title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: The band went on a brief successful three-show tour of small clubs in California to promote the album. These shows were at Slim's in San Francisco, The Catalyst in Santa Cruz, and The Troubador of Los Angeles on the December 19, 20 and 21, respectively. All three shows sold out and BRMC played to packed houses each night where the setlist ranged from classics to quite a bit of new material.


title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: After the success of these first shows, the band announced several more shows across Europe with stops in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy among other countries. The last announced show was at the Austin Psych Fest on April 26, 2013.


title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: On January 9, 2013, the band announced via Facebook the name of their seventh album called "Specter at the Feast" which was released on March 18 in the UK and Europe and on March 19 in U.S., Canada and worldwide.


title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: It received mostly positive reviews; many critics noting that despite the band having been together for some time the album showed a mellower and moodier side with songs such as opener "Firewalker".


title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: The band made the first single from the record available, a cover of The Call's 1989 hit "Let the Day Begin", as a free download on their website. The decision to record the song was a tribute to Robert's father Michael, who used his experience from The Call to help BRMC in the last couple of years before his death. The single became "Q" Magazine's track of the day. The same song also reached a worldwide audience when BBC's "Top Gear" used it for its 21st season trailer both on the live TV show and online. The band have also released the "Let the Day Begin" EP free, the EP consists of the single and the album track "Returning", made available for streaming on the official website.


title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: The band continued to show a willingness to tour despite obstacles. During the 2013 tour, the organisers of the Harvest festival in Australia decided to abandon the multi-city event, of which BRMC were one of the lead acts, only a few months ahead of the performances. BRMC was the first band to announce it would still visit the country and play its own shows. Several sold out.


title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: On October 2, 2014, the band announced they were in the studio mixing the audio for a forthcoming live album and DVD recorded in Paris during the Specter at the Feast tour.


title: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

text: In May 2017, the band confirmed they were working on a new studio album to be released in the fall of 2017. On September 12, 2017, they announced the album, "Wrong Creatures", would be released on January 12, 2018. The announcement was accompanied by the release of the first track, "Little Thing Gone Wild".


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Amar Singh Chamkila (21 July 1960 8 March 1988) was an Punjabi singer and musician of Punjabi music. Chamkila and his wife Amarjot were killed, along with two members of their band on 8 March 1988 in an assassination which remains unresolved.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Amar Singh Chamkila is regarded as one of the best live stage performers that Punjab has ever produced and extremely popular with the village audience. His monthly bookings regularly outnumbered the number of days in the month. Chamkila is generally regarded as one of the greatest and influential Punjabi artists of all time.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: His music was heavily influenced by the Punjabi village life he was surrounded by growing up. He commonly wrote songs about extra-marital relationships, coming of age, drinking, drug use, and the hot tempers of Punjabi men. He earned a controversial reputation, with his detractors regarding his music obscene, and his supporters regarding it a truthful commentary on Punjabi culture and society. Although he did give support to the Khalistan Movement and to show it he sang Dastaran Kesri with Amarjot Kaur, he also promoted gun culture and Jatt feudalism.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: His best-known hits include "Pehle Lalkare Naal" and his devotional songs "Baba Tera Nankana" and "Talwar Main Kalgidhar Di". Though he never recorded it himself, he wrote the widely popular "Jatt Di Dushmani" which has been recorded by many Punjabi artists. He became famous as a result of his first ever recorded song "Takue Te Takua".


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Amar Singh Chamkila was born as Dhani Ram on 21 July 1960 in a family belonging to Chamar community in the village of Dugri near Ludhiana, Punjab, India. The youngest child of Kartar Kaur and Hari Singh Sandila , he was educated at Gujar Khan Primary School in Dugri. His aspirations of becoming an electrician were unfulfilled and he found work at a Ludhiana cloth mill.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: With a natural aptitude for music, he learned to play the harmonium and dholki. In 1978, Chamkila approached Surinder Shinda for the first time on a bicycle with his best friend Kuldeep Paras. When Shinda heard the 18-year-old Chamkila sing, he finally found the protege that he had been looking for. Chamkila would go on to play alongside Punjabi folk artists such as K. Deep, Mohammad Sadiq and Shinda. He wrote several songs for Shinda and accompanied him as a member of his entourage before deciding to pursue a solo career.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: It is rumoured that Chamkila was happy enough writing songs, but he wasn't earning enough money to look after his family, so had to start singing. Chamkila's first time in the studio was providing backing vocals alongside Kuldeep Paras for Surinder Shinda's hit song "Putt Jattan De".


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: He was married to Gurmail Kaur by family with whom he had two daughters, Amandeep Kaur and Kamaldeep Kaur. Chamkila's second marriage was with his co-singer Amarjot Kaur, with whom he has a son Jaiman Chamkila. It was a love marriage held on 23 May 1983. Chamkila had spoken with close friends that he felt compelled to marry Amarjot as that was the only way to ensure the popular duet stayed together.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Adopting the stage name Amar Singh Chamkila – Chamkila in Punjabi means "one that glitters". Chamkila first partnered up with the female vocalist Surinder Sonia who had previously worked with Surinder Shinda. Sonia had felt sidelined after Shinda took Gulshan Komal to a tour in Canada, after which she was instrumental in pushing Chamkila to record his debut album. The pair recorded eight duets and released the album "Takue Te Takua" in 1980 with music produced by Charanjit Ahuja. The cunningly worded lyrics, which he had written himself, became hits across Punjab.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: In 1980, Chamkila felt he was significantly underpaid by Surinder Sonia's manager (her husband) and decided to form his own group. Chamkila established short-lived stage partnerships with Miss Usha Kiran, Amar Noorie and others.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Chamkila was struggling to find a long-term co-singer to record songs with until fellow Punjabi singer Kuldeep Manak suggested Amarjot Kaur, who had been singing infrequently with Manak and had even featured on his latest album. Not much is known about Amarjot Kaur, except for the fact that she was previously married but left the marriage to pursue her dream of singing. She would go on to become Chamkila's permanent singing partner providing the female vocals for his duets, that is, the majority of the songs that he wrote.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Chamkila, for the most part, wrote his own lyrics, the majority of which were boyish and suggestive, yet fluent, commentaries on extramarital affairs, alcohol and drug use. The couple's appeal grew not only in the Punjab, but they quickly raced to international stardom among Punjabis abroad. Around this time, Chamkila was rumoured to be receiving more bookings than his contemporaries. The biography "Awaz Mardi Nahin" by Gulzar Singh Shaunki found during its research that at the height of his popularity Chamkila had performed 366 shows in 365 days.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: By the early 1980s, Chamkila and Amarjot had recorded hugely successful LPs on the HMV label and they toured Canada, US, Dubai and Bahrain. They were also commonly booked for wedding parties, charging a reported Rs. 4000 per performance, an unprecedented amount for the time. Chamkila sold more HMV LP records in the world than any other Punjabi singer. He was also an accomplished player of the Tumbi instrument.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Much of Chamkila's success may be attributed to the fan-base he acquired performing in free, open-air concerts (known as Akhade in Punjabi) around Punjab. Accompanying the couple would be a harmonium and dholki player and Chamkila would play the Tumbi. The concerts served as a medium for gaining exposure and testing people's response to new songs that were planned for future recordings. In addition to singing his own songs, Chamkila wrote several songs and sold them to other artists. Some of these include "Main Digie Tilak Ke" (Surinder Shinda), "Gabroo Nu Marda" (Jagmohan Kaur) and "Deor Naal Nach Bhabiye" (KS Kooner). Chamkila continued to work with music director Charanjit Ahuja but also experimented by working with SN Gulati and KS Narula.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Starting in 1985, Chamkila and Amarjot released three devotional LPs: Baba Tera Nankana, Talwar Main Kalgidhar Di Haan and Naam Jap Le. The LPs were highly successful, with profits reportedly donated to charities.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Chamkila's song "Pehle Lalkare Naal" was featured in the soundtrack of the 1987 Punjabi film 'Patola'. He also recorded the song "Mera Jee Karda" for the Punjabi film 'Dupatta'. Both films fared averagely at the box office, but still increased Chamkila's popularity. Chamkila and Amarjot recorded in excess of ninety songs before they were killed in Mesumpur, Punjab in 1988. At the time of his death, he reportedly had 200 songs that had not been sung or recorded. Of these some were sung at stage shows including "Dhee Mar Jai Badkar Loko", "Jatt Di Dushmani" and "Akhiyan Di Maar Buri". Chamkila also wrote a song based on Punjabi folk hero Jeona Morh called "Kaadha Soorma" - a stage recording of Chamkila's vocals were remixed and released by Panjabi MC in 2008 on the "Indian Timing" album.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Chamkila also had many solo songs which have been sung in recent times by artists such as Chamak Chamkila, Nirmal Sidhu, Amar Arshi, and even his teacher Surinder Shinda. Some singers have used some of Chamkila's lyrics in their songs as part of their chorus. These include Nasha, Mere Yaar Ne (Gippy Grewal) and Shad De Vairne Yaari (Jazzy B). Chamkila's lyrics and compositions continue to be popular in contemporary Punjabi music.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Following various complaints to his office, Chamkila appeared before a five-member Sikh committee at the Golden Temple to seek forgiveness for any offence caused by his lyrics. The committee praised his hugely successful religious song "Talwar Main Kalgidhar Di Haan" and Chamkila was encouraged to lend his voice to religious songs going forward. Chamkila, working alongside friend and lyricist Swarn Sivia, was in the process of preparing a studio recording of Asa Di Var however due to Chamkila's death this was never recorded.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Chamkila had been invited by Doordarshan to record a song to be broadcast on television. The solo song titled "Dil Da Sheesha" had been sung live on stage but was never filmed. Following Chamkila's death, this song was sung on television by his protege Amar Arshi.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Before his death, Chamkila was working on publishing a magazine titled 'Gaunda Punjab', which would include articles regarding prominent singers, upcoming artists and news from the Punjabi film and music industry.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: With considerable experience in theatre during his teenage years, Chamkila was also in talks to star in a lead role in the Punjabi movie 'Guldasta' directed by Veerendra and alongside Sridevi in a Punjabi movie titled 'Naanke'. Both films were never made.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Amar Singh Chamkilla had also sung 'Dastaran Kesri' in 1988 as a pledge to support the Khalistan Movement and afterwards he stated a month before his death;


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: "If another single Sardar Sahib dies to the Punjab Police, just watch me shoot my gun at Ribeiro's head. I stand by what I said and will always stand by it."


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Having arrived to perform in Mehsampur, Punjab, both Chamkila and Amarjot were gunned down as they exited their vehicle on 8 March 1988 at approximately 2PM. A gang of motorcyclists fired several rounds, fatally wounding the couple and other members of the entourage. However, no arrests were ever made with connection to the shooting and the case was never solved.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: There are many conspiracy theories as to why Chamkila was killed. It is widely reported that he had been the victim of several death threats. The nature of those threats or the rationale behind them still remains a mystery. The high-profile murder sparked a frenzy of controversy and speculation. Some of the most prominent theories explaining the killings are:


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Indian music producer Yo Yo Honey Singh celebrates Chamkila as an important part of his musical journey.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: British Indian musician, Panjabi MC, cites Chamkila as one of his musical influences. The song "Kaadha Soorma" from his 2008 album, "Indian Timing", includes Chamkila's vocals.Diljit Dosanjh also sang Chamkila's songs and was inspired by him.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: A UK Born singer, MILAN, has said he is most inspired by the works of Chamkila and dedicated the song "Bai Chamkila" in his 2021 single.


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: "Mehsampur" is a 2018 Indian mockumentary film based on Chamkila's life, produced and directed by Kabir Singh Chowdhry.""


title: Amar Singh Chamkila

text: Chamkila's studio recordings were released by HMV as LP records and EP records during his lifetime. Though several compilation albums have been released since his death, the following CDs compiled by Saregama comprise nearly all of Chamkila's studio recordings:


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The Rouran Khaganate, also Juan-Juan Khaganate (, ), was a tribal confederation and later state founded by a people of Proto-Mongolic Donghu origin. The Rouran supreme rulers are noted for being the first to use the title of "khagan", having borrowed this popular title from the Xianbei. The Rouran Khaganate lasted from the late 4th century until the middle 6th century, when they were defeated by a Göktürk rebellion which subsequently led to the rise of the Turks in world history.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Their Khaganate overthrown, some Rouran remnants possibly became Tatars while others possibly migrated west and became the Pannonian Avars (known by such names as "Varchonites" or "Pseudo Avars"), who settled in Pannonia (centred on modern Hungary) during the 6th century. These Avars were pursued into the Byzantine Empire by the Göktürks, who referred to the Avars as a slave or vassal people, and requested that the Byzantines expel them. While this Rouran-Avars link remains a controversial theory, a recent DNA study has confirmed the genetic origins of the Avar elite as originating from the Mongolian plains. Other theories instead link the origins of the Pannonian Avars to peoples such as the Uar.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Considered an imperial confederation, the Rouran Khaganate was based on the "distant exploitation of agrarian societies", although many researchers claim that the Rouran had a feudal system, or "nomadic feudalism". The Rouran controlled trade routes, and raided and subjugated oases and outposts such as Gaochang. Their society is said to show the signs of "both an early state and a chiefdom". The Rouran have been credited as "a band of steppe robbers", because they adopted a strategy of raids and extortion of Northern China. The Khaganate was an aggressive militarized society, a "military-hierarchical polity established to solve the exclusively foreign-policy problems of requisitioning surplus products from neighbouring nations and states."


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: "Róurán" 柔然 is a Classical Chinese transcription of the endonym of the confederacy; 蠕蠕 "Ruǎnruǎn" ~ "Rúrú" (Weishu), however, was used in Tuoba-Xianbei sources such as orders given by Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei. It meant something akin to "wriggling worm" and was used in a derogatory sense. Other transcriptions are 蝚蠕 "Róurú" ~ "Róuruǎn" (Jinshu); 茹茹 "Rúrú" (Beiqishu, Zhoushu, Suishu); 芮芮 "Ruìruì" (Nanqishu, Liangshu, Songshu), 大檀 "Dàtán" and 檀檀 "Tántán" (Songshu).


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Mongolian Sinologist Sühe Baatar suggests "Nirun" Нирун as the modern Mongolian term for the "Rouran", as Нирун resembles reconstructed Chinese forms beginning with *"ń"- or *"ŋ"-. Rashid-al-Din Hamadani recorded "Niru'un" and "Dürlükin" as two divisions of the Mongols.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Klyastorny reconstructed the ethnonym behind the Chinese transcription 柔然 "Róurán" (LHC: *"ńu-ńan"; EMC: *"ɲuw-ɲian" > LMC: *"riw-rian") as *"nönör" and compares it to Mongolic нөкүр "nökür" "friend, comrade, companion" (Khalkha нөхөр "nöhör"). According to Klyashtorny, *"nönör" denotes "stepnaja vol'nica" "a free, roving band in the steppe, the 'companions' of the early Rouran leaders". In early Mongol society, a "nökür" was someone who had left his clan or tribe to pledge loyalty to and serve a charismatic warlord; if this derivation were correct, "Róurán" 柔然 was originally not an ethnonym, but a social term referring the dynastic founder's origins or the core circle of companions who helped him build his state.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: However, Golden identifies philological problems: the ethnonym should have been *"nöŋör" to be cognate to "nökür", & possible assimilation of -/k/- to -/n/- in Chinese transcription needs further linguistic proofs. Even if 柔然 somehow transmitted "nökür", it more likely denoted the Rouran's status as the subjects of the Tuoba. Before being used as an ethnonym, Rouran had originally been the byname of chief Cheluhui (车鹿会), possibly denoting his status "as a Wei servitor".


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Primary Chinese-language sources Songshu and Liangshu connected Rouran to the earlier Xiongnu (of unknown ethnolinguistic affiliation) while Weishu traced the Rouran's origins back to the Donghu, generally agreed to be Proto-Mongols. Xu proposed that "the main body of the Rouran were of Xiongnu origin" and Rourans' descendants, namely Da Shiwei (aka Tatars), contained Turkic elements, besides Mongolic Xianbei. Even so, the Xiongnu's language is still unknown and Chinese historians routinely ascribed Xiongnu origins to various nomadic groups, yet such ascriptions do not necessarily indicate the subjects' exact origins: for examples, Xiongnu ancestry was ascribed to Turkic-speaking Göktürks and Tiele as well as Para-Mongolic-speaking Kumo Xi and Khitans. However, historical developments show that the Xiongnu subsequently conquered Dong-Hu, the common ancestor of the Kitan and Kumo Xi peoples.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Kwok Kin Poon additionally proposes that the Rouran were descended specifically from Donghu's Xianbei lineage, i.e. from Xianbei who remained in the eastern Eurasian Steppe after most Xianbei had migrated south and settled in Northern China. Genetic testings on Rourans' remains suggested Donghu-Xianbei paternal genetic contribution to Rourans.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The founder of the Rouran Khaganate, Yujiulu Shelun, was said to be descended from the mythological founder Mugulü, who, according to Chinese-language chronicles (Weishu, Beishi), was captured and enslaved by Xianbei raiders. The anecdote of the founder of the Rouran being a slave is a "typical insertion by the Chinese historians intended to show the low birth and barbarian nature of the northern nomads". The endonym "Rouran" itself was distorted by the Sinicized Tuoba Xianbei into exonyms "Ruru" or "Ruanruan", meaning something akin to "wriggling worms". After the Xianbei migrated south and settled in Chinese lands during the late 3rd century AD, the Rouran made a name for themselves as fierce warriors. However they remained politically fragmented until 402 AD when Shelun gained support of all the Rouran chieftains and united the Rouran under one banner. Immediately after uniting, the Rouran entered a perpetual conflict with Northern Wei, beginning with a Wei offensive that drove the Rouran from the Ordos region. The Rouran expanded westward and defeated the neighboring Tiele people and expanded their territory over the Silk Roads, even vassalizing the Hephthalites which remained so until the beginning of the 5th century.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The Hepthalites migrated southeast due to pressure from the Rouran and displaced the Yuezhi in Bactria, forcing them to migrate further south. Despite the conflict between the Hephthalites and Rouran, the Hephthalites borrowed much from their eastern overlords, in particular the title of "Khan" which was first used by the Rouran as a title for their rulers.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The Rouran were considered vassals () by Tuoba Wei. By 506 they were considered a vassal state (). They were considered equal partners by the Chinese empire. Following the growth of Rouran and the turning of Wei into a classical Chinese state, they were considered partners of equal rights by Wei ("lindi gangli").


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In 429, Northern Wei launched a major offensive against the Rouran and killed a large number of people.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In 434, the Rouran entered a marriage alliance with Northern Wei. In 443, Northern Wei attacked the Rouran. In 449, the Rouran were defeated in battle by Northern Wei. In 456, Northern Wei attacked the Rouran. In 458, Northern Wei attacked the Rouran.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In 460, the Rouran subjugated the Ashina tribe residing around modern Turpan and resettled them in the Altai Mountains. The Rouran also ousted the previous dynasty of Gaochang and installed Kan Bozhou as its king.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In 492, Emperor Tuoba Hong sent 70 thousand horsemen against Rouran. Because Chinese sources are silent about the outcome of the expedition, it is probable that it was unsuccessful. However, possibly strained after the battle with Wei, the Rourans were not able to prevent the Uighur chief Abuzhiluo from heading "a 100 thousand tents" west, in a series of events that led to the overthrowing and killing of Doulun Khan. Two armies were sent in pursuit of the rebels, one led by Doulun, the other by Nagai, his uncle. The Rouran emerged victorious. In the war against the Uighurs, Doulan fought well, but his uncle Nagai won all the battles against the Uighurs. Thus, the soldiers thought that Heaven didn't favor Doulan anymore, and that he should be deposed in favor of Nagai. The latter, who was faithful to traditions, declined. Nonetheless, the subjects killed Doulan and murdered his next of kin, installing Nagai on the throne. In 518, Nagai married the sorceress Diwan, conferring her the title of "khagatun" for her outstanding service.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Between 525 and 527, Rouran was employed by Northern Wei in the suppression of rebellions in their territory, with the Rourans then plundering the local population.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The Rouran Khaganate arranged for one of their princesses, Khagan Yujiulü Anagui's daughter Princess Ruru, to be married to the Han Chinese ruler Gao Huan of the Eastern Wei.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The Rourans were involved many times in Royal intermarriage (also known as "Heqin" in China), with the Northern Yan and especially with the Northern Wei dynasty and its successors Eastern and Western Wei, which were fighting each other, and each seeking the support of Rouran to defeat the other. These royal intermarriages meant instances of Chinese dynasties' princesses marrying Rouran princes or khagans (e.g. Princess Lelang, Princess Lanling) and Rouran princesses marrying Chinese dynasties' rulers and princes (e.g. Princess Ruru, Empress Gong). Both parties, in turn, took the initiative of proposing such marriages to forge important alliances or solidify relations, with the warring Western Wei and Eastern Wei often seeking the Rourans in the latter period. The so-called "diplomatic princesses" were well treated and honored on both sides.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In the 1970s, the Tomb of Princess Linhe was unearthed in Ci County, Hebei. It contained artistically invaluable murals, a mostly pillaged but still consistent treasure, Byzantine coins and about a thousand vessels and clay figurines. Among the latter was the figurine of a "Shaman", standing in a dancing posture and holding a saw-like instrument. The Rouran would often visit the Eastern Wei, who were sometimes allies, sometimes rivals, and this figurine is thought to reflect the young princess' Rouran/nomadic roots.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: On one occasion, in 540, the Rourans attacked Western Wei reportedly with a million warriors because a Rouran princess reported being dissatisfied with being second to Emperor Wendi's principal wife.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The first "khagan" Shelun is said to have concluded a “treaty of peace based on kinship” () with the rulers of Jin. The royal house of Rouran is also said to have intermarried with the royal house of the Haital (Hephthalites) in the 6th century.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Since the time of Shelun Khan, the khans were bestowed with additional titles at their enthronement. Since 464, starting with Yucheng Khan they started to use epoch names, like the Chinese. The Rouran dignitaries of the ruling elite also adopted nicknames, referring to their deeds, similarly to the titles the Chinese gave posthumously. This practice is analogous with that of later Mongolian chiefs. There was a wide circle composing the nomadic aristocracy, including elders, chieftains, military commanders. The grandees could be high or low ranking. The khagan could confer titles in reward of services rendered and outstanding deeds, such as in 518, when Nagai entitled the sorceress Diwai "khagatun", taking her as his wife, and gave a compensation, a post and a title to Fushengmou, her then former husband. The Rouran titles included , (cf. Mongolian batur, baghatur), (cf. Mongolian ), , and , , , (cf. Turkic irkin), (cf. Turkic eltäbär).


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Sources indicate that slave ownership existed among the Rouran. In 521, Khagan Anagui was given two female slaves as a gift from the Chinese; included among the penalties and rewards introduced with the reorganization of the military and the state carried out by Shelun, there was the regulation that soldiers who fought outstandingly would receive captives. There is also evidence that the Rouran resettled people in the steppe.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Initially the Rouran chiefs, according to Chinese sources, having no letters to make records, "counted approximately the number of warriors by using sheep's droppings". Later, they made records using notches on wood. They adopted the Chinese written language, using it to make records and write diplomatic letters, and, with Anagui, started using it to write internal records. There is also evidence of a large number of literate people among the Rouran. This high level of literacy reportedly didn't affect only the elites, but also common people such as cattle-breeders, who were able to use ideograms. In the "Book of Song" there is the story of an educated Rouran "whose knowledge shamed a wise Chinese functionary". Further, it is not excluded that they had their own runic script. There is no record of monuments erected by the Rouran, though there is evidence of the latter requesting doctors, weavers and other artisans to be sent from China.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Imitating the Chinese, Anagui Khan introduced the use of officials at court, adopted a staff of bodyguards, or chamberlains, and "surrounded himself with advisers trained in the tradition of Chinese bibliophily". His chief advisor was the Chinese Shunyu Tan, whose role is comparable to that of Yelü Chucai with the Mongols and Zhonghang Yue with the Xiongnu (or Huns).


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The capital of the Rouran likely changed over time. The headquarters of the Rouran Khan ("ting") was initially northwest of Gansu.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Later the capital of the Rouran became Mumocheng, "encircled with two walls constructed by Liang Shu". The existence of this city would be proof of early urbanization among the Rouran. However, its location is disputed, and no trace of it has been found so far.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In 461, Lü Pi, Duke of Hedong, a Northern Wei general and Grand chancellor of Rouran descent, dies in Northern Wei. The Rouran and the Hephthalites had a falling out and problems within their confederation were encouraged by Chinese agents.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In 508, the Tiele defeated the Rouran in battle. In 516, the Rouran defeated the Tiele. In 551, Bumin of the Ashina Göktürks quelled a Tiele revolt for the Rouran and asked for a Rouran princess for his service. The Rouran refused and in response Bumin declared independence.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Bumin entered a marriage alliance with Western Wei, a successor state of Northern Wei, and attacked the Rouran in 552. The Rouran, now at the peak of their might, were defeated by the Turks. After a defeat at Huaihuang (in present-day Zhangjiakou, Hebei) the last great khan Anagui, realizing he had been defeated, took his own life. Bumin declared himself Illig Khagan of the Turkic Khaganate after conquering Otuken; Bumin died soon after and his son Issik Qaghan succeeded him. Issik continued attacking the Rouran, their khaganate now fallen into decay, but died a year later in 553.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: In 555, Turks invaded and occupied the Rouran and Yujiulü Dengshuzi led 3000 soldiers in retreat to Western Wei. He was later delivered to Turks by Emperor Gong with his soldiers under pressure from Muqan Qaghan. In the same year, Muqan is said to have annihilated the Rouran. All the Rouran handed over to the Turks, reportedly with the exception of children less than sixteen, were brutally killed.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: On 29 November 586 Yujiulü Furen (郁久闾伏仁), an official of Sui and a descendant of the ruling clan, dies in Hebei, leaving an epitaph reporting his royal descent from the Yujiulü clan.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: According to Xu (2005), some Rouran remnants fled to the northwest of the Greater Khingan mountain range, and renamed themselves 大檀 "Dàtán" (MC: *"da-dan") or 檀檀 "Tántán" (MC: *"dan-dan") after Tantan, personal name of a historical Rouran Khagan. Tantan were gradually incorporated into the Shiwei tribal complex and later emerged as Great-"Da Shiwei" (大室韋) in Suishu. Klyashtorny, apud Golden (2013), reconstructed 大檀 / 檀檀 as *"tatar" / "dadar", "the people who, [Klyashtorny] concludes, assisted Datan in the 420s in his internal struggles and who later are noted as the "Otuz Tatar" ("Thirty Tatars") who were among the mourners at the funeral of Bumın Qağan (see the inscriptions of Kül Tegin, E4 and Bilge Qağan, E5)".


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Some scholars claim that the Rouran then fled west across the steppes and became the Avars, though many other scholars contest this claim. New genetic data seem to answer that question, says Walter Pohl, a historian at the University of Vienna. “We have a very clear indication that they must have come from the core of the Rouran Empire. They were the neighbors of the Chinese.” “Genetically speaking, the elite Avars have a very, very eastern profile,” says Choongwon Jeong, a co-author and a geneticist at Seoul National University.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: That genetic data backs up two historical accounts of the Avar’s origins. One sixth century Chinese source describes an enigmatic steppe people called the Rouran, one of many horse-riding nomadic groups that swept out of the Mongolian steppes to attack their northern borders. The Rouran’s grassland empire was reportedly defeated by rival nomads in 552 C.E. A continent away, and just 15 years later, diplomats from Byzantium, the eastern remnants of the once-mighty Roman Empire, reported the arrival of a new group from the east on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The newcomers called themselves the Avars, and claimed to be related to a far-off people known as the Rouran.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: However, it's unlikely that Rouran would have migrated to Europe in any sufficient strength to establish themselves there, due to the desperate resistances, military disasters, and massacres. The remainder of the Rouran fled into China, were absorbed into the border guards, and disappeared forever as an entity. The last khagan fled to the court of the Western Wei, but at the demand of the Göktürks, Western Wei executed him and the nobles who accompanied him.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The Avars were pursued west by the Gokturks as most-wanted fugitives and accused of unlawfully usurping the imperial title of Khagan and also the prestigious name of the Avars. Contemporary sources indicate the Avars were not native to the Western Steppe but came to the region after a long wandering. Nor were they native to Central Asia to the south of which lay the Hephthalite Empire which has on and off been identified with the Avars by certain scholars. Instead the Avars' origins were further to the east, a fact which has been corroborated through DNA studies of Avar individuals buried in the Pannonian Basin which have shown that they were primarily East Asian. Their pretensions to empire despite their relatively small numbers indicate descendance from a previously hegemonic power in the Far East. The first embassy of the Avars to Justinian I in 557 corresponds directly to the fall of the Rouran Khaganate in 555. The Rouran Khaganate had fallen not through gradual decline but through a sudden internal revolution led by the Göktürks, hence the still vivid memories of empire in the Avar Khagan, a fact paralleled later by the Kara-Khitans who migrated a long distance west after being suddenly dislodged from northern China but still kept their pretensions to empire and defeated the Great Seljuk Empire in the Battle of Qatwan as the Western Liao. The Hephthalite Empire in southern Central Asia would not fall to the Göktürks until 560. The Hephthalites themselves had previously been vassals to the Rouran and adopted the title Khagan from them. They were also already known as the Hephthalites to the Byzantines. In view of these facts a strong Rouran component in the Avar Khaganate has been seen as likely, although the Khaganate later included many other peoples such as Slavs and Goths.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: examined the remains of a Rouran male buried at the Khermen Tal site in Mongolia. He was found to be a carrier of the paternal haplogroup C2b1a1b and the maternal haplogroup D4b1a2a1. Haplogroup C2b1a1b has also been detected among the Xianbei.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: Several genetic studies have shown that early Pannonian Avar elites carried a large amount of East Asian ancestry, and some have suggested this as evidence for a connection between the Pannonian Avars and the earlier Rouran. However, notes that there is still little genetic data on the Rouran themselves, and that their genetic relationship with the Pannonian Avars therefore still remains inconclusive.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The received view is that the relationships of the language remain a puzzle and that it may be an isolate. Alexander Vovin (2004, 2010) considers the Ruan-ruan language to be an extinct non-Altaic language that is not related to any modern-day language (i.e., a language isolate) and is hence unrelated to Mongolic. Vovin (2004) notes that Old Turkic had borrowed some words from an unknown non-Altaic language that may have been Ruan-ruan. In 2018 Vovin changed his opinion after new evidence was found through the analysis of the "Brāhmī Bugut" and "Khüis Tolgoi" inscriptions and suggests that the Ruanruan language was in fact a Mongolic language, close but not identical to Middle Mongolian.


title: Rouran Khaganate

text: The Rourans were the first people who used the titles Khagan and Khan for their emperors, replacing the Chanyu of the Xiongnu. The etymology of the title Chanyu is controversial: there are Mongolic, Turkic, Yeniseian versions.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Richard and Mary Parker are fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. They are the parents of Peter Parker, the superhero known as Spider-Man.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Richard and Mary Parker have been adapted to appear in several animated television series and video games. Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz portrayed the characters in the films "The Amazing Spider-Man" (2012) and "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" (2014).


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Richard and Mary Parker were created by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber. For many years prior to "The Amazing Spider-Man Annual" #5 (published in 1968), there had been no explanation of why Peter Parker was being raised by his aunt and uncle, with his parents only appearing in flashbacks and photographs. That issue finally answered the question: Richard and Mary Parker were murdered by Albert Malik, who was one of Johann Schmidt's successors to the persona of Red Skull.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In "The Amazing Spider-Man" #365 (August 1992), Spider-Man's 30th anniversary, they reappeared. Two years later, however, in #388 (April 1994), they were revealed to be Life Model Decoys created by the Chameleon and were destroyed.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In the novel "Mary Jane", it is said they died in a plane accident while going to Switzerland to turn in some important discovery that Richard made. Peter tries to figure out what the discovery was but fails, as he cannot figure out the things Richard has written on his board.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In July 1997, "Untold Tales of Spider-Man" #-1, part of Marvel Comics' "Flashback Month" event, written by Roger Stern and drawn by John Romita, Sr., the characters' origins are expanded. Since then, they have rarely been mentioned.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Captain Richard Parker, a decorated soldier of the United States Army Special Forces and younger brother of Ben Parker, was recruited by Nick Fury, the future director of S.H.I.E.L.D. to the C.I.A.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Mary Fitzpatrick was the daughter of O.S.S. agent "Wild Will" Fitzpatrick. She attended the best schools and eventually followed in her father's footsteps, becoming a C.I.A. translator and data analyst.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Richard and Mary met on the job, fell in love, and married. Originally they eloped, later having a more elaborate service, fooling many. Mary became a field agent like Richard, giving them both an easy cover as a married couple. They were assigned to investigate Baroness Adelicia Von Krupp, who had captured an agent of a "friendly power" (who turned out to be Logan, aka Wolverine, then a Canadian operative called "Agent Ten" and who would eventually become an ally of their son Peter who would grow up to become Spider-Man). They rescued Logan from the Baroness and Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. After that mission, they discovered Mary was pregnant; Logan was actually the first person to congratulate the Parkers, commenting later that he never saw an agent as tough as Richard Parker go that white that fast.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Their son, Peter, was often left in the care of Ben and his wife May when Richard and Mary were away on missions. When Richard and Mary ultimately died, Peter was raised by them.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: While on a mission to investigate Albert Malik, the third Red Skull, they posed as traitors and double agents to infiltrate his criminal organization in Algeria, ultimately being discovered. Malik had an assassin kill the two by sabotaging their airplane and causing it to crash. They were subsequently declared missing in action/presumed dead, as two burnt bodies were found in the remains.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Richard and Mary's son, Peter, grew up to become Spider-Man. Although he has only vague memories of his parents and no memory of their militaristic history, his aunt and uncle share photographs and happy memories with him, but not their belief that they had been traitors to their country. When Peter discovers this, he travels to Algeria. He finds Malik who sends the Finisher to kill Spider-Man. Spider-Man turns the Finisher's missile against him, killing him, but not before revealing that Richard and Mary were in fact innocent. Spider-Man returns to America with evidence and clears his parents' names.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Years later, the Chameleon, working for Harry Osborn, created Life Model Decoys of Richard and Mary. These LMDs were near-perfect robotic replicas of Peter's dead parents, and managed to convince him that they had in fact been held captive overseas for most of his life. Aunt May retained some suspicions, as there were some things they did not know, such as Richard and Mary's elopement. When Peter discovers that they were fake, he suffers a nervous breakdown. When the decoys were ordered to attack Parker, the Mary duplicate—sharing the original's love for her son—saves him instead. Neither LMD survives the incident. After battling the Chameleon, Spider-Man discovers that Harry Osborn was behind the whole thing, as an effort to avenge his (supposedly) dead father, Norman Osborn. Spider-Man then becomes mentally unhinged over time, until having a near-death experience. May Parker eventually learns the truth about the Life Model Decoys, via learning the truth about Spider-Man. May draws strength by talking to the graves of Mary, Richard, and Ben about Peter's life. The cynical mindset of Harry Osborn and the Chameleon was present in the LMDs, particularly during "Maximum Carnage": When Aunt May advises Peter to "listen to your heart", (the pseudo) "Richard" tells a very different lesson:


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: When Shriek uses her psychic powers to turn the whole town against Spider-Man and the other super-heroes, "Richard" remarks that the "moral, orderly" world he remembered while in prison "was just an "illusion!" The evil was here—all along — "festering" beneath the surface!" — inviting a sharp rebuke from Peter's wife, Mary Jane (when exposed as frauds, some of his "parents'" cynicism rubs off on the "son" — with Spider-Man becoming unusually brutal against his enemies and developing a "Spider" alternate personality).


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: The nature and timing of Richard and Mary Parker's fate are somewhat ambiguous in Spider-Man documentation. For one thing, the very fact that Harry Osborn and the Chameleon were able to fool the State Department, Peter, and (for a time) Aunt May into thinking Richard and Mary had "returned" after 20 years implies that the government was never able to solidly confirm the bodies found in the original plane crash were theirs. This uncertainty was exploited by Harry Osborn and the Chameleon: When explaining how he and Mary "survived", the false Richard Parker asserts that the bodies found were of Russian spies who stayed on the plane while they were forced to jump out. According to "Spider-Man: Unmasked", "young Peter was orphaned at an early age when his parents were declared missing in action".


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: It is also ambiguous how old Peter was when his parents mysteriously disappeared: some accounts have it happening in his infancy; others say he was as old as six years—particularly, "The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Spider-Man", 2004. The latter view is supported by Spider-Man's musing, during "The Child Within", that he remembers his parents, yet "they were practically "strangers" to me", as he prepares to fight Green Goblin and Vermin. During the fight, Harry drugs Peter and subsequently discovers that Peter blames himself for his parents' death; Harry conceives the LMD scam to "avenge" his own father shortly after. Another, more comprehensive book on the Marvel Universe (also released in 2004) asserts that Peter's only clear memory of his (real) parents was of the moment they were boarding the fateful plane and he promised them he would be a "good boy" for Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Most Spider-Man stories in the main continuity are vague about Peter's exact age when he was effectively orphaned.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In "Marvel 1602", Peter Parker's parents are briefly mentioned as having worked with Sir Nicholas Fury, Queen Elizabeth's chief of security.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In the alternate timeline of "Bullet Points", Ben is killed a few months into his relationship with May Parker. Richard and Mary promise to "always be there for her", a vow which was later broken.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In the alternate reality created by the Scarlet Witch during the House of M storyline, Peter and Gwen Stacy name their son Richard in name of Peter's father.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Richard has not appeared or been mentioned in the Marvel Mangaverse continuity, although Mary has. In this version, Mary is named Kiri and is Aunt May's sister and is both the leader of the Spider Clan and a Spider demon, who is known as the Spider Queen. She's been plotting to make her son, Peter, the new leader of the Clan, which he later rejects. Disappointed by his rejection, Mary passes leadership of the Spider Clan to her pupil, Venom, causing Peter to give up his Spider-Man identity.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In the alternate reality of MC2, Peter names his son Benjamin Richard Parker, with his second name being in honor of his father.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: The 2003 Epic Comics limited series, "Trouble", was marketed as the "true origin" of Spider-Man. In the story, characters named Richard and Mary met while on summer vacation, and Mary's friend, May, rather than Mary herself, was Peter's mother with none of the characters' last names ever revealed.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Richard "Ray" Parker was a biologist instead of a spy. He and Mary supposedly died in an airplane accident when Peter was six, and Peter still has vague memories of his parents. Before the crash, Richard, along with his friend Eddie Brock Sr., father of Peter's childhood friend Eddie Brock Jr. were working on a cure for terminal malady, in the form of a biological suit that could repair its host body. He recorded a series of tapes addressed to Peter, in which he revealed his fears the suit would be used as a weapon instead of a cure. A tape recorded just before the crash revealed his project had been taken away from him. His project became the basis of Venom. His name and work were known by scientists (including Dr. Curt Connors and the Ultimates Wasp and Giant Man with the former having a written a paper on his work in college), Susan Storm and Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four also knew of him and his work, with the former in particular being a great admirer of it.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In "Ultimate Spider-Man" #100, Richard Parker seemingly reappeared. He recounted that Bolivar Trask, the man responsible for shutting down the cure project, brought the research staff back together. Richard had second thoughts about working on the project, now knowing the suit he developed would be used as a weapon, and chose not to get on the plane. Mary, however, felt Richard was a fool for turning down this opportunity, and appeared willing to leave her husband (this contradicts her earlier sentiments, that Richard was getting in way over his head). After the crash, Richard was approached by government agent Henry Gyrich, for the purposes of launching his own research project in case S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury were ever to go rogue. Gyrich showed Richard a surveillance video proving his son, Peter, was Spider-Man. Afterwards, he revealed himself to May Parker. May, shocked by the possibility that Richard was alive all this time, told him to go away.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Later, in issue #103, Dr. Otto Octavius (who created multiple clones of Spider-Man) reveals that "Richard Parker" was a clone, later confirmed when Susan Storm runs a test on Richard's DNA and finds it identical to Peter's. Apparently, the cloning process severely aged Richard. Though his memories were false, Richard loves Peter like a son and asks the Fantastic Four in particular Sue Storm to look after him before passing away.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In issue #4 of "Ultimate Origins", which takes place 15 years before the current Ultimate timeline, Richard is shown to have been hired by the U.S. government and Nick Fury as part of a project to recreate the Super Soldier Serum. At a covert lab in Dover, New Jersey, Richard worked alongside fellow scientists, a young Hank Pym, Franklin Storm, father of Sue and Johnny Storm, and a young Bruce Banner.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: One day, while Pym and Banner are testing a possible match to the serum, Richard is just outside the lab being visited by his wife and recently born son, Peter. Having just tested the serum on himself, Banner transforms into the Hulk and goes on a rampage, destroying the complex. Richard and Mary are caught in an explosion and severely injured.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Artist Mark Bagley based the likeness of the Ultimate version of Richard Parker on that of Peter Parker as drawn by John Romita, Sr. and Gil Kane in the late 1960s and early 1970s, feeling he hadn't captured Peter's appearance during his earlier run on "The Amazing Spider-Man" in the 1990s.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: During the "Spider-Geddon" storyline, a version of Richard and Mary Parker were riding an airplane provided to them by Wilson Fisk that is carrying them over the Savage Land until it was rigged to crash by Fisk. The two of them perished in the crash while their son Peter was parachuted out of the airplane just in time where he was taken in by the giant spiders and became the Savage Spider-Man.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: Richard and Mary Parker are featured in the "Ultimate Spider-Man" video game with Richard voiced by Loren Lester and Mary having no dialogue. Richard and Eddie Brock Sr. (Eddie Brock's father) used to work together and they created the Venom suit, capable of healing its host, as a possible cure for severe illness. However, the suit is very unstable and Richard and Eddie never got to finish work on it, due to signing a contract with Trask Industries that caused them to lose ownership of the suit and both of them dying in a plane crash shortly after. It is revealed in a flashback at the end of the game that the crash was caused by Eddie Sr. trying the unstable Venom suit on board, which caused him to lose control due to its incompatibility and kill the pilot. Mary Parker was also aboard the plane and one of the only three survivors of the crash, but died in the ambulance shortly after, before she could mention what happened.


title: Richard and Mary Parker

text: In the "Sinister Six" novel trilogy by Adam-Troy Castro ("Gathering of the Sinister Six", "Revenge of the Sinister Six", and "Secret of the Sinister Six"), a man known as the Gentleman — an internationally known criminal mastermind, currently in his late nineties and possessing a strong disdain for the rest of humanity, as well as being the brother of the Red Skull's assassin the Finisher — was revealed to have been partially responsible for Richard and Mary's deaths, having revealed their true identities to the Red Skull, only asking that Peter be spared so that he would be more of a challenge later on in life. The possibility was also raised that Spider-Man had an older sister: the Gentleman's ward, a young woman called Pity, who was capable of climbing walls, possessed a strength level approximately equal to Spider-Man, and could create a "darkness" preventing anyone around her from seeing. At the conclusion of the trilogy, Peter Parker meets Logan, who reveals he worked regularly with the Parkers on joint missions between the American and Canadian secret services; the discovery that Logan was the first person to congratulate Richard after learning that Mary was pregnant prompted Peter to say "Wolverine's practically my Uncle". Logan also clarifies that Pity wasn't his sister; the photographs Peter found of his parents with a little girl were actually part of a long-term cover operation before Peter was born, with both of them still so attached to the memory that Mary kept the pictures and Richard told Logan about it during a joint mission.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: Surcouf was a large French gun-armed cruiser submarine of the mid 20th century. She carried two 8" guns as well as anti-aircraft guns and (for most of her career) a floatplane. "Surcouf" served in the French Navy and, later, the Free French Naval Forces during the Second World War.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: "Surcouf" disappeared during the night of 18/19 February 1942 in the Caribbean Sea, possibly after colliding with the American freighter Thompson Lykes, although this is not definitely established. She was named after the French privateer and slave trader Robert Surcouf. She was the largest submarine built until surpassed by the first Japanese Aircraft carrier submarine in 1944.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: The Washington Naval Treaty had placed strict limits on naval construction by the major naval powers in regard to displacements and artillery calibers of battleships and cruisers. However, no agreements were reached in respect of light ships such as frigates, destroyers or submarines. In addition, to ensure the country's protection and that of the empire, France mounted the construction of an important submarine fleet (79 units in 1939). "Surcouf" was intended to be the first of a class of three submarine cruisers; however, she was the only one completed.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: "Surcouf" had a twin-gun turret with 203 mm (8-inch) guns, the same calibre as the guns of a heavy cruiser, provisioned with 600 rounds. She was designed as an "underwater heavy cruiser", intended to seek out and engage in surface combat. The boat carried a Besson MB.411 observation floatplane in a hangar built aft of the conning tower for reconnaissance and observing fall of shot.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: The boat was equipped with ten torpedo tubes: four tubes in the bow, and two swiveling external launchers in the aft superstructure, each with one 550mm and two torpedo tubes. Eight 550mm and four 400mm reloads were carried. The 203mm/50 Modèle 1924 guns were in a pressure-tight turret forward of the conning tower. The guns had a 60-round magazine capacity and were controlled by a director with a rangefinder, mounted high enough to view an horizon, and able to fire within three minutes after surfacing. Using the boat's periscopes to direct the fire of the main guns, "Surcouf" could increase the visible range to ; originally an elevating platform was supposed to lift lookouts high, but this design was abandoned quickly due to the effect of roll.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: The Besson observation plane could be used to direct fire out to the guns' maximum range. Anti-aircraft cannon and machine guns were mounted on the top of the hangar.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: "Surcouf" also carried a motorboat, and contained a cargo compartment with fittings to restrain 40 prisoners or lodge 40 passengers. The submarine's fuel tanks were very large; enough fuel for a range and supplies for 90-day patrols could be carried.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: The first commanding officer was Frigate Captain ("Capitaine de Frégate", a rank equivalent to Commander) Raymond de Belot.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: To replace the floatplane, whose functioning was initially constrained and limited in use, trials were conducted with an autogyro in 1938.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: "Surcouf" was never painted in olive green as shown on numerous models and drawings. From the beginning of the boat's career until 1932, the boat was painted the same grey colour as surface warships, but thereafter in "Prussian dark blue", a colour which was retained until the end of 1940 when it was repainted with two tones of grey, serving as camouflage on the hull and conning tower.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: " Surcouf" is often depicted in her 1932 state, displaying the flag of the Free French Naval Forces which was not created until 1940.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: Soon after "Surcouf" was launched, the London Naval Treaty finally placed restrictions on submarine designs. Among other things, each signatory (France included) was permitted to possess no more than three large submarines, each not exceeding standard displacement, with guns not exceeding in caliber. "Surcouf", which would have exceeded these limits, was specially exempt from the rules at the insistence of Navy Minister Georges Leygues, but other 'big-gun' submarines of this boat's class could no longer be built.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: In 1940, "Surcouf" was based in Cherbourg, but in May, when the Germans invaded, she was being refitted in Brest following a mission in the Antilles and Gulf of Guinea. Under command of Frigate Captain Martin, unable to dive and with only one engine functioning and a jammed rudder, she limped across the English Channel and sought refuge in Plymouth.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: On 3 July, the British, concerned that the French Fleet would be taken over by the German "Kriegsmarine" at the French armistice, executed Operation Catapult. The Royal Navy blockaded the harbours where French warships were anchored, and delivered an ultimatum: rejoin the fight against Germany, be put out of reach of the Germans, or scuttle. Few accepted willingly; the North African fleet at Mers-el-Kebir and the ships based at Dakar (French West Africa) refused. The French battleships in North Africa were eventually attacked and all but one sunk at their moorings by the Mediterranean Fleet.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: French ships lying at ports in Britain and Canada were also boarded by armed marines, sailors and soldiers, but the only serious incident took place at Plymouth aboard "Surcouf" on 3 July, when two Royal Navy submarine officers, Commander Denis 'Lofty' Sprague, captain of , and Lieutenant Patrick Griffiths of , and French warrant officer mechanic Yves Daniel were fatally wounded, and a British seaman, Albert Webb, was shot dead by the submarine's doctor.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: By August 1940, the British completed "Surcouf"s refit and turned her over to the Free French Naval Forces ("Forces Navales Françaises Libres", FNFL) for convoy patrol. The only officer not repatriated from the original crew, Frigate Captain Georges Louis Blaison, became the new commanding officer. Because of Anglo-French tensions with regard to the submarine, accusations were made by each side that the other was spying for Vichy France; the British also claimed "Surcouf" was attacking British ships. Later, a British officer and two sailors were put aboard for "liaison" purposes. One real drawback was she required a crew of 110–130 men, which represented three crews of more conventional submarines. This led to Royal Navy reluctance to recommission her.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: "Surcouf" then went to the Canadian base at Halifax, Nova Scotia and escorted trans-Atlantic convoys. In April 1941, she was damaged by a German plane at Devonport.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: On 28 July, "Surcouf" went to the United States Naval Shipyard at Kittery, Maine for a three-month refit.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: After leaving the shipyard, "Surcouf" went to New London, Connecticut, perhaps to receive additional training for her crew. "Surcouf" left New London on 27 November to return to Halifax.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: In December 1941, "Surcouf" carried the Free French Admiral Émile Muselier to Canada, putting into Quebec City. While the Admiral was in Ottawa, conferring with the Canadian government, "Surcouf"s captain was approached by "The New York Times" reporter Ira Wolfert and questioned about the rumours the submarine would liberate Saint-Pierre and Miquelon for Free France. Wolfert accompanied the submarine to Halifax, where, on 20 December, they joined Free French "Escorteurs" corvettes "Mimosa", , and , and on 24 December, took control of the islands for Free France without resistance.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull had just concluded an agreement with the Vichy government guaranteeing the neutrality of French possessions in the Western hemisphere, and he threatened to resign unless President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt demanded a restoration of the status quo. Roosevelt did so, but when Charles de Gaulle refused, Roosevelt dropped the matter. Ira Wolfert's stories – very favourable to the Free French (and bearing no sign of kidnapping or other duress) – helped swing American popular opinion away from Vichy. The Axis Powers' declaration of war on the United States in December 1941 negated the agreement, but the U.S. did not sever diplomatic ties with the Vichy Government until November 1942.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: In January 1942, the Free French leadership decided to send "Surcouf" to the Pacific theatre, after she had been re-supplied at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. However, her movement south triggered rumours that "Surcouf" was going to liberate Martinique from the Vichy regime.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: In fact, "Surcouf" was bound for Sydney, Australia, via Tahiti. She departed Halifax on 2 February for Bermuda, which she left on 12 February, bound for the Panama Canal.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: "Surcouf" vanished on the night of 18/19 February 1942, about north of Cristóbal, Panama, while "en route" for Tahiti, "via" the Panama Canal. An American report concluded the disappearance was due to an accidental collision with the American freighter . Steaming alone from Guantanamo Bay on what was a very dark night, the freighter reported hitting and running down a partially submerged object which scraped along her side and keel. Her lookouts heard people in the water but, thinking she had hit a U-boat, the freighter did not stop although cries for help were heard in English. A signal was sent to Panama describing the incident.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: The loss resulted in 130 deaths (including 4 Royal Navy personnel), under the command of Frigate Captain Georges Louis Nicolas Blaison. The loss of "Surcouf" was announced by the Free French Headquarters in London on 18 April 1942, and was reported in "The New York Times" the next day. It was not reported "Surcouf" was sunk as the result of a collision with the "Thompson Lykes" until January 1945.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: The investigation of the French commission concluded the disappearance was the consequence of misunderstanding. A Consolidated PBY, patrolling the same waters on the night of 18/19 February, could have attacked "Surcouf" believing her to be German or Japanese. This theory could have been backed by several elements:


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: Inquiries into the incident were haphazard and late, while a later French inquiry supported the idea that the sinking had been due to "friendly fire"; this conclusion was supported by Rear Admiral Auphan in his book "The French Navy in World War II". Charles de Gaulle stated in his memoirs that "Surcouf" "had sunk with all hands".


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: As no one has officially dived or verified the wreck of "Surcouf", its location is unknown. If one assumes the "Thompson Lykes" incident was indeed the event of "Surcouf's" sinking, then the wreck would lie deep at .


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: A monument commemorates the loss in the port of Cherbourg in Normandy, France. The loss is also commemorated by the Free French Memorial on Lyle Hill in Greenock, Scotland.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: As there is no conclusive confirmation that "Thompson Lykes" collided with "Surcouf", and her wreck has yet to be discovered, there are alternative stories of her fate. James Rusbridger examined some of these theories in his book "Who Sank Surcouf?", finding them all easily dismissed except one: the records of the 6th Heavy Bomber Group operating out of Panama show them sinking a large submarine the morning of 19 February. Since no German submarine was lost in the area on that date, it could have been "Surcouf". He suggested the collision had damaged "Surcouf"s radio and the stricken boat limped towards Panama hoping for the best.


title: French submarine Surcouf

text: A conspiracy theory, based on no significant evidence, held that the "Surcouf", during its stationing at New London in late 1941, had been caught treacherously supplying a German U–boat in Long Island Sound, pursued by the American training subs "Marlin" and "Mackerel" out of New London, and sunk. The rumor circulated into the early 21st century, but is false since the "Surcouf"s later movements south are well documented.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: Hottentot (British and South African English ) is a term that was historically used to refer to the Khoekhoe, and indigenous nomadic pastoralists of South Africa.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: The term has also been used to refer to the non-Bantu-speaking indigenous population as a whole, now collectively known as the Khoisan. Use of the term "Hottentot" is now deprecated and is offensive, the preferred name for the non-Bantu speaking indigenous people of the Western Cape area being "Khoi", "Khoekhoe" (formerly "Khoikhoi").


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: "Hottentot" originated among the "old Dutch" settlers of the Dutch Cape Colony run by United East India Company (VOC), who arrived in the region in the 1650s, and it entered English usage from Dutch in the seventeenth century. However, no definitive Dutch etymology for the term is known. A widely claimed etymology is from a supposed Dutch expression equivalent to "stammerer, stutterer", applied to the Khoikhoi on account of the distinctive click consonants in their languages. There is, however, no earlier attestation of a word "hottentot" to support this theory. An alternative possibility is that the name derived from an overheard term in chants accompanying Khoikhoi or San dances, but seventeenth-century transcriptions of such chants offer no conclusive evidence for this.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: An early Anglicisation of the term is recorded as "hodmandod" in the years around 1700. The reduced Afrikaans/Dutch form "hotnot" has also been borrowed into South African English as a derogatory term for black people.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: In seventeenth-century Dutch, "Hottentot" was at times used to denote all black people (synonymously with "Kaffir"), but at least some speakers were careful to use the term "Hottentot" to denote what they thought of as a race distinct from the supposedly darker-skinned people referred to as "Kaffirs". This distinction between the non-Bantu "Cape Blacks" and the Bantu was noted as early as 1684 by the French anthropologist François Bernier. The idea that "Hottentot" referred strictly to the non-Bantu peoples of southern Africa was well embedded in colonial scholarly thought by the end of the eighteenth century.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: The main meaning of "Hottentot" as an ethnic term in the 19th and the 20th centuries has therefore been to denote the Khoikhoi people specifically. However, "Hottentot" also continued to be used through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in a wider sense, to include all of the people now usually referred to with the modern term "Khoisan" (not only the Khoikhoi, but also the San people, hunter-gatherer populations from the interior of southern Africa who had not been known to the seventeenth-century settlers, once often referred to as "Bosjesmans" in Dutch and "Bushmen" in English).


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: In George Murdock's "Atlas of World Cultures" (1981), the author refers to "Hottentots" as a "subfamily of the Khoisan linguistic family" who "became detribalized in contact with Dutch settlers in 1652, mixing with the latter and with slaves brought by them from Indonesia to form the hybrid population known today as the Cape Coloured." The term "Hottentot" remained in use as a technical ethnic term in anthropological and historiographical literature into the late 1980s. The 1996 edition of the "Dictionary of South African English" merely says that "the word 'Hottentot' is seen by some as offensive and Khoikhoi is sometimes substituted as a name for the people, particularly in scholarly contexts". Yet, by the 1980s, because of the racist connotations discussed below, it was increasingly seen as too derogatory and offensive to be used in an ethnic sense.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: From the eighteenth century onwards, the term "hottentot" was also a term of abuse without a specific ethnic sense, comparable to "barbarian" or "cannibal". In its ethnic sense, it had developed its connotations of savagery and primitivism by the seventeenth century; colonial depictions of the Hottentots (Khoikhoi) in the seventeenth to eighteenth century were characterized by savagery, often suggestive of cannibalism or the consumption of raw flesh, physiological features such as steatopygia and elongated labia perceived as primitive or "simian" and a perception of the click sounds in the Khoikhoi languages as "bestial". Thus, it can be said that the European, colonial image of "the Hottentot" from the seventeenth century onwards bore little relation to any realities of the Khoisan in Africa, and that this image fed into the usage of "hottentot" as a generalised derogatory term. Correspondingly, the word is "sometimes used as ugly slang for a black person".


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: Use of the derived term "hotnot" was explicitly proscribed in South Africa by 2008. Accordingly, much recent scholarship on the history of colonial attitudes to the Khoisan or on the European trope of "the Hottentot" puts the term "Hottentot" in scare quotes.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: In its original role of ethnic designator, the term "Hottentot" was included into a variety of derived terms, such as the Hottentot Corps, the first Coloured unit to be formed in the South African army, originally called the "Corps Bastaard Hottentoten" (Dutch: "Corps of Bastard Hottentots"), organised in 1781 by the Dutch colonial administration of the time.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: The word is also used in the common names of a wide variety of plants and animals, such as the "Africanis" dogs sometimes called "Hottentot hunting dogs", the fish "Pachymetopon blochii", frequently simply called "hottentots", "Carpobrotus edulis", commonly known as a "hottentot-fig", and "Trachyandra", commonly known as "hottentot cabbage". It has also given rise to the scientific name for one genus of scorpion, "Hottentotta", and may be the origin of the epithet "tottum" in the botanical name "Leucospermum tottum".


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: The word is still used as part of a tongue-twister in modern Dutch, "Hottentottententententoonstelling", meaning a "Hottentot tent exhibition".


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: In Denmark the word is used to designate a person with a lot of energy, usually in connection to small children exhibiting frenzied behaviour, and is not generally considered to be a racial term.


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: In the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz", the Cowardly Lion, blustering about his lack of courage, says: "What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the 'ape' in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?" Other cast members reply: "Courage."


title: Hottentot (racial term)

text: Tom Lehrer's song "We Will All Go Together When We Go" refers to both "Hottentots and Eskimos" going at the same time.


title: Chinese Internet slang

text: Chinese Internet slang () refers to various kinds of Internet slang used by people on the Chinese Internet. It is often coined in response to events, the influence of the mass media and foreign culture, and the desires of users to simplify and update the Chinese language. Slang that first appears on the Internet is often adopted to become current in everyday life. It includes content relating to all aspects of social life, mass media, economic, and political topics and the like. Internet slang is arguably the fastest-changing aspect of the language, created by a number of different influences—technology, mass media and foreign culture amongst others.


title: Chinese Internet slang

text: The categories given below are not exclusive and are used distinguish the different kinds of Chinese internet slang. Some phrases may belong in more than one category.


title: Chinese Internet slang

text: Chinese users commonly use a pinyin-enabled QWERTY keyboard. Upper-case letters are easy to type and require no transformation. (Lower-case letters spell words which are changed into Chinese characters). Latin alphabet abbreviations (rather than Chinese characters) are also sometimes used to evade censorship.


title: Chinese Internet slang

text: The "People’s Daily" coined the term "vulgar Internet language" to refer the Internet language that "offends the moral" and suggested a blacklist to discourage the usage of them.


title: Dappy

text: Costadinos Contostavlos (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Κοντόσταυλος; born 11 June 1987), better known by his stage name Dappy, is a British rapper and singer. He is the lead singer of the Camden-based hip hop and grime trio N-Dubz, with his cousin Tulisa and Fazer. He was known for his lack of dress sense and his love for what he describes as "eye-catching headwear". His trademark was wearing a selection of woolly chullos (sometimes referred to as "Dappy hats"), turning up one or both of the ear-flaps of the hat.


title: Dappy

text: Dappy appeared on the television show "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" on 29 November 2007, on Phill Jupitus' team, and wore a trademark "Dappy hat", also giving one to Simon Amstell to wear as part of the gag. Despite vowing he would not return to the show he appeared for a second time on the guest team on 4 December 2008 and for a third time, on Phill's team, which was broadcast on 18 November 2009. He is known to be a good friend of Chris Moyles and also gets on well with Tinchy Stryder after releasing a single together, called "Number 1". Dappy has made cameo appearances on K.I.G's "Head, Shoulders, Kneez and Toez" music video, Gracious K's "Migraine Skank" music video, and Chipmunk's "Chip Diddy Chip" music video, as one of Chipmunk's school friends.


title: Dappy

text: It was announced on 17 June 2011 that N-Dubz had left their American record deal, amid rumours that the band had split. These rumours began circulating again in August 2011; however, Dappy insisted the band had not split, but were simply taking a break. As such, during the band's hiatus period, all three members decided to embark upon solo careers. Before the band's split, Dappy signed a contract with Takeover Entertainment Ltd that confirmed that if the band ever split or went on hiatus, he would continue as a solo artist. His first taste of solo stardom came as a guest artist on label-mate Tinchy Stryder's single "Spaceship", which was released in June 2011. While deciding upon his debut solo single, Dappy was contacted by Def Jam, asking him what he would like done with the demos of a track N-Dubz had recorded whilst under the label, which remained unreleased. Dappy decided to re-record the track, "No Regrets", and release it as his debut solo effort. Featuring a cameo appearance from band-mate Fazer, "No Regrets" took the charts by storm, peaking at #1 in the UK and Scotland, and at #8 in Ireland.


title: Dappy

text: Following the success of "No Regrets", Dappy claimed during an interview that: "With my solo stuff, I really want to earn the respect of an older audience. I don't think there's any shame in trying to write music that will be recognised by people I admire. Bono. I have big goals. I want to have two #1 singles back-to-back as a solo artist." Dappy soon succeeded, gaining praise from Queen guitarist Brian May, who was "impressed" with "No Regrets". As a result, Dappy invited May for a guest stint on his second single, which coincidentally was titled "Rockstar". "Rockstar" was released on 26 February 2012. On 29 February, Dappy revealed that the title of his album would be "Bad Intentions", claiming that the album "is motivational music for people who believe they can't do nothing, a battle we have with our own mind." The album's third single was "Come with Me". Subsequently, he revealed that the fourth single will be "Good Intentions", and if "Rockstar" peaks at #1 on the UK Singles Chart, he will enlist Barbadian singer Rihanna and British superstar Adele, who will both have vocal sections on the single. He claimed that Rihanna contacted him after she was impressed with a demo tape she had heard of his music. Dappy confirmed in September 2011, before the release of "Rockstar" and "Bad Intentions", that the album's final single will be a collaboration with The Wanted, which will be released towards the end of 2012.


title: Dappy

text: Dappy's single "Beautiful Me" was released on 29 March 2015 and reached number 19 in the UK. He followed this up with the promotional release "100 (Built for This)" in July, and the full single "Money Can't Buy" in September 2015. All three songs were set to be included on his second All Around the World album "Miracles" in November 2015, but the album did not eventuate and Dappy has since left All Around the World and released his first independent EP, "Eros Apollo", on Christmas Day 2015.


title: Dappy

text: In 2016, Dappy released the singles "Hip Hip Hooray" and "Kiss" and a Freestyle called "Messi" these songs again were released via an independent label/management partnership called LEX Music Corp


title: Dappy

text: On 31 July 2017, Dappy released the single "Straight Facts". Again this was part of a new management deal with PlayDirty manager Vash who currently manages Krept and Konan . The music video was released the same day.


title: Dappy

text: On 12 October 2017, Dappy released his second single under the PlayDirty management called "Spotlight"; this song charted at 56 in the UK Singles Chart.


title: Dappy

text: In 2018, he released his single "Oh My" featuring fellow British rapper Ay Em. It peaked at 23 in the charts. He followed this up with the song "All We Know" which peaked at 64 and released an acoustic onto YouTube called "Count on Me".


title: Dappy

text: In mid 2007, Dappy released "Love for My Slum" with fellow UK rap artist Baker Trouble, which was number one on Channel U (then Channel AKA, now Now 70s) for several weeks and was a big hit in the underground urban scene. However, it didn't do as well with the media and was heavily criticized for a scene in which Dappy is standing outside a block of expensive luxury flats with a "rich kid" who is trying to look like a gangster. "The Independent" wrote, "His lyrics combine jealousy with anger: 'You got too much to lose / You're in a great position... You wouldn't last a minute where I'm from / You'd go missing / So appreciate what you got / 'cos I'm still wishing.' And then he grabs the rich kid by his coat, pulls him toward him, and punches him in the face. The silent boy falls instantly to the pavement ... Do scenes like these suggest that music videos are encouraging their viewers to indulge in criminality?". Other papers put that he was "idolising thuggery". When asked in interviews about the single, following these comments he said "these people need to listen to the lyrics, they are about showing appreciation to what you've got".


title: Dappy

text: On 12 January 2010, Contostavlos appeared on "The Chris Moyles Show" on BBC Radio 1 with Fazer and Tulisa. The show received a text message from a woman in Boston, Lincolnshire, complaining that Dappy was "vile" and "a little boy with a silly hat" and that N-Dubz were "losers". Dappy secretly copied her phone number from the studio console and, the following day, tried calling her and sent threatening messages including: "Your gonna die. U sent a very bad msg towards Ndubz on The Chris Moyels show yesterday Morning and for that reason u will never be left alone!!! u say sorry I will leave u alone u ****." The woman claimed that she continued to receive messages after declining to apologise, one of which said: "u dum f*********head u can call me names over the radio but when I call u direct u chicken out u punk!nana f******niii, Dappy". Dappy's management later apologised on his behalf and offered free tickets to one of his concerts, but he has not apologised to the woman personally. N-Dubz were subsequently dropped from the Government's anti-bullying "R U Cyber Safe?" campaign.


title: Dappy

text: Dappy was convicted of battery in 2007. In December 2008, Dappy pleaded guilty to two accounts of assault at Chelmsford Magistrates Court, Essex after reportedly spitting in a woman's face while drunk on a night out. Dappy pleaded guilty to the offences and for each count received four weeks' imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, to run concurrently and 100 hours community service. He was also ordered to pay £50 compensation to the woman and her friend and £300 costs.


title: Dappy

text: In January 2013, he was found guilty by a jury at Guildford Crown Court of assault and affray and given a suspended sentence of six months imprisonment. In February 2014, Dappy hit a man in Chelmsford for which, on 19 June 2014, he was convicted of common assault and fined. In September of the same year, he was convicted of an assault in Reading and given a two-month suspended prison sentence.


title: Dappy

text: In 2017, Dappy was convicted of possession of a bladed article in a public place following an altercation with his partner and given a suspended prison sentence.


title: Dappy

text: Dappy is cousin to fellow band member Tulisa. He lives in St Albans in which he has two sons, Gino and Milo.


title: Dappy

text: Born and raised in Camden Town, North London, Contostavlos grew up with his Greek parents, Byron Contostavlos and Zoi Agorou and older brother Spiros. Byron died on 12 April 2007. His father was from Cyprus, and his mother is from Sparta.


title: Dappy

text: He revealed that he is a "massive" Arsenal fan when N-Dubz appeared on "Live from Studio Five", gushing "it is an honour to sit next to you" to former Arsenal striker Ian Wright who was one of three hosts on the show.


title: Dappy

text: In May 2015, Dappy endorsed his manager Archie Lamb's father, Norman, in the Liberal Democrats leadership election.


title: John Parke Custis

text: John Parke Custis (November 27, 1754 – November 5, 1781) was an American planter. He was a son of Martha Washington and stepson of George Washington.


title: John Parke Custis

text: A son of Daniel Parke Custis, a wealthy planter with nearly three hundred enslaved persons and thousands of acres of land, and Martha Dandridge Custis, he was most likely born at White House, his parents' plantation on the Pamunkey River in New Kent County, Virginia.


title: John Parke Custis

text: Following his father's death in 1757, almost of land and about 285 enslaved persons were held in trust for him until he came of age. In January 1759, his mother married George Washington. The Washingtons raised him and his younger sister Martha (Patsy) Parke Custis (1756–1773) at Mount Vernon. Washington became his legal guardian and the administrator of the Custis Estate. Upon his sister's death in 1773 at the age of seventeen, Custis became the sole heir of the Custis estate. "Jacky", as he was known by his family, was a troubled, lazy and "free-willed" child who took no interest in his studies.


title: John Parke Custis

text: In 1773, at the age of eighteen, Jacky announced to the Washingtons his engagement to Eleanor Calvert, a daughter of Benedict Swingate Calvert and granddaughter of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore. George and Martha were greatly surprised by the marriage choice due to the couple being so young. During that year, Custis began to attend King's College (later Columbia University) in New York City, but left soon afterwards when his sister died.


title: John Parke Custis

text: On February 3, 1774, Custis married Eleanor at her family's home at the Mount Airy estate. Its restored mansion is the center of Rosaryville State Park in Prince George's County, Maryland. After their marriage, the couple settled at the White House plantation. After the couple had lived at the White House for more than two years, Custis purchased the Abingdon plantation in Fairfax County, Virginia (now in Arlington County, Virginia). The couple settled there during the winter of 1778–1779.


title: John Parke Custis

text: The terms of Abingdon's purchase were extremely unfavorable to Custis. His eagerness and inexperience allowed Abingdon's owner, Robert Alexander, to take advantage of him in the transaction, which required Custis to pay the principal of the purchase and compound interest over a 24-year period. The compound interest on the £12,000 purchase price would require Custis to pay over £48,000 during the 24 years. To accomplish this, Custis would need to pay over £2,000 each year during the period of the agreement. When he learned of the terms of the purchase, George Washington informed Custis that "No Virginia Estate (except a few under the best management) can stand simple Interest how then can they bear compound Interest".


title: John Parke Custis

text: Custis' behavior in this and other matters prompted George Washington to write in 1778: "I am afraid Jack Custis, in spite of all of the admonition and advice I gave him about selling faster than he bought, is making a ruinous hand of his Estate." By 1781, the financial strains of the Abingdon purchase had almost bankrupted Custis.


title: John Parke Custis

text: According to one account, Custis served on Washington's staff during the Siege of Boston in 1775–1776 and served as an emissary to the British forces there.


title: John Parke Custis

text: George Washington was not pleased with Custis' reported performance in the legislature. Washington wrote to Custis:


title: John Parke Custis

text: I do not suppose that so young a senator as you are, so little versed in political disquisition, can yet have much influence in a popular assembly, composed of various talents and different views, but it is in your power to be punctual in attendance.


title: John Parke Custis

text: Custis served as a civilian aide-de-camp to Washington during the siege of Yorktown. However, Custis contracted "camp fever", which could have been an illness now described as epidemic typhus, or dysentery while at Yorktown. Shortly after the surrender of Cornwallis, Custis died on November 5, 1781, in New Kent County at Eltham, Virginia, in the home of Colonel Burwell Bassett, brother-in-law of Martha Washington. He was buried at his family's plot near Queen's Creek, in York County, near Williamsburg, Virginia.


title: John Parke Custis

text: With Custis's premature death at 26, his widow sent her two youngest children (Eleanor and George) to Mount Vernon to be raised by the Washingtons. In 1783, she married David Stuart of Alexandria, Virginia, with whom she had 16 more children.


title: John Parke Custis

text: Although Custis had become well-established at Abingdon, his financial matters were in a state of disarray because of his poor business judgement and wartime taxation. After his death in 1781, it took the administrators of the Custis Estate more than a decade to negotiate an end to the transaction through which Custis had purchased Abingdon. Because he died intestate, his estate was not fully liquidated until the 1811 death of his widow. His four children inherited more than 600 slaves.


title: John Parke Custis

text: Part of the Abingdon estate is now on the grounds of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. When he purchased Abingdon, Custis also bought a nearby property that after his death became Arlington Plantation and later, Arlington National Cemetery.


title: The Selection

text: The Selection is a young adult novel by Kiera Cass first published on April 14, 2012 by HarperCollins. It is the first in a five-book series, followed by "The Elite" (2013), "The One" (2014), "The Heir" (2015) and "The Crown" (May 2016). The last two take place twenty years after the events in the first three.


title: The Selection

text: In addition, four spin-off novellas were released. The first two, "The Prince" and "The Guard", are narrated from the point of view of two supporting characters. "The Queen" and "The Favorite" are prequels, focusing on two other supporting characters in the main series. All four novellas were collected into one volume "Happily Ever After", including bonus content and epilogues.


title: The Selection

text: Kiera Cass stated that she began writing "The Selection" after thinking about the differences between Esther and Cinderella, wondering if either of them were happy with how they ended up. She also commented that she had written the book "from start to finish", while her writing process for the other books differed.


title: The Selection

text: In a futuristic world, society is divided into castes, with Ones being the most prosperous, consisting of royals and elites, and Eights being mostly orphans/homeless, drug users, handicapped, and unemployable. America Singer is a Five, the "artist" caste (e.g. musicians, artists, actors, dancers, etc.). Since their prosperity depends on their desirability, Fives live a lower-class life. America, however, doesn't care, because she enjoys entertaining, especially with a violin.


title: The Selection

text: The prince of Illéa, Maxon Schreave, announces that he is following in his father's footsteps by holding the Selection, a competition for the prince's hand in marriage and the crown. Despite pressure from her mother, America has no interest in entering the competition, because she already has Aspen, her next-door neighbor and secret boyfriend.


title: The Selection

text: After having a conversation with her mother which lets her keep most of her savings, America decides to surprise Aspen with dinner at her treehouse. This upsets him, as he believes he should be the one to provide for her, but is unable to because he is a Six (the servant caste) and has no means of doing so since he already has to take care of his mother and siblings. In the end, Aspen decides to break up with America. The end of their relationship, plus a bribe from her mother, leads America to enter the Selection and later into the palace where she has to compete with thirty-four other girls to win the prince's heart. It also helps that her time in the palace is accompanied by a small stipend sent to her family.


title: The Selection

text: America easily makes friends (Marlee Tames, a Four and a farmer) and enemies (Celeste Newsome, a Two and a model) within the first week of her stay, but her unique personality also catches the attention of the palace staff and the country. She still doesn't want to marry Prince Maxton, but a chance meeting in the gardens causes them to befriend each other. America still loves Aspen, but she gradually starts to fall in love with the prince. Maxon gives America his first kiss, and she begins to think that she could maybe marry him and forget Aspen. Rebels constantly attack the palace, which helps turn away the weak-earthed competitors, but also makes things tense, especially when the rebels seem to be getting closer. Things also become tense in the competition when America starts to feel jealous of Maxon spending time with the other Selected.


title: The Selection

text: America eventually sees Aspen again when he enters the palace as a new member of the guard. He was drafted into the army, where he earned top honors. Aspen's appearance confuses America's feelings even more and she begins to feel like she is still in love with him when he sneaks into her room to see her. Having a romantic relationship with someone other than the prince during the competition is considered treason, and the punishment for treason can be as severe as death. America sees Aspen in spite of the possible consequences.


title: The Selection

text: After an attack from the rebels that leads to three of the Selected leaving, Prince Maxon decides to narrow down the girls from ten to six, calling them The Elite. When America's name ends up among the six chosen to stay, she realizes that she does have feelings for Maxon and could see herself happy with him. With this in mind, she tells Aspen that she cannot continue their romantic liaisons. Instead of getting discouraged, Aspen claims that he will fight even harder to win her love again over Maxon. The book ends with America finally realizing that she is exactly where she ought to be — among the Elite.


title: The Selection

text: "Publishers Weekly" gave a positive review for the book, praising the character of America. The "School Library Journal", MTV, and Booklist all gave positive reviews for "The Selection" while in contrast, "Kirkus Reviews" panned the novel. "The A.V. Club" gave a mostly positive review, commenting that it "is something of a "Hunger Games" rip-off, but at least it's an entertaining one". It won the 2017 Young Hoosier Book Award (Middle Grade).


title: The Selection

text: On January 12, 2012, a one-star review of Cass' book, "The Selection", was posted on the book reviewing site Goodreads and on the reviewer's blog. Later on the same day, Kiera Cass' literary agent, Elana Roth, posted a series of derogatory tweets on the social networking site Twitter. In a conversation that Cass and Roth believed was private—but was, in fact, public—Roth called the reviewer names, and both Roth and Cass collaborated on how best to bump the negative review down and boost positive reviews by manipulating the ranking system themselves. The controversy sparked an article by "Publishers Weekly" speaking out against this practice and raised an outcry from multiple reviewers, bloggers, and publications against the cyber-bullying of nonprofessional reviewers by authors and agents.


title: The Selection

text: In 2012, Cass announced that The CW had optioned the rights to her series with the intent of turning it into a television series. The series would star Aimee Teegarden as America Singer, but the pilot was not picked up to series for the fall 2012 television season. A second pilot was ordered for the CW in 2013, starring Yael Grobglas as the same character but was also not picked up by the network.


title: The Selection

text: In 2015, Warner Bros. announced they had bought the film rights of the book. Denise Di Novi and Alison Greenspan of DiNovi Pictures would produce alongside Pouya Shahbazian, with Katie Lovejoy to write the screenplay.


title: The Selection

text: In April 2020, it was announced that Netflix would be adapting the first book. As stated in a "Variety" article, it is going to be directed by Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour, previously partnered with Netflix on 2018's "Nappily Ever After." Pouya Shahbazian and Denise Di Novi are set to produce, with Margaret French Isaac as executive producer.


title: Close-mid front unrounded vowel

text: The close-mid front unrounded vowel, or high-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .


title: Close-mid front unrounded vowel

text: For the close-mid front unrounded vowel that is usually transcribed with the symbol or , see near-close front unrounded vowel. If the usual symbol is , the vowel is listed here.


title: Madan Puri

text: Madan Puri (30 September 1915 – 13 January 1985) was an Indian actor of Hindi and Punjabi films. His brothers were actors Chaman Puri and Amrish Puri. As a character actor mainly in negative roles (villain), he acted in about 430 films in a career spanning above fifty years.


title: Madan Puri

text: Madan Lal Puri was born in Nawanshahr, Punjab, in a Punjabi Hindu family, to Nihal Chand Puri and Ved Kaur. He studied in Rahon. He was the second of five children, with elder brother Chaman Puri, younger brothers Amrish Puri and Harish Lal Puri and younger sister Chandrakanta Mehra. He was an cousin of singing sensation Kundan Lal Sehgal.


title: Madan Puri

text: Puri was one of the doyens of the Indian film industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was the first cousin of the singer K. L. Saigal, with whose help he started to make a mark in Bollywood. Once Puri was an established star he did the same for his brother, Amrish Puri, by helping him in establishing himself in the movie world.


title: Madan Puri

text: Puri had an acting career which spanned over 40 years from the 1940s through to the mid-1980s. He appeared in more than 430 films. His film debut was titled "Ahinsa" in 1946. Madan made an average of eight films per year, playing villains and negative characters and the hero's or heroine's uncle, father or elder brother, grandfather, police officer and politician. He starred in a number of Punjabi films throughout his career such as "Jatti", "Jatt Punjabi" and so on.