title: Subutai

text: Though unknown to the west for many centuries, Subutai's exploits were featured by the British military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart in his book "Great Captains Unveiled" after World War I. Liddell Hart used the example of the Mongols under Genghis and Subutai to demonstrate how a mechanized army could fight using the principles of mobility, dispersion and surprise. Due to his innovative battle tactics and novelty in strategy he is a source of inspiration for later generals. In particular, Erwin Rommel and George Patton were avid students of Mongol campaigns.


title: Subutai

text: Russia derived the most use out of a careful study of the Mongol campaigns. Their closer proximity to the steppe gave them greater interest and access to the Mongolian campaigns, first analyzed by the Russian General Mikhail Ivanin in the 19th century, which became a recommended text in the Russian military academies up until the mid 20th century. Ivanin's work became used in the Deep Battle doctrine developed by Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Mikhail Frunze, and G. S. Isserson. Deep Battle doctrine bore a heavy resemblance to Mongol strategic methods, substituting tanks, motorized troop carriers, artillery, and airplanes for Mongol horse archers, lancers, and field artillery. The Red Army even went so far as to copy Subutai's use of smokescreens on the battlefield to cover troop movements. Later in the 20th century, American military theorist John Boyd and some of his followers used Genghis Khan and Subutai's campaigns as examples of maneuver warfare.


title: Calendar of saints

text: The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does not mean "a large meal, typically a celebratory one", but instead "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint".


title: Calendar of saints

text: The system arose from the early Christian custom of commemorating each martyr annually on the date of their death, or birth into heaven, a date therefore referred to in Latin as the martyr's "dies natalis" ('day of birth'). In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a calendar of saints is called a "Menologion". "Menologion" may also mean a set of icons on which saints are depicted in the order of the dates of their feasts, often made in two panels.


title: Calendar of saints

text: As the number of recognized saints increased during Late Antiquity and the first half of the Middle Ages, eventually every day of the year had at least one saint who was commemorated on that date. To deal with this increase, some saints were moved to alternate days in some traditions or completely removed, with the result that some saints have different feast days in different calendars. For example, saints Perpetua and Felicity died on 7 March, but this date was later assigned to St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing them only a commemoration (see Tridentine Calendar), so in 1908 they were moved one day earlier. When the 1969 reform of the Catholic calendar moved him to 28 January, they were moved back to 7 March (see General Roman Calendar). Both days can thus be said to be their feast day, in different traditions. The General Roman Calendar, which list those saints celebrated in the entire church, contains only a selection of the saints for each of its days. A fuller list is found in the Roman Martyrology, and some of the saints there may be celebrated locally.


title: Calendar of saints

text: The earliest feast days of saints were those of martyrs, venerated as having shown for Christ the greatest form of love, in accordance with the teaching: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." Saint Martin of Tours is said to be the first or at least one of the first non-martyrs to be venerated as a saint. The title "confessor" was used for such saints, who had confessed their faith in Christ by their lives rather than by their deaths. Martyrs are regarded as dying in the service of the Lord, and confessors are people who died natural deaths. A broader range of titles was used later, such as: Virgin, Pastor, Bishop, Monk, Priest, Founder, Abbot, Apostle, Doctor of the Church.


title: Calendar of saints

text: The Tridentine Missal has common formulæ for Masses of Martyrs, Confessors who were bishops, Doctors of the Church, Confessors who were not Bishops, Abbots, Virgins, Non-Virgins, Dedication of Churches, and Feast Days of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pope Pius XII added a common formula for Popes. The 1962 Roman Missal of Pope John XXIII omitted the common of Apostles, assigning a proper Mass to every feast day of an Apostle. The present Roman Missal has common formulas for the Dedication of Churches, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Martyrs (with special formulas for missionary martyrs and virgin martyrs), pastors (subdivided into bishops, generic pastors, founders of churches, and missionaries), Doctors of the Church, Virgins, and (generic) Saints (with special formulas for abbots, monks, nuns, religious, those noted for works of mercy, educators, and [generically] women saints).


title: Calendar of saints

text: This calendar system, when combined with major church festivals and movable and immovable feasts, constructs a very human and personalised yet often localized way of organizing the year and identifying dates. Some Christians continue the tradition of dating by saints' days: their works may appear "dated" as "The Feast of Saint Martin". Poets such as John Keats commemorate the importance of "The Eve of Saint Agnes".


title: Calendar of saints

text: As different Christian jurisdictions parted ways theologically, differing lists of saints began to develop. This happened because the same individual may be considered differently by one church; in extreme examples, one church's saint may be another church's heretic, as in the cases of Nestorius, Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria, or Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople.


title: Calendar of saints

text: In the Catholic Church feast days are ranked in accordance with their importance. In the post-Vatican II form of the Roman Rite, feast days are ranked (in descending order of importance) as solemnities, feasts or memorials (obligatory or optional). Pope John XXIII's 1960 Code of Rubrics, whose use remains authorized by the motu proprio "Summorum Pontificum", divides liturgical days into I, II, III, and IV class days. Those who use even earlier forms of the Roman Rite rank feast days as doubles (of three or four kinds), Semidoubles, and Simples. See Ranking of liturgical days in the Roman Rite.


title: Calendar of saints

text: In the Eastern Orthodox Church the ranking of feasts varies from church to church. In the Russian Orthodox Church they are: Great Feasts, middle, and minor feasts. Each portion of such feasts may also be called feasts as follows: All-Night Vigils, Polyeleos, Great Doxology, Sextuple ("sixfold", having six stichera at Vespers and six troparia at the Canon of Matins). There are also distinctions between Simple feasts and double (i.e., two simple feasts celebrated together). In Double Feasts, the order of hymns and readings for each feast are rigidly instructed in Typikon, the liturgy book.


title: Calendar of saints

text: In the Church of England, mother Church of the Anglican Communion, there are Principal Feasts and Principal Holy Days, Festivals, Lesser Festivals, and Commemorations.


title: Calendar of saints

text: Before the advent of standardized naming of tropical storms and hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin, tropical storms and hurricanes that affected the island of Puerto Rico were informally named after the Catholic saints corresponding to the feast days when the cyclones either made landfall or started to seriously affect the island. Examples are: the 1780 San Calixto hurricane (more widely known as the Great Hurricane of 1780) (the deadliest in the North Atlantic basin's recorded history; named after Pope Callixtus I (Saint Callixtus), whose feast day is October 14), the 1867 San Narciso hurricane (named after Saint Narcissus of Jerusalem, feast day October 29), the 1899 San Ciriaco hurricane (the deadliest in the island's recorded history; Saint Cyriacus, August 8), the 1928 San Felipe hurricane (the strongest in terms of measured wind speed; Saint Philip, father of Saint Eugenia of Rome, September 13), and the 1932 San Ciprian hurricane (Saint Cyprian, September 26).


title: Calendar of saints

text: This practice continued until quite some time after the United States Weather Bureau (now called the National Weather Service) started publishing and using official female human names (initially; male names were added starting in 1979 after the NWS relinquished control over naming to the World Meteorological Organization). The last two usages of this informal naming scheme in P.R. were in 1956 (Hurricane Betsy, locally nicknamed Santa Clara after Saint Clare of Assisi, feast day August 12 back then; her feast day was advanced one day in 1970) and 1960 (Hurricane Donna, nicknamed San Lorenzo after Saint Lawrence Justinian, September 5 back then; feast day now observed January 8 by Canons regular of St. Augustine).


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: Patricia Ann Priest (born August 15, 1936) is an American actress known for portraying the second Marilyn Munster on the television show "The Munsters" (1964–1966) after the original actress, Beverley Owen, left after 13 episodes.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: Priest was born and raised in Bountiful, Utah. Her father was Roy Priest and her mother, Ivy Baker Priest, was the United States Treasurer from January 28, 1953, to January 29, 1961. American paper currency printed during Ivy Baker Priest's tenure bore her signature. Priest resided in Washington, D.C., with her mother. She graduated in 1954 from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia. She is also a graduate of Marjorie Webster Junior College.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: Early in her career, Priest worked as a singer and actress on local television stations, including WTTG in Washington, D.C. In the late 1950s, she acted in stage productions, including "Bus Stop" and "The Tender Trap".


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: Priest replaced actress Beverley Owen on the television sitcom "The Munsters"; Owen departed the series after the first 13 episodes in order to get married. Marilyn's character was a running gag, as she was a beautiful blonde treated as the ugly member of a family composed of a Frankenstein's monster for an uncle, a vampire for an aunt, a vampire for a grandfather, and a werewolf for a cousin.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: In a move which angered many fans of the series, Universal Pictures decided to use starlet Debbie Watson (12 years Priest's junior) in the role of Marilyn Munster in the 1966 feature "Munster, Go Home!" (1966) instead of Priest, as Watson was under contract to the studio which had plans to make her a film star.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: After the series ended, Priest appeared on episodes of television programs such as "Bewitched", "Perry Mason", "Death Valley Days" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", in which she played Sue Ann Nivens's unappreciated younger sister.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: Priest's film roles included "Looking for Love" (1964) with Connie Francis, "Easy Come, Easy Go" (1967) with Elvis Presley, the horror film "The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant" (1971) with Bruce Dern and "Some Call It Loving" (1973) starring Zalman King.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: Priest retired from acting in the 1980s, but continues to attend some of the nostalgia conventions and "Munsters" revivals around the country.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: She had previously restored and sold homes in Idaho, where she has lived for over two decades, before retiring.


title: Pat Priest (actress)

text: In 2001, Priest was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She finished maintenance treatments at St. Luke's Mountain States Tumor Institute and was later determined to be in remission.


title: 1985 NBA draft

text: The 1985 NBA Draft took place on June 18, 1985. It was also the first NBA draft of the "lottery" era. It was also around this time where the league decreased the amount of rounds the draft spent, with the previous few years lasting up to 10 rounds total. A total of 162 players were selected over seven rounds by the league's 23 teams.


title: 1985 NBA draft

text: The New York Knicks were awarded the first overall pick by winning the first-ever NBA draft lottery, which was held in May of that year. The Knicks used it on Georgetown's Patrick Ewing. In addition to Ewing, this draft also resulted in several Hall of Famers, including Karl Malone taken by the Utah Jazz at pick 13.


title: 1985 NBA draft

text: This list includes only players who appeared in at least one NBA game but were not selected in the first or second rounds of the 1985 NBA draft.


title: 1985 NBA draft

text: Some have argued that NBA Commissioner David Stern fixed the first overall pick to help his hometown team, the struggling New York Knicks. The lottery system used in 1985 involved a random drawing of seven envelopes from a hopper, with each of the then-seven non-playoff teams having an equal chance of obtaining the first pick. Inside each of the envelopes was the logo of a non-playoff team.


title: 1985 NBA draft

text: The team whose envelope was drawn first would get the first pick. The process was then repeated until the rest of the first seven lottery picks were determined. In the U.S., CBS had live coverage of Stern pulling the envelopes from the hopper (as opposed to NBA Draft lotteries today where the actual drawing is held behind closed doors "before" the results are revealed on TV).


title: 1985 NBA draft

text: There is speculation that the envelope containing the Knicks logo was frozen beforehand, enabling David Stern to recognize and select it.


title: 1985 NBA draft

text: According to another theory, some claim that when an accountant from Ernst & Whinney (the same firm used by Gulf + Western, then-owners of the Knicks) inserted the seven envelopes into the glass drum, some have claimed that he banged the fourth one against the side of the drum to create a creased corner, thereby making it easier for Stern to determine which envelope to choose: the envelope containing the Knicks logo. According to this theory, as the drum was being spun by NBA security director Jack Joyce, Stern was watching the envelopes closely. He then opened the drum, took a deep breath, reached in and selected the envelope with the bent corner and the Knicks logo. This has not been confirmed or corroborated by any official source, as most note that the spinning of the drum was far more forceful than any movement by Joyce, deliberate or otherwise.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Sir Christopher Wren (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including what is regarded as his masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710.


title: Christopher Wren

text: The principal creative responsibility for a number of the churches is now more commonly attributed to others in his office, especially Nicholas Hawksmoor. Other notable buildings by Wren include the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and the south front of Hampton Court Palace.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Educated in Latin and Aristotelian physics at the University of Oxford, Wren was a founder of the Royal Society and served as its president from 1680 to 1682. His scientific work was highly regarded by Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren was born in East Knoyle in Wiltshire, the only surviving son of Christopher Wren the Elder (1589–1658) and Mary Cox, the only child of the Wiltshire squire Robert Cox from Fonthill Bishop. Christopher Sr. was, at that time, the rector of East Knoyle and, later, Dean of Windsor. It was while they were living at East Knoyle that all their children were born; Mary, Catherine and Susan were all born by 1628 but then several children who were born, died within a few weeks of their birth. Their son Christopher was born in 1632 then, two years later, another daughter named Elizabeth was born. Mary must have died shortly after the birth of Elizabeth, although there does not appear to be any surviving record of the date. Through Mary Cox, however, the family became well off financially for, as the only heir, she had inherited her father's estate.


title: Christopher Wren

text: As a child Wren "seem'd consumptive". Although a sickly child, he would survive into robust old age. He was first taught at home by a private tutor and his father. After his father's royal appointment as Dean of Windsor in March 1635, his family spent part of each year there, but little is known about Wren's life at Windsor. He spent his first eight years at East Knoyle and was educated by the Rev. William Shepherd, a local clergyman.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Little is known of Wren's schooling thereafter, during dangerous times when his father's Royal associations would have required the family to keep a very low profile from the ruling Parliamentary authorities. It was a tough time in his life, but one which would go on to have a significant impact upon his later works. The story that he was at Westminster School between 1641 and 1646 is substantiated only by "Parentalia", the biography compiled by his son, a fourth Christopher, which places him there "for some short time" before going up to Oxford (in 1650); however, it is entirely consistent with headmaster Doctor Busby's well-documented practice of educating the sons of impoverished Royalists and Puritans alike, irrespective of current politics or his own position.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Some of Wren's youthful exercises preserved or recorded (though few are datable) showed that he received a thorough grounding in Latin and also learned to draw. According to "Parentalia", he was "initiated" in the principles of mathematics by Dr William Holder, who married Wren's elder sister Susan (or Susanna) in 1643. His drawing was put to academic use in providing many of the anatomical drawings for the anatomy textbook of the brain, "Cerebri Anatome" (1664), published by Thomas Willis, which coined the term "neurology". During this time period, Wren became interested in the design and construction of mechanical instruments. It was probably through Holder that Wren met Sir Charles Scarburgh whom Wren assisted in his anatomical studies.


title: Christopher Wren

text: On 25 June 1650, Wren entered Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied Latin and the works of Aristotle. It is anachronistic to imagine that he received scientific training in the modern sense. However, Wren became closely associated with John Wilkins, the Warden of Wadham. The Wilkins circle was a group whose activities led to the formation of the Royal Society, comprising a number of distinguished mathematicians, creative workers and experimental philosophers. This connection probably influenced Wren's studies of science and mathematics at Oxford. He graduated B.A. in 1651, and two years later received M.A.


title: Christopher Wren

text: After receiving his M.A. in 1653, Wren was elected a fellow of All Souls' College in the same year and began an active period of research and experiment in Oxford. Among these were a number of physiological experiments on dogs, including one now recognized as the first injection of fluids into the bloodstream of a live animal under laboratory conditions. His days as a fellow of All Souls ended when Wren was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London, in 1657. He was there provided with a set of rooms and a stipend and required to give weekly lectures in both Latin and English. Wren took up this new work with enthusiasm. He continued to meet the men with whom he had frequent discussions in Oxford. They attended his London lectures and in 1660, initiated formal weekly meetings. It was from these meetings that the Royal Society, England's premier scientific body, was to develop. He undoubtedly played a major role in the early life of what would become the Royal Society; his great breadth of expertise in so many different subjects helped in the exchange of ideas between the various scientists. In fact, the report on one of these meetings reads:


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1662, they proposed a society "for the promotion of Physico-Mathematicall Experimental Learning". This body received its Royal Charter from Charles II and "The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge" was formed. In addition to being a founder member of the Society, Wren was president of the Royal Society from 1680 to 1682.


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1661, Wren was elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and in 1669 he was appointed Surveyor of Works to Charles II. From 1661 until 1668 Wren's life was based in Oxford, although his attendance at meetings of the Royal Society meant that he had to make periodic trips to London.


title: Christopher Wren

text: The main sources for Wren's scientific achievements are the records of the Royal Society. His scientific works ranged from astronomy, optics, the problem of finding longitude at sea, cosmology, mechanics, microscopy, surveying, medicine and meteorology. He observed, measured, dissected, built models and employed, invented and improved a variety of instruments.


title: Christopher Wren

text: It was probably around this time that Sir Christopher Wren was drawn into redesigning a battered St Paul's Cathedral. Making a trip to Paris in 1665, Wren studied architecture, which had reached a climax of creativity, and perused the drawings of Bernini, the great Italian sculptor and architect, who himself was visiting Paris at the time. Returning from Paris, he made his first design for St Paul's. A week later, however, the Great Fire destroyed two-thirds of the city. Wren submitted his plans for rebuilding the city to King Charles II, although they were never adopted. With his appointment as King's Surveyor of Works in 1669, he had a presence in the general process of rebuilding the city, but was not directly involved with the rebuilding of houses or companies' halls. Wren was personally responsible for the rebuilding of 51 churches; however, it is not necessarily true to say that each of them represented his own fully developed design.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren was knighted on 14 November 1673. This honour was bestowed on him after his resignation from the Savilian chair in Oxford, by which time he had already begun to make his mark as an architect, both in services to the Crown and in playing an important part in rebuilding London after the Great Fire.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Additionally, he was sufficiently active in public affairs to be returned as Member of Parliament on four occasions. Wren first stood for Parliament in a by-election in 1667 for the Cambridge University constituency, losing by six votes to Sir Charles Wheler. He was unsuccessful again in a by-election for the Oxford University constituency in 1674, losing to Thomas Thynne. At his third attempt Wren was successful, and he sat for Plympton Erle during the Loyal Parliament of 1685 to 1687. Wren was returned for New Windsor on 11 January 1689 in the general election, but his election was declared void on 14 May 1689. He was elected again for New Windsor on 6 March 1690, but this election was declared void on 17 May 1690. Over a decade later he was elected unopposed for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis at the November 1701 general election. He retired at the general election the following year.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren's career was well established by 1669, and it may have been his appointment as Surveyor of the King's Works early that year that persuaded him that he could finally afford to marry. In 1669, the 37-year-old Wren married his childhood neighbour, the 33-year-old Faith Coghill, daughter of Sir John Coghill of Bletchingdon. Little is known of Faith, but a love letter from Wren survives, which reads, in part:


title: Christopher Wren

text: This brief marriage produced two children: Gilbert, born October 1672, who suffered from convulsions and died at about 18 months old, and Christopher, born February 1675. The younger Christopher was trained by his father to be an architect. It was this Christopher that supervised the topping out ceremony of St Paul's in 1710 and wrote the famous "Parentalia, or, Memoirs of the family of the Wrens". Faith Wren died of smallpox on 3 September 1675. She was buried in the chancel of St Martin-in-the-Fields beside the infant Gilbert. A few days later Wren's mother-in-law, Lady Coghill, arrived to take the infant Christopher back with her to Oxfordshire to raise.


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1677, 17 months after the death of his first wife, Wren remarried, this time to Jane Fitzwilliam, daughter of William FitzWilliam, 2nd Baron FitzWilliam, and his wife Jane Perry, the daughter of a prosperous London merchant.


title: Christopher Wren

text: She was a mystery to Wren's friends and companions. Robert Hooke, who often saw Wren two or three times every week, had, as he recorded in his diary, never even heard of her, and was not to meet her till six weeks after the marriage. As with the first marriage, this too produced two children: a daughter Jane (1677–1702); and a son William, "Poor Billy" born June 1679, who was developmentally delayed.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Like the first, this second marriage was also brief. Jane Wren died of tuberculosis in September 1680. She was buried alongside Faith and Gilbert in the chancel of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Wren was never to marry again; he lived to be over 90 years old and of those years was married only nine.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Bletchingdon was the home of Wren's brother-in-law William Holder, who was rector of the local church. Holder had been a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. An intellectual of considerable ability, he is said to have been the figure who introduced Wren to arithmetic and geometry.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren's later life was not without criticisms and attacks on his competence and his taste. In 1712, the "Letter Concerning Design" of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, circulated in manuscript. Proposing a new British style of architecture, Shaftesbury censured Wren's cathedral, his taste and his long-standing control of royal works. Although Wren was appointed to the Fifty New Churches Commission in 1711, he was left only with nominal charge of a board of works when the surveyorship started in 1715. On 26 April 1718, on the pretext of failing powers, he was dismissed in favour of William Benson.


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1713, he bought the manor of Wroxall, Warwickshire, from the Burgoyne family, to which his son Christopher retired in 1716 after losing his post as Clerk of Works. Several of Wren's descendants would be buried there in the Church of St Leonard.


title: Christopher Wren

text: The Wren family estate was at The Old Court House in the area of Hampton Court. He had been given a lease on the property by Queen Anne in lieu of salary arrears for building St Paul's. For convenience Wren also leased a house on St James's Street in London. According to a 19th-century legend, he would often go to London to pay unofficial visits to St Paul's, to check on the progress of "my greatest work". On one of these trips to London, at the age of ninety, he caught a chill which worsened over the next few days. On 25 February 1723 a servant who tried to awaken Wren from his nap found that he had died.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren was laid to rest on 5 March 1723. His body was placed in the southeast corner of the crypt of St Paul's. There is a memorial to him in the crypt at St Paul's Cathedral. beside those of his daughter Jane, his sister Susan Holder, and her husband William. The plain stone plaque was written by Wren's eldest son and heir, Christopher Wren the Younger The inscription, which is also inscribed in a circle of black marble on the main floor beneath the centre of the dome, reads:


title: Christopher Wren

text: Sir Christopher Wren who died on Monday last in the 91st year of his age, was the only son of Dr. Chr. Wren, Dean of Windsor & Wolverhampton, Registar of the Garter, younger brother of Dr. Mathew (sic) Wren Ld Bp of Ely, a branch of the ancient family of Wrens of Binchester in the Bishoprick of Durham


title: Christopher Wren

text: After 1666. Surveyor General for Rebuilding the Cathedral Church of St.Paul and the Parochial Churches & all other Public Buildings which he lived to finish


title: Christopher Wren

text: 1698. Surveyor General & Sub Commissioner for Repairs to Westminster Abbey by Act of Parliament, continued till death.


title: Christopher Wren

text: "The Curious and Entire Libraries of Sir Christopher Wren", and of his son, were auctioned by Langford and Cock at Mr Cock's in Covent Garden on 24–27 October 1748.


title: Christopher Wren

text: One of Wren's friends, Robert Hooke, scientist and architect and a fellow Westminster Schoolboy, said of him "Since the time of Archimedes there scarce ever met in one man in so great perfection such a mechanical hand and so philosophical mind."


title: Christopher Wren

text: When a fellow of All Souls, Wren constructed a transparent beehive for scientific observation; he began observing the moon, which was to lead to the invention of micrometers for the telescope. According to Parentalia (pp. 210–211), his solid model of the moon attracted the attention of the King who commanded Wren to perfect it and present it to him.


title: Christopher Wren

text: He experimented on terrestrial magnetism and had taken part in medical experiments while at Wadham College, performing the first successful injection of a substance into the bloodstream (of a dog). In Gresham College, he did experiments involving determining longitude through magnetic variation and through lunar observation to help with navigation, and helped construct a telescope with Sir Paul Neile. Wren also studied and improved the microscope and telescope at this time. He had also been making observations of the planet Saturn from around 1652 with the aim of explaining its appearance. His hypothesis was written up in "De corpore saturni" but before the work was published, Huygens presented his theory of the rings of Saturn. Immediately Wren recognised this as a better hypothesis than his own and "De corpore saturni" was never published. In addition, he constructed an exquisitely detailed lunar model and presented it to the king. In 1658, he found the length of an arc of the cycloid using an exhaustion proof based on dissections to reduce the problem to summing segments of chords of a circle which are in geometric progression.


title: Christopher Wren

text: A year into Wren's appointment as a Savilian Professor in Oxford, the Royal Society was created and Wren became an active member. As Savilian Professor, Wren studied mechanics thoroughly, especially elastic collisions and pendulum motions. He also directed his far-ranging intelligence to the study of meteorology: in 1662, he invented the tipping bucket rain gauge and, in 1663, designed a "weather-clock" that would record temperature, humidity, rainfall and barometric pressure. A working weather clock based on Wren's design was completed by Robert Hooke in 1679.


title: Christopher Wren

text: In addition, Wren experimented on muscle functionality, hypothesizing that the swelling and shrinking of muscles might proceed from a fermentative motion arising from the mixture of two heterogeneous fluids. Although this is incorrect, it was at least founded upon observation and may mark a new outlook on medicine: specialisation.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Another topic to which Wren contributed was optics. He published a description of an engine to create perspective drawings and he discussed the grinding of conical lenses and mirrors. Out of this work came another of Wren's important mathematical results, namely that the hyperboloid of revolution is a ruled surface. These results were published in 1669. In subsequent years, Wren continued with his work with the Royal Society, although after the 1680s his scientific interests seem to have waned: no doubt his architectural and official duties absorbed more time.


title: Christopher Wren

text: It was a problem posed by Wren that serves as an ultimate source to the conception of Newton's "Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis". Robert Hooke had theorised that planets, moving in vacuo, describe orbits around the Sun because of a rectilinear inertial motion by the tangent and an accelerated motion towards the Sun. Wren's challenge to Halley and Hooke, for the reward of a book worth thirty shillings, was to provide, within the context of Hooke's hypothesis, a mathematical theory linking Kepler's laws with a specific force law. Halley took the problem to Newton for advice, prompting the latter to write a nine-page answer, "De motu corporum in gyrum", which was later to be expanded into the "Principia".


title: Christopher Wren

text: Mentioned above are only a few of Wren's scientific works. He also studied other areas, ranging from agriculture, ballistics, water and freezing, light and refraction, to name only a few. Thomas Birch's "History of the Royal Society" (1756–57) is one of the most important sources of our knowledge not only of the origins of the Society, but also the day-to-day running of the Society. It is in these records that most of Wren's known scientific works are recorded.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren was a prominent man of science at the height of the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution seemed to promise a merger of the science of mechanics and the art of building. In Galileo Galilei's "Two New Sciences" the first science is not dynamics, for which the book is now better known, but rather the strength of materials, which Galileo had recognized 30 years earlier as a “science that is very necessary in making machines and buildings of all kinds.” In 1624 Henry Wotton, the British ambassador to Venice, published a book on architecture in which he analyzed in a rudimentary way the structure of a stone arch. Moreover, in the 17th century, it was people who would now be called scientists who were awarded the commissions to design and build monumental structures. In Turin, Guarino Guarini, a mathematician, devised the plans for such celebrated buildings as the Royal Church of Saint Lawrence, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud and the Palazzo Carignano. In Paris, Claude Perrault, a physician and an anatomist, designed the façade of the Louvre and the observatory of the Académie Française. In London, it was Wren and Hooke who collaborated as chief architect and city surveyor after the city was devasted by the Great Fire of 1666.


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1661, just months after taking his post at Oxford, Wren was invited by Charles II to oversee the construction of new harbour defences at Tangier—then-newly under British control. Wren ultimately excused himself from the King's offer. Letters dated to the end of 1661 note that in addition to the Tangier project, Charles II had also sought Wren for consultation regarding repairs to Old St Paul's Cathedral, the reconstruction of which would ultimately be the architect's magnum opus. Speaking of Wren's vocational transition from academic to architect-engineer, biographer Adrian Tinniswood writes "the use of mathematicians in military fortification was not unusual... Perhaps Wren also had experience of the business of fortification, more than we know."


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren's first known foray into architecture came after his uncle, Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, offered to finance a new chapel for Pembroke College, Cambridge. Matthew commissioned his nephew for the design, finding the architecturally inexperienced Christopher to be both ideologically sympathetic and stylistically deferential. Wren produced his design in the Winter of 1662 or 1663 and the chapel was completed in 1665.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren's second, similarly collegiate work followed soon after, when he was commissioned to design Oxford's "New Theatre," financed by Gilbert Sheldon. His design for the structure was met with lukewarm to negative reception, with even Wren's defenders admitting the young architect to have not yet been "capable of handling a large architectural composition with assurance". Adrian Tinniswood credits the building's flaws to "Sheldon’s refusal to pay for an elaborate exterior, Wren’s inability to find an adequate external expression for a building which was wholly conditioned by the functionality of its interior space and, ...his refusal to bend the knee to classical authority in the way that our experience of eighteenth-century architecture has conditioned us to believe is right." Prior to the theatre's 1669 completion, Wren had received further commissions for the Garden Quadrangle at Trinity College, Oxford, and the chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren left for Paris in July 1665 on his first and only trip abroad. In France, the architect encountered an architectural milieu more closely linked to the ideals of the Italian Renaissance. Wren also met Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who was "widely acknowledged by contemporaries as the greatest artist of the century". Though Bernini's concrete influence on Wren's designs was transmitted via published plans and engravings, the encounter surely impacted the budding architect and his vocational trajectory.


title: Christopher Wren

text: St Paul's Cathedral in London has always been the highlight of Wren's reputation. His association with it spans his whole architectural career, including the 36 years between the start of the new building and the declaration by parliament of its completion in 1711.Letters document Wren's involvement in St Paul as early as 1661, when he was consulted by Charles II regarding repairs to the medieval structure. In the spring of 1666, he made his first design for a dome for St Paul's. It was accepted in principle on 27 August 1666. One week later, however, the Great Fire of London reduced two-thirds of the City to a smoking desert and old St Paul's to ruin. Wren was most likely at Oxford at the time, but the news, so fantastically relevant to his future, drew him at once to London. Between 5 and 11 September, he ascertained the precise area of devastation, worked out a plan for rebuilding the City and submitted it to Charles II. Others also submitted plans. However, no new plan proceeded any further than the paper on which it was drawn. A Rebuilding of London Act which provided rebuilding of some essential buildings was passed in 1666. In 1669, the King's Surveyor of Works died and Wren was promptly installed.


title: Christopher Wren

text: It was not until 1670 that the pace of rebuilding started accelerating. A second rebuilding act was passed that year, raising the tax on coal and thus providing a source of funds for rebuilding of churches destroyed within the City of London. Wren presented his initial "First Model" for St Paul's. This plan was accepted, and demolition of the old cathedral began. By 1672, however, this design seemed too modest, and Wren met his critics by producing a design of spectacular grandeur. This modified design, called "Great Model", was accepted by the King and the construction started in November 1673. However, this design failed to satisfy the chapter and clerical opinion generally; moreover, it had an economic drawback. Wren was confined to a "cathedral form" desired by the clergy. In 1674 he produced the rather meagre Classical-Gothic compromise known as the Warrant Design. However, this design, called so from the royal warrant of 14 May 1675 attached to the drawings, is not the design upon which work had begun a few weeks before.


title: Christopher Wren

text: The cathedral that Wren started to build bears only a slight resemblance to the Warrant Design. In 1697, the first service was held in the cathedral when Wren was 65. There was still, however, no dome. Finally, in 1711 the cathedral was declared complete, and Wren was paid the half of his salary that, in the hope of accelerating progress, Parliament had withheld for 14 years since 1697. The cathedral had been built for 36 years under his direction, and the only disappointment he had about his masterpiece was the dome: against his wishes, the commission engaged Thornhill to paint the inner dome in false perspective and finally authorised a balustrade around the roof line. This diluted the hard edge Wren had intended for his cathedral, and elicited the apt parthian comment that "ladies think nothing well without an edging".


title: Christopher Wren

text: During the 1670s, Wren received significant secular commissions. Among many of his notable designs at this time, the monument (1671–76) commemorating the Great Fire also involved Robert Hooke, but Wren was in control of the final design, the Royal Observatory (1675–76), and the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge (1676–84) were the most important ones.


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1682, Wren advised that the original statues of the King's Beasts on St George's Chapel, Windsor be removed. The pinnacles were left bare until 1925, when replica statues were installed.


title: Christopher Wren

text: By historical accident, all Wren's large-scale secular commissions dated from after the 1680s. At the age of 50 his personal development, as was that of English architecture, was ready for monumental but humane architecture, in which the scales of individual parts relate both to the whole and to the people who used them. The first large project Wren designed, the Chelsea Hospital (1682–92), does not entirely satisfy the eye in this respect, but met its brief with distinction and such success that even in the 21st century it fulfils its original function. The reconstruction of the stateroom at Windsor Castle was notable for the integration of architecture, sculpture and painting. This commission was in the hand of Hugh May, who died in February 1684, before the construction finished; Wren assumed his post and finalised the works.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Between 1683 and 1685 he was much occupied in designing the King's House, Winchester, where Charles II had hoped to spend his declining years, but which was never completed. When Wren promised that it would be complete within a year the King, who was conscious of his mortality, replied that " a year is a great time in my life".After the death of Charles II in 1685, Wren's attention was directed mainly to Whitehall (1685–87). The new king, James II, required a new chapel and also ordered a new gallery, council chamber and a riverside apartment for the Queen. Later, when James II was removed from the throne, Wren took on architectural projects such as Kensington Palace (1689–96) and Hampton Court (1689–1700).


title: Christopher Wren

text: The erection of the present Windsor Guildhall was begun in 1687, under the direction of Sir Thomas Fitz (or Fiddes) but there is a story that on his death in 1689, the task was taken over by Sir Christopher Wren. It was completed at a cost of £2687 – 1s – 6d. The new building was supported around its perimeter by stone columns, providing a covered area beneath as a venue for corn markets.


title: Christopher Wren

text: The story is widely told that the borough Council demanded that Wren should insert additional columns within the covered area, in order to support the weight of the heavy building above; Wren, however, was adamant that these were not necessary. Eventually, the council insisted and, in due course, the extra supporting columns were built, but Wren made them slightly short, so that they do not quite touch the ceiling, hence proving his claim that they were not necessary. However, there is little evidence that Wren was ever involved in the design or construction of the Guildhall. It is now believed that the story grew out of Wren's connections with Windsor and that his son, also called Christopher Wren, who served as a Member of Parliament for Windsor, commissioned the statue of Prince George of Denmark in 1713 on the south end of the building and his name was engraved underneath. The pillars were probably moved into the corn market from the east side of the building when an extension was added in 1829. The gaps at the top of the pillars are now filled with tiles smaller than the capitals.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Wren did not pursue his work on architectural design as actively as he had before the 1690s, although he still played important roles in a number of royal commissions. In 1696 he was appointed Surveyor of Greenwich Naval Hospital, and in 1698 he was appointed Surveyor of Westminster Abbey. He resigned from the former role in 1716 but held the latter until his death, approving with a wavering signature Burlington's revisions of Wren's own earlier designs for the great Archway of Westminster School.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Since at least the 18th century, the Lodge of Antiquity No. 2, one of the four founding Masonic Lodges of the Premier Grand Lodge of England in 1717, has claimed Christopher Wren to have been its Master at the "Goose and Gridiron" at St. Paul's churchyard. Whilst he was rebuilding the cathedral he is said to have been "adopted" on 18 May 1691 (that is, accepted as a sort of honorary member or patron, rather than an operative). Their 18th-century maul with its 1827 inscription claiming that it was used by Wren for the foundation stone of St. Paul's, belonging to the Lodge and on display in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London, corroborates the story. James Anderson made the claims in his widely circulated "Constitutions" while many of Wren's friends were still alive, but he made many highly creative claims as to the history or legends of Freemasonry. There is also a clear possibility of confusion between the operative workmen's lodges which might naturally have welcomed the boss, and the "speculative" or gentlemen's lodges which became highly fashionable just after Wren's death. By the standards of his time, a gentleman like Wren would not generally join an artisan body; however the workmen of St Paul's cathedral would naturally have sought the patronage or "interest" of their employer, and within Wren's lifetime there was a predominantly gentlemen's Lodge at the "Rummer and Grapes", a mile upriver at Westminster (where Wren had been to School).


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1788, the Lodge of Antiquity thought they were buying a portrait of Wren which now dominates Lodge Room 10, in the same building as the Museum; but it is now identified with William Talman, not Wren. Nevertheless, this recorded event and many old records attest to the fact that Antiquity thought that Wren had been its Master, at a time when it still held its minute books for the relevant years (which were lost by Preston at some date after 1778).


title: Christopher Wren

text: The evidence of whether Wren was a speculative freemason is the subject of the Prestonian Lecture of 2011, which concludes on the evidence of two obituaries and Aubrey's memoirs, with supporting materials, that he did indeed attend the closed meeting in 1691, probably of the Lodge of Antiquity, but that there is nothing to suggest that he was ever a Grand Officer as claimed by Anderson.


title: Christopher Wren

text: Christopher Wren appeared on the reverse of the first British £50 banknote (Series D) issued in modern times. The notes were printed between 1981 and 1994, and were in circulation until 1996.


title: Christopher Wren

text: In 1997, UNESCO inscribed Wren's Greenwich Hospital on the World Heritage list, citing the complex's "outstanding architectural and artistic achievements".


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning () is a coastal province in Northeast China that is the smallest, southernmost, and most populous province in the region. With its capital at Shenyang, it is located on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea, and is the northernmost coastal province of the People's Republic of China.


title: Liaoning

text: Historically a gateway between China proper and Manchuria, the modern Liaoning province was established in 1907 as Fengtian or Fengtien province and was renamed Liaoning in 1929. It was also known at that time as Mukden Province for the Manchu name of "Shengjing", the former name of Shenyang. Under the Japanese-puppet Manchukuo regime, the province reverted to its 1907 name, but the name Liaoning was restored for a brief time in 1945 and then again in 1954.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning borders the Yellow Sea (Korea Bay) and Bohai Sea in the south, North Korea's North Pyongan and Chagang provinces in the southeast, Jilin to the northeast, Hebei to the southwest, and Inner Mongolia to the northwest. The Yalu River marks the province's border with North Korea, emptying into the Korea Bay between Dandong in Liaoning and Sinuiju in North Korea. Liaoning is also one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2022, two major cities in Liaoning ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Dalian 49th and Shenyang 162nd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning is named after the Liao River that runs through the province. "Ning" (宁, "peace") is used frequently in Chinese place names including Ningxia, Xining and Nanning. The current name was first adopted in 1929, and restored in 1954 upon the merging of the Liaoxi ("West Liao") and Liaodong ("East Liao") provinces.


title: Liaoning

text: Prior to 3rd century BC, Donghu, Gojoseon and Yemaek peoples inhabited Liaoning. The state of Yan conquered the area around 300 BC. Two commanderies, Liaodong ("east of the Liao River") and Liaoxi ("west of the Liao River"), were established within the Liaoning region. The Yan city of Xiangping, the center of Liaodong, was located on the site of the present Liaoyang city. As the Han dynasty fell, warlord Gongsun Du and his family established and maintained a semi-independent state based in Liaodong, until it was defeated by Cao Wei in 238. The state, also known as Yan, conducted numerous maritime diplomatic and trade expeditions, and had a lasting influence on Northeast Asian culture despite being short-lived. After the end of Western Jin dynasty, Liaoning was ruled by Xianbei states of the Murong tribe – Former Yan, Later Yan, and Northern Yan. In 436, as Northern Wei seized the Yan capital, Liaodong Peninsula was taken over by Goguryeo. Tang dynasty annexed the region during the Goguryeo–Tang War. However, when the An Lushan Rebellion drained Tang's resources away from its frontiers, Bohai gradually expanded into Liaodong. Eventually, Liaoning was conquered by the Khitan Liao dynasty, followed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty and the Mongol Empire.


title: Liaoning

text: The Ming Empire took control of Liaoning in 1371, just three years after the expulsion of the Mongols from Beijing. Around 1442, a defense wall was constructed to defend the agricultural heartland of the province from a potential threat from the Jurchen-Mongol Oriyanghan (who were Ming's tributaries) from the northwest. Between 1467 and 1468, the wall was expanded to protect the region from the northeast as well, against attacks from Jianzhou Jurchens (who were later to become known as the Manchu people). Although similar in purpose to the Great Wall of China, this "Liaodong Wall" was of a lower-cost design. While stones and tiles were used in some parts, most of the wall was in fact simply an earth dike with moats on both sides.


title: Liaoning

text: Despite the Liaodong Wall, the Jurchens conquered Liaodong, or eastern Liaoning, in the early 17th century, decades before the rest of China fell to them. The Jurchen dynasty, styled "Later Jin" before being renamed to Qing, established its capital in 1616–1621 in Xingjing (), which was located outside of the Liaodong Wall in the eastern part of the modern Liaoning Province. It was moved to Dongjing (east of today's Liaoyang, Liaoning), and finally in 1625 to Shengjing (now, Shenyang, Liaoning). Although the main Qing capital was moved from Shengjing to Beijing after it fell to the Qing in 1644, Shengjing retained its importance as a regional capital throughout most of the Qing era.


title: Liaoning

text: The Qing conquest of Liaoning resulted in a significant population loss in the area, as many local Chinese residents were either killed during fighting, or fled south of the Great Wall, many cities being destroyed by the retreating Ming forces themselves. As late as 1661, the Civil Governor ("Fuyin") of Fengtian Province, Zhang Shangxian reported that, outside of Fengtian City (Shenyang), Liaoyang, and Haicheng, all other cities east of the Liao River were either abandoned, or hardly had a few hundred residents left. In the Governor's words, "Tieling and Fushun only have a few vagrants". West of the Liao, only Ningyuan, Jinzhou, and Guangning had any significant populations remaining.


title: Liaoning

text: In the latter half of the seventeenth century (starting with laws issued in 1651 and 1653), the imperial Qing government recruited migrants from south of the Great Wall (notably, from Shandong) to settle the relatively sparsely populated area of Fengtian Province (roughly corresponding to today's Liaoning). Many of the current residents of Liaoning trace their ancestry to these seventeenth century settlers. The rest of China's Northeast, however, remained officially off-limits to Han Chinese for most of the Manchu era. To prevent the migration of Chinese to those regions (today's Jilin and Heilongjiang, as well as the adjacent parts of Inner Mongolia), the so-called Willow Palisade was constructed (ca. 1638 – ca. 1672). The Palisade encircled the agricultural heartlands of Fengtian, running in most areas either somewhat outside the old Ming Liaodong Wall, or reusing it, and separating it from the Manchu forests to the northeast and the Mongol grazing lands to the northwest.


title: Liaoning

text: Later on, the Qing government tried to stop the migrants flow to Fengtian or even to make some settlers return to their original places of residence – or, failing that, to legalize them. For example, an edict issued in 1704 commented on the recent Han Chinese settlers in Fengtian having failed to comply with earlier orders requiring them to leave, and asked them either to properly register and join a local defense group (), or to leave the province for their original places within the next ten years. Ten years later, naturally, another edict appeared, reminding of the necessity to do something with illegal migrants ... In any event, the restrictive policy was not as effective as desired by the officials in Beijing, and Fengtian's population doubled between 1683 and 1734.


title: Liaoning

text: During the Qing Dynasty, Manchuria was ruled by three generals, one of whom, the General of Shengjing (Mukden i Jiyanggiyūn) ruled much of modern Liaoning. In 1860, the Manchu government began to reopen the region to migration, which quickly resulted in Han Chinese becoming the dominant ethnic group in the region.


title: Liaoning

text: In the 20th century, the province of Fengtian was set up in what is Liaoning today. When Japan and Russia fought the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, many key battles took place in Liaoning, including the Battle of Port Arthur and the Battle of Mukden, which was, to that point, the largest land battle ever fought. During the Warlord Era in the early twentieth century, Liaoning was under the Fengtian Clique, including Zhang Zuolin and his son Zhang Xueliang. The province first received its present name on January 29, 1929; the Zhongdong Railway Incident took place later that year. In 1931, Japan invaded and the area came under the rule of the Japanese-controlled puppet state of Manchukuo. The Chinese Civil War that took place following Japanese defeat in 1945 had its first major battles (the Liaoshen Campaign) in and around Liaoning.


title: Liaoning

text: At the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Liaoning did not exist; instead there were two provinces, Liaodong and Liaoxi, as well as five municipalities, Shenyang, Lüda (present-day Dalian), Anshan, Fushun, and Benxi. These were all merged into "Liaoning" in 1954, and parts of former Rehe province were merged into Liaoning in 1955. During the Cultural Revolution Liaoning also took in a part of Inner Mongolia, though this was reversed later.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning was one of the first provinces in China to industrialize, first under Japanese occupation, and then even more in the 1950s and 1960s. The city of Anshan, for example, is home to one of the largest iron and steel complexes in China. In recent years, this early focus on heavy industry has become a liability, as many of the large state-run enterprises have experienced economic difficulties. Recognizing the special difficulties faced by Liaoning and other provinces in Northeast China because of their heritage of heavy industry, the Chinese central government recently launched a "Revitalize the Northeast" Campaign.


title: Liaoning

text: It is possible to think of Liaoning as three approximate geographical regions: the highlands in the west, plains in the middle, and hills in the east.


title: Liaoning

text: The highlands in the west are dominated by the Nulu'erhu Mountains, which roughly follow the border between Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. The entire region is dominated by low hills. A narrow strip of coastal plains, known as the Liaoxi Corridor, connects the Liao River Basin to the North China Plain, ending at the Shanhai Pass of the Great Wall.


title: Liaoning

text: The central part of Liaoning consists of a basin drained by rivers such as the Liao, Daliao, and their tributaries. This region is mostly flat and low-lying.


title: Liaoning

text: The eastern part of Liaoning is dominated by the Changbai Mountains and Qianshan Mountains which extend into the sea to form the Liaodong Peninsula. The highest point in Liaoning, Mount Huabozi (1336 m), is found in this region.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning has a continental monsoon climate, and rainfall averages to about 440 to 1130 mm annually. Summer is rainy while the other seasons are dry.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning contains some of the foremost paleontological sites in the world. Known collectively as the Jehol Group, they include the Yixian Formation, Jiufotang Formation and Tiaojishan Formation. The name "Jehol" derives from a now defunct provincial division of that name, which covered an area that is now Western Liaoning, Eastern Hebei, and a small part of Inner Mongolia. Fossils were first found there during the 1920s. During the Japanese occupation of the area through the 1930s and early 1940s, more fossils were found, but records of them were lost after World War II ended. The area remained relatively unexplored until the 1990s. It was in 1996 that Liaoning made the headlines with the announcement of the discovery of "Sinosauropteryx prima", the first example of a filamented "feathered" dinosaur. "Sinosauropteryx prima" was a small feathered meat-eating dinosaur, from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation. This discovery pushed the evolution of feathers back in time and showed that dinosaurs, not only birds, had feathers. It also showed a direct evolutionary link between theropod dinosaurs and modern birds.


title: Liaoning

text: Since then, dozens of ground-breaking finds have been discovered throughout the Jehol group. These including the earliest flower, earliest eutherian mammal, known as "Eomaia", the earliest known metatherian, an intact embryo of a pterosaur, "Repenomamus robustus"—a 15 kg heavy mammal that ate dinosaurs, "Sinornithosaurus millenii", as well as many birds and feathered dinosaurs. Discoveries such as "Dilong paradoxus", another feathered theropod, date to the early Cretaceous Period. This is some 60 million years before "Tyrannosaurus", and thus these discoveries push the evolution of feathers earlier than previously thought.


title: Liaoning

text: The Liaoning fossils are noted for their high degree of preservation—often including soft body tissues, which is rare. Aside from the famous birds and feathered dinosaurs, the Liaoning fossils include insects, fish, aquatic arthropods, and plants. The Liaoning deposit is widely considered to be the one of the world's premier fossil sites. The high level of preservation is believed to be due to how the animals died. The area was volcanically active, and large plumes of volcanic dust repeatedly covered the area, instantly killing and burying any living thing in the area. The extremely fine grain of the sediment and the chemical composition of the ash prevented the usual bacterial decay. In some specimens, extremely fine details can be seen such as the proboscis of the bee "Florinemestruis" used to drink nectar from the earliest flowers. In other specimens, colours are still visible, including stripes on fish and spots on turtles.


title: Liaoning

text: The politics of Liaoning is structured in a single party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Liaoning () is the highest-ranking official in the People's Government of Liaoning. However, in the province's single party-government governing system, the Governor has less power than the Communist Party of China Liaoning Provincial Committee Secretary ( for short), colloquially termed the "Liaoning Party Chief".


title: Liaoning

text: Previous to 1949 and the takeover of the Communist forces, Liaoning was governed by the Fengtian clique of warlords and interchangeably officials of the Chiang Kai-shek bureaucracy. During the Qing Dynasty Liaoning was known as the province of Fengtian (), and was governed by a zǒngdū or Viceroy (The Viceroy of the Three Eastern Provinces, ), along with the provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. The province itself also had a governor ().


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning is divided into fourteen prefecture-level divisions, all prefecture-level cities (including two sub-provincial cities):


title: Liaoning

text: These prefecture-level cities are in turn divided into 100 county-level divisions (56 districts, 17 county-level cities, 19 counties, and 8 autonomous counties), which are then further subdivided into 1511 township-level divisions (613 towns, 301 townships, 77 ethnic townships, and 520 subdistricts). At the end of the year 2017, the total population is 43.69 million.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning has the largest and wealthiest provincial economy of Northeast China. Its nominal GDP for 2017 was 2.39 trillion yuan (ca. US$354 billion), making it the 14th largest in China (out of 31 provinces). Its per capita GDP was 54,745 yuan (US$8,108). Among the three provinces of Northeast China, Liaoning is the largest in terms of GDP and GDP per capita.


title: Liaoning

text: In 2008, Liaoning was the region with the highest GDP growth among global G8x8, the eight provinces or states below national level with the highest GDP of the top eight GDP nations. According to preliminary statistics, Liaoning maintained its GDP growth rate of 13.1 percent in 2009 and held its position as the province with the highest economic growth. Economic growth has since slowed down, with the economy expanding 3% in 2015 and contracting 1.3% in the first quarter of 2016.


title: Liaoning

text: Leading industries include petrochemicals, metallurgy, electronics telecommunications, and machinery. On a national level, Liaoning is a major producer of pig iron, steel and metal-cutting machine tools, all of whose production rank among the top three in the nation. Liaoning is one of the most important raw materials production bases in China. Industries such as mining, quarrying, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals, petroleum and natural gas extraction, are all of great significance.


title: Liaoning

text: Meanwhile, Liaoning is an important production base of equipment and machinery manufacturing, with Shenyang and Dalian being the industrial centers. Enterprises such as Shenyang Jinbei Co. Ltd., Daxian Group Co. Ltd., and Shenyang Machine Tool Co. Ltd., are leaders in their sectors. The province's light industry mainly focuses on textiles and clothing industries which include cotton and wool spinning, chemical fiber production, knitting, silk production, and the manufacturing of both garments and textile machinery.


title: Liaoning

text: In 2008, its tertiary industry accounted for 34.5 percent of total GDP. In the future, Liaoning will continue its efforts to restructure large and medium-sized state enterprises. Meanwhile, the province will concentrate in developing its four pillar industries – petrochemicals, metallurgy, machinery and electronics.


title: Liaoning

text: Main agricultural products of Liaoning include maize, sorghum, and soybeans. The region around Dalian produces three-quarters of China's exported apples and peaches. Cotton is also produced.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning's fruits include apples from Dalian and Yingkou, golden peaches from Dalian, pears from Beizhen of Jinzhou, white pears from Huludao and Suizhong, and apricots and plums from Gushan of Dandong.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning has the most iron, magnesite, diamond, and boron deposits among all province-level subdivisions of China. Liaoning is also an important source of petroleum and natural gas. Salt is produced along the coast.


title: Liaoning

text: Along with Liaoning's rich mineral reserves, the province also has abundant deposits of crude oil, especially in the Liaohe Oilfield.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning is one of China's most important industrial bases, covering a wide range of industries, such as machinery, electronics, metal refining, petroleum, chemical industries, construction materials, coal, and so on.


title: Liaoning

text: The sea off Dalian abounds with quality seafood, such as abalones, sea cucumbers, scallops, prawns, crabs, and sea urchins. The big fish of Dandong, the jellyfish of Yingkou, and the clams of Panjin are known worldwide for their good tastes right from the sea and in products made in Liaoning for export domestically and internationally.


title: Liaoning

text: The cities of Dalian, Dandong and Yingkou have been developed as major ports and economic gateways to all of northeast China.


title: Liaoning

text: Of the development zones formally recognized by the PRC State Council, 56 are located in Liaoning, including 14 on the national level and 42 on the provincial level. These zones are further grouped into Economic Development Zones, High-Tech Zones, Free Trade and Export Processing Zones, and Special Development Zones.


title: Liaoning

text: In October 1995, the Shenyang Cross-Strait Science Industrial Zone was approved to be established by State Council. The Shenyang Cross-Strait Science Industrial Zone is the only zone established as part of the Shenyang Hunnan Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone. It has a total area of . It welcomes international investment. It focuses on the development of instruments manufacturing, telecommunication, bio-pharmaceuticals, electronics, and new materials.


title: Liaoning

text: The Liaoning Shenyang Zhangshi Export Processing Zone was approved to be established by the state government in June 2005. It is located in the national-level Shenyang Economic & Technological Development Zone, with a planned area of and current area of . It encourages and focuses on the development of auto and auto parts, electronics, precision machinery, new energy, new materials, and the fine chemical industry.


title: Liaoning

text: The Shenyang Hunnan Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone used to be called the Shenyang Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone. Established in 1988, it is a national high-tech development zone approved by the State Council. The zone is located in western Shenyang City with an area of . Its encouraged industries include electronic information, new materials, biological engineering, energy saving, and environmental protection.


title: Liaoning

text: The Dalian Economic & Technological Development Zone (now known as the "Dalian Development Area") was established in September 1984, as one of the first of the China National Economic and Technological Development Zones. The zone had a GDP of 70.31 billion yuan in 2007 and the total volume of its import and export trade was 14.92 billion dollars, which accounts for a quarter of such trade for all of Liaoning Province. Most of the enterprises in Dalian ETDZ are factories owned by foreign enterprises, especially from Japan, South Korea and the United States, such as Canon, Pfizer, Toshiba, and Intel.


title: Liaoning

text: The Dalian Export Processing Zone was approved to be set up by the State Council in April 2000, with a planned area of . It is divided into two parts, A Zone and B Zone. A Zone has a construction area of , and started operation in May 2001. All the basic infrastructure is available, which includes road, water, gas, and power supply, telecommunication, and so on. A Zone promotes industries such as home appliances, lighting, machinery, construction materials, and medical instruments.


title: Liaoning

text: The Dalian Free Trade Zone was approved to be set up by the government in May, 1992. Policies include duty-free trade. It has attracted some leading industries, such as electronics, machinery, and plastics.


title: Liaoning

text: The Dalian Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone was approved to be a national-level development zone in 1991. It has a total area of . It focuses on and encourages the following industries: electronic information, bio-pharmaceuticals, and new materials.


title: Liaoning

text: The Dandong Border Economic Corporation Zone was approved to be a national-level development zone in 1992. It is located in the bank of Yalu River, and opposite Sinuiju, a North Korean city. It promotes industries such as electronic information, machinery manufacturing, and bio-pharmaceuticals.


title: Liaoning

text: The Central Liaoning city cluster is a megalopolis centered on Shenyang (urban population 4 million). Within its radius, it includes Anshan (urban population 1.3 million), Fushun (1.3 million), Yingkou (1.1 million), Benxi (0.95 million), Liaoyang (0.7 million), and Tieling (0.4 million).


title: Liaoning

text: In April 2010, the State Council of the People's Republic of China approved a national development strategy for the Shenyang Metro Area. The core of this strategy is innovation in industrial development, integration of the eight cities, integration of urban and rural areas as well as the promotion of more market-oriented development.


title: Liaoning

text: The Party Secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, Li Keqiang, initiated the development of a strategy entitled "5 Points and One Line", which he first proposed on a visit to Yingkou in late 2005. Liaoning Province formally launched the development strategy for the entire Liaoning coastline in early 2006, so as to re-invigorate the provincial economy from its traditional status as a "rustbelt" of Chinese state-owned enterprises.


title: Liaoning

text: The "Five Points" indicate five key development areas in the province and cover seven zones: the Changxing Island Harbor Industrial Zone in


title: Liaoning

text: Dalian; Yingkou Coastal Industrial Base; Liaoxi Jinzhou Bay Coastal Economic Zone; Dandong, and the Zhuanghe Huayuankou Industrial Zone.


title: Liaoning

text: The "One Line" mentioned in the strategy represents a new series of motorways along the coast. The coastline of 1,433 kilometers will become the connection


title: Liaoning

text: between the five above zones, through which 6 provincial cities, 21 counties and 113 towns will be interlinked. Coastal motorways directly connect the entire string of five zones along the Bohai sea.


title: Liaoning

text: The population of Liaoning is mostly Han Chinese with minorities of Manchus, Mongols, Hui, Koreans and Xibe. Liaoning has both the highest absolute number and highest percentage of Manchus in all of China.


title: Liaoning

text: According to a 2012 survey only around 10% of the population of Liaoning belongs to organised religions, the largest groups being Buddhists with 5.5%, followed by Protestants with 2.2%, Muslims with 0.6% and Catholics with 0.2%.


title: Liaoning

text: The reports didn't give figures for other types of religion; around 90% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in Chinese folk religions (cults of nature deities and ancestors), Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects.


title: Liaoning

text: The significant Manchu population, although strongly assimilated to the Han Chinese and practicing Chinese religions, also retains its own pure Manchu shamanism. At the same time, the local religion of the Han people throughout Manchuria has developed patterns of deities, ideas, and practices inherited from Manchu and Tungus shamanism, making it quite different from central and southern Chinese folk religion. The Mongol ethnic minority either follows the Mongolian folk religion and shamanism, or Tibetan Buddhism.


title: Liaoning

text: The Mukden Palace was the palace of the Qing Dynasty emperors before they conquered the rest of China and moved their capital to Beijing. Though not as large nor as well known as its counterpart (the Forbidden City) in Beijing, the Mukden palace is significant for its representation of palace architecture at the time, and has recently been included on the UNESCO World Heritage Site as an extension of the Imperial Palace site in Beijing.


title: Liaoning

text: In addition, three imperial tombs dating from the Qing Dynasty are located in Liaoning. These tomb sites have been grouped with other Ming and Qing Dynasties tombs (such as the Ming Dynasty Tombs in Beijing, and the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum in Nanjing) as a combined UNESCO World Heritage Site.


title: Liaoning

text: Wunu Mountain City, a Goguryeo site found in Huanren Manchu Autonomous County, is part of a combined UNESCO World Heritage Site that also includes sites in Ji'an, Jilin.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoyang, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in northeast China, has a number of historical sites, including the White Pagoda (Baita), that dates to the Yuan Dynasty.


title: Liaoning

text: The port city of Dalian, located on the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, is a tourist destination in its own right, with beaches, resorts, zoos, seafood, shopping, Russian- and Japanese-era heritage architecture, and streetcars, a rare sight in China.


title: Liaoning

text: Dandong, on the border with North Korea, is a medium-sized city that offers a cross-river view of the North Korean city of Sinŭiju.


title: Liaoning

text: Liaoning is also one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2022, two major cities in Liaoning ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Dalian 49th and Shenyang 162nd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.


title: Old Prussians

text: Old Prussians, Baltic Prussians or simply Prussians (Old Prussian: "prūsai"; or "Prußen"; ; ; ; ; ) were an indigenous tribe among the Baltic peoples that inhabited the region of Prussia, at the south-eastern shore of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula Lagoon to the west and the Curonian Lagoon to the east. The Old Prussians, who spoke an Indo-European language now known as Old Prussian and worshipped pre-Christian deities, lent their name, despite very few commonalities, to the later, predominantly Low German-speaking inhabitants of the region.


title: Old Prussians

text: The duchy of the Polans under Mieszko I, which was the predecessor of the Kingdom of Poland, first attempted to conquer and baptize the Baltic tribes during the 10th century, but repeatedly encountered strong resistance. Not until the 13th century were the Old Prussians subjugated and their lands conquered by the Teutonic Order. The remaining Old Prussians were assimilated during the following two centuries. The old Prussian language, largely undocumented, was effectively extinct by the 17th century.


title: Old Prussians

text: The original territory of the Old Prussians prior to the first clashes with the Polans consisted of central and southern West and East Prussia, equivalent to parts of the modern areas of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland, the Kaliningrad Oblast in Russia and the southern Klaipėda Region in Lithuania. The territory was also inhabited by Scalovians, a tribe related to the Prussians, Curonians and Eastern Balts.


title: Old Prussians

text: The name of the Old Prussians has its origin in toponymy, as the word "Prūsas" (a Prussian) can be derived from the term for a body of water, an understandable convention in a coastal region dotted with thousands of lakes, streams and swamps (Masuria). To the south, the terrain runs into the vast wetlands of the Pripet Marshes at the headwaters of the Dnieper River, which has been an effective natural barrier throughout the millennia.


title: Old Prussians

text: Writing in 98 CE, Roman historian Tacitus described the pagan "Aesti" who lived somewhere by the Baltic Sea coast and east of the Vistula estuary. It has been suggested that the name "Aesti" could be etymologically related to the modern toponym Estonians. On the other hand, the Old Prussian and modern Lithuanian names for localities, such as the Vistula Lagoon, "Aīstinmari" and "Aistmarės", respectively, also appear to derive from "Aesti" and "mari" ("lagoon" or "fresh-water bay"), which suggests that the area around the lagoon had links with the "Aesti".


title: Old Prussians

text: The original settlers tended to name their assets after surrounding localities (streams, lakes, seas, forests, etc). The clan or tribal entity into which their descendants later were organized continued to use the names. This source is perhaps the one used in the very name of "Prusa" (Prussia), for which an earlier "Brus-" is found in the map of the Bavarian Geographer. In Tacitus' "Germania", the Lugii Buri are mentioned living within the eastern range of the Germans. Lugi may descend from Pokorny's "*leug-" (2), "black, swamp" (Page 686), while "Buri" is perhaps the "Prussian" root.


title: Old Prussians

text: The name of "Pameddi", the (Pomesania) tribe is derived from the words "pa" ("by" or "near") and "meddin" ("forest") or "meddu" ("honey"), which can be traced to the Proto-Indo-European root "*medhu-". Nadruvia may be a compound of the words "na" ("by" or "on") and "drawē" ("wood") or "nad" ("above") and the root "*reu-" ("flow" or "river"). The name of the Bartians, a Prussian tribe, and the name of the Bārta river in Latvia are possibly cognates.


title: Old Prussians

text: In the second century AD, the geographer Claudius Ptolemy listed some "Borusci" living in European Sarmatia (in his "Eighth Map of Europe"), which was separated from Germania by the "Vistula Flumen". His map is very confusing in that region, but the Borusci seem further east than the Prussians, which would have been under the "Gythones" (Goths) at the mouth of the Vistula. The "Aesti" recorded by Tacitus, were 450 years later recorded by Jordanes as part of the Gothic Empire.


title: Old Prussians

text: The original Old Prussian settlement area in the western Baltics, as well as that of the eastern Balts, was much larger than in historical times. The archaeological documentation and associated finds confirm uninterrupted presence from the Iron Age (fifth century BC) to the successive conquest by Slavic tribes, beginning in the Migration Period.


title: Old Prussians

text: Permanent recorded Baltic history begins in the 10th century with the failed Christianisation by Adalbert of Prague (997 CE.), the first conquest attempts at the expense of the Old Prussians by the duchy of the Polans under Mieszko I and the Duchy of Greater Poland under his son Bolesław, as a number of border areas were eventually lost.


title: Old Prussians

text: Around the year 1,000 CE. to the West of the Old Prussians lived the Kashubians and Pomeranians, the Poles to the south, the Sudovians (sometimes considered a separate people, other times regarded as a Prussian tribe) to the east and south-east, the Skalvians to the north, and the Lithuanians to the northeast.


title: Old Prussians

text: The smallest social unit in Baltic lands was the "laūks", a word attested in Old Prussian as "field", which were small family oriented settlements, households and the surrounding fields, only separated from one another by uninhabited areas of forest, swamp and marsh. The word appears as a segment in Baltic settlement names, especially in Curonian, and is found in Old Prussian placenames such as in "Stablack", from "stabs" (stone) + "laūks" (field, thus "stone field"). The plural is not attested in Old Prussian, but the Lithuanian plural of "laukas" ("field") is "laukai".


title: Old Prussians

text: A "laūks" was also formed by a group of farms, that shared economic interests and a desire for safety, ruled by a male head of the family and centred on strongholds or hill forts. The supreme power resided in general gatherings of all adult males, who discussed important matters concerning the community and elected the leader and chief; the leader was responsible for the supervision of the everyday matters, while the chief (the "rikīs") was in charge of the road and watchtower building, and border defense, undertaken by "Vidivarii".


title: Old Prussians

text: The head of a household was the "buttataws" (literally, the "house father", from "buttan", meaning "home", and "taws", meaning "father"). Larger political and territorial organisations, called "terrula" in Latin (a small land), existed in the early 13th century in the territories which later comprised Prussia, Latvia and Lithuania and centred on strongholds or hill forts. Such a political territorial unit covered up to and could have up to 2,000 inhabitants. They were known as "pulka", comprising a dozen or so laukses.


title: Old Prussians

text: Because the Baltic tribes inhabiting Prussia never formed a common political and territorial organisation, they had no reason to adopt a common ethnic or national name. Instead they used the name of the region from which they came — Galindians, Sambians, Bartians, Nadruvians, Natangians, Scalovians, Sudovians, etc. It is not known when and how the first general names came into being. This lack of unity weakened them severely, similar to the condition of Germany during the Middle Ages.


title: Old Prussians

text: The Prussian tribal structure is well attested in the "Chronicon terrae Prussiae" of contemporary author Peter of Dusburg, a chronicler of the Teutonic Order. The work is dated to 1326. He lists eleven lands and ten tribes, which were named on a geographical basis. These were:


title: Old Prussians

text: (in Anglo-Saxon) (English translation) describes a ninth century voyage by traveller and trader Wulfstan of Hedeby to the land of the Old Prussians. He observes their funeral customs.


title: Old Prussians

text: Characterized as a humble people, who dressed plainly, the Old Prussians were "distinguished for their valor and great bodily strength". They generally rejected luxury, yet were very hospitable, and enjoyed celebrating and drinking excessively, usually mead. Wulfstan of Hedeby, who visited the trading town of Truso at the Vistula Lagoon, observed that wealthy people drank fermented mare's milk kumis instead of mead. According to Adam of Bremen, the Samians are said to have consumed horse blood as well as horse milk. He also mentions that horse meat was eaten.


title: Old Prussians

text: Women held no powerful positions among the Old Prussians and, according to Peter von Dusburg, were treated like servants, forbidden to share the husband's table. Commercial marriage was widespread and after the husband's death, the widow fell to the son, like other inheritance. In addition, polygyny (up to three wives) was widespread. Adultery was a serious crime, punishable with death. After the submission, commercial marriage and polygyny were forbidden.


title: Old Prussians

text: During the Iron Age (5th century BC – 1st century AD), the western Baltic kurgan and barrow culture was widespread among the Old Prussians. It was then that cremation in urns appeared. Grave mounds were raised over stone cells for up to 30 urns, or stone boxes for the urns were buried in Bronze Age style barrows.


title: Old Prussians

text: During the early phase of imperial Rome, shallow graves appeared in which the corpse was buried in tree coffins. Cremation with urns spread from the third century onwards. Except for the Samians and Sudauers, where shallow grave fields existed until Christianization, cremation pits without urns increasingly became the only form of burials among the Prussians. However, different forms of burial could occur side by side at the same time.


title: Old Prussians

text: The Stone babas, found all over Old Prussia, have for centuries caused considerable speculation and dissent among scholars. Beginning with a lack of confirmation about their original location and context, all subsequent questions on their age, the chronology of the objects, an exact definition of their function, their provenance, pointing to which cultural influence have not been addressed until the late 19th century. A majority of past and present researchers agree the babas were created between the 8th and 13th centuries...as a "result of a long cultural process among the population of early Iron Age area of the south-eastern Baltic coast, which was affected by both the early traditions of the local craft and inspirations from countries already under Christian influence."[sic]


title: Old Prussians

text: ""Because they did not know God, therefore, in their error, they worshipped every creature as divine, namely the sun, moon and stars, thunder, birds, even four-legged animals, even the toad. They also had forests, fields and bodies of water, which they held so sacred that they neither chopped wood nor dared to cultivate fields or fish in them. "" – Peter of Dusburg: Chronicon terrae Prussiae III,5 ,53


title: Old Prussians

text: Baltic paganism has been described as a form of "polydoxy" – a belief in the sacredness of all-natural forces and phenomena, not personified but possess their own spirits and magical powers. Practically, the world is inhabited by a limitless number of spirits and demons that includes a belief in the afterlife, the soul and worship of ancestors characterised by specific cults and their associated rituals. Other authors have argued for a well developed, sophisticated Old Prussian polytheism with a clearly defined pantheon of gods.


title: Old Prussians

text: The highest priest "Kriwe-Kriwajto" was to be in permanent connection with the spirits of the dead ancestors. He lived in a sacred grove, the "Romove", a place off limit for anyone but elite clergy. Each district was headed by its "Kriwe", who also served as lawgiver and judge. The "Kriwe-Kriwajto's" next in rank, the "Siggonen" were expected to maintain the healthy spiritual connection with natural sacred sites, like springs and trees. The "Wurskaiten" – priests of lower rank – were supposed to superintend rites and ceremonies.


title: Old Prussians

text: With the submission to the Teutonic Order in 1231, the Old Prussians were Christianised. How long the old paganism lived on cannot be inferred from the sources. Pagan customs are said to have lasted the longest with the remote Sudauers. In the 16th century, the so-called Sudovian Book ("Sudauerbüchlein") was created, which described a list of gods, "pagan" festivals and goat sanctification. However, researchers argue that this little book misinterpreted traditional folk customs as 'pagan' in the context of the Reformation.


title: Old Prussians

text: Cassiodorus' "Variae", published in 537, contains a letter written by Cassiodorus in the name of Theodoric the Great, addressed to the "Aesti":


title: Old Prussians

text: More extensive mention of the Old Prussians in historical sources is in connection with Adalbert of Prague, who was sent by Bolesław I of Poland. Adalbert was slain in 997 during a missionary effort to Christianize the Prussians. As soon as the first Polish dukes had been established with Mieszko I in 966, they undertook a number of conquests and crusades not only against Prussians and the closely related Sudovians, but against the Pomeranians and Wends as well.


title: Old Prussians

text: Beginning in 1147, the Polish duke Bolesław IV the Curly (securing the help of Ruthenian troops) tried to subdue Prussia, supposedly as punishment for the close cooperation of Prussians with Władysław II the Exile. The only source is unclear about the results of his attempts, vaguely only mentioning that the Prussians were defeated. Whatever were the results, in 1157 some Prussian troops supported the Polish army in their fight against Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. In 1166 two Polish dukes, Bolesław IV and his younger brother Henry, came into Prussia, again over the Ossa River. The prepared Prussians led the Polish army, under the leadership of Henry, into an area of marshy morass. Whoever did not drown was felled by an arrow or by throwing clubs, and nearly all Polish troops perished. From 1191 to 1193 Casimir II the Just invaded Prussia, this time along the river Drewenz (Drwęca). He forced some of the Prussian tribes to pay tribute and then withdrew.


title: Old Prussians

text: Several attacks by Konrad of Masovia in the early 13th century were also successfully repelled by the Prussians. In 1209 Pope Innocent III commissioned the Cistercian monk Christian of Oliva with the conversion of the pagan Prussians. In 1215, Christian was installed as the first bishop of Prussia. The Duchy of Masovia, and especially the region of Culmerland, become the object of constant Prussian counter-raids. In response, Konrad I of Masovia called on the Pope for aid several times, and founded a military order (the Order of Dobrzyń) before calling on the Teutonic Order. The results were edicts calling for Northern Crusades against the Prussians.


title: Old Prussians

text: In 1224, Emperor Frederick II proclaimed that he himself and the Empire took the population of Prussia and the neighboring provinces under their direct protection; the inhabitants were declared to be "Reichsfreie", to be subordinated directly to the Church and the Empire only, and exempted from service to and the jurisdiction of other dukes. The Teutonic Order, officially subject directly to the Popes, but also under the control of the empire, took control of much of the Baltic, establishing their own monastic state in Prussia.


title: Old Prussians

text: In 1230, following the Golden Bull of Rimini, Grand Master Hermann von Salza and Duke Konrad I of Masovia launched the Prussian Crusade, a joint invasion of Prussia to Christianise the Baltic Old Prussians. The Order then created the independent Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights in the conquered territory and subsequently conquered Courland, Livonia, and Estonia. The Dukes of Poland accused the Order of holding lands illegally.


title: Old Prussians

text: During an attack on Prussia in 1233, over 21,000 crusaders took part, of which the burggrave of Magdeburg brought 5,000 warriors, Duke Henry of Silesia 3,000, Duke Konrad of Masovia 4,000, Duke Casimir of Kuyavia 2,000, Duke Wladyslaw of Greater Poland 2,200 and Dukes of Pomerania 5,000 warriors. The main battle took place at the Sirgune River and the Prussians suffered a decisive defeat. The Prussians took the bishop Christian and imprisoned him for several years.


title: Old Prussians

text: Numerous knights from throughout Catholic Europe joined in the Prussian Crusades, which lasted sixty years. Many of the native Prussians from Sudovia who survived were resettled in Samland; Sudauer Winkel was named after them. Frequent revolts, including a major rebellion in 1286, were defeated by the Teutonic Knights. In 1283, according


title: Old Prussians

text: to the chronicler of the Teutonic Knights, Peter of Dusburg, the conquest of the Prussians ended and the war with the Lithuanians began.


title: Old Prussians

text: In 1243, papal legate William of Modena divided Prussia into four bishoprics — Culm, Pomesania, Ermland, and Samland — under the Bishopric of Riga. Prussians were baptised at the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, while Germans and Dutch settlers colonized the lands of the native Prussians; Poles and Lithuanians also settled in southern and eastern Prussia, respectively. Significant pockets of Old Prussians were left in a matrix of Germans throughout Prussia and in what is now the Kaliningrad Oblast.


title: Old Prussians

text: The monks and scholars of the Teutonic Order took an interest in the language spoken by the Prussians and tried to record it. In addition, missionaries needed to communicate with the Prussians in order to convert them. Records of the Old Prussian language therefore survive; along with little-known Galindian and better-known Sudovian, these records are all that remain of the West Baltic language group. As might be expected, it is a very archaic Baltic language.


title: Old Prussians

text: Old Prussians resisted the Teutonic Knights and received help from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the 13th century in their quest to free themselves of the military order. In 1525 Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach secularized the Order's Prussian territories into the Protestant Duchy of Prussia, a vassal of the crown of Poland. During the Reformation, Lutheranism spread throughout the territories, officially in the Duchy of Prussia and unofficially in the Polish province of Royal Prussia, while Catholicism survived in the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, the territory of secular rule comprising a third of the then Diocese of Warmia. With Protestantism came the use of the vernacular in church services instead of Latin, so Albert had the Catechisms translated into Old Prussian.


title: Old Prussians

text: Because of the conquest of the Old Prussians by Germans, the Old Prussian language probably became extinct in the beginning of the 18th century with the devastation of the rural population by plagues and the assimilation of the nobility and the larger population with Germans or Lithuanians. However, translations of the Bible, Old Prussian poems, and some other texts survived and have enabled scholars to reconstruct the language.


title: Elisha

text: Elisha ( ; or "God is my salvation", Greek: , "Elis[s]aîos" or , "Elisaié," Latin: "Eliseus") was, according to the Hebrew Bible, a prophet and a wonder-worker. His name is commonly transliterated into English as Elisha via Hebrew, Eliseus via Greek and Latin, or Alyasa via Arabic, and Elyasa or Elyesa via Turkish. Also mentioned in the New Testament and the Quran, Elisha is venerated as a prophet in Judaism, Christianity and Islam and writings of the Baháʼí Faith refer to him by name.


title: Elisha

text: Before he settled in Samaria, Elisha passed some time on Mount Carmel. He served from 892 until 832 BC as an advisor to the third through the eighth kings of Judah, holding the office of "prophet in Israel". He is called a patriot because of his help to soldiers and kings.


title: Elisha

text: In the biblical narrative, he is a disciple and protégé of Elijah, and after Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind, Elisha received a double portion of his power and he was accepted as the leader of the sons of the prophets. Elisha then went on to perform twice as many miracles as Elijah.


title: Elisha

text: Elisha's story is related in the Books of Kings (Second Scroll, chapters 2-14) in the Hebrew Bible (part of the Nevi'im). According to this story, he was a prophet and a wonder-worker of the Kingdom of Israel who was active during the reign of Joram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, and Jehoash (Joash). Elisha was the son of Shaphat, a wealthy land-owner of Abel-meholah; he became the attendant and disciple of Elijah.


title: Elisha

text: His name first occurs in chapter 19 of the Books of Kings in the command given to Elijah to anoint him as his successor. After learning in the cave on Mount Horeb, that Elisha, the son of Shaphat, had been selected by Yahweh as his successor in the prophetic office, Elijah set out to find him. On his way from Mount Horeb to Damascus, Elijah found Elisha "one of them that was plowing with twelve yokes of oxen". Elijah went over to him, threw his mantle over Elisha's shoulders, investing him with the prophetic office. Elisha delayed only long enough to kill the yoke of oxen, whose flesh he boiled with the wood of his plough. After he had shared this farewell repast with his father, mother, and friends, the newly chosen prophet "went after Elijah, and ministered unto him". Elisha became Elijah's close attendant until Elijah was taken up into heaven. During all these years we hear nothing of Elisha except in connection with the closing scenes of Elijah's life.


title: Elisha

text: Elisha accompanied Elijah to Jericho, where according to , "the sons of the prophets" tell Elisha that the would "will take away thy master from thy head to-day".


title: Elisha

text: Elijah and Elisha went to the Jordan River. Elijah rolls up his mantle and strikes the water, the waters of which divided so as to permit both to pass over on dry ground. Elisha asks to "inherit a double-portion" of Elijah's spirit. Suddenly, a chariot of fire and horses of fire appear and Elijah is lifted up in a whirlwind. As Elijah is lifted up, his mantle falls to the ground and Elisha picks it up.


title: Elisha

text: Some scholars see this as indicative of the property inheritance customs of the time, where the oldest son received twice as much of the father's inheritance as each of the younger sons. In this interpretation Elisha is asking that he may be seen as the "rightful heir" and successor to Elijah. Critics of this view point out that Elisha was already appointed as Elijah's successor earlier in the narrative and that Elisha is described as performing twice as many miracles as Elijah. In this interpretation the "double-portion" is not merely an allusion to primacy in succession, but is instead a request for greater prophetic power even than Elijah.