title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Core memory controllers were designed so that every read was followed immediately by a write (because the read forced all bits to 0, and because the write assumed this had happened). Computers began to take advantage of this fact. For example, a value in memory could be read and incremented (as for example by the codice_1 instruction on the PDP-6) almost as quickly as it could be read; the hardware simply incremented the value between the read phase and the write phase of a single memory cycle (perhaps signalling the memory controller to pause briefly in the middle of the cycle). This might be twice as fast as the process of obtaining the value with a read-write cycle, incrementing the value in some processor register, and then writing the new value with another read-write cycle.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: "Word line" core memory was often used to provide register memory. Other names for this type are "linear select" and "2-D". This form of core memory typically wove three wires through each core on the plane, "word read", "word write", and "bit sense/write". To read or clear words, the full current is applied to one or more "word read" lines; this clears the selected cores and any that flip induce voltage pulses in their "bit sense/write" lines. For read, normally only one "word read" line would be selected; but for clear, multiple "word read" lines could be selected while the "bit sense/write" lines ignored. To write words, the half current is applied to one or more "word write" lines, and half current is applied to each "bit sense/write" line for a bit to be set. In some designs, the "word read" and "word write" lines were combined into a single wire, resulting in a memory array with just two wires per bit. For write, multiple "word write" lines could be selected. This offered a performance advantage over "X/Y line coincident-current" in that multiple words could be cleared or written with the same value in a single cycle. A typical machine's register set usually used only one small plane of this form of core memory. Some very large memories were built with this technology, for example the Extended Core Storage (ECS) auxiliary memory in the CDC 6600, which was up to 2 million 60-bit words.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Another form of core memory called core rope memory provided read-only storage. In this case, the cores, which had more linear magnetic materials, were simply used as transformers; no information was actually stored magnetically within the individual cores. Each bit of the word had one core. Reading the contents of a given memory address generated a pulse of current in a wire corresponding to that address. Each address wire was threaded either through a core to signify a binary [1], or around the outside of that core, to signify a binary [0]. As expected, the cores were much larger physically than those of read-write core memory. This type of memory was exceptionally reliable. An example was the Apollo Guidance Computer used for the NASA Moon landings.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The performance of early core memories can be characterized in today's terms as being very roughly comparable to a clock rate of 1 MHz (equivalent to early 1980s home computers, like the Apple II and Commodore 64). Early core memory systems had cycle times of about 6 µs, which had fallen to 1.2 µs by the early 1970s, and by the mid-70s it was down to 600 ns (0.6 µs). Some designs had substantially higher performance: the CDC 6600 had a memory cycle time of 1.0 µs in 1964, using cores that required a half-select current of 200 mA. Everything possible was done in order to decrease access times and increase data rates (bandwidth), including the simultaneous use of multiple grids of core, each storing one bit of a data word. For instance, a machine might use 32 grids of core with a single bit of the 32-bit word in each one, and the controller could access the entire 32-bit word in a single read/write cycle.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Core memory is non-volatile storage—it can retain its contents indefinitely without power. It is also relatively unaffected by EMP and radiation. These were important advantages for some applications like first-generation industrial programmable controllers, military installations and vehicles like fighter aircraft, as well as spacecraft, and led to core being used for a number of years after availability of semiconductor MOS memory (see also MOSFET). For example, the Space Shuttle IBM AP-101B flight computers used core memory, which preserved the contents of memory even through the "Challenger"s disintegration and subsequent plunge into the sea in 1986. Another characteristic of early core was that the coercive force was very temperature-sensitive; the proper half-select current at one temperature is not the proper half-select current at another temperature. So a memory controller would include a temperature sensor (typically a thermistor) to adjust the current levels correctly for temperature changes. An example of this is the core memory used by Digital Equipment Corporation for their PDP-1 computer; this strategy continued through all of the follow-on core memory systems built by DEC for their PDP line of air-cooled computers. Another method of handling the temperature sensitivity was to enclose the magnetic core "stack" in a temperature controlled oven. Examples of this are the heated-air core memory of the IBM 1620 (which could take up to 30 minutes to reach operating temperature, about and the heated-oil-bath core memory of the IBM 7090, early IBM 7094s, and IBM 7030.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Core was heated instead of cooled because the primary requirement was a "consistent" temperature, and it was easier (and cheaper) to maintain a constant temperature well above room temperature than one at or below it.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: In 1980, the price of a 16 kW (kiloword, equivalent to 32 kB) core memory board that fitted into a DEC Q-bus computer was around . At that time, core array and supporting electronics fit on a single printed circuit board about 25 × 20 cm in size, the core array was mounted a few mm above the PCB and was protected with a metal or plastic plate.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Diagnosing hardware problems in core memory required time-consuming diagnostic programs to be run. While a quick test checked if every bit could contain a one and a zero, these diagnostics tested the core memory with worst-case patterns and had to run for several hours. As most computers had just a single core memory board, these diagnostics also moved themselves around in memory, making it possible to test every bit. An advanced test was called a "Schmoo test" in which the half-select currents were modified along with the time at which the sense line was tested ("strobed"). The data plot of this test seemed to resemble a cartoon character called "Schmoo," and the name stuck. In many occasions, errors could be resolved by gently tapping the printed circuit board with the core array on a table. This slightly changed the positions of the cores along the wires running through them, and could fix the problem. The procedure was seldom needed, as core memory proved to be very reliable compared to other computer components of the day.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: The Scottish League Cup (also known as the Viaplay Cup for sponsorship reasons) is a football competition open to all Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) clubs. First held in 1946–47, it is the oldest national League Cup in existence. The competition had a straight knockout format but became a group and knockout competition from 2016–17.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: Rangers are the record holders of the cup, winning 27 times. Celtic are the holders, winning their 20th title after beating Hibernian 2–1 at Hampden Park on 19 December 2021.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: The domestic television rights are held by Viaplay, whose predecessor company Premier Sports replaced BT Sport from the 2019–20 season.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: Historically, the Scottish League Cup has oscillated between being a straightforward single-elimination knockout tournament and having an initial group phase. Since the 2016–17 season, the League Cup has used a group phase format. The format has eight groups of five teams playing each other once in a round-robin format. The forty teams playing in the group stage consist of the 38 league clubs who are not participating in UEFA competitions, along with two teams from outside the league. In the group phase, three points are given for a win and one point for a draw. If matches are level after ninety minutes, a penalty shoot-out is held with the winning team gaining a bonus point. The groups are regionalised: there are four groups in the North section, and four in the South section, with three pots for each regional section – top seeds, second seeds, and unseeded clubs. Each group will consist of one top seed, one second seed, and three unseeded clubs.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: The eight group winners and three best runners-up progress into the second round, where they are joined by the five clubs participating in UEFA competitions. The tournament then adopts a single-elimination knockout format. There are no replays, which means all drawn matches are decided by extra time and a penalty shootout, if necessary. The semi-final matches are played on a neutral ground, determined by the location and size of supports involved. The final game is traditionally played at Hampden Park in Glasgow, though due to renovations some finals have been played at other venues, such as Celtic Park or Ibrox Stadium. The new format also allowed the SPFL to reintroduce the two-weekend winter break in January. Along with the newly designed tournament, a new television deal for it was announced as BT Sport took over rights from BBC Scotland. In February 2016 the SPFL announced the League Cup final would be moved to November.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: The cup has its origins in a regional cup competition called the Southern League Cup which was introduced in 1940 when wartime restrictions led to a suspension of the Scottish Cup. This tournament was largely regional and did not involve all of the teams who comprised the Scottish Football League prior to the outbreak of war. The first official Scottish Football League Cup was contested during the 1946–47 season, when Rangers defeated Aberdeen in the final.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: The competition was very popular with supporters during the first few decades of its existence. The tournament consisted of 8 or 9 groups consisting of 4 or 5 teams. The groups were seeded into 2 sets with the top 16 teams in Division 1 making up the first four groups. This guaranteed that 4 'top' teams would play 4 'lesser' teams in the quarter-finals.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: Extra games when the Premier League was formed and expanded European competitions meant that by the early 1980s, its long-winded format, which involved group rounds played early in the season leading to two-legged knock-out rounds, attracted much criticism. In the mid-1980s the tournament was revamped to a shorter, single elimination knock-out format with a final played prior to Christmas, which provided the excitement of a cup final early in the season.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: During the 1999–2000 competition, the semi-finals and final were moved to the springtime to avoid the congestion of fixtures caused by the early rounds of the UEFA club competitions and Scotland's representatives in Europe were given automatic byes until the third round of competition.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: From the 2016–17 edition the League Cup reverted to a group stage format, with single-elimination knock-out in the last 16 onwards.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: Since the competition's inception, the winning team has been awarded the three-handled trophy known as the Scottish Football League Cup. However, during the 1980s when Skol lager sponsored the competition, a second trophy known as the Skol Cup was awarded as well. After the 1987–88 competition when Rangers won their third Skol Cup, they were given the trophy permanently and a new Skol Cup with a slightly different design was introduced the following season.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: It was long term Clyde and then Scottish Football League chairman John McMahon who donated the trophy that is still awarded to the winners of the competition to this day.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: Until 1995, the winners of the Scottish League Cup were granted a place in the UEFA Cup, although this privilege was rarely invoked as the winning teams usually qualified for Europe by some other means such as winning the League Championship or Scottish Cup. The final example of this was Raith Rovers who represented Scotland in the 1995–96 UEFA Cup after winning the League Cup the previous season as a First Division club. Since this privilege has been discontinued, 2012–13 winners St Mirren and 2015–16 winners Ross County both missed out on European football qualification the following season.


title: Scottish League Cup

text: Scottish League Cup matches are shown live by Viaplay in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In Australia, the Scottish League Cup is broadcast by beIN Sports. The 2009 Scottish League Cup Final was shown live on SBS due to a fixture clash on previous hosts' Setanta channel. In sub-Saharan Africa, the Scottish League Cup matches are shown live by ESPN


title: Worley (company)

text: WorleyParsons Limited, branded as Worley after completing the acquisition of Jacobs' Energy, Chemicals & Resources (ECR) division, is an American Australian engineering company which provides project delivery and consulting services to the resources and energy sectors, and complex process industries.


title: Worley (company)

text: 1970s: John Grill (chief executive officer 1975–2012), joined Smith, de Kantzow & Wholohan, which led to the 1976 establishment Wholohan Grill and Partners, a small Australian engineering consultancy. Wholohan Grill and Partners grew steadily throughout the 1970s and 80s.


title: Worley (company)

text: 1980s: In 1987, Wholohan Grill and Partners acquired the Australian interests of Worley, an American-based engineering firm. The company changed its name to Worley and from this point began expanding steadily, securing long-term contracts in Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, and creating local joint ventures, most of which are still active today.


title: Worley (company)

text: 1990s: Throughout the 1990s Worley expanded both its industry sector and geographical footprint. A policy of diversification saw Worley grow from its roots in the hydrocarbons sector into the power, infrastructure and environment, and minerals and metals sectors. At the start of the new millennium Worley was well poised to continue its industry sector and geographic expansion with 30 offices and 3,000 personnel globally. This success enabled Worley to diversify further through additional partnerships and acquisitions.


title: Worley (company)

text: 2000s: In 2002 Worley became a publicly listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange, leading to a period of acquisitions of increasing magnitude around the globe, including companies in Canada, Oman, and China. In 2004 Worley acquired Parsons E&C. Parsons E&C had its own history stemming back to 1944, when Ralph M. Parsons started what is now the Parsons Corporation in Los Angeles. In 2002, Parsons Corporation separated Parsons E&C from its other business units. Worley merged operations with Parsons E&C and commenced trading as WorleyParsons.


title: Worley (company)

text: Further acquisitions included Astron in 2004, and Komex, which was involved in environmental services, in 2005, DRPL in the power sector, TMG and Watkins & Godwin in the infrastructure sector, HG Engineering, Gas Cleaning Technologies, and Jones & Jones in the mineral and metals sector, continued to deepen and broaden WorleyParsons' capability and geographic presence.


title: Worley (company)

text: In 2006, WorleyParsons entered the South American market through a joint venture with Santiago-based ARA, a leading base metals and infrastructure engineering firm, and Colt Companies, Canada's largest engineering and project services firm, became part of the WorleyParsons family in 2007. Later that year, the companies Patterson Britton and Partners, and John Wilson and Partners, were acquired, both consultants in the water and environmental services market in Australia, with specific capabilities in the coastal and marine, water resources and waste water, environmental, civil and structural and power markets. That provided a significant expansion of the organisation's ability to support its customers in the areas of water and environmental services. In November 2007, WorleyParsons' capability in the nuclear consulting and analysis segment of the international nuclear industry was complemented with the acquisition of Polestar and UniField Engineering, with the aim of expanding its presence in the electrical power business in the USA further.


title: Worley (company)

text: WorleyParsons has a strong commitment to developing its business in Africa, as shown by the establishment of offices in Egypt and Libya, joint venture in Nigeria as DeltaAfrik with Delta Tek Engineering and by the acquisition, at the beginning of 2008, of a 50% share in Pangaea – a Pretoria-based project services company, which was renamed PangaeaWorleyParsons.


title: Worley (company)

text: The acquisitions of SEA Engineering in 2007, and INTEC (now known as INTECSEA) in April 2008, both international offshore deep-water hydrocarbons engineering and project services companies, strategically positioned the company to provide large-scale integrated deep-water facilities, subsea and marine systems projects.


title: Worley (company)

text: The acquisition of Westmar in 2008, a Canadian-based marine and port facility, resource and mining infrastructure, bulk material handling and transportation specialist, extended the Infrastructure and Minerals & Metals capabilities in both Canada and international markets.


title: Worley (company)

text: In 2009, WorleyParsons acquired the United Kingdom assets of Day & Zimmermann to form the hub of WorleyParsons' UK Improve business. The same year saw the acquisition of Brazilian based on CNEC. The capability of CNEC complements the existing capabilities of WorleyParsons' resource and energy businesses.


title: Worley (company)

text: In 2010, WorleyParsons acquired the business advisory services company, Evans & Peck. Operating in Australia and China, Evans & Peck provide services across the transport, power and energy, resources, water and social infrastructure sectors.


title: Worley (company)

text: More recently, the acquisition of Kwezi V3 Engineers, (KV3) a leading South African engineering firm in 2011 and TWP Holdings (Proprietary) Limited ("TWP") in 2013 gives WorleyParsons' customers access to the specialized underground mine planning and engineering capabilities, mineral processing and project management of TWP.


title: Worley (company)

text: In 2013, WorleyParsons acquired Bergen Group Rosenberg AS ("Rosenberg"). Rosenberg is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bergen Group ASA, a listed Norwegian company.


title: Worley (company)

text: In 2014, WorleyParsons acquired MTG, Ltd. MTG is a US based management consulting firm in the oil and gas, petrochemicals and chemicals industries with operations in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia.


title: Worley (company)

text: In October 2018, WorleyParsons reached an agreement with Jacobs to take over Jacobs' ECR business line for $3.3 billion. The transaction was completed in April 2019. The total number of employees of the combined organisation now employs 57,600 people in 51 countries.


title: Worley (company)

text: In April 2019, it was announced that the company would re-brand, becoming Worley, subject to approval at its October 2019 Annual General Meeting. Chris Ashton was named as the new CEO, to replace Andrew Wood, effective from 24 February 2020.


title: Federal cities of Russia

text: In the Russian Federation, a city of federal importance (), also known as a federal city, is a city that has a status of both an inhabited locality and a constituent federal subject. There are three federal cities: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Sevastopol. Two of them are the largest cities in the country: Moscow is the national capital and Saint Petersburg is a previous Russian capital and important port city in the Baltic Sea. Sevastopol is the newest federal city, located in Crimea, which is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.


title: Stardate

text: A stardate is a fictional system of time measurement developed for the television and film series "Star Trek". In the series, use of this date system is commonly heard at the beginning of a voice-over log entry, such as "Captain's log, stardate 41153.7. Our destination is planet Deneb IV …". While the original method was inspired by the Julian date system currently used by astronomers, writers and producers have selected numbers using different methods over the years, some more arbitrary than others. This makes it impossible to convert all stardates into equivalent calendar dates, especially since stardates were originally intended to avoid specifying exactly when "Star Trek" takes place.


title: Stardate

text: The original 1967 "Star Trek Guide" (April 17, 1967, p. 25) instructed writers for on how to select stardates for their scripts. Writers could pick any combination of four numbers plus a decimal point, and aim for consistency within a single script, but not necessarily between different scripts. This was to "avoid continually mentioning Star Trek's century" and avoid "arguments about whether this or that would have developed by then". Though the guide sets the series "about two hundred years from now", the few references within the show itself were contradictory, and later productions and reference materials eventually placed the series between the years 2265 and 2269. The second pilot begins on stardate 1312.4 and the last-produced episode on stardate 5928.5. Though the dating system would be revised for "", the pilot of "" follows the original series' dating system, starting on stardate 1207.3, which is stated precisely to be Sunday, May 11, 2256.


title: Stardate

text: Subsequent "Star Trek" series followed a new numerical convention. "" revised the stardate system in the 1987 "Star Trek: The Next Generation Writer's/Director's Guide", to five digits and one decimal place. According to the guide, the first digit "4" should represent the 24th century, with the second digit representing the television season. The remaining digits can progress unevenly, with the decimal point usually counting days. Stardates of "" began with 46379.1, corresponding to the sixth season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" which was also set in the year 2369. "" began with stardate 48315.6 (2371), one season after "TNG" had finished its seventh and final season. As in "TNG", the second digit would increase by one every season, while the initial two digits eventually rolled over from 49 to 50, despite the year 2373 still being in the 24th century. "" was set around stardate 56844.9. "Star Trek: Discovery" traveled to the year 3188, giving a stardate of 865211.3, corresponding to that year in this system of stardates.


title: Stardate

text: Additional "Star Trek" media have generated their own numbering systems. The 2009 MMORPG "Star Trek Online" takes place on stardate 86088.58, in the year 2409. Writer Roberto Orci revised the system for the 2009 film "Star Trek" so that the first four digits correspond to the year, while the remainder was intended to stand for the day of the year, in effect representing an ordinal date. In the first installment of the movie trilogy, Spock makes his log of the destruction of Vulcan on stardate 2258.42, or February 11, 2258. "Star Trek Into Darkness" begins on stardate 2259.55, or February 24, 2259. "Star Trek Beyond" begins on stardate 2263.02, or January 2, 2263.


title: Somerton Man

text: The Somerton Man was an unidentified man whose body was found on 1 December 1948 on the beach at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. The case is also known after the Persian phrase (Persian: تمام شد), meaning "is over" or "is finished", which was printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man's trousers. The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám", authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám.


title: Somerton Man

text: Following a public appeal by police, the book from which the page had been torn was located. On the inside back cover, detectives read through indentations left from previous handwriting: a local telephone number, another unidentified number, and text that resembled a coded message. The text has not been deciphered or interpreted in a way that satisfies authorities on the case.


title: Somerton Man

text: The case has been considered, since the early stages of the police investigation, "one of Australia's most profound mysteries". There has been intense speculation ever since regarding the identity of the victim, the cause of his death, and the events leading up to it. Public interest in the case remains significant for several reasons: the death occurred at a time of heightened international tensions following the beginning of the Cold War; the apparent involvement of a secret code; the possible use of an undetectable poison; and the inability of authorities to identify the dead man.


title: Somerton Man

text: On 26 July 2022, Adelaide University professor Derek Abbott, in association with genealogist Colleen M. Fitzpatrick, claimed to have identified the man as Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born in 1905, based on genetic genealogy from DNA of the man's hair. South Australia Police and Forensic Science South Australia have not verified the result, but South Australia Police said they were "cautiously optimistic" about it.


title: Somerton Man

text: On 1 December 1948 at 6:30 am, the police were contacted after the body of a man was discovered on Somerton Park beach near Glenelg, about southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. The man was found lying in the sand across from the Crippled Children's Home, which was on the corner of The Esplanade and Bickford Terrace. He was lying back with his head resting against the seawall, with his legs extended and his feet crossed. It was believed the man had died while sleeping. An unlit cigarette was on the right collar of his coat. A search of his pockets revealed an unused second-class rail ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach; a bus ticket from the city that may not have been used; a narrow aluminium comb that had been manufactured in the USA; a half-empty packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum; an Army Club cigarette packet which contained seven cigarettes of a different brand, Kensitas; and a quarter-full box of Bryant & May matches.


title: Somerton Man

text: Witnesses who came forward said that on the evening of 30 November, they had seen an individual resembling the dead man lying on his back in the same spot where the corpse was later found. A couple who saw him at around 7 pm noted that they saw him extend his right arm to its fullest extent and then drop it limply. Another couple who saw him from 7:30 pm to 8 pm, during which time the street lights had come on, recounted that they did not see him move during the half an hour in which he was in view, although they did have the impression that his position had changed. Although they commented between themselves that it was odd that he was not reacting to the mosquitoes, they had thought it more likely that he was drunk or asleep, and thus did not investigate further. One of the witnesses told the police she observed a man looking down at the sleeping man from the top of the steps that led to the beach. Witnesses said the body was in the same position when the police viewed it.


title: Somerton Man

text: Another witness came forward in 1959 and reported to the police that he and three others had seen a well-dressed man carrying another man on his shoulders along Somerton Park beach the night before the body was found. A police report was made by Detective Don O'Doherty.


title: Somerton Man

text: According to the pathologist, John Burton Cleland, the man was of "Britisher" appearance and thought to be aged about 40–45; he was in "top physical condition". He was: 180 centimetres (5 ft 11 in) tall, with grey eyes, fair to ginger-coloured hair, slightly grey around the temples, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, hands and nails that showed no signs of manual labour, big and little toes that met in a wedge shape, like those of a dancer or someone who wore boots with pointed toes; and pronounced high calf muscles consistent with people who regularly wore boots or shoes with high heels or performed ballet.


title: Somerton Man

text: He was dressed in a white shirt; a red, white and blue tie; brown trousers; socks and shoes; a brown knitted pullover and fashionable grey and brown double-breasted jacket of reportedly "American" tailoring. All labels on his clothes had been removed, and he had no hat (unusual for 1948) or wallet. He was clean-shaven and carried no identification, which led police to believe he had committed suicide. Finally, his dental records were not able to be matched to any known person.


title: Somerton Man

text: An autopsy was conducted, and the pathologist estimated the time of death at around 2 am on 1 December. The heart was of normal size, and normal in every way ...small vessels not commonly observed in the brain were easily discernible with congestion. There was congestion of the pharynx, and the gullet was covered with whitening of superficial layers of the mucosa with a patch of ulceration in the middle of it. The stomach was deeply congested... There was congestion in the second half of the duodenum. There was blood mixed with the food in the stomach. Both kidneys were congested, and the liver contained a great excess of blood in its vessels. ...The spleen was strikingly large ... about 3 times normal size ... there was destruction of the centre of the liver lobules revealed under the microscope. ... acute gastritis hemorrhage, extensive congestion of the liver and spleen, and the congestion to the brain.


title: Somerton Man

text: The autopsy also showed that the man's last meal was a pasty eaten about three to four hours before death, but tests failed to reveal any foreign substance in the body. The pathologist, Dr. Dwyer, concluded: "I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural ... the poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic". Although poisoning remained a prime suspicion, the pasty was not believed to be the source. Other than that, the coroner was unable to reach a conclusion as to the man's identity, cause of death, or whether the man seen alive at Somerton Beach on the evening of 30 November was the same man, as nobody had seen his face at that time. The body was then embalmed on 10 December 1948 after the police were unable to get a positive identification. The police said this was the first time they knew that such action was needed.


title: Somerton Man

text: On 14 January 1949, staff at the Adelaide railway station discovered a brown suitcase with its label removed, which had been checked into the station cloakroom after 11:00 am on 30 November 1948. It was believed that the suitcase was owned by the man found on the beach. In the case were a red checked dressing gown, a size-seven red felt pair of slippers, four pairs of underpants, pajamas, shaving items, a light brown pair of trousers with sand in the cuffs, an electrician's screwdriver, a table knife cut down into a short sharp instrument, a pair of scissors with sharpened points, a small square of zinc thought to have been used as a protective sheath for the knife and scissors, and a stencilling brush, as used by third officers on merchant ships for stencilling cargo.


title: Somerton Man

text: Also in the suitcase was a thread card of Barbour brand orange waxed thread of "an unusual type" not available in Australia—it was the same as that used to repair the lining in a pocket of the trousers the dead man was wearing. All identification marks on the clothes had been removed but police found the name "T. Keane" on a tie, "Keane" on a laundry bag and "Kean" on a singlet (undershirt), along with three dry-cleaning marks; 1171/7, 4393/7 and 3053/7. Police believed that whoever removed the clothing tags either overlooked these three items or purposely left the "Keane" tags on the clothes, knowing Keane was not the dead man's name. With wartime rationing still enforced, clothing was difficult to acquire at that time. Although it was a very common practice to use name tags, it was also common when buying secondhand clothing to remove the tags of the previous owners. What was unusual was that there were no spare socks found in the case, and no correspondence, although the police found pencils and unused letter stationery.


title: Somerton Man

text: A search concluded that no T. Keane was missing in any English-speaking country. A nationwide circulation of the dry-cleaning marks also proved fruitless. All that could be garnered from the suitcase was that the front gusset and featherstitching on a coat found in the case indicated it had been manufactured in the United States. The coat had not been imported, indicating the man had been to the United States or bought the coat from someone of similar size who had been.


title: Somerton Man

text: Police checked incoming train records and believed the man had arrived at the Adelaide railway station by overnight train from either Melbourne, Sydney or Port Augusta. They speculated he had showered and shaved at the adjacent City Baths (there was no Baths ticket on his body) before returning to the railway station to purchase a ticket for the 10:50 a.m. train to Henley Beach, which, for whatever reason, he missed or did not catch. He immediately checked his suitcase at the station cloak room before leaving the station and catching a city bus to Glenelg. Although named "City Baths", the centre was not a public bathing facility, but rather a public swimming pool. The railway station bathing facilities were adjacent to the station cloak room, which itself was adjacent to the station's southern exit onto North Terrace. The City Baths on King William St. were accessed from the station's northern exit via a lane way. There is no record of the station's bathroom facilities being unavailable on the day he arrived.


title: Somerton Man

text: An inquest into the man's death, conducted by coroner Thomas Erskine Cleland, commenced a few days following the discovery of the body but was adjourned until 17 June 1949. Cleland, as the investigating pathologist, re-examined the body and made a number of discoveries. He noted that the man's shoes were remarkably clean and appeared to have been recently polished, rather than in the condition expected of a man who had apparently been wandering around Glenelg all day. He added that this evidence fitted in with the theory that the body may have been brought to Somerton Park beach after the man's death, accounting for the lack of evidence of vomiting and convulsions, which are the two main physiological reactions to poison.


title: Somerton Man

text: Cleland speculated that, as none of the witnesses could positively identify the man they saw the previous night as the same person discovered the next morning, there remained the possibility the man had died elsewhere and had been dumped. He stressed that this was purely speculation as all the witnesses believed it was, "definitely the same person", as the body was in the same place and lying in the same distinctive position. He also found no evidence indicating the identity of the deceased.


title: Somerton Man

text: Cedric Stanton Hicks, professor of physiology and pharmacology at the University of Adelaide, testified that of a group of drugs, variants of a drug in that group he called "number 1" and in particular "number 2" were extremely toxic in a relatively small oral dose that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to identify even if it had been suspected in the first instance. He gave Cleland a piece of paper with the names of the two drugs which was entered as Exhibit C.18. The names were not released to the public until the 1980s as at the time they were "quite easily procurable by the ordinary individual" from a chemist without the need to give a reason for the purchase. (The drugs were later publicly identified as digitalis and ouabain, both cardenolide-type cardiac glycosides.) Hicks noted the only "fact" not found in relation to the body was evidence of vomiting. He then stated its absence was not unknown but that he could not make a "frank conclusion" without it. Hicks stated that if death had occurred seven hours after the man was last seen to move, it would imply a massive dose that could still have been undetectable. It was noted that the movement seen by witnesses at 7 p.m. could have been the last convulsion preceding death.


title: Somerton Man

text: Early in the inquiry, Cleland stated, "I would be prepared to find that he died from poison, that the poison was probably a glucoside and that it was not accidentally administered; but I cannot say whether it was administered by the deceased himself or by some other person." Despite these findings, he could not determine the cause of death of the unidentified man. Cleland remarked that if the body had been carried to its final resting place then "all the difficulties would disappear".


title: Somerton Man

text: After the inquest, a plaster cast was made of the man's head and shoulders. The lack of success in determining the identity and cause of death of the man had led authorities to call it an "unparalleled mystery" and believe that the cause of death might never be known.


title: Somerton Man

text: Around the same time as the inquest, a tiny piece of rolled-up paper with the words printed on it was found in a fob pocket sewn within the dead man's trouser pocket. Public library officials called in to translate the text identified it as a phrase meaning "ended" or "finished" found on the last page of "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam". The paper's verso side was blank. Police conducted an Australia-wide search to find a copy of the book that had a similarly blank verso. A photograph of the scrap of paper was released to the press.


title: Somerton Man

text: Following a public appeal by police, the copy of "Rubaiyat" from which the page had been torn was located. A man showed police a 1941 edition of Edward FitzGerald's (1859) translation of "Rubaiyat", published by Whitcombe and Tombs in Christchurch, New Zealand. Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane, who led the initial investigation, often protected the privacy of witnesses in public statements by using pseudonyms; Leane referred to the man who found the book by the pseudonym "Ronald Francis" and he has never been officially identified. "Francis" had not considered that the book might be connected to the case until he had seen an article in the previous day's newspaper.


title: Somerton Man

text: There is some uncertainty about the circumstances under which the book was found. One newspaper article refers to the book being found about a week or two before the body was found. Former South Australian Police detective Gerry Feltus (who dealt with the matter as a cold case) reports that the book was found "just after that man was found on the beach at Somerton". The timing is significant as the man is presumed, based on the suitcase, to have arrived in Adelaide the day before he was found on the beach. If the book was found one or two weeks before, it suggests that the man had visited previously or had been in Adelaide for a longer period. Most accounts state that the book was found in an unlocked car parked in Jetty Road, Glenelg – either in the rear floor well, or on the back seat.


title: Somerton Man

text: The theme of "Rubaiyat" is that one should live life to the fullest and have no regrets when it ends. The poem's subject led police to theorise that the man had committed suicide by poison, although no other evidence corroborated the theory. The book was missing the words on the last page, which had a blank reverse, and microscopic tests indicated that the piece of paper was from the page torn from the book. Also, in the back of the book were faint indentations representing five lines of text, in capital letters. The second line has been struck out – a fact considered significant due to its similarities to the fourth line and the possibility that it represents an error in encryption.


title: Somerton Man

text: In the book it is unclear whether the first line begins with an "M" or "W", but it is widely believed to be the letter W, owing to the distinctive difference when compared to the stricken letter M. There appears to be a deleted or underlined line of text that reads "MLIAOI". Although the last character in this line of text looks like an "L", it is fairly clear on closer inspection of the image that this is formed from an "I" and the extension of the line used to delete or underline that line of text. Also, the other "L" has a curve to the bottom part of the character. There is also an "X" above the last "O" in the code, and it is not known if this is significant to the code or not.


title: Somerton Man

text: Initially, the letters were thought to be words in a foreign language before it was realised it was a code. Code experts were called in at the time to decipher the lines, but were unsuccessful, and amateurs also attempted to crack the code.


title: Somerton Man

text: In 1978, following a request from ABC Television's journalist Stuart Littlemore, Department of Defence cryptographers analysed the handwritten text. The cryptographers reported that it would be impossible to provide "a satisfactory answer": if the text were an encrypted message, its brevity meant that it had "insufficient symbols" from which a clear meaning could be extracted, and the text could be the "meaningless" product of a "disturbed mind".


title: Somerton Man

text: In 2004, retired detective Gerry Feltus suggested in a "Sunday Mail" article that the final line "ITTMTSAMSTGAB" could stand for the initials of "It's Time To Move To South Australia Moseley Street..." (Jessica Thomson lived in Moseley Street which is the main road through Glenelg). In 2009 to 2011, Derek Abbott's team concluded that it was most likely that each letter was the first letter of a word. A 2014 analysis by computational linguist John Rehling strongly supports the theory that the letters consist of the initials of some English text, but finds no match for these in a large survey of literature, and concludes that the letters were likely written as a form of shorthand, not as a code, and that the original text can likely never be determined.


title: Somerton Man

text: A telephone number was also found in the back of the book, belonging to a nurse named Jessica Ellen "Jo" Thomson (1921–2007) – born Jessie Harkness in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, New South Wales – who lived in Moseley St, Glenelg, about north of the location where the body was found. When she was interviewed by police, Thomson said that she did not know the dead man or why he would have her phone number and choose to visit her suburb on the night of his death. However, she also reported that, at some time in late 1948, an unidentified man had attempted to visit her and asked a next door neighbour about her. In his book on the case, Gerry Feltus stated that when he interviewed Thomson in 2002, he found that she was either being "evasive" or she "just did not wish to talk about it". Feltus believed Thomson knew the Somerton man's identity. Thomson's daughter Kate, in a television interview in 2014 with Channel Nine's "60 Minutes", also said that she believed her mother knew the dead man.


title: Somerton Man

text: In 1949, Jessica Thomson requested that police not keep a permanent record of her name or release her details to third parties, as it would be embarrassing and harmful to her reputation to be linked to such a case. The police agreed – a decision that hampered later investigations. In news media, books and other discussions of the case, Thomson was frequently referred to by various pseudonyms, including the nickname "Jestyn" and names such as "Teresa Johnson née Powell". Feltus in 2010 claimed he was given permission by Thomson's family to disclose her names and that of her husband, Prosper Thomson. Nevertheless, the names Feltus used in his book were pseudonyms. Feltus also stated that her family did not know of her connection with the case, and he agreed not to disclose her identity or anything that might reveal it. Thomson's real name was considered important because it may be the decryption key for the purported code.


title: Somerton Man

text: When she was shown the plaster cast bust of the dead man by DS Leane, Thomson said she could not identify the person depicted. According to Leane, he described her reaction upon seeing the cast as "completely taken aback, to the point of giving the appearance that she was about to faint". In an interview many years later, Paul Lawson, the technician who made the cast and was present when Thomson viewed it, noted that after looking at the bust she immediately looked away and would not look at it again.


title: Somerton Man

text: Thomson also said that while she was working at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney during World War II, she had owned a copy of "Rubaiyat". In 1945, at the Clifton Gardens Hotel in Sydney, she had given it to an Australian Army lieutenant named Alf Boxall, who was serving at the time in the Water Transport Section of the Royal Australian Engineers. Thomson told police that, after the war ended, she had moved to Melbourne and married. She said that she had received a letter from Boxall and had replied, telling him that she was now married. (Subsequent research suggests that her future husband, Prosper Thomson, was in the process of obtaining a divorce from his first wife in 1949, and that he did not marry Jessica until mid-1950.) There is no evidence that Boxall had any contact with Jessica Thomson after 1945.


title: Somerton Man

text: As a result of their conversations with Thomson, police suspected that Boxall was the dead man. However, in July 1949, Boxall was found in Sydney and the final page of his copy of "Rubaiyat" (reportedly a 1924 edition published in Sydney) was intact, with the words "Tamam Shud" still in place. Boxall was now working in the maintenance section at the Randwick Bus Depot (where he had worked before the war) and was unaware of any link between the dead man and himself. In the front of the copy of "Rubaiyat" that was given to Boxall, Jessica Harkness had signed herself "JEstyn" and written out verse 70:


title: Somerton Man

text: The two daily Adelaide newspapers, "The Advertiser" and "The News", covered the death in separate ways. "The Advertiser" first mentioned the case in a small article on page three of its morning edition of 2 December 1948. Titled "Body found on Beach", it read:


title: Somerton Man

text: A body, believed to be of E.C. Johnson, about 45, of Arthur St, Payneham, was found on Somerton Beach, opposite the Crippled Children's Home yesterday morning. The discovery was made by Mr J. Lyons, of Whyte Rd, Somerton. Detective H. Strangway and Constable J. Moss are enquiring.


title: Somerton Man

text: As one journalist wrote in June 1949, alluding to the line in "Rubaiyat", "the Somerton Man seems to have made certain that the glass would be empty, save for speculation". An editorial called the case "one of Australia's most profound mysteries" and noted that if he died by poison so rare and obscure it could not be identified by toxicology experts, then surely the culprit's advanced knowledge of toxic substances pointed to something more serious than a mere domestic poisoning.


title: Somerton Man

text: A number of possible identifications have been proposed over the years. On 3 December 1948, a day after "The Advertiser" named him as the likely victim, E.C. Johnson identified himself at a police station. That same day, "The News" published a photograph of the dead man on its front page, leading to additional calls from members of the public about his possible identity. By 4 December, police had announced that the man's fingerprints were not on South Australian police records, forcing them to look further afield. On 5 December, "The Advertiser" reported that police were searching through military records after a man claimed to have had a drink with a person resembling the dead man at a hotel in Glenelg on 13 November. During their drinking session, the mystery man supposedly produced a military pension card bearing the name "Solomonson".


title: Somerton Man

text: In early January 1949, two people identified the body as that of 63-year-old former wood cutter Robert Walsh. A third person, James Mack, also viewed the body, initially could not identify it, but an hour later he contacted police to claim it was Walsh. Mack stated that the reason he did not confirm this at the viewing was a difference in the colour of the hair. Walsh had left Adelaide several months earlier to buy sheep in Queensland but had failed to return at Christmas as planned. Police were skeptical, believing Walsh to be too old to be the dead man. However, the police did state that the body was consistent with that of a man who had been a wood cutter, although the state of the man's hands indicated he had not cut wood for at least eighteen months. Any thoughts that a positive identification had been made were quashed, however, when Elizabeth Thompson, one of the people who had earlier positively identified the body as Walsh, retracted her statement after a second viewing of the body, where the absence of a particular scar on the body, as well as the size of the dead man's legs, led her to realise the body was not Walsh.


title: Somerton Man

text: By early February 1949, there had been eight different "positive" identifications of the body, including two Darwin men who thought the body was of a friend of theirs, and others who thought it was a missing station worker, a worker on a steamship or a Swedish man. Detectives from Victoria initially believed the man was from there because of the similarity of the laundry marks to those used by several dry-cleaning firms in Melbourne. Following publication of the man's photograph in Victoria, twenty-eight people claimed to know his identity. Victoria detectives disproved all the claims and said that "other investigations" indicated it was unlikely that he was from Victoria. A seaman named Tommy Reade from the , in port at the time, was thought to be the dead man, but after some of his shipmates viewed the body at the morgue, they stated categorically that the corpse was not that of Reade. By November 1953, police announced they had recently received the 251st "solution" to the identity of the body from members of the public who claimed to have met or known him. But, they said that the "only clue of any value" remained the clothing the man wore.


title: Somerton Man

text: Contemporary reports considered the connection with the death of a two-year-old boy six months later.


title: Somerton Man

text: On 6 June 1949, the body of two-year-old Clive Mangnoson was found in a sack in the Largs Bay sand hills, about up the coast from Somerton Park. Lying next to him was his unconscious father, Keith Waldemar Mangnoson. The father was taken to a hospital in a very weak condition, suffering from exposure; following a medical examination, he was transferred to a mental hospital. The Mangnosons had been missing for four days. The police believed that Clive had been dead for twenty-four hours when his body was found. The two were found by Neil McRae of Largs Bay, who claimed he had seen the location of the two in a dream the night before. The coroner could not determine the young Mangnoson's cause of death, although it was not believed to be natural causes. The contents of the boy's stomach were sent to a government analyst for further examination.


title: Somerton Man

text: Following the death, the boy's mother, Roma Mangnoson, reported having been threatened by a masked man who, while driving a battered cream car, almost ran her down outside her home in Cheapside Street, Largs North. Mangnoson stated that "the car stopped and a man with a khaki handkerchief over his face told her to 'keep away from the police or else'". Additionally a similar-looking man had been recently seen lurking around the house. Mangnoson believed that this situation could be related to her husband's attempt to identify the Somerton Man, believing him to be Carl Thompsen, who had worked with him in Renmark in 1939. Soon after being interviewed by police over her harassment, Mangnoson collapsed and required medical treatment.


title: Somerton Man

text: J. M. Gower, secretary of the Largs North Progress Association, received anonymous phone calls threatening that Mrs. Mangnoson would meet with an accident if he interfered while A. H. Curtis, the acting mayor of Port Adelaide, received three anonymous phone calls threatening "an accident" if he "stuck his nose into the Mangnoson affair". Police suspect the calls may be a hoax and the caller may be the same person who also terrorised a woman in a nearby suburb who had recently lost her husband in tragic circumstances.


title: Somerton Man

text: In addition to intense public interest in Australia during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the case also attracted international attention. South Australia Police consulted their counterparts overseas and distributed information about the dead man internationally, in an effort to identify him. International circulation of a photograph of the man and details of his fingerprints yielded no positive identification. For example, in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was unable to match the dead man's fingerprint with prints taken from files of domestic criminals. Scotland Yard was also asked to assist with the case, but could not offer any insights.


title: Somerton Man

text: In 1949, the body of the unknown man was buried in Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery, where the Salvation Army conducted the service. The South Australian Grandstand Bookmakers Association paid for the service to save the man from a pauper's burial.


title: Somerton Man

text: Years after the burial, flowers began appearing on the grave. Police questioned a woman seen leaving the cemetery but she claimed she knew nothing of the man. About the same time, Ina Harvey, the receptionist from the Strathmore Hotel opposite Adelaide railway station, revealed that a strange man had stayed in Room 21 or 23 for a few days around the time of the death, checking out on 30 November 1948. She recalled that he was English speaking and only carrying a small black case, not unlike one a musician or a doctor might carry. When an employee looked inside the case he told Harvey he had found an object inside the case he described as looking like a "needle". On 22 November 1959 it was reported that one E.B. Collins, an inmate of New Zealand's Whanganui Prison, claimed to know the identity of the dead man.


title: Somerton Man

text: In 1978, ABC-TV, in its documentary series "Inside Story", produced a programme on the Tamám Shud case, titled "The Somerton Beach Mystery", where reporter Stuart Littlemore investigated the case, including interviewing Boxall, who could add no new information, and Paul Lawson, who made the plaster cast of the body and who refused to answer a question about whether anyone had positively identified the body.


title: Somerton Man

text: In 1994, John Harber Phillips, Chief Justice of Victoria and Chairman of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, reviewed the case to determine the cause of death and concluded that, "There seems little doubt it was digitalis." Phillips supported his conclusion by pointing out that the organs were engorged, consistent with digitalis, the lack of evidence of natural disease and "the absence of anything seen macroscopically which could account for the death".


title: Somerton Man

text: Former South Australian Chief Superintendent Len Brown, who worked on the case in the 1940s, stated that he believed that the man was from a country in the Warsaw Pact, which led to the police's inability to confirm the man's identity.


title: Somerton Man

text: The South Australian Police Historical Society holds the plaster bust, which contains strands of the man's hair. Any further attempts to identify the body have been hampered by the embalming formaldehyde having destroyed much of the man's DNA. Other key evidence no longer exists, such as the brown suitcase, which was destroyed in 1986. In addition, witness statements have disappeared from the police file over the years.


title: Somerton Man

text: There has been persistent speculation that the dead man was a spy, due to the circumstances and historical context of his death. At least two sites relatively close to Adelaide were of interest to spies: the Radium Hill uranium mine and the Woomera Test Range, an Anglo-Australian military research facility. The man's death also coincided with a reorganisation of Australian security agencies, which would culminate the following year with the founding of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). This would be followed by a crackdown on Soviet espionage in Australia, which was revealed by intercepts of Soviet communications under the Venona project.


title: Somerton Man

text: Another theory concerns Boxall, who was reportedly involved in intelligence work during and immediately after World War II. In a 1978 television interview Stuart Littlemore asks: "Mr Boxall, you had been working, hadn't you, in an intelligence unit, before you met this young woman [Jessica Harkness]. Did you talk to her about that at all?" In reply, Boxall says "no", and when asked if Harkness could have known, Boxall replies: "Not unless somebody else told her." When Littlemore suggests in the interview that there may have been an espionage connection to the dead man in Adelaide, Boxall replies: "It's quite a melodramatic thesis, isn't it?" Boxall's army service record suggests that he served initially in the 4th Water Transport Company, before being seconded to the North Australia Observer Unit (NAOU) – a special operations unit – and that during his time with NAOU, Boxall rose rapidly in rank, being promoted from lance corporal to lieutenant within three months.


title: Somerton Man

text: In 2011, an Adelaide woman contacted biological anthropologist Maciej Henneberg about an identification card of an H. C. Reynolds that she had found in her father's possessions. The card, a document issued in the United States to foreign seamen during World War I, was given to Henneberg in October 2011 for comparison of the ID photograph to that of the Somerton man. While Henneberg found anatomical similarities in features such as the nose, lips and eyes, he believed they were not as reliable as the close similarity of the ear. The ear shapes shared by both men were a "very good" match, although Henneberg also found what he called a "unique identifier"; a mole on the cheek that was the same shape and in the same position in both photographs. "Together with the similarity of the ear characteristics, this mole, in a forensic case, would allow me to make a rare statement positively identifying the Somerton man."


title: Somerton Man

text: The ID card, numbered 58757, was issued in the United States on 28 February 1918 to H. C. Reynolds, giving his nationality as "British" and age as 18. Searches conducted by the US National Archives, the UK National Archives and the Australian War Memorial Research Centre have failed to find any records relating to H. C. Reynolds. The South Australia Police Major Crime Branch, who still have the case listed as open, will investigate the new information. Some independent researchers believe the ID card belonged to Horace Charles Reynolds, a Tasmanian man who died in 1953 and therefore could not have been the Somerton man.


title: Somerton Man

text: Prosper Thomson died in 1995 and Jessica Thomson died in 2007. In November 2013, three of their relatives gave interviews to the Channel Nine current affairs program "60 Minutes".


title: Somerton Man

text: Kate Thomson, the daughter of Jessica and Prosper Thomson, said that her mother was the woman interviewed by the police and that her mother had told her she had lied to them – Jessica did know the identity of the Somerton man and his identity was also "known to a level higher than the police force". She suggested that her mother and the Somerton man may both have been spies, noting that Jessica Thomson taught English to migrants, was interested in communism, and could speak Russian, although she would not disclose to Kate where she had learned it or why.


title: Somerton Man

text: Roma Egan, the widow of Jessica Thomson's son Robin, and Robin and Roma's daughter Rachel Egan, also appeared on "60 Minutes". They suggested that the Somerton man was Robin's father and, therefore, Rachel's grandfather. The Egans reported lodging a new application with the Attorney-General John Rau to have the Somerton man's body exhumed and DNA tested. Abbott also subsequently wrote to Rau in support of the Egans, saying that exhumation for DNA testing would be consistent with federal government policy of identifying soldiers in war graves, to bring closure to their families. Kate Thomson opposed the exhumation as being disrespectful to her brother.


title: Somerton Man

text: In October 2011, as interest in the case resurfaced, Attorney-General John Rau refused to exhume the body, stating: "There needs to be public interest reasons that go well beyond public curiosity or broad scientific interest." Feltus said he was still contacted by people in Europe who believed the man was a missing relative but did not believe an exhumation and finding the man's family grouping would provide answers to relatives, as "during that period so many war criminals changed their names and came to different countries".


title: Somerton Man

text: In October 2019, however, Attorney-General Vickie Chapman granted approval for his body to be exhumed to extract DNA for analysis. The parties interested in the analysis agreed to cover the costs. A potential granddaughter's DNA is planned to be compared to the unknown man's to see if it is a match.


title: Somerton Man

text: An exhumation was carried out on 19 May 2021. Police stated that the remains were in "reasonable" condition and were optimistic about the prospect of DNA recovery. The remains were deeper in the ground than previously thought. It was reported that the body was exhumed as part of Operation Persevere and Operation Persist, which are investigating historical unidentified remains in South Australia. The authorities have said that they intend to take DNA from the remains if possible. Dr. Anne Coxon of Forensic Science South Australia said: "The technology available to us now is clearly light years ahead of the techniques available when this body was discovered in the late 1940s," and that tests would use "every method at our disposal to try and bring closure to this enduring mystery".


title: Somerton Man

text: In March 2009 a University of Adelaide team led by Professor Derek Abbott began an attempt to solve the case through cracking the code and proposing to exhume the body to test for DNA. His investigations have led to questions concerning the assumptions police had made on the case. Abbott also tracked down the Barbour waxed cotton of the period and found packaging variations. This may provide clues to the country where it was purchased.


title: Somerton Man

text: It was determined the letter frequency was considerably different from letters written down randomly; the frequency was to be further tested to determine if the alcohol level of the writer could alter random distribution. They observed that the format of the code also appeared to follow the quatrain format of "Rubaiyat", leading them to theorise that the code was a one-time pad encryption algorithm. Copies of "Rubaiyat", as well as the Talmud and Bible, were being compared to the code using computers to get a statistical base for letter frequencies. However, the code's short length meant the investigators would require the exact edition of the book used. With the original copy lost in the 1950s, researchers have been looking for a FitzGerald edition. The team concluded that it was most likely that each letter was the first letter of a word.


title: Somerton Man

text: An investigation had shown that the Somerton man's autopsy reports of 1948 and 1949 are now missing and the Barr Smith Library's collection of Cleland's notes do not contain anything on the case. Maciej Henneberg, professor of anatomy at the University of Adelaide, examined images of the Somerton man's ears and found that his cymba (upper ear hollow) is larger than his cavum (lower ear hollow), a feature possessed by only 1–2% of the Caucasian population. In May 2009, Abbott consulted with dental experts who concluded that the Somerton Man had hypodontia (a rare genetic disorder) of both lateral incisors, a feature present in only 2% of the general population. In June 2010, Abbott obtained a photograph of Jessica Thomson's eldest son Robin, which clearly showed that he – like the unknown man – had not only a larger cymba than cavum but also hypodontia. The chance that this was a coincidence has been estimated as between one in 10,000,000 and one in 20,000,000. The media have suggested that Robin Thomson, who was sixteen months old in 1948 and died in 2009, may have been a child of either Boxall or the Somerton man and passed off as Prosper Thomson's son. DNA testing would confirm or eliminate this speculation. Abbott believes an exhumation and an autosomal DNA test could link the Somerton man to a shortlist of surnames which, along with existing clues to the man's identity, would be the "final piece of the puzzle".


title: Somerton Man

text: After discovering that Robin Thomson had died in 2009, Abbott contacted Rachel, the daughter of Roma Egan and Robin Thomson, who had been adopted and grew up in New Zealand. Abbott and Rachel married in 2010 and they have three children. The family has a painting of the Somerton man hanging in their home, believing him to be family. However, Rachel Egan's DNA has been analysed and links were found to the grandparents of Prosper Thomson.


title: Somerton Man

text: In July 2013, Abbott released an artistic impression he commissioned of the Somerton man, believing this might finally lead to an identification. "All this time we've been publishing the autopsy photo, and it's hard to tell what something looks like from that", Abbott said.


title: Somerton Man

text: In December 2017, Abbott announced three "excellent" hairs "at the right development stage for extracting DNA" had been found on the plaster cast of the corpse, and had been submitted for analysis to the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. Processing the results could reportedly take up to a year. While much of the DNA is degraded, in February 2018, the University of Adelaide team obtained a high-definition analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from the hair sample from Somerton Man. They found that the Somerton Man belonged to haplogroup H4a1a1a, possessed by only 1% of Europeans. However, mitochondrial DNA is only inherited through the maternal line, and therefore cannot be used to investigate a hereditary link between Rachel Egan, Abbott's wife, and the Somerton Man.


title: Somerton Man

text: On 26 July 2022, Abbott announced that he and genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick had determined that the man was Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born on November 16, 1905, in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne.


title: Somerton Man

text: Abbott claimed his DNA identification from strands of hair found in the plaster death mask made by South Australian Police in the late 1940s. Through investigative genetic genealogy, matches were found for descendants of two distant cousins of Webb, both on the paternal and on the maternal side.


title: Somerton Man

text: None of Webb’s still-living relatives in 2022 had known him in person. Initially there were no known pre-death photographs of Webb, but further investigation uncovered his likely presence in a 1921 Swinburne University football team photograph, though the image did not identify Webb directly, and in November 2022 "Australian Story" revealed photographs of Webb from the 1920s found in a Webb family photo album. Earlier the ABC had published photos of Webb's brother, Roy Webb, claiming they resembled the Somerton Man.


title: Somerton Man

text: Forensic Science South Australia, who were still investigating, declined to comment on Abbott's findings. South Australia Police had not verified the result, but stated they were "cautiously optimistic that this may provide a breakthrough".


title: Somerton Man

text: Carl Webb’s father Richard August Webb (died in 1939) had emigrated to Australia from Hamburg, Germany. He married Eliza Amelia Morris Grace (died in 1946) in 1892 and opened a bakery in Springvale, Victoria.


title: Somerton Man

text: Carl "Charles" Webb was born on November 16, 1905, in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, the youngest of six children of Richard and Eliza. The three sons would eventually work at the family bakery. When the bakery closed down, Carl retrained as an electrical instrument maker. In 1941, he married Dorothy “Doff” Robertson, a pharmacist and chiropodist. The couple moved into a flat in Bromby Street, South Yarra.


title: Somerton Man

text: The marriage was not a harmonic one, largely due to Carl’s personality. Dorothy described Carl as solitary, having few friends, living a quiet life and being in bed by 7pm each night, but also moody, violent and threatening, especially when facing defeat even over relatively trivial matters. He was fond of poetry and wrote several poems of his own, “most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire,” Dorothy stated. This would be consistent with the copy of the Rubaiyat, which also focuses on the subject of death.


title: Somerton Man

text: Dorothy recalled one instance in March 1946 in which her husband apparently attempted suicide with an overdose of ether. She nursed him back to health, only for him to scald her for it and become more violent. In September 1946, Dorothy fled from her husband, following years of physical and verbal abuse. Carl moved out in 1947 and went off the radar after that; no death record for him exists as of 2022.


title: Somerton Man

text: In 1951, Dorothy was reportedly living in Bute, South Australia, from Adelaide. According to Abbott, Carl had possibly tried to track her down. She applied for a divorce on June 5, 1951, citing desertion. The divorce was granted in April 1952.


title: Somerton Man

text: Carl’s oldest sister Freda Grace was married to Thomas Gerald Keane. They had a son named John, who died in World War II in 1943. (Carl’s brother Roy also died in battle the same year.) John’s possessions included items which imply he resided in the US at some point, such as US coins and a map of Chicago. Freda Grace and Carl lived a 20-minute drive away from each other. This would explain why the Somerton Man was wearing clothes of US origin and with the name Keane on them: they could have been handed down to him from his brother-in-law or nephew.


title: Somerton Man

text: Abbott's research indicates Webb enjoyed betting on horses, thus the coded messages could be horse names.


title: Somerton Man

text: Derek Abbott and Colleen Fitzpatrick believe that Carl had serious mental health issues and “spiralled down” after losing four close relatives in seven years. His history and the autopsy findings suggest he committed suicide by poisoning himself.


title: Ariq Böke

text: Ariq Böke (after 1219–1266), the components of his name also spelled Arigh, Arik and Bukha, Buka (, ; ), was the seventh and youngest son of Tolui and a grandson of Genghis Khan. After the death of his brother the Great Khan Möngke, Ariq Böke claimed the title of the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and briefly took power while his brothers Kublai and Hulagu were absent from the Mongolian Plateau. When Kublai returned for an election in 1260, rival factions could not agree, and elected both claimants, Kublai and Ariq Böke, to the throne, resulting in the Toluid Civil War that fragmented the Mongol Empire. Ariq Böke was supported by the traditionalists of the Mongol Empire, while his brother Kublai was supported by the senior princes of North China and Manchuria.


title: Ariq Böke

text: Ariq Böke was the youngest son of Sorghaghtani Beki and Tolui, the youngest son of Genghis Khan. When Genghis died in 1227, the leadership of the Empire passed to Genghis' third son (Ariq Böke's uncle), Ögedei. He peacefully attended the elections of both his uncle, Great Khan Ögedei and Ögedei's successor and eldest son, Güyük. After his eldest brother Möngke was enthroned in 1250, his family became even more powerful among the Chingisids. His mother was Christian and Ariq Böke was also known for being sympathetic towards Christianity; this is known from the account of Franciscan William of Rubruck, an envoy of Louis IX of France who wrote that he observed Ariq Böke make the sign of cross and state that "We know that the Messiah [Jesus] is God". A Confucian tutor was arranged for Ariq Böke, at the behest of his elder brother Kublai Khan, but Ariq Böke did not take to Chinese scholars the way his elder brother had.


title: Ariq Böke

text: When Ögedei Khan died, a power struggle erupted, with leadership then passing to Ögedei's son Güyük in 1246, though Güyük died only two years later, in 1248. After another struggle, the sons of Tolui, Ögedei's brother, took power. The first of Tolui's sons to be Great Khan was Möngke, who proceeded with Kublai to conquer Southern China and the Southern Song Dynasty. Their brother Hulagu led the Mongol advance westward, conquering Baghdad and proceeding into Syria and towards Palestine. During this time, all affairs of the Heartland were left under the control of their brother Ariq Böke.


title: Ariq Böke

text: When Möngke died in 1259, Ariq Böke was elected Khan in the absence of his brothers, and had the support of most of the existing ministers and powerful families in the capital of Karakorum, such as Möngke's family, and other princes of the Golden family along with other forces in the capital of Karakorum including Torguud royal bodyguards and White Horde elites, as well as the Oirats, who were allied with him as one of the Oirat leaders was married to his daughter. However, when Kublai and Hulagu received news of Möngke's death, they aborted their own battles in order to return to the capital to decide the matter of succession. In May 1260, Kublai was elected khan by his own supporters, to rival the claim of Ariq Böke. A civil war subsequently broke out between the brothers for the leadership of the Empire. For example, when the Chagatai Khanate needed a new leader, Kublai attempted to send Abishqa, who was loyal to him. But Ariq Böke had Abishqa captured and eventually killed, and instead installed his own ally Alghu. Ariq Böke ordered Alghu to defend the area from both the forces of Hulagu, and the possible presence of Berke of the Golden Horde. But Alghu deserted Ariq Böke, killing his envoys for treasure, while Kaidu remained loyal to Ariq Böke. Alghu and Ariq Böke were soon in direct conflict, with Alghu winning the first engagement, but then at the second, Ariq Böke was victorious, and forced Alghu to flee westward.


title: Ariq Böke

text: Eventually, as the war continued between Ariq Böke and his brother Kublai, the former's forces weakened. Kublai had powerful Mongol cavalry troops, Mongolian, Manchurian, Han, Kipchak and numerous Chinese and Goryeo infantry units. Kublai's supporter Kadan, a son of Ögedei, crushed Ariq Böke's force under General Alandar, and Ariq Böke twice lost control of the capital of Karakorum. Kublai also blockaded all trade to Mongolia from North China, in order to cut the food supply. Ariq Böke finally submitted to Kublai in 1263. He was imprisoned by Kublai and died mysteriously a few years after his surrender, leading to rumors that he had been secretly poisoned.


title: Ariq Böke

text: According to scholar David Morgan, "Ariq Böke can be seen as representing an influential school of thought among the Mongols, which Kublai through his actions and attitudes after 1260 opposed. Some Mongols felt there was a dangerous drift towards softness, typified in those like Kublai who thought there was something to be said for settled civilization and for the Chinese way of life. In the traditionalist view, the Mongol center ought to remain in Mongolia, and the Mongols' nomadic life be preserved uncontaminated. China ought merely to be exploited. Ariq Böke came to be regarded as this faction's figurehead." This legacy was continued by Kaidu (Khaidu). Although Ariq Böke lost power, some of his descendants later became important figures in the Ilkhanate and the Northern Yuan dynasty, and the lineage of both Ilkhan Arpa Ke'un and Yesüder can be traced back to Ariq Böke.


title: WHSmith

text: WHSmith (also written WH Smith, and known colloquially as Smith's and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son) is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery.


title: WHSmith

text: The company was formed by Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna in 1792 as a news vendor in London. It remained under the ownership of the Smith family for many years and saw large-scale expansion during the 1970s as the company began to diversify into other markets. Following a rejected private equity takeover in 2004, the company began to focus on its core retail business. It was responsible for the creation of the ISBN book identifier.


title: WHSmith

text: In 1792, Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna established the business as a news vendor in Little Grosvenor Street, London. After their deaths, the business — valued in 1812 at £1,280 () — was taken over by their youngest son William Henry Smith, and in 1846 the firm became W. H. Smith & Son when his only son, also named William Henry, became a partner. The firm took advantage of the by opening news-stands on railway stations, beginning with Euston in 1848. In 1850, the firm opened depots in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. It also ran a circulating library service, from 1860 to 1961, and a publishing business based at the Steam Press, Cirencester. The younger W. H. Smith used the success of the firm as a springboard into politics, becoming a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1868 and serving as a minister in several Conservative governments.


title: WHSmith

text: After the death of W. H. Smith the younger in 1891, his widow was created Viscountess Hambleden in her own right; their son inherited the business from his father and the viscountcy from his mother. After the death of the second Viscount in 1928, the business was reconstituted as a limited company, in which his son, the third Viscount, owned all the ordinary shares. On the death of the third Viscount in 1948, the death duties were so large that a public holding company had to be formed and shares sold to WH Smith staff and the public. A younger brother of the third Viscount remained chairman until 1972, but the Smith family's control slipped away, and the last family member left the board in 1996.


title: WHSmith

text: In 1966, WHSmith originated a nine-digit code for uniquely referencing books, called Standard Book Numbering or SBN. It was adopted as international standard ISO 2108 in 1970, and was used until 1974, when it became the ISBN scheme.


title: WHSmith

text: From the 1970s, WHSmith began to expand into other retail sectors. WH Smith Travel operated from 1973 to 1991. The Do It All chain of DIY shops originated with an acquisition in 1979, becoming a joint venture with Boots in 1990; Boots acquired WHSmith's share in June 1996. The bookshop chain Waterstone's, founded by former WHSmith executive Tim Waterstone in 1982, was bought in 1989 and sold in 1998.


title: WHSmith

text: The expanding WHSmith group adopted a new "house style" or corporate identity in 1973, with a new logo and a change of name from W. H. Smith & Son to WHSmith. The new hexagon-shaped logo featured the initials of the group on the sides of a box employing a new orange and brown colour scheme, replacing a logo that had been in use since before 1830. This updated visual identity extended throughout the company's operations, specified by a design manual, covering everything from the appropriate use of the logo in retail environments, through the design of decorative elements on wrapping paper and promotional material, the layout of stationery, labels and forms, and even crockery, also informing the design of staff uniforms and packaging.


title: WHSmith

text: In 1986, WHSmith bought a 75% controlling share of the Our Price music retail chain; in the 1990s it also bought other music retailers including the Virgin Group's smaller (non-Megastore) shops. The 75% share of Virgin Our Price was sold to Virgin Retail Group Ltd in July 1998 for £145m. WHSmith also owned the American record chain The Wall, which was sold to Camelot Music in 1998.


title: WHSmith

text: In March 1998, the company acquired John Menzies' retail outlets for £68m, which for many years had been the main rival to the company's railway-station outlets. This purchase also cleared the way for WHSmith's retail expansion into Scotland. Prior to the takeover, Menzies' larger Scottish shops (carrying a very similar range of products to High Street WHSmith shops elsewhere) dominated the market, and the latter's presence was minimal.


title: WHSmith

text: For several years, the company's retail arm had difficulties competing with specialist book and music chains on one side and large supermarkets on the other. This led to poor financial performance, and a takeover bid in 2004 by Permira, which fell through. The company reacted to this by disposing of its overseas subsidiaries and its publishing business Hodder Headline, in order to concentrate on reforming its core businesses.


title: WHSmith

text: In August 2006, the company demerged the retail and news distribution arms of the business into two separate companies: WH Smith plc (retail) and Smiths News plc (newspaper and magazine distribution). In September 2010 WHSmith bought The Gadget Shop from The Entertainer. That year, it also bought online greeting card retailer Funky Pigeon.


title: WHSmith

text: In April 2011, WHSmith agreed a deal with the legal services provider QualitySolicitors under which QualitySolicitors would place representatives in up to 500 of its UK branches. Past Times went into administration in January 2012, and the brand name was bought by WHSmith in March 2013.


title: WHSmith

text: In October 2013, WHSmith announced that it had bought the ModelZone brand and would sell products under this brand through existing WHSmith shops.<ref name="twitter 13/11/13">Tweet by @ModelZone on 13/11/13, "Twitter". "9 more to open by 23/11/13 in the following locations- CARDIFF, CROYDON, GATESHEAD METRO, GLASGOW SAUCHIEHALL..."</ref> In October 2014, WHSmith announced as part of its preliminary statement that it was planning on extending its greetings card offering by launching the low-price brand "Cardmarket" on a trial basis. According to the statement, these trial shops would be in low rent areas and let to WHSmith under short-term leases. The company announced in late 2018 that the trial of Cardmarket would be wound up, with the closure of the Cardmarket stores. This was in addition to the announcement of the closure for at least six WHSmith stores which were deemed economically unviable following a strategic business review.


title: WHSmith

text: Late in 2017, the company purchased Cult Pens, a UK-based online retailer of specialist pens, for an undisclosed amount.


title: WHSmith

text: In 2018, WHSmith acquired the brand InMotion, the largest airport-based electronics retailer in the USA. InMotion expanded to operate stores within UK airports including Heathrow, Manchester and Birmingham, as well as internationally in Spain and Australia.


title: WHSmith

text: In July 2020, WHSmith announced more than 150 redundancies at its head office, representing approximately 18% of the head office workforce. In November 2020, the company announced that, after a loss of £280 million, it had decided to close 25 stores in the country, noting that eight stores had been closed in 2019.


title: WHSmith

text: In August 2020, WHSmith launched a new flagship store in Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport, in collaboration with Well, which features an in-house pharmacy.


title: WHSmith

text: WHSmith founded one of the UK's earliest cable television channels, Lifestyle, which was carried on almost every cable system in the UK and Ireland prior to the start of Sky Television in 1989. By late 1984, the company had bought a 15% stake in Screensport and from January 1986, took over the operations and management when ABC and R Kennedy pulled out. Both channels were closed in 1993.


title: WHSmith

text: Since 2007, the company has taken on a number of Post Office branches, mainly within its high street shops. By April 2016, this had reached 107, including former Crown Post Offices, with plans for an additional 61.


title: WHSmith

text: WHSmith also operate a number of shops within hospitals, following its acquisition of Yorkshire-based newsagent chain United News in March 2008.


title: WHSmith

text: In addition to its existing joint ventures and franchise shops, the company trialed the smaller format, convenience-based WHSmith Local concept during 2013. Targeted at independent newsagents and post office business owners, a total of 40 such stores were trading and a further 40 planned by the time the 2015 annual report had been published.


title: WHSmith

text: Since 2011, the company has also opened shops using its Funky Pigeon brand and subsidiary Funky Pigeon.com Ltd which offers stationery and personalised greetings cards both online and via stores.


title: WHSmith

text: Canadian operations began in 1950. By 1970, there were 14 stores in Canada. They continued until 1989, when they were sold to domestic owners and renamed SmithBooks. SmithBooks later merged with Coles, forming Chapters, which retained the Coles and SmithBooks names and locations while also opening new namesake superstores. Many SmithBooks locations were eventually closed or converted to Coles; a few locations still retain the name as of 2013.


title: WHSmith

text: By 1970, WHSmith had one retail store in both Brussels and Paris. The company retains one shop on Rue de Rivoli in the centre of Paris, France.


title: WHSmith

text: WHSmith operated shops in the United States from 1985 until 2003, primarily in airports. The company acquired Australian and New Zealand subsidiaries in 2001, which were subsequently disposed of, along with those in Hong Kong International Airport (now as Page One) and in Singapore at Changi Airport, in 2004 (now Times Travel under the Times Bookstore banner).


title: WHSmith

text: WHSmith restarted its Australian operations in March 2011 following the collapse of Angus & Robertson/Borders who held the naming rights in Australia. The first new shop was opened at Melbourne Airport, in the international departures terminal. There are now three outlets at Melbourne Airport, three at Southern Cross railway station and one within Melbourne Central.


title: WHSmith

text: WHSmith has opened shops in major Indian airports. WHSmith is currently in the process of planning 30 kiosk shops in China. Currently, WHSmith sponsor the IPL cricket team (Sunrisers Hyderabad) (SRH) in India.


title: WHSmith

text: In October 2008, WHSmith, together with SSP, opened five branches within Copenhagen Airport, and in April 2009, opened a branch in Stockholm-Arlanda Airport. In 2009, WHSmith opened two shops in Shannon Airport, County Clare, Ireland. A further three shops are operated in Dublin Airport's Terminal Two, which opened in November 2010 and 5 shops in Dublin Airport's Terminal One, which opened in 2013. The chain promised when winning this latter contract to hire a full-time Irish book buyer; however, the appointment of an Australian, based in London and not in Dublin, drew adverse criticism.


title: WHSmith

text: In 2013, it opened an additional four shops at Dublin Airport's Terminal 1. Eason's, currently at T1 in Dublin, asked the airport operator to tender for a new contract one year earlier as the retailer blamed a fall in sales on the success of Terminal 2 at Dublin, which carried the majority of long haul traffic and long haul passengers tend to spend more on books.


title: WHSmith

text: The company has a shop in Malta International Airport which was opened in 2016 under a franchise agreement with Miller Distributors.


title: WHSmith

text: On 19 June 2009, WHSmith apologised after promoting a book on cellar rapist Josef Fritzl as one of the "Top 50 Books for Dad" as a Father's Day gift.


title: WHSmith

text: In October 2012, WHSmith faced criticism from shooters after the sale of shooting magazines to children under 14 was banned, although it is legal for children under 14 to go shooting. The decision appeared to follow a campaign by animal rights activists. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) campaigned against the ban, including a 12,000+ signature petition. In mid-November it emerged that the restrictions had been removed from all UK shooting magazines.


title: WHSmith

text: On 14 October 2013, WHSmith took their website offline because "unacceptable titles were appearing on their website". These were e-books with themes of abuse.


title: WHSmith

text: The chain was criticised in 2014 for the condition of its shops, with both analysts and customers accusing the chain of under-investing in its estate.


title: WHSmith

text: In 2015, an investigation by "The Independent" revealed that WHSmith and other airport retailers were charging VAT to shoppers travelling outside the European Union, then claiming the VAT back from the government and not passing the refund on to customers. This was made possible by the practice of scanning customer's boarding passes at the till point – solely for the benefit of the company – which made the passengers unwitting accomplices in their own deception. After a public outcry, a customer revolt in which many refused to hand over their boarding passes, and an intervention by Parliament, the company confirmed in March 2017 that it would pass on the VAT reduction to customers spending over £6, who were travelling outside the EU.


title: WHSmith

text: In 2015, the company was also criticised for the prices charged in its branches in hospitals, after media investigations found some items to be on sale at significantly higher prices than in high street branches. In May 2018, WHSmith apologised after it was revealed that it had made more than £700 by selling single tubes of toothpaste for £7.99 through its branch in Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. The price was described as an 'error' and WHSmith promised that the proceeds from the sales would be donated to a local charity. The price was restored to £2.49, still more than three times the price of 80p charged in a nearby Tesco.


title: Flatpak

text: Flatpak, formerly known as xdg-app, is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system.


title: Flatpak

text: Applications using Flatpak need permissions to have access to resources such as Bluetooth, sound (with PulseAudio), network, and files. These permissions are defined by the maintainer of the Flatpak and can be added or removed by users on their system.


title: Flatpak

text: Another key feature of Flatpak is that it allows application developers to directly provide updates to users without going through distributions, and without having to package and test the application separately for each distribution.


title: Flatpak

text: "Flathub," a repository (or remote source in the Flatpak terminology) located at , has become the de facto standard for getting applications packaged with Flatpak. Packages are added to it by both the Flathub administrators and the developers of the programs themselves (though the admins have stated their preference for developer-submitted apps). Although "Flathub" is the de facto source for applications packaged with Flatpak, it is possible to host a Flatpak repository that is independent of Flathub.


title: Flatpak

text: Theoretically, Flatpak apps can be installed on any existing Linux distribution including those installed with the Windows Subsystem for Linux compatibility layer.


title: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

text: Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is a role-playing video game created by Danny Ledonne and released in April 2005. The game recreates the 1999 Columbine High School shootings near Littleton, Colorado. Players assume the roles of gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and act out the massacre, with flashbacks relating parts of Harris and Klebold's past experiences. The game begins on the day of the shootings and follows Harris and Klebold after their suicides to fictional adventures in perdition.


title: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

text: Ledonne had spent many years conceptualizing games, but never created one due to his lack of game design and programming knowledge. He was inspired to create a video game about Columbine by his own experience being bullied and the effect the shooting had on his life. The game represents a critique of how traditional media sensationalized the shooting (in particular the role of video games), as well as parodying video games themselves. "Super Columbine Massacre" was created with ASCII's game development program RPG Maker 2000 and took approximately six months to complete. Ledonne initially published the game anonymously, releasing an artist's statement about the work after his identity was revealed. "Super Columbine Massacre" was released for free online and attracted little attention until 2006, when widespread media coverage fueled hundreds of thousands of downloads.


title: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

text: Reaction to "Super Columbine Massacre" was negative; the title was criticized as trivializing the actions of Harris and Klebold and the lives of the innocent. The game's cartoon presentation and the side-plot into hell were considered by critics as obscuring the game's message, but it received minor note as a game that transcended the stereotypical associations of the medium as entertainment for children. "Super Columbine Massacre"s themes and content led to it being included in discussions as to whether video games cause violence; the title was later listed as one of the possible motivating factors of the shooter after the 2006 Dawson College shooting. The game has been described as an art game, and Ledonne has become a spokesperson for video games as an art form, producing a documentary in 2008 called "Playing Columbine" about his game and its impact.


title: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

text: "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" is a role-playing video game. Players control the actions of teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold; the pair entered Colorado's Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 and killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves in a library. Much of the game takes place in a third-person view, with players controlling Harris and Klebold from an overhead perspective. The graphics and characters are deliberately reminiscent of a 16-bit-era video game; while the content is violent, the violence is not graphically rendered.


title: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

text: When players engage in battle, the screen changes to a first-person view of the enemy; enemies are named by stereotypes or occupations, such as "Preppy girl", "Janitor", "Math teacher" and "Jock Type". Combat has two options: "auto play", where the game chooses the weapon to use, or "manual play", in which the player decides to use a hand-to-hand weapon, explosive, gun, or defensive maneuver against foes. Once a battle starts, it is impossible to avoid or escape; the player must kill the enemy or die. Text narrates battle events and actions such as finding a bag or gaining a weapon.


title: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

text: As the game proceeds, flashbacks occur showing events in Harris and Klebold's lives which may have caused them to commit murder; real life events are compressed into the game's timeframe for narrative purposes. Much of the plot is constructed around the events precisely as they are believed to have occurred; lines of the gunmen's dialogue are often lifted verbatim from their writings or from their own home videos of each other. In contrast to the 16-bit graphics are digitized photographs from the shooting or full voice samples from news reports; photos of the school are used as backdrops during battle scenes.


title: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

text: The game begins as Eric Harris' mother wakes him on April 20, 1999. Harris phones Dylan Klebold, and the pair meet in Harris' basement to plot a series of bombings that will precede their planned shooting. The two reminisce about the bullying they experienced at Columbine High and express rage at those they perceive to be their tormentors. Harris and Klebold make a video, apologizing to their parents and asking them not to blame themselves for what will follow. The two boys collect their guns and bombs, pack a duffel bag with weapons, and leave home.