title: Occupation of the Baltic states

text: However, Russia's current official position directly contradicts its earlier rapprochement with Lithuania as well as its signature of membership to the Council of Europe, where it agreed to the obligations and commitments including "iv. as regards the compensation for those persons deported from the "occupied Baltic states" and the descendants of deportees, as stated in Opinion No. 193 (1996), paragraph 7.xii, to settle these issues as quickly as possible..." The Russian government and state officials maintain now that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate and that the Soviet Union liberated the countries from the Nazis. They assert that the Soviet troops initially entered the Baltic countries in 1940 following agreements and the consent of the Baltic governments. Their position is that the USSR was not in a state of war or engaged in combat activities on the territories of the three Baltic states, therefore, the word "occupation" cannot be used. "The assertions about [the] 'occupation' by the Soviet Union and the related claims ignore all legal, historical and political realities, and are therefore utterly groundless."—"Russian Foreign Ministry".


title: Occupation of the Baltic states

text: This particular Russian viewpoint is called the "Myth of 1939–40" by David Mendeloff, Associate Professor of International Affairs who states that the assertion that Soviet Union neither "occupied" the Baltic states in 1939 nor "annexed" them the following year is widely held and deeply embedded in Russian historical consciousness.


title: Occupation of the Baltic states

text: After the Baltic states proclaimed independence following the signing of the Armistice, Bolshevik Russia invaded at the end of 1918. "Izvestia" said in its 25 December 1918, issue: "Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are directly on the road from Russia to Western Europe and therefore a hindrance to our revolutions... This separating wall has to be destroyed." Bolshevik Russia, however, did not gain control of the Baltic States and in 1920 concluded peace treaties with all three of them. Subsequently, at the initiative of the Soviet Union, additional non-aggression treaties were concluded with all three Baltic States:


title: Colton Herta

text: Colton Thomas Herta (born March 30, 2000) is an American open-wheel racing driver currently competing in the NTT IndyCar Series for Andretti Autosport with Curb-Agajanian. He is the youngest person to ever win an IndyCar Series race.


title: Colton Herta

text: Herta made his karting debut in 2010 at the age of 10, racing karts in the SKUSA and IKF series, although he had been karting since the age of 6. He made his single debut at 13, finishing second in the SBF2000 Winter Series. In 2014, he made his formula car debut in the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda, finishing 15th in the championship despite missing the opening weekend due to age requirements. In the same year, Herta made his International Formula racing debut in Sepang, Malaysia with the AsiaCup Series, taking part in one event where he won 1 race win and 3 podium finishes. Herta also made a one-off appearance in the Global RallyCross Championship Lites, being the youngest driver to compete in the series.


title: Colton Herta

text: In 2015, he made his debut in the UK-based MSA Formula series, as the youngest driver and the only American on a grid that consisted mostly of Britons, and got his first win in the second race at Snetterton Circuit in August, thus helping the United States win the Nations Cup. He went on to collect three more victories throughout the season, finishing third overall.


title: Colton Herta

text: For 2016, he was planning to move to the newly renamed BRDC British F3 series but was too young to compete at the opening round. Wanting to complete a full season he made the switch to the Euroformula Open Championship, staying with Carlin and finished third in points, with four victories, six podium finishes, and five pole positions. Herta went on to compete in six British F3 events, earning three podium finishes including a victory at Brands Hatch.


title: Colton Herta

text: In 2017 Herta joined forces with the newly formed Andretti-Steinbrenner Racing to pilot the 98-car in the Indy Lights Series. He started the year strong with a second-place finish in the first race at St. Petersburg street circuit and followed it up with a Sunday victory; Colton's first win in Indy Lights. He got his 2nd victory at the next event at Barber Motorsports Park, the series' 400th race. Herta won Rookie of the Year and finished 3rd in the drivers championship.


title: Colton Herta

text: In 2018, Herta remained in Indy Lights. He won four races, including all three held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (both races of the GP of Indianapolis and the Freedom 100 on the speedway). Herta finished 2nd in points to his Andretti teammate Patricio O'Ward.


title: Colton Herta

text: For the 2019 IndyCar season, Herta signed to drive the No. 88 Harding Steinbrenner Racing car. Herta was the first IndyCar Series driver born in the 2000s to start a race. On March 24, 2019, at the age of 18, Herta became the youngest-ever winner in IndyCar history by winning the IndyCar Classic at Circuit of the Americas. He qualified 5th for the Indianapolis 500, but retired after just four laps after a gearbox failure. On June 22, 2019, at the age of 19, Herta became the youngest-ever pole-sitter at Road America. The driver won again at Laguna Seca, and finished 7th in the overall standings, just 5 points behind Rookie of the Year Felix Rosenqvist.


title: Colton Herta

text: Herta again drove the #88 car for Harding Steinbrenner Racing in 2020, with additional backing from Andretti Autosport. Herta finished 7th in the opening round of the 2020 IndyCar season at Texas Motor Speedway. He finished 8th at the Indianapolis 500. On September 13, 2020, Herta won the second of two races held at Mid-Ohio. He scored a runner-up finish at the Indianapolis road course's Saturday race. With seven top 5s in 14 races, he ranked third in points.


title: Colton Herta

text: Going into 2021, Herta was seen as the strongest challenger in the Andretti stable to Scott Dixon for the IndyCar title. For 2021 Herta would move from the #88 Andretti Harding Steinbrenner Racing car to the #26 Andretti Autosport with Curb Agajanian car with backing from Indianapolis 500 title sponsor Gainbridge. Herta started his season caught up in an accident caused by Josef Newgarden in Alabama but earned his first win of the season at St. Petersburg, his first win on a street circuit. The rest of the season proved to be a struggle for Herta. He would only secure two podium finishes before his second win of the season; a second-place at Road America and third place at the second round on the IMS Road Course. He was frequently beset by poor strategy, mechanical issues, and driving errors. Most notable of these was at the inaugural round in Nashville; Herta would qualify on pole position for the race, lead most of the race, lost the lead under caution to Marcus Ericsson, and crashed out of the race attempting to take the lead back from Ericsson in the closing laps. Herta would pick up his second win of the season at Laguna Seca, where he led all but one lap of the race to win from pole. He finished the season off with a come from behind victory on The Streets of Long Beach when he started fourteenth and worked his way rapidly through the field to take the lead from Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon to win his third race of the season. He ultimately finished the season fifth in the championship standings.


title: Colton Herta

text: After intense speculation that he would be making a move to Formula One, Andretti Autosport and Herta announced that he would be racing in IndyCar in 2022, partnering Alexander Rossi, Romain Grosjean, and Devlin DeFrancesco. Herta struggled in the initial rounds of the season, including crashing after losing the lead at Long Beach, but picked up his first win of the season at the GMR Grand Prix.


title: Colton Herta

text: Herta initially signed a multi-year contract to remain with Andretti Autosport, though this would be later to be extended to 2027.


title: Colton Herta

text: Herta participated in the 2019 24 Hours of Daytona in a BMW M8 GTE for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. He, along with co-drivers Connor De Phillippi, Augusto Farfus and Philipp Eng, won the race in the GTLM class.


title: Colton Herta

text: Herta returned to Daytona participate in the 2022 edition, partnering fellow IndyCar drivers Pato O'Ward and Devlin DeFrancesco along with Eric Lux in an LMP2 entry for DragonSpeed. The quartet won after Herta took the lead in the final 11 minutes of the race.


title: Colton Herta

text: In late 2022 Herta was confirmed as one of the drivers for the new BMW M Hybrid V8 prototype to be fielded by Rahal Letterman Lannigan racing during the 2023 IMSA SportsCar Championship.


title: Colton Herta

text: With the attempted purchase of Sauber by Andretti Autosport, Herta was the favorite candidate to join Formula One with Alfa Romeo for the 2022 season partnering Valtteri Bottas. He got to mold the seat and do a test with the simulator at the team's base in Hinwil, Switzerland, where according to multiple reports and Mario Andretti, he set faster times than Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi, then Alfa Romeo's lineup. A preliminary agreement was reached with Ferrari to hold a 300 km test with a Formula One car so that Herta could participate in free practice in the United States, Mexico City and Sao Paulo Grand Prix. However, those tests never happened and the negotiations between Andretti and Sauber broke down at the end of 2021, the purchase never took place and Alfa Romeo signed Zhou Guanyu for 2022.


title: Colton Herta

text: In March 2022, Herta was signed by McLaren as a development driver in the 2022 season to test the MCL35M from 2021. He took part in his first test drive from 11–13 July around Algarve International Circuit in Portimão, which results have said to have "seriously impressed" industry insiders.


title: Colton Herta

text: In 2022, Red Bull began to show interest in having Herta as an AlphaTauri driver for 2023. Herta however lacked enough points to obtain a super license, which is necessary to be able to contest in Formula One. Red Bull began efforts to obtain it by asking the FIA to consider making an exception for Herta. Red Bull reached an agreement with Alpine for Herta to be included in the tests with its Formula One cars in September in Hungary, which the French team was organizing to choose its driver in 2023. Alpine would accept, so that Herta could get some extra points in his super license and that the AlphaTauri driver, Pierre Gasly, was free to join the French team. Ultimately the FIA's refused to make an exception for Herta, Red Bull would abandon its efforts to bring the American driver to Formula One and Herta did not participate in the tests with Alpine.


title: Colton Herta

text: Herta plays the drums and is a member of indie punk rock band The Zibs, which he formed in 2018 with his high school friends Jon Graber and Chris Broadbent.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels "Little Lord Fauntleroy" (published in 1885–1886), "A Little Princess" (1905), and "The Secret Garden" (1911).


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 3 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her remunerative writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which ("That Lass o' Lowrie's"), was published to good reviews. "Little Lord Fauntleroy" was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "A Little Princess".


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote "The Secret Garden". Her elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townsend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous "Secret Garden" characters, Mary and Dickon.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Frances Eliza Hodgson was born at 141 York Street in Cheetham, Manchester on 24 November 1849. She was the third of five children of Edwin Hodgson, an ironmonger from Doncaster in Yorkshire, and his wife Eliza Boond, from a well-to-do Manchester family. Hodgson owned a business in Deansgate, selling ironmongery and brass goods. The family lived comfortably, employing a maid and a nurse-maid. Frances had two older brothers and two younger sisters.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: In 1852, the family moved about a mile away to a newly built terrace, opposite St Luke's Church, with greater access to outdoor space. Barely a year later, on 1 September 1853 and with his wife pregnant for a fifth time, Hodgson died suddenly of a stroke, leaving the family without an income. Frances was cared for by her grandmother while her mother took over running the family business. From her grandmother, who bought her books, Frances learned to love reading, in particular her first book, "The Flower Book", which had colored illustrations and poems. Because of their reduced income, Eliza had to give up their family home and moved with her children to live with relatives in Seedley Grove, Tanners Lane, Pendleton, Salford, where they lived in a house with a large enclosed garden in which Frances enjoyed playing.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: For a year Frances went to a small dame school run by two women, where she first saw a book about fairies. When her mother moved the family to Islington Square, Salford, Frances mourned the lack of flowers and gardens. Their new home was located in a gated square of faded gentility adjacent to an area with severe overcrowding and poverty that "defied description", according to Friedrich Engels, who lived in Manchester at the time.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Frances had an active imagination, writing stories she made up in old notebooks. One of her favorite books was Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and she spent many hours acting out scenes from the story. Frances and her siblings were sent to be educated at The Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, where she was described as "precocious" and "romantic". She had an active social life and enjoyed telling stories to her friends and cousins; in her mother, she found a good audience, although her brothers tended to tease her about her stories.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Manchester was almost entirely dependent on a cotton economy that was ruined by the Lancashire cotton famine brought about by the American Civil War. In 1863, Eliza Hodgson was forced to sell their business and move the family once again to an even smaller home; at that time Frances' limited education came to an end. Eliza's brother (Frances's uncle), William Boond, asked the family to join him in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he now had a thriving dry goods store. Within the year Eliza decided to accept his offer and move the family from Manchester. She sold their possessions and told Frances to burn her early writings in the fire. In 1865, the family emigrated to the United States and settled near Knoxville.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: After the end of the Civil War and the trade it had brought to the area, Frances's uncle lost much of his business and was unable to provide for the newly arrived family. The family went to live in a log cabin during their first winter in New Market, outside Knoxville. They later moved to a home in Knoxville that Frances called "Noah's Ark, Mt. Ararat", a name inspired by the house's location atop an isolated hill. Living across from them was the Burnett family, and Frances became friendly with Swan Burnett, to whom she introduced books by authors such as Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray that she had read in England. She may have befriended him because of a childhood injury that left him lame and unable to participate in physical activities. Not long after they met, Swan left for college in Ohio.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Frances turned to writing to earn money. Her first story was published in "Godey's Lady's Book" in 1868. Soon after, she was being published regularly in "Godey's Lady's Book", "Scribner's Monthly", "Peterson's Magazine" and "Harper's Bazaar". She wanted to escape from the family's poverty and tended to overwork herself, later writing that she had been "a pen driving machine" during the early years of her career. For five years she wrote constantly, often not worrying about the quality of her work. Once her first story was published, before she was 18, she spent the rest of her life as a working writer. By 1869, she had earned enough to move the family into a better home in Knoxville.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Her mother died in 1870, and within two years two of her sisters and a brother were married. Although she remained friends with Swan, neither was in a hurry to be married.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: With the income from her writing, she returned to England for an extended visit in 1872, and then went to Paris where, having agreed to marry Swan, she ordered an haute couture wedding dress to be made and shipped to Tennessee. Shortly afterward she returned home and attempted to postpone the wedding until the dress arrived, but Swan insisted they marry as soon as possible, and they were married in September 1873. Writing about the dress disappointment to a Manchester friend, she said of her new husband: "Men are so shallow ... he does not know the vital importance of the difference between white satin and tulle, and cream-colored brocade". Within the year she gave birth to her first child, Lionel, in September 1874. Also during that year she began work on her first full-length novel, "That Lass o' Lowrie's", set in Lancashire.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: The couple wanted to leave Knoxville, and her writing income was enough for them to travel to Paris, where Swan continued his medical training as an eye and ear specialist. The birth of their second son, Vivian, forced them to return to the United States. She had wanted her second child to be a girl, and having chosen the name Vivien, changed to the masculine spelling for her new son. The family continued to rely on her writing income and to economize she made clothing for her boys, often including many frills. Later, Burnett continued to make clothing, designing velvet suits with lace collars for her boys, and frilly dresses for herself. She allowed her sons' hair to grow long, which she then shaped into long curls.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: After two years in Paris, the family intended to move to Washington, D.C., where Swan, now qualified as a doctor, wanted to start his medical practice. However they were in debt, so Frances was forced to live with Swan's parents in New Market while he established himself in D.C. Early in 1877, she was offered a contract to have "That Lass o' Lowrie's" published, which was doing well in its serialization, and at that point, she made her husband her business manager. "That Lass o' Lowrie's" was published to good reviews, and the rights were sold for a British edition. Shortly after the publication of the book, she joined her husband in D.C., where she established a household and friends. She continued to write, becoming known as a rising young novelist. Despite the difficulties of raising a family and settling into a new city, Burnett began work on "Haworth's", which was published in 1879, as well as writing a dramatic interpretation of "That Lass o' Lowrie's" in response to a pirated stage version presented in London. After a visit to Boston in 1879, where she met Louisa May Alcott, and Mary Mapes Dodge, editor of children's magazine "St. Nicholas", Burnett began to write children's fiction. For the next five years, she had published several short works in "St. Nicholas". Burnett continued to write adult fiction as well: "Louisiana" was published in 1880; "A Fair Barbarian" in 1881; and "Through One Administration" in 1883. She wrote the play "Esmerelda" in 1881 while staying at the "Logan House" inn near Lake Lure, North Carolina; it became the longest-running play on Broadway in the 19th century. However, as had happened earlier in Knoxville, she felt the pressure of maintaining a household, caring for children and a husband, and keeping to her writing schedule, which caused exhaustion and depression.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Within a few years Burnett became well known in Washington society and hosted a literary salon on Tuesday evenings, often attended by politicians, as well as local literati. Swan's practice grew and had a good reputation, but his income lagged behind hers, so she believed she had to continue writing. Unfortunately she was often ill and suffered from the heat of D.C., which she escaped whenever possible. In the early 1880s she became interested in Christian Science as well as Spiritualism and Theosophy. These beliefs would affect her later life as well as being incorporated into her later fiction. She was a devoted mother and took great joy in her two sons. She doted on their appearance, continuing the practice of curling their long hair each day, which became the inspiration for "Little Lord Fauntleroy".


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: In 1884, she began work on "Little Lord Fauntleroy", with the serialization beginning in 1885 in "St. Nicholas", and the publication in book form in 1886. "Little Lord Fauntleroy" received good reviews, became a best-seller in the United States, and England was translated into 12 languages and secured Burnett's reputation as a writer. The story features a boy who dresses in elaborate velvet suits and wears his long hair in curls. The central character, Cedric, was modeled on Burnett's younger son Vivian, and the autobiographical aspects of "Little Lord Fauntleroy" occasionally led to disparaging remarks from the press. After the publication of "Little Lord Fauntleroy", Burnett's reputation as a writer of children's books was fully established. In 1888 she won a lawsuit in England over the dramatic rights to "Little Lord Fauntleroy", establishing a precedent that was incorporated into British copyright law in 1911. In response to a second incident of pirating her material into a dramatic piece, she wrote "The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy", which was produced on stage in London and on Broadway. The play went on to make her as much money as the book.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: In 1887 Burnett traveled to England for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, which became the first of yearly transatlantic trips from the United States to England. Accompanied by her sons, she visited tourist attractions such as Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London. In her rented rooms she continued the Tuesday evening salon and soon attracted visitors, meeting Stephen Townsend for the first time. Despite her busy schedule, she felt ill from the heat and the crowds of tourists, spending protracted periods in bed. With her sons, she moved on to spend the winter in Florence, where she wrote "The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax", the only book to be published in England but not in the United States. That winter "Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's" was published in the United States. She would go on to make "Sara Crewe" into a stage play, and later rewrite the story into "A Little Princess". In 1888, Burnett returned to Manchester, where she leased a large home off Cromwell Road, had it decorated, and then turned it over to cousins to run as a boarding house, after which she moved to London, where she again took rooms, enjoyed the London season, and prepared "Phyllis" for production, a stage adaptation of "The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax". When the play ran she was disappointed by the bad reviews and turned to socialize. During this period she began to see more of Stephen Townsend, whom she had met during the Jubilee year.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: In December 1890, Burnett's elder son Lionel died from consumption in Paris, which greatly affected her life and her writing. Before his death, she sought a cure from physicians and took him to Germany to visit spas. After his death, before she sank into a deep depression, she wrote in a letter to a friend that her writing was insignificant in comparison to having been the mother of two boys, one of whom died. At this time she turned away from her traditional faith in the Church of England and embraced Spiritualism and Christian Science. She returned to London, where she sought the distraction of charity work and formed the Drury Lane Boys' Club, hosting an opening in February 1892. Also during this period, she wrote a play with a starring role for Stephen Townsend in an attempt to begin his acting career. After a two-year absence from her Washington, D.C. home, her husband, and her younger son, Burnett returned there in March 1892, where she continued charity work and began writing again. In 1893, Burnett published an autobiography, devoted to her elder son, titled "The One I Knew Best of All". Also in that year, she had a set of her books displayed at the Chicago World Fair.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Burnett returned to London in 1894; there she heard the news that her younger son Vivian was ill, so she quickly went back to the United States. Vivian recovered from his illness, but missed his first term at Harvard University. Burnett stayed with him until he was well, then returned to London. At this time she began to worry about her finances: she was paying for Vivian's education; keeping a house in Washington D.C. (Swan had moved out of the house to his own apartment); and keeping a home in London. As she had in the past, she turned to writing as a source of income and began to write "A Lady of Quality". "A Lady of Quality", published in 1896, was to become the first of a series of successful adult historical novels, which was followed in 1899 with "In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim"; and in 1901 she had published "The Making of a Marchioness" and "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst."


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: In 1898, when Vivian graduated from Harvard, she divorced Swan Burnett. Officially the cause for the divorce was given to be desertion, but actually, Burnett and Swan had orchestrated the dissolution of their marriage some years earlier. Swan took his own apartment and ceased to live with Burnett so that after a period of two years she could plead desertion as a reason for the divorce. The press was critical, calling her a New Woman, with "The Washington Post" writing that the divorce resulted from Burnett's "advanced ideas regarding the duties of a wife and the rights of women".


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: From the mid-1890s she lived in England at Great Maytham Hall—which had a large garden where she indulged her love for flowers—where she made her home for the next decade, although she continued annual transatlantic trips to the United States. Maytham Hall resembled a feudal manor house which enchanted Burnett. She socialized in the local villages and enjoyed the country life. She filled the house with guests and had Stephen Townsend move in with her, which the local vicar considered a scandal. In February 1900 she married Townsend.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: The marriage took place in Genoa, Italy, and the couple went to Pegli for their honeymoon, where they endured two weeks of steady rain. Burnett's biographer Gretchen Gerzina writes of the marriage, "it was the biggest mistake of her life". The press stressed the age difference—Townsend was ten years younger than she—and she referred to him as her secretary. Biographer Ann Thwaite doubts he loved her. She claims at that time the 50-year-old Burnett was "stout, rouged and unhealthy". Thwaite believes Townsend needed her to help with his acting career and to support him financially. Within months, in a letter to her sister, she admitted the marriage was in trouble. She described Townsend as scarcely sane and hysterical. Thwaite argues Townsend blackmailed her into the marriage: he wanted money from her and he wanted to control her as a husband.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Unable to bear the thought of continuing to live with Townsend at Maytham, Burnett rented a house in London for the winter of 1900–1901. There she socialized with friends and wrote. She worked on two books simultaneously: "The Shuttle", a longer and more complicated book; and "The Making of a Marchioness", which she wrote in a few weeks and published to good reviews. In the spring of 1901, when she returned to the country, Townsend tried to replace her long-time publisher Scribner's with a publishing house offering a larger advance. In the autumn of 1902, after a summer of socializing and filling Maytham with house-guests, she suffered a physical collapse. She returned to America, and in the winter of 1902 entered a sanatorium. There she told Townsend she would no longer live with him, and the marriage ended.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: She returned to Maytham two years later in June 1904. Maytham Hall had a series of walled gardens and in the rose garden she wrote several books; it was there she had the idea for "The Secret Garden", mainly written at the manor house in Buile Hill Park while visiting Manchester. In 1905 "A  Little Princess" was published, after she had reworked the play into a novel. Once again Burnett turned to writing to increase her income. She lived an extravagant lifestyle, spending money on expensive clothing. It was reported in 1905 that Burnett was a semi-vegetarian. She had eliminated meat almost entirely from her diet.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: In 1907, she returned permanently to the United States, having become a citizen in 1905, and built a home, completed in 1908, in the Plandome Park section of Plandome Manor on Long Island outside New York City. Her son Vivian was employed in the publishing business, and at his request, she agreed to be an editor for "Children's Magazine". Over the next several years she had published in "Children's Magazine" several shorter works. In 1911 she had "The Secret Garden" published. In her later years she maintained the summer home on Long Island, and a winter home in Bermuda. "The Lost Prince" was published in 1915, and "The Head of the House of Coombe" and its sequel, "Robin, "were published in 1922.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Burnett lived for the last 17 years of her life in Plandome Manor, where she died on 29 October 1924, aged 74. She was buried in Roslyn Cemetery.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: During the serialization of "Little Lord Fauntleroy" in "St. Nicholas" in 1885, readers looked forward to new installments. The fashions in the book became popular, with velvet Fauntleroy suits being sold; other Fauntleroy merchandise included velvet collars, playing cards, and chocolates. Sentimental fiction was then the norm, and "rags to riches" stories were popular in the United States; in time, however, "Little Lord Fauntleroy" lost the popularity that "The Secret Garden" has retained.


title: Frances Hodgson Burnett

text: Several of Burnett's novels for adults were also very popular in their day, according to the "Publishers Weekly" list of bestselling novels in the United States. "A Lady of Quality" was second in 1896, "The Shuttle" was fourth in 1907 and fifth in 1908, "T. Tembarom" was tenth in 1913 and sixth in 1914, and "The Head of the House of Coombe" was fourth in 1922.


title: Matrix exponential

text: In mathematics, the matrix exponential is a matrix function on square matrices analogous to the ordinary exponential function. It is used to solve systems of linear differential equations. In the theory of Lie groups, the matrix exponential gives the exponential map between a matrix Lie algebra and the corresponding Lie group.


title: Matrix exponential

text: Let be an real or complex matrix. The exponential of , denoted by or , is the matrix given by the power series


title: Matrix exponential

text: where formula_2 is defined to be the identity matrix formula_3 with the same dimensions as formula_4.


title: Matrix exponential

text: The above series always converges, so the exponential of is well-defined. If is a 1×1 matrix the matrix exponential of is a 1×1 matrix whose single element is the ordinary exponential of the single element of .


title: Matrix exponential

text: Let and be complex matrices and let and be arbitrary complex numbers. We denote the identity matrix by and the zero matrix by 0. The matrix exponential satisfies the following properties.


title: Matrix exponential

text: The proof of this identity is the same as the standard power-series argument for the corresponding identity for the exponential of real numbers. That is to say, "as long as formula_4 and formula_8 commute", it makes no difference to the argument whether formula_4 and formula_8 are numbers or matrices. It is important to note that this identity typically does not hold if formula_4 and formula_8 do not commute (see Golden-Thompson inequality below).


title: Matrix exponential

text: Using the above results, we can easily verify the following claims. If is symmetric then is also symmetric, and if is skew-symmetric then is orthogonal. If is Hermitian then is also Hermitian, and if is skew-Hermitian then is unitary.


title: Matrix exponential

text: One of the reasons for the importance of the matrix exponential is that it can be used to solve systems of linear ordinary differential equations. The solution of


title: Matrix exponential

text: In addition to providing a computational tool, this formula demonstrates that a matrix exponential is always an invertible matrix. This follows from the fact that the right hand side of the above equation is always non-zero, and so , which implies that must be invertible.


title: Matrix exponential

text: to not be surjective, in contrast to the complex case mentioned earlier. This follows from the fact that, for real-valued matrices, the right-hand side of the formula is always positive, while there exist invertible matrices with a negative determinant.


title: Matrix exponential

text: The matrix exponential of a real symmetric matrix is positive definite. Let formula_19 be an real symmetric matrix and formula_20 a column vector. Using the elementary properties of the matrix exponential and of symmetric matrices, we have:


title: Matrix exponential

text: Since formula_22 is invertible, the equality only holds for formula_23, and we have formula_24 for all non-zero formula_25. Hence formula_26 is positive definite.


title: Matrix exponential

text: For any real numbers (scalars) and we know that the exponential function satisfies . The same is true for commuting matrices. If matrices and commute (meaning that ), then,


title: Matrix exponential

text: Using a large finite to approximate the above is basis of the Suzuki-Trotter expansion, often used in numerical time evolution.


title: Matrix exponential

text: In the other direction, if and are sufficiently small (but not necessarily commuting) matrices, we have


title: Matrix exponential

text: where may be computed as a series in commutators of and by means of the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff formula:


title: Matrix exponential

text: where the remaining terms are all iterated commutators involving and . If and commute, then all the commutators are zero and we have simply .


title: Matrix exponential

text: There is no requirement of commutativity. There are counterexamples to show that the Golden–Thompson inequality cannot be extended to three matrices – and, in any event, is not guaranteed to be real for Hermitian , , . However, Lieb proved that it can be generalized to three matrices if we modify the expression as follows


title: Matrix exponential

text: The exponential of a matrix is always an invertible matrix. The inverse matrix of is given by . This is analogous to the fact that the exponential of a complex number is always nonzero. The matrix exponential then gives us a map


title: Matrix exponential

text: from the space of all "n"×"n" matrices to the general linear group of degree , i.e. the group of all "n"×"n" invertible matrices. In fact, this map is surjective which means that every invertible matrix can be written as the exponential of some other matrix (for this, it is essential to consider the field C of complex numbers and not R).


title: Matrix exponential

text: where denotes an arbitrary matrix norm. It follows that the exponential map is continuous and Lipschitz continuous on compact subsets of .


title: Matrix exponential

text: The derivative at is just the matrix "X", which is to say that "X" generates this one-parameter subgroup.


title: Matrix exponential

text: Taking the above expression outside the integral sign and expanding the integrand with the help of the Hadamard lemma one can obtain the following useful expression for the derivative of the matrix exponent,


title: Matrix exponential

text: The coefficients in the expression above are different from what appears in the exponential. For a closed form, see derivative of the exponential map.


title: Matrix exponential

text: Let formula_4 be a formula_39 Hermitian matrix with distinct eigenvalues. Let formula_40 be its eigen-decomposition where formula_41 is a unitary matrix whose columns are the eigenvectors of formula_4, formula_43 is its conjugate transpose, and formula_44 the vector of corresponding eigenvalues. Then, for any formula_39 Hermitian matrix formula_46, the directional derivative of formula_47 at formula_4 in the direction formula_46 is


title: Matrix exponential

text: where formula_51, the operator formula_52 denotes the Hadamard product, and, for all formula_53, the matrix formula_54 is defined as


title: Matrix exponential

text: In addition, for any formula_39 Hermitian matrix formula_57, the second directional derivative in directions formula_57 and formula_46 is


title: Matrix exponential

text: Finding reliable and accurate methods to compute the matrix exponential is difficult, and this is still a topic of considerable current research in mathematics and numerical analysis. Matlab, GNU Octave, and SciPy all use the Padé approximant. In this section, we discuss methods that are applicable in principle to any matrix, and which can be carried out explicitly for small matrices. Subsequent sections describe methods suitable for numerical evaluation on large matrices.


title: Matrix exponential

text: Application of Sylvester's formula yields the same result. (To see this, note that addition and multiplication, hence also exponentiation, of diagonal matrices is equivalent to element-wise addition and multiplication, and hence exponentiation; in particular, the "one-dimensional" exponentiation is felt element-wise for the diagonal case.)


title: Matrix exponential

text: A matrix is nilpotent if for some integer "q". In this case, the matrix exponential can be computed directly from the series expansion, as the series terminates after a finite number of terms:


title: Matrix exponential

text: Since the series has a finite number of steps, it is a matrix polynomial, which can be computed efficiently.


title: Matrix exponential

text: By the Jordan–Chevalley decomposition, any formula_39 matrix "X" with complex entries can be expressed as


title: Matrix exponential

text: A closely related method is, if the field is algebraically closed, to work with the Jordan form of . Suppose that where is the Jordan form of . Then


title: Matrix exponential

text: Therefore, we need only know how to compute the matrix exponential of a Jordan block. But each Jordan block is of the form


title: Matrix exponential

text: Deriving this by expansion of the exponential function, each power of reduces to which becomes a common factor of the sum:


title: Matrix exponential

text: For a simple rotation in which the perpendicular unit vectors and specify a plane, the rotation matrix can be expressed in terms of a similar exponential function involving a generator and angle .


title: Matrix exponential

text: The formula for the exponential results from reducing the powers of in the series expansion and identifying the respective series coefficients of and with and respectively. The second expression here for is the same as the expression for in the article containing the derivation of the generator, .


title: Matrix exponential

text: The matrix projects a vector onto the -plane and the rotation only affects this part of the vector. An example illustrating this is a rotation of in the plane spanned by and ,


title: Matrix exponential

text: By virtue of the Cayley–Hamilton theorem the matrix exponential is expressible as a polynomial of order −1.


title: Matrix exponential

text: Such a polynomial can be found as follows−see Sylvester's formula. Letting be a root of , is solved from the product of by the principal part of the Laurent series of at : It is proportional to the relevant Frobenius covariant. Then the sum "S" of the "Q", where runs over all the roots of , can be taken as a particular . All the other "Q" will be obtained by adding a multiple of to . In particular, , the Lagrange-Sylvester polynomial, is the only whose degree is less than that of .


title: Matrix exponential

text: Thus, as indicated above, the matrix having decomposed into the sum of two mutually commuting pieces, the traceful piece and the traceless piece,


title: Matrix exponential

text: the matrix exponential reduces to a plain product of the exponentials of the two respective pieces. This is a formula often used in physics, as it amounts to the analog of Euler's formula for Pauli spin matrices, that is rotations of the doublet representation of the group SU(2).


title: Matrix exponential

text: The polynomial can also be given the following "interpolation" characterization. Define , and . Then is the unique degree polynomial which satisfies whenever is less than the multiplicity of as a root of . We assume, as we obviously can, that is the minimal polynomial of . We further assume that is a diagonalizable matrix. In particular, the roots of are simple, and the "interpolation" characterization indicates that is given by the Lagrange interpolation formula, so it is the Lagrange−Sylvester polynomial .


title: Matrix exponential

text: A practical, expedited computation of the above reduces to the following rapid steps. Recall from above that an "n×n" matrix amounts to a linear combination of the first −1 powers of by the Cayley–Hamilton theorem. For diagonalizable matrices, as illustrated above, e.g. in the 2×2 case, Sylvester's formula yields , where the s are the Frobenius covariants of .


title: Matrix exponential

text: It is easiest, however, to simply solve for these s directly, by evaluating this expression and its first derivative at , in terms of and , to find the same answer as above.


title: Matrix exponential

text: But this simple procedure also works for defective matrices, in a generalization due to Buchheim. This is illustrated here for a 4×4 example of a matrix which is "not diagonalizable", and the s are not projection matrices.


title: Matrix exponential

text: Consider the exponential of each eigenvalue multiplied by , . Multiply each exponentiated eigenvalue by the corresponding undetermined coefficient matrix . If the eigenvalues have an algebraic multiplicity greater than 1, then repeat the process, but now multiplying by an extra factor of for each repetition, to ensure linear independence.


title: Matrix exponential

text: To solve for all of the unknown matrices in terms of the first three powers of and the identity, one needs four equations, the above one providing one such at = 0. Further, differentiate it with respect to ,


title: Matrix exponential

text: The exponential of a 1×1 matrix is just the exponential of the one entry of the matrix, so . The exponential of "J"(16) can be calculated by the formula mentioned above; this yields


title: Matrix exponential

text: The matrix exponential has applications to systems of linear differential equations. (See also matrix differential equation.) Recall from earlier in this article that a "homogeneous" differential equation of the form


title: Matrix exponential

text: The second step is possible due to the fact that, if , then . So, calculating leads to the solution to the system, by simply integrating the third step with respect to .


title: Matrix exponential

text: A solution to this can be obtained by integrating and multiplying by formula_124 to eliminate the exponent in the LHS. Notice that while formula_124 is a matrix, given that it is a matrix exponential, we can say that formula_126. In other words, formula_127.


title: Matrix exponential

text: From before, we already have the general solution to the homogeneous equation. Since the sum of the homogeneous and particular solutions give the general solution to the inhomogeneous problem, we now only need find the particular solution.


title: Matrix exponential

text: which could be further simplified to get the requisite particular solution determined through variation of parameters.


title: Matrix exponential

text: For the inhomogeneous case, we can use integrating factors (a method akin to variation of parameters). We seek a particular solution of the form ,


title: Matrix exponential

text: To justify this claim, we transform our order scalar equation into an order one vector equation by the usual reduction to a first order system. Our vector equation takes the form


title: Matrix exponential

text: where is the transpose companion matrix of . We solve this equation as explained above, computing the matrix exponentials by the observation made in Subsection Evaluation by implementation of Sylvester's formula above.


title: Matrix exponential

text: For matrix-matrix exponentials, there is a distinction between the left exponential and the right exponential , because the multiplication operator for matrix-to-matrix is not commutative. Moreover,


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Robert III (c. 13374 April 1406), born John Stewart, was King of Scots from 1390 to his death in 1406. He was also High Steward of Scotland from 1371 to 1390 and held the titles of Earl of Atholl (1367–1390) and Earl of Carrick (1368–1390) before ascending the throne at about the age of 53 years. He was the eldest son of King Robert II and Elizabeth Mure and was legitimized by the second marriage of his parents and by papal dispensation in 1349.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: John joined his father and other magnates in a rebellion against his great-uncle David II early in 1363 but submitted to him soon afterward. He was married to Anabella Drummond by 1367. In 1368 David created him Earl of Carrick. His father became king in 1371 after the unexpected death of the childless King David. In the succeeding years, Carrick was influential in the government of the kingdom but became progressively more impatient at his father's longevity. In 1384 Carrick was appointed the king's lieutenant after having influenced the general council to remove Robert II from direct rule. Carrick's administration saw a renewal of the conflict with England. In 1388 the Scots defeated the English at the Battle of Otterburn where the Scots' commander, James, Earl of Douglas, was killed. By this time Carrick had been badly injured from a horse-kick but it was the loss of his powerful ally, Douglas, that saw a turnaround in magnate support in favour of his younger brother Robert, Earl of Fife, to whom the council transferred the lieutenancy in December 1388.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: In 1390, Robert II died and Carrick ascended the throne as Robert III but without authority to rule directly. Fife continued as Lieutenant until February 1393 when power was returned to the king in conjunction with his son David. At a council in 1399 owing to the king's 'sickness of his person', David, now Duke of Rothesay, became Lieutenant under the supervision of a special parliamentary group dominated by Fife, now styled Duke of Albany. After this, Robert III withdrew to his lands in the west and for a time played little or no part in affairs of state. He was powerless to interfere when a dispute between Albany and Rothesay arose in 1401, leading to Rothesay's imprisonment and death in March 1402. The general council absolved Albany from blame and reappointed him as Lieutenant. The only impediment now remaining to an Albany Stewart monarchy was the king's only surviving son, James, Earl of Carrick. After a clash with Albany's Douglas allies in 1406, the 11-year-old James tried to escape to France. The vessel was intercepted and James became the prisoner of Henry IV of England. Robert III died shortly after learning of his heir's imprisonment.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: John Stewart was born around the year 1337 to Robert, Steward of Scotland and heir presumptive to the throne, and his wife Elizabeth Mure. Robert's mother Marjorie and her half-brother, David II, were the children of the first Bruce king, Robert I.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Robert Stewart and Elizabeth Mure were married in 1336 by traditional marriage, recognized as legally binding but not recognized by the Church. The marriage was criticized for being uncanonical, so they married a second time in 1349, after receiving a papal dispensation from Pope Clement VI dated 22 November 1347. Therefore, although their children were actually legitimate, having been born after the first marriage of their parents, John, his three brothers and six sisters were legitimised by their parents' second Church-sanctioned marriage. Styled Lord of Kyle, John is first recorded in the 1350s as the commander of a campaign in the Lordship of Annandale to re-establish Scottish control over English occupied territory. In 1363, he joined his father along with the earls of Douglas and March in a failed insurrection against Robert's uncle, David II. The reasons for the rebellion were varied. In 1362, David II supported several of his royal favorites in their titles to lands in the Stewart earldom of Monteith and thwarted Stewart claims to the earldom of Fife. The King's involvement and eventual marriage with Margaret Drummond may also have represented a threat in the Steward's own earldom of Strathearn where the Drummonds also had interests, while Douglas and March mistrusted David's intentions towards them. These nobles were also unhappy at the king's squandering of funds provided to him for his ransom, and with the prospect that they could be sent to England as guarantors for the ransom payments. The dissension between the King and the Stewarts looked to have been settled before the end of spring 1367.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: On 31 May the Steward resigned the earldom of Atholl to John, who by this time was already married to Annabella Drummond, the daughter of the queen's deceased brother, Sir John Drummond. David II reinforced the position of John and Annabella by providing them with the Earldom of Carrick on 22 June 1368 and the tacit approval of John as the king's probable heir. A Stewart succession was suddenly endangered when David II had his marriage to Margaret annulled in March 1369 leaving the king free to remarry and with the prospect of a Bruce heir.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: On 22 February 1371 David II (who was preparing to marry the Earl of March's sister, Agnes Dunbar) unexpectedly died, presumably to the relief of both John and his father. Robert was crowned at Scone Abbey on 27 March 1371 and before this date had given John—now styled Steward of Scotland—the ancestral lands surrounding the Firth of Clyde. The manner in which the succession was to take place was first entailed by Robert I when female heirs were excluded and David II attempted unsuccessfully on several occasions to have the council change the succession procedure. Robert II quickly moved to ensure the succession of John when the general council attending his coronation officially named Carrick as heir—in 1373 the Stewart succession was further strengthened when parliament passed entails defining the manner in which each of the king's sons could inherit the crown. After the coronation John Dunbar who had received the Lordship of Fife from David II now resigned the title so that the king's second son, Robert, Earl of Monteith could receive the Earldom of Fife—Dunbar was compensated with the provision of the earldom of Moray.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: A son, David, the future Duke of Rothesay, was born to Carrick and Annabella on 24 October 1378. In 1381, Carrick was calling himself " 'lieutenant for the marches' " sustained by his connections to border magnates such as his brother-in-law, James Douglas, son of William, Earl of Douglas, whom he succeeded in 1384.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Robert II's policy of building up Stewart domination in Scotland through the advancement of his sons saw the emergence of Carrick as the pre-eminent Stewart magnate south of the Forth-Clyde line, just as his younger brother Alexander, Earl of Buchan, Lord of Badenoch and Ross had become in the north.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Prior to 1384 persistent objections regarding Robert II's application of the law were brought to the attention of the council. Some of these grievances maintained that the King had acted unlawfully by deliberately disregarding charges regarding his personal conduct. Buchan's use of cateran supporters drew criticism from Northern nobles and prelates and demonstrated Robert II's inability or reluctance to control his son. The king's failure to take a leading role in prosecuting the war with England and Buchan's abuse of royal power in the north was the backdrop to the general council meeting at Holyrood Abbey in November 1384, where the decision was taken to sideline the king and provide the ruling powers to Carrick as Guardian of Scotland.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Within weeks Carrick's actions signaled changes in the direction of crown strategy where the Carrick–Douglas affinity was, by far, the largest group to benefit from crown patronage. On 13 March 1385 it emerged that an unauthorised payment of £700 in bullion, a huge amount, had been taken by the guardian from the customs of Edinburgh. It transpired that Fife, also Chamberlain of Scotland, had been struggling to check Carrick's misuse of the Crown finances during 1384–5.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: In April 1385, the general council sharply condemned Buchan's behaviour and sat with the intention of maneuvering Carrick into firmly intervening in the north. In July, under Carrick's guardianship, a Scottish army that included a French force commanded by Admiral Jean de Vienne penetrated into the north of England without any serious gains but provoked a damaging retaliatory attack by Richard II. Yet in the north, Carrick did not bring Buchan under control and many of the Guardian's supporters although pleased at the resumption of hostilities with England were unhappy at the continued northern lawlessness. Carrick had been made Guardian partly on the need to curb Buchan's excesses yet despite this by February 1387 Buchan had become even more powerful and influential when he was appointed Justiciar north of the Forth. The war with England was halted by a series of truces but on 19 April 1388, English envoys sent to Scotland to again extend the ceasefire returned to Richard's court empty-handed—by 29 April Robert II was conducting a council in Edinburgh to authorise renewed conflict with England. Although the Scots army defeated the English at the Battle of Otterburn in Northumberland in August 1388, its leader, the Earl of Douglas, was killed. Douglas died childless, triggering a series of claims on his estate—Carrick backed his brother-in-law Malcolm Drummond, the husband of Douglas's sister, while Carrick's brother, Robert Earl of Fife, took the side of Sir Archibald Douglas, Lord of Galloway, who held an entail on his kinsman's estates, and who ultimately succeeded to the earldom. Fife, with his new powerful Douglas ally, together with those loyal to the king, ensured at the December 1388 council meeting that the guardianship of Scotland would pass from Carrick (who had recently been badly injured from a horse-kick) to Fife.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: There was general approval of Fife's intention to properly resolve the situation of lawlessness in the north and in particular the activities of Buchan his younger brother. Buchan was stripped of his position of justiciar, which would soon be given to Fife's son, Murdoch Stewart. In January 1390 Robert II was in the north-east perhaps to strengthen the now changed political outlook in the north of the kingdom. He returned to Dundonald Castle in Ayrshire in March where he died on 19 April and was buried at Scone on 25 April.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: In May 1390 parliament granted John permission to change his regnal name to Robert, probably in part to maintain the link back to Robert I but also to disassociate himself from King John Balliol. The four-month delay in the crowning of Robert III can be seen as a period when Fife and his affinity sought to ensure their future positions, and which also saw Buchan's opportunistic attack on Elgin Cathedral, settling an old score with the Bishop of Moray, and possibly also a protest at Fife's reappointment as the king's lieutenant.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: In 1392, Robert III strengthened the position of his son David, now Earl of Carrick, when he endowed him with a large annuity that allowed the young prince to build up his household and affinity, and then in 1393 regained his right to direct rule when the general council decided that Fife's lieutenancy should end and that Carrick, now of age, should assist his father. This independence of action was demonstrated in 1395–6, when he responded to Carrick's unauthorised marriage to Elizabeth Dunbar, daughter of George, Earl of March, by ensuring its annulment. The king appears to have also taken over the conduct of foreign affairs, preserving the peace with Richard II and managing to increase the power of the Red Douglas Earl of Angus in the southeast of the country as a counterbalance to Fife's Black Douglas ally. He further showed his authority when in an attempt to reduce inter-clan feuding and lawlessness, he arranged and oversaw a gladiatorial limited combat between the clans of Kay and Quhele (Clan Chattan) in Perth on 28 April 1396. Carrick progressively acted independently of his father taking control of the Stewart lands in the south-west, while maintaining his links with the Drummonds of his mother, and all at a time when Fife's influence in central Scotland remained strong.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: The king was increasingly blamed for the failure to pacify the Gaelic areas in the west and north. The general council held in Perth in April 1398 criticised the king's governance, and empowered his brother Robert and his son David—now respectively the Dukes of Albany and Rothesay—to lead an army against Donald, Lord of the Isles, and his brothers. In November 1398, an influential group of magnates and prelates met at Falkland Castle that included Albany, Rothesay, Archibald, Earl of Douglas, Albany's son Murdoch, justiciar North of the Forth along with the bishops Walter of St Andrews and Gilbert of Aberdeen—the outcome of this meeting manifested itself at the council meeting held in January 1399 when the king was forced to surrender power to Rothesay for a period of three years.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: The kin of the border earls took advantage of the confusion in England after the deposition of Richard II by Henry IV, and harried and forayed into England causing much damage, and taking Wark Castle around 13 October 1399. A far-reaching dispute between Rothesay and George Dunbar, Earl of March, occurred when Rothesay, rather than remarrying Elizabeth Dunbar as previously agreed, decided to marry Mary Douglas, daughter of the Earl of Douglas. March, enraged by this, wrote to Henry IV on 18 February 1400, and by July had entered Henry's service. In 1401, Rothesay took on a more assertive and autonomous attitude, circumventing proper procedures, unjustifiably appropriating sums from the customs of the burghs on the east coast, before provoking further animosity when he confiscated the revenues of the temporalities of the vacant bishopric of St Andrews. Rothesay had also in conjunction with his uncle, Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, confronted Albany's influence in central Scotland. As soon his lieutenancy expired in 1402, Rothesay was arrested and imprisoned in Albany's Falkland Castle where he died in March 1402. Rothesay's death probably lay with Albany and Douglas, who would have looked upon the possibility of the young prince acceding to the throne with great apprehension. They certainly fell under suspicion, but were cleared of all blame by a general council, " 'where, by divine providence and not otherwise, it is discerned that he departed from this life.' "


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Following Rothesay's death, and with the restoration of the lieutenancy to Albany and the Scottish defeat at the battle of Humbleton, Robert III experienced almost total exclusion from political authority and was limited to his lands in the west. By late 1404 Robert, with the aid of his close councilors Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, Sir David Fleming and Henry Wardlaw, had succeeded in re-establishing himself and intervened in favour of Alexander Stewart, the Earl of Buchan's illegitimate son, who was in dispute with Albany over the earldom of Mar. Robert III again exhibited his new resolve when in December 1404 he created a new regality in the Stewartry for his sole remaining son and heir, James, now Earl of Carrick—an act designed to prevent these lands falling into Albany's hands.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: By 28 October 1405 Robert III had returned to Dundonald Castle in Ayrshire. With the king's health failing, it was decided in the winter of 1405–6 to send the young prince to France out of the reach of Albany. Despite this, the manner of James's flight from Scotland was unplanned. In February 1406, James together with Orkney and Fleming, at the head of a large group of followers left the safety of Bishop Wardlaw's protection in St Andrews and journeyed through the hostile Douglas territories of east Lothian—an act probably designed to demonstrate James's royal endorsement of his custodians, but also a move by his custodians to further their own interests in the traditional Douglas heartlands. Events went seriously wrong for James and he had to escape to the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth along with the Earl of Orkney after his escorts were attacked by James Douglas of Balvenie, and which resulted in Sir David Fleming's death. Their confinement on the rock was to last for over a month before a ship from Danzig, en route for France, picked them up. On 22 March 1406, the ship was taken by English pirates off Flamborough Head, who delivered James to King Henry IV of England. Robert III had moved to Rothesay Castle where, after hearing of his son's captivity, he died 4 April 1406, and was buried in Paisley Abbey, which had been founded by the Stewarts.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: King Robert III married Anabella Drummond, the daughter of Sir John Drummond of Stobhall and Mary Montifex, daughter of Sir William Montifex, in c.1366/7. They had seven children:


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Abbot Walter Bower reported that Robert III described himself as "the worst of kings and the most miserable of men". Gordon Donaldson in his general history "Scottish Kings" (1967) agrees and writes of the first two Stewart kings "that a famous dynasty, which was to produce so many men of remarkable ability ... made a somewhat pedestrian beginning". He immediately qualifies this statement with "it is true that the sources, both record and narrative, are scanty". He goes further and explains "admittedly, no attempt has yet been made to bring the resources of modern historical research to bear on Robert II and Robert III ... but it is beyond the bounds of probability that even if this is done either of them will emerge as a man who did much positively to shape Scottish history." When Robert III re-established his personal rule in 1393, Donaldson characterises it as a period of anarchy, and of a king who couldn't control his brothers Albany and Buchan, nor his son Rothesay.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Ranald Nicholson agrees with Donaldson in his "Scotland: The Later Middle Ages" (1974), and describes Robert III as a failure, like his father, because he wasn't dominant. Nicholson's opinion was that in his period as Lieutenant in the 1380s, Robert (John, Earl of Carrick) was incapable of dealing with the breakdown of law and order, citing the number of legal cases. The lameness of Carrick after being kicked by a horse was explained by Nicholson as the excuse needed to have him replaced by his brother Robert, Earl of Fife as the king's lieutenant. Nicholson writes, "nothing much was to be hoped for in the heir apparent", and goes on to blame Robert III for the destruction of Forres and Elgin, despite the lieutenancy of Fife at the time.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Andrew Barrell in his book "Medieval Scotland" (2000) puts forward that the first two Stewart kings, "had difficulty in asserting themselves, partly because their dynasty was new to kingship and needed to establish itself". Robert III's period of personal rule from 1393 was "disastrous" according to Barrell, and was exemplified by the king's failure to re-take the royal fortress of Dumbarton. Barrell's final assessment of Robert III was of a man crippled in body and incapable or averse to personally confronting Albany but sought to do so through promoting the status of his sons, and even then he failed.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Alexander Grant in "Independence and Nationhood" (1984) found Robert III to be "probably Scotland's least impressive king". Grant puts this into perspective and writes that it is notable that Robert III's reign could have been worse compared to the turmoil and violence experienced in England and France when ruled by weak kings. Even on Robert's death, Scotland didn't descend into open civil war but was restricted to positioning among the royal family and its magnate groupings. Grant, in "The New Cambridge Medieval History", explains that the 13th-century Scottish kings ruled with the endorsement of practically all the political classes but that none of the 14th-century kings, from Robert I to Robert III, did so and retained loyalty by the use of patronage. The benefits of this were outweighed by the disadvantages—alienated lands reduced crown income, endowments had the same effect, the estates granted to nobles and church often in regality led to a loss of royal attendance within these territories and contributed to a diminishment of authority.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: Michael Lynch suggests that the earlier 20th-century historians made hasty evaluations of both Robert II and Robert III when they characterised them as "pathetically weak personalities" and their reigns as "nineteen years of senility and sixteen of infirmity". Lynch also makes the point that the complaints made in the later chronicles of lawlessness and disturbance in the country were mainly confined to the north with the king's brother Alexander, Lord of Badenoch and Earl of Buchan at its root. The death of John, Lord of the Isles heralded a state of dissension between the lordship and the crown that was to last for two generations and which even Robert III's successor James I was unable to deal with properly. Lynch states that much of the troubles during Robert III's reign derived from the sharp deterioration of the royal revenues. The unruliness of northern Scotland was the result of competing factions within the royal family—Lynch suggests that the weakness in kingship before 1406 "can be exaggerated", citing Buchan's enforced appearance at Robert III's council to answer for his incendiary attack on Elgin and its cathedral, and Albany's obtainment of a submission from the lord of the Isles.


title: Robert III of Scotland

text: In Stephen Boardman's "The Early Stewart Kings", the younger Robert, then John, Earl of Carrick, is shown to be an energetic ambitious man and fully engaged in the running of the country, at the centre of Anglo-Scottish diplomacy, and who became the pre-eminent magnate in Scotland and whose political importance south of the Forth would eclipse that of his father's. Boardman describes how in 1384 he callously engineered the council to remove his father from power and to place it in his hands. Many of the problems of Robert III's rule, Boardman argues, stemmed from the death of his brother-in-law and close ally James, Earl of Douglas at Otterburn in 1388, when his deliberately constructed and powerful affinity south of the Forth crumbled. That same year Carrick lost the lieutenancy to his brother Robert Earl of Fife, that was, Boardman suggests, a blow to the future king's standing and one from which he would not fully recover. According to Boardman, when Robert became king in 1390 he was the victim of his father's style of government characterised by Robert II's creation of his sons, sons-in-law, and other major territorial nobles as powerful magnates to whom he delegated extensive authority. As a result, Robert III's brothers refused to act simply as liegemen to the king. Robert III, already weakened by the council when he ascended the throne, was in the end completely subordinated to the magnate power of Albany and Douglas.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft (; February 6, 1914May 22, 2005) was an American actor and bass singer. He was known as one of the booming voices behind Kellogg's Frosted Flakes animated spokesman Tony the Tiger for more than five decades. He was also the uncredited vocalist for the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from the classic Christmas television special, Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Ravenscroft did some voice-over work and singing for Disney in both the films and the attractions at Disneyland (which were later featured at Walt Disney World). The best known of these attractions are Haunted Mansion as a singing bust, Country Bear Jamboree, Mark Twain Riverboat, Pirates of the Caribbean, Disneyland Railroad, and Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room as "Fritz".


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Ravenscroft left his native Norfolk, Nebraska, in 1933 for California, where he studied at Otis Art Institute. He achieved early success as part of a singing group called The Mellomen. The Mellomen can be heard on many popular recordings of the Big Band Era, including backup for Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, Spike Jones, Jo Stafford, and Rosemary Clooney. Their earliest contribution to a Disney film was for "Pinocchio" (1940), to which they contributed the song "Honest John". This was deleted from the film, but can still be heard in the supplements on the 2009 DVD. Ravenscroft also voiced Monstro the Whale in "Pinocchio". The Mellomen contributed to other Disney films, such as "Alice in Wonderland" and "Lady and the Tramp". The group appeared on camera in a few episodes of the Disney anthology television series; in one instance recording a canine chorus for "Lady and the Tramp" and in another as a barbershop quartet that reminds Walt Disney of the name of the young newspaper reporter "Gallegher".


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Ravenscroft is also heard with the quartet on some of the "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes" with Mel Blanc at Warner Bros. as well as on radio "driving Jack Benny crazy" on The Jack Benny Program as part of The Sportsmen Quartet.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: During World War II, Ravenscroft served as a civilian navigator contracted to the U.S. Air Transport Command, spending five years flying courier missions across the north and south Atlantic. Among the notables carried on board his flights were Winston Churchill and Bob Hope. As he told an interviewer: "I flew Winston Churchill to a conference in Algiers and flew Bob Hope to the troops a couple of times. So it was fun."


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Ravenscroft sang bass on Rosemary Clooney's "This Ole House", which went to No. 1 in both the United States and Britain in 1954, as well as Stuart Hamblen's original version of that same song. He sang on the soundtrack for Ken Clark as "Stewpot" in "South Pacific", one of the top-selling albums of the 1950s. He also backed The DeCastro Sisters on their 1955 top 20 hit, "Boom Boom Boomerang." Singing with the Johnny Mann Singers, his distinctive bass can also be heard as part of the chorus on 28 of their albums that were released during the 1960s and 1970s. He was also the bass singer on Bobby Vee's 1960 Liberty hit record "Devil or Angel". Andy Williams' recording of "The 12 Days of Christmas" features him as well. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ravenscroft was narrator for the annual Pageant of the Masters art show at the Laguna Beach, California, Festival of the Arts.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: He sang the opening songs for the two Disney serials used on "The Mickey Mouse Club", "Boys of the Western Sea" and "The Hardy Boys: Mystery of the Applegate Treasure".


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: He sang the "Twitterpatter Song" and "Thumper's Song" on the Disneyland record "Peter Cottontail and other Funny Bunnies".


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: On the Disneyland record "All About Dragons", he both provided the narration and sang the songs "The Reluctant Dragon" and "The Loch Ness Monster".


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: His voice was heard during the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as well as the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland as Uncle Theodore, the lead vocalist of the singing busts in the cemetery near the end of the ride. He also played the Narrator in "The Story and Song From the Haunted Mansion". Ravenscroft is also heard in the Enchanted Tiki Room as the voice of Fritz the Animatronics parrot, as well as the tree-like Tangaroa tiki god in the pre-show outside the attraction. He was also the voice of the Disneyland Railroad in the 1990s. Further roles include that of The First Mate on The Mark Twain Riverboat and of the American bison head named Buff at The Country Bear Jamboree.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: One of Ravenscroft's best-known uncredited works is as the vocalist for the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." His name was accidentally omitted from the credits, leading many to believe that the cartoon's narrator, Boris Karloff, sang the song, while others cited Tennessee Ernie Ford as the song's signature voice. The song, now credited to Ravenscroft, peaked on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 32 for the week ending January 2, 2021. Thanks to You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, Thurl Ravenscroft has officially hit the Top 40 as a solo artist.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Ravenscroft also sang "No Dogs Allowed" in the "Peanuts" animated motion picture "Snoopy, Come Home" and "I Was a Teenaged Brain Surgeon" for Spike Jones.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: For more than 50 years, he was the uncredited voice of Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. His booming bass gave the cereal's tiger mascot a voice with the catchphrase "They're g-r-r-r-eat!!!!".


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Various record companies, such as Abbott, Coral, Brunswick, and "X" (a division of RCA) also released singles by Ravenscroft, often in duets with little-known female vocalists, in an attempt to turn the bass-voiced veteran into a pop singer. These efforts were commercially unsuccessful, if often quite interesting. He was also teamed up with the Andrews Sisters (on the Dot Records album "The Andrews Sisters Present") on the cover of Johnny Cymbal's "Mr. Bass Man". The Mellomen released some doo-wop records under the name Big John & the Buzzards, a name apparently given to them by the rock-and-roll-hating Mitch Miller.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: A devoted Christian, he appeared on many religious television shows such as "The Hour of Power". In 1970, he recorded an album called "Great Hymns in Story and Song", which featured him singing 10 hymns, each prefaced with the stories of how each hymn came to be, with the background vocals and instrumentals arranged and conducted by Ralph Carmichael.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: He said his lifelong dream was to record the entire Bible on tape, but James Earl Jones "beat him out". On an episode of the TV variety series "Donny & Marie" featuring guest stars from the first "Star Wars" movie, Ravenscroft provided the voice for Darth Vader, voiced in the movie by Jones.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: Ravenscroft married June Seamans in 1946 and they had two children. June died in 1999 from unknown causes. Ravenscroft semi-retired and did not work at any other studio, but continued to voice Tony the Tiger through 2004 (with limo transportation provided by Kellogg's) and was also interviewed that year by the Disney "Extinct Attractions Club" website. He died in his home on May 22, 2005, from prostate cancer, and was buried at the Memorial Gardens at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.


title: Thurl Ravenscroft

text: In the June 6, 2005, issue of the advertising industry journal "Advertising Age", Kellogg's ran an advertisement commemorating Ravenscroft, the headline reading: "Behind every great character is an even greater man." After his death, Lee Marshall replaced him as the voice of Tony the Tiger in the Kellogg's commercials, but some commercials still recycle clips of Ravenscroft.


title: Mahabali

text: Mahabali (IAST: Mahābalī), also known as Bali, Indrasenan, or Māveli, is a daitya king featured in Hinduism. He is the grandson of Prahlada, and a descendant of the sage Kashyapa. There are many versions of his legend, in ancient texts such as the "Shatapatha Brahmana", "Ramayana", "Mahabharata", and several "Puranas". According to Hindu literature, he was banished beneath the earth into the "patala" (netherworld) by the Vamana avatar of Vishnu.


title: Mahabali

text: In Hinduism, Mahabali is considered one of the Chiranjivi, a group of eight immortals. It is believed that he will become the King of Svarga (heaven) in the next "yuga". In Kerala, King Mahabali is considered to be the noblest and most prosperous ruler, who transformed his kingdom into a heavenly place. His legend is a major part of the annual festival Onam in the state of Kerala, and Balipratipada (the fourth day of Deepavali and first day of Kartika month) festival in North India and Tulunadu.


title: Mahabali

text: Mahabali is described in early Hindu myths as a benevolent and generous king. He ruled without discrimination, and his people were honest, healthy, and happy under his rule. Mahabali also temporarily possessed the "amrita" (nectar of eternal life) obtained by the "asuras". The amrita allowed his subjects to bring him back to life after his death in one of the wars between "suras (devas)" and "asuras". Mahabali was, thus, immune from death. After many wars, the invincible Bali had conquered heaven and earth. The "suras" (devas) approached Vishnu to save them from complete obliteration. Vishnu refused to join the war, or outright kill his own devotee Mahabali. To restore the natural order, he incarnated as the dwarf Brahmin avatar, Vamana. While Mahabali was performing the ashvamedha sacrifice to celebrate his victories and giving away gifts to everyone, Vamana approached him and requested "three steps of land". Mahabali granted him this gift, despite warnings from Shukra, who had realised Vamana's true identity. Vamana then metamorphosed into Vishnu's colossal trivikrama form, the first foot encompassing all of heaven in one step and the earth with the second foot. When rhetorically asked where he might take his promised third step, Mahabali accepted his fate and offered his own head. Some Hindu texts state that Mahabali was banished to "patala" (netherworld), some state he was dragged there by Garuda, in others he entered heaven with the touch of Vishnu, while another version states he became "Chiranjivi" (immortal). Others even have Bali admitted into Vaikunta, which was an even higher place than the realm of the devas.


title: Mahabali

text: According to Hindu mythology, Vishnu granted Bali a boon whereby he could return back to his homeland once every year. The harvest festivals of Balipratipada and Onam are celebrated to mark his yearly homecoming. Literature and inscriptions in Hindu temples suggest that these festivals, featuring colourful decorations, lighted lamps, gift giving, feasts and community events, have been popular in India for more than a millennium. Bali is also featured in the Ramayana where Ravana tries to free him from Patala, but is unable to.


title: Mahabali

text: Mahabhali had a wife named Vindhyavalli, who was also referred to as Ashrama. With her he had many sons, including the Shiva devotee Bana (Banasura). It is believed that Vindhyavalli once saved Bana from the wrath of Krishna.


title: Mahabali

text: King Mahabali is also found in the mythologies of Jainism. He is the sixth of nine Prativasudevas (Prati-narayanas, anti-heroes). He is depicted as an evil king who schemed and attempted to rob Purusha's wife. He is defeated and killed by Purusha. In Jain mythology, the antagonists to Mahabali are the two sons born to King Mahasiva (Mahasiras): Ananda (the sixth Baladeva) and Purusapundarika (the sixth Vasudeva).


title: Mahabali

text: Mahabali is also mentioned in Jain inscriptions, where the patron compares the defeated evil opponents of the current king to Mahabali. For example, in the Girnar inscriptions of Gujarat dated to about 1231 CE (1288 Vikrama era), minister Vastupala of the Chaulukya dynasty is praised as a great king by Jains, and the inscriptions connect him to Mahabali because Vastupala gave much charity. Some excerpts from the inscriptions are:


title: Mahabali

text: Mahabali is a common name and found in other contexts. For example, in Jain history, Mahabali is the name of the son of Bahubali, who was given Bahubali's kingdom before Bahubali became a monk.


title: Mahabali

text: Bali appears in several Buddhist sutras, such as the Dānapāramitā Sūtra, the Ratnamegha Sūtra, and the Lotus Sutra; where he is seen among the audience who listens to the Buddha's discourses.


title: Mahabali

text: The Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra features an extensive dialogue between Bali and the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara that occurred during the life of the Buddha Viśvabhū. Bali relates his story of being imprisoned in the underworld by Nārāyaṇa. The asura king repents for his misdeeds and praises the qualities of Avalokiteśvara and the pure land Sukhāvatī. Avalokiteśvara bestows a prediction that Bali will someday become a fully awakended buddha named Śrī who will lead the asuras in the Dharma.


title: Mahabali

text: Bali offers Avalokiteśvara "strings of pearls worth a hundred thousand silver coins and diadems adorned with various jewels." Before leaving his abode, Avalokiteśvara gives a teaching about how humans must leave Jambudvīpa upon death and are subject to the punishments of King Yama in hell. He then tells Bali of the importance of cultivating merit in this life.


title: Mahabali

text: In Tulunadu, several people believe that Mahabali was an ancient king. They offer special puja during the fourth day of Deepavali, which they call, 'Bali Padyami'. They offer a special dish to the being on a plate prepared by bamboo tree sticks along with a lamp, and through the medium of a Tulu folklore song, request him to accept their offerings. People believe that on the fourth day of the festival, the king comes out of Patala for a day to see his kingdom.


title: Mahabali

text: In Hinduism in Thailand and Tai folk religion call him is Chao Krung Bhali (เจ้ากรุงพาลี). He is regarded as chief of deity serve as guardians of the earth. (พระภูมิเจ้าที่) deity guardians of the trees (รุกขเทวดา) and Tutelary deity. (เทพารักษ์) which deity these types same match with Grāmadevatā and Kuladevata in Hinduism., statue of his most important located in Ho kaew sal Phra bhum (หอแก้วศาลพระภูมิ) which is Spirit house for deity guardian of Grand Palace which is on the side of Phra Thinang Chai Chumpol but located in the area of the Inner royal Court (accommodation of Consort , concubine with daughter unmarried and woman attendant)., Him will receive special worship during in the old Thai new year festival (เทศกาลตรุษไทย) according Lunar calendar (around the end of the month March to early April) before the Songkran festival., by inviting statue of his with statue other in Spirit house for deity guardian Grand Palace., Come to worship with Siam Devadhiraj which was regarded as the chairman of chief deity guardian of Grand Palace.,which accompanying ceremony in Phra Thinang Phaisan Thaksin annually by Monarchy of Thailand or agent of Monarchy of Thailand. As for the Tai folk religion He was generally worshiped together with deity serve as guardians of the earth., deity guardians of the trees and Tutelary deity. by his famous statue and Spirit house of him located in San Chao Krung Bhali (ศาลเจ้ากรุงพาลี) in Noen Phra sud district in Mueang Rayong district Rayong province which has been praised by indigenous people to be Tutelary deity guardian of community.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: "Rivers of Babylon" is a Rastafari song written and recorded by Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton of the Jamaican reggae group The Melodians in 1970. The lyrics are adapted from the texts of Psalms 19, and 137 in the Hebrew Bible. The Melodians' original version of the song appeared on the soundtrack album for the 1972 movie "The Harder They Come", which made it internationally known.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The song was re-popularized in Europe by the 1978 Boney M. cover version, which was awarded a platinum disc and is one of the top-ten, all-time best-selling singles in the UK. The B-side of the single, "Brown Girl in the Ring", also became a hit.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The song is based on the Biblical Psalm 137:1-4, a hymn expressing the lamentations of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC: Previously the Kingdom of Israel, after being united under Kings David and Solomon, had been split in two, with the Kingdom of Israel in the north, conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC which caused the dispersion of 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. The southern Kingdom of Judah (hence the name Jews), home of the tribe of Judah and part of the tribes of Levi and Benjamin, was free from foreign domination until the Babylonian conquest to which Rivers of Babylon refers.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The namesake rivers of Babylon (in present-day Iraq) are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The song also has words from :


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: It is one of a few pop songs whose lyrics come directly from the Bible (see also "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by Pete Seeger, "40" by U2, and "The Lord's Prayer" by Sister Janet Mead). The melody bears a strong resemblance to "How Dry I Am".


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: In the Rastafarian faith, the term "Babylon" is used for any governmental system which is either oppressive or unjust. Rastafarians also use "Babylon" to refer to the police, often seen as a source of oppression because they arrest members for the use of marijuana (which is sacramental for Rastafarians). Therefore, "By the rivers of Babylon" refers to living in a repressive society and the longing for freedom, just like the Israelites in captivity. Rastafarians also identify themselves as belonging to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The original version specifically refers to Rastafarian belief in Haile Selassie, by changing references to "the Lord" in the Biblical text to "Far-I" and "King Alpha". Both terms refer to Selassie (Selassie's wife Menen Asfaw is known as "Queen Omega"). In addition, the term "the wicked" replaces the neutral "they" of Psalm 137 in the line "they that carried us away captive required of us a song...". According to David Stowe,


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: Brent Dowe, the lead singer of the Melodians, told Kenneth Bilby that he had adapted Psalm 137 to the new reggae style because he wanted to increase the public's consciousness of the growing Rastafarian movement and its calls for black liberation and social justice. Like the Afro-Protestant Revival services, traditional Rastafarian worship often included psalm singing and hymn singing, and Rastas typically modified the words to fit their own spiritual conceptions; Psalm 137 was among their sacred chants.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: After its release in 1970, the song quickly became well known in Jamaica. According to Brent Dowe, the song was initially banned by the Jamaican government because "its overt Rastafarian references ('King Alpha' and 'O Far-I') were considered subversive and potentially inflammatory". Leslie Kong, the group's producer, attacked the government for banning a song with words taken almost entirely from the Bible, stating that the Psalms had been "sung by Jamaican Christians since time immemorial". The government lifted the ban. After that, it took only three weeks to become a number-one hit in the Jamaican charts.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: It reached an international audience thanks to the soundtrack album of the 1972 film "The Harder They Come", which is credited with having "brought reggae to the world". The song was later used in the 1999 Nicolas Cage movie "Bringing Out the Dead" and the 2010 Philip Seymour Hoffman film "Jack Goes Boating".


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: "Rivers of Babylon" was covered in 1978 by Germany-based disco band Boney M., with a version that was released as a single. Boney M.'s release stayed at the no. 1 position in the UK for five weeks and was also the group's only significant US chart entry, peaking at no. 30 in the Pop charts. Boney M.'s version of the song remains one of the top ten all-time best-selling singles in the UK, where it is one of only seven songs to have sold over 2 million copies. In Canada, the song was a top 25 hit on the "RPM" magazine's Top 100 singles chart and reached no. 9 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The song also reached No. 1 on the South African Springbok chart, where it remained for a total of 11 weeks, making it the No. 1 song on that country's year end charts. The song was the first single from the band's equally successful 1978 album, "Nightflight to Venus". Some controversy arose when the first single pressings only credited Frank Farian and Reyam (aka Hans-Jörg Mayer) of Boney M.; after an agreement with Dowe and McNaughton, these two were also credited on later pressings.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The Rastafarian language was excised from the lyrics for the Boney M. version. Although the group performed an early mix of the song on a German TV show and sang "How can we sing King Alpha's song" as in the Melodians version, it was changed to "the Lord's song", restoring the original, biblical words, in the versions that were to be released. To fit the meter, "O Far-I" became "here tonight" rather than the original, biblical "O Lord".


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: Along with "Ma Baker", "Rivers of Babylon" helped establish what was to become a habit of Boney M. singles – namely that the original pressings featured an early version that was soon replaced by a more widely available mix.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The initial single mix of "Rivers of Babylon" is most notable for lead singer Liz Mitchell's ad-libs ("Dark tears of Babylon, you got to sing a song, sing a song of love, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah") between the two verses. On subsequent single pressings, only the 'yeah's were retained. However, the full ad-libs re-emerged in the US-only 12" version, and the original earlier fade-out point is kept in the album version.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The single mix differs from the album version by having Liz Mitchell singing all of the verse ""Let the words of our mouth ..."" with Frank Farian; on the LP, Farian sings the first half of this as a solo part. Additionally, it edits out the instrumental passage before the last "humming" part and fades out a little later (""Oooooh, have the power... yeah yeah yeah yeah"" can only be heard in full in the single mix) despite being slightly shorter overall.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The single's B-side, "Brown Girl in the Ring", was a traditional Caribbean nursery rhyme. When "Rivers of Babylon" had slipped to no. 20 in the UK charts, radio stations suddenly flipped the single, causing "Brown Girl in the Ring" to go all the way to no. 2 and become a hit in its own right. Early single pressings feature the full-length, 4:18 version, whose final chorus has a section that was later edited out. The single mix is also slightly different from the album version in that the latter features steel drums on the outro riff of the song, while the single mix doesn't.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: "Brown Girl in the Ring" was also issued separately in Canada as an A-side in the summer of 1979. It reached no. 8 on the Canadian AC chart in July 1979, becoming the third Boney M. song to reach the top 10 on that chart after "Rivers of Babylon" and "Rasputin". On "RPM"'s Top 100 singles chart, the song stalled at no. 79.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: Liz Mitchell had previously recorded "Brown Girl in the Ring" in 1975 with the group Malcolm's Locks, which had her ex-boyfriend Malcolm Magaron as the lead singer. Arranger Peter Herbolzheimer accused Frank Farian of stealing his arrangement for the song. The court case ran for more than 20 years in Germany.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: "Rivers of Babylon" / "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord" is a 1988 remix single that was issued to launch the group's reunion. (Boney M. had split up in 1986, their 10th anniversary.) The double-A-side single contained new mixes of the band's two most successful single releases ever. Although the remix album from which both sides of the single were taken sold well, the single failed to chart.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The song was parodied by The Barron Knights in their UK comedy hit "A Taste of Aggro" (1978), in which the lyrics are changed to "There's a dentist in Birmingham, he fixed my crown / And as I slept, he filled my mouth with iron." The song was their biggest hit, reaching no. 3 in the UK charts.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: The song was also parodied by an Australian Folk Musical Group Redgum, titled "Fabulon" in the album Caught in the Act.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: On 19 November 1978, a cover version with lyrics in Swedish, "Kommer du ihåg Babylon?" ("Do you remember Babylon?"), performed by Swedish dansband Schytts entered the first place on Svensktoppen where it stayed for 10 weeks.


title: Rivers of Babylon

text: On 30 September 1979, "Rivers of Babylon" was sung by an estimated crowd of 280,000 people attending the papal visit of John Paul II in Galway, Ireland.


title: Craig Roberts

text: Craig Haydn Roberts (born 21 January 1991) is a Welsh actor and director. He is best known for lead roles as Oliver Tate in the coming-of-age comedy-drama film "Submarine" (2010) and David Meyers in the series "Red Oaks" (2014–2017), and for playing Rio Wellard in the television series "The Story of Tracy Beaker" (2004–2006).


title: Craig Roberts

text: Roberts was born on 21 January 1991 in Newport, Wales, the son of Alison (Bishop) and Haydn Roberts. He was raised in Maesycwmmer, Caerphilly and attended Lewis School, Pengam. Roberts has a sister, Chelsea, and two half-sisters, Natalee and Angharad.


title: Craig Roberts

text: Roberts began his television career in the dramas "Care" (2000) and "Little Pudding" (2003). After these he was given roles in the series "The Story of Tracy Beaker" (2004–2006) and "Casualty" (2005–2008), and played vampire fanatic Robin Branagh in "Young Dracula" (2006–2008). He also appeared in the dramas "Kiddo" (2005) and "Scratching" (2006).


title: Craig Roberts

text: On stage, Roberts toured Britain in 2008 with Y Touring Theatre Company, playing young Ryan in "Full Time", a play that explores racism, sexism and homophobia in football; in January 2009 he played the evil queen's sidekick Drax in the pantomime "Snow White" at Worthing.


title: Craig Roberts

text: In 2010, Roberts had worldwide success with the teenage lead role in the film "Submarine", based on the 2008 novel by Joe Dunthorne. It was directed by Richard Ayoade and also starred Paddy Considine and Yasmin Paige.


title: Craig Roberts

text: Since then Roberts has appeared in the BBC Three television show "Being Human" (2011, 2012) and in the online spin-off series "Becoming Human" (2011) as Adam.


title: Craig Roberts

text: In 2012, he starred in The Killers' music video for "Here with Me" with Winona Ryder, directed by Tim Burton. He also starred in Kassidy’s music video for “One Man Army” in 2012.