title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: The components known as "Serial Attached SCSI Expanders" (SAS Expanders) facilitate communication between large numbers of SAS devices. Expanders contain two or more external expander-ports. Each expander device contains at least one SAS Management Protocol target port for management and may contain SAS devices itself. For example, an expander may include a Serial SCSI Protocol target port for access to a peripheral device. An expander is "not necessary" to interface a SAS initiator and target but allows a single initiator to communicate with more SAS/SATA targets. A useful analogy: one can regard an expander as akin to a network switch in a network, which connects multiple systems using a single switch port.


title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: SAS 1 defined two types of expander; however, the SAS-2.0 standard has dropped the distinction between the two, as it created unnecessary topological limitations with no realized benefit:


title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: Direct routing allows a device to identify devices directly connected to it. Table routing identifies devices connected to the expanders connected to a device's own PHY. Subtractive routing is used when you are not able to find the devices in the sub-branch you belong to. This passes the request to a different branch altogether.


title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: Expanders exist to allow more complex interconnect topologies. Expanders assist in link-switching (as opposed to packet-switching) end-devices (initiators or targets). They may locate an end-device either directly (when the end-device is connected to it), via a routing table (a mapping of end-device IDs and the expander the link should be switched to downstream to route towards that ID), or when those methods fail, via subtractive routing: the link is routed to a single expander connected to a subtractive routing port. If there is no expander connected to a subtractive port, the end-device cannot be reached.


title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: Expanders with no PHYs configured as subtractive act as fanout expanders and can connect to any number of other expanders. Expanders with subtractive PHYs may only connect to two other expanders at a maximum, and in that case they must connect to one expander via a subtractive port and the other via a non-subtractive port.


title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: SAS-1.1 topologies built with expanders generally contain one root node in a SAS domain with the one exception case being topologies that contain two expanders connected via a subtractive-to-subtractive port. If it exists, the root node is the expander, which is not connected to another expander via a subtractive port. Therefore, if a fanout expander exists in the configuration, it must be the domain's root node. The root node contains routes for all end devices connected to the domain. Note that with the advent in SAS-2.0 of table-to-table routing and new rules for end-to-end zoning, more complex topologies built upon SAS-2.0 rules do not contain a single root node.


title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: SAS connectors are much smaller than traditional parallel SCSI connectors. Commonly, SAS provides for point data transfer speeds up to 12 Gbit/s.


title: Serial Attached SCSI

text: "Nearline SAS" (abbreviated to "NL-SAS", and sometimes called "midline SAS") drives have a SAS interface, but head, media, and rotational speed of traditional enterprise-class SATA drives, so they cost less than other SAS drives. When compared to SATA, NL-SAS drives have the following benefits:


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: Mr Umar Ata Bandial (Urdu: عمرعطا بندیال; born 17 September 1958) is a Pakistani jurist who currently serves as the 28th Chief Justice of Pakistan . His appointment as the new Chief Justice was approved by President Dr. Arif Alvi on 13 January 2022, after which he assumed his office on 2 February 2022.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: He has been a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan since 17 June 2014. Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, he served as a Justice of Lahore High Court from 1 June 2012 to 16 June 2014.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: Justice mr Bandial will serve as the Chief Justice of Pakistan for one year, six months, and 25 days from 2 February 2022, until his retirement on 16 September 2023.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: In 1973, Justice Bandial received his Senior Cambridge certificate from St Mary's Academy, Rawalpindi. He then enrolled in Aitchison College, Lahore, for his Higher Senior Cambridge certificate, which he received in 1975. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from Columbia University in 1979 and followed this with a Law Tripos degree from the University of Cambridge in 1981. He qualified as a Barrister-at-Law from Lincoln's Inn, London.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: He joined the Lahore High Court as an advocate in 1983. He also taught torts law and contract law at the Punjab University Law College in Lahore until 1987, after which he served on its Graduate Studies Committee. He then was made a Judge of the Lahore High Court. After a few years, he became a Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: He was elevated as a Judge of the Lahore High Court on 4 December 2004. He was one of the judges who refused to take an oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order, preferring to resign instead. He was restored as a LHC judge as a result of the Lawyers' Movement.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: As a judge of the Lahore High Court, he presided over cases related to constitutional rights, civil and commercial disputes, and public interest. On 1 June 2012, he was appointed as the 41st Chief Justice of Lahore High Court. He served at that post until his appointment as a Supreme Court judge on 16 June 2014.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: Justice Bandial's appointment as the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) was approved by President Arif Alvi on 13 January 2022. He was sworn in on 2 February 2022, in a ceremony at Aiwan-e-Sadr.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: In his first month, he initiated reforms in various organs of the Supreme Court, including the Case Management System, to ensure provision of speedy justice. He reorganized the bodies that dealt with administrative and judicial powers, including the building committee, record enrolment committee, Supreme Court research affairs branch, and law clerk programme. He appointed Justices Qazi Faez Isa, Sardar Tariq Masood, Ijazul Ahsan, Mazhar Alam, and Sajjad Ali Shah as the monitoring judges of the provincial anti-terrorism courts of Balochistan, Islamabad, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh, respectively.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: As the CJP, Justice Bandial was elected as chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, Judicial Commission of Pakistan, and Law and Justice Commission. The structure of these three bodies was changed completely.


title: Umar Ata Bandial

text: In his first month as CJP, the Supreme Court decided a record 1,761 cases in an effort to address the issue of pendency. Senior lawyers noted the discipline in the fixation of cases and formation of benches.


title: Chromophore

text: The color that is seen by our eyes is the one not absorbed by the reflecting object within a certain wavelength spectrum of visible light. The chromophore is a region in the molecule where the energy difference between two separate molecular orbitals falls within the range of the visible spectrum. Visible light that hits the chromophore can thus be absorbed by exciting an electron from its ground state into an excited state. In biological molecules that serve to capture or detect light energy, the chromophore is the moiety that causes a conformational change in the molecule when hit by light.


title: Chromophore

text: Just like how two adjacent p-orbitals in a molecule will form a pi-bond, three or more adjacent p-orbitals in a molecule can form a conjugated pi-system. In a conjugated pi-system, electrons are able to capture certain photons as the electrons resonate along a certain distance of p-orbitals - similar to how a radio antenna detects photons along its length. Typically, the more conjugated (longer) the pi-system is, the longer the wavelength of photon can be captured. In other words, with every added adjacent double bond we see in a molecule diagram, we can predict the system will be progressively more likely to appear yellow to our eyes as it is less likely to absorb yellow light and more likely to absorb red light. ("Conjugated systems of fewer than eight conjugated double bonds absorb only in the ultraviolet region and are colorless to the human eye", "Compounds that are blue or green typically do not rely on conjugated double bonds alone.")


title: Chromophore

text: In the conjugated chromophores, the electrons jump between energy levels that are extended pi orbitals, created by electron clouds like those in aromatic systems. Common examples include retinal (used in the eye to detect light), various food colorings, fabric dyes (azo compounds), pH indicators, lycopene, β-carotene, and anthocyanins. Various factors in a chromophore's structure go into determining at what wavelength region in a spectrum the chromophore will absorb. Lengthening or extending a conjugated system with more unsaturated (multiple) bonds in a molecule will tend to shift absorption to longer wavelengths. Woodward–Fieser rules can be used to approximate ultraviolet-visible maximum absorption wavelength in organic compounds with conjugated pi-bond systems.


title: Chromophore

text: Some of these are metal complex chromophores, which contain a metal in a coordination complex with ligands. Examples are chlorophyll, which is used by plants for photosynthesis and hemoglobin, the oxygen transporter in the blood of vertebrate animals. In these two examples, a metal is complexed at the center of a tetrapyrrole macrocycle ring: the metal being iron in the heme group (iron in a porphyrin ring) of hemoglobin, or magnesium complexed in a chlorin-type ring in the case of chlorophyll. The highly conjugated pi-bonding system of the macrocycle ring absorbs visible light. The nature of the central metal can also influence the absorption spectrum of the metal-macrocycle complex or properties such as excited state lifetime. The tetrapyrrole moiety in organic compounds which is not macrocyclic but still has a conjugated pi-bond system still acts as a chromophore. Examples of such compounds include bilirubin and urobilin, which exhibit a yellow color.


title: Chromophore

text: An auxochrome is a functional group of atoms attached to the chromophore which modifies the ability of the chromophore to absorb light, altering the wavelength or intensity of the absorption.


title: Chromophore

text: Halochromism occurs when a substance changes color as the pH changes. This is a property of pH indicators, whose molecular structure changes upon certain changes in the surrounding pH. This change in structure affects a chromophore in the pH indicator molecule. For example, phenolphthalein is a pH indicator whose structure changes as pH changes as shown in the following table:


title: Chromophore

text: In a pH range of about 0-8, the molecule has three aromatic rings all bonded to a tetrahedral sp hybridized carbon atom in the middle which does not make the π-bonding in the aromatic rings conjugate. Because of their limited extent, the aromatic rings only absorb light in the ultraviolet region, and so the compound appears colorless in the 0-8 pH range. However, as the pH increases beyond 8.2, that central carbon becomes part of a double bond becoming sp hybridized and leaving a p orbital to overlap with the π-bonding in the rings. This makes the three rings conjugate together to form an extended chromophore absorbing longer wavelength visible light to show a fuchsia color. At pH ranges outside 0-12, other molecular structure changes result in other color changes; see Phenolphthalein details.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Hebbian theory is a neuroscientific theory claiming that an increase in synaptic efficacy arises from a presynaptic cell's repeated and persistent stimulation of a postsynaptic cell. It is an attempt to explain synaptic plasticity, the adaptation of brain neurons during the learning process. It was introduced by Donald Hebb in his 1949 book "The Organization of Behavior." The theory is also called Hebb's rule, Hebb's postulate, and cell assembly theory. Hebb states it as follows:


title: Hebbian theory

text: Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity (or "trace") tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability. ... When an axon of cell "A" is near enough to excite a cell "B" and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that "A"’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing "B", is increased.


title: Hebbian theory

text: The theory is often summarized as "Cells that fire together wire together." However, Hebb emphasized that cell "A" needs to "take part in firing" cell "B", and such causality can occur only if cell "A" fires just before, not at the same time as, cell "B". This aspect of causation in Hebb's work foreshadowed what is now known about "spike-timing-dependent plasticity", which requires temporal precedence.


title: Hebbian theory

text: The theory attempts to explain associative or "Hebbian learning", in which simultaneous activation of cells leads to pronounced increases in synaptic strength between those cells. It also provides a biological basis for errorless learning methods for education and memory rehabilitation. In the study of neural networks in cognitive function, it is often regarded as the neuronal basis of unsupervised learning.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Hebbian theory concerns how neurons might connect themselves to become engrams. Hebb's theories on the form and function of cell assemblies can be understood from the following:


title: Hebbian theory

text: The general idea is an old one, that any two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend to become 'associated' so that activity in one facilitates activity in the other.


title: Hebbian theory

text: When one cell repeatedly assists in firing another, the axon of the first cell develops synaptic knobs (or enlarges them if they already exist) in contact with the soma of the second cell.


title: Hebbian theory

text: [D. Alan Allport] posits additional ideas regarding cell assembly theory and its role in forming engrams, along the lines of the concept of auto-association, described as follows:


title: Hebbian theory

text: If the inputs to a system cause the same pattern of activity to occur repeatedly, the set of active elements constituting that pattern will become increasingly strongly interassociated. That is, each element will tend to turn on every other element and (with negative weights) to turn off the elements that do not form part of the pattern. To put it another way, the pattern as a whole will become 'auto-associated'. We may call a learned (auto-associated) pattern an engram.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Work in the laboratory of Eric Kandel has provided evidence for the involvement of Hebbian learning mechanisms at synapses in the marine gastropod "Aplysia californica". Experiments on Hebbian synapse modification mechanisms at the central nervous system synapses of vertebrates are much more difficult to control than are experiments with the relatively simple peripheral nervous system synapses studied in marine invertebrates. Much of the work on long-lasting synaptic changes between vertebrate neurons (such as long-term potentiation) involves the use of non-physiological experimental stimulation of brain cells. However, some of the physiologically relevant synapse modification mechanisms that have been studied in vertebrate brains do seem to be examples of Hebbian processes. One such study reviews results from experiments that indicate that long-lasting changes in synaptic strengths can be induced by physiologically relevant synaptic activity working through both Hebbian and non-Hebbian mechanisms.


title: Hebbian theory

text: From the point of view of artificial neurons and artificial neural networks, Hebb's principle can be described as a method of determining how to alter the weights between model neurons. The weight between two neurons increases if the two neurons activate simultaneously, and reduces if they activate separately. Nodes that tend to be either both positive or both negative at the same time have strong positive weights, while those that tend to be opposite have strong negative weights.


title: Hebbian theory

text: where formula_2 is the weight of the connection from neuron formula_3 to neuron formula_4 and formula_5 the input for neuron formula_4. Note that this is pattern learning (weights updated after every training example). In a Hopfield network, connections formula_2 are set to zero if formula_8 (no reflexive connections allowed). With binary neurons (activations either 0 or 1), connections would be set to 1 if the connected neurons have the same activation for a pattern.


title: Hebbian theory

text: where formula_2 is the weight of the connection from neuron formula_3 to neuron formula_4, formula_13 is the number of training patterns, formula_14 the formula_15th input for neuron formula_4 and <> is the average over all training patterns. This is learning by epoch (weights updated after all the training examples are presented), being last term applicable to both discrete and continuous training sets. Again, in a Hopfield network, connections formula_2 are set to zero if formula_8 (no reflexive connections).


title: Hebbian theory

text: A variation of Hebbian learning that takes into account phenomena such as blocking and many other neural learning phenomena is the mathematical model of Harry Klopf. Klopf's model reproduces a great many biological phenomena, and is also simple to implement.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Because of the simple nature of Hebbian learning, based only on the coincidence of pre- and post-synaptic activity, it may not be intuitively clear why this form of plasticity leads to meaningful learning. However, it can be shown that Hebbian plasticity does pick up the statistical properties of the input in a way that can be categorized as unsupervised learning.


title: Hebbian theory

text: This can be mathematically shown in a simplified example. Let us work under the simplifying assumption of a single rate-based neuron of rate formula_19, whose inputs have rates formula_20. The response of the neuron formula_19 is usually described as a linear combination of its input, formula_22, followed by a response function formula_23:


title: Hebbian theory

text: As defined in the previous sections, Hebbian plasticity describes the evolution in time of the synaptic weight formula_25:


title: Hebbian theory

text: As in previous chapter, if training by epoch is done an average formula_30 over discrete or continuous (time) training set of formula_31 can be done:formula_32where formula_33 is the correlation matrix of the input under the additional assumption that formula_34 (i.e. the average of the inputs is zero). This is a system of formula_35 coupled linear differential equations. Since formula_36 is symmetric, it is also diagonalizable, and the solution can be found, by working in its eigenvectors basis, to be of the form


title: Hebbian theory

text: where formula_38 are arbitrary constants, formula_39 are the eigenvectors of formula_36 and formula_41 their corresponding eigenvalues.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Since a correlation matrix is always a positive-definite matrix, the eigenvalues are all positive, and one can easily see how the above solution is always exponentially divergent in time.


title: Hebbian theory

text: This is an intrinsic problem due to this version of Hebb's rule being unstable, as in any network with a dominant signal the synaptic weights will increase or decrease exponentially. Intuitively, this is because whenever the presynaptic neuron excites the postsynaptic neuron, the weight between them is reinforced, causing an even stronger excitation in the future, and so forth, in a self-reinforcing way. One may think a solution is to limit the firing rate of the postsynaptic neuron by adding a non-linear, saturating response function formula_23, but in fact, it can be shown that for "any" neuron model, Hebb's rule is unstable. Therefore, network models of neurons usually employ other learning theories such as BCM theory, Oja's rule, or the generalized Hebbian algorithm.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Regardless, even for the unstable solution above, one can see that, when sufficient time has passed, one of the terms dominates over the others, and


title: Hebbian theory

text: where formula_44 is the "largest" eigenvalue of formula_36. At this time, the postsynaptic neuron performs the following operation:


title: Hebbian theory

text: Because, again, formula_47 is the eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue of the correlation matrix between the formula_48s, this corresponds exactly to computing the first principal component of the input.


title: Hebbian theory

text: This mechanism can be extended to performing a full PCA (principal component analysis) of the input by adding further postsynaptic neurons, provided the postsynaptic neurons are prevented from all picking up the same principal component, for example by adding lateral inhibition in the postsynaptic layer. We have thus connected Hebbian learning to PCA, which is an elementary form of unsupervised learning, in the sense that the network can pick up useful statistical aspects of the input, and "describe" them in a distilled way in its output.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Despite the common use of Hebbian models for long-term potentiation, Hebb's principle does not cover all forms of synaptic long-term plasticity. Hebb did not postulate any rules for inhibitory synapses, nor did he make predictions for anti-causal spike sequences (presynaptic neuron fires "after" the postsynaptic neuron). Synaptic modification may not simply occur only between activated neurons A and B, but at neighboring synapses as well. All forms of heterosynaptic and homeostatic plasticity are therefore considered non-Hebbian. An example is retrograde signaling to presynaptic terminals. The compound most commonly identified as fulfilling this retrograde transmitter role is nitric oxide, which, due to its high solubility and diffusivity, often exerts effects on nearby neurons. This type of diffuse synaptic modification, known as volume learning, is not included in the traditional Hebbian model.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Hebbian learning and spike-timing-dependent plasticity have been used in an influential theory of how mirror neurons emerge. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when an individual performs an action and when the individual sees or hears another perform a similar action. The discovery of these neurons has been very influential in explaining how individuals make sense of the actions of others, by showing that, when a person perceives the actions of others, the person activates the motor programs which they would use to perform similar actions. The activation of these motor programs then adds information to the perception and helps predict what the person will do next based on the perceiver's own motor program. A challenge has been to explain how individuals come to have neurons that respond both while performing an action and while hearing or seeing another perform similar actions.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Christian Keysers and David Perrett suggested that as an individual performs a particular action, the individual will see, hear, and feel the performing of the action. These re-afferent sensory signals will trigger activity in neurons responding to the sight, sound, and feel of the action. Because the activity of these sensory neurons will consistently overlap in time with those of the motor neurons that caused the action, Hebbian learning predicts that the synapses connecting neurons responding to the sight, sound, and feel of an action and those of the neurons triggering the action should be potentiated. The same is true while people look at themselves in the mirror, hear themselves babble, or are imitated by others. After repeated experience of this re-afference, the synapses connecting the sensory and motor representations of an action are so strong that the motor neurons start firing to the sound or the vision of the action, and a mirror neuron is created.


title: Hebbian theory

text: Evidence for that perspective comes from many experiments that show that motor programs can be triggered by novel auditory or visual stimuli after repeated pairing of the stimulus with the execution of the motor program (for a review of the evidence, see Giudice et al., 2009). For instance, people who have never played the piano do not activate brain regions involved in playing the piano when listening to piano music. Five hours of piano lessons, in which the participant is exposed to the sound of the piano each time they press a key is proven sufficient to trigger activity in motor regions of the brain upon listening to piano music when heard at a later time. Consistent with the fact that spike-timing-dependent plasticity occurs only if the presynaptic neuron's firing predicts the post-synaptic neuron's firing, the link between sensory stimuli and motor programs also only seem to be potentiated if the stimulus is contingent on the motor program.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Fritz the Cat is a comic strip created by Robert Crumb. Set in a "supercity" of anthropomorphic animals, it focused on Fritz, a feline con artist who frequently went on wild adventures that sometimes involved sexual escapades. Crumb began drawing the character in homemade comic books as a child. Fritz became one of his best-known characters, thanks largely to the motion picture adaptation by Ralph Bakshi.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: The strip first appeared in "Help!" and "Cavalier" magazines, and subsequently in publications associated with the underground comix scene between 1965 and 1972; "Fritz the Cat" comic compilations elevated it to one of the underground scene's most iconic features.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: The strip received further attention when it was adapted into a 1972 animated film of the same name. The directorial debut of animator Bakshi, it was an international hit. It was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States and the most successful independent animated feature to date.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: "Fritz the Cat" was created in 1959 by Robert Crumb in a homemade comic book story called "Cat Life", based on the experiences of Fred, the family cat. The character's next appearance was in a 1960 story entitled "Robin Hood". By this point, the cat had become anthropomorphic and had been renamed Fritz, a name derived from a minor unrelated character who appeared briefly in "Cat Life". Fritz appeared in the early 1960s "Animal Town" strips drawn by Charles and Robert Crumb. Sometimes Fritz was accompanied by Fuzzy the Bunny, who served as an alter ego for Charles, his creator.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: "Fritz the Cat" is set in a "modern 'supercity' of millions of animals." Stories begin simply and become increasingly chaotic and complex as the narrative responds to uncontrollable forces. The look of "Fritz the Cat" comics was characterized by the use of the Rapidograph technical pen and a simple drawing style Robert Crumb used to facilitate his storytelling. Crumb states that much of the comic books he enjoyed as a child were talking animal comics, particularly those of Carl Barks. Crumb was later influenced by Walt Kelly's daily anthropomorphic animal comic strip "Pogo"; Crumb did not copy Kelly's comics directly, but states that he imitated his drawing style closely; Crumb admired Kelly's storytelling style, which "seemed [to be] plotless and casually done. The characters talked to each other and nothing much happened. Just a lot of foolishness takes place". Crumb said of his anthropomorphic work:


title: Fritz the Cat

text: I can express something [with animals] that is different from what I put into my work about humans ... I can put more nonsense, more satire and fantasy into the animals ... they're also easier to do than people ... With people I try more for realism, which is probably why I'm generally better with animals.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: In 1964, when he was not working at American Greetings, Crumb drew many "Fritz the Cat" strips for his own amusement. Some of them were later published in "Help!" and "Cavalier" magazines and in underground comix. Fritz also appears briefly in Crumb's graphic novel "Big Yum Yum Book: The Story of Oggie and the Beanstalk", drawn in 1964, but not published until 1975. Several characters from the anthropomorphic universe of "Fritz the Cat" appeared in another Crumb comic strip, "The Silly Pigeons", drawn in 1965 and intended for "Help!" In 1970, Crumb redrew an early Fuzzy the Bunny story written by Charles Crumb in 1952; it was published in "Zap Comix" #5.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Marty Pahls, Crumb's childhood friend, describes Fritz as "a poseur", whose posturing was taken seriously by everyone around him. Fritz is self-centered and hedonistic, lacking both morals and ethics. Thomas Albright describes Fritz as "a kind of updated Felix with overtones of Charlie Chaplin, Candide, and Don Quixote." Fritz had a "glib, smooth and self-assured" personality, characteristics Crumb felt he himself lacked. According to Pahls, "To a great extent, Fritz was his wish-fulfillment ... [the character allowed Robert to] do great deeds, have wild adventures, and undergo a variety of sex experiences, which he himself felt he couldn't. Fritz was bold, poised, had a way with the ladies—all attributes which Robert coveted, but felt he lacked."


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Crumb denied any personal attachment to the character, stating, "I just got into drawing him ... He was fun to draw." As Crumb's personal life changed, Fritz's did too. According to Pahls, "For years, [Crumb] had few friends and no sex life; he was forced to spend many hours at school or on the job, and when he came home he 'escaped' by drawing home-made comics. When he suddenly found a group of friends that would accept him for himself, as he did in Cleveland in 1964, the 'compensation' factor went out of his drawing, and this was pretty much the end of Fritz's ."


title: Fritz the Cat

text: An early untitled 10-page story, drawn in 1964 and released in 1969 as part of "R. Crumb's Comics and Stories" (Rip Off Press), depicts Fritz as a beatnik caricature who has an incestuous tryst with his sister. In "Fred, the Teen-Age Girl Pigeon," Fritz is portrayed as a pop music star. The strips "Fritz the Cat" and "Fritz Bugs Out" portray him as a hip poet and college dropout in the hippie scene. "Fritz Bugs Out" uses anthropomorphic characters to comment on race relations, with crows representing African Americans. Fritz is portrayed as a self-conscious hypocrite, obsessed with his racism and associated guilt, while crows are portrayed as "hip innocents". "Fritz the Cat, Secret Agent for the C.I.A.," inspired by the popularity of the James Bond series, portrays Fritz as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency. "Fritz the No-Good" depicts him becoming involved with terrorist revolutionaries; he also abuses and rapes one of the group members’ girlfriends.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Fritz has an on-again/off-again relationship with a female fox named Winston; they break up at the beginning of "Fritz Bugs Out". Later in the story, she attempts to convince him not to "bug out", but eventually agrees to go on a road trip with him. When her car overheats and stalls in the desert, Fritz abandons her. Winston is also a character featured in the 1972 film, as is this storyline—Fritz's Volkswagen Beetle dodging big rig trucks on the highway in the middle of the night and later running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. She reappears in "Fritz the Cat Doubts His Masculinity" and in "Fritz the No-Good", where they reunite after Fritz is thrown out of his wife's apartment. Fuzzy the Bunny, who appeared in the early "Animal Town" strips, reappears as a college student in "Fritz Bugs Out" and as a revolutionary in "Fritz the No-Good".


title: Fritz the Cat

text: "Help!", a magazine published by former "Mad" editor Harvey Kurtzman, published two stories featuring Fritz, including the character's first public appearance in January 1965, "Fritz Comes on Strong". In this debut story, Fritz brings a young female cat home and strips all her clothes off before getting on top of her to pick fleas off of her. Preceding the publication of the story, Kurtzman sent Crumb a letter which read, "Dear R. Crumb, we think the little pussycat drawings you sent us were just great. Question is, how do we print them without going to jail?"


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Although Kurtzman agreed to publish the story, he requested that Crumb alter the final two panels; the published version depicted Fritz standing next to her. Crumb later recalled that the original ending "wasn't that dirty ... only slightly risque by today's standards". In May 1965, "Help!" published a second Fritz story, "Fred, the Teen-Age Girl Pigeon". In this episode Fritz is a guitar-playing pop idol and he brings Fred, a female pigeon groupie, to his hotel room and proceeds to eat her. John Canaday's "New York" magazine review of "Head Comix" describes this punch line as "outrageous brilliance [that] is rivaled only by Evelyn Waugh's last lines in "The Loved One"."


title: Fritz the Cat

text: "Fritz Bugs Out" was serialized in "Cavalier" from February to October 1968. In the summer of 1968, "Fritz the Cat" strips appeared in the Viking Press compilation titled "Head Comix", which focused exclusively on Crumb's material. In 1969, Ballantine Books paid Crumb a $5,000 advance for the publication rights to a compilation of three stories featuring Fritz. Crumb used the money to purchase a three-acre lot. In 2017, Crumb's original cover art for the Ballantine collection sold at auction for $717,000, the highest sale price to that point for any piece of American cartoon art.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Crumb abandoned the character the same year as the Ballantine collection, but previously unpublished stories appeared in "Promethean Enterprises" No. 3 and 4 in 1971 and "Artistic Comics" (Golden Gate Publishing Company) in 1973. "Fritz the Cat 'Superstar'" — featuring the death of the character — was the last new story released; it was published in "The People's Comics" (Golden Gate) in 1972.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: In 1978, Bélier Press published "The Complete Fritz the Cat", which brought together all the published stories featuring Fritz, as well as previously unpublished drawings and unfinished comics. At the artist's request, a 10-page story drawn in 1964 and previously published in "R. Crumb's Comics and Stories" (Rip Off Press) in 1969 was excluded from this collection. In April 1993, Fantagraphics Books published "The Life & Death of Fritz the Cat", compiling nine major strips, including the 1964 story previously excluded from "The Complete Fritz the Cat". "Fritz the Cat" strips also appear in "The Complete Crumb Comics" series. An unpublished page featuring Fritz that had been intended for "Help!", as well as comics featuring other characters related to the anthropomorphic universe of "Fritz the Cat", appeared in "The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book" in 1998.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: These Fritz comics were from Crumb's sketchbooks and/or were not originally intended for publication. They are presented here in approximate chronological order of creation:


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Following the publication of the compilations "Head Comix" and "R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat", Crumb received increased attention and "Fritz the Cat" became one of the most familiar features on the underground comix scene and Crumb's most famous creation. The strip's association with the 1960s counterculture is so strong that for example the 1975 song "Motorcycle Mama", being a nostalgic remembrance of the 1960s, by Swedish singer-songwriter Harpo mentions Fritz the Cat among other cultural icons of the decade such as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, "Easy Rider", Woodstock, Bob Dylan, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and according to Dez Skinn, author of "Comix: The Underground Revolution", the strip served as an inspiration for "Omaha the Cat Dancer".


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Like many other of Crumb's creations, Fritz the Cat has remained not without detractors. In "Graphic Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book-Length Comics", D. Aviva Rothschild criticized the stories printed in the collection "The Life & Death of Fritz the Cat" as being misogynist, racist, and violent. He felt that, "They also tend to ramble, as if Crumb were making them up as he went along." Rothschild concluded that, "Even though "Fritz the Cat" is a classic, there are better, more coherent Crumb books around."


title: Fritz the Cat

text: The stories served as the basis for a pair of film adaptations produced by Steve Krantz, "Fritz the Cat" (1972), directed by Ralph Bakshi, and "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat" (1974), directed by Robert Taylor. The first film adaptation of "Fritz the Cat" was ranked 51st on the Online Film Critics Society's list of the top 100 greatest animated films of all time and 56th on Channel 4's list of the "100 Greatest Cartoons".


title: Fritz the Cat

text: In 1969, New York animator Ralph Bakshi came across a copy of "R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat" and suggested to producer Steve Krantz that it would work as a film. After meeting with Bakshi, Crumb loaned him one of his sketchbooks as a reference, but was unsure of the film's production and refused to sign the contract. Bakshi and Crumb were unable to reach an agreement after two weeks of negotiations but Krantz secured the film rights from Crumb's wife, Dana, who had a power of attorney. Crumb received $50,000, distributed over the course of production, and ten percent of Krantz's proceeds.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: "Fritz the Cat" was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The film's distributor capitalized on the rating in the film's advertising material, which touted the film as being "X rated and animated!" Released on 12 April 1972, it opened simultaneously in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. The film became a worldwide hit, grossing over $100 million (USD) and was the most successful independent animated feature ever. Crumb disliked how the film presented the sexual content and politics, denouncing Fritz's dialogue in the final sequences of the film, which includes a paraphrased quote from The Beatles song "The End", as "red-neck and fascistic." Nonetheless, the film is credited with extending Crumb's reputation beyond the underground comix scene.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: Following the film's release, Crumb quickly produced the story "Fritz the Cat 'Superstar'," in which he satirized Bakshi and Krantz. Crumb portrayed Fritz in a script conference for "Fritz Goes to India", a fictional sequel to the film. Crumb's story ends with a neurotic ex-girlfriend killing Fritz. She stabs him in the back of the head with an ice pick due to Fritz's overt sexism.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: After the film's release, the American humor magazine the "National Lampoon" published a comics story written by mordant humorist Michael O'Donoghue, and drawn by Randall Enos in a parody of Crumb's style, called "Fritz the Star in 'Kitty Glitter.'" The four-page piece portrayed the Fritz character as a jaded and complacent Hollywood star going through the motions of celebrities of the day: appearing on talk shows, commercials, and telethons mouthing vaguely liberal platitudes, before cynically guiding the conversation over to promoting his next movie. Other comics cats make appearances, including Felix the Cat, Krazy Kat, and underground comix cats Pat (from Jay Lynch's Nard n' Pat) and Kim Deitch's Waldo. The strip ends with a nightmarish full-page vista of "Crumbland", where all of Crumb's countercultural icons have been turned into commercial commodities.


title: Fritz the Cat

text: In 1974, Krantz produced a sequel, "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat", without participation from either Bakshi or Crumb.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Elizabeth Marie Tallchief (Osage family name: , Osage script: ; January 24, 1925 – April 11, 2013) was an American ballerina. She was considered America's first major prima ballerina. She was the first Native American (Osage Nation) to hold the rank, and is said to have revolutionized ballet.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Almost from birth, Tallchief was involved in dance, starting formal lessons at age three. When she was eight, her family relocated from her birth home of Fairfax, Oklahoma, to Los Angeles, California. The purpose of the move was to advance the careers of Maria and her younger sister, Marjorie. Both sisters became dance professionals and leading figures.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: At age 17, she moved to New York City in search of a spot with a major ballet company, and, at the urging of others, took the name Maria Tallchief. She spent the next five years with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where she met choreographer George Balanchine. When Balanchine co-founded what would become the New York City Ballet in 1946, Tallchief became the company's first star.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: The combination of Balanchine's difficult choreography and Tallchief's passionate dancing revolutionized the ballet. Her 1949 role in "The Firebird" catapulted Tallchief to the top of the ballet world, establishing her as a "prima ballerina". Her role as the Sugarplum Fairy in "The Nutcracker" transformed the ballet from obscure to America's most popular.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: She traveled the world, becoming the first American to perform in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater. She made regular appearances on American TV before she retired in 1966. After retiring from dance, Tallchief was active in promoting ballet in Chicago. She served as director of ballet for the Lyric Opera of Chicago for most of the 1970s and debuted the Chicago City Ballet in 1981.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief was honored by the people of Oklahoma with multiple statues and an honorific day. She was inducted in the National Women's Hall of Fame and received a National Medal of Arts. In 1996, Tallchief received a Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievements. Her life has been the subject of multiple documentaries and biographies.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief (her birth name) was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma on January 24, 1925, to Alexander Joseph Tall Chief (1890–1959), a member of the Osage Nation, and his wife, Ruth (née Porter), of Scottish-Irish descent. Elizabeth Marie was known as "Betty Marie" to friends and family. Porter had met Alexander Tall Chief, a widower, while visiting her sister, who was his mother's housekeeper at the time.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Elizabeth Tall Chief's paternal great-grandfather, Peter Bigheart, had helped negotiate for the Osages concerning oil revenues that enriched the Osage Nation. Her father grew up rich as a result, never working "a day in his life." In her autobiography, Tallchief explained, "As a young girl growing up on the Osage reservation in Fairfax, Oklahoma, I felt my father owned the town. He had property everywhere. The local movie theater on Main Street and the pool hall opposite belonged to him. Our 10-room, a terracotta-brick house stood high on a hill overlooking the reservation." The family spent summers in Colorado Springs to escape the Oklahoma heat. Life was far from perfect, though, as her father was a binge drinker and her parents often fought about money.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief had five siblings, three from her father's first marriage to a German immigrant: Alexander; Frances (1913–1999); and Thomas (1919–1981), who played football for the University of Oklahoma, and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers; Gerald (1922–1999), who was injured in childhood when kicked in the head by a horse and never regained normal cognitive function. Her sister Marjorie, an accomplished ballerina in her own right, was Ruth's second child and Betty Marie's "best friend."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: As a child, Ruth Porter had dreamed about becoming a performer, but her family could not afford dance or music lessons. She was determined that her daughters would not suffer the same fate. Betty Marie was enrolled in summer ballet classes in Colorado Springs at age 3. She and other family members performed at rodeos and other local events. Tall Chief studied piano and contemplated becoming a concert pianist.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In 1930, a ballet teacher from Tulsa, Mrs. Sabin, visited Fairfax looking for students and took on Betty Marie and Marjorie as students. Looking back on Sabin many years later, Tallchief wrote, "She was a wretched instructor who never taught the basics, and it's a miracle I wasn't permanently harmed." In addition to the problems in her teaching technique, Sabin had put Tall Chief on pointe shortly after she joined the school (at 5 years old) while she was far too young to be able to dance on pointe without injury.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: At age five, Tall Chief was enrolled at the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic School. Impressed by her reading ability, the teachers allowed her to skip the first two grade levels. Between piano, ballet, and school work, Tall Chief had little free time but loved the outdoors. In her autobiography, she reminisced about time spent "wandering around our big front yard" and "[rambling] around the grounds of our summer cottage hunting for arrowheads in the grass."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In 1933, the family moved to Los Angeles with the intent of getting the children into Hollywood musicals. The day they arrived in Los Angeles, her mother asked the clerk at a local drugstore if he knew any good dance teachers. The clerk recommended Ernest Belcher, father of dancer Marge Champion. "An anonymous man in an unfamiliar town decided our fate with those few words," Tall Chief later recalled. California moved Tall Chief back to the proper grade for her age but put her in an Opportunity Class for advanced learners. "Opportunity Class or not, I was still way ahead," she recalled. "With nothing to do, I often wandered around the schoolyard by myself." At this time Tall Chief was removed from pointe, probably saving her from major injury.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Bored with school, Tall Chief devoted herself to dance in Belcher's studio. In addition to ballet, which she had previously been doing all wrong and went back to square one, she learned tap, Spanish dancing, and acrobatics there. She found tumbling very difficult and eventually quit the class, but later in life put the skills to good use. The family moved to Beverly Hills, where schools offered better academics. At Beverly Vista School, Tall Chief experienced what she described as "painful" discrimination and took to spelling her last name as one word, Tallchief. She continued to study piano, appearing as a guest soloist with small symphony orchestras throughout high school.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: At age 12, Tallchief began to work with Bronislava Nijinska, a renowned choreographer who had recently opened her own studio in Los Angeles, and David Lichine, a choreographer and former dancer. Nijinska "was a personification of what ballet was all about," Tallchief recalled. "I looked at her, and I knew this was what I wanted to do." Nijinska imparted a strong sense of discipline and the belief that being a ballerina was a full-time task. "We didn't concentrate only for an hour and a half a day," Tallchief recalled. "We lived it." It was under Nijinska that Tallchief decided ballet was what she wanted to devote her life to. "Before Nijinska, I liked ballet but believed that I was destined to become a concert pianist," she recalled. "Now my goal was different." Nijinska saw Tallchief was serious and began devoting great attention to her.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: When Tallchief was 15, Nijinska decided to stage three ballets in the Hollywood Bowl. Tallchief expected a lead role but instead was put in the "corps de ballet". She was devastated: "I was hurt and humiliated. I couldn't understand what was happening ... Didn't she love me anymore?" After a pep talk from her mother, Tallchief rededicated herself and soon worked her way into a lead part in "Chopin Concerto." When the big day came, she slipped during rehearsal and was concerned, but Nijinska dismissed it saying "happens to everybody." Tallchief also received instruction from various distinguished teachers during their visits to Los Angeles. For Ada Broadbent, she danced her first "pas de deux." Mia Slavenska took a shine to Tallchief and arranged for her to audition for Serge Denham, director of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. He was impressed, but nothing came of it.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1942. She had given up piano and wanted to go to college, but her father was against it. "I've paid for your lessons all your life," he said. "Now it's time for you to find a job." She won a bit part in "Presenting Lily Mars," an MGM musical with Judy Garland. Dancing in the movie was "not gratifying" and Tallchief decided against making a career of it. That summer, family friend Tatiana Riabouchinska asked if Tallchief would like to go to New York. With Riabouchinska chaperoning, she set off for the big city at age 17 in 1942.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Once in New York, Tallchief looked up Serge Denham. A secretary told her that the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo did not need any more dancers, and she left crying. A few days later, she was told there was a place for her after all. Denham did not actually remember her, but she had something he needed – a passport. Many of his dancers were Russian émigrés who lacked passports and the troupe had a Canadian tour coming up. Based on a combination of her talent and her passport, Tallchief was taken on as an apprentice. Her first performance was in "Gaîté Parisienne." After the Canadian tour, one of the dancers left the troupe due to pregnancy and Tallchief was offered the dancer's place and a $40 per week salary.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: On her first day as a full member of the company, Tallchief was surprised to find Nijinska had come to town to stage "Chopin Concerto" with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She soon cast Tallchief as first ballerina Nathalie Krassovska's understudy for the lead role. At the Ballet Russe, the Russian ballerinas frequently feuded with American ballerinas, whom they reportedly viewed as inferior. When Tallchief was surprisingly promoted by Nijinska, she became the primary target of their animosity.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: At the same time, the company was preparing to stage Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo, or The Courting at Burnt Ranch," an early example of balletic Americana. One day, de Mille suggested that Tallchief change her name. It was a sensitive subject for Tallchief; Denham had previously suggested Tallchief change her surname to a Russian-sounding name such as Tallchieva, a practice common among ballet dancers at the time. She refused: "Tallchief was my name, and I was proud of it." However, de Mille had a more acceptable idea – using a modified version of her middle name. Tallchief agreed and was known as Maria Tallchief for the remainder of her career.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Within her first two months at Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Tallchief had appeared in seven different ballets as part of the corps de ballet. While in New York, she took classes at the School of American Ballet, but on tour there were no official classes. Instead, Tallchief studied the efforts of her more experienced colleagues. In particular, she admired Alexandra Danilova who was known for her work ethic and professionalism. Tallchief practiced whenever she could, earning a reputation as a hard worker. "I was always doing a barre," she wrote, "always giving it my all in rehearsals."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Krassovska feuded with management regularly, raising the possibility of a sudden promotion for Tallchief. She nearly quit the company late in 1942 and Tallchief was told she would go on in her place. Krassovska was persuaded to return, but the incident made it clear to Tallchief she needed to be ready to perform Krassovska's technically difficult role on short notice – something for which she was not yet ready. In the spring of 1943, Krassovska argued with Denham and left the company. "Unprepared, I was numb with terror," Tallchief recalled. When the company returned to New York, Tallchief received positive reviews. "The New York Times" dance critic John Martin wrote, "Tallchief gave a stunning account of herself in Nijinkska's "Chopin Concerto" ... She has an easy brilliance that smacks of authority rather than bravura," and predicted she would be a big star in the near future. Glory, however, was short lived as Tallchief returned to the corps when the staging of "Chopin Concerto" was complete.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Back on tour, Tallchief saw her parents in Los Angeles. Seeing Tallchief's frail appearance – she had lost a lot of weight from a combination of poor nutrition and stress – and her minor role in "The Snow Maiden," her mother attempted to persuade Tallchief to quit ballet and return to piano. Ruth Tallchief changed her mind when Lichine showed her Martin's column and explained that he was America's top dance critic. Tallchief's second year with Ballet Russe brought bigger roles. She was a soloist in "Le Beau Danube" and got the lead in "Ancient Russia," another Nijinska ballet.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In the spring of 1944, well known choreographer George Balanchine was hired by Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo to work on a new production called "Song of Norway." The move would mark a turning point in Tallchief's and Balanchine's careers. She was drawn to Balanchine from the start. Describing one of her first experiences with him, she wrote, "When I saw what he had done, I was astonished. Everything seemed so simple yet perfect: An elegant ballet fell into place before my eyes." At first, she was not sure if he was paying much attention to her, but she quickly found out he was. Balanchine assigned Tallchief a solo in "Song of Norway" and on the night before the premiere also informed her that she would be Danilova's understudy. The ballet was a success and Balanchine was offered a contract for the rest of the season. He was glad to get back into ballet after years on Broadway and in Hollywood and accepted the offer. Sensing Tallchief's star was on the rise, her mother demanded a raise for her daughter. Tallchief was "mortified" by the move, but Denham gave into the demands and increased her salary to $50 per week and promoted her to "soloist."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Balanchine continued to cast Tallchief in important roles. In "Danses Concertantes," she was part of a jazzy pas de trois created for Mary Ellen Moylan, Nicholas Magallanes, and herself. The steps were classical in form, but they were presented in a unique manner. "The accent was sharp, the rhythm swinging and modern," she wrote. "Performing the steps seemed more like an exercise for pleasure and enjoyment than work. It was magical." In "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," she had a pas de deux with Yurek Lazowsky.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Shortly before "Ballet Imperial" was to open, Balanchine informed Tallchief that she would be second lead behind Moylan. "I nearly fainted," she recalled. "I couldn't get over it." As the season wore on, Balanchine grew fond of her both professionally – "The Washington Post" called Tallchief his "crucial artistic inspiration" – and personally. Tallchief was ignorant of the personal attraction for a long time and their relationship remained mostly on a professional level. Slowly they became friends; then one day, Balanchine asked Tallchief to marry him, much to her surprise. After some thought, she agreed and the couple wed on August 16, 1946.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: One night on tour in 1945, Tallchief was doing her barre when Balanchine remarked, "If only you would learn to do "battement tendu" properly you wouldn't have to learn anything else." It was his way of saying she needed to start all over – "battement tendu" is the most basic ballet exercise there is. "I wanted to die," she recalled. "But I had seen the difference between Mary Ellen's [who was a pupil of Balanchine] dancing and mine. I knew he was right." Under the tutelage of Balanchine, Tallchief lost ten pounds and elongated her legs and neck. She learned how to hold her chest high, keep her back straight, and keep her feet arched. "My body seemed to be going through a metamorphosis," she recalled. Tallchief relearned the basic exercises the way Balanchine wanted and transformed her greatest weakness–turnout–into a strength. Danilova devoted a lot of her time to instructing Tallchief in the ballerina's art, helping her transform from a teenage girl into a young woman.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief rose to the rank of "featured soloist" as Balanchine continued to cast her in important roles. She created (was the first person to perform) the role of Coquette in "Night Shadow", the ballet's most technically challenging role, after Danilova selected the other female lead for herself.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Also in 1946, Balanchine joined with arts patron Lincoln Kirstein to establish the Ballet Society, a direct forerunner to the New York City Ballet. Tallchief had six months remaining on her contract with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, so stayed with the company until 1947. When her contract expired, she joined Balanchine who was in France as guest choreographer at the Paris Opera Ballet. He had been called upon to "save" the famous troupe, but not everyone appreciated his presence. A group of supporters of Serge Lifar, who was on leave while accusations of aiding the Nazis during World War II were investigated, led a vocal campaign to get rid of Balanchine. "Spectateur" and "Les Arts" joined in, publishing articles attacking Balanchine personally. He ignored the company's hierarchy, further angering some dancers.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: When Tallchief arrived, she was put to work immediately with roles in "Le baiser de la fée" and "Apollo." Another dancer pulled out of "Apollo" shortly before opening night, forcing Tallchief to learn a more difficult role on short notice. In spite of all the difficulties, opening night was a huge success. The French press was fascinated by Tallchief's dancing, and even more so her background. ""Peau Rouge danse a l'Opera pour le Roi de Suede"" [Redskin dances at the Opera for the King of Sweden], read a front-page headline. ""La Fille du grand chef Indien danse a l'Opera"" [The daughter of the great Indian chief dances at the Opera], read another. Her colleagues never appreciated Tallchief's presence, but French audiences loved her. After six months in Paris, Tallchief and Balanchine returned to New York. During her time in Paris, Tallchief became the first American to perform with the Paris Opera Ballet.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: When the couple returned to the States, Tallchief quickly became one of the first stars, and first prima ballerina, of the New York City Ballet, which opened in October 1948. Balanchine "revolutionized ballet" by creating roles that demanded athleticism, speed, and aggressive dancing like nothing before. Tallchief was well suited for Balanchine's vision. "I always thought Balanchine was more of a musician even than a choreographer, and perhaps that's why he and I connected," Tallchief recalled. He created many roles specifically for Tallchief, including the lead of "The Firebird" in 1949. Of her "Firebird" debut, Kirstein wrote "Maria Tallchief made an electrifying appearance, emerging as the nearest approximation to a prima ballerina that we had yet enjoyed." The role created a sensation and launched her to the top of the ballet world, granting her the prima ballerina title. Noting the great technical difficulty of the role, "The New York Times" critic John Martin wrote that Tallchief was asked "to do everything except spin on her head, and she does it with complete and incomparable brilliance."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief's popularity helped the fledgeling dance company grow and she was asked to perform as many as eight times a week. In 1954, Tallchief was given the role of Sugar Plum Fairy in Balanchine's newly reworked version of "The Nutcracker," then an obscure ballet. Her performance of the role helped transform the work into an annual Christmas classic, and the industry's most reliable box-office draw. Critic Walter Terry remarked "Maria Tallchief, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, is herself a creature of magic, dancing the seemingly impossible with effortless beauty of movement, electrifying us with her brilliance, enchanting us with her radiance of being. Does she have any equals anywhere, inside or outside of fairyland? While watching her in "The Nutcracker," one is tempted to doubt it."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Other notable roles Tallchief created under Balanchine include the Swan Queen in Balanchine's version of "Swan Lake" and Eurydice in "Orpheus." She created the lead role of "Prodigal Son," "Jones Beach," ""A La Françaix,"" and plotless works such as ""Sylvia Pas de Deux,"" ""Allegro Brillante,"" ""Pas de Dix,"" and "Symphony in C." Her fiery, athletic performances helped establish Balanchine as the era's most prominent and influential choreographer.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief remained with the New York City Ballet until February 1960, but also took time off to work with other companies. She made guest appearances with the Chicago Opera Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, and the Hamburg Ballet, among others. Working for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1954–55, she was paid $2,000 a week, reportedly the highest salary ever paid to a dancer at the time. In 1958, she created the lead in Balanchine's "Gounod Symphony" before taking a leave of absence to have her first child.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: After leaving the New York City Ballet, Tallchief joined American Ballet Theatre, first as a guest dancer then as prima ballerina. That summer, she appeared alongside Danish danseur Erik Bruhn in Russia, where she was recognized for "aplomb, brilliance, and dignity of the American style." In so doing, she became the first American dancer to perform at Moscow's famed Bolshoi Theater. From 1960 to 1962, Tallchief expanded her repertoire taking on dramatic, as opposed to abstract, roles such as the title roles of Birgit Cullberg’s "Miss Julie" and "Lady from the Sea," as well as the melancholy heroine of Antony Tudor’s "Jardin aux Lilas."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief's dancing was not confined to the stage. She appeared on multiple TV shows, including "The Ed Sullivan Show." She portrayed Anna Pavlova in the 1952 movie musical "Million Dollar Mermaid." In 1962, Tallchief was Rudolf Nureyev's partner of choice for his American debut which was broadcast on national television. Her final performance in America was on television's "Bell Telephone Hour" in 1966.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: On the urging of Balanchine (to whom she was no longer married), she relocated to Germany, briefly becoming the lead dancer of the Hamburg Ballet. One of her last performances was a 1966 title role in Peter van Dyk's "Cinderella, "before she retired from dancing., not wishing to dance beyond her prime. During her career, she danced throughout Europe and South America, Japan, and Russia. She made guest appearances with several symphony orchestras.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: After retiring from dancing, Tallchief moved to Chicago, where husband Buzz Paschen resided. She served as director of ballet for the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1973 to 1979. In 1974, she founded Lyric Opera's ballet school, where she taught the Balanchine technique. Explaining her teaching philosophy she wrote "New ideas are essential, but we must retain respect for the art of ballet–and that means the artist too–or else it is no longer an art form."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: With her sister Marjorie, Tallchief founded the Chicago City Ballet in 1981. She served as co-artistic director until its demise in 1987. Despite the company failing, the "Chicago Tribune" called her "a force in the history of Chicago dance," and said she arguably increased the popularity of dance in the city.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief was featured in the documentary film "Dancing for Mr. B" in 1989. From 1990 until her death, she was artistic adviser to Von Heidecke's Chicago Festival Ballet.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief was known for "dazzling audiences with her speed, energy and fire." She was said to exhibit both "electrifying passion" and great technical ability. She combined precise footwork with athleticism. Ashley Wheater, artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet, remarked, "When you watch Tallchief on video, you see that aside from the technical polish there is a burning passion she brought to her dancing. In her interpretation of Balanchine's "Firebird," she was consumed both inside and out. She was not just a great dancer, but a real artist—a true interpreter who brought her personality to bear on the dancing." According to "Time," she was also "a master in the perfect pause, the moment of stillness allowing the audience and the narrative to keep pace with the choreography."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: William Mason, director emeritus of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, described Tallchief as "a consummate professional ... She realized who and what she was, but she didn't flaunt it. She was unpretentious." Fellow dancer Allegra Kent remarked "She didn't seem to be frightened of the stage, like some of the others. She had an iron will inside ... She phrased her curls and extensions as delicately or as strongly as the music itself."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: During her first year at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Tallchief dated Alexander "Sasha" Goudevitch, the darling of the company. "For both of us, it was our first love," Tallchief recalled. "We saw each other every day, and I was convinced it was true love." Goudevitch moonlighted for extra money and bought Tallchief an engagement ring. In the spring of 1944, however, he had a sudden change of heart when another young woman began to pursue him. As Tallchief later recalled, "My heart was broken."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: After George Balanchine was hired by the Ballet Russe, he found himself attracted to Tallchief both professionally and personally. She was unaware he felt this way: "It never occurred to me that there was anything more than dancing on his mind ... It would have been preposterous to think there was anything personal." Although their relationship became more intimate, it was a shock to Tallchief when Balanchine asked her to marry him. During the summer of 1945, he invited her to meet him after a Los Angeles performance. Balanchine opened the car door for her, and when she got in, he sat in silence for a moment before saying, "Maria, I would like you to become my wife," "I almost fell out of my seat and was unable to respond," she recalled. She eventually replied, "But, George, I'm not sure I love you. I feel I hardly know you." He answered that it did not matter, and if the marriage only lasted a few years, that was all right with him. After a day to think it over, Tallchief accepted his proposal.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: When she told her parents about the engagement, her mother was furious: "I've never heard of anything more ... "idiotic" [...] What's wrong with you?" Balanchine was unshaken by her objection, saying she would come around eventually. While they were engaged, Balanchine made extravagant romantic gestures and treated Tallchief with great affection. "He was obviously trying to convince me [that our marriage] was inevitable," she wrote. "I didn't need convincing. I was falling in love."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief and Balanchine were married on August 16, 1946, when she was 21 years old and he was 42. Her parents continued to oppose the marriage and did not attend the ceremony. The couple did not have a traditional honeymoon: "For both of us, work was more important."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: According to Tallchief, "Passion and romance didn't play a big part in our married life. We saved our emotions for the classroom." Nonetheless, she described Balanchine as "a warm, affectionate, loving husband." Their marriage was annulled in 1952, when both parties were attracted to other people.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In 1952, Tallchief married Elmourza Natirboff, a pilot for a private charter airline. The couple divorced two years later. In 1955, she met Chicago businessman Henry D. ("Buzz") Paschen Jr. "He was very happy, outgoing, and knew nothing about ballet —very refreshing," she recalled. The couple married the following June and honeymooned with a ballet tour of Europe. With Paschen, Tallchief had her only child, Elise Maria Paschen (born 1959), who became an award-winning poet and executive director of the Poetry Society of America. With this marriage, Tallchief also gained a stepdaughter, Margaret Wright. The couple remained together, even through Paschen's brief imprisonment for tax evasion, until his death, in 2004.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief tended to be direct in expressing her opinion, never mincing words. "It gave her the illusion of being a diva," said Tallchief protégé Kenneth von Heidecke, "but it was really a keen sense of honesty."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In December 2012, Tallchief broke her hip. She died on April 11, 2013 from complications stemming from the injury.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief was considered America's first major prima ballerina, and was the first Native American to hold the rank. She remained closely tied to her Osage history until her death, speaking out against stereotypes and misconceptions about Native Americans on many occasions. Tallchief was involved with America for Indian Opportunity and was a director of the Indian Council Fire Achievement Award. She and her sister Marjorie are counted as two of a group of five Native American ballet dancers from Oklahoma born in the 1920s. However, she wished to be judged on the merits of her dance alone. "Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina," she wrote.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief was called "one of the most brilliant American ballerinas of the 20th century" by "The New York Times". According to Wheater, she "paved the way for dancers who were not in the traditional mold of ballet ... she was crucial in breaking the stigma." Upon Tallchief's death, Jacques d'Amboise remarked "When you thought of Russian ballet, it was Ulanova. With English ballet, it was Fonteyn. For American ballet, it was Tallchief. She was grand in the grandest way." "Time" remarked "of all the ballerinas of the last century, few achieved Maria Tallchief's artistry, a kind of conscious dreaming, a reverie with backbone."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: She is credited with "[breaking] down ethnic barriers" and was among the first Americans to flourish in a field long dominated by Russians and Europeans. Reflecting on her own career, Tallchief wrote "I was in the middle of magic, in the presence of genius. And thank God I knew it."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In Oklahoma, Tallchief was honored by the governor for both her ballet achievements and her pride in her American Indian heritage. The Legislature declared June 29, 1953, as "Maria Tallchief Day." She is among four Indian ballerinas depicted in "Flight of Spirit," a mural in the Oklahoma Capitol building. Tallchief is a subject of one of the life-size bronze statues titled "The Five Moons," located at the Tulsa Historical Society. Osage Nation honored her with the title "Princess Wa-Xthe-Thomba" (, "Woman of Two Worlds" or "Two Standards").


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In 1996, Tallchief received a Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievements. Her Kennedy Center biography states that Tallchief was "both the inspiration and the living expression of the best [the United States] has given the world. Her individualism and her genius came together to create one of the most vital and beautiful chapters in the history of American dance."


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief is an inductee of the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and was twice named "Woman of the Year" by the Washington Press Club. She twice was on "Dance Magazine"s annual award list. The magazine explained the 1960 recognition: "[Tallchief is a] star with a truly American flavor, whose qualities of elegance, brilliance, and modesty ... [made] a distinguished contribution to the recent cultural mission of American Ballet Theatre in Europe and Russia." In 1999, Tallchief was awarded the American National Medal of Arts by the National Endowment of the Arts; in 2011, she received the Chicago History Museum's Making History Award for Distinction in the Performing Arts.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In 2006, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a special tribute to Maria Tallchief titled "A Tribute to Ballet Great Maria Tallchief," during which Tallchief officially named Kenneth von Heidecke as her protégé.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: In 2018, Tallchief became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief will be honored on an American Women quarter in 2023. The quarter, designed by Benjamin Sowards and sculpted by Joseph Menna, will show her on the reverse side opposite a depiction of Liberty scuplted by Laura Gardin Fraser.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Tallchief has been the subject of multiple biographies. Her autobiography, "Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina", was co-written with Larry Kaplan and released in 1997.


title: Maria Tallchief

text: Sandy and Yasu Osawa of Upstream Productions in Seattle, Washington made a documentary titled "Maria Tallchief" in November 2007 that aired on PBS between 2007 and 2010.


title: Bamba Dieng

text: Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba Mbacke Dieng (born 23 March 2000) is a Senegalese professional footballer who plays as a forward for Ligue 1 club Marseille and the Senegal national team.


title: Bamba Dieng

text: Dieng began his career with Diambars in the Senegal Premier League, and had 12 goals in his first 14 games in his debut season. He finished as the top scorer of the Senegal Premier League for the 2019–20 season.


title: Bamba Dieng

text: Dieng signed for Marseille on 5 October 2020. He made his debut the club in a 2–0 Coupe de France win over Auxerre on 10 February 2021, scoring a goal in the 92nd minute of the game.


title: Bamba Dieng

text: Dieng debuted with the Senegal national team in a 4–1 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification win over Namibia on 9 October 2021.


title: Bamba Dieng

text: He was called up to the Senegal squad for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations in January 2022, scoring his first goal for the side in a 2–0 round of 16 victory over Cape Verde. In the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations Final, Dieng scored in the penalty shootout to help Senegal become the champions of the tournament.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: Nicholas Todd Sutton (July 15, 1961 – February 20, 2020) was an American serial killer who was responsible for murdering two acquaintances and his own grandmother in North Carolina and Tennessee from August to December 1979. Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for these crimes, Sutton, among three others, later participated in a 1985 prison killing over drugs. For this final crime, he was sentenced to death and executed in 2020 by electric chair. Sutton is the most recent person to be executed in this manner.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: Nicholas Todd Sutton was born on July 15, 1961 in Morristown, Tennessee. His mother abandoned him at birth, while his father, a mentally-ill and verbally abusive alcoholic, was constantly detained in either mental institutions or various jails. As he grew up, Sutton was taught to use drugs by his father, leading to a drug addiction that would last up until his incarceration.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: When he was still a teenager, Sutton's father died suddenly, leading to him being adopted by his widowed grandmother, Dorothy Virginia Sutton, a schoolteacher living in Lowland. "Nicky", as he was nicknamed, eventually would drop out of school due to frequent fighting with classmates, leaving his grandmother to pay for his living expenses. Despite her good intentions, he often squandered the money on weekly purchases of cocaine and maintaining his pit bulls, and even resold a pickup truck and a land plot in North Carolina which his grandmother had given to him as a gift.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: On the day of Christmas 1979, Sutton went to the Morristown Police Department to report his grandma missing. In his statements, he claimed that he had last seen her three days prior in the company of an unknown male. An examination of the family house, however, revealed signs of foul play, most notably blood spots on the carpets, walls and floors. Shortly after, Sutton was detained for questioning, while investigators examined tips in order to locate Mrs. Sutton's body, one of which led them to a property in North Carolina. Upon their return, Sutton said that he had stuffed his grandmother's body in a bag, weighed it down with a cinderblock and then thrown it into the Nolichucky River. After a two-day long search, the 58-year-old's body was found at the bottom of the river, with a forensic autopsy determining that she had been hit in the back of the head with a blunt instrument, but later drowned after being thrown into the river. Sutton was charged with the murder and his bail set at $100,000.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: When pressed for a motive, Sutton claimed that while he had disposed of the body, he was not the killer, and what he had done was the result of a panic after finding Dorothy lying on the floor upon returning home. Thinking she was dead, he decided to get rid of the body to not be accused of being a murderer. His claims were not taken seriously, and Sutton was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: Following his conviction, Sutton changed his story, claiming that the actual killer was 46-year-old Charles Pomery Almon III, a Knoxville contractor who was pressing him for money. Allegedly, Almon broke into the Sutton household and attacked them, killing his grandmother in the process, but Sutton somehow managed to take his gun and shoot him, before dumping both of their bodies in the river. While police and prosecutors alike were skeptical of his version of events, they were convinced that Almon could indeed have been killed, as he had been reported missing for over two months by that point, with his abandoned gold Jaguar found in front of a Holiday Inn in Newport. During the investigations, Sutton confessed to yet another murder: that of his 19-year-old childhood friend, John Michael Large, with whom he shared an apartment in Knoxville. He claimed that sometime from August 10 to 22, he had set up a meeting with Large at his aunt's remote farm in Waterville, North Carolina, where he kept a stash of marijuana and white liquor. At that time, the two friends had been involved in a bitter argument over money, as Large supposedly had to use $25,000 to purchase cocaine from Ohio, but never got around to doing so. Sutton claimed that after arriving to the farm's barn on his motorcycle, Large suddenly opened fire on him, before the pair got into a fight. In the ensuing scuffle, he then said that he hit him with a tobacco stick, before grabbing a nearby dog chain, with which he beat and choked Large. While he was still recovering from the beatings, Sutton then grabbed the tobacco stick and rammed it down Large's throat, killing him instantly. He then dragged the body to a slope near Mount Sterling, where he buried it in a shallow grave among sumac groves.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: With Sutton's directions, police quickly located Large's burial site, exhumed the body and sent it to Chapel Hill for an autopsy. The coroner determined that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, and an object found in Large's mouth was a piece of plywood, not a piece of a tobacco stick. Nevertheless, a murder warrant was issued from the state of North Carolina for Sutton, as the killing had occurred in their jurisdiction. When it came to the Almon case, authorities were unable to find his body in the river, leading them to believe that Sutton had buried him somewhere else. With these doubts arising, Sutton changed his story yet again, claiming that Almon and an unidentified accomplice had robbed a bank in the Asheville area, and that they gave him $1,500 in exchange for acting as their getaway driver.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: On April 29, 1980, Sutton was arraigned for Large's murder in North Carolina, while authorities back in Tennessee continued to search for Almon's body. On May 14, scuba divers investigating an old rock quarry near Newport uncovered the remains of at least four bodies, one of which was thought to belong to Almon. Like his other victims, it bore what the investigators had termed "Sutton's signature" - it was wrapped up in bags, weighed with cinderblocks and sunk at the bottom of the quarry. The other bodies were determined to be unrelated to the case. Upon hearing of the discovery, Sutton spontaneously confessed to two additional victims: an Alcoa teenager he had apparently killed in July 1978 and buried in North Carolina, and a supposed drug buyer from Atlanta he had also buried on the family farm. As a result of these confessions, the search at the quarry was temporarily called off.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: Not long after, police in both North Carolina and Tennessee obtained search warrants to locate the new alleged victims, whose identities Sutton never disclosed. In an effort to locate them, prosecutors offered a plea deal with the convict, sparing the death penalty in exchange for him telling the burial site locations. After numerous failed searches, it was deduced that the "undiscovered victims" were made up by Sutton. In June 1980, he was additionally charged with Almon's murder.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: In a bid to avoid a possible death penalty, Sutton pleaded guilty to both murder charges, subsequently receiving two more life imprisonment terms. At his sentencing, Sutton claimed that he had done the killings in a fit of anger and was reckless, willingly accepting his sentence.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: After his conviction, Sutton initially served his sentence at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary before being transferred to the maximum security Morgan County Correctional Complex in Wartburg. While in prison, he continued using and dealing drugs to fellow inmates, one of whom was 44-year-old Carl Isaac Estep, who was serving a life term for raping a 9-year-old girl in Knoxville. In early January 1985, the two got into a dispute over drugs, with Estep threatening to kill Sutton using a homemade knife. In response, Sutton and three other inmates (23-year-old Charles Arnold Freeman; 33-year-old Thomas Street and 22-year-old David Wesley Stufflestreet) decided to arm themselves with knives and take revenge on Estep. On January 15, the quartet went to Estep's cell and stabbed him 38 times. None were charged until May 20, with Sutton, Freeman and Street being charged with first-degree murder while Stufflestreet was charged as an accessory. In March 1986, the jury found Sutton and Street guilty on the murder charge, sentencing the former to death and the latter to life imprisonment; Freeman and Stufflestreet were each acquitted.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: In the decades following his death sentence conviction, Sutton and his lawyers launched repeated appeals to various courts, arguing that his troubled personal life and good behavior after the incident were mitigating factors. These claims were backed up by several correctional officials at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, who said that Sutton was a Christian convert and model inmate who cared for the sick inmates on death row, and had even saved guards' lives during prison riots. Reportedly, five of the jurors who had originally given him the death sentence now supported his bid for commutation, as well as several of his victims' relatives. This sentiment was not shared by the sister of John Large, Amy Large Cook, who said that he deserved to die and she would visit the prison on the day of his execution. Likewise, his uncle Thomas Davis said in an interview that he had broken all contact with him, and that Sutton was "[...] totally somebody who shouldn’t even be part of society."


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: In January 2020, Sutton notified prison officials that he chose the electric chair over lethal injection as execution method, a choice allowed by Tennessee law.


title: Nicholas Todd Sutton

text: In the end, Sutton's death sentence was cemented, as Governor Bill Lee rejected his clemency application a week before the scheduled execution date. This was soon followed by a refusal from the Supreme Court to issue a stay of execution. On February 20, 2020, Sutton was executed via electric chair at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. In his final statement, Sutton spoke at length about his faith, love and gratefulness to his family, friends and Jesus Christ. After having his spiritual adviser serve communion, consisting of Welch's grape juice and a wafer, Sutton ate his requested last meal of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy and peach pie with vanilla ice cream. His last words were "I’m just grateful to be a servant of God." Sutton is the most recent person to be electrocuted in the United States.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: The Indian Army during World War II, a British force also referred to as the British Indian Army, began the war, in 1939, numbering just under 200,000 men. By the end of the war, it had become the largest volunteer army in history, rising to over 2.5 million men in August 1945. Serving in divisions of infantry, armour and a fledgling airborne force, they fought on three continents in Africa, Europe and Asia.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: The army fought in Ethiopia against the Italian Army, in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria against both the Italian and German armies, and, after the Italian surrender, against the German Army in Italy. However, the bulk of the Indian Army was committed to fighting the Japanese Army, first during the British defeats in Malaya and the retreat from Burma to the Indian border; later, after resting and refitting for the victorious advance back into Burma, as part of the largest British Empire army ever formed. These campaigns cost the lives of over 87,000 Indian servicemen, while 34,354 were wounded, and 67,340 became prisoners of war. Their valour was recognised with the award of some 4,000 decorations, and 18 members of the Indian Army were awarded the Victoria Cross or the George Cross. Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army from 1942, asserted that the British "couldn't have come through both wars (World War I and II) if they hadn't had the Indian Army." British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also paid tribute to "The unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers."


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: In 1939, the Indian Army was an experienced British force, having fought in the Third Afghan War, two major campaigns in Waziristan, during 1919–1920 and 1936–1939, and in several smaller disputes on the North West Frontier since the First World War. There was no shortage of manpower to call upon, but the army did suffer from a shortage of skilled technical personnel. The conversion of the cavalry force into a mechanised tank force had only just begun and was hampered by the inability to supply adequate numbers of tanks and armoured vehicles.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: In 1939, British officials had no plan for expansion and training of Indian forces, which comprised about 130,000 men (in addition, there were 44,000 men in British units in India in 1939). Their mission was internal security and defence against a possible Russian threat through Afghanistan. As the war progressed, the size and role of the Indian Army expanded dramatically, and troops were sent to battle fronts as soon as possible. The most serious problem was lack of equipment.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: The Indian Army of 1939 was different from the Indian Army during World War I (also a British force); it had been reformed in 1922, moving away from single battalion regiments to multi-battalion regiments. Overall, the army was reduced to 21 cavalry regiments and 107 infantry battalions. The field army now consisted of four infantry divisions and five cavalry brigades. There was a covering force of 12 infantry brigades to protect the North West Frontier from incursions and one third of the infantry, 43 battalions, were allocated to internal security and to aid the civil power. In the 1930s, the Indian Army began a programme of modernisation—they now had their own artillery—the Indian Artillery Regiment—and the cavalry had started to mechanise. By 1936, the Indian Army had committed to supplying in wartime a brigade each for Singapore, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, Burma and two for Egypt.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: But, by 1939, further reductions had reduced the Indian Army to 18 cavalry regiments and 96 infantry battalions, in total 194,373 men including 34,155 non-combatants. They could also call upon 15,000 men from the Frontier Irregular Force, 22,000 men from the Auxiliary Force (India), consisting of European and Anglo-Indian volunteers, 19,000 from the Indian Territorial Force, and 53,000 from the Indian State forces.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: There were twenty two regular regiments of cavalry, which supplied tank and armoured car units. (Seven more were raised during the war.) There were twenty regular Indian regiments of infantry (including the Burma Rifles) and ten Gurkha regiments. Before the war, all the Indian regiments had at least two battalions, and most had more. The Gurkha regiments had two battalions each. During the war, the Gurkha regiments raised a further two battalions each, while the Indian regiments raised up to fifteen each. Two further regiments (the Assam Regiment and the Burma Regiment) were created during the war.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: The Indian Army started World War II underprepared and short of modern weapons and equipment. It had not expected to be involved in any hostilities and had been advised after the outbreak of war in Europe, by the British government, that it was unlikely to be required at all. So, it was with some surprise when the 4th Infantry and 5th Infantry divisions were requested to serve in the North African and East African Campaigns and four mule companies to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: In May 1940, agreement was reached between the British and British Indian governments over the formation of another five infantry and one armoured divisions, which became the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th infantry and the 31st Indian Armoured Divisions. These new divisions were primarily intended to be used in the defence of Malaya (9th Division) and Iraq (6th, 8th and 10th Infantry divisions). The 3rd Indian Motor Brigade, from the armoured division, was to go to Egypt; the formation of the rest of the armoured division was put on hold, because of the shortage of armoured vehicles.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: In March 1941, the British Indian government revised the defence plan for India. Concerned with what the Japanese were planning and the requirement to replace the divisions sent overseas, seven new armoured regiments and 50 new infantry battalions were needed for five new infantry divisions that were formed: the 14th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 34th and the two armoured formations 32nd Indian Armoured Division and 50th Indian Tank Brigade.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: With the fall of Singapore in 1942, about 40,000 Indian soldiers were captured. They were given a choice; 30,000 joined the Indian National Army. Those who refused became POWs and were mostly shipped to New Guinea.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: With the previously formed divisions mostly committed overseas in 1942, the army formed another four infantry divisions (23rd, 25th, 28th, 36th) and the 43rd Indian Armoured Division. However, events during 1942 and the Japanese conquests meant that the 28th Division was not formed and the units earmarked for it were used elsewhere. The 36th Division, uniquely, was created as an Indian Army formation, but was formed from British brigades that had reached India from the Madagascar campaign and from Britain. The final division formed in 1942 was the 26th Indian Infantry Division, which was hastily formed from the various units in training or stationed near Calcutta.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: After the perceived poor performance in battles in Malaya and Burma in 1942, it was decided that the existing infantry divisions were over–mechanised. To counter this, the 17th and 39th divisions were selected to become light divisions, of only two brigades which would rely more on animal and four-wheel-drive transport.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: By December 1942, agreement was reached that India should become the base for offensive operations. Support should be in place for 34 divisions, which would include two British, one West African, one East African and eleven Indian divisions, and what was left of the Burma Army.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: The plans for 1943 included the formation of another infantry division, an airborne division and a heavy armoured brigade. Only the 44th Indian Armoured Division was formed, by amalgamating the 32nd and 43rd Armoured divisions. There was a change to the establishment of infantry divisions, which received two extra infantry battalions as divisional troops.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: A committee was set up in 1943 to report on the readiness of the army and suggest improvements. Its recommendations were:


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: To assist in the jungle training of the infantry from July 1943, the 14th and 39th divisions were converted to training divisions. The 116th Indian Infantry Brigade, part of 39th Division, provided the specialised jungle conversion training. An infantry battalion would spend from four to six months with the brigade, before being sent to the front to replace a tired battalion in one of the fighting divisions. The brigades and units of the 14th Division provided jungle training for drafts of reinforcements for the Indian battalions already serving on the Burma front.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: The planned 44th Indian Airborne Division was finally formed from the 44th Armoured Division, leaving the 31st Armoured as the only armoured division in the army. The infantry division formation was changed again; it was now standardised as three infantry brigades plus three infantry battalions assigned as divisional troops.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: The success of the 116th Brigade in training for jungle warfare was recognised. From May 1944, 116th Brigade trained units destined for the Fourteenth Army and 150th Brigade, which was converted from the Risalpur Training Brigade, trained units destined for the Southern Army. The 155th Indian Infantry Brigade was formed to provide training for units destined for the western theatres of war.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: Infantry divisions consisted of three infantry brigades, of three infantry battalions. Usually, one battalion in each brigade was British and two were Indian or Gurkha. Four brigades were raised consisting entirely of Gurkha battalions. Later in the war, as British infantry reinforcements became more scarce, particularly in the South East Asian Theatre, British battalions in brigades fighting in Burma were replaced by Indian units.


title: Indian Army during World War II

text: In a division with a standard MT (Mechanical Transport) establishment, the divisional units were a reconnaissance unit provided by a mechanised cavalry regiment, and a heavy machine gun battalion armed with thirty-six Vickers machine guns. (Each Indian infantry regiment raised a machine gun battalion in addition to its infantry battalions.) The divisional artillery consisted of three field artillery regiments with twenty-four 25-pounder guns each, one anti-tank regiment with forty-eight anti-tank guns and one light anti-aircraft regiment with up to fifty-four light anti-aircraft guns. There were three engineer field companies and one engineer field park company, plus signals, medical and transport units.