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Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 3)

The third season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation commenced airing in broadcast syndication in the United States on September 25, 1989 and concluded on June 18, 1990 after airing 26 episodes. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the crew of the Starfleet starship Enterprise-D. This season featured the return of Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher after she was replaced by Diana Muldaur for the second season. The season also saw the debut of several actors who would reappear in the same roles and others throughout the franchise, such as Dwight Schultz as Lt. Reginald Barclay, and Tony Todd as Kurn. Further changes occurred to the writing staff, with Michael Piller brought on board as executive producer after Michael I. Wagner held the position for three weeks. Ronald D. Moore also joined the staff following the submission of a script for "The Bonding". Hans Beimler, Richard Manning, Melinda M. Snodgrass and Ira Steven Behr all left the staff at the end of the season. Actor Wil Wheaton also asked to leave following the way his character, Wesley Crusher, was written during the season, a decision he later regretted. Other changes included a modification to the opening sequence, and changes to the Starfleet uniforms on the show. The season opened with Nielsen ratings of 10.8 for "Evolution" with the highest-rated episode being "Yesterday's Enterprise", which scored 11.9. This was the highest rating received since the sixth episode of the first season. The lowest rating of the season was received by the 23rd episode, "Ménage à Troi", which was given a score of 9.1. After a couple of initial ranking decreases, the episodes in the second half of the season rose back to third place in its timeslot. The season was well received by critics, who called it one of the best of the series. Particular praise was given to several episodes including "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Sins of the Father" and the first part of "The Best of Both Worlds". Box sets of the season have been released both on DVD and Blu-ray, and "The Best of Both Worlds" was given a limited theatrical release. ## Production ### Writing Senior writer Maurice Hurley left at the end of season two, and Michael I. Wagner was brought onto the show by executive producer Rick Berman. Wagner's tenure was brief, lasting three weeks, and he recommended Michael Piller to replace him. Wagner and Piller had previously worked together on the 1988 American television series Probe. Piller's agent had advised him not to join Star Trek as he would be "pigeon-holed as a freelance writer", but he ignored the advice. He would also look at leaving at the end of the season, but stayed after Berman and show creator Gene Roddenberry convinced him. Piller wrote the episode that opened the season, "Evolution" and took over as executive producer from "The Bonding" onwards. He explained to the writing staff that there were two requirements for every episode, saying that "every episode is going to be about a character's growth. And every episode has to be about something." The season also saw internal promotions to the existing writing staff. Both Hans Beimler and Richard Manning became co-producers, while Melinda M. Snodgrass became an executive script consultant. Following "The Vengeance Factor", Ira Steven Behr joined the crew as a writing producer. All four writers left the series at the end of the season. Behr would go on to become executive producer for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Richard Danus also acted as executive story editor between "Booby Trap" through to "Yesterday's Enterprise". Because of the open door policy on spec scripts Piller employed, the season saw the first script for Ronald D. Moore with "The Bonding". Because of his success with that script, he was subsequently hired as executive story editor from "Sins of the Father" onwards. Because of the way his character was written during season three, Wesley Crusher actor Wil Wheaton asked to be written out of the series. It was a decision he later regretted, as he realised that all the main cast outside of Picard, Riker and Data had similar roles at the time. He praised the writing of Moore in "The Bonding" and Piller in "Evolution", and said that "Yesterday's Enterprise" was one of his favourite episodes. The season also saw a relaxation in Gene Roddenberry's previous direction that The Next Generation could not touch on aspects of The Original Series. This was seen in the episode "Sarek", but was specifically related to the end of the episode where Captain Jean-Luc Picard mentions Spock during a mind meld with Sarek. Piller described this one act as "the breakthrough which allowed us to open the doors, that allowed us to begin to embrace our past." ### Casting Gates McFadden returned to the role of Doctor Beverly Crusher in the third season, the character had been written out for season two and replaced with Diana Muldaur playing Doctor Katherine Pulaski. Roddenberry had ensured that Crusher was not written out permanently to allow for her return in the future. Keith DeCandido blamed her departure on Maurice Hurley. After he left the series, McFadden returned. At the end of season 2 Patrick Stewart was asked by the producer what he wanted and he asked for new uniforms, more action scenes and for Diana Muldaur to be fired and McFadden brought back. Season three saw further appearances for several recurring characters from the franchise, including John de Lancie as Q in "Deja Q", Majel Barrett as Lwaxana Troi in "Ménage à Troi", who had both appeared in multiple episodes of previous seasons. It also featured an appearance by Mark Lenard as Sarek. Lenard had previously appeared in this role in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Journey to Babel" as well as the film franchise. Denise Crosby, whose character Tasha Yar was killed in the first season episode "Skin of Evil", returned in "Yesterday's Enterprise" due to changes to the timeline seen in the series. The events of that episode would set up appearances in The Next Generation for the actress as the half-Romulan character Sela in later seasons. The season also featured the first appearance of actors who would later reappear both in The Next Generation and later series of the franchise. These included Tony Todd as Worf's brother Kurn, who would appear in this role later in the series and also in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. "Hollow Pursuits" marked the first appearance of Dwight Schultz as Lt. Reginald Barclay in the franchise. He would become a recurring character in the series, and go on to appear in several episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and the film Star Trek: First Contact (1996). Schultz had previously been known for his role as H. M. Murdock in the television series The A-Team. Susan Gibney appeared as Dr. Leah Brahms in "Booby Trap", and would later return in that role in "Galaxy's Child". Gibney was also considered for the role of the Captain Janeway in Voyager and played Captain Erika Benteen in the Deep Space Nine episode "Paradise Lost". An actor who later gained a recurring role in Deep Space Nine following an appearance the third season of The Next Generation was Max Grodénchik. He appeared as the Ferengi Sovak in "Captain's Holiday", and as another Ferengi in the fifth season's "The Perfect Mate". In DS9, he was initially cast as a "Ferengi Pit Boss" in the pilot episode, "Emissary". That character would soon become Rom, who by the end of the series was the leader of his race. Jennifer Hetrick also made her first appearance in "Captain's Holiday" as Vash. She would also appear as that character in "Qpid" and Deep Space Nine's "Q-Less". Andreas Katsulas made his first appearances as the Romulan Tomalak in "The Enemy" and "The Defector." He would later reappear in episodes of later seasons, in both "Future Imperfect" and the series finale "All Good Things...". Charles Cooper and Patrick Massett appeared as K'mpec and Duras respectively in "Sins of the Father", and would also appear in those roles once more in "Reunion" in the fourth season. A number of other actors also appeared during the season in prominent guest star roles, including Saul Rubinek, Tricia O'Neil, Harry Groener and James Sloyan. Groener returned to Star Trek during the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise in a different role during the episodes "Demons" and "Terra Prime". ### Crew and effects Robert Blackman joined the crew prior to the start of the season as costume designer. He had been recommended by his predecessor, Durinda Rice Wood. He later recalled that he wasn't interested in the job and only took the interview as a favor, but he was so struck by producer David Livingston's enthusiasm that he accepted the post. One of his tasks was to redesign the Starfleet costumes which had been used for the first two seasons. The previous versions were made of spandex and caused back problems in the cast. The new costumes cost \$3,000, and were made out of a wool gabardine. With Roddenberry's permission, Blackman changed the primary color on the uniforms to black with only blocks of red, gold or blue to signify the branch. This change was intended to set off the faces of the cast and to smooth out their figures on screen. While the men's costumes became two piece outfits, the costumes for McFadden and Marina Sirtis remained as jumpsuits requiring them to maintain a specific weight each. It was following the introduction of these costumes that the nickname of the "Picard Maneuver" was given to Patrick Stewart's habit of tugging down his uniform tunic. Blackman also overhauled the Starfleet Admiral's uniforms, and worked on a variety of alien costumes including designed Klingon and Vulcan outfits. Associate producer Peter Lauritson was promoted to co-producer and both Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach were credited with the addition title of technical consultant due to the level of technical help they had been giving the writers since the start of the series. The opening sequence of the series was changed from the third season onwards. Instead of showing the Enterprise exiting the Solar System as in the first two seasons, it now showed the vessel coming in from the Milky Way. ## Reception ### Ratings By the end of season two, The Next Generation had risen to become the third most viewed series in its timeslot. "Evolution" opened the third season with Nielsen ratings 10.8 according to Nielsen Media Research. These were among the second lowest ratings of the season, with only the 23rd episode, "Menage a Troi", scoring lower with 9.1. Although other episodes received higher Nielsen ratings, they were ranked lower in comparison to other series in the same timeslot. "The Bonding" was ranked 6th, while "The Vengeance Factor" was ranked 5th. Following the latter, the series rose back to 3rd with only occasional drops to 4th place. "Yesterday's Enterprise" was the highest rated, with Nielsen ratings of 11.9. It was the highest-rated episode since the eighth episode of the first season, "Justice" which was broadcast on November 8, 1987. ### Reviews Keith DeCandido for Tor.com thought that the third season was where the series "really came into its own". He praised the changes to the show, such as the modification to the uniforms, and especially the new writing staff that joined the crew during the third season. He said that some of the episodes were highlights of the franchise, not just The Next Generation. Those episodes praised were "Sins of the Father", "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the first episode of "The Best of Both Worlds". He particularly thought that the season finale had never been matched in the entire franchise. He summed up the season by saying that it had "solidified TNG as a show that had finally outgrown the shadow of its predecessor and could stand on its own as a truly fine television show." Michael Simpson in his review of the Blu-ray release for SciFiNow magazine said that season three was where the series "found its feet". He thought that the increase in quality was due to the changes in writing staff, such as the addition of Piller, Echevarria and Moore. He also said that it was the most consistent and memorable season of the series, and several episodes were an "object lesson in clever, suspenseful plotting". Richard Edwards in his review for SFX magazine, said that it was in the third season that the "chemistry really clicked" between the main cast. He compared it to The Original Series, saying that in this season the show started "to vie with Kirk and co for the mantle of Trek's definitive incarnation". He too praised "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Sins of the Father" and "Best of Both Worlds", calling the latter the show's greatest story. In Jeremy Conrad's review of season three for IGN, he said that "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the first part of "Best of Both Worlds" lifted the season and "define[d] it as the best of all seven years". In 2019, CBR rated Season 3 of Star Trek: The Next Generation as the 16th best season of all Star Trek seasons up to that time. ### Accolades "Yesterday's Enterprise" was nominated in three categories at the 1990 Emmy Awards, winning one for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series. "Deja Q" was also nominated in two categories, but was not successful in either. In total, the series was nominated for nine awards, with the only other win coming in the category of Outstanding Art Direction for a Series for "Sins of the Father". "Allegiance", "Tin Man" and "Hollow Pursuits" were the other episodes nominated. For the second year in a row, the series was nominated in two categories at the Youth in Film Awards. At the 1990 awards, they were for Best Off-Prime Time Family Series and Best Young Actor in an Off-Primetime Family Series for Wil Wheaton. However, it did not win in either categories. ## Cast ### Main cast ### Recurring cast ## Episodes In the following table, episodes are listed by the order in which they aired. ## Home media release The previous Blu-ray releases of The Next Generation has been marked by one-day cinematic releases of chosen episodes. For the third season, the cliffhanger episode was broadcast for the first time with both parts of "The Best of Both Worlds" shown in cinemas on April 25, 2013. The two-part episode also received an individual Blu-ray release which coincided with the releases of the season three box set.

Gundamma Katha

1962 film directed by Kamalakara Kameswara Rao

Gundamma Katha () is a 1962 Indian Telugu-language comedy drama film directed by Kamalakara Kameswara Rao and co-produced by Nagi Reddi and Chakrapani under their banner Vijaya Productions. It stars N. T. Rama Rao, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Savitri, and Jamuna, with S. V. Ranga Rao, Suryakantham, and Ramana Reddy in supporting roles. Partially inspired by William Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew, Gundamma Katha is an official remake of the Kannada film Mane Thumbida Hennu (1958). It is also the first remake by Vijaya Productions. Gundamma Katha is the story of Gundamma, a rich widow who ill-treats her selfless step-daughter Lakshmi, who is reduced to working as a maid. Lakshmi dotes on Gundamma's daughter Saroja, an arrogant woman who loves Lakshmi. The film's centrepiece is formed by the way Lakshmi's suitor Anjaneya "Anji" Prasad and Saroja's lover Raja bring a change to Gundamma's life after the couples' marriages. The film is Rama Rao's 100th appearance and Nageswara Rao's 99th. It was photographed by Marcus Bartley, and co-edited by G. Kalyana Sundaram and D. G. Jayaram. Ghantasala composed the film's soundtrack and score. Madhavapeddi Gokhale and Kaladhar were the film's art directors. The production phase lasted for a year; it was filmed in and around Madras, mainly on sets at Vijaya Vauhini Studios. Released on 7 June 1962, Gundamma Katha received praise for its story, screenplay and cast performances, and criticism for its poor character development. The film was commercially successful, completing a 100-day run in 17 centres and a silver-jubilee run at the Durga Kalamandir, Vijayawada. It is regarded as the last film of Vijaya Productions' "Golden Age". The film's Tamil remake of the same year Manithan Maravillai, also produced by Vijaya Productions, had Nageswara Rao, Savitri, and Jamuna reprising their roles. Though Gundamma Katha has achieved cult status in Telugu cinema, it has received criticism for its influence on stereotypes in the narration of other unrelated Telugu films. ## Plot Gundamma is a rich widow who ill-treats her stepdaughter Lakshmi, a selfless person who is reduced to working as a maid. Gundamma has a daughter Saroja and a son Prabhakar. Gundamma has a half-brother Ghantayya, a cunning but weak milk vendor. Ghantayya wants Gundamma to marry off Saroja to his criminal son Bhoopati, who is in prison. To achieve this goal without the knowledge of Gundamma, he spoils every marriage proposal Saroja receives. Saroja's arrogance and Lakshmi's courteous attitude indirectly help Ghantayya. Gundamma decides to marry off Lakshmi to a vagabond and Saroja to the son of Ramabhadrayya, a wealthy man living in a faraway town, Veerapuram. Ramabhadrayya knows about Saroja (Gundamma's daughter) through a marriage broker and goes to Gundamma's home after finding that her late husband was a friend of his, who had aided him in convincing his in-laws to let him marry their daughter. After observing the situations in Gundamma's house with the help of Ghantayya, Ramabhadrayya sends his elder son Anjaneya "Anji" Prasad to Gundamma's house as a servant to get him married to Lakshmi, who he finds innocent and docile. He sends his younger son, Raja, to marry Saroja. Raja then meets Saroja through his cousin Padma, Saroja’s friend and Prabhakar’s classmate and lover. Anji and Lakshmi get married, and Raja and Saroja fall in love. Ramabhadrayya writes a letter to Gundamma opposing the marriage of Raja and Saroja upon the former's instructions, and Anji conducts their marriage against Ghantayya's wishes. Shortly afterward, Prabhakar and Padma's marriage is conducted. Raja acts like a drunkard and masquerades as Ramabhadrayya's son seeking to gain Saroja's wealth. A rift develops between Anji and Gundamma, and he leaves with Lakshmi. Anji, Raja, and Ramabhadrayya reveal the truth to Lakshmi later. Raja storms out of Gundamma's house and Saroja follows him; they join Ramabhadrayya's house as gardeners and Raja ensures Saroja is unaware of their employer. In the process, Saroja's character transforms from one of arrogance to one of a hardworking, courteous person. Gundamma is tortured by Padma's ruthless, confidence-trickster aunt Durga. Bhoopati is released from prison and Ghantayya asks Gundamma to give him some money. Because of Gundamma's arrogance, Prabhakar and Padma leave for Bangalore. Durga steals the money in the locker, accuses Gundamma of robbery, and locks her in a room behind the house. Lakshmi and Anji visit Gundamma and become aware of her condition. Lakshmi and Gundamma coerce Durga and retrieve the money she stole. Bhoopati comes to Durga's rescue but is defeated by Anji in a duel and is hospitalised. Saroja meets Ramabhadrayya, her employer, and walks out after a heated argument. She meets Lakshmi on the way and learns about Raja's plans and that Ramabhadrayya is her father-in-law. The film ends with Gundamma staying with her daughters in Ramabhadrayya's house. ## Cast - N. T. Rama Rao as Anjaneya "Anji" Prasad - Akkineni Nageswara Rao as Raja - Savitri as Lakshmi - Jamuna as Saroja - S. V. Ranga Rao as Ramabhadrayya - Rajanala as Bhoopati - Ramana Reddy as Kanchu Ghantayya - Haranath as Prabhakar - Allu Ramalingaiah as Iyer (cameo appearance) - Suryakantham as Gundamma - L. Vijayalakshmi as Padma - Chhaya Devi as Durgamma - Hemalatha as Kanchu Ghantayya's wife - Rushyendramani as Padma's mother ## Production ### Development Nagi Reddi of Vijaya Productions helped B. Vittalacharya in the production of Mane Thumbida Hennu (1958), the latter's directorial debut in Kannada cinema. As an act of gratitude, Vittalacharya sold the remake rights to Nagi Reddi. Mane Thumbida Hennu revolves around the life of a rich woman whose brother marries off her daughter to a criminal when she chooses a mentally challenged person as her step-daughter's life partner. Nagi Reddi chose to remake the film in Telugu and discussed it with D. V. Narasa Raju; it was the first time Vijaya Productions decided to remake a film. After the script was ready, Nagi Reddi approached C. Pullayya to direct the remake after considering B. N. Reddy. Pullayya was not appreciative of Narasa Raju's treatment of the script and Nagi Reddy met his partner Chakrapani to develop the script further. Chakrapani decided to retain only the background of Gundamma's family from the original and rewrote the remaining script, taking inspiration from William Shakespeare's comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. Chakrapani killed the character of Gundamma's cowardly husband because he felt that a husband who cannot answer his wife's questions was not eligible for inclusion. Kamalakara Kameswara Rao was chosen to direct the film. Chakrapani named the central character Gundamma in the remake after one of the characters in the original, despite a lack of nativity. Nagi Reddi's family members and the employees of the Vijaya Vauhini Studios used to ask him "Gundamma Katha Entha varaku vachchindi?" (What is the progress in Gundamma's story?), which prompted Nagi Reddi to title the film Gundamma Katha after considering various options. Marcus Bartley was recruited as the director of photography; G. Kalyana Sundaram and D. G. Jayaram edited the film. Ghantasala composed the soundtrack and score. Madhavapeddi Gokhale and Kaladhar were the film's art directors. M. Pithambaram and T. P. Bhaktavatsalam provided the make-up. ### Casting Suryakantham was chosen to play Gundamma and Chakrapani suggested Kameswara Rao not to make any special efforts to make her character look ruthless because Suryakantham had an aggressive body language. N. T. Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageswara Rao were chosen as the male leads Anjaneya "Anji" Prasad and Raja, making Gundamma Katha their 10th film together; the film was Rama Rao's 100th film as an actor and Nageswara Rao's 99th. Savitri and Jamuna were chosen as the female leads Lakshmi and Saroja, respectively. Saroja was created by Chakrapani for the film, taking cues from The Taming of the Shrew. S. V. Ranga Rao, Ramana Reddy and Rajanala Kaleswara Rao were cast in the supporting roles of Ramabhadrayya, Ghantayya and Bhoopati. Haranath and L. Vijayalakshmi were chosen to play Gundamma's son Prabhakar and daughter-in-law Padma, while Chhaya Devi appeared as Padma's aunt Durgamma. ### Filming The production phase of Gundamma Katha lasted nearly a year, with one of the reasons being that both Rama Rao and Nageswara Rao had delays in giving bulk dates for the project. A house set was erected in Vijaya Vauhini Studios, Madras (now Chennai) where scenes featuring Gundamma and other key characters were filmed. C. Kuppuswami Naidu and K. Srinivasan supervised the erection of sets. The film's shooting was severely affected by scheduling conflicts; Chakrapani would make telephone calls to all the key artistes, and sequences were filmed based on their availability. The filming of the song "Kolo Koloyanna" was significantly affected by this; all four lead actors were supposed to take part in the song's shoot; the film's editor took care to ensure a smooth flow in the sequences during the post-production phase. The scene before the song that features Anji and Raja communicating with whistles was conceptualised by Narasaraju. Harbans Singh supervised the film's special effects. Since Vijayalakshmi was a trained dancer, an elaborate dance sequence with no connection to the film's story was introduced as a stage performance and Nageswara Rao, Jamuna, and Haranath were made to sit along with the audience. The song "Prema Yatralaku" was filmed in the gardens near the Vijaya Vauhini Studios after abandoning plans to film it in either Ooty or Brindavan Gardens, Srirangapatna. During the film's shoot, a kickboxing tournament was held in Madras; this inspired Chakrapani and Kameswara Rao to add a fight sequence between Rama Rao and Kaleswara Rao. Pasumarthi Krishnamurthy conducted the choreography for the song sequences. The film was processed at Vijaya Laboratory and was recorded on Western Electric equipment. Its total length was approximately 14,999 feet (4,572 m) in 18 reels, with a running time of 166 minutes. ## Themes Gundamma Katha is based partially on William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. It focuses on a widow named Gundamma and her two daughters. The film's main theme is the step-daughter Lakshmi facing problems because of the widow, and the former's suitor teaching the latter a lesson. Using the first conversation between Gundamma and Lakshmi, in which the former abuses the latter for disturbing her sleep, Narasaraju introduces Gundamma's mindset and behaviour. Further incidents include the dismissal of a server fired from a hotel after refusing to work as a servant in Gundamma's house, and Ghantayya explaining Gundamma's character to Ramabhadrayya. According to Filmfare's V. V. S. R. Hanumantha Rao, true friendship is the theme of the film. Most of the film's dialogue, especially that between Ramana Reddy and Allu Ramalingaiah, are satirical and provide references to Indian society during the 1960s. The song "Lechindi Nidra" is about the empowerment of women and their role in areas of the government. In her article "Manifestation of devotion" about the importance of the Krishna Janmashtami festival, Rajeswari Kalyanam of The Hans India said the lyrics and photography of the song "Aligina Velane Choodali" recall the romantic side of Krishna that every woman sees in her husband or the person she loves. It also recalls the bond Krishna shared with his foster mother Yashoda. ## Music The official soundtrack of Gundamma Katha was composed by Ghantasala; it consists of eight songs whose lyrics were written by Pingali. The sound mixing process was supervised by A. Krishnan and V. Sivaram, and the soundtrack was processed by N. C. Sen Gupta. Ghantasala provided vocals for Rama Rao and Nageswara Rao; P. Susheela and P. Leela provided the vocals for Savitri and Jamuna. The song "Entha Hayi" was composed using the Mohanam raga. The soundtrack was marketed by HMV; it was successful and all eight songs were well received. "Lechindi Nidra", "Kolu Koloyanna", "Aligina Velane Choodali", and "Prema Yatralaku" achieved cult status in Telugu cinema, particularly for their lyrics. M. L. Narasimham of The Hindu noted that all songs from the film "are being enjoyed even today by music lovers." ## Release Gundamma Katha was released on 7 June 1962. In the opening credits, images of the film's cast were used instead of their names; the leads and Ranga Rao's images are screened first, and are followed by those of Suryakantham and the other supporting cast. Gundamma Katha was a profitable venture for Vijaya Productions; it completed a 100-day run in 17 theatres across Andhra Pradesh, and completed a silver-jubilee run at the Durga Kalamandir, Vijayawada. It became the first film to be run for 100 days with three screenings per day in Hyderabad. The silver-jubilee celebrations were not held, and the planned budget for the event was donated to a fundraiser who was active during the Sino-Indian War. ## Reception Upon release, many critics praised Gundamma Katha for its story, screenplay and performances of the lead cast, while some criticised its poor character development. Krishnanand, writing for Andhra Patrika on 15 June 1962, praised Suryakantham's role in particular and said, "Justifying the film's title, the makers have placed utmost importance on Gundamma's character, and Suryakantham who breathe life into that character, has equally mesmerized the audience with her performance." On the same day, an article from Zamin Ryot opined that the film was filled of humour, "The screenplay, each and every scene, and every character in the story is purposefully made for humour; Humour in anger, humour in brawl – humour everywhere!" it stated. Earlier on 8 June, a critic from Andhra Jyothi praising the film, wrote, "This isn't Gundamma's story, rather the story we see everyday – Our story." In an essay by V. Chakravarty writing for Eenadu in 2012, it was expressed that the characters played by Jamuna and Suryakantham were poorly written and under-developed. Chakravarty also found the characters played by Haranath and Vijayalakshmi out of place. Similar views were expressed after a special screening at L. V. Prasad's residence but Chakrapani was confident of the film's success when he saw children clapping in response to Rama Rao's performance in comical sequences. Narasimham wrote in his review of the film for The Hindu in 2016, "With more emphasis on banter in the story, the actors, without straining a nerve, sailed smoothly through their characters." ## Remakes Gundamma Katha was remade in Tamil as Manithan Maravillai (1962) by Vijaya Productions. Chakrapani directed the remake and Gemini Ganesan replaced Rama Rao, while Nageswara Rao, Savitri and Jamuna reprised their roles. Manithan Maravillai was Nageswara Rao's 100th film as an actor; Gundamma Katha became a notable film for both Rama Rao and Nageswara Rao as they completed 100 films as actors with two versions of the same film. Unlike the original film, Manithan Maravillai was a commercial failure. Vijaya had also planned to remake Gundamma Katha in Hindi, but this plan never came to fruition. However it was remade in Hindi as Swayamvar in 1980. Rama Rao's son Nandamuri Balakrishna and Nageswara Rao's son Nagarjuna, who established themselves as actors in Telugu cinema, planned to remake Gundamma Katha but withdrew after failing to find a suitable replacement for Suryakantham. In 2012, D. Ramanaidu planned to produce the remake of the film with Rama Rao's grandson N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Nagarjuna's son Naga Chaitanya playing the leading male characters but the plans were cancelled. In April 2016, Mohan Babu expressed interest in remaking the film with his son Vishnu Manchu and Raj Tarun . He added that G. Nageswara Reddy would direct the remake which he would announce after acquiring the rights. ## Sequel and digitisation plans After Gundamma Katha's release, Chakrapani wrote a story named "Gundamma Gari Kootulla Katha" (The Story of Gundamma's Daughters). It was serialised in Bharathi magazine. Its plot involves Ghantayya creating a rift between Lakshmi and Saroja. Readers expected Chakrapani to produce a sequel to Gundamma Katha but he showed no interest. In 1982, Rama Rao and Krishna acted in a film, Vayyari Bhamalu Vagalamari Bhartalu, whose story resembled "Gundamma Gari Kootulla Katha". In November 2007, a Hyderabad-based company named Goldstone Technologies acquired the film negative rights to 14 Telugu films produced by Vijaya Vauhini Studios, including Mayabazar (1957) and Gundamma Katha, to release colourised, digitally remastered versions. The remastered and colourised version of Mayabazar, released in January 2010, was commercially successful but Goldstone Technologies decided not to remaster the remaining 13 films, including Gundamma Katha, saying most of the producers who sold the rights to the negatives to television channels lost control over them. Goldstone further explained that a number of legal issues over ownership and copyright issues arise whenever producers try to do something on their own. ## Legacy Gundamma Katha is regarded as the last film of Vijaya Productions' "Golden Age". In commemoration of the Centenary of Indian Cinema, The Hindu listed Gundamma Katha, Pathala Bhairavi (1951), Missamma (1955), Mayabazar, Maduve Madi Nodu (1965), Ram Aur Shyam (1967), Julie (1975), and Shriman Shrimati (1982) as the iconic films produced by Nagi Reddi. Gundamma Katha is a notable film in the careers of Suryakantham and Ramana Reddy; Nagi Reddi said the latter played a key role in the film's success. Various words and phrases, such as "dush propaganda" and "alludirikam" (Mother-in-law staying at son-in-law's house), later became part of Telugu vernacular. In an interview with The Hindu in December 2005, Telugu actor Mallikarjuna Rao cited the film and Mayabazar as examples of incidental comedy, arguing that the situation and the subject should go "hand in hand". In May 2012, Radhika Rajamani of Rediff.com mentioned Gundamma Katha for the letter G in her list, "The A to Z of Telugu Cinema", calling it an "unforgettable film". In November 2012, The Times of India listed Gundamma Katha alongside unrelated films Missamma, Mayabazar, Narthanasala, and Bommarillu (2006) in its list of "Telugu classics to watch along with family this Deepavali". The commentator for The Times stated that Gundamma Katha "touches many layers of human [emotions] and situations" and features "top class actors, a strong script, melodious and meaningful songs". Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu (2013), which was rumoured to be a remake of Gundamma Katha, adapted the style of its opening credits—use of images rather than text to credit its principal cast. In their 2013 book Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas, K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake wrote that Gundamma Katha, along with Appu Chesi Pappu Koodu (1959), Missamma and Ramudu Bheemudu (1964), "represented the scope comedy had in the 1950s and 60s." The story and treatment of Gundamma Katha inspired many other Telugu films, resulting in stereotypes in narration. The filmmaker K. V. Reddy stated that Gundamma Katha had good dialogue and production design but lacked a proper story to narrate. In her review of screenwriter Trivikram Srinivas' film Attarintiki Daredi (2013), Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of The Hindu expressed hope that Srinivas "will give us something more innovative than relying on a story that’s been rehashed since the time of Gundamma Katha". In August 2015, the filmmaker Teja admitted that the Telugu film industry is stuck with two types of narratives and concepts—hero-centric films and those similar to Gundamma Katha. During the promotion of Soukhyam (2015), its director A. S. Ravikumar Chowdary said comedy is a dominant element in Telugu films, citing Gundamma Katha and Aha Naa-Pellanta! (1987) as examples.

Abergil Organization

Israeli organized crime group

The Abergil Organization is an Israeli organized crime syndicate that has been active since the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The organization was founded by brothers Yaakov and Avi Abergil in the city of Ramat Gan, Israel, in the 1990s. The Abergil Organization is involved in a wide range of criminal activities, including drug trafficking, money laundering, and extortion. One of the hallmarks of the Abergil Organization is its use of violence to maintain its position within the criminal underworld. The organization is known for its ruthless tactics, and its members are responsible for numerous murders and other violent crimes. Despite its reputation for violence, the Abergil Organization is also known for its sophisticated approach to criminal activity. The organization was highly organized and had a complex structure that allowed it to operate in multiple countries around the world. In the early 2000s, the Abergil Organization was targeted by law enforcement agencies in Israel and the United States. In 2005, Yaakov Abergil was arrested in Israel and extradited to the United States, where he was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 32 years in prison. Avi Abergil was also arrested in Israel in 2008 and extradited to the United States, where he was charged with drug trafficking and money laundering. He ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Despite the arrests of its leaders, the Abergil Organization is believed to still have some level of activity in Israel and other parts of the world. However, it is unclear to what extent the organization is currently involved in criminal activity. ## Operations ### Assets According to the Israeli Police, the Abergil Organization, at its height in June 2004, had tens of millions of shekels in assets in Israel. The organization ran 37 companies, owned 38 apartments and 56 cars. ### Money-laundering According to the indictment, the crime organization headed by Itzhak and Meir Abergil ran a flourishing money-laundering business in the US from 2002 to 2006, processing tens of millions of US dollars of funds embezzled from the Israel Trade Bank, through the “Jerusalem Gang′s” extortion of Ofer Maximov, that led to his sister Etti Alon's embezzling 250 million shekel. The money was given out as loans to Israeli businesspeople in the United States, who were later extorted to give up their businesses if they did not pay up. Meir Abergil, described as the person in charge of finances, collected the money that was exacted and later laundered and invested it. Gabi Ben Harosh of the “Jerusalem Gang” who was arrested in Los Angeles in 2004, ran the lending bank in the United States and updated Meir and Itzhak Abergil on its balance. Sasson Barashi of Jerusalem and Hai Vaknin of Los Angeles identified borrowers and businesses and also saw to the collection of the money. Yoram Elal, who has fled to Brazil, was responsible for special-operations. The activities have been documented in hundreds of surveillance reports, photographs and phone calls, which were recorded by police departments all over the world and are detailed in the indictment. ### Drug trafficking The US State Department considers the Abergils as one of the world's top 40 drug importers to the US. US federal prosecutors claim that when the Abergils wished to expand their mob syndicate in the US, they turned for help to an upstart Latino street gang known as the Vineland Boys. The Boys' feud with the Mexican Mafia, known as "La Eme", sent the Boys looking for a new source of drugs, which the Israelis provided. The Abergils, along with Moshe Malul and Israel Ozifa, are also charged with smuggling cocaine and hashish from Europe to the United States. On 22 July 2002, the Los Angeles Police busted a meeting of ecstasy dealers in the midst of a drug and money exchange, confiscating over 400,000 tablets of the drug, valued at more than \$5 million. According to the LAPD, Moshe Malul was the person behind the distribution of millions of ecstasy tablets in Southern California and Itzhak Abergil the person responsible for the ecstasy shipments from Belgium and the Netherlands. In May 2008, a court in Antwerp sentenced Itzhak Abergil along with eight other accomplices to a firm 5-year prison term for his involvement in large scale drug trafficking through the city of Antwerp's port. ### Personal safety In June 2002 Yaakov Abergil, the eldest of the brothers was murdered in front of his family. After his death, the leadership passed on to his brother Itzhak, who has accumulated a number of powerful enemies and survived several assassination attempts. In December 2002, one of Abergil's main rivals, underworld kingpin Ze'ev Rosenstein, was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to assassinate both Abergils. In 2007, Police learned that at least two contract killers, believed to be from the Commonwealth of Independent States, had come to Israel at the behest of a rival crime family embroiled in a vendetta with the Abergil crime syndicate. The police believed the two hit men to be hired by the competing Alperon crime family. ### Murders and assassinations The Abergils have been accused of number of murders and assassinations. On 31 August 2003, Sami Atias, an Israeli drug dealer who had belonged to an ecstasy ring headed by Abergil and Moshe Malul, was shot at close range and killed in the parking lot of an Encino café as he was getting into his car. Allegedly he had tried to steal 76 kilograms of Ecstasy in 2002. According to the indictment, Moshe Malul and fugitive Vineland Boyz′ member Luis Sandoval, were at the scene when Atias was shot, but another man had pulled the trigger. Itzhak Abergil had offered to help with the slaying during a meeting in Spain, but he did not play a direct role in the killing. On 5 October 2008, Amir Sanker and Eitan Gerella, two suspected associates of the Abergil crime family, were acquitted of a charge of grievous bodily harm by a Tel Aviv District Court, instead being convicted of lesser crimes, due to police negligence in collecting evidence. The charge sheet had claimed that the suspects had planned to kill Nissim Alperon, brother of crime boss Yaakov Alperon in retaliation for an attack on Itzhak Abergil said to be carried out by the Alperons five months earlier. In November 2008, Yaakov Alperon was killed in a car blast in Tel Aviv. In 2005, two girls were killed in Ramle by shots fired at a hall where Itzhak Abergil was celebrating. Police believe the slain girls were innocent victims of a mistake by the attacker in identifying his true target. In August 2008 31-year-old social worker Margarita Lautin (Hebrew: מרגריטה לאוטין), from Yehud, was killed while dining on the Bat Yam boardwalk with her husband and two young children. The targets of the shooting, attempting to run away from the shooters, had created a clear line of fire on Lautin, who was shot in the chest. The two suspected assassins, Ronen Ben-Adi and Shimon Sabah, members of the Abergil mob, fled the scene on a motorcycle, but were later apprehended by the police. They were convicted in May 2010, Sabah was sentenced to prison for seven years, and Ben Adi to life in prison and required to pay Lautin's daughters NIS 350,000 in compensation. The assailants were apparently targeting Rami Amira, who was sitting at a table nearby with Moti Hassin and Simantov Mahtayeb, who are all identified with the Abergil group, in an effort to resolve an internal dispute. Amira sustained a slight injury in his cheek as a result of the attack. He was killed on 2 February 2011 in Rishon LeZion, presumably by the Abergil organization which, according to police sources, continued to operate while the two Abergil brothers were extradited and awaiting trial in the United States. ## Arrests and extradition In 2004, Gabi Ben Harosh, partner of the Abergil brothers, was arrested in Los Angeles. After two years of house arrest, he signed a plea bargain for minor offenses, connected to bringing in foreign currency without a permit, and was sentenced to community service and judicial supervision for three years. In view of the Abergil brothers extradition to the US, he and his wife were arrested for violating immigration laws. It is believed that American authorities tried to apply pressure to Ben Harosh to incriminate the Abergil brothers but failed. Hai Vaknin, called an “Abergil henchman” by the Israeli daily Haaretz, was arrested in the US in 2006. In January 2011, he signed a plea bargain, confessing to money laundering and receiving a 57-month prison sentence, which he had already served, and was ordered to serve three years under supervised release. His description of loans and extortion practices was expected to help convict Itzhak and Meir Abergil. In early August 2008, Itzhak and Meir Abergil were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Margarita Lautin who had died after being mistakenly shot during a failed assassination attempt by members of the Abergil mob. On 26 August 2008 Itzhak and Meir Abergil along with Moshe Malul and Israel Ozifa were brought before a Jerusalem Magistrate's Court judge for their alleged role in the killing of Israeli drug dealer Sami Atias in Encino in August 2003, as a revenge for his allegedly having stolen money from them. They were remanded in custody together with Sason Barashi as a result of a request by law enforcement in the United States for their extradition. The indictment includes four different crimes that are attributed to Yitzhak Abergil: involvement together with Malul in the murder of Atias in California in 2003, trade in Ecstasy, extortion and violence against businessmen, and money laundering and fraud. The inquiry into the case had lasted for six years, involving the FBI, tax authorities and law enforcement officials in more than ten countries in America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In July 2009, a Jerusalem District Court approved the state's request to extradite the Abergils, Sasson Barashy, Moshe Malul and Israel Ozifa to the US. In December 2010, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the three associates of the Abergil brothers. On 12 January 2011 Itzhak and Meir Abergil, together with Sasson Barashy, Moshe Malul and Israel Ozifa, were extradited to the US, arriving in Los Angeles on January 13, aboard an American government airplane. They were being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, facing a 77-page, 32-count federal indictment that alleges murder, massive embezzlement, money laundering, racketeering and running a large Los Angeles-based Ecstasy ring. The trial was set for 8 November 2011 in the Los Angeles Federal District Court. If convicted, they may face life imprisonment, but not the death penalty, as US authorities have promised their Israeli counterparts that even if found guilty of murder, the five suspects would not be given the death penalty. Under the terms of the extradition agreement, they would likely serve their sentence in an Israeli prison. Shortly after the extradition, a threatening letter was found under the car of the wife of the Prosecutor who was involved in the extradition. Despite evidence, Itzhak Abergil called the allegations “police provocation” during an earlier custody hearing, further stating that he had never been to the United States. In an interview on Israeli television, Meir Abergil dismissed claims that he and his brother were important criminals, saying: “Who are we? We're peanuts compared to the mafias they have in America ... Who are we? Nothing, cockroaches.” ## After the extradition According to Israeli police sources, the Abergil crime organization has continued to operate in Israel after Itzhak Abergil and his brother Meir were arrested. The Israeli Police reportedly believe that Moti Hassin, a reputed senior member of the Abergil group, took the reins of the organization after the Abergil brothers were extradited to the US. In March 2012, Hassin and three alleged accomplices were arrested on suspicion of being responsible for two gangland hits carried out in the Tel Aviv area, the killings of Avi David, who was shot dead at point-blank range by a motorcyclist outside a Bat Yam steakhouse in October 2011, and Itzik Geffen, who died in a hail of gunfire at a gas station in Holon two months later. In February 2013, the police arrested three men suspected of taking part in the murder of Sharon Mizrachi, who was shot to death while sitting in his car in Bat Yam. According to the police, the main motive for the killings was the victim's intention to join a rival crime gang, and were ordered by Hassin partly to establish his position as the new leader of the crime family. In early May 2012, five alleged members of the Abergil organization who were suspected of conspiring to commit a crime and possessing deadly weapons were arrested in Jerusalem, after police had found a weapons cache inside a storage room in an apartment building in Jerusalem where one of the suspects' parents live. According to the suspects, they followed the advice of Itzhak Abergil to hide weapons in public buildings in order to deflect suspicion from the organization. At the suspects’ homes police discovered signs of violence, including ceramic bulletproof vests with bullet holes in them. The police suspects that the organization was planning a major attack. According to the suspects, they were planning to take revenge on a Jerusalem resident, who owed the organization money. ## Plea agreements In August 2011, Meir Abergil was freed and returned to Israel after having served about three years in prison first in Israel and then in the United States. Charged with blackmailing U.S. businessmen to whom the brothers had lent money, he allegedly had played a relatively minor role in the crimes and is thought to have been involved mainly in the extortion of Asi Vaknin, who was arrested in Mexico and brought to the United States in April 2011, but refuses to testify against the Abergils. As a result, U.S. authorities reportedly were not able to build a case against Meir Abergil, leading to a plea agreement approved by a California court in which Abergil confessed to extortion of over a million dollars from another mob figure. In Israel, he faces criminal charges pending against him in the district court in Petah Tikva over allegations regarding his involvement in an Internet gambling business set up about 10 years ago which operated in many locations in Israel, including Internet cafes, convenience stores, soccer lottery outlets and nightclubs functioning as casinos. According to his lawyer, Abergil's involvement in the alleged activities was marginal. In May 2012, Itzhak Abergil pleaded guilty in a Los Angeles federal court to being part of a racketeering enterprise that distributed Ecstasy and whose members killed Sami Atias for stealing a large drug shipment. On 21 May 2012 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, including the length of his detention in the US, leaving eight and a half years for him to serve. He was also ordered to serve three years under supervised release after his release from prison. His lawyers called it "a good deal," according to them, Abergil was facing the risk of getting a life sentence. He is to serve his time in Israel. Moshe Malul pleaded guilty to a charge of racketeering conspiracy, admitting to conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to import the drug Ecstasy to the U.S. In his plea agreement, he acknowledged that as part of the Abergil crime family, he hired members of the Vineland Boyz street gang based in North Hollywood, to kill Sami Atias in retaliation for stealing Ecstasy that belonged to the Abergil organization. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison on 21 June 2012 with credit for time served. He was also ordered to serve three years under supervised release after his release from federal prison. Israel Ozifa pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to import Ecstasy pills from Belgium into the United States. He was sentenced to eight years in federal prison on 18 July 2012 with credit for time served. He was also ordered to serve three years under supervised release after his release from federal prison. According to the prosecution, Ozifa was an "important, trusted and, most important, productive member" of the organization, while Ozifa's attorney said his client was "really the running dog" of the Abergil family and only followed orders. On 8 January 2013 Sasson Barashy was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison with credit for time served. He was also ordered to serve three years under supervised release after his release from federal prison.

Ann Dunham

American anthropologist, mother of Barack Obama

Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995) was an American anthropologist who specialized in the economic anthropology and rural development of Indonesia. She was the mother of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. Dunham was known as Stanley Ann Dunham through high school, then as Ann Dunham, Ann Obama, Ann Soetoro, a.k.a. Ann Sutoro, and resumed her maiden name, Ann Dunham, later in life. Born in Wichita, Kansas, Dunham studied at the East–West Center and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu, where she attained a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology (1967), and later received Master of Arts (1974) and PhD (1992) degrees, also in anthropology. She also attended the University of Washington in Seattle from 1961 to 1962. Interested in craftsmanship, weaving, and the role of women in cottage industries, Dunham's research focused on women's work on the island of Java and blacksmithing in Indonesia. To address the problem of poverty in rural villages, she created microcredit programs while working as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development. Dunham was also employed by the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and she consulted with the Asian Development Bank in Gujranwala, Pakistan. Towards the latter part of her life, she worked with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, where she helped apply her research to the largest microfinance program in the world. After her son was elected president, interest renewed in Dunham's work: the University of Hawaiʻi held a symposium about her research; an exhibition of Dunham's Indonesian batik textile collection toured the United States; and in December 2009, Duke University Press published Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, a book based on Dunham's original 1992 dissertation. Janny Scott, an author and former New York Times reporter, published a biography of her titled A Singular Woman in 2011. Posthumous interest has also led to the creation of the Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment in the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, as well as the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Fellowships, intended to fund students associated with the East–West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. In an interview, Barack Obama referred to his mother as "the dominant figure in my formative years ... The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics." ## Early life Dunham was born on November 29, 1942, at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kansas, the only child of Madelyn Lee Payne and Stanley Armour Dunham. She was of predominantly English ancestry, with some Scottish, Welsh, Irish, German and Swiss. Wild Bill Hickok is her sixth cousin, five times removed. Ancestry.com announced on July 30, 2012, after using a combination of old documents and yDNA analysis, that Dunham's mother was descended from John Punch, an enslaved African man who lived in seventeenth-century colonial Virginia. Her parents were born in Kansas and met in Wichita, where they married on May 5, 1940. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, her father joined the United States Army and her mother worked at a Boeing plant in Wichita. According to Dunham, she was named after her father because he wanted a son, though her relatives doubt this story and her maternal uncle recalled that her mother named Dunham after her favorite actress Bette Davis' character in the film In This Our Life because she thought Stanley, as a girl's name, sounded sophisticated. As a child and teenager she was known as Stanley. Other children teased her about her name. Nonetheless, she used it through high school, "apologizing for it each time she introduced herself in a new town." By the time Dunham began attending college, she was known by her middle name, Ann, instead. After World War II, Dunham's family moved from Wichita to California while her father attended the University of California, Berkeley. In 1948, they moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma, and from there to Vernon, Texas, and then to El Dorado, Kansas. In 1955, the family moved to Seattle, Washington, where her father was employed as a furniture salesman and her mother worked as vice president of a bank. They lived in an apartment complex in the Wedgwood neighborhood where she attended Nathan Eckstein Junior High School. In 1957, Dunham's family moved to Mercer Island, an Eastside suburb of Seattle. Dunham's parents wanted their 13-year-old daughter to attend the newly opened Mercer Island High School. At the school, teachers Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman taught the importance of challenging social norms and questioning authority to the young Dunham, and she took the lessons to heart: "She felt she didn't need to date or marry or have children." One classmate remembered her as "intellectually way more mature than we were and a little bit ahead of her time, in an off-center way", and a high school friend described her as knowledgeable and progressive: "If you were concerned about something going wrong in the world, Stanley would know about it first. We were liberals before we knew what liberals were." Another called her "the original feminist". She went through high school "reading beatnik poets and French existentialists". ## Family life and marriages On August 21, 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state to be admitted into the Union. Dunham's parents sought business opportunities in the new state, and after graduating from high school in 1960, Dunham and her family moved to Honolulu. Dunham enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. ### First marriage While attending a Russian language class, Dunham met Barack Obama Sr., the school's first African student. At the age of 23, Obama Sr. had come to Hawaii to pursue his education, leaving behind a pregnant wife, Kezia, and their infant son in his home town of Nyang'oma Kogelo in Kenya. Dunham and Obama Sr. were married on the Hawaiian island of Maui on February 2, 1961, despite parental opposition from both families. Dunham was three months pregnant. Obama Sr. eventually informed Dunham about his first marriage in Kenya but claimed he was divorced. Years later she discovered this was false. Obama Sr.'s first wife, Kezia, later said she had granted her consent for him to marry a second wife in keeping with Luo customs. On August 4, 1961, at the age of 18, Dunham gave birth to her first child, Barack Obama, in Honolulu. Friends in the state of Washington recall her visiting with her month-old baby in 1961. She studied at the University of Washington from September 1961 to June 1962, and lived as a single mother in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle with her son while her husband continued his studies in Hawaii. When Obama Sr. graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962, he left for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he began graduate study at Harvard University in fall 1962. Dunham returned to Honolulu and resumed her undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii with the spring semester in January 1963. During this time, her parents helped her raise the young Barack. Dunham filed for divorce in January 1964, which Obama Sr. did not contest. ### Second marriage It was at the East–West Center that Dunham met Lolo Soetoro, a Javanese surveyor who had come to Honolulu in September 1962 on an East–West Center grant to study geography at the University of Hawaii. Soetoro graduated from the University of Hawaii with an MA in geography in June 1964. In 1965, Soetoro and Dunham were married in Hawaii, and in 1966, Soetoro returned to Indonesia. Dunham graduated from the University of Hawaii with a B.A. in anthropology on August 6, 1967, and moved in October the same year with her six-year-old son to Jakarta, Indonesia, to rejoin her husband. In Indonesia, Soetoro worked first as a low-paid topographical surveyor for the Indonesian government, and later in the government relations office of Union Oil Company. The family first lived at 16 Kyai Haji Ramli Tengah Street in a newly built neighborhood in the Menteng Dalam administrative village of the Tebet subdistrict in South Jakarta for two and a half years, with her son attending the nearby Indonesian-language Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School for 1st, 2nd, and part of 3rd grade, then in 1970 moved two miles north to 22 Taman Amir Hamzah Street in the Matraman Dalam neighborhood in the Pegangsaan administrative village of the Menteng subdistrict in Central Jakarta, with her son attending the Indonesian-language government-run Besuki School one and half miles east in the exclusive Menteng administrative village of the Menteng subdistrict for part of 3rd grade and for 4th grade. On August 15, 1970, Soetoro and Dunham had a daughter, Maya Kassandra Soetoro. In Indonesia, Dunham enriched her son's education with correspondence courses in English, recordings of Mahalia Jackson, and speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1971, she sent the young Obama back to Hawaii to attend Punahou School starting in 5th grade rather than having him stay in Indonesia with her. Madelyn Dunham's job at the Bank of Hawaii, where she had worked her way up over a decade from clerk to becoming one of its first two female vice presidents in 1970, helped pay the steep tuition, with some assistance from a scholarship. A year later, in August 1972, Dunham and her daughter moved back to Hawaii to rejoin her son and begin graduate study in anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dunham's graduate work was supported by an Asia Foundation grant from August 1972 to July 1973 and by an East–West Center Technology and Development Institute grant from August 1973 to December 1978. Dunham completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for an M.A. in anthropology in December 1974, and after having spent three years in Hawaii, Dunham, accompanied by her daughter Maya, returned to Indonesia in 1975 to do anthropological field work. Her son chose not to go with them back to Indonesia, preferring to finish high school at Punahou School in Honolulu while living with his grandparents. Lolo Soetoro and Dunham divorced on November 5, 1980; Lolo Soetoro married Erna Kustina in 1980 and had two children, a son, Yusuf Aji Soetoro (born 1981), and daughter, Rahayu Nurmaida Soetoro (born 1987). Lolo Soetoro died, age 52, on March 2, 1987, due to liver failure. Dunham was not estranged from either ex-husband and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers. ## Professional life From January 1968 to December 1969, Dunham taught English and was an assistant director of the Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia Amerika (LIA)–the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute at 9 Teuku Umar Street in the Gondangdia administrative village of the Menteng subdistrict in Central Jakarta–which was subsidized by the United States government. From January 1970 to August 1972, Dunham taught English and was a department head and a director of the Lembaga Pendidikan dan Pengembangan Manajemen (LPPM)–the Institute of Management Education and Development at 9 Menteng Raya Street in the Kebon Sirih administrative village of the Menteng subdistrict in Central Jakarta. From 1968 to 1972, Dunham was a co-founder and active member of the Ganesha Volunteers (Indonesian Heritage Society) at the National Museum in Jakarta. From 1972 to 1975, Dunham was crafts instructor (in weaving, batik, and dye) at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Dunham then had a career in rural development, championing women's work and microcredit for the world's poor and worked with leaders from organizations supporting Indonesian human rights, women's rights, and grass-roots development. In March 1977, Dunham, under the supervision of agricultural economics professor Leon A. Mears, developed and taught a short lecture course at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Indonesia (FEUI) in Jakarta for staff members of BAPPENAS (Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional)—the Indonesian National Development Planning Agency. From June 1977 through September 1978, Dunham carried out research on village industries in the Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta (DIY)—the Yogyakarta Special Region within Central Java in Indonesia under a student grant from the East–West Center. As a weaver herself, Dunham was interested in village industries, and moved to Yogyakarta City, the center of Javanese handicrafts. In May and June 1978, Dunham was a short-term consultant in the office of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Jakarta, writing recommendations on village industries and other non-agricultural enterprises for the Indonesian government's third five-year development plan (REPELITA III). From October 1978 to December 1980, Dunham was a rural industries consultant in Central Java on the Indonesian Ministry of Industry's Provincial Development Program (PDP I), funded by USAID in Jakarta and implemented through Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI). From January 1981 to November 1984, Dunham was the program officer for women and employment in the Ford Foundation's Southeast Asia regional office in Jakarta. While at the Ford Foundation, she developed a model of microfinance which is now the standard in Indonesia, a country that is a world leader in micro-credit systems. Peter Geithner, father of Tim Geithner (who later became U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in her son's administration), was head of the foundation's Asia grant-making at that time. From May to November 1986 and from August to November 1987, Dunham was a cottage industries development consultant for the Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP) under the Gujranwala Integrated Rural Development Project (GADP). The credit component of the project was implemented in the Gujranwala district of the Punjab province of Pakistan with funding from the Asian Development Bank and IFAD, with the credit component implemented through Louis Berger International, Inc. Dunham worked closely with the Lahore office of the Punjab Small Industries Corporation (PSIC). From January 1988 to 1995, Dunham was a consultant and research coordinator for Indonesia's oldest bank, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) in Jakarta, with her work funded by USAID and the World Bank. In March 1993, Dunham was a research and policy coordinator for Women's World Banking (WWB) in New York. She helped WWB manage the Expert Group Meeting on Women and Finance in New York in January 1994, and helped the WWB take prominent roles in the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women held September 4–15, 1995 in Beijing, and in the UN regional conferences and NGO forums that preceded it. On August 9, 1992, she was awarded PhD in anthropology from the University of Hawaii, under the supervision of Prof. Alice G. Dewey, with a 1,043-page dissertation titled Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving and thriving against all odds. Anthropologist Michael Dove described the dissertation as "a classic, in-depth, on-the-ground anthropological study of a 1,200-year-old industry". According to Dove, Dunham's dissertation challenged popular perceptions regarding economically and politically marginalized groups, and countered the notions that the roots of poverty lie with the poor themselves and that cultural differences are responsible for the gap between less-developed countries and the industrialized West. According to Dove, Dunham > found that the villagers she studied in Central Java had many of the same economic needs, beliefs and aspirations as the most capitalist of Westerners. Village craftsmen were "keenly interested in profits", she wrote, and entrepreneurship was "in plentiful supply in rural Indonesia", having been "part of the traditional culture" there for a millennium. > > Based on these observations, Dr. Soetoro concluded that underdevelopment in these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital, the allocation of which was a matter of politics, not culture. Antipoverty programs that ignored this reality had the potential, perversely, of exacerbating inequality because they would only reinforce the power of elites. As she wrote in her dissertation, "many government programs inadvertently foster stratification by channeling resources through village officials", who then used the money to strengthen their own status further. Dunham produced a large amount of professional papers that are held in collections of the National Anthropological Archives (NAA). Her daughter donated a collection of them that is categorized as the S. Ann Dunham papers, 1965-2013. This collection contains case studies, correspondence, field notebooks, lectures, photographs, reports, research files, research proposals, surveys, and floppy disks documenting her dissertation research on blacksmithing, as well as her professional work as a consultant for organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI). They are housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. On November 11, 2010, for her research on women role, socio-economic empowerment, and micro-credit on rural villages, her son Barack Obama received the Main Star of Service in her name given by the Government of Indonesia. Her field notes have been digitized and, in 2020, Smithsonian Magazine noted that an effort had been established for a project to transcribe them. Public participation in the transcription project was announced at the same time. ## Illness and death In late 1994, Dunham was living and working in Indonesia. One night, during dinner at a friend's house in Jakarta, she experienced stomach pain. A visit to a local physician led to an initial diagnosis of indigestion. Dunham returned to the United States in early 1995 and was examined at the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and diagnosed with uterine cancer. By this time, the cancer had spread to her ovaries. She moved back to Hawaii to live near her widowed mother and died on November 7, 1995, 22 days short of her 53rd birthday. Following a memorial service at the University of Hawaii, Obama and his sister spread their mother's ashes in the Pacific Ocean at Lanai Lookout on the south side of Oahu. Obama scattered the ashes of his grandmother Madelyn Dunham in the same spot on December 23, 2008, weeks after his election to the presidency. Obama talked about Dunham's death in a 30-second campaign advertisement ("Mother") arguing for health care reform. The ad featured a photograph of Dunham holding a young Obama in her arms as Obama talks about her last days worrying about expensive medical bills. The topic also came up in a 2007 speech in Santa Barbara: > I remember my mother. She was 52 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn't thinking about getting well. She wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn't sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a preexisting condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it's like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it's wrong. It's not who we are as a people. Dunham's employer-provided health insurance covered most of the costs of her medical treatment, leaving her to pay the deductible and uncovered expenses, which came to several hundred dollars per month. Her employer-provided disability insurance denied her claims for uncovered expenses because the insurance company said her cancer was a preexisting condition. ## Posthumous interest In September 2008, the University of Hawaii at Mānoa held a symposium about Dunham. In December 2009, Duke University Press published a version of Dunham's dissertation titled Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. The book was revised and edited by Dunham's graduate advisor, Alice G. Dewey, and Nancy I. Cooper. Dunham's daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, wrote the foreword for the book. In his afterword, Boston University anthropologist Robert W. Hefner describes Dunham's research as "prescient" and her legacy as "relevant today for anthropology, Indonesian studies, and engaged scholarship". The book was launched at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia with a special Presidential Panel on Dunham's work; the 2009 meeting was taped by C-SPAN. In 2009, an exhibition of Dunham's Javanese batik textile collection (A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama's Mother and Indonesian Batiks) toured six museums in the United States, finishing the tour at the Textile Museum of Washington, D.C., in August. Early in her life, Dunham explored her interest in the textile arts as a weaver, creating wall hangings for her own enjoyment. After moving to Indonesia, she was attracted to the striking textile art of the batik and began to collect a variety of different fabrics. In December 2010 Dunham was awarded the Bintang Jasa Utama, Indonesia's highest civilian award; the Bintang Jasa is awarded at three levels, and is presented to those individuals who have made notable civic and cultural contributions. A lengthy major biography of Dunham by former New York Times reporter Janny Scott, titled A Singular Woman, was published in 2011. The University of Hawaii Foundation has established the Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment, which supports a faculty position housed in the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Fellowships, providing funding for students associated with the East–West Center (EWC) in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2010 the Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship was established for young women graduating from Mercer Island High School, Ann's alma mater. In its first six years the scholarship fund has awarded eleven college scholarships. On January 1, 2012, President Obama and his family visited an exhibition of his mother's anthropological work on display at the East–West Center. Filmmaker Vivian Norris's feature length biographical film of Ann Dunham entitled Obama Mama (La mère d'Obama-French title) premiered on May 31, 2014, as part of the 40th annual Seattle International Film Festival, not far from where Dunham grew up on Mercer Island. In the 2016 film Barry, a dramatization of Barack Obama's life as an undergraduate college student, Dunham is played by Ashley Judd. ## Personal beliefs In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama wrote, "My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess... In a land [Indonesia] where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship ... she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism." In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope Obama wrote, "I was not raised in a religious household ... My mother's own experiences ... only reinforced this inherited skepticism. Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones ... And yet for all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I've ever known." "Religion for her was "just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives," Obama wrote. > She felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core. That was very much her philosophy of lifeto not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places. > Maya Soetoro-Ng Dunham's best friend in high school, Maxine Box, said that Dunham "touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she'd read about and could argue. She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn't." On the other hand, Dunham's daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, when asked later if her mother was an atheist, said, "I wouldn't have called her an atheist. She was an agnostic. She basically gave us all the good books—the Bible, the Hindu Upanishads and the Buddhist scripture, the Tao Te Ching—and wanted us to recognize that everyone has something beautiful to contribute." "Jesus, she felt, was a wonderful example. But she felt that a lot of Christians behaved in un-Christian ways." In a 2007 speech, Obama contrasted the beliefs of his mother to those of her parents, and commented on her spirituality and skepticism: "My mother, whose parents were nonpracticing Baptists and Methodists, was one of the most spiritual souls I ever knew. But she had a healthy skepticism of religion as an institution." Obama also described his own beliefs in relation to the religious upbringing of his mother and father: > My father was from Kenya and a lot of people in his village were Muslim. He didn't practice Islam. Truth is he wasn't very religious. He met my mother. My mother was a Christian from Kansas, and they married and then divorced. I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a Christian. The only connection I've had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father's side came from that country. But I've never practiced Islam. ## Publications

1953 Pacific hurricane season

Hurricane season in the Pacific Ocean

The 1953 Pacific hurricane season was the least active season on record. The season officially began on May 15 in the northeast Pacific Ocean and on June 1 in the central northern Pacific. They ended on November 30. These dates conventionally delimit the time of year when most tropical cyclones form in northeast Pacific Ocean. Before the satellite age started in the 1960s, data prior to that time on Pacific hurricanes is extremely unreliable as most east Pacific storms are of no threat to land. Of the four known tropical systems, two became hurricanes. Although only a tropical storm, the first storm of the season was the deepest, with a pressure of 981 mbar (29.0 inHg). This season is unusual in that no one was killed, no damage was inflicted, and no tropical cyclones made landfall. ## Seasonal summary Only four known systems were observed during the 1953 season. This was below the average at that time, which was six. Furthermore, the season was well below the 1949-2006 average of 13 named storms and had the fewest storms in the hurricane database. Only two tropical cyclones reached hurricane status, compared to the modern-day average of seven. Furthermore, 1953 is also one of the few seasons without a major hurricane. This season was part of a decade-long absence of major hurricanes; from 1950–56, no major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) were reported in the Eastern Pacific basin. However, it is possible that some storms were missed due to the lack of satellite coverage in the region in addition to the lack of Hurricane Hunter data, which did not become available until the following year. The four known storms developed between the 14° N and the 20° N. All of the storms remained at sea throughout their lifetime; no deaths nor damages were noted during the season, though moisture from two of them reached the Southwestern United States. The season got onto an extremely slow start. The first storm formed in late August. At that time, it was believed that two systems would have long formed by then on average. According to the modern-day National Hurricane Center, 8-10 storms would have by that time on average. Additionally, 1953 had the latest start date of any Pacific hurricane season on record. Additionally, 1953 is the only season in the database to have no storms by August. Throughout the 1953 hurricane season, the Weather Bureau office in Los Angeles (WBOLA) issued 42 advisories during the season, mostly due to the storms' threat to Southern California. In addition to the four storms in the dataset, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center and Japan Meteorological Agency, on October 22 Tropical Storm Alice crossed the International Dateline, entering into CPHC's area of responsibility. The storm eventually became extratropical on October 23 over open waters. ## Systems ### Tropical Storm One Thunderstorm activity off the Mexican coast was quite for the first half of August. Based on data from six ships, a closed atmospheric circulation may have formed near the Revillagigedo Islands at 0000 UTC on August 23, which are situated roughly 350 mi (565 km) south of the Baja California Peninsula. At this time, winds were estimated to be no higher than 28 mph (45 km/h). After formation, One moved west-northwest and on August 25, the storm attained its peak intensity of 50 mph (80 km/h). Furthermore, the ship S.S. Sirocco measured a minimum barometric pressure of 981 mbar (29.0 inHg). Although the WBOLA reported that the storm dissipated that night near the peninsula, the HURDAT database suggests that the storm maintained peak intensity for another day, until August 27 when it dissipated. The remnants of Tropical Storm One brought heavy rains to Arizona at the very end of the month. Rainfall peaked at 3.22 in (82 mm) in Williams, while two other weather stations reported more than 3 in (76 mm) of precipitation. ### Tropical Storm Two Ships reports from the Hawaiian Islands to Panama indicated that an area of disturbed weather formed just west of the Revillagigedo island group. Initially, evidence of closed wind circulation was not sufficient enough to warrant an upgrade into a tropical disturbance. By the afternoon, pressures in the region began to fall. By that night, it was estimated to have developed winds of 40 mph (65 km/h). A tropical storm formed on September 9; meanwhile, ship reports indicated a pressure of 1,001 mbar (29.6 inHg) and sustained winds of 50 mph (85 km/h). Maintaining peak intensity for a day, the low moved northwest before dissipating on September 10 as barometric pressures began to rise. The remnants of the storm later brought rain to Central California on September 15. ### Hurricane Three A tropical cyclone first formed on September 13 near Western Mexico (in the extreme southern Gulf of California) while generating winds of 30–40 mph (50–65 km/h). It traveled north-northeastward and Three was upgraded into a hurricane on September 14 while reaching its maximum sustained wind speed of 85 mph (135 km/h). After turning east-northeast, Hurricane Three attained its peak pressure of 982 mbar (29.0 inHg). The storm held on to its wind speed, until September 17, when the storm dissipated. The remnants of the storm deluged the Mexican coast with rain, especially in Sinaloa. Winds of 45 mph (70 km/h) were reported in Mazatlan on land; however, no damage was recorded. ### Hurricane Four On October 1, a closed low formed in the Gulf of Tehuantepec from an area of disturbed weather, which had persisted for several days prior. The next day, the hurricane database suggests that Four became a hurricane on October 2 while peaking in intensity, with winds of 85 mph (135 km/h). That day, a peak pressure of 991 mbar (29.3 inHg) was measured. The hurricane dissipated on October 8 later after holding on to its maximum wind speed for six days before finally dissipating nowhere near land. ## See also - List of Pacific hurricanes - Pacific hurricane season - 1953 Atlantic hurricane season - 1953 Pacific typhoon season - Australian region cyclone seasons: 1952–53 1953–54 - South Pacific cyclone seasons: 1952–53 1953–54 - South-West Indian Ocean cyclone seasons: 1952–53 1953–54

Lord Hugh Seymour

British Royal Navy admiral

Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour (29 April 1759 – 11 September 1801) was a senior British Royal Navy officer of the late 18th century who was the fifth son of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford, and became known for being both a prominent society figure and a highly competent naval officer. He served during the American Revolutionary and French Revolutionary Wars and later in his career performed a period of shore duty on the Admiralty board. Seymour maintained a reputation as a courageous and innovative officer: he was awarded a commemorative medal for his actions at the battle of the Glorious First of June and is credited with introducing epaulettes to Royal Navy uniforms as a method of indicating rank to non-English speaking allies. In his youth he formed close personal friendships with fellow officer John Willett Payne and George, Prince of Wales, through association with whom he gained a reputation as a rake. His marriage in 1785, made at the insistence of his family as an antidote to his dissolution, was brought about through royal connections and proved very successful. During his lifetime he also held several seats as a member of parliament in the Parliament of Great Britain, although he did not pursue an active political career. ## Early career Hugh Seymour was born in 1759 into one of the wealthiest families in England, as the fifth son of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford, and his wife Isabella Fitzroy (Hugh retained the surname "Seymour-Conway" until his father's death in 1794, at which point he shortened it to Seymour). He was initially educated at Bracken's Academy in Greenwich, where he met lifelong friend John Willett Payne, before joining the Navy at age 11 at his own insistence. Seymour became a captain's servant on the yacht William & Mary, and two years later moved to HMS Pearl under his relation Captain John Leveson-Gower, stationed off Newfoundland. After several short commissions, including service in the West Indies under George Rodney, Seymour was attached to HMS Alarm as a midshipman in the Mediterranean. Apart from a brief spell in HMS Trident, Seymour remained on her for several years, becoming a lieutenant in 1776. By 1776 the American Revolutionary War was underway, and Seymour continued in Alarm until he was made a commander in 1778, taking command of the xebec HMS Minorca. In 1779, Seymour was promoted once more, making post captain in HMS Porcupine and serving in command of HMS Diana, HMS Ambuscade and HMS Latona, all in the Channel Fleet. The only major operation in which he participated during the period was the conclusion of the Great Siege of Gibraltar, when Latona was attached to Lord Howe's fleet that relieved the fortress. During this service, Seymour was repeatedly engaged in scouting the Franco-Spanish fleet in Algeciras, a task made difficult by bad weather and the erratic movements of the enemy. During much of the operation, Captain Roger Curtis was stationed aboard Latona to facilitate communicate between Howe and the Governor of Gibraltar. The effort to relieve and resupply the fortress was a complete success and Latona was sent back to Britain with dispatches, although Seymour remained in Gibraltar. Following the Peace of Paris in 1783, Seymour took a house in London with his brother Lord George Seymour and John Willett Payne. The three men became notorious socialites, joining the Prince of Wales on many of his drinking exploits across London: Seymour remained close friends with Prince George for the rest of his life. Seymour, already known for his good looks, good manners, height and martial bearing, rapidly gained a reputation for dissolution. In 1785 however, Seymour married Lady Anne Horatia Waldegrave, daughter of Earl Waldegrave and Maria Walpole (later Duchess of Gloucester) at the insistence of his family in a successful attempt to curtail his social activities. It was at this time that Seymour made his first foray into politics, becoming MP for Newport on the Isle of Wight before relinquishing the post two years later. In 1788 he became MP for Tregony, but in 1790 he switched to become MP for Wendover. Seymour remained in this position until 1796 when he changed his seat to Portsmouth, in which he remained until his death. He did not serve as an active politician in any of these positions, preferring his navy career to his political one. In May 1791 Hugh Seymour became president of the Hambledon Cricket Club, joining a band of like-minded Royal Navy Officers such as Captains Erasmus Gower, Robert Calder, Charles Powell Hamilton, Mark Robinson, Sir Hyde Parker and Robert Linzee. ## French Revolutionary Wars In the Spanish armament of 1790, Seymour was called to service in command of the ship of the line HMS Canada, opening his commission with a cruise off the Isle of Wight. Passing through shallow water, Seymour ordered the use of a lead line to measure the depth ahead, but was accidentally struck in the head by the lead weight while soundings were being taken. Although little immediate damage seemed to have been caused, during the firing of a salute several days later Seymour suddenly suffered a severely adverse reaction and had to be taken ashore for emergency medical treatment. The head injury rendered him unable to endure any loud noises or bright lights and for the next three years he lived as an invalid at his country estate in Hambledon. Command of HMS Canada passed to Captain Sir Erasmus Gower, a lifelong friend. By 1793 Seymour was sufficiently recovered to return to service, and escorted Lord Hood to the Mediterranean in HMS Leviathan. There Hood led the occupation, defence and ultimate withdrawal from Toulon during the Republican siege of the city. Following the collapse of the city's defences, Seymour was sent back to England with dispatches but returned shortly afterward to convoy Leviathan back to Britain. Transferred to the Channel Fleet, Leviathan was attached to service under Lord Howe and served with him during the Atlantic campaign of May 1794 alongside John Willett Payne, captain of HMS Russell. The campaign culminated in the Glorious First of June, when a French fleet was defeated by Howe's innovative tactics, but was ultimately successful in protecting a large grain convoy from the United States. Seymour's command of Leviathan was vitally important in the victory, the ship fighting at the initial engagement of the 28 May and seeing extensive action during the battle itself. Seymour was one of only a few of Howe's commanders to successfully close with the French line, although he was unable to break through it. Leviathan then engaged closely with America, which she reduced to a battered wreck in a duel that lasted two hours. Leviathan was also badly damaged, having taken fire from Éole and Trajan during the fighting. At Howe's order, Seymour then left America (which was later captured) and joined the reformed fleet that held off a French counter-attack in the latter stages of the battle. In the aftermath of the action, Seymour was one of the captains marked out for praise, being presented with a medal commemorating his service during the engagement. Leviathan had suffered 11 killed and 32 wounded in the engagement. In 1795, Seymour moved to the recently captured HMS Sans Pareil and soon became a rear-admiral, engaging the French at the Battle of Groix. During the action, Seymour managed to bring his ship to the head of the British line pursuing the French fleet and engaged the Formidable and Tigre. Both ships were captured in heavy fighting, and Sans Pareil suffered ten killed and two wounded during the exchange. In 1796, Seymour was employed in the search for the French fleet which attempted and failed to invade Ireland, but Sans Pareil was badly damaged in a collision with HMS Prince during the campaign and had to be decommissioned for extensive repairs. In April 1797, Seymour returned to sea with a small squadron of six ships searching the Eastern Atlantic for a Spanish treasure convoy. Although the convoy was eventually seized by a force sent by Lord St. Vincent, Seymour had covered over 5,000 miles in his fruitless search. ## Admiralty service and death Seymour had joined the Admiralty in 1795, becoming a Lord of the Admiralty and participating in much of the work the Admiralty board performed between 1795 and 1798, interposing his periods on land with brief sea commissions. In 1799, Seymour became a vice-admiral and joined the squadron blockading Brest for the next year, being involved in a minor operation against Basque Roads. In 1799 Seymour was sent to the West Indies as commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands Station. In August he led the naval squadron in the capture of Surinam in his flagship Prince of Wales. In 1800 he went on to be commander-in-chief of the Jamaica Station. However, in 1801 he fell ill, contracting Yellow Fever. He was sent to sea by his doctors in an attempt to regain his health but died aboard HMS Tisiphone in September 1801. Seymour's body was taken from Jamaica on the morning of 17 September 1801, for return to Britain aboard HMS Pickle (originally a Bermudian-built merchant vessel named Sting) and joined that of his wife, who had died in Bristol a few days before her husband's death. His extensive estates were dispersed amongst his seven children, of whom six survived him: - Adm. of the Flt. Sir George Seymour (1787–1870), father of the 5th Marquess of Hertford and a Princess (Laura, Princess Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg) - Lt-Col. Hugh Henry John Seymour (1790–1821) - Col. Sir Horace Beauchamp Seymour (1791–1851) - William John Richard Seymour (1793–1801) - Frederick Charles William Seymour (1 February 1797 – 7 December 1856), married Lady Mary Gordon (d. 13 June 1825), daughter of George Gordon, 9th Marquess of Huntly, on 15 April 1822, and Lady Augusta Hervey (d. 17 March 1880), daughter of Frederick Hervey, 1st Marquess of Bristol, on 18 September 1832 - Horatia Maria Frances Seymour (d. 26 August 1853), married John Philip Morier in 1814 - Mary Georgiana Seymour (d. 30 October 1848), married George Dawson-Damer in 1825 Seymour's death was widely mourned among his contemporaries, Lord St. Vincent once describing him as "an excellent officer". His service had been energetic and characterised by innovation and invention: he developed a new system of fitting topmasts and was also credited with making epaulettes standard among Royal Navy officers, following his difficulties in convincing French Royalists at the siege of Toulon that he was a British officer, due to his unimpressive uniform. ## Legacy The Royal Navy has named two ships after Seymour. The first HMS Seymour was a destroyer leader that was launched in 1916, saw service in World War I, and was sold in 1930. The second HMS Seymour (K563) was a frigate active from 1943 to 1946 that served during World War II. North Seymour Island (Spanish: Isla Seymour Norte) in the Galápagos is named in his honour, the "north" distinguishing it from nearby Baltra Island, which was formerly known as South Seymour Island, also in his honour. The airport on Baltra is still named Seymour Airport and the pair of islands are still sometimes known as the Seymours or the Seymour Group. ## Ancestry

Kepler-4b

Extrasolar planet in the constellation Draco

Kepler-4b, initially known as KOI 7.01, is an extrasolar planet first detected as a transit by the Kepler spacecraft. Its radius and mass are similar to that of Neptune; however, due to its proximity to its host star, it is substantially hotter than any planet in the Solar System. The planet's discovery was announced on January 4, 2010, in Washington, D.C., along with four other planets that were initially detected by the Kepler spacecraft and subsequently confirmed by telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory. ## Nomenclature and history Kepler-4b was named because it was the first planet discovered in the orbit of its star, Kepler-4. The star was, in turn, named for the Kepler Mission, a NASA satellite whose purpose is to discover Earth-like planets in a section of the sky between constellations Cygnus and Lyra using the transit method. Using this method, Kepler notes small and steady decreases in a star's brightness that are measured as a planet crosses in front of it. Initially, Kepler-4b was detected as a transit event by the Kepler telescope and considered a Kepler Object of Interest with the designation KOI 7.01. Subsequent radial velocity measurements by the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer on the telescopes of W.M. Keck Observatory confirmed the planetary nature of the transit event and established a mass estimate for the planet. The planet's discovery was announced on January 4, 2010, along with four other planets detected by Kepler: Kepler-5b, 6b, 7b and 8b at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. ## Host star Kepler-4 is a star very similar to the sun located about 1610 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Draco. ## Characteristics Kepler-4b orbits its host star in 3.213 days at a distance of 0.046 AU. This places it almost 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun. Consequently, Kepler-4b is thought to be extremely hot, with an equilibrium temperature greater than 1700 kelvins (2600 °F). (1426°C) The planet is estimated to be 25 times more massive than the Earth with a radius that is 4 times greater than the Earth. This makes it similar to Neptune in terms of size and mass, but with a temperature that is not comparable to any planet in the Solar System (Venus, the hottest planet, is only 735 kelvins). Kepler-4b's eccentricity was assumed to be 0, however an independent reanalysis of the discovery data found a value of 0.25 ± 0.12, and a later reanalysis of the light curve discovered a secondary eclipse with depth 7.47 ± 1.82ppm at a phase of about 0.7. ## See also - List of exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope

Viva el Príncipe

Viva el Príncipe (English: Long Live the Prince) is the thirteenth studio album by Mexican recording artist Cristian Castro, released on 30 November 2010 by Universal Music Latino. It is a tribute album to Mexican singer José José, Castro's musical idol. The album was produced by Rafael Pérez-Botija who also produced for José José. Viva el Príncipe covers twelve songs by José José and includes a poem recited by Castro's idol. Recording took place on August 2010 at The Hit Factory Criteria in Miami, Florida. To promote the recording, Castro released "La Nave del Olvido", which peaked at No. 48 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart. Castro toured for the release in United States, Latin America and Spain. The album became successful in Mexico and the United States where it topped both the Mexican and Billboard Latin album charts. It was certified diamond by the Asociación Mexicana de Productores de Fonogramas y Videogramas (AMPROFON) in Mexico and double platinum (Latin field) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States. In South America, it peaked at No. 5 on the Argentine Chamber of Phonograms and Videograms Producers (CAPIF) album chart and received gold certifications in Colombia and Venezuela. It had sold over 800,000 copies worldwide as of November 2011. Viva el Príncipe received a positive review from David Jeffries of Allmusic praising Botija's production and Castro's vocal delivery. It earned a negative review from an editor of Terra Networks who felt that the album did not add anything to the originals. The album received a nomination for a Latin Grammy, two Billboard Latin Music Awards nominations, and an Oye! award. The success led to a 2011 release of more José José songs titled Mi Amigo El Príncipe. ## Background The project for Viva el Príncipe began in 2008 after Castro, who was one of the selected artists, interpreted one of José's songs during a tribute concert. José believed that it was the right time for Castro to record a cover album with his songs and recommended that he seek the help of Rafael Pérez-Botija and Chucho Ferrer, who were responsible for producing José's albums. Castro recalled growing up in the same neighborhood with José, who often invited him over for parties and studied with his children in the same college. When he heard José's song "La Navel del Olvideo" for first time, Castro said: "I promised to be a singer someday and to sing ballads. José José is my musical father and biggest inspiration". Castro expressed hope that the album would allow José's songs to be heard by a newer generation. The album was officially revealed by Castro alongside José after his concert in Argentina. The title of the recording is a reference to José's honorary title "The Prince of Song" ("El Príncipe de la Canción"). ## Recording and production The album was recorded on August 2010 at The Hit Factory Criteria in Miami, Florida, produced by Botija. Along with Botija, the album includes arrangers Angel "Cucco" Peña and Jorge Calandrelli. The album covers ten of José's most recognized works such as "La Navel del Olvido", "El Triste", and "Gavilan o Paloma". "Lo Pasado, Pasado" features a duet with José José using the original recording. The album contains "Poema al Cantante" recited by José. In the poem, José conveys that the singer cannot live if he cannot sing ("Ya no podrá vivir, si ya no canta"); an allusion to losing his singing voice from the effects of alcoholism. Castro was initially disappointed with the project as he did not want to solely imitate José's vocals, Ferrer's absence and his desire to record Jose's lesser known songs. According to Castro, it was the decisions of the executive producers of his record label, Universal Music Latino, to only have Botija produce the album and to record José José's more recognized songs. He later retracted his statement, commending Botija and referred to the disc as his best, only lamenting he could not record José's lesser known songs. José expressed satisfaction with the result. ## Promotion To promote the album, "La Nave del Olvido" was selected as the lead single from the album and was released on 28 September 2010. It peaked at No. 48 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart and No. 22 on the Billboard Latin Pop Songs chart. The music video was directed by Ricardo Moreno and filmed in Los Angeles. Three promotional singles were released on iTunes: Amor, Amor, Volcán, and Mi Niña. The standard track listing contains contain ten tracks and the poem. The deluxe edition contains two additional songs, a cover of "Gracias" and "Mi Niña" and a DVD which includes Castro performing each song at The Hit Factory Criteria and the music video for "La Nave del Olvido". ### Tour On 2 June 2011, Castro announced the "Viva el Príncipe Tour" consisting of 121 shows including the United States and twelve countries in Latin America. The tour began in Mexico where he performed in Guadalajara on 24 June 2011,and sang in Tabasco, Jalisco, and Puebla. During the concert in the National Auditorium he was accompanied by José José and his parents Manuel Valdés and Verónica Castro. On 28 July 2011, Castro began the tour's US leg in Chicago, Illinois, performing in Texas, California, Florida and Puerto Rico. The tour continued on to South America where Castro performed in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Castro also performed in Spain and mentioned the difficulty of promoting in the country, as ballads are generally not well-received on radio stations. In the first part of the show, Castro performed songs from the disc sporting a white tuxedo. In the second he performed hits from his earlier career. ## Commercial reception The album was released on 30 November 2010 worldwide. In Mexico, the album spent fifteen weeks on top of the Top 100 Mexico chart. It was ranked as 2011's third best-selling album in Mexico and was certified diamond by AMPROFON for shipping 300,000 copies. In the United States, it debuted at No. 157 on the Billboard 200 and No. 2 on both the Billboard Top Latin Albums and Billboard Latin Pop Albums charts selling over 7,000 copies its first week. The album reached No. 1 on the Top Latin Albums and Latin Pop Albums charts in the week of 29 January 2011 succeeding Shakira's album Sale el Sol where it spent seven weeks on top of Latin Albums and ten weeks on top of Latin Pop Albums. It peaked at No. 49 on the Billboard 200 on the week of 21 March 2011. On the Billboard year-end charts of 2011, the album ranked as the second-best selling Latin album of the year after Prince Royce's eponymous album and the best-selling Latin pop album of the year. It was certified double platinum (Latin field) by the RIAA for shipments of 200,000 copies in United States. In Spain, it peaked at No. 44 on the Productores de Música de España album chart. In South America, Viva el Príncipe peaked at No. 5 on the Argentine Chamber of Phonograms and Videograms Producers pop charts and received gold certifications in Colombia by the Asociación Colombiana de Productores de Fonogramas and in Venezuela by the Association of Venezuelan Phonograph Producers. As of November 2011, the album had sold over 800,000 copies worldwide. ## Critical reception and accolades David Jeffries of Allmusic gave the album a positive review believing that José José's "spirit fills the album" and commended Botija for his role in the production and Castro for bringing "the sense of tradition as he delivers this material with respect". He observed that it doesn't stop Castro from "pouring his heart into the songs" and perceived mimicry as a non-issue. Jeffries closed the review affirming that the album "winds up a tribute that will please fans of either artist". An editor of Terra Networks gave the album a negative review. Although the editor complimented Castro's ability to imitate José José's music, he felt that the audience were better off listening to the original recordings as Castro did not take the risk of adapting the tunes to his own style. At the 12th Latin Grammy Awards, Castro received a nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Album, which went to Franco De Vita for En Primera Fila. At the 2012 Latin Billboard Music Awards, the album received two nominations for Latin Album of the Year and Latin Pop Album of the Year losing the first award to Prince Royce's eponymous album and the second award to Drama y Luz by Maná. At the 2012 Billboard Music Awards, it was nominated Latin Album of the Year but lost to Formula, Vol. 1 by Romeo Santos. At the 2012 Mexican Oye! Awards, it received an award for Male Pop Album of the Year and a nomination for Album of the Year. ## Legacy A follow-up to Viva el Príncipe was announced by Castro on 13 September 2011 titled Mi Amigo El Príncipe. As with its predecessor, Mi Amigo El Príncipe was produced by Botija. The disc was released on 1 November 2011. A two-disc compilation titled Viva El Príncipe: Edición Especial, Vol. 1 & 2 was released on 7 February 2012 with the tracks from both albums. Another compilation album featuring covers of José's songs was released in 2012 titled Celebrando Al Príncipe which contains thirteen previously recorded songs and two covers of "Mi Vida" and "Pero Me Hiciste Tuyo". Sony Music Latin released a greatest hits albums featuring José's and Castro's songs titled El Romántico & El Príncipe in 2012. ## Track listing ## Credits and personnel The following credits are adapted from Allmusic and the album liner notes. Arrangements - Angel "Cucco" Peña - "El Triste", "Mi Niña", "Almohada", "Lo Pasado, Pasado" - Jorge Calandrelli - "Gavilán o Paloma", "Si Me Dejas Ahora", "La Nave del Olvido" - Julio Reyes Copello - "Volcán", "Gracias", "Lo Que No Fué No Será" - Rafael Pérez-Botija - string arrangements for "Volcán" and "Gracias" Audio engineering - Javier Garza - Steve Sykes - Frank Socorro - Carlos Álvarez - Héctor Iván Rosa - Santos Santiago - Charles Wakeman Bass guitar - Julio Hernández - Kevin Axt Drums - Lee Levin, - John Robinson Guitar - Dan Warner - Michael Thomson - René Toledo - Dean Parks, - Juan Pablo Vega Keyboard instrument - Fernando Muscolo - Gabriel Saientz Mastering - Gabriel Wallach - Mastering Percussion - David Marrero - Jose Edgardo Santiago Piano - Milton Sesentón - Greg Mathieson - Jim Cox - Jorge Calandrelli - Julio Reyes Copello Strings - Miami Symphonic Strings Trombone - Rafi Torres - Jorge Díaz - Miguel Rivera Trumpet - Luis Aquino - Angie Machado Vocals - Cristian Castro - Chris Clansdrop - José José ("Poema al Cantante") - Susan Moyer - Claudio Jaffe - Ross Harbaugh - Jonah Kim Viola - Rebecca Diderrich - Chauncey Patterson - Viola - Scott O'Donnell - Viola - Deena Shapiro - Viola - Karen Hebermehl Violin - Alfredo Oliva - Concert master - Huifang Chen - Monica Cheversan - Adam Diderrich - John DiPuccio - Scott Flavin - Brian Fox - Charles Hardt - Dina Kostic - Marcia Littley - Jaime Mansilla - Evija Ozolins - Antony Seepersa ## Chart performance ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ### Certifications ## See also - 2010 in Latin music - List of number-one albums of 2010 (Mexico) - List of number-one albums of 2011 (Mexico) - List of number-one Billboard Latin Albums from the 2010s - List of number-one Billboard Latin Pop Albums of 2011

Soviet submarine K-85

Soviet Juliett-class cruise-missile submarine

K-85 was a "Project 651" (NATO reporting name: Juliett-class) diesel-electric submarine built for the Soviet Navy during the 1960s. Commissioned in 1965, the boat was armed with long-range cruise missiles to carry out its mission of destroying American aircraft carriers and bases. The missiles could be fitted with either conventional or nuclear warheads. While much of the submarine's activities during the Cold War are unknown, she did make at least two patrols in the Mediterranean Sea while assigned to the Northern Fleet. The submarine was renamed B-124 in 1977 and was transferred to the Baltic Fleet four years later. B-124 was decommissioned in 1993 and subsequently scrapped. ## Background and description In the late 1950s, the Soviet Navy was tasked to neutralize American bases and aircraft carriers and decided that submarines armed with cruise missiles were the best method to accomplish this. The number of expensive nuclear-powered Echo-class submarines that it could afford and build in a timely manner was insufficient to meet its requirements, so it decided to build the Juliett class as it was significantly cheaper and faster to build. The Juliett-class boats are a double-hulled design that displaces 3,174 metric tons (3,124 long tons) on the surface and 3,750 tonnes (3,690 long tons) submerged. K-68's hull was built from non-magnetic steel and was not covered with anechoic tiles. The boats have an overall length of 85.9 meters (281 ft 10 in), a beam of 9.7 meters (31 ft 10 in), and a draft (ship) of 6.29 meters (20 ft 8 in). The Julietts have a test depth of 240 meters (790 ft) and a design depth of 300 meters (980 ft). The prominent blast deflectors cut out of the outer hull behind the missile launchers make the submarines very noisy at high speed. Their crew numbered 78 men. ### Propulsion and performance The Juliett class is powered by a diesel-electric system that consists of two 4,000-metric-horsepower (2,900 kW) 1D43 diesel engines and a pair of 3,000-metric-horsepower (2,200 kW) MG-141 electric motors for cruising on the surface. Two additional 200-metric-horsepower (150 kW) electric motors are intended for slow speeds underwater and are powered by four banks of lead-acid battery cells that are recharged by a 1,000-metric-horsepower (740 kW) 1DL42 diesel generator. The boats are fitted with a retractable snorkel to allow the diesel engines to operate while underwater. On the surface, the submarines have a maximum speed of 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph). Using their diesel-electric system while snorkeling gives the Julietts a range of 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km; 21,000 mi) at 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph). Using just the electric motors underwater, they have a maximum range of 810 nmi (1,500 km; 930 mi) at 2.74 knots (5.07 km/h; 3.15 mph). Their best-submerged speed on electric motors is 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph), although it reduces their range to 27.8 nmi (51.5 km; 32.0 mi). They were designed to carry enough supplies for 90 days of operation. ### Armament To carry out the Julietts' mission of destroying American carrier battle groups and bases, they were fitted with two pairs of missile launchers, one each fore and aft of the sail. The launchers were used by the surface-launched SS-N-3 Shaddock family of long-range, turbojet-powered, cruise missiles that could be equipped with either a high-explosive or nuclear warhead. The more traditional armament of the Julietts consisted of six 533-millimeter (21 in) torpedo tubes mounted in the bow and four 406-millimeter (16 in) torpedo tubes in the stern. Due to space limitations, no reloads were provided for the bow tubes, but each stern tube had two reloads for a total of twelve. ### Fire control and sensors The submarines relied upon aircraft for their long-range anti-ship targeting which they received via the Uspekh-U data link system. Their own Argument missile-guidance radar controlled the missiles until they were out of range via a data link. The missiles' onboard radar would detect the targets and transmit an image back to the submarine via video data link so the crew could select which target to attack, after which the missile relied upon its own radar for terminal guidance. The Argument radar has a massive antenna that was stowed at the front of the sail and rotated 180° for use. The data link antenna was mounted on top of the missile-guidance antenna. The boats are fitted with Artika-M (MG-200) and Herkules (MG-15) sonars, Feniks-M (MG-10) and MG-13 hydrophones, and an Albatros (RLK-50) search radar. They are also equipped with a Nakat-M Electronic warfare support measures system. ## Construction and career K-85 was laid down at Shipyard 189 named after Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze in Leningrad on 25 October 1961. She was launched on 31 January 1964 and operated from Tallinn and Liepāja during initial tests in mid-year before being transferred via the White Sea–Baltic Canal to Belomorsk and Severodvinsk for further testing. Entering service on 30 December 1964, the submarine was officially included in the 35th Submarine Division of the Northern Fleet on 22 January 1965. Based at Malaya Lopatkina Bay, the boat made her first patrol in the Mediterranean Sea in 1966. It was plagued with problems with its diesel engines and periscope caused by poor-quality workmanship by the shipyard that got worse over her patrol and forced the navy to abort her mission and return home prematurely for repairs. From January to March 1967 the repairs were carried out at SRZ-35 in Rosta, Murmansk. Between August and November she went on patrol. On 9 September she was ordered to assist K-3 which had suffered a deadly fire while in the Norwegian Sea but was unable to reach K-3 during the day, instead being order to continue the patrol. In the first half of 1968 the submarine underwent repairs at SRZ-35 to replace her batteries, flooded during the previous cruise. Between August and November, the submarine spent 93 days at sea in the Mediterranean during the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis. While passing through the Strait of Gibraltar it was targeted with practice depth charges by American anti-submarine forces. In 1969 it conducted practice missile firing in the White Sea. The submarines of the 35th Division were relocated to Ara Bay near Vidyayevo in October of that year. K-85 collided with the fishing vessel Yerevan in 1970. Between April 1971 and January 1974 the submarine was under routine repair at SRZ-35, Murmansk. K-85 (the K standing for (Russian: крейсерская, romanized: kreyserskaya, lit. 'cruiser') was redesignated B-124 (the B standing for Russian: большая, romanized: bolshaya, lit. 'large') on 25 July 1977. Between October 1978 and April 1979 she conducted a Mediterranean cruise, replenishing at Tartus. B-124 conducted a cruise around Scandinavia into the Baltic to join the Baltic Fleet in 1981. The submarine was transferred to the 16th Submarine Division of the 14th Submarine Squadron of the Baltic Fleet on 24 February 1981, based at Liepāja. During 1982 and 1983 the submarine underwent modernization at SRZ-29 in Liepaja, receiving new batteries. The submarine was removed from service and laid up at Liepaja on 1 November 1989, but returned to service on 31 December 1990 as part of the 58th Submarine Brigade of the Baltic Fleet, reorganized from the 16th Submarine Division. The submarine B-124 was decommissioned on 30 June 1993 for disposal. After the Russian withdrawal from Latvia it was left moored half-submerged in Liepaja at Tosmare shipyard in agreement with a Russian military contract. The submarine hull was sold for scrap to the German company VMG and raised by the Lithuanian firm Opron Shipping in 1997 before being scrapped at Tosmare between 1998 and 1999.

John Slessor

Marshal of the Royal Air Force (1897-1979)

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Cotesworth Slessor, GCB, DSO, MC (3 June 1897 – 12 July 1979) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force (RAF), serving as Chief of the Air Staff from 1950 to 1952. As a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, he saw action with No. 17 Squadron in the Middle East, earning the Military Cross, and with No. 5 Squadron on the Western Front, where he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. Between the wars he commanded No. 4 Squadron in England, and No. 3 (Indian) Wing, earning the Distinguished Service Order for operations with the latter in Waziristan. In 1936, he published Air Power and Armies, which examined the use of air power against targets on and behind the battlefield. Slessor held several operational commands in the Second World War. As Air Officer Commanding Coastal Command in 1943 and 1944, he was credited with doing much to turn the tide of the Battle of the Atlantic through his use of long-range bombers against German U-boats. He was knighted in June 1943. In the closing stages of the war he became Commander-in-Chief RAF Mediterranean and Middle East and deputy to Lieutenant General Ira Eaker as Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, conducting operations in the Italian Campaign and Yugoslavia. Slessor went on to serve in the RAF's most senior post, Chief of the Air Staff, in the early 1950s, and was considered a strong proponent of strategic bombing and the nuclear deterrent. In retirement he published two more books, including an autobiography, and held ceremonial appointments in Somerset. ## Early life and First World War The son of Major Arthur Kerr Slessor and Adelaide Slessor (née Cotesworth), Slessor was born in Ranikhet, India, on 3 June 1897, and educated at Haileybury. Lame in both legs as a result of polio, he was rejected for army service in 1914 and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps on 6 July 1915 only with the help of family connections. He was appointed to the Special Reserve as a flying officer on 9 September 1915, and confirmed in his rank of second lieutenant on 28 September. Slessor saw action with No. 17 Squadron in Egypt and the Sudan, where he was credited with arresting the escape of Sultan Ali Dinar and 2,000 men on 23 May 1916, following the Sultan's defeat at Beringia. He was mentioned in despatches on 25 October before being wounded in the thigh and invalided back to England. Slessor was promoted to the temporary rank of captain on 1 December 1916. Awarded the Military Cross on 1 January 1917, he returned to combat in April as a flight commander with No. 5 Squadron on the Western Front. The squadron converted from Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2s to R.E.8s soon afterwards. Promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant on 1 July 1917, Slessor was appointed a Chevalier of the Belgian Order of Leopold on 24 September, and awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre on 11 March 1918. He transferred to the newly formed Royal Air Force in April 1918 and, having been promoted to the temporary rank of major on 3 July 1918, was posted to the Central Flying School at Upavon as an instructor on 14 July 1918. ## Inter-war years Having left the RAF as a flight lieutenant on 21 August 1919, Slessor applied to rejoin and was offered a short-service commission at the same rank on 24 February 1920. In May 1921, he became a flight commander with No. 20 Squadron, which operated Bristol Fighters on the North-West Frontier of India. He joined the staff at the Directorate of Training and Staff Duties in the Air Ministry in February 1923. The same year, he married Hermione Grace Guinness; they had a son and a daughter. He attended the RAF Staff College, Andover, in 1924, and was promoted squadron leader on 1 January 1925. Slessor commanded No. 4 (Army Cooperation) Squadron, which flew Bristol Fighters out of RAF Farnborough, from April 1925 to October 1928, when he joined the air planning staff at the Directorate of Operations and Intelligence at the Air Ministry. He attended the Staff College, Camberley, in 1931, and was appointed RAF Directing Staff Officer there in January 1932. Slessor was promoted acting wing commander on 1 January 1932 (substantive on 1 July). He became Officer Commanding No. 3 (Indian) Wing at Quetta in March 1935, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for operations in Waziristan between 25 November 1936 and 16 January 1937. In 1936, Slessor published Air Power and Armies, an examination of the use of air power against targets on and behind the battlefield. In this work he advocated army co-operation, interdiction to cut off enemy reinforcements and supply, and the use of aerial bombardment as a weapon against enemy morale. He did, however, acknowledge the limitations of his theory, stating: > ...the conditions envisaged throughout [this book] are those of a campaign on the land in which the primary problem at the time is the defeat of an enemy army in the field. ... in a war against a great Naval power at sea, or when the principle threat to the Empire at the time is the action of hostile air forces against this country or its possessions, the aim and objectives of the air forces of the Empire will not be the same as described in this book. On 17 May 1937, following his posting to India, Slessor was promoted acting group captain, and appointed deputy director of Plans at the Air Ministry. He was promoted to substantive group captain on 1 July 1937. Mentioned in despatches on 18 February 1938, he took over as Director of Plans on 22 December 1938. He was appointed Air Aide-de-Camp to the King on 1 January 1939. ## Second World War Slessor was promoted air commodore on 1 September 1939, and was succeeded as Air Aide-de-Camp by Group Captain Ralph Cochrane. On 10 January 1941, he was raised to temporary air vice marshal (made permanent in April 1942) and became Air Officer Commanding (AOC) No.5 (Bomber) Group in May 1941. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath and mentioned in dispatches in January 1942, he was appointed Assistant Chief of the Air Staff in April 1942. Slessor was closely involved in planning the combined Allied air offensive in Europe. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, he was able to influence Britain's Secretary for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, and Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, to agree to USAAF proposals that led to a "round-the clock" bombing policy against Germany, with the US mounting daylight precision attacks and the RAF conducting area bombing at night. Slessor's assigned personal pilot was Flight Lieutenant Owen Phillipps DFC, an Australian from No. 14 Squadron RAF and a distinguished veteran of the Mediterranean conflict. Appointed Commander-in-Chief Coastal Command with the acting rank of air marshal on 5 February 1943, Slessor had at his disposal sixty squadrons, two of which were equipped with B-24 Liberator heavy bombers. He was credited with doing much to turn the tide of the Battle of the Atlantic in the Allies' favour by employing his thinly stretched long-range bomber force against the U-boat threat, in close cooperation with naval forces. Promoted temporary air marshal on 1 June 1943, he was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1943 Birthday Honours. Slessor became Commander-in-Chief RAF Mediterranean and Middle East in January 1944, and deputy to Lieutenant General Ira Eaker as Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Allied Air Forces. In this role he conducted operations in the Italian Campaign and Yugoslavia, establishing the Balkan Air Force in the latter theatre. Slessor joined the Air Council as Air Member for Personnel on 5 April 1945. His rank of air marshal became substantive on 6 June. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Greek Order of the Phoenix on 6 September 1946. His war service also earned him appointment as a Commander of the Belgian Order of Leopold on 27 August 1948, and a Knight Grand Cross of the Norwegian Order of St. Olav on 6 March 1953. ## Post-war career Slessor was promoted air chief marshal on 1 January 1946. He continued to serve as Air Member for Personnel, responsible for overseeing the demobilisation of the wartime RAF, until 1 October 1947. At the urging of the-then Chief of the Air Staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Tedder, Slessor succeeded General Sir William Slim as Commandant of the Imperial Defence College. Slessor had been dubious about accepting the position, and sought assurances from Tedder that he would be next in line for the post of Chief of the Air Staff, particularly in light of Tedder's preference for Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane to succeed him. Meanwhile, Slessor was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 10 June 1948, and became Principal Air Aide-de-Camp to the King on 1 July. In the event, he took over from Tedder as Chief of the Air Staff on 1 January 1950, and chose Cochrane as his Vice Chief of the Air Staff. Slessor was promoted Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 8 June 1950. In late 1951, he reluctantly became involved in the Australian Government's quest for a suitable RAF officer to serve as Chief of the Air Staff of the Royal Australian Air Force. He eventually selected Air Marshal Donald Hardman as the "outstanding candidate" for the Australian post, trying to avoid what he called "the follies of some years ago", referring to Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Burnett's controversial tenure as Chief of the Air Staff in Australia on secondment from Britain in the early years of the Second World War. As leader of the RAF, Slessor coined the term "V-Force" to denote its planned trio of strategic jet bombers—the Vickers Valiant, Handley Page Victor, and Avro Vulcan—and contributed to the decision to build all three designs. He played a key role in promoting nuclear weapons as an effective instrument of deterrence in early Cold War British strategy. In 1952, the RAF argued that, because bombers were such an important deterrent, conventional forces could be drastically reduced at a time when the Government was seeking significant public expenditure savings. Slessor believed it unlikely that the United Kingdom would be able to meet a communist offensive without resorting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. He became one of the key propagandists of the "Great Deterrent" (which he employed as the title of a book he wrote after he retired) on both sides of the Atlantic. Slessor's term as Chief of the Air Staff was dominated by the Korean War. ## Later life Completing his term as Chief of the Air Staff on 31 December 1952, Slessor was succeeded by Air Chief Marshal Sir William Dickson and retired from the RAF on 29 January 1953. He attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. In retirement he published two books: his autobiography, The Central Blue (1956), and The Great Deterrent (1957). He served as Honorary Air Commodore of No. 3 (County of Devon) Maritime Headquarters Unit, Royal Auxiliary Air Force, from 23 May 1963 to 5 May 1969. His wife, Lady Hermione, was appointed a Serving Sister of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem on 2 July 1963. On 24 March 1965, Slessor was appointed Sheriff of Somerset for the following year. He was commissioned a Deputy Lieutenant of Somerset in April 1969. Slessor was also a director of Blackburn Aircraft and governor of several schools. After Hermione's death, he married Marcella Florence Priest (née Spurgeon) in 1971. Slessor died at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Wroughton, in Wiltshire on 12 July 1979. His son John also joined the RAF, rising to the rank of group captain.

A Golden Crown

"A Golden Crown" is the sixth episode of the first season of the HBO medieval fantasy television series Game of Thrones. The teleplay was written by Jane Espenson and series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss from a story by Benioff and Weiss, and directed by Daniel Minahan, his directorial debut for the series. It first aired on May 22, 2011. The episode's plot depicts the deterioration of the political balance of the seven kingdoms, with Eddard Stark having to deal with the Lannister aggressions while King Robert is away on a hunt. At the Eyrie, Tyrion is put on trial, and across the Narrow Sea, Viserys Targaryen is determined to force Khal Drogo to make him king. The episode was well received by critics, who praised aspects of the King's Landing storyline and the culmination of Viserys's storyline. In the United States, the episode achieved a viewership of 2.4 million in its initial broadcast. ## Plot ### In King's Landing Cersei accuses Ned of kidnapping Tyrion, and Robert tells Ned he cannot rule if the Lannisters and Starks are at war, appointing Ned regent while Robert leaves on a hunting trip. Arya continues her sword lessons with Syrio Forel, while her sister Sansa accepts an apology and a necklace from Prince Joffrey, unaware he has been forced by his mother. In Robert's absence, Ned learns that Ser Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane was seen attacking villages in the Riverlands. Realizing this is revenge for Tyrion's arrest, Eddard orders Lord Beric Dondarrion to arrest Gregor and summons his overlord Tywin Lannister to answer for Gregor's actions. Fearing war with the Lannisters, Ned orders Arya and Sansa return to Winterfell for their safety. Sansa declares her desire to have golden-haired babies with Joffrey, which leads Ned to revisit Arryn's research: Joffrey does not share the dark hair of Robert and his ancestors and bastards; Ned realizes that Joffrey is not truly Robert's son. ### In The Vale Tyrion convinces Lysa Arryn to convene a court, where he mockingly confesses to various misdeeds but not the attempt on Bran's life or Jon Arryn's murder. Tyrion demands a trial by combat, and the sellsword Bronn volunteers to fight for him. Bronn “dishonorably” defeats Lysa's champion, and Tyrion goes free with Bronn as his escort, to Lysa and Catelyn's dismay. ### At Winterfell Bran awakens from a recurring dream of a three-eyed raven, and tests his new saddle in the forest. He is rescued from wildlings by Robb and Theon, who take the only survivor, Osha, captive. ### In Vaes Dothrak Daenerys is left unscathed after taking one of her dragon eggs from the fire. She undergoes a ritual with the Dosh Khaleen, eating a stallion's raw heart and proclaiming her unborn son will be the Khal to unite the entire world as one khalasar, and names him Rhaego, for Drogo and her brother Rhaegar, killed by Robert Baratheon. Viserys, angry at his sister's growing popularity among the Dothraki, tries to steal Daenerys' dragon eggs to fund a new army, but is confronted by Jorah. A drunken Viserys threatens his sister at swordpoint, and Drogo agrees to give him the "golden crown" he desires; as his bloodriders restrain Viserys, Drogo pours molten gold on his head. Watching her brother burn to death while he begs for her to not let them kill him, Daenerys coldly remarks, "He was no dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon." ## Production ### Writing The teleplay for "A Golden Crown" was written by Jane Espenson, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss from a story by Benioff and Weiss, based on A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. The finished teleplay would be Espenson's only credited writing contribution to the series. The episode includes the book's chapters 38–41, 44-45 and 47 (Bran V, Tyrion V, Eddard X, Catelyn VII, Eddard XI, Sansa III, and Daenerys V). Chapter 42 (Jon V), dealing with Jon convincing Maester Aemon to allow Samwell to join the Watch as a steward, was removed from the series (although some of Ser Alliser's dialogue from the chapter was used), and chapter 43 (Tyrion VI) was moved to episode 8. ### Casting The episode introduces the recurring character of the wildling Osha. The writer of the original books, George R. R. Martin, admitted that this casting was different from his vision of the character. As he explains, he was surprised to see that actress Natalia Tena was being considered for the role since Osha had been conceived as a hard-bitten older woman and the actress was "too young and too hot". However, when he saw the audition tapes he was convinced with the new approach: "she was sensational, and I said, 'It's gotta be her.'" ### Staging and props The scene in which Daenerys has to eat a horse's heart was filmed in The Paint Hall studio in Belfast. There, the production built the Dothraki temple in which the scene is set – a large semicircular structure of wood and woven reeds, inspired by Marsh Arab constructions. The heart actress Emilia Clarke ate was, according to Weiss, "basically a giant, three-pound gummi bear covered in fake sugar blood – which has the added attraction of drawing real flies". Through repeated takes, Clarke had to eat much of the fake heart, which she said tasted like bleach and was made tough and gristly by the addition of valves made from "something like dried pasta". Clarke did not have to act in the shots at the end of the scene in which Daenerys almost throws up the last bit of heart, as she was already close to vomiting at that point. The book of lineages that helps Ned realize the truth about Joffrey's father was prepared by Bryan Cogman, who in addition to writing episode four ("Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things") also served as the show's "lore master" and authored the background content concerning the history of Westeros that is to be included in the first season's DVD and Blu-ray release. Cogman wrote two pages' worth of text detailing the lineage of four noble houses. The text concerning House Umber was shown in episode four, and the Baratheon text appears in episode six. Cogman also wrote text for the houses of Targaryen and Royce, but the corresponding scenes were removed from the final script for "Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things" but the Targaryen page was shown in "A Golden Crown". Cogman said that he drew on the novels and the fan-created website Wiki of Ice and Fire for reference, and invented what could not be sourced, including even some Internet fan message board names as in-jokes. ## Reception ### Ratings For the first time since the premiere of the show the ratings decreased in relation to the previous weeks. The first airing brought 2.4 million viewers, compared to the 2.6 million gathered by the previous episode. With the second airing the differences shrank, bringing the total of the night to 3.2 million, one hundred thousand viewers below the previous week's 3.3. ### Critical response "A Golden Crown" received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes surveyed 18 reviews of the episode and judged 100% of them to be positive with an average score of 8.92 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The character-focused "A Golden Crown" highlights Game of Throne's cast to exhilarating effect, with particularly entertaining comic relief courtesy of Peter Dinklage's Tyrion." Emily VanDerWerff from the A.V. Club gave it an A−, and Maureen Ryan from AOL TV rated it with a 70 out of 100. HitFix's Alan Sepinwall titled his review "The rules get upended in a terrific episode." Both Elio Garcia from Westeros.org and Jace Lacob from Televisionary considered it the best episode of the series so far. In the words of reviewer Jace Lacob, the episode "revolves around changes both great and small, about the way the scales can fall from our eyes and we can see the truth that has been standing in front of us for so long. For Eddard, it's a realization of just why Jon Arryn died, of the terrible secret he had gleaned from the book of royal lineages, and just what this could mean for the throne...and for the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. For Dany, it's the brutal truth of her brother's real nature, of his insatiable thirst for power and the twisted quality of his rampant heart." The Dothraki scenes that culminate with the "crowning" of Viserys Targaryen was acclaimed by critics. Writing for Time, James Poniewozik highlighted an acting of "touching self-recognition by Harry Lloyd, who did an outstanding job humanizing a villain," and Maureen Ryan congratulated the actor for his "excellent job of showing the human side of this impetuous, cruel aristocrat" and "keeping Viserys just this side of sane in all his scenes." The acting of Emilia Clarke, closing her arc initiated in the first episode from a frightened girl to an empowered woman was also praised. VanDerWerff commented on the difficulty to adapt such an evolution from page to screen, but concluded that "Clarke and Lloyd more than seal the deal here." IGN's Matt Fowler also praised Clarke and noted that Daenerys's choice to watch Viserys die was "powerful" and an important shift in her character. Another aspect of the show that was widely discussed among commentators was the moral dilemma presented in the episode between a pragmatic approach to ruling or remaining true to the ideals of justice and honor, exemplified in the scene where Eddard summons Tywin Lannister to the court to answer for the crimes of his bannerman Gregor Clegane. Poniewozik states that Eddard "doesn't seem to consider that he has options: he is left to rule in the king's place, an injustice has been committed, the law requires one path to justice and he chooses it. This makes his decision easy, but it may make his life, and others', difficult." According to The Atlantic's Scott Meslow, "Ned's principles are, as always, admirable, and he's clearly interested in justice. But the sad truth is that the lack of guile that makes him honorable also makes him a pretty poor king. It's a terrible idea to order the arrest of the man who is single-handedly financing your kingdom." Myles McNutt, writing for Cultural Learnings, agreed with Meslow and concluded that "the only thing more dangerous than a reckless man asserting their power in Westeros is an honorable man doing the same, as it threatens the delicate framework which has propped up King Robert for so long." ### Accolades

Fulton Street station (New York City Subway)

Station complex in Manhattan

The Fulton Street station is a major New York City Subway station complex in Lower Manhattan. It consists of four linked stations on the IND Eighth Avenue Line, the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, the BMT Nassau Street Line and the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. The complex is served by the 2, 4, A, and J trains at all times. The 3, 5, and C trains stop here at all times except late nights, and the Z stops during rush hours in the peak direction. The Lexington Avenue Line station was built for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) as part of the city's first subway line, and opened on January 16, 1905. The Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line station, built for the IRT as part of the Dual Contracts, opened on July 1, 1918. The Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT)'s Nassau Street Line station was also built under the Dual Contracts and opened on May 29, 1931. The Independent Subway System (IND)'s Eighth Avenue Line station, originally known as the Broadway–Nassau Street station, was the latest in the complex to be completed, opening on February 1, 1933. Several modifications have been made to the stations over the years, and they were connected within a single fare control area in 1948. The station was renovated during the 2000s and early 2010s, becoming part of the Fulton Center complex, which opened in 2014. The Lexington Avenue, Nassau Street, and Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line stations run north–south under Broadway, Nassau Street, and William Street respectively. The Eighth Avenue Line station is underneath Fulton Street, running west–east between Broadway and Nassau Streets. The Lexington Avenue and Nassau Street Line stations both have two tracks and two side platforms, while the Broadway–Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue Line stations both have two tracks and one island platform. The complex is connected to the nearby Chambers Street–World Trade Center/Park Place/Cortlandt Street station complex and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub through the Dey Street Passageway, which is outside of the station's fare control area. The station was the fifth busiest in the system in 2019 with 27,715,365 passengers. ## History ### First subway #### Construction and opening Planning for a subway line in New York City dates to 1864. However, development of what would become the city's first subway line did not start until 1894, when the New York State Legislature passed the Rapid Transit Act. The subway plans were drawn up by a team of engineers led by William Barclay Parsons, the Rapid Transit Commission's chief engineer. The Rapid Transit Construction Company, organized by John B. McDonald and funded by August Belmont Jr., signed the initial Contract 1 with the Rapid Transit Commission in February 1900, in which it would construct the subway and maintain a 50-year operating lease from the opening of the line. In 1901, the firm of Heins & LaFarge was hired to design the underground stations. Belmont incorporated the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in April 1902 to operate the subway. Several days after Contract 1 was signed, the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners instructed Parsons to evaluate the feasibility of extending the subway south to South Ferry, and then to Brooklyn. On January 24, 1901, the Board adopted a route that would extend the subway from City Hall to the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)'s Flatbush Avenue terminal station (now known as Atlantic Terminal) in Brooklyn, via the Joralemon Street Tunnel under the East River. Contract 2, which gave the IRT a 35-year lease, was executed between the commission and the Rapid Transit Construction Company on September 11, 1902. Construction began at State Street in Manhattan on November 8, 1902. The section of the Contract 2 subway tunnel under the southernmost section of Broadway, between Battery Park and City Hall, was awarded to Degnon-McLean Contracting Company. By the beginning of January 1905, the station was nearly complete, but heavy snow delayed the installation of the entrances. The IRT Lexington Avenue Line station opened on January 16, 1905, as part of a one-stop southward extension from Brooklyn Bridge, the previous southernmost express station on the original IRT line. Only the northbound platform (on the eastern side of the station) was in use initially. The station was to serve express trains, and thus the platforms were designed to accommodate eight cars. The platforms had entrances at Fulton and Dey Streets, with three token booths at each end, to alleviate overcrowding. The Rapid Transit Commission had not approved the station's opening; in considering whether to permit the station's operation, the commission found that advertising agents Ward & Gow had installed slot machines in the Fulton Street station just before it opened. The commission ordered the machines' removal on January 19, saying that the machines violated a ban on advertising in subway stations. The southbound platform opened on June 12, 1905, when the subway was extended one stop south to Wall Street. The station's completion resulted in increased real-estate values in the area. The slot machines were reinstalled in May 1906, following a legal dispute over whether the slot machines should be allowed. #### Early modifications To address overcrowding, in 1909, the New York Public Service Commission proposed lengthening the platforms at stations along the original IRT subway. As part of a modification to the IRT's construction contracts made on January 18, 1910, the company was to lengthen station platforms to accommodate ten-car express and six-car local trains. In addition to \$1.5 million (equivalent to \$ million in ) spent on platform lengthening, \$500,000 (equivalent to \$ million in ) was spent on building additional entrances and exits. It was anticipated that these improvements would increase capacity by 25 percent. The northbound platform at the Fulton Street station was extended 150 feet (46 m) to the south, while the southbound platform was extended 135 feet (41 m) to the south. The northbound platform extension required underpinning adjacent buildings, while the southbound platform extension was largely in the basements of adjacent properties and involved extensive reconstruction of these buildings. On January 23, 1911, ten-car express trains began running on the East Side Line, and the next day, ten-car express trains began running on the West Side Line. Staircases from the southbound platform to 195 Broadway, at the northwest corner of Broadway and Dey Street, opened in 1916. ### Dual Contracts expansion After the original IRT opened, the city began planning new lines. In April 1912, the New York Public Service Commission gave the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) the right to operate the proposed Clark Street Tunnel under the East River, between Old Slip in Lower Manhattan and Clark Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The next month, the Old Slip–Clark Street route was assigned to the IRT instead; the plans called for a station at Fulton Street. The BRT was allowed to extend its Centre Street Line south to a new Montague Street Tunnel. Both this extension and the IRT's Clark Street Tunnel were to have stations at Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan. These routes were finalized in the Dual Contracts between the government of New York City, the BRT, and the IRT, which were signed in 1913. #### Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line As part of the Dual Contracts, the New York City Public Service Commission planned to split the original IRT system into three segments: two north-south lines, carrying through trains over the Lexington Avenue and Broadway–Seventh Avenue Lines, and an east–west shuttle under 42nd Street. This would form a roughly "H"-shaped system. The Dual Contracts entailed building the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line south of Times Square–42nd Street. South of the Chambers Street station, the line was to split into two branches, one of which would travel under Park Place and William Street to the Clark Street Tunnel in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn branch was to have a station at William and Fulton Streets. Before the Dual Contracts were signed, many business owners on William Street had opposed the construction of a subway line there, claiming that the subway's construction could damage buildings because the street was only 40 feet (12 m) wide. The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, approved the William Street subway in February 1913. The William Street subway was to be a two-track line; the Public Service Commission originally planned to place one track above the other but, by July 1914, had decided to build both tracks on one level. The tunnel was to measure 29 feet (8.8 m) wide, except the stations on Fulton Street and Wall Street, which were to measure 40 feet (12 m) wide. The Public Service Commission began soliciting bids for the William Street portion of the line in September 1914. Smith, Hauser, & McIsaac submitted a low bid of \$2.254 million (equivalent to \$ million in ). The awarding of the contract was delayed by a dispute over whether gas mains should be carried on temporary overpasses above the tunnel's excavation site. Another dispute arose over the locations of subway entrances. The Fulton Street station was supposed to have entrances along the sidewalk on William Street, but local business and civic groups argued that the subway entrances, despite being only 6.5 feet (2.0 m) wide, would occupy much of the 9-foot-wide (2.7 m) sidewalk. By March 1916, two business owners on the street had agreed to add subway entrances in their buildings to the Fulton Street station. Prior to the start of construction, the city government agreed to pay for any damage caused by the project. The contractors underpinned every building along the tunnel because most of the buildings had shallow foundations that extended only to a shallow layer of quicksand, rather than to the bedrock below. Discussions of the station's exits continued through early 1918. The line was nearly completed by late 1917, but the signals and station finishes were incomplete due to World War I–related material shortages. The Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line's Fulton Street station opened on July 1, 1918, and was initially served by a shuttle between Chambers Street and Wall Street on the line's Brooklyn branch. On August 1, 1918, the new "H" system was implemented, joining the two halves of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line and sending all West Side trains south from Times Square; through trains on the Brooklyn branch began operating to Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. The Lexington Avenue Line also opened north of Grand Central–42nd Street, and all services at the original station on Broadway were sent through that line. #### Nassau Street Line Also as part of the Dual Contracts, the BRT (after 1923, the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation or BMT) was assigned to construct and operate the Nassau Street Line. Most of the BMT's Dual Contracts lines were completed by 1924, except for the Nassau Street Line. BMT chairman Gerhard Dahl was persistent in requesting that the city build the line, saying in 1923 that the BMT was willing to operate the line as soon as the city completed it. At the time, the BMT was planning to construct two stations on the Nassau Street Line, including one at Fulton Street, where the BMT planned to place the northbound platform above the southbound platform due to the street's narrowness. However, mayor John Hylan refused to act during his final two years in office. New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) chairman John H. Delaney believed that the line was unnecessary because both of its planned stations would be extremely close to existing subway stations. Meanwhile, the BMT claimed that the city's failure to complete the line was overburdening other BMT lines. By January 1925, the BMT was asking its passengers to pressure Hylan into approving the remainder of the Nassau Street Line. Work did not commence until after James Walker succeeded Hylan as mayor at the end of 1925. The city government agreed to build the Nassau Street Line in May 1927, after the BMT sued the city for \$30 million (equivalent to \$ million in ). At the time, the city wanted to take over the BMT's lines but could not do so until all Dual Contracts lines were completed. The BOT received bids for the construction of the line that July, but it rejected every bid the next month because of concerns over the lowest bidder's ability to complete the work. That September, contractors again submitted bids to the BOT; some bidders offered to build the entire line, while others only offered to construct the segments of the line to the north or south of Liberty Street. The BOT awarded construction contracts for the line's construction two months later. The Marcus Contracting Company was hired to build the portion north of Liberty Street, including the Fulton Street station, for \$4.7 million (equivalent to \$ million in ). Moranti and Raymond were hired to build the portion to the south for \$5.7 million (equivalent to \$ million in ). The New York City Board of Estimate approved the contracts in January 1928, allowing the builders to construct the line using the cut-and-cover method, despite merchants' requests that the line be constructed using tunneling shields. When the construction contracts were awarded, work had been projected to be completed in 39 months. The line was constructed 20 feet (6.1 m) below the active IRT Lexington Avenue Line, next to buildings along the narrow Nassau Street, and the project encountered difficulties such as quicksand. Nassau Street is only 34 feet (10 m) wide, and the subway floor was only 20 feet (6.1 m) below building foundations. As a result, 89 buildings had to be underpinned to ensure that they would stay on their foundations. Construction was done at night so as to not disturb workers in the Financial District. By early 1929, sixty percent of the work had been finished. The project was 80 percent complete by April 1930, and Charles Meads & Co. was awarded a \$252,000 contract to install the Fulton Street station's finishes the next month. The plans had been changed so that the southbound platform was above the northbound platform. Later that year, a federal judge ruled that the city government did not have to pay the BMT \$30 million in damages for failing to construct the Nassau Street Line. The total construction cost was \$10.072 million (equivalent to \$ million in ) for 0.9 miles (1.4 km) of new tunnels, or \$2,068 per foot (\$6,780/m), which was three times the normal cost of construction at the time. The Nassau Street Loop opened on May 29, 1931. The loop ran from the line's previous terminus at Chambers Street, running through the Fulton Street and Broad Street stations before merging with the Montague Street Tunnel to Brooklyn. The completion of the line relieved congestion on several BMT lines to southern Brooklyn, which previously had to operate to Midtown Manhattan using the Broadway Line. The BMT's Fulton Street station was originally served by trains from the Jamaica Line and the Culver Line. ### IND expansion Mayor Hylan's original plans for the Independent Subway System (IND), proposed in 1922, included building over 100 miles (160 km) of new lines and taking over nearly 100 miles (160 km) of existing lines, which would compete with the IRT and BMT. On December 9, 1924, the BOT gave preliminary approval for the construction of the IND Eighth Avenue Line. This line consisted of a corridor connecting Inwood, Manhattan, to Downtown Brooklyn, running largely under Eighth Avenue but also paralleling Greenwich Avenue and Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan. The BOT announced a list of stations on the new line in February 1928, with a station under Fulton Street at Broadway in Manhattan. Work on the line had commenced in 1925, and the main section of the Eighth Avenue Line, from Chambers Street north to 207th Street, was opened to the public on September 10, 1932. The Broadway/Nassau Street station was part of a three-stop extension of the IND Eighth Avenue Line from Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan to Jay Street–Borough Hall in Downtown Brooklyn. The station, under Fulton Street between Broadway and William Street, would be the southernmost IND station in Manhattan. The two-track extension was to connect the quadruple-tracked main portion of the Eighth Avenue Line with the proposed Culver and Fulton Street lines in Brooklyn. The Mason-Hangar Company received a \$22.28 million contract for the construction of this segment in May 1927 (equivalent to \$ million in ), and construction of the extension began in June 1928. The IND's Brooklyn extension was 82 percent completed by December 1930. Although most work on the line had been finished by December 1932, city controller Charles W. Berry then requested \$1.57 million for the line's completion (equivalent to \$ million in ). The Cranberry Street Tunnel, extending the express tracks east under Fulton Street to Jay Street, was opened for the morning rush hour on February 1, 1933, with a stop at Broadway/Nassau Street. The Broadway/Nassau station was initially served by express trains during the daytime on weekdays and Saturdays; local trains only served the station when express trains were not operating. It had ten entrances from the street, as well as direct connections to the IRT and BMT stations at Fulton Street. The opening of the Broadway/Nassau station eliminated an "outstanding drawback" to Upper Manhattan residents' usage of the Eighth Avenue Line, as the IND previously did not have a direct connection to Manhattan's Financial District. On the other hand, the station's convoluted layout confused some riders when it opened. ### 20th-century improvements #### 1940s to 1960s The city government took over the BMT's operations on June 1, 1940, and the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. Transfer passageways between the four stations were placed inside fare control on July 1, 1948. The rearrangement of turnstiles allowed free transfers in the existing passageways between the Eighth Avenue, Nassau Street, and Broadway–Seventh Avenue platforms. Passengers transferring to and from the Lexington Avenue Line had to receive a paper transfer. On August 25, 1950, the railings of the Lexington Avenue and Eighth Avenue Line stations were rearranged to allow direct transfers, and the paper transfers were discontinued. The New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA), the BOT's successor, announced plans in 1956 to add fluorescent lights to the Fulton Street station. The NYCTA also asked the city government in 1958 to provide \$66,700 for a moving walkway connecting the IND and IRT platforms at Fulton Street. The moving walkway, measuring 105 feet (32 m) long, would have been the first in the New York City Subway system. The NYCTA publicly announced plans for the moving walkway in August 1960; the agency's chairman Charles L. Patterson claimed that the moving walkway would ease congestion in the passageways between each platforms. In late 1959, contracts were awarded to extend the platforms at Fulton Street on the Lexington Avenue Line, as well as nine others on the same line, to 525 feet (160 m) to accommodate ten-car trains. Work on the platform extension at Fulton Street began in April 1960 and was still underway two years later. The platform-lengthening project was substantially completed by November 1965. During the 1964–1965 fiscal year, the platforms at Fulton Street on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, along with those at four other stations on the line, were lengthened to 525 feet (160 m) to accommodate a ten-car train of 51-foot IRT cars. #### 1970s to 1990s A passageway from the Lexington Avenue Line station to the World Trade Center was completed in 1977. Late the next year, the MTA announced that it would modernize the Broadway–Nassau/Fulton Street station. The improvements included new finishes on the walls and floors; acoustical, signage, and lighting improvements; replacement of old mechanical equipment; and new handrails. In 1979, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the space within the boundaries of the original IRT Lexington Avenue Line station, excluding expansions made after 1904, as a city landmark. The station was designated along with eleven others on the original IRT. By that time, the Lexington Avenue Line station was one of the 69 most deteriorated stations in the subway system. The Urban Mass Transportation Administration gave a \$66 million grant to the New York City Transit Authority. Part of the grant was to be used for the renovation of several subway stations, including Fulton Street's IRT platforms, in 1982. The MTA attempted to replicate the original design of the Lexington Avenue Line platforms, even obtaining marble wainscoting from a Georgia quarry. The renovation, designed by Lee Harris Pomeroy, was finished in 1987. In addition, to speed up passenger flow, dozens of platform conductors were assigned to direct crowds on the Lexington Avenue Line platforms during the late 1980s. During the early 1990s, the MTA removed some advertisements from the Lexington Avenue Line platforms to reduce what an MTA spokesman described as "the perception of chaos". The MTA also removed three of the station's high entry-exit turnstiles to increase passenger flow. The New York State Legislature agreed to give the MTA \$9.6 billion for capital improvements in April 1993. Some of the funds would be used to renovate nearly one hundred New York City Subway stations, including the BMT platforms at Fulton Street and the IND platform at Broadway–Nassau Street. In 1994, amid a funding shortfall, the administration of mayor Rudy Giuliani proposed delaying the IND station's renovation. That October, the MTA announced it had indefinitely postponed plans for renovating the IND's Broadway–Nassau Street station. Ultimately, the BMT and IND platforms were both renovated during the 1990s. Additionally, in January 1994, Automated Fare Collection turnstiles went into service at the Broadway–Nassau/Fulton Street station, making it one of the first stations in the system to receive these turnstiles. In late 1996, as part of a pilot program to reduce overcrowding, the MTA placed orange decals on the Lexington Avenue Line platforms with the words "Step Aside" and employed platform attendants during rush hours. Additionally, to reduce dwell times, the MTA started enforcing a policy that required conductors to close their doors after 45 seconds. This trial was shortly expanded to other stations. These policies reduced dwell times by about six seconds per train, allowing the MTA to operate an extra train during rush hours. ### 21st-century renovation #### Fulton Center plans and IRT renovation After several pieces of transit infrastructure in Lower Manhattan were destroyed or severely damaged during the September 11, 2001, attacks, officials proposed a \$7 billion redesign of transit in the neighborhood. Plans for a massive transit hub in Lower Manhattan, which was to incorporate the Fulton Street station, were first announced in January 2002. At the time, a Straphangers Campaign survey had ranked the station as one of the worst in the system; the complex was extremely hard to navigate because its four stations were built by different companies at different times. By April 2003, the MTA had released preliminary plans for a \$750 million transit hub at Fulton Street, connecting six subway stations and constructing a new head house and the Dey Street Passageway. That December, the Federal Transit Administration allocated \$750 million to the Fulton Street Transit Center (later the Fulton Center). The project was to include a domed station building at Fulton Street and Broadway. The transit center was to be financed using money from the September 11 recovery fund. By May 2006, the budget for Fulton Center had grown, and the project had been delayed. Further delays and costs were incurred in February 2007. The MTA downsized the original plans for the transit center due to cost overruns, and the agency partially funded the project using 2009 federal stimulus money. Despite delays with the Fulton Center project, the MTA began renovating the IRT platforms. The rehabilitation of the Seventh Avenue Line platform started in 2005 and was completed by November 2006. The Lexington Avenue Line station at the western end of the complex began refurbishment in 2008. Historical features, such as the tiling, were preserved. #### Fulton Center approval In January 2009, the MTA received \$497 million in additional stimulus money, bringing the total cost of the Fulton Street Transit Center to \$1.4 billion. By then, a reporter for The New York Times wrote that the station's ramps, passageways, and stairs were so confusing that "The Fulton Street subway station might be a good spot for M. C. Escher to set up an easel, if the surrealist artist were still alive and sketching." This intricate system of ramps was replaced by two new mezzanines. Work on the IND mezzanine commenced in January 2010; the reconstruction of the transfer mezzanine over the Fulton Street IND platform resulted in traffic flow changes. The Eighth Avenue Line station adopted the "Fulton Street" name in December 2010 to become unified with the other platforms in the station complex. The eastern mezzanine and parts of the western mezzanine had opened by 2011, and the western mezzanine was completed by 2012. New entrances were also opened as part of the project. In October 2012, a new entrance on Dey Street opened for the Dey Street underpass to Cortlandt Street, and an ADA-accessible elevator was installed for the southbound Lexington Avenue Line platform. The Fulton Building, at the southeast corner of Broadway and Fulton Street, was also built as part of the project; work on that building lasted for another two years. The Fulton Center project was completed with the opening of the Fulton Building in November 2014, and the entire complex was made ADA-accessible. ## Station layout The station consists of three levels; all of the platforms, except for the IND Eighth Avenue Line platform, are oriented roughly on a north–south axis. Most transfers are made through the IND platform, which runs east–west three stories below ground level, beneath the other three stations. The stacked-staggered configuration of the BMT Nassau Street Line platforms splits the IND mezzanine levels into halves. The eastern half stretches from Nassau Street to William Street, from the southbound Nassau Street Line platform to the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line platform. Similarly, the western half of the mezzanine stretches from Nassau Street to Broadway, from the northbound Nassau Street Line to the Lexington Avenue Line platforms. Transferring passengers have to use the third-basement-level IND platform to navigate between both halves of the mezzanine, since the Nassau Street Line's platforms bisect the mezzanine on both the first and second basement levels. Originally, a network of passageways and ramps loosely connected the various lines with each other, causing congestion during peak hours. The transfer mezzanine, also known as the IND mezzanine, was built as part of the Fulton Center project in the 2010s. This mezzanine replaced these ramps and made several adjacent entrances redundant. ### Artwork There are various artworks at the Fulton Street station. The Sky Reflector-Net, atop the Fulton Center building at the southeast corner of Fulton Street and Broadway, was installed in 2014 and commissioned as part of the MTA Arts & Design program. The Sky Reflector-Net uses hundreds of aluminum mirrors to provide natural sunlight from a 53 ft (16 m) skylight to an underground area as much as four stories deep. The complex also features digital signage with art, which is displayed as part of the MTA's Digital Art program. The connection from the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line platform to the Eighth Avenue Line platform contains the artwork Marine Grill Murals, salvaged from the Marine Grill restaurant in the Hotel McAlpin at Herald Square. The six murals in the station are part of a set of glazed terracotta mosaics created by Fred Dana Marsh in 1912 for the Marine Grill and were discarded in 1990 when the Marine Grill was demolished. The murals were subsequently salvaged from a dumpster. Each mural measures 8 feet 2 inches (2.49 m) tall by 11 feet 7 inches (3.53 m) wide and is shaped like a lunette. Of the 16 original murals, 12 depicted two sets of six related scenes, while the other four depicted separate motifs. The New York Landmarks Conservancy preserved six of the murals, which were reinstalled at the Fulton Street station in 2001 for \$200,000. Prior to the Fulton Center project, the mezzanine above the IND platform showcased an artwork by Nancy Holt, Astral Grating, which was installed in 1987 in conjunction with Lee Harris Pomeroy Architects. The artwork consisted of light fixtures on the ceiling, made of welded steel. The light fixtures signified five constellations, namely Aries, Auriga, Canis Major, Cygnus, and Piscis Austrinus. The work was uninstalled and placed in storage when Fulton Center was built. Astral Grating was the first artwork created by a female artist to be installed in the subway system through the MTA Arts & Design program. ### Exits Due to the highly fragmented nature of the Fulton Street station, most of its entrances are only signed as serving certain routes, even though all exits technically provide access to all routes. Prior to the completion of Fulton Center, many of the station's entrances had been constructed piecemeal within various buildings, and these entrances were not easily visible from the street. The entire station complex is ADA-accessible via a series of elevators between the platforms and mezzanines. The Fulton Street station is close to several attractions such as St. Paul's Chapel and the World Trade Center. On Broadway, five entrances are signed as serving the Eighth Avenue Line and southbound Lexington Avenue Line platforms (the , trains). At Broadway and Fulton Street, two stairs go up to the northwestern corner and one goes to 195 Broadway near the southwestern corner. One stair each goes up to the northwestern corner of Broadway's intersections with Dey and Cortlandt Streets. Additionally, one entrance, a stair at the northeast corner of Maiden Lane and Broadway at the southern end of the Lexington Avenue Line station, is signed as serving the Eighth Avenue Line and northbound Lexington Avenue Line platforms. The entrances on Broadway originally had cast-iron hoods with leaf patterns; similar hoods still exist at the Wall Street/Broadway and Borough Hall stations. The original entrances at the northwest and northeast corners of Fulton Street and Broadway were replaced in 1933 when the IND station opened. Prior to the completion of Fulton Center, there was no access from ground level to the southern ends of the Lexington Avenue Line platforms. Four Broadway entrances are signed as providing access to several routes in the complex. There is a stair and elevator at the southwest corner of Dey Street and Broadway; they are signed as providing access to all services except the northbound Lexington Avenue Line platform, and are also signed as an entrance as the separate Cortlandt Street station on the . The two stations are connected outside of fare control via the Dey Street Passageway, which measures 300 feet (91 m) long by 29 feet (8.8 m) wide and opened in May 2016. Two entrances are signed as serving all routes in the complex, as well as the at Cortlandt Street: the Fulton Center building at the southeast corner of Fulton Street and Broadway, as well as an entrance through the Corbin Building on John Street east of Broadway. The Fulton Center building has stairs, escalators, and elevators, while the Corbin Building contains escalators. Seven entrances are signed as serving the Eighth Avenue Line and Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line platforms (the , trains). At Fulton and William Streets are five entrances: two stairs to the northeastern corner, one to the southeastern corner, and one stair and one elevator to the southwestern corner. There are also two part-time entrances inside the office building at 110 William Street; one is on William Street and the other is on John Street. When the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line station was built in 1918, it had been designed to allow a subway entrance to be built inside any building on William Street between Ann Street to the north and John Street to the south. As such, there was formerly an entrance in a building on the east side of William Street south of Ann Street. Another exit, at the northeast corner of William and Fulton Streets, was removed before 1930. Six entrances are signed as serving the Eighth Avenue Line platform and either of the Nassau Street Line platforms (the , trains). Four stairs, one each on either eastern corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets and on either eastern corner of John and Nassau Streets, serve the Eighth Avenue Line and northbound Nassau Street Line platforms. The John and Nassau Streets entrances are open only during rush hours. Two stairs, one on either western corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets, serve the Eighth Avenue Line and northbound Nassau Street Line platforms. There were originally also two stairs from the northbound Nassau Street Line platform to the southwest corner of John and Nassau Streets and one stair to the northwest corner of the same intersection. From the north end of the Nassau Street Line station was an exit to Ann Street, as well as a passageway that led north to stairs on the northeast and southeast corners of Nassau and Beekman Streets. The exit to Ann Street connected the southbound platform with a structure known as the Hilton Building, where there were two stairs. The John Street and Beekman Street exits closed around 1988, while the Ann Street exit had closed by 1992. ## IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line platform The Fulton Street station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line has two tracks and one island platform. It is situated underneath William Street between John Street to the south and Ann Street to the north. The 2 train stops here at all times, while the 3 train stops here at all times except late nights. The station is between Park Place to the north and Wall Street to the south. The platform is 525 feet (160 m) long. It has a relatively narrow width of 13.5 feet (4.1 m), causing congestion during rush hours. The station has two mezzanines, separated at Fulton Street. The north mezzanine is open at all times, while the south mezzanine is open part-time. Prior to the construction of Fulton Center, the mezzanine had low ceilings and several bends, which caused congestion. Brooklyn-bound trains use track K2, while uptown trains use track K3; these designations come from track chaining and are not used by the public. ## BMT Nassau Street Line platforms The Fulton Street station on the BMT Nassau Street Line has two tracks and two side platforms in a split platform configuration, with downtown trains on the upper level and uptown trains on the lower level. It is situated underneath Nassau Street between John Street to the south and Ann Street to the north. The J train stops here at all times, while the Z train stops here during rush hours in the peak direction. The station is between Chambers Street to the north and Broad Street to the south. The platforms measure 535 feet (163 m) long. The northbound platform is about 14.5 feet (4.4 m) wide, while the southbound platform ranges from 14 to 17.7 feet (4.3 to 5.4 m) wide. The station is constructed on two levels because of the extreme narrowness of Nassau Street, which forced contractors to avoid buildings' foundations while they constructed the station, as well as a curve at Fulton Street. Nassau Street is only 40 feet (12 m) wide at this point, and the western and eastern walls on both levels abut the foundations of adjacent buildings. Since the platforms on both levels are to the left of the tracks, the most direct entrances are on the left side of each platform. Northbound trains are more directly accessed via entrances on the west side of Nassau Street, and southbound trains are more directly accessed via entrances on the east side of Nassau Street. The IND platform passes underneath both levels of this station; the two platforms are connected to each other and to the other stations in the complex via the IND platform. The walls of the Nassau Street Line station were originally decorated with orange tile bands, similar to those used at IND stations. By the 1990s, the walls had been redecorated with Greek key bands, as well as mosaics with the letter "F" and the station's name. ## IRT Lexington Avenue Line platforms The Fulton Street station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line has two tracks and two side platforms. It is situated underneath Broadway between Cortlandt Street to the south and Fulton Street to the north. The 4 train stops here at all times, while the 5 train stops here at all times except late nights. The station is between Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall to the north and Wall Street to the south. The platforms were originally 350 feet (110 m) long, like at other Contract 2 stations, but were lengthened during the 1959 expansion of the station. As with other stations built as part of the original IRT, the station was constructed using a cut-and-cover method. The tunnel is covered by a "U"-shaped trough that contains utility pipes and wires. The bottom of this trough contains a foundation of concrete no less than 4 inches (100 mm) thick. Each platform consists of 3-inch-thick (7.6 cm) concrete slabs, beneath which are drainage basins. The original platforms contain circular, cast-iron Doric-style columns away from the platform edge, spaced every 15 feet (4.6 m), while the platform extensions contain I-beam columns near the platform edge. Additional columns between the tracks, spaced every 5 feet (1.5 m), support the jack-arched concrete station roofs. There is a 1-inch (25 mm) gap between the trough wall and the platform walls, which are made of 4-inch (100 mm)-thick brick covered over by a tiled finish. The platform widths range from 7.5 to 19.3 feet (2.3 to 5.9 m). There are fare control areas at platform level. The walls along the platforms near the fare control areas consist of a pink marble wainscoting on the lowest part of the wall, with bronze air vents along the wainscoting, and white glass tiles above. The platform walls are divided at 15-foot (4.6 m) intervals by pink marble pilasters, or vertical bands. In the original portion of the station, each pilaster is topped by blue-and-green tile plaques, which contain the letter "F" surrounded by a buff-yellow and blue-green Greek key carving. Above these "F" plaques are faience mosaics that depict the Clermont, the steamboat built by Robert Fulton. These mosaics are topped by blue faience swags and are connected by a faience cornice with scrolled and foliate detail. This decorative design is extended to the fare control areas adjacent to the original portions of the station. White-on-blue tile plaques with the words "Fulton Street" and floral motifs are also placed on the walls. On the northern end of the southbound platform, a 75-foot-long (23 m) granite wall separates it from the basement of 195 Broadway. Within the granite wall are bronze sliding gates and a long window separated by bronze mullions. The sliding gates used to provide access to the station before being replaced by turnstiles. ## IND Eighth Avenue Line platform The Fulton Street station (formerly the Broadway–Nassau Street station) on the IND Eighth Avenue Line has two tracks and one island platform. It is situated underneath Fulton Street between Broadway to the west and William Street to the east. The A train stops here at all times, while the C train stops here at all times except late nights. The station is between Chambers Street to the north and High Street to the south. The platform is about 22 feet (6.7 m) wide throughout the length of the station. The Fulton Street station has curved walls, with a purple tile band and wall tiles reading "FULTON". An alternating pattern of "BWAY" and "NASSAU" was the original tiling. The purple tile band is part of a color-coded tile system used throughout the IND. The tile colors were designed to facilitate navigation for travelers going away from Lower Manhattan. The purple tiles at the Fulton Street station were also used at the Chambers Street station to the north and the High Street station to the south. The tiles change color at Canal Street to the north and Jay Street to the south. According to a document detailing the IND's color-coding scheme, the Broadway–Nassau Street station's tile band was only two tiles high (as was the case at local stations), rather than three tiles high (as at express stations). The mezzanine is split in half by the BMT Nassau Street line directly above. Therefore, the IND platform is also used by passengers transferring between from IRT Lexington and northbound BMT Nassau trains to IRT Seventh Avenue and southbound BMT Nassau trains. ## Ridership The Fulton Street station has historically ranked among the New York City Subway's ten busiest stations. The Fulton Street station recorded 19.502 million entries in 1963, which had declined to 15.805 million in 1973. During the 2000s, an estimated 225,000 people either entered, exited, or transferred at the station on an average day. By 2011, the Fulton Street station was the 11th-busiest in the system; at the time, an average of 63,203 riders entered the station every weekday. In 2019, the station had 27,715,365 boardings, making it the fifth most-used station in the -station system. This amounted to an average of 94,607 passengers per weekday. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, ridership dropped drastically in 2020, with only 8,855,302 passengers entering the station that year. However, it was still the system's fifth most-used station.

Jake the Brick

"Jake the Brick" is the twentieth episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series Adventure Time. The episode was written, storyboarded, and directed by head writer Kent Osborne, from an outline by Adam Muto, Osborne, and series creator Pendleton Ward. "Jake the Brick" debuted on November 26, 2014, on Cartoon Network as the third episode to be aired as part of the "Corn-Ooo-copia"—a week of all-new Adventure Time premieres. The series follows the adventures of Finn (voiced by Jeremy Shada), a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (voiced by John DiMaggio), a dog with magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. In this episode, Jake tries to fulfill a bizarre lifelong ambition of being a brick inside a shack as it collapses. Finn, being supportive, leaves a walkie talkie with Jake, who absentmindedly begins to narrate the events around him. Finn and BMO are drawn into Jake's storytelling, and Finn uses Starchy's radio station to broadcast Jake's narration of the trials and tribulations of a rabbit. All of Ooo is soon engrossed in the radio broadcast, unbeknownst to Jake. "Jake the Brick" was based on a doodle made by Tom Herpich during a game of exquisite corpse, making it one of the few episodes of Adventure Time to have been developed out of the game. Osborne and the production crew were so amused by Herpich's drawing that they decided to build an episode in order to showcase it. The episode was viewed by 2.00 million viewers. The episode also was met with mostly positive critical reception, with many commenters appreciating its simplistic and calm nature. In 2015, it won a Primetime Emmy Award for Short-format Animation. ## Plot Finn wanders all over Ooo until he manages to locate Jake, who is fulfilling a bizarre lifelong ambition of being a brick inside a shack as it collapses. Finn expresses his support, but decides to head back to the Tree Fort. He leaves a walkie talkie with Jake. After a period of time passes, Jake begins absentmindedly narrating the events around him. Finn and BMO are drawn into Jake's storytelling, and Finn uses Starchy's radio station to broadcast Jake's narration. Jake focuses his attention on the trials and tribulations of a rabbit. First, the rabbit is tormented by a rogue deer. Then, a storm threatens to destroy his home. But luckily, the rabbit enlists the aid of a friendly sea lard and several beavers, and together, the animals are able to rebuild the rabbit's home. While Jake narrates, the entirety of Ooo tunes into the broadcast and becomes engrossed in the tale of the rabbit, unbeknownst to Jake. ## Production "Jake the Brick" was written and storyboarded by Adventure Time head writer Kent Osborne, from a story by Adam Muto, Osborne, Jack Pendarvis, and series creator Pendleton Ward. Osborne also served as the episode's supervising director, while the art direction was helmed by Nick Jennings. The genesis for the episode can be traced back to a drawing made during a game of exquisite corpse by Tom Herpich. The quick doodle, which featured Finn offering a brick-shaped Jake a sandwich, was accompanied by a short plot synopsis involving Jake's son Kim Kil Whan. The plot was never used, but Osborne and the crew found the drawing so amusing that they decided to work it into an episode. In reality, "Jake the Brick" was one of the few episodes to have been generated from a game of exquisite corpse. According to Ward, most of the ideas that come from the game are "terrible". A large portion of the dialogue used in the final episode was written by Pendarvis. ## Reception "Jake the Brick" aired on November 26, 2014 on Cartoon Network and was the third episode to air during the "Corn-Ooo-copia"—a week of all-new Adventure Time premieres. It was seen by 2.00 million viewers and scored a 0.4 Nielsen rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. Nielsen ratings are audience measurement systems that determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States, which means that the episode was seen by 0.4 percent of all households aged 18 to 49 years old were watching television at the time of the episode's airing. The episode also was met with mostly positive critical reception, with many commenters appreciating its simplistic and calm nature. Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "B", calling it a "satisfying episode." He applauded the way that Osborne took the episode's fairly simple plot structure and framed it around an emergency news broadcast, noting that the episode emphasizes the importance of radio in regards to communication; he positively compared the episode to the popular podcast Serial, writing that both this episode and the aforementioned podcast emphasize the importance of the audio experience. Furthermore, Sava opined that the episode was one of the show's more experimental outings, and it was proof that the writers of Adventure Time had full creative control over their series. Dara Driscoll of TV Overmind named "Jake the Brick" one of the six best episodes of Adventure Time's sixth season. She praised the episode for its calm and peaceful tone, arguing that "it’s a ... relaxing episode [and] as you listen to Jake tell the story of the bunny ... you become attached to its well-being just like all of the listeners of the radio show." In September 2015, the episode won an Emmy for Short-format Animation, making it the series' first win in this category. ## Explanatory notes

Rob Sherman

American politician

Robert I. Sherman (April 2, 1953 – December 9, 2016) was an American political activist, perennial candidate, and businessman. He was known for his role as an Illinois Green Party candidate and for his atheist advocacy. He died in a plane crash outside Marengo, Illinois on December 9, 2016, at the age of 63. ## Biography ### Early life Sherman was born and raised a Jew. He stated that he was an atheist since age 9, and that "it became a big deal" when he was 13. He spent his adolescence in Highland Park, and according to a candidate questionnaire, he attended National Louis University, Northwestern University, and Harper College. He worked as an office supply dealer. ### Atheist advocacy In 1981, Sherman listened to a radio speech by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, an activist and founder of American Atheists. The speech motivated him to join the organization, and he eventually became its Illinois director and national spokesman. He first achieved notoriety on April 1, 1986, when he sued the village of Zion, Illinois for displaying a Christian cross on a water tower, as well as other property. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992, which ruled in Sherman's favor and ordered municipalities to drop the use of religious symbols. His success earned him front-page news coverage and invites to appear on national TV shows, including those of Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue and Larry King. Sherman frequently received attention in the 1980s and 1990s due to his atheism activism. He filed lawsuits against numerous American municipalities, against the Boy Scouts of America in 1997, and against Township High School District 214 in 2007 for what he considered unconstitutional endorsements of religion. He was involved in numerous other lawsuits, of which at least one other went to the Supreme Court in the late 2000s. Reporter Richard Roeper said in 1998 that "he has battled towns from South Holland to Deerfield to Zion to Palatine to Highland, Ind., and Wauwatosa, Wis., over public displays of religious symbols on water towers, on government property and on official village seals." After 10 years of membership in American Atheists, he formed his own organization, Rob Sherman Advocacy. ### Political involvement In his later years, Sherman was active in politics as a perennial candidate. In 2006, he unsuccessfully ran for the 53rd district in the Illinois House of Representatives as a Democrat. In 2008, after meeting Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney, Sherman joined the party. That same year, he ran as a Green for the same seat. He ran unsuccessfully for Buffalo Grove Village Clerk in 2011, for Illinois's 5th congressional district in 2016 as a Green – receiving 4.7% of the vote – and he had announced that he would run for Illinois's 12th congressional district in 2018. He served as the Cook County Green Party chairman in 2012. Sherman's political positions included support for capitalism, same-sex marriage, and climate change advocacy, and he opposed red light cameras. He also supported secularist views, such as removing mentions of "God" from United States dollar and the Pledge of Allegiance and removing Christmas as a federal holiday. ### Radio and later career Sherman hosted radio shows on AM 1530 WJJG and WSSY-AM (1330). In the summer of 2016, Sherman moved from Buffalo Grove to Poplar Grove, Illinois, where he started a company that built kit aircraft. ## Death On the night of December 9, 2016, Sherman died when his Zenair CH 601 Zodiac crashed outside of Marengo, Illinois. He was 63. He was flying from his home in Poplar Grove to Schaumburg Regional Airport to attend a holiday party. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that Sherman's plane lost control soon after taking off, and that it crashed around 6:19 p.m. on December 9. Federal Aviation Administration records also showed that Sherman had a sport pilot certificate, meaning that by flying at night, he was violating the restrictions on his license. ## Personal life Sherman married his wife, Celeste, in 1978, and together they had a son and a daughter. He lived in Buffalo Grove, Illinois for 32 years before moving to Poplar Grove, Illinois in the summer of 2016. He was a volunteer with the American Red Cross. On June 4, 1998, Sherman was arrested and charged with domestic battery for beating his 16-year-old son with his hands and fists. Police also confiscated Sherman's rifle and semiautomatic handgun. The following month, Sherman was convicted of domestic battery in Cook County Court. The next year, he spent 120 days in jail for failing to follow orders to complete domestic violence counseling.

Lion and Sun

Emblem in Iran's national flag before the 1979 revolution

The Lion and Sun (Persian: شیر و خورشید, romanized: Šir o Xoršid, ; Classical Persian: ) is one of the main emblems of Iran (Persia), and was an element in Iran's national flag until the 1979 revolution and is still commonly used by opposition groups of the Islamic Republic government. The motif, which illustrates ancient and modern Iranian traditions, became a popular symbol in Iran in the 12th century. The lion and sun symbol is based largely on astronomical and astrological configurations: the ancient sign of the sun in the house of Leo, which itself is traced back to Babylonian astrology and Near Eastern traditions. The motif has many historical meanings. First, as a scientific and secular motif, it was only an astrological and zodiacal symbol. Under the Safavid and the first Qajar kings, it became more associated with Shia Islam. During the Safavid era, the lion and sun stood for the two pillars of society, the state and the Islamic religion. It became a national emblem during the Qajar era. In the 19th century, European visitors at the Qajar court attributed the lion and sun to remote antiquity; since then, it has acquired a nationalistic interpretation. During the reign of Fat′h-Ali Shah Qajar and his successors, the form of the motif was substantially changed. A crown was also placed on the top of the symbol to represent the monarchy. Beginning in the reign of Fat′h-Ali, the Islamic aspect of the monarchy was de-emphasized. This shift affected the symbolism of the emblem. The meaning of the symbol changed several times between the Qajar era and the 1979 revolution. The lion could be a symbol for Rostam, the legendary hero of Iranian mythology. The Sun has alternately been interpreted as symbol of motherland or Jamshid, the mythical Shah of Iran. The many historical meanings of the emblem have provided rich ground for competing symbols of Iranian identity. In the 20th century, some politicians and scholars suggested that the emblem should be replaced by other symbols such as the Derafsh Kaviani. However, the emblem remained the official symbol of Iran until the 1979 revolution, when the "Lion and Sun" symbol was removed from public spaces and government organizations, and replaced by the present-day emblem of the Islamic Republic of Iran. ## Origin The lion and sun motif is based largely on astronomical and astrological configurations, and the ancient zodiacal sign of the sun in the house of Leo. This symbol, which combines "ancient Iranian, Arab, Turkic and Mongol traditions", first became a popular symbol in the 12th century. According to Afsaneh Najmabadi, the lion and sun motif has had "a unique success" among icons for signifying the modern Iranian identity, in that the symbol is influenced by all significant historical cultures of Iran and brings together Zoroastrian, Shia, Jewish, Turkic and Iranian symbolism. ### Zodiacal and Semitic roots According to Krappe, the astrological combination of the sun above a lion has become the coat of arms of Iran. In Islamic astrology the zodiacal Lion was the 'house' of the sun. This notion has "unquestionably" an ancient Mesopotamian origin. Since ancient times there was a close connection between the sun gods and the lion in the lore of the zodiac. It is known that, the sun, at its maximum strength between July 20 and August 20 was in the 'house' of the Lion. Krappe reviews the ancient Near Eastern tradition and how sun gods and divinities were closely connected to each other, and concludes that "the Persian solar lion, to this day the coat-of-arms of Iran, is evidently derived from the same ancient [Near Eastern] sun god". As an example, he notes that in Syria the lion was the symbol of the sun. In Canaan, a lion slayer hero was the son of Baa'l (i.e. Lord) Shamash, the great Semitic god of the sun. This lion slayer was originally a lion. Another example is the great Semitic solar divinity Shamash, who could be portrayed as a lion. The same symbolism is observed in Ancient Egypt where in the temple of Dendera, Ahi the Great is called "the Lion of the Sun, and the lion who rises in the northern sky, the brilliant god who bears the sun". According to Kindermann the Iranian Imperial coat of arms had its predecessor in numismatics, which itself is based largely on astronomical and astrological configurations. The constellation of Leo contains 27 stars and eight shapeless ones. Leo is "a fiction of grammarians ignorant of the skies, which owes its existence to false interpretations and arbitrary changes of the older star-names." It is impossible to determine exactly what was the origin of such interpretation from stars. The Babylonians observed a heavenly hierarchy of kings in the zodiacal sign of Leo. They put the lion, as the king of their animal kingdom, into the place in the zodiac in which the summer solstice occurs. In the Babylonian zodiac, it became the symbol of the victory of the sun. Just as Jesus is called the Lion of Judah, and in Islamic traditions Ali Ibn Abu Talib is called the "Lion of God" (Asadullah) by Shiite Muslims, Hamzah, the uncle of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, was also called Lion of God. ### Iranian background The male sun had always been associated with Iranian royalty: Iranian tradition recalls that Kayanids had a golden sun as their emblem. From the Greek historians of classical antiquity it is known that a crystal image of the sun adorned the royal tent of Darius III, that the Arsacid banner was adorned with the sun, and that the Sassanid standards had a red ball symbolizing the sun. The Byzantine chronicler Malalas records that the salutation of a letter from the "Persian king, the Sun of the East," was addressed to the "Roman Caesar, the Moon of the West". The Turanian king Afrasiab is recalled as saying: "I have heard from wise men that when the Moon of the Turan rises up it will be harmed by the Sun of the Iranians." The sun was always imagined as male, and in some banners a figure of a male replaces the symbol of the sun. In others, a male figure accompanies the sun. Similarly, the lion too has always had a close association with Iranian kingship. The garments and throne decorations of the Achaemenid kings were embroidered with lion motifs. The crown of the half-Persian Seleucid king Antiochus I was adorned with a lion. In the investiture inscription of Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam, the breast armour of the king is decorated with lions. Further, in some Iranian dialects the word for king (shah) is pronounced as sher, homonymous with the word for lion. Islamic, Turkish, and Mongol influences also stressed the symbolic association of the lion and royalty. The earliest evidence for the use of a lion on a standard comes from the Shahnameh, which noted that the feudal house of Godarz (presumably a family of Parthian or Sassanid times) adopted a golden lion for its devices. ### Islamic, Turkic, Mongolic roots Islamic, Turkic, and Mongol traditions stressed the symbolic association of the lion and royalty in the lion and sun motif. These cultures reaffirmed the charismatic power of the sun and the Mongols re-introduced the veneration of the sun, especially the sunrise. The lion is probably represented more frequently and diversely than any other animal. In most forms, the lion has no apotropaic meaning and was merely decorative. However, it sometimes has an astrological or symbolic meaning. One of the popular forms of the lion is explicitly heraldic form, including in the Persian coat of arms (the lion and sun); the animal in the coat of arms of the Mamluk Baybars and perhaps also in that of the Rum Saldjukids of the name of Kilidi Arslan; and in numismatic representations. ## History ### Iranian and Turkic dynasties Ahmad Kasravi, Mojtaba Minovi and Saeed Nafisi's vast amount of literary and archaeological evidence show that the ancient zodiacal sign of the sun in the house of Leo become a popular emblematic figure in the 12th century. (cf. Zodiacal origin, above) Fuat Köprülü suggests that the lion and sun on the Turkic and Mongolic flags and coins of these times are merely astrological signs and do not exemplify royalty. The lion and sun symbol first appears in the 13th century, most notably on the coinage of Kaykhusraw II, who was Sultan of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm from 1237 to 1246. These were "probably to exemplify the ruler's power." The notion that "the sun [of the symbol] symbolized the Georgian wife of the king, is a myth, for on one issue 'the sun rests on the back of two lions rampant with their tails interlaced' [...] and on some issues the sun appears as a male bust." Other chief occurrences of 12th- to 14th-century usage include: an early 13th-century luster tile now in the Louvre; a c. 1330 Mamluk steel mirror from Syria or Egypt; on a ruined 12th- to 14th-century Arkhunid bridge near Baghdad; on some Ilkhanid coins; and on a 12th- or 13th-century bronze ewer now in the Golestan palace museum. In the latter, a rayed nimbus enclosing three female faces rests on a lion whose tail ends in a winged monster. The use of the lion and sun symbol in a flag is first attested in a miniature painting illustrating a copy of Shahnameh Shams al-Din Kashani, an epic on Mongol conquest, dated 1423. The painting depicts several (Mongul?) horsemen approaching the walled city of Nishapur. One of the horsemen carries a banner that bears a lion passant with a rising sun on its back. The pole is tipped with a crescent moon. By the time of the Safavids (1501–1722), and the subsequent unification of Iran as a single state, the lion and sun had become a familiar sign, appearing on copper coins, on banners, and on works of art. The Lion and Sun motif was also used on banners of the Mughals of India, notably those of Shah Jahan. ### Safavid dynasty In Safavid times, the lion and sun stood for two pillars of the society, state and religion. It is clear that, although various alams and banners were employed by the Safavids during their rule, especially the earlier Safavid kings, by the time of Shah Abbas, the lion and sun symbol had become one of the most popular emblems of Persia. According to Najmabadi, the Safavid interpretation of this symbol was based on a combination of mytho-histories and tales such as the Shahnameh, stories of Prophets, and other Islamic sources. For the Safavids, the Shah had two roles: king and holy man. This double meaning was associated with the genealogy of Iranian kings. Two males were key people in this paternity: Jamshid (mythical founder of an ancient Persian kingdom), and Ali (Shi'te first Imam). Jamshid was affiliated with the sun and Ali was affiliated with the lion (Zul-faqar). Shahbazi suggest that the association may originally have been based on a learned interpretation of the Shahnameh's references to 'the Sun of Iran' and 'the Moon of the Turanians. (cf: the "Roman"—i.e., Byzantine—king as the "Moon of the West" in the Iranian background section). Since Ottoman sultans, the new sovereigns of 'Rûm', had adopted the moon crescent as their dynastic and ultimately national emblem, the Safavids of Persia, needed to have a their own dynastic and national emblem. Therefore, Safavids chose the lion and sun motif. Besides, the Jamshid, the sun had two other important meanings for the Safavids. The sense of time was organized around the solar system which was distinct from the Arab-Islamic lunar system. Astrological meaning and the sense of cosmos was mediated through that. Through the zodiac the sun was linked to Leo which was the most auspicious house of the sun. Therefore, for the Safavids, the sign of lion and sun condensed the double meaning of the Shah—king and holy man (Jamshid and Ali)—through the auspicious zodiac sign of the sun in the house of Leo and brought the cosmic-earthy pair (king and Imam) together. In seeking the Safavi interpretation of the lion and sun motif, Shahbazi suggests that the Safavids had reinterpreted the lion as symbolizing Imam ʿAlī and the sun as typifying the "glory of religion", a substitute for the ancient farr-e dīn. They reintroduced the ancient concept of God-given Glory (farr), reinterpreted as "light" in Islamic Iran, and the Prophet and Ali "had been credited with the possession of a divine light of lights (nūr al-anwār) of leadership, which was represented as a blazing halo." They attributed such qualities to Ali and sought the king's genealogy through the Shia Fourth Imam's mother to the royal Sassanian house. ### Afsharids and Zand dynasties The royal seal of Nader Shah in 1746 was the lion and sun motif. In this seal, the sun bears the word Al-Molkollah (Arabic: The earth of God). Two swords of Karim Khan Zand have gold-inlaid inscriptions which refer to the: "... celestial lion ... pointing to the astrological relationship to the Zodiac sign of Leo ..." Another record of this motif is the Lion and Sun symbol on a tombstone of a Zand soldier. ### Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties #### Islamic-Iranian Interpretation The earliest known Qajar lion and sun symbol is on the coinage of Aqa Mohammad Shah Qajar, minted in 1796 on the occasion of Shah's coronation. The coin bears the name of the new king underneath the sun and Ali (the first Shi'ite Imam) underneath the lion's belly. Both names are invoked and this coin suggest that this motif still stands for the king (sun) and religion (lion), "Iranization and Imamification of sovereignty". In the Qajar period the emblem can be found on Jewish marriage certificates (ketubas) and Shi'ite mourning of muharram banners. #### Nationalistic interpretation During the reign of the second Qajar shah, Fat′h Ali Shah Qajar, we observe the beginning of a shift in political culture from the Safavi concept of rule. The Islamic component of the ruler was de-emphasized, if not completely abounded. This shift coincides with the first archaeological surveys of Europeans in Iran and the re-introduction of the past pre-Islamic history of Iran to Iranians. Fat'h Ali Shah tried to affiliate his sovereignty with the glorious years of pre-Islamic Iran. Literary evidence and documents from his time suggest that the sun in the lion and sun motif was the symbol of the king and a metaphor of Jamshid. Referring to Rostam, the mythical hero of Iran in Shahnameh, and the fact that lion was the symbol of Rostam, the lion received a nationalistic interpretation. The lion was the symbol of heroes of Iran who are ready to protect the country against enemies. Fat'h Ali Shah addresses the meanings of the signs in two of his poems: > > Fat'h Ali shah, the Turki Shah, the universe-enlightening Jamshid The Lord of the country Iran, the universe-adoring sun Also: > > Iran, the gorg of lions, sun the Shah of Iran It's for this that the lion-and-sun is marked on the banner of Darius It was also during this time that he had the Sun Throne, the imperial throne of Persia, constructed. In the 19th century, European visitors at the Qajar court attributed the lion and sun to remote antiquity, which prompted Mohammad Shah Qajar to give it a "nationalistic interpretation." In a decree published in 1846, it is stated that "For each sovereign state an emblem is established, and for the august state of Persia, too, the Order of Lion and Sun has been in use, an ensign which is nearly three thousand years old—indeed dating from before the age of Zoroaster. And the reason for its currency may have been as follows. In the religion of Zoroaster, the sun is considered the revealer of all things and nourisher of the universe [...], hence, they venerated it". This is followed by an astrological rationale for having selecting the "selected the sun in the house of Leo as the emblem of the august state of Persia." The decree then claims that use of Order of the Lion and Sun had existed in pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran until the worship of the sun was abolished by Muslims. Piemontese suggests that in this decree, "native political considerations and anachronistic historical facts are mixed with curious astrological arguments" At the time, the lion and sun symbol stood the state, the monarchy, and the nation of Iran, associated all with a pre-Islamic history. #### Order of the Lion and the Sun The Imperial Order of the Lion and the Sun was instituted by Fat’h Ali Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1808 to honour foreign officials (later extended to Persians) who had rendered distinguished services to Persia. #### Substantial changes in the motif Another change under the second and third Qajar king was the Africanization of the motif. At this time, the lion was an African lion which had a longer mane and bigger body compared to the Persian lion. Yahya Zoka suggests that this modification was influenced by contact with Europeans. According to Shahbazi. the Zu'l-faqar and the lion decorated the Iranian flags at the time. It seems that towards the end of Fath' Ali Shah's reign the two logos were combined and the lion representing Ali was given Ali's saber, Zu'l-faqar. According to Najmabadi, occasionally we come across the lion and sun with a sword in the lion's paw and with a crown during this period. The Mohammad Shah's decree in 1836 states that the lion must erectly stand, bear a saber ("to make it explicitly stands for the military prowess of the state"). The crown was also added as a symbol of royalty rather than for any particular Qajar monarch. The decree states that the emblem is at once the national, royal, and the state emblem of Iran. In this period the lion was depicted as more masculine and the sun was female. Before this time the sun could be male or female and the lion was represented as a swordless, friendly and subdued seated animal. The crown over the lion and sun configuration consolidated the association of the symbol with the monarchy. The sun lost its importance as the icon of kingship and the Kiani Crown became the primary symbol of the Qajar monarchy. Under Nasir al-Din Shah, logos varied from seated, swordless lions to standing and sword-bearing lions. In February 1873, the decree for Order of Aftab (Nishan-i Afab) was issued by Nasi-al Din Shah. #### After the Constitutional Revolution In the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of 1906, the lion and sun motif in the flag of Iran was described as a passant lion that holds a saber in its paw and with the sun in its background. A decree dated September 4, 1910 specified the exact details of the logo, including the lion's tail ("like an italic S"), the position and the size of the lion, his paw, the sword, and the sun. Najmabadi observes a parallel symbolism on wall hangings produced between the lion/sun and Reza Khan/motherland, after Reza Khan's successful coup. The coy sun is protected by the lion and Rezakhan is the hero who should protect the motherland. Under Reza Shah the sun's female facial features were removed and the sun was portrayed more realistically and merely with rays. In the military contexts the Pahlavi crown was added to the motif. The Pahlavis adopted the lion and sun emblem from Qajars, but they replaced the Qajar Crown with the Pahlavi Crown. Pahlavis reintroduced the Persian symbolism to the motif. As is discussed in Persian traditions, the lion had been the symbol of kingship and symbol of Rustam's heroism in Shahnameh. The many historical meanings of the emblem, while provide a solid ground for its power as the national emblem of Iran, have also provided the rich ground for competing symbols of Iranian identity. One important campaign to abolish the emblem was initiated by Mojtaba Minuvi in 1929. In a report prepared at the request of the Iranian embassy in London, he insisted that the lion and sun is Turkic in origin. He recommended that the government replaces it with Derafsh-e-Kaviani: "One cannot attributed a national historical story to the lion-and-sun emblem, for it has no connection to ancient pre-Islamic history, there is no evidence that Iranians designed or created it.... We might as well get rid of this remnant of the Turkish people and adopt the flag that symbolizes our mythical grandeur, that is Derafsh-e-Kaviani". His suggestion was ignored. The symbol was challenged during World War I, while Hasan Taqizadeh was publishing the Derafsh-e-Kaviani newspaper in Berlin. In his newspaper, he argued that the lion and sun is neither Iranian in origin nor very ancient as people assume. He insisted that the lion and sun should be replaced by the more Iranian symbol of Derafsh-e-Kaviani. ### After the 1979 revolution The Lion and Sun remained the official emblem of Iran until after the 1979 revolution, when the Lion and Sun symbol was—by decree—removed from public spaces and government organizations and replaced by the present-day Emblem of Iran. For the Islamic revolution, the lion and sun symbol allegedly resembled the "oppressive Westernizing monarchy" that had to be replaced, despite the fact the symbol had old Shi'a meanings and the lion was associated with Ali. In the present day, the lion and the sun emblem is still used by a segment of the Iranian community in exile as the symbol of opposition to the Islamic Republic. Several exiled opposition groups, including the monarchists, and People's Mojahedin continue to use the lion and sun emblem. In Los Angeles and cities with large Iranian communities the lion and sun emblem is largely used on mugs, Iranian flags, and souvenirs to an extent that far surpasses its display during the years of monarchy in the homeland. ## International recognition The Lion and Sun is an officially recognized but currently unused emblem of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The Red Lion and Sun Society of Iran (جمعیت شیر و خورشید سرخ ایران) was admitted to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 1929. On September 4, 1980, the newly proclaimed Islamic Republic of Iran replaced the Red Lion and Sun with the Red Crescent, consistent with most other Muslim nations. Though the Red Lion and Sun has now fallen into disuse, Iran has in the past reserved the right to take it up again at any time; the Geneva Conventions continue to recognize it as an official emblem, and that status was confirmed by Protocol III in 2005 even as it added the Red Crystal. ## In literature - Anton Chekhov has a short story titled "The Lion and the Sun". The story is about a mayor who had "long been desirous of receiving the Persian order of The Lion and the Sun". ## Gallery ### Iranian variations ### Other (non-Iranian) variants ## See also - Emblem of Iran - Flags of Iran - Order of Aftab or the Order of Sun. - Order of the Lion and the Sun - Occurrence of the lion in historical Iran - Persian Relief Committee ## General references

Monmouth Rebellion

1685 English rebellion against James II

The Monmouth Rebellion, also known as the Pitchfork Rebellion, the Revolt of the West or the West Country rebellion, was an attempt to depose James II, who in February 1685 succeeded his brother Charles II as king of England, Scotland and Ireland. A group of dissident Protestants led by James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, opposed James largely due to his Catholicism. The failure of Parliamentary efforts to exclude James from the succession in 1681 resulted in the 1683 Rye House Plot to assassinate Charles II and James; although Monmouth was then in exile in the Dutch Republic, he was identified as a co-conspirator. His rebellion was coordinated with a simultaneous rising in Scotland, led by Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll. On 11 June 1685, Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis in South West England where he had widespread popular support, planning to take control of the area and march on London. In the next few weeks, his growing army of nonconformists, artisans and farm workers fought a series of skirmishes with local militias and regular soldiers commanded by Louis de Duras, 2nd Earl of Feversham, and John Churchill. However, his recruits were unable to compete with the regular army and failed to capture the city of Bristol. The rebellion ended with his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685 by a government army commanded by Feversham and Churchill. Monmouth was beheaded for treason on 15 July 1685. Many of his supporters were tried during the Bloody Assizes, led by Judge Jeffreys, and were condemned to death or transportation. James II consolidated his power and reigned until 1688, when he was deposed by another nephew, William III of Orange, in the Glorious Revolution. ## Duke of Monmouth Monmouth was an illegitimate son of Charles II. There had been rumours that Charles had married Monmouth's mother, Lucy Walter, but no evidence was forthcoming, and Charles always said that he only had one wife, Catherine of Braganza. Monmouth had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the English Army by his father in 1672 and Captain general in 1678, enjoying some successes in the Netherlands in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, as commander of a British brigade in the French army. ## Context The English Civil War had left resentment among some of the population about the monarchy and the penalties which had been imposed on the supporters of the Commonwealth. The South West of England contained several towns where opposition remained strong. Fears of a potential Catholic monarch persisted, intensified by the failure of Charles II and his wife to produce any children. A defrocked Anglican clergyman, Titus Oates, spoke of a "Popish Plot" to kill Charles and to put the Duke of York on the throne. The Earl of Shaftesbury, a former government minister and a leading opponent of Catholicism, attempted to have James excluded from the line of succession. Some members of Parliament even proposed that the crown go to Charles's illegitimate son, James Scott, who became the Duke of Monmouth. In 1679, with the Exclusion Bill - which would exclude the King's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the line of succession - in danger of passing, Charles II dissolved Parliament. Two further Parliaments were elected in 1680 and 1681, but were dissolved for the same reason. After the Rye House Plot of 1683, an attempt to assassinate both Charles and James, Monmouth went into self-imposed exile in the Netherlands, and gathered supporters in The Hague. Monmouth was a Protestant and had toured the South West of England in 1680, where he had been greeted amicably by crowds in towns such as Chard and Taunton. So long as Charles II remained on the throne, Monmouth was content to live a life of pleasure in Holland, while still hoping to accede peaceably to the throne. The accession of James II and coronation at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1685 put an end to these hopes. ## Plan The Monmouth rebellion was planned in Holland and coordinated with another rebellion in Scotland led by Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll. Several areas of England were considered as potential locations for rebellion, including Cheshire and Lancashire along with the South West, as these were seen as having the highest number of opponents of the monarchy. Argyll and Monmouth both began their expeditions from Holland, where James's nephew and son-in-law, stadtholder William III of Orange, had not detained them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts. Argyll sailed to Scotland and, on arriving there, raised recruits mainly from his own clan, the Campbells, as part of the Scottish revolt. He had previously been involved in the Rye House Plot of 1683. Another important member of the rebellion was Robert Ferguson, a radical Scottish Presbyterian minister. He was also known as "the plotter". It was Ferguson who drew up Monmouth's proclamation, and he who was most in favour of Monmouth being crowned King. Thomas Hayward Dare was a goldsmith from Taunton and a Whig politician, a man of considerable wealth and influence who had been jailed during a political campaign calling for a new parliament. He was also fined the huge sum of £5,000 for uttering "seditious" words. After his release from jail, he fled to Holland and became the paymaster general to the Rebellion. To raise the funds for ships and weaponry, Monmouth pawned many of his belongings. His wife Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch, and her mother also pawned their jewellery to hire the Dutch warship Helderenberg. Ann Smith, wealthy widow of a London sugar-baker, gave him £1,000. ## From Lyme Regis to Sedgemoor On 30 May 1685 Monmouth set sail for South West England, a strongly Protestant region, with three small ships, four light field guns, and 1500 muskets. He landed on 11 June with 82 supporters, including Lord Grey of Warke, Nathaniel Wade, and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun. They gathered about 300 men on the first day at Lyme Regis in Dorset, where a long statement prepared by Ferguson denounced the king. King James had previously received intelligence about the impending plot, and the ships leaving Holland, ten days before. He was warned of Monmouth's arrival soon after the first landing. The mayor of the town, Gregory Alford, informed the local militia regiments while Samuel Damsell and another customs officer rode from Lyme to London, arriving on 13 June, having ridden 200 miles (322 km). To face Monmouth's rebels, John Churchill was given command of the regular foot in the King's army, and the honour of leading the campaign passed to the Huguenot Earl of Feversham. It would take a few days to assemble the army and travel from London to the west country, therefore initial defence was left to local militias. Over the next couple of days volunteers arrived in Lyme offering to serve under Monmouth. By 15 June he had a force in excess of 1,000 men. On 13 June he lost two of his leading supporters when Dare and Fletcher disputed who should ride one of the best horses provided by local supporters. Fletcher shot and killed Dare and was then put under arrest and sent back to the frigate Helderenberg. The next day, 40 cavalry and 400 foot soldiers, under the command of Lord Grey and Wade, moved on to the nearby town of Bridport, where they encountered 1,200 men from the local royalist Dorset militia. The skirmish ended in a Royalist victory, with the retreat of Grey and the cavalry followed by Wade with the foot soldiers. Many of the militiamen deserted and joined Monmouth's army. Following this confrontation, Lord Albemarle led a royalist force from Exeter towards the forces of the Duke of Somerset, who were approaching Lyme Regis from the opposite direction. Monmouth learned of the approach of royalist reinforcements and departed, but instead of marching to London, he headed north with his force towards the county of Somerset. On 15 June he fought with the militia at Axminster, taking the town before the militias could join up. More recruits joined his disorganised force, which was now around 6,000, consisting mostly of nonconformists, artisans, and farm workers armed with farm tools (such as pitchforks). One famous supporter was the young Daniel Defoe. Monmouth again denounced the king in Chard and was the subject of a coronation in Taunton on 20 June 1685, against the wishes of some of his republican supporters such as Wade. The Taunton Corporation was forced to witness the event at sword point outside the White Hart Inn, to encourage the support of the country gentry. In Taunton, Monmouth was joined by many new supporters and formed a new regiment of 800 men. The king's force of Dragoons under Churchill continued to close on Monmouth, arriving in Chard on 19 June. With the assistance of the local militias they attempted to stop new recruits arriving in Taunton to join Monmouth. Feversham meanwhile moved with his forces into Bristol, on the assumption that this would be Monmouth's next target, and took overall charge of the campaign. Monmouth and his growing force then continued north to Bridgwater, where he took up residence at Bridgwater Castle on 21 June, Glastonbury (22 June) and on to Shepton Mallet, arriving on 23 June in worsening weather. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy captured Monmouth's ships, cutting off any hope of an escape back to the continent. The Royalist forces of Churchill, who was now in Chard, and of Feversham, in Bristol, also received reinforcements who had marched from London. On 24 June, Monmouth's army encamped at Pensford, and a small force skirmished with the Gloucester Militia to take control of Keynsham, a vital crossing point over the River Avon. He made Keynsham Abbey his headquarters there. Monmouth intended to attack the city of Bristol, after London the largest and most important city in England at that time, However, he heard the city had been occupied by Henry Somerset, 1st Duke of Beaufort. There were inconclusive skirmishes with a force of Life Guards commanded by Feversham. These attacks gave the impression that there was a much larger royalist force in the vicinity than there actually was. Several historians have speculated that if Monmouth had marched as quickly as possible for Bristol at this point, when it was only protected by the Gloucestershire militia, he would probably have been able to take the city and the outcome of the rebellion might have been very different. Once Bristol had been taken, more recruits would have been attracted to the Rebellion and a later march on London would have been possible. On 26 June, Monmouth moved towards Bath and, arriving on the south side of it, found it had also been occupied by royalist troops. He camped for the night in Philips Norton (now Norton St Philip), where his forces were attacked on the morning of 27 June by the leading elements of Feversham's forces, which had now combined into a larger force, but were still awaiting their artillery. Monmouth's half-brother Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, led some cavalry, dragoons, and 500 musketeers into the village, where they were surrounded by the rebels and had to hack through hedges to escape. They were rescued by Churchill and withdrew with approximately twenty casualties on each side; however, each side believed that the other had taken greater losses. Monmouth then marched overnight to Frome, arriving on 28 June. The morale of Monmouth's forces started to collapse as news of the failure of the rebellion in Scotland arrived that day, while the makeshift army was camped in Frome. Argyll's small force had been involved in minor skirmishes at Greenock and Ellangreig. He took Ardkinglass castle, but after disagreements with key supporters about when and where to fight the royalists commanded by Rosse and William Cleland, his supporters dwindled away and the Scottish rebellion failed. The rebels planned to go next to Warminster, where there were many nonconformist wool workers, but on 27 June the Wiltshire Militia had marched from Bath to Trowbridge, and on 29 June entered Westbury. Hearing that an army supporting him had gathered near Bridgwater, Monmouth turned back through Shepton Mallet and arrived in Wells on 1 July. His men damaged the Bishop's Palace and the west front of Wells Cathedral, tearing lead from the roof to make bullets, breaking the windows, smashing the organ and the furnishings, and for a time stabling their horses in the nave. Feversham aimed to contain the rebels in the South West until the rest of his forces, including three battalions of British mercenaries sent by William III of Orange from Holland arrived. In the light of propaganda suggesting the rebels had an army of 40,000 and that 500 royalist troops had been lost at Norton St Philip, Feversham was ordered to engage Monmouth's forces. On 30 June the final parts of Feversham's army, including his artillery, arrived and eventually Monmouth was pushed back via Shepton Mallet to the Somerset Levels, where Alfred the Great had found refuge in his conflicts with the Vikings. Becoming hemmed in at Bridgwater on 3 July, he ordered his troops to fortify the town. ## Battle of Sedgemoor Monmouth was finally defeated by Feversham with John Churchill, his second in command, on 6 July at the Battle of Sedgemoor. Once Monmouth's force had entered and started to fortify Bridgwater, he sent some of his cavalry to collect six cannon from Minehead. He planned to stay in Bridgwater until they returned and then break out and head for Bristol. Feversham and his army of 500 horse and 1,500 militiamen camped on the edge of Sedgemoor at the village of Westonzoyland. Monmouth could view them from the tower of Church of St Mary and may have inspected them more closely from the Church of St Mary in Chedzoy, before deciding to attack them. The Duke eventually led his untrained and ill-equipped troops out of Bridgwater at around 10:00 pm to undertake a night-time attack on the King's army. They were guided by Richard Godfrey, the servant of a local farmer, along the old Bristol road towards Bawdrip. With their limited cavalry in the vanguard, they turned south along Bradney Lane and Marsh Lane and came to the open moor with its deep and dangerous rhynes (drainage ditches). There was a delay while the rhyne was crossed and the first men across startled a royalist patrol. A shot was fired and a horseman from the patrol galloped off to report to Feversham. Lord Grey of Warke led the rebel cavalry forward and they were engaged by the King's Regiment of Horse which alerted the rest of the royalist forces. The superior training of the regular army and their horses routed the rebel forces by outflanking them. His untrained supporters were quickly defeated by the professionals, and hundreds were cut down by cannon- and musket-fire. The death count on the rebel side has variously been given as between 727 and 2,700, with royalist losses of 27 who were buried in the churchyard of the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Westonzoyland, which was used as a prison for rebel soldiers. ## After Sedgemoor Monmouth fled from the field of battle, but was captured in a ditch on 8 July (either at Ringwood in the New Forest, or at Horton in Dorset). Parliament had passed an Act of Attainder, on 13 June sentencing Monmouth to death as a traitor, therefore no trial was needed before his execution. Despite begging for mercy and claims of conversion to Roman Catholicism, he was beheaded at Tower Hill by Jack Ketch on 15 July 1685. It is said that it took multiple blows of the axe to sever his head. Though some sources say it took eight blows, the official Tower of London website says it took five blows, while Charles Spencer, in his book Blenheim, claims it was seven. The Hangman in 'Punch and Judy' is named after this notorious character, Jack Ketch. The dukedoms of Monmouth and Buccleuch were forfeited, but the subsidiary titles of the dukedom of Monmouth were restored to the Duke of Buccleuch. The subsequent Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys were a series of trials of Monmouth's supporters in which 320 people were condemned to death and around 800 sentenced to be transported to the West Indies, for ten years' hard labour. James II took advantage of the suppression of the rebellion to consolidate his power. He asked Parliament to repeal the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act, used his dispensing power to appoint Roman Catholics to senior posts, and raised the strength of the standing army. Parliament opposed many of these moves, and on 20 November 1685 James dismissed it. In 1688, when the birth of James Francis Edward Stuart heralded a Catholic succession, James II was deposed by William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution at the invitation of the disaffected Protestant Establishment. ## Literary references The Monmouth Rebellion and the events surrounding it have formed the basis for several works of fiction. John Dryden's work Absalom and Achitophel is a satire partially concerned with equating biblical events with the Monmouth Rebellion. It also plays an important role in R. D. Blackmore's novel Lorna Doone. Arthur Conan Doyle's historical novel Micah Clarke deals directly with Monmouth's landing in England, the raising of his army, its defeat at Sedgemoor, and the reprisals which followed. The Monmouth Rebellion plays a key role in Peter S. Beagle's novel Tamsin, about a 300-year-old ghost who is befriended by the protagonist. Several characters in Neal Stephenson's trilogy The Baroque Cycle, particularly Quicksilver and The Confusion, play a role in the Monmouth Rebellion and its aftermath. In Lorna Doone, Richard Doddridge Blackmore's romantic novel of 1869, Farmer John Ridd rescues his brother-in-law Tom Faggus from the battlefield of Sedgemoor, but is captured as a rebel, and is brought before Judge Jefferies. Another novel, of 1889, covering the events of the Rebellion was Sir Walter Besant's For Faith and Freedom. John Masefield's 1910 novel Martin Hyde: The Duke's Messenger tells the story of a boy who plays a central part in the Monmouth Rebellion, from the meeting with Argyll in Holland to the failed rebellion itself. Dr. Peter Blood, main hero of Rafael Sabatini's 1922 novel Captain Blood, was sentenced by Judge Jeffreys for aiding wounded Monmouth rebels. Transported to the Caribbean, he started his career as a pirate there. Another of Sabatini's novels, Mistress Wilding, also takes place during this time, as the hero, Anthony Wilding, is a supporter of Monmouth. The Royal Changeling, (1998), by John Whitbourn, describes the rebellion with some fantasy elements added, from the viewpoint of Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe. The events immediately before and after the Battle of Sedgemoor, and leading up to James II's exile following The Glorious Revolution provide the setting for Robert Neill's historical novel Lilliburlero. The aftermath of the Rebellion is the setting for A.E.W. Mason's 1896 novel The Courtship of Morrice Buckler.

A Fresh Start

1910 film

A Fresh Start is a 1910 American silent short drama produced by the Thanhouser Company. The film is the story of Jim, a chauffeur, who is fired from his job for being drunk. Jim becomes a tramp, but decides to reform after a little girl orders her butler to give him food. He encounters her again at the zoo and notices that two men are following the girl and her parents. Jim uncovers a plot to kidnap her and takes the place of their chauffeur. Jim then drives the kidnappers to the police station and secures a new position as the family's chauffeur. According to a trade review, the actual kidnapping scene and where Jim overpowers the villain's chauffeur is not actually depicted. The reviewer also stated the strength of the production is not in the plot, but in the staging and photography. The film was released on September 2, 1910, and it likely had a wide national release. The film is presumed lost. ## Plot Though the film is presumed lost, a synopsis survives in The Moving Picture World from September 3, 1910. It states: "Jim, an expert chauffeur, is discharged from a garage, for insobriety. Penniless and being unable to obtain a new situation, he takes to the road, a common tramp. At one house where he applies for food, he is harshly refused, and is about to turn away and try his luck elsewhere, when little Marie, the daughter of the house, comes to his assistance and orders the butler to at once give him the food he requires. She also picks a rose for him from the garden. Jim strolls into a nearby park and sits on a bench to enjoy his lunch. He is about to take a drink from the ever-present flask, which he takes from his pocket, when the sight of the rose, which the sweet-faced little girl gave him, inspires him with a desire to reform. He throws the flask from him, and refreshed by the lunch, he starts out with a new ambition to face the world." "Little Marie also visits the park with her parents. While viewing the wonderful zoo it contains she is seen and recognized by Jim. While admiring the little girl and viewing her enjoyment over the wonders of the zoo, Jim notices that two evil-looking men are apparently shadowing the little one and her parents. Jim's suspicions are aroused, and he determines to watch closely the actions of the mysterious pair. He finds that they have arranged with a chauffeur to assist in carrying off little Marie and holding her for ransom. Seizing an opportune moment, Jim forces the plotting chauffeur to turn over his auto, and disguised in the other man's coat, cap and goggles, he calmly awaits the conspirators. When the two wicked men return, after having successful enticed Marie away from her parents, they give the driver of their auto directions as to where to drive. Jim simply nods assent and drives quickly off, but instead of taking them to the destination they directed, he lands them safe at the police station, where they are quickly taken into custody. Here Marie is united to her parents, whom she easily persuades to offer her rescuer a life position." ## Production The writer of the scenario is unknown, but it was most likely Lloyd Lonergan. He was an experienced newspaperman employed by The New York Evening World while writing scripts for the Thanhouser productions. The film director is unknown, but it may have been Barry O'Neil. Film historian Q. David Bowers does not attribute a cameraman for this production, but at least two possible candidates exist. Blair Smith was the first cameraman of the Thanhouser company, but he was soon joined by Carl Louis Gregory who had years of experience as a still and motion picture photographer. The role of the cameraman was uncredited in 1910 productions. Only the role of Marie Eline is cited by Bowers, but a surviving film still raises the possibility of identifying several more actors in the production. Bowers states that most of the credits are fragmentary for 1910 Thanhouser productions. Little is known on the actual production of the film, but The New York Dramatic Mirror reviewer provided some insight into the production. The review and the synopsis are at odds on several aspects including on whether or not the man was fired for drunkenness or for no reason. In this case, it can be assumed that a drunken state was either not depicted or done inadequately. The reviewer states the "impossible parts of the plot are gracefully omitted" in reference to the abduction of the little girl played by Marie Eline and the overpowering of the chauffeur. Here the synopsis also differs, saying the girl is enticed away instead of being kidnapped. Though the overpowering of the chauffeur is required and acknowledged in the synopsis, the reviewer makes clear the actual method is not depicted. The reviewer also had a keen eye for detail, stating that the passengers disembarked into the middle of the street instead of on the sidewalk. The final scene's setting is captured in a surviving film still that shows the little girl persuading her parents to hire Jim in the police station with three officers looking on in the background. ## Release and reception The single reel drama, approximately 1,000 feet long, was released on September 2, 1910. The film was distributed by the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company. The film likely had a wide release like other Thanhouser releases. Known advertisements by theaters include those in Minnesota, Kansas, and Indiana. The film received mainly positive reviews from trade publications including The New York Dramatic Mirror which stated, "Although the story of the film does not promise a great deal, the scenes are developed with enough care for details to carry it easily. More is due to the stage management in this case than to the author. A chauffeur, dismissed for no reason by his employer, is down and out. Resorting to beggary, he is kindly treated by a little girl whom he later repays by rescuing her from two abductors. The grateful parents immediately give him a new chance at which he doubtless makes good. Except for the point where the beggar overhears the accomplices, the acting is good. The impossible parts of the plot are gracefully omitted - the abduction itself, and the overpowering of the chauffeur who was in the plot. In the last scene it is noted that the occupants of the automobile all disembark into the middle of the street instead of upon the sidewalk. Doubtless their excitement excuses their indiscretion." This review serves to highlight the actual action of the lost film and some of the execution of the scenes. The reviewer states that the chauffeur is dismissed for no reason, whereas the synopsis for drunkenness and it is possible that the scene was not depicted. Walton of The Moving Picture News approved of the film for its plot and execution. The Moving Picture World review is a more neutral one, but it concludes that, "[p]ictures like this might serve as an encouragement to reformation, but it is better to consider them as a species of entertainment, not to be despised, and yet, on the other hand, not to be accepted too literally." ## See also - List of American films of 1910

SMS Prinz Heinrich

Armored cruiser of the German Imperial Navy

SMS Prinz Heinrich was a unique German armored cruiser built at the turn of the 20th century for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), named after Kaiser Wilhelm II's younger brother Prince Heinrich. The second vessel of that type built in Germany, Prinz Heinrich was constructed at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Kiel, being laid down in December 1898, launched in March 1900, and commissioned in March 1902. Prinz Heinrich's design was a modification of the previous armored cruiser, Fürst Bismarck, and traded a smaller main battery and thinner armor for higher speed. All subsequent German armored cruisers were incremental developments of Prinz Heinrich. Prinz Heinrich served with the German fleet in home waters for just four years, from 1902 to 1906, when she was withdrawn from front-line service. During this period, she served as the flagship of the fleet's scouting forces, and she was primarily occupied with fleet training. The ship was out of service from early 1906 to mid-1908, when she was reactivated for use as a gunnery training ship, a role she filled until late 1912. Prinz Heinrich underwent modernization and conversion into a dedicated training ship in 1914, and the work was completed just before the outbreak of World War I in July that year. After the outbreak of war, the ship was reactivated for active service, initially with III Scouting Group with the High Seas Fleet. Prinz Heinrich was used for coastal defense in the North Sea and she participated in the fleet sortie that supported the Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in December 1914. After the naval command determined that Prinz Heinrich was too old to serve in the North Sea against the powerful British Royal Navy, she was transferred to the Baltic Sea in early 1915. She supported offensive minelaying operations and patrolled the central Baltic for Russian forces, but never encountered hostile forces. She provided gunfire support during the attack on Libau in May 1915 and shelled Russian positions during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August. In the face of severe crew shortages in late 1915, Prinz Heinrich had her crew reduced and was ultimately decommissioned and disarmed in March 1916. She thereafter served in a variety of secondary roles for the rest of the war, before being broken up in 1920. ## Design Prinz Heinrich, the second armored cruiser built in Germany, was authorized under the 1898 Naval Law, the first naval construction program begun under the direction of Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Naval Office). The design for Prinz Heinrich was prepared in the late 1890s while construction of the first vessel, Fürst Bismarck, was still underway. Some older naval historians, including Hugh Lyon and John Taylor, writing in 1979 and 1969, respectively, have stated that Prinz Heinrich was intended for overseas service, but Aidan Dodson points out that the ship's hull was not sheathed with wood and copper or zinc layers, which would have been necessary for any ship deployed overseas where shipyard facilities would not be readily available. Dodson also noted that the ship never actually went abroad on an extended deployment. The design staff based the new vessel on the basic design of Fürst Bismarck, but for budgetary reasons the new ship's size was reduced by about 1,500 metric tons (1,500 long tons). Weight reduction was achieved in part by thinning the ship's armor layout, though advances in steel technology meant this was not actually a compromise and her armor layout was in fact significantly more effective than Fürst Bismarck's. Krupp had recently developed cemented armor plate, which was considerably stronger than earlier Harvey armor, so less of it could be used to achieve the same level of protection. In addition, the belt could be made taller, extending up to the main deck level, which protected more of the ship's interior. The ship's deck armor sloped down on the sides, where it was connected to the lower edge of the belt, which considerably strengthened the protection system by providing another layer of armor that would need to be penetrated before the ship's vitals could be damaged. The armament was also significantly reduced to save weight and cost, from four heavy guns in two twin-gun turrets to two guns, each in single turrets; she also received two fewer secondary guns compared to Fürst Bismarck. But rather than spreading the secondary battery along the length of the hull in casemates and sponsons, they were concentrated in a battery amidships, which reduced the amount of the hull that needed to be protected with armor, further saving weight and allowing thicker armor to be concentrated in the battery. Further weight savings were achieved by adopting a smaller superstructure and discarding heavy military masts in favor of lighter pole masts. Her engines, however, were some 2,000 metric horsepower (2,000 ihp) more powerful, which produced a faster vessel. The ship proved to be an influential design, and all subsequent German armored cruisers were developments of Prinz Heinrich. In fact, the armor layout pioneered in Prinz Heinrich provided the basis of all German capital ships designed over the next forty years, including the final battleships of the Bismarck and H-classes. Nevertheless, she was not without critics; Vizeadmiral (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Albert Hopman referred to the ship as "cheap, but bad" in his memoirs Logbuch eines Seeoffiziers (Log of a Sea Officer). The naval historians Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, and Hans-Otto Steinmetz regard Hopman's criticism as an exaggeration, pointing out that Prinz Heinrich compared well to foreign contemporaries like the French Desaix, the Russian Bayan, and the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, though she was inferior to British designs. She nevertheless spent only four years in active service in peacetime before being replaced with newer, more powerful cruisers. ### Dimensions and machinery Prinz Heinrich was 124.9 meters (410 ft) long at the waterline and 126.5 m (415 ft) overall. She had a beam of 19.6 m (64 ft) and a draft of 7.65 m (25.1 ft) forward and 8.07 m (26.5 ft) aft. The ship displaced 8,887 metric tons (8,747 long tons; 9,796 short tons) as built, and 9,806 t (9,651 long tons; 10,809 short tons) at full load. The hull was constructed with transverse and longitudinal steel frames, and incorporated thirteen watertight compartments and a double bottom that extended for 57 percent of the length of the ship. The German navy considered the ship to be a good sea boat with gentle motion, though she suffered from severe roll. Her transverse metacentric height was .731 m (2 ft 4.8 in). Prinz Heinrich was crewed by 35 officers and 532 enlisted men. For the duration of her career as the second command flagship of the Cruiser Division, the standard crew was augmented by an additional nine officers and 44 enlisted men. She carried a number of smaller vessels, including two picket boats, a launch, a pinnace, two cutters, two yawls, and two dinghies. The ship was propelled by three vertical 4-cylinder triple expansion engines; the center shaft drove a four-bladed screw 4.28 m (14 ft) in diameter while the two outer shafts drove 4.65-meter (15.3 ft) wide four-bladed screws. Fourteen Dürr water-tube boilers, produced by Düsseldorf-Ratinger Röhrenkesselfabrik, supplied steam to the engines at pressures up to 15 standard atmospheres (1,500 kPa). The boilers were ducted into two funnels amidships. The propulsion system was rated at 15,000 indicated horsepower (11,000 kW) and gave the ship a top speed of 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph), though on sea trials, Prinz Heinrich's engines reached 15,694 ihp (11,703 kW) but a top speed of only 19.9 kn (36.9 km/h; 22.9 mph). She was designed to carry 900 t (890 long tons; 990 short tons) of coal, though additional storage allowed up to 1,590 t (1,560 long tons; 1,750 short tons). This enabled a maximum range of 2,290 nautical miles (4,240 km; 2,640 mi) at a speed of 18 kn (33 km/h; 21 mph) and 4,580 nmi (8,480 km; 5,270 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph). ### Armament Prinz Heinrich was armed with a variety of weapons. Her primary armament consisted of two 24 cm (9.4 in) SK L/40 quick-firing guns mounted in single turrets, one on either end of the superstructure. These guns were supplied with 75 rounds each; they could depress to −4° and elevate to 30°, which enabled a maximum range of 16,900 m (18,500 yd). The guns fired a 140 kg (310 lb) round at a muzzle velocity of 835 m (2,740 ft) per second. A secondary battery of ten 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/40 quick-firing guns rounded out her offensive armament. Six of these guns were mounted in amidships casemates on either side of the vessel, and the remaining four were mounted in turrets in the ship's hull above the casemates. These guns were supplied with 120 rounds each. The shells weighed 40 kg (88 lb) and were fired at a muzzle velocity of 800 m (2,600 ft) per second. The guns could elevate to 25° for a maximum range of 13,700 m (15,000 yd). The cruiser carried ten 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/30 quick-firing guns for defense against torpedo boats. Each of these guns was supplied with 250 shells. The shells weighed 7 kg (15 lb) and were fired at a muzzle velocity of 670 m (2,200 ft) per second. This enabled a maximum range of 7,300 m (8,000 yd) at an elevation of 20°. The ship's gun armament was rounded out by four autocannons, though these were subsequently removed. The ship was also fitted with four 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes. One was mounted on the stern in a swivel mount, one was mounted submerged in the bow, and one was placed submerged in the hull on either side abreast of the forward gun turret. ### Armor Prinz Heinrich was protected by Krupp armor. Her armor belt was 100 millimeters (3.9 in) thick in the central citadel of the ship, which protected the ammunition magazines, machinery spaces, and other vital areas of the cruiser. The belt was reduced to 80 mm (3.1 in) on either end of the main belt, and the bow and stern were unarmored. The entire length of the belt was backed by equal thicknesses of teak planks. The armored deck was 35 to 40 mm (1.4 to 1.6 in) thick and was connected to the belt by 50 mm (2 in) thick sloped armor on the broadside. The forward conning tower had 150 mm (5.9 in) thick sides and a 30 mm (1.2 in) thick roof. The aft conning tower was much less thoroughly protected; it was covered by only 12 mm (0.47 in) of steel plating. The main battery gun turrets had 150 mm-thick sides and 30 mm-thick roofs. The 15 cm gun turrets had 100 mm-thick armor, while the casemated weapons were protected by 70 mm (2.8 in) gun shields. The casemates themselves were armored with 100 mm worth of steel plating. ## Service history ### Peacetime career Prinz Heinrich was laid down on 1 December 1898 at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Kiel. She was launched on 22 March 1900, when she was christened by Princess Heinrich of Prussia; the ship's namesake, her husband Prince Heinrich of Prussia, was present at the ceremony, and the Generalinspekteur der Marine (General Inspector of the Navy), Admiral Hans von Koester, gave a speech. The ship was completed just under two years later, on 11 March 1902. She then began sea trials that lasted until June, at which point she joined the reconnaissance forces attached to I Squadron. She took part in the training activities in the squadron, including a training cruise in Norwegian waters from 8 to 20 July. In August, she escorted Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard his yacht Hohenzollern during a trip to meet Czar Nicholas II of Russia in Reval. Prinz Heinrich next took part in fleet training in August and September, where she served as the flagship of II Scouting Group, with included the light cruisers Niobe and Nymphe. After the conclusion of the maneuvers on 18 September, the pre-dreadnought battleship Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm was decommissioned for maintenance; the ship had been serving as the flagship of Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Curt von Prittwitz und Gaffron, the deputy commander of the squadron. While the ship was out of service, Prittwitz und Gaffron transferred to Prinz Heinrich, though he remained there only briefly before he was replaced by KAdm Ludwig Borckenhagen on 1 October. Prinz Heinrich and the rest of the squadron ended the year with a winter training cruise, during which she tried to pull the new battleship Wittelsbach free on 17 December after she ran aground in the Great Belt. The 1900 Naval Law created the position of Commander of Scouting Forces, and Borckenhagen became the first person to fill the role. He therefore remained aboard Prinz Heinrich, which became the flagship of the Reconnaissance Force on 1 March 1903. Prinz Heinrich, the protected cruiser Victoria Louise, and the light cruisers Amazone and Ariadne conducted training maneuvers beginning in April. On 12 April, they were joined by the light cruiser Medusa; by 2 May they had also been joined by the light cruisers Frauenlob and Niobe. The ships took part in the autumn fleet maneuvers in August and September, after which Borckenhagen was replaced by KAdm Gustav Schmidt. Prinz Heinrich participated in the fleet training activities of 1903, which included a visit to Spain from 7 May to 10 August. During the cruise, she stayed in Vigo, Spain from 20 to 30 May. After returning to Germany, the fleet then conducted its annual training exercises, which concluded on 22 September. On 25 January 1904, Prinz Heinrich went to help the Norwegian town of Ålesund in the aftermath of a fire that had caused extensive destruction. In mid-1904, the new armored cruiser Friedrich Carl joined the Reconnaissance Force. The typical autumn maneuvers took place in August and September, during which Prinz Heinrich won the Kaiser's Schiesspreis (Shooting Prize) for excellent accuracy for large cruisers. On 3 December, Schmidt transferred his flag to Friedrich Carl. The year 1905 passed without incident, following the same routine as previous years. From 11 March to 20 June, Prinz Heinrich again served as Schmidt's flagship, as Friedrich Carl was occupied with escorting Hohenzollern on a trip abroad. In early July, Prinz Heinrich experimented with a new coaling apparatus; further tests were made with it in November and February 1906. She visited Uddevalla and Södertälje in Sweden in mid-1905. She had another stint as flagship from 10 to 26 August while Friedrich Carl was in dry dock for maintenance. On 1 October, the position of Deputy Commander of Scouting Forces was created, and Prinz Heinrich's commander, Kapitän zur See (KzS—Captain at Sea) Raimund Winkler became the first to fill the role. In March 1906, the ship was removed from the reconnaissance forces, her place having been taken by Friedrich Carl, which had in turn been replaced by the new armored cruiser Yorck. By this time, Prinz Heinrich had spent just four years on active service with the fleet. Prinz Heinrich spent two years in reserve when she was reactivated on 15 May 1908 to replace the old gunnery training ship Mars. She went to Sonderburg on 22 June, where the Naval Artillery Inspectorate was located. Over the next four years, Prinz Heinrich largely remained in port where she trained gunners for the fleet until she was replaced by the armored cruiser Prinz Adalbert in October 1912. Prinz Heinrich was decommissioned again on 31 October; a year later, in November 1913, the Reichsmarineamt began exploring the possibility of converting the ship into a dedicated training vessel, and the naval command decided that it should still be possible to use the vessel as a warship in the event of an emergency. In early 1914, Prinz Heinrich went into dry dock at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel for the conversion. The arrangement of the searchlights was modified, the superstructure deck bulwark was removed, and the masts were modernized. Conversion work was completed just before the outbreak of World War I in July 1914. ### World War I Following the wave of declarations of war between the major European powers at the end of July and early August, Britain declared war on Germany on 5 August. Prinz Heinrich was reactivated for wartime service the same day, and she then went into the shipyard in Kiel for preparation work. She was then assigned to the defenses of the port in advance of an expected British attack on Kiel on 25–26 September. When that failed to materialize, Prinz Heinrich was assigned to III Scouting Group, part of the High Seas Fleet. From 8 November to 14 April 1915, Prinz Heinrich was primarily occupied with guard duty in the Jade Bay and the river Ems. During this period, she participated in the second major German offensive in the North Sea, the operation to bombard Hartlepool on 15–16 December 1914. Prinz Heinrich, along with Roon and a flotilla of torpedo boats, was assigned to the van of the High Seas Fleet, commanded by Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl. The main fleet was providing distant cover to Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers, which were conducting the bombardment. During the night of the 15th, the German battle fleet of some twelve dreadnoughts and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced von Ingenohl that he was faced with the entire Grand Fleet. Under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid risking the fleet unnecessarily, von Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battle fleet back toward Germany. After the operation, it was determined that the twelve-year-old Prinz Heinrich had no place in operations against the powerful British Grand Fleet. Accordingly, on 12 April 1915, III Scouting Group was detached from the High Seas Fleet and the ships were transferred to the Baltic Sea to operate against the Russian Baltic Fleet. On 15 April, the ships arrived in Kiel, where they came under command of then-KAdm Hopman, the commander of scouting forces in the Baltic. Hopman was then in the process of planning a major attack on Libau in conjunction with an attempt by the German Army to seize the city. The attack took place on 7 May, and consisted of Prinz Heinrich, Roon, and Prinz Adalbert, the elderly coast defense ship Beowulf, and the light cruisers Augsburg, Thetis, and Lübeck. They were escorted by a number of destroyers, torpedo boats, and minesweepers. The IV Scouting Group of the High Seas Fleet was detached from the North Sea to provide cover for the operation. The bombardment went as planned, though the destroyer V107 struck a mine in Libau's harbor, which blew off her bow and destroyed the ship. German ground forces were successful in their assault however, and took the city. Prinz Heinrich supported a minelaying operation off the coast of Finland over the course of 23–26 May. From 3 to 5 June, Prinz Heinrich participated in a sortie into the Gulf of Finland. She supported another minelaying operation from 20 to 23 June. On 1 July, the minelayer SMS Albatross, escorted by the cruisers Roon, Augsburg, and Lübeck and seven destroyers, laid a minefield north of Bogskär. While returning to port, the flotilla separated into two sections; Augsburg, Albatross, and three destroyers made for Rixhöft while the remainder of the unit went to Libau. Augsburg and Albatross were intercepted by a powerful Russian squadron commanded by Rear Admiral Bakhirev, consisting of three armored and two light cruisers. Commodore Johannes von Karpf, the flotilla commander, ordered the slower Albatross to steam for neutral Swedish waters and recalled Roon and Lübeck. Albatross was grounded off Gotland and Augsburg escaped, and the Russian squadron briefly engaged Roon before both sides broke contact. Upon being informed of the situation, Hopman sortied with Prinz Heinrich and Prinz Adalbert to support Karpf. While en route, the cruisers encountered the British submarine E9, which scored a hit on Prinz Adalbert. Hopman broke off the operation and returned to port with the damaged cruiser. From 11 to 12 July, Prinz Heinrich participated in a sortie toward Gotska Sandön, though the Germans failed to locate any Russian warships. Another sweep into the central Baltic, between Libau and Gotland, took place on 1 to 2 August that again did not result in combat. German naval forces in the Baltic were reinforced by elements of the High Seas Fleet during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in early August 1915. The Germans sought to drive out the Russians in the Gulf of Riga and to lay defensive minefields that would prevent a Russian counterattack. The battleships of the I Battle Squadron were the primary force, though Prinz Heinrich and the rest of the older vessels assigned to the Baltic fleet participated. On 10 August, Prinz Heinrich and Roon bombarded Russian defenses at Zerel, on the southernmost tip of the Sworbe Peninsula on the island of Ösel. Several Russian destroyers were anchored off Zerel, and were caught unawares by the German bombardment. Prinz Heinrich and Roon damaged one of the destroyers during their attack. A combination of tenacious Russian defense and reports of British submarines in the area—proved by the torpedoing of the battlecruiser Moltke on 19 August—caused the German navy to break off the operation. In the meantime, Prinz Heinrich's boiler tubes were in need of replacement, so she was detached for repairs at Kiel, where she arrived on 11 August. Repairs were completed the following month, and she arrived back in Libau on 22 September. She took part in another minelaying sortie into the Baltic in the direction of Östergarn on 5–6 October. By this time, the German navy had begun to experience severe crew shortages, and so the Reichsmarineamt decided to decommission older, less combat-capable vessels. On 10 November, Prinz Heinrich left Libau for Kiel, where she arrived the following day. Her crew was reduced and she was assigned to the "Readiness Division" with Wittelsbach, and she remained there until 27 March 1916, when she was decommissioned and disarmed. For the rest of the war, she served as a floating headquarters for Prince Heinrich, the commander in chief of naval forces in the Baltic. She was also used as a barracks ship and a tender. Beginning in 1918, she was also used to support the U-Kreuzer Flotilla. She was stricken from the naval register on 25 January 1920 and sold later that year. The ship was ultimately broken up for scrap at Audorf-Rendsburg.

Richard Trousdale

New Zealand flying ace

Richard Macklow Trousdale (23 January 1921 – 16 June 1947) was a New Zealand flying ace of the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. He was credited with at least six, possibly seven, aerial victories. Born in Waimate North, New Zealand, but raised in Auckland, Trousdale joined the RAF in 1939. After completing flight training, he was posted to No. 266 Squadron. He flew Supermarine Spitfires during the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk and during the subsequent Battle of Britain. He later flew with No. 255 and No. 409 Squadrons and achieved a number of aerial victories, many while flying Boulton Paul Defiants and Bristol Beaufighters on night fighting duties. In July 1942, he reformed No. 488 (NZ) Squadron and led it for several months. For much of the remainder of the war, he performed staff and training duties but transferred to the Royal New Zealand Air Force in January 1945. He was killed in a flying accident when his de Havilland Mosquito crashed near Pershore in England. ## Early life Born on 23 January 1921 at Waimate North, in the Far North region of New Zealand, Richard Macklow Trousdale was the son of A. C. Trousdale, a farmer in the area. The Trousdale family later moved south to Helensville and then to Howick, in Auckland. Trousdale was educated at Howick District High School. He applied for a short service commission in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in February 1938 and was accepted on a provisional basis at the end of the year. He left for the United Kingdom in February 1939, travelling on the RMS Tainui. In the same draft as fellow New Zealander and future flying ace Victor Verity, Trousdale commenced his flight training at No. 11 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School at the RAF station at Scone, near Perth, on 16 March, flying de Havilland Tiger Moths. He successfully completed the course and proceeded to a two-week induction into the RAF at Uxbridge. In late May, he began intermediate training at No. 9 Flying Training School at Hullavington as an acting pilot officer. He gained his wings at the end of August. He sought to be a bomber pilot and applied for training in this role. He was assessed as an exceptional student, having completed a month-long bombing and air firing course at Warmwell. In November 1939, he was posted to No. 266 Squadron, newly re-activated following the outbreak of the Second World War. ## Second World War At the time of Trousdale's posting, No. 266 Squadron was being equipped with Fairey Battle light bombers. However, within a matter of weeks, these were replaced by Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft, Trousdale flying one of these for the first time in February 1940. By April, the squadron was operational. Flying from Martlesham Heath, it carried out convoy patrols along the southeast coastline of England. The following month, it moved to Wittering. It was involved in Operation Dynamo, flying patrols over the beaches at Dunkirk from which the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was being evacuated from late May to early June. On 2 June, Trousdale and his flight engaged seven Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighters and he subsequently claimed one of these as probably destroyed. The same day he also claimed a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, but this was not confirmed. Once the BEF's evacuation had been completed, the squadron resumed training and convoy patrols. ### Battle of Britain On 11 August, No. 266 Squadron moved south to Tangmere and the next day began its involvement in the Battle of Britain by being part of a large dogfight over the Isle of Wight. Trousdale engaged several aircraft of the opposing Luftwaffe but without success. The squadron was briefly moved to the airfield at Eastchurch but its new location was then bombed and some of its aircraft destroyed. It subsequently moved to the RAF station at Hornchurch and was immediately heavily engaged. On 16 August, flying over Deal, Trousdale shot down a Bf 109 during a dogfight in which five of the six other Spitfires with which he was flying were destroyed. Two days later, he was credited with probably destroying another Bf 109, this time near Calais. On 21 August, having suffered a number of losses including its commander, the squadron moved back to Wittering to rebuild. Once it had sufficient numbers, the squadron began patrolling the airfields of No. 12 Group. On the morning of 7 September, Trousdale and two other pilots intercepted a Dornier Do 217 bomber over East Anglia and pursued it to the Scheldt estuary, off the Dutch coast, where it was shot down. Despite all three pilots being involved in destroying the aircraft, Trousdale, who damaged one of the Do 217's engines and shot off its tail, may have received the sole credit for shooting it down. At the end of October, he destroyed a Bf 109. He was promoted to flying officer early the next month. ### Night fighting duties In mid-November, Trousdale, promoted to acting flight lieutenant, was transferred to No. 255 Squadron. At the time, it was being reformed to help with the aerial defence of the Midlands. Based at Kirton-in-Lindsey it was equipped with Boulton Paul Defiant night fighters. Trousdale was to be one of the unit's flight commanders while it was working up to operational status, which was achieved in January 1941. It began coming into contact with bombers of the Luftwaffe the next month, with Trousdale and his gunner, Sergeant Chunn, credited with the probable shooting down of a Heinkel He 111 medium bomber off Spurn Head on 10 February. Trousdale was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in early March; the citation, published in The London Gazette, read: > Since the early months of the war, this officer has been continuously employed as a fighter pilot and his keenness and enthusiasm for operations has been most marked. He has destroyed at least four enemy aircraft, including one at night. The squadron's pace of operations increased in the following weeks and on the night of 9 May, Trousdale and Chunn combined to shoot down two He 111s that were raiding Hull. The squadron was responsible for shooting down six bombers that night. Trousdale was taken off operations in July to serve in a staff role at the headquarters of No. 12 Group. His work was in relation to night fighting duties and came with a promotion to acting squadron leader. On 1 October, he was posted to No. 409 Squadron as a flight commander, still holding his acting rank. His new unit was Canadian and working up to operational status with Bristol Beaufighters for night fighting duty. Later in the month he damaged a Dornier Do 17 bomber. By November the squadron was regularly flying night patrols but a quiet spell followed and it was not until the night of 8 March 1942 that Trousdale achieved another aerial victory, when he and his radar operator, Sergeant Affleck, destroyed a He 111 over Hull. He shot down a Do 217 on the night of 7 April; the aircraft was seen to crash into the sea off the Lincolnshire coast. He was awarded a bar to his DFC in May, the published citation reading: > This officer is an exceptionally skilful and keen fighter pilot. He has destroyed 8 hostile aircraft, 5 of which he has shot down at night. ### No. 488 Squadron Promoted to acting wing commander in July, Trousdale was posted to Church Fenton to take command of No. 488 Squadron. The original incarnation of the squadron had been raised for service in British Malaya but had been disbanded after the fall of Singapore; it was now being reformed at Church Fenton as a night fighter squadron operating Beaufighters. Trousdale set about bringing the squadron up to operational status, implementing training programs despite having inadequate personnel and equipment. At the start of September, the squadron moved to Ayr in Scotland where it continued training, including working with ground-based radar operators. It began flying missions to intercept incoming bombers identified by radar the following month although these were relatively few in number. Ranger missions, nighttime flights to occupied Europe that targeted German transportation infrastructure, began to be flown in February 1943. On one of these, mounted on 15 February, Trousdale damaged a train at Courtrai and two barges. Later in the month, he was posted to the headquarters of No. 13 Group in a training capacity for the next several months. In March 1944, he was attached to the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down; here he gained experience with a variety of aircraft, including the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber. He also attended a course for test pilots. ## Service with RNZAF At the start of 1945, having completed the five-year term of his short service commission in the RAF, Trousdale transferred to the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF). He remained in the United Kingdom, serving at the Telecommunications Flying Unit based at Defford and gaining flight experience with a variety of multi-engined aircraft. He ended the war credited with having destroyed six enemy aircraft, possibly seven, with a share in another destroyed as well as two or three probably destroyed and one damaged. Military aviation historians Christopher Shores and Clive Williams consider that it is possible that one of the probables was actually confirmed. Trousdale returned to New Zealand in January 1946 with his wife, who he had married in 1941, and their two children. He had an extensive period of leave and then formally commenced his service with the RNZAF in late April 1947 with the rank of squadron leader. Trousdale returned to the United Kingdom the next month, tasked with collecting and ferrying a de Havilland Mosquito fighter bomber back to New Zealand. On 16 June, while conducting flight checks on a Mosquito in which he was flying as second pilot, he was killed when it stalled in low level flight and crashed. He is buried at Haycombe Cemetery in Bath. His wife, a former officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, took the couple's two children back to the United Kingdom after his death but subsequently returned to live in New Zealand.

Jack Russell Terrier

Small terrier dog breed

The Jack Russell Terrier is a British breed of small terrier. It is principally white-bodied and smooth-, rough- or broken-coated, and can be any colour. It derives from dogs bred and used for fox-hunting in North Devon in the early nineteenth century by a country parson, Jack Russell – for whom the breed is named – and has similar origins to the modern Fox Terrier. Though closely similar, it is a distinct and different breed from the Parson Russell Terrier. Jack Russells are an energetic breed that rely on a high level of exercise and stimulation. They are relatively free from any serious health complaints. It has gone through several changes over the years, corresponding to different use and breed standards set by kennel clubs. Recognition by kennel clubs for the Jack Russell breed has been opposed by the breed's parent societies – which resulted in the breeding and recognition of the Parson Russell terrier. Jack Russells have appeared many times in film, television, and print – with several historical dogs of note. ## History ### Sporting parson The small white fox-working terriers we know today were first bred by the Reverend John "Jack" Russell, a parson and hunting enthusiast born in 1795, and they can trace their origin to the now extinct English white terrier. Difficulty in differentiating the dog from the creature it was pursuing brought about the need for a mostly white dog, and so in 1819 during his last year of university at Exeter College, Oxford, he purchased a small white and tan terrier female named Trump from a local milkman in the nearby small hamlet of Elsfield or Marston. Trump epitomised his ideal Fox Terrier, which, at the time, was a term used for any terrier which was used to bolt foxes out of their burrows. Her colouring was described as "...white, with just a patch of dark tan over each eye and ear; whilst a similar dot, not larger than a penny piece, marks the root of the tail." Davies, a friend of Russell's, wrote: "Trump was such an animal as Russell had only seen in his dreams". She was the basis for a breeding program to develop a terrier with high stamina for the hunt as well as the courage and formation to chase out foxes that had gone to ground. By the 1850s, these dogs were recognised as a distinct breed. An important attribute in this dog was a tempered aggressiveness that would provide the necessary drive to pursue and bolt the fox, without resulting in physical harm to the quarry and effectively ending the chase, which was considered unsporting. Russell was said to have prided himself that his terriers never tasted blood. This line of terriers developed by John Russell was well respected for those qualities, and his dogs were often taken on by hunt enthusiasts. It is unlikely, however, that any dogs alive today can be proved to be descendants from Trump, as Russell was forced to sell all his dogs on more than one occasion because of financial difficulty, and had only four aged (and non-breeding) terriers left when he died in 1883. The Fox terrier and Jack Russell terrier type dogs of today are all descended from dogs of that period. However, documented pedigrees earlier than 1862 have not been found. Several records remain of documented breeding by John Russell between the 1860s and 1880s. The Fox Terrier Club was formed in 1875 with Russell as one of the founder members; its breed standard was aspiration, and not a description of how the breed appeared then. By the start of the 20th century, the Fox Terrier had altered more towards the modern breed, but in some parts of the country the old style of John Russell's terriers remained, and it is from those dogs that the modern Jack Russell type has descended. Many breeds can claim heritage to the early Fox Terrier of this period, including the Brazilian Terrier, Japanese Terrier, Miniature Fox Terrier, Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz, Rat Terrier, and Tenterfield Terrier. ### After John Russell Following Russell's death, the only people who made serious efforts to continue those strains were two men, one in Chislehurst with the surname of East, and another in Cornwall named Archer. East, at one point, had several couples, all of which were descended from one of Russell's dogs. The type aimed for were not as big as the show Fox Terrier and were usually less than 7 kg (15 lb). Arthur Blake Heinemann created the first breed standard and, in 1894, he founded the Devon and Somerset Badger Club, the aims of which were to promote badger digging rather than fox hunting, and the breeding of terriers suitable for this purpose. Terriers were acquired from Nicholas Snow of Oare, and they were likely descended from Russell's original dogs, as Russell would probably have hunted at some point with Snow's hunting club and is likely to have provided at least some of their original terriers. By the turn of the 20th century, Russell's name had become associated with this breed of dog. The club was later renamed the Parson Jack Russell Terrier Club. Badger digging required a different type of dog than fox hunting, and it is likely that Bull Terrier stock was introduced to strengthen the breed, which may have caused the creation of a shorter legged variety of Jack Russell terrier that started to appear around this period. At the same time that a split was appearing between show and working Fox terriers, a further split was occurring between two different types of white terrier, both carrying Jack Russell's name. Heinemann was invited to judge classes for working terriers at Crufts with an aim to bring working terriers back into the show ring and influence those that disregard working qualities in dogs. These classes were continued for several years by various judges, but Charles Cruft dropped the attempt as the classes were never heavily competed. Following Heinemann's death in 1930, the kennel and leadership of the club passed to Annie Harris, but the club itself folded shortly before World War II. ### Post-World War II Following World War II, the requirement for hunting dogs drastically declined, and with it the numbers of Jack Russell terriers. The dogs were increasingly used as family and companion dogs. The Jack Russell Terrier Club of America (JRTCA) was formed in 1976 by Ailsa Crawford, one of the first Jack Russell terrier breeders in the United States. Size ranges for dogs were kept broad, with the ability of working dogs awarded higher than those in conformation shows. An open registry was maintained, with restricted line breeding. Registration for the club is made at adulthood for Jack Russells, rather than at birth, to ensure the breed's qualities remain, given the open registry. Several breed clubs appeared in the United Kingdom during the 1970s to promote the breed, including the Jack Russell Club of Great Britain (JRTCGB) and the South East Jack Russell Terrier Club (SEJRTC). The JRTCGB promoted the range of sizes that remain in its standards today, whereas the SEJRTC set a minimum height for dogs at 33 cm (13 in). While the JRTCGB sought to ensure that the breed's working ability remained through non-recognition with other breed registries, the SEJRTC activity sought recognition with the UK Kennel club. In 1983, the Parson Jack Russell Club of Great Britain (PJRTCGB) was resurrected to seek Kennel Club recognition for the breed. Although the application was initially rejected, a new standard was created for the PJRTCGB based on the standard of the SEJRTC, and under that standard the breed was recognised by the Kennel Club in 1990 as the Parson Jack Russell terrier. Jack was dropped from the official name in 1999, and the recognised name of the breed became the Parson Russell Terrier. In the late 1990s, the American Kennel Club explored the possibility of recognising the Jack Russell Terrier. This move was opposed by the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America as they did not want the breed to lose its essential working characteristics. The Jack Russell Terrier Breeders Association formed and petitioned the AKC; the breed's admission was granted in 2001. Under the AKC-recognised standard, the size of the breed was narrowed from the previous club's standard, and the name of the AKC-recognised Jack Russell Terrier was changed to Parson Russell Terrier, with the Jack Russell Terrier Breeders Association renamed to the Parson Russell Terrier Association of America. The Australian National Kennel Council (ANKC) and the New Zealand Kennel Club (NZCK) are some of national kennel associations that register both the Jack Russell terrier and the Parson Russell terrier; however, the size requirements for the Jack Russell terrier under both those standards would classify a dog as a Russell terrier in the United States. In 2009, there were 1073 Jack Russells registered with the ANKC, compared to 18 for the Parson Russell terrier. Other modern breeds are often mistaken for modern Jack Russell terriers, including their cousin the Parson Russell terrier, the Tenterfield terrier, and the Rat Terrier. Several other modern breeds exist that descended from the early Fox Terrier breed, including the Brazilian Terrier, Japanese Terrier, Miniature Fox Terrier, Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz, Rat Terrier, and Tenterfield Terrier. ## Description Due to their working nature, Jack Russell terriers remain much as they were some 200 years ago. They are sturdy, tough, and tenacious, measuring between 25–38 cm (10–15 in) at the withers, and weigh 6–8 kg (14–18 lb). The body length must be in proportion to the height, and the dog should present a compact, balanced image. Predominantly white in coloration (more than 51%) with black and/or brown and/or tan markings, they exhibit either a smooth, rough or a combination of both which is known as a broken coat. A broken-coated dog may have longer hair on the tail or face than that which is seen on a smooth-coated dog. The head should be of moderate width at the ears, narrowing to the eyes, and slightly flat between the ears. There should be a defined but not overpronounced stop at the end of the muzzle where it meets the head, and a black nose. The jaw should be powerful and well boned with a scissor bite and straight teeth. The eyes are almond shaped and dark coloured and should be full of life and intelligence. Small V-shaped ears of moderate thickness are carried forward on the head. When the dog is alert, the tip of the V should not extend past the outer corner of the eyes. The tail is set high and in the past was docked to approximately 10 cm (5 in) in order to provide a sufficient hand-hold for gripping the terrier. The Jack Russell should always appear balanced and alert. The red fox is the traditional quarry of the Jack Russell terrier, so the working Jack Russell must be small enough to pursue it. Red foxes vary in size, but across the world, they average from 6–8 kg (13–17 lb) in weight and have an average chest size of 30–36 cm (12–14 in) at the widest part. ### Differences from related breeds The Jack Russell terrier and Parson Russell Terrier breeds are similar, sharing a common origin, but have several marked differences – the most notable being the range of acceptable heights. Other differences in the Parson Russell can include a longer head and larger chest as well as overall a larger body size. The height of a Parson Russell at the withers according to the breed standard is 30–36 cm (12–14 in) which places it within the range of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America's standard size for a Jack Russell of 25–38 cm (10–15 in). However, the Parson Russell is a conformation show standard whereas the Jack Russell standard is a more general working standard. The Russell Terrier, which is also sometimes called the English Jack Russell terrier or the Short Jack Russell terrier is a generally smaller related breed. Both the breed standards of the American Russell Terrier Club and the English Jack Russell Terrier Club Alliance states that at the withers it should be an ideal height of 20–30 cm (8–12 in). Although sometimes called the English or Irish Jack Russell terrier, this is not the recognised height of Jack Russells in the United Kingdom. According to the Jack Russell Club of Great Britain's breed standard, it is the same size as the standard for Jack Russells in the United States, 25–38 cm (10–15 in). Compared to the Parson Russell Terrier, the Russell Terrier should always be longer than tall at the withers, whereas the Parson Russell's points should be of equal distance. The Fédération Cynologique Internationale standard for the Jack Russell terrier has this smaller size listed as a requirement. Terrierman Eddie Chapman, who has hunted in Devon for more than 30 years, the same area that John Russell himself hunted, notes that, "I can state categorically that if given the choice, ninety-nine percent of hunt terrier men would buy an under 12 in (30 cm) worker, if it was available, over a 14 in (36 cm) one." ## Temperament Jack Russells are first and foremost a working terrier. Originally bred to bolt foxes from their dens during hunts, they are used on numerous ground-dwelling quarry such as groundhog, badger, otter, and red and grey fox. The working JRT is required to locate quarry in the earth, and then either bolt it or hold it in place until they are dug to. To accomplish this, the dog will not bark but will expect attention to the quarry continuously. Because the preservation of this working ability is of highest importance to most registered JRTCA/JRTCGB breeders, Jack Russells tend to be extremely intelligent, athletic, fearless, and vocal dogs. It is not uncommon for these dogs to become moody or destructive if not properly stimulated and exercised, as they have a tendency to bore easily and will often create their own fun when left alone to entertain themselves, leading to the semi-affectionate nickname among suburban pet dogs of "Jack Russell Terrorist". Their high energy and drive make these dogs ideally suited to a number of different dog sports such as flyball or agility. Obedience classes are also recommended to potential owners, as Jack Russells can be stubborn at times and aggressive towards other animals and humans if not properly socialized. Despite their small size, these dogs are not recommended for the condominium or apartment dweller unless the owner is ready to take on the daunting task of providing the dog with the necessary amount of exercise and stimulation. They have a tremendous amount of energy for their size, a fact which can sometimes lead to trouble involving larger animals. ## Health The breed has a reputation for being healthy with a long lifespan. Breeders have protected the gene pool, and direct in-line breeding has been prevented. Jack Russells can live from 13 to 16 years given proper care. However, certain lines have been noted for having specific health concerns and, therefore, could occur in any line or generation because of recessive genes. These issues can include hereditary cataracts, ectopia lentis, congenital deafness, patellar luxation, ataxia, myasthenia gravis, Legg–Calvé–Perthes syndrome, and von Willebrand disease. Being a hunt-driven dog, the Jack Russell will usually pursue most creatures that it encounters. This includes the skunk, and the breed is prone to skunk toxic shock syndrome. The chemical in the skunk spray is absorbed by the dog and causes the red blood cells to undergo haemolysis, which can occasionally lead to fatal anaemia and kidney failure. If sprayed underground, it can also cause chemical burning of the cornea. Treatments are available to flush the toxin out of the dog's system. ### Eye disorders Lens luxation, also known as ectopia lentis is the most common hereditary disorder in Jack Russell terriers. Even so, this condition is not a common occurrence in the breed. Most frequently appearing in dogs between the ages of 3 and 8 years old, it is where the lens in one or both eyes becomes displaced. There are two types, posterior luxation (where the lens slips to the back of the eye) and anterior luxation (where the lens slips forward). Posterior luxation is the less severe of the two types, as the eye can appear normal although the dog's eyesight will be affected. In anterior luxation, the lens can slip forward and rub against the cornea, damaging it. Anterior luxation also has a high probability of causing glaucoma which can lead to partial or complete blindness. Treatment is available and may include both medical and surgical options. Secondary lens luxation is caused by trauma to the eye and is not hereditary. The condition appears in a number of terrier breeds as well as the Border collie, Brittany and Cardigan Welsh corgi. Cataracts can affect any breed of dog and is the same condition as seen in humans. Here the lens of the eye hardens and is characterised by cloudiness in the eye. Cataracts will blur the dog's vision and can lead to permanent blindness if left untreated. While considered mainly a hereditary disease, it can also be caused by diabetes, old age, radiation, eye injury or exposure to high temperatures. ### Musculoskeletal conditions Patellar luxation, also known as luxating patella, is a hereditary disorder affecting the knees. It is where the kneecap slips off the groove on which it normally sits. The effects can be temporary with the dog running while holding its hind leg in the air before running on it again once the kneecap slipped back into place as if nothing has happened. Dogs can have a problem with both rear knees, and complications can include arthritis or torn knee ligaments. Severe cases can require surgery. Some are prone to dislocation of the kneecaps, inherited eye diseases, deafness and Legg Perthes—a disease of the hip joints of small dog breeds. Prone to mast cell tumors. Legg–Calvé–Perthes syndrome, also called Avascular Necrosis of the Femoral Head, is where the ball section of the femur in the hip joint deteriorates following interruption of the blood flow and is the same condition as in humans. In dogs, this causes lameness of the hind-legs, the thigh muscles to atrophy and pain in the joint. It usually occurs between 6–12 months of age and has been documented in a variety of other terrier breeds including the Border terrier, Lakeland terrier, and Wheaten terrier. ## Well-known Jack Russell terriers Nipper was a dog born in 1884 who was thought to be a dog of the Jack Russell terrier type. He was the inspiration for the painting Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph, later renamed His Master's Voice. The painting was used by a variety of music related companies including The Gramophone Company, EMI, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and RCA. Today it remains in use incorporated into the logo for HMV in the UK and Europe. A Jack Russell named Bothie made history in 1982 as part of the Transglobe Expedition. Owned by explorers Ranulph and Ginny Fiennes, he became the first dog to travel to both the North and South Poles. This feat is unlikely to be repeated, as all dogs have been banned from Antarctica by the Antarctic Treaty nations since 1994, due to fears that they could transmit diseases to the native seal population. Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton actually made the trip to the north pole by powered sledges before signalling to the base camp that they had arrived. To celebrate their achievement, a plane was sent out to take the two men champagne, along with Bothie. On 29 April 2007, a Jack Russell named George saved five children at a carnival in New Zealand from an attack by two pit bulls. He was reported to have charged at them and held them at bay long enough for the children to get away. Killed by the pit bulls, he was posthumously awarded the PDSA Gold Medal in 2009, the animal equivalent of the George Cross. A statue has been erected in Manaia, New Zealand, in his memory. A former US Marine also donated to George's owner a Purple Heart award he had received for service in Vietnam. In 2019, Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds took a Jack Russell cross from an animal rescue charity in Wales. The dog's name is Dilyn and he became a famous dog at a polling station in the general election. During the ongoing 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a 2-year old Jack Russell named Patron has been working with the State Emergency Service of Ukraine to sniff out Russian explosives. As of April 20, 2022, the Ukrainian Government announced that he had located nearly 90 explosives. ### On screen and in literature In the UK, one of the more recognisable canine stars was restaurateur and chef Rick Stein's irrepressible terrier Chalky, who frequently upstaged his owner on his various cookery series. He had his own line of merchandise, including plushes, tea towels, art prints, art paw prints and two real ales – Chalky's Bite and Chalky's Bark, which won gold in the Quality Drink Awards 2009. Chalky was given a BBC obituary when he died in 2007. Moose and his son Enzo played the role of Eddie on the long-running American TV sitcom Frasier. Eddie belonged to lead character Frasier's father Martin Crane, and constantly "stole the show" with his deadpan antics, receiving more fan mail than any other Frasier character. Moose and Enzo also starred as Skip in the 2000 film My Dog Skip. Soccer was a Jack Russell who became the star of the American TV series Wishbone, which aired from 1995 to 2001. In the 2009 movie Hotel for Dogs, Friday, one of the main characters is a Jack Russell, played by the dog actor Cosmo. Cosmo went on to appear in the films Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Beginners. Uggie (2002–2015) was an animal actor, appearing in commercials starting in 2005 and in the films Water for Elephants and The Artist, both in 2011. In the same year, based on interest following The Artist, the "Consider Uggie" campaign was launched, which attempted to gain the dog a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2012, Uggie was named Nintendo's first-ever spokesdog. Sykes (est. 2001 - 2019) was a dog actor from Clifton, Oxfordshire, England. He was best known in the UK for his appearance as "Harvey" in Thinkbox's three television commercials, and, under his real name in five seasons of Midsomer Murders. He also appeared in several Hollywood blockbusters, as well as in a UK TV movie, several series and miniseries. He retired in 2016 after a long career on the big and small screen. Sykes was also a champion agility competitor. A clever, almost human like Jack Russel Terrier, named Jack, played a central role in the 1980s TV adventure series Tales of the Gold Monkey. K.K. Slider is a Jack Russell who is a main character in the Animal Crossing series developed by Nintendo. K.K. is a musician who performs to the townsfolk. He has appeared in every Animal Crossing game to date since the original Animal Crossing game in 2001 to Animal Crossing: New Horizons in 2020. ## Crossbreeds The planned-mating crossbreed of a Jack Russell terrier and a Beagle is called a Jackabee. Jackabees are believed to have first been bred in the United States. They typically have a muscular body with patches and a long tail. The breed brings together the hunting terrier with the scenthound.

Vampyr

1932 film

Vampyr (German: Vampyr – Der Traum des Allan Gray, lit. 'Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray') is a 1932 horror film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. The film was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly. Vampyr was funded by Nicolas de Gunzburg who starred in the film under the name of Julian West among a mostly non-professional cast. Gunzburg plays the role of Allan Gray, a student of the occult who enters the village of Courtempierre, which is under the curse of a vampire. Vampyr was challenging for Dreyer to make as it was his first sound film and was required to be recorded in three languages. To overcome this, very little dialogue was used in the film and much of the story is told with title cards like a silent film. The film was shot entirely on location and to enhance the atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for a washed out, soft focus photographic technique. The soundtrack was created in Berlin where the characters’ voices, sound effects, and score were recorded. Vampyr had a delayed release in Germany and opened to a generally negative reception from audiences and critics. Dreyer edited the film after its German premiere and it opened to more mixed opinions at its French debut. The film was long considered a low point in Dreyer's career, but modern critical reception to the film has become much more favorable with critics praising the film's disorienting visual effects and atmosphere. ## Plot On a late evening, Allan Gray arrives at an inn close to the village of Courtempierre and he rents a room to sleep. Gray is awakened suddenly by an old man, who enters the room and leaves a square packet on Gray's table; "To be opened upon my death" is written on the wrapping paper. Gray takes the package and walks outside. Shadows guide him to an old castle, where he sees the shadows dancing and wandering on their own. Gray also sees an elderly woman (later identified as Marguerite Chopin) and encounters another old man (later identified as the village doctor). Gray leaves the castle and walks to a manor. Looking through one of the windows, Gray sees the lord of the manor, the same man who gave him the package earlier. The man is suddenly murdered by gunshot. Gray is let into the house by servants, who rush to the aid of the fallen man but it is too late to save him. The servants ask Gray to stay the night. Gisèle, the younger daughter of the now deceased lord of the manor, takes Gray to the library and tells him that her sister, Léone, is gravely ill. Just then they see Léone walking outside. They follow her, and find her unconscious on the ground with fresh bite wounds. They have her carried inside. Gray remembers the parcel and opens it. Inside is a book about horrific demons called vampyrs, who can force humans into submission. By reading the book, Gray realizes that Léone is the victim of a vampyr. The village doctor visits Léone at the manor, and Gray recognizes him as the old man he saw in the castle. The doctor tells Gray that a blood transfusion is needed and Gray agrees to donate his blood to save Léone. Exhausted from blood loss, Gray falls asleep. Meanwhile, the oldest of the servants of the manor also reads the book and learns that a vampyr can be defeated by driving an iron bar through its heart. Gray wakes up sensing danger and rushes to Léone's bedside, where he surprises the doctor as he is attempting to poison the girl. The doctor flees the manor, and Gray finds that Gisèle is gone. Gray follows the doctor back to the castle, but before reaching it he has an out-of-body experience and sees himself being dead and buried by Marguerite Chopin and the doctor. After he returns to his own body, he sees the old servant heading to Marguerite Chopin's grave. They open the grave and find the old woman perfectly preserved. They hammer a large metal bar through her heart, killing her. The curse of the vampyr is lifted and Léone suddenly recovers. The ghost of the lord of the manor appears to the doctor, chasing him away from his house and killing the soldier who was helping him. Gray rescues Gisèle, who was held tied up. The doctor hides in an old mill, but finds himself locked in a chamber where flour sacks are filled. The old servant arrives and activates the mill's machinery, filling the chamber with flour and suffocating the doctor. Gisèle and Gray cross a foggy river by boat and find themselves in a bright clearing. ## Cast - Nicolas de Gunzburg (credited as Julian West) as Allan Gray, a young wanderer whose studies of occult matters have made him a dreamer. Gray's view of the world in the film is described as a blur of the real and unreal. - Rena Mandel as Giséle, Léone's younger sister and the daughter of the Lord of the Manor. Giséle is kidnapped by the Village Doctor late in the film. - Sybille Schmitz as Léone, Giséle's older sister, who is in thrall to the vampire and finds her strength dwindling day by day. - Jan Hieronimko as the Village Doctor, a pawn of the vampire, Marguerite Chopin. He kidnaps Giséle late in the film. - Henriette Gérard as Marguerite Chopin, the vampire, an elderly woman whose hold extends beyond her immediate victims. Many villagers, including the village doctor, are her minions. - Maurice Schutz as the Lord of the Manor, Giséle and Léone's father who offers Gray a book about vampirism to help Gray save his daughters. After his murder, he returns briefly as a spirit and takes revenge on the village doctor and a soldier who had helped Marguerite Chopin. - Albert Bras as an Old Servant, a servant at the manor house. After the death of his master, he finds Gray's book on vampirism and, aided by Gray, ends the vampire's reign of terror. - N. Babanini as his Wife - Jane Mora as a Nurse - Georges Boidin as the Limping Soldier ## Production ### Development Director Carl Theodor Dreyer began planning Vampyr in late 1929, a year after the release of his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc. The production company behind Dreyer's previous film had plans for Dreyer to make another film, but the project was dropped which led to Dreyer deciding to go outside the studio system to make his next film. Being Dreyer's first sound film, it was made under difficult circumstances as the arrival of sound put the European film industry in turmoil. In France, film studios lagged behind technologically with the first French sound films being shot on sound stages in England. Dreyer went to England to study sound film, where he got together with Danish writer Christen Jul who was living in London at the time. Dreyer decided to create a story based on the supernatural and read over thirty mystery stories and found a number of re-occurring elements including doors opening mysteriously and door handles moving with no one knowing why. Dreyer decided that "We can jolly well make this stuff too". In London and New York, the stage version of Dracula had been a large hit in 1927. Dreyer and Jul created a story based on vampires which Dreyer considered to be "fashionable things at the time". Vampyr is based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly, a collection of five stories first published in 1872. Dreyer draws from two of the stories for Vampyr, one being Carmilla, a lesbian vampire story and the other being The Room in the Dragon Volant about a live burial. Dreyer found it difficult to decide on a title for the film. It may have initially been titled Destiny and then Shadows of Hell. When the film was presented in the film journal Close Up it was titled The Strange Adventure of David Gray. ### Pre-production Dreyer returned to France to begin casting and location scouting. At the time in France, there was a small movement of artistic independently financed films, including Luis Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or and Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet which were both released in 1930. Through Valentine Hugo, Dreyer met Nicolas de Gunzburg, an aristocrat who agreed to finance Dreyer's next film in return for playing the lead role in it. Gunzberg had arguments with his family about becoming an actor, so he created the pseudonym Julian West, a name that would be the same in all three languages that the film was going to be shot in. Most of the cast in Vampyr were not professional actors. Jan Hieronimko, who plays the village doctor, was found on a late night metro train in Paris. When approached to act in the film, Hieronimko stared blankly and did not reply. Hieronimko later contacted Dreyer's crew and agreed to join the film. Many of the other non-professional actors in the film were found in similar fashion in shops and cafés. The only professional actors in the film were Maurice Schutz, who plays the Lord of the Manor, and Sybille Schmitz, who plays his daughter Léone. Many crew members of Vampyr had worked with Dreyer on his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Returning crew members included cinematographer Rudolph Maté and art director Hermann Warm. The entire film was shot on location with many scenes shot in Courtempierre, France. Dreyer and his cinematographer Rudolph Maté contributed to the location scouting for Vampyr. Dreyer left most of his scouting to an assistant, who Dreyer instructed to find "a factory in ruins, a chopped up phantom, worthy of the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Somewhere in Paris. We can't travel far." In the original script, the village doctor was intended to flee the village and get trapped in a swamp. On looking for a suitable mire, the crew found a mill where they saw white shadows around the windows and doors. After seeing this place, they changed the film's ending to take place at this mill where the doctor dies by suffocating under the milled plaster (the mill is a Plaster Mill). ### Filming Vampyr was filmed between 1930 and 1931. By having everything be shot on location, Dreyer believed it would be beneficial to lending the film the feel of a dream-like ghost world as well as allowing them to save money by not having to rent studio space. Dreyer originally wanted Vampyr to be a silent film, as it uses many elements of the silent era such as title cards to explain the story. Dialogue in the film was kept to a minimum. For the scenes with dialogue, the actors mouthed their lines in French, German and English so their lip movements would correspond to the voices that were going to be recorded in post-production. There is no record of the English version being completed. The scenes in the chateau were shot in April and May 1930. The chateau also acted as housing for the cast and crew during the filming. Life in the chateau was unpleasant for them as it was cold and infested with rats. The church yard scenes were shot in August 1930. The church was not an actual church, but a barn with a number of tombstones placed around it. This set was designed by the art director Hermann Warm. Critic and writer Kim Newman described Vampyr's style as closer to the experimental features such as Un Chien Andalou (1929) than a "quickie horror film" made after the release of Dracula (1931). Dreyer originally was going to film Vampyr in what he described as a "heavy style" but changed direction after cinematographer Maté showed him one shot that came out fuzzy and blurred. This washed out look was an effect Dreyer desired, and he had Maté shoot the film through a piece of gauze held three feet (.9 m) away from the camera to re-create this look. For other visuals in the film, Dreyer found inspiration from the fine arts. Actress Rena Mandel, who plays Gisèle, said that Dreyer showed her reproductions of paintings of Francisco Goya during filming. In Denmark, a journalist and friend of Dreyer, Henry Hellsen wrote in detail about the film and the artworks it appeared to draw on. When being asked about the intention of the film at the Berlin premiere, Dreyer replied that he "had not any particular intention. I just wanted to make a film different from all other films. I wanted, if you will, to break new ground for the cinema. That is all. And do you think this intention has succeeded? Yes, I have broken new ground". The filming of Vampyr was completed in the middle of 1931. ### Post-production Dreyer shot and edited the film in France and then brought it to Berlin where it was post-synchronized in both German and French. Dreyer did the audio work at Universum Film AG, as they had the best sound equipment available to him at the time. Most of the actors did not dub their own voices. The only voices of the actors that are their own in the film are of Schmitz and Gunzburg. The sounds of dogs, parrots, and other animals in the film were fake and were created by professional imitators. Wolfgang Zeller composed the film's score and worked with Dreyer to develop the music. There are differences between the German and French releases of the film. The character Allan Grey is named David Gray for the German release, which Dreyer attributed to a mistake. The German censors ordered cuts to the film that still exist today in some prints. The scenes which had to be toned down include the doctor's death under the milled flour and the vampire's death from the stake. There are other scenes that were included in the script and shot that do not exist in any current prints of Vampyr. These scenes reveal the vampire in the factory recoiling against a shadow of a Christian cross as well as a ferryman guiding Gray and Gisèle by getting young children to build a fire and sing a hymn to guide them back to the shore. Dreyer had prepared a Danish version of the film which was based on the German version with Danish subtitles and title cards. The distributor could not afford to have the title cards completed in the manner they appear in the German version, which were instead finished with a more simple style. The distributor also wanted to make the pages in the book shown in the film as plain title cards which Dreyer did not allow, saying that "the old book is not an text in the ordinary sense, but an actor. Just as much as the others." ## Release The premiere of Vampyr in Germany was delayed by UFA, as the studio wanted the American films Dracula and Frankenstein to be released first. The Berlin premiere was on 6 May 1932. At this premiere, the audience booed the film which led to Dreyer cutting several scenes out of the film after the first showing. The film was distributed in France by Société Générale de Cinema who also distributed Dreyer's previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc. The Paris premiere was in September 1932 where Vampyr was the opening attraction of a new cinema on the Boulevard Raspail. At a showing of the film in Vienna, audiences demanded their money back. When this was denied, a riot broke out that led to police having to restore order with night sticks. When the film premiered in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 1933, Dreyer did not attend. In the USA, the film premiered with English subtitles under the title Not Against The Flesh; an English-dubbed version, edited severely as to both the film continuity and the music track, appeared a few years later on the roadshow circuit as Castle of Doom. Dreyer soon had a nervous breakdown and went to a mental hospital in France. The film was a financial failure. ### Critical reception Press in Europe ranged from mixed to negative. The press in Germany did not like the film. At the Berlin premiere, a film critic from The New York Times wrote: "Whatever you think of the director Charles [sic] Theodor Dreyer, there is no denying that he is 'different'. He does things that make people talk about him. You may find his films ridiculous—but you won't forget them...Although in many ways [Vampyr] was one of the worst films I have ever attended, there were some scenes in it that gripped with brutal directness". Press reaction to the film in Paris was mixed. Reporter Herbert Matthews of The New York Times wrote that Vampyr was "a hallucinating film", that "either held the spectators spellbound as in a long nightmare or else moved them to hysterical laughter". For many years after Vampyr's initial release, the film was viewed by critics as one of Dreyer's weaker works. More modern reception for Vampyr has been more positive. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 98% based upon a sample of 40 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Full of disorienting visual effects, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr is as theoretically unsettling as it is conceptually disturbing." Todd Kristel of the online film database AllMovie gave the film four and a half stars out of five, stating that "Vampyr isn't the easiest classic film to enjoy, even if you are a fan of 1930s horror movies...If you're patient with the slow pacing and ambiguous story line of Vampyr, you'll find that this film offers many striking images" and that although the film is "not exciting in terms of pacing, it's a good choice if you want to see a film that establishes a compelling mood". Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote, "The greatness of Carl Dreyer's [Vampyr] derives partly from its handling of the vampire theme in terms of sexuality and eroticism and partly from its highly distinctive, dreamy look, but it also has something to do with Dreyer's radical recasting of narrative form". J. Hoberman of the Village Voice wrote that "Vampyr is Dreyer's most radical film—maybe one of my dozen favorite movies by any director". Anton Bitel of Channel 4 awarded the film four and a half stars out of five, comparing it to the silent vampire film Nosferatu, stating that it is "lesser known (but in many ways superior)" and that the film is "a triumph of the irrational, Dreyer's eerie memento mori never allows either protagonist or viewer fully to wake up from its surreal nightmare". In the early 2010s, the London edition of Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films. Vampyr placed at number 50 on their top 100 list. ### Home media Vampyr has been released with imperfect image and sound as the original German and French sound and film negatives are lost. Prints of the French and German versions of the film exist but most of them are either incomplete or damaged. Vampyr was released in the United States under the titles of The Vampire, and Castle of Doom and in the United Kingdom under the title of The Strange Adventures of David Gray. Many of these prints are severely cut, such as the re-dubbed 60-minute English-language Castle of Doom print. Vampyr was originally released on DVD on 13 May 1998 by Image Entertainment which ran at an abridged 72-minute running time. Image's release of Vampyr is a straight port of the Laserdisc that film restorer David Shepard produced in 1991. The subtitles are large and ingrained due to the source print having Danish subtitles which have been blacked out and covered. This DVD also included the short film The Mascot as a bonus feature. The Criterion Collection released a two-disc edition of Vampyr on 22 July 2008. This edition of the DVD includes the original German version of the film, along with a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 story "Carmilla". A Region 2 DVD of the film was released by Eureka Films on 25 August 2008. The Eureka release contains the same bonus material as the Criterion Collection discs, but also includes a commentary from director Guillermo del Toro. In October 2017, Criterion released the film on Blu-ray. This version was made from a new HD digital transfer of the 1998 restoration. ## See also - List of French films of 1932 - List of German films 1919–1933 - List of horror films of the 1930s - Vampire film

Dryopithecus

Extinct great ape from Europe

Dryopithecus is a genus of extinct great apes from the middle–late Miocene boundary of Europe 12.5 to 11.1 million years ago (mya). Since its discovery in 1856, the genus has been subject to taxonomic turmoil, with numerous new species being described from single remains based on minute differences amongst each other, and the fragmentary nature of the holotype specimen makes differentiating remains difficult. There is currently only one uncontested species, the type species D. fontani, though there may be more. The genus is placed into the tribe Dryopithecini, which is either an offshoot of orangutans, African apes, or is its own separate branch. A male specimen was estimated to have weighed 44 kg (97 lb) in life. Dryopithecus likely predominantly ate ripe fruit from trees, suggesting a degree of suspensory behaviour to reach them, though the anatomy of a humerus and femur suggest a greater reliance on walking on all fours (quadrupedalism). The face was similar to gorillas, and males had longer canines than females, which is typically correlated with high levels of aggression. They lived in a seasonal, paratropical climate, and may have built up fat reserves for winter. European great apes likely went extinct during a drying and cooling trend in the Late Miocene which caused the retreat of warm-climate forests. ## Etymology The genus name Dryopithecus comes from Ancient Greek drus 'oak tree' and pithekos 'ape' because the authority believed it inhabited an oak or pine forest in an environment similar to modern day Europe. The species D. fontani was named in honour of its discoverer, local collector Monsieur Alfred Fontan. ## Taxonomy The first Dryopithecus fossils were described from the French Pyrenees by French paleontologist Édouard Lartet in 1856, three years before Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species. Subsequent authors noted similarities to modern African great apes. In his The Descent of Man, Darwin briefly noted that Dryopithecus casts doubt on the African origin of apes: > ...it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject; for two or three anthropomorphous apes, one the Dryopithecus of Lartet, nearly as large as a man, and closely allied to Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Miocene age; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale. Dryopithecus taxonomy has been the subject of much turmoil, with new specimens being the basis of a new species or genus based on minute differences, resulting in several now-defunct species. By the 1960s, all non-human apes were classified into the now-obsolete family Pongidae, and extinct apes into Dryopithecidae. In 1965, English palaeoanthropologist David Pilbeam and American palaeontologist Elwyn L. Simons separated the genus–which included specimens from across the Old World at the time–into three subgenera: Dryopithecus in Europe, Sivapithecus in Asia, and Proconsul in Africa. Afterwards, there was discussion over whether each of these subgenera should be elevated to genus. In 1979, Sivapithecus was elevated to genus, and Dryopithecus was subdivided again into the subgenera Dryopithecus in Europe, and Proconsul, Limnopithecus, and Rangwapithecus in Africa. Since that time, several more species were assigned and moved, and by the 21st century, the genus included D. fontani, D. brancoi, D. laietanus, and D. crusafonti. However, the 2009 discovery of a partial skull of D. fontani caused many of them to be split off into different genera, such as the newly erected Hispanopithecus, because part of the confusion was caused by the fragmentary nature of the Dryopithecus holotype with vague and incomplete diagnostic characteristics. Currently, there is only one uncontested species, D. fontani. Specimens are: - Holotype MNHNP AC 36, three pieces of a male mandible with teeth from Saint-Gaudens in the French Pyrenees. Based on dental development in chimpanzees, it was 6 to 8 years old, and several diagnostic characteristics made from the holotype would be lost in mature D. fontani; A partial left humerus arm bone, an additional mandible (MNHNP 1872-2), a left lower jaw and five isolated teeth are also known from the site. - An upper incisor, NMB G.a.9., and female upper molar, FSL 213981, come from Saint-Alban-de-Roche, France. - A male partial face, IPS35026, and femur, IPS41724, from Vallès Penedès in Catalonia, Spain. - A female mandible with teeth, LMK-Pal 5508, from St. Stefan, Carinthia, Austria 12.5 mya, which could possibly be considered a separate species, "D. carinthiacus". Dryopithecus is classified into the namesake great ape tribe Dryopithecini, along with Hispanopithecus, Rudapithecus, Ouranopithecus, Anoiapithecus, and Pierolapithecus, though the latter two may belong to Dryopithecus, the former two may be synonymous, and the former three can also be placed into their own tribes. Dryopithecini is either regarded as an offshoot of orangutans (Ponginae), an ancestor to African apes and humans (Homininae), or its own separate branch (Dryopithecinae). Dryopithecus was a part of an adaptive radiation of great apes in the expanding forests of Europe in the warm climates of the Miocene Climatic Optimum, possibly descending from early or middle Miocene African apes which diversified in the proceeding Middle Miocene disruption (a cooling event). It is possible great apes first evolved in Europe or Asia, and then migrated down into Africa. ## Description Based on measurements of the femoral head of the Spanish IPS41724, the living weight for a male Dryopithecus was estimated to be 44 kg (97 lb). Dryopithecus teeth are most similar to those of modern chimps. The teeth are small and have a thin enamel layer. Dryopithecus has a slender jaw, indicating it was not well-suited for eating abrasive or hard food. Like modern apes, the males have pronounced canine teeth. The molars are wide, and the premolars wider. It has a wide roof of the mouth, a long muzzle (prognathism), and a large nose which is oriented nearly vertically to the face. In total, the face shows many similarities to the gorilla; since early to middle Miocene African apes do not share such similarities, gorilla-like features likely evolved independently in Dryopithecus rather than as a result of close affinities. The humerus, measuring an approximate 265 mm (10.4 in), is similar in size and form to the bonobo. Like in bonobos, the shaft bows outward, and the insertion for the triceps and deltoids was poorly developed, suggesting Dryopithecus was not as adept to suspensory behaviour as orangutans. The femoral neck, which connects the femoral head to the femoral shaft, is not very long nor steep; the femoral head is positioned low to the greater trochanter; and the lesser trochanter is positioned more towards the backside. All these characteristics are important in the mobility of the hip joint, and indicate a quadrupedal mode of locomotion rather than suspensory. However, fruit trees in the time and area of the Austrian Dryopithecus were typically 5 to 12 m (16 to 39 ft) high and bore fruit on thinner terminal branches, suggesting suspensory behaviour to reach them. ## Paleobiology Dryopithecus likely predominantly ate fruit (frugivory), and evidence of cavities on the teeth of the Austrian Dryopithecus indicates a high-sugar diet, likely deriving from ripe fruits and honey. Dental wearing indicates Dryopithecus ate both soft and hard food, which could either indicate they consumed a wide array of different foods, or they ate harder foods as a fallback. Nonetheless, its unspecialized teeth indicate it had a flexible diet, and large body size would have permitted a large gut to aid in the processing of less-digestible food, perhaps stretching to include foods such as leaves (folivory) in times of famine like in modern apes. Unlike modern apes, Dryopithecus likely had a high carbohydrate, low fibre diet. A high-fructose diet is associated with elevated levels of uric acid, which is neutralized by uricase in most animals except great apes. It is thought they stopped producing it by 15 mya, resulting in increased blood pressure, which in turn led to increased activity, and a greater ability to build up fat reserves. The palaeoenvironment of late Miocene Austria indicates an abundance of fruiting trees and honey for nine or ten months out of the year, and Dryopithecus may have relied on these fat reserves during the late winter. High uric acid levels in the blood are also associated with increased intelligence. Dryopithecus males had larger canines than females, which is associated with high levels of aggression in modern primates. ## Paleoecology The remains of Dryopithecus are often associated with several large mammals, such as proboscideans (e. g., though not limited to, Gomphotherium), rhinoceroses (e. g., Lartetotherium), suids (e. g., Listriodon), bovids (e. g., Miotragocerus), equids (e. g., Anchitherium), hyaenids (e. g., Protictitherium), and felids (e. g., Pseudaelurus). Other associated primates are the great apes Hispanopithecus, Anoiapithecus, and Pierolapithecus; and the pliopithecid ape Pliopithecus. These fauna are consistent with a warm, forested, paratropical wetland environment, and it may have lived in a seasonal climate. For the Austrian Dryopithecus, plants such as Prunus, grapevines, black mulberry, strawberry trees, hickory, and chestnuts may have been important fruit sources; and the latter two, oak, beech, elm, and pine honey sources. The late Miocene was the beginning of a drying trend in Europe. Increasing seasonality and dry spells in the Mediterranean region and the emergence of a Mediterranean climate likely caused the replacement of forestland and woodland by open shrubland; and the uplift of the Alps caused tropical and warm-climate vegetation in Central Europe to retreat in favor of mid-latitude and alpine flora. This likely led to the extinction of great apes in Europe. ## See also

1947 Cleveland Browns season

NFL team season

The 1947 Cleveland Browns season was the team's second in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). Led by head coach Paul Brown, Cleveland finished with a 12–1–1 record, winning the Western division and the AAFC championship for the second straight year. As in 1946, quarterback Otto Graham led an offensive attack that featured fullback Marion Motley, ends Dante Lavelli, and Mac Speedie. After a number of coaching changes and roster moves in the offseason, including signing punter Horace Gillom and fullback Tony Adamle, the Browns began with a 30–14 win over the Buffalo Bills, the first of five consecutive victories. The team lost its only game of the season to the Los Angeles Dons in October. Five more wins followed before a come-from-behind tie in November with the New York Yankees, the team Cleveland defeated in the 1946 AAFC championship. The Browns won their last two games, including a 42–0 shutout over the Baltimore Colts in the finale, to set up a championship game rematch with the Yankees in December. Cleveland beat the Yankees 14–3 in New York on an icy field to win its second championship in a row. Graham was named the AAFC's most valuable player after leading the league in passing yards, with 2,753, and passing touchdowns, with 25. Speedie led the league in receiving, and several other Cleveland players were named to sportswriters' All-Pro lists. Brown was named the league's coach of the year by Pro Football Illustrated. The Browns played all their home games in Cleveland Stadium, attracting an average crowd of 55,848, the best home attendance record in both the AAFC and the competing National Football League (NFL). ## Offseason and roster moves Cleveland finished with a 12–2 regular-season record and won the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) championship in 1946, the league's first year of play. Despite the team's strength, however, head coach Paul Brown made a number of roster moves before the beginning of 1947. He signed Tony Adamle, a fullback and linebacker who joined the team even though he had two years of college eligibility left at Ohio State University, and guard Bob Gaudio, another Ohio State player. Guard Weldon Humble, who Brown recruited out of Rice University in Texas, also joined the team. In the Browns' biggest trade of the offseason, Brown sent end John Harrington to the Chicago Rockets for Bill Boedeker, a halfback. Perhaps the most significant signing, however, was punter Horace Gillom, who had played for Brown at Massillon Washington High School and who Brown had recruited to Ohio State before World War II. Gillom could kick the ball further than most punters of his era. He changed the way teams approached punting by lining up 15 yards behind the center instead of the customary 10 yards to give himself more space and time to make his kicks. Gillom was also the third black player to sign with the Browns at a time when many teams did not employ African-Americans. Cleveland chose fullback Dick Hoerner in the 1947 AAFC Draft, but he signed instead with the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League. The Browns also made a number of changes to the coaching staff before the season. Bob Voigts, the tackles coach in 1946, left to become head football coach at Northwestern University. Bill Edwards, a former schoolmate of Brown's at Massillon, was hired to replace him. Red Conkright, the end and center coach in 1946, left for an assistant coaching job with the Buffalo Bills; he was replaced by Dick Gallagher. Creighton Miller, meanwhile, who had served as a backfield coach, left the Browns staff to get a law degree. ## Roster and coaching staff ## Preseason - Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer Cleveland held its training camp at Bowling Green University, as it did the year before. The Browns played one preseason game in late August against the Baltimore Colts, a new AAFC team formed to replace the Miami Seahawks after the Seahawks folded. The Browns scored their first points on a drive in the second period. A 14-yard run by fullback Marion Motley set up a 25-yard touchdown throw by quarterback Otto Graham to end Mac Speedie. Cleveland scored three more touchdowns in the game, all of them following Colts passes the Browns intercepted. One of them was a pass by Graham to end Dante Lavelli in the third quarter, and another was a rush by halfback Edgar Jones. Paul Brown pulled most of the Browns' starters from the game as the team built up a three-touchdown lead. Backup end Bob Cowan scored a fourth Cleveland touchdown in the final quarter on a pass from backup quarterback Ermal Allen, and the Browns won 28–0. Following the victory, the Browns faced the Buffalo Bills in the regular-season opener at Cleveland Stadium to begin their defense of the AAFC championship. ## Regular season results ## Game summaries ### Week 1: vs. Buffalo Bills - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland began the season with a 30–14 win over the Buffalo Bills. The Browns got out to a fast start, scoring two touchdowns in the first quarter and adding two more in the second while holding the Bills scoreless. Buffalo came back in the third quarter, scoring two touchdowns of its own, but Cleveland held its lead. Browns coach Paul Brown criticized the performance after the game, saying the team had failed to keep pace in the second half after he rotated in some of his younger players. "We got a good head of steam and took a commanding lead in the first half and then let down and looked bad in the last two periods," he said. Buffalo quarterback George Ratterman felt pressure from Cleveland's defense the whole game, and said the Browns were better than the Chicago Bears, who had won the 1946 NFL Championship Game the previous season. "Their line rushed me all night long and I didn't have much of a chance to get the ball away accurately," Ratterman said. "I think the Browns are much better than the Bears, especially their line." Placekicker Lou Groza had his extra point blocked after the Browns' first touchdown. It was his first missed extra point since Cleveland started play in 1946. ### Week 2: vs. Brooklyn Dodgers - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland next faced the Brooklyn Dodgers, winning 55–7. The Browns scored three touchdowns in five minutes during the first quarter. Cleveland added five more touchdowns in the second half and held a comfortable lead to the end. Fullback Marion Motley ran for 111 yards on five carries and scored two touchdowns, including a 50-yard run at the beginning of the second half. Tommy Colella scored a touchdown on an 82-yard punt return, and Bill Lund ran back an interception 28 yards for another. It was in this game that the Draw play was accidentally invented when Otto Graham tripped while dropping back for a pass. As he went down, sensing blitzers about to wallop him, he stuck the ball in Motley's stomach who scampered for a sizable gain. Liking the effect, Brown added it to the playbook during halftime. By the next game the play became a staple of the offense with several versions for different situations. As Cleveland's lead increased in the second half, Brown put in second-string players. Quarterback Otto Graham was replaced by Ermal Allen, who threw for two of the Browns' touchdowns and intercepted a pass while playing on defense. Cliff Lewis, Graham's primary backup, also played in the game. Brooklyn's only score came in the second quarter on a Bob Hoernschemeyer rush. The Dodgers were hurt by short punts from Mickey Colmer and a poor passing game. The team was held to 39 yards of passing. Edgar Jones, Cleveland's primary halfback suffered an elbow injury during the game. ### Week 3: vs. Baltimore Colts - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland shut out the Colts 28–0 in the third game of the regular season. The team scored three of its four touchdowns in the first quarter in a span of 12 plays. Two of those touchdowns came on runs, one by Motley and the other by Bill Boedeker; the third was a Colella interception returned for a score. The Browns' fourth touchdown, a short run by Bob Cowan, came at the end of the second quarter. Cleveland was helped by strong punting from Horace Gillom, who had a 55.7-yard average for the game, including punts of 85 and 80 yards. Graham was taken out of the game in the first half along with most of the team's first-string players. Bud Schwenk substituted at quarterback later in the game, but the team did not score in the second half. Baltimore had two opportunities to score, once reaching the Browns' four-yard line, but the Cleveland defense held. The victory made the Browns the only undefeated team in the AAFC after the San Francisco 49ers lost to the New York Yankees ### Week 4: vs. Chicago Rockets - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland beat the Chicago Rockets 41–21 at Chicago's Soldier Field to extend the team's winning streak to four games. The Browns scored a touchdown in the first quarter and two more in the second. The team led 27–0 at the half. Chicago, however, started to come back in the third quarter after Cleveland coach Paul Brown took out most of his first-string players. Graham, Colella, Lew Mayne and Ed Ulinski sat out most of the game. Chicago quarterback Sam Vacanti threw three touchdown passes in the second half to give the Rockets 21 points, but a score by Cleveland's Boedeker and a fumble return for a touchdown by Spiro Dellerba kept the game out of reach. The Rockets' Bill Kellagher intercepted one of Graham's passes in the first quarter, ending Graham's streak of 91 straight pass attempts without an interception, a professional football record at the time. Chicago had the best passing performance against the Browns of any team the Browns had faced in 1947 as Vacanti threw for 195 yards on 11 completions. Groza kicked through two field goals and five extra points in the game, putting him in third place in scoring in the AAFC behind Motley and New York's Spec Sanders. Motley suffered a head injury during a pileup in the second quarter and was taken to the locker room. ### Week 5: vs. New York Yankees - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland next faced the Yankees at home in a rematch of the previous year's title game. The crowd of 80,067 was the second-largest in professional football history at the time. More people were turned away at the gates because Cleveland Stadium was filled to capacity. New York scored first in the first quarter on a 47-yard field goal by Harvey Johnson, but Cleveland came back in the second quarter, putting up 17 points to lead 17–3 at halftime. New York came back and tied the game 17–17 in the third quarter. Graham responded with a touchdown throw to Speedie in the third quarter. The Yankees threatened a comeback in the final minutes when Lou Sossman blocked a Groza field goal try and New York recovered, advancing the ball to Cleveland's 25-yard line. Cleveland, however, took over on downs and ran down the clock to three minutes with a series of running plays, reaching New York's 35-yard line. Groza then attempted a field goal that fell short, but the Yankees were called offside, and Groza successfully booted his next try through, giving Cleveland a 26–17 victory. The Browns had 14 first downs to New York's 11 and rushed for 212 yards, compared to 111 for the Yankees. Graham had 11 completions for 161 passing yards despite being sacked five times for 72 yards of losses. ### Week 6: vs. Los Angeles Dons - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland lost its first game of the season to the Dons, 13–10. The Browns opened the scoring with a Groza field goal in the first quarter followed by a touchdown run from Motley, his sixth of the season, to go up 10–0. Los Angeles, however, scored a touchdown in the second quarter to come within three points of the Browns. Dons kicker Ben Agajanian then kicked field goals in the third and fourth quarters to win the game. The final field goal came in the closing seconds of the game after the Dons reached the Browns' 28-yard line. Agajanian missed on his first attempt, but Cleveland were penalized five yards for having 12 men on the field. Agajanian made his second attempt, giving Los Angeles the victory. Cleveland was hurt by three fumbles that set up scores, including the winning field goal. Lavelli suffered bruises to his ribs during the game, and center Mike Scarry had an ankle injury. The loss put the Browns in a virtual tie with the 49ers at 5–1 – the 49ers had the same record, but with an additional tie. ### Week 7: vs. Chicago Rockets - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland rebounded from its first loss of the season with a 31–28 victory over the Rockets. The game started slow; Groza's 21-yard field goal was the only score in the first quarter. The Rockets then went ahead by scoring a touchdown on a long pass from quarterback Vacanti to end Elroy Hirsch. Cleveland, however, piled on the points as Motley ran for a touchdown in the second quarter and Speedie caught a pass from Graham in the third. Jones added two touchdown runs in the fourth quarter, giving Cleveland a 31–14 lead. Chicago almost caught up at the end of the game, scoring two touchdowns, but the Browns held on to win. Cleveland's third-string players were on the field in the closing minutes when Chicago made its final push. Rockets rookie Ray Ramsey had three touchdowns in the game. Graham had 239 passing yards on 10 completions. Speedie caught half of them, gaining 166 yards. His touchdown came after he dropped to the ground to grab a 17-yard pass from Graham. He faked a backward lateral while on the ground, which drew Chicago's defense away from him, and then got up and ran into the end zone. ### Week 8: vs. San Francisco 49ers - Source: Pro Football Reference The Browns next faced the San Francisco 49ers, one of the AAFC's stronger teams. San Francisco's record was 5–1–1; its only loss came in a close game against the Yankees, another top team. The 49ers were built around a group of players including quarterback Frankie Albert, end Alyn Beals and back Norm Standlee. The game was played in a heavy fog at Kezar Stadium before a crowd of more than 54,000 people. Cleveland received the opening kickoff, and Graham drove the team to San Francisco's 7-yard line. Jones, however, fumbled the ball and the 49ers took over. After forcing a punt, Cleveland got the ball back and scored on a pass to Lavelli set up by a Motley run and two completions to Speedie. Cleveland scored another touchdown in the second quarter on a long pass to Speedie, and the Browns were ahead by two touchdowns at the half. San Francisco came back on the first drive of the second half, which was capped by a Standlee run for a touchdown from one yard out. Cleveland came close to scoring again in the fourth quarter, but a fumble by Motley ended the drive. The Browns, however, held on to win 14–7. Speedie was the league's leading receiver by the eighth week, having surpassed Alyn Beals and Lavelli. He had 10 catches for 141 yards against San Francisco; the 10 receptions in a single game set an AAFC record. ### Week 9: vs. Buffalo Bills - Source: Pro Football Reference A crowd of 43,167 people was on hand to watch the Browns play the Bills, Buffalo's biggest-ever home attendance figure. Cleveland scored a touchdown in each of the game's four quarters, winning 28–7. The first score followed several completions by Graham that set up a 12-yard touchdown run by Jones. In the second period, Cleveland tied a professional football record when Graham, pinned at his own one-yard line, threw a screen pass to Speedie. Speedie caught the ball and ran for a 99-yard touchdown, setting an AAFC record and tying the National Football League record for longest completed pass. The Browns scored again in the third quarter on a diving catch by Lavelli, who rolled into the end zone, and in the fourth quarter on a pass to John Yonakor. Buffalo scored its only points in the fourth period when George Ratterman connected with Al Baldwin for the quarterback's 16th touchdown of the season. Graham threw 13 completions for 246 yards as passing accounted for most of the team's 392 yards of total offense. Cleveland's defense was also strong, preventing the Bills from scoring on several drives that ventured deep into Browns territory. The win was the eighth for Cleveland in nine games and preserved its spot at the top of the AAFC standings. ### Week 10: vs. Brooklyn Dodgers - Source: Pro Football Reference The Browns were expected to win their November 9 game against the Brooklyn Dodgers by a wide margin; the Dodgers had just one win, and the Browns scored eight touchdowns when the teams played in September. The Dodgers, however, drove 80 yards on their first possession for a touchdown. Placekicker Phil Martinovich missed the extra point. Cleveland responded as Graham passed to Lavelli for a 72-yard touchdown on the second play from scrimmage on its ensuing possession. Groza kicked through the extra point to give the Browns a 7–6 lead. Cleveland scored again on its next possession, this time a 15-yard pass from Graham to Lew Mayne. After the second touchdown, Graham threw two interceptions and the Browns did not advance the ball past the Brooklyn 42-yard line. The Dodgers, meanwhile, threatened to score numerous times, advancing deep into Cleveland territory. One Brooklyn touchdown by Bob Hoernschmeyer was called back because of a holding penalty. Martinovich contributed to the frustration by missing four field goal tries. He also missed the extra point when the Dodgers did score in the fourth quarter on a long Monk Gafford rush. The Dodgers' missteps gave the Browns a 13–12 victory, extending their lead over the 49ers for the best record in the AAFC after San Francisco lost to the Yankees. ### Week 11: vs. San Francisco 49ers - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland next faced San Francisco at home, winning 37–14 before one of the biggest crowds of the season. Chet Adams opened the scoring for the Browns with a 44-yard field goal; he and Lou Saban shared kicking duties in the game after Groza pulled his leg muscle during pre-game warmups. On the ensuing possession, Albert had the ball stripped by Cleveland's Weldon Humble, and the Browns took over and scored their first touchdown on a Graham pass to Lavelli. San Francisco scored a touchdown near the beginning of the second quarter, but Cleveland dominated the scoring thereafter. Lavelli caught seven passes for a total of three touchdowns, setting an AAFC single-game record. Graham also rushed for a one-yard touchdown and threw for 222 yards. His touchdown passes made him the league leader in that category, with 18 on the season. It was the biggest margin of victory the Browns had ever recorded against the 49ers. Cleveland was helped by an adjustment Paul Brown made in his receivers' routes; the coach had Lavelli and Speedie run toward the middle of the field instead of trying to get open near the sidelines, as they had done in past games. The victory clinched the AAFC's western division for the Browns and assured the team a spot in the championship game. ### Week 12: vs. New York Yankees - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland's next game was against the Yankees, who had the best record in the AAFC's eastern division and were a likely opponent in the championship game. New York took an early lead as Spec Sanders scored two rushing touchdowns in the first quarter and added a third in the second. Sanders, called "Spectacular Spec" by New York sportswriters, was having a career season. By the end of the year, he had compiled 1,432 rushing yards and 1,442 passing yards; his 18 touchdowns set a professional football record that was not surpassed until the 1960s. After Sanders' three touchdowns, New York's Buddy Young added a fourth in the second quarter, widening the Yankees' lead to 28–0. Cleveland's Bill Boedeker scored a touchdown on a pass from Graham at the end of the period, but the game appeared out of reach for Cleveland at the half. The Browns, however, came back in the second half. Motley rushed for two touchdowns in the third quarter and Jim Dewar ran for a score in the fourth. The game ended in a tie. At halftime, Yankees players had hurled insults at the Browns. "They got us upset, got us angry," Graham later said. "Finally we got mad as a team and we said, 'We'll show these guys,' and we started playing football." More than 70,000 fans came to watch the game, a record for a New York pro football game that stood until 1958. Attendance was boosted by the presence of about 25,000 black fans who came in part to watch the four black players in the game: Buddy Young of the Yankees and Motley, Bill Willis and Horace Gillom of the Browns. Groza was injured during the game and was not able to play. ### Week 13: vs. Los Angeles Dons - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland next faced the Dons in Los Angeles. The Dons, who had handed the Browns their only loss of the season in October, scored a field goal and touchdown in the first quarter. The Browns responded with a touchdown run from Motley later in the quarter and led by four points at halftime after Tommy Colella caught a pass from Graham for another touchdown in the second period. Cleveland built on the lead in the third quarter with a long touchdown pass to Lew Mayne. Speedie sealed the victory for the Browns when he intercepted a backward lateral pass by Dons quarterback Chuck Fenenbock and ran it back 12 yards for a touchdown with four minutes left in the game. Los Angeles threatened to score numerous times, but Cleveland's defense held. The Browns forced the Dons to punt three times from within their own 10-yard line. Graham had 240 yards of passing. His two touchdown passes added to his league-leading total of 22 on the season. Tackle Lou Saban continued to handle placekicking duties for the Browns as Groza sat out with an injury. ### Week 14: vs. Baltimore Colts - Source: Pro Football Reference Cleveland's final regular-season game was a shutout victory over the Baltimore Colts. The Browns amassed 559 passing and rushing yards against the Colts, winning 42–0 and ending the season with a 12–1–1 record. Graham threw for three touchdowns, boosting his season total to 25, and raised his total passing yards to 2,752. Backup quarterback Cliff Lewis threw another touchdown in the third quarter as Graham and most of the other starters were pulled from the game. Groza returned to the lineup after sitting out several weeks because of an injury. He kicked all four of the Browns' extra points and played a bigger role than usual as an offensive and defensive tackle because of an injury to Ernie Blandin in the second quarter. Cleveland's defense held Baltimore to 186 yards of total offense. The Yankees beat the Bills 35–13 the same week as Sanders scored three touchdowns. New York ended with an 11–2–1 record, winning the eastern division and a spot in the championship game against the Browns. ## Final standings ## AAFC championship game - Source: Pro Football Reference For the second year in a row, the Cleveland Browns and the New York Yankees faced off in the AAFC championship game, this time on a cold December day at Yankee Stadium. The crowd of 61,879 was the largest ever to watch a professional football championship game. The Browns and Yankees had played to a 28–28 tie the previous month, but the championship game did not feature much scoring because of an icy field. The Browns scored a touchdown in the first quarter on a short run by Graham set up by a 51-yard run up the middle of the field by Motley. New York scored a field goal in the second quarter, but Jones ran for another touchdown in the third, and the Browns won 14–3. The slippery field made longer passes dangerous, and Graham instead relied on shorter routes, ending the game with 14 completions and 112 passing yards. Motley was a key performer for the Browns, running for 109 yards on 13 carries, including his touchdown. The Browns' defense, meanwhile, kept Spec Sanders and New York's offense in check. New York had just 13 first downs in the game and 212 total yards. A stop by the defense in the second quarter as the Yankees reached the Browns' five-yard line forced New York to kick its lone field goal. Tommy Colella added an interception in the third quarter to stop another New York drive. Sanders had just 40 yards of rushing on 12 attempts and 89 yards of passing. Gillom's booming punts – his five kicks averaged 45 yards – also helped the Browns stop New York's dangerous return game. The Yankees had a 4.7-yard punt return average. ## Season leaders and awards Graham led the AAFC in passing and was voted the league's most valuable player. Pro Football Illustrated named Brown the AAFC coach of the year. Speedie and Lavelli were the AAFC's top two receivers in receptions and receiving yards. Colella tied for the AAFC lead with six interceptions on the year. Motley was the AAFC's third-leading rusher, with 889 yards, and Gillom came in second in punting average, with 44.6 yards. Speedie, Lou Rymkus, Graham and Motley were chosen unanimously by sportswriters for an all-AAFC team. Lavelli and Bill Willis were also selected by some of the writers. Graham and Speedie were named first-team selections when the Associated Press put together a combined AAFC and NFL All-Pro list. Cleveland's success drew large crowds both at home and away in 1947. The team's average home attendance was 55,848 people during the season, slightly lower than in 1946 but still the best in either the AAFC or NFL. Including away games, a total of 666,017 people saw the Browns play, a professional football record. Although the team was a major success on the field, the following season was even better for Cleveland. The team won all of its games in 1948 and a third straight AAFC championship.

Therapy (New York City)

Defunct gay bar and nightclub in Manhattan, New York, U.S.

Therapy was a two-story gay bar and nightclub in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It hosted frequent drag shows, some of which featured performers who later rose to prominence on RuPaul's Drag Race. The venue was a favorite Monday-night stop for Broadway actors, who sometimes participated in the club's shows. Like other New York City nightlife establishments, Therapy was ordered to close temporarily in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In July of that year, the venue's owner announced that it was unlikely to reopen, citing financial troubles. Therapy's atmosphere, drink selection, food and entertainment have generally received positive remarks from critics. ## Description Therapy was located at 348 West 52nd Street in Manhattan, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. It was directly across the street from Industry, another gay nightclub. According to Time Out New York, Therapy's interior was characterized by "two levels of slate floors connected by a dramatic staircase, crowned with a massive skylight. Mellow pop, house and techno play at the perfect level, allowing for both conversation and grooving." The club served food and featured live entertainment most nights. According to Gothamist, "[Therapy contained] seating and full bars both upstairs and down, as well as music videos projected onto a screen in the upstairs area." As of mid-2019, it hosted drag shows five nights a week. Many of the clientele were tourists drawn to New York by Broadway musicals, whose cast members also frequented the bar. Celebrity participation in "Stage Fright", the Monday-night drag show hosted by Marti Gould Cummings, was not uncommon. Thrillist's Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner wrote of the show: "Broadway stars like Michael Longoria, Ann Reinking, and Tamyra Gray [were] unafraid to compete for attention and perhaps suffer some deprecation at the hands of a quick-witted drag queen in this sprawling lounge." A 2017 New York Times article counted Adam Pascal, Alice Ripley and Michael Cerveris among other Broadway names to appear on stage with Cummings at Therapy. ## History Therapy was established in a duplex in Hell's Kitchen in 2003. Over the years, the bar's drag shows were hosted by several performers who went on to appear on RuPaul's Drag Race, including Peppermint, Sahara Davenport, Bianca Del Rio, Bob the Drag Queen, Monét X Change and Jan Sport. Other prominent drag queens, including Sherry Vine, also had shows there. Among Therapy's popular weekly shows was "Sunday Services", a church-themed performance starring Lagoona Bloo, Jackie Cox and Kizha Carr. The club briefly closed in late May 2019 due to structural issues with a neighboring building, which had to be partially demolished. Two weeks later, on June 14, Therapy was permitted to reopen. ### COVID-19 pandemic and closure In March 2020, Therapy again closed down when New York State nightlife venues were ordered to shutter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The venue's co-owner, Tom Johnson, said he opted not to offer outdoor dining or to-go drinks when those services became permissible, because doing so would have brought in only 30–40% of the usual revenue, which would not have been sufficient to compensate staff. He also said that operating at half-capacity to abide by social distancing regulations would leave the establishment unable to cover operating costs. Citing these and other financial difficulties, Johnson announced in July that the bar would likely remain closed for good. Eater New York reported that "Johnson holds a glimmer of hope for Therapy's revival but isn't sure if the financial fallout from the pandemic will allow it". He told the publication, "It's great if people want to come together and invest in Therapy at some point ... I want nothing more than for all of this to go away, but I don't see that happening anytime soon." ## Reception In his 2015 list of "the best gay bars in Hell's Kitchen" for Time Out New York, Ethan LaCroix wrote: "Drinks like the Freudian Sip (Ketel One Citron, fresh ginger and lemonade), served in a nice big tumbler, are sure to leave you feeling blissfully worry-free at this cocktailcentric space. But it's the impressive venue that draws young neurotics." A review by Gothamist staff reads: "Therapy is the quintessential Hell's Kitchen hot spot and it has it all: comfort food, dancing, two levels and polite cocktail servers. Just avoid the nasty DJs, who do not make any song requests!... It's a spacious venue with an easy crowd; I'm always pleased to be invited there." On a 2019 list of New York City's 16 best LGBTQ bars for Thrillist, Kyler Alvord said: > This may not be the best Therapy for social anxiety, but if you're soothed by Absolut-forward cocktails in plastic cups and hundreds of sweaty guys pressed up against you, start your treatment at this HK lounge. DJs, live music, and drag entertainment make this place a party nearly every night of the week. Visitors here have planned a night out and are laser-focused on fun. ## See also - Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the LGBT community - LGBT culture in New York City

LSWR M7 class

Class of 105 two-cylinder 0-4-4T locomotives

The LSWR M7 class is a class of 0-4-4T passenger tank locomotive built between 1897 and 1911. The class was designed by Dugald Drummond for use on the intensive London network of the London and South Western Railway (LSWR), and performed well in such tasks. Because of their utility, 105 were built and the class went through several modifications over five production batches. For this reason there were detail variations such as frame length. Many of the class were fitted with push-pull operation gear that enabled efficient use on branch line duties without the need to change to the other end of its train at the end of a journey. Under LSWR and Southern Railway ownership they had been successful suburban passenger engines, although with the increased availability of newer, standard designs, many of the class were diagrammed to take on a new role as reliable branch line engines, especially in Southern England. Members of the class lasted in service until 1964, and two examples have survived into preservation: number 245 in the National Railway Museum, and 53 (as BR 30053) on the Swanage Railway. ## Background Drummond designed these locomotives to answer the need for a larger and more powerful version of William Adams' 0-4-4 T1 class of 1888. The Adams T1's 5 ft 7 in (1,702 mm) wheels had been developed to meet the LSWR's requirement for a compact and sure-footed suburban passenger locomotive to be utilised on the intensive commuter timetables around London. However, by the mid-1890s the suburban services around London were growing at a rate which began to preclude the use of these and other older classes of locomotive. ## Construction history The M7 tank locomotive was the first design by Dugald Drummond upon replacing William Adams as Locomotive Superintendent of the LSWR in 1895. It was an enlargement of the T1 with a sloping grate of increased area giving greater power. Drummond drew upon his previous experience with the successful London, Brighton and South Coast Railway D1 class, whilst he was works manager at Brighton in the early 1870s, and his own 157 class of 1877, on the North British Railway in Scotland. It was the heaviest 0-4-4 type ever to run in Britain. The first 25 were constructed at Nine Elms Locomotive Works between March and November 1897. Thereafter the M7 class had a long production run, with five major sets of design variants. Between 1897 and 1899, the locomotives were constructed with a short overhang at the front, and sandboxes combined with the front splashers. Injectors and a lever-type reverser were also added, and a conical, as opposed to flat, smokebox door was implemented on numbers 252–256. In 1900 the design was modified to incorporate the sandboxes inside the smokebox; these were later relocated below the running plate. After 1903, a 36 ft 3 in (11.05 m) frame with a longer overhang at the front end was introduced and steam reversing gear fitted. Some sources record these locomotives as X14 class, and this designation was sometimes used to refer to the longer-framed versions, but for most purposes the two sub-classes were grouped together and known as M7. The 1904/05 construction batch moved the sandboxes back to the front splasher and new items were feed water heating, single ram pumps and balanced crank axles. For the remainder of construction from the outshopping of the 105th locomotive in 1911, duplex pumps were fitted. Several of the most successful features of the class were used by Drummond on his other designs. Thus the boiler, cylinders and motion were identical and interchangeable with those used on his 700 class 0-6-0 freight locomotives of 1897 and the same boiler was used on his C8 4-4-0 passenger class. ### Boiler pressure According to Bradley (p. 108) the original 175 lbf/in² (1.21 MPa) working pressure was reduced to 150 lbf/in² (1.03 MPa) to reduce wear on the boilers in 1900 when it became clear that they were no longer to be used for sustained high speed running. However H. C. Casserley states that the pressure was increased from 150 to 175 pounds-force per square inch (1.03 to 1.21 MPa). ### Push-pull equipment After 1912, thirty-one M7 locomotives were equipped with push-pull train capabilities with the provision of a primitive cable and pulley device. This was a modification that was designed to save time on country branch lines where the locomotive would usually have to run around its train in order to make a return journey. As a result, it was possible for the driver to drive his train from a cab located at the front of a designated push-pull coach, leaving the fireman to tend the fire and operate the injectors on the locomotive footplate. The pulley system was eventually deemed unsafe due to instances of sagging and delayed reaction. As a result, it was replaced on 36 engines by a safer compressed air system between 1930 and 1937. This system had seen previous successful use on the LBSCR. Because the air compressor required extra space for installation, these conversions were confined to the long-framed members of the class. A further four conversions to push-pull capability appeared between 1960 and 1962. This was the result of short-framed M7s having long frames substituted during overhaul in order to create room for the air compressor. ### Variants Following the successful use of superheating on other Drummond classes, Robert Urie experimentally fitted a superheated boiler to No. 126 in December 1920, together with an extended smokebox and larger cylinders. The additional weight of the new boiler raised the centre of gravity of the locomotive, thereby adding to problems of instability on faster main line trains, whilst simultaneously preventing its use on many branch lines. As a result, no further examples were fitted, and No.126 was eventually broken up for spare parts in 1937. In 1931 No. 672 was experimentally fitted with the Strowger-Hudd Automatic Warning System, but the equipment was not adopted by the Southern Railway and the equipment later removed. ## Operational details When first introduced to LSWR, several of the class were allocated to work semi-fast passenger services between London and Portsmouth, Exeter and Plymouth, and Bournemouth and Weymouth. However they were withdrawn from these duties after a high-speed derailment near Tavistock in 1898, following criticism by the Board of Trade inspector about the use of front-coupled locomotives on fast services. As a result, the class was to become synonymous with local main line and branch workings, as well as London suburban services. With the gradual growth of the electrification of Inner London's suburban lines after 1915, the class tended to be used on stopping trains on the LSWR main line, and on services to Guildford and Reading. After the formation of the Southern Railway in 1923 the class gradually began to be used, further afield, notably in the west of England, but also on branch lines in Kent, and on the former South Eastern and Chatham Railway line between Redhill and Reading. During the 1950s, a substantial number of the "push-pull" fitted members of the class was transferred to the Central Section of the Southern Region, at Brighton and Horsham, replacing worn-out D3 locomotives on the branch lines of the former London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in West Sussex. A further ten were transferred to Tunbridge Wells and Three Bridges in 1955 for use on East Sussex branches. These were less well accepted by the train crews, who preferred the theoretically less powerful SECR H class. Others remained in the London area on empty stock workings, notably between Clapham Junction and Waterloo station. The class was gradually replaced in the southeast England during the late 1950s and early 1960s due to the introduction of further electrification, new lightweight standard steam classes, diesel shunters, and diesel-electric multiple units. By the end of 1963 the majority that remained were based at Bournemouth to work the Swanage branch. ## Accidents and incidents - On 25 May 1933, locomotive No. 107 was hauling a passenger train when it was derailed at Raynes Park, London, coming to rest foul of an adjacent line. A separate passenger train, hauled by SR U Class 2-6-0 No. 1618, was in a side-long collision with it. Five people were killed and 35 were injured. The accident was caused by a failure to implement a speed restriction on a section of track under maintenance. - On 13 April 1948, an M7 locomotive No. 672 was involved in an accident with the lift that serviced the Waterloo & City Line. As a number of coal wagons were being loaded onto the lift platform at the upper level, the platform tilted due to an error in engaging the required supports. The wagons and locomotive fell down the lift shaft. As there was no practicable method of retrieving any of the rolling stock, the locomotive and wagons were cut up in situ. - On 27 November 1962, locomotive No. 30131 was derailed at Eastleigh, Hampshire after it was moved by an unauthorised person. ## Withdrawal and preservation Apart from the experimentally boilered No. 126, all the M7s entered into British Railways service in 1948. In that year No. 672 fell down the lift shaft which provided rolling stock access to the Waterloo & City Line at Waterloo, and was scrapped. The remainder survived until 1957, but over the next seven years the remainder of the class was withdrawn as part of the Modernisation Plan. Two examples of this quintessential class of steam locomotive have survived into preservation and both were built by Nine Elms. Both engines have seen use at certain points in preservation. They are: Despite only being small sized engines with limited water capacity and only being power class 2 engines, both have been on the mainline in preservation. During the time it was in steam 30245 travelled to open weekends under its own power as well as making an appearance at London Waterloo in 1988. In 2009 for the Eastleigh 100 event at Eastleigh Works, 30053 travelled by rail from Swanage to Eastleigh alongside 34028 Eddystone & 34070 Manston. Because none of the engines were mainline certified they had to be towed behind a diesel. ## Livery and numbering ### LSWR and Southern Railway Under the LSWR the class saw various liveries over its pre-grouping career. Most associated with the class during this period was the LSWR passenger light sage green livery with purple-brown edging, creating panels of green. This was further lined in white and black with "LSWR" in gilt on the water tank sides, and the locomotive number on the coal bunker sides. The National Railway Museum has chosen a non-typical green for the livery on No 245. When transferred to Southern Railway ownership after 1923 the locomotives were outshopped in Richard Maunsell's darker version of the LSWR livery, with numbering having an 'E' prefix to denote Eastleigh. This was to prevent confusion with other locomotives of the same number inherited by the Southern from its constituent railways. "A" (denoting Ashford) was used for former South Eastern and Chatham Railway locomotives and "B" (Brighton for those from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. After 1931 the prefixes were dropped from former LSWR locomotives and the remainder were renumbered. The gilt lettering was changed to yellow with "Southern" on the water tank sides with black and white lining. With the appointment of Oliver Bulleid as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Southern, livery policy was changed once again to malachite green for major passenger locomotives, with Sunshine Yellow lettering. This was lined with yellow and black with solid black edging. However, this livery was not applied to the M7 class, which were black with sunshine lettering shaded green. The numbers also lost their "E" prefix. During the war years the locomotives were outshopped in wartime black after overhaul, and some of the class retained this livery to nationalisation. Numbering depended on which batch the locomotive belonged to, and therefore each batch was allocated a series. After the war, four Nine Elms locomotives (38, 242, 243 and 244) were turned out in fully lined malachite green for Waterloo station pilot duties. ### Post-1948 (nationalisation) The M7 Class was given the BR Power Classification of 2P upon Nationalisation. Livery remained Southern black, though two malachite locos which were painted soon after (numbers 30038/30244) were lettered for British Railways in yellow Gill Sans style along the sides of their tanks. This was eventually replaced with BR lined mixed traffic black livery. Numbering was initially that of the Southern, though for a period an "S" prefix was added to the number. This was replaced with the BR standard numbering system, with all locomotives being allocated, by batch, numbers within the 30xxx series. ## Models Dapol manufactured a model of the M7 for British N gauge in 2006 but has since ended production of this model. An updated model using new tooling was announced in February 2021. Hornby Railways manufacture a model of the M7 in OO gauge. The earlier Triang Hornby company also manufactured an OO scale model of the M7 with opening firebox door and crew: model No. R.754, introduced in 1967.

Lake Burton (Antarctica)

Lake in Eastern Antarctica

Lake Burton, also known as Burton Lagoon, is a meromictic and saline lake in the Vestfold Hills of Princess Elizabeth Land in Eastern Antarctica. Princess Elizabeth Land, including the lake, is claimed by Australia as part of the Australian Antarctic Territory. The lake has a surface area of 1.35 km² (0.52 sq mi), a volume of 9.69 million m³, a maximum depth of 18.3 metres (60 ft) and a mean depth of 7.16 metres (23.5 ft). The lake is named after H. R. Burton, a biologist working in the Vestfold Hills of Antarctica. The lake is covered with ice for 10–11 months in a year. A tidal channel links the lake with Crooked Fjord only seasonally for about 6–7 months in the year. The tidal channel has a width of 20 metres (66 ft) and is about 2 metres (6.6 ft) deep. Lake Burton is the only meromictic lagoon that is part of the Antarctic Specially Protected Area No. 143, within East Antarctica, and access to the lake can only legally be obtained by a special permit and adhering to some strict regulations. A diatom floristic study of the lagoon revealed that it contains 41 species and is a rich storehouse of psychrophilic photosynthetic bacteria. The heterotrophic bacterial microbiota and the ecology of photosynthetic bacteria of the Lake Burton were studied in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the findings indicate that salinity levels increase from below the ice level towards the lake bottom resulting in dense waters and that the environmental conditions, presence of light in summer, darkness during winter, and oxic and anoxic water status of the lake waters dictated the growth of bacterial phototrophs. ## Geography and climate Lake Burton is located on the Ingrid Christensen Coast in Princess Elizabeth Land in Eastern Antarctica on roughly the same longitude as central India. This area of the coastline lies between Jennings Promontory, at 72°33'E, and the western end of the West Ice Shelf at 81°24'E in the western half of Princess Elizabeth Land, just east of Amery Ice Shelf. The lake is named after H. R. Burton, a biologist working in the Vestfold Hills of Antarctica. The lake, formerly an arm of the sea, is a dominant feature of the western side of the Vestfold Hills area in what is known as the Mule Peninsula. The lake lies to the northwest of the Sorsdal Glacier, southeast of Oldroyd Island and southwest of the Tryne Islands. The lake has a surface area of 1.35 km² (0.52 sq mi), a volume of 9.69 million m³, a maximum depth of 18.3 metres (60 ft) and a mean depth of 7.16 metres (23.5 ft). The climate within the Antarctic Specially Protected Area is monitored at the Davis Station, which is 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) northwest of Marine Plain, not far from the lake. Hence, all meteorological data collected at this site is relevant to the lake environment also. The area has a polar maritime climate; cold, dry and windy, with sunny days during summer. The temperature varies from −1 °C (30 °F) to 3 °C (37 °F) during summer with a maximum of 5 °C (41 °F); however, the dominant temperature during most of the year is below 0 °C (32 °F). During winter, the temperature falls to as low as −40.7 °C (−41.3 °F). ## Protected area Lake Burton is the only meromictic lagoon that is part of the Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) No. 143, within East Antarctica. The lake is also defined as lagoon as it characterizes a stage in the biological and physio-chemical evolution of a terrestrial water body from the marine environment namely, the geological creation of a lake. Entry restrictions Entry to the protected area, including the lake, is controlled by the Australian government. Permits are strictly issued only for specific scientific research in the field of paleontology, paleoclimate, geology, geomorphology, glaciology, biology and limnology. Visits for educational or cultural reasons, which are mandatory within a defined management plan, are also permitted. Any such visit must not cause harm to the ecological or scientific values of the area. Access and movement within the protected areas is restricted. In the lake area in particular, no motorized boats are permitted. Flying over the lakes is also discouraged except for scientific reasons. Vehicular traffic is banned in the reserved areas. Taking samples from the lake is to be kept to the minimum even for scientific studies and also the equipment brought from outside for sampling, and it must be thoroughly washed to avoid any type of contamination from outside. There are many more rules and regulations that are set by the authorities, which have to be strictly adhered to. ## Fauna and flora The Mule Peninsula, in which the lake is located, is an area rich in fossils. Marine algae are abundant in Lake Burton. A diatom floristic study of the lagoon revealed that it contains 41 species. The lake is a rich storehouse of psychrophilic photosynthetic bacteria – some of which have been found nowhere else. Other dominant varieties of bacteria found are Chlorobium vibrioforme and C. limicola. The minor species identified are Thiocapsa roseopersicina and Rhodopseudomonas palustris. The lake also has an ultra structure of Postgaardi mariagerens identified as a member of the clade Euglenozoa – Euglenozoa incertae sedis. Choanoflagellates have been found in the lake, including Diaphanoeca grandis, Diaphanoeca sphaerica, Saepicula leadbeateri and Spiraloecion didymocostatum gen. et sp. nov species. Fish species The only fish species ever sighted in the lake, and on just one occasion, is Pagothenia borchgrevinki, though it is commonly found in the vicinity in the coastal areas and fjords of the Vestfold Hills. Zooplankton Four species of metazoan zooplankton have been recorded in the lake, namely, Drepanopus bispinosus, Paralabidocera antarctica (Copepoda), Rathkea lizzioides (Anthomedusae) and a cydippid ctenophore (not named). Also found in the benthic community here are several species of Holotricha, two species of nematode, and many marine amphipods and tardigrades. ### Vegetation The small water courses that flow radially from the northern direction into the lake, which are seasonal streams, abound in lichens. Mosses are found but are more prevalent on the northern end of Poseidon Lake. In the region as a whole, 23 species of lichens and six moss species have been recorded. ## Research findings The heterotrophic bacterial microbiota and the ecology of photosynthetic bacteria of the Lake Burton have been studied in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the findings indicate that salinity levels increase from below the ice level towards the lake bottom resulting in dense waters, the microbiota activity caused depletion of oxygen, separate water bodies of distinct chemistry got formed, the intervening chemical gradients have created niches for colonization by unique microbial communities and 68 bacteria were isolated. In the research studies on photosynthetic bacteria conducted in 1983, the dominant species identified were Chlorobium vibrioforme and Chlorobium limicola. Thiocapsa roseopersicina and Rhodopseudomonas palustris were also found but at lower density. In the anoxic water zone (temperature range of −5 °C (23 °F) to −2.2 °C (28.0 °F)) of the lake, Chlorobium spp. and T. roseopersicina were found. It was also noted that the environmental conditions, presence of light in summer, darkness during winter, and oxic and anoxic water status of the lake waters dictated the growth of bacterial phototrophs. The dominance of the species Chlorobium spp. was attributed to "more efficient maintenance metabolism in winter and of their greater efficiency in utilizing low intensity light". In 1984, during the Antarctic summer when phytoplankton bloom was apparent, the lake was studied, along with several others in the Vestfold Hills area to assess the reduced sulfuric gases by gas chromatography. The gases were trapped in a solid adsorbent – a molecular sieve with 5 Å pores (80–100 mesh) – and reduced sulfur compounds (RSCs) were detected. The most apparent RSCs were dimethyl sulfide (DMS), carbonyl sulfide and hydrogen sulfide.

Medford/Tufts station

Light rail station in Medford, Massachusetts, US

Medford/Tufts station is a light rail station on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Green Line located off Boston Avenue near College Avenue in Medford, Massachusetts, adjacent to Tufts University. The accessible station has a single island platform serving the two tracks of the Medford Branch. It opened on December 12, 2022, as part of the Green Line Extension (GLX), which added two northern branches to the Green Line, and is the northern terminus of the E branch. The location was previously served by railroad stations. The Boston and Lowell Railroad (B&L) opened Stearns Steps station near what is now College Avenue by 1849. It was soon named Tufts College, then College Hill, after the 1852-founded college. The original station building – a converted house – was replaced with the brick Tufts College station slightly to the south in 1897. The station was served by the Boston and Maine Railroad, successor to the B&L, until 1958. Tufts University station served the Lowell Line from 1977 to 1979 at the same location. Extensions to the Green Line were proposed throughout the 20th century, most with Tufts University as one of the intermediate stations. A station site between College Avenue and Winthrop Street was chosen for the GLX in 2008. However, the planned station was moved to College Avenue in 2009. Cost increases triggered a wholesale reevaluation of the GLX project in 2015, and a scaled-down station design was released in 2016. A design-build contract was issued in 2017. In January 2020, the station was renamed Medford/Tufts under an agreement between the MBTA and the university. Construction of the station began in mid-2020 and was largely completed by early 2022. ## Station design Medford/Tufts station is located off Boston Avenue near College Avenue on the northeast side of Walnut Hill in Medford. The Lowell Line runs roughly northwest–southeast through the station area, with the two-track Medford Branch of the Green Line on the south side of the Lowell Line tracks. The station has a single island platform, 225 feet (69 m) long and 22.5 feet (6.9 m) wide, between the Green Line tracks northwest of College Avenue. A canopy covers the full length of the platform. The platform is 8 inches (200 mm) high for accessible boarding on current light rail vehicles (LRVs), and can be raised to 14 inches (360 mm) for future level boarding with Type 9 and Type 10 LRVs; it is also provisioned for future extension to 300-foot (91 m) length. The tracks and platform are below grade in a cut. The main entrance is from Boston Avenue on the south side of the tracks, with part of the headhouse structure extending over the southern Green Line track. Stairs plus two elevators for accessibility connect the entrance to the southeast end of the platform. A starter booth is located at the northwest end of the platform, with an emergency exit ramp to Boston Avenue. A 50-space "Pedal and Park" bike cage is located next to the entrance along Boston Avenue. Public art at the station includes Speeding Green Line – a blurred mural over the station entrance – as well as murals on panels on station signs. MBTA bus routes stop on Boston Avenue near the station. ## History ### Railroad stations The Boston and Lowell Railroad (B&L) opened through Medford in 1835, though local stops were not added immediately. Stearns Steps station, named for the nearby estate of George Luther Stearns, was located near what is now College Avenue by 1846. Tufts College was founded in 1852; by 1855, the station was called Tufts College. It was located on the west side of the tracks. The stop did not appear in some timetables during its first decade, and may have had intermittent service during that time. By September 1858, it was called College Hill and served as a flag stop for six daily round trips – largely local trains serving the Woburn Branch. By the 1860s, special service was run to the station for commencement ceremonies. The first station building was an addition to a residential structure on the north side of the tracks just west of College Avenue. The college's post office was located in the station, with the station agent serving as the postmaster, until a separate post office was built nearby in 1885. In 1887, the B&L was leased by the Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) as its Southern Division. On May 3, 1897, the older station building was replaced with a brick structure, located on the opposite side of the tracks and slightly to the south at Pearson Street. At that time, it was renamed as Tufts College, matching the post office name, at the request of students. The bridge carrying College Avenue over the tracks was replaced in 1898. The former station was twice burnt by students during riots after football games in November 1905. Tufts College station was commonly used by students; special trains operated direct from the station for some away football games. However, streetcars consolidated under the Boston Elevated Railway cut sharply into local railroad traffic. The college purchased the disused station building for one dollar in 1941 to avoid its demolition by the railroad, and repurposed it as a theatre workshop in 1944. A small wooden shelter was built for passengers. On April 18, 1958, the Public Utilities Commission approved a vast set of cuts to B&M commuter service, including the closure of North Somerville, Tufts College, and Medford Hillside stations. The three stations were closed on May 18, 1958, amid the first of a series of cuts. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the B&M reopened several inner-suburb commuter rail stations in response to community desire for service that was faster if less frequent than buses. Tufts University station near the Tufts College station site was scheduled to open on October 12, 1976. The opening was delayed by a disagreement between the B&M and the university over liability insurance. As the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) took over the system, the new agency agreed to take on the liability. The university paid \$2,000 () of the \$4,600 () cost of the small platform, with the rest paid by the MBTA. Service began on September 1, 1977, with an opening ceremony held on September 15. The station was abandoned in October 1979 due to poor ridership. ### Green Line Extension #### Previous plans The Boston Elevated Railway (BERy) opened Lechmere station in 1922 as a terminal for streetcar service in the Tremont Street subway. That year, with the downtown subway network and several radial lines in service, the BERy indicated plans to build three additional radial subways: one paralleling the Midland Branch through Dorchester, a second branching from the Boylston Street subway to run under Huntington Avenue, and a third extending from Lechmere Square northwest through Somerville. The Report on Improved Transportation Facilities, published by the Boston Division of Metropolitan Planning in 1926, proposed extension from Lechmere to North Cambridge via the Southern Division and the 1870-built cutoff. Consideration was also given to extension past North Cambridge over the Lexington Branch, and to a branch following the Southern Division from Somerville Junction to Woburn. In 1945, a preliminary report from the state Coolidge Commission recommended nine suburban rapid transit extensions – most similar to the 1926 plan – along existing railroad lines. These included an extension from Lechmere to Woburn over the Southern Division, rather than using the Fitchburg Cutoff. Tufts College was to be among the intermediate stations. The 1962 North Terminal Area Study recommended that the elevated Lechmere–North Station segment be abandoned. The Main Line (now the Orange Line) was to be relocated along the B&M Western Route; it would have a branch following the Southern Division to Arlington or Woburn. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) was formed in 1964 as an expansion of the Metropolitan Transit Authority to subsidize suburban commuter rail service, as well as to construct rapid transit extensions to replace some commuter rail lines. In 1965, as part of systemwide rebranding, the Tremont Street subway and its connecting lines became the Green Line. The 1966 Program for Mass Transportation, the MBTA's first long-range plan, listed a short extension from Lechmere to Washington Street as an immediate priority, with a second phase reaching to (Route 16) or . The 1972 final report of the Boston Transportation Planning Review listed a Green Line extension from Lechmere to as a lower priority, as did several subsequent planning documents. In 1980, the MBTA began a study of the "Green Line Northwest Corridor" (from to Medford), with extension past Lechmere one of its three topic areas. Extensions to Tufts University or were considered. #### Station planning A 1991 agreement between the state and the Conservation Law Foundation, which settled a lawsuit over auto emissions from the Big Dig, committed to the construction of a "Green Line Extension To Ball Square/Tufts University". No progress was made until an updated agreement was signed in 2005. The Beyond Lechmere Northwest Corridor Study, a Major Investment Study/alternatives analysis, was published in 2005. The analysis studied a variety of light rail, bus rapid transit, and commuter rail extensions, most of which included a Ball Square station near the former North Somerville station site. The highest-rated alternatives all included an extension to West Medford with College Avenue as one of the intermediate stations. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works submitted an Expanded Environmental Notification Form (EENF) to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs in October 2006. The EENF identified a Green Line extension with Medford and Union Square branches as the preferred alternative. That December, the Secretary of Environmental Affairs issued a certificate that required analysis of the terminal location in the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) for the Green Line Extension (GLX). The EENF had proposed College Avenue, with a possible extension to a second station at Winthrop Street; the certificate also required analysis of a single station between the two streets, and of a further extension to . The certificate also required consideration of Lowell Line stations at Tufts University and to provide a connection between commuter rail and rapid transit. Planned station sites were announced in May 2008. A single station between College Avenue and Winthrop Street was recommended due to lower cost, better station spacing, and the ability to avoid modifying the College Avenue and Winthrop Street bridges. The DEIR, released in October 2009, did not recommend the construction of a commuter rail platform at Gilman Square or Tufts University. The width of a platform and a gauntlet track for freight would require additional right-of-way width, which would have substantial impacts on adjacent properties. It also recommended a single station at College Avenue, as the previously planned combined station would have had poor pedestrian access from neighborhoods north of the tracks. A separate Winthrop Street station was not recommended, as its catchment area overlapped with the College Avenue and Route 16 stations. However, Route 16 was deferred to a future phase, making College Avenue the terminus. Preliminary plans in the DEIR called for the station to have a single island platform northwest of College Avenue. A two-level headhouse with stairs, an escalator, and two elevators would have entrances from a plaza at the intersection of Boston Avenue and College Avenue. The 2010 final environmental impact report added several mitigations for traffic, noise, and vibration associated with College Avenue being the terminal station. Updated plans shown in June 2011 added a pedestrian path to Burget Avenue. Plans presented in February 2012 enlarged the entrance plaza, added an emergency exit ramp at the northwest end of the station, and relocated the bike cage. By 2012, the portion of the Medford Branch from Gilman Square station to College Avenue was expected to be completed by June 2019. A Tufts University commuter rail station to supplement the Green Line station was again listed as a possibility in 2012 as an interim air quality mitigation measure in response to delays in building the Green Line Extension. However, such a station would have been costly to build and could not have been completed by the 2015 deadline, and was thus not supported by MassDOT. A further update in June 2013 removed the electric penthouse and reconfigured the headhouse and emergency exit ramp. Design was then paused while Phase 2/2A stations (, , and ) were prioritized, as they were scheduled to open sooner than the rest of the GLX. Design resumed in fall 2014; by May 2015, elements of College Avenue station ranged between 30% and 90% design. In June 2015, Tufts announced plans to build a new university building on College Avenue. One-third of the structure was to be over the Green Line station, with a footbridge over Boston Avenue to the main campus area. #### Redesign In August 2015, the MBTA disclosed that project costs had increased substantially, triggered a wholesale re-evaluation of the GLX project. In December 2015, the MBTA ended its contracts with four firms. Construction work in progress continued, but no new contracts were awarded. At that time, cancellation of the project was considered possible, as were elimination of the Union Square Branch and other cost reduction measures. In May 2016, the MassDOT and MBTA boards approved a modified project that had undergone value engineering to reduce its cost. Stations were simplified to resemble D branch surface stations rather than full rapid transit stations, with canopies, faregates, escalators, and some elevators removed. The escalator was removed from the College Avenue station design; the emergency exit ramp was replaced with an at-grade track crossing. In December 2016, the MBTA announced a new planned opening date of 2021 for the extension. A design-build contract for the GLX was awarded in November 2017. The winning proposal included six additive options – elements removed during value engineering – including full-length canopies at all stations. The emergency exit ramp was re-added to the station design, and a pedestrian bridge was added adjacent to the College Avenue road bridge to avoid a larger reconstruction of the bridge. Station design advanced from 5% in March 2018 to 75% that December and to 95% in October 2019. #### Construction By the time construction on the new Tufts building – the Joyce Cummings Center – began in 2019, the footbridge and the portion over the station had been eliminated from the design. On January 2, 2020, the MBTA and Tufts announced that the station would be named Medford/Tufts. Tufts would pay \$2 million in maintenance costs over 10 years in exchange for the name. Construction on the station began by August 2020, with retaining wall work preceding it. The 100-foot (30 m)-long, 13.5-short-ton (12,200 kg) pedestrian bridge was put in place on May 8, 2021. Both elevator shafts were erected later that month. The concrete platform was poured in June 2021 – months later than the other GLX stations – with the emergency exit ramp under construction by that time. The headhouse and the platform canopy were constructed in the second half of 2021. Original plans called for the D branch to be extended to Medford/Tufts. However, in April 2021, the MBTA indicated that the Medford Branch would instead be served by the E branch. A pedestrian bridge parallel to College Avenue was installed on May 8, 2021. By March 2021, the station was expected to open in December 2021. In June 2021, the MBTA indicated an additional delay, under which the station was expected to open in May 2022. In February 2022, the MBTA announced that the Medford Branch would open in "late summer". Train testing on the Medford Branch began in May 2022. In August 2022, the planned opening was delayed to November 2022. The Medford Branch, including Medford/Tufts station, opened on December 12, 2022.

Alekseyev I-21

Soviet prototype fighter aircraft family

The Alekseyev I-21 was a Soviet twin-engined jet fighter, built in the late 1940s. Two prototypes were constructed with the designation of I-211, of which one was converted into the I-215 with more powerful engines. A third aircraft was built to evaluate the bicycle landing gear arrangement for use in other aircraft. The fighter was not accepted for production as it was inferior to the swept-wing fighters like the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15. ## Development After working as Lavochkin's right-hand man during World War II, Semyon Alekseyev was appointed as Chief Designer of OKB-21 (design bureau) at Gor'kiy. The Council of the People's Commissars directed Alekseyev and other designers to develop jet fighters using more powerful engines than the captured German Jumo 004 and the BMW 003 and their Soviet-built copies. The result of Alekseyev's efforts was the I-21 (Russian: istrebitel (fighter)), which was planned to be produced in several variants. The I-21 was a twin-engined, all-metal, single-seat jet fighter, with straight laminar flow wings, mid-set on a circular fuselage. The fighter's 1,500-kilogram-force (15 kN; 3,300 lbf) Lyul'ka TR-2 turbojet engines were mounted below the wings much like those on the German Messerschmitt Me 262 fighter. Underneath the engine nacelles were hardpoints that could carry 250-kilogram (550 lb) bombs or drop tanks. The slightly swept tail unit was cruciform in layout with the tailplane set at approximately half-fin span with slight dihedral. The aircraft's structure was generally constructed from high-strength B-95 duralumin, although high-strength steel and "Elektron" magnesium alloy were used for some components. A hydraulically retractable tricycle undercarriage was fitted, using twin wheels for the nose and main landing gear. Hydraulically actuated airbrakes were fitted either side of the rear fuselage. Alekseyev initially planned to arm the aircraft with three 37-millimeter (1.5 in) Nudelman N-37 autocannon, each with 30 rounds, but later decided upon a pair of 23 mm (0.91 in) Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 autocannon with 75 rounds per gun. Design work on the I-210 (I-21 version 0) was concurrent with the I-21, probably as a fall back for any lack of availability of the latter's TR-2 engines. The only significant difference was the substitution of 800 kgf (7.8 kN; 1,800 lbf) BMW 003 engines (or the reverse-engineered RD-20), but the ex-German engine's significantly inferior thrust rating meant that it would never meet the I-21's speed requirement. Even replacing the BMW 003 with the slightly more powerful (900 kgf (8.8 kN; 2,000 lbf)) Jumo 004 would not allow the I-210 to meet the speed requirement and the project was cancelled before any metal was cut. Construction of the first two airframes, designated as the I-211 (I-21 version 1), began at the end of 1946, under extreme pressure by the Ministry of Aircraft Production to complete initial flight testing by 1 August 1947, to enable the aircraft to take part in the Aviation Day Flypast at Tushino on 18 August. While one of the two airframes initially produced was used for static testing, the other was fitted with 1,300 kgf (13 kN; 2,900 lbf) Lyul'ka TR-1 turbojet engines because the intended TR-2 was not available. The engines were mounted in the middle of the wing, with the wing spars continued by banjo rings around the engines, much like those on the British Gloster Meteor fighter. Despite pressure from above, the I-211 was unable to participate in the Tushino display. Flight testing started in late 1947, but only six test flights had been carried out before the I-211 struck a pothole on landing, which collapsed the undercarriage. Even the limited amount of flight testing showed it to be faster than the Sukhoi Su-11 which also used the TR-1 engine. Repairs were carried out and the opportunity taken to replace the troublesome engines with imported 1,590 kgf (15.6 kN; 3,500 lbf) Rolls-Royce Derwent V engines. Alekseyev took the opportunity to upgrade the aircraft to the I-215 configuration which had been in development since before the first flight of the I-211. The substitution of the centrifugal-flow Derwent for the axial-flow TR-1 forced the redesign and enlargement of the nacelles to accommodate the larger engine. Other modifications included increasing the fuel capacity from 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) to 2,300 kg (5,100 lb), provision for a ranging radar in the nose, and better protection for the pilot. The armament was revised to the originally specified N-37 guns, although the ammunition capacity was marginally increased to 35 rounds per gun. Despite good results from flight testing, the I-215 lost out in production orders to the newer generation of swept-winged fighters. A second I-215 was built to an order from OKB-1 as the I-215D (dooblyor, second prototype), to evaluate the bicycle or tandem landing gear configuration. It used wider-diameter paired wheels in a tandem arrangement that retracted into the fuselage, along with small outrigger wheels under the engine nacelles which retracted into fairings. The main undercarriage of the I-215D also incorporated a kneeling feature which could increase the incidence of the aircraft by 3° to assist take-off. Trials with this undercarriage arrangement were successful and paved the way for its use in other Soviet aircraft, including Dr. Brunolf Baade's Aircraft 150, then under development. ## Variants - I-210 - The initial version with BMW 003 or Tumanskii RD-20 engines, project only. - I-211 - The first flyable example completed as the I-211 with Lyul'ka TR-1 engines, rebuilt as the I-215. - I-211S - I-211 with swept wing and unswept tail, project only. - I-215 - The re-built I-211 with Rolls-Royce Derwent V engines and other minor modifications. - I-215D - Bicycle-undercarriage I-215 built to order of OKB-1. ## Specifications (I-211 as tested) ## See also

Paradise Airlines Flight 901A

1964 aviation accident

Paradise Airlines Flight 901A was a scheduled passenger flight from San Jose Municipal Airport to Tahoe Valley Airport. On March 1, 1964, the Lockheed L-049 Constellation serving the flight crashed near Genoa Peak, on the eastern side of Lake Tahoe during a heavy snowstorm, killing all 85 aboard and destroying the plane. After the crashed plane was located, the recovery of the wreckage and the bodies of the victims took most of a month. Crash investigators concluded that the primary cause of the accident was the pilot's decision to attempt to land at Tahoe Valley Airport when the visibility was too low due to clouds and snowstorms in the area. After aborting the landing attempt, the flight crew lost awareness of the plane's location as it flew below the minimum safe altitude in mountainous terrain. The pilot likely tried to fly through a low mountain pass in an attempt to divert to the airport in Reno, Nevada, and crashed into the left shoulder of the pass. At the time, it was the second-deadliest single-plane crash in United States history, and remains the worst accident involving the Lockheed L-049 Constellation. The airline involved was a two-year-old company that operated discount excursion flights from the San Francisco Bay Area to Lake Tahoe. After the accident, investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uncovered multiple safety violations by the company and grounded all of its flights. After an unsuccessful appeal by the company, the FAA revoked its operating certificate and Paradise Airlines permanently shut down. ## Accident Flight 901A was one of two daily passenger flights operated by Paradise Airlines between San Jose Municipal Airport and Tahoe Valley Airport. On the morning of Sunday, March 1, 1964, the Lockheed L-049 Constellation operating the flight took off from the company's base at the Oakland International Airport with only the four crew members aboard, and made a pre-arranged stop at nearby Salinas Airport to pick up a group of eighteen passengers before proceeding to San Jose Airport, where a more passengers were waiting. There was only space for 63 of the waiting passengers; the remaining 15 travelers were unable to board because the aircraft was filled to capacity. The airline shuttled them by bus to Oakland to catch a later flight. The aircraft, with 81 passengers and 4 crew members, departed San Jose at 10:39 a.m. PST for the 50-minute flight to Lake Tahoe. The passengers who had been bussed to Oakland eventually learned that the later flight was canceled due to poor weather in the mountains. Although the U.S. Weather Bureau forecast for the Lake Tahoe region predicted weather conditions that would have been unsuitable for flights, the Paradise Airlines dispatcher estimated that by Flight 901A's scheduled arrival time, weather conditions would have improved, so he approved the aircraft's departure. En route, the crew of Flight 901A spoke to the company's other plane by radio, which had just left the Tahoe Airport on its way to Oakland. That crew said that they had encountered icing conditions at 12,000 feet (3,700 m), snow showers over Lake Tahoe, and that clouds had obscured the tops of mountains in the vicinity. At 11:21 a.m., the pilot of Flight 901A, near Lake Tahoe, reported to the Oakland air route traffic control center that he had spotted a break in the cloud cover, that he could see the airport on the south shore of the lake, and that he was going to proceed with a visual approach. At 11:27 a.m., the pilots contacted the passenger agent for Paradise Airlines at Tahoe Valley Airport to let him know they would be arriving shortly and that he should be prepared for the incoming passengers. The agent informed them that the 11:00 a.m. Weather Bureau report described the weather conditions as overcast, 2,000 feet (610 m) estimated ceiling, with 3 miles (5 km) visibility. According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations for the airport, the weather report had to have a minimum ceiling of 4,000 feet (1,200 m) and 10 miles (16 km) visibility before a commercial passenger aircraft could attempt an approach, so the incoming flight could not be given permission to land. There were different witnesses that testified either seeing or hearing the aircraft at different points in its flight near South Lake Tahoe. Investigators concluded that the flight flew south across the lake at an altitude of about 500 feet (150 m) toward the airport on the south end. According to the witnesses, it was not showing it any obvious mechanical problems. Near the airport, the plane entered an area of cloud cover, then added power to the engines and turned back north towards the lake. It then turned to the east and flew away from the lake. By this time the weather conditions had deteriorated into blizzard conditions, and witnesses could only hear the plane engines, which abruptly stopped. The witnesses did not hear the sound of an explosion or crash. The aircraft struck the ground at the crest of a ridge near Genoa Peak, Nevada. That section of the mountains around the lake, with a maximum height of 8,900 feet (2,700 m) above sea level, forms the north shoulder of Daggett Pass, a pass several miles across which has an average elevation of 7,300 feet (2,200 m) above sea level. Just before impact, the plane struck several of the trees on the ridge's west slope, and the pattern of damage to the trees showed that the aircraft was flying almost level at the time. The crash occurred just 25 to 30 feet (8 to 9 m) below the top of the ridge, leaving a trail of wreckage approximately 900 feet (270 m) long. If the aircraft had been 100 feet (30 m) more to the right at the altitude it was flying, it would have cleared the ridge. Paradise Airlines had been operating as an intrastate airline in California for about two years, and had not had any accidents in its history before this flight. It is the worst accident involving the Lockheed L-049 Constellation, and at the time was the second worst single-plane accident in United States history, exceeded only by American Airlines Flight 1 two years earlier. ## Aftermath When the aircraft was determined to be missing, search efforts commenced, but because of the heavy snowstorms in the Tahoe area, efforts were severely limited on the first day. Two small boats searched along a ten-mile (16 km) stretch of the lake's shore, but by nightfall, the searchers had found no trace of the missing aircraft. Experienced ski rescue crews and mountaineers waited for a break in the weather before they could join the search. By dawn the next morning, the weather had cleared enough to permit a large-scale search. Air Force Lt. Col. Alexander Sherry headed the operation, involving more than fifty planes and hundreds of people. At 7:36 a.m., an Air Force helicopter spotted the wreckage of the aircraft on the ridge. A second helicopter landed at the site and confirmed that the wreckage was from the missing flight. It also confirmed that there were no survivors. Looters had already been to the site and stolen cash and jewelry from the crash victims. Douglas County Sheriff's deputies led a group of off-road vehicles to the crash scene and left two deputies there overnight to guard the wreckage. A bulldozer cleared a 3+1⁄2-mile (6 km) road to the site along an old logging track to make it easier for rescuers and investigators to reach it. Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) investigators arrived at the scene of the crash and began to sift through the wreckage of the aircraft for clues as to why it crashed. Most of the wreckage was shattered into tiny pieces, with only a few recognizable parts. Portions of the four engines had burned, and there was evidence that a small area of the crash site had burned for four or five hours. The impact site was so close to the top of the ridge that the wheel from the aircraft's nose gear was found on the other side of the mountain. Rescuers estimated that because of the rugged terrain and the deep snow, it would take several days or possibly even months until after the spring thaw before all the victims could be recovered. The first seven were brought to a makeshift morgue in the CVIC Hall in Minden, Nevada, on March 3, two days after the crash, where technicians from the Federal Bureau of Investigation began the process of identification. An additional 43 victims were brought the next day, with officials hurrying to recover bodies before an incoming snowstorm buried them in the snow, making them even harder to locate. The Air Force flew in a helicopter to help shuttle the bodies down from the ridge. Two large Army helicopters brought in three 600-pound (270 kg) mobile hot air furnaces to the site to help melt away the snow. By March 6, searchers had located and recovered all but two of the victims. The last two were eventually located, but by March 9, officials had only been able to recover one of them before poor weather forced them to halt recovery operations. The final victim was removed from the site on March 30, about a month after the crash. Douglas County district attorney John Chrislaw reported that Paradise Airlines refused to pay the \$300 () per victim mortuary expenses of handling the remains, leaving the victims' relatives to bear the cost. Paradise Airlines president Herman Jones denied the report, saying that the expenses would be paid by the airline's insurance company. ### Airline grounded After cancelling flights immediately after the crash, Paradise Airlines resumed flights to Lake Tahoe on the morning of March 3, two days after the accident. The FAA immediately ordered an emergency suspension of all flights by the airline, which took effect at noon on March 4. The suspension order said that the airline had shown "a lack of ability and qualifications to conduct a safe intrastate common carrier passenger operation". The agency said that the airline could appeal the suspension, but that in the meantime, it could not conduct flights until a decision was made on the appeal. FAA Regional Director Joseph Tippets said that the reason the agency was being so strict with the airline was because Flight 901A had been dispatched on its fatal flight at a time when the weather conditions at the destination airport would not have permitted a safe landing. He said that the same day, the airline had also allowed its other aircraft to take off from Tahoe Valley Airport in during a time when the local weather conditions prohibited it. Both planes had been flying in conditions where icing would have been likely, but neither of them were equipped with wing de-icing equipment. Instead, the front edges of the wings of the two aircraft had simply been painted black, which made it look like they had de-icing equipment installed. Company president Herman Jones told reporters that he was puzzled by the FAA's action, saying that to his knowledge, the agency had found no problems with the company's operation or its paperwork. In the days following the suspension, he added that he believed that the FAA's "over-restrictive rules" about flying in adverse weather conditions were to blame for the accident. According to him, the aircraft was only three or four miles from the Tahoe Airport by the time the Tahoe Airport agent told them that the weather report stated that there was only a 2,000-foot (610 m) ceiling. Jones said the pilots may have already had the airport in sight, but instead of landing safely, the pilot probably decided to fly over to Reno in order to avoid being cited by the FAA for landing in violation of the airport weather minimums. At the outset of the appeal hearing before the FAA, Paradise Airlines tried to argue that the agency had no jurisdiction over the company because it was an intrastate airline that normally operated only within state boundaries. The company was unsuccessful making that argument. Once testimony commenced, attention was first focused on the company dispatcher that had approved the flight despite the poor weather conditions. At 25 years old, he was very inexperienced and had been employed by the company for only one month. He was not very fluent with the English language, and in response to questioning by the FAA, was unable to provide explanations of crucial weather terms that appeared in that day's forecast. He testified that he had used his own judgment and predicted that weather conditions at Tahoe Airport would be safe enough for the flight to land by the time it arrived. However, when he was given several examples of different weather conditions during the hearing, he was unable to accurately describe how those weather conditions could affect flight safety. In a later part of the hearing, FAA investigators revealed that the Tahoe Valley operations manager for Paradise Airlines had made changes to notes made by the airport's official weather observer on the morning of the flight. Operations manager Raymond Rickard testified that he had written in a minus sign in front of a certain meteorological symbol on the report, which changed its meaning from "broken cloud ceiling" to "thin, broken clouds". He said, "I knew [the observer] would not let us dispatch an airplane under the conditions he'd written, so I just inserted the minus sign." He said he did this because he had heard the observer tell another pilot that it was all right to take off, so he thought that the observer had just made a mistake on the report. However, the observer testified that he was positive that he had seen weather conditions well below minimum operating conditions that morning. Another FAA investigator testified that Paradise Airlines had violated civil air regulations several times in the three months before the accident, mostly involving weather conditions. On April 6, the company lost its appeal of the FAA order grounding the company's aircraft. Paradise Airlines president Herman Jones called the hearings "a great miscarriage of justice" and vowed to keep the company's planes flying, with or without an air operator's certificate. FAA representatives countered that if the company attempted to fly without a certificate, the United States Marshals Service would seize the aircraft involved. After the ruling, the airline shut down. ## Aircraft The aircraft was a Lockheed L-049 Constellation, serial number 2025 and registered with tail number N86504. Assembly of the aircraft finished in December 1945, and at the time of the crash it been operated for 45,629 hours. It was equipped with four Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone propeller engines that had undergone a total overhaul within the past 1,300 flight hours. The plane was owned by Nevada Airmotive Corporation of Las Vegas, and had been leased to Paradise Airlines since June 1963. It had been previously owned and operated by Trans World Airlines. Paradise Airlines had flown it a total of 551 hours. According to the FAA, the type of aircraft was well suited for operation in high-altitude, mountainous airports like Lake Tahoe, due to its relatively slow speed and high maneuverability. ## Passengers and crew Paradise Airlines Flight 901A carried 81 passengers and 4 crew on its final flight. Nearly all of the passengers were from the Salinas and San Jose areas. All but two of the eighteen passengers that the airline had picked up at its Salinas stop were employees of the Monte Mar Development company of Salinas and Monterey. The captain of the flight was Henry Norris, age 45, who had been employed with the airline since November 1963. He had 15,391 hours of flight time, including 3,266 hours in Lockheed Constellation type aircraft. He had served in the Air Transport Command during World War II, had flown as a pilot for Modern Air Transport and World Airways, and served as the director of training for Alaska Airlines. He was unmarried and a resident of Alameda, California. The first officer, 28-year-old Donald A. Watson, of San Francisco, had been employed with the company since March 1963. He had 3,553 flight hours of experience, including 149 hours instrument time and 1,353 hours in the Lockheed Constellation. Before joining Paradise Airlines, he had served as a mechanic with Pan American Airways and a pilot with Flying Tiger Line. The flight engineer, Jack C. Worthley, 33, of Fremont, California, had been employed with the company since October 1963. He had 3,700 flight hours as a flight engineer, including 912 hours on the Lockheed Constellation. He was the father of three children and was a native of Seattle. ## Investigation Investigators from the CAB arrived at the headquarters of Paradise Airlines on the day the plane went missing, even before the crash site had been located. Just as company president Herman Jones was about to meet with officials from the CAB and the FAA the next morning, word came in that the crash site had been located. After the meeting, investigators impounded all of the company's records. More than thirty CAB investigators were involved in the probe, studying the maintenance records of the plane, interviewing witnesses, studying the weather reports, and examining pieces of the wreckage for indications of the cause of the crash. The aircraft was not equipped with a cockpit voice recorder. All four propeller hub assemblies were located and shipped, with the broken propeller blades, to a shop in Hayward, California, to determine how much power the engines were generating when the plane crashed. By May 1, investigators had recovered the key instruments and the radio equipment of the crashed plane. A salvage operator began removing the rest of the plane, taking the pieces to a warehouse at Reid–Hillview Airport near San Jose and storing them there in case they were needed by CAB investigators. The CAB held a probable cause hearing in Oakland from June 2–5. The investigative team learned that pilots had made 11 reports of problems with the plane's directional instruments in the nine months before the crash. Testimony from the Tahoe Airport's weather observer repeated some of what was said during the appeal of the FAA's suspension of Paradise Airlines' operating certificate. The pilot of the Paradise Airlines flight that left Lake Tahoe an hour before the crash testified that he took off because the weather observer assured him that the weather was clear enough, but the observer said that he did not recall such a conversation. The pilot was asked about the company's procedures for operating in bad weather, and the company's financial arrangements with its pilots. He explained that the pilots were paid a flat fee of \$35 () per flight. In the hearing, the CAB interviewer hinted that the flat fee payment arrangements gave an incentive to pilots to avoid diversions due to bad weather because they would not be paid for their additional time. Investigators learned that neither of the company's aircraft operating at the Tahoe Airport had been equipped with de-icing equipment, and that Flight 802 had picked up rime ice half an inch thick when it was flying out of the Tahoe Valley earlier that day. They also learned that the maintenance records of the company's aircraft had several discrepancies, but that the FAA had no enforcement actions pending at the time of the crash. Previous flight crews had noted minor errors in the altimeters aboard the aircraft, and instrument repairmen had worked on both altimeters in the plane that crashed in the incident. The first officer's fluxgate compass was known to be faulty on the day of the crash, with crews reporting that it was "completely unreliable in any kind of banking turn". Instrument technicians had worked on it two days earlier, but it was still not functioning reliably. Investigators learned that there had been gaps in the cloud cover when the flight had arrived, but a snow squall hit the north end of the airport just as the aircraft was approaching from the north for landing. On July 15, 1965, the CAB released its final report. The report stated that the crash was caused by pilot error, a falsified weather report, and illegal maintenance practices. The accident report stated: > The Board Determines that the probable cause of this accident was the pilot's deviation from prescribed VFR flight procedures in attempting a visual landing approach in adverse weather conditions. This resulted in an abandoned approach and geographical disorientation while flying below the minimum altitude prescribed for operations in mountainous areas. The CAB report stated that maintenance had been performed on both altimeters and the No. 2 fluxgate compass transmitter on the evening before the accident. Paradise Airlines did not have any of its own maintenance personnel, and used an FAA-approved maintenance company located at Oakland Airport. The technicians who had performed the work had also inspected and signed off on their own work. The report stated the mechanic who had worked on the compass had never worked on that type of transmitter, and did not refer to any technical publications for guidance. He failed to check the entire system and did not perform all of the actions outlined in the maintenance manual. The technician who performed the work on the altimeters could not remember whether or not he had secured the barometric adjusting screw that he had unscrewed during the adjustments he had made. The reinstallation of the unit had been performed by a mechanic who had never performed that type of work before, and had been done without performing all of the checks outlined in the manual. The captain's altimeter that was recovered from the wreckage showed a pre-impact discrepancy that would have indicated the aircraft was flying 280 feet (85 m) higher than its true altitude. In addition, the compass had an error of 15 degrees or more, which could have caused the aircraft's indicated heading to be more southerly than the aircraft's true heading. Weather reports that were available to the company dispatcher included warnings of icing conditions in the Tahoe Airport area and that clouds and snow showers would be obscuring the mountains in western Nevada. None of this information was communicated to the captain of Flight 901A before or during the flight, and the board speculated that ice accumulation on the aircraft may have affected its ability to gain sufficient altitude to clear the mountains. The report concluded that when the crew abandoned the approach to Tahoe Valley Airport, they decided to proceed through Daggett Pass for unknown reasons, possibly to avoid an area of known icing that they had passed through during their descent, or possibly because icing was preventing the aircraft from being able to climb higher. The pilots would have been aware that an altitude of 9,000 feet (2,700 m) would have given the aircraft 1,500 feet (460 m) of terrain clearance through the pass's center, and an easterly heading from the southern end of the lake would have taken the aircraft through the pass's center, an opening several miles wide. The aircraft leveled off at 9,000 feet, either because the pilots believed that they had sufficient clearance, or because icing prevented further altitude gains. It was possible that the crew was unaware that its heading, altitude, or both, were not being accurately shown on the aircraft's instruments, and that undetected tail winds might also have affected the flight's heading.

Hurricane Irene–Olivia

Category 3 Atlantic and Pacific hurricane in 1971

Hurricane Irene–Olivia was the first actively tracked tropical cyclone to move into the eastern Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic basin. It originated as a tropical depression on September 11, 1971, in the tropical Atlantic. The cyclone tracked nearly due westward at a low latitude, passing through the southern Windward Islands and later over northern South America. In the southwest Caribbean Sea, it intensified to a tropical storm and later a hurricane. Irene made landfall on southeastern Nicaragua on September 19, and maintained its circulation as it crossed the low-lying terrain of the country. Restrengthening after reaching the Pacific, Irene was renamed Hurricane Olivia, which ultimately attained peak winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). Olivia weakened significantly before moving ashore on the Baja California Peninsula on September 30; the next day it dissipated. In the Atlantic, Irene produced moderate rainfall and winds along its path, although impact was greatest in Nicaragua where it moved ashore as a hurricane. A total of 96 homes were destroyed, and 1,200 people were left homeless. The rainfall resulted in widespread flooding, killing three people in Rivas. In neighboring Costa Rica, Hurricane Irene caused more than \$1 million (USD) in damage to the banana crop. Later, the remnants of Hurricane Olivia produced rainfall in the southwest United States. Flooding was reported near Yuma, Arizona, which closed a major highway, and the moisture produced snowfall in higher elevations in the Rocky Mountains. ## Meteorological history The origins of the hurricane were from a tropical wave that exited the west African coast on September 7. It moved rapidly westward, developing into a tropical depression on September 11 about 800 miles (1,300 km) east of the Windward Islands. It was one of seven active tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin that day, one of the most active single days on record. It existed at a fairly low latitude and failed to intensify due to the unfavorable combination of Hurricane Ginger and a long trough to its northwest. On September 13, the depression passed just south of Barbados and subsequently entered the Caribbean Sea. Interacting with the terrain of South America, the center became broad and ill-defined, although Curaçao reported winds of near tropical storm force as it crossed the island on September 16. It later moved near or over northern Venezuela and Colombia. As it approached the western Caribbean, the depression was able to organize more, with less influence from landmass or the trough to its north. At 0000 UTC on September 17, it is estimated the depression attained tropical storm status; that day, it was named Irene about 350 miles (560 km) east of San Andrés. Initially, the storm was expected to track west-northwestward toward the northwest Caribbean, similar to the track taken by the destructive Hurricane Edith two weeks prior. Tropical Storm Irene gradually intensified as it continued across the southwestern Caribbean Sea. Late on September 18, the storm attained hurricane status a short distance off the coast of Central America, with 80 mph (130 km/h) winds, its peak intensity in the Atlantic Ocean. As it strengthened, it developed an eye and spiral rainbands that extended across Panama into the Pacific Ocean. Hurricane Irene weakened slightly as it approached the coast, although its pressure dropped to 989 mbar. On September 19, the hurricane made landfall in the Nicaraguan South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region; it was the first tropical cyclone of hurricane intensity since 1911 to strike Nicaragua south of Bluefields. Irene quickly weakened, deteriorating to tropical depression status within 18 hours of moving ashore. The circulation remained organized over the low-lying terrain of southern Nicaragua, possibly due to it crossing Lake Nicaragua. After reaching the Pacific Ocean on September 20, the depression restrengthened to attain tropical storm status; upon doing so, it was re-designated by a new name, Olivia. It was the first time an Atlantic hurricane was tracked as a tropical cyclone while crossing Central America into the Pacific Ocean; subsequent research indicated there were earlier storms that accomplished the feat, although they were not known at the time. As an Eastern Pacific tropical cyclone, Olivia maintained well-defined outflow and inflow. It gradually intensified as it paralleled the southern Central America coastline. Late on September 21, a Hurricane Hunters flight reported winds of 80 mph (130 km/h) and an eye 23 miles (37 km) in diameter; based on the readings, Olivia was upgraded to hurricane status. For several days, Olivia moved west to west-northwestward off the coast of Mexico, although its exact intensity fluctuations were unknown, due to lack of significant observations. On September 25, the eye became very pronounced on satellite imagery, and based on a report from the Hurricane Hunters, it is estimated Olivia reached peak winds of 115 mph (185 km/h), about 245 miles (394 km) southwest of Manzanillo, Colima. The Hurricane Hunters also reported a pressure of 948 mbar, which was the lowest reported pressure during the 1971 Pacific hurricane season. The intensity of Hurricane Olivia fluctuated for two days as it turned westward away from land, due to a blocking ridge over northwestern Mexico. Early on September 26 it weakened to winds of about 105 mph (169 km/h), before it quickly restrengthened to its previous peak intensity. Subsequently, dry air became entrained in the circulation, and Olivia began to weaken as it moved over cooler waters. The eye became disorganized and eventually dissipated. Late on September 28 it weakened to tropical storm status, after beginning a turn to the northwest and later to the north. About 24 hours later, Olivia weakened to tropical depression status as it approached the coastline of the Baja California Peninsula. Most of the thunderstorm activity dissipated by the time the depression moved ashore on September 30; the next day, Olivia dissipated near the border of Baja California and Baja California Sur. ## Impact and records As a tropical depression, the cyclone produced a wind gust of 43 mph (69 km/h) in Barbados. The system also dropped 3.35 inches (85 mm) of rainfall in Trinidad. Prior to its arrival, officials noted the potential for the depression to bring flash flooding to northern Venezuela, as well as heavy rainfall to the ABC islands. Later as a tropical storm, Irene brushed San Andrés island in the western Caribbean with gale-force winds; no major damage was reported there. Prior to the hurricane's landfall in Nicaragua, the country's army evacuated about 500 people from a settlement near Bluefields, and along the coastline, boats were advised to remain at port. When it moved ashore, the hurricane produced sustained winds of 46 mph (74 km/h) in Bluefields. The winds destroyed 27 houses in the region. Observations were not available in the sparsely populated region near where Irene moved ashore, although winds were believed to have reached hurricane force there. Reconnaissance planes reported heavy structural and tree damage in southeastern Nicaragua. Satellite imagery suggested that heavy rainfall occurred from Panama through Honduras, and one location in Nicaragua reported more than 6.3 inches (160 mm) of precipitation. The rainfall caused flooding in many communities, killing three people in Rivas. At least five rivers reported flooding; along one of the rivers, 35 houses were inundated, and along another, the floodwaters swept away all of the crops and personal belongings of three villages. Across the country, the hurricane destroyed 96 homes, and 1,200 people were left homeless. In Costa Rica, Irene's passage resulted in more than \$1 million (USD) in damage to the banana crop. Late in its duration, Hurricane Olivia brought increased moisture into the southwest United States. More than 2 inches (51 mm) of rainfall were reported across Arizona and New Mexico. Light precipitation was also reported in western Texas and southeastern California. The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings throughout the region. Near Yuma, Arizona, thunderstorms caused three major power outages and produced flooding that resulted in the closure of a portion of U.S. Route 95. In Navajo and Pinal counties, the rainfall damaged roads, bridges, sewers, and homes, which amounted to about \$250,000 in repair work for the state of Arizona. The storm's moisture also produced locally heavy snowfall in higher elevations in the Rocky Mountains. Irene–Olivia is unusual in that it survived passage from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean. Only nine other named storms are known to have done so. Irene was the first of four Atlantic-to-Pacific crossover tropical cyclones in the 1970s, three of four which took eastern Pacific names starting with the letter O. ## See also - Other tropical cyclones named Irene - Other tropical cyclones named Olivia - List of Atlantic–Pacific crossover hurricanes - List of South America hurricanes - List of Category 1 Atlantic hurricanes - List of Category 3 Pacific hurricanes - Hurricane Joan–Miriam (1988) - Hurricane Bonnie (2022)

David DeJulius

American basketball player (born 1999)

David DeJulius (born August 9, 1999) is an American professional basketball player for Lavrio of the Greek Basket League. He previously played college basketball for the Cincinnati Bearcats, where he was a two-time Third-team All-AAC performer, as well as for the Michigan Wolverines. He attended Edison Public School Academy for two years before transferring to East English Village Preparatory Academy, where he finished 3rd in the 2018 Mr. Basketball of Michigan and was 2018 Mr. PSL for his play in the Detroit Public School League. ## Early life DeJulius was born August 9, 1999, in Detroit, Michigan to Latrice Halthon and Ladell DeJulius. He has a brother, Terrell Thornton, and three sisters, Aaliyah DeJulius, Cerisse DeJulius and Latriece DeJulius. ## High school DeJulius attended Edison Public School Academy for his freshman and sophomore seasons. As a freshman, he was selected to the 2015 Class C All-State team (2nd team, The Detroit News; 4th team Detroit Free Press). As a sophomore, he was again selected to the 2016 Class C All-State team (2nd team, The Detroit News; 3rd team Detroit Free Press; honorable mention Associated Press). DeJulius transferred to East English Village Preparatory Academy for his junior and senior seasons. As a junior, he visited the University of Michigan a few times (including September 17, 2016, and October 25, 2016). He scored 46 points with 7 rebounds and 5 assists against Dakota High School and Michigan State Spartans men's basketball signee Thomas Kithier in front of head coach John Beilein and the entire coaching staff on December 17, 2016. DeJulius got an offer and gave a verbal commitment on December 22. At the time, he was the 172nd ranked player in the national class of 2018 and the 32nd ranked point guard. DeJulius was a 2017 Class A All-state honoree (1st team Associated Press). On November 10, 2017, DeJulius tendered his National Letter of Intent as part of a five-man recruiting class that included Ignas Brazdeikis, Colin Castleton, Brandon Johns, and Adrien Nunez. DeJulius also had offers from Michigan State and DePaul. DeJulius earned 2018 Mr. PSL for his play in the Detroit Public School League. In January 2018, DeJulius scored 49 points in a 92–82 victory against Chicago's Orr Academy High School with 13-of-19 shooting from the field, including 9-of-11 3-point shooting. Orr was the defending 2017 Illinois High School Association Class 2A state champion and would repeat in 2018. With 2,542 points, DeJulius finished 3rd behind Michigan State signee Foster Loyer (3,691) and Michigan signee Brandon Johns (2,792) in the 2018 Mr. Basketball of Michigan voting. In his only head-to-head meeting with Loyer, DeJulius scored 42 points in an 80–71 comeback to give Clarkston High School its only regular season loss against 21 points, 12 assists, and eight rebounds from Loyer. East English had trailed in the battle of the state's two best point guards 49–31 at halftime and 63–53 after three quarters. Then, DeJulius had 25 points in the second half, including 17 in the fourth quarter, against the defending 2017 Michigan High School Athletic Association Class A state champions, who would repeat in 2018. DeJulius was an 2018 All-class first team All-state selection by The Detroit News. ## College ### Michigan #### Freshman season The 2017–18 Michigan team was the national runner-up in the 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. The 2018–19 team was expected to be ranked by ESPN (17) and CBS Sports (21). Of the incoming class, Brazdeikis had the highest expectations from Yahoo! Sports and ESPN. USA Today expected Johns to be the brightest newcomer. DeJulius played 25 games as a freshman for the 2018–19 Wolverines. By the end of the season, DeJulius was behind Zavier Simpson and his backup Eli Brooks on the depth chart for head coach John Beilein. The team lost the last game of the regular season to Loyer's Michigan State Spartans, finishing one game behind the Spartans and Purdue for the Big Ten regular season championship. The team was unable to defend its Big Ten Tournament championship in the championship game of the 2019 Big Ten men's basketball tournament against Michigan State, who swept three rivalry games from Michigan that season. The Wolverines finished the season with a 30–7 record, for its second consecutive 30-win season, losing in the Sweet Sixteen round of the 2019 NCAA tournament to (#9/#10) Texas Tech. #### Sophomore season On May 22, 2019, Juwan Howard signed a five-year contract as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team. Brazdeikis, Charles Matthews and Jordan Poole declared for the 2019 NBA draft. During the Michigan Wolverines' 2019–20 season, DeJulius played as a sophomore alongside starting guards Simpson and Brooks as well as Franz Wagner. Serving in a sixth man role, he averaged 7.0 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 1.5 assists in 20.9 minutes per game coming off the bench. On November 15, Michigan defeated Elon 70–50 DeJulius added 10 points and eight assists, which were both career highs at the time. On November 27, Michigan defeated Iowa State 83–76 in the quarterfinals of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament. DeJulius added a career-high 14 points. On January 28, with Simpson suspended and Isaiah Livers sidelined, DeJulius started against Nebraska and played 34 minutes. On March 8, Michigan lost to (#9/#9) Maryland 70–83 in their final game of the regular season. Michigan was led by DeJulius with a career-high 20 points. Michigan was scheduled to play Rutgers in the Big Ten tournament on March 12. However, the tournament and the remainder of the college basketball season was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. DeJulius entered the NCAA transfer portal in April 2020 even though Simpson had completed his eligibility and Brooks would be a senior. In the portal, he received interest from Maryland, Missouri, Marquette, Cincinnati, Iowa State, DePaul, Rhode Island, Creighton and Arizona State. With over 20 schools expressing interest, DeJulius announced four finalists by April 10: Iowa State, Cincinnati, Marquette and Missouri. During his sophomore year with the Wolverines, DeJulius scored 10 or more points in eleven games. There was speculation that he might secure the starting point guard position if he continued with the team. However, Michigan had been pursuing point guards Bryce Aiken and Mike Smith in the transfer portal and recruiting Josh Christopher prior to DeJulius's announcement that he would transfer. ### Cincinnati #### Junior season In August 2020, he was granted a waiver to play immediately as a transfer. On February 25, 2021, he became the fifth member of the 2020–21 Cincinnati Bearcats to opt out of the rest of the 2020–21 NCAA Division I men's basketball season due to the mental impact of COVID-19. Within two days after the March 14, 2021 American Athletic Conference men's basketball tournament championship game loss to Houston, the Bearcats saw six players enter the transfer portal. On March 26, the Athletic Director John Cunningham announced an investigation against the basketball program. On April 3, Cincinnati head coach John Brannen was placed on indefinite leave. On April 9, Cincinnati fired Brannen. On April 14, 2021, Cincinnati hired Wes Miller to become their next head coach, replacing Brannen. #### Senior season On January 30, 2022, he scored the go-ahead basket with 3.7 seconds left against East Carolina. DeJulius posted 3 consecutive 20-point games on February 6 (25, \#6 Houston), February 9 (24, South Florida), and February 12 (23, Tulsa), marking the first such streak by a Bearcat since Jarron Cumberland did so for the 2018–19 Bearcats over 3 years before. On February 24, 2022, he announced that he would not partake in Senior Night fanfare, in part because he was eligible to return with another year due to special COVID-19 waiver. DeJulius earned third-team All-American Athletic Conference as a true senior for the 2021–22 Cincinnati Bearcats men's basketball team. He averaged a team-leading 14.5 points per game, was the team's only All-AAC performer and decided to exercise his option to return. #### COVID Redshirt 5th year season DeJulius earned 2022–23 Preseason All-Conference Second Team recognition for his redshirt senior season. Before the season, he announced that he would donate his student athlete compensation proceeds from his team-licensed jersey sales to provide books to inner city youth in Detroit and Cincinnati. He began the season by leading the 2022–23 Cincinnati Bearcats to three victories, averaging 21.3 points and 3.7 assists while shooting 56.1% from the field, including 7-of-9 on three-point shots, and earning American Athletic Conference player of the week honors. When DeJulius was honored on March 5, 2023 Senior Night, along with Kalu Ezikpe and Rob Phinisee prior to the game against SMU, he posted a career-high 30 points with 6 assists. He repeated as an All-American Athletic Conference third-team honoree. DeJulius entered the 2023 American Athletic Conference men's basketball tournament with the nation's longest streak of five or more assists (16 games). In the 2023 National Invitation Tournament first round victory over Virginia Tech, DeJulius had 21 points, 6 rebounds and 7 assists. After three years at Cincinnati, DeJulius posted 1187 points and ended his final season with 192 assists, which is third in school history behind two Oscar Robertson totals on the school list for single-season assists. ## Professional career On August 3, 2023, DeJulius signed his first professional contract overseas with Greek club Lavrio. ## Career statistics ### College \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2018–19 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Michigan \| 25 \|\| 0 \|\| 3.8\|\| .200 \|\| .067 \|\| .167 \|\| 0.5 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 0.0 \|\| 0.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2019–20 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Michigan \| 31 \|\| 1 \|\| 20.9 \|\| .417 \|\| .361 \|\| .725 \|\| 2.4 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 0.4 \|\| 0.0 \|\| 7.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2020–21 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Cincinnati \| 19 \|\| 16 \|\| 29.5 \|\| .360 \|\| .203 \|\| .775 \|\| 4.5 \|\| 4.2 \|\| 0.8 \|\| 0.1 \|\| 9.1 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2021–22 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Cincinnati \| 33 \|\| 33 \|\| 28.6 \|\| .409 \|\| .297 \|\| .824 \|\| 2.8 \|\| 2.6 \|\| 0.7 \|\| 0.0 \|\| 14.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2022–23 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Cincinnati \| 36 \|\| 36 \|\| 32.5 \|\| .419 \|\| .335 \|\| .856 \|\| 2.3 \|\| 5.3 \|\| 1.1 \|\| 0.0 \|\| 14.8 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"\| Career \| 144 \|\| 86 \|\| 23.8 \|\| .402 \|\| .299 \|\| .801 \|\| 2.4 \|\| 2.8 \|\| 0.7 \|\| 0.0 \|\| 9.8 ## See also - Cincinnati Bearcats men's basketball statistical leaders

The Hammer of Thor

2016 book by Rick Riordan

The Hammer of Thor is an American young-adult fantasy novel based on Norse mythology written by Rick Riordan. It was published on October 4, 2016 as a hardcover, audiobook, and ebook, and is the second book in the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series. The novel takes place six weeks after the events of the preceding story, The Sword of Summer, and chronicles Magnus Chase's quest to retrieve the missing hammer of Thor and prevent Loki's rise to power. Since its release, the novel has been translated into 15 languages, and re-released in a boxed set and as a paperback. The Hammer of Thor received positive reviews from critics, who praised its inclusion of diverse characters such as the genderfluid character Alex Fierro, Muslim Samirah al-Abbas, and deaf-mute Hearthstone, but also noted its trite and repetitive plot that did not help readers progress through the series' overall story arc. The book won the 2017 Stonewall Book Award for Children's literature for its portrayal of Alex as was a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee for 2016. A sequel, The Ship of the Dead, was released on October 3, 2017. ## Plot summary The book opens six weeks after the close of the preceding novel, The Sword of Summer. Magnus Chase meets with Samirah "Sam" al-Abbas and Otis, one of the god Thor's two goats, who inform the heroes that Thor's hammer is still missing. The jötnar are beginning to suspect Thor does not have his weapon to defend Midgard and plan to invade. Magnus returns to Hotel Valhalla to rest and prepare, where he meets Alex Fierro, Sam's newest einherji recruit and a transgender/genderfluid child of Loki. While in Valhalla, Magnus has dreamlike visions of Loki manipulating his uncle Randolph. Loki also tells Magnus about a wedding between Samirah and the giant Thrym in five days and says that Magnus will need to bring the bride-price. Magnus, Sam, and their friends Blitzen and Hearthstone travel to the Provincetown barrow but discover the Skofnung Sword instead of Thor's hammer. Loki appears and tells the quartet that the sword and matching whetstone will be Sam's bride-price. They are reluctant to help Loki, who causes Randolph to wound Blitzen with the sword. Because wounds caused by the sword can only be healed by its whetstone, the four are forced to hunt for the stone. Hearth, Magnus, and a petrified Blitz travel to Alfheim. There, Magnus learns the stone is in the possession of Hearth's father, Alderman. Alderman insists Hearth repay a wergild he owes because Alderman resents Hearth for being unable to prevent his younger brother Andiron's death at the hands of a Brunnmigi before he may take the stone. Magnus and Hearthstone track down a dwarf named Andvari and force him to give them his treasure, which they use to repay Hearth's debt. With the stone, they heal Blitzen. After escaping Alderman, who has been driven insane by Andvari's cursed ring, the trio returns to Midgard. With Alex and Sam, Magnus visits the god Heimdall to locate Utgard-Loki. Rejoining Blitz and Hearth, Magnus's quest group then travels to Utgard-Loki. After completing some tasks to prove their worth, the giant king tells them Thrym has Thor's hammer to be given to the bride as part of the traditional Norse wedding ritual and helps them track Thrym. Utgard-Loki also reveals that, according to Norse rituals, the father of the bride (i.e., Loki) will receive the Skofnung Sword which can free Loki from his cave. To retrieve the hammer and stop the giants' invasion of Midgard, the quest group must go through with the wedding and deliver the Skofnung Sword to Loki. The goddess Sif arrives and transports the mortals to Asgard. They explain the situation to Thor, who agrees to help them trick Thrym and retrieve the hammer. Since Sam is already betrothed, Alex volunteers to act as the bride because she is a daughter of Loki. The group travels to the cave where Loki is bound. Although they find the hammer, Loki forces Randolph to use the Skofnung Sword to cut his bonds. Magnus's hallmates and a group of gods arrive and defeat the giants, but Loki escapes, and Randolph is killed by the spirits of the sword. The mortals and einherjar return to Hotel Valhalla and are told by Helgi their next mission will be to find and attempt to recapture Loki, who has gone to find the boat Naglfar. Magnus contacts his cousin Annabeth to ask for help from her boyfriend Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon. ### Characters - Magnus Chase – einherji son of the Norse god Frey and the human Natalie Chase. He is gifted with healing powers and resistance to extreme temperatures, and works with the sword Sumarbrander. - Samirah "Sam" al-Abbas – Valkyrie daughter of Loki and a human doctor. Sam is Muslim and hopes to become an aircraft pilot. She also performs special side missions for the god Odin. - Alex Fierro – a genderfluid einherji, whose mother was Loki. Throughout the novel, the character is referred to as either "he" or "she" depending on her current gender, rather than with a mix of pronouns or the singular they, and Alex has stated that she prefers she/her pronouns unless stated otherwise. Alex enjoys pottery and uses a pottery wire-turned garrote as a weapon and also shapeshifts, like her mother. - Blitzen "Blitz" – a dwarf and the son of the dwarf Bilì and the goddess Freya, making him Magnus's cousin. Blitz owns and operates a fashionwear store called "Blitzen's Best" in Boston. - Hearthstone "Hearth" – an elf, son of the influential elf Alderman. He is deaf-mute – which his parents always resented, especially after the death of their younger son Andiron. He speaks Alf Sign Language and uses magic by casting runestones. - Jack (Sumarbrander) – formerly the sword of Frey, now in possession of the god's son Magnus. Sumarbrander chose the name "Jack" when Magnus took possession of him. The sword is capable of fighting, talking, and flying about on its own, but the next person to hold it experiences fatigue as a result of Jack's actions. - Randolph Chase – Magnus's uncle. Loki blackmails Randolph into helping him by promising to bring back the man's deceased wife and daughters. ## Composition and marketing Before the release of The Sword of Summer, the first book in his series Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, author Rick Riordan had plans to publish a trilogy, while acknowledging that Percy Jackson was planned as a trilogy. The sequel was teased in the back pages of The Sword of Summer, the first novel in the series. Entertainment Weekly released an excerpt of the first chapter and the cover of The Hammer of Thor on April 28, 2016, along with an interview with Riordan. Penguin Books Australia also released a book trailer for The Hammer of Thor on YouTube on September 25, 2016. The trailer is an animated short with a narration explaining the concept of Yggdrasil. To promote The Hammer of Thor, Riordan went on a nine-day tour in the United States beginning October 4, 2016. The tour promoted both the new novel and Riordan's new imprint Rick Riordan Presents. Riordan also attended the Iowa Book Festival on October 7, where he announced the title of the third book in Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series, The Ship of the Dead. In a radio interview conducted in Iowa City, Riordan discussed his character choices and the kinds of themes he wanted to present in the series, including increased awareness of Muslim-American issues, and his inspiration and writing method. He also highlighted the differences between his approach to Norse mythology and that of other popular media series such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which he described as "fast and loose". ## Release The Hammer of Thor was first published as a hardcover in the United States on October 4, 2016, with cover illustration by John Rocco and interior rune illustrations by Michelle Gengaro-Kokmen. Ebook and audiobook editions were released the same day. The audiobook is read by actor Kieran Culkin and published by Listening Library. The Hammer of Thor sold more than 58,000 copies during the first week. Upon release, the book ranked No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list, No. 2 on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list, and No. 3 on the USA Today bestseller list, remaining on the former for 17 weeks (being in the first position for three weeks immediately after its release). It peaked at No. 6 in the Amazon's Children's Bestsellers list in the United Kingdom the week of its publication. It peaked at No. 5 on the Los Angeles Times list and remained in it for eight weeks. By the end of 2016, the book sold more than 298,000 copies. In the United Kingdom and Australia, English-language editions in hardcover were also released October 4 by Puffin Books. A paperback edition was released by Puffin on October 5, 2017. To date, editions have also been released in Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Czech, Danish, Bulgarian, Turkish, and Hebrew. Although many non-English editions used John Rocco's cover art, a few – and the Puffin editions – have unique covers by other illustrators. The book was recommended as a holiday gift by the Los Angeles Times. On January 1, 2017, The Hammer of Thor returned to the newspaper bestseller list at No. 19, and to No. 7 on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list in March 2017. The book received a Lexile score of 690L, making it age- and difficulty-appropriate for the average 8-13 year-old. ## Reception The novel received positive reviews, many of which praised Riordan's newly diverse characters. Maggie Reagan of Booklist wrote, "Riordan combines Norse mythology with a number of social issues: [gender fluidity, disability, and race and religion]", calling the book "a surefire hit". Kirkus Reviews gave The Hammer of Thor a starred review and praised the interposed religious and sexual complexity in the Norse mythological world introduced using characters such as Alex and Samirah, while also writing that Magnus is a distinct character when compared with Riordan's other protagonists. Hypable praised the depth of the storyline, the characters' diversity – particularly Alex Fierro – and the familial love between the characters. Todd Kleiboer of The East Texan, the student newspaper of Texas A&M University-Commerce, claimed that although Riordan does well to include such diverse characters as the Muslim Samirah and genderfluid Alex, the author runs the risk of making his readers believe such characters are representative of their "group" by portraying only one example of each "type" of person. He continues, "Young adult readers may have no contact with the Muslim or transgender population outside of literature, and most will take Samirah or Alex as representatives. However, Riordan counters this by portraying characters that do not fall into stereotypes and perhaps illuminate the diversity of people on Midgard–or Earth." Despite the praise for Riordan's new diversity, reviewers criticized other aspects of the novel. Claire Yu of the Central Times said in her review, "I want to thank Rick Riordan for giving us such a diverse set of characters, and how he emphasizes on the importance of other cultures", but also said she feels the "special something" of Riordan's typical humor writing is missing from the book. She calls the plot "repetitive" and "not ... filled with the same energy and vigour as its predecessors". Fantasy Literature similarly praised the book's sensitive approach to delicate issues and its continuation of Riordan's humorous style but criticized the book for its small part in expanding the over-reaching plot of the series. Common Sense Media, which gave the book four stars out of five, praised the continued inclusion of diverse characters and storylines but criticized the lack of character development for Magnus. The Hammer of Thor won the Stonewall Book Award for Children's Literature, which are granted to works of merit for children or teenagers relating to LGBTQ experience. The award was granted for the depiction of the genderfluid teenage character Alex Fierro. When asked about his decision to include Alex, Riordan said, "There’s lots of kinds of kids out there, and my feeling is that all of them deserve to be able to see themselves in stories". An official announcement by the American Library Association said, "Alex is a hero and represents the expansive possibilities of gender for future generations". The novel was also nominated for Best Middle Grade & Children's Book of 2016 in the Goodreads Choice Awards, and ended in third place, behind The Hidden Oracle (another book by Riordan) and Pax. ## Sequel The sequel, The Ship of the Dead, was released on October 3, 2017. The book ranked No. 2 on USA Today's bestseller list after its release and was considered one of the best books of the year by Barnes & Noble. It also won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for Middle Grade & Children's. On October 17, 2017, the three books of the series were released as a boxed set. ## See also

Thom Darden

Former American football player (born 1950)

Thomas Vincent Darden (born August 28, 1950) is an American former professional football player who was a safety and punt returner for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL). In nine NFL seasons, he was a three-time All-Pro free safety. He earned a Pro Bowl selection in 1978. He holds most Cleveland Browns franchise interception records. He was an All-American defensive back playing college football for the Michigan Wolverines, and made one of the more memorable interceptions in college history. After retiring from football, Darden pursued careers as a sports agent, security provider and business consultant. ## Early life Darden was born in Sandusky, Ohio. He graduated from Sandusky High School. ## College football After graduating, he was recruited by six Big Ten Conference football programs in 1968. He played at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1971 and had 218 tackles and 11 interceptions. He was an All American in 1971, and he was also named All-Big Ten in 1970. He played on Big Ten champions in both 1969 and 1971. Thom fit in well at Michigan becoming one of Coach Bo Schembechler's prized pupils and earning a reference in his 2006 book Bo Schembechler. Darden still ranks among leaders at Michigan for Punt Returns and Punt Return Yardage. Darden played all defensive back positions at Michigan. In college, Darden was a housemate of Reggie McKenzie, Glenn Doughty, Billy Taylor and Mike Taylor in a notable house known as the Den of the Mellow Men. ESPN chose Darden's November 21, 1971 interception against Ohio State as one of the 100 Plays, performances and moments that define college football. The play was a very controversial call late in the 10–7 game and Ohio State coach Woody Hayes stormed the field to rant at the referee Jerry Markbreit about the referee's call that Hayes thought should have been ruled pass interference. By the end of Hayes' tirade, he had broken a yard marker, shredded a first-down indicator and earned two 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalties. The scene was replayed over and over on national television broadcasts. That was Darden's second interception in that game. ESPN also chose Darden as a member of the All-Time University of Michigan Football team. ## Pro football Darden was drafted in the first round (18th overall) in the 1972 NFL Draft by the Cleveland Browns. Darden started at strong safety in his rookie season of 1972 and played the remainder of his career at free safety until he retired after his tenth and final season, where he only started 10 games. Autry Beamon and Lawrence Johnson filled in for the injured Darden in his final season (1981). Clinton Burrell, who won a starting cornerback position in 1980, only played 2 games in 1981. Rookie Hanford Dixon started at cornerback in place of the injured Burrell. After Darden's retirement, the Browns moved Clinton Burrell to strong safety and Clarence Scott to free safety. Darden was selected as an All-Pro safety in 1976, 1978, and 1979, and went to the Pro Bowl in 1978. Over the course of his career he handled 45 punt returns for 285 return yards. Darden holds Cleveland Browns franchise records with 45 career interceptions, 10 single-season interceptions and 820 interception return yards. Two of Darden's Browns teams went to the playoffs. His rookie year, the 10–4 1972 Browns went to the 1972-73 NFL playoffs under head coach Nick Skorich, but lost in the first round to the Miami Dolphins 20–14. The 11–5 1980 Browns went to the 1980-81 NFL playoffs under head coach Sam Rutigliano, but lost in the first round to the Oakland Raiders 14–12. Darden was ranked 47th on the Cleveland Browns top 100 players list. ## Post football Darden has served as a professional sports agent and represented Tony Boles. In 1990, he invested \$25,000 in Boles by hosting him in Cleveland, Ohio and working him out with athletic trainers. At the time he was Cleveland-based sports agent. During Darden's career as an agent he represented an assortment of NFL and National Basketball Association players and prospects including Felix Wright and Chris Calloway. He was a supporter of Maurice Clarett's attempt to challenge the NFL Draft's eligibility rules. In 1998, when the NFL reissued a franchise in Cleveland, Darden was part of one of the six bidding groups. In 1999, he owned a security company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As of 2006, Darden was a business consultant living in Cedar Rapids.

The Curse of the Black Spot

"The Curse of the Black Spot" is the third episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Stephen Thompson, and directed by Jeremy Webb, the episode was first broadcast on 7 May 2011 on BBC One in the United Kingdom and on BBC America in the United States. In the episode, the alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) land on board a pirate ship in the 17th century. The ship's crew is terrorised by a Siren-like creature. After receiving an injury, however minor, a black spot appears on their palms and then the creature apparently disintegrates them. The producers wished to develop a pirate-themed episode for the sixth series and allow the protagonists to "kick back and have some fun" on the adventure. The episode was primarily filmed at a dock in Cornwall and Upper Boat Studios in Wales. "The Curse of the Black Spot" was seen by 7.85 million viewers and received generally mixed reviews from critics. It gained an audience Appreciation Index of 86 – considered excellent. ## Plot ### Prequel On 30 April 2011, immediately following the broadcast of "Day of the Moon", the BBC released a "prequel" to "The Curse of the Black Spot". The prequel consists of a short montage of atmospheric shots of the pirate ship, bridged by a narration in the form of Captain Avery's journal for "April the first, 1699; the good ship Fancy." Avery describes how his ship has been becalmed for eight days, and the crew are being taken one by one by "an enemy"; he fears that they are all doomed to die there. ### Synopsis In the 17th century, a pirate ship is stranded in the ocean, terrorised by a Siren-like creature who marks people with black spots on their palms after they are injured and appears to disintegrate them with her touch after putting them in a trance. Rory receives a cut during a tussle with the pirates, and finds a black spot on his hand, but is prevented from succumbing to the song of the Siren by Amy and the Eleventh Doctor. Surmising the Siren is using water as a portal, the Doctor instructs the crew to seek refuge in the ship's dry magazine. There, they find Toby Avery, the son of the ship's captain Henry Avery, who stowed away on the ship in order to join the crew after his mother died, unaware of his father's illicit deeds. He too has a black spot on his palm due to a fever. The Doctor and Avery fail to escape in the TARDIS, and the Siren takes it. After another shipmate is taken by the Siren in a dry room, the Doctor realises the Siren is using any reflection to appear, not just the water. In response they rid the ship of reflective surfaces, including the ship's stolen treasure. When a storm begins, the crew start to set sail. Toby drops a polished crown while bringing his father a coat. The Siren is summoned and takes Toby. Soon, Rory falls into the ocean, and the Siren takes Rory. Believing the victims are not dead, the Doctor, Avery, and Amy agree to prick themselves to get the Siren to take them. The Siren's touch actually teleports them to an alien spaceship, invisible in the same spot the pirate ship is located. The Doctor finds the spaceship's crew long dead from exposure to a human disease. The trio then discover a sickbay where Avery's entire crew, Toby, and Rory are in medical care along with the TARDIS. The Siren turns out to be the ship's virtual doctor, caring for the injured humans; the black spots are tissue samples she uses as references to understand how to help them. Amy convinces the Siren to release Rory into her care. Using Rory's nursing knowledge, Amy and the Doctor remove him from life support and are able to resuscitate him. Meanwhile, Avery stays with his son on the ship and flies the spaceship with his crew. ### Continuity The historical pirate Henry Avery was previously mentioned in the 1966 serial The Smugglers, which deals with the search for "Avery's gold". "The Curse of the Black Spot" re-asserts unresolved plot points from the previous two episodes, "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon"; Amy and Rory express concern over the Doctor's future death, Madame Kovarian appears briefly to Amy, and the Doctor again uses the TARDIS scanner to perform a pregnancy test on Amy, the results of which remain unclear. ## Production ### Writing and casting In January 2011, it was announced that Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville would make a guest appearance as a "pirate captain" in an episode of the sixth series of Doctor Who. Lead actors Matt Smith and Karen Gillan felt that working with Bonneville was "great fun." Bonneville previously played Sir Sidney Herbert and Tzar Nicholas I of Russia in the Seventh Doctor audio drama The Angel of Scutari. Later in February 2011, it was announced actress and model Lily Cole was cast as a sea creature. The producers were looking for an actress who is "beautiful," "striking," and yet somewhat "spooky." Cole came early into the casting suggestions, and accepted the role when she was approached. The episode was written by Stephen Thompson. The producers wished to develop a Doctor Who episode set on "the high seas." The episode was also made to allow the Doctor and his companions to "kick back and have some fun." As the episode was pirate-themed, the producers wanted to fit in as many elements as possible from pirate fiction, including treasure, mutinies, a stowaway boy, walking the plank, storms, swords, and a pirate with a "good heart" who "isn't really evil." "The Curse of the Black Spot" was originally planned to be ninth in the series, but was moved forward prior to filming as executive producer Steven Moffat felt the first half of the series was too dark. ### Filming and effects Filming took place primarily in Cornwall and the Upper Boat Studios in Wales. The exterior of the pirate ship was filmed at a dock in Cornwall, while the lower decks were built from a set at the studio. The principal challenge to film at the dock was to ensure the audience would not see it. The crew set up smoke machines to simulate fog. To create the storm the crew used wind and rain machines, the latter of which went through 15,000 litres of water. The loud noise from the wind machines caused communication difficulties during takes. Anticipating they would get soaked, the cast present on the deck wore dry suits underneath their clothes. Before filming began on the storm sequences, actor Arthur Darvill heard that he would perform the stunt where he is thrown into the sea, and was willing to perform it. The stunt would later be performed by a double. The scenes in which Cole appeared on the ship were done by using a harness as if she was flying. Because the actress wore a green dress and makeup, the normal greenscreen was replaced by bluescreens in the studio. Cole felt it was fun to fly on the harness, but found it painful after a few hours. Gillan was allowed to perform several of her own stunts in the episode. She was excited to learn that her character would fight pirates with swords, and was taught how to handle one with basic moves. Gillan was also allowed to swing across the ship. However, a stunt double was required to film the sequence where Amy is thrown across the deck by the Siren. The sickbay set was also built in a studio. Because the beds were attached to strings, they were prone to swaying. The cast members who were asked to lie on the beds were instructed to stay still and not breathe heavily to limit movement. ## Broadcast and reception ### Broadcast and ratings "The Curse of the Black Spot" was first broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom on Saturday, 7 May 2011, from 6:15 pm to 7pm. It was shown on BBC America in the United States the same day as the UK broadcast. In the UK, the episode received preliminary overnight ratings of 6.21 million viewers. Based on these estimated figures, viewership was up by 800,000 from "Day of the Moon". Final consolidated ratings for the episode increased to 7.85 million viewers, with a 35.5 per cent audience share. It was the second largest audience of the night, behind Britain's Got Talent on ITV1. In addition nearly one million viewed the episode on BBC iPlayer. It was given an Appreciation Index of 86, placing it in the "excellent" category. ### Critical reception The episode was met with generally mixed reviews from television critics. Dan Martin of The Guardian thought that "The Curse of the Black Spot" was "a little bit anticlimactic" in comparison to the opening two-part episode of the series, though it was "a nice old-fashioned runaround bolstered by some high concepts and cute moments", much like the classic episodes. He praised Lily Cole as the Siren but criticised the character of Avery. Martin later rated it the worst episode of the first twelve of the series (the finale, which had not aired at the time, was not included in the list). IGN's Matt Risley gave it an overall "good" score of 7 out of 10, admitting that there were "some great lines" and the "Space Pirate" twist was "a refreshingly sci-fi spin on the well-worn genre plot", but he criticised the Siren for lacking qualities to become "a credible and terrifying Who villain". Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph did not feel the episode was believable enough, citing Bonneville's performance, saying he "didn't come across as a ruthless, greedy killer despite what his crew claimed of him," and if the crew had been "nastier," it could have given more potency to the Siren threat. Fuller felt that Cole did "a decent enough job," claiming that the Siren was the "best-realised thing" about the episode, "only slightly ahead of Karen Gillan looking very fetching in a pirate outfit." Simon Brew of Den of Geek started by comparing the episode to Lost's "massive, intriguing" cliffhangers, "and then sauntered off to other less interesting stuff," mainly criticising that the little girl's regeneration in "Day of the Moon" was left unresolved. However, Brew "still enjoyed" "The Curse of the Black Spot", reacting positively to the episode's production values and the reveal of the black spots. Nick Setchfield of the science-fiction based magazine SFX opined that the high points of the episode were that it was "high on shivery maritime atmosphere," and the Doctor for not being "in instant possession of all the facts, but who reloads his thinking as events unfold." However, Setchfield was critical of the story, claiming "pirates and Who should be as combustive a mix as gunpowder and a trusty flintlock, but ultimately this grog-time yarn falls short of its promise." Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy wrote "following on from that game-changing two-part premiere, this week's Doctor Who provides us with a real change of pace, with a moody and atmospheric pre-titles sequence setting the scene for a far more traditional adventure." Jeffery praised the performance of Bonneville, but was critical of Cole's role for her not being "given much to do except float around and look ethereal," but added "the English model certainly looks the part, with well-judged special effects aiding her performance as the beautiful yet unsettling Siren." Jeffery also thought that Amy's revival of Rory was "well-acted by both Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill," but criticised the series for the numerous "Rory's dead" scenes, negatively comparing Rory with the South Park character Kenny McCormick. Jeffery rated the episode three stars out of five for being somewhat underwhelming in comparison with "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon".

Extra Texture (Read All About It)

Extra Texture (Read All About It) is the sixth studio album by English musician George Harrison, released on 22 September 1975. It was Harrison's final album under his contract with Apple Records and EMI, and the last studio album issued by Apple. The release came nine months after his troubled 1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar and the poorly received Dark Horse album. Among Harrison's post-Beatles solo releases, Extra Texture is the only album on which his lyrics are devoid of any obvious spiritual message. It was recorded mostly in the United States rather than England, while Harrison was working in Los Angeles in his role as head of Dark Horse Records. Gary Wright, David Foster, Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis, Leon Russell, Tom Scott, Billy Preston and Jim Horn were among the many contributing musicians. The keyboard-heavy arrangements incorporate elements of soul music and the influence of Smokey Robinson, signalling a further departure from the rock and folk-rock sound of Harrison's popular early-1970s work. Contrasting with the musical content, the album's art design conveys an upbeat mood and includes an unusual die-cut cover with a textured surface. Although critical reception to the album was largely unfavourable, Extra Texture was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America within two months of release. It produced a hit single in the Motown-inspired "You", originally recorded in London in 1971 with co-producer Phil Spector. The album also includes "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)", which was both a sequel to Harrison's 1968 composition "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and a rebuttal to his detractors. The album was remastered and reissued in September 2014, as part of the Harrison box set The Apple Years 1968–75. ## Background In its 13 February 1975 issue, Rolling Stone magazine derided George Harrison's North American tour with Ravi Shankar over November–December 1974, and the accompanying Dark Horse album, as "disastrous". Previously viewed as "the surprise winner of the ex-Beatle sweepstakes", in the words of author Nicholas Schaffner – the dark horse – Harrison had disappointed many fans of his former group by failing to acknowledge the Beatles' legacy, both in the content of his 1974 shows and in his dealings with the media. In addition, his commitment to launching his Dark Horse record label had left Harrison rushing to finish the album while rehearsing for the concerts; as a result, he contracted laryngitis and sang hoarse on much of the recordings and throughout the tour. While Dark Horse sold well initially in America, it failed to place at all on Britain's top 50 albums chart. Despite Harrison's claims during the tour that the negative press only made him more determined, the criticism hit him hard, following the end of his marriage to Pattie Boyd. In a radio interview with Dave Herman of WNEW-FM in April 1975, recorded in Los Angeles, Harrison said that he accepted the validity of professional criticism, but objected when it came continually from "one basic source"; then, he added, it became "a personal thing". Author Simon Leng writes that the "bitterness and dismay" Harrison felt manifested itself on his follow-up to Dark Horse, titled Extra Texture (Read All About It), which would be the final studio album issued on the Beatles' Apple record label. The album came about while Harrison was in Los Angeles overseeing projects by some of his Dark Horse signings, one of which, Splinter, became unavailable to attend sessions pre-booked for them at A&M Studios. Although Harrison was unimpressed with the recording facility, he chose to use the vacated studio time himself. Authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter suggest that this decision was influenced by his business relationship with A&M Records, who were Dark Horse's worldwide distributor and the company with which Harrison was widely expected to sign as a solo artist, following the expiration of his EMI/Capitol-affiliated Apple contract in January 1976. Having barely written a song in the six months since completing Dark Horse, in late October 1974, he swiftly completed some half-finished compositions and wrote "a couple of new ones". Leng cites these circumstances, together with Harrison's eagerness "to cut a new album as soon as possible, to extricate himself from the Capitol/EMI contract", as part of an expedient quality that defines Extra Texture. ## Songs Writing for Rolling Stone in 2002, Mikal Gilmore commented that "the crises [Harrison] faced in the mid-1970s changed him", and that depression was a key factor. Depression permeated many of the songs that Harrison wrote during this period, an issue that was not helped by his continued heavy drinking and cocaine use. While viewing this mindset as an extension of the artist's "unholy coping mechanisms" over 1973–74, author Robert Rodriguez writes: "What's interesting is how he chose to address what he'd been grappling with, musically. In the end, Extra Texture is unique within the Harrison catalog as essentially an LP-length excursion into soul [music]." Lyrically, "The Answer's at the End", "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)", "World of Stone" and "Grey Cloudy Lies" all steer clear of his usual subject matter – Hindu spirituality – and instead appear to ask the listener for compassion. According to author and theologian Dale Allison, Extra Texture is "the sole Harrison album that fails to make any positive theological statements". Allison adds that its "confused melancholy" provides a sharp contrast with the "confident religious advocacy" of the artist's previous successes All Things Must Pass (1970) and Living in the Material World (1973). Harrison's wavering from his Krishna-conscious path was most evident in "World of Stone", writes author Gary Tillery: "'Such a long way from home,' he says, but in his autobiography he renders it, 'Such a long way from OM' – confessing inner turmoil at having strayed from his faith." The same despair was evident in "Grey Cloudy Lies", a track that Harrison described to Paul Gambaccini in September 1975 as "one of those depressing, 4 o'clock in the morning sort of songs". Harrison had begun writing "World of Stone", "Grey Cloudy Lies" and the soul-pop love song "Can't Stop Thinking About You" in 1973. He started "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" in Hawaii over Christmas 1974, while holidaying with his new girlfriend (later his wife), Olivia Arias, a secretary at Dark Horse's LA office. The song is a sequel to Harrison's popular Beatles track "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and the lyrics serve as a rebuttal to his critics, particularly Rolling Stone, whose savaging of the tour he would never forgive. Harrison wrote "Tired of Midnight Blue" in Los Angeles, where he continued to be based for much of 1975 on business relating to Dark Horse Records. In his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, he says that the song's lyrics focused on his "depressed" state following a night in an LA club with "a lot of grey-haired naughty people". In Tillery's estimation, with its chorus line "Made me chill right to the bone", "Tired of Midnight Blue" was Harrison reaching "rock bottom". As the most obvious example of his embracing of soul music on the album, he wrote "Ooh Baby (You Know That I Love You)" as the first of two tributes to Smokey Robinson, a singer whose work with the Miracles he had admired since the early 1960s. In addition to these compositions, Harrison revisited two unused recordings: the Motown-styled "You", and "His Name Is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen)", which open and close the album, respectively. Co-produced with Phil Spector in London, "You" was among the basic tracks taped in February 1971 for a planned Apple solo album by Spector's wife, Ronnie, formerly Veronica Bennett of the Ronettes. A reprise of the completed song, in the form of a brief instrumental titled "A Bit More of You", also appears on Extra Texture, opening side two in the LP format. "His Name Is Legs" was recorded at Harrison's Friar Park studio, FPSHOT, shortly before the 1974 tour, with Billy Preston, Tom Scott, Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark. In a private joke that few listeners were able to appreciate, the song features a hard-to-decipher monologue performed by "Legs" Larry Smith, formerly a member of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. The inclusion of these two older tracks provided some upbeat material on an album predominantly filled with ballads. ## Production ### Recording Alone among the studio albums that Harrison released between the break-up of the Beatles and his death in 2001, most of the recording for Extra Texture was carried out in the United States. The sessions took place on part of A&M's block along La Brea Avenue in Hollywood, where both the studio and the record company were based. Throughout the spring and summer of 1975, Harrison regularly attended Dark Horse's office, located in a bungalow shared with A&M-distributed Ode Records, and otherwise became fully involved in the Los Angeles music scene. Shortly before starting work on the album, he was among the guests at Wings' party on the Queen Mary ocean liner, at Long Beach, where a "drawn"-looking Harrison was seen socialising with Paul McCartney for the first time since the Beatles' break-up five years before. Often accompanied by Arias, Harrison caught shows by Bob Marley & the Wailers, Smokey Robinson and Santana, socialised with Ringo Starr, and met up with Preston and Ronnie Wood backstage after one of the Rolling Stones' concerts at the LA Forum. New friends such as Eric Idle entered Harrison's social circle that summer, although the Python's influence only extended to Extra Texture's quirky artwork and packaging rather than its musical content. With Norman Kinney as engineer, Harrison recorded the basic tracks for the new songs between 21 April and 7 May 1975, beginning with "Tired of Midnight Blue" and "The Answer's at the End". Among the musicians on the album were many of Harrison's previous collaborators and associates, including Jim Keltner (drums), Gary Wright (keyboards), Jesse Ed Davis (guitar), Klaus Voormann (bass), and Tom Scott, Jim Horn and Chuck Findley (all horns). Along with Keltner, the most regular participant was a young David Foster, then the piano player in Keltner's band, Attitudes, while the group's bassist and singer, Paul Stallworth, also contributed. On what would turn out to be a keyboard-dominated sound, Leon Russell and Nicky Hopkins made guest appearances as well. Voormann, a close friend of Harrison's since 1960, found the atmosphere at the sessions unpleasant; he later cited the heavy drug use typical of the LA music scene, and the ex-Beatle's "frame of mind when he was doing this album". Keltner, who described his own friendship with Harrison as "like brothers", has similarly spoken of Los Angeles as an unsuitable environment for Harrison during this period, while commenting that Arias "came into the picture at just the right time, a crazy, dark time". With Voormann choosing to absent himself, Harrison played some of the album's bass parts himself, using either ARP or Moog synthesizer. ### Overdubbing and mixing After a few weeks' break, the overdubbing phase began at A&M on 31 May. That day, instruments were added to the 1971 basic track for "You", including a saxophone solo (played by Horn), extra keyboards and a second drum part. Over 2–3 June, Scott and Findley overdubbed horns on "Ooh Baby" and "His Name Is Legs". The Foster-arranged strings for "This Guitar", "The Answer's at the End" and "Can't Stop Thinking About You" were recorded between 6 and 9 June. Final mixing of the album's ten songs lasted through July and possibly into August. Between June and October 1975, Preston's It's My Pleasure album, Peter Skellern's Hard Times and Splinter's Harder to Live were released, and sessions took place in August for Scott's New York Connection. All of these albums include guitar cameos from Harrison (often credited to his pseudonym "Hari Georgeson"), yet his playing on Extra Texture was surprisingly minimal. Harrison's signature instrument since 1970, the slide guitar, appeared significantly on "Tired of Midnight Blue" only, and in his extended solo on "This Guitar", on which he shared the lead guitarist's role with Jesse Ed Davis. Harrison's voice had fully recovered from the effects of laryngitis, allowing him to reach falsetto and indulge in gospel-style scat singing. In author Alan Clayson's estimation, with Harrison adopting a new, "close-miked" soft vocal style, much of Extra Texture reflected "the more feathery emanations from Philadelphia by the likes of The Stylistics and Jerry Butler". Leng considers that Harrison "was clearly targeting the mainstream U.S. audience" and adds: "There were few spiritual lyrics and absolutely no references to Krishna, while his much-criticized vocals were stronger, but recorded at a low level, as if the goal was to create a Harrison soul album for lovers." ## Album artwork and title The album's art design was credited to Capitol's in-house designer, Roy Kohara. Harrison supplied sketches for each item of the artwork, which adopted a humorous, "wacky" theme throughout the packaging. The vivid-orange front cover featured a die-cut design around the words "EXTRA TEXTURE", through which an inner-sleeve, blue-tinted picture of Harrison was visible. Some vinyl editions presented the words as simple blue text on an orange background, however, doing away with the expensive cut-out detail. In keeping with the album title, the thin cardboard used for the LP cover was similar in texture to the "animal skin used on a football", according to Beatles author Bruce Spizer. The front cover included an Om symbol, positioned below the angled title text and also coloured blue. On the back of the inner sleeve, there was a second Henry Grossman tour photo of Harrison, enjoying himself on stage. Seen as a joke referencing the demise of the Beatles' record label, the Apple logo was styled on Extra Texture as an eaten-away apple core. In addition, the blue inner-sleeve photo of Harrison – "grinning like a Monty Python choirboy", in the words of music critic Robert Christgau – was captioned "OHNOTHIMAGEN" ("Oh not him again"), which was Harrison's self-deprecating take on his dwindling popularity in 1974–75. The album's full title referenced the media outcry during and immediately after his US tour; it was a pun on the slogan that street-corner paperboys would yell out to sell late-breaking news editions of their newspapers: "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" Harrison had intended to call the album Ohnothimagen, until a studio discussion with Paul Stallworth suggested an alternative. According to Harrison, just as he himself was talking about an overdub needing something "extra", Stallworth happened to say the word "texture". As on Dark Horse, Harrison listed contributing musicians for each song, on the LP's back cover, but this time with an additional list for those not appearing. The first of these is guitarist Danny Kortchmar, the fourth member of Attitudes; others include Derek Taylor, Eric Idle, Peter Sellers and Dark Horse executive Dino Airali. ## Release Appearing nine months after Dark Horse, Extra Texture (Read All About It) was completed more quickly than any of Harrison's previous post-Beatles solo albums. The haste with which it was made was out of character for Harrison, and apparently symbolic of a wish to redeem himself with his audience before he left EMI for A&M Records. Preceded by its advance single, "You" backed with "World of Stone", the album was issued on 22 September 1975 in America (as Apple SW 3420) and on 3 October in Britain (Apple PAS 10009). Coinciding with the release of Extra Texture, Harrison's interview with Herman was broadcast on many stations around the US. In another departure from past form, Harrison undertook promotion for his new album in Britain. One of these activities, broadcast on 6 September, was his track-by-track discussion with Paul Gambaccini on the BBC Radio 1 show Rockweek. The same day, Melody Maker published an interview with Harrison, the magazine's cover declaring: "George Bounces Back!" Although he later admitted to being "in a real down place" while making the album, the Melody Maker interview found Harrison in good humour, pointing the way to a return in form the following year; "I'd rather be an ex-Beatle than an ex-Nazi!" he joked, referring to his recent uneasy experience with the musical John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert. Harrison's other activities in late 1975 likewise centred on comedy, beginning with his production of Monty Python's single "The Lumberjack Song", released in November, and including a humorous star turn, again with Eric Idle, on Rutland Weekend Television's Christmas special. Extra Texture peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart on 25 October, holding the position for three weeks, and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on 11 November. The album marked a welcome, though brief, return for Harrison to the official UK Albums Chart (now a top 60), reaching number 16 there in late October. "You" peaked at number 20 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles listings, while in the UK, despite the song receiving substantial airplay on Radio 1, its highest position was number 38, equalling that of his Dark Horse single "Ding Dong, Ding Dong". As the follow-up to "You", Apple issued "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" backed by the 1974 album track "Māya Love", in December, with a UK release following in February 1976. Apple's final single in its original incarnation, "This Guitar" failed to chart in either America or Britain, a fate that Rodriguez partly attributes to a lack of promotion from a label that was "[r]unning on fumes". ### Reissue Extra Texture (Read All About It) was remastered for CD release in January 1992. The album was remastered again and reissued in September 2014, as both a separate release and as part of the Harrison box set The Apple Years 1968–75. The 2014 reissue includes a liner note essay by radio producer and author Kevin Howlett, and adds a new version of "This Guitar", based on a demo that Harrison recorded in 1992 for Dave Stewart. Previously issued only as a digital download for the latter's Platinum Weird project, in 2006, the track features overdubs from Stewart, Harrison's son Dhani, Ringo Starr and singer Kara DioGuardi. Previewing the release on georgeharrison.com, Olivia Harrison spoke of the "strong melodies and thought-provoking lyrics" of many of the songs on Extra Texture, adding: "They are moody and personal and some of my favourites." ## Critical reception ### Contemporary reviews Discussing the album's reception in his 1977 book The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner wrote: "Harrison's worldly critics, who had long found his sermons insufferable, responded like bulls to a red flag to Extra Texture, which contains a number of treatises on how reviewers always 'miss the point.'" Even Harrison's loyal "disciples", Schaffner continued, tended to view the album as "plodding and aimless". Rolling Stone's reviewer, Dave Marsh, highlighted "You" as a return to All Things Must Pass-style grandeur, and "Can't Stop Thinking About You" and "Tired of Midnight Blue" as "the most effective nine minutes of music" the artist had made since 1970. Generally, on an album that was "sketchy at best", however, Marsh bemoaned the over-reliance on "merely competent" keyboards and Harrison's "affectingly feeble voice", before concluding: "Harrison is no longer a Beatle, as he has reminded us more than we have asked. But if he learned nothing else from his experience in that organization, it ought to have been that a good guitar player isn't worth much without a band." In the NME, Neil Spencer wrote that "Though Extra Texture isn't the Harrison revival that many might have hopes for, it's still several leagues superior to Hari's more recent efforts; and just as All Things Must Pass would have made a great single album, so Extra Texture would make a more than commendable single side." Spencer described the album's content as "the customary mournful and doom-laden Harrison we've come to know and fear, only this time the rigours of love take precedence over matters spiritual", and he advised his readers: "I've played it, I don't mind it ... Hari fans can anticipate purchase with glee. Others approach with cautious optimism." Reviewing for Melody Maker, Ray Coleman described it as "splendid" and approved of Harrison's return to his 1960s musical influences. Coleman especially admired the first three songs and said that the album was a "re-statement of the fundamentals we should all cherish". In the 1977 edition of their book The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Roy Carr and Tony Tyler described Extra Texture as "another lugubrious offering" and concluded: "the needle of the listener's personal Ecstatograph points sullenly towards zero throughout." Harrison's pleas for tolerance and understanding, like his self-deprecation on the album sleeve, seemed to backfire. Writing in 1981, Bob Woffinden found that the album showed signs that Harrison was "no longer so scornful of his audience" compared with Dark Horse. Woffinden wrote of the songs that "plead plaintively with critics not to judge too severely": "In this different context, such pleas are more sympathetic. Very well, then, we will not. Extra Texture wasn't really very good musically ... but it did have some appealing qualities, and barely any disagreeable ones." ### Retrospective reviews and legacy In his book subtitled The Beatles' Solo Years, 1970–1980, Robert Rodriguez features Extra Texture in a chapter dedicated to the worst solo albums released by the four ex-Beatles between 1970 and 1980 – the only one of Harrison's albums to be included there. Rodriguez writes: "To be sure, Extra Texture boasted several fine cuts ... but the remainder of the collection was almost entirely weary in tone, amounting to a prolonged buzz kill." Nick DeRiso of the music website Something Else! includes it on his list of the five worst solo albums by either John Lennon, McCartney or Harrison, and describes it as a "grinding, relentlessly downbeat album, where even the name Extra Texture has come to feel like a cruel joke". Several Harrison biographers likewise hold Extra Texture in low esteem, with Alan Clayson describing it as his "artistic nadir" and "a bedsit record rather than a dancing one". Simon Leng writes that Harrison's post-Dark Horse "rehabilitation disc" came way too soon, resulting in an uncharacteristically passionless work, with its singer sounding "punch drunk". Aside from the uplifting "You", both authors identify "Tired of Midnight Blue" as the only saving grace. Gary Tillery notes the "darkly sarcastic" album title for a collection full of such "downbeat" tracks, the darkest of which is "Grey Cloudy Lies". Harrison himself rated Extra Texture as his worst solo release of the 1970s. Speaking to Musician magazine in 1987, he dismissed it as "a grubby album" and added: "The production left a lot to be desired, as did my performance ... Some songs I like, but in retrospect I wasn't very happy about it." The album has its admirers. Writing in a Rolling Stone Press tribute book, Greg Kot labels Extra Texture as "something of a return to form for Harrison". AllMusic's Richard Ginell views "You", "The Answer's at the End" and "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" as some of Harrison's best post-Beatles compositions and identifies other "musical blossoms" on a collection that stands up relatively well to the passing of time. Writing in the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide, Mac Randall considered it to be an album that "starts off well, then runs out of steam midway through", while John Harris, in his 2011 review for Mojo, described it as "a classic case of contractual obligation" but still a "decided improvement" on Dark Horse. More impressed, Harrison biographer Elliot Huntley admires the album as "a welcome return to form" that offers "some gorgeous love songs, a truly commercial lead single, and flashes of the humour that define George Harrison as a songwriter". Reviewing the Apple Years box set for Blogcritics, Seattle-based critic Chaz Lipp opines of Extra Texture: "Though not without a few notable tracks, it's the least satisfying album of Harrison's entire career ... The essential cut is the grooving 'Tired of Midnight Blue.'" In his review for Classic Rock, Paul Trynka writes that the album "boasts neither the highs nor lows of its predecessors" and is "the work of a man wounded by criticism". In Trynka's assessment, whereas "You" "sounds dull today", "confessional songs" such as "World of Stone", "Tired of Midnight Blue" and "Grey Cloudy Lies" "have worn well". Writing for the website Vintage Rock, Shawn Perry similarly considers "You" to be "out of sync", and he highlights "This Guitar" and "Grey Cloudy Lies" on "a creative and introspective album that's aged well". In another 2014 review, for the Lexington Herald-Leader, Walter Tunis writes: "[Extra Texture (Read All About It)] is a delight from the start of the brightly orchestrated pop of 'You' to a series of light soul-savvy reveries that culminate in the playful 'His Name is Legs'. The record places the secular and spiritual concerns of Harrison's music in animated balance to close out The Apple Years in a state of hapless harmony." Writing in Mojo, Tom Doyle concedes that, being the final album in the box set, "It's possibly a downbeat note to end on", but welcomes the reissue for "allow[ing] us time to dig for the diamonds in the dirt". ## Track listing All songs written by George Harrison. Side one Side two 2014 remaster bonus track ## Personnel Track numbering refers to CD and digital releases of the album. - George Harrison – vocals (1–5, 7–10), electric and acoustic guitars (1–10), ARP synthesizer (3, 9), Moog synthesizer (9), piano (10), backing vocals (1, 2, 7–10) - David Foster – piano (2, 3, 5, 9), organ (1, 6), ARP string synthesizer (1, 5, 6), electric piano (7), tack piano (10), string arrangement (2, 3, 7) - Gary Wright – organ (2, 5), electric piano (1, 4, 6), ARP synthesizer (3, 7) - Jim Keltner – drums (1–9), percussion (8) - Jesse Ed Davis – electric guitar (3–5, 7, 9) - Klaus Voormann – bass (4–5, 7) - Paul Stallworth – bass (2, 8), background vocals (7) - Leon Russell – piano (1, 6, 8) - Tom Scott – saxophones (4, 10) - Chuck Findley – trumpet (4, 10), trombone (10) - Nicky Hopkins – piano (7) - Jim Horn – saxophone (1, 6) - Jim Gordon – drums (1, 6), percussion (1, 6) - Carl Radle – bass (1, 6) - Billy Preston – electric piano (10) - Willie Weeks – bass (10) - Andy Newmark – drums (10) - "Legs" Larry Smith – vocal (10) - Ronnie Spector – vocal (1) - Norm Kinney – percussion (2) Supplementary credits for 2014 reissue (track 11) - George Harrison – vocals, acoustic guitars - Dave Stewart – electric guitars, bass, organ - Dhani Harrison – acoustic guitar - Ringo Starr – drums - Kara DioGuardi – backing vocals ## Chart positions ## Certifications

Hurricane Marco (1996)

Category 1 Atlantic hurricane in 1996

Hurricane Marco caused significant flooding in the Greater Antilles and Central America, despite remaining well offshore. The thirteenth tropical cyclone, thirteenth named storm, and ninth hurricane of the 1996 Atlantic hurricane season, Marco developed in the western Caribbean Sea on November 16 after the interaction of a cold front and several tropical waves. Initially a tropical depression, it remained weak as it tracked southwestward and eventually southward. By November 19, the depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Marco, shortly before slowly curving in a general eastward direction. Marco briefly became a hurricane on November 20, though upper-level winds caused it to weaken back to a tropical storm later that day. The storm then tracked northeastward toward Hispaniola, but later become nearly stationary and curve eastward, then doubled-back to the west. After weakening to a tropical depression on November 23, Marco re-strengthened to a tropical storm on the following day. Marco tracked northwestward while fluctuating in intensity before finally weakening and dissipating on November 26. Despite not making landfall, Marco produced heavy rainfall in Cuba, Hispaniola, Central America, and Jamaica, which caused significant flooding in some areas. In Honduras, 4,000 homes were destroyed, 40 bridges washed away, nearly 50,000 acres of banana and fruit plantations flooded, and nine deaths were reported. Flooding also effected other Central American countries, albeit effects were less severe. Heavy rainfall was reported in Cuba, although flood damage is unknown. Marco contributed to an ongoing flood in Jamaica and caused three additional fatalities in the Dominican Republic. Overall, Marco caused 15 fatalities and approximately \$8.2 million (1996 USD) in damage. ## Meteorological history On November 9, a cold front moved into the northwest Caribbean Sea, shortly before an abnormally strong high-pressure system entered in the area. The front then became nearly stationary and interacted with several tropical waves over the next week. The Intertropical Convergence Zone became active, causing monsoonal southwesterly flow to enter the system from the eastern Pacific Ocean. On November 13, surface weather analysis indicated a weak low-pressure area had developed north of Colombia. Despite a well-defined low-level circulation, the system did not meet the criteria for a tropical cyclone because convective activity was not organized or concentrated within the vicinity of the center. Several small, weak centers of low pressure formed in the general area, and the entire system drifted northward for a couple days. In combination with a high-pressure area over the United States, the system produced gale-force winds on Florida, Cuba, the Bahamas and the Gulf of Mexico. Convection gradually developed over the broad low-pressure area, and post-storm analysis indicated that Tropical Depression Thirteen developed at 1800 UTC on November 16, while centered about 160 miles (260 km) southwest of Kingston, Jamaica. Operationally, the National Hurricane Center did not issue advisories until 2100 UTC on November 18. The depression tracked generally southward, soon encountering a more favorable environment for tropical cyclone development. Although environmental conditions were favorable for intensification, the depression initially failed to strengthen further. However, the depression later developed significant amounts of deep convection and intensified into Tropical Storm Marco on November 19. After intensifying into a tropical storm, Marco then headed slowly east-northeastward and continued to strengthen. By early on November 20, Marco was upgraded to a hurricane. Simultaneously, Marco attained its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 983 mbar (29.0 inHg). However, shortly thereafter, Marco began to move into a less favorable environment with strong upper-level westerly winds. As a result, it weakened back to a tropical storm later on November 20, after being a hurricane for only twelve hours. Despite the lesser favorable environment, Marco began to re-strengthen starting on the following day. By November 22, it nearly re-gained hurricane status, with winds remaining at 70 mph (110 km/h). However, Marco subsequently weakened to a tropical depression at 1800 UTC on November 23 while south of Jamaica. A mid-level ridge rebuilt over the Bahamas and Florida, which forced Marco westward, and then northwestward. The cyclone re-organized and thus re-intensified into a tropical storm on November 24. Tropical Storm Marco reached a third peak intensity with winds at 60 mph (100 km/h) on November 25 at 1200 UTC, before it weakened again. The storm maintained tropical storm status until 1200 UTC on November 26, when it weakened to a tropical depression once again. Marco then interacted with a cold front, causing it to degenerate into a remnant low-pressure system at 1800 UTC on November 26. Three hours later, the National Hurricane Center issued its final advisory on Marco, stating that the storm was merely a low-level swirl devoid of deep convection. After dissipating, the remnants of Marco drifted southward and produced heavy rainfall over Belize and Honduras. ## Preparations At 1500 UTC on November 19, a tropical storm watch was issued for Jamaica and was upgraded to a hurricane warning 24 hours later. However, by 2100 UTC on November 20, the hurricane warning was downgraded to a tropical storm warning. It was further downgraded to a tropical storm watch and discontinued by November 22. Other than hurricane/tropical storm watches and warnings, a flash flood warning was also posted on November 20, and sailors were advised to remain at port. Disaster committees cautioned residents to stock up on supplies such as batteries and canned food. At 1500 UTC on November 20, a hurricane watch was issued for Haiti and areas east of Camagüey, Cuba, though it was downgraded to a tropical storm watch six hours later. On the following day, the tropical storm watch was dropped. In addition, a tropical storm warning was issued on November 25 for the Isle of Youth and Pinar del Río, Cuba, though it was discontinued about 24 hours later. ## Impact Although Hurricane Marco never made landfall, it was a large storm with an unusual and erratic path and as a result, caused heavy rainfall throughout Central America and the western Caribbean nations. In the Dominican Republic, three people drowned north of Santo Domingo, while 200 families fled their homes during the flooding. Marco also contributed to an ongoing flood in Jamaica, which had already caused a total of \$3 million in damage to roads and left 170 families without shelter. After significant damage from Hurricane Lili in the previous month, minimal effects occurred in Cuba. Large amounts of precipitation also fell across Cuba, especially on the Isle of Youth and in Pinar del Río Province. Heavy rains caused thousands to flee their homes. However, damage in the country, if any is unknown. Torrential rainfall in Honduras caused flooding, which forced 60,000 people from their homes. In addition, 4,000 homes were destroyed and 40 wooden bridges were washed away. Roads were significantly affected, with six roads and the national highway damaged in Cortés Department. Damage to the highway infrastructure totaled to approximately \$500,000. Television broadcast images from La Lima showed houses submerged to their roofs. Flood waters also inundated nearly 50,000 acres of banana and fruit plantations owned by Chiquita Brands International. Other crops that sustained damage were maize, beans, sorghum, and rice. Agricultural losses associated with the storm totaled to approximately \$7.7 million. Along the Caribbean coastline of Honduras, about 1,000 shanty houses were destroyed. Overall, Marco caused nine fatalities in the country. In the Pacific and northern regions of Nicaragua, numerous houses washed away in the floods. In addition, Nicaraguan civil defense authorities reported two fatalities. Further north in Guatemala, at least one death occurred, and flood waters damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes. Swollen rivers in Costa Rica flooded several towns and numerous banana plantations. During its formative stage, a high-pressure area combined with the low pressure of Marco resulted in a tight pressure gradient which led to beach erosion and gale force winds on the Florida coast. In Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties, heavy surf generated by the combination of those systems caused 15 to 30 feet (4.6 to 9.1 m) of beach erosion. Additionally, 3 to 4 feet (0.91 to 1.22 m) of top sand were lost in that region. Further north, severe beach erosion caused the loss of as much as 10 feet (3.0 m) of the dune line in Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, and Martin counties. Other impact was minimal. Marco was one of few hurricanes to enter the Caribbean Sea and not make landfall. Also, Hurricane Hunter flights recorded volatile center structure with severe turbulence, extreme rainfall, and hail during a flight into the storm. Overall, Marco caused 14 fatalities and approximately \$8.2 million in damage. ## Aftermath While Marco was still spinning in the western Caribbean, the Government of Honduras allotted 70 million HNL (\$5.6 million 1996 USD) in emergency assistance. Following the storm, several countries contributed cash toward the recovery of Honduras, including: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States; cash donations collectively totaled slightly more than \$438,000. In addition, the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs contributed an emergency grant, worth \$10,000. Japan donated 40 tents, 10 water purifiers, 480 soaps, and 3 emergency health kits in lieu of money. Norway donated almost \$71,000 worth of food, medicines, and clothing. Spain also contributed medicine and transportation, costing \$156,250. The United States donated plastic sheeting, water containers, and family food bags. The primary contributor of non-government aid was the Red Cross. After the storm, the Red Cross set up temporary shelters in San Pedro Sula, Puerto Cortés, and El Progreso. Additionally, they distributed 3,000 pounds of powdered milk, clothing, 500 sheets, chlorine boxes, 14,000 pounds of rice, 15,000 pounds of beans and 9,000 pounds of maize, sugar, and butter. ## See also - Other storms of the same name - List of notable tropical cyclones - List of tropical cyclone names

Patient X (The X-Files)

"Patient X" is the thirteenth episode of the fifth season of American science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written by series creator Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, directed by Kim Manners and aired in the United States on March 1, 1998, on the Fox network. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 12.6, being watched by 20.21 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received moderately positive reviews from critics. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In this episode, as a rebel alien race secretly attacks several groups of former alien abductees, the agents meet Cassandra Spender (Veronica Cartwright), a woman who claims to be a multiple abductee and wants to deliver a positive message about aliens. Agent Mulder, now skeptical about extraterrestrial activity, is disturbed when Agent Scully forms a special bond with the woman. "Patient X" was a story milestone for the series. It introduced several new recurring characters for the series. It was the first episode to feature Chris Owens as Jeffrey Spender and Veronica Cartwright as Cassandra Spender. It is the first of a two-part story that concludes with the following episode, "The Red and the Black". ## Plot In Kazakhstan, two young boys see an unknown object fall from the sky. Seconds later, they witness a man being burned alive, and one of the boys is killed by an Alien Rebel who has his eyes and mouth sewn shut. The next day, Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden) leads an investigation of UN peacekeepers of the area. She runs into Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea), who has caught Dimitri, the other Kazakh boy. Krycek tells Marita to tell her superiors that "it is all going to hell". Meanwhile, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) attends a lecture at MIT, where the testimony of Cassandra Spender (Veronica Cartwright), an alien abductee, is being presented. Mulder argues against other members of the lecture over the existence of alien life, claiming that it is a lie created to cover up a program of medical experimentation on civilians run by the military industrial complex. When the lecture ends, Mulder is met by Dr. Heitz Werber, who is surprised to see that Mulder has lost his belief in alien life since the last time they met. Werber tells Mulder that he is Cassandra's doctor, and asks him to visit her. Meanwhile, Krycek, who has beaten Dmitri into telling him what he saw, orders his Russian colleagues to infect him with the black oil. Back in the United States, Werber introduces Mulder to Cassandra, who considers him a hero of hers. She claims that the aliens are in a state of upheaval and that she will be abducted by them again. Mulder tells Cassandra there is nothing he can do for her and leaves. In Russia, Krycek, working against the orders of his superiors, kidnaps the infected Dmitri and flees to the U.S., sewing shut the boy's eyes, nose, and mouth to keep the black oil from leaving his body. At FBI headquarters, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) meets Agent Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens), Cassandra's son, who fears the damage to his reputation if his colleagues learn about his mother. He tells Scully to keep Mulder away from her. Marita reports to the Syndicate, which expected colonization at a much later date. Krycek offers Dmitri to the Syndicate in exchange for all their research on a vaccine. Meanwhile, Scully talks to Mulder about his meeting with Cassandra. She realizes that she has much in common with Cassandra, including being abducted at Skyland Mountain and having an implant inserted in the base of her neck. Scully visits Cassandra, who immediately realizes that she's a fellow abductee. Scully tells her not to remove the implant. Cassandra assures Scully that she never will, as she looks forward to being abducted again. A group of abductees meet at Skyland Mountain and are burned alive by more faceless Alien Rebels. Scully and Mulder visit the scene, with Mulder continuing to be very skeptical of any alien involvement. The Syndicate is shocked by the massacre. Mulder and Scully visit Cassandra again, who knew many of the people who died. They encounter Spender, who is upset about their visit with his mother. Krycek is met by Marita and it is revealed that they are secretly lovers, conspiring against the Syndicate. When Krycek returns to the cell where Dmitri is held, he finds him gone, and the Well-Manicured Man there instead. Mulder finds that the victims of the attack had implants in their necks and all claimed to be abductees. He believes they were led there by the military, not aliens. Mulder is called by Marita, who kidnapped Dmitri. Dmitri pulls the stitches off his eyes, resulting in Marita getting infected with the black oil. Mulder calls Cassandra, looking for Scully, but Jeffrey answers and reveals that Cassandra is gone. At that moment Cassandra is with a group of abductees, including Scully and Dmitri, at the Ruskin Dam, brought there by Syndicate assassin Quiet Willy. The abductees see a UFO appear in the sky. Suddenly screams are uttered as a man is set on fire and two faceless aliens arrive. ## Production ### Casting This episode marks the first appearance of Chris Owens as Jeffrey Spender. Owens previously appeared in earlier episodes, the first being "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", in which he played the younger version of The Smoking Man. Owens later reprised this role in episode "Demons". During the fifth season of the show, Owens was cast as The Great Mutato in "The Post-Modern Prometheus". After his stint on The X-Files, Owens attempted to get a job as a waiter in Vancouver, to no avail. One day, however, he ran into series creator Chris Carter at a bar, who humorously told him, "I didn't know they served guys with two faces here", a reference to his portrayal of The Great Mutato. Carter explained that David Duchovny had "taken careful notice" of Owens' acting abilities and requested that he return to the series in some capacity. Heeding Duchovny's advice, Carter created the role of Jeffrey Spender just for him. "Patient X" also introduced the recurring character of Cassandra Spender, played by Veronica Cartwright. Rick Millikan, the series' casting director, was very pleased with Cartwright's performance, noting, "She's got a voice that adds a little creepiness and a little mystery that I thought played really well. She was just the perfect X-Files person." Because the script called for a number of Russian characters to appear, the show's casting scouts hired a number of Russian expatriates living in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area. Alex Shostak Jr., a teenage Ukrainian immigrant, was selected to play Dmitri. He worked 12–14 hours a day, much of which was spent applying the elaborate make-up effect that gave the appearance that his eyes and mouth had been sewed up. During filming, he was "literally" blind and guided by the crew members throughout the filming of his scenes. When it came to the dialogue, Shostak provided the Russian translation for his own lines. Both Nicholas Lea and Laurie Holden had to learn Russian for the episode, which, according to the former "was 'not hard'." Holden and Lea worked diligently together to perfect their pronunciation, with Holden explaining, "We'd come up with these fun ways to test ourselves to know if we had really nailed it. Show tunes come to mind, but I also remember this one time my dialect coach had me call a Russian friend of his on his cell phone to see if he could understand me. I passed the test." "Patient X" was the first episode in which Lea was credited under the Also Starring tag, alongside Mitch Pileggi and William B. Davis. ### Filming and visual effects Filming the scene with the burning camp was "tricky", according to Kim Manners, as the production crew was forced to follow a number of limiting safety precautions. To light the fires in the episode, the crew made use of propane. Manners wanted the shots to be as close to the fire as possible, so they also used fireproof cameras. According to Manners, "They used a half a million dollar camera on a crane wrapped in asbestos" and ran it through the fire. For the scene in which the alien rebels incinerate people, the production crew used a "very dangerous" stunt known as a "full burn", in which a person is set on fire with the aid of a special suit. In total, the stuntman who performed in the scene was on fire for about 30 seconds—quite a long time by filming standards. Special effects supervisor Toby Lindala supervised the creation of the faceless alien rebels, Dmitri's mutilation, and the incinerated victims of the rebels. Lindala also designed the rig used to infect Dmitri with the black oil. The set for the Russian gulag was erected at North Shore Studios, under production designer Graeme Murray's supervision. The ship scenes were filmed at a warehouse in Vancouver. When filming the Syndicate meeting, Manners wanted Marita Covarrubias to look as strong as possible since this marked the first appearance of a woman in the Syndicate meeting room. Since very little movement occurs during these scenes, the director tried to make things visually interesting by mixing wide shots with unique camera angles. ## Reception "Patient X" premiered in the United States on the Fox network on March 1, 1998. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 12.6, with a 19 share, meaning that roughly 12.6 percent of all television-equipped households, and 19 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 20.21 million viewers. Veronica Cartwright was nominated in the category "Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series" in the 1998 Emmy Awards for her performance in this episode and its follow-up, "The Red and the Black". The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth. Critical reception to the episode was largely positive. Television Without Pity ranked "Patient X" the eighth most nightmare-inducing episode of the show, citing, in particular the abuse of Dmitri. The article noted that "If The X-Files has taught us anything, it’s that if a G-Man asks us if we know anything about anything and we foolishly say yes, our mouths and eyelids will be sewn shut and we will be brainwashed to kill on demand." The A.V. Club reviewer Emily VanDerWerff gave "Patient X" a B+, and wrote that the episode "feels epic, in a way the mythology episodes do at their best". However, VanDerWerff noted that "The problem with breaking the status quo on a TV series is that your audience is always going to know in the back of its head that the status quo isn’t really broken." She reasoned that the audience never fully believed that "Mulder could lose his belief in the all-consuming alien conspiracy" or accept the idea that "Scully could find herself dabbling with belief in [aliens]." Despite these setbacks, however, she noted that "Patient X" was the episode where the series' mythology "gets moving again, after chasing its own tail throughout much of season four and reaching a sort of climax in the opening episodes of season five." Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode four stars out of five. The two described the tone of "Patient X" as "truly visceral", citing the faceless men incinerating people as well as the mutilation of the innocent Dmitri, who was "at the wrong place at the wrong time". Furthermore, Shearman and Pearson praised the episode for "shift[ing] the goalposts" and allowing Mulder and Scully to switch roles as the believer and skeptic. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a moderately positive review and awarded it two-and-a-half stars out of four. Vitaris praised the episode's premise and writing. "'Patient X' is a rare episode in that it actually advances The X-Files mythology, with the news of a vaccine to combat the black oil". However, she was critical of the episode's reliance on shock value, noting that the "camera seems to take a perverse delight in death, pain, and mutilation, with the distressing effect of numbing the viewer to the horror."

Ombla

River in Croatia

The Ombla is a short river in Croatia, northeast of Dubrovnik. Its course is approximately 30 metres (98 feet) long, and it empties into the Rijeka Dubrovačka, ria formed by the Adriatic Sea near Komolac in Dubrovnik-Neretva County. Rijeka Dubrovačka is actually a ria, a flooded river valley formed through changes in sea surface elevation on a geologic time scale. The river rises as a karst spring fed by groundwater replenished by Trebišnjica, which is an influent stream flowing in Popovo Polje, in the immediate hinterland of the Ombla. The elevation difference between the river's source and its mouth is just over 2 metres (6 feet 7 inches). The average discharge of the river is 24.1 cubic metres (850 cubic feet) per second. The drainage basin of the Ombla encompasses 600 square kilometres (230 square miles) and, besides the short surface course, includes only groundwater flow. The Ombla is used as a source of drinking water for Dubrovnik's water supply network, and construction of a hydroelectric power plant has been planned for the past two decades. As of 2012, the plans entail construction of a subsurface reservoir and a 68 megawatt power plant. The plan sparked controversy amid doubts raised with respect to environmental protection and biodiversity management, technical and financial feasibility, and procedural problems related to the project. A particular concern expressed was that the underground reservoir might trigger earthquakes. ## Source and course The course of the Ombla River is located in the Dubrovnik-Neretva County, northeast of the city of Dubrovnik in the southernmost part of the mainland of Croatia. The entire ria with its surroundings bears the name, Rijeka Dubrovačka (lit. Dubrovnik's River), and encompasses several villages clustered near the Ombla that are home to 12,000 people. The name is also applied to an estuary of the Ombla—a ria enclosed by steep slopes of 600-metre (2,000 ft) high hills, forming a 5-kilometre (3.1-mile) long, 200-to-400-metre (660 to 1,310 ft) wide and 26-metre (85-foot) deep embayment of the Adriatic Sea. The Ombla rises at the foot of the 422-metre (1,385 ft) Golubov Kamen massif, a landform that straddles the border between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The river rises in an 80-by-40-metre (260 by 130 ft) cave whose roof has an 8-metre (26 ft) clearance above the surface of the water. The primary source is located at an elevation of 15 metres (49 feet) below sea level, and the secondary sources are found at 2.5 metres (8 feet 2 inches) above sea level (a.s.l.). The spring is the largest karst spring in Croatia, and one of the largest ones in the Dinarides. The surface of the water in the cave is 2.38 metres (7 feet 10 inches) a.s.l. The watercourse flows for approximately 30 metres (98 feet) before reaching a weir across which the Ombla discharges into the Adriatic Sea, leading to claims that the Ombla is the shortest river in the world. ## Drainage basin The drainage basin of the Ombla is estimated to cover an area of at least 600 square kilometres (230 square miles), and up to 900 square kilometres (350 square miles) between the Adriatic Sea coast in the area of Dubrovnik and Popovo Polje. Other than the short surface course of the river, the drainage basin includes groundwater only. The exact boundaries of the drainage basin vary depending on prevailing hydrological conditions determining groundwater seepage and flow. The area comprises 176 settlements and 50,000 inhabitants. The area exhibits karst morphology, with bedrock largely consisting of limestones and comparatively small areas of dolomites and Quaternary sediments. Eocene flysch forms the southwest boundary of the catchment area, towards which the catchment basin drains and where the Ombla rises. The rocks were formed as a thick series of carbonate sediments were deposited between the Norian and Late Cretaceous as the Adriatic Carbonate Platform, up to 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) deep. In the Eocene and early Oligocene, the Adriatic Plate moved north and north-east, contributing to the Alpine orogeny via the tectonic uplift of the Dinarides. The basin's karst topography developed from the carbonate platform's exposure to weathering. Karstification largely began after the Dinarides' final uplift in the Oligocene and the Miocene, when the carbonates were exposed to atmospheric effects; this extended to the level of 120 metres (390 feet) below the present sea level, exposed during the Last Glacial Maximum. Some karst formations were created during earlier sea level drops, most notably the Messinian salinity crisis. The geological structure of the area indicates recent tectonic activity in the catchment, with a fault running between Hum and the Ombla. A recent strong earthquake in the wider region was the 1979 Montenegro earthquake, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. The only strong historical earthquake in the immediate area was the 1667 Dubrovnik earthquake, which was followed by a tsunami. The hydrological regime of the basin and Popovo Polje is determined by the flow of the Trebišnjica—a losing stream disappearing underground in the polje. The groundwater is distributed to a number of springs. Some of them are headwaters of watercourses discharging into the Neretva River to the northwest of the polje, or appearing as vruljas (submarine springs) or as headwaters of the Ombla river. Flow rate of the Ombla River, measured at the Komolac water intake plant, ranges from 3.96 to 104 cubic metres (140 to 3,673 cubic feet) per second, averaging 24.1 cubic metres (850 cubic feet) per second. The average has dropped by about 10 cubic metres (350 cubic feet) per second since completion of Trebišnjica Hydroelectric Power Plant and the concreting of the Trebišnjica's river bed. On the other hand, the minimum discharge was not affected by the river engineering works. The catchment basin area straddles boundary of two climate zones—the Mediterranean climate zone in areas at elevations up to 400 metres (1,300 feet) a.s.l, and the continental climate zone in other parts of the basin. Average annual precipitation varies depending on the climate zones: 1,238 millimetres (48.7 inches) in Dubrovnik, at the coast, and 2,037 millimetres (80.2 inches) in Hum, in Popovo Polje. ## Economy As of 2012, the Ombla is used as a source of drinking water for the city of Dubrovnik. The water intake plant at Komolac has a water supply capacity of 560 litres (120 imperial gallons; 150 US gallons) per second. The Ombla has been used as a part of Dubrovnik's water supply network since 1897, when the first contract to supply 960 cubic metres (34,000 cubic feet) of water per day was made with an owner of watermills operating on the river. The river water becomes opaque, containing increased proportion of suspended particulate matter, three to five times a year for periods of four to five days after increased rainfall. The situation is proposed to be addressed through moving of the intake plant to a higher elevation during construction of a proposed Ombla Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP). The new water intake is planned to be constructed at 55 metres (180 feet) a.s.l. These changes are expected to improve the quality of the drinking water, and to increase the water supply capacity to 1,500 litres (330 imperial gallons; 400 US gallons) per second. Average volume of water diverted to the water supply network varies considerably by month, peaking during summer tourist seasons. In August 2008, daily volume of water taken from Ombla for the water supply network averaged at 23,419 cubic metres (827,000 cubic feet). In 2008, the annual daily volume of the water diverted averaged 17,750 cubic metres (627,000 cubic feet). ### Proposed power plant The Ombla HPP is proposed to be built as an underground power plant utilizing headwaters of the Ombla River through a planned underground reservoir, which would hold the water behind a grout curtain and a concrete block extending from 250 metres (820 feet) below sea level to 135 metres (443 feet) a.s.l. The project entails flooding of a cavern system at the spring to a level 7 metres (23 feet) below the entrance to the 3,063-metre (10,049-foot) long Vilina Cave. The proposed power plant is planned to have productive capacity of 68 megawatts. The project is to be financed in part through a European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) loan in the amount of 123.2 million Euros, approved on 22 November 2011. Total project cost is estimated at 152.4 million Euros. Pursuant to the European Union Habitats Directive, an additional assessment and a biodiversity management plan are required before the EBRD actually provides the approved funds. The documents should define any mitigating or compensating activities that might be needed. The development project became controversial as environmental protection non-governmental organizations (NGOs) drew public attention to a possible threat that may arise to seven species of bats. Subsequently, the NGOs alleged that the project is illegal, environmentally unsafe, financially not feasible, and technically questionable. Project legality was disputed because it is based on a 1999 environmental impact assessment (EIA), while Croatian legislation requires that EIAs must not be more than two years old. Flooding of Vilina Cave is cited as an environmental concern, while the financial issues are based on previous cost overruns by Hrvatska elektroprivreda—the state-owned company planning the development—in other projects. One objection to the technical aspects of the project is the possibility that the groundwater may trigger earthquakes. Opponents of the project have urged the Prime Minister of Croatia to cancel development of the plant. After the elections of 2011, Mirela Holy, who had declared her opposition to the project prior to the elections, was appointed Minister of Environment and Nature Protection. In 2012 the ministry commissioned four reviews of the EIA. The reviews—one of them supporting the EIA and three disproving the conclusions of the original EIA—were submitted to the Government of Croatia one day after Holy resigned her post, reportedly over an unrelated matter, on 7 June 2012. Objections were raised by authors of the EIA that the reviews were not published and the names of the authors have been kept secret. Prime Minister Zoran Milanović said he wanted to collect opinions from the foremost Croatian, European, and worldwide experts before deciding on the matter, which has been under consideration since the early 1990s. In May 2013, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development cancelled its proposed loan to the project, pointing at environmental concerns. ## Etymology In classical antiquity, the Ombla was a part of the river Arion, rising and sinking in present-day region of Herzegovina before resurfacing at the coast. This is the earliest known name of the river, reported in Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax. The most likely etymology of the river's name is that it is derived from the Latin Vimbula, being named after vineyards, or Humbla, since the river was once in Zachlumia. Alternatively it is proposed that the name of the river descended from the Slavic word ubao or ubla, meaning a pit containing water, possibly a water well. Since the 16th century, the river was called Ombla or Umbla, or a variety of similar names which all translate as "River"—Rika, Rieka, Ričina, and Rijeka. In the 19th century, the use of name Orion was also reported, apparently based on the Arion of the classical period. The word ombla means 'sweet water' in Albanian. ## See also - Geography of Croatia - List of rivers of Croatia

Twin Falls saucer hoax

Flying saucer hoax (1947)

The Twin Falls saucer hoax was a hoaxed flying disc discovered in Twin Falls, Idaho, United States, on July 11, 1947. Amid a nationwide wave of alleged "flying disc" sightings, residents of Twin Falls reported recovering a 30 in (76 cm) "disc". FBI and Army officials took possession of the disc and quickly proclaimed the object to be a hoax. Press reported that local teenagers admitted to perpetrating the hoax. ## Background On June 24, 1947, civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold reported a sighting of 'flying discs'. By June 27, disc sightings were being reported nation-wide. On July 1, Twin Falls Times-News declared that "flying saucers have invaded" the Twin Falls region after a forest ranger and his companion reported seeing eight to ten "discs" flying in a V-shaped formation over Galena Summit. The two men were marking timber about three miles south of Galena Summit when they reportedly heard a buzzing noise overhead and saw shining objects above themselves. One of the witnesses, Walter Nicholson, was quoted as saying "it wasn't anything like an airplane". The following day, on July 2, press reported on a second sighting. Mr and Mrs. J. F. Meuser were reportedly driving near Malta, Idaho, when they spotted a lone "big ball of fire" about the size of the moon, only "much brighter". A third sighting was reported on July 3; railway foreman B.G. Tiffany contacted the Times-News with a story of him and his crew having seen a fleet of nine discs noiselessly flying in a V-shaped formation over Hollister, Idaho, a month prior. Two additional sightings were reported on July 4. Twin Falls resident R.L. Dempsey reported seeing two discs over the city. Three residents of Richfield, Idaho, reported having seen a single disc. On July 5, a group of 60 picnickers reportedly witnessed 35 discs in the skies over Twin Falls, making it the "largest number of the mystery devices reported anywhere in the nation" according to local press. On July 7, additional sightings were reported, with one report naming three 14- to 15-year-old boys as witnesses of a lone disc that was "the size of a motor scooter wheel". The Twin Falls disc was not the first story of a recovered disc. On July 8, it was reported that Army personnel at Roswell had recovered a 'flying disc'; The following day, it was reported that the Roswell debris was an ordinary weather balloon. On July 10, United Press reported on a hoax saucer allegedly recovered in North Hollywood. ## Twin Falls 'disc' On July 11, the press reported the recovery of a 30-inch (76 cm) disc from the yard of a Twin Falls home. Residents reported hearing a "thud" around 2:30 am but dismissed the noise as a truck. At 8:20 am, a next-door neighbor reportedly discovered a "disc" and contacted police. Local police arrived and took possession of the object. The matter was referred to both FBI and military intelligence. Multiple officers from Fort Douglas flew in to investigate. Authorities "clamped down a lid of secrecy pending the outcome of further investigation". Local press featured a piece on Army "cloak and dagger" during the disc investigation, mentioning that photographs of the object were confiscated. That same day, the FBI reported the object had been turned over to the Army. On July 12, it was reported nationally that the Twin Falls disc was a hoax. Press reported that four teenagers had confessed to creating the disc. Photos of the object were then publicly released. ### Description The object was described as containing radio tubes, electric coils, and wires underneath a plexiglass dome. According to Deseret News: > "The disc is described as being thirty inches in diameter and resembling the base of an old-fashioned chandelier. It has a dome-like bubble, made of plexiglass, on one side and steel dome-like bubble on the other. Inside the plastic dome are three silver painted radio tubes with wires attached to what appears to be an electro-magnetic coil on the outside." The Independent Record further described it, stating: "The object measured 301⁄2 inches in diameter with a metal dome on one side and a plastic dome about 14 inches high on the opposite side, anchored in place by what appeared to be stove bolts. The gadget is gold painted on one side and silver (either stainless steel, aluminum, or tin) on the other. It appeared to have been turned out by machine." ## Reception and influence The Twin Falls hoax, with its nationally published image showing a bemused army officer holding a disc-like object of mundane construction, has been called the "coup de grâce of press coverage" on the 1947 flying disc craze. In the days following the story, "press accounts rapidly fell off". The Twin Falls hoax was not the last recovered saucer hoax. On July 28, 1947, just weeks after the Twin Falls hoax, there were reports of recovered disc debris at Maury Island, Washington. In 1949, another 'crashed disc' story circulated as part of the Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax. Decades later, fringe conspiracy theorists like Kenn Thomas and Nick Redfern would cite the Twin Falls hoax in connection with both UFO conspiracy theories and JFK assassination conspiracy theories.

Picnic on the Grass

1959 film by Jean Renoir

Picnic on the Grass (French: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe) is a 1959 French comedy film written and directed by Jean Renoir, starring Paul Meurisse, Fernand Sardou and Catherine Rouvel. It is known in the United Kingdom by its original title or in translation as Lunch on the Grass. A satire on contemporary science and politics, it revolves around a prominent biologist and politician who wants to replace sex with artificial insemination, but begins to reconsider when a picnic he organizes is interrupted by the forces of nature. The film brings up issues of modernity, human reproduction, youth and European integration. It ridicules rationalist idealism and celebrates a type of materialism it associates with classical mythology and ancient Greek philosophy. The title is taken from the painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet. The female lead in Picnic on the Grass was the first major role for Rouvel, who due to an unusual contract would not appear in another film until 1963. Filming took place around Renoir's childhood home in Provence, and inspiration came from the impressionist paintings of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The filming technique was influenced by live television and involved multiple cameras and direct audio recording. The press reviews were generally positive and described the film as charming and beautiful. Negative response came from the political left, where critics disapproved of the film's treatment of progress and depiction of a European superstate; the subject of European unification was topical and sensitive due to the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957. In spite of the generally good reviews, the film was a commercial failure, and has attracted little attention from general audiences over the years. Some modern critics have seen its implicit critiques of technocracy and dogged rationalism as both prophetic and of increasing relevance to today's world. ## Plot The famous French biologist Étienne Alexis is the frontrunner in the upcoming election for the first President of Europe. He advocates mandatory artificial insemination in order to improve humanity and make it worthy of modern science. He is newly engaged to his German cousin Marie-Charlotte and has invited her to a picnic near his mansion in Provence. Nénette, a farmer's daughter, is disappointed with men after a failed relationship, but still wants children and applies to be a test subject for Étienne's insemination project. She ends up hired as his chambermaid and accompanies the picnic with the other servants. Present at the picnic are several cousins of the engaged couple—stiff, rationally minded people who profess belief in scientific progress. They have invited journalists to document the picnic event, which they want to present as a symbol for the new unified Europe. The picnic takes place next to the ruins of a temple of Diana, the goddess who the ancient Romans believed presided over childbirth. Nearby is also a group of young campers. Nénette is worried when she spots the goatherd Gaspard; she knows that when he plays his flute, strange things tend to happen. Gaspard plays and suddenly a strong wind blows away the picnic chairs and tables. As everybody takes cover, Étienne and Nénette are separated from the rest. When the wind subsides, the two are invited to sit down with the campers, to whom Étienne explains how he hopes to eliminate passion. Meanwhile, a Bacchanalia breaks out among the picnic guests not far away. Leaving the campers to look for Marie-Charlotte, Étienne ends up seeing Nénette swimming nude, and becomes visibly affected; when Nénette emerges from the water and joins him, Gaspard's flute is heard playing again, and the two run off into the high reeds together. After returning, they see the cousins and servants leaving in cars. They choose to not approach them, and instead rejoin the campers, who offer to let them stay the night in their camp. The next morning, Étienne says he wants to escape from the world for a while, so he and Nénette go to stay at Nénette's father Nino's house. Étienne begins to reconsider the relationship between humans and the natural world. The cousins eventually discover his whereabouts and arrive at the house, where they convince Nénette to leave. Realizing she is gone, Étienne becomes agitated and goes to look for her, running into Gaspard, the goatherd, who recommends that he kneel before his goat and ask for help. After doing so, Étienne turns ecstatic and shouts "Down with science!" before being forcibly restrained by his cousins. Étienne goes back to his old life, but on the day of his wedding he discovers Nénette, happily pregnant with his child, working in a hotel kitchen. He abruptly brings her instead of Marie-Charlotte to the waiting crowd. He will launch his presidential campaign with a speech about science and nature, and he intends to marry Nénette. ## Cast Cast adapted from A Companion to Jean Renoir and the British Film Institute. - Paul Meurisse as Professor Étienne Alexis - Catherine Rouvel as Nénette - Fernand Sardou as Nino, Nénette's father - Jacqueline Morane as Titine, Nénette's elder sister - Jean-Pierre Granval as Ritou, Titine's husband - Ingrid Nordine as Marie-Charlotte - Charles Blavette as Gaspard, the old goatherd - Paulette Dubost as Mlle Forestier, the telephonist ## Themes ### Modernity and nature The themes of Picnic on the Grass revolve around modern issues such as artificial insemination, the pharmaceutical industry and the mass media. Jean Renoir's biographer Pascal Mérigeau writes that the film "deals with disturbingly serious subjects using a farcical tone". The film historian Jean Douchet wrote that the film should be taken seriously, but describes its story as an invitation to not do so. Renoir satirizes a modernity he does not think highly of, and uses story and tone to suggest to the viewer that it is not very important. The central conflict is built on several dichotomies: between the Apollonian and Dionysian, the technocratic Northern Europe and underdeveloped Mediterranean region, and the rationalist idealism of Postchristianity and materialist philosophy of ancient Greece. The film ridicules the idealist notion of progress and celebrates the Dionysian world. It portrays an empty spirituality produced by a bureaucratic utilitarianism, and thereby seeks to justify the celebration of a material world imbued with spirit. When Étienne converses with a Christian priest, the two are shown to have disagreements, but to simultaneously understand each other well; this is because both still belong to the idealist side in the film's conflict. According to Douchet, the film sets up a scenario where harmonious equilibrium is achieved when science abandons idealism and submits to a materialist view of nature. This happens when Étienne marries Nénette, who is pregnant with their naturally conceived child. Étienne is an intellectual who lives in a theoretical world. This makes him similar to the main characters in two earlier works by Renoir: the play Orvet (1955) and the television film The Doctor's Horrible Experiment (1959). Étienne's eugenic ideology combines rationalism and moralism in a way that gives Darwinism an active role in concord with individualism. Human reproduction and evolution become tied to Étienne's notions of self-sufficiency and to ideas about social responsibility. Nénette is comfortable with her human physicality, but is also driven by self-sufficiency in her wish to have her own child through artificial insemination. She is emancipated and mobile, and it is her actions that twice bring her to Étienne. Another—militaristic—type of women's emancipation is represented by Marie-Charlotte. Allied against Western rationalism are the gods Pan and Diana. Pan is evoked through the flute-playing goatherd, and Diana presides over chastity and childbirth, which in this classical mythological context are aspects of female independence. ### Youth and experience Renoir had spent years of his childhood and adolescence in the area where Picnic on the Grass was filmed. He had recently begun to write a book about his father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, which made him reminisce about his early life. According to Mérigeau, the film sees Renoir return to the perspective he had as a young boy and adolescent, from where he confronts the troubling questions of the contemporary world. Renoir's reconnection to his younger self is paralleled in the mode of storytelling, which is reminiscent of the silent cinema in which he began his filmmaking career in the 1920s; Mérigeau writes that the film thereby creates a paradox, since it was made using new techniques from television. Another parallel to Renoir's earlier experiences is how the portrayal of eroticism is similar to that of his 1936 film Partie de campagne. The filmmaker Shirley Clarke said that Picnic on the Grass "could only have been made by someone of 6 or 60". ### European integration The historian Hugo Frey groups Picnic on the Grass with a number of French comedies that deal with a "modernist invasion". These include the films of Jacques Tati, Mr. Freedom (1968), directed by William Klein, and The Holes (1974), directed by Pierre Tchernia. Renoir's film stands out in the group because it targets the nascent European Union rather than the United States. The vision of a European superstate was conceived as the logical continuation of the European Economic Community (EEC), created in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome. The film's depiction of a French and German elite couple follows a convention where European integration is understood as something that particularly concerns France and Germany, or France and Germanic-speaking Europe overall. The way Étienne speaks to journalists, with technical and obscure terminology, envisions a future political elite as the only people who will comprehend the European project. ## Production ### Development After working in Hollywood in the 1940s, Renoir had re-established himself in European cinema following the international success of The River (1951). During the 1950s, he developed a more detached and depoliticized approach to filmmaking than before. Simultaneously, he became a more prominent celebrity in France due to television appearances and an increased appreciation for his films from the 1930s. His work became more oriented toward personal subjects. The title of Picnic on the Grass is taken from the painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) by Édouard Manet. Renoir wrote seven versions of the screenplay. He made the film through his own production company, Compagnie Jean Renoir; it was the last time he did so, as annoyances about logistics during the production made him decide to never produce his own films again. Financial backing was provided by Pathé and the UCIF, to whom Renoir also offered 50% of his earnings from La Grande Illusion (1937) as a reimbursement guarantee, to a limit of 10 million francs. ### Pre-production Catherine Rouvel—who was married to Georges Rouveyre—had her first major role in Picnic on the Grass. Renoir had met her in 1958, shortly after her 19th birthday, during a tribute to Robert J. Flaherty at the Cinémathèque Française. She had accompanied her husband Georges Rouveyre, whose friend Claude Beylie, a film critic, introduced her to Renoir. A few weeks earlier, she had enrolled at the drama school Centre d'art dramatique de la rue Blanche, and that same winter, Renoir contacted her for a reading and an informal screen test. Later, when the casting process for Picnic on the Grass formally began, she was not the only candidate for the role of Nénétte; Renoir auditioned Michèle Mercier the same day, and also considered giving the part to the dancer Ludmilla Tchérina, whom he had directed in a ballet. Renoir told Rouveyre in April 1959 that the role was hers; soon thereafter, he suggested that she should change her name to Rouvel. For the male lead, Renoir first considered Pierre Blanchar, a man in his mid 60s, before giving the role to the 20-years-younger Paul Meurisse; Renoir had previously worked with Meurisse in a production of Julius Caesar and the two were good friends. In the role of the goatherd Gaspard he cast Charles Blavette, who had played the title role in Renoir's film Toni (1935). Renoir rehearsed with the actors for a week before adding technicians to the rehearsals. After this, the director, designer, camera operator and assistant scouted the filming locations. The rehearsals then resumed, with markers chalked on the floor of the rehearsal room corresponding to the filming locations' topography. Working with markers was something Renoir abandoned after Picnic on the Grass, because he thought it was better if the actors could discover the surroundings more freely. ### Filming and post-production Filming took place from 6 to 30 July 1959 at Studio Francœur in Paris, and in Cagnes-sur-Mer and La Gaude in Alpes-Maritimes. Picnic on the Grass borrows visual traits from French impressionist painting, in particular that of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. This is reflected in the choices of filming locations; Jean Renoir called the film "something of a homage to the olive-trees under which my father worked so much". A major location was the property Les Collettes in Cagnes-sur-Mer, which Renoir the elder had bought in 1907, and which had been the home of Jean Renoir for a part of his childhood and adolescence. Renoir the elder had spent significant time in the town La Gaude where a part of the film was shot, and several of his paintings feature the nearby river Le Coup, which also appears in the film. Another stylistic choice came from the director's desire to follow impulses on location and encourage improvisation; Renoir said he wanted to make a "sort of filmed poem" written in one sitting. After the rehearsals, he gave very little instruction to the actors. He used a rapid working method influenced by live television, a technique he had first used in his recent television film The Doctor's Horrible Experiment, which he called an "experimental film". He also took advantage of the cinematographer's experience from making newsreel footage, with six cameras placed around a scene to cover all useful angles and shots. In addition to saving time and money, the aim was to retain the uninterrupted, intensive acting of a long take and still be able to make cuts within the scene. This method made it possible to record most of the dialogue directly, without problems of continuity due to surrounding sounds such as that from airplanes. Up to twelve microphones were present and only around 20 phrases had to be dubbed in post-production. Several key crew members were reused from The Doctor's Horrible Experiment. They included the cinematographer Georges Leclerc and the editor Renée Lichtig, both of whom would work with Renoir again on his next film, The Elusive Corporal, which became his final feature film, although the multiple-camera technique was abandoned after Picnic on the Grass. The original music for Picnic on the Grass was composed by Joseph Kosma, who first collaborated with Renoir in 1936 and had provided music for several of his best known films. The score includes a melody the goatherd plays in high pitch on his flute during the wind scene, an upbeat piece played on clarinet in jazz style, and a melody played on flute with harp glissandos during a lyrical passage. ## Release Pathé released Picnic on the Grass theatrically in France on 11 November 1959. In the United Kingdom it was released by Mondial Films in April 1960 under the title Lunch on the Grass. It was released in the United States as Picnic on the Grass on 12 October 1960 by Kingsley-International Pictures. For the French home-media market, it was first released on VHS in 1990 by Fil à film and on DVD in 2003 by StudioCanal vidéo. The DVD, which was re-released in 2008, includes a 30-minute documentary directed by Pierre-François Glaymann. The film was released on DVD in the United Kingdom in 2007 by Optimum Releasing, as part of a box set with other Renoir films. The DVD uses the original French title, Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe. ## Reception ### Contemporary critical response French film critics generally gave Picnic on the Grass a positive reception, characterized by respect for Renoir. They highlighted the film's connection to impressionism and described it as charming. Rouvel's face was on the cover of the December 1959 issue of Cahiers du cinéma, and the magazine called the film "the most beautiful of a month rich in masterpieces". The review by Éric Rohmer stressed the technical novelty of the film, released in "the year of the 'New Wave'", which Renoir had influenced profoundly. With its detached and intentionally naive style, Rohmer described it as "avant-garde popular theater" in the vein of Mr Puntila and his Man Matti. For Rohmer, the satire against science should be understood through Renoir's role as an artist, not philosopher or moralist, and not as a rejection of practical science. As for politics, he defended the artist's right to look at the problems of the world without being politically engaged. Picnic on the Grass made 13th place on Cahiers du cinéma'''s composite list of the best films of 1959. Pierre Braunberger, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Rohmer and François Truffaut were among the Cahiers critics who named it to year-end top ten lists. Renoir had supported the French Communist Party (PCF) in the 1930s, but Picnic on the Grass received negative reviews from critics with communist sympathies. It was released at a time when the PCF idealized progress and its members were enthusiastic about the Soviet space program. Samuel Lachize of L'Humanité considered the film flawed on a technical level, and criticized its lack of a clear choice between scientific progress and the rejection of it. He dismissed the philosophical content, which he took as a pseudo-Rousseauesque message about going back to nature. The Doctor's Horrible Experiment received a similar treatment from communist critics. Left-wing critics also criticized Picnic on the Grass for its evident acceptance of a European superstate, which was taken as an approval of the EEC, opposed by the left at the time. Furthermore, upsetting for the left, the reservations Étienne appears to have developed toward the end of the film were interpreted as support for Charles de Gaulle's Europe des patries ("Europe of fatherlands"). In the 1970s, the film critic Raymond Durgnat related the response to the left's own struggle to oppose the EEC without turning to patriotism. Durgnat wrote that it was "perhaps not too unkind to suggest that my left-wing colleagues were making their 'lost leader' a scapegoat for the very real difficulties of the left itself—or should one say the lefts themselves?" Gideon Bachmann wrote in Film Quarterly that many American critics gave Picnic on the Grass a "silly treatment", because they did not understand it through its director as a person. He used Hollis Alpert of the Saturday Review as a positive counterexample. Alpert called it "a nonsensically unconventional movie" where viewers "would be better off not trying to make sense or logic out of it, but simply allowing M. Renoir to have his day in the fields". Bachmann wrote that the film is reminiscent of Tati's films, both in message and how the message is conveyed through colors. He contrasted the seeming simplicity with the serious content, and the impressionism with the surreal elements. He called it "almost facile in impact but lasting in the perturbations it causes". ### Retrospective critical response Picnic on the Grass has received little attention from general audiences over time, but it has been embraced by individual critics. In 2006, Luc Arbona of Les Inrockuptibles called it an "extraordinary pamphlet" portraying "the peddlers of progress" who "only care about security, asepticity and uniformity". Arbona called the satire "abundant and exhilirating" and the film "brilliantly prophetic", because by the time of his writing, Arbona wrote, "these progress-obsessed, these ad-agency apostles who have nothing but the politically correct to say, have seized power and are leading the dance." The New Yorker's Richard Brody wrote about the film in conjunction with Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Taking its message as a rejection of modern technology, he compared it favorably to Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, which shows science and the government triumphant in a crisis of natural origin. Brody made a point of separating art and politics: "Looking to filmmakers for practical advice in the teeth of trouble is usually as pointless as turning to politicians for visions of beauty." Time Out called it "one of Renoir's most ravishing, and simultaneously most irritating films", because the "sumptuous photography" repeatedly "collapses into cold argument". ### Box office Picnic on the Grass had 757,024 admissions in France, and was a commercial failure. Renoir addressed this in a letter to the producer Ginette Doynel a few weeks after the Paris premiere. He wrote that the failure had given him a distaste for film and television work in general; from now on, he would instead focus on his teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley, his plays, and his book about his father. Picnic on the Grass later had a significant theatrical run in the United States, which delighted him. ## Legacy Rouvel signed an unusual contract which had the practical effect of giving Renoir the power to approve all her engagements for the next three years. Renoir decided to keep her away from the film industry and only accepted offers of theater roles. He rejected roles for her in The Green Mare and a film by Gérard Oury. Rouvel returned to film acting in Claude Chabrol's Bluebeard, released in January 1963. The film Le Bonheur (1965), directed by Agnès Varda, pays tribute to Picnic on the Grass by including a passage which plays on a television screen. The film scholar Nancy Pogel argues in her book on Woody Allen that Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) is indebted to Picnic on the Grass. ## See also - The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes'' - France–Germany relations - Pan in popular culture - Physis and techne - Reproduction and pregnancy in speculative fiction

Dangerously in Love

Dangerously in Love is the debut solo studio album by American singer Beyoncé. It was released on June 23, 2003, by Columbia Records and Music World Entertainment. During the recording of Destiny's Child's third studio album Survivor (2001), the group announced that each member would produce solo albums. Recording sessions for Dangerously in Love took place from March 2002 to March 2003 at various recording studios, during the group's hiatus. As the executive producer of the album, Beyoncé took a wider role in its production, co-writing a majority of the songs, choosing which ones to produce and sharing ideas on mixing and mastering. Although she remained discreet about her interpretation of the album's songs, their underlying meanings were attributed by media outlets as an allusion to her intimate relationship with rapper Jay-Z. Musically, the album is a mixture of uptempo tracks and ballads, all of which are primarily R&B songs, while also incorporating elements of soul, hip hop and Arabic music. Upon its release, Dangerously in Love received generally positive reviews from music critics, many of whom praised Beyoncé's "artistic leap". An international commercial success, the album debuted atop the US Billboard 200, selling 317,000 copies in its first week and earning Beyoncé the highest debut-week sales among Destiny's Child members' solo albums. At the 46th Annual Grammy Awards (2004), the album and its songs won five awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album; Beyoncé consequently tied with Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Norah Jones for the record of most Grammy Awards won by a woman at a single ceremony. Dangerously in Love has been certified sextuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and, as of 2011, has sold over 11 million copies worldwide. Dangerously in Love produced four singles. "Crazy in Love" spent eight consecutive weeks atop the US Billboard Hot 100, reaching the top ten almost everywhere it charted and winning two Grammy Awards. "Baby Boy" replicated the international commercial success of "Crazy in Love" while outlasting it atop the Billboard Hot 100 by one week. "Me, Myself and I" peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 while attaining lower peaks than its predecessors internationally. "Naughty Girl" peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and within the top ten in several additional countries. Beyoncé promoted the album via numerous live performances and two concert tours—Dangerously in Love Tour (2003) and Verizon Ladies First Tour (2004), the latter of which was co-headlined with Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott, while the former produced the live album Live at Wembley (2004). ## Background and development Beyoncé launched her career as the lead singer in the R&B girl group Destiny's Child in the late 1990s. According to Corey Moss of MTV News, "fans [were] eager to see" how Beyoncé, after years with the group, performs solo. While recording their third album Survivor in late 2000, Beyoncé announced the group would be put on hiatus in order for the members to produce solo albums in the coming years, which they hoped would boost interest in Destiny's Child. The idea of individual releases emanated from the group's manager and Beyoncé's father Mathew Knowles. With different musical styles for each member to produce, the albums were not intended to compete on the charts. Destiny's Child's management strategically planned to stagger the release of each group member's album to maximize sales. Michelle Williams was the first to release a debut solo album, titled Heart to Yours, in April 2002. Meanwhile, Beyoncé had her film debut in the comedy film Austin Powers in Goldmember, and recorded her debut single "Work It Out", which was featured on the film's soundtrack. Rowland collaborated with American rapper Nelly on the song "Dilemma" (2002) as a featured artist; it became a US Billboard Hot 100 number-one single, leading the label to advance the release date of her debut solo album Simply Deep to October. Beyoncé additionally starred in The Fighting Temptations (2003) and recorded another solo single. In August 2002, she collaborated with her now-husband Jay-Z as a featured vocalist on his song "'03 Bonnie & Clyde". Peaking at number four on the Billboard Hot 100, the song earned Beyoncé credibility as a solo artist and paved the way for the release of Dangerously in Love. ## Recording and production Before Beyoncé began recording for Dangerously in Love, she selected the producers with whom she would collaborate. For two days, she held meetings with prospective producers from the West Coast across the East Coast, and had interviews with them. Beyoncé went to Miami to begin sessions with record producer Scott Storch, her first collaborator, and lived in a hotel in the following months. As she wanted to concentrate on the album, Beyoncé took her time to avoid pressure build-up, significantly different from the hasty productions of Destiny's Child's albums. Beyoncé felt that recording an album without her groupmates was "liberating and therapeutic", coming into the studio and freely expressing her ideas with her collaborators. The dependency she developed with Destiny's Child, however, meant it was harder "to be on [her] own creatively". As she wanted to grow as an artist, Beyoncé contacted other artists with a view to forming a collaborative partnership. When the collective finished writing several songs, she printed copies of each and sent them to prospective guest artists. She talked to them by phone for possible collaboration, eventually gaining their approval. Besides Jay-Z, Beyoncé was able to work with Jamaican artist Sean Paul and American rapper Missy Elliott, among others. In contrast, some artists sent copies of songs to Beyoncé, which were eventually produced. Beyoncé also worked with Elliott and Timbaland on a track titled "Wrapped Around Me", but it ultimately failed to appear on the album. Survivor included a track titled "Dangerously in Love", which was deemed too sophisticated compared to other tracks on the album, and Destiny's Child decided not to release it as a single. After recording several tracks for Dangerously in Love, Beyoncé decided to re-record and add the track, retitling it "Dangerously in Love 2", after realizing that it fit the overriding theme of her album. As she did on Survivor, Beyoncé took a wider role in the production of Dangerously in Love, co-writing a majority of the songs, choosing which ones to produce and sharing ideas on the mixing and mastering of tracks. Although Beyoncé did not create beats, she came up with melodies and ideas she shared with the producers. Since the album's release date was postponed so Columbia Records could capitalize on the success of Kelly Rowland's feature on Nelly's "Dilemma", Beyoncé had been offered the chance to further enhance the record. Although she was disappointed with the decision, Beyoncé realized that "everything happens for a reason", agreeing to return to the recording studio to work with other songwriters. This allowed her to record more songs, including the album's lead single "Crazy in Love". In late 2002, Beyoncé paused working on Dangerously in Love in favor of a holiday tour with Destiny's Child. With a few weeks left for recording in March 2003, Beyoncé was still collaborating with other guests on the album, including Sean Paul and P. Diddy. The latter contributed on "Summertime", which ultimately did not make the album's final cut. However, it was later sent to radio stations and received favorable response. Consequently, Beyoncé planned to release a follow-up album comprising leftover tracks from Dangerously in Love, as the creative output of its sessions left several tracks ready for another album pressing. With 43 songs completed, Beyoncé is credited as a co-writer and a co-producer, as well as the album's executive producer alongside her father and then-manager Mathew Knowles. ## Music and lyrics Beyoncé's father and then-manager Mathew Knowles said Dangerously in Love showcased her musical roots. While Williams and Rowland explored on gospel and alternative pop styles, respectively, Beyoncé focused on recording R&B songs. The album's tracks vary, ranging from mid-tempo and club-oriented tracks on the first half, to ballads on the second half. Beyoncé commented: "My album is a good balance of ... ballads and ... mid-tempos with just ridin'-in-your-car feels, to a lot of ... up-tempo club songs, to really sexy songs, to songs that make you feel emotional. It's a nice mixture of different types of tracks." Although it contains high-energy tracks such as "Crazy in Love" and "Naughty Girl", the album's focal mode, however, is slow and moody. Beyoncé said she had mainly written ballads for the album. She added that she wanted to be understood as an artist and showcase her range, and by doing so, she blended various genres and musical influences; consequently, the album incorporates R&B, hip hop, soul, reggae and Arabic music influences. Its hip hop influences came from Jay-Z, Outkast, and Lil' Kim, while the reggae influences came from Sean Paul. Additionally, Scott Storch's personal study of Arabic music gave the album a Middle Eastern vibe. Beyoncé and the producers also used a wide array of instrumentations. Lyrically, love was the theme Beyoncé had incorporated for Dangerously in Love the most. Surrounding the release of the album, there were persistent rumors of her relationship with Jay-Z, which would later be proven true. Though "most the material is vague enough to be about any relationship", the album consists multiple tracks suggesting affirmation of their relationship. On "Signs", Beyoncé sings about being in love with a Sagittarius, Jay-Z's zodiac sign. Beyoncé said the album was lyrically similar to Destiny's Child's albums. However, since she had to write only for herself, Beyoncé had the chance to compose personally deeper songs than previous records with the group. With a theme based upon different stages of a romantic relationship, the album contains tracks speaking of romance and honesty. In addition, Beyoncé admitted some address sex. The personal content of the album, however, was not generally attributed to Beyoncé's own experiences—although some songs were—instead, the theme kept recurring in her mind. Beyoncé later explained: "I wanted to have an album that everyone could relate to and would listen to as long as I'm alive and even after... Love is something that never goes out of style. It's something everybody experiences, and if they are not in love, people usually want to feel that..." While some songs merely focus on the "beauty of love", the album also explores another side of love, with songs that "celebrate breakup" and songs that narrate a woman's desire to have a degree of control in a relationship. The album's hidden track "Daddy" is a tribute to Mathew Knowles, being an account of Beyoncé wanting her future husband and child to possess qualities similar to her father's. Originally, Beyoncé did not intend to include the track on the album, having thought its lyrics would make her appear immature. However, considering it one of the songs that reflected her life at that transitional moment, she relegated "Daddy" as the closing track. ## Title and packaging Dangerously in Love was titled after a track of the same title from Destiny's Child's third studio album Survivor (2001), which Beyoncé re-recorded for the album. The song itself is lyrically about being romantically obsessed, as indicated in the chorus: "I am in love with you / You set me free / I can't do this thing called life without you here with me". When "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" was released as a single in October 2002, critics and the public had speculated that Beyoncé and Jay-Z were having a mutual affair. Despite widespread rumors, they remained silent about their relationship. According to critics, the album's title sounded "more intriguing" with Beyoncé singing personal songs. Though love was the theme Beyoncé had incorporated in the album, "most the material is vague enough to be about any relationship"; some tracks, however, alluded to the accuracy of the rumors. In response to the rumors allegedly echoed in the album's title, Beyoncé stated: "People can come to whatever conclusion they like... That's the beauty of music... I'm a singer, I'll talk about writing songs all you want. But when it comes to certain personal things any normal person wouldn't tell people they don't know, I just feel like I don't have to [talk about it]." The album cover for Dangerously in Love was photographed by Markus Klinko. Beyoncé asked for a diamond-themed portrait, inspired by Klinko's 2000 campaign for Diamond.com showing Laetitia Casta lying on diamond-studded spider web. Beyoncé's mother and stylist, Tina Knowles, brought a diamond top for the shoot. Tina had brought skirts to pair it with, but Beyoncé felt they would look too "red carpet" with the top, according to Klinko. Instead, he lent Beyoncé his Dolce & Gabbana jeans for the shoot. The photograph was edited in post-production to conceal Beyoncé's breasts. Klinko said: "That famous pose she struck, with her arms out, she just did that. I didn't tell her to do that ... I just captured it." He felt the image "projected who Beyoncé was about to become ... Within a couple of years she had become that iconic, undeniable superstar. The photoshoot created a road map to where she was headed." The diamond top was displayed in the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exhibition dedicated to Beyoncé. ## Release and promotion Beyoncé said she had trouble convincing executives at Columbia Records to release Dangerously in Love. She recounted that it was almost not released: "In 2003, I had my first solo album. But when I played it through for my record label, they told me I didn't have one hit on my album. I guess they were kinda right, I had five—'Dangerously in Love', 'Naughty Girl', 'Me, Myself and I', 'Baby Boy' and 'Crazy in Love'." Since Kelly Rowland's "Dilemma" was concurrently charting atop the US Billboard Hot 100, Beyoncé's management released "Work It Out", one of the songs on the soundtrack to Austin Powers in Goldmember, instead of a single from Dangerously in Love to preclude it from possibly competing with "Dilemma". Dangerously in Love was consequently pushed back from its original October 2002 release date to December, and then to May 2003. Beyoncé recorded a cover version of 50 Cent's "In Da Club", which served its way to mixtapes before the original release date. The song failed to dominate as a "dancefloor favorite"; Mathew Knowles, however, confirmed that it was just a "buzz cut" and was not included on the album. Nonetheless, it earned enough airplay to chart on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. While Beyoncé was completing the album, several of its tracks had leaked online. In an effort to prevent more tracks from the album being spread illegally, as well as being a victim of bootlegging, Columbia Records, with high commercial expectations from the album, pulled the release of Dangerously in Love to June 24, two weeks ahead of the planned July 8 release. Buyers who pre-ordered Dangerously in Love via Sony Music's online store received links where they could download a song titled "I Can't Take No More"; the offer lasted until the album's release. On June 14, Beyoncé premiered songs from the album during her first solo concert and the pay-per-view television special titled Ford Presents Beyoncé Knowles, Friends & Family, Live From Ford's 100th Anniversary Celebration in Dearborn, Michigan. By the night of the album's release, Beyoncé's concert was broadcast in over 20 theaters across the United States. Rowland, Michelle Williams, Tyrese and Beyoncé's younger sister Solange also performed during the show. Beyoncé also promoted the album by performing on television shows such as Saturday Night Live, Late Show with David Letterman, Today, The Early Show, and The View. She further promoted it with her Dangerously in Love Tour in November 2003, performing in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands. Her concert at Wembley Arena in London on November 10, was filmed for her live album Live at Wembley, released on April 26, 2004. Additionally, Beyoncé co-headlined the Verizon Ladies First Tour with Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott across the US from March to April. ## Singles In April 2003, Columbia Records was choosing the lead single from Dangerously in Love between two songs. Sent to clubs, the song that would receive better reception would be selected as the lead single. Finally, "Crazy in Love" was released as the lead single on May 14, 2003. It was lauded by critics who described it as "deliriously catchy". The single topped the US Billboard Hot 100, based on heavy rotation alone. The same week the song reached number one, Dangerously in Love topped the Billboard 200 as well. The substantial airplay and later retail sales of "Crazy in Love" facilitated it to dominate the chart, subsequently spending eight straight weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, making it Beyoncé's first number-one single in her solo career. According to Nielsen SoundScan, "Crazy in Love" was the most downloaded song in the United States for four consecutive weeks in July 2003. The digital single was certified sextuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The song also became a success internationally, reaching the top of the charts in Croatia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. At the 46th Annual Grammy Awards (2004), the song won Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Its Jake Nava-directed accompanying music video "celebrates the evolution of a woman. It is about a girl who is at the point of a relationship. She realizes that she is in love, she is doing stuff she would not normally do but she does not care. It does not matter she is just crazy in love." Critically acclaimed, the video won Best Female Video, Best R&B Video and Best Choreography in a Video at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. "Baby Boy" was released as the second single from Dangerously in Love on August 3, 2003. It was well received by critics, who declared it a "high-profile collaboration" which "bridges the gap between the genres of R&B and dancehall." It ultimately peaked atop the US Billboard Hot 100 eight weeks after its debut, and stayed there for nine consecutive weeks, surpassing the eight-week run atop the chart of "Crazy in Love". The digital single was certified platinum by the RIAA. Internationally, the song peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart, reaching the top ten in 15 additional countries. Its accompanying music video, Beyoncé's second consecutive to be directed by Nava, features Beyoncé performing the song infused with heavy choreography at a flooded party and on a Miami beach, among other sceneries. "Me, Myself and I" was released as the third single from Dangerously in Love on October 19, 2003. It received generally positive critical response, directed towards its production and Beyoncé's vocal performance. It peaked at number four on the US Billboard Hot 100, and reached the top ten in Canada. The digital single was certified platinum by the RIAA. However, the song failed to replicate its predecessors' international commercial success, reaching the top 20 in Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Its Johan Renck-directed accompanying music video shows events of Beyoncé dealing with an adulterous boyfriend in reverse. Critically acclaimed, the video was nominated for Best R&B Video at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards. "Naughty Girl" was released as the fourth and final single from Dangerously in Love on March 14, 2004. The song was lauded by critics, who noted that "Beyoncé borrowed a portion of Donna Summer's naughty classic "Love to Love You Baby" to create this celebration of sensual naughtiness." It peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100, continuing Beyoncé's string of top-five singles on the chart. The digital single was certified platinum by the RIAA. Internationally, the song became a top-ten hit in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Despite "Me, Myself and I" and "Naughty Girl" not peaking atop the Billboard Hot 100, they still achieved high commercial success and helped Dangerously in Love reach a multi-platinum status. The accompanying music video for "Naughty Girl" was directed by Nava and features Beyoncé seductively dancing and flirting with Usher. The Studio 54-styled video was inspired by the dancing of Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire in the 1953 musical comedy film The Band Wagon. Critically acclaimed, it won Best Female Video at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards. Leading up to the release of Dangerously in Love, "Daddy" was released as a promotional single via iTunes Store on June 3, 2003. Beyoncé and Luther Vandross' cover of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway's "The Closer I Get to You" was released as the fourth and final single from Vandross' thirteenth and final studio album Dance with My Father on June 13, 2004. Having won Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, the song peaked at number 62 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Despite never being released as a single, "Dangerously in Love 2" won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, and peaked at number 57 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Its mastertone was certified gold by the RIAA. ## Critical reception Dangerously in Love received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 63, based on 17 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone viewed that it presents Beyoncé in two styles, one "far more flattering" than the other, and found the ballad-oriented songs on the album least flattering, commenting that Beyoncé has "plenty of time" to develop the style maturely that would "[make] sense for her". Entertainment Weekly's Neil Drumming commented that the album validates Beyoncé's "taste in innovation". He also viewed that Beyoncé's collaboration with various record producers explores new directions in contemporary music, doing more reinventing than revisiting. Like DeCurtis' review, however, Drumming pointed out that "most of the disc's missteps" are in its latter part. Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani wrote that "[Beyoncé] is allowed more room to experiment vocally as a solo artist, exploring softer registers and lathering on the coquettish persona that was only hinted at on Destiny's Child tracks like 'Bootylicious.'". Steve Jones of USA Today stated, "Beyoncé succeeds by showing greater depth as a songwriter and broader range as a singer". Blender's Ben Ratliff complimented Beyoncé's performance and stated, "She's playing the cool-hunter but covering the bases with seraphic arrangements of multiple voices. Her reach is remarkable". Mark Anthony Neal of PopMatters called it an "artistic leap" and wrote that it "finds Ms. B in the midst of a fully flowering womanhood and doing the best singing of her career". In a mixed review, Vibe's Jason King said Dangerously in Love occasionally "sounds desperate to reach every demographic". Kelefa Sanneh, writing for The New York Times, felt that the album missed the harmonies of Destiny's Child records and that Beyoncé was more effective "when she's got a posse behind her". Rob Fitzpatrick of NME called it "a cruel glimpse of a talent that occasionally blazes but is frustratingly inconsistent". Uncut called its ballads "self-pitying/self-mythologising", while Q stated: "She has good songs, but no great songs". Los Angeles Times writer Natalie Nichols expressed that it "demonstrates vocal finesse [...] But, especially on the ballads, [Beyoncé] often drags things out with diva acrobatics". The Guardian's Adam Sweeting wrote that "the desperate urge to cover every musical base from dancefloor to soul-ballad means that there is barely a track here with any distinctive identity or even a tune". In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau cited "Yes" and "Baby Boy" as the album's highlights and quipped that the artist was "Dangerously in Love ... with her daddy, the bonus cut reveals—as if we didn't know." He gave the album a one-star honorable mention, indicating "a worthy effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well like." In a retrospective review, AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented that "the first half is good enough to make Dangerously in Love one of the best mainstream urban R&B records released in 2003, and makes a strong case that Beyoncé might be better off fulfilling this destiny instead of reuniting with Destiny". ## Accolades Dangerously in Love and its singles earned Beyoncé numerous awards and nominations. Beyoncé was recognized as New Female Artist and New R&B Artist, among the four awards she won during the 2003 Billboard Music Awards. At the November 2003 American Music Awards, the album was nominated in the category for Favorite Soul/R&B Album. It also received a nomination in the category for Best Album at the 2003 MOBO Awards. At the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, Beyoncé won Best Contemporary R&B Album along with four other awards for the album's songs. With that feat, she tied with Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, and Lauryn Hill for most Grammy Awards won by a female artist in one night. At the 2004 Brit Awards, the album was nominated in the category for Best International Album but lost to Justin Timberlake's Justified. However, the singer herself won in the category for International Female Solo Artist. Dangerously in Love was also nominated in the category for Best Album at the 2004 MTV Europe Music Awards. ### Rankings ## Commercial performance In the United States, Dangerously in Love debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart dated July 12, 2003, with first-week sales of 317,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. Although its first-week sales failed to match those of Survivor (2001), which sold 663,000 copies, Beyoncé registered the highest single-week sales among Destiny's Child members' solo albums: Kelly Rowland's Simply Deep sold 77,000 copies in its first week, while Michelle Williams' Heart to Yours sold 17,000 copies in its strongest week. Beyoncé became the first female artist and the fifth artist ever to simultaneously top both the single–with "Crazy in Love"–and album charts in the United States and the United Kingdom, following the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Rod Stewart and Men at Work. In its second week, the album registered a 42-percent sales decrease to 183,000 copies, descending to number two behind Ashanti's Chapter II. It remained behind Chapter II at number two in its third week, selling 132,000 copies. The album has been certified sextuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It remains Beyoncé's best-selling album in the country to date, with cumulative sales of five million copies as of June 2016. In Canada, the album debuted atop the Canadian Albums Chart and has since been certified triple platinum by Music Canada. Across Europe, Dangerously in Love reached the summit in Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland and Norway, also peaking atop the European Top 100 Albums. In November 2003, it was certified platinum by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for sales of one million copies across Europe. By July 2011, the album had sold over 1,143,000 copies in the UK, being certified quadruple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). In Australia, the album debuted at number three on the ARIA Top 100 Albums, ascending to its peak at number two the following week. It eventually went on to be certified triple platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). In New Zealand, the album debuted at number 14, peaking at number eight in its second week. It was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ). In Japan, the album peaked at number 12 on the Oricon Albums Chart, being certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). As of 2011, Dangerously in Love has sold over 11 million copies worldwide. ## Legacy With the release of Dangerously in Love and the combined commercial success of its singles, Beyoncé had established herself as a viable solo artist. Rebecca Louie of the New York Daily News wrote that the success of Dangerously in Love brought Beyoncé into a "sultry solo star" who "blossomed from a girly group", referring to Destiny's Child. The album also facilitated her to become one of the most marketable artists in the industry. She appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, guested television shows for promotions, and signed lucrative commercial deals. In 2003, she signed a contract with the conglomerate beverage manufacturer PepsiCo, and appeared on several television commercials for its products within the next ten years. The album's success also incited the public to infer that it signalled the disbandment of Destiny's Child, as pop singer Justin Timberlake "could not go back to 'N Sync after tasting solo success". However, Beyoncé said that their side projects were only "a brief diversion in the juggernaut that has become Destiny's Child". As time did not permit, Beyoncé's solo aspirations–which included a follow-up album to Dangerously in Love composed of its unreleased tracks–were put on hiatus for her to concentrate on her Super Bowl XXXVIII performance, wherein she was slated to sing the US national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner", as well as the recording of Destiny's Child's fourth studio album Destiny Fulfilled (2004). Destiny Fulfilled would also become their final album, as the group ultimately disbanded in 2006. Following the disbandment, Beyoncé recorded her second studio album B'Day, which was released on September 4, 2006, her 25th birthday. The album became her second to debut atop the US Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 541,000 units, which exceeded those of Dangerously in Love. Despite the album's first two singles' average commercial performance—neither of which reached the summit of the US Billboard Hot 100—its "handsome debut" was noted by Keith Caulfield of Billboard as having been generated "by goodwill earned from the performance of [Beyoncé's] smash first album Dangerously in Love." ## Track listing Notes - signifies an additional vocal producer - signifies a co-producer - signifies a vocal producer Sample credits - "Crazy in Love" contains samples from "Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)" by the Chi-Lites - "Naughty Girl" contains interpolations from "Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer - "Baby Boy" contains uncredited interpolations from "Hot Stepper" by Ini Kamoze - "Be with You" contains interpolations from "I'd Rather Be with You" by Bootsy's Rubber Band, excerpts from "Strawberry Letter 23" by Shuggie Otis and an uncredited sample from "Ain't Nothing I Can Do" by Tyrone Davis - "That's How You Like It" contains resung lyrics from "I Like It" by DeBarge - "Gift from Virgo" is "inspired by" "Rainy Day" by Shuggie Otis - "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" contains interpolations from "If I Was Your Girlfriend" by Prince and samples from "Me and My Girlfriend" by 2Pac - "What's It Gonna Be" contains samples from "Do It Roger" by Roger Troutman ## Personnel Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Dangerously in Love. - Nat Adderley, Jr. – arrangement (track 11), electric piano (track 11), production (track 11), string arrangements (track 11) - Tawatha Agee – backing vocals (track 11) - Vincent Alexander – additional engineering (track 4) - Sanford Allen – concertmastering - Chuckie Amos – hair styling - Skip Anderson – additional keyboards (track 11), arrangement (track 11), programming (track 11) - Delroy "D-Roy" Andrews – production (track 10), songwriting (track 10) - Ray Bardani – mixing (track 11), string engineering (track 11) - Sherrod Barnes – production (track 9), songwriting (track 9) - Mark Batson – additional instrumentation (track 15), conducting (track 15), engineering (track 15), production (track 15), songwriting (track 15), string arrangements (track 15) - Carlos "El Loco" Bedoya – engineering (tracks 2, 3, 6, 8, 9 and 13), vocal engineering (track 7) - Pete Bellotte – songwriting (track 2) - Angela Beyincé – songwriting (tracks 2, 5 and 9) - Beyoncé – executive production, production (tracks 1–10 and 12–15), songwriting (tracks 1–7, 9, 10 and 12–15), vocal production (track 8), vocals (all tracks) - Big Boi – additional vocal production (track 4), songwriting (track 4), vocals (track 4) - Kevin Bird – prop styling - Brian Bridgeman – songwriting (track 10) - Craig Brockman – production (track 8), songwriting (track 8) - John "Jab" Broussard – additional guitars (track 12) - Al Brown – string contracting (track 11) - Dan Bucchi – mixing assistance (track 9) - Chris Carmouche – additional engineering (track 4) - Jim Caruana – engineering (tracks 1, 5 and 8) - Demacio "Demo" Castellon – mixing assistance (track 8) - George Clinton, Jr. – songwriting (track 5) - William Collins – songwriting (track 5) - Gary Cooper – songwriting (track 5) - Tom Coyne – mastering (all tracks) - Ian Cuttler – art direction - Dahlen – photography - Jason Dale – mixing assistance (track 7) - Makeda Davis – songwriting (track 4) - Eldra DeBarge – songwriting (track 10) - Randy DeBarge – songwriting (track 10) - Missy Elliott – production (track 8), songwriting (track 8), vocals (track 8) - Focus... – engineering (track 7), instrumentation (track 7), production (track 7), songwriting (track 7) - Guru – engineering (tracks 4 and 10) - Phil Hamilton – guitar (track 11) - Ivan Hampden Jr. – drums (track 11) - Rich Harrison – instrumentation (tracks 1 and 5), production (tracks 1 and 5), songwriting (tracks 1 and 5) - Andreao "Fanatic" Heard – production (track 9), songwriting (track 9) - Cissy Houston – backing vocals (track 11) - James Hunter – graphic design - Indrani – photography - Jay-Z – songwriting (tracks 1, 3, 4, 7 and 10), vocals (tracks 1 and 10) - Bashiri Johnson – percussion (track 11) - Etterlene Jordan – songwriting (track 10) - Scott Kieklak – mixing (track 8) - Markus Klinko – photography - Mathew Knowles – executive production - Tina Knowles – styling - Brendan Kuntz – mixing assistance (track 14) - Reggie Lucas – songwriting (track 11) - Tony Maserati – mixing (tracks 1–7, 9, 10, 14 and 15) - Errol "Poppi" McCalla, Jr. – production (track 12), songwriting (track 12) - Byron Miller – bass (track 11) - Giorgio Moroder – songwriting (track 2) - Mr. B – production (track 10) - James Mtume – songwriting (track 11) - Shuggie Otis – songwriting (tracks 5 and 14) - Sean Paul – songwriting (track 3), vocals (track 3) - Greg Price – mixing assistance (tracks 2, 3 and 6) - Eugene Record – songwriting (track 1) - Mally Roncal – make-up - Dexter Simmons – mixing (track 12) - Sleepy Brown – vocals (track 4) - Matt Snedecor – mixing assistance (tracks 9 and 14) - Brian Springer – engineering (track 12) - Nisan Stewart – production (track 8), songwriting (track 8) - Scott Storch – production (tracks 2, 3 and 6), songwriting (tracks 2, 3 and 6) - Donna Summer – songwriting (track 2) - Candace Thomas – backing vocals (track 11) - Pat Thrall – engineering (tracks 1 and 3) - Luther Vandross – vocal arrangement (track 11), vocals (track 11) - Luz Vasquez – mixing assistance (tracks 1–6 and 10) - Stan Wallace – engineering (track 11) - Robert Waller – songwriting (tracks 2, 3 and 6) - Brenda White-King – backing vocals (track 11) - Teresa LaBarbera Whites – A&R - Bryce Wilson – production (track 4), songwriting (track 4) - Pat Woodward – mixing assistance (tracks 1, 4–6 and 10) - Dan Workman – engineering (track 12), guitars (track 12) ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Monthly charts ### Year-end charts ### Decade-end charts ### All-time charts ## Certifications and sales ## Release history ## See also - Beyoncé discography - List of Billboard 200 number-one albums of 2003 - List of Billboard number-one R&B albums of 2003 - List of number-one albums of 2003 (Canada) - List of number-one hits of 2003 (Germany) - List of number-one albums of 2003 (Ireland) - List of UK Albums Chart number ones of the 2000s - List of UK R&B Albums Chart number ones of 2003 - List of best-selling albums of the 21st century - List of best-selling albums by women - Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album

Christmas truce

Ceasefires along the Western Front of WWI

The Christmas truce (German: Weihnachtsfrieden; French: Trêve de Noël; Dutch: Kerstbestand) was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of the First World War around Christmas 1914. The truce occurred five months after hostilities had begun. Lulls occurred in the fighting as armies ran out of men and munitions and commanders reconsidered their strategies following the stalemate of the Race to the Sea and the indecisive result of the First Battle of Ypres. In the week leading up to 25 December, French, German and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. In some areas, men from both sides ventured into no man's land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in carolling. Men played games of football with one another, creating one of the most memorable images of the truce. Hostilities continued in some sectors, while in others the sides settled on little more than arrangements to recover bodies. The following year, a few units arranged ceasefires but the truces were not nearly as widespread as in 1914; this was, in part, due to strongly worded orders from commanders, prohibiting truces. Soldiers were no longer amenable to truce by 1916; the war had become increasingly bitter after the human losses suffered during the battles of 1915. The truces were not unique to the Christmas period and reflected a mood of "live and let live", where infantry close together would stop fighting and fraternise, engaging in conversation. In some sectors, there were occasional ceasefires to allow soldiers to go between the lines and recover wounded or dead comrades; in others, there was a tacit agreement not to shoot while men rested, exercised or worked in view of the enemy. The Christmas truces were particularly significant due to the number of men involved and the level of their participation—even in quiet sectors, dozens of men openly congregating in daylight was remarkable—and are often seen as a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the most violent conflicts in human history. ## Background During the first eight weeks of World War I, French and British troops stopped the German attack through Belgium into France outside Paris at the First Battle of the Marne in early September 1914. The Germans fell back to the Aisne valley, where they dug in. In the First Battle of the Aisne, the Franco–British attacks were repulsed and both sides began digging trenches to economise on manpower and use the surplus to outflank, to the north, their opponents. In the Race to the Sea, the two sides made reciprocal outflanking manoeuvres and after several weeks, during which the British forces were withdrawn from the Aisne and sent north to Flanders, both sides ran out of room. By November, armies had built continuous lines of trenches running from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier. Before Christmas 1914, there were several peace initiatives. The Open Christmas Letter was a public message for peace addressed "To the Women of Germany and Austria", signed by a group of 101 British women's suffragettes at the end of 1914. Pope Benedict XV, on 7 December 1914, had begged for an official truce between the warring governments. He asked "that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang", which was refused by both sides. ## Fraternisation Fraternisation—peaceful and sometimes friendly interactions between opposing forces—was a regular feature in quiet sectors of the Western Front. In some areas, both sides would refrain from aggressive behaviour, while in other cases it extended to regular conversation or even visits from one trench to another. On the Eastern Front, Fritz Kreisler reported incidents of spontaneous truces and fraternisation between the Austro-Hungarians and Russians in the first few weeks of the war. Truces between British and German units can be dated to early November 1914, around the time that the war of manoeuvre ended. Rations were brought up to the front line after dusk and soldiers on both sides noted a period of peace while they collected their food. By 1 December, a British soldier could record a friendly visit from a German sergeant one morning "to see how we were getting on". Relations between French and German units were generally more tense but the same phenomenon began to emerge. In early December, a German surgeon recorded a regular half-hourly truce each evening to recover dead soldiers for burial, during which French and German soldiers exchanged newspapers. This behaviour was often challenged by officers; lieutenant Charles de Gaulle wrote on 7 December of the "lamentable" desire of French infantrymen to leave the enemy in peace, while the commander of 10th Army, Victor d'Urbal, wrote of the "unfortunate consequences" when men "become familiar with their neighbours opposite". Other truces could be forced on both sides by bad weather, especially when trench lines flooded and these often lasted after the weather had cleared. The proximity of trench lines made it easy for soldiers to shout greetings to each other. This may have been the most common method of arranging informal truces in 1914. Men would frequently exchange news or greetings, helped by a common language; many German soldiers had lived in England, particularly London, and were familiar with the language and the society. Several British soldiers recorded instances of Germans asking about news from the football leagues, while other conversations could be as banal as discussions of the weather or as plaintive as messages for a sweetheart. One unusual phenomenon that grew in intensity was music; in peaceful sectors, it was not uncommon for units to sing in the evenings, sometimes deliberately with an eye towards entertaining or gently taunting their opposite numbers. This shaded gently into more festive activity; in early December, Sir Edward Hulse of the Scots Guards wrote that he was planning to organise a concert party for Christmas Day, which would "give the enemy every conceivable form of song in harmony" in response to frequent choruses of Deutschland Über Alles. ## Christmas 1914 Roughly 100,000 British and German troops were involved in the informal cessations of hostility along the Western Front. The Germans placed candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols. The British responded by singing carols of their own. The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. Soon thereafter, there were excursions across No Man's Land, where small gifts were exchanged, such as food, tobacco, alcohol, and souvenirs such as buttons and hats. The artillery in the region fell silent. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently killed soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Joint services were held. In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, continuing until New Year's Day in others. On Christmas Day, Brigadier-General Walter Congreve, commander of the 18th Infantry Brigade, stationed near Neuve Chapelle, wrote a letter recalling that the Germans declared a truce for the day. One of his men bravely lifted his head above the parapet and others from both sides walked onto no man's land. Officers and men shook hands and exchanged cigarettes and cigars; one of his captains "smoked a cigar with the best shot in the German army", the latter no more than 18 years old. Congreve admitted he was reluctant to witness the truce for fear of German snipers. Bruce Bairnsfather, who fought throughout the war, wrote: > I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything.... I spotted a German officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons.... I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then gave him two of mine in exchange.... The last I saw was one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a docile Boche, who was patiently kneeling on the ground whilst the automatic clippers crept up the back of his neck. Henry Williamson, a nineteen-year-old private in the London Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother on Boxing Day: > Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, & exchanged souvenirs, & shook hands. Yes, all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvellous, isn't it? Captain Sir Edward Hulse reported how the first interpreter he met from the German lines was from Suffolk and had left his girlfriend and a 3.5 hp motorcycle. Hulse described a sing-song which "ended up with 'Auld lang syne' which we all, English, Scots, Irish, Prussians, Württenbergers, etc, joined in. It was absolutely astounding, and if I had seen it on a cinematograph film I should have sworn that it was faked!" Captain Robert Miles, King's Shropshire Light Infantry, who was attached to the Royal Irish Rifles, recalled in an edited letter that was published in the Daily Mail and the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News in January 1915, following his death in action on 30 December 1914: > Friday (Christmas Day). We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. The funny thing is it only seems to exist in this part of the battle line – on our right and left we can all hear them firing away as cheerfully as ever. The thing started last night – a bitter cold night, with white frost – soon after dusk when the Germans started shouting 'Merry Christmas, Englishmen' to us. Of course our fellows shouted back and presently large numbers of both sides had left their trenches, unarmed, and met in the debatable, shot-riddled, no man's land between the lines. Here the agreement – all on their own – came to be made that we should not fire at each other until after midnight tonight. The men were all fraternizing in the middle (we naturally did not allow them too close to our line) and swapped cigarettes and lies in the utmost good fellowship. Not a shot was fired all night. Of the Germans he wrote: "They are distinctly bored with the war.... In fact, one of them wanted to know what on earth we were doing here fighting them." The truce in that sector continued into Boxing Day; he commented about the Germans, "The beggars simply disregard all our warnings to get down from off their parapet, so things are at a deadlock. We can't shoot them in cold blood.... I cannot see how we can get them to return to business." On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (24 and 25 December) 1914, Alfred Anderson's unit of the 1st/5th Battalion of the Black Watch was billeted in a farmhouse away from the front line. In a later interview (2003), Anderson, the last known surviving Scottish veteran of the war, vividly recalled Christmas Day and said: > I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence. Only the guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and just stood listening. And, of course, thinking of people back home. All I'd heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted 'Merry Christmas', even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war. A German Lieutenant, Johannes Niemann, wrote "grabbed my binoculars and looking cautiously over the parapet saw the incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps and chocolate with the enemy". General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the II Corps, issued orders forbidding friendly communication with the opposing German troops. Adolf Hitler, a corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, was also an opponent of the truce. In the Comines sector of the front there was an early fraternisation between German and French soldiers in December 1914, during a short truce and there are at least two other testimonials from French soldiers, of similar behaviours in sectors where German and French companies opposed each other. Gervais Morillon wrote to his parents "The Boches waved a white flag and shouted 'Kamarades, Kamarades, rendez-vous'. When we didn't move they came towards us unarmed, led by an officer. Although we are not clean they are disgustingly filthy. I am telling you this but don't speak of it to anyone. We must not mention it even to other soldiers". Gustave Berthier wrote "On Christmas Day the Boches made a sign showing they wished to speak to us. They said they didn't want to shoot. ... They were tired of making war, they were married like me, they didn't have any differences with the French but with the English". On the Yser Front, where German and Belgian troops faced each other in December 1914, a truce was arranged at the request of Belgian soldiers who wished to send letters back to their families, over the German-occupied parts of Belgium. ### Football matches Many accounts of the truce involve one or more football matches played in no man's land. This was mentioned in some of the earliest reports, with a letter written by a doctor attached to the Rifle Brigade, published in The Times on 1 January 1915, reporting "a football match... played between them and us in front of the trench". Similar stories have been told over the years, often naming units or the score. Some accounts of the game bring in elements of fiction by Robert Graves, a British poet and writer (and an officer on the front at the time) who reconstructed the encounter in a story published in 1962; in Graves's version, the score was 3–2 to the Germans. The truth of the accounts has been disputed by some historians. In 1984, Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton concluded that there were probably attempts to play organised matches which failed due to the state of the ground, but that the contemporary reports were either hearsay or refer to "kick-about" matches with "made-up footballs" such as a bully-beef tin. Chris Baker, former chairman of the Western Front Association and author of The Truce: The Day the War Stopped, was also sceptical, but says that although there is little evidence, the most likely place that an organised match could have taken place was near the village of Messines: "There are two references to a game being played on the British side, but nothing from the Germans. If somebody one day found a letter from a German soldier who was in that area, then we would have something credible". Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxon Infantry Regiment said that the English "brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvellously wonderful, yet how strange it was". In 2011 Mike Dash concluded that "there is plenty of evidence that football was played that Christmas Day—mostly by men of the same nationality but in at least three or four places between troops from the opposing armies". Many units were reported in contemporary accounts to have taken part in games: Dash listed the 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment pitched against "Scottish troops"; the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders against unidentified Germans (with the Scots reported to have won 4–1); the Royal Field Artillery against "Prussians and Hanovers" near Ypres and the Lancashire Fusiliers near Le Touquet, with the detail of a bully beef ration tin as the "ball". One recent writer has identified 29 reports of football, though does not give substantive details. Colonel J. E. B. Seely recorded in his diary for Christmas Day that he had been "Invited to football match between Saxons and English on New Year's Day", but this does not appear to have taken place. ### Eastern Front On the Eastern Front the first move originated from Austro-Hungarian commanders, at some uncertain level of the military hierarchy. The Russians responded positively and soldiers eventually met in no man's land. ## Public awareness The truces were not reported for a week, eventually being publicised to the masses when an unofficial press embargo was broken by The New York Times, published in the neutral United States, on 31 December. The British papers quickly followed, printing numerous first-hand accounts from soldiers in the field, taken from letters home to their families and editorials on "one of the greatest surprises of a surprising war". By 8 January 1915, pictures had made their way to the press, and the Mirror and Sketch printed front-page photographs of British and German troops mingling and singing between the lines. The tone of the reporting was strongly positive, with the Times endorsing the "lack of malice" felt by both sides and the Mirror regretting that the "absurdity and the tragedy" would begin again. Author Denis Winter argues that then "the censor had intervened" to prevent information about the spontaneous ceasefire from reaching the public and that the real dimension of the truce "only really came out when Captain Chudleigh in the Telegraph wrote after the war." Coverage in Germany was less extensive than that of the British press, while in France, press censorship ensured that the only word that spread of the truce came from soldiers at the front or first-hand accounts told by wounded men in hospitals. The press was eventually forced to respond to the growing rumours by reprinting a government notice that fraternising with the enemy constituted treason. In early January, an official statement on the truce was published, claiming it was restricted to the British sector of the front and amounted to little more than an exchange of songs which quickly degenerated into shooting. The press of neutral Italy published a few articles on the events of the truce, usually reporting the articles of the foreign press. On 30 December 1914, Corriere della Sera printed a report about a fraternisation between the opposing trenches. The Florentine newspaper La Nazione published a first-hand account about a football match played in the no man's land. In Italy, the lack of interest in the truce probably depended on the occurrence of other events, such as the Italian occupation of Vlorë, the debut of the Garibaldi Legion on the front of the Argonne and the earthquake in Avezzano. ## Later truces After 1914, sporadic attempts were made at seasonal truces; on the Western Front, for example, a German unit attempted to leave their trenches under a flag of truce on Easter Sunday 1915 but were warned off by the British opposite them. At Easter 1915 on the Eastern Front there were truces between Orthodox troops of opposing sides; the Bulgarian writer Yordan Yovkov, serving as an officer near the Greek border at the Mesta river, witnessed one. It inspired his short story "Holy Night", translated into English in 2013 by Krastu Banaev. In November, a Saxon unit briefly fraternised with a Liverpool battalion. In December 1915, there were orders by the Allied commanders to forestall any repeat of the previous Christmas truce. Units were encouraged to mount raids and harass the opposing line, whilst communicating with the enemy was discouraged by artillery barrages along the front line throughout the day; a small number of brief truces occurred despite the prohibition. On the German side, a general order from 29 December 1914 already forbade fraternisation with the enemy, warning German troops that "every approach to the enemy...will be punished as treason". Richard Schirrmann, who was in a German regiment holding a position on the Bernhardstein, one of the Vosges Mountains, wrote an account of events in December 1915, "When the Christmas bells sounded in the villages of the Vosges behind the lines... something fantastically unmilitary occurred. German and French troops spontaneously made peace and ceased hostilities; they visited each other through disused trench tunnels, and exchanged wine, cognac and cigarettes for Pumpernickel (Westphalian black bread), biscuits and ham. This suited them so well that they remained good friends even after Christmas was over". He was separated from the French troops by a narrow No Man's Land and described the landscape "Strewn with shattered trees, the ground ploughed up by shellfire, a wilderness of earth, tree-roots and tattered uniforms". Military discipline was soon restored but Schirrmann pondered over the incident and whether "thoughtful young people of all countries could be provided with suitable meeting places where they could get to know each other". He founded the German Youth Hostel Association in 1919. An account by Llewelyn Wyn Griffith, recorded that after a night of exchanging carols, dawn on Christmas Day saw a "rush of men from both sides... [and] a feverish exchange of souvenirs" before the men were quickly called back by their officers, with offers to hold a ceasefire for the day and to play a football match. It came to nothing, as the brigade commander threatened repercussions for lack of discipline and insisted on a resumption of firing in the afternoon. Another member of Griffith's battalion, Bertie Felstead, later recalled that one man had produced a football, resulting in "a free-for-all; there could have been 50 on each side", before they were ordered back. Another unnamed participant reported in a letter home: "The Germans seem to be very nice chaps, and said they were awfully sick of the war." In the evening, according to Robert Keating "The Germans were sending up star lights and singing – they stopped, so we cheered them & we began singing Land of Hope and Glory – Men of Harlech et cetera – we stopped and they cheered us. So we went on till the early hours of the morning". In an adjacent sector, a short truce to bury the dead between the lines led to repercussions; a company commander, Sir Iain Colquhoun of the Scots Guards, was court-martialled for defying standing orders to the contrary. While he was found guilty and reprimanded, the punishment was annulled by General Douglas Haig, and Colquhoun remained in his position; the official leniency may perhaps have been because his wife's uncle was H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister. In December 1916 and 1917, German overtures to the British for truces were recorded without any success. In some French sectors, singing and an exchange of thrown gifts was occasionally recorded, though these may simply have reflected a seasonal extension of the live-and-let-live approach common in the trenches. On 24 May 1915, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and troops of the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli agreed to a 9-hour truce to retrieve and bury their dead, during which opposing troops "exchang(ed) smiles and cigarettes". ## Legacy and historical significance Although the popular tendency has been to see the December 1914 Christmas Truces as unique and of romantic rather than political significance, they have also been interpreted as part of the widespread spirit of non-cooperation with the war. In his book on trench warfare, Tony Ashworth described the 'live and let live system'. Complicated local truces and agreements not to fire at each other were negotiated by men along the front throughout the war. These often began with agreement not to attack each other at tea, meal or washing times. In some places tacit agreements became so common that sections of the front would see few casualties for extended periods of time. This system, Ashworth argues, 'gave soldiers some control over the conditions of their existence'. The December 1914 Christmas Truces then can be seen as not unique, but as the most dramatic example of the spirit of non-cooperation with the war that included refusals to fight, unofficial truces, mutinies, strikes, and peace protests. - In the 1933 play Petermann schließt Frieden oder Das Gleichnis vom deutschen Opfer (Petermann Makes Peace: or, The Parable of German Sacrifice), written by Nazi writer and World War I veteran Heinz Steguweit [de], a German soldier, accompanied by Christmas carols sung by his comrades, erects an illuminated Christmas tree between the trenches but is shot dead. Later, when the fellow soldiers find his body, they notice in horror that snipers have shot down every Christmas light from the tree. - The video for the 1983 song "Pipes of Peace" by Paul McCartney depicts a fictional version of the Christmas truce. - John McCutcheon's 1984 song "Christmas in the Trenches" tells the story of the 1914 truce through the eyes of a fictional soldier. Performing the song he met German veterans of the truce. - "Goodbyeee", the final episode of the BBC television series Blackadder Goes Forth notes the Christmas truce, with the main character Edmund Blackadder recalling having played in a football match. He is still annoyed at having had a goal disallowed for offside. - The song "All Together Now" by Liverpool band The Farm, took its inspiration from the Christmas Day Truce of 1914. The song was re-recorded by The Peace Collective for release in December 2014 to mark the centenary of the event. - The song 1997 "Belleau Wood" by Garth Brooks gives a depiction of the truce of soldiers leaving their trenches to sing carols together and braving the risky opportunity to be shot by their enemies to do so. - The truce is dramatised in the 2005 French film Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas), depicted through the eyes of French, British and German soldiers. The film, written and directed by Christian Carion, was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, but was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. - Ahead of the centenary of the truce, English composer Chris Eaton and singer Abby Scott produced the song, "1914 – The Carol of Christmas", to benefit British armed forces charities. At 5 December 2014, it had reached top of the iTunes Christmas chart. - Sainsbury's produced a short film for the 2014 Christmas season as an advertisement re-enacting the events of the Christmas truce, primarily following a young English soldier in the trenches. - In the Doctor Who 2017 Christmas Special "Twice Upon a Time", the First and Twelfth Doctors become accidentally involved in the fate of a British captain, who was seemingly destined to die in No Man's Land in a standoff with a German soldier. The Twelfth Doctor sent him a few hours forward in time so that the start of the Christmas truce would prevent him from being killed. - On 29 October 2021, the Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton released their single "Christmas Truce" about the events of those fateful December days in 1914, followed 40 days later by an animated story video set to the song in cooperation with the animated history YouTube channel Yarnhub. ### Monuments A Christmas truce memorial was unveiled in Frelinghien, France, on 11 November 2008. At the spot where their regimental ancestors came out from their trenches to play football on Christmas Day 1914, men from the 1st Battalion, The Royal Welch Fusiliers played a football match with the German Battalion 371. The Germans won 2–1. On 12 December 2014, a memorial was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, England by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and the England national football team manager Roy Hodgson. The Football Remembers memorial was designed by a ten-year-old schoolboy, Spencer Turner, after a UK-wide competition. ### Annual re-enactments The Midway Village in Rockford, Illinois, has hosted re-enactments of the Christmas Truce.

Pulveroboletus bembae

Species of fungus

Pulveroboletus bembae is a species of fungus in the family Boletaceae that was first described in 2009. It is known only from the rainforest of northern Gabon, a region known for its high level of species diversity. Like all boletes, P. bembae has fleshy fruit bodies that form spores in tubes perpendicular to the ground on the underside of the cap. These yellowish tubes form a surface of pores, each about 1–2 mm in diameter. The brownish caps may reach up to 3.5 cm (1.4 in) wide, and rest atop pale brown stems up to 5.5 cm (2.2 in) long. The stems have a woolly, whitish yellow ring of tissue that is short-lived, and may be absent in older specimens. The spores of P. bembae are spindle- or fuse-shaped, and have rough surfaces—a detail observable when viewed with scanning electron microscopy. The fungus grows in a mycorrhizal relationship with Gilbertiodendron dewevrei, the dominant tree species of the Guineo-Congolian rainforest. Other similar Pulveroboletus species in the area include P. annulus and P. croceus, which may be differentiated from P. bembae by a combination of macro- and microscopic characteristics. ## Discovery and classification The specimens of Pulveroboletus bembae upon which the species description is based were collected in April, 2008 from three locations in Gabon: in Ogooue-Ivindo Province at the Ipassa-Makokou Research Station; in the Minkébé National Park near Minvoul, and in Bitouga, both locations in the northerly province of Woleu-Ntem. Until the report of this species and the related Pulveroboletus luteocarneus, 12 species of Pulveroboletus had been reported in tropical Africa. According to Degreef & De Kesel, who described the species in a 2009 publication, P. bembae belongs to the section Pulveroboletus of the genus Pulveroboletus. This section, defined by Singer in 1947, is characterized by the presence of a pulverulent-arachnoid veil (covered with fine, powdery wax granules and cobwebby) and fruit bodies that are sulphur-yellow, greenish, or yellowish-brown in color. The specific epithet is derived from the word bemba, a name used by the Baka people for the tree Gilbertiodendron dewevrei that is associated with the fungus. ## Description The cap is initially convex—sometimes with a small rounded elevation in the center—and flattens out in maturity. It reaches 30–35 mm (1.2–1.4 in) in diameter, and the color is almost uniformly rust-brown to reddish brown, although young specimens have a slightly paler margin (edge). The cap surface is dry and dull, but develops a sheen with age. In older specimens, the texture of the margins is described as rimulose—a condition in which a surface is cracked, but the cracks do not intersect one another to form a network and mark out areas. The cap cuticle extends slightly over the edge of the cap and curves downward, and is partly covered with remnants of the universal veil. The flesh at the center of the cap is less than about 5 mm (0.20 in) thick, and gradually becomes very thin towards the margin. It is cream-colored to pale yellow with pale reddish-brown to light brown shades under the cuticle and down the stem. The yellowish tubes on the underside of the cap are slightly swollen on one side, slightly depressed around the area of attachment to the stem. They are fused to the stem, in an adnate attachment; rarely, some tubes will have a decurrent "tooth" (tissue that runs slightly down the length of the stem) that is less than 5 mm (0.20 in) long. The pores formed by the tube ends are angular to round, and are more elongated near the stem. Their diameters are typically less than 1–2 mm in diameter, and are they are the same color as the tubes, or slightly greener. The stem is 37–55 mm (1.5–2.2 in) by 4–5 mm (0.16–0.20 in) thick, cylindrical, with a narrow base measuring 2–4 mm, and sometimes attached to yellow mycelia. It is solid, but as it ages it becomes stuffed (as if filled with cotton) and eventually almost completely hollow. The stem surface is dull, dry, pale brown, and entirely covered with tiny brown to reddish brown squamules (small scales). The flesh of the stem is cream-colored, streaked with pale reddish brown to light brown from the upper third towards the base, while the base is light brown. The ring is located on either the stem or the margin of the cap. This woolly, whitish yellow ring of tissue is fragile and short-lived, and has usually weathered away in older specimens. The odor of the mushroom is described as "mildly fungoid to earthy", and the taste "mildly fungoid". ### Microscopic characteristics The color of the spore print is unknown. The spores are somewhat spindle-shaped, boletoid (long, lean, and fuse-shaped), with a pronounced suprahilar depression (a surface indentation formed where the spore was attached to the spore-bearing cells, the basidia), and typically measure 9.3–11.3 by 3.9–4.7 μm. They are weakly pigmented, and their rough surfaces can be seen under scanning electron microscopy. The spores are inamyloid, meaning they will not absorb iodine stain from Melzer's reagent. The basidia are 26.9–39.3 by 9.0–12.0 μm, cylindrical to narrowly club-shaped, hyaline (translucent), and have four sterigmata (extensions that attach the spores). The pleurocystidia (cystidia on the gill face) are 57.4–92.6 by 9.4–17.4 μm, spindle-shaped, moderately frequent, and extend beyond the surface of the hymenium. They have thin, hyaline walls, and are colored the same as the hymenium, without any crystals or encrustations. The cheilocystidia (cystidia on the gill edge), which measure 50.6–75.1 by 12.2–16.1 μm, are more abundant than the cheilocystidia, but otherwise share the same characteristics. The cap cuticle is made of a thin physalo-palisadoderm—a type of tissue where the ends of the hyphae reach the same length and form a palisade of cells; these short anticlinal hyphae are 20–40 by 5–8 μm, and support one or two inflated, brownish, spherical to spheropedunculate (somewhat spherical with a stem) terminal elements that are 25–45 μm wide, non-amyloid, thin-walled, and do not have any encrustations. The cuticle of the stem is made of smooth parallel hyphae. The squamules on the cap surface have a physalo-palisadodermic arrangement made of short anticlinal hyphae that support elongated inflated elements of 15–30 by 10–15 μm and some scattered basidia. The flesh is made of hyaline, thin-walled hyphae, measuring 10–15 μm wide, and organized in a parallel fashion. These hyphae do not have an associated mediostratum—a central strand of parallel hyphae from which other hyphae diverge sideways. Clamp connections are absent in the hyphae of P. bembae. ### Similar species Although the fruit bodies of P. bembae are roughly similar to those in Xerocomus, species in this genus do not have the powdery veil characteristic of P. bembae. Two similar species in the same area include P. annulus and P. croceus, described in 1951 by Belgian mycologist Paul Heinemann, based on specimens collected in the Congo. Although the identity of these two species is not fully clarified because of insufficient collections, P. bembae differs from both in its larger cystidia, its cream-colored flesh with pale reddish-brown to light brown tones under the cap cuticle (compared to white in P. annulus and P. croceus), its yellow mycelium (white in P. annulus and P. croceus), and differences in ecology. ## Habitat and distribution The species has been found growing in small groups in the Guineo-Congolian rainforest. This forest is dominated by the single canopy tree species Gilbertiodendron dewevrei. Not only does this tree provide food in the form of edible seeds for a wide variety of large mammals, it forms mycorrhizal relationships with P. bembae. This is a mutually beneficial relationship where the hyphae of the fungus grow around the roots of the plant, enabling the fungus to receive moisture, protection and nutritive byproducts of the tree, and affording the tree greater access to soil nutrients. The ectomycorrhizal symbiosis is thought to contribute to the success of the dominant species, by allowing it access to nutrients otherwise unavailable. The Congolian forests encompass an ecoregion known for its species richness and endemism, which is spread across four countries: Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.

Aleister Crowley

English occultist (1875–1947)

Aleister Crowley (/ˈælɪstər ˈkroʊli/; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, philosopher, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life. Born to a wealthy family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected his parents' fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life. In 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. He went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. In 1904, he married Rose Edith Kelly and they honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt, where Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with The Book of the Law, a sacred text that served as the basis for Thelema. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should "Do what thou wilt" and seek to align themselves with their True Will through the practice of magick. After the unsuccessful 1905 Kanchenjunga expedition and a visit to India and China, Crowley returned to Britain, where he attracted attention as a prolific author of poetry, novels and occult literature. In 1907, he and George Cecil Jones co-founded an esoteric order, the A∴A∴, through which they propagated Thelema. After spending time in Algeria, in 1912 he was initiated into another esoteric order, the German-based Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), rising to become the leader of its British branch, which he reformulated in accordance with his Thelemite beliefs. Through the O.T.O., Thelemite groups were established in Britain, Australia and North America. Crowley spent the First World War in the United States, where he took up painting and campaigned for the German war effort against Britain, later revealing that he had infiltrated the pro-German movement to assist the British intelligence services. In 1920, he established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily where he lived with various followers. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and the Italian government evicted him in 1923. He divided the following two decades between France, Germany and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death. Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a drug user, bisexual and an individualist social critic. Crowley has remained a highly influential figure over Western esotericism and the counterculture of the 1960s and continues to be considered a prophet in Thelema. He is the subject of various biographies and academic studies. ## Early life ### Youth Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, on 12 October 1875. His father, Edward Crowley (1829–1887), was trained as an engineer, but his share in a lucrative family brewing business, Crowley's Alton Ales, had allowed him to retire before his son was born. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop (1848–1917), came from a Devonshire-Somerset family and had a strained relationship with her son; she described him as "the Beast", a name that he revelled in. The couple had been married at London's Kensington Registry Office in November 1874, and were evangelical Christians. Crowley's father had been born a Quaker, but had converted to the Exclusive Brethren, a faction of a Christian fundamentalist group known as the Plymouth Brethren; Emily likewise converted upon marriage. Crowley's father was particularly devout, spending his time as a travelling preacher for the sect and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife and son after breakfast every day. Following the death of their baby daughter in 1880, in 1881 the Crowleys moved to Redhill, Surrey. At the age of 8, Crowley was sent to H.T. Habershon's evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings, and then to Ebor preparatory school in Cambridge, run by the Reverend Henry d'Arcy Champney, whom Crowley considered a sadist. In March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer. Crowley described this as a turning point in his life, and he always maintained an admiration of his father, describing him as "my hero and my friend". Inheriting a third of his father's wealth, he began misbehaving at school and was harshly punished by Champney; Crowley's family removed him from the school when he developed albuminuria. He then attended Malvern College and Tonbridge School, both of which he despised and left after a few terms. He became increasingly sceptical regarding Christianity, pointing out inconsistencies in the Bible to his religious teachers, and went against the Christian morality of his upbringing by smoking, masturbating, and having sex with prostitutes from whom he contracted gonorrhea. Sent to live with a Brethren tutor in Eastbourne, he undertook chemistry courses at Eastbourne College. Crowley developed interests in chess, poetry, and mountain climbing, and in 1894 climbed Beachy Head before visiting the Alps and joining the Scottish Mountaineering Club. The following year he returned to the Bernese Alps, climbing the Eiger, Trift, Jungfrau, Mönch, and Wetterhorn. ### Cambridge University: 1895–1898 Having adopted the name of Aleister over Edward, in October 1895 Crowley began a three-year course at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was entered for the Moral Science Tripos studying philosophy. With approval from his personal tutor, he changed to English literature, which was not then part of the curriculum offered. Crowley spent much of his time at university engaged in his pastimes, becoming president of the chess club and practising the game for two hours a day; he briefly considered a professional career as a chess player. Crowley also embraced his love of literature and poetry, particularly the works of Richard Francis Burton and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Many of his own poems appeared in student publications such as The Granta, Cambridge Magazine, and Cantab. He continued his mountaineering, going on holiday to the Alps to climb every year from 1894 to 1898, often with his friend Oscar Eckenstein, and in 1897 he made the first ascent of the Mönch without a guide. These feats led to his recognition in the Alpine mountaineering community. Crowley had his first significant mystical experience while on holiday in Stockholm in December 1896. Several biographers, including Lawrence Sutin, Richard Kaczynski, and Tobias Churton, believed that this was the result of Crowley's first same-sex sexual experience, which enabled him to recognize his bisexuality. At Cambridge, Crowley maintained a vigorous sex life with women—largely with female prostitutes, from one of whom he caught syphilis—but eventually he took part in same-sex activities, despite their illegality. In October 1897, Crowley met Herbert Charles Pollitt, president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two entered into a relationship. They broke apart because Pollitt did not share Crowley's increasing interest in Western esotericism, a break-up that Crowley would regret for many years. In 1897, Crowley travelled to Saint Petersburg in Russia, later saying that he was trying to learn Russian as he was considering a future diplomatic career there. In October 1897, a brief illness triggered considerations of mortality and "the futility of all human endeavour", and Crowley abandoned all thoughts of a diplomatic career in favour of pursuing an interest in the occult. In March 1898, he obtained A.E. Waite's The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, and then Karl von Eckartshausen's The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, furthering his occult interests. That same year, Crowley privately published 100 copies of his poem Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In, but it was not a particular success. Aceldama was issued by Leonard Smithers. That same year, Crowley published a string of other poems, including White Stains, a Decadent collection of erotic poetry that was printed abroad lest its publication be prohibited by the British authorities. In July 1898, he left Cambridge, not having taken any degree at all despite a "first class" showing in his 1897 exams and consistent "second class honours" results before that. ### The Golden Dawn: 1898–1899 In August 1898, Crowley was in Zermatt, Switzerland, where he met the chemist Julian L. Baker, and the two began discussing their common interest in alchemy. Back in London, Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones, Baker's brother-in-law and a fellow member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which had been founded in 1888. Crowley was initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898 by the group's leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. The ceremony took place in the Golden Dawn's Isis-Urania Temple held at London's Mark Masons Hall, where Crowley took the magical motto and name "Frater Perdurabo", which he interpreted as "I shall endure to the end". Crowley moved into his own luxury flat at 67–69 Chancery Lane and soon invited a senior Golden Dawn member, Allan Bennett, to live with him as his personal magical tutor. Bennett taught Crowley more about ceremonial magic and the ritual use of drugs, and together they performed the rituals of the Goetia, until Bennett left for South Asia to study Buddhism. In November 1899, Crowley purchased Boleskine House in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. He developed a love of Scottish culture, describing himself as the "Laird of Boleskine", and took to wearing traditional highland dress, even during visits to London. He continued writing poetry, publishing Jezebel and Other Tragic Poems, Tales of Archais, Songs of the Spirit, Appeal to the American Republic, and Jephthah in 1898–99; most gained mixed reviews from literary critics, although Jephthah was considered a particular critical success. Crowley soon progressed through the lower grades of the Golden Dawn, and was ready to enter the group's inner Second Order. He was unpopular in the group; his bisexuality and libertine lifestyle had gained him a bad reputation, and he had developed feuds with some of the members, including W. B. Yeats. When the Golden Dawn's London lodge refused to initiate Crowley into the Second Order, he visited Mathers in Paris, who personally admitted him into the Adeptus Minor Grade. A schism had developed between Mathers and the London members of the Golden Dawn, who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Acting under Mathers' orders, Crowley—with the help of his mistress and fellow initiate Elaine Simpson—attempted to seize the Vault of the Adepts, a temple space at 36 Blythe Road in West Kensington, from the London lodge members. When the case was taken to court, the judge ruled in favour of the London lodge, as they had paid for the space's rent, leaving both Crowley and Mathers isolated from the group. ### Mexico, India, Paris, and marriage: 1900–1903 In 1900, Crowley travelled to Mexico via the United States, settling in Mexico City and starting a relationship with a local woman. Developing a love of the country, he continued experimenting with ceremonial magic, working with John Dee's Enochian invocations. He later claimed to have been initiated into Freemasonry while there, and he wrote a play based on Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser as well as a series of poems, published as Oracles (1905). Eckenstein joined him later in 1900, and together they climbed several mountains, including Iztaccihuatl, Popocatepetl, and Colima, the latter of which they had to abandon owing to a volcanic eruption. Leaving Mexico, Crowley headed to San Francisco before sailing for Hawaii aboard the Nippon Maru. On the ship, he had a brief affair with a married woman named Mary Alice Rogers; saying he had fallen in love with her, he wrote a series of poems about the romance, published as Alice: An Adultery (1903). Briefly stopping in Japan and Hong Kong, Crowley reached Ceylon, where he met with Allan Bennett, who was there studying Shaivism. The pair spent some time in Kandy before Bennett decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, travelling to Burma to do so. Crowley decided to tour India, devoting himself to the Hindu practice of Rāja yoga, from which he claimed to have achieved the spiritual state of dhyana. He spent much of this time studying at the Meenakshi Temple in Madura. At this time he also wrote poetry which was published as The Sword of Song (1904). He contracted malaria, and had to recuperate from the disease in Calcutta and Rangoon. In 1902, he was joined in India by Eckenstein and several other mountaineers: Guy Knowles, H. Pfannl, V. Wesseley, and Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. Together, the Eckenstein-Crowley expedition attempted K2, which had never been climbed. On the journey, Crowley was afflicted with influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, and other expedition members were also struck with illness. They reached an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,100 m) before turning back. Having arrived in Paris in November 1902, he socialized with his friend the painter Gerald Kelly, and through him became a fixture of the Parisian arts scene. Whilst there, Crowley wrote a series of poems on the work of an acquaintance, the sculptor Auguste Rodin. These poems were later published as Rodin in Rime (1907). One of those frequenting this milieu was W. Somerset Maugham, who after briefly meeting Crowley later used him as a model for the character of Oliver Haddo in his novel The Magician (1908). He returned to Boleskine in April 1903. In August, Crowley wed Gerald Kelly's sister Rose Edith Kelly in a "marriage of convenience" to prevent her from entering an arranged marriage; the marriage appalled the Kelly family and damaged his friendship with Gerald. Heading on a honeymoon to Paris, Cairo, and then Ceylon, Crowley fell in love with Rose and worked to prove his affections. While on his honeymoon, he wrote her a series of love poems, published as Rosa Mundi and other Love Songs (1906), as well as authoring the religious satire Why Jesus Wept (1904). ## Developing Thelema ### Egypt and The Book of the Law: 1904 In February 1904, Crowley and Rose arrived in Cairo. Claiming to be a prince and princess, they rented an apartment in which Crowley set up a temple room and began invoking ancient Egyptian deities, while studying Islamic mysticism and Arabic. According to Crowley's later account, Rose regularly became delirious and informed him "they are waiting for you." On 18 March, she explained that "they" were the god Horus, and on 20 March proclaimed that "the Equinox of the Gods has come". She led him to a nearby museum, where she showed him a seventh-century BCE mortuary stele known as the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu; Crowley thought it important that the exhibit's number was 666, the Number of the Beast in Christian belief, and in later years termed the artefact the "Stele of Revealing." According to Crowley's later statements, on 8 April he heard a disembodied voice claiming to be that of Aiwass, the messenger of Horus, or Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Crowley said that he wrote down everything the voice told him over the course of the next three days, and titled it Liber AL vel Legis or The Book of the Law. The book proclaimed that humanity was entering a new Aeon, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. It stated that a supreme moral law was to be introduced in this Aeon, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," and that people should learn to live in tune with their Will. This book, and the philosophy that it espoused, became the cornerstone of Crowley's religion, Thelema. Crowley said that at the time he had been unsure what to do with The Book of the Law. Often resenting it, he said that he ignored the instructions which the text commanded him to perform, which included taking the Stele of Revealing from the museum, fortifying his own island, and translating the book into all the world's languages. According to his account, he instead sent typescripts of the work to several occultists he knew, putting the manuscript away and ignoring it. ### Kanchenjunga and China: 1905–06 Returning to Boleskine, Crowley came to believe that Mathers had begun using magic against him, and the relationship between the two broke down. On 28 July 1905, Rose gave birth to Crowley's first child, a daughter named Lilith, with Crowley writing the pornographic Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden to entertain his recuperating wife. He also founded a publishing company through which to publish his poetry, naming it the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in parody of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Among its first publications were Crowley's Collected Works, edited by Ivor Back, an old friend of Crowley's who was both a practicing surgeon and an enthusiast of literature. His poetry often received strong reviews (either positive or negative), but never sold well. In an attempt to gain more publicity, he issued a reward of £100 for the best essay on his work. The winner of this was J. F. C. Fuller, a British Army officer and military historian, whose essay, The Star in the West (1907), heralded Crowley's poetry as some of the greatest ever written. Crowley decided to climb Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas of Nepal, widely recognized as the world's most treacherous mountain. The collaboration between Jacot-Guillarmod, Charles Adolphe Reymond, Alexis Pache, and Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, the expedition was marred by much argument between Crowley and the others, who thought that he was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley's control, with the other climbers heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley's warnings that it was too dangerous. Subsequently, Pache and several porters were killed in an accident, something for which Crowley was widely blamed by the mountaineering community. Spending time in Moharbhanj, where he took part in big-game hunting and wrote the homoerotic work The Scented Garden, Crowley met up with Rose and Lilith in Calcutta before being forced to leave India after non-lethally shooting two men who tried to mug him. Briefly visiting Bennett in Burma, Crowley and his family decided to tour Southern China, hiring porters and a nanny for the purpose. Crowley smoked opium throughout the journey, which took the family from Tengyueh through to Yungchang, Tali, Yunnanfu, and then Hanoi. On the way, he spent much time on spiritual and magical work, reciting the "Bornless Ritual", an invocation to his Holy Guardian Angel, on a daily basis. While Rose and Lilith returned to Europe, Crowley headed to Shanghai to meet old friend Elaine Simpson, who was fascinated by The Book of the Law; together they performed rituals in an attempt to contact Aiwass. Crowley then sailed to Japan and Canada, before continuing to New York City, where he unsuccessfully solicited support for a second expedition up Kanchenjunga. Upon arrival in Britain, Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid in Rangoon, something he later blamed on Rose's increasing alcoholism. Under emotional distress, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began short-lived romances with actress Vera "Lola" Neville (née Snepp) and author Ada Leverson, while Rose gave birth to Crowley's second daughter, Lola Zaza, in February 1907. ### The A∴A∴ and The Holy Books of Thelema: 1907–1909 With his old mentor George Cecil Jones, Crowley continued performing the Abramelin rituals at the Ashdown Park Hotel in Coulsdon, Surrey. Crowley claimed that in doing so he attained samadhi, or union with Godhead, thereby marking a turning point in his life. Making heavy use of hashish during these rituals, he wrote an essay on "The Psychology of Hashish" (1909) in which he championed the drug as an aid to mysticism. He also claimed to have been contacted once again by Aiwass in late October and November 1907, adding that Aiwass dictated two further texts to him, "Liber VII" and "Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente", both of which were later classified in the corpus of The Holy Books of Thelema. Crowley wrote down more Thelemic Holy Books during the last two months of the year, including "Liber LXVI", "Liber Arcanorum", "Liber Porta Lucis, Sub Figura X", "Liber Tau", "Liber Trigrammaton" and "Liber DCCCXIII vel Ararita", which he again claimed to have received from a preternatural source. Crowley stated that in June 1909, when the manuscript of The Book of the Law was rediscovered at Boleskine, he developed the opinion that Thelema represented objective truth. Crowley's inheritance was running out. Trying to earn money, he was hired by George Montagu Bennett, the Earl of Tankerville, to help protect him from witchcraft; recognizing Bennett's paranoia as being based in his cocaine addiction, Crowley took him on holiday to France and Morocco to recuperate. In 1907, he also began taking in paying students, whom he instructed in occult and magical practice. Victor Neuburg, whom Crowley met in February 1907, became his sexual partner and closest disciple; in 1908 the pair toured northern Spain before heading to Tangier, Morocco. The following year Neuburg stayed at Boleskine, where he and Crowley engaged in sadomasochism. Crowley continued to write prolifically, producing such works of poetry as Ambergris, Clouds Without Water, and Konx Om Pax, as well as his first attempt at an autobiography, The World's Tragedy. Recognizing the popularity of short horror stories, Crowley wrote his own, some of which were published, and he also published several articles in Vanity Fair, a magazine edited by his friend Frank Harris. He also wrote Liber 777, a book of magical and Qabalistic correspondences that borrowed from Mathers and Bennett. In November 1907, Crowley and Jones decided to found an occult order to act as a successor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, being aided in doing so by Fuller. The result was the A∴A∴. The group's headquarters and temple were situated at 124 Victoria Street in central London, and their rites borrowed much from those of the Golden Dawn, but with an added Thelemic basis. Its earliest members included solicitor Richard Noel Warren, artist Austin Osman Spare, Horace Sheridan-Bickers, author George Raffalovich, Francis Henry Everard Joseph Feilding, engineer Herbert Edward Inman, Kenneth Ward, and Charles Stansfeld Jones. In March 1909, Crowley began production of a biannual periodical titled The Equinox. He billed this periodical, which was to become the "Official Organ" of the A∴A∴, as "The Review of Scientific Illuminism". Crowley had become increasingly frustrated with Rose's alcoholism, and in November 1909 he divorced her on the grounds of his own adultery. Lola was entrusted to Rose's care; the couple remained friends and Rose continued to live at Boleskine. Her alcoholism worsened, and as a result she was institutionalized in September 1911. ### Algeria and the Rites of Eleusis: 1909–1911 In November 1909, Crowley and Neuburg travelled to Algeria, touring the desert from El Arba to Aumale, Bou Saâda, and then Dā'leh Addin, with Crowley reciting the Quran on a daily basis. During the trip he invoked the thirty aethyrs of Enochian magic, with Neuburg recording the results, later published in The Equinox as The Vision and the Voice. Following a mountaintop sex magic ritual, Crowley also performed an evocation to the demon Choronzon involving blood sacrifice, and considered the results to be a watershed in his magical career. Returning to London in January 1910, Crowley found that Mathers was suing him for publishing Golden Dawn secrets in The Equinox; the court found in favour of Crowley. The case was widely reported in the press, with Crowley gaining wider fame. Crowley enjoyed this, and played up to the sensationalist stereotype of being a Satanist and advocate of human sacrifice, despite being neither. The publicity attracted new members to the A∴A∴, among them Frank Bennett, James Bayley, Herbert Close, and James Windram. The Australian violinist Leila Waddell soon became Crowley's lover. Deciding to expand his teachings to a wider audience, Crowley developed the Rites of Artemis, a public performance of magic and symbolism featuring A∴A∴ members personifying various deities. It was first performed at the A∴A∴ headquarters, with attendees given a fruit punch containing peyote to enhance their experience. Various members of the press attended, and reported largely positively on it. In October and November 1910, Crowley decided to stage something similar, the Rites of Eleusis, at Caxton Hall, Westminster; this time press reviews were mixed. Crowley came under particular criticism from West de Wend Fenton, editor of The Looking Glass newspaper, who called him "one of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times". Fenton's articles suggested that Crowley and Jones were involved in homosexual activity; Crowley did not mind, but Jones unsuccessfully sued for libel. Fuller broke off his friendship and involvement with Crowley over the scandal, and Crowley and Neuburg returned to Algeria for further magical workings. The Equinox continued publishing, and various books of literature and poetry were also published under its imprint, like Crowley's Ambergris, The Winged Beetle, and The Scented Garden, as well as Neuburg's The Triumph of Pan and Ethel Archer's The Whirlpool. In 1911, Crowley and Waddell holidayed in Montigny-sur-Loing, where he wrote prolifically, producing poems, short stories, plays, and 19 works on magic and mysticism, including the two final Holy Books of Thelema. In Paris, he met Mary Desti, who became his next "Scarlet Woman", with the two undertaking magical workings in St. Moritz; Crowley believed that one of the Secret Chiefs, Ab-ul-Diz, was speaking through her. Based on Desti's statements when in trance, Crowley wrote the two-volume Book 4 (1912–13) and at the time developed the spelling "magick" in reference to the paranormal phenomenon as a means of distinguishing it from the stage magic of illusionists. ### Ordo Templi Orientis and the Paris Working: 1912–1914 In early 1912, Crowley published The Book of Lies, a work of mysticism that biographer Lawrence Sutin described as "his greatest success in merging his talents as poet, scholar, and magus". The German occultist Theodor Reuss later accused him of publishing some of the secrets of his own occult order, the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), within The Book. Crowley convinced Reuss that the similarities were coincidental, and the two became friends. Reuss appointed Crowley as head of the O.T.O's British branch, the Mysteria Mystica Maxima (MMM), and at a ceremony in Berlin Crowley adopted the magical name of Baphomet and was proclaimed "X° Supreme Rex and Sovereign Grand Master General of Ireland, Iona, and all the Britons". With Reuss' permission, Crowley set about advertising the MMM and re-writing many O.T.O. rituals, which were then based largely on Freemasonry; his incorporation of Thelemite elements proved controversial in the group. Fascinated by the O.T.O's emphasis on sex magic, Crowley devised a magical working based on anal sex and incorporated it into the syllabus for those O.T.O. members who had been initiated into the eleventh degree. In March 1913, Crowley acted as producer for The Ragged Ragtime Girls, a group of female violinists led by Waddell, as they performed at London's Old Tivoli theatre. They subsequently performed in Moscow for six weeks, where Crowley had a sadomasochistic relationship with the Hungarian Anny Ringler. In Moscow, Crowley continued to write plays and poetry, including "Hymn to Pan", and the Gnostic Mass, a Thelemic ritual that became a key part of O.T.O. liturgy. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city. In January 1914, Crowley and Neuburg settled into an apartment in Paris, where the former was involved in the controversy surrounding Jacob Epstein's new monument to Oscar Wilde. Together Crowley and Neuburg performed the six-week "Paris Working", a period of intense ritual involving strong drug use in which they invoked the gods Mercury and Jupiter. As part of the ritual, the couple performed acts of sex magic together, at times being joined by journalist Walter Duranty. Inspired by the results of the Working, Crowley wrote Liber Agapé, a treatise on sex magic. Following the Paris Working, Neuburg began to distance himself from Crowley, resulting in an argument in which Crowley cursed him. ### United States: 1914–1919 By 1914, Crowley was living a hand-to-mouth existence, relying largely on donations from A∴A∴ members and dues payments made to O.T.O. In May, he transferred ownership of Boleskine House to the MMM for financial reasons, and in July he went mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. During this time the First World War broke out. After recuperating from a bout of phlebitis, Crowley set sail for the United States aboard the RMS Lusitania in October 1914. Arriving in New York City, he moved into a hotel and began earning money writing for the American edition of Vanity Fair and undertaking freelance work for the famed astrologer Evangeline Adams. In the city, he continued experimenting with sex magic, through the use of masturbation, female prostitutes, and male clients of a Turkish bathhouse; all of these encounters were documented in his diaries. Professing to be of Irish ancestry and a supporter of Irish independence from Great Britain, Crowley began to espouse support for Germany in their war against Britain. He became involved in New York's pro-German movement, and in January 1915 German spy George Sylvester Viereck employed him as a writer for his propagandist paper, The Fatherland, which was dedicated to keeping the US neutral in the conflict. In later years, detractors denounced Crowley as a traitor to Britain for this action. Crowley entered into a relationship with Jeanne Robert Foster, with whom he toured the West Coast. In Vancouver, headquarters of the North American O.T.O., he met with Charles Stansfeld Jones and Wilfred Talbot Smith to discuss the propagation of Thelema on the continent. In Detroit he experimented with Peyote at Parke-Davis, then visited Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and the Grand Canyon, before returning to New York. There he befriended Ananda Coomaraswamy and his wife Alice Richardson; Crowley and Richardson performed sex magic in April 1916, following which she became pregnant and then miscarried. Later that year he took a "magical retirement" to a cabin by Lake Pasquaney owned by Evangeline Adams. There, he made heavy use of drugs and undertook a ritual after which he proclaimed himself "Master Therion". He also wrote several short stories based on J.G. Frazer's The Golden Bough and a work of literary criticism, The Gospel According to Bernard Shaw. In December, he moved to New Orleans, his favourite US city, before spending February 1917 with evangelical Christian relatives in Titusville, Florida. Returning to New York City, he moved in with artist and A∴A∴ member Leon Engers Kennedy in May, learning of his mother's death. After the collapse of The Fatherland, Crowley continued his association with Viereck, who appointed him contributing editor of arts journal The International. Crowley used it to promote Thelema, but it soon ceased publication. He then moved to the studio apartment of Roddie Minor, who became his partner and Scarlet Woman. Through their rituals, which Crowley called "The Amalantrah Workings", he believed that they were contacted by a preternatural entity named Lam. The relationship soon ended. In 1918, Crowley went on a magical retreat in the wilderness of Esopus Island on the Hudson River. Here, he began a translation of the Tao Te Ching, painted Thelemic slogans on the riverside cliffs, and—he later claimed—experienced past life memories of being Ge Xuan, Pope Alexander VI, Alessandro Cagliostro, and Eliphas Levi. Back in New York City, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he took Leah Hirsig as his lover and next Scarlet Woman. He took up painting as a hobby, exhibiting his work at the Greenwich Village Liberal Club and attracting the attention of the New York Evening World. With the financial assistance of sympathetic Freemasons, Crowley revived The Equinox with the first issue of volume III, known as The Blue Equinox. He spent mid-1919 on a climbing holiday in Montauk before returning to London in December. ### Abbey of Thelema: 1920–1923 Now destitute and back in London, Crowley came under attack from the tabloid John Bull, which labelled him traitorous "scum" for his work with the German war effort; several friends aware of his intelligence work urged him to sue, but he decided not to. When he was suffering from asthma, a doctor prescribed him heroin, to which he soon became addicted. In January 1920, he moved to Paris, renting a house in Fontainebleau with Leah Hirsig; they were soon joined in a ménage à trois by Ninette Shumway, and also (in living arrangement) by Leah's newborn daughter Anne "Poupée" Leah. Crowley had ideas of forming a community of Thelemites, which he called the Abbey of Thelema after the Abbaye de Thélème in François Rabelais' satire Gargantua and Pantagruel. After consulting the I Ching, he chose Cefalù (on Sicily, Italy) as a location, and after arriving there, began renting the old Villa Santa Barbara as his Abbey on 2 April. Moving to the commune with Hirsig, Shumway, and their children Hansi, Howard, and Poupée, Crowley described the scenario as "perfectly happy ... my idea of heaven." They wore robes, and performed rituals to the sun god Ra at set times during the day, also occasionally performing the Gnostic Mass; the rest of the day they were left to follow their own interests. Undertaking widespread correspondences, Crowley continued to paint, wrote a commentary on The Book of the Law, and revised the third part of Book 4. He offered a libertine education for the children, allowing them to play all day and witness acts of sex magic. He occasionally travelled to Palermo to visit rent boys and buy supplies, including drugs; his heroin addiction came to dominate his life, and cocaine began to erode his nasal cavity. There was no cleaning rota, and wild dogs and cats wandered throughout the building, which soon became unsanitary. Poupée died in October 1920, and Ninette gave birth to a daughter, Astarte Lulu Panthea, soon afterwards. New followers continued to arrive at the Abbey to be taught by Crowley. Among them was film star Jane Wolfe, who arrived in July 1920, where she was initiated into the A∴A∴ and became Crowley's secretary. Another was Cecil Frederick Russell, who often argued with Crowley, disliking the same-sex sexual magic that he was required to perform, and left after a year. More conducive was the Australian Thelemite Frank Bennett, who also spent several months at the Abbey. In February 1922, Crowley returned to Paris for a retreat in an unsuccessful attempt to kick his heroin addiction. He then went to London in search of money, where he published articles in The English Review criticising the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 and wrote a novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, completed in July. On publication, it received mixed reviews; he was lambasted by the Sunday Express, which called for its burning and used its influence to prevent further reprints. Subsequently, a young Thelemite named Raoul Loveday moved to the Abbey with his wife Betty May; while Loveday was devoted to Crowley, May detested him and life at the commune. She later said that Loveday was made to drink the blood of a sacrificed cat, and that they were required to cut themselves with razors every time they used the pronoun "I". Loveday drank from a local polluted stream, soon developing a liver infection resulting in his death in February 1923. Returning to London, May told her story to the press. John Bull proclaimed Crowley "the wickedest man in the world" and "a man we'd like to hang", and although Crowley deemed many of their accusations against him to be slanderous, he was unable to afford the legal fees to sue them. As a result, John Bull continued its attack, with its stories being repeated in newspapers throughout Europe and in North America. The Fascist government of Benito Mussolini learned of Crowley's activities, and in April 1923 he was given a deportation notice forcing him to leave Italy; without him, the Abbey closed. ## Later life ### Tunisia, Paris, and London: 1923–1929 Crowley and Hirsig went to Tunis, where, dogged by continuing poor health, he unsuccessfully tried again to give up heroin, and began writing what he termed his "autohagiography", The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. They were joined in Tunis by the Thelemite Norman Mudd, who became Crowley's public relations consultant. Employing a local boy, Mohammad ben Brahim, as his servant, Crowley went with him on a retreat to Nefta, where they performed sex magic together. In January 1924, Crowley travelled to Nice, France, where he met with Frank Harris, underwent a series of nasal operations, and visited the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man and had a positive opinion of its founder, George Gurdjieff. Destitute, he took on a wealthy student, Alexander Zu Zolar, before taking on another American follower, Dorothy Olsen. Crowley took Olsen back to Tunisia for a magical retreat in Nefta, where he also wrote To Man (1924), a declaration of his own status as a prophet entrusted with bringing Thelema to humanity. After spending the winter in Paris, in early 1925 Crowley and Olsen returned to Tunis, where he wrote The Heart of the Master (1938) as an account of a vision he experienced in a trance. In March Olsen became pregnant, and Hirsig was called to take care of her; she miscarried, following which Crowley took Olsen back to France. Hirsig later distanced herself from Crowley, who then denounced her. According to Crowley, Reuss had named him head of the O.T.O. upon his death, but this was challenged by a leader of the German O.T.O., Heinrich Tränker. Tränker called the Hohenleuben Conference in Thuringia, Germany, which Crowley attended. There, prominent members like Karl Germer and Martha Küntzel championed Crowley's leadership, but other key figures like Albin Grau, Oskar Hopfer, and Henri Birven backed Tränker by opposing it, resulting in a split in the O.T.O. Moving to Paris, where he broke with Olsen in 1926, Crowley went through a large number of lovers over the following years, with whom he experimented in sex magic. Throughout, he was dogged by poor health, largely caused by his heroin and cocaine addictions. In 1928, Crowley was introduced to young Englishman Israel Regardie, who embraced Thelema and became Crowley's secretary for the next three years. That year, Crowley also met Gerald Yorke, who began organising Crowley's finances but never became a Thelemite. He also befriended the journalist Tom Driberg; Driberg did not accept Thelema either. It was here that Crowley also published one of his most significant works, Magick in Theory and Practice, which received little attention at the time. In December 1928 Crowley met the Nicaraguan Maria Teresa Sanchez (Maria Teresa Ferrari de Miramar). Crowley was deported from France by the authorities, who disliked his reputation and feared that he was a German agent. So that she could join him in Britain, Crowley married Sanchez in August 1929. Now based in London, Mandrake Press agreed to publish his autobiography in a limited edition six-volume set, also publishing his novel Moonchild and book of short stories The Stratagem. Mandrake went into liquidation in November 1930, before the entirety of Crowley's Confessions could be published. Mandrake's owner P.R. Stephenson meanwhile wrote The Legend of Aleister Crowley, an analysis of the media coverage surrounding him. ### Berlin and London: 1930–1938 In April 1930, Crowley moved to Berlin, where he took Hanni Jaegar as his magical partner; the relationship was troubled. In September he went to Lisbon in Portugal to meet the poet Fernando Pessoa. There, he decided to fake his own death, doing so with Pessoa's help at the Boca do Inferno rock formation. He then returned to Berlin, where he reappeared three weeks later at the opening of his art exhibition at the Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf. Crowley's paintings fitted with the fashion for German Expressionism; few of them sold, but the press reports were largely favourable. In August 1931, he took Bertha Busch as his new lover; they had a violent relationship, and often physically assaulted one another. He continued to have affairs with both men and women while in the city, and met with famous people like Aldous Huxley and Alfred Adler. After befriending him, in January 1932 he took the communist Gerald Hamilton as a lodger, through whom he was introduced to many figures within the Berlin far left; it is possible that he was operating as a spy for British intelligence at this time, monitoring the communist movement. Crowley left Busch and returned to London, where he took Pearl Brooksmith as his new Scarlet Woman. Undergoing further nasal surgery, it was here in 1932 that he was invited to be guest of honour at Foyles' Literary Luncheon, also being invited by Harry Price to speak at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. In need of money, he launched a series of court cases against people whom he believed to have libelled him, some of which proved successful. He gained much publicity for his lawsuit against Constable and Co for publishing Nina Hamnett's Laughing Torso (1932)—a book he claimed libelled him by referring to his occult practice as black magic—but lost the case. The court case added to Crowley's financial problems, and in February 1935 he was declared bankrupt. During the hearing, it was revealed that Crowley had been spending three times his income for several years. Crowley developed a friendship with Deidre Patricia Doherty; she offered to bear his child, who was born in May 1937. Named Randall Gair, Crowley nicknamed him Aleister Atatürk. He died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 65. Crowley continued to socialize with friends, holding curry parties in which he cooked particularly spicy food for them. In 1936, he published his first book in six years, The Equinox of the Gods, which contained a facsimile of The Book of the Law and was considered to be volume III, number 3, of The Equinox periodical. The work sold well, resulting in a second print run. In 1937, he gave a series of public lectures on yoga in Soho. Crowley was now living largely off contributions supplied by the O.T.O.'s Agape Lodge in California, led by rocket scientist John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons. Crowley was intrigued by the rise of Nazism in Germany, and influenced by his friend Martha Küntzel believed that Adolf Hitler might convert to Thelema; when the Nazis abolished the German O.T.O. and imprisoned Germer, who fled to the US, Crowley then lambasted Hitler as a black magician. ### Second World War and death: 1939–1947 When the Second World War broke out, Crowley wrote to the Naval Intelligence Division offering his services, but they declined. He associated with a variety of figures in Britain's intelligence community at the time, including Dennis Wheatley, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight, and claimed to have been behind the "V for Victory" sign first used by the BBC; this has never been proven. In 1940, his asthma worsened, and with his German-produced medication unavailable, he returned to using heroin, once again becoming addicted. As the Blitz hit London, Crowley relocated to Torquay, where he was briefly hospitalized with asthma, and entertained himself with visits to the local chess club. Tiring of Torquay, he returned to London, where he was visited by American Thelemite Grady McMurtry, to whom Crowley awarded the title of "Hymenaeus Alpha". He stipulated that though Germer would be his immediate successor, McMurty should succeed Germer as head of the O.T.O. after the latter's death. With O.T.O. initiate Lady Frieda Harris, Crowley developed plans to produce a tarot card set, designed by him and painted by Harris. Accompanying this was a book, published in a limited edition as The Book of Thoth by Chiswick Press in 1944. To aid the war effort, he wrote a proclamation on the rights of humanity, Liber Oz, and a poem for the liberation of France, Le Gauloise. Crowley's final publication during his lifetime was a book of poetry, Olla: An Anthology of Sixty Years of Song. Another of his projects, Aleister Explains Everything, was posthumously published as Magick Without Tears. In April 1944 Crowley briefly moved to Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire, where he was visited by the poet Nancy Cunard, before relocating to Hastings in Sussex, where he took up residence at the Netherwood boarding house. He took a young man named Kenneth Grant as his secretary, paying him in magical teaching rather than wages. He was also introduced to John Symonds, whom he appointed to be his literary executor; Symonds thought little of Crowley, later publishing negative biographies of him. Corresponding with the illusionist Arnold Crowther, it was through him that Crowley was introduced to Gerald Gardner, the future founder of Gardnerian Wicca. They became friends, with Crowley authorising Gardner to revive Britain's ailing O.T.O. Another visitor was Eliza Marian Butler, who interviewed Crowley for her book The Myth of the Magus. Other friends and family also spent time with him, among them Doherty and Crowley's son Aleister Atatürk. On 1 December 1947, Crowley died at Netherwood of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration, aged 72. His funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium on 5 December; about a dozen people attended, and Louis Wilkinson read excerpts from the Gnostic Mass, The Book of the Law, and "Hymn to Pan". The funeral generated press controversy, and was labelled a Black Mass by the tabloids. Crowley's body was cremated; his ashes were sent to Karl Germer in the US, who buried them in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey. ## Beliefs and thought Crowley's belief system, Thelema, has been described by scholars as a religion, and more specifically as both a new religious movement, and as a "magico-religious doctrine". It has also been characterized as a form of esotericism and Modern Paganism. Although holding The Book of the Law—which was composed in 1904—as its central text, Thelema took shape as a complete system in the years after 1904. In his autobiography, Crowley claimed that his purpose in life had been to "bring oriental wisdom to Europe and to restore paganism in a purer form", although what he meant by "paganism" was unclear. Crowley also wrote in the 4th Book of Magick about a great pagan Umbral fleet ruled by Ottovius that would be handed down to the great Spartan. The esoteric nature of this was also unclear. Crowley's thought was not always cohesive, and was influenced by a variety of sources, ranging from eastern religious movements and practices like Hindu yoga and Buddhism, scientific naturalism, and various currents within Western esotericism, among them ceremonial magic, alchemy, astrology, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, and the Tarot. He was steeped in the esoteric teachings he had learned from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, although pushed further with his own interpretations and strategies than the Golden Dawn had done. Crowley incorporated concepts and terminology from South Asian religious traditions like yoga and Tantra into his Thelemic system, believing that there was a fundamental underlying resemblance between Western and Eastern spiritual systems. The historian Alex Owen noted that Crowley adhered to the "modus operandi" of the Decadent movement throughout his life. Crowley believed that the twentieth century marked humanity's entry to the Aeon of Horus, a new era in which humans would take increasing control of their destiny. He believed that this Aeon follows on from the Aeon of Osiris, in which paternalistic religions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism dominated the world, and that this in turn had followed the Aeon of Isis, which had been maternalistic and dominated by goddess worship. He believed that Thelema was the proper religion of the Aeon of Horus, and also deemed himself to be the prophet of this new Aeon. Thelema revolves around the idea that human beings each have their own True Will that they should discover and pursue, and that this exists in harmony with the Cosmic Will that pervades the universe. Crowley referred to this process of searching and discovery of one's True Will to be "the Great Work" or the attaining of the "knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel". His favoured method of doing so was through the performance of the Abramelin operation, a ceremonial magic ritual obtained from a 17th-century grimoire. The moral code of "Do What Thou Wilt" is believed by Thelemites to be the religion's ethical law, although the historian of religion Marco Pasi noted that this was not anarchistic or libertarian in structure, as Crowley saw individuals as part of a wider societal organism. ### Magick and theology Crowley believed in the objective existence of magic, which he chose to spell as "Magick", which is an archaic spelling of the word. He provided various different definitions of this term over his career. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley defined Magick as "the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will". He also told his disciple Karl Germer that "Magick is getting into communication with individuals who exist on a higher plane than ours. Mysticism is the raising of oneself to their level." Crowley saw Magick as a third way between religion and science, giving The Equinox the subtitle of The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion. Within that journal, he expressed positive sentiments toward science and the scientific method, and urged magicians to keep detailed records of their magical experiments, having said: "The more scientific the record is, the better." His understanding of magic was also influenced by the work of the anthropologist James Frazer, in particular the belief that magic was a precursor to science in a cultural evolutionary framework. Unlike Frazer, however, Crowley did not see magic as a survival from the past that required eradication, but rather he believed that magic had to be adapted to suit the new age of science. In Crowley's alternative schema, old systems of magic had to decline (per Frazer's framework) so that science and magic could synthesize into magick, which would simultaneously accept the existence of the supernatural and an experimental method. Crowley deliberately adopted an exceptionally broad definition of magick that included almost all forms of technology as magick, adopting an instrumentalist definition of magic, science, and technology. Sexuality played an important role in Crowley's ideas about magick and his practice of it, and has been described as being central to Thelema. He outlined three forms of sex magick—the autoerotic, homosexual, and heterosexual—and argued that such acts could be used to focus the magician's will onto a specific goal such as financial gain or personal creative success. For Crowley, sex was treated as a sacrament, with the consumption of sexual fluids interpreted as a Eucharist. This was often manifested as the Cakes of Light, a biscuit containing either menstrual blood or a mixture of semen and vaginal fluids. The Gnostic Mass is the central religious ceremony within Thelema. Crowley's theological beliefs were not clear. The historian Ronald Hutton noted that some of Crowley's writings could be used to argue that he was an atheist, while some support the idea that he was a polytheist, and others would bolster the idea that he was a mystical monotheist. On the basis of the teachings in The Book of the Law, Crowley described a pantheon of three deities taken from the ancient Egyptian pantheon: Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. In 1928, he made the claim that all true deities were derived from this trinity. Jason Josephson-Storm has argued that Crowley built on 19th-century attempts to link early Christianity to pre-Christian religions, such as Frazer's Golden Bough, to synthesize Christian theology and Neopaganism while remaining critical of institutional and traditional Christianity. Both during his life and after it, Crowley has been widely described as a Satanist, usually by detractors. Crowley stated he did not consider himself a Satanist, nor did he worship Satan, as he did not accept the Christian world view in which Satan was believed to exist. He nevertheless used Satanic imagery, for instance by describing himself as "the Beast 666" and referring to the Whore of Babylon in his work, while in later life he sent "Antichristmas cards" to his friends. In his writings, Crowley occasionally identified Aiwass as Satan and designated him as "Our Lord God the Devil" at one occasion. The scholar of religion Gordan Djurdjevic stated that Crowley "was emphatically not" a Satanist, "if for no other reason than simply because he did not identify himself as such". Crowley nevertheless expressed strong anti-Christian sentiment, stating that he hated Christianity "as Socialists hate soap", an animosity probably stemming from his experiences among the Plymouth Brethren. He was nevertheless influenced by the King James Bible, especially the Book of Revelation, the impact of which can be seen in his writings. He was also accused of advocating human sacrifice, largely because of a passage in Book 4 in which he stated that "A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory victim" and added that he had sacrificed about 150 every year. This was a tongue-in-cheek reference to ejaculation, something not realized by his critics. ## Image and opinions Crowley considered himself to be one of the outstanding figures of his time. The historian Ronald Hutton stated that in Crowley's youth, he was "a self-indulgent and flamboyant young man" who "set about a deliberate flouting and provocation of social and religious norms", while being shielded from an "outraged public opinion" by his inherited wealth. Hutton also described Crowley as having both an "unappeasable desire" to take control of any organisation that he belonged to, and "a tendency to quarrel savagely" with those who challenged him. Crowley biographer Martin Booth asserted that Crowley was "self-confident, brash, eccentric, egotistic, highly intelligent, arrogant, witty, wealthy, and, when it suited him, cruel". Similarly, Richard B. Spence noted that Crowley was "capable of immense physical and emotional cruelty". Biographer Lawrence Sutin noted that Crowley exhibited "courage, skill, dauntless energy, and remarkable focus of will" while at the same time showing a "blind arrogance, petty fits of bile, [and] contempt for the abilities of his fellow men". The Thelemite Lon Milo DuQuette noted that Crowley "was by no means perfect" and "often alienated those who loved him dearest." ### Political opinions Crowley enjoyed being outrageous and flouting conventional morality, with John Symonds noting that he "was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time". Crowley's political thought was studied by academic Marco Pasi, who noted that for Crowley, socio-political concerns were subordinate to metaphysical and spiritual ones. He was neither on the political left nor right but perhaps best categorized as a "conservative revolutionary" despite not being affiliated with the German-based movement of the same name. Pasi described Crowley's fascination to the extreme ideologies of Nazism and Marxism–Leninism, which aimed to violently overturn society: "What Crowley liked about Nazism and communism, or at least what made him curious about them, was the anti-Christian position and the revolutionary and socially subversive implications of these two movements. In their subversive powers, he saw the possibility of an annihilation of old religious traditions, and the creation of a void that Thelema, subsequently, would be able to fill." Crowley described democracy as an "imbecile and nauseating cult of weakness", and commented that The Book of the Law proclaimed that "there is the master and there is the slave; the noble and the serf; the 'lone wolf' and the herd". In this attitude, he was influenced by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and by Social Darwinism. Although he had contempt for most of the British aristocracy, he regarded himself as an aristocrat and styled himself as Laird Boleskine, once describing his ideology as "aristocratic communism". ### Opinions on race and gender Crowley was bisexual, but exhibited a preference for women, with his relationships with men being fewer and mostly in the early part of his life. In particular he had an attraction toward "exotic women", and claimed to have fallen in love on multiple occasions; Kaczynski stated that "when he loved, he did so with his whole being, but the passion was typically short-lived". Even in later life, Crowley was able to attract young bohemian women to be his lovers, largely due to his charisma. He applied the term "Scarlet Woman" to various female lovers whom he believed played an important role in his magical work. During homosexual acts, he usually played 'the passive role', which Booth believed "appealed to his masochistic side". An underlying theme in many of his writings is that spiritual enlightenment arises through transgressing socio-sexual norms. Crowley advocated complete sexual freedom for both men and women. He argued that homosexual and bisexual people should not suppress their sexual orientation, commenting that a person "must not be ashamed or afraid of being homosexual if he happens to be so at heart; he must not attempt to violate his own true nature because of public opinion, or medieval morality, or religious prejudice which would wish he were otherwise." On other issues he adopted a more conservative attitude; he opposed abortion on moral grounds, believing that no woman following her True Will would ever desire one. Biographer Lawrence Sutin stated that "blatant bigotry is a persistent minor element in Crowley's writings". Sutin thought Crowley "a spoiled scion of a wealthy Victorian family who embodied many of the worst John Bull racial and social prejudices of his upper-class contemporaries", noting that he "embodied the contradiction that writhed within many Western intellectuals of the time: deeply held racist viewpoints courtesy of society, coupled with a fascination with people of colour". Crowley is said to have insulted his close Jewish friend Victor Benjamin Neuburg, using antisemitic slurs, and he had mixed opinions about Jewish people as a group. Although he praised their "sublime" poetry and stated that they exhibited "imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity", he also thought that centuries of persecution had led some Jewish people to exhibit "avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest". He was also known to praise various ethnic and cultural groups, for instance he thought that the Chinese people exhibited a "spiritual superiority" to the English, and praised Muslims for exhibiting "manliness, straightforwardness, subtlety, and self-respect". Both critics of Crowley and adherents of Thelema have accused Crowley of sexism. Booth described Crowley as exhibiting a "general misogyny", something the biographer believed arose from Crowley's bad relationship with his mother. Sutin noted that Crowley "largely accepted the notion, implicitly embodied in Victorian sexology, of women as secondary social beings in terms of intellect and sensibility". The scholar of religion Manon Hedenborg White noted that some of Crowley's statements are "undoubtedly misogynist by contemporary standards", but characterized Crowley's attitude toward women as complex and multi-faceted. Crowley's comments on women's role varied dramatically within his written work, even that produced in similar periods. Crowley described women as "moral inferiors" who had to be treated with "firmness, kindness and justice", while also arguing that Thelema was essential to women's emancipation. ## Intelligence work Biographers Richard B. Spence and Tobias Churton have suggested that Crowley was a spy for the British secret services and that among other things he joined the Golden Dawn under their command to monitor the activities of Mathers, who was known to be a Carlist. Spence suggested that the conflict between Mathers and the London lodge for the temple was part of an intelligence operation to undermine Mathers' authority. Spence has suggested that the purpose of Crowley's trip to Mexico might have been to explore Mexican oil prospects for British intelligence. Spence has suggested that his trip to China was orchestrated as part of a British intelligence scheme to monitor the region's opium trade. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city. Spence and Sutin both claim that Crowley's pro-German work in the United States was actually a cover for him being a double agent for Britain, citing his hyperbolic articles in The Fatherland to make the German lobby appear ridiculous in the eyes of the American public. Spence also claims that Crowley encouraged the German Navy to destroy the Lusitania, informing them that it would ensure the US stayed out of the war, while in reality hoping that it would bring the US into the war on Britain's side. ## Legacy and influence Crowley has remained an influential figure, both amongst occultists and in popular culture, particularly that of Britain, but also of other parts of the world. In 2002, a BBC poll placed Crowley seventy-third in a list of the 100 Greatest Britons. Richard Cavendish has written of him that "In native talent, penetrating intelligence and determination, Aleister Crowley was the best-equipped magician to emerge since the seventeenth century." The scholar of esotericism Egil Asprem described him as "one of the most well-known figures in modern occultism". The scholar of esotericism Wouter Hanegraaff asserted that Crowley was an extreme representation of "the dark side of the occult", adding that he was "the most notorious occultist magician of the twentieth century". The philosopher John Moore opined that Crowley stood out as a "Modern Master" when compared with other prominent occult figures like George Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, or Helena Blavatsky, also describing him as a "living embodiment" of Oswald Spengler's "Faustian Man". Biographer Tobias Churton considered Crowley "a pioneer of consciousness research". Hutton noted that Crowley had "an important place in the history of modern Western responses to Oriental spiritual traditions", while Sutin thought that he had made "distinctly original contributions" to the study of yoga in the West. Thelema continued to develop and spread following Crowley's death. In 1969, the O.T.O. was reactivated in California under the leadership of Grady Louis McMurtry; in 1985 its right to the title was unsuccessfully challenged in court by a rival group, the Society Ordo Templi Orientis, led by Brazilian Thelemite Marcelo Ramos Motta. Another American Thelemite is the filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who had been influenced by Crowley's writings from a young age. In the United Kingdom, Kenneth Grant propagated a tradition known as Typhonian Thelema through his organisation, the Typhonian O.T.O., later renamed the Typhonian Order. Also in Britain, an occultist known as Amado Crowley claimed to be Crowley's son; this has been refuted by academic investigation. Amado argued that Thelema was a false religion created by Crowley to hide his true esoteric teachings, which Amado claimed to be propagating. Several Western esoteric traditions other than Thelema were also influenced by Crowley, with Djurdjevic observing that "Crowley's influence on twentieth-century and contemporary esotericism has been enormous". Gerald Gardner, founder of Gardnerian Wicca, made use of much of Crowley's published material when composing the Gardnerian ritual liturgy, and the Australian witch Rosaleen Norton was also heavily influenced by Crowley's ideas. More widely, Crowley became "a dominant figure" in the modern Pagan community. L. Ron Hubbard, the American founder of Scientology, was involved in Thelema in the early 1940s (with Jack Parsons), and it has been argued that Crowley's ideas influenced some of Hubbard's work. The scholars of religion Asbjørn Dyrendel, James R. Lewis, and Jesper Petersen noted that despite the fact that Crowley was not a Satanist, he "in many ways embodies the pre-Satanist esoteric discourse on Satan and Satanism through his lifestyle and his philosophy", with his "image and ought" becoming an "important influence" on the later development of religious Satanism. For instance, two prominent figures in religious Satanism, Anton LaVey and Michael Aquino, were influenced by Crowley's work. ### In popular culture Crowley also had a wider influence in British popular culture. After his time in Cefalù which had brought him to public attention in Britain, various "literary Crowleys" appeared: characters in fiction based upon him. One of the earliest was the character of the poet Shelley Arabin in John Buchan's 1926 novel The Dancing Floor. In his novel The Devil Rides Out, the writer Dennis Wheatley used Crowley as a partial basis for the character of Damien Morcata, a portly bald defrocked priest who engages in black magic. The occultist Dion Fortune used Crowley as a basis for characters in her books The Secrets of Doctor Taverner (1926) and The Winged Bull (1935). He was included as one of the figures on the cover art of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), and his motto of "Do What Thou Wilt" was inscribed on the vinyl of Led Zeppelin's album Led Zeppelin III (1970). Led Zeppelin co-founder Jimmy Page bought Boleskine in 1971, and part of the band's film The Song Remains the Same was filmed in the grounds. He sold it in 1992. Though David Bowie makes but a fleeting reference to Crowley in the lyrics of his song "Quicksand" (1971), it has been suggested that the lyrics of Bowie's No. 1 hit single "Let's Dance" (1983) may substantially paraphrase Crowley's 1923 poem "Lyric of Love to Leah". Ozzy Osbourne and his lyricist Bob Daisley wrote a song titled "Mr. Crowley" (1980). A prophetic quote about the coming of the New Aeon borrowed from Crowley's work Magick in Theory and Practice (1911) has been featured as the opening introduction to the video game Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (1996). Crowley began to receive scholarly attention from academics in the late 1990s.

Metal Wolf Chaos

2004 video game

is a third-person shooter video game developed by FromSoftware. It originally released in 2004 in Japan for the Xbox. The player takes on the role of fictional United States President Michael Wilson piloting a mech to battle the rebelling military, led by fictional Vice President Richard Hawk. Wilson's mech can be equipped with up to eight weapons selected from a set of over a hundred. In each mission, the player battles through destructible environments, destroying all enemies they come across. The Xbox's low popularity in Japan led Microsoft to team up with FromSoftware to develop a mecha game for the system. FromSoftware was primarily known at the time for the mecha combat series Armored Core. Since Microsoft was an American company, the team worked in extensive American context and cultural references. Despite the game only being released in Japan, it grew a cult following in the West due to its exaggerated themes of American patriotism. Publisher Devolver Digital released Metal Wolf Chaos XD, a remastered version of the game, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in August 2019. ## Gameplay Metal Wolf Chaos is a third-person shooter. The player takes on the role of Michael Wilson, the President of the United States, piloting an armored mech with a large arsenal of weapons, and must fight their way through destructible environments full of enemy infantry, tanks, and helicopters. The goal of each mission is to destroy all enemies, sometimes within a time limit. Each stage also has optional goals of rescuing a set of hostages and collecting energy pods. Saving hostages unlocks musical tracks for the game and special weapons, while the energy pods give the player additional shields for protection from enemy attack. The player can dash for quicker mobility, but excessive dashing will drain shield power. There are over a hundred unique weapons in the game, ranging from handguns to surface-to-air missiles, but only eight can be equipped at a time. Weapons are unlocked with money collected in each stage. Destroying enemies in quick succession will generate a chain bonus, giving the player a higher score. ## Plot By the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, the United States has plunged into a state of civil and economic unrest. The military launches a coup d'état, led by Vice President Richard Hawk, and succeeds in gaining control of the nation's government institutions. During this time, Michael Wilson, a fictional relative of Woodrow Wilson, is serving as the 47th President of the United States. Wilson realizes he is the country's last hope for freedom, and he dons a special mech developed in secret by the military to fight Hawk and the rebel forces, aided by his secretary Jody Crawford. Wilson flies aboard Air Force One to the west coast of the United States and begins to liberate cities and outposts, traveling from west to east across the country. After retaking the White House, Wilson pursues Hawk to Las Vegas, but Hawk escapes aboard a Space Shuttle and goes to a space station, planning to launch a nuclear missile at the United States in retribution. Wilson and Hawk battle in space, with Wilson ultimately defeating Hawk and saving the country from nuclear destruction. ## Development and release In 2001, Microsoft released the Xbox console, which was successful in Western regions but had not gained a foothold in Japan or other Asian regions. In an effort to support the Xbox, Microsoft teamed up with FromSoftware to develop an exclusive mecha game for the system. FromSoftware was mostly known for its mecha combat series Armored Core at the time. Although they borrowed influence, the team did not want to recreate Armored Core. The game was developed by the team responsible for the Otogi games, while the Armored Core team provided input for how to incorporate mecha gameplay. Since Microsoft was an American company, they wanted to develop something with an American theme, and decided on combining both Western and Eastern influences. They aimed to create a near future American setting. FromSoftware worked closely with the nearby Microsoft Japan offices, who provided some of the American context and humor. Despite the American cultural references, the game was still developed with a Japanese player base in mind. In an interview at E3 2019, FromSoftware producer Masanori Takeuchi recalled that they were looking to draw both American and Japanese audiences: "It is America as perceived by the Japanese. It's completely fictional, but at the time, it was our idea of this ideology of American culture and comic book heroes, and we pieced that together and it became the president piloting the mech. We think that when Japanese look at it that way, from the American point of view, it's almost like how they imagine a Japanese ninja, and sort of the same ideologies, the same kind of fantasy, so it goes two ways". A Microsoft employee suggested the name "Metal Wolf Chaos", with the idea being that a rhythmic three-word name would appeal to Western-focused audiences, like the American-inspired Metal Gear Solid series. Metal Wolf Chaos took between eight and eleven months to develop by a team of 30 before being released in Japan on December 22, 2004. FromSoftware also released a soundtrack and modelguns in limited quantities to coincide with the release. The game did not sell as well as producer Masanori Takeuchi expected. FromSoftware had the intent for worldwide localization, with a targeted North American release for 2005 with competitive Xbox Live multiplayer modes, and had gotten to the point of making available a secret playable demo of the Japanese version through a demo disc in issue 39 of Official Xbox Magazine. FromSoftware did not comment immediately on the reason the localization was canceled. Journalist John Sczepaniak believed the game's American satire and themes of terrorism may have given publishers cold feet. According to Zach Huntley of Kakehashi Games (the Japanese publisher working with Devolver Digital on the 2019 remaster), the game's long development period left its release near the end of the Xbox's lifecycle, and Microsoft was already shifting their focus to the Xbox 360. In 2018, FromSoftware confirmed that the political climate following the September 11 attacks led them to cancel localization. Takeuchi had expressed some remorse for not being able to provide the promised worldwide release for the game. Metal Wolf Chaos remained as part of a small selection of Japanese exclusives for the original Xbox system. ### Remaster Despite its limited regional availability, Metal Wolf Chaos grew a cult following. For years after its release, Takeuchi heard rumors about Westerners asking for the game, but did not know why they would want to play an old Xbox game not released in their region. In 2016, American publisher Devolver Digital posted a message on Twitter offering to help localize Metal Wolf Chaos. The fan reaction to the message prompted Takeuchi and FromSoftware to begin conversations with Devolver. The porting was handled by General Arcade, with consultation from Takeuchi and some FromSoftware staff. Also involved in the project was Kakehashi Games, a Japanese company that helps independent developers publish their games in Japan. The cross-functional team's priority was to release the game as it originally was, while upgrading visuals and potentially adding additional story missions. A remaster of the original game was shown at E3 2018. The game features increased resolution and widescreen support, improved textures and visual effects, and some gameplay improvements. The original English voice acting remained. The game was targeted for release worldwide on Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2018, marking its first release outside Japan. The game was later delayed to August 6, 2019. ## Reception Brad Shoemaker (GameSpot) and Chris Carle (IGN) expressed their opinions of Metal Wolf Chaos based upon a demo they played at the 2004 Tokyo Game Show. Both praised the absurdity of the game's story, the frantic action, simple controls, and the destructible environments. Ryan Payton (1UP.com) reviewed the full game. He found the premise great, writing: "Chaos is presented as a satire of Saturday morning cartoon quality. The graphics, music, and characters' vernacular all drip of super-sized Americana, giving the game a surprisingly fresh and fun atmosphere". Although he agreed with the other sentiments shared by Carle and Shoemaker, Payton found that the game grew worse with repeated play. He felt that the combo system, which was designed to extend the game's longevity, was flawed due to glitches and interrupting gameplay tips from a sidekick. Reviewing the game in 2017, John Sczepaniak (Hardcore Gaming 101) found it to be a rich experience despite its simplicity, and a shame it was never released in the West. He called the writing "a work of absurdist genius", and praised the game's "intuitive arcade-style action" and "relentless style". In retrospective coverage, the game is largely remembered for its exaggerated American patriotism. 1UP.com wrote that Metal Wolf Chaos as the most "insanely patriotic" game ever, Kotaku called it the most American game ever, and GameSpot considered it among the most American games of all time. Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked Michael Wilson first on their list of top ten video game politicians. Metal Wolf Chaos XD has received "mixed or average reviews" on Metacritic.

Trunajaya rebellion

1674–80 failed revolt in Java

The Trunajaya rebellion (also spelled Trunojoyo; Indonesian: Pemberontakan Trunajaya) or Trunajaya War was the ultimately unsuccessful rebellion waged by the Madurese prince Trunajaya and fighters from Makassar against the Mataram Sultanate and its Dutch East India Company (VOC) supporters in Java (in modern-day Indonesia) during the 1670s. The uprising was initially successful; the rebels gained Gegodog (1676), the majority of Java's north coast (1677), and the capital of Mataram (1677) from the royal army. During the retreat of the royal court, King Amangkurat I died. Amangkurat II, his son and successor, asked the VOC for assistance in exchange for cash payments and territorial concessions. The subsequent engagement of the VOC changed the course of the battle. Trunajaya was driven from Surabaya (1677) by VOC and Mataram forces, who also helped him reclaim lost territory and take control of his new capital at Kediri (1678). However, the uprising persisted until Trunajaya was captured at the end of 1679 and the other rebel leaders were overthrown, killed, or submitted (1679–1680). Amangkurat II personally executed Trunajaya in 1680 while he was a prisoner of the VOC. After his father's death in 1677, Amangkurat II also faced rival claims to the throne. The most serious rival was his brother Pangeran Puger, who took the capital Plered in 1677 and did not surrender until 1681. ## Background Amangkurat I took the throne of Mataram in 1646, succeeding Sultan Agung, who had expanded Mataram's realm to include most of Central and East Java, as well as a few overseas vassals in southern Sumatra and Borneo. The early years of Amangkurat's reign were marked by executions and massacres against his political enemies. In response to the failed coup attempt of his brother Pangeran Alit, he ordered massacres of Islamic men who he believed were complicit in Alit's rebellion. Alit himself was killed during the failed coup. In 1659 Amangkurat suspected that Pangeran Pekik, his father-in-law and the son of the conquered Duke of Surabaya who lived at the Mataram court after Surabaya's defeat, was leading a conspiracy against his life. He ordered Pekik and his relatives killed. This massacre of East Java's most important princely house created a rift between Amangkurat and his East Javanese subjects and caused a conflict with his son, the crown prince (later Amangkurat II), who was also Pekik's grandson. Over the next few years, Amangkurat carried out a number of additional killings against members of the nobility who had lost his trust. Raden Trunajaya (also spelled Trunojoyo) was a descendant of the rulers of Madura, who was forced to live in the Mataram court after Madura's defeat and annexation by Mataram in 1624. After his father was executed by Amangkurat I in 1656, he left the court, moved to Kajoran, and married the daughter of Raden Kajoran, the head of the ruling family there. The Kajoran family was an ancient family of clerics and was related by marriage to the royal family. Raden Kajoran was alarmed at the brutality of Amangkurat I's rule, including executions of noblemen at court. In 1670 Kajoran introduced his son-in-law Trunajaya to the crown prince, who had recently been banished by the king due to a scandal, and the two forged a friendship that included a mutual dislike of Amangkurat. In 1671 Trunajaya returned to Madura, where he used the crown prince's support to defeat the local governor and become the master of Madura. Makassar was the principal trading center east of Java. After the 1669 VOC victory over the Gowa Sultanate in the Makassar War, bands of Makassarese soldiers fled Makassar to seek their fortune elsewhere. Initially, they settled in territories of the Banten Sultanate, but in 1674 they were expelled, and turned to piracy, raiding coastal towns in Java and Nusa Tenggara. The Mataram crown prince later allowed them to settle in Demung, a village in the eastern salient of Java. In 1675 an additional band of Makassarese fighters and pirates arrived in Demung led by the Kraeng of Galesong. These Makassarese itinerant fighters would later join the rebellion as Trunajaya's allies. ## Forces involved Lacking a standing army, the bulk of Mataram's forces were drawn from troops raised by the king's vassals, who also provided the arms and supplies. The majority of the men were peasants who were conscripted by the local lords (Javanese: sikep dalem). In addition, the army included a small number of professional soldiers drawn from the palace guards. The army used cannons, small firearms including flintlocks (Javanese: senapan, from Dutch snaphaens) and carbines, cavalry and fortifications. Historian M. C. Ricklefs said the transfer of European military technology to the Javanese was "virtually immediate", with the Javanese manufacturing gunpowder and firearms by 1620 at the latest. Europeans were hired to train the Javanese troops in weapons handling, military leadership skills, and construction techniques, but in spite of this training, the conscripted peasants of the Javanese armies often lacked discipline and fled during battle. Mataram's troops numbered "much larger" than the rebel's 9,000 at Gegodog in September 1676, dropped to just "a small retinue" after the fall of the capital in June 1677, and grew to over 13,000 during the march to Trunajaya's capital at Kediri in late 1678. The VOC had professional soldiers of its own. Each VOC soldier had a sword, small arms, cartridges, carrying pouches and belts, smoke bombs, and grenades. The majority of VOC regulars were Indonesians, with a small number of European soldiers and marines, all under the command of European officers. While in the technological sense VOC troops were not superior to their indigenous counterparts, they generally had better training, discipline, and equipment than indigenous Indonesian armies. The VOC troops also differed with regard to logistics: its troops marched in step followed by a long caravan of carts carrying supplies. This gave them an advantage over Javanese troops, who often lived off the land and frequently faced supply shortages. VOC forces numbered 1,500 in 1676, but they were later augmented by Bugis allies under the leadership of Arung Palakka. The first contingent of 1,500 Bugis arrived in Java in late 1678, and by 1679 there were 6,000 Bugis troops on Java. Similar to other belligerents, the armies of Trunajaya and his allies also used cannons, cavalry, and fortifications. When the VOC took Surabaya from Trunajaya in May 1677, Trunajaya fled with twenty of his bronze cannons, and left behind 69 iron and 34 bronze pieces. Trunajaya's forces included Javanese, Madurese, and Makassarese. When the rebels invaded Java in 1676, they numbered 9,000 and consisted of Trunajaya's followers and the Makassarese fighters. Later, the rebellion was joined by other Javanese and Madurese nobles. Notably, the lord of Giri, one of the most prominent Islamic spiritual lords in Java, joined in early 1676. Trunajaya's father-in-law Raden Kajoran, head of the powerful Kajoran family, joined after Trunajaya's victory at Gegodog in September 1676, and Trunajaya's uncle the prince of Sampang (later Cakraningrat II) joined after the fall of Mataram's capital in June 1677. ## Campaign ### Beginning and initial rebel victories The rebellion started with a series of raids from Makassarese pirates based in Demung against the trading towns on the northern coast of Java. The first raid took place in 1674 in Gresik but was repulsed. Trunajaya entered into a pact and marriage alliance with the Kraeng of Galesong, the leader of the Makassarese, in 1675 and planned further raids. In the same year, the Makasserese–Madurese raiders took and burned principal cities in northeast Java, from Pajarakan to Surabaya and Gresik. Given the failure of loyalist forces against the rebels, King Amangkurat I appointed a military governor in Jepara, the provincial capital of the northern coast, and reinforced the town. Mataram forces marching on Demung were defeated, and combined actions by Mataram and VOC ships on the coast controlled by the raiders were not always successful. The Kraeng of Galesong moved to Madura, the domain of his ally Trunajaya. In 1676 Trunajaya gave himself the title Panembahan (Lord of) Maduretna and secured the support of the sunan (spiritual lord) of Giri, near Gresik. A VOC fleet attack later destroyed the raiders' base in Demung, but they did not take action against Trunajaya in Madura. In September 1676, a rebel army of 9,000 led by the Kraeng of Galesong crossed over from Madura to Java and later took Surabaya, the principal city of eastern Java. Mataram sent a large force, commanded by the crown prince (later Amangkurat II) to meet the rebels. A battle took place in Gegodog, east of Tuban, in 1676, resulting in the complete defeat of the much larger Mataram forces. The loyalist army was routed, the king's uncle Pangeran Purbaya was killed, and the crown prince fled to Mataram. The crown prince was blamed for this defeat due to his long wavering before attacking the rebels. In addition, there were rumours that he colluded with the enemy, which included his former protégé Trunajaya. In the few months after the victory in Gegodog, the rebels quickly took Javanese northern trading towns from Surabaya westward to Cirebon, including the towns of Kudus and Demak. The towns fell easily, partly because their fortifications had been destroyed due to their conquest by Sultan Agung about 50 years earlier. Only Jepara managed to resist capture, due to combined efforts of the new military governor and VOC forces who reinforced the town just in time. The rebellion spread inland when Raden Kajoran, Trunajaya's powerful father-in-law based to the east of the Mataram capital, joined the rebellion. Kajoran and Trunajaya's forces marched on the capital, but were repelled by loyalist forces. ### VOC intervention and fall of Mataram's capital In response to Mataram's request for intervention, VOC dispatched a large fleet containing Indonesian and European forces, commanded by Admiral Cornelis Speelman. In April 1677 the fleet sailed to Surabaya, where Trunajaya was based. After negotiations failed, Speelman's forces stormed Surabaya and took it after hard fighting. The troops proceeded to clear the rebels from the area surrounding Surabaya. VOC forces also took Madura, Trunajaya's native island, and laid his residence there in ruin. Trunajaya fled Surabaya and established his capital in Kediri. Although the rebels were defeated in Surabaya, rebel forces campaigning in the interior of Central and East Java had more success. The rebel campaign culminated in the fall of the capital Plered in June 1677. The king was ill, and distrust among the royal princes prevented organized resistance. The king fled west with the crown prince and his retinue, allowing the rebels to enter and plunder the capital with little fighting. The rebels then withdrew to Kediri, taking the royal treasury with them. ### Amangkurat II's accession and alliance with the VOC King Amangkurat I died during his retreat in Tegal in July 1677. The crown prince succeeded his father and took the title of Amangkurat II, and was accepted by the Javanese gentry in Tegal (his grandmother's hometown) as well as by the VOC. However, he failed to assert his authority in the nearby town of Cirebon, whose ruler decided to declare independence from Mataram with support from the Banten Sultanate. Furthermore, his younger brother Pangeran Puger (later Pakubuwana I) took the now-ruined capital, refused entry to Amangkurat II's loyalists, and declared himself king under the title of Ingalaga Mataram. Having no army or treasury and unable to assert his authority, Amangkurat decided to ally himself with the VOC. At this point, Admiral Speelman was in Jepara, sailing there from Surabaya after hearing of the fall of the capital. His forces had recovered important coastal towns in Central Java, including Semarang, Demak, Kudus, and Pati. Amangkurat moved to Jepara on VOC ships in September 1677. The king had to agree to sweeping concessions demanded by the VOC in exchange for restoring his monarchy. He promised the VOC the income of all harbour towns on the northern coast. The Priangan highlands and Semarang would be ceded to the VOC. The king also agreed to recognize the jurisdiction of VOC courts over all non-Javanese residing in his domains. Dutch historian H. J. de Graaf commented that by doing this, the VOC, being a corporation, engaged in a "hazardous speculation", which they expected to pay off in the future when their associate would regain his rule over Mataram. VOC–Mataram forces made slow progress against the rebels. By the beginning of 1678 their control was limited to several towns in the central northern coast. In 1678 Speelman became the Director-General of the VOC, replacing Rijcklof van Goens, who became Governor-General (Speelman would become Governor-General in 1681). His command in Jepara was handed over to Anthonio Hurdt, who arrived in June 1678. ### Loyalist victories and death of Trunajaya VOC and Mataram forces marched inland against Kediri in September 1678. Following a proposal by the king, the troops were split to take three parallel, less direct routes, in order to cover more locations and "overawe" factions who were wavering on which side to take. The king's idea worked, and as the campaign proceeded, local bands joined the troops, eager for booty. Kediri was taken on 25 November by an assault force led by Captain François Tack. The victorious troops proceeded to Surabaya, the largest city in East Java, where Amangkurat established his court. Elsewhere, the rebels were also defeated. In September 1679, combined VOC, Javanese, and Bugis forces under Sindu Reja and Jan Albert Sloot defeated Raden Kajoran in a battle in Mlambang, near Pajang. Kajoran surrendered but was executed under Sloot's orders. In November, the VOC and allied Bugis forces under Arung Palakka expelled the Makassarese rebels' stronghold in Keper, East Java. In April 1680, after what the VOC considered the fiercest battle of the war, the rebellious lord of Giri was defeated and most of his family was executed. As the VOC and Amangkurat won more victories, more and more Javanese declared their allegiance to the king. After the fall of his stronghold in Kediri, Trunajaya managed to escape to the mountains of eastern Java. VOC and the king's forces chased Trunajaya, who, isolated and deprived of food, surrendered to the VOC on 26 December 1679. Initially, he was treated with respect as a captive of the VOC commander. However, during a ceremonial visit to the royal residence in Payak, East Java, on 2 January 1680, he was personally stabbed by Amangkurat, and the king's courtiers finished him off. The king defended this killing of a VOC prisoner by saying that Trunajaya had tried to kill him. The VOC was not convinced by this explanation, but it chose not to call the king into account. A romanticised account of Trunajaya's death appears in the 18th-century Central Javanese babads. ### End of Pangeran Puger's rebellion In addition to Trunajaya's forces, Amangkurat II continued to face opposition from his brother Pangeran Puger, who had taken the old capital in Plered and had claimed the throne for himself in 1677. Before the defeat of Trunajaya, Amangkurat's forces had not taken action against him. After Trunajaya was defeated, Amangkurat still could not convince his brother to submit. In September 1680 Amangkurat constructed a new capital in Kartasura. In November, Amangkurat and VOC forces drove Puger from Plered. However, Puger quickly rebuilt his forces, took Plered again in August 1681, and nearly took Kartasura. In November 1681 VOC and Mataram forces again defeated Puger, and this time he submitted and was pardoned by his brother. ## Aftermath Amangkurat II secured his reign with the defeat of the rebels. Due to rebel capture and subsequent destruction of the capital in Plered, he built a new capital, Kartasura, in the district of Pajang, and moved his court there. A VOC fort was constructed in the capital, next to the royal residence, to defend it against invasion. As for the VOC, its involvement allowed the cornered and nearly defeated Amangkurat II to stay on his throne. This began the precedent of the VOC supporting Javanese kings or claimants in exchange for concessions. However, in 1680 this policy required a high level of expenditure to maintain a military presence in Central and East Java, and this contributed to the VOC's financial decline. The payments promised by Amangkurat were not made, and by 1682 the king's debt to the VOC exceeded 1.5 million reals, about five times the amount of the royal treasury. The cession of Semarang was delayed by disputes, and other stipulations in the contract were largely ignored by local Javanese officials. Furthermore, an anti-VOC faction developed at the Mataram court, and a member of this faction, Nerangkusuma, became the patih (chief minister) from 1682 to 1686. Poor relations between Mataram and the VOC continued with the sheltering of Surapati, an enemy of the VOC, in 1684, and the death of VOC captain François Tack in the Mataram court in 1686. The king's brother Pangeran Puger, who tried to claim the throne during the Trunajaya rebellion, was pardoned by the king. However, after the king's death in 1703 and the accession of his son Amangkurat III, Puger claimed the throne again. Puger's claim was supported by the VOC, and the VOC–Puger alliance won the ensuing First Javanese War of Succession (1704–1708). Puger took the throne with the title Pakubuwana I and Amangkurat III was exiled to Ceylon.

The Boat Race 1996

The 142nd Boat Race took place on 6 April 1996. Held annually, the Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing race between crews from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge along the River Thames. Umpired by a former Blue, Mike Sweeney, Cambridge won by 2+3⁄4 lengths in the second-fastest time in the history of the race. In the reserve race, Cambridge's Goldie defeated Oxford's Isis in a record time, while Cambridge won the Women's Boat Race. ## Background The Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing competition between the University of Oxford (sometimes referred to as the "Dark Blues") and the University of Cambridge (sometimes referred to as the "Light Blues"). First held in 1829, the race takes place on the 4.2-mile (6.8 km) Championship Course on the River Thames in southwest London. The rivalry is a major point of honour between the two universities and followed throughout the United Kingdom and broadcast worldwide. Cambridge went into the race as reigning champions, having won the 1995 race by four lengths, with Cambridge leading overall with 72 victories to Oxford's 68 (excluding the "dead heat" of 1877). The first Women's Boat Race took place in 1927, but did not become an annual fixture until the 1960s. Up until 2014, the contest was conducted as part of the Henley Boat Races, but as of the 2015 race, it is held on the River Thames, on the same day as the men's main and reserve races. The reserve race, contested between Oxford's Isis boat and Cambridge's Goldie boat has been held since 1965. It usually takes place on the Tideway, prior to the main Boat Race. The previous year's race was watched by seven million viewers in the United Kingdom alone. Oxford coach Dan Topolski suggested that part of the appeal was that the contest was "absolutely amateur" but still "represents quality". Former Oxford Blue and Olympic gold medallist Jonny Searle agreed, calling the Boat Race "a unique experience". Both Topolski and Searle predicted a close race; Cambridge coach Robin Williams agreed: "We've got to accord Oxford some respect. I think we're again the better crew ... but the only way to find out is on the water." Penny Chuter, one of the other Oxford coaches, noted "Cambridge have a continuity ... but we have more power this year." Cambridge's boat club president John Carver had earlier withdrawn from the race with injury. Oxford's director of rowing, Steve Royle, said of his crew: "these guys love a scrap." The 250 officers from Wandsworth Police lining the embankments were able to replace their traditional helmets for peaked caps for the first time, in order to discourage members of the crowd from removing them and throwing them into the river. The race was sponsored for the tenth consecutive year by Beefeater Gin, and umpired by former Cambridge Blue Mike Sweeney. ## Crews The Oxford crew weighed an average of 1.25 pounds (0.57 kg) more per rower than their opponents. Each crew saw just one former Blue return, Clegg for Oxford and Barnett for Cambridge, in addition to Barnett, Cambridge's crew contained five former Goldie rowers. Oxford's crew contained more international rowers with four Americans and a Canadian. ## Race Cambridge started as pre-race favourites. They won the toss and elected to start from the Surrey station. After a close start, where neither boat took a significant lead, Cambridge were a half a length up at the Mile Post. They pushed on at Harrods Furniture Depository to take two thirds of a length lead over Oxford by Hammersmith Bridge. Under pressure from the Dark Blues, Whyman steered his crew to record times between the Mile Post and Barnes Bridge, Hammersmith Bridge to Barnes Bridge, Chiswick Steps to Barnes Bridge and Chiswick Steps to the finishing post. Cambridge won by 2+3⁄4 lengths in a time of 16 minutes 58 seconds, the second-fastest time on record (thirteen seconds slower than the winning time in the 1984 race). In the reserve race, Cambridge's Goldie won by eleven lengths, in a record time, over Isis. It was Cambridge's ninth victory in ten years. Cambridge won the 51st Women's Boat Race by four lengths in a time of 6 minutes and 12 seconds, their seventh victory in eight years. ## Reaction During the race, David Miller of The Times claimed that Cambridge's stroke James Ball "conducted a continual tactical conversation with Kevin Whyman, the Cambridge cox". Miller suggested that while Oxford were the more powerful crew, Cambridge were technically superior. Oxford coach Chuter concluded: "we did not find the cohesive and relaxed rhythm which we have had." Her counterpart, Williams, exclaimed "you have got to be happy with that".

Mr. Monk and the Airplane

"Mr. Monk and the Airplane" is the first season finale of the American comedy-drama detective television series Monk, and the show's 13th episode overall. The series follows Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub), a private detective with obsessive–compulsive disorder and multiple phobias, and his assistant Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram). In this episode, Monk is obligated to fly with Sharona and is faced with a murder case on the airplane. The episode was written by David M. Stern and directed by Rob Thompson. It guest starred several actors, including Brooke Adams, Tim Daly, and Garry Marshall. When the episode first aired in the United States on USA Network on October 18, 2002, it was watched by 4.2 million viewers. "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" was well received by critics, and earned Shalhoub a Primetime Emmy Award in 2003. ## Plot Practical nurse Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) leaves to fly to New Jersey to visit her aunt. Her client and detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) is forced to go with her, as he fears not being able to live without Sharona. While at San Francisco International Airport, a woman named Barbara Chabrol (Jennifer Dale) stands on her toes to kiss her husband Stefan (Carl Marotte). Aboard the plane, an annoying extension cord salesman named Warren Beach (Garry Marshall) does little to assuage Monk's fears. Monk quickly becomes suspicious of Stefan Chabrol after he notices that Barbara no longer needs to stand on her toes to kiss him, has "forgotten" that she ordered the vegetarian meal, knows nothing about air travel despite a frequent-flyer lapel, and claims to have "forgotten how to" speak French when an old family friend, Bernard, meets them on board. More digging convinces Monk he is on to something. Monk quickly annoys everyone and a fellow passenger informs Stefan of Monk's suspicions. Meanwhile, Bernard appears dead, probably because of a heart attack but Monk cannot guarantee it. So Monk asks Sharona to steal Bernard's wine glass and, with a lighter borrowed from Beach, proceeds to burn away the wine to reveal a mysterious liquid at the bottom. However, the flight attendant, Leigh Harrison (Brooke Adams), is alerted to Monk's use of a lighter on board, and confiscates both the lighter and the glass, dumping the liquid down the sink. Monk calls Lieutenant Disher and explains what he thinks happened. Stefan and his mistress murdered Barbara and the mistress disguised herself as Barbara. Stefan, being a pilot, then used his valid identification card and its virtually unlimited access to hide the body at a construction site at the airport. The construction workers poured concrete over the corpse, unwittingly destroying the evidence. When Monk and Sharona's flight lands at Newark Liberty International Airport, Monk stalls Stefan's connecting flight to Paris by wittingly saying that the captain of the Paris flight is drunk. This allows Disher and the construction crew to excavate and find the body. The Newark Police Department shows up, and Stefan and his mistress are led away in handcuffs. ## Production "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" was written by David M. Stern and directed by Rob Thompson. Both were credited for the second time in the series, as Stern previously worked on "Mr. Monk and the Other Woman" and Thompson on "Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale". There were various discussions between series creator Andy Breckman and writer Tom Scharpling with USA Network's producers over the setting for the episode. The network required to have only half of the scenes on the plane, but the writing staff wanted it to be completely set on the plane. There was also discussion over the repetition of a "Pete and Repeat" joke; ultimately, USA's executives "were crying from laughing so hard" and agreed to include the scene. Tim Daly guest starred as himself; he and Tony Shalhoub were in the NBC TV show Wings. To further explore the in-joke of his casting, Monk's comment about Wings—"Never saw it. Was it good?"—was added. Another guest star, Garry Marshall himself created Warren Beach's trademark line—"If it doesn't reach, call Warren Beach"—as he was allowed to improvise; Breckman further stated, "He was improvising all the way". Marshall appeared in the episode after telling Monk's producer David Hoberman that it was his wife's favorite show. Brooke Adams, the real-life wife of Shalhoub, also starred in this episode as the flight attendant Leigh. Breckman appeared as the passenger who enters the plane just ahead of Monk and Sharona, just as his credit as executive producer appears on screen. ## Reception "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" was first broadcast in the United States on the USA Network at 10 pm EST on October 18, 2002. According to Nielsen Media Research, the episode was viewed by an estimated number of 4.25 million viewers with a 2.5 household rating. Jason Gray-Stanford listed "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" among his three favorite episodes of the series. Moreover, it was positively received by critics. In The Futon Critic's ranking of the fifty best episodes of 2002, it was placed 32nd, with Brian Ford Sullivan stating, "The title of the episode says it all for us." New York Daily News's David Bianculli declared "It seems that lots of people are getting on board with Monk, which is as it should be", referring to the guest stars of the episode. The guests were said to be one of the "many subtle and silly pleasures" of the episode by Kevin McDonough, a critic for the United Feature Syndicate, while a TelevisionWeek reviewer praised Marshall's performance as a "tour de force guest shot". Austin Smith of the New York Post deemed it "a true classic" and said it put "Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan" "to shame". Chris Hicks from Deseret News qualified it as "perfection," and Bianculli stressed "the writing team for Monk made the most" of it. On the other hand, Joy Press of The Village Voice called it "a Seinfeld-like device" in which Monk's fear of flying was explored "to the point of exhaustion." At the 55th Primetime Emmy Awards, Shalhoub won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for this episode.

Travelers (The X-Files)

"Travelers" is the fifteenth episode of the fifth season of American science fiction television series The X-Files, and the 111th episode of the series overall. It was written by John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz, directed by William A. Graham and aired in the United States on March 29, 1998, on the Fox network. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.9, being watched by 15.06 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed reviews from television critics. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In this flashback episode, a young Fox Mulder visits retired FBI Agent Arthur Dales (Darren McGavin), who tells him about one of the first X-Files, a case that Mulder's father, Bill, was involved in. "Travelers" was written as a tribute to Howard Dimsdale, a screenwriter who was victimized by Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s and explored the idea that "the witch-hunt [of the 1950s] was actually a smoke screen to conceal something else". Noted actor Darren McGavin appears as Arthur Dales. McGavin was requested for the part especially by Chris Carter and had been approached to play various characters on the series before. In order to create a "convincing period movie", various special effects were used, including a special facial appliance that allowed the "alien spider" to crawl out of Skur's mouth and into his victim, and a bleaching job for the final film to give it an aged feel. ## Plot In 1990 in Caledonia, Wisconsin, a man named Edward Skur is shot by a police officer during an eviction and the last word he speaks is "Mulder". Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), at this point working with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, believes that the man may have had some connection to his father, Bill. Mulder discovers that Skur was reported to have died in 1952. He seeks out Arthur Dales (Darren McGavin), a retired FBI agent who investigated Skur in the 1950s. At first, Dales is reluctant to discuss the case and warns Mulder away. However, Mulder's threat of a subpoena persuades Dales to tell his story. In a flashback to the 1950s, Dales (Fredric Lane) and his partner Hayes Michel are sent to arrest Skur (Garret Dillahunt) for being a communist. When Dales is told that Skur hanged himself while in custody, he feels guilty and returns to Skur's house to apologize to his wife. While there, he sees Skur alive and tries to recapture him. In the following struggle, an appendage emerges from Skur's mouth. Skur is forced to flee when a neighbor interrupts the fight. Both Michel and Roy Cohn warn Dales to change his report about the attack. He does so, but feels guilty about it. Later, Dales and Michel are called to investigate the death of a German doctor in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The local police deny calling them, and Dales finds a coaster for a bar with "come alone" written on the back. At the bar, Dales meets Bill Mulder, an agent from the State Department. Bill tells him that Skur was experimented on along with two other men, who later killed themselves; that Skur killed the German doctor in revenge for what was done to him and that he will kill Dales and Michel too because Skur believes they are part of the plot. Dales tries to warn Michel by telephone but is unable to prevent his murder. Dales tries to investigate his partner's death but Cohn covers it up. A secretary at the FBI office, Dorothy Bahnsen (Jane Perry), helps Dales find a file that mentions Gissing, one of the two test subjects. Gissing's body is still in the morgue and Dales convinces the technician to cut open his body, where they find a strange creature has been sewn into Gissing's chest. Dales goes to Skur's wife and tells her what was done to her husband and that he wants to expose the experiments. Skur's wife goes down into the backyard bomb shelter to tell Skur, but he is overcome by his parasite and kills her. Cohn brings Dales before FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who convinces him to help bring in Skur. They take Dales back to the bar to meet Skur, who attacks Dales. Bill and the other agent wait outside until they think Dales is dead before rushing in to find that he has handcuffed Skur and is still alive. In 1990, Fox Mulder is dismayed to hear what his father was involved in. He asks Dales how Skur escaped and Dales speculates that someone might have helped Skur escape hoping that the truth of what was done to him may one day be revealed. The episode ends with a final flashback of Bill Mulder driving down a road with Skur and giving Skur the keys to the car and walking away. ## Production ### Writing and casting The episode was inspired by the story of Howard Dimsdale, a screenwriter who had been negatively affected by the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s. Dimsdale wrote several movies under the pseudonym "Arthur Dales"—a name which eventually made its way into this episode. For many years, Dimsdale was an instructor at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, where he taught executive producer Frank Spotnitz and co-producer John Shiban. While developing this episode, the two decided to combine many of Dimsdale's stories of "paranoia, treachery, and double-dealing" with the idea that "the witch-hunt was actually a smoke screen to conceal something else". The writers soon realized that by setting the episode in the past, they would also be able to "trace the roots of both Fox Mulder and the X-Files". Scully did not appear in this episode as Gillian Anderson was busy filming final parts of Fight the Future. Noted actor Darren McGavin appears as Arthur Dales. He was requested for the part especially by Chris Carter. Casting director Rick Millikan noted, "McGavin was Chris's inspiration for writing this series. He always had Darren in mind to use somewhere, and that was really his doing. He said 'I want Darren McGavin for this,' and he happened to be available, and we got him." McGavin had originally been casting directors' first choice for the role of Senator Matheson for the second season opener "Little Green Men". McGavin was later sought out to be Mulder's dad, but he again eluded the staff. In the end, McGavin finally agreed to appear on the show playing Dales. ### Filming Because the show's fifth season was filmed under a number of financial and time restraints, production for "Travelers" was somewhat rushed. Costume designer Jenni Gullet was forced to "frantically" rent or create the vintage clothing featured in the episode, and art director Gary Allen did extensive research to make J. Edgar Hoover's office look realistic. Allen also constructed the bomb shelter, because his father was a contractor who had actually built several. Special effects supervisor Toby Lindala created the "alien spider" as well as a special facial appliance that Garret Dillahunt wore. The final film was slightly bleached in post-production to give it a "vintage appearance". The production staff was pleased with the final product, noting that it "does justice" to both "the painful controversies of the 1950s" and The X-Files as a "contemporary TV series". The episode contains several in-jokes. The song playing in the German doctor's house is the popular song "Lili Marleen", of which a new recording was made specifically for this episode. The record sleeve attributes the track to "Paula Rabwini", a reference to one of the series' producers, Paul Rabwin. Agent Hayes Michel was named after the fiancé of series creator Chris Carter's executive assistant, Mary Astadourian. ### Continuity In several shots, Mulder can be seen wearing a wedding band. This was David Duchovny's idea; he explained "That was just me, you know, fooling around. I had recently gotten married, and I wanted to wear it." He later described the situation as "so Mulder to never have mentioned that he was married". Series creator Chris Carter later told Duchovny that the situation "creates a problem. If we ever do a show that takes place seven years ago, you'll have to be married." However, Duchovny reassured Carter by pointing out that there were not very many episodes, if any, that had been planned to take place seven years prior to the events in this episode. The inclusion of the detail caused an "Internet frenzy" and the minor detail was never resolved on screen. ## Reception ### Ratings "Travelers" premiered in the US on the Fox network on March 19, 1998, and in the United Kingdom on February 3, 1999. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 9.9, with a 15 share, meaning that roughly 9.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 15 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 15.06 million viewers. ### Reviews "Travelers" received mixed reviews from critics. In a 2000 review of season five for the New Straits Times, Francis Dass noted that the episode possessed a "nice retro feel throughout". Dass was also complimentary towards the fact that "Mulder senior is shown in action" during the episode. Emily VanDerWerff from The A.V. Club gave the episode a B and wrote positively of it, noting that, although the entry was designed as a "stall", it felt like a "weird backdoor pilot for [a show] that never happened." She noted that the episode "isn’t as good as it could have been" but argued that the story was "still a mostly fun episode". In addition, VanDerWerff wrote positively of McGavin's guest starring role and was complimentary towards the "alien spider thing", describing it as "wonderfully gross". Robert Shearman, in his book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode four stars out of five and called it "fresh and urgent". He wrote that, while the episode was a stopgap, it "cannot be better placed." Shearman further argued that "Travelers"'s use of the "Communist witch hunt" conceit and its idea that "serving" means being a patriot, whereas "resisting" means being a traitor —a reference to the previous episode's tagline—themes were well-played. Shearman further praised McGavin's acting, noting that he was "the series' spiritual father". In his "Politics of the X-Files" column at The Companion, A.J. Black observed that "‘Travelers" skirts the edges of what would be considered a ‘mytharc’ storyline, tethered to the alien mythology, by attempting to transform the fear of Communism directly into a fear of the extra-terrestrial, without ever using the word." Other reviews were more critical. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a largely negative review and awarded it one star out of four. She noted that the episode, much like the earlier season five entry "Unusual Suspects" was "filler", but that, unlike the earlier episode, "Travelers" was "not particularly entertaining." Vitaris criticized the character of Arthur Dales and wrote that he was "not an intriguing character". However, she did praise the visuals, describing them as "outstanding".

Natarajasana

Yoga pose

Natarajasana (Sanskrit: नटराजासन, romanized: Naṭarājāsana), Lord of the Dance Pose or Dancer Pose is a standing, balancing, back-bending asana in modern yoga as exercise. It is derived from a pose in the classical Indian dance form Bharatnatyam, which is depicted in temple statues in the Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram. Nataraja, the "Dancing King", is in turn an aspect of the Hindu God Shiva, depicted in bronze statues from the Chola dynasty. The asana was most likely introduced into modern yoga by Krishnamacharya in the early 20th century, and taken up by his pupils, such as B. K. S. Iyengar, who made the pose his signature. Natarajasana is among the yoga poses often used in advertising, denoting desirable qualities such as flexibility and grace. ## Etymology and mythology The name comes from the Sanskrit epithet नटराज Naṭarāja, "Dancing King", one of the names given to the Hindu God Shiva in his form as the cosmic dancer, and आसन āsana meaning "posture" or "seat". Nataraja is the aspect of Shiva "whose ecstatic dance of destruction lays the foundation for the creation and sustenance of the universe." The significance of the image of the dancing Shiva is indicated by his gestures: he is depicted with four arms, standing on Avidya, the demon of ignorance. In his hands he beats out time on a drum, and holds the flame of Vidya, knowledge. Sometimes he holds a conch shell, signifying Om, the universal cosmic sound. He holds up a hand in the gesture of fearlessness, Abhayamudra. The pose is among some twenty asanas depicted in 13th – 18th century Bharatnatyam dance statues of the Eastern Gopuram, Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram. ## In modern yoga The yoga scholar Elliott Goldberg observes that Natarajasana is not found in any medieval hatha yoga text, nor is it mentioned by any pre-20th century traveller to India, or found in artistic depictions of yoga such as the Sritattvanidhi or the Mahamandir near Jodhpur. Goldberg argues that the pose, like several others, was introduced into modern yoga by Krishnamacharya in the early 20th century, and taken up by his pupils such as B. K. S. Iyengar, who made the pose a signature of modern yoga; Goldberg suggests that Iyengar transmitted the pose also to Sivananda, as Iyengar sent him a complete photo album showing Iyengar in all his asanas. Iyengar writes in the coverage of Natarajasana in his Light on Yoga that the god Shiva created over 100 dances, from gentle to fierce, of which the best-known is the Tāṇḍava, "the cosmic dance of destruction". He describes Natarajasana as a "vigorous and beautiful pose", and is pictured demonstrating the pose on the cover of some editions of his book. ## Description This aesthetic, stretching and balancing asana is said to require concentration and grace; it is used in the Indian classical dance form Bharatanatyam. The actor Mariel Hemingway describes Natarajasana as "a beautiful pose with tremendous power", comparing the balance and tension in the arms and legs with an archery bow, and calling it "a very difficult pose to hold." The pose is entered from standing in Tadasana, bending one knee and stretching that foot back until it can be grasped with the hand on that side. The foot can then be extended back and up, arching the back and stretching out the other arm forwards. For the full pose and a stronger stretch, reverse the rear arm by lifting it over the shoulder, and grasp the foot. ## Variations Reaching up and back with both arms, elbows upwards, to grasp the rear foot gives a more intense pose. The pose can be modified by grasping a strap around the rear foot, or by holding on to a support such as a wall or chair. ## See also - List of asanas

First-person shooter

Video game genre

First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of a protagonist or antagonist which is armed, and then controlling the player character in a three-dimensional space. The genre shares common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action game genre. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have challenged hardware development, and multiplayer gaming has been integral. The first-person shooter genre has been traced back to Wolfenstein 3D (1992), which has been credited with creating the genre's basic archetype upon which subsequent titles were based. One such title, and the progenitor of the genre's wider mainstream acceptance and popularity, was Doom (1993), often considered the most influential game in this genre; for some years, the term Doom clone was used to designate this genre due to Doom's influence. Corridor shooter was another common name for the genre in its early years, since processing limitations of the era's hardware meant that most of the action in the games had to take place in enclosed areas. 1998's Half-Life—along with its 2004 sequel Half-Life 2—enhanced the narrative and puzzle elements. In 1999, the Half-Life mod Counter-Strike was released and, together with Doom, is perhaps one of the most influential first-person shooters. GoldenEye 007, released in 1997, was a landmark first-person shooter for home consoles, while the Halo series heightened the Xbox's commercial and critical appeal as a platform for first-person shooter titles. ## Definition First-person shooters are a type of shooter game that relies on a first-person point of view with which the player experiences the action through the eyes of the character. They differ from third-person shooters in that, in a third-person shooter, the player can see the character they are controlling (usually from behind, or above). The primary design focus is combat, mainly involving firearms or other types of long range weapons. A defining feature of the genre is "player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space." This is a defining characteristic that clearly distinguishes the genre from other types of shooting games that employ a first-person perspective, including light gun shooters, rail shooters, shooting gallery games, or older shooting electro-mechanical games. First person-shooter games are thus categorized as being distinct from light gun shooters, a similar genre with a first-person perspective which uses dedicated light gun peripherals, in contrast to the use of conventional input devices. Light-gun shooters (like Virtua Cop) often feature "on-rails" (scripted) movement, whereas first-person shooters give the player complete freedom to roam the surroundings. The first-person shooter may be considered a distinct genre itself, or a type of shooter game, in turn a subgenre of the wider action game genre. Following the release of Doom in 1993, games in this style were commonly referred to as "Doom clones'''"; over time this term has largely been replaced by "first-person shooter". Wolfenstein 3D, released in 1992, the year before Doom, has been often credited with introducing the genre, but critics have since identified similar, though less advanced, games developed as far back as 1973. There are occasional disagreements regarding the specific design elements which constitute a first-person shooter. For example, titles like Deus Ex or BioShock may be considered as first-person shooters, but may also fit into the role-playing games category, as they borrow extensively from that genre. Other examples, like Far Cry and Rage, could also be considered adventure games, because they focus more on exploration than simple action, they task players with multiple different objectives other than just killing enemies, and they often revolve around the construction of complex cinematic storylines with a well defined cast of secondary characters to interact with. Furthermore, certain puzzle or platforming games are also sometimes categorized as first-person shooters, in spite of lacking any direct combat or shooting element, instead using a first-person perspective to help players immerse within the game and better navigate 3D environments (for example, in the case of Portal, the 'gun' the player character carries is used to create portals through walls rather than fire projectiles). Some commentators also extend the definition to include combat flight simulators and space battle games, whenever the cockpit of the aircraft is depicted from a first-person point of view. ## Game design Like most shooter games, first-person shooters involve an avatar, one or more ranged weapons, and a varying number of enemies. Because they take place in a 3D environment, these games tend to be somewhat more realistic than 2D shooter games, and have more accurate representations of gravity, lighting, sound and collisions. First-person shooters played on personal computers are most often controlled with a combination of a keyboard and mouse. This system has been claimed as superior to that found in console games, which frequently use two analog sticks: one used for running and sidestepping, the other for looking and aiming. It is common to display the character's hands and weaponry in the main view, with a heads-up display showing health, ammunition and location details. Often, it is possible to overlay a map of the surrounding area. ### Combat and power-ups First-person shooters generally focus on action gameplay, with fast-paced combat and dynamic firefights being a central point of the experience, though certain titles may also place a greater emphasis on narrative, problem-solving and logic puzzles. In addition to shooting, melee combat may also be used extensively. In some games, melee weapons are especially powerful, as a reward for the risk the player must take in maneuvering his character into close proximity to the enemy. In other games, instead, melee weapons may be less effective but necessary as a last resort. "Tactical shooters" tend to be more realistic, and require the players to use teamwork and strategy in order to succeed; the players can often command a squad of characters, which may be controlled by the A.I. or by human teammates, and can be given different tasks during the course of the mission. First-person shooters typically present players with a vast arsenal of weapons, which can have a large impact on how they will approach the game. Some games offer realistic reproductions of actual existing (or even historical) firearms, simulating their rate of fire, magazine size, ammunition amount, recoil and accuracy. Depending on the context, other first-person shooters may incorporate some imaginative variations, including futuristic prototypes, alien-technology or magical weapons, and/or implementing a wide array of different projectiles, from lasers, to energy, plasma, rockets, and arrows. These many variations may also be applied to the tossing of grenades, bombs, spears and the like. Also, more unconventional modes of destruction may be employed by the playable character, such as flames, electricity, telekinesis or other supernatural powers, and traps. In the early era of first-person shooters, often designers allowed characters to carry a large number of different weapons with little to no reduction in speed or mobility. More modern games started to adopt a more realistic approach, where the player can only equip a handheld gun, coupled with a rifle, or even limiting the players to only one weapon of choice at a time, forcing them to swap between different alternatives according to the situation. In some games, there's the option to trade up or upgrade weapons, resulting in multiple degrees of customization. Thus, the standards of realism are extremely variable. The protagonist can generally get healing and equipment supplies by means of collectible items such as first aid kits or ammunition packs, simply by walking over, or interacting with them. Some games allow players to accumulate experience points in a role-playing game fashion, that can generally be used to unlock new weapons, bonuses and skills. ### Level design First-person shooters may be structurally composed of levels, or use the technique of a continuous narrative in which the game never leaves the first-person perspective. Others feature large sandbox environments, which are not divided into levels and can be explored freely. In first-person shooters, protagonists interact with the environment to varying degrees, from basics such as using doors, to problem solving puzzles based on a variety of interactive objects. In some games, the player can damage the environment, also to varying degrees: one common device is the use of barrels containing explosive material which the player can shoot, harming nearby enemies. Other games feature environments which are extensively destructible, allowing for additional visual effects. The game world will often make use of science fiction, historic (particularly World War II) or modern military themes, with such antagonists as aliens, monsters, terrorists and soldiers of various types. Games feature multiple difficulty settings; in harder modes, enemies are tougher, more aggressive and do more damage, and power-ups are limited. In easier modes, the player can succeed through reaction times alone; on more difficult settings, it is often necessary to memorize the levels through trial and error. ### Multiplayer First-person shooters may feature a multiplayer mode, taking place on specialized levels. Some games are designed specifically for multiplayer gaming, and have very limited single player modes in which the player competes against game-controlled characters termed "bots". Massively multiplayer online first-person shooters like those in the PlanetSide series allow thousands of players to compete at once in a persistent world. Large scale multiplayer games allow multiple squads, with leaders issuing commands and a commander controlling the team's overall strategy. Multiplayer games have a variety of different styles of match. The classic types are the deathmatch (and its team-based variant) in which players score points by killing other players' characters; and capture the flag, in which teams attempt to penetrate the opposing base, capture a flag and return it to their own base whilst preventing the other team from doing the same. Other game modes may involve attempting to capture enemy bases or areas of the map, attempting to take hold of an object for as long as possible while evading other players, or deathmatch variations involving limited lives or in which players fight over a particularly potent power-up. These match types may also be customizable, allowing the players to vary weapons, health and power-ups found on the map, as well as victory criteria. Games may allow players to choose between various classes, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, equipment and roles within a team. ### Free-to-play There are many free-to-play first-person shooters on the market now, including Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Apex Legends, Team Fortress 2, PlanetSide 2, and Halo Infinite Multiplayer. Some games are released as free-to-play as their intended business model and can be highly profitable (League of Legends earned \$2 billion in 2017), but others such as Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade begin their life as paid games and become free-to-play later to reach a wider audience after an initially disappointing reception. Some player communities complain about freemium first-person-shooters, fearing that they create unbalanced games, but many game designers have tweaked prices in response to criticism, and players can usually get the same benefits by playing longer rather than paying. ## History ### Origins: 1970s–1980s The earliest two documented first-person shooter video games are Maze War and Spasim. Maze War was originally developed in 1973 by Greg Thompson, Steve Colley and Howard Palmer, high-school students in a NASA work-study program trying to develop a program to help visualize fluid dynamics for spacecraft designs. The work became a maze game presented to the player in the first-person, and later included support for a second player and the ability to shoot the other player to win the game. Thompson took the game's code with him to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where with help from Dave Lebling to create an eight-player version that could be played over ARPANET, computer-run players using artificial intelligence, customizable maps, online scoreboards and a spectator mode. Spasim had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974. The game was a rudimentary space flight simulator for up to 32 players, featuring a first-person perspective. Both games were distinct from modern first-person shooters, involving simple tile-based movement where the player could only move from square to square and turn in 90-degree increments. Such games spawned others that used similar visuals to display the player as part of a maze (such as Akalabeth: World of Doom in 1979), and were loosely called "rat's eye view" games, since they gave the appearance of a rat running through a maze. Another crucial early game that influenced first-person shooters was Wayout. It featured the player trying to escape a maze, using ray casting to render the environment, simulating visually how each wall segment would be rendered relative to the player's position and facing angle. This allowed more freeform movement compared to the grid-based and cardinal Maze War and Spasim. A slightly more sophisticated first-person shooting mainframe game was Panther (1975), a tank simulator for the PLATO system. Atari's first-person tank shooter arcade video game Battlezone (1980) was released for arcades and presented using a vector graphics display, with the game designed by Ed Rotberg. It is considered to be the first successful first-person shooter video game, making it a milestone for the genre. It was primarily inspired by Atari's top-down arcade shooter game Tank (1974). The original arcade cabinet also employed a periscope viewfinder similar to submarine shooting arcade games such as Midway's video game Sea Wolf (1976) and Sega's electro-mechanical game Periscope (1966). Battlezone became the first successful mass-market game featuring a first-person viewpoint and wireframe 3D graphics, with a version later released for home computers in 1983. ### Early first-person shooters: 1987–1992 MIDI Maze, a first-person shooter released in 1987 for the Atari ST, featured maze-based gameplay and character designs similar to Pac-Man, but displayed in a first-person perspective. Later ported to various systems — including the Game Boy and Super NES under the title Faceball 2000 — it featured the first network multiplayer deathmatches, using a MIDI interface. Despite the inconvenience of connecting numerous machines together, it gained a cult following; 1UP.com called it the "first multi-player 3D shooter on a mainstream system" and the first "major LAN action game". Id Software's Hovertank 3D pioneered ray casting technology in May 1991 to enable faster gameplay than 1980s vehicle simulators; and Catacomb 3-D introduced another advance, texture mapping, in November 1991. The second game to use texture mapping was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a March 1992 action role-playing game by Looking Glass Technologies that featured a first-person viewpoint and an advanced graphics engine. In October 1990, id developer John Romero learned about texture mapping from a phone call to Paul Neurath. Romero described the texture mapping technique to id programmer John Carmack, who remarked, "I can do that.", and would feel motivated by Looking Glass's example to do the same in Catacomb 3-D. Catacomb 3-D also introduced the display of the protagonist's hand and weapon (in this case, magical spells) on the screen, whereas previously aspects of the player's avatar were not visible. The experience of developing Ultima Underworld would make it possible for Looking Glass to create the Thief and System Shock series years later. ### Rise in popularity: 1992–1995 Wolfenstein 3D (created by id Software as a successor of the successful 1980s video games Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein and released in 1992) was an instant success, fueled largely by its shareware release, and has been credited with inventing the first-person shooter genre. It was built on the ray casting technology pioneered in earlier games to create a revolutionary template for shooter game design, which first-person shooters are still based upon today. Despite its violent themes, Wolfenstein largely escaped the controversy generated by the later Doom, although it was banned in Germany due to the use of Nazi iconography; and the Super NES version replaced the enemy attack dogs with giant rats. Apogee Software, the publisher of Wolfenstein 3D, followed up its success with Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold in 1993 which featured friendly non-player characters in the form of informants that would give the player hints and supplies. The game was initially well-received but sales rapidly declined in the wake of the success of id's Doom, released a week later. Doom, released as shareware in 1993, refined Wolfenstein 3D's template by adding support for higher resolution, improved textures, variations in height (e.g., stairs and platforms the player's character could climb upon), more intricate level design (Wolfenstein 3D was limited to a grid based system where walls had to be orthogonal to each other, whereas Doom allowed for any inclination) and rudimentary illumination effects such as flickering lights and areas of darkness, creating a far more believable 3D environment than Wolfenstein 3D's levels, all of which had a flat-floor space and corridors. Doom allowed competitive matches between multiple players, termed "deathmatches", and the game was responsible for the word's subsequent entry into the video gaming lexicon. According to creator John Romero, the game's deathmatch concept was inspired by the competitive multiplayer of fighting games such as Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury. Doom became so popular that its multiplayer features began to cause problems for companies whose networks were used to play the game, causing frequent bandwidth reductions. Doom has been considered the most important first-person shooter ever made. It was highly influential not only on subsequent shooter games but on video gaming in general, and has been made available on almost every video gaming system since. Multiplayer gaming, which is now integral to the first-person shooter genre, was first successfully achieved on a large scale by Doom. While its combination of gory violence, dark humor and hellish imagery garnered acclaim from critics, these attributes also generated criticism from religious groups and censorship committees, with many commentators labelling the game a "murder simulator". There was further controversy when it emerged that the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre were fans of the game; the families of several victims later unsuccessfully attempted to sue numerous video game companies - among them id Software - whose work the families claimed inspired the massacre. In 1994, Raven Software released Heretic, which used a modified version of the Doom engine that allowed for vertical aiming, an inventory system to store and select items, and gibs. Star Wars: Dark Forces was released in 1995 after LucasArts decided Star Wars would make appropriate material for a game in the style of Doom. However, Star Wars: Dark Forces improved on several technical features that Doom lacked, such as the ability to crouch, jump, or look and aim up and down. Dark Forces also was one of the first games to incorporate 3D-designed objects rendered into the game's 2.5D graphics engine. Apogee's Rise of the Triad began as a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, but was soon altered and became a stand-alone game released in 1995. The game included "ludicrous" gibs, bullet holes persisted, and sheets of glass can be shattered by shooting or running through it. Apogee followed up with Duke Nukem 3D (sequel to the earlier platformers Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II), released in 1996, which ran on the Build engine and was "the last of the great, sprite-based shooters." Duke Nukem 3D won acclaim for its humor based around stereotyped machismo as well as its adrenalinic gameplay and graphics. However, some found the game's (and later the whole series') treatment of women to be derogatory and tasteless. Most shooters in this period were developed for IBM PC compatible computers. On the Macintosh side, Bungie released its first shooter, Pathways into Darkness in 1993, which featured more adventure and narrative elements alongside first-person shooter gameplay. Pathways had been inspired by Wolfenstein 3D, and born out of an attempt to take their previous top-down dungeon exploration game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete into a 3D setting. In the subsequent year, Bungie released Marathon, which streamlined concepts from Pathways by eliminating role-playing elements in favor of the shooter action. Marathon was highly successful, leading to two sequels to form the Marathon Trilogy, and becoming the standard for first-person shooters on that platform. Marathon pioneered or was an early adopter of several new features such as default freelook, dual-wielded and dual-function weapons, versatile multiplayer modes (such as King of the Hill, Kill the Man with the Ball, and cooperative play), and friendly non-player characters (NPCs). The Marathon games also had a strong emphasis on storytelling in addition to the action, which would continue in Bungie's future projects, like Halo and Destiny. ### Advances in 3D graphics: 1995–1999 In 1994, Japanese company Exact released Geograph Seal for the Sharp X68000 home computer. An obscure import title as far as the Western market is concerned, it was nonetheless an early example of a 3D polygonal first-person shooter, with innovative platform game mechanics and free-roaming outdoor environments. The following year, Exact released its successor for the PlayStation console, called Jumping Flash!, which placed more emphasis on its platform elements. Descent (released by Parallax Software in 1995), a game in which the player pilots a spacecraft around caves and factory ducts, was among the earliest truly three-dimensional first-person shooters. It abandoned sprites and ray casting in favour of polygonal models and allowed movement through all of the six possible degrees of freedom. Shortly after the release of Duke Nukem 3D, in 1996, id Software released the much anticipated Quake. Like Doom, Quake was influential and genre-defining, featuring fast-paced, gory gameplay, within a completely 3D game environment, and making use of real-time rendered polygonal models instead of sprites. It was centered on online gaming and featured multiple match types still found in first-person shooter games today. It was the first FPS game to gain a cult following of player clans (although the concept had existed previously in MechWarrior 2s Netmech, with its Battletech lore as well as amongst MUD players), and would inspire popular LAN parties and events such as QuakeCon. The game's popularity and use of 3D polygonal graphics also helped to expand the growing market for video card hardware; and the additional support and encouragement for game modifications attracted players who wanted to tinker with the game and create their own modules. According to creator John Romero, Quake's 3D world was inspired by the 3D fighting game Virtua Fighter. Quake was also intended to expand the genre with Virtua Fighter influenced melee brawling, but this element was eventually scrapped from the final game. Based on the James Bond film, Rare's GoldenEye 007 was released in 1997, and as of 2004 it was still the best-selling Nintendo 64 game in the United States. It has been the first landmark first-person shooter for console gamers and was highly acclaimed for its atmospheric single-player campaign and well designed multiplayer maps. It featured a sniper rifle, the ability to perform head-shots, and the incorporation of stealth elements (all of these aspects were also included in the game's spiritual sequel, Perfect Dark) as well as some Virtua Cop-inspired features such as weapon reloading, position-dependent hit reaction animations, penalties for killing innocents, and a newly designed aiming system that allowed players to aim at a precise spot on the screen. Though not the first of its kind, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six started a popular trend of tactical first-person shooters in 1998. It featured a team-based, realistic design and themes based around counter-terrorism, requiring missions to be planned before execution and in it, a single hit was sometimes enough to kill a character. Medal of Honor, released in 1999, gave birth to a long running proliferation of simulative first-person shooters set during World War II. Valve's Half-Life was released in 1998, based upon Quake's graphics technology. Initially met with only mild anticipation, it went on to become a commercial success. While most of the previous first-person shooters on the IBM PC platform had focused on visceral gameplay with relatively weak or irrelevant plots, Half-Life placed a far bigger focus on strong narrative; the game featured no cut scenes but remained in the first-person perspective at all times. It capitalized heavily on the concepts of non-enemy characters (previously featured in many other titles, such as the Marathon series and Strife) and wider in-game interactivity (as first introduced by the likes of Duke Nukem 3D and System Shock) but did not employ power-ups in the traditional sense, making for a somewhat more believable overall experience. The game was praised for its artificial intelligence, selection of weapons and attention to detail and "has since been recognized as one of the greatest games of all time" according to GameSpot. Its sequel, Half-Life 2, (released in 2004), was less influential though "arguably a more impressive game". Starsiege: Tribes, also released in 1998, was a multiplayer online shooter allowing more than 32 players in a single match. It featured team-based gameplay with a variety of specialized roles, and an unusual jet pack feature. The game was highly popular and later imitated by many other titles such as the Battlefield series. Id's Quake III Arena and Epic's Unreal Tournament, both released in 1999, became the real milestones for multiplayer gaming, thanks to their incredible graphics and frenetic, yet accessible and perfectly balanced online modes; on the other hand, both games only featured a very limited single player campaign designed for a more "disposable" arcade approach. Counter-Strike was also released in 1999, a Half-Life modification with a counter-terrorism theme copied from Rainbow Six. The game and later version Counter-Strike: Source (2004) went on to become the most popular multiplayer game modification ever, with over 90,000 players competing online at any one time during its peak. ### Online wars and return of the console: 2000–2008 At the E3 game show in 1999, Bungie unveiled a real-time strategy game called Halo; aka Halo CE at the following E3, an overhauled third-person shooter version was displayed. In 2000, Bungie was bought by Microsoft. Halo was then revamped and released as a first-person shooter; it was one of the launch titles for the Xbox console. It was a runaway critical and commercial success, and is considered a premier console first-person shooter. It featured narrative and storyline reminiscent of Bungie's earlier Marathon series but now told largely through in-game dialog and cut scenes. It also received acclaim for its characters, both the protagonist, Master Chief and its alien antagonists. The sequel, Halo 2 (2004), brought the popularity of online gaming to the console market through the medium of Xbox Live, on which it was the most played game for almost two years. Deus Ex, released by Ion Storm in 2000, featured a levelling system similar to that found in role-playing games; it also had multiple narratives depending on how the player completed missions and won acclaim for its serious, artistic style. The Resident Evil games Survivor in 2000 and Dead Aim in 2003 attempted to combine the light gun and first-person shooter genres along with survival horror elements. Metroid Prime, released in 2002 for the GameCube, a highly praised first-person shooter, incorporated action adventure elements such as jumping puzzles and built on the Metroid series of 2D side-scrolling platform-adventures. Taking a "massive stride forward for first-person games", the game emphasized its adventure elements rather than shooting and was credited by journalist Chris Kohler with "breaking the genre free from the clutches of Doom". Efforts to develop early handheld video games with 3-D graphics have eventually led to the dawn of ambitious handheld first-person shooter games, starting with two Game Boy Advance ports of Back Track and Doom not long after the system was launched in 2001. The GBA eventually saw the release of several first-person shooter games specifically tailored for it, including Duke Nukem Advance, Ecks vs. Sever and Dark Arena, with a sizable amount of them being praised for pushing the hardware to the limit while providing satisfying gameplay. Despite their varying reception, they would demonstrate the viability of first-person shooters on handhelds, which became more apparent with new technological advances that accompanied future handheld systems. World War II Online, released in 2001, featured a persistent and "massively multiplayer environment", although IGN said that "the full realization of that environment is probably still a few years away." Battlefield 1942, another World War II shooter released in 2002, featured large scale battles incorporating aircraft, naval vessels, land vehicles and infantry combat. In 2003, PlanetSide allowed hundreds of players at once to compete in a persistent world, and was also promoted as the "world's first massively multiplayer online first person shooter." The Serious Sam series, first released in 2001, and Painkiller, released in 2004, both emphasized fighting waves of enemies in large open arenas, in an attempt to hearken back to the genre's roots. Doom 3, released in 2004, placed a greater emphasis on horror and frightening the player than previous games in the series and was a critically acclaimed best seller, though some commentators felt it lacked gameplay substance and innovation, putting too much emphasis on impressive graphics. In 2005, a film based on Doom featured a sequence that emulated the viewpoint and action of the first-person shooter, but was critically derided as deliberately unintelligent and gratuitously violent. In 2005, F.E.A.R. was acclaimed for successfully combining first-person shooter gameplay with a Japanese horror atmosphere. Later in 2007, Irrational Games' BioShock would be acclaimed by some commentators as the best game of that year for its innovation in artistry, narrative and design, with some calling it the "spiritual successor" to Irrational's earlier System Shock 2. Finally, the Crytek games Far Cry (2004) and Crysis (2007) as well as Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 (2008) would break new ground in terms of graphics and large, open-ended level design, whereas Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), Resistance: Fall of Man (2006) and its sequel Resistance 2 (2008) presented increasingly refined linear levels and narratives, with the fast pace and linearity of the Call of Duty games bearing a resemblance to rail shooters. BLACK in 2006 was considered to be a leader in cinematic game design, with strong sound design and destructible environments. In 2007, Portal popularized the concept of puzzles mechanics in first-person perspective. In 2006, Gamasutra reported the first-person shooter as one of the biggest and fastest growing video game genres in terms of revenue for publishers. ### 2008–present Team Fortress 2, originally a user-made mod for Quake but made into an official product by Valve by its release in 2007, launched a new type of team-based subgenre called hero shooters, which consist of first-person and third-person shooters where players selected from one of several pre-made characters with existing weapons and skill sets, using those different characters effectively to complete objectives against their opponents. The hero shooter genre had significant growth following the release of Overwatch in which refined the hero shooter formula by adding unique characters and larger narrative as they expanded the game in future updates. The use of motion-detecting game controllers – particularly the Wii's – "promised to make FPS controls more approachable and precise with an interface as simple as literally pointing to aim" and thus "dramatically reshape the first-person shooter." However, technical difficulties pertinent to functions other than aiming – such as maneuvering or reloading – prevented their widespread use among first-person shooters. The Pointman user interface combines a motion-sensitive gamepad, head tracker and sliding foot pedals to increase the precision and level of control over one's avatar in military first-person shooter games. In the late 2010s, first-person and third-person shooters enjoyed a surge in popularity with the rise of battle royale games, in which many players battle for survival on a large map to be the last man or team standing through intense action-packed combat, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (2017) reached the highest number of concurrent players ever to be recorded on Steam. Its free-to-play mobile game version, PUBG Mobile'' (2018), reached over 1 billion downloads worldwide by early 2021 and grossed over \$8 billion by early 2022. ## Research In 2010, researchers at Leiden University showed that playing first-person shooter video games is associated with superior mental flexibility. Compared to non-players, players of such games were found to require a significantly shorter reaction time while switching between complex tasks, possibly because they are required to develop a more responsive mindset to rapidly react to fast-moving visual and auditory stimuli, and to shift back and forth between different sub-duties. ## See also - First-person shooter engine - List of first-person shooters - Social interaction and first-person shooters

Marvin Williams (footballer)

English association football player

Marvin Travis Williams (born 12 August 1987) is an English former footballer who played as a winger and forward. Williams began his career as a trainee at Millwall, progressing through the club's youth system. Williams made his first-team debut for Millwall during the club's 2005–06 season, signing his first professional contract in January 2006. He joined Torquay United on loan in March 2007 in an attempt to play regular first-team football, before returning to his parent club a month later. Williams played over 50 times for Millwall during his two years at the club. Ahead of the 2007–08 season, he signed for Yeovil Town for an undisclosed fee, and spent a season with the Somerset club. He joined Brentford in June 2008 on a one-year contract, and helped the club achieve promotion to League One. Williams then joined Torquay United, this time on a permanent basis, but only made four appearances for the club, and was released in December 2009. A spell at Swedish Third Division club Östersund followed in April 2010, playing seven times before leaving the team in June that year. In October 2010, Williams briefly joined League Two club Stevenage on non-contract terms, but was released two weeks later. Williams signed for Hemel Hempstead Town in early 2011, but soon returned to full-time football with Conference South club Salisbury City. In May 2012, he joined Eastleigh. Williams was released from his contract at Eastleigh just two months into the 2012–13 season and subsequently signed for fellow Conference South team Sutton United in October 2012. Williams was loaned out to Tonbridge Angels during the 2014–15 season. He retired from playing due to a persistent achilles problem in 2015. ## Early life Williams was born in Sydenham and educated at Addey and Stanhope School. ## Career ### Millwall Williams began his career at Millwall at the age of 9 and progressed through the club's youth system. He made his first-team debut for the club on 10 December 2005, coming on as a late substitute for Jermaine Wright in a 1–0 defeat away to Coventry City. Williams scored his first professional goal on 2 January 2006, the winner in a 2–1 home victory against Derby County, controlling David Livermore's pass before beating Lee Camp in the Derby goal. Five days later, Williams signed his first professional contract with Millwall, just hours before the club's FA Cup tie against Premier League club Everton. Williams subsequently made his first start against Everton, scoring just before half-time in a 1–1 draw. He later described the goal as one of the highlights of his career. He scored his third goal for Millwall in the club's 2–1 victory against Luton Town at The Den on 4 March 2006. Williams' goal came in injury-time, one which was described as "priceless" due to Millwall's precarious league position. Williams played 24 games during the 2005–06 season, scoring five times as Millwall were relegated to League One. He scored his first goal of the 2006–07 season on 26 August 2006, scoring with a "low shot" to give Millwall the lead against Cheltenham Town, although Millwall ended up losing the match 3–2. Williams went six months without scoring, ending his goal drought in Millwall's 2–1 away win at Oldham Athletic on 17 February 2007. After Williams was not included on the substitutes' bench in Millwall's 2–0 home win against Cheltenham Town on 3 March 2007, he requested to go out on loan in order to "start playing regular first-team football". Three days later, on 6 March 2007, Williams joined League Two club Torquay United on loan for the remainder of the season. He scored on his Torquay debut in a 3–0 home victory against Wycombe Wanderers on 10 March 2007. After playing twice for Torquay, Millwall took advantage of the clause that stated Williams could be recalled after 28 days when it was revealed that the club's top scorer Darren Byfield would be out for the rest of the season. He was recalled on 4 April 2007. Williams played 31 games for Millwall during the 2006–07 season, scoring three goals. Williams played 55 times for Millwall during his two-year association with the club, scoring eight times. ### Yeovil Town Ahead of the 2007–08 season, on 26 July 2007, Williams signed a two-year contract for Yeovil Town of League One for an undisclosed fee. On signing for Yeovil, Williams stated Yeovil manager Russell Slade "was really persistent and was the one that really came in and pushed for me. From there I always knew that I would join Yeovil". He made his debut for Yeovil in the club's 1–0 away loss to Huddersfield Town on 11 August 2007, playing the opening 74 minutes. Williams made just nine starting appearances for Yeovil during the season, an ankle injury sustained in training in September 2007 also meant he missed three months of first-team action. He played 24 times for Yeovil during the season. ### Brentford Williams joined League Two club Brentford on 27 June 2008, signing an initial one-year contract. He joined Brentford for a nominal fee, having had a year left on his contract at Yeovil. He made his debut in the club's first game of the season, a 1–0 loss away to Bury, playing 75 minutes of the match before being substituted for Moses Ademola. A week later, Williams provided assists for Nathan Elder and Charlie MacDonald in Brentford's 4–0 win against Grimsby Town. He scored his first goal for Brentford in the club's 2–2 Football League Trophy draw with Luton Town at Kenilworth Road on 7 October 2008, a game in which Brentford were beaten on penalties. He played a total of 37 times, scoring twice, during Brentford's successful 2008–09 season, as the club finished as League Two champions. Shortly after the conclusion of the season, on 9 May 2009, Williams was transfer-listed by Brentford manager Andy Scott. The decision to transfer-list Williams was "agreed mutually" due to the player's first team chances being described as "limited" by Scott. Despite being placed on the transfer list, Williams remained at Brentford a month into the 2009–10 season, eventually leaving by mutual consent when he signed a six-month contract with Torquay United, the club he had previously spent time on loan with, on a free transfer. After four appearances for Torquay, Williams was released by the club in December 2009. ### Östersunds FK Williams fell foul of an FA rule which states that players cannot play for more than two clubs in one season – Williams had already made one six-minute substitute appearance for Brentford and also played on loan at Torquay United during the 2009–10 season. Due to this ruling, he had to look for first-team football either outside of the UK or within the non-League football pyramid. He joined Swedish Third Division club Östersund in April 2010. He signed for the Swedish club after English manager Lee Makel contacted him, asking him to play for Östersunds on a short-term basis. He made his debut in Östersunds' 7–1 away win in the Swedish Cup second round against Umedalens IF on 11 April 2010. He played alongside other English players in the form of Joe Holt, Richard Offiong, and Jon Routledge during his time with Östersunds. Williams made his first league start the following week, playing the whole match in a 1–0 loss to Vasalunds IF. Williams went on to make nine appearances for the Swedish side, scoring his only goal in his last game for the club, a 1–1 draw with Valsta Syrianska IK on 5 June 2010. He left the Swedish club June 2010, describing it as "a really interesting experience culturally". ### Return to England The 2010–11 season meant that Williams was eligible to once again play in the Football League, and he subsequently featured for League Two club Stevenage's reserve team in September 2010. After a short trial period, he signed for the club on non-contract terms on 2 October 2010. On the same day as his signing was announced, Williams made his first-team debut for Stevenage in the club's 2–0 loss to Wycombe Wanderers, coming on as a 73rd-minute substitute in the match. Williams left the club after two weeks, having made one appearance. He then joined Hemel Hempstead Town in February 2011 for the remainder of the 2010–11 season. He continued to play for Hemel until he was offered a full-time contract by Conference South club Salisbury City, which he signed on 14 November 2011. Salisbury manager Darrell Clarke commented on Williams' "experience and great pedigree" as being factors in the move, also noting that Williams was "delighted" to be back playing full-time football. A day after joining Salisbury, Williams scored two goals on his debut after coming on as a second-half substitute in a 4–3 defeat to Welling United. Williams scored his first ever professional hat-trick in Salisbury's 3–1 win over Sutton United on 21 April 2012, the club's last home league game of the 2011–12 season. He ended the season having scored 10 times in 28 appearances for the club. ### Sutton United Ahead of the 2012–13 season, Williams signed for Eastleigh, also of the Conference South, on an initial two-year contract. After making eleven appearances, scoring once in a 3–0 away win against Havant & Waterlooville, he was released from his Eastleigh contract in October 2012, and subsequently signed for Sutton United. Williams made his debut for Sutton in the club's 2–1 victory over Truro City on 27 October 2012, playing the first 75 minutes of the match before being replaced by Paul Telfer. He scored his first goal for Sutton on 1 January 2013, netting from a tight angle in the club's 2–0 away victory over Bromley. Having scored twice in his first five months at Sutton, Williams hit a rich vein of goalscoring form in April 2013 to end the 2012–13 season. This run included three separate braces in convincing victories against Farnborough, Hayes & Yeading United and Bath City respectively and meant that Williams ended the season with nine goals in seven matches, with Sutton narrowly missing out on a play-off place despite winning their last eight league games. In his opening season with the club, he scored 11 times in 30 matches. The following season, Williams was limited to 16 appearances due to injury, scoring once. Having started the opening month of the 2014–15 season making six of his seven appearances for Sutton from the substitutes' bench, Williams was loaned out to Isthmian League Premier Division club Tonbridge Angels on a one-month deal in October 2014. The loan agreement was aimed to assist Williams in his recovery from long-term injury. He made his debut for Tonbridge in a 1–0 home defeat to Billericay Town on 8 November 2014, coming on as a 68th-minute substitute in the match. The loan deal was later extended for the remainder of the 2014–15 season, as he went on to make 25 appearances during his time at the club, scoring three times. This included a goal in a 2–2 draw with Dulwich Hamlet on 25 April 2015. It proved to be his final appearance as a persistent achilles problem that was present for the final two seasons of his career forced him to retire from playing. ## Style of play Williams was originally deployed as a striker when he first broke into the Millwall first team in 2006. Towards the latter stages of the 2005–06 season he was often used as the second striker alongside Ben May, and would use his quick turn of pace to "cause opposition defences' problems". When Williams signed for Brentford in 2008, manager Andy Scott described him as "quick and direct", as well as saying "he can play wide on the right or up front – he has a lot of potential". ## Coaching career In 2014, Williams established a football academy at Sutton United and his role entails overseeing "the programme, from coaching to taking matchdays, arranging the logistics of a game as well as organising fixtures and recruitment". ## Personal life In late 2010, he undertook a personal training course. Williams has two children. ## Career statistics ## Honours Brentford - League Two: 2008–09

Jerk De Soleil

"Jerk De Soleil" is the 12th broadcast episode of the first season of the animated television series Phineas and Ferb. In the episode, stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb and their friends host a circus in their backyard, attracting much attention from the neighborhood. The boys' sister, Candace, tries to expose the cirque to her mother while experiencing an allergic reaction to wild parsnips. "Jerk De Soleil" was written by Bobby Gaylor and Martin Olson, and directed by series co-creator Dan Povenmire, who also provided the voice for Candace on scenes where the character was experiencing an allergic reaction, as the crew was unable to lower the voice of her regular actress, Ashley Tisdale, to the necessary degree. The episode was originally broadcast on February 10, 2008, as part of the special marathon event "Phineas and Ferb-urary". It received generally positive reviews. ## Voice cast - Vincent Martella as Phineas Flynn - Thomas Sangster as Ferb Fletcher - Ashley Tisdale as Candace Flynn, Mindy - Alyson Stoner as Isabella Garcia-Shapiro - Caroline Rhea as Linda Flynn-Fletcher - Richard O'Brian as Lawrence Fletcher, Additional Voices - Mitchel Musso as Jeremy Johnson, Additional Voices - Maulik Pancholy as Baljeet Rai, Additional Voices - Bobby Gaylor as Buford Van Stomm, Additional Voices - Dee Bradley Baker as Perry the Platypus, Additional Voices - Dan Povenmire as Dr. Doofenshmirtz, Candace Flynn (allergy affected), Additional Voices - Jeff "Swampy" Marsh as Major Monogram, Additional Voices - Eileen Galindo as Vivian Garcia-Shapiro - Alec Holden as Django Brown - Ariel Winter as Additional Voices ## Plot Plans for Phineas, Ferb, and their friends Isabella, Baljeet, Buford, and Django to go to the local circus, "Cirque de lune" are ruined after the performance is canceled due to the ringleader having an allergy after Baljeet comes from his mom's car at the start of the episode. Undeterred, the boys and their friends decide to build their own circus in their backyard and have themselves and their other friends act as performers. The cirque tent is speedily put up, and the group prepare their costumes. Candace discovers the boys' circus and has set out to tell their mother, when Jeremy stops by to give her a basket of plants. Unfortunately, they include some wild parsnips, which give Candace an allergic reaction: to hide her hives and deep, scratchy voice she dons a sweatsuit and a paper bag before going to the mall to tell Linda about the boys' plans, and then sings E.V.I.L. B.O.Y.S. where Linda and her friend Vivian, Isabella's mother, are. Exasperated, Candace returns to the circus, where Jeremy has saved a spot for her, only for the boys to mistake her for Buford, whose act is of a mud jumping performance, and include her in his act. She is sent flying through the roof of the tent, just as Doofenshmirtz and Perry are flying overhead. Doofenshmirtz's machine: the Voice-inator, activates, giving everyone in the cirque audience high-pitched voices that cause the tent to rupture. The high velocity of the Voice-inator propels the tent up into the air, destroying the machine and sending Doofenshmirtz flying off (with a high voice). Jeremy gives a CD to Candace, but Candace is not at the house, but Candace then gets the CD from Jeremy. ## Production "Jerk De Soleil" was written by Bobby Gaylor and Martin Olson. It was storyboarded by the creator of Regular Show series J. G. Quintel, and Kim Roberson, and directed by Phineas and Ferb co-creator Dan Povenmire. The crew was unable to lower the pitch of actress Ashley Tisdale's delivery enough for the scenes in which allergies give Candace a deep voice; instead, Povenmire voiced the character in her place. "Jerk De Soleil" was originally broadcast in the United States on Disney Channel on February 10, 2008, as part of the special month-long marathon event "Phineas and Ferb-urary." It was released on the DVD compilation The Daze of Summer on its first anniversary, alongside nine other episodes, including the previously unaired "Unfair Science Fair" and "Unfair Science Fair Redux (Another Story)." E.V.I.L. B.O.Y.S. — the episode's featured musical number — became available along with several other songs on the official Phineas and Ferb soundtrack later in 2009. ## Cultural references Phineas and Ferb's elaborate backyard cirque is a parody of Cirque du Soleil, a real-life Canadian traveling company which performs circus arts and street entertainment. The scene where Candace jumps onto the stage and sings about her hardships, mainly concerning her inability to successfully tattle on her brothers, references a scene in the film Adventures in Babysitting (1987) in which Elisabeth Shue's character sings about her hardships similarly. ## Reception "Jerk De Soleil" received generally positive reviews from television critics. The Kidzworld website called Phineas and Ferb's cirque "magical." Writing for DVD Town, reviewer James Plath wrote that the subplot with Doofenshmirtz and Perry "absolutely evokes the old Boris and Natasha plans on Rocky and Bullwinkle." USA Today blogger Whitney Matheson, reviewing the episode, described the entire series as "a short 'toon that zooms all over the place in 15 minutes" and "an animated version of Parker Lewis Can't Lose," calling the writing "clever without being too cute." The song "E.V.I.L. B.O.Y.S." also received a generally favorable reception. Wired magazine called it an "ever-pleasing blues banger." Fan reaction to the song was also positive, and in the 2009 television event "Phineas and Ferb's Musical Cliptastic Countdown," voters ranked it the series' sixth-best musical feature.

Mysore Airport

Airport in Mysuru, India

Mysuru Airport , also known as Mandakalli Airport, is a domestic airport serving Mysore, a city in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located near the village of Mandakalli, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south of the city, and is owned and operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). At present, it has direct flights to Chennai, Goa, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The airport's history dates to the 1940s, when it was constructed by the Kingdom of Mysore. Passenger service, training flights of the Indian Air Force, and other operations took place at Mysore Airport during its first several decades. ## History In 1940, the Princely State of Mysore established the airport on 290 acres (120 ha) of land. Following Indian independence in 1947, the Government of Karnataka assumed control of the airfield. The Ministry of Civil Aviation took control in 1950. Passenger service to Bangalore using Dakota aircraft began, but it did not last long as people found travel by road to be faster. Thereafter, The Hindu started daily flights from Chennai via Bangalore to deliver its newspapers. However, these flights lasted only a few months. Afterward, the airfield was used by charter flights carrying foreign tourists and by flights transporting dignitaries to the city, such as Jawaharlal Nehru. The Indian Air Force operated training flights at the airport as well. In 1985, regional airline Vayudoot commenced thrice weekly flights from Bangalore using its Dornier 228 aircraft. The service was inaugurated by famous Indian writer R. K. Narayan. At the time, Mysore Airport consisted solely of a grass airstrip and a one-roomed terminal with one toilet. Because of low passenger loads, the flights ended in 1990. The existing terminal was built in 2010, allowing the airport to handle 200 passengers. Airlines started commencing flights, however due to poor response, the flights were stopped leaving the airport unused. With central government's UDAN scheme, flights started functioning again, and as of December 2020, there are flights to 7 destinations from Mysore Airport. ## Infrastructure Mysore Airport has a single runway, 09/27, with dimensions 1,740 by 30 metres (5,709 ft × 98 ft) and the ability to service ATR 72 turboprop and similar aircraft. The apron has three parking stands and is connected to the runway by a single perpendicular taxiway. Mysore Airport's passenger terminal occupies 3,250 square metres (35,000 sq ft) and can hold a maximum of 200 passengers. Volvo buses from Mysuru City Bus Stand are available 7 times a day before flight timings. ## Airlines and destinations ## Statistics ## Future plans Under the second phase of expansion, the runway would be lengthened to 2,750 by 45 metres (9,022 ft × 148 ft), allowing jet aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 to land at Mysore Airport. The runway cannot be extended to the west because of the presence of a railway line, while an extension to the east requires diverting National Highway 766. The State Government initially decided to hold off on this phase, preferring to wait until air traffic increased and the cost of diverting the highway was justified. Proposal for second phase was submitted by the State government of Karnataka for extension of runway. It proposed tunneling NH 766 beneath the runway, which requires less land than deviating the highway; but the Central Government rejected this proposal, citing security concerns. In August 2016, however, the Deccan Chronicle reported that the Ministry of Civil Aviation had directed airport officials to have a study conducted regarding tunneling of the highway. On 17 May 2018, central government gave permission to the above proposal and as per the plan the existing runway would be expanded to 2750 metres. In 2020, it was announced that government has agreed to upgrade Mysore Airport to an International Airport after runway expansion. ## See also - List of airports in Karnataka

Paddy Finucane

Irish RAF officer killed in action

Wing Commander Brendan Eamonn Fergus Finucane, DSO, DFC & Two Bars (16 October 1920 – 15 July 1942), known as Paddy Finucane amongst his colleagues, was an Irish Second World War Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot and flying ace—defined as an aviator credited with five or more enemy aircraft destroyed in aerial combat. Born into a Catholic family, Finucane grew up during the period also known as the "early troubles" and the Irish Civil War. In 1936, the family moved to England, where he developed an interest in aviation. Finucane was keen to fly, applied to join the RAF and was accepted for training as a pilot in August 1938. After a shaky training career, in which he crash-landed on one occasion, he received news that he had completed flight training. In June–July 1940, he began conversion training on the Supermarine Spitfire. On 13 July, Finucane was posted to No. 65 Squadron at RAF Hornchurch. Finucane's first victory was scored on 12 August 1940 during the Battle of Britain. During the campaign, he was credited with two enemies destroyed, two probably destroyed and one damaged. Promoted to acting flight lieutenant in April 1941, he joined No. 452 Squadron flying offensive patrols over France—known as the Circus offensive. During this period, Finucane had his most successful period of operations, destroying 20 German aircraft, sharing in the destruction of three, with two damaged and another two probably destroyed from 4 January to 13 October 1941. In January 1942, Finucane was promoted to the rank of squadron leader in No. 602 Squadron. Within six months, he was credited a further six individual victories bringing his tally to 28. Four more were damaged, four were shared destroyed and two credited as individual probable victories and one shared probable. In June 1942, he became the RAF's youngest wing commander in its history. Finucane was appointed to lead the Hornchurch Wing. On 15 July 1942, Finucane took off with his flight for a mission over France. His Spitfire was damaged by ground-fire. Finucane attempted to fly back to England across the English Channel but was forced to ditch into the sea and subsequently vanished. After his death, Finucane's brother Raymond served in No. 101 Squadron RAF and survived the war. Finucane was credited with 28 aerial victories, five probably destroyed, six shared destroyed, one shared probable victory, and eight damaged. Included in his total were 23 Messerschmitt Bf 109s, four Focke-Wulf Fw 190s and one Messerschmitt Bf 110. Official records differ over the exact total. After the war, two of Finucane's victories that were credited as probables had, in fact, been destroyed, but were not officially included. His total victory count could be as high as 32. Some sources credit him this figure. ## Early life Brendan Finucane was born on 16 October 1920, the first child of Thomas and Florence Finucane of 13 Rathmines Road, Rathmines, Dublin, Ireland. His mother was English, originally from Leicester. Her mother had travelled across Canada at a young age, and Florence moved to Dublin to seek her own adventure. She accepted the risks associated with living in the city. In 1919, she met Thomas Andrew Finucane, who had been involved in the Irish Rebellion. Thomas Finucane had been taught mathematics at college by Éamon de Valera, leader of the Irish opposition. As a member of the Irish Volunteers, he served under de Valera's command in the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. Thomas' father, Brendan Finucane's grandfather, was an Irishman who had served in the King's Own Scottish Borderers on the North-West Frontier Province. Thomas Finucane had ceased his political activism shortly before the couple married in October 1919, and after Florence had converted to Catholicism. The couple moved to Drumcondra in October 1919, where Thomas found a job as a bank cashier. The job did not pay well, but the two managed on his meagre wages. In early 1920, they moved to Grove Road in the Rathmines district, and Brendan was born in October. Soon afterwards, Brendan and his mother were nearly killed, when caught in cross-fire between the temporary constables employed by the Royal Irish Constabulary, known as the "Black and Tans", and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1921, Brendan's brother Raymond was born, followed by sisters Clare and Monica, and a brother, Kevin. The household was somewhat split over religious and political issues. Their father was a teetotaller and a strict Catholic. Their mother, however, encouraged the elder brothers to adopt a more liberal leaning in life. Brendan was educated at Synge Street and Marlborough Street. At 10, Brendan showed a keen interest in sport, particularly rugby. In summer 1932, the Finucane brothers were taken to an air show at Baldonnel and had a 10-minute flight. Brendan expressed his desire to become a pilot, an ambition which strengthened during holiday visits to air shows at Swaythling and Eastleigh airfields. In August 1933, the family moved to New Grange Road, Cabra. Brendan started school at the Christian Brothers O'Connell School, a distinguished Roman Catholic school in North Richmond Street. There he became a successful rugby player, rower and a champion boxer. Among his classmates were future Gaelic football stars Michael O'Hehir and Philip Greene. After a visit to England in July 1936 Thomas Finucane, now a company director, decided to establish an office in the West End of London. In November 1936, the family moved to England permanently and bought a house at 26 Castlegate, Richmond, which was then in Surrey and is now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Brendan was sent to Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. Brendan completed his schooling with good qualifications. He started in an office job as an accountant, which he loathed. In 1937, the RAF began offering short-service commissions (SSC) to lower-class persons who met the academic standard. It offered a four-year term as a junior rank, on squadron service with flying lessons. A further six years would be spent on the reserve list. In November 1937, Brendan approached his father about joining the British Armed Forces. Despite his Republican past, the senior Finucane agreed, believing a military career would provide a sense of direction lacking in his own youth. His parents cashed in their insurance policies, even though they needed the money and Thomas Andrew Finucane had been made unemployed. ## Royal Air Force In April 1938, aged 17 and a half (the minimum application age), Finucane handed in his application to the Air Ministry at Kingsway, London, on his way to work. Eight weeks later, in June 1938, he was invited for an interview. He showed a keenness to fly, sound school leaving certificate qualifications and a good sporting record. After waiting two months, in August 1938 Brendan Finucane was ordered to report to the 6 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School at Sywell in Northamptonshire. He arrived on 28 August. Within days, Finucane had taken to the skies with his instructor, flying the de Havilland Tiger Moth trainer. Finucane was slow to come to grips with handling the aircraft and he suffered a series of mishaps. During his training, on 7 September, he nearly flew into an airfield boundary hedge. He struggled with landing. Four days later, his tyre burst on a landing approach. The Moth bounced up into the air and Finucane barely recovered to make a heavy landing, although this time he was praised by his instructor. As they climbed out, they saw that the landing gear had been destroyed. Further heavy contact, said Finucane, "[and] there would have been no more Brendan or Mr. Morris!" Roland Morris was an experienced instructor, with more than 2,000 hours. He was critical of Finucane's habit of trying to force the aircraft to do what he wanted, instead of coaxing it. Despite a series of blunders, Finucane wanted to fly solo. At that time, Finucane was five hours flight training behind the rest of his group, but he made a successful solo trip on 21 September, after the completion of 14:05 hours piloting. The flight was not without fault; Finucane nearly stalled the aircraft after taking off. Finucane was now one of the 45 pilots in his class to have completed 100 hours of piloting time on aircraft since joining the RAF. After completing basic flight training on 28 October 1938, Finucane was classed as an average pilot, but deemed to be competent enough to be assigned to advanced flying school. With effect from the following day, he was granted a short-service commission as an acting pilot officer (on probation) and sent to 8 Flying Training School, RAF Montrose in Scotland. On 12 November, he left King's Cross railway station travelling on the Flying Scotsman to Glasgow, arriving at Montrose after a 10-hour journey. At Montrose, Finucane struggled with the more powerful Hawker Hart which was used for advanced training. His positioning in the air was poor and he struggled to hold a good landing pattern. One of his instructors remarked, "the ground was never quite where Paddy expected it to be!" After failing a test with Squadron Leader Dickie Legg, his situation was reviewed. Legg was persuaded to keep him after Finucane showed improvement and a steely determination. Finucane moved on to the Hawker Fury on 21 March 1939. On 23 June, he was classed as average again, but with low marks: 2,010 out of 3,400 or 59 per cent. Pilot ability was assessed as 400 out of 750; officer qualities 450 of 750; and in the written exams 837 of 1,300. Examined in navigation, meteorology, engine mechanics, and armament, he achieved marks of 77, 54, 50, and 65 percent. At this time, he flew radio-controlled aircraft for the Targeting Section. On 10 July, he crashed a Queen Bee on a transport flight to Gosport in bad weather, which did not improve his standing as a pilot. He escaped with a cut thumb. On 29 August, he was re-graded as a pilot officer (on probation), with the service number 41276. ## World War II Finucane spent the winter of 1939–40 gaining as much flight practice as possible. He was unable to gain any hours in fighter aircraft. He was abruptly transferred to the practice and parachute test flight centre at RAF Henlow. He had to settle for making trips around airfields in an antiquated Vickers Virginia, as a co-pilot ferrying engineers and ground crew from 16 September 1939. That month German forces invaded Poland on 1 September, prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and beginning the war in Europe. Finucane's piloting skills were far from being at the acceptable level for a fighter pilot. He continued in this trend until May 1940, when he was assigned to flying Miles Magister training aircraft. In May, German forces began the Battle of the Netherlands and the Battle of Belgium which fell quickly. In June France collapsed. Fighter Command now needed an influx of pilots, after losses in Western Europe. Finucane's flying had improved and on 27 June 1940, he was posted to 7 Operational Training Unit (7 OTU), at RAF Hawarden near Chester. Finucane was to convert onto Supermarine Spitfires, while awaiting a fighter squadron posting. Finucane made his first flight in a Spitfire on 3 July 1940 and made 26 such flights in nine days. The pilots were tested on radio transmission, handling, formation flying and aerobatics. On 11 July 1940 he was permitted just one firing practice. At the end of his stay at 7 OTU, he had logged 2 hours 40 minutes on the Magister, 2 hours 25 minutes on the Fairey Battle, 15 minutes on the Hawker Hurricane and 22 hours and 20 minutes on the Spitfire. ### Battle of Britain Finucane was posted to No. 65 Squadron at RAF Hornchurch on 12 July 1940, arriving the next day, just as the Battle of Britain was getting under-way. No. 65 Squadron boasted several aces, including Bill Franklin who had destroyed 10 enemy aircraft. Finucane called him the scruffiest man in the squadron, but was envious of Franklin's skill and was keen to emulate him. Anxious to get more experience, Finucane loitered around dispersal hoping to build up flight time on the Spitfire by asking as many senior officers for as many hours practice as was possible. Finucane was granted a few flights to improve his handling of the fighter before he was assigned to B Flight or Green Section. On 24 July, the squadron moved to a satellite airfield RAF Rochford in Essex. The following day, he became operational. The Battle of Britain was slowly escalating and air fighting increased with a series of German air attacks against British shipping in the English Channel, a phase of the battle termed Kanalkampf by the Luftwaffe. Finucane's first scramble came on 25 July 1940. Flying Spitfire N3128 code YT-W, he took off at 08:45. The Spitfire was worn, having served in combat since April. It developed a glycol leak whilst climbing and the cockpit filled with escaping vapour from the cooling liquid condensing on the hot engine. Suddenly his radio transmission failed. Still, he managed a wheels-up landing at Rochford. 65 Squadron was in action again at 12:20 and engaged enemy aircraft but suffered no losses. For the next few days, Finucane did not scramble. On 1 August, he was assigned Spitfire R6818 which had been taken on charge by the unit on 26 July. On 12 August, he took off to intercept a raid at 11:30. Climbing to 26,000 feet (7,900 m), 10 miles (16 km) off North Foreland, the squadron attacked 30 Messerschmitt Bf 109s several thousand feet below them. Evading a German counterattack Finucane dived upon a formation of 12 enemy fighters. He fired from 250 to 50 yd (229 to 46 m), causing one Bf 109 to crash into the Channel. The victory was witnessed by Sergeant Orchard in Finucane's flight. He landed at 11:45. While the squadron was refuelling and assembling for another patrol at RAF Manston, the airfield came under a low-level attack by Messerschmitt Bf 110s and Dornier Do 17s covered by Bf 109s. The Bf 110s were led by Hauptmann Walter Rubensdörffer, commanding ''Erprobungsgruppe 210. 18 Do 17s from Kampfgeschwader 2 supported them. Not many of the Spitfires got airborne. Alongside Jeffrey Quill, Finucane took off downwind as the first bombs started to fall. Both Quill and Finucane sighted Bf 109s and engaged. Quill hit a Bf 109 and Finucane fired on two, claiming a probable and one damaged. According to another account Quill had taken off without permission when he heard reverberations to his right. He saw a hangar roof with a mountain of earth flying sky-ward and a Bf 110 pulling out of a dive. He fired at, but missed, a Bf 109. One Spitfire was damaged in the attack. Finucane's first claim may be one of two III./Jagdgeschwader 54 Bf 109s shot down over the Channel by an unknown British fighter unit. One pilot was unhurt, the other, a Leutnant Eberle was wounded in action. No losses for Bf 109s were incurred on the second air battle. On 13 August, the Luftwaffe began an all-out assault on RAF airfields. Christened Adlertag (Eagle Day), the raids saw the heaviest fighting thus far. Scrambling at 16:00 to intercept an incoming raid near Dover, 65 Squadron encountered large numbers of Bf 109s from Jagdgeschwader 51 led by Hannes Trautloft. Finucane claimed a Bf 109 shot down and damaged another, leaving the Messerschmitt streaming smoke. Finucane lost contact with it in cloud and he claimed as a probable. One Bf 109 was lost from JG 51 and the pilot wounded. Two more were 80 percent damaged. 65 Squadron suffered no losses. On 18 August Finucane was involved in the large air battles that characterised the campaign. 65 Squadron engaged Heinkel He 111 bombers from Kampfgeschwader 1 downing one of their number. On 28 August, the squadron was moved to RAF Turnhouse near Edinburgh to rest, having lost two pilots killed in action, one missing in action and four Spitfires between 14 and 27 August. While at Turnhouse, on 3 September, Finucane was confirmed in his rank and promoted to flying officer. A squadron report on 9 September noted that Finucane was learning quickly and showing signs of becoming an efficient combat leader; "I have great hopes of this officer. He is keen and intelligent and shows likelihood of becoming a very efficient leader. Is being trained as a leader and is learning quickly." 65 Squadron remained in the battle until its end in October 1940, but Finucane gained no further successes. On 8 November the unit transferred to RAF Leuchars and then on 29 November back to No. 11 Group RAF in the south at RAF Tangmere near Chichester in West Sussex. The squadron remained idle for the winter as The Blitz and the German night attacks began and lasted in to the following spring. Finucane billeted near Oving. While drinking at a nearby pub, overlooking the harbour, an air raid began on Southampton. Finucane heard the drone of German bombers over the Isle of Wight in the distance and watched as the pathfinders marked the city. They clambered into a Wolseley Hornet two-seater car and headed into the town to seek out acquaintances of a squadron-mate. After seeing the destruction in the city Finucane said "Until this war is won we must shoot every Jerry from the sky." ### Channel Front By early 1941, the Luftwaffe rarely appeared in daylight and Finucane spent most of his operational time patrolling the Channel coast. On 4 January 1941 at 09:50 off Selsey Bill, he caught and shot down a Bf 110 at 7,000 feet (2,100 m). It took 15 minutes and four attacks to bring it down. The Bf 110 crashed into the Channel. Off St. Catherine's Point on 19 January, Finucane was one of two Spitfires that intercepted a Junkers Ju 88 at 17,000 feet (5,200 m). They chased the Ju 88 to within 5 miles (8.0 km) of Cherbourg and broke off for lack of fuel. They left the Ju 88 on fire in both engines and flying at 50 feet. The pilot had proven a skilful opponent. The Ju 88 flew low-level skidding turns and into the sun where the glare prevented the British pilots from gaining a clear view. The rear gunner was also firing accurately, hitting Finucane's fighter with a few well-placed rounds. The Ju 88 was credited as shared destroyed. The share was with Sergeant H. Orchard. In November 1940 Air Marshal Sholto Douglas became Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Fighter Command. On 8 December 1940 a directive from the Air Staff called for Sector Offensive Sweeps. It ordered hit-and-run operations over Belgium and France. The operations were to be conducted by three squadrons to harass German air defences. On 10 January 1941 'Circus' attacks were initiated by sending small bomber formations protected by large numbers of fighters. The escalation of offensive operations throughout 1941 was designed to draw up the Luftwaffe as Douglas' Command took an increasingly offensive stance. Trafford Leigh-Mallory, AOC 11 Group, promulgated Operations Instruction No. 7, which he had written on 16 February. Leigh-Mallory outlined six distinct operations for day fighters: 'Ramrod' (bomber escort with primary goal the destruction of the target); 'Fighter Ramrod' (the same goal where fighters escorted ground-attack fighters); Roadstead (bomber escort and anti-shipping operations); Fighter Roadstead (the same operation as Roadstead but without bombers) along with Rhubarb and Circus operations. On 5 February, Finucane participated in the third Circus operation. 65 supported 610 and 302 Squadron over Saint-Omer. Leading high cover, Finucane claimed another Bf 109 over Cap d'Alprech as three German fighters attempted to attack the other squadrons from behind. It was seen to crash into woodland. On 26 February 1941, 65 Squadron was posted to Kirton in Lindsey. The airfield was located in Lincolnshire in No. 12 Group RAF's sector where air-to-air combat was very uncommon in daylight. The stay at Lindsey was short. On 14 April 1941, Finucane was posted as a Flight Commander to the newly formed Australian No. 452 Squadron RAAF, the first RAAF squadron to serve in Fighter Command. He was promoted to acting flight lieutenant the same day. The following day, 15 April, he flew his final sortie with 65 Squadron flying support for 266 Squadron and 402 Squadron. On the way back in the afternoon he claimed one Bf 109 destroyed. This, his fifth victory, made him an official fighter ace. However, according to other accounts, only two Bf 109s were involved in the brief air battle. Finucane's and 65's likely opponents in the battle was Adolf Galland, Geschwaderkommodore (wing commander) Jagdgeschwader 26 and future General der Jagdflieger (General of Fighter Forces). Galland had taken off with his wingman and a crate containing lobster loaded into the fuselage of his Bf 109 to deliver to Jagdfliegerführer 2 Theo Osterkamp for his birthday at Luftflotte 2 headquarters. En route, Galland took a detour over the English coast and attacked several flights of Spitfires, claiming two 266 squadrons shot down. Galland's landing-gear fell down during the battle, possibly leading Finucane to claim it as destroyed. Both German pilots returned to France, their machines undamaged. Finucane was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) on 25 April. Finucane's start at No. 452 was unimpressive. On 3 May 1941 while on a recognition flight with his new commanding officer, Squadron Leader Roy Dutton, Finucane got too close and his propeller sliced through Dutton's tailplane. Finucane radioed Dutton immediately. Dutton attempted to abandon the aircraft but was too low and crash-landed, cracking several ribs but surviving. Finucane excused himself from error asserting that his Spitfire was the only one with a metal propeller—the others being elder Mark I's with wooden mounts—which gave him extra speed. In tight formation, this had caused the collision. Despite the incident, he was Gazetted on 13 May and given temporary command of the squadron while Dutton was injured. While at 452 Finucane became a popular commander and encouraged a more relaxed atmosphere, which he believed would help him get more out of the Australian pilots. He was now in command of 23 pilots, 16 fighters and 130 ground crew. The squadron re-equipped with Mk. II's in May 1941 and Finucane was assigned serial P8038, formerly of No. 303 Squadron RAF, on 21 May. It was the first of four Spitfires to carry the Shamrock emblem as his personal insignia. Jimmy Firth, his airframe rigger and 'Speedy' Moore, a Canadian engine fitter, were attempting to put an outline of the design on. Poorly done, it attracted the attention of Maurice Pownhall a professional in Lithography. Using green dope he completed the emblem on the forward left part of the cockpit fairing panel. Finucane approved and the Shamrock stayed. On 11 July 1941 Fighter Command conducted Circus Number 44. 12 Group flew as the lower echelon with Spitfire squadrons 452, 65 and 266. Two 11 Group wings from RAF Biggin Hill encompassing 72, 92 and 609 Squadrons and the incomplete RAF Kenley wing with 485 and 602. There was so much competition in the squadron to fly on its first Circus operation that Finucane had to draw lots. The squadron re-fuelled at West Malling after staging down to the coast through England. Flying as the middle-squadron at 18,000 ft Finucane's flight crossed the coast east of Dunkirk at 14:45 GMT. Over Poperinghe the wing split into four groups and headed to Cassel. The sole charge was a Bristol Blenheim of No. 60 Group RAF which was to act as a decoy. Five miles west of Lille at 15:00 GMT they were engaged by elements of Jagdgeschwader 2 and JG 26. Finucane engaged 8 Bf 109s and other units engaged three flights of 10 Bf 109s in total. Finucane was able to position himself behind a straggler after firing 90 rounds the Bf 109 was hit and the pilot bailed out. Fighter Command claimed seven destroyed, two probably destroyed and seven damaged for three Spitfires. Circus 45 took place 40 minutes later. Finucane's success was the first victory for the squadron. ### Kenley Wing On 21 July 452 was moved to Kenley on a plateau near Kenley Common just south of London in East Surrey. There it joined 602 (City of Glasgow) and 485 (New Zealand) Squadron. These fighter units were to form the nucleus of the new Kenley Wing. From here, they were to fly many intensive operations over the summer period. The squadrons were bolstered by experienced Non-commissioned officers but were relatively inexperienced units. One of them, 602, was commanded by the seasoned Squadron Leader Al Deere. While there Finucane developed a friendship with the Australian pilot Keith Truscott, who joined 452 in May 1941. The two frequented Oddenino's restaurant on Regent Street, a favourite among pilots in blacked-out London. Lew Stone the dance band leader played there. One evening he met Jean Woolford who was to become his fiancé. Whatever time Finucane could spend on leave was spent in Kew Gardens or Richmond Park with her. After a period of air-to-air exercises and practice the Wing undertook a Circus operation on 3 August 1941. In the evening the Wing crossed out over RAF Manston at 18,000 ft and then dropped to 13,000 ft over the coast at Gravelines and set course for Saint-Omer. Near Ambleteuse five Bf 109Fs were sighted one thousand feet above and in front travelling past the Spitfires. The German fighters shadowed the flight before three detached and dived to attack, curving in from behind. The Spitfires turned into them. Finucane missed with his first burst of fire and chased the leading Bf 109 into cloud while following the Bf 109's condensation trail. Hitting the enemy with another burst from 200 yards the Bf 109 burst into flames. He sighted another formation of 18 Bf 109s above and climbed to attack supported by six Spitfires. Finucane scored hits on the tail unit of one which went down vertically and into a cloud layer at 2,000 ft at which point contact was lost. Finucane claimed one destroyed and one probably destroyed. The operation elevated his tally to 7. The day was best remembered in Fighter Command for the loss of Flight Lieutenant Eric Lock who was shot down by ground-fire in the morning patrol. On 9 August Finucane was involved with Circus 68 in which five Wings escorted five Blenheims from No. 2 Group RAF to a power station at Gosnay four miles south-west of Béthune. Kenley's three squadrons shared the target support role with Tangmere Wing 610, 616 and 41 Squadrons led by Wing Commander Douglas Bader. The escort wing was 71, 222, and 111 squadrons from North Weald and the escort cover wing was 403, 603 and 611 from Hornchurch while Northolt Wing committed 306, 308 and 315. With thick cloud cover they abandoned the Gosnay operation and moved to a secondary target at Gravelines. The Luftwaffe provided severe resistance and large air battles developed over the coast. Finucane and 452 were positioned as the lower squadron in the Kenley Wing at 20,000 ft with Finucane leading 'A' Flight—a section of four Spitfires. Over Saint Omer at 11:32 Finucane engaged eight Bf 109s and with a long four-second burst of machine gun and cannon-fire from 100 yards one of the Messerschmitts caught fire and went into a spin. Finucane then shared two others with Keith Chisholm. The squadron lost three pilots—Jay O'Bryne became a prisoner of war while Barry Haydon and Geoff Chapman were shot down. Bader was also captured after being shot down by friendly-fire. Over the next few days 452 re-equipped with Spitfire VBs which had two Hispano-Suiza HS.404 calibre cannon in each wing to supplement four 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Browning machine guns. Finucane chose AB852 because it had the code W adorned on the fuselage. The Spitfire that Finucane damaged in the collision with Dutton earlier also had this letter. Superstition compelled him to fly with a W-decorated fighter for good luck. On Saturday 16 August 1941 Finucane celebrated his greatest success in this machine. Circus 73 began at 07:25, and once again the wing was sent to Saint Omer. Near Gravelines eight to ten Bf 109s engaged 485 squadron. At the customary 100 yards a two-second burst—his second—put the first enemy aircraft into a spin. Pilot Officer Truscott witnessed it diving steeply at 1,000 ft and spinning. At midday 452, 602 and 485 participated in Circus 74 but made no claims. At 17:45 Circus 75 yielded another response from the Luftwaffe. Kenley performed the role of escort wing. Eight Bf 109s engaged at 9,000 ft and 452 claimed seven. Finucane engaged one which caught fire and emitted a lot of white smoke. He then opened fire on another from 10 yards after his gun sight failed. The Bf 109 lost its tail unit. The day's successes were victory numbers 9, 10 and 11. On 19 August Circus 81 once again targeted the Gosnay power station escorting six 2 Group Blenheims. JG 2 and JG 26—the only Luftwaffe wings in the west—reacted. A series of dogfights started at 18,000 ft and ended near 4,000 ft. Finucane claimed one destroyed and one probable. One fell near Gosnay the other was left pouring black smoke at only 500 ft in the Calais area. Truscott claimed a third but 452 lost two pilots—Bill Eccleton and Dick Gazzard. The squadron attracted attention through its successes and Sholto Douglas visited them on 21 August. The following day Finucane was awarded a Bar to the DFC. The citation read, "Flight Lieutenant Finucane has been largely responsible for the fighting spirit of the unit." Circus 85 on 27 August 1941 was meant as an escort mission but the Blenheims of No. 139 Squadron RAF arrived at the rendezvous 30 minutes early and veered off to England. Four wings crossed the coast at 07:12 at 18,000 ft. The Germans reacted and there followed a large air battle which the squadron claimed four Bf 109s—two by Finucane. 452 Squadron were now the most successful in Fighter Command in August. Finucane took leave in early September and his award for a second Bar was gazetted on 9 September. Circus 100B was flown on 20 September 1941. A three-pronged attack was planned involving 23 squadrons and 270 Spitfires with bomber units acting as decoys. The Kenley wing was to provide escort for bombers hitting marshalling yards at Abbeville. 452 was one of three squadrons flying high cover. Immediately after crossing the coast at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme they were engaged by enemy aircraft. Finucane hit a Bf 109 which exploded forcing him to fly through the debris but within minutes 452 had lost three Spitfires. Finding himself and his wingman, Sergeant Chisholm alone he shot down a Bf 109 that attempted to attack his squadron-mate. He followed it briefly and it caught fire while emitting white smoke. Another Bf 109 turned in to attack Finucane but was shot down by Chisholm. Fighting their way back to the Channel Finucane dived and shot down a Bf 109 which went into a spin before he lost sight of it at approximately 500 ft. Three successes had inflated Finucane's tally to 17. ### In command The success of 452 and its highest scoring pilot Brendan Finucane brought fame and publicity and information about the squadron's exploits was released by the Air Ministry to the press. That same day, Sunday 21 September 1941, 452 escorted Blenheims to Gosnay once more on Circus 101. 452 met resistance and Bf 109s engaged the Wing. Finucane claimed two at around 15:25 GMT. Chisholm witnessed the first one explode and the second victory burst into flames and dived out of control. The Air Ministry released the details of the operation to the press that night. The Daily Herald had planned to use the headline "Finucane wants 3 for his 21st – 21 for his 21st birthday". Editions were changed overnight to "Finucane wants one more". The Daily Mail, a believer in publishing fighter pilots' exploits since the First World War, ran the headline "Spitfire Finucane shoots down 20 Nazis" [sic]. Most of the headlines carried pictures of the squadron in the aftermath of Circus 100B and the stories elevated Finucane to national hero status. On 2 October 1941, 452 Squadron was joined by 485 from Kenley. The Tangmere Wing's 41, 616 and 129 Squadrons followed to participate in another Circus operation. These formations flew from Mardyck to Boulogne at 22,000 ft to tempt the Luftwaffe to send fighter units into battle. III./JG 26 scrambled to intercept with a staffel (squadron) of Bf 109s. Engaging in battle Finucane shot the wing off one Messerschmitt Bf 109 and damaged another while a third attacked him and was promptly dispatched into the Channel. Finucane followed it down to 6,000 ft but could not ascertain the result because he was attacked by five Bf 109s. A series of barrel rolls and steep climbing turns effected his escape. The engagement took place approximately three miles from the French coast. Upon returning the airfield Finucane's Spitfire was painted to include his initials on the shamrock and 21 Swastika emblems encircling it. Finucane was not pleased with the decoration and ordered it removed. On 4 October he was given temporary command of the squadron when his commanding officer went on leave. On 11 October, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (gazetted 21 October) for 21 enemy aircraft shot down. The next day Circus 107 took place and 452 participated. Blenheims attacked the port of Boulogne protected by 19 squadrons from six wings. Between Le Touquet and mid-Channel at 12:20 the RAF formations were engaged by approximately 50 Bf 109s. Finucane falsely claimed a Bf 109 S.W. Le Touquet 12.22-40 hrs. at 20,000 ft., but it was his no. 2 Sgt Roderick Aeneas Chisholme (Red 2) in Spitfire Mk.VB W3520, who bailed out and was captured. He was shot down either by Hptm. Seifert or Priller, both Luftwaffe Experten. Chisholm escaped in 1942 and spent the next three years evading recapture through Poland, Nazi Germany and France to Paris until the city was liberated in 1944. On 12 October 1941 Circus 108A yielded two victories—one over Saint Omer and another just out to sea off Boulogne. Attempting a third attack Finucane hit a Bf 109 in a climbing attack but stalled and had to dive out of the fight. Truscott, according to his own logbook, shot at a German pilot in a parachute. The attack was frowned upon but the Australian argued leaving an enemy to live to fight again was unwise. Circus 108A cost Fighter Command 8 fighters for 15 claims. The squadron celebrated with a night of drinking. Walking back to their quarters Finucane jumped Croydon Town hall's stone balustrade parapet which hid an 18-foot drop the other side which broke his heel bone and put him in hospital for several weeks. Finucane was treated in Horton Hospital which specialised in combat wounds. While recovering Finucane was sent messages of congratulations by Trafford Leigh-Mallory AOC 11 Group. The Air Ministry sought to take advantage of Finucane's reputation by asking him to assist with morale and propaganda activities. On 22 October he read out an Air Ministry-approved description of his service for the BBC radio programme The World Goes By from his hospital bed. Finucane was moved to RAF Halton in Wendover, Buckinghamshire on 14 November 1941. On 22 November he moved to the former luxury Palace Hotel in Torquay. Upon arrival Finucane was asked to leave for London to receive the DSO and two bars to the DFC on 25 November with his brother and parents. That day King George VI personally decorated Finucane at Buckingham Palace. On 20 January 1942, Finucane was given command of 602 Squadron at RAF Redhill. Five days later Group Captain Victor Beamish arrived as the new station commander. Beamish promoted Finucane instantly to the rank of squadron leader. Beamish had flown in the Battle of Britain and had then been posted to II Group as Group Captain Operations in 1941. Beamish frequently asked for an operational command and eventually Leigh-Mallory relented and gave him Redhill. Beamish was ordered not to fly on operations but usually flew whenever he felt like it. Beamish was killed on operations just two months later. Finucane observed 602's Glasgow traditions by reviving the squadron badge which pictured the Scottish lion rampant in red. On 12 February 1942 station commander Beamish took off and headed over the English Channel with wingman for an early morning patrol. Reaching mid-Channel they sighted many ships and realised they had over-flown strong German naval forces. The German navy (Kriegsmarine) were in the midst of Operation Cerberus. The naval squadron consisting of the capital ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen along with escorts. The operation ran a British blockade and sailed from Brest in Brittany to their home bases in Germany via the Channel. The Luftwaffe protected the ships with Operation Donnerkeil, an air superiority plan. The British counter-plan, Operation Fuller was put into action at 11:30 after Beamish had landed and reported the enemy position. Within five minutes Finucane was ordered to take-off on a Roadstead operation. Seven of 602 Squadron fired on warships and caught the images on cine gun-camera. The German operation was a success and on 19 February 1942 Finucane was ordered to London with his former squadron-mate Keith Truscott. He gave evidence before the Fuller Enquiry which reported on the failure to prevent the break-out before Air Chief Marshal Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt and Vice Admiral Hugh Binney. On 20 February 1942 Finucane flew a two-Spitfire sortie to Dunkirk, France. The last few days had been monotonous and Finucane was eager to fly and asked Dick Lewis—a 29-year-old Australian who had put his age down so he was accepted for pilot training—to fly as his wingman. At 10:55 GMT Finucane took off and headed over Manston toward France. Off the coast, they strafed a small ship and turned north to return home. Finucane spotted two aircraft taking off from Mardyck but lost sight of them. Both Spitfires dropped to sea level. Minutes later two enemy fighters came towards them. They were identified as Focke-Wulf Fw 190s. The Fw 190 had a higher performance than the Spitfire V in all departments other than turning circle and was more heavily armed. Finucane scored hits on the first Fw 190's wing but the enemy quickly gained the advantage and Finucane's Spitfire was hit with six machine gun rounds which blew a piece of fuselage into the cockpit and into his leg. Blood loss induced dizziness and Lewis protected his leader from six more astern attacks. In the last attack the two Fw 190s came from opposite directions. Lewis was able to claim one shot down and the other gave up over the mid-Channel. They taxied to 452's dispersal where Finucane passed out after shutting down the engine. On 2 March Finucane went on leave after spending over a week in hospital. No claim or loss was recorded by JG 26, the resident German fighter unit. ## Death Finucane returned to operations on 13 March; 602 had been strengthened by the arrival of Flight Lieutenant James Harry Lacey, an established fighter pilot with considerable combat experience. Lacey commanded several flights in 602 over the spring and summer, 1942. By coincidence, Lacey also ended the war on 28 aerial victories. He flew with Finucane and 602 on Circus 114 which targeted the railway yards at Hazebrouck. Finucane fought an Fw 190 from 23,000 to 8,000 ft. He claimed it shot down and it was witnessed by Sergeant Paul Green. Fighter Command claimed eight for the loss of six. JG 26 recorded no losses in the battle and the Germans issued a communiqué on losses. Air Chief Marshal Charles Portal requested proof from Sholto Douglas to demonstrate Fighter Command's claims were accurate. Douglas issued him with combat reports from the Kenley Wing which stated two German aircraft were seen to hit the ground and one pilot bailed out. These claims cannot be substantiated through German losses. One source records a loss of Bf 109 from I./JG 26. Finucane claimed three more successes in the spring, one Fw 190 on 26 March while escorting 24 Douglas Boston from 88 and 107 squadrons to attack Le Havre docks; another on 28 March and one Bf 109 and another Fw 190 on 17 May 1942. Four aircraft were claimed as shared, two probably destroyed and four damaged. Life magazine filmed the squadron's sortie on 26 March, as the fighters took off and landed. This operation was significant as Finucane's unit was also making use of gun camera footage to help verify combat claims. Finucane used footage to verify two claims on 2 April. Despite two clear images of two Fw 190s being hit he was credited only with one damaged. 602 had been prompted to use the cameras because the Command thought the squadron's claims were excessive and the pilots were over stating their success. The Air Ministry also accelerated a plan to introduce the Spitfire IX to restore qualitative parity with the Fw 190 which was inflicting many losses against British fighters; primarily through German pilots taking full advantage of its superior performance over the Spitfire V. Finucane took at least one flight in the Spitfire IX, in the personal aircraft of commanding officer W. G. G. Duncan Smith, 64 Squadron, on 26 June 1942. Finucane had completed 108 fighter operations over France by the fourth week of June 1942. On 27 June, Leigh-Mallory, with the approval of Sholto Douglas, promoted Finucane to wing commander. Finucane became the youngest wing commander in the RAF, and was to lead the Hornchurch Wing. Duncan Smith later said, that though he admired Finucane, he resented the young fighter pilot's appointment and felt as an older, experienced leader, he could have led the wing himself. Duncan Smith also felt the press gave the young pilot too much attention. Nevertheless, the two maintained a cordial relationship. In his short time as wing commander of Hornchurch, Finucane made a few alterations to the formation. The most notable was to tighten flying discipline, loosen formation flying and increase low-level navigation skills. On 15 July, Finucane was killed at the age of 21 while leading the Hornchurch Wing in a fighter "Ramrod"—ground attack—operation targeting a German Army camp at Étaples, France. Finucane took off with his wing at 11:50. The attack was timed to hit the Germans at lunchtime. Crossing the French coast at Le Touquet, they targeted machine gun positions. Finucane was hit in the radiator at 12:22. His wingman, Alan Aikman, notified him of the white plume of smoke and Finucane acknowledged it with a thumbs up. Standard regulations insisted the wing carry on the mission even if the leader was in trouble. Radio silence was maintained so the enemy radio-interception services would not know a person of importance was hit. Finucane flew slowly out to sea, talking calmly to Aikman as he glided along in his ailing Spitfire. Finally, approximately 8 miles (13 km) off Le Touquet, he broke radio silence and sent his last message. Aikman, flying alongside Finucane, saw him pull back the canopy, and before taking off his helmet, say "This is it, Butch". It was a well–executed landing, but the waves were difficult to predict and the Spitfire's nose struck the water and disappeared in a wall of spray. Before he hit the water, Aikman and Keith Chisholm of 452 Squadron saw him release, or perhaps tighten, his parachute release harness and straps. If Finucane had released them it is possible he could have been thrown forward onto the gun-sight and killed, or knocked unconscious and drowned; the circumstances remain unknown. ## Memorials Over 2,500 people attended his memorial at Westminster Cathedral. A rose was planted in the memorial garden in Baldonnel Aerodrome in Dublin (home of the Irish Air Corps) where Brendan and his brother Ray first flew. Finucane's name is also inscribed on the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede. The memorial commemorates airmen who were lost in the Second World War and who have no known grave. The Battle of Britain Memorial on London's Embankment also includes his name as one of The Few. A number of streets in Bushey are named after Battle of Britain pilots, including Finucane Rise. There is a small estate, Finucane Court, with a plaque dedicated to him in Richmond, London. The Finucane family donated Brendan Finucane's uniform to the Royal Air Force Museum London. ## Personal life Finucane and his family worshipped at Our Lady of Loreto and St Winefride's, Kew, where he was an altar server. He was engaged to Jean Woolford, who lived two doors away from his home in Catelgate, Richmond. She subsequently married, in 1944, another airman, Flying Office Edward Crang from New Zealand. ## Summary of career ### Air victories RAF Fighter Command claims against the main British opponents in 1941 and 1942—Jagdgeschwader 26 (Fighter Wing 26) and Jagdgeschwader'' 2 (Fighter Wing 2) —are very difficult to verify. Only two of the 30 volumes of War Diaries produced by JG 26 survived the war. Historian Donald Caldwell has attempted to use what limited German material is available to compare losses and air victory claims but acknowledges the lack of sources leave the possibility for error. From June 1941 to the spring, 1942, Fighter Command claimed 711 enemy aircraft while losing 411. According to available German records, the loss to JG 2 and JG 26 were reportedly 103. ### Awards - 13 May 1941 – "in recognition of gallantry displayed in flying operations against the enemy" Finucane was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross > Flying Officer Brendan Finucane (41276)—No. 65 Squadron > This officer has shown great keenness in his efforts to engage the enemy and has destroyed at least 5 of their aircraft. His courage and enthusiasm have been a source of encouragement to other pilots of the squadron. - 9 September 1941 – Acting Flight Lieutenant Brendan Finucane DFC (41276) of No. 452 (RAAF) Squadron is awarded a Bar to the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantry displayed in flying operation against the enemy: > This officer has led his flight with great dash, determination and courage in the face of the enemy. Since July 1941, he has destroyed three enemy aircraft and assisted in the destruction of a further two. Flight Lieutenant Finucane has been largely responsible for the fine fighting spirit of the unit. - 26 September 1941 – Acting Flight Lieutenant Brendan Finucane DFC (41276) of No. 452 (RAAF) Squadron is awarded a second Bar to the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantry displayed in flying operation against the enemy:: > This officer has fought with marked success during recent operations over Northern France and has destroyed a further six enemy aircraft. Of these, three were destroyed in one day and two in a single sortie on another occasion. His ability and courage have been reflected in the high standard of morale and fighting spirit of his unit. Flight Lieutenant Finucane has personally destroyed fifteen hostile aircraft. - 21 October 1941 – Acting Flight Lieutenant Brendan Finucane DFC (41276) of No. 452 (RAAF) Squadron is awarded a Distinguished Service Order for gallantry displayed in flying operation against the enemy: > Recently during two sorties on consecutive days, Flight Lieutenant Finucane destroyed five Messerschmitt 109's bringing his total victories to at least 20. He has flown with this squadron since June 1941, during which time the squadron has destroyed 42 enemy aircraft of which Flight Lieutenant Finucane had personally destroyed 15. The successes achieved are undoubtedly due to this officer's brilliant leadership and example

Space Launch System

NASA super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle

The Space Launch System (SLS) is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle used by NASA. As the primary launch vehicle of the Artemis Moon landing program, SLS is designed to launch the crewed Orion spacecraft on a trans-lunar trajectory. The first SLS launch was the uncrewed Artemis 1, which took place on 16 November 2022. Development of SLS began in 2011, as a replacement for the retired Space Shuttle as well as the cancelled Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles. As a Shuttle-derived vehicle, the SLS reuses hardware from the Shuttle program, including the solid rocket boosters and RS-25 first stage engines. A Congressionally mandated late 2016 launch was delayed by nearly 6 years. All Space Launch System flights are launched from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first three SLS flights use the Block 1 configuration, comprising a core stage, extended Space Shuttle boosters developed for Ares I and the ICPS upper stage. An improved Block 1B configuration, with the Exploration Upper Stage, is planned to debut on the fourth flight; a further improved Block 2 configuration featuring new solid rocket boosters is planned to debut on the ninth flight. After the launch of Artemis 4, NASA plans to transfer production and launch operations of SLS to Deep Space Transport LLC, a joint venture between Boeing and Northrop Grumman. ## Description The SLS is a Space Shuttle-derived launch vehicle. The first stage of the rocket is powered by one central core stage and two outboard solid rocket boosters. All SLS Blocks share a common core stage design, while they differ in their upper stages and boosters. ### Core stage Together with the solid rocket boosters, the core stage is responsible for propelling the upper stage and payload out of the atmosphere to near orbital velocity. It contains the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks for the ascent phase, the forward and aft solid rocket booster attach points, avionics, and the Main Propulsion System (MPS), an assembly of the four RS-25 engines, associated plumbing and hydraulic gimbal actuators, and equipment for autogenous pressurization of the vehicle's tanks. The core stage provides approximately 25% of the vehicle's thrust at liftoff, the rest coming from the solid rocket boosters. The stage measures 213 ft (65 m) long by 28 ft (8.4 m) in diameter and is visually similar to the Space Shuttle external tank. It is made mostly of 2219 aluminium alloy, and contains numerous improvements to manufacturing processes, including friction stir welding for the barrel sections, and integrated milling for the stringers. The first four flights will each use and expend four of the remaining sixteen RS-25D engines previously flown on Space Shuttle missions. Aerojet Rocketdyne refits these engines with modernized engine controllers, higher throttle limits, as well as insulation for the high temperatures the engine section will experience due to their position adjacent to the solid rocket boosters. Later flights will switch to a RS-25 variant optimized for expended use, the RS-25E, which will lower per-engine costs by over 30%. The thrust of each RS-25D engine has been increased from 492,000 lbf (2,188 kN), as on the Space Shuttle, to 513,000 lbf (2,281 kN) on the sixteen modernized engines. The RS-25E will further increase per-engine thrust to 522,000 lbf (2,321 kN). ### Solid Rocket Boosters Blocks 1 and 1B of the SLS will use two five-segment solid rocket boosters. They use casing segments that were flown on Shuttle missions as parts of the four-segment Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters. They possess an additional center segment, new avionics, and lighter insulation, but lack a parachute recovery system, as they will not be recovered after launch. The propellants for the solid rocket boosters are aluminum powder, which is very reactive, and ammonium perchlorate, a powerful oxidizer. They are held together by a binder, polybutadiene acrylonitrile (PBAN). The mixture has the consistency of a rubber eraser and is packed into each segment. The five-segment solid rocket boosters provide approximately 25% more total impulse than the Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters. The stock of SLS Block 1 to 1B boosters is limited by the number of casings left over from the Shuttle program, which allows for eight flights of the SLS. On 2 March 2019, the Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension program was announced. This program will develop new solid rocket boosters, to be built by Northrop Grumman Space Systems, for further SLS flights, marking the beginning of Block 2. These boosters will be derived from the composite-casing solid rocket boosters then in development for the canceled OmegA launch vehicle, and are projected to increase Block 2's payload to 290,000 lb (130 t) to LEO and at least 101,000 lb (46 t) to trans-lunar injection. As of July 2021, the BOLE program is under development, with first firing expected in 2024. ### Upper stages The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) is the upper stage of SLS Block 1, and first flew on Artemis 1. It is planned to fly again on Artemis 2 and 3 with its last flight on SLS being for Artemis 3. It is a stretched and human-rated Delta IV 16 ft (5 m) Delta Cryogenic Second Stage powered by a single RL10 engine. The Artemis 1 ICPS used the RL10B-2 variant, while the ICPS for Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 will use the RL10C-2 variant. Block 1 is intended to be capable of lifting 209,000 lb (95 t) to low Earth orbit (LEO) in this configuration, including the weight of the ICPS as part of the payload. At the time of SLS core stage separation, Artemis 1 was travelling on an initial 1,806 by 30 km (1,122 by 19 mi) transatmospheric orbital trajectory. This trajectory ensured safe disposal of the core stage. ICPS then performed orbital insertion and a subsequent translunar injection burn to send Orion towards the Moon. The ICPS will be human-rated for the crewed Artemis 2 and 3 flights. The Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) is planned to first fly on Artemis 4. The EUS will complete the SLS ascent phase and then re-ignite to send its payload to destinations beyond LEO. It is expected to be used by Block 1B and Block 2. The EUS shares the core stage diameter of 8.4 meters, and will be powered by four RL10C-3 engines. It will eventually be upgraded to use four improved RL10C-X engines. As of March 2022, Boeing is developing a new composite-based fuel tank for the EUS that would increase Block 1B's overall payload mass capacity to TLI by 40 percent. The improved upper stage was originally named the Dual Use Upper Stage (DUUS, pronounced "duce"), but was later renamed the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS). ### Block 1 interstage The SLS Block 1 has a conical frustrum-shaped interstage called the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter between the core stage and the ICPS. It consists of sixteen aluminum-lithium panels made of 2195 aluminium alloy. Teledyne Brown Engineering is its builder. The first one cost \$60 million, and the next two cost \$85 million together. ### Block variants ## Development ### Funding During the joint Senate-NASA presentation in September 2011, it was stated that the SLS program had a projected development cost of US\$18 billion through 2017, with \$10 billion for the SLS rocket, \$6 billion for the Orion spacecraft, and \$2 billion for upgrades to the launch pad and other facilities at Kennedy Space Center. These costs and schedules were considered optimistic in an independent 2011 cost assessment report by Booz Allen Hamilton for NASA. An internal 2011 NASA document estimated the cost of the program through 2025 to total at least \$41 billion for four 209,000 lb (95 t) launches (1 uncrewed, 3 crewed), with the 290,000 lb (130 t) version ready no earlier than 2030. The Human Exploration Framework Team estimated unit costs for 'Block 0' at \$1.6 billion and Block 1 at \$1.86 billion in 2010. However, since these estimates were made the Block 0 SLS vehicle was dropped in late 2011, and the design was not completed. In September 2012, an SLS deputy project manager stated that \$500 million is a reasonable target average cost per flight for the SLS program. In 2013, the Space Review estimated the cost per launch at \$5 billion, depending on the rate of launches. NASA announced in 2013 that the European Space Agency will build the Orion service module. In August 2014, as the SLS program passed its Key Decision Point C review and was deemed ready to enter full development, costs from February 2014 until its planned launch in September 2018 were estimated at \$7.021 billion. Ground systems modifications and construction would require an additional \$1.8 billion over the same time. In October 2018, NASA's Inspector General reported that the Boeing core stage contract had made up 40% of the \$11.9 billion spent on the SLS as of August 2018. By 2021, development of the core stage was expected to have cost \$8.9 billion, twice the initially planned amount. In December 2018, NASA estimated that yearly budgets for the SLS will range from \$2.1 to \$2.3 billion between 2019 and 2023. In March 2019, the Trump administration released its fiscal year 2020 budget request for NASA, which notably proposed dropped funding for Block 1B and Block 2 variants of SLS. Congressional action ultimately included the funding in the passed budget. One Gateway component that had been previously planned for the SLS Block 1B is expected to fly on the Falcon Heavy. On 1 May 2020, NASA awarded a contract extension to Aerojet Rocketdyne to manufacture 18 additional RS-25 engines with associated services for \$1.79 billion, bringing the total RS-25 contract value to almost \$3.5 billion. #### Budget For fiscal years 2011 through 2022, the SLS program had expended funding totaling \$23.8 billion in nominal dollars. This is equivalent to \$27.5 billion in 2022 dollars using the NASA New Start Inflation Indices. Included in the above SLS costs above are (1) the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), a \$412 million contract and (2) the costs of developing the Exploration Upper Stage (below). Excluded from the SLS cost above are the costs to assemble, integrate, prepare and launch the SLS and its payloads, funded separately in the NASA Exploration Ground Systems, currently at about \$600 million per year, and anticipated to stay there through at least the first four launches of SLS. Also excluded are payloads that launch on the SLS, such as the Orion crew capsule. Also excluded are predecessor programs that contributed to the development of the SLS, such as the Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle project, funded from 2008 to 2010 for a total of \$70 million, and the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle, funded from 2006 to 2010 for a total of \$4.8 billion in development, including the 5-segment Solid Rocket Boosters used on the SLS. #### Launch costs Estimates of the per launch costs for the SLS have varied widely, partly due to uncertainty over how much the program will expend during development and testing before the operational launches begin, and partly due to various agencies using differing cost measures; but also based on differing purposes for which the cost estimates were developed. For example, a marginal cost per one additional launch ignores the development and annual recurring fixed costs, whereas a total cost per launch includes recurring costs but excludes development. There are no official NASA estimates for how much the SLS will cost per launch, nor for the SLS program annual recurring costs once operational. Cost per launch is not a straightforward figure to estimate as it depends heavily on how many launches occur per year. For example, similarly, the Space Shuttle was estimated, in 2012 dollars, to cost \$576 million per launch had it been able to achieve 7 launches per year, while the marginal cost of adding a single additional launch in a given year was estimated to be less than half of that, at just \$252 million of marginal cost. However, at the rate that it flew, the final cost was \$1.64 billion per Space Shuttle launch, including development. NASA associate administrator William H. Gerstenmaier said in 2017 that there would be no official per flight cost estimates of any variety provided by NASA for the SLS. Other bodies, such as the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the NASA Office of Inspector General, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the White House Office of Management and Budget have put out cost per launch figures, however. Several internal NASA programs and project concept study reports have released proposed budgets that include future SLS launches. For example, a concept study report for a space telescope stated it was advised by NASA HQ in 2019 to budget \$500 million for an SLS launch in 2035. Another study in 2019 also proposing a space telescope assumed a budget for their launch of \$650 million in current-day dollars, or \$925 million for when the launch would occur, also in the "mid-2030s". Europa Clipper is a NASA scientific mission that was initially required by Congress to launch on SLS. Oversight bodies both internal and external to NASA disagreed with this requirement. First, NASA's Inspector General office published a report in May 2019 that stated Europa Clipper would need to give up \$876 million for the "marginal cost" of its SLS launch. An addendum to the letter published in August 2019 increased the estimate and stated that switching to a commercial rocket would save over \$1 billion. Ultimately, Europa Clipper was rebooked to launch on a Falcon Heavy for a contract price of \$178 million — saving \$2 billion in launch costs compared to SLS. The move was done not only for cost reasons but also due to unacceptably high vibration loads on SLS, and concerns over the availability of spare SLS vehicles from the Artemis program. A JCL (Joint Cost and Schedule Confidence Level) analysis cited in that letter put the cost savings at \$700 million, with the SLS at \$1.05 billion per launch and the commercial alternative at \$350 million. Finally, a letter from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the Senate Appropriations Committee in October 2019 revealed that SLS's total cost to the taxpayer was estimated at "over \$2 billion" per launch after development is complete; said development has cost \$23 billion in 2021 dollars. The letter suggested Congress remove this requirement, agreeing the NASA Inspector General, adding that using a commercial launch vehicle for Europa Clipper instead of the SLS would save \$1.5 billion overall. NASA did not deny this \$2 billion cost of launch and an agency spokesperson stated it "is working to bring down the cost of a single SLS launch in a given year as the agency continues negotiations with Boeing on the long-term production contract and efforts to finalize contracts and costs for other elements of the rocket". This OMB figure is dependent on the rate of construction, so building more SLS rockets faster could decrease the per-unit cost. For example, Exploration Ground Systems – whose only role is to support, assemble, integrate, and launch SLS – has separately budgeted fixed costs of \$600 million per year on facilities, spread across however many rockets launch that year. Then, in December 2019, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine shared informally that he disagrees with the \$2 billion figure since the marginal cost of an SLS launch should decrease after the first few, and is expected to end up around \$800 million to \$900 million, although contract negotiations were only just beginning for those later cores. In November 2021 a new NASA Office of Inspector General audit was released, which estimated that, at least for the first four launches of SLS, the per-launch production and operating costs would be \$2.2 billion for SLS, plus \$568 million for Exploration Ground Systems. Additionally, since the first four missions are under the Artemis program, the payload would cost \$1 billion for Orion and \$300 million for the ESA service module. ### Early plans The SLS was created by an act of Congress in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, Public Law 111–267, in which NASA was directed to create a system for launching payloads and crew into space that would replace the capabilities lost with the retirement of the Space Shuttle. The act set out certain goals, such as being able to lift 130 tons or more of payload into low earth orbit, a target date of December 31, 2016 for the system to be fully operational, and a directive to use "to the extent practicable" existing components, hardware, and workforce from the Space Shuttle and from Ares I. On 14 September 2011, NASA announced their plan to meet these requirements: the design for the SLS, with the Orion spacecraft as payload. The SLS has considered several future development routes of potential launch configurations, with the planned evolution of the blocks of the rocket having been modified many times. Many options, all of which just needed to meet the congressionally mandated payload minimums, were considered, including a Block 0 variant with three main engines, a variant with five main engines, a Block 1A variant with upgraded boosters instead of the improved second stage, and a Block 2 with five main engines plus the Earth Departure Stage, with up to three J-2X engines. In the initial announcement of the design of the SLS, NASA also announced an "Advanced Booster Competition", to select which boosters would be used on Block 2 of the SLS. Several companies proposed boosters for this competition, all of which were indicated as viable: Aerojet and Teledyne Brown proposed three booster engines each with dual combustion chambers, Alliant Techsystems proposed a modified solid rocket booster with lighter casing, more energetic propellant, and four segments instead of five, and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Dynetics proposed a liquid-fueled booster named Pyrios. However, this competition was planned for a development plan in which Block 1A would be followed by Block 2A, with upgraded boosters. NASA canceled Block 1A and the planned competition in April 2014, in favor of simply remaining with the Ares I's five-segment solid rocket boosters, themselves modified from the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, until at least the late 2020s. The overly powerful advanced booster would have resulted in unsuitably high acceleration, and would need modifications to LC-39B, its flame trench, and Mobile Launcher. On 31 July 2013, the SLS passed Preliminary Design Review. The review included not only the rocket and boosters but also ground support and logistical arrangements. On 7 August 2014, the SLS Block 1 passed a milestone known as Key Decision Point C and entered full-scale development, with an estimated launch date of November 2018. #### EUS options In 2013, NASA and Boeing analyzed the performance of several EUS engine options. The analysis was based on a second-stage usable propellant load of 105 metric tons, and compared stages with four RL10 engines, two MARC-60 engines, or one J-2X engine. In 2014, NASA also considered using the European Vinci instead of the RL10, which offered the same specific impulse but with 64% greater thrust, which would allow for the same performance at a lower cost. In 2018, Blue Origin submitted a proposal to replace the Exploration Upper Stage with a cheaper alternative to be designed and fabricated by the company, but it was rejected by NASA in November 2019 on multiple grounds; these included lower performance compared to the existing EUS design, incompatibility of the proposal with the height of the door of the Vehicle Assembly Building being only 390 feet (120 m), and unacceptable acceleration of Orion components such as its solar panels due to the higher thrust of the engines being used for the fuel tank. #### SRB tests From 2009 to 2011, three full-duration static fire tests of five-segment solid rocket boosters were conducted under the Constellation Program, including tests at low and high core temperatures, to validate performance at extreme temperatures. The 5-segment solid rocket booster would be carried over to SLS. Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems has completed full-duration static fire tests of the five-segment solid rocket boosters. Qualification Motor 1 was tested on 10 March 2015. Qualification Motor 2 was successfully tested on 28 June 2016. ## Operation ### Construction As of 2020, three SLS versions are planned: Block 1, Block 1B, and Block 2. Each will use the same Core stage with its four main engines, but Block 1B will feature the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), and Block 2 will combine the EUS with upgraded boosters. The ICPS for Artemis 1 was delivered by ULA to NASA about July 2017 and was housed at Kennedy Space Center as of November 2018. #### Construction of core stage In mid-November 2014, construction of the first core stage hardware began using a new friction stir welding system in the South Vertical Assembly Building at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility. Between 2015 and 2017, NASA test fired RS-25 engines in preparation for use on SLS. The core stage for the first SLS, built at Michoud Assembly Facility by Boeing, had all four engines attached in November 2019, and it was declared finished by NASA in December 2019. The first core stage left Michoud Assembly Facility for comprehensive testing at Stennis Space Center in January 2020. The static firing test program at Stennis Space Center, known as the Green Run, operated all the core stage systems simultaneously for the first time. Test 7 (of 8), the wet dress rehearsal, was carried out in December 2020 and the fire (test 8) took place on 16 January 2021, but shut down earlier than expected, about 67 seconds in total rather than the desired eight minutes. The reason for the early shutdown was later reported to be because of conservative test commit criteria on the thrust vector control system, specific only for ground testing and not for flight. If this scenario occurred during a flight, the rocket would have continued to fly normally. There was no sign of damage to the core stage or the engines, contrary to initial concerns. The second fire test was completed on 18 March 2021, with all 4 engines igniting, throttling down as expected to simulate in-flight conditions, and gimballing profiles. The core stage was shipped to Kennedy Space Center to be mated with the rest of the rocket for Artemis 1. It left Stennis on April 24 and arrived at Kennedy on April 27. It was refurbished there in preparation for stacking. On 12 June 2021, NASA announced the assembly of the first SLS rocket was completed at the Kennedy Space Center. The assembled SLS was used for the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in 2022. The first SLS for Artemis 1 flew to the moon on a test flight in fall 2022, and currently, NASA and Boeing are constructing the next three rockets for Artemis 2, Artemis 3, and Artemis 4. Boeing stated in July 2021 that while the COVID-19 pandemic had affected their suppliers and schedules, such as delaying parts needed for hydraulics, they would still be able to provide the Artemis 2 SLS core stage per NASA's schedule, with months to spare. The spray-on foam insulation process for Artemis 2 has been automated for most sections of the core stage, saving 12 days in the schedule. The Artemis 2 forward skirt, which is the foremost component of the core stage, was affixed on the liquid oxygen tank in late May 2021. As of May 2023, the complete core stage is set to ship to NASA in late fall 2023, eight months later than was predicted originally. For Artemis 3, assembly of elements of the thrust structure began at Michoud Assembly Facility in early 2021. The liquid hydrogen tank that is to be used on Artemis 3 was originally planned to be the Artemis 1 tank, but it was set aside as the welds were found to be faulty. Repair techniques were developed, and the tank has reentered production and will be proof tested for strength, for use on Artemis 3. #### Construction of EUS for Block 1B As of July 2021, Boeing is also preparing to begin construction of the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), which is planned to debut on Artemis 4. ### Launches Originally planned for late 2016, the uncrewed first flight of SLS slipped more than twenty-six times and almost six years. As of earlier that month, the first launch was originally scheduled for 8:30 am EDT, 29 August 2022. It was postponed to 2:17 pm EDT (18:17 UTC), 3 September 2022, after the launch director called a scrub due to a temperature sensor falsely indicating that an RS-25 engine's hydrogen bleed intake was too warm. The 3 September attempt was then scrubbed due to a hydrogen leak in the tail service mast quick disconnect arm, which was fixed; the next launch option was at first a period in late October and then a launch in mid-November, due to unfavorable weather during Hurricane Ian. It launched on November 16. NASA originally limited the amount of time the solid rocket boosters can remain stacked to "about a year" from the time two segments are joined. The first and second segments of the Artemis 1 boosters were joined on 7 January 2021. NASA could choose to extend the time limit based on an engineering review. On 29 September 2021, Northrop Grumman indicated that the limit could be extended to eighteen months for Artemis 1, based on an analysis of the data collected when the boosters were being stacked; an analysis weeks before the actual launch date later extended that to December 2022 for the boosters of Artemis 1, almost two years after stacking. In late 2015, the SLS program was stated to have a 70% confidence level for the first Orion flight that carries crew, the second SLS flight overall, to happen by 2023; as of November 2021, NASA delayed Artemis 2 from 2023 to May 2024. In March 2023, NASA announced they had delayed Artemis 2 to November 2024. #### Usage beyond Artemis Although the SLS is only confirmed for use on the first few Artemis missions, several NASA mission concept studies for robotic missions considered launching on the SLS. These include: Neptune Odyssey, Europa Lander, Enceladus Orbilander, Persephone, HabEx, Origins Space Telescope, LUVOIR, Lynx, and Interstellar probe. These concept studies were prepared for possible recommendation by the National Academy's Decadal surveys. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey in 2021 recommended a smaller, merged version of HabEx and LUVOIR preceded by a technology maturation program to reduce cost and schedule risk, although the eventual mission may or may not use SLS. In 2022 the Planetary Science Decadal Survey recommended Enceladus Orbilander as the third highest priority for flagship planetary missions in the 2020s. The Heliophysics Decadal Survey, due to be completed in 2024, is considering the Interstellar Probe mission concept. NASA is planning to turn over the SLS to contractors such as Boeing and Northtrop Grumman to find more buyers and bring down costs, hoping to reduce the rocket's price tag to \$1 billion. Finding a market for a large and costly rocket is difficult however, Reuters reported. The DoD, seen as a potential customer, stated in 2023 that it is not interested in a partnership with NASA or the SLS as other rockets already offer them the capability that they need at an affordable price. ## Criticism The SLS has been criticized based on program cost, lack of commercial involvement, and non-competitiveness of legislation requiring the use of Space Shuttle components. ### Funding In 2011, Rep. Tom McClintock and other groups called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate possible violations of the Competition in Contracting Act, arguing that the requirement that Space Shuttle components be used on SLS were non-competitive and assured contracts to existing Space Shuttle suppliers. Lori Garver, a former NASA Deputy Administrator, called for canceling the launch vehicle alongside the Mars 2020 rover. In 2023, Cristina Chaplain, former assistant director of the GAO, has expressed doubts about the reduction of the rocket's cost to a competitive threshold, "just given the history and how challenging it is to build". ### Management In 2019, the Government Accountability Office noted that NASA had assessed the performance of contractor Boeing positively, though the project had experienced cost growth and delay. A March 2020 report by Office of Inspector General found NASA moved out \$889 million of costs relating to SLS boosters, but did not update the SLS budget to match. This kept the budget overrun to 15% in FY 2019; an overrun of 30% would have required NASA to request additional funding from Congress The Inspector General report found that were it not for this "masking" of cost, the overrun would have been 33% by FY 2019. The GAO stated "NASA's current approach for reporting cost growth misrepresents the cost performance of the program". ### Proposed alternatives In 2009, the Augustine commission proposed a commercial 165,000 lb (75 t) launcher for lunar exploration. In 2011–2012, the Space Access Society, Space Frontier Foundation, and The Planetary Society called for the cancellation of the project, arguing that the SLS would consume the funds for other projects from the NASA budget. U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher and others proposed the development of an orbital propellant depot and the acceleration of the Commercial Crew Development program as an alternative to the SLS program. An unpublished NASA study and another from the Georgia Institute of Technology found these approaches could have lower costs. In 2012, United Launch Alliance also suggested using existing rockets with on-orbit assembly and propellant depots as needed. In 2019, a former ULA employee alleged that Boeing viewed orbital refueling technology as a threat to the SLS and blocked investment in the technology. In 2010, SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk claimed that his company could build a launch vehicle in the 310,000–330,000 lb (140–150 t) payload range for \$2.5 billion, or \$300 million (in 2010 dollars) per launch, not including a potential upper-stage upgrade. Former NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, expressed that the SLS could be replaced in the future in an interview with Politico in September 2020. Bolden said that the "SLS will go away ... because at some point commercial entities are going to catch up." Bolden further stated, "They are really going to build a heavy-lift launch vehicle sort of like SLS that they will be able to fly for a much cheaper price than NASA can do SLS. That's just the way it works." ## See also - Austere Human Missions to Mars - Comparison of orbital launchers families - Comparison of orbital launch systems - DIRECT, proposals prior to SLS - Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, a 2009 concept launch vehicle - Ares V, a 2000s cargo vehicle design for the Constellation Program - National Launch System, 1990s - Magnum (rocket), a 1990s concept - Saturn (rocket family), 1960s - Studied Space Shuttle Variations and Derivatives

Insane Clown President

2017 book by Matt Taibbi

Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus is a non-fiction book by Matt Taibbi about Donald Trump and the 2016 United States presidential election. The book contains illustrations by Rolling Stone artist Victor Juhasz. Taibbi's choice of title for the book was motivated by Trump's marketing style and is wordplay based on the name of American horrorcore band Insane Clown Posse. His work was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, who had previously published Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Taibbi begins the work by quoting from his 2008 book, The Great Derangement, asserting he predicted the onslaught of fake news and the beginnings of the alt-right in society. He argues such societal factors helped set the tone for a climate in which Trump could ascend to the presidency. Taibbi writes that Trump's prior experiences in reality television gave him the tools to triumph in an era of post-truth politics. He criticizes the media for its coverage of Trump, describing how the candidate's inflammatory campaign rhetoric led to increased publicity. The book documents a chronology of the author's thoughts over time as he begins to realize Trump's increasing chances of success. Taibbi reflects back on the events after the election, concluding Trump won because he was able to harness the power of television. The book was a commercial success, debuting in hardcover nonfiction at number 15 on The New York Times Best Seller list. The New York Times also listed it as a best seller in its separate category of combined print and ebooks. It debuted at number six in the Los Angeles Times best seller list, remaining on that list for two months. It was also a best seller in New Zealand. Insane Clown President was positively reviewed by Publishers Weekly, which called it "equal parts entertaining and enlightening". Kirkus Reviews pointed out the author's lack of pretense for objectivity, and concluded, "[a] lively set of dispatches that shows how even the harshest skeptic in the pundit class can be blindsided." San Francisco Chronicle called it "a rich trove of sharply written essays from the campaign". The New York Times criticized the work for its lack of moderation. The Daily Beast characterized it as "raucous, trenchant, knee-slapping". Adelaide Review said the author was "one of the finest exponents of polemic journalism". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette criticized the book for not delving deeply into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Santa Barbara Independent concluded, "Insane Clown President is a valuable work about one of the most bizarre electoral outcomes in American history." ## Contents summary Insane Clown President contains two original articles in addition to a compilation of 25 reports from Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi along the 2016 United States presidential election campaign trail. Taibbi characterizes the phenomenon of the 2016 election campaign as, "simultaneously the most thrilling and disgusting political event of our generation." In the work's introduction, Taibbi quotes from his 2008 book The Great Derangement, and documents how he foresaw the increasing influence of disruptive societal factors such as the alt-right and fake news ten years before the book's publication. He asserts such factors led to a political climate where Trump could flourish. Taibbi observes, "The country's leaders are corrupt and have become unresponsive to the needs of the population. People all over are beginning to notice. This being America, as ordinary people tune out their corrupt leaders, they will replace official propaganda with conspiratorial explanations even more ridiculous than the original lies." Taibbi warns, Donald Trump's "vulgarity and defiant lack of self-awareness make him, unfortunately, the perfect foil for reflecting the rot and neglect of the corrupted political system". He laments, "A system unable to stop this must be very sick indeed." The author writes about Donald Trump's campaign style, "He can do plenty of damage just by encouraging people to be as uninhibited in their stupidity as he is." Taibbi refers to Trump as an ignorant individual engaged in confidence tricks, "bloviating and farting his way" along the trail of the 2016 election. The author recalls Trump, "saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next." The book offers a positive assessment of the campaign of Bernie Sanders for president. Taibbi writes, "More than any politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost." Taibbi writes critically of the impact press coverage had on the 2016 election. He recounts the process by which Trump, previously known for his reality television appearances, learned how to strategically manipulate coverage of his campaign through boorish behavior. Taibbi describes a campaign placed with post-truth politics where facts are subsumed by reactions garnered from television audiences. The author recounts that such strategic campaigning was not beholden simply to Donald Trump, but extended to other candidates including Carly Fiorina. The author is critical of the nature by which press coverage of politics has moved to the extremes, writing, "The model going forward will likely involve Republican media covering Democratic corruption and Democratic media covering Republican corruption." He notes it is rare that press companies from one side of the political divide will cover the same subject matter as the other. The book chronicles Taibbi's changing assessments of Trump's likelihood to win the 2016 election for president. In August 2015, he criticizes the poor slate of candidates for the Republican nomination for president, calling them the "GOP clown car". Taibbi begins to change his views after personally visiting speeches by Trump at campaign stops in the beginning portion of 2016. In an election dispatch from September 2016, Taibbi writes, "I still don't think Trump really has a chance, but we're sure headed towards a scary ending." In October, he states, "Trump can't win. Our national experiment can't end because one ageing narcissist got bored of sex and food. Not even America deserves that." The book castigates Republican tactics of engaging in culture wars, writing they are, "taking advantage of the fact that their voters didn't know the difference between an elitist and the actual elite, between a snob and an oligarch." Taibbi documents how Trump's inflammatory campaign rhetoric, often over social media including Twitter, garnered him increased publicity which led to increased influence. Insane Clown President argues that after the 2016 election, subsequent campaign processes will become, "a turnout battle between people who believe in a multicultural vision for the country, and those who don't. Every other issue, from taxes to surveillance to war to jobs to education, will take a distant back seat to this ongoing, moronic referendum on white victimhood." The author identifies the press as a key figure in the tenor of the 2016 campaign, "The public hates us reporters in the best of times. But the summer of Trump could easily turn into an Alamo moment for the press." Taibbi comes to the view that members of the press should spend more time hearing out the viewpoints of the American populace, writing, "Just like the politicians our job was to listen, and we talked instead. Now America will do its own talking for a while. The world may never forgive us for not seeing this coming." After the election, Taibbi analyzes its outcome and the factors which led to Trump's success. Taibbi surmises Trump capitalized on the power of television, and "is the first to realize the weakness in the system, which is that the watchdogs in the political media can't resist a car wreck." The author concludes, "Trump won because he grasped instinctively that the campaign trail was more TV show than democracy." ## Composition and publication Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi had previously covered four other presidential campaigns prior to 2016. Taibbi documented the 2016 presidential campaign in a series of contemporaneous reports for Rolling Stone. He combined these dispatches into one publication for Insane Clown President. The book contains illustrations by Victor Juhasz, an artist for Rolling Stone. In a pre-inauguration interview with PBS, Taibbi explained his choice of Insane Clown President as the title, "If the president-elect and his followers have complaints about the title, they should really blame Trump himself. Because I actually learned a lot about marketing watching Donald Trump over the last couple of years. There is no reason to be subtle at all in the current environment." Taibbi's work was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, who had previously published Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Taibbi explained, "What made Thompson's work on that 1972 campaign art, as opposed to just snappy periodical writing, was Thompson's obsession with Nixon. It was like the two men were linked in another dimension." Taibbi contrasted his publication with Thompson's reporting from 1972, "unlike previous campaigns I've covered for the magazine, 2016 had a lot in common with 1972. Richard Nixon was the defining monster of Thompson's era. We've now found ours in Donald Trump." The author recounted how he initially had felt the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign would be looked back on in retrospect as a brief humorous period of hysteria on the part of the American populace. He realized, "It turned out to be something a lot darker and crazier than that." Taibbi said of his book, "Insane Clown President is the story of how we got here, to the beginning of our next long national nightmare." The first edition of the book was published by Spiegel & Grau in hardcover format on January 17, 2017. It was released in ebook format the same year. The book was published in London that year by WH Allen, and again in the U.S. by Random House in print and ebook formats. It was published in 2017 in audiobook formats by Random House and Books on Tape, narrated by voice actor Rob Shapiro. ## Sales and reception Insane Clown President was a commercial success, debuting at number 15 on The New York Times Best Seller list in the category, "Hardcover Nonfiction". In the category, "Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction", it debuted at number 17 on The New York Times Best Seller list in its first week of publication. It remained on the list in this category for its second week, rising to number 12. Insane Clown President debuted at number six in the Los Angeles Times best seller list in the category of nonfiction. The book remained on the Los Angeles Times best seller list for eight weeks. The work was additionally a best seller in New Zealand in 2017. Publishers Weekly assessed in its book review, "Taibbi, a writer of striking intelligence and bold ideas, is as hilarious as he is scathing." The review pointed out the book's author did not seek objectivity in his work, "The book is strikingly partisan, and the left-of-center readers most likely to laugh out loud will find their mirth tinged with chagrin that's hard to digest so soon after the recounted events." The review criticized the contradictory nature of Taibbi, as a member of the press himself, taking time in the book to criticize the media. The review concluded, "Readers new to Taibbi will regret not reading his reporting as events unfolded, as his analysis is equal parts entertaining and enlightening." Kirkus Reviews wrote that throughout the chronology of Taibbi's recounting of the 2016 campaign, the book, "unfolds as a comedy that slowly turns into a horror movie." Kirkus Reviews criticized the author's tone in the beginning of the book, "Taibbi is cleareyed about the populist forces and fractured media landscape Trump exploited, but given his admission of underestimating Trump's chances, his first-chapter victory lap, which annotates a chapter from his 2008 book, The Great Derangement, to show how much he's correctly predicted, feels defensive if not unseemly." The piece from Kirkus Reviews concluded, "A lively set of dispatches that shows how even the harshest skeptic in the pundit class can be blindsided." Los Angeles Review of Books writer Greg LaGambina commented of the book's acknowledgement of Trump's win at the end of the election, "Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus, would have been a raucous good-time chuckle of a read had the ending not ruined the ride." LaGambina concluded, "Insane Clown President might not be the book he intended to write, but for anyone looking to get out of the maze we've stormed into blindly, Taibbi's dispatches might prove to be a good map." San Francisco Chronicle book reviewer John Diaz said the work contained, "a rich trove of sharply written essays from the campaign." Diaz wrote that Insane Clown President, "evokes a distinct aura of the gunslinging, spare-no-niceties outsider approach that Hunter S. Thompson brought to the 1972 Nixon-McGovern campaign in his seminal work, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail." Diaz concluded, "Insane Clown President is a breezy read and will bring knowing chuckles among liberals who will savor its wickedly clever shots at all the jesters in the clown car who constituted the Republican primary field." The Daily Beast journalist John Batchelor called the book "raucous, trenchant, knee-slapping". The New York Times reviewed the work, with John Williams observing, "Matt Taibbi didn't see much moderation while covering the most recent campaign season for Rolling Stone." Williams pointed out the work did not make a pretense of having an objective viewpoint, writing, "If his title (or familiarity with his previous work) didn't tip you off, Taibbi doesn't aim for a neutral tone." Bustle writer Kerri Jarema observed, "Matt Taibbi tells the story of Western civilization's very own train wreck, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion." Jarema described the author's writing as "dead-on, real-time analysis". David Knight reviewed the book for Adelaide Review, and wrote of its author, "He is one of the finest exponents of polemic journalism, and regularly punches the reader in the gut with analogies and metaphors that brutally describe the world around him." Knight observed, "Taibbi's been called the modern Hunter S. Thompson many times, but unlike the overrated gonzo pioneer, Taibbi is able to brutally assess what's going on as well as cover the mood of the public with humour, heart and venom minus the ego." His review concluded, "Here his venom is not aimed at Middle America but the Republican Party, the Democrats and the media. Writing for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, journalist Chris Potter compared the book to Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson, commenting, "Nearly a half-century later, another Rolling Stone writer, Matt Taibbi, has assembled a selection of his own 2016 reports. And — spoiler alert! — the outcome is arguably not much different." Potter criticized the work for not devoting more space to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He lamented, "I wish Mr. Taibbi had delved into the Kremlin's meddling in the 2016 election, which was on display as early as last fall. He's lived in, and written extensively about, contemporary Russia, and might have revealed some interesting correspondences between the political culture there and here." Santa Barbara Independent journalist Brian Tanguay wrote in his book review that Taibbi was "the spiritual heir of legendary presidential campaign scribes" including Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Crouse. Tanguay said of Taibbi's writing style, "Taibbi is incisive and often incredibly funny as he recounts the foibles of candidates and the long, enervating presidential primary process." He observed, "A veteran of four presidential campaigns, Taibbi knows how the game works. Or at least he knew until Trump came." Tanguay's review concluded, "Insane Clown President is a valuable work about one of the most bizarre electoral outcomes in American history."

1999 South Dakota Learjet crash

Fatal plane crash caused by hypoxia

On October 25, 1999, a chartered Learjet 35 business jet was scheduled to fly from Orlando, Florida, United States to Dallas, Texas, United States. Early in the flight, the aircraft, which was climbing to its assigned altitude on autopilot, lost cabin pressure, and all six on board were incapacitated by hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the brain and body. The aircraft continued climbing past its assigned altitude, then failed to make the westward turn toward Dallas over North Florida and continued on its northwestern course, flying over the southern and midwestern United States for almost four hours and 1,500 miles (2,400 km). The plane ran out of fuel over South Dakota and crashed into a field near Aberdeen after an uncontrolled descent, killing all six on board. The two pilots were Michael Kling and Stephanie Bellegarrigue. The four passengers on board were PGA golfer Payne Stewart; his agent, and former Alabama football quarterback, Robert Fraley; president of the agency, Van Ardan; and Bruce Borland, a golf architect with the Jack Nicklaus golf course design company. ## History of the flight Note: all times are presented in 24-hour format. Because the flight took place in both the Eastern Time zone – Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) – and the Central Time zone – Central Daylight Time (CDT) – all times are given in this article in Coordinated Universal Time (which is indicated by the time followed by the letters UTC). ### Departure On October 25, 1999, a Learjet 35, registration operated by Sunjet Aviation of Sanford, Florida, departed Orlando International Airport at 13:19 UTC (09:19 EDT) on a two-day, five-flight trip. Before departure, the aircraft had been fueled with 5,300 lb (2,400 kg) of Jet A, enough for four hours and 45 minutes of flight. On board were two pilots and four passengers. At 13:27:13 UTC, the air traffic controller from the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) instructed the pilot to climb and maintain flight level (FL) 390 (39,000 feet (11,900 m) above sea level). At 13:27:18 UTC (09:27:18 EDT), the pilot acknowledged the clearance by stating, "three nine zero bravo alpha." This was the last known radio transmission from the airplane, and occurred while the aircraft was passing through 23,000 feet (7,000 m). The next attempt to contact the aircraft occurred six minutes, twenty seconds later (fourteen minutes after departure), with the aircraft at 36,500 feet (11,100 m), and the controller's message went unacknowledged. The controller attempted to contact N47BA five more times in the next 4+1⁄2 minutes, again with no answer. ### First interception About 14:54 UTC (now 09:54 CDT in the Central Time zone), a United States Air Force F-16 test pilot named Colonel Olson, from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base in western Florida, who happened to be in the air nearby, was directed by controllers to intercept N47BA. When the fighter was about 2,000 feet (600 m) from the Learjet, at an altitude of about 46,400 feet (14,100 m), Olson made two radio calls to N47BA but did not receive a response. The F-16 pilot made a visual inspection of the Lear, finding no visible damage to the airplane. Both engines were running and the plane's red, rotating anti-collision beacon was on which is standard operation for aircraft in flight. Olson could not see inside the passenger section of the airplane because the windows seemed to be dark. Further, he stated that the entire right cockpit windshield was opaque, as if condensation or ice covered the inside. He also indicated that the left cockpit windshield was opaque, although several sections of the center of the windshield seemed to be only thinly covered by condensation or ice; a small rectangular section of the windshield was clear, with only a small section of the glare shield visible through this area. He did not see any flight control movement. At about 15:12 UTC, Olson concluded his inspection of N47BA and broke formation, proceeding to Scott Air Force Base in southwestern Illinois. ### Second interception At 16:13 UTC, almost three hours into the flight of the unresponsive Learjet, two F-16s from the 138th Fighter Wing of the Oklahoma Air National Guard, flying under the call-sign "TULSA 13 flight," were directed by the Minneapolis ARTCC to intercept the Learjet. The TULSA 13 lead pilot reported that he could not see any movement in the cockpit, that the windshield was dark and that he could not tell if the windshield was iced. A few minutes later, a TULSA 13 pilot reported, "We're not seeing anything inside, could be just a dark cockpit though... he is not reacting, moving or anything like that he should be able to have seen us by now." At 16:39 UTC, TULSA 13 left to rendezvous with a tanker for refueling. The aircraft reached a maximum altitude of 48,900 feet (14,900 m). ### Third interception and escort About 16:50 UTC, two F-16s from the 119th Wing of the North Dakota Air National Guard with the identification "NODAK 32" were directed to intercept N47BA. TULSA 13 flight also returned from refueling and all four fighters maneuvered close to the Lear. The TULSA 13 lead pilot reported, "We've got two visuals on it. It's looking like the cockpit window is iced over and there's no displacement in any of the control surfaces as far as the ailerons or trims." About 17:01 UTC, TULSA 13 flight returned to the tanker again, while NODAK 32 remained with N47BA. There was some speculation in the media that the fighter jets were prepared to shoot down the Learjet if it threatened to crash in a heavily populated area. Officials at the Pentagon strongly denied that possibility. Shooting down the plane "was never an option," Air Force spokesman Captain Joe Della Vedova said, adding that "I don't know where that came from." Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien authorized the Canadian Forces Air Command to shoot down the plane if it entered Canadian airspace without making contact. He writes in his 2018 memoirs, "The plane was heading toward the city of Winnipeg and the air traffic controllers feared that it would crash into the Manitoba capital. I was asked to give permission for the military to bring down the plane if that became necessary. With a heavy heart, I authorized the procedure. Shortly after I made my decision, I learned that the plane had crashed in South Dakota." ### Crash The Learjet's cockpit voice recorder (CVR), which was recovered from the wreckage, contained an audio recording of the last thirty minutes of the flight (it was an older model which only recorded thirty minutes of audio; the aircraft was also not equipped with a flight data recorder). At 17:10:41 UTC, the Learjet's engines can be heard winding down on the CVR recording, indicating that the plane's fuel had been exhausted. In addition, sounds of the stick shaker and the disconnection of the autopilot can be heard. With the engines powered down, the autopilot would have attempted to maintain altitude, causing the plane's airspeed to drop until it approached stall speed, at which point the stick shaker would have automatically engaged to warn the pilot and the autopilot would have switched itself off. At 17:11:01 UTC, the Lear began a right turn and descent. NODAK 32 remained to the west, while TULSA 13 broke away from the tanker and followed N47BA down. At 17:11:26 UTC, the NODAK 32 lead pilot reported, "The target is descending and he is doing multiple rolls, looks like he's out of control... in a severe descent, request an emergency descent to follow target." The TULSA 13 pilot reported, "It's soon to impact the ground; he is in a descending spiral." Impact occurred approximately 17:13 UTC, or 12:13 local, after a total flight time of 3 hours, 54 minutes, with the aircraft hitting the ground at nearly supersonic speed and at an extreme angle. The Learjet crashed in South Dakota, just outside Mina in Edmunds County, on relatively flat ground and left a crater 42 feet (13 m) long, 21 feet (6.4 m) wide, and 8 feet (2.4 m) deep. None of its components remained intact. ## Passengers and crew In addition to Payne Stewart and three others, there were two pilots on board: The 42-year-old captain, Michael Kling, held an airline transport pilot certificate and type ratings for the Boeing 707, Boeing 737, and Learjet 35. He also had Air Force experience flying the KC-135 and Boeing E-3 Sentry. Kling was also an instructor pilot on the KC-135E in the Maine Air National Guard. According to Sunjet Aviation records, the captain had accumulated a total of 4,280 hours of flight time (military and commercial) and had flown a total of 60 hours with Sunjet, 38 as a Learjet pilot-in-command and 22 as a Learjet second-in-command. The first officer, 27-year-old Stephanie Bellegarrigue, held a commercial pilot certificate and type ratings for Learjet and Cessna Citation 500. She was also a certified flight instructor. She had accumulated a total of 1,751 hours of flight time, of which 251 hours were with Sunjet Aviation as a second-in-command and 99 as a Learjet second-in-command. ## Investigation The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has several levels of investigation, of which the highest is a "major" investigation. Because of the extraordinary circumstances in this crash, a major investigation was performed. The NTSB determined that: > The probable cause of this accident was incapacitation of the flight crew members as a result of their failure to receive supplemental oxygen following a loss of cabin pressurization, for undetermined reasons. The Board added a commentary regarding the possible reasons why the crew did not obtain supplemental oxygen: > Following the depressurization, the pilots did not receive supplemental oxygen in sufficient time and/or adequate concentration to avoid hypoxia and incapacitation. The wreckage indicated that the oxygen bottle pressure regulator/shutoff valve was open on the accident flight. Further, although one flight crew mask hose connector was found in the wreckage disconnected from its valve receptacle (the other connector was not recovered), damage to the recovered connector and both receptacles was consistent with both flight crew masks having been connected to the airplane's oxygen supply lines at the time of impact. In addition, both flight crew mask microphones were found plugged into their respective crew microphone jacks. Therefore, assuming the oxygen bottle contained an adequate supply of oxygen, supplemental oxygen should have been available to both pilots' oxygen masks. > > [A] possible explanation for the failure of the pilots to receive emergency oxygen is that their ability to think and act decisively was impaired because of hypoxia before they could don their oxygen masks. No definitive evidence exists that indicates the rate at which the accident flight lost its cabin pressure; therefore, the Safety Board evaluated conditions of both rapid and gradual depressurization. > > If there had been a breach in the fuselage (even a small one that could not be visually detected by the in-flight observers) or a seal failure, the cabin could have depressurized gradually, rapidly, or even explosively. Research has shown that a period of as little as 8 seconds without supplemental oxygen following rapid depressurization to about 30,000 feet (9,100 m) may cause a drop in oxygen saturation that can significantly impair cognitive functioning and increase the amount of time required to complete complex tasks. > > A more gradual decompression could have resulted from other possible causes, such as a smaller leak in the pressure vessel or a closed flow control valve. Safety Board testing determined that a closed flow control valve would cause complete depressurization to the airplane's flight altitude over a period of several minutes. However, without supplemental oxygen, substantial adverse effects on cognitive and motor skills would have been expected soon after the first clear indication of decompression (the cabin altitude warning), when the cabin altitude reached 10,000 feet (3,000 m) (which could have occurred in about 30 seconds). > > Investigations of other accidents in which flight crews attempted to diagnose a pressurization problem or initiate emergency pressurization instead of immediately donning oxygen masks following a cabin altitude alert have revealed that, even with a relatively gradual rate of depressurization, pilots have rapidly lost cognitive or motor abilities to effectively troubleshoot the problem or don their masks shortly thereafter. In this accident, the flight crew's failure to obtain supplemental oxygen in time to avoid incapacitation could be explained by a delay in donning oxygen masks; of only a few seconds in the case of an explosive or rapid decompression, or a slightly longer delay in the case of a gradual decompression. > > In summary, the Safety Board was unable to determine why the flight crew could not, or did not, receive supplemental oxygen in sufficient time and/or adequate concentration to avoid hypoxia and incapacitation. The NTSB report showed that the plane had several instances of maintenance work related to cabin pressure in the months leading up to the crash. The NTSB was unable to determine whether they stemmed from a common problem – replacements and repairs were documented, but not the pilot discrepancy reports that prompted them or the frequency of such reports. The report criticised Sunjet Aviation for the possibility that this would have made the problem harder to identify, track, and resolve, as well as the fact that in at least one instance the plane was flown with an unauthorized maintenance deferral for cabin pressure problems. ## Aftermath Stewart was ultimately headed to Houston for the 1999 Tour Championship but planned a stop in Dallas for discussions with the athletic department of his alma mater, Southern Methodist University, about building a new home course for the school's golf program. Stewart was memorialized at the Tour Championship with a lone bagpipe player playing at the first hole at Champions Golf Club prior to the beginning of the first day of play. The owner of the crash site, after consulting the wives of Stewart and several other victims, created a memorial on about 1 acre (4,000 m²) of the site. At its center is a rock pulled from the site inscribed with the names of the victims and a Bible passage. The 2000 U.S. Open, held at Pebble Beach Golf Links, began with a golf version of a 21-gun salute when 21 of Stewart's fellow players simultaneously hit balls into the Pacific Ocean. In 2001, Stewart was posthumously inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. On June 8, 2005, a Florida state court jury in Orlando found that Learjet was not liable for the deaths of Stewart and his agents. ## Documentaries The documentary series Mayday, also known by the titles Air Crash Investigation and Air Disasters, features this incident in the first episode of its 16th season. The episode, titled "Deadly Silence", was first aired on June 7, 2016. ## See also - Bo Rein – another US sportsman who died in a similar aircraft accident - 2000 Australia Beechcraft King Air crash - Helios Airways Flight 522 - 2022 Baltic Sea Cessna crash - 2023 Virginia plane crash

Melina Perez

American professional wrestler and valet

Melina Nava Perez (born March 9, 1979) is an American professional wrestler and model. She is best known for her time with WWE under the ring name Melina. Outside of WWE, Perez most recently wrestled for the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). In 2000, Perez began training to be a professional wrestler at Jesse Hernandez's School of Hard Knocks, and made her debut in 2001. In late 2002, Perez auditioned for WWE's reality show Tough Enough III, but was eliminated in the first round, and was inspired by Al Snow to continue pursuing her wrestling career. In March 2004, Perez signed a contract with WWE, and was assigned to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), WWE's developmental territory, where she began managing Johnny Nitro and Joey Mercury, dubbed MNM, to three reigns as WWE Tag Team Champions, as well as Nitro to two reigns as WWE Intercontinental Champion. Perez is a three-time WWE Women's Champion, and a two-time WWE Divas Champion. After winning her second WWE Divas Championship, Perez became the first woman in WWE history to become a multiple-time champion with both the Women's and Divas titles. Famed for her flexibility, utilized during her entrance and in her in-ring maneuvers, Perez was called "one of the best wrestlers in the world" by Bret Hart, and cited by WWE as having "perhaps the most impressive arsenal of offensive maneuvers in Diva history." ## Early life Melina Nava Perez was born on March 9, 1979, in Los Angeles but was raised in the High Desert. Perez is of Mexican descent, and speaks English and Spanish natively. ## Modeling career Perez began her career as a beauty pageant contestant, winning Miss Hawaiian Tropic, Anaheim. During her modelling career, she has won many modelling competitions such as Group USA Bridal Show, Group USA Fashion Show, and Ms. California Belleza Latina. Melina was body painted by artist Mark Greenawalt for a modeling photo shoot in 2007 where she posed with her WWE Women's Championship belt. ## Professional wrestling career ### Early career (2001–2004) Perez began training at Jesse Hernandez's School of Hard Knocks in San Bernardino, California, and made her in-ring debut in November 2001. Many officials stated that she had the most natural ability of any woman who came through their school. In late 2002, Perez auditioned for World Wrestling Entertainment's reality show Tough Enough III, making it through to the final twenty-one, before being eliminated in the final cut of the first episode. After she was eliminated from the contest, trainer Al Snow encouraged her to keep trying to pursue her dream as a wrestler. On November 27, 2003, episode of SmackDown!, Melina was seen as a Native American alongside John Cena during a feast. ### World Wrestling Entertainment/WWE #### MNM (2004–2006) Perez debuted in WWE's then-developmental territory OVW in March 2004, being placed in a storyline as John Hennigan's ex-girlfriend. The storyline had Matt Cappotelli introduce her to the ring as a way to taunt Hennigan. Melina, however, turned on Cappotelli and aligned herself with Hennigan, who later changed his ring name to Johnny Nitro. Soon after, the duo began teaming with Joey Matthews, later known as Joey Mercury. The trio became known as MNM and on November 10, Melina managed Mercury and Nitro to win the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship, holding it for over two months. During her time in OVW, Melina, Nitro, and Steven Adkins came up with Melina's trademark split ring entrance. Melina made her first Raw appearance on November 29, 2004, when Randy Orton was the guest General Manager and hosted a Diva lingerie fashion show. She made another Raw appearance in December, participating in a limbo contest when Chris Jericho was General Manager for the night. Melina made her official debut in WWE as a heel, resuming her role as the manager of MNM, on the April 14, 2005, episode of SmackDown!. The team interrupted the first ever Carlito's Cabana interview segment, where one half of the WWE Tag Team Champions, Rey Mysterio, was a guest. Melina insulted Mysterio and had Mercury and Nitro attack him, leading to MNM's in-ring debut the next week on SmackDown! in a title match. The team won the match against Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero, starting their first WWE Tag Team Title reign. While managing the Tag Team Champions, Melina's character was developed to be more egotistical, as she declared herself "the most-dominant Diva in WWE". She made her official in-ring debut on June 30 against Michelle McCool, and had her first pay-per-view match against Torrie Wilson at The Great American Bash in a bra and panties match, winning both matches. In the same night, MNM dropped their championships to the Legion of Doom, prompting a new storyline where Melina hired Jillian Hall, a fixer, to assist them. MNM regained the titles on October 28 in a fatal four-Way tag team match. On the Eddie Guerrero Tribute Show, Melina won a Divas battle royal by eliminating the Women's Champion Trish Stratus. The next week, as a part of a new storyline, MNM kidnapped Stratus, tied her up and gagged her for Melina, who then challenged her to a match for the Women's Championship. The two fought at Survivor Series, with Melina losing to Stratus with the help of Mickie James. During this time, MNM defended their titles against Rey Mysterio and the World Heavyweight Champion Batista. Melina was placed in a storyline where she tried to make Batista call off the match by visiting him in his locker room and attempting to seduce him. The storyline had the two engage in sexual intercourse, after which he simply thanked her for the "warm-up" before leaving to take part in the match, where he and Mysterio defeated MNM for the titles. The storyline played over to the next episode of SmackDown! when, before MNM invoked their rematch clause, Melina held a press conference in the ring where she claimed that Batista had sexually harassed her. During the tag team match, Mark Henry aided MNM in winning back the WWE Tag Team Championship. The storyline with Henry continued into the next year. On the first SmackDown! of 2006, Melina announced that Henry was her personal protection against Batista. He accompanied her and aided the other members of MNM in matches against Batista and Mysterio. At Judgment Day on May 21, 2006, MNM lost their titles to Paul London and Brian Kendrick. After the match, Melina and Nitro, as part of the storyline, attacked Mercury, blaming him for the loss. Later that night, Melina lost a singles match against Jillian Hall, and after slapping General Manager Theodore Long in anger, she and Nitro were fired from the SmackDown! brand. The team then broke up because off-screen, Nitro and Mercury did not get along, and WWE management decided to send Nitro and Melina to the Raw brand. Melina and Nitro debuted on Raw on May 29, with Nitro losing to WWE Champion John Cena. Melina continued to manage Nitro during his successful hunt for the WWE Intercontinental Championship, and in another storyline with Trish Stratus. The storyline turned into a tag team feud when Carlito teamed with Stratus after he saved her from the attacks of Melina and Nitro. At Saturday Night's Main Event XXXIII on July 15, Melina and Nitro lost to Carlito and Stratus in a mixed tag team match. #### Women's Champion (2006–2009) After Melina's arrival on Raw, Mick Foley began to mention her in promos and on his WWE.com columns, playing on their real-life friendship, and they soon formed an on-screen friendship. At SummerSlam, Melina was involved in Foley's "I Quit" match against Ric Flair, when Flair threatened to hit her with a barbed wire baseball bat, causing Foley to quit the match to save her. The next night on Raw, the storyline had Vince McMahon order Foley to join the Kiss My Ass club. After begging Foley not to go through with it, Foley "joined the club" to save Melina's job, only to have her suddenly turn on him by delivering a low blow and firing him at the behest of McMahon. The storyline was concocted by Foley to refresh the idea of the Kiss My Ass club. It was also around this time that Melina added another characteristic to her gimmick: screaming loudly at ringside while managing or in tag team action, which became known as the "primal scream". On January 29, 2007, Melina became the number one contender for the WWE Women's Championship after defeating Maria in a number one contender's match. On the February 5 episode of Raw, Melina received her title match against Mickie James but was unsuccessful. After pinning James in a mixed tag team match, Melina was granted another title match. On the February 19 episode of Raw, as part of her first major singles push, Melina defeated James to win the WWE Women's Championship for the first time in her career and became the first woman of Mexican American descent to win the title. The feud between the two Divas continued and Melina later retained the title in a rematch during the first ever Women's Falls Count Anywhere match in WWE history. In March, Melina was placed in an angle where she became jealous of SmackDown! Diva Ashley Massaro, who was receiving attention because of her appearance in Playboy. The angle had Melina claim in her blogs that no Playboy cover models were capable of fighting her. This resulted in scheduled matches against former Playboy cover girls Torrie Wilson and Candice Michelle, with both women losing to Melina. The storyline came to an end at WrestleMania 23, where Melina pinned Ashley in a Lumberjill match to retain her Women's Championship. After WrestleMania, Melina organized a photo op with the Women's Championship belt in the ring, but was interrupted by Mickie James, resulting in another storyline feud between the two Divas. On April 24, at a house show in Paris, Melina lost the Women's Championship in a Triple Threat match to James when James pinned Victoria, but on the orders of Jonathan Coachman, she was entitled to a rematch on the same night, where she pinned James by putting her hands on the ropes to regain the title and become a two-time WWE Women's Champion. On May 7, 2007, Melina began feuding with Playboy cover girl Candice Michelle after she was defeated in a tag team match alongside Victoria against Candice Michelle and Mickie James. Melina continued to lose to Candice in various tag team matches, as well as in non-title bouts over the next few weeks. At Vengeance, Melina lost the Women's Championship to Candice, and failed to recapture the title at The Great American Bash. At SummerSlam, Melina participated in a battle royal to determine the number one contender for the WWE Women's Championship. Melina scored two eliminations and lasted until the final four, before being eliminated by Torrie Wilson and Michelle McCool. On the December 29, 2007 episode of Raw, Melina once again challenged for the WWE Women's Championship in a triple threat match against then-champion Beth Phoenix and Mickie James. Melina was defeated and pinned after suffering a DDT from James, followed by a delayed fisherman suplex, while she was completely unconscious, from Phoenix. In April 2008, Melina, along with then-ally Beth Phoenix, competed at WrestleMania XXIV in a tag team match, defeating Maria and Ashley. On the May 5 episode of Raw, Melina unintentionally attacked Phoenix with her boot during a lumberjill match with Mickie James. The following week, Phoenix walked out on Melina during a tag match against James and Maria, when Melina accidentally bumped Phoenix off the apron. Melina was then attacked by Phoenix during a backstage segment following the match, leading to Melina turning face. On the May 19 episode of Raw, Melina commentated during Beth Phoenix's match against Maria, which Phoenix won, and Melina would afterwards attack Phoenix with her boot before being attacked by Phoenix. At the One Night Stand pay-per-view, Melina competed in the first ever women's "I Quit" match against Beth Phoenix, but was unsuccessful. The next night on Raw, Melina teamed with former rival Mickie James in a tag team match against Beth Phoenix and Katie Lea in a losing effort. On June 23, 2008, Perez suffered a heel injury after falling from the turnbuckles during a tag team match with Mickie James against Natalya and Victoria. Melina returned from injury on the November 24 episode of Raw, teaming with former rivals Mickie James and Candice Michelle to defeat Phoenix, Jillian Hall, and Katie Lea Burchill. The following week, she made her singles return by defeating Hall. Following the match, Melina stated her intentions to take the WWE Women's Championship from Beth Phoenix. On December 29, Melina won a six-woman battle royal to become the number one contender for the Championship. After the match, Melina and Phoenix engaged in a confrontation over a fan of Phoenix's named Rosa Mendes, who had attacked Melina. On January 25, 2009, Melina won her third WWE Women's Championship at the Royal Rumble by defeating Phoenix. She retained her championship against Beth Phoenix on February 16 episode of Raw, and again during a dark match at No Way Out. On the March 9 episode of Raw, Melina was defeated by WWE Divas Champion Maryse, in a champion vs. champion Lumberjill Match. At WrestleMania 25, Melina participated in the "Miss Wrestlemania" Battle Royal, where she was not victorious. #### Divas Champion (2009–2011) On the April 13, 2009, episode of Raw, Melina was drafted back to SmackDown as part of the 2009 WWE Draft, thus making the WWE Women's Championship exclusive to the brand. She began a feud with Michelle McCool, who was named as the number one contender to the title. McCool attacked Melina after her victory over Alicia Fox on the June 19 episode of SmackDown. Melina would then lose the Women's Championship to McCool at The Bash after an interference from Alicia Fox; she failed to regain the championship at Night of Champions. On the September 29 episode of SmackDown, Melina was once again defeated by McCool in a rematch for the championship, thus convincingly ending their feud. On October 12, Melina was traded back to the Raw brand, and won the WWE Divas Championship from Divas Champion Jillian Hall, who had won the belt from Mickie James only a few minutes earlier, this win also made Melina the first Latina American to hold the title. On the November 23 episode of Raw, Melina teamed up with Mickie James and Kelly Kelly to defeat Jillian Hall and LayCool (Michelle McCool and Layla). After the match, guest timekeeper The Gobbledy Gooker was revealed as Maryse by attacking Melina. The following week, Melina was pinned by Maryse in a tag team match. On the December 7 episode of Raw, Maryse defeated Gail Kim, and following the match, Maryse proceed to attack Kelly Kelly but was stopped by Melina. On December 29, at a WWE live event in Manchester, New Hampshire, Melina tore her ACL during a six-woman tag team match, and as a result she relinquished the Divas Championship on January 4. Melina made her return on the August 2, 2010, episode of Raw, attacking WWE Divas Champion Alicia Fox after a six-woman tag team match in which she, Jillian Hall, and Tamina defeated Eve Torres, Gail Kim, and Natalya. At SummerSlam, Melina defeated Fox to capture the Divas Championship for the second time in her career. After the match, she was attacked by Michelle McCool and WWE Women's Champion Layla. On the 900th episode of Raw, after winning a match, she was challenged by either Layla or McCool to a Lumberjill match at Night of Champions, to unify the WWE Women's and WWE Divas Championships. McCool would win that match, after Layla attacked Melina during the match, to unify the championships. The unified championship would henceforth be known as the Divas Championship, with the Women's Championship title being retired. On the September 20, 2010, episode of Raw, Melina was defeated by Layla in a match for the WWE Divas Championship. On the October 25 episode of Raw, Melina and Gail Kim were defeated by LayCool in just over a minute. On the December 20 episode of Raw, Melina became the number one contender to the Divas Championship and turned heel when she slapped then champion Natalya, who had attempted to congratulate her following her victory. When the two fought for the Divas Championship on January 24, 2011, on Raw, Melina was defeated. Following this loss, Melina would be relegated to mainly competing on WWE Superstars in various tag team matches, usually in defeat. On the August 1 episode of Raw, Melina participated in a \#1 contender's battle royal, which was won by Beth Phoenix. This would be her final match with WWE, as she was released later that week. #### Sporadic appearances (2019–present) On the July 22, 2019, episode of Raw, Melina made her first appearance in WWE in almost eight years at the Raw Reunion, acting as a referee in 24/7 Championship bouts between Kelly Kelly, Candice Michelle, and Alundra Blayze. PWInsider reported in September 2020 that Perez had signed a contract to return to WWE but Perez informed in February 2021 that, while WWE and she talked, they didn't come to an agreement. She would make another appearance on January 4, 2021, at WWE Raw Legends Night. On January 29, 2022, Melina made a surprise return opening the 2022 Royal Rumble match with Sasha Banks. She was, however, eliminated by Banks in less than a minute. ### Independent circuit (2011–2012) In November 2011, Perez wrestled her first match outside of WWE by defeating Lexxus at the Women Superstars Uncensored November 19 pay-per-view. Perez appeared on the World Wrestling Fan Xperience (WWFX) Champions Showcase Tour in Manila, Philippines on February 4, 2012, where she wrestled under her real name. On February 5, 2012, episode of WWFX, Melina defeated Jillian Hall. Melina appeared at the Family Wrestling Entertainment (FWE) event, signing autographs and serving as Eric Young's valet as he became the new FWE Heavyweight Champion. At the Empire City Showdown, on August 20, Melina made a further appearance for FWE in a segment with Charlie and Jackie Haas. On the April 28 episode of FWE Television, Melina was defeated by Winter with Lita as the special guest referee in a FWE Women's Championship match. Melina debuted for North East Wrestling on March 23, 2012, competing in a victorious effort against Velvet Sky, but lost to Sky the following day in a rematch. From June 30 to July 2, 2012, Melina participated in World Wrestling Council's (WWC) Anniversario weekend in Puerto Rico. On the first two nights, Melina defeated Velvet Sky in singles matches, but on the final night, she and Davey Richards were defeated in a mixed tag team match by Sky and Xix Savant. ### Return to the independent circuit (2015–Present) On June 19, 2015, after a three-year hiatus, Melina returned to the independent circuit at Maryland Championship Wrestling's Ladies Night event as the enforcer in the MCW Women's Championship main event match between Amber Rodriguez and Mickie James; Melina turned heel by attacking James during the match before being attacked by referee Lisa Marie Varon, after which James won the title. On August 5, Melina appeared as a villainess at Lucha Undergrounds Ultima Lucha helping Johnny Mundo in his match against Alberto El Patron by hitting El Patron with his title belt while the referee was knocked down. On October 16, Melina made her debut for Japanese promotion World Wonder Ring Stardom, during their first American tour in Covina, California. She teamed with Santana Garrett in a tag team match to defeat Hudson Envy and Thunder Rosa. On June 20, 2016, Melina announced her official in-ring return at Southside Wrestling Entertainment (SWE), taking part at SWE's Queen of The Ring tournament. On October 1, Perez made her official in-ring return in a tag team match at SWE Speed King 2016, teaming with Nixon Newell participating against the team of Alex Windsor and Kay Lee Ray. The match was declared a no contest. On October 2, Melina entered the SWE Queen of the Ring tournament. She defeated Lana Austin and Viper to advance to the finals, when she defeated the Queen Of Southside champion Kay Lee Ray, winning the tournament and the championship in the process. At the same day, Melina wrestled SWE KirbyMania, in an eight-man tag team match. She teamed with Jessicka Havok, Leah Vaughan, and Nixon Newell, and defeated the team of Alex Windsor, Kasey Owens, Kay Lee Ray and Viper. On October 29, at SWE 6th Anniversary Show, Melina successfully defended her championship against Alex Windsor, Dahlia Black, Kay Lee Ray, Nixon Newell, and Ruby Summers in a six-way match. On November 5, Melina defeated Renee Michelle to capture the MCW Women's Championship for the first time. On October 5, 2017, she left the title vacated due to injury, ending her reign at 350 days. After a two-year absence of in-ring activity, Melina returned on June 11, 2018, at promotion A Matter of Pride Wrestling to face off against The Boy Diva Rick Cataldo. The following month Melina attacked Cataldo with a bouquet of flowers given to Cataldo as a sign of affection by Vinny Pacifico. On April 4, 2019, Melina defeated Sonny Kiss at A Matter of Pride's Divamania in a match that qualified her to compete in the Chris Kanyon Memorial Battle Royal to determine the company's inaugural Champion; she was eliminated by eventual winner, Eddy McQueen. In August 2019 Perez faced Jamie Senegal in singles match at A Matter of Pride in a winning effort. Melina continued her feud with Rick Cataldo at A Matter Of Pride, notably attacking him on his wedding night and trying to convince Rick's husband Vinny Pacifico-Cataldo to stand up for himself against his abusive life partner. Melina debuted for Outlaw Wrestling on June 20, 2019; teaming with Bull James in defeating Anthony Greene and the Platinum Hunnies, and picked up her first singles win for the promotion on August 15, defeating Solo Darling. Melina began turning heel during her match against Kimber Lee on September 26; feigning an injury before attacking Lee and defeating her. Post-match, Melina cemented her heel turn by attacking Lee and an injured Willow Nightingale, leading to a grudge match on November 9, which Melina won over Nightingale. On May 7, 2022, Melina wrestled a match, which she lost, against Scarlett Bordeaux at Wrestle Pro Mayhem. On September 16, 2022 Melina was defeated by Mandy Leon in a fatal four way match for the MCW Women's Title at MCW Ladies Night, which also featured Gia Scott and Leila Grey. ### National Wrestling Alliance (2019–2021) Melina made her National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) debut on the November 19, 2019, episode of NWA Power (taped on October 1, 2019), aligning with Marti Belle and Thunder Rosa after helping them defeat NWA World Women's Champion Allysin Kay and Ashley Vox, establishing herself as a villainess. Melina made her NWA in-ring debut on Into the Fire, on December 14, teaming with Belle as they unsuccessfully challenged Kay and ODB. Following NWA's 18 month hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Melina resumed her role as Thunder Rosa's manager, and began a feud with Kamille and a debuting Taryn Terrell, turning face in the process. At NWA When Our Shadows Fall, on June 6, 2021, Melina teamed with Rosa in a losing effort against Terrell and Kylie Rae, despite Melina's wrestling on a retorn ACL. Melina turned heel once again and briefly feuded with Kylie Rae, leading to a match on the June 29 episode of NWA Power, which Melina lost. A few months later, Melina won a number one contenders triple threat match against Chelsea Green and Kylie Rae for a shot at Kamille's NWA World Women's Championship at NWA Hard Times 2, which she lost. ### Impact Wrestling (2021) Melina made her debut on the August 5, 2021, episode of Impact, where she was revealed as the challenger for Deonna Purrazzo's Impact Knockouts Championship at NWA EmPowerrr. On the August 19 episode of Impact!, she made her in-ring debut, defeating Brandi Lauren. After the match, she was attacked by Purrazzo and Matthew Rehwoldt but was saved by Trey Miguel, setting up a mixed tag team match at Emergence. At Emergence, they lost to Purrazzo and Rehwoldt. The feud ended at NWA EmPowerrr when Melina unsuccessfully challenged Deonna Purrazzo for the Impact Knockouts Championship after a hard fought contest. At Bound for Glory, Melina competed in the 20-wrestler Intergender Call Your Shot Gauntlet match which was won by Moose. ## Other media On April 13, 2008, she appeared in an episode of Celebrity Fit Club Boot Camp along with Mickie James, Layla, and Kelly Kelly. Perez has appeared in five WWE video games. She made her in-game debut in SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 and also appears in SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 and SmackDown vs. Raw 2011. ## Filmography ### Film ### Television ## Championships and accomplishments - The Baltimore Sun - Woman of the Year (2009) - Battle Championship Wrestling - BCW Women's Championship (1 time) - Empire Wrestling Federation - EWF Hall of Fame (2016) - Face 2 Face Wrestling - F2F Women's Championship (1 time) - Maryland Championship Wrestling - MCW Women's Championship (1 time) - Pro Wrestling Illustrated'' - Ranked No. 3 of the top 50 female wrestlers in the PWI Female 50 in 2009 - Southside Wrestling Entertainment - Queen of Southside Championship (1 time) - Queen of the Ring (2016) - WWE - WWE Divas Championship (2 times) - WWE Women's Championship (3 times) - Warriors of Wrestling''' - WOW Women's Championship (1 time)

Italian ironclad Terribile

Ironclad warship of the Italian Royal Navy

Terribile was the first ironclad warship to be built for the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy), and the second member of the Formidabile class. Terribile and her sister, Formidabile, were both built in France. A broadside ironclad, she was laid down in June 1860, launched in February 1861, and was completed in September that year. She was the first Italian ironclad to enter service and was equipped with four 203 mm (8 in) and sixteen 164 mm (6.5 in) guns. The ship took part in the operation off Lissa in 1866 during the Third Italian War of Independence. There, was tasked with neutralizing the Austrian coastal batteries protecting the port at Comisa, which placed her too far away to take part in the ensuing Battle of Lissa. The ship's postwar career was limited due to a combination of drastically reduced naval budgets and the appearance of more modern ironclads. In 1885, Terribile was withdrawn from service for use as a training ship. She remained in service until 1904 when she was broken up for scrap. ## Design Terribile was 65.8 meters (215 ft 11 in) long overall; she had a beam of 14.44 m (47 ft 5 in) and an average draft of 5.45 m (17 ft 11 in). She displaced 2,682 long tons (2,725 t) normally and up to 2,807 long tons (2,852 t) at full load. She had a crew of 371. Her propulsion system consisted of one single-expansion marine steam engine that drove a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by six coal-fired, rectangular fire-tube boilers. The boilers were vented through a single funnel. Her engine produced a top speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) from 1,100 indicated horsepower (820 kW). She could steam for about 1,300 nautical miles (2,400 km; 1,500 mi) at her top speed. To supplement her steam engine, the ship was schooner-rigged. Terribile was a broadside ironclad, armed with a main battery of four 203 mm (8 in) guns and sixteen 164 mm (6.5 in) rifled muzzle-loading guns. The ship's hull was sheathed with wrought iron armor that was 109 mm (4.3 in) thick. ## Service history Terribile was built by the Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée shipyard in La Seyne; her keel was laid down in June 1860, the first member of her class to begin construction. She was launched on 16 February 1861 and was completed in September that year. Ordered for the Royal Sardinian Navy, by the time the ship had been completed Italy had unified and Terribile was instead commissioned into the new Regia Marina (Royal Navy). In June 1866, Italy declared war on Austria, as part of the Third Italian War of Independence, which was fought concurrently with the Austro-Prussian War. The Italian fleet commander, Admiral Carlo Pellion di Persano, initially adopted a cautious course of action; he was unwilling to risk battle with the Austrian Navy, despite the fact that the Austrian fleet was much weaker than his own. Persano claimed he was simply waiting on the ironclad ram Affondatore, en route from Britain, but his inaction weakened morale in the fleet, with many of his subordinates openly accusing him of cowardice. Rear Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff brought the Austrian fleet to Ancona on June 27, in attempt to draw out the Italians. At the time, many of the Italian ships were in disarray; Terribile was carrying only half her guns at the time, and other ships were experiencing various difficulties with their engines or armament. Persano held a council of war aboard the ironclad Principe di Carignano to determine whether he should sortie to engage Tegetthoff, but by that time, the Austrians had withdrawn, making the decision moot. The Minister of the Navy, Agostino Depretis, urged Persano to act and suggested the island of Lissa, to restore Italian confidence after their defeat at the Battle of Custoza the previous month. On 7 July, Persano left Ancona and conducted a sweep into the Adriatic, but encountered no Austrian ships and returned on the 13th. ### Battle of Lissa On 16 July, Persano took the Italian fleet out of Ancona, bound for Lissa, where they arrived on the 18th. With them, they brought troop transports carrying 3,000 soldiers; the Italian warships began bombarding the Austrian forts on the island, with the intention of landing the soldiers once the fortresses had been silenced. In response, the Austrian Navy sent the fleet under Tegetthoff to attack the Italian ships. Terribile was at that time in the 3rd Division, along with her sister Formidabile, the ironclads Re di Portogallo and Regina Maria Pia, and the coastal defense ship Varese. After spending the 18th unsuccessfully bombarding the Austrian fortresses, the Italians withdrew late in the day, preparing to launch another attack the following morning. Persano ordered Terribile and Varese to attack the fortifications protecting the town of Comisa, while the rest of the fleet would attack the main port at Vis. These attacks again failed to defeat the Austrian defenders. Persano repeated his orders for the 20th, with Terribile and Varese again tasked with suppressing the batteries at Comisa. Before the Italians could begin the attack, the dispatch boat Esploratore arrived, bringing news of Tegetthoff's approach. Persano's fleet was in disarray; Terribile and Varese were nine miles to the west of most of his ships, preparing to attack Comisa, and three other ironclads were to the north-east. Persano immediately recalled Terribile and Varese while he ordered his ships first into a line abreast formation, and then to line ahead formation. Shortly before the action began, Persano left his flagship, Re d'Italia, and transferred to Affondatore, though none of his subordinates on the other ships were aware of the change. They there thus left to fight as individuals without direction. Terribile did not see action during the battle; she only fired a single long-range shot at the ship of the line Kaiser. She had answered Persano's summons very slowly and only arrived on the scene after Re d'Italia had been rammed and sunk, and the coastal defense ship Palestro had been set on fire, soon to be destroyed by a magazine explosion. Persano's forces had withdrawn, and though his ships still outnumbered the Austrians, Persano refused to counter-attack. The Italian fleet began to withdraw, followed by the Austrians; as night began to fall, the opposing fleets disengaged completely, heading for Ancona and Pola, respectively. ### Later career After the battle, Persano was replaced by Admiral Giovanni Vacca; he was ordered to attack the main Austrian naval base at Pola, but the war ended before the operation could be carried out. After the end of the war, the government lost confidence in the fleet and drastically reduced the naval budget. The cuts were so severe that the fleet had great difficulty in mobilizing its ironclad squadron to attack the port of Civitavecchia in September 1870, as part of the wars of Italian unification. Instead, the ships were laid up and the sailors conscripted to man them were sent home. Terribile was rapidly surpassed, first by central battery and then turret ships, which made the first generation of ironclads like Terribile and her sister obsolete. On 3 December 1872, Terrible was driven ashore in a storm at Naples. In 1872–1873, the ship received new boilers. Her armament was significantly reduced in 1878 to eight 8-inch guns. Starting in 1885, Terribile was employed as a training ship. By that time her armament had been revised and now consisted of two 6 in (152 mm) guns, two 5.9 in (150 mm) guns, and two 4.7 in (119 mm) guns alongside two torpedo tubes. She served in this capacity until 1904, when she was stricken from the naval register and subsequently broken up for scrap.

1st Guards Breakthrough Artillery Division

The 1st Guards Glukhov Order of Lenin, Red Banner, Orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov, and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Breakthrough Artillery Division was the formal name of the 1st Guards Breakthrough Artillery Division (Russian: 1-я гвардейская артиллерийская дивизия прорыва), a division of the Red Army (the Soviet Army from 1946) that existed during World War II and the early period of the Cold War. The division was formed under the reorganisation of the Soviet artillery forces in 1943, becoming an active heavy artillery formation during the Second World War. However, following cuts to the army in the later 50s, the division was disbanded. ## History The division was formed as the 1st Artillery Division of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command (RGK) in October 1942 with the Southwestern Front, under the command of Colonel Vikenty Mazur. It was composed of the 274th, 275th, and 331st Howitzer, the 1162nd and 1166th Gun, and the 468th, 501st, and 1189th Tank Destroyer Artillery Regiments. In addition to its regiments, the division included the organic 816th Separate Reconnaissance Artillery Battalion and the 45th Separate Corrective Aviation Squadron. It was sent into combat on 9 November 1942 in the area of Kletskaya and Serafimovich, supporting the 21st Army of the Southwestern Front in the final stage of the Soviet defensive phase of the Battle of Stalingrad. From the second half of November to January 1943, the units of the 1st Artillery, operationally subordinated to the 24th and 65th Armies of the Don Front, provided artillery support in the encirclement and defeat of the German troops in the Stalingrad area. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the 1st Artillery was transferred to the Central Front during February, where it was subordinated to the 65th Army and later the 70th Army. The division was reorganized on 20 February 1943, with its regiments combined into three brigades – one howitzer, one gun, and one tank destroyer. In recognition of its "courage and heroism", the division was converted into the 1st Guards Artillery Division RGK on 1 March; Mazur received a simultaneous promotion to major general. The 1st Guards Artillery Division included the 1st Guards Gun, 2nd Guards Howitzer, and 1st Guards Light Artillery Brigades, which in turn included the 201st and 205th Guards Gun, 169th and 203rd Guards Howitzer, and 167th, 200th, and 206th Guards Light Artillery Regiments. In May 1943 Mazur was promoted to artillery corps command and replaced by Colonel Grigory Godin, who would be promoted to major general on 7 August. During the defensive phase of the Battle of Kursk, the division supported the 13th and 70th Armies with massed artillery fire, helping to repulse German tank and infantry attacks. It received the Glukhov honorific title on 31 August. In October the division was assigned to the First Ukrainian Front. In July 1944 the division was assigned to the 7th Artillery Corps. From 16 April to 20 May 1944 3rd Guards Light Artillery Brigade commander Colonel Viktor Zhagala temporarily commanded the division after Arkady Volchek was wounded. 76th Rifle Corps Artillery commander Colonel Viktor Khusid (promoted to major general on 18 November 1944) was appointed to lead the division on 21 May, while it was part of the 1st Ukrainian Front. The division then fought in the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive. The division was redesignated as the 1st Guards Breakthrough Artillery Division in November 1944, reflecting its role of providing artillery concentrations for offensives. In 1945 the division fought in the Sandomierz–Silesian Offensive, the Lower Silesian Offensive, the Berlin Offensive, and the Prague Offensive, and in fighting for the cities of Szydłów, Kielce, Steinau, Lüben, Sprottau, Cottbus, and Dresden. Postwar, the division became part of the Central Group of Forces and in April 1947 was withdrawn to the Carpathian Military District. In August of that year, Khusid was transferred to the artillery reserve. Until its disbandment in 1960, the division was stationed in Nestorov in the Carpathian Military District. Its lineage is inherited by the 39th Guards Rocket Division of the 33rd Guards Rocket Army, part of the Russian Strategic Missile Troops. The 39th Guards Rocket Division was established on 18 July 1960 in Pashino (Gvardeyskiy), Novosibirsk Oblast, as the 212th Guards Svir Orders of Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Rocket Brigade, from the 21st Heavy Howitzer Artillery Brigade. ## Commanders The following officers are known to have commanded the division: - Colonel Vikenty Mazur (promoted to major general 1 March 1943; October 1942 – May 1943) - Colonel Grigory Godin (promoted to major general 7 August 1943; May – September 1943) - Colonel Arkady Volchek (promoted to major general 28 September 1943; September 1943 – April 1944) - Colonel Viktor Zhagala (acting; 16 April–20 May 1944) - Colonel Viktor Khusid (promoted to major general 18 November 1944; 21 May 1944 – August 1947) - Dmitry Parovatkin - Ivan Kupin ## Organization in 1943 Structure of the division when it was formed from the 1st Artillery Division in 1943: - Divisional Headquarters - Artillery Observation Battalion - Truck Transportation Battalion - Artillery and Automotive Maintenance Group [battalion] - Medical Company - 3rd Guards Light Artillery Brigade - 167th Guards Light Artillery Regiment (armed with M1942 ZiS-3 76mm divisional guns) - 200th Guards Light Artillery Regiment (armed with M1942 ZiS-3 76mm divisional guns) - 206th Guards Light Artillery Regiment (armed with M1942 ZiS-3 76mm divisional guns) - 1st Guards Cannon Brigade - 201st Guards Cannon Regiment - 205th Guards Cannon Regiment - 3rd Guards Howitzer Brigade - 169th Guards Howitzer Regiment (armed with M1938 M-30 122mm howitzers) - 203rd Guards Howitzer Regiment (armed with M1938 M-30 122mm howitzers) - 399th Guards Howitzer Regiment (armed with M1938 M-30 122mm howitzers) ## Organization in 1945 Structure of the division between 1943 and 1945: - Divisional Headquarters - 14th Guards Separate Reconnaissance Artillery Battalion (before 29 November 1944) - 30th Mortar Brigade (added December 1944) - 19th Guards Mortar Brigade (added December 1944) - 16th Heavy Mortar Brigade (added December 1944) - 3rd Guards Light Artillery Brigade - 1st Guards Cannon Brigade - 3rd Guards Howitzer Brigade - 98th Heavy Howitzer Brigade (added November 1944) - 870th Auto Transport Battalion - 494th Field Auto Repair Base (from 15 May 1944) - 101st Field Artillery Repair Shop (from 5 July 1943) - 528th Medical and Sanitation Company - 494th Field Bakery - 1726th Field Post Office - 1786th Field Cash Office of the State Bank

Hodad's

Local hamburger restaurant chain in San Diego

Hodad's is a small chain of hamburger restaurants in San Diego, United States, established in 1973 by husband and wife Byron and Virginia Hardin, who operated from a single burger stand until 1979. Following the death of co-founder Byron Hardin, their son Mike Hardin assumed operating responsibilities and ultimately took over the management following his mother's death in 1989. Hardin moved the restaurant to its current location on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach, later opening additional restaurants in Petco Park and on the corner of 10th Avenue and Broadway. Mike Hardin died in 2015, leaving the business to his children Shane and Lexi. Hodad's has received positive reception for its burgers, especially its bacon cheeseburger. It was featured on Guy Fieri's TV show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Since appearing on the show, the restaurant has enjoyed a large increase in sales, often selling thousands of burgers daily. It has also been included on multiple "best of" lists, including CNN's nationwide list of "Five tasty burger joints worth visiting" in 2009 and in 2015 on Foursquare's top 50 "best burger joints in America". ## History Husband and wife Byron and Virginia Hardin originally ran a restaurant in 1969 called Hardin's Barrel, in El Cajon, San Diego. In 1973, they purchased a burger stand in Ocean Beach, San Diego for \$600 () and called it Hodad's, the name originating as a surfing term for a non-surfer who pretends to be one. The restaurant moved to a larger venue on Voltaire Street in 1979 after the previous landlord doubled the rent, at which point the business started to see increased turnover and success. Hodad's moved to its current location on Newport Avenue in 1991, taking just four days to open. The restaurant expanded into a second location in downtown San Diego on the corner of Broadway in 2011, named "Hodad's Too" and approximately twice the size as their other outlet. Hodad's began selling its products in Petco Park after signing a partnership with the San Diego Padres. To celebrate this partnership, Mike Hardin threw the first pitch at the July 5, 2012 Padres game versus the Cincinnati Reds. As of 2015, the restaurant estimated that it sells between 1,200 and 1,500 hamburgers daily. Hodad's is popular among both tourists and locals, with queues at times taking hours to get through. ### Management From its inception in 1973 until 1984, the restaurant was co-owned by Byron and Virginia Hardin. Their son, Mike Hardin, became co-owner when his father died in 1984. He assumed greater responsibility with business partner Terry Rhodes when his mother died in 1989. Mike Hardin was called a local icon by Discover San Diego and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Mike Hardin died on February 5, 2015, having suffered a heart attack and a makeshift memorial for was created by the community in front of the Ocean Beach restaurant. The restaurant closed during February 6 and 7 to honor both him and another employee, and was reopened on February 9. Hundreds of people attended a public memorial ceremony in late March at the Petco's Park location, including Guy Fieri. His son Shane and daughter Lexi became co-owners of the restaurant chain in 2015. In an interview with SD News, Shane discussed the pressures of taking over the business as well as both modeling his behavior after his father and establishing his own identity as its owner. ## Menu Hodad's is known for its bacon cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings, and giant milkshakes. At the original beach location, Hodad's served burgers for 25 cents (), with burger prices ranging from \$4.25 to \$8.25 by 2015. When Mike Hardin took over the business, he began to create burgers with large portions and in 2013, created the Guido Burger, inspired by Guy Fieri and his nickname 'Guido,' who featured Hodad's on his show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Another burger is the Blue Jay, a bacon cheeseburger with blue cheese and grilled onions. Hodad's bacon patties are of a similar consistency to that of a hash brown. ## Decor Hodad's walls are decorated with numerous license plates, while stickers can be found at both Newport Avenue and 10th Avenue locations. Mike Hardin had previously said that everything in the Ocean Beach location is provided by customers. Other decor at Hodad's Too includes skateboards and surfboards on the wall as well as a surfboard table. Its style has been described as beach-like and biker-chic. ## Reception Hodad's has received positive reception for its burgers and style. It appeared on an episode of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on the TV channel Food Network. The restaurant's bacon cheeseburger has been lauded by Guy Fieri, and in 2009 CNN included it on a list of "Five tasty burger joints worth visiting." Hodad's was featured in one of San Diego Magazine "Everyday Eats" articles, which covers budget food options. In 2015 Foursquare ranked the restaurant 26th on its list of 50 "best burger joints in America." In an article by Hoodline, Hodad's burgers ranked number 3 out of 50 for quality burgers under \$10. The San Diego Union-Tribune included it in its list of the 30 best burgers in San Diego. Times of San Diego's Hoa Quach included it in a list of restaurants to celebrate Father's Day in San Diego. Serious Eats writer Erin Jackson gave it a positive review due to its bacon cheeseburger. The Daily Meal included it in its top 50 list of the best french fries in the U.S. Houston Press writer Robb Walsh argued that the burger was not actually the best in the country. San Diego Reader's Ian Pike included its burgers in his list of the most overrated burgers in San Diego, suggesting praise for them came from the sunk cost fallacy, although was more positive about their milkshakes.

Hammond organ

Electric organ

The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and then strengthening the signal with an amplifier to drive a speaker cabinet. The organ is commonly used with the Leslie speaker. Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured. The organ was originally marketed by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios—small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Jazz club owners found that organ trios were cheaper than hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, and its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in rhythm and blues, rock, reggae, and progressive rock. In the 1970s, the Hammond Organ Company abandoned tonewheels and switched to integrated circuits. These organs were less popular, and the company went out of business in 1985. The Hammond name was purchased by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation, which proceeded to manufacture digital simulations of the most popular tonewheel organs. This culminated in the production of the "New B-3" in 2002, a recreation of the original B-3 organ using digital technology. Hammond-Suzuki continues to manufacture a variety of organs for both professional players and churches. Companies such as Korg, Roland, and Clavia have achieved success in providing more lightweight and portable emulations of the original tonewheel organs. The sound of a tonewheel Hammond can be emulated using modern software audio plug-ins. ## Features A number of features of the Hammond organ are not usually found on other keyboards like the piano or synthesizer. Some are similar to a pipe organ, but others are unique to the instrument. ### Keyboards and pedalboard Most Hammond organs have two 61-note (five-octave) keyboards called manuals. As with pipe organ keyboards, the two manuals are positioned on two levels close to each other. Each is laid out in a similar manner to a piano keyboard, except that pressing a key on a Hammond results in the sound continuously playing until it is released, whereas with a piano, the note's volume decays. No difference in volume occurs regardless of how heavily or lightly the key is pressed (unlike with a piano), so overall volume is controlled by a pedal (also known as a "swell" or "expression" pedal). The keys on each manual have a lightweight action, which allows players to perform rapid passages more easily than on a piano. In contrast to piano and pipe organ keys, Hammond keys have a flat-front profile, commonly referred to as "waterfall" style. Early Hammond console models had sharp edges, but starting with the B-2, these were rounded, as they were cheaper to manufacture. The M series of spinets also had waterfall keys (which has subsequently made them ideal for spares on B-3s and C-3s), but later spinet models had "diving board" style keys which resembled those found on a church organ. Modern Hammond-Suzuki models use waterfall keys. Hammond console organs come with a wooden pedalboard played with the feet, for bass notes. Most console Hammond pedalboards have 25 notes, with the bottom note a low C and the top note a middle C two octaves higher. Hammond used a 25-note pedalboard because he found that on traditional 32-note pedalboards used in church pipe organs, the top seven notes were seldom used. The Hammond Concert models E, RT, RT-2, RT-3 and D-100 had 32-note American Guild of Organists (AGO) pedalboards going up to the G above middle C as the top note. The RT-2, RT-3 and D-100 also contained a separate solo pedal system that had its own volume control and various other features. Spinet models have 12- or 13-note miniature pedalboards. Hammond organ manuals and pedalboards were originally manufactured with solid palladium alloy wire to ensure a high-quality electrical connection when pressing a key. This design was discontinued with the introduction of the transistor organ. This means tonewheel organs have between 3.2 and 8.4 grams of palladium, depending on make and model. ### Drawbars The sound on a tonewheel Hammond organ is varied through the manipulation of drawbars. A drawbar is a metal slider that controls the volume of a particular sound component, in a similar way to a fader on an audio mixing board. As a drawbar is incrementally pulled out, it increases the volume of its sound. When pushed all the way in, the volume is decreased to zero. The labeling of the drawbar derives from the stop system in pipe organs, in which the physical length of the pipe corresponds to the pitch produced. Most Hammonds contain nine drawbars per manual. The drawbar marked "8′" generates the fundamental of the note being played, the drawbar marked "16′" is an octave below, and the drawbars marked "4′", "2′" and "1′" are one, two and three octaves above, respectively. The other drawbars generate various other harmonics and subharmonics of the note. While each individual drawbar generates a relatively pure sound similar to a flute or electronic oscillator, more complex sounds can be created by mixing the drawbars in varying amounts. Because of this, the Hammond organ can be considered a type of additive synthesis. Hammond manufactured from 1969 onwards have the footage of each drawbar engraved on its end. Some drawbar settings have become well-known and associated with certain musicians. A very popular setting is 888000000 (i.e., with the drawbars labeled "16′", "5+1⁄3′" and "8′" fully pulled out), and has been identified as the "classic" Jimmy Smith sound. ### Presets In addition to drawbars, many Hammond tonewheel organ models also include presets, which make predefined drawbar combinations available at the press of a button. Console organs have one octave of reverse colored keys (naturals are black, sharps and flats are white) to the left of each manual, with each key activating a preset; the far left key (C), also known as the cancel key, de-activates all presets, and results in no sound coming from that manual. The two right-most preset keys (B and B) activate the corresponding set of drawbars for that manual, while the other preset keys produce preselected drawbar settings that are internally wired into the preset panel. ### Vibrato and chorus Hammond organs have a built-in vibrato effect that provides a small variation in pitch while a note is being played, and a chorus effect where a note's sound is combined with another sound at a slightly different and varying pitch. The best known vibrato and chorus system consists of six settings, V1, V2, V3, C1, C2 and C3 (i.e., three each of vibrato and chorus), which can be selected via a rotary switch. Vibrato / chorus can be selected for each manual independently. ### Harmonic percussion The B-3 and C-3 models introduced the concept of "Harmonic Percussion", which was designed to emulate the percussive sounds of the harp, xylophone, and marimba. When selected, this feature plays a decaying second- or third-harmonic overtone when a key is pressed. The selected percussion harmonic fades out, leaving the sustained tones the player selected with the drawbars. The volume of this percussive effect is selectable as either normal or soft. Harmonic Percussion retriggers only after all notes have been released, so legato passages sound the effect only on the very first note or chord, making Harmonic Percussion uniquely a "single-trigger", but still a polyphonic effect. ### Start and run switches Before a Hammond organ can produce sound, the motor that drives the tonewheels must come up to speed. On most models, starting a Hammond organ involves two switches. The "Start" switch turns a dedicated starter motor, which must run for about 12 seconds. Then, the "Run" switch is turned on for about four seconds. The "Start" switch is then released, whereupon the organ is ready to generate sound. The H-100 and E-series consoles and L-100 and T-100 spinet organs, however, had a self-starting motor that required only a single "On" switch. A pitch bend effect can be created on the Hammond organ by turning the "Run" switch off and on again. This briefly cuts power to the generators, causing them to run at a slower pace and generate a lower pitch for a short time. Hammond's New B3 contains similar switches to emulate this effect, though it is a digital instrument. ## History The Hammond organ's technology derives from the Telharmonium, an instrument created in 1897 by Thaddeus Cahill. The telharmonium used revolving electric alternators which generated tones that could be transmitted over wires. The instrument was bulky enough to require several railway cars for its transportation, because the alternators had to be large enough to generate high voltage for a loud enough signal. The Hammond organ solved this problem by using an amplifier. Laurens Hammond graduated from Cornell University with a mechanical engineering degree in 1916. By the start of the 1920s, he had designed a spring-driven clock, which provided enough sales for him to start his own business, the Hammond Clock Company, in 1928. As well as clocks, his early inventions included three-dimensional glasses and an automatic bridge table shuffler. However, as the Great Depression continued into the 1930s, sales of the bridge table declined and he decided to look elsewhere for a commercially successful product. Hammond was inspired to create the tonewheel or "phonic wheel" by listening to the moving gears of his electric clocks and the tones produced by them. He gathered pieces from a second-hand piano he had purchased for \$15 and combined it with a tonewheel generator in a similar form to the telharmonium, albeit much shorter and more compact. Since Hammond was not a musician, he asked the company's assistant treasurer, W. L. Lahey, to help him achieve the desired organ sound. To cut costs, Hammond made a pedalboard with only 25 notes, instead of the standard 32 on church organs, and it quickly became a de facto standard. On April 24, 1934, Hammond filed a patent for an "electrical musical instrument", which was personally delivered to the patent office by Hanert, explaining that they could start production immediately and it would be good for local employment in Chicago. The invention was unveiled to the public in April 1935, and the first model, the Model A, was made available in June of that year. Over 1,750 churches purchased a Hammond organ in the first three years of production, and by the end of the 1930s, over 200 instruments were being made each month. By 1966, an estimated 50,000 churches had installed a Hammond. For all its subsequent success with professional musicians, the original company did not target its products at that market, principally because Hammond did not think there would be a sufficient return. In 1936, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a complaint claiming that the Hammond Company made "false and misleading" claims in advertisements for its organ, including that the Hammond could produce "the entire range of tone coloring of a pipe organ". The complaint resulted in lengthy hearing proceedings, which featured a series of auditory tests that pitted a Hammond costing about \$2600 against a \$75,000 Skinner pipe organ in the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel. During the auditory tests, sustained tones and excerpts from musical works were played on the electric and pipe organs while a group of musicians and laymen attempted to distinguish between the instruments. While attorneys for Hammond argued that the test listeners were wrong or guessed nearly half the time, witnesses for the FTC claimed that Hammond employees had unfairly manipulated the Skinner organ to sound more like the Hammond. In 1938, the FTC ordered Hammond to "cease and desist" a number of advertising claims, including that its instrument was equivalent to a \$10,000 pipe organ. After the FTC's decision, Hammond claimed that the hearings had vindicated his company's assertions that the organ produced "real", "fine", and "beautiful" music, phrases which were each cited in the FTC's original complaint, but not included in the "cease and desist" order. Hammond also claimed that although the hearing was expensive for his company, the proceedings generated so much publicity that "as a result we sold enough extra organs to cover the expense." The Hammond Organ Company produced an estimated two million instruments in its lifetime; these have been described as "probably the most successful electronic organs ever made". A key ingredient to the Hammond organ's success was the use of dealerships and a sense of community. Several dedicated organ dealers set up business in the United States and there was a bi-monthly newsletter, The Hammond Times, mailed out to subscribers. Advertisements tended to show families gathered around the instrument, often with a child playing it, as an attempt to show the organ as a center-point of home life and to encourage children to learn music. ### Tonewheel organs Hammond organs, as manufactured by the original company, can be divided into two main groups: - Console organs have two 61-note manuals and a pedalboard of at least two octaves. Most consoles do not have a built-in power amplifier or speakers, so an external amplifier and speaker cabinet is required. - Spinet organs have two 44-note manuals and one octave of pedals, plus an internal power amplifier and set of speakers. #### Console organs The first model in production, in June 1935, was the Model A. It contained most of the features that came to be standard on all console Hammonds, including two 61-key manuals, a 25-key pedalboard, an expression pedal, 12 reverse-color preset keys, two sets of drawbars for each manual, and one for the pedals. To address concerns that the sound of the Hammond was not rich enough to accurately mimic a pipe organ, the model BC was introduced in December 1936. It included a chorus generator, in which a second tonewheel system added slightly sharp or flat tones to the overall sound of each note. The cabinet was made deeper to accommodate this. Production of the old Model A cases stopped, but the older model continued to be available as the AB until October 1938. Criticism that the Hammond organ was more aesthetically suitable to the home instead of the church led to the introduction of the model C in September 1939. It contained the same internals as the AB or BC, but covered on the front and sides by "modesty panels" to cover female organists' legs while playing in a skirt, often a consideration when a church organ was placed in front of the congregation. The model C did not contain the chorus generator, but had space in the cabinet for it to be fitted. The concurrent model D was a model C with a prefitted chorus. Development of the vibrato system took place during the early 1940s, and was put into production shortly after the end of World War II. The various models available were the BV and CV (vibrato only) and BCV and DV (vibrato and chorus). The B-2 and C-2, introduced in 1949, allowed vibrato to be enabled or disabled on each manual separately. In 1954, the B-3 and C-3 models were introduced with the additional harmonic percussion feature, advertised as "touch response percussion control". Despite several attempts by Hammond to replace them, these two models remained popular and stayed in continuous production through early 1975. The last models to be manufactured were built from leftover stock that remained, and are not considered as good as earlier models. To cater more specifically to the church market, Hammond introduced the Concert Model E in July 1937, which included a full 32-note pedalboard and four electric switches known as toe pistons, allowing various sounds to be selected by the feet. The model E was replaced by the model RT in 1949, which retained the full-sized pedalboard, but otherwise was internally identical to the B and C models. RT-2 and RT-3 models subsequently appeared in line with the B-2/C-2 and B-3/C-3, respectively. In 1959, Hammond introduced the A-100 series. It was effectively a self-contained version of the B-3/C-3, with an internal power amplifier and speakers. The organ was manufactured in a variety of different chassis, with the last two digits of the specific model number determining the style and finish of the instrument. For example, A-105 was "Tudor styling in light oak or walnut", while the A-143 was "warm cherry finish, Early American styling". This model numbering scheme was used for several other series of console and spinet organs that subsequently appeared. The D-100 series, which provided a self-contained version of the RT-3, followed in 1963. The E-100 series was a cost-reduced version of the A-100 introduced in 1965, with only one set of drawbars per manual, a reduced number of presets, and a slightly different tone generator. This was followed by the H-100 series, with a redesigned tonewheel generator and various other additional features. An extended model, the H-300, also featured an integrated drum machine. The organ was not particularly well made, and suffered a reputation for being unreliable. Hammond service engineer Harvey Olsen said, "When they [H-100s] work, they sound pretty decent. But die-hard enthusiasts won't touch it." #### Spinet organs Though the instrument had been originally designed for use in a church, Hammond realized that the amateur home market was a far more lucrative business, and started manufacturing spinet organs in the late 1940s. Outside of the United States, they were manufactured in greater numbers than the consoles, and hence were more widely used. Several different types of M series instruments were produced between 1948 and 1964; they contained two 44-note manuals with one set of drawbars each, and a 12-note pedalboard. The M model was produced from 1948 to 1951, the M-2 from 1951 to 1955, and the M-3 from 1955 to 1964. The M series was replaced by the M-100 series in 1961, which used a numbering system to identify the body style and finish as used on earlier console series. It included the same manuals as the M, but increased the pedalboard size to 13 notes, stretching a full octave, and included a number of presets. The L-100 series entered production at the same time as the M-100. It was an economy version, with various cost-cutting changes so the organ could retail for under \$1,000. The vibrato was a simpler circuit than on other consoles and spinets. Two variations of the vibrato were provided, plus a chorus that mixed various vibrato signals together. The expression pedal, based on a cheaper design, was not as sophisticated as on the other organs. The L-100 sold particularly well in the UK, with several notable British musicians using it instead of a B-3 or C-3. The T series, produced from 1968 to 1975, was the last of the tonewheel spinet organs. Unlike all the earlier Hammond organs, which used vacuum tubes for preamplification, amplification, percussion and chorus-vibrato control, the T series used all-solid-state, transistor circuitry, though, unlike the L-100, it did include the scanner-vibrato as seen on the B-3. Other than the T-100 series models, all other T-Series models included a built-in rotating Leslie speaker and some included an analog drum machine, while the T-500 also included a built-in cassette recorder. It was one of the last tonewheel Hammonds produced. ### Transistor organs In the 1960s, Hammond began to manufacture transistor organs in response to competitors such as Lowrey and Wurlitzer who were offering them, with a greater feature set compared to tonewheel Hammonds. The first organ that bridged the gap between tonewheel and transistor was the X-66, introduced in May 1967. The X-66 contained just 12 tonewheels, and used electronics for frequency division. It contained separate "vibrato bass" and "vibrato treble" in an attempt to simulate a Leslie speaker. Hammond designed it as the company's flagship product, in response to market competition and to replace the B-3. However, it was considered expensive at \$9,795 and it sold poorly. It did not sound like a B-3. Hammond introduced their first integrated circuit (IC) model, the Concorde, in 1971. The company had stopped manufacturing tonewheel organs entirely by 1975, due to increased financial inefficiency, and switched to making IC models full-time. Console models included the 8000 Aurora (1976) and 8000M Aurora (1977), which contained drawbars and a built-in rotating speaker. Spinet organs included the K-100 and J-400 series, and the "Cadette" V series. Some models included a headphone jack. The B-3 and C-3 were replaced by the B-3000, designed to be a model for professional use that had the same look and feel of the earlier organs. It contained the same controls, but was 200 pounds (91 kg) lighter than a B-3. Although promoted by Hammond as a suitable replacement, musicians did not think it had a comparable sound. In 1979, a Japanese offshoot, Nihon Hammond, introduced the X-5, a portable solid-state clone of the B-3. Though transistor Hammonds were criticised for their sound, the company remained commercially successful. Many such models were sold to churches, funeral homes and private residences. ### Hammond-Suzuki Laurens Hammond died in 1973, and the company struggled to survive, proposing the acquisition of a majority stake in Roland in 1972, which the latter turned down. Roland's Ikutaro Kakehashi did not believe it was practical at that point to move the entire manufacturing operation from Chicago to Japan, and also viewed Hammond's declining sales figures as a problem. In 1985, Hammond went out of business, though servicing and spares continued to be available after this under the name of the Organ Service Company. In early 1986, the Hammond brand and rights were acquired by Hammond Organ Australia, run by Noel Crabbe. Then in 1989, the name was purchased by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation, which rebranded the company as Hammond-Suzuki. Although nominally a Japanese company, founder Manji Suzuki was a fan of the instrument and retained several former Hammond Organ Company staff for research and development, and ensured that production would partially remain in the United States. The new company produced their own brand of portable organs, including the XB-2, XB-3 and XB-5. Sound on Sound's Rod Spark, a longtime Hammond enthusiast, said these models were "a matter of taste, of course, but I don't think they're a patch on the old ones". In 2002, Hammond-Suzuki launched the New B-3, a recreation of the original electromechanical instrument using contemporary electronics and a digital tonewheel simulator. The New B-3 is constructed to appear like the original B-3, and the designers attempted to retain the subtle nuances of the familiar B-3 sound. Hammond-Suzuki promotional material states that it would be difficult for even an experienced B-3 player to distinguish between the old and new B-3 organs. A review of the New B-3 by Hugh Robjohns called it "a true replica of an original B-3 ... in terms of the look and layout, and the actual sound". The instrument project nearly stalled after a breakdown in negotiations between Japanese and United States staff, the latter of whom insisted on manufacturing the case in the United States and designing the organ to identical specifications to the original. The company has since released the XK-3, a single-manual organ using the same digital tonewheel technology as the New B-3. The XK-3 is part of a modular system that allows an integrated lower manual and pedals to be added. In response to some clones, including a variety of vintage keyboards in a single package, Hammond released the SK series of organs, which include grand piano, Rhodes piano, Wurlitzer electronic piano, Hohner clavinet, and samples of wind and brass instruments alongside the standard drawbar and tonewheel emulation. Keyboard magazine's Stephen Fortner praised the single manual SK1, indicated that it gave an accurate sound throughout the range of drawbar settings, and said the organ sound was "fat, warm, utterly authentic". The XK-1c model was introduced in early 2014, which is simply an organ-only version of the SK1. An updated flagship organ, the XK-5, was launched in 2016, and a stage keyboard, the SK-X followed in 2019, which allows a player to select an individual instrument (organ, piano or synthesizer) for each manual. In the US, Hammond manufactures a number of dedicated console organs, including the B-3mk2 and the C-3mk2, and the A-405, a Chapel Console Organ. The company has a dedicated Church Advisory Team that provides a consultancy, so churches can choose the most appropriate instrument. ## Speakers ### Tone cabinet The authorized loudspeaker enclosure to use with a console organ was the Hammond Tone Cabinet, which contained an external amplifier and speaker. The cabinet carried a balanced mono signal and AC power directly from the organ via a six-pin cable. Spinet organs contained their own built-in amplifier and speakers. The tone cabinet was originally the only method of adding reverberation to a Hammond organ. The first models to be produced were the 20-watt A-20 and 40-watt A-40. The A-20 was designed for churches and small-capacity halls, and featured a set of doors in front of the speaker, that could be closed when the organ was not in use. The D-20 was introduced in 1937 and only allowed sound from the speakers to escape by a louvred opening on one side and a gap in the top. The most commercially successful set of Tone Cabinets were probably the PR series cabinets introduced in 1959. The 40-watt PR40 weighed 126 pounds (57 kg) and was 37.5 inches (950 mm) high. It has a good response from bass pedals. ### Leslie speaker Many players prefer to play the Hammond through a cabinet with a rotating speaker known, after several name changes, as a Leslie speaker, after its inventor Donald J. Leslie. The typical Leslie system is an integrated speaker/amplifier combination in which sound is emitted by a rotating horn over a stationary treble compression driver, and a rotating baffle beneath a stationary bass woofer. This creates a characteristic sound because of the constantly changing pitch shifts that result from the Doppler effect created by the moving sound sources. The Leslie was originally designed to mimic the complex tones and constantly shifting sources of sound emanating from a large group of ranks in a pipe organ. The effect varies depending on the speed of the rotors, which can be toggled between fast (tremolo) and slow (chorale) using a console half-moon or pedal switch, with the most distinctive effect occurring as the speaker rotation speed changes. The most popular Leslies were the 122, which accepted a balanced signal suitable for console organs, and the 147, which accepted an unbalanced signal and could be used for spinet organs with a suitable adapter. The Pro-Line series of Leslies which were made to be portable for gigging bands using solid-state amps were popular during the 1970s. Leslie initially tried to sell his invention to Hammond, but Laurens Hammond was unimpressed and declined to purchase it. Hammond modified their interface connectors to be "Leslie-proof", but Leslie quickly engineered a workaround. Some Hammond staff thought Laurens Hammond was being irrational and autocratic towards Leslie, but Don Leslie later said it helped give his speakers publicity. The Leslie company was sold to CBS in 1965, and the following year, Hammond finally decided to officially support the Leslie speaker. The T-200 spinet, introduced in 1968, was the first Hammond to have an integrated Leslie speaker. Hammond finally purchased Leslie in 1980. Hammond-Suzuki acquired the rights to Leslie in 1992; the company currently markets a variety of speakers under this name. As well as faithful reissues of the original 122 speaker, the company announced in 2013 that they would start manufacturing a standalone Leslie simulator in a stomp box. ## Tone generation Although they are sometimes included in the category of electronic organs, the majority of Hammond organs are, strictly speaking, electric or electromechanical rather than electronic organs, because the sound is produced by moving parts rather than electronic oscillators. The basic component sound of a Hammond organ comes from a tonewheel. Each one rotates in front of an electromagnetic pickup. The variation in the magnetic field induces a small alternating current at a particular frequency, which represents a signal similar to a sine wave. When a key is pressed on the organ, it completes a circuit of nine electrical switches, which are linked to the drawbars. The position of the drawbars, combined with the switches selected by the key pressed, determines which tonewheels are allowed to sound. Every tonewheel is connected to a synchronous motor via a system of gears, which ensures that each note remains at a constant relative pitch to every other. The combined signal from all depressed keys and pedals is fed through to the vibrato system, which is driven by a metal scanner. As the scanner rotates around a set of pickups, it changes the pitch of the overall sound slightly. From here, the sound is sent to the main amplifier, and on to the audio speakers. The Hammond organ makes technical compromises in the notes it generates. Rather than produce harmonics that are exact multiples of the fundamental as in equal temperament, it uses the nearest-available frequencies generated by the tonewheels. The only guaranteed frequency for a Hammond's tuning is concert A at 440 Hz. Crosstalk or "leakage" occurs when the instrument's magnetic pickups receive the signal from rotating metal tonewheels other than those selected by the organist. Hammond considered crosstalk a defect that required correcting, and in 1963 introduced a new level of resistor–capacitor filtering to greatly reduce this crosstalk, along with 50–60 Hz mains hum. However, the sound of tonewheel crosstalk is now considered part of the signature of the Hammond organ, to the extent that modern digital clones explicitly emulate it. Some Hammond organs have an audible pop or click when a key is pressed. Originally, key click was considered a design defect and Hammond worked to eliminate or at least reduce it with equalization filters. However, many performers liked the percussive effect, and it has been accepted as part of the classic sound. Hammond research and development engineer Alan Young said, "the professionals who were playing popular music [liked] that the attack was so prominent. And they objected when it was eliminated." Because the tones on a Hammond organ are mechanically generated, different models were manufactured for the US and European markets, which run on 110 V/60 Hz and 240 V/50 Hz AC mains respectively. The gearing and starter motors are different, and run at 1,200 RPM and 1,500 RPM respectively. Third party companies manufacture transformers that can allow a Hammond organ designed for one region to run in the other, which are used by internationally touring bands. ## Clones and emulation devices The original Hammond organ was never designed to be transported regularly. A Hammond B-3 organ, bench, and pedalboard weighs 425 pounds (193 kg). This weight, combined with that of a Leslie speaker, makes the instrument cumbersome and difficult to move between venues. This created a demand for a more portable and reliable way of generating the same sound. Electronic and digital keyboards that imitate the sound of the Hammond are referred to as "clonewheel organs". The first attempts to electronically copy a Hammond appeared in the 1970s, including the Roland VK-1 and VK-9, the Yamaha YC45D, and the Crumar Organizer. The Korg CX-3 (single manual) and BX-3 (dual manual) were the first lightweight organs to produce a sound comparable to the original. Sound on Sound's Gordon Reid said that the CX-3 "came close to emulating the true depth and passion of a vintage Hammond", particularly when played through a Leslie speaker. The Roland VK-7, introduced in 1997, attempted to emulate the sound of a Hammond using digital signal processing technology. An updated version, the VK-8, which appeared in 2002, also provided emulations of other vintage keyboards and provided a connector for a Leslie. Clavia introduced the Nord Electro in 2001; this used buttons to emulate the physical action of pulling or pushing a drawbar, with an LED graph indicating its current state. Clavia has released several updated versions of the Electro since then, and introduced the Nord Stage with the same technology. The Nord C2D was Clavia's first organ with real drawbars. Diversi, founded by former Hammond-Suzuki sales representative Tom Tuson in 2003, specializes in Hammond clones, and has an endorsement from Joey DeFrancesco. The Hammond organ has also been emulated in software. One prominent emulator is the Native Instruments B4 series, which has been praised for its attention to detail and choice of features. Emagic (now part of Apple) has also produced a software emulation, the EVB3. This has led to a Hammond organ module with all controls and features of the original instrument in the Logic Pro audio production suite. ## Notable players Early customers of the Hammond included Albert Schweitzer, Henry Ford, Eleanor Roosevelt, and George Gershwin. The instrument was not initially favored by classical organ purists, because the tones of two notes an octave apart were in exact synchronization, as opposed to the slight variation present on a pipe organ. However, the instrument did gradually become popular with jazz players. One of the first performers to use the Hammond organ was Ethel Smith, who was known as the "first lady of the Hammond organ". Fats Waller and Count Basie also started using the Hammond. Organist John Medeski thinks the Hammond became "the poor man's big band", but because of that, it became more economical to book organ trios. Jimmy Smith began to play Hammond regularly in the 1950s, particularly in his sessions for the BlueNote label between 1956 and 1963. He eschewed a bass player, and played all the bass parts himself using the pedals, generally using a walking bassline on the pedals in combination with percussive left-hand chords. His trio format, composed of organ, guitar, and drums, became internationally known following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957. Medeski says musicians "were inspired when they heard Jimmy Smith's records". "Brother" Jack McDuff switched from piano to Hammond in the 1950s, and toured regularly throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In his Hammond playing, Keith Emerson sought partly to replicate the sound achieved by McDuff in his arrangement of "Rock Candy". An admirer of Billy Preston's work also, particularly the 1965 instrumental "Billy's Bag", Emerson limited the use of Leslie because he felt that was Preston's domain at the time, whereas he himself was approaching the instrument with an aesthetic combining "a white European attitude", classical music, and rock. Booker T. Jones is cited as being the bridge from rhythm and blues to rock. British organist James Taylor said the Hammond "became popular [in the UK] when people such as Booker T. & the M.G.'s and artists on the Stax Records label came over to London and played gigs". Matthew Fisher first encountered the Hammond in 1966, having heard the Small Faces' Ian McLagan playing one. When Fisher asked if he could play it, McLagan told him, "They're yelling out for Hammond players; why don't you go out and buy one for yourself?" Fisher played the organ lines on Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale", which topped the UK charts in the summer of 1967. Steve Winwood started his musical career with the Spencer Davis Group playing guitar and piano, but he switched to Hammond when he hired one to record "Gimme Some Lovin'". Gregg Allman became interested in the Hammond after Mike Finnigan had introduced him to Jimmy Smith's music, and started to write material with it. His brother Duane specifically requested he play the instrument when forming the Allman Brothers Band, and he was presented with a brand new B-3 and Leslie 122RV upon joining. Allman recalls the instrument was cumbersome to transport, particularly on flights of stairs, which often required the whole band's assistance. Author Frank Moriarty considers Allman's Hammond playing a vital ingredient of the band's sound. Deep Purple's Jon Lord became inspired to play the Hammond after hearing Jimmy Smith's "Walk on the Wild Side". He modified his Hammond so it could be played through a Marshall stack to get a growling, overdriven sound, which became known as his trademark and he is strongly identified with it. This organ was later acquired by Joey DeFrancesco. Van der Graaf Generator's Hugh Banton modified his Hammond E-100 extensively with customized electronics, including the ability to put effects such as distortion on one manual but not the other, and rewiring the motor. The modifications created, in Banton's own words, "unimaginable sonic chaos". The Hammond was a key instrument in progressive rock music. Author Edward Macan thinks this is because of its versatility, allowing both chords and lead lines to be played, and a choice between quiet and clean, and what Emerson described as a "tacky, aggressive, almost distorted, angry sound". However, progressive rock historian Paul Stump argued that initially, the popularity of the Hammond organ in progressive rock was less due to the suitability of the instrument to the genre than to its ubiquity in popular music, much like the electric guitar. Emerson first found commercial success with the Nice, with whom he used and abused an L-100, putting knives in the instrument, setting fire to it, playing it upside down, or riding it across stage in the manner of a horse. He continued to play the instrument in this manner alongside other keyboards in Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Other prominent Hammond organists in progressive rock include Argent's Rod Argent, Yes's Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman, Focus's Thijs van Leer, Uriah Heep's Ken Hensley, Pink Floyd's Rick Wright, Kansas's Steve Walsh, Mott the Hoople's Verden Allen, and Genesis's Tony Banks. Banks later claimed he only used the Hammond because a piano was impractical to transport to gigs. Ska and reggae music made frequent use of the Hammond throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Junior Marvin started to play the instrument after hearing Booker T & the MGs' "Green Onions", although he complained about its weight. Winston Wright was regarded in the music scene of Jamaica as one of the best organ players, and used the Hammond when performing live with Toots and the Maytals, as well as playing it on sessions with Lee "Scratch" Perry, Jimmy Cliff, and Gregory Isaacs. Tyrone Downie, best known as Bob Marley and the Wailers' keyboard player, made prominent use of the Hammond on "No Woman, No Cry", as recorded at the Lyceum Theatre, London, for the album Live! The Hammond organ was perceived as outdated by the late 1970s, particularly in the UK, where it was often used to perform pop songs in social clubs. Punk and new wave bands tended to prefer second-hand combo organs from the 1960s, or use no keyboards at all. Other groups started taking advantage of cheaper and more portable synthesizers that were beginning to become available. The Stranglers' Dave Greenfield was an exception to this, and used a Hammond onstage during the band's early career. Andy Thompson, better known for being an aficionado of the Mellotron, stated, "the Hammond never really went away. There are a lot of studios that have had a B-3 or C-3 sitting away in there since the 70s." The instrument underwent a brief renaissance in the 1980s with the mod revival movement. Taylor played the Hammond through the 1980s, first with the Prisoners and later with the James Taylor Quartet. In the 1990s, Rob Collins' Hammond playing was integral to the Prisoners-influenced sound of the Charlatans. The sound of the Hammond has appeared in hip-hop music, albeit mostly via samples. A significant use is the Beastie Boys' 1992 single "So What'cha Want", which features a Hammond mixed into the foreground (the instrument was recorded live rather than being sampled). Jazz, blues, and gospel musicians continued to use Hammond organs into the 21st century. Barbara Dennerlein has received critical acclaim for her performances on the Hammond, particularly her use of the bass pedals, and has modified the instrument to include samplers triggered by the pedals. Joey DeFrancesco embraced the instrument during the 1990s, and later collaborated with Jimmy Smith. He is positive about the future of the Hammond organ, saying "Everybody loves it. It makes you feel good ... I think it's bigger now than ever." Grammy-winning jazz keyboardist Cory Henry learned to play the Hammond organ at age two and used it on 2016's The Revival. Lachy Doley has a Hammond organ as one of his main instruments, and has been described by Glenn Hughes as "the greatest living keyboard player in the world today" and dubbed the "Hendrix of the Hammond Organ" (an accolade also given to Emerson). ## See also - Chord organ - List of Hammond organs - Novachord

Mortal Folly and Mortal Recoil

"Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil" are the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth episodes of the second season of the American animated television series Adventure Time. "Mortal Folly" was written and storyboarded by Adam Muto and Rebecca Sugar, whereas "Mortal Recoil" was written and storyboarded by Jesse Moynihan and Cole Sanchez. Both were based on a story by Mark Banker, Kent Osborne, Patrick McHale, and series creator Pendleton Ward. The two episodes originally aired on Cartoon Network on May 2, 2011, and guest starred Ron Perlman as the Lich, and Isabella Acres as young Princess Bubblegum. Perlman's character would become the series' chief antagonist, and would reappear in several fourth and fifth season episodes. The series follows the adventures of Finn (voiced by Jeremy Shada), a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (voiced by John DiMaggio), a dog with magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. In "Mortal Folly", Finn and Jake must go on a quest to find the Lich (voiced by Perlman), while the Ice King (voiced by Tom Kenny) pesters them for their blessing to marry Princess Bubblegum (voiced by Hynden Walch). After seemingly defeating the Lich, however, the Ice King accidentally drops Bubblegum into the Lich's well of power. In "Mortal Recoil", Princess Bubblegum possessed by the spirit of the Lich, and Finn and Jake team up with the Ice King to stop him. In the end, Bubblegum is seriously wounded, and since there is not enough candy bio-mass to fully revive her, she reverts to a 13-year-old. "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil" marked the first time the plot of one Adventure Time episode carried into another. "Mortal Folly" also introduced the Lich, one of the show's primary antagonists, who had first been proposed in the series' pitch bible. Both episodes aired on the same day, and were supposed to air as the second season finale, but due to a studio mix-up, they were instead aired as the penultimate episode, before "Heat Signature". Despite this, they are still considered by Ward to function as the season two finale. Both episodes were watched by 1.92 million people, and received largely positive critical attention; many critics enjoyed the way the episode began to set up the series' mythology. ## Plot ### "Mortal Folly" While meditating with Finn and Jake, Princess Bubblegum has a premonition involving the Lich, an evil undead sorcerer who was long ago trapped in a block of amber by the legendary hero Billy. Bubblegum tells Finn and Jake about the dream, and the three of them journey to the tree at the top of Bubblegum's palace where the block of amber is hidden; Bubblegum also places magical jewels on Finn and Jake's heads that will prevent the Lich from exerting mind-control on them. While examining the amber, a snail is placed under the Lich's spell and helps break him out while Finn and Jake are not paying attention. The Lich then blasts out of the kingdom, leaving a wave of destruction in his path. Finn and Jake, after acquiring the legendary gauntlet of Billy as well as a special pink sweater made by Bubblegum, give chase, but they are consistently interrupted by the Ice King, who keeps trying to get Finn and Jake's blessings to marry Bubblegum. Fed up with their dismissive attitude, the Ice King kidnaps Bubblegum and follows Finn and Jake as the two heroes pursue the Lich. The Lich eventually reaches his lair, an abandoned subway station, and creates a pool of green liquid which he plans to use to regain his strength and destroy the world. Finn, Jake, the Ice King, and Bubblegum follow the Lich into his lair. In the entanglement that follows, Billy's gauntlet is destroyed by the Lich and Finn breaks his jewel. The Lich attempts to exert his mind-control on Finn, but Finn finds himself able to resist it. It is then revealed that the sweater Bubblegum gave to Finn has the power to repel the Lich due to it being imbued with "liking someone a lot". Finn then takes the sweater and pushes it into the Lich's eye sockets and rips his face apart, destroying him. However, the Ice King accidentally drops Bubblegum into the Lich's evil vat, to the horror of Finn and Jake. ### "Mortal Recoil" After Princess Bubblegum falls into the Lich's well of power, she is rushed to the Candy Kingdom hospital and saved. However, the Ice King feels that something is awry and tries to warn Finn, but Finn angrily scolds him and tells him to leave the kingdom. Finn and Jake then focus their energy on taking care of Princess Bubblegum, whose behavior seems off. At first, she claims that she needs some rest, but soon she begins acting strangely, such as convulsing in her bed. Finn leaves to acquire items that Bubblegum requests—which includes weapons-grade plutonium, ammonium, and gasoline among other items—and Jake tries to cheer Bubblegum up with a song. This, however, back-fires and Princess Bubblegum ignites her bedroom with some sort of dark magic. It is apparent that Bubblegum has been possessed by the spirit of the Lich. Finn returns, and the two discover Bubblegum mixing the ingredients that Finn retrieved in her bathtub and then drinking it. She soon deforms and turns into a grotesque monster; she hurls Finn and Jake through a wall and the two discover the Ice King. He finally tells them that he saw with his "wizard eyes" the spirit of the Lich descend into Bubblegum after she fell into the well of power. The three make an unlikely alliance, teaming up to beat the Lich-possessed Bubblegum. While Finn distracts her, the Ice King uses his ice powers to freeze Bubblegum. Their moment of success, however, is cut short when the still-frozen Bubblegum tips over and shatters everywhere. Her body parts are again rushed to the hospital where she is reassembled. However, there are not enough pieces to complete her, and so she ends up reverting to a 13-year-old girl. Finn, who is also 13, is excited, but the Ice King temporarily gives up his pursuit of Bubblegum due to her age. As the episode ends, it is revealed that the Lich has once again possessed the body of the snail, who angrily waves goodbye to the camera. ## Production Both "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil" were directed by Larry Leichliter, with Pat McHale and Sanchez serving as creative co-directors and Nick Jennings serving as art director. "Mortal Folly" was storyboarded by Rebecca Sugar and Adam Muto, whereas "Mortal Recoil" was storyboarded by Jesse Moynihan and Cole Sanchez. Both were episodes based on a story by Mark Banker, Kent Osborne, Patrick McHale, and series creator Pendleton Ward. "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil" feature the first substantial appearance of the Lich, the series' primary antagonist, who made an early appearance in the season one episode "His Hero" being defeated by Billy in a flashback. The Lich had appeared in concept drawings in the series' pitch bible, which Ward himself had created in 2007. Ward's original drawing was re-designed by former creative director McHale; he purposely gave the Lich a desiccated and dried-up look, and was instrumental in crafting the Lich's rotting appearance. In both this episode and other episodes where the character appears, the Lich was voiced by Ron Perlman. In the original outline for "Mortal Folly", the Lich had several lines that played him off as a stereotypical villain. Sugar and Muto decided to make him into a more "scary and dangerous" character, and purposely played up the darker elements of the episode. The scene featuring Finn stuffing the sweater into the Lich's eye sockets and then ripping his skull apart was inspired by an artistic design idea Sugar had had when she was in high school; she had wanted to draw a comic featuring a small person getting into a fight and being pushed up to the ceiling. In the initial storyboard, the Lich's lair was not specifically designed to be a subway. This was added later by the background designers. The undead skeletons that attack Finn and Jake were originally supposed to be "specific undead from [Dungeons & Dragons]". However, Ward changed his mind and tasked Andy Ristaino, a character designer for the series, with stylizing the corpses. Ristaino designed them to resemble "east coast commuters [all] bundled up for winter." He strove to make them look like people you might see on a subway, such as a bike messenger, a couple, man in a "goofy hat", and a man wearing a suit. Originally, when the Lich set off his bomb, the storyboard featured a simple mushroom cloud. Ian Jones-Quartey, one of the series' storyboard revisionists, however, added a face to the blast. Ristaino then added skulls to the smoke. The series' staff liked this version so much that they later included it on the title card. The snail, an easter egg that appears in every episode, appears in the episodes and plays a prominent part. Originally, the snail was inspired by the in-jokes in episodes of The Simpsons, and was Ward's attempt to "make a game out of every episode of Adventure Time, where you could freeze-frame and find things in the background", such as the snail. However, in "Mortal Folly", the snail serves as the catalyst for the Lich's escape. The snail would also play an important part in other mythology-heavy episodes like "In Your Footsteps", and "The Lich". Osborne later noted that the snail's appearance was pleasing to fans who knew that the snail had been appearing in all the episodes and had actively searched for it before. Because a large amount of the action in "Mortal Recoil" takes place in Bubblegum's bedroom, Moynihan was worried that the scenes would not carry interest and "people would get bored". As such, Moynihan and Sanchez created the scenes "trying to be simultaneously funny and terrifying". Ward noted that he liked to be "laughing and freaked out", and that the scenes work in this manner. Former storyboard artist Adam Muto commented that the possession scenes turned out "nice and off-putting". Jones-Quartey called the shot of a possessed Princess Bubblegum melting "terrifying". Although the series tries to avoid "cartoon physics", Sanchez and Moynihan were forced to work around this during the scene when Bubblegum throws Finn and Jake through a wall without harming them. Moynihan later rationalized that the wall was made of candy, and thus was harmless. The end of "Mortal Recoil" introduced the plot thread of Bubblegum de-aging to a 13-year-old girl. This would be expanded upon and eventually resolved in the third season episode "Too Young". The younger version of Bubblegum was voiced by Isabella Acres, who would reprise her role in "Too Young". According to Moynihan, there were initially "rumors" to keep Bubblegum young for several episodes, but the character eventually reverted to normal after only two episodes. ## Reception "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil" first aired on Cartoon Network on May 2, 2011. Both episodes were viewed by 1.92 million viewers and scored a Nielsen rating of 1.3/2 percent. This means it was seen by 1.3 percent of all households and 2 percent of all households watching television at the time of the episode's airing. The episodes first saw physical release as part of the 2012 Adventure Time: Jake vs. Me-Mow DVD, which included 16 episodes from the series' first three seasons. It was later re-released as part of the complete second season DVD in June 2013. The season was originally supposed to end with "Mortal Folly"/"Mortal Recoil", but due to a scheduling conflict, "Heat Signature" was the last episode of the second season aired. Despite this, Ward still considers the two-parter to be the real season finale, and the two entries are the last episodes featured on the second season DVD release. Tyler Foster of DVD Talk praised both "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil", noting that, despite the fact that the episodes represented only "the beginning of the show's journey into direct serialization", the story-arc was nonetheless "a tantalizing taste of what's to come." Wired magazine noted it as one of the stand-outs from the Jake vs. Me-Mow DVD, calling it a "three-part suite", which concluded with the third season episode "Too Young". The reviewer enjoyed the way the episode set the stage for the apparent death, resurrection, and de-aging for Princess Bubblegum, which became a major plot point in the next season. Matt Fowler of IGN praised both "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil", specifically giving applause to the introduction of the Lich, noting that he is "a real, grotesque villain inserted into the merely semi-dark world of Adventure Time". Fowler ended up being very happy with the two episodes, writing that they end the season "strong". ## Use in other media "Mortal Folly" was later adapted as part of a level pack for the 2015 video game Lego Dimensions. ## Explanatory notes

Nepenthes rajah

Species of pitcher plant from Borneo

Nepenthes rajah /nɪˈpɛnθiːz ˈrɑːdʒə/ is a carnivorous pitcher plant species of the family Nepenthaceae. It is endemic to Mount Kinabalu and neighbouring Mount Tambuyukon in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Nepenthes rajah grows exclusively on serpentine substrates, particularly in areas of seeping ground water where the soil is loose and permanently moist. The species has an altitudinal range of 1,500–2,650 metres (4,920–8,690 ft) a.s.l. and is thus considered a highland or sub-alpine plant. Due to its localised distribution, N. rajah is classified as an endangered species by the IUCN and listed on CITES Appendix I. The species was collected by Hugh Low on Mount Kinabalu in 1858, and described the next year by Joseph Dalton Hooker, who named it after James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak. Hooker called it "one of the most striking vegetable productions hither-to discovered". Since being introduced into cultivation in 1881, Nepenthes rajah has always been a much sought-after species. For a long time, the plant was seldom seen in private collections due to its rarity, price, and specialised growing requirements. However, recent advances in tissue culture technology have resulted in prices falling dramatically, and N. rajah is now relatively widespread in cultivation. Nepenthes rajah is most famous for the giant urn-shaped traps it produces, which can grow up to 41 cm high and 20 cm wide. These are capable of holding 3.5 litres of water and in excess of 2.5 litres of digestive fluid, making them probably the largest in the genus by volume. Another morphological feature of N. rajah is the peltate leaf attachment of the lamina and tendril, which is present in only a few other species. Nepenthes rajah traps vertebrates and even small mammals, with drowned rats having been observed in the pitcher-shaped traps. It is one of only three Nepenthes species documented as having caught mammalian prey in the wild, the others being N. rafflesiana and N. attenboroughii. N. rajah is also known to occasionally trap small vertebrates such as frogs, lizards, and even birds, although these cases probably involve sick animals and certainly do not represent the norm. Insects, and particularly ants, comprise the staple prey in both aerial and terrestrial pitchers. Although Nepenthes rajah is most famous for trapping and digesting animals, its pitchers are also host to a large number of other organisms, which are thought to form a symbiotic association with the plant. Many of these animals are so specialised that they cannot survive anywhere else, and are referred to as nepenthebionts. N. rajah has two such mosquito taxa named after it: Culex rajah and Toxorhynchites rajah. Another key feature of N. rajah is the relative ease with which it is able to hybridise in the wild. Hybrids between it and all other Nepenthes species on Mount Kinabalu have been recorded. However, due to the slow-growing nature of N. rajah, few hybrids involving the species have been artificially produced yet. ## Etymology Joseph Dalton Hooker described Nepenthes rajah in 1859, naming it in honour of Sir James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak. In the past, the Latin name was written as Nepenthes Rajah, since it derives from a proper noun. However, this capitalisation is considered incorrect today. 'Rajah Brooke's Pitcher Plant' is an accurate, but seldom-used common name. N. rajah is also sometimes called the 'Giant Malaysian Pitcher Plant' or simply 'Giant Pitcher Plant', although the binomial name remains by far the most popular way of referring to this species. The specific epithet rajah means "King" in Malay and this, coupled with the impressive size of its pitchers, has meant that N. rajah is often referred to as the "King of Nepenthes". ## Plant characteristics Nepenthes rajah, like virtually all species in the genus, is a scrambling vine. The stem usually grows along the ground, but will attempt to climb whenever it comes into contact with an object that can support it. The stem is relatively thick (≤30 mm) and may reach up to 6 m in length, although it rarely exceeds 3 m. N. rajah does not produce runners as some other species in the genus, but older plants are known to form basal offshoots. This is especially common in plants from tissue culture, where numerous offshoots may form at a young age. ### Leaves Leaves are produced at regular intervals along the stem. They are connected to the stem by sheathed structures known as petioles. A long, narrow tendril emanates from the end of each leaf. At the tip of the tendril is a small bud which, when physiologically activated, develops into a functioning trap. Hence, the pitchers are modified leaves and not specialised flowers as is often believed. The green structure most similar to a normal leaf is specifically known as the lamina or leaf blade. The leaves of N. rajah are very distinctive and reach a large size. They are leathery in texture with a wavy outer margin. The leaves are characteristically peltate, whereby the tendril joins the lamina on the underside, before the apex. This characteristic is more pronounced in N. rajah than in any other Nepenthes species, with the exception of N. clipeata. However, it is not unique to these two taxa, as mature plants of many Nepenthes species display slightly peltate leaves. The tendrils are inserted ≤5 cm below the leaf apex and reach a length of approximately 50 cm. Three to five longitudinal veins run along each side of the lamina and pennate (branching) veins run towards the margin. The lamina is oblong to lanceolate-shaped, ≤80 cm long and ≤15 cm wide. ### Pitchers All Nepenthes pitchers share several basic characteristics. Traps consist of the main pitcher cup, which is covered by an operculum or lid that prevents rainwater from entering the pitcher and displacing or diluting its contents. A reflexed ring of hardened tissue, known as the peristome, surrounds the entrance to the pitcher (only the aerial pitchers of N. inermis lack a peristome). A pair of fringed wings run down the front of lower traps and these presumably serve to guide terrestrial insects into the pitchers' mouth. Accordingly, the wings are greatly reduced or completely lacking in aerial pitchers, for which flying insects constitute the majority of prey items. Nepenthes rajah, like most species in the genus, produces two distinct types of traps. "Lower" or "terrestrial" pitchers are the most common. These are very large, richly coloured, and ovoid in shape. In lower pitchers, the tendril attachment occurs at the front of the pitcher cup relative to the peristome and wings. Exceptional specimens may be more than 40 cm in length and hold 3.5 litres of water and in excess of 2.5 litres of digestive fluid, although most do not exceed 200 ml. The largest recorded pitcher of N. rajah, measuring 41 cm, was found on March 26, 2011, during a trip to Mesilau organised by The Sabah Society. The trap was discovered next to a steep sidepath of the Mesilau nature trail and was measured by Alex Lamb, son of Anthea Phillipps and Anthony Lamb, who were also on the trip. It was collected for preservation at Mesilau Headquarters. Another trap measuring 40 cm was spotted on the same day. The previous record for a N. rajah pitcher was 38 cm. The lower pitchers of N. rajah are probably the largest in the genus by volume, rivaled only by those of N. merrilliana, N. truncata and the giant form of N. rafflesiana. These traps rest on the ground and are often reclined, leaning against surrounding objects for support. They are usually red to purple on the outside, whilst the inside surfaces are lime green to purple. This contrasts with all other parts of the plant, which are yellow-green. The lower pitchers of N. rajah are unmistakable and for this reason it is easy to distinguish it from all other Bornean Nepenthes species. Mature plants may also produce "upper" or "aerial" pitchers, which are much smaller, funnel-shaped, and usually more colourful than the lowers. The tendril attachment in upper pitchers is normally present at the rear of the pitcher cup. True upper pitchers are seldom seen, as the stems of N. rajah rarely attain lengths greater than a few metres before dying off and being replaced by off-shoots from the main rootstock. Upper and lower pitchers differ significantly in morphology, as they are specialised for attracting and capturing different prey. Pitchers that do not fall directly into either category are simply known as "intermediate" pitchers. The peristome of N. rajah has a highly distinctive scalloped edge and is greatly expanded, forming an attractive red lip around the trap's mouth. A series of raised protrusions, known as ribs, intersect the peristome, ending in short, sharp teeth that line its inner margin. The inner portion of the peristome accounts for around 80% of its total cross-sectional surface length in this species. Two fringed wings run from the tendril attachment to the lower edge of the peristome. The huge, vaulted lid of N. rajah, the largest in the genus, is another distinguishing characteristic of this species. It is ovate to oblong in shape and has a distinct keel running down the middle, with two prominent lateral veins. The spur at the back of the lid is approximately 20 mm long and unbranched. Nepenthes rajah is noted for having very large nectar-secreting glands covering its pitchers. These are quite different from those of any other Nepenthes and are easily recognisable. The inner surface of the pitcher, in particular, is wholly glandular, with 300 to 800 glands/cm². ### Flowers Nepenthes rajah seems to flower at any time of the year. Flowers are produced in large numbers on inflorescences that arise from the apex of the main stem. N. rajah produces a very large inflorescence that can be 80 cm, and sometimes even 120 cm tall. The individual flowers of N. rajah are produced on partial peduncles (twin stalks) and so the inflorescence is called a raceme (as opposed to a panicle for multi-flowered bunches). The flowers are reported to give off a strong sugary smell and are brownish-yellow in colour. Sepals are elliptic to oblong and ≤8 mm long. Like all Nepenthes species, N. rajah is dioecious, which means that individual plants produce flowers of a single sex. Fruits are orange-brown and 10 to 20 mm long (see image). A study of 300 pollen samples taken from a herbarium specimen (J.H.Adam 2443, collected at an altitude of 1930–2320 m) found the mean pollen diameter to be 34.7 μm (SE = 0.3; CV = 7.0%). ### Other characteristics The root system of N. rajah is notably extensive, although it is relatively shallow as in most Nepenthes species. All parts of the plant are covered in long, white hairs when young, but mature plants are virtually glabrous (lacking hair). This covering of hair is known as the indumentum. The colour of herbarium specimens is dark-brown in varying hues (see image). Little variation has been observed within natural populations of Nepenthes rajah and, consequently, no forms or varieties have been described. Furthermore, N. rajah has no true nomenclatural synonyms, unlike many other Nepenthes species, which exhibit greater variability. ## Carnivory Nepenthes rajah is a carnivorous plant of the pitfall trap variety. It is famous for occasionally trapping vertebrates, even small mammals. There exist at least two records of drowned rats found in N. rajah pitchers. The first observation dates from 1862 and was made by Spenser St. John, who accompanied Hugh Low on two ascents of Mount Kinabalu. In 1988, Anthea Phillipps and Anthony Lamb confirmed the plausibility of this record when they managed to observe drowned rats in a large pitcher of N. rajah. In 2011, the discovery of a drowned mountain treeshrew (Tupaia montana) in a N. rajah pitcher was reported. Nepenthes rajah is also known to occasionally trap other small vertebrates, including frogs, lizards and even birds, although these cases probably involve sick animals, or those seeking shelter or water in the pitcher, and certainly do not represent the norm. Insects, and particularly ants, comprise the majority of prey in both aerial and terrestrial pitchers. Other arthropods, such as centipedes, also fall prey to N. rajah. Nepenthes rafflesiana is one of the few other Nepenthes species reliably documented as having caught mammalian prey in its natural habitat. In Brunei, frogs, geckos and skinks have been found in the pitchers of this species. The remains of mice have also been reported. On September 29, 2006, at the Jardin botanique de Lyon in France, a cultivated N. truncata was photographed containing the decomposing corpse of a mouse. ### Mutualism with mammals Nepenthes rajah has evolved a mutualistic relationship with mountain treeshrews (Tupaia montana) in order to collect their droppings. The inside of the reflexed lid exudes a sweet nectar. The distance from the pitcher mouth to the exudate is the same as the average body length of the mountain treeshrew. These proportions also hold true for N. lowii and N. macrophylla. As it feeds, the treeshrew defecates, apparently as a method of marking its feeding territory. It is thought that in exchange for providing nectar, the faeces provide N. rajah with the majority of the nitrogen it requires. In N. lowii, N. macrophylla and N. rajah, the colour of the lower lid surface corresponds to visual sensitivity maxima of the mountain treeshrew in the green and blue wavebands, making the lid underside stand out against adjacent parts of the pitcher. Of the three species, N. rajah shows the tightest 'fit', particularly in the green waveband. In 2011, it was reported that N. rajah has a similar mutualistic relationship with the summit rat (Rattus baluensis). Whereas the mountain treeshrew visits pitchers during daylight hours, the summit rat is primarily active at night; this may be an example of resource partitioning. Daily scat deposition rates were found to be similar for both mammalian species. ## Other interactions with animals ### Pitcher infauna Although Nepenthes are most famous for trapping and digesting animals, their pitchers also play host to a large number of other organisms (known as infauna). These include fly and midge larvae, spiders (most notably the crab spider Misumenops nepenthicola), mites, ants, and even a species of crab, Geosesarma malayanum. The most common and conspicuous predators found in pitchers are mosquito larvae, which consume large numbers of other larvae during their development. Many of these animals are so specialised that they cannot survive anywhere else, and are referred to as nepenthebionts. The complex relationships between these various organisms are not yet fully understood. The question of whether infaunal animals "steal" food from their hosts, or whether they are involved in a mutually beneficial (symbiotic) association has yet to be investigated experimentally and is the source of considerable debate. Clarke suggests that mutualism is a "likely situation", whereby "the infauna receives domicile, protection and food from the plant, while in return, the infauna helps to break down the prey, increase the rate of digestion and keep bacterial numbers low". ### Species specific As the size and shape of Nepenthes pitchers vary greatly between species, but little within a given taxon, it is not surprising that many infaunal organisms are specially adapted to life in only the traps of particular species. N. rajah is no exception, and in fact has two mosquito taxa named after it. Culex (Culiciomyia) rajah and Toxorhynchites (Toxorhynchites) rajah were described by Masuhisa Tsukamoto in 1989, based on larvae collected in pitchers of N. rajah on Mount Kinabalu three years earlier. The two species were found to live in association with larvae of Culex (Lophoceraomyia) jenseni, Uranotaenia (Pseudoficalbia) moultoni and an undescribed taxon, Tripteroides (Rachionotomyia) sp. No. 2. Concerning C. rajah, Tsukamoto noted that the "body surface of most larvae are covered in Vorticella-like protozoa". At present, nothing is known of this species with regards to its adult biology, habitat, or medical importance as a vector of diseases. The same is true for T. rajah; nothing is known of its biology except that adults are not haematophagous. Another species, Culex shebbearei, has also been recorded as an infaunal organism of N. rajah in the past. The original 1931 record by F. W. Edwards is based on a collection by H. M. Pendlebury in 1929 from a plant growing on Mount Kinabalu. However, Tsukamoto notes that in light of new information on these species, "it seems more likely to conclude that the species [C. rajah] is a new species which has been misidentitied as C. shebbearei for a long time, rather than to think that both C. shebbearei and C. rajah n. sp. are living in pitchers of Nepenthes rajah on Mt. Kinabalu". ### Pests Not all interactions between Nepenthes and fauna are beneficial to the plant. Nepenthes rajah is sometimes attacked by insects which feed on its leaves and damage substantial portions of the lamina. Also, monkeys and tarsiers are known to occasionally rip pitchers open to feed on their contents. ## History and popularity Due to its size, unusual morphology and striking colouration, N. rajah has always been a very popular and highly sought-after insectivorous plant. However, despite its popularity amongst pitcher plant enthusiasts, N. rajah remains a little-known species outside the field of carnivorous plants. Due to its specialised growing requirements, it is not a suitable candidate for a houseplant and, as such, is only cultivated by a relatively small number of hobbyists and professional growers worldwide. This being the case, N. rajah is nonetheless probably the most famous of all pitcher plants. Its reputation for producing some of the most magnificent pitchers in the genus dates back to the late 19th century. Nepenthes rajah was first collected by Hugh Low on Mount Kinabalu in 1858. It was described the following year by Joseph Dalton Hooker, who named it after James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak. The description was published in The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London: > Nepenthes Rajah, H. f. (Frutex, 4-pedalis, Low). Foliis maximis 2-pedalibus, oblongo-lanceolatis petiolo costaque crassissimis, ascidiis giganteis (cum operculo l-2-pedalibus) ampullaceis ore contracto, stipite folio peltatim affixo, annulo maximo lato everso crebre lamellato, operculo amplissimo ovato-cordato, ascidium totum æquante.—(Tab. LXXII.) > > Hab.—Borneo, north coast, on Kina Balu, alt. 5,000 feet (Low). This wonderful plant is certainly one of the most striking vegetable productions hitherto discovered, and, in this respect, is worthy of taking place side by side with the Rafflesia Arnoldii. It hence bears the title of my friend Rajah Brooke, of whose services, in its native place, it may be commemorative among botanists. . . . I have only two specimens of leaves and pitchers, both quite similar, but one twice as large as the other. Of these, the leaf of the larger is 18 inches long, exclusive of the petioles, which is as thick as the thumb and 7–8 broad, very coriaceous and glabrous, with indistinct nerves. The stipes of the pitcher is given off below the apex of the leaf, is 20 inches long, and as thick as the finger. The broad ampullaceous pitcher is 6 inches in diameter, and 12 long: it has two fimbriated wings in front, is covered with long rusty hairs above, is wholly studded with glands within, and the broad annulus is everted, and 1–11⁄2 inch in diameter. Operculum shortly stipitate, 10 inches long and 8 broad. > > The inflorescence is hardly in proportion. Male raceme, 30 inches long, of which 20 are occupied by the flowers; upper part and flowers clothed with short rusty pubescence. Peduncles slender, simple or bifid. Fruiting raceme stout. Peduncles 11⁄2 inches long, often bifid. Capsule, 3⁄4 inch long, 1⁄3 broad, rather turgid, densely covered with rusty tomentum. Spenser St. John wrote the following account of his encounter with N. rajah on Mount Kinabalu in Life in the Forests of the Far East published in 1862: > Another steep climb of 800 feet brought us to the Marei Parei spur, to the spot where the ground was covered with the magnificent pitcher-plants, of which we had come in search. This one has been called the Nepenthes Rajah, and is a plant about four feet in length, with broad leaves stretching on every side, having the great pitchers resting on the ground in a circle about it. Their shape and size are remarkable. I will give the measurement of one, to indicate the form: the length along the back nearly fourteen inches; from the base to the top of the column in front, five inches; and its lid a foot long by fourteen inches broad, and of an oval shape. Its mouth was surrounded by a plaited pile, which near the column was two inches broad, lessening in its narrowest part to three-quarters of an inch. The plaited pile of the mouth was also undulating in broad waves. Near the stem the pitcher is four inches deep, so that the mouth is situated upon it in a triangular manner. The colour of an old chalice is a deep purple, but that of the others is generally mauve outside, very dark indeed in the lower part, though lighter towards the rim; the inside is of the same colour, but has a kind of glazed and shiny appearance. The lid is mauve in the centre, shading to green at the edges. The stems of the female flowers we found always a foot shorter than those of the male, and the former were far less numerous than the latter. It is indeed one of the most astonishing productions of nature. > > [...] The pitchers, as I have before observed, rest on the ground in a circle, and the young plants have cups of the same form as those of the old ones. While the men were cooking their rice, we sat before the tent enjoying our chocolate and observing one of our followers carrying water in a splendid specimen of the Nepenthes Rajah, desired him to bring it to us, and found that it held exactly four pint bottles. It was 19 inches in circumference. We afterwards saw others apparently much larger, and Mr. Low, while wandering in search of flowers, came upon one in which was a drowned rat. Nepenthes rajah was first collected for the Veitch Nurseries by Frederick William Burbidge in 1878, during his second trip to Borneo. Shortly after being introduced into cultivation in 1881, N. rajah proved very popular among wealthy Victorian horticulturalists and became a much sought-after species. A note in The Gardeners' Chronicle of 1881 mentions the Veitch plant as follows: "N. rajah at present is only a young Rajah, what it will become was lately illustrated in our columns...". A year later, young N. rajah plants were displayed at the Royal Horticultural Society's annual show for the first time. The specimen exhibited at the show by the Veitch Nurseries, the first of this species to be cultivated in Europe, won a first class certificate. In Veitch's catalogue for 1889, N. rajah was priced at £2.2s per plant. During this time, interest in Nepenthes had reached its peak. The Garden reported that Nepenthes were being propagated by the thousands to keep up with European demand. However, dwindling interest in Nepenthes at the turn of the century saw the demise of the Veitch Nurseries and consequently the loss of several species and hybrids in cultivation, including N. northiana and N. rajah. By 1905, the final N. rajah specimens from the Veitch nurseries were gone, as the cultural requirements of the plants proved too difficult to reproduce. The last surviving N. rajah in cultivation at this time was located at the National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin in Ireland, however this soon perished also. It would be many years before N. rajah was reintroduced into cultivation. ### Recent popularity In recent years there has been renewed interest in Nepenthes worldwide. Much of the plants' current popularity can probably be attributed to Shigeo Kurata, whose book Nepenthes of Mount Kinabalu (1976), which featured the best colour photography of Nepenthes to date, did much to bring attention to these unusual plants. Not surprisingly, N. rajah is a relatively well known plant in Malaysia, especially its native Sabah. The species is often used to promote Sabah, and specifically Kinabalu National Park, as a tourist destination, and features prominently on postcards from the region. Nepenthes rajah has appeared on the covers of several popular Nepenthes publications, including Nepenthes of Mount Kinabalu (Kurata, 1976) and Nepenthes of Borneo (Clarke, 1997), both published in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. On April 6, 1996, Malaysia issued a series of four postage stamps depicting some of its more famous Nepenthes species. Two 30¢ stamps, featuring N. macfarlanei and N. sanguinea, as well as two 50¢ stamps, depicting N. lowii and N. rajah, were released. The N. rajah stamp has been assigned a unique identification number in two popular stamp numbering systems: Scott \#580 and Yvert \#600. Curiously, the peltate leaf attachment that is so characteristic of this species is not shown. Nepenthes rajah was featured in the first episode of Kingdom of Plants 3D, a natural history documentary series presented by David Attenborough. ## Classification Nepenthes rajah is not generally considered to be closely related to any other species, due to its unusual pitcher and leaf morphology. However, several attempts have been made to deduce natural groupings within the genus Nepenthes, which have grouped N. rajah with other species thought to share certain traits with it. The Nepenthes were first split up in 1873, when Hooker published his monograph on the genus, titled "Nepenthaceae". Hooker distinguished N. pervillei from all other taxa based on its seeds, which lack the appendages typical of most Nepenthes. He placed it in the monotypic subgenus Anourosperma. All other species were subsumed in the second subgenus, Eunepenthes. A second attempt to establish a natural subdivision within the genus was made in 1895 by Günther Beck von Mannagetta und Lerchenau in "Die Gattung Nepenthes". Beck kept the two subgenera created by Hooker, but divided Eunepenthes into three subgroups: Retiferae, Apruinosae and Pruinosae. Nepenthes rajah formed part of the Apruinosae (Latin: pl. of apruinosa: not frosted). Nepenthes taxonomy was once again revised in 1908 by John Muirhead Macfarlane in his own monograph, "Nepenthaceae". Oddly, Macfarlane did not name the groups he distinguished. His revision is not generally considered to be a natural division of the genus. In 1928, B. H. Danser published his seminal monograph, "The Nepenthaceae of the Netherlands Indies", in which he divided Nepenthes into six clades, based on observations of herbarium material. The clades were: the Vulgatae, Montanae, Nobiles, Regiae, Insignes and Urceolatae. Danser placed N. rajah in the Regiae (Latin: pl. of rēgia: royal). The Regiae clade as proposed by Danser is shown in the adjacent table. Most of the species in this clade are large plants with petiolate leaves, an indumentum of coarse reddish-brown hairs, raceme-like inflorescence, and funnel-shaped (infundibulate) upper pitchers. All bear a characteristic appendage on the lower surface of the lid near the apex. With the exception of N. lowii, the Regiae all have a mostly flattened or expanded peristome. The majority of species comprising Regiae are endemic to Borneo. Based on current understanding of the genus, Regiae appears to reflect the relationships of its members quite well, although the same cannot be said for the other clades. Despite this, Danser's classification was undoubtedly a great improvement on previous attempts. The taxonomical work of Danser (1928) was revised by Hermann Harms in 1936. Harms divided Nepenthes into three subgenera: Anurosperma Hooker.f. (1873), Eunepenthes Hooker.f. (1873) and Mesonepenthes Harms (1936) (Latin: meso: middle; "middle" Nepenthes). The Nepenthes species found in the subgenera Anurosperma and Mesonepenthes differ from those in the Vulgatae, where Danser had placed them. Harms included N. rajah in the subgenus Eunepenthes together with the great majority of other Nepenthes; Anurosperma was a monotypic subgenus, while Mesonepenthes contained only three species. He also created an additional clade, the Distillatoriae (after N. distillatoria). In his 1976 book, Nepenthes of Mount Kinabalu, Shigeo Kurata presented detailed photographs of lid nectar glands and the digestive glands of the trap interior. He divided the latter into the "lower", "upper" and "middle" parts. ### Biochemical analysis More recently, biochemical analysis has been used as a means to determine cladistical relationships between Nepenthes species. In 1975, David E. Fairbrothers et al. first suggested a link between chemical properties and certain morphological groupings, based on the theory that morphologically similar plants produce chemical constituents with similar therapeutic effects. In 2002, phytochemical screening and analytical chromatography were used to study the presence of phenolic compounds and leucoanthocyanins in several naturally occurring hybrids and their putative parental species (including N. rajah) from Sabah and Sarawak. The research was based on leaf material from nine dry herbarium specimens. Eight spots containing phenolic acids, flavonols, flavones, leucoanthocyanins and 'unknown flavonoid' 1 and 3 were identified from chromatographic profiles. The distributions of these in the hybrid N. × alisaputrana and its putative parental species N. rajah and N. burbidgeae are shown in the adjacent table. A specimen of N. × alisaputrana grown from tissue culture (in vitro) was also tested. Phenolic and ellagic acids were undetected in N. rajah, while concentrations of kaempferol were found to be very weak. Chromatographic patterns of the N. × alisaputrana samples studied showed complementation of its putative parental species. Myricetin was found to be absent from all studied taxa. This agrees with the findings of previous authors (R. M. Som in 1988; M. Jay and P. Lebreton in 1972) and suggests that the absence of a widely distributed compound like myricetin among the Nepenthes examined might provide "additional diagnostic information for these six species". Several proteins and nucleotides of N. rajah have been either partially or completely sequenced. These are as follows: - translocated tRNA-Lys (trnK) pseudogene (DQ007139) - trnK gene & maturase K (matK) gene (AF315879) - trnK gene & maturase K (matK) gene (AF315880) - maturase K (AAK56010) - maturase K (AAK56011) ### Related species In 1998, a striking new species of Nepenthes was discovered in the Philippines by Andreas Wistuba. Temporarily dubbed N. sp. Palawan 1, it bears a close resemblance to N. rajah in terms of pitcher and leaf morphology. In 2007, the species was described by Wistuba and Joachim Nerz as N. mantalingajanensis. ## Ecology ### Kinabalu Nepenthes rajah has a very localised distribution, being restricted to Mount Kinabalu and neighbouring Mount Tambuyukon, both located in Kinabalu National Park, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Mount Kinabalu is a massive granitic dome structure that is geologically young and formed from the intrusion and uplift of a granitic batholith. At 4095.2 m, it is by far the tallest mountain on the island of Borneo and one of the highest peaks in Southeast Asia. The lower slopes of the mountain are mainly composed of sandstone and shale, transformed from marine sand and mud about 35 million years ago. Intrusive ultramafic (serpentine) rock was uplifted with the core of the batholith and forms a collar around the mountain. It is on these ultramafic soils that the flora of Mount Kinabalu exhibits the greatest levels of endemicity and many of the area's rarest species can be found here. ### Substrate Nepenthes rajah seems to grow exclusively on serpentine soils containing high concentrations of nickel and chromium, which are toxic to many plant species. Its tolerance of these, therefore, means that it can grow in an ecological niche where it faces less competition for space and nutrients. The root systems of N. × alisaputrana and N. villosa are also known to be resistant to the heavy metals present in serpentine substrates. These soils are also rich in magnesium and are slightly alkaline as a result. They often form a relatively thin layer over a base of ultramafic rock and are thus known as ultramafic soils. Ultramafic soils are thought to cover approximately 16% of Kinabalu National Park. These soils have high levels of endemicity in many taxonomic groups, not least the Nepenthes. Four species in the genus, including N. rajah, can only be found within the boundaries of the park. Nepenthes rajah usually grows in open, grassy clearings on old land slips and flat ridge tops, particularly in areas of seeping ground water, where the soil is loose and permanently moist. Although these sites can receive very high rainfall, excess water drains away quickly, preventing the soil from becoming waterlogged. N. rajah can often be found growing in grassy undergrowth, especially among sedges. ### Climate Nepenthes rajah has an altitudinal distribution of 1500–2650 m a.s.l. and is thus considered an (ultra) highland or Upper Montane plant. In the upper limit of its range, night-time temperatures may approach freezing and day-time maxima rarely exceed 25 °C. Due to the night-time temperature drop, relative air humidity increases significantly, rising from 65 to 75% to over 95%. Vegetation at this height is very stunted and slow-growing due to the extreme environmental conditions that prevail. Plants are often subjected to fierce winds and driving rain, as well as exposure to intense direct sunlight. The relatively open vegetation of the upper montane forest also experiences greater fluctuations in temperature and humidity compared with lower altitudes. These changes are largely governed by the extent of cloud cover. In the absence of clouds, temperatures rise rapidly, humidity drops, and light levels may be very high. When cloud cover returns, temperatures and light levels fall, while humidity levels increase. Average annual precipitation in this region is around 3000 mm. ## Conservation status ### Endangered species Nepenthes rajah is classified as Endangered (EN – B1+2e) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It is also listed on Schedule I, Part II of the Wildlife Conservation Enactment (WCE) 1997 and CITES Appendix I, which prohibits commercial international trade in plants collected from the wild. However, due to its popularity among collectors, many plants have been removed from the wild illegally, even though the species' distribution lies entirely within the bounds of Kinabalu Park. This led to some populations being severely depleted by over-collection in the 1970s and eventually resulted in the species' inclusion in CITES Appendix I in 1981. Together with N. khasiana, it is one of only two species in the genus to feature on this list; all other Nepenthes species are covered by Appendix II. This being the case, however, the short-term future of N. rajah seems to be relatively secure and it would perhaps be more accurately classified as Vulnerable (VU) or, taking into account protected populations in National Parks, Lower Risk conservation dependent (LR (cd)). This agrees with the conservation status of N. rajah according to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), under which it is also considered Vulnerable. Furthermore, the species was originally treated as Vulnerable (V) by the IUCN prior to the introduction of the 1994 threat categories. Although N. rajah has a restricted distribution and is often quoted as a plant in peril, it is not rare in the areas where it does grow and most populations are now off-limits to visitors and lie in remote parts of Kinabalu National Park. Furthermore, N. rajah has a distinctive leaf shape making it difficult to illegally ship abroad even if the pitchers are removed, as an informed customs official should be able to identify it. The recent advent of artificial tissue culture, or more specifically in vitro, technology in Europe and the United States has meant that plants can be produced in large numbers and sold at relatively low prices (\~US\$20–\$30 in the case of N. rajah). In vitro propagation refers to production of whole plants from cell cultures derived from explants (generally seeds). This technology has, to a large extent, removed the incentive for collectors to travel to Sabah to collect the plant illegally, and demand for wild-collected plants has fallen considerably in recent years. Rob Cantley, a prominent conservationist and artificial propagator of Nepenthes plants, assesses the current status of plants in the wild as follows: > This species grows in at least 2 distinct sub-populations, both of which are well protected by Sabah National Parks Authority. One of the populations grows in an area public access to which is strictly prohibited without permit. However, there has been a decline in population of mature individuals in the better known and less patrolled site. This is largely due to damage to habitat and plants by careless visitors rather than organised collection of plants. Nepenthes rajah has become common in cultivation in recent years as a result of the availability of inexpensive clones from tissue culture. I believe that these days commercial collection of this species from the wild is negligible. This being the case, however, it appears that the genetic variability of cultivated N. rajah plants is very small, as all commercially available tissue-cultured plants are thought to belong to just four clones originating from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, England. However, illegal collection is not the only threat facing plants in the wild. The El Niño climatic phenomenon of 1997/98 had a catastrophic effect on the Nepenthes species on Mount Kinabalu. The dry period that followed severely depleted some natural populations. Forest fires broke out in 9 locations in Kinabalu Park, covering a total area of 25 square kilometres and generating large amounts of smog. During the El Niño period, many plants were temporarily transferred to the park nursery to save at least some individuals. These were later replanted in the "Nepenthes Garden" in Mesilau (see below). In spite of this, N. rajah was one of the less affected species and relatively few plants perished as a result. Since then, Ansow Gunsalam has established a nursery close to the Mesilau Lodge at the base of Kinabalu Park to protect the endangered species of that area, including N. rajah. ### Restricted distribution The newly opened Mesilau Nature Resort, which lies near the golf course behind the village of Kundasang, is now the only place where regular visitors can hope to see this species in its natural habitat. Here, several dozen N. rajah plants grow near the top of a steep landslide. Both young and mature plants are present, some with sizable pitchers that may occasionally exceed 40 cm in height (see image). Daily guided tours are organised to the "Nepenthes Garden" where these plants are located. The "Nepenthes rajah Nature Trail" is subject to a fee and operates daily from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Almost all other natural populations of this species occur in remote parts of Kinabalu National Park, which are off-limits to tourists. Visitors to the park can also see N. rajah on display in the nursery adjoining the "Mountain Garden" at Kinabalu Park Headquarters. Other known localities of wild N. rajah populations include the Marai Parai plateau, Mesilau East River near Mesilau Cave, the Upper Kolopis River, and the eastern slope of Mount Tambuyukon. On Pig Hill, N. rajah grows at 1950–2320 m and is sympatric with N. burbidgeae, N. tentaculata, and the natural hybrid N. × alisaputrana. ## Natural hybrids Nepenthes rajah is known to hybridise with several other species with which it is sympatric. It seems to flower at any time of year and for this reason it hybridises relatively easily. Charles Clarke also notes that "N. rajah, more than any other species, appears to have been successful in having its pollen transported over considerable distances. Consequently, a number of putative N. rajah hybrids exist without the parent plant growing nearby". However, it appears that the limit as to how far pollen can be transported is approximately 10 km. Hybrids between N. rajah and all other Nepenthes species on Mount Kinabalu have been recorded. Due to the slow-growing nature of N. rajah, few hybrids involving it have been artificially produced yet. At present, the following natural hybrids are known: - N. burbidgeae × N. rajah [=N. × alisaputrana J.H.Adam & Wilcock (1992)] - N. edwardsiana × N. rajah - N. fusca × N. rajah - N. lowii × N. rajah - N. macrovulgaris × N. rajah - N. rajah × N. stenophylla - N. rajah × N. tentaculata - N. rajah × N. villosa [=N. × kinabaluensis Sh.Kurata (1976) nom.nud.] The "Mountain Garden" of Kinabalu National Park contains a number of well-grown Nepenthes, including the rare hybrid N. rajah × N. stenophylla. This plant has leaves resembling those of N. stenophylla, but the lid and wings are typical of N. rajah. The peristome is strongly influenced by N. stenophylla and bristles are present at the border of the lid, a unique characteristic of this hybrid. It occurs at an altitude of 1500–2600 m. A single example of N. lowii × N. rajah grows along the Mesilau nature trail. Two hybrids of N. rajah have been formally described and given specific names: N. × alisaputrana and N. × kinabaluensis. Both are listed on CITES Appendix II and the latter is also considered Endangered (EN (D)) under current IUCN criteria. ### Nepenthes × alisaputrana Nepenthes × alisaputrana (originally published as "Nepenthes × alisaputraiana") is named in honour of Datuk Lamri Ali, Director of Sabah Parks. It is only known from a few remote localities within Kinabalu National Park where is grows in stunted, open vegetation over serpentine soils at around 2000 m above sea level, often amongst populations of N. burbidgeae. This plant is notable for combining the best characters of both parent species, not least the size of its pitchers, which rival those of N. rajah in volume (≤35 cm high, ≤20 cm wide). The other hybrids involving N. rajah do not exhibit such impressive proportions. The pitchers of N. × alisaputrana can be distinguished from those of N. burbidgeae by a broader peristome, larger lid and simply by their sheer size. The hybrid differs from its other parent, N. rajah, by its lid structure, indumentum of short, brown hairs, narrower and more cylindrical peristome, and pitcher colour, which is usually yellow-green with red or brown flecking. For this reason, Phillipps and Lamb (1996) gave it the common name Leopard pitcher-plant, though this is rarely used. The peristome is green to dark red and striped with purple bands. Leaves are often slightly peltate. The plant climbs well and aerial pitchers are frequently produced. N. × alisaputrana more closely resembles N. rajah than N. burbidgeae, but it is difficult to confuse this plant with either. However, this mistake has previously been made on at least one occasion; a pitcher illustrated in Insect Eating Plants & How To Grow Them (Slack, 1986) as being N. rajah was in fact N. burbidgeae × N. rajah. ### Nepenthes × kinabaluensis Nepenthes × kinabaluensis is another impressive plant. The pitchers get large also, but do not compare to those of N. rajah or N. × alisaputrana. It is a well-known natural hybrid of what many consider to be the two most spectacular Nepenthes species of Borneo: N. rajah and N. villosa. Nepenthes × kinabaluensis is only found on Mount Kinabalu (hence the name) and nearby Mount Tambuyukon, where the two parent species are occur sympatrically. More specifically, plants are known from a footpath near Paka Cave and several places along an unestablished route on a southeast ridge, which lies on the west side of the Upper Kolopis River. The only accessible location from which this hybrid is known is the Kinabalu summit trail, between Layang-Layang and the helipad, where it grows at about 2900 m in a clearing dominated by Dacrydium gibbsiae and Leptospermum recurvum trees. Nepenthes × kinabaluensis has an altitudinal distribution of 2420 to 3030 m. It grows in open areas in cloud forest. This hybrid can be distinguished from N. rajah by the presence of raised ribs that line the inner edge of the peristome and end with elongated teeth. These are more prominent than those found in N. rajah and are clue as to the hybrid's parentage (N. villosa has highly developed peristome ribs). The peristome is coarse and expanded at the margin (but not scalloped like that of N. rajah), the lid orbiculate or reniformed and almost flat. In general, pitchers are larger than those of N. villosa and the tendril joins the apex about 1–2 cm below the leaf tip, a feature which is characteristic of N. rajah. In older plants, the tendril can be almost woody. Nepenthes × kinabaluensis has an indumentum of villous hairs covering the pitchers and leaf margins, which is approximately intermediate between the parents. Lower pitchers have two fringed wings, whereas the upper pitchers usually lack these. The colour of the pitcher varies from yellow to scarlet. Nepenthes × kinabaluensis seems to produce upper pitchers more readily than either of its parents. In all respects N. × kinabaluensis is intermediate between the two parent species and it is easy to distinguish from all other Nepenthes of Borneo. However, it has been confused once before, when the hybrid was labelled as N. rajah in Letts Guide to Carnivorous Plants of the World (Cheers, 1992). Nepenthes × kinabaluensis was first collected near Kambarangoh by Lilian Gibbs in 1910 and later mentioned by Macfarlane as "Nepenthes sp." in 1914. Although Macfarlane did not formally name the plant, he noted that "[a]ll available morphological details suggest that this is a hybrid between N. villosa and N. rajah". The name N. × kinabaluensis was first published in Shigeo Kurata's 1976 book, Nepenthes of Mount Kinabalu, but was a nomen nudum at the time as it lacked an adequate description and information on the type specimen. The name was subsequently published validly by Kurata in 1984. ### Hybrid or species? Nepenthes × alisaputrana and N. × kinabaluensis are often fertile and thus may breed among themselves. Clive A. Stace writes that we may speak of "stabilised hybrids when they have developed a distributional, morphological or genetic set of characters which is no longer strictly related to that of its parents, ... if the hybrid has become an independent, recognisable, self-producing unit, it is de facto a separate species". Nepenthes hurrelliana and N. murudensis are two examples of species that have a putative hybrid origin. Nepenthes × alisaputrana and N. × kinabaluensis are sufficiently stabilised that a species status has been discussed. Indeed, N. kinabaluensis was described as a species by Adam & Wilcock in 1996. Due to their dioecious nature, a hybrid involving a pair of Nepenthes species can represent one of two possible crosses, depending on which species was the female and which was the male. When the cross is known, the female (or pod) parent is usually referred to first, followed by the male (or pollen) parent. This is an important distinction, as the hybrid will usually display different morphological features according to the type of cross; the pod parent is thought to be dominant in most cases and hybrid offspring usually resemble it more than the pollen parent. Most wild plants of N. × kinabaluensis, for example, show a greater affinity to N. rajah than N. villosa and are thus thought to represent the cross N. rajah × N. villosa. However, specimens have been found that seem to be more similar to N. villosa, suggesting that they might be the reverse cross (see ). The same is true for other hybrids involving N. rajah. ## Cultivation Nepenthes rajah has always been considered to be one of the more difficult Nepenthes species to cultivate. However, in recent years, it has become apparent that the plant may not be deserving of its reputation. ### Environmental factors Nepenthes rajah is a montane species or "highlander", growing at altitudes ranging from 1500 to 2650 m. As such, it requires warm days, with temperatures ranging (ideally) from approximately 25 to 30 °C, and cool nights, with temperatures of about 10 to 15 °C. The temperatures themselves are not vital (when kept within reasonable limits), but rather the temperature drop itself; N. rajah needs considerably cooler nights, with a drop of 10 °C or more being preferable. Failure to observe this requirement will almost certainly doom the plant in the long term or, at best, limit it to being a small, unimpressive specimen. In addition, like all Nepenthes, this plant needs a fairly humid environment to grow well. Values in the region of 75% R.H. are generally considered optimal, with increased humidity at night (\~90% R.H.). However, N. rajah does tolerate fluctuations in humidity, especially when young, provided that the air does not become too dry (below 50% R.H.). Humidity can be easily controlled using an ultrasonic humidifier in conjunction with a humidistat. In its natural habitat, N. rajah grows in open areas, where it is exposed to direct sunlight – it therefore needs to be provided with a significant amount of light in cultivation as well. To meet this need, many growers have used metal halide lamps in the 500–1000 watt range, with considerable success. The plant should be situated a fair distance from the light source, 1 to 2 m is recommended. Depending on location, growers can utilise natural sunlight as a source of illumination. However, this is only recommended for those living in equatorial regions, where light intensity is sufficient to satisfy the needs of the plant. A photoperiod of 12 hours is comparable to that experienced in nature, since Borneo lies on the equator. ### Potting and watering Pure long-fibre Sphagnum moss is an excellent potting medium, though combinations involving any of the following – peat, perlite, vermiculite, sand, lava rock, pumice, Osmunda fibre, orchid bark and horticultural charcoal – may be used with equal success. The potting medium should be well-drained and not too compacted. Moss is useful for moisture retention near the roots. The mix should be thoroughly soaked in water prior to potting the plant. It has been noted that N. rajah produces a very extensive root system (for a Nepenthes) and, for this reason, it is recommended that a wide pot be used to allow for proper development of the root system. This also eliminates the need for frequent re-potting, which can lead to transplant shock and the eventual death of the plant. Purified water should be used for watering purposes, although 'hard water' is tolerated. This is done to minimise the build-up of minerals and chemicals in the soil. Water purity greater than 100 p.p.m. of total dissolved solids is often quoted as ideal. A reverse osmosis unit can be used to filter the water or, alternatively, bottled distilled water can be purchased. Watering should be done regularly. However, plants should not be allowed to sit in water, as this may lead to root rot. ### Feeding and fertilising Nepenthes rajah is a carnivorous plant and, as such, supplements nutrients gained from the soil with captured prey (especially insects) to alleviate deficiencies in important elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Just as in nature, a cultivated plant's 'diet' may include insects and other prey items, although this is not necessary for successful cultivation. Crickets are recommended for their size and low cost. These can be purchased online or at specialist pet stores. They can simply be dropped into the pitchers by hand or placed inside using metal tongs or similar, whether dead or alive. From trials carried out by a commercial Nepenthes nursery, it appears that micronutrient solutions have "a beneficial effect on plants of improved leaf colouration, with no deleterious effects" as far as can be seen. However, more research is required to verify these results. Actual fertilisers (containing NPK) were, on the other hand, found to "cause damage to plants, promote pathogens and have no observable benefits". Hence, the use of chemical fertilisers is usually not advised. Nepenthes rajah is a slow growing Nepenthes. Under optimal conditions, N. rajah can reach flowering size within 10 years of seed germination. ## Common misconceptions Nepenthes rajah has been a well known and highly sought after species for over a century and, as a result, there are many stories woven around this plant. One such example is the famous legend that N. rajah grows exclusively in the spray zones of waterfalls, on ultramafic soils. Although the latter is true, N. rajah is certainly not found solely in the spray zones of waterfalls and this statement seems to have little basis in fact. It is likely this misconception was popularised by Shigeo Kurata's 1976 book Nepenthes of Mount Kinabalu, in which he states that "N. rajah is rather fond of wet places like swamps or the surroundings of a waterfall". This being the case, certain N. rajah plants do in fact grow in the vicinity of waterfalls (as noted by H. Steiner, 2002) "providing quite a humid microclimate", which may indeed be the source of this particular misconception. Another myth surrounding this species is that it occasionally catches small monkeys and other large animals in its pitchers. Such tales have persisted for a very long time, but can probably be explained as rodents being mistaken for other species. It is interesting to note that one common name for Nepenthes plants is 'Monkey Cups'. The name refers to the fact that monkeys have been observed drinking rainwater from these plants. ## Timeline

New Jersey Route 413

State highway in Burlington County, New Jersey, US

Route 413 is a 0.76-mile-long (1.22 km) state highway located entirely in the City of Burlington, New Jersey, United States. It is an eastward extension into New Jersey of the longer Pennsylvania Route 413 (PA 413). The western terminus is in the middle of the Burlington–Bristol Bridge crossing of the Delaware River at the New Jersey–Pennsylvania state border; the eastern terminus is at an intersection with U.S. Route 130 (US 130) and County Route 543 (CR 543). Prior to the 1953 renumbering, Route 413 was Route S25, a prefixed spur of Route 25. ## Route description Route 413 begins at the state line, midway along the vertical-lift Burlington–Bristol Bridge, as a continuation of PA 413. As the road descends from the bridge, a toll booth spans the width of the road though a toll is only collected for westbound traffic. The highway heads eastward, heading along Keim Boulevard, and becomes maintained by Burlington County. For eastbound traffic, a right-in/right-out intersection with Veterans Drive is present while for westbound traffic, an exit for Reed Street is located before the toll booths. East of here, an oblong traffic circle, bisected by a grade crossing of NJ Transit's River Line light rail, is found and has intersections with West Broad Street. East of here, Route 413 continues as a divided highway with one lane in each direction passing through an area of commercial businesses. The road comes to another oblong traffic circle, with intersections at Oakland Avenue, Washington Avenue, and Lincoln Avenue. One house and two businesses are located along the eastern edge of the circle. East of this circle, Route 413 ends at a complex intersection with US 130 (on which CR 543 runs concurrently), Taylor Avenue, Salem Road, and Mott Avenue. ## History In the 1927 renumbering of highways in New Jersey, US 130 was assigned as a part of New Jersey State Highway Route 25, which made up US 1 and US 9 as well. During that renumbering in 1927, Route 413 was originally New Jersey State Highway Route S-25, a prefixed spur of State Highway Route 25. The highway remained intact along its alignment in Keim Road to the Burlington–Bristol Bridge until January 1, 1953. On January 1, 1953, the New Jersey State Highway Department performed a second renumbering of state highways. State Highway Route 25, which had run at the southern terminus with Route 130, was decommissioned for the sole designation. Since State Highway Route 25 was decommissioned, State Highway Route S-25 would be orphaned and was decommissioned that day. The Highway Department renumbered S-25's alignment to Route 413, which continued as PA 413. ## Major intersections ## See also

Miles Copeland (Home and Away)

Fictional character in Home and Away

Miles "Milco" Copeland is a fictional character from the Australian Channel Seven soap opera Home and Away, played by Josh Quong Tart. He debuted on-screen during the episode airing on 30 November 2007. Ryley Mickle and Jackson Edwards played Miles in flashback sequences, showing him at ages three and eight years old respectively. During the early years of Home and Away, Sally Fletcher (Kate Ritchie) often spoke of an imaginary friend she called "Milco". When Ritchie announced her departure from the soap, producers decided to introduce the real Milco, as regular character Miles Copeland. The development was described by the media as a "legacy storyline." Quong Tart announced his departure from Home and Away in October 2011. Miles departed on 23 November 2011. Miles is characterised as being charming and quick witted. His clothes often consist of board shorts and crumpled shirts, with his long hair, this gives him a trademark "beachy" look. Miles' style changed in 2010 following Quong Tart's break from the show. Upon returning to Home and Away, the actor had lost weight, grown a beard and cut his hair short. Producers were impressed with the changes and wrote them into the scripts. Miles is often seen consuming large amounts of food, which stems from his time spent living hungry on the streets. This was a character trait created by Quong Tart. Some viewers have written to Home and Away to complain about Miles' eating habits. Miles' storylines have often centred on his friendships and romantic relationships with other characters. He has become a surrogate father to several teenagers, including Jai Fernandez (Jordan Rodrigues) and Melody Jones (Celeste Dodwell). Miles and Kirsty Sutherland (Christie Hayes) had a long relationship together, during which they lost an unborn child. Kirsty eventually left town, ending their relationship. After sharing a long friendship, Miles and Leah Patterson-Baker (Ada Nicodemou) entered into a romantic relationship in 2011. Leah becomes pregnant and Miles proposes to her. Miles has earned a generally positive reception, while Quong Tart has been nominated for three Inside Soap Awards. ## Creation and casting The character of Miles was introduced to Home and Away in 2007, as Sally Fletcher's (Kate Ritchie) brother, whom she had always referred to as "Milco". For twenty years, viewers had been led to assume Milco was just Sally's imaginary friend. Channel Seven ran an on-air promotion campaign, which promised viewers "a 20-year-old mystery" would be solved. In the 2007 season finale, Miles mysteriously arrives in Summer Bay and writes "Milco" in the sand on the beach. Quong Tart was cast in the role of Miles. He previously starred in the Home and Away spin-off headLand as Will Monk. In 2010, Miles was briefly written out of the serial, while Quong Tart took a break from filming to rehearse for a play at the Sydney Opera House. In October 2011, Quong Tart announced his departure from Home and Away. Of his time in the show, Quong Tart told TV Week, "I couldn't have imagined how much fun I would have and the friends I would make on Home and Away. Playing Miles was a gift." Rebecca Davies from Digital Spy reported the actor had already filmed his final scenes, while TV Week said the way in which Miles leaves the Bay was being kept secret. Miles departed on 23 November 2011. ## Character development ### Characterisation and career > Once he returned to set up home in the Bay, the adult Miles soon developed his trademark style. The crumpled shirts and board shorts might not have been to everyone's taste, but his charm and quick wit more than made up for his sartorial shortcomings, earning him a string of admirers, from on-off squeeze Kirsty to bessie mate Leah, with whom he's recently struck up a relationship. Quong Tart told Channel 5 that he liked the way Miles looks at the world and revealed that he shared similarities with the character's personality. Miles is often shown consuming large amounts of food on-screen. Miles enjoys his food because of his time spent living hungry on the streets. This was a character choice made by Quong Tart. He thought it was important that viewers see his eating habits, staying true to "representing human beings." However, Quong Tart stated that it sometimes reached a "point where it might not be very pleasant to watch." Viewers had written letters to Quong Tart requesting that Miles should stop "pigging out on television." In 2011, Miles returns to Home and Away with a new look. Miles had lost weight, cut his hair short and grew a beard. Off-screen Quong Tart had such a busy schedule that he lost weight. When he revealed his new look to producers, they were so impressed they decided to change Miles' image, because it suited the storyline. Miles secures employment as a teacher at Summer Bay High. One of his students, Ruby Buckton (Rebecca Breeds), develops romantic feelings for him. Breeds said it was a "genuine teenage infatuation" and Ruby was drawn to Miles' maturity rather than his physical appearance. Quong Tart said Miles was "taken back" when he was faced with accusations of kissing Ruby. He manages to prove they are false. ### Relationship with Kirsty Sutherland One of Miles' first relationships is with Kirsty Sutherland (Christie Hayes), which develops from a friendship. Miles is left upset over his foster child Jai Fernandez (Jordan Rodrigues). His emotional state has an effect on Kirsty and she kisses him. Hayes told TV Week that as Kirsty's feelings "take over in the moment", Miles is left surprised because he had been harbouring feelings for her too. Hayes also said Miles did not want to scare Kirsty away and they agree to take their relationship slowly. Hayes later said that Miles and Kirsty's relationship worked so well because "they talk about things and they're mature about their relationship." Kirsty decides that she needs to raise money for her husband Kane Phillips' (Sam Atwell) trial. She secretly begins work as an escort behind Miles' back. Hayes' explained Kirsty was "terrified" that Miles would find out and hated lying to him, but "has no choice." When Miles discovers the truth about Kirsty's escorting, he feels "totally betrayed" and ends their relationship. However, when Kirsty nearly sleeps with a client, Miles comes to her aid. At this point Leah Patterson-Baker (Ada Nicodemou) tries to kiss Miles, as the two previously shared a connection. However, Miles defends Kirsty when he learns Leah had argued with Kirsty over her deceit. The state of their relationship remained troubled, though Hayes correctly predicted the couple would reunite. In 2009 Hayes quit the serial and her exit storyline played out the same year. It was initially left unclear what impact her departure would have on Miles'. Their relationship deteriorates after Kirsty miscarries their unborn baby. Kirsty is left distraught and feels she has to move with her life without Miles. However, Kirsty does not tell Miles she is leaving and leaves him a goodbye letter. Speaking of the scenes, Hayes said "I don't agree with what she did or how she did it but Kirsty in her warped, grieving mind thinks it's best for everybody." She felt that Kirsty's actions were "horrible and selfish." She also described her as "emotionally detached" and Miles would have tried to talk her out of leaving if he had been made aware of her departure. Viewers were not shown the full content of the goodbye letter. Hayes said it was good because she wrote a private goodbye letter to Quong Tart, and noted the personal element was best left between the two. After Miles chances of a family are again ruined, Miles loses control. He starts drinking and on one occasion he tries to kiss Leah. Producers decided to introduce a character named Rabbit (Mitzi Ruhlmann), who "brings a little fun back into Miles' life." Though Rabbit later turns out to be his dead daughter and a figment of Miles' imagination. ### Relationship with Leah Patterson-Baker In 2008, Miles and Leah develop feelings for one another. Nicodemou who plays Leah said her character becomes "freaked out" when she realises they share a connection. At this point in the series Leah was still grieving for her late husband Dan Baker (Tim Campbell). Leah is so ashamed of herself she "cuts Miles off". Nicodemou added that the characters "bonded straight away" because Miles understands Leah and has supported her when she needed help. However, Miles "cannot deny the attraction" which sends Leah further into denial. She decides she is not ready to move on, Nicodemou said this was to respect Dan's memory. Though, she concluded that Leah sees Miles as an "old sock you just feel comfortable with." In January 2011, Quong Tart revealed Miles was set to have a new love interest. The actor said he found his character's new romance intriguing and explained Miles is "more surprised than anyone that it happens." A few months later, the Daily Star reported Miles would confess his love to Leah, who is shocked by the declaration. Miles is left wondering whether he has ruined their friendship by revealing his feelings to her. An insider told the paper, "Miles and Leah have both been unlucky in love so if they could find happiness together it would be pretty special. Leah is shocked but once the confession starts to sink in she wonders whether they could work as a couple. She begins to consider making a go of it with him." Nicodemou explained that Leah and Miles have tried to get together in the past, but the timing has never been right for them. She later told RTÉ TEN that she thinks Miles and Leah are well suited and hoped they find happiness with each other. Miles and Leah discuss their situation and Leah decides to take the first step and kisses Miles to see if they have any chemistry. Nicodemou said once Leah realises she and Miles have chemistry, she decides to go for it and they begin dating. In August 2011, Leah discovers she is pregnant. She realises that she does not want a baby as she previously had a miscarriage, which made her decide not to have children again. Of the impact the storyline would have on Miles and Leah, Nicodemou said "It's a really interesting storyline for them. It makes everything serious because things have been quite light, so it's good to see that side of them. There are some rocky times ahead for them because there are differences of opinion." A week later it was announced Miles would propose to Leah in a bid to "solidify" their relationship. Miles confides in Alf Stewart (Ray Meagher) about his plans and Quong Tart said Alf is very excited and encourages Miles. Of Miles' decision to propose to Leah, Quong Tart said "They've dated for a while and they know each other so well, and I think it's just one of those things that makes sense." ### Other relationships Miles starts a relationship with Shandi Palmer (Samantha Tolj), TV Week described them as a "kooky" pairing. However their relationship was short-lived, lasting only a number of weeks. Quong Tart said "It came and went like every romance in his life." Miles "couldn't believe his luck" with Shandi because of her attractive appearance. They were compatible because she was "beachy and hippy" and like Miles enjoyed to talk about the meaning of life. Miles drunkenly sleeps with Roo Stewart (Georgie Parker), the next morning she reacts badly. A Home and Away spokesperson said Miles was one of the "nicest blokes in the Bay" and felt like a humiliated "idiot". In various storylines Miles has taken in teenagers without homes. Jai Fernandez (Jordan Rodrigues) is the first to be taken into Miles' care. Miles knew Jai from the Boxing Day tsunami in which they both lost their families. Rodrigues said that Jai is "angry at the world" because Miles "ditched" him in Phuket. Miles tries to help Jai because he realises that he is having a tough time at the refuge. Off-screen Quong Tart mentored Rodrigues to improve his acting skill. He later takes in Melody Jones (Celeste Dodwell), though she makes life hard for Miles by causing chaos at the school formal and running away to Melbourne. In the latter storyline Miles and Charlie Buckton (Esther Anderson) travel to Melbourne to search for Melody. The episodes marked the first time the cast had filmed in Melbourne. Location shoots took place at Queen Victoria Market, Docklands Studios Melbourne and St Kilda. Anderson told Inside Soap that "It's a nice self-contained little storyline" and described it as a treat for British and Irish viewers. She added that Melody ends up on the streets and Charlie and Miles fail to locate her straightaway. The situation leaves them feeling "vulnerable" and they kiss. Anderson opined the kiss was "a rebound thing" and they feel "awkward the following morning." Miles lets teenagers Nicole Franklin (Tessa James) and Romeo Smith (Luke Mitchell), and adult character Marilyn Chambers (Emily Symons) move in with him. Together they form a new character unit, Meagher who plays Alf praised the dynamic. He said as none of them have external relationships at the time, there was a "genuine caring for the well-being of the other people in the house." ## Storylines ### Backstory Miles and his twin Sally initially lived together with their alcoholic father Aaron (Timothy Walter) and mother Diana. Aaron used to beat Diana, so she left him and took Sally with her. When Miles was eight years old, Aaron read that Diana and her new husband Derek Wilson had been killed in a boating accident. Aaron and Miles went to find Sally, but after seeing Sally was better off with the Fletcher family, they left. In the serial Sally constantly insisted her imaginary friend Milco was real, it was actually Miles she was thinking about, but no one believed Sally and her bullying foster brother Brian "Dodge" Forbes (Kelly Dingwall) eventually stopped her believing in him. Aaron died of alcohol-related illness, so Miles became an English teacher. He married a woman called Louise and they had a daughter called Amber. They both died in the Boxing Day tsunami whilst on holiday in Phuket. He then went on a downward spiral and became a homeless drifter. ### 2007–11 Miles turns up in Summer Bay and decides to stick around after he thinks it is a familiar setting. He has nowhere to live and is starving. Irene Roberts (Lynne McGranger) becomes annoyed with him for stealing food out of the bins, but Roman Harris (Conrad Coleby) takes pity on him and feeds him. He sees Sally on the beach and writes Milco in the sand. They later become friends and she feels like she has a close connection. He reveals his family's death to be the reason why he became a drifter. He eventually reveals the truth to Sally, that he is Milco and her twin brother. After it sinks in she is delighted with this and they become close. Miles stays with her and one night forgets to lock the door. Johnny Cooper (Callan Mulvey) enters the house and stabs Sally, however she survives but he blames himself. He decides to get his life back on track and becomes an English teacher at the school. Aden Jefferies (Todd Lasance) initially gives him a hard time, but he is well liked after he and Ric Dalby (Mark Furze) arrange a leaving party for Sally, who has decided to move away. At the party Steven Matheson (Adam Willits) and Carly Morris (Sharyn Hodgson) are startled to meet the person they heard so much about whilst growing up. Miles becomes the new owner of the caravan park. He becomes good friends with Leah and falls in love with her. She feels it is to soon after husband Dan's death and does not feel the same, leaving him upset. Morag Bellingham (Cornelia Frances) then helps him track down Jai, a boy from Phuket whom he told he would help, but never did. He comes to live with Miles, their relationship is strained by Jai's reluctance to trust him, eventually they become close. Religious Christine Jones (Elizabeth Alexander) later starts a campaign to have Miles removed from his job when she does not agree with his choice of book used for teaching. Morag later helps rid of Christine and saves his career. He lets Melody Jones stay with him, but she rebels and causes trouble for him with her new-found bad attitude. He then has a brief relationship with Jazz Curtis (Rachel Gordon). He gives Kirsty a place to stay. They start a relationship and he falls in love with her, however he finds out she has been working as an escort to raise money for husband Kane Phillips' (Sam Atwell) trial and throws her out. Melody becomes more wild and runaway from home, he tracks her down with the help of Charlie, who he shares a kiss with. He lets Melody leave to live in New Zealand with her mother. Kirsty returns with Kane who attacks him and he has to admit they were never together. After Trey Palmer (Luke Bracey) makes advances on Kirsty and Miles supports her, they reconcile. Trey tries to attack Kirsty, but Miles pushes him over, Miles is then under investigation for assault, later Trey drops the charges. Whilst out fishing Miles falls overboard and is nearly eaten by a shark, he discovers Lou De Bono's (David Roberts) body in the process. He promises to look after Nicole after Roman is sent to prison. Miles then decides he wants to try for a baby with Kirsty, she agrees but he is angry when he sees her taking the pill. She says he thought he would leave her, he reassures her this is not the case. Kirsty starts university studying teaching. He resents her for spending time at university with her new friends, he suspects she is having affair. Upon confrontation she admits she is actually pregnant. She is unhappy about it, but agrees to keep the baby. He breaks his promise of keeping the pregnancy a secret, Kirsty starts to feel more at ease about the baby. Kirsty has a series of fits causing her to miscarry. Their relationship becomes strained and Kirsty's mother Shelley (Paula Forrest) convinces her to run away to the city with her. Miles is devastated she has left and becomes withdrawn from everyone. After VJ Patterson (Felix Dean) is bullied by Riley Radcliffe (Tani Edgecombe) he goes to see his father Ian (Ben Simpson) but he laughs it off. Miles is attacked and beaten and presumes it was Ian. He later finds out it was in fact Riley and his friends. He tries to drag Riley to the police station but he breaks his wrist. Miles is arrested for assault. Ian blackmails him saying he will drop the charges for money, the police find out Ian was responsible for the injuries. However the newspapers published an article on Miles branding him a thug. Miles destroys a classroom and Gina Austin (Sonia Todd) forces him to take leave. He starts drinking heavily again, makes a pass at Leah and sleeps on the beach. Miles begins having visions of a girl called Rabbit, who tells him about future events. She convinces him to do good deeds. Miles becomes good friends with Elijah Johnson (Jay Laga'aia) and he goes to Africa with him. On his return he is assaulted by Heath Braxton (Daniel Ewing). He then gets drunk and kisses Roo Stewart (Georgie Parker) and wakes up next to her in the morning. He later confesses his love to Leah and they start a relationship. Elijah is initially annoyed, but they repair their friendship. Leah learns she is pregnant, which delights Miles. Leah is initially hesitant about going ahead with the pregnancy, but she and Miles talk and she decides to keep the baby. Miles proposes to Leah, but she turns him down, saying they are not ready. She later asks him to move in with her and VJ. Leah suffers a miscarriage, which devastates Miles. The couple struggle with their grief and Miles moves out. He and Leah later break up. Miles learns Elijah is still in love with Leah. Miles tells Marilyn that Sally has got him a teaching job in Thailand and he leaves the Bay. ## Reception For his portrayal of Miles, Quong Tart was nominated for "Best Newcomer" at the 2008 Inside Soap Awards. The following year he received a nomination for "Best Actor". At the 2011 Inside Soap Awards he was nominated for "Best Daytime Star". The episode where Miles conquers his fear of water to save Jai Fernandez who feigns drowning earned Writer Sean Nash an Australian Writer's Guild award nomination for "Best Television Serial" in 2009. The episode featuring Miles finally letting go of his visions of Rabbit won the Australian Writers' Guild Award in the same category the following year and was presented to the episode's writer, Sam Meikle. The week ahead of the serial's airing, Mark Patrick of The Sun-Herald said Milco, "an imaginary friend of one of the brats" was his favorite character. Michael Idato writing for the Sydney Morning Herald said Milco being not being imaginary seemed "ludicrous". He said that Milco being revealed to be Miles, was Home and Away delivering a "plot twist equal to the genre's best." He opined that Miles' "timely" arrival softened the blow of Sally's departure. They said it was "a tender baton change that evokes memories of the iconic '80s soap Sons And Daughters" Idato later said Miles and Sally's story was an example of "strong legacy storylines" Home and Away creates. Ruth Deller of entertainment website Lowculture placed Miles at number nine on her best characters of February 2009 list. In July 2010, she placed Miles second on her list of best soap characters. She spoke about how "ridiculous storylines" turn out to be great onscreen and referred to Miles's visions of Rabbit, which she went on to praise. She said "Miles's grief, his visions of Rabbit and his torment at everyone telling him she wasn't real were devastating to watch, and this was a really interesting avenue to take one of the soap's best-loved characters down that could have spectacularly backfired, but instead, had people bawling their eyes out." Holy Soap have said that Miles's most memorable moment is "When he found student Trey trying to kiss Kirsty, Miles pushed him and found his job as a teacher in jeopardy". The website also named Miles as one their Summer Bay hunks. In 2010, the Daily Record said that "poor old Miles" had a so many problems that "he was probably happier when everybody thought he was just sister Sally's friend". After Miles became involved with Shandi, they stated that true love "never ran smoothly in Summer Bay" and that with Shandi; Miles got "a lot more than he first bargained for". Australian television website Throng, said Miles looked completely different after Quong Tart lost weight. They said he looks "a lot older, thinner, has a new hair style and is sporting a dark beard!" When he left the series, Sarah Ellis of Inside Soap said that Home and Away "won't be the same without Miles' shaggy barnet". Laura Morgan of All About Soap said that she and her colleagues were "in mourning" over Miles' exit. She added that they "sorely missed" him.

Al-Mansur Abu Bakr

Al-Malik al-Mansur Sayf ad-Din Abu Bakr (Arabic: الملك المنصور سيف الدين أبو بكر), better known as al-Mansur Abu Bakr (Arabic: المنصور أبو بكر), (ca. 1321 – November 1341) was the Bahri Mamluk sultan in 1341. From an early age, Abu Bakr received military training in the desert town of al-Karak. His father, Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1310–41), groomed him as a potential successor to the throne and made him an emir in 1335. He was consistently promoted in the following years, becoming the na'ib (governor) of al-Karak in 1339. In June 1341, he became sultan, the first of several sons of an-Nasir Muhammad to accede the throne. However, his reign was short-lived; in August, Abu Bakr was deposed and arrested by his father's senior emir, Qawsun. Abu Bakr was imprisoned in the Upper Egyptian city of Qus, along with several of his brothers, and executed on Qawsun's orders two months later. He was formally succeeded by his younger half-brother, al-Ashraf Kujuk, but Qawsun was left as the strongman of the sultanate. ## Early life and career Abu Bakr was born around 1321 to his sultan father an-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1310–1341) and his concubine mother, Narjis. Narjis also gave birth to Abu Bakr's younger full brothers Ramadan (died 1343) and Yusuf (died 1346). Information about Abu Bakr's early childhood is unavailable in the Mamluk sources. The first mention of Abu Bakr came in 1332. At that time, Abu Bakr had been sent to the desert fortress of al-Karak to join his half-brothers Ahmad and Ibrahim in their military training. Also during that year, Abu Bakr left al-Karak to accompany his father and half-brothers Anuk and Ahmad at al-Aqaba and from there to Mecca to perform the Hajj pilgrimage. However, an-Nasir Muhammad had them return to al-Karak before the trek to Mecca. In 1335, Abu Bakr was recalled to Cairo and made an emir by his father. The event was marked by a royal procession, led by Emir Qawsun, in which Abu Bakr was dressed in the attire of an emir. At around the same time, an-Nasir Muhammad arranged Abu Bakr's marriage to a daughter of Emir Tuquzdamur al-Hamawi, who married Narjis sometime earlier. Later, during his 59-day reign as sultan, Abu Bakr also married two slave girls, spending 100,000 gold dinars for each of their bridal veils. In 1337/38, Abu Bakr was promoted to an amir arba'in (emir of forty [mounted mamluks]). Abu Bakr was sent back to al-Karak in 1339 to replace Ahmad as na'ib of the province. By then, Ahmad had been dropped by an-Nasir Muhammad as a potential successor. Anuk remained the sultan's favored son to replace him, but with Ahmad deemed unfit to rule, Abu Bakr became the runner-up. Sometime that year, Abu Bakr paid a visit to his father with a gift of 200,000 silver dirhams that he apparently extorted from the inhabitants of al-Karak. He later returned to al-Karak where he remained until 17 July 1340. At that point, Anuk had been dropped as a potential successor by the sultan, who invited Abu Bakr back to Cairo. There, an-Nasir Muhammad had his emirs swear an oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr then set off for al-Karak until he was recalled to Cairo once more in 1341, arriving on 24 January. When he returned, he brought his father a sum of 100,000 dirhams, while an-Nasir Muhammad issued another order recalling all of Abu Bakr's mamluks and soldiers in al-Karak to Cairo. Abu Bakr remained in Cairo effectively to wait for his ailing father to die. In the months prior to an-Nasir Muhammad's death, Abu Bakr was given a large iqta (fief), his interests were put under the care of Emir Bashtak and he was transferred a large number of wafidiyya (immigrant, typically Mongol, soldiers) from Aleppo and other troops. On 4 June 1341, while on his deathbed, an-Nasir Muhammad had all of his emirs recognize the transfer of the sultanate to Abu Bakr in the event of his death. Moreover, he crowned Abu Bakr as "al-Malik al-Mansur", the title of the latter's grandfather, Sultan Qalawun (r. 1277–90), and gave him Qalawun's sword. The throne was peacefully passed to Abu Bakr when an-Nasir Muhammad died on 7 June. ## Reign Although Abu Bakr was made sultan, the reins of power were held by an-Nasir Muhammad's senior emirs, chief among whom were his son-in-law Qawsun and Bashtak. According to historian Amalia Levanoni, Abu Bakr sought to restore the traditional concepts of mamluk-master relations and the modes of hierarchical advancement set by his grandfather Qalawun and abrogate the growing independence of the emirs that developed under his father. However, the post-Qalawun mamluk norms of conduct proved too resilient for Abu Bakr. In the view of the emirs and the low and middle-ranking mamluks, Abu Bakr was to solely play the role of a figurehead and not disturb the system created by his father. Thus, Abu Bakr's attempts to rule in his own right were consistently stymied by the emirs. Of the latter, the most prominent was Qawsun, who sought to become the mudabbir ad-dawla (organizer of the state), in effect the strongman of the sultanate. After neutralizing Bashtak, his principal rival, Qawsun moved against Abu Bakr; Qawsun had feared that Abu Bakr would attempt to imprison him. On 5 August 1341, Qawsun had Abu Bakr arrested on concocted charges of frivolity. Abu Bakr and six of his brothers were subsequently sent to prison in Qus in Upper Egypt. In November 1341, Abu Bakr was executed by the governor of Qus on orders from Qawsun. After his death, Qawsun installed Abu Bakr's infant half-brother, Kujuk, as sultan and became the Kujuk's regent. Meanwhile, dissent mounted against Qawsun in Syria and Cairo and he was ousted in a revolt, along with Kujuk. The new sultan, Abu Bakr's half-brother Ahmad, later had Qawsun and the governor of Qus (who apologized for killing Abu Bakr) executed in early 1342.

5 Beekman Street

Building in Manhattan, New York

5 Beekman Street, also known as the Beekman Hotel and Residences, is a building in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is composed of the interconnected 10-story, 150-foot-tall (46 m) Temple Court Building and Annex (also known as Temple Court) and a 51-story, 687-foot-tall (209 m) condominium tower called the Beekman Residences, which contains 68 residential units. The 287-unit The Beekman, a Thompson Hotel is split between all three structures. The original section of the Temple Court Building was designed by the firm of Benjamin Silliman Jr. and James M. Farnsworth in the Queen Anne, neo-Grec, and Renaissance Revival styles. It contains a granite base of two stories, as well as a facade of red brick above, ornamented with tan stone and terracotta. The Temple Court Annex was designed by Farnsworth alone in the Romanesque Revival style, and contains a limestone facade. An interior atrium contains a skylight, and the facade contains two pyramidal towers at its corners. The Beekman Residences, designed by Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel Architects, rises above the original building and annex, with pyramidal towers at its pinnacle. 5 Beekman Street was erected as the Temple Court Building between 1881 and 1883, while an annex was constructed between 1889 and 1890. The structure, intended as offices for lawyers, was commissioned and originally owned by Eugene Kelly, and was sold to the Shulsky family in 1945. The Temple Court Building and Annex were made a New York City designated landmark in 1997, and are also contributing properties to the Fulton–Nassau Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district created in 2005. The building was abandoned in 2001 and proposed for redevelopment, during which it was sold multiple times and used for film shoots. Construction on the Beekman Residences tower started in 2014 and was completed in 2016; the original building was extensively renovated as well and reopened in 2016. ## Site 5 Beekman Street is in the Financial District of Manhattan, just east of New York City Hall, City Hall Park, and the Civic Center. It is bounded on the east by Nassau Street, on the north by Beekman Street, and on the west by Theatre Alley. The Morse Building and 150 Nassau Street are diagonally across the intersection of Nassau and Beekman streets, while the Potter Building and 41 Park Row are directly across Beekman Street. The Park Row Building is directly to the southwest, across Theatre Alley, while the Bennett Building is on the block to the south. The Temple Court Building, at 119–133 Nassau Street, has a frontage of 150 feet (46 m) long on Nassau Street and Theatre Alley, and 100 feet (30 m) deep on Beekman Street. The Beekman Residences at 115–117 Nassau Street occupy a length of 50 feet (15 m) along Nassau Street and Theater Alley. In total, 5 Beekman Street is 200 feet (61 m) long by 100 feet (30 m) deep. The alternate addresses for the original building and annex include 119–133 Nassau Street, 3–9 Beekman Street, and 10 Theater Alley. ## Architecture 5 Beekman Street is composed of two sections. The Temple Court Building is ten stories tall, with nine full stories. Two pyramidal towers on the northwest and northeast corners, as well as an annex on the southern side, contain a tenth floor. The Temple Court Building is 150 feet (46 m) tall when measured to the peaks of its pyramidal roofs, and 133 feet (41 m) tall when measured to the roof of the ninth story. Most of the 287 rooms in the Beekman Hotel are located in the Temple Court Building. The Temple Court Building and Annex is a New York City designated landmark. Immediately south of the Temple Court Building and Annex is the Beekman Residences, a 51-story, 687-foot-tall (209 m) condominium tower with its primary address at 115–117 Nassau Street. The Beekman Residences tower contains the remainder of the hotel and 68 residences. ### Temple Court Building and Annex The original portion of the Temple Court Building is on the northern section of the lot. It is a red-brick and terracotta building in the Queen Anne, neo-Grec, and Renaissance Revival styles, and was originally used as an office building. The structure was designed by the firm of Benjamin Silliman, Jr. and James M. Farnsworth, which worked together until 1882. The adjoining annex at 119–121 Nassau Street to the south was designed by James M. Farnsworth, who by that time had established his own practice separate from his partnership with Silliman. The annex has a limestone facade in a Romanesque Revival style. The Temple Court Building and Annex contains 165,000 square feet (15,300 m²) of space. It was purportedly "modeled after a building of the same name in London" that was part of the Inns of Court. Before its 2010s renovation, the Temple Court Building was one of the earliest tall fireproof buildings that survived largely in its original condition. It was also one of the city's earlier buildings to utilize brick and terracotta cladding, and one of the few from the late 19th century to be built around an atrium with a skylight. #### Form and facade The original building has an atrium rising through all nine stories and crowned by a large pyramidal skylight. Two pavilions extend south to enclose another light well on the south side of the original building. The annex is C-shaped, with a light well on its northern side connecting to the original structure's light well. The original Temple Court Building's articulation consists of three horizontal sections, with granite cladding at its base and brick and terracotta on the other stories. The original building has ten vertical bays on Nassau Street and nine on Beekman Street; the outer three bays on each side project slightly and are designed as corner "towers". The two-story base contains cornices above both stories, as well as a main entrance facing Beekman Street and storefronts on the Beekman and Nassau Street sides. The four-story midsection is clad with brick, with terracotta spandrels between each story on the Beekman and Nassau Street sides, as well as band courses and other decorative elements. The four-story upper section contains a mansard roof with iron dormer windows. The Theatre Alley side of the midsection and upper section is faced with plain brick. The northwestern and northeastern corner "towers" are topped by pyramidal slate roofs, both of which are surrounded by smaller ornamental pinnacles. The pyramidal roofs were intended to make the building appear shorter than it actually was. There is also a glass pyramidal skylight over the center atrium and an asphalt roof with decorative iron fence over the remainder of the building. The annex has facades onto Nassau Street and Theatre Alley. The facade on Nassau Street is made of limestone, with cornices above the second, sixth, and ninth floors. It is two bays wide. An arched entrance on this side provided entry into the annex until 1963, when it was turned into a storefront entrance. The facade on Theatre Alley is composed of brick with rectangular windows, as well as a now-filled entrance. #### Features The atrium at the center of the building is an opening measuring 212 square feet (19.7 m²). It is accessed through the main entrance on Beekman Street. The balconies around the atrium have tile-mosaic floors and iron railings, and are held up by cast-iron brackets shaped like dragons. Other decorative elements included metal grilles with leaf patterns. The atrium was closed off from the mid-20th century to the early 2000s, and a 2010s renovation added a smoke curtain to comply with fire codes. Around the atrium are rooms that were originally used as offices; there were 212 suites in total. These rooms contained tall ceilings as well as fireplaces. A shaft descended through nine floors, with trapdoors on each floor to allow easier transport of safes from the basement. Three elevators were installed in the building, south of the atrium. An iron staircase wrapped around the center elevator shaft. The annex contained an additional two elevators. In the basement, iron support beams descend to the Temple Court Building's foundation. The building also had a large vault with two series of locks that required two people to operate. A night watchman was stationed in the basement, with directions to "send electric signals to the office of the burglar Police every half-hour." The structure as a whole was considered "solidly fireproof": it incorporated iron floor beams, as well as brick exterior walls whose thicknesses ranged from 32 inches (810 mm) at the upper floors to 52 inches (1,300 mm) in the foundation. Iron girders and terracotta blocks were also used to fireproof the annex. However, the annex had interior pine walls, which contributed to damage in the annex during an 1893 fire. ### Beekman Residences South of the Temple Court Building and Annex is the Beekman Residences tower, completed in 2016 to a design by Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel Architects. The tower contains 340,000 square feet (32,000 m²) of space, situated on a 5,000-square-foot (460 m²) lot. Its height was possible because of the transfer of unused air rights from the Temple Court Building. There are two 50-foot (15 m) pyramidal peaks at the top of the tower, which were inspired by the pyramidal roofs of the Temple Court Building. The facade of the Beekman Residences tower is made of concrete, glass, and metal. It consists of full-height windows set between piers made of concrete slabs. There are three double-height sections of the facade that have patterned engravings, modeled after the Temple Court Building's atrium, in place of windows. The Beekman Residences contains 68 condominiums above the 17th floor, some 172 feet (52 m) above the ground. These units include 20 one-bedroom units, 39 two-bedroom units, 8 three-bedroom units, and two penthouses at the top two floors. Most of the other floors have two residences on each floor. The residences contain windows on two sides of the tower, with the living room typically at the corner, as well as 10-foot-tall (3.0 m) ceilings and oak floors. Mechanical spaces were placed in the Beekman Residences tower, within the windowless sections, because of insufficient space in the Temple Court Building. ### Hotel and restaurants The 287-unit Beekman Hotel is spread out between the Temple Court Building and the Beekman Residences tower. Two of the units are duplex suites located underneath the roofs of the Temple Court Building. While most of the units are located in the Temple Court Building, there are 75 additional suites in the lowest floors of the Beekman Residences tower. The Temple Court Building's landmark status precluded any significant changes to that portion of 5 Beekman Street without the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's approval. On the 11th floor, there is a terrace on the Temple Court Building's roof, as well as private dining and media rooms. 5 Beekman Street contains two restaurants, operated by Daniel Boulud and Tom Colicchio. The first restaurant was originally known as the Augustine and operated by Keith McNally; it closed permanently in July 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Colicchio's restaurant, Temple Court, also opened in October 2016 and was originally named after the Fowler & Wells Company, a publishing firm that previously operated at the site of the Temple Court Building. The name was changed in August 2017 after a controversy emerged over the publishing company's racial views. Boulud leased the Augustine's old space in October 2021, and his bistro Le Gratin opened in May 2022. ## History ### Context The site of 5 Beekman Street was historically part of New York City's first theater district. One theater on the site, built in 1761, hosted the first presentation of the tragedy Hamlet in the United States. The site faced the back door of the Park Theatre to the west. The Fowler & Wells publishing company also occupied a building on the site. In 1830, the New York Mercantile Library built Clinton Hall on the site, occupying it until 1854; Clinton Hall was also occupied by the National Academy of Design. Between 1857 and 1868, the corner of Theatre Alley and Beekman Street contained the National Park Bank. During the late 19th century, the surrounding area had grown into the city's "Newspaper Row". Several newspaper headquarters had been built on the adjacent Park Row, including the New York Times Building, the Potter Building, the Park Row Building, and the New York World Building. Meanwhile, printing was centered around Beekman Street. ### Construction By early 1881, wealthy entrepreneur Eugene Kelly had paid \$250,000 for two lots at Nassau and Beekman streets. The New York Times reported that January that Kelly had hired Silliman and Farnsworth to construct a structure on the property. The firm filed plans with the New York City Department of Buildings in April 1881 for a 10-story office structure, which would become the original building. The structure would be called the "Kelly Building", and would have a facade of granite, brick, and terracotta. Richard Deeves was the contractor for the structure, and work began in May 1881, with an expected completion date of May 1882. The structure was to be one of the first office buildings to be erected in Lower Manhattan after the Panic of 1873, and the Real Estate Record and Guide predicted that Kelly would earn an annual profit of 20% of the building cost. Various events delayed the completion of Kelly's building. A bricklayers' strike took place in 1881, holding up construction. A draft of wind from the building was blamed for a January 1882 fire that destroyed the former New York World Building across Beekman Street, on the site of the Potter Building. In March 1882, the Kelly Building was renamed the Temple Court Building, or "Temple Court" for short. The British publication The Building News claimed that the building was "called Temple Court, because [it was] designed for lawyers' offices", although this is not confirmed by other sources. The Temple Court Building was completed in May 1883. It had cost \$750,000 to construct, and the land under it was estimated as being worth \$407,500. The Temple Court Building was quickly occupied by tenants, and Kelly bought the lots at 119–121 Nassau Street in 1886. At the time, these lots were occupied by a pair of six-story iron-front buildings. Farnsworth filed plans for a 10-story annex in January 1889, which would have a facade of stone, granite, and brick, with a roof of rock asphalt. Farnsworth had separated from his partnership with Silliman several years prior, and was working alone in the design of the annex. Farnsworth subsequently changed the plans for the annex so that it would have a limestone facade. The expansion was expected to cost \$300,000 and would involve John Keleber as the mason, Post & McCord as the iron supplier, William Brennan as the stone-worker, and E. F. Haight as the carpenter. Foundation work commenced in June 1889 and the annex was nearly topped out by September. Work was delayed during March 1890 because of a three-week strike that occurred when unionized masonry workers objected to the presence of non-union workers. The annex was completed by May 1890. ### Office building #### Kelly ownership 5 Beekman Street's spacious facilities were intended to attract a clientele of lawyers. The Real Estate Record and Guide stated in 1882 that the Tribune, Times, Morse, and Temple Court buildings were close to the courts of the Civic Center, making these buildings ideal for lawyers. According to The New York Times, for the first half century of the building's existence, it was "one of the finest office buildings in the city" for several years, with its "homelike" facilities being preferred by lawyers. Other firms also took space at the Temple Court Building, including labor unions, advertisers, insurance firms, labor unions, and detectives. One long-term tenant was mapmaker E. Belcher Hyde Company, which occupied the building from 1895 to 1939. Another was the Tobacco Merchants' Association of the United States, formed in 1915 to end a trade war between different parties in the tobacco industry, which collectively participated in \$700 million of trade every year. Upon Silliman's 1901 death, American Architect and Building News called the building "popular and profitable". On April 2, 1893, between 6:30 and 7:30 am, a fire started in room 725 of the annex, a typist's office. The fire was likely lit by an electric wire crossing an electric light, and was then spread through the interior pine walls and the openings facing the light court. There were no deaths: the annex's only occupants, a resident janitor and his wife who lived on the annex's tenth floor, were able to escape. However, damage to the top four floors of the annex was severe, and 53 rooms were greatly damaged. The structure of the building and annex was not damaged. The construction industry scrutinized the fire, as it had been one of the largest fires in a "fireproof" building to date. When Kelly died in 1895, the Temple Court Building passed to his executors, which included three of his sons and two other individuals. His will specified that the Temple Court Building and its annex "shall not be sold until, in the opinion of the executors, it would be detrimental to hold them longer". The original building and its annex were then considered to be on separate lots. In 1907, the properties were transferred to the Temple Court Company, headed by Kelly's children. The company intended to build a new skyscraper called the Kelly Building in "about four or five years", replacing the Temple Court Building. The company acquired the adjacent property at 115–117 Nassau Street in 1913. The building underwent "extensive alterations" two years later: the storefronts were combined and the granite piers were replaced by structural steel. In subsequent years, several tenants moved to the Temple Court Building, including the State, County and Municipal Workers of America in 1938, as well as map publishers E. Belcher Hyde in 1940. #### Changes of ownership The property's mortgage was held by the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, which took over the building in 1942 after foreclosing upon the mortgage. The bank then sold the building to the Wakefield Realty Corporation in 1945. Wakefield Realty sold the Temple Court Building to the Region Holding Corporation, held by the Shulsky family, the next year. The family transferred the building to another one of its firms, Satmar Realty, in 1953. Sometime in the mid-20th century, walls were erected on each floor to enclose the central court for fire-safety reasons, hiding the atrium, railings, and skylight from public view. A renovation during the 1950s concealed the building's original decorative elements. The main entrance was also modified between 1949 and 1950, and the doorway to the annex was turned into a storefront in 1963. The lots of the original building and annex were combined by 1962. According to a news article published in 1942, the lawyers had moved out because the neighborhood was in decline. During the mid-20th century, many labor organizations took up space at 5 Beekman Street. The tenants included a broker for marine insurance, as well as the War Resisters League and the Citizens Union. 5 Beekman Street was renovated again in the early 1990s by John L. Petrarca, and many of the original decorative elements were restored. By the end of that decade, Rena M. Shulsky was planning to restore the Temple Court Building's atrium, and she was actively looking for a partner to restore 5 Beekman Street and erect a tower on an adjacent plot. The Temple Court Building and its annex was designated a New York City landmark on February 10, 1998. The building's final tenant was architect Joseph Pell Lombardi, who moved out in 2001, leaving the entire structure vacant. The Shulsky family sold the property in 2003 to Rubin Schron. While the building remained unoccupied, the walls were removed between 2005 and 2008, revealing the skylight and the atrium with its elaborate wrought-iron railings. On September 7, 2005, the Temple Court Building and its annex was designated as a contributing property to the Fulton–Nassau Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district. ### Redevelopment In 2008, Joseph Chetrit and Charles Dayan purchased 5 Beekman Street from Schron for \$61 million, with plans to convert it into a 200-room hotel. Hillel Spinner, representing Dayan's firm Bonjour Capital, managed the building after 2008. With the financial crisis of 2007–2008, legal disputes formed between Chetrit and Dayan. Chetrit sued Dayan for \$50 million, alleging that the latter had promised to pay off a construction loan that had gone into default, then refused to pay it. Chetrit eventually won a judgement of \$2.45 million. The settlement also mandated that a third party would have to be responsible for redeveloping the Temple Court Building. While the legal disputes and sales were ongoing, the Temple Court Building suddenly became popular among urban explorers as well as photographers. In May 2010, fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar hosted a photo shoot at the building. This was followed in July by a viral post on the blog Scouting NY, which attracted great interest in the building. The interior was used a backdrop for photography, including shoots of the supermodel Iman and actors from the drama Rubicon. Other events included fashion shows and parties; film shoots for crime TV series such as White Collar, Person of Interest, Law & Order, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; and a music video featuring Kanye West. At least one wedding proposal took place there: a finance worker who took his girlfriend, a lawyer, to the building in late 2010 under the pretense of touring the building. These shoots brought \$1 million in revenue. Allen Gross of GFI Capital Resources attempted to purchase the Temple Court Building in 2011. That October, André Balazs bought the building. In January 2012, Balazs placed the building for sale after having invested \$5 million; two months later, it was purchased by GFI Capital Resources for \$64 million. GFI also bought 115–117 Nassau Street from the Shulskys for \$22 million. As part of the sale, the Temple Court Building would be converted into a hotel under the Thompson Hotels brand. Shoots and events had started to wind down by late 2012; the last two events to take place in the building were H&M's fashion show in October 2012 and Proenza Schouler's fashion show in September 2013. Work began in January 2014 on the Beekman Residences tower, designed by Gerner Kronick + Valcarel. The tower, along with the Temple Court Building and its annex, was to become part of a single complex called the Beekman Hotel and Residences. The Temple Court Building also received a renovation, as Gerner Kronick + Valcarel replaced the skylight and refurbished its atrium with its original tiles and moldings. Randy Gerner, an architect with the firm, also raised doorway heights to account for the heights of modern people, which had increased on average since the Temple Court Building was erected. Colicchio and McNally were hired to run restaurants at 5 Beekman Street in September 2014, and condominium sales commenced the next month. The tower was largely completed by mid-2015. In August 2016, the Temple Court Building reopened as part of the Beekman Hotel, the remainder of which was located in the new residential tower. The hotel's two restaurants opened two months later. By October 2017, all except nine of the condominiums had been sold. The penthouse was sold in August 2020 for \$12.5 million, becoming the final "sponsor unit" in the building to be purchased. The Beekman Hotel was refinanced in early 2022 for \$195 million. ## Reception Early architectural reviews of the Temple Court Building were mixed. One review of the building likened the two pyramidal roofs to "donkey's ears" and described it as "architecturally nondescript". Conversely, critic Montgomery Schuyler praised the building before its completion as an "animation in the sky-line", while Moses King wrote in A Handbook For New York City that Temple Court was "a fine office structure". A writer for one of the Temple Court Building's tenants, The Manhattan literary magazine, praised it as "stalwart and sumptuous". The periodical New York 1895 Illustrated called the Temple Court Building "the pioneer among the great office buildings" because of its shape and height. It was soon surpassed by other structures such as the Potter Building in height. Even so, Temple Court was a forerunner to the twin-towered apartment buildings on Central Park West that were erected in the 1930s, as well as the large office buildings that would later be built in the Financial District. Architectural historian Robert A. M. Stern, in his 1999 book New York 1880, said the Temple Court's twin peaks "gave it some of the presence of a true skyscraper". After the Temple Court Building was abandoned in 2001, it was referred to as "that abandoned building". A writer for the website 6sqft described the abandoned atrium as being in an "eerily beautiful derelict state", and another critic for the website The Travel said that the atrium was "one of the only buildings in the country that looked just as stunning abandoned as it does as a high-end hotel". The magazine Building Design+Construction described the hotel as "an instant hit". Reviews for the tower were more negative. A critic for the website New York Yimby called the tower's "misproportioned parapets" "an affront to New Yorkers and the skyline." Another critic for Curbed said, "Unless the rendering is just plain bad, it seems [the tower's parapets] can be chalked up to a contrived effort at cohesion." ## See also - List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan below 14th Street - List of tallest buildings in New York City

Queen Mary 2

British 21st-century transatlantic ocean liner

RMS Queen Mary 2 (also referred to as the QM2) is a British transatlantic ocean liner. She has served as the flagship of Cunard Line since succeeding Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2004. As of 2023, Queen Mary 2 is the only ocean liner in service. The ship was officially named Queen Mary 2 by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 after the first of 1936. Queen Mary had in turn been named after Mary of Teck, consort of King George V. With the retirement of Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2008, Queen Mary 2 is the only transatlantic ocean liner in regular service between Southampton, England, and New York City, United States. The ship is also used for cruising, including an annual world cruise. She was designed by a team of British naval architects led by Stephen Payne, and was constructed in France by Chantiers de l'Atlantique. At the time of her construction, Queen Mary 2 was the longest, at 1,131.99 ft (345.03 m), and largest, with a gross tonnage of , passenger ship ever built. She no longer holds these records after the construction of Royal Caribbean International's (a cruise ship) in April 2006, but remains the largest ocean liner ever built. Queen Mary 2 was intended for regular scheduled crossings of the Atlantic Ocean; the final construction cost was approximately \$300,000 per berth. The cost was increased by the high quality of materials; having been designed as an ocean liner, 40% more steel was required than for a standard cruise ship. Queen Mary 2 has a maximum speed of just over 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) and a cruising speed of 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph), which is faster than a contemporary cruise ship. Instead of the common diesel-electric configuration, Queen Mary 2 uses integrated electric propulsion to achieve her top speed. Diesel engines, augmented by gas turbines, are used to generate electricity for electric motors for propulsion and for on-board use. Queen Mary 2's facilities include fifteen restaurants and bars, five swimming pools, a casino, a ballroom, a theatre, and the first planetarium at sea. ## Characteristics Queen Mary 2 is the flagship of Cunard Line. She was constructed to replace the ageing Queen Elizabeth 2, which was the Cunard flagship from 1969 to 2004 and the last major ocean liner built before Queen Mary 2. Queen Mary 2 had the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) prefix conferred on her by the Royal Mail when she entered service in 2004, as a gesture to Cunard's history. Queen Mary 2 is not a steamship like many of her predecessors, but is powered primarily by four diesel engines, with two additional gas turbines providing extra power when required; this integrated electric propulsion configuration is used to produce the power to drive her four electric propulsion pods as well as the ship's hotel services. The spaces for these prime movers are also split, and controls are also backed up, with the intention of preventing a single failure from disabling the ship. Like her predecessor Queen Elizabeth 2 she is built for crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and is also regularly used for cruising. In the winter season she cruises from New York to the Caribbean. Queen Mary 2s 30-knot (56 km/h; 35 mph) open ocean speed sets the ship apart from cruise ships, such as , which has a service speed of 22.6 knots (41.9 km/h; 26.0 mph); Queen Mary 2's normal service speed is 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph). While the hull of a cruise ship will typically have a block coefficient of 0.73 (1.0 would represent a rectangular block) Queen Mary 2 is more fine-lined, with a block coefficient of 0.61. ## Design and construction Cunard completed a design for a new class of , 2,000 passenger liners on 8 June 1998, but revised them upon comparing those specifications with Carnival Cruise Line's Destiny-class cruise ships and Royal Caribbean International's Voyager class. In December 1998, Cunard released details of Project Queen Mary, the project to develop a liner that would complement Queen Elizabeth 2. Harland and Wolff of Northern Ireland, Aker Kværner of Norway, Fincantieri of Italy, Meyer Werft of Germany, and Chantiers de l'Atlantique of France were invited to bid on the project. The contract was finally signed with Chantiers de l'Atlantique, a subsidiary of Alstom, on 6 November 2000. This was the same yard that built Cunard's former rivals, the SS Normandie and SS France of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. The QM2's keel was laid down on 4 July 2002, in the construction dock at Saint-Nazaire, France, with the hull number G32. Approximately 3,000 craftsmen spent around eight million working hours on the ship, and around 20,000 people were directly or indirectly involved in her design, construction, and fitting out. In total, 300,000 pieces of steel were assembled into 94 "blocks" off the dry dock, which were then positioned and welded together to complete the hull and superstructure. After floating out on 21 March 2003, the Queen Mary 2 was fitted out in the large fitting out basin ("Bassin C"), the first ship to use this huge dry dock since the shipyard built large tankers in the 1970s, such as . Her sea trials were conducted during 25–29 September and 7–11 November 2003, between Saint-Nazaire and the offshore islands of Île d'Yeu and Belle-Île. ### 2003 dry dock accident The final stages of construction were marred by a fatal accident on 15 November 2003, when a gangway collapsed under a group of shipyard workers and their relatives who had been invited to visit the vessel. In total, 16 people were killed and another 32 people injured after a 15-metre (49 ft) fall into the drydock.[^1] Construction was completed on schedule. On 22 December 2003, Queen Mary 2 left Saint-Nazaire and arrived in Southampton, England, on 26 December 2003. On 8 January 2004, the liner was officially named by Queen Elizabeth II. ### Exterior Queen Mary 2s principal naval architect was Carnival's in-house designer, Stephen Payne. He intended many aspects of the ship's design to resemble notable aspects of former ocean liners, such as Queen Elizabeth 2 and the ship's predecessor Queen Mary. These include the three thick black lines known as "hands" that wrap around either edge of the ship's bridge screen, and at the stern end of the superstructure, which are to recall the appearance of the crossovers of the forward decks on the first Queen Mary. Queen Mary 2 has 14,164 square metres (152,460 sq ft) of exterior deck space, with wind screens to shield passengers in rough seas. The ship was originally constructed with five swimming pools. However, the shallow "Splash Pool" on Deck 13 was removed during the ship's 2016 refurbishment to make room for additional staterooms. Two of her remaining four swimming pools are outdoors. There are indoor pools on Deck 7, in the Canyon Ranch Spa Club, and on Deck 12. The Pavilion Pool on Deck 12 is covered with a retractable magrodome. In common with liners such as , there is a continuous wrap-around promenade deck (Deck 7). This passes behind the bridge screen and allows passengers to circumnavigate the deck while protected from the winds; one circuit is 620 m (2,030 ft) long. The flanking promenades are created by the need to step the superstructure to allow space for lifeboats. By SOLAS standards, these should have been lower on the hull (15 m (49 ft) above the waterline), but for the sake of appearance as well as to avoid the danger of large waves damaging the boats, Payne convinced SOLAS officials to exempt Queen Mary 2 from this requirement, and the boats are 25 m (82 ft) above the waterline. Payne's original intention was for a stern profile with a spoon shape, similar to most previous liners, but the mounting of the propeller pods required a flat transom. The compromise was a Costanzi stern – a combination of the two, which provides the transom required for azimuthal pod propulsors and has better seaholding characteristics in a following swell. In common with many modern ships, Queen Mary 2 has a bulbous bow to reduce drag and thereby increase speed, range, and fuel efficiency. While of a design similar to that of Queen Elizabeth 2, Queen Mary 2's funnel has a slightly different shape, because a taller funnel would have made it impossible for the ship to pass under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City at high tide. The final design permits a minimum of 13 feet (4.0 m) of clearance under the bridge. As Queen Mary 2 is too large to dock in many ports, passengers are often ferried to and from the ship in tenders, which can also be used as lifeboats. These are stored at sea in davits alongside the lifeboats. To transport passengers ashore the tenders pull up to one of four loading stations, each of which has a large hull door that opens hydraulically to form a boarding platform, complete with railings and decking. Queen Mary 2 is a post-Panamax ship, too wide to use the Panama Canal before its expansion in 2016. As a result, she had to circumnavigate South America to transit between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The decision not to constrain her width to transit the Panama Canal was taken as Queen Elizabeth 2 only transited once a year, during the world cruise. Cunard decided to pass up the convenience of the occasional passage in favour of a greater passenger capacity. ### Interior As is the case with many modern passenger ships, many of the major public rooms on board Queen Mary 2 are on the lowest public decks of the ship, with the passenger cabins stacked above. This is the opposite of the traditional practice on ocean liners, but the design allowed for larger rooms to be contained within the stronger hull, as well as for more passenger cabins to have private balconies higher up on the ship, where they are less affected by large waves. Payne attempted to create a central axis to the two main public room decks (similar in fashion to the Normandie), but a full vista is broken by various public rooms that span the full beam of the ship. The dining rooms were placed further aft, though not directly at the stern, where the fore-and-aft pitching of the ship is most noticeable, and might cause discomfort to dining passengers. Deck 2, the lowest passenger deck, contains the Illuminations theatre, cinema and planetarium (the first at sea); Royal Court Theatre; Grand Lobby; "Empire Casino"; "Golden Lion Pub"; and the lower level of the "Britannia Restaurant". Deck 3 holds the upper levels of "Illuminations", the "Royal Court theatre" and the "Britannia Restaurant", as well as a small shopping arcade, "Veuve Cliquot champagne bar", the "Chart Room", "Sir Samuel's" wine bar, the "Queen's Room", and the "G32" Nightclub. The other main public deck is Deck 7, on which are the "Canyon Ranch Spa", "Carinthia Lounge", "King's Court", the "Queen's Grill Lounge", and the "Queen's Grill" and "Princess Grill" restaurants for higher-fare passengers. The public rooms on Deck 8 include the à la carte "Verandah Restaurant" an 8,000-volume library (the largest of any cruise ship), a book shop and the upper part of the Canyon Ranch Spa. Also on Deck 8 is a large outdoor pool and terrace at the stern. The kennels, located aft on starboard side of Deck 12, are available only for transatlantic crossings. They can accommodate up to twenty two dogs (the kennels will also take cats) in small and large cages. The King's Court area on the ship is open twenty four hours a day, serving as a buffet restaurant for breakfast and lunch. The overall space is divided into quarters, with each section decorated according to the theme of the four separate alternate dining venues that are "created" each evening through lighting, tableware, and menus: Lotus, which specialises in Asian cuisine; the Carvery, a British style grille; La Piazza, with Italian food; and the Chef's Galley, which offers an interactive experience to food preparation. The passengers' dining arrangements on board are dictated by the type of accommodation in which they choose to travel. Around 85% of passengers are in Britannia class, and, therefore, dine in the main restaurant. However, passengers can choose to upgrade to either a "junior suite", and dine in the "Princess Grill"', or a suite, and dine in the "Queens' Grill". Those in the two latter categories are grouped together by Cunard as "Grill Passengers", and they are permitted to use the "Queens' Grill Lounge" and a private outdoor area on deck 11 with its own whirlpool. This feature is also present on both Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth. However, all other public areas can be used by all passengers. As the Britannia Restaurant takes up the full width of the ship on two decks, a 'tween deck, called Deck 3L, was devised to allow passengers to walk from the Grand Lobby to the Queen's Room without traversing the dining room mid-meal. The deck consists of two corridors that run beneath the upper balcony of the restaurant on Deck 3, and above the main dining area on Deck 2. This is why the balcony of the Britannia has tiers that step up towards the hull. This arrangement is illustrated on the hull where there is a stack of three rows of windows in the area where the main restaurant sits, the two upper and lower most rows illuminate the dining room, while the centre row serves Deck 3L. There is a similar arrangement through the Royal Court Theatre. As well, the passages that run on either side of Illuminations on Deck 3 ramp upwards to compensate for the change in deck elevation between the entrance to Illuminations and an elevator bank forward of the room. More than 5,000 commissioned works of art are visible in Queen Mary 2s public rooms, corridors, staterooms and lobbies, having been created by 128 artists from sixteen countries. Two of the most notable pieces are Barbara Broekman's tapestry, an abstract depiction of an ocean liner, bridge, and New York skyline which spans the full height of the Britannia Restaurant, and the British sculptor John McKenna's sheet bronze relief mural in the Grand Lobby, a seven square metre portrait of the ship fabricated in bronze inspired by the Art Deco mural in the main dining room of the original Queen Mary. The 10th Deck Pavillion features a glass ellipse sculpture by Tomasz Urbanowicz called "Blue Sun Setting in the Ocean". ## Technical aspects ### Power plant and propulsion system Queen Mary 2s power plant comprises four sixteen-cylinder Wärtsilä 16V46CR EnviroEngine marine diesel engines, generating a combined 67,200 kW (90,100 hp) at 514 rpm, and two General Electric LM2500+ gas turbines, provide a further 50,000 kW (67,000 hp); these drive electric generators, which in turn provide the power to drive four 21,500 kW (28,800 hp) Alstom electrical motors located inside the podded propulsors (and thus entirely outside the vessel's hull). Such an arrangement, known as integrated electric propulsion (IEP), provides for economical cruising at low speed combined with an ability to sustain much higher speeds when required, and has been common in naval vessels for several decades. The propulsors are Rolls-Royce Mermaid azimuth thruster type podded propulsion units, each with one forward-facing low-vibration propeller with separately bolted blades. The forward pair of thrusters is fixed, but the aft pair can swivel through 360°, removing the need for a rudder. Queen Mary 2 is the first quadruple-propeller passenger ship completed since the SS France in 1961. Queen Mary 2 carries eight spare blades on the foredeck, immediately forward of the bridge screen. In addition to the primary thrusters, the ship is also fitted with three bow thrusters, with a power output of 3.2 MW each. These allow the ship to turn in its own length while in port, to conduct more complex docking manoeuvres. Unusually, Queen Mary 2s gas turbines are not housed along with her diesels in the engine room deep in her hull, but instead are in a soundproofed enclosure directly beneath the funnel. This arrangement allows the turbines to be supplied with sufficient air without having to run large diameter air ducts the height of the ship, which would have wasted valuable interior space. ### Navigation Queen Mary 2 has a fully integrated bridge system designed by British firm Kelvin Hughes, which controls the ship's navigation systems, radar, dynamic positioning system, and engine monitoring system. Kelvin Hughes supplied many of the ship's components, including the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) and eight multifunction display units. ### Water supply Fresh water aboard Queen Mary 2 is supplied by three seawater desalination plants. The plants, each with a capacity of 630,000 litres (170,000 US gal) per day, use multiple effect plate (MEP) distillation technology. The plants' energy is supplied primarily by steam and cooling water from the ship's gas turbines and diesel engines, or if needed by steam from the ship's two oil-fired boilers. The traditional multiple-effect distillation technology has been improved for the ship's plant, so that scaling of plates is reduced, vastly reducing maintenance required. The desalinated water has a very low salt content of less than five parts per million. Average total water production is 1,100,000 litres (290,000 US gal) per day with a capacity of 1,890,000 litres (500,000 US gal) so that there is ample spare capacity. The ship could easily be supplied by only two of the three plants. Potable water tanks have a capacity of 3,830,000 litres (1,010,000 US gal), enough for more than three days of supply. If the engines are running on low load (when the ship is running at a slow speed) the engine jacket cooling water temperature is insufficient to heat the seawater to run the desalination plants. In that case steam from oil-fired boilers is used to heat the sea water. This is uneconomical as generating steam is expensive. It may be cheaper, therefore, to buy water in a particular port than to produce it on board. The seawater intakes are located in the hull of the ship. Concentrated salt solution (brine) is discharged to the sea closer to the ship's stern together with cooling water from the engines. An additional plant was added during the 2016 refit. ## Service history On 12 January 2004 Queen Mary 2 set sail on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the United States, carrying 2,620 passengers. She was under the command of captain Ronald Warwick, who had previously commanded Queen Elizabeth 2. Warwick is the son of William (Bil) Warwick, who had also been a senior Cunard officer and the first captain of Queen Elizabeth 2. The ship returned to Southampton late from her maiden voyage after bow doors covering the thrusters failed to shut in Portugal. During the 2004 Summer Olympics Queen Mary 2 sailed to Athens and docked at Piraeus for two weeks for use as a floating hotel, serving the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, French President Jacques Chirac, then United States President George W. Bush, and the United States Olympic men's basketball team. According to Cunard, Queen Mary 2'''s passengers have also included jazz musician Dave Brubeck and singers Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, and James Taylor. One 2005 transatlantic crossing saw Queen Mary 2 carrying, in a locked steamer trunk, the first United States copy of J. K. Rowling's book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, autographed by the author. In a promotional press release for the event, Cunard said that this marked the first time a book had been transported to its international launch aboard an ocean liner. In January 2006 Queen Mary 2 embarked on a cruise to South America. Upon departure from Fort Lauderdale, one of her propeller pods was damaged when it struck a channel wall, forcing the ship to sail at a reduced speed, which resulted in Commodore Warwick's decision to skip several calls on its voyage to Rio de Janeiro. Many of her passengers threatened to stage a sit-in protest because of the missed calls, before Cunard offered to refund the voyage costs. Queen Mary 2 continued to operate at a reduced service speed and several itinerary changes were necessary until repairs had been completed after the ship returned to Europe in June, where Queen Mary 2 paid a visit to dry dock and the damaged propeller pod was unseated. In November, Queen Mary 2 was drydocked once more at the Blohm+Voss yard in Hamburg (drydock Elbe 17) for the reinstallation of the repaired propeller pod. At the same time, sprinkler systems were installed in all of the vessel's balconies to comply with new safety regulations which had come into effect since the MS Star Princess fire. Additionally, both bridge wings were extended by two metres to improve visibility. After completing the journey around South America, on 23 February 2006, Queen Mary 2 met her namesake, the original , which is permanently docked at Long Beach, California. Escorted by a flotilla of smaller ships, the two Queens exchanged a "whistle salute" which was heard throughout the city of Long Beach. Queen Mary 2 met the other serving Cunard liners and Queen Elizabeth 2 on 13 January 2008 near the Statue of Liberty in New York City harbour, with a celebratory fireworks display; Queen Elizabeth 2 and Queen Victoria made a tandem crossing of the Atlantic for the meeting. This marked the first time three Cunard Queens have been present in the same location. Cunard stated this would be the last time these three ships would ever meet, due to Queen Elizabeth 2s impending retirement from service in late 2008. However this would prove not to be the case, as the three Queens met in Southampton on 22 April 2008. Queen Mary 2 rendezvoused with Queen Elizabeth 2 in Dubai on Saturday 21 March 2009, after the latter ship's retirement, while both ships were berthed at Port Rashid. With the withdrawal of Queen Elizabeth 2 from Cunard's fleet and its docking in Dubai, Queen Mary 2 became the only ocean liner left in active passenger service. On 3 August 2007 three men were stopped by police while escorting and piloting a replica of the first American combat submarine within 200 feet (61 m) of Queen Mary 2, which was docked at the cruise ship terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The replica was created by New York artist Philip "Duke" Riley and two out-of-town residents, one of whom claimed to be a descendant of David Bushnell, who had invented it. The Coast Guard issued Riley a citation for having an unsafe vessel, and for violating the security zone around Queen Mary 2. On 19 October 2011, Queen Mary 2 had her registry changed to Hamilton, Bermuda, from her previous home port of Southampton, to allow the ship to host on-board weddings. This marked the first time in its 171-year history that Cunard has not had a ship registered within the UK. Bermuda is a member of the Red Ensign Group and the ship continues to fly the undefaced Red Ensign rather than the Bermuda Red Ensign. ### World cruises On 10 January 2007, Queen Mary 2 started her first world cruise, circumnavigating the globe in 81 days. On 20 February, she met her fleet-mate, Queen Elizabeth 2, also on her 2007 world cruise, in Sydney harbour. This is the first time two Cunard Queens had been together in Sydney since the original Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth served as troop ships in 1941. Despite the early arrival time of 5:42 am, the Queen Mary 2s presence attracted so many viewers that the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge were blocked. With 1,600 passengers leaving the ships in Sydney, Cunard estimated the stopovers injected more than \$3 million into the local economy. On 10 January 2012, the ship embarked on a three-month world cruise from Southampton, travelling south and then east around Africa, a first ever circumnavigation of Australia, to Japan, then back to Southampton along the south coastline of Eurasia and through the Suez Canal. ### Anniversary voyage In October 2009, Queen Mary 2's fifth year in service was celebrated with an 8-night voyage around the British Isles. The voyage included maiden visits to Greenock and Liverpool. ### The Boston Cup Carried aboard Queen Mary 2 is the Boston Cup. Sometimes referred to as The Britannia Cup, this artifact was created for Sir Samuel Cunard in Boston, United States, to commemorate the arrival of his first vessel . Cunard had selected Boston as the American port for his Atlantic service, which resulted in a strong connection between Boston and the Cunard Line. It is believed that the cup was presented to Sir Samuel Cunard sometime in 1840, but for much of its life it was missing. It was discovered in an antique shop in 1967 and returned to Cunard, where it was placed aboard Queen Elizabeth 2. In 2004, when Queen Mary 2 became the flagship, the Boston Cup was placed aboard Queen Mary 2. It is in a glass case, aft of the Chart Room lounge. ### Propulsion failures The propulsor pods fitted to Queen Mary 2 have been prone to failure, attributed to the motors' thrust bearings, which continued to show a tendency to fail even after numerous attempts at redesign. In January 2009, Carnival, through its Cunard division, sued Rolls-Royce in the United States. The line alleged that the Mermaid pod propulsion systems fitted to Queen Mary 2 were inherently defective in design, and that Rolls-Royce knew about the design deficiencies and deliberately conspired to mislead, deceive and defraud in the course of winning the contract. In January 2011, the court awarded Carnival US\$24 million (approximately UK£15 million at the time of verdict). ### Cunard Royal Rendezvous Three years after the first Cunard Royal Rendezvous on the same date, Queen Mary 2 met up with and the then brand-new for another Royal Rendezvous in New York City on 13 January 2011. and made a tandem crossing of the Atlantic for the event. All three ships met in front of the statue of Liberty at 6:45 pm for Grucci fireworks. The Empire State Building was lit up in red to mark the event. On 5 June 2012, the three Queens met again, but this time in Southampton to celebrate the Diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. ### Atlantic rowing Queen Mary 2 has rendezvoused with ocean rowing teams in the middle of the Atlantic. On 30 July 2010 she met up with Artemis Investments, whose rowing crew were Don Lennox, Livar Nysted, Ray Carroll, Leven Brown. Carroll had been a former engineer and was patched through via marine VHF radio and Queen Mary 2's public address system to speak to the captain and crew. On 26 September 2013 Queen Mary 2 resupplied solo-rower Mylène Paquette and her vessel Hermel with a replacement satellite phone, drogue anchor and groceries. Queen Mary 2 changed her course by 20 degrees and only added 14 nautical miles (26 km) to the overall distance of the crossing. ### Engine fire A small fire broke out in the gas turbine engine room (located high on the ship behind the Queen Mary 2 sign) on the evening of 5 October 2011. The fire was started in one of the ship's gas turbines. No injuries were reported, and crew on board the ship safely extinguished the fire. ### Plant incident On 23 September 2010, an incident occurred in Queen Mary 2s aft harmonic filter room. This resulted in the shutdown of all four propulsion motors and a loss of electrical power throughout the ship. Within an hour, the ship's main generators were restarted and the ship was able to resume passage. Later investigations found that an explosion was caused by electrical arcing within the aft harmonic filter igniting leaked dielectric fluid vapour. ### 200th transatlantic voyage On 6 July 2013 Queen Mary 2 departed New York en route to Southampton on her 200th transatlantic voyage. On board speakers were Stephen Payne OBE—the ship's designer—and presenter and newsreader Nick Owen, who presented talks about the ship's design. ### 10th birthday celebrations On 6 May 2014, all three Queens met up for the first time in Lisbon, Portugal. The three ships sailed abreast of each other from Lisbon to Southampton. On 9 May 2014 Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria led Queen Mary 2 up the Southampton channel where they docked in formation at the QEII terminal and performed a birthday salute to Queen Mary 2. The anniversary included a tour of the ship by His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. ### Cunard 175th anniversary On 25 May 2015, all three Queens met, once again, at Liverpool, in order to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the shipping line. After arriving at Liverpool the previous day, Queen Mary 2 made a brief excursion to the entrance of the River Mersey to welcome her two fleetmates into port in the early afternoon. The three Cunarders then sailed, in formation, towards Liverpool. The ships spent several hours together, before the departure of Queen Mary 2 to Saint Peter Port, Guernsey. On 2 July 2015, Queen Mary 2 began a 175th Anniversary Crossing in Southampton. She sailed first to Liverpool, leaving that city after a fireworks display on 4 July, the actual anniversary date of Cunard's first transatlantic voyage. Queen Mary 2 followed the route of the original ship Britannia, calling first at Halifax, Nova Scotia. After a day there, she headed first upriver into the harbor, using her bow thrusters and swivel-pod motors to negotiate the tight turnaround to come back down close to the cityfront. A 21-gun salute and bagpipe band honored the ship. From Halifax, the ship sailed to Boston and was there for a full day at the cruise terminal (Boston was the terminus of the original crossing in 1840). In the evening the ship backed out into Boston Harbor, where a fireworks display was presented before Queen Mary 2 sailed away. After a night and day at sea, the vessel entered New York Harbor early the morning of 14 July and docked at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Later in the evening the vessel sailed to the lower harbor, between the Statue of Liberty and the Battery, for the Forever Cunard Queen Mary 2 Light Show. ### 2016 refit In June 2016, Queen Mary 2 underwent a \$132 million/£90 million renovation at Blohm+Voss over 25 days. Major changes include the addition of fifteen single-occupancy staterooms, thirty additional balcony staterooms, and ten more animal cages for an enlarged kennels. According to Blohm+Voss, the refit included the installation of exhaust gas scrubbers and filters to reduce emissions. ### Atlantic rescue On 10 June 2017, Queen Mary 2, commanded by Captain Christopher Wells, came to the rescue of a stranded solo yachtsman, 73-year-old Mervyn Wheatley, whose craft Tamarind had been disabled by a strong storm while participating in the Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race. British and Canadian coastguards coordinated this long-range rescue after they detected Tamarind's distress beacon. Queen Mary 2 was guided to Wheatley's position by a Royal Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft. ### COVID-19 When COVID-19 started to spread around in the world in 2020, Queen Mary 2 was in the midst of a world cruise. In early February, Cunard cancelled the Asian leg of the voyage, and the vessel stopped in Singapore only to refuel and sailed to Australia. On 15 March, Cunard cancelled the remainder of the voyage, disembarked all passengers at Fremantle, and then the ship returned to Southampton. It stopped briefly on 2 April in Durban to disembark six South African crew members before continuing to its home port. Queen Mary 2 arrived back in Southampton on 15 April. Due to the pandemic, Cunard suspended all voyages of the Queen Mary 2 until November 2021. In August 2021 Cunard announced that the ship would enter drydock in Brest, France prior to her return to service. On 28 November 2021, Queen Mary 2 returned to service. [^1]:

Anna Cramling

Swedish chess player (born 2002)

Anna Yolanda Cramling Bellón (born 30 April 2002) is a Spanish-Swedish chess player, Twitch live streamer, and YouTuber who holds the FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) title of Woman FIDE Master (WFM). She had a peak FIDE rating of 2175 in March 2018. Cramling represented Sweden in the 2016 and 2022 Chess Olympiad as well as two European Team Chess Championships. Cramling grew up in a chess-playing family. Her mother is Swedish grandmaster (GM) Pia Cramling and her father is Spanish grandmaster (GM) Juan Manuel Bellón López. She began playing chess at age three while living in Spain but later moved with her family to Sweden at age eleven, switching federations from Spain to Sweden soon after. She participated in several European Youth, World Cadets, World Youth, and World Junior Chess Championships in different age divisions from 2015 until 2019. When representing Sweden in international team competitions, she has played on the same team with her mother while her father has served as the team captain. Cramling earned the title of Woman FIDE Master (WFM) in 2018 at age 15, the same year she reached her peak rating. During 2018, she defeated Renier Castellanos Rodriguez, a Spanish International Master (IM) with a FIDE rating of 2498 at the time. Cramling began streaming in early 2020, focusing on chess content. Her mother and father are both occasional guests on her channel. About a year later, Cramling signed with the Panda esports organization as their first chess streamer. ## Early life and background Cramling was born on 30 April 2002 in Malaga to Pia Cramling and Juan Manuel Bellón López. Her mother is from Sweden and her father is from Spain. Both of her parents are chess players and both hold the Grandmaster (GM) title. Her mother was No. 1 in the world among women by FIDE rating in 1984 and became the fifth woman ever to achieve the GM title in 1992. Her father is a five-time Spanish champion. Cramling began playing chess at age three. Throughout her childhood, both of her parents were actively competing at chess. When she was young, she typically accompanied her parents to chess tournaments because her only regular babysitter was her maternal grandfather, who was not regularly available to babysit because he lived in Sweden. Cramling and her parents lived in Spain until she was eleven years old, when they moved to Sweden. Cramling switched federations from Spain to Sweden in 2014, having only played in a few tournaments while representing Spain. Her father later made the same federation switch in 2017. ## Chess career Cramling earned her first FIDE rating in February 2013 at age 10, starting out at 1519 after playing the Amateur A competition at the Gibraltar Chess Festival. She won one out of four games against rated opponents, defeating Raymond Kearsley, an English player rated 1772. The following year, 2014, she won the women's prize in the same Amateur A competition at Gibraltar. Her prize drew media attention because her parents regularly competed at the event and she had regularly been attending even as an infant. This performance also helped her reach a rating of 1600. Cramling had a large increase in rating in early 2015 at age 12 when she gained over 300 rating points across four tournaments in two months to surpass a rating of 1900. These tournaments included the Rilton under-1800 tournament in Stockholm around New Year's Day and the Amateur A and Amateur B competitions at Gibraltar. At the end of 2015, Cramling participated in the girls under-14 division of the World Cadets Chess Championship in Porto Carras, Greece. As the 58th seed out of 125 participants, she finished slightly better than her seeding in 54th place with a score of 6/11. Cramling first reached a rating of 2000 in June 2016 at age 14 after competing in the Hasselbacken Chess Open in Stockholm. Her best victory in that tournament was against her compatriot Michael Backman, who was rated 2161. In September 2016, Cramling represented Sweden in the 2016 Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan alongside her mother who also competed and her father who was the team's captain. Cramling competed in 7 of the 11 rounds which contributed to Sweden placing 23rd out of the 134 competing teams. In early 2017, Cramling played the Masters competition in Gibraltar, during which she drew a game against her father. Towards the end of the year, she played both the European Youth Chess Championships in the girls under-16 division and World Junior Chess Championships in the girls under-20 division. She performed well at both, gaining 17 and 31 rating points at each tournament respectively. She finished in 35th place out of 75 participants in the former, and 61st out of 89 participants at the latter, similar to her respective seedings of 31st and 66th. Cramling earned the Woman FIDE Master (WFM) title in 2018. She gained about another 200 points in early 2018 to reach her career-best rating of 2175 by virtue of good performances across four tournaments. She had an even score in the Challenger B competition in Gibraltar against opponents with an average rating of 2151 and followed up that result with a perfect score of 4/4 at the Elite Hotels Open in Sweden, during which she defeated two players with a rating of about 2200. During the Open Internacional Villa de Benasque in Spain in July 2018, Cramling again defeated Renier Castellanos Rodriguez, a Spanish International Master (IM) rated 2498. Towards the end of the year, she participated in both the girls under-20 division of the World Junior Championships and the girls under-16 division of the World Youth Championships. She again finished similar to her seeding of 57th in the former, coming in 54th place out of 98 competitors. In contrast, she underperformed in the youth championships and finished in 59th place out of 90 competitors compared to her seed of 30th, which led to her rating declining to below 2000. After that decline in rating in late 2018, Cramling was able to regain most of her lost rating points in 2019, reaching a year-high rating of 2164 in October. Her best tournament of the year was the European Youth Championships. As the 33rd seed in the under-18 girls' division, Cramling finished in 13th place with a score of 5+1⁄2/9, gaining 103 rating points. Her best victory in the tournament was against Govhar Beydullayeva, an Azerbaijani WFM rated 2307. Cramling has seldom competed since the end of 2019 amidst becoming a streamer and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited the number of over-the-board tournaments in operation. In September 2022, she represented Sweden (alongside her mother Pia) in the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Chennai, India, playing board 3 and competing in 10 of the 11 rounds, winning three games and drawing four. ## Team competitions Cramling has represented Sweden in the women's divisions at one Chess Olympiad and two European Team Chess Championships. In each of these tournaments, she competed on the same team as her mother Pia Cramling while her father Juan Bellón López was the team captain. At the 2016 Chess Olympiad in Baku, she played on the reserve board behind her mother on the top board followed by Inna Agrest, Jessica Bengtsson, and Angelina Fransson. Both Cramling and the team overall had good performances. With a score of 14 points (+7–4=0), Sweden finished in 23rd place out of 134 teams, far ahead of their seeding of 43rd. Individually, Cramling had a score of 3/7, gaining 17 rating points. She declined to compete at the 2018 Chess Olympiad in Batumi because her mother Pia was not going to be on the team. Pia decided not to participate after Swedish Chess Federation manager Anders Wengholm did not select Bellón López as the women's team captain. Cramling played at the European Team Chess Championship in 2019 and 2021. She played on the third board in 2019 behind her mother and Ellinor Frisk, and was again on the reserve board in 2021. Individually, she fared better in 2021, scoring 3/5 and gaining 22 rating points. In 2022, Cramling played board 3 in the 44th Chess Olympiad individually scoring 5/10 (+3-3=4), giving her a TPR of 2099. ## Playing style Cramling has a strong preference for playing 1.d4 (the Queen's Pawn Game) with the white pieces over any other first move. Cramling believes she combines her mother's opening style with her father's aggressive style, saying, "I think that I play very aggressively, especially when I play online. It's just more fun! (laughs) I'd say I got that from my father, as he's definitely a very aggressive and tactical chess player. In that sense I play a lot like him, and in terms of openings, I play a lot that are similar to my mother's openings, because she used to teach me a lot of them. So I guess, I'd say I play my mum's openings with my dad's style!" ## Streaming career Cramling launched her own Twitch channel in early 2020 after having the chance to commentate with her mother Pia on the 2020 Women's World Chess Championship match between Ju Wenjun and Aleksandra Goryachkina earlier in the year. On occasion, her mother joins her on Twitch to play games or give advice. On rarer occasions, her father does as well. After about a year of streaming on Twitch, she signed with the Panda esports team, becoming their first chess streamer as well as the first Swedish chess player to sign with such an esports organisation. ## Awards and nominations

Battle of North Borneo

1945 battle of World War II

The Battle of North Borneo took place during the Second World War between Allied and Japanese forces. Part of the wider Borneo campaign of the Pacific War, it was fought between 10 June and 15 August 1945 in North Borneo (later known as Sabah). The battle involved a series of amphibious landings by Australian forces on various points on the mainland around Brunei Bay and upon islands situated around the bay. Japanese opposition to the landings was sporadic initially, although as the campaign progressed a number of considerable clashes occurred and both sides suffered significant casualties, although major combat was largely restricted to Labuan and around Beaufort. On the mainland, while Allied conventional operations focused largely on the coastal areas around Brunei Bay, guerrilla forces consisting of Dayak tribesmen and small numbers of Allied personnel from the Services Reconnaissance Department fought an unconventional campaign in the interior. The Allies were successful in seizing control of the region. Nevertheless, many of the strategic gains that possession of North Borneo provided were ultimately negated by the sudden conclusion of the war in August 1945. ## Background ### Strategic situation and planning Codenamed Operation Oboe Six, the battle was part of the second phase of the Allied operations to capture the island of Borneo. North Borneo had been occupied by troops from the Imperial Japanese Army since early 1942 following the Japanese invasion of Borneo; prior to this the area had been a British territorial possession. Following its occupation, the area's oil resources had been exploited for the Japanese war effort. The island's population had also been subjected to harsh occupation policies. This had led to a revolt at Jesselton in late 1943, which was suppressed by the Japanese with heavy civilian casualties. The first stage of the Allied campaign in Borneo had begun in May 1945 when a brigade-sized force had been put ashore on Tarakan, on the north-eastern side of Borneo. The operation in North Borneo was planned by General Douglas MacArthur's South West Pacific Area command. Designed with three phases—preparatory bombardment, forced landings, and an advance—the objective of the Allied operation was to establish "an advanced fleet base" for the British Pacific Fleet in Brunei Bay, which offered the Allies a deep-water port, to enable subsequent naval operations. Further objectives included capturing the vast oil and rubber supplies available in the area and re-establishing British civil administration. It was also intended that Labuan would be secured to control the entrance to Brunei Bay, and would be developed as an airbase. In the planning phase of the operation, the Allied high commands differed in their opinions about the necessity of securing Brunei, with the British Chiefs of Staff Committee believing it would take too long to develop the area for it to be developed for it to be used in operations. They were also concerned that it would divert the British Pacific Fleet from the main theatre of operations off Japan and instead favoured establishing a fleet base in the Philippines. The United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, approved the operation believing that it could support future operations in south-east Asia. In preparation for the landings, commencing in March, the Allied Services Reconnaissance Department (also known as Special Operations Australia) began Operation Agas in North Borneo, and Operation Semut in Sarawak; these were clandestine operations to gather information and organise local Dayak tribesmen to carry out guerrilla operations following the main landings. Ultimately, five Allied parties would be inserted into Borneo as part of Operation Agas, while four were deployed under Semut. Preliminary aerial bombardment of northern Borneo by Australian and US aircraft began on 3 May, before being concentrated on the main landing areas on 5 June. Meanwhile, minesweepers began to clear sea lines of communication for the large Allied naval task force that was assigned to support the operation. This force was designated as Task Force 78.1 and consisted of Australian and US warships, under the command of Rear Admiral Forrest B. Royal. Initially, the Allies planned to launch operations in North Borneo in late May, but shipping shortages delayed moving the assault troops to their staging base on Morotai Island and resulted in the operation being delayed until early June. ### Opposing forces A total of 29,000–30,000 men were committed by the Allies to secure North Borneo, with the majority of the ground forces being provided by the Australian 9th Division, under the command of Major General George Wootten. The 9th Division consisted of three brigades—the 20th, 24th and 26th Brigades—however, at the time of the North Borneo operations, the 26th was engaged at Tarakan having been detached from the division in May 1945, so only two brigades were allocated to operations in North Borneo. Part of the all-volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force, the 9th Division was a veteran formation, having previously served in North Africa, the Middle East and New Guinea. Prior to the Borneo campaign, the division had been resting and reorganising on the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. The division had experienced a high turn over in personnel following its service in the Huon Peninsula campaign as soldiers were medically discharged or transferred to other units. In addition to the Australian ground troops, naval support was provided by the United States Navy and Royal Australian Navy and aerial support from the United States Army Air Force's Thirteenth Air Force, the United States Marine Corps, and elements of the Royal Australian Air Force's 1st Tactical Air Force. Two United States Army units, the 727th Amphibian Tractor Battalion who manned the LVTs and the 593rd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment's Boat Battalion, were also attached to the Australians. Meanwhile, Allied intelligence estimated that there were approximately 31,000 Japanese troops on Borneo, with about 8,800 of these in North Borneo. The Japanese Thirty-Seventh Army, led by Lieutenant-General Masao Baba, was tasked with defending the area, and was headquartered in Jesselton. The main Japanese units in the vicinity included elements of the 56th Independent Mixed Brigade, consisting of six battalions (the 366th to the 371st), along with another independent battalion. This brigade was commanded by Major General Taijiro Akashi. It had been raised in Japan during the second half of 1944 and arrived in Borneo late that year as the area's garrison troops were reorganised for defence against future Allied landings. By mid-1945, the brigade had been heavily depleted by its overland movement from the north-eastern part of Borneo prior to the Allied landings and was at around half strength; its troops were largely inexperienced, lightly equipped and were suffering from poor morale. Japanese air power in the region had been heavily depleted and, except in Java and Sumatra, was ineffective, although there were small numbers of aircraft at Keningau and Kuching. ## Battle ### Labuan Two main landings were undertaken by the Australians in North Borneo on 10 June. After concentrating at Morotai Island in May, where complex landing rehearsals were undertaken, the assault force, consisting of 85 ships—mainly from the US Navy—departed in early June, preceded by minesweepers and survey vessels, as well as the naval attack group. The first landing was made when troops from two battalions of Brigadier Selwyn Porter's 24th Brigade—the 2/28th and 2/43rd Battalions—landed on Labuan Island with a squadron of Matilda tanks from the 2/9th Armoured Regiment. The 24th Brigade's third battalion, 2/32nd Battalion, was placed in divisional reserve for the initial landing. The attack was preceded by a heavy naval bombardment from cruisers, mortar and rocket ships, and attacks by eight Liberator heavy bomber squadrons which used anti-personnel bombs to target Japanese troops around the intended beachheads. With this support, the main Allied landings were largely unopposed as the Japanese defenders had withdrawn from the beaches on the peninsula and Muara Island had been abandoned completely. At Labuan, the Australian troops came ashore near Victoria and, supported by a heavy artillery and naval gunfire support, the two battalions drove towards the airfield. Light opposition was overcome and the town and airfield were secured late on the first day, after minor clashes with Japanese outposts and troops fighting amongst the aircraft dispersal bays. Meanwhile, the 2/11th Commando Squadron provided flank support to the west. Despite the initial progress the fighting on Labuan intensified during this time as the Japanese defenders retreated inland to a heavily fortified position known as "the Pocket" and attempted to hold the Australians along the dense jungle ridges and thick swamps. The 2/12th Commando Squadron was brought ashore from divisional reserve on 12 June and was given the task of clearing the outlying areas of resistance that had been bypassed during the initial advance on the island, By 14 June, the Australians had secured the island, apart from those Japanese contained within the Pocket. Despite considerable artillery and armoured support, a company-level attack by the 2/28th Battalion was turned back on 14 June, and as a result further preparatory fires were called upon to soften up the Japanese defences. At this stage of the war, Australian commanders were under strict orders to limit their casualties, and "avoid unnecessary risks", utilising fire support where possible to reduce Japanese defences prior to attacking. Commencing on 17 June, an intense three day naval and aerial bombardment was laid down in an effort to reduce the Japanese defences. Meanwhile, 100 Japanese attacked the Australian brigade's maintenance area and the airfield before the Australians launch a renewed attack on 21 June. At this time, two companies of infantry from the 2/28th Battalion assaulted the Japanese position. Supported by indirect fire support from sea and air, and direct fire support from tanks and flamethrowers, the Australians overwhelmed the Japanese defenders and cleared the remaining resistance from Labuan. After the battle 180 Japanese dead were counted, bringing the total killed during the fighting on Labuan to 389. Against this the Australians suffered 34 killed and 93 wounded. ### Brunei and Muara Island The second Allied landing that took place on 10 June, consisted of two battalions of Brigadier Victor Windeyer's 20th Brigade—2/15th and 2/17th Battalions—landing at Muara Island and on the mainland peninsula north of Brooketon, supported by a second squadron of Matildas from the 2/9th Armoured Regiment. The 20th Brigade's third battalion, the 2/13th, was held back in brigade reserve. Meanwhile, in the interior, Dayak tribesmen supported by Allied operatives commenced their guerrilla campaign on 9 June. Lightly armed, and with only limited training, these guerrillas sought to harass the withdrawing Japanese, while avoiding decisive engagement. In this role, they met with some success, but were in some cases forced to withdraw in the face of heavy opposition. The troops that had landed near Brooketon on the mainland advanced on Brunei, which was captured on 13 June by the 2/17th Battalion after several minor section and platoon level actions over several days. The 2/15th, which had earlier secured Muara Island, secured Limbang on 18 June, advancing by landing craft up the river in the south-west of Brunei Bay. The two 20th Brigade battalions were now joined by the 2/13th Battalion, which had conducted an unopposed landing at Lutong on 20 June, supported by Spitfire and Kittyhawk fighters operating from Labuan, before continuing their advance down the south-western coast and then overland, passing through Miri and Seria on their way towards Kuching. At Seria the Australians found the 37 oil wells ablaze, having been deliberately lit by the Japanese defenders as they withdrew, and engineers from the 2/3rd Field Company were called up to put out the fires, a task which took over three months to complete. Kuala Belait was reached on 24 June. Having secured its objectives, the 20th Brigade then began patrolling operations, using landing craft to move quickly along the various rivers and streams that punctuated the coastline. The initial priority of Japanese troops on the mainland was to withdraw inland. As a result, only minor clashes occurred, against Japanese rearguards, which were generally poorly equipped and inexperienced. Resistance and aggressiveness amongst these rearguard elements stiffened as the Australians moved beyond Miri. Generally, the guerrilla forces in the interior carried out their operations separately from the conventional forces that focused mainly upon the coastal areas. However, some co-ordinated action was achieved during the campaign. During July, guerrillas assigned to Operation Semut captured Marudi, on the Barem River, as part of efforts to disrupt the Japanese withdrawal from Miri. A strong Japanese counter-attack retook the village from the lightly armed Semut operatives, after which the guerrillas linked up with conventional Australian infantry from the 2/17th Battalion to capture it once again on 15 July. During the course of their involvement in the campaign, the 20th Brigade's casualties were relatively light, suffering only 40 casualties. Throughout late June and into August, RAAF aircraft including Mosquitos and Beafighters attacked Japanese targets throughout North Borneo, including barges, shipping, barracks and airfields, sinking an 800-ton vessel near the Tabuan River and destroying several Japanese aircraft on the ground. Wirraways were also used to provide tactical reconnaissance, and other fighters flew close air support sorties. ### Weston Another landing was made by Allied forces on 16 June on the mainland at Weston, in the north-eastern part of Brunei Bay. The 2/32nd Battalion, which had previously been held back as the divisional reserve, forced its way ashore near Padas Bay. After taking Weston, patrols were sent out to Beaufort, which was 23 km (14 mi) inland. Due to the lack of roads and the indefensible nature of the railway track that led to the town, it was decided to advance along the Klias River, while a secondary force moved along the Padas River. As a part of this phase of the operation, minor landings were made at Mempakul on 19 June and at Sabang on 23 June by elements of the 2/43rd Battalion and the 2/11th Commando Squadron. Kibidang was captured the same day by the 2/43rd, while the 2/32nd advanced further along the Padas River and the two battalions married up. Following this, reinforcements in the form of two companies from the 2/28th Battalion were transferred from Labuan to take over rear area security while plans were made for the main attack on Beaufort. The Allies assessed that Beaufort, which lay on the main Japanese avenue of withdrawal, was held by between 800 and 1,000 Japanese troops seeking to keep key egress routes open. On 27 June, the Australians attacked the town. The 2/43rd Battalion was assigned the task of the main assault, while the 2/32nd Battalion was tasked with flank protection. Despite being hamstrung by torrential downpours and unforgiving terrain, the 2/32nd Battalion secured the south bank of the Padas River, while one company from the 2/43rd was sent to take the town and another marched to the flanks, to take up ambush positions along the route that the Japanese were expected to withdraw along. The 2/28th Battalion secured the lines of communication north of the river. The resistance from the Japanese defenders was not co-ordinated and as a result the Australians had secured their objectives by nightfall. Throughout the night, however, the Japanese launched six counterattacks which eventually broke down into hand-to-hand combat. During the course of these actions, one company became isolated and the next morning, 28 June, another was sent to aid it by attacking the Japanese force from the rear. Fighting its way through numerous Japanese positions throughout the afternoon, the company reached its objective in the early evening and launched its assault, killing at least 100 Japanese defenders. It was during the course of this action that Private Tom Starcevich, of the 2/43rd Battalion, performed the deeds for which he was later awarded the Victoria Cross. By 29 June, the Japanese began to withdraw from Beaufort in small groups. Elsewhere, on 1 July, the Australian 7th Division carried out the final stage of the Allied operation to secure Borneo, landing at Balikpapan, on the south-east coast. In North Borneo, Allied forces observed a brief pause while reinforcements arrived. The 2/3rd Anti-tank Regiment, being used as infantry rather than the anti-tank role for which it was intended, arrived at Weston on 3 July, where it relieved the 2/28th Battalion, which then moved on to Beaufort. On 6 July the Australian advance was resumed. Due to the strategic situation, it was decided to undertake a slow and cautious advance using indirect fire to limit casualties. By 12 July the 2/32nd Battalion occupied Papar, and from there patrols were dispatched to the north and along the banks of the river as offensive operations came to an end. ## Aftermath Following the capture of Papar, the Australians ceased offensive actions on Borneo and the situation remained largely static until a ceasefire came into effect in mid-August. In early August 1945, two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and on 15 August the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, effectively announced an end to hostilities, with the formal surrender being signed on 2 September 1945. As a result of the ceasefire, the planned Allied invasion of Japan was no longer required and the strategic gains provided by the capture of North Borneo were arguably negated; this included development of Brunei Bay into a naval base, which ultimately never occurred. To some extent, this has led to claims in Australia that the Oboe operations—as well as the campaigns in the Aitape–Wewak region of New Guinea and on Bougainville and New Britain—had been "unnecessary" and had therefore resulted in needless casualties. Throughout the course of the fighting on North Borneo, the Australians lost 114 men killed or died of wounds while another 221 men were wounded. Against this, the Japanese lost at least 1,234 men, while 130 had been captured. On top of this, a further 1,800 Japanese were estimated to have been killed by the guerrilla forces operating in the interior; many of these were Japanese troops who were withdrawing inland following the conventional landings on the coast who were ambushed by guerrillas or attacked by Allied airstrikes directed by these forces. These forces also occupied large areas in Sarawak and the southern parts of North Borneo by the end of hostilities. After the fighting was over, the Australians began the task for establishing British civil administration, rebuilding the infrastructure that had been damaged and providing for the civilians that had been displaced in the fighting. This proved to be a significant undertaking, with the 9th Division working to establish hospitals, dispensaries, and schools. Sanitation and drainage had not been provided by the Japanese, and the local population was suffering from disease and was malnourished. Infrastructure was re-built by Australian engineers, while 9th Division medical personnel provided medical aid directly to locals. The 132-kilometre (82 mi) North Borneo railway was also re-established. Houses that were destroyed in pre-invasion bombardment and later fighting were also rebuilt. Following the ceasefire, there were still a large number of Japanese troops in North Borneo—by October 1945 it was estimated that there were over 21,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians still in North Borneo—and the 9th Division was made responsible for organising the surrender, provisioning and protection of these personnel. They were also tasked with liberating the Allied civilian internees and prisoners of war that were being held at Batu Lintang camp in Kuching, Sarawak, and with disarming the guerrillas that had been assigned to Operations Agas and Semut. As civil administration was slowly restored, in October 1945, the Australian demobilisation process began. Initially this process was slow as there were few troops able to relieve the Australian forces in Borneo and as such only long service personnel were released for return to Australia. The 9th Division remained in North Borneo performing garrison duties until January 1946, when it was relieved by the 32nd Indian Brigade, and subsequently disbanded. For the majority of the 9th Division's personnel a return to civilian life followed, however, as part of Australia's contribution to the occupation of Japan, a number of men from the 9th Division were transferred to the 67th Battalion which was being formed as part of the 34th Brigade. According to the Australian War Memorial, such was the relationship formed between the 9th Division and the civilian population of North Borneo, that the division's Unit Colour Patch was incorporated into the coat of arms of the Colony of British Borneo following the war, remaining as such until 1963, when the region was subsumed by the Malaysian state of Sabah. ## See also - Japanese occupation of Malaya

Quantum electrodynamics

Quantum field theory of electromagnetism

In particle physics, quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved. QED mathematically describes all phenomena involving electrically charged particles interacting by means of exchange of photons and represents the quantum counterpart of classical electromagnetism giving a complete account of matter and light interaction. In technical terms, QED can be described as a very accurate way to calculate the probability of the position and movement of particles, even those massless such as photons, and the quantity depending on position (field) of those particles, and described light and matter beyond the wave-particle duality proposed by Einstein in 1905. Richard Feynman called it "the jewel of physics" for its extremely accurate predictions of quantities like the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the Lamb shift of the energy levels of hydrogen. ## History The first formulation of a quantum theory describing radiation and matter interaction is attributed to British scientist Paul Dirac, who (during the 1920s) was able to compute the coefficient of spontaneous emission of an atom. Dirac described the quantization of the electromagnetic field as an ensemble of harmonic oscillators with the introduction of the concept of creation and annihilation operators of particles. In the following years, with contributions from Wolfgang Pauli, Eugene Wigner, Pascual Jordan, Werner Heisenberg and an elegant formulation of quantum electrodynamics by Enrico Fermi, physicists came to believe that, in principle, it would be possible to perform any computation for any physical process involving photons and charged particles. However, further studies by Felix Bloch with Arnold Nordsieck, and Victor Weisskopf, in 1937 and 1939, revealed that such computations were reliable only at a first order of perturbation theory, a problem already pointed out by Robert Oppenheimer. At higher orders in the series infinities emerged, making such computations meaningless and casting serious doubts on the internal consistency of the theory itself. With no solution for this problem known at the time, it appeared that a fundamental incompatibility existed between special relativity and quantum mechanics. Difficulties with the theory increased through the end of the 1940s. Improvements in microwave technology made it possible to take more precise measurements of the shift of the levels of a hydrogen atom, now known as the Lamb shift and magnetic moment of the electron. These experiments exposed discrepancies which the theory was unable to explain. A first indication of a possible way out was given by Hans Bethe in 1947, after attending the Shelter Island Conference. While he was traveling by train from the conference to Schenectady he made the first non-relativistic computation of the shift of the lines of the hydrogen atom as measured by Lamb and Retherford. Despite the limitations of the computation, agreement was excellent. The idea was simply to attach infinities to corrections of mass and charge that were actually fixed to a finite value by experiments. In this way, the infinities get absorbed in those constants and yield a finite result in good agreement with experiments. This procedure was named renormalization. Based on Bethe's intuition and fundamental papers on the subject by Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson, it was finally possible to get fully covariant formulations that were finite at any order in a perturbation series of quantum electrodynamics. Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman were jointly awarded with the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in this area. Their contributions, and those of Freeman Dyson, were about covariant and gauge-invariant formulations of quantum electrodynamics that allow computations of observables at any order of perturbation theory. Feynman's mathematical technique, based on his diagrams, initially seemed very different from the field-theoretic, operator-based approach of Schwinger and Tomonaga, but Freeman Dyson later showed that the two approaches were equivalent. Renormalization, the need to attach a physical meaning at certain divergences appearing in the theory through integrals, has subsequently become one of the fundamental aspects of quantum field theory and has come to be seen as a criterion for a theory's general acceptability. Even though renormalization works very well in practice, Feynman was never entirely comfortable with its mathematical validity, even referring to renormalization as a "shell game" and "hocus pocus". Thence, neither Feynman nor Dirac were happy with that way to approach the observations made in theoretical physics, above all in quantum mechanics. QED has served as the model and template for all subsequent quantum field theories. One such subsequent theory is quantum chromodynamics, which began in the early 1960s and attained its present form in the 1970s work by H. David Politzer, Sidney Coleman, David Gross and Frank Wilczek. Building on the pioneering work of Schwinger, Gerald Guralnik, Dick Hagen, and Tom Kibble, Peter Higgs, Jeffrey Goldstone, and others, Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam independently showed how the weak nuclear force and quantum electrodynamics could be merged into a single electroweak force. ## Feynman's view of quantum electrodynamics ### Introduction Near the end of his life, Richard Feynman gave a series of lectures on QED intended for the lay public. These lectures were transcribed and published as Feynman (1985), QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, a classic non-mathematical exposition of QED from the point of view articulated below. The key components of Feynman's presentation of QED are three basic actions. A photon goes from one place and time to another place and time. An electron goes from one place and time to another place and time. An electron emits or absorbs a photon at a certain place and time. These actions are represented in the form of visual shorthand by the three basic elements of Feynman diagrams: a wavy line for the photon, a straight line for the electron and a junction of two straight lines and a wavy one for a vertex representing emission or absorption of a photon by an electron. These can all be seen in the adjacent diagram. As well as the visual shorthand for the actions, Feynman introduces another kind of shorthand for the numerical quantities called probability amplitudes. The probability is the square of the absolute value of total probability amplitude, $\text{probability} = | f(\text{amplitude}) |^2$. If a photon moves from one place and time $A$ to another place and time $B$, the associated quantity is written in Feynman's shorthand as $P(A \text{ to } B)$, and it depends on only the momentum and polarization of the photon. The similar quantity for an electron moving from $C$ to $D$ is written $E(C \text{ to } D)$. It depends on the momentum and polarization of the electron, in addition to a constant Feynman calls n, sometimes called the "bare" mass of the electron: it is related to, but not the same as, the measured electron mass. Finally, the quantity that tells us about the probability amplitude for an electron to emit or absorb a photon Feynman calls j, and is sometimes called the "bare" charge of the electron: it is a constant, and is related to, but not the same as, the measured electron charge e. QED is based on the assumption that complex interactions of many electrons and photons can be represented by fitting together a suitable collection of the above three building blocks and then using the probability amplitudes to calculate the probability of any such complex interaction. It turns out that the basic idea of QED can be communicated while assuming that the square of the total of the probability amplitudes mentioned above (P(A to B), E(C to D) and j) acts just like our everyday probability (a simplification made in Feynman's book). Later on, this will be corrected to include specifically quantum-style mathematics, following Feynman. The basic rules of probability amplitudes that will be used are: The indistinguishability criterion in (a) is very important: it means that there is no observable feature present in the given system that in any way "reveals" which alternative is taken. In such a case, one cannot observe which alternative actually takes place without changing the experimental setup in some way (e.g. by introducing a new apparatus into the system). Whenever one is able to observe which alternative takes place, one always finds that the probability of the event is the sum of the probabilities of the alternatives. Indeed, if this were not the case, the very term "alternatives" to describe these processes would be inappropriate. What (a) says is that once the physical means for observing which alternative occurred is removed, one cannot still say that the event is occurring through "exactly one of the alternatives" in the sense of adding probabilities; one must add the amplitudes instead. Similarly, the independence criterion in (b) is very important: it only applies to processes which are not "entangled". ### Basic constructions Suppose we start with one electron at a certain place and time (this place and time being given the arbitrary label A) and a photon at another place and time (given the label B). A typical question from a physical standpoint is: "What is the probability of finding an electron at C (another place and a later time) and a photon at D (yet another place and time)?". The simplest process to achieve this end is for the electron to move from A to C (an elementary action) and for the photon to move from B to D (another elementary action). From a knowledge of the probability amplitudes of each of these sub-processes – E(A to C) and P(B to D) – we would expect to calculate the probability amplitude of both happening together by multiplying them, using rule b) above. This gives a simple estimated overall probability amplitude, which is squared to give an estimated probability. But there are other ways in which the result could come about. The electron might move to a place and time E, where it absorbs the photon; then move on before emitting another photon at F; then move on to C, where it is detected, while the new photon moves on to D. The probability of this complex process can again be calculated by knowing the probability amplitudes of each of the individual actions: three electron actions, two photon actions and two vertexes – one emission and one absorption. We would expect to find the total probability amplitude by multiplying the probability amplitudes of each of the actions, for any chosen positions of E and F. We then, using rule a) above, have to add up all these probability amplitudes for all the alternatives for E and F. (This is not elementary in practice and involves integration.) But there is another possibility, which is that the electron first moves to G, where it emits a photon, which goes on to D, while the electron moves on to H, where it absorbs the first photon, before moving on to C. Again, we can calculate the probability amplitude of these possibilities (for all points G and H). We then have a better estimation for the total probability amplitude by adding the probability amplitudes of these two possibilities to our original simple estimate. Incidentally, the name given to this process of a photon interacting with an electron in this way is Compton scattering. There is an infinite number of other intermediate "virtual" processes in which more and more photons are absorbed and/or emitted. For each of these processes, a Feynman diagram could be drawn describing it. This implies a complex computation for the resulting probability amplitudes, but provided it is the case that the more complicated the diagram, the less it contributes to the result, it is only a matter of time and effort to find as accurate an answer as one wants to the original question. This is the basic approach of QED. To calculate the probability of any interactive process between electrons and photons, it is a matter of first noting, with Feynman diagrams, all the possible ways in which the process can be constructed from the three basic elements. Each diagram involves some calculation involving definite rules to find the associated probability amplitude. That basic scaffolding remains when one moves to a quantum description, but some conceptual changes are needed. One is that whereas we might expect in our everyday life that there would be some constraints on the points to which a particle can move, that is not true in full quantum electrodynamics. There is a nonzero probability amplitude of an electron at A, or a photon at B, moving as a basic action to any other place and time in the universe. That includes places that could only be reached at speeds greater than that of light and also earlier times. (An electron moving backwards in time can be viewed as a positron moving forward in time.) ### Probability amplitudes Quantum mechanics introduces an important change in the way probabilities are computed. Probabilities are still represented by the usual real numbers we use for probabilities in our everyday world, but probabilities are computed as the square modulus of probability amplitudes, which are complex numbers. Feynman avoids exposing the reader to the mathematics of complex numbers by using a simple but accurate representation of them as arrows on a piece of paper or screen. (These must not be confused with the arrows of Feynman diagrams, which are simplified representations in two dimensions of a relationship between points in three dimensions of space and one of time.) The amplitude arrows are fundamental to the description of the world given by quantum theory. They are related to our everyday ideas of probability by the simple rule that the probability of an event is the square of the length of the corresponding amplitude arrow. So, for a given process, if two probability amplitudes, v and w, are involved, the probability of the process will be given either by $P = |\mathbf{v} + \mathbf{w}|^2$ or $P = |\mathbf{v} \, \mathbf{w}|^2.$ The rules as regards adding or multiplying, however, are the same as above. But where you would expect to add or multiply probabilities, instead you add or multiply probability amplitudes that now are complex numbers. Addition and multiplication are common operations in the theory of complex numbers and are given in the figures. The sum is found as follows. Let the start of the second arrow be at the end of the first. The sum is then a third arrow that goes directly from the beginning of the first to the end of the second. The product of two arrows is an arrow whose length is the product of the two lengths. The direction of the product is found by adding the angles that each of the two have been turned through relative to a reference direction: that gives the angle that the product is turned relative to the reference direction. That change, from probabilities to probability amplitudes, complicates the mathematics without changing the basic approach. But that change is still not quite enough because it fails to take into account the fact that both photons and electrons can be polarized, which is to say that their orientations in space and time have to be taken into account. Therefore, P(A to B) consists of 16 complex numbers, or probability amplitude arrows. There are also some minor changes to do with the quantity j, which may have to be rotated by a multiple of 90° for some polarizations, which is only of interest for the detailed bookkeeping. Associated with the fact that the electron can be polarized is another small necessary detail, which is connected with the fact that an electron is a fermion and obeys Fermi–Dirac statistics. The basic rule is that if we have the probability amplitude for a given complex process involving more than one electron, then when we include (as we always must) the complementary Feynman diagram in which we exchange two electron events, the resulting amplitude is the reverse – the negative – of the first. The simplest case would be two electrons starting at A and B ending at C and D. The amplitude would be calculated as the "difference", E(A to D) × E(B to C) − E(A to C) × E(B to D), where we would expect, from our everyday idea of probabilities, that it would be a sum. ### Propagators Finally, one has to compute P(A to B) and E(C to D) corresponding to the probability amplitudes for the photon and the electron respectively. These are essentially the solutions of the Dirac equation, which describe the behavior of the electron's probability amplitude and the Maxwell's equations, which describes the behavior of the photon's probability amplitude. These are called Feynman propagators. The translation to a notation commonly used in the standard literature is as follows: $P(A \text{ to } B) \to D_F(x_B - x_A),\quad E(C \text{ to } D) \to S_F(x_D - x_C),$ where a shorthand symbol such as $x_A$ stands for the four real numbers that give the time and position in three dimensions of the point labeled A. ### Mass renormalization A problem arose historically which held up progress for twenty years: although we start with the assumption of three basic "simple" actions, the rules of the game say that if we want to calculate the probability amplitude for an electron to get from A to B, we must take into account all the possible ways: all possible Feynman diagrams with those endpoints. Thus there will be a way in which the electron travels to C, emits a photon there and then absorbs it again at D before moving on to B. Or it could do this kind of thing twice, or more. In short, we have a fractal-like situation in which if we look closely at a line, it breaks up into a collection of "simple" lines, each of which, if looked at closely, are in turn composed of "simple" lines, and so on ad infinitum. This is a challenging situation to handle. If adding that detail only altered things slightly, then it would not have been too bad, but disaster struck when it was found that the simple correction mentioned above led to infinite probability amplitudes. In time this problem was "fixed" by the technique of renormalization. However, Feynman himself remained unhappy about it, calling it a "dippy process", and Dirac also criticized this procedure as "in mathematics one does not get rid of infinities when it does not please you". ### Conclusions Within the above framework physicists were then able to calculate to a high degree of accuracy some of the properties of electrons, such as the anomalous magnetic dipole moment. However, as Feynman points out, it fails to explain why particles such as the electron have the masses they do. "There is no theory that adequately explains these numbers. We use the numbers in all our theories, but we don't understand them – what they are, or where they come from. I believe that from a fundamental point of view, this is a very interesting and serious problem." ## Mathematical formulation ### QED action Mathematically, QED is an abelian gauge theory with the symmetry group U(1), defined on Minkowski space (flat spacetime). The gauge field, which mediates the interaction between the charged spin-1/2 fields, is the electromagnetic field. The QED Lagrangian for a spin-1/2 field interacting with the electromagnetic field in natural units gives rise to the action where - $\gamma^\mu$ are Dirac matrices. - $\psi$ a bispinor field of spin-1/2 particles (e.g. electron–positron field). - $\bar\psi\equiv\psi^\dagger\gamma^0$, called "psi-bar", is sometimes referred to as the Dirac adjoint. - $D_\mu \equiv \partial_\mu+ieA_\mu+ieB_\mu$ is the gauge covariant derivative. - e is the coupling constant, equal to the electric charge of the bispinor field. - $A_\mu$ is the covariant four-potential of the electromagnetic field generated by the electron itself. It is also known as a gauge field or a $\text{U}(1)$ connection. - $B_\mu$ is the external field imposed by external source. - m is the mass of the electron or positron. - $F_{\mu\nu} = \partial_\mu A_\nu - \partial_\nu A_\mu$ is the electromagnetic field tensor. This is also known as the curvature of the gauge field. Expanding the covariant derivative reveals a second useful form of the Lagrangian (external field $B_\mu$ set to zero for simplicity) $\mathcal{L} = - \frac{1}{4}F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu} + \bar\psi(i\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu - m)\psi - ej^\mu A_\mu$ where $j^\mu$ is the conserved $\text{U}(1)$ current arising from Noether's theorem. It is written $j^\mu = \bar\psi\gamma^\mu\psi.$ ### Equations of motion Expanding the covariant derivative in the Lagrangian gives $\mathcal{L} = - \frac{1}{4}F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu} + i \bar\psi \gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \psi - e\bar{\psi}\gamma^\mu A_\mu \psi -m \bar{\psi} \psi$ $= - \frac{1}{4}F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu} + i \bar\psi \gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \psi -m \bar{\psi} \psi - ej^\mu A_\mu .$ For simplicity, $B_\mu$ has been set to zero. Alternatively, we can absorb $B_\mu$ into a new gauge field $A'_\mu = A_\mu + B_\mu$ and relabel the new field as $A_\mu.$ From this Lagrangian, the equations of motion for the $\psi$ and $A_\mu$ fields can be obtained. #### Equation of motion for ψ These arise most straightforwardly by considering the Euler-Lagrange equation for $\bar\psi$. Since the Lagrangian contains no $\partial_\mu\bar\psi$ terms, we immediately get $\frac{\partial \mathcal{L}}{\partial \bar\psi} = 0$ so the equation of motion can be written $(i\gamma^\mu\partial_\mu-m)\psi = e\gamma^\mu A_\mu\psi.$ #### Equation of motion for A_μ - Using the Euler–Lagrange equation for the $A_\mu$ field, the derivatives this time are $\partial_\nu \left( \frac{\partial \mathcal{L}}{\partial ( \partial_\nu A_\mu )} \right) = \partial_\nu \left( \partial^\mu A^\nu - \partial^\nu A^\mu \right),$ $\frac{\partial \mathcal{L}}{\partial A_\mu} = -e\bar{\psi} \gamma^\mu \psi.$ Substituting back into (3) leads to $\partial_\mu F^{\mu\nu} = e\bar\psi \gamma^\nu \psi$ which can be written in terms of the $\text{U}(1)$ current $j^\mu$ as Now, if we impose the Lorenz gauge condition $\partial_\mu A^\mu = 0,$ the equations reduce to $\Box A^\mu = ej^\mu,$ which is a wave equation for the four-potential, the QED version of the classical Maxwell equations in the Lorenz gauge. (The square represents the wave operator, $\Box = \partial_\mu \partial^\mu$.) ### Interaction picture This theory can be straightforwardly quantized by treating bosonic and fermionic sectors as free. This permits us to build a set of asymptotic states that can be used to start computation of the probability amplitudes for different processes. In order to do so, we have to compute an evolution operator, which for a given initial state $|i\rangle$ will give a final state $\langle f|$ in such a way to have $M_{fi} = \langle f|U|i\rangle.$ This technique is also known as the S-matrix. The evolution operator is obtained in the interaction picture, where time evolution is given by the interaction Hamiltonian, which is the integral over space of the second term in the Lagrangian density given above: $V = e \int d^3 x\, \bar\psi \gamma^\mu \psi A_\mu,$ and so, one has $U = T \exp\left[-\frac{i}{\hbar} \int_{t_0}^t dt'\, V(t')\right],$ where T is the time-ordering operator. This evolution operator only has meaning as a series, and what we get here is a perturbation series with the fine-structure constant as the development parameter. This series is called the Dyson series. ### Feynman diagrams Despite the conceptual clarity of this Feynman approach to QED, almost no early textbooks follow him in their presentation. When performing calculations, it is much easier to work with the Fourier transforms of the propagators. Experimental tests of quantum electrodynamics are typically scattering experiments. In scattering theory, particles' momenta rather than their positions are considered, and it is convenient to think of particles as being created or annihilated when they interact. Feynman diagrams then look the same, but the lines have different interpretations. The electron line represents an electron with a given energy and momentum, with a similar interpretation of the photon line. A vertex diagram represents the annihilation of one electron and the creation of another together with the absorption or creation of a photon, each having specified energies and momenta. Using Wick's theorem on the terms of the Dyson series, all the terms of the S-matrix for quantum electrodynamics can be computed through the technique of Feynman diagrams. In this case, rules for drawing are the following To these rules we must add a further one for closed loops that implies an integration on momenta $\int d^4p/(2\pi)^4$, since these internal ("virtual") particles are not constrained to any specific energy–momentum, even that usually required by special relativity (see Propagator for details). The signature of the metric $\eta_{\mu \nu }$ is ${\rm diag}(+---)$. From them, computations of probability amplitudes are straightforwardly given. An example is Compton scattering, with an electron and a photon undergoing elastic scattering. Feynman diagrams are in this case and so we are able to get the corresponding amplitude at the first order of a perturbation series for the S-matrix: $M_{fi} = (ie)^2 \overline{u}(\vec{p}', s')\epsilon\!\!\!/\,'(\vec{k}',\lambda')^* \frac{p\!\!\!/ + k\!\!\!/ + m_e} {(p + k)^2 - m^2_e} \epsilon\!\!\!/(\vec{k}, \lambda) u(\vec{p}, s) + (ie)^2\overline{u}(\vec{p}', s')\epsilon\!\!\!/(\vec{k},\lambda) \frac{p\!\!\!/ - k\!\!\!/' + m_e}{(p - k')^2 - m^2_e} \epsilon\!\!\!/\,'(\vec{k}', \lambda')^* u(\vec{p}, s),$ from which we can compute the cross section for this scattering. ### Nonperturbative phenomena The predictive success of quantum electrodynamics largely rests on the use of perturbation theory, expressed in Feynman diagrams. However, quantum electrodynamics also leads to predictions beyond perturbation theory. In the presence of very strong electric fields, it predicts that electrons and positrons will be spontaneously produced, so causing the decay of the field. This process, called the Schwinger effect, cannot be understood in terms of any finite number of Feynman diagrams and hence is described as nonperturbative. Mathematically, it can be derived by a semiclassical approximation to the path integral of quantum electrodynamics. ## Renormalizability Higher-order terms can be straightforwardly computed for the evolution operator, but these terms display diagrams containing the following simpler ones that, being closed loops, imply the presence of diverging integrals having no mathematical meaning. To overcome this difficulty, a technique called renormalization has been devised, producing finite results in very close agreement with experiments. A criterion for the theory being meaningful after renormalization is that the number of diverging diagrams is finite. In this case, the theory is said to be "renormalizable". The reason for this is that to get observables renormalized, one needs a finite number of constants to maintain the predictive value of the theory untouched. This is exactly the case of quantum electrodynamics displaying just three diverging diagrams. This procedure gives observables in very close agreement with experiment as seen e.g. for electron gyromagnetic ratio. Renormalizability has become an essential criterion for a quantum field theory to be considered as a viable one. All the theories describing fundamental interactions, except gravitation, whose quantum counterpart is only conjectural and presently under very active research, are renormalizable theories. ## Nonconvergence of series An argument by Freeman Dyson shows that the radius of convergence of the perturbation series in QED is zero. The basic argument goes as follows: if the coupling constant were negative, this would be equivalent to the Coulomb force constant being negative. This would "reverse" the electromagnetic interaction so that like charges would attract and unlike charges would repel. This would render the vacuum unstable against decay into a cluster of electrons on one side of the universe and a cluster of positrons on the other side of the universe. Because the theory is "sick" for any negative value of the coupling constant, the series does not converge but is at best an asymptotic series. From a modern perspective, we say that QED is not well defined as a quantum field theory to arbitrarily high energy. The coupling constant runs to infinity at finite energy, signalling a Landau pole. The problem is essentially that QED appears to suffer from quantum triviality issues. This is one of the motivations for embedding QED within a Grand Unified Theory. ## Electrodynamics in curved spacetime This theory can be extended, at least as a classical field theory, to curved spacetime. This arises similarly to the flat spacetime case, from coupling a free electromagnetic theory to a free fermion theory and including an interaction which promotes the partial derivative in the fermion theory to a gauge-covariant derivative. ## See also - Abraham–Lorentz force - Anomalous magnetic moment - Bhabha scattering - Cavity quantum electrodynamics - Circuit quantum electrodynamics - Compton scattering - Euler–Heisenberg Lagrangian - Gupta–Bleuler formalism - Lamb shift - Landau pole - Moeller scattering - Non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics - Photon polarization - Positronium - Precision tests of QED - QED vacuum - QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter - Quantization of the electromagnetic field - Scalar electrodynamics - Schrödinger equation - Schwinger model - Schwinger–Dyson equation - Vacuum polarization - Vertex function - Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory

Architecture of the Song dynasty

Architecture of 11th-13th century Chinese dynasty

The architecture of the Song dynasty (960–1279) was noted for its towering Buddhist pagodas, enormous stone and wooden bridges, lavish tombs, and extravagant palaces. Although literary works on architecture existed beforehand, architectural writing blossomed during the Song dynasty, maturing into a more professional form that described dimensions and working materials in a concise, organized manner. In addition to the examples still standing, depictions in Song artwork, architectural drawings, and illustrations in published books all aid modern historians in understanding the architecture of the period. The professions of architect, master craftsman, carpenter, and structural engineer did not have the high status of the Confucian scholar-officials during the dynastic era. Architectural knowledge had been passed down orally for thousands of years, usually from craftsman fathers to their sons. There were also government agencies and schools for construction, building, and engineering. The Song dynasty's building manuals aided not only the various private workshops, but also the craftsmen employed by the central government. ## City and palace The layout of ancient Chinese capitals, such as Bianjing, capital of the Northern Song, followed the guidelines in Kao Gong Ji, which specified a square city wall with several gates on each side and passageways for the emperor. The outer city of ancient Bianjing was built during the reign of Emperor Shenzong to a rectangular plan, almost square in proportions, about 6 km (3.7 mi) from north to south and 7 km (4.3 mi) from west to east. The south wall had three gates, with Nanxun Gate in the center, Chenzhou Gate to the east, and Dailou Gate to the west. The other walls had four gates each: in the east wall were Dongshui Gate (at the southern end), Xinsong Gate, Xinchao Gate, and North-East Water Gate; in the west wall Xinzheng Gate, West Water Gate, Wansheng Gate, and Guzi Gate; and in the north wall Chenqiao Gate (at the eastern end), Fengqiu Gate, New Wild Jujube Gate and Weizhou Gate. The gates in the center of each of the four sides were reserved for the emperor; these gates had straight passages and only two sets of doors, while the other city gates had zigzag passages and were guarded by three sets of doors. The Song artist Zhang Zeduan's painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival depicts the Dongshui Gate in detail: the building on top had a five-ridged roof with a shallow slope in the Song dynasty style, supported prominently by two sets of brackets (dougong). The lower bracket assembly rested on the city gate to form a wooden foundation, while the upper assembly supported the roof, similar to the dougong in an extant Song building, the Goddess Temple in Taiyuan. This method of using bracket assemblies to support superstructure was specified in the 12th-century building manual Yingzao Fashi as pingzuo (literally "flat base"). The city wall itself was built with rammed earth, a technique also detailed in Yingzao Fashi, vol. III, "Standards for Moat, Stronghold and Masonry Work": > Foundation: For every square chi, apply two dan of earth; on top of it lay a mixture of broken brick, tile and crushed stones, also two dan. For every five-cun layer of earth, two men, standing face to face, should tamp six times with pestles, each man pounding three times on a dent; then tamp four times on each dent, two men again standing face to face, each pounding twice on the same dent; then tamp two more times, each man pounding once. Following this, tamp the surface with pestles or stamp with feet randomly to even out the surface. Every five-cun layer of earth should be compressed to three cun; every three-cun layer of brick and stone to one and a half cun. Rammed-earth walls during this time were tapered: the thickness of the wall is greatest at the base and decreases steadily with increasing height, as detailed in Li Jie's book. During the Song dynasty, the city of Bianjing had three enclosures: the outer city wall, the inner city wall, and the palace at the center. The inner city was rectangular, with three doors on each side. The palace enclosure was also rectangular, with a watch tower on each of the four corners. It had four main gates: Xihua Gate to the west, Donghua Gate to the east, Gongchen Gate to the north, and Xuande Gate, also known as Duan Gate or Xuandelou, at the south. Xuande Gate had five-paneled doors, painted red and decorated with gold tacks; its walls were lavishly decorated with dragon, phoenix and floating-cloud patterns to match the carved beams, painted rafters and glazed-tile roof. There were also two glazed dragons, each biting an end of the rooftop ridge, its tail pointing to the sky. The symbolic function of these chi wei was explained in Yingzao Fashi: > There is a dragon in the East Sea, whose tail (wei) is similar to that of a sparrow-hawk (chi); it stirs up waves and causes rainfall, so people put its likeness on the rooftop to prevent fire. However, they misnamed it "sparrow-hawk tail" (chi wei). Running southward from Xuande Gate was the Imperial Boulevard, about two hundred paces wide, with the Imperial Corridors on either side. Merchants opened shops in the Corridors until 1112, when they were banned. Two rows of black fencing were placed at the center of the boulevard as a barrier to pedestrians and carriages. Along the inner sides of the fences ran the brick-lined Imperial Water Furrows, filled with lotus. About 400 m (1,300 ft) south from Xuande Gate, the Bian River intercepted the Imperial Boulevard, which crossed it over the stone Zhou Bridge, balustraded and flat-decked. This design of a boulevard with a stone bridge crossing a river was later imitated in the Forbidden City. During spring and summer, mingled peach, plum, pear and apricot trees adorned the banks of the Bian with a variety of flowers. ## Buddhist pagodas Following the reign of the Han dynasty, (202 BC–220 AD), the idea of the Buddhist stupa entered Chinese culture as a means to house and protect scriptural sutras. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, the distinctive Chinese pagoda was developed, its predecessors being the tall watch towers and towering residential apartments of the Han dynasty (as inferred from models in Han-era tombs). During the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907) periods, Chinese pagodas were developed from purely wooden structures to use articulated stone and brick, which could more easily survive fires caused by lightning or arson and were less susceptible to decay. The earliest brick pagoda that remains extant is the Songyue Pagoda, built in 523, and a typical example of a Tang-era stone pagoda is the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, constructed in 652. Although Buddhist influences on China waned after the late Tang period, numerous Buddhist pagoda towers were built during the Song dynasty. Tall Chinese pagodas were often built in the countryside rather than within a city's walls, largely to avoid competition with the cosmic-imperial authority embodied in the cities' drum- and gate-towers. The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, built in a city ward of what was southeastern Chang'an, is among the exceptions. The Iron Pagoda of Youguo Temple in Kaifeng earned its name from the iron-grey color of the glazed bricks forming the tower. Originally built of wood by the architect Yu Hao, it was struck by lightning and burned down in 1044, during the Northern Song period. In 1049 the pagoda was rebuilt as it appears today, under the order of Emperor Renzong of Song. This 13-story pagoda, structured on an octagonal base, is 56.88 meters (186.6 ft) tall. Its glazed tile bricks feature carved artwork of dancing figures, solemn ministers, and Buddhist themes (see gallery below). The period also featured true cast-iron pagodas, such as the Iron Pagoda of Yuquan Temple (Jade Springs Temple), Dangyang, Hubei Province. Built in 1061, it incorporates 53,848 kg (118,715 lb) of cast iron and stands 21.28 m (69.8 ft) tall. Imitating contemporary wooden, stone, and brick pagodas, the pagoda features sloping eaves and an octagonal base. Another iron pagoda was constructed in 1105, Jining, Shandong, and was cast layer by layer in octagonal sections, standing 78 feet high. Several such cast iron pagodas exist in China today. The Liuhe Pagoda, or Six Harmonies Pagoda, is another example of Song-era pagoda architecture. It is located in the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province, at the foot of Yuelun Hill facing the Qiantang River. Although the original was destroyed in 1121, the current tower was erected in 1156 and fully restored by 1165. It stands 59.89 m (196.5 ft) tall, and was constructed from a red brick frame with 13 stages of wooden eaves. Because of its size, the pagoda served as a permanent lighthouse to aid sailors at night (as described in Hangzhou Fu Zhi). The Zhengjue Temple Pagoda in Pengxian County of Sichuan Province (near Chengdu) is a brick pagoda that was built between 1023 and 1026, according to inscriptions running along its first storey. It has a square base on a sumeru pedestal, thirteen stories totaling 28 m (92 ft) in height, and multiple layers of eaves similar in style to the earlier Tang pagodas of Chang'an, the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. Wood-and-brick hybrid pagodas were also built. The first four floors of the octagonal, 42 m (138 ft) Lingxiao Pagoda of 1045 are brick (with wooden eaves), while from the fifth floor up it is entirely made of wood. Even pagodas made of stone or brick featured architectural elements that were typical of Chinese wooden buildings; for example the Pizhi Pagoda, built from 1056 to 1063, uses the dougong brackets typical of wooden architecture to hold up pent, shingled roofs and tiers. Both of these pagodas feature interior staircases, although the Lingxiao Pagoda's only reaches to the fourth floor, and the Pizhi Pagoda's to the fifth. However, the Pizhi Pagoda features winding exterior stairs that provide access to the ninth and topmost floor. The Liaodi Pagoda in Dingzhou, Hebei Province is a stone and brick pagoda completed in 1055, and one of the tallest pre-modern Chinese constructions. At 84 meters (276 ft) tall, it is the tallest Chinese pagoda built in the dynastic era that is still standing, surpassing the 69-meter (226 ft) Qianxun Pagoda, which had held the record since its construction in the 9th century by the Kingdom of Dali. The Liaodi Pagoda has an octagonal base on a large platform. It served both a religious purpose as a Buddhist landmark of the Kaiyuan Monastery, and a military purpose as a watch tower used to observe the enemy forces of the Liao dynasty. Beside their utility in surveillance, pagoda towers could also serve as astronomical observatories; one such is the Gaocheng Astronomical Observatory, built in 1276 and still standing today. ## Temples It was not uncommon for wealthy or powerful families to facilitate the construction of large temple complexes, usually by donating a portion of their family estate to a Buddhist sect. Often the land already contained buildings that could be re-purposed for religions use. The Fei (費) family of the town of Jinze, located just west of Shanghai, converted a mansion on their property into a Buddhist sutra-recitiation hall, and later built several other religious buildings around the hall. This spurred a boom in temple construction in the area, causing Jinze to become a major center of the White Lotus sect of Buddhism, which in turn spurred the construction of more temples and lead the town to become a significant location within the Song. The nearby town of Nanxiang gained prominence shortly after the fall of the Song in large part to the construction of temples and other religious buildings, which spanned the entire Song empire. Apart from stimulating the development of urban areas, temples and religious buildings featured a number of unique aesthetic and structural features. The Temple of the Saintly Mother (圣母殿) and the Hall of Sacrifice of the Jin Temple (晋祠), located in a southeastern suburb of Taiyuan City, Shanxi province, are extant examples of early Song architecture. The Temple of the Saintly Mother is the main building of the Jin Temple, first built in the period between 1023 and 1032 and renovated in 1102. It has a double-eaved roof with nine ridges, and two dragon-heads with wide-open jaws biting the ends of the main ridge. The roof is supported by massive dougong brackets corresponding to drawings in Yingzao Fashi. The eaves of the Temple of the Saintly Mother curve upward slightly at each end, a characteristic of Song architecture. The columns of the façade, decorated with dragons that coil around the shafts, become progressively taller with increasing distance to either side of the central pair. The building has a porch around it, the sole example of such a structure; another unique feature of the site is a cross-shaped bridge that leads to the Goddess Temple. The Trinity Hall of Xuan Miao Temple (玄妙观), situated in the heart of Suzhou city, is another example of Song architecture. In 1982, it was established as a National Heritage Site by the Chinese government. The Jingling Palace (景灵宫 Jingling Gong), a temple to the legendary Yellow Emperor located near modern-day Qufu, was built in the 11th century. It was subsequently destroyed near the end of the Yuan dynasty. However, several other structures in Shou Qiu, the complex that Jingling Palace was situated in, remain intact. Two giant tortoise-borne steles flank what was the entrance to the palace. One of the two steles, the Stele of the Sorrow of 10,000, is at 52 meters (171 ft) high, the tallest unmarked stele in the country. A large pyramid constructed of rounded stone blocks, the symbolic tomb of the Yellow Emperor's son Shaohao, is located outside the Shou Qiu complex. Another important large tortoise-borne stele of the same period has been preserved at the Dai Miao of Mount Tai. ## Bridges Bridges over waterways had been known in China since the ancient Zhou dynasty. During the Song dynasty, large trestle bridges were constructed, such as that built by Zhang Zhongyan in 1158. There were also large bridges made entirely of stone, like the Ba Zi Bridge of Shaoxing, built in 1256 and still standing today. Bridges with pavilions crowning their central spans were often featured in such paintings as the landscapes of Xia Gui (1195–1224). Long, covered corridor bridges, like the 12th-century Rainbow Bridge in Wuyuan, Jiangxi province, which has wide stone-based piers and a wooden superstructure, were also built. While serving as an administrator for Hangzhou, the poet Su Shi (1037–1101) had a large pedestrian causeway built across the West Lake, which still bears his name: Sudi (蘇堤). In 1221, the Taoist traveler Qiu Changchun visited Genghis Khan in Samarkand, describing various Chinese bridges encountered on the way there through the Tian Shan Mountains, east of Yining. The historian Joseph Needham quotes Qiu as saying: > [The road had] "no less than 48 timber bridges of such width that two carts can drive over them side by side". It had been built by Chang Jung [Zhang Rong] and the other engineers of the Chagatai some years before. The wooden trestles of Chinese bridges from the −3rd century [BC] onwards were no doubt similar to those supposed to have been employed in Julius Caesar's bridge of −55 [BC] across the Rhine, or drawn by Leonardo, or found in use in Africa. But where in +13th century [AD] Europe could a two-lane highway like Chang Jung's have been found? In Fujian Province, enormous beam bridges were built during the Song dynasty. Some of these were as long as 1,220 m (4,000 ft), with individual spans of up to 22 m (72 ft) in length; their construction necessitated moving massive stones of 203 t (203,000 kg). No names of the engineers were recorded or appear in the inscriptions on the bridges, which give only the names of local officials who sponsored them and oversaw their construction and repair. However, there might have been an engineering school in Fujian, headed by a prominent engineer known as Cai Xiang (1012–1067), who had risen to the position of governmental prefect in Fujian. Between 1053 and 1059, he planned and supervised the construction of the large Wanan Bridge (once called the Luoyang Bridge) near Quanzhou (on the border of the present-day Luojiang District and Huai'an County. This bridge, a stone structure similar to a number of other bridges found in Fujian, still stands, and features ship-like piers bound to their bases using mucilage from oysters as an adhesive. It is 731 m (2,398 ft) in length, 5 m (16 ft) in width, and 7 m (23 ft) in height. Another famous bridge near Quanzhou, the Anping Bridge, was constructed between 1138 and 1151. Other examples of Song bridges include Guyue Bridge, a stone arch bridge in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province. The bridge was built in 1213, the sixth year of the Jiading Era in the Southern Song dynasty. Song-era pontoon bridges include the Dongjin Bridge, 400 m (1⁄4 mi) long, which may still be seen today. ## Tombs of Northern Song emperors Located southwest of Gongyi city in Henan province, the large tombs of the Northern Song number about one thousand, including individual tombs for Song emperors, empresses, princes, princesses, consorts, and members of the extended family. The complex extends approximately 7 km (4.3 mi) from east to west and 8 km (5.0 mi) from north to south. The construction of the complex began in 963 AD, during the reign of the first Song ruler, Emperor Taizu of Song, whose father is also buried at the site. The only Northern Song emperors not buried there are Emperor Huizong of Song and Emperor Qinzong of Song, who died in captivity after the Jin–Song Wars in 1127. Lining the spirit ways of the tomb complex are hundreds of Song sculptures and statues of tigers, rams, lions, horses with grooms, horned beasts and mythical creatures, government officials, military generals, foreign ambassadors, and others featured in an enormous display of Song-era artwork. The layout and style of the Song tombs resemble those found in the contemporary Tangut kingdom of the Western Xia, which also had an auxiliary burial site associated with each tomb. At the center of each burial site is a truncated pyramidal tomb, each having once been guarded by a four-walled enclosure with four centered gates and four corner towers. About 100 km (62 mi) from Gongxian is the Baisha Tomb, which contains "elaborate facsimiles in brick of Chinese timber frame construction, from door lintels to pillars and pedestals to bracket sets, that adorn interior walls." The Baisha Tomb has two large separate chambers with conical domed ceilings; a large staircase leads down to the entrance doors of the subterranean tomb. ## Literature During the Song dynasty, previous works on architecture were brought to more sophisticated levels of description, as in Yili Shigong written in 1193 AD. However, one of the most definitive works was the earlier Mu Jing ("Timberwork Manual"), ascribed to Yu Hao and written sometime between 965 and 995. Yu Hao was responsible for the construction of a wooden pagoda tower in Kaifeng, which was destroyed by lightning and replaced by the brick Iron Pagoda soon after. In his time, books on architecture were still considered a low scholarly achievement due to the craft's status, so Mu Jing was not even recorded in the official court bibliography. Although the book itself was lost to history, the scientist and statesman Shen Kuo wrote of Yu's work extensively in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088, praising it as a work of architectural genius, saying that no one in his own time could reproduce such a work. Shen Kuo singled out, among other passages, a scene in which Yu Hao gives advice to another artisan-architect about slanting struts in order to brace a pagoda against the wind, and a passage in which Yu Hao describes the three sections of a building, the area above the crossbeams, the area above ground, and the foundation, and then proceeds to provide proportional ratios and construction techniques for each section. Several years later the Yingzao Fashi ("Treatise on Architectural Methods" or "State Building Standards") was published. Although similar books came before it, such as Yingshan Ling ("National Building Law") of the early Tang dynasty (618–907), this is a manual on Chinese architecture to have survived in full. ### Yingzao Fashi Yingzao Fashi is a technical treatise on architecture and craftsmanship written at the Directorate of Buildings and Construction. The book was completed in 1100 and presented to Emperor Zhezong of Song in the last year of his reign. His successor, Emperor Huizong of Song, had the treatise officially published three years later, in 1103, for the benefit of foremen, architects, and literate craftsmen. The book was intended to provide standard regulations, to not only the engineering agencies of the central government, but also the many workshops and artisan families throughout China who could benefit from using a well-written government manual on building practices. Yingzao Fashi included building codes and regulations, accounting information, descriptions of construction materials, and classification of crafts. In its 34 chapters, the book outlined units of measurement, and the construction of moats, fortifications, stonework, and woodwork. For the latter, it included specifications for making bracketing units with inclined arms and joints for columns and beams. It also provided specifications for wood carving, drilling, sawing, bamboo work, tiling, wall building, and decoration. The book contained recipes for decorative paints, glazes, and coatings, also listing proportions for mixing mortars used in masonry, brickwork, and manufacture of glazed tiles, illustrating practices and standards with drawings. His book outlined structural carpentry in great detail, providing standard dimensional measurements for all components used. here he developed a standard eight-grade system for sizing timber elements, known as the cai-fen system of units, which could be universally applied in buildings. About 8% of the book was derived from pre-existing written material on architecture, while the majority of the book documented the inherited traditions of craftsmen and architects. The Yingzao Fashi provided a full glossary of technical terms that included mathematical formulae, building proportions, and construction techniques, and discussed the implications of the local topography for construction at a particular site. He also estimated the monetary costs of hiring laborers of different skill levels from various crafts on the basis of a day's work, in addition to the price of the materials they would need and according to the season in which they were to be employed. ## Architecture in Song artwork ## See also - Ming architecture - Chinese architecture - Caihua - Chinese Palaces - List of Chinese inventions

Tigris (roller coaster)

Steel roller coaster at Busch Gardens Tampa

Tigris is a steel launched roller coaster at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay theme park in Tampa, Florida, United States. Built on the former Tanganyika Tidal Wave water ride, Tigris officially opened on April 19, 2019 as the park's ninth roller coaster. Tigris is located within the Stanleyville section of the park. The roller coaster and surrounding area re-uses previous infrastructure and landscaping of the former attraction. Manufactured by Premier Rides, the roller coaster is one of ten Sky Rocket II models built. Tigris utilizes a linear synchronous motor (LSM) system to propel the train through three launches. The roller coaster reaches a maximum height of 150 ft (46 m), a maximum speed of 62 mph (100 km/h), and has a total track length of 863 ft (263 m), though riders traverse around 1,800 ft (550 m) of track. Upon opening, the roller coaster received positive reviews from critics. ## History The Tanganyika Tidal Wave, an African-themed shoot the chutes water ride, closed in April 2016. In March 2018, SeaWorld Entertainment (owner of Busch Gardens Tampa Bay) filed trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the name "Tigris", in addition to "Twisted Tiger" and "Uproar". In April 2018, demolition permits were filed for the water ride's deconstruction. Demolition of the former water ride began in June 2018. An environmental resource permit was submitted on June 26, 2018, to the Southwest Florida Water Management District revealing the location of a new attraction to be within the confines of the tiger exhibit and section of Jungala. The documents and permits, reported in July, discussed upcoming developments on the site of the prior water ride under the working title "Project TEEL". The project proposed to construct a 3,230 sq ft (300 m²) building within a 19,683 sq ft (1,828.6 m²) area consisting of the attraction and paths and to remove 40,185 sq ft (3,733.3 m²) within the existing area. Busch Gardens Tampa Bay announced Tigris, a Premier Rides Sky Rocket II, model on September 12, 2018. The announcement revealed the roller coaster would be themed to the tiger and open in 2019 along with a development for a Gwazi area attraction in 2020. In October 2018, the concrete footers for the roller coaster were completed and the first construction updates by the park were published. During the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) exposition in November 2018, the design of Tigris's cars were revealed by Premier Rides in the form of a cake. The roller coaster's track began arriving at the park on November 29, 2018, with vertical construction of the track pieces taking place on December 3, 2018. The park detailed the support structure of Tigris was around three-fifths complete by January 2019, with construction of the roller coaster complete by February. The train for Tigris was observed being lifted onto the track on February 20. Busch Gardens announced a media event to present the roller coaster's car alongside additional information on the Gwazi attraction. The train for the roller coaster was publicly displayed for parkgoers beginning on March 1. The roller coaster's opening date was announced by the park on April 4, with Tigris soft opening on April 16, 2019, and officially opening on April 19. ## Ride experience ### Queue The queue area of the ride was repurposed from the previous attraction, Tanganyika Tidal Wave, though the water rides station was not reused. The roller coaster's queue uses a part of the water ride's pathway with landscaping in tact from the previous layout. The queue of the ride features educational pieces of the tiger's living conditions in the wild and actions wildlife conservationists take with the species. ### Layout Tigris launches out of the station up into a partial twist. The train then falls back through the station, where it is accelerated backwards into another twist. Once again, the train falls forward into the station and riders are accelerated to a top speed of 62 mph (100 km/h). It then travels up to a height of 150 ft (46 m) where it completes a half-loop and a heartline roll before exiting in a second non-inverting half-loop. It then enters a full non-inverting loop before returning to the station. ## Characteristics Tigris operates within a small footprint of the former attraction and is located within the Stanleyville section of the park. For the construction of the roller coaster, existing infrastructure in the land was reused for the purpose of the ride. The landscape was preserved with recycled materials from the previous Tanganyika Tidal Wave water ride and other byproducts from the construction of Falcon's Fury and Cobra's Curse attractions. Tigris was the third Sky Rocket II model to be constructed at SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment-owned theme parks, the first being Tempesto at sister park Busch Gardens Williamsburg and the second, Electric Eel, at SeaWorld San Diego. The roller coaster is one of ten Sky Rocket II models built by Premier Rides. Tigris was the ninth roller coaster built at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay in operation. The roller coaster features black-gray supports with bright orange track. The roller coaster uses a linear synchronous motor (LSM) launch system that adjusts the speed of each launch by timing the train's position through sensors. The LSM launch system is cooled by air blowers beneath the track. The roller coaster has a total track length of 863 ft (263 m), though riders traverse around 1,800 ft (550 m) of track because of the forward and backward launches. Tigris operates one train featuring three cars, with each car having a row of two seats across in three rows for a total of eighteen riders per train. The cars have a lap bar and over the shoulder restraint system. The roller coaster train features an orange color scheme with tiger print. ## Reception Upon opening, Tigris received positive review from critics. A writer for the Tampa Bay Times, Daniel Figueroa IV, enthusiastically remarked about the roller coaster's overall intensity and its "visually impressive" speed. Figueroa IV further commented that any seat on the roller coaster had favorable moments to experience, with the front being more visually notable and the back for more intensity. A writer for the Orlando Sentinel, Dewayne Bevil, noted overall about the thrilling experience of the roller coaster, being both "confusing and...exciting". Bevil also remarked about the ride experiences from different seating position and the restraint system having positive and negative aspects. Haley Coomes of WKMG-TV described the "good first impression" the roller coaster operations left on her experience and personally added it earned "a top approval rating" between "the other Busch Gardens coaster giants". Andrew Stilwell of Coaster101 categorized Tigris as a mid-tier attraction for "thrill seekers" among other Busch Gardens roller coasters while praising its overall speed and different seating experiences. ## See also - SheiKra, another roller coaster located within the Stanleyville area of Busch Gardens Tampa Bay - Superman: Ultimate Flight (Six Flags Discovery Kingdom), another Sky Rocket II model

Craig Reid (footballer, born 1985)

English association football player

Craig Kevin Reid (born 17 December 1985) is an English footballer who plays as a striker. Reid started his career at Coventry City's youth academy in 2000, spending two years at the club before opting to join Ipswich Town in 2002. He spent two years at Ipswich, and then returned to Coventry, under a professional contract, in 2004. During his time at Coventry, Reid spent a month on loan at Conference National club Tamworth in March 2006. He was released by Coventry at the end of the 2005–06 season having not made a first-team appearance for his hometown club. In January 2007, Reid signed for Cheltenham Town and spent a year-and-a-half there before being released by the club in May 2008. Reid signed for Conference Premier club Grays Athletic on a short-term deal in August 2008, before being loaned out to Newport County. Reid joined Newport on a permanent basis. He was the club's top goalscorer for three consecutive seasons, and helped Newport to promotion to the Conference Premier during the club's successful 2009–10 season. In January 2011, Reid signed for Stevenage for a fee of £90,000, making him the club's record signing. He helped the club earn promotion to League One during the 2010–11 season. In July 2012, Reid joined Aldershot Town for an undisclosed fee. When Aldershot were relegated to the Conference at the end of the season, he had brief spells in the Football League with Southend United and Stevenage before spending the 2014–15 season with Kidderminster Harriers. Reid left Harriers by mutual consent early in the 2015–16 season, and then spent brief periods at various levels of non-League football with Brentwood Town, Lincoln City and Gainsborough Trinity. He signed for Gloucester City in June 2016. Reid returned to the Football League once again when he rejoined Newport County of League Two in January 2017, spending the second half of the 2016–17 season. He joined Coventry United in May 2017, before signing for Barwell on loan in January 2018. Reid left Coventry United at the end of the 2017–18 season. ## Career ### Early career Reid started his career with home city club Coventry City in their youth academy, before moving to Ipswich Town's academy after a successful trial in April 2002. After two years at Ipswich, he rejoined Coventry, this time under a professional contract. He was the club's Young Player of the Year for the 2004–05 season, and was given another year's contract. In March 2006, Reid signed for Conference National club Tamworth on a month's loan deal. He made his first-team debut the next day, starting in the club's 2–0 loss to Ebbsfleet United at Stonebridge Road, and played one further game for the club, a 0–0 home draw against Southport. On his return to Coventry, at the end of the 2005–06 season, Reid was released, having not made any first-team appearances. In May 2006, Reid had an unsuccessful trial at Stockport County. Ahead of the 2006–07 season, he went on trial at Falkirk, and scored twice in their 2–1 friendly victory against Airdrie United in July 2006. Despite this, he did not earn a contract with the club. He also had another unsuccessful trial with Dundee in September 2006. In January 2007, Reid signed for Cheltenham Town on a free transfer, signing a rolling monthly contract. He made his Cheltenham debut on 13 January 2007, coming on as a 76th-minute substitute in the club's 2–0 away loss at Huddersfield Town. He made a further five appearances for the club towards the latter stages of the 2006–07 season. In July 2007, Reid signed for Cheltenham on a permanent basis. He made a late substitute appearance in Cheltenham's first game of the 2007–08 season, playing three minutes in a 1–0 home win over Gillingham. Reid scored his first professional goal in Cheltenham's 3–1 away win against Swindon Town in the Football League Trophy. He made 12 appearances for Cheltenham during the 2007–08 season, scoring one goal. Reid was released by Cheltenham on 6 May 2008, having made 18 appearances for the club. Reid signed for Conference Premier club Grays Athletic on a one-year deal in August 2008, making his debut in a 1–0 home loss to Eastbourne Borough. He made two further appearances for Grays, before joining Conference South club Newport County on loan on 25 September 2008. ### Newport County Reid scored four times in ten league appearances during his loan spell at Newport, before signing for the club permanently on 19 December 2008. Reid scored his first senior hat-trick in Newport's 3–1 win against Chelmsford City in January 2009. He ended the season having scored 21 goals in 31 games in all competitions, 16 of which came in the Conference South. He remained at Newport for the 2009–10 season, and scored his first goal of the season in a 4–0 win against Chelmsford City. Reid was named as the Conference South Player of the Month after a run of seven goals in five matches in September 2009. Reid finished the 2009–10 season as Conference South top scorer with 24 goals for Newport who were champions with a record 103 points. He was named the Conference South Player of the Year. Reid signed a new two-year contract with Newport County on 17 April 2010. Reid started in Newport's first game of the 2010–11 season, the club's first game back in the top tier of the non-League pyramid; they lost 1–0 to Darlington at the Darlington Arena on 14 August 2010. Three days later, he scored his first goal of the season, a 71st-minute penalty that earned Newport a point in a 1–1 draw against Tamworth. At the end of August 2010, Reid scored four goals in two games, scoring successive braces in games against Kidderminster Harriers and AFC Wimbledon respectively. During the January 2011 transfer window, it was reported that Reid had attracted interest from Premier League club Stoke City, as well as from his former employers, Coventry. Reid's last two goals for Newport came in the club's 3–2 defeat to Tamworth at The Lamb Ground, Dean Holdsworth's final game in charge of the club. Reid made his last Conference appearance for the club on 29 January 2011, in a goalless draw away at Histon in which he missed an 83rd-minute penalty. He scored 18 goals in 29 league appearances during the first half of the 2010–11 season. During his two-and-a-half-year stay at Newport, Reid scored 66 goals in 112 games in all competitions. Reid was inducted into Newport's Hall of Fame during the club's centenary evening on 27 October 2012. ### Stevenage Reid signed for League Two club Stevenage for an initial undisclosed fee on 31 January 2011; the fee was a record for both clubs, and Stevenage later stated that they paid £90,000 for the player. As part of the deal, Stevenage strikers Charlie Griffin and Yemi Odubade joined Newport on loan. Reid made his Stevenage debut in a 2–2 home draw with Accrington Stanley on 5 February 2011. He scored his first goal for the club in a 2–1 away victory against Oxford United on 15 March, running onto Rob Sinclair's through pass to give Stevenage the three points. On the final day of the regular season, Reid scored Stevenage's second goal from the penalty spot in a 3–3 draw with Bury; the draw meant that Stevenage reached the play-offs thanks to a sixth-place finish. Reid started in all three of Stevenage's play-off games, including in the Final at Old Trafford against Torquay United, which Stevenage won 1–0 to gain promotion to League One. Reid made 23 appearances for Stevenage during the second half of the 2010–11 season, scoring twice. Reid started the first competitive game of the 2011–12 season, on 6 August 2011, playing 70 minutes in a 0–0 draw at home to Exeter City, before being substituted for Byron Harrison. On his next appearance, ten days later, he scored the first goal of the season in a 3–1 away victory against AFC Bournemouth. Reid scored twice for Stevenage in a 4–2 home win against Rochdale on 3 September. His first goal, from Lawrie Wilson's knockdown, opened the scoring, and his second – Stevenage's fourth – was widely reported as a Neal Trotman own goal, although it was attributed by Stevenage's website to Reid. His fourth goal in five games was Stevenage's first in a 5–1 victory against Sheffield Wednesday on 13 September 2011; he reacted quickest to a parried Michael Bostwick shot and scored from six yards out. He suffered a groin injury in November 2011 which required surgery, and he had a successful operation in January 2012. Reid returned to first-team action on 28 February, after three-and-a-half months out; he played the first 74 minutes of a 2–2 draw with Huddersfield Town. Reid went on to score goals in home victories against Brentford and Bury, with the latter strike coming in a 3–0 win that ultimately secured Stevenage's place in the play-offs. He made 34 appearances during the season, scoring seven times, as Stevenage lost in the play-off semi-finals. During his one-and-a-half-year spell at Stevenage, Reid made 57 appearances in all competitions, scoring eight times. ### Aldershot Town Ahead of the 2012–13 season, Reid signed for League Two club Aldershot Town for an undisclosed five-figure fee, later reported as a club record £75,000; the move reunited him with Aldershot manager Dean Holdsworth, who had previously managed Reid during his time at Newport County. He made his debut for the club on the opening day of the season, playing the whole match as Aldershot lost 7–6 on penalties to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the League Cup. Reid scored his first goal in his third appearance, in a 2–1 home defeat to Exeter City on 21 August 2012. Reid scored his first Football League hat-trick on 2 October 2012 in a 4–3 defeat to Torquay United at Plainmoor. He added a further three goals to his tally before the end of 2012, and opened the new year by scoring the winner from the penalty spot in a 1–0 victory away at Barnet, his tenth of the season. He ended the season with 12 goals from 45 appearances as Aldershot were relegated to the Conference. ### Southend United Although Aldershot did not initially release Reid, his contract was cancelled by mutual consent, and on 1 August 2013, he returned to League Two when he signed a one-year deal with Southend United. Southend manager Phil Brown stated that he hoped Reid would replace the goals scored by strikers Gavin Tomlin and Britt Assombalonga, both of whom had left. Reid made his Southend debut two days after signing for the club, on 3 August 2013, coming on as a 68th-minute substitute in a 1–0 victory against Plymouth Argyle. All eight of Reid's appearances for Southend came in the opening three months of the season, of which six were from the substitutes' bench, and he did not play for the club beyond October 2013. ### Return to Stevenage His contract with Southend was terminated by mutual consent on 25 February 2014, and Reid returned to League One club Stevenage. The move meant that Reid would be reunited with manager Graham Westley, who had signed the player for his first spell at the club three years earlier. He made one start and three substitute appearances without scoring, and was released at the end of the season. ### Non-League After leaving Stevenage, Reid signed a two-year deal with Conference Premier club Kidderminster Harriers on 15 May 2014. Reid made his Kidderminster debut on the opening day of the 2014–15 season, playing the first 64 minutes of the club's 0–0 draw away at Lincoln City. He scored his first goal for the club on 6 September 2014, opening the scoring in an eventual 2–1 victory against Gateshead at Aggborough. After scoring five times in 34 appearances during his first season, and not at all in the first month of the 2015–16 season, Reid left the club by mutual consent at the end of the transfer window. Reid linked up again with Dean Holdsworth, this time at Isthmian League Premier Division club Brentwood Town in October 2015, where he spent a short spell before joining for Lincoln City of the National League. He was released after two appearances and moved on to Gainsborough Trinity of the National League North in January 2016. Reid finished the season with Gainsborough, scoring three goals from 12 league matches, and was one of six players released. He signed for another National League North club on 6 June 2016, Gloucester City, managed by Tim Harris who was director of football at Newport when Reid was playing there. Reid made his debut for Gloucester in the club's first match of the 2016–17 season, playing the opening 84 minutes in a 1–1 draw away at Salford City. He scored once during his time there, in a 2–2 away draw with AFC Fylde, making 16 appearances during the first half of the season. ### Return to Newport County Having trained with the club prior to the official agreement, Reid rejoined former club Newport County on 6 January 2017. He signed for the club on a short-term deal under manager Graham Westley, the third time Westley had signed Reid. A day later, he made his second debut for Newport as a second-half substitute in a 3–1 defeat to former club Stevenage. He subsequently started Newport's next nine League Two matches, although did not appear for the club following Westley's sacking in March 2017. Reid was released by Newport in May 2017 having made 10 appearances during his second spell with the club. ### Return to Non-League Following his release from Newport, Reid returned to his home city to join Midland Football League Premier Division club Coventry United. He scored 14 times in 29 appearances for the club during the first half of the 2017–18 season, before signing for Barwell of the Northern Premier League Premier Division on loan on 19 January 2018. Reid made his Barwell debut in the club's 2–0 away win at Workington a day after signing. He scored his only goal for the club in a 1–1 draw with Ashton United on 17 February 2018, and went on to make nine appearances during his time there. He returned to Coventry United and finished the 2017–18 season playing in the club's first-team. Reid was not named in Coventry United's squad list ahead of the 2018–19 season as he began to focus on earning his coaching badges. ## Style of play Reid has been deployed as a striker throughout his career. Manager Graham Westley described Reid as a "good quality technician". After signing Reid for a third time, Westley stated "pace was never his main attribute which is why, four years on, I am comfortable that he can still play a role in what we do next. ## Coaching career Reid is a UEFA B Licence coach. He has been the head coach of the University of Warwick men's football team since September 2016. ## Personal life Reid was born in Coventry. He supports his hometown club, Coventry City. ## Career statistics ## Honours Newport County - Conference South: 2009–10 Stevenage - League Two play-offs: 2010–11 Individual - Conference South Player of the Year: 2009–10

Early life of Jan Smuts

Jan Christian Smuts (aka Jan Christiaan Smuts), OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS (24 May 1870–11 September 1950) was a prominent South African and Commonwealth statesman, military leader, and philosopher. He served as a Boer General during the Boer War, a British General during the First World War and was appointed Field Marshal by King George VI during the Second World War. In addition to various cabinet appointments, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948. From 1917 to 1919 he was one of five members of the British War Cabinet, helping to create the Royal Air Force. He played a leading part in the post-war settlements at the end of both world wars, making significant contributions towards the creation of the League of Nations and the United Nations. He did much to redefine the relationship between Britain and the Dominions and Colonies, leading to the formation of the British Commonwealth. Jan Smuts was born in 1870, the second son of a traditional Boer farming family. By rural tradition, the eldest son would be the only child to receive a full formal education; however, on the death of his elder brother in 1882, 12-year-old Jan was sent to school for the first time. After four years of education he had made exceptional progress, gaining admission to study at Victoria College in Stellenbosch. He graduated in 1891 with first-class honours in Literature and Science. With this strong academic background, he applied for, and won, the Ebden scholarship for overseas study, electing to read law at Christ's College, Cambridge. After further academic success, and the recipient of many prestigious academic awards, he graduated in 1894 with double First-class honours. After graduating, Smuts passed the examinations for the Inns of Court, entering the Middle Temple. In 1895, despite the prospect of a bright future in the United Kingdom, the homesick Smuts returned to South Africa. ## In South Africa ### Childhood On 24 May 1870, at the Smuts family farm, Bovenplaats, in the district of Malmesbury, Cape Colony, a child was born to Jacobus Smuts and his wife Catharina. This child, their second son in what was to become a family of four sons and two daughters, was christened Jan Christiaan after his maternal grandfather, Jan Christiaan de Vries The Smuts family were prosperous yeoman farmers, long-established in the area. For four generations, since 1786, they had farmed in the Malmesbury district, settling on the farm Ongegund, of which Bovenplaats was a part, in 1818. This area was part of the so-called Swartland, the chief wheat-growing area of the Cape Colony. 1870 found Bovenplaats under the care of Jacobus Abraham Smuts and his wife Catharina Petronella. Jacobus Smuts lived in much the same manner as his forefathers — a hard-working farmer, a pillar of the Church, and one who took a leading part in the social and political affairs of the neighbourhood. Such was the regard in which he was held that he was later to be elected as the Member for Malmesbury in the Cape Parliament. Smuts's mother, born Catharina Petronella de Vries, was the sister of Boudewijn Homburg de Vries, the predikant of the nearby town of Riebeek West, some three miles (5 km) from Bovenplaats. The de Vries family originated from the area around Worcester, Cape Colony. Catharina accompanied her brother as his housekeeper when he took up his appointment at Riebeek West, eventually meeting and marrying her husband in 1866. She was a woman of considerable education and culture, at least according to the standards of the area, having studied music and French in Cape Town. When Jan was six years of age the family moved from Bovenplaats to a new farm some thirteen miles (19 km) away. This farm, Klipfontein, was a bequest to Jacobus Smuts, who, keen to have a farm of his own rather than one under the supervision of his father, moved his family there in 1876. #### Family life The Smuts family were traditional Afrikaner farmers. As such, questions of property and family affairs were extensively governed by custom. Custom dictated that it was upon the first son that family expectations fell; the family would strive, so far as their means allowed, to provide him with the best possible education with the goal of paving the way for his entry into one of the professions. As for the others, they would be put to work on the farm, while at the same time receiving a rudimentary home education. As the second son this was to be Jan's role. While he remained at the farm, his elder brother, Michiel, was sent to begin his schooling in Riebeek West, destined, like his uncle Boudewyn, for a future as a predikant in the Dutch Reformed Church. Farmwork combined with lessons from his mother — such was the order of Jan's life for the next few years. During his early childhood, still too young to be given formal responsibilities on the farm, Jan accompanied the Coloured farm labourers as they went about their daily work. At this time the relations between master and servant, between black and white, were certainly not based on social equality; nevertheless, on these Swartland farms there was little of the rigid segregation which was already emerging elsewhere in South Africa and which was later to have such profound consequences. Since 1828 the Cape had enshrined in law the principle of strict legal equality between the races. Unlike the rest of South Africa, all adult males, were entitled to vote and to stand for election to the Colonial legislature, subject only to a property qualification. In these country districts therefore, there existed a certain intimacy between the farm owners and their labourers. At harvest times it was common to find both working together to gather in the crops and it was also commonplace to find the farm's children playing with one another, irrespective of race. In this relatively liberal environment Jan accompanied the servants in their work, listening to their stories, learning the ways of the countryside, and trying to help as best he could. As his knowledge and confidence increased Jan began to go out into the countryside by himself, exploring the hills and valleys which surrounded him. Later, as an older boy, his chief responsibility was as a herd — first of the pigs and poultry in the farmyard, and later of the cattle out on the veld. The same laws of custom which had preordained Jan's role as a farmer also had their beneficial aspect; Boer farmers customarily allotted their sons a share of the natural increase of the beasts under their care. As time passed Jan gradually built up a respectable holding of livestock. At home, away from the work of the farm, his education was not neglected. Although restricted to rudimentary home schooling, his mother's own notable education placed him and his siblings at an advantage compared with other children in similar circumstances. #### Outside influence The Smuts family lived in an almost exclusively Afrikaner world. Nevertheless, this cultural identity, unlike that of the Boer republics to the north, did not define itself on opposition to Britain or the British. Swartland farmers had been largely insulated from the causes of discontent of earlier years, discontent which eventually culminated in the mass Boer migrations of the Great Trek. As a result, Jacobus Smuts largely unmoved by the Afrikaner nationalism preached by such organisations as the Afrikaner Bond, founded by Rev. SJ du Toit in 1877. After 1884, having come under the leadership of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, the Bond became more to the Smuts' taste. Hofmeyr changed the fundamental basis of the organisation, from one preaching Afrikaner separatism to one which combined a pragmatic policy of economic protectionism for Cape farmers and their produce with a call for unity between the English and Dutch-speaking populations and cooperation with the Colonial authorities. As a member of the Cape legislature Jacobus Smuts pledged his support to Hofmeyr and the reformed Bond. Unlike many parts of South Africa, conflict was an element largely absent from Jan Smuts's early life. Whether conflict between Briton and Boer, or conflict between Black and White — it had been many years since the farmers of the Swartland had had to deal with turmoil on their doorsteps. The absence of conflict, along with its inevitable counterpart, development of prejudice, had its effect upon Smuts. In later years Smuts was to look upon this time with the uttermost fondness. Of all his childhood experiences it was the time spent out on the veld, whether tending the cattle or out on excursions of his own, which seemed to have the most marked effects on him, developing an attachment which was almost spiritual in nature. As he wrote in 1902, aged 32: > How well I remember the years I spent tending the cattle on the large farm, roaming over all its far expanse of veld, in which every kloof, every valley, every koppie was endeared to me by the most familiar associations. Month after month I had spent there in lonely occupation — alone with the cattle, myself and God. The veld had grown part of me, not only in the sense that my bones were a part of it, but in that more vital sense which identifies nature with man ... Having no human companion, I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence. In ordinary circumstances Jan Smuts would have, in time, taken over the running of the family farm, spending his life as a farmer as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had before him. However this was not to be; events were to conspire to change this predetermined fate. ### Schooldays In 1882 tragedy struck the Smuts family. Their eldest son, Michiel, suddenly succumbed to typhoid while attending school at Riebeek West. This time of family grief and upheaval had a direct effect upon Jan; now, as the eldest son, the weight of family expectation fell squarely upon his shoulders. Within weeks Jan was sent from the familiar surroundings of Klipfontein to a boarding house at Riebeek West, to take his brother's place at the school of Mr TC Stoffberg. As had been the case with his brother, his parents had already mapped out his future; like his brother Jan was destined for a future in the Dutch Reformed Church, to be ordained as a predikant at the conclusion of his studies. This vocation, though imposed upon him by his parents, was by no means regarded as an imposition by Jan, growing up as he had in an environment where adherence to the Church and piety of deeds counted for a good deal. This upbringing had turned twelve-year-old Jan into a deeply religious, serious-minded boy. Now, attending school for the first time, he faced a number of obstacles. Foremost amongst these was his rudimentary grasp of English, at a time when it was the main medium of instruction and crucial for any Afrikaner who wished to play a role in wider Cape society. Thanks to his mother's efforts. in this as well as in other subjects, he was better prepared than most children in similar circumstances, but nevertheless he was to start his schooling alongside children many years younger than himself with many years of study separating him from his contemporaries. Even so, despite these disadvantages, Jan proved himself an outstanding scholar. He surpassed the other children both in terms of innate ability and in terms of dedication to his work. It was not for nothing that his headmaster, Mr Stoffberg, described him as "one of the most brilliant pupils he had ever taught, and the most hard-working boy he had ever met." Within three years Jan had made sufficient progress to have caught up with his age group, children with up to ten years of formal education behind them. He compounded this remarkable achievement when the time came for him to sit the Cape Colony elementary examination in 1885; Jan was placed ninth in the entire colony. The next year he surpassed even this, coming second in the School Higher examination. During these few years at Riebeek West Jan worked assiduously at his studies — self-evidently, given his achievements. His academic abilities were soon noted by his headmaster, who went out of his way to provide Jan with further curricular reading. Yet this was to prove insufficient to meet what was becoming an almost insatiable thirst for knowledge. Jan borrowed books and yet more books from the headmaster, poring over them at all times rather than engaging in the childish pursuits of the other children, separated from them by his strong work ethic. A few weeks before the School Higher examination this had its consequences — Jan fell ill, an illness exacerbated by his unremitting study. With a strict injunction from his doctor, ordering a complete rest with an absolute prohibition on work and reading, Jan was packed off to bed. Nevertheless, despite the doctor's orders, Jan went to strenuous lengths to evade the ban. One story told of him during this enforced convalescence describes how he used to involve the headmaster's youngest son in his subterfuges, bribing the four-year-old child to bring him books from his father's study. This enjoyed considerable success until the day of an unannounced visit from the headmaster's wife. In his sparsely furnished room there were few possibilities, but Jan made the best job that he could of concealing his by now substantial collection of books. The headmaster's wife upon entering the room found Jan, as expected, in bed. However the boy did not look to be comfortably resting as he ought, in fact he looked positively uncomfortable. She offered to make Jan's bed for him, he declined, insisting that he was perfectly comfortable; she insisted and, being the headmaster's wife, got her way. Embarking upon her deed of kindness she found, to her astonishment, the real reason for Jan's restlessness — underneath his bedclothes he was making a valiant effort to conceal an immense pile of contraband books! This dedication to reading and study might, in another boy, have been nothing more than a reaction to the impending examinations — but not in Jan's case. What made this particular episode revealing was that the books found under his bedclothes were largely unconnected with his studies. In Riebeek West he developed a lifelong habit, that of reading avidly outside the prescribed curriculum, seeking knowledge for its own sake. In 1886, at the age of sixteen, Jan embarked on the next stage of his education. Jan applied to, and was accepted by, Victoria College, Stellenbosch — one of the most prominent institutes of higher education in the Cape. In late 1886 he bade farewell to Riebeek West, ready to embark upon a new stage in life. ### Life in Stellenbosch Mr Stoffberg's school did not take its pupils to the final stage of secondary education. Before Jan could set his schooldays behind him and commence his higher education he would have to sit the Matriculation exam. Jan duly moved from Riebeek West to Stellenbosch, spending early 1886 to late 1886 preparing for this test. At Riebeeck West Jan had been a hard-working, deeply religious child, with a strongly reserved, almost solitary, nature. This disposition, a legacy of his pious, rural upbringing, is manifest in what is his earliest surviving letter. This letter, written to Professor C Murray, a tutor at Victoria College, was for the most part a run-of-the-mill enquiry into the administrative arrangements for the forthcoming term. Yet in amongst this mundane request for information on such matters as textbooks and school fees Jan found himself confiding his innermost motive forces to this stranger. As he wrote: > ... such a place [Stellenbosch] where a large puerile element exists, affords fair scope for moral, and what is more important, religious temptation, which, if yielded to, will eclipse alike the expectations of my parents and the intentions of myself ... For of what use will a mind, enlarged and refined in all possible ways, be to me, if my religion be a deserted pilot and morality a wreck? > > To avoid temptation and to make the proper use of my precious time, I purposely refuse to enter a public boarding department, as that of Mr de Kock, but shall board privately (most likely at Mr N. Ackermann's) which will, in addition, accord with my private and reserved nature. In the event, Smuts's resolution to "make the proper use of my precious time" overcame such moral and religious temptations as a small town like Stellenbosch was capable of providing. Religion and his studies – these remained unchallenged as the twin poles of his existence during his matriculation year. In the seclusion of Mr Ackermann's boarding house Jan studied assiduously, attended church with zeal, and ignored the blandishments of the "puerile element". The Matriculation exam tested candidates on five subjects: Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Science, and English Literature. By exam-time this dedication to his studies had paid off spectacularly; the 1887 Cape lists placed Jan third overall, with the highest marks in the Colony in Greek. In what had been by any standards a year of tremendous success the latter achievement was especially outstanding; a misunderstanding at the start of the year led Jan to believe that he would be exempted from the Greek exam – as a result it was a subject which he largely disregarded. Six days before the exam this potentially devastating oversight was exposed – there was now less than a week in which to catch up with a year's study. Jan immediately shut himself away in his rooms, spending the next days in total seclusion, working from sunrise to sunset in the attempt to master the grammar and vocabulary upon which he was shortly to be tested. By the time of the exam this hard work had paid off. Within a relatively short period Jan had largely memorised his books and had mastered the Greek language to a remarkable degree. Smuts's determined work ethic played a central role in these successes, yet he was also aided in no small part by his formidable memory. At that age Jan found himself able to memorise large portions of book simply by reading through them, and though this ability gradually diminished as the years passed, it never entirely disappeared. As his son was later to recount: > [at] Stellenbosch his examiners were, until they learned to understand this prodigy, inclined to accuse the youngster of cribbing, for many of his answers were verbatim from the text-book. At Stellenbosch his facility for memorising was at its peak... With the hurdle of Matriculation behind him the start of the 1887 term finally saw Smuts admitted as a student of Victoria College and enrolled as an undergraduate of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. #### Victoria College Victoria College proved fertile grounds for Smuts's imagination. As his biographer WK Hancock was to write: > The small teaching body, hardly more that [sic?] half a dozen men, covered a wide curriculum: but the students were also few and sifted for quality. Teachers and students were able in consequence to enjoy close individual contact with each other and ... they were able to work in an atmosphere of leisure. Smuts thrived in this environment. With these new vistas of knowledge and learning now revealed that he spared no effort in his attempts to master them. His surviving notebooks from this period reveal the range and breadth of his studies: Latin, Greek, German, the Classics, Optical Physics, Inorganic Chemistry and Metallurgy, Organic Chemistry and Agriculture, and Geology - to name but a few. Once again, as had been the case at Riebeek West, this was not merely study for the sake of exams - as ever, Smuts continued to study avidly outside the confines of the curriculum. Over the next few years at Victoria College, Smuts's religion continued to be of crucial importance. On Sundays he would attend both morning and evening church services, also leading a Bible study class for local Coloured boys, and during the week he was an assiduous attendee at evening prayer meetings. Within Victoria College, one of the strongest friendships he formed was with Professor JI Marais, the head of the Theology faculty. Smuts's religious observance was unsurprising in one who whose moral outlook was based exclusively upon Biblical teachings and who was destined for a future in the Church. Yet, though religion continued to serve in this central role, his studies at Stellenbosch, with their decidedly scientific bias, led Smuts towards a more critical examination of his faith. From this time onwards Smuts was, by gradual degrees, to start to move away from the uncompromisingly Calvinist outlook within which he had been raised. If Stellenbosch marked Smuts's intellectual awakening, it also was where he came to mature socially. Here he began to cast off the shyness and reserve which afflicted him, joining the local militia, becoming a regular contributor to the college magazine, and becoming leader of the Victoria College debating society. For the first time, in both verbal and literary debate, Smuts began to grapple with the political and social issues facing South Africa. Though Smuts did much to cast off his shyness and reserve, he made few hard-and-fast friendships at Stellenbosch. Yet it was here that he met the woman who was to play a central role in his life thereafter. Sybella Margaretha Krige, known to all as Isie, was the daughter of Japie Krige, a prominent local wine and dairy farmer. Six months younger than Smuts, she had shared a similar upbringing with much the same resulting character traits. As their son, also name Jan Christian, was later to write: > There was nothing particularly romantic about the courtship. They were rather reserved and undemonstrative, and from questioning and teasing our mother, we decided that it was rather an odd and old-fashioned courtship. ... But what the courtship lacked in impetuosity if gained in depth of friendship and understanding. That friendship, unscathed and undiminished, withstood the test of time, and was the basis of a fruitful and exemplary married life. Isie was an intelligent young woman who, like Smuts, had scored highly in her Matriculation exam. It was thought, as a girl, a future in higher education was largely closed to her. The time spent in her company, whether reading poetry and singing together at the piano, or walking together in the mornings and evenings on the journey to and from Victoria College, did much to break down Smuts's social isolation, enabling him to cast some of those protective prejudices which he had harboured of the "puerile element", that is to say his peers. As he wrote in his diary some years later: "[She], less idealistic than I, but more human, recalled me from my intellectual isolation and made me return to my fellows." #### Political Awakening In 1888 Cecil Rhodes paid a visit to Victoria College. As the leader of the college debating society, Smuts was called upon to deliver the welcoming address on behalf of the student body. Rhodes, on the verge of becoming Prime Minister of Cape Colony, was a vocal advocate of Southern African political and economic unity. Now, on the occasion of this visit, Smuts chose to give his address on the theme of Pan-Africanism. Smuts's engagement with politics was very much a product of his time at Stellenbosch. While his parents' political moderation and rejection of Afrikaner exclusivism had left him largely unencumbered by any innate prejudices, it was his time at Victoria College which saw him develop his own independent political outlook. These views developed in tandem with another of Smuts's fixations, his philosophical pursuit of the embodiment of unity. This intellectual quest was later to develop into his philosophy of Holism, but even at this early undeveloped stage he brought these ideas to bear in shaping his political opinions. So it was that Smuts emerged as an outspoken supporter of South African unity, and, by extension, a supporter of Rhodes. Two essays written during this time foreshadow Smuts's later views, both political and philosophical. The first of these, entitled South African Customs Union, was written in 1890 in competition for the JB Ebden prize offered by the University of the Cape of Good Hope. This essay, an examination of the economic relations of the colonies and states of South Africa, though 'Highly Commended' by the judges, failed to win the prize. Nevertheless, despite achieving only modest success, it is unsurpassed as a clear and authoritative statement of Smuts's political outlook at this time. Within the essay Smuts considered the vexed question of the political and economic relations of the colonies and states of South Africa. Though close in terms of geographical proximity, their troubled relations over the preceding quarter century had done much to create an atmosphere of political estrangement. Smuts considered that this estrangement had come about largely as the result of petty jealousies, fostered by politicians interested more in their own parochial concerns than those of South Africa as a whole. And it was to South Africa as a whole that Smuts looked; he did not take the side of one colony or state over the others, but rather treated the region as one single unity. In his own words he summed this up: > The general maxim in this particular case of South African politics and interests is this: no policy in any Colony or State is sound, which does not recognise, and frame its measures as much as possible in accordance with, the fact that South African is one, that consisting as it does of separate parts, it yet forms one commercial and moral unity. A call for unity was his emotional response to the question. Coming down to earth, he proposed two concrete policies as steps towards its ultimate realisation - expansion of a pan-South African railway system, fostering greater commercial links and binding the region together, combined with the elimination of all regional tariffs and trade barriers with the formation of a South African customs union. The writing of this essay was an important formative experience for Smuts. For the first time he had seriously grappled with questions of contemporary politics, and in doing so came to comprehend something of his own political role in resolving them. As he was to write: > In trying to master the [question of a customs union for South Africa] and its relation to other South African problems, I had to study the relations which have existed between the various territories of South Africa during the past quarter century; and to that study I owe the birth of my political consciousness. As I studied old Blue and other books, it dawned for the first time on me, that I too was a member for better or worse of the great South African community, and that as such I too would be called upon to contribute my drop, or fraction of a drop, of thought or action to the great "river of ocean" which still has to sweep through the Augeas-stable of the South. Seminal though this moment was, it was just a start. As his biographer, WK Hancock, noted: "All the same, [Smuts] knew that nations are not made by administrative arrangements alone". In The Conditions of Future South African Literature, his next essay of significance, he dealt with the other significant factor in nation-building - the cultural and emotional ties needed to form a united community. Within this essay, not at first sight written on an overtly political topic, Smuts declared that a true South African literature did not and could not exist until a true South African nation had been born. The question then arose - what was hindering this development? Smuts identified the inhibiting factor as the relations between Briton and Boer - particularly the effect of the influx of British emigrants to the gold mines of the Transvaal on the deeply conservative Afrikaner population. The relations between these two groups were fraught; the discover of gold and the rapid industrialisation of the Transvaal had done much to disturb the settled ways of the Boer population. With its vast mineral wealth the Transvaal was rapidly becoming the most significant economic unit of South Africa, but the sudden tide of primarily British immigrants caused a great deal of unrest, with the established population decrying the immorality and degeneracy they perceived in the new mineworkers. These divisions, though strongest in the Transvaal, existed to one degree or another throughout South Africa. Smuts, though sympathising with the concerns of the old population, fearful their established ways and traditions would be swamped in a flood of migration, urged the Afrikaners to embrace the new spirit of dynamism which he saw the new migrants injecting. Likewise he exhorted the new population to integrate with the old, to consolidate the white population both for the sake of a future South African nation but also to secure their survival in the face of the vastly greater Native population. ## A New Direction In later years Smuts summed up this period: > The five years I spent at Victoria College, Stellenbosch ... were probably the happiest of my life. I read much and widely, but especially the poets and philosophical writers. I had not yet any defined channel of thinking or feeling. My mind was simply dazzled and attracted by beauty in all its intellectual forms ... My passion for nature made me spend most of my free time in the mountains, along the streams and in the innumerable winding valleys. In the examinations of 1891, Smuts took a double-First in Literature and Science. He applied for, and won, the Ebden scholarship for overseas study offered by the University of the Cape of Good Hope. On 23 September 1891 he departed the Cape, on board the ship Roslyn Castle, bound for the United Kingdom and a place at Cambridge University. ### Cambridge Smuts was admitted to Christ's College, where he elected to study Law. The choice of Law marked the start of a new chapter for Smuts. The preceding years at Stellenbosch had been ones of tremendous intellectual development. From the narrow focus of his upbringing, his outlook had now expanded, awakening within him a consciousness of the breadth of knowledge now open before him. Smuts, though remaining an adherent of the Church, and respectful of the Bible and its teachings, had developed a more questioning and critical outlook during the course of his studies. Whereas at the outset of his university career he was content to follow his parents' wishes and be ordained into the Church, as his time at Victoria College came to an end he found himself more and more unwilling to commit to this path. Though he had not as yet wholly rejected the idea of ordination, he wished for a period of more diversified study before making that decision. So it was that Smuts came to select Law, rather than Divinity or Philosophy - the logical choices for a future Minister of Religion. During his time at Cambridge Smuts maintained a regular correspondence with his old friend and tutor Professor Marais. Smuts's choice of Law gave rise to a lively discussion between the two, with Marais regretting Smuts's choice, declaring Law to be 'simply classified humbug' and accusing 'those who pore over legal tomes' of having a 'contracted view of life'. In response Smuts published an essay in Christ's College Magazine in defence of Law. Entitled 'Law - A Liberal Study', it attempted to rebut these criticisms, declaring that from Moses onwards lawyers had been the 'great lights and ornaments of the Church' and identifying within Law '...as it develops through the ages of human history, ...the deepest, truest, most permanent thought and social achievement of progressive humanity.' Aside from friendship on this intellectual level, Marais was also able to come to Smuts's rescue at a time of awkward crisis. Smuts came to Cambridge at the age of twenty-one, three or more years older than the typical university undergraduate. He was isolated from the other men of his year by a different social background, different upbringing, and different attitudes. Smuts's disdain for frivolity and laxity combined with his lack of interest in sports and his decision to take up lodgings outside the college, did much to divide him from the other students. During his first year at Cambridge, Smuts suffered from tremendous homesickness, describing himself as being 'utterly desolate'. Yet during this time Smuts had not found himself without social opportunities - as his biographer WK Hancock wrote: > ...[H]is fellow ... lodger was a serious and friendly man called John Gregg, who became in later life Archbishop of Armagh. Gregg invited him in the first week or two to come for a walk ... but Smuts never proposed a second walk and Gregg got the impression that he wanted to be left to himself. In the same year at Christ's there was a warm-hearted medical student called Auden, who became in later life Chief Medial Officer at Birmingham and the father of a famous poet; but Smuts never returned the invitations to breakfast which he received once or twice from Auden and their acquaintance never ripened. Early in his first term Smuts received and accepted invitations to join the debating society and to write for the College magazine; but the never followed up the chances of friendship which these activities put in his way. This could of course have simply been a case of Smuts's diffidence and reserve re-asserting itself in the face of new and unfamiliar surrounding; however Smuts's biographers almost universally ascribe it to the poverty Smuts endured during this first year. The Ebden scholarship was usually worth £200 per year. However, in 1891, due to a failure of the fund's investments, it was worth only £100. The sale of Smuts's personal livestock holdings on the family farm had enabled him to pay his sea passage and left him with a small residue to bank, yet despite this there remained a substantial gap between his resources and his essential needs as a student. During his first term Christ's College provided him with a small scholarship, but the gap remained. This was a crippling burden for Smuts, yet it was Professor Marais who was to come to his rescue. Smuts, having confided his difficulties to Marais towards the end of 1891 received by immediate return a cheque for £50. Marais urged Smuts to write to him whenever he felt himself in need, in return of which Smuts took out a life insurance policy naming Marais as beneficiary. Should Smuts have died this policy would cover the loans, but while he lived, Smuts's integrity was Marais's only cover. With Marais's loans combined with the Ebden scholarship, Smuts began to enjoy a degree of financial security. Though far from affluent he was at least able to meet his basic expenses. From his second year onwards Smuts began to enter more into the social arena of the university. He ceased to be lonely, making a number of friends and acquaintances, principally amongst the other colonial students. Though no longer so reclusive as he had been during his first year, he remained extremely serious and devoted to his work; an attitude which served as a barrier separating him from the English undergraduates, though not from the Fellows at Cambridge, with many of whom he struck up friendships. In respect of his studies, he achieved the unique distinction of sitting both parts of the Law Tripos in the same year, passing both with first-class honours. Over the course of his studies at Cambridge Smuts won many academic awards and accolades, culminating, in 1893, with the award of the prestigious George Long prize in Roman Law and Jurisprudence - a particular honour given that the prize was very rarely awarded as the rigorous academic standard required was very rarely met. This was all combined with extensive extracurricular reading and private research into various topics including poetry, philosophy, botany, and archaeology. As his biographer WK Hancock wrote: > ... he pursued all his other interests after he had taken the measure of his day's work. He was able to do this because he worked unusually faster than other people and because he found recreation, not in the things that are fritterers of time, but in reading, thinking, writing, exploring. ### Aftermath Smuts's time at Cambridge had been one of outstanding success; his tutor Professor FW Maitland, himself one of the most eminent legal minds of the time, described Smuts as the most brilliant Law student he had ever taught. With testimonials such as this, in summer 1894 Smuts was able to persuade the Ebden trustees to award him £100 for a further year's study. After a short holiday in Strasbourg, spent studying English conveyancing and German philosophy, Smuts returned to England. For a short time he contemplated moving to the Netherlands to seek a Dutch degree, but by October 1894 he had instead decided to read for the Bar. In December 1894 he passed the Honours Examination of the Inns of Court, passing first in his year. Smuts was called to the Middle Temple and soon received an offer of a fellowship in Law from his old college, Christ's. The possibility of a distinguished legal career in England, whether in practice or in academia, now lay before him. Instead, he rejected both paths; in June 1895, as his Ebden funding came to an end, the homesick Smuts returned to the Cape, determined to make his future there. ## Select bibliography ### Primary sources - Hancock, WK and van der Poel, J (eds) - Selections from the Smuts Papers, 1886–1950, (7 vols), (1966–73) ### Smuts, General - Cameron, T - Jan Smuts: An Illustrated Biography, (1994) - Hancock, WK - Smuts: 1. The Sanguine Years, 1870–1919, (1962) - Ingham, K - Jan Christian Smuts: The Conscience of a South African, (1986) - Millin, SG - General Smuts, (2 vols), (1933) - Smuts, JC - Jan Christian Smuts, (1952) [Jan Smuts](Category:Jan_Smuts "wikilink") [Early lives by military personnel](Category:Early_lives_by_military_personnel "wikilink") [Early lives by heads of government](Category:Early_lives_by_heads_of_government "wikilink")

Typhoon Joe

Pacific typhoon in 1980

Typhoon Joe, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Nitang, affected the Philippines, China, and Vietnam during July 1980. An area of disturbed weather formed near the Caroline Islands on July 14. Shower activity gradually became better organized, and two days later, the system was upgraded into a tropical depression. On July 18, the depression was classified as Tropical Storm Joe. Initially, Joe moved northwest, but began to turn to the west-northwest, anchored by a subtropical ridge to its north. Joe started to deepen at a faster clip, and attained typhoon intensity on July 19. The eye began to clear out, and the next day, Joe reached its highest intensity. Shortly thereafter, Joe moved ashore the Philippines. There, 31 people were killed and 300,000 others were directly affected. Around 5,000 homes were destroyed, resulting in an additional 29,000 homeless. Damage in the nation was estimated at \$14.5 million (1980 USD). The storm weakened rapidly over land, but re-intensified over the open waters of the South China Sea. Joe crossed the Leizhou Peninsula on July 22, where it became the strongest system to hit the peninsula in 26 years. A total of 188 people were killed in the area. Further north, in Hong Kong, two people were killed and 59 were injured. After weakening slightly, Joe made its final landfall in Vietnam while still at typhoon intensity. In Vietnam, 130 people were killed, 300,000 were directly affected, 165,000 lost their homes, 50,000 acres (20,000 ha) of rice paddies were flooded. In addition, 15,800 buildings were destroyed while 16,300 homes were flooded. Inland over Vietnam, Joe dissipated on July 24. ## Meteorological history An area of disturbed weather developed over the Caroline Islands on July 14. Tracking westward, convective activity gradually increased in both convection and coverage. At 18:00 UTC on July 22, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) started tracking the system. Less than four hours later, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued a Tropical Cyclone Formation Alert (TCFA). On July 16, a Hurricane Hunter aircraft found a weak surface circulation and minimum sea level pressure of 1006 mbar (29.7 inHg). Initially, the low- and mid-level circulations were not vertically stacked, with the low-level center exposed from the deep convection. By 00:00 UTC on July 17, the surface center and the deep convection moved closer together, prompting the JTWC to classify the system as Tropical Depression 09. Post-season analysis indicated that the depression had actually developed about 24 hours earlier than initially indicated. Meanwhile, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) also monitored the storm and assigned it with the local name Nitang. Moving northwest in response to a shortwave trough an elongated area of lower air pressure aloft that was passing to its east, the newly developed depression passed approximately 300 km (185 mi) west-southwest of Guam. The depression began to develop at a quicker pace, and early on July 18, the JTWC upgraded it to a tropical storm. Six hours later, the JMA declared Joe a tropical storm. At this time, the tropical system was located roughly 555 km (345 mi) west of Guam. Joe then began to move on a constant and brisk westward course that it would maintain for the rest of its life in response to an unusually strong subtropical ridge that was east of its climatological position and to the north of the cyclone. After Joe developed a central dense overcast – a large mass of deep convection, the JMA upgraded Joe into a severe tropical storm. At midday, hints of an eye became apparent on satellite imagery, which led to the JTWC and JMA upgrading Joe into a typhoon. This intensity estimate was confirmed by a Hurricane hunter plane later on July 19, which measured a pressure of 974 mbar (28.8 inHg). An eye began to clear out on July 20. That same day, a Hurricane hunter aircraft recorded a pressure of 940 mbar (28 inHg). At midday, the JTWC estimated that Joe peaked in intensity, with winds of 195 km/h (120 mph), equal to a Category 3 hurricane on the United States-based Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (SSHWS). Meanwhile, the JMA estimated maximum intensity of 160 km/h (100 mph). Six hours after its peak, Joe made landfall in central Luzon. At the time of landfall, the JMA indicated winds of 90 mph (145 km/h). Over land, Joe weakened rapidly, falling to tropical storm strength according to the JTWC. After entering the South China Sea on July 21, the JTWC expected Joe to turn northwest and threaten China. However, this did not occur due to the strong ridge to its north. Joe began to re-intensify; data from the JTWC suggested that Joe regained typhoon intensity almost immediately thereafter. Around this time, the JMA estimated that Joe reached its secondary peak of 135 km/h (85 mph). At 00:00 UTC on July 22, the JTWC estimated that Joe attained a secondary peak of 170 km/h (105 mph) based on a Dvorak classification of T5.0. Despite maintaining its structure as it tracked over the Leizhou Peninsula, the storm weakened as it entered the Gulf of Tonkin and approached the coast of Vietnam. Both the JTWC and JMA agree that Joe had winds of 130 km/h (80 mph) when it moved ashore near Haiphong in Vietnam later on July 22. A combination of land interaction and vertical wind shear resulted in rapid weakening. At 00:00 UTC on July 23, the JTWC issued its last warning on Joe. The remnants of Joe later moved into Laos. The JMA stopped watching Joe on July 24. ## Preparations and impact Prior to its first landfall, storm warnings were posted for most of the Philippines. Across the Philippines, 31 citizens were killed, including eight fisherman. There, 300,000 people were directly affected. Around 5,000 homes were destroyed, resulting in an additional 29,000 homeless. Damage totaled \$14.5 million. Less than a week later, the same areas were affected by Typhoon Kim. The typhoon also tracked over the Leizhou Peninsula, becoming the strongest system to affect the region in 26 years. Two large ships, a 20,000 short tons (18,145 t) liner and a 50,000 short tons (45,360 t) tanker, were washed ashore in Chankiang. Throughout the area, 188 people were killed and at least 100 others were left homeless. Further north, in Hong Kong, a No 1. hurricane signal was issued early on July 21. Later that day, the signal was increased to a No 3. hurricane signal and then elevated to a No 8. hurricane signal. All signals were dropped late on July 22, after Joe made its closest approach to Hong Kong. A minimum pressure of 1001.2 mbar (29.57 inHg) was recorded at the Hong Kong Royal Observatory (HKO) early on July 22. Tate's Cairn recorded a peak wind speed of 87 km/h (54 mph) and a peak wind gust of 154 km/h (96 mph) occurred in Stanley. HKO observed 61.9 mm (2.44 in) of rain over a 72-hour period. Within the vicinity of Hong Kong, two people were killed at a construction site in Kwai Chung. A total of 59 people were injured, including seven that were hospitalized, most from fallen debris. Three boats were also lost at sea after their anchors to the harbor broke. Air and sea traffic came to a halt. Overall, damage in the Hong Kong area was slight. In Vietnam, 130 people were killed, 300,000 others were directly affected, and 165,000 others lost their homes. An additional 15,800 buildings were destroyed, 16,300 homes were flooded, and many boats sunk. The storm inundated 20,235 ha (50,000 acres) of rice paddies, uprooted trees, and blew off roofs from houses. It also brought additional flooding to provinces of Ha nam ninh, Ha bac, Hai hung, and Ha son binh; these areas were already inundated by prior flooding. ## See also - Similar early season Philippine typhoons - Typhoon Koryn (1993) - Typhoon Peggy (1986) - Typhoon Vera (1983)

Marguerite LeHand

Secretary to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Marguerite Alice "Missy" LeHand (September 13, 1896 – July 31, 1944) was a private secretary to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for 21 years. According to LeHand's biographer Kathryn Smith in The Gatekeeper, she eventually functioned as White House Chief of Staff, the only woman in American history to do so. Born into a blue collar, Irish-American family in upstate New York, LeHand studied secretarial science in high school, took a series of clerical jobs, and began to work for the Franklin Roosevelt vice presidential campaign in New York. Following the Democrats' defeat, FDR's wife, Eleanor, invited her to join the family at their home in Hyde Park, New York, to clean up the campaign correspondence. FDR hired LeHand to work for him on Wall Street, where he was the partner in a law firm and worked for a bonding company. After FDR was partially paralyzed in August 1921, LeHand became his daily companion and one of the main people to encourage him to return to politics, with Eleanor and his political strategist Louis McHenry Howe. She remained his secretary when he became governor of New York in 1929 and when he became president in 1933, serving until a 1941 stroke left her partially paralyzed and barely able to speak. She moved to her sister's home in Somerville, Massachusetts, and died after another stroke in 1944. The exact nature of LeHand's relationship with FDR is debated by historians. It is generally accepted that their relationship contained a romantic element, but scholars remain divided on whether the pair had a sexual relationship. LeHand was romantically involved with William Christian Bullitt Jr., U.S. ambassador to Russia and later France, from 1933 to 1940, but apparently never contemplated marriage to him. Her devotion to the Roosevelt family and dedication to her career were the most likely impediments to marriage, although she once asked a friend: "How could anyone ever come up to FDR?" ## Early life LeHand was born in Potsdam, New York, to Daniel J. and Mary J. (née Graffin) LeHand, who were the children of Irish immigrants. The parents began their family at age 16 with a son, also called Daniel, followed by Bernard, Anna and finally Marguerite, when they were in their 40s. When she was a young child, the family relocated to Somerville, a working class suburb of Boston, where LeHand was struck by rheumatic fever at age fifteen. It permanently damaged her heart, causing episodes of atrial fibrillation and leading to her premature death. Eleanor Roosevelt later stated that the disease had left her delicate and barred from strenuous exercise. She graduated from Somerville High School in 1917, where she took secretarial courses in preparation for a career. Although she never attended college, in 1937, Rosary College (now called Dominican University) recognized her professional achievements with an honorary doctor of laws, presented at the White House. After holding a variety of clerical positions in the Boston area and passing the Civil Service exam, she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1917, to briefly serve as a clerk at the Department of the Navy during World War I. FDR was serving as assistant secretary of the Navy then, but the two did not meet. At the recommendation of Charles McCarthy, Roosevelt's assistant at the Navy Department, she became a secretary with FDR's vice presidential campaign three years later when he ran on a ticket with James M. Cox against Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, LeHand's work on the campaign and her personal devotion to FDR caught the eye of the Roosevelts. In early 1921, FDR hired her as his personal secretary and she moved to New York, sleeping on the sofa of a cousin's home in the Bronx. Roosevelt biographer Jean Edward Smith described the young LeHand as "five feet, seven inches tall ... warm and attractive, with ink-blue eyes, black hair already turning gray, and an engaging throaty voice. She was also modest, well mannered, exceptionally capable, and thoroughly organized." She once described her early work with FDR: > The first thing for a private secretary to do is to study her employer. After I went to work for Mr. Roosevelt, for months I read carefully all the letters he dictated ... I learned what letters he wanted to see and which ones it was not necessary to show him ... I came to know exactly how Mr. Roosevelt would answer some of his letters, how he would couch his thoughts. When he discovered that I had learned these things it took a load off his shoulders, for instead of having to dictate the answers to many letters he could just say yes or no and I knew what to say and how to say it. ## Partner in illness, politics, and the presidency LeHand quickly became a key part of Roosevelt's staff, managing his correspondence and appointment calendar. She was nicknamed "Missy" by Roosevelt's younger children, who had a hard time negotiating "Miss LeHand" and soon became popularly known by this name. In turn, she nicknamed her boss "F.D.", a name only she used. In the summer of 1921, Roosevelt was struck by a disabling paralytic illness (diagnosed at the time as polio), leaving him paralyzed below the waist; LeHand soon became his inseparable companion. Each winter in the mid-1920s, FDR would spend four months on his houseboat, Larooco, off the Florida coast. LeHand lived with him and acted as his hostess. She also accompanied him to the spa town of Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1924, overseeing and encouraging his physical therapy. Together, they worked to establish the first polio rehabilitation facility in the country, which was incorporated as a nonprofit organization, the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, in 1927. That spring, LeHand suffered what she described as a "heart attack" while swimming in the pool at Warm Springs. She was treated for resulting atrial fibrilation with digitalis, which provoked a toxic reaction and mental confusion. (Some of her contemporaries later told historians that she had suffered a mental breakdown, which contributed to a perception of emotional instability.) LeHand opposed FDR's plan to run for governor of New York in 1928, telling him "Don't you dare." She feared he would lose his chance to walk again if he interrupted his therapy. When he ultimately decided to run, she suffered another illness that was also often described as a nervous breakdown. By the time he was elected and assumed office, however, she was well enough to resume work and moved into the second floor of the Governor's Mansion in Albany, continuing on as his secretary. With Eleanor often away working in New York City during this time (she was part owner of an elite girls' school), LeHand was FDR's day-to-day companion and the back-up hostess at the Governor's Mansion. During her long tenure as FDR's secretary, LeHand came to share many of his likes and dislikes. She enthusiastically learned to play poker and spent hours working with him on his stamp collection. She even adopted his figures of speech and favorite drinks. Eleanor Roosevelt disapproved of alcohol, and Missy served as hostess at FDR's daily cocktail time, which he later dubbed "the Children's Hour." After a second term as governor, Roosevelt was elected president of the United States in November 1932, assuming the office in March 1933. LeHand accompanied the Roosevelts to the White House, where she became the first woman to serve as a presidential secretary and the only female member of the four-person "secretariat" that managed the West Wing. (The other three were Louis McHenry Howe, Steve Early and Marvin H. McIntyre. Missy earned half the salary of the men.) As her obituary in the New York Times wrote "when her employer was elected to the Presidency, it had become an established fact that neither other offers of employment or proposals of marriage could entice the prematurely gray and handsome young woman from the career she had chosen." During Roosevelt's tenure as president, LeHand became a federal employee. Until the 1941 stroke that incapacitated her, she lived on the third floor of the White House and continued to manage Roosevelt's daily business, also presiding as the White House hostess during Eleanor's absences. In August 1933, Newsweek ran a profile of her describing her as FDR's "Super-Secretary", making her nationally famous. She also appeared on the cover of Time magazine in December 1934, one of just three women to grace a Time cover that year. In 1937 she was listed as one of the best-dressed women in Washington. LeHand's importance as an adviser and gatekeeper to FDR grew during the second term. Following Howe's death in 1936, she became the de facto White House chief of staff, and was seen as one of the more powerful people in the administration. She met with the other members of the secretariat around FDR's bedside every morning, vetted his mail, provided a "back door" entrance to the Oval Office—which adjoined hers alone—and spent many evenings with the president in his upstairs study as well as accompanied him on weekend cruises on the presidential yachts: the Sequoia and its successor the Potomac. Because FDR could not be awakened after he went to bed at night without LeHand's permission, she was the first person to learn by telephone that Hitler had invaded Poland in September 1939, setting off World War II. Samuel I. Rosenman, a close FDR adviser and speechwriter, called her "one of the most important people of the Roosevelt era." ## Relationship with Roosevelt The question of whether LeHand and Roosevelt's relationship contained a sexual component was widely discussed among their contemporaries and continues to be debated by historians. Hazel Rowley argues that "there is no doubt that Franklin's relationship with Missy was romantic," but notes the possibility that the relationship could not have been consummated due to FDR's disability. Roosevelt biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin states that "beneath the complexity, it is absolutely clear that Franklin was the love of Missy's life, and that he adored her and depended on her for affection and support as well as work." Doug Wead wrote in his work on the parents of presidents The Raising of a President: "Some Roosevelt historians insist that their relationship was never consummated. Eleanor and the children accepted the relationship, which speaks for its innocence. Sara [Roosevelt] spoke favorably of Missy's family and upbringing. Years later, only Elliott, of all the children, would declare that it had not been as benign as historians like to believe." In 1973, FDR's son Elliott published An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park, in which he recalled seeing LeHand in his father's lap and alleged that she "shared a familiar life in all its aspects with father." His eldest brother Jimmy disagreed, arguing that FDR's illness had made sexual function too difficult for him to have a physical affair. "I suppose you could say they came to love one another," he wrote, "but it was not a physical love." Kathryn Smith, the author of the only biography of LeHand, could come to no conclusion, but wrote "As far as evidence goes, there is not a single written account of anyone seeing them in a compromising position, despite the hundreds of Secret Service agents, staff members, political cronies, family members and friends who traipsed through FDR's bedrooms—which he used as an auxiliary office—during their twenty-one years together." She quotes LeHand's great-niece, Jane Scarbrough, who said "We have no reason to believe they did (have a sexual relationship), but we don't know." Eleanor and LeHand remained on good terms. Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook describes the First Lady as treating LeHand warmly, "as an elder daughter or, in the manner of Asian matriarchs, as the junior wife". The two women went shopping together, and Eleanor took a solicitous interest in LeHand's smoking and keeping general health. Eleanor accompanied LeHand to her mother's funeral in Potsdam during the first presidential campaign in 1932, helping the family make arrangements. Elliott later stated that he believed "Missy alleviated Mother's guilt", allowing her to travel without worrying that Franklin would lack for companionship. In one of her later books, Eleanor wrote that she occasionally failed to "meet the need of someone whom I dearly love", stating "You must learn to allow someone else to meet the need, without bitterness or envy, and accept it." Cook reads these passages as veiled references to LeHand's role in Franklin's life, and Eleanor's acceptance of that role. ### Other relationships LeHand had a brief romance with Eleanor's bodyguard (and rumored love) Earl Miller in 1931. Miller later told biographer Joseph Lash that he had begun the affair out of respect for Eleanor, feeling that she was hurt by LeHand's relationship with Franklin. In 1933, LeHand began to date the diplomat William Christian Bullitt Jr., who became the first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union late that year. FDR's son James later described this as "the one real romance" of her life. While some historians have stated that LeHand ended the engagement after discovering Bullitt was having an affair with a Bolshoi Ballet dancer or that he "dumped" her, correspondence between the two makes it clear that LeHand ended the relationship in September 1940 after Bullitt returned to the United States from Nazi-occupied France and began demanding more of her time. The length and depth of LeHand's relationship with William C. Bullitt raises questions about FDR being the true love of her life. FDR aide and confidant Harry Hopkins, a widower, was close friends with Missy, especially after he moved into the White House in 1940. Goodwin states while the pair were close enough to spark Washington gossip, nothing appears to have come of it: "Missy had probably cut it short, as she had cut short every other relationship in her life that might subordinate her great love for FDR." Smith does not cite Hopkins as a serious contender for LeHand's affections. ## Illness, death, and memorials In June 1941, LeHand collapsed at a White House dinner party, and two weeks later, she suffered a major stroke that left her partially paralyzed with little speech function. Goodwin says a factor that may have led to her illness was stress stemming from fears that the exiled Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, a Washington-area resident during World War II, had replaced her as FDR's favorite companion, occupying the seat next to him that had long been LeHand's in automobile rides. Kathryn Smith cites the stress of the world crisis that spring, as Britain stood alone against the Nazis, and the ill health of FDR, who had expected her to be at his bedside for weeks on end. She also became critical of FDR's leadership for the first time that spring, sharing her disappointment with Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, a close friend. FDR paid LeHand's medical bills and later made provisions for her in his will, stating that the principal would be divided equally among his children while half the income of his estate (which was eventually probated at more than \$3 million) would go to Eleanor and half to "my friend Marguerite A. LeHand...for medical attention, care and treatment during her lifetime." (As LeHand died before FDR, her half reverted to Eleanor.) He also sent her to Warm Springs, where he hoped she could recover with the help of the physical therapy staff there. She was very unhappy in Warm Springs and may have tried to kill herself by eating chicken bones during the 1941 Christmas season. In early 1942, she spent some weeks in her old room at the White House, but quickly deteriorated due to her frustrations at not being able to help. After an incident in which she set the bed on fire—probably while smoking—it was agreed that LeHand would return to her sister's home in Somerville, Massachusetts, and she departed from Washington on May 15, 1942. Grace Tully, an assistant of LeHand, took over as Roosevelt's secretary, but was never a companion for Roosevelt in the same way as LeHand had been. After Missy departed the White House, she never saw FDR again, but he did keep in touch by writing letters, making phone calls, and sending gifts. When LeHand died on July 31, 1944, the president issued a statement: > Memories of more than a score of years of devoted service enhance the sense of personal loss which Miss LeHand's passing brings. Faithful and painstaking, with charm of manner inspired by tact and kindness of heart, she was utterly selfless in her devotion to duty. Hers was a quiet efficiency, which made her a real genius in getting things done. Her memory will ever be held in affectionate remembrance and appreciation, not only by all the members of our family but by the wide circle of those whose duties brought them into contact with her. Eleanor Roosevelt attended LeHand's funeral in Cambridge, Massachusetts, over which Bishop (later Cardinal) Richard Cushing presided. Other mourners included Associate Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and former ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. The president's words "She was utterly selfless in her devotion to duty" appear on LeHand's marker at Mount Auburn Cemetery. In her will, LeHand left the furniture in her White House apartment to Grace Tully and the First Couple. According to LeHand's great-niece, Jane Scarbrough, to this day, the Roosevelt family pays for the upkeep of the LeHand family plot. ### SS Marguerite LeHand In March 1945, the United States Maritime Commission christened the SS Marguerite LeHand, an 18,000 ton C3 cargo vessel, in Pascagoula, Mississippi. During her maiden voyage, she struck the U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse tender amidships, sinking it and killing one Coast guardsman. ### Representations in television and film LeHand was a character in the 1958 Broadway play Sunrise at Campobello and its 1960 film adaptation, in which she was played by Jean Hagen. The productions portray FDR's initial struggles with his paralytic illness, and his decision to continue his political career. Priscilla Pointer played the role of LeHand in the 1977 ABC television production Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years. Bibi Besch portrayed her in the mini series Backstairs at the White House. She had a brief appearance in the 2005 HBO movie Warm Springs, which is about the creation of the polio rehabilitation center there and FDR's return to politics. She was played by Marianne Fraulo. In the 2012 movie Hyde Park on Hudson, which portrays the visit of British monarchs George VI and Queen Consort Elizabeth to FDR's estate at Hyde Park, LeHand is played by Elizabeth Marvel. LeHand's work and friendship with Franklin Roosevelt is chronicled in the 2014 documentary film The Roosevelts, directed by Ken Burns. The 2020 PBS drama series Atlantic Crossing includes a portrayal (by Lucy Russell) of LeHand's relationship with Roosevelt. ## General bibliography - Smith, Kathryn (2016). The Gatekeeper. Touchstone. .

Alley Pond Park

Public park in Queens, New York

Alley Pond Park is the second-largest public park in Queens, New York City, occupying 655.3 acres (265.2 ha). The park is bordered to the east by Douglaston, to the west by Bayside, to the north by Little Neck Bay, and to the south by Union Turnpike. The Cross Island Parkway travels north-south through the park, while the Long Island Expressway and Grand Central Parkway travel east-west through the park. The park primarily consists of woodlands south of the Long Island Expressway and meadowlands north of the expressway. It is run and operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Alley Pond Park was mostly acquired and cleared by the city in 1929, as authorized by a resolution of the New York City Board of Estimate in 1927. The park contains the Queens Giant, a tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) that is the tallest carefully measured tree in New York City and possibly the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area. The Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC), with a library, museum and animal exhibits, is located in the northern part of the park, on the south side of Northern Boulevard. ## History ### Site What is now Alley Pond Park was once home to the Matinecock Native Americans, who harvested shellfish from Little Neck Bay. The English began to colonize the area by the 1630s, when Charles I granted Thomas Foster 600 acres (240 ha), on which he built a stone cottage near what is now Northern Boulevard. Mills were built on Alley Creek by Englishmen Thomas Hicks and James Hedges. The valley also contained the region's first mail route, established in 1764. Colonists also used the valley as a route to Brooklyn, the Hempstead Plains and the Manhattan ferries, and U.S. president George Washington is thought to have used this route for his 1790 tour of Long Island. The valley's usage as a passage, or perhaps its shape, may ultimately account for its name; in any case, an 18th-century commercial and manufacturing center there became known as "the Alley". In 1828, the Burhman general store was opened, becoming the only store in the area. On the west side of the valley, William Douglas (the namesake of the Douglaston neighborhood on the east side) bought 180 acres (73 ha) around Oakland Lake in 1827. The lake itself was named after another estate, Frederick N. Lawrence's "The Oaks": that estate was named because of the many oak trees nearby, and was the namesake of the Oakland Gardens neighborhood on the valley's west side. In 1896–1897, the Oaks became the Oakland Golf Club. The lake itself was used as a water source by the town of Flushing from the 19th century through the creation of the City of Greater New York in 1898, when the city built a water pumping plant on the lake; by the early 20th century, the city took its water from upstate reservoirs. Despite the valley's commercial center and light industrial uses that dated back to Hicks' and Hedges' mills, the area remained agricultural and largely unspoiled into the 20th century. In 1908, as motorists sought attractive areas for expeditions, William Kissam Vanderbilt built his privately run Long Island Motor Parkway through the area. ### Founding and early history By the 1920s, with open space becoming less plentiful, the City of New York began setting aside land for parks. Queens borough president Maurice E. Connolly wrote a letter to the city in 1927, suggesting that the tributary of the Little Neck Bay south of Northern Boulevard could be acquired for one such park called Alley Park. His successor Bernard M. Patten also supported the purchase of the land, and Douglaston civics groups argued in favor of the park. After the New York City Board of Estimate passed a resolution in 1927 to allow the acquisition of parkland, the city acquired the Alley site for such purposes on June 24, 1929. Later that year, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) expanded the park into a 330-acre (130 ha) landscape surrounding the Alley and removed some older structures, including the Burhman store. After this acquisition had been approved, Mayor James J. Walker declared that "there is no better site in Queens" for a park. NYC Parks acquired Oakland Lake for Alley Pond Park in 1934. NYC Parks then began work on converting the park for public use. The northern section of the land became a nature preserve. In the southern section, a field house and numerous sports fields for soccer, baseball, tennis, and hockey were built. These sections officially opened in 1935 with a ceremony attended by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. At opening, the park had 26 acres (11 ha) of new playing fields; the Alley Pond Park Nature Trail, the first of its kind in the city; a 23-acre (9.3 ha) bird sanctuary; bridle paths; tennis court; picnic areas; and a 200-space parking lot. NYC Parks added a 2.5-mile (4.0 km) bicycle path in the 1930s, having acquired and converted Vanderbilt's parkway. It runs west into Cunningham Park as part of the 40-mile (64 km) Brooklyn-Queens Greenway from Bayside to Prospect Park and Coney Island. The path opened in 1938. Part of the southern section of Alley Pond Park was renovated into a nature trail and reopened in 1940. ### Recreation and pollution After the 1930s, NYC Parks had focused more on recreation in Alley Pond Park than on the park's conservation. NYC Parks filled in much of the valley's marshlands to construct recreational facilities and roads, namely the Cross Island Parkway and Long Island Expressway. The construction of the Cross Island Parkway resulted in the park's namesake pond being reduced in size. By 1954, when the Long Island Expressway was built, Alley Pond was infilled to create the interchange between the two highways; the expressway opened in 1957 The center portion of the park, surrounding Alley Creek, was not developed through the mid-20th century and was considered an "eyesore". A 1959 proposal to add 91 acres (37 ha) along the bay to Alley Pond Park was controversial among Douglaston landowners, who wanted the land to be used for a commercial amusement center. The related legislation was rejected almost unanimously by the New York City Council, with only the two representatives of borough president John T. Clancy voting in favor of the expansion. The Oakland Golf Club disbanded in 1952 but served as a city-operated course until 1961, after which it was developed into the Queensborough Community College, Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, and tract housing. This contributed to pollution in the Oakland Lake section of Alley Pond Park. In 1969, mayor John Lindsay broke ground on the renovation of the badly deteriorated Alley Park Extension at the north end of the park. Ford Motor Company bought a lot on the northern side of Northern Boulevard in 1968, intending to build an automotive showroom there, but the company's plan was controversial, and was rejected by the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals. Another lawsuit was filed in 1977 to prevent the construction of a tennis spa next to Alley Pond Park, which the plaintiffs argued would cause pollution in the park, though the spa owners won the lawsuit. ### Conservation By the 1960s, civic groups were advocating for Alley Pond Park's restoration. Two thousand people participated in the first "Walk in the Alley" in 1969, led by Queensborough Community College dean John O. Riedl. Local groups also argued for the preservation of Alley Pond and Cunningham Parks. The city's park system was in various states of disrepair by the 1970s, with a maintenance building at Alley Pond Park having burned down. NYC Parks also cut staffing at numerous parks: though Alley Pond Park was maintained by 17 workers in 1970, that number decreased to 11 in 1972. The agency commenced the Wetlands Reclamation Project in 1974 to rehabilitate the park's natural wetlands. NYC Parks also dredged the creek, leveled surrounding areas to eliminate standing water, cleaning three freshwater springs and two freshwater ponds, landscaping paths and trails, and building sound-reducing berms on Northern Boulevard. In addition, some of the park's tennis courts were renovated. The Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC), founded in 1972, moved to its own building on Northern Boulevard four years later. The city also acquired over \$10.9 million worth of land for the park. An 1870s-era windmill 1 mile (1.6 km) away at Arleigh Road, on the Douglaston peninsula, was relocated to the park when the windmill's original site was threatened with development, and was intended to be used as an APEC exhibit; however, the windmill was burned in an arson two years later. APEC volunteers raised money to build a 40-foot (12 m) replica, which was completed in 2005. On the other side of the park, Gertrude Waldeyer led an advocacy group to preserve Oakland Lake, leading NYC Parks to spend \$1 million restoring the lake in 1987, with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation designating the surrounding area as freshwater wetlands the next year. In 1993, almost \$1 million was spent to restore the Picnic Grove, renovate two stone buildings, and reconstruct the playground and soccer field. By the mid-1990s, development around Alley Pond Park had led to pollution, including in Oakland Lake in the western section of the park. This led local groups to propose that the city hire an administrator to run numerous parks in eastern Queens, including Alley Pond Park, Crocheron Park, Cunningham Park, Douglaston Park, Fort Totten, and Udalls Cove. A proposal to renovate the interchange between the Cross Island Parkway and Long Island Expressway was announced in 1995, leading conservationists to raise concerns over the potential removal of trees. The interchange plan was approved in 2000. With the renovation of the interchange, 12 acres (4.9 ha) of the interchange were reclaimed for park usage, and Alley Pond was restored. The project was completed in 2005. The area around Oakland Lake was restored again in 2011. The Alley Pond Environmental Center relocated to a temporary location at 224–75 76th Avenue in Oakland Gardens in 2019, after a renovation of its Northern Boulevard headquarters had begun that September. The renovation of the APEC building was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ## Geography At 655.3 acres (265.2 ha), Alley Pond Park is the second-largest public park in Queens, behind Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, and the ninth-largest public park in the city. It occupies part of a terminal moraine, a ridge of sand and rock, that was formed by a glacier 15,000 years ago, at the southern terminus of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Boulders dropped by the glaciers on the hillsides of the southern end of the park still remain, as do scattered kettle ponds formed by melting ice. The valley features both fresh water, draining into the valley from the hills and bubbling up from natural springs, and salt water from Little Neck Bay. This promotes ecodiversity, with freshwater and saltwater wetlands, tidal flats, meadows, and forests accommodating abundant bird life. Much of the park is part of the Alley Pond nature preserve. ### Waterways #### Alley Creek Alley Creek flows northward through the valley within which the park is located, emptying into Little Neck Bay. Alley Creek is surrounded by some of the last remaining old-growth forest in Queens. The creek is crossed by a masonry-and-metal span carrying Northern Boulevard and a viaduct carrying the Long Island Rail Road's Port Washington Branch. A stream from Oakland Lake, which was buried after the Cross Island Parkway was built, is a left-bank tributary of Alley Creek. #### Ponds In addition to Alley Creek, there are seven ponds in Alley Pond Park, all of which are kettle ponds. These ponds are Alley Pond, Cattail Pond, Lily Pad Pond, Little Alley Pond, Muskrat Pond, Turtle Pond, and Windmill Pond. Little Alley Pond is located near the Grand Central Parkway and is the southernmost pond in the park. Turtle, Lily Pad, and Decodon Ponds are located slightly to the north; the latter two are shallow wetland ponds. Alley Pond, located at the southwest corner of the Cross Island Parkway and Long Island Expressway interchange, was historically a rest stop on West Alley Road and contained gristmills and the Burhman general store. Windmill Pond, near the Alley Pond Environmental Center at Northern Boulevard, is powered by a windmill. Cattail Pond, also near the APEC building, is at the lowest point of a cattail marsh that includes Marsh St. John’s wort and swamp milkweed as well as water plantain and arrow arum. #### Oakland Lake The westernmost part of the park, south of 48th Avenue between Springfield Boulevard to the west and Cloverdale Boulevard to the east, includes Oakland Lake, a larger kettle pond on the grounds of the former Oakland Golf Club (now the Queensborough Community College campus). It is fed by natural springs, and prior to the development of eastern Queens, was fed by a stream extending from the modern intersection of Horace Harding Expressway and 223rd Place. Numerous species of bass, pickerel, and sunfish can be found in the lake, and fishing is allowed. An urban legend speculated that the lake was 600 feet (180 m) deep with an underwater spring flowing to Little Neck Bay, but a 1969 study of the lake found it was only 20 feet (6.1 m) deep. Oakland Lake was officially used as a water source from the mid-19th century likely into the 1950s. The brook leading to the lake was channelized and later infilled in the 1930s, and the wetlands were partially infilled in 1941. After deterioration in the late 20th century due to increasing urbanization, it was restored in 1987 and 2011. A boardwalk circling Oakland Lake is named after Gertrude Waldeyer, who led the 1980s preservation campaign for the lake. The area surrounding Oakland Lake also contains Queens' first "bluebelt" system, created in 2011, in which runoff flows through natural-looking landscapes rather than through storm sewers. ### Wetlands and meadows The northern end of Alley Pond Park includes 150 acres (61 ha) of freshwater and saltwater wetlands. Freshwater from further inland mixes with the saltwater from Little Neck Bay. These wetlands host a complex ecosystem with numerous bird and fish species. The John Riedl Wildflower Meadow, named after the Queensborough Community College dean, is located on both sides of Northern Boulevard. It was named in Riedl's honor in 1994 and contains ox-eyed daisies, grey birch, and pitch pine. ## Features ### Alley Pond Environmental Center The Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC) was founded in 1972 by Joan and Hy Rosner as a grassroots organization that advocated for the park. The APEC building, on the south side of Northern Boulevard, was announced in 1975 as part of a series of improvements across Queens. The building opened in 1976 and contains a library, museum and animal exhibits. By 2011, it had eight staff members and 1,000 volunteers, and its programs had served over 62,000 students. ### Queens Giant The Queens Giant (also known as the Alley Pond Giant or Alley Pond Park Giant), at , is an old tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) that is located in Alley Pond Park. It is the tallest carefully measured tree in New York City, measuring 133.8 feet (40.8 m) tall with a 19-foot (5.8 m) circumference as of 2005, and it might also be the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area, being between 350 and 450 years old in 2005. A tree in Staten Island, known as the Clove Lake Colossus, has a more massive trunk, but it is only 119 feet (36 m) tall. However, NYC Parks is unsure of the margin of error regarding the Queens Giant's age, and its true age may have a margin of error of several decades or centuries. Some arborists estimate the tree's age at 250 years, making it younger than other trees in the city. The nearby Great White Oak in Douglaston, though smaller, may have been about 600 years old when it was cut down in 2009, though that tree's age is also disputed. The Queens Giant is hidden within a grove, barely visible from the westbound Long Island Expressway. The tree is near the Douglaston Plaza Mall, and is accessible by foot from Alley Pond Park. There are no signs to it, but it can be viewed in an Urban Park Ranger tour. The Queens Giant is surrounded by a metal fence on all sides to protect it, and a hill and a sign describing the tree stand in front of it. ### Recreation Alley Pond Park contains numerous sports fields. The northern section of the park near Cloverdale Boulevard and Horatio Parkway contains Horatio Playground as well as a baseball field, a basketball court, and two handball courts. The central section, at 67th Avenue between 230th and 233rd Streets, contains Alley Playground as well as a baseball field, a basketball court, and four handball courts. Springfield Boulevard between 73rd and 76th Avenues, at Alley Pond Park's southwestern corner, has five baseball fields and a soccer field, as well as restrooms and a picnic area. The area northwest of the intersection between the Cross Island and Grand Central Parkways contains a barbecue area, a picnic area, a football field, two baseball fields, four handball fields, and Alley Springfield Playground. South of the Grand Central Parkway is the Alley Athletic Playground, with five baseball fields, a cricket/football field, a soccer field, a handball court, numerous batting cages, and a playground. Alley Pond Park also has numerous hiking and walking trails. There are six named trails, which range from 0.7 to 2.2 miles (1.1 to 3.5 km). These are the Red, Orange, Blue, White, Yellow, and Tulip Tree trails; all except the Yellow and Tulip Tree trails are on the southern side of the park, south of the Long Island Expressway. #### Alley Pond Adventure Course The Alley Pond Adventure Course is at the southern end of the park. Opened in 2007, the course contains a climbing wall, a ropes course, a trust fall area, a zip line, swings, and balance platforms. The ropes courses extend up to 45 feet (14 m) above ground. #### Alley Pond Golf Center The Alley Pond Golf Center is east of the Northern Boulevard bridge over Alley Creek. The golf center has operated since the 1950s and has 70 stalls. The golf center is especially popular among the Korean-American population of the surrounding area, and signs at the complex are posted in both English and Korean.

Jacob deGrom

American baseball player (born 1988)

Jacob Anthony deGrom (born June 19, 1988) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the New York Mets. Prior to playing professionally, deGrom attended Stetson University and played college baseball for the Stetson Hatters. DeGrom began playing baseball as a shortstop and was converted into a pitcher during his junior year at Stetson. The Mets selected him in the ninth round of the 2010 MLB draft, and he made his major league debut with the Mets on May 15, 2014. In the same year, deGrom was named the National League's (NL) Rookie of the Month twice, and the NL Rookie of the Year. In 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2021 deGrom was selected as an MLB All-Star. In 2018, deGrom was the NL leader in earned run average and won the Cy Young Award. In 2019, he led the NL in strikeouts and won the Cy Young Award for the second year in a row. In 2020, he again led the National League in strikeouts. ## Amateur career DeGrom attended Calvary Christian Academy, a small school in Ormond Beach, Florida, where he played for the school's baseball and basketball teams. As a basketball player, he was voted the District 9 Class 1A player of the year by the Florida Athletic Coaches Association and selected to the all-state third team for Class 1A. As a senior baseball player the Florida Sports Writers Association named deGrom to the All-Florida second team. He also played American Legion baseball, where he was noticed by the coaches for the Stetson Hatters, the college baseball team of Stetson University. After not being selected in the Major League Baseball draft out of high school, deGrom enrolled at Stetson and played for the Hatters. He was exclusively a shortstop during his freshman and sophomore seasons. Though he was considered a good fielder with a strong throwing arm, deGrom was a light hitter with a career .263 batting average. He made his first appearance as a pitcher in May 2009. In the summer of 2009, between his sophomore and junior years, deGrom received an invitation to play collegiate summer baseball for the DeLand Suns of the Florida Collegiate Summer League, which he declined after discovering that they wanted him to play as a pitcher. When deGrom returned to Stetson that fall, the team used him as a relief pitcher, filling the role of their closer, in addition to playing shortstop. He quickly became one of Stetson's best pitchers, so the team moved deGrom into their starting rotation midway through the season. In addition to a fastball, deGrom learned to throw a changeup and a slider. Major league scouts began to take notice of deGrom when he pitched against Chris Sale of Florida Gulf Coast University. In the game deGrom hit his only home run of the season against Chris Sale. He made 12 starts for the Hatters, pitching to a 4–5 win–loss record with a 4.48 earned run average. ## Professional career ### Minor leagues The New York Mets selected deGrom in the ninth round as a pitcher, with the 272nd overall selection, of the 2010 Major League Baseball draft. He signed with the Mets, receiving a \$95,000 signing bonus. The Mets assigned deGrom to the Kingsport Mets of the rookie-level Appalachian League where he made six starts before he was diagnosed with a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his pitching elbow. He attempted to rehabilitate his arm for four months, but underwent Tommy John surgery to repair the UCL in October. He did not pitch in 2011 while he recovered from the surgery. While rehabilitating deGrom worked on his changeup with Johan Santana. DeGrom pitched for the Savannah Sand Gnats of the Class A South Atlantic League and the St. Lucie Mets of the Class A-Advanced Florida State League in 2012, finishing the year with a 2.43 earned run average in 19 games started. In 2013, he began the season with St. Lucie, but was promoted to the Binghamton Mets of the Class AA Eastern League after two starts due to injuries to Binghamton's Luis Mateo and Cory Mazzoni. He received a promotion to the Las Vegas 51s of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League in June after the Mets promoted Zack Wheeler and Carlos Torres to the major leagues and traded Collin McHugh. He had a combined 4.51 earned run average for the season, due to a broken finger suffered during the offseason, which altered the way he threw the ball. The Mets added deGrom to their 40-man roster on November 20, 2013, to protect him from being eligible in the Rule 5 draft. During the offseason, deGrom improved his mechanics, and learned to throw a curveball. He began the 2014 season with Las Vegas, and had a 4–0 win–loss record and a 2.58 earned run average in his first seven games started. ### New York Mets #### 2014 The Mets promoted deGrom to the major leagues on May 12, 2014, after Gonzalez Germen was placed on the disabled list. The Mets planned to use deGrom in relief, but an injury to Dillon Gee required the Mets to insert him into their starting rotation. DeGrom made his major league debut on May 15 against cross-town rival New York Yankees in Citi Field. He faced fellow rookie Chase Whitley, also making his major league debut. He pitched seven innings, allowing only one run and striking out six, but the Yankees shut out the Mets and won 1–0. DeGrom also collected his first major league hit in the game in his first career at-bat. It was the first hit by a Mets pitcher in the 2014 season ending an 0-for-64 hitless streak, the worst collective mark by a pitching staff to begin a season in major league history. DeGrom compiled four quality starts in his first four major league starts, but did not record a win in any of them. On July 8, deGrom pitched seven scoreless innings and recorded 11 strikeouts in giving the Mets their 4,000th franchise victory. Along with Steve Cishek of the Miami Marlins, deGrom was named the National League's (NL) Co-Player of the Week for the period of July 21 to 27 after allowing only one earned run in two starts that week. He was named the NL Rookie of the Month for July. On August 11, deGrom was placed on the disabled list with rotator cuff tendinitis. Rafael Montero was called up on August 12 in deGrom's place. On August 23, Montero was re-sent back to the 51s to make room for deGrom coming off the disabled list. On September 15, 2014, deGrom faced the Marlins and struck out his first eight batters, tying the major league record. Near the end of the season, deGrom was shut down for the year, ending his season with a 9–6 record, a 2.69 earned run average and 144 strikeouts. DeGrom collected a second Rookie of the Month award for his September performance, and, after the regular season ended, he was named the 2014 Sporting News NL Rookie of the Year by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, receiving first place votes on 26 of the 30 ballots. He was the first Met to receive the honor since Dwight Gooden in 1984. #### 2015 DeGrom and Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers were selected as NL Co-Players of the Week for the week ending June 7, 2015. He began the 2015 season with an 8–6 win–loss record and a 2.30 earned run average through the end of June, and was named to the NL roster in the 2015 MLB All-Star Game. During the All-Star Game, deGrom struck out the three batters he faced on ten pitches, becoming the first person to do so since pitch counts were recorded. DeGrom pitched to a 14–8 record with a 2.54 earned run average and a 0.99 walks plus hits per inning pitched ratio during the 2015 season. Starting Game 1 of the 2015 National League Division Series, he allowed no runs and five hits over seven innings pitched and tied a Mets franchise postseason record with 13 strikeouts (set by Tom Seaver, Game 1 of the 1973 National League Championship Series). DeGrom won the deciding Game 5 with a six-inning, two-run effort. In Game 3 of the 2015 NLCS against the Chicago Cubs, deGrom pitched seven-inning game, allowing just two runs on four hits, one walk and seven strikeouts, putting the Mets ahead 3–0 and within one game of their first World Series appearance since the 2000 Subway Series. DeGrom started Game 2 of the 2015 World Series on October 28; he allowed four runs on six hits and three walks over five innings and took the loss as the Royals went up, 2–0, in the series. Following the season, deGrom received a Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award as the best defensive player statistically at his position in Major League Baseball. He also placed seventh in Cy Young Award voting. #### 2016 DeGrom initially refused to sign the 2016 contract for the \$607,000 salary assigned to him. Not yet eligible for salary arbitration, deGrom was bound by the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement to accept the salary assigned to him by his club. He relented and reluctantly capitulated to signing his contract early in spring training. On July 17 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, deGrom pitched a shutout against the Philadelphia Phillies, allowing only one hit and one walk while striking out seven batters. His game score of 97 was tied for second-best in Mets history in a nine-inning game. DeGrom's final pitching appearance of the season came on September 1, when he faced the Miami Marlins. He underwent season-ending surgery on his ulnar nerve in late September in order to relieve discomfort in his elbow and numbness in his fingers which had plagued him during the 2016 season. #### 2017 Eligible for salary arbitration for the first time, deGrom and the Mets avoided an arbitration hearing by agreeing to a salary of \$4.05 million for the 2017 season. On June 18, 2017, deGrom hit his first career home run at Citi Field against Joe Ross of the Washington Nationals. deGrom was named NL Player of the Week for the week of June 12–18 after hitting his first home run, posting a 0.53 earned run average, allowing eight hits, striking out 12 and walking six in 17 innings over two starts. DeGrom recorded wins in eight consecutive starts from June 12 until July 24, tying a franchise record previously set by Seaver, David Cone and Bobby Jones. DeGrom had the first stolen base of his career on August 4 off of Yu Darvish and Yasmani Grandal of the Dodgers. He became the first Mets pitcher to steal a base since Óliver Pérez in 2008. Of the seven potential starting pitchers who began the season with the Mets, deGrom was the only one who finished the 2017 season without spending any time on the disabled list. deGrom finished the 2017 season with a record of 15-10 and a 3.53 earned run average. DeGrom finished eighth in voting for the 2017 NL Cy Young Award. #### 2018 DeGrom and the Mets agreed on a \$7.4 million salary for the 2018 season. On May 6, the Mets placed deGrom on the 10 day disabled list, retroactive to May 3, with a hyperextended pitching elbow. DeGrom had suffered the minor injury while batting during his May 2 start against the Braves. Owning a 1.68 earned run average that led the major leagues, deGrom was named to the 2018 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. During the All-Star Break, Brodie Van Wagenen, deGrom's sports agent, called for the Mets to engage in contract extension talks, or to "seriously consider trade opportunities now". On September 3, deGrom tied a major league record with his 25th straight start allowing three or fewer runs. DeGrom recorded his 1,000th career strikeout in his final start of the season on September 26 at Citi Field. DeGrom finished the season 10–9 with a 1.70 earned run average, which led the majors and was the third-lowest of any pitcher with 30 starts in a season since the pitching mound was lowered following the 1968 season. For the 2018 season he led the majors in lowest home runs per nine innings (0.41). On November 14, deGrom was announced as the National League Cy Young Award winner; he received all but one first place vote. His 10 wins were the fewest in history by a Cy Young Award-winning starting pitcher. DeGrom finished fifth in the National League Most Valuable Player voting and was the only player other than award winner Christian Yelich to receive a first place vote. #### 2019 During the 2018-19 offseason, the Mets hired Van Wagenen as their general manager. DeGrom and the Mets agreed to a \$17 million salary for the 2019 season, the largest annual raise ever for an arbitration-eligible player. With Van Wagenen now negotiating for the Mets rather than deGrom, the two sides agreed to a five-year, \$137.5 million contract extension with an option for the 2024 season during spring training in 2019. DeGrom started for the Mets on Opening Day against Max Scherzer, the 2018 Cy Young Award runner-up to deGrom and the 2017 Cy Young Award winner. DeGrom set a career high in strikeouts in his next start on April 3 with 14. DeGrom began the first half of the 2019 season with a 4–7 record and a 3.27 earned run average while striking out 138 batters. He was then named to the NL roster in the 2019 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. DeGrom had a remarkable second half, posting a 7–1 record with a 1.44 earned run average and 117 strikeouts. He won his second straight Cy Young Award in a near-unanimous vote, receiving 29 of 30 first-place votes, becoming the 11th pitcher in history to win back-to-back Cy Young Awards. In December 2019, the New York Post named him their New York Athlete of the Decade over such competition as Eli Manning, Henrik Lundqvist, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter. #### 2020 In the shortened 60-game 2020 season, deGrom was 4–2 with a 2.38 earned run average, and led the National League in strikeouts for the second consecutive season, with 104. He led the NL in strikeouts per 9 innings pitched (13.765), was 3rd in walks plus hits per inning pitched (0.956) and hits per 9 innings pitched (6.221), 4th in earned run average, 6th in win–loss percentage (.667) and home runs per 9 innings pitched (0.927), and 8th in walks per 9 innings pitched (2.382). His \$25 million salary was the 10th-highest in the NL. He finished third in NL Cy Young Award voting. #### 2021 On April 23, 2021, in a start against the Washington Nationals, deGrom set a record for most strikeouts in the first four starts of a season with 50. He pitched a complete game shutout with a career-high 15 strikeouts, only 2 hits, and no walks. In addition, deGrom went 2–4 at the plate with 2 runs and a run batted in RBI. In the same game, he lowered his career earned run average to 2.55, setting a franchise record. He was named April's National League Pitcher of the Month for the first time in his career. On June 5, deGrom threw seven scoreless innings against the San Diego Padres, lowering his earned run average to 0.62, the lowest by any pitcher in history through nine starts. On June 11, deGrom pitched six scoreless innings against the Padres, improving his earned run average to 0.56, the lowest by any pitcher through his first ten starts of the season. DeGrom had also thrown 100 strikeouts in just 61+2⁄3 innings, achieving the mark in the fewest innings since the mound was moved to its current distance from home plate in 1893. At that point in the season, deGrom also had more runs batted in on the year (6) than earned runs allowed (4). Through 12 starts, deGrom's walks plus hits per inning pitched was 0.51. Since at least 1901, no major league pitcher has had a walks plus hits to inning pitched ratio that low during 12 consecutive starts. He was named to the 2021 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, his fourth career nomination, although he announced he did not play. On July 7, deGrom earned his 1,500th career strikeout against Brewers shortstop Willy Adames. He achieved it in 198 career starts, becoming the 2nd-fastest pitcher to reach the mark behind Yu Darvish who did it in 197 career starts. On July 18, deGrom began to feel tightness in his forearm during a bullpen session and was subsequently placed by the Mets onto the 10-day injured list. Later in the month, deGrom also started feeling soreness in his elbow. An MRI revealed inflammation in his elbow, but with no structural damage. On August 20, deGrom was transferred to the 60-day IL to make room for relief pitcher Heath Hembree. deGrom did not pitch for the remainder of the 2021 season. Overall in 2021, deGrom posted a 7–2 record in 15 starts and recorded a 1.08 earned run average with 146 strikeouts and 11 walks in 92 innings. He was a finalist for the Silver Slugger Award, which was won by Max Fried. #### 2022 DeGrom suffered a stress reaction, the precursor to a stress fracture in his right scapula during spring training, an injury which caused him to miss the beginning of the 2022 season. DeGrom began a rehab assignment with the St. Lucie Mets in July 2022 and, after two successful starts, progressed to the Triple-A Syracuse Mets. DeGrom made his 2022 season debut for the Mets on August 2 against the Washington Nationals, allowing one run and striking out six in five innings. A September 13 start against the Cubs was deGrom's 39th consecutive start allowing three or fewer earned runs, tying a major league record set by Jim Scott of the Chicago White Sox in 1914. In his next start, on September 18, he broke Scott's record. At the end of the regular season, deGrom allowed at least three runs in four straight games, marking his worst stretch since 2017. However, deGrom bounced back in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the San Diego Padres, as the Mets faced elimination. That night deGrom allowed just two runs in six innings pitched with eight strikeouts, as the Mets won the game 7–3, although they eventually lost the series in Game 3. The stat line for deGrom in 2022 included a 3.08 earned run average over 11 starts, with 102 strikeouts. Following the end of the season, deGrom opted out of his contract, joining a group of several other Mets entering free agency. ### Texas Rangers On December 2, 2022, deGrom signed a five-year, \$185 million contract with the Texas Rangers. He made 6 starts for Texas in 2023, posting a 2.67 ERA with 45 strikeouts in 30+1⁄3 innings pitched. On June 6, 2023, the Rangers announced that deGrom would require Tommy John surgery after suffering a torn UCL in his right elbow. ## Personal life DeGrom is from DeLeon Springs, Florida. He was raised by his parents, Tony, an AT&T lineman, and Tammy, a customer service representative for a credit card rewards program. Tony deGrom built a batting cage in the backyard for his son to practice. Jacob deGrom credits his father for his quiet intensity and remembers demanding sessions playing catch in their yard. He says his father said to stay humble. He is one of three children of Tony and Tammy; his sisters are named Sarah and Jessica. He grew up an Atlanta Braves fan. Shortly after graduating from high school deGrom met his wife, Stacey. They were married in November 2014 and live in DeLand, Florida. They had a son in April 2016 and their second child, a girl was born in February 2018. They have a Morkie which is a combination of a Maltese and a Yorkie. At Stetson deGrom began to grow out his hair. His starts with the Mets led to the trending hashtag on Twitter of "#hairwego". His hair inspired a promotional "Jacob deGrom Hair Hat" giveaway at Citi Field during the 2016 season. After learning that an unnamed major league hitter said that deGrom's hair made it harder to pick up the ball out of his hand, deGrom said in 2016 that he would never cut his hair. However, he cut his hair during the 2017-18 offseason, saying that it could add speed to his fastball and also that he was tired of having long hair. ## See also - All-MLB Team - List of New York Mets team records - List of New York Mets Opening Day starting pitchers - MLB annual ERA Leaders • Career ERA Leaders - MLB Cy Young Award Winners - MLB Rookies of the Year - MLB Strikeout leaders - Major League Baseball Rookie of the Month Award - Major League Baseball Player of the Week Award - New York Mets award winners and league leaders - SN Pitcher of the Year Award Winners - Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award

Formidable-class battleship

Pre-dreadnought battleship class of the British Royal Navy

The Formidable class of battleships were a three-ship class of pre-dreadnoughts designed by Sir William White and built for the Royal Navy in the late 1890s. The class comprised Formidable, Irresistible, and Implacable. They were armed with a battery of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns, they had top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph), and they marked the adoption of Krupp armour in British battleship designs. The class formed the basis for the nearly identical London class of five ships, and those ships are sometimes included in the Formidable class. Formidable, Irresistible, and Implacable were built between 1898 and 1901 at the Portsmouth, Chatham, and Devonport Dockyards, respectively. All three ships served in the Mediterranean Fleet early in their careers, before returning to British waters in the late 1900s for duty in the Home Fleet, Channel Fleet, and the Atlantic Fleet. By 1912, all three ships had been assigned to the 5th Battle Squadron, Home Fleet, where they remained until the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. They patrolled the English Channel in the early months of the war and escorted troopships carrying elements of the British Expeditionary Force and other British Army units across the Channel to France. On the night of 31 December 1914 – 1 January 1915 while on patrol in the Channel, the 5th Squadron encountered a German U-boat that torpedoed and sank Formidable. Irresistible was sent to the Dardanelles Campaign in February 1915, and after engaging in a series of attacks on the Ottoman coastal fortifications, she struck a naval mine and sank. Implacable, the sole surviving member of the class, joined the Dardanelles operations in March 1915 and saw action during the landings at Cape Helles in April. She was later withdrawn, first in May 1915 to reinforce the Italian fleet guarding the Adriatic Sea and then to Salonika in November that year. After being recalled to Britain in July 1917, she was converted into a depot ship and used to support the Northern Patrol. After the war, she was sold for scrap in 1921 and was broken up in 1922. ## Design Design work on what became the Formidable class began with a meeting of the Board of Admiralty on 3 May 1897, where the general parameters of the new class was discussed. The Board concluded that repeating the Canopus class would not be a workable solution, since the Imperial Japanese Navy had begun building larger, 15,000-tonne (15,000-long-ton; 17,000-short-ton) battleships and the Canopus design was too small to carry the new 40-calibre 12-inch (305 mm) Mk IX guns, which were significantly heavier than the shorter 35-calibre BL 12-inch Mk VIII guns. The design staff determined that it was possible to construct a new ship that incorporated the advances of the Canopus class—namely, Krupp armour and improved engines and water-tube boilers—on a larger hull like the earlier Majestic-class battleships without increasing displacement and keeping the same speed as the Canopus class. The Director of Naval Construction, William Henry White, provided two design options, both modified versions of the basic Majestic form. Both variants had a main battery of four 12-inch guns, belt armour that was 8 inches (203 mm) thick, and a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). The main difference between the designs was the number of secondary guns; the first had twelve 6 in (152 mm) guns and the second had fourteen of the guns. Displacement differed by just 200 tons, at 14,700 t (14,500 long tons; 16,200 short tons) for the 12-gun variant and 14,900 t (14,700 long tons; 16,400 short tons) for the other one. White preferred the 14-gun version, though the consensus of the Board was that twelve guns were sufficient, on the basis that the two additional guns would overcrowd the upper deck, where they would have been placed, and would have increased the size of the crew too much. Additionally, a secondary battery of twelve guns was deemed to be sufficient in comparison to most other foreign battleships. And while an increase in offensive power would have been welcome, members of the Board decided that the weight savings gained by omitting the two guns could be used to strengthen the ships' armour, which they preferred at a time where naval guns were becoming increasingly powerful. The board adopted the 12-gun version, along with a request to increase the belt to 9 inches (229 mm). The thicker armour increased displacement to 15,000 t (15,000 long tons). The board requested that White prepare drawings for this new design on 19 June. A model was created by 17 August, which allowed the design staff to refine the hull shape. The staff cut away the deadwood forward and aft, which made the vessels more handy. Due to their similarity, some like historian Tony Gibbons consider the five London-class battleships to be part of the Formidable class, though most historians view them as a distinct class. The five London-class ships differed from the Formidables in their protection layout, which abandoned the forward armoured bulkhead in favour of an armoured belt that extended all the way to the stem. Regardless, the Formidable design provided the basis for the five Londons that were ordered under the 1898 programme. The only extant British built pre-dreadnought remaining, the Japanese battleship Mikasa was also built to a slightly modified design, the chief difference being the addition of another pair of 6-inch guns. ### General characteristics and machinery The ships of the Formidable class were 400 feet (122 m) long between perpendiculars, 411 ft (125 m) long at the waterline, and 431 feet 9 inches (132 m) long overall. They had a beam of 75 ft (23 m) and a draft of 26 ft (8 m) normally and 28 ft 8 in (9 m) fully loaded. The three ships displaced between 14,480 to 14,720 long tons (14,710 to 14,960 t) normally and up to 15,805 to 15,930 long tons (16,059 to 16,186 t) fully loaded. Freeboard was 23 ft (7.0 m) forward, 16 ft 9 in (5.11 m) amidships, and 18 ft (5.5 m) aft. They had two pole masts fitted with fighting tops; each top carried a searchlight, and four additional searchlights were mounted on the forward and aft bridges. Their crew size varied over the course of their careers; Irresistible had a crew of 788 officers and ratings in 1901, and in 1910, Formidable had a crew of 711. After having been withdrawn from active service in 1917, Implacable had a crew of just 361. The ships carried a number of small boats that varied over the course of their careers, including a variety of steam and sail pinnaces, sail launches, cutters, galleys, whalers, three gigs, dinghies, and rafts. The Formidable-class ships were powered by a pair of 3-cylinder triple-expansion engines that drove two inward-turning screws, with steam provided by twenty Belleville boilers. The boilers were divided into three boiler rooms and were trunked into two funnels located amidships. The boilers proved to be troublesome in service, with all three members of the class experiencing problems with them, particularly as the ships aged, between 1909 and 1914. The Formidable-class ships were rated for a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) from 15,000 indicated horsepower (11,000 kW). The ships' normally carried 900 t (890 long tons; 990 short tons) of coal for the boilers, but had a total capacity of 1,920 to 2,000 t (1,890 to 1,970 long tons; 2,120 to 2,200 short tons), which provided a cruising range of 5,100 nmi (9,400 km; 5,900 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). ### Armament and armour Formidable and her sisters had four 12-inch (305 mm) 40-calibre Mk IX guns mounted in twin-gun turrets fore and aft; these guns were mounted in circular barbettes that allowed all-around loading or elevation. Shell allowance was 80 rounds per gun. The Formidable class were the first to carry these guns, which featured several improvements over the earlier Mk VIII guns used in older battleships, including a stronger barrel design and higher muzzle velocity. Formidable and Implacable had BVI type mountings for their guns, while Irresistible received newer BVII mounts, the primary difference between the two types being the arrangement of the shell hoists and other equipment. Both types of mountings had a range of elevation from -5 degrees to of 13.5 degrees. The BVI mounts required the guns to return to 4.5 degrees to be loaded, while the BVII mounts allowed for loading at any angle. The guns had a muzzle velocity of 2,562 to 2,573 feet per second (781 to 784 m/s), and they were capable of penetrating 12 inches of Krupp armour at a range of 4,800 yards (4,400 m). At their maximum elevation, the guns had a range of 15,300 yards (14,000 m). The guns had a rate of fire of one shot every eighty seconds. The ships also mounted a secondary battery of twelve 6-inch (152 mm) 45-calibre guns mounted in casemates, which were supplied with 200 rounds per gun. The guns had a muzzle velocity of 2,536 ft/s (773 m/s). These guns could penetrate 6 inches of Krupp armour at 2,500 yards (2,300 m). Maximum elevation was 14 degrees, which allowed the guns to engage targets out to 12,000 yards (11,000 m). For close-range defence against torpedo boats, they carried ten 12-pounder guns with 300 rounds per gun and six 3-pounder guns with 500 shells per gun. As was customary for battleships of the period, they were also equipped with four 18-inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes submerged in the hull. The Formidable-class ships made more extensive use of Krupp steel than the preceding Canopus class, with most of their side armour consisting of the stronger steel. They had an armoured belt that was 9 inches (229 mm) thick and extended from the forward main battery barbette to the aft barbette; the transverse bulkheads on either end of the belt were 9 in thick forward and 9 to 10 in (229 to 254 mm) thick aft. The belt extended from main deck level (9 ft 6 in (3 m) above the waterline) to 5 ft 6 in (2 m) below the waterline. The ships' side plating forward of the belt was 3 in (76 mm) thick, while it was only 1.5 in (38 mm) aft of the belt. The ships were fitted with two armoured decks; the first was a flat deck that was 1 in (25 mm) thick, above the main deck, which was 2 in on the flat portion and increased slightly to 3 in on the sloped sides, where it connected to the belt armour. The ships' main battery turrets sides and faces were 8 in (203 mm) thick—reduced slightly compared to earlier ships to account for the heavier belt armour—with 10 in (254 mm) thick rears. The turret roofs were 3 in thick. The turrets sat atop 12 in thick barbettes, though Irresistible's barbette armour was reduced in thickness to 10 in behind the belt. Above the main belt was a strake of armour that protected the casemate guns, which was 6 inches thick; behind the casemates, an interior bulkhead that was 2 in (51 mm) thick protected the interior of the ship. Their forward conning tower had 10 to 14 in (254 to 356 mm) thick sides, with a communication tube below the tower that had armour protection that was 8 in (203 mm) thick. The aft conning tower had 3 in thick sides with a 3 in tube below. ## Ships in class ## Service history The ships of the Formidable class had uneventful peacetime careers. All three ships of the class served with the Mediterranean Fleet as their first station; in 1908, Formidable and Irresistible were recalled to the Channel Fleet, though the former remained there for just a year, transferring to the Home Fleet and then shortly thereafter to the Atlantic Fleet in 1909. That year, Implacable joined her sister ship in the Atlantic Fleet. Between 1911 and 1912, all three ships were assigned to the 5th Battle Squadron of the Home fleet, where they remained for the rest of their peacetime careers. Throughout their peacetime careers, the ships were repeatedly overhauled and had minor modifications carried out, including alterations to their light armament, addition of searchlights, and installation of improved fire-control and wireless systems. All three ships were mobilized as part of the 5th Battle Squadron at Britain's entry into the First World War in August 1914. They were initially based in the English Channel, and they helped to escort the British Expeditionary Force and later the Portsmouth Marine Battalion across the Channel in August. In October Implacable was temporarily detached to guard against a rumoured German cruiser attack. Shortly after midnight on 1 January 1915, Formidable was torpedoed and sunk by the German U-boat U-24 off Portland Bill while on patrol in the Channel. Most of the ship's crew—35 officers and 512 men—were killed in the sinking. The following month, Irresistible was sent to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to join the Dardanelles Campaign against the Ottoman Empire. She took part in repeated, failed attacks on the Ottoman defences guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles over the course of February and March. During a major Anglo-French attack on the coastal fortifications on 18 March, Irresistible struck a naval mine and sank, though most of her crew was evacuated; around 150 men were killed in her final battle. Implacable was ordered to join the Dardanelles campaign in March 1915, and she arrived shortly after the loss of Irresistible. She supported the landings at Cape Helles and at Anzac Cove, the beginning of the land portion of the Gallipoli Campaign. On the day of the attack, 25 April, the ship steamed off X Beach at Cape Helles, bombarding Ottoman defences as men went ashore. In recognition of the critical support she had provided the troops as they attacked Ottoman positions, they named the landing site "Implacable Beach". She continued to support the ground forces into May, including during the First and Second Battles of Krithia. In May, she was reassigned to the 2nd Detached Squadron, which was tasked with supporting the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in the Adriatic Sea, where it contained the Austro-Hungarian Navy. In November, she was again transferred, this time to the 3rd Detached Squadron, based in Salonika, Greece. The ship was recalled to Britain in July 1917, later being converted into a depot ship for the Northern Patrol. Implacable was ultimately sold for scrap in 1921 and was broken up the following year in Germany.

Semyon Sakhnov

Red army major general

Semyon Pavlovich Sakhnov (Russian: Семён Павлович Сахнов; 15 February 1900 – 8 March 1950) was a Red Army major general who commanded the 56th Rifle Division in the early stages of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). After fighting as an ordinary soldier in the Russian Civil War, Sakhnov graduated from an officer training school and served there during the 1920s before rising to division command in the late 1930s. He was commanding the 56th Rifle Division in Belarus when Operation Barbarossa was launched. Stationed close to the border, his unit was destroyed in the first days of the war. After more than two months behind German lines, Sakhnov reached the Soviet lines with a small group of other officers, but was expelled from the Communist Party for burying his documents when he was encircled by German units. As a result of this censure, he never held a combat command again and spent the rest of the war in command of a training unit. ## Early life and Russian Civil War The son of Ukrainian peasants, Semyon Pavlovich Sakhnov was born on 15 February 1900 in Samoylovka in the Saratov Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Saratov Oblast, Russia). He graduated from the village primary school. Drafted into the Red Army on 20 July 1919 during the Russian Civil War, he was sent to serve with a cavalry battalion of the 23rd Rifle Division on the Southern Front. With the latter, Sakhnov fought as a Red Army man in the suppression of revolts in the rear of the 9th Army, and in battles against the Armed Forces of South Russia in the advance on Novocherkassk, on the Manych River, and at Yekaterinodar. He was transferred to the 99th Railroad Detachment at Balashov in February 1920 and later that year became a cadet of the 34th Machine Gun Commanders' Courses at Saratov, which became the Saratov Infantry School in May 1921. With a cadet detachment from the school, Sakhnov fought in the suppression of peasant revolts in Saratov Governorate. ## Interwar period After graduating from the school in September 1922, Sakhnov remained there as a platoon commander. From October 1927 he was a class commander, and later became an assistant company commander at the school. After completing the Leningrad Armored Courses for the Improvement of Command Cadre in 1931, Sakhnov became a company commander at the tank school reorganized from the Saratov Infantry School, in April 1931. He transferred to the 245th Rifle Regiment of the 82nd Rifle Division at Sverdlovsk, east of the Ural Mountains, in February 1932, serving with it as a battalion commander and assistant regimental commander. He became commander of the 245th before being sent to the Vystrel course for advanced training in November 1937. After completing the course in August 1938, Sakhnov, by then a colonel, was appointed commander of the 71st Rifle Division at Kemerovo in October of that year. The division was disbanded to form an officer cadet school and training courses for commanders within a few months, and in January 1940 Sakhnov became commander of the 23rd Reserve Rifle Brigade, a training unit in the district. He became a major general on 4 June of that year when the Red Army introduced general officer ranks. Appointed commander of the 201st Rifle Division at Tyumen in March 1941, Sakhnov was quickly sent to the Western Special Military District in Belarus, where he took command of the 56th Rifle Division, part of the 4th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Army, on 12 June. ## World War II When Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June, the 56th came under attack from three divisions of the German VIII Army Corps in what became known as the Battle of Białystok–Minsk. Spread out over an area of 50 kilometers (31 mi) in camps near Grodno in Polish territory annexed by the Soviet Union, close to the border of German-occupied Poland, the division suffered heavy losses and by 10:00 its remnants began retreating to the east and southeast, although one regiment was surrounded defending the Augustów Canal. Sakhnov's communications with his units relied on telephone lines, which were soon cut, preventing him from controlling his forces. German tanks broke through to his command post by 09:00 and he began evacuating to the rear. In the chaos, the headquarters was scattered, and by 14:00 Sakhnov, with the guard platoon, the division's political commissar and chief of artillery, and other headquarters officers, made his way eastward, deep in the German rear. To cross the Neman, the group split up and Sakhnov, with five other officers and six enlisted men, crossed at Grandichi, 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) north of Grodno on the night of 22–23 June. He proceeded to the Ozyory area on the next day, bringing his group to 25 people by collecting retreating troops. Sakhnov led his group to the Ozyory area on 24 June, having heard from another officer that Soviet troops were attempting to make a stand at Skidel. They arrived there in the afternoon, finding that the head of the operational department of the neighbouring 85th Rifle Division's staff had organized a defense from remnants of two regiments of the 56th and 85th with roughly 350 personnel. Skidel was surrounded by German tanks and infantry by the end of the day and Sakhnov, who had taken command, withdrew the troops across the Neman to the area of Most under the cover of darkness. On 25 June he and the staff officers went to Shchuchyn by staff car to retrieve rear units of the division there and shifted them and the remnants that could be collected to the area of Lida that night. Seeking the 3rd Army headquarters, supposedly at Lunno, Sakhnov and the division rear units met the commander of the 56th's 184th Rifle Regiment with 700 of his men while en route to Most and headed for Lunno on the morning of 27 June. German defenses in the area of Most on 27 June were porous and the 184th managed to overwhelm them at Rozhanka, capturing several prisoners who were shot, according to Sakhnov's postwar recollections. Later that day they slipped through the German lines to reach the south bank of the Neman at Most, but in the fighting Sakhnov and a group of around 50 people were separated from the regiment. After this engagement, Sakhnov's group gradually split into ever smaller groups that continued to move east over the next few days. Having to detour around German-occupied locations, Sakhnov and four other officers from his unit and the 3rd Army staff slowly made their way northeast on foot. He and the other officers reached Soviet lines on 6 September north of Andreapol in the sector of the 133rd Rifle Division of the 22nd Army, unarmed and dressed in civilian clothes, without his identity papers. For burying his party card with his papers while behind German lines, he was expelled from the Communist Party ten days later, a disgrace that ensured that he could not return to the front. After spending three months under NKVD investigation, Sakhnov was briefly assigned to the Vystrel course in October before being sent to the Siberian Military District under the direction of Lieutenant General Stepan Kalinin to work on raising new units in the district. In December he was appointed commander of the 23rd Reserve Rifle Brigade, a training unit, which was reorganized as a division with the same number in July 1944. Sakhnov spent the rest of the war in Siberia. In this capacity, he was responsible for the formation of new units and the dispatch of march battalions to provide replacements for the army. ## Postwar After the end of the war, Sakhnov continued to command the division. In October 1945 he became chief of the department of combat and physical training of the staff of the Western Siberian Military District. He was dismissed from the army and became chief of the military department of the Bashkir Agricultural Institute at Ufa in June 1948. Sakhnov died in Moscow on 8 March 1950, and was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery. He was survived by a son, Vyacheslav, who coached basketball at Bashkir State University. ## Awards and honors Sakhnov was a recipient of the following decorations: - Order of Lenin (21 February 1945) - Order of the Red Banner (3 November 1944) Both awards were made as a reward for the length of his service in the Red Army.

Manasa

Hindu folk goddess of snakes

Manasa (Sanskrit: मनसा, romanized: Manasā) is a Hindu goddess of snakes. She is worshipped mainly in Bihar, Bengal, Jharkhand, South Assam and other parts of northeastern India and in Uttarakhand, chiefly for the prevention and cure of snakebite, and also for fertility and prosperity. In Hinduism, Manasa is the sister of Shesha and Vasuki, king of Nāgas (serpents), and wife of sage Jaratkaru. She is the mother of the sage Astika. She is also known as Vishahari (the destroyer of poison), Nityā (eternal) and Padmavati. In regional tradition, her stories emphasise her bad temper and unhappiness, due to rejection by her father, Shiva, and her husband, and the hate of her stepmother Chandi (Shiva's wife, identified with Parvati in this context). Manasa is depicted as kind to her devotees, but harsh toward people who refuse to worship her. Denied full godhood due to her mixed parentage, Manasa's aim was to fully establish her authority as a goddess, and to acquire steadfast human devotees. ## Origin Bhattacharya and Sen suggest that Manasa originated in South India as a non-Vedic and non-Aryan goddess and is related to the Kannada folk snake-goddess Manchamma. Manasa was originally an Adivasi (tribal) goddess. She was accepted in the pantheon worshipped by Hindu backward caste groups. Later, Dimock suggests that though snake worship is found in the Vedas (the earliest Hindu scriptures), Manasa - a human goddess of snakes - has "little basis" in early Hinduism. Bhattacharya suggests another influence on Manasa being the Mahayana Buddhist goddess of poison-cure Janguli. Janguli shares his swan vehicle and her poison-destroyer epithet with Manasa. Manasa is also known as Janguli. A theory suggests that Janguli may have influenced by the Kirata-giri ("the conqueror of all poisons") of the Atharvaveda. As per McDaniel, she was included in higher caste Hindu pantheon, where she is now regarded as a Hindu goddess rather than a tribal one. According to Tate, Manasa as Jaratkaru was initially recognized as a daughter of sage Kashyapa and Kadru, the mother of all nagas in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. According to Bhattacharya, the Jaratkaru of the Mahabharata is not the Manasa popular in Bengal. By the 14th century, Manasa was identified as the goddess of fertility and marriage rites and was assimilated into the Shaiva pantheon, related to the god Shiva. Myths glorified her by describing that she saved Shiva after he drank the poison, and venerated her as the "remover of poison". Her popularity grew and spread to southern India, and her followers began to rival the earliest Shaivism (the cult of Shiva). As a consequence, stories attributing Manasa's birth to Shiva emerged and ultimately Shaivism adopted this indigenous goddess into the Brahmanical tradition of mainstream Hinduism. Alternatively, Vasudev suggests that the Bengali tale of Manasa reflects rivalry between Shaivism and the goddess-centric Shaktism. ## Iconography Manasa is depicted as a beautiful woman with a golden complexion (thats why termed as Jagat Gauri) and smiling face. She wears Red garments and Golden jewellery.She is four handed with her upper right hands holding a shankh and left hand holding her favorite flower, lotus.Her lower left hands holds a snake and right hand bestows Varada Mudra. She is covered with snakes, sitting on a lotus platform or standing upon a snake. She is sheltered by the canopy of the hoods of seven cobras. Sometimes, she is depicted with a child on her lap. The child is assumed to be her son, Astika.In Bengal she is rarely seen with her husband Rishi Jarat Karu. In some of her idol she is shown with Behula and Lakshminder. ## Legend ### Mahabharata The Mahabharata tells the story of Manasa's marriage. Sage Jaratkaru practised severe austerities and had decided to abstain from marriage. Once, he came across a group of men hanging from a tree upside down. These men were his ancestors, who were doomed to misery as their children had not performed their last rites. So, they advised Jaratkaru to marry and have a son who could free them of those miseries by performing the ceremonies. Vasuki offered his sister Manasa's hand to Jaratkaru. Manasa gave birth to a son, Astika, who freed his ancestors. Astika also helped in saving the naga race from destruction when King Janamejaya decided to exterminate them by sacrificing them in his yajna, called the sarpa satra. ### Puranas The Puranas are the first scriptures to speak about her birth. They declare that sage Kashyapa is her father, not Shiva as described in the later Mangalkavyas. Once, when serpents and reptiles had created chaos on the Earth, Kashyapa created the goddess Manasa from his mind (mana). The creator god Brahma made her the presiding deity of snakes and reptiles. Manasa gained control over the earth, by the power of mantras she chanted. Manasa then propitiated the god Shiva, who told her to please the god Krishna. Upon being pleased, Krishna granted her divine Siddhi powers and ritually worshipped her, making her an established goddess. Kashyapa married Manasa to sage Jaratkaru, who agreed to marry her on the condition that he would leave her if she disobeyed him. Once, when Jaratkaru was awakened by Manasa, he became upset with her because she awakened him too late for worship, and so he left her temporarily. ### Mangalkavyas The Mangalkavyas were devotional paeans to local deities such as Manasa, composed in Bengal between the 13th and the 18th centuries. The Manasa Mangalkavya by Vijay Gupta and Manasa Vijaya (1495) by Bipradas Pipilai trace the origin and myths of the goddess. However these stray further from Puranaic references probably due to creative licenses exercised. At least fifteen Mangalkavyas dedicated to Manasa are known. Scholar D. C. Sen traced fifty-one versions of her tale. According to Manasa Vijaya, Manasa was born when a statue of a girl that had been sculpted by Vasuki's mother which was touched by Shiva's seed. Vasuki accepted Manasa as his sister, and granted her the charge of poison that was produced when King Prithu milked the Earth as a cow. When Shiva saw Manasa, he was attracted to her, but she proved to him that he was her father. Shiva took Manasa to his home where his wife, Chandi, suspected Manasa of being Shiva's concubine or co-wife, and insulted Manasa and burnt one of her eyes, leaving Manasa half-blind. Later, when Shiva was dying of poison, Manasa cured him. On one occasion, when Chandi kicked her, Manasa rendered her senseless with a glance of her poison eye. Finally, tired of quarrels between Manasa and Chandi, Shiva deserted Manasa under a tree, but created a companion for her from his tears of remorse, called Neto or Netā. Later, the sage Jaratkaru married Manasa, but Chandi ruined Manasa's wedding night. Chandi advised Manasa to wear snake ornaments and then threw a frog in the bridal chamber which caused the snakes to run around the chamber. As a consequence, the terrified Jaratkaru ran away from the house. After few days, he returned and Astika, their son, was born. Accompanied by her adviser, Neto, Manasa descended to earth to see human devotees. She was initially mocked by the people but then Manasa forced them to worship her by raining calamity on those who denied her power. She managed to convert people from different walks of life, including the Muslim ruler Hasan, but failed to convert Chand Sadagar. Manasa wanted to become a goddess like Lakshmi or Saraswati. To get there, she had to achieve the worship of Chand Sadagar who was extremely adamant and took oath not to worship Manasa. Thus to gain his fear and insecurity, Manasa one by one killed his six sons. At last Manasa conspired against two dancers of Indras Court who loved each other, Anirudha and Usha. Anirudh had to take birth as Lakhinder, Chand and Sanaka's seventh son. Usha took birth as Behula and married him. Manasa killed him but Behula floated on water for nine months with the dead body of her husband and finally brought back the lives of the seven sons and the lost prosperity of Chand. At last, he yielded by offering a flower to the goddess with his left hand without even looking at her. This gesture made Manasa so happy that she resurrected all of Chand's sons and restored his fame and fortunes. The Mangal kavyas say that after this, the worship of Manasa was popular forever. Manasa Mangalkavya attributes Manasa's difficulty in attracting devotees to an unjust curse she gave to Chand in his previous life. Chand then retaliated with a counter-curse that worshipping her would not be popular on earth unless he worshipped her also. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita say, "[The] legend of [Chand Sadagar and] Manasā Devī, [...] who must be as old as the Mykenean stratum in Asiatic society, reflects the conflict between the religion of Shiva and that of female local deities in Bengal. Afterwards Manasā or Padmā was recognized as a form of Shakti, [...] and her worship accepted by Shaivas. She is a phase of the mother-divinity who for so many worshippers is nearer and dearer than the far-off and impersonal Shiva...". ## Worship Generally, Manasa is worshipped without an image. A branch of a tree, an earthen pot or an earthen snake image is worshipped as the goddess, though images of Manasa are worshipped too. She is worshipped for protection from and cure of snake bites and infectious diseases like smallpox and chicken pox. The following of Manasa is most widespread in Bengal, where she is ritually worshipped in temples. The goddess is widely worshipped in the rainy season, when the snakes are most active. Manasa is also a very important fertility deity, especially among the lower castes, and her blessings are invoked during marriage or for childlessness. She is usually worshipped and mentioned along with Neto, who is called Neta, Netidhopani, Netalasundori, etc. in various parts of Bengal. In North Bengal, among the Rajbanshis, Manasa (called Bishohora, Bishohori or Padmavati) is one of the most important goddesses, and her thaan (shrine) may be found in the courtyard of almost every agrarian household. Among the lower-caste Hindus of East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh) too, she is worshipped with great pomp. Manasa is an especially important deity in Bengal for the mercantile castes. This is because Chando of the Manasamangal was the first to initiate her worship, and Behula, the heroine of the Manasamangal was a daughter of the Saha clan (a powerful trading community). Manasa is the prime deity of Anga Region, specially in Anga's capital, Champa (now Bhagalpur). It is believed that the story of Chand Saudagar and Behula started from this very place. In the old quarters of Champanagar in the city, stands an enormous temple of Manasa. Several artefacts and sculptures found in and around the place made locals believed that it was where Chand Saudagar had his Rajbari. A recent excavation has also found "Loha- Bashor ghor" or "Bashor ghor", the building made specifically for the wedding night of Lakhendar and Behula. The Angika lokgatha, "Behula Bishari Lokgatha" and the regional art, Manjusha Chitrakatha is full flegedly based on the chronicles of Manasa and the hardships of Behula. Every year, from 16 to 19 August, Bhagalpur springs up like a scented flower to worship the local guardian Manasa and commemorate the wedding of Behula Manasa is also worshipped extensively in Assam and Tripura, and a kind of Oja-Pali (musical folk theatre) is dedicated entirely to her myth. Manasa is ceremonially worshipped on Nag Panchami - a festival of snake worship in the Hindu month of Shravan (July–August). Bengali women observe a fast (vrata) on this day and offer milk at snake holes. Manasa Devi is worshipped in Andhra Pradesh. ## Notable temples - Shri Manasa Devi Temple (Swayambu), Kasimpet(Manasavaram), Karimnagar, Telangana - Mansa Bishari Temple, Bhagalpur, Bihar - Mansa Devi Temple, Mukkamala, West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Naidupeta, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Tilaru, Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Dornipadu, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Kanumalapalle, Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Chinadugam, Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Thurpu Rompidodla, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh - Mansa Devi Temple, Vadluru, West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh - Ma Manasha Mandir, Lake Town, Kolkata, West Bengal - Ma Manasa Mandir, Gopinagar, Khamarchandi, Haripal,Hooghly,West Bengal. ## See also - Shesha - Vasuki - Kadru

M-247 (Michigan highway)

State highway in Bangor Township, Bay County, Michigan, United States

M-247 is a north–south state trunkline highway in the US state of Michigan, connecting M-13 to the Bay City Recreation Area, entirely within Bangor Township. As a state trunkline, M-247 runs north from M-13 before turning to access the park, a distance of 3.036 miles (4.886 km). The highway carries just over 6,000 vehicles a day on average. The roadway has been part of the state trunkline highway system since the 1920s, and from 1961 until 1998, it was the highest non-Interstate highway in the state. Before it was given the M-247 designation, the roadway has been a part of M-111 and M-47. ## Route description Starting at its southern terminus at M-13, M-247 follows Euclid Avenue north about 2.7 miles (4.3 km), crossing the Kawkawlin River. When it meets Beaver Road, M-247 turns east leading directly into the state park and ends at its entrance. The entire roadway passes through suburban Bay City near the Saginaw Bay. None of the highway is listed on the National Highway System, a system of regionally important highways. The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) measures the traffic volumes on its highways using a calculation called average annual daily traffic (AADT). This value is an expression of the number of vehicles that use a section of roadway on any average day of the year. When the department surveyed M-247 in 2009, the southernmost section near M-13 carried 6,135 vehicles; the remainder carried 6,224 vehicles. As a subset of these figures, 190 commercial vehicles used the trunkline on average. This was an overall increase from 2008 when the sections carried 5,031 and 5,573 vehicles respectively, but a decrease from the 214 commercial vehicles. ## History By 1929, the first highway designation along the current M-247 was assigned. That first number was M-111, which lasted until 1937 when all of M-111 became part of M-47. In early 1961, the roadway changed numbers once more. This time M-47 was realigned to a former section of US Highway 10 (US 10), and the connection to the state park was assigned the M-247 designation. This was the highest highway number in the state, excluding Interstates, until the 1998 designation of M-553 in the Upper Peninsula. ## Major intersections ## See also

Russian cruiser Dmitrii Donskoi

Russian armoured cruiser

Dmitrii Donskoi (Russian: Дмитрий Донской) was an armoured cruiser built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the early 1880s. She was designed as a commerce raider and equipped with a full suite of sails to economize on coal consumption. The ship spent the bulk of her career abroad, either in the Far East or in the Mediterranean. Dmitrii Donskoi was assigned to the Second Pacific Squadron after the Japanese destroyed Russian ships deployed in the Far East during the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The squadron was intercepted by the Japanese fleet in May 1905 in the Battle of Tsushima after a lengthy voyage from the Baltic. The cruiser was not seriously damaged during the initial fighting and tried to continue on to Vladivostok after the first day's fighting. She was spotted by several groups of Japanese warships the following day and was badly damaged in the resulting combat. Her captain ordered the crew ashore near Ulleungdo and had Dmitrii Donskoi scuttled offshore. ## Design and description Dmitrii Donskoi was classified as a semi-armoured frigate and was an improved version of her half-sister Vladimir Monomakh. The ship was designed with long endurance and high speed to facilitate her role as a commerce raider. She was laid out as a central-battery ironclad with her armament concentrated amidships. The iron-hulled ship was fitted with a ram and was sheathed in wood and copper to reduce fouling. Her crew numbered approximately 550 officers and men. The ship was 306 feet 5 inches (93.4 m) long overall. She had a beam of 58 feet 1 inch (17.7 m) and a draught of 25 feet 7 inches (7.8 m). The ship displaced 5,593 long tons (5,683 t) at deep load. Dmitrii Donskoi had a pair of three-cylinder compound steam engines driving a single propeller shaft. Steam was provided by eight cylindrical boilers. The engines were designed to produce 7,000 indicated horsepower (5,200 kW), but produced 6,609 ihp (4,928 kW) during sea trials which gave the ship a maximum speed around 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph). The ship normally carried 900 long tons (910 t) of coal which gave her an economical range of 7,000 nautical miles (13,000 km; 8,100 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), but she is known to have loaded 1,625 long tons (1,651 t) in May 1889. She was ship rigged with three masts and had a total sail area of 26,000 square feet (2,400 m²). To reduce drag while under sail, her funnels were retractable. The highest speed that she made solely under sail was 10.5 knots (19.4 km/h; 12.1 mph). Dmitrii Donskoi was armed with two 30-calibre 8-inch (203 mm) Model 1877 guns, on sponsons on the upper deck between the funnels. The fourteen 28-calibre Model 1877 6-inch (152 mm) guns were mounted in casemates on the main deck. Anti-torpedo boat defence was provided by a number of nine-pounder (42 mm (1.7 in)), four-pounder (34 mm (1.3 in)) and 37 mm (1.5 in) five-barreled revolver Hotchkiss guns. The ship was also equipped with four above-water 15-inch (381 mm) torpedo tubes. The ship's waterline belt was composed of compound armour and extended the full length of the ship. It was six inches thick amidships, but reduced to 4.5 inches (114 mm) at the ship's ends. It extended 2 feet (0.6 m) above the waterline and 5 feet (1.5 m) below. Transverse bulkheads 3–4 inches (76–102 mm) thick protected the guns in the battery from raking fire. The sponsons of the 8-inch guns were equally thick. The protective deck was 0.5-inch (13 mm) thick. ## Service Construction began on Dmitrii Donskoi on 22 September 1880, at the New Admiralty Shipyard in St. Petersburg, and the keel-laying ceremony was held on 21 May 1881. She was launched on 30 August 1882 and completed in early 1885. The ship's total cost was 3,421,468 rubles. She was named after Dmitry Donskoy, Grand Duke of Moscow. She sailed to the Mediterranean on 8 August 1885 and remained there until she arrived at Port Said on 6 March 1887 en route to the Far East. Dmitrii Donskoi reached Nagasaki, Japan, on 19 May and remained in Japanese waters for several months. The ship arrived at Vladivostok on 20 July and accidentally grounded on 12 October whilst conducting torpedo practice. Only lightly damaged, she was refloated the following day. Dmitrii Donskoi wintered in Japan that year and made port visits to Chefoo and Shanghai in February 1888. She was refitted in Yokohama before she began her return to the Baltic on 20 January 1889. The ship was inspected by Tsar Alexander III after her arrival at Kronstadt on 12 June. She began a lengthy overhaul in preparation for her next foreign cruise shortly afterwards. Dmitrii Donskoi began her second foreign cruise on 3 October 1891 when she sailed for the Mediterranean, visiting Brest, France en route. She was reclassified as a cruiser of the first rank on 13 February 1892 and remained in the Mediterranean for another month or so. The ship reached Vladivostok on 29 June, stopping at Aden, Singapore, and Hong Kong en route. Dmitrii Donskoi served as the flagship of Rear Admiral Tirtov several times during the year. She spent the winter in Yokosuka and Nagasaki before she sailed in early 1893 to America for a goodwill visit to mark the 400th anniversary of America's discovery. In Algiers in March, the ship picked up Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia and became flagship of Rear Admiral Kaznakov who commanded all the Russian ships at the exhibition. Dmitrii Donskoi reached New York City on 25 April and participated in the Presidential Review two days later. She made port visits to Philadelphia, Boston and Newport, Rhode Island before she arrived back at Kronstadt in early September. During the ship's lengthy 1893–95 refit, she was rearmed with six 45-calibre six-inch guns, ten 45-calibre 4.7-inch (120 mm) guns, and six 47-millimetre (1.9 in) guns. Her boilers may have been replaced at this time and her sailing rig was replaced by three pole masts. Wilgelm Vitgeft was appointed as the ship's captain in late 1895 and Dmitrii Donskoi began her voyage to the Far East on 10 November. She was one of the Russian ships that occupied Port Arthur in March 1898 and participated in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion in mid-1900. The ship was ordered home in late 1901. Dmitrii Donskoi was refitted again upon her arrival and six of her 4.7-inch guns were replaced by six 75-millimetre (3.0 in) guns and two additional 47 mm guns. After the completion of her refit, she escorted a group of seven destroyers and five torpedo boats to the Mediterranean in October 1903 where they were assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron under the command of Rear Admiral Virenius. The Naval Staff decided to reinforce the Pacific Squadron with the Mediterranean Squadron in December, but its departure was delayed by repairs to the battleship Oslyabya after it had grounded. When the Russo-Japanese War began in February 1904, the squadron was in the Red Sea and was recalled to the Baltic lest it be caught and destroyed en route by the Japanese. ### Sinking Dmitrii Donskoi was assigned to the cruiser force of the Second Pacific Squadron and departed Libau on 15 October 1904 bound for Vladivostok with Captain 1st Rank Lebedev in command. En route in the North Sea, she was damaged by friendly fire from seven sister ships in mistake for a Japanese vessel during the Dogger Bank Incident of 21/22 October. The ship passed the Cape of Good Hope on 20 December. Whilst approaching the Strait of Tsushima on 27 May 1905, the Russian force was intercepted by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima. The cruiser was assigned to defend the transport ships at the rear of the Russian formation and was not seriously engaged during the day. She became separated from the rest of the fleet during the early evening and attempted to steam north to Vladivostok through the Japanese fleet. Dmitrii Donskoi was unsuccessfully attacked by Japanese destroyers and torpedo boats during the night. The following morning, she helped to transfer the badly wounded squadron commander, Vice Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, from the destroyer Buinyi to the destroyer Biedovi and then was forced to scuttle Buinyi when the destroyer's machinery broke down. The destroyer's crew as well as some 205 survivors from Oslyabya were transferred to the cruiser before Buinyi was scuttled. As the ship sailed northward, she was spotted late in the day by several groups of Japanese ships and badly damaged in the ensuing combat. Captain Lebedev decided to run his ship aground on Ulleungdo, but the ship anchored instead and all of the men aboard were taken to the island. Roughly 60 men of the ship's crew had been killed and another 120 wounded during the fighting. The next morning, 29 May, Dmitrii Donskoi was scuttled about a 1.5 nautical miles (2.8 km; 1.7 mi) offshore at approximately . The survivors were taken prisoner that afternoon by landing parties from the destroyer Fubuki and the armed merchant cruiser Kasuga Maru. ## Shipwreck In 2000, the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, contracted in 1999 by Dong Ah Construction Industrial Co., South Korea's fifth-largest construction company, was rumoured to have found the shipwreck of Dmitrii Donskoi. A month beforehand, the company had gone into receivership, but was allowed to continue trading shares. Its share price rose by 41% in one week on media reports that 14,000 tons of gold (10% of all the gold ever mined on Earth) were on board the ship, but they never raised anything from the sea, and the company went bankrupt. South Korea's Institute of Ocean Science and Technology claims to have discovered the wreck in 2003 and has photographs dating from 2007 on its website. ### Shinil Group In July 2018, the Shinil Group, a South Korean treasure hunting company, announced it had found Dmitrii Donskoi 1,400 feet (430 m) below the surface, 1 mile (1.6 km) off the South Korean island of Ulleungdo. Under the group's plan, a Chinese salvage company would attempt to retrieve the 5,500 boxes of gold bullion and 200 tons of gold coins, altogether worth £101.3 billion (c. US\$133 billion), which they believed to be inside the wreck. Half of the gold would be given back to Russia. The company, founded in June 2018, had not applied to South Korea's Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries for the salvage rights. No evidence was offered by Shinil Group for the ship carrying any gold when it sank. South Korea's financial regulator warned the public against investing money in treasure hunting ventures. Park Sung-jin, a spokesman for Shinil Group, said that a cryptocurrency exchange website purporting to be theirs was fake. A representative of the Central Naval Museum in Saint Petersburg said there was no evidence to support the claim of gold in the Dmitrii Donskoi's wreck. On 26 July, the group changed its name to Shinil Marine Technology and publicly withdrew its claims about Dmitrii Donskoi, having raised an estimated US\$53 million in funds. A Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, Shinil Group PTE, from which Shinil Marine Technology had tried to distance itself, said that 124,000 pre-sale investors were signed up and the value of a coin was expected to rise by 25,000%. South Korean police launched a fraud investigation and imposed travel bans on heads of the Korean firm. A South Korean court found the vice chairman of the group guilty of fraud and sentenced him to a five-year prison term, along with a key accomplice. The former chairman of the group received a two-year prison sentence.

Dragon Lee (wrestler)

Mexican professional wrestler (born 1995)

Dragon Lee (born May 15, 1995) is a Mexican luchador enmascarado, or masked professional wrestler who is signed to WWE, where he performs on the NXT brand. Dragon Lee's real name is not a matter of public record, as is often the case with masked wrestlers in Mexico where their private lives are kept a secret from the wrestling fans. A second-generation wrestler, he is best known for his work for the Mexican professional wrestling promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), where he used a tecnico ("Good guy") wrestling character. Lee is also known for his work in Ring of Honor (ROH), where he was ROH World Television Champion and ROH World Tag Team Champion with La Faccion Ingobernable teammate Kenny King, and for his work in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), under the name Ryu Lee (リュウ・リー Ryū Rī), where he is a former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion. Dragon Lee is the son of professional wrestler Arturo Muñoz, known under the ring name La Bestia del Ring, where the family relationship is publicly acknowledged. He is the second person to use the Dragon Lee ring persona and mask, the first Dragon Lee being his older brother, Carlos, who now wrestles under the ring name Dralístico. Dragon Lee has another brother, William, who works under the ring name Rush. Dragon Lee was voted the 2014 Rookie of the Year by readers of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. In April 2015, Dragon Lee won his first professional wrestling title, the CMLL World Lightweight Championship. Lee is also the fourth wrestler to win titles in ROH, CMLL, and NJPW after Rocky Romero, Matt Taven, and Tama Tonga. ## Personal life The man known under the ring name Dragon Lee was born on May 15, 1995, in Tala, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, son of professional wrestler Arturo Muñoz, who had worked as Toro Blanco, Poder Boriqua, Poder Mexico, and Comandante Pierroth over the years. Dragon Lee's two older brothers grew up to become professional wrestlers as well, with the oldest of the brothers, William, making his wrestling debut in 2008 and would later become known as "Rush". Another of Dragon Lee's brothers, Carlos, became a professional wrestler in 2011, adopting the enmascarado (masked) character Dragon Lee initially. In 2012, the original Dragon Lee was offered the opportunity to take over the Místico character after the original wrestler under the Místico mask left Mexico. It was public knowledge that Dragon Lee had taken over the Místico character, leaving the mask and character of Dragon Lee behind. Dragon Lee's uncles are also professional wrestlers, known as Franco Columbo, Pit Bull I, and Pit Bull II, and all had a hand in training Dragon Lee prior to his professional wrestling debut. At the age of 14, his father took him to Mexico City to start training in amateur wrestling, participating in several wrestling events. He would also participate in boxing; but, as Dragon Lee recalls in a 2015 interview, during his first match he performed a Suplex (a wrestling throw) on his opponent and was disqualified. At that point he realized that his future was in Lucha Libre. In December 2019, Dragon Lee married his fiancée, Lupita Orozco. The wedding was officiated by Fray Tormenta. ## Professional wrestling career ### Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (2013–2019) Muñoz began training in Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre's (CMLL: Spanish for "World Wrestling Council") gym in 2013, working towards a contract to become a regular wrestler for CMLL. He made his first public appearance as Dragon Lee on November 20, 2013, when he competed in CMLL's 2013 Bodybuilding Contest, winning the beginners category while CMLL regulars Pequeño Olimpico and Stukita took second and third place. He made his in-ring debut for CMLL on January 1, 2014, as part of the 2014 La Copa Junior tournament. During the match Dragon Lee eliminated Herodes, Jr., but was himself eliminated by Cachorro as the third man eliminated in the tournament that was eventually won by Super Halcón Jr. Dragon Lee was referred to as part of CMLL's Generacion 2014, a group of wrestlers who all made their debut around January 2014 and also included Black Panther, Cachorro, Espiritu Negro, Flyer, Hechicero, El Rebelde and Star Jr. A month after his CMLL debut Dragon Lee participated in the 2014 Torneo Gran Alternativa ("Great Alternative") tournament, which is an annual a tag team tournament that has a wrestling rookie team up with an experienced wrestler for the tournament. For the tournament, Dragon Lee teamed up with older brother Rush. In the first round the brothers defeated Negro Casas and Canelo Casas, then went on to defeat Herodes, Jr. and Shocker in the second round before losing to eventual tournament winners Bárbaro Cavernario and Mr. Niebla in the tournament semi-final. On March 23, 2014, Dragon Lee was one of 16 wrestlers in a tornero cibernetico (elimination) match, hoping to qualify for one of eight spots in CMLL's annual En Busca de un Ídolo ("In search of an idol") tournament. Dragon Lee was one of the eight survivors of the match alongside Cachorro, Cavernario, Guerrero Negro Jr. Hechicero, Star Jr., Soberano Jr. and Super Halcon Jr. and thus qualified for the actual tournament. The first round consisted of a round-robin tournament where he wrestled against all other participants. Following the matches each wrestler was given points by a panel of judges as well as points from an online poll. The first round saw Dragon Lee in 4th place with 423 points following victories over Cachorro, Guerrero Negro, Jr. and Soberano, Jr., 423 points qualified him for the second round along with Cavernario, Hechicero and Cachorro. Dragon Lee only defeated Cachorro during the second round, landing him in 3rd place with 198 points. On August 25, 2014, it was announced that Dragon Lee would team up with fellow rookie Cachorro for the CMLL 81st Anniversary Show, marking Dragon Lee first appearance at CMLL's Anniversary Shows, the promotion's most important show of the year. They were scheduled to compete in the first match against the brother-duo of Puma and Tiger. In early 2015, Lee started a storyline rivalry with Japanese wrestler Kamaitachi. The prolonged storyline rivalry culminated on March 20 at the Homenaje a Dos Leyendas ("Homage to Two Wrestlers") show. The two masked men faced off in a Lucha de Apuestas, or "bet match", with both wrestlers risking their mask on the outcome. Dragon Lee defeated Kamaitachi two falls to one, forcing his rival to unmask. On April 5, 2015, Dragon Lee won his first professional wrestling championship, when he defeated Virus to capture the CMLL World Lightweight Championship. On May 15, 2015, Dragon Lee outlasted Bárbaro Cavernario, Fuego, Kamaitachi, Luciferno, Mephisto, Místico, Niebla Roja, The Panther, Titán, Virus and Volador Jr. to win the first round torneo cibernetico of the 2015 Leyenda de Plata ("Silver Legend") tournament, one of CMLL's most prestigious annual tournaments. On May 22, he lost to Negro Casas in the finals of the tournament. In January 2016, Dragon Lee made his Japanese debut by taking part in the CMLL and New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) co-produced Fantastica Mania 2016 tour. On the fifth show of the tour, he successfully defended the CMLL World Lightweight Championship against Virus. After the match, Dragon Lee was attacked by Kamaitachi, which led to a match the following day, where Dragon Lee lost the CMLL World Lightweight Championship. Dragon Lee regained the championship from Kamaitachi on March 4 when the two had a rematch in Mexico City. During the summer, Dragon Lee became involved in a rivalry with La Máscara, a storyline that sprung from La Máscara feuding with the entire Muñoz family. La Máscara and Rush had teamed together as Los Ingobernables for years, but over the summer of 2016 the group had broken up. Initially the feud focused on Rush and La Máscara but late changed focus from Rush to Dragon Lee. On August 5, Dragon Lee made a challenge for a Mask vs. Mask Lucha de Apuestas between the two, which was accepted by La Máscara. On September 2 at the 83rd Anniversary Show, Dragon Lee defeated La Máscara win the second mask of his career. In January 2017, Dragon Lee took part in the Fantastica Mania 2017 tour, successfully defending the CMLL World Lightweight Championship against Bárbaro Cavernario during the January 20 event. Dragon Lee as a participant in the 2017 International Gran Prix. He was eliminated from the torneo cibernetico on September 1 by Juice Robinson. On September 27, 2019, CMLL announced that they had fired both Dragon Lee and Rush for not following guidelines set by the programming department. According to Dave Meltzer, CMLL wasn't happy with Lee since he participated in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla's Battle of Los Angeles after they told him to not work in the tournament. ### Ring of Honor (2016–2021) Dragon Lee made his Ring of Honor (ROH) debut on September 30, 2016, at ROH's All Star Extravaganza VIII, in a victory over Kamaitachi. Lee was unsuccessful in a three-way dance for the ROH World Television Championship, against champion Marty Scurll and Will Ospreay at ROH's December pay-per-view, Final Battle 2016, where Scurll retained his title. At the 2019 Final Battle show, Dragon Lee defeated Shane Taylor to win the ROH World Television Championship. On December 15, 2019, Dragon Lee joined his brother RUSH, Amy Rose, and Kenny King in forming La Faccion Ingobernable, turning heel. Following this, Lee started to wrestle a more aggressive style, and wear darker colors. On February 10, (recognized as February 27 due to tape delay), Dragon Lee and King defeated The Foundation (Jay Lethal and Jonathan Gresham) to win the ROH World Tag Team Championships for the first time, thus making Lee a dual champion. Both of these reigns ended at ROH's 19th anniversary show when Lee was sidelined with an ear injury. King lost the Television title on Lee's behalf to Foundation member Tracy Williams, as well as dropping the Tag team championship to Williams and his Foundation stablemate, King's former tag team partner, Rhett Titus. On November 21, 2021, Lee lost the title against Dalton Castle. ### New Japan Pro-Wrestling (2017–2020) On January 5, 2017, Dragon Lee made a surprise return to NJPW, attacking Hiromu Takahashi (the former Kamaitachi) and Tetsuya Naito during their match against Kushida and Michael Elgin. Following the match, Dragon Lee posed with Takahashi's IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship belt. This led to Lee unsuccessfully challenging Takahashi for the title on February 11 at The New Beginning in Osaka. The following May, Dragon Lee realized one of his goals in professional wrestling, when he was announced as a participant in the Best of the Super Juniors 24 tournament. In his opening match of the tournament on May 17, Dragon Lee handed rival Hiromu Takahashi his first singles loss since returning to Japan at the end of 2016. Dragon Lee finished the tournament on May 31 with a record of four wins and three losses, failing to advance to the finals. Dragon Lee returned to NJPW the following October, teaming with Titán in the 2017 Super Jr. Tag Tournament, from which they were eliminated in the first round by Bushi and Hiromu Takahashi. On May 7, NJPW announced Lee as a participant in the 2018 Best of the Super Juniors tournament. He finished the tournament with 3 wins and 4 losses, failing to advance to the finals. On G1 Special in San Francisco, Lee challenged Hiromu Takahashi for the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship. However, he didn't win the title. At the G1 Supercard on April 6, 2019, Dragon Lee defeated Taiji Ishimori and Bandido in a triple threat match to win the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship for the first time, and in the process, becoming the third Mexican to hold the title (behind Juventud Guerrera and Mistico, who were the first and second, respectively). On December 8, 2019, Dragon Lee, now having changed his ring name to Ryu Lee, challenged Jyushin Thunder Liger to be Liger's final opponent at Wrestle Kingdom 14. On January 5, he and Takahashi successfully defeated Liger and Naoki Sano in a tag match. It was then announced that at the New Beginning in Osaka, Lee would once again challenge Takahashi for the Jr. Heavyweight title. ### Independent circuit (2018) While working for CMLL, Dragon Lee was allowed to take independent bookings for days where he was not needed for CMLL shows, which has allowed Dragon Lee to work on both the Mexican and US independent circuit, mainly against other CMLL wrestlers. In early 2018, he challenged Shane Strickland for the PCW Light Heavyweight Championship as part of PCW's Opposites Attack pay-per-view show, but lost. On July 6, 2018, Dragon Lee competed in the All Pro Wrestling/Pro Wrestling Revolution jointly promoted "King of Indies" tournament, defeating Ryusuke Taguchi in the first round, Brody King in the semi-finals and Flip Gordon to win the whole tournament. ### Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (2019, 2021–2022) On November 7, 2019, Lee appeared in Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide promotion at the press conference where, he was announced as a challenger to the AAA Mega Championship against Kenny Omega in Triplemanía Regia, however he was defeated in his debut. On October 9, 2021, at Héroes Inmortales XIV, Lee returned for AAA accompanied by his brother Dralístico, challenged Los Lucha Bros (Fénix and Pentagón Jr.) for the AAA World Tag Team Championship, after they had retained the title over Jinetes del Aire (Hijo del Vikingo and Laredo Kid). ### All Elite Wrestling (2022) Lee made his All Elite Wrestling (AEW) debut on the August 17 edition of Dynamite, participating in the first round of the AEW World Trios Championship tournament, where he teamed with La Facción Ingobernable members Andrade El Idolo and his brother Rush to take on The Young Bucks and their mystery partner, who was revealed to be Kenny Omega. The match ended with Omega and the Bucks emerging victorious, after Omega pinned Lee. After the match El Idolo and Rush attacked Lee and removed his mask. ### WWE (2022–present) On December 28, 2022, after defeating FTR for the AAA World Tag Team Championships at AAA Lucha Libre: Noche de Campeones with his brother, Dralistico, Lee announced that he had signed a contract with WWE, and that he expects to start working with them in January 2023. On March 21, 2023, Dragon Lee was chosen as one of Wes Lee's opponent in a match for the NXT North American Championship at Stand & Deliver on April 1, where he took part in a fatal five-way match for the title in a losing effort. At NXT Battleground in May, Lee challenged Noam Dar for Dar's NXT Heritage Cup but lost due to interference from Jakara Jackson and Lash Legend. On the August 8 episode of NXT, Lee, with Rey Mysterio in his corner, failed to win the NXT North American Championship from Dominik Mysterio after interference from Rhea Ripley. ## In other media In the late summer of 2018 Dragon Lee was one of the participants in the Mexican version of the Exathlon sports reality show, Dragon Lee was part of the "celebrity/athlete" Exathlon team, competing against a team of amateurs that was shown several days a week on the Mexican Azteca Uno television station. Due to the show Dragon Lee did not wrestle between August 15 and December 13, 2018. He was eliminated from the show on November 20, 2018, for medical reasons, as he was suffering from a severe ear infection that threatened his hearing. He later revealed that he had been advised that he may need surgery on his ear and nose. He also revealed that he had lost 19 kg (42 lb) during the show as he was not allowed to eat the same amount of food as he did while staying in wrestling shape. ## Professional wrestling persona Muñoz's "Dragon Lee" ring character is that of a tecnico or the good guy; in Lucha Libre traditional good guy/bad guy divide is still maintained much stricter than most other countries in the 21st century. His wrestling style is a high speed, high flying version of Lucha Libre, where he will take higher risks than a lot of wrestlers when executing moves off the top rope or from inside the ring to the outside. (Bridging package fallaway powerbomb) During his long running storyline with Takahashi the two developed such a trust in each other that they were able to perform high risk moves that Dragon Lee would not be able to do against other wrestlers who would not be able to execute their part of the move safely. His high risk style has led him to often use a Running frankensteiner throw where he leaps over the top rope and executes the leg scissor takedown on an opponent standing on the apron, sending him to the floor. His high flying style has earned him the nickname "El Niño Maravilla" ("The Boy Wonder"). One of his signature finishing moves is the "Dragon Driver", also known as the "Phoenix-Plex" - a Bridging package fallaway powerbomb where he lifts his opponent up, hooks his legs in a "package" position and then falls backwards so the opponent is slammed to the ground and he holds them there for a pinfall. The Phoenix-Plex is one of the riskier professional wrestling moves, designed to look like it hurts the opponent without actually inflicting too much pain, but can go wrong when the person executing or the person taking the move makes a mistake. That risk was highlighted in a match between Dragon Lee and Takahashi at NJPW's G1 Special in San Francisco, where Dragon Lee released his opponent too early and Takahashi landed on his neck, breaking it in the process. ## Championships and accomplishments - All Pro Wrestling - King of the Indies tournament (2018, 2019) - Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre - CMLL World Lightweight Championship (2 times) - CMLL World Welterweight Championship (1 time) - CMLL Bodybuilding Contest: Beginners Category (2013) - CMLL Bodybuilding Contest: Intermediate Category (2014, 2015) - Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide - AAA World Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Dralístico - The Crash Lucha Libre - The Crash Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Dralístico - Kaoz Lucha Libre - Kaoz Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Dralístico - New Japan Pro-Wrestling - IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship (1 time) - Torneo de Parejas Familiares (2019) – with Místico - Pro Wrestling Illustrated - Ranked No. 41 of the top 500 singles wrestlers in the PWI 500 in 2021 - Pro Wrestling Revolution - PWR Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Dragon Lee - Ring of Honor - ROH World Television Championship (2 times) - ROH World Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Kenny King - Wrestling Observer Newsletter - Rookie of the Year (2014) ## Luchas de Apuestas record

No Man's Land (Koda Kumi song)

"No Man's Land" is a song recorded by Japanese recording artist Kumi Koda, taken from her tenth studio album, Japonesque (2012). It was written by Koda, Mr. Blistah, Pete Kirtley, Jorge Mhondera, Samiya Berrabah, with production being done by long-time collaborator Max Matsuura. The song premiered on January 18, 2012 as the album's fifth promotional digital single, which was served through online retailers Dwanga, Mora, Mu-Mo, music.jp and Recochoku. It was re-released as a promotional radio airplay single on January 25, the same release date as Japonesque. The single artwork uses the CD and double DVD cover of Japonesque, which was used exclusively through Recochoku stores. Musically, "No Man's Land" has been described as a rock song that borrows numerous musical elements such as heavy metal. It lyrically portrays an angry and violent woman trying to escape her lover's life. Self-described as "barren", the song includes several instruments including electric guitars, acoustic guitars, and drums. The song received mixed to positive reviews from most music critics. While critics singled it out as an album highlight and one of the better tracks from Japonesque, it was criticized for Koda's rap and overuse of instrumentation. Due to "No Man's Land" being released digitally, it was ineligible to chart on the Japanese Oricon Singles Chart due to their policy of restricting digital sales and releases. To promote the single, it has featured on one concert tour conducted by Koda, this being her 2013 Japonesque Tour. An accompanying music video for "No Man's Land" (and every other track from the parent album) was directed by long-time collaborator Ryuji Seki; it featured Koda wandering through a wasteland, with distant views of decayed cityscapes and merry go rounds. ## Background and release While working on her then-upcoming album Japonesque (2012), Koda and her main record labels Avex Trax and Rhythm Zone enlisted Japanese rapper Mr. Blistah to work with her again; Mr. Blistah worked and performed with Koda in some of her albums, including the single "Candy, and Japonesque promotional single "So Nice", among others. "No Man's Land" was written by Koda, Mr. Blistah, Pete Kirtley, Jorge Mhondera, Samiya Berrabah, and produced by long-time collaborator Max Matsuura. Mr. Blistah, Kirtley, Mhondera, and Berrabah served as the song's composers, with Japanese arrangers Kenichi Asami, Toshiyuki Takao, Satoshi Yamada, and Daisuke Sakurai hired to arrange the instrumentation. Both Kirtley and Mhondera were credited as the song's co-arrangers. The song's instrumentation includes guitars, drums, bass guitars, keyboards, and subtle synthesizers. The song was recorded in early-2011 by Takeshi Takizawa, Makoto Yamadoi, and Masahiro Kawata at Prime Sound Studios and Avex Studios, in Tokyo, Japan. In December 2011, Rhythm Zone confirmed that "No Man's Land" would be included on Japonesque, and it appeared as the thirteenth track on all formats from Japonesque. "No Man's Land", alongside Japonesque tracks: "So Nice", "Slow" featuring American recording artist Omarion, "Brave", and "Escalate", served as the album's lead promotional digital singles on January 18, 2012, which was served through online retailers including Mora, Mu-Mo, music.jp and Recochoku. That same year, "No Man's Land", "So Nice", "Slow", "Brave", and "Escalate" were then re-released on January 25 through Japanese airplay stations. This was the same release date as the album Japonesque A special application code was uploaded onto Koda's official website, which allowed users to access the song from Recochoku and download a full ringtone for free. At the end of January 2012, British production team StarRock promoted the single on Star Rock television; the song was circulated throughout UK radio airplay shows. The single artwork uses the CD and double DVD cover of Japonesque, which was used exclusively through Recochoku stores. ## Composition `"No Man's Land" is a "hard" mid-tempo rock song. Koda stated on her website that the song was a "violently", "painful", and "destructive" mix of rock and heavy metal music. Koda recognized the musical composition as a "turning point" for her future musical elements and influences. The original arrangement of "No Man's Land" was different from the current version; according to Koda, the original arrangement omitted the rapping verses and didn't include heavy rock instrumentation or synthesizers. Zero from JpopJRock.com commented that "No Man's Land" was the only song on the album that didn't suffer from a "sparse" arrangement.` Lyrically, "No Man's Land" portrays an angry and violent woman trying to escape her lovers life. In an exclusive interview with Recochoku about the song, Koda stated that "No Man's Land" is a "nuance" of a "girl screaming that she wants to go to a world with no other men." Koda identified that the themes cheating and betrayal are present throughout the song's lyrics. However, Koda stated that "No Man's Land" had a similarity to her single "Futari de...", where she believed had also grown strength after moving on. Koda performs the song in both the English and Japanese languages, one of nine tracks from Japonesque that is performed bilingually. According to the lyric sheet provided by Avex Trax, English is used in the song's hook; "No man's, no man's, no man's land". The onomatopoeia lyric "Ding Dong Ding Dong" is spoken during the first verse, whilst the rest is rapped in Japanese. The chorus opens with the English lyrics; "I've been running in circles, round and around", carries on with Japanese, and ends with "Welcome to no man's land". The second verse includes the phrases "Zero zero" and "so look at deep", whilst performed in Japanese. The bridge section has Koda singing in English; "No matter where I go, this is still my home" and "my home", whilst performing in Japanese. The song's final English phrase is the interlude break; "Everybody put hands right this", and finishes with the chorus and hook. ## Critical reception After its release, "No Man's Land" received mixed to positive reviews from most music critics. Zero, Jaylee, and Loki from JpopJRock.com highlighted "No Man's Land" as the best track on the album; they agreed that the single had a better arrangement than most tracks on Japonesque, and enjoyed the song's composition. A member from StarRock highlighted "No Man's Land" as the best track on the album, praising its commercial appeal. A staff member from CD Journal enjoyed the song's composition, labelling the verses and second half of the song "impressive". ## Music video ### Background and synopsis The accompanying music video for "No Man's Land" was directed by long-time collaborator Ryuji Seki. The music video was shot with Koda in front of a green screen to immolate the chroma key functions. Koda, who was present at post-production for the music video, suggested the use of black and white colouring, which Seki then added. This is Koda's first music video to be in full black and white. The video opens with a distance shot of a wasteland, with decaying trees, floating black leaves, and hills. Koda is seen dragging herself through the valley, and an inter cut scene features a body shot of Koda in front of an abandoned city and abandoned merry-go-round; the merry-go-round references the lyric in the song. As the first hook stars in the song, it features two scenes; Koda singing the track in a distance, and close-ups of Koda wearing a shackle. The verse has Koda wandering through a valley and singing the song. The first chorus has Koda walking through the land, and scenes of her singing. She grabs a compass, but it does not function properly. She grabs a drinking bottle, but only filled with little droplets; she tries to drink it, but falls all on her face instead. As she sings the song; by the end of the second chorus, black projectile smoke is scene falling from the sky in the distance and hits parts of the abandoned city. As more smoke falls and black leaves con-stellate, Koda collapses and sings the bridge on the ground. When the bridge section ends, rocks start levitating and the smoke rises, forming a black Dust devil in the distance. As more dust devil's form, they become large and closely devour Koda. By the last chorus, a close-up of Koda's eyes closes and zooms out, showing Koda in lighter clothes and long hair. A long field of dark green grass with the sun and blue sky beaming above it, still showing the abandoned city and merry-go-round in the distance. The field is then shown to be the distance of a cliff, with Koda standing on the edge and observing a forest at the bottom; these scenes are shot in colour instead of black and white. The final vocal interlude break of the song has inter cut scenes of Koda on the cliff, and Koda walking through the valley from earlier scenes. The final scene has a repeating scene of the first scene; Koda walking through the valley in the distance of a wasteland. After completing the video and watching it, Koda commented that the overall appearance had given her a "personal connection" to the video and song. She stated that the visual effects were "very cool", and declared it as one of her "best" videos. ### Release The music video premiered on Japanese music television channels on January 18, 2012. Alongside with its radio airplay release, StarRock Productions had premiered the music video on UK music television channels on January 25. The music video for "No Man's Land" appeared on the CD and DVD format, and the CD and double DVD formats for Japonesque. Koda uploaded the video on her website, in order to promote the music videos from the album. On January 26, Koda hosted a special television show for Nico Nico Live and premiered the music video to "No Man's Land", alongside the music videos from Japonesque. Tetsuo Hiraga from Hot Express complimented the music video's erotic nature, Koda's sexy image, and the video's graphics. ## Live performances and other inclusions "No Man's Land" has appeared on one of Koda's concert tours, this being her 2013 Japonesque tour. The performance was included on part two of the concert tour, where Koda is wearing a soldier's uniform and singing the song in front of her backing band. Koda plays the drums to the ending interlude of the track. The performance was recorded live and included on the subsequent live DVD release, Koda Kumi Live Tour 2013: Japonesque (2013). Released as a triple-DVD and double-Blu-ray set, "No Man's Land" appeared on the second disc and first disc respectively. The 4 Skips D'n'B remix for "No Man's Land" was included on her Koda Kumi Driving Hit's 5 remix compilation (2013). ## Track listing - Digital download 1. "No Man's Land" – 4:26 - Digital music video download 1. "No Man's Land" (music video) – 4:34 - 2013 Japonesque Tour live download 1. "No Man's Land" (2013 Japonesque Tour live audio) – 4:11 - 4 Skips D'n'B remix digital download 1. "No Man's Land" – 4:26 ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of Japonesque. - Kumi Koda – vocals, background vocals, songwriting - Mr. Blistah – songwriting, composing - Pete Kirtley – songwriting, composing, arrangement - Jorge Mhondera – songwriting, composing, arrangement - Samiya Berrabah – songwriting, composing - Kenichi Asami – arrangement, programming, acoustic guitar - Toshiyuki Takao – arrangement, drums - Satoshi Yamada – arrangement, bass guitar - Daisuke Sakurai – arrangement, keyboards, synthesizers - Takeshi Takizawa – engineer, recording - Makoto Yamadoi – engineer, recording - Masahiro Kawata – engineer, recording - Ryuji Seki – music video director - Rhythm Zone - management, label - Avex Taiwan – distribution label - Avex Trax - parent label, management - Recorded at Prime Sound Studios and Avex Studios, in Tokyo, Japan. ## Release history ## See also - Kumi Koda discography

Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce

Unreleased episode of ''Sesame Street''

"Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce" is the name of an episode on the children's television program Sesame Street. Produced in 1992, it never aired because tests showed several unintended negative effects. Sesame Street has had a history of presenting difficult topics as part of its affective curriculum goals, including death, marriage, childbirth, and disaster. Extensive research was done before these episodes were written and produced, to ascertain their focus, and after they aired, to analyze the effect they had on viewers, and that was the case for "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce". The show's producers had expressed a desire to produce the episode as early as 1989, and they were convinced that it was a topic they should address after the US Census Bureau reported that 40% of American children had experienced divorce. The producers chose to present the Muppet Mr. Snuffleupagus ("Snuffy") and his family's experience of divorce. The episode was written by staff writer Norman Stiles, who also wrote the 1983 episode in which Mr. Hooper's death was explained. The episode was reviewed by the Children's Television Workshop's (CTW) advisory board, content experts, and developmental psychologists. After tests showed that their young viewers were confused by the episode and did not understand important concepts about divorce, the producers decided not to air it, despite the investment they had made. This marks the only time the show's producers made this kind of decision, and was cited as an example of the producer's practice of "listening to the voices of children and by putting their needs first", despite the costs. Sesame Street did not address the topic of divorce until November 2012, when they produced a video for limited audiences titled Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce as part of their resiliency initiative. ## Background Sesame Street, which premiered in 1969, was the first children's television program to use a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum, with specific educational goals, in its content. The show's goals included both cognitive and affective objectives. Initially, the cognitive skills of its young viewers were stressed over affective skills, which were addressed indirectly because the producers, writers, and researchers believed that focusing on cognitive skills would increase children's self-esteem and feelings of competency. Eventually, after the show's first season, its critics forced its staff to address affective goals more overtly, which occurred after "extensive research and planning". According to writer Michael Davis, Sesame Street's curriculum began addressing affective goals more overtly during the 1980s. For example, the producers addressed grief after the 1982 death of Will Lee, who had played Mr. Hooper since the show's premiere. Author David Borgenicht called the episode "poignant", and Davis called it "a landmark broadcast" and "a truly memorable episode, one of the show's best". For the 1988 and 1989 seasons, the topics of love, marriage, and childbirth were addressed when the show's staff created a storyline in which the characters Luis and Maria fall in love, marry, and have a child, Gabi. Extensive research was done before these episodes were written and produced, to ascertain their focus, and after they aired, to analyze the effect they had on viewers. The show also addressed real-life disasters. For example, the producers addressed the September 11 terrorist attacks with an episode that aired in early 2002. They also produced a series of four episodes that aired after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. ## Development The Children's Television Workshop (CTW, later Sesame Workshop), the organization responsible for the production of Sesame Street, considered and discussed addressing the topic of divorce for many years before developing an episode. As early as 1989, writer and director Jon Stone expressed his intention of writing a script about it, stating, "My two projects for this year are drugs and divorce. Divorce is a difficult one. Perhaps we could do it with puppets. I am also writing a script on drugs and peer pressure". Executive producer Dulcy Singer vetoed the idea in 1990, before it reached development. While she felt complex social matters should be discussed on the series, she felt the issue was irrelevant to inner city and financially disadvantaged families, which was the show's target audience. She said that "divorce is a middle-class thing," and suggested instead that an episode focus on a single-parent family, with the child born out of wedlock with an absent father. Singer stated, even after the episode was filmed, "We were really nervous about the show, and we didn't think it was a shoo-in. When you're dealing with something like death, the approach can be universal. But with divorce, it's so personal. People react differently." The topic of divorce was discussed again the following year, after the US Census Bureau released statistics suggesting 40 percent of all children in the United States, not just the middle classes, would soon live in divorced households. Producer/director Lisa Simon stated, regarding the difficulty the producers and writers had with crafting the episode, "We hope to get to it by the end of the season. It always takes us a while to figure out how to do an issue appropriately, from a child's point of view". Puppeteer Jerry Nelson, who was one of the original performers of Snuffy, noted, "Now we delve into things like divorce that are likely to affect small children very heavily. We didn't touch those things before". Instead of using the human characters in the show's cast, the writers and producers decided to use Muppets to present their narrative about the effects of divorce on young children. They chose to use the family of Mr. Snuffleupagus ("Snuffy"), a large Muppet that had been on the show since 1971. Long-time cast member Bob McGrath stated, "They knew they couldn't do it with either of our married couples—Gordon and Susan or Maria and Luis—so they tried it with Snuffleupagus, writing a show about his parents getting divorced". According to Simon, "With puppets, it's slightly less frightening ... The kids have somebody to identify with. They see the puppet characters have feelings and work through a difficult issue many of them will have to face". Staff writer Norman Stiles, who also wrote the episode in which Mr. Hooper's death was explained, was assigned to compose the script. The episode was reviewed by CTW's advisory board, content experts, and developmental psychologists. The episode featured Gordon explaining the concept of divorce, Snuffy being assured that his parents still loved him, and the characters talking and singing "about how Snuffy will have good homes, and so on and so on". ## Test results As with the Mr. Hooper episode, "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce" was studied extensively for comprehension and attention. After it was filmed, it was screened before a test audience of 60 children in four daycare centers. The results found several unintended negative effects. As The Christian Science Monitor said, "it bombed". Despite Gordon's reassuring the Muppets Elmo, Big Bird, and Telly, children believed that their parents' arguments would lead to divorce. They also were unsure that Snuffy and his little sister Alice's parents loved them despite the divorce, and were unclear where the characters' parents lived (especially their father, who had never appeared on the show before). Many viewers also thought that Snuffy and Alice would never see their father again. According to Singer, "The kids came away with negative messages ... The kids misunderstood arguments. They said arguments did mean divorce. Some thought Snuffy's parents were moving away even though we said just the opposite. A number said the parents would no longer be in love with them". Based upon their findings, and despite the expense and their intention to air "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce" in April 1992, the CTW decided not to risk possibly harming their audience and not air the episode. McGrath said, "They wrote a whole show and taped it, and it was just devastating for test groups of kids. So they just threw the whole thing in the garbage and never tried it again. It was just too difficult a concept for a 3-year-old". CTW Research director Valeria Lovelace recommended scrapping the episode and going "back to the drawing board", and the idea was abandoned, at least for the season. Producer Michael Loman recalled, "We ate the cost and never aired it. We feel there are a range of issues that we can deal with in the family that do not go to the extreme of divorce". According to Sesame Street researcher Susan Scheiner, it was the first time the CTW had produced an episode, and after making a large investment, found after tests that the episode did not work. Rosemarie T. Truglio and her colleagues at the CTW cited the episode as an example of the CTW's practice of "listening to the voices of children and by putting their needs first". ## Legacy Sesame Street did not address the subject of divorce until November 2012, when its producers created, as part of their resiliency initiative, Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce. It was made available to military families and to the general public through family courts, counseling services, and parenting and child care programs. It included a 22-minute DVD, a caregiver guide, a storybook, a tip sheet for extended families and friends, mobile apps and social networking sites, and an online toolkit. Like in "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce", the Little Children, Big Challenges production also used a Muppet, Abby Cadabby, to represent the child experiencing divorce. Whereas Snuffy was shown going through it in real time, Abby's parents' divorce was in the past, which gave her time to adjust. Footage from the episode exists at the Museum of the Moving Image near the studios where Sesame Street is recorded, and was screened for the public in November 2019. Some footage of the episode was aired during the Sesame Street: 50 Years of Sunny Days documentary on ABC.

Tristan and Isolde (Egusquiza)

Paintings by Rogelio de Egusquiza

Tristan and Isolde (Spanish: Tristán e Isolda) is the title of two oil paintings by the Spanish artist Rogelio de Egusquiza. Both works are based on the opera Tristan und Isolde by the German composer Richard Wagner, whom Egusquiza idolised. The first painting, subtitled Death and also known as La mort d'Isolde (The Death of Isolde), was completed in 1910 and depicts Isolde's "Liebestod", as she collapses in death upon the lifeless body of Tristan. The second painting, subtitled Life, was completed two years later and depicts the lovers embracing in the night, a scene from the second act of Wagner's opera. The two works are part of a series of paintings by Egusquiza depicting Wagnerian subjects after he developed a fascination for Wagner's music in 1879 and met with the composer several times. From the early 1890s, he worked on various studies and etchings and exhibited some of them at the salons in France, where they were enthusiastically received. Death and Life were exhibited in Paris at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1911 and 1912, respectively. They received mixed reviews from contemporary French critics who disagreed on whether the paintings met the high standards set by Wagner's acclaimed opera. ## Background Born in Santander, Spain, Rogelio de Egusquiza studied in Rome and Paris, including with the French academic painter Léon Bonnat. In his early career, he produced numerous cabinet paintings depicting bourgeois life. His artistic focus shifted dramatically after he attended a performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1879 and developed a decades-long fascination with the composer's works. His enthusiasm for what he heard led to several meetings between the two, including a September 1880 meeting in Venice where they discussed Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. Egusquiza frequented the annual Bayreuth Festivals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He attended the first Bayreuth performances of Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde in 1882 and 1886 respectively, two operas that were later featured prominently in his paintings. In 1892, he took part in the first Salon de la Rose + Croix hosted by Joséphin Péladan in Paris. Egusquiza's exhibitions included a red chalk drawing of Siegmund and Sieglinde from Die Walküre, and another of Amfortas from Parsifal. Though he had not yet painted Tristan or Isolde, his depiction of Siegmund and Sieglinde's embrace was the precursor to Tristan and Isolde (Life), which it closely resembles. Péladan later alluded to the connection in a description of Egusquiza's Salon paintings, writing: "Ses Tristan sont d'une splendour de vertige indicible" ("His Tristans are of an inexpressibly vertiginous splendour"). In 1896, Egusquiza produced an etching of Tristan and Isolde (Life), changing Siegmund's animal skin clothing into Tristan's knightly attire. Egusquiza began preparing studies in chalk for the paintings in the early 1890s. He depicted Isolde as nude in the early studies and experimented with both Tristan's and Isolde's positions. An 1899 sketch of Tristan was drawn with Egusquiza's own features, and by 1901 he had established the position of the lovers' bodies in Tristan and Isolde (Death). He exhibited his works, including etchings of Tristan and Isolde, at the salons in France. They received critical acclaim, including from Péladan who wrote that Egusquiza's depictions of Der Ring des Nibelungen and Tristan und Isolde were worthy illustrations of Wagner's music. Egusquiza, however, was dissatisfied with the lack of colour in his own works, an opinion that was shared by Bonnat, his former teacher. He destroyed his early paintings and restarted several times. Tristan and Isolde (Death) was completed in 1910 and exhibited the following year at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where it was presented with the title La mort d'Isolde (The Death of Isolde). Tristan and Isolde (Life) was completed in 1912 and exhibited at the Salon that same year. ## Composition Tristan and Isolde (Death) depicts the lovers during the final scene in the third act of Wagner's opera, as Isolde collapses upon Tristan's body and dies. The other figures in the scene (Mark, Brangäne, and the bodies of Kurwenal and Melot) are omitted from the painting. The sea is in the background beyond the horizon, consistent with Wagner's stage directions, and surrounding Tristan and Isolde are several types of flowers—a common element in Egusquiza's works. He likely took inspiration from The Two Commanders (1866) by José Casado del Alisal for the placement of Isolde's proper right arm. The work borrows elements from Cephalus and Procris (1879) by João Marques de Oliveira, with similarities in the structure and lighting of the two paintings and common elements such as the landscape and a semi-nude, dead female figure. Egusquiza likely also borrowed from another painting titled Tristan and Isolde (1887) by Jean Delville for his depiction of Isolde's body. Tristan and Isolde (Life) is based on Act II of the opera, during a scene in which Tristan and Isolde passionately reunite during the night. Wagner used the night as a metaphor for a realm in which the lovers can freely express their desire for each other and for death, in contrast to the daytime when they must hide their love, stifled by honour and shame. Egusquiza, who published a treatise in the Bayreuther Blätter on the use of lighting in Wagner's works in 1885, strove to transcribe the day/night metaphor of Tristan und Isolde in his two paintings. ## Reception A critic for Le Gaulois praised Tristan and Isolde (Death) during its 1911 exhibition at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, describing it as a particularly striking painting within Egusquiza's depictions of Wagner's works. Péladan also championed the painting in a review of the 1911 Salon: Camille Le Senne [fr], writing for Le Ménestrel, was more critical; though he applauded Egusquiza for the effort in producing the painting, he felt that it did not meet the standards of Wagner's music. Tristan and Isolde (Life) received similarly mixed reviews from the contemporary French press the following year. A reviewer for Le Gaulois introduced the work as a continuation of Egusquiza's Wagnerian series, writing that the artist had a profound understanding of the source material. However, Le Senne criticized the painting: "Nous rentrons dans la série des sujets avec [...] le Tristan et Isolde de M. Roger de Egusquiza, dont la couleur ne vaut pas le dessin" ("We return to the series of subjects with [...] the Tristan and Isolde of Mr Roger de Egusquiza, whose colour is not worth the drawing").

Cyclone Kate (2006)

Category 2 Australian region cyclone

Tropical Cyclone Kate was a short-lived Category 2 cyclone that remained nearly stationary for its entire existence in the northwestern Coral Sea in February 2006. Forming out of a monsoonal trough on 22 February, Kate rapidly intensified throughout the day. By 23 February, the system attained its peak intensity with winds of 95 km/h (60 mph 10-minute sustained) and a barometric pressure of 985 hPa (mbar). Shortly thereafter, increasing wind shear caused the storm to quickly weaken. By 24 February, the system dissipated over open waters near Queensland, Australia. Although Kate did not directly affect land, large swells produced by the storm impacted beaches in Papua New Guinea and Queensland. The waves injured six people in Australia, although no property damage was reported. ## Meteorological history Cyclone Kate originated from an area of low pressure that was first identified on 22 February 2006, within a monsoonal trough. The system rapidly intensified throughout the day, with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issuing their first advisory on the system that evening. Upon being classified, the system was immediately declared Tropical Cyclone Kate, skipping tropical low status. At the same time, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) also began issuing advisories on the system, designating it as Tropical Cyclone 13P. The storm had developed well-defined, upper-level outflow enhanced by diffluence over the system. The system remained nearly stationary over the northwestern Coral Sea. Early on 23 February, the storm attained its peak intensity with winds of 95 km/h (60 mph 10-minute sustained) and a barometric pressure of 985 hPa (mbar). However, the JTWC assessed the system to have been slightly weaker, attaining peak winds of 85 km/h (50 mph 1-minute sustained). Further intensification was anticipated as Kate slowly tracked towards Queensland, Australia. However, Kate stalled shortly thereafter and began to weaken due to increasing wind shear. Rapid weakening took place throughout the day, and JTWC declared the system dissipated early on 24 February. The Bureau of Meteorology downgraded Kate to a tropical low around the same time, although they continued to monitor the storm for several more hours before reporting that it had dissipated over open waters. ## Preparations and impact Upon the cyclone's formation, the Bureau of Meteorology warned vessels to avoid the storm in anticipation of rough seas and winds gusting to 125 km/h (78 mph). Although the storm did not pose much of a threat to Queensland, officials urged residents to ensure their disaster kits were ready and that preparations for a moderate storm, such as storing lose outdoor objects and clearing gutters, had been completed. While the storm had no direct impact on land, large swells affected most of the Queensland coastline. In the Shire of Noosa, six surfers sustained serious injuries after wading into turbulent waters. Waves up to 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tossed the six surfers, leaving them with injuries ranging from broken noses and fractured ankles to head wounds from surfboards. The waves also caused additional beach erosion to parts of Papua New Guinea previously impacted by Cyclone Ingrid in March 2005. ## See also - 2005–06 Australian region cyclone season

The National (Scotland)

Daily Scottish newspaper

The National is a Scottish daily newspaper owned by Newsquest. It began publication on 24 November 2014, and was the first daily newspaper in Scotland to support Scottish independence. Launched as a response to calls from Newsquest's readership for a pro-independence paper in the wake of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, it is a sister paper of The Herald, and is edited by Callum Baird. Initially published on weekdays, a Saturday edition was added in May 2015. The National is printed in tabloid format, and is also available via online subscription. Details of its launch were announced on 21 November, with further information given at a Scottish National Party (SNP) rally the following day. It was launched on a five-day trial basis against the backdrop of a general decline in newspaper sales, with an initial print-run of 60,000 copies for its first edition, but this was increased the following day as a result of public demand, and Newsquest decided to print it on a permanent basis after healthy sales continued throughout the first week. The first front page carried a story about charities urging devolution of powers over welfare legislation to Scotland. Reception to the newspaper's launch was mixed in both media and political circles. Libby Brooks of The Guardian noted that its international coverage was strong but that its news was "central belt-centric – and Holyrood-filtered", while the Labour peer George Foulkes branded it "McPravda". However, the Scottish journalist and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch – who went on to write for the title – was more positive, claiming its launch could be a "sound business move" by its publishers. Upon its launch, The National stated that it is a separate entity from the SNP. By January 2015, daily sales had fallen to below 20,000. The following year, its print edition dropped below 10,000, and was being outsold by every Scottish regional daily newspaper with the exception of the Paisley Daily Express. The Sunday National was launched as a Sunday edition on 9 September 2018 as a replacement to its former sister title the Sunday Herald. ## Background The National describes itself as "the newspaper that supports an independent Scotland", and has a masthead depicting a map of Scotland. This had to be hastily redesigned for the second issue after it was pointed out that Shetland was missing from the map on the first edition. Details of the newspaper were revealed on 21 November 2014 after The Guardian obtained a copy of a letter being circulated to retailers by Newsquest announcing its forthcoming publication. A sister paper of The Herald and the Sunday Herald, The National would be the first daily newspaper in Scotland to support Scottish independence, and was being piloted in response to a request from Herald readers for a pro-independence newspaper. During the 2014 independence referendum, the Sunday Herald had been the only newspaper to support the "Yes" campaign, and saw an increase in its circulation—with sales rising by 60% in the week preceding the referendum and 111% in the week afterwards. Richard Walker, editor of the Sunday Herald, was announced as the new paper's editor. On 22 November, Walker told a gathering of Scottish National Party (SNP) supporters assembled at Glasgow's SSE Hydro that The National's publishers would trial the newspaper for five days, but that it would become a permanent addition to the market if there was demand for it. Copies would cost 50p, while an online version would also be available via subscription. The paper was launched with an initial print-run of 60,000, and was edited by a skeleton staff during the trial run, with plans to employ more journalists if it became a permanent publication. Initial contributors included Sunday Herald journalists Jamie Maxwell and Peter Geoghegan, as well as freelance reporter Sarah Cooper. During the initial week of publication, Walker spoke of his belief that The National would continue beyond the trial period, but said the decision was in the hands of its publishers. Following healthy sales in the first few days, Newsquest executives decided on 27 November to continue printing the newspaper, and to allocate it additional resources. On the same day, Neil Mackay, The National's news editor, confirmed that the paper would be published on a permanent basis. Publication then continued on weekdays until the introduction of a Saturday edition in May 2015. On 27 November 2014, Alex Salmond, the former First Minister of Scotland, publicly endorsed The National when he took a copy of it on stage to accept The Spectator's award for Politician of the Year. On 27 January 2015, Newsquest area manager Tim Blott announced that the newspaper's website would be relaunched in February, while Callum Baird would be appointed as assistant editor. The first Saturday edition of The National was published on 9 May to provide coverage of the results of the 2015 UK general election. Walker subsequently described the response as "very strong" and said that the newspaper would continue to be printed on a Saturday for "as long as there’s a public demand for it." In September 2015 Walker announced his resignation from Newsquest, and consequently the Sunday Herald and The National, but he agreed to continue with The National as a consulting editor. He was succeeded as editor by Callum Baird. As Scotland prepared to welcome its first batch of refugees from the Syrian Civil War an edition of the newspaper published on 17 November 2015 carried the headline "Welcome to Scotland". The Independent reported that an image of the front page was subsequently shared multiple times among users of social media. ## Launch Launched as a 32-page newspaper, and printed in tabloid format, The National was first published on Monday 24 November 2014, and according to its editor received an "amazing response" from readers, with its print-run for the following day's edition increased to 100,000. The Press Gazette reported that 80,000 copies were produced on the third day, while 12,000 online digital subscriptions had been registered at a price of £1.50 per week. Other sources, including The Guardian, and subsequently The National itself, put the online subscription figure at 11,000. On 27 November, The Guardian reported that of the 100,000 copies printed on 25 November, unofficial sales figures indicated that only 50,000 had been sold, and that daily sales were stabilising at around the 50,000 mark. Sales figures for the first Friday edition, published on 28 November, were reported as 40,000 by The Guardian, with an average daily sale for the first week of 44,000 copies. On 3 December, The Guardian reported that unofficial industry sales figures indicated 36,000 copies were sold for the Monday edition of the second week. On 27 January 2015, The Guardian reported that daily sales had fallen to below 20,000—a figure consisting of around 15,000 print sales, with a further 2,500 to 3,000 digital subscriptions. By 2017, ABC figures showed that the average daily sale of the print edition of The National was just 7,771 copies, and average readership of each digital edition was 1,975. In February 2023, ABC reported daily paid circulation of 3,210 single copies and 345 subscriptions. On 27 November 2014, Newsquest announced plans for the Friday edition, published the following day, to be expanded to 40 pages to accommodate news coverage of the Smith Commission's report into increased devolution for Scotland, which was published on 27 November, and due to a large demand for space from advertisers. The 28 November edition also included an editorial thanking readers for backing the new publication. Speaking to The Guardian shortly after its launch, Walker said that the initial print run had been set as 30,000, but a last-minute decision was taken to double it, something he described as "in hindsight, a good decision". The National's launch and success came at a time of general decline in the print media industry, where news providers were cutting staff and resources due to a downturn in newspaper sales. Douglas Beattie of the New Statesman and Alex Massie of The Spectator reported that copies of the first edition, which sold out, were being auctioned on eBay for at least £10. The Financial Times reported that pro-independence campaigners used social media to help potential readers locate available copies of the paper when the first edition had sold out in many areas. However, the launch was not without its problems when three major supermarkets did not stock copies. On launch day, Sainsbury's said that its tills had not been updated in time to enable them to sell the paper, but that it would begin doing so from the following day, while Tesco and Morrisons planned to monitor sales before deciding whether or not to stock it. Morrisons also said that it did not have the space to sell the newspaper without doing so at the expense of local titles. On 27 November, The Guardian reported that the distribution issues had been resolved, while STV News suggested the distribution problems were responsible for the fewer number of printed copies in the latter part of the launch week. Stewart Kirkpatrick, the former digital chief of Yes Scotland noted that The National had no digital presence at the time of its launch, something that prompted him to observe "We're in the age of 'digital first' not 'digital when we get round to it'." The first edition of The National carried the headline "Give Scotland the powers to cut child poverty", an article in which charities urged the Smith Commission to devolve welfare powers to the Scottish Parliament. The newspaper also included a mixture of national and international stories, with Libby Brooks of The Guardian noting the international coverage was "[stronger] than one is used to from a Scottish title [with] stories from Tunisia and Gaza as well as a profile of [Iranian President] Hassan Rouhani". There was also sport and business coverage, but the BBC's Jamie McIvor wrote of the first edition that "stories related to independence, Scottish politics and issues which featured in the referendum campaign characterise the news pages". The newspaper's opening edition also set out its mission statement: > The status quo is no longer an option and there is an unquenchable desire for greater devolution. Quite simply, the Scottish people want to be more directly and deeply involved in the decisions that affect them and the generations to come. It is with this uppermost in mind that today we launch The National, a daily newspaper that will fly a vibrant flag for independence and the right for Scots to govern themselves. ## Reception Despite having details of its launch announced at an SNP political event, the newspaper has claimed that it is politically independent of that party. Its inaugural editorial says that being a mouthpiece for the party "would not be a healthy course to follow. We will be critical where appropriate and complimentary when merited." But in The Guardian, Brooks suggested that launching The National at an SNP political rally "might not have been the most auspicious of starts" for the newspaper, while Labour peer George Foulkes quickly dubbed it "McPravda", a reference to the political newspaper associated with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Damian Thompson, an associate editor with The Spectator, described the launch event as "creepy". McIvor wrote that the calibre of its stablemates together with a respected editor had ensured The National was being taken seriously in political and media circles, but that the onus was on it to prove its credibility as a publication that supports independence rather than being viewed as "a propaganda organ, a cynical business exercise or the old media equivalent of some pro-independence websites". Writing for The Guardian, the journalist and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch took a different view, suggesting that the launch of a pro-independence newspaper in a country where 45% of voters had recently voted for independence "may be a large but calculated risk and a very sound business move", and that "Perhaps the novelty and sheer boldness of the National newspaper will match the national mood". Kirkpatrick, although critical of its online shortfalls, was positive about the paper's content, describing it as "a lively mix of briefs and longer pieces". Douglas Beattie of the New Statesman said The National "has a clear raison d’etre and will be welcomed by a large number of the 1.6 million Scots who voted Yes". Stephen Daisley of STV News wrote that it was "both frustratingly light [and] stodgily worthy", but drew favourable comparisons with the Scottish Standard, a weekly pro-independence paper launched in 2005 that ceased publication after just seven issues, suggesting The National would succeed because it had more financial backing, and as there was a latent demand for a news sheet supporting independence. Writing in The Guardian, the journalist and author Peter Preston said there were "many good things to say about the National" including its editor, who was leading a newspaper that "helps to reflect public opinion better". In 2017 the pro-independence Green MSP Ross Greer said he believed "The National often does more harm than good to the cause of independence", after the newspaper labelled a number of Conservative politicians as "Enemies of the Scottish People" on its front page, adding that the headline "followed a pattern of front pages which are less thought-provoking and more cringe-inducing". ## Sunday National In September 2018, The National launched the Sunday National as a Sunday edition to fill the void left by the ending of the Sunday Herald. ## See also - The Scots Independent - The New European

Pensionado Act

Act Number 854 of the Philippine Commission

The Pensionado Act is Act Number 854 of the Philippine Commission, which passed on 26 August 1903. Passed by the United States Congress, it established a scholarship program for Filipinos to attend school in the United States. The program has roots in pacification efforts following the Philippine–American War. It hoped to prepare the Philippines for self-governance and present a positive image of Filipinos to the rest of the United States. Students of this scholarship program were known as pensionados. From the initial 100 students, the program provided education in the United States to around 500 students. They would go on to be influential members of the Philippine society, with many of the alumni of the program going on to work for the government in the Philippine Islands. Due to their success, other immigrants from the Philippines followed to be educated in the United States, in excess of 14,000. Many of these non-pensioned students ended up permanently residing in the United States. In 1943, the program ended. It was the largest American scholarship program until the Fulbright Program was established in 1948. During World War II, Japan initiated a similar program during its occupation of the Philippines, named nampo tokubetsu ryugakusei. Following the War, and Philippine independence, Filipino students continued to come to the United States utilizing government scholarships. ## Background During the Spanish era of the Philippines, officially from the years 1565 to 1898, education other than that provided by religious institutions, was not generally available to the average Filipino until after 1863. Following the Spanish–American War in 1898, the Philippines was annexed by the United States due to the Treaty of Paris, and it became a territory of the United States. As a consequence, Filipinos became nationals of the United States. However, Filipinos who supported the independence of the First Republic of the Philippines clashed with American authority, and fought an unsuccessful conflict with the United States. At the behest of American soldiers, well-to-do families began to send their children to the United States for education; one example was Ramon Jose Lascon, who went on to earn his Ph.D. at Georgetown University at the age of 20. This followed a trend of well-to-do Asian families sending students to the United States, with Chinese students first coming to the United States beginning in 1847, and Japanese students coming to the United States beginning in 1866. The first school established by the United States in the Philippines was on Corregidor. Following the establishment of the Philippine Commission, it began to pass legislation to provide for public education, primarily Act Number 74 in 1901, which established public schools. In 1902, Act Number 372 established public secondary education in each provincial capital. However, there was a lack of educators, with many soldiers taking up the task of becoming teachers. In an attempt to increase the number of educators in the Philippines, over 500 teachers from the United States were sent there aboard the USAT Thomas, arriving in 1901; these teachers would later be known as Thomasites. These teachers from the United States were also tasked to train Filipinos to become teachers; however, schools continued to have a shortage of educators. ## Passage Then-Governor General William Howard Taft asked for more to be done to foster goodwill between Filipinos and Americans. On 26 August 1903, Act 854 of the Philippine Commission—the Pensionado Act—was passed. It was then passed by the United States Congress. Initially envisioned by Professor Bernard Moses in July 1900, the program was to pacify Filipino opposition following the Philippine–American War, as well as prepare the islands for self-governance, by showing the difference between Spain and the United States through exposure to American values. Additionally, the program was to expose the United States to "the best and brightest Filipino youths" to "make a favorable impression" of the Philippines in the United States. ## Implementation The program was initially overseen by David Prescott Barrows, the Philippines' director of education at the time. In its first year, 1903, there were twenty thousand applicants, of which about a hundred were selected. Those selected became the first pensionados, students who were accepted by this scholarship program. These early pensionados were chosen from the wealthy and elite class of Filipinos. Prior to taking college courses, the initial pensionados attended high school in the continental United States for the purpose of language and culture acclimation. In some areas of the United States, the pensionados were some of the first Filipinos to immigrate to those areas; as was the case for Chicago, New York City, Riverside, San Diego, and Ventura County, California. As much as a quarter of the initial batch of pensionados went to school in the Chicago region. During the second year of the program, the first Filipina pensionados were chosen, numbering five out of a total of thirty-nine; this created a gender imbalance favoring Pinoy (Filipino men) pensionados. In 1904, pensionados served as guides and waiters at the Philippines exhibit at the St. Louis Exposition; there they were a contrast to the Igorots, who also represented Filipinos to the attendees of the world's fair. In 1905, only three Pinay pensionados were chosen out of a total of thirty-seven pensionados beginning the program. As the program continued, the number of pensionados steadily increased, with there being 180 pensionados in 1907, and 209 in 1912. Among the pensionados were some of the first Filipino nursing students to come to the United States. Only seven years after the program began, the initial 100 pensionados had all returned to the Philippines. Beginning in 1908, with the opening of the University of the Philippines, the program shifted its focus from undergraduate studies to graduate studies. There was a pause in the program between 1915 and 1917. In 1921, the Philippine government was supporting 111 pensionados, 13 of whom were working towards a doctoral degree. From 1903 until 1938, pensionados traveled to the United States to study, with the majority returning to the Philippines. In 1943, the program ended. Pensionados would go on to serve within the government established in the islands by the United States; this was a scholarship requirement, and had to be at least 18 months of government service. Before returning to the Philippines, pensionados began student-run newspapers, which were part of the beginning of media geared specifically to the Filipino diaspora in the United States. While, initially, pensionados were chosen from wealthy and elite families, later pensionados were more likely not to come from wealthy families. Due to the Great Depression funding for the program was reduced. For instance, in 1930, there were but thirteen pensionados, eleven of whom were funded fully by the Philippine government, two of whom were partially funded, and another six were formerly funded by the Philippine government but remained in the United States to complete their education at their own expense. Near the end of World War II, the Commonwealth Government in Exile was offered to have some of the pensionados trained in foreign relations, anticipating the 1946 independence of the Philippines from the United States. ### Schools attended Pensionados went on to attend many colleges and universities, including the following: - California Christian College - Columbia University - Cornell University - Drexel Institute - Harvard University - Indiana University - Los Angeles Junior College - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Oberlin College - San Diego Normal School - Stanford University - Syracuse University - State Normal School - University of California - University of California, Los Angeles - University of Chicago - University of Illinois - University of Michigan - University of Southern California - University of Washington - Woodbury College ## Impact Upon returning to the Philippines, pensionados were often called "American boys" and faced discrimination from other Filipinos. This discrimination was due to the view that the returning pensionados were associated with American authority of the Philippines. Some of the later Filipino immigrants to the United States, who were not the children of the well-to-do in the Philippines like the pensionados were, shared this resentment. Carlos Bulosan, an English-language Filipino novelist and poet, wrote of this social divide. Some of the returning pensionados would go on to help the development of Filipino nationalism. A majority of the returning pensionados were assigned as educators, with some later becoming superintendents. For instance, University of Michigan alum Esteba Adaba became the director of education for the Philippines under the Roxas Administration; he would then go on to become a Philippine senator. Jorge Bocobo, an Indiana University alum, went on to become President of the University of the Philippines. Returning pensionados who studied nursing established nursing schools, whose students would go on to immigrate around the world to fill nursing shortages. Pensionado Bienvenido Santos made his name as an author. Other pensionados took influential roles in government, including Secretary of Finance Antonio de las Alas, Senator Camilo Osias, Major General Carlos P. Romulo, and Chief Justice José Abad Santos. When architects began to be registered in the Philippines in 1921, a pensionado was the second to be registered. Ultimately, about 500 pensionados received scholarships to be educated in the United States. ### Other students The success of returning pensionados enticed others to immigrate to the United States, including non-pensionados who self-financed their higher education, including some veterans of the United States Navy. By the 1920s, these self-financed students outnumbered the pensionados. The aspiration of education advancement became a dominant theme for those Filipinos coming to the United States. Known as "fountain pen boys", by 1920 nearly five thousand Filipino students had attended American schools, receiving post-secondary education. In 1922 alone, there were almost 900 Filipinos attending college in the United States. So many Filipinos would seek to advance their education that by 1930, they were the third largest population of students from outside of the continental United States, only surpassed by Chinese and Canadian students; some of those Chinese students were attending using a similar government funding method known as the Boxer Indemnity. By 1938, around 14,000 Filipino students had received their education in the United States, some going onto important positions upon returning to the Philippines. Some of these students would go on to fund their education as domestic workers, with some attending Chapman College and the University of Southern California, with a few earning graduate degrees. Others attempted to fund their education by working as farmworkers; one immigrant to do so was Philip Vera Cruz. Many of these self-funding students would not return to the Philippines, instead settling in the United States. E. Llamas Rosario, for example, earned graduate degrees from Columbia University and New York University and went on to found the Filipino Pioneer, a newspaper published in Stockton, California. Along with those who immigrated to the United States without educational aspirations, these Filipinos started the second wave of immigration to the United States from the Philippines. Educated Filipinos who settled in the United States faced racial discrimination when looking for jobs in their trained industries. In addition, laws barred Filipinos from professional employment, such as the ones in California which barred non-citizens the ability to gain professional licenses. ### Similar programs In 1909, due to an overpayment by China to the United States of funds for damages caused during the Boxer Rebellion, the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship was established. It has its roots in an idea proposed by Edmund James, then the Chancellor of the University of Illinois. Subsequent payments made by China to the United States relating to the Boxer Rebellion were deferred, as long as they were spent for the scholarship. A school, Qinghua Preparatory School which was jointly operated by China and the United States, was opened to train students who would be traveling to the United States. This scholarship lasted until 1937; about 2,000 Chinese students were funded by the scholarship. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, the Japanese government sponsored students to study in Japan, with two groups being sent Japan in 1943 and 1944. The program was administrated out of the former American School in Japan by a part of the Ministry of Greater East Asia. Prior to departing for Japan, the students were disciplined by the Second Republic Constabulary to cleanse their thinking of anti-Japanese sentiments; this was conducted at Malacañang, but only after the students had passed individual interviews with a panel of Japanese officials which included General Wachi. In total there were a total of 51 students who studied in Japan under the program, referred to as "Nantoku" ナントク. In 1946, after the Philippines became an independent nation, thousands more Filipinos came to the United States for education through the Fulbright Program. The Fulbright exchanges have since become a larger program than the pensionado program. A similar but smaller program funding the education of Filipinos in the United States was done under the Smith–Mundt Act, which was specific for civic leaders. ### Inspired legislation In the early 21st century, legislators have introduced bills named after the Pensionado Act in the Senate of the Philippines. In 2010, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago submitted the "Pensionado Act of 2010", which remained in committee. In 2017, Senator Sonny Angara submitted "Pensionado Act of 2017" which was referred to committee of the Philippine Senate in the 17th Congress, with no additional action taken; following the conclusion of the 17th Congress, Senator Angara submitted similar legislation titled "Pensionado Act of 2019" to the current Philippine Senate. ## See also - Education in the Philippines during American rule - History of higher education in the United States

Gita Gutawa

Singer, songwriter, actress

Aluna Sagita Gutawa (born 11 August 1993), better known as Gita Gutawa, is an Indonesian soprano, actress, and lyricist songwriter. She is also the daughter of composer Erwin Gutawa. Although she originally studied piano, Gutawa later switched to vocals. She was discovered in 2004 while practising her vocals, then booked to sing a duet with ADA Band. After Heaven of Love (2005), featuring the duet, sold 800,000 copies, Gutawa was approached by Sony Music Indonesia with an offer to record a solo album. The success of that album, the self-titled Gita Gutawa, led to numerous acting and marketing job offers. Since her debut, she has recorded two more albums, the well-received Harmoni Cinta in 2009 and the Islamic-themed Balada Shalawat in 2010. As an actress, she has starred in two Indonesian soap operas, Ajari Aku Cinta and Ajari Lagi Aku Cinta. She voiced a character for the animated Meraih Mimpi, and made her feature film debut in 2010's Love in Perth. Personality-wise, Dian Kuswandini of The Jakarta Post has described Gutawa as being "sweet like cotton candy and warm like a kiss"; however, Gutawa has noted that there are people who believe she succeeded through nepotism. Gutawa has received several awards, including Best Newcomer at the 2008 Anugerah Musik Indonesia. She also won the 6th International Nile Children Song Festival in Cairo. ## Biography ### Early life Gutawa was born Aluna Sagita Gutawa – Aluna Sagita meaning "song rhythm" – in Jakarta, Indonesia on 11 August 1993 to Erwin Gutawa, a composer, and Luthfi Andriani. The first child of the couple, she enjoyed watching her father work on his compositions. As a result, he enrolled her in a classical piano course, later sending her to a vocal course to develop her soprano voice. She received full support from her father, who assisted her as an adviser. In Chrisye's 2003 Dekade Concert, Gutawa performed in public for the first time, after Chrisye – who often collaborated with her father – invited her on stage. She later described him as her idol. ### Music career In 2004 Gutawa was approached by the manager of ADA Band, who had heard her practising at her singing lessons from the band's studio next door. She was asked to sing a duet with the band's lead singer; Gutawa, although at the time only singing as a hobby, accepted. The duet, titled "Yang Terbaik Bagimu" ("The Best for You"), was included on ADA Band's 2005 album Heaven of Love, which sold 800,000 copies. After singing other duets with different singers, including religious singer Haddad Alwi, Gutawa was asked to record a solo album by Sony Music Indonesia. After a year in production, Gutawa's self-titled debut album was released in February 2007. The album was produced by her father and featured songs written by Glenn Fredly and Melly Goeslaw. Well-received, Gita Gutawa sold 150,000 copies in four months and was eventually certified triple platinum. After the success of the album, Gutawa's previously school-oriented schedule was filled with requests for media appearances and sponsorships. This led to Gutawa's mother stepping in and serving as her manager, in which role she continued until she became pregnant. Other members of Gutawa's family then assisted in managing her, with her mother scheduling Gutawa's media appearances and recording sessions. Gutawa soon began singing in music festivals to gain experience. In 2008, she won the 6th International Nile Children Song Festival in Cairo with Ria Leimena's "To Be One", which she had previously sung on her debut album. That same year she attended a song festival in Italy. She later assembled a girl band to support her after several performances had to be cancelled due to an inability to find musicians at short notice. After her return from Italy, Gutawa began production of her second album, Harmoni Cinta (Love's Harmony), in June 2008. She played a larger role in its production than in her debut album, choosing the concepts behind the album as well as the track listing; she eventually wrote five of the album's twelve songs. The album was released in May 2009. selling well. In August of that year, she released her biography, Kota Musik Gita Gutawa (Gita Gutawa's Music Box). Gutawa followed Harmony Cinta in August 2010 with a third album, the Islamic religious album Balada Shalawat (Ballads for Salah). During recording, Gutawa received coaching from an Islamic scholar, or ustad, regarding the correct pronunciation of Arabic lyrics used in some songs. The album was launched during Ramadhan, with profits donated to Indonesia's poor. Gutawa has expressed concern that the public sees her rise to fame as being dependent on her already-famous father; she has stated in an interview with The Jakarta Post that she learned that "nepotism wouldn't work in the music industry". As such, Gutawa has attempted to emphasise that her duet with ADA Band and contract with Sony Music was won entirely on her own merits, with the band's manager not knowing that she was Erwin Gutawa's daughter when he approached her. She also cites the "negative sentiments against [her] sudden popularity" as pushing her to do her best. In 2011, Gutawa announced that she would be retiring from music to study abroad. As a farewell celebration, her father held the concert "A Masterpiece of Erwin Gutawa" in Jakarta. She announced that she planned to take a degree in economics. On 5 April 2012, during a visit to Indonesia from her university in England, she performed Chrisye's song "Baju Pengantin" ("Wedding Dress") in the Kidung Abadi Chrisye concert at Plenary Hall, Jakarta Convention Center. She and her father also wrote a new song for the concert, entitled "Kidung Abadi" ("Eternal Ballad"), which was made by stringing together 246 syllables in Chrisye's voice. ### Acting career After the success of Gita Gutawa, Gutawa performed in numerous television commercials. She later received an offer to act in an upcoming sinetron (Indonesian soap opera) entitled Ajari Aku Cinta (Teach Me About Love), which used her song "Bukan Permainan" ("Not a Toy") as its theme. Gutawa accepted the offer, viewing it as a mainly promotional role. She later starred in its sequel, Ajari Lagi Aku Cinta (Teach Me More About Love). In 2009, Gutawa voiced a character in Meraih Mimpi (Chasing Dreams), the Indonesian adaptation of Sing to the Dawn; the voice recording took four months. She later cited it as a good learning experience. The following year, she appeared in her first feature-length film, Love in Perth, in which she played a shy student studying in Perth, Australia. She considered it challenging; for the most difficult part, a scene in which she had to cry, she practised in front of a mirror. In May 2011 she began dating her Love in Perth costar Derby Romero; the couple split up sometime before January 2012. ## Education While in elementary school and junior high school, she was chosen as the best student for five consecutive years. After becoming famous, she continued to attend Al-Izhar Junior High School instead of being home schooled like most Indonesian child stars because she felt that "attending a normal school is more fascinating," with more friends and chances to socialise. She later attended Bina Nusantara Senior High School. In 2009, Gutawa was chosen by the education-oriented Sampoerna Foundation – run by the investment company Sampoerna Strategic – as its first youth ambassador, taking a direct part in the company's initiatives. As one of her first acts, she promised that part of the sales of Harmoni Cinta would be used to send poor Indonesian children to school; every twenty albums sold would be enough for one child. - 1996–1999 : TK Bakti Mulya, Jakarta - 1999–2005 : SD Bakti Mulya, Jakarta - 2005–2008 : SMP Al-Izhar Pondok Labu, Jakarta - 2008–2011 : SMA Bina Nusantara Simprug, Jakarta - 2011–2014: University of Birmingham, UK - 2014–2015 : London School of Economics and Political Science, UK ## Styles In a 2011 interview with the Jakarta Globe, Gutawa said that she continued to treat singing as a hobby despite it being her career. ## Songwriting Gutawa often draws her inspiration from her own experiences, as well as those of her friends. When she receives inspiration, she will write the lyrics down and work out a melody immediately. ## Awards and recognition Gutawa's debut album was well received by both the Indonesian public and critics, being certified triple platinum and winning four national awards; the 2007 SCTV award for Best Singer, as well as Best Album from SCTV and Best Newcomer and Best Album from Anugerah Musik Indonesia in 2008. Juliani Harsianti of The Jakarta Post describes Gutawa as having a "clear voice and fresh style" on the album. ## Discography - 2007: Gita Gutawa - 2009: Harmoni Cinta (Love's Harmony) - 2010: Balada Shalawat (Ballads for Salah) - 2014: The Next Chapter ## Filmography - Ajari Aku Cinta (Teach Me about Love) - Ajari Lagi Aku Cinta (Teach Me More about Love) - Meraih Mimpi (Chasing Dreams, based on Sing to the Dawn) - Love in Perth

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

American cosmologist (born c. 1982)

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (born ) is an American theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist at the University of New Hampshire. She is also an advocate of increasing diversity in science. ## Early life and education Prescod-Weinstein was born in El Sereno in East Los Angeles, California, and went to school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is of Barbadian descent on her mother's side and Russian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish descent on her father's side. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and astronomy at Harvard College in 2003. Her thesis, "A study of winds in active galactic nuclei", was completed under the supervision of Martin Elvis. She then earned a master's degree in astronomy in 2005 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, working with Anthony Aguirre. In 2006, Prescod-Weinstein changed research directions and ultimately moved to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics to work with Lee Smolin. In 2010, Prescod-Weinstein completed her doctoral dissertation, titled "Cosmic acceleration as Quantum Gravity Phenomenology", under the supervision of Lee Smolin and Niayesh Afshordi at the University of Waterloo, while conducting her research at the Perimeter Institute. ## Research Prescod-Weinstein's research has focused on various topics in cosmology and theoretical physics, including the axion as a dark matter candidate, inflation, and classical and quantum fields in the early universe. From 2004 to 2007, she was a named National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. After earning her Ph.D., she became a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow in the Observational Cosmology Lab at Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2011, she won a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was jointly appointed to the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and the department of physics. At MIT, Prescod-Weinstein worked in Alan Guth's group in the Center for Theoretical Physics. In 2016, she became the principal investigator on a \$100,522 FQXI grant to study "Epistemological Schemata of Astro \| Physics: A Reconstruction of Observers" seeking to answer questions regarding how to re-frame who is an "observer", to acknowledge those existing outside of the European Enlightenment framework, and how that might change knowledge production in science. She is working on the NASA STROBE-X experiment. Since 2019, she has been a faculty member in physics and astronomy, as well as in women's and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. She earned tenure in 2023. ## Awards Prescod-Weinstein earned the Barbados House Canada Inc. Gordon C Bynoe Scholarship in 2007. In 2013 she won the MIT "Infinite Kilometer Award". In March 2017, Prescod-Weinstein won the LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award "For Years of Dedicated Effort in Changing Physics Culture to be More Inclusive and Understanding Toward All Marginalised Peoples". She was recognized by Essence Magazine as one of 15 Black Women Who are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers. Prescod-Weinstein's personal story and ideas have been featured in several venues, including Huffington Post, Gizmodo, Nylon, and the African-American Intellectual History Society. She was named to Nature's list of "ten people who helped shape science in 2020" in January 2021, as well as one of VICE Motherboard's "Humans2020," "honoring scientists, engineers, and visionaries who are changing the world for the better." She received the 2021 Edward A. Bouchet Award from the American Physical Society, in recognition "For contributions to theoretical cosmology and particle physics, ranging from axion physics to models of inflation to alternative models of dark energy, for tireless efforts in increasing inclusivity in physics, and for co-creating the Particles for Justice movement." Her 2021 work The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred () won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Science & Technology category, and in 2022 it received a PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Award. She has given several interviews and public talks about her work. ## Activism Prescod-Weinstein is an advocate for increasing the diversity within science by considering intersectionality and proper celebration of the underrepresented groups who contribute to scientific knowledge production. She has been a member of the executive committee of the National Society of Black Physicists. In 2017 she was a plenary speaker at the Women in Physics Canada meeting. Prescod-Weinstein has contributed popular science articles for Scientific American, Slate, American Scientist, Nature Astronomy, Bitch media, and Physics World. She is on the Book Review Board of Physics Today and was editor-in-chief of The Offing. The American Physical Society described her as a "vocal presence on Twitter". Prescod-Weinstein maintains a Decolonising Science Reading List. She is a monthly contributor to New Scientist, with a column titled "Field Notes from Space-time," and a contributing columnist for Physics World. She was a founding member of the American Astronomical Society Committee for Sexual Orientation and Gender Minorities in Astronomy. Prescod-Weinstein has in the past also been a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory council. In October 2018, Prescod-Weinstein was one of 18 authors of a public letter titled "High Energy Physics Community Statement" hosted on a website called "Particles for Justice." The statement condemned Alessandro Strumia's controversial claim at CERN's first Workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender that male scientists were victims of discrimination. Within a day of publication, nearly 1,600 academics had signed the letter in support. As of October 13, it had received nearly 4,000 signatures, including those of John Ellis, Howard Georgi and David Gross. In June 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Prescod-Weinstein, Brian Nord, and the Particles for Justice group organized a global "Strike for Black Lives". Prescod-Weinstein authored a note on the Particles for Justice page titled "What I wanted when I called for a Strike for Black Lives". On June 10, the day of the strike, over 4,500 academics pledged participation in the strike. Additionally, numerous organizations, including Nature, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Physics supported and/or participated in the strike. In March 2021, along with Nord, Lucianne Walkowicz, and Sarah Tuttle, Prescod-Weinstein co-authored an opinion piece in Scientific American calling for the James Webb Space Telescope to be renamed, citing Webb's promotion of psychological warfare as a cold war tool, as well as citing archival evidence indicating that Webb was a supervisor to State Department staff enforcing the Truman Administration's policy of purging LGBT individuals from the workplace, and had also directly participated in meetings with Senators during which he personally handed over a homophobic memorandum. The opinion argued that as someone in management, Webb bore responsibility for policies of purging LGBT employees from agencies enacted under his leadership. Prescod-Weinstein, Walkowicz, Nord, and Tuttle also started a petition, signed by more than 1,700 people, a majority of the signatories astronomers or those in related fields. These activities were part of a larger movement to rename the James Webb Space Telescope, including by the JustSpace Alliance, which produced a documentary on the issue. In 2022, NASA released a report of an investigation, in response to Prescod-Weinstein's claims, based on an examination of more than 50,000 documents. The report found "no available evidence directly links Webb to any actions or follow-up related to the firing of individuals for their sexual orientation". In December 2022, The New York Times published an article by Michael Powell suggesting that Prescod-Weinstein employed false ad hominem attacks in an attempt to discredit Hakeem Oluseyi, a vocal defender of the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope. Prescod-Weinstein has stated that Powell's claim of her attacks on Oluseyi was never fact-checked and that, to date, neither Powell nor the New York Times has proven this claim. Prescod-Weinstein has also expressed that Powell's article clearly has a point of view, one that he had settled on prior to interviewing her; this experience of Powell's strong point of view was also expressed by Scientific American editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth. Nord, Tuttle, and Walkowicz also publicly criticized the New York Times' lack of fact-checking and Powell for his attempt to reframe the broader movement to rename the James Webb Space Telescope as a personal disagreement between two individuals. Prescod-Weinstein worked with two research assistants for two years to form a database of all professional publications by Black women with PhDs in physics-related disciplines, which was released in December 2022. She said she drew inspiration from the Cite Black Women movement on social media. ## Personal life Prescod-Weinstein is queer and agender. Her husband is a lawyer. Her mother Margaret Prescod emigrated from Barbados as a teenager, and in New York was a founder of International Black Women for Wages for Housework in 1974. Prescod-Weinstein is the grandchild of feminist Selma James and the step-granddaughter of Trinidadian Marxist writer and historian C. L. R. James.

The Aenar

"The Aenar" is the fourteenth episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Enterprise, and originally aired on February 11, 2005. It was written by André Bormanis from a story by Manny Coto, and was directed by Mike Vejar. "The Aenar" was the third installment of a three-part story which concluded the events of episodes "Babel One" and "United". Set in the 22nd century, the series follows the adventures of the first Starfleet starship Enterprise. In this episode, Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and Commander Shran (Jeffrey Combs) travel to Andoria, a moon, seeking the help of the Aenar—an offshoot race of the Andorians—one of whom has been taken by the Romulans to pilot a drone vessel (first seen in the previous episode). The episode showed the home world of the Andorians for the first time, with the sets for the planet's ice tunnels being created on a sound stage. Alexandra Lydon and Alicia Adams made their first Star Trek appearances in "The Aenar". Reviews of the episode were mostly negative, with critics citing issues with plot holes and unanswered questions from the story arc. On its first showing, 3.17 million watched the episode. ## Plot Senator Vrax (Geno Silva), fresh from the Romulan Senate, is disappointed that Admiral Valdore (Brian Thompson) and scientist Nijil's (J. Michael Flynn) drone program has failed to provoke a rift between Human, Andorian, Vulcan and Tellarite races as they had hoped (seen in "Babel One" and "United"). In fact, the opposite has happened – political discord throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants has declined. Now that a second drone vessel is ready to be launched, Valdore suggests a mission against the Enterprise in order to impress the Senate. Nijil argues that the pilot requires time to recover from his previous exertions, but Valdore insists and prioritizes the mission. On Enterprise, analysis of data gathered in the previous encounter with the Romulan ship reveals that the ship is being piloted telepathically by an Andorian. Commander Shran (Jeffrey Combs) explains that the data indicates that the pilot is probably a member of the Aenar, a white-skinned and blind Andorian sub-race. This, however, seems unlikely, since the Aenar are few in number, reclusive pacifists, and inhabitants of the isolated extreme northern polar region of their moon. Shran and Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) then beam down to contact the Aenar. The Aenar's spokesperson, Lissan (Alicia Adams), initially declines to assist as the Aenar do not want to get involved in a war. However, a young Aenar named Jhamel (Alexandra Lydon) decides to help, since doing so may help locate Gareb (Scott Allen Rinker), her missing brother. Meanwhile, Doctor Phlox (John Billingsley), Commander T'Pol (Jolene Blalock), and Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker III (Connor Trinneer) work in Sickbay on their own "telepresence" unit to help counter the drone ship. T'Pol volunteers to test it, and a concerned Tucker finds it increasingly difficult to balance his duties and emotions. Jhamel then tests the unit, with better results. Later, when the drone ships reappear and attack, she is able to contact the drone pilot, and it is indeed her long-lost brother, who was tricked into working with the Romulans. Learning the deception of his "helpers", he turns the drones on each other and both are soon destroyed, and Valdore angrily kills him in retribution. With the threat resolved, the Andorians depart Enterprise. Tucker requests a transfer to the Columbia, which Archer reluctantly grants. ## Production "The Aenar" was the third and final part in the Romulan story arc, comprising "Babel One", "United" and "The Aenar". It was written by André Bormanis from a story by show runner Manny Coto. Bormanis had also written "Babel One", and earlier in the season the episode "Awakening", which formed part of the Vulcan story arc. "The Aenar" was directed by Mike Vejar, his third episode of the season. This episode was the first time the homeworld of the Andorian race was represented on screen. The race had been introduced in the Star Trek: The Original Series second-season episode "Journey to Babel". The interior of a sound stage was fitted out to appear like caverns on the ice world as it was theorized that this was the environment in which a race such as the Andorians, including the Aenar sub-species, could have evolved. These sets were enhanced in post-production using computer-generated imagery. Filming began on November 22, 2004, and was completed on December 2, with the production being halted for two days due to Thanksgiving. The majority of the guest stars from earlier installments of the trilogy returned for "The Aenar", and they were joined by Alexandra Lydon and Alicia Adams, who were both making their first appearances in a Star Trek series. Kim Koski was the stunt double for Jeffrey Combs during a scene in which Shran was impaled through the leg by a stalagmite. ## Reception "The Aenar" was first aired in the United States on UPN on February 11, 2005. It was watched by 3.17 million viewers, which was an increase on the 2.81 million viewers who watched the previous episode. The following episode, "Affliction", received around the same number of viewers as "The Aenar". Michelle Erica Green, while writing for the website TrekNation, thought that the episode had strong character development despite the other flaws present. She felt that it opened up a number of questions about the abilities of the Andorians due to their similarity to the Aenar, and enjoyed the issues present in the Tucker/T'Pol relationship. Although she said that it was the "weakest" of the story arc, it was also the most "gripping". Jamahl Epsicokhan, at his website Jammer's Reviews, gave the episode two out of four, adding that "The Aenar" was "aimless" since the majority of the storyline ended in the previous episode. He found fault with the plot, as the Romulan threat was unspecific, and because of several plot holes which the episode failed to explain. ## Home media release "The Aenar" was released on home media in the United States on November 1, 2005, as part of the season four DVD box set of Enterprise. The Blu-ray edition was released on April 1, 2014.

Leave It to Beaver (Veronica Mars)

"Leave It to Beaver" is the twenty-second and final episode of the first season of the American television series Veronica Mars. Series creator Rob Thomas wrote the story, and collaborated with Diane Ruggiero to write the teleplay. The season finale was directed by Michael Fields, and was first aired on May 10, 2005, in the United States on UPN. The finale concludes the storyline of Lilly Kane's murder, as Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) finally discovers the identity of the murderer after investigating the mystery with her father Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) throughout the season. Thomas said that the finale was more ambitious than the average episode, requiring a larger budget and more filming than usual. "Leave It to Beaver" was watched by 2.99 million American viewers on its original airing. Critical reaction to the episode was generally positive, and several critics praised Thomas' use of red herrings. ## Background The first season revolves around Veronica's investigation of her best friend Lilly's murder. Prior to the murder, Veronica was dumped by her boyfriend, Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn), who was also Lilly's brother. After Lilly was killed, Veronica's father, County Sheriff Keith Mars, accused Lilly's father, popular software billionaire Jake Kane (Kyle Secor), of being involved in the murder. This provoked Neptune's wrath and Keith's ousting as sheriff in a recall election. Veronica's mother, Lianne Mars (Corinne Bohrer), developed a drinking problem and left town. Veronica's "09er" friends—wealthy students from the fictional 90909 ZIP code—forced her to choose between them and her father; Veronica chose her father. After being voted out as sheriff, Keith opens a private investigation agency, Mars Investigations, where Veronica works part-time. Veronica helps her father solve cases and conducts her own investigations on behalf of friends and acquaintances at school. Veronica discovers new evidence which suggests that Abel Koontz (Christian Clemenson), the man imprisoned after confessing to Lilly's murder, is innocent. As Veronica delves deeper into the murder case, she also works on other investigations, seeks her mother's whereabouts and deals with the aftermath of being drugged and raped during an "09er" party. Things get more complicated when Veronica falls into a relationship with Lilly's ex-boyfriend Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring), who for a time held Veronica partly responsible for Lilly's death and went out of his way to harass her. In the previous episode, Keith proves the innocence of convicted murderer Koontz, who had falsely confessed to murdering Lilly. Veronica, who believed that she had been raped the previous year at a party, discovers that she and Duncan had sex while under the influence of GHB; Duncan left that next morning because he believed Veronica was his sister. Veronica spends time with her boyfriend Logan in his pool house, but discovers a hidden video system linking to cameras focused on the bed. Veronica is shocked and goes home, only to find her mother Lianne has returned from rehab. ## Plot After reading a newspaper article revealing Koontz's innocence, Duncan demands the truth from his parents, Jake and Celeste Kane (Lisa Thornhill), who tell him that they arrived home one night to find Duncan covered in blood and holding Lilly's body. Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas (Kyle Gallner) tells Veronica that on the weekend of Lilly's murder, he had gone surfing in Mexico with Logan and Dick Casablancas (Ryan Hansen), but that Logan had driven back to Neptune to see Lilly. Veronica and Keith discover that a shot glass Logan bought for Lilly in Mexico is on the list of evidence found in Lilly's bedroom and car. Talking to Keith on the phone, Veronica suggests that Logan is the murderer; she is overheard by the leader of the Latino biker gang PCHers, Eli "Weevil" Navarro (Francis Capra), who had a relationship with Lilly. Keith ends his relationship with Wallace's mother Alicia Fennel (Erica Gimpel), to give Lianne a second chance. He sues the Kanes for refusing to pay the \$50,000 reward for finding Duncan; they agree to pay if Veronica signs away any future claim to their estate. Once Veronica signs, Keith shows her the DNA test that proves he is her father, meaning Veronica was never a potential Kane heir. Logan is arrested, and once released he angrily breaks up with Veronica for providing the evidence against him. He tells her that when he saw Lilly after returning from Mexico, he knew their relationship was over and wrote her a letter, which he left in Lilly's car along with the shot glass. Veronica realizes that the letter was never found, and sneaks into a dinner party at the Kane household to search Lilly's room for it. Duncan finds her in the room, and they discover several videotapes which show Lilly having an affair with Logan's father, Aaron Echolls (Harry Hamlin). Veronica concludes that when Aaron learned that Lilly had taken the tapes and she refused to return them, he killed her in a fit of rage, leading to Duncan's discovery of Lilly's body and his parents' mistaken belief that he killed her. In Lilly's room, as a hidden person watches from a closet, Veronica calls Keith and tells him that she will bring home the tapes, noting that Aaron is at the party. Before she leaves, Veronica tells Duncan that they are not related. Elsewhere, Logan drunkenly stands on a bridge railing; Weevil and the PCHers arrive and menacingly close in on him. As she drives home, Veronica discovers Aaron is in the back seat of her car, and intentionally crashes into a power pole to escape him. Although both are knocked unconscious, Veronica awakens first and flees to the back porch of a nearby house, hiding the tapes in various places as she runs. Aaron traps Veronica in a refrigerator on the porch, demanding she reveal where the tapes are, and when Keith arrives, Aaron sets the refrigerator on fire. Keith is burnt while freeing Veronica, and Aaron is hit by a truck while trying to escape. The police arrive and Keith and Aaron are taken away on stretchers as Aaron is read his rights. Jake vows to see Aaron fry for his actions and is also arrested, for obstruction of justice. Keith wakes up in hospital to find Alicia by his side. Veronica arrives home and tells her mother to leave; she knows that Lianne is still drinking and did not finish her rehab. Lianne packs her bags, taking the \$50,000 Kane settlement check as she leaves. Veronica dreams about floating on pool rafts with Lilly, in a pool covered with flowers, and they say their final goodbyes. Veronica wakes up and answers the door, telling the unseen visitor, "I was hoping it would be you." ## Production The first season of Veronica Mars features a different "case of the week" each episode, and the season-long mystery of Lilly Kane's murder. In addition to developing a separate mystery for each episode, the writers also had to provide clues that would lead to the murder's resolution in the season finale. The murder mystery plot was planned from the beginning of the season and the killer's identity remained the same throughout production. Thomas said that at the beginning of the season, "I know the broad strokes, I know who did it, I know how it was done, I know the big arcs, but we're always filling in the details. Those are week to week. It's a week to week challenge in the writers room figuring out how much information we want to dole out to the audience." Although series creator Rob Thomas always planned on Harry Hamlin's character Aaron Echolls as the murderer, this reveal almost didn't happen because Hamlin was almost unavailable to shoot the season finale due to a movie he had booked in Australia. However, he decided to continue on Veronica Mars instead. Although the season's plan was changed very little, Thomas said that Logan became a much bigger character than anticipated. Thomas attributed this to Jason Dohring being an engaging performer, and the crew wanting to write scenes for him. While the budget for each episode was around \$1.7 million, an extra \$400,000 was spent for the finale. Filming was extended by one full day with the first unit and an extra three days of filming with the second unit. Thomas promised that there would be "more action than you've ever seen on Veronica Mars." Speaking about the episode's filming, Thomas said, "our final Lilly moment is just beautiful. I think Veronica and Lilly saying goodbye to each other is what people want to see. As much as who killed Lilly Kane." For the finale, Thomas promised "80 percent total satisfaction. People will know who killed Lilly Kane. And there won't be that twist at the end that 'perhaps they didn't do it.' I'm not going to be leaving people like that. However, at the end of the episode, it gives us a pretty big cliffhanger question as well." ## Reception ### Ratings "Leave It to Beaver" was watched by 2.99 million American viewers on its original airing, ranking number 98 out of 112 in the weekly charts. This was an increase over the pilot, which was viewed by 2.49 million American viewers. The first season averaged 2.5 million viewers per episode. ### Reviews Jesse Hassenger of PopMatters found the finale to be "breathlessly paced". However, the writer was also dissatisfied with the cliffhanger, and hoped that the second season would not increase the series' focus on Veronica's relationships. Hassenger wrote, "so far, the series has eschewed the relationship angst so common in other teen-centric shows; Neptune hearts get broken, yes, but the show never stoops to that will-they-or-won't-they dynamic. Veronica is that rare television character who's too interesting for love triangles." Filip Vukcevic of IGN thought that while the resolution of the murder was satisfying, it could have been better; "I liked the way everything played out, but I didn't get the Sixth Sense moment I was hoping for. I wanted the season finale to blow my mind, instead all it got out of me was, 'Ah, I see. That's cool.'" Vukcevic wrote that the pace of the season increased exponentially, and was at its best during the final episode. Both reviewers praised Rob Thomas's use of red herrings. Vukcevic felt that "as the finale approaches you are led to believe that the murderer could be any one of several different people - not any easy thing to pull off convincingly. What makes good TV is audience participation. If you feel for a character or are puzzling out a mystery, you're involved. And when you're involved, you're having a good time." Hassenger cited Lianne, Duncan and Logan as the main red herrings. Mike Duffy of the Detroit Free Press included the episode on his list of "12 season finales you won't want to miss", citing "great writing, a merrily dark sense of humor and Bell's self-assured smart-girl charm" as the main reasons to watch. Screenwriter and director Kevin Smith praised the "seat-of-your-pants" season finale, writing that it managed to "thread the needle with the Lilly Kane murder so well, it never feels marginalized or played out over 22 episodes". Smith compared the year-long murder mystery to that of Twin Peaks, stating that "unlike Peaks, when the murderer is revealed and the storyline wrapped up in the final [episode], it doesn't feel like the show's outlived its relevance; thanks to the crisp writing, the deft fleshing-out of the Mars universe and the endearing cast, you’re left wanting Veronica's story to continue." Price Peterson, writing for TV.com, gave the episode an extremely positive review, writing that it was "stellar...just a perfect hour of television and a fantastic end to the season. I still can't believe how well they pulled off the mystery. I did NOT see Aaron Echolls as the killer." Rowan Kaiser of The A.V. Club gave a glowing review, praising the Keith-Veronica dynamic, the conclusions to the story arcs, and the final sequence after it is revealed that Aaron is the murderer. "It’s also an interesting choice to have the reveal come about two-thirds of the way through the episode, and have the episode end with a dramatic chase and fight scene. Veronica has so rarely been in direct personal danger that having Aaron Echolls chase and capture her, and having Keith show up for a brutal fight and rescue, is jarring. And I think it is effective." Television Without Pity gave the episode an "A". Give Me My Remote listed the episode as the third best episode of Veronica Mars, writing "everything about this episode is superb, from the plotlines, to the stunts, and the performances. Kristen Bell, in particular, churned out gut- wrenching, Emmy- worthy scenes." IGN ranked the episode as the best episode of Veronica Mars, writing "Once you realize Aaron is the one, you're glued to your seat for the rest of the episode, possibly hiding behind a blanket. Getting to this reveal was worth the season-long wait." BuzzFeed listed the episode as the second best episode of the series, calling it "one of the most intense, thrilling, and emotional episodes of the show." On a similar list, TVLine ranked the episode as the fourth best episode of the show.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice for All

2002 video game

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice for All is a visual novel adventure video game developed and published by Capcom. It was originally released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002 in Japan, and has since been released on multiple platforms. The Nintendo DS version, initially released in 2006 in Japan, was released in English in the West in 2007. The game is the second entry in the Ace Attorney series, following Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The story follows Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney who defends his clients in four episodes. Among other characters are his partner Maya Fey, her cousin Pearl, and the rival prosecutor Franziska von Karma. The game is divided into two types of sections: courtroom sessions, where the player cross-examines witnesses and tries to uncover contradictions in their testimonies; and investigations, where the player gathers evidence and talks to witnesses. The game was directed and written by Shu Takumi, as the second entry in a planned Ace Attorney trilogy. It was originally intended to feature the first game's prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth, in all episodes; Franziska was created when the development team learned that Edgeworth had become popular among players, and Takumi wanted to use the character more carefully and sparingly. They only introduced one new gameplay mechanic in the game; Takumi wanted to keep the game focused on the core concept of finding lies, and to keep it simple enough for his mother to play. The game was positively received by critics, who generally liked the writing, but criticized the lack of the Nintendo DS-exclusive gameplay mechanics that appeared in the previous game. A high-definition version of the first three Ace Attorney games, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy HD, was released for iOS and Android in Japan on February 7, 2012, and for iOS in the West on May 30, 2013. Another collection of the first three games, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, was released for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan on April 17, 2014, in North America on December 9, 2014, and in Europe on December 11, 2014. It was also released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on February 21, 2019, in Japan, and on April 9, 2019, internationally; a Windows version was released internationally on the same date. The PC version of the collection was among the best-selling new releases of the month on Steam. ## Gameplay Justice for All is a visual novel adventure game in which the player takes the role of Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney who defends people accused of murder in four different episodes. At first, only one episode is available; as the player solves a case, a new episode is unlocked to play. The episodes are all divided into chapters, consisting of courtroom sections and investigation sections. During the investigation sections, the player investigates the case to gather evidence needed for the trial; once enough evidence has been collected, the game moves on to the next chapter of the episode. During these sections, the player has access to a menu with four options: examine, move, present, and talk. By choosing "examine", the player can move a cursor around the screen and look at various things in the environment; by choosing "move", the player reaches a sub-menu with all locations they can choose to move to; by choosing "present", the player can choose to show a piece of evidence or a character profile to a character at the location; and by choosing "talk", the player is able to pick a topic to discuss with a character who is present at the location. As the player talks to a character, the topics they have already discussed get marked with a checkmark. If the player chooses a topic the witnesses does not want to discuss, the player is shown locks and chains on top of the character, referred to as "psyche-locks"; additionally, a lock symbol is added to that topic in the talk menu. By presenting a magatama to the character, the player is able to start breaking the psyche-locks and unlock the topics; this is done by showing the character evidence or character profiles that proves they are hiding something. The deeper the secret is that the character is hiding, the more psyche-locks appear; by breaking all the locks, the topic gets unlocked and the player is given access to new information. During the courtroom sections, the player attempts to get the defendant the correct verdict by questioning witnesses and presenting evidence to the judge and the prosecutor. Many witnesses lie or make errors during their testimonies; the player is able to move back and forth through the testimony to try to find any inconsistencies. There are two options available during cross-examinations: "press", which makes the player question a particular statement, which sometimes makes the witnesses change their testimony; and "present", which is used to show a piece of evidence or a character profile that the player thinks shows a contradiction in the witness's currently shown statement. In the upper right corner of the screen, the player's health bar is shown, representing the judge's patience. The bar decreases if the player makes mistakes, such as presenting the wrong piece of evidence; if it reaches zero, the defendant is declared guilty, and the player loses the game. While the player cannot lose the game while trying to break a psyche-lock, the bar will still decrease if the player presents the wrong evidence while trying to break psyche-locks. 50% of the bar is restored when the player manages to break all psyche-locks on a topic, and 100% is restored when an episode is completed. ## Plot In the game's first case, "The Lost Turnabout", attorney Phoenix Wright is attacked with a fire extinguisher from behind after an anonymous individual calls him on a phone which was supposed to be used as evidence in the trial, resulting in a severe case of amnesia. The assailant is later shown to be Richard Wellington after an attempt to steal his phone back. With the help of his client, policewoman Maggey Byrde, he learns that he is representing her in a case where she faces charges of having murdered her boyfriend, a fellow officer named Dustin Prince on his birthday. After narrowly avoiding disaster due to his lack of preparation, Phoenix exposes Richard Wellington, a con artist testifying for the prosecution, as the true murderer, as well as Phoenix's attacker, saving Maggey. The second case, "Reunion, and Turnabout", is set shortly before the first, in which Dr. Turner Grey, a private surgeon who lost his reputation due to alleged malpractice that resulted in the death of several patients, requests his help in contacting Maya Fey, Phoenix's former assistant who had left the practice to finish training as a spirit medium in her home village. While performing a spirit channeling on Grey's behalf, Maya apparently kills him under the influence of the channeled spirit. Forced to once again defend her in court, Phoenix faces prosecutor Franziska von Karma, the daughter of his old enemy Manfred von Karma, and the foster sister of his old friend Miles Edgeworth, who is presumed to have committed suicide. Teaming up with Maya and her young cousin Pearl, Phoenix uncovers a conspiracy between Mimi Miney, a disgruntled nurse who was the true culprit of the malpractice incident at Grey's clinic who faked her identity stating her name was “Ini Miney”, Mimi's sister who was the victim of a car accident 1 year prior, and Maya's aunt and Pearl's mother Morgan Fey, who held a deep hatred of Maya's mother Misty Fey. The two plotted to kill Grey and frame Maya, ruining her chances of succeeding her mother as spiritual leader of her home village, and replace her as successor with Pearl. When Miney publicly confesses to the murder and her real identity, Morgan is sentenced to solitary confinement for her crimes, and Phoenix decides to take Pearl in as one of his assistants. The third case, "Turnabout Big Top", focuses on circus magician Maximillion Galactica, who is accused of murdering his employer Russell Berry in a dispute. Despite Franziska's interference, Phoenix and his team prove that Acro, one of Max's fellow performers, framed him after mistakenly killing Russell, having intended to kill his daughter Regina in revenge for an incident that left his brother in a coma. In the final case, "Farewell, My Turnabout", Maya is kidnapped by assassin Shelly de Killer, who threatens to kill her if Phoenix does not win an acquittal for his client, actor Matt Engarde, who has been arrested for killing his rival, Juan Corrida. As a "present", de Killer stages an assassination attempt on Franziska by shooting her, rendering her unable to act as prosecutor. At the last second, Edgeworth arrives and steps in to replace her. While in court, Phoenix points to evidence that suggests that Engarde's manager, Adrian Andrews, killed Corrida and planted evidence to make Engarde look guilty. However, after the trial, Phoenix is horrified to learn that Engarde is in actuality a cruel psychopath who hired de Killer to commit the murder, and that while Andrews did plant evidence, it was only after she had discovered the body, as she knew Engarde was responsible for his death and wanted to make sure he was found guilty. As a result, Phoenix becomes increasingly pressured over deciding whether or not to convict Engarde at the cost of Maya's life. With Phoenix resorting to increasingly desperate acts to prolong the trial, Edgeworth offers to help him save Maya, explaining that he has been leading a task force to apprehend de Killer. Using a tape that Engarde had recorded as blackmail, Phoenix reveals that Engarde planned to blackmail de Killer after the trial. De Killer becomes furious, cancels his contract with Engarde, and declares him his next target. Fearing for his life, Engarde suffers a breakdown, pleads guilty and is convicted of Juan's murder. As a reward for Phoenix's help, de Killer releases Maya, who subsequently reunites with Pearl and all of their friends. Edgeworth explains that his absence was spent soul-searching for "the answer" as to what it means to be a prosecutor, and he and Phoenix reconcile, while Franziska pledges to renounce her profession in disgrace. Edgeworth confronts her at the airport, where Franziska breaks down in tears and admits that she is jealous of Edgeworth and wanted to destroy him, but now feels that she cannot with such huge losses on her record. Recognizing that she needs to find the same answers he did, she returns to her native Germany with a picture of Phoenix in her possession. There is also an alternate ending, where Engarde is declared innocent, and his manager is convicted in a later trial. Phoenix runs away from the courtroom, and while he assumes that Maya was released, he never sees her again. ## Development After development of the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was finished, the writer and director Shu Takumi's boss, Shinji Mikami, told him that they should make an Ace Attorney trilogy, with a grand finale in the third game's last case. Development of the game began immediately when Takumi returned to work from his vacation: the producer, Atsushi Inaba, called him in to a meeting, and told Takumi that he wanted him to write the script for five episodes before the game went into full production, with a deadline of three and a half months. Takumi thought that this was "completely insane", as it had taken him an average of more than a month to write each of the four episodes for the first Ace Attorney; additionally, he felt that he did not have any "tricks" left to use for mysteries or any story threads to work off of. He wanted to protest, but still ended up having to do it. As soon as he returned to his desk, he drafted a work schedule: he scheduled two and a half month to write the dialogue, with half a month per episode, leaving him with a month to create the first prototype and figure out the "tricks" to be used in the mysteries. He doubted that he would be able to do it in time, but managed to write the whole script by the deadline. However, due to issues with memory on the game's cartridge, one episode ended up having to be cut from the game; it was later used as the third episode of the third game. After finishing writing the dialogue, Takumi was called into another meeting with Inaba, and was told to add a new gameplay mechanic to the investigations. Takumi wanted to keep the gameplay simple enough for his mother to be able to play it, and keep it focused on the core concept of finding lies; according to him, he immediately had a vision of the psyche lock system during the meeting with Inaba, but still asked for three days to come up with an idea. He found it easy to formulate the idea, but it took over a month to create the system; the biggest problem was how to visually represent the psyche locks. Takumi also drew storyboards for the episodes' openings, which consisted of series of detailed drawings that show what is happening. He also drew rough sketches of cut-in illustrations; it was only decided after all the text had been written what scenes would have illustrations made for them. While the game's opening features the judge, it was originally supposed to have featured a demon instead; this was because Takumi was playing Devil May Cry at the time, and had liked its opening. As Takumi wanted the first three Ace Attorney games to be part of one larger work, he did not want the first game to look outdated in comparison to later ones, so it was decided to keep the same graphics for main characters such as Phoenix, Maya and Edgeworth throughout all their appearances, and not make updates to them. The game's music was composed by Naoto Tanaka under the pseudonym Akemi Kimura. As the dialogue-integrated "tutorial" in the first Ace Attorney was well received, the inclusion of one in Justice for All was considered a "major point". While the first game's tutorial involved Phoenix being helped through his first trial by his mentor Mia and the judge, this could not be used twice, which led to the idea of giving Phoenix a temporary amnesia from a blow to the head. Takumi included a circus and magic in the game's third episode; he really wanted to do this, as performing magic was a hobby of his. The episode includes two themes that he wanted to explore: the difficulties in forming a cohesive team with different people, and a person who against the odds tries to make something whole. The former was reflected in how the circus members come together at the end, while the latter was reflected in the character Moe. Several different versions of the fourth episode were created, partially because of them running out of memory on the game's cartridge, but also because of the popularity of the character of Miles Edgeworth: Takumi had originally planned to let Edgeworth be the prosecutor in all episodes, but when they were in full production the development team learned that the character had become popular, which led to Takumi feeling that he had to use the character more carefully and sparingly. Because of this, he created the character Franziska von Karma, to save Edgeworth for the game's last case, and avoid a situation where he – a supposed prodigy – loses every case. The character Pearl Fey was originally intended to be a rival character around the same age as Maya, only appearing in the game's second episode; one of the game's designers suggested that it would be more dramatic if she were much younger, so Takumi wrote her as an eight-year-old. As he ended up liking her, he included her in other episodes as well. ## Release The game was originally released for the Game Boy Advance on October 18, 2002, in Japan; a Nintendo DS version followed on October 26, 2006, in Japan, on January 16, 2007, in North America, and on March 16, 2007, in Europe. A PC port of the Game Boy Advance version, developed by a company called Daletto, was released in Japan in an episodic format, starting on April 15, 2008. A Wii version was released through WiiWare on January 26, 2010, in Japan, on February 15, 2010, in North America, and on February 19, 2010, in Europe. ### Localization Starting with Justice for All, the series localization direction has been handled by Janet Hsu; by the time she joined Capcom's localization team in 2005, the first Ace Attorney had already been localized, with the original localization team having decided to do a full localization, changing the setting from Japan to Los Angeles. While Hsu thought that this was the right choice to make, as it made the characters and dialogue more relatable and made for an emotional experience closer to what players of the Japanese version experience, it resulted in issues with each following game. According to the localization editor, Brandon Gay, Justice for All was one of their largest games to localize due to its focus on the story, and how it needs to convey the whole game world and its characters through just text; this made it a challenge to make the characters relatable for an American audience. Another thing the localization team had to keep in mind was to ensure that recurring characters were consistent with how they behave in the first Ace Attorney. According to JP Kellams, another staff member working on the localization, there was a lot of pressure on them to make a good localization, as the first game's localization had been well received; he also felt that there was room for creativity due to the game's style and subject, with room for humor that might not fit in other localizations. A lot of the humor in the original was based on Japanese wordplay; these jokes had to be redone entirely for the English release. Hsu felt that the game was more demanding than previous projects she had worked on, as the localizers "almost have to become [the characters]" in order to get the nuance and motivations right due to their complexity. One of the first decisions Hsu had to make was how to localize Maya's hometown and the mysticism of the Fey clan. She came up with the idea that the localized versions of the Ace Attorney games take place in Los Angeles in an alternative universe where anti-Japanese laws like the California Alien Land Law of 1913 were not passed, anti-Japanese sentiments were not powerful, and where Japanese culture flourished. This dictated what should be localized and what should be kept Japanese; things relating to the Fey clan and the Kurain channeling technique were kept Japanese, as that was Maya's heritage, while Japanese foods that were not widely known in the West were changed. Despite the setting in the United States in the localized version, the Japanese justice system of the original remained intact in the localization, as changing it would have altered the entire game structure. As the localization team wanted to keep the humor in the Japanese names for the characters, it was decided to make the English names contain the same kinds of double meanings: character name puns were based on their personalities or backgrounds, or were visual gags. A lot of the names were determined with the original Japanese name in mind; for the game's third episode, several Japanese names were used without changes, since they were English puns to begin with. For some other characters, the names had to be altered heavily from the Japanese originals. Due to the dramatic feeling of the last episode, the characters in it were given names that sounded more like real names, while still making use of deeper meanings. Takumi personally approved all the English names; for one of the names, Takumi and the localization team had a discussion for days, as Takumi did not think the English name conveyed the same feeling as the Japanese one. According to Gay, characters with "extreme personality quirks" were both fun and stressful to write: for the clown Moe, he found it challenging to get the balance right between his silly jokes and the seriousness of his dialogue. Among other challenging characters to write for were Acro, who led to "heated arguments" about how to get his personality and tone right; and Morgan Fey, whose "very old style" of speaking in the Japanese version was difficult to translate to English. One aspect they had to change due to cultural differences was a conversation with the lecherous character Director Hotti, where an animation of him grabbing in the air with his hands is played while he talks about Pearl. According to Hsu, the Japanese version is considered funny to Japanese people, as Hotti is set up as the "butt of the joke", and Phoenix reacts negatively to him, while it would have been considered sickening to an American audience. They were unable to change the animation, so the dialogue was rewritten to instead be directed at an adult nurse. ## Reception Justice for All holds a score of 76/100 at the review aggregator Metacritic based on 51 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews. Writers for Famitsu praised the mix of seriousness and comedy, and liked the characters' quirkiness and the pacing of the conversations. John Walker at Eurogamer called the game "splendidly crazy as ever" and "the most joyfully daft fun imaginable". Tom East at Official Nintendo Magazine called the script fantastic. Joe Juba at Game Informer found the game entertaining, calling the writing hilarious and the problem-solving clever, with the two aspects complementing each other well. Aaron Thomas at GameSpot liked the game, praising the game's story and calling the characters its greatest strength. He thought that the pacing was better than the first Ace Attorney's, but still found the game to be a step back: he felt that the game often reuses the same kinds of twists from the first. Gerald Villoria at GameSpy called the episodes well structured and stronger than the ones in first game, and called the dialogue sharp. Mikel Reparaz at GamesRadar said that the script, while entertaining, contains "long stretches of meaningless dialogue" and tends to leave the player knowing what happened and how to prove it before Phoenix does. He initially liked the new rival character Franziska, but thought that she only becomes increasingly obnoxious. Craig Harris at IGN said that the episodes are well written, with enthusiasm and personality, making them hard to put down. Walker found the court sections "maddening" due to how the game sometimes requires very specific evidence to be presented, with evidence that he found reasonable being rejected, forcing him to resort to guessing; he wished that the health meter would have been replenished through correct answers, or that it had been removed from the game entirely. Bryan Vore at Game Informer found the investigation sections tedious at times, but found them to be helped by how the psyche-locks add "courtroom drama" to the investigations. Juba thought that the game's reliance on text made the investigations move slowly, but that the game becomes an "irresistible adventure" when the text is mixed with gameplay in the trials. Thomas found the psyche-locks interesting, but underwhelming as the only new feature. East said that the psyche-locks were what made the investigations fun. Reparaz liked how the psyche-lock mechanic adds "a new dimension of weirdness" to the game. Both Harris and Thomas wished that the game had been less linear, with more possible wrong paths to take or more endings. Thomas, Reparaz and East wished that the Nintendo DS-exclusive gameplay features introduced in the first game's final episode had been used in Justice for All, with Reparaz calling it disappointing but "not a huge deal". Villoria and East said that the game does not last very long; Walker did not consider it short, but found it to not last as long as the first game. Vore said that the game is lacking in "advanced graphics and interface", but felt that it makes up for it through its charm and intrigue. Thomas called the character designs outstanding, but thought that the reused art assets for returning characters and locations from the first game made it feel like Capcom had "cut some corners". He called the music "uniformly outstanding and used masterfully", both for conveying various moods throughout the story, and for characters' personalities. Harris found the music "moody and appropriate", but wished that there had been a full voice-over as an option. He said that the game's art was nice, but not more than that. Thomas called the localization outstanding despite finding some errors, finding it impressive how smoothly Capcom was able to localize such a text-heavy game. Harris liked the game's localization, saying that the localization team's writing was what made the game design work so well. Walker called the localization incredible, and said that while there are a few spelling errors and grammatical errors in the text, it did not bother him much as the localization was included in the Japanese Nintendo DS release.

Naulakha Pavilion

World Heritage Site in Pakistan

The Naulakha Pavilion ([] Error: : no text (help)) is a white marble personal chamber with a curvilinear roof, located beside the Sheesh Mahal courtyard, in the northern section of the Lahore Fort in Lahore, Pakistan. The monument is one of the 21 monuments situated within the Lahore Fort, with its western façade providing a panoramic view of the ancient city of Lahore. The structure was originally inlaid with precious and semi-precious stones and overlooked the Ravi River. In 1981, as part of the larger Lahore Fort Complex, Naulakha was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The pavilion is now one of Lahore's most recognizable sights, and has influenced architectural design of notable buildings, including the Pakistani embassy in Washington, D.C. ## Etymology When the pavilion was built in 1633 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a small summer house, it cost around 900,000 rupees, an exorbitant amount at the time. It is called Naulakha because in Urdu language, the word means 'worth 9 lakhs rupees'. This also brought the word Naulakha into common use to signify something precious. ## History The Lahore Fort was built in 1566 under the rule of Mughal emperor Akbar the Great on the location of an earlier mud-fort. The solid brick masonry complex was later extended and modified by subsequent emperors. Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was a romantic man who constructed Taj Mahal in Agra and after that this master piece in Lahore was built in 1633 as a small summer house costing around 900,000 rupees - an exorbitant amount at the time. Naulakha Pavilion is among the buildings that were erected or reconstructed between 1628 and 1634 under Shah Jahan's rule. Due to his personal interest in the design and construction, Shah Jahan's architectural traditions manifest distinctive symmetry and hierarchical accents. Naulakha Pavilion is part of the Shah Burj block in the northwest section of the fort that was actually built by his predecessor Jahangir. In 1927, the building was listed by the Department of Archaeology of British India. In 1975, it was listed as a protected monument under the Antiquities Act by Pakistan's Department of Archaeology, whereas in 1981, as part of the larger Lahore Fort Complex, it became inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. More recently, the building and its materials have started showing signs of damage and discolouration due to the air pollution. The pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and other emissions, have already affected the white marble of the nearby Sheesh Mahal in the Lahore Fort Complex. ## Design The pavilion is rectangular in shape, situated in the west of Sheesh Mahal, and is prominent because of its centrally arched and extraordinarily curved roof typical of Bengal’s Do-chala style. This unique feature is symbolic of Shajahani architecture. It reflects a mixture of contemporary traditions (at the time of its construction) of sloping-roof from Bengal, and Baldachin from Europe. This demonstrates the imperial as well as religious image of the subject. The original roof was probably gilded. The inner walls are minutely inlaid with precious and semi-precious stones and silver with delicate parchin kari ornamentation are considered among the finest in the world. Glazed tile mosaics have been used to decorate the spandrels of the arched openings with floral designs and images of angels, genies, and solomonic symbols. The marble screens of the pavilion are crowned with merlons to prevent inmates being seen from the grounds in between the Fort and the river. The overall quadrangle comprises private quarters for royal family and closely resembles Agra fort. ## Influence As a unique and impressive monument of Mughal architecture, the building became a source of inspiration to Rudyard Kipling during his early days in Lahore. One of his novels is titled The Naulahka (sic), written in collaboration with Wolcott Balestier, the brother of his then-fiancée Caroline. The novel is about a precious necklace, which is called the Naulahka. When Kipling settled in his house in Dummerston, Vermont, he named it Naulakha, after the pavilion. To him, Naulakha symbolised the virtues, peacefulness, and solitude of the rural Vermont. ## Numismatics The Naulakha Pavilion motif was used on the reverse of the Pakistani one rupee banknote, issued by the Government of Pakistan in 1964. The motif was subsequently replaced with the Tomb of Muhammad Iqbal in 1980s, until the one rupee Banknote was taken out of circulation in 2005. The Pakistan Embassy building in Washington D.C. is partly modelled on the Naulakha Pavilion. ## Gallery ## See also - Lahore Fort - Walled City of Lahore - Badshahi Mosque - Shalimar Gardens - Naulakha Bazaar

Kirkandrews, Dumfries and Galloway

Hamlet in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland

Kirkandrews, sometimes written as Kirkanders in older documents, is a coastal hamlet about 9 kilometres (6 mi) west-southwest of Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It sits in farmland at the head of Kirkandrews Bay, an inlet of Wigtown Bay. The history of Kirkandrews' name is not altogether clear. Some authors have suggested that it was named for a Northumbrian or Irish saint who established a church here in the first millennium; certainly there was an ancient church at the site, but most recent scholarship suggests that both the original church and its name have been lost, and that a new church was built and dedicated to St Andrew, the apostle and patron saint of Scotland, at some point before 1174. Evidence of human habitation at the site dates to the Iron Age, and a Christian church has been there since the early medieval period. Originally an independent parish, it was amalgamated into the parish of Borgue in the 1790s. There was a barony of Kirkandrews, which changed hands many times during its history. By the nineteenth century it had declined to the status of a small hamlet within the grounds of the Knockbrex estate, which was purchased in 1894 by James Brown of Affleck & Brown, who embarked on a series of building works that would put his distinctive, flamboyant architectural stamp on Kirkandrews and its immediate vicinity. There are no shops or commercial businesses in the hamlet, but there are a number of historical sites. These include the ancient churchyard with some surviving stonework from its medieval church, a listed village hall that is used for religious services and private events, and a short distance along the coast there is a dun, built in the Iron Age and reused by Scandinavians, which was renovated in the early 20th century and has since been designated a scheduled monument. ## Name Kirkandrews takes its name, sometimes written as Kirkanders in historical records, from that of its ruined medieval church, but the history of the church's dedication is not clear. Local author Andrew McCulloch writes that it is named for a Northumbrian saint called Andrew, and the nineteenth-century writers William Daniell and Richard Ayton, in an account of their travels in the region, report that St Andrew is said to have arrived there by sea from Ireland. A similar account is given by W. J. Pennell in The Story of Knockbrex, which reports that the church was built on the site by monks from Iona Abbey, and was named for a 9th-century Irish saint called Andrew. Other authors take a different view. George Chalmers, in his account of Scottish history Caledonia, indicates that it was named for the St Andrew, the apostle and patron saint of Scotland. R. C. Reid, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, argues that the original name of the church must have been lost because the prefix 'Kirk' is not one that would have been used at the time when Ionian monks were active in the area. He suggests that the church was probably rebuilt at some point prior to 1174 and rededicated to St Andrew at that time. A 1970 assessment by the Ordnance Survey's Archaeology Division also noted that it was probably rededicated to St Andrew in the 12th century, and that its earlier dedication is unknown. Local historian Daphne Brooke agrees with this assessment, and suggests that the choice of St Andrew, a fisherman, would have been in keeping with Kirkandrew's status as a port town. ## Geography Kirkandrews sits amidst fields of arable farmland at the head of Kirkandrews Bay, an inlet of Wigtown Bay. It is approximately 9 kilometres (6 mi) west-southwest from Kirkcudbright, and 3 kilometres (2 mi) west of Borgue in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The closest weather observation site is at Dundrennan, 11 kilometres (7 mi) away from Kirkandrews. The observations are taken at an elevation of 113 metres (371 ft), considerably higher than Kirkandrews which is around 10 metres (33 ft) above sea level. ## History The area around Kirkandrews Bay retains evidence of very early human activity. At Tongue Croft, in a field just to the east of the village, is a rock bearing a set of four prehistoric cup and ring marks with up to six rings. There are signs of Iron Age habitation at Castle Haven, 700 metres (0.4 mi) along the coastline to the north west, in the form of a 1st-century BCE dun. This structure shows signs of reuse in the late first millennium, and was largely rebuilt and heightened in 1905. It is known locally as the Borg or Borgue, probably from the Old Norwegian word for a fort, indicating probable Scandinavian use. Angles from Northumbria conquered much of south west Scotland in the 7th century, and there is evidence of an Anglian coastal settlement at Kirkandrews. Older histories record that a church was established at the site by monks from Iona very early in Scotland's Christian history, and that it was transferred to the ownership of Holyrood Abbey in the 12th century by William the Lion. More recent work has called some of these details into question. Brooke argues that there were in fact two early Christian settlements in the vicinity called Kirkandrews: this one, Kirkandrews Purton (port village), and another some miles away known as Kirkandrews Balmaghie (village in the woods). She believes that it was Kirkandrews Balmaghie that was founded by Iona and later transferred to Holyrood, but agrees that there was certainly an Anglian religious settlement at Kirkandrews Porton, and that the old churchyard that survives today is at least pre-conquest in age. In the 13th century, the barony of Kirkandrews was granted to Robert de Champaign, brother to the constable of Roxburgh Castle Ralph de Champaign. Robert ruled the area from a substantial nearby stronghold, the earthworks of which survive and are known as Roberton Motte. It passed to his son, also named Robert, and then to his daughter Margaret and her husband, the Northumbrian nobleman Bernard de Rippelay. There are records of the lands being leased by William Lennox of Cally in the 15th century, and in 1472 James III granted the barony to William, Lord Moneypenny, who had served as a Scottish diplomat at the court of Louis XI of France. In the late 16th century the barony was purchased by John Gordon of Lochinvar, and in the 17th century the village hosted thriving annual markets. The minister Andrew Symson, in his Large Description of Galloway published in 1684, records that "in the kirk-yard of Kirkanders, upon the ninth day of August, there is a fair kept, called St. Lawrence Fair, where all sorts of merchant-wares are to be sold; but the fair only lasts for three or four hours, and then the people, who flock hither in great companies, drink and debauch, and commonly great lewdness is committed here at this fair." In the late 1790s, the Statistical Accounts of Scotland record that the parish of Kirkandrews was merged with those of Borgue and Senwick; the new amalgamated parish was known simply as Borgue. The Accounts also record that a planned village was to be built at Kirkandrews by Lord Daer, but this plan was never realised. The settlement around that time appears to have been in a very run-down condition: Daniel and Ayton, recounting their visit in the summer of 1813, described it as "the ne plus ultra of lowness and obscurity". They explain that it had previously been a centre of smuggling but that customs officers had seized all the village's boats and broken up the racket, leaving the inhabitants with no means of making an income. The Ordnance Survey map of 1854 shows a corn mill at Kirkandrews, and four buildings labelled Guttieside, Meggerland, Craighouse and Knockkennock. By the late 19th century, Kirkandrews seems to have become a quiet and romantic backwater. A guidebook to the area, published in 1876, describes a pleasant walk into the village, where "the murmur of the little stream, as it glides over the stones and brushwood in its course, is wafted to the ear, and nought of din, or sign of life, is heard or seen, save one of the aged liferenters drawing water from a pool of the running stream, or the grating sound of the mill wheel revolving on its rusty axle." The author comments on the "quaint and picturesque" nature of the houses, but also on the fact that some of them were derelict, and "only fit models for the painter." The 1885 Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland notes Kirkandrews' decline, from "a place of some note, long the scene of an annual fair, with horse and foot races, to the condition of a small, picturesque hamlet." By 1894, Kirkandrews was a part of the nearby estate of Knockbrex, which was acquired by James Brown, a successful draper from Manchester who had been made rich by the department store he helped establish, Affleck & Brown. He set about a programme of building on the estate, renovating existing structures and constructing new ones, all in a distinctive and individual style influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, and described by Historic Environment Scotland as having "a stylistic individuality bordering on the idiosyncratic". These buildings, mostly castellated and ornately decorated, include a folly known as the Toy Fort; Corseyard Farm, a dairy built to resemble a large castle tower; and within Kirkandrews itself a village hall known as Kirkandrews Kirk. Brown was also responsible for the reconstruction and heightening of the dun at Castle Haven, an act described by one local writer as "well-meant vandalism"; what remains of it today has been described as "an important example of Edwardian restoration of a specialised Iron Age stone fort". ## Kirkandrews today Modern Kirkandrews consists of a handful of domestic buildings, but there are no shops or other businesses. It is approached by a single-lane road which follows the Pulwhirrin Burn south from the main road. The first building the road passes is Kirkandrews Kirk, the village hall built by James Brown and completed in 1906, and a Category B listed building. Designed by the Arts and Crafts architect George Harry Higginbottom, it is accessed through an elaborate timber lychgate, and made to resemble a small castle. It is buttressed and crenellated, with mock portcullises built into the round arches above the doorway and windows. The interior walls are lined with a carved wooden dado with Celtic designs, and there is a rubble fireplace surmounted by a heraldic panel depicting St Andrew; the chimney above the fireplace is disguised externally to look like a turret. Built into the walls of the enclosure around the kirk are memorials for members of the Brown family, including James Brown himself, who died in 1920. The building is maintained by a charity, the Kirkandrews Kirk Trust, and used for ecumenical religious services, weddings and private functions. The road passes a number of houses, then comes to the old medieval churchyard. The church no longer remains as a complete building, but two burial enclosures in the middle of the yard appear to incorporate some of the fabric of its original walls. There are gravestones and memorials in the churchyard dating back to the 18th century, and because Lance Corporal Francis James Elms, who died in October 1918 during the First World War, is buried there, the churchyard is registered as a Commonwealth War Grave. A carved stone cross, dated to the 11th or 12th century and now standing in the forecourt of the Stewartry Museum in Kirkcudbright, is thought to have been taken from the churchyard. The poet William Nicholson, who was born in Borgue, is buried in the graveyard, and there is a memorial to Robert McWhae, a Covenanter martyr killed in 1685. The Castle Haven dun, which was designated a scheduled monument in 1928, is approached from Kirkandrews by a path which crosses the burn over a wooden bridge and follows the coast to the north-west. It is built on a rocky promontory, with inner and outer walls, and is the only known example in Galloway of this type of structure, which is more common in Argyll and the Outer Hebrides. The outer wall, roughly 2.7 metres (8.9 ft) thick, encloses an area of 39 metres (128 ft) by 20 metres (66 ft), with entrances to the north east and south east. The inner enclosure is approximately 18 metres (59 ft) by 11 metres (36 ft), and there are steps up to the top of the walls in the north east corner. Although the walls were substantially heightened by Brown in 1905, the original outline of the walls was faithfully maintained. During the excavations that preceded the modifications, artefacts including bronze spiral finger-rings and a blue glass paste bead, dated to the Iron Age, were discovered, alongside a brooch and fragments of mail that are suggestive of later reuse. ## General sources