title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on September 13, 2005 as a smaller, lighter redesign of the Game Boy Advance. The system is the last console in the Game Boy line, alongside the AGS-101 model of the Game Boy Advance SP. Unlike its predecessors, the Game Boy Micro lacks backward compatibility for original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: According to Nintendo of America vice president George Harrison, the idea for a smaller version of the Game Boy was first discussed in 2004. Harrison explained that unlike the traditional console development process, Nintendo was always thinking about new ideas for the Game Boy, describing it as a "continuous process of invention". Developed under the code name "Oxy", the company tried many ways to see how small they could make the Game Boy, opting for a metallic casing that, according to Nintendo Co. Ltd president Satoru Iwata, was "unusual for Nintendo".


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro was announced by Nintendo of America's vice president of sales and marketing, Reggie Fils-Aimé, at the company's Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference on May 17, 2005. The system was released in Japan on September 13, 2005, in North America on September 19, 2005, in Australia on November 3, 2005., and in Europe on November 4, 2005. It was released in China as the iQue Game Boy Micro on October 1, 2005, and later released in South Korea on November 9, 2005.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro retains some of the functionality of the Game Boy Advance SP, but in a more compact form factor. Additionally, it has a backlit screen with the ability to adjust the brightness. The shape itself is oblong, similar to the style of the Nintendo Entertainment System controller.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro cannot play original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games due to design changes. While the 8-bit Sharp LR35902 coprocessor and graphics hardware necessary to run games from older Game Boy systems is still present, it lacks other internal hardware necessary for backwards compatibility. It is also incompatible with the Nintendo e-Reader and other peripherals due to similar design issues.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro features removable, decorative housing called a faceplate. Designs with special faceplates were sold as a customization feature. Faceplates for the Micro are made using in-mould decoration.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro has a two-way switch on its right side for adjusting volume. By holding down the left shoulder button, the switch can also be used to adjust the backlight between five levels of brightness.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro is compatible with Game Boy Advance games, including Game Boy Advance Video Game Paks.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: While Game Boy or Game Boy Advance Game Link cables and the Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter are not compatible with the Game Boy Micro system, adapters and a Game Boy Micro-compatible Wireless adapter have been released. Nintendo also redesigned their Play-Yan music/video adapter to better fit the Game Boy Micro. This device is able to play MP3 and digital video files from SD cards.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: As with the Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Advance SP systems, there are no regional lockouts on software, so North American games can be played on Japanese or European hardware and vice versa.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: In Japan, the Game Boy Micro was released in four different base colors: black, blue, purple, and silver. Also available at launch was a limited edition version, based on the controller of the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Famicom. In October 2005, Square Enix announced that they would be releasing a special faceplate, featuring artwork by Yoshitaka Amano, to promote their re-release of "Final Fantasy IV" on the Game Boy Advance. On November 17, 2005, Nintendo released a "Pokémon" version in Japan, featuring a red Micro with a black faceplate containing the silhouette of Pikachu. Another special edition of the Micro was released on April 20, 2006, which bundled "Mother 3" with a red Micro and a themed faceplate.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: In the United States and Canada, the Game Boy Micro launched with two regular color choices, each sold with three interchangeable faceplates included: silver with black, "Ammonite" and "Ladybug" faceplates; and black with silver, "Flame" and "Camouflage" faceplates. The "20th Anniversary" edition was released on December 4, 2005, which was the Famicom controller-inspired version released in Japan.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: In Europe the Game Boy Micro is available in four different colors, with one matching faceplate: silver, green, blue and pink. Game Boy Micro sold in Australia have the same colors (except Green which replaced by red color) as Europe.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: There are reportedly no plans to sell additional faceplates in the US retail locations (as indicated in the letter page in issue 200 of Nintendo Power) or the UK. Nintendo of Europe cannot supply replacement faceplates of any kind, and the feature is omitted from the product's marketing, packaging, and manual in Europe. However, some third parties are manufacturing such faceplates for sale in the US and Europe, and some importers stock faceplates acquired from Japan. Nintendo of America used to sell some of the faceplates individually online, however they are no longer available since the handheld was discontinued in 2008.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: Satoru Iwata stated that the marketing of the Nintendo DS may have hurt the Micro in the marketplace and admitted that Game Boy Micro sales did not meet Nintendo's expectations.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The system retailed for US$99, compared to US$79 for the Game Boy Advance SP. The system was originally available in black and silver, and a red 20th Anniversary Edition was later released to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The Game Boy Micro's backlit screen, which is superior to the original AGS-001 (frontlit) Game Boy Advance SP model (a later remodel, the AGS-101, added a similar high quality screen to SP systems), has been praised for its visibility. Due to a finer dot pitch, the screen is more evenly lit, and the brightness is adjustable. The smaller dot pitch has also improved the apparent sharpness of the display.


title: Game Boy Micro

text: The removable faceplates have also been praised because they allow for personalization and protect the high-resolution backlit screen.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: In the field of complex analysis in mathematics, the Cauchy–Riemann equations, named after Augustin Cauchy and Bernhard Riemann, consist of a system of two partial differential equations which, together with certain continuity and differentiability criteria, form a necessary and sufficient condition for a complex function to be holomorphic (complex differentiable). This system of equations first appeared in the work of Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Later, Leonhard Euler connected this system to the analytic functions. Cauchy then used these equations to construct his theory of functions. Riemann's dissertation on the theory of functions appeared in 1851.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The Cauchy–Riemann equations on a pair of real-valued functions of two real variables and are the two equations:


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Typically "u" and "v" are taken to be the real and imaginary parts respectively of a complex-valued function of a single complex variable , . Suppose that and are real-differentiable at a point in an open subset of , which can be considered as functions from to . This implies that the partial derivatives of and exist (although they need not be continuous), so we can approximate small variations of linearly. Then is complex-differentiable, at that point if and only if the partial derivatives of and satisfy the Cauchy–Riemann equations () and () at that point. The existence of partial derivatives satisfying the Cauchy–Riemann equations there doesn't ensure complex differentiability: and must be real differentiable, which is a stronger condition than the existence of the partial derivatives, but in general, weaker than continuous differentiability.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Holomorphy is the property of a complex function of being differentiable at every point of an open and connected subset of (this is called a domain in ). Consequently, we can assert that a complex function "f", whose real and imaginary parts "u" and "v" are real-differentiable functions, is holomorphic if and only if, equations () and () are satisfied throughout the domain we are dealing with. Holomorphic functions are analytic and vice versa. This means that, in complex analysis, a function that is complex-differentiable in a whole domain (holomorphic) is the same as an analytic function. This is not true for real differentiable functions.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Suppose that formula_1. The complex-valued function formula_2 is differentiable at any point in the complex plane.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The equations are one way of looking at the condition on a function to be differentiable in the sense of complex analysis: in other words they encapsulate the notion of function of a complex variable by means of conventional differential calculus. In the theory there are several other major ways of looking at this notion, and the translation of the condition into other language is often needed.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: In this form, the equations correspond structurally to the condition that the Jacobian matrix is of the form


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: where formula_11 and formula_12. A matrix of this form is the matrix representation of a complex number. Geometrically, such a matrix is always the composition of a rotation with a scaling, and in particular preserves angles. The Jacobian of a function takes infinitesimal line segments at the intersection of two curves in z and rotates them to the corresponding segments in . Consequently, a function satisfying the Cauchy–Riemann equations, with a nonzero derivative, preserves the angle between curves in the plane. That is, the Cauchy–Riemann equations are the conditions for a function to be conformal.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Moreover, because the composition of a conformal transformation with another conformal transformation is also conformal, the composition of a solution of the Cauchy–Riemann equations with a conformal map must itself solve the Cauchy–Riemann equations. Thus the Cauchy–Riemann equations are conformally invariant.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: is a function of a complex number formula_14. Then the complex derivative of formula_15 at a point formula_16 is defined by


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: If this limit exists, then it may be computed by taking the limit as formula_18 along the real axis or imaginary axis; in either case it should give the same result. Approaching along the real axis, one finds


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Conversely, if is a function which is differentiable when regarded as a function on , then "f" is complex differentiable if and only if the Cauchy–Riemann equations hold. In other words, if and are real-differentiable functions of two real variables, obviously is a (complex-valued) real-differentiable function, but is complex-differentiable if and only if the Cauchy–Riemann equations hold.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Indeed, following Rudin, suppose "f" is a complex function defined in an open set . Then, writing for every , one can also regard Ω as an open subset of R, and "f" as a function of two real variables "x" and "y", which maps to C. We consider the Cauchy–Riemann equations at . So assume "f" is differentiable at , as a function of two real variables from Ω to C. This is equivalent to the existence of the following linear approximation


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Now consider the potential values of formula_29 when the limit is taken at the origin. For "z" along the real line, formula_30 so that formula_31. Similarly for purely imaginary "z" we have formula_32 so that the value of formula_33 is not well defined at the origin. It's easy to verify that formula_33 is not well defined at any complex "z", hence "f" is complex differentiable at "z" if and only if formula_35 at formula_36. But this is exactly the Cauchy–Riemann equations, thus "f" is differentiable at "z" if and only if the Cauchy–Riemann equations hold at "z".


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The above proof suggests another interpretation of the Cauchy–Riemann equations. The complex conjugate of "z", denoted formula_37, is defined by


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: by using the Wirtinger derivative with respect to the conjugate variable. In this form, the Cauchy–Riemann equations can be interpreted as the statement that "f" is independent of the variable formula_37. As such, we can view analytic functions as true functions of "one" complex variable as opposed to complex functions of "two" real variables.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: A standard physical interpretation of the Cauchy–Riemann equations going back to Riemann's work on function theory is that "u" represents a velocity potential of an incompressible steady fluid flow in the plane, and "v" is its stream function. Suppose that the pair of (twice continuously differentiable) functions formula_40 satisfies the Cauchy–Riemann equations. We will take "u" to be a velocity potential, meaning that we imagine a flow of fluid in the plane such that the velocity vector of the fluid at each point of the plane is equal to the gradient of "u", defined by


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: By differentiating the Cauchy–Riemann equations a second time, one shows that "u" solves Laplace's equation:


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: That is, "u" is a harmonic function. This means that the divergence of the gradient is zero, and so the fluid is incompressible.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The function "v" also satisfies the Laplace equation, by a similar analysis. Also, the Cauchy–Riemann equations imply that the dot product formula_43. This implies that the gradient of "u" must point along the formula_44 curves; so these are the streamlines of the flow. The formula_45 curves are the equipotential curves of the flow.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: A holomorphic function can therefore be visualized by plotting the two families of level curves formula_46 and formula_47. Near points where the gradient of "u" (or, equivalently, "v") is not zero, these families form an orthogonal family of curves. At the points where formula_48, the stationary points of the flow, the equipotential curves of formula_46 intersect. The streamlines also intersect at the same point, bisecting the angles formed by the equipotential curves.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Another interpretation of the Cauchy–Riemann equations can be found in Pólya & Szegő. Suppose that "u" and "v" satisfy the Cauchy–Riemann equations in an open subset of R, and consider the vector field


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: regarded as a (real) two-component vector. Then the second Cauchy–Riemann equation () asserts that formula_51 is irrotational (its curl is 0):


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The first Cauchy–Riemann equation () asserts that the vector field is solenoidal (or divergence-free):


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Owing respectively to Green's theorem and the divergence theorem, such a field is necessarily a conservative one, and it is free from sources or sinks, having net flux equal to zero through any open domain without holes. (These two observations combine as real and imaginary parts in Cauchy's integral theorem.) In fluid dynamics, such a vector field is a potential flow. In magnetostatics, such vector fields model static magnetic fields on a region of the plane containing no current. In electrostatics, they model static electric fields in a region of the plane containing no electric charge.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: This interpretation can equivalently be restated in the language of differential forms. The pair "u","v" satisfy the Cauchy–Riemann equations if and only if the one-form formula_54 is both closed and coclosed (a harmonic differential form).


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Another formulation of the Cauchy–Riemann equations involves the complex structure in the plane, given by


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: This is a complex structure in the sense that the square of "J" is the negative of the 2×2 identity matrix: formula_56. As above, if "u"("x","y"),"v"("x","y") are two functions in the plane, put


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Then the pair of functions "u", "v" satisfies the Cauchy–Riemann equations if and only if the 2×2 matrix "Df" commutes with "J".


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: This interpretation is useful in symplectic geometry, where it is the starting point for the study of pseudoholomorphic curves.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Other representations of the Cauchy–Riemann equations occasionally arise in other coordinate systems. If (1a) and (1b) hold for a differentiable pair of functions "u" and "v", then so do


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: for any coordinate system such that the pair (∇"n", ∇"s") is orthonormal and positively oriented. As a consequence, in particular, in the system of coordinates given by the polar representation formula_60, the equations then take the form


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The inhomogeneous Cauchy–Riemann equations consist of the two equations for a pair of unknown functions and of two real variables


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: for some given functions and defined in an open subset of R. These equations are usually combined into a single equation


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: If "𝜑" is "C", then the inhomogeneous equation is explicitly solvable in any bounded domain "D", provided "𝜑" is continuous on the closure of "D". Indeed, by the Cauchy integral formula,


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Suppose that is a complex-valued function which is differentiable as a function . Then Goursat's theorem asserts that "f" is analytic in an open complex domain Ω if and only if it satisfies the Cauchy–Riemann equation in the domain. In particular, continuous differentiability of "f" need not be assumed.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The hypotheses of Goursat's theorem can be weakened significantly. If is continuous in an open set Ω and the partial derivatives of "f" with respect to "x" and "y" exist in Ω, and satisfy the Cauchy–Riemann equations throughout Ω, then "f" is holomorphic (and thus analytic). This result is the Looman–Menchoff theorem.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: The hypothesis that "f" obey the Cauchy–Riemann equations throughout the domain Ω is essential. It is possible to construct a continuous function satisfying the Cauchy–Riemann equations at a point, but which is not analytic at the point (e.g., . Similarly, some additional assumption is needed besides the Cauchy–Riemann equations (such as continuity), as the following example illustrates


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Nevertheless, if a function satisfies the Cauchy–Riemann equations in an open set in a weak sense, then the function is analytic. More precisely:


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: This is in fact a special case of a more general result on the regularity of solutions of hypoelliptic partial differential equations.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: There are Cauchy–Riemann equations, appropriately generalized, in the theory of several complex variables. They form a significant overdetermined system of PDEs. This is done using a straightforward generalization of the Wirtinger derivative, where the function in question is required to have the (partial) Wirtinger derivative with respect to each complex variable vanish.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Viewed as conjugate harmonic functions, the Cauchy–Riemann equations are a simple example of a Bäcklund transform. More complicated, generally non-linear Bäcklund transforms, such as in the sine-Gordon equation, are of great interest in the theory of solitons and integrable systems.


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: In Clifford algebra the complex number formula_70 is represented as formula_71 where formula_72. The fundamental derivative operator in Clifford algebra of Complex numbers is defined as formula_73. The function formula_74 is considered analytic if and only if formula_75, which can be calculated in the following way:


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: Let Ω be an open set in the Euclidean space R. The equation for an orientation-preserving mapping formula_81 to be a conformal mapping (that is, angle-preserving) is that


title: Cauchy–Riemann equations

text: where "Df" is the Jacobian matrix, with transpose formula_83, and "I" denotes the identity matrix. For , this system is equivalent to the standard Cauchy–Riemann equations of complex variables, and the solutions are holomorphic functions. In dimension , this is still sometimes called the Cauchy–Riemann system, and Liouville's theorem implies, under suitable smoothness assumptions, that any such mapping is a Möbius transformation.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group International Limited (MOHG) is a Hong Kong hotel investment and management group focusing on luxury hotels, resorts, and residences, with a total of 33 properties worldwide, 20 of which are fully or partially owned by MOHG.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: The Mandarin Oriental name was established in 1985 following the merger of Mandarin International Hotels Limited and the holding company of the hotel "The Oriental", in which Mandarin had already acquired a 49% stake in 1974. Mandarin's history traces back to the 1963 opening of its namesake hotel "The Mandarin" (now Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong), whereas "The Oriental" (now Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok) had opened in 1876 as the Kingdom of Siam's first luxury hotel.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: MOHG is a subsidiary of the publicly-traded Mandarin Oriental International Limited, which itself is a subsidiary of Jardine Matheson.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: Although 1876 was the ‘official’ opening year of the Oriental Hotel, the origin of the ‘Oriental’ side of the Mandarin Oriental can be traced back as early as 1863, when two Americans, Captain Atkins Dyer and William West, opened the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Siam (now Thailand): however, the original building burnt down only two years later, on 11 June 1865.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: However, the history of the ‘Mandarin’ side of the group is comparatively recent: the Mandarin hotel opened only in 1963, in the Central District of Hong Kong Island. In 1973, The Excelsior Hotel, which closed in 2019, opened in Causeway Bay.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: In 1974, Mandarin International Hotels Limited was formed as a hotel management company, with the intention to expand into Asia. That year, the company acquired a 49% interest in the Oriental Hotel, resulting in two "flagship" hotels for the company.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: In 1985, the Company combined the two hotels under a common name, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. In 1987, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group was floated on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong under the name of "Mandarin Oriental International Limited." Mandarin Oriental International Limited, is incorporated in Bermuda, and listed in London, Singapore and Bermuda. Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group Limited, which operates from Victoria City, manages the activities of the Group's hotels.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: Starting in September 2005, Mandarin Oriental showed the "Moments of Delight at Mandarin Oriental" at all hotels. In June 2006, the Moments of Delight video was slightly updated to add several new scenes and in October 2014, the video featured lyrics by Chinese singer, Sa Ding Ding, accompanied by new music.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: Within the next five years, Mandarin Oriental plans to open hotel properties in Beijing (Zhengyangmen), Makati, Nanjing, Phuket, Saigon, Shenzhen, Etiler, London (Mayfair), Lucerne (renovated Hotel Palace Luzern), Moscow, Muscat, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Zurich (renovated Savoy Baur en Ville Hotel), Boca Raton, Dallas, Grand Cayman, Honolulu, Vienna, Maldives and standalone residences in Barcelona, Beverly Hills and New York City.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: Notable former Mandarin Oriental properties include Hotel Majapahit, Loews Regency San Francisco, Waldorf Astoria Atlanta Buckhead, Mandarin Oriental Manila, Grand Lapa Macau, Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas, Salamander Washington DC and The Excelsior, as well as the spa Ananda in the Himalayas.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: On 1 April 2003, singer, actor and film producer Leslie Cheung leapt to his death from the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental in Central, Hong Kong. Every year on the anniversary of his death, a fan-organised memorial event takes place outside the hotel.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: On 9 February 2009, the Beijing Television Cultural Center, which was to be completed in May 2009 and incorporate a Mandarin Oriental hotel, caught fire due to unauthorized fireworks celebrating the Chinese New Year. One fireman died from the incident and the structure was severely damaged, but did not collapse and underwent repair. However, the Mandarin Oriental hotel ultimately opened at a different location at Wangfujing, near the Beijing Hotel and the spot of the "Unknown Rebel" picture during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: In March 2015, a number of Mandarin Oriental hotels were affected by a point-of-sale systems security breach.


title: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

text: On 6 June 2018, a fire (believed to have been caused by welding work) damaged the park-facing exterior of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park in London. Although there were no injuries, the fire closed the hotel and caused a major setback to the (then) near-complete renovation work, which involved interior designer Joyce Wang. The hotel returned to full operation on 15 April 2019.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Allan Sherman (born Allan Copelon; or Allan Gerald Copelon; November 30, 1924 – November 20, 1973) was an American musician, satirist and television producer who became known as a song parodist in the early 1960s. His first album, "My Son, the Folk Singer" (1962), became the fastest-selling record album up to that time. His biggest hit was "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", a comic song in which a boy describes his summer camp experiences to the tune of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours".


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman was born on November 30, 1924, in Chicago, Illinois, to Percy Copelon and Rose Sherman. Percy was an auto mechanic and race car driver who suffered from obesity (he weighed over 350 pounds) and died while attempting a 100-day diet. Sherman's family was Jewish. His parents divorced when he was in grade school, and he adopted his mother's maiden name. Because his parents frequently moved to new residences, he attended 21 public schools in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. He later attended the University of Illinois, where he earned mostly "C" grades and contributed a humor column to "The Daily Illini", the college newspaper. He was expelled for breaking into the Sigma Delta Tau sorority house with his girlfriend and future wife, Dolores "Dee" Chackes.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman devised a game show he intended to call "I Know a Secret". Television producer Mark Goodson adapted Sherman's idea into "I've Got a Secret", which ran on CBS from 1952 to 1967. Rather than paying him for the concept, Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions made Sherman the show's producer. Sherman was reported to be warm and kindhearted to all who worked for him. However, differences occurred between Sherman and anyone who was in a position to try to restrain his creativity. As producer of "I've Got a Secret," which was broadcast live, he showed a fondness for large-scale stunts that had the potential to teeter on the brink of disaster. He once released 100 rabbits onstage as an Easter surprise for the Madison Square Boys Club, whose members were seated in the studio. The boys were invited to come up onstage to collect their prize. Although the resultant melee made a good story, it did not necessarily make for good TV.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In his autobiography, "A Gift of Laughter", Sherman writes that he was fired from "I've Got a Secret" in 1958, after guest host Henry Morgan was left short of scripted material by seven minutes, and that Morgan filled the time by berating Sherman on-air. However, the episode in question, featuring a demonstration of childhood games by Tony Curtis, does not run short and in fact Morgan ends it abruptly and says they’ve run out of time.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman also produced a short-lived 1954 game show, "What's Going On?", which was technologically ambitious, with studio guests interacting with multiple live cameras in remote locations. In 1961, he produced a daytime game show for Al Singer Productions called "Your Surprise Package", which aired on CBS with host George Fenneman.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In 1951, Sherman recorded a 78-rpm single with veteran singer Sylvia Froos which contained "A Satchel and a Seck," parodying "A Bushel and a Peck" from "Guys and Dolls", coupled with "Jake's Song", parodying "Sam's Song", a contemporary hit for Bing Crosby and his son Gary. The single sold poorly and when Sherman wrote his autobiography, he did not make reference to it. Later, he found that the song parodies he performed to amuse his friends and family were taking on a life of their own. Sherman lived in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles next door to Harpo Marx, who invited him to perform his song parodies at parties attended by Marx's show-biz friends. After one party, George Burns phoned an executive at Warner Bros. Records and persuaded him to sign Sherman to a contract. The result was an LP of these parodies, "My Son, the Folk Singer", released in 1962. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. The album was very successful and was quickly followed by "My Son, the Celebrity".


title: Allan Sherman

text: Capitalizing on his success, in 1962 Jubilee Records re-released Sherman's 1951 single on the album "More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends", which compiled material by various Borscht Belt comedians such as Sylvia Froos, Fyvush Finkel and Lee Tully.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman's first two LPs were mainly reworkings of old folk songs to infuse them with Jewish humor. His first minor hit was "Sarah Jackman" (pronounced "Jockman"), a takeoff of "Frère Jacques" in which he and a woman (Christine Nelson) exchange family gossip. The popularity of "Sarah Jackman" (as well as the album "My Son, the Folk Singer") was enhanced after President John F. Kennedy was overheard singing the song in the lobby of the Carlyle hotel. By his peak with "My Son, the Nut" in 1963, however, Sherman had broadened both his subject matter and his choice of parody material and begun to appeal to a larger audience.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman wrote his parody lyrics in collaboration with Lou Busch. A few of the Sherman/Busch songs are completely original creations, featuring original music as well as lyrics, rather than new lyrics applied to an existing melody.


title: Allan Sherman

text: However, Sherman had trouble in getting permission to record for profit from some well-known composers and lyricists, who did not tolerate parodies or satires of their melodies and lyrics, including Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George and Ira Gershwin, Meredith Willson, Alan Jay Lerner, and Frederick Loewe, as well as the estates of Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Kurt Weill, and Bertolt Brecht, which prevented him from releasing parodies or satires of their songs. In the late 1950s, Sherman was inspired by a recording of a nightclub musical show called "My Fairfax Lady", a parody of "My Fair Lady" set in the Jewish section of Los Angeles that was performed at Billy Gray's Band Box. Sherman then wrote his own song parodies of "My Fair Lady", which appeared as a bootleg recording in 1964, and were only officially released in 2005 on "My Son, the Box". Alan Jay Lerner did not approve of having the parody being performed; however, he reluctantly settled to allow the performances of "Fairfax Lady", on the strict conditions that the show could only be allowed to be performed inside the Fairfax Theater, without any touring company, and that the musical could not be videotaped or recorded for any album.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Although Sherman believed that all the songs parodied on "My Son, the Folk Singer" were in the public domain, two of them, "Matilda" and "Water Boy"–parodied as "My Zelda" and "Seltzer Boy", respectively–were actually under copyright, and Sherman was sued for copyright infringement.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In 1963's "My Son, the Nut", Sherman's pointed parodies of classical and popular tunes dealt with automation in the workplace ("Automation", to the tune of "Fascination"), space travel ("Eight Foot Two, Solid Blue", to "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue"), summer camp ("Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", to the tune of "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli), the exodus from the city to the suburbs ("Here's to the Crabgrass", to the tune of "English Country Garden"), and his own bulky contours ("Hail to Thee, Fat Person", which claims his obesity was a public service similar to the Marshall Plan). Six cartoon bears were printed on back of every album.


title: Allan Sherman

text: One track from "My Son, the Nut", a spoof of summer camp titled "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", became a surprise novelty hit, reaching No. 2 on the national "Billboard" Hot 100 chart for three weeks in late summer 1963. The lyrics were sung to the tune of one segment of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours". That December, Sherman's "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas" single appeared on "Billboard"s separate Christmas chart. Sherman had one other Top 40 hit, a 1965 take-off on the Petula Clark hit "Downtown" called "Crazy Downtown", which spent one week at #40. Two other Sherman singles charted in the lower regions of the "Billboard" 100: an updated "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh" (#59 in 1964), and "The Drinking Man's Diet" (#98 in 1965). Sherman's "The End of a Symphony", spotlighting Arthur Fiedler's Boston Pops Orchestra, reached #113 on the "Bubbling Under" chart in 1964, but did not make the Hot 100.


title: Allan Sherman

text: The songs on Sherman's next album "My Name Is Allan" (1965) were thematically connected: except for a couple of original novelty songs with music by Sherman and Busch, all the songs on the album are parodies of songs that had won, or were nominated for, the Academy Award for Best Song. They included "That Old Black Magic", "Secret Love", "The Continental", "Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "Call Me Irresponsible". The cover of the album bore a childhood photograph of Sherman. That, and the album's title, were references to Barbra Streisand's album "My Name Is Barbra", released earlier that year, which featured a cover photograph of the singer as a young girl.


title: Allan Sherman

text: During his brief heyday, Sherman's parodies were so popular that he had at least one contemporary imitator: "My Son the Copycat" was an album of song parodies performed by Stanley Ralph Ross, co-written by Ross and Bob Arbogast. Lest there be any doubt of whom Ross is copying, his album's cover bears a crossed-out photo of Sherman. One of the songs on this album is a fat man's lament, "I'm Called Little Butterball", parodying "I'm Called Little Buttercup" from Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta "HMS Pinafore". Sherman would later parody this same song as "Little Butterball" – with the same subject matter – on his album "Allan in Wonderland". The song may have had more poignancy for Sherman, as he, unlike Stanley Ross, was genuinely overweight. Sherman also parodied Gilbert and Sullivan's "Titwillow" from "The Mikado", in the song "The Bronx Bird-Watcher" (on "My Son, the Celebrity"), as well as several other Gilbert and Sullivan songs.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In 1965, Sherman published an autobiography, "A Gift of Laughter", and, for a short period at least, he was culturally ubiquitous. He sang on and guest-hosted "The Tonight Show", was involved in the production of Bill Cosby's first three albums, appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and sang "The Dropouts' March" on the March 6, 1964, edition of the NBC satirical program "That Was The Week That Was".


title: Allan Sherman

text: Also in 1964, Sherman narrated his own version of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" in a live concert at Tanglewood with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler. The concert, which was released by RCA Victor Red Seal as the album "Peter and the Commissar", also included "Variations on 'How Dry I Am'", with Sherman as conductor, and "The End of a Symphony". In "Variations", Fiedler was the guest soloist, providing solo hiccups. In 2004, Collector's Choice reissued the complete RCA Victor album on CD.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman's later albums grew more pointedly satirical and less light-hearted, skewering protesting students ("The Rebel"), consumer debt ("A Waste of Money", based on "A Taste of Honey"), and the generation gap ("Crazy Downtown" and "Pop Hates the Beatles"). It was for this reason that Ken Barnes, when attempting to analyze American music acts that were harmed by the British Invasion, surmised in 2021 that Sherman had been doomed to lose momentum anyway and could not blame the Invasion for his career decline (even as "Crazy Downtown" was a top-40 hit for him).


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman was often tapped to produce specialty song parodies for corporations. An album of six paper-cup and vending machine related songs, titled "Music to Dispense With", was created for the Container Division of the Scott Paper Company for distribution to its vendors and customers. It consisted of the tracks "Makin' Coffee" (a parody of "Makin' Whoopee"), "Vending Machines", "There Are Cups", "That's How the Change Is Made", "The Wonderful Tree in the Forest" and "Scott Cups".


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman also created a group of eight "public education" radio spots for Encron carpet fibers, singing their praises to the tunes of old public-domain songs. Entitled "Allan Sherman Pours It On for Carpets Made with Encron Polyester", it featured an introduction by Sherman and comprised the tracks "Encron Is a Brand New Fiber" (to the tune of "Shine On, Harvest Moon"), "Put Them All Together, They Spell Encron" (to the tune of Eddy Arnold's "M-O-T-H-E-R"), "There's a Fiber Called Encron" (to the tune of William H. Hill's "There is a Tavern in the Town"), "Encron Alive, Alive-O" (to the tune of "Molly Malone"), "Encron's the Name", "Why They Call It Encron" (to the tune of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart"), "Encron, Encron" (to the tune of "Daisy Bell") and "Encron Is a Great New Fiber" (to the tune of "Take Me to the Fair").


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman's career success was short-lived: after peaking in 1963, his popularity declined rather quickly. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the public taste for Sherman's type of comedy lessened. Beginning in 1964, Sherman was among many American acts whose sales were affected badly by the British Invasion (which Sherman skewered in the song "Pop Hates the Beatles", a spoof of "Pop! Goes the Weasel").


title: Allan Sherman

text: By 1965, Sherman had released two albums that did not make the Top 50 and in 1966, Warner Bros. Records dropped him from the roster. His last album for WB, "Togetherness", was released in 1967 to poor reviews and poor sales. All of his previous releases had been recorded in front of a live studio audience – or in the case of "Live, Hoping You Are the Same", recorded during a Las Vegas performance – but "Togetherness" was purely a studio recording, and the lack of an audience and their response affected the result, as did the nondescript backup singers and studio orchestra.


title: Allan Sherman

text: On November 13, 1965, Sherman made a rare prime time television acting appearance in "The Sheriff of Fetterman's Crossing," an episode of Rod Serling's short-lived Western series "The Loner" (1965–66). Sherman played Walton Peterson Tetley, a local schnook who went off to war and rose to regiment cook before returning home a hero thanks to tall tales and yarn-spinning. The town hails its conquering hero and Tetley is appointed sheriff. Series star Lloyd Bridges as William Colton, a wandering Union veteran, comes to town and signs on to be Tetley's deputy, discovering quickly his boss' utter incompetence in the office. Tetley receives a threatening note from a gunslinger challenging this purported hero to a gunfight when he arrives on the noon stage, at which point the story becomes a parody of iconic Western movie "High Noon" (1952). Colton sets to teaching the shivering-in-his-boots sheriff courage and gunmanship. Sherman's semi-serious and sympathetic performance was strong and his presence an affable one.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In 1966, Sherman visited Australia. He did a television series in Melbourne, Victoria, for a live audience. During the performance, he sang a parody of "Molly Malone." It included a play on the word "but" (butt) which did not elicit a laugh. What Sherman did not know is that Australians use the word "bum" where Americans would say "butt" (although usage of the word "butt" has since become widespread in Australia). Otherwise, Sherman was well received by the audience. Afterward, he met with some of his fans and signed at least one autograph.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In 1969, Sherman wrote the book and lyrics – with music by Albert Hague – for "The Fig Leaves Are Falling", a flop Broadway musical that ran only four performances, despite direction by George Abbott and a cast that included Barry Nelson, Dorothy Loudon, and David Cassidy. Still creative, in 1973, Sherman published the controversial "The Rape of the A*P*E*", which detailed his point of view on American Puritanism and the sexual revolution.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In 1971, Sherman was the voice of Dr. Seuss's "The Cat in the Hat" for the animated television special. He reprised the role for "Dr. Seuss on the Loose", his last project before his death.


title: Allan Sherman

text: In his final years, Sherman's alcoholism and weight gain caused severe deterioration of his health; he later developed diabetes and struggled with lung disease. In 1966, his wife Dee filed for divorce and received full custody of their son and daughter.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman lived on unemployment benefits for a time and moved into the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital for a short time to lose weight. He died while entertaining his friends during the night of November 20, 1973, at his home in Los Angeles, California, ten days shy of his 49th birthday. According to sheriff's officers, Sherman, who had been undergoing treatment for emphysema, asthma and obesity, died of respiratory failure. He is entombed in Culver City, California's Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman was the inspiration for a new generation of developing parodists such as "Weird Al" Yankovic, who pays homage to Sherman on the cover of his first LP.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman's hit song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" has been translated into other languages. In one notable example, the Dutch–Swedish poet Cornelis Vreeswijk translated the song loosely into Swedish as "Brev från kolonien" (Letter from Summer Camp), which reached fourth on the Swedish popular music chart Svensktoppen in the summer of 1965 and is still popular in Sweden today.


title: Allan Sherman

text: A "Best of Allan Sherman" CD was released in 1990, and a boxed set of most of his songs was released in 2005 under the title "My Son, the Box". In 1992 a musical revue of his songs titled "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" ran for over a year off-off-Broadway; other productions ran Off-Broadway for four months in 2001 and toured in 2003. A children's book based on the song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", with illustrations by Syd Hoff, was published in 2004.


title: Allan Sherman

text: Sherman's son, Robert, later became a game show producer, producing for Mark Goodson during the 1970s and 1980s, including "Password Plus", "Blockbusters", "Body Language" and "Super Password".


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: Rebellion is a 2016 historical drama television serial written and created by Colin Teevan for RTÉ. The series is a dramatisation of the events surrounding the 1916 Easter Rising. The story is told through the perspective of a group of fictional characters who live through the political events. The series was produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. The ensemble cast includes Charlie Murphy, Ruth Bradley, Sarah Greene, Brian Gleeson, Niamh Cusack, Michelle Fairley and Ian McElhinney.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: In May 2015, RTÉ announced it would produce a drama series to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Filming took place in Dublin in mid-2015. With a budget of €6 million, it became the most expensive drama ever to be produced by RTÉ. It was co-produced by Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and SundanceTV, in association with Zodiak Media Ireland, Element Pictures and Touchpaper Television.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: The series was first broadcast on 3 January 2016 on RTÉ One and concluded on 31 January 2016. The series has received mixed reviews from television critics, who praised the cast and production values, however the plot, script and direction drew criticism. It was singled out by many for its historical inaccuracies. The first episode drew a strong audience share of 619,000 viewers. However, the viewership consistently dropped, with the finale gathering an average of 463,300 viewers.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: The series was followed by a five-part sequel miniseries, "Resistance" which dramatised the events surrounding the Irish War of Independence.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: "Rebellion" depicts fictional characters in Dublin during the 1916 Rising. The commemorative drama begins with the outbreak of World War I. As expectations of a short and glorious campaign are dashed, social stability is eroded, and Irish nationalism comes to the fore. The tumultuous events that follow are seen through the eyes of a group of friends from Dublin, Belfast, and London as they play vital and conflicting roles in the narrative of Ireland's independence.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: The series was directed by Finnish director Aku Louhimies and written by series creator Colin Teevan.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: RTÉ secured €400,000 in funding from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland in 2014. In May 2015, RTÉ confirmed it would produce a drama series commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising; the show was filmed during summer 2015 in Dublin. In December 2015, RTÉ Television confirmed the series would premiere early January on Irish television. The series, which cost €6 million, is the most expensive drama series produced by the public broadcaster. RTÉ and Zodiac Media, the production company that made "Rebellion", announced in 2016 they would produce a sequel series, initially titled "Rebellion: Two States", set during the War of Independence. The sequel, starring Brian Gleeson and Gavin Drea, was released in 2019 with the title "Resistance". The sequel opens as British police are closing in on Irish leader Michael Collins and his men.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: The series premiered on SundanceTV in the United States, on 24 April 2016 and on YLE in Finland, on 1 June 2016. SundanceTV has combined episodes into pairs and titled "To Arms", "Under Siege" and "The Reckoning" S1E5. The series is available on RTÉ Player in Ireland and on Netflix worldwide, except in Finland.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: Following its first broadcast, episode 1 held a strong audience of 619,000. 41% of the available audience tuned in to RTÉ One to watch the opening episode of the five-part series, with an additional 45,000 people catching it on RTÉ One +1 and more than 9,000 people viewing it on the RTÉ Player.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: "The Irish Times" gave the first episode a favourable review. After the series had aired, the review in "The Irish Times" was less favourable: "Now, though, as we learn more about the events of Easter 1916 – largely through the centenary coverage in print and on television – we know its history is filled with real drama, extraordinary events and fascinating characters (some of them women). This dramatic device of creating fictitious ones now looks like a wasted opportunity."


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: The "Irish Mirror" claimed that the series was "destined to court controversy". Dr. Shane Kenna, a historian and lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, criticised the series for its "poor ahistorical script with no educational benefit". The series was slated on social media, with many viewers criticising its historical inaccuracies.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: Among the ahistorical elements of the series complained of by critics were scenes in which rebels shot looting civilians, the depiction of Dublin's slums as somewhat comfortable and the portrayal of Sean Connolly executing an unarmed constable who offered only token resistance at the gates of Dublin Castle. While Constable James O'Brien was the first fatality of the Rising, he was described as rushing to lock the gates and then grabbing for a rebel's gun or, according to Helena Molony, as physically attempting to stop Connolly from advancing toward the gate before Connolly shot him. Critics also took issue with the show's misrepresentation of the roles and ideologies of other real-life historical figures. Gerry Adams tweeted that "whoever wrote "Rebellion" [should've] read Pearse's writings." Rónán Duffy wrote in "TheJournal.ie" that a scene showing Éamon de Valera losing his nerve while awaiting execution before a firing squad only to be spared at the last moment was probably the show's "most unnecessary" use of poetic license.


title: Rebellion (miniseries)

text: Pat Stacey, writing in the "Irish Independent", wrote negatively about the dialogue, stating: "the characters didn’t so much converse as chuck out egregiously stilted slabs of text which hung in the air for a moment, before crashing to the floor", concluding: "It’s not historical accuracy the Rebellion has to worry about; it's plain, old-fashioned bad writing, allied with dismally flat direction." In "TheJournal.ie", Duffy complained that too many of the subplots and characters were extraneous and often did not have satisfying or, in some cases, clear conclusions.


title: Duce

text: This position was the model which other fascist leaders adopted, such as the position of by Adolf Hitler and by Francisco Franco. In September 1943, Mussolini styled himself as the "Duce of the Italian Social Republic" (), and held the position until the collapse of the Italian Social Republic and his execution in April 1945.


title: Duce

text: The title was used outside its traditional noble sense in some of the publications praising Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Italian unification in 1860, though not taken up officially by Garibaldi himself.


title: Duce

text: Because the title has become associated with fascism, it is no longer in common use other than in reference to Mussolini. Because of modern anti-fascist sentiment, Italian speakers in general now use other words for leader, mainly including the English loanword. survives as an antonomasia for Mussolini.


title: Duce

text: Mussolini intended that the Grand Council of Fascism would choose a successor from a list of three men chosen by him, and submit the name for approval by the king. As of 1940 he may have been preparing his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano for the role.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: SS "Richard Montgomery" was an American Liberty cargo ship built during World War II. She was named after Richard Montgomery, an Irish officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: The ship was wrecked on the Nore sandbank in the Thames Estuary, near Sheerness, Kent, England, in August 1944, while carrying a cargo of munitions. About of explosives remaining on board presents a hazard but the likelihood of explosion is claimed to be remote.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: "Richard Montgomery" was laid down on 15 March 1943 under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull 1199, by the St. Johns River Shipbuilding Company, Jacksonville, Florida. She was sponsored by Mrs. Rockwell, the wife of the director of MARCOM, Production Division, and was launched on 15 June 1943. She was the seventh of the 82 liberty ships built by the yard.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: She was allocated to Agwilines Inc. on 29 July 1943. In August 1944, on what was to be her final voyage, the ship left Hog Island, Philadelphia, where she had been loaded with 6,127 tons of munitions.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: She travelled from the Delaware River to the Thames Estuary, then anchored while awaiting the formation of a convoy to travel to Cherbourg, France, which had come under Allied control on 27 July 1944, during the Battle of Normandy.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: When "Richard Montgomery" arrived off Southend, she came under the authority of the Thames naval control at located at the end of Southend Pier. The harbourmaster, responsible for all shipping movements in the estuary, ordered the ship to a berth off the north edge of Sheerness middle sands, an area designated as the Great Nore Anchorage.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: On 20 August 1944 she dragged anchor and ran aground on a sandbank around from the Medway Approach Channel, in a depth of of water. The general dry cargo liberty ship had an average draft of , but "Richard Montgomery" was trimmed to a draft of . As the tide went down, the ship broke her back on sand banks near the Isle of Sheppey about from Sheerness and from Southend.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: A Rochester-based stevedore company was given the job of removing the cargo, which began on 23 August 1944, using the ship's own cargo handling equipment. By the next day, the ship's hull had cracked open, causing several cargo holds at the bow end to flood. The salvage operation continued until 25 September, when the ship was finally abandoned before all the cargo had been recovered. Subsequently the vessel broke into two separate parts, roughly amidships.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: During the enquiry following the shipwreck it was revealed that several ships moored nearby had noticed "Richard Montgomery" drifting towards the sandbank. They had attempted to signal an alert by sounding their sirens, but without avail because Captain Wilkie of "Richard Montgomery" was asleep. The ship's chief officer was unable to explain why he had not alerted the captain. A board of inquiry concluded that the anchorage the harbour master assigned had placed the ship in jeopardy, and returned the captain of "Richard Montgomery" to full duty within a week.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: According to a 2008 survey, the wreck is at a depth of , on average, and leaning to starboard. At all states of the tide, her three masts are visible above the water.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: Because of the presence of the large quantity of unexploded ordnance, the ship is monitored by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and is clearly marked on the relevant Admiralty charts. In 1973, she became the first wreck designated as dangerous under section 2 of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. There is an exclusion zone around her monitored visually and by radar. The exclusion zone around the wreck is defined by the following co-ordinates:


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: According to a survey conducted in 2000 by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the wreck still held munitions containing approximately of TNT high explosive. This comprises the following items of ordnance:


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: An investigation by "New Scientist" magazine in 2004, based partly on government documents released in 2004, concluded that the cargo was still deadly, and could be detonated by a collision, an attack, or even shifting of the cargo in the tide. The deterioration of the bombs is so severe that they could explode spontaneously. Documents declassified shortly before revealed that the wreck was not dealt with immediately after it happened, or in the intervening 60 years, due to the expense.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: The Maritime and Coastguard Agency nevertheless believes that the risk of a major explosion is remote. The UK government's Receiver of Wreck commissioned a risk assessment in 1999, but this risk assessment has not been published. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency convened with local and port authorities to discuss the report in 2001 and concluded that "doing nothing [was] not an option for much longer".


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: One of the reasons that the explosives have not been removed was the unfortunate outcome of a similar operation in July 1967, to neutralize the contents of the Polish cargo ship , that sank in 1946, off Folkestone in the English Channel. During preliminary work, "Kielce" exploded with a force equivalent to an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale, digging a 20-foot-deep (6 m) crater in the seabed and bringing "panic and chaos" to Folkestone, although there were no injuries. "Kielce" was at least from land, sunk in deeper water than "Richard Montgomery", and had "just a fraction" of the load of explosives.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: According to a BBC News report in 1970, it was determined that if the wreck of "Richard Montgomery" exploded, it would throw a 300 metre (1,000 feet)-wide column of water and debris nearly 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) into the air and generate a wave 5 metres (16 feet) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (population circa 20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast. However, news reports in May 2012, including one by BBC Kent, stated that the wave could be about one metre (3 feet) high, which although lower than previous estimates would be enough to cause flooding in some coastal settlements.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: When the condition of the munitions was originally assessed there was concern that copper azide, an extremely sensitive explosive, would be produced through reaction between lead azide and copper from fuse components (lead azide would react with water vapour, rather than liquid water, to form hydrazoic acid, which could react with copper in the detonating cap to form copper azide).


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said in 1998, "as the fuses will probably all have been flooded for many years and the sensitive compounds referred to are all soluble in water this is no longer considered to be a significant hazard".


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: Critics of government assurances that the likelihood of a major explosion is remote argue that one of the fuses of the 2,600 fused-fragmentation devices could become partially flooded and undergo the reaction producing copper azide. A knock, such as caused by the ship breaking up further, or a collision on the busy shipping lane, could cause the copper azide to explode and trigger an explosive chain reaction detonating the bulk of the munitions.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: The wreck site has been surveyed regularly since 1965 to determine the stability of the structure, with a diver survey being completed in 2003. High-resolution multi-beam sonar surveys in 2005 and September 2006 found that there had been no recent significant movement of the wreck.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: Surveys undertaken in 2008 and 2009 by the MCA, showed that the ship was continuing to deteriorate structurally, with accelerated deterioration in some areas and new cracks appearing in the bow section of the wreck. The report states that "Whilst significant structural collapse does not appear to be imminent, surveys suggest that this prospect is getting closer." The increasing calls for a new airport in the Thames estuary would mean a solution would have to be found for removing the wreck, or at least making it safe, should the airport be built.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: The 2010 survey report, released in May 2012, found that, while there had been little change in 2009–2010, the future was uncertain due to the "dynamic nature" of the surrounding environment. Mayor of London Boris Johnson said that engineers had found the wreck would not prevent construction of an airport, and the wreck area would have to be considered. Julian Huppert, the co-chair of the Liberal Democrats committee on transport, disagreed, saying: "This report shows the ship's slow deterioration is continuing with the lethal cargo still on board", and "This must surely put an end to the bonkers idea of building an airport in the Thames estuary." A 2013 "Daily Telegraph" article quoting local historian Colin Harvey, agreed the ship would have to be removed before any airport was built and printed a spectrogram showing the ship clearly broken into two pieces. However, a DfT spokesperson said that the ship remained stable, and the likelihood of an explosion was remote; the matter of the ship was unrelated to the ongoing development of the aviation strategy.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: In June 2020, the DfT announced it was looking for a contractor to remove the ship's three masts as they were placing undue strain on the rest of the vessel structure. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) warned that the collapse of a mast could detonate ordnance, and Royal Navy specialists would need to remove them safely. In December 2021 it was reported that a contractor supported by the Navy would remove the ship's masts, starting in June 2022.


title: SS Richard Montgomery

text: In the second series of the Sky programme "COBRA", broadcast in 2021, the "Montgomery" (unnamed in the series) explodes as a consequence of undersea earthquakes, with the consequences predicted in the 1970 BBC report: heavy flooding, property damage and great loss of life (including the local MP) in Sheerness.


title: Dave Shaw

text: David John Shaw (20 July 1954 – 8 January 2005) was an Australian scuba diver, technical diver, and airline pilot for Cathay Pacific, flying the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, then the 747-400, and then the A330-300, A340-300, and A340-600. He flew for Cathay Pacific from 1989 until his death in 2005. Before flying for Cathay Pacific he flew for Missionary Aviation Fellowship in Papua New Guinea and Tanzania. He also flew agricultural aircraft in South Australia and New South Wales.


title: Dave Shaw

text: Shaw's first rebreather was an Inspiration closed circuit rebreather, with which he eventually dived to depths beyond its purported capability. This prompted him to not only purchase a Mk15.5 but to replace its analogue electronics with the digital ones of the Juergensen Marine Hammerhead, resulting in a specially modified POD designed to handle extreme pressures. The Mk15.5 was his rebreather of choice for dives deeper than . For extended dives in caves shallower than 150 m, Shaw used his Cis-Lunar since he believed it had superior redundancy capabilities but could not cope with extreme depths.


title: Dave Shaw

text: On 28 October 2004, Shaw descended to a depth of 270m at Bushman's Hole, South Africa, breaking the following records:


title: Dave Shaw

text: He used a Mk15.5 with Juergensen Marine Hammerhead electronics and the following gas mixtures: trimix 4/80, 10/70, 15/55, 17/40, 26/25, air, nitrox50, 100% oxygen. The cave elevation was and the dive duration was 9 hours 40 minutes.


title: Dave Shaw

text: On this record-breaking dive, Shaw discovered the body of Deon Dreyer, a South African diver who had died in Bushman's Hole ten years previously. The body was at a depth of .


title: Dave Shaw

text: Shaw recorded his dive with an underwater camera, which allowed researchers to determine that he suffered from respiratory issues due to the high pressure. Shaw ran into difficulties when the body unexpectedly began to float. Shaw had been advised by various experts that the body would remain negatively buoyant because the visible parts were reduced to the skeleton. However, within his wetsuit, Dreyer's corpse had turned into a soap-like substance called adipocere, which floats. Shaw had been working with both hands, and so had been resting his can light on the cave floor. The powerful underwater lights that cave divers use are connected by wires to heavy battery canisters, normally worn on the cave diver's waist, or sometimes attached to their tanks. Normally he would have wrapped the wire behind his neck, but he was unable to do so; the lines from the body bag appear to have become entangled with the light head, and the physical effort of trying to free himself led to his death. Three days later, both of the bodies that had become entangled in the lines were pulled up to near the surface as the dive team was retrieving their equipment.


title: Dave Shaw

text: Shaw's close friend and support diver, Don Shirley, nearly died too and was left with permanent damage that has impaired his balance.


title: Dave Shaw

text: The dive on which Shaw died was the 333rd of his career. At the time of his world record setting dive, he had been diving for a little over five years.


title: Dave Shaw

text: His death has been profiled in a number of documentary films, including the 2020 documentary feature "Dave Not Coming Back".


title: Dave Shaw

text: Shaw was a devout Christian. He and his wife, Ann, lived in Hong Kong, where they were members of a small Christian congregation. They had two children, Steven Shaw and Lisa Shaw (now Lisa Moyers).


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery on the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern parishes. Africans who were enslaved during Spanish rule over Jamaica (1493–1655) may have been the first to develop such refugee communities.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The English, who invaded the island in 1655, continued the importation of enslaved Africans to work on the island's sugar-cane plantations. Africans in Jamaica continually resisted enslavement, with many who freed themselves becoming maroons. The revolts disrupted the sugar economy in Jamaica and made it less profitable. The uprisings decreased after the British colonial authorities signed treaties with the Leeward Maroons in 1739 and the Windward Maroons in 1740, which required them to support the institution of slavery. The importance of the Maroons to the colonial authorities declined after slavery was abolished in 1838.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The Windward Maroons and those from the Cockpit Country resisted conquest in the First Maroon War ( 1728 to 1740), which the colonial government ended in 1739–1740 by making treaties to grant lands and to respect maroon autonomy, in exchange for peace and aiding the colonial militia if needed against external enemies. The tension between Governor Alexander Lindsay and the majority of the Leeward Maroons resulted in the Second Maroon War from 1795 to 1796. Although the governor promised leniency if the maroons surrendered, he later betrayed them and, supported by the Assembly, insisted on deporting just under 600 Maroons to British settlements in Nova Scotia, where enslaved Americans who escaped from the United States were also resettled. The deported Maroons were unhappy with conditions in Canada, and in 1800 a majority left, having obtained passage to Freetown eight years after the Sierra Leone Company established it in West Africa (in present-day Sierra Leone) as a British colony, where they formed the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic identity.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The word "maroon" is derived via French from the Spanish word "cimarrón", meaning "wild" or "untamed". This word usually referred to runaways, castaways, or the shipwrecked; those "marooned" probably would never return. The origin of the Spanish word "cimarrón" is unknown.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: When the English invaded Jamaica in 1655, most Spanish colonists fled. Many of their slaves escaped and, together with free blacks and mulattoes, former slaves, and some native Taíno, coalesced into a number of ethnically diverse groups in the Jamaican interior.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Some Spanish Maroons created "palenques", or stockaded mountain farms, first at Lluidas Vale, in modern-day St Catharine Parish, under Juan de Bolas (also known as Lubolo). Toward the western end of Cockpit Country were the "Varmahaly or Karmahaly Negroes" under the leadership of Juan de Serras. There was possibly a third group that was active in the region of Porus, in modern Manchester Parish; and a fourth in the Blue Mountains. During the first decade of English rule, these groups were active on behalf of the Spanish. But, as it became increasingly obvious that the British would hold their conquest, the group run by de Bolas changed its position.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Faced with discovery and defeat in 1659, de Bolas allied with the English and guided their troops on a raid which resulted in the final expulsion of the Spanish in 1660. In exchange, in 1663, Governor Sir Charles Lyttelton, 3rd Baronet signed the first maroon treaty, granting de Bolas and his people land on the same terms as English settlers. The colonial authorities paid the men of de Bolas to hunt the supporters of de Serras and recent runaways. However, de Bolas was eventually killed in an ambush, probably by Maroons belonging to de Serras. While the Maroons belonging to de Bolas disappeared from history, the English authorities failed to subdue the Karmahaly Maroons.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The other Maroon groups remained independent in the mountainous interior of Jamaica, surviving by subsistence farming and periodic raids of plantations. These initial Maroon groups faded from colonial history records, possibly migrating to more mountainous or remote regions of the interior. Others may have coalesced to form the nucleus of what would later be called the Windward Maroons. Over time, runaway slaves increased the Maroon population, which eventually came to control large areas of the Jamaican mountainous interior.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In the 1670s and 1680s, in his capacity as an owner of a large slave plantation, former buccaneer and now lieutenant-governor of Jamaica Sir Henry Morgan led three campaigns against the Karmahaly Maroons of de Serras. Morgan achieved some success against the Maroons, who withdrew further into the Blue Mountains, where they were able to stay out of the reach of Morgan and his forces. It is possible the Maroons of de Serras merged with the Windward Maroons.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Between 1673 and 1690 there were several major slave uprisings, mainly prompted by newly arrived, highly militarized Fante or Coromantee groups from Cape Coast and Ashanti Empire. On 31 July 1690, a rebellion involving 500 slaves from the Sutton estate in Clarendon Parish led to the formation of Jamaica's most stable and best organized Maroon group. Although some were killed, recaptured, or surrendered, more than 200, including women and children, remained free after the rebellion ended.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: They established an Ashanti-style polity based in the western parts of the Cockpit Country, notably Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town); the most famous ruler of the Western Maroons was Cudjoe. They incorporated outsiders only after newcomers had satisfied a strict probationary period.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: At this time, the leaders who emerged in the Eastern Maroons were Quao and Queen Nanny. The Windward Maroons, in the wilder parts of eastern Jamaica, were always composed of separate highly mobile and culturally heterogeneous groups. It is possible that the runaway slaves from de Serras' group of Karmahaly Maroons formed the initial nucleus of the Windward Maroons. From early on, the Jamaican governors considered their settlements an impediment to English development of the interior. They ordered raids on the Maroon settlements in 1686 and 1702, to little effect.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: By about 1720, a stronger Windward community had developed around the culturally Africanised group of three villages known as Nanny Town, under the spiritual leadership of Queen Nanny, an Ashanti woman, sometimes in allegiance and sometimes in competition with other Windward groups. She was known for her exceptional leadership skills, especially in guerrilla warfare during the First Maroon War. One tactic particular to the Jamaican Maroons involved the art of camouflage using plants. Her remains are reputedly buried at "Bump Grave" in Moore Town, the main town of the Windward Maroons, who are concentrated in and around the Rio Grande valley in the north-eastern parish of Portland. Queen Nanny, also known as Granny Nanny (died c. 1750s), is the only woman honoured as one of Jamaica's National Heroes. She has been immortalised in songs and legends.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Disturbed by plantation raiding, the colonial authorities of Jamaica wanted to eradicate the Maroon communities in order to promote British settlement. Their strategy, beginning in the 1730s, was to break off lines of communication between the Windward and Leeward Maroons, then first pick off the less organized Windward Maroons. In practice, the Maroon troops' command of the territory and skill in guerrilla warfare gave them a strong advantage over colonial forces.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: After much fighting, the British took and destroyed Nanny Town in 1734, but most of the Windward Maroons simply dispersed and formed new settlements. At this point, however, fighting shifted to Leeward, where the British troops had equally limited success against the well-trained and organized forces of Cudjoe.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: By the mid-1730s, warfare was proving costly to Maroons and British alike and was turning into an ongoing stalemate. Cudjoe rejected suggestions of a treaty in 1734 and 1736, but by 1738 he agreed to parley with John Guthrie. This local planter and militia officer was known to and respected by the Maroons. In 1739, the treaty signed under British governor Edward Trelawny granted Cudjoe's Maroons 1500 acres of land between their strongholds of Trelawny Town and Accompong in the Cockpit Country and a certain amount of political autonomy and economic freedoms, in return for which the Maroons were to provide military support in case of invasion or rebellion, and to return runaway slaves in exchange for a bounty of two dollars each. This last clause in the treaty caused tension between the Maroons and the enslaved black population, although from time to time runaways from the plantations still found their way into Maroon settlements.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In addition, a British superintendent was to be assigned to live in each Maroon town. In 1740, similar treaties were signed by Quao and Nanny, major leaders of the Windward Maroons. The Windward Maroons were originally located at Crawford's Town and the new Nanny Town (now called Moore Town). In all, about 600 Maroons came to terms with the British authorities through these two treaties.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Not all the Maroons accepted the treaties. Rebellions occurred in Maroon communities in the years that followed. After the treaties, the white superintendents appointed by the governors eventually took control of the Maroon towns. In the 1740s, some Leeward Maroons who opposed the 1739 treaty rose in revolt, but Cudjoe crushed those rebellions.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In 1754, Quao attempted to overthrow Edward Crawford, the new Maroon leader of the Windward Maroon town, and in the resulting conflict, Crawford's Town was destroyed. Governor Charles Knowles re-established control over the uprising with the help of other Maroons. He then ordered that the Maroons of Crawford's Town be resettled in the new, nearby Windward Maroon towns of Charles Town (Jamaica) and Scott's Hall (Jamaica).


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The Maroon population grew from 664 in 1739 to 1,288 in 1796, at a time when both the slave population and the white settler communities were ravaged by disease.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In April 1760, the Jamaican government called upon the Maroons to honour their treaties and come to their assistance during the major slave uprising led by the Fante leader, Tacky, in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. The Windward Maroons were first to be mobilized. Their intervention at first appeared half-hearted: the Scott's Hall Maroons began by claiming outstanding arrears in bounty, while those Charles Town Maroons at Down's Cove allegedly took cover when attacked by the rebels. However, the Maroon warriors were employing guerrilla warfare tactics, which contradicted the British military tradition of marching into the oncoming fire.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In the end, it was a Scott's Hall Maroon, Lieutenant Davy the Maroon, who killed Tacky during a skirmish. The loss of Tacky's leadership essentially ended the initial rebellion.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In western Jamaica, Apongo led another slave rebellion, inspired by Tacky's Revolt, which lasted from April 1760 to October 1761. Cudjoe's well-trained forces were mobilized to help deal with them with some degree of success.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In the years that followed Tacky's rebellion, many Maroon officers such as Samuel Grant, allegedly the son of Davy, made a career out of hunting runaway slaves for the colonial authorities. These runaway slaves formed informal maroon communities, modelled along the lines of the official Maroon communities before they came to terms.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In the 18th century, Maroons also hunted and killed notorious escaped slaves and their deputies, such as Ancoma, Three Fingered Jack (Jamaica), and Dagger. However, while they were successful in capturing and killing some runaways and their leaders, most members of the runaway maroon communities continued to thrive under new leaders.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: White superintendents took command of the Maroon towns, and the Maroon officers were relegated to their subordinates. After Tacky's War, the governor appointed a separate superintendent for each of the five Maroon towns. These superintendents reported to the Superintendent-General, who in turn reported to the governor. The Superintendents-General of all Maroon towns were as follows:


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The Second Maroon War began in 1795 against the background of the British-Jamaican planters panicked by the excesses of the French Revolution, and by the corresponding start of a slave revolt in neighboring Saint-Domingue, which ended with the independence of Haiti in 1804. At the same time, an increasing hunger for land among expanding Maroon communities in Jamaica coincided with several more immediate and proximate causes of grievance among the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town).


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The treaties following the First Maroon War had called for the assignment of a white "superintendent" in each Maroon community. Trelawny Town had objected to the official recently assigned to them and eventually expelled him. At this, the new, hardline Governor, Balcarres, sent William Fitch to march on Trelawny Town with a military force to demand their immediate submission. Balcarres ignored the advice of local planters, who suggested giving the Maroons some more land in order to avoid conflict. Instead, the governor demanded that the Maroons surrender unconditionally, provoking a conflict that could have been avoided. The Trelawny Maroons, led by their colonel, Montague James, chose to fight and were initially successful, fighting a guerrilla war in small bands under several captains, of whom the most noted were Johnson, Parkinson, and Palmer.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The casualties suffered by Fitch and his men were significantly higher than those felt by the Maroons of Trelawny Town. When the Trelawny Town Maroons killed Fitch, several of his officers, some Accompong Maroon trackers, and many militia soldiers in an ambush, Balcarres appointed a new general, George Walpole. This new general suffered more setbacks, until he eventually opted to besiege the Cockpit Country on a massive scale, surrounding it with watchposts, firing in shells from a long distance, and intending to destroy or cut off all Maroon provision grounds. Meanwhile, Maroon attempts to recruit plantation slaves met with a mixed response, though large numbers of runaway slaves gained their freedom by fighting for Trelawny Town. Other Maroon communities maintained neutrality, but Accompong Town, however, fought on the side of the colonial militias against Trelawny Town.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Despite signs that the siege was working, Balcarres grew impatient and sent to Cuba for a hundred hunting dogs and handlers. The reputation of these was so fearsome that their arrival quickly prompted the surrender of the majority of Trelawny forces. The Maroons, however, only put down their arms on condition that they would not be deported, and Walpole gave his word that would be the case. To Walpole's dismay, Balcarres refused to treat with the defeated Maroons and had them deported from Jamaica, at first to Nova Scotia, then to the new British colony of Sierra Leone, and joined the African-American founders who established the Colony of Sierra Leone and the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: From the 1830s on some Maroons (or their descendants) returned to Jamaica to work as free labourers, and many of them settled in the village of Flagstaff, near the old site of Trelawny Town (although some of these returnees resettled in Sierra Leone) (see Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone). The descendants of the Returned Maroons live in Flagstaff today (see Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town)). Those who remained in Sierra Leone formed the new Creole ethnic group of Sierra Leone which established diaspora communities along the West African shores from Sierra Leone to the Gambia to Fernando Pó.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Trelawny Town was the largest Maroon town, so the population of Maroons in Jamaica was significantly dented by their deportation. However, in the nineteenth century the total population of the four remaining Maroon towns grew from 853 in 1808 to 1,563 in 1841. The Maroon towns grew in numbers at a time when the population of black slaves and white slave-holders alike declined from disease. One historian argues that this is due to the healthier environment of the Maroon towns.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: When the colonial authorities deported the Maroons of Trelawny Town, they left a void which was filled by communities of runaway slaves. The Maroons of the smaller town of Accompong were unable to cope with the growing numbers of runaways in western Jamaica, who found refuge in the Cockpit Country. The Accompong Maroons tried but failed in their attempts to disperse the runaway community of Cuffee (Jamaica), who established a community of runaway slaves in the Cockpit Country in 1798. When Cuffee's maroon group faded from the colonial records, their place was taken by another group of runaways, who established themselves in the Cockpit Country in 1812. The maroon community of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come also resisted attempts by the Accompong Maroons and the colonial militias to disperse them in the 1820s.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: A large maroon group of runaway slaves established themselves near Hellshire Beach in southern Jamaica, and it thrived there for years until it was finally dispersed by a party of Windward Maroons in 1819.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: The Maroons played a significant role in helping the colonial authorities to suppress the Samuel Sharpe revolt in 1831–32, under the leadership of white superintendents such as Alexander Fyfe (Fyffe).


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Sharpe's Baptist War persuaded the British government to end the system of slavery, which they did in the years following the rebellion. After that, the colonial authorities had no use for the Maroons, and they passed the Maroon Allotments Act in 1842, and abolished the post of superintendent in the 1850s. Their attempts to break up the Maroon communal land, while partially successful in Charles Town and Scott's Hall, met with Maroon resistance in Accompong Town and Moore Town.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: After the Second Maroon War, the colonial authorities converted Trelawny Town into a military barracks, and renamed it Maroon Town, Jamaica. The Trelawny Maroons flourished in Sierra Leone at first, but their situation soon soured, and they submitted petitions to British government, asking for permission to return to Jamaica. These petitions were turned down.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: However, in 1831, another petition was presented by 224 Sierra Leone Maroons to the British government, and this time the Jamaican authorities relented. They responded by saying they would place no obstacle in the way of Maroons returning to Jamaica, but would not pay any passage or for the purchase of lands in the island.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In 1839, the first Maroons made their way from Sierra Leone to Jamaica. Mary Brown and her family, which included her daughter Sarah McGale and a Spanish son-in-law, sold off their property in Sierra Leone, bought a schooner, and set sail for Jamaica. They were joined by two other Sierra Leone Maroons, Mary Ricketts and her daughter Jane Bryan. In 1841, this group found their way to Trelawny Town, now called Maroon Town, Jamaica but which they still insisted on calling Cudjoe's Town. Their descendants still live there today in a village named Flagstaff among a group known as the Returned Maroons.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In 1841, the first ship to arrive in Sierra Leone looking for African workers was the "Hector", and several Maroons were so desperate to leave Sierra Leone that they did not wait for the ship to dock, but rowed out to meet it in their canoes. In all, 64 Maroons left Sierra Leone for Jamaica on the "Hector" alone. Most Sierra Leone Maroons lived in Freetown, and between 1837 and 1844, Freetown's Maroon population shrank from 650 to 454, suggesting that about 200 made their way back to Jamaica.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: In 1865, poor free blacks, led by Bapist deacon Paul Bogle, rose in revolt against the colonial authorities in the Morant Bay Rebellion. The governor called out the Moore Town Maroons one last time to put down the rebellion. Fyfe was called up once more to lead a combination of Moore Town Maroons, including some who resided in Hayfield and Bath, and they committed a number of atrocities before they captured Bogle. However, their cruelty in suppressing the uprising attracted a lot of criticism from Methodist missionaries and residents of Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: To this day, the Maroons in Jamaica are, to a small extent, autonomous and separate from Jamaican culture. Those of Accompong have preserved their land since 1739. The isolation used to their advantage by their ancestors has today resulted in their communities being among the most inaccessible on the island.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Today, the four official Maroon towns still in existence in Jamaica are Accompong Town, Moore Town, Charles Town and Scott's Hall. They hold lands allotted to them in the 1739–1740 treaties with the British. These Maroons still maintain their traditional celebrations and practices, some of which have West African origin. For example, the council of a Maroon settlement is called an "Asofo," from the Akan word asafo (assembly, church, society).


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Native Jamaicans and island tourists are allowed to attend many of these events. Others considered sacred are held in secret and shrouded in mystery. Singing, dancing, drum-playing, and preparation of traditional foods form a central part of most gatherings. In their largest town, Accompong, in the parish of St. Elizabeth, the Leeward Maroons have a vibrant community of about 600. Tours of the village are offered to foreigners. They hold a large festival annually on 6 January to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty with the British after the First Maroon War.


title: Jamaican Maroons

text: Moore Town, located between the Blue Mountains and John Crow Mountains in Portland Parish, was relisted on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008 for its Maroon heritage, particularly music.


title: Dialect continuum

text: A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around the world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India, varieties of Arabic across north Africa and southwest Asia, the Turkic languages, the Chinese languages or dialects, and subgroups of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic families in Europe. Leonard Bloomfield used the name dialect area. Charles F. Hockett used the term L-complex.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as waves. In this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead, dialectologists map variation of various language features across a dialect continuum, drawing lines called isoglosses between areas that differ with respect to some feature.


title: Dialect continuum

text: A variety within a dialect continuum may be developed and codified as a standard language, and then serve as an authority for part of the continuum, e.g. within a particular political unit or geographical area.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Since the early 20th century, the increasing dominance of nation-states and their standard languages has been steadily eliminating the nonstandard dialects that comprise dialect continua, making the boundaries ever more abrupt and well-defined.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Dialectologists record variation across a dialect continuum using maps of various features collected in a linguistic atlas, beginning with an atlas of German dialects by Georg Wenker (from 1888), based on a postal survey of schoolmasters. The influential "Atlas linguistique de la France" (1902–10) pioneered the use of a trained fieldworker. These atlases typically consist of "display maps", each showing local forms of a particular item at the survey locations.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Secondary studies may include "interpretive maps", showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an isogloss, a line separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate.


title: Dialect continuum

text: In a dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the gradual transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicates a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries. In other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Standard varieties may be developed and codified at one or more locations in a continuum until they have independent cultural status (autonomy), a process the German linguist Heinz Kloss called "ausbau". Speakers of local varieties typically read and write a related standard variety, use it for official purposes, hear it on radio and television, and consider it the standard form of their speech, so that any standardizing changes in their speech are towards that variety. In such cases the local variety is said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, the standard variety.


title: Dialect continuum

text: A standard variety together with its dependent varieties is commonly considered a "language", with the dependent varieties called "dialects" of the language, even if the standard is mutually intelligible with another standard from the same continuum. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are often cited as examples. Conversely, a language defined in this way may include local varieties that are mutually unintelligible, such as the German dialects.


title: Dialect continuum

text: The choice of standard is often determined by a political boundary, which may cut across a dialect continuum.


title: Dialect continuum

text: As a result, speakers on either side of the boundary may use almost identical varieties, but treat them as dependent on different standards, and thus part of different "languages".


title: Dialect continuum

text: The various local dialects then tend to be leveled towards their respective standard varieties, disrupting the previous dialect continuum.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Examples include the boundaries between Dutch and German, between Czech, Slovak and Polish, and between Belarusian and Ukrainian.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Examples of controversies are regions such as the disputed territory of Kashmir, in which local Muslims usually regard their language as Urdu, the national standard of Pakistan, while Hindus regard the same speech as Hindi, an official standard of India. Even so, the Eighth Schedule to the Indian Constitution contains a list of 22 scheduled languages and Urdu is among them.


title: Dialect continuum

text: During the time of the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia, a standard was developed from local varieties of Eastern South Slavic, within a continuum with Torlakian to the north and Bulgarian to the east. The standard was deliberately based on varieties from the west of the republic that were most different from standard Bulgarian.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Now known as Macedonian, it is the national standard of North Macedonia, but viewed by Bulgarians as a dialect of Bulgarian.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Europe provides several examples of dialect continua, the largest of which involve the Germanic, Romance and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family, the continent's largest language branches.


title: Dialect continuum

text: The Romance area spanned much of the territory of the Roman Empire but was split into western and eastern portions by the Slav Migrations into the Balkans in the 7th and 8th centuries.


title: Dialect continuum

text: The Slavic area was in turn split by the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the 9th and 10th centuries.


title: Dialect continuum

text: The Norwegian, Danish and Swedish dialects comprise a classic example of a dialect continuum, encompassing Norway, Denmark, Sweden and coastal parts of Finland. The Continental North Germanic standard languages (Norwegian, Danish and Swedish) are close enough and intelligible enough for some to consider them to be dialects of the same language, but the Insular ones (Faroese and Icelandic) are not immediately intelligible to the other North Germanic speakers.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Historically, the Dutch, Frisian and German dialects formed a canonical dialect continuum, which has been gradually falling apart since the Late Middle Ages due to the pressures of modern education, standard languages, migration and weakening knowledge of the dialects.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Though the internal dialect continua of both Dutch and German remain largely intact, the continuum which historically connected the Dutch, Frisian and German languages has largely disintegrated. Fragmentary areas of the Dutch-German border in which language change is more gradual than in other sections or a higher degree of mutual intelligibility is present still exist, such as the Aachen-Kerkrade area, but the historical chain in which dialects were only divided by minor isoglosses and negligible differences in vocabulary has seen a rapid and ever-increasing decline since the 1850s.


title: Dialect continuum

text: Standard Dutch was based on the dialects of the principal Brabantic and Hollandic cities. The written form of Standard German originated in the East Central German used at the chancery of the kingdom of Saxony, while the spoken form emerged later, based on North German pronunciations of the written standard. Being based on widely separated dialects, the Dutch and German standards do not show a high degree of mutual intelligibility when spoken and only partially so when written. One study concluded that, when concerning written language, Dutch speakers could translate 50.2% of the provided German words correctly, while the German subjects were able to translate 41.9% of the Dutch equivalents correctly. In terms of orthography, 22% of the vocabulary of Dutch and German is identical or near-identical.