title: Central venous catheter

text: In the case of non-thrombotic occlusion (e.g. formation of precipitates), dilute acid can be used to restore patency to the catheter. A solution of 0.1N hydrochloric acid is commonly used. Infusates that contain a significant amount of lipids such as total parenteral nutrition (TPN) or propofol are also prone to occlusion over time. In this setting, patency can often be restored by infusing a small amount of 70% ethanol.


title: Central venous catheter

text: CVC misplacement is more common when the anatomy of the person is different or difficult due to injury or past surgery.


title: Central venous catheter

text: CVCs can be mistakenly placed in an artery during insertion (for example, the carotid artery or vertebral artery when placed in the neck or common femoral artery when placed in the groin). This error can be quickly identified by special tubing that can show the pressure of the catheter (arteries have a higher pressure than veins). In addition, sending blood samples for acidity, oxygen, and carbon dioxide content (pH, pO, pCO respectively) can show the characteristics of an artery (higher pH/pO, lower pCO) or vein (lower pH/pO, higher pCO).


title: Central venous catheter

text: During subclavian vein central line placement, the catheter can be accidentally pushed into the internal jugular vein on the same side instead of the superior vena cava. A chest x-ray is performed after insertion to rule out this possibility. The tip of the catheter can also be misdirected into the contralateral (opposite side) subclavian vein in the neck, rather than into the superior vena cava.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Entry of air into venous circulation has the potential to cause a venous air embolism. This is a rare complication of CVC placement – however, it can be lethal. The volume and the rate of air entry determine the effect an air embolus will have on a patient. This process can become fatal when at least 200–300 milliliters of air is introduced within a few seconds. The consequences of this include: acute embolic stroke (from air that passes through a patent foramen ovale), pulmonary edema, and acute right heart failure (from trapped air in the right ventricle) which can lead to cardiogenic shock.


title: Central venous catheter

text: The clinical presentation of a venous air embolism may be silent. In those who are symptomatic, the most common symptoms are sudden-onset shortness of breath and cough. If the presentation is severe, the patient may become rapidly hypotensive and have an altered level of consciousness due to cardiogenic shock. Symptoms of an acute stroke may also be seen. Echocardiography can be used to visualize air that has become trapped in the chambers of the heart. If a large air embolism is suspected, a syringe can be attached to the catheter cap and pulled pack in an attempt to remove the air from circulation. The patient can also be placed in the left lateral decubitus position. It is thought that this position helps relieve air that has become trapped in the right ventricle.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Catheter-related thrombosis (CRT) is the development of a blood clot related to long-term use of CVCs. It mostly occurs in the upper extremities and can lead to further complications, such as pulmonary embolism, post-thrombotic syndrome, and vascular compromise. Symptoms include pain, tenderness to palpation, swelling, edema, warmth, erythema, and development of collateral vessels in the surrounding area. However, most CRTs are asymptomatic, and prior catheter infections increase the risk for developing a CRT. Routine flushings may help to prevent catheter thrombosis. If there is catheter obstruction, thrombolytic drugs can be used if the obstruction is caused by clots or fibrin deposition. Anticoagulant treatment is indicated if the obstruction is caused by thrombus formation. There is inadequate evidence whether heparin saline flush is better than normal saline flush to maintain central venous catheter patency and prevent occlusion.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Before insertion, the patient is first assessed by reviewing relevant labs and indication for CVC placement, in order to minimize risks and complications of the procedure. Next, the area of skin over the planned insertion site is cleaned. A local anesthetic is applied if necessary. The location of the vein is identified by landmarks or with the use of a small ultrasound device. A hollow needle is advanced through the skin until blood is aspirated. The color of the blood and the rate of its flow help distinguish it from arterial blood (suggesting that an artery has been accidentally punctured). Within North American and Europe, ultrasound use now represents the gold standard for central venous access and skills, with diminishing use of landmark techniques. Recent evidence shows that ultrasound-guidance for subclavian vein catheterization leads to a reduction in adverse events.


title: Central venous catheter

text: The line is then inserted using the Seldinger technique: a blunt guidewire is passed through the needle, then the needle is removed. A dilating device may be passed over the guidewire to expand the tract. Finally, the central line itself is then passed over the guidewire, which is then removed. All the lumens of the line are aspirated (to ensure that they are all positioned inside the vein) and flushed with either saline or heparin. A chest X-ray may be performed afterwards to confirm that the line is positioned inside the superior vena cava and no pneumothorax was caused inadvertently. On anteroposterior X-rays, a catheter tip between 55 and 29 mm below the level of the carina is regarded as acceptable placement. Electromagnetic tracking can be used to verify tip placement and provide guidance during insertion, obviating the need for the X-ray afterwards.


title: Central venous catheter

text: The Hagen–Poiseuille equation describes the properties of flow through a rigid tube. The equation is shown below:


title: Central venous catheter

text: The equation shows that flow rate (Q) through a rigid tube is a function of the inner radius (r), the length of the tube (L), and the viscosity of the fluid (μ). The flow is directly related the fourth power of the inner radius of the tube, and inversely related to the length of the tube and viscosity of the fluid. This equation can be used to understand the following vital observations regarding venous catheters: that the inner radius of a catheter has a much greater impact on flow rate than catheter length or fluid viscosity, and that for rapid infusion, a shorter, large bore catheter is optimal because it will provide the greatest flow rate.


title: Central venous catheter

text: There are several types of central venous catheters; these can be further subdivided by site (where the catheter is inserted into the body) as well as the specific type of catheter used.


title: Central venous catheter

text: A percutaneous central venous catheter, or CVC, is inserted directly through the skin. The internal or external jugular, subclavian, or femoral vein is used. It is most commonly used in critically ill patients. The CVC can be used for days to weeks, and the patient must remain in the hospital. It is usually held in place with sutures or a manufactured securement device. Commonly used catheters include Quinton catheters.


title: Central venous catheter

text: A peripherally inserted central catheter, or PICC line (pronounced "pick"), is a central venous catheter inserted into a vein in the arm (via the basilic or cephalic veins) rather than a vein in the neck or chest. The basilic vein is usually a better target for cannulation than the cephalic vein because it is larger and runs a straighter course through the arm. The tip of the catheter is positioned in the superior vena cava. PICC lines are smaller in diameter than central lines since they are inserted in smaller peripheral veins, and they are much longer than central venous catheters (50–70 cm vs. 15–30 cm). Therefore, the rate of fluid flow through PICC lines is considerably slower than other central lines, rendering them unsuitable for rapid, large volume fluid resuscitation. PICCs can easily occlude and may not be used with phenytoin. PICC lines may also result in venous thrombosis and stenosis, and should therefore be used cautiously in patients with chronic kidney disease in case an arteriovenous fistula might one day need to be created for hemodialysis.


title: Central venous catheter

text: However, PICC lines are desirable for several reasons. They can provide venous access for up to one year. The patient may go home with a PICC. They avoid the complications of central line placement (e.g. pneumothorax, accidental arterial cannulation), and they are relatively easy to place under ultrasound guidance and cause less discomfort than central lines. PICC lines may be inserted at the bedside, in a home or radiology setting. It is held in place with sutures or a manufactured securement device.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Tunneled catheters are passed under the skin from the insertion site to a separate exit site. The catheter and its attachments emerge from underneath the skin. The exit site is typically located in the chest, making the access ports less visible than catheters that protrude directly from the neck. Passing the catheter under the skin helps to prevent infection and provides stability. Insertion is a surgical procedure, in which the catheter is tunnelled subcutaneously under the skin in the chest area before it enters the SVC. Commonly used tunneled catheters include Hickman, and Groshong, or Broviac catheters and may be referred to by these names as well.


title: Central venous catheter

text: A tunnelled catheter may remain inserted for months to years. These CVCs have a low infection rate due to a Dacron cuff, an antimicrobial cuff surrounding the catheter near the entry site, which is coated in antimicrobial solution and holds the catheter in place after two to three weeks of insertion.


title: Central venous catheter

text: An implanted central venous catheter, also called a port a cath or port a catheter, is similar to a tunneled catheter, but is left entirely under the skin and is accessible via a port . Medicines are injected through the skin into the catheter. Some implanted ports contain a small reservoir that can be refilled in the same way. After being filled, the reservoir slowly releases the medicine into the bloodstream. Surgically implanted infusion ports are placed below the clavicle (infraclavicular fossa), with the catheter threaded into the heart (right atrium) through a large vein. Once implanted, the port is accessed via a "gripper" non-coring Huber-tipped needle (PowerLoc is one brand, common sizes are length; 19 and 20 gauge. The needle assembly includes a short length of tubing and cannula) inserted directly through the skin. The clinician and patient may elect to apply a topical anesthetic before accessing the port. Ports can be used for medications, chemotherapy, and blood sampling. As ports are located completely under the skin, they are easier to maintain and have a lower risk of infection than CVC or PICC catheters.


title: Central venous catheter

text: An implanted port is less obtrusive than a tunneled catheter or PICC line, requires little daily care, and has less impact on the patient's day-to-day activities. Port access requires specialized equipment and training.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Ports are typically used on patients requiring periodic venous access over an extended course of therapy, then flushed regularly until surgically removed.


title: Central venous catheter

text: If venous access is required on a frequent basis over a short period, a catheter having external access is more commonly used.


title: Central venous catheter

text: The most commonly used catheter for central venous access is the triple lumen catheter. They are preferred (particularly in the ICU) for their three infusion channels that allow for multiple therapies to be administered simultaneously. They are sized using the French scale, with the 7 French size commonly used in adults. These catheters typically have one 16 gauge channel and two 18 gauge channels. Contrary to the French scale, the larger the gauge number, the smaller the catheter diameter. Although these catheters possess one 16 gauge port, the flow is considerably slower than one would expect through a 16 gauge peripheral IV due to the longer length of the central venous catheter (see section on "catheter flow" above). It is important to note that the use of multiple infusion channels does not increase the risk of catheter-related blood stream infections.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Hemodialysis catheters are large diameter catheters (up to 16 French or 5.3mm) capable of flow rates of 200–300 ml/min, which is necessary to maintain the high flow rates of hemodialysis. There are two channels: one is used to carry the patient's blood to the dialysis machine, while the other is used to return blood back to the patient. These catheters are typically placed in the internal jugular vein.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Introducer sheaths are large catheters (8–9 French) that are typically placed to facilitate the passage of temporary vascular devices such as a pulmonary artery catheter or transvenous pacemaker. The introducer sheath is placed first, and the device is then threaded through the sheath and into the vessel. These catheters can also serve as stand-alone devices for rapid infusion given their large diameter and short length. When paired with a pressurized infusion system, flow rates of 850 ml/min have been achieved.


title: Central venous catheter

text: The catheter is held in place by an adhesive dressing, suture, or staple which is covered by an occlusive dressing. Regular flushing with saline or a heparin-containing solution keeps the line open and prevents blood clots. There is no evidence that heparin is better than saline at preventing blood clots. Certain lines are impregnated with antibiotics, silver-containing substances (specifically silver sulfadiazine) and/or chlorhexidine to reduce infection risk.


title: Central venous catheter

text: Specific types of long-term central lines are the Hickman catheters, which require clamps to make sure that the valve is closed, and Groshong catheters, which have a valve that opens as fluid is withdrawn or infused and remains closed when not in use. Hickman lines also have a "cuff" under the skin, to prevent bacterial migration. The cuff also causes tissue ingrowth into the device for long term securement.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Paula Poundstone (born December 29, 1959) is an American stand-up comedian, author, actor, interviewer, and commentator. Beginning in the late 1980s, she performed a series of one-hour HBO comedy specials. She provided backstage commentary during the 1992 presidential election on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." She is the host of the Starburns Audio podcast (previously a member of the Maximum Fun network) "Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone", which is the successor to the National Public Radio program "Live from the Poundstone Institute." She is a frequent panelist on NPR's weekly news quiz show "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me", and was a recurring guest on the network's "A Prairie Home Companion" variety program during Garrison Keillor's years as host.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the daughter of Vera, a housewife, and Jack Poundstone, an engineer. Her family moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts, about a month after her birth.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone started doing stand-up comedy at open-mic nights in Boston in 1979. In the early 1980s, she traveled across the United States by Greyhound bus, stopping in at open-mic nights at comedy clubs en route. She stayed in San Francisco, where she became known for improvisational sets at Holy City Zoo on Clement Street and The Other Café comedy club in Cole Valley.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: In 1984, Robin Williams saw her act and encouraged her to move to Los Angeles. She performed her act when Williams hosted an episode of "Saturday Night Live". That year, Poundstone was cast in the movie "Gremloids". She continued as a comedian and began appearing on several talk shows. In 1989, she won the American Comedy Award for "Best Female Stand-Up Comic".


title: Paula Poundstone

text: In 1990, she wrote and starred in an HBO special called "Cats, Cops and Stuff," for which she won a CableACE Award, making her the first woman to win the ACE for best Standup Comedy Special. In March 2019, comedian Tig Notaro named "Cats, Cops and Stuff" one of The 5 Funniest Stand-Up Specials Ever for TIME Magazine. Poundstone went on to another first with her second HBO stand-up special, "Paula Poundstone Goes to Harvard," taped on campus in Sanders Theatre. Poundstone had her own Bravo special in 2006 as part of their three-part "Funny Girls" series, along with Caroline Rhea and Joan Rivers, titled "Paula Poundstone: Look What the Cat Dragged In."


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone worked as a political correspondent for "The Tonight Show" during the 1992 US Presidential campaign and did field pieces for "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" in 1996. In 1993, Poundstone won a second CableACE Award for "Best Program Interviewer" for her HBO series "The Paula Poundstone Show." She was then featured in her own variety show, "The Paula Poundstone Show," on ABC (which lasted two episodes). She also appeared on "Hollywood Squares" and was a regular panelist for the remake of "To Tell the Truth". Poundstone had a recurring role in Cybill Shepherd's TV series "Cybill" (1997).


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone has also worked as a voice actress. She voiced Judge Stone on "Science Court" (also known as "Squigglevision"), an edutainment cartoon series done in the Squigglevision style that aired on Saturday mornings, on ABC Kids in 1997.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Staying with the makers of "Science Court", Tom Snyder Productions, she was the voice of the mom, Paula Small, in the cartoon series "Home Movies" for the show's first five episodes, which aired on UPN. Between the show's 1999 UPN cancellation and 2000 revival on Cartoon Network, Poundstone chose to leave the show and was replaced by Janine Ditullio,


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone is a frequent panelist on National Public Radio (NPR)'s weekly news quiz show, "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me". In 2017, she launched a new science-comedy-interview program on NPR called "Live from the Poundstone Institute" that released episodes weekly, then stopped suddenly, saying “the semester is over”. In July 2018, Poundstone began co-hosting the information-based, comedy podcast "Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone" with Adam Felber.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone tours the country extensively, performing stand-up comedy in theaters and performing arts centers. She is known for never doing the same act twice and spontaneously interacting with the crowd. Writes Nick Zaino III of the "Boston Globe," "Her crowd work has always been unusual—her natural disposition, curious and ever-perplexed, allows Poundstone to aggressively question audience members without ever seeming threatening. And no one does the callback better." She has released three comedy CDs: "I Heart Jokes: Paula Tells Them in Boston" on April Fools' Day 2013; "North by Northwest: Paula Poundstone Live!" (her first double album) in June 2016; and "I Heart Jokes: Paula Tells Them in Maine" in January 2009.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone's first book, "There Is Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say", was published by Crown in 2006. Her second book, published by Algonquin in May 2017, is titled "The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness." She also wrote the column "Hey, Paula!" for "Mother Jones" (1993–1998) and articles for "The Los Angeles Times", "Glamour", and "Entertainment Weekly," among others.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: An avid reader, Poundstone has been the National Spokesperson for the American Library Association's "United for Libraries" since 2007. It is a citizens' support group that works to raise funds and awareness for their local libraries.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: Poundstone began serving as a foster parent in the 1990s. She has fostered eight children, and eventually adopted two daughters and a son.


title: Paula Poundstone

text: In October 2001, Poundstone was charged with felony child endangerment in connection with driving while intoxicated with her children in the car. She was also charged with three counts of lewd acts upon a girl younger than 14. The charge involved inappropriate touching of a 12-year-old girl. In a plea bargain, she changed her earlier plea of not guilty, and in exchange prosecutors asked for the court records to be sealed, dropped three counts of committing lewd acts against a child, and added a misdemeanor count of inflicting injury upon a child. Poundstone also pleaded no contest to one count of felony child endangerment. She was barred from taking in foster children again, sentenced to five years of probation and six months in rehabilitation, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and a child-abuse program, and receive random drug and alcohol tests. In 2002, Poundstone talked about her personal responsibility for the events that led to her arrest and the steps she has taken, including a six-month treatment program for alcoholism, but she said that she did not commit any lewd acts or child abuse.


title: Tradition

text: A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes (like lawyers' wigs or military officers' spurs), but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings. Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word "tradition" itself derives from the Latin "tradere" literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. While it is commonly assumed that traditions have an ancient history, many traditions have been invented on purpose, whether that be political or cultural, over short periods of time. Various academic disciplines also use the word in a variety of ways.


title: Tradition

text: The phrase "according to tradition", or "by tradition", usually means that whatever information follows is known only by oral tradition, but is not supported (and perhaps may be refuted) by physical documentation, by a physical artifact, or other quality evidence. "Tradition" is used to indicate the quality of a piece of information being discussed. For example, "According to tradition, Homer was born on Chios, but many other locales have historically claimed him as theirs." This tradition may never be proven or disproven. In another example, "King Arthur, by tradition a true British king, has inspired many well loved stories." Whether they are documented fact or not does not decrease their value as cultural history and literature.


title: Tradition

text: Traditions are a subject of study in several academic fields, especially in social sciences such as folklore studies, anthropology, archaeology, and biology.


title: Tradition

text: The concept of tradition, as the notion of holding on to a previous time, is also found in political and philosophical discourse. For example, it is the basis of the political concept of traditionalism, and also strands of many world religions including traditional Catholicism. In artistic contexts, tradition is used to decide the correct display of an art form. For example, in the performance of traditional genres (such as traditional dance), adherence to guidelines dictating how an art form should be composed are given greater importance than the performer's own preferences. A number of factors can exacerbate the loss of tradition, including industrialization, globalization, and the assimilation or marginalization of specific cultural groups. In response to this, tradition-preservation attempts have now been started in many countries around the world, focusing on aspects such as traditional languages. Tradition is usually contrasted with the goal of modernity and should be differentiated from customs, conventions, laws, norms, routines, rules and similar concepts.


title: Tradition

text: The English word "tradition" comes from the Latin "traditio" via French, the noun from the verb "tradere" (to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping); it was originally used in Roman law to refer to the concept of legal transfers and inheritance. According to Anthony Giddens and others, the modern meaning of tradition evolved during the Enlightenment period, in opposition to modernity and progress.


title: Tradition

text: As with many other generic terms, there are many definitions of tradition. The concept includes a number of interrelated ideas; the unifying one is that tradition refers to beliefs, objects or customs performed or believed in the past, originating in it, transmitted through time by being taught by one generation to the next, and are performed or believed in the present.


title: Tradition

text: Tradition can also refer to beliefs or customs that are Prehistoric, with lost or arcane origins, existing from "time immemorial". Originally, traditions were passed orally, without the need for a writing system. Tools to aid this process include poetic devices such as rhyme and alliteration. The stories thus preserved are also referred to as tradition, or as part of an oral tradition. Even such traditions, however, are presumed to have originated (been "invented" by humans) at some point. Traditions are often presumed to be ancient, unalterable, and deeply important, though they may sometimes be much less "natural" than is presumed. It is presumed that at least two transmissions over three generations are required for a practice, belief or object to be seen as traditional. Some traditions were deliberately invented for one reason or another, often to highlight or enhance the importance of a certain institution. Traditions may also be adapted to suit the needs of the day, and the changes can become accepted as a part of the ancient tradition. Tradition changes slowly, with changes from one generation to the next being seen as significant. Thus, those carrying out the traditions will not be consciously aware of the change, and even if a tradition undergoes major changes over many generations, it will be seen as unchanged.


title: Tradition

text: Many objects, beliefs and customs can be traditional. Rituals of social interaction can be traditional, with phrases and gestures such as saying "thank you", sending birth announcements, greeting cards, etc. Tradition can also refer to larger concepts practiced by groups (family traditions at Christmas), organizations (company's picnic) or societies, such as the practice of national and public holidays. Some of the oldest traditions include monotheism (three millennia) and citizenship (two millennia). It can also include material objects, such as buildings, works of art or tools.


title: Tradition

text: Tradition is often used as an adjective, in contexts such as traditional music, traditional medicine, traditional values and others. In such constructions tradition refers to specific values and materials particular to the discussed context, passed through generations.


title: Tradition

text: The term "invention of tradition", introduced by E. J. Hobsbawm, refers to situations when a new practice or object is introduced in a manner that implies a connection with the past that is not necessarily present. A tradition may be deliberately created and promulgated for personal, commercial, political, or national self-interest, as was done in colonial Africa; or it may be adopted rapidly based on a single highly publicized event, rather than developing and spreading organically in a population, as in the case of the white wedding dress, which only became popular after Queen Victoria wore a white gown at her wedding to Albert of Saxe-Coburg.


title: Tradition

text: An example of an invention of tradition is the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (location of the British Parliament) in the Gothic style. Similarly, most of the traditions associated with monarchy of the United Kingdom, seen as rooted deep in history, actually date to 19th century. Other examples include the invention of tradition in Africa and other colonial holdings by the occupying forces. Requiring legitimacy, the colonial power would often invent a "tradition" which they could use to legitimize their own position. For example, a certain succession to a chiefdom might be recognized by a colonial power as traditional in order to favour their own candidates for the job. Often these inventions were based in some form of tradition, but were exaggerated, distorted, or biased toward a particular interpretation.


title: Tradition

text: Invented traditions are a central component of modern national cultures, providing a commonality of experience and promoting the unified national identity espoused by nationalism. Common examples include public holidays (particularly those unique to a particular nation), the singing of national anthems, and traditional national cuisine (see national dish). Expatriate and immigrant communities may continue to practice the national traditions of their home nation.


title: Tradition

text: In science, tradition is often used in the literature in order to define the relationship of an author's thoughts to that of his or her field. In 1948, philosopher of science Karl Popper suggested that there should be a "rational theory of tradition" applied to science which was fundamentally sociological. For Popper, each scientist who embarks on a certain research trend inherits the tradition of the scientists before them as he or she inherits their studies and any conclusions that superseded it. Unlike myth, which is a means of explaining the natural world through means other than logical criticism, scientific tradition was inherited from Socrates, who proposed critical discussion, according to Popper. For Thomas Kuhn, who presented his thoughts in a paper presented in 1977, a sense of such a critical inheritance of tradition is, historically, what sets apart the best scientists who change their fields is an embracement of tradition.


title: Tradition

text: Traditions are a subject of study in several academic fields in social sciences—chiefly anthropology, archaeology, and biology—with somewhat different meanings in different fields. It is also used in varying contexts in other fields, such as history, psychology and sociology. Social scientists and others have worked to refine the commonsense concept of tradition to make it into a useful concept for scholarly analysis. In the 1970s and 1980s, Edward Shils explored the concept in detail. Since then, a wide variety of social scientists have criticized traditional ideas about tradition; meanwhile, "tradition" has come into usage in biology as applied to nonhuman animals.


title: Tradition

text: Tradition as a concept variously defined in different disciplines should not be confused with various traditions (perspectives, approaches) in those disciplines.


title: Tradition

text: Tradition is one of the key concepts in anthropology; it can be said that anthropology is the study of "tradition in traditional societies". There is however no "theory of tradition", as for most anthropologists the need to discuss what tradition is seems unnecessary, as defining tradition is both unnecessary (everyone can be expected to know what it is) and unimportant (as small differences in definition would be just technical). There are however dissenting views; scholars such as Pascal Boyer argue that defining tradition and developing theories about it are important to the discipline.


title: Tradition

text: In archaeology, the term "tradition" is a set of cultures or industries which appear to develop on from one another over a period of time. The term is especially common in the study of American archaeology.


title: Tradition

text: Biologists, when examining groups of non-humans, have observed repeated behaviors which are taught within communities from one generation to the next. Tradition is defined in biology as "a behavioral practice that is relatively enduring (i.e., is performed repeatedly over a period of time), that is shared among two or more members of a group, that depends in part on socially aided learning for its generation in new practitioners", and has been called a precursor to "culture" in the anthropological sense.


title: Tradition

text: Behavioral traditions have been observed in groups of fish, birds, and mammals. Groups of orangutans and chimpanzees, in particular, may display large numbers of behavioral traditions, and in chimpanzees, transfer of traditional behavior from one group to another (not just within a group) has been observed. Such behavioral traditions may have evolutionary significance, allowing adaptation at a faster rate than genetic change.


title: Tradition

text: In the field of musicology and ethnomusicology tradition refers to the belief systems, repertoire, techniques, style and culture that is passed down through subsequent generations. Tradition in music suggests a historical context with which one can perceive distinguishable patterns. Along with a sense of history, traditions have a fluidity that cause them to evolve and adapt over time.


title: Tradition

text: While both musicology and ethnomusicology are defined by being 'the scholarly study of music' they differ in their methodology and subject of research. 'Tradition, or traditions, can be presented as a context in which to study the work of a specific composer or as a part of a wide-ranging historical perspective.'


title: Tradition

text: The concept of tradition, in early sociological research (around the turn of the 19th and 20th century), referred to that of the traditional society, as contrasted by the more modern industrial society. This approach was most notably portrayed in Max Weber's concepts of traditional authority and modern rational-legal authority. In more modern works, One hundred years later, sociology sees tradition as a social construct used to contrast past with the present and as a form of rationality used to justify certain course of action.


title: Tradition

text: Traditional society is characterized by lack of distinction between family and business, division of labor influenced primarily by age, gender, and status, high position of custom in the system of values, self-sufficiency, preference to saving and accumulation of capital instead of productive investment, relative autarky. Early theories positing the simple, unilineal evolution of societies from traditional to industrial model are now seen as too simplistic.


title: Tradition

text: In 1981 Edward Shils in his book "Tradition" put forward a definition of tradition that became universally accepted. According to Shils, tradition is anything which is transmitted or handed down from the past to the present.


title: Tradition

text: Another important sociological aspect of tradition is the one that relates to rationality. It is also related to the works of Max Weber (see theories of rationality), and were popularized and redefined in 1992 by Raymond Boudon in his book "Action". In this context tradition refers to the mode of thinking and action justified as "it has always been that way". This line of reasoning forms the basis of the logical flaw of the appeal to tradition (or "argumentum ad antiquitatem"), which takes the form "this is right because we've always done it this way." In most cases such an appeal can be refuted on the grounds that the "tradition" being advocated may no longer be desirable, or, indeed, may never have been despite its previous popularity.


title: Tradition

text: The idea of tradition is important in philosophy. Twentieth century philosophy is often divided between an 'analytic' tradition, dominant in Anglophone and Scandinavian countries, and a 'continental' tradition, dominant in German and Romance speaking Europe. Increasingly central to continental philosophy is the project of deconstructing what its proponents, following Martin Heidegger, call 'the tradition', which began with Plato and Aristotle. In contrast, some continental philosophers - most notably, Hans-Georg Gadamer - have attempted to rehabilitate the tradition of Aristotelianism. This move has been replicated within analytic philosophy by Alasdair MacIntyre. However, MacIntyre has himself deconstructed the idea of 'the tradition', instead posing Aristotelianism as one philosophical tradition in rivalry with others.


title: Tradition

text: The concepts of tradition and traditional values are frequently used in political and religious discourse to establish the legitimacy of a particular set of values. In the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the concept of tradition has been used to argue for the centrality and legitimacy of conservative religious values. Similarly, strands of orthodox theological thought from a number of world religions openly identify themselves as wanting a return to tradition. For example, the term "traditionalist Catholic" refers to those, such as Archbishop Lefebvre, who want the worship and practices of the Church to be as they were before the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65. Likewise, Sunni Muslims are referred to as "Ahl el-Sunnah wa Al-Jamā‘ah" (), literally "people of the tradition [of Muhammad] and the community", emphasizing their attachment to religious and cultural tradition.


title: Tradition

text: More generally, tradition has been used as a way of determining the political spectrum, with right-wing parties having a stronger affinity to certain ways of the past than left-wing ones. Here, the concept of adherence tradition is embodied by the political philosophy of traditionalist conservatism (or simply "traditionalism"), which emphasizes the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, hierarchy and organic unity, agrarianism, classicism and high culture, and the intersecting spheres of loyalty. Traditionalists would therefore reject the notions of individualism, liberalism, modernity, and social progress, but promote cultural and educational renewal, and revive interest in the Church, the family, the State and local community. This view has been criticised for including in its notion of tradition practices which are no longer considered to be desirable, for example, stereotypical views of the place of women in domestic affairs.


title: Tradition

text: In other societies, especially ones experiencing rapid social change, the idea of what is "traditional" may be widely contested, with different groups striving to establish their own values as the legitimate traditional ones. Defining and enacting traditions in some cases can be a means of building unity between subgroups in a diverse society; in other cases, tradition is a means of othering and keeping groups distinct from one another.


title: Tradition

text: In artistic contexts, in the performance of traditional genres (such as traditional dance), adherence to traditional guidelines is of greater importance than performer's preferences. It is often the unchanging form of certain arts that leads to their perception as traditional. For artistic endeavors, tradition has been used as a contrast to "creativity", with traditional and folk art associated with unoriginal imitation or repetition, in contrast to fine art, which is valued for being original and unique. More recent philosophy of art, however, considers interaction with tradition as integral to the development of new artistic expression.


title: Tradition

text: In the social sciences, "tradition" is often contrasted with "modernity", particularly in terms of whole societies. This dichotomy is generally associated with a linear model of social change, in which societies progress from being traditional to being modern. Tradition-oriented societies have been characterized as valuing filial piety, harmony and group welfare, stability, and interdependence, while a society exhibiting modernity would value "individualism (with free will and choice), mobility, and progress." Another author discussing tradition in relationship to modernity, Anthony Giddens, sees tradition as something bound to ritual, where ritual guarantees the continuation of tradition. Gusfield and others, though, criticize this dichotomy as oversimplified, arguing that tradition is dynamic, heterogeneous, and coexists successfully with modernity even within individuals.


title: Tradition

text: Tradition should be differentiated from "customs, conventions, laws, norms, routines, rules" and similar concepts. Whereas tradition is supposed to be invariable, they are seen as more flexible and subject to innovation and change. Whereas justification for tradition is ideological, the justification for other similar concepts is more practical or technical. Over time, customs, routines, conventions, rules and such can evolve into traditions, but that usually requires that they stop having (primarily) a practical purpose. For example, wigs worn by lawyers were at first common and fashionable; spurs worn by military officials were at first practical but now are both impractical and traditional.


title: Tradition

text: The legal protection of tradition includes a number of international agreements and national laws. In addition to the fundamental protection of cultural property, there is also cooperation between the United Nations, UNESCO and Blue Shield International in the protection or recording of traditions and customs. The protection of culture and traditions is becoming increasingly important nationally and internationally.


title: Tradition

text: In many countries, concerted attempts are being made to preserve traditions that are at risk of being lost. A number of factors can exacerbate the loss of tradition, including industrialization, globalization, and the assimilation or marginalization of specific cultural groups. Customary celebrations and lifestyles are among the traditions that are sought to be preserved. Likewise, the concept of tradition has been used to defend the preservation and reintroduction of minority languages such as Cornish under the auspices of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Specifically, the charter holds that these languages "contribute to the maintenance and development of Europe's cultural wealth and traditions". The Charter goes on to call for "the use or adoption... of traditional and correct forms of place-names in regional or minority languages". Similarly, UNESCO includes both "oral tradition" and "traditional manifestations" in its definition of a country's cultural properties and heritage. It therefore works to preserve tradition in countries such as Brazil.


title: Tradition

text: In Japan, certain artworks, structures, craft techniques and performing arts are considered by the Japanese government to be a precious legacy of the Japanese people, and are protected under the Japanese Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. This law also identifies people skilled at traditional arts as "National Living Treasures", and encourages the preservation of their craft.


title: Tradition

text: For native peoples like the Māori in New Zealand, there is conflict between the fluid identity assumed as part of modern society and the traditional identity with the obligations that accompany it; the loss of language heightens the feeling of isolation and damages the ability to perpetuate tradition.


title: Tradition

text: The phrase "traditional cultural expressions" is used by the World Intellectual Property Organization to refer to "any form of artistic and literary expression in which traditional culture and knowledge are embodied. They are transmitted from one generation to the next, and include handmade textiles, paintings, stories, legends, ceremonies, music, songs, rhythms and dance."


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for "Mighty Joe Young" (1949) with his mentor Willis H. O'Brien (for which the latter won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects); his first color film, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958); and "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963), which featured a sword fight with seven skeleton warriors. His last film was "Clash of the Titans" (1981), after which he retired.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In 1960, Harryhausen moved to the United Kingdom and became a dual American-British citizen. He lived in London until his death in 2013. During his life, his innovative style of special effects in films inspired numerous filmmakers. In November 2016 the BFI compiled a list of those present-day filmmakers who claim to have been inspired by Harryhausen, including Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Joe Dante, Tim Burton, Nick Park, James Cameron, and Guillermo del Toro. Others influenced by him include George Lucas, John Lasseter, John Landis, Henry Selick, J. J. Abrams, and Wes Anderson.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Martha L. (née Reske) and Frederick W. Harryhausen. Of German descent, the family surname was originally spelled "Herrenhausen".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: After having seen "King Kong" (1933) on its initial release for the first of many times, Harryhausen spent his early years experimenting in the production of animated shorts, inspired by the burgeoning science fiction literary genre of the period. The scenes utilising stop-motion animation (or model animation), those featuring creatures on the island or Kong, were the work of pioneer model animator Willis O'Brien. His work in "King Kong" inspired Harryhausen, and a friend arranged a meeting with O'Brien for him. O'Brien critiqued Harryhausen's early models and urged him to take classes in graphic arts and sculpture to hone his skills. Taking O'Brien's advice, while still at high school, Harryhausen took evening classes in art direction, photography and editing at the newly formed School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, where he would later serve as a lecturer. Meanwhile, he became friends with an aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury, with similar enthusiasms. Bradbury and Harryhausen joined the Los Angeles chapter of the Science Fiction League (now the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society), Bradbury in 1937, Harryhausen in 1939, where they met Forrest J Ackerman; and the three became lifelong friends.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: After studying art and anatomy at Los Angeles City College, Harryhausen secured his first commercial model-animation job, on George Pal's "Puppetoons" shorts, based on viewing his first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from a project called "Evolution of the World", which was never finished.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: During World War II, Harryhausen served in the United States Army Special Services Division under Colonel Frank Capra, as a loader, clapper boy, gofer and later camera assistant, whilst working at home animating short films about the use and development of military equipment. During this time, he also worked with composer Dimitri Tiomkin and Ted Geisel ("Dr. Seuss"). Following the war, he salvaged several rolls of discarded 16 mm surplus film from which he made a series of fairy tale-based shorts, which he called his "teething-rings".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In 1947, Harryhausen was hired as an assistant animator (credited as "First technician, Special Effects") on what turned out to be his first major film, "Mighty Joe Young" (1949).


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: The first film with Ray Harryhausen in full charge of technical effects was "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953) which began development under the working title "Monster From the Sea". The filmmakers learned that a long-time friend of Harryhausen, writer Ray Bradbury, had sold a short story called "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (later re-titled "The Fog Horn") to "The Saturday Evening Post", about a dinosaur drawn to a lone lighthouse by its foghorn. Because the story for Harryhausen's film featured a similar scene, the film studio bought the rights to Bradbury's story to avoid any potential legal problems. Also, the title was changed back to "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms". Under that title, it became Harryhausen's first solo feature film effort, and a major international box-office hit for Warner Brothers.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: It was on "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" that Harryhausen first used a technique he created called "Dynamation" that split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate images into which he would animate a model or models, seemingly integrating the live-action with the models. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, re-photographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model was "sandwiched" in between the two live action elements, right into the final live action scene.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In most of Harryhausen's films, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention to themselves as only "animation." Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were created via Harryhausen's careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both the set and the projector. This dramatically reduced much of degradation common in the use of back-projection or the creation of dupe negatives via the use of an optical printer. Harryhausen's use of diffused glass to soften the sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed the matching of the soft background plates far more successfully than Willis O'Brien had achieved in his early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements seamlessly in most of his shots. By developing and executing most of this miniature work himself, Harryhausen saved money, while maintaining full technical control.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: A few years later, when Harryhausen began working with color film to make "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad", he experimented extensively with color film stocks to overcome the color-balance-shift problems. Ray's producer/partner Charles H. Schneer coined the word Dynamation as a "merchandising term" (modifying it to "SuperDynaMation" and then "Dynarama" for some subsequent films).


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen was always heavily involved in the pre-production conceptualizing of each film's story, script development, art-direction, design, storyboards, and general tone of his films, as much as any "auteur" director would have on any other film, which any "director" of Harryhausen's films had to understand and agree to work under. The complexities of the Directors Guild of America's rules prevented Harryhausen from being credited as the director of his films, resulting in the more modest credits he had in most of his films.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Throughout most of his career, Harryhausen's work was a sort of family affair. His father did the machining of the metal armatures (based on his son's designs) that were the skeletons for the models and allowed them to keep their position, while his mother assisted with some miniature costumes. After Harryhausen's father died in 1973, Harryhausen contracted his armature work out to another machinist. An occasional assistant, George Lofgren, a taxidermist, assisted Harryhausen with the creation of furred creatures. Another associate, Willis Cook, built some of Harryhausen's miniature sets. Other than that, Harryhausen worked generally alone to produce almost all of the animation for his films.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: The same year that "Beast" was released, 1953, fledgling film producer Irwin Allen released a live action documentary about life in the oceans titled "The Sea Around Us", which won an Oscar for best documentary feature film of that year. Allen's and Harryhausen's paths would cross three years later, on Allen's sequel to this film.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen soon met and began a fruitful partnership with producer Charles H. Schneer, who was working with the Sam Katzman B-picture unit of Columbia Pictures. Their first tandem project was "It Came from Beneath the Sea" (a.k.a. "Monster from Beneath the Sea", 1955), about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. It was a box-office success, quickly followed by "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" (1956), set in Washington D.C. – one of the best of the alien invasion films of the 1950s, and also a box office hit.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In 1954, Irwin Allen had started work on a second feature-length documentary film, this one about animal life on land called "The Animal World" (completed in 1956). Needing an opening sequence about dinosaurs, Allen hired premier model animator Willis O'Brien to animate the dinosaurs, but then gave him an practically impossibly short production schedule. O'Brien again hired Harryhausen to help with animation to complete the eight-minute sequence. It was Harryhausen's and O'Brien's first and only professional full-color work. Most viewers agree that the dinosaur sequence of "Animal World" was the best part of the entire movie ("Animal World" is available on the DVD release of O'Brien's 1957 film "The Black Scorpion").


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen then returned to Columbia and Charles Schneer to make "20 Million Miles to Earth" (1957), about an American spaceship returning from the planet Venus. The spaceship crashes into the sea near Sicily, releasing an on-board alien egg specimen which washes up on shore. The egg soon hatches a creature that, in Earth's atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size and terrifies the citizens of Rome. Harryhausen refined and improved his already-considerable ability at establishing emotional characterizations in the face of his Venusian "Ymir" model, creating yet another international box office hit.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Schneer was eager to graduate to full-color films. Reluctant at first, Harryhausen managed to develop the systems necessary to maintain proper color balances for his DynaMation process, resulting in his biggest hit of the 1950s, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958). The top-grossing film of that summer, and one of the top-grossing films of that year, Schneer and Harryhausen signed another deal with Columbia for four more color films.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: After "The 3 Worlds of Gulliver" (1960) and "Mysterious Island" (1961), both great artistic and technical successes, and successful at the box office, according to Harryhausen, who stated in the DVD and Blu-ray featurette about the making of "Mysterious Island": ""Mysterious Island" was one of the most successful films that we made and I am glad people are still enjoying it today". And "Gulliver" "made its profits" as Ray is quoted in Jeff Rovin's bio-book "From The Land Beyond Beyond: The Making of the Movie Monsters You've Known and Loved – The Films of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen". His next film is considered by film historians and fans as Harryhausen's masterwork, "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963). Among the film's several celebrated animation sequences is an extended fight between three actors and seven living skeletons, a considerable advance on the single-skeleton fight scene in "Sinbad". This stop-motion sequence took over four months to complete.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen next made "First Men in the Moon" (1964), his only film made in the 2.35:1 widescreen (a.k.a. "CinemaScope") format, based on the novel by H. G. Wells. "Jason" and "First Men in the Moon" were box office disappointments at the time of their original theatrical release. That, plus changes of management at Columbia Pictures, resulted in his contract with Columbia Picture not being renewed. Also, as the 1960s counter-culture came to influence more and more and younger filmmakers, and failing studios struggled to find material that was popular with the new "Boomer-generation" audience, Harryhausen's love of the past, setting his stories in ancient fantasy worlds or previous centuries, kept him from keeping pace with changing tastes in the 1960s. Only a handful of Harryhausen's features have been set in then-present time, and none in the future. As this revolution in the traditional Hollywood film studio system, and the influx of a new generation of film makers sorted itself out, Harryhausen became a free agent.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen was then hired by Hammer Films to animate the dinosaurs for "One Million Years B.C." (1966). It was a success at the box office, helped in part by the presence of Raquel Welch in her second film. Harryhausen next went on to make another dinosaur film, "The Valley of Gwangi" with Schneer. The project had been developed for Columbia, who declined. Schneer then made a deal with Warner Brothers instead. It was a personal project to Harryhausen, which he had wanted to do for many years, as it was storyboarded by his original mentor, Willis O'Brien for a 1939 film, "Gwangi", that was never completed. Set in Mexico, "The Valley of Gwangi" is a parallel "Kong" story—cowboys capture a living "Allosaurus" and bring him to the nearest Mexican town for exhibition. Sabotage releases the creature, and it wreaks havoc on the town. The film features a roping scene reminiscent of 1949's "Mighty Joe Young" (which was itself recycled from the old "Gwangi" storyboards), and a spectacular fire and animation sequence inside a cathedral toward the end of the film, combining multiple special effects.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: After a few lean years, Harryhausen and Schneer talked Columbia Pictures into reviving the Sinbad character, resulting in "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad", often remembered for the sword fight involving a statue of the six-armed Hindu goddess Kali. It was first released in Los Angeles in the Christmas season of 1973, but garnered its main audience in the spring and summer of 1974. It was followed by "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" (1977), which disappointed some fans because of its tongue-in-cheek approach. Both films were, however, box office successes.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Schneer and Harryhausen finally were allowed by MGM to produce a big budget film with name actors and an expanded effects budget. The film started out smaller, but then MGM increased the budget to hire stars such as Laurence Olivier. It became the last feature film to showcase his effects work, "Clash of the Titans" (1981), for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Special Effects. For this film, he hired protégé model animators Steve Archer and two-time Oscar-nominated Jim Danforth to assist with major animation sequences. Harryhausen fans will readily discern that the armed-and-finned Kraken (a name borrowed from medieval Scandinavian folklore) he invented for "Clash of the Titans" has similar facial qualities to the Venusian Ymir he created 25 years earlier for "20 Million Miles to Earth".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Perhaps because of his hermetic production style and the fact that he produced half of his films outside of Hollywood (living in London since 1960), reducing his day-to-day kinship with other more traditional, but still influential Hollywood effects artists, none of Harryhausen's films were nominated for a special effects Oscar. Harryhausen himself says the reason was that he worked in Europe, but this oversight by the AMPAS visual-effects committee also occurred throughout the 1950s when Harryhausen lived in Los Angeles.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In spite of the very successful box office returns of "Clash of the Titans", more sophisticated computer-assisted technology developed by ILM and others began to eclipse Harryhausen's production techniques, and so MGM and other studios passed on funding his planned sequel, "Force of the Trojans", causing Harryhausen and Schneer to retire from active filmmaking.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In the early 1970s, Harryhausen had also concentrated his efforts on authoring a book, "Film Fantasy Scrapbook" (produced in three editions as his last three films were released) and supervising the restoration and release of (eventually all) his films to VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, and currently Blu-ray. A second book followed, "Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life", written with author and friend Tony Dalton, which details his techniques and history. This was then followed in 2005 by "The Art of Ray Harryhausen", featuring sketches and drawings for his many projects, some of them unrealized. In 2008, Harryhausen and Dalton published a history of stop-motion model animation, "A Century of Model Animation", and, to celebrate Harryhausen's 90th birthday, the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation published "Ray Harryhausen – A Life in Pictures". In 2011, Harryhausen and Dalton's last volume, called "Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook", was also published.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen continued his lifelong friendship with Ray Bradbury until Bradbury's death in 2012. Another longtime close friend was "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J Ackerman, who loaned Harryhausen his photos of "King Kong" in 1933, right after Harryhausen had seen the film for the first time. Harryhausen also maintained his friendships with his longtime producer, Charles H. Schneer, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London until Schneer moved full-time to the U.S. (a few years later, in early 2009, Schneer died at 88 in Boca Raton, Florida); and with model animation protégé, Jim Danforth, still living in the Los Angeles area.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen and Terry Moore appeared in small comedic cameo roles in the 1998 remake of "Mighty Joe Young", and he provided the voice of a polar bear cub in the film "Elf". He also appears as a bar patron in "Beverly Hills Cop III", and as a doctor in the John Landis film "Spies Like Us". In 2010, Harryhausen had a brief cameo in "Burke & Hare", a British film directed by Landis.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In 1986, Harryhausen formed the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a registered charity in the U.K. and U.S. that preserves his collection and promotes the art of stop-motion animation and Harryhausen's contributions to the genre.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: TidalWave Productions' "Ray Harryhausen Signature Series" produced authorized comic-book adaptions of some of Harryhausen's unrealized projects from 2007 on.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In 2009, he released self-colorized versions on Blu-Ray video of three of his classic black-and-white Columbia films: "20 Million Miles to Earth", "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers", and "It Came from Beneath the Sea". He also personally supervised the colorization of three films, two of them in partial tribute to their producer Merian C. Cooper, who had supervised "King Kong", the film that inspired him as a young man: "The Most Dangerous Game" (1932), "She" (1935), and the non-Cooper film "Things to Come" (1936).


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen married Diana Livingstone Bruce in October, 1962. The couple had a daughter, Vanessa. The family announced Harryhausen's death on Twitter and Facebook on May 7, 2013. Diana survived her husband by five months.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: The "Daily Mirror" quoted Harryhausen's website, saying his "influence on today's film makers was enormous, with luminaries; Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, John Landis and the U.K.'s own Nick Park have cited Harryhausen as being the man whose work inspired their own creations." Harryhausen drew a distinction between films that combine special effects animation with live action and films that are completely animated, such those of Nick Park, Henry Selick, Ivo Caprino, Ladislav Starevich (and his own fairy tale shorts), which he saw as pure "puppet films", and which are more accurately (and traditionally) called "puppet animation".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: The BBC quoted Peter Lord of Aardman Animations, who wrote on Twitter that Harryhausen was "a one-man industry and a one-man genre". The BBC also quoted "Shaun of the Dead" director Edgar Wright: "I loved every single frame of Ray Harryhausen's work ... He was the man who made me believe in monsters." In a full statement released by the family, George Lucas said, "Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no "Star Wars"". Terry Gilliam said, "What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits." James Cameron said, "I think all of us who are practitioners in the arts of science fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we're standing on the shoulders of a giant. If not for Ray's contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn't be who we are."


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: John Walsh, author of "", calls Harryhausen "the most influential stop-motion animator and special-effects wizard in cinema history."


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Harryhausen left his collection, which includes all of his film-related artifacts, to the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, which he set up in 1986 to look after his extensive collection, to protect his name and to further the art of model stop-motion animation. The trustees are his daughter Vanessa Harryhausen, Simon Mackintosh, actress Caroline Munro, who appeared in "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" and film maker John Walsh, who first met Harryhausen in 1988 as a student at the London Film School and made the documentary "", narrated by "Doctor Who" actor Tom Baker. The foundation's website charts progress on the restoration of the collection and plans for Harryhausen's legacy.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In 2013, the RH foundation and Arrow Films released a feature-length biography of Harryhausen and his films, "Ray Harryhausen – Special Effects Titan", on Blu-Ray. Featuring photos, artifacts, and film clips culled directly from Harryhausen's estate and never before seen by the public, the film was initially released only in the U.K., but was released on Blu-Ray in the U.S. in 2016.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In February 2016, John Walsh and Collections Manager Connor Heaney began a podcast about all things Harryhausen, from the films to the various composers involved on the productions. Occasionally the podcast features interviews with fans, as well as insights into Harryhausen's models from Foundation model conservator Alan Friswell. The podcast has featured Mark Gatiss, John Cairney, Caroline Munro, and Vanessa Harryhausen.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: Some of Harryhausen's models and artworks were showcased as part of the Barbican Centre's 'Into the Unknown' exhibition from June 3 to September 1, 2017. To mark his 97th birthday on July 29, 2017, the Barbican posted a guest blog by Heaney, highlighting Harryhausen's lasting influence on science fiction.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: On June 5, 2017, it was announced that a major exhibition of Harryhausen's models, "Ray Harryhausen—Mythical Menagerie", would take place at the Science Museum Oklahoma. The exhibition opened on July 29. USA Today called it "one of best museum exhibits in the U.S. this fall". In 2018 the exhibition was nominated for a Rondo Hatton Award for "Best Live Event".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: An exhibition at Tate Britain from June 26 to November 19, 2017, features work from the Harryhausen collection and short film made by John Walsh on the restoration of a painting owned by Harryhausen which influenced his work.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In September 2018, Titan Books published "Harryhausen – The Movie Posters" by author Richard Holliss, focusing on the various movie posters associated with Harryhausen's films from across the globe.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In September 2019, Foundation trustee, Titan Books published a new book by Walsh, which delves into the hidden treasures of Ray's unrealised film projects. On the 15th September, a book launch and signing event was held at the Forbidden Planet London Megastore, and was followed up with a 4K screening of "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad". In a podcast interview with BritFlicks, Walsh discussed his plans to further develop lost Ray Harryhausen film projects, which includes the follow up to 1981's "Clash of the Titans", entitled "Force of the Trojans".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: An exhibition opened showing items from the Harryhausen collection at the Valence House Museum on March 14, 2018. The exhibition was inspired by local man Alan Friswell, who worked with Ray Harryhausen on the creatures' restorations. It was funded by Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In July 2018, it was announced that the largest ever exhibition of Ray Harryhausen's models and artwork would take place at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, to mark the centenary of his birth. The exhibition is running for a year, from October 2020 until September 2021. Ultimately, the exhibition was extended to end in February 2022. The exhibition was the subject of a BBC iPlayer documentary entitled "Culture in Quarantine", which featured interviews with Vanessa Harryhausen, Caroline Munro and Martine Beswick, as well as footage from . Many of Harryhausen's original latex models were repaired for this exhibition: in an interview with the Visual Effects Society, Walsh said that "We’re restoring pieces as we go, trying to get things back as close to how people remember them as possible".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: It was also announced that Vanessa Harryhausen was writing a book to mark her father's centenary, to accompany the exhibition in Edinburgh. Also entitled "", the book looks back on his personal and professional life through Vanessa's 100 favourite objects from his collection, and contains contributions from John Landis, Rick Baker, Phil Tippett, Jim Danforth and others.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In 2021, it was announced that The Ray Harryhausen Award would be launched to celebrate Ray's influence on contemporary filmmakers and animators. The first awards ceremony took place on what would have been Ray's 102nd birthday, in June 2022. The movie "Mad God" won the inaugural award for best feature film, and six other winners were selected across a range of categories.


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: During the 1980s and early 1990s, Harryhausen's fans who had graduated into the professional film industry started lobbying The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to acknowledge Harryhausen's contribution to the film industry, and so, in 1992, the academy finally awarded him the Gordon E. Sawyer Award (effectively a lifetime achievement "Oscar") for "technological contributions [which] have brought credit to the industry", with actor Tom Hanks (as the Master of Ceremonies) and Ray Bradbury (a friend from when they were both just out of high school) presenting the award to him. After the presentation to Harryhausen, actor Tom Hanks told the audience, "Some people say "Casablanca" or "Citizen Kane"...I say "Jason and the Argonauts" is the greatest film ever made!"


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of Ray Harryhausen's films, including "Guadalcanal", "How to Bridge a Gorge", and "The Story of Hansel and Gretel".


title: Ray Harryhausen

text: In March 1983, Harryhausen participated in a special one-day event at Mann's Chinese Theater celebrating the 50th anniversary of premiere screening of the 1933 "King Kong" in the same theater. Visual effects technicians from several film-effects facilities recreated the life-sized bust of Kong as it appeared in the theater's outer lobby area 50 years earlier. The August 1983 issue of "American Cinematographer" features three articles about the event.


title: Mutiny

text: Mutiny is a revolt among a group of people (typically of a military, of a crew or of a crew of pirates) to oppose, change, or overthrow an organization to which they were previously loyal. The term is commonly used for a rebellion among members of the military against an internal force, but it can also sometimes mean any type of rebellion against any force. Mutiny does not necessarily need to refer to a military force and can describe a political, economic, or power structure in which there is a change of power.


title: Mutiny

text: During the Age of Discovery, mutiny particularly meant open rebellion against a ship's captain. This occurred, for example, during Ferdinand Magellan's journeys around the world, resulting in the killing of one mutineer, the execution of another, and the marooning of others; on Henry Hudson's "Discovery", resulting in Hudson and others being set adrift in a boat; and the notorious mutiny on the "Bounty".


title: Mutiny

text: Until 1689, mutiny was regulated in England by "Articles of War" instituted by the monarch and effective only in a period of war. In 1689, the first "Mutiny Act" was approved, which passed the responsibility to enforce discipline within the military to Parliament. The "Mutiny Act", altered in 1803, and the "Articles of War" defined the nature and punishment of mutiny until the latter were replaced by the "Army Discipline and Regulation Act" in 1879. This, in turn, was replaced by the Army Act in 1881.


title: Mutiny

text: The military law of England in early times existed, like the forces to which it applied, in a period of war only. Troops were raised for a particular service and were disbanded upon the cessation of hostilities. The crown, by prerogative, made laws known as "Articles of War" for the government and discipline of the troops while thus embodied and serving. Except for the punishment of desertion, which was made a felony by statute in the reign of Henry VI, these ordinances or Articles of War remained almost the sole authority for enforcing discipline until 1689. That year, the first "Mutiny Act" was passed and the military forces of the crown were brought under the direct control of Parliament. Even the Parliamentary forces in the time of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell were governed not by an act of the legislature, but by articles of war similar to those issued by the king and authorized by an ordinance of the Lords and Commons exercising in that respect the sovereign prerogative. This power of law-making by prerogative was however held to be applicable during a state of actual war only, and attempts to exercise it in times of peace were ineffectual. Subject to this limitation, it existed for considerably more than a century after the passing of the first Mutiny Act.


title: Mutiny

text: From 1689 to 1803, the Mutiny Act occasionally expired during times of peace. Yet statutory power was given to the crown to make Articles of War that operated in the colonies and elsewhere beyond the seas in the same manner as those made by prerogative in times of war.


title: Mutiny

text: In 1715, in consequence of the rebellion, this power was created in respect of the forces in the kingdom, but apart from and in no respect affected the principle acknowledged all this time that the crown of its mere prerogative could make laws for the government of the army in foreign countries in time of war.


title: Mutiny

text: The Mutiny Act of 1803 effected a great constitutional change in this respect: the power of the crown to make any Articles of War became altogether statutory, and the prerogative merged in the act of Parliament. The Mutiny Act 1873 was passed in this manner.


title: Mutiny

text: Such matters remained until 1879 when the last Mutiny Act was passed and the last Articles of War were promulgated. The Mutiny Act legislated for offences in respect of which death or penal servitude could be awarded. Meanwhile, the Articles of War, while repeating those provisions of the act, constituted the direct authority for dealing with offences for which imprisonment was the maximum punishment, as well as with many matters relating to trial and procedure.


title: Mutiny

text: The act and the articles were found not to harmonize in all respects. Their general arrangement was faulty, and their language sometimes obscure. In 1869, a royal commission recommended that both should be recast in a simple and intelligible shape. In 1878, a committee of the House of Commons endorsed this view and made recommendations for performing the task. In 1879, a measure was passed into law consolidating in one act both the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War, and amending their provisions in certain important respects. This measure was called the Army Discipline and Regulation Act 1879.


title: Mutiny

text: After one or two years of experience highlighted the need for improvement, it was superseded by the Army Act 1881, which formed the foundation and main portion of the military law of England. The act contained a proviso saving the right of the crown to make Articles of War, but in such a manner as to render the power in effect a nullity by enacting that no crime made punishable by the act shall be otherwise punishable by such articles. As the punishment of every conceivable offence was provided, any articles made under the act could be no more than an empty formality having no practical effect.


title: Mutiny

text: Thus the history of English military law up to 1879 may be divided into three periods, each having a distinct constitutional aspect: (I) prior to 1689, the army, being regarded as so many personal retainers of the sovereign rather than servants of the state, was mainly governed by the will of the sovereign; (2) between 1689 and 1803, the army, being recognised as a permanent force, was governed within the realm by statute and without it by the prerogative of the crown; and (3) from 1803 to 1879, it was governed either directly by statute or by the sovereign under an authority derived from and defined and limited by statute. Although in 1879 the power of making Articles of War became in effect inoperative, the sovereign was empowered to make rules of procedure, having the force of law, to regulate the administration of the act in many matters formerly dealt with by the Articles of War. These rules, however, must not be inconsistent with the provisions of the Army Act itself, and must be laid before parliament immediately after they are made. Thus in 1879, the government and discipline of the army became for the first time completely subject either to the direct action or the close supervision of Parliament.


title: Mutiny

text: A further notable change took place at the same time. The Mutiny Act had been brought into force on each occasion for one year only, in compliance with the constitutional theory:


title: Mutiny

text: that the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace, unless with the consent of parliament, is against law. Each session therefore the text of the act had to be passed through both Houses clause by clause and line by line. The Army Act, on the other hand, is a fixed permanent code. But constitutional traditions are fully respected by the insertion in it of a section providing that it shall come into force only by virtue of an annual act of parliament. This annual act recites the illegality of a standing army in time of peace unless with the consent of parliament, and the necessity nevertheless of maintaining a certain number of land forces (exclusive of those serving in India) and a body of royal marine forces on shore, and of keeping them in exact discipline, and it brings into force the Army Act for one year.


title: Mutiny

text: Until 1998 mutiny and another offence of failing to suppress or report a mutiny were each punishable with death. Section 21(5) of the Human Rights Act 1998 completely abolished the death penalty in the United Kingdom. (Prior to this, the death penalty had already been abolished for murder, but it had remained in force for certain military offences and treason, although no executions had been carried out for several decades.) This provision was not required by the European Convention on Human Rights, since Protocol 6 of the Convention permitted the death penalty in time of war, and Protocol 13, which prohibits the death penalty for all circumstances, did not then exist. The UK government introduced section 21(5) as a late amendment in response to parliamentary pressure.


title: Mutiny

text: U.S. military law requires obedience only to lawful orders. Disobedience to unlawful orders (see Superior orders) is the obligation of every member of the U.S. military, a principle established by the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials following World War II and reaffirmed in the aftermath of the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. However, a U.S. soldier who disobeys an order after deeming it unlawful will almost certainly be court-martialed to determine whether the disobedience was proper. In addition, simple refusal to obey is not mutiny, which requires collaboration or conspiracy to disobedience.


title: Bushism

text: Bushisms are unconventional statements, phrases, pronunciations, possible Freudian slips, malapropisms, as well as semantic or linguistic errors in the public speaking of former President of the United States George W. Bush. The term "Bushism" has become part of popular folklore and is the basis of a number of websites and published books. It is often used to caricature the former president. Common characteristics include malapropisms, the creation of neologisms, spoonerisms, stunt words and ungrammatical subject–verb agreement.


title: Bushism

text: Bush's use of the English language in formal and public speeches has spawned several books that document the statements. A poem entitled "Make the Pie Higher", composed entirely of Bushisms, was compiled by cartoonist Richard Thompson. Various public figures and humorists, such as Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" and Garry Trudeau, creator of the comic strip "Doonesbury", have popularized some more famous Bushisms.


title: Bushism

text: Linguist Mark Liberman of Language Log has suggested that Bush is not unusually error-prone in his speech, saying: "You can make any public figure sound like a boob, if you record everything he says and set hundreds of hostile observers to combing the transcripts for disfluencies, malapropisms, word formation errors and examples of non-standard pronunciation or usage... Which of us could stand up to a similar level of linguistic scrutiny?". Nearly a decade after George W. Bush said "misunderestimated" in a speech, Philip Hensher called the term one of his "most memorable additions to the language, and an incidentally expressive one: it may be that we rather needed a word for 'to underestimate by mistake'."


title: Bushism

text: Journalist and pundit Christopher Hitchens published an essay in "The Nation" titled "Why Dubya Can't Read", writing:


title: Bushism

text: Stanford Graduate School lecturer and former Bush economic policy advisor Keith Hennessey has argued that the number of Bush's verbal gaffes is not unusual given the significant amount of time that he has spoken in public, and that Barack Obama's miscues are not as scrutinized. In Hennessey's view, Bush "intentionally aimed his public image at average Americans rather than at Cambridge or Upper East Side elites".


title: Bushism

text: Bush's statements were also notorious for their ability to state the opposite of what he intended, with notable examples including his remarks on the estate tax, "I'm not sure 80% of people get the death tax. I know this: 100% will get it if I'm the president."


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Civilisational history of Bangladesh previously known as East Bengal, dates back over four millennia, to the Chalcolithic. The country's early documented history featured successions of Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms and empires, vying for regional dominance.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Islam arrived during the 6th-7th century AD and became dominant gradually since the early 13th century with the conquests led by Bakhtiyar Khalji as well as activities of Sunni missionaries such as Shah Jalal in the region. Later, Muslim rulers initiated the preaching of Islam by building mosques. From the 14th century onward, it was ruled by the Bengal Sultanate, founded by king Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah, beginning a period of the country's economic prosperity and military dominance over the regional empires, which was referred by the Europeans as the richest country to trade with.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Afterwards, the region came under the Mughal Empire, as its wealthiest province. Bengal Subah generated almost half of the empire's GDP and 12% of the world's GDP, larger than the entirety of western Europe. The population of the capital city, Dhaka, exceeded a million people.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Following the decline of the Mughal Empire in the early 1700s, Bengal became a semi-independent state under the Nawabs of Bengal, ultimately led by Siraj ud-Daulah. It was later conquered by the British East India Company at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Bengal directly contributed to the Industrial Revolution in Britain but led to its deindustrialization. The Bengal Presidency was later established.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: The borders of modern Bangladesh were established with the separation of Bengal and India in August 1947, when the region became East Pakistan as a part of the newly formed State of Pakistan following the end of British rule in the region. Proclamation of Bangladeshi Independence in March 1971 led to the nine-month long Bangladesh Liberation War, that culminated with East Pakistan emerging as the People's Republic of Bangladesh.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: After independence, the newly-founded state endured famine, natural disasters, and widespread poverty, as well as political turmoil and military coups.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: The exact origin of the word "Bangla" or Bengal is unknown. According to Mahabharata, Purana, Harivamsha Vanga was one of the adopted sons of King Vali who founded the Vanga Kingdom. The earliest reference to "Vangala" ("Bôngal") has been traced in the Nesari plates (805 AD) of the south Indian ruler Rashtrakuta Govinda III, who invaded northern India in the 9th century, which speak of Dharmapala as the king of Vangala. The records of Rajendra Chola I of the Chola dynasty, who invaded Bengal in the 11th century, affirms Govinda Chandra as the ruler of Bengal. Shams-ud-din Ilyas Shah took the title "Shah-e-Bangalah" and united the whole region under one government for the first time.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: The Vanga Kingdom (also known as Banga) was located in the eastern part of the Indian Subcontinent, comprising part of present-day modern Bangladesh and India's West Bengal. Vanga and Pundra were two dominant tribes in Bangladesh in ancient time.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: The Oxford History of India categorically claims that there is no definitive information about Bengal before the third century BCE. It is believed that there were movements of Indo-Aryans, Dravidians and Mongoloids, including a people called Vanga, into Bengal.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: The Bengal delta was made up of thick jungles and wetlands for several millennia. A major part of this geography lasted till historical times. The loss of the jungle was due to human activity. Bengal had an early human presence, but there is no consensus for the time frame of the first human activity in Bengal nor are there plenty of remains. One view contends that humans entered Bengal from China 60,000 years ago. Another view claims that a distinct regional culture emerged 100,000 years ago. There is weak evidence for a prehistoric human presence in the region. There is scant evidence of a human presence during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras. This could be because of the shifts in the rivers' courses. The Bengali climate and geography is not suitable for tangible archaeological remains. Due to lack of stones the early humans in Bengal probably used materials such as wood and bamboo that could not survive in the environment. South Asian archaeologists have tended to focus on other parts of the subcontinent. Archaeologists interested in Bengal have focused on more recent history.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Archaeological discoveries are almost entirely from the hills around the Bengal delta. West Bengal and Bangladesh's eastern terrain offer the best source of information about the early peoples of Bengal. Industries of fossil-wood manufacturing blades, scrapers and axes have been discovered in Lalmai, Sitakund and Chaklapunji. These have been connected with similar findings in Burma and West Bengal. Large stones, thought to be prehistoric, were constructed in north eastern Bangladesh and are similar to those in India's nearby hills. Farming was practised before the first millennium BCE. West Bengal holds the earliest evidence of settled agrarian societies.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Agricultural success gave ground in the fifth century BCE for a stationary culture and the emergence of towns, cross-sea trade and the earliest polities. Archaeologists have uncovered a port at Wari-Bateshwar which traded with Ancient Rome and Southeast Asia. The archaeologists have discovered coinage, pottery, iron artefacts, bricked road and a fort in Wari-Bateshwar. The findings suggest that the area was an important administrative hub, which had industries such as iron smelting and valuable stone beads. The site shows widespread use of clay. The clay, and bricks, were used to build walls. The most famous terracotta plaques, made by clay, are from Chandraketurgah and depicts deities and scenes of nature and ordinary life. The early coinage discovered in War-Bateshwar and Chandraketugarh (West Bengal, India) depict boats.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Many of archaeological excavations in Bangladesh revealed evidences of the Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW or NBP) culture of the Indian Subcontinent (c. 700–200 BC), which was an Iron Age culture developed beginning around 700 BC and peaked from c. 500–300 BC, coinciding with the emergence of 16 great states or mahajanapadas in Northern India, and the subsequent rise of the Mauryan Empire. The eastern part of ancient India, covering much of current days Bangladesh was part of one of such mahajanapadas, the ancient kingdom of Anga, which flourished in the 6th century BC.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Well developed towns had emerged by 300 BCE such as Tamralipti ( present-day Tamluk, West Bengal, India), Mahasthan and Mainamati. Instead of the seaside, main towns sprang up by the riversides. Mahasthan contains the earliest piece of writing in Bangladesh, a stone inscription. It indicates that the site was an important town in the Maurya empire. Mahasthan is believed to have then been a provincial centre. The inscription, in Prakrit, apparently contains a command to stock up supplies in case of an emergency. The inscription is called the Mahasthan Brahmi Inscription. Bengal was the eastern frontier of the Mauryan empire. Western Bengal with its port of Tamralipti achieved importance under the Mauryas.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: A prominent view in scholarship is that the Mauryan and Gupta empires exercised authority over most parts of the Bengal delta. The incomplete evidence which exists suggests that Bengal's western rather than eastern regions were parts of larger empires. The ancient zones in Bengal were the Bhagirathi-Hooghly basin, Harikela, Samatata, Vanga and Varendra. Vanga is believed to be central Bengal, Harikela and Samitata were apparently Bengal's eastern zones and Varendra was northern Bengal. The names of sites indicate that Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian languages were spoken by the majority of people. Indo-European languages became prominent from 400 BCE.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: The Vanga Kingdom was a powerful seafaring nation of Ancient Bengal. They had overseas trade relations with Java, Sumatra and Siam (modern day Thailand). According to Mahavamsa, the Vanga prince Vijaya Singha conquered Lanka (modern day Sri Lanka) in 544 BC and gave the name "Sinhala" to the country. Bengali people migrated to the Maritime Southeast Asia and Siam (in modern Thailand), establishing their own settlement there.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Though north and west Bengal were part of the empire southern Bengal thrived and became powerful with her overseas trades. In 326 BCE, with the invasion of Alexander the Great the region again came to prominence. The Greek and Latin historians suggested that Alexander the Great withdrew from India anticipating the valiant counter-attack of the mighty Gangaridai empire that was located in the Bengal region. Alexander, after the meeting with his officer, Coenus, was convinced that it was better to return. Diodorus Siculus mentions Gangaridai to be the most powerful empire in India whose king possessed an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants trained and equipped for war. The allied forces of the Gangaridai Empire and Nanda Empire (Prasii) were preparing a massive counter-attack against the forces of Alexander on the banks of the Ganges. Gangaridai, according to the Greek accounts, kept on flourishing at least up to the 1st century CE.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: Bengal was left on its own after Mauryan power declined. Little is known of the period after that although parts of Bengal were probably under the Pataliputra-based Sunga dynasty. During this time Pundra was still a significant Buddhist location. Local rulers retained power while paying tribute to the Gupta Empire in the 300s and 400s. The Bengal delta became the kingdom of Samatata; its hub near the contemporary Chandpur. A Gupta inscription indicates that the Gupta empire possessed influence in Samatata without ruling it directly. Bengal remained a frontier despite its rare associations with the Indian heartland. Several dynasties changed during the next few centuries. While not much information is available about them, plates and other forms of evidence obtained from the Comilla district indicate that Gopachandra ruled the area in the early 500s. The Khargas became rulers in the next century. They were followed by the Deva dynasty, Harikela kingdom, Chandras and the Varmans. They were based in different sites of the Comilla district and Dhaka district's Vikrampur. Around that time, Bengalis first ruled in Varendra. Gaur was ruled by Sasanka in the early 600s. He was based in Karnasuvarna in modern-day Murshidabad district. Contemporary Chinese reports and coinage suggest that he was a firm Shaivite who was vehemently opposed to Buddhism. Opposition to Buddhism and a commitment to Brahminism apparently continued under the Sura dynasty, founded by Adisura around 700 CE. Around the middle of the eighth century a firm Buddhist, Gopala, assumed power in Bengal, possibly supported by Buddhist chiefs who were opposed to the effects of the Suras and Sasanka's faithful Brahmanism. During this time, the kingdoms of the Bay of Bengal were trading with the nations of nearby South Asia and Southeast Asia, thereby exporting Buddhism into Sri Lanka to the south and both Hinduism and Buddhism into Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines to the east.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: By the 6th century, the Gupta Empire, which ruled over the northern Indian subcontinent had largely broken up. Eastern Bengal splintered into the kingdoms of Vanga, Samatata and Harikela while the Gauda kings rose in the west with their capital at Karnasuvarna (near modern Murshidabad). Shashanka, a vassal of the last Gupta Emperor proclaimed independence and unified the smaller principalities of Bengal (Gaur, Vanga, Samatata). He vied for regional power with Harshavardhana in northern India after treacherously murdering Harsha's elder brother Rajyavardhana. Harsha's continuous pressure led to the gradual weakening of the Gauda kingdom founded by Shashanka and finally ended with his death. This burst of Bengali power ended with the overthrow of Manava (his son), Bengal descended into a period marked by disunity and intrude once more.


title: History of Bangladesh

text: The Pala dynasty ruled Bengal until the middle of the twelfth century and expanded Bengali power to its farthest extent and supported Buddhism. It was the first independent Buddhist dynasty of Bengal. The name "Pala" ( "pal") means "protector" and was used as an ending to the names of all Pala monarchs. The Palas were followers of the Mahayana and Tantric schools of Buddhism. Gopala was the first ruler from the dynasty. He came to power in 750 in Gaur, after being elected by a group of feudal chiefs. He reigned from 750 to 770 and consolidated his position by extending his control over all of Bengal. He was succeeded by Dharmapala. The Palas promoted Buddhism and opposed Brahmanism. They provided support to Buddhist universities in Vikramashila and Nalanda. During the Pala dynasty the Vajrayana was developed in Bengal and introduced to Tibet. The Palas patronised the arts.