Passage 1:Peggy PettittPeggy Pettitt (born February 8, 1950) is an American actress, dancer, teacher, playwright, and storyteller. Pettitt is best known for her role as Billie Jean in the 1972 family–drama film Black Girl,starring alongside Brock Peters and Claudia McNeil. Pettitt is a native of St. Louis, Missouri.Playwright and storytellerThe centerpiece of Pettitt's theater career is a unique style of solo performance rooted inAfrican-American storytelling. She developed this form to portray a spectrum of characters. Related by blood and circumstance, these characters shed light on the multifaceted history of African American men andwomen. And they tell "stories addressing important issues of our time." In collaboration with director Remy Tissier, she has created over 10 original full-length plays. These examine issues of domestic violence, sexualabuse, cross-generational differences, voting registration, the Civil Rights Movement, identity and the world HIV/Aids crisis. Titles include Women Preachers, Caught Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea,Tricksters: All Over You Like White On Rice, Wrapped Up, Tied Up and Tangled, Mollie Oil BETWIXT, Wild Steps and In The Spirit For Real.One play was the product of her 2000-01 Fulbright Fellowship to Senegal: TheSpirit Factor. An original play, it's based on the living history and the art of storytelling in West Africa. Another play, Voyage, was presented at the Avignon Off Festival in 2010. It explores American history through boththe blues and a spiritual heritage that lives along the Mississippi River but originated in West Africa. Pettitt has presented her work at the Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni Les Rencontres du Bout des Mondes InternationalFestival in 2011 (French Guiana). In addition to the Fulbright Fellowship, she has received numerous other grants and awards. These include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New YorkFoundation for the Arts. Pearls of Wisdom is a storytelling ensemble of the Elders Share the Arts in N.Y. City. Pettitt is its founding artistic director, and with the Pearls of Wisdom, she was inducted in 2007 into CityLore's People's Hall of Fame.ActressIn 1972, during the era of Blaxploitation movies, Pettitt starred in Black Girl, her first feature film. Pettitt was nominated for Best Actress by the NAACP for her role in Black Girl,written by J.E. Franklin (from her 1969 WGBH (Boston) teleplay and her 1971 play), and directed by Ossie Davis. Another of her noteworthy roles was at Lincoln Center as Miss Lindsey in Mule Bone, Zora Neale Hurstonand Langston Hughes’ historical comedy.TeacherPettitt has professional experience and training in directing and storytelling workshops. She teaches a step-by-step process of creating, writing and performing originalmaterial. Partnering with a wide array of organizations, she has helped scores of diverse groups present their own original stories as both theater and storytelling performances. She also works extensively with dramatherapists, social workers and educators in public schools.Both in the U.S. and abroad, Pettitt has worked at numerous schools and educational institutions. Her teaching experience extends to facilities such as homelessshelters, prisons, drug treatment centers, VA hospitals, and senior and adolescent centers. Additionally she has ample experience working with the emotionally and physically disabled and their families. She currentlyteaches self-scripting at New York University's Experimental Theatre Wing.BiographyIn 1974, after earning a BA from Antioch College, she moved to London on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Pettitt now resides in NewYork City. She has been married since 1982 to writer, director and painter Rémy Tissier.Awards and honors2008, Story gatherer for "Another River Flows" recipient of the Pennsylvania Human Relation Award2010,Voyage was presented at the Avignon, France Off FestivalNominated for an NAACP Image Award for role in Black Girl2007, Ms. Pettitt and the Pearls of Wisdom were inducted into New York City Lore's People's Hall ofFameRecipient of New York City's Arts In Education Roundtable Award for sustained achievement in theaterHonored by the William Hodson Senior Center, The Roundtable Senior Center and Elders Share the Arts for"Commitment to the art of storytelling that transforms lives and communities"2011, Performance Space 122 founders and board pioneers Shining Star AwardIn booksOut of Character, Mark Russell, 1997PerformingDemocracy, Susan Chandler Haedicke, 2004Mapping Memories, Pam Schweitzer, 2004Local Acts, An International Anthology, Jan Cohen Cruz, 2005Ensemble Works, An Anthology, Ferdinand Lewis, 2005ReminiscenceTheatre: Making Theatre from Memory, Pam Schweitzer, 2007Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives For People With Dementia, Ann Basting, 2009.== Notes ==Passage 2:Maksim KedrinMaksim Kedrin (born 21September 1982 in Beloretsk) is a Russian former alpine skier who competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics.External linkssports-reference.comMaksim Kedrin at FIS (alpine)Maksim Kedrin at OlympediaPassage3:François van der MerweFrançois van der Merwe is a South African professional rugby union player. He plays at lock for Lyon Olympique in the Top 14. He is older brother of Flip van der MerwePassage 4:FilipArsenijevićFilip Arsenijević (Serbian Cyrillic: Филип Арсенијевић; born 2 September 1983) is a Serbian footballer. He is older brother of Nemanja Arsenijević.Club careerBorn in Titovo Užice, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia,between 2001 and 2009 he played in Serbian clubs FK Sloboda Užice, OFK Beograd, FK Mačva Šabac, FK Sevojno and FK Javor Ivanjica. Between 2009 and 2011 he has been in Greece playing with Panthrakikos in theGreek Super League.On 30 August 2011 he returned to Serbia and signed a one-year deal with top league club FK Jagodina. Later, he spent the 2012 season playing with the Kazakhstan Premier League team FCShakhter Karagandy and winning the national title, before returning to Jagodina by early 2013 in time to help the team with the Serbian Cup.HonoursJavor IvanjicaSerbian First League: 2007–08ShakhterKaragandyKazakhstan Premier League: 2012JagodinaSerbian Cup: 2013Passage 5:Aleksandar LomaAleksandar Loma (Serbian: Александар Лома; born March 2, 1955) is a Serbian philologist, Indo-Europeanist and acorresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts since October 30, 2003.Aleksandar Loma emphasized that Serbian epic poetry about Kosovo events is older than the events it describes, having itsorigin in the pre-Christian and pre-Balkan periods of Serbian history.Bibliography"Sloveni i Albanci do XII veka u svetlu toponomastike" [Slavs and Albanians till the 12th century in the light of the toponomastics],Stanovništvo slovenskog porijekla u Albaniji (in Serbian), Cetinje, pp. 279–327, 1990, OCLC 439986558Ogledna sveska, 1998, Department for etymology of Institute for Serbian language of SANU(coauthorship)Ljubinko Radenković, ed. (2002), Prakosovo : slovenski i indoevropski koreni srpske epike (in Serbian), Belgrade: SANU Institute of Balkanology, ISBN 9788671790338, OCLC 54098329Etymologicaldictionary of Serbian language, 2003 (coauthorship)Passage 6:Robin KačaniklićRobin Kačaniklić (Serbian Cyrillic: Робин Качаниклић, Macedonian: Робин Качаниклиќ; born 25 August 1988) is a Swedish footballer whoplays for Real Åstorp FF as a midfielder. He is older brother to the former Swedish national team player Alexander Kačaniklić.Passage 7:Peggie CrombiePeggie (or Peggy) Crombie (1901–1984) was an Australianmodernist painter. She was a member of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.BiographyCrombie was born in 1901 in Melbourne, Australia. In 1921 she studied art at Stott's Commercial Art TrainingInstitute. From 1922 through 1928 she attended the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne, where she was taught by Lindsay Bernard Hall, William Beckwith McInnes and George Bell.Crombie exhibited her work withmodernist groups in Melbourne, specifically The Embryos, the 1932 Group, the New Art Club, the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, and the Victorian Artists Society.Crombie died in 1984.Externallinksimages of Peggy Crombie's paintings on MutualArtPeggy Crombie [Australian art and artists file], State Library VictoriaPassage 8:Ognen StojanovskiOgnen Stojanovski (Macedonian: Огнен Стојановски; bornJanuary 25, 1984) is a Macedonian professional basketball player. He was under contract with MZT Skopje until 2014. He is 1.91 m (6 ft 3 in) in height and plays at the point guard position.Born in Skopje, Republic ofMacedonia, he is older brother of the twins Vojdan Stojanovski and Damjan Stojanovski, who are also basketball players.Achievements RabotničkiMacedonian League Champion - 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,2009Macedonian Cup Winner - 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Feni IndustriesMacedonian League Champion - 2010, 2011Macedonian Cup Winner - 2010 MZT SkopjeMacedonian League Champion - 2012, 2013,2014Macedonian Cup Winner - 2012, 2013, 2014Passage 9:Peggy Jones (musician)Peggy Jones (later Malone, July 19, 1940 – September 16, 2015), known on stage as Lady Bo in recognition of her relationship with BoDiddley, was an American musician. A pioneer of rock and roll, Jones played rhythm guitar in Bo Diddley's band in the late 1950s and early 1960s, becoming one of the first (perhaps the first) female rock guitarists in ahighly visible rock band, and was sometimes called the Queen Mother of Guitar.Early lifeBorn in Harlem, New York City, in 1940, Jones grew up in the Sugar Hill section, and attended the High School of Performing Artswhere she studied tap and ballet dance and trained in opera. Even from a very young age, she found herself completely consumed with music; purchasing her first guitar at the age of 15. She was briefly in a localdoo-wop group, the Bop Chords, which disbanded in 1957.  A chance meeting with Bo Diddley, who was impressed to see a girl with a guitar case, led to an invitation to join Diddley's band as a guitarist and singer.  Sherecorded with him from 1957 to 1961 or 1963, appearing on singles including "Hey! Bo Diddley", "Road Runner", "Bo Diddley's A Gunslinger", and the instrumental "Aztec" which she wrote and played all the guitarparts. However, throughout her career, Peggy Jones always strived to be an independent artist and was involved in an R&B band known as the Jewels, among other various names.Throughout her time with Diddley,Jones maintained the separate career she had begun independently as a songwriter, session musician, and bandleader.  She led her own band, the Jewels (also known as the Fabulous Jewels, Lady Bo and the FamilyJewels, and various other names, but not to be confused with The Jewels), which became a top R&B band on the New York – Boston east coast club scene the 1960s and 1970s.  She eventually left Diddley's band toconcentrate on the Jewels and other activities.  She was replaced with another female guitarist, Norma-Jean Wofford ("The Duchess").Jones played guitar on Les Cooper's 1962 instrumental "Wiggle Wobble" andpercussion on the 1967 hit "San Franciscan Nights" by Eric Burdon and The Animals and other recordings and later backed James Brown and Sam & Dave.  She remained musically active well into the 21st century.SoloworkShe left Bo Diddley's band in 1961 to focus on her work with the Jewels. In 1970, she re-joined Bo Diddley’s band, bringing The Jewels with her.Jones was known for playing the Roland guitar synthesizer, anexperimental instrument not typically heard in rhythm and blues music.RelationshipsJones met Bo Diddley in 1956 backstage after playing with the Bop-Chords in the Apollo Theater in the neighborhood of Harlem. Manyassumed that Lady Bo and Bo Diddley were a couple but that was not the case. She was married to the band’s bass player, Wally Malone.Malone lived in the mountains of western Pennsylvania when he first met Jonesin a New York club in the 1960s. Later, Jones invited Malone into her band in 1968 and got married. They both moved to San Jose, California where Jones played at a show with Bo Diddley and that was the time shereceived her nickname, “Lady Bo.” In 1962 Jones left Bo Diddley and recruited The Duchess to play for him. In 1979, Malone and Jones moved to Boulder Creek.DeathAt the age of 75, Peggy Jones died on September16, 2015, leaving behind her husband, Wally Malone. He announced his wife’s death via Facebook, saying, “Today is one of the saddest days of my life. My wife and partner of 47 years has been called up to that greatrock & roll band in the heavens to be reunited with Bo Diddley, Jerome Green and Clifton James. The last hour and a quarter I spent by her side and the last thing I said to her was the quote above regarding Diddley andband. The other thing I added at the end of it is that band doesn’t have a bass player and for them to please hold that seat until it is my time to join them. The incredible part of this is immediately after saying this toher there was a quick sound that came from her and right then her heart stopped beating. Many of you know about the Bo Diddley connection but in case not my wife’s professional stage name is LadyBo.”DiscographyWith Bo DiddleyGo Bo Diddley (Checker, 1959)Have Guitar Will Travel (Checker, 1960)Bo Diddley in the Spotlight (Checker, 1960)Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger (Checker, 1960)Bo Diddley Is a Lover(Checker, 1961)Bo Diddley's a Twister (Checker, 1962)Bo Diddley (Checker, 1962)Passage 10:Jovan MarkovskiJovan Markovski (born March 28, 1988) is a Macedonian professional basketball small forward who lastplayed for TFT. He is older brother of Gorjan Markovski who is also basketball player and plays for KumanovoExternal links[1][2]


Passage 1:Chang YiThe Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi (), is either an individual deity (shen) in Chinese religion, one of the legendary Chinese sovereigns and cultural heroes included among the mytho-historical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, or a part of the Five Regions' Highest Deities (Chinese: ; pinyin: Wfāng Shàngdì). Calculated by Jesuit missionaries, who based their work on various Chinese chronicles, and later accepted by the twentieth-century promoters of a universal calendar starting with the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi's traditional reign dates are 2697–2597 or 2698–2598 BC.Huangdi's cult became prominent in the late Warring States and early Han dynasty, when he was portrayed as the originator of the centralized state, as a cosmic ruler, and as a patron of esoteric arts. A large number of texts – such as the Huangdi Neijing, a medical classic, and the Huangdi Sijing, a group of political treatises – were thus attributed to him. Having waned in influence during most of the imperial period, in the early twentieth century Huangdi became a rallying figure for Han Chinese attempts to overthrow the rule of the Qing dynasty, which they considered foreign because its emperors were Manchu people. To this day the Yellow Emperor remains a powerful symbol within Chinese nationalism. Traditionally credited with numerous inventions and innovations – ranging from the lunar calendar (Chinese calendar), Taoism, wooden houses, boats, carts, "the compass needle", "the earliest forms of writing", civilization and its benefits, and/or an early form of football – the Yellow Emperor is now regarded as the initiator of Han culture (later Chinese culture).Names"Huangdi": Yellow Emperor, Yellow ThearchUntil 221 BC when Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty coined the title huangdi () – conventionally translated as "emperor" – to refer to himself, the character di  did not refer to earthly rulers but to the highest god of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC) pantheon. In the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC), the term di on its own could also refer to the deities associated with the five Sacred Mountains of China and colors. Huangdi (), the "yellow di", was one of the latter. To emphasize the religious meaning of di in pre-imperial times, historians of early China commonly translate the god's name as "Yellow Thearch" and the first emperor's title as "August Thearch", in which "thearch" refers to a godly ruler.In the late Warring States period, the Yellow Emperor was integrated into the cosmological scheme of the Five Phases, in which the color yellow represents the earth phase, the Yellow Dragon, and the center. The correlation of the colors in association with different dynasties was mentioned in the Lüshi Chunqiu (late 3rd century BC), where the Yellow Emperor's reign was seen to be governed by earth. The character huang  ("yellow") was often used in place of the homophonous huang , which means "august" (in the sense of 'distinguished') or "radiant", giving Huangdi attributes close to those of Shangdi, the Shang supreme god.Xuanyuan and YouxiongThe Records of the Grand Historian, compiled by Sima Qian in the first century BC, gives the Yellow Emperor's name as "Xuan Yuan" (traditional Chinese: ; simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: Xuān Yuán < Old Chinese (B-S) *qa[r]-[]a[n], lit. "Chariot Shaft"). Third-century scholar Huangfu Mi, who wrote a work on the sovereigns of antiquity, commented that Xuanyuan was the name of a hill where Huangdi had lived and that he later took as a name. The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions a Xuanyuan nation whose inhabitants have human faces, snake bodies, and tails twisting above their heads; Yuan Ke, a contemporary scholar of early Chinese mythology, "noted that the appearance of these people is characteristic of gods and suggested that they may reflect the form of the Yellow Thearch himself". The Qing dynasty scholar Liang Yusheng (, 1745–1819) argued instead that the hill was named after the Yellow Emperor. Xuanyuan is also the name of the star Regulus in Chinese, the star being associated with Huangdi in traditional astronomy. He is also associated to the broader constellations Leo and Lynx, of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon  ( Huánglóng), Huangdi's animal form.Huangdi was also referred to as "Youxiong" (; Yuxióng). This name has been interpreted as either a place name or a clan name. According to British sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), that name was "taken from that of [Huangdi's] hereditary principality". William Nienhauser, a modern translator of the Records of the Grand Historian, states that Huangdi was originally the head of the Youxiong clan, which lived near what is now Xinzheng in Henan. Rémi Mathieu, a French historian of Chinese myths and religion, translates "Youxiong" as " possessor of bears" and links Huangdi to the broader theme of the bear in world mythology. Ye Shuxian has also associated the Yellow Emperor with bear legends common across northeast Asia people as well as the Dangun legend.Other namesSima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian describes the Yellow Emperor's ancestral name as Gongsun ().In Han dynasty texts, the Yellow Emperor is also called upon as the "Yellow God" ( Huángshén). Certain accounts interpret him as the incarnation of the "Yellow God of the Northern Dipper" ( Huángshén Běidu), another name of the universal god (Shangdi  or Tiandi ). According to a definition in apocryphal texts related to the Hétú , the Yellow Emperor "proceeds from the essence of the Yellow God".As a cosmological deity, the Yellow Emperor is known as the "Great Emperor of the Central Peak" ( Zhōngyuè Dàdì), and in the Shizi as the "Yellow Emperor with Four Faces" ( Huángdì Sìmiàn). In old accounts the Yellow Emperor is identified as a deity of light (and his name is explained in the Shuowen jiezi to derive from guāng , "light") and thunder, and as one and the same with the "Thunder God" ( Léishén), who in turn, as a later mythological character, is distinguished as the Yellow Emperor's foremost pupil, such as in the Huangdi Neijing.HistoryThe Chinese historian Sima Qian – and much Chinese historiography following him – considered the Yellow Emperor to be a more historical figure than earlier legendary figures such as Fu Xi, Nüwa, and Shennong. Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian begins with the Yellow Emperor, while passing over the others.Throughout most of Chinese history, the Yellow Emperor and the other ancient sages were considered to be historical figures. Their historicity started to be questioned in the 1920s by historians such as Gu Jiegang, one of the founders of the Doubting Antiquity School in China. In their attempts to prove that the earliest figures of Chinese history were mythological, Gu and his followers argued that these ancient sages were originally gods who were later depicted as humans by the rationalist intellectuals of the Warring States period. Yang Kuan, a member of the same current of historiography, noted that only in the Warring States period had the Yellow Emperor started to be described as the first ruler of China. Yang thus argued that Huangdi was a later transformation of Shangdi, the supreme god of the Shang dynasty's pantheon.Also in the 1920s, French scholars Henri Maspero and Marcel Granet published critical studies of China's accounts of high antiquity. In his Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne ["Dances and legends of ancient China"], for example, Granet argued that these tales were "historicized legends" that said more about the time when they were written than about the time they purported to describe.In the "middle of the [20th] century, a group of" Chinese "historians proposed the theory that [the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors]" were originally Chinese gods who became thought of as human during the later period of the Zhou dynasty. Most scholars now agree that the Yellow Emperor originated as a god who was later represented as a historical person. K.C. Chang sees Huangdi and other cultural heroes as "ancient religious figures" who were "euhemerized" in the late Warring States and Han periods. Historian of ancient China Mark Edward Lewis speaks of the Yellow Emperor's "earlier nature as a god", whereas Roel Sterckx, a professor at University of Cambridge, calls Huangdi a "legendary cultural hero".Origin of the mythThe origin of Huangdi's mythology is unclear, but historians have formulated several hypotheses about it. Yang Kuan, a member of the Doubting Antiquity School (1920s–40s), argued that the Yellow Emperor was derived from Shangdi, the highest god of the Shang dynasty. Yang reconstructs the etymology as follows: Shangdi   Huang Shangdi   Huangdi   Huangdi , in which he claims that huang  ("yellow") either was a variant Chinese character for huang  ("august") or was used as a  way to avoid the naming taboo for the latter. Yang's view has been criticized by Mitarai Masaru and by Michael Puett.Historian Mark Edward Lewis agrees that huang  and huang  were often interchangeable, but disagreeing with Yang, he claims that huang meaning "yellow" appeared first. Based on what he admits is a "novel etymology" likening huang  to the phonetically close wang   (the "burned shaman" in Shang rainmaking rituals), Lewis suggests that "Huang" in "Huangdi" might originally have meant "rainmaking shaman" or "rainmaking ritual."  Citing late Warring States and early Han versions of Huangdi's myth, he further argues that the figure of the Yellow Emperor originated in ancient rain-making rituals in which Huangdi represented the power of rain and clouds, whereas his mythical rival Chiyou (or the Yan Emperor) stood for fire and drought.Also disagreeing with Yang Kuan's hypothesis, Sarah Allan finds it unlikely that such a popular myth as the Yellow Emperor's could have come from a taboo character.  She argues instead that pre-Shang "'history'," including the story of the Yellow Emperor, "can all be understood as a later transformation and systematization of Shang mythology." In her view, Huangdi was originally an unnamed " lord of the underworld" (or the "Yellow Springs"), the mythological counterpart of the Shang sky deity Shangdi.  At the time, Shang rulers claimed that their mythical ancestors, identified with "the [ten] suns, birds, east, life, [and] the Lord on High" (i.e., Shangdi), had defeated an earlier people associated with "the underworld, dragons, west."  After the Zhou dynasty overthrew the Shang dynasty in the eleventh century BC, Zhou leaders reinterpreted Shang myths as meaning that the Shang had vanquished a real political dynasty, which was eventually named the Xia dynasty. By Han times – as seen in Sima Qian's account in the Shiji – the Yellow Emperor, who as lord of the underworld had been symbolically linked to the Xia, had become a historical ruler whose descendants were thought to have founded the Xia.Given that the earliest extant mention of the Yellow Emperor was on a fourth-century BC Chinese bronze inscription claiming that he was the ancestor of the royal house of the state of Qi, Lothar von Falkenhausen speculates that Huangdi was invented as an ancestral figure as part of a strategy to claim that all ruling clans in the "Zhou dynasty culture sphere" shared common ancestry.History of Huangdi's cultEarliest mentionExplicit accounts of the Yellow Emperor started to appear in Chinese texts during the Warring States period. "The most ancient extant reference" to Huangdi is an inscription on a bronze vessel made during the first half of the fourth century BC by the royal family (surnamed Tian ) of the state of Qi, a powerful eastern state.Harvard University historian Michael Puett writes that the Qi bronze inscription was one of several references to the Yellow Emperor in the fourth and third centuries BC within accounts of the creation of the state. Noting that many of the thinkers who were later identified as precursors of the Huang–Lao – "Huangdi and Laozi" – tradition came from the state of Qi, Robin D. S. Yates hypothesizes that Huang–Lao originated in that region.Warring States periodThe cult of Huangdi became very popular during the Warring States period (5th century–221 BC), a period of intense competition between rival states which ended with the unification of the realm by the state of Qin. In addition to his role as ancestor, he became associated with "centralized statecraft" and emerged as a figure paradigmatic of emperorship.The state of QinIn his Shiji, Sima Qian claims that the state of Qin started worshipping the Yellow Emperor in the fifth century BC, along with Yandi, the Fiery Emperor. The altars were established at Yong  (near modern Fengxiang County in Shaanxi province), which was the capital of Qin from 677 to 383 BC. By the time of King Zheng, who became king of Qin in 247 BC and First Emperor of a unified China in 221 BC, Huangdi had become by far the most important of the four "thearchs" (di ) who were then worshiped at Yong.The Shiji versionThe figure of Huangdi had appeared sporadically in Warring States texts. Sima Qian's Shiji (or Records of the Grand Historian, completed around 94 BC) was the first work to turn these fragments of myths into a systematic and consistent narrative of the Yellow Emperor's "career". The Shiji's account was extremely influential in shaping how the Chinese viewed the origin of their history.The Shiji begins its chronological account of Chinese history with the life of Huangdi, whom it presents as a sage sovereign from antiquity. It recounts that Huangdi's father was Shaodian and his mother was Fubao(). The Yellow Emperor had four wives. His first wife Leizu of Xiling bore him two sons. His other three wives were his second wife Fenglei (), third wife Tongyu () and fourth wife Momu (). The emperor had a total of 25 sons, 14 of whom began their own surnames and clans. The oldest was Shaohao or Xuan Xiao, who lived in Qingyang by the Yangtze River. Changyi, the second son, lived by the Ruo River. When the Yellow Emperor died, he was succeeded by Changyi's son, Zhuan Xu.The chronological tables found in chapters 13 of the Shiji represent all past rulers – legendary ones such as Yao and Shun, the first ancestors of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, as well as the founders of the main ruling houses in the Zhou sphere – as descendants of Huangdi, giving the impression that Chinese history was the history of one large family.Imperial eraThe Yellow Emperor was credited with an enormous number of cultural legacies and esoteric teachings. While Taoism is often regarded in the West as arising from Laozi, many Chinese Taoists claim the Yellow Emperor formulated many of their precepts. The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon ( Huángdì Nèijīng), which presents the doctrinal basis of traditional Chinese medicine, was named after him. He was also credited with composing the Four Books of the Yellow Emperor ( Huángdì Sìjīng), the Yellow Emperor's Book of the Hidden Symbol ( Huángdì Yīnfújīng), and the "Yellow Emperor's Four Seasons Poem" included in the Tung Shing fortune-telling almanac."Xuanyuan (+ number)" is also the Chinese name for Regulus and other stars of the constellations Leo and Lynx, of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon. In the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing's Forbidden City, there is also a mirror called the "Xuanyuan Mirror".In TaoismIn the second century AD, Huangdi's role as a deity was diminished because of the rise of a deified Laozi. A state sacrifice offered to "Huang-Lao jun" was not offered to Huangdi and Laozi, as the term Huang-Lao would have meant a few centuries earlier, "yellow Laozi". Nonetheless, Huangdi kept being considered as an immortal: he was seen as a master of longevity techniques and as a god who could reveal new teachings – in the form of texts such as the sixth-century Huangdi Yinfujing – to his earthly followers.Twentieth centuryThe Yellow Emperor became a powerful national symbol in the last decade of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and remained dominant in Chinese nationalist discourse throughout the Republican period (1911–49). The early twentieth century is also when the Yellow Emperor was first referred to as the ancestor of all Chinese people.Late QingStarting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of his birth as the first year of the Chinese calendar. Intellectuals such as Liu Shipei (1884–1919) found this practice necessary in order to " preserve the [Han] race" (baozhong ) from both dominance by Manchu people and foreign encroachment. Revolutionaries motivated by Anti-Manchuism such as Chen Tianhua (1875–1905), Zou Rong (1885–1905), and Zhang Binglin (1868–1936) tried to foster the racial consciousness they thought was missing from their compatriots, and thus depicted the Manchus as racially inferior barbarians who were unfit to rule over Han Chinese. Chen's widely circulated pamphlets claimed that the "Han race" formed one big family descended from the Yellow Emperor. The first issue (Nov. 1905) of the Minbao  ("People's Journal"), which was founded in Tokyo by revolutionaries of the Tongmenghui, featured the Yellow Emperor on its cover and called Huangdi "the first great nationalist of the world." It was one of several nationalist magazines that featured the Yellow Emperor on their cover in the early twentieth century. The fact that Huangdi meant "yellow" emperor also served to buttress the theory that he was the originator of the "yellow race".Many historians interpret this sudden popularity of the Yellow Emperor as a reaction to the theories of French scholar Albert Terrien de Lacouperie (1845–94), who in a book called The Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, from 2300 B.C. to 200 A.D. (1892) had claimed that Chinese civilization was founded around 2300 BCE by Babylonian immigrants.  Lacouperie's "Sino-Babylonianism" posited that Huangdi was a Mesopotamian tribal leader who had led a massive migration of his people into China around 2300 BC and founded what later became Chinese civilization. European sinologists quickly rejected these theories, but in 1900 two Japanese historians, Shirakawa Jirō and Kokubu Tanenori, omitted these criticisms and published a long summary that presented Lacouperie's views as the most advanced Western scholarship on China. Chinese scholars were quickly attracted by "the historicization of Chinese mythology" that the two Japanese authors advocated.Anti-Manchu intellectuals and activists who searched for China's "national essence" (guocui ) adapted Sino-Babylonianism to their needs. Zhang Binglin explained Huangdi's battle with Chi You as a conflict opposing the newly arrived civilized Mesopotamians to backward local tribes, a battle that transformed China into one of the most civilized places in the world. Zhang's reinterpretation of Sima Qian's account "underscored the need to recover the glory of early China."  Liu Shipei also presented these early times as the golden age of Chinese civilization. In addition to tying the Chinese to an ancient center of human civilization in Mesopotamia, Lacouperie's theories suggested that China should be ruled by the descendants of Huangdi. In a controversial essay called History of the Yellow Race (Huangshi ), which was published serially from 1905 to 1908, Huang Jie (; 1873–1935) claimed that the "Han race" was the true master of China because it was descended from the Yellow Emperor. Reinforced by the values of filial piety and the Chinese patrilineal clan, the racial vision defended by Huang and others turned vengeance against the Manchus into a duty owed to one's ancestors.Republican periodThe Yellow Emperor continued to be revered after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the Qing dynasty. In 1912, for instance, banknotes carrying Huangdi's effigy were issued by the new Republican government.   After 1911, however, the Yellow Emperor as national symbol changed from first progenitor of the Han race to ancestor of China's entire multi-ethnic population.  Under the ideology of the Five Races Under One Union, Huangdi became the common ancestor of the Han Chinese, the Manchu people, the Mongols, the Tibetans, and the Hui people, who were said to form the Zhonghua minzu, a broadly understood Chinese nation. Sixteen state ceremonies were held between 1911 and 1949 to Huangdi as the "founding ancestor of the Chinese nation" () and even "the founding ancestor of human civilization" ().Modern significanceThe cult of the Yellow Emperor was forbidden in the People's Republic of China until the end of the Cultural Revolution. The prohibition was halted during the 1980s when the government reversed itself and resurrected the " Yellow Emperor cult". Starting in the 1980s, the cult was revived and phrases relating to the "Descendants of Yan and Huang" were sometimes used by the Chinese state when referring to people of Chinese descent.  In


Passage 1:Waitrose Duchy OrganicWaitrose Duchy Organic (formerly Duchy Originals from Waitrose and earlier simply Duchy Originals) is a brand of organic food sold in Waitrose stores in the United Kingdom. The brand is a partnership between Waitrose and Duchy Originals Limited, a company set up in 1990  by King Charles III when he was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. The Duchy Originals company is named after the Duchy of Cornwall estates that are held in trust by the Duke of Cornwall, who often holds the title Prince of Wales.HistoryThe Duchy Originals brand was originally conceived in 1990 as an outlet for the organic food grown on the Prince of Wales' Highgrove House estate and nearby Home Farm which he had leased from the Duchy of Cornwall in the mid-1980s. The first Duchy Originals product was oaten biscuits. Products were initially sold through high-end stores such as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason. During the 1990s, Duchy Originals products began being stocked in farm shops and independent delicatessens and expansion during the 2000s saw a selected range of Duchy Originals products becoming widely available in most major UK supermarkets, with Waitrose as the brand's largest customer. By 2008 sales of Duchy Originals had raised over £7 million cumulatively for The Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund.Following the 2007–2008 financial crisis the Duchy Originals business began making losses, amounting to around £3 million in 2009, and in September of that year it was announced that Duchy Originals had agreed an exclusive deal with Waitrose. From August 2010 products were relaunched under the Duchy Originals from Waitrose brand and the then range of around 200 lines was expanded to over 300. Waitrose invested heavily in the brand and sales doubled during the first three years of the exclusive arrangement. By 2013 the brand was selling in 30 countries including Australia and Japan. In the summer of 2015 the brand name was changed to Waitrose Duchy Organic. The tradition of donating royalties to charity continued and Prince Charles continued his involvement with the brand which operates separately from the Duchy of Cornwall. The lease on Home Farm was not renewed in 2020, but the Prince of Wales continued to farm organically at Sandringham House. The new tenant of Home Farm continued the relationship with Waitrose Duchy Organic, which reported a profit of £3.6 million in 2021.The brandsThe company Duchy Originals, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund, originated the Duchy Originals brand in 1990 as a premium organic food and drink brand. It also created two other brands, Duchy Selections and Duchy Collections. Duchy Selections was a range of premium free-range (but not organic) pork and fish products and mineral waters, and Duchy Collections was a range of high quality non food products. The Duchy Originals company has never sold the goods that carry the brand names, and other than the short-lived Duchy Originals Food company venture it has not manufactured them. Instead Duchy branded products have been sold and manufactured by a number of different retail companies, all of whom have paid royalties to the Duchy Originals Company.Financial informationBy the end of the 1990s the brand had an annual turnover of around £1 million. This had grown to £4.86 million by 2006/7. Administrative expenses came to £3.31 million, giving an operating profit of £1.53 million. The company was badly hit by the recession in 2007 and started making a loss. For the financial year 2008/9, the company failed to make any profits and turnover dropped to £2.2 million, with an operating loss of £3.3 million, compared to the previous year's operating profit of £57,000. Fortunes improved after the 2009 Waitrose arrangement, and by 2013 annual profits were £2.8 million.The Duchy Originals Food companyDuchy Originals' only venture into manufacturing has been the Duchy Originals Food company. This was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Duchy Originals company and it opened a factory in Launceston, Cornwall in 2006. The factory was a bakery making both sweet and savoury pastry products. The venture suffered financial problems, with the factory making a loss of £447,158 in the financial year 2006/7. In 2009, the Duchy Originals company decided to sell the bakery, with one-off costs from the sale contributing towards Duchy Originals making a loss for 2009–10.Herbal medicinesIn 2008, Duchy Originals partnered with the alternative medicine company Nelsons to produce a line of herbal remedies. This led to controversy, in which leading UK scientists said that Duchy Originals promoted its herbal remedies with scientifically unsound claims. Edzard Ernst, the UK's first professor of complementary medicine, said Duchy Originals detox products were "outright quackery". Subsequently, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) ruled that healing claims were misleading and required the company to amend an advertising campaign promoting two herbal medicines.Mineral waterIn 2002 the Deeside Water Company began to produce some of its bottled mineral water for the Duchy Originals brand. In 2010, Waitrose rebranded the product as Duchy Originals from Waitrose and in 2016 the supermarket repackaged it as part of its Waitrose One premium range.Garden toolsGardening tools were produced under the Duchy Originals brand by the Lancashire company Caldwells until it went into administration in 2009.Charitable givingThe company Duchy Originals Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary company of The Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund and donates to the charity from its profits. By 2013 the brand had raised £11 million from its profits for the Prince's Charities. In Canada the proceeds from sales of Duchy Originals products are donated to the charities associated with The Prince's Charities Canada. By 2012 more than one million Canadian dollars were being raised annually in this manner.The Duchy Future Farming programmeThe Duchy Future Farming programme was set up in 2013 in partnership with the Soil Association to provide advice and support to UK farmers and growers in conducting research into organic farming methods. Participants are encouraged to carry out experiments in their own fields, and over 3000 farmers had been involved in this by 2015. A research fund offering up to £25,000 is also available.Passage 2:John De MargheritiJohn De Margheriti (born July 1962) is an Italian-born Australian electrical engineer, software developer and entrepreneur. De Margheriti is widely seen as a founding 'father' of Australia's video games industry and Australia's most experienced interactive entertainment business executive.He is the founder and former CEO of BigWorld Pty Limited and the founder of parent company Micro Forté Pty Limited. De Margheriti is also the Executive Chairman of the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, the Chairman of Canberra Technology Park, the founder of the Game Developers' Association of Australia, the founder of the Australian Game Developers Conference, and the founder of the three Canberra business parks, the co-founder of DEMS Entertainment, the co-founder of Dreamgate Studios, the co-founder of Game Plus and co-founder of The Film Distillery.De Margheriti has been recognised as an Honorary Ambassador for Canberra due to his contribution to Australia's national capital and in 2022 was awarded the Pearcey Medal, Australia's highest honour in the ICT Industry, for his lifetime contribution to the establishment and ongoing success of the Australian games industry. Without his vision, tenacity and passion, the industry would not be as successful and vibrant as it is in now. John has effectively had an influence on just about every Australian games studio and developer in operation today, not to mention his contribution to the broader ICT community and the international games industry.Early yearsBorn in Rome, Italy, De Margheriti arrived in Canberra with his family in 1970. He experimented with CB radios and electronics early as a young teenager. When he was sixteen De Margheriti experimented with making computer games independently. During his senior years at Hawker College, De Margheriti co-created an amateur 8 millimetres (0.31 in) science fiction film after watching the 1977 film, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. During the development of his amateur film, he co-developed a robotics system entitled 3DIM that would enable him to film complex stop-motion animation footage of large scale spaceship models.  De Margheriti's need to create scrolling film credits led him to discover computers as a tool. The film involved dozens of actors and as a result, De Margheriti gained his first taste in management working with actors and prop builders. During filming he met Steve Wang which would later form the basis of a longstanding business association. He wrote his first computer game called “Maze” on a PDP-11 and his peer, Steve Wang developed a computer game called “Caves”, also on a PDP-11 computer.De Margheriti graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the UNSW Sydney (UNSW), and holds an MBA from Sydney University. Wang also went on to study at UNSW in the field of computer science. Together they devoted much of their time during university hours to developing computer games. They pooled their money to purchase a Commodore PET. During this time John also met Stephen Lewis and he joined the group, helping make games on the Commodore PET.The most memorable game that they developed during university years was made for the Commodore 64. Whilst working part-time at the Computer 1 computer store in Randwick to put himself through university, De Margheriti met Gerry Gerlach who was interested in finding a person who could develop a computer game based on the recent Australian win of the Americas Cup 12 metres (39 ft) sailing.  After a conversation with Gerlach, De Margheriti approached his friends at the university and pulled together a team including Wang, Stephen Lewis and John Reidy capable of developing the simulation game. The team spent 72 hours straight developing a demo, pitched it to Armchair Entertainment and won a contract to develop the Americas Cup Sailing Simulation game for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad which was ultimately developed and then sold to Electronic Arts.Soon after starting to develop their first game, Wang and Lewis tactfully told De Margheriti that his true strength was not programming but managing and winning new projects for the fledgling group. This “truth” ultimately saw De Margheriti become the entrepreneur and visionary for a group of profit and not for profit companies that have offices around the globe.In addition to the Americas Cup Sailing Simulation, De Margheriti went on to program two other of games for Electronic Arts including Demon Stalkers and Fireking for the Commodore 64 and IBM PC, which was later released by Sydney-based Strategic Studies Group. http://www.ssg.com.au/Later careerMicro Forte Pty LimitedBetween 1985 and 1988, De Margheriti turned his focus towards business negotiations and contract development. He co-founded a games development company called Micro Forté Pty Limited and wrote games for a new company called Electronic Arts.In 1995 De Margheriti came up with the concept of developing a software solution that would somehow group bulletin board services (BBS) together so that many people could play games together. He called this concept Game Net. Game Net was a precursor to what would later become known as BigWorld Technology. De Margheriti's idea was to allow  large scale Multi User Dungeons [MUDs] to be developed where hundreds of people could be playing together in a multiplayer game. He was greatly influenced by an EA friend Danielle/Dan Bunten who had designed M.U.L.E, Modem Wars  as well as a game called Command HQ which he often played with Stephen Lewis.Those seminal games influenced De Margheriti in terms of coming up with the concept of building what is now commonly known as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). While developing the idea of Game Net, De Margheriti became increasingly more aware of the advent of the internet particularly after playing Ultima Online and Meridian 59, two of the first MMOGs.He realised that these two games were an extension of the multiplayer games he loved and that in the future many developers would want to create massively multiplayer games. De Margheriti decided to switch his focus away from BBS, and made the decision to build a middleware engine that would help developers deal with the complexities of creating these online games. In 1996 Stephen Lewis and John lodged patents for a Communication System and Method and in 1999 he lodged an application for funding through AusIndustry's R&D Start program and received a multimillion-dollar grant. This was subsequently matched by venture capital from Allen & Buckeridge, an Australian Venture capital firm. The name of “Large Scale Multi Player Universe” (LSMPU) was originally used to describe the server, client and tools middleware system that De Margheriti had in mind. In 2011 the Micro Forte company acquired all the shares from the venture capital company.The Academy of Interactive EntertainmentIn 1996, during Micro Forté's expansion years, there was a need for the hiring of 3D animators and artists. At that time there was a clear lack of knowledge in that area and little or no available talent. De Margheriti established the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) as a business unit of Micro Forté to work towards solving this problem. The academy was to focus on developing 3D animation skills, and a course taught by De Margheriti, Steve Wang and other 3D experts was created for a group of 10 students.Later on in 1997 it was spun out as a separate non profit organisation called the Academy of Interactive Entertainment Limited (AIE) to assist the greater industry. De Margheriti had realised that Micro Forté's shortages were not just his shortages; other industry related companies like Beam Software were also suffering a similar fate. The AIE has since grown from a small division of Micro Forté with 10 students, to an independent, nationally accredited, small registered training organisation that specialises in education for computer game development and the 3D Digital Content Industry. The AIE now has campuses in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Online, Adelaide, Seattle, and Lafayette.The Founding of the Australian Game Development IndustryIn 1999 De Margheriti realised that to really help the Australian games industry grow, not only for Micro Forté's needs, but to solve the problem that the nation had, a wider support infrastructure was needed for the Australian industry. He established, personally funded and launched the inaugural Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC) to foster the growth and collective presence of the Australian Games Industry. The AGDC at its peak had over 1,200 delegates and brought in numerous international speakers and publishers. The conference also brought capital to the Australian games industry. In December 2005, the GDAA announced that it would hold its own conference, Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP), and so De Margheriti in turn also announced the closing of the privately held (AGDC) to ensure that the GDAA would not have to compete with AGDC.  In his AGDC closing talk he hoped that the GDAA could take their new conference, GCAP,  to a whole new level for Australia.It was at the inaugural Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC) that De Margheriti, along with Adam Lancman and others, formed the local industry representative body titled the Game Developers Association of Australia [GDAA] in order to increase the profile of the Australian games industry both domestically and internationally. De Margheriti acted as treasurer until late 2005 when he resigned from the Board to focus his energies on expanding BigWorld Pty Limited. De Margheriti is credited with creating and personally funding the GDAA (determining its aims and objectives, board composition, voting rights, constitution, web pages and accounting needs) as well as choosing its first President and Board. The AIE funded the Australian Game Developers Conference and donated most if not all its profits made from AGDC to the GDAA.De Margheriti is a founding member of the Association of Christian Entertainment.De Margheriti established Canberra Technology Park (CTP) in 1997, a business park to facilitate the growth of the computer game development, 3D animation and other information technology [IT] related industries within Canberra.In November 2000, ACT Chief Minister, Gary Humphries, appointed De Margheriti Honorary Ambassador for Canberra in recognition of De Margheriti's contribution in assisting Canberra to develop a significant business base. De Margheriti continues to foster business growth for start ups, mentor industry rookies and support industry development. He has participated as a guest presenter at industry conferences; is pro-active in seeking government support and assistance for the Australian industry, and features in industry related media. Since 2005 De Margheriti has focused more on his growing world-wide businesses and is less involved in local industry politics.In 2005 De Margheriti took over the site management of the Capital Region Enterprise and Employment Development Association (CREEDA) Business Centres Downer, Narrabundah and Erindale that had gone into liquidation, with a view to negotiate a long term lease on the sites. De Margheriti's main motivation in taking over the defunct sites was to restore an important business incubator function in Australia's capital city, Canberra. The sites were re-branded as Canberra Business Parks and in May 2008, De Margheriti largely donated the CBP name [and associated brands] and business, which were now a profitable business [almost operating at full capacity] to the ACT Government and the local business community.De Margheriti saw an opportunity within the online game market for a definitive MMOG middleware solution. His studios shifted their focus into developing the multi award-winning BigWorld Technology which he later [2002] spun out into a middleware company - BigWorld Pty Limited. On 7 August 2012 Wargaming acquired BigWorld middleware firm for $45M.Published gamesPassage 3:Charles, Prince of WalesCharles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms.Charles was born in Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, George VI, and was three years old when his mother, Elizabeth II, acceded to the throne in 1952, making him the heir apparent. He was created Prince of Wales in 1958 and his investiture was held in 1969. He was educated at Cheam School and Gordonstoun, and later spent six months at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. After earning a history degree from the University of Cambridge, Charles served in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1976. In 1981, he married Lady Diana Spencer, with whom he has two sons: William, Prince of Wales, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Charles and Diana divorced in 1996, after they had each engaged in well-publicised extramarital affairs. Diana died as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash the following year. In 2005, Charles married his long-term partner, Camilla Parker Bowles.As heir apparent, Charles undertook official duties and engagements on behalf of his mother. He founded the Prince's Trust in 1976, sponsored the Prince's Charities, and became patron or president of more than 800 other charities and organisations. He advocated for the conservation of historic buildings and the importance of architecture in society. In that vein, he generated the experimental new town of Poundbury. An environmentalist, Charles supported organic farming and action to prevent climate change during his time as the manager of the Duchy of Cornwall estates, earning him awards and recognition as well as criticism; he is also a prominent critic of the adoption of genetically modified food, while his support for alternative medicine has been criticised. He has authored or co-authored 17 books.Charles became king upon his mother's death on 8 September 2022. At the age of 73, he became the oldest person to accede to the British throne, after having been the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales in British history. His coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 6 May 2023.Early life, family, and educationCharles was born at 21:14 (GMT) on 14 November 1948, during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI. He was the first child of Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh (later Queen Elizabeth II), and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His parents had three more


Passage 1:Pieces of a WomanPieces of a Woman is a 2020 drama film directed by Kornél Mundruczó, from a screenplay by Kata Wéber. The film stars Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Molly Parker, Sarah Snook, IlizaShlesinger, Benny Safdie, Jimmie Fails, and Ellen Burstyn as the family and associates of Martha (Kirby) involved in her traumatic childbirth, baby loss, and a subsequent court case against the midwife, Eva (Parker),whom Martha's mother Elizabeth (Burstyn) blames for the baby's death. Martin Scorsese and Sam Levinson served as executive producers, and the film was scored by Howard Shore.An international co-production ofthe United States and Canada, the film is partly based on Mundruczó and Wéber's stage play of the same name and explores themes of grief and loss. It premiered on September 4, 2020, at the 77th VeniceInternational Film Festival, where Kirby won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. It was released in select theaters on December 30, 2020, before beginning to digitally stream on Netflix on January 7, 2021, and becamenoted for its long take childbirth scene at the start of the film.The film received generally positive reviews, with praise for the actors, particularly Kirby, though elements of the plot were criticized. For her performance,Kirby received Academy Award, BAFTA, SAG, Critics' Choice, and Golden Globe nominations.PlotMartha and Sean, a young Boston couple, are expecting their first child. Sean resents Martha's mother Elizabeth, awealthy Holocaust survivor, who is buying them a minivan.Martha goes into labor at their home and Sean calls their midwife Barbara, who is unavailable and sends another midwife named Eva in her place. Marthastruggles with nausea and pain during contractions and, when she reaches ten centimeters, Eva realizes the baby's heart rate has dropped dangerously low. Sean asks Eva if they are safe to continue and Eva tells Seanto call an ambulance. Martha soon gives birth to a baby girl who at first seems healthy. Eva then notices the baby is turning blue and attempts to revive her, but she goes into cardiac arrest and dies.The followingmonth, Martha and Sean attend an appointment with a coroner; Sean is eager to find out what went wrong, while Martha is reluctant. They learn the cause of death has not yet been established but are told they wereable to determine that the baby was in a low-oxygen environment and start proceedings against Eva. Sean leaves, overcome with emotion, while Martha remains and decides that she wants to donate the baby's body toscience.The relationship between Martha and Sean continues to be strained, as is Martha's relationship with her mother, who wants to bury the baby and have a funeral. Both Martha and Sean remain deeply depressed.Sean returns the car that Elizabeth bought for them. He later has sex with Martha's cousin, Suzanne, and uses cocaine after being sober for almost seven years. Suzanne, who is also the attorney prosecuting Eva,informs him that a potential lawsuit against Eva could be very lucrative.At a tense family gathering at her home, Elizabeth tells Martha that she has to attend Eva's trial and blames Martha for her baby's death becauseshe decided to have a home birth. Elizabeth then tells Sean that she never liked him before offering him a check for a large sum of money to leave and never return. Martha drops Sean off at Logan International Airportand he leaves for Seattle.Months later, Martha testifies at Eva's trial. After her testimony, the judge allows her to address the court, and she states that Eva is not at fault for the death and that she does not blame her.Back home, she discovers that the apple seeds she stored in her refrigerator have started to sprout. A month later, Martha scatters her daughter's ashes into the river from the bridge that Sean helped to build.Yearslater, a little girl climbs an apple tree, picks an apple, and eats it. Martha calls her name, Lucianna, then helps her down. The two go inside together.CastProductionPlayThe play Pieces of a Woman was created by KornélMundruczó and Kata Wéber, a couple who experienced miscarriage during pregnancy. The couple did not initially talk about their experience or process their grief, but Mundruczó read a scene written in Wéber'snotebook depicting a woman and her mother debate child loss and felt that it needed exploration. Wéber, who had already titled the scene "Pieces of a Woman", became the playwright after Mundruczó encouraged herto make a "family drama" from the scene; the play was originally performed at TR Warszawa in Warsaw, Poland. Following (Polish) Maja, her senile mother, and her Norwegian husband, the play contained two scenes:the childbirth and a family dinner in the aftermath. For BroadwayWorld, Filip Piotrowicz wrote that the scenes being performed in real time with real props (including a working oven and food being cooked inside) feltboth like a film and classic theatrical form. The birth scene was multimedia, with the performance being recorded by a camera freely roaming the stage and live-streamed on screens in the theater, and other screensshowing ultrasound scans of the fetus.Development and themesThe film Pieces of a Woman was announced to be in production in October 2019, with Mundruczó directing from a screenplay by Wéber. It is based ontheir play, and also incorporates fictionalized aspects of the trial of Hungarian midwife Ágnes Geréb. Wéber consulted with psychiatrists and other women who had lost babies while writing the film. In developing theplay for the screen, Mundruczó chose to set it in Boston, thinking the city's historic Irish Catholic culture was a good translation of the conservative Polish society of the original. It is his first film in the English language.Wéber submitted the script to the Hungarian National Film Fund but did not get support; Aaron Ryder read the script and showed it to producers Ashley Levinson and Kevin Turen, who took it on. Sam Levinson andMartin Scorsese, among others, served as executive producers on the film; Scorsese, who was shown the film by composer Howard Shore prior to its release, boarded after the film was complete, hoping to help itsdistribution as Mundruczó and Wéber were unknown filmmakers. Supporting actress Ellen Burstyn, who was directed by Scorsese in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, said that he "picked up on things [about Pieces of aWoman] that [she] never heard anybody else pick up on. And he has such an appreciation of the art of moviemaking that you feel seen."The film explores themes of trauma, which Dr. Lipi Roy writing for Forbes foundrelevant during the COVID-19 pandemic when it was released; Mundruczó and lead actress Vanessa Kirby both also commented that the loss in the film can speak to people who have been bereaved in the pandemic,and Wéber spoke of the relevance of the isolation and inability to talk about feelings that Martha experiences. Kirby has described the film as "almost a character study on grief" that also explores intergenerationaltrauma. In the film, Martha's family are all physically present but not emotionally available to her, and they each find different ways to process their loss, according to Roy. Midwives speaking with NOW also noted thatfilms exploring grief often do so by presenting it as a bonding experience, while Pieces of a Woman focused on the differences. Renaldo Matadeen of CBR compared the film's exploration of grief to that of Marriage Story,though he felt that Pieces of a Woman did not explore the shared grief Martha and Sean experience. Also for NOW, Kevin Ritchie noted that the film shifts focus on themes throughout, featuring class tensions at thestart and, at the end, focusing on generational divides and present baggage of Holocaust survival. The New Yorker's Anthony Lane wrote that the film "amounts to a set of variations on the theme of winter", reflected inits little-changing Boston setting; similarly, Lee Marshall of Screen International opined that the wintry setting and its "oppressive" Gothic Revival architecture helped to inform the themes of the film.CastingThe firstperson to be cast was Shia LaBeouf as Sean. He was followed shortly by Vanessa Kirby, playing Martha, who had been shown the script by Sam Levinson; she had met with the Levinsons and told them she wanted tomake a film like A Woman Under the Influence. Mundruczó was a fan of The Crown and wanted to cast Kirby after watching her as Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon and thinking her performance resembledClaudia Cardinale and Catherine Deneuve. He also wanted to work with Kirby at this point in her career, "Where all of the skills are already there, but the fear is not [...] When you are very established, you are moreand more careful." Though Kirby was considered a frontrunner in discussions for the role, the production had been turned down by bigger names before Kirby was shown the script; the day after she read it, she flew toBudapest and they had a two-hour meeting with Mundruczó. Asked about this, Kirby said that she "just loved the script ... You just know when you know".Kirby and LaBeouf were revealed as the lead roles when the filmwas announced in October 2019. Kirby spoke with women who had experienced baby loss to prepare for her role, and prepared extensively for her performance of labor in the opening scene. She had not given birthherself and was concerned about realism; she first watched childbirth documentaries but felt these were too edited and so she wrote to obstetricians and was invited by one, Claire Mellon, to observe on a labor ward,including being allowed to witness a birth, which she told NPR she would not have been able to perform in the film without.In December 2019, Jimmie Fails, Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker and Iliza Shlesinger joined the castof the film, followed by Sarah Snook and Benny Safdie in January 2020. Burstyn said getting cast in the film felt like "a win-win-win situation", as she was able to work with Mundruczó, whose White God Burstynenjoyed, and Kirby, whose The Crown performance Burstyn had been impressed by; Kirby was also excited to work with Burstyn.FilmingPrincipal photography began on December 3, 2019, in Montreal, Canada, andlasted until the end of January 2020.The film is noted for its 24-minute long take labor scene at the start, dubbed "The Scene" by The Guardian's Adrian Horton and described as "one of the most controversial scenes ofthe year" by Entertainment Weekly. Writer Wéber did not anticipate a one-shot take, which Mundruczó planned from the start, though knew she wanted all the details present. Mundruczó began the scene with Martha'sfirst pains and ended with the arrival of an ambulance "because [they didn't] want to show exactly what's happening", wanting to leave the audience having only seen the baby alive while creating suspense. As thedirector, Mundruczó wanted the actors to make their own performance choices in the scene; there were no marks to hit, LaBeouf came up with the bad jokes used himself, and the production team would not show thecast any of the stage performance so as not to influence them. Kirby told Empire that the cast "had a map of where to be, and then [they would] freefall and see what happened." Three crewmembers were used for thescene: director of photography Benjamin Loeb, acting as camera operator upon Mundruczó's request, and two boom operators. A birthing coach, Elan McAllister, had also been brought to the set to assist Kirby andLaBeouf. Loeb chose to shoot the scene with a gimbal as he wanted a "floaty" quality to the scene to represent the baby's perspective and felt that using a hand-held camera would make it look too much like adocumentary; he also explained the smooth gimbal movement made the scene easier to physically watch, which was something Mundruczó wanted in order to compensate for the potentially-divisive subject matter.Loeb physically trained beforehand so that he would have the strength to carry a gimbal-loaded camera for the whole take, though the shoot still negatively affected his health.The scene was filmed six times over twodays, four times on one day and twice the next, with one camera; it was the first scene shot for the film and took up over 30 pages in the script. The choice to use a single take stemmed from the scene in the play andits inclusion of live video. Loeb said that they "wanted to make sure that the sequence felt like it was presented as a long-winded breath in some ways". The fourth of the six takes was used; though less technicallyaccurate than the takes on the second day, Mundruczó felt it was more alive. Kirby was glad to be filming the scene in one take, which, while intimidating, meant that she kept the same energy throughout; she saidfilming the scene was like performing on stage, and that it was "the best film experience of [her] life", though it took a long time to come down from the emotions she went through in making it. To stay in the emotionalplace between scenes, Kirby listened to a playlist of songs about expectancy and birth.Set within the couple's apartment, the scene was filmed in a real house. It had large archways that allowed Loeb and the castmovement – Kirby was encouraged to make use of the space if she wanted to – except for the bathroom door; Mundruczó initially wanted to pass in and out of the bathroom three times but this was reduced to once tolimit the possibility of the shot being ruined. He had chosen the house because it had the same layout as the set design of their play. Before shooting, one practice run was taken; filmed on Loeb's phone, the practicetook 38 minutes. Mundruczó did not do another practice, telling Vulture that "if you are very choreographed, then the whole shot can be really cold and calculated, [and] when you don't fix anything, it [can] become aDogme style of shaking camera." A real baby was used in the scene, with a CGI umbilical cord; the baby was held by its mother just outside the apartment and brought in off-camera for the moment of birth. Mundruczóand Kirby both felt the real baby was integral to the film. Other realism was achieved in the scene: partway through the scene, Sean frantically searches for a phone to call 9-1-1, and in about half of the takes, includingthe final cut, LaBeouf really struggled to remember where the prop was placed.Richard Brody of The New Yorker described the scene as a "mere stunt", saying that it is emotionally empty until the last moments and itssignificance to the rest of the film is an "ultimately pointless symbolic function: as evidence." Vulture's Hillary Kelly instead felt that the scene "is a technical trick, but an emotional lever, too, a reminder that labor is aprocess you cannot wriggle out of once it has begun."MusicHoward Shore composed the film's score. The opening piece of the film is a previously released Shore track, the second movement of his Ruin and Memorypiano concerto performed by Lang Lang. The movement is ten minutes long and reflects the action of the film's 24-minute opening scene; following this, the music becomes "gradually thornier" as the story progresses,at times displaying discomfort. Much of the score comprises piano pieces, as well as featuring celesta and oboe, and was said by Maddy Shaw Roberts of Classic FM to guide the audience "through the story in acontemplative, dreamlike manner, accompanying Martha's reckoning". Shore became involved after he was introduced to Mundruczó by mutual friend Robert Lantos, and the pair collaborated due to Mundruczó's operabackground; Mundruczó wanted a score that was classical. They began working on the music during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, collaborating remotely with Shore in New York, Mundruczó in Budapest, and themusicians at Teldex Studio in Germany.Shore wanted to express the perspectives of Martha and of her child through his music, showing both grief and hope. Though he does not have a theme, Sean is often representedwith darker music. The themes representing Martha and the baby recur throughout the film, including the baby's theme playing while Martha solemnly watches other children, and pieces of Ruin and Memory arerepurposed in other parts of the score. At the end of the film, a new melody, which was "partly improvised" by Holger Groschopp, is used to represent Martha moving on.The soundtrack was released digitally by DeccaRecords on January 8, 2021. Reviewers criticized the score as "intrusive".ReleaseThe film had its world premiere at the 77th Venice International Film Festival in official competition on September 4, 2020, and had itsNorth American premiere at TIFF Bell Lightbox during the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) shortly afterward. On September 12, Netflix acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film at TIFF. Mundruczówas happy to sell to Netflix, saying their appreciation of independent filmmakers is comparable to United Artists in the 1970s.A trailer was released in November 2020, and the film opened in select theaters onDecember 30, 2020, before beginning to digitally stream on Netflix on January 7, 2021. Upon its digital release, it was the most-watched film over its first three days of release, and finished second overall in its debutweekend.ReceptionCritical responseOn review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 75% based on 238 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads:"Pieces of a Woman struggles to maintain momentum after a stunning opening act, but Vanessa Kirby's performance makes the end result a poignant portrait of grief." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of66 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".Pippa Vosper of Vogue, who had lost a child in a similar way to Martha in the film, said that Kirby played Martha "with unnerving accuracy" andwas pleased that the film did not shy away from the harsher realities of baby loss. The Evening Standard's Charlotte O'Sullivan also praised Mundruczó for treating Martha's extended grief with compassion. Hortoncritiqued that the film centered on Martha's trauma rather than Martha herself, which he found frustrating, though he highly praised Kirby's performance, as did other reviewers. Empire's Terri White and EntertainmentWeekly's Leah Greenblatt also praised LaBeouf's performance.Xan Brooks of The Guardian wrote that the film was an "acting masterclass" but felt too staged; colleague Peter Bradshaw agreed on the acting talent butfelt that, besides the birth scene and the ending, the film comprises "a lot of frankly inauthentic, silly and jarring plot points". The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney opined that while Kirby's performance is "themovie's shattered core", the film was undermined by a "pedestrian" courtroom speech and awkwardly upbeat ending. Rooney, O'Sullivan, and Justin Chang for NPR were critical of simplistic metaphors andmelodrama.AccoladesDistributor Netflix initially campaigned for Kirby, LaBeouf, Burstyn, Mundruczó, Wéber, Safdie, Fails, and Snook for awards contention in acting, directing, and writing categories, but removedLaBeouf from their publicity after assault allegations were made against him by former girlfriend FKA Twigs in late 2020 to maintain focus on the film and its significance.Passage 2:Claude WeiszClaude Weisz is a Frenchfilm director born in Paris.FilmographyFeature filmsUne saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (1972) with Germaine Montéro, Lucien Raimbourg, Florence Giorgetti, Jean-François Delacour, Hélène Darche, Manuel Pinto,etc.Festival de Cannes 1973 - Quinzaine des réalisateursJury Prize: Festival Jeune Cinéma 1973La Chanson du mal aimé (1981) with Rufus, Daniel Mesguich, Christine Boisson, Věra Galatíková, Mark Burns, PhilippeClévenot, Dominique Pinon, Madelon Violla, Paloma Matta, Béatrice Bruno, Catherine Belkhodja, Véronique Leblanc, Philippe Avron, Albert Delpy, etc.Festival de Cannes 1982 - Perspectives du cinémafrançaisCompetition selections: Valencia, Valladolid, Istanbul, MontréalOn l'appelait... le Roi Laid (1987) with Yilmaz Güney (mockumentary)Valencia Festival 1988 - Grand Prix for documentaries "LaurelWreath"Competition selections: Rotterdam, Valladolid, Strasbourg, Nyon, Cannes, Lyon, CairoPaula et Paulette, ma mère (2005) Documentary - Straight to DVDShort and mid-lengthLa Grande Grève (1963 -Co-directed CAS collective, IDHEC)L'Inconnue (1966 - with Paloma Matta and Gérard Blain - Prix CNC Hyères, Sidney)Un village au QuébecMontréalDeux aspects du Canada (1969)La Hongrie, vers quel socialisme ?(1975 - Nominated for best documentary - Césars 1976)Tibor Déry, portrait d'un écrivain hongrois (1977)L'huître boudeuseAncienne maison Godin ou le familistère de Guise (1977)Passementiers et RubaniersLequinzième moisC'était la dernière année de ma vie (1984 - FIPRESCI Prize- Festival Oberhausen 1985 - Nomination - Césars 1986)Nous aimons tant le cinéma (Film of the European year of cinema - Delphes


Passage 1:Servillano AquinoServillano Aquino y Aguilar (April 20, 1874 – February 3, 1959) was a Filipino general during the Philippine Revolution and the Philippine–American War. He served as a delegate to theMalolos Congress and was the grandfather of Benigno S. "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. He is the great-grandfather of Benigno Aquino III, the 15th President of the Philippines.Early life and educationAquino, known by his nickname"Mianong", was born on April 20, 1874, to Don Braulio Aquino y Lacsamana and Doña Petrona Aguilar y Henson. He had his early education from a private tutor in Mexico, Pampanga. He moved to Manila and enteredthe Colegio de San Juan de Letran, and later, the University of Santo Tomas.Philippine–American WarIn 1896, Aquino became a mason and joined the Katipunan. He was also elected mayor of Murcia, Tarlac and underGeneral Francisco Macabulos, he organized the Filipino revolutionary forces against the Americans. He was promoted to major but was defeated in the battle at Mount Sinukuan or Mount Arayat in Arayat, Pampanga.After the Pact of Biak-na-Bato was signed, Aquino was self-exiled to Hong Kong together with Emilio Aguinaldo and the revolutionary government after receiving 100,000 pesos from the Spanish government inexchange of their surrender. He returned to the Philippines in 1898 and joined General Antonio Luna to fight against the American forces. Together they attacked Manila but retreated to Mount Arayat. In September1902, he surrendered and was jailed in Bilibid Prison and sentenced to hang. However, United States President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned Aquino after two years.Personal lifeHe married Guadalupe Quiambao, withwhom he had three children, namely Gonzalo (born 1892), Benigno (1894–1947) and Amando (born 1896). Later, he married his sister-in-law, Belen Sanchez, and had a child with her, Herminio (born1949).DeathAquino died of a heart attack on February 3, 1959.AncestrySee alsoList of people pardoned or granted clemency by the president of the United StatesPassage 2:Stanisław of MasoviaStanisław of Masovia(pl: Stanisław mazowiecki; 17 May 1501 – 8 August 1524), was a Polish prince member of the House of Piast in the Masovian branch. He was a Duke of Czersk, Warsaw, Liw, Zakroczym and Nur during 1503-1524(under regency until 1518) jointly with his brother.He was the eldest son of Konrad III the Red and his third wife Anna, a daughter of Mikolaj Radziwiłł the Old, Voivod of Vilnius and the first Grand Chancellor ofLithuania.LifeAfter the death of their father on 28 October 1503, Stanisław and his younger brother Janusz III inherited his domains but, because they were minors, remained under the regency of their mother.Most ofthe Masovian inheritance (except Czersk, which had already been given to Konrad III as a hereditary fief in 1495) was seriously threatened by the Kingdom of Poland at the time of Konrad III's death, and was notsecured in his sons' hands until 14 March 1504, when by a ruling of King Alexander, the young princes received their whole patrimony as a fief.Stanisław and his brother took the government in 1518, because of theconstant riots of the local nobility. Despite this, Anna Radziwiłł retained the real power in Masovia until her death in 1522. In the same year when they attained their majority, both princes attended the wedding of KingSigismund I the Old to Bona Sforza in Kraków.In 1519, fulfilling their duties as Polish vassals, Stanisław and Janusz III intervened in the Polish-Teutonic War, sending auxiliary troops to the Polish King, and in the winterof 1519-1520 they personally captured several towns in Masuria. At the same time, Stanisław secretly entered into talks with the Teutonic Knights for a ceasefire, which finally took place in December 1520, a fewmonths before a peace treaty ended the war between Poland and the Teutonic Order.In their private lives, both Stanisław and his brother were heavily inclined to drink and women; however, in order to continue hisbloodline, in 1523 Stanisław started negotiations for marriage with Princess Hedwig of Poland, only surviving daughter of King Sigismund I and his first wife, Barbara Zápolya. The wedding never took place; one yearlater, and likely as a result of his dissolute lifestyle, Stanisław died on 8 August 1524. He was buried at St. John's Archcathedral, Warsaw.The sudden death of Stanisław, and that two years later of his younger brotherJanusz III, were considered suspicious at the time. The main suspect was a Płock lady called Katarzyna Radziejowska, who after being seduced and abandoned by both princes, was believed to have poisoned firstly AnnaRadziwiłł, then Stanisław and finally Janusz III in revenge. Declared guilty, she and her supposed accomplice were tied naked to poles and beaten for hours, and finally burned alive. The hurry where the sentence wascarried raised even more suspicion that in fact the real instigator of the crimes was Queen Bona. The controversy was so intense that King Sigismund I, in order to clarify the matter once and for all, ordered aninvestigation, as a result of which a special edict was declared on 9 February 1528 which ruled that the princes "weren't victims of a human hand, but was the will of the Almighty Lord that caused theirdeaths".According to Jan Długosz, the real cause of the death of both princes could be an inherited disease of the Masovian princes: tuberculosis.Passage 3:Konrad V KantnerKonrad V Kantner (ca. 1385 – 10 September1439) was a duke of Oleśnica, Koźle, half of Bytom and half of Ścinawa during 1412–1427 (with his brothers as co-rulers), since 1427 sole ruler over Oleśnica.He was the second son of Konrad III the Old, Duke ofOleśnica, by his wife Judith. Like his one older and three younger brothers, at the baptism he received the name of Konrad, which was characteristic in this branch of the House of Piast. His nickname of Kantner wasderived from the town of Kanth (pl: Kąty Wrocławskie), who was a property of the Oleśnica dukes since 1379.LifeAfter the death of his father in 1412, Konrad V succeeded him in all his lands together with his olderbrother Konrad IV the Older as co-rulers, due to the minority of their younger brothers.In 1416, when all Konrad III's sons attained his majority, Konrad IV renounced to the government on behalf of Konrad V and therest of his brothers. However, because two other brothers (Konrad VI the Dean and Konrad VIII the Younger), also pursued a Church career, the main beneficiaries in the government are two others laic brothers:Konrad V and Konrad VII the White, who in 1431 co-founded in Koźle a Minorites Cloister. In 1434 they purchased the town of Wołczyn to Duke Louis II of Brieg. The co-rulership was maintained until 1427, when wasmade the division of the Duchy: Konrad V retained the main city of Oleśnica.Like his brothers, Konrad V fought against the Hussites. In 1428 they tried unsuccessfully to prevent their depredations in the Duchy ofTroppau. On 4 April 1431 they raided Gliwice, which was occupied by the Hussites and where just held religious discussions in which the Lithuanian prince Sigismund Korybut, a nephew of Vytautas, was involved.Presumably, therefore, undertook the Hussites in 1432 a raid into the Duchy of Oleśnica, which was largely spared from them until then. Konrad V and his brothers, however, managed to defeat them at Ścinawa.Together with his brother Konrad IV, other Piast Dukes and the cities of Wrocław, Świdnica and Nysa was notarized on 13 September 1432 for the Hussites the still occupied cities of Niemcza, Kluczbork and Otmuchówthe amount of 10,000 groschen for damages.Their fight against the Hussites was rewarded by Emperor Sigismund, who, in his capacity as King of Bohemia, in 1434 transfer to them the districts of Psie Pole and Psary.Three years later, in 1437 he confirmed to them the complete investiture of this territories by Escheat, so that upon the death of the childless Konrad VII they could reverted to the Kingdom. Two years later, Konrad Vdied of the plague. The guardianship of his minor sons was taken by his brother Konrad VII.Marriage and issueBy 9 October 1411, Konrad V married Margareta (d. 15 March 1449), whose origins are unknown. They hadfive children:Agnes (b. aft. 1411 – d. Herbst, September 1448), married in 1437 to Kaspar I Schlik, Count of Passaun-Weisskirchen and Imperial Chancellor.Konrad IX the Black (b. ca. 1415 – d. 14 August1471).Konrad X the White (b. 1420 – d. 21 September 1492).Anna (b. ca. 1425? – d. aft. 15 August 1482), married by 1444 to Duke Władysław I of Płock.Margareta (b. by 1430 – d. 10 May 1466), Abbess of Trebnitz(1456).In his will, Konrad V leave the town of Wołów to his wife as her dower, who was ruled by her until her own death. His sons were excluded from the government by their uncle Konrad VII, who maintained his ruleuntil 1450, when they finally deposed him and assumed the full control over the Duchy.Passage 4:Konrad IV the OlderKonrad IV the Elder (Polish: Konrad IV Starszy, German: Konrad von Oels) (c. 1384 – 9 August1447) served as the Duke of Oels (Oleśnica), Koźle, half of Bytom, and half of Ścinawa from 1412 to 1416, sharing the rule with his brothers. After 1416, he became the sole ruler over Kąty, Bierutów, Prudnik, andSyców. In 1417, he assumed the role of Bishop of Wrocław and also held the title of Duke of Nysa.Born to Konrad III the Old, Duke of Oleśnica, and his wife Judith, Konrad IV the Elder was the eldest among his siblings.It is worth noting that his four younger brothers also shared the name Konrad; however, historians primarily distinguish them through letters and regnal numbers.LifeChurch careerKonrad IV, despite being the oldestson and having a strong potential to inherit his father's duchy, made the decision to pursue a religious vocation. He quickly advanced within the church hierarchy and by the end of 1399, he assumed the role of cleric inWrocław. Within a year, he was elected as the canon of Wrocław and the provost of Domasław/Domslau, although he did not succeed in this position. Nevertheless, this setback did not deter him, and in 1410 he wasultimately chosen as the canon of Wrocław. From 1411 to 1417, he held the office of provost of the chapter. During this time, Konrad IV devoted himself entirely to his candidacy for the position of Bishop of Warmia,concentrating all his efforts towards this goal. He embarked on a lengthy journey to Rome in pursuit of this appointment, although the endeavor proved unsuccessful. Nonetheless, as compensation, he was awarded amaster's degree and appointed as a papal notary. In 1412, he also assumed the role of Canon of Olomouc.Following the resignation of Duke Wenceslaus II of Legnica, the Bishop of Wrocław, on 17 December 1417, PopeMartin V appointed Konrad IV as the new Bishop of Wrocław. He received his ordination as bishop on 22 January 1418 from John Tylemann, a suffragent of the Kolegiata of St. Nicholas in Otmuchów.Beginning of hisinvolvement in politicsKonrad IV, in addition to his clerical duties, actively participated in politics during his time. In 1402, he joined the newly formed alliance of Silesian princes. In 1409, he supported his fatheralongside King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia during the truce negotiations between Poland and the Teutonic Knights. In 1412, Konrad IV served as a mediator in conflicts involving the Dukes of Opole, King Wenceslaus IV,and the city of Wrocław. Subsequently, in 1416, he, along with his brothers, allied with the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Michael Küchmeister von Sternberg, against the Kingdom of Poland.Following the death ofhis father in 1412, Konrad IV became the Duke of Oleśnica, sharing the rule with his younger brother Konrad V Kantner as co-ruler. In the pursuit of advancing his ecclesiastical career, Konrad IV relinquished most ofhis governance over the duchy in 1416, favoring Konrad V and his other younger brothers. However, he retained control over the several towns within the duchy, including Kąty (Kanth), Bierutów (Bernstadt), Prudnik,and Syców.During his tenure as the ruler of the Diocese of Wrocław and the Duchy of Nysa-Otmuchów, Konrad IV faced the challenges posed by the Hussite Wars, a period marked by significant political upheaval thatgreatly influenced the policies of the duke-bishop.The Hussite WarsIn the early months of 1420, Konrad IV, along with other Silesian princes, convened in the Silesian Sejm in Wrocław and paid homage to EmperorSigismund. Subsequently, he accompanied the emperor to Prague, where Sigismund was crowned King of Bohemia. Konrad IV remained loyal to the House of Luxembourg, even after the loss of the German Kingdom,retaining authority solely over Silesia. He played a role in organizing a campaign against the reigning delinquency in the Silesian lands, which resulted in the occupation of Broumov.Recognizing his contributions, KonradIV was appointed Governor of Silesia by the emperor in 1422, with the official responsibility of organizing the fight against the Hussites.In January 1423, Konrad IV participated in negotiations for a potential alliancebetween Emperor Sigismund and the Teutonic Order against King Władysław II of Poland. The agreement stipulated territorial acquisitions for the Silesian princes in the event of a Polish defeat. However, the treaty wasnot upheld as King Władysław II obtained the emperor's refusal to join the alliance after their meeting in Kežmarok. Following the example of his sovereign, Konrad IV reestablished relations with Poland in April 1424,joining his brother Konrad V in Kalisz.In 1425, Konrad IV led a new crusade against the Hussites, organized by the Kingdom of Bohemia, which ultimately ended in failure.Beginning in 1427, the Hussites retaliatedagainst the allies of Emperor Sigismund through a series of military expeditions. During these campaigns, they ravaged Lusatia, Złotoryja, and Lubań.To counter the Hussite threat, the Silesian princes and several majorcities, including Wrocław and Świdnica, sought mutual aid from the Bishop of Wrocław and offered him leadership of the coalition. The fear of these cities and princes became evident the following year when a Hussitearmy, led by Prokop the Great, invaded Silesia. Most of the princes reached agreements with Prokop, securing the safety of their properties in exchange for a substantial ransom and unhindered passage through theirterritories.Despite the treachery of some princes, Konrad IV chose to fight, supported by a contingent led by Duke Jan of Ziębice. The Battle of Stary Wielisław near Nysa took place on 27 August 1428. The coalitionforces were decisively defeated, resulting in the death of Duke Jan of Ziębice. However, Konrad IV managed to escape.Following the battle, Prokop the Great's army devastated large portions of Lower and Upper Silesia,particularly targeting the possessions of the Bishopric of Wrocław. In search of protection, the duke-bishop forged a closer alliance with Duke Bolko V of Opole, one of the prominent Hussite leaders among the Silesianprinces.In the subsequent years, despite the defeat in 1428, Konrad IV made continued efforts to wage war against the Hussites in Silesia, receiving support from the majority of the Wroclaw nobility.By 1430, a newHussite expedition, bolstered by Polish mercenary Sigismund Korybut, advanced from the northwest. As a result, Konrad IV had to accept the loss of two significant fortresses, Niemcza and Otmuchów, which he wouldonly regain five years later through a purchase from Hussite commanders.Finally, in 1432, the personal domain of Konrad IV, the Duchy of Oleśnica, suffered severe damage as Oleśnica itself was burned, including themonasteries of Lubiąż and Trzebnica.In order to safeguard the church's possessions, Konrad IV decided to revive the Union of Silesian Princes (Związek książąt śląskich) in 1433, once again assuming the position of itsleader.Civil war in SilesiaIn 1437, Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, died, triggering a civil war in Bohemia and Silesia. Before his death, Sigismund designated his son-in-law, Albert V ofHabsburg, as his successor in all his possessions. However, a faction of the electors opted to choose Casimir, the younger brother of the King of Poland, as their preferred candidate.Standing alongside Albert V, KonradIV played a pivotal role in the decisive battle that ensued in 1438. The Polish army attempted to rally the Silesian princes to acknowledge Casimir as the King of Bohemia through a swift attack. Nevertheless, theduke-bishop, along with his brother Konrad V, convinced the Polish troops to retreat. This retreat was primarily influenced by the unexpected arrival of the formidable Austrian army.The relative tranquility experiencedin Silesia was short-lived, lasting less than two years. In 1440, another double election for the King of Bohemia took place. This time, the contenders were Władysław, the posthumous son of Albert V, and Władysław III,the King of Poland and Hungary. The situation became significantly more complex as both candidates garnered substantial support. Notably, Konrad IV remained loyal to the Habsburg cause, while his younger brother,Konrad VII the White, sided with the Polish king.The ensuing protracted conflict ravaged the Silesian lands further, exacerbated by a new Hussite expedition in 1444.Financial difficulties and the dispute with the chapter,deathKonrad IV's extensive involvement in political affairs and prolonged wars had a significant impact on the bishopric, leading to a substantial debt of 8,500 Hungarian guilders at the time of his death. This financialburden posed a challenging situation for his successors.One notable aspect of Konrad IV's financial activities was his encouragement of Pope Eugene IV to condemn simony in Basel. This prompted the chapter toinvestigate the matter, revealing that Konrad IV had amassed considerable sums of money from both Western and Orthodox churches within the diocese. As a result, on 1 August 1444, the chapter formally decided todepose the duke-bishop, citing his substantial personal debts and the lack of funds to maintain his court. However, Pope Eugene IV declined to endorse this decision and, through the Bull issued on 21 July 1445, orderedKonrad IV's reinstatement as bishop.It was not until 1446, under pressure from the military forces of the duke-bishop, that a final reconciliation took place between Konrad IV and the chapter. This reconciliation allowedhim to implement diocesan statutes that aimed to reform the ecclesiastical life of Wrocław.Konrad IV died on the evening of 9 August 1447, in Jelcz. He was buried in the Wrocław Cathedral.Passage 5:Konrad VII theWhiteKonrad VII the White (aft. 1396 – 14 February 1452) was a Duke of Oels / Oleśnica, Koźle, half of Bytom and half of Ścinawa during 1416–1427 (with his brothers as co-rulers), sole Duke of Koźle and half ofBytom during 1427–1450, Duke of Oleśnica during 1421–1450 (until 1439 with his brother as co-ruler) and sole Duke of half of Ścinawa during 1447–1450.He was the fourth son of Konrad III the Old, Duke of Oleśnica,by his wife Judith. Like his three older and one younger brothers, at the baptism he received the name of Konrad, which was characteristic in this branch of the House of Piast.LifeAt a young age, he fought in the famousBattle of Grunwald (1410) on the side of the Teutonic Order and was taken captive by the Polish, but was soon released.Konrad VII began his rule over the family lands only in 1416, when all his brother (including him)attained his majority. The older brother, Konrad IV renounced in favor of his brothers the government over the Duchy. Konrad VII and his brothers remained as co-rulers until 1427, when a second division of the Duchywas made: Kornad VII obtained Koźle and half of Bytom.After the death of his brother Konrad V Kantner in 1439, Konrad VII obtain Oleśnica, this time as a regent on behalf of his nephews, Konrad V's sons, who wereeffectively excluded from the government. After the death of Konrad VIII the Younger (5 September 1444), Konrad VII inherited half of Ścinawa; three years later (9 August 1447), Konrad VII also inherited Kątach(Kanth) and Bierutów after Konrad IV's death.In 1449 he obtain Wołów after the death of his sister-in-law Margareta (widow of Konrad V), who ruled this land as her dower; however, one year later, in 1450, he wasfinally deposed by the sons of Konrad V. He died two years later.MarriagesBy 2 February 1437 Konrad VII married firstly Katharina (d. bef. 20 Jun 1449), whose origins are unknown. They had no children.By 7 March1450 Konrad VII remarried. According to some sources the name of his second wife is unknown, and others stated that she was Dorothea (d. aft. 16 July 1450), daughter of Janusz the Younger, eldest son and heir ofDuke Janusz I of Warsaw. Like his first marriage, this union was also childless.Passage 6:Konrad VI the DeanKonrad VI the Dean (Polish: Konrad VI Dziekan) (ca. 1391 – 3 September 1427) was a Duke of Oleśnica,