title: Jesus of Suburbia

text: Because the song changes into different sections, Armstrong’s guitars were recorded differently. The musicians would "split the signal from the guitar and send it into an amp while simultaneously going direct with it," to achieve a sound reminiscent of "Revolution" by the Beatles or the style of David Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson. In addition, an overdrive pedal was employed to accentuate gain from the instrument, producing a "punchy" sound to each chord. For the first two sections of the song, Cool emulated Ginger Baker and Charlie Watts, two English drummers from the 1960s. For the final three, he drums in his style: "I'm tipping my hat to all these great drummers that I love, and then I kick the door down and do it … "my style"." In addition to Watts, Cool pulled inspiration from Keith Moon and Alex Van Halen.


title: Jesus of Suburbia

text: The song was composed by Green Day (with Billie Joe Armstrong writing the lyrics), and was co-produced by Rob Cavallo.


title: Jesus of Suburbia

text: Two versions of the "Jesus of Suburbia" music video exist, directed by Samuel Bayer (who also directed the music videos for the first four singles released from the "American Idiot" album). The official music video premiered on October 14, 2005 in the UK and on October 25, 2005 on the MTV network for viewers in the US. One version is a 12-minute edit, complete with a plot and dialogue; the other is a nine and a half-minute director's cut, inclusive solely of the music itself and devoid of additives. The twelve-minute version is censored, whereas the nine-minute version is not. The video starred Lou Taylor Pucci as Jesus. Jesus' love interest (Whatsername) was played by Kelli Garner. Jesus' mother was portrayed by Canadian actress Deborah Kara Unger. Although Armstrong was originally tipped to provide the acting role of the main character, this was altered during pre-filming.


title: Jesus of Suburbia

text: The plot of the video essentially follows that of the song. Despite the fact it is the second track, the video reveals Jesus' and Whatsername's relationship before it is revealed in the story. The video pays homage to "1979" by Smashing Pumpkins—it also made use of the snorricam which created the videos' notable up close shots in the convenience store and party scenes.


title: Jesus of Suburbia

text: It has been played at most of the group's concerts since its release. At many concerts on the 21st Century Breakdown World Tour the band picked an audience member from the crowd to play guitar to the song.


title: Jesus of Suburbia

text: The song holds the record of the longest performance on the UK television programme, "Top of the Pops" at 9 minutes and 10 seconds on November 6, 2005.


title: Jesus of Suburbia

text: Since its release, "Jesus of Suburbia" has received universal critical acclaim. "People" magazine called the song "epic" and a "magnificent nine-minute rock opera." It is often recognized as one of Green Day's greatest songs. It was voted the greatest Green Day song of all time in a "Rolling Stone" readers poll in September 2012. "Magnet" considered the song underrated, saying "the five-movement, nine-plus-minute song bobs and weaves its way through standard-issue pop punk (“Jesus Of Suburbia”), a piano-laced interlude (“City Of The Damned”), the slobbering, thundering middle section (“I Don’t Care”), [and] acoustic mid-tempo connective tissue (“Dearly Beloved”)." In 2022, "Variety" ranked it as one of the best emo songs of all time.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: BSA motorcycles were made by the Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA), which was a major British industrial combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and sporting firearms; bicycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron castings; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered metals; and hard chrome process.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: A government-organised rescue operation in 1973 led to the takeover of BSA-Triumph motorcycle operations by Norton-Villiers, later known as Norton Villiers Triumph.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: At its peak, BSA (including Triumph) was the largest motorcycle producer in the world. In the late 1950s and early 1960s poor management and failure to develop new products in the motorcycle division led to a dramatic decline of sales to its major USA market. The management had failed to appreciate the importance of the resurgent Japanese motorcycle industry, leading to problems for the entire BSA group.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: When Norton Villiers Triumph was liquidated in 1978, the rights to use the brand name of BSA were purchased by a new business, the B.S.A. Company.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Motor bicycles were added to bicycle products in 1910. The BSA 3½ hp was exhibited at the 1910 Olympia Show, London for the 1911 season. The entire BSA production sold out in 1911, 1912 and 1913.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: In November 1919 BSA launched their first 50 degree v-twin, Model E, 770cc side valve (6–7 hp) motorcycle for the 1920 season. The machine had interchangeable valves, total loss oil system with mechanical pump and an emergency hand one. Retail price was £130. Other features were Amal carburettor, chain drive, choice of magneto or Magdyno, 7-plate clutch, 3 speed gear box with kickstarter and new type of cantilever fork


title: BSA motorcycles

text: As the result of increased post war demand the Small Heath, Birmingham factory was turned over entirely to motorcycle production.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: In 1953 BSA withdrew motorcycle production from BSA Cycles Ltd, the company it had established in 1919, by creating BSA Motorcycles Ltd. BSA also produced its 100,000th BSA Bantam motorcycle, a fact celebrated at the 1953 motorcycle show with a visit by Sir Anthony Eden to the BSA stand.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: The Group continued to expand and acquire throughout the 1950s, but by 1965 competition from Japan (in the shape of companies like Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki) and Europe from Jawa/CZ, Bultaco and Husqvarna was eroding BSA's market share. The BSA (and Triumph range) were no longer aligned with the markets; mopeds were displacing scooter sales and the trials and scrambles areas were now the preserve of European two-strokes. Some poor marketing decisions and expensive projects contributed to substantial losses. For example, the development and production investment of the Ariel 3, an ultra stable 3-wheel moped, was not recouped by sales; the loss has been estimated at £2 million. Furthermore, BSA failed to take seriously the threat that electric-start Japanese motorcycles might completely destroy the market for kick-started BSA motorcycles.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: In 1968, BSA announced many changes to its product line of singles, twins and the new three-cylinder machine named the "Rocket three" for the 1969 model year. It now concentrated on the more promising USA, and to a lesser extent, Canadian markets. However, despite the adding of modern accessories, for example, turn signals and even differing versions of the A65 twins for home and export sale, the damage had been done and the end was near.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Reorganisation in 1971 concentrated motorcycle production at Meriden, Triumph's site, with production of components and engines at BSA's Small Heath. At the same time there were redundancies and the selling of assets. Barclays Bank arranged financial backing to the tune of £10 million.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Upgrades and service bulletins continued until 1972, but the less service-intensive Japanese bikes had by then flooded the market on both sides of the Atlantic. The merger with Norton Villers was started in late 1972, and for a brief time a Norton 500 single was built with the B50-based unit-single engine, but few if any were sold publicly. The BSA unit single B50's 500 cc enjoyed much improvement in the hands of the CCM motorcycle company allowing the basic BSA design to continue until the mid to late 1970s in a competitive form all over Europe.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: The final BSA range was just four models: Gold Star 500, 650 Thunderbolt/Lightning and the 750 cc Rocket Three. By 1972, BSA was so moribund that, with bankruptcy imminent, its motorcycle businesses were merged (as part of a government-initiated rescue plan) with the Manganese Bronze company, Norton-Villiers, to become NVT, headed by Dennis Poore. The intention was to produce and market Norton and Triumph motorcycles at home and abroad; but Poore's rationalisation led to redundancies of two-thirds of the workforce. In response, the Triumph workers at Meriden set up their own cooperative. This left Poore with neither BSA nor the iconic Triumph Bonneville model and the only NVT models listed for the 1975 model year were the Norton Commando and the Triumph T160 Trident. Although the Commando won the "Motor Cycle News" "Bike of the Year" award for several years running, nothing could hide the fact that the Commando engine was an old design, being a pre-unit pushrod parallel-twin, notwithstanding its effective and revolutionary vibration-damping 'Isolastic' engine mounting system.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: The T160 was an upgraded triple with a host of improvements such as electric starting and all-disc braking whose engine, built at BSA's Small Heath plant bore, in many ways, a striking similarity to that of the original BSA Rocket 3, being forward-inclined in the frame rather than vertically mounted. This layout was found to give better weight distribution and allowed ancillary components like the starter to be mounted behind the cylinder block, thus apparently vindicating the earlier BSA 'inclined -parallel 3' design.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: In exchange for its motorcycle businesses, Manganese Bronze received BSA Group's non-motorcycle-related divisions—namely, Carbodies. Although the BSA name was left out of the new company's name, a few products continued to be made carrying it until 1973. However, the plan involved the axing of some brands, large redundancies and consolidation of production at two sites. This scheme to rescue and combine Norton, BSA and Triumph failed in the face of worker resistance. Norton's and BSA's factories were eventually shut down, while Triumph staggered on to fail four years later.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Rights went to Norton Villiers Triumph and on its liquidation were purchased by a new company formed by management and named BSA Company Limited.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: BSA Motorcycles were made by BSA Cycles Ltd, under the BSA parent, up until 1953 when the motorcycle business was moved into holding "BSA Motorcycles Ltd". The first instance of intention to produce motorcycles was reported in "The Motor Cycle", a British motorcycling journal, in July 1906. The first wholly BSA motorcycle, the 3½ H.P. was built in 1910 and displayed at the first Olympia Show, London on 21 November in that year. Sir Hallewell Rogers, BSA Chairman, had informed the shareholders at the Company's 1910 AGM in Birmingham "We have decided to put a motor-bicycle on the market for the coming season ... These machines will be on exhibit at the Cycle and Motor Show on November 21st, after which date we look forward to commencing delivery". The machines were available for the 1911 season and entire production sold out. BSA had previously acquired a commercially available engine in 1905 and fitted it to one of their bicycle frames and discovered at first hand the problems that needed to be overcome. BSA Cycles Ltd was set up as a subsidiary company in 1919 under Managing Director Charles Hyde to manufacture both bicycles and motorcycles.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: BSA produced their only two-stroke motorcycle design for the 1928 season, the 1.74 H.P. Model A28 with two speed gearbox. It was produced as the A29 and A30 the following two years and became the A31 with a three-speed gearbox in 1931, the last year of production. The post-war 'Bantam' was a German DKW design, part of war reparation, and not a true BSA design.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: BSA motorcycles were sold as affordable motorcycles with reasonable performance for the average user. BSA stressed the reliability of their machines, the availability of spares and dealer support. The motorcycles were a mixture of sidevalve and OHV engines offering different performance for different roles, e.g. hauling a sidecar. The bulk of use would be for commuting. BSA motorcycles were also popular with "fleet buyers" in Britain, who (for example) used the Bantams for telegram delivery for the Post Office or motorcycle/sidecar combinations for AA patrols The Automobile Association (AA) breakdown help services. This mass market appeal meant they could claim "one in four is a BSA" on advertising.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Machines with better specifications were available for those who wanted more performance or for competition work.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Initially, after the Second World War, BSA motorcycles were not generally seen as racing machines, compared to the likes of Norton. In the immediate post-war period few were entered in races such as the TT races, though this changed dramatically in the Junior Clubman event (smaller engine motorcycles racing over some 3 or 4 laps around one of the Isle of Man courses). In 1947 there were but a couple of BSA mounted riders, but by 1952 BSA were in the majority and in 1956 the makeup was 53 BSA, 1 Norton and 1 Velocette.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: To improve US sales, in 1954, for example, BSA entered a team of riders in the 200 mile Daytona beach race with a mixture of single cylinder Gold Stars and twin cylinder Shooting Stars assembled by Roland Pike. The BSA team riders took first, second, third, fourth, and fifth places with two more riders finishing at 8th and 16th. This was the first case of a one brand sweep.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Mike Hailwood raced for BSA at the Daytona 200 in 1970 and 1971, but failure of his factory triples meant it was without the success BSA had hoped for. For 1970 BSA (which then owned Triumph) built three Triumph Trident based, and three very similar BSA Rocket 3 based racers in Rob North frames. This was a no-expense spared effort to reclaim the US market after Honda’s successful introduction of the CB750. US riders and Daytona 200 specialists were hired, meaning Hailwood was the only British rider in the 1970 team until a seventh bike was built for Percy Tait. However a Honda CB750 ridden by Dick Mann won the race. Returning in 1971 with 10 triples BSA did win the Daytona 200, with a Rocket 3 based racer ridden by Dick Mann who had parted ways with Honda.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: The BSA factory experienced success in the sport of motocross with Jeff Smith riding a B40 to capture the 1964 and 1965 FIM 500 cc Motocross World Championships. It would be the last year the title would be won by a four-stroke machine until the mid-1990s. A BSA motocross machine was often colloquially known as a "Beezer."


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Birmingham rocker Steve Gibbons released a song "BSA" on his 1980 album "Saints & Sinners" as a tribute to the Gold Star. He still plays this song with his band and often performs on the Isle of Man at the TT races.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: The C11 used a C10 motor fitted with an overhead valve cylinder head. The C11 frame was almost unchanged until 1951 when BSA added plunger rear suspension. Early gearboxes were weak and unreliable. The C11G was available with a three ratio gearbox and rigid frame or a four ratio gearbox and a plunger frame. Both models had better front brakes than earlier models. This model was a common commuter motorcycle, and many survive today.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: Used the C11G engine, fitted with an alternator and swinging fork (known as swinging arm) rear suspension.


title: BSA motorcycles

text: At the time of the company's demise, BSA engineers were developing a range of new two-strokes from 100 - 400 cc, a 350 cc 4-valve DOHC single and a wankel engine. The wankel engine would later be used in Norton machines.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: Raghib Ramadian "Rocket" Ismail (born November 18, 1969) is an American former American and Canadian football wide receiver and kick returner. He played college football at Notre Dame before moving on to both the Canadian Football League (CFL) from 1991–92 and the National Football League (NFL) from 1993–2001.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: Ismail recorded two 1,000-yard receiving seasons in the NFL and was a CFL All-Star in 1991, as well as the Most Valuable Player of the 79th Grey Cup. In 2004, "College Football News" named Ismail the No. 75 player on its list of the Top 100 Greatest College Football Players of All-Time. He was also selected by "Sports Illustrated" to the 85-man roster of its all-20th Century college football team.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: Ismail was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and was raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He attended Elmer L. Meyers Junior/Senior High School.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: Ismail first came to prominence as a receiver for the University of Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish won the College Football National Championship in 1988, placed second in 1989 winning the 1990 Orange Bowl against Colorado, and again went to the 1991 Orange Bowl, losing to Colorado 10–9. In that game, he returned a punt 91 yards for a touchdown that would have won the game for Notre Dame and stopped Colorado from winning a share of the National Championship; however, the play was called back on a clipping penalty sealing the Irish defeat. After the 1990 season, Ismail finished second in the voting for the Heisman Trophy as the top college football player, losing to Brigham Young University quarterback Ty Detmer.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: During the 1989 regular season game against Michigan, Ismail returned two kickoffs for touchdowns. He was featured on the cover of "Sports Illustrated" twice, and received numerous awards, including All-American status.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: The projected first overall selection in the 1991 NFL Draft, Ismail decided at the last minute to sign a record contract with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League starting during their 1991 season. As a result, he was chosen by the Los Angeles Raiders with the 100th overall pick in the draft.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: Ismail was also a track star at the University of Notre Dame, where he ran the 100 meters in 10.2 seconds. He also competed in the 55 meters, with a personal best of 6.07 seconds. At the 1991 NCAA Indoor Track Championships, he finished 2nd in the 55-meter sprint.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: After Bruce McNall purchased the Toronto Argonauts with hockey player Wayne Gretzky and actor John Candy, the Argonauts made Ismail a groundbreaking offer for a CFL player: $18.2 million over four years. The average value of his full contract, $4.55 million per season, was more than the anticipated 2006 CFL salary cap of $3.8 million "per team". The CFL had a salary cap in place since 1991, but the rules contained an exemption for a "marquee player" who would not count against the cap. Doug Flutie of the BC Lions was about to be paid $1 million under the exemption, but Ismail's contract was more than anything North American football had ever seen, as his yearly salary was then the largest in Canadian or American football history. By comparison, the highest paid NFL player at the time was Joe Montana earning $3.25 million per year.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: Ismail joined the Argonauts in time for the 1991 season, and in his first game, returned a kick seventy-three yards on a reverse with Michael Clemons. Ismail ended his rookie season at the 79th Grey Cup. He recorded an 87-yard touchdown on a kickoff return and was named the Grey Cup Most Valuable Player as his Argonauts defeated the Calgary Stampeders 36–21. He came within fifty yards of breaking his teammate Clemons' franchise record for single-season kickoff return yardage, and made the 1991 All-Star team as a wide receiver, finishing runner-up to Jon Volpe for rookie of the year.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: In 1992 Ismail broke Clemons' franchise record for single-season kick return yards. Ismail was unhappy in Canada as the Argonauts slumped to a 6–12 record, missing the playoffs. He was also remembered for his participation in a sideline brawl against the Stampeders where he stomped an opposing player's helmeted face. He later apologized on "Speaker's Corner." With the huge contract around Toronto's neck and McNall facing increasing financial trouble, Ismail left the CFL, and, after the season, signed with the Los Angeles Raiders.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: Ismail was going to be selected as the first overall pick in the 1991 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys, until he decided to sign with the Toronto Argonauts. The Los Angeles Raiders selected him in the fourth round (100th overall), to own his rights in case he decided to return to the NFL.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: In 1993, as a rookie in the National Football League, Ismail recorded 353 receiving yards. The next year, he recorded 513 receiving yards and five touchdowns. In 1995, the Raiders' first season back in Oakland, he recorded 491 yards receiving.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: On August 25, 1996, after having three disappointing seasons, Ismail was traded to the Carolina Panthers for a fifth-round pick (#157-Nick Lopez).


title: Raghib Ismail

text: In 1996 the Panthers, under head coach Dom Capers, finished 12–4, but Ismail recorded a career-low 214 yards receiving, without a single touchdown. In 1997 he recorded 419 receiving yards and two touchdowns.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: In 1998, he had a breakout year, registering 69 receptions for 1,024 yards and eight touchdowns, two yards short of doubling his previous career high.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: On March 23, 1999, the Dallas Cowboys signed him as a free agent after outbidding other teams. After Michael Irvin suffered a career-ending injury in the fourth game of the season, Ismail became the team's leading wide receiver, recording a career-high 1,097 yards and six touchdowns.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: In 2000, he missed the last six games after tearing the ACL in his right knee against the Philadelphia Eagles, during the tenth game of the season, finishing with only 350 receiving yards. In 2001, he missed two games after spraining the MCL in the same injured knee against the San Diego Chargers.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: On August 31, 2002, he was placed on the injured reserve list after suffering a herniated disk in his neck, due to a collision with teammate Dat Nguyen during training camp. He was released on February 26, 2003, in a salary cap move. He later announced his retirement in March.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: He was a contestant on "Ty Murray’s Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge" on CMT. In March 2010, it was announced that Ismail would be a correspondent on the show, interviewing contestants about their lives outside the competition.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: He is the older brother of former Syracuse University and NFL wide receiver Qadry Ismail, nicknamed "The Missile", and former University of Texas-El Paso and New York Dragons receiver Sulaiman Ismail, nicknamed "The Bomb". His father, Ibrahim, died when he was 10; his mother, Fatma, was sometimes referred to as "The Launch Pad" because of her sons' nicknames Rocket, Missile, and Bomb.


title: Raghib Ismail

text: He converted from Islam in his early teens after his Muslim father died and he was sent to live with his grandmother, a member of an Assemblies of God church. Ismail has been described as a "devout Christian".


title: Raghib Ismail

text: As of the 2019 season, his son, Raghib "Rocket" Ismail Jr., plays for the University of Wyoming football team.


title: Water landing

text: In aviation, a water landing is, in the broadest sense, an aircraft landing on a body of water. Seaplanes, such as floatplanes and flying boats, land on water as a normal operation. Ditching is a controlled emergency landing on the water surface in an aircraft not designed for the purpose, a very rare occurrence. Controlled flight into the surface and uncontrolled flight ending in a body of water (including a runway excursion into water) are generally not considered water landings or ditching.


title: Water landing

text: Seaplanes, flying boats, and amphibious aircraft are designed to take off and alight on water. Alighting can be supported by a hull-shaped fuselage and/or pontoons. The availability of a long effective runway was historically important on lifting size restrictions on aircraft, and their freedom from constructed strips remains useful for transportation to lakes and other remote areas. The ability to loiter on water is also important for marine rescue operations and fire fighting. One disadvantage of water alighting is that it is dangerous in the presence of waves. Furthermore, the necessary equipment compromises the craft's aerodynamic efficiency and speed.


title: Water landing

text: Early crewed spacecraft launched by the United States were designed to alight on water by the splashdown method. The craft would parachute into the water, which acted as a cushion to bring the craft to a stop; the impacts were violent but survivable. Alighting over water rather than land made braking rockets unnecessary, but its disadvantages included difficult retrieval and the danger of drowning. The NASA Space Shuttle design was intended to land on a runway instead. Since 2020 the SpaceX Dragon has used water landings. The Boeing CST-100 is designed to do likewise.


title: Water landing

text: While ditching is extremely uncommon in commercial passenger travel, small aircraft tend to ditch slightly more often because they usually have only one engine and their systems have fewer redundancies. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, there are about a dozen ditchings per year.


title: Water landing

text: General aviation includes all fields of aviation outside of military or scheduled (commercial) flights. This classification includes small aircraft, e.g., training aircraft, airships, gliders, helicopters, and corporate aircraft, including business jets and other for-hire operations. General aviation has the highest accident and incident rate in aviation, with 16 deaths per million flight hours, compared to 0.74 deaths per million flight hours for commercial flights (North America and Europe).


title: Water landing

text: The FAA does not require commercial pilots to train to ditch but airline cabin personnel must train on the evacuation process. In addition, the FAA implemented rules under which circumstances (kind of operator, number of passengers, weight, route) an aircraft has to carry emergency equipment including floating devices such as life jackets and life rafts.


title: Water landing

text: Some aircraft are designed with the possibility of a water landing in mind. Airbus aircraft, for example, feature a "ditching button" which, if pressed, closes valves and openings underneath the aircraft, including the outflow valve, the air inlet for the emergency RAT, the avionics inlet, the extract valve, and the flow control valve. It is meant to slow flooding in a water landing.


title: Water landing

text: Aircraft also sometimes end up in water by running off the ends of runways, landing in water short of the end of a runway, or even being forcibly flown into the water during suicidal/homicidal events. Twice at LaGuardia Airport, an aircraft have rolled into the East River (USAir Flight 5050 and USAir Flight 405).


title: Water landing

text: A limited number of pre-World War II military aircraft, such as the Grumman F4F Wildcat and Douglas TBD Devastator, were equipped with flotation bags that kept them on the surface in the event of a ditching.


title: Water landing

text: The "water bird" emergency landing is a technique developed by the Canadian Forces to safely land the Sikorsky CH-124 Sea King helicopter if one engine fails while flying over water. The emergency landing technique allows the boat-hull equipped aircraft to land on the water in a controlled fashion.


title: Water landing

text: Beginning in 2013 and continuing into 2014 and 2015, a series of ocean water landing tests were undertaken by SpaceX as a prelude to bringing booster rockets back to the launch pad in an effort to reuse launch vehicle booster stages. Seven test flights with controlled-descents have been conducted by April 2015.


title: Water landing

text: Prior to 2013, successful water landings of launch vehicles were not attempted, while periodic water landings of space capsules have been accomplished since 1961. The vast majority of space launch vehicles take off vertically and are destroyed on falling back to earth. Exceptions include suborbital vertical-landing vehicles (e.g., Masten Xoie or the Armadillo Aerospace' Lunar Lander Challenge vehicle), and the spaceplanes that use the "vertical takeoff, horizontal landing" (VTHL) approach (e.g., the Space Shuttle, or the USAF X-37) which have landing gear to enable runway landings. Each vertical-takeoff spaceflight system to date has relied on expendable boosters to begin each ascent to orbital velocity. This is beginning to change.


title: Water landing

text: Recent advances in private space transport, where new competition to governmental space initiatives has emerged, have included the explicit design of recoverable rocket technologies into orbital booster rockets. SpaceX has initiated and funded a multimillion-dollar program to pursue this objective, known as the reusable launch system development program.


title: Water landing

text: The orbital-flight version of the SpaceX design was first successful at accomplishing a water landing (zero velocity and zero altitude) in April 2014 on a Falcon 9 rocket and was the first successful controlled ocean soft touchdown of a liquid-rocket-engine orbital booster.


title: Water landing

text: Seven test flights with controlled-descent test over-water landings, including two with failed attempts to land on a floating landing platform, have been conducted by April 2015.


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia was a diversified financial services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before its acquisition by Wells Fargo and Company in 2008, Wachovia was the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States, based on total assets. Wachovia provided a broad range of banking, asset management, wealth management, and corporate and investment banking products and services. At its height, it was one of the largest providers of financial services in the United States, operating financial centers in 21 states and Washington, D.C., with locations from Connecticut to Florida and west to California. Wachovia provided global services through more than 40 offices around the world.


title: Wachovia

text: The acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo was completed on December 31, 2008, after a government-forced sale to avoid Wachovia's failure. The Wachovia brand was absorbed into the Wells Fargo brand in a process that lasted three years. On October 15, 2011, the last Wachovia branches in North Carolina were converted to Wells Fargo.


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia was the product of a 2001 merger between the original Wachovia Corporation, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Charlotte-based First Union Corporation.


title: Wachovia

text: The company was organized into four divisions: General Bank (retail, small business, and commercial customers), Wealth Management (high-net-worth, personal trust, and insurance business), Capital Management (asset management, retirement, and retail brokerage services), and Corporate and Investment Bank (capital markets, investment banking, and financial advisory).


title: Wachovia

text: It served retail brokerage clients under the name Wachovia Securities nationwide as well as in six Latin American countries, and investment banking clients in selected industries nationwide. In 2009, Wachovia Securities was the first Wachovia business to be converted to the Wells Fargo brand, when the business became Wells Fargo Advisors. Calibre was an independent consultant that was hired by Wachovia for the Family Wealth Group to research managers. The group no longer uses Calibre.


title: Wachovia

text: The company's corporate and institutional capital markets and investment banking groups operated under the Wachovia Securities brand, while its asset management group operated under the Evergreen Investments brand until 2010, when the Evergreen fund family merged with Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, and institutional and high-net-worth products merged with Wells Capital Management and its affiliates.


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia's private equity arm operated as Wachovia Capital Partners. Additionally, the asset-based lending group operated as Wachovia Capital Finance.


title: Wachovia

text: "Wachovia" ( ) has its origins in the Latin form of the Austrian name "Wachau". When Moravian settlers arrived in Bethabara, North Carolina, in 1753, they gave this name to the land they acquired, because it resembled the Wachau valley along the Danube River. The area formerly known as Wachovia now makes up most of Forsyth County, and the largest city is now Winston-Salem.


title: Wachovia

text: First Union was founded as Union National Bank on June 2, 1908, a small banking desk in the lobby of a Charlotte hotel by H.M. Victor.


title: Wachovia

text: The bank merged with First National Bank and Trust Company of Asheville, North Carolina, in 1958 to become First Union National Bank of North Carolina. First Union Corporation was incorporated in 1967.


title: Wachovia

text: By the 1990s, it had grown into a Southern regional powerhouse in a strategy mirroring its longtime rival on Tryon Street in Charlotte, NCNB (later NationsBank and now Bank of America). In 1995, however, it acquired First Fidelity Bancorporation of Newark, New Jersey; at one stroke becoming a major player in the Northeast. Its Northeastern footprint grew even larger in 1998, when it acquired CoreStates Financial Corporation of Philadelphia. One of CoreStates' predecessors, the Bank of North America, had been the first bank proposed, chartered and incorporated in America on December 31, 1781. A former Bank of North America branch in Philadelphia remains in operation today as a Wells Fargo branch


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia Corporation began on June 16, 1879 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina as the Wachovia National Bank. The bank was co-founded by James Alexander Gray and William Lemly. In 1911, the bank merged with Wachovia Loan and Trust Company, "the largest trust company between Baltimore and New Orleans", which had been founded on June 15, 1893. Wachovia grew to become one of the largest banks in the Southeast partly on the strength of its accounts from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which was also headquartered in Winston-Salem. On December 12, 1986, Wachovia purchased First Atlanta. Founded as Atlanta National Bank on September 14, 1865, and later renamed to First National Bank of Atlanta, this institution was the oldest national bank in Atlanta. This purchase made Wachovia one of the few companies with dual headquarters: one in Winston-Salem and one in Atlanta. In 1991, Wachovia entered the South Carolina market by acquiring South Carolina National Corporation, founded as the Bank of Charleston in 1834. In 1998, Wachovia acquired two Virginia-based banks, Jefferson National Bank and Central Fidelity Bank. In 1997, Wachovia acquired both 1st United Bancorp and American Bankshares Inc, giving its first entry into Florida. In 2000, Wachovia made its final purchase, which was Republic Security Bank.


title: Wachovia

text: On April 16, 2001, First Union announced it would acquire Wachovia, through the exchange of approximately $13.4 billion in First Union stock. First Union offered two of its shares for each Wachovia share outstanding. The announcement was made by Wachovia chairman L.M. "Bud" Baker Jr. and First Union chairman Ken Thompson. Baker would become chairman of the merged bank, while Thompson would become president and CEO. First Union was the acquiring party and nominal survivor, and the merged bank was based in Charlotte and adopted First Union's corporate structure and retained First Union's pre-2001 stock price history. However, as an important part of the merger, the merged bank took Wachovia's name and stock ticker symbol; despite First Union technically being the surviving identity and acquiring party.


title: Wachovia

text: This merger was viewed with great surprise by the financial press and security analysts. While Wachovia had been viewed as an acquisition candidate after running into problems with earnings and credit quality in 2000, the suitor shocked analysts as many speculated that Wachovia would be sold to Atlanta-based SunTrust.


title: Wachovia

text: The deal was met with skepticism and criticism. Analysts, remembering the problems with the CoreStates acquisition, were concerned about First Union's ability to merge with another large company. Winston-Salem's citizens and politicians suffered a blow to their civic pride because the merged company would be based in Charlotte. The city of Winston-Salem was concerned both by job losses and the loss of stature from losing a major corporate headquarters. First Union was concerned by the potential deposit attrition and customer loss in the city. First Union responded to these concerns by placing the wealth management and Carolinas-region headquarters in Winston-Salem.


title: Wachovia

text: On May 14, 2001, SunTrust announced a rival takeover bid for Wachovia, the first hostile takeover attempt in the banking sector in many years. In its effort to make the deal appeal to investors, SunTrust argued that it would provide a smoother transition than First Union and offered a higher cash price for Wachovia stock than First Union.


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia's board of directors rejected SunTrust's offer and supported the merger with First Union. SunTrust continued its hostile takeover attempt, leading to a bitter battle over the summer between SunTrust and First Union. Both banks increased their offers for Wachovia, took out newspaper ads, mailed letters to shareholders, and initiated court battles to challenge each other's takeover bids. On August 3, 2001, Wachovia shareholders approved the First Union deal, rejecting SunTrust's attempts to elect a new board of directors for Wachovia and ending SunTrust's hostile takeover attempt.


title: Wachovia

text: Another complication concerned each bank's credit card division. In April 2001, Wachovia had agreed to sell its $8 billion credit card portfolio to Bank One. The cards, which would have still been branded as Wachovia, would have been issued through Bank One's First USA division. First Union had sold its credit card portfolio to MBNA in August 2000. After entering into negotiations, the new Wachovia agreed to buy back its portfolio from Bank One in September 2001 and resell it to MBNA. Wachovia paid Bank One a $350 million termination fee.


title: Wachovia

text: On September 4, 2001, First Union and Wachovia officially merged. In order to prevent a repeat of the CoreStates problems, the new Wachovia gradually phased-in the conversion of legacy Wachovia computer systems to First Union systems. The company first began converting systems in the southeast United States where both banks had branches, before moving to First Union's branches in the Northeast, which only had to change their signs to reflect the new company name and logo. This process was completed on August 18, 2003, almost 2 years after the merger.


title: Wachovia

text: In comparison to the CoreStates purchase, the acquisition of Wachovia by First Union was considered successful by analysts. The company's deliberate pace of conversion prevented any large-scale customer attrition. In fact, Wachovia was ranked number one in customer satisfaction among major banks by the University of Michigan's annual American Customer Satisfaction Index for every year after the merger.


title: Wachovia

text: When Wachovia and First Union merged, Charlotte's One, Two, and Three First Union buildings became One, Two, and Three Wachovia Center (respectively), and the 55-story First Union Financial Center in downtown Miami became the Wachovia Financial Center. The merger also affected the names of the indoor professional sports arenas in Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Formerly known as the First Union Center and the First Union Spectrum (both Philadelphia) and First Union Arena (Wilkes-Barre), they were renamed the Wachovia Center (now known as Wells Fargo Center), Wachovia Spectrum (which was later demolished), and Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza (now known as Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza), respectively.


title: Wachovia

text: A graphic illustration of the company's major mergers, acquisitions, and historical predecessors, up to the 2001 merger of Wachovia and First Union:


title: Wachovia

text: Between 2001 and 2006, Wachovia bought several other financial services companies in an attempt to become a national bank and comprehensive financial services company.


title: Wachovia

text: While First Union was merging into Wachovia, they changed the Wachovia logo to a square with wave like lines, the green color represents First Union while the blue represents the main company. They have also released new merchandise such as t-shirts, and provided other things such as retractable keychains, cups, and coffee mugs to show the success during 2001 to its acquisition by Wells Fargo.


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia Securities and the Prudential Securities Division of Prudential Financial, Inc. combined to form Wachovia Securities LLC on July 1, 2003. Wachovia owned a controlling 62% stake, while Prudential Financial retained the remaining 38%. At the time, the new firm had client assets of $532.1 billion, making it the nation's third largest full service retail brokerage firm, based on assets.


title: Wachovia

text: On October 22, 2003, Wachovia announced it would acquire Metropolitan West Securities, an affiliate company of Metropolitan West Financial. This acquisition added a portfolio of over $50 billion of securities on loan to the Wachovia Global Securities Lending division.


title: Wachovia

text: On November 1, 2004, Wachovia completed the acquisition of Birmingham, Alabama-based SouthTrust Corporation, a transaction valued at $14.3 billion. The merger created the largest bank in the southeast United States, the fourth largest bank in terms of holdings, and the second largest in terms of number of branches. Integration was completed by the end of 2005.


title: Wachovia

text: In June 2005, Wachovia negotiated to purchase monoline credit card company MBNA. However, the deal fell through when Wachovia balked at MBNA's purchase price. Within a week of the deal's collapse, MBNA entered into an agreement to be purchased by Wachovia's chief rival, Bank of America. Wachovia received $100 million as the result of an agreement Wachovia predecessor First Union made in 2000 when it sold its credit card portfolio to MBNA. This agreement required MBNA to pay this sum if it were ever sold to a competitor. In late 2005 Wachovia announced that it would end its relationship with MBNA and create its own credit card division so that the bank could issue its own Visa cards.


title: Wachovia

text: Westcorp, Western Financial Bank's parent company, WFS Financial Inc. and Wachovia announced a proposed acquisition by Wachovia in September 2005. Westcorp and WFS Financial Inc. shareholders approved the acquisition on Jan. 6, 2006 and on March 1, 2006, the merger was completed. This acquisition made Wachovia the ninth largest auto finance lender in the competitive U.S. auto finance market and provided Wachovia with a small retail and commercial banking presence in Southern California. On February 12, 2007, the former 19 Western Financial Bank branches opened under the Wachovia name. These branches became the launching point for a much larger Wachovia presence in California with the acquisition and integration of World Savings Bank in 2007.


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia agreed to purchase Golden West Financial for a little under $25.5 billion on May 7, 2006. This acquisition gave Wachovia an additional 285-branch network spanning 10 states. Wachovia greatly raised its profile in California, where Golden West held $32 billion in deposits and operated 123 branches.


title: Wachovia

text: Golden West, which operated branches under the name World Savings Bank, was the second largest savings and loan in the United States. The business was a small savings and loan in the San Francisco Bay area when it was purchased in 1963 for $4 million by Herbert and Marion Sandler. Golden West specialized in option ARMs loans, marketed under the name "Pick-A-Pay." These loans gave the borrower a choice of payment plans, including the option to defer paying a part of the interest owed, which was then added onto the balance of the loan. In 2006, Golden West Financial was named the "Most Admired Company" in the mortgage services business by Fortune magazine. By the time Wachovia announced its acquisition, Golden West had over $125 billion in assets and 11,600 employees. By October 2, 2006 Wachovia had closed the acquisition of Golden West Financial Corporation. The Sandlers agreed to remain on the board at Wachovia.


title: Wachovia

text: The Sandlers sold their firm at the top of the market, saying that they were growing older and wanted to devote themselves to philanthropy. A year earlier, in 2005, World Savings lending had started to slow, after more than quadrupling since 1998. Some current and former Wachovia officials said that the merger was agreed to within days, making it impossible to thoroughly vet the World Savings loan portfolio. They noted that the creditworthiness of World Savings borrowers edged down from 2004 to 2006, while Pick-A-Pay borrowers had credit scores well below the industry average for traditional loans. World Savings lending volume dipped again in 2006 shortly after the sale to Wachovia was initiated. In 2007, after the merger, World Savings, then known as Wachovia Mortgage began to attract more borrowers by taking a step that some regulators frowned upon, and which the former World Savings management had resisted for years: it allowed borrowers to make monthly payments with an annual interest rate of just 1 percent. While Wachovia Mortgage continued to scrutinize borrowers' ability to manage increased payments, the move to rock-bottom rates lured customers whose financial reliability was more difficult to verify. More than 70% of the Pick-A-Pay loans were made in California, Florida and Arizona, where home prices had declined severely. In 2009 "New York Times" reporter Floyd Norris called World Savings a "ticking timebomb" that created "zombie homeowners".


title: Wachovia

text: While Wachovia Chairman and CEO G. Kennedy "Ken" Thompson had described Golden West as a "crown jewel", investors did not react positively to the deal. Analysts said that Wachovia purchased Golden West at the peak of the US housing boom. Wachovia Mortgage's mortgage-related problems led to Wachovia suffering writedowns and losses that far exceeded the price paid in the acquisition, ending up in the fire-sale of Wachovia to Wells Fargo.


title: Wachovia

text: On May 31, 2007, Wachovia announced plans to purchase A. G. Edwards for $6.8 billion to create the United States' second largest retail brokerage firm. The acquisition closed on October 1, 2007. In early March 2008 Wachovia began to phase out the AG Edwards brand in favor of a unified Wachovia Securities.


title: Wachovia

text: Exposed to risky loans, such as adjustable rate mortgages acquired during the acquisition of Golden West Financial in 2006, Wachovia began to experience heavy losses in its loan portfolios during the subprime mortgage crisis.


title: Wachovia

text: In the first quarter of 2007, Wachovia reported $2.3 billion in earnings, including acquisitions and divestitures. However, in the second quarter of 2008, Wachovia reported a much larger than anticipated $8.9 billion loss.


title: Wachovia

text: On June 2, 2008, Wachovia chief executive officer Ken Thompson was forced to retire. He had been head of the company since 2000, while it was still known as First Union.


title: Wachovia

text: The board replaced him on an interim basis with Chairman Lanty Smith. Smith had already replaced Thompson as chairman a month earlier.


title: Wachovia

text: On July 9, 2008, Wachovia hired Treasury Undersecretary Bob Steel as chief executive in hopes that his experience would lead the company out of its difficulties.


title: Wachovia

text: After Steel took over, he insisted that Wachovia would stay independent. However, its stock price plunged 27 percent on September 26 due to the seizure of Washington Mutual the previous night. On the same day, several businesses and institutional depositors withdrew money from their accounts in order to drop their balances below the $100,000 insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) – an event known in banking circles as a "silent run." Ultimately, Wachovia lost a total of $5 billion in deposits that day—about one percent of the bank's total deposits. The large outflow of deposits attracted the attention of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks. Federal regulators pressured Wachovia to put itself up for sale over the weekend. Had Wachovia failed, it would have been a severe drain on the FDIC's insurance fund due to its size (it operated one of the largest branch networks on the East Coast).


title: Wachovia

text: As business halted for the weekend, Wachovia was already in FDIC-brokered talks with Citigroup and Wells Fargo; the latter company initially emerged as the frontrunner to acquire the ailing Wachovia's banking operations. Wells Fargo originally backed out of this particular deal due to concerns over Wachovia's commercial loans. With no deal in place as September 28 dawned, regulators were concerned that Wachovia wouldn't have enough short-term funding to open for business the next day. In order to obtain enough liquidity to do business, banks usually depend on short-term loans to each other. However, the markets had been so battered by a credit crisis related to the housing bubble that banks were skittish about making such loans. Under the circumstances, regulators feared that if customers pulled out more money, Wachovia wouldn't have enough liquidity to meet its obligations. This would have resulted in a failure dwarfing that of WaMu.


title: Wachovia

text: When FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair got word of Wachovia's situation, she initially decided to handle the situation the same way she handled WaMu a day earlier. Under this scenario, the Comptroller of the Currency would have seized Wachovia's banking assets (Wachovia Bank, N.A. and Wachovia Bank of Delaware, N.A.) and placed them under the receivership of the FDIC who would have then sold the banking assets to the highest bidder. Bair called Steel on September 28 and told him that the FDIC would be auctioning off Wachovia's banking assets. Bair felt this would best protect the small banks. However, several Federal regulators, led by New York Fed President Tim Geithner, felt such a course would be politically unjustifiable so soon after WaMu's seizure.


title: Wachovia

text: After a round of mediation between Geithner and Bair, the FDIC declared that Wachovia was "systemically important" to the health of the economy, and thus could not be allowed to fail. It was the first time the FDIC had made such a determination since the passage of a 1991 law allowing the FDIC to handle large bank failures on short notice. Later that night, in an FDIC-brokered deal, Citigroup agreed to buy Wachovia's retail banking operations in an "open bank" transfer of ownership. The transaction would have been facilitated by the FDIC, with the concurrence of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with the President. The FDIC's open bank assistance procedures normally require the FDIC to find the cheapest way to rescue a failing bank. However, when a bank is deemed "systemically important," the FDIC is allowed to bypass this requirement. Steel had little choice but to agree, and the decision was announced on the morning of September 29, roughly 45 minutes before the markets opened. From this point on, Citigroup became the source of liquidity allowing Wachovia to continue to operate until the acquisition was complete.


title: Wachovia

text: In its announcement, the FDIC stressed that Wachovia did not fail and was not placed into receivership. In addition, the FDIC said that the agency would absorb Citigroup's losses above $42 billion; Wachovia's loan portfolio was valued at $312 billion. In exchange for assuming this risk, the FDIC would receive $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants from Citigroup. The transaction would have been an all-stock transfer, with Wachovia Corporation stockholders to have received stock from Citigroup, valuing Wachovia stock at about one dollar per share for a total transaction value of about $2.16 billion. Citigroup would have also assumed Wachovia's senior and subordinated debt. Citigroup intended to sell ten billion dollars of new stock on the open market to recapitalize its purchased banking operations.


title: Wachovia

text: Wachovia expected to continue as a publicly traded company, retaining its retail brokerage arm, Wachovia Securities and Evergreen mutual funds. At the time, Wachovia Securities had 14,600 financial advisers and managed more than $1 trillion, third in the U.S. after Merrill Lynch and Citigroup's Smith Barney.


title: Wachovia

text: The announcement drew some criticism from Wachovia stockholders who felt the dollar-per-share price was too cheap. Some of them planned to try to defeat the deal when it came up for shareholder approval. However, institutional investors such as mutual funds and pension funds controlled 73 percent of Wachovia's stock; individual stockholders would have had to garner a significant amount of support from institutional shareholders to derail the sale. Also, several experts in corporate dealmaking told "The Charlotte Observer" that such a strategy is very risky since federal regulators helped broker the deal. One financial expert told the "Observer" that if Wachovia's shareholders voted the deal down, the OCC could have simply seized Wachovia and placed it into the receivership of the FDIC, which would then sell it to Citigroup. Had this happened, the shareholders of Wachovia risked being completely wiped out.


title: Wachovia

text: Though Citigroup was providing the liquidity that allowed Wachovia to continue to operate, Wells Fargo and Wachovia announced on October 3, 2008, that they had agreed to merge in an all-stock transaction requiring no government involvement. Wells Fargo announced it had agreed to acquire all of Wachovia for $15.1 billion in stock. Wachovia preferred the Wells Fargo deal because it would be worth more than the Citigroup deal and keep all of its businesses intact. Also, there is far less overlap between the banks, as Wells Fargo is dominant in the West and Midwest compared to the redundant footprint of Wachovia and Citibank along the East Coast. Both companies' boards unanimously approved the merger on the night of October 2.


title: Wachovia

text: Citigroup explored its legal options and demanded that Wachovia and Wells Fargo cease discussions, claiming that Wells Fargo engaged in "tortious interference" with an exclusivity agreement between Citigroup and Wachovia. That agreement states in part that until October 6, 2008 "Wachovia shall not, and shall not permit any of its subsidiaries or any of its or their respective officers, directors, [...] to [...] take any action to facilitate or encourage the submission of any Acquisition Proposal.".


title: Wachovia

text: Citigroup convinced Judge Charles E. Ramos of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County to grant a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the Wells Fargo deal. This ruling was later overturned by Judge James M. McGuire of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, First Department, partly because he believed Ramos did not have the right to rule on the case in Connecticut.


title: Wachovia

text: On October 9, 2008, Citigroup abandoned its attempt to purchase Wachovia's banking assets, allowing the Wachovia-Wells Fargo merger to go through. However, Citigroup pursued $60 billion in claims, $20 billion in compensatory and $40 billion in punitive damages, against Wachovia and Wells Fargo for alleged violations of the exclusivity agreement. Wells Fargo settled this dispute with Citigroup Inc. for $100 Million on November 19, 2010.


title: Wachovia

text: Citigroup may have been pressured by regulators to back out of the deal; Bair endorsed Wells Fargo's bid because it removed the FDIC from the picture. Geithner was furious, claiming that the FDIC's reversal would undermine the government's ability to quickly rescue failing banks. However, Geithner's colleagues at the Fed were not willing to take responsibility for selling Wachovia.


title: Wachovia

text: The combined company retained the Wells Fargo name, and was based in San Francisco. However, Charlotte remained as the headquarters for the combined company's East Coast banking operations, and Wachovia Securities remained in Charlotte. Three members of the Wachovia board joined the Wells Fargo board. The merger created the largest branch network in the United States.


title: Wachovia

text: In filings unsealed two days before the merger approval in a New York federal court, Citigroup argued that its own deal was better for U.S taxpayers and Wachovia shareholders. It said that it had exposed itself to "substantial economic risk" by stating its intent to rescue Wachovia after less than 72 hours of due diligence. Citigroup had obtained an exclusive agreement in order to protect itself. Wachovia suffered a $23.9 billion loss in the third quarter.


title: Wachovia

text: In September 2008, the Internal Revenue Service issued a notice providing tax breaks to companies that acquire troubled banks. According to analysts, these tax breaks were worth billions of dollars to Wells Fargo. Vice Chairman Bill Thomas of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission indicated that these tax breaks may have been a factor in Wells Fargo's decision to purchase Wachovia.


title: Wachovia

text: Wells Fargo's purchase of Wachovia closed on December 31, 2008. By the time Wells Fargo completed the acquisition of Wachovia, the byline "A Wells Fargo company" was added to the logo.


title: Wachovia

text: A May 2007 "New York Times" article described Wachovia's negligence in screening and taking action against companies linked with identity theft. With stolen identities, the companies used unsigned checks to remove funds from personal Wachovia bank accounts. In total, Wachovia accepted $142 million in unsigned checks from "companies that made unauthorized withdrawals from thousands of accounts", collecting millions of dollars in fees from them. According to Pat Meehan, a U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Wachovia received "thousands of warnings that it was processing fraudulent checks, but ignored them".


title: Wachovia

text: On April 25, 2008, Wachovia agreed to pay up to $144 million to end the investigation without admitting wrongdoing. The investigation found that Wachovia had failed to conduct suitable due diligence, and that it would have discovered the thefts if it had followed normal procedures. The penalty is one of the largest ever demanded by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.


title: Wachovia

text: In April 2008, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that federal prosecutors had initiated a probe into Wachovia and other U.S. banks for aiding drug money laundering by Mexican and Colombian money-transfer companies, also known as "casas de cambio". These companies help Mexican immigrants in the United States send remittances back to family in Mexico, but it is widely known that they also present a significant money-laundering risk. However, not only is it a "lucrative industry" that is able to charge high fees, but Wachovia also viewed it as a way to gain a foothold in the Hispanic banking market.


title: Wachovia

text: In March 2010, Wachovia admitted "serious and systemic" violations of the Bank Secrecy Act that allowed Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to launder $378.4 billion between 2004 and 2007, the "largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act". It negotiated a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department to resolve criminal charges for willfully failing to set up an effective anti-money-laundering program. It agreed to forfeit $110 million and pay a $50 million fine to the U.S. Treasury.


title: Wachovia

text: Reports in "Bloomberg Businessweek" in June 2010 and "The Observer" in April 2011 shed light on the extent to which Wachovia went to turn a blind eye, including by ignoring the warnings and suspicious activity reports (SARs) of its London-based director of anti-money-laundering.


title: Oocyte

text: An oocyte (, ), oöcyte, or ovocyte is a female gametocyte or germ cell involved in reproduction. In other words, it is an immature ovum, or egg cell. An oocyte is produced in a female fetus in the ovary during female gametogenesis. The female germ cells produce a primordial germ cell (PGC), which then undergoes mitosis, forming oogonia. During oogenesis, the oogonia become primary oocytes. An oocyte is a form of genetic material that can be collected for cryoconservation.


title: Oocyte

text: The formation of an oocyte is called oocytogenesis, which is a part of oogenesis. Oogenesis results in the formation of both primary oocytes during fetal period, and of secondary oocytes after it as part of ovulation.


title: Oocyte

text: Oocytes are rich in cytoplasm, which contains yolk granules to nourish the cell early in development.


title: Oocyte

text: The only normal human type of secondary oocyte has the 23rd (sex) chromosome as 23,X (female-determining), whereas sperm can have 23,X (female-determining) or 23,Y (male-determining).


title: Oocyte

text: The cumulus-oocyte complex contains layers of tightly packed cumulus cells surrounding the oocyte in the Graafian follicle. The oocyte is arrested in Meiosis II at the stage of metaphase II and is considered a secondary oocyte. Before ovulation, the cumulus complex goes through a structural change known as cumulus expansion. The granulosa cells transform from tightly compacted to an expanded mucoid matrix. Many studies show that cumulus expansion is critical for the maturation of the oocyte because the cumulus complex is the oocyte's direct communication with the developing follicle environment. It also plays a significant role in fertilization, though the mechanisms are not entirely known and are species specific.


title: Oocyte

text: Because the fate of an oocyte is to become fertilized and ultimately grow into a fully functioning organism, it must be ready to regulate multiple cellular and developmental processes. The oocyte, a large and complex cell, must be supplied with numerous molecules that will direct the growth of the embryo and control cellular activities. As the oocyte is a product of female gametogenesis, the maternal contribution to the oocyte and consequently the newly fertilized egg, is enormous. There are many types of molecules that are maternally supplied to the oocyte, which will direct various activities within the growing zygote.


title: Oocyte

text: The DNA of a cell is vulnerable to the damaging effect of oxidative free radicals produced as byproducts of cellular metabolism. DNA damage occurring in oocytes, if not repaired, can be lethal and result in reduced fecundity and loss of potential progeny. Oocytes are substantially larger than the average somatic cell, and thus considerable metabolic activity is necessary for their provisioning. If this metabolic activity were carried out by the oocyte's metabolic machinery, the oocyte genome would be exposed to the reactive oxidative by-products generated. Thus it appears that a process evolved to avoid this vulnerability of germline DNA. It was proposed that, in order to avoid damage to the DNA genome of the oocytes, the metabolism contributing to the synthesis of much of the oocyte's constituents was shifted to other maternal cells that then transferred these constituents to oocytes. Thus, oocytes of many organisms are protected from oxidative DNA damage while storing up a large mass of substances to nurture the zygote in its initial embryonic growth.


title: Oocyte

text: During the growth of the oocyte, a variety of maternally transcribed messenger RNAs, or mRNAs, are supplied by maternal cells. These mRNAs can be stored in mRNP (message ribonucleoprotein) complexes and be translated at specific time points, they can be localized within a specific region of the cytoplasm, or they can be homogeneously dispersed within the cytoplasm of the entire oocyte. Maternally loaded proteins can also be localized or ubiquitous throughout the cytoplasm. The translated products of the mRNAs and the loaded proteins have multiple functions; from regulation of cellular "house-keeping" such as cell cycle progression and cellular metabolism, to regulation of developmental processes such as fertilization, activation of zygotic transcription, and formation of body axes. Below are some examples of maternally inherited mRNAs and proteins found in the oocytes of the African clawed frog.


title: Oocyte

text: The oocyte receives mitochondria from maternal cells, which will go on to control embryonic metabolism and apoptotic events. The partitioning of mitochondria is carried out by a system of microtubules that will localize mitochondria throughout the oocyte. In certain organisms, such as mammals, paternal mitochondria brought to the oocyte by the spermatozoon are degraded through the attachment of ubiquitinated proteins. The destruction of paternal mitochondria ensures the strictly maternal inheritance of mitochondria and mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA.


title: Oocyte

text: In mammals, the nucleolus of the oocyte is derived solely from maternal cells. The nucleolus, a structure found within the nucleus, is the location where rRNA is transcribed and assembled into ribosomes. While the nucleolus is dense and inactive in a mature oocyte, it is required for proper development of the embryo.


title: Oocyte

text: Maternal cells also synthesize and contribute a store of ribosomes that are required for the translation of proteins before the zygotic genome is activated. In mammalian oocytes, maternally derived ribosomes and some mRNAs are stored in a structure called cytoplasmic lattices. These cytoplasmic lattices, a network of fibrils, protein, and RNAs, have been observed to increase in density as the number of ribosomes decrease within a growing oocyte.


title: Oocyte

text: Female mammals and birds are born possessing all the oocytes needed for future ovulations, and these oocytes are arrested at the prophase I stage of meiosis. In humans, as an example, oocytes are formed between three and four months of gestation within the fetus and are therefore present at birth. During this prophase I arrested stage (dictyate), which may last for many years, four copies of the genome are present in the oocytes. The arrest of ooctyes at the four genome copy stage appears to provide the informational redundancy needed to repair damage in the DNA of the germline. The repair process used likely involves homologous recombinational repair. Prophase arrested oocytes have a high capability for efficient repair of DNA damages. DNA repair capability appears to be a key quality control mechanism in the female germ line and a critical determinant of fertility.


title: Oocyte

text: The spermatozoon that fertilizes an oocyte will contribute its pronucleus, the other half of the zygotic genome. In some species, the spermatozoon will also contribute a centriole, which will help make up the zygotic centrosome required for the first division. However, in some species, such as in the mouse, the entire centrosome is acquired maternally. Currently under investigation is the possibility of other cytoplasmic contributions made to the embryo by the spermatozoon.


title: Oocyte

text: During fertilization, the sperm provides three essential parts to the oocyte: (1) a signalling or activating factor, which causes the metabolically dormant oocyte to activate; (2) the haploid paternal genome; (3) the centrosome, which is responsible for maintaining the microtubule system. See anatomy of sperm


title: Late modern period

text: In many periodizations of human history, the late modern period followed the early modern period. It began approximately around the year 1800 and depending on the author either ended with the beginning of contemporary history after World War II, or includes that period up to the present day. Notable historical events in the late 18th century that marked the transition from the early modern period to the late modern period include the American Revolution (1765–1791), the French Revolution (1789–1799), and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1760. It took all of human history up to 1804 for the world's population to reach 1 billion; the next billion came just over a century later, in 1927.


title: Late modern period

text: As a result of the Industrial Revolution and political revolutions in the early modern period, the world-views of modernism emerged. The industrialization of many nations was initiated with the industrialization of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Particular facets of the late modern period include:


title: Late modern period

text: There are differing approaches to defining a possible end or conclusion to the Late Modern period, or indeed whether it might be considered to have concluded at all; if that period is indeed concluded, then there are various options for how to label the subsequent era, i.e. the current contemporary era, as described below.


title: Late modern period

text: Additionally, the Late Modern period can be divided into various smaller periods; there are differing opinions and approaches on which time periods to assert in doing so.


title: Late modern period

text: The development of the steam engine started the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. The steam engine was created to pump water from coal mines, enabling them to be deepened beyond groundwater levels. The date of the Industrial Revolution is not exact, but some studies suggest it occurred after the East India Company's conquests of Mughal Bengal, Kingdom of Mysore and the rest of India, which were already observing the proto-industrialization. Eric Hobsbawm held that it "broke out" in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T.S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 (in effect the reigns of George III, The Regency, and George IV). The great changes of centuries before the 19th were more connected with ideas, religion or military conquest, and technological advance had only made small changes in the material wealth of ordinary people.


title: Late modern period

text: The first Industrial Revolution merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships and railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal combustion engine and electric power generation. The Second Industrial Revolution was a phase of the Industrial Revolution; labeled as the separate Technical revolution. From a technological and a social point of view there is no clean break between the two. Major innovations during the period occurred in the chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel industries. Specific advancements included the introduction of oil fired steam turbine and internal combustion driven steel ships, the development of the airplane, the practical commercialization of the automobile, mass production of consumer goods, the perfection of canning, mechanical refrigeration and other food preservation techniques, and the invention of the telephone.


title: Late modern period

text: Industrialization is the process of social and economic change whereby a human group is transformed from a pre-industrial society into an industrial one. It is a subdivision of a more general modernization process, where social change and economic development are closely related with technological innovation, particularly with the development of large-scale energy and metallurgy production. It is the extensive organization of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing. Industrialization also introduces a form of philosophical change, where people obtain a different attitude towards nature.


title: Late modern period

text: An economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanization of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads, and then railways.


title: Late modern period

text: The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.


title: Late modern period

text: The modern petroleum industry started in 1846 with the discovery of the process of refining kerosene from coal by Nova Scotian Abraham Pineo Gesner. Ignacy Łukasiewicz improved Gesner's method to develop a means of refining kerosene from the more readily available "rock oil" ("petr-oleum") seeps in 1852 and the first rock oil mine was built in Bóbrka, near Krosno in Galicia in the following year. In 1854, Benjamin Silliman, a science professor at Yale University in New Haven, was the first to fractionate petroleum by distillation. These discoveries rapidly spread around the world.


title: Late modern period

text: Engineering achievements of the revolution ranged from electrification to developments in materials science. The advancements made a great contribution to the quality of life. In the first revolution, Lewis Paul was the original inventor of roller spinning, the basis of the water frame for spinning cotton in a cotton mill. Matthew Boulton and James Watt's improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both the Kingdom of Great Britain and the world.


title: Late modern period

text: In the latter part of the second revolution, Thomas Alva Edison developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world and is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. In 1882, Edison switched on the world's first large-scale electrical supply network that provided 110 volts direct current to fifty-nine customers in lower Manhattan. Also toward the end of the second industrial revolution, Nikola Tesla made many contributions in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: Late modern period

text: The Industrial Revolutions were major technological, socioeconomic, and cultural changes in late 18th and early 19th centuries that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting the majority of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous and is often compared to the Neolithic Revolution, when mankind developed agriculture and gave up its nomadic lifestyle.


title: Late modern period

text: It has been argued that GDP per capita was much more stable and progressed at a much slower rate until the industrial revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, and that it has since increased rapidly in capitalist countries.


title: Late modern period

text: The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout the European continent. Described as a revolutionary wave, the period of unrest began in France and then, further propelled by the French Revolution of 1848, soon spread to the rest of Europe. Although most of the revolutions were quickly put down, there was a significant amount of violence in many areas, with tens of thousands of people tortured and killed. While the immediate political effects of the revolutions were reversed, the long-term reverberations of the events were far-reaching.


title: Late modern period

text: Industrial age reform movements began the gradual change of society rather than with episodes of rapid fundamental changes. The reformists' ideas were often grounded in liberalism, although they also possessed aspects of utopian, socialist or religious concepts. The Radical movement campaigned for electoral reform, a reform of the Poor Laws, free trade, educational reform, postal reform, prison reform, and public sanitation.


title: Late modern period

text: Following the Enlightenment's ideas, the reformers looked to the Scientific Revolution and industrial progress to solve the social problems which arose with the Industrial Revolution. Newton's natural philosophy combined a mathematics of axiomatic proof with the mechanics of physical observation, yielding a coherent system of verifiable predictions and replacing a previous reliance on revelation and inspired truth. Applied to public life, this approach yielded several successful campaigns for changes in social policy.


title: Late modern period

text: Under Peter the Great, Russia was proclaimed an Empire in 1721 and became recognized as a world power. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede West Karelia and Ingria (two regions lost by Russia in the Time of Troubles), as well as Estland and Livland, securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade. On the Baltic Sea Peter founded a new capital called Saint Petersburg, later known as Russia's "Window to Europe". Peter the Great's reforms brought considerable Western European cultural influences to Russia. Catherine II ("the Great"), who ruled in 1762–96, extended Russian political control over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and incorporated most of its territories into Russia during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward and southward. Russia would colonize the vast Asian lands of Siberia expanding by land to the Pacific Coast of Asia, and North America. As the large realm embraced Absolute monarchy Russia remained more conservative than its western neighbors. In the 19th century, Russia was invaded by France in 1812 but emerged as a more powerful superpower afterwards. Nonetheless, industrialization did not come to Russia until the 1870s. The Medieval practice of serfdom was abolished in 1861 freeing over thirty million Russian peasants. A market economy finally emerged in the Russian Empire. However class warfare rose, and the nation was vulnerable due to rivalries with the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire, and the Japanese Empire.


title: Late modern period

text: The French and Indian Wars were a series of conflicts in North America that represented the actions there that accompanied the European dynastic wars. In Quebec, the wars are generally referred to as the Intercolonial Wars. While some conflicts involved Spanish and Dutch forces, all pitted Great Britain, its colonies and American Indian allies on one side and France, its colonies and Indian allies on the other.


title: Late modern period

text: The expanding French and British colonies were contending for control of the western, or interior, territories. Whenever the European countries went to war, there were actions within and by these colonies although the dates of the conflict did not necessarily exactly coincide with those of the larger conflicts.


title: Late modern period

text: Beginning the Age of Revolution, the American Revolution and the ensuing political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century saw the Thirteen Colonies of North America overthrow the governance of the Parliament of Great Britain, and then reject the British monarchy itself to become the sovereign United States of America. In this period the colonies first rejected the authority of the Parliament to govern them without representation, and formed self-governing independent states. The Second Continental Congress then joined against the British to defend that self-governance in the armed conflict from 1775 to 1783 known as the American Revolutionary War (also called American War of Independence).


title: Late modern period

text: The American Revolution began with fighting at Lexington and Concord. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their independence from Great Britain and their formation of a cooperative union. In June 1776, Benjamin Franklin was appointed a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Although he was temporarily disabled by gout and unable to attend most meetings of the Committee, Franklin made several small changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson.


title: Late modern period

text: The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. While the states had already rejected the governance of Parliament, through the Declaration the new United States now rejected the legitimacy of the monarchy to demand allegiance. The war raged for seven years, with effective American victory, followed by formal British abandonment of any claim to the United States with the Treaty of Paris.


title: Late modern period

text: The Philadelphia Convention in 1787 set up the current United States; the United States Constitution ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a limited central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.


title: Late modern period

text: Historians define the 19th century historical era as stretching from 1815 (the Congress of Vienna) to 1914 (the outbreak of the First World War). Alternatively, Eric Hobsbawm defined the "Long Nineteenth Century" as spanning the years 1789 to 1914.


title: Late modern period

text: In the 1800s and early 1900s, once great and powerful Empires such as Spain, Ottoman Turkey, the Mughal Empire, and the Kingdom of Portugal began to break apart. Spain, which was at one time unrivaled in Europe, had been declining for a long time when it was crippled by Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion. Sensing the time was right, Spain's vast colonies in South America began a series of rebellions that ended with almost all of the Spanish territories gaining their independence.


title: Late modern period

text: The once mighty Ottoman Empire was wracked with a series of revolutions, resulting with the Ottoman's only holding a small region that surrounded the capital, Istanbul.


title: Late modern period

text: The Mughal empire, which was descended from the Mongol Khanate, was bested by the upcoming Maratha Confederacy. All was going well for the Marathas until the British took an interest in the riches of India and the British ended up ruling not just the boundaries of Modern India, but also Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh and some Southern Regions of Afghanistan.


title: Late modern period

text: The King of Portugal's vast territory of Brazil reformed into the independent Empire of Brazil. With the defeat of Napoleonic France, Britain became undoubtedly the most powerful country in the world, and by the end of the First World War controlled a Quarter of the world's population and a third of its surface. However, the power of the British Empire did not end on land, since it had the greatest navy on the planet. Electricity, steel, and petroleum enabled Germany to become a great international power that raced to create empires of its own.


title: Late modern period

text: Substantial decolonization of the Americas occurred through various revolutions and wars of independence fought by new countries in the Americans against European colonizers in late 18th and early-to-mid-19th centuries. The Spanish American wars of independence lasted from 1808 until 1829, directly related to the Napoleonic French invasion of Spain. The conflict started with short-lived governing juntas established in Chuquisaca and Quito opposing the composition of the Supreme Central Junta of Seville. When the Central Junta fell to the French, numerous new Juntas appeared all across the Americas, eventually resulting in a chain of newly independent countries stretching from Argentina and Chile in the south, to Mexico in the north. After the death of the king Ferdinand VII, in 1833, only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule, until the Spanish–American War in 1898. Unlike the Spanish, the Portuguese did not divide their colonial territory in America. The captaincies they created were subdued to a centralized administration in Salvador (later relocated to Rio de Janeiro) which reported directly to the Portuguese Crown until its independence in 1822, becoming the Empire of Brazil.


title: Late modern period

text: The Meiji Restoration was a chain of events that led to enormous changes in Japan's political and social structure that was taking a firm hold at the beginning of the Meiji Era which coincided the opening of Japan by the arrival of the Black Ships of Commodore Matthew Perry and made Imperial Japan a great power. Russia and Qing Dynasty China failed to keep pace with the other world powers which led to massive social unrest in both empires. The Qing Dynasty's military power weakened during the 19th century, and faced with international pressure, massive rebellions and defeats in wars, the dynasty declined after the mid-19th century.


title: Late modern period

text: European powers controlled parts of Oceania, with French New Caledonia from 1853 and French Polynesia from 1889; the Germans established colonies in New Guinea in 1884, and Samoa in 1900. The United States expanded into the Pacific with Hawaii becoming a U.S. territory from 1898. Disagreements between the US, Germany and UK over Samoa led to the Tripartite Convention of 1899.


title: Late modern period

text: The Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 to January 1901. This was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed a large, educated middle class to develop. Some scholars would extend the beginning of the period—as defined by a variety of sensibilities and political games that have come to be associated with the Victorians—back five years to the passage of the Reform Act 1832.


title: Late modern period

text: In Britain's "imperial century", victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the "Pax Britannica", and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation". Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many nominally independent countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been generally characterized as "informal empire". Of note during this time was the Anglo-Zulu War, which was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Empire.


title: Late modern period

text: British imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the Empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line. Growing until 1922, around of territory and roughly 458 million people were added to the British Empire. The British established colonies in Australia in 1788, New Zealand in 1840 and Fiji in 1872, with much of Oceania becoming part of the British Empire.


title: Late modern period

text: The Bourbon Restoration followed the ousting of Napoleon I of France in 1814. The Allies restored the Bourbon Dynasty to the French throne. The ensuing period is called the Restoration, following French usage, and is characterized by a sharp conservative reaction and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church as a power in French politics. The July Monarchy was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution (or Three Glorious Days) of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848. The Second Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.


title: Late modern period

text: The Franco-Prussian War was a conflict between France and Prussia, while Prussia was backed up by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete Prussian and German victory brought about the final unification of Germany under King Wilhelm I of Prussia. It also marked the downfall of Napoleon III and the end of the Second French Empire, which was replaced by the Third Republic. As part of the settlement, almost all of the territory of Alsace-Lorraine was taken by Prussia to become a part of Germany, which it would retain until the end of World War I.


title: Late modern period

text: The French Third Republic was the republican government of France between the end of the Second French Empire following the defeat of Louis-Napoléon in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and the Vichy Regime after the invasion of France by the German Third Reich in 1940. The Third Republic endured seventy years, making it the most long-lasting regime in France since the collapse of the Ancien Régime in the French Revolution of 1789.


title: Late modern period

text: Italian unification was the political and social movement that annexed different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century. There is a lack of consensus on the exact dates for the beginning and the end of this period, but many scholars agree that the process began with the end of Napoleonic rule and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and approximately ended with the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, though the last "città irredente" did not join the Kingdom of Italy until after World War I.


title: Late modern period

text: Slavery was greatly reduced around the world in the 19th century. Following a successful slave revolt in Haiti, Britain forced the Barbary pirates to halt their practice of kidnapping and enslaving Europeans, banned slavery throughout its domain, and charged its navy with ending the global slave trade. Slavery was then abolished in Russia(1861), America(1865), and Brazil(1888).


title: Late modern period

text: Following the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and propelled by economic exploitation, the Scramble for Africa was initiated formally at the Berlin West Africa Conference in 1884–1885. The Berlin Conference attempted to avoid war among the European powers by allowing the European rival countries to carve up the continent of Africa into national colonies. Africans were not consulted.


title: Late modern period

text: The major European powers laid claim to the areas of Africa where they could exhibit a sphere of influence over the area. These claims did not have to have any substantial land holdings or treaties to be legitimate. The European power that demonstrated its control over a territory accepted the mandate to rule that region as a national colony. The European nation that held the claim developed and benefited from their colony's commercial interests without having to fear rival European competition. With the colonial claim came the underlying assumption that the European power that exerted control would use its mandate to offer protection and provide welfare for its colonial peoples, however, this principle remained more theory than practice. There were many documented instances of material and moral conditions deteriorating for native Africans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under European colonial rule, to the point where the colonial experience for them has been described as "hell on earth."


title: Late modern period

text: At the time of the Berlin Conference, Africa contained one-fifth of the world's population living in one-quarter of the world's land area. However, from Europe's perspective, they were dividing an unknown continent. European countries established a few coastal colonies in Africa by the mid-nineteenth century, which included Cape Colony (Great Britain), Angola (Portugal), and Algeria (France), but until the late nineteenth century Europe largely traded with free African states without feeling the need for territorial possession. Until the 1880s most of Africa remained uncharted, with western maps from the period generally showing blank spaces for the continent's interior.


title: Late modern period

text: From the 1880s to 1914, the European powers expanded their control across the African continent, competing with each other for Africa's land and resources. Great Britain controlled various colonial holdings in East Africa that spanned the length of the African continent from Egypt in the north to South Africa. The French gained major ground in West Africa, and the Portuguese held colonies in southern Africa. Germany, Italy, and Spain established a small number of colonies at various points throughout the continent, which included German East Africa (Tanganyika) and German Southwest Africa for Germany, Eritrea and Libya for Italy, and the Canary Islands and Rio de Oro in northwestern Africa for Spain. Finally, for King Leopold (ruled from 1865 to 1909), there was the large "piece of that great African cake" known as the Congo, which became his personal fiefdom. By 1914, almost the entire continent was under European control. Liberia, which was settled by freed American slaves in the 1820s, and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in eastern Africa were the last remaining independent African states.


title: Late modern period

text: Around the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, the Meiji era occurred during the reign of the Meiji Emperor. During this time, Japan started its modernization and rose to world power status. This era name means "Enlightened Rule". In Japan, the Meiji Restoration started in the 1860s, marking the rapid modernization by the Japanese themselves along European lines. Much research has focused on the issues of discontinuity versus continuity with the previous Tokugawa Period. It was not until the beginning of the Meiji Era that the Japanese government began taking modernization seriously. Japan expanded its military production base by opening arsenals in various locations. The hyobusho (war office) was replaced with a War Department and a Naval Department. The samurai class suffered great disappointment the following years.


title: Late modern period

text: Laws were instituted that required every able-bodied male Japanese citizen, regardless of class, to serve a mandatory term of three years with the first reserves and two additional years with the second reserves. This action, the deathblow for the samurai warriors and their "daimyōs", initially met resistance from both the peasant and warrior alike. The peasant class interpreted the term for military service, ketsu-eki ("blood tax") literally, and attempted to avoid service by any means necessary. The Japanese government began modelling their ground forces after the French military. The French government contributed greatly to the training of Japanese officers. Many were employed at the military academy in Kyoto, and many more still were feverishly translating French field manuals for use in the Japanese ranks. Japan's modernized military gave Japan the opportunity to engage in Imperialism with its victory against the Qing Empire in the First Sino-Japanese War Japan annexed Taiwan, Korea and the Chinese province of Shandong.


title: Late modern period

text: After the death of the Meiji Emperor, the Taishō Emperor took the throne, the Taishō period was a time of democratic reform granting democratic rights to all Japanese men. Foreigners would be instrumental in aiding in Japan's modernization. A key foreign observer of the remarkable and rapid changes in Japanese society in this period was Ernest Mason Satow.


title: Late modern period

text: The Antebellum Age was a period of increasing division in the country based on the growth of slavery in the American South and in the western territories of Kansas and Nebraska that eventually led to the Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum Period is often considered to have begun with the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, although it may have begun as early as 1812. This period is also significant because it marked the transition of American manufacturing to the industrial revolution.


title: Late modern period

text: "Manifest destiny" was the belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. During this time, the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean—"from sea to shining sea"—largely defining the borders of the contiguous United States as they are today.


title: Late modern period

text: The American Civil War began when seven Southern slave states declared their secession from the U.S. and formed the Confederate States of America, the Confederacy (four more states joined the Confederacy later). Led by Jefferson Davis, they fought against the U.S. federal government (the Union) under President Abraham Lincoln, which was supported by all the free states and the five border slave states in the north.