title: Glassblowing

text: Eventually, the glassblowing technique reached Egypt and was described in a fragmentary poem printed on papyrus which was dated to the 3rd century AD. The Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean areas resulted in the substitution of glassblowing for earlier Hellenistic casting, core-forming and mosaic fusion techniques. The earliest evidence of blowing in Hellenistic work consists of small blown bottles for perfume and oil retrieved from the glass workshops on the Greek island of Samothrace and at Corinth in mainland Greece which were dated to the 1st century AD.


title: Glassblowing

text: Later, the Phoenician glassworkers exploited their glassblowing techniques and set up their workshops in the western territories of the Roman Empire, first in Italy by the middle of the 1st century AD. Rome, the heartland of the empire, soon became a major glassblowing center, and more glassblowing workshops were subsequently established in other provinces of Italy, for example Campania, Morgantina and Aquileia. A great variety of blown glass objects, ranging from unguentaria (toiletry containers for perfume) to cameo, from tableware to window glass, were produced.


title: Glassblowing

text: From there, escaping craftsmen (who had been forbidden to travel) otherwise advanced to the rest of Europe by building their glassblowing workshops in the north of the Alps (which is now Switzerland), and then at sites in northern Europe in present-day France and Belgium.


title: Glassblowing

text: One of the most prolific glassblowing centers of the Roman period was established in Cologne on the river Rhine in Germany by the late 1st century BC. Stone base molds and terracotta base molds were discovered from these Rhineland workshops, suggesting the adoption and the application of mold-blowing technique by the glassworkers. Besides, blown flagons and blown jars decorated with ribbing, as well as blown perfume bottles with letters CCAA or CCA which stand for Colonia Claudia Agrippiniensis, were produced from the Rhineland workshops. Remains of blown blue-green glass vessels, for example bottles with handles, collared bowls and indented beakers, were found in abundance from the local glass workshops at Poetovio and Celeia in Slovenia.


title: Glassblowing

text: Surviving physical evidence, such as blowpipes and molds which are indicative of the presence of blowing, is fragmentary and limited. Pieces of clay blowpipes were retrieved from the late 1st century AD glass workshop at Avenches in Switzerland. Clay blowpipes, also known as mouthblowers, were made by the ancient glassworkers due to the accessibility and availability of the resources before the introduction of the metal blowpipes. Hollow iron rods, together with blown vessel fragments and glass waste dating to approximately 4th century AD, were recovered from the glass workshop in Mérida of Spain, as well as in Salona in Croatia.


title: Glassblowing

text: The glass blowing tradition was carried on in Europe from the medieval period through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in the demise of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. During the early medieval period, the Franks manipulated the technique of glassblowing by creating the simple corrugated molds and developing the claws decoration techniques. Blown glass objects, such as the drinking vessels that imitated the shape of the animal horn were produced in the Rhine and Meuse valleys, as well as in Belgium. The Byzantine glassworkers made mold-blown glass decorated with Christian and Jewish symbols in Jerusalem between the late 6th century and the middle of the 7th century AD. Mold-blown vessels with facets, relief and linear-cut decoration were discovered at Samarra in the Islamic lands.


title: Glassblowing

text: Renaissance Europe witnessed the revitalization of glass industry in Italy. Glassblowing, in particular the mold-blowing technique, was employed by the Venetian glassworkers from Murano to produce the fine glassware which is also known as "cristallo". The technique of glassblowing, coupled with the cylinder and crown methods, was used to manufacture sheet or flat glass for window panes in the late 17th century. The applicability of glassblowing was so widespread that glass was being blown in many parts of the world, for example, in China, Japan and the Islamic Lands.


title: Glassblowing

text: The Nøstetangen Museum at Hokksund, Norway, shows how glass was made according to ancient tradition. The Nøstetangen glassworks had operated there from 1741 to 1777, producing table-glass and chandeliers in the German and English styles.


title: Glassblowing

text: The "studio glass movement" began in 1962 when Harvey Littleton, a ceramics professor, and Dominick Labino, a chemist and engineer, held two workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art, during which they started experimenting with melting glass in a small furnace and creating blown glass art. Littleton promoted the use of small furnaces in individual artists studios. This approach to glassblowing blossomed into a worldwide movement, producing such flamboyant and prolific artists as Dale Chihuly, Dante Marioni, Fritz Driesbach and Marvin Lipofsky as well as scores of other modern glass artists. Today there are many different institutions around the world that offer glassmaking resources for training and sharing equipment.


title: Glassblowing

text: Working with large or complex pieces requires a team of several glassworkers, in a complex choreography of precisely timed movements. This practical requirement has encouraged collaboration among glass artists, in both semi-permanent and temporary working groups.


title: Glassblowing

text: In addition, recent developments in technology allow for the use of glass components in high-tech applications. Using machininery to shape and form glass enables to manufacture glass products of the highest quality and accuracy. As a result, glass is often used in semiconductor, analytical, life science, industrial, and medical applications.


title: Glassblowing

text: The writer Daphne du Maurier was descended from a family of glass-blowers in 18th century France, and she wrote about her forebears in the 1963 historical novel "The Glass-Blowers".


title: Glassblowing

text: The subject of mystery novelist Donna Leon's "Through a Glass, Darkly" is the investigation of a crime in a Venetian glassworks on the island of Murano.


title: Apne

text: Apne () is a 2007 Indian Hindi-language sports drama film directed by Anil Sharma. It is the first film to feature Dharmendra and his real-life sons Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol together. Previously Sunny and Bobby had worked together in "Dillagi" (1999) and Dharmendra and Sunny had also appeared together in "Sultanat" (1986) and "Kshatriya" (1993). Katrina Kaif, Shilpa Shetty and Kiron Kher play the female leads. The film opened to an excellent response across India and emerged as a hit overseas as well.


title: Apne

text: Dharmendra plays the role of a disgraced ex-boxer Baldev Chaudhary who tries to wash a stain in his boxing career through his sons Angad and Karan (Sunny & Bobby Deol). Dharmendra had earlier played the role of a boxer in the film "Main Intequam Loonga" (1982). Footage from that film is used as flashback scenes in this film to show Baldev's career as a boxer.


title: Apne

text: Former Olympic medallist boxer Baldev Choudhary is disgraced while competing for the World Heavy weight championship when a betting syndicate falsely accuses him of drug doping. He tries to erase this stain upon his honour by training up his son, Angad, but financial difficulties keep them from achieving his dream. He trains a local boy to get into a media hyped TV boxing show, but is dropped for a better coach at the last minute. Baldev's younger son Karan has just launched his first music album. Realising his father is depressed, he gives up his own dream of a musical career to become a boxer and please his father. Karan persists with training and wins a series of fights, thinking that victory will bring his family together. The final match is with the current world heavy weight champion; Karan is tricked, and he ends up paralysed in a hospital bed. Baldev, who wanted to wash a stigma, is now about to lose his son. When Karan reveals the world heavy weight champion cheated, Angad decides to return to boxing and win the title for his father. Although Angad is also badly injured in boxing match but somehow survives and wins the match. meanwhile, Karan suffers liver damage and requires a liver to survive. A pang of guilt stricken Baldev pleads with the doctors to use his liver, but the doctors reject the idea. In a stroke of luck, a liver is given to Karan through an unknown donor. In the end, Baldev, who was going to give up his life for Karan, is instead alive and happy with his family.


title: Apne

text: The Soundtrack of the movie was composed by Himesh Reshammiya. Apne was the last film in which Reshammiya and Sonu Nigam worked together due to the issues between them both.


title: Apne

text: "Apne" opened to a very good response throughout the country especially in the Northern territories most notably Punjab where it had a mammoth opening becoming a gigantic blockbuster in the long run. The rest of the country saw a good opening for Apne. The Gross Collection of Apne was ₹45 crore.


title: Apne

text: Taran Adarsh in his review stated that ""Apne is rich in emotions and has the potential to strike a chord with families. Those who love emotional fares are bound to take a liking for its theme"." The movie was also dubbed into Punjabi.


title: Apne

text: A sequel named "Apne 2" was officially announced on 30 November 2020, and will star Dharmendra, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol and Sunny's son Karan Deol. It goes on floors in March 2021 and has been scheduled for a theatrical release on 5 November 2021, coinciding with Diwali. Delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Hausdorff space

text: In topology and related branches of mathematics, a Hausdorff space ( , ), separated space or T space is a topological space where for any two distinct points there exist neighbourhoods of each which are disjoint from each other. Of the many separation axioms that can be imposed on a topological space, the "Hausdorff condition" (T) is the most frequently used and discussed. It implies the uniqueness of limits of sequences, nets, and filters.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Hausdorff spaces are named after Felix Hausdorff, one of the founders of topology. Hausdorff's original definition of a topological space (in 1914) included the Hausdorff condition as an axiom.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Points formula_1 and formula_2 in a topological space formula_3 can be "separated by neighbourhoods" if there exists a neighbourhood formula_4 of formula_1 and a neighbourhood formula_6 of formula_2 such that formula_4 and formula_6 are disjoint formula_10. formula_3 is a Hausdorff space if any two distinct points in formula_3 are separated by neighbourhoods. This condition is the third separation axiom (after T and T), which is why Hausdorff spaces are also called T spaces. The name "separated space" is also used.


title: Hausdorff space

text: A related, but weaker, notion is that of a preregular space. formula_3 is a preregular space if any two topologically distinguishable points can be separated by disjoint neighbourhoods. A preregular space is also called an R space.


title: Hausdorff space

text: The relationship between these two conditions is as follows. A topological space is Hausdorff if and only if it is both preregular (i.e. topologically distinguishable points are separated by neighbourhoods) and Kolmogorov (i.e. distinct points are topologically distinguishable). A topological space is preregular if and only if its Kolmogorov quotient is Hausdorff.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Almost all spaces encountered in analysis are Hausdorff; most importantly, the real numbers (under the standard metric topology on real numbers) are a Hausdorff space. More generally, all metric spaces are Hausdorff. In fact, many spaces of use in analysis, such as topological groups and topological manifolds, have the Hausdorff condition explicitly stated in their definitions.


title: Hausdorff space

text: A simple example of a topology that is T but is not Hausdorff is the cofinite topology defined on an infinite set.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Pseudometric spaces typically are not Hausdorff, but they are preregular, and their use in analysis is usually only in the construction of Hausdorff gauge spaces. Indeed, when analysts run across a non-Hausdorff space, it is still probably at least preregular, and then they simply replace it with its Kolmogorov quotient, which is Hausdorff.


title: Hausdorff space

text: In contrast, non-preregular spaces are encountered much more frequently in abstract algebra and algebraic geometry, in particular as the Zariski topology on an algebraic variety or the spectrum of a ring. They also arise in the model theory of intuitionistic logic: every complete Heyting algebra is the algebra of open sets of some topological space, but this space need not be preregular, much less Hausdorff, and in fact usually is neither. The related concept of Scott domain also consists of non-preregular spaces.


title: Hausdorff space

text: While the existence of unique limits for convergent nets and filters implies that a space is Hausdorff, there are non-Hausdorff T spaces in which every convergent sequence has a unique limit. Such spaces are called "US spaces".


title: Hausdorff space

text: Subspaces and products of Hausdorff spaces are Hausdorff, but quotient spaces of Hausdorff spaces need not be Hausdorff. In fact, "every" topological space can be realized as the quotient of some Hausdorff space.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Hausdorff spaces are T, meaning that all singletons are closed. Similarly, preregular spaces are R. Every Hausdorff space is a Sober space although the converse is in general not true.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Another nice property of Hausdorff spaces is that compact sets are always closed. For non-Hausdorff spaces, it can be that all compact sets are closed sets (for example, the cocountable topology on an uncountable set) or not (for example, the cofinite topology on an infinite set and the Sierpiński space).


title: Hausdorff space

text: The definition of a Hausdorff space says that points can be separated by neighborhoods. It turns out that this implies something which is seemingly stronger: in a Hausdorff space every pair of disjoint compact sets can also be separated by neighborhoods, in other words there is a neighborhood of one set and a neighborhood of the other, such that the two neighborhoods are disjoint. This is an example of the general rule that compact sets often behave like points.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Compactness conditions together with preregularity often imply stronger separation axioms. For example, any locally compact preregular space is completely regular. Compact preregular spaces are normal, meaning that they satisfy Urysohn's lemma and the Tietze extension theorem and have partitions of unity subordinate to locally finite open covers. The Hausdorff versions of these statements are: every locally compact Hausdorff space is Tychonoff, and every compact Hausdorff space is normal Hausdorff.


title: Hausdorff space

text: The following results are some technical properties regarding maps (continuous and otherwise) to and from Hausdorff spaces.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Let "formula_24" be a continuous function and suppose formula_25 is Hausdorff. Then the graph of "formula_26", formula_27, is a closed subset of "formula_28".


title: Hausdorff space

text: Let "formula_24" be a function and let formula_30 be its kernel regarded as a subspace of "formula_22".


title: Hausdorff space

text: If "formula_41" are continuous maps and "formula_25" is Hausdorff then the equalizer formula_43 is closed in "formula_3". It follows that if "formula_25" is Hausdorff and "formula_26" and "formula_47" agree on a dense subset of "formula_3" then "formula_49". In other words, continuous functions into Hausdorff spaces are determined by their values on dense subsets.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Let "formula_24" be a closed surjection such that "formula_51" is compact for all "formula_52". Then if "formula_3" is Hausdorff so is "formula_25".


title: Hausdorff space

text: Let "formula_24" be a quotient map with "formula_3" a compact Hausdorff space. Then the following are equivalent:


title: Hausdorff space

text: All regular spaces are preregular, as are all Hausdorff spaces. There are many results for topological spaces that hold for both regular and Hausdorff spaces.


title: Hausdorff space

text: Most of the time, these results hold for all preregular spaces; they were listed for regular and Hausdorff spaces separately because the idea of preregular spaces came later.


title: Hausdorff space

text: On the other hand, those results that are truly about regularity generally do not also apply to nonregular Hausdorff spaces.


title: Hausdorff space

text: There are many situations where another condition of topological spaces (such as paracompactness or local compactness) will imply regularity if preregularity is satisfied. Such conditions often come in two versions: a regular version and a Hausdorff version. Although Hausdorff spaces are not, in general, regular, a Hausdorff space that is also (say) locally compact will be regular, because any Hausdorff space is preregular. Thus from a certain point of view, it is really preregularity, rather than regularity, that matters in these situations. However, definitions are usually still phrased in terms of regularity, since this condition is better known than preregularity.


title: Hausdorff space

text: The terms "Hausdorff", "separated", and "preregular" can also be applied to such variants on topological spaces as uniform spaces, Cauchy spaces, and convergence spaces. The characteristic that unites the concept in all of these examples is that limits of nets and filters (when they exist) are unique (for separated spaces) or unique up to topological indistinguishability (for preregular spaces).


title: Hausdorff space

text: As it turns out, uniform spaces, and more generally Cauchy spaces, are always preregular, so the Hausdorff condition in these cases reduces to the T condition. These are also the spaces in which completeness makes sense, and Hausdorffness is a natural companion to completeness in these cases. Specifically, a space is complete if and only if every Cauchy net has at "least" one limit, while a space is Hausdorff if and only if every Cauchy net has at "most" one limit (since only Cauchy nets can have limits in the first place).


title: Hausdorff space

text: The algebra of continuous (real or complex) functions on a compact Hausdorff space is a commutative C*-algebra, and conversely by the Banach–Stone theorem one can recover the topology of the space from the algebraic properties of its algebra of continuous functions. This leads to noncommutative geometry, where one considers noncommutative C*-algebras as representing algebras of functions on a noncommutative space.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Mary Edwards Walker, M.D. (November 26, 1832 – February 21, 1919), commonly referred to as Dr. Mary Walker, was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war and surgeon. She is the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: In 1855, she earned her medical degree at Syracuse Medical College in New York, married and started a medical practice. She attempted to join the Union Army at the outbreak of the American Civil War and was denied. She served as a surgeon at a temporary hospital in Washington, D.C. before being hired by Union Forces and assigned to Army of the Cumberland and later the 52nd Ohio Infantry, becoming the first female surgeon in the US Army. She was captured by Confederate forces after crossing enemy lines to treat wounded civilians and arrested as a spy. She was sent as a prisoner of war to Richmond, Virginia until released in a prisoner exchange.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: After the war, she was approved for the Medal of Honor, for her efforts to treat the wounded in battle and across enemy lines during the Civil War. Notably, the award was not expressly given for gallantry in action at that time, and in fact was the only military decoration during the Civil War. Walker is the only woman to receive the medal and one of only eight civilians to receive it. Her name was deleted from the Army Medal of Honor Roll in 1917 (along with over 900 other, male MOH recipients); however, it was restored in 1977. After the war, she was a writer and lecturer supporting the women's suffrage movement until her death in 1919.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Mary Edwards Walker was born in the Town of Oswego, New York, on November 26, 1832, the daughter of Alvah (father) and Vesta (mother) Walker. She was the youngest of seven children: she had five sisters and one brother. Alvah and Vesta raised both their son and their daughters in a progressive manner that was revolutionary for the time. Their nontraditional parenting nurtured Mary's spirit of independence and sense of justice that she actively demonstrated throughout her life. While they were devoted Christians, the Walkers were "free thinkers" who raised their children to question the regulations and restrictions of various denominations. The Walker parents also demonstrated non-traditional gender roles to their children regarding sharing work around the farm: Vesta often participated in heavy labor while Alvah took part in general household chores. Walker worked on her family farm as a child. She did not wear women's clothing during farm labor because she considered it too restricting. Her mother reinforced her views that corsets and tight lacings were unhealthy.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Her elementary education consisted of attendance at the local school that her parents had started. The Walkers were determined that their daughters be as well-educated as their son, so they founded the first free schoolhouse in Oswego in the late 1830s. After finishing primary school, Mary and two of her older sisters attended Falley Seminary in Fulton, New York. Falley was not only an institution of higher learning, but a place that emphasized modern social reform in gender roles, education, and hygiene. Its ideologies and practices further cemented Mary's determination to defy traditional feminine standards on a principle of injustice. In her free time, Mary would pore over her father's medical texts on anatomy and physiology; her interest in medicine is attributable to her exposure to medical literature at an early age. As a young woman, she taught at a school in Minetto, New York, eventually earning enough money to pay her way through Syracuse Medical College, where she graduated with honors as a medical doctor in 1855, the only woman in her class.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: She married a fellow medical school student, Albert Miller, on November 16, 1855, shortly before she turned 23. Walker wore a short skirt with trousers underneath, refused to include "obey" in her vows, and retained her last name, all characteristic of her obstinate nonconformity. They set up a joint practice in Rome, New York. The practice did not flourish, as female physicians were generally not trusted or respected at that time. They later divorced, on account of Miller's infidelity.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Walker briefly attended Bowen Collegiate Institute (later named Lenox College) in Hopkinton, Iowa, in 1860, until she was suspended for refusing to resign from the school's debating society, which until she joined had been all male.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Inspired by her parents' novel standard of dressing for health purposes, Walker was infamous for contesting traditional female wardrobe, a campaign then known as rational dress. In 1871, she wrote, "The greatest sorrows from which women suffer to-day are those physical, moral, and mental ones, that are caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing!" She strongly opposed women's long skirts with numerous petticoats, not only for their discomfort and their inhibition to the wearer's mobility but for their collection and spread of dust and dirt. As a young woman, she began experimenting with various skirt-lengths and layers, all with men's trousers underneath. By 1861, her typical ensemble included trousers with suspenders under a knee-length dress with a tight waist and full skirt.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: While encouraged by her family, Walker's wardrobe choices were often met with criticism. Once, while a schoolteacher, she was assaulted on her way home by a neighboring farmer and a group of boys, who chased her and attacked her with eggs and other projectiles. Female colleagues in medical school criticized her choices, and patients often gawked at her and teased her. She nevertheless persisted in her mission to reform women's dress. Her view that women's dress should "protect the person, and allow freedom of motion and circulation, and not make the wearer a slave to it" made her commitment to dress reform as great as her zeal for abolitionism. She famously wrote to the women's journal, "The Sibyl: A Review of the Tastes, Errors, and Fashions of Society", about her campaign against women's fashion, amongst other things, for its injuries to health, its expense, and its contribution to the dissolution of marriages. Her literature contributed to the spread of her ideas and made her a popular figure amongst other feminists and female physicians.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: In 1870, Walker was arrested in New Orleans and mocked by men because she was dressed as a man. The arresting officer Mullahy twisted her arm and asked her if she had ever had sex with a man. Walker was released from custody when she was recognized at Police Court.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Walker volunteered at the outbreak of American Civil War as a surgeon – first for the Army, but was rejected because she was a woman (despite having kept a private practice for many years). She was offered the role of a nurse but declined and chose to volunteer as a surgeon for the Union Army as a civilian. The U.S. Army had no female surgeons, and at first, she was allowed to practice only as a nurse. During this period, she served at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), July 21, 1861, and at the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, D.C. She worked as an unpaid field surgeon near the Union front lines, including at the Battle of Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga. As a suffragist, she was happy to see women serving as soldiers, and alerted the press to the case of Frances Hook, in Ward 2 of the Chattanooga hospital, a woman who served in the Union forces disguised as a man. Walker was the first female surgeon of the Union army. She wore men's clothing during her work, claiming it to be easier for high demands of her work.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: In September 1862, Walker wrote to the War Department requesting employment as a spy, but her proposal was declined. In September 1863, she was employed as a "Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)" by the Army of the Cumberland, becoming the first female surgeon employed by the U.S. Army Surgeon. Walker was later appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During her service, she frequently crossed battle lines and treated civilians.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: On April 10, 1864, she was captured by Confederate troops, and arrested as a spy, just after she finished helping a Confederate doctor perform an amputation. She was sent to Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, and remained there until August 12, 1864, when she was released as part of a prisoner exchange. While she was imprisoned, she refused to wear the clothes provided her, said to be more "becoming of her sex". Walker was exchanged for a Confederate surgeon from Tennessee on August 12, 1864.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: She went on to serve as supervisor of a female prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and as the head of an orphanage in Tennessee.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: After the war, Walker was awarded a disability pension for partial muscular atrophy suffered while she was imprisoned by the enemy. She was given $8.50 a month, beginning June 13, 1865, but in 1899 that amount was raised to $20 per month.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: She became a writer and lecturer, supporting such issues as health care, temperance, women's rights, and dress reform for women. She was frequently arrested for wearing men's clothing, and insisted on her right to wear clothing that she thought appropriate. She wrote two books that discussed women's rights and dress. She replied to criticism of her attire: "I don't wear men's clothes, I wear my own clothes."


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Walker was a member of the central woman's suffrage Bureau in Washington, and solicited funds to endow a chair for a female professor at Howard University medical school. She attempted to register to vote in 1871, but was turned away. The initial stance of the movement, following her lead, was to claim that women already had the right to vote, and Congress needed only to enact enabling legislation. After a number of fruitless years advocating this position, the movement promoted the adoption of a constitutional amendment. This was diametrically opposed to her position, and she fell out of favor with the movement. She continued to attend suffrage conventions and distribute her own literature, but was virtually ignored by the rest of the movement. Her penchant for wearing masculine clothing, including a top hat, only exacerbated the situation. She received a more favorable reception in England than in the United States.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: In 1907, Walker published "Crowning Constitutional Argument", in which she argued that some States, as well as the federal Constitution, had already granted women the right to vote. She testified on women's suffrage before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1912 and 1914.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: After a long illness, Walker died at home on February 21, 1919, at the age of eighty-six. She was buried at Rural Cemetery in Oswego, New York, in a plain funeral, with an American flag draped over her casket, and wearing a black suit instead of a dress. Her death in 1919 came one year before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed women the right to vote.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: After the war, Walker sought a retroactive brevet or commission to validate her service. President Andrew Johnson directed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to study the legality of the issue, and he solicited an opinion from the Army's Judge Advocate General, who determined that there was no precedent for commissioning a female, but that a "commendatory acknowledgment" could be issued in lieu of the commission. This led Johnson to personally award the Medal of Honor as an alternative. Thus, Walker was not formally recommended for the Medal of Honor, and this unusual process may also explain why authorities overlooked her ineligibility, ironically on the grounds of lacking a commission.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: In 1916, the U.S. Congress created a pension act for Medal of Honor recipients, and in doing so created separate Army and Navy Medal of Honor Rolls. The Army was directed to review eligibility of prior recipients in a separate bill not related to the pension rolls, but which had been requested by the Army in order to retroactively police undesirable awards. The undesirable awards resulted from the lack of regulations on the medal.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: The Army had published no regulations until 1897, and the law had very few requirements, meaning that recipients could earn a medal for virtually any reason, resulting in nearly 900 awards for non-combat enlistment extensions.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: The Army's Medal of Honor Board deliberated from 1916 to 1917, and struck 911 names from the Army Medal of Honor Roll, including those of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker and William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Both were considered ineligible for the Army Medal of Honor because 1862, 1863, and 1904 laws strictly required recipients to be officers or enlisted service members. In Walker's case, she was a civilian contract surgeon, not a commissioned officer.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Nevertheless, the Medal of Honor Board perhaps discriminated against Walker because it declined to revoke the Medal of at least two other contract surgeons who were likewise ineligible. One of these, Major General Leonard Wood, was a former Army Chief of Staff who was a civilian contract surgeon of the same status as Walker when he was recommended for the award. All of which was known to the Medal of Honor Board, as board president General Nelson Miles had twice recommended Wood for the medal, and knew that he was ineligible.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: The disenrolled recipients were not ordered to return their medals per a recommendation from the Army Judge Advocate General, who noted that Congress did not grant the Army the jurisdiction to enforce this provision of the statute, rendering both the repossession and criminal penalties inoperative.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Although several sources attribute President Jimmy Carter with restoring Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, this is probably incorrect. The action was taken well below the Secretary of the Army, at the level of the Army's Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, which was acting on a recommendation from the Board for Correction of Military Records. In fact, both the Ford and Carter Administrations opposed the restoration; the Carter White House reacted with confusion to the announcement of the Board's decision.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: A recent historical work documented that the Board for Correction probably exceeded its authority in making a unilateral restoration of the medal, since the Board is merely a delegation arm of the authority of the Secretary of the Army, and thus cannot contradict a standing law. Therefore, the Board's decision was controversial because its mandate was to only correct errors or injustices within its authority, not act against the authority of public law.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: This very point was illustrated by the awarding of Garlin Conner's Medal of Honor in early 2018, which also originated from the Board for Correction, but instead went through the President and required a statutory waiver from Congress—seen to be a requirement because the Board lacked the authority to contravene a public law and the associated statutes of limitations.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Walker felt that she had been awarded the Medal of Honor because she had gone into enemy territory to care for the suffering inhabitants, when no man had the courage to do so, for fear of being imprisoned.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: Rank and organization: Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian), U.S. Army. Places and dates: Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861; Patent Office Hospital, Washington, D.C., October 1861; Chattanooga, Tennessee, following Battle of Chickamauga, September 1863; Prisoner of War, April 10, 1864 – August 12, 1864, Richmond, Virginia; Battle of Atlanta, September 1864. Entered service at: Louisville, Kentucky. Born: 26 November 1832, Oswego County, New York.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: In 1982, the U.S. Postal Service issued a twenty-cent stamp in her honor, commemorating the anniversary of her birth.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: The medical facilities at SUNY Oswego are named in her honor (Mary Walker Health Center). On the same grounds a plaque explains her importance in the Oswego community.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: The Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C., is named in honor of Walker and the poet Walt Whitman, who was a nurse in D.C. during the Civil War.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: The Mary Walker Clinic at Fort Irwin National Training Center in California is named in honor of Walker.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: The Mary E. Walker House is a thirty-bed transitional residence run by the Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service & Education Center for homeless women veterans.


title: Mary Edwards Walker

text: In May 2012, a 900-pound bronze statue honoring Walker was unveiled in front of the Oswego, New York Town Hall.


title: Trent Brown

text: Trenton Jacoby Brown (born April 13, 1993) is an American football offensive tackle for the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Georgia Military College and Florida, and was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in the seventh round of the 2015 NFL Draft.


title: Trent Brown

text: Brown was born in Bastrop, Texas on April 13, 1993. He attended Deerfield-Windsor School before transferring to Westover Comprehensive High School, both in Albany, Georgia, and played basketball his first two years of high school before moving to football his junior year. Brown graduated from Westover High in 2011.


title: Trent Brown

text: Brown enrolled in Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, Georgia in the fall of 2011. He played for the GMC Bulldogs for two years, where the Bulldogs running game averaged 188 yards-per-game. After displaying his skills at the junior college level, where he was named a second team NJCAA All-American in 2012, Brown was recruited by several NCAA Division I schools, including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida State, Georgia, Kansas, LSU, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Texas A&M.


title: Trent Brown

text: Brown eventually chose to continue his college career at the University of Florida, signing a National Letter of Intent in December 2012 and enrolling in May 2013. Standing at 6-foot-8 and weighing 363 pounds, Brown was the Gators biggest offensive lineman since Max Starks, who played for the team in 2003 and is believed to be the biggest player to ever wear a Florida Gators uniform. At the beginning of his first year at Florida, Brown was used mainly on field goals and "Jumbo" packages in short yardage situations. He took over the starting tackle job in the Georgia game after Tyler Moore was injured and lost for the year. Brown moved to starting guard at the beginning of the 2014 season.


title: Trent Brown

text: On May 2, 2015, Brown was selected by the San Francisco 49ers in the 7th round with the 244th overall pick of the 2015 NFL Draft. Brown started the last 2 regular season games of his rookie season and played in a total of 5 games.


title: Trent Brown

text: After being asked in an interview to name the blocker that gives him the most trouble, Denver Broncos' linebacker and Super Bowl MVP Von Miller said, "I feel like Trent Brown has a very bright future in the National Football League. He's 6-foot-8. He knows how to use his arms, knows how to use his wingspan and he has length. So I feel like he's young and people haven’t really seen him, but I feel like he’s one of the better tackles in the National Football League." On August 16, 2017, Miller made a similar remark about Brown to the "San Francisco Chronicle" after the Broncos and 49ers had a joint practice, stating, "He's the best right tackle in the National Football League! And he may even be a top-five tackle, period, in the National Football League. There’s not another tackle who’s that tall, that big and can move the way he moves.”


title: Trent Brown

text: In 2017, Brown started 10 games at right tackle before being placed on injured reserve on December 16, 2017 with a shoulder injury.


title: Trent Brown

text: On April 27, 2018, Brown was traded along with the 143rd selection in the 2018 NFL Draft to the New England Patriots for the 95th selection (Tarvarius Moore). Brown's arrival was part of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick's attempt to build one of the heaviest rosters for a power-running offense. After playing right tackle during his tenure with the 49ers, Brown became the Patriots starting left tackle in 2018, starting all 16 games. With Brown, the Patriots reached and went on to win Super Bowl LIII.


title: Trent Brown

text: On March 13, 2019, Brown signed a four-year, $66 million contract with the Oakland Raiders with $36.75 million guaranteed, making him the highest-paid offensive lineman in the league. Head coach Jon Gruden announced that Brown would play right tackle with Kolton Miller remaining at left tackle. In his first 11 games with the Raiders, Brown allowed only one sack in 326 pass-blocking snaps. On December 17, 2019, Brown was named a Pro Bowl selection for the first time of his career. The next day, he was placed on IR, ending his season.


title: Trent Brown

text: Brown was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list by the Raiders on October 21, 2020, and was activated on October 30. Just before their Week 8 game, Brown was hospitalized after a pregame IV caused air to enter his bloodstream and missed the game. He was placed back on the COVID-19 list on November 5, and activated again on December 2.


title: Trent Brown

text: On March 17, 2021, Brown and a 2022 seventh-round pick were traded to the New England Patriots for a 2022 fifth-round pick. He was named the Patriots starting right tackle. He suffered a calf injury in Week 1, missed the next three games, then placed on injured reserve on October 9, 2021. He was activated on November 13.


title: David Owen

text: David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, (born 2 July 1938) is a British politician and physician who served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs as a Labour Party MP under James Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, and later led the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was a Member of Parliament over 26 years from 1966 to 1992.


title: David Owen

text: Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, at the age of 38 the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post. In 1981, Owen was one of the "Gang of Four" who left the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party. He was the only member of the Gang of Four who did not join the Liberal Democrats, which was founded when the SDP merged with the Liberal Party. Owen led the Social Democratic Party from 1983 to 1987, and the continuing SDP from 1988 to 1990. Appointed as a life peer in 1992, he sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher until March 2014, and now sits as an "independent social democrat".


title: David Owen

text: In the course of his career, Owen has held, and resigned from, a number of senior posts. He first quit as Labour's spokesman on defence in 1972 in protest at the Labour leader and former Prime Minister Harold Wilson's attitude to the European Economic Community; he left the Labour Shadow cabinet over the same issue later; and over unilateral disarmament in November 1980 when Michael Foot became Labour leader. He resigned from the Labour Party when it rejected one member, one vote in February 1981 and later as Leader of the Social Democratic Party, which he had helped to found, after the party's rank-and-file membership voted to merge with the Liberal Party.


title: David Owen

text: Owen was born in 1938 to Welsh parents in Plympton, near the city of Plymouth, in Devon, England. He also has Swiss and Irish ancestry. He described Plymouth as, "a Cromwellian city, surrounded by royalists." After schooling at Mount House School, Tavistock, and Bradfield College, Berkshire, he was admitted to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1956 to study Medicine, and obtained a ; he was made an Honorary Fellow of the college in 1977. He began clinical training at St Thomas's Hospital in October 1959.


title: David Owen

text: Owen was deeply affected by the Suez crisis of 1956, when Anthony Eden's Conservative government launched a military operation to retrieve the Suez Canal after Nasser's decision to nationalise it. At the time, aged 18, he was working on a labouring job before going to Cambridge. Owen later told Kenneth Harris:


title: David Owen

text: [T]here was Gaitskell...criticizing Eden, and here were these men working alongside me, who should have been his natural supporters, furious with him. The "Daily Mirror" backed Gaitskell, but these men were tearing up their "Daily Mirror"s every day. ... My working mates were solidly in favour of Eden. It was not only that they taught me how people like them think; they also opened my eyes to how I should think myself. From then on I never identified with the liberal – with a small 'l' – establishment. Through that experience I became suspicious of a kind of automatic sogginess which you come across in many aspects of British life. ... The rather defeatist, even traitorous attitude reflected in the pre-war Apostles at Cambridge. I suppose it underlay the appeasement years. Its modern equivalent is a resigned attitude to Britain's continuous post-war economic decline.


title: David Owen

text: In 1960, Owen joined the Vauxhall branch of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society. He qualified as a doctor in 1962 and began work at St Thomas's Hospital. In 1964, he contested the Torrington seat as the Labour candidate against the Conservative Party incumbent, losing in what was a traditional Conservative-Liberal marginal. He was neurology and psychiatric registrar at St Thomas's Hospital for two years, as assistant to Dr. William Sargant, then Research Fellow on the Medical Unit doing research into Parkinsonian trauma and neuropharmacology.


title: David Owen

text: At the next general election, in 1966, Owen returned to his home town and was elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for the Plymouth Sutton constituency. In the February 1974 general election Owen became Labour MP for the adjacent Plymouth Devonport constituency, winning it from the Conservative incumbent Dame Joan Vickers by a slim margin (437 votes). He managed to hold on to it in the 1979 general election, again by a narrow margin (1001 votes). From 1981, however, his involvement with the SDP meant he developed a large personal following in the constituency and thereafter he was re-elected as an SDP candidate with safe margins. He remained as MP for Plymouth Devonport until his elevation to a peerage in 1992.


title: David Owen

text: From 1968 to 1970, Owen served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Navy in Harold Wilson's first government. After Labour's defeat in the 1970 General Election, he became the party's Junior Defence Spokesman until 1972 when he resigned with Roy Jenkins over Labour's opposition to the European Community. On Labour's return to government in March 1974, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health before being promoted to Minister of State for Health in July 1974.


title: David Owen

text: As Minister of State for Health he encouraged Britain to become "self-sufficient" in blood products such as Factor VIII, a recommendation also promoted by the World Health Organisation. This was principally due to the risk of Hepatitis infection from high-risk blood donors overseas who were often paid and from "skid-row" locations. David Owen has been outspoken that his policy of "Self-Sufficiency" was not put into place (although he was, himself, Minister of Health) and gave rise to the Tainted Blood Scandal which saw 5,000 British Haemophiliacs infected with Hepatitis C, 1,200 of those were also infected with HIV. It was later described in the House of Lords as "the worst treatment disaster in the history of the National Health Service".


title: David Owen

text: In September 1976, Owen was appointed by the new Prime Minister of five months, James Callaghan, as a Minister of State at the Foreign Office, and was consequently admitted to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. Five months later, however, the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Crosland, died suddenly and Owen was appointed his successor. Aged 38, he became the youngest Foreign Secretary since Anthony Eden in 1935.


title: David Owen

text: As Foreign Secretary, Owen was identified with the Anglo-American plan for Rhodesia, which formed the basis for the Lancaster House Agreement, negotiated by his Tory successor, Lord Carrington, in December 1979. The Contact Group sponsored UN Resolution 435 in 1978 on which Namibia moved to independence twelve years later. He wrote a book entitled "Human Rights" and championed that cause in Africa and in the Soviet Union. He later admitted to at one stage contemplating the assassination of Idi Amin while Foreign Secretary but settled instead to backing with money for arms purchases to President Nyerere of Tanzania in his armed attack on Uganda which led to the exile of Amin to Saudi Arabia.


title: David Owen

text: Shortly after Labour's defeat in the 1979 General Election and following the election of a new Shadow Cabinet Callaghan moved Owen from the position of Shadow Foreign Secretary to Shadow Energy Secretary, a move which was reported as being a demotion.


title: David Owen

text: Eighteen months after Labour lost power, the staunchly left-wing politician Michael Foot was elected party leader, despite vocal opposition from Labour Party moderates (including Owen), sparking a crisis over the party's future.


title: David Owen

text: Michael Foot's election as Labour party leader indicated that the party was likely to become more left-wing, and in 1980 committed itself to withdrawing from the EEC without even a referendum (as Labour had carried out in 1975). Labour also endorsed unilateral nuclear disarmament and introduced an electoral college for leadership elections, with 40% of the college going to a block vote of the trade unions.


title: David Owen

text: Early in 1981, Owen and three other senior moderate Labour politicians – Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams – announced their intention to break away from the Labour Party to form a "Council for Social Democracy". The announcement became known as the Limehouse Declaration and the four as the "Gang of Four". The council they formed became the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with a collective leadership. Although Owen was one of the founding members of the party, he was not always enthusiastic about creating a schism on the centre-left, saying to the "Glasgow Herald" in January 1981 that he felt "haunted by the possibility that, if the Labour Party splits, the centre left will never again form the Government in Britain".


title: David Owen

text: Twenty-eight other Labour MPs and one Conservative MP (Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler) joined the new party. In late 1981, the SDP formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the Liberal Party to strengthen both parties' chances in the UK's "first past the post" electoral system. The alliance performed so well that for much of the early part of 1982, it appeared that it would become a centre-left coalition government at the next election. In 1982, uneasy about the Alliance, Owen challenged Jenkins for the leadership of the SDP, but was defeated by 26,256 votes to 20,864. In the following year's General Election, the Alliance gained 25% of the vote, only slightly behind the Labour Party, but because of the first-past-the-post voting system, it won only 23 out of 650 seats. Although elected, Jenkins resigned the SDP leadership and Owen succeeded to it without a contest among the six remaining SDP MPs.


title: David Owen

text: In 1982, during the Falklands War, Owen spoke at the Bilderberg Group advocating sanctions against Argentina. Ironically, the success of the war ended any hope that SDP might have had of winning the 1983 election. The Tories were proving unpopular largely due to high unemployment and the early 1980s recession. However, Britain's success in the conflict saw Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government surge back to the top of the opinion polls, and her position was strengthened further by the end of the year as the recession died down.


title: David Owen

text: Owen is widely regarded as having been, at the very least, a competent party leader. He had high popularity ratings throughout his leadership as did the SDP–Liberal Alliance. Owen kept a high profile, so much so that "Spitting Image", the satirical puppet show, depicted the Liberal leader David Steel popping up like a jack-in-the-box in Owen's pocket. He succeeded in keeping the party in the public eye and in maintaining its independence from the Liberals for the length of the 1983 Parliament. Moreover, under him, the SDP increased its representation from six to eight seats via the by-election victories of Mike Hancock, at Portsmouth South (1984), and Rosie Barnes, at Greenwich (1987).


title: David Owen

text: However, the progress of the SDP–Liberal Alliance as a whole was hampered, with policy splits between the two parties. The first was over the miners' strike of 1984–85, with Owen and most of the SDP favouring a fairly tough line but the Liberals preferring compromise and negotiation. More significantly the Alliance had a dispute over the future of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. Owen and the SDP favoured replacing Polaris with Trident as a matter of some importance, whereas most Liberals were either indifferent to the issue or committed disarmers. The SDP favoured a radical social market economy, while the Liberals mostly favoured a more interventionist, corporate style approach. The cumulative effect of these divisions was to make the Alliance appear less credible as a potential government in the eyes of the electorate.


title: David Owen

text: Moreover, Owen, unlike Jenkins, faced an increasingly moderate Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and a dynamic Conservative government. The 1987 general election was as disappointing for the Alliance as the 1983 election and it lost one seat. Nevertheless, it won over 23% of the vote – at that time, the second-largest third-placed vote in British politics since 1929.


title: David Owen

text: In 1987 immediately after the election, the Liberal leader David Steel proposed a full merger of the Liberal and SDP parties and was supported for the SDP by Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. Owen rejected this notion outright, on the grounds that he and other Social Democrats wished to remain faithful to social democracy as it was practised within Western Europe, and it was unlikely that any merged party would be able to do this, even if it was under his leadership. Nevertheless, the majority of the SDP membership supported the merger.


title: David Owen

text: The Liberal Party and SDP merged to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD) in March 1988, renamed the Liberal Democrats in October 1989.


title: David Owen

text: At the request of two of the remaining SDP MPs, John Cartwright and Rosie Barnes, Owen continued to lead a much smaller continuing SDP, with three MPs in total. The party polled well at its first election, its candidate coming a close second in the 1989 Richmond by-election, but thereafter a string of poor and ultimately disastrous by-election results followed, including coming behind the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in the Bootle by-election of May 1990, prompting Owen to wind up the party in 1990. Owen blamed the SDP's demise on the reforms which had been taking place in the Labour Party since Kinnock's election as leader in 1983.


title: David Owen

text: Some branches, however, continued to function using the SDP name; Bridlington's was still extant in 2006.


title: David Owen

text: Lord Holme later blamed Owen for the Alliance's failure to make a breakthrough at the 1987 general election, believing that a merged party would have performed much better and possibly gained more votes and seats than Labour.


title: David Owen

text: After winding up the re-formed SDP, Owen announced his intention to stand down as an MP at the next General Election. He then served the remainder of his term as an independent MP and after the 1992 General Election was made a life peer, nominated by then Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, with the title, Baron Owen, "of the City of Plymouth in the County of Devon." in Letters Patent dated 30 June 1992. As a member of the House of Lords, he is called "Lord Owen" and he sat as a crossbencher until 2014 (see below). Owen was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Plymouth University in 1992.


title: David Owen

text: During the April 1992 election campaign, Owen writing in "The Mail on Sunday" newspaper advised voters to vote Liberal Democrat where they had a chance of victory and to vote Conservative rather than let Neil Kinnock become Prime Minister. Owen maintained his long-standing position that he would never join the Conservative Party, although the memoirs of at least three of John Major's cabinet ministers refer to Major being quite keen to appoint Owen to his cabinet, but threats of resignation from within the Cabinet prevented him from doing so. When asked in a conversation with Woodrow Wyatt on 18 December 1988 whether she would have Owen in her government if approached by him, Margaret Thatcher replied: "Well, not straight away. I don't think I would do it straight away. He was very good on the Northern Ireland terrorist business. He's wasting his life now. It's so tragic. He's got real ability and it ought to be used". In another conversation with Wyatt on 4 June 1990 Thatcher said Owen's natural home was the Conservative Party.


title: David Owen

text: Owen was approached privately by Tony Blair, then leader of the Opposition, in 1996 on whether he was ready to support New Labour. Lord Owen declined mainly because he disagreed with Blair's intention, as Prime Minister, to join the eurozone. In 2019, Owen recounted that Blair implied that a “political future” awaited him if he rejoined Labour. Owen said he "was very tempted, but then [Blair] started to talk about the euro.” Owen concluded that Blair was “passionately committed” to taking Britain into the Euro; thus, Owen said no.


title: David Owen

text: In May 2005, he was approached two days before the General Election by someone very close to Tony Blair to endorse Labour. He declined, because though he did not want a Conservative government, he wanted the Liberal Democrats to do sufficiently well to ensure a greatly reduced Labour majority. In September 2007, it was reported in the British press that Lord Owen had met the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown and afterwards had refused to rule out supporting Labour at the next general election. It later emerged that he could have been part of the "government of all the talents" initiative advising on the NHS, but Owen declined. In October 2009 he wrote an article in "The Times" predicting that the Conservatives, then well ahead in the opinion polls, were unlikely to win an outright majority. He helped create the web-based Charter 2010 to explain and promote the potential of a hung parliament. The website campaign was launched in January 2010 while the Conservatives still appeared on course to win outright. Within weeks the polls changed and the website became a major source of information about hung parliaments. In May 2010 "The Sunday Times" called Owen "the prophet of the coalition".


title: David Owen

text: During the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum he signed a letter in "The Guardian" stating that he opposed AV but would continue to campaign for proportional representation.


title: David Owen

text: In January 2011, Owen said that his "heart was with Labour" and that he looked forward to the time when he could vote Labour again. He added that what hampered him in the past was the way the Labour Party elects its leader and it was very necessary for the electoral college arrangement to be reformed and he refused to rule out joining the Labour Party in the future. He vigorously opposed the Health and Social Care Bill in 2011–12. In a pamphlet, "Fatally Flawed", he demonstrated that far from the internal market, which he had championed in the 1980s, the Bill introduced an external market and he worked closely with the Labour Front Bench in the House of Lords. In March 2014, it was revealed that Owen had donated over £7,500 to the Labour Party, following the Labour leader Ed Miliband's reforms of the party's links with trade unions. No longer eligible to sit as a crossbencher, Owen now sits in the House of Lords as an "Independent Social Democrat". Owen later said he admired Miliband's "integrity" and "guts".


title: David Owen

text: In the June 2017 General Election, Owen continued to support the Labour Party, though he had once been a political opponent of Labour's new leader, Jeremy Corbyn. He added that he was "pleasantly surprised that the manifesto was a lot better than expected", and praised Corbyn for showing "more flexibility in taking account of Labour MPs and party members’ views than ever Michael Foot did" in reference to the manifesto's commitments to NATO and nuclear weapons despite Corbyn's lifelong pacifism. He made political donations to the national Labour Party, as well as the Labour candidate in his former constituency of Plymouth Sutton & Devonport, Luke Pollard, who successfully won the seat.


title: David Owen

text: However in March 2019, Owen said he would not support Labour, criticising Corbyn's leadership for its failure to "unequivocally" root out antisemitism in the Labour Party. In October 2019, Owen warned that Labour would lose potentially 5 million Leave voters who supported them due to its stance for a second Brexit referendum, and said that Labour under Corbyn and John McDonnell reminded voters of "the Labour Party of the 1980s". He also criticised McDonnell's push to change Labour's policy to a second referendum stance. In the subsequent December 2019 general election, true to Owen's warning, Labour lost 60 seats, including long time Labour seats in the red wall which supported leaving the EU.


title: David Owen

text: In August 1992, Owen was British Prime Minister John Major's choice to succeed Lord Carrington as the EU co-chairman of the Conference for the Former Yugoslavia, along with Cyrus Vance, the former US Secretary of State as the UN co-chairman.


title: David Owen

text: "Private Eye", the British satirical magazine, playfully alluded towards Owen's legendary tendency towards self-destruction. "It's a lost cause", says the bubble emanating from Major's mouth. "I'm your man", says the bubble from Owen's mouth. The Labour Shadow Foreign Minister, Jack Cunningham, greeted Major's appointment of Owen in the British House of Commons by saying that the Prime Minister's choice "was regarded as somewhat eccentric by [MPs] and myself – he [Owen] is known for many qualities, but not as a mediator. Indeed he has Balkanised a few political parties himself."


title: David Owen

text: David Owen come badly out of "Milosevic: A Biography" by Adam Le Bor's book, "After he was appointed the European Community negotiator for the


title: David Owen

text: former Yugoslavia in 1992, Lord Owen and his wife Debbie cultivated a personal friendship with Milosevic and his wife Mira, flying in a helicopter to lunch with them in one of Tito's former palaces and offering publishing advice to Mira Milosevic". In August 1992, five months after the Bosnian war started, Owen said, "Now it is clear that Milosevic really wants peace".


title: David Owen

text: Owen became a joint author of the Vance–Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), in January 1993, which made an effort to move away from the presumption of ethnic partition. According to America's last ambassador to Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Government were ready to accept the VOPP, but unfortunately the Clinton Administration delayed in its support, thus missing a chance to get it launched. The VOPP was eventually agreed in Athens in May 1993 under intense pressure by all parties including Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić but then rejected later by the Bosnian-Serb Assembly meeting in Pale, after Karadžić insisted that the Assembly had the right to ratify the agreement. After Vance's withdrawal, Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg brokered the EU Action Plan of December 1993. They both helped the Contact Group of the US/UK/France/Germany and Russia to present its plan in the summer of 1994.


title: David Owen

text: In early 1994, the European Parliament voted by 160 votes to 90, with 2 abstentions, for Owen's dismissal, but he was supported by all 15 EU Member State governments. There was a perception in America that Owen was "not fulfilling his function as an impartial negotiator". Owen, however, was consistently supported by all 15 EU Member States and the German Presidency in July 1994 urged him to remain as did the French Presidency in January 1995. Owen was made a Companion of Honour for his services in the former Yugoslavia in 1994.


title: David Owen

text: In January 1995, Lord Owen wrote to François Mitterrand as President of the European Union to say that he wished to step down before the end of the French presidency. At the end of May 1995, he was succeeded by the former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. "Had I been younger, I would probably have resigned when the Americans ditched the Vance-Owen Peace Plan".


title: David Owen

text: Owen testified as a witness of the court in the trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former president of FR Yugoslavia.


title: David Owen

text: Lord Owen has continued to speak out on issues of international affairs including on nuclear proliferation and constrained intervention. In 2011 he was the first politician to call for a "no-fly zone" over Libya. In an editorial on 27 February 2011 the "Sunday Times" said, "It was a man who has not been in office for nearly 32 years – Lord Owen, the former foreign secretary – who has been the most eloquent British voice over Libya. His call for a no-fly-zone ... struck the right note".


title: David Owen

text: As former Minister of State for Health, Lord Owen has long been highly critical of previous governments for their role in and handling of the tainted blood scandal. Alleging maladministration in 2002 he sought to bring about an inquiry into the matter and was joined in his efforts by former Solicitor General for England and Wales Lord Archer, former Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Services Lord Jenkin and others.


title: David Owen

text: In 2009 the culmination of these efforts, the privately funded and independent "Archer Report" in which Lord Owen was heavily involved, published its findings but was thwarted because it had no power to compel witnesses as it was not a statutory public inquiry. Successive governments have refused to hold a public inquiry into the matter and continue to withhold documentation on grounds of commercial interest.


title: David Owen

text: During his investigation into the matter he attempted to access his archived documents and files from his time as minister. At first he was told "they couldn't find them" and was later told they had all been destroyed; the exact series of events that led to the destruction of these documents remains a mystery and continues to raise questions amongst MPs such as Alistair Burt. Lord Owen has regularly told the media that he is not a conspiracy theorist but that he does suspect there has been a cover-up carried out by the Civil Service and that this was done after prosecutions and jail sentences were brought against government officials in France.


title: David Owen

text: In September 2016 at a film-screening of the documentary "Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale", he dramatically ended a 15-minute speech on the subject proclaiming: "I have failed and I feel very miserable about it".


title: David Owen

text: In October 2016, the Civil Service Commission refused a request to investigate Lord Owen's destroyed documents and separately the Department of Health advised that "the Department does not have any plans to make public the identity of junior officials involved in this matter".


title: David Owen

text: On 10 May 2017 he featured in an episode of "BBC Panorama" called "Contaminated Blood: The Search for the Truth".


title: David Owen

text: On 22 September 2020, Lord Owen gave evidence to the Infected Blood Inquiry in London. As part of his testimony he said: "We should have realised how dangerous it was to rely on blood coming in from abroad from people who were given blood for money".


title: David Owen

text: Owen had previously been a supporter of Britain's membership of the European Union (saying that he was "not a Eurosceptic" and a "convinced European"), but in recent years has opposed what he sees as the increased federalisation of the EU, citing examples such as a unified currency (the euro), a unified defence force and a unified foreign policy as "structure[s] for a United States of Europe".


title: David Owen

text: As chairman of New Europe, he was the co-leader of the 'No to the Euro' campaign with Business for Sterling, which ceased when the UK Government declared in 2005 that Euro membership was off the agenda following the defeat of the EU Constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands.


title: David Owen

text: He called for a referendum before Britain's ratification of the Lisbon treaty, and expressed concerns about proposals for the creation of a 'European Rapid Reaction Force'. In February 2010, he wrote a pamphlet for the Social Market Foundation thinktank entitled "EU Social Market and Social Policy". Owen supports the referendum requirements within the European Union Act 2011.


title: David Owen

text: Lord Owen continued to argue for engagement, criticising David Cameron's so-called 'veto' in December 2011 and arguing instead for a formal non-eurozone grouping with the right to join or leave the eurozone. In June 2012 Lord Owen published "Europe Restructured", outlining a blueprint for restructuring the EU to allow for those countries that wish to be part of a more integrated eurozone to be facilitated while those who may only want to belong to a Single Market community are enabled to do so. He stated that a referendum on the UK's relationship with the EU was inevitable.


title: David Owen

text: In February 2016, he announced that he was backing the UK leaving the EU for the 2016 referendum, arguing that "There are many positive aspects to leaving the EU. ... It could be the spark we need to re-energise our nation: a challenge and an opportunity." He has supported Vote Leave and spoken at rallies against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which Owen stated would put the NHS in danger. Owen also cited his support for Brexit due to his opposition to the concept of a United States of Europe and stated that the Eurozone was “broken”, condemning how the EU treated Greece during its debt crisis.


title: David Owen

text: In February 2022 he signed a letter to the "Financial Times", alongside Robert Skidelsky and others, about Ukraine, in which he said, "Nato governments have rightly said they are willing to address Russia’s security concerns, but then say in the same breath that Russia has no legitimate security concerns because Nato is a purely defensive alliance. Whether we like it or not, a Nato that now borders Russia and could in future border even more of Russia is seen by Russia as a security concern."


title: David Owen

text: Lord Owen was chairman of Yukos International UK BV, a division of the former Russian petroleum company Yukos, from 2002 to 2005. and a member of the board of Abbott Laboratories, a US healthcare company, from 1996 to 2011. He was non-executive chairman of Europe Steel Ltd and consultant to Epion Holdings, owned by Alisher Usmanov until 2015. From 2009 to 2014 Lord Owen served on the board of Texas-based Hyperdynamics Corporation, an oil concern with an exclusive lease to an offshore area of the Republic of Guinea in west Africa.. He also served on the board of Coats Viyella from 1994 to 2001.


title: David Owen

text: Owen was the Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, from 1996 to 2009. He has written extensively on the interaction between illness and politics, with a particular emphasis on the 'hubris syndrome', a condition affecting those at the pinnacle of power. The concept has been most fully developed in a co-authored paper in "Brain". The concept of hubris syndrome has been analysed by Professor Gerald Russell. Lord Owen is chairman of the Trustees of the Daedalus Trust established to promote and provide funds for the interdisciplinary study of how 'the intoxication of power' in all walks of life can affect personality and decision making.


title: David Owen

text: He married Deborah Owen (née Schabert), an American literary agent, in 1968. They have two sons and one daughter, Tristan, Gareth and Lucy.


title: Popcaan

text: Andrae Hugh Sutherland (born 19 July 1988), known professionally as Popcaan, is a Jamaican deejay, singer and songwriter from the parish of St. Thomas.


title: Popcaan

text: In 2008, Popcaan joined Vybz Kartel's Gaza Music Empire. In 2010, he released his breakthrough international hit "Clarks" with Kartel, an ode to the popular shoe brand.


title: Popcaan

text: In 2013, Popcaan signed with Mixpak Records and released his debut studio album, "Where We Come From". 2016 Popcaan signed with Canadian rapper Drake's record label OVO Sound and Warner Records. Popcaan's international singles include "Only Man She Want" (2011), "Everything Nice" (2014), "Ova Dweet" (2016), "El Chapo" (2017), and "Family" (2017). Popcaan made his acting debut in the film "" (2018).


title: Popcaan

text: Popcaan has collaborated with a number of international artists, most notably Drake, Jamie xx, Pusha T, Giggs, Matoma, Wale, Gorillaz and Davido.


title: Popcaan

text: Born in Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica, Sutherland grew up in Greater Portmore, Saint Catherine Parish.The artist was raised in a housing scheme, or housing project, known as Gangsta City. He describes his childhood as "rough", having to stop attending school due to the street drama surrounding his town. His stage name Popcaan was bestowed on him by his close friend Scumpy, who tragically lost his life to the street life of Portmore.


title: Popcaan

text: In 2007, Popcaan approached Vybz Kartel at a local jam called "My Scheme" where Kartel recruited the young deejay to his Portmore Empire music group, becoming both a producer and mentor. Besides showing Popcaan the ropes of the music game, Kartel took him on major shows like Sting and Reggae Sumfest.


title: Popcaan

text: Popcaan began making music for Adidjaheim Productions with then in-house producer NotNice, the first person to voice him professionally. He got off to a strong start with "Gal Wine" on the Gal Farm riddim, "Clarks" featuring Vybz Kartel, Popcaan and Gaza Slim and more following up with early hits including "It Nuh Work So", "Jah Jah Protect Me", "Gangsta City", "Dream", "Gangsta City Part Second" and "Hot Grabba".


title: Popcaan

text: Popcaan's breakthrough came in 2010 with "Clarks", a collaboration with Kartel. The success of the song caused a nationwide spike in sales of the British shoe. In 2011, Popcaan received the Excellence in Music and Entertainment (EME) Award for Best New Artist, and Collaboration of the Year for "Clarks", which also won Song of the Year (Dancehall).


title: Popcaan

text: At the end of January 2012, Popcaan released a new mixtape, "Chromatic presents Yiy Change"—the follow-up to his 2010 mixtape "Hot Skull, Fry Yiy, Boil Brainz". In March, "Only Man She Want" gave Popcaan his first "Billboard" entry at No. 89 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The song was later officially remixed by rapper Busta Rhymes.


title: Popcaan

text: Popcaan was also featured in "The New York Times" speaking on the growing impact of "Only Man She Want".


title: Popcaan

text: At the Youth View Awards, Popcaan won three awards: Favourite Summer Song and Local Chart-Topping Song of the Year for "Ravin", and Young, Hot and Hype Male of the Year.


title: Popcaan

text: Popcaan has toured the world since, in Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean and South American region. While in Canada, Popcaan connected with Canadian rapper Drake, who has publicly expressed his admiration. In 2013, Popcaan released the video for "Unruly Rave", which was shot in Toronto and directed by October's Very Own label head Niko.


title: Popcaan

text: In 2012, Popcaan was featured on Pusha T's song "Blocka". His voice was then sampled by Kanye West on "Yeezus" in 2013.


title: Popcaan

text: In 2014, Popcaan signed to Mixpak Records for a multi-record deal. His debut studio album, "Where We Come From", was released on Mixpak on 10 June 2014. The project was executive-produced by Dre Skull. The first single from the album, "Everything Nice", was produced by Dubbel Dutch and released on 1 October 2013. It entered the "Billboard" Top Reggae Albums chart at number 2, and the video gained over 5 million views on YouTube.


title: Popcaan

text: In June 2014, Popcaan first appeared on the cover of "The Fader" in its 92nd issue. He featured on Melissa Steel's "Kisses for Breakfast" single, which was a top ten hit in the UK in August 2014.


title: Popcaan

text: In September 2014 he was nominated for a MOBO Award in the Best Reggae Act category, his fourth consecutive nomination. He won the MOBO Award in 2015 and 2016.


title: Popcaan

text: In May 2015, Popcaan was featured on Jamie xx's "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)" with American rapper Young Thug.


title: Popcaan

text: In January 2016, Popcaan was featured on English electronic duo AlunaGeorge's single "I'm in Control". On 29 March 2016, a song entitled "Controlla" by Drake was leaked, with Popcaan being featured on it. A version without Popcaan was later featured on Drake's fourth studio album "Views".


title: Popcaan

text: On 28 April 2016, Popcaan released the single "Ova Dweet" which gained popularity both in Jamaica and abroad.


title: Popcaan

text: On 2 May 2016, Popcaan was reportedly held by police after a performance in Antigua involving an altercation with an officer on stage.


title: Popcaan

text: In June 2016, Popcaan made his first UK appearance alongside Mixpak for the annual Red Bull Culture Clash, and won the clash over Wiz Khalifa, Taylor Gang, Eskimo Dance and UKG.


title: Popcaan

text: In March 2017, Popcaan performed guest vocals for the Gorillaz track "Saturnz Barz" off of the album "Humanz". The track reached number five on the "Billboard" Hot Rock Songs chart. He also spent time in Europe as the opening act on Drake's Boy Meets World Tour.


title: Popcaan

text: Popcaan announced his second album "Forever" on 11 May 2018. It was preceded by the singles "Body So Good", "Wine For Me", and "Firm and Strong". The album was released on 20 July, premiered on a live stream hosted by Boiler Room. Popcaan headlined Reggae Sumfest the following day. "Forever" entered the "Billboard" Reggae Albums chart at number 2.


title: Popcaan

text: On 23 December 2018, Drake announced that Popcaan would be signed to OVO Sound and Warner Records. Popcaan's third album "Vanquish", released on 19 December 2019, was the first project produced with OVO Sound. Popcaan's fourth album, "Fixtape", was released on 7 August 2020. It includes the Drake collaborations "All I Need" and "Twist & Turn" featuring Partynextdoor. On 16 October 2020, Popcaan joined forces with OVO affiliate Preme for their "Link Up" EP, which featured Wiz Khalfia, Davido, BEAM and French Montana.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: The Ravens of the Tower of London are a group of at least six captive ravens resident at the Tower of London. Their presence is traditionally believed to protect the Crown and the Tower; a superstition holds that "if the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it." Some historians, including the Tower's official historian, believe the "Tower's raven mythology is likely to be a Victorian flight of fantasy". The earliest known reference to captive ravens at the Tower is an illustration from 1883.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Historically, wild ravens were common throughout Britain, even in towns; the Tower was within their natural range. When they were exterminated from much of their traditional range, including London, they could only exist at the Tower in captivity and with official support. The Tower ravens are tended to, 365 days a year, by the Ravenmaster of the Yeomen Warders heading a team of Yeoman Warders known as Ravenmaster’s assistants. Local legend puts the origin of the captive raven population at the time of King Charles II (reigned 1660–85). Some of the ravens at the Tower were specially bred in Somerset.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: The earliest legend that connects the Tower with a raven is the euhemerised Welsh tale of the war against the Irish leader Matholwch who had mistreated the princess Branwen. Branwen's brother Brân the Blessed (King of the Britons) ordered his followers to cut off his head and bury it beneath "The White Hill" (upon which the Tower now stands) facing out towards France as a talisman to protect Britain from foreign invasion.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Brân is the modern Welsh word for raven and the magical and protective qualities of ravens are attested throughout Celtic mythology. The knowledge that Brân's head was buried beneath the White Hill would have served as protective reassurance in the Celtic tradition, just as modern ideas about the presence of ravens does. As such, it is likely to have its origins in British folklore.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: It was said that at the execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536, "Even the ravens of the Tower sat silent and immovable on the battlements and gazed eerily at the strange scene. A Queen about to die!" The ravens of the Tower behaved much worse during the execution of Lady Jane Grey in 1554, purportedly "pecking the eyes from the severed head" of the queen.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: In his article "How Ravens Came to the Tower of London", American author Boria Sax came to the conclusion that "the ravens were originally brought in to dramatise the alleged site of executions at the Tower".


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: One legend attributes the start of the tradition of keeping ravens with clipped wings in the Tower of London to Charles II and to his royal astronomer John Flamsteed, although there are versions of the legend that differ in their details. According to one legend, John Flamsteed complained to Charles II that wild ravens were flying past his telescope and making it harder for him to observe the sky from his observatory in the White Tower. Flamsteed requested that the birds be removed, but Charles II refused to comply with this request.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Another variation of this legend says that it was Charles II himself who disliked the wild ravens' droppings falling onto the telescope. The conversation with his astronomer that supposedly followed decided the fate not only of the ravens, but also of Greenwich, where the Greenwich Observatory was commissioned by the King in 1675. In this version of the legend the King complained:


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Yet another legend attributes the appearance of ravens in the Tower to the Great Fire of London in 1666. Wild ravens, as well as pigs and kites, were the biggest scavengers in medieval London. Allegedly after the fire, survivors started persecuting ravens for scavenging, but Flamsteed explained to Charles II that killing all ravens would be a bad omen, and that the kingdom would not outlive the last killed raven. Charles II then ordered six birds to be kept at the Tower.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Wild ravens are native to Britain (and most other parts of the Northern Hemisphere), although in recent times breeding populations are mostly restricted to the wilder western upland areas of the British Isles. It is quite likely that ravens lived in and around the Tower centuries ago, because until the 16th century, ravens lived in close proximity to people as well as in wild areas; they were welcomed in towns because their scavenging habits of feeding helped keep the streets clean. However, in later years wild ravens were viewed as a threat to livestock, and during the 19th century they were eliminated in many areas by systematic hunting and shooting.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: The last time ravens nested in the wild in London was in Hyde Park in 1826, but the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reported in 2004 that ravens had been observed nesting in the Home Counties around London, as close as 30 miles from the Tower.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: The first two known depictions of ravens in the Tower of London both date from the year 1883. One is in a special edition of the newspaper "The Pictorial World" and the other is from the children's Book "London Town", written by Felix Leigh and illustrated by Thomas Crane and Elizabeth Houghton.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Sax found the one early mention of importation of captive ravens in the 1918 book "The Tower from Within" by George Younghusband. Younghusband stated that the ravens were provided by the 4th Earl of Dunraven (1841–1926). The second Earl of Dunraven had been a patron of the Druidic scholar, poet, and forger Iolo Morganwg, who convinced the family that their castle in Glamorgan had been the original residence of the raven-god Bran, actually an early king. The Earls may have thought of the ravens as avatars of Bran, and wished to assert a spiritual claim over the Tower.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Geoffrey Parnell, the official Tower of London historian and a member of the Royal Armouries staff, considers the purported ancient history of captive ravens at the Tower to instead be a legend invented during the Victorian era. During Parnell's research, despite the superstition that the Crown depends on the continued presence of the ravens, "[he] has found the blunt statement in the records 'there are none left' – and yet the monarchy and the tower have more or less survived". This alludes to a period right before the reopening of the Tower after World War II, when the only surviving ravens, the mated pair Mabel and Grip, disappeared from the Tower, perhaps eloping to a nearby wood. The story of their escape appeared in several local American papers.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Parnell has stated that the first captive ravens may have been introduced to the Tower as pets of the staff. After "The Raven" the famous narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe was first published in January 1845, the Western world became fascinated with the birds.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Japanese novelist and scholar Natsume Sōseki visited the Tower in 1900. He wrote an account published in 1906 reporting a total of six ravens at the Tower as a central focus during and following an execution at the site. It was noted, however, that Sōseki's writing style "blends fantasy, history, and present experience."


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: The first reference to an early version of the legend that Britain will fall if the ravens leave the Tower comes from July 1944, when ravens were used as unofficial spotters for enemy bombs and planes during the Blitz of World War II. During the Blitz, all but three of the ravens died from either bombing or stress; the survivors were Gripp, his mate Mabel and another raven named Pauline. Mabel and Gripp soon "disappeared", however.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: After this, Winston Churchill, then prime minister, ordered more ravens to bring the flock back to the correct size. The Tower ravens are enlisted as soldiers of the Kingdom and were issued attestation cards in the same way as soldiers and police. As with soldiers, they can be dismissed for unsatisfactory conduct.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Today the Tower's ravens are one of the attractions for tourists visiting the City of London. However, visitors are advised not to feed the birds and warned that a raven will bite if it feels threatened.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Since 1987, the Tower ravens have been the subject of a successful captive breeding programme. For example, over time, 17 chicks were successfully hatched and raised by a pair of ravens known as "Charlie" and "Rhys".


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: In 1995, raven Charlie startled a bomb-sniffing dog, and the dog grabbed the raven with his mouth. According to a police spokesman, "the bird probably died of shock".


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: While visiting the Tower in 2003, Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, is reported to have been taken aback by the verbal skills of one of the birds; Thor greeted each person in his entourage with a "Good morning!".


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: During the global spread of H5N1 virus ("bird flu") in 2006, the ravens of the Tower were taken inside and lived in "custom-built aviaries".


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Raven Jubilee was presented to the Queen to mark the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, and later released in the Tower, bringing the total number to eight.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: In May 2013, two Tower ravens were killed by a red fox that managed to infiltrate the grounds, the only fox attack inside the walls ever recorded. This reduced the raven population to the minimum number of six. Upgraded security measures were included in the plans for a major refurbishment of the raven accommodations, funded by the independent Historic Royal Palaces organisation.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Appointed in 2011, current Ravenmaster Christopher Skaife was caring for seven of the birds in 2018. He has reduced the amount of clipping of the wings and feathers by a third to allow the ravens to fly, instead of merely hopping or gliding. He has allowed one of the birds, Merlina, to fly to the wharf on the Thames, but she always returns due to her bonding with her keeper.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: During Skaife's tenure, only one raven, Muninn, has escaped, but was captured by a member of the public.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: On Saint George's Day (23 April) 2019, four chicks were hatched from ravens Huginn and Muninn (named after Odin's mythical ravens), the first to do so at the Tower since 1989. One of the chicks remains at the Tower and has been named George, in reference to the date the hatching began.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: On January 13, 2021, the Tower of London announced that Merlina, known as "Queen of the Tower Ravens", had not been seen at the Tower grounds for several weeks, leading the Ravenmaster to believe she has passed away. A statement released on Twitter reads:


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: In March 2021, it was announced that two raven chicks were born to the Tower's breeding pair, Huginn and Muninn. The male of the pair was given the name 'Edgar' after Edgar Allan Poe. A public vote was announced to decide on the name of the female in the pair in time for the reopening of the Tower to the public on 19 May 2021. The names available to vote on include Matilda, Branwen, Brontë, Winifred and Florence. The winner was Branwen.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: The ravens cannot fly far because the flight feathers on one wing are clipped. With a single wing clipped, they can only fly short distances to perch. Otherwise, as Boria Sax writes, tongue-in-cheek:


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Each Tower raven has a different coloured band on one leg, to make it easier to identify individual birds. Ravens in captivity in the Tower grounds have had lifespans of over 40 years.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: The Tower's ravens are given individual names, and are all under the care of the Yeomen Warders. The diet of the ravens is carefully maintained. In 2007, the Ravenmaster Derek Coyle commented: "I buy fresh meat from Smithfield – liver, lamb, beef, chicken. And occasionally when I'm at my own place in Suffolk someone will give me some rabbit that's been killed. If I see roadkill on the road, and it's not been too badly mangled, I normally put it in a black bag and bring it back here. I give them biscuits as well, soaked in blood from the meat that I buy. And in winter I get them capsules of cod liver oil. I know they're getting as much vitamins and oil as they possibly can. That's why they look so healthy."


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Their diet consists of raw meat daily, usually liver, lambs' hearts and beef or pork trimming, and every other day includes boiled egg with shell and blood-soaked bird biscuits. Occasionally, rabbit parts with fur are added for roughage. Once a week the birds are given a thorough check-over, and once every third week the lifting feathers on their right wings are trimmed to prevent them from flying away.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Londoners tend to be fond of the ravens, but sometimes an individual bird will fall out of favour because of inappropriate behaviour. For example, "Raven George" lost his appointment to the Crown, and was retired to Wales for attacking and destroying TV aerials. A special decree was issued about the incident:


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: In 1996, two more ravens fell out of favour and were dismissed from the Tower for "conduct unbecoming Tower residents."


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Despite having their flight feathers clipped on one wing, sometimes the Tower ravens desert their duties. In 1981, Grog the raven decided to leave the surroundings of the Tower for those of a pub, after 21 years of faithful service to the Crown. In contrast, a raven named Mabel was kidnapped from the Tower soon after World War II, a mystery that has never been solved.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: Another story concerns the two ravens named "James Crow" and "Edgar Sopper". James Crow, who was a much-loved and long-lived raven, had died. After noticing the commotion surrounding the other raven's death, Edgar Sopper decided he could "play dead" in order to bring more attention to himself. His trick was so convincing that the ravenmaster fully believed that Edgar Sopper had died. When the ravenmaster picked up the "corpse", Edgar bit the man's finger and "flapped off croaking huge raven laughs". Likewise, "Merlin" has since been known for eliciting a commotion from visitors by occasionally playing dead.


title: Ravens of the Tower of London

text: In 1990 a chaplain named Norman Hood died in his chamber on the Tower grounds. Former Assistant Ravenmaster Tom Trent has reported that the ravens appeared to be aware of the death, for they soon gathered on the Tower Green near the chapel, called out, and then became quiet, as though to pay their respects. Corvids have been widely reported to hold "funerals", in which they mourn and then cluster around a dead bird in silence.


title: Anita Rani

text: Anita Rani Nazran (born 25 October 1977), better known as Anita Rani, is an English radio and television presenter.


title: Anita Rani

text: In an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" first broadcast on 1 October 2015 on BBC One, Rani investigated the history of her maternal grandfather Sant Singh (born Sant Ram, in Sarhali in 1916, died 1975), in particular learning more about his first wife and children, who died during the violence of the Partition of India in 1947, while he was a thousand miles away in Kirkee, serving in the British Indian Army, which he had joined in August 1942. Rani discovered that her maternal grandfather was born into a Hindu Taggar family, but converted to Sikhism as a young man in accordance with a custom prevalent at the time. He continued to serve in the Indian Army after Indian independence, retiring as a "subedar" (equivalent to a warrant officer) in 1970.


title: Anita Rani

text: Rani was educated at Bradford Girls' Grammar School, an independent school. Rani developed an early interest in journalism, hosting her first show at the age of 14 on Sunrise Radio. She went to the University of Leeds, where she studied broadcasting.


title: Anita Rani

text: In 2002, Rani presented "The Edit", a live news and entertainment programme on Channel Five. She presented a number of pop shows on Five including "Spring Break Live", "Party in the Park" and "Pop City Live", as well as being a freelance journalist for "5 News". In Spring 2003, she fronted "The State We're In", a satirical current affairs programme on BBC Three. She also presented the first "Poetry Slam" on the same channel. She was nominated as "Best On Screen Personality" at the Royal Television Society Midlands awards in 2005.


title: Anita Rani

text: Rani joined the BBC Asian Network radio station in March 2005, and became presenter of the weekend "Hot Breakfast" show. From April 2006 to March 2007 she presented the weekday morning talkback programme "Anita Rani on the BBC Asian Network" on the station.


title: Anita Rani

text: In 2005, she was a regular reporter on "The Cricket Show" on Channel 4. From 20 May 2006 she was a co-presenter of "Desi DNA", an arts programme on BBC Two catering to the Desi (British Asian) community. She launched "Destination Three", a late night entertainment zone on BBC Three. In May 2006, Rani joined Sky Sports where she became co-presenter with Simon Thomas on the "Cricket AM" show each Saturday morning.


title: Anita Rani

text: Rani presented "My Generation Next", shown on BBC News 24 between 2 and 9 December 2006. She covered for Anita Anand on the late evening weekday show on BBC Radio 5 Live in March and September 2007 and has presented "World Have Your Say" on the BBC World Service and "Weekend Breakfast" on Five Live. She has also covered on various shows for BBC Radio 6 Music. In August 2008, Rani was the co-presenter of "Rogue Restaurants" on BBC One and joined the team of roving reporters on "The One Show". From 2 March 2009 she co-presented BBC One's "Watchdog", succeeding Julia Bradbury.


title: Anita Rani

text: From 2011 until 2015, Rani presented "Four Rooms" where unique objects are offered for sale to specialist dealers. In 2016, she was replaced by Sarah Beeny.