title: Mount Ararat

text: In their detailed study and summary of the Quaternary volcanism of Anatolia, Yilmaz et al. recognized four phases to the construction of Mount Ararat from volcanic rocks exposed in glacial valleys deeply carved into its flanks. First, they recognized a "fissure eruption phase" of Plinian-subPlinian fissure eruptions that deposited more than of pyroclastic rocks and a few basaltic lava flows. These volcanic rocks were erupted from approximately north northwest–south southeast-trending extensional faults and fissures prior to the development of Mount Ararat. Second, a "cone-building phase" began when the volcanic activity became localized at a point along a fissure. During this phase, the eruption of successive flows of lava up to thick and pyroclastic flows of andesite and dacite composition and later eruption of basaltic lava flows, formed the Greater Ararat cone with a low conical profile. Third, during a "climatic phase", copious flows of andesitic and basaltic lavas were erupted. During this phase, the current cones of Greater and Lesser Ararat were formed as eruptions along subsidiary fissures and cracks and flank occurred. Finally, the volcanic eruptions at Mount Ararat transitioned into a "flank eruption phase", during which a major north–south-trending fault offset the two cones that developed along with a number of subsidiary fissures and cracks on the volcano's flanks. Along this fault and the subsidiary fissures and cracks, a number of parasitic cones and domes were built by minor eruptions. One subsidiary cone erupted voluminous basalt and andesite lava flows. They flowed across the Doğubeyazıt plain and along the southerly flowing Sarısu River. These lava flows formed black ʻaʻā and pāhoehoe lava flows that contain well preserved lava tubes. The radiometric dating of these lava flows yielded radiometric ages of 0.4, 0.48 and 0.81 Ma. Overall, radiometric ages obtained from the volcanic rocks erupted by Mount Ararat range from 1.5 to 0.02 Ma.


title: Mount Ararat

text: The chronology of Holocene volcanic activity associated with Mount Ararat is documented by either archaeological excavations, oral history, historical records, or a combination of these data, which provide evidence that volcanic eruptions of Mount Ararat occurred in 2500–2400 BC, 550 BC, possibly in 1450 AD and 1783 AD, and definitely in 1840 AD. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that explosive eruptions and pyroclastic flows from the northwest flank of Mount Ararat destroyed and buried at least one Kura–Araxes culture settlement and caused numerous fatalities in 2500–2400 BC. Oral histories indicated that a significant eruption of uncertain magnitude occurred in 550 BC and minor eruptions of uncertain nature might have occurred in 1450 AD and 1783 AD. According to the interpretation of historical and archaeological data, strong earthquakes not associated with volcanic eruptions also occurred in the area of Mount Ararat in 139, 368, 851–893, and 1319 AD. During the 139 AD earthquake, a large landslide that caused many casualties and was similar to the 1840 AD landslide originated from the summit of Mount Ararat.


title: Mount Ararat

text: A phreatic eruption occurred on Mount Ararat on July 2, 1840 and pyroclastic flow from radial fissures on the upper north flank of the mountain and a possibly associated earthquake of magnitude 7.4 that caused severe damage and numerous casualties. Up to 10,000 people died in the earthquake, including 1,900 villagers in the village of Akhuri (Armenian: Akori, modern Yenidoğan) who were killed by a gigantic landslide and subsequent debris flow. In addition, this combination of landslide and debris flow destroyed the Armenian monastery of St. Jacob near Akori, the town of Aralik, several villages, and Russian military barracks. It also temporarily dammed the Sevjur (Metsamor) River.


title: Mount Ararat

text: The 13th century missionary William of Rubruck wrote that "Many have tried to climb it, but none has been able."


title: Mount Ararat

text: The Armenian Apostolic Church was historically opposed to ascents of Ararat on religious grounds. Thomas Stackhouse, an 18th-century English theologian, noted that "All the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's ark exists to the present day on the summit of Mount Ararat, and that in order to preserve it, no person is permitted to approach it." In response to its first ascent by Parrot and Abovian, one high-ranking Armenian Apostolic Church clergyman commented that to climb the sacred mountain was "to tie the womb of the mother of all mankind in a dragonish mode." By contrast, in the 21st century to climb Ararat is "the most highly valued goal of some of the patriotic pilgrimages that are organized in growing number from Armenia and the Armenian diaspora."


title: Mount Ararat

text: The first recorded ascent of the mountain in modern times took place on . The Baltic German naturalist Friedrich Parrot of the University of Dorpat arrived at Etchmiadzin in mid-September 1829, almost two years after the Russian capture of Yerevan, for the sole purpose of exploring Ararat. The prominent Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian, then a deacon and translator at Etchmiadzin, was assigned by Catholicos Yeprem, the head of the Armenian Church, as interpreter and guide.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Parrot and Abovian crossed the Aras River into the district of Surmali and headed to the Armenian village of Akhuri on the northern slope of Ararat, above sea level. They set up a base camp at the Armenian monastery of St. Hakob some higher, at an elevation of . After two failed attempts, they reached the summit on their third attempt at 3:15 p.m. on October 9, 1829. The group included Parrot, Abovian, two Russian soldiers – Aleksei Zdorovenko and Matvei Chalpanov – and two Armenian Akhuri villagers – Hovhannes Aivazian and Murad Poghosian. Parrot measured the elevation at using a mercury barometer. This was not only the first recorded ascent of Ararat, but also the second highest elevation climbed by man up to that date outside of Mount Licancabur in the Chilean Andes. Abovian dug a hole in the ice and erected a wooden cross facing north. Abovian also picked up a chunk of ice from the summit and carried it down with him in a bottle, considering the water holy. On , Parrot and Abovian together with the Akhuri hunter Sahak's brother Hako, acting as a guide, climbed up Lesser Ararat.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Other early notable climbers of Ararat included Russian climatologist and meteorologist Kozma Spassky-Avtonomov (August 1834), Karl Behrens (1835), German mineralogist and geologist Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich (29 July 1845), British politician Henry Danby Seymour (1848) and British army officer Major Robert Stuart (1856). Later in the 19th century, two British politicians and scholars—James Bryce (1876) and H. F. B. Lynch (1893)—climbed the mountain. The first winter climb was by Turkish alpinist Bozkurt Ergör, the former president of the Turkish Mountaineering Federation, who climbed the peak on 21 February 1970.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Noah's Ark landed on the "mountains of Ararat" (Biblical , "hare ararat"), according to . Many historians and Bible scholars agree that "Ararat" is the Hebrew name of Urartu, the geographical predecessor of Armenia; they argue that the word referred to the wider region at the time and not specifically to Mount Ararat. The phrase is translated as "mountains of Armenia" ("montes Armeniae") in the Vulgate, the fourth century Latin translation of the Bible. Nevertheless, Mount Ararat is traditionally considered the resting place of Noah's Ark, and, thus, considered a biblical mountain.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Mount Ararat has been associated with the Genesis account since the 11th century, and Armenians began to identify it as the ark's landing place during that time. F. C. Conybeare wrote that the mountain was "a center and focus of pagan myths and cults… and it was only in the eleventh century, after these had vanished from the popular mind, that the Armenian theologians ventured to locate on its eternal snows the resting-place of Noah's ark." Franciscan missionary William of Rubruck is usually considered the earliest reference for the tradition of Mount Ararat as the landing place of the ark in European literature. English traveler John Mandeville is another early author who mentioned Mount Ararat, "where Noah's ship rested, and it is still there."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Most Christians identify Mount Ararat with the biblical "mountains of Ararat," "largely because it would have been the first peak to emerge from the receding flood waters", and it is where most of Western Christianity place the landing of Noah's Ark. A 1722 biblical dictionary by Austin Calmet and the 1871 Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary both point to Mount Ararat as the place where the ark rested. American missionary H. G. O. Dwight wrote in 1856 that it is "the general opinion of the learned in Europe" that the Ark landed on Mount Ararat. James Bryce wrote that the ark rested upon a "mountain in the district which the Hebrews knew as Ararat, or Armenia" in an 1878 article for the Royal Geographical Society, and he added that the biblical writer must have had Mount Ararat in mind because it is so "very much higher, more conspicuous, and more majestic than any other summit in Armenia."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Pope John Paul II declared in his homily in Yerevan's St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral: "We are close to Mount Ararat, where tradition says that the Ark of Noah came to rest." Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, also mentioned Mount Ararat as the resting place of Noah's Ark in his speech at the Etchmiadzin Cathedral during his visit to Armenia in 2010.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Those critical of this view point out that Ararat was the name of the country at the time when Genesis was written, not specifically the mountain. Arnold wrote in his 2008 Genesis commentary, "The location 'on the mountains' of Ararat indicates not a specific mountain by that name, but rather the mountainous region of the land of Ararat."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Ararat has traditionally been the main focus of the searches for Noah's Ark. Augustin Calmet wrote in his 1722 biblical dictionary, "It is affirmed, but without proof, that there are still remains of Noah's ark on the top of this mountain; but M. de Tournefort, who visited this spot, has assured us there was nothing like it; that the top of mount Ararat is inaccessible, both by reason of its great height, and of the snow which perpetually covers it." Archaeological expeditions, sometimes supported by evangelical and millenarian churches, have been conducted since the 19th century in search of the ark. According to a 1974 book around 200 people from more than 20 countries claimed to have seen the Ark on Ararat since 1856. A fragment from the ark supposedly found on Ararat is on display at the museum of Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the center of the Armenian Church. Despite numerous reports of ark sightings (e.g. Ararat anomaly) and rumors, "no scientific evidence of the ark has emerged."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Searches for Noah's Ark are considered by scholars an example of pseudoarchaeology. Kenneth Feder writes, "As the flood story itself is unsupported by any archaeological evidence, it is not surprising that there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of an impossibly large boat dating to 5,000 years ago."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Despite lying outside the borders of modern Armenia, Ararat has historically been associated with Armenia, and Armenians have being called by some authors the "people of Ararat". It is widely considered the country's principal national symbol and brand. The image of Ararat, usually framed within a nationalizing discourse, is ubiquitous in everyday material culture in Armenia. Tsypylma Darieva arguues that Armenians have "a sense of possession of Ararat in the sense of symbolic cultural property."


title: Mount Ararat

text: There is historical and modern mountain worship around it among Armenians. Ararat is known as the "holy mountain" of the Armenian people. It was principal to the pre-Christian Armenian mythology, where it was the home of the gods. With the rise of Christianity, the mythology associated with pagan worship of the mountain was lost.


title: Mount Ararat

text: In the early 20th century, the Italian traveler Luigi Villari wrote, "Almost the whole history of the Armenian people centres round Mount Ararat." Ararat was the geographical center of ancient Armenian kingdoms. One scholar defined the historic Greater Armenia ("Armenia Major") as "the area about 200 miles [320 km] in every direction from Mount Ararat." In 19th-century era of romantic nationalism, when an Armenian state did not exist, Mount Ararat symbolized the historical Armenian nation-state. In 1861 Armenian poet Mikael Nalbandian, witnessing the Italian unification, wrote to Harutiun Svadjian in a letter from Naples: "Etna and Vesuvius are still smoking; is there no fire left in the old volcano of Ararat?"


title: Mount Ararat

text: The Genesis flood narrative was linked to the Armenian myth of origin by the early medieval historian Movses Khorenatsi. In his "History of Armenia", he wrote that Noah and his family first settled in Armenia and later moved to Babylon. Hayk, a descendant of Japheth, a son of Noah, revolted against Bel (the biblical Nimrod) and returned to the area around Mount Ararat, where he established the roots of the Armenian nation. He is thus considered the legendary founding father and the name giver of the Armenian people. According to Razmik Panossian, this legend "makes Armenia the cradle of all civilisation since Noah's Ark landed on the 'Armenian' mountain of Ararat. […] it connects Armenians to the biblical narrative of human development. […] it makes Mount Ararat the national symbol of all Armenians, and the territory around it the Armenian homeland from time immemorial."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Mount Ararat has been depicted on the coat of arms of Armenia consistently since 1918. The First Republic's coat of arms was designed by architect Alexander Tamanian and painter Hakob Kojoyan. This coat of arms was readopted by the legislature of the Republic of Armenia on April 19, 1992, after Armenia regained independence. Ararat is depicted along with the ark on its peak on the shield on an orange background.


title: Mount Ararat

text: The emblem of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (Soviet Armenia) was created by the painters Martiros Saryan and Hakob Kojoyan in 1921. Mount Ararat is depicted in the center and makes up a large portion of it.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Ararat also appeared on the coat of arms of the Armenian Oblast and the Georgia-Imeretia Governorate (), subdivisions of the Russian Empire that included the northern flanks of the mountain. They were adopted in 1833 and 1843, respectively.


title: Mount Ararat

text: In the aftermath of the Armenian genocide of 1915, Ararat came to represent the destruction of the native Armenian population of eastern Turkey (Western Armenia) in the national consciousness of Armenians. Ari L. Goldman noted in 1988, "In most Armenian homes in the modern diaspora, there are pictures of Mount Ararat, a bittersweet reminder of the homeland and national aspirations."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Ararat has become a symbol of Armenian efforts to reclaim its "lost lands", i.e. the areas west of Ararat that are now part of Turkey that had significant Armenian population before the genocide. Adriaans noted that Ararat is featured as a sanctified territory for the Armenians in everyday banal irredentism. Stephanie Platz wrote, "Omnipresent, the vision of Ararat rising above Yerevan and its outskirts constantly reminds Armenians of their putative ethnogenesis … and of their exile from Eastern Anatolia after the Armenian genocide of 1915."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Turkish political scientist Bayram Balci argues that regular references to the Armenian Genocide and Mount Ararat "clearly indicate" that the border with Turkey is contested in Armenia. Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Armenian government has not made official claims to any Turkish territory, however the Armenian government has avoided "an explicit and formal recognition of the existing Turkish-Armenian border." In a 2010 interview with "Der Spiegel", Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan was asked whether Armenia wants "Mount Ararat back." Sargsyan, in response, said that "No one can take Mount Ararat from us; we keep it in our hearts. Wherever Armenians live in the world today, you will find a picture of Mount Ararat in their homes. And I feel certain that a time will come when Mount Ararat is no longer a symbol of the separation between our peoples, but an emblem of understanding. But let me make this clear: Never has a representative of Armenia made territorial demands. Turkey alleges this—perhaps out of its own bad conscience?"


title: Mount Ararat

text: The most prominent party to lay claims to eastern Turkey is the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun). which claims it as part of what it considers United Armenia. In various settings, several notable individuals such as German historian Tessa Hofmann, Slovak conservative politician František Mikloško, Lithuanian political scientist and Soviet dissident Aleksandras Štromas have spoken in support of Armenian claims over Mt. Ararat.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Levon Abrahamian noted that Ararat is visually present for Armenians in reality (it can be seen from many houses in Yerevan and settlements in the Ararat plain), symbolically (through many visual representations, such as on Armenia's coats of arms), and culturally—in numerous and various nostalgic poetical, political, architectural representation. The first three postage stamps issued by Armenia in 1992 after achieving independence from the Soviet Union depicted Mount Ararat.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Mount Ararat has been depicted on various Armenian dram banknotes issued in 1993–2001; on the reverse of the 10 dram banknotes issued in 1993, on the reverse of the 50 dram banknotes issued in 1998, on the obverse of the 100 and 500 dram banknotes issued in 1993, and on the reverse of the 50,000 dram banknotes issued in 2001. It was also depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 100 lira banknotes of 1972–1986.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Ararat is depicted on the logos of two of Armenia's leading universities—the Yerevan State University and the American University of Armenia. It is depicted on the logos of Football Club Ararat Yerevan (since the Soviet times) and the Football Federation of Armenia. The logo of Armavia, Armenia's now defunct flag carrier, also depicted Ararat. The publications of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party in Lebanon ("Ararad" daily) and California, U.S. ("Massis" weekly) are both named for the mountain. The Ararat brandy, produced by the Yerevan Brandy Company since 1887, is considered the most prestigious Eastern European brandy. Hotels in Yerevan often advertise the visibility of Ararat from their rooms, which is seen as a major advantage for tourists.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Ararat was depicted in the books of European, including many British, travelers in the 18th–19th centuries who visited Armenia.


title: Mount Ararat

text: According to one source, the first Armenian artist to depict the mountain was Ivan Aivazovsky, who created a painting of Ararat during his visit to Armenia in 1868. Other major Armenians artists who painted Ararat include Yeghishe Tadevosyan, Gevorg Bashinjaghian, Martiros Saryan, and Panos Terlemezian.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Rouben Paul Adalian suggested that "there is probably more poetry written about Mount Ararat than any other mountain on earth." Travel writer Rick Antonson described Ararat as the "most fabled mountain in the world."


title: Mount Ararat

text: Mount Ararat is featured prominently in Armenian literature. According to Meliné Karakashian, Armenian poets "attribute to it symbolic meanings of unity, freedom, and independence." According to Kevork Bardakjian, in Armenian literature, Ararat "epitomizes Armenia and Armenian suffering and aspirations, especially the consequences of the 1915 genocide: almost total annihilation, loss of a unique culture and land [...] and an implicit determination never to recognize the new political borders."


title: Mount Ararat

text: The last two lines of Yeghishe Charents's 1920 poem "I Love My Armenia" () read: "And in the entire world you will not find a mountaintop like Ararat's. / Like an unreachable peak of glory I love my Mount Masis." In a 1926 poem dedicated to the mountain Avetik Isahakyan wrote: "Ages as though in second came, / Touched the grey crest of Ararat, / And passed by...! [...] It's now your turn; you too, now, / Stare at its high and lordly brow, / And pass by...!" Mount Ararat is the most frequently cited symbol in the poetry of Hovhannes Shiraz. In collection of poems, "Knar Hayastani" (Lyre of Armenia) published in 1958, there are many poems "with very strong nationalist overtones, especially with respect to Mount Ararat (in Turkey) and the irredentism it entailed." In one such poem, "Ktak" (Bequest), Shiraz bequeaths his son Mt. Ararat to "keep it forever, / As the language of us Armenians, as the pillar of your father’s home."


title: Mount Ararat

text: The first lines of Paruyr Sevak's 1961 poem "We Are Few..." () read: "We are few, but they say of us we are Armenians. / We do not think ourselves superior to anyone. / Clearly we shall have to accept / That we, and only we, have an Ararat" In one short poem Silva Kaputikyan compares Armenia to an "ancient rock-carved fortress", the towers of which are Ararat and Aragats.


title: Mount Ararat

text: English Romantic poet William Wordsworth imagines seeing the ark in the poem "Sky-prospect — From the Plain of France."


title: Mount Ararat

text: In his "Journey to Arzrum" (; 1835–36), the celebrated Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin recounted his travels to the Caucasus and Armenia at the time of the 1828–29 Russo-Turkish War.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Russian Symbolist poet Valery Bryusov often referred to Ararat in his poetry and dedicated two poems to the mountain, which were published in 1917. Bryusov saw Ararat as the embodiment of antiquity of the Armenian people and their culture.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote fondly of Ararat during his 1933 travels in Armenia. "I have cultivated in myself a sixth sense, an 'Ararat' sense," the poet wrote, "the sense of an attraction to a mountain."


title: Mount Ararat

text: During his travels to Armenia, Soviet Russian writer Vasily Grossman observed Mount Ararat from Yerevan standing "high in the blue sky." He wrote that "with its gentle, tender contours, it seems to grow not out of the earth but out of the sky, as if it has condensed from its white clouds and its deep blue. It is this snowy mountain, this bluish-white sunlit mountain that shone in the eyes of those who wrote the Bible."


title: Mount Ararat

text: In "The Maximus Poems" (1953) American poet Charles Olson, who grew up near the Armenian neighborhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, compares the Ararat Hill near his childhood home to the mountain and "imagines he can capture an Armenian's immigrant perspective: the view of Ararat Hill as Mount Ararat."


title: Mount Ararat

text: The world renowned Turkish-Kurdish writer Yaşar Kemal's 1970 book entitled "Ağrı Dağı Efsanesi" ("The Legend of Mount Ararat") is about a local myth about a poor boy and the governor's daughter.


title: Mount Ararat

text: Several major episodes in "Declare" (2001) by Tim Powers take place on Mount Ararat. In the book, it is the focal point of supernatural happenings.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Mauser C96 ("Construktion 96") is a semi-automatic pistol that was originally produced by German arms manufacturer Mauser from 1896 to 1937. Unlicensed copies of the gun were also manufactured in Spain and China in the first half of the 20th century.


title: Mauser C96

text: The distinctive characteristics of the C96 are the integral box magazine in front of the trigger, the long barrel, the wooden shoulder stock, which gives it the stability of a short-barreled rifle and doubles as a holster or carrying case, and a grip shaped like the handle of a broom. The grip earned the gun the nickname "broomhandle" in the English-speaking world, and in China the C96 was nicknamed the "box cannon" () because of its rectangular internal magazine and because it could be holstered in its wooden box-like detachable stock.


title: Mauser C96

text: With its long barrel and high-velocity cartridge, the Mauser C96 had superior range and better penetration than most other pistols of its era; the 7.63×25mm Mauser cartridge was the highest-velocity commercially manufactured pistol cartridge until the advent of the .357 Magnum cartridge in 1935.


title: Mauser C96

text: Mauser manufactured approximately one million C96 pistols, while the number produced in Spain and China is large but unknown due to poor production records.


title: Mauser C96

text: Within a year of its introduction in 1896, the C96 had been sold to governments and commercially to civilians and individual military officers.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Mauser C96 pistol was extremely popular with British officers at the time, and many purchased it privately. Mauser supplied the C96 to Westley Richards in the UK for resale. By the onset of World War I, the C96's popularity with the British military had waned.


title: Mauser C96

text: As a military sidearm, the pistols saw service in various colonial wars, as well as World War I, the Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War, where the gun was nicknamed "Peter the Painter", after the contemporary London gangster of that name who was believed to use one, and because the pistol grip looked like a brush handle, the Estonian War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, and World War II. During the Warlord Era in China, European embargoes on exporting rifles to Chinese warlords meant that the C96 became a mainstay of the period's armies, and the basic form of the pistol was extensively copied. The C96 also became a staple of Bolshevik commissars from one side and various warlords and gang leaders from another in the Russian Civil War, known simply as "the Mauser". Communist revolutionaries Yakov Yurovsky and Peter Ermakov used Mausers to execute the Russian imperial family in July 1918.


title: Mauser C96

text: Winston Churchill was fond of the Mauser C96 and used one at the 1898 Battle of Omdurman and during the Second Boer War; Lawrence of Arabia carried a Mauser C96 for a period, during his time in the Middle East. Indian revolutionary Ram Prasad Bismil and his partymen used these Mauser pistols in the historic Kakori train robbery in August 1925. Chinese communist general, Zhu De, carried a Mauser C96 during his Nanchang Uprising and later conflicts; his gun (with his name printed on it) is in the Beijing war museum.


title: Mauser C96

text: Three Mauser C96s were used in the killing of Spanish prime minister Eduardo Dato in 1921, and a Mauser C96 was used in the assassination of the King of Yugoslavia, Alexander I of Yugoslavia, in 1934.


title: Mauser C96

text: Imported and domestic copies of the C96 were used extensively by the Chinese in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, as well as by the Spanish during the Spanish Civil War and the Germans in World War II.


title: Mauser C96

text: Besides the standard 7.63×25 mm chambering, C96 pistols were also commonly chambered for 9×19mm Parabellum, with a small number also being produced in 9mm Mauser Export. In 1940, Mauser officials proposed using the C-96 as the vehicle for an upgrade to the 9×25mm Mauser Export cartridge to match the ballistics of the .357 Magnum. Lastly, there was a Chinese-manufactured model chambered for .45 ACP. Despite the pistol's worldwide popularity and fame, China was the only nation to use the C96 as the primary service pistol of its military and police.


title: Mauser C96

text: Mauser's first military contract was with the Ottoman government in 1897. They ordered 1,000 pistols for the royal palace guards. They had their own range of serial numbers, running from 1 to 1000. They differ in that they use a Farsi number system on the tangent sight and serial number, and the weapon is designated in the Muslim calendar year number system "1314" in place of the year of the Gregorian calendar "1896/1897". Markings include a six-pointed star on both sides of the chamber and the crest of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (a trophy of crossed Turkish flags, various polearms, and a collection of his royal awards and honours) and the Muslim year "1314" on the square left rear frame panel. Under the sultan's rule, there was great concern about potential military coups, and most weapons were locked away in armories, including many of the C96 pistols. After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908-1909, these pistols were issued to the army and police for service use. Some were used in combat in World War I, and after the war they were considered obsolete, being put up for sale cheaply to army or police officers. All of this meant that they saw a lot of use and as a result few specimens survive today, many of them in quite harsh conditions.


title: Mauser C96

text: In 1899, the Italian government ordered Mauser's first major military contract; an order for 5,000 C96 pistols for the Italian Royal Navy. They differ in that their receivers are "slab-sided" (i.e., lacked the milling on the sides found on commercial Mausers). They also have a "ring hammer" (spurless hammer with a hole through its head) instead of the early "cone hammer" (spurless hammer with ribbed cone-like projections on the sides of its head). These guns had their own serial number range, running from 1 to 5000.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Persian government ordered 1,000 pistols. They have the Persian government's "Lion and Sun" insignia on the rectangular milled panel on the left side of the receiver and the serial numbers range from 154000 to 154999. It is often confused with the Turkish contract Mauser.


title: Mauser C96

text: Austria-Hungary ordered 50,000 Mausers in the standard 7.63×25mm. A small number were rebarreled to 8mm Gasser (8.11×27mm) for an unknown reason.


title: Mauser C96

text: During World War I, the Imperial German Army contracted with Mauser for 150,000 C96 pistols chambered in 9mm Parabellum to offset the slow production of the standard-issue Luger P08 pistol. They use the same clip-loaded internal box magazines as the 7.63mm Mauser and also hold ten rounds. This variant of the C96 was named the "Red 9" after a large number "9" burned into the grip panels and painted in red. (This was done to warn the pistols' users not to incorrectly load them with 7.63 mm ammunition.) Because the army delegated the branding to unit armourers, not all 9 mm pistols carry the nine. Of the 150,000 pistols commissioned, approximately 137,000 were delivered before the war ended. Original 9 mm pistols can be told from 7.63 mm-to-9 mm conversions because they have 9 mm-rated sights (marked "50 m-500 m") rather than 7.63 mm-rated sights (marked "50 m-800 m").


title: Mauser C96

text: The French government set up an order for 2,000 pistols with barrels for the Gendarmerie Nationale. The pistol has black ebonite grips rather than wooden ones.


title: Mauser C96

text: The German government purchased 7,800 commercial M1930 pistols in 1940 for use by the Luftwaffe. They have Wehrmacht proof marks and the Mauser serial numbers come from the early- to mid-1930s. The weapon had ceased production in 1937 but the order was filled from remaining stocks. According to Kersten, Moll and Schmid, these were likely purchased by the high command of the armed forces and issued to motorcycle and flak crews of the Luftwaffe.


title: Mauser C96

text: There were many variants of the C96 besides the standard commercial model; the most common are detailed below.


title: Mauser C96

text: One of the experimental ideas was the creation of a pistol-carbine for use by light cavalry. They had "slab-sided" receivers, standard 10-round magazines, permanently affixed wooden stocks and forends, and lengthened (early production) or (late production) barrels. They were dropped from production after 1899 due to poor sales and little military interest.


title: Mauser C96

text: There was limited sporting interest in the carbine version and, due to small production numbers, it is a highly prized collectable priced at about twice the value of the pistol version. Recently, importers like Navy Arms imported replica Mauser carbines with 16-inch or longer barrels for sale in the US.


title: Mauser C96

text: A version of the Mauser pistol with a full-sized grip, six-shot internal magazine, and a barrel. Production was phased out by 1899.


title: Mauser C96

text: This is the unofficial term for a variant compact Mauser with a curved wooden or hard-rubber grip, like that of the "Reichsrevolver". The name comes from the US Army designation of the Mauser pistol sent to participate in their self-loading pistol trials.


title: Mauser C96

text: This was the first model to come cut for a combination wooden stock-holster. The stock doubles as a case or holster and attaches to a slot cut in the grip frame.


title: Mauser C96

text: This model was the first to chamber the 9×25mm Mauser Export cartridge. It was designed to appeal to the arms markets in South America and China. Mauser C96 pistols in this caliber usually have an indentation milled into the upper surface of the magazine's follower to facilitate feeding of the straight-cased 9×25mm cartridge cases. The rifling in the barrel has a unique 13:8 twist. In addition, the flat surfaces extending around the chamber are longer, to accommodate the higher pressures of the 9×25mm cartridge. Examples of Mauser C96s in this caliber are rare, but are still occasionally found on the private collector's market. The 9×25mm Mauser Export calibre receded from the market as the armaments industry reoriented itself towards military manufacture during World War I, but the round enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as a submachine gun calibre in the 1930s.


title: Mauser C96

text: This model features an extended stock and barrel similar to the M1896 "Kavallerie Karabiner". It also possesses a 40-round magazine and is chambered in 9×19mm Parabellum. The M1917 Mauser trench carbine was introduced during World War I and was intended to be a cheaper replacement for the expensive Lange "Pistole" 08 in close-quarters combat. However, the Imperial German Army did not believe it was a cost-effective substitute, and the project was shortly abandoned with only a few ever made.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Treaty of Versailles (signed in 1919) imposed a number of restrictions on pistol barrel lengths and calibres on German arms manufacturers. Pistols for German government issue or domestic market sales could not have a barrel longer than 4 inches and could not be chambered for 9 mm cartridges.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Weimar Republic banned the private ownership of military-issue or military-style weapons in an attempt to recover valuable arms from returning soldiers. The confiscated weapons were then used to arm government forces, leaving them with a hodge-podge of military and civilian arms. To meet the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, a major reworking project was begun that set about converting these weapons.


title: Mauser C96

text: To be compliant, pre-war C.96 models belonging to the Weimar government had to have their barrels cut down to . This meant that their tangent sights had to be replaced with fixed sights. They also had to be converted to the standard 7.63×25mm Mauser round, though a few hybrid Mausers were made with salvaged Navy Luger barrels that were chambered for 7.65mm Parabellum. Compliant confiscated government-issue guns were marked "M1920". This practice was continued on German service pistols even after the ban was ignored and the conversions had stopped.


title: Mauser C96

text: Mauser began manufacturing a compliant version of the C96 for commercial sale from 1920 to 1921. It featured smaller grips, a shorter barrel, and was chambered for the standard 7.63×25mm Mauser. An experimental 8.15×25.2mm Mauser cartridge (DWM 580) was used to replace the banned 9×19mm Parabellum and 9×25mm Mauser Export cartridges for domestic sales but it never supplanted the 9 mm calibre.


title: Mauser C96

text: Mass-production of the weapon was from 1921 to 1930. It was sold in quantity to armies in the contested Baltic region and was carried by the Poles, Lithuanians, German "Freikorps" and White Russians. The Bolshevik government (and later the new Red Army) of the embryonic Soviet Union purchased large numbers of this model in the 1920s and also appropriated them from defeated enemies. The distinctive pistol became associated with the Bolsheviks and was thus nicknamed the "Bolo". The "Bolo" model was also popular elsewhere, as the shorter barrel and smaller overall size made the gun easier to conceal.


title: Mauser C96

text: Also known as the "M30" by collectors, it was a simplification and improvement of the M1921 Mauser. It simplified production by removing several fine-machining details and reverted to the "pre-war" large grip and long barrel. The early model M30s had a barrel, but later models had the traditional barrel. It was made from 1930 until 1937.


title: Mauser C96

text: Joseph Nickl designed a selective-fire conversion in 1930. It tended to "cook off" (fire by spontaneous ignition of the propellant when overheated) when fired in long bursts. Only 4,000 of this model were made between 1930 and 1931.


title: Mauser C96

text: Since the M1932 / M712 variant was full-auto, the semi-auto M1930 it was derived from was sometimes called the "M711" by war surplus dealers and collectors.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Spanish gunmaking firms of Beistegui Hermanos and Astra began producing detachable magazine-fed, select-fire versions of the C96 in 1927 and 1928 respectively, intended for export to the Far East.


title: Mauser C96

text: Mauser began production of the "Schnellfeuer" (rapid fire), their own select-fire, detachable magazine version of the M30 designed by Karl Westinger. Production started in 1932 and ended in 1936, which has led to its unofficial designation of "M1932" by collectors. An extremely successful design, around 98,000 guns were made overall and they had their own series of serial numbers.


title: Mauser C96

text: It was largely intended for export to South America and China or to the opposing sides in the later Spanish Civil War. From 1932 to 1935, the Yugoslavian military tested batches of the Schnellfeuer in both 7.63mm and 9mm Parabellum for the purpose of arming mountain troops and special operations units. Improvements requested by the Yugoslavs included a detachable barrel, improved front and rear sights, more durable parts to prevent breakage under sustained fire and lowered position of the shoulder stock to avoid "hammer bite".


title: Mauser C96

text: Small numbers of M1932s were supplied to the German Wehrmacht during World War II, who designated it the M712.


title: Mauser C96

text: The US National Firearms Act of 1934 placed a $200 tax on select-fire weapons ("machine guns"), making exports of the "Schnellfeuer" guns to the US impractical since at the time this was roughly half the cost of a new car. After World War II, importers sold a semi-automatic conversion of the detachable magazine "Schnellfeuer" that was made for the US surplus market. The versions imported from China were built on new semi-auto-only frames; the ATF treats them under the law as new guns and not under the curio and relic exemption.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Brazilian government bought five-hundred 7.63mm M1932 "Schnellfeuer" machine pistols for the "Policia Militar do Distrito Federal" (Portuguese: "Federal District Military Police") during the mid-1930s. The PASAM ("pistola automática semi-automática Mauser", or "semi-automatic / automatic Mauser pistol") used the M1932 as its base but made a few alterations. The controls were the same as the standard model, except the markings were in Portuguese. The selector switch (found on the left side, above the trigger guard) was marked "N" for "normal" ("average", or semi-automatic) and "R" for "rápido" ("rapid", or fully automatic). The safety control lever (found to the left of the hammer) was marked "S" for "seguro" ("safe") and "F" for "fogo" ("fire'). It was used with Brazilian State Military Police (Polícia Militar) forces in the 1980s. They preferred to use it as a semi-automatic carbine and reserved its full-auto setting for emergencies due to its recoil and muzzle-climb.


title: Mauser C96

text: In 1970, the "Policia Militar do Rio de Janeiro" (PMRJ) asked the services of Jener Damau Arroyo, a Spanish-born gunsmith, to make modifications on their PASAMs in order to improve their handling. The first modification (PASAM MOD-1), of which 101 were modified, received a metal frame extension welded to the magazine housing. It was fitted with a metal forward grip well ahead of the gun under the muzzle. The original grip was left alone, making it compatible with the wooden holster/stock. The second modification (PASAM MOD-2), involving 89 pistols, featured a similar frame extension, but the forward grip had wooden panels and was of a different shape. The pistol grip frame used thicker rectangular wooden grips and had a "t-bar" metal shoulder stock welded to it. A metal frame attached to the receiver supported a rectangular wooden foregrip, taking pressure off the barrel. In both models, of course, the barrel was left free so as to enable it to do its short recoil during firing. For the record, 295 PASAMs were left in the original condition. It took standard detachable 10-round box magazines, although they can also take the extended 20- and 40-round magazines.


title: Mauser C96

text: The most common and popular pistol in China since the beginning of the Republic in 1912, was the Mauser C96, called the "Box Cannon" (盒子炮) in Chinese. It was imported from Germany and Spain (Astra 900 and MM31), but mostly produced locally in various arsenals, the larger being in Hanyang, Shanghai, Gongxian, Shanxi. They were often used with a detachable shoulder stock. Hanyang alone produced around 13,000 copies.


title: Mauser C96

text: During the Warlord era of Chinese history in the early 20th century, the province of Shanxi was ruled by warlord Yen Hsi-shan, who had established a modern arms factory in his capital city of Taiyuan. Yen was equipping his troops with a locally-produced copy of the Thompson submachine gun, chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge, but was experiencing supply difficulties as his troops' sidearms were 7.63mm calibre C96 handguns.


title: Mauser C96

text: Yen's solution was to produce a .45 ACP caliber version of the C96, thus standardizing ammunition and making supply logistics easier. Designated "Type 17", production of the .45 caliber handgun began in 1928 at the Taiyuan Arsenal and ended in 1931. They are inscribed (in Chinese) "Type 17" on the left-hand side of the gun, and "Republic Year Eighteen, Made in Shansi" on the right-hand side. They were issued (along with Thompson SMGs) to railway guards in the province as defense against bandits and other warlords.


title: Mauser C96

text: Besides being chambered for a larger cartridge, the Shanxi .45 pistols use a noticeably larger frame than their 7.63mm counterparts, with the 10-round magazine extending below the trigger guard and a 155 mm (6.1 in) barrel. It was loaded using two five-round stripper clips rather than the single 10-round stripper clips of the standard 7.63mm Mauser. Because of the overall increase in size, Type 17 pistols share no interchangeable parts with any other C96 variant.


title: Mauser C96

text: Most of the Shanxi .45 pistols were melted down after the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, largely due to their odd caliber for Chinese communist standards, but a few examples were exported overseas for sale on the commercial market. Approximately 8,500 Shanxi .45 caliber broomhandle pistols are believed to have been produced by the Taiyuan Arsenal, but there is some debate as to how many of the Shanxi .45 calibre broomhandle pistols currently on the commercial market were actually produced for Yen's troops, and how many are more recent productions for the US collectors' market.


title: Mauser C96

text: Type 80 is a machine pistol designed in the late 20th century by the People's Republic of China. It is based on the C96 which was widely used in China since the 1900s and is chambered for the Type 51 cartridge (Chinese copies of the Soviet 7.62x25mm Tokarev cartridge), but it is fed by a 20-round detachable box magazine instead of the 10-round nondetachable magazine in a standard C96. A 10-round box magazine is also available for the firearm.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Type 80 features a different grip similar to that on a TT-33 but seems narrower than that of a standard TT-33. The Type 80 is said to have an effective firing range of 100 metres (about 109 yards)and a muzzle velocity of 470 metres per second (about 1542 fps).


title: Mauser C96

text: It was designed to replace some of the PLA's Type 54s (Chinese copies of Soviet Tokarev TT pistol. The Type 54 was the standard service pistol of the PLA from the 1950s to the 1990s), especially the Type 54s in service in the Chinese special forces, as a small, light weapon which was required to be good at both attacking and personal defending, similar to that of a PDW.


title: Mauser C96

text: In the 1990s, the Chinese designed a new type of pistol, the QSZ-92, which was adopted as the standard-issue pistol by both the military and most of the police forces later and replaced most of the pistols in their service, including the Type 80.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Spanish gunmaker Astra-Unceta y Cia began producing a copy of the Mauser C.96 in 1927 that was externally similar to the C96 (including the presence of a detachable shoulder stock/holster) but with non-interlocking internal parts. It was produced until 1941, with a production hiatus in 1937 and 1938, and a final batch assembled from spare parts in 1951. The Spanish copies of the C96 were generally intended for export to China, but after the commencement of the Sino-Japanese war (which blocked supply of guns to Chinese forces) the remaining Astra 900s were used in the Spanish Civil War, and numbers were also sold to Germany in the period 1940–1943.


title: Mauser C96

text: Produced by Beistegui Hermanos in Eibar, Spain, this was the first pseudo-Mauser on the market, a relatively crude semi-auto appearing in 1926 and full-auto variants appearing in 1927. Mechanically, it was laid out approximately like the Mauser original, but without the removable lock frame. Internal parts (trigger, hammer, safety lever, etc.) pivoted on pins and screws extending through the frame. The screws also held the frame together. The bolt was of round cross-section, unlike the square Mauser bolt. The weapon was stamped with either "Royal" or "ETAI".


title: Mauser C96

text: Beistigui introduced an improved version of the Model H as the MM31 – the Modelo Military 1931. It included a number of improvements. A 20-round fixed magazine version was quickly introduced, followed by a detachable magazine version, to address the issues inherent to a gun with a 10-round magazine and a 900 rounds per minute rate of fire.


title: Mauser C96

text: This was a much closer copy of the Mauser original than the ETAI/Royal model and variants, with the full separate lock frame. It is of much better quality than the earlier gun, though still not at Mauser level. The MM31 was manufactured until 1934. A total of about 10,000 were made, in perhaps four successive variants. These models came in semi-auto and semi-auto/full auto selective fire variants.


title: Mauser C96

text: This model is much like the MM31, but adds a mechanical rate reducer inside the grip area and a three-position lever to select the firing rate. It also has a ribbed barrel to help prevent overheating during sustained full auto fire. Only a few hundred of these weapons were made and are very rare today.


title: Mauser C96

text: The Azul and Super Azul pistols were also manufactured by Beistegui Hermanos in Eibar, Spain, but sold by Eulogio Arostegui. The Azul was a copy of the standard C96 while the Super Azul is a semi auto/full auto select fire variant. Each accept detachable box magazines instead of having an internal box magazine.


title: Mauser C96

text: In the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the Federal Ordnance firearms company in South El Monte, California made reproductions of the Mauser 1917 trench carbine and C96 pistol, named the M713 and M714 respectively. The M713 came in a standard variant with a fixed stock and magazine, as well as a "deluxe" variant which has a detachable stock and detachable box magazines. The M714 supports detachable box magazines, unlike the original C96, and a "Bolo" variant, with the "Bolo" model having a shorter barrel and grip. All variants of the M713 and M714 were available in 7.63x25mm and 9x19mm ammunition.


title: Mauser C96

text: The broomhandle Mauser is a popular collector's gun. It was popularized in Soviet films as the iconic weapon of the Russian revolution and civil war. The C96 frequently appears as a "foreign" or "exotic" pistol in a number of films (such as "The Great Silence", where Jean-Louis Trintignant's use of the C96 intentionally contrasts with the Colt Single Action Army revolvers used by the other characters in the film) and TV shows, owing to its distinctive and instantly recognizable shape.


title: Mauser C96

text: The gun is depicted as a standard sidearm for Turkish officers in the film, "Lawrence of Arabia", and a wounded, disoriented Turkish officer fires one at Lawrence after he de-rails the Turkish train. Author Ian Fleming outfitted agents of SMERSH in the "James Bond" series with Mausers on the advice of firearms expert Geoffrey Boothroyd. The C96 was the inspiration for the Buck Rogers Atomic Pistol in the movie serial and the comic, and a popular toy version was produced in 1934 by the Daisy Manufacturing Company. A C96 was modified to form Han Solo's prop blaster pistol for the "Star Wars" films (under the name BlasTech DL-44 heavy blaster pistol). Reproductions of the blaster became so popular in the cosplay community that gun collectors became aware that fans were buying and altering increasingly rare original Mausers to make blaster replicas. The gun also figures prominently in the films "Sitting Target", "Brannigan", and "Joe Kidd". The Japanese toy maker "Epoch Co." created a dedicated video game console in 1977, the TV Game System 10, which includes as a light gun a plastic replica of a Mauser C96; the C96 replica was also usable with its next console, the Epoch Cassette Vision, created in 1981. The C96 was used by Vlado Chernozemski to assassinate the Yugoslav king Alexander I in Marseilles in 1934.


title: Himesh Patel

text: Himesh Jitendra Patel (born 13 October 1990) is a British actor, musician, and singer. He is known for portraying Tamwar Masood on the BBC soap opera "EastEnders" from 2007 to 2016, for starring in the 2019 musical romantic comedy film "Yesterday", and for the 2020 science fiction action film "Tenet" with John David Washington. In 2020, he had a recurring role in the HBO comedy series "Avenue 5". In 2021, he starred in the HBO miniseries "Station Eleven" earning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination. That same year, he also starred in Adam McKay's Netflix satirical comedy film "Don't Look Up", earning a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Cast in a Motion Picture nomination.


title: Himesh Patel

text: Patel was born on 13 October 1990 in Sawtry, Cambridgeshire. His parents are both Indian Gujaratis. His mother was born in Zambia and his father was born in Kenya. He grew up speaking Gujarati.


title: Himesh Patel

text: Patel attended Prince William School in Oundle, Northamptonshire. As a child, he began impersonating his favourite characters on television and film. When he was 11, he was cast in a school play, "This Is Your Life, Santa Claus", as Michael Aspel. Upon the suggestion by a teacher, his parents then signed him up for a local theatre group, the Key Youth Theatre in Peterborough. Later, he became a member of The Young Actors' Company in Cambridge, where he also took film classes. He took piano lessons and bought himself an electric guitar and taught himself to play at the age of 13.


title: Himesh Patel

text: When he was 16, Patel received a call on the day of his GCSEs saying he had landed an audition for the British soap opera "EastEnders" through an agency in The Young Actors' Company. He finished his last exam and had his parents rush him to his audition. After his first audition a casting assistant saw him waiting outside the audition room and asked him to read for the casting director. Patel won the part of Tamwar Masood, and 1 October 2007 marked his first appearance on "EastEnders."


title: Himesh Patel

text: Patel has also appeared in "" as Tamwar. In 2011 he co-wrote episode one of series three with co-star Charlie G. Hawkins. In 2013 he filmed an internet spin-off of "EastEnders" called "Tamwar Tales - The Life of an Assistant Market Inspector." Four episodes were aired weekly, starting on 25 July 2013. All four episodes and one behind-the-scenes clip are available on the "EastEnders" official website.


title: Himesh Patel

text: He played Tamwar for nine years until he left the show in 2016 to explore other opportunities. His last appearance was on 22 April 2016.


title: Himesh Patel

text: He has appeared in a number of short films. In 2014, he was cast as Pavan in the short film "Two Dosas"; the film won several awards, including Best Short Comedy at the London Short Film Festival and Best Comedy at the Aspen Film Festival. At the Shuffle festival, it won a third award, judged by Danny Boyle, who would later direct Patel in "Yesterday" (2019).


title: Himesh Patel

text: On 27 September 2016 he made his first appearance on TV since leaving "EastEnders" in the first episode of the Channel 4 sitcom "Damned." He played ex-constable and social worker Nitin for 12 episodes in two six-episode series. He appeared in "Rapscallions" (2016), a short film by Henry Scriven.


title: Himesh Patel

text: In 2017 he was cast in "Don Juan in Soho" as "Vagabond" with David Tennant playing the titular character. Patel played Amit in an episode of the BBC comedy "Climaxed" in the same year. He made a short appearance as Mr. Glencuddy in the second episode of the comedy "Motherland."


title: Himesh Patel

text: Patel has been credited as a voice actor in two "Doctor Who" audio stories. He voiced Biotech Dendry in "Day of the Vashta Nerada" as well as Engineer and Ayrton Valencia in "The Lifeboat and the Deathboat."


title: Himesh Patel

text: He is credited as a producer for the 2017 feature film "My Pure Land." In 2019, he made his film debut with his breakthrough role as Jack Malik in "Yesterday" (2019). He sings live throughout the film, covering various songs by The Beatles.


title: Himesh Patel

text: Patel was cast as Emery Staines in "The Luminaries," a mini-series based on the 2013 book by Eleanor Catton. The plot of the TV series differs from the book. Patel appears on the 2019 Children in Need album. He sang the Killers' song, "All These Things That I've Done". According to an interview, Patel is working on his first original TV script with What Larks Productions.


title: Himesh Patel

text: In 2019, Patel joined the cast of HBO Max limited series "Station Eleven". In 2020, Patel appeared as Jordan Hatwal in the comedy series "Avenue 5", starring Hugh Laurie.


title: Himesh Patel

text: In 2020, Patel appeared in the film "Tenet" as Mahir, a fixer who initially helps Neil and the protagonist in their plot to steal the painting from the Oslo airport. Patel appears in the 2021 Netflix film "Don't Look Up", portraying Phillip Kaj, the unscrupulous journalist dating the astronomer, Jennifer Lawrence's Kate Dibiasky, who is responsible for detecting the movie's comet. For his performance and along with the ensemble he received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture nomination.


title: Essay

text: An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.


title: Essay

text: Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" and "An Essay on Man"). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" and Thomas Malthus's "An Essay on the Principle of Population" are counterexamples.


title: Essay

text: In some countries (e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills; admission essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants, and in the humanities and social sciences essays are often used as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.


title: Essay

text: The concept of an "essay" has been extended to other media beyond writing. A film essay is a movie that often incorporates documentary filmmaking styles and focuses more on the evolution of a theme or idea. A photographic essay covers a topic with a linked series of photographs that may have accompanying text or captions.


title: Essay

text: The word "essay" derives from the French infinitive , "to try" or "to attempt". In English "essay" first meant "a trial" or "an attempt", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing.


title: Essay

text: Subsequently, "essay" has been defined in a variety of ways. One definition is a "prose composition with a focused subject of discussion" or a "long, systematic discourse".


title: Essay

text: It is difficult to define the genre into which essays fall. Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, gives guidance on the subject. He notes that "the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything", and adds that "by tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece". Furthermore, Huxley argues that "essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference".


title: Essay

text: Huxley adds that the most satisfying essays "...make the best not of one, not of two, but of all the three worlds in which it is possible for the essay to exist."


title: Essay

text: Montaigne's "attempts" grew out of his commonplacing. Inspired in particular by the works of Plutarch, a translation of whose "Œuvres Morales" ("Moral works") into French had just been published by Jacques Amyot, Montaigne began to compose his essays in 1572; the first edition, entitled "Essais", was published in two volumes in 1580. For the rest of his life, he continued revising previously published essays and composing new ones. A third volume was published posthumously; together, their over 100 examples are widely regarded as the predecessor of the modern essay.


title: Essay

text: While Montaigne's philosophy was admired and copied in France, none of his most immediate disciples tried to write essays. But Montaigne, who liked to fancy that his family (the Eyquem line) was of English extraction, had spoken of the English people as his "cousins", and he was early read in England, notably by Francis Bacon.


title: Essay

text: Bacon's essays, published in book form in 1597 (only five years after the death of Montaigne, containing the first ten of his essays), 1612, and 1625, were the first works in English that described themselves as "essays". Ben Jonson first used the word "essayist" in 1609, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary".


title: Essay

text: Other English essayists included Sir William Cornwallis, who published essays in 1600 and 1617 that were popular at the time, Robert Burton (1577–1641) and Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682). In Italy, Baldassare Castiglione wrote about courtly manners in his essay "Il Cortigiano". In the 17th century, the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián wrote about the theme of wisdom.


title: Essay

text: In England, during the Age of Enlightenment, essays were a favored tool of polemicists who aimed at convincing readers of their position; they also featured heavily in the rise of periodical literature, as seen in the works of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Samuel Johnson. Addison and Steele used the journal "Tatler" (founded in 1709 by Steele) and its successors as storehouses of their work, and they became the most celebrated eighteenth-century essayists in England. Johnson's essays appear during the 1750s in various similar publications. As a result of the focus on journals, the term also acquired a meaning synonymous with "article", although the content may not the strict definition. On the other hand, Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" is not an essay at all, or cluster of essays, in the technical sense, but still it refers to the experimental and tentative nature of the inquiry which the philosopher was undertaking.


title: Essay

text: In the 18th and 19th centuries, Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote essays for the general public. The early 19th century, in particular, saw a proliferation of great essayists in English—William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Thomas De Quincey all penned numerous essays on diverse subjects, reviving the earlier graceful style. Thomas Carlyle's essays were highly influential, and one of his readers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, became a prominent essayist himself. Later in the century, Robert Louis Stevenson also raised the form's literary level. In the 20th century, a number of essayists, such as T.S. Eliot, tried to explain the new movements in art and culture by using essays. Virginia Woolf, Edmund Wilson, and Charles du Bos wrote literary criticism essays.


title: Essay

text: In France, several writers produced longer works with the title of that were not true examples of the form. However, by the mid-19th century, the "Causeries du lundi", newspaper columns by the critic Sainte-Beuve, are literary essays in the original sense. Other French writers followed suit, including Théophile Gautier, Anatole France, Jules Lemaître and Émile Faguet.


title: Essay

text: As with the novel, essays existed in Japan several centuries before they developed in Europe with a genre of essays known as "zuihitsu"—loosely connected essays and fragmented ideas. Zuihitsu have existed since almost the beginnings of Japanese literature. Many of the most noted early works of Japanese literature are in this genre. Notable examples include "The Pillow Book" (c. 1000), by court lady Sei Shōnagon, and "Tsurezuregusa" (1330), by particularly renowned Japanese Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenkō. Kenkō described his short writings similarly to Montaigne, referring to them as "nonsensical thoughts" written in "idle hours". Another noteworthy difference from Europe is that women have traditionally written in Japan, though the more formal, Chinese-influenced writings of male writers were more prized at the time.


title: Essay

text: The eight-legged essay (Chinese: 八股文; pinyin: "bāgǔwén"; 'eight bone text') was a style of essay in imperial examinations during the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. The eight-legged essay was needed for those test takers in these civil service tests to show their merits for government service, often focusing on Confucian thought and knowledge of the Four Books and Five Classics, in relation to governmental ideals. Test takers could not write in innovative or creative ways, but needed to conform to the standards of the eight-legged essay. Various skills were examined, including the ability to write coherently and to display basic logic. In certain times, the candidates were expected to spontaneously compose poetry upon a set theme, whose value was also sometimes questioned, or eliminated as part of the test material. This was a major argument in favor of the eight-legged essay, arguing that it were better to eliminate creative art in favor of prosaic literacy. In the history of Chinese literature, the eight-legged essay is often said to have caused China's "cultural stagnation and economic backwardness" in the 19th century.


title: Essay

text: This section describes the different forms and styles of essay writing. These are used by an array of authors, including university students and professional essayists.


title: Essay

text: The defining features of a "cause and effect" essay are causal chains that connect from a cause to an effect, careful language, and chronological or emphatic order. A writer using this rhetorical method must consider the subject, determine the purpose, consider the audience, think critically about different causes or consequences, consider a thesis statement, arrange the parts, consider the language, and decide on a conclusion.


title: Essay

text: Classification is the categorization of objects into a larger whole while division is the breaking of a larger whole into smaller parts.


title: Essay

text: Compare and contrast essays are characterized by a basis for comparison, points of comparison, and analogies. It is grouped by the object (chunking) or by point (sequential). The comparison highlights the similarities between two or more similar objects while contrasting highlights the differences between two or more objects. When writing a compare/contrast essay, writers need to determine their purpose, consider their audience, consider the basis and points of comparison, consider their thesis statement, arrange and develop the comparison, and reach a conclusion. Compare and contrast is arranged emphatically.


title: Essay

text: An expository essay is used to inform, describe or explain a topic, using important facts to teach the reader about a topic. Mostly written in third-person, using "it", "he", "she", "they," the expository essay uses formal language to discuss someone or something. Examples of expository essays are: a medical or biological condition, social or technological process, life or character of a famous person. The writing of an expository essay often consists of the following steps: organizing thoughts (brainstorming), researching a topic, developing a thesis statement, writing the introduction, writing the body of essay, and writing the conclusion. Expository essays are often assigned as a part of SAT and other standardized testing or as homework for high school and college students.


title: Essay

text: Descriptive writing is characterized by sensory details, which appeal to the physical senses, and details that appeal to a reader's emotional, physical, or intellectual sensibilities. Determining the purpose, considering the audience, creating a dominant impression, using descriptive language, and organizing the description are the rhetorical choices to consider when using a description. A description is usually arranged spatially but can also be chronological or emphatic. The focus of a description is the scene. Description uses tools such as denotative language, connotative language, figurative language, metaphor, and simile to arrive at a dominant impression. One university essay guide states that "descriptive writing says what happened or what another author has discussed; it provides an account of the topic".


title: Essay

text: In the dialectic form of the essay, which is commonly used in philosophy, the writer makes a thesis and argument, then objects to their own argument (with a counterargument), but then counters the counterargument with a final and novel argument. This form benefits from presenting a broader perspective while countering a possible flaw that some may present. This type is sometimes called an ethics paper.


title: Essay

text: An exemplification essay is characterized by a generalization and relevant, representative, and believable examples including anecdotes. Writers need to consider their subject, determine their purpose, consider their audience, decide on specific examples, and arrange all the parts together when writing an exemplification essay.


title: Essay

text: An essayist writes a "familiar essay" if speaking to a single reader, writing about both themselves, and about particular subjects. Anne Fadiman notes that "the genre's heyday was the early nineteenth century," and that its greatest exponent was Charles Lamb. She also suggests that while critical essays have more brain than the heart, and personal essays have more heart than brain, familiar essays have equal measures of both.


title: Essay

text: A history essay sometimes referred to as a thesis essay describes an argument or claim about one or more historical events and supports that claim with evidence, arguments, and references. The text makes it clear to the reader why the argument or claim is as such.


title: Essay

text: A narrative uses tools such as flashbacks, flash-forwards, and transitions that often build to a climax. The focus of a narrative is the plot. When creating a narrative, authors must determine their purpose, consider their audience, establish their point of view, use dialogue, and organize the narrative. A narrative is usually arranged chronologically.


title: Essay

text: An argumentative essay is a critical piece of writing, aimed at presenting objective analysis of the subject matter, narrowed down to a single topic. The main idea of all the criticism is to provide an opinion either of positive or negative implication. As such, a critical essay requires research and analysis, strong internal logic and sharp structure. Its structure normally builds around introduction with a topic's relevance and a thesis statement, body paragraphs with arguments linking back to the main thesis, and conclusion. In addition, an argumentative essay may include a refutation section where conflicting ideas are acknowledged, described, and criticized. Each argument of an argumentative essay should be supported with sufficient evidence, relevant to the point.


title: Essay

text: A process essay is used for an explanation of making or breaking something. Often, it is written in chronological order or numerical order to show step-by-step processes. It has all the qualities of a technical document with the only difference is that it is often written in descriptive mood, while a technical document is mostly in imperative mood.


title: Essay

text: An economic essay can start with a thesis, or it can start with a theme. It can take a narrative course and a descriptive course. It can even become an argumentative essay if the author feels the need. After the introduction, the author has to do his/her best to expose the economic matter at hand, to analyze it, evaluate it, and draw a conclusion. If the essay takes more of a narrative form then the author has to expose each aspect of the economic puzzle in a way that makes it clear and understandable for the reader


title: Essay

text: A "reflective essay" is an analytical piece of writing in which the writer describes a real or imaginary scene, event, interaction, passing thought, memory, or form—adding a personal reflection on the meaning of the topic in the author's life. Thus, the focus is not merely descriptive. The writer doesn't just describe the situation, but revisits the scene with more detail and emotion to examine what went well, or reveal a need for additional learning—and may relate what transpired to the rest of the author's life.


title: Essay

text: The logical progression and organizational structure of an essay can take many forms. Understanding how the movement of thought is managed through an essay has a profound impact on its overall cogency and ability to impress. A number of alternative logical structures for essays have been visualized as diagrams, making them easy to implement or adapt in the construction of an argument.


title: Essay

text: In countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, essays have become a major part of a formal education in the form of free response questions. Secondary students in these countries are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills, and essays are often used by universities in these countries in selecting applicants ("see" admissions essay). In both secondary and tertiary education, essays are used to judge the mastery and comprehension of the material. Students are asked to explain, comment on, or assess a topic of study in the form of an essay. In some courses, university students must complete one or more essays over several weeks or months. In addition, in fields such as the humanities and social sciences, mid-term and end of term examinations often require students to write a short essay in two or three hours.


title: Essay

text: In these countries, so-called academic essays, also called "papers", are usually more formal than literary ones. They may still allow the presentation of the writer's own views, but this is done in a logical and factual manner, with the use of the first person often discouraged. Longer academic essays (often with a word limit of between 2,000 and 5,000 words) are often more discursive. They sometimes begin with a short summary analysis of what has previously been written on a topic, which is often called a literature review.


title: Essay

text: Longer essays may also contain an introductory page that defines words and phrases of the essay's topic. Most academic institutions require that all substantial facts, quotations, and other supporting material in an essay be referenced in a bibliography or works cited page at the end of the text. This scholarly convention helps others (whether teachers or fellow scholars) to understand the basis of facts and quotations the author uses to support the essay's argument. The bibliography also helps readers evaluate to what extent the argument is supported by evidence and to evaluate the quality of that evidence. The academic essay tests the student's ability to present their thoughts in an organized way and is designed to test their intellectual capabilities.


title: Essay

text: One of the challenges facing universities is that in some cases, students may submit essays purchased from an essay mill (or "paper mill") as their own work. An "essay mill" is a ghostwriting service that sells pre-written essays to university and college students. Since plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty or academic fraud, universities and colleges may investigate papers they suspect are from an essay mill by using plagiarism detection software, which compares essays against a database of known mill essays and by orally testing students on the contents of their papers.


title: Essay

text: Essays often appear in magazines, especially magazines with an intellectual bent, such as "The Atlantic" and "Harpers". Magazine and newspaper essays use many of the essay types described in the section on forms and styles (e.g., descriptive essays, narrative essays, etc.). Some newspapers also print essays in the op-ed section.


title: Essay

text: Employment essays detailing experience in a certain occupational field are required when applying for some jobs, especially government jobs in the United States. Essays known as Knowledge Skills and Executive Core Qualifications are required when applying to certain US federal government positions.


title: Essay

text: A KSA, or "Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities", is a series of narrative statements that are required when applying to Federal government job openings in the United States. KSAs are used along with resumes to determine who the best applicants are when several candidates qualify for a job. The knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for the successful performance of a position are contained on each job vacancy announcement. KSAs are brief and focused essays about one's career and educational background that presumably qualify one to perform the duties of the position being applied for.


title: Essay

text: An Executive Core Qualification, or ECQ, is a narrative statement that is required when applying to Senior Executive Service positions within the US Federal government. Like the KSAs, ECQs are used along with resumes to determine who the best applicants are when several candidates qualify for a job. The Office of Personnel Management has established five executive core qualifications that all applicants seeking to enter the Senior Executive Service must demonstrate.


title: Essay

text: A film essay (also essay film or cinematic essay) consists of the evolution of a theme or an idea rather than a plot per se, or the film literally being a cinematic accompaniment to a narrator reading an essay. From another perspective, an essay film could be defined as a documentary film visual basis combined with a form of commentary that contains elements of self-portrait (rather than autobiography), where the signature (rather than the life story) of the filmmaker is apparent. The cinematic essay often blends documentary, fiction, and experimental film making using tones and editing styles.


title: Essay

text: The genre is not well-defined but might include propaganda works of early Soviet filmmakers like Dziga Vertov, present-day filmmakers including Chris Marker, Michael Moore ("Roger & Me", "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11"), Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line"), Morgan Spurlock ("Supersize Me") and Agnès Varda. Jean-Luc Godard describes his recent work as "film-essays". Two filmmakers whose work was the antecedent to the cinematic essay include Georges Méliès and Bertolt Brecht. Méliès made a short film ("The Coronation of Edward VII" (1902)) about the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII, which mixes actual footage with shots of a recreation of the event. Brecht was a playwright who experimented with film and incorporated film projections into some of his plays. Orson Welles made an essay film in his own pioneering style, released in 1974, called "F for Fake", which dealt specifically with art forger Elmyr de Hory and with the themes of deception, "fakery", and authenticity in general. These are often published online on video hosting services.


title: Essay

text: David Winks Gray's article "The essay film in action" states that the "essay film became an identifiable form of filmmaking in the 1950s and '60s". He states that since that time, essay films have tended to be "on the margins" of the filmmaking the world. Essay films have a "peculiar searching, questioning tone ... between documentary and fiction" but without "fitting comfortably" into either genre. Gray notes that just like written essays, essay films "tend to marry the personal voice of a guiding narrator (often the director) with a wide swath of other voices". The University of Wisconsin Cinematheque website echoes some of Gray's comments; it calls a film essay an "intimate and allusive" genre that "catches filmmakers in a pensive mood, ruminating on the margins between fiction and documentary" in a manner that is "refreshingly inventive, playful, and idiosyncratic".


title: Essay

text: In the realm of music, composer Samuel Barber wrote a set of "Essays for Orchestra", relying on the form and content of the music to guide the listener's ear, rather than any extra-musical plot or story.


title: Essay

text: A photographic essay strives to cover a topic with a linked series of photographs. Photo essays range from purely photographic works to photographs with captions or small notes to full-text essays with a few or many accompanying photographs. Photo essays can be sequential in nature, intended to be viewed in a particular order—or they may consist of non-ordered photographs viewed all at once or in an order that the viewer chooses. All photo essays are collections of photographs, but not all collections of photographs are photo essays. Photo essays often address a certain issue or attempt to capture the character of places and events.


title: Essay

text: In the visual arts, an essay is a preliminary drawing or sketch that forms a basis for a final painting or sculpture, made as a test of the work's composition (this meaning of the term, like several of those following, comes from the word "essay"'s meaning of "attempt" or "trial").


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: On August 10, 2019, guards found the American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein unresponsive in his Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, jail cell, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. After prison guards performed CPR, he was transported in cardiac arrest to the New York Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:39 am. The New York City medical examiner ruled that Epstein's death was a suicide by hanging. Epstein's lawyers challenged the medical examiner's conclusion and opened their own investigation, hiring pathologist Michael Baden.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: After initially expressing suspicion, Attorney General William Barr described Epstein's death as "a perfect storm of screw-ups". Both the FBI and the Department of Justice's Inspector General are conducting investigations into the circumstances of his death. The guards on duty were later charged with multiple counts of record falsification. Many public figures accused the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) of negligence; several lawmakers called for reforms to the federal prison system. In response, Barr removed the Bureau's director.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: As a result of Epstein's death, all charges against him were dismissed, and ongoing sex-trafficking investigations shifted attention to his alleged associates, notably purported madam Ghislaine Maxwell, who was arrested and indicted in July 2020 and convicted on five sex trafficking-related counts on December 29, 2021.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: Due to violations of normal jail procedures on the night of Epstein's death, the malfunction of two cameras in front of his cell, and his claims to have compromising information about powerful figures, his death generated speculation and conspiracy theories about the possibility that he was murdered. Other theories claimed his death was feigned. In November 2019, the contested nature of his death spawned the "Epstein didn't kill himself" meme. Public opinion polls suggest that only a small percentage of Americans believe that Epstein committed suicide; one such poll saw 16% of respondents saying they believed Epstein committed suicide, 45% believing he was murdered, and 39% being unsure.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: On July 6, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in New York City on multiple charges, including sex trafficking, and held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. He pleaded not guilty. He faced similar charges in Florida in 2008, but escaped federal charges in a plea deal. Under its provisions, he pleaded guilty to two state felony charges, paid restitution to three dozen victims identified by the FBI, and registered as a sex offender in both Florida and New York.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: On July 18, 2019, Epstein was denied bail after offering $600,000 to be able to wear an ankle tracker at his New York City townhouse. He was viewed as a potential flight risk because of the 20 international flights he took in the previous 18 months. Epstein appealed the bail denial decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; at the time of his death, the appeal was still pending.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: At 1:27a.m. on July 23, 2019, Epstein was found semiconscious in his cell with injuries to his neck. Prison officials questioned his cellmate, multiple murder and drug conspiracy suspect Nicholas Tartaglione. He denied harming Epstein. An internal prison investigation cleared Tartaglione of any connection to the event. An unnamed source claimed Epstein staged the incident in order to be transferred. Spencer Kuvin, a lawyer who represented three of Epstein's alleged victims, said in July 2019, after Epstein's first apparent suicide attempt, that he believed it was an attack on his life, and that there was a high probability that he would be murdered in prison.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: As a result of the incident, Epstein was placed on suicide watch. He was held in an observation cell, surrounded by windows, where lights were left on and any devices that he could use to kill himself were not permitted. After six days, psychological staff removed Epstein from suicide watch following a psychiatric examination. He then returned to the special housing unit (SHU), where he was to have a cellmate and be checked on every 30 minutes.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: A note written by Epstein was found in his cell after his death. In it, he complained about large bugs crawling on his body, guard Tova Noel giving him burnt food, and a guard intentionally locking him in a shower cell without clothes for an hour. On August 8, Epstein signed his last will and testament, witnessed by two attorneys who knew him. The will named two longtime employees as executors, and immediately gifted all his assets, and any assets remaining in his estate, to a trust.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: When Epstein was placed in the Security Housing Unit (SHU), the jail informed the Justice Department that he would have a cellmate and that a guard would look into the cell every 30 minutes. These procedures were not followed on the night he died. On August 9, Epstein's cellmate was transferred, and no replacement was brought in. The evening of his death, Epstein met with his lawyers, who described him as "upbeat" before being escorted back to the SHU at 7:49p.m. by guard Tova Noel. CCTV footage shows that the two guards failed to perform the required institutional count at 10:00p.m. and recorded Noel briefly walking by Epstein's cell at 10:30p.m., the last time the guards entered the tier where his cell was located. Through the night, in violation of the jail's normal procedure, Epstein was not checked every 30 minutes. The two guards assigned to check his cell overnight, Noel and Michael Thomas, fell asleep at their desk for about three hours and later falsified related records. Two cameras in front of Epstein's cell also malfunctioned that night. Another camera had footage that was "unusable".


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: As the guards were distributing breakfast shortly after 6:30a.m. on the morning of August 10, Epstein was found unresponsive in cardiac arrest in his cell. He was found in a kneeling position with a strip of bedsheet wrapped around his neck. The sheet was tied to the top of his bunk. He was believed to have been dead for about two hours by then. The guards performed CPR on Epstein, and other prisoners heard them yell "Breathe, Epstein, breathe." At 6:33a.m., the guards pulled an alarm, notifying their supervisor, to whom Noel said, "Epstein hung himself." He was rushed to the New York Downtown Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 6:39a.m. His body was transported to the medical examiner's office soon after. At 8:16 am, an anonymous person posted on 4chan's /pol/ board that Epstein had died from hanging and cardiac arrest.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: The removal of Epstein's body from his cell was a violation of protocol, as the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) mandates that a suicide scene be treated with the "same level of protection as any crime scene in which a death has occurred". Consequently, prison personnel also failed to photograph Epstein's body as it was found.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: Epstein's death was the first death ruled a suicide at the MCC in 14 years. Michael Baden and "60 Minutes" questioned whether Epstein, who was almost tall and weighed , could have been able to hang himself from the lower bunk. Photos taken after the death also show bottles and medicine standing upright on the top bunk. Baden also questioned why Epstein did not use other materials available in his cell as a ligature, such as wires and tubing from a sleep apnea machine, which were stronger and longer.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: New York City's Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson conducted a four-hour autopsy on Epstein's body on August 11. Epstein's lawyers sent pathologist Michael Baden to observe the autopsy. Following the autopsy, the medical examiner's office reported that Epstein had hanged himself with a sheet from his bed. On August 14, unofficial sources reported that broken bones were found in Epstein's neck, although this can occur in the suicide of the elderly. According to forensic experts and studies, these broken bones are "more common in victims of homicide by strangulation". The last death ruled a suicide at the MCC was in 1998. Epstein's lawyers released a joint statement after the medical examiner's report, expressing dissatisfaction with it, challenging its conclusions and saying a more complete response was forthcoming. They said that the defense team fully intended to continue its own investigation into the circumstances and cause of Epstein's death, including taking legal action to view the camera footage near his cell during the night of his death. They later said that the evidence concerning Epstein's death was "far more consistent" with murder than suicide.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: On August 16, Sampson announced that Epstein's death had been ruled a suicide by hanging. Later, conflicting reports said the injuries Epstein sustained were as consistent, if not more so, with strangulation or homicide as with suicide. Sampson's report found there was no foul play in his death. Three of Epstein's lawyers expressed their dissatisfaction with Sampson's conclusion, having hired forensic pathologist Michael Baden to observe the autopsy; they said they would initiate their own investigation and provide a more detailed statement in the future. Baden observed Sampson's autopsy when it was conducted; after the autopsy he said he could not comment because of gag orders filed by Sampson's office and Epstein's estate.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: On October 30, 2019, Baden issued a report stating that Epstein's neck injuries were much more consistent with "homicidal strangulation" than suicide. He stated that Epstein "had two fractures on the left and right sides of his larynx, specifically the thyroid cartilage or Adam's apple, as well as one fracture on the left hyoid bone above the Adam's apple". In particular, Baden claimed that Epstein's hyoid bone was broken in a way indicative of strangulation from behind. Later that day, Sampson refuted Baden's claims, saying, "I stand firmly behind our determination of the cause and manner of death for Mr. Epstein. The cause is hanging, the manner is suicide." Baden later said, "Going over a thousand jail hangings, suicides in the New York City state prisons over the past 40-50 years, no one had three fractures." Neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta asserted Epstein could have easily broken his hyoid bone in a hanging because of the bone's weakening and loss of flexibility with age. Gupta also suggested that multiple broken neck bones were more characteristic of hanging. Gerald Rodts, chief of spinal surgery at Emory University Hospital, also stated that multiple broken neck bones are consistent with hanging. A professor of forensic science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said the hyoid bone can indeed break from hanging, noting that it is a weak bone. According to their analysis, a broken hyoid bone is not sufficient proof of homicide.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: According to Baden, the neck wound was in the center of Epstein's neck, not under his mandibles as in a typical hanging. Baden said this is more common when a victim is strangled by a wire or cord. Baden also said that the wound was much thinner than the strip of bedsheet, and although there was blood on Epstein's neck, it was absent on the bed-sheet ligature. In response to Baden's claims, Sampson stood by the conclusion that Epstein's death was suicide.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: Following the autopsy, Epstein's body was claimed by an "unidentified associate", later revealed to be his brother, Mark. On September 5, the body was buried in an unmarked tomb next to those of his parents at the IJ Morris Star of David mausoleum in Palm Beach, Florida. His parents' names were removed from their tombstone to prevent vandalism.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: A few hours after Epstein's death was announced, President Donald Trump responded by retweeting a post related to the "Clinton Body Count", a conspiracy theory purporting to link Epstein's death to the former president, Bill Clinton, and the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. At a speech in Pennsylvania three days later, Trump told reporters he wanted "a full investigation". Attorney General William Barr said he was "appalled" by Epstein's death in federal custody and that it "raises serious questions that must be answered". He ordered an investigation by the Justice Department's Inspector General in addition to the FBI investigation. Senator Ben Sasse, chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary oversight subcommittee, later wrote Barr a letter saying, "The Department of Justice failed." He added, "Given Epstein's previous attempted suicide, he should have been locked in a padded room under unbroken, 24/7, constant surveillance. Obviously, heads must roll." Representative Matt Gaetz, who sits on the United States House Judiciary Committee, called on chairman Jerry Nadler to prioritize investigating the circumstances around Epstein's death over other probes the committee was carrying out. Representative Lois Frankel called for a congressional investigation into Epstein's 2008 plea deal. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Rick Scott called for an investigation and expressed their dissatisfaction that Epstein's victims would not find closure in a trial.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: On August 11, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, then campaigning for president in Iowa, said, "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but something's way too convenient here, and we need to get down to the bottom of what happened." The next day, the leaders of the House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Jerry Nadler and ranking member Doug Collins, sent the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) 23 questions about Epstein's death. "The apparent suicide of this high-profile and—if allegations are proven to be accurate—particularly reprehensible individual while in the federal government's custody demonstrates severe miscarriages of or deficiencies in inmate protocol and has allowed the deceased to ultimately evade facing justice", they wrote. "Any victims of Mr. Epstein's actions will forever be denied proper recourse and the scintilla of recompense our justice system can provide in the face of such alleged atrocities; the competency and rigor of our criminal justice system has been marred by this apparent oversight." On August 13, Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Attorney General Barr urging him to "rip up" the 2008 non-prosecution deal for Epstein and his co-conspirators. Sasse argued that the Justice Department must bring Epstein's co-conspirators to justice, despite his death, and added, "This crooked deal cannot stand." On August 19, Barr replaced the BOP director with former director Kathleen Hawk Sawyer. Sasse praised the move.


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: "For them to pull him off suicide watch is shocking", Cameron Lindsay, a former warden at three federal facilities, told NBC News. "For someone this high-profile, with these allegations and this many victims, who has had a suicide attempt in the last few weeks, you can take absolutely no chances. You leave him on suicide watch until he's out of there." Federal prosecutors in the case called Epstein's death "disturbing" and emphasized they would continue to seek justice for his accusers even after the financier's death. Geoffrey Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement, "To those brave young women who have already come forward and to the many others who have yet to do so, let me reiterate that we remain committed to standing for you, and our investigation of the conduct charged in the indictment—which included a conspiracy count—remains ongoing."


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: The BOP subsequently launched an investigation into the circumstances of Epstein's death, with Attorney General Barr saying that Justice Department officials would thoroughly investigate "serious irregularities" at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. As Barr received more information surrounding Epstein's death, however, he came to believe it was only "a perfect storm of screw-ups".


title: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

text: In November 2019, BOP director Sawyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI was investigating whether a "criminal enterprise" was involved in Epstein's death. She added there is "no indication, from anything I know" that his death "was anything other than a suicide". A spokesperson later explained that she had used the phrase "criminal enterprise" because that was what Senator Lindsey Graham had asked her about, and that "she was referring to looking into possible criminal conduct by staff".