title: Anne Bonny

text: The concept of the female criminal is evident in Anne Bonny because she was cunning and intuitive and used this to swindle many of the crew members and it is said in the "General History of the…Pyrates" that she had a “fierce and courageous temper”. This concept is also evident in her life because it is also said in this work that she had a large amount of ambiguity and tenacity in terms of her motivations for piracy.


title: Anne Bonny

text: Anne Bonny being seen as a transatlantic subject draws on the laboring class values, women warrior archetypes, as well as concepts of pirate freedoms. It is clear that they both had many options in terms of her mobility and independence. Bonny also embodies the idea of the transatlantic subject because of the disparate expressions of the impulse to escape imperious British rule  which can also show her shrewdness, practicality, resolveness.


title: Anne Bonny

text: One last concept that can be interpreted with Anne Bonny is the idea of how they interacted in what is a predominantly male dominated society. It is known from the little information on the interactions of Anne Bonny that they supposedly are said to have been at some points better than their male counterparts in being a pirate. They were at times better than them at things such as fighting, drinking, working and this is also what helped get them away with being a male pirate for so long.


title: Anne Bonny

text: In 2020, a statue of Bonny and Read was unveiled at Execution Dock in Wapping, London. It is planned to eventually bring the statue to Burgh Island in south Devon.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: On the morning of 6 December 1917, the French cargo ship collided with the Norwegian vessel in the waters of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The "Mont-Blanc", laden with high explosives, caught fire and exploded, devastating the Richmond district of Halifax. 1,782 people were killed, largely in Halifax and Dartmouth, by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. The blast was the largest human-made explosion at the time, releasing the equivalent energy of roughly .


title: Halifax Explosion

text: "Mont-Blanc" was under orders from the French government to carry her cargo from New York City via Halifax to Bordeaux, France. At roughly 8:45 am, she collided at low speed, approximately one knot (), with the unladen "Imo", chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to pick up a cargo of relief supplies in New York. On the "Mont-Blanc", the impact damaged benzol barrels stored on deck, leaking vapours which were ignited by sparks from the collision, setting off a fire on board that quickly grew out of control. Approximately 20 minutes later at 9:04:35 am, the "Mont-Blanc" exploded.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Nearly all structures within an 800-metre (half-mile) radius, including the community of Richmond, were obliterated. A pressure wave snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels (including "Imo", which was washed ashore by the ensuing tsunami), and scattered fragments of "Mont-Blanc" for kilometres. Across the harbour, in Dartmouth, there was also widespread damage. A tsunami created by the blast wiped out the community of the Mi'kmaq First Nation who had lived in the Tufts Cove area for generations.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Relief efforts began almost immediately, and hospitals quickly became full. Rescue trains began arriving the day of the explosion from across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick while other trains from central Canada and the northeastern United States were impeded by blizzards. Construction of temporary shelters to house the many people left homeless began soon after the disaster. The initial judicial inquiry found "Mont-Blanc" to have been responsible for the disaster, but a later appeal determined that both vessels were to blame. In the North End, there are several memorials to the victims of the explosion.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Dartmouth lies on the east shore of Halifax Harbour, and Halifax is on the west shore. By 1917, "Halifax's inner harbour had become a principal assembly point for merchant convoys leaving for Britain and France." Halifax and Dartmouth had thrived during times of war; the harbour was one of the British Royal Navy's most important bases in North America, a centre for wartime trade, and a home to privateers who harried the British Empire's enemies during the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The completion of the Intercolonial Railway and its Deep Water Terminal in 1880 allowed for increased steamship trade and led to accelerated development of the port area, but Halifax faced an economic downturn in the 1890s as local factories struggled to compete with businesses in central Canada. The British garrison left the city in late 1905 and early 1906. The Canadian government took over the Halifax Dockyard (now CFB Halifax) from the Royal Navy. This dockyard later became the command centre of the Royal Canadian Navy upon its founding in 1910.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Just before the First World War, the Canadian government began a determined, costly effort to develop the harbour and waterfront facilities. The outbreak of the war brought Halifax back to prominence. As the Royal Canadian Navy had virtually no seaworthy ships of its own, the Royal Navy assumed responsibility for maintaining Atlantic trade routes by re-adopting Halifax as its North American base of operations. In 1915, management of the harbour fell under the control of the Royal Canadian Navy; by 1917 there was a growing naval fleet in Halifax, including patrol ships, tugboats, and minesweepers.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The population of Halifax/Dartmouth had increased to between 60,000 and 65,000 people by 1917. Convoys carried men, animals, and supplies to the European theatre of war. The two main points of departure were in Nova Scotia at Sydney, on Cape Breton Island, and Halifax. Hospital ships brought the wounded to the city, so a new military hospital was constructed.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The success of German U-boat attacks on ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean led the Allies to institute a convoy system to reduce losses while transporting goods and soldiers to Europe. Merchant ships gathered at Bedford Basin on the northwestern end of the harbour, which was protected by two sets of anti-submarine nets and guarded by patrol ships of the Royal Canadian Navy.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The convoys departed under the protection of British cruisers and destroyers. A large army garrison protected the city with forts, gun batteries, and anti-submarine nets. These factors drove a major military, industrial, and residential expansion of the city, and the weight of goods passing through the harbour increased nearly ninefold. All neutral ships bound for ports in North America were required to report to Halifax for inspection.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The Norwegian ship had sailed from the Netherlands en route to New York to take on relief supplies for Belgium, under the command of Haakon From. The ship arrived in Halifax on 3 December for neutral inspection and spent two days in Bedford Basin awaiting refuelling supplies. Though she had been given clearance to leave the port on 5 December, "Imo"s departure was delayed because her coal load did not arrive until late that afternoon. The loading of fuel was not completed until after the anti-submarine nets had been raised for the night. Therefore, the vessel could not depart until the next morning.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The French cargo ship arrived from New York late on 5 December, under the command of Aimé Le Medec. The vessel was fully loaded with the explosives TNT and picric acid, the highly flammable fuel benzol and guncotton. She intended to join a slow convoy gathering in Bedford Basin readying to depart for Europe but was too late to enter the harbour before the nets were raised. Ships carrying dangerous cargo were not allowed into the harbour before the war, but the risks posed by German submarines had resulted in a relaxation of regulations.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Navigating into or out of Bedford Basin required passage through a strait called the Narrows. Ships were expected to keep close to the side of the channel situated on their starboard ("right"), and pass oncoming vessels "port to port", that is to keep them on their "left" side. Ships were restricted to a speed of within the harbour.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: "Imo" was granted clearance to leave Bedford Basin by signals from the guard ship HMCS "Acadia" at approximately 7:30 on the morning of 6December, with Pilot William Hayes on board. The ship entered the Narrows well above the harbour's speed limit in an attempt to make up for the delay experienced in loading her coal. "Imo" met American tramp steamer SS "Clara" being piloted up the wrong (western) side of the harbour. The pilots agreed to pass starboard-to-starboard. Soon afterwards, "Imo" was forced to head even further towards the Dartmouth shore after passing the tugboat "Stella Maris", which was travelling up the harbour to Bedford Basin near mid-channel. Horatio Brannen, the captain of "Stella Maris", saw "Imo" approaching at excessive speed and ordered his ship closer to the western shore to avoid an accident.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Francis Mackey, an experienced harbour pilot, had boarded "Mont-Blanc" on the evening of 5 December 1917; he had asked about "special protections" such as a guard ship, given the "Mont-Blanc's" cargo, but no protections were put in place. "Mont-Blanc" started moving at 7:30 am on 6 December and was the second ship to enter the harbour as the anti-submarine net between Georges Island and Pier 21 opened for the morning. "Mont-Blanc" headed towards Bedford Basin on the Dartmouth side of the harbour. Mackey kept his eye on the ferry traffic between Halifax and Dartmouth and other small boats in the area. He first spotted "Imo" when she was about away and became concerned as her path appeared to be heading towards his ship's starboard side, as if to cut him off. Mackey gave a short blast of his ship's signal whistle to indicate that he had the right of way but was met with two short blasts from "Imo", indicating that the approaching vessel would not yield its position. The captain ordered "Mont-Blanc" to halt her engines and angle slightly to starboard, closer to the Dartmouth side of the Narrows. He let out another single blast of his whistle, hoping the other vessel would likewise move to starboard but was again met with a double-blast.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Sailors on nearby ships heard the series of signals and, realizing that a collision was imminent, gathered to watch as "Imo" bore down on "Mont-Blanc". Both ships had cut their engines by this point, but their momentum carried them towards each other at slow speed. Unable to ground his ship for fear of a shock that would set off his explosive cargo, Mackey ordered "Mont-Blanc" to steer hard to port (starboard helm) and crossed the bow of "Imo" in a last-second bid to avoid a collision. The two ships were almost parallel to each other, when "Imo" suddenly sent out three signal blasts, indicating the ship was reversing its engines. The combination of the cargoless ship's height in the water and the transverse thrust of her right-hand propeller caused the ship's head to swing into "Mont-Blanc". "Imo"s prow pushed into the No. 1 hold of "Mont Blanc", on her starboard side.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The collision occurred at 8:45 am. The damage to "Mont Blanc" was not severe, but barrels of deck cargo toppled and broke open. This flooded the deck with benzol that quickly flowed into the hold. As "Imo"s engines kicked in, she disengaged, which created sparks inside "Mont-Blanc"s hull. These ignited the vapours from the benzol. A fire started at the water line and travelled quickly up the side of the ship. Surrounded by thick black smoke, and fearing she would explode almost immediately, the captain ordered the crew to abandon ship. A growing number of Halifax citizens gathered on the street or stood at the windows of their homes or businesses to watch the spectacular fire. The frantic crew of "Mont-Blanc" shouted from their two lifeboats to some of the other vessels that their ship was about to explode, but they could not be heard above the noise and confusion. As the lifeboats made their way across the harbour to the Dartmouth shore, the abandoned ship continued to drift and beached herself at Pier 6 near the foot of Richmond street.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Towing two scows at the time of the collision, "Stella Maris" responded immediately to the fire, anchoring the barges and steaming back towards Pier 6 to spray the burning ship with their fire hose. The tug's captain, Horatio H. Brannen, and his crew realized that the fire was too intense for their single hose and backed off from the burning "Mont Blanc". They were approached by a whaler from HMS "Highflyer" and later a steam pinnace belonging to HMCS "Niobe". Captain Brannen and Albert Mattison of "Niobe" agreed to secure a line to the French ship's stern so as to pull it away from the pier to avoid setting it on fire. The hawser initially produced was deemed too small and orders for a hawser came down. It was at this point that the blast occurred.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: At 9:04:35 am the out-of-control fire on board "Mont-Blanc" set off her cargo of high explosives. The ship was completely blown apart and a powerful blast wave radiated away from the explosion initially at more than per second. Temperatures of and pressures of thousands of atmospheres accompanied the moment of detonation at the centre of the explosion. White-hot shards of iron fell down upon Halifax and Dartmouth. "Mont-Blanc"s forward 90-mm gun landed approximately north of the explosion site near Albro Lake in Dartmouth with its barrel bent and half torn away by the force of the blast, and the shank of "Mont-Blanc"s anchor, weighing half a ton, landed south at Armdale.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: A cloud of white smoke rose to at least . The blast was felt as far away as Cape Breton () and Prince Edward Island (). An area of over was completely destroyed by the explosion, and the harbour floor was momentarily exposed by the volume of water that was displaced. A tsunami was formed by water surging in to fill the void; it rose as high as above the high-water mark on the Halifax side of the harbour. "Imo" was carried onto the shore at Dartmouth by the tsunami. The blast killed all but one on the whaler, everyone on the pinnace and 21 of the 26 men on "Stella Maris"; she ended up on the Dartmouth shore, severely damaged. The captain's son, First Mate Walter Brannen, who had been thrown into the hold by the blast, survived, as did four others. All but one of the "Mont-Blanc" crew members survived.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Over 1,600 people were killed instantly and 9,000 were injured, more than 300 of whom later died. Every building within a radius, over 12,000 in total, was destroyed or badly damaged. Hundreds of people who had been watching the fire from their homes were blinded when the blast wave shattered the windows in front of them. Overturned stoves and lamps started fires throughout Halifax, particularly in the North End, where entire city blocks burned, trapping residents inside their houses. Firefighter Billy Wells, who was thrown away from the explosion and had his clothes torn from his body, described the devastation survivors faced: "The sight was awful, with people hanging out of windows dead. Some with their heads missing, and some thrown onto the overhead telegraph wires." He was the only member of the eight-man crew of the fire engine "Patricia" to survive.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Large brick and stone factories near Pier 6, such as the Acadia Sugar Refinery, disappeared into unrecognizable heaps of rubble, killing most of their workers. The Nova Scotia cotton mill located 1.5 km (0.93 mile) from the blast was destroyed by fire and the collapse of its concrete floors. The Royal Naval College of Canada building was badly damaged, and several cadets and instructors maimed. The Richmond Railway Yards and station were destroyed, killing 55 railway workers and destroying and damaging over 500 railway cars. The North Street Station, one of the busiest in Canada, was badly damaged.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The death toll could have been worse had it not been for the self-sacrifice of an Intercolonial Railway dispatcher, Patrick Vincent (Vince) Coleman, operating at the railyard about from Pier 6, where the explosion occurred. He and his co-worker, William Lovett, learned of the dangerous cargo aboard the burning "Mont-Blanc" from a sailor and began to flee. Coleman remembered that an incoming passenger train from Saint John, New Brunswick, was due to arrive at the railyard within minutes. He returned to his post alone and continued to send out urgent telegraph messages to stop the train. Several variations of the message have been reported, among them this from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic: "Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys." Coleman's message was responsible for bringing all incoming trains around Halifax to a halt. It was heard by other stations all along the Intercolonial Railway, helping railway officials to respond immediately. Passenger Train No. 10, the overnight train from Saint John, is believed to have heeded the warning and stopped a safe distance from the blast at Rockingham, saving the lives of about 300 railway passengers. Coleman was killed at his post.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: First rescue efforts came from surviving neighbours and co-workers who pulled and dug out victims from buildings. The initial informal response was soon joined by surviving policemen, firefighters and military personnel who began to arrive, as did anyone with a working vehicle; cars, trucks and delivery wagons of all kinds were enlisted to collect the wounded. A flood of victims soon began to arrive at the city's hospitals, which were quickly overwhelmed. The new military hospital, Camp Hill, admitted approximately 1,400 victims on 6 December.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Firefighters were among the first to respond to the disaster, rushing to "Mont-Blanc" to attempt to extinguish the blaze before the explosion even occurred. They also played a role after the blast, with fire companies arriving to assist from across Halifax, and by the end of the day from as far away as Amherst, Nova Scotia, () and Moncton, New Brunswick, () on relief trains. Halifax Fire Department's West Street Station 2 was the first to arrive at Pier 6 with the crew of the "Patricia", the first motorized fire engine in Canada. In the final moments before the explosion, hoses were being unrolled as the fire spread to the docks. Nine members of the Halifax Fire Department lost their lives performing their duty that day.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Royal Navy cruisers in port sent some of the first organized rescue parties ashore. HMS "Highflyer", along with the armed merchant cruisers HMS "Changuinola", HMS "Knight Templar" and HMS "Calgarian", sent boats ashore with rescue parties and medical personnel and soon began to take wounded aboard. A US Coast Guard cutter, , also sent a rescue party ashore. Out at sea, the American cruiser USS "Tacoma" and armed merchant cruiser USS "Von Steuben" (formerly SS "Kronprinz Wilhelm") were passing Halifax en route to the United States. "Tacoma" was rocked so severely by the blast wave that her crew went to general quarters. Spotting the large and rising column of smoke, "Tacoma" altered course and arrived to assist rescue at 2 pm. "Von Steuben" arrived a half-hour later. The American steamship "Old Colony", docked in Halifax for repairs, suffered little damage and was quickly converted to serve as a hospital ship, staffed by doctors and orderlies from the British and American navy vessels in the harbour.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Dazed survivors immediately feared that the explosion was the result of a bomb dropped from a German plane. Troops at gun batteries and barracks immediately turned out in case the city was under attack, but within an hour switched from defence to rescue roles as the cause and location of the explosion were determined. All available troops were called in from harbour fortifications and barracks to the North End to rescue survivors and provide transport to the city's hospitals, including the two army hospitals in the city.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Adding to the chaos were fears of a potential second explosion. A cloud of steam shot out of ventilators at the ammunition magazine at Wellington Barracks as naval personnel extinguished a fire by the magazine. The fire was quickly put out; the cloud was seen from blocks away and quickly led to rumours that another explosion was imminent. Uniformed officers ordered everyone away from the area. As the rumour spread across the city, many families fled their homes. The confusion hampered efforts for over two hours until fears were dispelled by about noon. Many rescuers ignored the evacuation, and naval rescue parties continued working uninterrupted at the harbour.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Surviving railway workers in the railyards at the heart of the disaster carried out rescue work, pulling people from the harbour and from under debris. The overnight train from Saint John was just approaching the city when hit by the blast but was only slightly damaged. It continued into Richmond until the track was blocked by wreckage. Passengers and soldiers aboard used the emergency tools from the train to dig people out of houses and bandaged them with sheets from the sleeping cars. The train was loaded with injured and left the city at 1:30 with a doctor aboard, to evacuate the wounded to Truro.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Led by Lieutenant Governor MacCallum Grant, leading citizens formed the Halifax Relief Commission at around noon. The committee organized members in charge of organizing medical relief for both Halifax and Dartmouth, supplying transportation, food and shelter, and covering medical and funeral costs for victims. The commission would continue until 1976, participating in reconstruction and relief efforts and later distributing pensions to survivors. Men and women turned out to serve as everything from hospital aides to shelter staff, while children contributed to the relief effort by carrying messages from site to site. Community facilities like the Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA) were rapidly converted to emergency hospital facilities with medical students providing care.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Rescue trains were dispatched from across Atlantic Canada, as well as the northeastern United States. The first left Truro around 10 am carrying medical personnel and supplies, arrived in Halifax by noon and returned to Truro with the wounded and homeless by 3 pm. The track had become impassable after Rockingham, on the western edge of Bedford Basin. To reach the wounded, rescue personnel had to walk through parts of the devastated city until they reached a point where the military had begun to clear the streets. By nightfall, a dozen trains had reached Halifax from the Nova Scotian towns of Truro, Kentville, Amherst, Stellarton, Pictou, and Sydney and from New Brunswick, including the town of Sackville, and the cities of Moncton and Saint John.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Relief efforts were hampered the following day by a blizzard that blanketed Halifax with of heavy snow. Trains en route from other parts of Canada and from the United States were stalled in snowdrifts, and telegraph lines that had been hastily repaired following the explosion were again knocked down. Halifax was isolated by the storm, and while rescue committees were forced to suspend the search for survivors, the storm also aided efforts to put out fires throughout the city.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The exact number killed by the disaster is unknown. The Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book, an official database of the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, identified 1,782 victims. As many as 1,600 people died immediately in the blast, tsunami, and collapse of buildings. The last body, a caretaker killed at the Exhibition Grounds, was not recovered until the summer of 1919. An additional 9,000 were injured. 1,630 homes were destroyed in the explosion and fires, and another 12,000 damaged; roughly 6,000 people were left homeless and 25,000 had insufficient shelter. The city's industrial sector was in large part gone, with many workers among the casualties and the dockyard heavily damaged.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: A mortuary committee chaired by Alderman R. B. Coldwell was quickly formed at Halifax City Hall on the morning of the disaster. The Chebucto Road School (now the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts) in Halifax's west end was chosen as a central morgue. A company of the Royal Canadian Engineers (RCE) repaired and converted the basement of the school to serve as a morgue and classrooms to serve as offices for the Halifax coroner. Trucks and wagons soon began to arrive with bodies. Arthur S. Barnstead took over from Coldwell as the morgue went into operation and implemented a system based on the one his father, John Henry Barnstead, developed to catalogue the dead in the aftermath of the disaster of 1912.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Many of the wounds inflicted by the blast were permanently debilitating, such as those caused by flying glass or by the flash of the explosion. Thousands of people had stopped to watch the ship burning in the harbour, many from inside buildings, leaving them directly in the path of glass fragments from shattered windows. Roughly 5,900 eye injuries were reported, and 41 people lost their sight permanently.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: An estimated CA$35 million in damage resulted (CA$ million today). About $30 million in financial aid was raised from various sources, including $18 million from the federal government, over $4 million from the British government, and $750,000 from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Dartmouth was not as densely populated as Halifax and was separated from the blast by the width of the harbour, but still suffered heavy damage. Almost 100 people were estimated to have died on the Dartmouth side. Windows were shattered and many buildings were damaged or destroyed, including the Oland Brewery and parts of the Starr Manufacturing Company. Nova Scotia Hospital was the only hospital in Dartmouth and many of the victims were treated there.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: There were small enclaves of Mi'kmaq in and around the coves of Bedford Basin on the Dartmouth shore. Directly opposite to Pier 9 on the Halifax side sat a community in Tufts Cove which included the Mi'kmaq community of Turtle Grove. In the years and months preceding the explosion, the Department of Indian Affairs had been actively trying to force the Mi'kmaq to give up their land and move to a reserve, but this had not occurred by the time of the explosion. Turtle Grove was close to the centre of the blast and the physical structures of the settlement were obliterated by the explosion and tsunami. A precise Mi'kmaq death toll is unknown as the Department of Indian Affairs and census records for the community were incomplete. Nine bodies were recovered from Turtle Grove and there were eleven known survivors. The Halifax Remembrance Book lists 16 members of the Tufts Cove Community as dead; not all the dead listed as in Tufts Cove were Indigenous. The Turtle Grove settlement was not rebuilt in the wake of the disaster. Survivors were housed in a racially segregated building under generally poor conditions and most were eventually dispersed around Nova Scotia.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The black community of Africville, on the southern shores of Bedford Basin adjacent to the Halifax Peninsula, was spared the direct force of the blast by the shadow effect of the raised ground to the south. Africville's small and frail homes were heavily damaged by the explosion. Families recorded the deaths of five residents. A combination of persistent racism and a growing conviction that Africville should be demolished to make way for industrial development resulted in the people of Africville receiving no police or fire protection; they had to make do without water mains and sewer lines, despite paying city taxes. Africville received little of the donated relief funds and none of the progressive reconstruction invested in other parts of the city after the explosion.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Many people in Halifax first thought the explosion to be the result of a German attack. The "Halifax Herald" continued to propagate this belief for some time, for example reporting that Germans had mocked victims of the explosion. While John Johansen, the Norwegian helmsman of "Imo", was being treated for serious injuries sustained during the explosion, it was reported to the military police that he had been behaving suspiciously. Johansen was arrested on suspicions of being a German spy when a search turned up a letter on his person, supposedly written in German. It turned out that the letter was actually written in Norwegian. Immediately following the explosion, most of the German survivors in Halifax had been rounded up and imprisoned. Eventually the fear dissipated as the real cause of the explosion became known, although rumours of German involvement persisted.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: A judicial inquiry known as the Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry was formed to investigate the causes of the collision. Proceedings began at the Halifax Court House on 13 December 1917, presided over by Justice Arthur Drysdale. The inquiry's report of 4 February 1918 blamed "Mont-Blanc"s captain, Aimé Le Médec, the ship's pilot, Francis Mackey, and Commander F. Evan Wyatt, the Royal Canadian Navy's chief examining officer in charge of the harbour, gates and anti-submarine defences, for causing the collision. Drysdale agreed with Dominion Wreck Commissioner L. A. Demers' opinion that "it was the "Mont-Blanc"s responsibility alone to ensure that she avoided a collision at all costs" given her cargo; he was likely influenced by local opinion, which was strongly anti-French, as well as by the "street fighter" style of argumentation used by "Imo" lawyer Charles Burchell. According to Crown counsel W. A. Henry, this was "a great surprise to most people", who had expected the "Imo" to be blamed for being on the wrong side of the channel. All three men were charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence at a preliminary hearing heard by Stipendiary Magistrate Richard A. McLeod, and bound over for trial. A Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice, Benjamin Russell, found there was no evidence to support these charges. Mackey was discharged on a writ of "habeas corpus" and the charges dropped. Because the pilot and the captain were arrested on the same warrant, the charges against Le Médec were also dismissed. On 17 April 1918, a jury acquitted Wyatt in a trial that lasted less than a day.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Drysdale also oversaw the first civil litigation trial, in which the owners of the two ships sought damages from each other. His decision (27 April 1918) found "Mont-Blanc" entirely at fault. Subsequent appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada (19 May 1919), and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London (22 March 1920), determined "Mont-Blanc" and "Imo" were equally to blame for navigational errors that led to the collision. No party was ever convicted for any crime or otherwise successfully prosecuted for any actions that precipitated the disaster.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Efforts began shortly after the explosion to clear debris, repair buildings, and establish temporary housing for survivors left homeless by the explosion. By late January 1918, around 5,000 were still without shelter. A reconstruction committee under Colonel Robert Low constructed 832 new housing units, which were furnished by the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Fund.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Partial train service resumed from a temporary rail terminal in the city's South End on 7 December. Full service resumed on 9 December when tracks were cleared and the North Street Station reopened. The Canadian Government Railways created a special unit to clear and repair railway yards as well as rebuild railway piers and the Naval Dockyard. Most piers returned to operation by late December and were repaired by January.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The North End Halifax neighbourhood of Richmond bore the brunt of the explosion. In 1917, Richmond was considered a working-class neighbourhood and had few paved roads. After the explosion, the Halifax Relief Commission approached the reconstruction of Richmond as an opportunity to improve and modernize the city's North End. English town planner Thomas Adams and Montreal architectural firm Ross and Macdonald were recruited to design a new housing plan for Richmond. Adams, inspired by the Victorian garden city movement, aimed to provide public access to green spaces and to create a low-rise, low-density, and multifunctional urban neighbourhood.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The planners designed 326 large homes that each faced a tree-lined, paved boulevard. They specified that the homes be built with a new and innovative fireproof material, blocks of compressed cement called Hydrostone. The first of these homes was occupied by March 1919, just a few months before Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, visited the site on 17 August, touring many of the houses and hearing stories about the impacts of the tragedy and "of the kindness of the people who quickly came to their aid." Once finished, the Hydrostone neighbourhood consisted of homes, businesses, and parks, which helped create a new sense of community in the North End of Halifax. It has now become an upscale neighbourhood and shopping district. In contrast, the equally poor and underdeveloped area of Africville was not included in reconstruction efforts.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Every building in the Halifax dockyard required some degree of rebuilding, as did HMCS "Niobe" and the docks themselves; all of the Royal Canadian Navy's minesweepers and patrol boats were undamaged. Prime Minister Robert Borden pledged that the government would be "co-operating in every way to reconstruct the Port of Halifax: this was of utmost importance to the Empire". Captain Symington of USS "Tacoma" speculated that the port would not be operational for months, but a convoy departed on 11 December and dockyard operations resumed before Christmas.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The Halifax Explosion was one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions. An extensive comparison of 130 major explosions by Halifax historian Jay White in 1994 concluded that it "remains unchallenged in overall magnitude as long as five criteria are considered together: number of casualties, force of blast, radius of devastation, quantity of explosive material, and total value of property destroyed." For many years afterward, the Halifax Explosion was the standard by which all large blasts were measured. For instance, in its report on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, "Time" wrote that the explosive power of the Little Boy bomb was seven times that of the Halifax Explosion.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The many eye injuries resulting from the disaster led to better understanding of how to care for damaged eyes, and "with the recently formed Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Halifax became internationally known as a centre for care for the blind", according to Dalhousie University professor Victoria Allen. The lack of coordinated pediatric care in such a disaster was also noted by William Ladd, a surgeon from Boston who had arrived to help. His insights from the explosion are generally credited with inspiring him to pioneer the specialty of pediatric surgery in North America. The Halifax Explosion also inspired a series of health reforms, including around public sanitation and maternity care.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The event was traumatic for the whole surviving community, so the memory was largely suppressed. After the first anniversary, the city stopped commemorating the explosion for decades. The second official commemoration did not take place before the 50th anniversary in 1967, and even after that, the activities stopped again. Construction began in 1964 on the Halifax North Memorial Library, designed to commemorate the victims of the explosion. The library entrance featured the first monument built to mark the explosion, the Halifax Explosion Memorial Sculpture, created by artist Jordi Bonet. The sculpture was dismantled by the Halifax Regional Municipality in 2004.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: The Halifax Explosion Memorial Bells were built in 1985, relocating memorial carillon bells from a nearby church to a large concrete sculpture on Fort Needham Hill, facing the "ground zero" area of the explosion. The Bell Tower is the location of an annual civic ceremony every 6 December. A memorial at the Halifax Fire Station on Lady Hammond Road honours the firefighters killed while responding to the explosion. Fragments of "Mont-Blanc" have been mounted as neighbourhood monuments to the explosion at Albro Lake Road in Dartmouth, at Regatta Point, and elsewhere in the area. Simple monuments mark the mass graves of explosion victims at the Fairview Lawn Cemetery and the Bayers Road Cemetery. A Memorial Book listing the names of all the known victims is displayed at the Halifax North Memorial Library and at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which has a large permanent exhibit about the Halifax Explosion. Harold Gilman was commissioned to create a painting memorializing the event; his work, "Halifax Harbour at Sunset", "tells very little about the recent devastation, as the viewpoint is set back so that the harbour appears undisturbed".


title: Halifax Explosion

text: Hugh MacLennan's novel "Barometer Rising" (1941) is set in Halifax at the time of the explosion and includes a carefully researched description of its impact on the city. Following in MacLennan's footsteps, journalist Robert MacNeil penned "Burden of Desire" (1992) and used the explosion as a metaphor for the societal and cultural changes of the day. MacLennan and MacNeil's use of the romance genre to fictionalize the explosion is similar to the first attempt by Lieutenant-Colonel Frank McKelvey Bell, author of the short novella "A Romance of the Halifax Disaster" (1918). This work follows the love affair of a young woman and an injured soldier. Keith Ross Leckie scripted a miniseries entitled "" (2003), which took the title but has no relationship to Janet Kitz's non-fiction book "" (1990). The film was criticized for distortions and inaccuracies.


title: Halifax Explosion

text: In 1918, Halifax sent a Christmas tree to the City of Boston in thanks and remembrance for the help that the Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee provided immediately after the disaster. That gift was revived in 1971 by the Lunenburg County Christmas Tree Producers Association, which began an annual donation of a large tree to promote Christmas tree exports as well as acknowledge Boston's support after the explosion. The gift was later taken over by the Nova Scotia Government to continue the goodwill gesture as well as to promote trade and tourism. The tree is Boston's official Christmas tree and is lit on Boston Common throughout the holiday season. In deference to its symbolic importance for both cities, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources has specific guidelines for selecting the tree and has tasked an employee to oversee the selection.


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthaginians and Romans, among others. Crucifixion has been used in parts of the world as recently as the twentieth century.


title: Crucifixion

text: The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth is central to Christianity, and the cross (sometimes depicting Jesus nailed to it) is the main religious symbol for many Christian churches.


title: Crucifixion

text: Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: (), from (which in today's Greek only means "cross" but which in antiquity was used of any kind of wooden pole, pointed or blunt, bare or with attachments) and () "crucify on a plank", together with ( "impale"). In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts usually means "impale".


title: Crucifixion

text: The Greek used in the Christian New Testament uses four verbs, three of them based upon (), usually translated "cross". The most common term is (), "to crucify", occurring 46 times; (), "to crucify with" or "alongside" occurs five times, while (), "to crucify again" occurs only once at the Epistle to the Hebrews . (), "to fix or fasten to, impale, crucify" occurs only once at the Acts of the Apostles .


title: Crucifixion

text: The English term cross derives from the Latin word , which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross. The related term crucifix, derives from the Latin or , past participle passive of or , meaning "to crucify" or "to fasten to a cross".


title: Crucifixion

text: The gibbet on which crucifixion was carried out could be of many shapes. Josephus says that the Roman soldiers who crucified the many prisoners taken during the Siege of Jerusalem under Titus diverted themselves by nailing them to the crosses in different ways; and Seneca the Younger recounts: "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet."


title: Crucifixion

text: At times the gibbet was only one vertical stake, called in Latin "crux simplex". This was the simplest available construction for torturing and killing the condemned. Frequently, however, there was a cross-piece attached either at the top to give the shape of a T ("crux commissa") or just below the top, as in the form most familiar in Christian symbolism ("crux immissa"). The most ancient image of a Roman crucifixion depicts an individual on a T-shaped cross. It is a graffito found in a taberna (hostel for wayfarers) in Puteoli, dating to the time of Trajan or Hadrian (late 1st century to early 2nd century AD).


title: Crucifixion

text: Second-century writers who speak of the execution cross describe the crucified person's arms as outstretched, not attached to a single stake: Lucian speaks of Prometheus as crucified "above the ravine with his hands outstretched". He also says that the shape of the letter T (the Greek letter tau) was that of the wooden instrument used for crucifying. Artemidorus, another writer of the same period, says that a cross is made of posts (plural) and nails and that the arms of the crucified are outstretched. Speaking of the generic execution cross, Irenaeus (c. 130–202), a Christian writer, describes it as composed of an upright and a transverse beam, sometimes with a small projection in the upright.


title: Crucifixion

text: The New Testament writings about the crucifixion of Jesus do not specify the shape of that cross, but the early writings that do speak of its shape liken it to the letter T. William Barclay notes that, because the letter T is shaped exactly like the "crux commissa" and because the Greek letter T represented the number 300, "wherever the fathers came across the number 300 in the Old Testament they took it to be a mystical prefiguring of the cross of Christ". The earliest example, possibly of the late first century, is the Epistle of Barnabas. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) is another early writer who gives the same interpretation of the numeral used for 300. Justin Martyr (c. 100–165) sees the cross of Christ represented in the crossed spits used in roasting the Passover Lamb: "That lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of the cross which Christ would undergo. For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb."


title: Crucifixion

text: In popular depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus (possibly because in translations of the wounds are described as being "in his hands"), Jesus is shown with nails in his hands. But in Greek the word "χείρ", usually translated as "hand", could refer to the entire portion of the arm below the elbow, and to denote the "hand" as distinct from the "arm" some other word could be added, as "ἄκρην οὔτασε χεῖρα" (he wounded the end of the χείρ, i.e., "he wounded her in the hand".


title: Crucifixion

text: A possibility that does not require tying is that the nails were inserted just above the wrist, through the soft tissue, between the two bones of the forearm (the radius and the ulna).


title: Crucifixion

text: A foot-rest ("suppedaneum") attached to the cross, perhaps for the purpose of taking the person's weight off the wrists, is sometimes included in representations of the crucifixion of Jesus but is not discussed in ancient sources. Some scholars interpret the Alexamenos graffito, the earliest surviving depiction of the Crucifixion, as including such a foot-rest. Ancient sources also mention the "sedile", a small seat attached to the front of the cross, about halfway down, which could have served a similar purpose.


title: Crucifixion

text: In 1968, archaeologists discovered at Giv'at ha-Mivtar in northeast Jerusalem the remains of one Jehohanan, who had been crucified in the 1st century. The remains included a heel bone with a nail driven through it from the side. The tip of the nail was bent, perhaps because of striking a knot in the upright beam, which prevented it being extracted from the foot. A first inaccurate account of the length of the nail led some to believe that it had been driven through both heels, suggesting that the man had been placed in a sort of sidesaddle position, but the true length of the nail, 11.5 cm (4.53 inches), suggests instead that in this case of crucifixion the heels were nailed to opposite sides of the upright. The skeleton from Giv'at ha-Mivtar is currently the only confirmed example of ancient crucifixion in the archaeological record. A second set of skeletal remains with holes transverse through the calcaneum heel bones was found in 2007. This could be a second archaeological record of crucifixion. The find in Cambridgeshire (United Kingdom) in November 2017 of the remains of the heel bone of a (probably enslaved) man with an iron nail through it, is believed by the archeologists to confirm the use of this method in ancient Rome.


title: Crucifixion

text: The length of time required to reach death could range from hours to days depending on method, the victim's health, and the environment. A literature review by Maslen and Mitchell identified scholarly support for several possible causes of death: cardiac rupture, heart failure, hypovolemic shock, acidosis, asphyxia, arrhythmia, and pulmonary embolism. Death could result from any combination of those factors or from other causes, including sepsis following infection due to the wounds caused by the nails or by the scourging that often preceded crucifixion, eventual dehydration, or animal predation.


title: Crucifixion

text: A theory attributed to Pierre Barbet holds that, when the whole body weight was supported by the stretched arms, the typical cause of death was asphyxiation. He wrote that the condemned would have severe difficulty inhaling, due to hyper-expansion of the chest muscles and lungs. The condemned would therefore have to draw himself up by the arms, leading to exhaustion, or have his feet supported by tying or by a wood block. When no longer able to lift himself, the condemned would die within a few minutes. Some scholars, including Frederick Zugibe, posit other causes of death. Zugibe suspended test subjects with their arms at 60° to 70° from the vertical. The test subjects had no difficulty breathing during experiments, but did suffer rapidly increasing pain, which is consistent with the Roman use of crucifixion to achieve a prolonged, agonizing death. However, Zugibe's positioning of the test subjects' feet is not supported by any archaeological or historical evidence.


title: Crucifixion

text: Since death does not follow immediately on crucifixion, survival after a short period of crucifixion is possible, as in the case of those who choose each year as a devotional practice to be non-lethally crucified.


title: Crucifixion

text: There is an ancient record of one person who survived a crucifixion that was intended to be lethal, but was interrupted. Josephus recounts: "I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintances. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered." Josephus gives no details of the method or duration of the crucifixion of his three friends before their reprieve.


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion (or impalement), in one form or another, was used by Persians, Carthaginians, and among the Greeks, the Macedonians.


title: Crucifixion

text: The Greeks were generally opposed to performing crucifixions. However, in his "Histories", ix.120–122, the Greek writer Herodotus describes the execution of a Persian general at the hands of Athenians in about 479 BC: "They nailed him to a plank and hung him up ... this Artayctes who suffered death by crucifixion." The "Commentary on Herodotus" by How and Wells remarks: "They crucified him with hands and feet stretched out and nailed to cross-pieces; cf. vii.33. This barbarity, unusual on the part of Greeks, may be explained by the enormity of the outrage or by Athenian deference to local feeling."


title: Crucifixion

text: Some Christian theologians, beginning with Paul of Tarsus writing in , have interpreted an allusion to crucifixion in Deuteronomy . This reference is to being hanged from a tree, and may be associated with lynching or traditional hanging. However, Rabbinic law limited capital punishment to just 4 methods of execution: stoning, burning, strangulation, and decapitation, while the passage in Deuteronomy was interpreted as an obligation to hang the corpse on a tree as a form of deterrence. The fragmentary Aramaic Testament of Levi (DSS 4Q541) interprets in column 6: "God ... (partially legible)-"will set" ... right errors. ... (partially legible)-"He will judge" ... revealed sins. Investigate and seek and know how Jonah wept. Thus, you shall not destroy the weak by wasting away or by ... (partially legible)-"crucifixion" ... Let not the nail touch him."


title: Crucifixion

text: The Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus, king of Judea from 103 BC to 76 BC, crucified 800 rebels, said to be Pharisees, in the middle of Jerusalem.


title: Crucifixion

text: Alexander the Great is reputed to have crucified 2,000 survivors from his siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, as well as the doctor who unsuccessfully treated Alexander's lifelong friend Hephaestion. Some historians have also conjectured that Alexander crucified Callisthenes, his official historian and biographer, for objecting to Alexander's adoption of the Persian ceremony of royal adoration.


title: Crucifixion

text: In Carthage, crucifixion was an established mode of execution, which could even be imposed on generals for suffering a major defeat.


title: Crucifixion

text: The oldest crucifixion may be a post-mortem one mentioned by Herodotus. Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, was put to death in 522 BC by Persians, and his dead body was then crucified.


title: Crucifixion

text: The Greek and Latin words corresponding to "crucifixion" applied to many different forms of painful execution, including being impaled on a stake, or affixed to a tree, upright pole (a crux simplex), or to a combination of an upright (in Latin, "stipes") and a crossbeam (in Latin, "patibulum"). Seneca the Younger active in the first century c.e. wrote: "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet".


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion was generally performed within Ancient Rome as a means to dissuade others from perpetrating similar crimes, with victims sometimes left on display after death as a warning. Crucifixion was intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful (hence the term "excruciating", literally "out of crucifying"), gruesome, humiliating, and public, using whatever means were most expedient for that goal. Crucifixion methods varied considerably with location and period.


title: Crucifixion

text: One hypothesis suggested that the Ancient Roman custom of crucifixion may have developed out of a primitive custom of "arbori suspendere"—hanging on an "arbor infelix" ("inauspicious tree") dedicated to the gods of the nether world. This hypothesis is rejected by William A. Oldfather, who shows that this form of execution (the "supplicium more maiorum", punishment in accordance with the custom of our ancestors) consisted of suspending someone from a tree, not dedicated to any particular gods, and flogging him to death. Tertullian mentions a 1st-century AD case in which trees were used for crucifixion, but Seneca the Younger earlier used the phrase "infelix lignum" (unfortunate wood) for the transom ("patibulum") or the whole cross. Plautus and Plutarch are the two main sources for accounts of criminals carrying their own patibula to the upright "stipes".


title: Crucifixion

text: Notorious mass crucifixions followed the Third Servile War in 73–71 BC (the slave rebellion under Spartacus), other Roman civil wars in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Crassus ordered the crucifixion of 6,000 of Spartacus' followers who had been hunted down and captured after his defeat in battle. Josephus says that in the siege that led to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Roman soldiers crucified Jewish captives before the walls of Jerusalem and out of anger and hatred amused themselves by nailing them in different positions.


title: Crucifixion

text: In some cases, the condemned was forced to carry the crossbeam to the place of execution. A whole cross would weigh well over 135 kg (300 lb), but the crossbeam would not be as burdensome, weighing around 45 kg (100 lb). The Roman historian Tacitus records that the city of Rome had a specific place for carrying out executions, situated outside the Esquiline Gate, and had a specific area reserved for the execution of slaves by crucifixion. Upright posts would presumably be fixed permanently in that place, and the crossbeam, with the condemned person perhaps already nailed to it, would then be attached to the post.


title: Crucifixion

text: The person executed may have been attached to the cross by rope, though nails and other sharp materials are mentioned in a passage by the Judean historian Josephus, where he states that at the Siege of Jerusalem (70), "the soldiers out of rage and hatred, "nailed" those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest". Objects used in the crucifixion of criminals, such as nails, were sought as amulets with perceived medicinal qualities.


title: Crucifixion

text: While a crucifixion was an execution, it was also a humiliation, by making the condemned as vulnerable as possible. Although artists have traditionally depicted the figure on a cross with a loin cloth or a covering of the genitals, the person being crucified was usually stripped naked. Writings by Seneca the Younger state some victims suffered a stick forced upwards through their groin. Despite its frequent use by the Romans, the horrors of crucifixion did not escape criticism by some eminent Roman orators. Cicero, for example, described crucifixion as "a most cruel and disgusting punishment", and suggested that "the very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen's body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears". Elsewhere he says, "It is a crime to bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is a wickedness; to put him to death is almost parricide. What shall I say of crucifying him? So guilty an action cannot by any possibility be adequately expressed by any name bad enough for it."


title: Crucifixion

text: Frequently, the legs of the person executed were broken or shattered with an iron club, an act called "crurifragium", which was also frequently applied without crucifixion to slaves. This act hastened the death of the person but was also meant to deter those who observed the crucifixion from committing offenses.


title: Crucifixion

text: Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, abolished crucifixion in the Roman Empire in 337 out of veneration for Jesus Christ, its most famous victim.


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion was intended to be a gruesome spectacle: the most painful and humiliating death imaginable. It was used to punish slaves, pirates, and enemies of the state. It was originally reserved for slaves (hence still called "supplicium servile" by Seneca), and later extended to citizens of the lower classes ("humiliores"). The victims of crucifixion were stripped naked and put on public display while they were slowly tortured to death so that they would serve as a spectacle and an example.


title: Crucifixion

text: According to Roman law, if a slave killed his or her master, all of the master's slaves would be crucified as punishment. Both men and women were crucified. Tacitus writes in his "Annals" that when Lucius Pedanius Secundus was murdered by a slave, some in the Senate tried to prevent the mass crucifixion of four hundred of his slaves because there were so many women and children, but in the end tradition prevailed and they were all executed. Although not conclusive evidence for female crucifixion by itself, the most ancient image of a Roman crucifixion may depict a crucified woman, whether real or imaginary. Crucifixion was such a gruesome and humiliating way to die that the subject was somewhat of a taboo in Roman culture, and few crucifixions were specifically documented. One of the only specific female crucifixions we have documented is that of Ida, a freedwoman (former slave) who was crucified by order of Tiberius.


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion was typically carried out by specialized teams, consisting of a commanding centurion and his soldiers. First, the condemned would be stripped naked and scourged. This would cause the person to lose a large amount of blood, and approach a state of shock. The convict then usually had to carry the horizontal beam ("patibulum" in Latin) to the place of execution, but not necessarily the whole cross.


title: Crucifixion

text: During the death march, the prisoner, probably still nude after the scourging, would be led through the most crowded streets bearing a "titulus" – a sign board proclaiming the prisoner's name and crime. Upon arrival at the place of execution, selected to be especially public, the convict would be stripped of any remaining clothing, then nailed to the cross naked. If the crucifixion took place in an established place of execution, the vertical beam ("stipes") might be permanently embedded in the ground. In this case, the condemned person's wrists would first be nailed to the "patibulum", and then he or she would be hoisted off the ground with ropes to hang from the elevated "patibulum" while it was fastened to the "stipes". Next the feet or ankles would be nailed to the upright stake. The 'nails' were tapered iron spikes approximately long, with a square shaft across. The "titulus" would also be fastened to the cross to notify onlookers of the person's name and crime as they hung on the cross, further maximizing the public impact.


title: Crucifixion

text: There may have been considerable variation in the position in which prisoners were nailed to their crosses and how their bodies were supported while they died. Seneca the Younger recounts: "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet." One source claims that for Jews (apparently not for others), a man would be crucified with his back to the cross as is traditionally depicted, while a woman would be nailed facing her cross, probably with her back to onlookers, or at least with the "stipes" providing some semblance of modesty if viewed from the front. Such concessions were "unique" and not made outside a Jewish context. Several sources mention some sort of seat fastened to the "stipes" to help support the person's body, thereby prolonging the person's suffering and humiliation by preventing the asphyxiation caused by hanging without support. Justin Martyr calls the seat a "cornu", or "horn," leading some scholars to believe it may have had a pointed shape designed to torment the crucified person. This would be consistent with Seneca's observation of victims with their private parts impaled.


title: Crucifixion

text: In Roman-style crucifixion, the condemned could take up to a few days to die, but death was sometimes hastened by human action. "The attending Roman guards could leave the site only after the victim had died, and were known to precipitate death by means of deliberate fracturing of the tibia and/or fibula, spear stab wounds into the heart, sharp blows to the front of the chest, or a smoking fire built at the foot of the cross to asphyxiate the victim." The Romans sometimes broke the prisoner's legs to hasten death and usually forbade burial. On the other hand, the person was often deliberately kept alive as long as possible to prolong their suffering and humiliation, so as to provide the maximum deterrent effect. Corpses of the crucified were typically left on the crosses to decompose and be eaten by animals.


title: Crucifixion

text: Islam spread in a region where many societies, including the Persian and Roman empires, had used crucifixion to punish traitors, rebels, robbers and criminal slaves. The Qur'an refers to crucifixion in six passages, of which the most significant for later legal developments is verse 5:33:


title: Crucifixion

text: The corpus of hadith provides contradictory statements about the first use of crucifixion under Islamic rule, attributing it variously to Muhammad himself (for murder and robbery of a shepherd) or to the second caliph Umar (applied to two slaves who murdered their mistress). Classical Islamic jurisprudence applies the verse 5:33 chiefly to highway robbers, as a "hadd" (scripturally prescribed) punishment. The preference for crucifixion over the other punishments mentioned in the verse or for their combination (which Sadakat Kadri has called "Islam's equivalent of the hanging, drawing and quartering that medieval Europeans inflicted on traitors") is subject to "complex and contested rules" in classical jurisprudence. Most scholars required crucifixion for highway robbery combined with murder, while others allowed execution by other methods for this scenario. The main methods of crucifixion are:


title: Crucifixion

text: Most classical jurists limit the period of crucifixion to three days. Crucifixion involves affixing or impaling the body to a beam or a tree trunk. Various minority opinions also prescribed crucifixion as punishment for a number of other crimes. Cases of crucifixion under most of the legally prescribed categories have been recorded in the history of Islam, and prolonged exposure of crucified bodies was especially common for political and religious opponents.


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion was introduced into Japan during the Sengoku period (1467–1573), after a 350-year period with no capital punishment. It is believed to have been suggested to the Japanese by the introduction of Christianity into the region, although similar types of punishment had been used as early as the Kamakura period. Known in Japanese as , crucifixion was used in Japan before and during the Tokugawa Shogunate. Several related crucifixion techniques were used. Petra Schmidt, in "Capital Punishment in Japan", writes:


title: Crucifixion

text: In 1597 twenty-six Christian Martyrs were nailed to crosses at Nagasaki, Japan. Among those executed were Saints Paulo Miki, Philip of Jesus and Pedro Bautista, a Spanish Franciscan who had worked about ten years in the Philippines. The executions marked the beginning of a long history of persecution of Christianity in Japan, which continued until its decriminalization in 1871.


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion was used as a punishment for prisoners of war during World War II. Ringer Edwards, an Australian prisoner of war, was crucified for killing cattle, along with two others. He survived 63 hours before being let down.


title: Crucifixion

text: In Burma, crucifixion was a central element in several execution rituals. Felix Carey, a missionary in Burma from 1806 to 1812, wrote the following:


title: Crucifixion

text: During World War I, there were persistent rumors that German soldiers had crucified a Canadian soldier on a tree or barn door with bayonets or combat knives. The event was initially reported in 1915 by Private George Barrie of the 1st Canadian Division. Two investigations, one a post-war official investigation, and the other an independent investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, concluded that there was no evidence to support the story. However, British documentary maker Iain Overton in 2001 published an article claiming that the story was true, identifying the soldier as Harry Band. Overton's article was the basis for a 2002 episode of the Channel 4 documentary show "Secret History".


title: Crucifixion

text: It has been reported that crucifixion was used in several cases against the German civil population of East Prussia when it was occupied by Soviet forces at the end of the Second World War.


title: Crucifixion

text: Although the Roman historians Josephus and Appian refer to the crucifixion of thousands of Jews by the Romans, there are few actual archaeological remains. An exception is the crucified body of a Jew dating back to the first century CE which was discovered at Givat HaMivtar, Jerusalem in 1968. The remains were found accidentally in an ossuary with the crucified man's name on it, 'Jehohanan, the son of Hagakol'. Nicu Haas, from the Hebrew University Medical School, examined the ossuary and discovered that it contained a heel bone with a nail driven through its side, indicating that the man had been crucified. The position of the nail relative to the bone suggests the feet had been nailed to the cross from their side, not from their front; various opinions have been proposed as to whether they were both nailed together to the front of the cross or one on the left side, one on the right side. The point of the nail had olive wood fragments on it indicating that he was crucified on a cross made of olive wood or on an olive tree.


title: Crucifixion

text: Additionally, a piece of acacia wood was located between the bones and the head of the nail, presumably to keep the condemned from freeing his foot by sliding it over the nail. His legs were found broken, possibly to hasten his death. It is thought that because in earlier Roman times iron was valuable, the nails were removed from the dead body to conserve costs. According to Haas, this could help to explain why only one nail has been found, as the tip of the nail in question was bent in such a way that it could not be removed. Haas had also identified a scratch on the inner surface of the right radius bone of the forearm, close to the wrist. He deduced from the form of the scratch, as well as from the intact wrist bones, that a nail had been driven into the forearm at that position.


title: Crucifixion

text: Many of Haas' findings have, however, been challenged. For instance, it was subsequently determined that the scratches in the wrist area were non-traumatic – and, therefore, not evidence of crucifixion – while reexamination of the heel bone revealed that the two heels were not nailed together, but rather separately to either side of the upright post of the cross.


title: Crucifixion

text: In 2007, a possible case of a crucified body, with a round hole in a heel bone, possibly caused by a nail, was discovered in the Po Valley near Rovigo, in northern Italy.


title: Crucifixion

text: In 2017 part of a crucified body, with a nail in the heel, was additionally discovered at Fenstanton in the United Kingdom. Further studies suggested that the remains may be those of a slave, because at that time that the crucifixion is estimated as happened it was banned in Roman law for citizens, although not necessarily for slaves.


title: Crucifixion

text: Crucifixion is still used as a rare method of execution in Saudi Arabia. The punishment of crucifixion ("șalb") imposed in Islamic law is variously interpreted as exposure of the body after execution, crucifixion followed by stabbing in the chest, or crucifixion for three days, survivors of which are allowed to live.


title: Crucifixion

text: Several people have been subjected to crucifixion in Saudi Arabia in the 2000s, although on occasion they were first beheaded and then crucified. In March 2013, a robber was set to be executed by being crucified for three days. However, the method was changed to death by firing squad. The Saudi Press Agency reported that the body of another individual was crucified after his execution in April 2019 as part of a crackdown on charges of terrorism.


title: Crucifixion

text: Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 when he was 17 years old for taking part in an anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia during the Arab Spring. In May 2014, Ali al-Nimr was sentenced to be publicly beheaded and crucified.


title: Crucifixion

text: Theoretically, crucifixion is still one of the Hadd punishments in Iran. If a crucified person were to survive three days of crucifixion, that person would be allowed to live. Execution by hanging is described as follows: "In execution by hanging, the prisoner will be hung on a hanging truss which should look like a cross, while his (her) back is toward the cross, and (s)he faces the direction of Mecca [in Saudi Arabia], and his (her) legs are vertical and distant from the ground."


title: Crucifixion

text: Sudan's penal code, based upon the government's interpretation of shari'a, includes execution followed by crucifixion as a penalty. When, in 2002, 88 people were sentenced to death for crimes relating to murder, armed robbery, and participating in ethnic clashes, Amnesty International wrote that they could be executed by either hanging or crucifixion.


title: Crucifixion

text: In 1997, the Ministry of Justice in the United Arab Emirates issued a statement that a court had sentenced two murderers to be crucified, to be followed by their executions the next day. A Ministry of Justice official later stated that the crucifixion sentence should be considered cancelled. The crucifixions were not carried out, and the convicts were instead executed by firing squad.


title: Crucifixion

text: On 5 February 2015, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had committed "several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive".


title: Crucifixion

text: On 30 April 2014, a total of seven public executions were carried out in Raqqa, northern Syria. The pictures, originally posted to Twitter by a student at Oxford University, were retweeted by a Twitter account owned by a known member of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) causing major media outlets to incorrectly attribute the origin of the post to the militant group. In most of these cases of crucifixion the victims are shot first then their bodies are displayed but there have also been reports of crucifixion preceding shootings or decapitations as well as a case where a man was said to have been "crucified alive for eight hours" with no indication of whether he died.


title: Crucifixion

text: The human rights group Karen Women Organization documented a case of Tatmadaw forces crucifying several Karen villagers in 2000 in the Dooplaya District in Burma's Kayin State.


title: Crucifixion

text: On 22 January 2014, Dmytro Bulatov, an anti-government activist and member of AutoMaidan, claimed to have been kidnapped by unknown persons "speaking in Russian accents" and tortured for a week. His captors kept him in the dark, beat him, cut off a piece of his ear, and nailed him to a cross. His captors ultimately left him in a forest outside Kyiv after forcing him to confess to being an American spy and accepting money from the US Embassy in Ukraine to organize protests against then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Bulatov said he believed Russian secret services were responsible.


title: Crucifixion

text: The Catholic Church frowns upon self-crucifixion as a form of devotion: "Penitential practices leading to self-crucifixion with nails are not to be encouraged." Despite this, the practice persists in the Philippines, where some Catholics are voluntarily, non-lethally crucified for a limited time on Good Friday to imitate the sufferings of Christ. Pre-sterilised nails are driven through the palm of the hand between the bones, while there is a footrest to which the feet are nailed. Rolando del Campo, a carpenter in Pampanga, vowed to be crucified every Good Friday for 15 years if God would carry his wife through a difficult childbirth, while in San Pedro Cutud, Ruben Enaje has been crucified 33 times. The Filipino Catholic Church has repeatedly voiced disapproval of crucifixions and self-flagellation, while the government has noted that it cannot deter devotees. The Department of Health recommends that participants in the rites should have tetanus shots and that the nails used should be sterilized.


title: Crucifixion

text: In other cases, a crucifixion is only simulated within a passion play, as in the ceremonial re-enactment that has been performed yearly in the town of Iztapalapa, on the outskirts of Mexico City, since 1833, and in the more famous Oberammergau Passion Play. Also, since at least the mid-19th century, a group of flagellants in New Mexico, called "Hermanos de Luz" ("Brothers of Light"), have annually conducted reenactments of Christ's crucifixion during Holy Week, in which a penitent is tied—but not nailed—to a cross.


title: Crucifixion

text: In a reported case from July 1805 a man named Mattio Lovat attempted to crucify himself at a public street in Venice, Italy. The attempt was unsuccessful, and he was sent to an asylum, where he died a year later.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: The 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Michigan. Incumbent Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer ran for re-election to a second term and faced former political commentator Tudor Dixon in the general election. Whitmer defeated Dixon by a vote margin of nearly 11 percentage points, a larger victory than when she was first elected four years prior.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: This was the first gubernatorial election in Michigan history in which both major party candidates for governor were women, and the first since 1990 in which the winner was from the same party as the incumbent president.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: In order to appear on a primary ballot for the August 2 Democratic and Republican primaries, candidates must submit between 15,000 and 30,000 signatures in addition to their filing paperwork. These signatures are submitted to the Board of State Canvassers, a bipartisan and independent board that verifies petition signatures. Within seven days of the filing deadline, citizens and organizations can challenge nomination signatures submitted by candidates. Voters are only allowed to sign one nomination petition.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: After the filing deadline, the Board of State Canvassers received nearly 30 challenges to nomination petitions. Among them, the Michigan Democratic Party alleged that several Republican candidates engaged in signature fraud with their petitions. This was followed by a report by the Michigan Bureau of Elections which alleged that 36 paid signature circulators faked signatures and engaged in practices that added fraudulent signatures to other candidates petitions.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: An eight-hour meeting of the Board of State Canvassers reached a deadlock on whether to allow the candidates in question to stay on the ballot. Due to the deadlock, the candidates in question were not allowed to appear on the primary ballot. The rushed pace of the proceedings and the decision were criticized by Common Cause of Michigan, whose policy director suggested that the candidates in question had to plead their cases to the Board of Canvassers days after finding out about the alleged fraud themselves.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: Several candidates filed lawsuits appealing the decision. These suits were rejected in the Michigan Court of Appeals. At least two of the candidates involved pledged to appeal their cases to the Michigan Supreme Court.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: Fourteen people declared their candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. At the filing deadline, 10 candidates submitted enough signatures to appear on the ballot, a state record. However, following challenges by the state Democratic party and other organizations, five candidates were deemed ineligible to appear on the ballot due to alleged fraudulent signatures. Several of these candidates, including former Detroit police chief James Craig and Michael Markey, pledged to appeal the decision to the State Supreme Court. Craig also mentioned that, should the appeal fail, he would still plan to run as a write-in candidate for both the primary and the general election. On June 15, 2022, Craig announced he was launching a write-in campaign for the nomination.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: On June 9, 2022, candidate Ryan Kelley was arrested by the FBI following numerous tips that he had participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack. The criminal complaint alleges that Kelley engaged in disorderly conduct on restricted grounds and engaged in acts of violence against a person or property.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: On August 19, 2022, Dixon announced former state representative Shane Hernandez as her running mate. However, shortly after, former gubernatorial candidates Ralph Rebandt and Garrett Soldano both announced that they were exploring the possibility of launching their own campaigns for Lieutenant Governor to contest Hernandez at the August 27 state GOP convention for not being conservative enough. On August 22, 2022, Soldano announced that he would not seek the position of Lieutenant Governor at the convention. Later that same day, Rebandt announced that he would seek the nomination at the convention. Hernandez secured his party's nomination at the convention, despite heated opposition from supporters of Rebandt.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: The first debate was held on Thursday, October 13 in Grand Rapids hosted by local TV station WOOD-TV. The two clashed on various issues such as abortion, the economy and COVID-19. The fact checkers were busy analyzing the claims the two candidates made. Analysts determined this debate to be a draw.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: The second debate was held on Tuesday, October 25 on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester. The debate was co-sponsored by Oakland University's Center for Civic Engagement and E.W. Scripps owned TV stations WXYZ-TV in Detroit, WXMI-TV in Grand Rapids and WSYM-TV in Lansing. News stories about the debate specifically noted a question Whitmer gave Dixon when they argued on school safety and library books: "Do you really think books are more dangerous than guns?"


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: Whitmer led Dixon in most of the polls. Most Republican donors chose not to fund campaign ads for Dixon, causing the TV airwaves to be dominated by ads for Whitmer, which included negative ads against Dixon. Abortion rights, which were on the ballot in the same election, were the subject of negative ads against Dixon, who opposed abortion rights. Although aggregate polling had Whitmer up by about 3%, and a last minute poll by Trafalgar Group had Dixon ahead by 1%, the election was not close. Whitmer defeated Dixon at the same time Michigan voters approved a ballot measure that would guarantee abortion rights in the Michigan constitution. Democrats swept the other statewide partisan races and won control of both the state House and state Senate. This marked the first time Democrats took control of both houses of the Michigan legislature since 1984.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: Whitmer's victory was attributed to her strong performance in Michigan's most populous counties, which include Wayne (Detroit and Dearborn), Oakland (Pontiac and Troy), Kent (Grand Rapids), Macomb (Warren plus other northern Detroit suburbs), Genesee (Flint), Washtenaw (Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan), Ingham (home to the state capital of Lansing), Kalamazoo, Saginaw, and Muskegon. She also performed well in some more moderately populous places, including Marquette County in the Upper Peninsula and the Traverse City area in the northwestern tip of the Lower Peninsula. Whitmer's wider victory margin was attributed to her increased leads from her previous election in places such as Kent County (4.15% to 10.38%), Oakland County (16.96% to 23.08%), and Washtenaw County (46.14% to 51.48%), solidifying the latter's status as the bluest county in Michigan. Voting by college students also went up, causing long lines at polling places which led to continued voting long after the polls closed at 8 p.m.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: Dixon, on the other hand, did well in Michigan's outer suburbs, exurbs, and more rural counties. While she improved on 2018 Republican nominee Bill Schuette's performance in moderately populated Monroe and St. Clair counties on the outskirts of Metro Detroit, she saw her leads drop in Livingston County (home to Howell and other Detroit suburbs) from 17.07% to 12.83% and Ottawa County (home to Grand Haven, Holland, and other Grand Rapids suburbs) from 23.57% to 18.04%, further continuing the trend of moderate white suburban voters shifting away from the Republicans and toward the Democrats.


title: 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election

text: Despite Dixon's loss, she managed to flip Gogebic County in the Upper Peninsula (which had voted for Whitmer in 2018), making this the first election since 1932 where a Democrat won the Michigan Governor's Mansion without carrying Gogebic County.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: Nagorno-Karabakh ( ) is a landlocked region in the South Caucasus, within the mountainous range of Karabakh, lying between Lower Karabakh and Syunik, and covering the southeastern range of the Lesser Caucasus mountains. The region is mostly mountainous and forested.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed territory, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but most of it is governed by the unrecognised Republic of Artsakh (also known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR)) since the first Nagorno-Karabakh War. Since the end of the war in 1994, representatives of the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group on the region's disputed status.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: The region is usually equated with the administrative borders of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, comprising . The historical area of the region, however, encompasses approximately .


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: On 27 September 2020, a new war erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories, which saw both the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia report military and civilian casualties. Azerbaijan made significant gains during the war, regaining most of the occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the culturally significant city of Shusha. The war ended on 10 November 2020, when a trilateral ceasefire agreement was signed between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia, which forced Armenia to return all the remaining occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: The prefix "Nagorno-" derives from the Russian attributive adjective (), which means "highland". The Azerbaijani names of the region include the similar adjectives (mountainous) or (upper). Such words are not used in the Armenian name, but appeared in the region's official name during the Soviet era as Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. Other languages apply their own wording for "mountainous", "upper", or "highland"; for example, the official name used by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in French is , meaning "Upper Karabakh".


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: The names for the region in the various local languages all translate to "mountainous Karabakh", or "mountainous black garden":


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: Armenians living in the area often call Nagorno-Karabakh "Artsakh" (), the name of the 10th province of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia. Urartian inscriptions (9th–7th centuries BC) use the name for the region. Ancient Greek sources called the area .


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: Nagorno-Karabakh falls within the lands occupied by peoples known to modern archaeologists as the Kura-Araxes culture, who lived between the two rivers Kura and Araxes.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: The ancient population of the region consisted of various autochthonous local and migrant tribes who were mostly non-Indo-Europeans. According to the prevailing western theory, these natives intermarried with Armenians who came to the region after its inclusion into Armenia in the 2nd or possibly earlier, the 4th century BC. Other scholars suggest that the Armenians settled in the region as early as the 7th century BC.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: In around 180 BC, Artsakh became one of the 15 provinces of the Armenian Kingdom and remained so until the 4th century. While formally having the status of a province ("nahang"), Artsakh possibly formed a principality on its own — like Armenia's province of Syunik. Other theories suggest that Artsakh was a royal land, belonging directly to the king of Armenia. King Tigran the Great of Armenia (ruled from 95 to 55 BC) founded in Artsakh one of four cities named "Tigranakert" after himself. The ruins of the ancient Tigranakert, located north-east of Stepanakert, are being studied by a group of international scholars.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: In 387 AD, after the partition of Armenia between the Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia, two Armenian provinces, Artsakh and Utik, became part of the Sassanid satrapy of Caucasian Albania, which, in turn, came under strong Armenian religious and cultural influence. At the time the population of Artsakh and Utik consisted of Armenians and several Armenized tribes.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: Armenian culture and civilization flourished in the early medieval Nagorno-Karabakh. In the 5th century, the first-ever Armenian school was opened on the territory of modern Nagorno-Karabakh at Amaras Monastery by the efforts of St. Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet. St. Mesrop was very active in preaching the Gospel in Artsakh and Utik. Overall, Mesrop Mashtots made three trips to Artsakh and Utik, ultimately reaching pagan territories at the foothills of the Greater Caucasus. The 7th-century Armenian linguist and grammarian Stephanos Syunetsi stated in his work that Armenians of Artsakh had their own dialect, and encouraged his readers to learn it.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: Around the mid 7th century, the region was conquered by the invading Muslim Arabs through the Muslim conquest of Persia. Subsequently, it was ruled by local governors endorsed by the Caliphate. According to some sources, in 821, the Armenian prince Sahl Smbatian revolted in Artsakh and established the House of Khachen, which ruled Artsakh as a principality until the early 19th century. According to other sources, Sahl Smbatian "was of the Zamirhakan family of kings," and in the year 837–838, he acquired sovereignty over Armenia, Georgia, and Albania. The name "Khachen" originated from Armenian word "khach," which means "cross". By 1000 the House of Khachen proclaimed the Kingdom of Artsakh with John Senecherib as its first ruler. Initially Dizak, in southern Artsakh, formed also a kingdom ruled by the ancient House of Aranshahik, descended of the earliest Kings of Caucasian Albania. In 1261, after the daughter of the last king of Dizak married the king of Artsakh, Armenian prince Hasan Jalal Dola, the two states merged into one Armenian Principality of Khachen. Subsequently, Artsakh continued to exist as a de facto independent principality.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: In the 15th century, the territory of Karabakh was part of the states ruled subsequently by the Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu Turkic tribal confederations. According to Abu Bakr Tihrani, during the period of Jahan Shah (1438–1468), the ruler of Kara Koyunlu, Piri bey Karamanli held the governorship of Karabakh. However, according to Robert H. Hewsen, the Turkoman lord Jahan Shah (1437–67) assigned the governorship of upper Karabakh to local Armenian princes, allowing a native Armenian leadership to emerge consisting of five noble families led by princes who held the titles of "meliks". These dynasties represented the branches of the earlier House of Khachen and were the descendants of the medieval kings of Artsakh. Their lands were often referred to as the Country of Khamsa ("five" in Arabic). In a Charter (2 June 1799) of the Emperor Paul I titled "About their admission to Russian suzerainty, land allocation, rights and privileges", it was noted that the Christian heritage of the Karabakh region and all their people were admitted to the Russian suzerainty. However, according to Robert Hewsen, the Russian Empire recognized the sovereign status of the five princes in their domains by the charter of Emperor Paul I dated 2 June 1799.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: The Armenian meliks were granted supreme command over neighbouring Armenian principalities and Muslim khans in the Caucasus by the Iranian king Nader Shah, in return for the meliks' victories over the invading Ottoman Turks in the 1720s. These five principalities in Karabakh were ruled by Armenian families who had received the title Melik (prince) and were the following:


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: From 1501 to 1736, during the existence of the Safavid Empire, the province of Karabakh was governed by Ziyadoglu Gajar's dynasty. Ziyadoglu Gajar's dynasty ruled the province of Karabakh until Nader Shah took over Karabakh from their rule. The Armenian meliks maintained full control over the region until the mid-18th century. In the early 18th century, Iran's Nader Shah took Karabakh out of control of the Ganja khans in punishment for their support of the Safavids, and placed it under his own control In the mid-18th century, as internal conflicts between the meliks led to their weakening, the Karabakh Khanate was formed. The Karabakh khanate, one of the largest khanates under Iranian suzerainty, was headed by Panah-Ali khan Javanshir. For the reinforcement of the power of Karabakh khanate, Khan of Karabakh, Panah-Ali khan Javanshir, built up “the fortress of Panahabad (today Shusha)” in 1751. During that time, Otuziki, Javanshir, Kebirli, and other Turkic tribes constituted the majority of the overall population.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: Karabakh (including modern-day Nagorno-Karabakh), became a protectorate of the Russian Empire by the Kurekchay Treaty, signed between Ibrahim Khalil Khan of Karabakh and general Pavel Tsitsianov on behalf of Tsar Alexander I in 1805, according to which the Russian monarch recognized Ibrahim Khalil Khan and his descendants as the sole hereditary rulers of the region. However, its new status was only confirmed following the outcome of the Russo-Persian War (1804-1813), when through the loss in the war, Persia formally ceded Karabakh to the Russian Empire per the Treaty of Gulistan (1813), before the rest of Transcaucasia was incorporated into the Empire in 1828 by the Treaty of Turkmenchay, which came as an outcome of the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828).


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: In 1822, 9 years after it passed from Iranian to Russian control, the Karabakh Khanate was dissolved and the area became part of the Elisabethpol Governorate within the Russian Empire. In 1823 the five districts corresponding roughly to modern-day Nagorno-Karabakh were 90.8% Armenian-populated.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Karabakh became part of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, but this soon dissolved into separate Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian states. Over the next two years (1918–1920), there were a series of short wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan over several regions, including Karabakh. In July 1918, the First Armenian Assembly of Nagorno-Karabakh declared the region self-governing and created a National Council and government. Later, Ottoman troops entered Karabakh, meeting armed resistance by Armenians.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, British troops occupied Karabakh. The British command provisionally affirmed Khosrov bey Sultanov (appointed by the Azerbaijani government) as the governor-general of Karabakh and Zangezur, pending a final decision by the Paris Peace Conference. The decision was opposed by Karabakh Armenians. In February 1920, the Karabakh National Council preliminarily agreed to Azerbaijani jurisdiction, while Armenians elsewhere in Karabakh continued guerrilla fighting, never accepting the agreement. The agreement itself was soon annulled by the Ninth Karabagh Assembly, which declared union with Armenia in April.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: In April 1920, while the Azerbaijani army was locked in Karabakh fighting local Armenian forces, Azerbaijan was taken over by Bolsheviks. On 10 August 1920, Armenia signed a preliminary agreement with the Bolsheviks, agreeing to a temporary Bolshevik occupation of these areas until final settlement would be reached. In 1921, Armenia and Georgia were also taken over by the Bolsheviks. After the Sovietization of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Kavbiuro (Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)) decided that Karabakh would remain within Azerbaijan SSR with broad regional autonomy, with the administrative centre in the city of Shusha (the administrative center was later moved to Stepanakert). The oblast's borders were drawn to include Armenian villages and to exclude as much as possible Azerbaijani villages. The resulting district ensured an Armenian majority.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: With the Soviet Union firmly in control of the region, the conflict over the region died down for several decades until the beginning of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the question of Nagorno-Karabakh re-emerged. Accusing the Azerbaijani SSR government of conducting forced Azerification of the region, the majority Armenian population, with ideological and material support from the Armenian SSR, started a movement to have the autonomous oblast transferred to the Armenian SSR. In August 1987, Karabakh Armenians sent a petition for union with Armenia with tens of thousands of signatures to Moscow.


title: Nagorno-Karabakh

text: On 13 February 1988, Karabakh Armenians began demonstrating in Stepanakert, in favour of unification with the Armenian republic. Six days later they were joined by mass marches in Yerevan. On 20 February, the Soviet of People's Deputies in Karabakh voted 110 to 17 to request the transfer of the region to Armenia. This unprecedented action by a regional Soviet brought out tens of thousands of demonstrations both in Stepanakert and Yerevan, but Moscow rejected the Armenians' demands. On 20 February 1988, 2 Azeri girls had been raped in Stepanakert, this caused wide outrage in the Azeri town of Aghdam, where the first direct confrontation of the conflict occurred as a large group of Azeris marched from Agdam to the Armenian populated town of Askeran. The confrontation between the Azeris and the police near Askeran degenerated into the Askeran clash, which left two Azeris dead, one of them allegedly killed by an Azeri police officer, as well as 50 Armenian villagers and an unknown number of Azeris and police injured. Large numbers of refugees left Armenia and Azerbaijan as violence began against the minority populations of the respective countries. On 7 July 1988, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemned the violence employed against Armenian demonstrators in Azerbaijan, and supported the demand of the Armenians for reunification with the Soviet Republic of Armenia.