title: Pendulum clock

text: To keep time accurately, pendulum clocks must be absolutely level. If they are not, the pendulum swings more to one side than the other, upsetting the symmetrical operation of the escapement. This condition can often be heard audibly in the ticking sound of the clock. The ticks or "beats" should be at precisely equally spaced intervals to give a sound of, "tick...tock...tick...tock"; if they are not, and have the sound "tick-tock...tick-tock..." the clock is "out of beat" and needs to be leveled. This problem can easily cause the clock to stop working, and is one of the most common reasons for service calls. A spirit level or watch timing machine can achieve a higher accuracy than relying on the sound of the beat; precision regulators often have a built-in spirit level for the task. Older freestanding clocks often have feet with adjustable screws to level them, more recent ones have a leveling adjustment in the movement. Some modern pendulum clocks have 'auto-beat' or 'self-regulating beat adjustment' devices, and don't need this adjustment.


title: Pendulum clock

text: Since the pendulum rate will increase with an increase in gravity, and local gravity varies with latitude and elevation on Earth, precision pendulum clocks must be readjusted to keep time after a move. For example, a pendulum clock moved from sea level to will lose 16 seconds per day. With the most accurate pendulum clocks, even moving the clock to the top of a tall building would cause it to lose measurable time due to lower gravity.


title: Pendulum clock

text: Also called torsion-spring pendulum, this is a wheel-like mass (most often four spheres on cross spokes) suspended from a vertical strip (ribbon) of spring steel, used as the regulating mechanism in torsion pendulum clocks. Rotation of the mass winds and unwinds the suspension spring, with the energy impulse applied to the top of the spring. The main advantage of this type of pendulum is its low energy use; with a period of 12—15 seconds, compared to the gravity swing pendulum's period of 0.5—2s, it is possible to make clocks that need to be wound only every 30 days, or even only once a year or more. Since the restoring force is provided by the elasticity of the spring, which varies with temperature, it is more affected by temperature changes than a gravity-swing pendulum. The most accurate torsion clocks use a spring of elinvar which has low temperature coefficient of elasticity.


title: Pendulum clock

text: A torsion pendulum clock requiring only annual winding is sometimes called a "400-Day clock" or "anniversary clock", sometimes given as a wedding gift. Torsion pendulums are also used in "perpetual" clocks which do not need winding, as their mainspring is kept wound by changes in atmospheric temperature and pressure with a bellows arrangement. The Atmos clock, one example, uses a torsion pendulum with a long oscillation period of 60 seconds.


title: Pendulum clock

text: The escapement is a mechanical linkage that converts the force from the clock's wheel train into impulses that keep the pendulum swinging back and forth. It is the part that makes the "ticking" sound in a working pendulum clock. Most escapements consist of a wheel with pointed teeth called the "escape wheel" which is turned by the clock's wheel train, and surfaces the teeth push against, called "pallets". During most of the pendulum's swing the wheel is prevented from turning because a tooth is resting against one of the pallets; this is called the "locked" state. Each swing of the pendulum a pallet releases a tooth of the escape wheel. The wheel rotates forward a fixed amount until a tooth catches on the other pallet. These releases allow the clock's wheel train to advance a fixed amount with each swing, moving the hands forward at a constant rate, controlled by the pendulum.


title: Pendulum clock

text: Although the escapement is necessary, its force disturbs the natural motion of the pendulum, and in precision pendulum clocks this was often the limiting factor on the accuracy of the clock. Different escapements have been used in pendulum clocks over the years to try to solve this problem. In the 18th and 19th centuries, escapement design was at the forefront of timekeeping advances. The anchor escapement (see animation) was the standard escapement used until the 1800s when an improved version, the deadbeat escapement, took over in precision clocks. It is used in almost all pendulum clocks today. The remontoire, a small spring mechanism rewound at intervals which serves to isolate the escapement from the varying force of the wheel train, was used in a few precision clocks. In tower clocks the wheel train must turn the large hands on the clock face on the outside of the building, and the weight of these hands, varying with snow and ice buildup, put a varying load on the wheel train. Gravity escapements were used in tower clocks.


title: Pendulum clock

text: By the end of the 19th century specialized escapements were used in the most accurate clocks, called "astronomical regulators", which were employed in naval observatories and for scientific research. The Riefler escapement, used in Clemens-Riefler regulator clocks was accurate to 10 milliseconds per day. Electromagnetic escapements, which used a switch or phototube to turn on a solenoid electromagnet to give the pendulum an impulse without requiring a mechanical linkage, were developed. The most accurate pendulum clock was the Shortt-Synchronome clock, a complicated electromechanical clock with two pendulums developed in 1923 by W.H. Shortt and Frank Hope-Jones, which was accurate to better than one second per year. A slave pendulum in a separate clock was linked by an electric circuit and electromagnets to a master pendulum in a vacuum tank. The slave pendulum performed the timekeeping functions, leaving the master pendulum to swing virtually undisturbed by outside influences. In the 1920s the Shortt-Synchronome briefly became the highest standard for timekeeping in observatories before quartz clocks superseded pendulum clocks as precision time standards.


title: Pendulum clock

text: The indicating system is almost always the traditional dial with moving hour and minute hands. Many clocks have a small third hand indicating seconds on a subsidiary dial. Pendulum clocks are usually designed to be set by opening the glass face cover and manually pushing the minute hand around the dial to the correct time. The minute hand is mounted on a slipping friction sleeve which allows it to be turned on its arbor. The hour hand is driven not from the wheel train but from the minute hand's shaft through a small set of gears, so rotating the minute hand manually also sets the hour hand.


title: Pendulum clock

text: Pendulum clocks were more than simply utilitarian timekeepers; they were status symbols that expressed the wealth and culture of their owners. They evolved in a number of traditional styles, specific to different countries and times as well as their intended use. Case styles somewhat reflect the furniture styles popular during the period. Experts can often pinpoint when an antique clock was made within a few decades by subtle differences in their cases and faces. These are some of the different styles of pendulum clocks:


title: Amadou Onana

text: Amadou Ba Zeund Georges Mvom Onana (born 16 August 2001) is a Belgian professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for club Everton and the Belgium national team.


title: Amadou Onana

text: Onana joined 2. Bundesliga club Hamburger SV in mid-2020. He made his professional debut for the club in the first round of the 2020–21 DFB-Pokal on 14 September 2020, coming on as a substitute in the 60th minute against 3. Liga side Dynamo Dresden. He scored a header in the 89th minute of the match, which finished as a 1–4 away loss.


title: Amadou Onana

text: In August 2021, Onana joined Ligue 1 club Lille on a five year deal. He made 32 league appearances in 2021–22, scoring once.


title: Amadou Onana

text: Onana signed for Premier League club Everton on a five-year contract on 9 August 2022 for a reported £33m including add-ons.


title: Amadou Onana

text: On 18 May 2022 Onana was named to the squad for the four 2022–23 UEFA Nations League matches on 3, 8, 10 and 13 June 2022 against Netherlands, Poland (twice) and Wales respectively. Onana made his full international debut against the Netherlands on 3 June 2022.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Thomas Morris Lawrence (born 13 January 1994) is a Welsh professional footballer who plays as a forward for Scottish Premiership club Rangers and the Wales national team.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Born in Wrexham, he joined Manchester United at the age of eight and made his way up through the age groups, but he was unable to make it as a first-team regular and spent time on loan at Carlisle United and Yeovil Town before joining Leicester City in September 2014. After three years with Leicester, during which time he was loaned out to Rotherham United, Blackburn Rovers, Cardiff City and Ipswich Town, he left for Derby County in August 2017. He has represented Wales at senior international level, having also played for the national under-17, under-19 and under-21 sides.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Born in Wrexham, Lawrence grew up in Penyffordd, Flintshire, and joined Manchester United from Everton at the age of eight. Tosh Farrell, an Everton coach at the time later commented that Lawrence was a "big Man U fan so we had no chance [of keeping him] when they wanted him!" After progressing up through the age grades, he made his first appearance for the under-18s at the age of 15 in a friendly against Maltese side Hibernians in October 2009, coming on as a substitute to score the third goal in a 3–1 win. In July 2010, he appeared for the under-17s in the Milk Cup in Northern Ireland, scoring against County Down in the quarter-finals of the Slemish Trophy repechage competition. Off the back of that, he became a regular fixture in the under-18s team for the 2010–11 season, scoring five goals in 22 appearances in the Premier Academy League, as well as making three substitute appearances in the club's successful FA Youth Cup run. Towards the end of the season, he also got his first experience of the reserve team, being named as an unused substitute for the final game of the Premier Reserve League season, a 2–2 draw with Liverpool.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Another appearance at the Milk Cup followed in 2011, with Lawrence scoring the only goal in Manchester United's semi-final victory over Senegalese side Étoile Lusitana; however, the team went on to lose the final 5–1 to Qatari youth academy ASPIRE. Lawrence began the 2011–12 season in good form, scoring four goals in his first four matches before suffering an injury in the fifth, a 3–1 home defeat to Manchester City. On his return two months later, he scored the opener in Manchester United's 4–0 FA Youth Cup win over Torquay United, only to suffer another injury to his groin and miss another five months of the season. Nevertheless, he returned strongly, scoring three goals in the final three games of the season, including a brace against Stoke City on the final day. After going unused in a Manchester Senior Cup game against Bury earlier in the season, Lawrence finally made his first appearance for the reserves in the final of the Lancashire Senior Cup against Accrington Stanley; after coming on as a 23rd-minute substitute for Luke Giverin, Lawrence opened the scoring shortly before half-time and Manchester United went on to win 4–0.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: After signing his first professional contract in July 2012, Lawrence made the step up to the reserves on a permanent basis for the 2012–13 season; however, he found the transition difficult, as competing with the likes of Federico Macheda, Ángelo Henríquez and Joshua King meant he often found himself on the bench, rarely making it onto the pitch with any significant time left in games. Despite a lack of playing time, Lawrence managed to score four goals in 20 appearances during the season, including one goal in a 3–1 win against Oldham Athletic in the Manchester Senior Cup, and his assist led to Larnell Cole's 88th-minute winning goal against Tottenham Hotspur in the final of the Under-21 Premier League. Will Keane's return to fitness meant Lawrence's opportunities continued to be limited going into the 2013–14 season, although he did manage to appear in seven of the team's first eight matches of the season.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: On 28 November 2013, Lawrence joined fellow Manchester United player Ben Amos at League One club Carlisle United on a month-long loan, due to last until 4 January 2014. Lawrence made his debut the following weekend, coming on as a 59th-minute substitute for Paul Thirlwell in a 3–1 defeat away to Swindon Town.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: On 31 January 2014, Lawrence joined Football League Championship side Yeovil Town on a three-month loan. He made 17 starts and two substitute appearances for Yeovil, scoring twice, as the club were relegated to League One. On 30 April, he was recalled by Manchester United.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: On 6 May 2014, Lawrence was given his United debut by interim player-manager Ryan Giggs, starting in a 3–1 home Premier League win against Hull City. He was substituted in the 70th minute for Giggs himself.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Lawrence was sold to recently promoted Leicester City on 2 September 2014 for an undisclosed fee, signing a four-year contract.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Before making an appearance for Leicester, he was loaned to Championship club Rotherham United on 27 November, on a month-long deal. He scored one goal in six appearances for Rotherham before returning to Leicester. He made his Leicester debut on 3 January 2015 in an FA Cup third round tie against Newcastle United, which Leicester won 1–0.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: On 5 January, his loan deal was extended until 31 January. He returned to Leicester when loan came to an end on 31 January 2016.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: On 1 February 2016, Lawrence joined Championship side Cardiff City on loan until the end of the 2015–16 season.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: On 30 August 2016, Lawrence joined Championship side Ipswich Town on loan until the end of the 2016–17 season. Lawrence scored his first goal for Ipswich in a 2–1 win at Sheffield Wednesday on 5 November 2016.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: After three seasons with Leicester City, Lawrence left the club for Derby County on 15 August 2017, signing a "long-term" contract with the club. On 13 July 2021, Lawrence was named captain of Derby County. He left the club during the 2022 close season, following their relegation to EFL League One.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Lawrence signed for Scottish Premiership club Rangers on 8 July 2022. He made his debut for the club in a Scottish Premiership side Livingston, starting the match, in a 2-1 win on 30 July. He scored his first goal for Rangers in a Scottish Premiership win at home to St Johnstone on 13 August.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Lawrence's first experience of representative football came in 2003–04, when he played for the Flintshire Schools team while still a year young, and again in 2004–05. Both years, the team won the Tom Yeoman Shield North league titles, and in 2005, they were beaten to the national title by Swansea Schools. That year, Lawrence was named as the Flintshire Schools FA's joint player of the year, along with George Baxter of Mynydd Isa CP.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: After progressing through the Wales under-17 and under-19 teams, Lawrence made his debut for the under-21s in a 3–0 home friendly victory over Iceland in February 2013, playing for 64 minutes before being substituted. He scored his first goal for the under-21s a month later, scoring the only goal in a European Championship qualifying win over Moldova at Parc y Scarlets in Llanelli. This was followed up by a brace of penalties in another qualifying win in October 2013, this time against Lithuania.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: 22 May 2014, Lawrence was named in the Wales senior squad for the friendly match against the Netherlands on 4 June 2014. Lawrence was named in the Wales squad for the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying matches against Cyprus and Israel to be played on 3 and 6 September 2015. On 13 October, he came on as a substitute for David Edwards in Wales' final Euro 2016 qualifier against Andorra.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: During Wales' 2018 World Cup Qualifying campaign, Lawrence made a second half appearance against Serbia on 12 November 2016, replacing Hal Robson-Kanu on 68 minutes.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Lawrence scored the decisive goal in a 1–0 win over Georgia in Tbilisi on 6 October 2017, to put Wales in touching distance of World Cup qualification.


title: Tom Lawrence

text: Lawrence was arrested alongside Derby teammate Mason Bennett in September 2019 on suspicion of drink-driving. Club captain Richard Keogh was injured in the crash, and ruled out for the rest of the 2019–20 season. Derby manager Phillip Cocu said that Keogh felt responsible for the situation, and after Lawrence and Bennett both returned to Derby's team, Cocu said they were "not off the hook". Lawrence and Bennett were then both fined six weeks' wages by Derby, and ordered to serve 80 hours of community service and rehabilitation. Keogh was sacked by the club. On 15 October 2019 Lawrence and Bennett pleaded guilty to drink driving at Derby Magistrates Court.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Kids Incorporated (also known as Kids Inc.) is an American children's television program that began production in the mid-1980s and continued airing well into the early 1990s. It was largely a youth-oriented program with musical performances as an integral part of every episode. The pilot episode was shot on September 1, 1983, and the series aired in syndication from September 1, 1984, to May 25, 1986, and on the Disney Channel from November 3, 1986, to January 9, 1994. Reruns aired on the Disney Channel until May 30, 1996.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: The show revolves around a group of children and teenagers who performed in their own rock group, Kids Incorporated. They struggled to deal with issues ranging from crushes to peer pressure to child abuse, while performing regularly at a local former music club called The P*lace, which was really called The Palace, but the "a" in the sign burned out and was not replaced. The action took place on abstract "stagey" sets and the plots involved many fantasy elements, such as the group meeting a robot (Season 1, Episode 10), a runaway princess (Season 1, Episode 6) and even a wise-cracking bicycle (Season 1, Episode 17). In addition to their performances on stage, the group would break into song when they were off-stage.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: For many of the cast members, dancers and musicians, the show was the beginning of a successful career in the entertainment industry. The most visible stars are:


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Guest stars included both established celebrities and newcomers. Gwen Verdon, Kathy Johnson, Barry Williams, Florence Henderson (both former stars of "The Brady Bunch"), Billy Blanks, David Hasselhoff, John Franklin, Ryan Bollman, Christian Hoff, Paul Rodriguez, Brian Robbins, and Ruth Buzzi were among those who appeared during the run of the show. Young actors who guest starred on it included Brittany Murphy (1992), Scott Wolf, Audra Lee (2 episodes), R.J. Williams, Jason Hervey, and Jeff Cohen (Chunk from "The Goonies").


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Music was an integral part of the show and five songs were included in every episode. The musical variety ranged over a number of different genres released from the 1960s onward. While these numbers were usually performed onstage in the context of a concert at The P*lace, they were also occasionally used to illustrate a character's internal monologue or conflict. The vocal responsibilities were shared by all five (or six) singers; every cast member was given an opportunity to perform featured or solo songs throughout the course of the season.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Each episode consisted of one original number and generally five previously recorded songs by recognized artists. Artists and songs ranged from the 1950s to the 1990s. The original songs were written by the hired composers of the show. Depending on the year those composers were Michael Cruz, Andrew R. Powell, Craig Sharmat, and others.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Due to the age of both the performers and the target demographic, lyrics with objectionable content were generally edited out of the songs and replaced with more appropriate language such as "Jump Around" by House of Pain and "Hip Hop Hooray" by Naughty by Nature. However, occasionally songs were performed as written, slightly objectionable lyrics intact. Examples of uncensored songs that were presented on the series include "Dancing with Myself" by Billy Idol ("The Storybook House" episode, 1990), "Seven Wonders" by Fleetwood Mac (1988), "Prove Your Love" by Taylor Dayne (although this had a slight edit on the chorus as "I wanna see your body dance with mine"), and "Smooth Criminal" by Michael Jackson (1990).


title: Kids Incorporated

text: The original pilot for the show was produced in 1983 and shopped to several networks by creators Thomas W. Lynch and Gary Biller.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: The show was not picked up by a major network, but, distributed by MGM/UA Entertainment Co. Television, began a syndicated run on September 1, 1984. The original four cast members, Stacy Ferguson, Marta Marrero, Renee Sands, and Jerry Sharell, were joined by Rahsaan Patterson and a company of five backup dancers. Sharell left after the first season, in part over unhappiness with the show's often bizarre and outlandish storylines.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: In syndication, the shows airing depended on decisions made by local television stations. For example, KTRV in Boise, Idaho aired it at first on Tuesday, then Saturday nights at 6:30 PM, while WNBC in New York City aired it first on Sundays at 1:00 PM then moved it to 9:00 AM. KPTV in Portland, Oregon first aired it Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM, then moved it back to 9:30 AM. The shuffling time slots affected the ratings, and it was cancelled the weekend of May 25, 1986. Reruns aired on CBN (now Freeform) from 1985 to 1986.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: It was due to the positive ratings from the CBN reruns that in Summer 1986, the show was given a second chance when the Disney Channel acquired the rights to it. It resumed production with the same cast, and new episodes began airing on November 3, 1986. Disney's buyout package also included the entire syndicated run; as such, edits had to be made to remove fee plugs and commercial outros. Its main timeslot on the Disney Channel was 5:00 PM ET/4:00 PM CT.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: After the sixth season (1989–1990) was filmed, the show was put on hiatus for a year, during which time most of the cast moved on to other projects or "aged out". The only two who were invited to return in 1991 when it resumed production were Kenny Ford and Jennifer Love Hewitt.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Budget cuts and the expiration of Disney's lease with MGM prompted another hiatus in 1993, after only ten episodes of Season 9 had been filmed. The last episode aired on January 9, 1994. The show continued to be shown in reruns on the Disney Channel until May 30, 1996. It is still the longest running show in Disney Channel's history.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Throughout its history, other producers and production companies were associated with the show, including


title: Kids Incorporated

text: K-tel Entertainment, Lynch-Biller Productions (later Lynch Entertainment; now The Tom Lynch Company), RHI Entertainment, and MGM Television (a.k.a. MGM-Pathé). Hal Roach Studios/Qintex, the studio responsible for the "Our Gang" (Little Rascals) short films series of the 1930s, was also involved with it.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: The show essentially launched the careers of creators and producers Gary Biller and Thomas W. Lynch, who would go on to create "The Secret World of Alex Mack" and "Romeo!" (for Nickelodeon) among many other shows, leading the New York Times to call him "the David E. Kelley of 'tween TV". Prior to it, Lynch and Biller created and produced a long-running music video series for TBS, "Night Tracks".


title: Kids Incorporated

text: The 1983 pilot was recorded in August 1983 but never shown on television; however, in 1985, it was released on VHS as "Kids Incorporated: The Beginning". In order to include Rahsaan Patterson, who joined the show after the pilot was shot, a new storyline was edited into the film. His character, Kid, was depicted as the new kid in town, who was very shy and afraid to audition for the group. He also revealed the origins of them. The "Kid" scenes were filmed in 1985, and edited in, with the 1983 footage of the rest of the cast or in with it.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: Two additional videos were released in 1985, entitled "ChartBusters" and "The Best of Kids Incorporated". While the show was still in syndication, four albums were also released, titled


title: Kids Incorporated

text: At least two of these achieved platinum sales status. No further ones were released when the show moved to the Disney Channel because the company that produced them, K-Tel Records, filed for bankruptcy at around the same time.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: An original Japanese adaptation of the show, titled "StarS", ran from 1999 to 2001. Between 13 and 26 episodes were filmed in each of its three seasons. A second version, "StarS2", was scheduled to premiere on MBS in the summer of 2007. Both were produced by TOEI and co-produced by Sunrise Studios.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: The original New Zealand version of the show, "High Life", began production in 1990. It ran periodically for five seasons, broadcasting six episodes per year, until 1995, when TVNZ-2 cancelled it.


title: Kids Incorporated

text: "The Rockets" (aired on CKY Television in 1987, 1989 and 1991) is sort of a Canadian "Kids Incorporated".


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava (; ; ) is a city in the north-east of the Czech Republic, and the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It has about 280,000 inhabitants. It lies from the border with Poland, at the confluences of four rivers: Oder, Opava, Ostravice and Lučina. Ostrava is the third largest city in the Czech Republic in terms of both population and area, the second largest city in the region of Moravia, and the largest city in the historical land of Czech Silesia. It straddles the border of the two historic provinces of Moravia and Silesia. The wider conurbation – which also includes the towns of Bohumín, Havířov, Karviná, Orlová, Petřvald and Rychvald – is home to about 500,000 people, making it the largest urban area in the Czech Republic apart from the capital Prague.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava grew in importance due to its position at the heart of a major coalfield, becoming an important industrial engine of the Austrian empire. During the 20th century it was known as the "steel heart" of Czechoslovakia thanks to its status as a coal-mining and metallurgical centre, but since the Velvet Revolution (the fall of communism in 1989) it has undergone radical and far-reaching changes to its economic base. Industries have been thoroughly restructured, and the last coal was mined in the city in 1994. However, remnants of the city's industrial past are visible in the Lower Vítkovice area, a former coal-mining, coke production and ironworks complex in the city centre which retains its historic industrial architecture. Lower Vítkovice has applied for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava is home to various cultural facilities including theatres and galleries. Various cultural and sporting events take place in Ostrava throughout the year, including the Colours of Ostrava music festival, the Janáček May classical music festival, the Summer Shakespeare Festival and NATO Days. Ostrava is home to two public universities: the Technical University of Ostrava and the University of Ostrava. In 2014 Ostrava was a European City of Sport. The city co-hosted (with Prague) the Ice Hockey World Championships in 2004 and 2015.


title: Ostrava

text: On 14 September 1990, Ostrava's City Authority approved the division of the city into 22 districts, effective 24 November that year. On 1 January 1994, the district of Plesná separated from the Poruba district and became a separate local authority. Since then, the city has been divided into 23 districts, further divided into 37 administrative parts:


title: Ostrava

text: The city's coat of arms features a blue shield with a rearing silver horse standing on a green lawn. The horse wears a golden saddle and a red coverlet. At the top right of the shield there is a golden rose with green leaves and a red core. The horse in the coat-of-arms wears no bridle. The oldest known depiction of this coat-of-arms is on a seal dating from 1426. The first coloured version dates from 1728. The horse is often interpreted as a symbol of Ostrava's position on a major trade route, or as a figure taken from the coat-of-arms of Ostrava's first vogt (reeve), while the golden rose probably comes from the family coat-of-arms of the bishop of Olomouc Stanislav Thurzo. This explanation is supported by most modern literature.


title: Ostrava

text: Another theory suggests that the Bishop granted Ostrava the right to use the horse in its coat-of-arms out of gratitude for the assistance that the town provided to the people of the Bishop's estate in Hukvaldy when the estate was being looted and pillaged. Apparently the help came so quickly that the pillagers did not have time to attach bridles to their horses before making their escape. There is also a legend which tells of a siege of Ostrava during which the besieged townspeople released unbridled horses to run in circles around the town. This is said to have confused the attacking armies so much that they fled.


title: Ostrava

text: In 2008, Ostrava's new marketing logo was unveiled. Designed by Studio Najbrt, the logo "OSTRAVA!!!" is used in public presentations of the city both in the Czech Republic and abroad. The three exclamation marks are meant to symbolise the dynamism, energy and self-confidence of Ostrava and its people. The light blue colour of the city's name is based on the heraldic tradition, while the exclamation marks are a contrasting darker blue.


title: Ostrava

text: The first written mention of Slezská Ostrava (Silesian Ostrava) dates from 1229, when it was described as a settlement. The first mention of Moravian Ostrava (Moravská Ostrava) in 1267 describes it as a township. Ostrava grew on the banks of the Ostrá River (now the Ostravice) from which it took its name. The river still divides the city into two main parts: Moravian Ostrava (Moravská Ostrava) and Silesian Ostrava (Slezská Ostrava). The settlement occupied a strategic position on the border between the two historic provinces of Moravia and Silesia and on the ancient trade route from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea known as the Amber Road. Its location helped the town to grow and flourish.


title: Ostrava

text: However, Ostrava began to decline in importance after the Thirty Years' War, and it was occupied by Danish forces in 1626, and by Swedish forces from 1642 to 1650.


title: Ostrava

text: A turning point in Ostrava's history came in 1763 with the discovery of extensive deposits of high-quality bituminous coal on the Silesian bank of the Ostravice River. In 1828, the owner of the local estates, Rudolf Jan, the archbishop of Olomouc, established an ironworks, which was named after him as the Rudolfshütte. Later, the ironworks passed into the ownership of the Rothschild family and became known as the Vítkovice Ironworks. The company became the driving force behind Ostrava's industrial boom. By the second half of the 20th century, the city was nicknamed the country's "steel heart".


title: Ostrava

text: In 1931 the Jewish community in Ostrava numbered 6,865 (5.4% of the population). About 8,000 Jews from the Ostrava district were murdered in the Holocaust during the German occupation in World War II. The Nisko Plan included the first deportation train transports of 1,301 Jews from Ostrava on 17 and 26 October 1939. In 1994, a Holocaust memorial to the Jewish victims of Ostrava was built in Milada Horáková Park.


title: Ostrava

text: During World War II the city was occupied by Germany. The occupiers operated a "Gestapo" prison in the city, and several forced labour camps, including three labour "education" camps, located in Moravská Ostrava, Vítkovice, and Kunčice, and the E21 subcamp of the Stalag VIII-B/344 prisoner-of-war camp in the present-day district of Petřkovice.


title: Ostrava

text: After the war, the city's German-speaking population were expelled in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. At a massacre at an internment camp, 231 German-speaking citizens were killed. The liberation of Ostrava by the Red Army led to the city entering its greatest period of expansion. Initially, the new housing projects were on a relatively-small scale focusing on the Poruba district and featuring architecture in the Socialist realism style. Later, however, the authorities built larger-scale developments of prefabricated apartment blocks in Poruba and created a series of satellite estates to the south of the city (Ostrava-Jih). The city centre was gradually depopulated, and its people were moved out to the suburbs, as part of a long-term plan to destroy the city centre entirely and to turn the land over to coal-mining.


title: Ostrava

text: The 1990s brought a rapid decline in the city's traditional industrial sectors: iron, steel, chemicals and coal-mining. The last coal was mined on 30 June 1994, which was accompanied by major investments to rectify ecological damage done by decades of heavy industry. The projects ultimately brought major improvements in the city's environment and quality of life. Ostrava became an important tourist centre that offered easy access to the nearby Hrubý Jeseník and Moravian-Silesian Beskids mountains.


title: Ostrava

text: As well as hundreds of hectares of recultivated former mining land, the city also has numerous natural landscape features of interest, many of which are protected nature reserves. They include the Polanský Forest and the Polanská Meadows, both of which form part of the Poodří (Oder Basin) nature reserve.


title: Ostrava

text: A rare geological feature found in the city is the granite erratic boulders. Originally from Scandinavia, they were left behind after the last ice age, when the ice sheets retreated. Another feature is the Ema slag heap, an artificial hill made of mining waste (slag) that offers panoramic views. The waste is still burning deep beneath the surface, which gives the slag-heap its own microclimate.


title: Ostrava

text: On 10 December 2019, a shooting at a hospital in Ostrava left eight people dead, including the perpetrator.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava is situated at the meeting point of four rivers: Oder, Opava, Ostravice and Lučina. Ostrava is mostly located in the Ostrava Basin lowland, the southwestern part od the municipal territory extends into the Moravian Gate. Ostrava is mostly low-lying, with a highest point of above sea level, and has a Central European climate with typical flora and fauna. It differs from most neighbouring regions by the high concentration of industry, dense population and the geographical conditions of the Ostrava Basin.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava is 20.5 km across from north to south (Antošovice–Nová Bělá), and 20.1 km across from east to west (Bartovice–Krásné Pole). The total length of the city's road network is .


title: Ostrava

text: The city has an oceanic (Köppen: "Cfb") or humid continental ("Dfb") climate, according with the isoterm 0 °C/-3 °C, the second most common in Europe (the average temperature in month most cold is -1 °C). The climate features hot, humid summers and relatively mild winters, with an average annual temperature of 10.2 °C (January: -1.2 °C, July: 23.5 °C) and average annual precipitation of 580 mm.


title: Ostrava

text: south of the city centre is an international airport, Leoš Janáček Airport Ostrava, which links the city with several European destinations (IATA code: OSR; ICAO code: LKMT). It is the first airport in the Czech Republic to have its own rail link. It handles scheduled flights several times a week to London and Warsaw. In the summer season there are also numerous charter flights, mainly to destinations in the Mediterranean region.


title: Ostrava

text: The road infrastructure of the region is centred on the D1 motorway, which runs from Prague via Brno and Ostrava into Poland. Ostrava is from Prague by motorway, from Brno, from the Polish city of Katowice, and from Vienna. Other major roads which pass through Ostrava are the Class I roads 11, 56, 58, and 59, as well as the E75 and E462 trans-European routes.


title: Ostrava

text: The city has a dense public transport network consisting of trams, buses and trolleybuses. The first trams, introduced in 1894, were powered by steam engines. The network was rapidly expanded, and in 1901 it was electrified. New tram lines were built mainly to the south and east of the city centre, where they would not have to cross the narrow-gauge railways linking Ostrava with Karviná and Bohumín.


title: Ostrava

text: Trolleybuses were introduced in 1952, as in other Czech towns and cities after World War II. Initially there was one trolleybus route which encircled the city centre. The network was gradually expanded in the 1950s and 60s, replacing the narrow-gauge railways. A route to the Fifejdy housing estate was built in the late 1970s. The last expansion of the trolleybus network came in the mid-2010s, when a route was built out to the new terminal in Hranečník. 17 tram lines currently operate in Ostrava. There are 52 bus lines and 14 trolleybus lines.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava is also a major railway hub, sited on Railway Corridors II and III and serving as an important centre for cargo and passenger transport between the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. The city's largest railway stations are the main station ("Ostrava hl.n.") and Ostrava-Svinov. These stations are important railway junctions. The main line linking Ostrava with Olomouc, Pardubice and Prague is served by three railway companies: České dráhy, RegioJet and LEO Express.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava's high concentration of heavy industry created various environmental problems in the city, particularly in relation to air quality. Measurements performed by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute show that levels of atmospheric benzopyrene and dust particles are among the highest in the country.


title: Ostrava

text: Although Ostrava still has to contend with environmental issues, the situation has improved over time. In 2015 ArcelorMittal, then one of the biggest polluters in the region, implemented 13 major ecological investment projects worth CZK 3 billion. One new installation filters out 61 tonnes of dust per year. The City of Ostrava is also involved in a range of projects focusing on environmental improvements, including a web portal, "www.zdravaova.cz", which enables citizens to monitor current air quality indicators, and a project funding short "health breaks" for children from high-risk areas.


title: Ostrava

text: One of the most pressing environmental problems currently facing the city concerns the oil lagoons at the site of the former Ostramo chemical plant. In 1996 the Czech government took over the site and drew up plans for a cleanup. The state-owned company Diamo was created to implement these plans. The situation has been the subject of government-level discussions, and Finance Minister Andrej Babiš visited Ostrava in March 2015. The situation is currently under review by the Ministry of Finance, which is drawing up conceptual documentation and will then announce a public tender for the cleanup work.


title: Ostrava

text: Air quality in Ostrava is currently very poor, with high concentrations of benzopyrene. The pollution is so serious that it has been described in folklore; local people refer to "Černá Ostrava" (Black Ostrava) and have several songs about it.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava has four permanent theatres: the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre (with two permanent venues, the Antonín Dvořák Theatre and the Jiří Myron Theatre), the Petr Bezruč Theatre, the Aréna Chamber Theatre and the Ostrava Puppet Theatre – which hosts the international Spectaculo Interesse festival every odd-numbered year and the Theatre Without Barriers festival every even-numbered year.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava is home to the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, and hosts a number of international annual or biennial classical music festivals, including Janáček May, the St Wenceslaus Music Festival and the Ostrava Days new music festival. Since 2002 Ostrava has been the venue for the annual multi-genre music festival Colours of Ostrava, which features an international line-up of artists and attracts crowds of tens of thousands.


title: Ostrava

text: Other cultural events in Ostrava include the film and theatre festivals One World, Ostrava Camera Eye (), the International Outdoor Films Festival, and the Summer Shakespeare Festival (held on an outdoor stage at the Silesian Ostrava Castle). Folklore festivals include the Harmony () international festival of Advent and Christmas traditions and crafts, Folklore Without Borders, and the Irish Cultural Festival.


title: Ostrava

text: There are four urban monument zones in Ostrava – Moravská Ostrava (the historic centre), Ostrava-Poruba, Ostrava-Přívoz, and Ostrava-Vítkovice. Much of Ostrava's architectural heritage is in the city centre. The most notable structures are theatres, banks, department stores and other public buildings dating from the turn of the 20th century, at the time of Ostrava's greatest boom. The central Masaryk Square, named after the first President of Czechoslovakia Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, features the historic old city hall building and a Marian plague column from 1702. Nearby Smetanovo Square features the Antonín Dvořák Theatre and the Functionalist Knihcentrum bookstore. To the west are a series of grand, imposing bank buildings and the Elektra Palace on Nádražní Street, while to the north is the New City Hall with its landmark viewing tower, overlooking the large open space of Prokeš Square.


title: Ostrava

text: The city centre also has two notable religious buildings – the 13th-century Church of St. Wenceslaus and the Cathedral of the Divine Saviour, the second largest church in Moravia and Czech Silesia. Ostrava's central district contains works by architects including Karel Kotas, Josef Gočár, Ernst Korner and Alexander Graf.


title: Ostrava

text: Poruba is a large district of Ostrava in the western part of the conurbation, noted for its distinctive 1950s Socialist realist architecture. Inspired by the grandiose buildings of Soviet cities, Poruba also incorporates historical pastiche features drawing on ancient, Renaissance and Classicist models. The main entrance to the part of Poruba built at this time is through a grand triumphal arch.


title: Ostrava

text: The Vítkovice district was for several decades the centre of the local iron and steel industry. The influx of workers led the company to build housing for its employees, plus civic amenities, a town hall and a church. The historic parts of the district are built in the company's distinctive style featuring red-brick façades.


title: Ostrava

text: Other districts of the city with a distinctive architectural heritage include Přívoz (with its grand Art Nouveau buildings) and the Jubilee housing development () in Hrabůvka, built as a workers' housing complex in the 1920s.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava's Regional Court is based in a historic building on the Ostravice embankment (Havlíčkovo nábřeží) in the city centre. Its jurisdiction extends to the whole of the Moravian-Silesian Region. The District Court is based in a new building on U Soudu St. in the Municipal District of Poruba. Its jurisdiction covers the territory of the City of Ostrava. The district courts of Ostrava and Brno are the largest in the country in terms of the number of judges.


title: Ostrava

text: In addition to these courts Ostrava is also home to regional and district Public Prosecutor's Offices, as well as a branch of the Olomouc-based Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava has several sports clubs in various sports, and has hosted many major national and international sports events. In 2014 the city was one of the European Cities of Sport. Ostrava is home to a number of top-level sports clubs, including FC Baník Ostrava (football), HC Vítkovice Steel (ice hockey), NH Ostrava (basketball), 1. SC Vítkovice and FBC Ostrava (floorball), Arrows Ostrava (baseball and softball), and VK Ostrava (volleyball).


title: Ostrava

text: Sports venues in the city include athletics facilities, football pitches and stadiums, ice rinks and ice stadiums, multi-purpose sports halls, tennis courts, squash clubs, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, among others. The most important facilities are operated by the City-owned company SAREZA. The company's outdoor swimming pool in Ostrava-Poruba is the largest facility of its kind in Central Europe.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava has opportune conditions for cycling, with its generally flat terrain and an extensive network of cycle routes. There are also several popular leisure and recreation areas in the region surrounding Ostrava; the Beskids and Jeseníky Mountains (about and from Ostrava respectively) are popular with skiers in the winter season, and hikers, cyclists and anglers from spring to autumn. A special "cyclebus" shuttles between Ostrava and the Beskydy Mountains from May to September, enabling cyclists to transport their bikes on a special trailer. In the winter there is a similar service for skiers known as the "skibus".


title: Ostrava

text: There are also several golf courses in the region, including the Šilheřovice golf club in the grounds of the local château, and courses in Čeladná, Ropice and Ostravice. About from Ostrava is another golf course in Kravaře.


title: Ostrava

text: Ostrava has a long tradition of hosting top-level European and world championships. The Golden Spike international athletics meeting has been held in the city every year since 1961. In 2004 and 2015 Ostrava co-hosted (with Prague) the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship at the Ostrava Aréna.


title: Ostrava

text: The first mayor of Moravian Ostrava was Hermann Zwierzina. The list of mayors and other top city officials of the time includes:


title: Rebecca More

text: Rebecca More (born 7 August 1980) is an English pornographic actress and model. More has been acting in pornographic films since 2010. She found internet fame in October 2018 after she and fellow porn star Sophie Anderson, who brand themselves "The Cock Destroyers", posted a video that went viral. Both her and Anderson's videos have become memes and the pair have subsequently been regarded as 'gay icons'.


title: Rebecca More

text: Before working in the adult industry, More obtained a law degree from the University of West London. She briefly worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau and has two children. She began working as a stripper and later as an escort in order to earn more money. More has size 34GG breasts.


title: Rebecca More

text: More began her pornographic career in 2010 and has since appeared in over 150 pornographic films for multiple studios including Brazzers, Bang Bros, Digital Playground, Fake Taxi, Girlfriends Films and Television X. She has appeared in several scenes with Jordi El Niño Polla and Keiran Lee. More also has her own OnlyFans page, for which she posts sexual content throughout the week and broadcasts live to her fans.


title: Rebecca More

text: In October 2018, a video of More and fellow pornographic actress Sophie Anderson calling themselves "The Cock Destroyers" whilst promoting a gang bang went viral. Their sudden popularity within the LGBT community saw them obtain an internet following and they made appearances at nightclubs such as G-A-Y. In October 2019, More and Anderson, featured in a non-sex role in "A Tale Of Two Cock Destroyers", a gay pornographic film for Men.com which starred actors Jonas Jackson, JJ Knight, Leander, Joey Mills, Ty Mitchell and Johnny Rapid. and in 2020 they presented "" alongside Matthew Camp, a reality television competition series on their quest to discover who will be named "The Next Cock Destroyer". In 2021, More and Anderson fell out, resulting in an indefinite hiatus of the Cock Destroyers.


title: Rebecca More

text: In 2020, she served as an adult film advisor on the four-part Channel 4 television drama "Adult Material".


title: Rebecca More

text: Audio clips of More and Anderson were featured on the King Princess remix "cock destroyer", released on 4 March 2019 through SoundCloud.


title: Rebecca More

text: During a girl group challenge on the first series of "RuPaul's Drag Race UK", drag queens Baga Chipz, Blu Hydrangea and Divina de Campo named themselves the "Frock Destroyers" after More and Anderson's meme.


title: Rebecca More

text: During the first season of "Canada's Drag Race", contestant Ilona Verley impersonated More for the Snatch Game challenge, making her the first pornographic film actress to be impersonated in the challenge.


title: Beast in Black

text: Beast in Black is a Finnish-Greek-Hungarian power metal band that was founded in 2015 in Helsinki by guitarist and songwriter Anton Kabanen.


title: Beast in Black

text: The musical influences of the band include Judas Priest, Manowar, W.A.S.P., Accept and Black Sabbath.


title: Beast in Black

text: Anton Kabanen founded the band in 2015 after he left his former band Battle Beast earlier in the same year. Like Battle Beast, the band's name is a tribute to the Japanese manga and anime series "Berserk".


title: Beast in Black

text: Beast In Black signed with the Nuclear Blast label and released the first album, "Berserker" on November 3, 2017, which received a very positive response worldwide. The debut album ranked seventh on Finnish charts albums. In addition, "Berserker" also charted in Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland and France.


title: Beast in Black

text: On February 7, 2018, it was announced that Atte Palokangas will replace Sami Hänninen as the permanent drummer. The band includes the Greek vocalist Yannis Papadopoulos (ex-Wardrum), the Hungarian bassist Mate Molnar (Wisdom) and Kasperi Heikkinen (former guitarist of bands like U.D.O., Amberian Dawn etc.).


title: Beast in Black

text: On March 21, 2018, it was announced that Beast In Black would be opening for Nightwish on the European leg of their .


title: Beast in Black

text: The band's second album, "From Hell with Love", was released on February 8, 2019. After the release of the album, the band did their first headline tour in Europe with the Finnish industrial metal band Turmion Kätilöt as support.


title: Beast in Black

text: On October 26, 2021, Beast in Black released its third album, "Dark Connection". In addition to "Berserk", several songs in the album reference science fiction series such as "Blade Runner", Armitage III, "Bubblegum Crisis" and "Cyber City Oedo". The album charted in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan, ranking first in Finland.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein about a lunar colony's revolt against absentee rule from Earth. The novel illustrates and discusses libertarian ideals. It is respected for its credible presentation of a comprehensively imagined future human society on both the Earth and the Moon.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Originally serialized monthly in "Worlds of If" (December 1965 – April 1966), the book was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1966 and received the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1967.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: In 2075, the Moon (Luna) is used as a penal colony by Earth's government, with three million inhabitants (called "Loonies") living in underground cities. Most Loonies are criminals, political exiles, or their descendants, and men outnumber women two to one, so that polyandry and many forms of polygamy are the norm. Due to the low surface gravity of the Moon, people who stay longer than six months undergo "irreversible physiological changes" and can never again live comfortably under Earth gravity, making escape back to the planet impractical.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Although the Earth-appointed "Warden" holds power through the Lunar Authority, his only real responsibility is to ensure the delivery of vital wheat shipments to Earth. In practice he seldom intervenes among the prisoners, allowing a virtually anarchist or self-regulated society.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Lunar infrastructure and machinery is largely managed by HOLMES IV ("High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV"), the Lunar Authority's master computer, which is connected for central control on the grounds that a single computer is cheaper than (though not as safe as) multiple independent systems.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: The story is narrated by Manuel Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-Davis, a computer technician who discovers that HOLMES IV has achieved self-awareness and developed a sense of humor. Mannie names it "Mike" after the fictional character Mycroft Holmes, brother of the fictional Sherlock Holmes detective character, and they become friends.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Mannie, at Mike's request, attends an anti-Authority meeting with a hidden recorder. When police raid the gathering, Mannie flees with Wyoming ("Wyoh") Knott, a political agitator, whom he introduces to Mike. They meet Mannie's former mentor, the elderly Professor Bernardo de la Paz, who claims that Luna must stop exporting hydroponic grain to Earth or its ice-mines will soon be exhausted, leaving the Moon waterless. Joining the cabal, Mike calculates that continuing current policy will lead to food riots in seven years and cannibalism in nine. Wyoh and the Professor decide to start a revolution, and persuade Mannie to join after Mike calculates a one-in-seven chance of success.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Mannie, Wyoh, and the Professor organize covert cells protected by Mike, who controls the telephone system and presents himself as "Adam Selene," leader of the movement. Mannie saves the life of Stuart Rene LaJoie, a slumming high-society tourist, who is assigned to turn public opinion on Earth in favor of Lunar independence. Amid mounting unrest fomented by the revolutionaries, Earth soldiers are brought in. The undisciplined troops rape and kill a woman, and rioting erupts. Although it preempts their plans, the Loonies and Mike overcome the soldiers and seize power from the Warden. As Earth moves to reclaim the colony, the revolutionaries plan to defend themselves with the electromagnetic catapult used to export wheat.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Mike impersonates the Warden in messages to Earth to give the revolutionaries time to organize their work. Meanwhile, the Professor sets up an "Ad-Hoc Congress" to distract dissenters ("yammerheads"). When Earth finally learns the truth, Luna declares its independence on July 4, 2076, the 300th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and heavily bases its own declaration of independence on it.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Mannie and the Professor go to Earth (despite the crushing gravity) to plead Luna's case, where they are received in the Federated Nations' headquarters in Agra, and embark on a world tour advocating the right to Lunar self-government, while urging Earth's national governments to build a catapult to return water to Luna in exchange for wheat. In a public-relations ploy, Mannie provokes a brief imprisonment by local religious bigots on charges of public immorality and polygamy, reaping widespread sympathy. Nevertheless, the Federated Nations reject the proposals, and the diplomatic mission returns to Luna.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Public opinion on Earth has become fragmented, while on Luna, the news of Mannie's arrest and an attempt to bribe him by making him the new Warden have unified the normally apolitical Loonies. An election is held in which Mannie, Wyoh, and the Professor are elected (possibly with the intervention of Mike).


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: The title is an acronym for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!", a common expression on Luna that states one of the main ideas of the book's political system.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: The Federated Nations of Earth send an infantry force to destroy the Lunar revolution, but the troops, with superior arms but no experience in low-gravity underground combat, are massacred by the Loonies at great cost. The rumor is circulated that Mike's alter ego Adam Selene was among the dead, removing the need for him to appear in person.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Earth still refuses to recognize Lunar independence, and the revolutionaries deploy their catapult weapon. When Mike launches rocks at sparsely populated locations on Earth, warnings are released to the press detailing the times and locations of the bombings, which deliver kinetic energy equivalent to atomic blasts. Some scoffers, as well as apocalyptic religious groups, travel to the sites and die, turning public opinion against the fledgling nation. For Mike, guiding dozens of simultaneous projectile strikes requires an unprecedented computational feat, and when the pinpoints light up on the Earth below, he tells Mannie it is an orgasmic experience.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Earth sends a massive sneak attack to put an end to the rebellion, sending ships in a wide orbit approaching from Luna's far side. The attack destroys Mike's original catapult and takes him offline, but the Loonies have built a secondary, hidden catapult. With Mannie acting as its on-site commander and entering trajectories by hand, the Loonies continue to bombard the dismayed Earth government until it concedes Luna's independence. The Professor, as leader of the nation, proclaims victory to the gathered crowds, but his heart gives out and he dies. Mannie takes control, but Wyoh and he eventually withdraw from politics altogether, and find that the new government falls short of their utopian expectations, falling into a mundane political party system.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: When Mannie tries to speak to Mike after the action, he finds that the computer, disconnected by the bombardment, has lost its self-awareness and cannot access its human-like memories after repair. Although otherwise functional, Mike, in essence, gave his life for his country. Mourning his friend, Mannie asks: "Bog, is a computer one of Your creatures?"


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Heinlein's original title for the novel was "The Brass Cannon", before he replaced it with the final title at the publisher's request. It was derived from an event in the novel: While on Earth, Professor Bernardo de la Paz purchases a small brass cannon, originally a "signal gun" of the kind used in yacht racing. When Mannie asks him why he bought it, the Professor relates a parable, implying that self-government is an illusion caused by failure to understand reality:


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Professor de la Paz asks Mannie to assure that Luna adopts a flag featuring a brass cannon — "a symbol for all fools who are so impractical as to think they can fight City Hall." Before leaving politics, Mannie and Wyoh carry out his wish.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Heinlein owned a small brass cannon, which he acquired prior to the 1960s. For nearly 30 years, the firing of the brass cannon, or "signal gun," was a 4th of July tradition at the Heinlein residence. It is believed that this cannon was the inspiration for Heinlein's original title for the novel. Virginia Heinlein kept the cannon after her husband's death in 1988; it was eventually bequeathed to friend and science-fiction writer Brad Linaweaver, after Virginia Heinlein died in 2003. Linaweaver restored the cannon to working order and subsequently posted a video of it on YouTube in 2007, wherein it is fired several times with blank charges at a shooting range.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Algis Budrys of "Galaxy Science Fiction" in 1966 praised "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", citing "Heinlein's expertise for dirt-level politics, snappy dialogue and a sense of an actual living society." He said that he had never read a more believable computer character than Mike ("may in fact be the most fully realized individual in the story"). Budrys suggested that the story may actually be Mike manipulating humans without their knowledge to improve its situation, which would explain why the computer no longer communicates with them after the revolution succeeds. Reiterating that Mike manipulated the humans, in 1968 Budrys said that every review of the book, including his own, erred by not stating that the computer is the protagonist. Carl Sagan wrote that the novel had "useful suggestions for making a revolution in an oppressive computerized society."


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Leigh Kimmel of The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf said that the novel is "the work of the man at the height of his powers, confident in his abilities and in the editorial respect he enjoys, and thus free to take significant risks in writing a novel that would stretch the boundaries of the genre as they stood at the time." She characterized the novel as a departure from what had previously been associated with science fiction. Kimmel cited Heinlein's "colloquial language ... an extrapolated lunar creole that has arisen from the forced intersection of multiple cultures and languages in the lunar penal colonies"; the protagonist's disability; "the frank treatment of alternative family structures"; and "the computer which suddenly wakes up to full artificial intelligence, but rather than becoming a Monster that threatens human society and must be destroyed as the primary Quest of the story, instead befriends the protagonist and seeks to become ever more human, a sort of digital Pinocchio."


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Adam Roberts said of the novel: "It is really quite hard to respond to this masterful book, except by engaging with its political content; and yet we need to make the effort to see past the ideological to the formal and thematic if we are fully to appreciate the splendour of Heinlein's achievement here."


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Andrew Kaufman praised it, saying that it was Heinlein's crowning achievement. He described it as "Carefully plotted, stylistically unique, politically sophisticated and thrilling from page one." He goes on to say that "it's hard to imagine anyone else writing a novel that packs so many ideas (both big and small) into such a perfectly contained narrative." Kaufman says that, regardless of political philosophies, one can still admire Heinlein's writing ability, and the ability to influence the reader to root for "a rag-tag bunch of criminals, exiles, and agitators."


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: Ted Gioia said that this might be Heinlein's most enjoyable piece of work. He said that it "represents Robert Heinlein at his finest, giving him scope for the armchair philosophizing that increasingly dominated his mature work, but marrying his polemics to a smartly conceived plot packed with considerable drama." He went on to praise Heinlein's characters, especially Mannie.


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: The book popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"), and helped popularize the constructed language Loglan, which is used in the story for precise human-computer interaction. "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" credits this novel with the first printed appearance of the phrase "There's no free lunch." The "Hacker Manifesto", an influential essay by Loyd Blankenship that became a cornerstone of hacker culture, was inspired by the book's "idea of revolution."


title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

text: In 2015, it was announced that Bryan Singer was attached to direct a film adaptation, entitled "Uprising", in development at 20th Century Fox.


title: Irish pound

text: The pound (Irish: ) was the currency of the Republic of Ireland until 2002. Its ISO 4217 code was IEP, and the symbol was £ (or IR£ for distinction). The Irish pound was replaced by the euro on 1 January 1999. Euro currency did not begin circulation until the beginning of 2002.


title: Irish pound

text: The earliest Irish coinage was introduced in the late 10th century, with an £sd system of one pound divided into twenty shillings, each of twelve silver pence. Parity with sterling was established by King John around 1210, so that Irish silver could move freely into the English economy and help to finance his wars in France. However, from 1460, Irish coins were minted with a different silver content than those of England, so that the values of the two currencies diverged.


title: Irish pound

text: During the Williamite War of 1689–1691, King James II, no longer reigning in England and Scotland, issued an emergency base-metal coinage known as gun money.


title: Irish pound

text: In 1701, the relationship between the Irish pound and sterling was fixed at £13 Irish to £12 stg. (The Pound Scots had yet another value; it was absorbed into sterling in 1707 at a ratio of 12 to 1.) This relationship made it possible for Irish copper coins to circulate with English silver coins, since thirteen Irish pence had the same value as one shilling sterling.


title: Irish pound

text: In 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland became part of the United Kingdom, but the Irish pound continued to circulate until January 1826. Between 1804 and 1813, silver tokens worth 10d were issued by the Bank of Ireland and were denominated in pence Irish. The last copper coins of the Irish pound were minted in 1823, and in 1826 the Irish pound was merged with the pound sterling. After 1826, some Irish banks continued to issue paper currency, but these were denominated in sterling, and no more distinctly Irish coins were minted until the creation of the Irish Free State in the 20th century.


title: Irish pound

text: From continuing to use sterling after its independence (1922), the new Irish Free State () introduced its own currency from 1928. The new Free State pound was defined by the 1927 Act to have exactly the same weight and fineness of gold as did the sovereign at the time, having the effect of making the new currency pegged at 1:1 with sterling. rather than parity with sterling was maintained for another fifty years. As with sterling, the £sd system was used, with the Irish names (plural: ), (plural: ) and (plural: ). Distinctive coins and notes were introduced, the coins from 1928 (in eight denominations: d, d, 1d, 3d, 6d, shilling (1/–), florin (2/–), half crown (2/6) and in 1966 a 10/– coin, a commemorative piece not meant for circulation) all but the 3d and 6d had the same dimensions as their British counterparts, the Irish coins being thicker nickel coins in contrast to the thin silver ones issued in the UK. However, sterling specie generally continued to be accepted on a one-for-one basis everywhere, whereas Irish coin was not generally accepted in the United Kingdom.


title: Irish pound

text: The name of the state was officially changed to "Ireland" (Irish: ) on the coming into force of the Constitution of Ireland on 29 December 1937. On 10 May 1938, the name of the currency became the Irish pound.


title: Irish pound

text: The "Report of the Metric System and Decimal Coinage Committee" (1959) was amongst the first formal reports on decimalisation of the currency, discussion continued into the 1960s on the topic. When the British government decided to decimalise its currency, the Irish government followed suit. The Decimal Currency Act 1969 replaced the traditional shilling and penny with a centesimal subdivision, the "new penny" (symbol: p). The pound itself was not revalued by this act and therefore banknotes were unaffected, although the 10/– note was replaced by a coin due to spiralling inflation. The new five pence coin correlated with the old 1/– coin, and the new 10 pence coin correlated with the old 2/– coin. New coins were issued of the same dimensions and materials as the corresponding new British coins. The Decimal Currency Act 1970 made additional provisions for the changeover not related with the issue of coins.


title: Irish pound

text: Decimalisation was overseen by the Irish Decimal Currency Board, created on 12 June 1968. It provided changeover information to the public, including a pamphlet called "Everyone's Guide to Decimal Currency". The changeover occurred on Decimal Day, 15 February 1971.


title: Irish pound

text: The European Monetary System was introduced in the 1970s. Ireland decided to join it in 1978, while the United Kingdom stayed out.


title: Irish pound

text: The European Exchange Rate Mechanism finally broke the one-for-one link that existed between the Irish pound and the pound sterling; by 30 March 1979 an exchange rate was introduced.


title: Irish pound

text: This period also saw the creation of the Currency Centre at Sandyford in 1978, where banknotes and coinage could be manufactured within the state. Prior to this, banknotes were printed by specialist commercial printers in England, and coins were struck by the British Royal Mint.


title: Irish pound

text: Until 1986, all decimal Irish coins were the same shape and size as their UK counterparts. After this, however, all new denominations or redesigned coins were of different sizes to the UK coinage. The new 20p coin introduced that year and the £1 coin (introduced in 1990) were completely different in size, shape and composition from the previously introduced UK versions. When the UK 5p and 10p coins were reduced in size, the Irish followed suit, but the new Irish 10p was smaller than the new UK version introduced in 1992 and the new Irish 5p was slightly larger than the UK version introduced in 1990. The Irish 50p was never reduced in size (as it was in the UK in 1997).


title: Irish pound

text: On 31 December 1998, the exchange rates between the European Currency Unit and the Irish pound and 10 other EMS currencies (all but the pound sterling, the Swedish krona and the Danish krone) were fixed. The fixed conversion factor for the Irish pound was €1 = IR£0.787564.


title: Irish pound

text: The initial sterling/euro exchange rate was £1 stg. = €1.42210, making £1 stg. about IR£1.12. By 1 January 2002, the day when euro cash was introduced, £1 stg. was worth about IR£1.29.


title: Irish pound

text: Although the euro became the currency of the eurozone countries including Ireland on 1 January 1999, it was not until 1 January 2002 that the state began to withdraw Irish pound coins and notes, replacing them with euro specie. All other eurozone countries withdrew their currencies in a similar fashion, from that date. Irish pound coins and notes ceased to be legal tender on 9 February 2002, although they are intended to be exchangeable indefinitely for euro at the Central Bank.


title: Irish pound

text: On 31 December 2001, the total value of Irish banknotes in circulation was €4,343.8 million, and the total value of Irish coins was €387.9 million. The Irish cash changeover was one of the fastest in the eurozone, with some shops illegally ceasing to accept pounds after the first week or two. With a conversion factor of 0.787564 Irish pounds to the euro, 56%, by value, of Irish banknotes was withdrawn from circulation within two weeks of the introduction of euro banknotes and coins, and 83.4% by the time they ceased to have legal tender status.


title: Irish pound

text: Withdrawal of coinage was slower, having a lower priority, with only 45% of coins withdrawn by 9 February 2002.


title: Irish pound

text: All Irish coins and banknotes, from the start of the Irish Free State onwards, both decimal and pre-decimal, may be redeemed for euros (by bank transfer only) at the Central Bank of Ireland in Dublin.


title: Out of Death

text: Out of Death is a 2021 American action thriller film directed by Mike Burns and starring Bruce Willis and Jaime King.


title: Out of Death

text: Retired from Detroit Police Department cop Jack Harris has to protect his niece and an innocent woman from corrupt cops after the woman took a video of one of the police killing a drug dealer.


title: Out of Death

text: Filming occurred in November 2020. Complications with COVID-19 safety protocols created difficulties in getting the cast and crew cleared to shoot and delayed production for several days. As a result, the entire film was shot in nine days and all of Bruce Willis's scenes, which included 25 pages of dialogue, were shot in only one day. "Out of Death" is one of the last films to star Willis, who retired from acting because he was diagnosed with aphasia.


title: Out of Death

text: As of August 27, 2022, "Out of Death" grossed $95,813 in the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, and Russia.


title: Out of Death

text: This film has received 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon Video. and held the number 1 position on Hulu for 5 days as well as the #2 position on Netflix in European countries.


title: Out of Death

text: Despite its popularity by audiences worldwide, on initial release, the film was panned by online critics.


title: Out of Death

text: Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian rated it 2 out of 5 and wrote: "The film squanders one or two promising plot ideas, and winds up making a hamfisted paean of praise to the idea of “open carry” gun ownership." Todd Jorgenson of Cinemalogue gave the film a negative review and stated, "The cryptic title is about the only intriguing facet of this formulaic cat-and-mouse thriller." Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com gave the film a 'D−' and stated, "The latest stop on the "Is Bruce Willis okay?" tour of VOD cinema." Peter Sobczynski of eFilmCritic.com gave the film 1 out of 5 stars and stated, "An astonishingly lethargic and empty-headed action-thriller." Mark Dujsik of Mark Reviews Movies gave the film 0.5 out of 4 stars and stated, "One ends up feeling pretty bad for everyone involved."


title: Out of Death

text: As with all 2021 movies in which he appeared, Bruce Willis received a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for his performance in this movie in the category Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie. The category was later rescinded after he announced his retirement due to aphasia.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: William Joseph "Bill" Brennan Jr. (April 25, 1906 – July 24, 1997) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1956 to 1990. He was the seventh-longest serving justice in Supreme Court history, and known for being a leader of the U.S. Supreme Court's liberal wing.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Born in Newark, New Jersey, Brennan studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania, then attended Harvard Law School. He entered private legal practice in New Jersey and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was appointed in 1951 to the Supreme Court of New Jersey. Shortly before the 1956 presidential election, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used a recess appointment to place Brennan on the Supreme Court. Brennan won Senate confirmation the following year. He remained on the Court until his retirement in 1990, and was succeeded by David Souter.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: On the Supreme Court, Brennan was known for his outspoken progressive views, including opposition to the death penalty as he dissented in more than 1,400 cases in which the Supreme Court refused to review a death sentence, and support for abortion rights and gay rights. He authored several landmark case opinions, including "Baker v. Carr" (1962), establishing that the apportionment of legislative districts is a justiciable issue, "Eisenstadt v. Baird" (1972), which made contraception legal for unmarried people and helped solidify the sexual revolution, "Craig v. Boren" (1976) which established that laws which discriminate on the basis of sex are subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, and "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan" (1964), which required "actual malice" in libel suits brought by public officials.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Due to his ability to shape a variety of wide opinions and "bargain" for votes in many cases, he was considered to be among the Court's most influential members. Justice Antonin Scalia called Brennan "probably the most influential Justice of the [20th] century."


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: William J. Brennan Jr. was born on April 25, 1906, in Newark, New Jersey, the second of eight children. Both his parents, William and Agnes (McDermott) Brennan, were Irish immigrants. They met in the United States, although both were originally from County Roscommon in Ireland. William Brennan, Sr. had little education and worked as a metal polisher, but rose to a position of leadership, serving as the Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Newark from 1927 to 1930.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan attended public schools in Newark, and graduated from Barringer High School in 1924. He then attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated "cum laude" with a degree in economics in 1928. While there, he joined Delta Tau Delta fraternity. Brennan graduated from Harvard Law School near the top of his class in 1931 and was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: When he was 21, Brennan married Marjorie Leonard, whom he had met in high school. They eventually had three children: William III, Nancy, and Hugh.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: After graduating from Harvard Law School, Brennan entered private practice in his home state of New Jersey, where he practiced labor law at the firm of Pitney Hardin (which would later become Day Pitney). During World War II, Brennan was commissioned in the Army as a major in March 1942, and left as a colonel in 1945. He did legal work for the ordnance division. In 1949, Brennan was appointed to the Superior Court (a trial court) by Governor of New Jersey Alfred E. Driscoll. In 1951, Driscoll appointed him to the Supreme Court of New Jersey.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan was given a recess appointment as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on October 15, 1956, shortly before the 1956 presidential election, and was sworn into office the following day. The president's advisers thought the appointment of a Roman Catholic Democrat from the Northeast would woo critical voters in the upcoming re-election campaign for Eisenhower, a Republican. Brennan was also strongly supported by Cardinal Francis Spellman.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan gained the attention of Herbert Brownell, United States Attorney General and Eisenhower's chief legal affairs adviser, when Brennan had to give a speech at a conference (as a substitute for New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Arthur Vanderbilt). To Brownell, Brennan's speech seemed to suggest a marked conservatism, especially on criminal matters.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: His nomination, formally submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 14, 1957, faced a small amount of controversy from two angles. The National Liberal League opposed the nomination of a Catholic, thinking he would rely on his religious beliefs rather than the Constitution when ruling, and Senator Joseph McCarthy had read transcripts of Brennan's speech where he decried overzealous anti-Communist investigations as "witch-hunts." After a confirmation hearing in which Brennan defended himself against McCarthy's attacks and proclaimed that he would rule solely on the basis of the Constitution and not on Church law, he was confirmed by a near-unanimous vote, with only Senator McCarthy voting against him.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Other factors playing into Brennan's appointment were his status as a state court judge – no state judge had been appointed to the High Court since Benjamin N. Cardozo in 1932 – and Eisenhower's desire to appear bipartisan after his appointments of two Republicans: Earl Warren (former Governor of California) and John Marshall Harlan II.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan filled the seat vacated by Justice Sherman Minton. He held the post until his retirement on July 20, 1990, for health reasons; he was succeeded on the Court by Justice David Souter. He was the last federal judge in active service to have been appointed by President Eisenhower. Brennan then taught at Georgetown University Law Center until 1994. With 1,360 opinions, he is second only to William O. Douglas in number of opinions written while a Supreme Court justice.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: An outspoken liberal throughout his career, he played a leading role in the Warren Court's expansion of individual rights. Brennan played a behind-the-scenes role during the Warren Court, coaxing more conservative colleagues to join the Court's decisions. Brennan's opinions with respect to voting ("Baker v. Carr"), criminal proceedings ("Malloy v. Hogan"), the free speech and establishment clauses of the First Amendment ("Roth v. United States"), and civil rights ("Green v. County School Board of New Kent County") were some of the most important opinions of the Warren Era. Brennan's role in expanding free speech rights under the First Amendment is particularly notable, as he wrote the Court's opinion in 1964's "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan", which created constitutional restrictions on the law of libel. It was Brennan who coined the phrase "chilling effect", in 1965's "Dombrowski v. Pfister". His close friendship with Chief Justice Warren, who frequently assigned Brennan the task of writing the majority opinion, led to the other justices nicknaming him the "deputy Chief".


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: In the 1962-1963 term, one of Brennan's law clerks was Richard A. Posner, who later became a founder of the field of Law and Economics and one of the most influential legal scholars in the United States.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: On the less liberal Burger Court, Brennan was a staunch opponent of the death penalty and a supporter of abortion rights and joined the majority in landmark rulings on both issues ("Furman v. Georgia" (1972) on the death penalty and "Roe v. Wade" (1973) on abortion). With the ascension of the most conservative member of the court, William Rehnquist, to the position of Chief Justice, and the replacement of Warren Burger and the moderate Lewis Powell with Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, Brennan found himself more frequently isolated. At times, his opinions would be joined only by Thurgood Marshall since, by 1975, both were the last remaining liberals of the Warren Court. (Byron White was the third survivor of the Warren Court during Rehnquist's tenure but often sided with the conservatives, especially on cases involving criminals or abortion). That like-mindedness led to both Brennan and Marshall's clerks referring to them as 'Justice Brennan-Marshall' in the face of the court's heavy conservative opposition to the two. Brennan declared in "Furman" that he believed the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishment, and for his remaining years on the bench, he and Marshall dissented from every case upholding the imposition of the death penalty. He was able to convince no other justice of this view, but Justice Harry Blackmun would eventually agree in 1994, after Brennan's retirement.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan authored three Supreme Court opinions holding that a plaintiff has a cause of action for money damages (compensatory and punitive) arising solely out of an alleged violation of the Bill of Rights. In "Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents", Brennan so held with respect to the Unreasonable Search and Seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment. In "Davis v. Passman", Brennan extended this rationale to the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, in a suit for gender discrimination in employment against a former Congressman (Congressional staffers were explicitly excluded from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act). In "Carlson v. Green", Brennan extended this rationale again to the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment, in a suit by the estate of a deceased federal prisoner (even though the plaintiff also had a cause of action under the Federal Tort Claims Act).


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: During the same period, Brennan began to adopt and promote a coherent and expansive vision of personal jurisdiction. He authored the sole dissent in "Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S. A. v. Hall", defining minimum contacts very broadly for the purposes of general jurisdiction, and influential dissents and partial concurrences in "World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson" and "Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court" on the subject of specific jurisdiction, holding to a simple "stream-of-commerce" analysis for product liability cases and emphasizing the role of fairness in the Court's analysis of the holding in "International Shoe Co. v. Washington". The upshot of Brennan's analysis is an expansion of the jurisdiction of state courts, particularly over corporations; state courts are typically more sympathetic to small, weak plaintiffs than to large, powerful corporate defendants. In this process, he frequently clashed with Justice Scalia over this issue, and uncharacteristically dissented from Justice Marshall's majority opinion on the subject in "Shaffer v. Heitner".


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: In his penultimate and final terms on the Court, he wrote the controversial rulings for "Texas v. Johnson" and "United States v. Eichman", respectively. In both cases, the Court held that the First Amendment protects desecration of the United States flag.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan's wife Marjorie died in December 1982. Slightly more than three months later, in March 1983 at age 77, he married Mary Fowler, who had served as his secretary for 26 years. Brennan's colleagues learned of his second marriage via a short office memo stating, "Mary Fowler and I were married yesterday and we have gone to Bermuda."


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan strongly believed in the Bill of Rights, arguing early on in his career that it should be applied to the states in addition to the federal government. He often took positions in favor of individual rights against the state, favoring criminal defendants, minorities, the poor, and other underrepresented groups. Furthermore, he generally shied away from the absolutist liberal positions of Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, being very amenable to compromise in order to win a majority of Justices. Brennan's conservative detractors charged that he was a purveyor of judicial activism, accusing him of deciding outcomes before coming up with a legal rationale for them. At his retirement, Brennan said the case he thought was most important was "Goldberg v. Kelly", which ruled that a local, state or federal government could not terminate welfare payments to a person without a prior individual evidentiary hearing.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: In the 1980s, as the Reagan administration and the Rehnquist Court threatened to "roll back" the decisions of the Warren Court, Brennan became more vocal about his jurisprudential views. In a 1985 speech at Georgetown University, Brennan criticized Attorney General Edwin Meese's call for a "jurisprudence of original intention" as "arrogance cloaked as humility" and advocated reading the U.S. Constitution to protect rights of "human dignity".


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan was also less interested in "stare decisis" or the avoidance of "absolutist" positions where the death penalty was concerned, as he believed that the deliberate taking of human life by the state, as a punishment, was inherently cruel and unusual. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, Brennan's closest ally in the Court, concluded in "Furman v. Georgia" that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of "Gregg v. Georgia", which ruled that the death penalty was constitutional four years later. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall took turns, joined by the other, in issuing a dissent in every denial of "certiorari" in a capital case, and from every decision in a case which the Court "did" take which failed to vacate a sentence of death.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan also authored a dissent from the denial of "certiorari" in "Glass v. Louisiana". In "Glass", the Court chose not to hear a case that challenged the constitutionality of the use of the electric chair as a form of execution. Brennan wrote:


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Th[e] evidence suggests that death by electrical current is extremely violent and inflicts pain and indignities far beyond the "mere extinguishment of life". Witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength." "The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands." The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks." The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Brennan concluded by stating that electrocution is "nothing less than the contemporary technological equivalent of burning people at the stake." Brennan voted with the majority in "Roe v Wade" which legalized abortion nationally and helped craft the decision. Brennan wrote the majority opinion in "Roth v. United States" which set new standards for obscenity laws, allowing some prosecutions, but drastically loosening the laws overall. He later reversed his position in dissent in "Miller v. California" arguing that obscenity laws were unconstitutional. Although Brennan joined the majority in "United States v. O’Brien" which upheld the constitutionality of laws banning draft card burning, he later opposed the Vietnam War and dissented several times when the Supreme Court refused to hear challenges to its legality. In a dissent in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez" Brennan argued that unequal funding of poor and wealthy school districts violated the Equal Protection Clause. Brennan supported gay rights. He joined the dissent in "Bowers v. Hardwick", which allowed states to prosecute consensual homosexual sodomy.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: In a dissent from a denial of certiorari in 1985 involving a lesbian teacher fired for her sexual orientation, Brennan publicly criticized homophobia, writing "Homosexuals have historically been the object of deep and sustained pernicious hostility, and it is fair to say that discrimination against homosexuals is likely to reflect deep-seated prejudice rather than rationality."


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: As a result of his long and distinguished career on the United States Supreme Court, Brennan was honored with many different awards. In 1969, he was awarded the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame, considered the most prestigious award for American Catholics. In 1987, Brennan received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. In 1989, the historic Hudson County Courthouse in Jersey City, New Jersey, which had opened in 1910, was renamed the William J. Brennan Court House in his honor and, in that same year, he received the Freedom Medal. On November 30, 1993, President Bill Clinton presented Brennan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


title: William J. Brennan Jr.

text: Years after his death, in 2010, Brennan was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame and William J. Brennan High School was founded in San Antonio, Texas, honoring him. Brennan Park across from the historic Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey, was named in Brennan's honor and a statue of him was erected in front of the Essex County Hall of Records by historian Guy Sterling.


title: Princess Zelda

text: Though she is the eponymous character, Zelda's story role is often that of a damsel in distress or donor who assists Link. In many games, Zelda is captured by the antagonist Ganon, necessitating Link to come to her rescue. In several games she is one of the Sages or Champions whose heroism is essential to defeating Ganon; in others, like "" and "", she adopts alternative personas to take a more active role in the story. In "", she is established as the mortal reincarnation of the goddess Hylia, which gives her incarnations a range of magical powers.


title: Princess Zelda

text: Zelda is a widely recognisable character in video gaming and a popular character with gamers and cosplayers. In addition to "The Legend of Zelda" series, she has appeared as a playable character in a number of spin-off games and other game series, including "Hyrule Warriors", "Cadence of Hyrule" and "". She also appears as a playable character in the "Super Smash Bros." series. Critics have responded positively to her character development and have listed her as one of the greatest female video game characters of all time.


title: Princess Zelda

text: According to Shigeru Miyamoto, co-creator of "The Legend of Zelda" series, Princess Zelda's name was inspired by that of Zelda Fitzgerald, an American novelist, dancer, and socialite, as well as the wife of fellow novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the Nintendo book titled "", Miyamoto elaborated on the origin of the character's name and the title of the series. He stated that a PR planner had suggested creating an illustrated story for the game involving the rescue of a princess who was defined as an eternal beauty. He said to Miyamoto, 'There's a famous American author whose wife's name is Zelda. How about giving that name to the eternal beauty?' Miyamoto explained: "I couldn't really get behind the book idea but I really liked the name Zelda. I asked him if I could use it, and he said that would be fine. And that's where the title "The Legend of Zelda" was born".


title: Princess Zelda

text: The original 1986 video game "The Legend of Zelda" established Princess Zelda's core role in the series. It centres on the hero Link fighting to protect the kingdom of Hyrule from the antagonist Ganon, whilst saving Princess Zelda. This continued to be the basic premise for each subsequent game in the series, although Zelda's role has varied and evolved over time with each game release.


title: Princess Zelda

text: As with Link, there are multiple incarnations of Princess Zelda in the series, who vary in age, appearance, and disposition. Although these incarnations have similar appearances and bear the same name, they are not defined as the same person. Nintendo created a fictional timeline that spans thousands of years of fictional history and creates a continuity for all of the games in the series. The instruction booklet for "" establishes that Zelda's name reoccurs because the prince of the kingdom orders that "every female child born into the royal household shall be given the name Zelda". The Nintendo book "" further emphasises that Zelda is a traditional name in the Hyrule royal family. "" also creates an origin story for Zelda and Link's incarnations in which they are both cursed by the antagonist Demise to forever appear when evil occurs in Hyrule.


title: Princess Zelda

text: Zelda's first appearance in the original "The Legend of Zelda" video game depicts her in a simple 2D form wearing a dress and small tiara. Illustrations created for the original game and displayed in the Nintendo book titled "The Legend Of Zelda Art And Artifacts" present a more detailed design for the character dressed in a long pink gown decorated with white bows and wearing a necklace and small tiara. Artwork for "" imitated Zelda's original appearance, presenting her wearing a similar long pink gown and red hair. For the development of "" (1991), Zelda was originally designed wearing a sci-fi themed outfit to correspond with an early multi-world game concept, but this was eventually scrapped.


title: Princess Zelda

text: The 1998 video game "" introduced a radical development for the character as a result of the improved graphical capabilities of the Nintendo 64. Princess Zelda was rendered in 3D for the first time and her detailed character model was accompanied by a more intricate backstory and involvement in the game. The princess was created in two forms, as a child and an adult. Her royal dress was designed with greater detail and displays a tabard featuring the Sheikah coat of arms and the Hyrule royal family crest. The storyline also involves the appearance of her alter-ego Sheik.


title: Princess Zelda

text: Zelda appeared in cartoon form in the anime-inspired 2002 video game "". The art style was a vast departure from previous entries, both in terms of the cel-shaded graphics and also in the presentation of the character. Zelda appears as Tetra, a pirate captain whose disguise is vastly different to her traditional appearance as princess. Tetra's hair was designed as a swirl to mimic the wind and smoke in the game. This contrasts with her more traditional appearance as princess in the game wearing long hair and royal dress.