title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: Tunbridge Wells is mentioned in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Valley of Fear", H. G. Wells' "Christina Alberta's Father", Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow", Philip Reeve's "Mortal Engines", E. M. Forster's "A Room with a View", Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest", Arnold Bennett's "The Old Wives' Tale", and Zadie Smith's "White Teeth". The Inspector Bone mysteries by Susannah Stacey are also set in and around Tunbridge Wells. In Fanny Burney's 1796 novel "Camilla", several characters make an excursion to Tunbridge Wells, and there are many references to The Pantiles and other local sites.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: In "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens the children find a mug in the cupboard entitled "A Present From Tunbridge Wells."


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: David Lean's epic film "Lawrence of Arabia" closes with Mr. Dryden answering King Feisal: "Me, your Highness? On the whole, I wish I'd stayed in Tunbridge Wells", and in the James Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" Tracy Di Vicenzo says to Bond that she "looks forward to living as Mr and Mrs James Bond of Acacia Avenue, Tunbridge Wells".


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: Tunbridge Wells is referenced in another of David Lean's films, "A Passage to India", in which Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) exclaims about the odious wife of the District Collector that "My only consolation is that Mrs. Turton will soon be retired to a villa in Tunbridge Wells." Less well known is H. G. Wells's sending up in his 1925 book "Christina Alberta's Father": "Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge Wells, and there is nothing really like it upon our planet".


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: In "Spitting Image", when Britain enters a revolution, Royal Tunbridge Wells declares independence under the slogan of 'liberty, equality, gardening'.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: In the TV sketch comedy series "Rutland Weekend Television", there is a musical sketch that tells the tale of three US Navy sailors who plan to spend an exciting—"More exciting than a book of Norman Mailer's"—and glamour-filled 24 hours in Royal Tunbridge Wells.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: In the UK, the town has a reputation for being a bastion of the middle class and a typical example of "Middle England". This is reflected in the locution "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells", first used by a fictional writer of letters to national newspapers in the 1950s, to express outrage and defend conservative values.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: The Pantiles and its chalybeate spring have been the landmarks most readily associated with Royal Tunbridge Wells ever since the founding of the town, though the steel Millennium Clock at the Fiveways area in the centre of town, designed by local sculptor Jon Mills for the Millennium celebrations, stakes a claim to be a modern landmark.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: Tunbridge Wells contains green spaces that range from woodland to maintained grounds and parks. The most substantial areas of woodland are the Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Commons, which comprise of wood and heathland and are close to the centre of the town. Open areas of the common are popular picnic spots, and there is a maintained cricket ground situated next to Wellington Rocks.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: Located in the town centre opposite the railway station, Calverley Grounds is a historic park with ornamental gardens and a bandstand (now demolished). The park was part of Mount Pleasant House, which was converted into a hotel in 1837, until 1920, when the borough council purchased it for the town. The bandstand dated from 1924 and was damaged by an incendiary bomb in 1940 and parts of the metalwork were sold for scrap metal. The subsequently repaired bandstand and the adjacent pavilion were intended to form part of a new centre to the park but were never completed. The bandstand was demolished in 2010 although the pavilion still exists as a café. Just inside the entrance to the park coming from the station is a memorial to Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, hero of the Battle of Britain, who lived and died in Tunbridge Wells.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: Dunorlan Park, at the largest maintained green space in the town, was once a private garden that was part of the millionaire Henry Reed's now demolished mansion, and only passed into public possession in 1941. The gardens were designed by the Victorian gardener James Green, but over the years they became overgrown, making it hard to distinguish the full scope of Marnock's design. In 1996 Tunbridge Wells Borough Council applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant to restore the park in line with the original designs, and in 2003/4 Dunorlan underwent a £2.8 million restoration. The River Teise rises in the park, and two dams on it have created a pond and a boating lake. Dunorlan is listed as Grade II on English Heritage's National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: Great Culverden Park is a small, -acre woodland in the Mount Ephraim area behind the site of the old Kent and Sussex Hospital and is the remnant grounds of the previous Great Culverden House designed by Decimus Burton that used to stand on Mount Ephraim.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: The oldest public park in Royal Tunbridge Wells is Grosvenor Recreation Ground designed by landscape architect Robert Marnock, located close to the town centre on Quarry Road. It was opened in 1889 by Mayor John Stone-Wigg, on the land that was formerly Caverley Waterworks. The lake area with dripping wells remains, but the other lakes, bandstand and open air pool have all gone. There is a bowls club, café, toilets and children's play area, including cycle track. It is adjoined by the Hilbert recreation ground, parts of which have been designated as a local nature reserve by the Kent High Weald Partnership; these include Roundabout Woods and the adjoining grass areas. The Hilbert Recreation Ground was donated to the town by Cllr Edward Strange in 1931, on the site of the form John Beane's Charity Farm. There are two football pitches, built as part of the King George V playing fields scheme, and a skatepark.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: The Salomons Museum preserves the home of David Salomons, the first Jew to serve as Lord Mayor of London and the first non-Christian to sit in Parliament. It preserves the bench from which Salomons rose to speak as the first Jewish MP ever to speak in Parliament.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: The town's largest theatre is the Assembly Hall in Crescent Road, which has a capacity of 1020. Nearby, in Church Road, is the Trinity Arts Centre which is a converted church.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: The Forum is a 250-capacity live music venue in the town, run by Jason Dormon, where many bands have played their early concerts on their way to success.


title: Royal Tunbridge Wells

text: Royal Tunbridge Wells has one local commercial radio station, KMFM West Kent. The BBC has its regional centre in the town at the Great Hall on Mount Pleasant Road. It is the base of BBC Radio Kent and for BBC South East regional programmes, the complex contains studios and offices.


title: Yakisoba

text: Yakisoba ( ), "fried noodle", is a Japanese noodle stir-fried dish. Usually, soba noodles are made from buckwheat flour, but soba in yakisoba are Chinese noodles (Chuuka soba) made from wheat flour, typically flavored with a condiment similar to Worcestershire sauce. The dish first appeared in food stalls in Japan around the 1930s.


title: Yakisoba

text: Yakisoba is prepared by frying ramen-style wheat noodles (also called "Chinese noodles" 中華麺) with bite-sized pork and finely chopped vegetables like cabbage, onions, bean sprouts, and carrots. It is then flavored with yakisoba sauce, salt, and pepper. It can be served with a variety of garnishes, such as "aonori" (seaweed powder), "beni shōga" (shredded pickled ginger), "katsuobushi" (bonito fish flakes), or Japanese-style mayonnaise.


title: Yakisoba

text: A more novel way of serving yakisoba in Japan is to pile the noodles into a bun sliced down the middle in the style of a hot dog, and garnish the top with mayonnaise and shreds of red pickled ginger. Called yakisoba-pan ("pan" meaning "bread"), it is commonly available at "konbini" (convenience stores) and school canteens.


title: Yakisoba

text: Sometimes, udon is used as a replacement for the Chinese-style soba and called "yakiudon". This variation originates in Kitakyushu or Kokura, in Fukuoka Prefecture.


title: Yakisoba

text: In Okinawa, yakisoba is popular with locals as well as US service members stationed on the island. After the 1945 hostilities with Japan ended on Okinawa, the US military command supplied American food products to the displaced and malnourished islanders. Yakisoba was prepared with alternative packaged ingredients such as spaghetti, spam, ketchup, any available vegetable (usually canned), and mayonnaise. Mess halls and other on-base eateries often serve yakisoba.


title: Yakisoba

text: Along with typical Okinawan meats such as pork or chicken, fried spam, chopped hot dogs, and sliced ham are still popular postwar additions to yakisoba eaten by islanders today, along with common local vegetables such as cabbage and carrots.Okinawa-style yakisoba is generally made with Okinawa soba, a wheat noodle much thicker than what is commonly used for yakisoba in the rest of Japan, and flavored with pre-packaged yakisoba sauce.


title: Nishabdham

text: Nishabdham () is a 2020 Indian mystery film directed by Hemant Madhukar and co-produced by Kona Venkat and T. G. Vishwa Prasad. The film stars R. Madhavan, Anushka Shetty, Michael Madsen, Anjali, Subbaraju, and Shalini Pandey. Although the film was intended to have no dialogues, it was later shot simultaneously in Telugu and Tamil, with the latter version titled Silence. The film is released along with the dubbed versions in Malayalam and Kannada languages, through Amazon Prime Video on 2 October 2020.


title: Nishabdham

text: In 1972, a couple spending Christmas night at a villa near Seattle is mysteriously murdered, with the male victim being crucified. The King County takes possession of the villa, which remains unsold until 2019 due to its reputation as a haunted house.


title: Nishabdham

text: Sakshi, a deaf-mute artist, travels with her fiancé to the villa to find a painting of a previous owner whose ghost is believed to have killed the couple. However, she runs away blood-stained after a while and gets hit by a car. Detective Mahalakshmi and Captain Richard Dawkins are assigned to investigate. It is revealed that Sakshi's fiancé has died in the basement, and as his corpse is taken out, a key falls from his hand. Maha interrogates Sakshi in the hospital, learning that she found his body crucified and could not see the attacker. Maha then researches the victim, Anthony Gonsalves, a famous cellist whose previous wife committed suicide.


title: Nishabdham

text: As many girls have already gone missing in Seattle, the police are under heavy scrutiny. The initial investigation is inconclusive, so Sakshi is interviewed again. It is revealed that soon after her engagement with Anthony, Sakshi's best friend Sonali went missing. Sakshi recounts her past. She grew up in an orphanage in Sequim where she met Sonali. One day, she received an invitation to show her art in a Seattle gallery. Sonali, who is very possessive, does not agree but changes her mind after deciding to live with Sakshi. At the gallery, Sakshi meets Vivek, a photographer. Anthony, a new exhibition's guest of honor, meets Sakshi and is impressed with her work. He donates a million dollars to her orphanage and invites her to his concert. Sakshi attends and is mesmerized by his music. They grow closer and eventually fall in love and get engaged. After Sonali went missing, she decided to go to the villa for a week to relax and find the painting.


title: Nishabdham

text: Maha realises that Sonali wants all of Sakshi's attention after seeing similar behavior in a child. She goes to the orphanage to investigate Sonali's disappearance, suspecting a connection to Anthony's death. She learns that Sonali's only friend was Sakshi, even getting arrested for stabbing someone who went out with her. Maha also discovers a drawing of a crucifixion in Sonali's room. Concerned, Maha goes to Sakshi's house and encounters a hooded man who escapes after she shoots at him. The police searches the villa again, hoping to discover evidence against Sonali. Tom finds the key in the basement brings it to Richard, who kills Tom and pockets it. Maha notices Richard's coat button next to Tom's corpse and suspects his involvement, so she breaks into his office and gets the key. She then trails Richard and follows him to a farmhouse, which she discovers secretly belongs to Anthony. Richard searches for the house's CCTV footage to no avail and leaves. Soon afterwards, the hooded man, revealed to be Vivek, who took the footage earlier, meets with Sakshi at the Space Needle, where a flashback occurs.


title: Nishabdham

text: Vivek and Sakshi became good friends and started living together with Sonali, who becomes jealous. Vivek is hurt, but Sakshi explains Sonali's nature. When Sonali and Sakshi were baristas, a customer asked Sakshi out. Sonali insists that he is a flirt and tried to prove it. Sonali and Sakshi go out with him for coffee, and Sonali rubbed his leg. The customer put his hand up Sonali's skirt under the table, so she brought her hand up and stabbed it with a fork, leading to her arrest. Vivek decides to give Sonali a chance, and they begin to get along. With Sakshi's encouragement, Vivek and Sonali fall in love. Later on, when Anthony proposes to Sakshi, Sonali is displeased. One day after Anthony's concert, his fans greet him. Some kiss him and even give him their phone number. Sonali tries to convince Sakshi that Anthony is also a flirt, but Sakshi dismisses her. Sonali texts him flirtatiously to prove it. He refuses at first but eventually agrees to meet her. Sakshi reassured Sonali that he does not have bad intentions, but Sonali went to meet him anyway, with Sakshi secretly observing them. She sees them drink and get intimate in the farmhouse. However, Anthony suddenly kills Sonali. Richard arrives at the scene and helps Anthony clean up the scene. Sakshi left unnoticed and told Vivek what happened. They went to the police station, where she recognized Richard. Anthony brought Sakshi to Richard again to report Sonali's disappearance, where she saw a poster for a girl who gave Anthony her number. Sakshi discovered that the dates of the disappearances coincide with Anthony's concerts. She planned to take revenge with Vivek by deceiving Anthony to go to the villa so Vivek can kill him. After Anthony is knocked out and restrained, they interrogate him after he wakes up.


title: Nishabdham

text: Anthony reveals that he killed his wife and her lover at a motel for their unfaithfulness. Richard entered the room and decided to let him continue. When he went to meet Richard outside, Richard reveals he had come to the same motel to investigate his wife, who was also cheating on him in another room. Anthony then proceeded to kill Richard's wife, and Richard helps cover up the murders. Subsequently, Anthony begins killing all unfaithful women who hit on him, and Richard hides all the bodies and evidence. Upon hearing this, Sakshi kills Anthony in rage.


title: Nishabdham

text: In the present, Sakshi and Vivek decide to expose Richard to the FBI using the footage. However, Richard kidnaps Vivek and holds him hostage. Maha, who put a tracker on Richard's car earlier, kills Richard and saves them. Afterwards, Richard and Anthony's crimes are finally proven, and Anthony's murder officially remains unsolved. The film ends with Sakshi and Vivek paying respects to Sonali at her grave.


title: Nishabdham

text: In 2013, director Hemant Madhukar re-watched Singeetam Srinivasa Rao's dialogue-less film "Pushpaka Vimana" (1987) and developed a desire to make a similar dialogue-less film. He was keen to explore the idea with a hearing and speech impaired protagonist. Once he wrote the story that would become "Nishabdham", he pitched it to the PVP Group for production, but there was no progress for months despite PVP liking the idea. Madhukar then discussed the project with screenwriter Kona Venkat, who helped improvise the script and develop the screenplay. Venkat felt it had potential to be an "international project", and included dialogues.


title: Nishabdham

text: R. Madhavan and Taapsee Pannu were signed on to play the lead roles, though the actress later opted out citing a scheduling conflict. While on a flight, Venkat had a chance meeting with Anushka Shetty, narrated the script to her, and she joined the project. Anjali was cast as an American police officer, while American actor Michael Madsen was cast in an important role. Shalini Pandey, Subbaraju, and Srinivas Avasarala were cast in supporting roles.


title: Nishabdham

text: Principal photography began in May 2019. The filming took place predominantly in the United States, with a 60-day long schedule. The film was shot simultaneously in Telugu and Tamil, while international actors spoke their lines in English.


title: Nishabdham

text: The film was scheduled to be released on 21 February 2020 but was postponed to 2 April 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the film's release was postponed indefinitely. The official trailer was launched by Amazon Prime Video on 21 September 2020.


title: Nishabdham

text: The film was released through Prime Video on 2 October 2020 in Telugu and Tamil languages, along with dubbed versions in Malayalam and Kannada.


title: Nishabdham

text: Regarding the Telugu version, "The Times of India" gave the film three out of five stars and stated, ""Nishabdham" on the whole promises to be a treat, not just to Anushka’s fans but to movie buffs who love thrillers too. Sadly, it doesn’t always live up to that promise because all it ends up being is a stylish film with no depth". Regarding the Tamil version, "The Times of India" gave the film a rating of two out of five stars and noted that ""Silence" is meant to be a whodunit, but the moment you get the plot points, the film stops being one" and additionally stated that "the Tamil version resembles a dubbed film".


title: Nishabdham

text: Karthik Kumar of "Hindustan Times" called "Nishabdham" "a colossal mess", and added, "Despite the presence of some talented stars like Anushka and Madhavan, the film is excruciatingly boring and lacks the thrills to keep one invested throughout." Sowmya Rajendran writing for "The News Minute", opined that "The ideas must have sounded good on paper but the writing and execution, unfortunately, don't hold up." While appreciating the performances of Shetty and Pandey, Sowmya wrote "Michael Madsen as police chief Richard Dickens deserved more to his character. With a limp and a swagger, he does his best with what he's given."


title: Nishabdham

text: The soundtrack was composed by Gopi Sundar, whereas the lyrics for the Telugu version are written by Bhaskarabhatla, Sreejo, Krishna Kanth, and Ramajogayya Sastry. The song "Ninne Ninne" in Telugu and "Neeye Neeye" in Tamil was released as single from the album on 17 December 2019. "Madhuramithe" in Telugu and "Pudhu Unarve" in Tamil were released on 29 September 2020.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: Oliver James Palmer (born 21 January 1992) is an English professional footballer who plays as a striker for club Wrexham.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: Born in Epsom, Surrey, Palmer supported Wimbledon as a child, for whom his grandfather Tony Wright played in the 1950s. He stopped supporting the club following their relocation to Milton Keynes, stating "My team was Wimbledon as a kid – but I wasn't going to support Milton Keynes Dons". He attended Therfield School from 2003 to 2008.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: Having progressed through the youth system at Woking, Palmer was selected for the England Colleges National Team in 2010, and later signed a first-team contract in August of that year. Palmer was subsequently loaned out to fellow Conference South club St Albans City in November 2010 and scored one goal from five appearances. He finished 2010–11 with two goals from 20 appearances for Woking and signed a new one-year contract with the club after the end of the season.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: After he was recalled from a loan spell at Boreham Wood, Palmer signed for fellow Conference South club Havant & Waterlooville permanently in September 2011. After seven goals from five appearances, League One club Charlton Athletic were reportedly interested in signing him. Palmer finished 2012–13 as Conference South joint top scorer with 25 goals from 42 appearances and was also named Player of the Year.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: Palmer signed for newly promoted League Two club Mansfield Town on 2 August 2013 on a two-year contract for an undisclosed fee. He debuted a day later as a 61st-minute substitute in a 2–0 defeat away to Scunthorpe United and scored his first goal in a 1–0 win away to Wycombe Wanderers on 17 August.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: On 5 January 2015, Palmer joined Conference Premier club Grimsby Town on an initial one-month loan. He scored on his debut at home to league-leaders Barnet on 17 January, scoring Grimsby's first goal in a 3–1 victory. Palmer's loan at Grimsby was extended on 30 January until the end of the season. He missed a month due to a hamstring injury, scoring on his return with the opener away to former club Woking on 7 March, which finished as a 2–1 victory. Palmer scored a brace in the play-off semi-final second leg against Eastleigh, the first coming in the 35th minute and the second coming in the 71st minute, which made the score 3–0, meaning Grimsby won the tie 5–1 on aggregate. He started in the 2015 Conference Premier play-off Final at Wembley Stadium on 17 May 2015, which finished as a 1–1 draw after extra time, but Grimsby lost the subsequent penalty shoot-out 5–3 to Bristol Rovers.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: On 6 July 2015, Palmer signed for League Two club Leyton Orient for an undisclosed fee on a two-year contract. He debuted on the opening day of 2015–16 in a 2–0 win at home to Barnet, having entered the match as an 89th-minute substitute and scored his first goal after being introduced as a 76th-minute substitute in a 3–0 win at home to Stevenage on 18 August.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: On 31 January 2017, Palmer joined League Two club Luton Town on loan until the end of 2016–17. He debuted four days later in a 1–1 draw away to former loan club Grimsby Town, having entered the match as a 58th-minute substitute. After coming on as a substitute in the 73rd minute, Palmer scored his first goal for Luton with the third goal in a 3–0 victory at home to Hartlepool United on 14 February. Having entered Luton's 3–2 defeat away to Blackpool in the first leg of the play-off semi-final on 14 May as an 86th-minute substitute, Palmer was an unused substitute in the second leg four days later, which resulted in a 3–3 draw and a 6–5 defeat on aggregate. He completed the loan spell with 18 appearances and three goals.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: On 26 June 2017, Palmer signed a two-year contract with newly promoted League Two club Lincoln City. He scored his first goal for Lincoln in an EFL Trophy tie against Mansfield Town on 29 August. Palmer came on as a 63rd-minute substitute as Lincoln beat Shrewsbury Town 1–0 at Wembley Stadium in the 2018 EFL Trophy Final on 8 April 2018, having been named in the Team of the Tournament prior to the match.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: Palmer signed for fellow League Two club Crawley Town on 27 June 2018 on a two-year contract for a nominal fee. In February 2019, Palmer apologised after he and teammate Dominic Poleon posted a video online mocking Crawley's training facilities and teammates. He left the club in the summer of 2020 following the expiry of his contract.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: Palmer joined League One club AFC Wimbledon on 7 August 2020 on a contract of undisclosed length. He scored his first goal for Wimbledon in a 2–1 defeat to Lincoln City on 2 January 2021.


title: Ollie Palmer

text: Palmer signed for National League club Wrexham on 24 January 2022 on a three-and-a-half-year contract for a club record fee of £300,000. Owner Rob McElhenney compared his arrival to that of Irish Stephen in Braveheart on Welcome to Wrexham.


title: Salmon as food

text: Salmon is a common food fish classified as an oily fish with a rich content of protein and omega-3 fatty acids. In Norway – a major producer of farmed and wild salmon – farmed and wild salmon differ only slightly in terms of food quality and safety, with farmed salmon having lower content of environmental contaminants, and wild salmon having higher content of omega-3 fatty acids.


title: Salmon as food

text: Raw wild salmon is 70% water, 20% protein, 6% fat, and contains no carbohydrates (table). In a 100 gram reference amount, raw salmon supplies 142 calories, and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of several B vitamins, especially vitamin B12 at 133% DV, selenium (52% DV), and phosphorus (29% DV). Dietary minerals in moderate content are copper (15% DV) and potassium (10% DV).


title: Salmon as food

text: PCBs, metformin, and mercury are some of the pollutants found in wild salmon, caught close to wastewater treatment plants of major metropolitan areas in the United States’ Pacific Northwest.


title: Salmon as food

text: Most Atlantic salmon available on the world market are farmed, whereas the majority of Pacific salmon are wild-caught.


title: Salmon as food

text: Canned salmon in the U.S. is usually wild from the Pacific Ocean, though some farmed salmon is available in cans. Smoked salmon is another preparation method, and can either be hot- or cold-smoked. Lox can refer either to cold-smoked salmon or to salmon cured in a brine solution (also called gravlax). Traditional canned salmon includes some skin (which is harmless) and bone (which adds calcium). Skinless and boneless canned salmon is also available.


title: Salmon as food

text: Raw salmon flesh may contain "Anisakis" nematodes, marine parasites that cause anisakiasis. Before the availability of refrigeration, Japan did not consume raw salmon. Salmon and salmon roe have only recently come into use in making sashimi (raw fish) and sushi, with the introduction of parasite-free Norwegian salmon in the late 1980s.


title: Salmon as food

text: Ordinary types of cooked salmon contain 500–1,500 mg DHA and 300–1,000 mg EPA (two similar species of fatty acids) per 100 grams


title: Ratnasimha

text: Ratnasimha (IAST: Ratna-Siṃha, r. c. 1302 –1303 CE) was a ruler of the Medapata (Mewar) kingdom in present-day Rajasthan, India. He belonged to the Rawal branch of the Guhila dynasty, which ruled from the Chitrakuta fort (modern Chittorgarh). The last ruler of this branch, he was defeated by Alauddin Khalji in the Siege of Chittorgarh in 1303 CE.


title: Ratnasimha

text: The Rajasthani legends mention him as the Rajput ruler "Rawal" Ratan Singh. A fictionalized version of him appears as Ratan Sen in Malik Muhammad Jayasi's "Padmavat". According to this poem, Alauddin Khalji attacked Chittorgarh to obtain his beautiful wife Rani Padmini; Alauddin captured the fort after Ratan Sen died in a combat with king Devpal of Kumbhalner; subsequently, Padmini and other women committed Jauhar to protect their honour. The historicity of this legend is disputed.


title: Ratnasimha

text: <mapframe text="Delhi and Chittor in present-day India" width="400" height="400" zoom="5" longitude="75.94" latitude="26.77">


title: Ratnasimha

text: Ratnasimha succeeded his father Samarasimha as the Guhila ruler of Mewar around 1302 CE. He belonged to the Rawal branch of the family, which ruled from Chitrakuta fort (now known as Chittorgarh).


title: Ratnasimha

text: Ratnasimha is attested by the 1302 CE (1359 VS) Dariba temple inscription, which records a gift of 16 "drammas" (coins) to the temple during his reign. The inscription mentions his title as "Maharajakula" (which appears as "Maharawal" in colloquial literature).


title: Ratnasimha

text: In 1303, Alauddin Khalji, the Sultan of Delhi, invaded Chittor. After reaching the foot of the Chittor hill, two wings of his army attacked the fort from two different sides. After two months of unsuccessful siege, the attackers pelted stones on the fort using "manjaniq"s (mangonels), but still failed to capture the fort. Finally, on 26 August 1303, the invaders managed to enter the fort.


title: Ratnasimha

text: According to Amir Khusrau, who claims to have entered the fort with Alauddin, the ruler ("Rai") of Chittor surrendered to Alauddin. The Delhi Sultan massacred 30,000 other Hindus, but pardoned the ruler and his family. He assigned the fort to his young son Khizr Khan with Malik Shahin as the actual administrator, renamed it to Khizrabad, and then returned to Delhi.


title: Ratnasimha

text: Khusrau's account is also corroborated by the 14th century Muslim chroniclers Ziauddin Barani and Isami. Historian Banarsi Prasad Saksena believes that Khusrau's account is correct. Kishori Saran Lal, on the other hand, doubts this account, arguing that it seems improbable that Alauddin spared the life of Chittor's ruler while ordering a massacre of 30,000 other Hindus.


title: Ratnasimha

text: According to historian Dasharatha Sharma, this suggests that the ruler of Chitrakuta (IAST: Citrakūṭa i.e. Chittor) survived the siege, and corroborates the accounts of the Muslim chroniclers.


title: Ratnasimha

text: The earliest Hindu account of the event is the Kumbhalgarh "prashasti" (eulogistic inscription) of 1460 CE. This inscription was issued by Kumbhakarna of the Guhila family's Rana branch, who were a rival of Ratnasimha's Rawal branch. The inscription states:


title: Ratnasimha

text: The inscription mentions the title of Ratnasimha and his predecessors as ""Rāula"", thus indicating that they belonged to the Rawal branch. However, Lakshmasimha (IAST: Lakṣmasiṃha) is explicitly called a ""Mahārāṇā"", thus indicating that he belonged to the Rana branch.


title: Ratnasimha

text: The word "departed" ("tasmin gate" in Sanskrit) in this verse has been variously interpreted as "died" or "deserted the defenders". Historian Gaurishankar Hirachand Ojha interpreted this verse to suggest that Ratnasimha bravely fought till death. Some other scholars such as Kalika Ranjan Qanungo and R. B. Haldar also accepted Ojha's translation.


title: Ratnasimha

text: However, according to other historians such as Akshay Kirti Vyas and R. C. Majumdar, the verse means that Ratnasimha cowardly fled from the battlefield. Subimal Chandra Datta points out that while describing the death of Lakshmasimha, the inscription states that he "departed for heaven". But while describing Ratnasimha's departure, it simply mentions that he "departed". This, combined with the surrender of the "Rai" described in the Muslim accounts, suggests that Ratnasimha departed from the battlefield and surrendered to Alauddin.


title: Ratnasimha

text: The 16th century "Padmavat" legend claims that Ratnasimha ("Ratan Sen") died in a combat with the ruler of Kumbhalner, before Alauddin's conquest of the fort. The 17th century chronicler Muhnot Nainsi in his Nainsi ri Khyat, who wrote under Rajput patronage, states that Ratnasimha ("Ratan Singh") died on the battlefield.


title: Ratnasimha

text: A legendary account of Ratan Singh (as Ratan Sen) appears in Malik Muhammad Jayasi's 16th century epic poem "Padmavat". According to this account, he married the Sinhala princess Padmini after a quest. Alauddin Khalji invaded Chittor to obtain Padmini, after hearing of her beauty. Ratan Sen was captured by the Delhi forces, but his Rajput warriors rescued him on Padmini's request. While he was in captivity, his Rajput neighbour - Devpal of Kumbhalner - sent a marriage proposal to Padmini. Ratan Sen fought with Devpal to avenge this insult, and the two Rajput kings killed each other in a single combat. Alauddin then invaded Chittor, but before he could capture the fort, Padmini (Padmavati) and other women immolated themselves.


title: Ratnasimha

text: Several adaptions of the "Padmavat" legend appeared in the later years. The 16th century historians Firishta and Haji-ud-Dabir were among the earliest writers to mention Padmini as a historical figure, but their accounts differ with each other and with that of Jayasi. For example, according to Firishta, Padmini was a daughter (not wife) of Ratan Sen. Some other medieval legends written under Rajput patronage state that the contemporary ruler of Chittor was Lakhamsi (Lakshmasimha), and Ratan Sen (Ratnasimha) was his younger brother. Another version, compiled by James Tod, states that Padmini was the wife of Lakhamsi's uncle Bhimsi (Bhimasimha); this version does not mention Ratan Sen at all.


title: Ratnasimha

text: Historian Kalika Ranjan Qanungo, in his "A Critical Analysis of the Padmini Legend" (1960), proposed that there were actually four distinct people with similar names. According to him, the medieval bards confused and linked these four individuals:


title: Ratnasimha

text: Other historians, such as Jogendra Prasad Singh (1964) and Ram Vallabh Somani (1976) have criticized Qanungo's theory based on the following points:


title: Ratnasimha

text: Regarding the historicity of Padmini's story, historian S. Roy wrote in "The History and Culture of the Indian People" that "... Abu-'l Fazl definitely says that he gives the story of Padminī from "ancient chronicles", which cannot obviously refer to the "Padmāvat", an almost contemporary work. ... it must be admitted that there is no inherent impossibility in the kernel of the story of Padminī devoid of all embellishments, and it should not be totally rejected off-hand as a myth. But it is impossible, at the present state of our knowledge, to regard it definitely as a historical fact."


title: Seaplane

text: A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteristics: floatplanes and flying boats; the latter are generally far larger and can carry far more. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are in a subclass called amphibious aircraft, or amphibians. Seaplanes were sometimes called "hydroplanes", but currently this term applies instead to motor-powered watercraft that use the technique of hydrodynamic lift to skim the surface of water when running at speed.


title: Seaplane

text: The use of seaplanes gradually tapered off after World War II, partially because of the investments in airports during the war but mainly because landplanes were less constrained by weather conditions that could result in sea states being too high to operate seaplanes while landplanes could continue to operate. In the 21st century, seaplanes maintain a few niche uses, such as for aerial firefighting, air transport around archipelagos, and access to undeveloped or roadless areas, some of which have numerous lakes.


title: Seaplane

text: The word "seaplane" is used to describe two types of air/water vehicles: the floatplane and the flying boat.


title: Seaplane

text: The term "seaplane" is used by some instead of "floatplane". This is the standard British usage. This article treats both flying boats and floatplanes as types of seaplane, in the US fashion.


title: Seaplane

text: An amphibious aircraft can take off and land both on conventional runways and water. A true seaplane can only take off and land on water. There are amphibious flying boats and amphibious floatplanes, as well as some hybrid designs, "e.g.", floatplanes with retractable floats.


title: Seaplane

text: Modern (2019) production seaplanes range in size from flying-boat type light-sport aircraft amphibians, such as the Icon A5 and AirMax SeaMax, to the 100,000 lb ShinMaywa US-2 and Beriev Be-200 multi-role amphibians. Examples in between include the Dornier Seastar flying-boat type, 12-seat, utility amphibian and the Canadair CL-415 amphibious water-bomber. The Viking Air DHC-6 Twin Otter and Cessna Caravan utility aircraft have landing gear options which include amphibious floats.


title: Seaplane

text: The Frenchman Alphonse Pénaud filed the first patent for a flying machine with a boat hull and retractable landing gear in 1876, but Austrian Wilhelm Kress is credited with building the first seaplane, "Drachenflieger," in 1898, although its two Daimler engines were inadequate for take-off, and it later sank when one of its two floats collapsed.


title: Seaplane

text: On 6 June 1905, Gabriel Voisin took off and landed on the River Seine with a towed kite glider on floats. The first of his unpowered flights was . He later built a powered floatplane in partnership with Louis Blériot, but the machine was unsuccessful.


title: Seaplane

text: Other pioneers also attempted to attach floats to aircraft in Britain, Australia, France and the United States.


title: Seaplane

text: On 28 March 1910, Frenchman Henri Fabre flew the first successful powered seaplane, the Gnome Omega-powered "hydravion", a trimaran floatplane. Fabre's first successful take off and landing by a powered seaplane inspired other aviators, and he designed floats for several other flyers. The first hydro-aeroplane competition was held in Monaco in March 1912, featuring aircraft using floats from Fabre, Curtiss, Tellier and Farman. This led to the first scheduled seaplane passenger services, at Aix-les-Bains, using a five-seat Sanchez-Besa from 1 August 1912. The French Navy ordered its first floatplane in 1912. On May 10, 1912 Glenn L. Martin flew a homemade seaplane in California, setting records for distance and time.


title: Seaplane

text: In 1911−12, François Denhaut constructed the first seaplane with a fuselage forming a hull, using various designs to give hydrodynamic lift at take-off. Its first successful flight was on 13 April 1912.


title: Seaplane

text: Throughout 1910 and 1911, American pioneering aviator Glenn Curtiss developed his floatplane into the successful Curtiss Model D land-plane, which used a larger central float and sponsons. Combining floats with wheels, he made the first amphibian flights in February 1911 and was awarded the first Collier Trophy for US flight achievement. From 1912, his experiments with a hulled seaplane resulted in the 1913 Model E and Model F, which he called "flying-boats".


title: Seaplane

text: In February 1911, the United States Navy took delivery of the Curtiss Model E and soon tested landings on and take-offs from ships, using the Curtiss Model D.


title: Seaplane

text: In Britain, Captain Edward Wakefield and Oscar Gnosspelius began to explore the feasibility of flight from water in 1908. They decided to make use of Windermere in the Lake District, England's largest lake. The latter's first attempts to fly attracted large crowds, though the aircraft failed to take off and required a re-design of the floats incorporating features from the boat hulls of the lake's motor boat racing club member Isaac Borwick. Meanwhile, Wakefield ordered a floatplane similar to the design of the 1910 Fabre Hydravion. By November 1911, both Gnosspelius and Wakefield had aircraft capable of flight from water and awaited suitable weather conditions. Gnosspelius's flight was short-lived, as the aircraft crashed into the lake. Wakefield's pilot, however, taking advantage of a light northerly wind, successfully took off and flew at a height of to Ferry Nab, where he made a wide turn and returned for a perfect landing on the lake's surface.


title: Seaplane

text: In Switzerland, Emile Taddéoli equipped the Dufaux 4 biplane with swimmers and successfully took off in 1912. A seaplane was used during the Balkan Wars in 1913, when a Greek "Astra Hydravion" did a reconnaissance of the Turkish fleet and dropped four bombs.


title: Seaplane

text: In 1913, the "Daily Mail" newspaper put up a £10,000 prize for the first non-stop aerial crossing of the Atlantic, which was soon "enhanced by a further sum" from the "Women's Aerial League of Great Britain".


title: Seaplane

text: American businessman Rodman Wanamaker became determined that the prize should go to an American aircraft and commissioned the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to design and build an aircraft capable of making the flight. Curtiss's development of the "Flying Fish" flying boat in 1913 brought him into contact with John Cyril Porte, a retired Royal Navy Lieutenant, aircraft designer and test pilot who was to become an influential British aviation pioneer. Recognising that many of the early accidents were attributable to a poor understanding of handling while in contact with the water, the pair's efforts went into developing practical hull designs to make the transatlantic crossing possible.


title: Seaplane

text: The two years before World War I's breakout also saw the privately produced pair of Benoist XIV biplane flying boats, designed by Thomas W. Benoist, initiate the start of the first heavier-than-air airline service anywhere in the world, and the first airline service of any kind at all in the United States.


title: Seaplane

text: At the same time, the British boat-building firm J. Samuel White of Cowes on the Isle of Wight set up a new aircraft division and produced a flying boat in the United Kingdom. This was displayed at the London Air Show at Olympia in 1913. In that same year, a collaboration between the S. E. Saunders boatyard of East Cowes and the Sopwith Aviation Company produced the "Bat Boat", an aircraft with a consuta laminated hull that could operate from land or on water, which today is called an amphibious aircraft. The "Bat Boat" completed several landings on sea and on land and was duly awarded the Mortimer Singer Prize. It was the first all-British aeroplane capable of making six return flights over five miles within five hours.


title: Seaplane

text: In the US, Wanamaker's commission built on Glen Curtiss's previous development and experience with the Curtiss Model F for the U.S. Navy, which rapidly resulted in the "America", designed under Porte's supervision following his study and rearrangement of the flight plan; the aircraft was a conventional biplane design with two-bay, unstaggered wings of unequal span with two pusher inline engines mounted side-by-side above the fuselage in the interplane gap. Wingtip pontoons were attached directly below the lower wings near their tips. The design (later developed into the Model H) resembled Curtiss's earlier flying boats but was built considerably larger so it could carry enough fuel to cover . The three crew members were accommodated in a fully enclosed cabin.


title: Seaplane

text: Trials of the "America" began 23 June 1914 with Porte also as Chief Test Pilot; testing soon revealed serious shortcomings in the design; it was under-powered, so the engines were replaced with more powerful tractor engines. There was also a tendency for the nose of the aircraft to try to submerge as engine power increased while taxiing on water. This phenomenon had not been encountered before, since Curtiss's earlier designs had not used such powerful engines nor large fuel/cargo loads and so were relatively more buoyant. In order to counteract this effect, Curtiss fitted fins to the sides of the bow to add hydrodynamic lift, but soon replaced these with sponsons, a type of underwater pontoon mounted in pairs on either side of a hull. These sponsons (or their engineering equivalents) and the flared, notched hull would remain a prominent feature of flying-boat hull design in the decades to follow. With the problem resolved, preparations for the crossing resumed. While the craft was found to handle "heavily" on takeoff, and required rather longer take-off distances than expected, the full moon on 5 August 1914 was selected for the trans-Atlantic flight; Porte was to pilot the "America" with George Hallett as co-pilot and mechanic.


title: Seaplane

text: Curtiss and Porte's plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Porte sailed for England on 4 August 1914 and rejoined the Navy as a member of the Royal Naval Air Service. Appointed Squadron Commander of Royal Navy Air Station Hendon, he soon convinced the Admiralty of the potential of flying boats and was put in charge of the naval air station at Felixstowe in 1915. Porte persuaded the Admiralty to commandeer (and later, purchase) the "America" and a sister craft from Curtiss. This was followed by an order for 12 more similar aircraft, one Model H-2 and the remaining as Model H-4s. Four examples of the latter were assembled in the UK by Saunders. All of these were similar to the design of the "America" and, indeed, were all referred to as "America"s in Royal Navy service. The engines, however, were changed from the under-powered 160 hp Curtiss engines to 250 hp Rolls-Royce Falcon engines. The initial batch was followed by an order for 50 more (totalling 64 "Americas" overall during the war). Porte also acquired permission to modify and experiment with the Curtiss aircraft.


title: Seaplane

text: The Curtiss H-4s were soon found to have a number of problems; they were underpowered, their hulls were too weak for sustained operations, and they had poor handling characteristics when afloat or taking off. One flying boat pilot, Major Theodore Douglas Hallam, wrote that they were "comic machines, weighing well under two tons; with two comic engines giving, when they functioned, 180 horsepower; and comic control, being nose heavy with engines on and tail heavy in a glide."


title: Seaplane

text: At Felixstowe, Porte made advances in flying-boat design and developed a practical hull design with the distinctive "Felixstowe notch".


title: Seaplane

text: Porte's first design to be implemented in Felixstowe was the Felixstowe Porte Baby, a large, three-engined biplane flying boat, powered by one central pusher and two outboard tractor Rolls-Royce Eagle engines.


title: Seaplane

text: Porte modified an H-4 with a new hull whose improved hydrodynamic qualities made taxiing, take-off and landing much more practical and called it the Felixstowe F.1.


title: Seaplane

text: Porte's innovation of the "Felixstowe notch" enabled the craft to overcome suction from the water more quickly and break free for flight much more easily. This made operating the craft far safer and more reliable. The "notch" breakthrough would soon after evolve into a "step", with the rear section of the lower hull sharply recessed above the forward lower hull section, and that characteristic became a feature of both flying-boat hulls and seaplane floats. The resulting aircraft would be large enough to carry sufficient fuel to fly long distances and could berth alongside ships to take on more fuel.


title: Seaplane

text: Porte then designed a similar hull for the larger Curtiss H-12 flying boat which, while larger and more capable than the H-4s, shared failings of a weak hull and poor water handling. The combination of the new Porte-designed hull, this time fitted with two steps, with the wings of the H-12 and a new tail, and powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle engines, was named the Felixstowe F.2 and first flew in July 1916, proving greatly superior to the Curtiss on which it was based. It was used as the basis for all future designs. It entered production as the Felixstowe F.2A, being used as a patrol aircraft, with about 100 being completed by the end of World War I. Another seventy were built, and these were followed by two F.2c, which were built at Felixstowe.


title: Seaplane

text: In February 1917, the first prototype of the Felixstowe F.3 was flown. It was larger and heavier than the F.2, giving it greater range and heavier bomb load, but poorer agility. Approximately 100 Felixstowe F.3s were produced before the end of the war.


title: Seaplane

text: The Felixstowe F.5 was intended to combine the good qualities of the F.2 and F.3, with the prototype first flying in May 1918. The prototype showed superior qualities to its predecessors but, to ease production, the production version was modified to make extensive use of components from the F.3, which resulted in lower performance than the F.2A or F.5.


title: Seaplane

text: Porte's final design at the Seaplane Experimental Station was the 123-foot-span five-engined Felixstowe Fury triplane (also known as the "Porte Super-Baby" or "PSB").


title: Seaplane

text: F.2, F.3, and F.5 flying boats were extensively employed by the Royal Navy for coastal patrols and to search for German U-boats.


title: Seaplane

text: In 1918, they were towed on lighters towards the northern German ports to extend their range; on 4 June 1918, this resulted in three F.2As engaging in a dogfight with ten German seaplanes, shooting down two confirmed and four probables at no loss. As a result of this action, British flying boats were dazzle-painted to aid identification in combat.


title: Seaplane

text: The Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company independently developed its designs into the small Model F, the larger Model K (several of which were sold to the Russian Naval Air Service), and the Model C for the U.S. Navy. Curtiss, among others, also built the Felixstowe F.5 as the Curtiss F5L, based on the final Porte hull designs and powered by American Liberty engines.


title: Seaplane

text: Meanwhile, the pioneering flying-boat designs of François Denhaut had been steadily developed by the Franco-British Aviation Company into a range of practical craft. Smaller than the Felixstowes, several thousand FBAs served with almost all of the Allied forces as reconnaissance craft, patrolling the North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean Oceans.


title: Seaplane

text: In Italy, several seaplanes were developed, starting with the L series and progressing with the M series. The Macchi M.5, in particular, was extremely manoeuvrable and agile and matched the land-based aircraft it had to fight. Two hundred forty-four were built in total.


title: Seaplane

text: Towards the end of World War I, the aircraft were flown by Italian Navy Aviation, United States Navy and United States Marine Corps airmen. Ensign Charles Hammann won the first Medal of Honor awarded to a United States naval aviator in an M.5


title: Seaplane

text: The German aircraft manufacturing company Hansa-Brandenburg built flying boats starting with the model Hansa-Brandenburg GW in 1916, and had a degree of military success with their Hansa-Brandenburg W.12 two-seat floatplane fighter the following year, being the primary aircraft flown by Imperial Germany's maritime fighter ace, Friedrich Christiansen. The Austro-Hungarian firm Lohner-Werke began building flying boats, starting with the Lohner E in 1914 and the later (1915) widely copied Lohner L.


title: Seaplane

text: In September 1919, British company Supermarine started operating the first flying-boat service in the world, from Woolston to Le Havre in France, but it was short-lived.


title: Seaplane

text: A Curtiss NC-4 became the first airplane to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1919, crossing with multiple stops via the Azores. Of the four that made the attempt, only one completed the flight.


title: Seaplane

text: In 1923, the first successful commercial flying-boat service was introduced, with flights to and from the Channel Islands. After frequent appeals by the industry for subsidies, the Government decided that nationalization was necessary and ordered five aviation companies to merge to form the state-owned Imperial Airways of London (IAL). IAL became the international flag-carrying British airline, providing flying-boat passenger and mail-transport links between Britain and South Africa and India using aircraft such as the Short S.8 Calcutta.


title: Seaplane

text: In 1928, four Supermarine Southampton flying boats of the RAF Far East flight arrived in Melbourne, Australia. The flight was considered proof that flying boats had become a reliable means of long-distance transport.


title: Seaplane

text: In the 1930s, flying boats made it possible to have regular air transport between the U.S. and Europe, opening up new air travel routes to South America, Africa, and Asia. Foynes, Ireland and Botwood, Newfoundland and Labrador were the terminals for many early transatlantic flights. In areas where there were no airfields for land-based aircraft, flying boats could stop at small river, lake or coastal stations to refuel and resupply. The Pan Am Boeing 314 "Clipper" flying boats brought new exotic destinations like the Far East within reach and came to represent the romance of flight.


title: Seaplane

text: By 1931, mail from Australia was reaching Britain in 16 days, or less than half the time taken by sea. In that year, government tenders on both sides of the world invited applications to run new passenger and mail services between the ends of the Empire, and Qantas and IAL were successful with a joint bid. A company under combined ownership was then formed, Qantas Empire Airways. The new ten-day service between Rose Bay, New South Wales, (near Sydney) and Southampton was such a success that the volume of mail soon exceeded aircraft storage space.


title: Seaplane

text: A solution was found by the British government, who had requested Short Brothers to design a large long-range monoplane for IAL in 1933. Partner Qantas purchased six Short Empire flying boats.


title: Seaplane

text: Delivering the mail as quickly as possible generated a lot of competition and some innovative designs. One variant of the Short Empire flying boats was the strange-looking Maia and Mercury. It was a four-engined floatplane "Mercury" (the winged messenger) fixed on top of "Maia", a heavily modified Short Empire flying boat. The larger Maia took off, carrying the smaller Mercury loaded to a weight greater than it could take off with. This allowed the Mercury to carry sufficient fuel for a direct trans-Atlantic flight with the mail. Unfortunately, this was too complex, and the Mercury had to be returned from America by ship. The Mercury did set some distance records before in-flight refuelling was adopted.


title: Seaplane

text: Sir Alan Cobham devised a method of in-flight refuelling in the 1930s. In the air, the Short Empire could be loaded with more fuel than it could take off with. Short Empire flying boats serving the trans-Atlantic crossing were refueled over Foynes; with the extra fuel load, they could make a direct trans-Atlantic flight. A Handley Page H.P.54 Harrow was used as the fuel tanker.


title: Seaplane

text: The German Dornier Do X flying boat was noticeably different from its UK and U.S.-built counterparts. It had wing-like protrusions from the fuselage, called sponsons, to stabilize it on the water without the need for wing-mounted outboard floats. This feature was pioneered by Claudius Dornier during World War I on his Dornier Rs. I giant flying boat and perfected on the Dornier Wal in 1924. The enormous Do X was powered by 12 engines and carried 170 people. It flew across the Atlantic to the Americas in 1929, It was the largest flying boat of its time, but was severely underpowered and was limited by a very low operational ceiling. Only three were built, with a variety of different engines installed, in an attempt to overcome the lack of power. Two of these were sold to Italy.


title: Seaplane

text: The military value of flying boats was well-recognized, and every country bordering on water operated them in a military capacity at the outbreak of the war. They were utilized in various tasks from anti-submarine patrol to air-sea rescue and gunfire spotting for battleships. Aircraft such as the PBM Mariner patrol bomber, PBY Catalina, Short Sunderland, and Grumman Goose recovered downed airmen and operated as scout aircraft over the vast distances of the Pacific Theater and Atlantic. They also sank numerous submarines and found enemy ships. In May 1941, the German battleship "Bismarck" was discovered by a PBY Catalina flying out of Castle Archdale Flying boat base, Lower Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.


title: Seaplane

text: The largest flying boat of the war was the Blohm & Voss BV 238, which was also the heaviest plane to fly during World War II and the largest aircraft built and flown by any of the Axis Powers.


title: Seaplane

text: In November 1939, IAL was restructured into three separate companies: British European Airways, British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), and British South American Airways (which merged with BOAC in 1949), with the change being made official on 1 April 1940. BOAC continued to operate flying-boat services from the (slightly) safer confines of Poole Harbour during wartime, returning to Southampton in 1947. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, the Mediterranean was closed to Allied planes and BOAC and Qantas operated the Horseshoe Route between Durban and Sydney using Short Empire flying boats.


title: Seaplane

text: The Martin Company produced the prototype XPB2M Mars based on their PBM Mariner patrol bomber, with flight tests between 1941 and 1943. The Mars was converted by the Navy into a transport aircraft designated the XPB2M-1R. Satisfied with the performance, twenty of the modified JRM-1 Mars were ordered. The first, named "Hawaii Mars", was delivered in June 1945, but the Navy scaled back their order at the end of World War II, buying only the five aircraft which were then on the production line. The five Mars were completed, and the last delivered in 1947.


title: Seaplane

text: After World War II, the use of flying boats rapidly declined for several reasons. The ability to land on water became less of an advantage owing to the considerable increase in the number and length of land-based runways during World War II. Further, as the speed and range of land-based aircraft increased, the commercial competitiveness of flying boats diminished; their design compromised aerodynamic efficiency and speed to accomplish the feat of waterborne takeoff and landing. Competing with new civilian jet aircraft like the de Havilland Comet and Boeing 707 proved impossible.


title: Seaplane

text: The Hughes H-4 Hercules, in development in the U.S. during the war, was even larger than the BV 238, but it did not fly until 1947. The "Spruce Goose", as the 180-ton H-4 was nicknamed, was the largest flying boat ever to fly. Carried out during Senate hearings into Hughes's use of government funds on its construction, the short hop of about a mile (1.6 km) at above the water by the "Flying Lumberyard" was claimed by Hughes as vindication of his efforts. Cutbacks in expenditure after the war and the disappearance of its intended mission as a transatlantic transport left it no purpose.


title: Seaplane

text: In 1944, the Royal Air Force began development of a small jet-powered flying boat that it intended to use as an air defence aircraft optimised for the Pacific, where the relatively calm sea conditions around the many archipelagos made the use of seaplanes easier. By making the aircraft jet-powered, it was possible to design it with a hull rather than making it a floatplane. The Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 prototype first flew in 1947 and was relatively successful in terms of its performance and handling. However, by the end of the war, carrier-based aircraft were becoming more sophisticated, and the need for the SR.A/1 evaporated.


title: Seaplane

text: During the Berlin Airlift (which lasted from June 1948 until August 1949), ten Sunderlands and two Hythes were used to transport goods from Finkenwerder on the Elbe near Hamburg to isolated Berlin, landing on the Havelsee beside RAF Gatow until it iced over. The Sunderlands were particularly used for transporting salt, as their airframes were already protected against corrosion from seawater. Transporting salt in standard aircraft risked rapid and severe structural corrosion in the event of a spillage. In addition, three Aquila flying boats were used during the airlift. This is the only known operational use of flying boats within central Europe.


title: Seaplane

text: The U.S. Navy continued to operate flying boats (notably the Martin P5M Marlin) until the early 1970s. The Navy even built a jet-powered seaplane bomber, the Martin Seamaster.


title: Seaplane

text: Bucking the trend, in 1948, Aquila Airways was founded to serve destinations that were still inaccessible to land-based aircraft. This company operated Short S.25 and Short S.45 flying boats out of Southampton on routes to Madeira, Las Palmas, Lisbon, Jersey, Majorca, Marseille, Capri, Genoa, Montreux and Santa Margherita. From 1950 to 1957, Aquila also operated a service from Southampton to Edinburgh and Glasgow. The flying boats of Aquila Airways were also chartered for one-off trips, usually to deploy troops where scheduled services did not exist or where there were political considerations. The longest charter, in 1952, was from Southampton to the Falkland Islands. In 1953, the flying boats were chartered for troop-deployment trips to Freetown and Lagos, and there was a special trip from Hull to Helsinki to relocate a ship's crew. The airline ceased operations on 30 September 1958.


title: Seaplane

text: The technically advanced Saunders-Roe Princess first flew in 1952 and later received a certificate of airworthiness. Despite being the pinnacle of flying-boat development, none were sold, though Aquila Airways reportedly attempted to buy them. Of the three Princesses that were built, two never flew, and all were scrapped in 1967. In the late 1940s, Saunders-Roe also produced the jet-powered SR.A/1 flying-boat fighter, which did not progress beyond flying prototypes.


title: Seaplane

text: Ansett Australia operated a flying-boat service from Rose Bay to Lord Howe Island until 1974, using Short Sandringhams.


title: Seaplane

text: On 18 December 1990, Pilot Tom Casey completed the first round-the-world flight in a floatplane with only water landings using a Cessna 206 named Liberty II.


title: Seaplane

text: Many modern civilian aircraft have a floatplane variant, usually as utility transports to lakes and other remote areas. Most of these are offered as third-party modifications under a supplemental type certificate (STC), although there are several aircraft manufacturers that build floatplanes from scratch, and a few that continue to build flying boats. Some older flying boats remain in service for firefighting duty, as well as the Canadair CL-415 which remains in production as of 2022, and Chalk's Ocean Airways operated a fleet of Grumman Mallards in passenger service until service was suspended after a crash on December 19, 2005, which was linked to maintenance, not to design of the aircraft. Purely water-based seaplanes have largely been supplanted by amphibious aircraft.


title: Seaplane

text: Seaplanes can only take off and land on water with little or no wave action and, like other aircraft, have trouble in extreme weather. The size of waves a given design can withstand depends on, among other factors, the aircraft's size, hull or float design, and its weight, all making for a much more unstable aircraft, limiting actual operational days.


title: Seaplane

text: Flying boats can typically handle rougher water and are generally more stable than floatplanes while on the water.


title: Seaplane

text: Seaplanes are also used in remote areas such as the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness, especially in areas with a large number of lakes convenient for takeoff and landing. They may operate on a charter basis, provide scheduled service, or be operated by residents of the area for personal use. There are seaplane operators that offer services between islands such as in the Caribbean Sea or the Maldives.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Operation Snow White was a criminal conspiracy by the Church of Scientology during the 1970s to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. This project included a series of infiltrations into and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of Scientology, carried out by Church members in more than 30 countries. It was one of the largest infiltrations of the United States government in history, with up to 5,000 covert agents. This operation also exposed the Scientology plot "Operation Freakout", because Operation Snow White was the case that initiated the U.S. government's investigation of the Church.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Under this program, Scientology operatives committed infiltration, wiretapping, and theft of documents in government offices, most notably those of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Eleven highly placed Church executives, including Mary Sue Hubbard (wife of founder L. Ron Hubbard and second-in-command of the organization), pleaded guilty and were convicted in federal court of obstructing justice, burglary of government offices, and theft of documents and government property. The case was "United States v. Mary Sue Hubbard et al.", 493 F.Supp. 209 (D.D.C. 1979).


title: Operation Snow White

text: As early as 1960, L. Ron Hubbard had proposed that Scientologists should infiltrate government departments by taking secretarial, bodyguard or other jobs. In the early 1970s, the Church of Scientology was increasingly scrutinized by US federal agencies, having already been raided by the Food and Drug Administration in 1963. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claimed the Church owed millions of dollars in taxes and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent agents into the organization. The Church's response involved a publicity campaign, extensive litigation against the IRS and a program of infiltration of agency offices.


title: Operation Snow White

text: The specific branch of Scientology responsible for Operation Snow White was the Guardian's Office. Created in 1966 by L. Ron Hubbard, the purpose of the Guardian's Office was to protect the interests of Scientology.


title: Operation Snow White

text: At the time of Operation Snow White, the Guardian's Office had its worldwide headquarters (Guardian's Office WW) located at Saint Hill Manor in England. Headquarters in the United States (Guardian's Office US) were in Los Angeles, California, though smaller offices existed in Washington, D.C. (Guardian's Office DC), and other cities throughout the United States. Each Guardian Office consisted of five bureaus. One such bureau was the Information Bureau, which oversaw the infiltration of the government. L. Ron Hubbard oversaw the Guardian's Office, though it was Mary Sue Hubbard, his wife, who held the title Commodore Staff Guardian.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Several years later, in 1973, the Guardian's Office began a massive infiltration of governments around the world, though the primary target of the operation was the United States. Worried about Scientology's long-term reputation, the Guardian's Office decided to infiltrate Interpol to obtain documents related to Scientology, as well as those connecting L. Ron Hubbard to criminal activity. Jane Kember handed this duty to Henning Heldt and his staff.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Around this time L. Ron Hubbard himself wrote Guardian Order 732, which called for the removal and correction of "erroneous" Scientology files. It is here that Operation Snow White has its origins. Though the order called for this to be achieved by legal means, this would quickly change. Hubbard himself would later be named by federal prosecutors as an "unindicted co-conspirator" for his part in the operation. Though extensive records of his involvement exist, many Scientologists claim his directives were misinterpreted by his followers.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Operation Snow White would be further refined by Guardian Order 1361. Addressed from Jane Kember to Heldt, Duke Snider, and Richard Weigand, GO 1361 called for, among other things, an infiltration of the Los Angeles and London offices of the IRS, and the Department of Justice.


title: Operation Snow White

text: While the order was specific to the IRS, the Guardian's Office was soon recruiting their own field agents to infiltrate other governmental offices, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Coast Guard intelligence service, and the National Institute of Mental Health, among others, as well as the American Medical Association. The program called for rewards to be given for successful missions carried out by Scientologists.


title: Operation Snow White

text: One of the sentencing memoranda in the case also noted that, contrary to what the defendants claimed, the programs planned by the Guardian's Office were not restricted to trying to remove "false reports" but included plans to plant false information—for instance, planting false records about "a cat with a pedigree name" into US security agency computers so that later "the creature holds a press conference and photographic story results." The purpose of Operation Cat was "to hold up the American security to ridicule, as outlined in the GO by LRH."


title: Operation Snow White

text: The start of 1974 saw Michael Meisner appointed Assistant Guardian for Information in the District of Columbia (AG I DC). Meisner's responsibilities included the implementation of all Information Bureau orders, programs, and projects within the DC area. Meisner's supervisor at this time was Duke Snider, the Assistant Guardian for DC, or AG DC. This was the highest position in Washington's GO office.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In July 1974, Meisner was ordered by Duke Snider to implement the previously written plan to obtain Interpol documents, which were then located in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Meisner had more to do than just this, though, as by August he was also taking directions from Cindy Raymond, the GO's Collections Officer for the US, who ordered Meisner to assist her in finding a loyal Scientologist agent to gain employment at the IRS headquarters in Washington, DC. This employee was to steal all documents dealing with Scientology, especially those involving current litigation by Scientology against the government. Meisner discussed this with Raymond for a period of a month before interviewing various Scientologists with no luck. A month after the order had been given, Raymond informed Meisner that she had selected Gerald Bennett Wolfe.


title: Operation Snow White

text: The GO's actual infiltration of the government likely began when Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner were able to gain employment at the IRS as clerk-typists. Under direction of the Guardian Office, Wolfe monitored files on tax-exempt organizations and, when requested, illegally made copies for Scientology. Meisner supervised both Wolfe and the Information Bureau section in DC, and reported to the GO's Deputy Guardian for Information in the US.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In November 1974, Operation Snow White took an unexpected turn for the GO when they received word that the IRS would be conducting a meeting on Scientology's tax-exempt status. In response, the church sent a spy to bug the room. On the morning of November 1, the day before the meeting, a GO agent, Hermann, broke into the conference room and plugged the device into an electrical outlet. This device, in turn, then transmitted a signal on an FM frequency, which was picked up and recorded by Scientologists sitting in a car in the parking lot of the Smithsonian, which faced the office. After the meeting Hermann removed the device, and the taped recording of the meeting was sent to Los Angeles.


title: Operation Snow White

text: By December, Wolfe, Herman, and Meisner had sent a shipment of stolen documents 20 inches thick to Duke Snider. Snider, in turn, sent notification to Mo Budlong in Los Angeles. By the end of December, Wolfe was stealing documents from the IRS's Chief Counsel's office. Just days after Christmas, Wolfe broke into the office of Barbara Bird, an attorney in the IRS's Refund Litigation Service. Bird had been present at the November 1st meeting. Instead of stealing files, Wolfe took them to a copier and made photocopies using government paper.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Later, Wolfe met Meisner at a restaurant, where he reported on his most recent theft. Meisner took the documents and underlined selections that he believed his superiors would find interesting or relevant and wrote a summary of the important points. This was then routed through the Assistant Guardian for DC and on to the Deputy Guardian for the US, the Deputy Guardian for Information in the US, the Branch I Director of the Information Bureau, and the Collections Officer, all of which were in Los Angeles. A copy was also sent to Mary Sue Hubbard. This was typically standard procedure for Meisner.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In early 1975, Operation Snow White expanded again as Sharon Thomas found employment in the U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence Agency and Nancy Douglass began work at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Douglass stole documents and made photocopies of others. These were transmitted to Hermann.


title: Operation Snow White

text: By spring, attention had been called back to the IRS case as Mary Sue Hubbard had instructed Kember and Heldt to "use any method at our disposal to win the battle and gain our non-profit (tax) status". Heldt wrote back telling that her request had been sent to the Information Bureau, who had been ordered to complete the collection of documents from the IRS and the Department of Justice's tax files within three months.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In April, Meisner procured a directory of the Department of Justice and located the offices that would have files pertaining to Scientology litigation. When he found what he wanted he sent in Wolfe, who broke into the offices of two attorneys on three successive Saturdays. Wolfe copied twelve files and met up with Meisner, as before, at a restaurant. These files were especially useful to Scientology, as it detailed the government's strategy in various court cases.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In May, Willardson directed Meisner to implement "Project Horn", which called for Meisner to "provide a cover for PR and legal for the way they obtained IRS docs". The idea would be for the GO's Public Relations Bureau to view the documents without worrying about being connected to the theft. Willardson's idea called for Meisner to steal documents dealing with organizations other than Scientology. Willardson also called for the theft of IRS stationery, in order to forge letters from a (fictional) disgruntled IRS employee. The files on various organizations (including Scientology, of course) would then be sent out attached to the fake letter. The idea was that it would appear that an upset IRS agent had himself sent the files to numerous organizations. There would be nothing to tie it to Scientology. Wolfe stole both the stationery and, without permission, files on the Unification Church and Bob Jones University.


title: Operation Snow White

text: During the summer and fall months of 1975, the GO launched an additional plan. In July, Meisner was told by Cindy Raymond that the Church of Scientology had initiated a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS. Meisner was directed to add the office of Charles Zuravin to his list of offices to monitor. Zuravin was representing the government in the case. Meisner immediately passed this duty on to Wolfe, who broke into Zuravin's office multiple times between July and November. Wolfe revealed to his superiors that Zuravin was preparing an index of Scientology files relevant to the FOIA case. IRS offices from all over the country were sending files to Zuravin. This index file, required by the courts in all FOIA cases, is a total list of the documents requested, and reasons for their exemption from the public, if any.


title: Operation Snow White

text: By October, Zuravin had finished the index, numbering each document in order to simplify location, and had provided a copy to Scientology attorneys. These attorneys, in turn, gave the index to Raymond, who passed it along to Meisner, who passed it to Wolfe. Wolfe then entered Zuravin's office and then began copying the documents listed on the index. Zuravin had essentially done the GO's job for them.


title: Operation Snow White

text: On December 5, 1975, Jane Kember issued Guardian Program Order 158, which intended to give L. Ron Hubbard early warning of impending legal action. The plan called for the infiltration of the government agencies that had either the power to issue, or the knowledge of, impending subpoenas. Specific agencies include the US Attorney's Office in D.C. and LA, the IRS Office of International Operations, the DEA, and the Coast Guard and Immigration and Naturalization. After reviewing the letter, Meisner concluded it would be a better idea to infiltrate the Department of Justice than the US Attorney's Office.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In January 1976, Hermann, the Southeast US Secretary for the Information Bureau, informed Meisner that Heldt and Weigand had approved a plan to send Alverzo to Washington. Alverzo arrived on the 17th, and on the 18th he picked the locks on the doors belonging to the office of Lewis Hubbard (no relation to L. Ron Hubbard) and the file room housing Zuravin's files. Wolfe stood guard at the end of the hallway while Alverzo worked on Hubbard's door. A few doors down Meisner worked on Zuravin's door. After an hour and a half with no success, Meisner was getting upset. In frustration, Meisner hit the top of Zuravin's door, which popped right open. The three Scientologists entered the office and took the remaining Scientology related documents. They then traveled to another floor where they made photocopies. Wolfe continued to make copies while Alverzo and Meisner tried again to open Hubbard's office. The trio then worked well into the night photocopying files from Hubbard's office. When they left, sometime around 2 AM, they left with a foot tall stack of documents. Less than a month later Richard Weigand wrote to Jane Kember, telling her that the IRS documents that had been ordered to be produced in Guardian Order 1361, over two years earlier, had been obtained.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Gerald Wolfe, along with Meisner, were later able to break into a room and make false IRS identification cards, which allowed them access to the federal courthouse in Washington. Wolfe and Meisner then used these cards to gain access to restricted areas and steal more documents.


title: Operation Snow White

text: While Wolfe and Meisner continued their work at the IRS, Mary Sue Hubbard, along with other Guardian Office members, were coming up with further plans. Guardian Program Order 302, written by Cindy Raymond and approved by Hubbard, amongst others, directed the infiltration of all government agencies that had withheld files from Scientology's various FOIA requests.


title: Operation Snow White

text: On the night of April 14, Meisner and Wolfe were on the tenth floor of the IRS building housing the Office of International Operations. Trying to enter an office, the pair found it locked. A passing cleaning lady noted Meisner and Wolfe's suspicious behavior, and notified a security guard. The guard confronted the pair and was presented with Wolfe's genuine IRS card and Meisner's fabricated one. Satisfied, the guard had the cleaning lady open the door. Inside, the pair grabbed a hefty load of files. Unable to find a photocopier, the pair then took the files to the main IRS building, where the pair again used their identification to gain access. After copying the files, they returned them to Crate's office. The entire process took some four hours.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In May, Wolfe broke into the United States Courthouse and stole keys to the office of Assistant United States Attorney Nathan Dodell. Wolfe then took these keys to have them duplicated, and returned them unnoticed. Almost three weeks later, Wolfe and Meisner broke into Dodell's office, stealing documents and, as usual, forwarding them to Guardian headquarters in Los Angeles. The GO's interest in Nathan Dodell stemmed from a Scientology FOIA case. In April, Judge George L Hart asked Dodell whether the US had considered taking a deposition of L. Ron Hubbard. Dodell responded that it was an "interesting thought". Furthermore, he promised to discuss it with the Department of Justice.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In May, Meisner and Wolfe entered the US Courthouse for the District of Columbia around four in the afternoon. They went to the third floor, which was the home of both the US Attorney's Office and the Bar Association Library. They planned to locate Nathan Dodell's office, which was in the back of the Civil Division area, near an elevator. They then searched for the building's photocopiers. After mapping out these locations, they left. Later, Wolfe and Meisner made a copy of Dodell's keys.


title: Operation Snow White

text: On May 21, Meisner and Wolfe entered the Courthouse, signing in to do research in the library and were issued an elevator key. After riding the elevator to the floor of the library, the pair entered the library and removed several books from shelves and sat at a table. After a few minutes, they exited through a backdoor and emerged in a hallway. In this hallway was Dodell's office, which they entered using their keys. The duo stole a number of documents related to Scientology and walked through the hallway to the two copy machines they had previously located. The pair photocopied some six inches of documents before returning the originals to Dodell's office.


title: Operation Snow White

text: One week later, Wolfe and Meisner again met outside the IRS building. The duo then walked to the US Courthouse, and signed in under fake names. They repeated their actions from the previous week, copying another group of documents from the District of Columbia Police Department as well as the Food and Drug Administration. Returning to Dodell's office through the library, they were stopped by the night librarian, who asked if they had signed in. While they had signed in at the front desk, they had failed to do the same at the front desk of the library. When they announced that they had not, Johnson, the night librarian, told the pair not to come back unless they had specific authorization from the day librarian. The pair promptly left. Three days later Johnson notified the US Attorney's Office that two individuals had been seen using the photocopying machines of the Attorney's Office. Johnson and the night guard were told to immediately contact the FBI if the individuals returned.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Less than two weeks later, Hermann phoned Meisner, and ordered him to return to Dodell's office and steal his personal files. The goal was to formulate a plan that would result in Dodell being removed from his position as an Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Meisner and Wolfe entered the United States Courthouse on June 11 around 7 in the evening. They signed in as they did before, and headed to the library. Johnson, the night librarian, recognized the pair and immediately stopped them. Meisner was prepared for this, and showed the man a letter from the head librarian. Wolfe and Meisner continued to the back of the library where they exited into the hallway. Outside Dodell's office the two saw that cleaning ladies were still at work.


title: Operation Snow White

text: While Meisner and Wolfe waited for the cleaning crew to vacate the office, Johnson called the FBI, which sent two agents over immediately. The two agents confronted the Scientologists and demanded to see their identification. Wolfe used his real identification. Meisner presented his fake card, and told the agents that he had recently resigned from the IRS. Meisner told Hansen that the pair was in the library to do legal research, and that they had used the photocopiers to copy books and cases. Neither mentioned Scientology. After roughly twenty minutes of questioning, the FBI agents allowed them to leave. Meisner then phoned Hermann to inform him of the news and was told to immediately fly to Los Angeles.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Meisner and Wolfe were given cover stories by the Guardian's Office. On the last day of June, Gerald Wolfe was arrested. Wolfe was charged with "the use and possession of a forged official pass of the United States." The day after Wolfe's arrest, Mary Sue Hubbard wrote a letter to Weigand ordering him to keep her abreast of the situation. Hubbard also conversed with Mo Budlong and Richard Weigand about Wolfe's arrest, cover story, and subsequent plan to destroy evidence linking Wolfe and Meisner to Scientology.


title: Operation Snow White

text: At the end of July a judge decided that the case against Wolfe warranted an investigation by a grand jury. A week later the judge issued an arrest warrant for Meisner, who, at the time, was being hidden in LA. The FBI was able to connect him to Scientology. By January 1977, it was becoming increasingly likely that Scientology would be unable to escape Operation Snow White without serious penalty. Though Meisner was still in hiding, he was growing increasingly anxious about the situation. By April, Meisner wanted to surrender to the authorities. Meisner was quickly put under the control of several guards.


title: Operation Snow White

text: On May 13, Gerald Wolfe entered a guilty plea. Later in the month, Meisner escaped his captors, only to be convinced to rejoin the GO the following day.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In June, Wolfe, after being sentenced to probation and community service, testified before the Grand Jury. Instead of the truth, Wolfe told the latest incarnation of his cover story. Several days later Meisner would again escape his captors, though this time he would contact the FBI. Meisner was eventually taken to Washington, where he agreed to plead guilty to a five-year conspiracy felony and cooperate with the Grand Jury.


title: Operation Snow White

text: On July 8, the FBI raided Church of Scientology locations in Los Angeles, Hollywood and Washington, D.C. The Los Angeles raid involved 156 FBI agents, the most that had ever been used in a single raid. It lasted 21 hours and filled a 16-ton truck with documents and other items.


title: Operation Snow White

text: The raids turned up documentation of not only the group's illegal activities against the United States government, but also illegal activities carried out against other perceived enemies of Scientology. These included "Operation Freakout", a conspiracy to frame author Paulette Cooper on false bomb-threat charges, and conspiracies to frame Gabe Cazares, mayor of Clearwater, Florida, on false hit-and-run charges. The papers also revealed that Sir John Foster (author of the official UK Government inquiry into Scientology) and Lord Balniel (who had requested the report) were targets, along with the National Association for Mental Health (NAMH) and World Federation for Mental Health.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Comparing the FBI to the Gestapo, the Church declared that all the files seized from the Church were taken illegally, though the FBI produced a 40-plus page affidavit detailing 160 specific items they were looking for.


title: Operation Snow White

text: By July 20, 13 days after the raid, a Washington judge ruled that the documents should be returned, at least temporarily, to the Church, and that none of the documents could be shared with branches of the government, unless that specific branch was investigating Scientology. Scientology's lawyers had successfully argued that in order to prepare for an August 8 hearing on the legality of the raid, they must be able to see the documents. By July 27, a judge in Washington had ruled the warrant authorizing the raid was too broad and, as such, violated the Church's 4th Amendment rights. In August, this ruling would be overturned, with Scientology promising to take the case to the Supreme Court, which would, early in the next year, refuse to hear the case.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In August 1978, 11 high-ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges. One of the indicted was Mary Sue Hubbard, wife of Scientology's creator L. Ron Hubbard. The other ten were Gerald Wolfe, Cindy Raymond, Henning Heldt, Duke Snider, Gregory Willardson, Richard Weigand, Mitchell Herman, Sharon Thomas, Jane Kember, and Mo Budlong. Kendrick Moxon and L. Ron Hubbard were named unindicted co-conspirators.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Over the course of the investigation, the Church of Scientology attempted to have a judge removed, and subpoenaed almost 150 federal agents in what appeared to be a large stalling scheme. The Church also offered several shifting explanations for their actions. Ultimately, these tactics failed and the defendants agreed to a plea deal.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Seven of the 11 members of the Guardian's Office pleaded guilty to just a single count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. One more pleaded guilty to a similar charge and a ninth pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. The Scientologists were allowed to argue for the suppression of the government's evidence. The remaining two Scientologists were in England, pending extradition.


title: Operation Snow White

text: On December 6, 1979, some five years after Operation Snow White began, it officially came to an end. Five of the Scientologists were sentenced to four years in jail, with four of the convicted being taken immediately. Mary Sue Hubbard, wife of L. Ron Hubbard, was sentenced to five years. Each of the six faced a fine of $10,000. The next day the four remaining Scientologists were sentenced. Three of the four faced a fine of $10,000 and five years in jail. The fourth was fined $1,000 and sent to jail for six months. Upon release Mary Sue Hubbard was given five years of probation and community service. All of the Scientologists immediately appealed, but the verdicts were confirmed.


title: Operation Snow White

text: In November 1980, the two remaining Scientologists, Jane Kember and Mo Budlong, were finally convicted on nine counts of aiding and abetting burglary in connection with break-ins at government offices, and were sentenced to six years.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Kember and Budlong had claimed political asylum in the UK, arguing that they should not be extradited to the US because the burglaries had political objectives. Their application against extradition was denied by the British High Court on the grounds that it did not fall within the political offence exception to the Extradition Act 1870; Mr. Justice Griffiths said:


title: Operation Snow White

text: I am unable to accept that organising burglaries either for the purpose of identifying persons in Government offices hostile to the Scientologists, or for the purpose of gaining an advantage in litigation, or even for the wider purpose of refuting false allegations thus enabling a better image of the Church of Scientology to be projected to the public, comes anywhere near being an offence of a political character within the meaning of the Extradition Act.


title: Operation Snow White

text: The Applicants did not order these burglaries to take place in order to challenge the political control or Government of the United States; they did so to further the interests of the Church of Scientology and its members, and in particular the interest of Ron L. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. In my view, it would be ridiculous to regard the Applicants as political refugees seeking asylum in this country, and I reject the submission that these were offences of a political character.


title: Operation Snow White

text: Mary Sue Hubbard, Cindy Raymond, Gerald Bennett Wolfe, Henning Heldt, Duke Snider, Gregory Willardson, Richard Weigand, Mitchell Herman, Sharon Thomas, Jane Kember, and Mo Budlong, all high-ranking Scientologists, were convicted; prison sentences were as long as six years, though no defendant served that amount. L. Ron Hubbard was named by federal prosecutors as an "unindicted co-conspirator" and went into hiding for the rest of his life.


title: Operation Snow White

text: The Church has been reluctant to discuss the operation's details; typical statements by members and operatives are often vague comments saying that the Guardian's Office (GO) had been "infiltrated" and "set up" to fail in its mission to protect the Church, that those involved were "purged" from the Church, without detailing what actually happened (although it has been suggested many of those involved and "purged" remained in important positions of power within the church). Church spokespersons on the Internet and elsewhere have been known to claim that the operatives "had done nothing more serious than steal photocopier paper."


title: Oral candidiasis

text: Oral candidiasis, also known as oral thrush among other names, is candidiasis that occurs in the mouth. That is, oral candidiasis is a mycosis (yeast/fungal infection) of "Candida" species on the mucous membranes of the mouth.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: "Candida albicans" is the most commonly implicated organism in this condition. "C. albicans" is carried in the mouths of about 50% of the world's population as a normal component of the oral microbiota. This candidal carriage state is not considered a disease, but when "Candida" species become pathogenic and invade host tissues, oral candidiasis can occur. This change usually constitutes an opportunistic infection by normally harmless micro-organisms because of local (i.e., mucosal) or systemic factors altering host immunity.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: Oral candidiasis is a mycosis (fungal infection). Traditionally, oral candidiasis is classified using the Lehner system, originally described in the 1960s, into acute and chronic forms (see table). Some of the subtypes almost always occur as acute (e.g., acute pseudomembranous candidiasis), and others chronic. However, these typical presentations do not always hold true, which created problems with this system. A more recently proposed classification of oral candidiasis distinguishes "primary oral candidiasis", where the condition is confined to the mouth and perioral tissues, and "secondary oral candidiasis", where there is involvement of other parts of the body in addition to the mouth. The global human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic has been an important factor in the move away from the traditional classification since it has led to the formation of a new group of patients who present with atypical forms of oral candidiasis.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: Three main clinical appearances of candidiasis are generally recognized: pseudomembranous, erythematous (atrophic) and hyperplastic. Most often, affected individuals display one clear type or another, but sometimes there can be more than one clinical variant in the same person.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: Acute pseudomembranous candidiasis is a classic form of oral candidiasis, commonly referred to as thrush. Overall, this is the most common type of oral candidiasis, accounting for about 35% of oral candidiasis cases.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: It is characterized by a coating or individual patches of pseudomembranous white slough that can be easily wiped away to reveal erythematous (reddened), and sometimes minimally bleeding, mucosa beneath. These areas of pseudomembrane are sometimes described as "curdled milk", or "cottage cheese". The white material is made up of debris, fibrin, and desquamated epithelium that has been invaded by yeast cells and hyphae that invade to the depth of the stratum spinosum. As an erythematous surface is revealed beneath the pseudomembranes, some consider pseudomembranous candidiasis and erythematous candidiasis stages of the same entity. Some sources state that if there is bleeding when the pseudomembrane is removed, then the mucosa has likely been affected by an underlying process such as lichen planus or chemotherapy. Pseudomembraneous candidiasis can involve any part of the mouth, but usually it appears on the tongue, buccal mucosae or palate.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: It is classically an acute condition, appearing in infants, people taking antibiotics or immunosuppressant medications, or immunocompromising diseases. However, sometimes it can be chronic and intermittent, even lasting for many years. Chronicity of this subtype generally occurs in immunocompromised states, (e.g., leukemia, HIV) or in persons who use corticosteroids topically or by aerosol. Acute and chronic pseudomembranous candidiasis are indistinguishable in appearance.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: Erythematous (atrophic) candidiasis is when the condition appears as a red, raw-looking lesion. Some sources consider denture-related stomatitis, angular stomatitis, median rhomboid glossitis, and antiobiotic-induced stomatitis as subtypes of erythematous candidiasis, since these lesions are commonly erythematous/atrophic. It may precede the formation of a pseudomembrane, be left when the membrane is removed, or arise without prior pseudomembranes. Some sources state that erythematous candidiasis accounts for 60% of oral candidiasis cases. Where it is associated with inhalation steroids (often used for treatment of asthma), erythematous candidiasis commonly appears on the palate or the dorsum of the tongue. On the tongue, there is loss of the lingual papillae (depapillation), leaving a smooth area.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: Acute erythematous candidiasis usually occurs on the dorsum of the tongue in persons taking long term corticosteroids or antibiotics, but occasionally it can occur after only a few days of using a topical antibiotic. This is usually termed "antibiotic sore mouth", "antibiotic sore tongue", or "antibiotic-induced stomatitis" because it is commonly painful as well as red.


title: Oral candidiasis

text: Chronic erythematous candidiasis is more usually associated with denture wearing (see denture-related stomatitis).


title: Oral candidiasis

text: This variant is also sometimes termed "plaque-like candidiasis" or "nodular candidiasis". The most common appearance of hyperplastic candidiasis is a persistent white plaque that does not rub off. The lesion may be rough or nodular in texture. Hyperplastic candidiasis is uncommon, accounting for about 5% of oral candidiasis cases, and is usually chronic and found in adults. The most common site of involvement is the commissural region of the buccal mucosa, usually on both sides of the mouth.