title: The Wire (season 1)

text: These investigators were overseen by two commanding officers more concerned with politics and their own careers than with the case, Major William Rawls (John Doman) and Deputy Commissioner Ervin Burrell (Frankie Faison). Assistant state's attorney Rhonda Pearlman (Deirdre Lovejoy) acted as the legal liaison between the detail and the courthouse and also had a casual relationship with McNulty. In the homicide division, Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce) was a gifted, dry-witted detective partnered with McNulty.


title: The Wire (season 1)

text: On the other side of the investigation was Avon Barksdale's drug empire. The driven, ruthless Barksdale (Wood Harris) was aided by business-minded Stringer Bell (Idris Elba). Avon's nephew D'Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gilliard Jr.) ran some of his uncle's territory, but also possessed a guilty conscience.


title: The Wire (season 1)

text: The first season featured several significant characters in recurring roles. Like Detective Greggs, partners Thomas "Herc" Hauk (Domenick Lombardozzi) and Ellis Carver (Seth Gilliam) were reassigned to the detail from the narcotics unit. The duo's initially violent nature was eventually subdued as they proved useful in grunt work, and sometimes served as comic relief for the audience. Rounding out the temporary unit were detectives Leander Sydnor (Corey Parker Robinson), Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) and Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost). Sydnor was a rookie detective with a reputation for solid undercover work. Though not initially important players in the operation, Freamon proved a quietly capable investigator with a knack for noticing tiny but important details, and Prez, while a liability on the street, turned out to be a natural at his desk job. McNulty and Bunk served in a homicide unit squad led by Sergeant Jay Landsman (Delaney Williams), the jovial squad commander. Peter Gerety had a recurring role as Judge Phelan, the official who started the case moving.


title: The Wire (season 1)

text: There were also several recurring characters in the Barksdale Organization. Loyal Wee-Bey Brice (Hassan Johnson) was responsible for multiple homicides carried out on Avon's orders. Working under D'Angelo were Poot Carr (Tray Chaney), Bodie Broadus (J.D. Williams), and Wallace (Michael B. Jordan), all street-level drug dealers. Wallace was an intelligent but naïve youth trapped in the drug trade, Bodie a violent and determined young dealer, and Poot a lascivious young man happy to follow rather than lead. Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), a notorious Baltimore stick-up man robbing drug dealers for a living, was a frequent thorn in the side of the Barksdale clan.


title: The Wire (season 1)

text: The first season received mostly positive reviews from critics, holding a 79/100 on Metacritic. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 85% with an average score of 9.5 out of 10 based on 34 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Though it takes its time getting started, "The Wire" is worth the wait, spinning a connective web of characters and delivering no-holds-barred commentary on some of America's unsettling societal problems."


title: The Wire (season 1)

text: Some called it superior to HBO's better-known "flagship" drama series such as "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under". One reviewer felt that the show was partially a retread of themes from HBO and David Simon's earlier works but still valuable viewing, describing the series as particularly resonant because of parallels between the war on terror and the war on drugs. Another review postulated that the series might suffer because of its reliance on profanity and slowly drawn-out plot, but was largely positive about the show's characters and intrigue. "TIME" named the first season as the best TV show of 2002 in their Top 10 Everything 2002.


title: The Wire (season 1)

text: Despite the critical acclaim, "The Wire" has received poor Nielsen ratings, which Simon attributes to the complexity of the plot, a poor time slot, heavy use of esoteric slang (particularly among the gangster characters), and a predominantly black cast. Critics felt the show was testing the attention span of its audience and felt that it was mistimed in the wake of the launch of the successful crime drama "The Shield" on FX. However, anticipation for a release of the first season on DVD was high at "Entertainment Weekly".


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: John David Gosch (November 12, 1969 – disappeared September 5, 1982) was a paperboy in West Des Moines, Iowa, who disappeared between 6 and 7 a.m. on September 5, 1982. He is presumed to have been kidnapped.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: His mother, Noreen Gosch, said that Johnny escaped from his captors and visited her with an unidentified man in 1997. She said that her son told her that he had been the victim of a pedophile organization and had been cast aside when he was too old but subsequently feared for his life and lived under an assumed identity, feeling it was not safe to return home. Gosch's father, John, divorced from Noreen since 1993, has publicly stated that he is not sure whether or not such a visit actually occurred. Many have also speculated that the visit did occur, but it was someone else pretending to be Johnny. Authorities have not located Gosch or confirmed Noreen Gosch's account, and his fate continues to be the subject of speculation, conspiracy theories, and dispute.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: The case received renewed publicity in 2006 when his mother said she had found photographs on her doorstep depicting Gosch in captivity. Some of the photos received were said to be children from a case in Florida, but one boy in the photos was never identified. Noreen Gosch insists that boy is Johnny.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Gosch's picture was among the first to be featured on milk cartons as part of a campaign to find missing children.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: On Sunday, September 5, 1982, in the suburb of West Des Moines, Johnny Gosch left home before dawn to begin his paper route. Although it was customary for Johnny to awaken his father to help with the route, the boy took only the family's miniature dachshund, Gretchen, with him that morning. Other paper carriers for "The Des Moines Register" would later report having seen Gosch at the paper drop, picking up his newspapers. It was the last sighting of Gosch that can be corroborated by multiple witnesses.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Another paperboy named Mike reported that he observed Gosch talking to a stocky man in a blue two-toned car near the paper drop; another witness, John Rossi, saw the man in the blue car talking to Gosch and "thought something was strange." Gosch told Rossi that the man was asking for directions and asked Rossi to help. Rossi looked at the license plate, but could not recall the plate number. He said, "I keep hoping I'll wake up in the middle of the night and see that number on the license plate as distinctly as night and day, but that hasn't happened." Rossi underwent hypnosis and told police some of the numbers and that the plate was from Warren County, Iowa. According to a private investigator hired by the Gosches, as Johnny walked a block north, where his route started, a paperboy noticed another man following Gosch. A neighbor heard a door slam, and saw a silver Ford Fairmont speed away northwards from where Johnny's wagon was found.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: John and Noreen Gosch, Johnny's parents, began receiving phone calls from customers along their son's route, complaining of undelivered papers. John performed a cursory search of the neighborhood around 6 a.m. He immediately found Johnny's wagon full of newspapers two blocks from their home. The Gosches immediately contacted the West Des Moines police department, and reported Johnny's disappearance. Noreen, in her public statements and her book "Why Johnny Can't Come Home", has been critical of what she perceives as a slow reaction time from authorities, and of the policy at the time that Gosch could not be classified as a missing person until 72 hours had passed. By her estimation, the police did not arrive to take her report for a full 45 minutes.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Initially, the police came to believe that Gosch was a runaway, but later they changed their statement and suggested that Gosch was kidnapped, but they were unable to establish a viable motive. They turned up little evidence and arrested no suspects in connection with the case.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: A few months after his September 1982 disappearance, Noreen Gosch has said her son was spotted in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when a boy yelled to a woman for help before being dragged off by two men.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Over the years, several private investigators have assisted the Gosches with the search for their son. Among them are Jim Rothstein, a retired New York City police detective and Ted Gunderson, a retired chief of the Los Angeles FBI branch.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: In 1984, Gosch's photograph appeared alongside that of Juanita Lee Estevez on milk cartons across America; they were the second and third abducted children to have their plights publicized in this way. The first was Etan Patz.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: On August 12, 1984, Eugene Martin, another Des Moines-area paperboy, disappeared under similar circumstances. He disappeared while delivering newspapers on the south side of Des Moines.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Marc James Warren Allen, then 13 years old, told his mother he was going to walk to a friend's house across the street on March 29, 1986, the day before Easter. However, he never made it to the neighbor's house and hasn't been seen since. Allen was first believed to be the third Iowa paperboy to go missing in the 1980s based on earlier media reporting. Allen was not a paperboy in Des Moines, according to a detailed piece about Iowa's missing people that appeared in the Des Moines Register on August 18, 2013. But even now, three decades later, none of the three boys' cases have been solved.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Authorities were unable to prove a connection between the three cases, yet Noreen Gosch says that she was personally informed of the abduction of Eugene Martin a few months in advance by a private investigator who was searching for her son. She was told the kidnapping "would take place the second weekend in August 1984 and it would be a paperboy from the southside of Des Moines."


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: In 1985, Noreen Gosch received a letter from Robert Herman Meier II, 19, of Saginaw, Michigan. The letter had been signed "Samuel Forbes Dakota". In the letter, Meier stated that he was a guard in a motorcycle club when Gosch's son disappeared in September 1982. According to Meier, Gosch's son was taken as part of a large child-slavery ring operated by the club. According to the FBI, Meier requested from and received $11,000 from the Gosches. Meier additionally requested $100,000 more along with a promise to return their son.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Meier was arrested in Buffalo at the Canadian border by FBI agents, and was later charged with fraud by wire. The letter Meier wrote had stated that Gosch's son was sold to a man whom Meier identified as a "high-level drug dealer residing in Mexico City." Despite the accusation of fraud, Noreen Gosch reportedly believed Meier at his word, and later criticized the FBI, stating that the arrest warrant against Meier destroyed her and her husband John's credibility with anyone who would take the couple's offer to pay ransom for their boy.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: According to Noreen Gosch, one morning in March 1997 she was awakened around 2:30 a.m. by a knock at her apartment door. Waiting outside was Johnny Gosch, now 27, accompanied by an unidentified man. Gosch said she immediately recognized her son, who opened his shirt to reveal a birthmark on his chest. "We talked about an hour or an hour and a half. He was with another man, but I have no idea who the person was. Johnny would look over to the other person for approval to speak," says Gosch. "He didn't say where he is living or where he was going." In a 2005 interview, Gosch said, "The night that he came here, he was wearing jeans and a shirt and had a coat on because it was March. It was cold and his hair was long; it was shoulder-length and it was straight and dyed black." After the visit, she had the FBI create a picture she says looked like Johnny.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Gosch self-published a book in 2000 titled "Why Johnny Can't Come Home". The book presents her understanding of what her son went through, based on the original research of various private investigators and her son's visit.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: On September 1, 2006, Gosch reported that she found photographs left at her front door, some of which she posted on her website. One color photo shows three boys bound and gagged. She says that a black-and-white photo appears to show 12-year-old Johnny Gosch with his mouth gagged, his hands and feet tied, and an apparent human brand on his shoulder. A third photo shows a man, possibly dead, who may have something tied around his neck. Mrs. Gosch stated that the man was one of the "perpetrators who molested [my] son". Gosch later said the first two photos had originated on a website featuring child pornography.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Someone has played a reprehensible joke on a grieving mother. The photo in question is not one of her son but of three boys in Tampa, Florida about 1979–80, challenging each other to an escape contest. There was an investigation concerning that picture, made by the Hillsborough County (FL) Sheriff's Office. No charges were filed, and no wrongdoing was established. The lead detective on the case was named Zalva. This allegation should be easy enough to check out.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: Nelson Zalva, who worked for the Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff's Office in the 1970s, said the details of the letter were true and adds that he also investigated the black-and-white in "1978 or 1979", before Gosch's disappearance. "I interviewed the kids, and they said there was no coercion or touching. ... I could never prove a crime," Zalva says. When asked for proof that this was indeed the same photo from the investigation nearly three decades prior, Zalva could not provide any. According to the documentary film "Who Took Johnny" (2014), only three boys in the pictures were identified by law enforcement, but not the one thought to be Johnny. Noreen Gosch still believes the pictures to be of her son.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: In 1989, 21-year-old Paul A. Bonacci told his attorney John DeCamp that he had been abducted into a sex ring with Gosch as a teenager and was forced to participate in Gosch's kidnapping. John DeCamp met with Bonacci and believed he was telling the truth. Noreen later met him and said he told her things "he could know only from talking with her son." He said that Johnny had a birthmark on his chest, a scar on his tongue and a burn scar on his lower leg; although a description of the birthmark had been widely circulated, information about the scars had not been made public. Bonacci also described a stammer that Johnny had when he was upset. The FBI and local police do not believe that Bonacci is a credible witness in the case and have not interviewed him. His siblings told police he was at home when Gosch was abducted.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: The case generated national interest as Noreen Gosch became increasingly vocal about the inadequacy of law enforcement's investigation of missing children cases. She established the Johnny Gosch Foundation in 1982, through which she visited schools and spoke at seminars about the "modus operandi" of sexual predators. She lobbied for "The Johnny Gosch Bill", state legislation which would mandate an immediate police response to reports of missing children. The bill became law in Iowa in 1984, and similar or identical laws were later passed in Missouri and seven other states.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: In August 1984, Noreen Gosch testified in Senate hearings on organized crime, speaking about "organized pedophilia" and its presumed role in her son's abduction. She began receiving death threats. Gosch also testified before the U.S. Department of Justice, which provided $10 million to establish the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Gosch was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan for the dedication ceremony.


title: Disappearance of Johnny Gosch

text: In 2014, a documentary titled "Who Took Johnny" was released. The film includes interviews with Gosch's parents.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: The , also known as the Nevada-tan murder, was the murder of a 12-year-old Japanese schoolgirl, , by an 11-year-old female classmate referred to as "Girl A". The murder occurred on June 1, 2004, at an elementary school in the city of Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture. The murderer slit Mitarai's throat and arms with a box cutter.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: Reactions to the incident included Internet memes and a discussion of lowering the age of criminal responsibility in Japan. The killer's name has not been released to the press (but it was accidentally revealed), as per Japanese legal procedures prohibiting the identification of juvenile offenders; "Girl A" is a common pseudonym used for juvenile girls involved in criminal cases in Japan. The Nagasaki District Legal Affairs Bureau cautioned Internet users against revealing her photos. However, the girl's name was accidentally revealed on a Fuji TV broadcast, and members of Japanese Internet community 2channel publicized her identity on June 18, 2004, based on analysis of a picture broadcast on television.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: On June 1, 2004, an 11-year-old schoolgirl, later dubbed "Girl A", murdered her 12-year-old classmate, Satomi Mitarai, in an empty classroom during the lunch hour at Okubo Elementary School in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. Girl A returned to her classroom, her clothes covered in blood. The girls' teacher, who had noticed that both girls were missing, stumbled upon the body and called the police.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: After being taken into custody, Girl A was reported to have confessed to the crime, saying "I am sorry, I am sorry" to police. She spent the night at the police station, often crying, and refused to eat and refused to drink. Girl A initially mentioned no motive for the killing. Shortly afterward, she confessed to police that she and Mitarai had quarreled as a result of messages left on the Internet. Girl A claimed that Mitarai slandered her by commenting on her weight and calling her a "goody-goody".


title: Sasebo slashing

text: On September 15, 2004, a Japanese Family Court ruled to institutionalize Girl A, putting aside her young age because of the severity of the crime. She was sent to a reformatory in Tochigi Prefecture. The Nagasaki family court originally sentenced Girl A to two years of involuntary commitment, but the sentence was extended by two years in September 2006, following a psychological evaluation. On May 29, 2008, local authorities announced that they did not seek an additional sentence.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: Because of issues with communication ability and obsessive interests, Girl A was diagnosed after the murder with Asperger syndrome.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: The killing provoked a debate in Japan whether the age of criminal responsibility, lowered from 16 to 14 in 2000 due to the 1997 Kobe child murders, needed to be lowered again. Girl A was considered to be a normal and well-adjusted child before the incident, which made the public more anxious.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: Members of the Japanese Diet, such as Kiichi Inoue and Sadakazu Tanigaki, came under criticism for comments made in the wake of the killing. Inoue was criticized for referring to Girl A as "genki" (vigorous, lively), a word with positive connotations. Tanigaki was criticized for referring to the method of killing, slitting of the throat, as a "manly" act.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: Girl A became the subject of an Internet meme on Japanese web communities such as 2channel. She was nicknamed "Nevada-tan" because a class photograph showed a girl believed to be her wearing a University of Nevada, Reno sweatshirt, "-tan" being a childlike pronunciation of the Japanese honorific suffix "-chan," generally used to refer to young girls.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: Akio Mori cited this case in support of his controversial "game brain" theory, which has been criticized as being nothing more than superstition. Girl A was reported to be a fan of the death-themed flash animation "Red Room", a claim used in support of the theory. It was also known that Girl A had read the controversial novel "Battle Royale" and had seen its film adaptation, which centers on young students fighting to the death.


title: Sasebo slashing

text: At the March 18, 2005 Okubo Elementary graduation, students were given a graduation album with a blank page in honor of Mitarai's death on which they could put pictures of Mitarai, Girl A, or class pictures containing both girls. Mitarai was posthumously awarded a graduation certificate, which her father accepted on her behalf. Girl A was also awarded a certificate, as one is required in Japan in order to enter junior high school and the school believed it would aid her "reintegration into society".


title: Flight recorder

text: A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to as a "black box", an outdated name which has become a misnomer—they are now required to be painted bright orange, to aid in their recovery after accidents.


title: Flight recorder

text: There are two types of flight recording devices: the flight data recorder (FDR) preserves the recent history of the flight through the recording of dozens of parameters collected several times per second; the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) preserves the recent history of the sounds in the cockpit, including the conversation of the pilots. The two devices may be combined into a single unit. Together, the FDR and CVR objectively document the aircraft's flight history, which may assist in any later investigation.


title: Flight recorder

text: The two flight recorders are required by international regulation, overseen by the International Civil Aviation Organization, to be capable of surviving the conditions likely to be encountered in a severe aircraft accident. For this reason, they are typically specified to withstand an impact of 3400 "g" and temperatures of over , as required by EUROCAE ED-112. They have been a mandatory requirement in commercial aircraft in the United States since 1967. After the unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in 2014, commentators have called for live streaming of data to the ground, as well as extending the battery life of the underwater locator beacons.


title: Flight recorder

text: One of the earliest and proven attempts was made by François Hussenot and Paul Beaudouin in 1939 at the Marignane flight test center, France, with their "type HB" flight recorder; they were essentially photograph-based flight recorders, because the record was made on a scrolling photographic film long by wide. The latent image was made by a thin ray of light deviated by a mirror tilted according to the magnitude of the data to be recorded (altitude, speed, etc.). A pre-production run of 25 "HB" recorders was ordered in 1941 and HB recorders remained in use in French flight test centers well into the 1970s.


title: Flight recorder

text: In 1947, Hussenot founded the Société Française des Instruments de Mesure with Beaudouin and another associate, so as to market his invention, which was also known as the "hussenograph". This company went on to become a major supplier of data recorders, used not only aboard aircraft but also trains and other vehicles. SFIM is today part of the Safran group and is still present in the flight recorder market. The advantage of the film technology was that it could be easily developed afterwards and provides a durable, visual feedback of the flight parameters without needing any playback device. On the other hand, unlike magnetic tapes or later flash memory-based technology, a photographic film cannot be erased and reused, and so must be changed periodically. The technology was reserved for one-shot uses, mostly during planned test flights: it was not mounted aboard civilian aircraft during routine commercial flights. Also, cockpit conversation was not recorded.


title: Flight recorder

text: Another form of flight data recorder was developed in the UK during World War II. Len Harrison and Vic Husband developed a unit that could withstand a crash and fire to keep the flight data intact. The unit was the forerunner of today's recorders, in being able to withstand conditions that aircrew could not. It used copper foil as the recording medium, with various styli, corresponding to various instruments or aircraft controls, indenting the foil. The foil was periodically advanced at set time intervals, giving a history of the aircraft's instrument readings and control settings. The unit was developed at Farnborough for the Ministry of Aircraft Production. At the war's end the Ministry got Harrison and Husband to sign over their invention to it and the Ministry patented it under British patent 19330/45.


title: Flight recorder

text: The first modern flight data recorder, called "Mata Hari", was created in 1942 by Finnish aviation engineer Veijo Hietala. This black high-tech mechanical box was able to record all important details during test flights of fighter aircraft that the Finnish army repaired or built in its main aviation factory in Tampere, Finland.


title: Flight recorder

text: During World War II both British and American air forces successfully experimented with aircraft voice recorders. In August 1943 the USAAF conducted an experiment with a magnetic wire recorder to capture the inter-phone conversations of a B-17 bomber flight crew on a combat mission over Nazi-occupied France. The recording was broadcast back to the United States by radio two days afterwards.


title: Flight recorder

text: In 1953, while working at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories (ARL) of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, in Melbourne, Australian research scientist David Warren conceived a device that would record not only the instrument readings, but also the voices in the cockpit. In 1954 he published a report entitled "A Device for Assisting Investigation into Aircraft Accidents".


title: Flight recorder

text: Warren built a prototype FDR called "The ARL Flight Memory Unit" in 1956, and in 1958 he built the first combined FDR/CVR prototype. It was designed with civilian aircraft in mind, explicitly for post-crash examination purposes. Aviation authorities from around the world were largely uninterested at first, but this changed in 1958 when Sir Robert Hardingham, the secretary of the British Air Registration Board, visited the ARL and was introduced to David Warren. Hardingham realized the significance of the invention and arranged for Warren to demonstrate the prototype in the UK.


title: Flight recorder

text: The ARL assigned an engineering team to help Warren develop the prototype to airborne stage. The team, consisting of electronics engineers Lane Sear, Wally Boswell and Ken Fraser, developed a working design that incorporated a fire-resistant and shockproof case, a reliable system for encoding and recording aircraft instrument readings and voice on one wire, and a ground-based decoding device. The ARL system, made by the British firm of S. Davall & Sons Ltd, in Middlesex, was named the "Red Egg" because of its shape and bright red color.


title: Flight recorder

text: The units were redesigned in 1965 and relocated at the rear of aircraft to increase the probability of successful data retrieval after a crash.


title: Flight recorder

text: Carriage of data recording equipment became mandatory in UK-registered aircraft in two phases, the first for new turbine-engined public transport category aircraft over in weight was mandated in 1965, with a further requirement in 1966 for piston-engined transports over , with the earlier requirement further extended to all jet transports. One of the first UK uses of the data recovered from an aircraft accident was that recovered from the Royston "Midas" data recorder that was onboard the British Midland Argonaut involved in the Stockport Air Disaster in 1967.


title: Flight recorder

text: The flight recorder was invented and patented in the United States by Professor James J. "Crash" Ryan, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota from 1931 to 1963. Ryan's "Flight Recorder" patent was filed in August 1953 and approved on November 8, 1960, as US Patent 2,959,459. A second patent by Ryan for a "Coding Apparatus For Flight Recorders and the Like" is US Patent 3,075,192 dated January 22, 1963. An early prototype of the Ryan Flight Data Recorder is described in the January 2013 "Aviation History" article "Father of the Black Box" by Scott M. Fisher.


title: Flight recorder

text: Ryan, also the inventor of the retractable safety seat belt now required in automobiles, began working on the idea of a flight recorder in 1946, and invented the device in response to a 1948 request from the Civil Aeronautics Board aimed at establishing operating procedures to reduce air mishaps. The requirement was for a means of accumulating flight data. The original device was known as the "General Mills Flight Recorder".


title: Flight recorder

text: The benefits of the flight recorder and the coding apparatus for flight recorders were outlined by Ryan in his study entitled "Economies in Airline Operation with Flight Recorders" which was entered into the "Congressional Record" in 1956. Ryan's flight recorder maintained a continuing recording of aircraft flight data such as engine exhaust temperature, fuel flow, aircraft velocity, altitude, control surfaces positions, and rate of descent.


title: Flight recorder

text: A "Cockpit Sound Recorder" (CSR) was independently invented and patented by Edmund A. Boniface Jr., an aeronautical engineer at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He originally filed with the US Patent Office on February 2, 1961, as an "Aircraft Cockpit Sound Recorder". The 1961 invention was viewed by some as an "invasion of privacy". Subsequently Boniface filed again on February 4, 1963, for a "Cockpit Sound Recorder" (US Patent 3,327,067) with the addition of a spring-loaded switch which allowed the pilot to erase the audio/sound tape recording at the conclusion of a safe flight and landing.


title: Flight recorder

text: Boniface's participation in aircraft crash investigations in the 1940s and in the accident investigations of the loss of one of the wings at cruise altitude on each of two Lockheed Electra turboprop powered aircraft (Flight 542 operated by Braniff Airlines in 1959 and Flight 710 operated by Northwest Orient Airlines in 1961) led to his wondering what the pilots may have said just prior to the wing loss and during the descent as well as the type and nature of any sounds or explosions that may have preceded or occurred during the wing loss.


title: Flight recorder

text: His patent was for a device for recording audio of pilot remarks and engine or other sounds to be "contained with the in-flight recorder within a sealed container that is shock mounted, fireproofed and made watertight" and "sealed in such a manner as to be capable of withstanding extreme temperatures during a crash fire". The CSR was an analog device which provided a continuous erasing/recording loop (lasting 30 or more minutes) of all sounds (explosion, voice, and the noise of any aircraft structural components undergoing serious fracture and breakage) which could be overheard in the cockpit.


title: Flight recorder

text: The term "black box" was a World War II British phrase, originating with the development of radio, radar, and electronic navigational aids in British and Allied combat aircraft. These often-secret electronic devices were literally encased in non-reflective black boxes or housings.  The earliest identified reference to "black boxes" occurs in a May 1945 "Flight" article, "Radar for Airlines", describing the application of wartime RAF radar and navigational aids to civilian aircraft: "The stowage of the 'black boxes' and, even more important, the detrimental effect on performance of external aerials, still remain as a radio and radar problem." (The term "black box" is used with a different meaning in science and engineering, describing a system exclusively by its inputs and outputs, with no information whatsoever about its inner workings.)


title: Flight recorder

text: Magnetic tape and wire voice recorders had been tested on RAF and USAAF bombers by 1943 thus adding to the assemblage of fielded and experimental electronic devices employed on Allied aircraft.  As early as 1944 aviation writers envisioned use of these recording devices on commercial aircraft to aid incident investigations. When modern flight recorders were proposed to the British Aeronautical Research Council in 1958, the term "black box" was in colloquial use by experts.


title: Flight recorder

text: By 1967 when flight recorders were mandated by leading aviation countries, the expression had found its way into general use: "These so-called 'black boxes' are, in fact, of fluorescent flame-orange in colour." The formal names of the devices are "flight data recorder" and "cockpit voice recorder". The recorders must be housed in boxes that are bright orange in color to make them more visually conspicuous in the debris after an accident.


title: Flight recorder

text: A flight data recorder (FDR; also ADR, for "accident data recorder") is an electronic device employed to record instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft.


title: Flight recorder

text: The data recorded by the FDR are used for accident and incident investigation. Due to their importance in investigating accidents, these ICAO-regulated devices are carefully engineered and constructed to withstand the force of a high speed impact and the heat of an intense fire. Contrary to the popular term "black box", the exterior of the FDR is coated with heat-resistant bright orange paint for high visibility in wreckage, and the unit is usually mounted in the aircraft's tail section, where it is more likely to survive a crash. Following an accident, the recovery of the FDR is usually a high priority for the investigating body, as analysis of the recorded parameters can often detect and identify causes or contributing factors.


title: Flight recorder

text: Modern day FDRs receive inputs via specific data frames from the flight-data acquisition units. They record significant flight parameters, including the control and actuator positions, engine information and time of day. There are 88 parameters required as a minimum under current US federal regulations (only 29 were required until 2002), but some systems monitor many more variables. Generally each parameter is recorded a few times per second, though some units store "bursts" of data at a much higher frequency if the data begin to change quickly. Most FDRs record approximately 17–25 hours of data in a continuous loop. It is required by regulations that an FDR verification check (readout) is performed annually in order to verify that all mandatory parameters are recorded. Many aircraft today are equipped with an "event" button in the cockpit that could be activated by the crew if an abnormality occurs in flight. Pushing the button places a signal on the recording, marking the time of the event.


title: Flight recorder

text: Modern FDRs are typically double wrapped in strong corrosion-resistant stainless steel or titanium, with high-temperature insulation inside. Modern FDRs are accompanied by an underwater locator beacon that emits an ultrasonic "ping" to aid in detection when submerged. These beacons operate for up to 30 days and are able to operate while immersed to a depth of up to .


title: Flight recorder

text: A cockpit voice recorder (CVR) is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flight deck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents. This is typically achieved by recording the signals of the microphones and earphones of the pilots' headsets and of an area microphone in the roof of the cockpit. The current applicable FAA TSO is C123b titled Cockpit Voice Recorder Equipment.


title: Flight recorder

text: Where an aircraft is required to carry a CVR and uses digital communications the CVR is required to record such communications with air traffic control unless this is recorded elsewhere. it is an FAA requirement that the recording duration is a minimum of two hours.


title: Flight recorder

text: A standard CVR is capable of recording four channels of audio data for a period of two hours. The original requirement was for a CVR to record for 30 minutes, but this has been found to be insufficient in many cases because significant parts of the audio data needed for a subsequent investigation occurred more than 30 minutes before the end of the recording.


title: Flight recorder

text: The earliest CVRs used analog wire recording, later replaced by analog magnetic tape. Some of the tape units used two reels, with the tape automatically reversing at each end. The original was the ARL Flight Memory Unit produced in 1957 by Australian David Warren and instrument maker Tych Mirfield.


title: Flight recorder

text: Other units used a single reel, with the tape spliced into a continuous loop, much as in an 8-track cartridge. The tape would circulate and old audio information would be overwritten every 30 minutes. Recovery of sound from magnetic tape often proves difficult if the recorder is recovered from water and its housing has been breached. Thus, the latest designs employ solid-state memory and use digital recording techniques, making them much more resistant to shock, vibration and moisture. With the reduced power requirements of solid-state recorders, it is now practical to incorporate a battery in the units, so that recording can continue until flight termination, even if the aircraft electrical system fails.


title: Flight recorder

text: Like the FDR, the CVR is typically mounted in the rear of the airplane fuselage to maximize the likelihood of its survival in a crash.


title: Flight recorder

text: With the advent of digital recorders, the FDR and CVR can be manufactured in one fireproof, shock proof, and waterproof container as a combined digital cockpit voice and data recorder (CVDR). Currently, CVDRs are manufactured by L3Harris Technologies and Hensoldt among others.


title: Flight recorder

text: Solid state recorders became commercially practical in 1990, having the advantage of not requiring scheduled maintenance and making the data easier to retrieve. This was extended to the two-hour voice recording in 1995.


title: Flight recorder

text: Since the 1970s, most large civil jet transports have been additionally equipped with a "quick access recorder" (QAR). This records data on a removable storage medium. Access to the FDR and CVR is necessarily difficult because they must be fitted where they are most likely to survive an accident; they also require specialized equipment to read the recording. The QAR recording medium is readily removable and is designed to be read by equipment attached to a standard desktop computer. In many airlines, the quick access recordings are scanned for "events", an event being a significant deviation from normal operational parameters. This allows operational problems to be detected and eliminated before an accident or incident results.


title: Flight recorder

text: A flight-data acquisition unit (FDAU) is a unit that receives various discrete, analog and digital parameters from a number of sensors and avionic systems and then routes them to the FDR and, if installed, to the QAR. Information from the FDAU to the FDR is sent via specific data frames, which depend on the aircraft manufacturer.


title: Flight recorder

text: Many modern aircraft systems are digital or digitally controlled. Very often, the digital system will include built-in test equipment which records information about the operation of the system. This information may also be accessed to assist with the investigation of an accident or incident.


title: Flight recorder

text: The design of today's FDR is governed by the internationally recognized standards and recommended practices relating to flight recorders which are contained in ICAO Annex 6 which makes reference to industry crashworthiness and fire protection specifications such as those to be found in the European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment documents EUROCAE ED55, ED56 Fiken A and ED112 (Minimum Operational Performance Specification for Crash Protected Airborne Recorder Systems). In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates all aspects of US aviation, and cites design requirements in their Technical Standard Order, based on the EUROCAE documents (as do the aviation authorities of many other countries).


title: Flight recorder

text: Currently, EUROCAE specifies that a recorder must be able to withstand an acceleration of 3400 "g" (33 km/s) for 6.5 milliseconds. This is roughly equivalent to an impact velocity of and a deceleration or crushing distance of . Additionally, there are requirements for penetration resistance, static crush, high and low temperature fires, deep sea pressure, sea water immersion, and fluid immersion.


title: Flight recorder

text: EUROCAE ED-112 (Minimum Operational Performance Specification for Crash Protected Airborne Recorder Systems) defines the minimum specification to be met for all aircraft requiring flight recorders for recording of flight data, cockpit audio, images and CNS / ATM digital messages and used for investigations of accidents or incidents. When issued in March 2003 ED-112 superseded previous ED-55 and ED-56A that were separate specifications for FDR and CVR. FAA TSOs for FDR and CVR reference ED-112 for characteristics common to both types.


title: Flight recorder

text: In order to facilitate recovery of the recorder from an aircraft accident site they are required to be coloured bright yellow or orange with reflective surfaces. All are lettered "Flight recorder do not open" on one side in English and ""Enregistreur de vol ne pas ouvrir"" in French on the other side. To assist recovery from submerged sites they must be equipped with an underwater locator beacon which is automatically activated in the event of an accident.


title: Flight recorder

text: On November 1, 1966, Bobbie R. Allen - director of Bureau of Safety, Civil Aeronautics Board and John S. Leak - chief of Technical Services Section, presented "The Potential Role of Flight Recorders in Aircraft Accident Investigation" at the AIAA/CASI Joint Meeting on Aviation Safety, Toronto, Canada. The vision of these professionals contributed greatly to improvements in the technology and accident investigation.


title: Flight recorder

text: In the investigation of the 1960 crash of Trans Australia Airlines Flight 538 at Mackay, Queensland, the inquiry judge strongly recommended that flight recorders be installed in all Australian airliners. Australia became the first country in the world to make cockpit-voice recording compulsory.


title: Flight recorder

text: The United States' first CVR rules were passed in 1964, requiring all turbine and piston aircraft with four or more engines to have CVRs by March 1, 1967. it is an FAA requirement that the CVR recording duration is a minimum of two hours, following the NTSB recommendation that it should be increased from its previously-mandated 30-minute duration. From 2014 the United States requires flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders on aircraft that have 20 or more passenger seats, or those that have six or more passenger seats, are turbine-powered, and require two pilots.


title: Flight recorder

text: For US air carriers and manufacturers, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is responsible for investigating accidents and safety-related incidents. The NTSB also serves in an advisory role for many international investigations not under its formal jurisdiction. The NTSB does not have regulatory authority, but must depend on legislation and other government agencies to act on its safety recommendations. In addition, 49 USC Section 1114(c) prohibits the NTSB from making the audio recordings public except by written transcript.


title: Flight recorder

text: The ARINC Standards are prepared by the Airlines Electronic Engineering Committee (AEEC). The 700 Series of standards describe the form, fit, and function of avionics equipment installed predominately on transport category aircraft. The FDR is defined by ARINC Characteristic 747. The CVR is defined by ARINC Characteristic 757.


title: Flight recorder

text: The NTSB recommended in 1999 that operators be required to install two sets of CVDR systems, with the second CVDR set being "deployable or ejectable". The "deployable" recorder combines the cockpit voice/flight data recorders and an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) in a single unit. The "deployable" unit would depart the aircraft before impact, activated by sensors. The unit is designed to "eject" and "fly" away from the crash site, to survive the terminal velocity of fall, to float on water indefinitely, and would be equipped with satellite technology for immediate location of crash impact site. The "deployable" CVDR technology has been used by the US Navy since 1993. While the recommendations would involve a massive, expensive retrofit program, government funding would meet cost objections from manufacturers and airlines. Operators would get both sets of recorders (including the currently-used fixed recorder) free of charge. The cost of the second "deployable/ejectable CVDR" (or "black box") was estimated at US$30 million for installation in 500 new aircraft (about $60,000 per new commercial plane).


title: Flight recorder

text: In the United States, the proposed SAFE Act calls for implementing the NTSB 1999 recommendations. However, so far the SAFE Act legislation has failed to pass Congress, having been introduced in 2003 (H.R. 2632), in 2005 (H.R. 3336), and in 2007 (H.R. 4336). Originally the "Safe Aviation Flight Enhancement (SAFE) Act of 2003" was introduced on June 26, 2003, by Congressman David Price (D-NC) and Congressman John Duncan (R-Tenn.) in a bipartisan effort to ensure investigators have access to information immediately following commercial accidents.


title: Flight recorder

text: On July 19, 2005, a revised SAFE Act was introduced and referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the US House of Representatives. The bill was referred to the House Subcommittee on Aviation during the 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses.


title: Flight recorder

text: In the United States, on March 12, 2014, in response to the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, David Price re-introduced the SAFE Act in the US House of Representatives.


title: Flight recorder

text: The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 demonstrated the limits of the contemporary flight recorder technology, namely how physical possession of the flight recorder device is necessary to help investigate the cause of an aircraft incident. Considering the advances of modern communication, technology commentators called for flight recorders to be supplemented or replaced by a system that provides "live streaming" of data from the aircraft to the ground. Furthermore, commentators called for the underwater locator beacon's range and battery life to be extended, as well as the outfitting of civil aircraft with the deployable flight recorders typically used in military aircraft. Previous to MH370, the investigators of 2009 Air France Flight 447 urged that the battery life be extended as "rapidly as possible" after the crash's flight recorders went unrecovered for over a year.


title: Flight recorder

text: On December 28, 2014, Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501, en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, crashed in bad weather, killing all 155 passengers and seven crew on board.


title: Flight recorder

text: On January 8, 2015, before the recovery of the flight recorders, an anonymous ICAO representative said: "The time has come that deployable recorders are going to get a serious look." A second ICAO official said that public attention had "galvanized momentum in favour of ejectable recorders on commercial aircraft".


title: Flight recorder

text: Live flight data streaming as on the , plus 20 minutes of data before and after a triggering event, could have removed the uncertainty before the Boeing 737 MAX groundings following the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash.


title: Flight recorder

text: The NTSB has asked for the installation of cockpit image recorders in large transport aircraft to provide information that would supplement existing CVR and FDR data in accident investigations. They have recommended that image recorders be placed into smaller aircraft that are not required to have a CVR or FDR. The rationale is that what is seen on an instrument by the pilots of an aircraft is not necessarily the same as the data sent to the display device. This is particularly true of aircraft equipped with electronic displays (CRT or LCD). A mechanical instrument panel is likely to preserve its last indications, but this is not the case with an electronic display. Such systems, estimated to cost less than $8,000 installed, typically consist of a camera and microphone located in the cockpit to continuously record cockpit instrumentation, the outside viewing area, engine sounds, radio communications, and ambient cockpit sounds. As with conventional CVRs and FDRs, data from such a system is stored in a crash-protected unit to ensure survivability. Since the recorders can sometimes be crushed into unreadable pieces, or even located in deep water, some modern units are self-ejecting (taking advantage of kinetic energy at impact to separate themselves from the aircraft) and also equipped with radio emergency locator transmitters and sonar underwater locator beacons to aid in their location.


title: Flight recorder

text: The artwork for the band Rammstein's album "Reise, Reise" is made to look like a CVR; it also includes a recording from a crash. The recording is from the last 1–2 minutes of the CVR of Japan Airlines Flight 123, which crashed on August 12, 1985, killing 520 people; JAL123 is the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in history.


title: Flight recorder

text: Members of the performing arts collective made a theatrical presentation of a play called "Charlie Victor Romeo" with a script based on transcripts from CVR voice recordings of nine aircraft emergencies. The play features the famous United Airlines Flight 232 that crash-landed in a cornfield near Sioux City, Iowa, after suffering a catastrophic failure of one engine and most flight controls.


title: Flight recorder

text: "Survivor", a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is about a cult member who dictates his life story to a flight recorder before the plane runs out of fuel and crashes.


title: ShareChat

text: ShareChat (Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd.) is an Indian social media company, based in Bangalore. It was founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan, and incorporated on 8 January 2015. ShareChat is the parent company of applications such as ShareChat, Moj and Moj Lite+ (TakaTak). ShareChat acquired MX TakaTak, one of the largest homegrown short video platforms in February 2022. ShareChat has over 400 million monthly active users across 15 Indian languages. The current valuation of the company is US$5 billion.


title: ShareChat

text: ShareChat's holding company, Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd, was incorporated in January 2015 by three IIT Kanpur graduates— Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan. The company is headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, and presently employs over 2500 people.


title: ShareChat

text: Initially, ShareChat primarily worked as a content sharing platform, without any scope of users generating their own content. In April 2016, ShareChat enabled user-generated content creation on its platform, allowing its users to share their own posters and creative content. At around the same time, it also introduced open tagging for users, which would allow anyone to create their own hashtags depending on the content.


title: ShareChat

text: The key people at the hierarchy of ShareChat include Ankush Sachdeva (co-founder and Chief Executive Officer), Farid Ahsan (co-founder and Chief Operating Officer), and Bhanu Pratap Singh (co-founder and Chief Technical Officer) All of the co-founders featured in Forbes’ 30 under 30 Asia 2018, having been recognised for their work with language-first approach in the social media landscape. In the wake of the ban on TikTok by the Indian government in June 2020, ShareChat launched the similar Moj app and grew substantially.


title: ShareChat

text: In September 2020, ShareChat raised $40 million from investors Dr. Pawan Munjal of Hero MotoCorp, Ajay Shridhar Shriram of DCM Shriram, Twitter, SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Ventures and India Quotient. By April 2021 ShareChat had raised $500 million from investors and was valued at over $2 billion. In May 2022, ShareChat raised $300 million from Google, Times Group and Temasek Holdings at a valuation of $5 billion.


title: ShareChat

text: In March 2019, Mohalla Tech acquired Transversal Tech-owned short video sharing platform, Clip. In February 2020, it acquired Bengaluru-based online fashion marketplace Elanic. In March 2020, it acquired a meme discovery and sharing platform, Memer. In August 2020, it acquired a hyperlocal information platform, Circle Internet. Sharechat parent company also brought MX TakaTak from Times Internet Group.


title: ShareChat

text: On April 17, 2019, ShareChat took down around half a million pieces of content and removed 54,000 accounts for spreading fake news, hate speech, spam and conducting coordinated misinformation campaign.


title: ShareChat

text: ShareChat (Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd.) announced the following HR policies for women in 2022 to build a nurturing and conducive environment for its workforce.


title: ShareChat

text: ShareChat's app Moj, launched on 29 June 2020, is a short-video platform that emulates the features of TikTok, which was among the apps banned by the Indian government in June 2020.


title: ShareChat

text: In a tweet, Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder and CEO of ShareChat, said the app was coded in 30 hours. It has received Google Play Best of 2020 Awards, as of 1 December 2020.


title: ShareChat

text: Moj today has emerged as India's number one short video app with the highest monthly active users. It has over 160 million monthly active users. In a recent feature by TechCrunch, Moj was positioned as #1 short video platform in India, beating others like MX TakaTak, Josh and Roposo.


title: Susan Kelechi Watson

text: Susan Kelechi Watson (born November 11, 1981) is an American actress. She is known for her work on the television show "Louie" and for her role as Beth Pearson in "This Is Us". She was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for the latter.


title: Susan Kelechi Watson

text: Watson was born in Brooklyn on November 11, 1981. Her parents were born in Jamaica. Watson's middle name, "Kelechi" is of Nigerian Igbo origins meaning "Thank God". Watson obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Howard University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program.


title: Susan Kelechi Watson

text: Watson had a recurring role on the television show "Louie" from 2012 through 2014. She has had recurring roles on "NCIS", "The Following", and "The Blacklist". She appeared in a play at the American Airlines Theatre in New York City by playwright Richard Greenberg entitled "A Naked Girl on the Appian Way" in 2005. Since 2016, she has starred in the NBC drama series "This Is Us" as Beth Pearson.


title: Susan Kelechi Watson

text: Watson played Andrea Vogel in the Fred Rogers biopic "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" alongside Tom Hanks in 2019.


title: Susan Kelechi Watson

text: In September 2022 she will appear in the European premiere of "Eureka Day" at The Old Vic theatre in London.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Charles III (839 – 13 January 888), also known as Charles the Fat, was the emperor of the Carolingian Empire from 881 to 888. A member of the Carolingian dynasty, Charles was the youngest son of Louis the German and Hemma, and a great-grandson of Charlemagne. He was the last Carolingian emperor of legitimate birth and the last to rule a united kingdom of the Franks.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Over his lifetime, Charles became ruler of the various kingdoms of Charlemagne's former empire. Granted lordship over Alamannia in 876, following the division of East Francia, he succeeded to the Italian throne upon the abdication of his older brother Carloman of Bavaria who had been incapacitated by a stroke. Crowned emperor in 881 by Pope John VIII, his succession to the territories of his brother Louis the Younger (Saxony and Bavaria) the following year reunited the kingdom of East Francia. Upon the death of his cousin Carloman II in 884, he inherited all of West Francia, thus reuniting the entire Carolingian Empire.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Usually considered lethargic and inept—he was frequently ill, and is believed to have had epilepsy—Charles twice purchased peace with Viking raiders, including at the infamous Siege of Paris which led to his downfall.


title: Charles the Fat

text: The reunited empire did not last. During a coup led by his nephew Arnulf of Carinthia in November 887, Charles was deposed in East Francia, Lotharingia, and the Kingdom of Italy. Forced into quiet retirement, he died of natural causes in January 888, just a few weeks after his deposition. The Empire quickly fell apart after his death, splintering into five separate successor kingdoms; the territory it had occupied was not entirely reunited under one ruler until the conquests of Napoleon.


title: Charles the Fat

text: The nickname "Charles the Fat" (Latin "Carolus Crassus") is not contemporary. It was first used by the "Annalista Saxo" (the anonymous "Saxon Annalist") in the twelfth century. There is no contemporary reference to Charles's physical size, but the nickname has stuck and is the common name in most modern European languages (French "Charles le Gros", German "Karl der Dicke", Italian "Carlo il Grosso").


title: Charles the Fat

text: His numeral is roughly contemporary. Regino of Prüm, a contemporary of Charles's recording his death, calls him "Emperor Charles, third of that name and dignity" (Latin "Carolus imperator, tertius huius nominis et dignitatis").


title: Charles the Fat

text: Charles was the youngest of the three sons of Louis the German, first King of East Francia, and Hemma from the House of Welf. An incident of demonic possession is recorded in his youth, in which he was said to have been foaming at the mouth before he was taken to the altar of the church. This greatly affected him and his father. He was described as: "… a very Christian prince, fearing God, with all his heart keeping His commandments, very devoutly obeying the orders of the Church, generous in alms-giving, practising unceasingly prayer and song, always intent upon celebrating the praises of God."


title: Charles the Fat

text: In 859, Charles was made Count of the Breisgau, an Alemannic march bordering southern Lotharingia. In 863 his rebellious eldest brother Carloman revolted against their father. The next year Louis the Younger followed Carloman in revolt and Charles joined him. Carloman received rule over the Duchy of Bavaria. In 865, the elder Louis was forced to divide his remaining lands among his heirs: the Duchy of Saxony (along with the Duchy of Franconia and the Duchy of Thuringia) went to Louis, Alemannia (the Duchy of Swabia along with Rhaetia) went to Charles, and Lotharingia was to be divided between the younger two.


title: Charles the Fat

text: When in 875 the Emperor Louis II, who was also King of Italy, died having agreed with Louis the German that Carloman would succeed him in Italy, Charles the Bald of West Francia invaded the peninsula and had himself crowned king and emperor. Louis the German sent first Charles and then Carloman himself, with armies containing Italian forces under Berengar of Friuli, their cousin, to the Italian kingdom. These wars, however, were not successful until the death of Charles the Bald in 877.


title: Charles the Fat

text: In 876 Louis the German died and the inheritance was divided as planned after a conference at Ries, though Charles received less of his share of Lotharingia than planned. In his charters, Charles's reign in "Germania" is dated from his inheritance in 876.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Three brothers ruled in cooperation and avoided wars over the division of their patrimony: a rare occurrence in the Early Middle Ages. In 877, Carloman finally inherited Italy from his uncle Charles the Bald. Louis divided Lotharingia and offered a third to Carloman and a third to Charles. In 878, Carloman returned his Lotharingian share to Louis, who then divided it evenly with Charles. In 879, Carloman was incapacitated by a stroke and divided his domains between his brothers: Bavaria went to Louis and Italy to Charles. Charles dated his reign in "Italia" from this point, and from then he spent most of his reign until 886 in his Italian kingdom.


title: Charles the Fat

text: In 880, Charles joined Louis III of France and Carloman II, the joint kings of West Francia, in failed siege of Boso of Provence in Vienne from August to September. Provence, legally a part of the Italian kingdom from 863, had rebelled under Boso. In August 882, Charles sent Richard, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Autun, to take the city, which he finally did in September. After this, Boso was restricted to the vicinity of Vienne.


title: Charles the Fat

text: On 18 July 880, Pope John VIII sent a letter to Guy II of Spoleto seeking peace, but the duke ignored him and invaded the Papal States. John responded by begging the aid of Charles in his capacity as king of Italy and crowned Charles emperor on 12 February 881. This was accompanied by hopes of a general revival in western Europe, but Charles proved to be unequal to the task. Charles did little to help against Guy II. Papal letters as late as November were still petitioning Charles for action.


title: Charles the Fat

text: As emperor, Charles began the construction of a palace at Sélestat in Alsace. He modelled it after the Palace at Aachen which was built by Charlemagne, whom he consciously sought to emulate, as indicated by the "Gesta Karoli Magni" of Notker the Stammerer. As Aachen was located in the kingdom of his brother, it was necessary for Charles to build a new palace for his court in his own power base of western Alemannia. Sélestat was also more centrally located than Aachen.


title: Charles the Fat

text: In February 882, Charles convoked a diet in Ravenna. The duke, emperor, and pope made peace and Guy and his uncle, Guy of Camerino, vowed to return the papal lands. In a March letter to Charles, John claimed that the vows went unfulfilled. In 883, Guy of Camerino, now duke of Spoleto, was accused of treason at an imperial synod held at Nonantula late in May. He returned to Spoleto and made an alliance with the Saracens. Charles sent Berengar against Guy III. Berengar was initially successful until an epidemic of disease, which ravaged all of Italy, affecting the emperor and his entourage as well as Berengar's army, forced him to retreat.


title: Charles the Fat

text: In 883, Charles signed a treaty with Giovanni II Participazio, Doge of Venice, granting that any assassin of a doge who fled to the territory of the Empire would be fined 100 lbs of gold and banished.


title: Charles the Fat

text: In the early 880s, the remnants of the Great Heathen Army, defeated by Alfred the Great at the Battle of Ethandun in 878, began to settle in the Low Countries. Charles's brother Louis the Younger had opposed them with some success, but he died after a short campaign on 20 January 882, leaving his throne to Charles, who reunited the whole East Frankish kingdom.


title: Charles the Fat

text: After returning from Italy, Charles held an assembly at Worms with the purpose of dealing with the Vikings. Armies from the whole East Francia were assembled in the summer under Arnulf, Duke of Carinthia, and Henry, Count of Saxony. The chief Viking camp was then besieged at Asselt. Charles then opened negotiations with the Viking chiefs Godfrid and Sigfred. Godfrid accepted Christianity and became Charles's vassal. He was married to Gisela, daughter of Lothair II of Lotharingia. Sigfred was bribed off. Despite the insinuations of some modern historians, no contemporary account criticised Charles's actions during this campaign. In 885, fearing Godfrid and his brother-in-law, Hugh, Duke of Alsace, Charles arranged for a conference at Spijk near Lobith, where the Viking leader fell into his trap. Godfrid was executed, and Hugh was blinded and sent to Prüm.


title: Charles the Fat

text: From 882 to 884, the Wilhelminer War engulfed the March of Pannonia (later March of Austria). Arnulf of Carinthia, Charles's illegitimate nephew, made an alliance with the rebel Engelschalk II against Aribo of Austria, Charles's appointed margrave of the region. Svatopluk I, ruler of Great Moravia, agreed to help Aribo and in 884 at Kaumberg took an oath of fidelity to Charles. Though the emperor lost his vassals of the Wilhelminer family and his relationship with his nephew was broken, he gained powerful new allies in the Moravian "dux" and other Slavic "duces" of the region.


title: Charles the Fat

text: When Carloman II of West Francia died on 12 December 884, the nobles of the kingdom invited Charles to assume the kingship. Charles gladly accepted, it being the third kingdom to "fall into his lap". According to the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", Charles succeeded to all of the kingdom of Carloman except Brittany, but this does not seem to have been true. It is likely that Charles was crowned by Geilo, Bishop of Langres, as "rex in Gallia" on 20 May 885 at Grand in the Vosges in southern Lorraine. Although Geilo even developed a special West Frankish seal for him, Charles's government in the West was always very distant and he left most day-to-day business to the higher nobility.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Though West Francia (the future France) was far less menaced by the Vikings than the Low Countries, it was heavily hit nonetheless. In 885, a huge fleet led by Sigfred sailed up the Seine, for the first time in years, and besieged Paris. Sigfred demanded a bribe again, but this time Charles refused. He was in Italy at the time and Odo, Count of Paris, sneaked some men through enemy lines to seek his aid. Charles sent Henry of Saxony to Paris. In 886, as disease began to spread through Paris, Odo himself went to Charles to seek support. Charles brought a large army and encircled the army of Rollo and set up a camp at Montmartre. However, Charles had no intention of fighting. He sent the attackers up the Seine to ravage Burgundy, which was in revolt. When the Vikings withdrew from France next spring, he gave them 700 pounds of promised silver. Charles's prestige in France was greatly diminished.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Charles issued a number of charters for West Frankish recipients during his stay in Paris during and after the siege. He recognised rights and privileges granted by his predecessors to recipients in the Spanish March and Provence, but especially in Neustria, where he had contact with Nantes at a time when the Breton duke Alan I was known to be powerful in the county of Nantes. It is probable that Charles granted Alan the right to be titled "rex"; as emperor he would have had that prerogative and Alan's use of the title appears legitimate. A charter dated to between 897 and 900 makes reference to the soul of "Karolus", on whose behalf Alan had ordered prayers to be said in the monastery of Redon. This was probably Charles the Fat.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Charles, childless by his marriage to Richgard, tried to have his illegitimate son by an unknown concubine, Bernard, recognised as his heir in 885, but this met with opposition from several bishops. He had the support of Pope Hadrian III, whom he invited to an assembly in Worms in October 885, but the pope died on the way there, just after crossing the river Po. Hadrian was going to remove the obstructing bishops for Charles, as he doubted he could do this himself, and legitimize Bernard. Based on the unfavouring attitude shown by the chronicler responsible for the Mainz continuation of the "Annales Fuldenses", the chief of Charles's opponents in this matter was most likely Liutbert, Archbishop of Mainz. Because Charles had called together the "bishops and counts of Gaul" as well as the pope to meet him at Worms, it is likely that he had plans to make Bernard King of Lotharingia. Notker the Stammerer, who considered Bernard as a possible heir, wrote in his "Deeds of Charlemagne":


title: Charles the Fat

text: After the failure of this first attempt, Charles set about to try again. He had the term "proles" (offspring) inserted into his charters (it had not been in previous years), in a likely attempt to legitimize Bernard. In early 886 Charles met the new Pope Stephen V and probably negotiated for the recognition of his illegitimate son as heir. An assembly was planned for April and May of the following year at Waiblingen. Pope Stephen cancelled his planned attendance on 30 April 887. Nevertheless, at Waiblingen, Berengar, who after a brief feud with Liutward had lost the favour of the emperor, came in early May 887, made peace with the emperor and compensated for his actions of the previous year by dispensing great gifts.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Charles eventually abandoned his plans for Bernard and instead adopted Louis of Provence as his son at an assembly at Kirchen in May. It is possible, however, that the agreement with Louis was only designed to engender support for Bernard's subkingship in Lotharingia. In June or July, Berengar arrived in Kirchen, probably pining to be declared Charles's heir; he may in fact have been so named in Italy, where he was acclaimed (or made himself) king immediately after Charles's deposition. Odo, Count of Paris, may have had a similar purpose in visiting Charles at Kirchen. On the other hand, the presence of these magnates at these two great assemblies may merely have been necessary to confirm Charles's illegitimate son as his heir (Waiblingen), a plan which failed when the pope refused to attend, and then to confirm Louis instead (Kirchen).


title: Charles the Fat

text: With Charles increasingly seen as spineless and incompetent, matters came to a head in late 887. In the summer of that year, having given up on plans for his son's succession, Charles received Odo and Berengar, Margrave of Friuli, a relative of his, at his court. He may have accepted neither, one, or both of these as his heir in their respective kingdoms. His inner circle then began to fall apart. First, he accused his wife Richgard of having an affair with his chief minister and archchancellor, Liutward, bishop of Vercelli. She proved her innocence in an ordeal of fire and left him for the monastic life. He then turned against Liutward, who was hated by all, and removed him from office, appointing Liutbert (archbishop of Mainz), in his place.


title: Charles the Fat

text: In that year, his first cousin once removed, Ermengard of Provence, daughter of the Emperor Louis II and wife of Boso of Provence, brought her son Louis the Blind to him for protection. Charles confirmed Louis in Provence (he may even have adopted him) and allowed them to live at his court. He probably intended to make Louis heir to the whole realm and the "imperium". On 11 November, he called an assembly to Frankfurt. While there he received news that an ambitious nephew, Arnulf of Carinthia, had fomented a general rebellion and was marching into Germany with an army of Bavarians and Slavs. The next week saw the collapse of all his support in East Francia. The last to abandon him were his loyal Alemanni, though the men of Lotharingia never seem to have formally accepted his deposition. By 17 November, Charles was out of power, though the exact course of events is unknown. Aside from rebuking his faithlessness, he did little to prevent Arnulf's move—he had recently been ill again—but assured that Bernard was entrusted to his care and possibly Louis too. He asked for a few estates in Swabia on which to live out his days and thus received Naudingen (Donaueschingen). There he died six weeks later, on 13 January 888.


title: Charles the Fat

text: The Empire fell apart, never to be restored. According to Regino of Prüm, each part of the realm elected a "kinglet" from its own "bowels"—the bowels being the regions inside the realm. It is probable that Arnulf desired the whole empire, but the only part he received other than East Francia was Lotharingia. The French elected Odo, although he was opposed at first by Guy III of Spoleto, who also opposed Arnulf in Lotharingia. Guy sought the kingship in Italy after his failures in Francia, despite Berengar having already been crowned. Louis was crowned in Provence, as Charles had intended, and he sought the support of Arnulf and gained it, probably through supplication to him. Odo would eventually submit to Arnulf's supremacy as well. In Upper Burgundy, one Rudolph, a "dux" of the region, was elected as king in a distinctly non-Carolingian creation, probably the result of his failure to succeed in the whole of Lotharingia. In Aquitaine, Ranulf II declared himself king and took the guardianship of the young Charles the Simple, the Carolingian heir to the West, refusing to recognise Odo's election.


title: Charles the Fat

text: It is unknown if these elections were a response to Charles's East Frankish deposition or to his death. Only those of Arnulf and Berengar can be certainly placed before his death. Only the magnates of the East ever formally deposed him. He was buried with honour in Reichenau after his death and the "Annales Fuldenses" heap praises on his piety and godliness. Indeed, contemporary opinion of Charles is consistently kinder than later historiography, though it is a modern suggestion that his lack of apparent successes is the excusable result of near constant illness and infirmity.


title: Charles the Fat

text: Charles was the subject of a hortative piece of Latin prose, the "Visio Karoli Grossi", designed to champion the cause of Louis the Blind and warn the Carolingians that their continued rule was not certain if they did not have "divine" (i.e. ecclesiastical) favour.


title: Millionaire

text: A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire. In countries that use the short scale number naming system, a billionaire is someone who has at least a thousand times a million dollars, euros or the currency of the given country.


title: Millionaire

text: Many national currencies have, or have had at various times, a low unit value, in many cases due to past inflation. It is obviously much easier and less significant to be a millionaire in those currencies, thus a millionaire (in the local currency) in Hong Kong or Taiwan, for example, may be merely averagely wealthy, or perhaps less wealthy than average. A millionaire in Zimbabwe in 2007 could have been extremely poor. Because of this, the term 'millionaire' generally refers to those whose assets total at least one million units of a high-value currency, such as the United States dollar, Euro, or Pound Sterling.


title: Millionaire

text: , there were estimated to be just over 15 million millionaires in the world according to the Global Citizens Report by Henley & Partners. The United States had the highest number of millionaires (5,325,000) of any country, whilst New York is the wealthiest city with 345,000 millionaires.


title: Millionaire

text: The word "millionaire" was apparently coined in French in 1719 to describe speculators in the Mississippi Bubble who earned millions of livres in weeks before the bubble burst. (The standard French spelling is now , though the earliest reference uses a single "n".) The word was first used (as millionnaire, double "n") in French in 1719 by Steven Fentiman, and is first recorded in English (millionaire, as a French term) in a letter of Lord Byron of 1816, then in print in Vivian Grey, a novel of 1826 by Benjamin Disraeli. Earlier English writers also mention the French word, including Sir William Mildmay in 1764. The OED's first print citation is Benjamin Disraeli's 1826 novel "Vivian Grey", The anglicisation "millionary" was used in 1786 by Thomas Jefferson while serving as Minister to France; he wrote: "The poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary".


title: Millionaire

text: While statistics regarding financial assets and net worth are presented by household, the term is also often used to describe only the individual who has amassed the assets as millionaire. That is, even though the term statistically refers only to households, common usage is often in reference only to an individual.


title: Millionaire

text: There are multiple approaches to determining a person's status as a millionaire. One of the two most commonly used measurements is net worth, which counts the total value of all property owned by a household minus the household's debts. According to this definition, a household owning an $800,000 home, $50,000 of furnishings, two cars worth $60,000, a $60,000 retirement savings account, $45,000 in mutual funds, and a $325,000 vacation home with a $250,000 mortgage, $40,000 in car loans, and $25,000 in credit card debt would be worth about $1,025,000; and every individual in this household would thus be a millionaire. However, according to the net financial assets measurement used for some specific applications (such as evaluating an investor's expected tolerance for risk for stockbroker ethics), equity in one's principal residence is excluded, as are lifestyle assets, such as the car and furniture. Therefore, the above example household would only have net financial assets of $115,000. Another term used is "net investable assets" or working capital. These practitioners may use the term "millionaire" to mean somebody who is free to invest a million units of currency through them as broker. For similar reasons, those who market goods, services and investments to HNWIs are careful to specify a net worth "not counting principal residence". At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the United States, while at the same time there were 11 million millionaires in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households, including those 5.1 million HNWIs.


title: Millionaire

text: In the real estate bubble up to 2007, average house prices in some U.S. regions exceeded $1 million, but many homeowners owed large amounts to banks holding mortgages on their homes. For this reason, there are many people in million-dollar homes whose net worth is far short of a million—in some cases, the net worth is actually negative.


title: Millionaire

text: While millionaires constitute only a small percentage of the population, they hold substantial control over economic resources, with the most powerful and prominent individuals usually ranking among them. The total amount of money held by millionaires can equal the amount of money held by a far higher number of poor people. The Gini coefficient, and other measures in economics, estimated for each country, are useful for determining how many of the poorest people have the equivalent total wealth of the few richest in the country. "Forbes" and "Fortune" magazines maintain lists of people based on their net worth and are generally considered authorities on the subject. "Forbes" listed 1,645 dollar billionaires in 2014, with an aggregate net worth of $6.4 trillion, an increase from $5.4 trillion the previous year. (see US-dollar billionaires in the world).


title: Millionaire

text: Sixteen percent of millionaires inherited their fortunes. Forty-seven percent of millionaires are business owners. Twenty-three percent of the world's millionaires got that way through paid work, consisting mostly of skilled professionals or managers. Millionaires are, on average, 61 years old with $3.05 million in assets.


title: Millionaire

text: Thus one would need to have almost thirty million dollars today to have the purchasing power of a US millionaire in 1900, or more than 100 million dollars to have the same impact on the US economy.


title: Millionaire

text: Dated ways of describing someone worth "n" millions are ""n"-fold millionaire" and "millionaire "n" times over". Still commonly used is "multimillionaire", which refers to individuals with net assets of 2 million or more of a currency. There are approximately 584,000 US$ multimillionaires who have net assets of $10M+ worldwide in 2017. Roughly 1.5% of US$ millionaires are "ultra-high-net-worth individuals" (ultra-HNWIs), defined as those with a net worth or wealth of $30 million or more. There are approximately 226,000 ultra-HNWIs in the world in 2017, according to Wealth-X.


title: Millionaire

text: The rising prevalence of people possessing ever increasing quantities of wealth has given rise to additional terms to further differentiate millionaires. Individuals with net assets of 100 million or more of a currency are commonly termed "centimillionaires," or more rarely "hectomillionaires".


title: Millionaire

text: High-net-worth individuals (those with financial assets, not including the residence, greater than a million US dollars).


title: Millionaire

text: According to wealth research group Wealth-X that released its latest UHNW Cities report, showing the residential footprint of the world's top ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individual cities.


title: Millionaire

text: Excluding Monaco – which has very high UHNWI density – Geneva has the highest density of super-wealthy people per capita in the world. The city is known as the most compact metropolitan area, and also enjoys a concentration of affluence. Singapore has the second-highest concentration, followed by San Jose, the center of Silicon Valley, and the largest city in Northern California.


title: Millionaire

text: While New York City leads in terms of overall UHNW footprint, London has a similar number of UHNW "second homers" despite a considerably smaller population. Paris features as the second-highest European city, after London, Wealth-X said.


title: Millionaire

text: Among suburbs and smaller towns, Beverly Hills has the highest overall number of UHNW residents, and Aspen has the highest concentration on a per capita basis, the report showed.


title: Millionaire

text: Ultra-high net worth individuals are defined by Wealth-X as those whose total net worth is higher than $30 million (R400 million).


title: Millionaire

text: The following is a list of the countries with the most Ultra high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) as of November 2019 as per the 2020 Knight Frank's Wealth Report.


title: Millionaire

text: , New York is the wealthiest city in the world with 345,000 HNWIs according to the Global Citizens Report by Henley & Partners.


title: Millionaire

text: There is a wide disparity in the estimates of the number of millionaires residing in the United States.


title: Millionaire

text: A quarterly report prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Barclays Wealth in 2007 estimated that there were 16.6 million millionaires in the US. At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the US, while at the same time, there were 11 million millionaires in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households, including those 5.1 million HNWIs.


title: Millionaire

text: According to TNS Financial Services, as reported by CNN Money, 2 million households in the US alone had a net worth of at least $1 million excluding primary residences in 2005. According to TNS, in mid-2006 the number of millionaire US households was 9.3 million, with an increase of half a million since 2005. The study found that half of all millionaire households in the US were headed by retirees. In 2004 the United States saw a "33 percent increase over the 6.2 million households that met that criteria [sic] in 2003", fueled largely by the country's real estate boom.


title: Millionaire

text: A report by Capgemini for Merrill Lynch on the other hand stated that in 2007 there were approximately 3,028,000 households in the United States who held at least US$1 million in financial assets, excluding collectibles, consumables, consumer durables and primary residences.


title: Millionaire

text: According to TNS Financial Services, Los Angeles County, California, had the highest number of millionaires, totalling over 262,800 households in mid-2006.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between approximately 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In its most widespread version, YEC is based on the religious belief in the inerrancy of certain literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis. Its primary adherents are Christians and Jews who believe that God created the Earth in six literal days, in contrast with old Earth creationism (OEC), which holds literal interpretations of Genesis that are compatible with the scientifically determined ages of the Earth and universe and theistic evolution, which posits that the scientific principles of evolution, the Big Bang, abiogenesis, solar nebular theory, age of the universe, and age of Earth are compatible with a metaphorical interpretation of Genesis.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Since the mid-20th century, young Earth creationists—starting with Henry Morris (1918–2006)—have developed and promoted a pseudoscientific explanation called creation science as a basis for a religious belief in a supernatural, geologically recent creation, in response to the scientific acceptance of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, which was developed over the previous century. Contemporary YEC movements arose in protest to the scientific consensus, established by numerous scientific disciplines, which demonstrates that the age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years, the formation of the Earth and Solar System happened around 4.6 billion years ago, and the origin of life occurred roughly 4 billion years ago.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: A 2017 Gallup creationism survey found that 38 percent of adults in the United States held the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years. It was suggested that the level of support could be lower when poll results are adjusted after comparison with other polls with questions that more specifically account for uncertainty and ambivalence. Gallup found that, when asking a similar question in 2019, 40 percent of US adults held the view that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so".


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Among the biggest YEC organizations are Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, and Creation Ministries International.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Young Earth creationists have claimed that their view has its earliest roots in ancient Judaism, citing, for example, the commentary on Genesis by Ibn Ezra (c. 1089–1164). That said, Shai Cherry of Vanderbilt University notes that modern Jewish theologians have generally rejected such literal interpretations of the written text, and that even Jewish commentators who oppose some aspects of science generally accept scientific evidence that the Earth is much older.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: The most accepted and popular date of creation among Young Earth creationists is 4004 BC because this specific date appears in the Ussher chronology. This chronology was included in many Bibles from 1701 onwards, including the authorized King James Version . The youngest ever recorded date of creation within the historic Jewish or Christian traditions is 3616 BC, by Yom-Tov Lipmann-Muhlhausen, while the oldest proposed date was 6984 BC by Alfonso X of Castile. However, some contemporary or more recent proponents of young Earth creationism have proposed dates that are several thousands of years earlier by theorizing significant gaps in the genealogies in chapters 5 and 11 of the Book of Genesis. Harold Camping, for example, dated the creation to 11,013 BC, while Christian Charles Josias Bunsen in the 19th century dated the creation to 20,000 BC.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: The Protestant reformation hermeneutic inclined some of the Reformers, including John Calvin and Martin Luther, and later Protestants toward a literal reading of the Bible as translated. This means they believed that the "days" referred to in Genesis correspond to ordinary days, in contrast to reading the "days" as standing in for a longer period of time.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Famous poets and playwrights of the Early Modern Period (1500–1800) referenced an Earth that was thousands of years old. For example William Shakespeare:


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Beginning in the 18th century, support for a young Earth declined among scientists and philosophers as new knowledge including discoveries of the Scientific Revolution and philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment. In particular, discoveries in geology required an Earth that was much older than thousands of years, and proposals such as Abraham Gottlob Werner's Neptunism attempted to incorporate what was understood from geological investigations into a coherent description of Earth's natural history. James Hutton, now regarded as the father of modern geology, went further and opened up the concept of deep time for scientific inquiry. Rather than assuming that the Earth was deteriorating from a primal state, he maintained that the Earth was infinitely old. Hutton stated that:


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Hutton's main line of argument was that the tremendous displacements and changes he was seeing did not happen in a short period of time by means of catastrophe, but that the incremental processes of uplift and erosion happening on the Earth in the present day had caused them. As these processes were very gradual, the Earth needed to be ancient, in order to allow time for the changes to occur. While his ideas of Plutonism were hotly contested, scientific inquiries on competing ideas of catastrophism pushed back the age of the Earth into the millions of years – still much younger than commonly accepted by modern scientists, but much older than the young Earth of less than 20,000 years in which Biblical literalists believed.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Hutton's ideas, called uniformitarianism or gradualism, were popularized by Sir Charles Lyell in the early 19th century. The energetic advocacy and rhetoric of Lyell led to the public and scientific communities largely accepting an ancient Earth. By this time, the Reverends William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick and other early geologists had abandoned their earlier ideas of catastrophism related to a biblical flood and confined their explanations to local floods. By the 1830s, the scientific consensus had abandoned a young Earth as a serious hypothesis.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: John H. Mears was one of several scholars proposing Biblical interpretations ranging from a series of long or indefinite periods interspersed with moments of creation to a day-age theory of indefinite 'days'. He subscribed to the latter theory (indefinite days) and found support from the side of Yale professor James Dwight Dana, one of the fathers of mineralogy, who wrote a paper consisting of four articles named 'Science and the Bible' on the topic. As many biblical scholars reinterpreted Genesis 1 in the light of Lyell's geological results with the support of a number of renowned (Christian) scientific scholars, Developmentalism, a form of theistic evolution based on Darwin's Natural selection, grew in acceptance.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: This 19th century trend was contested. The scriptural geologists and later the founders of the Victoria Institute opposed the decline of support for a biblically literal young Earth.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: The rise of fundamentalist Christianity early in the 20th century brought rejection of evolution. Its leaders explained an ancient Earth through belief in the gap or in the day-age interpretation of Genesis. In 1923, George McCready Price, a Seventh-day Adventist, wrote "The New Geology", a book partly inspired by the book "Patriarchs and Prophets" in which Seventh-day Adventist prophet Ellen G. White described the impact of the Great Flood on the shape of the Earth. Although not an accredited geologist, Price's writings, which were based on reading geological texts and documents rather than field or laboratory work, provide an explicitly fundamentalist perspective on geology. The book attracted a small following, with its advocates almost all being Lutheran pastors and Seventh-day Adventists in North America. Price became popular with fundamentalists for his opposition to evolution, though they continued to believe in an ancient Earth.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: In the 1950s, Price's work came under severe criticism, particularly by Bernard Ramm in his book "The Christian View of Science and Scripture". Together with J. Laurence Kulp, a geologist and in fellowship with the Plymouth Brethren, and other scientists, Ramm influenced Christian organizations such as the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) in not supporting flood geology.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: Price's work was subsequently adapted and updated by Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb Jr. in their book "The Genesis Flood" in 1961. Morris and Whitcomb argued that the Earth was geologically recent and that the Great Flood had laid down most of the geological strata in the space of a single year, reviving pre-uniformitarian arguments. Given this history, they argued, "the last refuge of the case for evolution immediately vanishes away, and the record of the rocks becomes a tremendous witness... to the holiness and justice and power of the living God of Creation!"


title: Young Earth creationism

text: This became the foundation of a new generation of young Earth creationist believers, who organized themselves around Morris' Institute for Creation Research. Sister organizations such as the Creation Research Society have sought to re-interpret geological formations within a young Earth creationist viewpoint. Langdon Gilkey writes:


title: Young Earth creationism

text: A 2006 joint statement of InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) by 68 national and international science academies enumerated the scientific facts that young Earth creationism contradicts, in particular that the universe, the Earth, and life are billions of years old, that each has undergone continual change over those billions of years, and that life on Earth has evolved from a common primordial origin into the diverse forms observed in the fossil record and present today. Evolutionary theory remains the only explanation that fully accounts for all the observations, measurements, data, and evidence discovered in the fields of biology, ecology, anatomy, physiology, zoology, paleontology, molecular biology, genetics, anthropology, and others.


title: Young Earth creationism

text: As such, young Earth creationism is dismissed by the academic and the scientific communities. One 1987 estimate found that "700 scientists ... (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) ... give credence to creation-science". An expert in the evolution-creationism controversy, professor and author Brian Alters, states that "99.9% of scientists accept evolution". A 1991 Gallup poll found that about 5 per cent of American scientists (including those with training outside biology) identified themselves as creationists. For their part, young Earth creationists say that the lack of support for their beliefs by the scientific community is due to discrimination and censorship by professional science journals and professional science organizations. This viewpoint was explicitly rejected in the rulings from the 1981 United States District Court case "McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education" as no witness was able to produce any articles that had been refused publication and the judge could not conceive how "a loose knit group of independent thinkers in all the varied fields of science could, or would, so effectively censor new scientific thought". A 1985 study also found that only 18 out of 135,000 submissions to scientific journals advocated creationism.