title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Coconino County is a county in the north-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. Its population was 145,101 at the 2020 census. The county seat is Flagstaff. The county takes its name from "Cohonino", a name applied to the Havasupai people. It is the second-largest county by area in the contiguous United States, behind San Bernardino County, California. It has , or 16.4% of Arizona's total area, and is larger than each of the nine smallest states in the U.S.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Coconino County comprises the Flagstaff metropolitan statistical area, Grand Canyon National Park, the federally recognized Havasupai Nation, and parts of the federally recognized Navajo, Hualapai, and Hopi nations. As a result, its relatively large Native American population makes up nearly 30% of the county's total population; it is mostly Navajo, with smaller numbers of other tribes.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: After European Americans completed the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad in 1883, the region of northern Yavapai County began to undergo rapid growth. The people of the northern reaches had tired of the rigors of traveling to Prescott to conduct county business. They believed that they should have their own county jurisdiction, so petitioned in 1887 for secession from Yavapai and creation of a new Frisco County. This did not take place, but Coconino County was formed in 1891 and its seat was designated as Flagstaff.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which are land and (0.2%) are covered by water. It is the largest county by area in Arizona and the second-largest county in the United States (excluding boroughs in Alaska) after San Bernardino County in California. It has more land area than each of the following states: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: The highest natural point in the county, as well as the entire state, is Humphreys Peak at . The Barringer Meteor Crater is located in Coconino County.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Coconino County has of federally designated Indian reservations, second in scale only to Apache County. In descending order of area within the county, the reservations are the Navajo, Hualapai, Hopi, Havasupai, and Kaibab. The Havasupai Reservation is the only one that lies entirely within the county's borders.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: As of the census of 2000, 116,320 people, 40,448 households, and 26,938 families were living in the county. The population density was 6 people per square mile (2/km). The 53,443 housing units averaged 3 per sq mi (1/km). The racial makeup of the county was 63.1% White, 28.5% Native American, 1.0% African American, 0.8% Asian, 4.2% from other races, and 2.4% from two or more races. About 10.9% of the population were Hispanics or Latinos of any race. Around 18.6% reported speaking Navajo at home, while 6.6% spoke Spanish.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Of the 40,448 households, 34.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.7% were married couples living together, 12.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.4% were not families. About 22.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 4.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.80, and the average family size was 3.36.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: In the county, the age distribution was 28.7% under 18, 14.4% from 18 to 24, 29.2% from 25 to 44, 20.7% from 45 to 64, and 7.0% who were 65 or older. The median age was 30 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.70 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.20 males.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: The median income for a household in the county was $38,256, and for a family was $45,873. Males had a median income of $32,226 versus $25,055 for females. The per capita income for the county was $17,139. About 13.1% of families and 18.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.3% of those under age 18 and 13.3% of those age 65 or over.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: As of the census of 2010, 134,421 people, 46,711 households, and 29,656 families were living in the county. The population density was . The 63,321 housing units had an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 61.7% White (55.2% non-Hispanic White), 27.3% American Indian, 1.4% Asian, 1.2% African American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 5.2% from other races, and 3.1% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 13.5% of the population. The largest ancestry groups were:


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Of the 46,711 households, 33.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.0% were married couples living together, 12.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 36.5% were not families, and 24.5% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.69, and the average family size was 3.26. The median age was 31.0 years.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: The median income for a household in the county was $49,510 and for a family was $58,841. Males had a median income of $42,331 versus $31,869 for females. The per capita income for the county was $22,632. About 11.6% of families and 18.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.5% of those under age 18 and 13.8% of those age 65 or over.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Coconino County has trended towards the Democratic Party in modern times after being a Republican stronghold between the 1950s and 1980s. It was won by every Republican presidential nominee between 1952 and 1988; however, no Republican since George H. W. Bush in 1988 has managed to come within 6% of reclaiming the county. It is the only county from any state west of the Mississippi river that voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 but has since voted for the democratic nominee in the most recent six presidential elections.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Grand Canyon Airlines and Air Grand Canyon are headquartered on the grounds of Grand Canyon National Park Airport in Tusayan.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2019 the employment of Coconino County in the following sectors was:


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Flagstaff in Coconino County is a major highway junction, with Interstate 40 extending to the east and the west (connecting with Williams and Winslow, Arizona, for example), and with Interstate 17 extending south from Flagstaff to Phoenix and Maricopa County. U.S. Routes 89 and 180 extend north from Flagstaff and connect it with the Grand Canyon National Park.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: The Grand Canyon National Park Airport is a public airport located in Tusayan, near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Flagstaff Pulliam Airport is a public airport located four miles (6 km) south of the central business district of Flagstaff, it is mostly used for general aviation but is also served by two commercial airlines.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: There is a Greyhound Bus Lines station in Flagstaff, with regular service east–west along Interstate 40, and also north–south service to Phoenix along Interstate 17.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: Amtrak has a passenger railroad stations in Flagstaff and formerly in Williams, with daily service on the Southwest Chief to the east towards Chicago, and to the west towards Los Angeles.


title: Coconino County, Arizona

text: The Grand Canyon Railway, a tourist railroad, links Williams with the canyon's South Rim in the Grand Canyon National Park and has service every day except Christmas.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Liz Carmouche (born February 19, 1984) is an American mixed martial arts fighter currently signed to Bellator MMA, where she is the current Bellator Women's Flyweight World Champion. Carmouche competed for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the Women's Flyweight and Women's Bantamweight divisions. At the time of her UFC departure, she was #4 in the UFC women's flyweight rankings.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche competed in the first ever women's MMA match in the UFC when she competed against Ronda Rousey for the UFC Women's Bantamweight Championship at UFC 157. A two-time title challenger, Carmouche also challenged for the UFC Women's Flyweight Championship in August 2019 against Valentina Shevchenko. Carmouche was the first openly lesbian fighter in the UFC and was praised by company president Dana White for coming out. As of April 26, 2022, she is #2 in the Bellator Women's pound-for-pound Rankings.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, and grew up on Okinawa, Japan. She is of Lebanese, Irish and Cajun French descent. She currently resides in San Diego, California and trains at San Diego Combat Academy.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: She went to Okinawa Christian School International in Japan graduating in the class of 2003. She is currently attending San Diego City College studying Kinesiology.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Prior to becoming a professional MMA fighter, Carmouche spent five years in the Marine Corps as an aviation electrician during which she did three tours of duty in the Middle East. Her nickname is Girl-Rilla, earned from her muscular physique and strength that outperforms male counterparts.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche started her professional career in 2010, winning her first three fights via knockout or submission.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: On August 13, 2010, she made her Strikeforce debut at in a reserve bout for their one-night Women's Welterweight tournament. She defeated Colleen Schneider via unanimous decision after two rounds.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche returned to the promotion at Strikeforce Challengers 12 on November 19, 2010, where she defeated Jan Finney via TKO in the third round.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: On February 23, 2011, it was announced that number one title contender Miesha Tate had suffered a knee injury and that Carmouche would step in on short notice to face Women's Bantamweight (135 lbs) champion Marloes Coenen on March 5, 2011 at . Carmouche was defeated via triangle choke in the fourth round, after dominating two of the previous rounds.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: On July 22, 2011, Carmouche faced Sarah Kaufman at Strikeforce Challengers: Voelker vs. Bowling III in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was defeated by unanimous decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche was scheduled to return to Strikeforce to face Sara McMann at on November 3, 2012, but the event was cancelled.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Ashleigh Curry at Invicta Fighting Championships 1 on April 28, 2012. She won the fight via TKO in the first round.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Kaitlin Young at Invicta Fighting Championships 2 on July 28, 2012. She won the fight via submission due to a rear-naked choke in the second round.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: It was announced at the pre-fight press conference by UFC President Dana White that former Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey would be the very first UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion. It was confirmed by White that Carmouche would be challenging Rousey for the Women's Bantamweight title at UFC 157. In the early part of the first round, Carmouche locked in a standing rear-naked choke/face crank on Rousey. However, Rousey escaped and eventually finished the fight by armbar with 11 seconds left in the first round.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche was expected to face Miesha Tate at UFC on Fox 8 on July 27, 2013. However, Tate was pulled from the bout to participate as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter 18. Carmouche instead faced promotional newcomer Jéssica Andrade. She won the fight by TKO in round two, earning her first win inside the Octagon.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: In her third UFC fight, Carmouche faced Alexis Davis on November 6, 2013 at UFC Fight Night 31. She lost the fight via unanimous decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Miesha Tate in the co-main event at UFC on Fox 11. She lost the back-and-forth fight via unanimous decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Lauren Murphy on April 4, 2015 at UFC Fight Night 63. She won the fight by unanimous decision. However, 10 out of 13 media outlets scored the bout for Murphy, whilst 3 scored it for Carmouche.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Katlyn Chookagian on November 12, 2016 at UFC 205. She won the fight via split decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Alexis Davis in a women's flyweight bout on December 9, 2017 at UFC Fight Night 123. She lost the fight by split decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Jennifer Maia on July 14, 2018 at UFC Fight Night 133. She won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Lucie Pudilová on February 23, 2019 at UFC Fight Night 145. She won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: A rematch with Valentina Shevchenko was scheduled on August 10, 2019 at UFC Fight Night 156 for the UFC Women's Flyweight Championship. She lost the fight via unanimous decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: On December 6, 2019, it was announced that Carmouche had been released from the UFC despite signing a new contract after the failed title bid.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche was scheduled to make her debut at Bellator against Mandy Böhm on May 29, 2020 at Bellator 243 but the bout was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Carmouche made her promotional debut against DeAnna Bennett at Bellator 246 on September 12, 2020. At the weigh-ins, Bennett missed weight, weighing in at 131.7 pounds. The bout proceeded as a catchweight and Carmouche was awarded a percentage of Bennett's purse. Carmouche won the bout via third round submission.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced former Invicta FC Flyweight World Champion Vanessa Porto on April 9, 2021 at Bellator 256. She won the bout via a unanimous decision.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced Kana Watanabe on June 25, 2021 at Bellator 261. She won the bout via TKO within 35 seconds of the first round.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche faced undefeated flyweight champ, Juliana Velasquez for the Bellator Women's Flyweight World Championship on April 22, 2022 at Bellator 278. She won the bout and the title via elbows from crucifix at the end of the fourth round. Following the bout, Velasquez's team appealed the result on the grounds of refereeing error made by Mike Beltran, but the appeal was denied by the Hawaii State Boxing Commission.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: In a title rematch, Carmouche faced Juliana Velasquez again on December 9, 2022 at Bellator 289. She won the fight via an armbar submission in the second round.


title: Liz Carmouche

text: Carmouche is openly lesbian, and has a son with her wife. She has a tattoo on her left side representing the Chinese zodiac symbol of her mother and sister. Carmouche is the spokesperson for Medical Marijuana Inc. on the cannabidiol (CBD) therapeutic benefits for athletes.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: Magnus August Høiberg (born 29 November 1987), known professionally as Cashmere Cat, is a Norwegian DJ, record producer, songwriter and musician. He is best known for producing songs for artists including Kanye West, The Kid Laroi, Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello, Ariana Grande, Major Lazer, Tory Lanez and The Weeknd, as well as his own critically acclaimed musical output.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: His debut EP, "Mirror Maru", was released in October 2012 and followed by the full length albums "9", in 2017, and "Princess Catgirl", in 2019.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: Høiberg has toured the world over, performing at festivals including Coachella (US), Lollapalooza (US), Hangout (US), Firefly (US), Ultra (US), Clockenflap (HK), Sonar (ES), Roskilde (DK), Lowlands (NL), Pukkelpop (BE), Falls Festival (AUS) and Øya (Nor).


title: Cashmere Cat

text: As a teenager, Høiberg began producing music and teaching himself how to DJ. He represented Norway in the DMC World DJ Championships from 2006 to 2009 under the pseudonym DJ Final.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: Høiberg's debut extended play (EP) as Cashmere Cat, "Mirror Maru," was released on 22 October 2012 on French label Pelican Fly. The diversity and influence of multiple genres gained support from notables such as Hudson Mohawke, Rustie and Gilles Peterson.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: He continued to gain recognition with a number of remixes, including his edits of 2 Chainz' "No Lie," Lana Del Rey's "National Anthem," Miguel's "Do You..." and Jeremih's "773 Love." In January 2013, producer, songwriter and musician Benny Blanco invited Cashmere to New York to collaborate on production work and helped book his first. In 2013 Cashmere Cat also played his first concerts in the United States. That summer, he moved from Norway to Manhattan.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: On 11 February 2014, Høiberg's second EP "Wedding Bells" was released on UK label LuckyMe. In August same year, he produced and featured on "Be My Baby" from Ariana Grande's second studio album "My Everything". He was also the opening act during Grande's North American The Honeymoon Tour.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: On 28 February 2016, Cashmere confirmed that his debut studio album, "9", was on the way. Ahead of the album, Cashmere Cat release singles "Wild Love" featuring The Weeknd and Francis and the Lights; "Trust Nobody" featuring Selena Gomez and Tory Lanez; "Love Incredible" featuring Camila Cabello and co-produced by Sophie; and "9 (After Coachella)" featuring MØ and Sophie.   The album was released on the 28th of April 2017 with further contributions from Kehlani, Kacy Hill, Ariana Grande, Ty Dolla Sign and Jhené Aiko.


title: Cashmere Cat

text: Cashmere co-produced "Wolves", alongside Sinjin Hawke, for Kanye West's 2016 studio album "The Life of Pablo."


title: Cashmere Cat

text: In 2018, Cashmere Cat co-produced album tracks for Kanye West ("Kids See Ghosts") and Nas. He continued to produce for a number of artists, with notable credits on Benny Blanco's debut single, the global hit "Eastside" with Halsey and Khalid and Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello's global hit "Señorita".


title: Cashmere Cat

text: Cashmere Cat's second album, "Princess Catgirl", was released on September 20, 2019 featuring singles "Emotions" and "For Your Eyes Only."


title: Cashmere Cat

text: Cashmere Cat co-wrote and co-produced The Kid Laroi's 2021 song "Stay" (with Justin Bieber), which went on to reach number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in August 2021.


title: Timeline of first images of Earth from space

text: This is a timeline of first images of Earth from space. The initial photographs and digital images of planet Earth taken from outer space were preceded by aerial photography and continue in the form of satellite imagery.


text: For the purpose of this list, a spaceflight is defined as any flight that crosses the Kármán line, the FAI-recognized edge of space, which is above mean sea level (AMSL).


title: Holy Alliance

text: The Holy Alliance (; , "Svyashchennyy soyuz"; also called the Grand Alliance) was a coalition linking the monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. It was created after the final defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Emperor (Tsar) Alexander I of Russia and signed in Paris on 26 September 1815. The alliance aimed to restrain liberalism and secularism in Europe in the wake of the devastating French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, and it nominally succeeded in this until the Crimean War. Otto von Bismarck managed to reunite the Holy Alliance following the unification of Germany in 1871, but the alliance again faltered by the 1880s over Austrian and Russian conflicts of interest over the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Holy Alliance

text: Ostensibly, the alliance was formed to instil the divine right of kings and Christian values in European political life, as pursued by Alexander I under the influence of his spiritual adviser Baroness Barbara von Krüdener. It was written by the Tsar and edited by Ioannis Kapodistrias and Alexandru Sturdza. Under the treaty European rulers would agree to govern as "branches" of the Christian community and offer mutual service. In the first draft Tsar Alexander I made appeals to mysticism through a proposed unified Christian empire that was seen as disconcerting by the other monarchies. Following revision, a more pragmatic version of the alliance was adopted by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The document was called "an apocalypse of diplomacy" by French diplomat Dominique-Georges-Frédéric Dufour de Pradt.


title: Holy Alliance

text: The agreement was at first secret, and mistrusted by liberals though liberalism was effectively restrained in this political culture until the Revolutions of 1848.


title: Holy Alliance

text: About three months after the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, the monarchs of Catholic (Austria), Protestant (Prussia), and Orthodox (Russia) confession promised to act on the basis of "justice, love, and peace", both in internal and foreign affairs, for "consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections".


title: Holy Alliance

text: The Alliance was quickly rejected by the United Kingdom (though George IV declared consent in his capacity as King of Hanover), the Papal States, and the Ottoman Empire. Lord Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, called it "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense". Nonetheless, Britain participated in the Concert of Europe.


title: Holy Alliance

text: In practice, the Austrian state chancellor and foreign minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich made it a bastion against democracy, revolution, and secularism. It also allowed coordinating suppression of Polish efforts to restore an independent state, by Austria in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodkmeria, by Russia in its Congress Poland and by Prussia in the Grand Duchy of Posen and in West Prussia. The monarchs in the Alliance used it to suppress revolutionary influence (especially from the French Revolution) from entering their own nations.


title: Holy Alliance

text: The Alliance is usually associated with the later Quadruple and Quintuple Alliances, which included the United Kingdom and (from 1818) France with the aim of upholding the European peace settlement and balance of power in the Concert of Europe concluded at the Congress of Vienna. On 29 September 1818, Alexander, Emperor Francis I of Austria and King Frederick William III of Prussia met with the Duke of Wellington, Viscount Castlereagh and the Duc de Richelieu at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle to demand stern measures against university "demagogues", which would be realized in the Carlsbad Decrees of the following year. At the Congress of Troppau in 1820 and the succeeding Congress of Laibach in 1821, Metternich tried to align his allies in the suppression of the Carbonari revolt against King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. The Quintuple Alliance met for the last time at the Congress of Verona in 1822 to advise against the Greek Revolution and to resolve upon the French invasion of Spain.


title: Holy Alliance

text: The last meetings had revealed the rising antagonism between Britain and France, especially on Italian unification, the right to self-determination, and the Eastern Question. The Alliance is conventionally taken to have become defunct with Alexander's death in 1825. France ultimately went her separate way following the July Revolution of 1830, leaving the core of Austria, Prussia, and Russia as a Central-Eastern European block which once again congregated to suppress the Revolutions of 1848. The Austro-Russian alliance finally broke up in the Crimean War. Though Russia had helped to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Austria did not take any action to support her ally, declared herself neutral, and even occupied the Wallachian and Moldavian lands on the Danube upon the Russian retreat in 1854. Thereafter, Austria remained isolated, which added to the loss of her leading role in the German states, culminating in her defeat during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: Phillip Lang Crosby (July 13, 1934 – January 13, 2004) was an American actor and singer. He was one of the four sons of Bing Crosby and Dixie Lee; the others were his older brother Gary, his twin brother Dennis, and his younger brother Lindsay. Phillip began his career singing alongside his three brothers and his father.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: Crosby was born in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose in June 1952 and went on to Washington State College at Pullman with his twin brother Dennis for a three-year animal husbandry course. It was thought for a time that twins might take over the running of their father's ranch in Elko, Nevada. It had been the custom for many years for Bing Crosby to take his sons to the ranch each summer for several weeks before going on to Hayden Lake, Idaho, prior to their return to school. As children, the twins were exposed to show business in a big way and appeared on Bing Crosby's various radio shows with their brothers Gary and Lindsay.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: When he was 21 in 1955, Phillip inherited $200,000 from his late mother's trust. That same year, Phillip began his national service with the Army and was posted to West Germany in February 1956 to join his twin. They were part of the 24th Medical Detachment of the 10th Infantry Division at Schweinfurt. After leaving the army, Phillip went into show business.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: Phillip had sung with his brothers on their father's radio shows and they participated in a record with Bing in 1950 called "A Crosby Christmas" which charted at number 22 in the "Billboard" lists in December, 1950.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: After leaving the army, Phillip recorded four tracks for UPA-Chevron on July 29, 1958, including "Thanks" in which his father ad-libbed various comments. Phillip and Dennis had an amusing linking role on the "Bing Crosby Show" transmitted on ABC-TV on March 2, 1959.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: When Phillip's younger brother, Lindsay, was released from the Army, the four brothers decided to form a vocal group called The Crosby Brothers. They were featured on the cover of "Life" on September 15, 1958. An appearance on "The Phil Silvers Show" on November 14, 1958, followed, and they made their debut as a singing group at Tucson, Arizona in 1959. Moving on to the Chez Paree, Chicago, in June 1959, they earned a good review from "Variety" which said "CROSBY BROS. Chez Paree, Chicago. Songs 58 Mins. Bing Crosby's four sons are launched on the cabaret scene in high style. The frères - Gary, Phillip, Dennis and Lindsay - have a superlative act that is likely to abash those skeptics who surmised the boys would trade merely on the lustrous family name." They continued to perform successfully at locations such as the Sahara in Las Vegas and the El Morocco nightclub in Montreal. However, after one of their performances at El Morocco in December 1959, the boys fought among themselves and Gary Crosby left the group.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: Phillip, Dennis, and Lindsay continued without Gary and they were given useful exposure on the "Bing Crosby Show" seen on ABC-TV on February 29, 1960. Bing took the place of Gary to sing "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" with his sons, who also sang two other songs themselves.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: They made their first LP for their father's company, Project Records, in April 1960, which was released by MGM Records and was well received. "The Crosby Brothers – Dennis – Philip – Lindsay Crosby (MGM); "Dinah" (Mills*), a hip version of the oldie, makes a promising disk bow for this trio of Bing Crosby offspring. "The Green Grass Grows All Around" (Marfran*) is a bright ensemble of this folk tune. To promote the album, the brothers appeared on the "I've Got a Secret" show and taught the panel how to lip-sync to "I Can't Give You Anything but Love."


title: Phillip Crosby

text: Starting at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas and continuing for the next two years, the three men enjoyed useful success as The Crosby Brothers at venues such as the Chi Chi in Palm Springs, The Venetian room at the Fairmont in San Francisco, and the Latin Quarter in New York. During their stay at the Latin Quarter, they appeared on the "What's My Line?" TV show on May 14, 1961.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: On television, the Crosby Brothers starred on several high-profile shows such as Perry Como's "Kraft Music Hall" (twice), "The Ed Sullivan Show" (four times) and of course the "Bing Crosby Show" (twice). The Crosby Brothers act folded, however, when Lindsay Crosby had a breakdown in July 1962 in Juarez, Mexico. Lindsay had to be hospitalized for some time.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: Eventually, Phillip decided to embark on a solo career, and he had parts in several films, as well as one of the "Ben Casey" episodes. He also guest-starred on "The Bob Hope Christmas Special" on January 17, 1964. Around this time, Phillip was one of the original investors in a chain of Mexican restaurants and he accepted what was at the time a generous offer to buy him out. The chain went on to become the huge Taco Bell organization and Phillip would have made a fortune if he stayed in.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: As a singer, Phillip launched his solo act on April 27, 1965, at Hyatt's Backstage Bar in Burlingame, California. Having developed his act, Phillip went to Vietnam with Bob Hope twice to entertain the troops and enjoyed the experience so much that he returned there himself to sing on several occasions. He also appeared on "The Bob Hope Vietnam Christmas Show" on January 18, 1968, "The Hollywood Palace" show on March 23, 1968, and April 5, 1969 and "The Ed Sullivan Show" on June 15, 1969.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: An opportunity then arose to buy an interest in a night club in Atlanta and he performed there nightly for some years. Phillip gave his final performance at an Elk's Club party in Burbank in 1983.


title: Phillip Crosby

text: In his later years, Phillip's health was not good and he had problems with his back and knees following a motorcycle accident. In the 1980s, he was arrested several times for drunk driving and, despite 18 months of Alcoholics Anonymous, he told "People", "I don't drink any more -- but I don't drink any less."


title: Phillip Crosby

text: Despite a promising start to life, the Crosby brothers were clearly overwhelmed by their emotional problems, which resulted in heavy drinking. Their mother died from ovarian cancer in 1952, but her health was not helped by acute alcoholism. Phillip's twin Dennis, and his younger brother, Lindsay, both committed suicide with shotguns, in their 50s. Gary died of lung cancer in 1995, aged 62. Gary Crosby wrote a book called "Going My Own Way", alleging emotional and physical abuse by his father. Phillip refuted this and he gave an interview to Neil Blincow of" The Globe" in 1999 stating:


title: Phillip Crosby

text: "My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was, he was strict, but my father never beat us black and blue and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good liar for saying so. I have nothing but fond memories of dad, going to studios with him, family vacations at our cabin in Idaho, boating and fishing with him. . . He [Gary] knew it [the book "Going My Own Way"] would generate a lot of publicity and that was the only way he could get his ugly, no-talent face on television and in the newspapers. He wrote it out of greed. He wanted to make money and knew that humiliating our father and blackening his name was the only way he could do it. My dad took care of us from a very early age with a trust fund. But we blew it all. To my dying day, I'll hate Gary for dragging Dad's name through the mud. My dad was my hero. I loved him very much. And he loved all of us too, including Gary. He was a great father."


The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. It is the eleventh installment in "The Legend of Zelda" series. It was released in Japan on March 18, 2004, North America on June 7, 2004, in Europe on January 7, 2005 and in Australia on April 7, 2005. The Game Boy Advance handheld game console can be used as a controller when using the GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable bundled with the game in North America and Europe.


title: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures

text: Similar to its predecessor "" in its gameplay and presentation, the game takes Link and his three clones created by the magic "Four Sword" on an adventure to restore peace to Hyrule after learning that an evil counterpart of himself, Shadow Link, has been created. "Four Swords Adventures" was considered the 48th-best game made for a Nintendo system by "Nintendo Power", and received an aggregated 86 out of 100 from Metacritic. It was the third best-selling game of June 2004 in North America, with 155,000 units, and has since sold 250,000 copies; it has sold 127,000 units in Japan.


text: The main mode of "Four Swords Adventures" is "Hyrulean Adventure", an episodic cooperative multiplayer adaptation of conventional "The Legend of Zelda" gameplay. "Shadow Battle" is a competitive multiplayer battle mode. "Navi Trackers", present only in the Japanese version of the game, is a multiplayer stamp rally race.


text: Hyrulean Adventure is the main campaign of "Four Swords Adventures", and can be played by one to four players. It consists of eight worlds, each with three stages and a boss battle. The graphics are similar to that of the previously released "" for the Game Boy Advance (GBA), but the maps are static rather than randomly generated, the top-down view is taken from "", and gameplay includes effects from "". The graphics include enhanced atmospheric effects such as cloud shadows that slowly move across the ground, heat shimmer, dust storms, and fog. Music is based on that of "", but is rearranged in places.


text: In Hyrulean Adventure, most of the same mechanics as "Four Swords" are used. The multiplayer version requires each player to have a GBA, which is used as a controller and to which the action transfers when that player's character goes off the main screen, but the single-player game may be played with either a GameCube controller or a GBA. There are always four Link characters (differentiated by colors: green, red, blue and purple) in play, regardless of the number of people playing; "extra" Links are attached to those directly controlled and positioned around the controlling character. Normally, the extra Links follow the player, but players can separate an individual Link and control him independently, or put the four Links into formations. These techniques are required to solve puzzles and defeat enemies. Players are encouraged to work together to gather enough Force Gems to empower the Four Sword, and failing to do so by the time the boss is defeated or the dark barrier is reached results in having to go back to the beginning of the stage to collect more. However, once the requisite gems are collected, players are automatically transported to the dark barrier and therefore do not have to repeat the entire stage.


text: Players can play minigames in multiplayer mode at Tingle's Tower, which appears in every world, to gain extra multiplayer lives. These eight games are earned by playing though certain stages in multiplayer mode. The minigames include horse racing, hammer tag, monster hunting and five others.


text: In Shadow Battle, two or more players battle each other until only one is left standing. Each player uses a different-colored Link character and wields various tools to attack the other Links. Initially, there are five stages which players can choose as the battle's arena. Five bonus maps are unlocked upon completion of Hyrulean Adventure (these "dark stages" are almost the same as the first five maps, but portals to the dark world appear and the player has limited vision). In each stage, items randomly appear, and are usually similar to the items in Hyrulean Adventure. There are many special objects in each stage, which can be used to the player's advantage. There is a time limit; when it reaches zero, the game is tied.


text: Navi Trackers (formerly planned as a stand-alone game titled "Tetra's Trackers") is a game only present in the Japanese version of "Four Swords Adventures" ("Four Swords +"). Multiple players use a combination of the television screen and Game Boy Advances to search for members of Tetra's pirate crew to gain as many stamps as possible within a given time limit. Action takes place on the Game Boy Advance used by each player, with the television screen showing a basic map and Tetra narrating the action. A single-player mode is available, which allows players to either collect alone or compete against Tingle.


text: The game takes place centuries after "" and "", within the events of the "Child Timeline", and chronologically is the final game in this timeline prior to "". The game features a separate incarnation of the Dark Lord Ganondorf/The Dark Beast Ganon to the one whose backstory is shown in "", something which is unique to "Four Swords Adventures".


text: The game begins with the land of Hyrule in a state of fear because of strange happenings that have occurred recently. On a stormy night, Princess Zelda and the shrine maidens fear that the reason for these events is that Vaati's seal is weakening. She summons Link and brings him to the castle so he can protect her and the other maidens while they open the portal to the Four Sword Sanctuary. When they do, however, Shadow Link appears, who kidnaps the maidens of the Shrines and seals them inside their crystals. Link pulls the Four Sword out of its Pedestal, splitting into three clones of himself to destroy his doppelgänger. However, the seal that imprisoned Vaati breaks and releases him from his prison once again, wreaking havoc on the once peaceful kingdom of Hyrule.


text: As Link and his clones wander the overworld of Hyrule Field on their quest to restore peace to Hyrule, they learn that the creation of Link's evil counterpart and the release of Vaati is only a small part in a larger plot to conquer the kingdom of Hyrule. Things complicate as the dimension of the Dark World appears and people are being abducted throughout Hyrule. The four Links learn that the knights of Hyrule have mysteriously disappeared and evil versions of them have been creating havoc, allowing Hyrule castle to be taken over and monsters to appear throughout the land. The four Links agree that they will defeat Vaati, and rescue Zelda to restore peace to Hyrule.


text: It is revealed that the true villain is Ganon, who obtained his powers after stealing a powerful trident containing dark energy that was previously hidden away within a pyramid, and used it to seize control over substantial portions of Hyrule. In order to further his plans and distract Link from interfering in his bid for further power, Ganon stole the dark mirror and used it to create Shadow Link, who was eventually sent to kidnap the shrine maidens and trick Link into releasing Vaati. Furthermore, he uses the Dark Mirror to abduct people and turn them into his minions.


text: The four Links save the shrine maidens, retrieve the Dark Mirror and stop Shadow Link from respawning once and for all. The four heroes head forth to the Palace of Winds and defeat Vaati, leading them into their final battle with Ganon. Trying to stop him from plunging the world into chaos, the four Links use the Power of the Shrine Maidens, including Zelda, to defeat Ganon, striking through him. After defeating Ganon, the four Links firmly seal him inside the Four Sword. Peace returns to Hyrule and the people celebrate as all traces of evil that plagued Hyrule are vanquished. With Ganon defeated and sealed inside, Link returns the Four Sword back to its resting pedestal and the four Links become one again, while the Maidens of the Shrine use their powers and create a barrier around the Four Sword.


text: At E3 2003, Nintendo showcased two Zelda games which would make use of the Game Boy Advance connectivity, "Four Swords" and "Tetra's Trackers". In December of the same year, both games were expected to be together in a single disc, "Four Swords +", along with a third, "Shadow Battle". "Four Swords Adventures" was released in Japan with "Hyrule Adventure", "Shadow Battle", and "Navi's Trackers" as three individual games bundled together. In June 2004, however, "Hyrule Adventures" and "Navi's Trackers" were scheduled to be sold as two separate titles in the United States, while the retail status of "Shadow Battle" was still unknown. This decision was later changed to bundle "Hyrule Adventure" with "Shadow Battle", and to not release "Navi's Trackers" in the United States.


text: Despite the fact that translations for the PAL version were finished in October, the game was not released in Europe until early January 2005. A possible reason for this is so that the game did not compete with "" for sales, which in turn was released pre-Christmas in Europe because, unlike North America, it would not cannibalize Nintendo DS sales.


text: Early on the development of "Navi Trackers", it was decided that it would include a speech navigation system that talks and advises the player during mini-games. Players type in their name and the system calls players by their name during the game in order to notify them of their turn.


text: In 2006, "Nintendo Power" rated "Four Swords Adventures" the 48th best game made on a Nintendo system. It received a score of 86 out of 100 based on 55 aggregated reviews from Metacritic, and an average score of 85% based on 67 reviews from GameRankings.


text: GameSpot praised the game's connectivity feature with the Game Boy Advance, claiming that this is "a truly compelling reason to invest in a GameCube-to-GBA link cable" and that "using the Game Boy Advance as a controller has an appreciable impact on the experience". They praised the story and said, noting that the differences between the original "Four Swords" and "Adventures" is a more persistent narrative. The game was applauded, with critic remarking that "Adventures" improved on the original "Four Swords" visuals, making the "Wind Waker"-derived visual style more reminiscent of the cel-shaded adventure of Link. The audio was noted, with a review remarking that the sound design for "Four Swords Adventures" is familiar to anyone who has played any "The Legend of Zelda" game, including "The Wind Waker". "GameSpot" later named it the best GameCube game of June 2004.


text: "Four Swords Adventures" also received criticism. Game Revolution said about the game and was particularly critical of the graphics, calling it an odd mix of cheap 2D SNES sprites and nice GameCube particle effects, believing that it created an inconsistent feel. They also criticized the requirement of the link cable, saying that the required use of the GBA for multiplayer limits the play potential.


text: "Four Swords Adventures" was the third best-selling game of June 2004 in North America with 155,000 units, and has since sold 250,000 copies, becoming a part of the Player's Choice line. The game also sold 127,000 units in Japan. Producer Eiji Aonuma felt the game's sales were disappointing due to each player needing a Game Boy Advance and a Link Cable, which made it difficult to convince consumers that they needed to play the game.


title: BTR (vehicle)

text: BTR (), from "Bronetransportyor"/"Bronetransporter" (/; literally "armoured transporter"), is any of a series of Soviet or post-Soviet military armoured personnel carriers.


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: Esther Denise "Woj" Hochman Wojcicki ( ; born May 26, 1941) is an American journalist, educator, and vice chair of the Creative Commons advisory council. Wojcicki has studied education and technology. She is the founder of the Palo Alto High School Media Arts Program in Palo Alto, CA., and the Co-Founder of TractLearning, Inc that publishes the website Tract.app a peer to peer, project-based, gamified learning platform for kids 8 years and over.


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: Wojcicki is the oldest of three children and was the first in her family to attend college. Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who came to New York City in the 1930s. Her family moved to Southern California after she was born. Wojcicki was valedictorian of her high school class and attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a B.A. in English and political science. She also received a secondary teaching credential and a master's degree in journalism from Berkeley. She has an M.A. in French and French history from the Sorbonne as well as both a secondary school administrative credential and a M.A. in educational technology from San Jose State University.


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: Wojcicki has taught at Palo Alto High School from 1984 to 2020, where she taught journalism and English. There she began the journalism program which has grown to become one of the largest in America. She has worked as a professional journalist for multiple publications and blogs regularly for "The Huffington Post".


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: Wojcicki was the 1990 Northern California Journalism teacher of the year, and was selected as the California Teacher of the Year in 2002 by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: She served on the University of California Office of the President Curriculum Committee where she helped revise the beginning and advanced journalism curriculum for the state of California. In 2009, she was awarded the Gold Key by Columbia Scholastic Press Association in recognition of outstanding devotion to the cause of the school press. Wojcicki is also on the Board of Trustees of the "Developmental Studies Center" and on the Board of Governors of the "Alliance for Excellent Education".


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: She serves as Chairman of the Board of "Learning Matters" and is part of the Advisory Board at the THNK School of Creative Leadership. She is Chief Learning Officer for Explore Planet3, an exploration based science platform for middle school students.


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: She is on the board of the Newseum in Washington, D.C and the Freedom Forum. She holds an honorary doctorate from Palo Alto University (2013) and from Rhode Island School of Design (2016).


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: She is the founder of the Journalistic Learning Initiative at the University of Oregon School of Communications and School of Education (2016) www.journalisticlearning.com. She is the founder of the Moonshots in Education Movement (MiE) that can be found at www.Moonshots.org.(2017). In 2019 she was the author of the book "How to Raise Successful People", a parenting book on the philosophy she used in raising her 3 daughters. Wojcicki discussed her life and the book on BBC Radio 4's "Woman's Hour" in May 2019. She publishes a newsletter called "Woj's World News."


title: Esther Wojcicki

text: Her husband is Stanford University professor of physics Stanley Wojcicki. They have three daughters: Susan (CEO of YouTube), Janet, a Fulbright-winning anthropologist, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and researcher, and Anne (co-founder of 23andMe), and ten grandchildren.


title: Married to Medicine

text: Married to Medicine (also known as Married to Medicine: Atlanta) is an American reality television series that premiered on Bravo on March 24, 2013. The series chronicles the personal and professional lives of several women in the Atlanta medical community with four of the women being doctors themselves, while the others are doctors' wives. It shows the group as they balance their social circles, careers and families.


title: Married to Medicine

text: The cast of the current ninth season consists of Dr. Jacqueline Walters, Dr. Simone Whitmore, Toya Bush-Harris, Quad Webb, Dr. Heavenly Kimes, Dr. Contessa Metcalfe and Anila Sajja.


title: Married to Medicine

text: In November 2012, Bravo announced the series green-light of "Married to Medicine". The network detailed the series by stating, ""Married to Medicine" follows a group of successful and educated women, including doctors and wives of doctors, who are connected to the world of medicine in Atlanta." Purveyors of Pop, a production company formed by "Real Housewives" producers Matt Anderson and Nate Green, produced the series, its second on Bravo after "The Real Housewives of Miami". The first season was shot in Atlanta in September and October 2012. By February 2013, the first-season cast was revealed with Toya Bush-Harris, Mariah Huq, Quad Webb-Lunceford, Jacqueline Walters, Kari Wells, and Simone Whitmore starring in the series. At the time of its debut, "Married to Medicine" held the title of highest-rated series premiere since "Bethenny Getting Married?" in 2010 and the most watched non-spinoff series premiere in the network's history. The milestone was later surpassed in January 2014 by "Blood, Sweat and Heels". The first season delivered over 1 million viewers in the 18-49 viewership demographic and 1.8 million total viewers, making it the network's highest-rated non-franchise/non-spin-off freshman series since "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy".


title: Married to Medicine

text: The production of the second season began the first week of September 2013. It premiered on April 6, 2014, with Toya Bush-Harris, Mariah Huq, Quad Webb-Lunceford, Jacqueline Walters, and Simone Whitmore reprising their roles while Lisa Nicole Cloud and Heavenly Kimes joined the series beginning with the second season after the departure of Wells.


title: Married to Medicine

text: On January 15, 2015, Bravo renewed the show for a third season, which premiered on June 7, 2015, and featured Bush-Harris, Lunceford, Walters, Whitmore, Kimes, and Cloud reprising their roles from the second season. Huq transitioned into a recurring role for the third season, while Jill Connors, who had guest starred in the second season, was featured in a recurring capacity.


title: Married to Medicine

text: Sources revealed on April 27, 2016, that the show had been renewed for a fourth season by Bravo, and the current cast were already six weeks into filming. The entire cast from the third season returned as series regulars, along with Mariah returning in a recurring capacity. The network also announced a spin-off show entitled "", which premiered on November 11, 2016.


title: Married to Medicine

text: On June 19, 2017, it was confirmed that majority of the cast would be returning for the upcoming fifth season, with the exception of Lisa Nicole. Mariah Huq return in a recurring capacity. On September 19, 2017, Bravo announced the premiere date for the fifth season, along with a trailer and the reveal of the new cast member, Dr. Contessa Metcalfe, who officially joined the main cast from the third episode.


title: Married to Medicine

text: On August 2, 2018, the premiere of the sixth season was announced, starting on September 2, along with the release of the seasons' trailer. The cast was also revealed, reconfirming the majority of the cast of the fifth season, along with Mariah rejoining the main cast.


title: Married to Medicine

text: On April 11, 2018, Bravo renewed the show for a sixth season, which premiered on September 2, 2018. With this renewal, another spin-off titled "" would be premiering on March 10, 2019.


title: Married to Medicine

text: On May 12, 2022, the show was renewed for a ninth season which premiered on July 10, 2022, with Quad rejoining the main cast.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Lilliput and Blefuscu are two fictional island nations that appear in the first part of the 1726 novel "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift. The two islands are neighbours in the South Indian Ocean, separated by a channel wide. Both are inhabited by tiny people who are about . Both are empires, i.e. realms ruled by an emperor. The capital of Lilliput is Mildendo. In some pictures, the islands are arranged like an egg, as a reference to their egg-dominated histories and cultures.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Swift gives the location of Lilliput and Blefuscu in Part I of "Gulliver's Travels", both in the text and with a map, though neither correspond to real-world geography, even as it was known in Swift's time. The text states that Gulliver's ship (the "Antelope") was bound for the East Indies when it was caught in "a violent storm to the northwest of Van Diemen's Land" (Tasmania). He gives the latitude as 30°2'S, though the longitude is unspecified. Likewise, the map depicts Lilliput and Blefuscu south of "Hogs Island" (Simeulue), off northwest Sumatra, and northwest of Van Diemen's Land, though the map is considerably foreshortened; Van Diemen's Land is shown south of the Sunda Strait, some 10° (700 miles) east of Hogs Island, whereas Tasmania is actually some 40° (2,500 miles) east of that meridian. Neither the text nor the map make reference to New Holland (Western Australia), which had been discovered in 1644, some 80 years before publication, and was well-documented in the maps of Swift's time. While Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands are in roughly the right map location south-west of Sumatra, have two inhabited islands, and would have been known of in Swift's day, they are at entirely the wrong latitude.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Because the area indicated by Swift is actually occupied by Australia, and on the basis of other textual evidence, some authors have concluded that Swift intended to place Lilliput in the Pacific Ocean, to the northeast, not northwest, of Van Diemen's Land. However, none of the sea routes to the East Indies, Gulliver's stated destination, required ships to round Van Diemen's Land; the northern routes, via India or Ceylon, avoided Australia altogether, while the southern (Brouwer) route, taking advantage of the Roaring Forties, turned northeast in mid-ocean precisely to avoid New Holland, though the number of shipwrecks on that coast from the period attests to the dangers of overshooting the turning point. Swift was sceptical about the reliability of the travel literature of his day, and it is suggested that the unlikely geographic descriptions parody many of these works (described by Percy Adams as "travel lies").


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Lilliput is said to extend 5,000 "blustrugs", or 12 miles in circumference. Blefuscu is located northeast of Lilliput, across an 800-yard (730 m) channel. The only cities mentioned by Swift are Mildendo, the capital of Lilliput, and Blefuscu, capital of Blefuscu. However, the map showing Lilliput's position depicts the islands as considerably larger, approaching the size of Van Diemen's Land.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Lilliput is said to be ruled by an Emperor, Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue. He is assisted by a first minister (who carries a white staff) and several other officials (who bring articles of impeachment against Gulliver on grounds of treason): the "galbet" or high admiral, Skyresh Bolgolam; the lord high treasurer, Flimnap; the general, Limnoc; the chamberlain, Lalcom; and the grand justiciary, Balmuff. Blefuscu is also ruled by an Emperor, who is not named.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Both nations follow the teachings of a prophet, Lustrog, as recorded in their scripture, known as the Blundecral ("which is their Alcoran or Bible, we don't really know"). Sectarian divisions exist in the debate between "Little-Endians" and "Big-Endians" (see below).


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Lilliput and Blefuscu were intended as, and understood to be, satirical portraits of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of France, respectively, as they were in the early 18th century. Only the internal politics of Lilliput are described in detail; these are parodies of British politics, in which the great central issues of the day are belittled and reduced to unimportance.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: For instance, the two major political parties of the day were the Whigs and the Tories. The Tories are parodied as the "Tramecksan" or "High-Heels" (due to their adhesion to the high church party of the Church of England, and their exalted views of royal supremacy), while the Whigs are represented as the "Slamecksan" or "Low-Heels" (the Whigs inclined toward low church views, and believed in parliamentary supremacy). These issues, generally considered to be of fundamental importance to the constitution of Great Britain, are reduced by Swift to a difference in fashions.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: The Emperor of Lilliput is described as a partisan of the Low-Heels, just as King George I employed only Whigs in his administration; the Emperor's heir is described as having "one of his heels higher than the other", which describes the encouragement by the Prince of Wales (the future George II) of the political opposition during his father's life.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: The novel further describes an intra-Lilliputian quarrel over the practice of breaking eggs. Traditionally, Lilliputians broke boiled eggs on the larger end; a few generations ago, an Emperor of Lilliput, the Present Emperor's great-grandfather, had decreed that all eggs be broken on the smaller end after his son cut himself breaking the egg on the larger end. The differences between Big-Endians (those who broke their eggs at the larger end) and Little-Endians had given rise to "six rebellions ... wherein one Emperor lost his life, and another his crown". The Lilliputian religion says an egg should be broken on the convenient end, which is now interpreted by the Lilliputians as the smaller end. The Big-Endians gained favour in Blefuscu.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: The Big-Endian/Little-Endian controversy reflects, in a much simplified form, British quarrels over religion. Less than 200 years previously, England had been a Catholic (Big-Endian) country; but a series of reforms beginning in the 1530s under King Henry VIII (reigned 1509–1547), Edward VI (1547–1553), and Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) had converted most of the country to Protestantism (Little-Endianism), in the episcopalian form of the Church of England. At the same time, revolution and reform in Scotland (1560) had also converted that country to Presbyterian Protestantism, which led to fresh difficulties when England and Scotland were united under one ruler, James I (1603–1625).


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Religiously inspired revolts and rebellions followed, in which, indeed, one king, Charles I (1625–49) lost his life, and his grandson James II lost his crown and fled to France (1685–1688). Some of these conflicts were between Protestants and Catholics; others were between different branches of Protestantism. Swift does not clearly distinguish between these different kinds of religious strife.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Swift has his Lilliputian informant blame the "civil commotions" on the propaganda of the Emperor of Blefuscu, i.e. the King of France; this primarily reflects the encouragement given by King Louis XIV of France to James II in pursuit of his policies to advance the toleration of Catholicism in Great Britain. He adds that "when (the commotions) were quelled, the (Big-Endian) exiles always fled for refuge to that empire" (Blefuscu/France). This partially reflects the exile of King Charles II on the Continent (in France, Germany, the Spanish Netherlands, and the Dutch Republic) from 1651 to 1660, but more particularly the exile of the Catholic King James II from 1688–1701. James II was dead by the time Swift wrote "Gulliver's Travels", but his heir James Francis Edward Stuart, also Catholic, maintained his pretensions to the British throne from a court in France (primarily at Saint-Germain-en-Laye) until 1717, and both Jameses were regarded as a serious threat to the stability of the British monarchy until the end of the reign of George II. The court of the Pretender attracted those Jacobites, and their Tory sympathizers, whose political activity precluded them staying safely in Great Britain; notable among them was Swift's friend, the Anglican Bishop of Rochester Francis Atterbury, who was exiled to France in 1722.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Swift's Lilliputian claims that the machinations of "Big-Endian exiles" at the court of the Emperor of Blefuscu have brought about a continuous war between Lilliput and Blefuscu for "six and thirty moons" (Lilliputians calculate time in "moons", not years; their time-scale, while not one-twelfth the size of normal humans, appears to be somewhat faster, since the emperor was stated to be "past his prime" before he was thirty.) This is an allusion to the wars fought under King William III and Queen Anne against France under Louis XIV, the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713). In both cases, the claims of the exiled House of Stuart were marginal to other causes of war, but were an important propaganda point in Great Britain itself, as both James II and James Francis Edward were accused of allying with foreigners to force Catholicism on the British people.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: In the novel, Gulliver washes up on the shore of Lilliput and is captured by the inhabitants while asleep. He offers his services to the Emperor of Lilliput in his war against Blefuscu, and succeeds in capturing the (one-twelfth sized) Blefuscudian fleet. Despite a triumphant welcome, he soon finds himself at odds with the Emperor of Lilliput, as he declines to conquer the rest of Blefuscu for him and to force the Blefuscudians to adopt Little-Endianism.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Gulliver's position reflects the decision of the Tory government to withdraw from the War of the Spanish Succession. Britain's allies considered the important objects of the war to have been met, and that the Whigs' larger claims were excessive. The withdrawal was seen by the Whigs as a betrayal of British interests. Swift (a Tory) is here engaged in an apology.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Gulliver is, after further adventures, condemned as a traitor by the Council of Lilliput, and condemned to be blinded; he escapes his punishment by fleeing to Blefuscu. This condemnation parallels that issued to the chief ministers of the Tory government that had made peace with France, Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, who was impeached and imprisoned in the Tower of London from 1715 to 1717; and Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, who, after his political fall, received vague threats of capital punishment and fled to France in 1715, where he remained until 1723.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: In 1728, John Arbuthnot wrote "An account of the state of learning in the empire of Lilliput: Together with the history and character of Bullum the Emperor's Library-Keeper"; this purported to be transcribed from a treatise by Gulliver on the empire of Lilliput alluded to in chapter 4 of "Gulliver's Travels". Arbuthnot used this work to satirise Richard Bentley, master of Trinity College, Cambridge but also described the early history of Lilliput and Blefuscu. At one time (Gulliver is told), Blefuscu was a commonwealth and had its own language and an extensive literature. Lilliput, meanwhile, was divided among several petty kingdoms. The first emperor of Blefuscu attacked and subdued Lilliput, but later the Lilliputians won their independence and set up their own emperor.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: It has been pointed out that the long and vicious war which started after a disagreement about which was the best end to break an egg is an example of the narcissism of small differences, a term Sigmund Freud coined in the early 1900s.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: In 1946 T. H. White wrote "Mistress Masham's Repose", which describes the adventures of a girl, Maria, who discovers a group of Lilliputians on a tiny forgotten island in the lake of a ruinous estate in Northamptonshire.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: A modernised Lilliput is the setting of a 1958 sequel children's novel, "Castaways in Lilliput", by Henry Winterfeld. This book provides more geographical detail: other cities in addition to Mildendo include Plips (a major city and cathedral town), Wiggywack (a suburb of Mildendo and seat of the Island Council), Tottenham (on the west coast), and Allenbeck (at the mouth of a river on the west coast).


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Winterfeld also provides further details of Lilliputian history. The Emperor of Gulliver's time, Mully Ully Gue, is said to have reigned 1657–1746. (This contradicts Swift's account, in which the Emperor is only 28 years old and has reigned about seven years when Gulliver arrives in 1699.) His descendant, Alice, is the reigning Queen in the 1950s when three Australian children visit the island. The monetary system has apparently also been changed, the "sprug" of Swift's novel replaced by the "onze", equal to ten "dimelings" or 100 "bims". Technology has kept pace with the outside world, so the Lilliputians have trains, automobiles, helicopters, telephones, and telegraphs.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Winterfeld describes the flag of Lilliput as having blue and white stripes with a golden crown on a red field. These symbols are also painted on the police helicopters.


title: Lilliput and Blefuscu

text: Swift presents a number of Lilliputian words and phrases, and further states that the official languages of Lilliput and Blefuscu are about as far apart as typical European languages. Arbuthnot explains further that Blefuscu originally had its own language and an extensive literature, but during the period when it occupied Lilliput, the Blefuscudian language was much altered by contact with Lilliputian. Blefuscudian remained an old language of scholarship. In T. H. White's sequel, "Mistress Masham's Repose", the protagonist Maria studies the Lilliputian language from a book owned by her professor friend. This is a rare copy of Gulliver's 1735 treatise: "A General Description of the Empire of Lilliput, from its first Erection, through a long Series of Princes; with a Particular Account of their Wars and Politicks, Laws, Learning, & Religion, their Plants and Animals, their peculiar Manners and Customs, with other Matters very curious and useful, to which is added a Brief Vocabulary of their Language, with its English Correspondencies". In Winterfeld's sequel, English has become the official language, due to a decision of the Council of the Island in 1751.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The Soviet crewed lunar programs were a series of programs pursued by the Soviet Union to land humans on the Moon, in competition with the United States Apollo program. The Soviet government publicly denied participating in such a competition, but secretly pursued two programs in the 1960s: crewed lunar flyby missions using Soyuz 7K-L1 (Zond) spacecraft launched with the Proton-K rocket, and a crewed lunar landing using Soyuz 7K-LOK and LK spacecraft launched with the N1 rocket. Following the dual American successes of the first crewed lunar orbit on 24–25 December 1968 (Apollo 8) and the first Moon landing on July 20, 1969 (Apollo 11), and a series of catastrophic N1 failures, both Soviet programs were eventually brought to an end. The Proton-based Zond program was canceled in 1970, and the N1-L3 program was "de facto" terminated in 1974 and officially canceled in 1976. Details of both Soviet programs were kept secret until 1990 when the government allowed them to be published under the policy of "glasnost".


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: As early as 1961, the Soviet leadership had made public pronouncements about landing a man on the Moon and establishing a lunar base; however, serious plans were not made until several years later. Sergei Korolev, the senior Soviet rocket engineer, was more interested in launching a heavy orbital station and in crewed flights to Mars and Venus. With this in mind, Korolev began the development of the super-heavy N-1 rocket with a 75-ton payload.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: In its preliminary Moon plans, Korolev's design bureau initially promoted the Soyuz A-B-C circumlunar complex (A-B-V in Russian) concept under which a two-crew spacecraft would rendezvous with other components in Earth orbit to assemble a lunar flyby excursion vehicle. The components would then be delivered by the proven middle-sized R-7 rocket. While developing the N1, since 1963, Korolev began to plan a Moon landing mission using two launches and docking. Later Korolev managed to increase the payload of the N1 to 92-93 tons (by switching to liquid hydrogen in the upper stage(s) and increasing the number of engines in its first stage from 24 to 30), providing enough power to accomplish the mission with a single launch.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Another main space design bureau, headed by Vladimir Chelomei, proposed a competing cislunar orbiting mission using a heavy UR-500K rocket (later renamed the Proton rocket) and a two-crew LK-1 spacecraft. Later, Chelomei also proposed a Moon landing program with a super-heavy UR-700 rocket, an LK-700 lunar lander, and an LK-3 spacecraft.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The R-56 which was developed between April 1962 and June 1964 was considered for involvement with the lunar program.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: In the early stage of the Soviet and US crewed lunar program, Kennedy proposed before the United Nations a joint Moon program, a proposal which was considered by Khrushchev. The proposal disappeared though with Kennedy's assassination two months later, but nevertheless foreshadowed the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which enabled subsequently the Shuttle-Mir program and the ISS.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The Soviet government issued a response to the American Apollo challenge after three years. According to the first government decree about the Soviet crewed Moon programs (Decree 655-268, ' "On Work on the Exploration of the Moon and Mastery of Space" '), adopted in August 1964, Chelomei was instructed to develop a Moon flyby program with a projected first flight by the end of 1966, and Korolev was instructed to develop the Moon landing program with a first flight by the end of 1967.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Following the change from Nikita Khrushchev to Leonid Brezhnev in 1964, the Soviet government in September 1965 assigned the flyby program to Korolev, who redesigned the cislunar mission to use his own Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft and Chelomei's Proton rocket.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Korolev organized full-scale development of both programs, but died after surgery in January 1966. According to a government decree of February 1967, the first crewed flyby was scheduled for mid-1967, and the first crewed landing for the end of 1968.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Launched by a 3-staged Proton rocket, the L1 (Zond) was a spacecraft from the Soyuz family and consisted of two or three modified modules of the main craft Soyuz 7K-OK with a total weight of 5.5 tons. The Apollo orbital spacecraft (command ship) for the lunar flyby also had two modules (command and service) but was five times heavier, carried a crew of three and entered lunar orbit, whereas the L1 (Zond) performed a flight around the Moon and came back on a return trajectory. In September 1968 Zond 5 carried the first Earth lifeforms, including two tortoises, to travel around the Moon and return safely. Planned for 8 December 1968 for priority over the US, a first crewed mission of the L1 (Zond) was canceled due to the insufficient readiness of the capsule and rocket. After Apollo 8 won the first (lunar orbit) phase of the Moon Race at the end of 1968, the Soviet leadership lost political interest in the L1 (Zond) program. A few reserve units of L1 (Zond) made unpiloted flights, but by the end of 1970, this program was canceled.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The crewed landing plan adopted a similar method to the single launch and lunar orbit rendezvous of the Apollo project.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: For mission safety, weeks before the crewed mission, an LK-R uncrewed L3 complex and two Lunokhod automated rovers would be sent to the Moon, to work as radio beacons for crewed LK, with the LK-R used as a reserve escape craft. The Lunokhods were also equipped with manual controls for the cosmonauts, both for transfer to LK-R in necessity and for regular research.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The N1 rocket would then carry the L3 Moon expedition complex, with two spacecraft (LOK and LK) and two (Block G and Block D) boosters.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: A variant of the Soyuz craft, the "Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl" (LOK) command module, would carry two men, with three modules like the regular Soyuz 7K-OK, but was heavier by a few tons. The 7K-OK was half the mass of the three-crew Apollo orbital command ship. The "Lunniy Korabl" (LK) accommodated only one cosmonaut, so in the Soviet plan, only one cosmonaut would land on the Moon. The mass of the LK was 40% of the mass of the Apollo lunar lander.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The L3 complex to be placed in LEO by the N1 was 93 tons (compared to Saturn V's 137 tons). The mass of the LOK and LK was 40% of the Apollo complex, but was equivalent to the L3 complex without Block G.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The booster for the LEO toward the Moon for the Apollo vehicle was provided by the last stage of the Saturn V, while for the Block D, LOK and LK, this was to be provided by Block G of the same L3 complex.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: During the L3 complex's journey to the Moon, there would be no need to undock and re-dock the orbital and landing craft as was done in Apollo, because the cosmonaut would transfer from the LOK to LK by a 'spacewalk'. On the Apollo missions, the transfer was done using an internal passage.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Block D was to slow the LOK and LK into lunar orbit, while with Apollo this phase was undertaken by firing the engine on the service module to slow the complex and enter lunar orbit since the Apollo complex traveled with the Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) facing back towards the Earth.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Once in orbit, the LK with Block D would separate from the LOK and descend toward the surface of the Moon using the Block D engine. After Block D exhausted its fuel, the LK was to separate and complete landing using its own Blok E engine.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: On the Moon, the cosmonaut would take Moon walks, use Lunokhods, collect rocks, and plant the Soviet flag.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: After a few hours on the lunar surface, the LK's engine would fire again using its landing structure as a launch pad, as with Apollo. To save weight, the engine used for landing would blast the LK back to lunar orbit for an automated docking with the LOK. The cosmonaut then would spacewalk back to the LOK carrying rock samples.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Korolev's death in 1966, along with various technical and administrative reasons, as well as a lack of financial support, resulted in both programs being delayed.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: In 1966, two cosmonaut training groups were formed. One group was commanded by Vladimir Komarov and included Yuri Gagarin, and was to prepare for qualification flights of the Soyuz in Earth orbit and a Proton-launched cis-lunar mission (Gagarin, Nikolayev, Komarov, Bykovsky, Khrunov; Engineer-Cosmonauts: Gorbatko, Grechko, Sevastyanov, Kubasov, Volkov). Komarov later died in the Soyuz 1 spaceflight when his parachute malfunctioned causing his capsule to smash into the earth at high speed. The second group was led by Alexei Leonov and concentrated on the landing mission (Commanders: Leonov, Popovich, Belyayev, Volynov, Klimuk; Engineer-cosmonauts: Makarov, Voronov, Rukavishnikov, Artyukhin). As a result, Leonov has the strongest claim to have been the Soviets' first choice for the first man on the Moon.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: After Komarov's death in Soyuz 1 in 1967, Gagarin was taken out of training and the groups were restructured. Despite the Soyuz 1 setback, the Soviets successfully rehearsed the automated docking of two uncrewed Soyuz craft in Earth orbit in 1968 and with the crewed Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 joint mission in early 1969 tested the other key mission elements.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: After the US Moon landing in 1969, the justification for the Soviet lunar landing program largely evaporated, although development and testing continued into the early 1970s. In 1970–1971 the LK was ready after three uncrewed test flights in LEO (Kosmos 379, Kosmos 398, Kosmos 434). The LOK launched once (Kosmos 382 7K-L1E, a dummy of 7K-LOK). The Krechet lunar spacesuit and support systems were tested.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: Four N1 test launches in 1969 (twice), 1971, and 1972 were failures, despite improvements after each crash. The second launch, on 3 July 1969 (an attempt to upstage Apollo 11 by 13 days), resulted in the destruction of the rocket and the entire launch complex, which delayed the N1-L3 program for two years.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: In an automatic Moon flyby, these first two launches of the N1 carried the 7K-L1S spacecraft (modified 7K-L1). The dummy 7K-LOK (7K-L1E) and regular 7K-LOK with dummy LKs were used in the third and fourth launches.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The complete L3 lunar expedition complex with the 7K-LOK and LK for the Moon flyby and landing was prepared for a fifth launch, using a modified N1 rocket in August 1974. If this mission and the next had been successful, it would have led to the decision to launch up to five Soviet crewed N1-L3 expeditions in 1976–1980. To gain technical and scientific interest in the program, the modified multi-launched N1F-L3M missions were planned to have significantly more time on the Moon's surface than Apollo.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: However, N1-L3 (as well as N1F-L3M) program was canceled in May 1974, and Soviet crewed space efforts subsequently concentrated on the development of space stations and on several designs and ground preparatory processes for a Mars mission, which continues to the present day, but has unclear objectives.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: A Moon base, Zvezda, that was proposed later, developed mockups of expedition vehicles and surface modules, and "Vulkan-LEK" project were not adopted for economic reasons. As some recompense and as a replacement for the crewed landing program, the Soviets fulfilled a program of automated delivery of lunar soil and Lunokhod automated Moon rovers.


title: Soviet crewed lunar programs

text: The launch pad and MIK of N1 were redesigned for the Energia-Buran shuttle program. Five LKs and three LOKs remain, at least, with some kept in the designer's and producer's company museums. Nearly 150 engines produced for first stages of N1F were kept by the manufacturer (Kuznetsov Design Bureau), then sold for use on other launchers beginning around 2000.


title: Blackmore's Night

text: Blackmore's Night is a British-American neo-medieval folk rock band formed in 1997, consisting mainly of Ritchie Blackmore (acoustic guitar, hurdy gurdy, mandola, mandolin, nyckelharpe, and electric guitar) and Candice Night (lead vocals, lyricist, and woodwinds). Their lineup has seen many changes over the years; Blackmore and Night have been the only two constant members. They have released eleven studio albums. Their early releases were mostly acoustic and imitated early music, but eventually Blackmore's Night started using more electric guitars and other modern instruments, as well as performing folk-rearranged cover versions of pop and rock songs.


title: Blackmore's Night

text: Candice Night was a Rainbow fan, and first encountered Ritchie Blackmore to ask him for an autograph in 1989, while she was working for a local New York radio station. The two started living together in 1991, and discovered they both had a passionate interest in Renaissance music.


title: Blackmore's Night

text: During the reformed Rainbow's recording of the album "Stranger in Us All" in 1995, on which Night contributed some of the lyrics and backing harmony vocals, the duo were already gearing up their debut album. In 1997, the project started as being a pun of their own names, which would consist of themselves plus session musicians.


title: Blackmore's Night

text: Their debut album "Shadow of the Moon" was a musical success and featured Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull on flute for the song "Play Minstrel Play". In subsequent albums, particularly "Fires at Midnight", there was an increased incorporation of rock guitar into the music, whilst maintaining a folk rock direction. Over time, Night has increasingly participated instrumentally as well as singing the vocals, and is competent in a wide variety of Renaissance instruments.


title: Blackmore's Night

text: The group performs at Renaissance fairs and Renaissance festivals, as well as in stand-alone concert tours in appropriate venues including 'castle tours' of Europe, where they perform in historic surroundings for an audience dressed largely in period costume. The duo has been successful enough to inspire a number of international tribute bands including: "Renaissance Night", the Italian "Morning Star," The "Midnight" and "Elflore".


title: Blackmore's Night

text: In 2006, Night performed a duet with Andi Deris on Helloween's "Light the Universe", which was released as a single in certain countries and is available on their album "", released in the same year.


title: Blackmore's Night

text: On 27 June 2008, the duo released its seventh studio album called "Secret Voyage", a mix of medieval-sounding tracks and some contemporary ones. In addition to some covers of some traditional folk music (“Locked Within the Crystal Ball" is from the fourteenth century) and some originals, Blackmore's Night also performed a cover of a Rainbow song (“Rainbow Eyes”) and an Elvis Presley cover ("Can't Help Falling in Love").


title: Blackmore's Night

text: A new album titled "Autumn Sky" was released at the end of 2010 in Europe and in 2011 in the U.S. This was followed by "Dancer and the Moon", in 2013, an album featuring covers of songs by Randy Newman ("I Think It's Going to Rain Today"), Uriah Heep ("Lady in Black") and another Rainbow song (“Temple Of The King”, originally from the album "Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow").


title: Blackmore's Night

text: Their album, "All Our Yesterdays", was released on 18 September 2015. Their latest studio album, "Nature's Light" was released worldwide on 12 March 2021.


title: Blackmore's Night

text: On 5 October 2008, Night and Blackmore were married after 19 years together. This is the fourth marriage for Blackmore. Autumn Esmerelda Blackmore was born on 27 May 2010. Their son Rory Dartanyan was born on 7 February 2012.


title: Viking sword

text: The Viking Age sword (also Viking sword) or Carolingian sword is the type of sword prevalent in Western and Northern Europe during the Early Middle Ages.


title: Viking sword

text: The Viking Age or Carolingian-era sword developed in the 8th century from the Merovingian sword more specifically, the Frankish production of swords in the 6th to 7th century and during the 11th to 12th century in turn gave rise to the knightly sword of the Romanesque period.


title: Viking sword

text: Although popularly called "Viking sword", this type of sword was produced in the Frankish Empire during the Carolingian era. The association of the name "Viking" with these swords is due to the disappearance of grave goods in Christian Francia in the 8th century, due to which the bulk of sword blades of Frankish manufacture of this period were found in pagan burials of Viking Age Scandinavia, imported by trade, ransom payment or looting, while continental European finds are mostly limited to stray finds in riverbeds.


title: Viking sword

text: Swords of the 8th to 10th centuries are also termed "Carolingian swords", while swords of the late Viking Age and the beginning High Middle Ages (late 10th to early 12th centuries) blend into the category of Norman swords or the early development of the knightly sword.


title: Viking sword

text: During the Viking age, the Carolingian Empire was central for advanced swordswithing. The area produced the best quality weapons found in Central and Northern Europe.


title: Viking sword

text: During the reign of Charlemagne, the price of a sword (a "spata") with scabbard was set at seven solidi (totaling about US$1300) ("Lex Ribuaria").


title: Viking sword

text: Swords were still comparatively expensive weapons, although not as exclusive as during the Merovingian period, and in Charlemagne's capitularies, only members of the cavalry, who could afford to own and maintain a warhorse, were required to be equipped with swords.


title: Viking sword

text: Regino's Chronicle suggests that by the end of the 9th century, the sword was seen as the principal weapon of the cavalry.


title: Viking sword

text: There are very few references to Carolingian-era sword production, apart from a reference to "emundatores vel politores" present in the workshops of the Abbey of Saint Gall. Two men sharpening swords, one using a grindstone the other a file, are shown in the Utrecht Psalter (fol. 35v).


title: Viking sword

text: Because grave goods were no longer deposited in Francia in the 8th century, continental finds are mostly limited to stray finds in riverbeds (where anaerobic conditions favoured the preservation of the steel), and most extant examples of Carolingian swords are from graves from northern or eastern cultures where pagan burial customs were still in effect.


title: Viking sword

text: Pattern welding fell out of use in the 9th century, as higher quality steel became available. Better steel also allowed the production of narrower blades, and the swords of the 9th century have more pronounced tapering than their 8th-century predecessors, shifting the point of balance towards the hilt.


title: Viking sword

text: Swords were very costly to make, and a sign of high status. Owning a sword was a matter of high honour. Persons of status might own ornately decorated swords with silver accents and inlays. Most Viking warriors would own a sword as one raid was usually enough to afford a good blade. Most freemen would own a sword with "goðar", "jarls" and sometimes richer freemen owning much more ornately decorated swords. The poor farmers would use an axe or spear instead but after a couple of raids they would then have enough to buy a sword. One sword mentioned in the "Laxdæla saga" was valued at half a crown, which would correspond to the value of 16 milk-cows. Constructing such weapons was a highly specialized endeavour and many sword-blades were imported from foreign lands, such as the Rhineland. Swords could take up to a month to forge and were of such high value that they were passed on from generation to generation. Often, the older the sword, the more valuable it became. Local craftsmen often added their own elaborately decorated hilts, and many swords were given names, such as Leg-biter and Gold-hilt.


title: Viking sword

text: As mentioned above, a sword was so valued in Norse society that good blades were prized by successive generations of warriors. There is even some evidence from Viking burials for the deliberate and possibly ritual "killing" of swords, which involved the blade being bent so that it was unusable. Because Vikings were often buried with their weapons, the "killing" of swords may have served two functions. A ritualistic function in retiring a weapon with a warrior, and a practical function in deterring any grave robbers from disturbing the burial in order to get one of these costly weapons. Indeed, archaeological finds of the bent and brittle pieces of metal sword remains testify to the regular burial of Vikings with weapons, as well as the habitual "killing" of swords. The Swords were not exclusive to the Vikings, but rather was used throughout Europe.


title: Viking sword

text: The Frankish swords often had pommels shaped in a series of three or five rounded lobes. This was a native Frankish development which did not exist prior to the 8th century, and the design is frequently represented in the pictorial art of the period, e.g. in the Stuttgart Psalter, Utrecht Psalter, Lothar Gospels and Bern Psychomachia manuscripts, as well as in the wall frescoes in the church in Mals, South Tyrol.


title: Viking sword

text: Likewise, the custom of inlaid inscriptions in the blades is Frankish innovation dating to the reign of Charlemagne, notably in the Ulfberht group of blades, but continued into the high medieval period and peaking in popularity in the 12th century.


title: Viking sword

text: While blade inscriptions become more common over the Viking Age, the custom of hilt decorations in precious metals, inherited from the Merovingian sword and widespread during the 8th and 9th centuries, is in decline over the course of the 10th century. Most swords made in the later 10th century in what was now the Holy Roman Empire, while still conforming to the "Viking sword" type morphologically, have plain steel hilts.


title: Viking sword

text: The distribution of Frankish blades throughout Scandinavia and as far east as Volga Bulgaria attest to the considerable importance of Frankish arms exports, even though Carolingian kings attempted to prevent the export of weapons to potential enemies; in 864, Charles the Bald set the death penalty on selling weapons to the Vikings. Ibn Fadlan in the 10th century notes explicitly that the Volga Vikings carried Frankish swords.


title: Viking sword

text: Foreign-made, specifically Frankish, weapons and armour played a special role in Norse society. Norsemen attained them either through trade (an extension of gift-giving in Norse society) or as plunder. Therefore, their possession and display by any individual would signify their station in the social hierarchy and any political allegiances they had. One example of an exchange of weapons between the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons occurred in 795 when Charlemagne exchanged weapons with the Anglo-Saxon king Offa of Mercia.


title: Viking sword

text: Scandinavian affinity towards foreign arms and armour during the Viking Age had an eminently practical aspect. Norse weapon designs were obsolete and sources of iron within Scandinavia were of poor quality. Many of the most important Viking weapons were highly ornate—decorated lavishly with gold and silver. Weapons adorned as such served large religious and social functions. These precious metals were not produced in Scandinavia and they too would have been imported. Once in Scandinavia, the precious metals would have been inlaid in the pommels and blades of weapons creating geometric patterns, depictions of animals, and (later) Christian symbols.


title: Viking sword

text: During the mid-9th century, there was an influx of these high-quality weapons into Scandinavia, and Frankish arms became the standard for all Vikings. As Ahmad ibn Fadlan observed in his account of his journey to Russia, every Viking carried a "sword of the Frankish type". The Franks attempted to limit the Vikings' use of weapons and armour produced in Francia—fearing that they would eventually face equally armed opponents. Chapter 10 of the "Capitulare Bononiense" of 811 made it illegal for any clerical functionary to supply swords or armour to non-Frankish individuals. Laws like this were enacted throughout Francia. Ultimately, in 864, King Charles the Bald of West Francia made the practice punishable by death. Some scholars have proposed that such laws proved so effective at stemming the flow of Frankish weapons that they initiated the practice of raiding for which Vikings became notorious.


title: Viking sword

text: Carolingian scabbards were made of wood and leather. Scabbard decorations are depicted in several manuscripts (Stuttgart Psalter, Utrecht Psalter, Vivian Bible). A number of miniatures also show the system of suspension of the sword by means of the sword-belt. While the scabbards and belts themselves are almost never preserved, their metal mounts have been found in Scandinavian silver hoards and in Croatian graves. A complete set seems to have included two to three oval or half-oval mounts, one large strap-end, a belt buckle and a trefoil mount. Their arrangement on the sword-belt has been reconstructed by Menghin (1973).


title: Viking sword

text: Petersen (1919): Devised the original hilt typology of 26 types that is still widely used across Europe for classifying and dating Viking swords. Based on about 1,700 finds of Viking swords in Norway this typology remains the most commonly used. Petersen's types are identified by capital letters A–Z. Petersen listed a total of 110 specimens found in Norway. Of these, 40 were double-edged, 67 were single-edged and 3 indeterminate.


title: Viking sword

text: R. E. M. Wheeler (1927): Created a simplified typology of sword hilts based on finds from Britain, combining Petersen's hilt typology with a blade typology, in nine types labelled I to IX.


title: Viking sword

text: Oakeshott (1960): Added two more types to Wheelers typology bridging the gap between the Viking Age and the later mediaeval sword.


title: Viking sword

text: Geibig (1991): introduced an additional typology based on blade morphology (types 1–14) and a typology of pommel shapes (types 1–17, with subtypes), focussing on swords of the 8th to 12th centuries found within the boundaries of East Francia (as such including the transitional types between the "Viking" and the "knightly" sword).


title: Viking sword

text: Oakeshott (1991): Mainly dealing with sword from the post Viking-age period. He classifies all of the Viking Age swords as his type X.


title: Viking sword

text: Jakobsson (1992): has recently published a number of maps detailing the distribution patterns of Petersen's sword hilts across Europe. Jokobsson's conclusions are discussed in Ian Peirce's 'Swords from the Viking Age'


title: Viking sword

text: Peirce (2002): Oakeshott provides an overview of typologies and a discussion on inscribed blades. Jones also provides an overview of hilt and blade classifications, provides a summary of Jakobsson's and Geibig's work and provides an updated typology date range chart. Peirce provides a catalogue of examples, detailing 85 complete or almost complete swords and comparing them to Petersen's discoveries.


title: Viking sword

text: An important aspect in the development of the European sword between the early and high medieval periods is the availability of high-quality steel.


title: Viking sword

text: Migration period as well as early medieval sword blades were primarily produced by the technique of pattern welding, also known as "false Damascus" steel.


title: Viking sword

text: Blooms of high-quality steel large enough to produce an entire sword blade were only rarely available in Europe at the time, mostly via import from Central Asia, where a crucible steel industry began to establish itself from c. the 8th century.


title: Viking sword

text: Higher quality swords made after AD 1000 are increasingly likely to have crucible steel blades. The group of Ulfberht swords includes a wide spectrum of steel and production method. One example from a 10th-century grave in Nemilany, Moravia, has a pattern-welded core with welded-on hardened cutting edges. Another example appears to have been made from high-quality hypoeutectoid steel possibly imported from Central Asia.


title: John Romita Jr.

text: John Salvatore Romita (; born August 17, 1956), known professionally as John Romita Jr., is an American comics artist best known for his extensive work for Marvel Comics from the 1970s to the 2010s. He is the son of artist John Romita Sr.


title: John Romita Jr.

text: John Romita Jr. is the son of Virginia (Bruno) and comic book artist John Romita Sr., one of the signature "Spider-Man" artists since the 1960s. He studied advertising art and design at Farmingdale State College in East Farmingdale, New York, graduating in 1976.


title: John Romita Jr.

text: Romita Jr.'s first contribution to Marvel Comics was at the age of 13 with the creation of the Prowler in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #78 (Nov. 1969). Romita Jr. began his career at Marvel UK, doing sketches for covers of reprints. His American debut was with a six-page story entitled "Chaos at the Coffee Bean!" in "The Amazing Spider-Man Annual" #11 (1977).


title: John Romita Jr.

text: Romita's early popularity began with his run on "Iron Man" with writer David Michelinie and artist Bob Layton which began in 1978. The creative team introduced several supporting characters, including Tony Stark's bodyguard girlfriend Bethany Cabe and rival industrialist Justin Hammer. In the early 1980s, he had his first regular run on the series "The Amazing Spider-Man" and also was the artist for the launch of the "Dazzler" series. He and writer Dennis O'Neil introduced Madame Web in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #210 (Nov. 1980) and Hydro-Man in issue #212 (Jan. 1981). In 1982, Romita Jr. drew "Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions" the first limited series published by Marvel Comics. Working with writer Roger Stern on "The Amazing Spider-Man", he co-created the character Hobgoblin. From 1983 to 1986 he had a run on the "Uncanny X-Men" with Dan Green and author Chris Claremont and co-created Forge. Romita has downplayed the significance of his run, saying that few of the characters introduced during this time were co-created by him and that his style has had no discernible influence on succeeding X-Men artists. His relationship with Claremont was rather cool at the time, as Claremont did not like his work as much as the artists he had previously worked with. He would return for a second run on "Uncanny X-Men "in 1993, which he said he liked better "because of getting to work with [writer] Scott Lobdell."