title: Religious war

text: In 1947, the UN's decision to partition the Mandate of Palestine, led to the creation of the state of Israel and Jordan, which annexed the West Bank portion of the mandate, since then, the region has been plagued with conflict. The 1948 Palestinian exodus also known as the "Nakba" (), occurred when approximately 711,000 to 726,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute, though the number of Palestine refugees and their unsettled descendants registered with UNRWA is more than 4.3 million. The causes remain the subject of fundamental disagreement between Palestinians and Israelis. Both Jews and Palestinians make ethnic and historical claims to the land, and Jews make religious claims as well.


title: Religious war

text: The All India Muslim League (AIML) was formed in Dhaka in 1906 by Muslims who were suspicious of the Hindu-majority Indian National Congress. They complained that Muslim members did not have the same rights as Hindu members. A number of different scenarios were proposed at various times. This was fuelled by the British policy of "Divide and Rule", which they tried to bring upon every political situation. Among the first to make the demand for a separate state was the writer/philosopher Allama Iqbal, who, in his presidential address to the 1930 convention of the Muslim League said that a separate nation for Muslims was essential in an otherwise Hindu-dominated subcontinent.


title: Religious war

text: After the dissolution of the British Raj in 1947, British India was partitioned into two new sovereign states—the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. In the resulting Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948, up to 12.5 million people were displaced, with estimates of loss of life varying from several hundred thousand to a million. India emerged as a secular nation with a Hindu majority, while Pakistan was established as an Islamic republic with Muslim majority population.


title: Religious war

text: Inter-ethnic conflict in Nigeria has generally had a religious element. Riots against Igbo in 1953 and in the 1960s in the north were said to have been sparked by religious conflict. The riots against Igbo in the north in 1966 were said to have been inspired by radio reports of mistreatment of Muslims in the south. A military coup d'état led by lower and middle-ranking officers, some of them Igbo, overthrew the NPC-NCNC dominated government. Prime Minister Balewa along with other northern and western government officials were assassinated during the coup. The coup was considered an Igbo plot to overthrow the northern dominated government. A counter-coup was launched by mostly northern troops. Between June and July there was a mass exodus of Ibo from the north and west. Over 1.3 million Ibo fled the neighboring regions in order to escape persecution as anti-Ibo riots increased. The aftermath of the anti-Ibo riots led many to believe that security could only be gained by separating from the North.


title: Religious war

text: In the 1980s, serious outbreaks between Christians and Muslims occurred in Kafanchan in southern Kaduna State in a border area between the two religions.


title: Religious war

text: The 2010 Jos riots saw clashes between Muslim herders against Christian farmers near the volatile city of Jos, resulting in hundreds of casualties. Officials estimated that 500 people were massacred in night-time raids by rampaging Muslim gangs.


title: Religious war

text: During the rule of the Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, the discrimination against the majority Buddhist population generated the growth of Buddhist institutions as they sought to participate in national politics and gain better treatment. The Buddhist Uprising of 1966 was a period of civil and military unrest in South Vietnam, largely focused in the I Corps area in the north of the country in central Vietnam.


title: Religious war

text: In a country where the Buddhist majority was estimated to be between 70 and 90 percent, Diem ruled with a strong religious bias. As a member of the Catholic Vietnamese minority, he pursued pro-Catholic policies that antagonized many Buddhists.


title: Religious war

text: The Dungan revolt (1862–1877) and Panthay Rebellion (1856–1873) by the Hui were also set off by racial antagonism and class warfare, rather than the mistaken assumption that it was all due to Islam that the rebellions broke out. During the Dungan revolt fighting broke out between Uyghurs and Hui.


title: Religious war

text: In 1936, after Sheng Shicai expelled 20,000 Kazakhs from Xinjiang to Qinghai, the Hui led by General Ma Bufang massacred their fellow Muslims, the Kazakhs, until there were only 135 of them left.


title: Religious war

text: Tensions with Uyghurs and Hui arose because Qing and Republican Chinese authorities used Hui troops and officials to dominate the Uyghurs and crush Uyghur revolts. Xinjiang's Hui population increased by over 520 percent between 1940 and 1982, an average annual growth rate of 4.4 percent, while the Uyghur population only grew by 1.7 percent. This dramatic increase in the Hui population led inevitably to significant tensions between the Hui and Uyghur Muslim populations. Some old Uyghurs in Kashgar remember that the Hui army at the Battle of Kashgar (1934) massacred 2,000 to 8,000 Uyghurs, which caused tension as more Hui moved into Kashgar from other parts of China. Some Hui criticize Uyghur separatism, and generally do not want to get involved in conflicts in other countries over Islam for fear of being perceived as radical. Hui and Uyghur live apart from each other, praying separately and attending different mosques.


title: Religious war

text: There is no consensus among scholars on what triggered the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). However, the militarization of the Palestinian refugee population, along with the arrival of the PLO guerrilla forces, sparked an arms race for the different Lebanese political factions. However, the conflict played out along three religious lines: Sunni Muslim, Christian Lebanese and Shiite Muslim, Druze are considered among Shiite Muslims.


title: Religious war

text: It has been argued that the antecedents of the war can be traced back to the conflicts and political compromises reached after the end of Lebanon's administration by the Ottoman Empire. The Cold War had a powerful disintegrative effect on Lebanon, which was closely linked to the polarization that preceded the 1958 political crisis. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, an exodus of Palestinian refugees, who fled the fighting or were expelled from their homes, arrived in Lebanon. Palestinians came to play a very important role in future Lebanese civil conflicts, and the establishment of Israel radically changed the local environment in which Lebanon found itself.


title: Religious war

text: Lebanon was promised independence, which was achieved on 22 November 1943. Free French troops, who had invaded Lebanon in 1941 to rid Beirut of the Vichy French forces, left the country in 1946. The Christians assumed power over the country and its economy. A confessional Parliament was created in which Muslims and Christians were given quotas of seats. As well, the president was to be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of Parliament a Shia Muslim.


title: Religious war

text: In March 1991, Parliament passed an amnesty law that pardoned all political crimes prior to its enactment. The amnesty was not extended to crimes perpetrated against foreign diplomats or certain crimes referred by the cabinet to the Higher Judicial Council. In May 1991, the militias (with the important exception of Hezbollah) were dissolved, and the Lebanese Armed Forces began slowly to rebuild themselves as Lebanon's only major non-sectarian institution.


title: Religious war

text: Some violence still occurred. In late December 1991 a car bomb (estimated to carry 220 pounds of TNT) exploded in the Muslim neighborhood of Basta. At least 30 people were killed, and 120 wounded, including former Prime Minister Shafik Wazzan, who was riding in a bulletproof car.


title: Religious war

text: In the case of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), the new revolutionary government of the Islamic Republic of Iran generally described the conflict as a religious war, and used the narrative of "jihad" to recruit, mobilise and motivate its troops. On the other hand, justifications from the Saddam Hussein-led Ba'athist Iraq were mostly framed in terms of a supposed Persian–Arab historical enmity, and Iraq-centred Arab nationalism (including support for Arab separatism in Khuzestan). Some of the underlying motives of Saddam appear to have been controlling the Shatt al-Arab waterway and region (previously settled by the 1975 Algiers Agreement, which had ended Imperial Iranian support for the 1974–75 Kurdish rebellion against the Iraqi government), obtaining access to the oil reserves in Khuzestan, and exploiting the instability of post-Revolution Iran, including the failed 1979 Khuzestan insurgency. Peyman Asadzade (2019) stated: 'Although the evidence suggests that religious motivations by no means contributed to Saddam's decision to launch the war, an overview of the Iranian leaders' speeches and martyrs' statements reveals that religion significantly motivated people to take part in the war. (...) The Iranian leadership painted the war as a battle between believers and unbelievers, Muslims and infidels, and the true and the false.' Iran cited religious reasons to justify continuing combat operations, for example in the face of Saddam's offer of peace in mid-1982, rejected by Ayatollah Khomeini's declaration that the war would not end until Iran had defeated the Ba'athist regime and replaced it with an Islamic republic.


title: Religious war

text: While Ba'athist Iraq has sometimes been described as a 'secular dictatorship' before the war, and therefore in ideological conflict with the Shia Islamic 'theocracy' which seized control of Iran in 1979, Iraq also launched the so-called "Tawakalna ala Allah" ("Trust in God") Operations (April–July 1988) in the final stages of the war. Moreover, the Anfal campaign (1986–1989; in strict sense February–September 1988) was code-named after Al-Anfal, the eighth sura of the Qur'an which narrates the triumph of 313 followers of the new Muslim faith over almost 900 pagans at the Battle of Badr in the year 624. "Al Anfal" literally means "the spoils (of war)" and was used to describe the military campaign of extermination and looting commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid (also known as "Chemical Ali"). His orders informed "jash" (Kurdish collaborators with the Baathists, literally "donkey's foal" in Kurdish) units that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even women as spoils of war was "halal" (religiously permitted or legal). Randal (1998, 2019) argued that 'Al Anfal' was 'a curious nod to Islam' by the Ba'athist government, because it had originally been known as a 'militantly secular regime'. Some commentators have concluded that the code name was meant to serve as 'a religious justification' for the campaign against the Kurds.


title: Religious war

text: The Croatian War (1991–95) and the Bosnian War (1992–95) have been viewed as religious wars between the Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim populations of former Yugoslavia: respectively called "Serbs", "Croats" and "Bosniaks" (or "Bosnian Muslims"). Traditional religious symbols were used during the wars. Notably, foreign Muslim volunteers came to Bosnia to wage "jihad" and were thus known as "Bosnian mujahideen". Although some news media and some scholars at the time and in the aftermath often described the conflicts as nationalist or ethnic in nature, others such as the literary critic Christopher Hitchens (2007) have argued that they were religious wars (Catholic versus Orthodox versus Islamic), and that terms such as "Serb" and "Croat" were employed as mere euphemisms to conceal the religious core of the armed conflicts, even though the term "Muslims" was frequently used. Some scholars have stated that they "were not religious wars", but acknowledged that "religion played an important role in the wars" and "did often serve as the motivating and integrating factor for justifying military attacks".


title: Religious war

text: The Second Sudanese Civil War from 1983 to 2005 has been described as an ethnoreligious conflict where the Muslim central government's pursuits to impose sharia law on non-Muslim southerners led to violence, and eventually to the civil war. The war resulted in the independence of South Sudan six years after the war ended. Sudan is majority-Muslim and South Sudan is majority-Christian.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Hilma af Klint (; 26 October 1862 – 21 October 1944) was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered among the first abstract works known in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian. She belonged to a group called "The Five", comprising a circle of women inspired by Theosophy, who shared a belief in the importance of trying to contact the so-called "High Masters"—often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Hilma af Klint was the fourth child of Mathilda af Klint (née Sonntag) and Captain Victor af Klint, a Swedish naval commander, and she spent summers with her family at their manor, "Hanmora", on the island of Adelsö in Lake Mälaren. In these idyllic surroundings she came into contact with nature at an early stage in her life, and a deep association with natural forms was to be an inspiration in her work. Later in life, Hilma af Klint lived permanently on Munsö, an island next to Adelsö.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: From her family, Hilma af Klint inherited a great interest for mathematics and botany. She showed an early ability in visual art and, after the family moved to Stockholm, she studied at Tekniska skolan in Stockholm (Konstfack today), where she learned portraiture and landscape painting.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: She was admitted at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at the age of twenty. During the years 1882–1887 she studied mainly drawing, portrait painting, and landscape painting. She graduated with honors and was allocated a scholarship in the form of a studio in the so-called "Atelier Building" (Ateljébyggnaden), owned by The Academy of Fine Arts between Hamngatan and Kungsträdgården in central Stockholm. This was the main cultural hub in the Swedish capital at that time. The same building also held Blanch's Café and Blanch's Art Gallery, where conflict existed between the conventional art view of the Academy of Fine Arts and the opposition movement of the Art Society (Konstnärsförbundet), inspired by the French En Plein Air painters. Hilma af Klint began working in Stockholm, gaining recognition for her landscapes, botanical drawings, and portraits.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Her conventional painting became the source of financial income, but her 'life's work' remained a quite separate practice.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: In 1880 her younger sister Hermina died, and it was at this time that the spiritual dimension of her life began to develop. Her interest in abstraction and symbolism came from Hilma af Klint's involvement in spiritism, very much in vogue at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Her experiments in spiritual investigation started in 1879. She became interested in the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky and the philosophy of Christian Rosencreutz. In 1908 she met Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical Society, who was visiting Stockholm. Steiner introduced her to his own theories regarding the Arts, and would have some influence on her paintings later in life. Several years later, in 1920, she met him again at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society. Between 1921 and 1930 she spent long periods at the Goetheanum.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Af Klint's work can be understood in the wider context of the Modernist search for new forms in artistic, spiritual, political, and scientific systems at the beginning of the twentieth century. There was a similar interest in spirituality by other artists during this same period, including Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevitch, and the French Nabis, in which many, like af Klint, were inspired by the Theosophical Movement.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: She felt the abstract work and the meaning within were so groundbreaking that the world was not ready to see it, and she wished for the work to remain unseen for 20 years after her death.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: At the Academy of Fine Arts she met Anna Cassel, the first of the four women with whom she later worked in "The Five" ("De Fem"), a group of artists who shared her ideas. The other members were Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson. <nowiki>"The Five"</nowiki> began their association as members of the Edelweiss Society, which embraced a combination of the Theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky and spiritualism. All of "The Five" were interested in the paranormal and regularly organized spiritistic séances. They opened each meeting with a prayer, followed by a meditation, a Christian sermon, and a review and analysis of a text from the New Testament. This would be followed by a séance. They recorded in a book a completely new system of mystical thought, in the form of messages from higher spirits called "The High Masters" ("Höga Mästare"). One, Gregor, announced, "All the knowledge that is not of the senses, not of the intellect, not of the heart but is the property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspect of your being...the knowledge of your spirit".


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Through her work with "The Five", Hilma af Klint created experimental automatic drawing as early as 1896, leading her toward an inventive geometric visual language capable of conceptualizing invisible forces both of the inner and outer worlds.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: She explored world religions, atoms, and the plant world and wrote extensively about her discoveries. As she became more familiar with this form of expression, Hilma af Klint was assigned by the High Masters to create the paintings for the "Temple" – however she never understood what this "Temple" referred to.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Hilma af Klint felt she was being directed by a force that would literally guide her hand. She wrote in her notebook:


title: Hilma af Klint

text: The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: In 1906, after 20 years of artistic works, and at the age of 44, Hilma af Klint painted her first series of abstract paintings.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: The works for the Temple were created between 1906 and 1915, carried out in two phases with an interruption between 1908 and 1912. As Hilma af Klint discovered her new form of visual expression, she developed a new artistic language. Her painting became more autonomous and more intentional. The spiritual would continue to be the main source of creativity throughout the rest of her life.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: The collection for the Temple is 193 paintings, grouped within several sub-series. The major paintings, dated 1907, are extremely large: each painting measures approximately 240 x 320 cm. This series, called "The Ten Largest", describes the different phases of life, from early childhood to old age.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Quite apart from their diagrammatic purpose the paintings have a freshness and a modern aesthetic of tentative line and hastily captured image: a segmented circle, a helix bisected and divided into a spectrum of lightly painted colours. The artistic world of Hilma af Klint is impregnated with symbols, letters, and words. The paintings often depict symmetrical dualities, or reciprocities: up and down, in and out, earthly and esoteric, male and female, good and evil. The colour choice throughout is metaphorical: blue stands for the female spirit, yellow for the male one, and pink / red for physical / spiritual love. "The Swan" and "the Dove", names of two series of the "Paintings for the Temple", are also symbolic, representing respectively transcendence and love. Understood as gates to other dimensions, her paintings call for interpretation on a narrative, esoteric and artistic level while evoking primordial geometry and humanistic motifs.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: When Hilma af Klint had completed the works for the Temple, the spiritual guidance ended. However, she continued to pursue abstract painting, now independent from any external influence. The paintings for the Temple were mostly oil paintings, but she now also used watercolours. Her later paintings are significantly smaller in size. She painted among others a series depicting the stand-points of different religions at various stages in history, as well as representations of the duality between the physical being and its equivalence on an esoteric level. As Hilma af Klint pursued her artistic and esoteric research, it is possible to perceive a certain inspiration from the artistic theories developed by the Anthroposophical Society from 1920 onward.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Through her life, Hilma af Klint would seek to understand the mysteries that she had come in contact with through her work. She produced more than 150 notebooks with her thoughts and studies.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: In 1908 af Klint met Rudolf Steiner for the first time. In one of the few remaining letters, she was asking Steiner to visit her in Stockholm and see the finished part of the "Paintings for the Temple" series, 111 paintings in total. Steiner did see the paintings but mostly left unimpressed, stating that her way of working was inappropriate for a theosophist. According to H.P. Blavatsky, mediumship was a faulty practice, leading its adepts on the wrong path of occultism and black magic. However, during their meeting, Steiner stated that af Klint's contemporaries would not be able to accept and understand their paintings, and it would take another 50 years to decipher them. Of all the paintings shown to him, Steiner paid special attention only to the "Primordial Chaos" Group, noting them as "the best symbolically". After meeting Steiner, af Klint was devastated by his response and, apparently, stopped painting for 4 years. Interestingly enough, Steiner kept photographs of some of af Klint's artworks, some of them even hand-coloured. Later the same year he met Wassily Kandinsky, who had not yet come to abstract painting. Some art historians assume that Kandinsky could have seen the photographs and perhaps was influenced by them while developing his own abstract path. Later in her life, she made a decision to destroy all her correspondence. She left a collection of more than 1200 paintings and 125 diaries to her nephew, Erik af Klint. Among her last paintings made in 1930s, there are two watercolours predicting the events of World War II, titled "The Blitz" and "The Fight in the Mediterranean".


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Despite the popular belief that Hilma af Klint had chosen to never exhibit her abstract works during her lifetime, in recent years art historians such as Julia Voss uncovered enough evidence of af Klint making an actual effort to show her art to the public. Around 1920 in Dornach, Switzerland, af Klint met Dutch eurythmist Peggy Kloppers-Moltzer, who was also a member of The Anthroposophical Society. Later, the artist travelled to Amsterdam, where she and Kloppers discussed the possible exhibition with the editors of art and architecture magazine "Wendingen".


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Although the Amsterdam talks did not bring any result, at least one exhibition of Hilma af Klint's abstract works actually happened in London several years later. In July 1928 in London, the World Conference on Spiritual Science took place, with Kloppers being one of the organizing committee members. Originally, Hilma af Klint was excluded from the circle of participants, but after Kloppers' insistence, the matter was settled. In July 1928 Hilma af Klint takes a boat trip from Stockholm to London, along with some of her large-scale paintings. In her postcard to Anna Cassel (discovered only in 2018) af Klint writes that she was not alone during this 4-day trip. Despite af Klint not stating the name, Julia Voss suggests that most likely her companion was Thomasine Andersson, an old friend from De Fem days. Voss also stated that despite the list of paintings presented being unknown, we can suggest that these were some extracts from the "Paintings for the Temple" series.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Hilma af Klint died in Djursholm, Sweden in 1944, nearly 82 years old, in the aftermath of a traffic accident, having only exhibited her works a handful of times, mainly at spiritual conferences and gatherings. She is buried at Galärvarvskyrkogården in Stockholm.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Hilma Af Klint's later period abstract art (1906-1920) delved into symbolism with a combination of geometry, figuration, scientific research and religious practices. Her studies of organic growth, including shells and flowers, helped her portray life through a spiritual lens.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Her individual or signature style was also marked with impressions from the late 19th and early 20th century scientific discoveries as also influenced by contemporary spiritual movements such as theosophy and anthrosophy too. The idea to transcend the physical world and the constraints of representational art is visible in her abstract paintings.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Her symbolic visual language has an ordered progression that reflects her understanding of grids, circles, spirals and petal-like forms—sometimes diagrammatic, sometimes biomorphic. Her paintings also explored dichotomy of the world.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: Spiral forms appear often in her art, as they do in the automatic drawings by De Fem. While every such geometric form, in this case, Spiral suggests growth, progress and evolution, color choices also are metaphorical in nature.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: In her will, Hilma af Klint left all her abstract paintings to her nephew, vice-admiral Erik af Klint of the Royal Swedish Navy. She specified that her work should be kept secret for at least 20 years after her death. When the boxes were opened at the end of the 1960s, very few persons had knowledge of what would be revealed.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: In 1970 her paintings were offered as a gift to Moderna Museet i Stockholm, but the donation was declined. Erik af Klint then donated thousands of drawings and paintings to a foundation bearing the artist's name in the 1970s. Thanks to the art historian Åke Fant, her art was introduced to an international audience in the 1980s, when he presented her at a Nordik conference in Helsinki in 1984.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: The collection of abstract paintings of Hilma af Klint includes more than 1200 pieces. It is owned and managed by the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2017, Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta presented plans for an exhibition centre dedicated to af Klint in Järna, south of Stockholm, with estimated building costs of €6 to 7.5 million. In February 2018, the Foundation signed a long-term agreement of cooperation with the Moderna Museet, thereby confirming the perennity of the Hilma af Klint Room, i.e., a dedicated space at the museum where a dozen works of the artist are shown on a continuous basis.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: The abstract work of Hilma af Klint was shown for the first time at the exhibition "The Spiritual in Art, Abstract Painting 1890–1985" organized by Maurice Tuchman in Los Angeles in 1986. This exhibition was the starting point of her international recognition.


title: Hilma af Klint

text: “Hilma Af Klint: Paintings for the Future” the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition was the most-visited exhibition in the museum’s 60-year history. The show was attended by over 600,000 visitors.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Thiamine deficiency is a medical condition of low levels of thiamine (Vitamin B). A severe and chronic form is known as beriberi. The two main types in adults are wet beriberi and dry beriberi. Wet beriberi affects the cardiovascular system, resulting in a fast heart rate, shortness of breath, and leg swelling. Dry beriberi affects the nervous system, resulting in numbness of the hands and feet, confusion, trouble moving the legs, and pain. A form with loss of appetite and constipation may also occur. Another type, acute beriberi, found mostly in babies, presents with loss of appetite, vomiting, lactic acidosis, changes in heart rate, and enlargement of the heart.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Risk factors include a diet of mostly white rice, alcoholism, dialysis, chronic diarrhea, and taking high doses of diuretics. In rare cases, it may be due to a genetic condition that results in difficulties absorbing thiamine found in food. Wernicke encephalopathy and Korsakoff syndrome are forms of dry beriberi. Diagnosis is based on symptoms, low levels of thiamine in the urine, high blood lactate, and improvement with thiamine supplementation.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Treatment is by thiamine supplementation, either by mouth or by injection. With treatment, symptoms generally resolve in a few weeks. The disease may be prevented at the population level through the fortification of food.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Thiamine deficiency is rare in the United States. It remains relatively common in sub-Saharan Africa. Outbreaks have been seen in refugee camps. Thiamine deficiency has been described for thousands of years in Asia, and became more common in the late 1800s with the increased processing of rice.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Symptoms of beriberi include weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and pain in the limbs, and periods of irregular heart rate. Edema (swelling of bodily tissues) is common. It may increase the amount of lactic acid and pyruvic acid within the blood. In advanced cases, the disease may cause high-output cardiac failure and death.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Symptoms may occur concurrently with those of Wernicke's encephalopathy, a primarily neurological thiamine deficiency-related condition.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Beriberi is divided into four categories. The first three are historical and the fourth, gastrointestinal beriberi, was recognized in 2004:


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Dry beriberi causes wasting and partial paralysis resulting from damaged peripheral nerves. It is also referred to as endemic neuritis. It is characterized by:


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: A selective impairment of the large proprioceptive sensory fibers without motor impairment can occur and present as a prominent sensory ataxia, which is a loss of balance and coordination due to loss of the proprioceptive inputs from the periphery and loss of position sense.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE), Korsakoff syndrome (also called alcohol amnestic disorder), and Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome are forms of dry beriberi.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Wernicke's encephalopathy is the most frequently encountered manifestation of thiamine deficiency in Western society, though it may also occur in patients with impaired nutrition from other causes, such as gastrointestinal disease, those with HIV/AIDS, and with the injudicious administration of parenteral glucose or hyperalimentation without adequate B-vitamin supplementation. This is a striking neuro-psychiatric disorder characterized by paralysis of eye movements, abnormal stance and gait, and markedly deranged mental function.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Korsakoff syndrome, in general, is considered to occur with deterioration of brain function in patients initially diagnosed with WE. This is an amnestic-confabulatory syndrome characterized by retrograde and anterograde amnesia, impairment of conceptual functions, and decreased spontaneity and initiative.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Following improved nutrition and the removal of alcohol consumption, some impairments linked with thiamine deficiency are reversed, in particular poor brain functionality, although in more severe cases, Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome leaves permanent damage. (See delirium tremens.)


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Wet beriberi affects the heart and circulatory system. It is sometimes fatal, as it causes a combination of heart failure and weakening of the capillary walls, which causes the peripheral tissues to become edematous. Wet beriberi is characterized by:


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Infantile beriberi usually occurs between two and six months of age in children whose mothers have inadequate thiamine intake. It may present as either wet or dry beriberi.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: In the acute form, the baby develops dyspnea and cyanosis and soon dies of heart failure. These symptoms may be described in infantile beriberi:


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Beriberi is often caused by eating a diet with a very high proportion of calorie rich polished rice (common in Asia) or cassava root (common in sub-Saharan Africa), without much if any thiamine containing animals or vegetables.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: It may also be caused by shortcomings other than inadequate intake - diseases or operations on the digestive tract, alcoholism, dialysis or genetic deficiencies. All those causes mainly affect the central nervous system, and provoke the development of Wernicke's encephalopathy.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Wernicke's disease is one of the most prevalent neurological or neuropsychiatric diseases. In autopsy series, features of Wernicke lesions are observed in approximately 2% of general cases. Medical record research shows that about 85% had not been diagnosed, although only 19% would be asymptomatic. In children, only 58% were diagnosed. In alcohol abusers, autopsy series showed neurological damages at rates of 12.5% or more. Mortality caused by Wernicke's disease reaches 17% of diseases, which means 3.4/1000 or about 25 million contemporaries. The number of people with Wernicke's disease may be even higher, considering that early stages may have dysfunctions prior to the production of observable lesions at necropsy. In addition, uncounted numbers of people can experience fetal damage and subsequent diseases.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Genetic diseases of thiamine transport are rare but serious. Thiamine responsive megaloblastic anemia syndrome (TRMA) with diabetes mellitus and sensorineural deafness is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the gene SLC19A2, a high affinity thiamine transporter. TRMA patients do not show signs of systemic thiamine deficiency, suggesting redundancy in the thiamine transport system. This has led to the discovery of a second high-affinity thiamine transporter, SLC19A3. Leigh disease (subacute necrotising encephalomyelopathy) is an inherited disorder that affects mostly infants in the first years of life and is invariably fatal. Pathological similarities between Leigh disease and WE led to the hypothesis that the cause was a defect in thiamine metabolism. One of the most consistent findings has been an abnormality of the activation of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Mutations in the "SLC19A3 "gene have been linked to biotin-thiamine responsive basal ganglia disease, which is treated with pharmacological doses of thiamine and biotin, another B vitamin.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Other disorders in which a putative role for thiamine has been implicated include subacute necrotising encephalomyelopathy, opsoclonus myoclonus syndrome (a paraneoplastic syndrome), and Nigerian seasonal ataxia (or African seasonal ataxia). In addition, several inherited disorders of ThDP-dependent enzymes have been reported, which may respond to thiamine treatment.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Thiamine in the human body has a half-life of 18 days and is quickly exhausted, particularly when metabolic demands exceed intake. A derivative of thiamine, thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP), is a cofactor involved in the citric acid cycle, as well as connecting the breakdown of sugars with the citric acid cycle. The citric acid cycle is a central metabolic pathway involved in the regulation of carbohydrate, lipid, and amino acid metabolism, and its disruption due to thiamine deficiency inhibits the production of many molecules including the neurotransmitters glutamic acid and GABA. Additionally, thiamine may also be directly involved in neuromodulation.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: A positive diagnosis test for thiamine deficiency involves measuring the activity of the enzyme transketolase in erythrocytes (Erythrocyte transketolase activation assay). Alternatively, thiamine and its phosphorylated derivatives can directly be detected in whole blood, tissues, foods, animal feed, and pharmaceutical preparations following the conversion of thiamine to fluorescent thiochrome derivatives (thiochrome assay) and separation by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Capillary electrophoresis (CE) techniques and in-capillary enzyme reaction methods have emerged as alternative techniques in quantifying and monitoring thiamine levels in samples.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Many people with beriberi can be treated with thiamine alone. Given thiamine intravenously (and later orally), rapid and dramatic recovery occurs, generally within 24 hours.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Beriberi is a recurrent nutritional disease in detention houses, even in this century. In 1999, an outbreak of beriberi occurred in a detention center in Taiwan. High rates of illness and death in overcrowded Haitian jails in 2007 were traced to the traditional practice of washing rice before cooking. In the Ivory Coast, among a group of prisoners with heavy punishment, 64% were affected by beriberi. Before beginning treatment, prisoners exhibited symptoms of dry or wet beriberi with neurological signs (tingling: 41%), cardiovascular signs (dyspnoea: 42%, thoracic pain: 35%), and edemas of the lower limbs (51%). With treatment, the rate of healing was about 97%.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Populations under extreme stress may be at higher risk for beriberi. Displaced populations, such as refugees from war, are susceptible to micronutritional deficiency, including beriberi. The severe nutritional deprivation caused by famine also can cause beriberis, although symptoms may be overlooked in clinical assessment or masked by other famine-related problems. An extreme weight-loss diet can, rarely, induce a famine-like state and the accompanying beriberi.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Earliest written descriptions of thiamine deficiency are from ancient China in the context of Chinese medicine. One of the earliest is by Ge Hong in his book "Zhou hou bei ji fang" ("Emergency Formulas to Keep up Your Sleeve") written sometime during the third century. Hong called the illness by the name "jiao qi", which can be interpreted as "foot qi". He described the symptoms to include swelling, weakness, and numbness of the feet. He also acknowledged that the illness could be deadly, and claimed that it could be cured by eating certain foods, such as fermented soybeans in wine. Better known examples of early descriptions of "foot qi" are by Chao Yuanfang (who lived during 550–630) in his book "Zhu bing yuan hou lun" ("Sources and Symptoms of All Diseases") and by Sun Simiao (581–682) in his book "Bei ji qian jin yao fang" ("Essential Emergency Formulas Worth a Thousand in Gold").


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: In the late 19th century, beriberi was studied by Takaki Kanehiro, a British-trained Japanese medical doctor of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Beriberi was a serious problem in the Japanese navy; sailors fell ill an average of four times a year in the period 1878 to 1881, and 35% were cases of beriberi. In 1883, Takaki learned of a very high incidence of beriberi among cadets on a training mission from Japan to Hawaii, via New Zealand and South America. The voyage lasted more than nine months and resulted in 169 cases of sickness and 25 deaths on a ship of 376 men. With the support of the Japanese Navy, he conducted an experiment in which another ship was deployed on the same route, except that its crew was fed a diet of meat, fish, barley, rice, and beans. At the end of the voyage, this crew had only 14 cases of beriberi and no deaths. This convinced Takaki and the Japanese Navy that diet was the cause. In 1884, Takaki observed that beriberi was common among low-ranking crew who were often provided free rice, thus ate little else, but not among crews of Western navies, nor among Japanese officers who consumed a more varied diet.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: In 1897, Christiaan Eijkman, a Dutch physician and pathologist, demonstrated that beriberi is caused by poor diet, and discovered that feeding unpolished rice (instead of the polished variety) to chickens helped to prevent beriberi. The following year, Sir Frederick Hopkins postulated that some foods contained "accessory factors"—in addition to proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and salt—that were necessary for the functions of the human body. In 1901, Gerrit Grijns, a Dutch physician and assistant to Christiaan Eijkman in the Netherlands, correctly interpreted beriberi as a deficiency syndrome, and between 1910 and 1913, Edward Bright Vedder established that an extract of rice bran is a treatment for beriberi. In 1929, Eijkman and Hopkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Although according to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the term "beriberi" comes from a Sinhalese phrase meaning "weak, weak" or "I cannot, I cannot", the word being duplicated for emphasis, the origin of the phrase is questionable. It has also been suggested to come from Hindi, Arabic, and a few other languages, with many meanings like "weakness", "sailor", and even "sheep". Such suggested origins were listed by Heinrich Botho Scheube, among others. Edward Vedder wrote in his book "Beriberi" (1913) that "it is impossible to definitely trace the origin of the word beriberi". Word "berbere" was used in writing at least as early as 1568 by Diogo do Couto, when he described the deficiency in India.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: "Kakke", which is a Japanese synonym for thiamine deficiency, comes from the way "jiao qi" is pronounced in Japanese. ""Jiao qi" is an old word used in Chinese medicine to describe beriberi. ""Kakke" is supposed to have entered into the Japanese language sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: As most feedstuffs used in poultry diets contain enough quantities of vitamins to meet the requirements in this species, deficiencies in this vitamin do not occur with commercial diets. This was, at least, the opinion in the 1960s.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Mature chickens show signs three weeks after being fed a deficient diet. In young chicks, it can appear before two weeks of age. Onset is sudden in young chicks, with anorexia and an unsteady gait. Later on, locomotor signs begin, with an apparent paralysis of the flexor of the toes. The characteristic position is called "stargazing", with the affected animal sitting on its hocks with its head thrown back in a posture called opisthotonos. Response to administration of the vitamin is rather quick, occurring a few hours later.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Polioencephalomalacia (PEM) is the most common thiamine deficiency disorder in young ruminant and nonruminant animals. Symptoms of PEM include a profuse, but transient, diarrhea, listlessness, circling movements, stargazing or opisthotonus (head drawn back over neck), and muscle tremors. The most common cause is high-carbohydrate feeds, leading to the overgrowth of thiaminase-producing bacteria, but dietary ingestion of thiaminase (e.g., in bracken fern), or inhibition of thiamine absorption by high sulfur intake are also possible. Another cause of PEM is "Clostridium sporogenes" or "Bacillus aneurinolyticus" infection. These bacteria produce thiaminases that can cause an acute thiamine deficiency in the affected animal.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Snakes that consume a diet largely composed of goldfish and feeder minnows are susceptible to developing thiamine deficiency. This is often a problem observed in captivity when keeping garter and ribbon snakes that are fed a goldfish-exclusive diet, as these fish contain thiaminase, an enzyme that breaks down thiamine.


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: Thiamine deficiency has been identified as the cause of a paralytic disease affecting wild birds in the Baltic Sea area dating back to 1982. In this condition, there is difficulty in keeping the wings folded along the side of the body when resting, loss of the ability to fly and voice, with eventual paralysis of the wings and legs and death. It affects primarily 0.5–1 kg-sized birds such as the European herring gull ("Larus argentatus"), common starling ("Sturnus vulgaris"), and common eider ("Somateria mollissima"). Researches noted, "Because the investigated species occupy a wide range of ecological niches and positions in the food web, we are open to the possibility that other animal classes may develop thiamine deficiency, as well."


title: Thiamine deficiency

text: In the counties of Blekinge and Skåne (southernmost Sweden), mass deaths of several bird species, especially the European herring gull, have been observed since the early 2000s. More recently, species of other classes seems to be affected. High mortality of salmon ("Salmo salar") in the river Mörrumsån is reported, and mammals such as the Eurasian elk ("Alces alces") have died in unusually high numbers. Lack of thiamine is the common denominator where analysis is done. In April 2012, the County Administrative Board of Blekinge found the situation so alarming that they asked the Swedish government to set up a closer investigation.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: St Michael's Mount (, meaning "hoar rock in woodland") is a tidal island in Mount's Bay, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The island is a civil parish and is linked to the town of Marazion by a causeway of granite setts, passable between mid-tide and low water. It is managed by the National Trust, and the castle and chapel have been the home of the St Aubyn family since approximately 1650.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Historically, St Michael's Mount was a Cornish counterpart of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, with which it shares the same tidal island characteristics and a similar conical shape, though Mont-Saint-Michel is much taller.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: St Michael's Mount is one of 43 unbridged tidal islands that one can walk to from mainland Britain. Part of the island was designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1995 for its geology.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Its Cornish language name—literally, "the grey rock in a wood"—may represent a folk memory of a time before Mount's Bay was flooded, indicating a description of the mount set in woodland. Remains of trees have been seen at low tides following storms on the beach at Perranuthnoe.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: There is evidence of people living in the area during the Neolithic (from circa 4000 to 2500 BC years). The key discovery was of a leaf-shaped flint arrowhead, which was found within a shallow pit on the lower eastern slope, now part of the modern gardens. Other pieces of flint have been found, and at least two could be Mesolithic (circa 8000 to 3500 BC). During the Mesolithic, Britain was still attached to mainland Europe via Doggerland, and archaeologist and prehistorian Caroline Malone noted that during the Late Mesolithic the British Isles were something of a "technological backwater" in European terms, still living as a hunter-gatherer society whilst most of southern Europe had already taken up agriculture and sedentary living. At this time the mount would likely have been an area of dry ground surrounded by a marshy forest. Any Neolithic or Mesolithic camps are likely to have been destroyed by the later extensive building operations, but it is reasonable to expect the mount to have supported either a seasonal or short-term camp for Mesolithic people.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: None of the flints, so far recovered, can be positively dated to the Bronze Age (c. 2500 to 800 BC), although any summit cairns would have most likely been destroyed when building the castle. Radiocarbon dating established the submerging of the hazel wood at about 1700 BC. A hoard of copper weapons, once thought to have been found on the mount, are now thought to have been found on nearby Marazion Marsh. Defensive stony banks on the north-eastern slopes are likely to date to the early 1st millennium BC, and are considered to be a cliff castle. The mount is one of several candidates for the island of Ictis, described as a tin trading centre in the "Bibliotheca historica" of the Sicilian-Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BC.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: St Michael's Mount may have been the site of a monastery from the 8th to the early 11th centuries. Edward the Confessor gave the site to the Benedictine order of Mont-Saint-Michel and it was a priory of that abbey until the dissolution of the alien houses as a side-effect of the by Henry V. Subsequently, it ceased to be a priory, but was reduced to being a secular chapel which was given to the Abbess and Convent of Syon at Isleworth, Middlesex, in 1424. Thus ended its association with Mont-Saint-Michel, and any connection with Looe Island (dedicated to the Archangel Michael). It was a destination for pilgrims, whose devotions were encouraged by an indulgence granted by Pope Gregory in the 11th century. The earliest buildings on the summit, including a castle, date to the 12th century.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Sir Henry de la Pomeroy captured the Mount in 1193, on behalf of Prince John, in the reign of King Richard I, the leader of the previous occupants having 'died of fright' upon learning rumours of Richard's release from captivity. The monastic buildings were built during the 12th century. Various sources state that the earthquake of 1275 destroyed the original Priory Church, although this may be a misunderstanding of the term "St Michael's on the Mount" which referred to the church of St Michael atop Glastonbury Tor. Syon Abbey, a monastery of the Bridgettine Order, acquired the Mount in 1424. Some 20 years later the Mount was granted by Henry VI to King's College, Cambridge on its foundation. However, when Edward IV took the throne during the Wars of the Roses the Mount was returned to the Syon Abbey in 1462.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, seized and held it during a siege of 23 weeks against 6,000 of Edward IV's troops in 1473–74. Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the English throne, occupied the Mount in 1497. Sir Humphrey Arundell, Governor of St Michael's Mount, led the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it was given to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, by whose son it was sold to Sir Francis Bassett. During the Civil War, Sir Arthur Bassett, brother of Sir Francis, held the Mount against the Parliament until July 1646.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The Mount was sold in 1659 to Colonel John St Aubyn. his descendants, the Lords St Levan, remain seated at St Michael's Mount.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Little is known about the village before the beginning of the 18th century, save that there were a few fishermen's cottages and monastic cottages. After improvements to the harbour in 1727, St Michael's Mount became a flourishing seaport.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: In 1755 the Lisbon earthquake caused a tsunami to strike the Cornish coast over away. The sea rose in 10 minutes at St Michael's Mount, ebbed at the same rate, and continued to rise and fall for five hours. The 19th-century French writer Arnold Boscowitz claimed that "great loss of life and property occurred upon the coasts of Cornwall."


title: St Michael's Mount

text: By 1811, there were 53 houses and four streets. The pier was extended in 1821 and the population peaked in the same year, when the island had 221 people. There were three schools, a Wesleyan chapel, and three public houses, mostly used by visiting sailors. Following major improvements to nearby Penzance harbour, and the extension of the railway to Penzance in 1852, the village went into decline, and many of the houses and other buildings were demolished.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: During the 18th and 19th centuries, the structure of the castle was romanticised. In the late 19th century, the remains of an anchorite were discovered in a tomb within the domestic chapel.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: A short, underground narrow gauge railway was constructed in about 1900. It was used to bring goods up to the castle and take away rubbish. In 2018, the tramway was reported as being "still in regular use, perhaps not every day", and is not open to the general public, although a small stretch is visible at the harbour. It is Britain's last functionally operational railway.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Some sources, including in the British industrial narrow gauge railways, a list of track gauges and, in 2018, on an information board near the line, suggest a different gauge of while "The Railway Magazine" says it has a gauge of .


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The Mount was fortified in World War II, during the invasion crisis of 1940–41. Three pillboxes can be seen to this day.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Sixty-five years after the Second World War, it was suggested based on interviews with contemporaries that the former Nazi Foreign Minister and one-time ambassador to London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, had intended to live at the mount after the planned German conquest. Archived documents revealed that during his time in Britain in the 1930s, when he had proposed an alliance with Nazi Germany, von Ribbentrop frequently visited Cornwall.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: In 1954, Francis Cecil St Aubyn, 3rd Baron St Levan, gave most of St Michael's Mount to the National Trust, together with a large endowment fund. The St Aubyn family retained a 999-year lease to inhabit the castle and a licence to manage the public viewing of its historic rooms. This is managed in conjunction with the National Trust.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The chapel of St Michael, a 15th-century building, has an embattled tower, one angle of which is a small turret, which served for the guidance of ships. The chapel is extra-diocesan and continues to serve the Order of St John by permission of Lord St Levan. Chapel Rock, on the beach, marks the site of a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, where pilgrims paused to worship before ascending the mount. Many antiquities, comprising plate armour, paintings and furniture, are preserved at the castle. Several houses are built on the hillside facing Marazion, and a spring provides a natural flow of water. There is a row of eight houses at the back of the present village; built in 1885 they are known as Elizabeth Terrace. Some of the houses are occupied by staff working in the castle and elsewhere on the island. The mount's cemetery (currently no public access) contains the graves of former residents of the island and several drowned sailors. There are also buildings that were formerly the steward's house, a changing-room for bathers, the stables, the laundry, a barge house, a sail loft (now a restaurant), and two former inns. A former bowling green adjoins one of the buildings. The population of this parish in 2011 was 35.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The harbour, enlarged in 1823 to accommodate vessels of up to 500 tonnes deadweight, has a pier dating back to the 15th century which has also been renovated. Queen Victoria disembarked from the royal yacht at St Michael's Mount in 1846, and a brass inlay of her footstep can be seen at the top of the landing stage. King Edward VII's footstep is also visible near the bowling green. In 1967 the Queen Mother entered the harbour in a pinnace from the royal yacht Britannia.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Another noteworthy point of interest on the island is its underground railway, which is still used to transport goods from the harbour up to the castle. It was built by miners around 1900, replacing the pack horses which had previously been used. Its steep gradient renders it unsafe for passenger use; thus, the National Trust has made it out-of-bounds for public access.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The causeway between the mount and Marazion was improved in 1879 by raising it by with sand and stones from the surrounding area. Repairs were completed in March 2016 following damage from the 2014 winter storms. Some studies indicate that any rise in ocean waters as well as existing natural erosion would put some of the Cornwall coast at risk, including St. Michael's Mount.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Until recent times, both the mount and the town of Marazion formed part of the parish of St Hilary. St Michael's Mount forms its own civil parish for local government purposes. Currently, this takes the form of a parish meeting as opposed to a parish council (that is, a yearly meeting of electors that does not elect councillors). Lord St Levan currently chairs the St Michael's Mount parish meeting.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The rock exposures around St Michael's Mount provide an opportunity to see many features of the geology of Cornwall in a single locality. The mount is made of the uppermost part of a granite intrusion into metamorphosed Devonian mudstones or pelites. The granite is itself mineralised with a well-developed sheeted greisen vein system. Due to its geology the island's seaward has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1995.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: There are two types of granite visible on the mount. Most of the intrusion is a tourmaline muscovite granite which is variably porphyritic. This is separated from a biotite muscovite granite by pegmatites.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Originally laid down as mudstones these pelites were regionally metamorphosed and deformed (mainly folded here) by the Variscan orogeny. They were then affected by the intrusion of the granite, which caused further contact metamorphism, locally forming a hornfels, and mineralisation.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The best developed mineralisation is found within the uppermost part of the granite itself in the form of sheeted greisen veins. These steep W-E trending veins are thought to have formed by hydraulic fracturing when the fluid pressure at the top of the granite reached a critical level. The granite was fractured and the fluids altered the granite by replacing feldspars with quartz and muscovite. The fluids were also rich in boron, tin and tungsten, and tourmaline, wolframite and cassiterite are common in the greisen veins. As the area cooled the veins became open to fluids from the surrounding country rock and these deposited sulphides, e.g. chalcopyrite and stannite. Greisen veins are also locally developed within the pelites.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: In prehistoric times, St Michael's Mount may have been a port for the tin trade, and Gavin de Beer made a case for it to be identified with the "tin port" Ictis/Ictin mentioned by Posidonius.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: There are popular claims of a tradition that the Archangel Michael appeared before local fishermen on the mount in the 5th century AD. But in fact this is a modern myth. The earliest appearance of it is in a version by John Mirk, copying details of the medieval legend for Mont-Saint-Michel from the Golden Legend. The folk-story was examined and found to be based on a 15th-century misunderstanding by Max Muller.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The chronicler John of Worcester relates under the year 1099 that St Michael's Mount was located five or six miles (10 km) from the sea, enclosed in a thick wood, but that on the third day of November the sea overflowed the land, destroying many towns and drowning many people as well as innumerable oxen and sheep; the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" records under the date 11 November 1099, "The sea-flood sprung up to such a height, and did so much harm, as no man remembered that it ever did before". The Cornish legend of Lyonesse, an ancient kingdom said to have extended from Penwith toward the Isles of Scilly, also talks of land being inundated by the sea.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: One of the earliest references to the mount (originally named "Dynsol" or "Dinsul"), was in the mid 11th century when it was "Sanctus Michael beside the sea".


title: St Michael's Mount

text: In the 1600s, John Milton used the Mount as the setting for the finale of what was once one of the most famous poems in English literature, his "Lycidas", which drew on the traditional sea-lore that had it that the archangel Michael sat in a great stone chair at the top of the Mount, seeing far over the sea and thus protecting England. In the mid-1850s the poem's scenes of the drowning of Lycidas, in the seas below the Mount, were illustrated in engravings and paintings by J. M. W. Turner. The poem drew together various traditions from the Bible, classical mythology and local folklore to offer an elegy for the pagan world that had faded away.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: During the 6th century, before a castle was built, according to legend, the island St. Michael's Mount sits upon was once home to an 18-foot giant named Cormoran, who lived in a cave with his ill-gotten treasures obtained by terrorizing local towns and villages. That is, until a young farmer's son named Jack took on this gigantic menace, who had an appetite for cattle and children, and killed him by trapping him in a concealed pit, bringing down his axe upon his head. When he returned home, the elders in the village gave him a hero's welcome, and henceforth, called him "Jack the Giant Killer".


title: St Michael's Mount

text: The mount has featured in a number of films, including the 1979 film "Dracula", where it was prominently featured as the exterior of Castle Dracula. It appeared in the 1983 James Bond film "Never Say Never Again", as two guided missiles armed with nuclear warheads fly over the English countryside and out to sea, passing directly over St Michael's Mount. In the 2003 film "Johnny English" it was used as the exterior of the character Pascal Sauvage's French chateau, in 2012 it was a filming location for the fantasy adventure movie "Mariah Mundi and the Midas Box", and in 2021 it was used for the "Game of Thrones" prequel series "House of the Dragon".


title: St Michael's Mount

text: "Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount" is the title of an experimental electronic track by musician Aphex Twin, who grew up in Cornwall, and in Michael Moorcock's series of Fantasy novels about Prince Corum, a fictionalised version of St Michael's Mount appears as Moidel's Mount.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: It was one of the locations used on BBC One "Balloon" Idents which were used on the channel from 4 October 1997 to 29 March 2002.


title: St Michael's Mount

text: Under its Cornish name of Karrek Loos yn Koos, the island appears prominently in Giles Kristian's 2018 historical fiction novel "Lancelot".


title: St Michael's Mount

text: St. Michael's Mount is the setting for "The Secrets of Winter," a murder mystery written by Nicola Upson featuring the detectives Archie Penrose and Upson's fictionalized version of the author Josephine Tey, published in 2020.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Martha Ellis Gellhorn (8 November 1908 – 15 February 1998) was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Gellhorn reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career. She was also the third wife of American novelist Ernest Hemingway, from 1940 to 1945. She died in 1998 by apparent suicide at the age of 89, ill and almost completely blind. The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is named after her.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Gellhorn was born on 8 November 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Edna Fischel Gellhorn, a suffragist, and George Gellhorn, a German-born gynecologist. Her father and maternal grandfather were Jewish, and her maternal grandmother came from a Protestant family. Her brother Walter became a noted law professor at Columbia University, and her younger brother Alfred was an oncologist and dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: At age 7, Gellhorn participated in "The Golden Lane," a rally for women's suffrage at the Democratic Party's 1916 national convention in St. Louis. Women carrying yellow parasols and wearing yellow sashes lined both sides of a main street leading to the St. Louis Coliseum. A tableau of the states was in front of the Art Museum; states that had not enfranchised women were draped in black. Gellhorn and another girl, Mary Taussig, stood in front of the line, representing future voters.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: In 1926, Gellhorn graduated from John Burroughs School in St. Louis, and enrolled in Bryn Mawr College, several miles outside Philadelphia. The following year, she left without having graduated to pursue a career as a journalist. Her first published articles appeared in "The New Republic". In 1930, determined to become a foreign correspondent, she went to France for two years, where she worked at the United Press bureau in Paris, but was fired after she reported sexual harassment by a man connected with the agency. She spent years traveling Europe, writing for newspapers in Paris and St. Louis and covering fashion for "Vogue". She became active in the pacifist movement, and wrote about her experiences in her 1934 book "What Mad Pursuit".


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Returning to the United States in 1932, Gellhorn was hired by Harry Hopkins, whom she had met through her friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The Roosevelts invited Gellhorn to live at the White House, and she spent evenings there helping Eleanor Roosevelt write correspondence and the first lady’s “My Day” column in "Women's Home Companion". She was hired as a field investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), created by Franklin D. Roosevelt to help end the Great Depression. Gellhorn traveled around the United States for FERA to report on how the Depression was affecting the country. She first went to Gastonia, North Carolina. Later, she worked with Dorothea Lange, a photographer, to document the everyday lives of the hungry and homeless. Their reports became part of the official government files for the Great Depression. They were able to investigate topics that were not usually open to women of the 1930s. She drew on her research to write a collection of short stories, "The Trouble I've Seen" (1936). In Idaho doing FERA work, Gellhorn convinced a group of workers to break the windows of the FERA office to draw attention to their crooked boss. Although this worked, she was fired from FERA.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Gellhorn met Ernest Hemingway during a 1936 Christmas family trip to Key West, Florida. Gellhorn had been hired to report for "Collier's Weekly" on the Spanish Civil War, and the pair decided to travel to Spain together. They celebrated Christmas of 1937 in Barcelona. In Germany, she reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler; in the spring of 1938, months before the Munich Agreement, she was in Czechoslovakia. After the outbreak of World War II, she described these events in the novel "A Stricken Field" (1940). She later reported the war from Finland, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, and England.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: In June 1944, Gellhorn applied to the British government for press accreditation to report on the Normandy landings; her application, like those of all female journalists, was denied. Lacking official press credentials, she posed as a nurse and was allowed onto a hospital ship where she promptly locked herself in a bathroom. Upon landing two days later she saw the many wounded and became a stretcher-bearer. Later she recalled, "I followed the war wherever I could reach it." She was the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day on 6 June 1944.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: She was among the first journalists to report from Dachau concentration camp after it was liberated by U.S. troops on 29 April 1945.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Gellhorn and Hemingway lived together off and on for four years, before marrying in November 1940. (Hemingway had ostensibly lived with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, until 1939). Increasingly resentful of Gellhorn's long absences during her reporting assignments, Hemingway wrote to her when she left their Finca Vigía estate near Havana in 1943 to cover the Italian Front: "Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?" Hemingway, however, would later go to the front just before the Normandy landings, and Gellhorn also went, with Hemingway trying to block her travel. When she arrived by means of a dangerous ocean voyage in war-torn London (he had landed there eleven days before her, via an RAF flight on which she had arranged a seat for him), she told him she had had enough. She had found, as had his other wives, that, as described by Bernice Kert in "The Hemingway Women": "Hemingway could never sustain a long-lived, wholly satisfying relationship with any one of his four wives. Married domesticity may have seemed to him the desirable culmination of romantic love, but sooner or later he became bored and restless, critical and bullying." After four contentious years of marriage, they divorced in 1945.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: The 2012 film "Hemingway & Gellhorn" is based on these years. The 2011 documentary film "No Job for a Woman: The Women Who Fought to Report WWII" features Gellhorn and how she changed war reporting.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: After the war, Gellhorn worked for the "Atlantic Monthly", covering the Vietnam War and the Arab-Israel conflicts in the 1960s and 70s. She passed her 70th birthday in 1979 but continued working in the following decade, covering the civil wars in Central America. As she approached 80, Gellhorn began to slow down physically and although she still managed to cover the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, she finally retired from journalism as the 1990s began. An operation for cataracts was unsuccessful and left her with permanently impaired vision. Gellhorn announced that she was "too old" to cover the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s. She did manage one last overseas trip to Brazil in 1995 to report on poverty in that country, which was published in the literary journal "Granta". This last feat was accomplished with great difficulty as Gellhorn's eyesight was failing, and she could not read her own manuscripts.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Gellhorn's books include a collection of articles on war, "The Face of War" (1959); "The Lowest Trees Have Tops" (1967), a novel about McCarthyism; an account of her travels (including one trip with Hemingway), "Travels with Myself and Another" (1978); and a collection of her peacetime journalism, "The View from the Ground" (1988).


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Peripatetic by nature, Gellhorn reckoned that in a 40-year span of her life, she had created homes in 19 locales.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Gellhorn's first major affair was with the French economist Bertrand de Jouvenel. It began in 1930, when she was 22 years old, and lasted until 1934. She would have married de Jouvenel if his wife had consented to a divorce.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: She met Ernest Hemingway in Key West, Florida, in 1936. They married in 1940. Gellhorn resented her reflected fame as Hemingway's third wife, remarking that she had no intention of "being a footnote in someone else's life." As a condition for granting interviews, she was known to insist that Hemingway's name not be mentioned. As she put it once, "I've been a writer for over 40 years. I was a writer before I met him and I was a writer after I left him. Why should I be merely a footnote in his life?"


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: While married to Hemingway, Gellhorn had an affair with U.S. paratrooper Major General James M. Gavin, commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division. Gavin was the youngest divisional commander in the U.S. Army in World War II.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Between marriages after divorcing Hemingway in 1945, Gellhorn had romantic liaisons with "L," Laurance Rockefeller, an American businessman (1945); journalist William Walton (1947) (no relation to the British composer); and medical doctor David Gurewitsch (1950). In 1954, she married the former managing editor of "Time Magazine", T. S. Matthews. She and Matthews divorced in 1963. She stayed in London for some time before moving to Kenya and then to Kilgwrrwg near Devauden in Gwent, South Wales, She was very taken by the niceness of the Welsh people and lived there from 1980 to 1994 before finally returning to London because of her ill-health.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: In 1949, Gellhorn adopted a boy, Sandro, from an Italian orphanage. He was formally renamed George Alexander Gellhorn, and widely called Sandy. Gellhorn was reportedly a devoted mother for a time but was not by nature maternal. She left Sandy in the care of relatives in Englewood, New Jersey, for long periods as she travelled, and he eventually attended boarding school. Their relationship was said to have become embittered.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Gellhorn and the writer Sybille Bedford met in Rome in 1949 and developed a strong platonic friendship. It long survived volatility on both sides and entailed much moral, creative and financial support for her friend on Gellhorn's part until she ended the friendship in the early 1980s.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: If I practised sex out of moral conviction, that was one thing; but to enjoy it ... seemed a defeat. I accompanied men and was accompanied in action, in the extrovert part of life; I plunged into that ... but not sex; that seemed to be their delight, and all I got was a pleasure of being wanted, I suppose, and the tenderness (not nearly enough) that a man gives when he is satisfied. I daresay I was the worst bed partner in five continents.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: On her relationship with Hemingway, she said "My whole memory of sex with Ernest is the invention of excuses, and failing that, the hope that it would soon be over."


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: However, the legacy of Gellhorn's personal life remains shrouded in controversy. Supporters of Gellhorn say her unauthorized biographer, Carl Rollyson, is guilty of "sexual scandal-mongering and cod psychology." Several of her prominent close friends (among them the actress Betsy Drake, journalist John Pilger, writer James Fox, and Martha's younger brother Alfred) have dismissed the characterizations of her as sexually manipulative and maternally deficient. Her supporters include her stepson, Sandy Matthews, who describes Gellhorn as "very conscientious" in her role as stepmother; and Jack Hemingway once said that Gellhorn, his father's third wife, was his "favorite other mother."


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: In her last years, Gellhorn was in frail health, nearly blind and suffering from ovarian cancer that had spread to her liver. On 15 February 1998, she died from suicide in London apparently by swallowing a cyanide capsule.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: In 2019, a blue English Heritage plaque was unveiled at Gellhorn's former London home, the first to feature the dedication of "war correspondent".


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: In 2021 a Purple Plaque was placed on the cottage she lived in near Kilgwrrwg, as part of a national scheme to commemorate remarkable women.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: On 5 October 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that it would honor five 20th-century journalists with first-class rate postage stamps, to be issued on 22 April 2008: Martha Gellhorn; John Hersey; George Polk; Ruben Salazar; and Eric Sevareid. Postmaster General Jack Potter announced the stamp series at the Associated Press Managing Editors Meeting in Washington, D.C.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: In 2011, Gellhorn was the subject of an hour-long episode of the World Media Rights series "Extraordinary Women", which airs on the BBC, and periodically in the United States on PBS.


title: Martha Gellhorn

text: Martha Gellhorn's relationship with Ernest Hemingway is the subject of Paula McLain's 2018 novel, "Love and Ruin". In April 2021, "Hemingway", a three-episode, six-hour documentary recapitulation of Hemingway's life, labors, and loves, debuted on the Public Broadcasting System. It was co-produced and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. It contains considerable footage and photographs of Gellhorn, who is voiced by Meryl Streep, and recollections of those who knew her and her life with Hemingway first-hand.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Dermot John Morgan (31 March 1952 – 28 February 1998) was an Irish comedian and actor, best known for his role as Father Ted Crilly in the Channel 4 sitcom "Father Ted".


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan was born in Dublin, the son of Hilda "Holly" (née Stokes) and artist and sculptor Donnchadh Morgan. His father died young of an aneurysm, leaving Holly with four children: Dermot, Paul, Denise, and Ruth, the last of whom died in childhood. Morgan was educated at Oatlands College in Stillorgan and University College Dublin (UCD), where he studied English literature and philosophy. During his time there, he honed his comic skills; he also fronted a country and Irish band named Big Gom and the Imbeciles, a kind of 'tribute' act to Big Tom and The Mainliners, a major Irish band of the era. After graduation, he worked as an English teacher at St Michael's College in Ailesbury Road, then became a full-time performer.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan made his debut in the media on the Morning Ireland radio show produced by Gene Martin, whose sister Ella was the mother of one of Morgan's friends. It was through this contact that Morgan made the break into radio and eventually television.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan came to prominence as part of the team behind the highly successful RTÉ television show "The Live Mike", presented by Mike Murphy. Between 1979 and 1982 Morgan played a range of comic characters who appeared between segments of the show. Morgan lampooned the rampant Modernism within the Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church in Ireland by creating Father Trendy, a wishy-washy, trying-to-be-cool hippie-priest (modelled after Father Brian D'Arcy). Father Trendy always wore an Elvis-style haircut and sometimes a leather jacket. He was also given to drawing ludicrous parallels between religious life and secular hobbies in two-minute 'sermons' to the camera. Morgan's other characters included a bigoted GAA member who waved his hurley around while verbally attacking his pet hates.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan also lampooned both the Wolfe Tones and the clichés of Irish rebel songs, which he said: "always have lots of blood and guts and thunder in them". He then sang a rebel song of his own, a parody of Thomas Osborne Davis' song "A Nation Once Again", about the martyrdom of Fido, a dog who saves his IRA master by eating a hand grenade during a search of the house by the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence. When the dog farts and the grenade detonates, the Black and Tans comment that "It must have been something he ate." The song climaxed with the words: "I hope that I shall live to see Fido an Alsatian once again."


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan released a comedy single, "Thank You Very Very Much, Mr. Eastwood", in December 1985. It was a take on the fawning praise that internationally successful Irish boxer Barry McGuigan gave his manager, Barney Eastwood, at the end of successive bouts. The single 'featured' lines by McGuigan, Ronald Reagan, Bob Geldof and Pope John Paul II, and was the Christmas number one in the Irish singles chart in 1985.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan's biggest Irish broadcasting success occurred in the late 1980s on the Saturday morning radio comedy show "Scrap Saturday", in which Morgan, co-scriptwriter Gerard Stembridge, Owen Roe and Pauline McLynn mocked Ireland's political, business and media establishment. The show's treatment of the relationship between the ever-controversial Taoiseach Charles Haughey and his press secretary PJ Mara proved particularly popular, with Haughey's dismissive attitude towards Mara and the latter's adoring and grovelling attitude towards his boss winning critical praise.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan pilloried Haughey's propensity for claiming a family connection to almost every part of Ireland he visited by referring to a famous advertisement for Harp beer, which played on the image of someone returning home and seeking friends.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: The Haughey/Mara "double act" became the star turn in a series that mocked both sides of the political divide, from Haughey and his advisors to opposition Fine Gael TD Michael Noonan as Limerick disk jockey "Morning Noon'an Night". When RTÉ axed the show in the early 1990s a national outcry ensued. Morgan lashed the decision, calling it "a shameless act of broadcasting cowardice and political subservience". An RTÉ spokesman said: "The show is not being axed. It's just not being continued!"


title: Dermot Morgan

text: In 1991, Morgan received a Jacob's Award for his contribution to "Scrap Saturday" from the Irish national newspaper radio critics.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Already a celebrity in Ireland, Morgan got his big break in Britain with Channel 4's Irish sitcom "Father Ted", which ran for three series from 1995 to 1998. Writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews auditioned many actors for the title role, but Morgan's enthusiasm won him the part. "Father Ted" focuses on the misadventures of three morally dubious Irish Catholic priests, whose transgressions have caused them to be exiled to the fictional Craggy Island, off the coast of County Galway.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: In 1996, "Father Ted" won a BAFTA award for Best Comedy. The same year Morgan also won a British Comedy Award for Top TV Comedy Actor, and McLynn was awarded Top TV Comedy Actress. In 1999, "Father Ted" won a second BAFTA for Best Comedy, with Morgan being awarded Best Comedy Performance posthumously.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan said in an interview with Gay Byrne on "The Late Late Show" in 1996 that he was writing a screenplay entitled "Miracle of the Magyars", based on a real-life incident in the 1950s when the Archbishop of Dublin forbade Catholics from attending a football match between the Republic of Ireland and Yugoslavia on religious and spiritual grounds. Yugoslavia won the match 4–1. Morgan planned to use Hungary as the opposing side to the Republic of Ireland – hence the title. At the time of his death in 1998, he had completed the screenplay but the film never was made.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan's first project after "Father Ted" was to be "Re-united", a sitcom about two retired footballers sharing a flat in London. According to former manager John Fischer, Morgan was writing the script for the programme and planned to take the part of "an Eamon Dunphy-type who had gone on to work in journalism, but had ended up living with an old football pal". Mel Smith was in talks for the role of the friend.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan was married to Susanne Garmatz, a German woman, with whom he had two sons. He later began a relationship with Fiona Clarke, with whom he had another son.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Although he had been raised as a Catholic and had briefly considered becoming a priest during childhood, Morgan became an atheist in his later life, and he was critical of the Catholic Church. He supported Irish football club UCD FC and English football club Chelsea FC.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Before location filming on the third and final series of "Father Ted", Morgan underwent a mandatory medical examination in which he was found to have high blood pressure, and was prescribed medication. One day after recording the series' final episode, Morgan suffered a heart attack while hosting a dinner party at his home in London's Hounslow area, at which the Scottish musician Jim Diamond was present. He was rushed to hospital, but died soon afterward. He was 45 years old.


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Morgan's sister Denise said "He wasn't feeling great at the end of the meal and I went to the bedroom with him. He had a heart attack, and I didn't recognise it. From my limited training in first aid, I wasn't sure exactly what was happening. The symptoms didn't match what the books said. I said to him 'I think you are okay' and we went back to the table. He apologised for having left the room and the next thing he just collapsed. We tried to resuscitate him but it didn't work." "Father Ted" co-star Frank Kelly said "Dermot's mind was mercurial. I think he was a kind of comedic meteor. He burned himself out."


title: Dermot Morgan

text: Despite Morgan's atheism, a Catholic requiem mass was offered for him at St Therese's Church in the South Dublin suburb of Mount Merrion. The mass was attended by Irish President Mary McAleese, her predecessor Mary Robinson, and many of the Irish political and religious leaders who had been the targets of his satire in "Scrap Saturday". His body was cremated at Glasnevin Cemetery, and his ashes were buried in the family plot at Deans Grange Cemetery.


title: Equerry

text: An equerry (; from French 'stable', and related to 'squire') is an officer of honour. Historically, it was a senior attendant with responsibilities for the horses of a person of rank. In contemporary use, it is a personal attendant, usually upon a sovereign, a member of a royal family, or a national representative. The role is equivalent to an aide-de-camp, but the term is now prevalent only in the Commonwealth of Nations.


title: Equerry

text: Australian equerries are commissioned officers in the Australian Defence Force, appointed on an "ad hoc" basis to the King of Australia, Governor General, state governors or to visiting foreign heads of state.


title: Equerry

text: Canadian equerries are drawn from the commissioned officers of the Canadian Armed Forces, and are most frequently appointed to serve visiting members of the Canadian Royal Family. The equerry appointed for the King of Canada is a senior officer, typically a major or a lieutenant-commander, while the equerry appointed for a child of the monarch is a junior officer, typically a captain or naval lieutenant.


title: Equerry

text: Canadian equerries are also sometimes appointed to serve national representatives of the country. Colonel the Hon Henry Jackman of The Governor General's Horse Guards, Canada's Household Cavalry regiment, is the equerry to Akaash Maharaj, in the latter's role as head of UNICEF Team Canada.


title: Equerry

text: New Zealand equerries are appointed to serve the King of New Zealand only for the duration of a royal visit to the country, and are always drawn from the officers of the New Zealand Defence Force, typically captains, flight lieutenants, and navy lieutenants.


title: Equerry

text: Squadron Leader Leanne Woon of the Operational Support Squadron, part of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, was the equerry to the Queen of New Zealand during the most recent royal visit in 2002. She is the only woman to serve as an equerry to the monarch anywhere in the Commonwealth. Captain Sam Stevenson of the New Zealand Army served as equerry to the Duke of Cambridge during his 2005 visit to New Zealand. Squadron Leader Marcel 'Shagga' Scott of the Royal New Zealand Air Force served as equerry to HRH Prince Charles in November 2012. Squadron Leader Tim Costley of the Royal New Zealand Air Force served as equerry to the Duke of Cambridge during the 2014 Royal visit to New Zealand by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George.


title: Equerry

text: In the UK equerries are appointed by working members of the Royal family and are drawn from senior officers of the British Armed Forces. The role involves being in regular close attendance both within the royal residence and outside on public engagements.


title: Equerry

text: The Royal Household also includes a number of "extra equerries" – honorary appointees drawn from among the current and retired senior officers of the Royal Household. They are comparatively rarely required for duty, but their attendance can be called upon if needed.


title: Equerry

text: Equerries, Temporary Equerries and Extra Equerries are entitled to wear aiguillettes as part of their uniform, and to wear the appropriate royal cypher below their badges of rank on the shoulder board (or equivalent). Army officers serving as equerries or extra equerries may wear a distinctive cocked hat (with red and white upright feathers) when on duty in full dress uniform.


title: Equerry

text: At the time of his accession to the throne, the household of Charles III included at least two equerries.


title: Equerry

text: Other working members of the Royal Family can also appoint Equerries; in the case of more junior members the appointment might be combined with another post. Like the monarch, they may also appoint Extra Equerries.


title: Equerry

text: For most of her reign Queen Elizabeth II maintained an establishment of two Equerries plus a Temporary Equerry: the senior Equerry was a permanent appointment (joined to the position of Deputy Master of the Household); whereas the junior Equerry (who routinely held office for three years) was appointed in turn from each of the three services of the British Armed Forces. The Temporary Equerry was a captain of the Coldstream Guards, who provided part-time attendance, and who (when not required for duty) was assigned to regimental or staff duties.


title: Equerry

text: On overseas tours to Commonwealth realms an equerry was often appointed from the local armed forces to serve for the duration of the tour.


title: Equerry

text: At her funeral, the late Queen's senior Equerry and junior Equerry, ten past Equerries and two Extra Equerries marched together as pallbearers (following a custom established by Queen Victoria); in this role (which is separate from that of the bearer party which carried the coffin) they walked immediately alongside the late Queen's coffin in each of the State funeral processions which took place in London and Windsor.


title: Equerry

text: Senior courtiers often continued as Extra Equerries (or could be appointed to the position) after retirement; as such, they were sometimes called upon to represent the Queen e.g. at funerals or memorial services for former colleagues.


title: Equerry

text: Other senior royals generally followed the Queen's pattern of appointing an equerry from one of the three armed services, in rotation; and of appointing a Temporary Equerry, often from a regiment with which they had personal links: e.g. the Duke of Edinburgh used to appoint a Temporary Equerry from the Grenadier Guards, the Queen Mother one from the Irish Guards, the Prince of Wales one from the Welsh Guards.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992) is a book written by American author and relationship counselor John Gray, after he had earned degrees in meditation and taken a correspondence course in psychology. The book states that most common relationship problems between men and women are a result of fundamental psychological differences between the sexes, which the author exemplifies by means of its eponymous metaphor: that men and women are from distinct planets—men from Mars and women from Venus—and that each sex is acclimated to its own planet's society and customs, but not to those of the other. One example is men's complaint that if they offer solutions to problems that women bring up in conversation, the women are not necessarily interested in solving those problems, but mainly want to talk about them. The book asserts each sex can be understood in terms of distinct ways they respond to stress and stressful situations.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: The book has sold more than 15 million copies and, according to a CNN report, it was the "highest ranked work of non-fiction" of the 1990s, spending 121 weeks on the bestseller list. The book and its central metaphor have become a part of popular culture and the foundation for the author's subsequent books, recordings, seminars, theme vacations, one-man Broadway show, TV sitcom, workout videos, a podcast, men's and ladies' apparel lines, fragrances, travel guides and his-and-hers salad dressings.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: Gray writes how men and women each monitor the amount of give and take in relationships. If the balance shifts, one person feeling they have given more than they have received, resentment can develop. This is a time when only communication can help to bring the relationship back into balance.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: Gray further asserts men and women view giving and receiving love differently, how individual actions intended as loving expressions are "tallied up." According to Gray, women and men are often surprised to find their partners "keep score" at all, or that their scoring methods widely differ.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: He says women use a points system which few men are aware of. Each individual act of love gets one point, regardless of magnitude. Men, on the other hand, assign small acts, small expenditures, fewer points. Larger blocks of points (20, 30, 40 points, etc.) go to what they consider bigger expenditures. To a woman, the emotional stroke delivered by sincere attention is inseparable from the act. The different perception of expenditure can lead to conflict when the man thinks his work has earned him, say, 20 points and deserves corresponding recognition, while the woman has assigned him only 1 point and recognizes him accordingly. The man tends to think he can do one Big Thing for her (scoring 50 points) and not do much else, assuming he has "banked" points and can afford to "coast." The woman should be satisfied with his performance and give him credit for it. Instead, the woman would rather have many little things done for her on a regular basis, because women like to think their men are thinking of them and care for them more constantly. Gray clarifies how these two perceptions of "strokes" cause conflict. He encourages talking about these issues openly.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: Another major idea put forth in Gray's book regards the difference in the way the genders react to stress. Gray states that when male tolerance to stressful situations is exceeded, they withdraw temporarily, "retreating into their cave", so to speak. Often, they literally retreat: for example, to the garage, or to go spend time with friends. In their "caves", Gray writes, men are not necessarily focused on the problem at hand. Yet this "time-out" lets them distance themselves from the problem and relax, allowing them to re-examine the problem later from a fresh perspective.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: Gray holds that male retreat into the cave has historically been hard for women to understand. When women become unduly stressed, their natural reaction is to talk with someone close about it (even if talking doesn't provide a solution to the problem at hand). This sets up a natural dynamic where the man retreats as the woman tries to get closer, which becomes a major source of conflict between them.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: The "wave" is a term Gray uses to describe a natural dynamic centered around a woman's ability to give to other people. He writes when she feels full of love and energy to give to others, her wave is stable. When she gives of herself, but doesn't receive adequate love and attention in return, her wave becomes unbalanced, cresting and eventually crashing. Then, a woman needs the attention, listening, understanding, and reassurance of those around her—as well as self-love. Gray explains that once she is rejuvenated by getting the support she needs, her wave is able to build and rise once again, with renewed love and energy to give. Men, advises Gray, should support this natural cycle by not being threatened by it or telling her why she should not feel the way a woman feels.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: The book has sold more than 15 million copies and, according to a CNN report, it was the "highest ranked work of non-fiction" of the 1990s.


title: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

text: The book has become a “popular paradigm” for problems in relationships based on the different tendencies in each gender and has spawned infomercials, audiotapes and videotapes, weekend seminars, theme vacations, a one-man Broadway show, a TV sitcom, and a proposed movie topic with 20th Century Fox. The book has been turned into a successful stage show in France in 2006, where it has been running for six years in Paris. There is currently an English version on tour in the UK.