title: Electrical ballast

text: Electronic ballasts are often based on switched-mode power supply (SMPS) topology, first rectifying the input power and then chopping it at a high frequency. Advanced electronic ballasts may allow dimming via pulse-width modulation or via changing the frequency to a higher value. Ballasts incorporating a microcontroller (digital ballasts) may offer remote control and monitoring via networks such as LonWorks, Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI), DMX512, Digital Serial Interface (DSI) or simple analog control using a 0-10 V DC brightness control signal. Systems with remote control of light level via a wireless mesh network have been introduced.


title: Electrical ballast

text: Electronic ballasts usually supply power to the lamp at a frequency of or higher, rather than the mains frequency of ; this substantially eliminates the stroboscopic effect of flicker, a product of the line frequency associated with fluorescent lighting (see photosensitive epilepsy). The high output frequency of an electronic ballast refreshes the phosphors in a fluorescent lamp so rapidly that there is no perceptible flicker. The flicker index, used for measuring perceptible light modulation, has a range from 0.00 to 1.00, with 0 indicating the lowest possibility of flickering and 1 indicating the highest. Lamps operated on magnetic ballasts have a flicker index between 0.04 and 0.07 while digital ballasts have a flicker index of below 0.01.


title: Electrical ballast

text: Because more gas remains ionized in the arc stream, the lamp operates at about 9% higher efficacy above approximately 10 kHz. Lamp efficiency increases sharply at about 10 kHz and continues to improve until approximately 20 kHz. Electronic ballast retrofits to existing street lights had been tested in some Canadian provinces circa 2012; since then LED retrofits have become more common.


title: Electrical ballast

text: With the higher efficiency of the ballast itself and the higher lamp efficacy at higher frequency, electronic ballasts offer higher system efficacy for low pressure lamps like the fluorescent lamp. For HID lamps, there is no improvement of the lamp efficacy in using higher frequency, but for these lamps the ballast losses are lower at higher frequencies and also the light depreciation is lower, meaning the lamp produces more light over its entire lifespan. Some HID lamp types like the ceramic discharge metal halide lamp have reduced reliability when operated at high frequencies in the range of ; for these lamps a square wave low frequency current drive is mostly used with frequency in the range of , with the same advantage of lower light depreciation.


title: Electrical ballast

text: Application of electronic ballasts to HID lighting is growing in popularity. Most newer generation electronic ballasts can operate both high pressure sodium (HPS) lamps as well as metal-halide lamps. The ballast initially works as a starter for the arc by its internal ignitor, supplying a high-voltage impulse and, later, it works as a limiter/regulator of the electric flow inside the circuit. Electronic ballasts also run much cooler and are lighter than their magnetic counterparts.


title: Electrical ballast

text: This technique uses a combination filament–cathode at each end of the lamp in conjunction with a mechanical or automatic (bi-metallic or electronic) switch that initially connect the filaments in series with the ballast to preheat them. When filaments are disconnected, an inductive pulse from the ballast starts the lamp. This system is described as "Preheat" in North America and "Switch Start" in the UK, and has no specific description in the rest of the world. This system is common in 200–240 V countries (and for 100–120 V lamps up to about 30 watts).


title: Electrical ballast

text: Although an inductive pulse makes it more likely that the lamp will start when the starter switch opens, it is not actually necessary. The ballast in such systems can equally be a resistor. A number of fluorescent lamp fittings used a filament lamp as the ballast in the late 1950s through to the 1960s. Special lamps were manufactured that were rated at 170 volts and 120 watts. The lamp had a thermal starter built into the 4 pin base. The power requirements were much larger than using an inductive ballast (though the consumed current was the same), but the warmer light from the lamp type of ballast was often preferred by users particularly in a domestic environment.


title: Electrical ballast

text: Resistive ballasts were the only type that was usable when the only supply available to power the fluorescent lamp was DC. Such fittings used the thermal type of starter (mostly because they had gone out of use long before the glow starter was invented), but it was possible to include a choke in the circuit whose sole purpose was to provide a pulse on opening of the starter switch to improve starting. DC fittings were complicated by the need to reverse the polarity of the supply to the tube each time it started. Failure to do so vastly shortened the life of the tube.


title: Electrical ballast

text: An instant start ballast does not preheat the electrodes, instead using a relatively high voltage (~600 V) to initiate the discharge arc. It is the most energy efficient type, but yields the fewest lamp-start cycles, as material is blasted from the surface of the cold electrodes each time the lamp is turned on. Instant-start ballasts are best suited to applications with long duty cycles, where the lamps are not frequently turned on and off. Although these were mostly used in countries with 100-120 volt mains supplies (for lamps of 40 W or above), they were briefly popular in other countries because the lamp started without the flicker of switch start systems. The popularity was short lived because of the short lamp life.


title: Electrical ballast

text: A rapid start ballast applies voltage and heats the cathodes simultaneously. It provides superior lamp life and more cycle life, but uses slightly more energy as the electrodes in each end of the lamp continue to consume heating power as the lamp operates. Again, although popular in 100-120 volt countries for lamps of 40 W and above, rapid start is sometimes used in other countries particularly where the flicker of switch start systems is undesirable.


title: Electrical ballast

text: A dimmable ballast is very similar to a rapid start ballast, but usually has a capacitor incorporated to give a power factor nearer to unity than a standard rapid start ballast. A quadrac type light dimmer can be used with a dimming ballast, which maintains the heating current while allowing lamp current to be controlled. A resistor of about 10 kΩ is required to be connected in parallel with the fluorescent tube to allow reliable firing of the quadrac at low light levels.


title: Electrical ballast

text: An electronic ballast with an integrated battery is designed to provide emergency egress lighting in the event of a power failure (typically less than 2 hours). These can be used as an alternative to egress lighting powered by a back-up electrical generator. However, emergency ballasts require regular testing and have a useful life of 10–12 years.


title: Electrical ballast

text: A hybrid ballast has a magnetic core-and-coil transformer and an electronic switch for the electrode-heating circuit. Like a magnetic ballast, a hybrid unit operates at line power frequency—50 Hz in Europe, for example. These types of ballasts, which are also referred to as "cathode-disconnect ballasts", disconnect the electrode-heating circuit after they start the lamps.


title: Electrical ballast

text: For a lighting ballast, the ANSI ballast factor is used in North America to compare the light output (in lumens) of a lamp operated on a ballast compared to the lamp operating on an ANSI reference ballast. Reference ballast operates the lamp at its ANSI specified nominal power rating. The ballast factor of practical ballasts must be considered in lighting design; a low ballast factor may save energy, but will produce less light. With fluorescent lamps, ballast factor can vary from the reference value of 1.0.


title: Electrical ballast

text: Early tube-based color TV sets used a ballast triode, such as the PD500, as a parallel shunt stabilizer for the cathode ray tube (CRT) acceleration voltage, to keep the CRT's deflection factor constant.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev (; 26 August 193724 September 2010) was a Soviet politician who served as the first and only vice president of the Soviet Union. Yanayev's political career spanned the rules of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, and culminated during the Gorbachev years. Yanayev was born in Perevoz, Gorky Oblast. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but he also held other lesser posts such as deputy of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: Due to his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, in 1990 he gained a seat in the 28th Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee. Later that year, on 27 December, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yanayev was elected the first, and only, Vice President of the Soviet Union. Having growing doubts about where Gorbachev's reforms were leading, Yanayev started working with, and eventually formally leading, the Gang of Eight, the group which deposed Gorbachev during the August 1991 coup d'état attempt. After three days, the coup collapsed, in part due to Western backing of Boris Yeltsin, but during its brief grip of power Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union. He was then arrested for his role in the coup, but in 1994 he was pardoned. He spent the rest of his life working in the Russian tourism administration until his death on 24 September 2010.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: Yanayev was born on 26 August 1937 in the town of Perevoz, Gorky Oblast during the administration of Joseph Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He graduated from the Gorky Institute of Agriculture in 1959. After graduation he worked as the head of a mechanised agricultural unit and later as a chief engineer in the Gorky Oblast. He applied and officially became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1962. From 1963 to 1968, he held the positions of second, and subsequently first, secretary of the Gorky Komsomol, and later became Chairman of the Committee of Youth Organisations, which he held for 12 years. From 1980 to 1986 he was Deputy Chairman of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. He became Secretary for International Affairs of All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in 1986 and became Deputy Chairman of the trade unions in 1989. In April 1990 he was elected Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. As chairman of the trade unions, he was not able to quell the growing labour discontent in the country, but his position granted him a seat in the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) at the 28th CPSU Congress (held in 1990), alongside his election as Secretary of the Central Committee.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: On 27 December 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev proposed Yanayev as Vice President of the Soviet Union. He was Gorbachev's third choice for the post; Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev had turned the offer down.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: Yanayev had initially been rejected by the Supreme Soviet, but he was finally approved by a second vote due to Gorbachev's insistence, (by a vote of 1,237 for to 563 against), only days after Shevardnadze had resigned from office due to Gorbachev's willingness to give leeway to conservatives. Yanayev said after the vote "I am a Communist to the depths of my soul." Some weeks after Yanayev's election, a senior Soviet official described Yanayev as "Gorbachev's Quayle—a conservative nonentity, no threat to Gorbachev, and his selection would pacify the right-wing". At the beginning of January 1991, Yanayev headed a committee working on the formation of a new cabinet. Later, he was sent to the Soviet city of Kuznetsk to negotiate with a newly formed independent trade union, making this the first time since 1917 that a Russian government official had negotiated with a trade union. However, after gaining the attention of the Soviet government, the unionists withdrew their plans for a strike.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: Shortly after taking office, Yanayev joined a group of more conservative Communist politicians, led by KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, who hoped to persuade Gorbachev to declare a state of emergency.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: After Gorbachev announced his proposal for a New Union Treaty to form the Union of Sovereign States, as a reorganisation of the Soviet Union into a new confederation, he went on vacation to his dacha in the Crimea. Believing that this new Union treaty would lead to the disintegration of the USSR, the State Committee of the State of Emergency placed Gorbachev under house arrest on 19 August, one day before the treaty was due to be signed. On that same day the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) issued the coup plotters' decree, which stated: "Owing to the conditions of his health, Mikhail Gorbachev is no longer capable of carrying on the duties of the President of the USSR. In accordance with article 127, clause 7 of the USSR constitution, Vice President Gennady Yanayev has assumed the duties of the President of the USSR." The decree made references to the growing problems facing the country such as ethnic tensions, political confrontations and chaos, which according to the coup leaders threatened the very existence of Soviet life and the territorial integrity of the USSR. Yanayev further claimed that the danger of collapse was imminent, and if the economic situation was not handled quickly, the Soviet Union would collapse. In addition, Yanayev and the rest of the state committee ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to alter the then current five-year plan to relieve the housing shortage. All city-dwellers were given one third of an acre each to combat winter food shortages by growing fruit and vegetables.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: When asked about Gorbachev, Yanayev replied: "Let me say that Mikhail Gorbachev is now on vacation. He is undergoing treatment, himself, in our country. He is very tired after these many years and he will need some time to get better." At a press conference Yanayev's hands were shaking rather violently, leading many journalists to focus on Yanayev's apparent drunkenness instead of Gorbachev's alleged bad health.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: On 19 August, citizens of Moscow gathered around Russia's White House and began to erect barricades around it, in which at 16:00 Yanayev responded by declaring a state of emergency in Moscow. Yanayev declared at the press conference at 17:00 that Gorbachev was "resting". He said: "Over these years he has become very tired and needs some time to get his health back." Yanayev said the Emergency Committee was committed to continuing his reforms. However, Yanayev's weak posture, trembling hands and shaky expressions made his words unconvincing. On August 21, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, chaired by the heads of the chambers of the union parliament, adopted a resolution in which it declared illegal the actual dismissal of President Gorbachev from his duties and the transfer of them to the country's vice-president and, in this regard, demanded that Vice-President Yanayev cancel the decrees and emergency orders based on them. According to some historians, Yanayev was the most visible and powerful member of the Emergency Committee but was not its mastermind; Kryuchkov has been described as the "heart and soul of the conspiracy". Yanayev only agreed to head the Emergency Committee on 20 August. Along with the other coup leaders, such as Valentin Pavlov and Boris Pugo for instance, Yanayev was dismissed as vice president and later jailed for his crimes against the Soviet state.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: In 1993, Moscow weekly "Novy Vzglyad" quoted Yanayev as admitting that he was drunk when he signed the decree which made him acting president, but saying that inebriation had not affected his judgment. In a 2008 interview, Yanayev said he regretted making himself acting President, further claiming that he was pressured by the more conservative members to sign the documents which declared his own presidency. He described the events of 1991 as a burden for the rest of his life.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: Yanayev was released on recognizance not to leave in January 1993. He was pardoned in 1994. He would eventually become the head of the Department of History and International Relations of the Russian International Academy of Tourism. On 20 September 2010, he fell ill and was hospitalised at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, where he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on 24 September 2010.


title: Gennady Yanayev

text: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) expressed their condolences to Yanayev's family. Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the CPRF, said of him: "Yanayev lived an interesting, complicated and worthy life." The CPRF officially praised him as "a highly professional specialist [...] a dear and trustworthy comrade". In another statement made by the CPRF, this time on their official website, they claimed: "If they had acted much more decisively, our unified country would have been preserved." He was buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery, in a ceremony attended by several prominent CPRF members. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: Japanese sword mountings are the various housings and associated fittings ("") that hold the blade of a Japanese sword when it is being worn or stored. refers to the ornate mountings of a Japanese sword (e.g. "katana") used when the sword blade is being worn by its owner, whereas the is a plain undecorated wooden mounting composed of a "" and "" that the sword blade is stored in when not being used.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: A , "white scabbard", is a plain wooden Japanese sword "saya" (scabbard) and "tsuka" (hilt), traditionally made of nurizaya wood and used when a blade was not expected to see use for some time and needed to be stored. They were externally featureless save for the needed "mekugi-ana" to secure the "nakago" (tang), though sometimes (blade information) was also present. The need for specialized storage is because prolonged "koshirae" mounting harmed the blade, owing to factors such as the lacquered wood retaining moisture and encouraging corrosion.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: Such mountings are not intended for actual combat, as the lack of a "tsuba" (guard) and proper handle wrappings were deleterious; as such they would likely never make their way onto a battlefield. However, there have been loosely similar "hidden" mountings, such as the "shikomizue". Also, many blades dating back to earlier Japanese history are today sold in such a format, along with modern-day reproductions; while most are purely decorative replicas, a few have functional blades.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The word "koshirae" is derived from the verb , which is no longer used in current speech. More commonly "tsukuru" is used in its place with both words meaning to "make, create, manufacture." A more accurate word is , meaning sword-furniture, where are the parts of the mounting in general, and "kanagu" stands for those made of metal. are the "outer" mountings, as opposed to , the "body" of the sword.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: A "koshirae" should be presented with the "tsuka" (hilt) to the left, particularly in times of peace with the reason being that you cannot unsheathe the sword easily this way. During the Edo period, many formalized rules were put into place: in times of war the hilt should be presented to the right allowing the sword to be readily unsheathed.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: Koshirae were meant not only for functional but also for aesthetic purposes, often using a family "mon" (crest) for identification.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "tachi" (太刀) style "koshirae" is the primary style of mounting used for the "tachi", where the sword is suspended edge-down from two hangers ("ashi") attached to the "obi". The hilt often had a slightly stronger curvature than the blade, continuing the classic "tachi" increase in curvature going from the tip to the hilt. The hilt was usually secured with two pegs "(mekugi)", as compared to one peg for shorter blades including "katana". The "tachi" style "koshirae" preceded the "katana" style "koshirae".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "katana" (刀) style "koshirae" is the most commonly known "koshirae" and it is what is most associated with a "samurai" sword. Swords mounted in this manner are worn with the cutting edge up as opposed to the "tachi" mounting, in which the sword is worn with the cutting edge down.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "han-dachi" (半太刀) "koshirae" was worn "katana"-style but included some "tachi" related fittings such as a "kabuto-gane" instead of a "kashira".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The is a form of "koshirae" for small swords in which the hilt and the scabbard meet without a crossguard between them. The word literally means "ai" ("meeting") + "kuchi" ("mouth; opening"), in reference to the way the hilt fits directly against the scabbard. Originally used on the koshigatana (a precursor to the wakizashi) to facilitate close wearing with armour, it became a fashionable upper-class mounting style for a "tantō" (literally, "small sword", nowadays regarded as a dagger) from the Kamakura period onwards.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The or "jotō" (杖刀, "staff sword") is a Japanese swordstick. It is most famous for its use by the fictional swordmaster Zatoichi.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The sword blade was placed in a cane-like mounting ("tsue") as concealment. These mountings are not to be confused with the Shirasaya (白鞘, "white scabbard"), which were just plain wooden mountings with no decoration other than (sometimes) a short description of the contents.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: Some "shikomi-zue" also concealed "metsubushi", chains, hooks, and many other things. "Shikomi-zue" could be carried in public without arousing suspicion, making them perfect tools for "shinobi".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "kaiken" (懐剣) is an 8–10 inch long, single- or double-edged dagger without ornamental fittings housed in a plain mount, formerly carried by men and women of the samurai class in Japan. It was useful for self-defense indoors where the long "katana" and intermediate "wakizashi" were inconvenient. Women carried them in their kimono either in a pocket like fold or in the sleeve for self-defense or for suicide by means of slashing the jugular veins and carotid artery in the left side of the neck.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: is the Japanese term for a scabbard, and specifically refers to the scabbard for a sword or knife. The saya of a koshirae (scabbards for practical use) are normally manufactured from very lightweight wood, with a coat of lacquer on the exterior. Correct drawing and sheathing of the blade involves contacting the mune (the back of the blade) rather than ha (the edge) to the inside of the scabbard. The saya also has a on one side for attaching a braided cord ("sageo"), and may have a shitodome (mounting loop) to accent the as well as an made from metal. Traditionally the koiguchi (the throat of the scabbard) and kojiri (the chape) were made from buffalo horn.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: A is a hanging cord made of silk, cotton or leather that is passed through the hole in the (栗形) of a Japanese sword's "saya". There are a number of different methods for wrapping and tying the sageo on the "saya" for display purposes. Other uses for the sageo are tying the sword to the samurai and hojojutsu. The samurai felt the sageo formed a spiritual bond between them and the sword, and they were very particular about tying it correctly when the sword was not in use.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "kurikata" (栗形) is a knob that is attached to the scabbard of a Japanese sword. The "sageo" (cord) that secures the "saya" of the sword to the "obi" (belt) goes through a hole in the "kurikata".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "kojiri" (鐺) is the end cap of the scabbard or the protective fitting at the end of the scabbard.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: "Kogatana" (小刀), a small utility knife that fits into a pocket on the scabbard, the "kozuka" is the decorative handle for the "kogatana".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "umabari" (馬針) is a small knife that is a variation of the "kogatana", it fits into a pocket on the "saya".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "menuki" (目貫) are ornaments on the "tsuka" (generally under the "tsuka-ito"); to fit into the palm for grip.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: "Tsuka-ito" (柄糸) is the wrapping of the "tsuka", traditionally silk but today more often cotton and sometimes, leather.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: "Fuchi" (縁), a cap type collar or ferrule which covers the opening in the "tsuka" of a Japanese sword. The tang of the sword goes into the "tsuka" through the opening in the "fuchi".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The is usually a round (or occasionally squarish) guard at the end of the grip of bladed Japanese weapons, like the "katana" and its variations, "tachi", "wakizashi", "tantō", "naginata" etc. They contribute to the balance of the weapon and to the protection of the hand. The "tsuba" was mostly meant to be used to prevent the hand from sliding onto the blade during thrusts as opposed to protecting from an opponent's blade. The "chudan no kamae" guard is determined by the "tsuba" and the curvature of the blade. The diameter of the average "katana" "tsuba" is , "wakizashi" "tsuba" is , and "tantō" "tsuba" is .


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: During the Muromachi period (1333–1573) and the Momoyama period (1573–1603) "Tsuba" were more for functionality than for decoration, being made of stronger metals and designs. During the Edo period (1603–1868) there was peace in Japan so "tsuba" became more ornamental and made of less practical metals such as gold.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: "Tsuba" are usually finely decorated, and nowadays are collectors' items. "Tsuba" were made by whole dynasties of craftsmen whose only craft was making "tsuba". They were usually lavishly decorated. In addition to being collectors items, they were often used as heirlooms, passed from one generation to the next. Japanese families with samurai roots sometimes have their family crest (mon) crafted onto a "tsuba". "Tsuba" can be found in a variety of metals and alloys, including iron, steel, brass, copper and "shakudō".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: In a duel, two participants may lock their katana together at the point of the "tsuba" and push, trying to gain a better position from which to strike the other down. This is known as "tsubazeriai" (鍔迫り合い), lit. pushing "tsuba" against each other. "Tsubazeriai" is a common sight in modern "kendō".


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "seppa" (切羽) are washers used in front of and behind the "tsuba" to tighten the fittings. "Seppa" can be ornate or plain.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The is a piece of metal encircling the base of the blade of a Japanese sword. It has the double purpose of locking the "tsuba" (guard) in place, and to maintain the weapon in its "saya" (scabbard).


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The importance of the "habaki" is seen in drawing the katana from the scabbard. It is drawn by grasping the scabbard near the top and pressing the guard with the thumb to emerge the blade just enough to unwedge the "habaki" from inside the scabbard in a process called . The blade, being freed, can be drawn out very quickly. This is known as , , or . This is obviously an extremely aggressive gesture, since a fatal cut can be given in a fraction of a second thereafter (see "iaidō"). It is similar in connotation and effect as drawing back the hammer of a handgun, chambering a round on a pump-action shotgun, or pulling back and releasing the charging handle on other firearms.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The expression ""tanka o kiru"" is now widely used in Japan, in the sense of "getting ready to begin something", or "getting ready to speak", especially with an aggressive connotation.


title: Japanese sword mountings

text: The "habaki" will cause normal wear and tear inside the scabbard, and either a shim or a total replacement of the scabbard may be needed to remedy the issue as it will become too loose over time. Removing the "habaki" and oiling it after cutting or once every few months is recommended.


title: Henry Moore

text: Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper.


title: Henry Moore

text: His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moore's works are usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his Yorkshire birthplace.


title: Henry Moore

text: Moore became well known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfil large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy. Despite this, he lived frugally; most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts.


title: Henry Moore

text: Moore was born in Castleford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Mary (née Baker) and Raymond Spencer Moore. His father was Irish and became pit deputy and then under-manager of the Wheldale colliery in Castleford. He was an autodidact with an interest in music and literature. Determined that his sons would not work in the mines, he saw formal education as the route to their advancement. Henry was the seventh of eight children in a family that often struggled with poverty. He attended infant and elementary schools in Castleford, where he began modelling in clay and carving in wood. He professed to have decided to become a sculptor when he was eleven after hearing of Michelangelo's achievements at a Sunday School reading.


title: Henry Moore

text: On his second attempt he was accepted at Castleford Secondary School, which several of his siblings had attended, where his headmaster soon noticed his talent and interest in medieval sculpture. His art teacher, Alice Gostick, broadened his knowledge of art, and with her encouragement, he determined to make art his career; first by sitting for examinations for a scholarship to the local art college. Moore's earliest recorded carvings – a plaque for the Scott Society at Castleford Secondary School, and a Roll of Honour commemorating the boys who went to fight in the First World War from the school – were executed around this time.


title: Henry Moore

text: Despite his early promise, Moore's parents had been against him training as a sculptor, a vocation they considered manual labour with few career prospects. After a brief introduction as a student teacher, Moore became a teacher at the school he had attended. Upon turning eighteen, Moore volunteered for army service in the First World War. He was the youngest man in the Prince of Wales' Own Civil Service Rifles regiment and was injured in 1917 in a gas attack, on 30 November at Bourlon Wood, during the Battle of Cambrai. After recovering in hospital, he saw out the remainder of the war as a physical training instructor, only returning to France as the Armistice was signed. He recalled later, "for me the war passed in a romantic haze of trying to be a hero." This attitude changed as he reflected on the destructiveness of war and in 1940 he wrote, in a letter to his friend Arthur Sale, that "a year or two after [the war] the sight of a khaki uniform began to mean everything in life that was wrong and wasteful and "anti-life". And I still have that feeling."


title: Henry Moore

text: After the war, Moore received an ex-serviceman's grant to continue his education and in 1919 he became a student at the Leeds School of Art (now Leeds Arts University), which set up a sculpture studio especially for him. At the college, he met Barbara Hepworth, a fellow student who would also become a well-known British sculptor, and began a friendship and gentle professional rivalry that lasted for many years. In Leeds, Moore also had access to the modernist works in the collection of Sir Michael Sadler, the university Vice-Chancellor, which had a pronounced effect on his development. In 1921, Moore won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London, along with Hepworth and other Yorkshire contemporaries. While in London, Moore extended his knowledge of primitive art and sculpture, studying the ethnographic collections at the British Museum.


title: Henry Moore

text: The student sculptures of both Moore and Hepworth followed the standard romantic Victorian style, and included natural forms, landscapes and figurative modelling of animals. Moore later became uncomfortable with classically derived ideals; his later familiarity with primitivism and the influence of sculptors such as Constantin Brâncuși, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Frank Dobson led him to the method of direct carving, in which imperfections in the material and marks left by tools became part of the finished sculpture. Having adopted this technique, Moore was in conflict with academic tutors who did not appreciate such a modern approach. During one exercise set by Derwent Wood (the professor of sculpture at the Royal College), Moore was asked to reproduce a marble relief of Domenico Rosselli's "The Virgin and Child" by first modelling the relief in plaster, then reproducing it in marble using the mechanical aid known as a "pointing machine", a technique called "pointing". Instead, he carved the relief directly, even marking the surface to simulate the prick marks that would have been left by the pointing machine.


title: Henry Moore

text: In 1924, Moore won a six-month travelling scholarship which he spent in Northern Italy studying the great works of Michelangelo, Giotto di Bondone, Giovanni Pisano and several other Old Masters. During this period he also visited Paris, took advantage of the timed-sketching classes at the Académie Colarossi, and viewed, in the Trocadero, a plaster cast of a Toltec-Maya sculptural form, the Chac Mool, which he had previously seen in book illustrations. The reclining figure was to have a profound effect upon Moore's work, becoming the primary motif of his sculpture.


title: Henry Moore

text: On returning to London, Moore undertook a seven-year teaching post at the Royal College of Art. He was required to work two days a week, which allowed him time to spend on his own work. His first public commission, "West Wind" (1928–29), was one of the eight reliefs of the 'four winds' high on the walls of London Underground's headquarters at 55 Broadway. The other 'winds' were carved by contemporary sculptors including Eric Gill with the ground-level pieces provided by Epstein. 1928 saw Moore's first solo exhibition, held at the Warren Gallery in London. On 19 July 1929, Moore married Irina Radetsky, a painting student at the Royal College. Irina was born in Kyiv in 1907. Her father was killed in the Russian Revolution and her mother was evacuated to Paris where she married a British army officer. Irina was smuggled to Paris a year later and went to school there until she was 16, after which she was sent to live with her stepfather's relatives in Buckinghamshire.


title: Henry Moore

text: Irina found security in her marriage to Moore and was soon posing for him. Shortly after they married, the couple moved to a studio in Hampstead at 11a Parkhill Road NW3, joining a small colony of avant-garde artists who were taking root there. Shortly afterward, Hepworth and her second husband Ben Nicholson moved into a studio around the corner from Moore, while Naum Gabo, Roland Penrose, Cecil Stephenson and the art critic Herbert Read also lived in the area (Read referred to the area as "a nest of gentle artists"). The area was also a stopping-off point for many refugee artists, architects and designers from continental Europe en route to America.


title: Henry Moore

text: In 1932, after six-year's teaching at the Royal College, Moore took up a post as the Head of the Department of Sculpture at the Chelsea School of Art. Artistically, Moore, Hepworth and other members of The Seven and Five Society would develop steadily more abstract work, partly influenced by their frequent trips to Paris and their contact with leading progressive artists, notably Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti. Moore flirted with Surrealism, joining Paul Nash's modern art movement "Unit One", in 1933. In 1934, Moore visited Spain; he visited the cave of Altamira (which he described as the "Royal Academy of Cave Painting"), Madrid, Toledo and Pamplona.


title: Henry Moore

text: In 1936, Moore joined a group of surrealist artists founded by Roland Penrose, and the same year was honorary treasurer to the organising committee of the London International Surrealist Exhibition. In 1937, Roland Penrose purchased an abstract 'Mother and Child' in stone from Moore that he displayed in the front garden of his house in Hampstead. The work proved controversial with other residents and the local press ran a campaign against the piece over the next two years. At this time Moore gradually transitioned from direct carving to casting in bronze, modelling preliminary maquettes in clay or plaster rather than making preparatory drawings.


title: Henry Moore

text: In 1938, Moore met Kenneth Clark for the first time. From this time, Clark became an unlikely but influential champion of Moore's work, and through his position as member of the Arts Council of Great Britain he secured exhibitions and commissions for the artist.


title: Henry Moore

text: At the outbreak of the Second World War the Chelsea School of Art was evacuated to Northampton and Moore resigned his teaching post. During the war, Moore produced powerful drawings of Londoners sleeping in the London Underground while sheltering from the Blitz. Kenneth Clark, the chairman of the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), had previously tried to recruit Moore as a full-time salaried war artist and now agreed to purchase some of the shelter drawings and issued contracts for further examples. The shelter drawings WAAC acquired were completed between the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941 and are regarded as among the finest products of the WAAC scheme. In August 1941 WAAC commissioned Moore to draw miners working underground at the Wheldale Colliery in Yorkshire, where his father had worked at the start of the century. Moore drew the people in the shelters as passively waiting the all-clear while miners aggressively worked the coal-faces. These drawings helped to boost Moore's international reputation, particularly in America where examples were included in the WAAC "Britain at War" exhibition which toured North America throughout the war.


title: Henry Moore

text: After their Hampstead home was hit by bomb shrapnel in September 1940, Moore and Irina moved out of London to live in a farmhouse called Hoglands in the hamlet of Perry Green near Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. This was to become Moore's home and workshop for the rest of his life. Despite acquiring significant wealth later in life, Moore never felt the need to move to larger premises and, apart from the addition of a number of outbuildings and studios, the house changed little over the years. In 1943 he received a commission from St Matthew's Church, Northampton, to carve a Madonna and Child; this sculpture was the first in an important series of family-group sculptures.


title: Henry Moore

text: After the war and following several earlier miscarriages, Irina gave birth to their daughter, Mary Moore, in March 1946. The child was named after Moore's mother, who had died two years earlier. Both the loss of his mother and the arrival of a baby focused Moore's mind on the family, which he expressed in his work by producing many "mother-and-child" compositions, although reclining and internal/external figures also remained popular. In the same year, Moore made his first visit to America when a retrospective exhibition of his work opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.


title: Henry Moore

text: Before the war, Moore had been approached by educator Henry Morris, who was trying to reform education with his concept of the Village College. Morris had engaged Walter Gropius as the architect for his second village college at Impington near Cambridge, and he wanted Moore to design a major public sculpture for the site. The County Council, however, could not afford Gropius's full design, and scaled back the project when Gropius emigrated to America. Lacking funds, Morris had to cancel Moore's sculpture, which had not progressed beyond the maquette stage. Moore was able to reuse the design in 1950 for a similar commission outside a secondary school for the new town of Stevenage. This time, the project was completed and "Family Group" became Moore's first large-scale public bronze.


title: Henry Moore

text: In the 1950s, Moore began to receive increasingly significant commissions. He exhibited at the Festival of Britain in 1951, and in 1958 produced a large marble reclining figure for the UNESCO building in Paris. With many more public works of art, the scale of Moore's sculptures grew significantly and he started to employ an increasing number of assistants to work with him at Much Hadham, including Anthony Caro and Richard Wentworth.


title: Henry Moore

text: On the campus of the University of Chicago in December 1967, 25 years to the minute after the team of physicists led by Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, Moore's "Nuclear Energy" was unveiled on the site of what was once the university's football field stands, in the rackets court beneath which the experiments had taken place. This 12-foot-tall piece in the middle of a large, open plaza is often thought to represent a mushroom cloud topped by a massive human skull, but Moore's interpretation was very different. He once told a friend that he hoped viewers would "go around it, looking out through the open spaces, and that they may have a feeling of being in a cathedral." In Chicago, Illinois, Moore also commemorated science with a large bronze sundial, locally named "Man Enters the Cosmos" (1980), which was commissioned to recognise the space exploration program.


title: Henry Moore

text: The last three decades of Moore's life continued in a similar vein; several major retrospectives took place around the world, notably a very prominent exhibition in the summer of 1972 in the grounds of the Forte di Belvedere overlooking Florence. Following the pioneering documentary 'Henry Moore', produced by John Read in 1951, he appeared in many films. In 1964, for instance, Moore was featured in the documentary "5 British Sculptors (Work and Talk)" by American filmmaker Warren Forma. By the end of the 1970s, there were some 40 exhibitions a year featuring his work. The number of commissions continued to increase; he completed "Knife Edge Two Piece" in 1962 for College Green near the Houses of Parliament in London. According to Moore, "When I was offered the site near the House of Lords ... I liked the place so much that I didn't bother to go and see an alternative site in Hyde Park—one lonely sculpture can be lost in a large park. The House of Lords site is quite different. It is next to a path where people walk and it has a few seats where they can sit and contemplate it."


title: Henry Moore

text: As his wealth grew, Moore began to worry about his legacy. With the help of his daughter Mary, he set up the Henry Moore Trust in 1972, with a view to protecting his estate from death duties. By 1977, he was paying close to a million pounds a year in income tax; to mitigate his tax burden, he established the Henry Moore Foundation as a registered charity with Irina and Mary as trustees. The Foundation was established to encourage the public appreciation of the visual arts and especially the works of Moore. It now runs his house and estate at Perry Green, with a gallery, sculpture park and studios.


title: Henry Moore

text: In 1979 Henry Moore became unexpectedly known in Germany when his sculpture "Large Two Forms" was installed in the forecourt of the German Chancellery in Bonn, which was the capital city of West Germany prior to German reunification in October 1990.


title: Henry Moore

text: Moore died on 31 August 1986 at his home in Perry Green. His body was interred at the churchyard of St Thomas's Church.


title: Henry Moore

text: Moore's signature form is a reclining figure. Moore's exploration of this form, under the influence of the Toltec-Mayan figure he had seen at the Louvre, was to lead him to increasing abstraction as he turned his thoughts towards experimentation with the elements of design. Moore's earlier reclining figures deal principally with mass, while his later ones contrast the solid elements of the sculpture with the space, not only round them but generally through them as he pierced the forms with openings.


title: Henry Moore

text: Earlier figures are pierced in a conventional manner, in which bent limbs separate from and rejoin the body. The later, more abstract figures are often penetrated by spaces directly through the body, by which means Moore explores and alternates concave and convex shapes. These more extreme piercings developed in parallel with Barbara Hepworth's sculptures. Hepworth first pierced a torso after misreading a review of one of Henry Moore's early shows. The plaster "" (1951) in the Tate, is characteristic of Moore's later sculptures: an abstract female figure intercut with voids. As with much of the post-War work, there are several bronze casts of this sculpture. When Moore's niece asked why his sculptures had such simple titles, he replied, All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.


title: Henry Moore

text: Moore's early work is focused on direct carving, in which the form of the sculpture evolves as the artist repeatedly whittles away at the block. In the 1930s, Moore's transition into modernism paralleled that of Barbara Hepworth; the two exchanged new ideas with each other and several other artists then living in Hampstead. Moore made many preparatory sketches and drawings for each sculpture. Most of these sketchbooks have survived and provide insight into Moore's development. He placed great importance on drawing; in old age, when he had arthritis, he continued to draw.


title: Henry Moore

text: After the Second World War, Moore's bronzes took on their larger scale, which was particularly suited for public art commissions. As a matter of practicality, he largely abandoned direct carving, and took on several assistants to help produce the larger forms based on maquettes. By the end of the 1940s, he produced sculptures increasingly by modelling, working out the shape in clay or plaster before casting the final work in bronze using the lost wax technique. These maquettes often began as small forms shaped by Moore's hands—a process that gives his work an organic feeling. They are from the body.


title: Henry Moore

text: At his home in Much Hadham, Moore built up a collection of natural objects; skulls, driftwood, pebbles, rocks and shells, which he would use to provide inspiration for organic forms. For his largest works, he usually produced a half-scale, working model before scaling up for the final moulding and casting at a bronze foundry. Moore often refined the final full plaster shape and added surface marks before casting.


title: Henry Moore

text: Moore produced at least three significant examples of architectural sculpture during his career. In 1928, despite his own self-described "extreme reservations", he accepted his first public commission for "West Wind" for the London Underground Building at 55 Broadway in London, joining the company of Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill. In 1953, he completed a four-part screen carved in Portland stone for the Time-Life Building in New Bond Street, London, and in 1955 Moore turned to his first and only work in carved brick, "Wall Relief" at the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam. The brick relief was sculpted with 16,000 bricks by two Dutch bricklayers under Moore's supervision.


title: Henry Moore

text: The aftermath of World War II, The Holocaust, and the age of the atomic bomb instilled in the sculpture of the mid-1940s a sense that art should return to its pre-cultural and pre-rational origins. In the literature of the day, writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre advocated a similar reductive philosophy. At an introductory speech in New York City for an exhibition of one of the finest modernist sculptors, Alberto Giacometti, Sartre spoke of "The beginning and the end of history". Moore's sense of England emerging undefeated from siege led to his focus on pieces characterised by endurance and continuity.


title: Henry Moore

text: Most sculptors who emerged during the height of Moore's fame, and in the aftermath of his death, found themselves cast in his shadow. By the late 1940s, Moore was a worldwide celebrity; he was the voice of British sculpture, and of British modernism in general. The next generation was constantly compared against him, and reacted by challenging his legacy, his "establishment" credentials and his position. At the 1952 Venice Biennale, eight new British sculptors produced their "Geometry of Fear" works as a direct contrast to the ideals behind Moore's idea of "Endurance, Continuity"; his large bronze "Double Standing Figure" stood outside the British pavilion, and contrasted strongly with the rougher and more angular works inside.


title: Henry Moore

text: Yet Moore had a direct influence on several generations of sculptors of both British and international reputation. Among the artists who have acknowledged Moore's importance to their work are Sir Anthony Caro, Phillip King and Isaac Witkin, all three having been assistants to Moore. Other artists whose work was influenced by him include Helaine Blumenfeld, Drago Marin Cherina, Lynn Chadwick, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bernard Meadows, Reg Butler, William Turnbull, Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, and Geoffrey Clarke.


title: Henry Moore

text: Henry Moore Foundation helps to preserve his legacy by supporting sculptors and creating exhibitions, its goal is to develop appreciation for visual arts. The Foundation was established by Henry and his family in 1977 in England, and still working.


title: Henry Moore

text: In December 2005, the two ton "Reclining Figure" (1969–70) – insured for £3 million – was lifted by crane from the grounds of the Henry Moore Foundation on to a lorry and has not been recovered. Two men were jailed for a year in 2012 for stealing a sculpture called "Sundial" (1965) and the bronze plinth of another work, also from the foundation's estate. In October 2013 "Standing Figure" (1950), one of four Moore pieces in Glenkiln Sculpture Park, estimated to be worth £3 million, was stolen.


title: Henry Moore

text: In 2012, the council of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets announced its plans to sell another version of "Draped Seated Woman 1957–58", a 1.6-tonne bronze sculpture. Moore, a well-known socialist, had sold the sculpture at a fraction of its market value to the former London County Council on the understanding that it would be displayed in a public space and might enrich the lives of those living in a socially deprived area. Nicknamed "Old Flo", it was installed on the Stifford council estate in 1962 but was vandalised and moved to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1997. Tower Hamlets Council later had considered moving "Draped Seated Woman" to private land in Canary Wharf but instead chose to "explore options" for a sale. In response to the announcement an open letter was published in "The Guardian", signed by Mary Moore, the artist's daughter, by Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Gallery, by filmmaker Danny Boyle, and by artists including Jeremy Deller. The letter said that the sale "goes against the spirit of Henry Moore's original sale" of the work.


title: Henry Moore

text: Today, the Henry Moore Foundation manages the artist's former home at Perry Green in Hertfordshire as a visitor destination, with 70 acres of sculpture grounds as well as his restored house and studios. It also runs the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds which organises exhibitions and research activities in international sculpture. Popular interest in Moore's work was perceived by some to have declined for a while in the UK but has been revived in recent times by exhibitions including at Kew Gardens in 2007, Tate Britain in 2010, and Hatfield House in 2011. The Foundation he endowed continues to play an essential role in promoting contemporary art in the United Kingdom and abroad through its grants and exhibitions programme.


title: Henry Moore

text: The world's largest collection of Moore's work is open to the public and is housed in the house and grounds of the 70-acre estate that was Moore's home for 40 years in Perry Green in Hertfordshire. The site and the collection are now owned by the Henry Moore Foundation.


title: Henry Moore

text: In December 2005, thieves entered a courtyard at the Henry Moore Foundation and stole a cast of Moore's "Reclining Figure 1969–70" (LH 608) – a 3.6 metre-long, 2.1-tonne bronze sculpture. Closed-circuit-television footage showed that they used a crane to lower the piece onto a stolen flatbed truck. A substantial reward was offered by the Foundation for information leading to its recovery. By May 2009, after a thorough investigation, British officials said they believe the work, once valued at £3 million was probably sold for scrap metal, fetching about £5,000. In July 2012 the bronze "Sundial 1965", valued at £500,000, was stolen from the Moore Foundation. Later that year, following the details of the theft being publicised on the BBC Crimewatch television programme, the work was recovered, and the thieves were sentenced to twelve months' custody.


title: Henry Moore

text: Moore presented 36 sculptures, as well as drawings, maquettes and other works to the Tate Gallery in 1978.


title: Henry Moore

text: The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, opened in 1974. It comprises the world's largest public collection of Moore's work, most of it donated by him between 1971 and 1974. Moore's "Three Way Piece No. 2 (The Archer)" has also been on display in Nathan Phillips Square at Toronto City Hall since 1966.


title: Henry Moore

text: In 1948, Moore won the International Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale. He turned down a knighthood in 1951 because he felt that the bestowal would lead to a perception of him as an establishment figure and that "such a title might tend to cut me off from fellow artists whose work has aims similar to mine". He was, however, awarded the Companion of Honour in 1955, the Order of Merit in 1963 and Erasmus Prize in 1968. He was also a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.


title: Henry Moore

text: He was a trustee of both the National Gallery and Tate Gallery. His proposal that a wing of the latter should be devoted to his sculptures aroused hostility among some artists. In 1975, he became the first President of the Turner Society, which had been founded to campaign for a separate museum in which the whole Turner Bequest might be reunited, an aim defeated by the National Gallery and Tate Gallery.


title: Henry Moore

text: Given to the City of London by Moore and the Contemporary Art Society in 1967, "Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65" is displayed in Abingdon Street Gardens, opposite the Houses of Parliament, where its regular appearance in the background of televised news reports from Westminster makes it Moore's most prominent piece in Britain. The ownership of "Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65" was disputed until its 2011 acquisition by the Parliamentary Art Collection.


title: Henry Moore

text: By the end of his career, Moore was the world's most successful living artist at auction. In 1982, four years before his death, Sotheby's in New York sold a 6 ft "Reclining Figure" (1945), for $1.2 million to collector Wendell Cherry. Although a first record of $4.1 million was set in 1990, Moore's market slumped during the recession that followed. In 2012, his eight-foot bronze, "" (1951) sold for a record £19.1 million at Christie's, making him the second most expensive 20th-century British artist after Francis Bacon.


title: (G)I-dle discography

text: South Korean girl group (G)I-dle have released one studio album, six extended plays, one single album and eight digital singles. They have also participated in six collaboration songs and two soundtrack contributions.


title: (G)I-dle discography

text: Formed by Cube Entertainment in 2018, (G)I-dle debuted on May 2, 2018, with EP "I Am" with the song "Latata" as their first single. The group continued with the release of their first digital single titled "Hann (Alone)" on August 14, 2018, peaking at number 8 on the Gaon Digital Chart. They released their second mini album titled "I Made" on February 26, 2019, followed by the release of their second digital single titled "Uh-Oh" on June 26. A month later, (G)I-dle began their venture into the Japanese music market with the release of "Latata" on July 31. The same year, two more singles—"Put It Straight (Nightmare Version)" and "Lion"—was released through their participation in Mnet's survival show "Queendom". "Lion" managed to gain commercial success and was nominated in Korean Music Awards. In April 2020, (G)I-dle's third EP, "I Trust", and its lead single "Oh My God", were released on April 6. The EP became the group's best-selling album and scored the second-highest first-day sales by a girl group with 91,311 physical copies sold. It debuted atop the Gaon Album Chart with over 110,000 copies and scored their highest debut on "Billboard"'s World Albums chart. In August 2020, they released 2 albums; "Dumdi Dumdi", a special summer single album on August 3 with the title track of the same name, and the group's second Japanese mini album, "Oh My God", on August 26. In January 2021, (G)I-dle's fourth EP, "I Burn", and its lead single "Hwaa", were released on January 11. In March 2022, they released their studio album "I Never Die", on March 14.


title: Huzzah

text: Huzzah (sometimes written "hazzah"; originally spelled huzza and pronounced huz-ZAY, now often pronounced as huz-ZĀ; in most modern varieties of English hurrah or hooray) is, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary" ("OED"), "apparently a mere exclamation". The dictionary does not mention any specific derivation. Whatever its origins, it has seen occasional literary use since at least the time of Shakespeare, as the first use was in 1573, according to Merriam-Webster.


title: Huzzah

text: "Huzzah" may be categorised with such interjections as "hoorah" and "hooray". According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", "In English, the form "hurrah" is literary and dignified; "hooray" is usual in popular acclamation".


title: Huzzah

text: In common usage, such as cheers at sporting events and competitions, the speaker need not make distinction, and the words are distinguished by regional dialect and accent.


title: Huzzah

text: The origin of the word in its various forms is not clear, but it may have been influenced by war cries from various languages: the "Oxford English Dictionary" (OED) suggests Norse, Dutch, Russian and Prussian words that may have played a part.


title: Huzzah

text: Anthropologist Jack Weatherford hypothesized that it comes from the Mongolian "Huree"; used by Mongol armies, and spread throughout the world during the Mongol Empire of the 13th century. The word is a praise, much like "amen" or "hallelujah", shouted at the end of speeches or prayers.


title: Huzzah

text: Contrary to popular belief, the word does "not" appear in Shakespeare's original works. Written in three parts around 1591, Shakespeare's "I", "II", and "III Henry VI" were condensed by Charles Kemble in 1888 into a single text titled, "Henry VI". Though Kemble's condensed version records the last line of Act III, Scene III as, ""All." Huzza ! huzza ! huzza !— Long live the King !", this line does not appear in Shakespeare's original text, but is rather Kemble's own insertion between "II Henry VI", Act IV, Scenes VIII and IX.


title: Huzzah

text: Often incorrectly used at Renaissance Festivals and American Revolution reenactments, Huzzah was originally spelled Huzza and pronounced huz-ZAY. In the poetry and writings of the late 1700s, words like say, play, and day were used to rhyme with Huzza. One example can be seen in the song "Keppel Forever":


title: Huzzah

text: The" OED" notes that in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was identified as a sailor's cheer or salute, and suggests that it was possibly related to words like "heeze" and "hissa", which are cognates of "hoist".


title: Huzzah

text: In the 18th and early 19th centuries, three 'huzzahs' were given by British infantry before a bayonet charge, as a way of building morale and intimidating the enemy. The book "" by military historian Richard Holmes indicates that this was given as two short 'huzzahs', followed by a third sustained one as the charge was carried out.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Nanak founded the Sikh faith in the Punjab region of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, and present-day Pakistan, in the end of fifteenth century. He was first of the ten Sikh Gurus. The tenth, Guru Gobind Singh, formalised its practices on 13 April 1699. He baptised five Sikh people from different parts of India, with different social backgrounds, to form Khalsa (ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ). Those five Beloved Ones, the Pañj Piārē, then baptised him into the Khalsa fold. This gives the order of Khalsa a history of around 500 years.


title: History of Sikhism

text: The history of the Sikh faith is closely associated with the history of Punjab and the socio-political situation in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century. From the rule of India by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (), Sikhism came into conflict with Mughal laws, because they were affecting political successions of Mughals while cherishing saints from Islam. Mughal rulers killed many prominent Sikhs for refusing to obey their orders, and for opposing the persecution of Sikhs. Of the total ten Sikh gurus, two, Guru Arjan Dev and Guru Tegh Bahadur, were tortured and executed, and close kin of several gurus (such as the seven and nine-year old sons of Guru Gobind Singh), were brutally killed, along with numerous other main revered figures of Sikhism (such as Banda Bahadur (1716), Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das and Bhai Dayala), who were also tortured and killed by Mughal rulers for refusing their orders, and for opposing the persecution of Sikhs and Hindus. Subsequently, Sikhism militarised itself to oppose Mughal hegemony. The emergence of the Sikh Confederacy under the misls and Sikh Empire under the reign of the Maharajah Ranjit Singh () was characterised by religious tolerance and pluralism with Christians, Muslims and Hindus in positions of power. The establishment of the Sikh Empire in 1799 is commonly considered the zenith of Sikhism in the political sphere, during its existence (from 1799 to 1849) the Sikh Empire came to include Kashmir, Ladakh, and Peshawar. A number of Muslim and Hindu peasants converted to Sikhism.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Hari Singh Nalwa, the Commander-in-chief of the Sikh army along the northwest Frontier from 1825 to 1837, took the boundary of the Sikh Empire to the very mouth of the Khyber Pass. The Sikh Empire's secular administration integrated innovative military, economic and governmental reforms.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Sikh organizations, including the Chief Khalsa Dewan and Shiromani Akali Dal led by Master Tara Singh, strongly opposed the partition of India, viewing the possibility of the creation of Pakistan as inviting persecution. The months leading up to the partition of India in 1947, saw heavy conflict in the Punjab between Sikhs and Muslims, which saw the effective religious migration of Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus from West Punjab and mirrored a similar religious migration of Punjabi Muslims from East Punjab. Currently, most Sikhs live in the Punjab state of India.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Nanak Dev (1469–1539), founder of Sikhism, was born to Mehta Kalu and Mata Tripta, in the village of Talwandi, now called Nankana Sahib, near Lahore. His father, named Mehta Kalu, was a Patwari, an accountant of land revenue in the government. Nanak's mother was Mata Tripta, and he had one older sister, Bibi Nanki.


title: History of Sikhism

text: From an early age, Guru Nanak Dev Ji seemed to have acquired a questioning and enquiring mind and refused as a child to wear the ritualistic "sacred" thread called a Janeu and instead said that he would wear the true name of God in his heart as protection, as the thread which could be broken, be soiled, burnt or lost could not offer any security at all. From early childhood, Bibi Nanki saw in her brother the Light of God but she did not reveal this secret to anyone. She is known as the first disciple of Guru Nanak.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Even as a boy, his desire to explore the mysteries of life eventually led him to leave home. Nanak married Sulakhni, daughter of Moolchand Chona, a trader from Batala, and they had two sons, Sri Chand and Lakhmi Chand.


title: History of Sikhism

text: His brother-in-law, Jai Ram, the husband of his sister Nanki, obtained a job for him in Sultanpur as the manager of the government granary. One morning, when he was twenty-eight, Guru Nanak Dev went as usual down to the river to bathe and meditate. It was said that he was gone for three days. When he reappeared, it is said he was "filled with the spirit of God". His first words after his re-emergence were: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim". With this secular principle he began his missionary work. He made four distinct major journeys, in the four diffe


title: History of Sikhism

text: } directions, which are called Udasis, spanning many thousands of kilometres, preaching the message of God.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Nanak spent the final years of his life in Kartarpur where Langar free blessed food was available. The food would be partaken of by Hindus, rich, poor, both high and so-called low castes. Guru Nanak worked in the fields and earned his livelihood. After appointing Bhai Lehna as the new Sikh Guru, on 22 September 1539, aged 70, Guru Nanak died.


title: History of Sikhism

text: In 1538, Guru Nanak chose Lehna, his disciple, as a successor to the Guruship rather than one of his sons. Bhai Lehna was named Guru Angad and became the successor of Guru Nanak. Bhai Lehna was born in the village of Harike in Ferozepur district in Punjab, on 31 March 1504. He was the son of a small trader named Pheru. His mother's name was Mata Ramo (also known as Mata Sabhirai, Mansa Devi, Daya Kaur). Baba Narayan Das Trehan was his grandfather, whose ancestral house was at Matte-di-Sarai near Muktsar.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Under the influence of his mother, Bhai Lehna began to worship Durga (A Hindu Goddess). He used to lead a group of Hindu worshippers to Jwalamukhi Temple every year. He married Mata Khivi in January 1520 and had two sons, (Dasu and Datu), and two daughters (Amro and Anokhi). The whole Pheru family had to leave their ancestral village because of the ransacking by the Mughal and Baloch military who had come with Emperor Babur. After this, the family settled at the village of Khadur Sahib by the River Beas, near Tarn Taran Sahib, a small town about 25 km from Amritsar city.


title: History of Sikhism

text: One day, Bhai Lehna heard the recitation of a hymn of Guru Nanak from Bhai Jodha (a Sikh of Guru Nanak Sahib) who was in Khadur Sahib. He was thrilled and decided to proceed to Kartarpur to have an audience (darshan) with Guru Nanak. So while on the annual pilgrimage to Jwalamukhi Temple, Bhai Lehna left his journey to visit Kartarpur and see Baba Nanak. His very first meeting with Guru Nanak completely transformed him. He renounced the worship of the Hindu Goddess, dedicated himself to the service of Guru Nanak and so became his disciple, (his Sikh), and began to live in Kartarpur.


title: History of Sikhism

text: His devotion and service (Sewa) to Guru Nanak and his holy mission was so great that he was instated as the Second Nanak on 7 September 1539 by Guru Nanak. Earlier Guru Nanak tested him in various ways and found an embodiment of obedience and service in him. He spent six or seven years in the service of Guru Nanak at Kartarpur.


title: History of Sikhism

text: When Guru Nanak died on 22 September 1539, Guru Angad left Kartarpur for the village of Khadur Sahib (near Goindwal Sahib). He carried forward the principles of Guru Nanak both in letter and spirit. Yogis and Saints of different sects visited him and held detailed discussions about Sikhism with him.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Angad introduced a new alphabet known as Gurmukhi Script, modifying the old Punjabi script's characters. Soon, this script became very popular and started to be used by the people in general. He took great interest in the education of children by opening many schools for their instruction and thus increased the number of literate people. For the youth, he started the tradition of Mall Akhara, where physical, as well as spiritual exercises, were held. He collected the facts about Guru Nanak's life from Bhai Bala and wrote the first biography of Guru Nanak. He also wrote 63 Saloks (stanzas), which are included in the Guru Granth Sahib. He popularized and expanded the institution of "Guru ka Langar" that had been started by Guru Nanak.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Angad travelled widely and visited all important religious places and centres established by Guru Nanak for the preaching of Sikhism. He also established hundreds of new Centres of Sikhism (Sikh religious Institutions) and thus strengthened the base of Sikhism. The period of his Guruship was the most crucial one. The Sikh community had moved from having a founder to a succession of Gurus and the infrastructure of Sikh society was strengthened and crystallised – from being an infant, Sikhism had moved to be a young child and ready to face the dangers that were around.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Amar Das became the third Sikh guru in 1552 at the age of 73. Goindwal became an important centre for Sikhism during the Guruship of Guru Amar Das. He continued to preach the principle of equality for women, the prohibition of Sati and the practise of Langar. In 1567, Emperor Akbar sat with the ordinary and poor people of Punjab to have Langar. Guru Amar Das also trained 140 apostles, of which 52 were women, to manage the rapid expansion of the religion. Before he died in 1574 aged 95, he appointed his son-in-law Jetha as the fourth Sikh Guru.


title: History of Sikhism

text: It is recorded that before becoming a Sikh, Bhai Amar Das, as he was known at the time, was a very religious Vaishanavite Hindu who spent most of his life performing all of the ritual pilgrimages and fasts of a devout Hindu. One day, Bhai Amar Das heard some hymns of Guru Nanak being sung by Bibi Amro Ji, the daughter of Guru Angad, the second Sikh Guru. Bibi Amro was married to Bhai Sahib's brother, Bhai Manak Chand's son who was called Bhai Jasso. Bhai Sahib was so impressed and moved by these Shabads that he immediately decided to go to see Guru Angad at Khadur Sahib. It is recorded that this event took place when Bhai Sahib was 61 years old.


title: History of Sikhism

text: In 1535, upon meeting Guru Angad, Bhai Sahib was so touched by the Guru's message that he became a devout Sikh. Soon he became involved in Sewa (Service) to the Guru and the Community. Under the impact of Guru Angad and the teachings of the Gurus, Bhai Amar Das became a devout Sikh. He adopted Guru as his spiritual guide (Guru). Bhai Sahib began to live at Khadur Sahib, where he used to rise early in the morning and bring water from the Beas River for the Guru's bath; he would wash the Guru's clothes and fetch wood from the jungle for 'Guru ka Langar'. He was so dedicated to Sewa and the Guru and had completely extinguished pride and was totally lost in this commitment that he was considered an old man who had no interest in life; he was dubbed Amru, and generally forsaken.


title: History of Sikhism

text: However, as a result of Bhai Sahib's commitment to Sikhi principles, dedicated service, and devotion to the Sikh cause, Guru Angad Sahib appointed Guru Amar Das Sahib as third Nanak in March 1552 at the age of 73. He established his headquarters in the newly built town of Goindwal, which Guru Angad had established.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Soon large numbers of Sikhs started flocking to Goindwal to see the new Guru. Here, Guru Amar Das propagated the Sikh faith in a vigorous, systematic and planned manner. He divided the Sikh Sangat area into 22 preaching centres or Manjis, each under the charge of a devout Sikh. He himself visited and sent Sikh missionaries to different parts of India to spread Sikhism.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Amar Das was impressed with Bhai Gurdas' thorough knowledge of Hindi and Sanskrit and the Hindu scriptures. Following the tradition of sending out Masands across the country, Guru Amar Das deputed Bhai Gurdas to Agra to spread the gospel of Sikhism. Before leaving, Guru Amar Das prescribed the following routine for Sikhs:


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Ji strengthened the tradition of 'Guru ka Langar' and made it compulsory for the visitor to the Guru to eat first, saying that 'Pehle Pangat Phir Sangat' (first visit the Langar then go to the Guru). Once the emperor Akbar came to see Guru Sahib and he had to eat the coarse rice in the Langar before he could have an interview with Guru Sahib. He was so much impressed with this system that he expressed his desire to grant some royal property for 'Guru ka Langar', but Guru Sahib declined it with respect.


title: History of Sikhism

text: He introduced new birth, marriage, and death ceremonies. Thus he raised the status of women and protected the rights of female infants who were killed without question as they were deemed to have no status. These teachings were met with stiff resistance from the Orthodox Hindus.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Amar Das not only preached the equality of people irrespective of their caste but also fostered the idea of women's equality. He preached strongly against the practice of Sati (a Hindu wife burning on her husband's funeral pyre). Guru Amar Das also disapproved of a young widow remaining unmarried for the rest of her life.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Amar Das constructed "Baoli" at Goindwal Sahib having eighty-four steps and made it a Sikh pilgrimage centre for the first time in the history of Sikhism. He reproduced more copies of the hymns of Guru Nanak and Guru Angad. He also composed 869 (according to some chronicles these were 709) verses (stanzas) including Anand Sahib, and then later on Guru Arjan (fifth Guru) made all the Shabads part of Guru Granth Sahib.


title: History of Sikhism

text: When the time came for the Guru's younger daughter Bibi Bhani to marry, he selected a pious and diligent young follower of his called Jetha from Lahore. Jetha had come to visit the Guru with a party of pilgrims from Lahore and had become so enchanted by the Guru's teachings that he had decided to settle in Goindwal. Here he earned a livelihood selling boiled chickpeas and would regularly attend the services of Guru Amar Das in his spare time.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Amar Das did not consider anyone of his sons fit for Guruship and chose instead his son-in-law (Guru) Ram Das to succeed him. Guru Amar Das Sahib at the age of 95 died on 1 September 1574 at Goindwal in District Amritsar, after giving the responsibility of Guruship to the Fourth Nanak, Guru Ram Das.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Ram Das (Punjabi: ਗੁਰੂ ਰਾਮ ਦਾਸ) (Born in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan on 24 September 1534 – 1 September 1581, Amritsar, Punjab, India) was the fourth of the Ten Gurus of Sikhism, and he became Guru on 30 August 1574, following in the footsteps of Guru Amar Das. He was born in Lahore to a Sodhi family of the Khatri clan. His father was Hari Das and his mother Anup Devi, and his name was Jetha, meaning 'first born'. His wife was Bibi Bhani, the younger daughter of Guru Amar Das, the third guru of the Sikhs. They had three sons: Prithi Chand, Mahan dev, and Arjan Dev.


title: History of Sikhism

text: As a Guru one of his main contributions to Sikhism was organising the structure of Sikh society. Additionally, he was the author of Laava, the hymns of the Marriage Rites, the designer of the Harmandir Sahib, and the planner and creator of the township of Ramdaspur (later Amritsar).


title: History of Sikhism

text: "One who calls himself a Sikh of the True Guru shall get up early morning and meditate on the Lord's Name. Make effort regularly to cleanse, bathe and dip in the ambrosial pool. Upon Guru's instructions, chant Har, Har singing which, all misdeeds, sins, and pains shall go away."


title: History of Sikhism

text: In 1581, Guru Arjan — the youngest son of the fourth guru — became the Fifth Guru of the Sikhs. In addition to being responsible for building the Golden Temple, he prepared the Sikh Sacred text and his personal addition of some 2,000 plus hymns in the Gurū Granth Sāhib. He compiled and composed the most hymns. He even added many Sufi Saints, Bhagats, Bhatts and Gursikhs verses such as Sheik Farid, Sant Kabir, Bhagat Namdev and Bhai Mardana.


title: History of Sikhism

text: In 1604 he installed the Ādi Granth for the first time as the Holy Book of the Sikhs. He is known as "Shaheedan-De-Saraaj" or "Crown of Martyrs" because he gave Jehangir's son langer and made him hear Kirtan, his son, Khusrau, was revolting against Jehangir. Guru Arjan Dev Ji refused to convert to Islam when he was given the choice.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru HarGobind became the sixth guru of the Sikhs. He carried two swords — one for Spiritual reasons and one for temporal (worldly) reasons. From this point onward, the Sikhs became a military force and always had a trained fighting force to defend their independence.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru HarGobind fixed two Nishan Sahibs at Akal Bunga in front of the Akal Takht. One flag is towards the Harmandir Sahib and the other shorter flag is towards Akal Takht. The first represents the reins of the spiritual authority while the later represents temporal power stating temporal power should be under the reins of the spiritual authority.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Har Rai (Punjabi: ਗੁਰੂ ਹਰਿ ਰਾਇ) (26 February 1630 – 6 October 1661) was the seventh of the ten Gurus of Sikhism, becoming Guru on 8 March 1644, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Guru Har Gobind, who was the sixth guru. Before Guru Har Rai died, he nominated Guru Har Krishan, his youngest son, as the next Guru of the Sikhs.


title: History of Sikhism

text: As a very young child, he got disturbed by the suffering of a flower damaged by his robe in passing. Though such feelings are common with children, Guru Har Rai would throughout his life be noted for his compassion for life and living things. His grandfather, who was famed as an avid hunter, is said to have saved the Moghul Emperor Jahangir's life during a tiger's attack. Guru Har Rai continued the hunting till the age 31, Guru followed the tradition of his grandfather, but he would allow no animals to be killed on his grand Shikars. The Guru instead captured the animal and added it to his zoo. He made several tours to the Malwa and Doaba regions of Punjab.


title: History of Sikhism

text: His son, Ram Rai, seeking to assuage concerns of Aurangzeb over one line in Guru Nanak's verse (Mitti Mussalmaan ki paerrai pai kumihaar) suggested that the word Mussalman was a mistake on the copyist's part, therefore distorting Bani. The Guru refused to meet with him again. The Guru is believed to have said, "Ram Rai, you have disobeyed my order and sinned. I will never see you again on account of your infidelity." It was also reported to the Guru that Ram Rai had also worked miracles in the Mughal's court against his father's direct instructions. Sikhs are constrained by their Gurus to not believe in magic and myth or miracles. Just before his death at age 31, Guru Har Rai passed the Gaddi of Nanak on to his younger son, the five-year-old – Guru Har Krishan.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Har Rai was the son of Baba Gurdita and Mata Nihal Kaur (also known as Mata Ananti Ji). Baba Gurdita was the son of the sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind. Guru Har Rai married Mata Kishan Kaur (sometimes also referred to as Sulakhni), daughter of Sri Daya Ram of Anoopshahr (Bulandshahr) in Uttar Pradesh on Har Sudi 3, Samvat 1697. Guru Har Rai had two sons: Baba Ram Rai and Sri Har Krishan.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Although Guru Har Rai was a man of peace, he never disbanded the armed Sikh Warriors (Saint Soldiers), who earlier were maintained by his grandfather, Guru Hargobind. He always boosted the military spirit of the Sikhs, but he never himself indulged in any direct political and armed controversy with the contemporary Mughal Empire. Once, Dara Shikoh (the eldest son of emperor Shah Jahan), came to Guru Har Rai asking for help in the war of succession with his brother, the murderous Aurangzeb. The Guru had promised his grandfather to use the Sikh Cavalry only in defense. Nevertheless, he helped him to escape safely from the bloody hands of Aurangzeb's armed forces by having his Sikh warriors hide all the ferry boats at the river crossing used by Dara Shikoh in his escape.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Har Krishan born in Kirat Pur, Ropar (Punjabi: ਗੁਰੂ ਹਰਿ ਕ੍ਰਿਸ਼ਨ) (7 July 1656 – 30 March 1664) was the eighth of the Ten Gurus of Sikhism, becoming the Guru on 7 October 1661, following in the footsteps of his father, Guru Har Rai. Before Har Krishan died of complications of Smallpox, he nominated his granduncle, Guru Teg Bahadur, as the next Guru of the Sikhs. The following is a summary of the main highlights of his short life:


title: History of Sikhism

text: When Har Krishan stayed in Delhi there was a smallpox epidemic and many people were dying. According to Sikh history at Har Krishan's blessing, the lake at Bangla Sahib provided cure for thousands. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib was constructed in the Guru's memory. This is where he stayed during his visit to Delhi. Gurdwara Bala Sahib was built in south Delhi besides the bank of the river Yamuna, where Har Krishan was cremated at the age of about 7 years and 8 months. Guru Har Krishan was the youngest Guru at only 7 years of age. He did not make any contributions to Gurbani.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Tegh Bahadur was the ninth of the Sikh Gurus. The eight Sikh Guru, Guru Har Krishan, nominated him, his grand-uncle as the next Guru before he died. Guru Tegh Bahadur was actually the son of the sixth Sikh Guru, Guru Hargobind.


title: History of Sikhism

text: He sacrificed himself to protect Hindus. Aurungzeb was forcibly converting Hindus to Muslims. Hindus from Kashmir came to Guru Teg Bahadur for protection and requested for assistance. Guru asked them to tell Aurungzeb that if he will be able to convert Guru Teg Bahadur to Islam then they all become Muslim. He was asked by Aurungzeb, the Mughal emperor, under coercion by conservative Naqshbandi clerics, to convert to Islam or to sacrifice himself. The exact place where he died is in front of the Red Fort in Delhi (Lal Qila) and the gurdwara is called Sisganj. This marked a turning point for Sikhism. His successor, Guru Gobind Singh further militarised his followers.


title: History of Sikhism

text: While, Bhai Mati Das along with his younger brother Bhai Sati Das were martyrs of early Sikh history. Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Dayala, and Bhai Sati Das were executed at a "kotwali" (police-station) in the Chandni Chowk area of Delhi, under the express orders of Emperor Aurangzeb just before the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur. Bhai Mati Das was executed by being bound between two pillars and cut in two.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Guru Gobind Singh was the tenth guru of Sikhs. He was born in 1666 at Patna (Capital of Bihar, India).and did his basic schooling there. Along with the religious scriptures, he also studied the Bihari language at Patna. His Uncle, Bhai Kripal, trained him in archery and swordsmanship and soon he became a great marksman. When Guru Tegh Bahadur returned from Dhaka (now Bangladesh‘s Capital) to Patna he saw his five years old child for the first time, and kissed and embraced his divine boy. The Guru blossomed under the spiritual guidance of his father, but it was short-lived since Guru Tegh bahadur had to leave Patna for Anandpur.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Gobind Rai, as he was called then, was beloved of many people in Patna including a large number of Muslims. The child had a charming personality which attracted everyone he met, even for a short while. When he was six years old he had learnt Hindi, Marathi and Gurumukhi. He was a very bold and courageous boy, and had all the qualities of a great man and a natural leader.


title: History of Sikhism

text: A Raja's childless Queen had developed special fondness for the young Guru Gobind Singh, who, too, often came here to sit in the Queen's lap giving her immense delight and spiritual solace. She fed the Child Gobind and his playmates, at his demand, with boiled and salted gram.


title: History of Sikhism

text: In 1675 Pundits from Kashmir in India came to Anandpur Sahib pleading to Guru Teg Bahadur (father of Guru Gobind Singh) about Aurangzeb forcing them to convert to Islam. Guru Teg Bahadur told them that martyrdom of a great man was needed. His son, Guru Gobind Singh said "Who could be greater than you", to his father. Guru Teg Bahadur told pundits to tell Aurangzeb's men that if Guru Teg Bahadur will become Muslim, they all will.


title: History of Sikhism

text: After Guru Tegh Bahadur ji's martyrdom Guru Gobind Singh Ji created many poems compositions and letters, including Zafarnama, Ugardandis, Lakhi Jungle Khalsa, Hikayatan, Akal Ustat, Japji Sahib etc., these were incorporated into the Dasam Granth and Sarbloh Granth respectively. He stayed at Anandpur Sahib for most of his life and the Hindu Hill Chieftains were jealous of his riches so the Kingdoms of Kahlur, Bilaspur, Garhwal and common Hindus made an alliance to fight him. He and the kingdom of Una allied and won the Battle of Bhangani. The even more Himachali states allied and still lost. This showed the Guruji's influence and military strength in the area.


title: History of Sikhism

text: They allied with Wazir Khan of Sirhind and the Subedar of Lahore and together they still lost and one day Guruji started retreating from Anandpur Sahib and he got separated with his two sons aged 5 and 9 due to the cold Satluj River. He entrusted his Brahmin cook, Gangu Brahmin, to take care of them but he sold them to Wazir Khan. In the meantime Aurangzeb dispatched 50,000-75,000 troops to attack the Guruji. after he sent his elder sons and 42 others to fight only 17,000 Mughals came back alive, his elder sons died on the battlefield with bravery and honour. The younger sons and their grandmother remained trapped in the same week that their brothers died. Wazir Khan said that he would give them riches if they convert and immurement if they do not, they chose death, till now Sahibzada Fateh Singh is the youngest Martyr in the history of the World. Guru Gobind Singh Ji sent his letter of victory to Aurangzeb and they signed a treaty. Later when Aurangzeb Died and the Guru was in Rajputana there was a war of succession between Muhammad Azam Shah and Bahadur Shah I and Guru Gobind Singh Ji sided with Bahadur Shah I who was secular in his views. On his way to Aurangabad he was stabbed three times in his lungs and killed the assassin. He survived for three more weeks and but later died from his wounds.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Shortly before passing away Guru Gobind Singh ordered that the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh Holy Scripture), would be the ultimate spiritual authority for the Sikhs and temporal authority would be vested in the Khalsa Panth – the Sikh Nation. The first Sikh Holy Scripture was compiled and edited by the Fifth Guru, Guru Arjan in AD 1604, although some of the earlier gurus are also known to have documented their revelations. This is one of the few scriptures in the world that has been compiled by the founders of faith during their own lifetime. The Guru Granth Sahib is particularly unique among sacred texts in that it is written in Gurmukhi script but contains many languages including Punjabi, Hindustani, Sanskrit, Bhojpuri, Arabic and Persian. Sikhs consider the Guru Granth Sahib the last, perpetual living guru.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Banda Singh Bahadur was chosen to lead the Sikhs by Guru Gobind Singh. He was successful in setting up a Sikh Empire that spread from Uttar Pradesh to Punjab. He fought the Mughal state tyranny and gave the common people of Punjab courage, equality, and rights. On his way to Punjab, Banda Singh punished robbers and other criminal elements making him popular with the people. Banda Singh inspired the minds of the non-Muslim people, who came to look upon the Sikhs as defenders of their faith and country. Banda Singh possessed no army but Guru Gobind Singh in a Hukamnama called to the people of Punjab to take arms under the leadership of Banda Singh overthrow and destroy the oppressive Mughal rulers, oppressed Muslims and oppressed Hindus also joined him in the popular revolt against the tyrants.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Banda Singh Bahadur camped in Khar Khoda, near Sonipat from there he took over Sonipat and Kaithal. In 1709 Banda Singh captured the Mughal city of Samana with the help of revolting oppressed Hindu and common folk, killing about 10,000 Muslims. Samana which was famous for minting coins, with this treasury the Sikhs became financially stable. The Sikhs soon took over Saraswati Nagar and Sadhora (near Jagadhri). The Sikhs then captured the Cis-Sutlej areas of Punjab including Ghurham, Kapori, Banoor, Malerkotla, and Nahan. The Sikhs captured Sirhind in 1710 and killed the Governor of Sirhind, Wazir Khan who was responsible for the death of the two youngest sons of Guru Gobind Singh at Sirhind. Becoming the ruler of Sirhind Banda Singh gave order to give ownership of the land to the farmers and let them live in dignity and self-respect. Petty officials were also satisfied with the change. Dindar Khan, an official of the nearby village, took Amrit and became Dinder Singh and the newspaper writer of Sirhind, Mir Nasir-ud-din, became Mir Nasir Singh


title: History of Sikhism

text: Banda Singh developed the village of Mukhlisgarh, and made it his capital He then renamed the city it to Lohgarh (fortress of steel) where he issued his own mint. The coin described Lohgarh: "Struck in the City of Peace, illustrating the beauty of civic life, and the ornament of the blessed throne." He briefly established a state in Punjab for half a year. Banda Singh sent Sikhs to the Uttar Pradesh and Sikhs took over Saharanpur, Jalalabad, Saharanpur, and other areas nearby bringing relief to the repressed population. In the regions of Jalandhar and Amritsar, the Sikhs started fighting for the rights of the people. They used their newly established power to remove corrupt officials and replace them with honest ones.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Banda Singh is known to have abolished or halted the Zamindari system in time he was active and gave the farmers proprietorship of their own land. It seems that all classes of government officers were addicted to extortion and corruption and the whole system of regulatory and order was subverted. Local tradition recalls that the people from the neighborhood of Sadaura came to Banda Singh complaining of the iniquities practices by their landlords. Banda Singh ordered Baj Singh to open fire on them. The people were astonished at the strange reply to their representation, and asked him what he meant. He told them that they deserved no better treatment when being thousands in number they still allowed themselves to be cowed down by a handful of Zamindars.


title: History of Sikhism

text: The rule of the Sikhs over the entire Punjab east of Lahore obstructed the communication between Delhi and Lahore, the capital of Punjab, and this worried Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah He gave up his plan to subdue rebels in Rajasthan and marched towards Punjab. The entire Imperial force was organised to defeat and kill Banda Singh. All the generals were directed to join the Emperor’s army. To ensure that there were no Sikh agents in the army camps, an order was issued on 29 August 1710 to all Hindus to shave off their beards.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Banda Singh was in Uttar Pradesh when the Moghal army under the orders of Munim Khan marched to Sirhind and before the return of Banda Singh, they had already taken Sirhind and the areas around it. The Sikhs therefore moved to Lohgarh for their final battle. The Sikhs defeated the army but reinforcements were called and they laid siege on the fort with 60,000 troops. Gulab Singh dressed himself in the garments of Banda Singh and seated himself in his place. Banda Singh left the fort at night and went to a secret place in the hills and Chamba forests. The failure of the army to kill or catch Banda Singh shocked Emperor, Bahadur Shah and On 10 December 1710 he ordered that wherever a Sikh was found, he should be murdered. The Emperor became mentally disturbed and died on 18 February 1712.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Banda Singh Bahadur wrote Hukamnamas to the Sikhs telling them to get themselves reorganised and join him at once. In 1711 the Sikhs gathered near Kiratpur Sahib and defeated Raja Bhim Chand, who was responsible for organising all the Hill Rajas against Guru Gobind Singh and instigating battles with him. After Bhim Chand’s dead the other Hill Rajas accepted their subordinate status and paid revenues to Banda Singh.


title: History of Sikhism

text: While Bahadur Shah's 4 sons were killing themselves for the throne of the Mughal Emperor Banda Singh Bahadur recaptured Sadhura and Lohgarh. Farrukh Siyar, the next Moghal Emperor, appointed Abdus Samad Khan as the governor of Lahore and Zakaria Khan, Abdus Samad Khan's son, the Faujdar of Jammu. In 1713 the Sikhs left Lohgarh and Sadhura and went to the remote hills of Jammu and where they built Dera Baba Banda Singh. During this time Sikhs were being hunted down especially by pathans in the Gurdaspur region.


title: History of Sikhism

text: Banda Singh came out and captured Kalanaur and Batala which rebuked Farrukh Siyar to issue Mughal and Hindu officials and chiefs to proceed with their troops to Lahore to reinforce his army.


title: History of Sikhism

text: In March 1715, Banda Singh Bahadur was in the village of Gurdas Nangal, Gurdaspur, Punjab, when the army under the rule of Samad Khan, the Mogual king of Delhi laid siege to the Sikh forces. The Sikhs fought and defended the small fort for eight months. On 7 December 1715 Banda Singh starving soldiers were captured.


title: History of Sikhism

text: On 7 December 1715 Banda Singh Bahadur was captured from the Gurdas Nangal fort and put in an iron cage and the remaining Sikhs were captured, chained. The Sikhs were brought to Delhi in a procession with the 780 Sikh prisoners, 2,000 Sikh heads hung on spears, and 700 cartloads of heads of slaughtered Sikhs used to terrorise the population. They were put in the Delhi fort and pressured to give up their faith and become Muslims.


title: History of Sikhism

text: On their firm refusal all of them were ordered to be executed. Every day, 100 Sikhs were brought out of the fort and murdered in public daily, which went on approximately seven days.After 3 months of confinement On 9 June 1716, Banda Singh’s eyes were gouged, his limbs were severed, his skin removed, and then he was killed.