the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
Another version was made restoring the chorus.
Early productions
The first performance outside Dresden occurred at Weimar.
This production demonstrated to small theaters that they could stage the opera.
Other productions took place in Schwerin, Breslau, Prague, Wiesbaden, and other small houses.
The opera played in New York in 1859.
It played in London (in Italian) in 1876.
In Vienna, Johann Strauss performed excerpts in 1853.
The first Austrian staging occurred at Graz in 1854.
Vienna mounted the opera in 1857.
The opera was performed at the Vienna court opera in 1875.
In 1860, the Paris Opera wanted the work in a revised version in French.
Wagner made extensive revisions for Paris.
Popular numbers in the early years
Tannhäuser's song in praise of Venus
Pilgrims' Chorus
Wolfram's plea to Tannhäuser to return to the Minnesingers
Entrance of the Guests
Wolfram's song to the Evening Star
New York State Route 199 (NY 199) is a road in the Hudson Valley of New York, United States.
It is  long, and goes from near Kingston to Millerton.
In between, NY 199 crosses over the Hudson River over a bridge and passes through the communities of Red Hook and Pine Plains.
Part of the road was part of the Ulster and Delaware Turnpike.
NY 199 was named in 1930.
Route log
New York State Route 9G (NY 9G) is a road in Dutchess County, New York, United States.
It starts at US 9 in Poughkeepsie and follows the Hudson River as it goes north.
It crosses Route 9 just north of Rhinebeck and ends in Hudson.
Every year, the Kennedy Center gives its Kennedy Center Honors to artists.
These artists have contributed to American culture.
Most of these artists were performers, such as actors, dancers, and musicians.
Some of these artists were movie directors, play writers, and songwriters.
Most of the recipients have been American.
The President of the United States usually attends the awards ceremony.
The Honors are given in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
From 1978 until 2002, the ceremony was hosted by Walter Cronkite.
Since 2003, it has been hosted by Caroline Kennedy.
1978 – Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers and Arthur Rubinstein
1979 – Aaron Copland, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham and Tennessee Williams
1980 – Leonard Bernstein, James Cagney, Agnes de Mille, Lynn Fontanne, and Leontyne Price
1981 – Count Basie, Cary Grant, Helen Hayes, Jerome Robbins, and Rudolf Serkin
1982 – George Abbott, Lillian Gish, Benny Goodman, Gene Kelly, and Eugene Ormandy
1983 – Katherine Dunham, Elia Kazan, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, and Virgil Thomson
1984 – Lena Horne, Danny Kaye, Gian Carlo Menotti, Arthur Miller, and Isaac Stern
1985 – Merce Cunningham, Irene Dunne, Bob Hope, Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe, and Beverly Sills
1986 – Lucille Ball, Hume Cronyn & Jessica Tandy, Yehudi Menuhin, Antony Tudor, and Ray Charles
1987 – Perry Como, Bette Davis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Nathan Milstein, and Alwin Nikolais
1988 – Alvin Ailey, George Burns, Myrna Loy, Alexander Schneider, and Roger L. Stevens
1989 – Harry Belafonte, Claudette Colbert, Alexandra Danilova, Mary Martin, and William Schuman
1990 – Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, Risë Stevens, Jule Styne, and Billy Wilder
1991 – Roy Acuff, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Fayard & Harold Nicholas, Gregory Peck, and Robert Shaw
1992 – Lionel Hampton, Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward, Ginger Rogers, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Paul Taylor
1993 – Johnny Carson, Arthur Mitchell, Georg Solti, Stephen Sondheim, and Marion Williams
1994 – Kirk Douglas, Aretha Franklin, Morton Gould, Harold Prince, and Pete Seeger
1995 – Jacques d'Amboise, Marilyn Horne, B.B. King, Sidney Poitier, and Neil Simon
1996 – Edward Albee, Benny Carter, Johnny Cash, Jack Lemmon, and Maria Tallchief
1997 – Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, Charlton Heston, Jessye Norman, and Edward Villella
1998 – Bill Cosby, Fred Ebb & John Kander, Willie Nelson, André Previn, and Shirley Temple Black
1999 – Victor Borge, Sean Connery, Judith Jamison, Jason Robards, and Stevie Wonder
2000 – Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chuck Berry, Plácido Domingo, Clint Eastwood, and Angela Lansbury
2001 – Julie Andrews, Van Cliburn, Quincy Jones, Jack Nicholson, and Luciano Pavarotti
2002 – James Earl Jones, James Levine, Chita Rivera, Paul Simon, and Elizabeth Taylor
2003 – James Brown, Carol Burnett, Loretta Lynn, Mike Nichols, and Itzhak Perlman
2004 – Warren Beatty, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Elton John, Joan Sutherland, and John Williams
2005 – Tony Bennett, Suzanne Farrell, Julie Harris, Robert Redford, and Tina Turner
2006 – Zubin Mehta, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson, Steven Spielberg, and Andrew Lloyd Webber
2007 – Leon Fleisher, Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Martin Scorsese, and Brian Wilson
2008 – Morgan Freeman, George Jones, Barbra Streisand, Twyla Tharp, and Pete Townshend & Roger Daltrey
2009 – Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro, and Bruce Springsteen
2010 — Merle Haggard, Jerry Herman, Bill T. Jones, Paul McCartney and Oprah Winfrey
2011 — Barbara Cook, Neil Diamond, Yo-Yo Ma, Sonny Rollins and Meryl Streep
2012 — Buddy Guy, Dustin Hoffman, Led Zeppelin (John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant), David Letterman and Natalia Makarova
2013 — Martina Arroyo, Herbie Hancock, Billy Joel, Shirley MacLaine and Carlos Santana
2014 — Al Green, Tom Hanks, Patricia McBride, Sting and  Lily Tomlin
2015 – Carole King, George Lucas, Rita Moreno, Seiji Ozawa, and Cicely Tyson
2016 – Martha Argerich, Eagles (Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh), Al Pacino, Mavis Staples, and James Taylor
2017 – Carmen de Lavallade, Gloria Estefan, LL Cool J, Norman Lear, and Lionel Richie
2018 – Cher, Philip Glass, Reba McEntire, Wayne Shorter, and the creators of Hamilton: An American Musical (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, Alex Lacamoire, and Andy Blankenbuehler)
2019 – Earth, Wind & Fire (Philip Bailey, Verdine White, Ralph Johnson and Maurice White), Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, Sesame Street (Lloyd Morrisett and Joan Ganz Cooney), and Michael Tilson Thomas
2020 – Cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic
2021 – Debbie Allen, Joan Baez, Garth Brooks, Midori, and Dick Van Dyke
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the Kennedy Center's award for contributions to American humor
The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by Oliver Goldsmith.
It was written in 1761 and 1762.
It was published in 1766.
The book was very popular.
The novel tells of the Primrose family.
1760s works
Lady's slipper orchids are the orchids in the subfamily Cypripedioideae.
They are special because of their slipper-shaped pouches on their flowers.
The pouch traps insects so that they must climb up past the modified stamens, where they get or give pollen, fertilizing the flower.
A lady slipper orchid has a deep pocket that is actually a bee trap.
When a bee crawls down into the flower to get the nectar, the pocket on the flower closes shut.
Because of this, the bee is stuck for a while, wiggling and squirming, getting pollen all over itself.
The lady's slipper is also known in the United States of America as the moccasin flower, because it looks like a shoe or moccasin.
Cox, A.V., A. M. Pridgeon, V. A. Albert, and M. W. Chase.
Phylogenetics of the slipper orchids (Cypripedioideae: Orchidaceae): nuclear rDNA ITS sequences.
Plant Systematics and Evolution 208: 197-223.
Pridgeon, A.M.; Cribb, P.J.; Chase, M.W. & F. N. Rasmussen (1999): Genera Orchidacearum Vol.
1, Oxford U. Press.
The Slipper Orchid Alliance
SlipperOrchids.info
Pandita Ramabai (23 April 1858, Karnataka – 5 April 1922) was an Indian Christian who tried to change many things in India.
A poet and scholar, she tried hard to improve (make better) the lives of women in India.
She wrote many books, such as her popular The high
-Caste Indian Woman, which showed the troubles of child wives and women in India.
She was born in Gangamoola, in the Mala village, in Karkala Taluk, in the Karnataka State of India.
Her father's name was Ananta Shastri.
She lost her parents (Laxmi Bai) early.
She travelled to Kolkata with her brother.
There, she received (got) a Pandita and a Sarasvathi Award for her expertise in Sanskrit Poetry.
Born in the home of an important scholar named Brahmin, Pandita Ramabai had more freedom than many Indian women.
Her father taught her and her mother to read Sanskrit writing.
She then began to study Christianity in India, and later in England.
She decided that it was the best religion; that she should be a Christian.
However, she had not yet received Jesus into her heart.
Ramabai later said,
Shortly after her "true conversion", Pandita Ramabai began a faith mission for the girls and widows of India.
Pandita and her helpers began a school and prayed for what they needed every day.
Wheta went to  and saved widows and girls from death or abuse.
Soon she had over a thousand women and girls at the mission.
Helping this many people during a time of great famine was very hard, but Pandita wrote in her autobiography,
Every day, Pandita Ramabai and her helpers taught the women to read and write, showed them cleanliness, and helped them prepare for a job.
She also taught them about Jesus.
She opened Ashrams at Pune, Mumbai.
She established a Christian High school at Gulbarga, (now at Karnataka) and her daughter Manorama was the principal.
Manorama studied in the United States and traveled to Australia.
Synthesis means to bring ideas together, or to make something out of parts which were independent.
It is the opposite of analysis.
As an intellectual activity, synthesis occurs often in philosophy and science.
In philosophy, synthesis is the end of a process of argument.
Two examples of people whose work was mostly synthesis are:
In chemistry, to synthesize is to make new compounds from simpler elements.
In acoustics, speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech.
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening, is an ancient chess opening.
It is named after the Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura.
He may have invented the opening.
These are the opening moves:
Bb5
The Ruy Lopez is one of the most common and well liked openings, with many ways to play it.
It has always been popular in master chess.
Something to know about it is that it does not threaten the black e5 pawn:
3.... a6
4.Bxc6 dxc6
5.Nxe5 Qd4 recovers the pawn.
ECO code: C60–C99.
ECO is the Encyclopaedia of chess openings.
A triathlon is a sport that consists of three different events one after another without resting in between.
Usually, they are swimming, cycling, and running.
Triathlon has been in the Olympic Games since 2000.
One of the hardest and most famous triathlons is the Ironman Triathlon, which involves swimming two miles, biking a hundred miles, and then running a marathon.
A mathematical function is called continuous if, roughly said, a small change in the input only causes a small change in the output.
If this is not the case, the function is discontinuous.
Functions defined on the real numbers, with one input and one output variable, will show as an uninterrupted line (or curve).
They can be drawn without lifting the pen off of the page.
The definition given above was made by Augustin-Louis Cauchy.
Karl Weierstraß gave another definition of continuity: Imagine a function f, defined on the real numbers.
At the point  the function will have the value .
If the function is continuous at , then for every value of  no matter how small it is, there is a value of , so that , means that .
We can put this another way, given a point close to  (called x), the absolute value of the difference between the two values of the function can be made increasingly small, if the point x is close enough to .
There are also special forms of continuous, such as Lipschitz-continuous.
A function is Lipschitz-continuous if there is a  with  for all x,y ∈ (a,b).
A basic way to know if a function is continuous is to use a pencil or your finger.
Then, start at the left of the function.
Then, move your finger along the path of the function.
If you ever need to lift your finger or pencil to keep following the function, then you know it is not continuous.
This is because, by lifting your finger, you have "jumped" from one section of the function to another.
That means you made a very small movement but the function changed very much.
This is what the first sentence of this article is talking about.
Peter Michael Falk (September 16, 1927 - June 23, 2011) was an American actor.
His best known role was Columbo in the TV series of the same name.
Falk was born in Manhattan on September 16, 1927.
He grew up in Ossining, New York.
He earned a degree in political science from the New School for Social Research.
He then earned his Master's degree in public administration at Syracuse University.
He appeared in a number of Broadway plays including: The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Passion of Josef D, Diary of a Scoundrel, and Saint Joan.
Falk won four Emmy Awards playing the police detective Columbo, and one for The Dick Powell Theatre.
He was nominated for seven other Emmy awards.
Falk also received two Academy Award nominations for the films Murder Inc. and Pocketful of Miracles.
Falk was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
He died in his Beverly Hills, California home on the morning of June 23, 2011.
Peter Falk at Emmys.com
Peter Falk on Dean Martin show, video, 10 min.
Peter Falk At Find A Grave
World War I & World War II
Born in Wyre Piddle, son of Harry & Madeline (née Winn), near Pershore, Worcestershire, Choules joined the Royal Navy as a young man in 1916, and served aboard the Naval Training Ship HMS Circe at Plymouth.
In 1917, he joined the battleship HMS Revenge, which was the flagship of the First Battle Squadron.
While serving aboard her, Choules witnessed the surrender of the German Imperial Navy at the Firth of Forth in 1918, ten days after the Armistice, and was also to witness the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow.
During World War II, Choules was the Acting Torpedo Officer of Fremantle and also the Chief Demolition Officer on the western side of the Australian continent.
He was tasked with sabotaging Fremantle harbors and related oil storage tanks in the event of a Japanese invasion.
List of surviving veterans of World War I
List of Last veterans of World War I by Country and Branch of Service
People from Worcestershire
Florence Green (19 February 1901 – 4 February 2012) was a British supercentenarian.
She was the last surviving veteran of World War I. Green was born in London and moved to King's Lynn in 1920 after her marriage to Walter, a railway worker who died in 1970.
She joined up in September 1918, two months before the end of the war.
She served as a waitress in the officers' mess at RAF Marham and also at Narborough airfield.
She was the last living British veteran following the death of Claude Choules.
John Henry Foster "Jack" Babcock (July 23, 1900 – February 18, 2010) was the last living Canadian veteran who fought in the First World War.
He became an American citizen in 1946.
Born on July 23, 1900, Mr. John "Jack" Babcock grew up on a farm near Kingston, Ontario as part of a family of 13 children.
When he was quite young, his father died in a tree-cutting accident.
Despite this devastating loss, Mr. Babcock went on to bravely serve his country in the First World War before moving to the United States where he settled in Spokane, Washington.
He was 15 years old when he joined the 146th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Sydenham (near Kingston), Ontario.
A few months later, he arrived in England.
He was transferred to reserve battalions and ended up with the Boys Battalion in 1917, waiting until he turned 18 to go to the front lines.
The war ended first.
Mr. Babcock would later move to the United States, where he served in the United States Army from 1921 to 1924.
Mr. Babcock married Dorothy after losing his first wife, Elsie, in the late 1970s.
Mr. Babcock read voraciously and, in recent years, completed his high school degree via correspondence courses.
He had also taken local college courses.
He could recite the alphabet backwards without hesitation and spell out his name in Morse code.
He enjoyed travelling with his wife and taking daily walks to keep in good shape.
He took up flying lessons and became a pilot when he was 65!
In April 2008, the Minister of Veterans Affairs awarded Mr. Babcock a Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation.
Later that year, a small ceremony was held in May at Mr. Babcock's home, where his Canadian citizenship was reinstated.
Another accolade came in September 2008 when the Royal Canadian Regiment Association honored Mr. Babcock with the honorary title of regimental patriarch.
This was the first time the title of regimental patriarch was given in Canada.
Frank Woodruff Buckles (born Wood Buckles'; 1 February 1901 – 27 February 2011) was the last living American veteran who fought in World War I.
Buckles was born in Bethany, Missouri.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army at the beginning of America's involvement in World War I in April 1917.
Only 16 years old at the time, Buckles was asked by his recruiter to show a birth certificate.
Later Buckles said of that event, “I was just 16 and didn’t look a day older.
I confess to you that I lied to more than one recruiter.
I gave them my solemn word that I was 18, but I’d left my birth certificate back home in the family Bible.
They’d take one look at me and laugh and tell me to go home before my mother noticed I was gone.
Somehow I got the idea that telling an even bigger whopper was the way to go.
So I told the next recruiter that I was 21 and darned if he didn’t sign me up on the spot!
I enlisted in the Army on the 14th of August 1917."
In 1917, Buckles was sent to Europe on the RMS Carpathia, which had rescued RMS Titanic survivors five years earlier.
During the war Buckles served in England and France, driving ambulances and motorcycles for the Army's 1st Fort Riley Casualty Detachment.
After the Armistice in 1918, Buckles escorted prisoners of war back to Germany.
Following his discharge in 1919, he attended the dedication of the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, in honor of those Americans who died in World War I. While there, he met General John "Black Jack" Pershing, commander of all U.S. forces in France during the war.
In the 1940s Buckles worked for a shipping company in Manila, Philippines.
He was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and spent the next three and a half years in the Los Baños prison camp.
He became malnourished, with a weight below 100 lb, and developed beriberi, yet led his fellow inmates in calisthenics.
He was rescued on February 23, 1945.
Józef Kowalski (2 February 1900 – 7 December 2013) was the last Polish veteran who served just after the First World War.
He is the oldest verified military veteran in the world, following the death of Gertrude Noone.
He fought in the Polish-Soviet War that was linked to the First World War.
It lasted from 1919 to 1921.
He is the only living person who is known to have definitely fought in that war.
He lived in Tursk, near Sulęcin, in a care home.
He died on 7 December 2013, aged 113.
Stanley Lucas (15 January 1900 - 21 June 2010) was a British supercentenarian.
He was the oldest living man in Europe at the time of his death.
He was also the third-oldest man in the world.
Lucas was born at Morwenstow UK and had two brothers and two sisters.
In 1908 his family moved to Marhamchurch where Lucas lived until 1948.
Lucas married Ivy Nancekivell in 1926 and took over the family farm.
Lucas was a breeder of Devon cattle and Devon longwool sheep and started a dairy farm in the early 1940s.
In 1948 he moved to live with his family at Poughill, where he continued to live after Ivy's death in 1963.
Lucas was a member of Bude Town Council from 1959 to 1970, as well as vice chairman.
His daughter said, "He has worked hard in his working life and was a teetotaller and non-smoker and since he has been elderly has been well cared for".
He died on 21 June 2010 in Bude, England at the age of 110.
Michelle Elizabeth Keegan (born 3 June 1987) is a British actress.
She was born in Stockport, Greater Manchester.
She is best known for playing Tina McIntyre in the long-running ITV soap opera, Coronation Street from 2008 to 2014.
Sir David John White OBE (born 2 February 1940), known professionally as by his stage name David Jason, is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter and television producer.
He is best known for his roles as Del Boy in the BBC and GOLD comedy series sitcom Only Fools and Horses and Detective Insepctor Jack Frost in A Touch Of Frost, Granville in Open All Hours and Still Open All Hours, and Pop Larkin in The Darling Buds of May, as well as voicing Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Williows and the title character of DangerMouse and Count Duckula; His last original was Del Boy was in 2014 and Frost in 2010.
Jason was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1993, and knighted in 2005, both for services to drama.
He won the British Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 2003.
Jason lived with his long term girlfriend, actress Myfanwy Talog, for eighteen years until her death from breast cancer in 1995.
At age 61, Jason and 41-year-old girlfriend Gill Hinchcliffe had a baby girl in 2001.
David Jason has a total of twenty-three awards between 1986 and 2003.
His hit comedy show, Only Fools and Horses won many of these awards, and was also nominated many times.
His crime drama, A Touch of Frost, has also won and been nominated many times.
Porterhouse Blue, The Second Quest, All the King's Men and A Bit of a Do have won David Jason one award each.
Karl Malden (22 March 1912 – 1 July 2009) was an American actor.
He worked in acting from the 1930s to 2000.
He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire.
He was also in other classic movies, such as On the Waterfront, One-Eyed Jacks and Patton.
He is perhaps best known for his role on television in the series The Streets of San Francisco during the 1970s.
He was born Mladen Sekulovich in Chicago.
He grew up in Gary, Indiana.
His family was Serbian.
In 1938, he married Broadway actress Mona Greenberg.
The two would remain married until Malden's death in 2009.
Greenberg died in July 2019.
At one time he served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Among other awards he won during his lifetime was an Emmy Award for his role in Fatal Vision.
He was also given a Life Achievement Award by the Screen Actors' Guild in 2003.
Born in Newtown, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Ross served as a wireless operator in the First Australian Imperial Force, enlisting in January 1918, but never left Australia or saw active service.
He later went on to serve in the Second World War as a corporal with the 20th Battalion, Volunteer Defence Corps.
His wife, Irene (née Laird), had been deceased by several decades before Jack Ross's death.
He is survived by a son, Robert, a daughter, Peggy Ashburn, four grandchildren- Janette, Heather, Kay, and John - and nine great-grand children.
The death of William Evan Allan in October 2005 left Ross as the last Australian digger from World War I. However Claude Choules, a World War I veteran who served for Britain, lived in Western Australia.
Ross became Australia's oldest man at the age of 108, on 12 June 2007, upon the death of Frank Scarrabelotti.
Following the death of 112 year old E. Beatrice Riley, he was verified as the oldest person in Australia.
As a civilian, Ross worked for Victorian Railways until he retired in 1964.
Ross died peacefully in his sleep at approximately 4 am.
at the Golden Oaks Nursing Home in Bendigo on 3 June 2009, aged 110.
This a list of known veterans of World War I who died in 2009 (5 veterans), 2010 (1 veteran), 2011 (2 veterans) and 2012 (1 veteran).
Florence Green, who died on 4 February 2012, was the last surviving veteran of any nation.
Veterans by country of service – 9 veterans
Unverified World War I veterans – 4 veterans
World War I era veterans – 6 veterans
Lists of military people
William Frederick Stone (23 September 1900 – 10 January 2009) was a British veteran of World War I who served in the Royal Navy.
He died on 10 January 2009.
Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom OBE (4 February 1915 – 4 October 2010) was an English comedian, singer, songwriter, actor and musician.
Wit and Wisdom (1948–1950, TV)
Trouble in Store (1953)
One Good Turn (1954)
As Long as They're Happy (1955)
Man of the Moment (1955)
Up in the World (1956)
Just My Luck (1957)
The Square Peg (1958)
Follow a Star (1959)
There Was a Crooked Man (1960)
The Bulldog Breed (1960)
On the Beat (1962)
The Girl on the Boat (1962)
A Stitch in Time (1963)
The Early Bird (1965)
The Sandwich Man (1966)
Press for Time (1966)
Androcles and the Lion (1967, TV)
The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968)
What's Good for the Goose (1969)
Norman (1970, TV)
Music Hall (1970, TV)
Nobody Is Norman Wisdom (1973, TV)
A Little Bit of Wisdom (1974, TV)
BBC Playhouse: "Going Gently" (1981, TV)
BBC Bergerac: "Almost Like a Holiday" (1983, TV)
The 1950s: Music, Memories & Milestones (1988, TV)
Double X: The Name of the Game (Double X, Run Rabbit Run) (1992)
Last of the Summer Wine episode "The Man Who Nearly Knew Pavarotti" (1995, TV)
Last of the Summer Wine episode "Extra, Extra!" (
1996, TV)
Where on Earth Is ... Katy Manning (1998, TV)
Casualty episode "She Loved the Rain" (1998, TV)
Last of the Summer Wine episode "The Coming of the Beast" (2001, TV)
Last of the Summer Wine episode "A Musical Passing for a Miserable Muscroft" (2002, TV)
Dalziel and Pascoe episode "Mens Sana" (2002, TV)
Coronation Street (2004, TV)
Five Children and It (2004) Played Nesbitt.
Last of the Summer Wine episode "Variations on a Theme of the Widow Winstanley" (2004, TV)
Expresso (2007) [www.expressofilm.com]
Evil Calls: The Raven (2008)
Wonderland: The Secret Life Of Norman Wisdom Aged 92 and 3/4 (2008, TV)
CDs and vinyl
I Would Like to Put on Record Jingle Jangle The Very Best of Norman Wisdom Androcles and the Lion Where's Charley?
Wisdom of a Fool Nobody's Fool Follow a Star 1957 Original Chart Hits Follow a Star/Give Me a Night in June Happy Ending/The Wisdom Of A Fool Big in Albania - One Hit Wonderland''
In August 1914, after the start of World War I, Ponticelli joined the 1st Régiment de Marche of the French Foreign Legion at 16 years old.
He had to lie about his age as he was still to young to join the army.
His older brother, Céleste Ponticelli, had also joined the regiment.
Ponticelli said that France had done much for him, and being in the army was his way of showing his thanks.
He fought at Soissons in Picardy, northeast France and at Douaumont, near Verdun.
Ponticelli worked digging burial pits and trenches.
Ponticelli was not a French citizen and in May 1915, when Italy entered the war, he was forced into the Italian Army by conscription.
Even though he tried to stay with his French regiment, he had to become part of the 3rd Alpini Regiment.
Ponticelli fought against the Austro-Hungarian Army at Mount Piccolo on the Austria–Italy border.
At his new job as a machine gunner, Ponticelli was wounded by a shell during an assault on an Austrian mountain.
He was sent back to his job after rest in Naples.
Once, his regiment stopped fighting the Austrians for three weeks.
The armies, who mostly spoke the same language, traded loaves of bread for tobacco and took pictures of each other.
His commanders found out about this, and moved the regiment to another area.
Fire ants are stinging ants.
They are also called ginger ants and tropical fire ants.
They evolved in South America, but have become a major pest in North America.
They are known for a painful sting.
This sting uses a base, not an acid.
In 1918, fire ants were accidentally moved into the United States of America by a ship from South America.
They were moved in large amounts of dirt.
The ships brought heavy things like machines from the US to South America.
They brought back light things like crops.
The dirt was ballast make the ships more stable.
The dirt sometimes had fire ants in it.
In the United States, fire ants have no natural predators or competitors.
They became an invasive species.
Native animals are not adapted to these ants.
Fire ants are very aggressive.
Their colonies can have many queens unlike many other ant species.
Because of this, fire ants have spread very fast.
By 1965, fire ant mounds spread on the south eastern coast and as far west as Texas.
Today they are found in at least 10 southern states.
There is a separate group of fire ants living in California.
Jaws of damage
Fire ants have done a lot of harm as they have spread across the United States.
Because they are attracted to electrical currents, they chew through wires.
This makes short circuits.
Fire ants have also disturbed the natural balance of native ecosystems.
In some places, they have killed off 70% of the native ant species and 40% of other native insect species.
Each year, about 25,000 people go for medical help because of painful bites from fire ants.
Fire ants attack in groups when disturbed.
People often get many bites.
Fire ant bites are usually not dangerous but some people are allergic to fire ants.
They may go into shock.
This can kill them.
Fighting fire
The fire ants are growing in the US 80 years after they came there.
About 157 chemicals, like ammonia, gasoline, parts of manure, and insect-killing pesticides, are used against fire ants.
However, none of them were very helpful.
By 1995, the government had allowed only one fire-ant bait for people to use a lot.
Biology, Control, and Management of Imported Fire Ants in North America at www.eXtension.org
The Alabama Fire Ant Management Program
Queensland Government - Department of Primary Industries Fire Ants Homepage
Fire Ant Gene Sequence database
Fireants building a lifeboat to save the queen - Video
Fulgurites are a rare type of natural glass made when lightning hits silica-rich minerals that are commonly in sand, soil, and some rocks.
Tubular fulgurites are found in places with a lot of silica, like beaches or deserts.
Lightning makes a tubular fulgurite when a bolt goes through the sand and melts silica into a liquid.
The liquid silica cools and hardens quickly, leaving behind a thin glassy tube, usually with a rough outer surface and a smooth inner surface.
Underground, a fulgurite may be shaped like the roots of a tree, branching out with many arms that trace the zigzagging path of the lightning bolt.
They are quite delicate, with walls no thicker than 1-2 mm.
Some of the largest fulgurites are removed from the ground in many pieces and then glued back into their original shape.
Saint Patrick's Cathedral is a decorated Neo-Gothic-style Catholic cathedral church in the United States.
It is the seat of the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and a parish church, located on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets in midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York.
It faces Rockefeller Center.
Sindhi food refers to the food of the Sindhi people who live in Pakistan.
The daily food in most Sindhi households consists of wheat-based flat-bread (phulka) and rice accompanied by two dishes, one gravy and one dry.
Kutti (Mashed Roti [Bread] with sugar and butter)
Lolo or Mithi Loli (Sweeter version of koki (see below) - also made if you get chicken pox (Hindu))
Ku-ini Kich-anee (Sindhi comfort food.
A porridge like dish made with rice and served with yogurt)
Chhola Dhabal (baked bread with chick peas in thick gravy)
Ka-raw-o (religious offering made with flour, ghee and sugar)
Bhat - (porridge, usually given to a sick child, but popular at all times)
Sindhi Curry - (chick pea flour and vegetables like lady finger, potato and eggplant.
Seyal Mani (Cooked Chappati in green sauce with tomato, coriander and spices).
Seyal Dab-roti (variation of above, but instead of Chappati, use bread)
Koki or Loli (a thick chappati with ghee, onion and coriander).
Loli Du-dh (as above, but served with yogurt.
Some Sindhis will eat Loli with pickles, but many Sindhis do not consider it good form to mix yogurt and pickles).
This is a popular dish served at breakfast or brunch.
Pappad (a crisp and thin snack.
Sindhi will generally eat this after a meal to digest food and in particular after an oily meal).
Dhodo Chutney (A thick roti with garlic paste and served with mint chutney)
Sai Bhaji (a spinach based gravy, sai means green - the colour of spinach)
Bugha Chawar (a browned rice)
Bhugal Bheeha (lotus root in thick curry)
Dhangi Fulko (moong beans with roti)
Curry Chawal (a tomato curry eaten with white rice - served with aloo took, a potato cutlet)
Besan ji Bhaji (vegetable made of gram flour)
Bhugal Teewarn (a mutton dish)
Jera & Bhukiyoo (Fried liver, Kidney of goat)
Dal Tikkhar (daal yellow pulses) cooked in gravy eaten with crisp fried very thin matthi)
Bhugge Chawal (rice cooked in flavoured spices beige/ golden brown in colour with vegetable assortments)
Pava (goats legs)
Pakkwan Dal (lentil and solid crunchy puri)
Curry Chawal (It's Kathi Curry eaten with Rice)
Fote waro Tivan (Lamb meat in cardamom)
Keemo (ground lamb meet)
Seyal Pallo (pomfret fish in garlic sauce)
Desserts or Sweets or Drink
Thadal
Varo (Indian sweet made with pistachio, almonds or other nuts)
Moomthal (Indian sweet)
Khi-r-ni (hot drink made with milk with flavours of cardamom and saffron)
Mal-pooro
Bhangg ( for have fun and relaxtion , specially drunk on Holi,Eid or marriages)
carrot pickle
mango pickle
mix fruit pickle
green chilli pickle
Murbo (sweet grated mango in sugar syrup)
Food for Special Occasions
There are food that are served during special occasions, such as during Diwali a Bahji with seven vegetables is made.
If someone gets chicken pox and after it is gone, it is common to make an offering and make 'mitho lolo'.
Vermicelli is served on both Eids.
On special religious occasions, mitho lolo, accompanied with milk is given to the poor.
This section provides the translations between Hindi, Sindhi and English (British and American) cooking terms.
There occasional even in Sindhi for instance Hyderabadi Sindhi will refer to an egg as 'bedo' however Sindhis from other parts will refer to it as 'ando'.
The Musical Offering (German title Musikalisches Opfer or Das Musikalische Opfer), BWV 1079, is a collection of several pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach.
It consists of canons, fugues, ricercars and a trio sonata.
All the music is based on a tune made up by King Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great).
Bach dedicated the work to him.
How Bach composed the work
The idea for this music started at a meeting between Bach and Frederick II on 7 May 1747.
One of Bach’s sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel, was one of the king’s court musicians.
The king wanted to show Johann Sebastian Bach a new instrument that had recently been invented.
This was the piano.
The king invited Bach to his palace at Potsdam.
During the visit the king gave Bach a theme and asked him to write a 3 part fugue based on it.
Bach was good at improvisation so he made up a 3 part fugue.
The king wondered whether he could make up a 6 part fugue.
That would be very difficult, and people thought he was joking, but Bach said he would think about it.
Two months later, after he had gone home to Leipzig, Bach made up a six-voice fugue based on the king’s theme.
He put it together with other compositions based on the theme and sent them to the king.
This music became known as the “Musical Offering”.
We do not know what the king thought of it.
At the top of the music Bach wrote some Latin words: "Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta" (this means: “the theme given by the king, with additions, resolved in the canonic style”).
The first letters of these words spell out the word ricercar, which was a form of music well-known at the time.
The Musical Offering consists of a collection of ricercars, canons, fugues and a trio sonata.
The trio sonata was written for flute, violin and basso continuo, but most of the other music does not show what instruments should play it.
They are often played on keyboard instruments, or as chamber music by small groups of instruments.
Bach did not show what order he wanted the pieces to be played in.
Bach also put riddles at the top of some of the pieces.
Some of these riddles have been explained, but some have more than one solution.
One of these riddle canons, "in augmentationem" (i.e. augmentation) has notes which get longer and longer.
Bach wrote: "Notulis crescentibus crescat Fortuna Regis" (“may the fortunes of the king increase like the length of the notes”).
Another one is a modulating canon which ends a tone higher than it starts.
Bach wrote over the music: "Ascendenteque Modulationis ascendat Gloria Regis" (“as the modulation rises, so may the King's glory”).
20th century adaptations
Several composers have made arrangements of some of the music from the “Musical Offering”.
In 1935, Anton Webern arranged Bach’s six-part ricercar for orchestra.
In 1980 Sofia Gubaidulina used the Royal Theme of the Musical Offering in her violin concerto.
She turns the notes into a Russian Orthodox hymn.
Dedication can also mean the writing at the beginning of a book or piece of music in which the author or composer says that it was written for a particular person.
For example: a composer may write a piece of music for a particular musician and dedicate it to them.
An author may dedicate a book to someone they love or respect.
A book or a piece of music may be dedicated to the person who has paid them to write it.
This may be a rich person such as king.
A boomslang (Dispholidus typus)  is a large venomous snake found in sub-Saharan Africa.
Its name means "tree snake" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
It is a colubrid, the largest family of snakes, found on every continent except Antarctica.
Boomslangs eat small animals like chameleons, frogs, and birds, and they also eat eggs.
Like all snakes, boomslangs do not chew  they swallow everything whole.
The venom of boomslangs can disrupt the clotting of blood, and this can kill a person.
After a bite, one can sometimes feel a headache, nausea and sleepiness.
This does not happen often, as boomslangs only bite humans when they feel attacked.
Its eyes are large in proportion to its head; they have binocular vision that helps them spot their prey.
Its scientific name is Dispholidus typus.
A boomslang is a slender snake with large eyes on a large blunt head.
The snake can grow to up to 2 metres long, but is on average about 1 to 1.6 m in length.
A fire engine is a vehicle that is designed to help in fighting fires.
A fire engine carries hoses, a pump, a water tank and breathing equipment.
It will also have rescue equipment, such as ladders, ropes and cutting tools, and usually first aid kits as well.
A fire engine brings firefighters to the scene from the fire station.
It will also have sirens and flashing lights to warn traffic along the way.
In the Middle Ages, the only way to fight a fire was with buckets of water.
In the 16th century, hand-powered pumps were invented.
In the 19th century, the design of these pumps was improved, so that horses could wheel them to the scene.
Later, steam power was used to turn both the pumps and the wheels.
The first modern fire engine was invented in 1905 by Knox Automobile in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Ladder truck: Although a normal fire engine often carries a ladder, these trucks carry very high ladders with a basket on the end.
These can be used for allowing water to be squirted from high up, to bring firefighters up to a high position, as an escape route for firefighters, and for rescuing other people.
In turn, there are different types of ladder truck.
A turntable ladder has a long, straight ladder.
An aerial ladder platform cannot reach as high, but its ladder can bend in the middle.
A quint is a ladder truck that also has a pump.
Water tender: A truck for carrying water.
Heavy rescue vehicle: A vehicle that carries special rescue equipment that is not found in a normal fire engine.
Hazmat vehicle: A vehicle for dealing with dangerous chemicals.
Airport crash tender: A fire engine for use at airports, designed for responding to aircraft disasters.
Command unit: A large truck that acts as a base for senior firefighters during a big incident.
An ice cream sandwich is a type of frozen desert that is made by putting ice cream in between two cookies or pieces of cake (called "sandwiching").
It is often made with vanilla ice cream between two pieces of chocolate cake, but sometimes is made with other flavours instead.
The Mycenaean culture (~1600–1100BC) was an early Greek culture during the Bronze Age, on the Greek mainland and on Crete.
The name Achaean was used by Homer to describe them, and occurs in the Iliad.
The term we use is derived from Mycenae, which is an important archaeological site about 90 km from Athens.
Other important Mycenaean sites are at Athens, Thebes, Tiryns and Pylos.
The epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are Mycenaean in origin.
The earlier Minoans traded but did not conquer.
The Mycenaeans traded and conquered.
The Mycenaean language
Mycenaean  is the oldest  known form of the Greek language.
It was spoken on the Greek mainland and on Crete in the Mycenaean period, 16th to 12th centuries BC.
The language is written on clay tablets in a script called Linear B.  Most of these tablets were found in Knossos in central Crete, and in Pylos in the southwest of the Peloponnese.
Other tablets have been found at Mycenae itself, Tiryns and Thebes and at Chania in Western Crete.
For a long time no-one could translate the tablets.
At last, in 1952 Michael Ventris deciphered the script.
He  showed that the language was an early form of Greek.
The texts on the tablets are mostly lists and inventories.
There are no stories, myths or poetry, but they give us some idea of the people who made them.
By the late thirteenth century BC mainland Greece witnessed a wave of destruction.
The Mycenaean sites declined, and the people moved to refuge settlements.
This is the so-called Greek Dark Ages; little or no writing is found until the 8th century BC.
See Ancient Greece for this and later periods.
Comparison with the Hittite language
Old Hittite and Mycenaean Greek are both Indo-European languages.
The oldest Hittite texts are slightly earlier than the earliest Mycenaean texts, but Greek is the oldest surviving Indo-European language.
The somewhat younger Linear B tablets suggest that the people called Mycenaeans might have been Achaeans.
No written source found at a Mycenaean site reveals what they called themselves.
In the Iliad, the residents of the Peloponnesus and nearby islands are often called Achaeans.
There is mention of the Ahhiyawa in Hittite sources from the Late Bronze Age, which suggests itself that the Mycenaeans could possibly be Achaeans.
The Tawagalawa Letter, written by an unnamed Hittite king (14th–13th century BC) to the king of Ahhiyawa, treats him as an equal.
The letter suggests that Miletus (Millawanda) was under his control and refers to an earlier 'Wilusa' episode" involving hostility by Ahhiyawa.
Ahhiya(wa) has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy.
However the exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans is hotly debated by scholars, even after the discovery that Mycenaean Linear B is an early form of Greek.
The written forms of the two languages are quite different.
Manna, sometimes spelled mana, is the name of a food which, according to the Pentateuch of the Bible, the Israelites ate while they were traveling 40 years in the desert after leaving Egypt, which God provided because they had nothing to eat.
Every morning they would gather the white flakes that covered the ground.
It is said to have a sweet taste.
When they got tired of manna, God gave them quail (bird).
Manna was called the "bread of heaven" because it seemed to come from Heaven, according to the Bible.
Some suggest that they were a type of locust; some say that it was the sap of a tree which is known to satisfy hunger.
In the Mishna, it is said that it was made during twilight of the sixth day of Creation.
Clarissa Harlowe "Clara" Barton (December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912) was an American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian.
During the American Civil War, she was in charge of the agency to find missing Union soldiers.
She also headed several hospitals in Virginia.
She is best remembered for organizing the American Red Cross.
Childhood of the Angel of the Battlefield
Clara was born on December 25, 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts.
She was the youngest child of Sarah Stone and Stephen Barton.
In her youth, Barton was timid and sensitive, which made household life difficult for Barton.
Clara's father was an important member of the town; he served as the town's moderator, ran a decent farm, and were well-known members of the town's church.
Clara shared a special bond with her father.
Both of them were adventurous and patriotic.
Clara's father often told her stories about war, and they pretended to fight each other in fake battles.
Clara's mother was said to be a very beautiful woman.
She was married at the age of seventeen, and by the time she was twenty she had already given birth to four children.
She was very practical (good with her hands) and taught Clara many chores around the house.
Her mother was strict and would not even let Clara have a toy doll.
However, Clara's mother taught her many important things.
She was a very strong and determined woman, and was full of common sense, traits that were both passed on to Clara.
Clara's four siblings were all older than she was.
Her oldest sister, Dorothy, was seventeen years old when Clara was born; her oldest brother, Stephen, was fifteen; her younger brother, David, was thirteen; and her younger sister, Sally, was ten.
She learned many skills from her siblings.
Her sisters taught her how to read before she was even three years old.
Stephen taught her mathematics, and David taught her how to ride a horse.
As a child, Clara liked to pretend she was a nurse.
She took care of sick and injured animals.
When she was eleven, her brother David fell off the roof of a barnhouse.
This incident had a large effect on Clara, who helped nurse her brother.
David suffered a severe injury to his head, and he was close to death for two years.
For two years Clara took care of her brother, hardly leaving his bedside.
She learned many medical practices, including bloodletting, giving medicine, and applying leeches.
Though she didn't realize it, Clara had discovered her talent and love of nursing.
After David was treated, Clara felt anxious and restless.
She began becoming depressed because she had nothing to do.
She tried being a weaver at her brother David's mill, but she quit and looked for a new job.
One day, a phrenologist visiting the Barton household told Barton's parents to teach in a school so she could overcome her extreme shyness.
Barton was first terrified of this, but she soon taught a class of forty girls and boys in a local school.
Barton impressed the children, who were barely younger than she was, and she felt happy at earning their respect.
After her school received an award for discipline, Barton received many job offers.
She asked for and received the same pay for teaching as male teachers, which was uncommon at the time.
Barton taught at the school for ten years.
When she was thirty, Barton enrolled at the Clinton Liberal Institute in New York.
After graduating, two schoolmates, Charles and Mary Norton, invited her to live with their family in Hightstown, New Jersey.
Barton began teaching in the local school, and then began starting free public schools like the ones in Massachusetts.
The school was very successful, and many new teachers were hired and a new building was built.
A man was hired to run the school, and he received a salary almost twice as high as Barton's salary.
Barton was angry at this treatment, and she left to find a new job in Washington D.C.
Barton spent the next five years of her life in the US capital, her first job being a clerk for the government.
Department of the Interior records say that she became a clerk in 1855, which makes her the first female to work for the government.
Barton was appointed a position in the US patent office.
She even received the same pay as the other workers, receiving $1400 a year.
The other workers were very angry about this; they "spat on the floor", "blew smoke in her face", insulted her, and made slanderous remarks about her.
Many of these men lost their jobs because of this behavior.
Barton quit working and lived in Glen Echo, Maryland.