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16936 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabyle | Kabyle | Kabyle people, an ethnic group in Algeria
Kabyle language
Kabyle alphabet, also known as Berber Latin alphabet
Kabyle grammar
Kabylie, the Kabyle ethnic homeland
Kabyles du Pacifique, a group of Algerians deported to New Caledonia after an uprising in 1871
Kabyle (ancient city), an ancient Thracian city in southeastern Bulgaria
Kabile, Bulgaria, a modern village near the Thracian city
Kabyle musket
See also
JS Kabylie, Algerian football team
Language and nationality disambiguation pages | [
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16938 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaolinite | Kaolinite | Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2Si2O5(OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral sheet of alumina () octahedra. Rocks that are rich in kaolinite are known as kaolin () or china clay. Kaolin is occasionally referred to by the antiquated term lithomarge, from the ancient greek litho- and Latin marga, meaning 'stone of marl'. Presently the name lithomarge can refer to a compacted, massive form of kaolin.
The name kaolin is derived from Gaoling (), a Chinese village near Jingdezhen in southeastern China's Jiangxi Province. The name entered English in 1727 from the French version of the word: , following François Xavier d'Entrecolles's reports on the making of Jingdezhen porcelain.
Kaolinite has a low shrink–swell capacity and a low cation-exchange capacity (1–15 meq/100 g). It is a soft, earthy, usually white, mineral (dioctahedral phyllosilicate clay), produced by the chemical weathering of aluminium silicate minerals like feldspar. In many parts of the world it is colored pink-orange-red by iron oxide, giving it a distinct rust hue. Lower concentrations yield white, yellow, or light orange colors. Alternating layers are sometimes found, as at Providence Canyon State Park in Georgia, United States. Commercial grades of kaolin are supplied and transported as dry powder, semi-dry noodle, or liquid slurry.
Chemistry
Notation
The chemical formula for kaolinite as used in mineralogy is , however, in ceramics applications the formula is typically written in terms of oxides, thus the formula for kaolinite is .
Structure
Compared with other clay minerals, kaolinite is chemically and structurally simple. It is described as a 1:1 or TO clay mineral because its crystals consist of stacked TO layers. Each TO layer consists of a tetrahedral (T) sheet composed of silicon and oxygen ions bonded to an octahedral (O) sheet composed of oxygen, aluminum, and hydroxyl ions. The T sheet is so called because each silicon ion is surrounded by four oxygen ions forming a tetrahedron. The O sheet is so called because each aluminum ion is surrounded by six oxygen or hydroxyl ions arranged at the corners of an octahedron. The two sheets in each layer are strongly bonded together via shared oxygen ions, while layers are bonded via hydrogen bonding between oxygen on the outer face of the T sheet of one layer and hydroxyl on the outer face of the O sheet of the next layer.
A kaolinite layer has no net electrical charge and so there are no large cations (such as calcium, sodium, or potassium) between layers as with most other clay minerals. This accounts for kaolinite's relatively low ion exchange capacity. The close hydrogen bonding between layers also hinders water molecules from infiltrating between layers, accounting for kaolinite's nonswelling character.
When moistened, the tiny platelike crystals of kaolinite acquire a layer of water molecules that cause crystals to adhere to each other and give kaolin clay its cohesiveness. The bonds are weak enough to allow the plates to slip past each other when the clay is being molded, but strong enough to hold the plates in place and allow the molded clay to retain its shape. When the clay is dried, most of the water molecules are removed, and the plates hydrogen bond directly to each other, so that the dried clay is rigid but still fragile. If the clay is moistened again, it will once more become plastic.
Structural transformations
Kaolinite group clays undergo a series of phase transformations upon thermal treatment in air at atmospheric pressure.
Milling
High-energy milling of the kaolinite results in the formation of a mechanochemically amorphized phase similar to metakaolin, although, the properties of this solid are quite different. The high-energy milling process is highly inefficient and consumes a large amount of energy.
Drying
Below , exposure to dry air will slowly remove liquid water from the kaolin. The end-state for this transformation is referred to as "leather dry". Between 100 °C and about , any remaining liquid water is expelled from kaolinite. The end state for this transformation is referred to as "bone dry". Throughout this temperature range, the expulsion of water is reversible: if the kaolin is exposed to liquid water, it will be reabsorbed and disintegrate into its fine particulate form. Subsequent transformations are not reversible, and represent permanent chemical changes.
Metakaolin
Endothermic dehydration of kaolinite begins at 550–600 °C producing disordered metakaolin, but continuous hydroxyl loss is observed up to . Although historically there was much disagreement concerning the nature of the metakaolin phase, extensive research has led to a general consensus that metakaolin is not a simple mixture of amorphous silica () and alumina (), but rather a complex amorphous structure that retains some longer-range order (but not strictly crystalline) due to stacking of its hexagonal layers.Al2Si2O5(OH)4 -> Al2Si2O7 + 2 H2O
Spinel
Further heating to 925–950 °C converts metakaolin to an aluminium-silicon spinel which is sometimes also referred to as a gamma-alumina type structure:2 Al2Si2O7 -> Si3Al4O12 + SiO2
Platelet mullite
Upon calcination above 1050 °C, the spinel phase nucleates and transforms to platelet mullite and highly crystalline cristobalite:3 Si3Al4O12 -> 2(3 Al2O3. 2 SiO2) + 5 SiO2
Needle mullite
Finally, at 1400 °C the "needle" form of mullite appears, offering substantial increases in structural strength and heat resistance. This is a structural but not chemical transformation. See stoneware for more information on this form.
Occurrence
Kaolinite is one of the most common minerals; it is mined, as kaolin, in Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Brazil, Bulgaria, Bangladesh, France, the United Kingdom, Iran, Germany, India, Australia, South Korea, the People's Republic of China, the Czech Republic, Spain, South Africa, Tanzania and the United States.
Mantles of kaolinitic saprolite are common in Western and Northern Europe. The ages of these mantles are Mesozoic to Early Cenozoic.
Kaolinite clay occurs in abundance in soils that have formed from the chemical weathering of rocks in hot, moist climates—for example in tropical rainforest areas. Comparing soils along a gradient towards progressively cooler or drier climates, the proportion of kaolinite decreases, while the proportion of other clay minerals such as illite (in cooler climates) or smectite (in drier climates) increases. Such climatically related differences in clay mineral content are often used to infer changes in climates in the geological past, where ancient soils have been buried and preserved.
In the Institut National pour l'Étude Agronomique au Congo Belge (INEAC) classification system, soils in which the clay fraction is predominantly kaolinite are called kaolisol (from kaolin and soil).
In the US, the main kaolin deposits are found in central Georgia, on a stretch of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line between Augusta and Macon. This area of thirteen counties is called the "white gold" belt; Sandersville is known as the "Kaolin Capital of the World" due to its abundance of kaolin. In the late 1800s, an active kaolin surface-mining industry existed in the extreme southeast corner of Pennsylvania, near the towns of Landenberg and Kaolin, and in what is present-day White Clay Creek Preserve. The product was brought by train to Newark, Delaware, on the Newark-Pomeroy line, along which can still be seen many open-pit clay mines. The deposits were formed between the late Cretaceous and early Paleogene, about 100 to 45 million years ago, in sediments derived from weathered igneous and metakaolin rocks. Kaolin production in the US during 2011 was 5.5 million tons.
During the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum sediments deposited in the Esplugafreda area of Spain were enriched with kaolinite from a detrital source due to denudation.
Synthesis and genesis
Difficulties are encountered when trying to explain kaolinite formation under atmospheric conditions by extrapolation of thermodynamic data from the more successful high-temperature syntheses. La Iglesia and Van Oosterwijk-Gastuche (1978) thought that the conditions under which kaolinite will nucleate can be deduced from stability diagrams, based as they are on dissolution data. Because of a lack of convincing results in their own experiments, La Iglesia and Van Oosterwijk-Gastuche (1978) had to conclude, however, that there were other, still unknown, factors involved in the low-temperature nucleation of kaolinite. Because of the observed very slow crystallization rates of kaolinite from solution at room temperature Fripiat and Herbillon (1971) postulated the existence of high activation energies in the low-temperature nucleation of kaolinite.
At high temperatures, equilibrium thermodynamic models appear to be satisfactory for the description of kaolinite dissolution and nucleation, because the thermal energy suffices to overcome the energy barriers involved in the nucleation process. The importance of syntheses at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure towards the understanding of the mechanism involved in the nucleation of clay minerals lies in overcoming these energy barriers. As indicated by Caillère and Hénin (1960) the processes involved will have to be studied in well-defined experiments, because it is virtually impossible to isolate the factors involved by mere deduction from complex natural physico-chemical systems such as the soil environment.
Fripiat and Herbillon (1971), in a review on the formation of kaolinite, raised the fundamental question how a disordered material (i.e., the amorphous fraction of tropical soils) could ever be transformed into a corresponding ordered structure. This transformation seems to take place in soils without major changes in the environment, in a relatively short period of time, and at ambient temperature (and pressure).
Low-temperature synthesis of clay minerals (with kaolinite as an example) has several aspects. In the first place the silicic acid to be supplied to the growing crystal must be in a monomeric form, i.e., silica should be present in very dilute solution (Caillère et al., 1957; Caillère and Hénin, 1960; Wey and Siffert, 1962; Millot, 1970). In order to prevent the formation of amorphous silica gels precipitating from supersaturated solutions without reacting with the aluminium or magnesium cations to form crystalline silicates, the silicic acid must be present in concentrations below the maximum solubility of amorphous silica. The principle behind this prerequisite can be found in structural chemistry: "Since the polysilicate ions are not of uniform size, they cannot arrange themselves along with the metal ions into a regular crystal lattice." (Iler, 1955, p. 182)
The second aspect of the low-temperature synthesis of kaolinite is that the aluminium cations must be hexacoordinated with respect to oxygen (Caillère and Hénin, 1947; Caillère et al., 1953; Hénin and Robichet, 1955). Gastuche et al. (1962), as well as Caillère and Hénin (1962) have concluded, that only in those instances when the aluminium hydroxide is in the form of gibbsite, kaolinite can ever be formed. If not, the precipitate formed will be a "mixed alumino-silicic gel" (as Millot, 1970, p. 343 put it). If it were the only requirement, large amounts of kaolinite could be harvested simply by adding gibbsite powder to a silica solution. Undoubtedly a marked degree of adsorption of the silica in solution by the gibbsite surfaces will take place, but, as stated before, mere adsorption does not create the layer lattice typical of kaolinite crystals.
The third aspect is that these two initial components must be incorporated into one and the same mixed crystal with a layer structure. From the following equation (as given by Gastuche and DeKimpe, 1962) for kaolinite formation2Al(OH)3 + 2H4SiO4 -> Si2O5 . Al2(OH)4 + 5H2Oit can be seen, that five molecules of water must be removed from the reaction for every molecule of kaolinite formed. Field evidence illustrating the importance of the removal of water from the kaolinite reaction has been supplied by Gastuche and DeKimpe (1962). While studying soil formation on a basaltic rock in Kivu (Zaïre), they noted how the occurrence of kaolinite depended on the of the area involved. A clear distinction was found between areas with good drainage (i.e., areas with a marked difference between wet and dry seasons) and those areas with poor drainage (i.e., perennially swampy areas). Only in the areas with distinct seasonal alternations between wet and dry was kaolinite found. The possible significance of alternating wet and dry conditions on the transition of allophane into kaolinite has been stressed by Tamura and Jackson (1953). The role of alternations between wetting and drying on the formation of kaolinite has also been noted by Moore (1964).
Laboratory syntheses
Syntheses of kaolinite at high temperatures (more than ) are relatively well known. There are for example the syntheses of Van Nieuwenberg and Pieters (1929); Noll (1934); Noll (1936); Norton (1939); Roy and Osborn (1954); Roy (1961); Hawkins and Roy (1962); Tomura et al. (1985); Satokawa et al. (1994) and Huertas et al. (1999).
Relatively few low-temperature syntheses have become known (cf. Brindley and DeKimpe (1961); DeKimpe (1969); Bogatyrev et al. (1997)).
Laboratory syntheses of kaolinite at room temperature and atmospheric pressure have been described by DeKimpe et al. (1961). From those tests the role of periodicity becomes convincingly clear. DeKimpe et al. (1961) had used daily additions of alumina (as ) and silica (in the form of ethyl silicate) during at least two months. In addition, adjustments of the pH took place every day by way of adding either hydrochloric acid or sodium hydroxide. Such daily additions of Si and Al to the solution in combination with the daily titrations with hydrochloric acid or sodium hydroxide during at least 60 days will have introduced the necessary element of periodicity.
Only now the actual role of what has been described as the "aging" (Alterung) of amorphous alumino-silicates (as for example Harder, 1978 had noted) can be fully understood. Time as such is not bringing about any change in a closed system at equilibrium; but a series of alternations, of periodically changing conditions (by definition, taking place in an open system), will bring about the low-temperature formation of more and more of the stable phase kaolinite instead of (ill-defined) amorphous alumino-silicates.
Uses
The main use of the mineral kaolinite (about 50% of the time) is the production of paper; its use ensures the gloss on some grades of coated paper.
Kaolin is also known for its capabilities to induce and accelerate blood clotting. In April 2008 the US Naval Medical Research Institute announced the successful use of a kaolinite-derived aluminosilicate infusion in traditional gauze, known commercially as QuikClot Combat Gauze, which is still the hemostat of choice for all branches of the US military.
Kaolin is used (or was used in the past):
in ceramics (it is the main component of porcelain)
in toothpaste
as a light-diffusing material in white incandescent light bulbs
in cosmetics
in industrial insulation material called Kaowool (a form of mineral wool)
in 'pre-work' skin protection and barrier creams
in paint to extend the titanium dioxide () white pigment and modify gloss levels
for modifying the properties of rubber upon vulcanization
in adhesives to modify rheology
in organic farming as a spray applied to crops to deter insect damage, and in the case of apples, to prevent sun scald
as whitewash in traditional stone masonry homes in Nepal (the most common method is to paint the upper part with white kaolin clay and the middle with red clay; the red clay may extend to the bottom, or the bottom may be painted black)
as a filler in Edison Diamond Discs
as a filler to give bulk, or a coating to improve the surface in papermaking
as an indicator in radiological dating since kaolinite can contain very small traces of uranium and thorium
to soothe an upset stomach, similar to the way parrots (and later, humans) in South America originally used it (more recently, industrially-produced kaolinite preparations were common for treatment of diarrhea; the most common of these was Kaopectate, which abandoned the use of kaolin in favor of attapulgite and then (in the United States) bismuth subsalicylate (the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol))
for facial masks or soap (known as "White Clay")
for spa body treatments, such as body wraps, cocoons, or spot treatments such as just the feet, back, or hands. Essential oil can be added to add a pleasant aroma, or seaweed can be added to boost the nutrient values of the treatment.
as adsorbents in water and wastewater treatment
to induce blood clotting in diagnostic procedures, e.g. Kaolin clotting time
in its altered metakaolin form, as a pozzolan; when added to a concrete mix, metakaolin accelerates the hydration of Portland cement and takes part in the pozzolanic reaction with the portlandite formed in the hydration of the main cement minerals (e.g. alite)
in its altered metakaolin form, as a base component for geopolymer compounds
Geophagy
Humans sometimes eat kaolin for pleasure or to suppress hunger, a practice known as geophagy. In Africa, kaolin used for such purposes is known as kalaba (in Gabon and Cameroon), calaba, and calabachop (in Equatorial Guinea). Consumption is greater among women, especially during pregnancy, and its use is sometimes said by women of the region to be a habit analogous to cigarette smoking among men.
This practice has also been observed within a small population of African-American women in the Southern United States, especially Georgia, likely brought by traditions of afromentioned Africans via slavery. There, the kaolin is called white dirt, chalk, or white clay.
Safety
Kaolin is generally recognized as safe, but may cause mild irritation of the skin or mucous membranes. Kaolin products may also contain traces of crystalline silica, a known carcinogen.
People can be exposed to kaolin in the workplace by breathing in the powder or from skin or eye contact.
United States
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the legal limit (permissible exposure limit) for kaolin exposure in the workplace as 15 mg/m3 total exposure and 5 mg/m3 respiratory exposure over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 10 mg/m3 total exposure TWA 5 mg/m3 respiratory exposure over an 8-hour workday.
Geotechnical engineering
Research results show that the utilization of kaolinite in geotechnical engineering can be alternatively replaced by safer illite, especially if its presence is less than 10.8% of the total rock mass.
See also
References
Citations
General references
External links
CDC – NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards
Aluminium minerals
Aluminosilicates
Clay minerals group
Industrial minerals
Medicinal clay
Phyllosilicates
Triclinic minerals
Minerals in space group 1 | [
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16941 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawasaki%20Ki-56 | Kawasaki Ki-56 | The Kawasaki Ki-56 (, Type 1 Freight Transport) was a Japanese two-engine light transport aircraft used during World War II. It was known to the Allies by the reporting name "Thalia". 121 were built between 1940 and 1943.
Design and development
The Kawasaki Ki-56 was derived from the Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra aircraft that the Kawasaki Kokuki Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (The Kawasaki Aircraft Engineering Company Limited) had built under licence. In September 1939 Kawasaki was asked by the Koku Hombu to design an improved version as Ki-56. A number was also built by Tachikawa Hikoki K.K.
Operational history
The Japanese invasion of Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies campaign began with a paratroop drop from Ki-56 transports on Airfield P1 and the oil refineries near Palembang. Royal Air Force Hawker Hurricane fighters flying from P1 to locate the Japanese invasion fleet passed the incoming Ki-56s, but thought them to be friendly Lockheed Hudsons (also developed from the Lockheed Model 14) returning from a raid. The defending anti-aircraft gunners at P1 were equally fooled, until the parachutes began to open. Once the AA guns opened fire one transport was shot down, another force-landed, and others veered off course, but the paratroop drop was effective and the airfield and oil installations were overrun.
Specifications (Ki-56)
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
Pilot Friend
Ki-056, Kawasaki
World War II Japanese transport aircraft
Ki-056
Twin piston-engined tractor aircraft
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16942 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV%20Wilhelm%20Gustloff | MV Wilhelm Gustloff | MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German military transport ship which was sunk on 30 January 1945 by in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilian refugees from East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Estonia and military personnel from Gotenhafen (Gdynia) as the Red Army advanced. By one estimate, 9,400 people died, making it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.
Originally constructed as a cruise ship for the Nazi Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) organization in 1937, Wilhelm Gustloff had been requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine (German navy) in 1939. She served as a hospital ship in 1939 and 1940. She was then assigned as a floating barracks for naval personnel in Gotenhafen before being fitted with anti-aircraft guns and put into service to transport evacuees in 1945.
Construction and naming
Wilhelm Gustloff was constructed by the Blohm & Voss shipyards. Measuring long by wide, with a capacity of , she was launched on 5 May 1937.
The ship was originally intended to be named Adolf Hitler but instead was christened after Wilhelm Gustloff, leader of the Nazi Party's Swiss branch, who had been assassinated by a Jewish medical student in 1936. Adolf Hitler decided on the name change after sitting next to Gustloff's widow during his memorial service. After completing sea trials in the North Sea from 15 to 16 March 1938 she was handed over to her owners.
Cruise ship
Wilhelm Gustloff was the first purpose-built cruise ship for the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF) and used by subsidiary organisation Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, KdF). Her purposes were to provide recreational and cultural activities for German functionaries and workers, including concerts, cruises, and other holiday trips, and to serve as a public relations tool that would present "a more acceptable image of the Third Reich". She was the flagship of the KdF cruise fleet, her last civilian role, until the spring of 1939.
The ship made her unofficial maiden voyage between 24 and 27 March 1938 carrying Austrians in an attempt to convince them to vote for the annexation of Austria by Germany. On 29 March she departed on her second voyage carrying workers and their families from the Blohm & Voss shipyard on a three-day cruise.
Rescue of Pegaway
For her third voyage Wilhelm Gustloff left Hamburg on 1 April 1938 under the command of Carl Lübbe to join the KdF ships Der Deutsche, Oceania and Sierra Cordoba on a group cruise of the North Sea. A storm developed on 3 April with winds up to that forced the four ships apart. Meanwhile, the 1,836 gross ton coal freighter Pegaway, which had departed the Tyne on 2 April for Hamburg, was also caught up in the storm. Cargo and machinery were washed from Pegaways decks and the ship lost maneuverability as the storm increased in intensity. By 4 April, it was taking on water and slowly sinking.
At 4 am, Captain G. W. Ward of Pegaway issued an SOS when the ship was northwest of the island of Terschelling, off the coast of the Netherlands. The closest of the ships that answered the distress call was Wilhelm Gustloff, which reached Pegaway at 6 am. She launched her Lifeboat No. 1, with a crew of twelve under the command of Second Officer Meyer. The oar-powered lifeboat was unable to come aside Pegaway in the heavy seas and looked in danger of needing rescuing. Lifeboat No. 6, with a crew of ten under the command of Second Officer Schürmann, was then lowered. As it had a motor, it was better able to handle the waves.
After first assisting their shipmates in Lifeboat No. 1 to head back towards Wilhelm Gustloff, Schürmann was able to reach Pegaway. One by one the 19 men on Pegaway jumped into the sea and were hauled onto Lifeboat No. 6, with both them and the crew of the lifeboat back at Wilhelm Gustloff by 7:45 am. By now a Dutch tugboat had arrived but was unable to save Pegaway, which soon rolled to port and sank. Lifeboat No. 1 had been so badly damaged by the waves that after its crew had climbed up via ladders to the safety of their ship it was set adrift, to later be washed up on the shores of Terschelling on 2 May.
Anschluss
On 8 April 1938 Wilhelm Gustloff, under the command of Captain Lübbe, departed Hamburg for England, where she anchored over offshore from Tilbury so as to remain in international waters. This allowed her to act as a floating polling station for German and Austrian citizens living in England who wished to vote on the approaching plebiscite on Germany's unification with Austria. During 10 April, 1,172 Germans and 806 Austrian eligible voters were ferried between the docks at Tilbury to the ship where 1,968 votes were cast in favour of the union and ten voted against. Once the voting was complete, Wilhelm Gustloff departed, reaching Hamburg on 12 April.
After undertaking a further voyage on 14 to 19 April 1938, the ship went on an Osterfahrt (Easter Voyage) before her actual official maiden voyage, which was undertaken from 21 April to 6 May 1938, when she joined Der Deutsche, Oceania and Sierra Cordoba on a group cruise to the Madeira Islands. On the second day of her voyage, the 58-year-old Captain Lübbe died on the bridge from a heart attack. He was replaced by Friedrich Petersen, who commanded Wilhelm Gustloff for the remainder of the cruise. Petersen left the ship until he returned as captain on her fatal voyage.
Condor legion
Between 20 May and 2 June 1939, Wilhelm Gustloff was diverted from her pleasure cruises. With seven other ships in the KdF fleet, she transported the Condor Legion back to Germany from Spain following the victory of the Nationalist forces under General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
From 14 March 1938 until 26 August 1939, the ship took over 80,000 passengers on a total of 60 voyages, all around Europe.
Military career
From September 1939 to November 1940, Wilhelm Gustloff served as a hospital ship, officially designated Lazarettschiff D. Beginning on 20 November 1940, medical equipment was removed from the ship and she was repainted from the hospital ship colors of white with a green stripe to standard naval grey.
As a consequence of the Allied blockade of the German coastline, she was used as a barracks ship for approximately 1,000 U-boat trainees of the 2nd Submarine Training Division (2. Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision) in the port of Gdynia, which had been occupied by Germany and renamed Gotenhafen, located near Danzig (Gdańsk). Wilhelm Gustloff sat in dock there for over four years. In 1942, was used as a stand-in for in the German film version of the disaster. Filmed in Gotenhafen, the 2nd Submarine Training Division acted as extras in the movie. Eventually, Wilhelm Gustloff was put back into service transporting civilians and military personnel as part of Operation Hannibal.
Operation Hannibal – evacuation
Operation Hannibal was the naval evacuation of German troops and civilians from Poland and the Baltic states as the Red Army advanced. Wilhelm Gustloffs final voyage was to evacuate German refugees, military personnel, and technicians from Courland, East Prussia, and Danzig-West Prussia. Many had worked at advanced weapon bases in the Baltic from Gotenhafen to Kiel.
The ship's complement and passenger lists cited 6,050 people on board, but these did not include many civilians who boarded the ship without being recorded in the official embarkation records. Heinz Schön, a German archivist and Gustloff survivor who extensively researched the sinking during the 1980s and 1990s, concluded that she was carrying a crew of 173 (naval armed forces auxiliaries); 918 officers, NCOs, and men of the 2 Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision; 373 female naval auxiliary helpers; 162 wounded soldiers and 8,956 civilians, for a total of 10,582 passengers and crew. The passengers, besides civilians, included Gestapo personnel, members of the Organisation Todt, and Nazi officials with their families. The ship was overcrowded, and due to the temperature and humidity inside, many passengers defied orders not to remove their life jackets.
The ship left Gotenhafen at 12:30 pm on 30 January 1945, accompanied by the passenger liner Hansa, also filled with civilians and military personnel, and two torpedo boats. Hansa and one torpedo boat developed mechanical problems and could not continue, leaving Wilhelm Gustloff with one torpedo boat escort, Löwe (ex-). The ship had four captains (Wilhelm Gustloff's captain, two merchant marine captains, and the captain of the U-boat complement housed on the vessel) on board, and they disagreed on the best course of action to guard against submarine attacks. Against the advice of the military commander, Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Zahn (a submariner who argued for a course in shallow waters close to shore and without lights), Wilhelm Gustloff's captain, Friedrich Petersen, decided to head for deep water which was known to have been cleared of mines. When he was informed by a mysterious radio message of an oncoming German minesweeper convoy, Petersen decided to activate his ship's red and green navigation lights so as to avoid a collision in the dark, making Wilhelm Gustloff easy to spot in the dark.
As Wilhelm Gustloff had been fitted with anti-aircraft guns, and the Germans did not mark her as a hospital ship, no notification of her operating in a hospital capacity had been given and, as she was transporting military personnel, she did not have any protection as a hospital ship under international accords.
Sinking
Wilhelm Gustloff was soon sighted by the , under the command of Captain Alexander Marinesko. The submarine sensor on board the escorting torpedo boat had frozen, rendering it inoperable, as had her anti-aircraft guns, leaving the vessels defenseless. Marinesko followed the ships to their starboard (seaward) side for two hours before making a daring move, surfacing his submarine and steering it around Wilhelm Gustloffs stern, to attack it from the port side closer to shore, from where the attack would be less expected. At around 9 pm (CET), Marinesko ordered his crew to launch four torpedoes at Wilhelm Gustloffs port side, about offshore, between Großendorf and Leba. The first torpedo was nicknamed "for the Motherland", the second "for Leningrad", the third "for the Soviet people", and the fourth, which got jammed in the torpedo tubes and had to be dismantled, "for Stalin".
The three torpedoes which were fired successfully all struck Wilhelm Gustloff on her port side. The first struck the ship's bow, causing watertight doors to seal off the area where off-duty crew members were sleeping. The second hit the accommodations for the women's naval auxiliary, located in the ship's drained swimming pool, dislodging the pool tiles at high velocity, which caused heavy casualties; only three of the 373 people quartered there survived. The third torpedo scored a direct hit on the engine room located amidships, disabling all power and communications.
Reportedly, only nine lifeboats could be lowered; the rest had frozen in their davits and had to be broken free. About twenty minutes after the torpedoes' impact, Wilhelm Gustloff suddenly listed so dramatically to port that the lifeboats lowered on the high starboard side crashed into the ship's tilting side, destroying many lifeboats and spilling their occupants.
Many deaths were caused either directly by the torpedoes or drowning in the onrushing water. Some fatalities were due to the initial stampede caused by panicked passengers on the stairs and decks. Many passengers jumped into the icy Baltic. The water temperature in the Baltic Sea in late January is usually around ; however, this was a particularly cold night, with an air temperature of and ice floes covering the surface. The majority of those who perished succumbed to exposure in the freezing water.
Less than 40 minutes after being struck, Wilhelm Gustloff was lying on her side. She sank bow-first ten minutes later, in of water.
German forces were able to rescue 1,252 people: the torpedo boat rescued 564; the torpedo boat Löwe, 472; the minesweeper M387, 98; the minesweeper M375, 43; the minesweeper M341, 37; the steamer Göttingen, 28; the torpedo recovery boat (Torpedofangboot) TF19, 7; the freighter Gotenland, two; and the patrol boat (Vorpostenboot) V1703, one baby. Thirteen survivors died later. All four captains on Wilhelm Gustloff survived her sinking, but an official naval inquiry was only initiated against Lieutenant Commander Zahn. His degree of responsibility was never resolved, however, because of Nazi Germany's collapse in 1945.
Losses
The figures from Schön's research make the loss in the Wilhelm Gustloff sinking to be "9,343 men, women and children". His more recent research is backed up by estimates arrived at by a different method. An Unsolved History episode that aired in March 2003, on the Discovery Channel, undertook a computer analysis of the sinking. Using Maritime Exodus software, it estimated that 9,600 people died out of more than 10,600 on board, by taking into account passenger density based on witness reports, and a simulation of escape routes and survivability with the timeline of the sinking.
Aftermath
Many ships carrying civilians were sunk during the war by the Allies and by the Axis Powers. However, based on the latest estimates of passenger numbers and those known to be saved, Wilhelm Gustloff remains by far the largest loss of life resulting from the sinking of a single vessel in maritime history. Günter Grass said in an interview published by The New York Times in April 2003: "One of the many reasons I wrote Crabwalk was to take the subject away from the extreme Right... They said the tragedy of Wilhelm Gustloff was a war crime. It wasn't. It was terrible, but it was a result of war, a terrible result of war."
About 1,000 German naval officers and men were aboard and died in the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff. Women aboard the ship at the time of the sinking were inaccurately described by Soviet propaganda as "SS personnel from the German concentration camps". There were, however, 373 female naval auxiliaries amongst the passengers, only three of whom survived.
On the night of 9–10 February, just eleven days after the sinking, S-13 sank another German ship, , killing about 4,500 people.
Before sinking Wilhelm Gustloff, Captain Marinesko was facing a court martial due to his alcohol problems and for being caught in a brothel while he and his crew were off duty. Marinesko was thus deemed "not suitable to be a hero" for the sinking and, instead of gaining the title Hero of the Soviet Union, he was awarded the lesser Order of the Red Banner. He was downgraded in rank to lieutenant and dishonorably discharged from the Soviet Navy in October 1945. In 1960, Marinesko was reinstated as captain third class and granted a full pension, and in 1963 was given the traditional ceremony due a captain upon the successful return from a mission. He died three weeks later from cancer at age 50. Marinesko was posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990.
Wreckage
Noted as "Obstacle No. 73" on Polish navigation charts, and classified as a war grave, Wilhelm Gustloff rests at , about offshore, east of Łeba and west of Władysławowo (the former Leba and Großendorf, respectively). It is one of the largest shipwrecks on the Baltic Sea floor and has attracted much interest from treasure hunters searching for the lost Amber Room. In order to protect the property on board the war grave, as well as the wreck itself and the surrounding environment, the Polish Maritime Office in Gdynia has forbidden diving within a radius of the wreck.
In 2006, a bell recovered from the wreck and subsequently used as a decoration in a Polish seafood restaurant was lent to the privately funded "Forced Paths" exhibition in Berlin.
Popular culture
Books:
Günter Grass: Im Krebsgang, translated into English as Crabwalk. Combines historical elements, such as the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, with fictional elements, such as the book's major characters and events.
Ruta Sepetys: Salt to the Sea. Young Adult historical fiction about the lives of four fictional characters during the evacuation of East Prussia and the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Carnegie Medal winner (2017).
I"ll Be Damned, the autobiography by the German-born American actor Eric Braeden, published by Harper Collins in 2017, discusses how he was a survivor of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff sinking.
The prologue of Polar Shift features the sinking of the ship while a Resistance fighter trying to smuggle a scientist out of Nazi hands is on board.
The novel The Other Side of Silence. London: Quercus, by Philip Kerr, includes in its plot the sinking of MV Wilhelm Gustloff by combining accurate historical facts and fictional characters.
Films:
Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen (Night fell over Gotenhafen), feature film by Frank Wisbar, 1959
Die Gustloff (The Gustloff), two-part telemovie by Joseph Vilsmaier, 2008
Documentaries:
"Killer Submarine," an episode of History's Mysteries, 1999.
Die große Flucht. Der Untergang der Gustloff (The Great Escape. The sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff), 2001.
"The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff", The Sea Hunters (television program), 2002.
"Wilhelm Gustloff: World's Deadliest Sea Disaster", Unsolved History (television program), 2003.
Ghosts of the Baltic Sea, 2006.
Sinking Hitler's Supership, 2008. National Geographic documentary using extensive footage from the 2008 German miniseries.
Triumph Und Tragödie der Wilhelm Gustloff, 2012.
See also
MV Goya, another ship taking part in Operation Hannibal, was also sunk by a Soviet submarine with just 183 survivors out of 7,000 passengers and crew.
Soviet hospital ship Armenia, sunk by German aircraft with only 8 survivors out of 5,000–7,000 passengers and crew.
SS Cap Arcona
MV Awa Maru
Iosif Stalin
Deutschland
Thielbek
Lancastria
RMS Lusitania
List by death toll of ships sunk by submarines
List of maritime disasters
List of shipwrecks
Eric Braeden, a survivor
References
Bibliography
Heath, Tim & Cocolin, Michela; Hitler's Lost State: The Fall of Prussia and the Wilhelm Gustloff Tragedy (Pen and Sword Military, 2020).
Kappes, Irwin J.; The Greatest Marine Disaster in History...and why you probably never heard of it, 2003.
Leja, Michael; Die letzte Fahrt der "Wilhelm Gustloff"; ZDF (1 August 2005), reports that earlier estimates of approximately 6000 drowned have been revised upwards by more recent sources to about 9300. An article in German.
Moorehouse, Roger; Ship of Fate: The Story of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff (Independently published, 2018).
Niven, Bill; "The Good Captain and the Bad Captain: Joseph Vilsmaier's "Die Gustloff" and the Erosion of Complexity" in German Politics & Society Vol. 26, No. 4 (89), SPECIAL ISSUE: Dynamics of Memory in 21st Century Germany (Winter 2008), pp. 82–98.
Pipes, Jason; A Memorial to the Wilhelm Gustloff.
Prince, Cathryn J.; Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff (St. Martin's Press, 2013).
Schön, Heinz; Die Gustloff Katastrophe (Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 2002).
Sellwood, A.V.; The Damned Don't Drown (TBS The Book Service Ltd, London, 1974).
Williams, David; Wartime Disasters at Sea (Patrick Stephens Limited, Nr Yeovil, UK, 1997) .
Further reading
Bishop, Leigh; Shipwreck Expedition May 2003, led by Mike Boring, 2003
External links
A Memorial to the Wilhelm Gustloff
Lazarettschiff D (Wilhelm Gustloff)
Details, map and position info on www.wrecksite.eu
Schiff ohne Klassen - Die Wilhelm Gustloff 1938 propaganda film
Maritimequest Wilhelm Gustloff Photo Gallery
National Geographic Channel Timeline
Sinking the Gustloff (Film about Gustloff survivors)
The Wilhelm Gustloff Museum – The Ultimate Visual Record
Wilhelm Gustloff hi-rez images gallery
Cruise ships of Germany
Ships sunk by Soviet submarines
World War II shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea
Ships built in Hamburg
1937 ships
Hospital ships in World War II
1945 in Germany
Maritime incidents in January 1945
Shipwrecks of Poland | [
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16947 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos%20%28protocol%29 | Kerberos (protocol) | Kerberos () is a computer-network authentication protocol that works on the basis of tickets to allow nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. Its designers aimed it primarily at a client–server model, and it provides mutual authentication—both the user and the server verify each other's identity. Kerberos protocol messages are protected against eavesdropping and replay attacks.
Kerberos builds on symmetric-key cryptography and requires a trusted third party, and optionally may use public-key cryptography during certain phases of authentication. Kerberos uses UDP port 88 by default.
The protocol was named after the character Kerberos (or Cerberus) from Greek mythology, the ferocious three-headed guard dog of Hades.
History and development
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed Kerberos to protect network services provided by Project Athena. The protocol is based on the earlier Needham–Schroeder symmetric-key protocol. Several versions of the protocol exist; versions 1–3 occurred only internally at MIT.
Kerberos version 4 was primarily designed by Steve Miller and Clifford Neuman. Published in the late 1980s, version 4 was also targeted at Project Athena.
Neuman and John Kohl published version 5 in 1993 with the intention of overcoming existing limitations and security problems. Version 5 appeared as RFC 1510, which was then made obsolete by RFC 4120 in 2005.
Authorities in the United States classified Kerberos as "Auxiliary Military Equipment" on the US Munitions List and banned its export because it used the Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption algorithm (with 56-bit keys). A Kerberos 4 implementation developed at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden named KTH-KRB (rebranded to Heimdal at version 5) made the system available outside the US before the US changed its cryptography export regulations (around 2000). The Swedish implementation was based on a limited version called eBones. eBones was based on the exported MIT Bones release (stripped of both the encryption functions and the calls to them) based on version Kerberos 4 patch-level 9.
In 2005, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Kerberos working group updated specifications. Updates included:
Encryption and Checksum Specifications (RFC 3961).
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Encryption for Kerberos 5 (RFC 3962).
A new edition of the Kerberos V5 specification "The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5)" (RFC 4120). This version obsoletes RFC 1510, clarifies aspects of the protocol and intended use in a more detailed and clearer explanation.
A new edition of the Generic Security Services Application Program Interface (GSS-API) specification "The Kerberos Version 5 Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSS-API) Mechanism: Version 2" (RFC 4121).
MIT makes an implementation of Kerberos freely available, under copyright permissions similar to those used for BSD. In 2007, MIT formed the Kerberos Consortium to foster continued development. Founding sponsors include vendors such as Oracle, Apple Inc., Google, Microsoft, Centrify Corporation and TeamF1 Inc., and academic institutions such as the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, Stanford University, MIT, and vendors such as CyberSafe offering commercially supported versions.
Microsoft Windows
Windows 2000 and later versions use Kerberos as their default authentication method. Some Microsoft additions to the Kerberos suite of protocols are documented in RFC 3244 "Microsoft Windows 2000 Kerberos Change Password and Set Password Protocols". RFC 4757 documents Microsoft's use of the RC4 cipher. While Microsoft uses and extends the Kerberos protocol, it does not use the MIT software.
Kerberos is used as the preferred authentication method: in general, joining a client to a Windows domain means enabling Kerberos as the default protocol for authentications from that client to services in the Windows domain and all domains with trust relationships to that domain.
In contrast, when either client or server or both are not joined to a domain (or not part of the same trusted domain environment), Windows will instead use NTLM for authentication between client and server.
Intranet web applications can enforce Kerberos as an authentication method for domain-joined clients by using APIs provided under SSPI.
Microsoft Windows and Windows Server include , a command-line utility that can be used to read, modify, or delete the Service Principal Names (SPN) for an Active Directory service account.
Unix and other operating systems
Many Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Apple's macOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle's Solaris, IBM's AIX, HP-UX and others, include software for Kerberos authentication of users or services. A variety of non-Unix like operating systems such as z/OS, IBM i and OpenVMS also feature Kerberos support. Embedded implementation of the Kerberos V authentication protocol for client agents and network services running on embedded platforms is also available from companies.
Protocol
Description
The client authenticates itself to the Authentication Server (AS) which forwards the username to a key distribution center (KDC). The KDC issues a ticket-granting ticket (TGT), which is time stamped and encrypts it using the ticket-granting service's (TGS) secret key and returns the encrypted result to the user's workstation. This is done infrequently, typically at user logon; the TGT expires at some point although it may be transparently renewed by the user's session manager while they are logged in.
When the client needs to communicate with a service on another node (a "principal", in Kerberos parlance), the client sends the TGT to the TGS, which usually shares the same host as the KDC. The service must have already been registered with the TGS with a Service Principal Name (SPN). The client uses the SPN to request access to this service. After verifying that the TGT is valid and that the user is permitted to access the requested service, the TGS issues ticket and session keys to the client. The client then sends the ticket to the service server (SS) along with its service request.
The protocol is described in detail below.
User Client-based Login without Kerberos
A user enters a username and password on the client machine(s). Other credential mechanisms like pkinit (RFC 4556) allow for the use of public keys in place of a password. The client transforms the password into the key of a symmetric cipher. This either uses the built-in key scheduling, or a one-way hash, depending on the cipher-suite used.
The server receives the username and symmetric cipher and compares it with the data from database. Login was a success if the cipher matches the cipher that is stored for the user.
Client Authentication
The client sends a cleartext message of the user ID to the AS (Authentication Server) requesting services on behalf of the user. (Note: Neither the secret key nor the password is sent to the AS.)
The AS checks to see whether the client is in its database. If it is, the AS generates the secret key by hashing the password of the user found at the database (e.g., Active Directory in Windows Server) and sends back the following two messages to the client:
Message A: Client/TGS Session Key encrypted using the secret key of the client/user.
Message B: Ticket-Granting-Ticket (TGT, which includes the client ID, client network address, ticket validity period, and the Client/TGS Session Key) encrypted using the secret key of the TGS.
Once the client receives messages A and B, it attempts to decrypt message A with the secret key generated from the password entered by the user. If the user entered password does not match the password in the AS database, the client's secret key will be different and thus unable to decrypt message A. With a valid password and secret key the client decrypts message A to obtain the Client/TGS Session Key. This session key is used for further communications with the TGS. (Note: The client cannot decrypt Message B, as it is encrypted using TGS's secret key.) At this point, the client has enough information to authenticate itself to the TGS.
Client Service Authorization
When requesting services, the client sends the following messages to the TGS:
Message C: Composed of the message B (the encrypted TGT using the TGS secret key) and the ID of the requested service.
Message D: Authenticator (which is composed of the client ID and the timestamp), encrypted using the Client/TGS Session Key.
Upon receiving messages C and D, the TGS retrieves message B out of message C. It decrypts message B using the TGS secret key. This gives it the Client/TGS Session Key and the client ID (both are in the TGT). Using this Client/TGS Session Key, the TGS decrypts message D (Authenticator) and compares the client IDs from messages B and D; if they match, the server sends the following two messages to the client:
Message E: Client-to-server ticket (which includes the client ID, client network address, validity period, and Client/Server Session Key) encrypted using the service's secret key.
Message F: Client/Server Session Key encrypted with the Client/TGS Session Key.
Client Service Request
Upon receiving messages E and F from TGS, the client has enough information to authenticate itself to the Service Server (SS). The client connects to the SS and sends the following two messages:
Message E: From the previous step (the Client-to-server ticket, encrypted using service's secret key).
Message G: A new Authenticator, which includes the client ID, timestamp and is encrypted using Client/Server Session Key.
The SS decrypts the ticket (message E) using its own secret key to retrieve the Client/Server Session Key. Using the sessions key, SS decrypts the Authenticator and compares client ID from messages E and G, if they match server sends the following message to the client to confirm its true identity and willingness to serve the client:
Message H: The timestamp found in client's Authenticator (plus 1 in version 4, but not necessary in version 5), encrypted using the Client/Server Session Key.
The client decrypts the confirmation (message H) using the Client/Server Session Key and checks whether the timestamp is correct. If so, then the client can trust the server and can start issuing service requests to the server.
The server provides the requested services to the client.
Drawbacks and limitations
Kerberos has strict time requirements, which means that the clocks of the involved hosts must be synchronized within configured limits. The tickets have a time availability period, and if the host clock is not synchronized with the Kerberos server clock, the authentication will fail. The default configuration per MIT requires that clock times be no more than five minutes apart. In practice, Network Time Protocol daemons are usually used to keep the host clocks synchronized. Note that some servers (Microsoft's implementation being one of them) may return a KRB_AP_ERR_SKEW result containing the encrypted server time if both clocks have an offset greater than the configured maximum value. In that case, the client could retry by calculating the time using the provided server time to find the offset. This behavior is documented in RFC 4430.
The administration protocol is not standardized and differs between server implementations. Password changes are described in RFC 3244.
In case of symmetric cryptography adoption (Kerberos can work using symmetric or asymmetric (public-key) cryptography), since all authentications are controlled by a centralized key distribution center (KDC), compromise of this authentication infrastructure will allow an attacker to impersonate any user.
Each network service that requires a different host name will need its own set of Kerberos keys. This complicates virtual hosting and clusters.
Kerberos requires user accounts and services to have a trusted relationship to the Kerberos token server.
The required client trust makes creating staged environments (e.g., separate domains for test environment, pre-production environment and production environment) difficult: Either domain trust relationships need to be created that prevent a strict separation of environment domains, or additional user clients need to be provided for each environment.
Vulnerabilities
The Data Encryption Standard (DES) cipher can be used in combination with Kerberos, but is no longer an Internet standard because it is weak. Security vulnerabilities exist in many legacy products that implement Kerberos because they have not been updated to use newer ciphers like AES instead of DES.
In November 2014, Microsoft released a patch (MS14-068) to rectify an exploitable vulnerability in Windows implementation of the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC). The vulnerability purportedly allows users to "elevate" (and abuse) their privileges, up to Domain level.
See also
Single sign-on
Identity management
SPNEGO
S/Key
Secure remote password protocol (SRP)
Generic Security Services Application Program Interface (GSS-API)
Host Identity Protocol (HIP)
List of single sign-on implementations
References
General
RFCs
The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5) [Obsolete]
The Kerberos Version 5 GSS-API Mechanism
Encryption and Checksum Specifications for Kerberos 5
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Encryption for Kerberos 5
The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5) [Current]
The Kerberos Version 5 Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSS-API) Mechanism: Version 2
Kerberos Cryptosystem Negotiation Extension
Public Key Cryptography for Initial Authentication in Kerberos (PKINIT)
Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) Support for Public Key Cryptography for Initial Authentication in Kerberos (PKINIT)
The RC4-HMAC Kerberos Encryption Types Used by Microsoft Windows [Obsolete]
Extended Kerberos Version 5 Key Distribution Center (KDC) Exchanges over TCP
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Support for Public Key Cryptography for Initial Authentication in Kerberos (PKINIT)
Problem Statement on the Cross-Realm Operation of Kerberos
Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSS-API): Delegate if Approved by Policy
Additional Kerberos Naming Constraints
Anonymity Support for Kerberos
A Generalized Framework for Kerberos Pre-Authentication
Using Kerberos Version 5 over the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
The Unencrypted Form of Kerberos 5 KRB-CRED Message
Kerberos Version 5 Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSS-API) Channel Binding Hash Agility
One-Time Password (OTP) Pre-Authentication
Deprecate DES, RC4-HMAC-EXP, and Other Weak Cryptographic Algorithms in Kerberos
Kerberos Options for DHCPv6
Camellia Encryption for Kerberos 5
Kerberos Principal Name Canonicalization and Cross-Realm Referrals
An Information Model for Kerberos Version 5
Further reading
External links
Kerberos Consortium
Kerberos page at MIT website
Kerberos Working Group at IETF website
Kerberos Sequence Diagram
Heimdal/Kerberos implementation
Authentication protocols
Computer access control protocols
Computer network security
Key transport protocols
Symmetric-key algorithms
Massachusetts Institute of Technology software | [
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16948 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine | Ketamine | Ketamine is a medication primarily used for induction and maintenance of anesthesia. It induces dissociative anesthesia, a trance-like state providing pain relief, sedation, and amnesia. The distinguishing features of ketamine anesthesia are preserved breathing and airway reflexes, stimulated heart function with increased blood pressure, and moderate bronchodilation. At lower, sub-anesthetic doses, ketamine is a promising agent for pain and treatment-resistant depression. However, the antidepressant action of a single administration of ketamine wanes with time, and the effects of repeated use have not been sufficiently studied.
Psychiatric side effects are frequent as well as raised blood pressure and nausea. Liver and urinary toxicity are common among regular users of high doses of ketamine for recreational purposes. Ketamine is an NMDA receptor antagonist, and that accounts for most of its actions except the antidepressive effect, the mechanism of which is a matter of much research and debate.
Ketamine was first synthesized in 1962 and approved for use in the United States in 1970. It was regularly used on dogs and horses and extensively used for surgical anaesthesia in the Vietnam War. Ketamine is also used as a recreational drug, both in powder and liquid form, often referred to as "Special K" for its hallucinogenic and dissociative effects. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. It is available as a generic medication.
Medical uses
Anesthesia
The use of ketamine in anesthesia reflects its characteristics. It is a drug of choice for short-term procedures when muscle relaxation is not required. The effect of ketamine on the respiratory and circulatory systems is different from that of other anesthetics. It suppresses breathing much less than most other available anesthetics. When used at anesthetic doses, ketamine usually stimulates rather than depresses the circulatory system. Protective airway reflexes are preserved, and it is sometimes possible to administer ketamine anesthesia without protective measures to the airways. Psychotomimetic effects limit the acceptance of ketamine; however, they can be counteracted by administering benzodiazepines or propofol.
Ketamine is frequently used in severely injured people and appears to be safe in this group. It has been widely used for emergency surgery in field conditions in war zones, for example, during the Vietnam War. A 2011 clinical practice guideline supports the use of ketamine as a sedative in emergency medicine, including during physically painful procedures. It is the drug of choice for people in traumatic shock who are at risk of hypotension. Low blood pressure is harmful in people with severe head injury, and ketamine is least likely to cause low blood pressure and often even able to prevent it.
Ketamine is an option in children, as the sole anesthetic for minor procedures or as an induction agent followed by neuromuscular blocker and tracheal intubation In particular, children with cyanotic heart disease and neuromuscular disorders are good candidates for ketamine anesthesia.
Due to the bronchodilating properties of ketamine, it can be used for anesthesia in people with asthma, chronic obstructive airway disease, and with severe reactive airway disease including active bronchospasm.
Pain
Ketamine infusions are used for acute pain treatment in emergency departments and in the perioperative period in individuals with refractory pain. The doses are lower than those used for anesthesia; they are usually referred to as sub-anesthetic doses. Adjunctive to morphine or on its own, ketamine reduces morphine use, pain level, nausea, and vomiting after surgery. Ketamine is likely to be most beneficial for surgical patients when severe post-operative pain is expected and for opioid-tolerant patients.
Ketamine is especially useful in the prehospital setting, due to its effectiveness and low risk of respiratory depression.
Ketamine has similar efficacy to opioids in a hospital emergency department setting for management of acute pain and for control of procedural pain. It may also prevent opioid-induced hyperalgesia and postanesthetic shivering.
For chronic pain, ketamine is used as an intravenous analgesic, particularly, if the pain is neuropathic. It has the added benefit of counteracting spinal sensitization or wind-up phenomena experienced with chronic pain. In multiple clinical trials, ketamine infusions delivered short-term pain relief in neuropathic pain diagnoses, pain after traumatic spine injury, fibromyalgia, and complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). However, the 2018 consensus guidelines on chronic pain concluded that, overall, there is only weak evidence in favor of ketamine use in spinal injury pain, moderate evidence in favor of ketamine for CRPS, and weak or no evidence for ketamine in mixed neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, and cancer pain. In particular, only for CRPS there is evidence of medium to longer term pain relief.
Depression
Ketamine is a robust and rapid-acting antidepressant, albeit its effect is transient. Intravenous ketamine infusion in treatment resistant depression results in improved mood within 4 hours reaching the peak at 24 hours. A single dose of intravenous ketamine results in a response rate over 60% as early as 4.5 hours after the dose (with a sustained effect after 24 hours) and over 40% after 7 days. Although there are only a few pilot studies studying the optimal dose, increasing evidence suggests that 0.5 mg/kg dose injected over 40 minutes gives an optimal outcome. The antidepressant effect of ketamine is diminished at 7 days, and most patients relapse within 10 days, although for a significant minority the improvement may last 30 days and longer. The main challenge with ketamine treatment is what to do when the antidepressant effect expires. The maintenance therapy with ketamine (from twice a week to once in two weeks) appears to be a promising option, although the evidence to firmly recommend it is insufficient. Ketamine may also decrease suicidal thoughts for up to three days after the injection.
Ketamine has not been approved for use as an antidepressant, but the Canadian Network for Mood and
Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) recommends it as a third-line treatment for depression. One of the enantiomers of ketamine, esketamine, has been approved as a nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression in the United States and elsewhere (see Esketamine § Depression). A comparative meta-analysis of clinical trials suggests superior efficacy of intravenous ketamine over intranasal esketamine, with intravenous ketamine having greater overall response and remission rates and a lower number of dropouts. Ketamine may also be effective for bipolar depression, but the data on its use for this form of depression is scarce.
Ketamine Vs rTMS in Treatment Resistant Depression
A retrospective comparative study recently published in Frontiers in Psychiatry aimed to describe and compare the acute antidepressant efficacy of the two mentioned therapies, intramuscular ketamine and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in patients with depression. The clinical records of twenty-four patients with treatment-resistant depression were collected retrospectively from the Cyprus rTMS Center .
• Twelve patients were treated with intramuscular ketamine (patients received intramuscular ketamine twice a week for four weeks)
• Twelve patients had received treatment with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (30 sessions of intermittent theta burst stimulation in the left dorsal lateral frontal cortex over 6 weeks).
The severity of depression and anxiety was assessed before and after each treatment using three clinical assessments (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, Beck Depression Inventory II).
The results of the study showed that both treatments led to a statistically significant improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms, and that there was no statistically significant difference between the two experimental groups, indicating that the effect of both experimental groups on the sample was equally effective. In addition, the results showed high rates of depression and response in both experimental groups, with no statistical differences between patients in the ketamine group versus the group of repetitive trans-cranial magnetic stimulation in the rates of depression and response.
This comparative study was the first to directly compare the efficacy of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and intramuscular ketamine, i.e., a non-pharmacological treatment and a pharmacological treatment for treatment-resistant depression.
Near-death experience
Most people who were able to remember their dreams during ketamine anesthesia report near-death experiences (NDE) when the widest possible definition of an NDE is used. Ketamine can reproduce features which have commonly been associated with NDE's. A 2019 large-scale study found that most drug-induced NDEs were linked to ketamine.
Seizures
Ketamine is sometimes used in the treatment of status epilepticus that has failed to adequately respond to standard treatments, although only limited evidence (case studies and no randomized controlled trials) exists in its favor.
Contraindications
Main contraindications for ketamine:
Severe cardiovascular disease such as unstable angina or poorly controlled hypertension
Increased intracranial or intraocular pressure. Both of these contraindications are controversial
Poorly controlled psychosis
Severe liver disease such as cirrhosis
Pregnancy
Active substance use disorder (for serial ketamine injections)
Age less than 3 months
Side effects
At anesthetic doses, 10–20% of adults (1–2% of children) experience adverse psychiatric reactions that occur during emergence from anesthesia, ranging from dreams and dysphoria to hallucinations and emergence delirium. These can be counteracted by pretreating with a benzodiazepine or propofol. Ketamine anesthesia commonly causes tonic-clonic movements (greater than 10% of people) and rarely hypertonia. Vomiting can be expected in 5–15% of the patients; pre-treatment with propofol mitigates it as well. Laryngospasm occurs only rarely with ketamine. Ketamine, generally, stimulates breathing; however, in the first 2–3 minutes of a high-dose rapid intravenous injection it may cause a transient respiratory depression.
At lower sub-anesthetic doses, psychiatric side effects are prominent. A majority of patients feel strange, spacey, woozy or floating, or have visual distortions or numbness. Also very frequent (20–50%) are difficulty speaking, confusion, euphoria, drowsiness, and difficulty concentrating. The symptoms of psychosis such as going into a hole, disappearing, feeling melting, experiencing colors and hallucinations are described by 6–10% of people. Dizziness, blurred vision, dry mouth, hypertension, nausea, increased/decreased body temperature, or feeling flushed are the common (>10%) non-psychiatric side effects. All these adverse effects are most pronounced by the end of the injection, dramatically reduced 40 min after, and completely disappear within 4 hours after the injection.
Urinary and liver toxicity
Urinary toxicity occurs primarily in people who use large amounts of ketamine routinely, with 20–30% of frequent users having bladder complaints. It includes a range of disorders from cystitis to hydronephrosis to kidney failure. The typical symptoms of ketamine-induced cystitis are frequent urination, dysuria, and urinary urgency sometimes accompanied by pain during urination and blood in urine. The damage to the bladder wall has similarities to both interstitial and eosinophilic cystitis. The wall is thickened, and the functional bladder capacity is as low as 10–150 mL.
Management of ketamine-induced cystitis involves ketamine cessation as the first step. This is followed by NSAIDs and anticholinergics and, if the response is insufficient, by tramadol. The second line treatments are epithelium-protective agents such as oral pentosan polysulfate or intravesical (intra-bladder) instillation of hyaluronic acid. Intravesical botulinum toxin is also useful.
Liver toxicity of ketamine also involves higher doses and repeated administration. In a group of chronic high dose ketamine users, the frequency of liver injury was reported to be about 10%. There are case reports of increased liver enzymes involving ketamine treatment of chronic pain.
Dependence and tolerance
Although the incidence of ketamine dependence is unknown, some people who regularly use ketamine develop ketamine dependence. Animal experiments also confirm the risk of misuse. Additionally, the rapid onset of effects following insufflation may increase the drug's recreational use potential. The short duration of effects promotes bingeing. Ketamine tolerance rapidly develops, even with repeated medical use, prompting the use of higher doses. Some daily users reported withdrawal symptoms, primarily anxiety, shaking, sweating, and palpitations, following the attempts to stop. Cognitive deficits as well as increased dissociation and delusion symptoms were observed in frequent recreational users of ketamine.
Interactions
Ketamine potentiates the sedative effects of propofol and midazolam. Naltrexone potentiates psychotomimetic effects of a low dose of ketamine, while lamotrigine and nimodipine decrease them. Clonidine reduces the salivation, heart rate and blood pressure increases during ketamine anesthesia and decreases the incidence of nightmares.
Clinical observations suggest that benzodiazepines may diminish the antidepressant effects of ketamine. Ketamine is frequently used to treat resistant depression as an add-on to a variety of antidepressants. Hence, it appears most conventional antidepressants can be safely combined with ketamine.
Pharmacology
Pharmacodynamics
Mechanism of action
Antagonism of the NMDA receptor is responsible for the anesthetic, analgesic, and psychotomimetic effects of ketamine. NMDA receptor antagonism results in analgesia by preventing central sensitization in dorsal horn neurons; in other words, ketamine's actions interfere with pain transmission in the spinal cord.
The mechanism of antidepressant action of ketamine is uncertain. It is not clear whether NMDA receptor is solely responsible for this action or interactions with other receptors are also necessary. It is not clear whether ketamine alone is sufficient for the antidepressive action or its metabolites are also important. In any case, it has been elucidated that acute blockade of NMDA receptors in the brain results in an activation of α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptors (AMPA receptors), which in turn modulate a variety of downstream signaling pathways to influence neurotransmission in the limbic system and mediate antidepressant effects of NMDA receptor antagonists like ketamine. Such downstream actions of this activation of AMPA receptors include upregulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and activation of its signaling receptor tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB), activation of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, deactivation of glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK-3), and inhibition of the phosphorylation of the eukaryotic elongation factor 2 (eEF2) kinase. In addition to blockade of the NMDA receptor, the active metabolite of ketamine hydroxynorketamine, which does not interact importantly with the NMDA receptor but nonetheless indirectly activates AMPA receptors similarly, may also or alternatively be involved in the rapid-onset antidepressant effects of ketamine. Recent research has elucidated that an acute inhibition of the lateral habenula, a part of the brain in the limbic system that has been referred to as the "anti-reward center" (projecting to and inhibiting the mesolimbic reward pathway and modulating other limbic areas), may be involved in the antidepressant effects of ketamine.
Ketamine is a mixture of equal amounts of two enantiomers: esketamine and arketamine. Esketamine is a more potent NMDA receptor antagonist and dissociative hallucinogen than arketamine. Because of the hypothesis that NMDA receptor antagonism underlies the antidepressant effects of ketamine, esketamine was developed as an antidepressant. However, multiple other NMDA receptor antagonists, including memantine, lanicemine, rislenemdaz, rapastinel, and 4-chlorokynurenine, have thus far failed to demonstrate sufficient effectiveness for depression. Furthermore, animal research indicates that arketamine, the enantiomer with a weaker NMDA receptor antagonism, as well as (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine, the metabolite with negligible affinity for the NMDA receptor but a potent alpha-7 nicotinic receptor antagonist may have antidepressive action. It is now argued that NMDA receptor antagonism may not be responsible for the antidepressant effects of ketamine.
Molecular targets
Ketamine principally acts as an antagonist of the NMDA receptor, an ionotropic glutamate receptor. The S(+) and R(–) stereoisomers of ketamine bind to the dizocilpine site of the NMDA receptor with different affinities, the former showing approximately 3- to 4- fold greater affinity for the receptor than the latter. As a result, the S isomer is a more potent anesthetic and analgesic than its R counterpart.
Ketamine may also interact with and inhibit the NMDAR via another allosteric site on the receptor.
With a couple of exceptions ketamine actions at other receptors are far weaker than ketamine's antagonism of the NMDA receptor (see the activity table to the right).
Although ketamine is a very weak ligand of the monoamine transporters (Ki > 60 μM), it has been suggested that it may interact with allosteric sites on the monoamine transporters to produce monoamine reuptake inhibition. However, no functional inhibition (IC50) of the human monoamine transporters has been observed with ketamine or its metabolites at concentrations of up to 10,000 nM. Moreover, animal studies and at least three human case reports have found no interaction between ketamine and the monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) tranylcypromine, which is of importance as the combination of a monoamine reuptake inhibitor with an MAOI can produce severe toxicity such as serotonin syndrome or hypertensive crisis. Collectively, these findings shed doubt on the involvement of monoamine reuptake inhibition in the effects of ketamine in humans. Ketamine has been found to increase dopaminergic neurotransmission in the brain, but instead of being due to dopamine reuptake inhibition, this may be via indirect/downstream mechanisms, namely through antagonism of the NMDA receptor.
Whether ketamine is an agonist of D2 receptors is controversial. Early research by Philip Seeman's group found ketamine to be a D2 partial agonist with the potency similar to that of its NMDA receptor antagonism. However, later studies by different researchers found the affinity of ketamine of >10 μM for the regular human and rat D2 receptors, Moreover, whereas D2 receptor agonists like bromocriptine are able to rapidly and powerfully suppress prolactin secretion, subanesthetic doses of ketamine have not been found to do this in humans and in fact have been found to dose-dependently increase prolactin levels. Imaging studies have shown mixed results on inhibition of striatal [11C] raclopride binding by ketamine in humans, with some studies finding a significant decrease and others finding no such effect. However, changes in [11C] raclopride binding may be due to changes in dopamine concentrations induced by ketamine rather than binding of ketamine to the D2 receptor.
Relationships between levels and effects
Dissociation and psychotomimetic effects are reported in patients treated with ketamine at plasma concentrations of around 100 to 250 ng/mL (0.42–1.1 μM). The typical intravenous antidepressant dosage of ketamine used to treat depression is low and results in maximal plasma concentrations of 70 to 200 ng/mL (0.29–0.84 μM). At similar plasma concentrations (70 to 160 ng/mL; 0.29–0.67 μM) it also shows analgesic effects. In 1–5 minutes after inducing anesthesia by a rapid intravenous injection of ketamine, its plasma concentration reaches as high as 60–110 μM. When the anesthesia was maintained using nitrous oxide together with continuous injection of ketamine, the ketamine concentration stabilized at about 9.3 μM. In an experiment with purely ketamine anesthesia, patients began to awaken once the plasma level of ketamine decreased to about 2,600 ng/mL (11 μM) and became oriented in place and time when the level was down to 1,000 ng/mL (4 μM). In a single-case study, the concentration of ketamine in cerebrospinal fluid, a proxy for the brain concentration, during anesthesia varied between 2.8 and 6.5 μM and was about 40% lower than in plasma.
Pharmacokinetics
Ketamine can be absorbed by many different routes due to both its water and lipid solubility. Intravenous ketamine bioavailability is 100% by definition, intramuscular injection bioavailability is slightly lower at 93%, and epidural bioavailability is 77%. Subcutaneous bioavailability has never been measured but is presumed to be high. Among the less invasive routes, intranasal has the highest bioavailability (45–50%) and oral – the lowest (16–20%). Sublingual and rectal bioavailabilities are intermediate at about 25–50%.
After absorption ketamine is rapidly distributed into the brain and other tissues. The plasma protein binding of ketamine is variable at 23 to 47%.
In the body ketamine undergoes extensive metabolism. It is biotransformed by CYP3A4 and CYP2B6 isoenzymes into norketamine, which, in turn, is converted by CYP2A6 and CYP2B6 into hydroxynorketamine and dehydronorketamine. Low oral bioavailability of ketamine is due to the first-pass effect and, possibly, ketamine intestinal metabolism by CYP3A4. As a result, norketamine plasma levels are several-fold higher than ketamine following oral administration, and norketamine may play a role in anesthetic and analgesic action of oral ketamine. This also explains why oral ketamine levels are independent of CYP2B6 activity, unlike subcutaneous ketamine levels.
After an intravenous injection of tritium-labelled ketamine, 91% of the radioactivity is recovered from urine and 3% from the feces. The medication is excreted mostly in the form of metabolites, with only 2% remaining unchanged. Conjugated hydroxylated derivatives of ketamine (80%) followed by dehydronorketamine (16%) are the most prevalent metabolites detected in urine.
Chemistry
Synthesis
2-chlorobenzonitrile is reacted with the Grignard reagent cyclopentylmagnesium bromide to give (2-chlorophenyl)(cyclopentyl)methanone. This is then brominated using bromine to form the corresponding bromoketone, which is then reacted with methylamine in an aqueous solution to form the methylimino derivative, 1-(2-Chloro-N-methylbenzimidoyl)cyclopentanol, with hydrolysis of the tertiary bromine atom. This final intermediate is then heated in decalin or another suitable high-boiling solvent, upon which a ring-expansion rearrangement occurs, forming ketamine.
Structure
In chemical structure, ketamine is an arylcyclohexylamine derivative. Ketamine is a chiral compound. The more active enantiomer, esketamine (S-ketamine), is also available for medical use under the brand name Ketanest S, while the less active enantiomer, arketamine (R-ketamine), has never been marketed as an enantiopure drug for clinical use. While S-ketamine is more effective as an analgesic and anesthetic through NMDA receptor antagonism, R-ketamine produces longer-lasting effects as an antidepressant.
The optical rotation of a given enantiomer of ketamine can vary between its salts and free base form. The free base form of (S)‑ketamine exhibits dextrorotation and is therefore labelled (S)‑(+)‑ketamine. However, its hydrochloride salt shows levorotation and is thus labelled (S)‑(−)‑ketamine hydrochloride.
Detection
Ketamine may be quantitated in blood or plasma to confirm a diagnosis of poisoning in hospitalized patients, provide evidence in an impaired driving arrest or to assist in a medicolegal death investigation. Blood or plasma ketamine concentrations are usually in a range of 0.5–5.0 mg/L in persons receiving the drug therapeutically (during general anesthesia), 1–2 mg/L in those arrested for impaired driving and 3–20 mg/L in victims of acute fatal overdosage. Urine is often the preferred specimen for routine drug use monitoring purposes. The presence of norketamine, a pharmacologically active metabolite, is useful for confirmation of ketamine ingestion.
History
Ketamine was first synthesized in 1962 by Calvin L. Stevens, a professor of chemistry at Wayne State University and a Parke-Davis consultant. It was known by the developmental code name CI-581. After promising preclinical research in animals, ketamine was tested in human prisoners in 1964. These investigations demonstrated ketamine's short duration of action and reduced behavioral toxicity made it a favorable choice over phencyclidine (PCP) as an anesthetic. The researchers were going to call the state of ketamine anesthesia "dreaming" but Parke-Davis did not like it. Hearing about this problem and about the "disconnected" appearance of the patients, the wife of one of the pharmacologists working on ketamine, Edward Domino, suggested "dissociative anesthesia". Following FDA approval in 1970, ketamine anesthesia was first given to American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
The discovery of antidepressive action of ketamine in 2000 has been described as the single most important advance in the treatment of depression in over 50 years. It has sparked interest in NMDA receptor antagonists for depression, and has shifted the direction of antidepressant research and development.
Society and culture
Legal status
While ketamine is legally marketed in many countries worldwide, it is also a controlled substance in many countries.
In Australia, ketamine is listed as a schedule 8 controlled drug under the Poisons Standard (October 2015).
In Canada, ketamine is classified as a Schedule I narcotic, since 2005.
In December 2013, the government of India, in response to rising recreational use and the use of ketamine as a date rape drug, has added it to Schedule X of the Drug and Cosmetics Act requiring a special license for sale and maintenance of records of all sales for two years.
In the United Kingdom, it became labeled a Class B drug on 12 February 2014.
The increase in recreational use prompted ketamine to be placed in Schedule III of the United States Controlled Substance Act in August 1999.
Recreational use
At subanesthetic doses ketamine produces a dissociative state, characterised by a sense of detachment from one's physical body and the external world that is known as depersonalization and derealization. At sufficiently high doses, users may experience what is called the "K-hole", a state of dissociation with visual and auditory hallucinations similar to the effects of LSD. John C. Lilly, Marcia Moore, D. M. Turner, and David Woodard (amongst others) have written extensively about their own entheogenic use of, and psychonautic experiences with, ketamine. Turner died prematurely due to drowning during presumed unsupervised ketamine use. In 2006 the Russian edition of Adam Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture II was banned and destroyed by authorities owing to its inclusion of an essay by Woodard about the entheogenic use of, and psychonautic experiences with, ketamine.
Recreational ketamine use has been implicated in deaths globally, with more than 90 deaths in England and Wales in the years of 2005–2013. They include accidental poisonings, drownings, traffic accidents, and suicides. The majority of deaths were among young people. Because of its ability to cause confusion and amnesia, ketamine has been used for date rape.
Veterinary medicine
In veterinary anaesthesia, ketamine is often used for its anaesthetic and analgesic effects on cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, and other small animals. It is frequently used in induction and anaesthetic maintenance in horses. It is an important part of the "rodent cocktail", a mixture of drugs used for anaesthetising rodents. Veterinarians often use ketamine with sedative drugs to produce balanced anaesthesia and analgesia, and as a constant-rate infusion to help prevent pain wind-up. Ketamine is also used to manage pain among large animals. It is the primary intravenous anaesthetic agent used in equine surgery, often in conjunction with detomidine and thiopental, or sometimes guaifenesin.
Ketamine appears not to produce sedation or anaesthesia in snails. Instead, it appears to have an excitatory effect.
References
External links
Ketamine — from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) Drug Information Portal
Ketamine hydrochloride — from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)Drug Information Portal
Ketamine fact sheet — from the United States DEA, via Archive.org
Analgesics
Antidepressants
Arylcyclohexylamines
Chemical substances for emergency medicine
Chloroarenes
D2-receptor agonists
Dissociative drugs
Drugs with unknown mechanisms of action
Euphoriants
General anesthetics
Ketones
Muscarinic antagonists
NMDA receptor antagonists
Nicotinic antagonists
Opioid modulators
Sedatives
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World Health Organization essential medicines
Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate
Veterinary medicine
Equine medications | [
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16954 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickapoo%20people | Kickapoo people | The Kickapoo people (Kickapoo: Kiikaapoa or Kiikaapoi; ) are an Algonquian-speaking Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribe, originating in the region south of the Great Lakes. Today, three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes are in the United States: the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. The Oklahoma and Texas bands are politically associated with each other. The Kickapoo in Kansas came from a relocation from southern Missouri in 1832 as a land exchange from their reserve there. Around 3,000 people are enrolled tribal members.
Another band, the Tribu Kikapú, resides in Múzquiz Municipality in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. Smaller bands live in Sonora, to the west, and Durango, to the southwest.
Name and etymology
According to some sources, the name "Kickapoo" (Giiwigaabaw in the Anishinaabe language and its Kickapoo cognate Kiwikapawa) means "stands here and there," which may have referred to the tribe's migratory patterns. The name can also mean "wanderer". This interpretation is contested and generally believed to be a folk etymology.
History
Pre-1800s
The Kickapoo are an Algonquian-language people who likely migrated to or developed as a people in a large territory along the southern Wabash River in the area of modern Terre Haute, Indiana, where they were located at the time of first contact with Europeans in the 1600s. They were confederated with the larger Wabash Confederacy, which included the Piankeshaw and the Wea to their north, and the powerful Miami Tribe, to their east. A subgroup occupied the Upper Iowa River region in what was later known as northeast Iowa and the Root River region in southeast Minnesota in the late 1600s and early 1700s. This group was probably known by the clan name "Mahouea", derived from the Illinoian word for wolf, m'hwea.
The earliest European contact with the Kickapoo tribe occurred during the La Salle Expeditions into Illinois Country in the late 17th century. The French colonists set up remote fur trading posts throughout the region, including on the Wabash River. They typically set up posts at or near Native American villages. Terre Haute was founded as an associated French village. The Kickapoo had to contend with a changing cast of Europeans; the British defeated the French in the Seven Years' War and took over nominal rule of former French territory east of the Mississippi River after 1763. They increased their own trading with the Kickapoo.
1800s to present
The United States acquired the territory east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River after it gained independence from the United Kingdom. As white settlers moved into the region from the United States' eastern areas, beginning in the early 19th century, the Kickapoo were under pressure. They negotiated with the United States over their territory in several treaties, including the Treaty of Vincennes, the Treaty of Grouseland, and the Treaty of Fort Wayne. They sold most of their lands to the United States and moved north to settle among the Wea.
Rising tensions between the regional tribes and the United States led to Tecumseh's War in 1811. The Kickapoo were among the closest allies of Shawnee leader Tecumseh. Many Kickapoo warriors participated in the Battle of Tippecanoe and the subsequent War of 1812 on the side of the British, hoping to expel the white American settlers from the region.
The 1819 treaty of Edwardsville saw the Kickapoo cede the entirety of their holdings in Illinois comprising nearly one-half area of the state, in exchange for a smaller tract on the Osage river in Missouri and $3,000 worth of goods. The Kickapoo were not eager to move, partly as their assigned tract in Missouri was made of rugged hills and already occupied by the Osage, who were their hereditary enemies. Instead, half of the population traveled south and crossed onto the Spanish side of the Red river in modern day Texas. The US government quickly mobilized to prevent this emigration and force their removal to Missouri. This remnant of Kickapoo remained in Illinois under the guidance of Kennekuk, a prominent, nonviolent spiritual leader among the Kickapoo. He led his followers during the Indian Removal in the 1830s to their current tribal lands in Kansas. He died there of smallpox in 1852.
The close of the war led to a change of federal Indian policy in the Indiana Territory, and later the state of Indiana. White American leaders began to advocate the removal of tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River, to extinguish their claims to lands wanted by white American settlers. The Kickapoo were among the first tribes to leave Indiana under this program. They accepted land in Kansas and an annual subsidy in exchange for leaving the state.
Language
Kickapoo is dialect of the Fox language closely related to dialects spoken by the Sauk people and Meskwaki people. They are classified with the Central Algonquian languages, and are also related to the Illinois Confederation.
In 1985, the Kickapoo Nation's School in Horton, Kansas, began a language-immersion program for elementary school grades to revive teaching and use of the Kickapoo language in kindergarten through grade 6. Efforts in language education continue at most Kickapoo sites.
In 2010, the Head Start Program at the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas reservation, which teaches the Kickapoo language, became "the first Native American school to earn Texas School Ready! (TSR) Project certification."
Also in 2010, Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia participated in the elaboration of a Kickapoo alphabet. The Kickapoo in Mexico are known for their whistled speech.
Texts, recordings, and a vocabulary of the language are available.
The Kickapoo language and members of the Kickapoo tribe were featured in the movie The Only Good Indian (2009), directed by Greg Wilmott and starring Wes Studi. This was a fictionalized account of Native American children forced to attend an Indian boarding school, where they were forced to speak English and give up their cultural practices.
Writing system
A Kickapoo alphabet was developed by Paul Voorhis in 1974 and was revised in 1981. A new orthography is used by the Kickapoo Language Development Program in Oklahoma.
Sounds
Consonants
Eleven consonant phonemes are used in Kickapoo:
The voiceless sounds can sometimes be voiced as .
in word-initial position can also be aspirated as .
// can also be pronounced as .
Vowels
The eight vowel sounds in Kickapoo are: short and long .
Sounds , can be phonetically heard as allophones and can be heard as .
Tribes and communities
Three federally recognized Kickapoo communities are in the United States in Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. The Mexican Kickapoo are closely tied to the Texas and Oklahoma communities. These groups migrate annually among the three locations to maintain connections. Indeed, the Texas and Mexican branches are the same cross-border nation, called Kickapoo of Coahuila/Texas
Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Kansas
The tribe in Kansas was home to prophet Kenekuk, who was known for his astute leadership that allowed the small group to maintain their reservation. Kenekuk wanted to keep order among the tribe he was in, while living in Kansas. He also wanted to focus on keeping the identity of the Kickapoo people, because of all the relocations they had done.
The basis of Kenekuk's leadership began in the religious revivals of the 1820s and 1830s, with a blend of Protestantism and Catholicism. Kenekuk taught his tribesmen and white audiences to obey God's commands, for sinners were damned to the pits of hell. Once the Kickapoo people got relocated to Kansas they resisted the ideas of Protestantism and Catholicism and started focusing more on farming, so they could provide food for the rest of the tribe. After this had happened they remained together and claimed some of the original land that they had before it was taken by Americans.
The Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Kansas is located at in the northeastern part of the state in parts of three counties: Brown, Jackson, and Atchison. It has a land area of and a resident population of 4,419 as of the 2000 census. The largest community on the reservation is the city of Horton. The other communities are:
Muscotah
Netawaka
Powhattan
Whiting
Willis
Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Texas
The Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Texas is located at on the Rio Grande on the U.S.-Mexico border in western Maverick County, just south of the city of Ciudad Acuña, as part of the community of Rosita South. It has a land area of and a 2000 census population of 420 persons. The Texas Indian Commission officially recognized the tribe in 1977.
Other Kickapoo in Maverick County, Texas, constitute the "South Texas Subgroup of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma". That band owns of non-reservation land in Maverick County, primarily to the north of Eagle Pass. It has an office in that city.
Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma
After being expelled from the Republic of Texas, many Kickapoo moved south to Mexico, but the population of two villages settled in Indian Territory. One village settled within the Chickasaw Nation and the other within the Muscogee Creek Nation. These Kickapoo were granted their own reservation in 1883 and became recognized as the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma.
The reservation was short-lived. In 1893 under the Dawes Act, their communal tribal lands were broken up and assigned to separate member households by allotments. The tribe's government was dismantled by the Curtis Act of 1898, which encouraged assimilation by Native Americans to the majority culture. Tribal members struggled under these conditions.
In the 1930s the federal and state governments encouraged tribes to reorganize their governments. This one formed the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma in 1936, under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act.
Today the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is headquartered in McLoud, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is in Oklahoma, Pottawatomie, and Lincoln counties. They have 2,719 enrolled tribal members.
See also
Kickapoo whistled speech
Mascouten
Notes
Further reading
Grant Foreman, The Last Trek of the Indians: An Account of the Removal of the Indians from North of the Ohio River, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946
Arrell M. Gibson, The Kickapoo: Lords of the Middle Border, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963
Mager Elisabeth (2017) Ethnic Consciousness in Cultural Survival: The Morongo Band of Mission Indians and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas . American Indian Culture and Research Journal: 2017, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 47–72.
M. Christopher Nunley, "Kickapoo Indians," in The New Handbook of Texas, Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996.
Muriel H. Wright, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986
Joseph B. Herring, Kennekuk: The Kickapoo Prophet, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1988
External links
Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas, official website
Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, official website
Kickapoo language, alphabet and pronunciation
Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, official website
Matthew R. Garrett, Kickapoo Foreign Policy, 1650–1830, PhD dissertation, University of Nebraska, 2006, at Digital Commons
Kickapoo Reservation, Kansas and Kickapoo Reservation, Texas United States Census Bureau
"First Nations: Kickapoo", Lee Sultzman Tolatsga]
Algonquian peoples
Native American history of Indiana
Native American history of Iowa
Native American history of Kansas
Native American history of Minnesota
Native American history of Oklahoma
Native American history of Texas
Native American tribes in Kansas
Native American tribes in Oklahoma
Native American tribes in Texas
Algonquian ethnonyms
Native American tribes in Iowa | [
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16957 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata%20%28disambiguation%29 | Kata (disambiguation) | Kata is a martial arts term referring to a pattern of defense-and-attack. Kata may also mean:
People:
Kata (name)
Kata people or Katirs, alternative name for a tribal group of Afghanistan
Katariina Souri (born 1968), Finnish author, artist, columnist, and a Playboy Playmate of the Month
Kata, Georgian royal princess of the 11th century
Kata, Georgian royal princess of the 12th century
Solomone Kata, Tongan rugby league player
Places:
Kata, Burma, a town
Kata, Estonia, a village
Kata, Iran, a village
Kata, Myanmar, a village
Kata, Tibet, a village
Other:
Kata (programming), exercises in programming which help hone skills through practice and repetition
Kata (mathematics), a name proposed for a direction in a fourth spatial dimension
KATA (AM), a California radio station
KATA-CD, a Dallas, TX, television station
Kata Station, a train station in Owase, Japan
An abbreviation for the Katakana character set in the Japanese writing language
Kata, a Grenada drum
Kata, a West-African local name for Ovine rinderpest
See also
Khata, a name for ceremonial white silk scarves most often Tibet which are an auspicious symbol and lend a positive note to the start of any enterprise or relationship
he:קאטה
ja:型 | [
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16959 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyusha%20rocket%20launcher | Katyusha rocket launcher | The Katyusha multiple rocket launcher () is a type of rocket artillery first built and fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II. Multiple rocket launchers such as these deliver explosives to a target area more intensively than conventional artillery, but with lower accuracy and requiring a longer time to reload. They are fragile compared to artillery guns, but are cheap, easy to produce, and usable on any chassis. The Katyushas of World War II, the first self-propelled artillery mass-produced by the Soviet Union, were usually mounted on ordinary trucks. This mobility gave the Katyusha, and other self-propelled artillery, another advantage: being able to deliver a large blow all at once, and then move before being located and attacked with counter-battery fire.
Katyusha weapons of World War II included the BM-13 launcher, light BM-8, and heavy BM-31. Today, the nickname is also applied to newer truck-mounted post-Soviet – in addition to non-Soviet – multiple-rocket launchers, notably the common BM-21 Grad and its derivatives.
Although this type of weapon has existed since the 15th century (Leonardo da Vinci having designed a similar machine), the design of the Katyusha may have been influenced by the Machine infernale of Giuseppe Marco Fieschi (1790–1836) — Fieschi was honored in a religious service at a Moscow church in 1942 at the prompting of the Soviet engineer General , a co-developer of the Katyusha rocket launcher.
Nickname
Initially, concerns for secrecy kept the military designation of the Katyushas from being known by the soldiers who operated them. They were called by code names such as Kostikov guns, after A. Kostikov, the head of the RNII, the Reaction-Engine Scientific Research Institute, and finally classed as Guards Mortars. The name BM-13 was only allowed into secret documents in 1942, and remained classified until after the war.
Because they were marked with the letter K (for Voronezh Komintern Factory), Red Army troops adopted a nickname from Mikhail Isakovsky's popular wartime song, "Katyusha", about a girl longing for her absent beloved, who has gone away on military service. Katyusha is the Russian equivalent of Katie, an endearing diminutive form of the name Katherine. Yekaterina is given the diminutive Katya, which itself is then given the affectionate diminutive Katyusha.
German troops coined the nickname "Stalin's organ" (), after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, comparing the visual resemblance of the launch array to a pipe organ, and the sound of the weapon's rocket motors, a distinctive howling sound which terrified the German troops, adding a psychological warfare aspect to their use. Weapons of this type are known by the same name in Denmark (), Finland (), France (), Norway (), the Netherlands and Belgium (), Hungary (), Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries () as well as in Sweden ().
The heavy BM-31 launcher was also referred to as Andryusha (Андрюша, an affectionate diminutive of "Andrew").
World War II
Katyusha rocket launchers, which were invented in Voronezh, were mounted on many platforms during World War II, including on trucks, artillery tractors, tanks, and armoured trains, as well as on naval and riverine vessels as assault support weapons. Soviet engineers also mounted single Katyusha rockets on lengths of railway track to serve in urban combat.
The design was relatively simple, consisting of racks of parallel rails on which rockets were mounted, with a folding frame to raise the rails to launch position. Each truck had 14 to 48 launchers. The M-13 rocket of the BM-13 system was long, in diameter and weighed .
The weapon is less accurate than conventional artillery guns, but is extremely effective in saturation bombardment. A battery of four BM-13 launchers could fire a salvo in 7–10 seconds that delivered 4.35 tons of high explosives over a impact zone, making its power roughly equivalent to that of 72 conventional artillery guns. With an efficient crew, the launchers could redeploy to a new location immediately after firing, denying the enemy the opportunity for counterbattery fire. Katyusha batteries were often massed in very large numbers to create a shock effect on enemy forces. The weapon's disadvantage was the long time it took to reload a launcher, in contrast to conventional guns which could sustain a continuous low rate of fire.
Development
In June 1938, the Soviet Reaction-Engine Scientific Research Institute (RNII) in Moscow was authorized by the Main Artillery Directorate (GAU) to develop a multiple rocket launcher for the RS-132 aircraft rocket (RS for , 'rocket-powered shell'). I. Gvay led a design team in Chelyabinsk, Russia, which built several prototype launchers firing the modified 132 mm M-132 rockets over the sides of ZIS-5 trucks. These proved unstable, and V.N. Galkovskiy proposed mounting the launch rails longitudinally. In August 1939, the result was the BM-13 (BM stands for боевая машина (translit. boyevaya mashina), 'combat vehicle' for M-13 rockets).
The first large-scale testing of the rocket launchers took place at the end of 1938, when 233 rounds of various types were used. A salvo of rockets could completely straddle a target at a range of . But the artillery branch was not fond of the Katyusha, because it took up to 50 minutes to load and fire 24 rounds, while a conventional howitzer could fire 95 to 150 rounds in the same time. Testing with various rockets was conducted through 1940, and the BM-13-16 with launch rails for sixteen rockets was authorized for production. Only forty launchers were built before Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
After their success in the first month of the war, mass production was ordered and the development of other models proceeded. The Katyusha was inexpensive and could be manufactured in light industrial installations which did not have the heavy equipment to build conventional artillery gun barrels. By the end of 1942, 3,237 Katyusha launchers of all types had been built, and by the end of the war total production reached about 10,000.
The truck-mounted Katyushas were installed on ZIS-6 6×4 trucks, as well as the two-axle ZIS-5 and ZIS-5V. In 1941, a small number of BM-13 launchers were mounted on STZ-5 artillery tractors. A few were also tried on KV tank chassis as the KV-1K, but this was a needless waste of heavy armour. Starting in 1942, they were also mounted on various British, Canadian and U.S. Lend-Lease trucks, in which case they were sometimes referred to as BM-13S. The cross-country performance of the Studebaker US6 2½-ton 6×6 truck was so good that it became the GAU's standard mounting in 1943, designated BM-13N (normalizovanniy, 'standardized'), and more than 1,800 of this model were manufactured by the end of World War II. After World War II, BM-13s were based on Soviet-built ZIS-151 trucks.
The 82 mm BM-8 was approved in August 1941, and deployed as the BM-8-36 on truck beds and BM-8-24 on T-40 and T-60 light tank chassis. Later these were also installed on GAZ-67 jeeps as the BM-8-8, and on the larger Studebaker trucks as the BM-8-48. In 1942, the team of scientists Leonid Shvarts, Moisei Komissarchik and engineer Yakov Shor received the Stalin prize for the development of the BM-8-48.
Based on the M-13, the M-30 rocket was developed in 1942. Its bulbous warhead required it to be fired from a grounded frame, called the M-30 (single frame, four round; later double frame, 8 round), instead of a launch rail mounted on a truck. In 1944 it became the basis for the BM-31-12 truck-mounted launcher.
A battery of BM-13-16 launchers included four firing vehicles, two reload trucks and two technical support trucks, with each firing vehicle having a crew of six. Reloading was executed in 3–4 minutes, although the standard procedure was to switch to a new position some 10 km away due to the ease with which the battery could be identified by the enemy. Three batteries were combined into a division (company), and three divisions into a separate mine-firing regiment of rocket artillery.
Variants
Soviet World War II rocket systems were named according to the following templates:
BM-x-y (names used for ground vehicles)
M-x-y (names used for towed trailers and sledges)
y-M-x (names used for navy)
where:
x is a model of a missile.
y is a number of launch rails/tubes.
In particular, BM-8-16 is a vehicle which fires M-8 missiles and has 16 rails. BM-31-12 is a vehicle which fires M-31 missiles and has 12 launch tubes. Short names such as BM-8 or BM-13 were used too. Number of launch rails/tubes is absent here. Such names describe launchers only no matter what vehicle they are mounted on. In particular BM-8-24 had a number of variants: vehicle mounted (ZIS-5 truck), tank mounted (T-40) and tractor mounted (STZ-3). All of them had the same name: BM-8-24. Other launchers had a number of variants mounted on different vehicles too. Typical set of vehicles for soviet missile systems is the following:
ZIS-5 (truck),
ZIS-6 (truck),
GAZ-AA (truck),
STZ-5 (tractor),
T-40 (tank),
Studebaker US6 (truck),
Armored train car,
River boat,
Towed sledge,
Towed trailer,
Backpack (portable variant, so called "mountain Katyusha"),
ZIS-151 (truck, used after the war);
Note: There was also an experimental KV-1K – Katyusha mounted on KV-1 tank which was not taken in service.
A list of some implementations of the Katyusha follows:
Rocket variants
Rockets used in the above implementations were:
The M-8 and M-13 rocket could also be fitted with smoke warheads, although this was not common.
Foreign variants
The Axis powers had captured Katyushas during the war. Germany considered producing a local copy, but instead created the 8 cm Raketen-Vielfachwerfer, which was based on the Katyusha.
Romania had started developing its Mareșal tank destroyer in late 1942. One of the first experimental models was equipped with a Katyusha rocket launcher and tested in the summer of 1943. The project was not continued.
Combat history
The multiple rocket launchers were top secret in the beginning of World War II. A special unit of the NKVD troops was raised to operate them. On July 14, 1941, an experimental artillery battery of seven launchers was first used in battle at Rudnya in Smolensk Oblast of Russia, under the command of Captain Ivan Flyorov, destroying a concentration of German troops with tanks, armored vehicles and trucks at the marketplace, causing massive German Army casualties and its retreat from the town in panic, see also in articles by a Russian military historian Andrey Sapronov, an eyewitness of the maiden launches. Following the success, the Red Army organized new Guards mortar batteries for the support of infantry divisions. A battery's complement was standardized at four launchers. They remained under NKVD control until German Nebelwerfer rocket launchers became common later in the war.
On August 8, 1941, Stalin ordered the formation of eight special Guards mortar regiments under the direct control of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command (RVGK). Each regiment comprised three battalions of three batteries, totalling 36 BM-13 or BM-8 launchers. Independent Guards mortar battalions were also formed, comprising 12 launchers in three batteries of four. By the end of 1941, there were eight regiments, 35 independent battalions, and two independent batteries in service, fielding a total of 554 launchers.
In June 1942 heavy Guards mortar battalions were formed around the new M-30 static rocket launch frames, consisting of 96 launchers in three batteries. In July, a battalion of BM-13s was added to the establishment of a tank corps. In 1944, the BM-31 was used in motorized heavy Guards mortar battalions of 48 launchers. In 1943, Guards mortar brigades, and later divisions, were formed equipped with static launchers.
By the end of 1942, 57 regiments were in service—together with the smaller independent battalions, this was the equivalent of 216 batteries: 21% BM-8 light launchers, 56% BM-13, and 23% M-30 heavy launchers. By the end of the war, the equivalent of 518 batteries were in service.
Post-war development
The success and economy of multiple rocket launchers (MRL) have led them to continue to be developed. In the years following WWII, the BM-13 was replaced by the 140 mm BM-14 and the BM-31 was replaced by the 240 mm BM-24. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union fielded several models of Katyusha-like MRL, notably the BM-21 Grad launchers somewhat inspired by the earlier weapon, and the larger BM-27 Uragan. Advances in artillery munitions have been applied to some Katyusha-type multiple launch rocket systems, including bomblet submunitions, remotely deployed land mines, and chemical warheads.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia inherited most of its military arsenal including its large complement of MRLs. In recent history, they have been used by the Russian Armed Forces during the First and Second Chechen Wars and by the Armenian and Azerbaijani Armed Forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. The Georgian Defense Forces are reported to have used BM-21 Grad or similar rocket artillery in fighting in the 2008 South Ossetia war.
Katyusha-like launchers were exported to Afghanistan, Angola, Czechoslovakia, Khmer Republic, Egypt, East Germany, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Mongolia, North Korea, Poland, Syria, Yemen and Vietnam. They were also built in Czechoslovakia, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and Iran.
Proper Katyushas (BM-13s) also saw action in the Korean War, used by the Chinese People's Volunteer Army and Korean People's Army against the South Korean and United Nations forces. Soviet BM-13s were known to have been imported to China before the Sino-Soviet split and were operational in the People's Liberation Army. The Viet Minh deployed them against the French Far East Expeditionary Corps during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu at the end of the First Indochina War.
Israel captured BM-24 MRLs during the Six-Day War (1967), used them in two battalions during the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the 1982 Lebanon War, and later developed the MAR-240 launcher for the same rockets, based on a Sherman tank chassis.
The rockets were employed by the Tanzania People's Defence Force in the Uganda-Tanzania War. Tanzanian forces called them Baba Mtakatifu (Kiswahili for "Holy Father") while the Ugandans called them Saba Saba.
During the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired between 3,970 and 4,228 rockets, from light truck-mounts and single-rail man-portable launchers. About 95% of these were 122 mm (4.8 in) Syrian-manufactured M-21OF type artillery rockets which carried warheads up to 30 kg (66 lb) and had a range of 20 km, perhaps up to 30 km (19 mi). Most rockets fired at Israel by Hamas from the Gaza Strip are of the simpler Qassam rocket type, but Hamas has also launched 122-mm Grad-type Katyusha rockets against several cities in Israel, although they are not reported to have truck-mounted launchers. Although Katyusha originally referred to the mobile launcher, today the rockets are often referred to as Katyushas.
Some allege that the Central Intelligence Agency bought Katyushas from the Egyptian Armed Forces and supplied them to the Mujahideen (via Pakistan's ISI) during the Soviet Afghan war.
Katyusha-like MRLs were also allegedly used by the Rwandan Patriotic Front during its 1990 invasion of Rwanda, through the 1994 genocide. They were effective in battle, but translated into much anti-Tutsi sentiment in the local media.
It was reported that BM-21 Grad launchers were used against the U.S. Army during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They have also been used in the Afghanistan and Iraq insurgencies. In Iraq, according to Associated Press and Agence France-Presse reports, Katyusha-like rockets were fired at the Green Zone late March 2008.
Katyusha rockets were reportedly used by both Gaddafi Loyalists and anti-Gaddafi forces during the Libyan Civil War.
In February 2013, the Defence Ministry of Yemen reported seizing an Iranian ship, and that the ship's cargo included (among its other weapons) Katyusha rockets.
On May 19, 2019, a Katyusha rocket was fired inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq, landing less than a mile from the US Embassy near the statue of the Unknown Soldier. No casualties were reported.
On January 4, 2020, four Katyusha rockets were fired in the Baghdad area. According to two Iraqi Police sources and an official Iraqi Armed Forces statement, one Katyusha rocket landed in the Green Zone in Celebration Square near the U.S. Embassy and another landed in the nearby Jadriya neighborhood. Two other Katyusha rockets landed in Balad Air Base, which houses U.S. Armed Forces troops, according to two security sources.
See also
Congreve rocket, British military weapon designed by Sir William Congreve in 1804
Hwacha, Korean gunpowder-based flaming arrow launcher from the 1500s
Land Mattress, employed by Allied forces in World War II
List of rocket artillery
Nebelwerfer, the most common barrage rocket series employed by the Wehrmacht in World War II
Panzerwerfer, German rocket launcher mounted on a half-track
T34 Calliope, rocket launcher mounted on M-4 Sherman tank chassis. Last vehicle-mounted highly-mobile multiple-rocket launcher by US land forces, before abandoning this concept till the latter's concept comeback in the mid-1980s.
Wurfrahmen 40, another German rocket launcher mounted on a half-track
References
Citations
General bibliography
Further reading
Prenatt, Jamie and Hook, Adam (2016). Katyusha: Russian Multiple Rocket Launchers 1941–Present, Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd.
External links
Photos of various mounts of Katyushas
"Creation and Development of Rocket Artillery in the First Phase of the War", translation of a 1976 article published by the USSR Defence Ministry (broken link, see archive)
Photo of a Cuban BM-21 in Angola
Multiple rocket launchers of the Soviet Union
Self-propelled artillery of the Soviet Union
World War II self-propelled artillery
Wheeled self-propelled rocket launchers
World War II artillery of the Soviet Union
Soviet inventions
Military vehicles introduced from 1940 to 1944 | [
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16960 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy%20Acker | Kathy Acker | Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 – November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trauma, sexuality and rebellion. She was influenced by the Black Mountain School poets, William S. Burroughs, David Antin, Carolee Schneeman, Eleanor Antin, French critical theory, mysticism, and pornography, as well as classic literature.
Biography
The sole biological daughter of Donald and Claire (née Weill) Lehman, Kathy Acker was born Karen Lehman in New York City, in 1947, although the Library of Congress gives her birth year as 1948, while The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica gave her birth year as April 18, 1948, New York, New York, U.S. and died Nov. 30, 1997, Tijuana, Mexico. Most obituaries, including The New York Times, cited her birth year as 1944. Her family was from a wealthy, assimilated, German-Jewish background that was culturally, but not religiously Jewish. Her paternal grandmother, Florence Weill, was an Austrian Jew who had inherited a small fortune from her husband's glove-making business. Acker's grandparents went into political exile from Alsace-Lorraine prior to World War I, due to the rising nationalism of pre-Nazi Germany, moving to Paris and then to the United States. According to Acker, her grandparents were "first generation French-German Jews" whose ancestors originally hailed from the Pale of Settlement. In an interview with the magazine Tattoo Jew, Acker stated that religious Judaism "means nothing to me. I don't run away from it, it just means nothing to me" and elaborated that her parents were "high-German Jews" who held cultural prejudices against Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews ("I was trained to run away from Polish Jews.").
The pregnancy was unplanned; Donald Lehman abandoned the family before Karen's birth. Her relationship with her domineering mother even into adulthood was fraught with hostility and anxiety because Acker felt unloved and unwanted. Her mother soon remarried, to Albert Alexander, whose surname Kathy was given, although the writer later described her mother's union with Alexander as a passionless marriage to an ineffectual man. Karen (later Kathy) had a half-sister, Wendy, by her mother's second marriage, but the two women were never close and long estranged. By the time of Kathy's death, she had requested that her friends not contact Wendy, as some had suggested. Acker was raised in her mother and stepfather's home in the Sutton Place neighborhood of Manhattan's prosperous Upper East Side. In 1978, Claire Alexander, Karen's mother, committed suicide. As an adult, Acker tried to track down her father, but abandoned her search after she discovered that her father had disappeared after killing a trespasser on his yacht and spending six months in a psychiatric asylum until the state excused him of murder charges.
In 1966, she married Robert Acker, and took his surname. Robert Acker was the son of lower-middle-class Polish-Jewish immigrants. Kathy's parents had held hopes that their daughter would marry a wealthy man and did not expect the marriage to last long. Although her birth name was Karen, she was known as Kathy to her friends and family. Her first work appeared in print as part of the burgeoning New York City literary underground of the mid-1970s.
During the 1970s, Acker often moved back and forth between San Diego, San Francisco, and New York. She married the composer and experimental musician Peter Gordon shortly before the end of their seven-year relationship. Later, she had relationships with the theorist, publisher, and critic Sylvère Lotringer and then with the filmmaker and film theorist Peter Wollen.
In 1996, Acker left San Francisco and moved to London to live with the writer and music critic Charles Shaar Murray.
She married twice. Although most of her relationships were with men, she was openly bisexual. In 1979, she won the Pushcart Prize for her short story "New York City in 1979". During the early 1980s, she lived in London, where she wrote several of her most critically acclaimed works. After returning to the United States in the late 1980s, she worked as an adjunct professor at the San Francisco Art Institute for about six years and as a visiting professor at several universities, including the University of Idaho, the University of California, San Diego, University of California, Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Arts, and Roanoke College.
Health and death
In April 1996, Acker was diagnosed with breast cancer and she elected to have a double mastectomy. In January 1997, she wrote about her loss of faith in conventional medicine in a Guardian article, "The Gift of Disease".
In the article, she explains that after unsuccessful surgery, which left her feeling physically mutilated and emotionally debilitated, she rejected the passivity of the patient in the medical mainstream and began to seek out the advice of nutritionists, acupuncturists, psychic healers, and Chinese herbalists. She found appealing the claim that instead of being an object of knowledge, as in Western medicine, the patient becomes a seer, a seeker of wisdom, that illness becomes the teacher and the patient the student. After pursuing several forms of alternative medicine in England and the United States, Acker died a year and a half later, on November 30, 1997, aged 50, from complications of cancer in a Tijuana alternative cancer clinic, the only alternative-treatment facility that accepted her with her advanced stage of cancer. She died in what was called "Room 101", to which her friend Alan Moore quipped, "There's nothing that woman can't turn into a literary reference". (Room 101, in the climax of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, is the basement torture chamber in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst fears.)
Education
At Brandeis University, she engaged in undergraduate coursework in Classics at a time when Angela Davis was also at the university. She became interested in writing novels, and moved to California to attend University of California, San Diego, where David Antin, Eleanor Antin, and Jerome Rothenberg were among her teachers. She received her bachelor's degree in 1968. After moving to New York, she attended two years of graduate school at the City University of New York in Classics, specializing in Greek. She did not earn a graduate degree. During her time in New York, she was employed as a file clerk, secretary, stripper, and porn performer.
Literary overview
Acker was associated with the New York punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The punk aesthetic influenced her literary style.
In the 1970s, before the term "postmodernism" was popular, Acker began writing her books. These books contain features that would eventually be considered postmodernist work. Her controversial body of work borrows heavily from the experimental styles of William S. Burroughs and Marguerite Duras. Her writing strategies at times used forms of pastiche and deployed Burroughs's cut-up technique, involving cutting-up and scrambling passages and sentences into a somewhat random remix. Acker defined her writing as existing post-nouveau roman European tradition.
In her texts, she combines biographical elements, power, sex and violence. Indeed, critics often compare her writing to that of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jean Genet. Critics have noticed links to Gertrude Stein and photographers Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine. Acker's novels also exhibit a fascination with and an indebtedness to tattoos. She dedicated Empire of the Senseless to her tattooist.
Acker published her first book, Politics, in 1972. Although the collection of poems and essays did not garner much critical or public attention, it did establish her reputation within the New York punk scene. In 1973, she published her first novel (under the pseudonym Black Tarantula), The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula: Some Lives of Murderesses. The following year, she published her second novel, I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining. Both works are reprinted in Portrait of an Eye.
In 1979, she received popular attention after winning a Pushcart Prize for her short story "New York City in 1979". She did not receive critical attention, however, until publishing Great Expectations in 1982. The opening of Great Expectations is an obvious re-writing of Charles Dickens's work of the same name. It features her usual subject matter, including a semi-autobiographical account of her mother's suicide and the appropriation of several other texts, including Pierre Guyotat's violent and sexually explicit "Eden Eden Eden". That same year, Acker published a chapbook, entitled Hello, I'm Erica Jong. She appropriated from a number of influential writers. These writers include Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Keats, William Faulkner, T.S Eliot, the Brontë sisters, the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, and Arthur Rimbaud.
Acker wrote the script for the 1983 film Variety. Acker wrote a text on the photographer Marcus Leatherdale that was published in 1983, in an art catalogue for the Molotov Gallery in Vienna.
In 1984, Acker's first British publication, the novel Blood and Guts in High School was published soon after its publication by Grove Press in New York.
That same year, she was signed by Grove Press, one of the legendary independent publishers committed to controversial and avant-garde writing; she was one of the last writers taken on by Barney Rosset before the end of his tenure there. Most of her work was published by them, including re-issues of important earlier work. She wrote for several magazines and anthologies, including the periodicals RE/Search, Angel Exhaust, monochrom and Rapid Eye. As she neared the end of her life, her work was more well-received by the conventional press; for example, The Guardian published a number of her essays, interviews, and articles, among them was an interview with the Spice Girls.
In Memoriam to Identity draws attention to popular analyses of Rimbaud's life and The Sound and the Fury, constructing or revealing social and literary identity. Although known in the literary world for creating a whole new style of feminist prose and for her transgressive fiction, she was also a punk and feminist icon for her devoted portrayals of subcultures, strong-willed women, and violence.
Notwithstanding the increased recognition she got for Great Expectations, Blood and Guts in High School is often considered Acker's breakthrough work. Published in 1984, it is one of her most extreme explorations of sexuality and violence. Borrowing from, among other texts, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Blood and Guts details the experiences of Janey Smith, a sex-addicted and pelvic inflammatory disease-ridden urbanite who is in love with a father who sells her into slavery. Many critics criticized it for being demeaning toward women, and Germany banned it completely. Acker published the German court judgment against Blood and Guts in High School in Hannibal Lecter, My Father.
Acker published Empire of the Senseless in 1988, and considered it a turning point in her writing. While she still borrows from other texts, including Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the appropriation is less obvious. However, one of Acker's more controversial appropriations is from William Gibson's 1984 text, Neuromancer, in which Acker equates code with the female body and its militaristic implications. In 1988, she published Literal Madness: Three Novels, which included three previously-published works: Florida deconstructs and reduces John Huston's 1948 film noir Key Largo into its base sexual politics, Kathy Goes to Haiti details a young woman's relationship and sexual exploits while on vacation, and My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini provides a fictional autobiography of the Italian filmmaker in which he solves his own murder.
Between 1990 and 1993, she published four more books: In Memoriam to Identity (1990); Hannibal Lecter, My Father (1991); Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels (1992), also composed of already-published works; and My Mother: Demonology (1992). Her last novel, Pussy, King of the Pirates, was published in 1996, which she, Rico Bell, and the rest of rock band the Mekons also reworked into an operetta, which they performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in 1997.
In 2007, Amandla Publishing re-published Acker's articles that she wrote for the New Statesman from 1989 to 1991. Grove Press published two unpublished early novellas in the volume Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective and The Burning Bombing of America, and a collection of selected work, Essential Acker, edited by Amy Scholder and Dennis Cooper in 2002.
Three volumes of her non-fiction have been published and republished since her death. In 2002, New York University staged Discipline and Anarchy, a retrospective exhibition of her works, while in 2008, London's Institute of Contemporary Arts screened an evening of films influenced by Acker.
Posthumous reputation
A collection of essays on Acker's work, titled Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker, edited by Carla Harryman, Avital Ronell, and Amy Scholder, was published by Verso in 2006 and includes essays by Nayland Blake, Leslie Dick, Robert Glück, Carla Harryman, Laurence Rickels, Avital Ronell, Barrett Watten, and Peter Wollen. In 2009, the first collection of essays to focus on academic study of Acker, Kathy Acker and Transnationalism was published.
In 2015, Semiotext(e) published I'm Very Into You, a book of Acker's email correspondence with media theorist McKenzie Wark, edited by Matias Viegener, her executor and head of the Kathy Acker Literary Trust. Her personal library is housed in a reading room at the University of Cologne in Germany, and her papers are divided between NYU's Fales Library and the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University. A limited body of her recorded readings and discussions of her works exists in the special collections archive of University of California, San Diego.
In 2013, the Acker Award was launched and named for Kathy Acker. Awarded to living and deceased members of the San Francisco or New York avant-garde art scene, the award is financed by Alan Kaufman and Clayton Patterson.
In 2017, American writer and artist Chris Kraus published After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography, the first book-length biography of Acker's life experiences and literary strategies. American writer Douglas A. Martin published Acker. a book-length study of Acker's influences and artistic trajectory.
In 2018, British writer Olivia Laing published Crudo, a novel which references Acker's works and life, and whose main character is a woman called Kathy, suffering double breast cancer; yet book's events are situated in August–September 2017.
In 2019, Amy Scholder and Douglas A. Martin co-edited Kathy Acker: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. Kate Zambreno wrote on Kathy Acker in her essay "New York City, Summer 2013" published as part of the collection Screen Tests (Harpers Collins, 2019). The essay was originally published in Icon edited by Amy Scholder (Feminist Press, 2014).
Between May 1, 2019 and August 4, 2019, the exhibition I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Kathy Acker was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. The exhibition featured works by more than 40 artists, such as Reza Abdoh, Johanna Hedva and Reba Maybury.
In 2020, Grove Press issued a new edition of Portrait of an Eye, with an introduction by Kate Zambreno.
Bibliography
Novels, stories
Politics (1972; excerpts published in Hannibal Lecter, My Father (1991); full text published in Kathy Acker (1971-1975) (2019)
The Burning Bombing of America: The Destruction of the United States (pub. 2002, from manuscript 1972)
Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective (pub. 2002, from manuscript 1973)
Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula By the Black Tarantula (1973)
I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining (1974)
Haiti: A Trip to the Voodoo Doctor (Travelers Digest Issue 1, Volume 1, 1977; later published in Kathy Goes to Haiti)
Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (1978)
Florida (1978)
Kathy Goes To Haiti (1978)
The Seattle Book: For Randy and Heather (1980, with illustrations)
The Persian Poems by Janey Smith (Travelers Digest Issue 2, Volume 1, ed. Jeff Goldberg, 1980; poems from Blood and Guts in High School, with drawings by Robert Kushner, 1980)
N.Y.C. in 1979 (1981)
Hello, My Name Is Erica Jong (1982; also available in Blood and Guts in High School)
Translations of the Diaries of Laure the Schoolgirl (1983)
Implosion (1983; also available in My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Great Expectations (1983)
Algeria : A Series of Invocations Because Nothing Else Works (1984)
My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1984)
Blood and Guts in High School (1984)
Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986)
Lust: A Sailor's Slight Identity (1987, available in Hannibal Lecter, My Father)
Literal Madness: Three Novels (Reprinted 1987; contains Kathy Goes to Haiti, My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Florida)
Young Lust (1988; contains Kathy Goes to Haiti, The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec, and Florida)
Empire of the Senseless (1988)
In Memoriam to Identity (1990)
Hannibal Lecter, My Father (1991)
Portrait of an Eye (1992, includes early novels Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula By the Black Tarantula (1973); I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining (1974); Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (1978)
My Mother: Demonology (1994)
Pussycat Fever (with Diane Dimassa and Freddie Baer, illustrators, 1995)
Pussy, King of the Pirates (1996)
Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels (Reprinted 1998)
Eurydice in the Underworld (1998)
Essential Acker: The Selected Writings of Kathy Acker (2002)
New York City in 1979 (2018, Penguin Modern)
Kathy Acker (1971–1975) (2019, Éditions Ismael, 656 pgs.), ed. Justin Gajoux and Claire Finch, critical edition of unpublished early writings from 1971 to 1975
Some of the contents from * Kathy Acker (1971-1975) (2019, Éditions Ismael, 656 pgs.), ed. Justin Gajoux and Claire Finch, critical edition of unpublished early writings from 1971 to 1975
The Golden Woman (poem, 1969–1970)
Section from DIARY (1-2, 1971)
Portraits (7, 1971)
Portraits and Visions (summer 1971)
Diary Warmcatfur (1, 1972)
Politics (1972, full text)
For H. (1972)
Revolutionary Diary of an Anarchist (1972)
Journal Black Cats Black Jewels (summer 1972)
Gold Songs for Jimi Hendrix (1972)
Breaking Up (summer 1972)
[Letter to Berndadette Mayer] (fall 1972)
Entrance into Dwelling in Paradise (poems, fall 1972)
[Exercises] (fall 1972)
Stripper Disintergration (2-3, 1973)
Section from Diary (3, 1973)
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (1973)
The Beginning of the Thesmophoriazusae (7-9, 1973)
Part I of Breaking Through Memories into Desire (11, 1973)
Part II [of Breaking Through Memories...] (1, 1974)
Conversations (1, 1974)
[Letters to Alan Sondheim] (2-3, 1974)
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (3/3/1974)
Poetry
This is not a complete list.
This symbol # indicates published in Kathy Acker (1971–1975) (2019, Éditions Ismael, 656 pgs.), ed. Justin Gajoux and Claire Finch, critical edition of unpublished early writings from 1971 to 1975
The Golden Woman (poem, 1969–1970) #
Journal Black Cats Black Jewels (summer 1972) #
Gold Songs for Jimi Hendrix (1972) #
Part I of Breaking Through Memories into Desire (11, 1973) #
Part II [of Breaking Through Memories...] (1, 1974) #
Baby don't give baby don't get (from the novel Florida)
Homage to Leroi Jones (poems, pub. 2015 by Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetics Documents Initiative, from manuscript 1972)
Discussion/reading of two poems from the novel Blood and Guts in High School
Stage work
Desire (Bomb 3, spring 1982)
Lulu Unchained (drama, 1985, first performed at ICA; available in the novel Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream)
The Birth of the Poet (drama, 1981; performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1985, directed by Richard Foreman; published in Eurydice in the Underworld; also in Wordplays 5: An Anthology of New American Drama, 1987)
Requiem (drama, 1997; published in Eurydice in the Underworld)
Screenplay
Variety (screenplay, 1985, directed by Bette Gordon; unpublished)
Recordings, music collabs
Pussy (1994, produced by CodeX; contains two sections, O and Ange and Pussy, King of the Pirates: Her Story)
The Stabbing Hand (1995) – spoken-word guest appearance on alternate mix of song by Oxbow, included on reissues of album Let Me Be a Woman
Pussy, King of the Pirates (1997, Touch and Go Records) - Acker's operetta, performed and recorded by the Mekons with Kathy Acker
Redoing Childhood (2000) spoken-word recording, KRS 349.
Essays (periodicals, book reviews, movie reviews, art reviews, speeches, and other texts)
This is not a complete list.
The symbols ^^ indicate it's available at Duke University's collection of Kathy Acker's papers. The symbol # indicates the essay is included in the Kathy Acker collection Bodies of Work: Essays (London: Serpent's Tail, 1997).
Notes on Writing from the Life of Baudelaire (1979^^)
New York City 1983 (from Marcus Leatherdale: His photographs – a book in a series on people and years, with Christian Michelides, published by Wien, Molotov, 1983)
Realism for the Cause of Future Revolution (from Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, 1984#)
Collette (1985#)
An Actual Institution of Art (1986^^)
Introduction to collection Young Lust (1988)
Introduction to Boxcar Bertha (1988#)
A Few Notes on Two of my Books (from Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol 9, no. 3, Fall 1989#)
Blue Valentine (1989^^)
Review of Scandal for Weiner (1989^^)
Low: Good and Evil in the Work of Nayland Blake (1990) A selection is available in the Kathy Acker collection Body of Works: Essays.
The World According to Peter Greenway (from The Village Voice, vol. 35, April 17, 1990#)
In the Underworld (1990^^)
William Burroughs' Realism (1990)
From Counter-Culture to Culture, But Here's no Culture/Fuck Ecology and the Death of Communism/The Meaning of the 80s (1990^^)
New York City 25/12/89-31/12/89 at the Edge of the New (1990^^)
The Language of Sex The Sex of Language (1990)
Critical Languages (1990#)
Dead Doll Humility (1990).
The Meaning of the Eighties (from The Village Voice, vol. 35, January 2, 1990#)
Bodybuilding (1991)
The War at Home: Bonfire of the Vanities by Brian de Palma (1991^^)
Red Wings: Concerning Richard Prince's "Spiritual America" (from Parkett, 1992#)
Against Ordinary Language: The Language of the Body (from The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies, 1993#)
Reading the Lack of the Body: The Writing of the Marquis de Sade (from The Divine Sade, 1994#)
After the End of the Art World (1994^^)
Statements on the Nature of Musical Comedy (1994^^)
Seeing Gender (from Critical Quarterly, 1995#)
Running through the World: On the Art of Kiki Smith (1995^^)
Mirror: Two Works of Art (1995^^)
Moving Into Wonder (An introduction to Time Capsule: A Concise Encyclopedia by Women Artists, 1995#)
Unidentified contribution to Dust: Essays (1995)
Writing, Identity, and Copyright in the Net Age (from MMLA, vol. 28, no. 1, Spring 1995#)
Samuel Delaney: Orpheus (1996^^)
On Delany the Magiian (Foreword to Trouble on Triton, 1996#)
The Future (1997#)
The Gift of the Disease (The Guardian, January 18, 1997)
Bruce Willis and Me (1997^^)
Bodies of Work: Essays (1997). Includes a preface. Any essay with symbol # indicates it is included in this collection.
Acker: Articles from The New Statesman 1989-1991 (2007, Amandla Publishing)
Russian Constructivism (from Blasted Allegories) (date unknown#)
Notes on a title page of Herman Melville's White Jacket (Undated)
Some American Cities (from Marxism Today) (date unknown#)
Postmoderism (undated #)
About Robert Mapplethorpe (undated^^)
Allen Ginsberg: A Personal Portrait (undated^^)
A Bunch of Propositions about the Hernandez Brothers (undated^^)
On Twin Peaks (undated^^)
Women who have Big Muscles (undated^^)
The End of Poetry (undated^^)
Eugenie De Franval (undated^^)
Fabre's Work or Opera (undated^^)
Unidentified essay, part of the Iain Sinclair inventory.
Book reviews - typescripts of sixteen different reviews from 1985 to 1989 - available at Duke University's collection of Kathy Acker papers.
Interviews and conversations
This is not a complete list.
Interview with Barry Alpert (Mitali Restaurant, pub. in Only Paper Today, March 30, 1976) Published in The Last Interview.
"Kathy Acker by Mark Margill" (pub. in BOMB Magazine, July 1, 1983)
Informal Interview (with R.J. Ellish, Carolyn Bird, Dawn Curwen, Ian Mancor, Val Ogden, and Charles Patrick, April 23, 1986) Published in The Last Interview.
Kathy Acker at the ICA (Part of the Anthony Rolland Collection of Films and Art, Writers in Conversation, 1986)
A Conversation with Kathy Acker (with Ellen G. Friedman, Gramercy Park Hotel, NYC, 1 February 1988) Pub. in Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, No. 3 (Fall 1989): 12-22.
Conversations with Dean Kulpers (Gramercy Park Hotel Bar, NYC, July 2, 1988). Published in The Last Interview.
Devoured by Myths: An Interview with Sylvere Lotringer (New York, Oct 1989 – May 1990, published in Hannibal Lecter My Father) The unexpurgated transcript was published in The Last Interview.
"An interview with Kathy Acker" (with Larry McCaffery, pub. in Mississippi Review 20, Nos. 1-2 (1991): 83-97).
The On Our Backs Interview: Kathy Acker (with Lisa Palac, May/June 1991). Published in The Last Interview.
Kathy Acker Interviewed by Rebecca Deaton (pub. in Textual Practice 6, No. 2 (Summer 1992): 271-82.
Body Building (with Laurence A. Rikels, pub. in Artforum, February 1994). Published in The Last Interview.
Can't: Walk and chew gum (with Ricahrd Kadrey, from Covert Culture series, pub. in Hotwired online, 13 September 1995)
Kathy Acker (in conversation with Beth Jackson, pub. in eyeline, Autumn/Winter 1996). Published in The Last Interview.
Strange Gaze interview with Anton Corbijn (1996, source unknown, available at Duke University's collection of Kathy Acker's papers)
All Girls Together: Kathy Acker Interviews the Spice Girls (pub. The Guardian, 1997) Published in The Last Interview.
The Last Interview (with Kesia Boddy, 1997) Published in The Last Interview.
Candle in the Wind (interviewed by Ruben Reyes, Phsycus Room, Issue 3, Summer 1998)
Kathy Acker (with Andrea Juno and V. Vale, pub. in Angry Women (RE/Search, 1991: June Books, 1999). Published in The Last Interview.
Pussy and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance or how to be a pirate on-line and channel your energies so as to remember your dreams... (interviewed by Rosie X, date/magazine unknown)
Kathy Acker Where does she get off? (interviewed by R.U. Sirius, date/magazine unknown)
interview with Karl Schieder (July 25, 1991, The Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado, pub. in ilato.org, pub date unknown)
A Conversation with Kathy Acker (interviewed by Benjamin Bratton (Speed), pub. in Apparatus and Memory, date unknown)
Kathy Acker interviews William S. Burroughs (date unknown)
Kathy Acker and British astrologer discuss Kathy Acker's astrology chart (date unknown)
Correspondence
This is not a complete list.
Spread Open, with artist Paul Buck. Incorporates correspondence between Kathy Acker and Buck from early 80s. Published in 2005 by Dis Voir.
I'm Very Into You. A book of Acker's email correspondence with media theorist McKenzie Wark, edited by Matias Viegener, her executor and head of the Kathy Acker Literary Trust. Pub. in 2015, by Semiotext(e).
See also
Postmodern feminism
References
Further reading
"no one can find little girls any more: Kathy Acker in Australia" (1997). Documentary film by Jonathan and Felicity Dawson. Griffith University, 90 minutes. Footage from this film is included in Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker? A documentary by Barbara Caspar
Devouring Institutions: The Life Work of Kathy Acker, ed. Michael Hardin (Hyperbole/San Diego State University Press: 2004). DEVOURING INSTITUTIONS
Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker, ed. Carla Harryman, Avital Ronell, and Amy Scholder (Verso, 2006)
Kathy Acker and Transnationalism, ed. Polina Mackay and Kathryn Nicol (Cambridge Scholars, 2009)
I'm Very into You: Correspondence 1995--1996, by Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark, edited by Matias Viegener (Semiotext(e), 2017)
After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography, by Chris Kraus (Semiotext(e), 2017)
Pérez, Rolando. "What is Don Quijote/Don Quixote And…And…And the Disjunctive Synthesis of Cervantes and Kathy Acker", Cervantes ilimitado: cuatrocientos años del Quijote. Ed. Nuria Morgado. ALDEEU, 2016. pp. 75–100.
External links
Part 2 · Part 3
Acker interview with the Spice Girls.
"Kathy Acker Papers, 1972–1997 and undated", at Duke University
1947 births
1997 deaths
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16966 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor | Koh-i-Noor | The Koh-i-Noor (; from Persian , "Mountain of Light"), also spelt Kohinoor and Koh-i-Nur, is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, weighing . It is part of the British Crown Jewels. The diamond is currently set in the crown of The Queen Mother.
Possibly mined in Kollur Mine, India, during the period of the Kakatiya dynasty, there is no record of its original weight – but the earliest well-attested weight is 186 old carats (191 metric carats or 38.2 g). It was later acquired by Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khalji. The diamond was also part of the Mughal Peacock Throne. It changed hands between various factions in south and west Asia, until being ceded to Queen Victoria after the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849, during the reign of eleven-year-old emperor Maharaja Duleep Singh, who ruled under the shadow influence of the British ally Gulab Singh the 1st Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, who had previously possessed the stone.
Originally, the stone was of a similar cut to other Mughal-era diamonds, like the Darya-i-Noor, which are now in the Iranian Crown Jewels. In 1851, it went on display at the Great Exhibition in London, but the lacklustre cut failed to impress viewers. Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, ordered it to be re-cut as an oval brilliant by Coster Diamonds. By modern standards, the culet (point at the bottom of a gemstone) is unusually broad, giving the impression of a black hole when the stone is viewed head-on; it is nevertheless regarded by gemologists as "full of life".
Because its history involves a great deal of fighting between men, the Koh-i-Noor acquired a reputation within the British royal family for bringing bad luck to any man who wears it. Since arriving in the UK, it has only been worn by female members of the family. Victoria wore the stone in a brooch and a circlet. After she died in 1901, it was set in the Crown of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII. It was transferred to the Crown of Queen Mary in 1911, and finally to the Crown of Queen Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother) in 1937 for her coronation as Queen consort.
Today, the diamond is on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. The governments of India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan have all claimed ownership of the Koh-i-Noor and demanded its return ever since India gained independence from the UK in 1947. The British government insists the gem was obtained legally under the terms of the Last Treaty of Lahore and has rejected the claims.
History
Origin
The diamond may have been mined from Kollur Mine, a series of deep gravel-clay pits on the south bank of the Krishna River in the Golconda (present-day Andhra Pradesh), India. It is impossible to know exactly when or where it was found, and many unverifiable theories exist as to its original owner.
Early history
Babur, the Turco-Mongol founder of the Mughal Empire, wrote about a "famous" diamond that weighed just over 187 old carats – approximately the size of the 186-carat Koh-i-Noor. Some historians think Babur's diamond is the earliest reliable reference to the Koh-i-Noor. According to his diary, it was acquired by Alauddin Khalji, second ruler of the Khalji dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, when he invaded the kingdoms of southern India at the beginning of the 14th century and was probably in the possession of the Kakatiya dynasty. It later passed to succeeding dynasties of the Sultanate, and Babur received the diamond in 1526 as a tribute for his conquest of Delhi and Agra at the Battle of Panipat.
Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, had the stone placed into his ornate Peacock Throne. In 1658, his son and successor, Aurangzeb, confined the ailing emperor to Agra Fort. While in the possession of Aurangzeb, it was allegedly cut by Hortense Borgia, a Venetian lapidary, reducing the weight of the large stone to . For this carelessness, Borgia was reprimanded and fined 10,000 rupees. According to recent research, the story of Borgia cutting the diamond is not correct, and most probably mixed up with the Orlov, part of Catherine the Great's imperial Russian sceptre in the Kremlin.
Following the 1739 invasion of Delhi by Nadir Shah, the Afsharid Shah of Persia, the treasury of the Mughal Empire was looted by his army in an organised and thorough acquisition of the Mughal nobility's wealth. Along with millions of rupees and an assortment of historic jewels, the Shah also carried away the Koh-i-Noor. He exclaimed Koh-i-Noor!, Persian and Hindi-Urdu for "Mountain of Light", when he obtained the famous stone. One of his consorts said, "If a strong man were to throw four stones – one north, one south, one east, one west, and a fifth stone up into the air – and if the space between them were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the value of the Koh-i-Noor".
After Nadir Shah was killed and his empire collapsed in 1747, the Koh-i-Noor fell to his grandson, who in 1751 gave it to Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Afghan Empire, in return for his support. One of Ahmed's grandsons, Shuja Shah Durrani, wore a bracelet containing the Koh-i-Noor on the occasion of Mountstuart Elphinstone's visit to Peshawar in 1808. A year later, Shuja formed an alliance with the United Kingdom to help defend against a possible invasion of Afghanistan by Russia. He was quickly overthrown, but fled with the diamond to Lahore, where Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire, in return for his hospitality, insisted upon the gem being given to him, and he took possession of it in 1813.
In Ranjit Singh's possession
Ranjit Singh had the diamond examined by jewelers of Lahore for two days to ensure that Shuja had not tricked him. After the jewelers confirmed its genuineness, he donated 125,000 rupees to Shuja. Ranjit Singh then asked the principal jewelers of Amritsar to estimate the diamond's value; the jewelers declared that the value of the diamond was "far beyond all computation". Ranjit Singh then fixed the diamond in the front of his turban, and paraded on an elephant to enable his subjects to see the diamond. He used to wear it as an armlet during major festivals such as Diwali and Dusserah, and took it with him during travel. He would exhibit it to prominent visitors, especially British officers.
One day, Ranjit Singh asked the diamond's former owners — Shuja and his wife Wafa Begum — to estimate its value. Wafa Begum replied that if a strong man threw a stone in four cardinal directions and vertically, Koh-i-Noor would be worth more than the gold and precious stones filled in the space. Ranjit Singh grew paranoid about the Koh-i-Noor being stolen, because in the past, another valuable jewel had been stolen from him while he was intoxicated. He kept the diamond within a high-security facility at the Gobindgarh Fort when it was not in use. When the diamond was to be transported, it was placed in a pannier on a guarded camel; 39 other camels with identical panniers were included in the convoy; the diamond was always placed on the first camel immediately behind the guards, but great secrecy was maintained regarding which camel carried it. Only Ranjit Singh's treasurer Misr Beli Ram knew which camel carried the diamond.
In June 1839, Ranjit Singh suffered his third stroke, and it became apparent that he would die soon. On his deathbed, he started giving away his valuable possessions to religious charities, and appointed his eldest son Kharak Singh as his successor. A day before his death, on 26 June 1839, a major argument broke out between his courtiers regarding the fate of Koh-i-Noor. Ranjit Singh himself was too weak to speak, and communicated using gestures. Bhai Gobind Ram, the head Brahmin of Ranjit Singh, insisted that the king had willed Koh-i-Noor and other jewels to the Jagannath Temple in Puri: the king apparently supported this claim through gestures, as recorded in his court chronicle Umdat ul-Tawarikh. However, treasurer Beli Ram insisted that it was a state property rather than Ranjit Singh's personal property, and therefore, should be handed over to Kharak Singh.
After Ranjit Singh's death, Beli Ram refused to send the diamond to the temple, and hid it in his vaults. Meanwhile, Kharak Singh and prime minister Dhian Singh also issued orders stating that the diamond should not be taken out of Lahore.
In Gulab Singh's possession
On 8 October 1839, the new emperor Kharak Singh was overthrown in a coup by his prime minister Dhian Singh. The prime minister's brother Gulab Singh, Raja of Jammu, came into possession of the Koh-i-Noor. Kharak Singh later died in prison, soon followed by the mysterious death of his son and successor Nau Nihal Singh on 5 November 1840. Gulab Singh held onto the stone until January 1841, when he presented it to emperor Sher Singh in order to win his favour, after his brother Dhian Singh negotiated a ceasefire between Sher Singh and the overthrown empress Chand Kaur. Gulab Singh had attempted to defend the widowed empress at her fort in Lahore, during two days of conflict and shelling by Sher Singh and his troops. Despite handing over the Koh-i-noor, Gulab Singh as a result of the ceasefire returned safely to Jammu with a wealth of gold and other jewels taken from the treasury.
Worn by child emperor Duleep Singh
On 15 September 1843, both Sher Singh and prime minister Dhian Singh were assassinated in a coup led by Ajit Singh Sandhawalia. However, the next day in a counter coup led by Dhian's son Hira Singh the assassins were killed. Aged 24, Hira Singh succeeded his father as prime minister, and installed the five-year old Duleep Singh as emperor. The Koh-i-noor was now fastened to the arm of the child emperor in court at Lahore. Duleep Singh and his mother empress Jind Kaur, had till then resided in Jammu, the kingdom governed by Gulab Singh.
Following his nephew Prime Minister Hira Singh's assassination on 27 March 1844, and the subsequent outbreak of the First Anglo-Sikh War, Gulab Singh himself led the Sikh empire as its prime minister, and despite defeat in the war, he became the first Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir on 16 March 1846, under the Treaty of Amritsar.
Acquisition by Queen Victoria
On 29 March 1849, following the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Sikh War, the Kingdom of Punjab was formally annexed to Company rule, and the Last Treaty of Lahore was signed, officially ceding the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria and the Maharaja's other assets to the company. Article III of the treaty read:
The lead signatory of the treaty for the eleven-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh was his commander-in-chief Tej Singh, a loyalist of Maharaja Gulab Singh who had previously been in possession of the Koh-i-Noor and gained Kashmir from the Sikh empire, via treaty with Britain, following the First Anglo-Sikh War.
The Governor-General in charge of the ratification of this treaty was the Marquess of Dalhousie. The manner of his aiding in the transfer of the diamond was criticized even by some of his contemporaries in Britain. Although some thought it should have been presented as a gift to Queen Victoria by the East India Company, it is clear that Dalhousie believed the stone was a spoil of war, and treated it accordingly, ensuring that it was officially surrendered to her by Duleep Singh, the youngest son of Ranjit Singh. The presentation of the Koh-i-Noor by the East India Company to the queen was the latest in a long history of transfers of the diamond as a coveted spoil of war. Duleep Singh had been placed in the guardianship of Dr John Login, a surgeon in the British Army serving in the Presidency of Bengal. Duleep Singh moved to England in 1854 and spent the rest of his life in exile.
Journey to the United Kingdom
In due course, the Governor-General received the Koh-i-Noor from Dr Login, who had been appointed Governor of the Citadel, on 6 April 1848 under a receipt dated 7 December 1849, in the presence of members of the Board of Administration for the affairs of the Punjab: Sir Henry Lawrence (President), C. G. Mansel, John Lawrence and Sir Henry Elliot (Secretary to the Government of India).
Legend in the Lawrence family has it that before the voyage, John Lawrence left the jewel in his waistcoat pocket when it was sent to be laundered, and was most grateful when it was returned promptly by the valet who found it.
On 1 February 1850, the jewel was sealed in a small iron safe inside a red dispatch box, both sealed with red tape and a wax seal and kept in a chest at Bombay Treasury awaiting a steamer ship from China. It was then sent to England for presentation to Queen Victoria in the care of Captain J. Ramsay and Brevet Lt. Col F. Mackeson under tight security arrangements, one of which was the placement of the dispatch box in a larger iron safe. They departed from Bombay on 6 April on board HMS Medea, captained by Captain Lockyer.
The ship had a difficult voyage: an outbreak of cholera on board when the ship was in Mauritius had the locals demanding its departure, and they asked their governor to open fire on the vessel and destroy it if there was no response. Shortly afterwards, the vessel was hit by a severe gale that blew for some 12 hours.
On arrival in Britain on 29 June, the passengers and mail were unloaded in Plymouth, but the Koh-i-Noor stayed on board until the ship reached Spithead, near Portsmouth, on 1 July. The next morning, Ramsay and Mackeson, in the company of Mr Onslow, the private secretary to the Chairman of the Court of Directors of the British East India Company, proceeded by train to East India House in the City of London and passed the diamond into the care of the chairman and deputy chairman of the East India Company.
The Koh-i-Noor was formally presented to Queen Victoria on 3 July 1850 at Buckingham Palace by the deputy chairman of the East India Company. The date had been chosen to coincide with the Company's 250th anniversary.
The Great Exhibition
Members of the public were given a chance to see the Koh-i-Noor when The Great Exhibition was staged at Hyde Park, London, in 1851. It represented the might of the British Empire and took pride of place in the eastern part of the central gallery.
Its mysterious past and advertised value of £1–2 million drew large crowds. At first, the stone was put inside a gilded birdcage, but after complaints about its dull appearance, the Koh-i-Noor was moved to a case with black velvet and gas lamps in the hope that it would sparkle better. Despite this, the flawed and asymmetrical diamond still failed to please viewers.
1852 re-cutting
Originally, the diamond had 169 facets and was long, wide, and deep. It was high-domed, with a flat base and both triangular and rectangular facets, similar in overall appearance to other Mughal era diamonds which are now in the Iranian Crown Jewels.
Disappointment in the appearance of the stone was not uncommon. After consulting mineralogists, including Sir David Brewster, it was decided by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, with the consent of the government, to polish the Koh-i-Noor. One of the largest and most famous Dutch diamond merchants, Mozes Coster, was employed for the task. He sent to London one of his most experienced artisans, Levie Benjamin Voorzanger, and his assistants.
On 17 July 1852, the cutting began at the factory of Garrard & Co. in Haymarket, using a steam-powered mill built specially for the job by Maudslay, Sons and Field. Under the supervision of Prince Albert and the Duke of Wellington, and the technical direction of the queen's mineralogist, James Tennant, the cutting took thirty-eight days. Albert spent a total of £8,000 on the operation, which reduced the weight of the diamond from 186 old carats (191 modern carats or 38.2 g) to its current . The stone measures long, wide, and deep. Brilliant-cut diamonds usually have fifty-eight facets, but the Koh-i-Noor has eight additional "star" facets around the culet, making a total of sixty-six facets.
The great loss of weight is to some extent accounted for by the fact that Voorzanger discovered several flaws, one especially big, that he found it necessary to cut away. Although Prince Albert was dissatisfied with such a huge reduction, most experts agreed that Voorzanger had made the right decision and carried out his job with impeccable skill. When Queen Victoria showed the re-cut diamond to the young Maharaja Duleep Singh, the Koh-i-Noor's last non-British owner, he was apparently unable to speak for several minutes afterwards.
The much lighter but more dazzling stone was mounted in a honeysuckle brooch and a circlet worn by the queen. At this time, it belonged to her personally, and was not yet part of the Crown Jewels. Although Victoria wore it often, she became uneasy about the way in which the diamond had been acquired. In a letter to her eldest daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal, she wrote in the 1870s: "No one feels more strongly than I do about India or how much I opposed our taking those countries and I think no more will be taken, for it is very wrong and no advantage to us. You know also how I dislike wearing the Koh-i-Noor".
Crown Jewel
After Queen Victoria's death, the Koh-i-Noor was set in the Crown of Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII, that was used to crown her at their coronation in 1902. The diamond was transferred to Queen Mary's Crown in 1911, and finally to The Queen Mother's Crown in 1937. When The Queen Mother died in 2002, the crown was placed on top of her coffin for the lying-in-state and funeral.
All these crowns are on display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London with crystal replicas of the diamond set in the older crowns. The original bracelet given to Queen Victoria can also be seen there. A glass model of the Koh-i-Noor shows visitors how it looked when it was brought to the United Kingdom. Replicas of the diamond in this and its re-cut forms can also be seen in the 'Vault' exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London.
During the Second World War, the Crown Jewels were moved from their home at the Tower of London to Windsor Castle. In 1990, The Sunday Telegraph, citing a biography of the French army general, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, by his widow, Simonne, reported that George VI hid the Koh-i-Noor at the bottom of a pond or lake near Windsor Castle, about 32 km (20 miles) outside London, where it remained until after the war. The only people who knew of the hiding place were the king and his librarian, Sir Owen Morshead, who apparently revealed the secret to the general and his wife on their visit to England in 1949.
Ownership dispute
The Koh-i-Noor has long been a subject of diplomatic controversy, with India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan all demanding its return from the UK at various points.
India
The Government of India, believing the gem was theirs, first demanded the return of the Koh-i-Noor as soon as independence was granted in 1947. A second request followed in 1953, the year of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Each time, the British Government rejected the claims, saying that ownership was non-negotiable.
In 2000, several members of the Indian Parliament signed a letter calling for the diamond to be given back to India, claiming it was taken illegally. British officials said that a variety of claims meant it was impossible to establish the diamond's original owner, and that it had been part of Britain's heritage for more than 150 years.
In July 2010, while visiting India, David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said of returning the diamond, "If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty. I am afraid to say, it is going to have to stay put". On a subsequent visit in February 2013, he said, "They're not having that back".
In April 2016, the Indian Culture Ministry stated it would make "all possible efforts" to arrange the return of the Koh-i-Noor to India. It was despite the Indian Government earlier conceding that the diamond was a gift. The Solicitor General of India had made the announcement before the Supreme Court of India due to public interest litigation by a campaign group. He said "It was given voluntarily by Ranjit Singh to the British as compensation for help in the Sikh Wars. The Koh-i-Noor is not a stolen object".
Pakistan
In 1976, Pakistan asserted its ownership of the diamond, saying its return would be "a convincing demonstration of the spirit that moved Britain voluntarily to shed its imperial encumbrances and lead the process of decolonisation". In a letter to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, James Callaghan, wrote, "I need not remind you of the various hands through which the stone has passed over the past two centuries, nor that explicit provision for its transfer to the British crown was made in the peace treaty with the Maharajah of Lahore in 1849. I could not advise Her Majesty that it should be surrendered".
Afghanistan
In 2000, the Taliban's foreign affairs spokesman, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, said the Koh-i-Noor was the legitimate property of Afghanistan, and demanded for it to be handed over to the regime. "The history of the diamond shows it was taken from us (Afghanistan) to India, and from there to Britain. We have a much better claim than the Indians", he said. The Afghan claim derives from Shah Shuja Durrani memoirs, which states he surrendered the diamond to Ranjit Singh while Singh was having his son tortured in front of him, so argue the Maharajah of Lahore acquired the stone illegitimately.
Possible compromises
Because of the quadripartite dispute over the diamond's rightful ownership, there have been various compromises suggested to bring the dispute to an end. These include dividing the diamond into four, with a piece given to each of Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, with the final piece retained by the British Crown. Another suggestion is that the jewel be housed in a special museum at the Wagah border between India and Pakistan. However this suggestion does not cater to Afghan claims, nor the reality of current British possession. The British Government rejects these compromises, and has stated since the end of the British Raj that the status of the diamond is 'non-negotiatable'.
In popular culture
The Koh-i-Noor made its first appearance in popular culture in The Moonstone (1868), a 19th-century British epistolary novel by Wilkie Collins, generally considered to be the first full length detective novel in the English language. In his preface to the first edition of the book, Collins says that he based his eponymous "Moonstone" on the histories of two stones: the Orlov, a diamond in the Russian Imperial Sceptre, and the Koh-i-Noor. In the 1966 Penguin Books edition of The Moonstone, J. I. M. Stewart states that Collins used G. C. King's The Natural History, Ancient and Modern, of Precious Stones ... (1865) to research the history of the Koh-i-Noor.
The Koh-i-Noor also features in Agatha Christie's 1925 novel The Secret of Chimneys where it is hidden somewhere inside a large country house and is discovered at the end of the novel. The diamond had been stolen from the Tower of London by a Parisian gang leader who replaced it with a replica stone.
The Koh-i-Noor is a central element in the book Flashman and the Mountain of Light written by George MacDonald Fraser where Flashman becomes entangled in the intrigues of the Punjabi court before being called personally by the Maharani of the Punjab to attend to an urgent mission: smuggling her son Daleep Singh and the Koh-i-Noor diamond out of the country.
See also
Daria-i-Noor
Golconda Diamonds
List of diamonds
List of largest rough diamonds
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Shipley, Robert M. (1939) Important Diamonds of the World, pp. 5-8. Gemological Institute of America, USA, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter 1939)
Shipley, Robert M. (1943) Diamond Glossary, pp. 119 (PDF page 11) Gemological Institute of America, USA, Vol. 4, No. 8 (Winter 1943)
External links
Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom
Jewels of the Mughal Empire
History of India
History of Andhra Pradesh
Sikh Empire
1739 in Asia
Persian words and phrases
Golconda diamonds | [
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16971 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass | Kvass | Kvass is a fermented cereal-based non-alcoholic or low alcoholic (0.5–1.0% or 1–2 proof) beverage with a slightly cloudy appearance, light-dark brown colour and sweet-sour taste. It may be flavoured with berries, fruits, herbs and honey.
Terminology
The word kvass is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European base *kwat- ('sour'). In English it was first mentioned in a text around 1553 as quass. Nowadays, the name of the drink is almost the same in most languages: in Belarusian: , ; Russian: , ; Ukrainian: , ; in Polish: (, to differentiate it from kwas, 'acid', originally from kwaśny, 'sour'); Latvian: ; Romanian: ; Hungarian: ; Serbian: ; Chinese: , ; Eastern Finnish: . Non-cognates include Estonian , Finnish , Latvian (), Lithuanian (, similar to Latvian ), and Swedish ().
Production
In the traditional method, either dried rye bread or a combination of rye flour and rye malt is used. The dried rye bread is extracted with hot water and incubated for 12 hours at room temperature, after which bread yeast and sugar is added to the extract and fermented for 12 hours at 20°C. Alternatively, rye flour is boiled, mixed with rye malt, bread yeast, sugar and baker’s yeast and fermented for 12 hours at 20°C.
In the simplest industrial method, kvass is produced from a wort concentrate. The concentrate is first warmed up to decrease its viscosity and make it suitable for pumping. Then the concentrate is mixed with a water and sugar solution to create wort with a sugar concentration of 5–7% and pasteurized to stabilize it. After that, the wort is pumped into a fermentation tank, where baker's yeast and lactic acid bacteria culture is added and the solution is fermented for 12–24 hours at 12–30 °C. Only around 1% of the extract is fermented out into ethanol, carbon dioxide and lactic acid. Afterwards, the kvass is cooled to 6 °C, clarified through either filtration or centrifugation and adjusted for sugar content, if necessary. Initially, it was filled in large containers, from which the kvass was sold on streets, but nowadays the vast majority of industrially produced kvass is filled and sold in 1–3 litre plastic bottles, and has a shelf life of 4–6 weeks.
History
The exact origins of kvass are unclear and whether it was invented by Slavic people or any other Eastern European ethnicity is unknown. Kvass has existed in the northeastern part of Europe, where the grain production is thought to have been insufficient for beer to become a daily drink. The first written mention of kvass is found in the Primary Chronicle, describing the celebration of Vladimir the Great's baptism in 996 when kvass along with mead and food was given out to the citizens of Kiev. Kvass making remained a daily household activity well into the 19th century.
In the second half of the 19th century, with military engagement, increasing industrialization and large-scale projects, such as the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, that created a growing need to supply large numbers of people with foodstuff for extended periods of time, commercial kvass producers began appearing in the Russian Empire. Many of them specialized in the use of different raw ingredients and more than 150 kvass varieties, such as apple, pear, mint, lemon, chicory, raspberry and cherry kvass, are recorded. As commercial kvass producers began selling it in barrels on the streets, domestic kvass making started to decline. In the year ended 30 June 1912, there were 17 factories in the Governorate of Livonia producing a total of 437,255 gallons of kvass.
In the 1890s, the first scientific studies into the production of kvass were conducted in Kyiv, and in the 1960s, the commercial mass production technology of kvass was developed by chemists in Moscow.
Russia
Although the massive flood of western soft drinks after the fall of the USSR such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi substantially shrank the market share of kvass in Russia, in recent years it has regained its original popularity, often marketed as a national soft drink or "patriotic" alternative to cola. For example, the Russian company Nikola has promoted its brand of kvass with an advertising campaign emphasizing "anti cola-nisation." Moscow-based Business Analytica reported in 2008 that bottled kvass sales had tripled since 2005 and estimated that per-capita consumption of kvass in Russia would reach three litres in 2008. Between 2005 and 2007, cola's share of the Moscow soft drink market fell from 37% to 32%. Meanwhile, kvass' share more than doubled over the same time period, reaching 16% in 2007. In response, Coca-Cola launched its own brand of kvass in May 2008. This is the first time a foreign company has made an appreciable entrance into the Russian kvass market. Pepsi has also signed an agreement with a Russian kvass manufacturer to act as a distribution agent. The development of new technologies for storage and distribution, and heavy advertising, have contributed to this surge in popularity; three new major brands have been introduced since 2004.
Market shares (2014)
Poland
Kvass may have appeared in Poland as early as the 10th century, possibly due to trade between the Kingdom of Poland and Kievan Rus'. It was at first commonly drunk by peasants in the eastern parts of the country, but eventually the drink spread to the szlachta. One example of this is kwas chlebowy sapieżyński kodeński, an old type of Polish kvass that is still sold as a contemporary brand. Its origins can be traced back to the 1500s, when founded the town of Kodeń on land granted by the Polish king. He then bought the mills and 24 villages of the surrounding areas from their previous landowners. It was then that the taste of kvass became known among the Polish szlachta, who used it for its supposed healing qualities. Throughout the 19th century, kvass remained popular among Poles who lived in the Congress Poland of Imperial Russia and in Austrian Galicia, especially the inhabitants of rural areas.
Production of the beverage in Poland on an industrial scale can be traced back to the more recent interwar period, when the Polish state regained independence as the Second Polish Republic. In interwar Poland, kvass was brewed and sold in mass numbers by magnates of the Polish drinks market like the Varsovian brewery Haberbusch i Schiele or the Karpiński company. Kvass remained particularly popular in eastern Poland, partly due to the plentiful numbers of Belarusian and Ukrainian minorities that lived there. However, with the collapse of many prewar businesses and much of the Polish industry during World War II, kvass lost popularity following the aftermath of the war. It also lost favour upon the introduction of Coca-Cola onto the Polish market.
Although nowadays not as popular in Poland as it is in neighbouring Ukraine, kvass can still be found in some supermarkets and grocery stores where it is known in Polish as kwas chlebowy (). Commercial bottled versions of the drink are the most common variant, as there are companies that specialise in manufacturing a more modern version of the drink (some variants are manufactured in Poland whilst others are imported from its neighbouring countries, Lithuania and Ukraine being the most popular source). However, recipes for a traditional version of kvass exist; some of them originate from eastern Poland. Although commercial kvass is much easier to find in Polish shops, Polish manufacturers of more natural and healthier variants of kvass have become increasingly popular both within and outside of the country's borders.
Latvia
In Latvian, kvass was also called dzersis. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the street vendors disappeared from the streets of Latvia due to new health laws that banned its sale on the street, and economic disruptions forced many kvass factories to close. The Coca-Cola Company moved in and began to quickly dominate the market for soft drinks. In 1998, the local soft drink industry adapted by starting to sell bottled kvass and launching aggressive marketing campaigns. This surge in sales was stimulated by the fact that kvass sold for about half the price of Coca-Cola. In just three years, kvass constituted as much as 30% of the soft drink market in Latvia, while the market share of Coca-Cola fell from 65% to 44%. The Coca-Cola Company had losses in Latvia of about $1 million in 1999 and 2000. Coca-Cola responded by purchasing kvass manufacturers as well as producing kvass at their own soft drink plants.
On 30 September 2010, the Saeima adopted quality and classification requirements for kvass, defining it as "a beverage obtained by fermenting a mixture of kvass wort with a yeast of microorganism cultures to which sugar and other food sources and food additives are added or not added after the fermentation" with a maximum ABV of 1.2 percent, and differentiating it from an unfermented non-alcoholic mixture of grain product extract, water, flavourings, preservatives, and other ingredients, which is designated as a "kvass (malt) beverage".
In 2014 Latvian kvass producers won seven medals at the Russian Beverage exposition in Moscow with Ilgezeem's Porter Tanheiser kvass winning two gold medals. In 2019, Iļģuciema kvass ranked second in the Most Loved Latvian Beverage Brand Top, and first in the subsequent 2020 top.
Lithuania
In Lithuania, kvass is known as gira and is widely available in bottles and draft. First written records of kvass and kvass recipes in Lithuania appear in the 16th century. Many restaurants in Vilnius make their own kvass', which they sell on the premises. Strictly speaking, gira can be made from anything fermentable—such as caraway tea, beetroot juice, or berries—but it is made mainly from black bread, or from barley or rye malt.
Belarus
Belarus has several breweries producing kvass: Alivaria Brewery, , and . It also has a variety of kvass tasting and entertainment festivals. The largest show takes place in the city of Lida.
Estonia
In Estonia, kvass is known as kali. Initially, it was made from either brewer's spent grain or wort left to ferment in a closed container, but later special kvass bread (kaljaleib) or industrially produced malt concentrate was started to be used. Nowadays, kali generally is industrially produced with the use of pasteurization, the addition of preservatives and artificial carbonation.
Finland
In Finland, a fermented drink made from a mixture of rye flour and rye malt, which in parts of Eastern Finland was heated in the oven, was very common. It was called kalja or vaasa (in Eastern Finnish), while nowadays the drink is often known as kotikalja () and is available in many work canteens, gas stations, and lower-end restaurants.
Traditionally, kalja was usually made in households once a week from a mixture of malted and unmalted rye grains. Other grains, such as oats or barley, were also sometimes used and, occasionally, leftover potatoes or pieces of bread were added as well. Everything was mixed with water in a metal cauldron or a clay pot and kept warm in the oven or by the stove for at least six hours for the mixture to darken and sweeten. Sometimes, the grain solids were filtered out through lautering. In Eastern Finland, the mixture was formed into large loaves and briefly baked for the crust to turn brown. The porridge or pieces of the malt bread were mixed into a wooden cask with water and fermented for one or two days with a previous batch, a sourdough starter, spontaneously or in more recent times with commercial baker's yeast. In the early 20th century, with sugar becoming more readily available, it started replacing the malting process and modern kalja is made from dark rye malt, sugar and baker's yeast.
Sweden
Kvass was also made in Sweden, where it was known as (), although it was very likely limited only to areas where rye bread was the standard bread as opposed to crispbread, which was more common in Western Sweden and did not stale. was still being made in Öland farms up until 1935.
China
In mid 19th century, kvass was introduced in Xinjiang, where it became known as kavas and eventually became one of the region's signature drinks. It is usually consumed cold together with barbecue. In 1900, Russian merchant Ivan Churin founded Harbin Churin Food in Heilongjiang, offering kvass and other specialties and by 2009 the company was already producing 5,000 tons of kvass a year making up 90% of the local market. In 2011, it moved its kvass factory to Tianjin increasing its sales to 20,000 tonns in the first year.
Elsewhere
In the United Kingdom, kvass is practically unknown, as there are no cultural ties to it within the nation's history and there are no renowned kvass breweries in the country. However, with the influx of immigrants following the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, a number of stores selling cuisine and beverages from Eastern Europe cropped up throughout the UK, many of them stocking kvass on their shelves. In 2019, Brod Kvas in Somerset became the first domestic kvass producer in the United Kingdom. In recent years, kvass has also become more popular in Serbia.
Nutritional composition
Naturally fermented kvass contains 5.9%±0.02 carbohydrates, of which 5.7%±0.02 are sugars (mostly fructose, glucose and maltose), as well as 0.71±0.09, 1.28±0.12, and 18.14±0.48 mg/100 g of thiamine, riboflavin and niacin respectively. In addition to that, 19 different aroma volatile compounds have also been identified in naturally fermented kvass, most notably 4-penten-2-ol (10.05×107 PAU), which has a fruity odour, carvone (2.28×107 PAU) originating from caraway fruits used as an ingredient in rye bread, and ethyl octanoate (1.03×107 PAU), which has an odour of fruit and fat.
Traditional kvass made from rye wholemeal bread has been found to have on average two times higher dietary fibre content, 60% higher antioxidant activity (due to the addition of caramel and citric acid to the bread) and three times lower reducing sugar content than industrially produced kvass.
Historically, the ABV of kvass varied depending on the ingredients, microbial flora, as well as temperature and length of fermentation, but nowadays it is usually not higher than 1.5%. The wide availability and consumption of kvass, including by children of all ages, together with the lacking indication of ABV for kvass on the labels and in advertisements has been named a possible contributor to chronic alcoholism in the former Soviet Union.
Use
Apart from drinking, kvass is also used by families (especially the poor ones) as the basis for many dishes. Traditional cold summertime soups of Russian cuisine, such as okroshka, botvinya and tyurya, are based on kvas.
Cultural references
The name of Kvasir, a wise being in Norse mythology, is possibly related to kvass.
There is a Russian expression "Перебиваться с хлеба на квас" (literally "to clamber from bread to kvass"), which means "to live from hand to mouth" or to "scrape by" referring to the frugal practice amongst the poor peasants of making kvass from stale leftovers of rye bread. Another kvass-related term in Russian is "" (квасной патриотизм) dating back to a 1823 letter by the Russian poet Pyotr Vyazemsky where he defines it as "unqualified praise of everything that is your own".
In the Polish language, there is an old folk rhyming song. It shows the history of kvass in the country as having been drunk by generations of Polish reapers as a thirst-quenching beverage used during periods of hard work during the harvest season, long before it became popular as a medicinal drink among the szlachta. The words of the song go as follows:
In Tolstoy's War and Peace, French soldiers are aware of kvass on entering Moscow, enjoying it but referring to it as "pig's lemonade". In Sholem Aleichem's Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son, diluted kvass is the focus of one of Motl's older brother's get-rich-quick schemes.
See also
Brottrunk
Boza
Chicha
Malta
Rejuvelac
Rivella
Pruno
Borș (bran)
References
External links
Fermented drinks
Rye-based drinks
Soft drinks
Belarusian drinks
Chinese drinks
Estonian drinks
Finnish drinks
Latvian drinks
Lithuanian drinks
Polish drinks
Russian drinks
Serbian drinks
Soviet cuisine
Ukrainian drinks | [
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16972 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Arnold%E2%80%93Moser%20theorem | Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem | The Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser (KAM) theorem is a result in dynamical systems about the persistence of quasiperiodic motions under small perturbations. The theorem partly resolves the small-divisor problem that arises in the perturbation theory of classical mechanics.
The problem is whether or not a small perturbation of a conservative dynamical system results in a lasting quasiperiodic orbit. The original breakthrough to this problem was given by Andrey Kolmogorov in 1954. This was rigorously proved and extended by Jürgen Moser in 1962 (for smooth twist maps) and Vladimir Arnold in 1963 (for analytic Hamiltonian systems), and the general result is known as the KAM theorem.
Arnold originally thought that this theorem could apply to the motions of the Solar System or other instances of the -body problem, but it turned out to work only for the three-body problem because of a degeneracy in his formulation of the problem for larger numbers of bodies. Later, Gabriella Pinzari showed how to eliminate this degeneracy by developing a rotation-invariant version of the theorem.
Statement
Integrable Hamiltonian systems
The KAM theorem is usually stated in terms of trajectories in phase space of an integrable Hamiltonian system.
The motion of an integrable system is confined to an invariant torus (a doughnut-shaped surface). Different initial conditions of the integrable Hamiltonian system will trace different invariant tori in phase space. Plotting the coordinates of an integrable system would show that they are quasiperiodic.
Perturbations
The KAM theorem states that if the system is subjected to a weak nonlinear perturbation, some of the invariant tori are deformed and survive (there is a continuous (in the perturbation) map from the original manifold to the deformed one), while others are destroyed (even arbitrarily small perturbations cause the manifold to no longer be invariant and there exists no such map to nearby manifolds) . Surviving tori meet the non-resonance condition, i.e., they have “sufficiently irrational” frequencies. This implies that the motion on the deformed torus continues to be quasiperiodic, with the independent periods changed (as a consequence of the non-degeneracy condition). The KAM theorem quantifies the level of perturbation that can be applied for this to be true.
Those KAM tori that are destroyed by perturbation become invariant Cantor sets, named Cantori by Ian C. Percival in 1979.
The non-resonance and non-degeneracy conditions of the KAM theorem become increasingly difficult to satisfy for systems with more degrees of freedom. As the number of dimensions of the system increases, the volume occupied by the tori decreases.
As the perturbation increases and the smooth curves disintegrate we move from KAM theory to Aubry–Mather theory which requires less stringent hypotheses and works with the Cantor-like sets.
The existence of a KAM theorem for perturbations of quantum many-body integrable systems is still an open question, although it is believed that arbitrarily small perturbations will destroy integrability in the infinite size limit.
Consequences
An important consequence of the KAM theorem is that for a large set of initial conditions the motion remains perpetually quasiperiodic.
KAM theory
The methods introduced by Kolmogorov, Arnold, and Moser have developed into a large body of results related to quasiperiodic motions, now known as KAM theory. Notably, it has been extended to non-Hamiltonian systems (starting with Moser), to non-perturbative situations (as in the work of Michael Herman) and to systems with fast and slow frequencies (as in the work of Mikhail B. Sevryuk).
See also
Stability of the Solar System
Arnold diffusion
Ergodic theory
Hofstadter's butterfly
Nekhoroshev estimates
Notes
References
Arnold, Weinstein, Vogtmann. Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics, 2nd ed., Appendix 8: Theory of perturbations of conditionally periodic motion, and Kolmogorov's theorem. Springer 1997.
Rafael de la Llave (2001) A tutorial on KAM theory.
KAM theory: the legacy of Kolmogorov’s 1954 paper
Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theory from Scholarpedia
H Scott Dumas. The KAM Story – A Friendly Introduction to the Content, History, and Significance of Classical Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser Theory, 2014, World Scientific Publishing, . Chapter 1: Introduction
Hamiltonian mechanics
Theorems in dynamical systems | [
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16973 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kam%20%28disambiguation%29 | Kam (disambiguation) | Kam or Kaam (from Sanskrit: kama) means deep extensive desire, often sexual, and is counted among the cardinal sins in Sikhism.
Kam or KAM also refer to:
People and language
Kam (name), a list of people with either the given name, nickname or surname
Kam people, a Kadai people in China
Kam language, spoken in China
K. A. Manoharan (born 1951), nicknamed K.A.M., Indian Politician
Kam (rapper), born Craig A. Miller in 1970
Kam language (Nigeria) or Nyingwom, spoken in eastern Nigeria
Kams or the Kok people, a Nuristani tribe in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Businesses
Kam Air, an airline headquartered in Kabul, Afghanistan
KAM Manufacturing, a handbag manufacturer in Ohio, United States
Key account management, the idea of looking after large and important accounts that are critical to a business
Places
Kám, Hungary, a village
Kam, Mazandaran, Iran, a village
Kam, West Azerbaijan, Iran, a village
Kam Group, Northwest Territories, Canada, a volcanic group
Other uses of KAM
Kam River, a nickname for the Kaministiquia River in Ontario, Canada
Kentucky Active Militia, a state defense force active during World War II
The forerunner to KHAD, the secret police of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Knowledge Assessment Methodology, an interactive benchmarking tool to help countries make the transition to a knowledge-based economy
Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem
Abbreviation for the phrase Kill all men
See also
Cam (disambiguation)
Language and nationality disambiguation pages | [
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16974 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack%20problem | Knapsack problem | The knapsack problem is a problem in combinatorial optimization: Given a set of items, each with a weight and a value, determine the number of each item to include in a collection so that the total weight is less than or equal to a given limit and the total value is as large as possible. It derives its name from the problem faced by someone who is constrained by a fixed-size knapsack and must fill it with the most valuable items. The problem often arises in resource allocation where the decision makers have to choose from a set of non-divisible projects or tasks under a fixed budget or time constraint, respectively.
The knapsack problem has been studied for more than a century, with early works dating as far back as 1897. The name "knapsack problem" dates back to the early works of the mathematician Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956), and refers to the commonplace problem of packing the most valuable or useful items without overloading the luggage.
Applications
Knapsack problems appear in real-world decision-making processes in a wide variety of fields, such as finding the least wasteful way to cut raw materials, selection of investments and portfolios, selection of assets for asset-backed securitization, and generating keys for the Merkle–Hellman and other knapsack cryptosystems.
One early application of knapsack algorithms was in the construction and scoring of tests in which the test-takers have a choice as to which questions they answer. For small examples, it is a fairly simple process to provide the test-takers with such a choice. For example, if an exam contains 12 questions each worth 10 points, the test-taker need only answer 10 questions to achieve a maximum possible score of 100 points. However, on tests with a heterogeneous distribution of point values, it is more difficult to provide choices. Feuerman and Weiss proposed a system in which students are given a heterogeneous test with a total of 125 possible points. The students are asked to answer all of the questions to the best of their abilities. Of the possible subsets of problems whose total point values add up to 100, a knapsack algorithm would determine which subset gives each student the highest possible score.
A 1999 study of the Stony Brook University Algorithm Repository showed that, out of 75 algorithmic problems, the knapsack problem was the 19th most popular and the third most needed after suffix trees and the bin packing problem.
Definition
The most common problem being solved is the 0-1 knapsack problem, which restricts the number of copies of each kind of item to zero or one. Given a set of items numbered from 1 up to , each with a weight and a value , along with a maximum weight capacity ,
maximize
subject to and .
Here represents the number of instances of item to include in the knapsack. Informally, the problem is to maximize the sum of the values of the items in the knapsack so that the sum of the weights is less than or equal to the knapsack's capacity.
The bounded knapsack problem (BKP) removes the restriction that there is only one of each item, but restricts the number of copies of each kind of item to a maximum non-negative integer value :
maximize
subject to and
The unbounded knapsack problem (UKP) places no upper bound on the number of copies of each kind of item and can be formulated as above except for that the only restriction on is that it is a non-negative integer.
maximize
subject to and
One example of the unbounded knapsack problem is given using the figure shown at the beginning of this article and the text "if any number of each box is available" in the caption of that figure.
Computational complexity
The knapsack problem is interesting from the perspective of computer science for many reasons:
The decision problem form of the knapsack problem (Can a value of at least V be achieved without exceeding the weight W?) is NP-complete, thus there is no known algorithm both correct and fast (polynomial-time) in all cases.
While the decision problem is NP-complete, the optimization problem is not, its resolution is at least as difficult as the decision problem, and there is no known polynomial algorithm which can tell, given a solution, whether it is optimal (which would mean that there is no solution with a larger V, thus solving the NP-complete decision problem).
There is a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm using dynamic programming.
There is a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme, which uses the pseudo-polynomial time algorithm as a subroutine, described below.
Many cases that arise in practice, and "random instances" from some distributions, can nonetheless be solved exactly.
There is a link between the "decision" and "optimization" problems in that if there exists a polynomial algorithm that solves the "decision" problem, then one can find the maximum value for the optimization problem in polynomial time by applying this algorithm iteratively while increasing the value of k. On the other hand, if an algorithm finds the optimal value of the optimization problem in polynomial time, then the decision problem can be solved in polynomial time by comparing the value of the solution output by this algorithm with the value of k. Thus, both versions of the problem are of similar difficulty.
One theme in research literature is to identify what the "hard" instances of the knapsack problem look like, or viewed another way, to identify what properties of instances in practice might make them more amenable than their worst-case NP-complete behaviour suggests. The goal in finding these "hard" instances is for their use in public key cryptography systems, such as the Merkle-Hellman knapsack cryptosystem.
Furthermore, notable is the fact that the hardness of the knapsack problem depends on the form of the input. If the weights and profits are given as integers, it is weakly NP-complete, while it is strongly NP-complete if the weights and profits are given as rational numbers. However, in the case of rational weights and profits it still admits a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme.
Solving
Several algorithms are available to solve knapsack problems, based on the dynamic programming approach, the branch and bound approach or hybridizations of both approaches.
Dynamic programming in-advance algorithm
The unbounded knapsack problem (UKP) places no restriction on the number of copies of each kind of item. Besides, here we assume that
subject to and
Observe that has the following properties:
1. (the sum of zero items, i.e., the summation of the empty set).
2.
, , where is the value of the -th kind of item.
The second property needs to be explained in detail. During the process of the running of this method, how do we get the weight ? There are only ways and the previous weights are where there are total kinds of different item (by saying different, we mean that the weight and the value are not completely the same). If we know each value of these items and the related maximum value previously, we just compare them to each other and get the maximum value ultimately and we are done.
Here the maximum of the empty set is taken to be zero. Tabulating the results from up through gives the solution. Since the calculation of each involves examining at most items, and there are at most values of to calculate, the running time of the dynamic programming solution is . Dividing by their greatest common divisor is a way to improve the running time.
Even if P≠NP, the complexity does not contradict the fact that the knapsack problem is NP-complete, since , unlike , is not polynomial in the length of the input to the problem. The length of the input to the problem is proportional to the number of bits in , , not to itself. However, since this runtime is pseudopolynomial, this makes the (decision version of the) knapsack problem a weakly NP-complete problem.
0-1 knapsack problem
A similar dynamic programming solution for the 0-1 knapsack problem also runs in pseudo-polynomial time. Assume are strictly positive integers. Define to be the maximum value that can be attained with weight less than or equal to using items up to (first items).
We can define recursively as follows: (Definition A)
if (the new item is more than the current weight limit)
if .
The solution can then be found by calculating . To do this efficiently, we can use a table to store previous computations.
The following is pseudocode for the dynamic program:
// Input:
// Values (stored in array v)
// Weights (stored in array w)
// Number of distinct items (n)
// Knapsack capacity (W)
// NOTE: The array "v" and array "w" are assumed to store all relevant values starting at index 1.
array m[0..n, 0..W];
for j from 0 to W do:
m[0, j] := 0
for i from 1 to n do:
m[i, 0] := 0
for i from 1 to n do:
for j from 0 to W do:
if w[i] > j then:
m[i, j] := m[i-1, j]
else:
m[i, j] := max(m[i-1, j], m[i-1, j-w[i]] + v[i])
This solution will therefore run in time and space.
(If we only need the value m[n,W], we can modify the code so that the amount of memory required is O(W) which stores the recent two lines of the array "m".)
However, if we take it a step or two further, we should know that the method will run in the time between and . From Definition A, we know that there is no need to compute all the weights when the number of items and the items themselves that we chose are fixed. That is to say, the program above computes more than necessary because the weight changes from 0 to W often. From this perspective, we can program this method so that it runs recursively.
// Input:
// Values (stored in array v)
// Weights (stored in array w)
// Number of distinct items (n)
// Knapsack capacity (W)
// NOTE: The array "v" and array "w" are assumed to store all relevant values starting at index 1.
Define value[n, W]
Initialize all value[i, j] = -1
Define m:=(i,j) // Define function m so that it represents the maximum value we can get under the condition: use first i items, total weight limit is j
{
if i == 0 or j <= 0 then:
value[i, j] = 0
return
if (value[i-1, j] == -1) then: // m[i-1, j] has not been calculated, we have to call function m
value[i-1, j] = m(i-1, j)
if w[i] > j then: // item cannot fit in the bag
value[i, j] = value[i-1, j]
else:
if (value[i-1, j-w[i]] == -1) then: // m[i-1,j-w[i]] has not been calculated, we have to call function m
value[i-1, j-w[i]] = m(i-1, j-w[i])
value[i, j] = max(value[i-1,j], value[i-1, j-w[i]] + v[i])
}
Run m(n, W)
For example, there are 10 different items and the weight limit is 67. So,
If you use above method to compute for , you will get this, excluding calls that produce :
Besides, we can break the recursion and convert it into a tree. Then we can cut some leaves and use parallel computing to expedite the running of this method.
To find the actual subset of items, rather than just their total value, we can run this after running the function above:/**
* Returns the indices of the items of the optimal knapsack.
* i: We can include items 1 through i in the knapsack
* j: maximum weight of the knapsack
*/
function knapsack(i: int, j: int): Set<int> {
if i == 0 then:
return {}
if m[i, j] > m[i-1, j] then:
return {i} ∪ knapsack(i-1, j-w[i])
else:
return knapsack(i-1, j)
}
knapsack(n, W)
Meet-in-the-middle
Another algorithm for 0-1 knapsack, discovered in 1974 and sometimes called "meet-in-the-middle" due to parallels to a similarly named algorithm in cryptography, is exponential in the number of different items but may be preferable to the DP algorithm when is large compared to n. In particular, if the are nonnegative but not integers, we could still use the dynamic programming algorithm by scaling and rounding (i.e. using fixed-point arithmetic), but if the problem requires fractional digits of precision to arrive at the correct answer, will need to be scaled by , and the DP algorithm will require space and time.
algorithm Meet-in-the-middle is
input: A set of items with weights and values.
output: The greatest combined value of a subset.
partition the set {1...n} into two sets A and B of approximately equal size
compute the weights and values of all subsets of each set
for each subset of A do
find the subset of B of greatest value such that the combined weight is less than W
keep track of the greatest combined value seen so far
The algorithm takes space, and efficient implementations of step 3 (for instance, sorting the subsets of B by weight, discarding subsets of B which weigh more than other subsets of B of greater or equal value, and using binary search to find the best match) result in a runtime of . As with the meet in the middle attack in cryptography, this improves on the runtime of a naive brute force approach (examining all subsets of ), at the cost of using exponential rather than constant space (see also baby-step giant-step).
Approximation algorithms
As for most NP-complete problems, it may be enough to find workable solutions even if they are not optimal. Preferably, however, the approximation comes with a guarantee of the difference between the value of the solution found and the value of the optimal solution.
As with many useful but computationally complex algorithms, there has been substantial research on creating and analyzing algorithms that approximate a solution. The knapsack problem, though NP-Hard, is one of a collection of algorithms that can still be approximated to any specified degree. This means that the problem has a polynomial time approximation scheme. To be exact, the knapsack problem has a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS).
Greedy approximation algorithm
George Dantzig proposed a greedy approximation algorithm to solve the unbounded knapsack problem. His version sorts the items in decreasing order of value per unit of weight, . It then proceeds to insert them into the sack, starting with as many copies as possible of the first kind of item until there is no longer space in the sack for more. Provided that there is an unlimited supply of each kind of item, if is the maximum value of items that fit into the sack, then the greedy algorithm is guaranteed to achieve at least a value of .
For the bounded problem, where the supply of each kind of item is limited, the above algorithm may be far from optimal. Nevertheless, a simple modification allows us to solve this case: Assume for simplicity that all items individually fit in the sack ( for all ). Construct a solution by packing items greedily as long as possible, i.e. where . Furthermore, construct a second solution containing the first item that did not fit. Since provides an upper bound for the LP relaxation of the problem, one of the sets must have value at least ; we thus return whichever of and has better value to obtain a -approximation.
Fully polynomial time approximation scheme
The fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for the knapsack problem takes advantage of the fact that the reason the problem has no known polynomial time solutions is because the profits associated with the items are not restricted. If one rounds off some of the least significant digits of the profit values then they will be bounded by a polynomial and 1/ε where ε is a bound on the correctness of the solution. This restriction then means that an algorithm can find a solution in polynomial time that is correct within a factor of (1-ε) of the optimal solution.
algorithm FPTAS is
input: ε ∈ (0,1]
a list A of n items, specified by their values, , and weights
output: S' the FPTAS solution
P := max // the highest item value
K := ε
for i from 1 to n do
:=
end for
return the solution, S', using the values in the dynamic program outlined above
Theorem: The set computed by the algorithm above satisfies , where is an optimal solution.
Dominance relations
Solving the unbounded knapsack problem can be made easier by throwing away items which will never be needed. For a given item , suppose we could find a set of items such that their total weight is less than the weight of , and their total value is greater than the value of . Then cannot appear in the optimal solution, because we could always improve any potential solution containing by replacing with the set . Therefore, we can disregard the -th item altogether. In such cases, is said to dominate . (Note that this does not apply to bounded knapsack problems, since we may have already used up the items in .)
Finding dominance relations allows us to significantly reduce the size of the search space. There are several different types of dominance relations, which all satisfy an inequality of the form:
, and for some
where
and . The vector denotes the number of copies of each member of .
Collective dominance The -th item is collectively dominated by , written as , if the total weight of some combination of items in is less than wi and their total value is greater than vi. Formally, and for some , i.e. . Verifying this dominance is computationally hard, so it can only be used with a dynamic programming approach. In fact, this is equivalent to solving a smaller knapsack decision problem where , , and the items are restricted to .
Threshold dominance The -th item is threshold dominated by , written as , if some number of copies of are dominated by . Formally, , and for some and . This is a generalization of collective dominance, first introduced in and used in the EDUK algorithm. The smallest such defines the threshold of the item , written . In this case, the optimal solution could contain at most copies of .
Multiple dominance The -th item is multiply dominated by a single item , written as , if is dominated by some number of copies of . Formally, , and for some i.e. . This dominance could be efficiently used during preprocessing because it can be detected relatively easily.
Modular dominance Let be the best item, i.e. for all . This is the item with the greatest density of value. The -th item is modularly dominated by a single item , written as , if is dominated by plus several copies of . Formally, , and i.e. .
Variations
There are many variations of the knapsack problem that have arisen from the vast number of applications of the basic problem. The main variations occur by changing the number of some problem parameter such as the number of items, number of objectives, or even the number of knapsacks.
Multi-objective knapsack problem
This variation changes the goal of the individual filling the knapsack. Instead of one objective, such as maximizing the monetary profit, the objective could have several dimensions. For example, there could be environmental or social concerns as well as economic goals. Problems frequently addressed include portfolio and transportation logistics optimizations.
As an example, suppose you ran a cruise ship. You have to decide how many famous comedians to hire. This boat can handle no more than one ton of passengers and the entertainers must weigh less than 1000 lbs. Each comedian has a weight, brings in business based on their popularity and asks for a specific salary. In this example, you have multiple objectives. You want, of course, to maximize the popularity of your entertainers while minimizing their salaries. Also, you want to have as many entertainers as possible.
Multi-dimensional knapsack problem
In this variation, the weight of knapsack item is given by a D-dimensional vector and the knapsack has a D-dimensional capacity vector . The target is to maximize the sum of the values of the items in the knapsack so that the sum of weights in each dimension does not exceed .
Multi-dimensional knapsack is computationally harder than knapsack; even for , the problem does not have EPTAS unless PNP. However, the algorithm in is shown to solve sparse instances efficiently. An instance of multi-dimensional knapsack is sparse if there is a set for such that for every knapsack item , such that and . Such instances occur, for example, when scheduling packets in a wireless network with relay nodes. The algorithm from also solves sparse instances of the multiple choice variant, multiple-choice multi-dimensional knapsack.
The IHS (Increasing Height Shelf) algorithm is optimal for 2D knapsack (packing squares into a two-dimensional unit size square): when there are at most five square in an optimal packing.
Multiple knapsack problem
This variation is similar to the Bin Packing Problem. It differs from the Bin Packing Problem in that a subset of items can be selected, whereas, in the Bin Packing Problem, all items have to be packed to certain bins. The concept is that there are multiple knapsacks. This may seem like a trivial change, but it is not equivalent to adding to the capacity of the initial knapsack. This variation is used in many loading and scheduling problems in Operations Research and has a Polynomial-time approximation scheme.
Quadratic knapsack problem
The quadratic knapsack problem maximizes a quadratic objective function subject to binary and linear capacity constraints. The problem was introduced by Gallo, Hammer, and Simeone in 1980, however the first treatment of the problem dates back to Witzgall in 1975.
Subset-sum problem
The subset sum problem is a special case of the decision and 0-1 problems where each kind of item, the weight equals the value: . In the field of cryptography, the term knapsack problem is often used to refer specifically to the subset sum problem and is commonly known as one of Karp's 21 NP-complete problems.
The generalization of subset sum problem is called multiple subset-sum problem, in which multiple bins exist with the same capacity. It has been shown that the generalization does not have an FPTAS.
Geometric knapsack problem
In the geometric knapsack problem, there is a set of rectangles with different values, and a rectangular knapsack. The goal is to pack the largest possible value into the knapsack.
See also
Bin packing problem
Change-making problem
Combinatorial auction
Combinatorial optimization
Continuous knapsack problem
Cutting stock problem
List of knapsack problems
Packing problem
Notes
References
A6: MP9, pg.247.
External links
Free download of the book "Knapsack problems: Algorithms and computer implementations", by Silvano Martello and Paolo Toth
Lecture slides on the knapsack problem
PYAsUKP: Yet Another solver for the Unbounded Knapsack Problem, with code taking advantage of the dominance relations in an hybrid algorithm, benchmarks and downloadable copies of some papers.
Home page of David Pisinger with downloadable copies of some papers on the publication list (including "Where are the hard knapsack problems?")
Knapsack Problem solutions in many languages at Rosetta Code
Dynamic Programming algorithm to 0/1 Knapsack problem
Knapsack Problem solver (online)
Solving 0-1-KNAPSACK with Genetic Algorithms in Ruby
Codes for Quadratic Knapsack Problem
Optimizing Three-Dimensional Bin Packing
Knapsack Integer Programming Solution in Python Gekko (optimization software)
Cryptography
Packing problems
NP-complete problems
Dynamic programming
Combinatorial optimization
Weakly NP-complete problems
Pseudo-polynomial time algorithms | [
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16976 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernite | Kernite | Kernite, also known as rasorite, is a hydrated sodium borate hydroxide mineral with formula . It is a colorless to white mineral crystallizing in the monoclinic crystal system typically occurring as prismatic to acicular crystals or granular masses. It is relatively soft with Mohs hardness of 2.5 to 3 and light with a specific gravity of 1.91. It exhibits perfect cleavage and a brittle fracture.
Kernite is soluble in cold water and alters to tincalconite when it dehydrates. It undergoes a non-reversible alteration to metakernite () when heated to above 100 °C.
Occurrence and history
The mineral occurs in sedimentary evaporite deposits in arid regions.
Kernite was discovered in 1926 in eastern Kern County, in Southern California, and later renamed after the county. The location was the US Borax Mine at Boron in the western Mojave Desert. This type material is stored at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.
The Kern County mine was the only known source of the mineral for a period of time. More recently, kernite is mined in Argentina and Turkey.
The largest documented, single crystal of kernite measured 2.44 x 0.9 x 0.9 m3 and weighed ~3.8 tons.
Uses
Kernite is used to produce borax which can be used in a variety of soaps.
References
Sodium minerals
Inoborates
Monoclinic minerals
Minerals in space group 14
Natural history of Kern County, California
Natural history of the Mojave Desert | [
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16978 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketoprofen | Ketoprofen | Ketoprofen is one of the propionic acid class of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) with analgesic and antipyretic effects. It acts by inhibiting the body's production of prostaglandin.
It was patented in 1967 and approved for medical use in 1980.
Medical uses
Ketoprofen is generally prescribed for arthritis-related inflammatory pains or severe toothaches that result in the inflammation of the gums.
Ketoprofen topical patches are being used for treatment of musculoskeletal pain.
Ketoprofen can also be used for treatment of some pain, especially nerve pain such as sciatica, postherpetic neuralgia and referred pain for radiculopathy, in the form of a cream, ointment, liquid, spray, or gel, which may also contain ketamine and lidocaine, along with other agents which may be useful, such as cyclobenzaprine, amitriptyline, acyclovir, gabapentin, orphenadrine and other drugs used as NSAIDs or adjuvant, atypical or potentiators for pain treatment.
Efficacy
A 2013 systematic review indicated "The efficacy of orally administered ketoprofen in relieving moderate-severe pain and improving functional status and general condition was significantly better than that of ibuprofen and/or diclofenac." A 2017 Cochrane systematic review investigating ketoprofen as a single-dose by mouth in acute, moderate-to-severe postoperative pain concluded that its efficacy is equivalent to drugs such as ibuprofen and diclofenac.
There is evidence supporting topical ketoprofen for osteoarthritis but not other chronic musculoskeletal pain.
Adverse effects
In October 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required the drug label to be updated for all nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications to describe the risk of kidney problems in unborn babies that result in low amniotic fluid. They recommend avoiding NSAIDs in pregnant women at 20 weeks or later in pregnancy.
Mechanism
The patches have been shown to provide rapid and sustained delivery to underlying tissues without significantly increasing levels of drug concentration in the blood when compared to the traditional oral administration. Ketoprofen undergoes metabolism in the liver via conjugation with glucuronic acid (glucuronidation) by UGT enzymes, hydroxylation of the benzoyl ring by the CYP3A4 and CYP2C9 enzymes, and reduction of its ketone moiety (a carbonyl functional group, i.e. with carbon-oxygen double bond) by carbonyl reducing enzymes (CREs). Ketoprofen is used for its antipyretic, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory properties by inhibiting cyclooxygenase-1 and -2 (COX-1 and COX-2) enzymes reversibly, which decreases production of proinflammatory prostaglandin precursors.
Available forms
Ketoprofen was available over-the-counter in the United States in the form of 12.5 mg coated tablets (Orudis KT and Actron), but this form has been discontinued. It is available by prescription capsules.
Ketoprofen is also available as a 2.5% gel for topical application, and it is also available as a patch for topical analgesia and anti-inflammatory action. However, the gel is not sold in the United States.
Brand names in Australia are Orudis and Oruvail. It is available in Japan in a transdermal patch Mohrus Tape, made by Hisamitsu Pharmaceutical. It is available in the UK as Ketoflam and Oruvail, in Ireland as Fastum Gel, in Estonia as Keto, Ketonal, and Fastum Gel, in Finland as Ketorin, Keto, Ketomex, and Orudis; in France as Profénid, Bi-Profénid and Ketum; in Italy as Ketodol, Fastum Gel, Lasonil, Orudis and Oki; in Poland as Ketonal, Ketonal active, Ketolek, in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia as Knavon and Ketonal; in Romania as Ketonal and Fastum Gel; in Mexico as Arthril; in Norway as Zon and Orudis; in Russia as ОКИ (OKI), Fastum Gel and Ketonal; in Spain as Actron and Fastum Gel; in Albania as Oki and Fastum Gel and in Venezuela as Ketoprofeno as an injectable solution of 100 mg and 150 mg capsules.
In some countries, the optically pure (S)-enantiomer (dexketoprofen) is available; its trometamol salt is said to be particularly rapidly reabsorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, having a rapid onset of effects.
The earliest report of therapeutic use in humans was in 1972.
Veterinary medicine
Ketoprofen is a common NSAID, antipyretic, and analgesic used in horses and other equines. It is most commonly used for musculoskeletal pain, joint problems, and soft tissue injury, as well as laminitis. It is also used to control fevers and prevent endotoxemia. It is also used as a mild painkiller in smaller animals, generally following surgical procedures.
In horses, it is given at a dose of 2.2 mg/kg/day. Studies have shown that it does not inhibit 5-lipoxygenase and leukotriene B4, as originally claimed. It is therefore not considered superior to phenylbutazone as previously believed, although clinical signs of lameness are reduced with its use. In fact, phenylbutazone was shown superior to ketoprofen in cases of experimentally-induced synovitis when both drugs were used at labeled dosages.
Administration
Ketoprofen, when administered intravenously, is recommended for a maximum of five days of use. Its analgesic and antipyretic effects begin to occur one to two hours following administration. The most common dosage is 1 mg/ lb, once per day, although this dosage may be lowered for ponies, which are most susceptible to NSAID side effects.
It is also available as a capsule dosage form and tablet.
Ecological problems
Experiments have found ketoprofen, like diclofenac, is a veterinary drug causing lethal effects in red-headed vultures. Vultures feeding on the carcasses of recently treated livestock suffer acute kidney failure within days of exposure.
See also
Piketoprofen, a ketoprofen amide
References
External links
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
Equine medications
Benzophenones
Hepatotoxins | [
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16980 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KY | KY | KY or Ky may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Ky Kiske, a fictional character in the Guilty Gear video game series
Kashiyatra, a festival in India
People
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ (1930-2011), South Vietnamese general and prime minister
Ky Baldwin (born 2001), Australian singer, songwriter, dancer, and actor
Ky Bowman (born 1997), American professional basketball player
Ky Bush (born 1999), American MLB player
Ky Dickens, American filmmaker, writer, and director
Ky Ebright (1894-1979), American rowing coach
Ky Fan (1914-2010), Chinese-born American mathematician
Ky Furneaux (born 1973), Australian television personality and host, outdoor guide, survival expert, and stunt person
Ky Hollenbeck (born 1987), American kickboxer
Ky Hurst (born 1981), Australian swimmer and ironman
Ky Laffoon (1908-1984), American professional golfer
Ky Nam Le Duc, Vietnamese-Canadian film director and screenwriter
Ky Rodwell (born 1999), Australian professional rugby league footballer
Places
KY postcode area, UK (Kirkcaldy), covering most of Fife and surrounding areas in Scotland
Kentucky, a U.S. state
County Kerry, a county of Ireland
Cayman Islands (ISO two-letter country code)
.ky, top-level domain for the Cayman Islands
Kyritz, a German licence plate code, for Kyritz in Brandenburg
Other uses
K-Y Jelly, a brand of personal lubricant
Kerosene, A fuel, can be used as industrial lubricant. Known in some countries as paraffin.
Kyrgyz language (ISO 639 alpha-2 code KY)
Air São Tomé and Príncipe and Kunming Air (IATA airline designator)
, Swedish Qualified Vocational Education
KY Cygni, a red supergiant located in the constellation Cygnus
A variation of the name Kye, Kai, Kay, or Cai; and as a nickname for Kyle
See also
ΚΨ or Kappa Psi, a professional pharmacy fraternity | [
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16984 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea%20Institute%20for%20Advanced%20Study | Korea Institute for Advanced Study | The Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) is an advanced research institute in South Korea. It is located on a campus in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul.
KIAS was founded in 1996, aiming to become a world leading research institute where international elite scholars gather and dedicate to fundamental research in basic sciences. Currently, there are three schools in the institute: mathematics, physics, and computational sciences. As of 2016, the institute has 3 distinguished professors, 26 professors, and 133 research fellows.
As its name suggests, the institute was modeled after the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. KIAS is funded by the government and is a subordinate institute of KAIST.
Presidents
1st and 2nd: Kim Chung Wook
3rd: Kim Mahn Won
4th: Hyo Chul Myung
5th: Kim Doochul
6th: Keum Jonghae
7th: Lee Yong-hee
8th: Choe Jaigyoung
See also
Institute for Basic Science
Notes
External links
(English and Korean)
Research institutes in South Korea
Dongdaemun District
1996 establishments in South Korea
Mathematical institutes
Physics institutes | [
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16985 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki | Kabuki | is a classical form of Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.
Kabuki is thought to have originated in the very early Edo period, when founder Izumo no Okuni formed a female dance troupe who performed dances and light sketches in Kyoto. The art form later developed into its present all-male theatrical form after women were banned from performing in kabuki theatre in 1629. Kabuki developed throughout the late 17th century and reached its zenith in the mid-18th century.
In 2005, kabuki theatre was proclaimed by UNESCO as an intangible heritage possessing outstanding universal value. In 2008, it was inscribed in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Etymology
The individual kanji that make up the word 'kabuki' can be read as , , and . Kabuki is therefore sometimes translated as "the art of singing and dancing". These are, however, characters which do not reflect actual etymology. The kanji of "skill" generally refers to a performer in kabuki theatre.
Since the word "kabuki" is believed to derive from the verb , meaning "to lean" or "to be out of the ordinary", the word "kabuki" can also be interpreted as "avant-garde" or "bizarre" theatre. The expression referred originally to those who were bizarrely dressed. It is often translated into English as "strange things" or "the crazy ones", and referred to the style of dress worn by gangs of samurai.
History
1603–1629: Female kabuki
The history of kabuki began in 1603 when Izumo no Okuni, possibly a of Izumo-taisha, began performing with a troupe of female dancers a new style of dance drama, on a makeshift stage in the dry bed of the Kamo River in Kyoto, at the very beginning of the Edo period, and Japan's rule by the Tokugawa shogunate, enforced by Tokugawa Ieyasu.
In the earliest forms of kabuki, female performers played both men and women in comic playlets about ordinary life. It didn't take long for the style to become popular, and Okuni was asked to perform before the Imperial Court. In the wake of such success, rival troupes quickly formed, and kabuki was born as ensemble dance and drama performed by women.
Much of the appeal of kabuki in this era was due to the ribald, suggestive themes featured by many troupes; this appeal was further augmented by the fact that many performers were also involved in prostitution. For this reason, kabuki was also known as during this period.
Kabuki became a common form of entertainment in the red-light districts of Japan, especially in Yoshiwara, the registered red-light district in Edo. The widespread appeal of kabuki often meant that a diverse crowd of different social classes gathered to watch performances, a unique occurrence that happened nowhere else in the city of Edo. Kabuki theatres became well known as a place to both see and be seen in terms of fashion and style, as the audience—commonly comprising a number of socially low but economically wealthy merchants—typically used a performance as a way to feature the fashion trends.
As an art-form, kabuki also provided inventive new forms of entertainment, featuring new musical styles played on the , clothes and fashion often dramatic in appearance, famous actors and stories often intended to mirror current events. Performances typically lasted from morning until sunset, with surrounding teahouses providing meals, refreshments and place to socialise. The area surrounding kabuki theatres also featured a number of shops selling kabuki souvenirs.
Despite its popularity, the ruling shogunate held unfavorable views of kabuki performances. The crowd at a kabuki performance often mixed different social classes, and the social peacocking of the merchant classes, who controlled much of Japan's economy at the time, were perceived to have entrenched upon the standing of the samurai classes, both in appearance and often wealth. In an effort to clamp down on kabuki's popularity, women's kabuki, known as , was banned in 1629 for being too erotic. Following this ban, young boys began performing in , which was also soon banned. Kabuki switched to adult male actors, called , in the mid-1600s. Adult male actors, however, continued to play both female and male characters, and kabuki retained its popularity, remaining a key aspect of the Edo period urban life-style.
Although kabuki was performed widely across Japan, the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za and Kawarazaki-za theatres became the most widely known and popular kabuki theatres, where some of the most successful kabuki performances were and still are held.
1629–1673: Transition to
During the time period of 1628–1673, the modern version of all-male kabuki actors, a style of kabuki known as (lit., "young man kabuki"), was established, following the ban on women and young boys. Cross-dressing male actors, known as "" (lit., "woman role") or "" took over previously female- or -acted roles. Young (adolescent) men were still preferred for women's roles due to their less obviously masculine appearance and the higher pitch of their voices. The roles of adolescent men in kabuki, known as , were also played by young men, often selected for their attractiveness; this became a common practice, and were often presented in an erotic context.
The focus of kabuki performances also increasingly began to emphasise drama alongside dance. However, the ribald nature of kabuki performances continued, with male actors also engaging in sex work for both female and male customers. Audiences frequently became rowdy, and brawls occasionally broke out, sometimes over the favors of a particularly popular or handsome actor, leading the shogunate to ban first and then roles for a short period of time; both bans were rescinded by 1652.
1673–1841: Genroku period kabuki
During the Genroku period, kabuki thrived, with the structure of kabuki plays formalising into the structure they are performed in today, alongside many other elements which eventually came to be recognised as a key aspect of kabuki tradition, such as conventional character tropes. Kabuki theater and , an elaborate form of puppet theater later known as , became closely associated with each other, mutually influencing the other's further development.
The famous playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, one of the first professional kabuki playwrights, produced several influential works during this time, though the piece usually acknowledged as his most significant, (The Love Suicides at ), was originally written for . Like many plays, it was adapted for kabuki, eventually becoming popular enough to reportedly inspire a number of real-life "copycat" suicides, and leading to a government ban on (plays about love suicides) in 1723.
Also during the Genroku period was the development of the style of posing, credited to kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjūrō I, alongside the development of the mask-like makeup worn by kabuki actors in some plays.
In the mid-18th century, kabuki fell out of favor for a time, with taking its place as the premier form of stage entertainment among the lower social classes. This occurred partly because of the emergence of several skilled playwrights in that time. Little of note would occur in the further development of kabuki until the end of the century, when it began to reemerge in popularity.
1842–1868: kabuki
In the 1840s, repeated periods of drought led to a series of fires affecting Edo, with kabuki theatres—traditionally made of wood—frequently burning down, forcing many to relocate. When the area that housed the Nakamura-za was completely destroyed in 1841, the refused to allow the theatre to be rebuilt, saying that it was against fire code.
The shogunate, mostly disapproving of the socialisation and trade that occurred in kabuki theatres between merchants, actors and prostitutes, took advantage of the fire crisis in the following year, forcing the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za and Kawarazaki-za out of the city limits and into Asakusa, a northern suburb of Edo. Actors, stagehands, and others associated with the performances were also forced to move in lieu of the death of their livelihood; despite the move of everyone involved in kabuki performance, and many in the surrounding areas, to the new location of the theatres, the inconvenience of the distance led to a reduction in attendance. These factors, along with strict regulations, pushed much of kabuki "underground" in Edo, with performances changing locations to avoid the authorities.
The theatres' new location was called Saruwaka-chō, or Saruwaka-machi; the last thirty years of the Tokugawa shogunate's rule is often referred to as the "Saruwaka-machi period", and is well known for having produced some of the most exaggerated kabuki in Japanese history.
Saruwaka-machi became the new theatre district for the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za and Kawarazaki-za theatres. The district was located on the main street of Asakusa, which ran through the middle of the small city. The street was renamed after Saruwaka Kanzaburo, who initiated Edo kabuki in the Nakamura-za in 1624.
European artists began noticing Japanese theatrical performances and artwork, and many artists, such as Claude Monet, were inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. This Western interest prompted Japanese artists to increase their depictions of daily life, including the depiction of theatres, brothels, main streets and so on. One artist, Utagawa Hiroshige, produced a series of prints based on Saruwaka from the Saruwaka-machi period in Asakusa.
Despite the revival of kabuki in another location, the relocation diminished the tradition's most abundant inspirations for costuming, make-up, and storylines. Ichikawa KodanjiIV was considered one of the most active and successful actors during the Saruwaka-machi period. Deemed unattractive, he mainly performed , or dancing, in dramas written by Kawatake Mokuami, who also wrote during the Meiji era to follow. Kawatake Mokuami commonly wrote plays that depicted the common lives of the people of Edo. He introduced (seven-and-five syllable meter) dialogue and music such as . His kabuki performances became quite popular once the Saruwaka-machi period ended and theatre returned to Edo; many of his works are still performed.
In 1868, the Tokugawa ceased to exist, with the restoration of the Emperor. Emperor Meiji was restored to power and moved from Kyoto to the new capital of Edo, or Tokyo, beginning the Meiji period. Kabuki once again returned to the pleasure quarters of Edo, and throughout the Meiji period became increasingly more radical, as modern styles of kabuki plays and performances emerged. Playwrights experimented with the introduction of new genres to kabuki, and introduced twists on traditional stories.
Post-Meiji period kabuki
Beginning in 1868, enormous cultural changes, such as the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the elimination of the samurai class, and the opening of Japan to the West, helped to spark kabuki's re-emergence. Both actors and playwrights strove to improve the reputation of kabuki in the face of new foreign influence and amongst the upper classes, partially through adapting traditional styles to modern tastes. This endeavour would prove successful, with the Emperor sponsoring a kabuki performance on 21 April 1887.
After World War II, the occupying forces briefly banned kabuki, which had formed a strong base of support for Japan's war efforts since 1931; however, by 1947 the ban had been rescinded.
Post-war to modern day kabuki
The ensuing period of occupation following World War II posited a difficult time for kabuki; besides the war's physical impact and devastation upon the country, some schools of thought chose to reject both the styles and artforms of pre-war Japan, kabuki amongst them. Director Tetsuji Takechi's popular and innovative productions of kabuki classics at this time are credited with sparking new interest in kabuki in the Kansai region. Of the many popular young stars who performed with the Takechi Kabuki, Nakamura Ganjiro III (b. 1931) was the leading figure, first known as Nakamura Senjaku before taking his current name. It was this period of kabuki in Osaka that became known as the "Age of Senjaku" in his honor.
Today, kabuki is the most popular of the traditional styles of Japanese drama, with its star actors often appearing in television or film roles. Well-known actor Bandō Tamasaburō V has appeared in several non-kabuki plays and movies, often in the role of a woman.
Kabuki also appears in works of Japanese popular culture such as anime. In addition to the handful of major theatres in Tokyo and Kyoto, there are many smaller theatres in Osaka and throughout the countryside. The troupe, based in Ōshika, Nagano Prefecture, is one example.
Some local kabuki troupes today use female actors in roles. The Ichikawa Shōjo Kabuki Gekidan, an all-female troupe, debuted in 1953 to significant acclaim, though the majority of kabuki troupes have remained entirely-male.
The introduction of earphone guides in 1975, including an English version in 1982, helped broaden the artform's appeal. As a result, in 1991 the Kabuki-za, one of Tokyo's best known kabuki theaters, began year-round performances and, in 2005, began marketing kabuki cinema films. Kabuki troupes regularly tour Asia, Europe and America, and there have been several kabuki-themed productions of Western plays such as those of Shakespeare. Western playwrights and novelists have also experimented with kabuki themes, an example of which is Gerald Vizenor's (2004). Writer Yukio Mishima pioneered and popularised the use of kabuki in modern settings and revived other traditional arts, such as Noh, adapting them to modern contexts. There have even been kabuki troupes established in countries outside Japan. For instance, in Australia, the Za Kabuki troupe at the Australian National University has performed a kabuki drama each year since 1976, the longest regular kabuki performance outside Japan.
In November 2002, a statue was erected in honor of kabuki's founder, Izumo no Okuni and to commemorate 400 years of kabuki's existence. Diagonally across from the Minami-za, the last remaining kabuki theater in Kyoto, it stands at the east end of a bridge (Shijō Ōhashi) crossing the Kamo River in Kyoto.
Kabuki was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists in 2005.
Super Kabuki
While still maintaining most of the historical practices of kabuki, aimed to broaden its appeal by creating a new genre of kabuki productions called . With as the first Super Kabuki production to premiere in 1986, remakes of traditional plays and new contemporary creations have been brought to local theaters throughout the country, including anime-based productions such as Naruto or One Piece starting from 2014.
Super Kabuki has sparked controversy within the Japanese population regarding the extent of modification of the traditional art form. Some say that it has lost its 400-year history, while others consider the adaptations necessary for contemporary relevance. Regardless, since incorporating more advanced technology in the new stage sets, costumes, and lighting, Super Kabuki has regained interest from the young demographic.
Elements
Stage design
The kabuki stage features a projection called a , a walkway which extends into the audience and via which dramatic entrances and exits are made. Okuni also performed on a stage with her entourage. The stage is used not only as a walkway or path to get to and from the main stage, but important scenes are also played on the stage.
Kabuki stages and theaters have steadily become more technologically sophisticated, and innovations including revolving stages and trap doors were introduced during the 18th century. A driving force has been the desire to manifest one frequent theme of kabuki theater, that of the sudden, dramatic revelation or transformation. A number of stage tricks, including actors' rapid appearance and disappearance, employ these innovations. The term , often translated as "playing to the gallery", is sometimes used as a catch-all for these tricks. The , and several innovations including revolving stage, and have all contributed to kabuki. The creates depth and both and provide a vertical dimension.
(revolving stage) developed in the Kyōhō era (1716–1735). The trick was originally accomplished by the on-stage pushing of a round, wheeled platform. Later a circular platform was embedded in the stage with wheels beneath it facilitating movement. The ("darkened revolve") technique involves lowering the stage lights during this transition. More commonly the lights are left on for ("lighted revolve"), sometimes simultaneously performing the transitioning scenes for dramatic effect. This stage was first built in Japan in the early 18th century.
refers to the stage "traps" that have been commonly employed in kabuki since the middle of the 18th century. These traps raise and lower actors or sets to the stage. or refers to trap(s) moving upward and or to traps descending. This technique is often used to lift an entire scene at once.
(riding in mid-air) is a technique, which appeared toward the middle of the 19th century, by which an actor's costume is attached to wires and he is made to "fly" over the stage or certain parts of the auditorium. This is similar to the wire trick in the stage musical Peter Pan, in which Peter launches himself into the air. It is still one of the most popular (visual tricks) in kabuki today; major kabuki theaters, such as the National Theatre, Kabuki-za and Minami-za, are all equipped with installations.
Scenery changes are sometimes made mid-scene, while the actors remain on stage and the curtain stays open. This is sometimes accomplished by using a , or "small wagon stage". This technique originated at the beginning of the 18th century, where scenery or actors move on or off stage on a wheeled platform. Also common are stagehands rushing onto the stage adding and removing props, backdrops and other scenery; these are always dressed entirely in black and are traditionally considered invisible. Stagehands also assist in a variety of quick costume changes known as ("quick change technique").
When a character's true nature is suddenly revealed, the devices of and are often used. This involves layering one costume over another and having a stagehand pull the outer one off in front of the audience.
The curtain that shields the stage before the performance and during the breaks is in the traditional colours of black, red and green, in various order, or white instead of green, vertical stripes. The curtain consists of one piece and is pulled back to one side by a staff member by hand.
An additional outer curtain called was not introduced until the Meiji era following the introduction of western influence. These are more ornate in their appearance and are woven. They depict the season in which the performance is taking place, often designed by renowned artists.
Appearances
Since feudal laws in 17th century Japan prohibited replicating the looks of samurai or nobility and the use of luxurious fabrics, the kabuki costumes were groundbreaking new designs to the general public, even setting trends that still exist today.
Although the earliest kabuki costumes have not been preserved, separate and kabuki costumes today are made based on written records called and in collaboration with those whose families have been in the kabuki industry for generations. The kimono the actors wear for their costumes are typically made with vibrant colors and multiple layers. Both and wear - pleated trousers – in some plays, and both use padding underneath their costumes to create the correct body shape for the outfit.
Kabuki makeup provides an element of style easily recognizable even by those unfamiliar with the art form. Rice powder is used to create the white base for the characteristic stage makeup, and enhances or exaggerates facial lines to produce dramatic animal or supernatural masks. The color of the is an expression of the character's nature: red lines are used to indicate passion, heroism, righteousness, and other positive traits; blue or black, villainy, jealousy, and other negative traits; green, the supernatural; and purple, nobility.
Another special feature of kabuki costumes is the , or the wig. Each actor has a different wig made for every role, constructed from a thin base of hand-beaten copper custom-made to fit the actor perfectly, and each wig is usually styled in a traditional manner. The hair used in the wigs is typically real human hair hand-sewn onto a habotai base, though some styles of wig require yak hair or horse hair.
Performance
The three main categories of kabuki play are , , and .
, or history plays, are set within the context of major events in Japanese history. Strict censorship laws during the Edo period prohibited the representation of contemporary events and particularly prohibited criticising the shogunate or casting it in a bad light, although enforcement varied greatly over the years. Many shows were set in the context of the Genpei War of the 1180s, the Nanboku-chō Wars of the 1330s, or other historical events. Frustrating the censors, many shows used these historical settings as metaphors for contemporary events. , one of the most famous plays in the kabuki repertoire, serves as an excellent example; it is ostensibly set in the 1330s, though it actually depicts the contemporary (18th century) affair of the revenge of the 47 rōnin.
Unlike , which generally focused upon the samurai class, focused primarily upon commoners, namely townspeople and peasants. Often referred to as "domestic plays" in English, generally related to themes of family drama and romance. Some of the most famous are the love suicide plays, adapted from works by the playwright Chikamatsu; these center on romantic couples who cannot be together in life due to various circumstances and who therefore decide to be together in death instead. Many if not most contain significant elements of this theme of societal pressures and limitations.
pieces place their emphasis on dance, which may be performed with or without dialogue, where dance can be used to convey emotion, character and plot. Quick costume change techniques may sometimes be employed in such pieces. Notable examples include and . musicians may be seated in rows on stepped platforms behind the dancers.
Important elements of kabuki include the , in which the actor holds a picturesque pose to establish his character. At this point his house name () is sometimes heard in loud shout () from an expert audience member, serving both to express and enhance the audience's appreciation of the actor's achievement. An even greater compliment can be paid by shouting the name of the actor's father.
The main actor has to convey a wide variety of emotions between a fallen, drunkard person and someone who in reality is quite different since he is only faking his weakness, such as the character of Yuranosuke in . This is called or "belly acting", which means he has to perform from within to change characters. It is technically difficult to perform and takes a long time to learn, but once mastered the audience takes up on the actor's emotion.
Emotions are also expressed through the colours of the costumes, a key element in kabuki. Gaudy and strong colours can convey foolish or joyful emotions, whereas severe or muted colours convey seriousness and focus.
Play structure and performance style
Kabuki, like other forms of drama traditionally performed in Japan, was—and sometimes still is—performed in full-day programmes, with one play comprising a number of acts spanning the entire day. However, these plays—particularly —were commonly sequenced with acts from other plays in order to produce a full-day programme, as the individual acts in a kabuki play commonly functioned as stand-alone performances in and of themselves. plays, in contrast, were generally not sequenced with acts from other plays, and genuinely would take the entire day to perform.
The structure of a full-day performance was derived largely from the conventions of both and Noh theatre. Chief amongst these was the concept of , a pacing convention in theatre stating that the action of a play should start slow, speed up, and end quickly. The concept, elaborated on at length by master Noh playwright Zeami, governs not only the actions of the actors, but also the structure of the play, as well as the structure of scenes and plays within a day-long programme.
Nearly every full-length play occupies five acts. The first corresponds to , an auspicious and slow opening which introduces the audience to the characters and the plot. The next three acts correspond to , where events speed up, culminating almost always in a great moment of drama or tragedy in the third act, and possibly a battle in the second or fourth acts. The final act, corresponding to , is almost always short, providing a quick and satisfying conclusion.
While many plays were written solely for kabuki, many others were taken from plays, Noh plays, folklore, or other performing traditions such as the oral tradition of the Tale of the Heike. While plays tend to have serious, emotionally dramatic, and organised plots, plays written specifically for kabuki generally have looser, more humorous plots.
One crucial difference between and kabuki is a difference in storytelling focus; whereas focuses on the story and on the chanter who recites it, kabuki has a greater focus on the actors themselves. A play may sacrifice the details of sets, puppets, or action in favor of the chanter, while kabuki is known to sacrifice drama and even the plot to highlight an actor's talents. It was not uncommon in kabuki to insert or remove individual scenes from a day's schedule in order to cater to an individual actor—either scenes he was famed for, or that featured him, would be inserted into a program without regard to plot continuity. Certain plays were also performed uncommonly as they required an actor to be proficient in a number of instruments, which would be played live onstage, a skill that few actors possessed.
Kabuki traditions in Edo and the Kyoto-Osaka region (Kamigata) differed; throughout the Edo period, Edo kabuki was defined by its extravagance, both in the appearance of its actors, their costumes, stage tricks and bold poses. In contrast, Kamigata kabuki focused on natural and realistic styles of acting. Only towards the end of the Edo period did the two styles begin to merge to any significant degree. Before this time, actors from different regions often failed to adjust their acting styles when performing elsewhere, leading to unsuccessful performance tours outside of their usual region of performance.
Famous plays
While there are many famous plays known today, many of the most famous were written in the mid-Edo period, and were originally written for theatre.
(Treasury of Loyal Retainers) is the famous story of the forty-seven , led by Oishi Kuranosuke, who exact revenge on their enemy before committing suicide upon the death of their master, Lord Takuminokami of the Asano clan. This story is one of the most popular traditional tales in Japan, and is based on a famous episode in 18th century Japanese history.
( and the Thousand Cherry Trees) follows Minamoto no Yoshitsune as he flees from agents of his brother Yoritomo. Three Taira clan generals supposedly killed in the Genpei War figure prominently, as their deaths ensure a complete end to the war and the arrival of peace, as does a named Genkurō.
( and the Secrets of Calligraphy) is based on the life of famed scholar Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), who is exiled from Kyoto, and upon his death causes a number of calamities in the capital. He is then deified, as ("divine spirit") of scholarship, and worshipped in order to propitiate his angry spirit.
Actors
Every kabuki actor has a stage name, which is different from the name they were born with. These stage names, most often those of the actor's father, grandfather, or teacher, are passed down between generations of actors' lineages, and hold great honor and importance. Many names are associated with certain roles or acting styles, and the new possessor of each name must live up to these expectations; there is the feeling almost of the actor not only taking a name, but embodying the spirit, style, or skill of each actor to previously hold that name. Many actors will go through at least three names over the course of their career.
are grand naming ceremonies held in kabuki theatres in front of the audience. Most often, a number of actors will participate in a single ceremony, taking on new stage-names. Their participation in a represents their passage into a new chapter of their performing careers.
Kabuki actors are typically part of a school of acting, or are associated with a particular theatre.
Major theatres
Akita
Kosaka
Tokyo
Kabuki-za
Meiji-za
Shinbashi Enbujō
National Theater
Kyoto
Minami-za
Osaka
Nagoya
Misono-za
Suehiro-za
Fukuoka
Hakata-za
Kagawa
Kotohira Kanamaru-za
See also
Theatre of Japan
, a lettering style invented to advertise kabuki and other theatrical performances
, a traditional form of Japanese comic theatre that influenced the development of kabuki
, an imprint of the face make-up of kabuki actors, as artwork and souvenir
Noh, a traditional form of Japanese theatre
, a traditional Japanese puppet theatre from whose scripts many kabuki plays were adapted
Famous kabuki actor lineages, such as:
Ichikawa Danjūrō
Ichikawa Ebizō
Matsumoto Kōshirō
Nakamura Kanzaburō
Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, a 1991 comedic superhero film directed by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz and distributed by Troma Entertainment.
, a light novel, manga, and anime series about a boy who loves kabuki
Balinese dance
Notes
References
Ronald Cavaye (1993). Kabuki: A Pocket Guide. USA and Japan: Charles E. Tuttle,
Ronald Cavaye, Paul Griffith and Akihiko Senda (2004). A Guide to the Japanese Stage. Japan: Kodansha International.
Senelick, L. (2000). The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and Theatre. London: Routledge.
Facts JPN-kabuki. 25 November 2007 <https://web.archive.org/web/20070606160340/http://inic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/japan/kabuki.html>.
Japanese Culture. 25 November 2007 <http://japan-zone.com/culture/kabuki.shtml>.
Kabuki. 25 November 2007 <http://japan-guide.com/e/e2090.html>
Kabuki. Ed. Shoriya Aragoro. 9 September 1999. 25 November 2007 <http://www.kabuki21.com/>
Further reading
External links
Kabuki Web—Shochiku Official Kabuki Website in English
Earphone Guide—The English language Earphone Guide
Kabuki 21—All about Japan's traditional Theatre Art of Kabuki: The art, the plays, the great stars of today, the legends of the past, the theaters, the history, the glossary, the traditions, the heroes and the derivatives.
National Diet Library: photograph of Kabuki-za in Kyobashi-ku, Kobiki-cho, Tokyo (1900); Kakuki-za (1901); Kakuki-za (1909); Kabuki-za (1911); Kabuki-za (1912); Kakuki-za (1915)
Kabuki prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798–1861)
Japan Mint: Kabuki Coin Set
Audio recording of the kabuki play Narukami by Ichikawa Danjūrō I at LostPlays.com
1969 'Camera Three' program on Kabuki, (audio only; with Faubion Bowers et al.)
Collection: "Kabuki Images" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art
"Kabuki Performance and Expression in Japanese Prints" exhibition at the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri
History of theatre
Japanese art terminology
Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
Theatre in Japan | [
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16986 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent%20State%20University | Kent State University | Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in Ashtabula, Burton, East Liverpool, Jackson Township, New Philadelphia, Salem, and Warren, Ohio, with additional facilities in Cleveland, Independence, and Twinsburg, Ohio, New York City, and Florence, Italy.
The university was established in 1910 as a teacher-training school. The first classes were held in 1912 at various locations and in temporary buildings in Kent and the first buildings of the original campus opened the following year. Since then, the university has grown to include many additional baccalaureate and graduate programs of study in the arts and sciences, research opportunities, as well as over and 119 buildings on the Kent campus. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the university was known internationally for its student activism in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, due mainly to the Kent State shootings in 1970.
, Kent State was the third-largest university in Ohio with an enrollment of over 34,000 students in the eight-campus system and over 25,000 students at the main campus in Kent. Kent State offers over 300 degree programs, among them 250 baccalaureate, 40 associate, 50 master's, and 23 doctoral programs of study, which include such notable programs as nursing, business, history, library science, aeronautics, journalism, architecture, fashion design and the Liquid Crystal Institute. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – very high research activity".
History
Early history
Kent State University was established in 1910 as an institution for training public school teachers. It was part of the Lowry Bill, which also created a sister school in Bowling Green, Ohio – now known as Bowling Green State University. It was initially known under the working name of the Ohio State Normal College At Kent, but was named Kent State Normal School in 1911 in honor of William S. Kent (son of Kent, Ohio, namesake Marvin Kent), who donated the used for the original campus. The first president was John Edward McGilvrey, who served from 1912 to 1926. McGilvrey had an ambitious vision for the school as a large university, instructing architect George F. Hammond, who designed the original campus buildings, to produce a master plan. Classes began in 1912 before any buildings had been completed at the campus in Kent. These classes were held at extension centers in 25 cities around the region. By May 1913, classes were being held on the campus in Kent with the opening of Merrill Hall. The school graduated 34 students in its first commencement on July 29, 1914. In 1915, the school was renamed Kent State Normal College due to the addition of four-year degrees. By then additional buildings had been added or were under construction. Kent State's enrollment growth was particularly notable during its summer terms. In 1924, the school's registration for summer classes was the largest of any teacher-training school in the United States. In 1929, the state of Ohio changed the name to Kent State College as it allowed the school to establish a college of arts and sciences.
McGilvrey's vision for Kent was not shared by many others outside the school, particularly at the state level and at other state schools. His efforts to have the state funding formula changed created opposition, particularly from Ohio State University and its president William Oxley Thompson. This resulted in a 1923 "credit war" where Ohio State refused Kent transfer credits and spread to several other schools taking similar action. It was this development – along with several other factors – which led to the firing of McGilvrey in January 1926. McGilvrey was succeeded first by David Allen Anderson (1926–1928) and James Ozro Engleman from 1928 to 1938, though he continued to be involved with the school for several years as president emeritus and as head of alumni relations from 1934 to 1945. He was present in Columbus on May 17, 1935, when Kent native Governor Martin L. Davey signed a bill that allowed Kent State and Bowling Green to add schools of business administration and graduate programs, giving them each university status.
1940s to 1960s
From 1944 to 1963, the University was led by President George Bowman. During his tenure, the student senate, faculty senate and graduate council were organized. Although it had served Stark County from the 1920s, in 1946, the University's first regional campus, the Stark Campus, was established in Canton, Ohio. In the fall of 1947, Bowman appointed Oscar W. Ritchie as a full-time faculty member. Ritchie's appointment to the faculty made him the first African American to serve on the faculty at Kent State and also made him the first African American professor to serve on the faculty of any state university in Ohio. In 1977, the former Student Union, which had been built in 1949, was rededicated as Oscar Ritchie Hall in his honor. Recently renovated, Oscar Ritchie Hall currently houses the department of Pan-African Studies the Center of Pan-African Culture, the Henry Dumas Library, the Institute for African American Affairs, the Garrett Morgan Computer Lab and the African Community Theatre.
The 1950s and 1960s saw continued growth in both enrollment and in the physical size of the campus. Several new dorms and academic buildings were built during this time, including the establishment of additional regional campuses in Warren (1954), Ashtabula (1957), New Philadelphia (1962), Salem (1962), Burton (1964), and East Liverpool, Ohio (1965). In 1961, grounds superintendent Larry Wooddell and Biff Staples of the Davey Tree Expert Company released ten cages of black squirrels obtained from Victoria Park in London, Ontario, Canada, onto the Kent State campus. By 1964 their estimated population was around 150 and today they have spread in and around Kent and have become unofficial mascots of both the city and university. Since 1981, the annual Black Squirrel Festival is held every fall on campus.
In 1965, chemistry professor Glenn H. Brown established the Liquid Crystal Institute, a world leader in the research and development the multibillion-dollar liquid crystal industry. James Fergason invented and patented the basic TN LCD in 1969 and ten liquid crystal companies have been spun off from the Institute.
In 1967, Kent State became the first university to run an independent, student-operated Campus Bus Service. It was unique in that it provided jobs for students, receiving funding from student fees rather than bus fares. Campus Bus Service was the largest such operation in the country until it merged with the Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority in 2004. 1969 saw the opening of a new Memorial Stadium on the far eastern edge of campus and the closure and dismantling of the old Memorial Stadium.
Kent State shootings
Kent State gained international attention on May 4, 1970, when an Ohio Army National Guard unit fired at students during an anti-war protest on campus, killing four and wounding nine. The Guard had been called into Kent after several protests in and around campus had become violent, including a riot in downtown Kent and the burning of the ROTC building. The main cause of the protests was the United States' invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The shootings caused an immediate closure of the campus with students and faculty given just 60 minutes to pack belongings. Around the country, many college campuses canceled classes or closed for fear of similar violent protests. In Kent, schools were closed and the National Guard restricted entry into the city limits, patrolling the area until May 8. With the campus closed, faculty members came up with a variety of solutions—including holding classes in their homes, at public buildings and places, via telephone, or through the mail—to allow their students to complete the term, which was only a few weeks away at the time.
In 1971, the University established the Center for Peaceful Change, now known as the Center for Applied Conflict Management, as a "living memorial" to the students who had died. It offers degree programs in Peace and Conflict Studies and Conflict Resolution and is one of the earliest such programs in the United States.
In response to, and protest of, the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote the song "Ohio" which was performed by the folk rock group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
1970s to 1980s
Also in 1970, the university opened its 12-story library, moving from the previous home of Rockwell Hall to the tallest building in Portage County. Dedicated in 1971, the library became a member of the Association of Research Libraries in 1973. Kent State joined with the University of Akron and Youngstown State University in establishing the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in 1973. It was the world's first medical consortium. Today it includes a college of pharmacy and Cleveland State University as an additional consortium member.
Kent State was again in the national spotlight in 1977 when construction was set to begin on the Memorial Gym Annex, adjacent to the area where the Kent State shootings had occurred in 1970. Protesters organized a tent city in May, which lasted into July. Several attempts were made to block construction even after the end of the tent city, including an appeal to the United States Congress and the Department of the Interior to have the area declared a National Historic Landmark, which ended up being unsuccessful. Additional rallies were held that year, including one attended by Joan Baez on August 20. After several additional unsuccessful legal challenges, construction finally began on September 19 and was finished in 1979.
1990–present
In March 1991, Kent State once again made history by appointing Carol Cartwright as president of the University, the first female to hold such a position at any state university in Ohio. In 1994, Kent State was named a "Research University II" by the Carnegie Foundation. Beginning in the late 1990s, the University began a series of building renovations and construction, which included the complete renovation of the historic original campus, the construction of several new dormitories, a student recreation center, and additional academic buildings on the Kent Campus and at the regional campuses. In September 2010, the university announced its largest student body ever, with a total enrollment of 41,365. U.S. News & World Report's 2017 rankings put Kent State as tied for #188 for National Universities and tied for #101 in Top Public Schools. Kent State had a Fall 2015 acceptance rate of 85%.
Campuses
Kent State University is an eight-campus system in northeastern Ohio, with the main administrative center in Kent. Within the Kent State University system, the main campus is officially referred to as the "Kent Campus". The Kent Campus is a landscaped suburban environment, covering approximately which house over 100 buildings, gardens, bike trails, and open greenery. There are also thousands of additional acres of bogs, marshes, and wildlife refuges adjacent to or near the campus. While the university's official mascot is Flash the golden eagle, the campus also has an unofficial mascot in the black squirrel, which were brought to Kent in 1961 and can be found on and around the campus. The campus is divided into North, South, and East sections but many areas have come to be referred to as Front Campus, Residential Campus, and Science Row. The main hub of activity and central point is the Student Center and Risman Plaza, which is adjacent to the twelve-story main library. The university also operated the 18-hole Kent State Golf Course until 2017, and currently operates Centennial Research Park just east of campus in Franklin Township and the Kent State University Airport in Stow.
Regional campuses
In addition to the Kent Campus, there are seven regional campuses. The regional campuses provide open enrollment and are generally treated as in-house community colleges as opposed to the large university feel of the Kent Campus. Students at the regional campuses can begin any of Kent State's majors at their respective campus and each campus offers its own unique programs and opportunities that may or may not be available in Kent. Regional campuses include:
Ashtabula
The Ashtabula Campus was established in 1958 and is made up of four buildings: Main Hall, a library, the Bookstore Building, and the Robert S. Morrison Health and Science Building. It is on a site in Ashtabula, just south of Lake Erie. The campus offers 27 associate and bachelor's degree programs of its own, with the nursing program being the largest. Approximately 75% of registered nurses working in Ashtabula County graduated with an associate degree in nursing from Kent State at Ashtabula.
East Liverpool
The East Liverpool Campus was established in 1965 from facilities formerly owned by the East Liverpool City School District, occupying a downtown site overlooking the Ohio River. It is composed of the Main Building, Memorial Auditorium, Mary Patterson Building, and a Commons area.
Geauga
The Geauga Campus is located on an campus in Burton Township, just north of the village of Burton in Geauga County. It was established in 1964 and, , has an enrollment of 1,276 students. Six associate degree and seven baccalaureate degree programs can be taken in their entirety at the campus. The Geauga Campus also administers the Regional Academic Center, a facility located in Twinsburg, Ohio.
Salem
Kent State at Salem is located in Salem Township, just south of the city of Salem. The campus features a lake, outdoor classroom, and nature walk. Kent State University at Salem also owns and operates the "City Center" facility in the former home of Salem Middle School and Salem High School, in which administrative offices, classes, and student services are located.
Stark
The Stark Campus is the largest regional campus of Kent State University, with an enrollment of over 2,900 students . The campus serves around 11,000 students total each year through professional development and other academic coursework classes. It is located on in Jackson Township in Stark County. The campus includes seven major buildings and a natural pond. Additionally, the Stark Campus includes the Corporate University and Conference Center, an advanced meeting, training, and events facility that is one of only ten such centers in the state of Ohio affiliated with the International Association of Conference Centers. The Center also serves as a home to the Corporate University, which provides training and learning exercises for area businesses and organizations. Kent State University at Stark offers 24 complete degree programs, including three associate degree, 18 bachelor's degree, and three master's degree programs.
Trumbull
Kent State's Trumbull Campus is located just north of Warren in Champion Heights, Ohio, on SR 45 near the SR 5–SR 82 bypass. , it has an enrollment of 1,158 students. It offers programs in 170 majors at the freshman and sophomore level, as well as 18 certificates and 15 associate degree programs. In addition, there is upper division coursework for baccalaureate degree completion in nursing, justice studies, technology, business management, Theatre, and English, as well as general studies and psychology degrees. In 2004 the campus opened a Technology Building that includes the Workforce Development and Continuing Studies Center.
Tuscarawas
The Tuscarawas Campus in New Philadelphia, Ohio offers 19 associate degrees, six bachelor's degrees, and the Master of Technology Degree. Bachelor's degrees are offered in business management, general studies, justice studies, industrial technology, nursing and technology 2+2. , it has an enrollment of 1,245 students. The Science and Advanced Technology Center provides of laboratory and classroom space for science, nursing and workforce development. The Tuscarawas Campus has constructed a , $13.5 million Fine and Performing Arts center that will enable the campus to expand academic and cultural programming.
Additional facilities
In addition to the eight campuses in northeast Ohio, Kent State operates facilities for study-abroad programs in Florence, Italy; New York City; Cleveland, Ohio; and Shanghai, China.
Florence Center
KSU-Florence opened its doors to International Studies Abroad in a collaboration that grants students the opportunity to study in historic Florence at its newly renovated Palazzo dei Cerchi. Palazzo dei Cerchi is a prestigious and ancient building located in the heart of Florence, at the corner of Via della Condotta and Vicolo dei Cerchi, next to the famous Piazza della Signoria and the birthplace of literary genius Dante Alighieri. Kent State acquired this facility in 2003 and undertook its complete renovation. The original exterior was maintained and reflects Florence as it was in the 13th century. The restoration carefully preserved the original structure while creating an efficient space for academic purposes, with an interior that houses state-of-the-art classrooms. After using the recently restorated Palazzo Vettori since January 2016, on April 17, 2016 the Kent State University Florence campus was officially moved from Palazzo dei Cerchi and Palazzo Bartolini Baldelli to Palazzo Vettori.
New York City Studio
The New York City Studio is located in the heart of New York City's Garment District. Surrounded by fabric and accessory shops, fashion showrooms, and designer studios; one-third of all clothing manufactured in the USA is designed and produced in this neighborhood. The District is home to America's world-renowned fashion designers, including Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Liz Claiborne, and Nicole Miller. The facility is a state-of-the-art, space and includes a 50-person lecture room, 12-station computer lab with instructor station, and a fashion design studio fully outfitted with professional equipment. The NYC studio gives Kent State students the advantage of working within the heart of the fashion, dance and theater industry.
Cleveland Urban Design Center
Kent State's Cleveland Urban Design Center is located at 1309 Euclid Ave in the downtown Cleveland Theater District neighborhood, just off of East 14th Street. The Urban Design Center was created in 1983 under the sponsorship of the Urban University Program, which supports the outreach and community service efforts of Ohio's state universities working in urban areas. Under its founding director, Foster Armstrong, the Center expanded on the existing outreach and public service activities of Kent State's architecture school, focusing primarily on historic preservation and the problems of Northeast Ohio's smaller towns and cities. In 2003, the CUDC began a collaboration with the Dresden University of Technology, Kent State's sister university in Germany, with a joint vision on the revitalization of the lower Cuyahoga Valley in Cleveland. Since then, there have been a number of faculty exchanges as the two universities seek to pool their expertise both to enhance students' experiences and to better serve their respective regions.
Academics
Kent State has 12 academic colleges:
College of Aeronautics and Engineering
College of Architecture & Environmental Design
College of Applied and Technical Studies
College of the Arts
College of Arts and Sciences
College of Business Administration
College of Communication and Information
College of Education, Health, and Human Services
College of Nursing
College of Podiatric Medicine
College of Public Health
Honors College
The university also has interdisciplinary programs in Biomedical Sciences, Digital Science, Financial Engineering, and Information Architecture and Knowledge Management. The College of Aeronautics and Engineering offers four aeronautics degrees; Flight Technology, Aviation Management, Air Traffic Control and Aeronautical Engineering, and holds courses via the Kent State University Airport. In 2008, the university began offering a flight training certificate program through an affiliation with Premier Flight Academy in Akron.
The Washington Program in National Issues, founded in 1973, is one of the longest running study away programs in Washington D.C. Housed in the College of Arts and Sciences, this program gives students the opportunity to live in Washington, get a closer look at public issues and policies, and work an internship of their choosing.
The Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Design and Merchandising has programs in Florence, Hong Kong, and New York City, and affiliations in Paris and London. It was named a top-ten fashion school in the United States by Runway Magazine.
The Liquid Crystal Institute, founded 1965, is engaged in the research and development of liquid crystal optoelectronic materials, technology, and consumer products in connection with the National Science Foundation as part of ALCOM.
The Hugh A Glauser School of Music offers degrees in music education, music performance, music theory and composition, ethnomusicology, chamber music, and a new minor in jazz studies. The School of Music is one of the few colleges in the U.S. that offer a BM, a MM, and a PhD in music education. The Kent/Blossom Music program partners with the Cleveland Orchestra each summer for its classical music festivals.
The School Psychology Program (SPSY) is accredited by APA and NASP. The program's graduates comprise about 18% of all SPSY professionals in Ohio. Kent is the only institution in Ohio to offer a degree in Library and Information Science, Kent is ranked 20th by U.S. News & World Report. Kent State has a complete undergraduate, master's, and doctoral sequence in translation and the only dual master's degree program in the nation.
Faculty, staff and students collaborate at The Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence (ISPV). The Center for Peaceful Change, a response to the Kent State shootings of 1970, was established in 1971 "as a living memorial to the events of May 4, 1970." Now known as The Center for Applied Conflict Management (CACM), it developed one of the earliest conflict resolution undergraduate degree programs in the United States.
Student life
The university offers a large number of opportunities for student involvement at all its campuses, including student and professional associations, service organizations, performing ensembles, student publications, student government, and intramural and club athletics.
Greek life
Greek life at Kent State is overseen by the Center for Student Involvement located in the Kent Student Center. Organizations belong to one of three governing councils, the Panhellenic Council, the Interfraternity Council and the Integrated Greek Council. Sorority houses are primarily located on Fraternity Drive located across the street from the main library and fraternity houses are located throughout the city of Kent. The university set aside land for the development of a Greek fraternity village in 2008, on land near the Student Recreation and Wellness Center. Sigma Nu built a new chapter house in 2008 on this land, but is now and empty house on fraternity circle. . Kent State's Greek life claims numerous famous and well-known figures in society including Lou Holtz, a brother of the Kent Delta Upsilon chapter and Drew Carey, a brother of the Kent Delta Tau Delta chapter.
Performing arts
Through the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music and the School of Theatre and Dance, the university offers performance opportunities in the performing arts, including three concert bands (Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, and Communiversity Band), Athletic Bands (Marching Golden Flashes and Flasher Brass), three jazz ensembles (Jazz Ensemble I, Jazz Ensemble II, and Jazz Lab Band), six choral ensembles (Kent Chorus, KSU Chorale, Women's Chorus, Men's Coro Cantare, Gospel Choir, and Nova Jazz Singers), one orchestra (KSU Orchestra), World Music Ensembles, as well as theater and dance opportunities. The Trumbull, Stark, and Tuscarawas campuses have theatre seasons featuring student actors. Each regional campus also offers their own performing arts opportunities.
Student government
Kent State offers several student government options, the largest of which is the Undergraduate Student Government (USG), which represents students from all campuses of the university and has been in some form of operation since 1924. The current 25 person governing body was formed after the merger of the All-Campus Programming Board (ACPB) and the Undergraduate Student Senate (USS). USG is led by an executive director and is composed of eight directors, ten college senators, one senator for residence hall students, one senator for commuter and off-campus students, one senator for undergraduate studies, and 3 senators-at-large. USG oversees the USG Programming Board which hosts various concerts, comedians, and performers, as well as the USG Allocations Committee which disburses conference and programming funds to the over 250 registered student organizations on the Kent Campus. Elections for USG are held annually in March, and officers are typically inaugurated in late April.
In addition to the USG, Kent State also has the Graduate Student Senate (GSS) and the Kent Interhall Council (KIC). KIC is for students who live in the on-campus residence halls and deals with policies and activities. Within the KIC is a programming board and individual councils for each residence hall.
Student media
The Kent Stater, colloquially known as the "Stater", is a student newspaper publishing student and guests editorials Monday, Wednesday and Thursday during the fall and spring semesters and weekly as the Summer Kent Stater during the summer. Stater staff is entirely students, primarily in the journalism school. Most editors hold their positions for one semester.
Black Squirrel Radio is Kent State's student-run radio station, which has nearly 120 students on its staff. The station streams constantly online and is also available through iTunes and on campus TV. The station plays urban, rock, and local music, and also broadcasts KSU basketball and football home games live.
Fusion magazine is published twice a year by KSU students in print and on the Internet. The magazine strives to unify people of different backgrounds through education and awareness. Fusion addresses sexual minority issues within the general population using illustrative photo essays and in-depth feature articles.
Uhuru Magazine is Kent State University's magazine dedicated to minority issues and topics and concentrates on African American issues and topics more specifically.
Artemis Magazine is Kent State University's magazine dedicated to women's issues and topics.
TV2 KSU is Kent State's student-run television station, produced solely by students with live Monday through Friday 5:30 pm news. Other student-created shows include Sports Corner; The Blurb, an entertainment news show; The Agenda, Role Call; talk shows and more, including public affairs programming and election coverage. TV2 KSU programming is available on Kent State University cable TV Channel 2.2, Portage County Time Warner Cable Channel 16 and on-demand online. HD Streaming and an online archive are available on KentWired.
Campus living
Kent State operates twenty-five on-campus residence halls, all of which are located on the main campus in Kent. Each hall is a part of a larger group, usually bound by a common name or a common central area. They are:
Twin Towers: Beall and McDowell
Tri-Towers: Koonce, Leebrick, Wright and Korb
Loop Road: Van Campen
Eastway: Allyn, Clark, Fletcher, and Manchester.
New Front: Prentice, Verder, Dunbar, and Engleman
Centennial Court: Six buildings lettered A - F
Quad: Lake, Olson, Johnson, and Stopher
Dining halls are in Eastway, the Design Innovation Hub (known as the DI Hub), and Tri-Towers, as well as multiple locations in the Student Center. Each of the residence hall dining locations also houses small grocery stores where students may use their board plan.
Learning communities
Within the halls are 12 Living-Learning Communities based on area of study:
Air Force ROTC, housed in Dunbar Hall
Army ROTC, housed in Dunbar Hall
Business Learning Community, housed in Prentice Hall
College of Aeronautics and Engineering (CAE): Aeronautics, housed in Koonce Hall
College of Arts and Sciences, housed in Wright Hall
College of Communication and Information (CCI) Commons, housed in Olson Hall
EXCEL: Exploratory Majors, housed in Lake Hall
Education Health & Human Services Residential College (EHHS), housed in Manchester Hall
Fine Arts Community, housed in Verder Hall
Honors Halls, housed in Johnson and Stopher Halls
Ida B. Wells/Atonkwa Village, housed in Wright Hall
International Village Experience (IVE), Housed in Clark Hall
LGBT, housed in Korb Hall
Social programs
4 Paws for Ability
4 Paws for Ability University Program provides university students with an opportunity to foster and socialize service dogs-in-training before they begin their professional training at the 4 Paws for Ability facility in Xenia, Ohio. A chapter was founded at Kent State in August 2016 with three service dogs-in-training; it became an official organization a year later. The chapter and organization was founded by Maxwell Newberry. , 4 Paws for Ability Kent State has 25 dogs on campus at a time. However, the number of sitters, co-handlers, and volunteers is not capped. The chapter has approximately 325 volunteers on their e-mail list, about 30 sitters, and over 50 co-handlers. The organization shares custody of the small fenced-in discus area at the outdoor track along Johnston Drive. Discussion and plans began in late 2017 to create a separate field for the organization.
Autism services
In recent years, Kent State has developed extensive services to support people with autism, with many of its programs nationally recognized in different areas. Neurotypical students who wish to be involved with these activities are paired with students with autism, and one sorority is directly involved with these services. In a 2018 story, the university's autism outreach coordinator told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland that about 30 autistic students were registered as such with the university, but estimated that close to 500 students with autism used the school's services. These services contributed to Kent State becoming the first NCAA Division I member to sign a recruit known to be diagnosed as autistic to a National Letter of Intent in a team sport in November of that year, when Kalin Bennett committed to play for the men's basketball team starting in 2019–20, making his debut with the team in November 2019.
Athletics
Kent State's athletic teams are called the Golden Flashes and the school colors are shades of navy blue and gold, officially "Kent State blue" and "Kent State gold". The university sponsors 16 varsity athletic teams who compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division I level with football in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Kent State is a member of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) East division and has been a member of the conference since 1951. The university athletic facilities are mainly on campus, featuring the 25,319-seat Dix Stadium and the 6,327-seat Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center, one of the oldest arenas in Division I college basketball.
Through the 2014–2015 season, in MAC play, Kent State has won the Reese Cup for best men's athletic program eight times, winning in 2000, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. The Flashes have also won the Jacoby Cup for best women's athletic program eight times, winning in 1989, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2010, and 2014. In 2002 the Men's Basketball team advanced to NCAA "Elite Eight", while the baseball team, women's basketball, gymnastics, men's golf, and women's golf teams have won numerous MAC titles and advanced to NCAA tournament play.
Some notable athletic alumni include: Alabama Crimson Tide head football coach and five-time national champion head coach Nick Saban, former Missouri Tigers head football coach Gary Pinkel, 2003 British Open Champion and current PGA member Ben Curtis, former New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson, Thomas Jefferson 1984 200m Olympic bronze medalist, former Pittsburgh Steelers Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker and four-time Super Bowl champion Jack Lambert, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker and two-time Super Bowl champion James Harrison, ESPN Analyst and former college football national champion head coach Lou Holtz, New England Patriots Wide Receiver and Super Bowl champion Julian Edelman, former San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers All-Pro tight end Antonio Gates (who played basketball at KSU, not football), former Cleveland Browns and Indianapolis Colts All Pro return specialist Joshua Cribbs, former San Diego Padres pitcher Dustin Hermanson, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Andy Sonnanstine, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Matt Guerrier. pitcher Joe Crawford, New York Mets.
Kent State University Press
The university operates the Kent State University Press, which is located in the main library building and publishes 30 to 35 titles a year. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses, which includes over 100 university-sponsored scholarly presses. The Press was established in 1965, and initially published literary criticism; in 1972 its publishing program was expanded to include regional studies and ethnomusicology. Further expansion began in 1985 when the Press began publishing works related to the American Civil War and Ohio history.
Notable alumni
Kent State counts 227,000 living alumni . It has produced a number of individuals in the entertainment industry including comedian and current Price is Right host Drew Carey, comedian and talk show host Arsenio Hall, Steve Harvey, actors John de Lancie, Michael Keaton, and Ray Wise, actresses Alaina Reed Hall and Alice Ripley, Phenomenon star Angela Funovits, boxing promoter Don King, 30 Rock producer Jeff Richmond, and That 70s Show creator Bonnie Turner. Musicians from Kent State include several members of the band Devo, which was formed at Kent State in 1973, including Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Lewis, and Gerald Casale. Additional musicians include singers Chrissie Hynde, Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees, Debra Byrd of American Idol, guitarist Joe Walsh, and drummer Chris Vrenna.
In politics and government, several politicians in Ohio attended Kent State including former judge and United States Representative Robert E. Cook, former minority leader C.J. Prentiss, current United States House of Representatives member Betty Sutton, former representative, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor Nancy Hollister, and Supreme Court of Ohio justice Terrence O'Donnell. Other politicians include Allen Buckley of Georgia, Ohio politician Jeffrey Dean, Pennsylvania state representative Allen Kukovich, and George Petak of Wisconsin. Politician activists from Kent State include anti-war activist Alan Canfora and former Students for a Democratic Society leaders Ken Hammond and Carl Oglesby.
Literary and journalism alumni include Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft writer Tom Batiuk, Captain Underpants comic book creators Sean McArdle and Jon Judy, author Dav Pilkey, and columnists Connie Schultz and Regina Brett. Television journalism alumni include CNN anchor Carol Costello, Cleveland news anchors Ted Henry, Wayne Dawson, sportscaster Jeff Phelps, and ESPN Dream Job winner Dave Holmes.
A number of professional athletes are Kent State alumni including current WWE wrestler Dolph Ziggler and National Football League players Julian Edelman, James Harrison, Josh Cribbs, and Usama Young. Former NFL players include Don Nottingham, Cedric Brown, Bob Hallen, Abdul Salaam, Jack Lambert, and Antonio Gates, along with Canadian Football League standouts Jay McNeil, Tony Martino, and Canadian Football Hall of Fame and former Kent State football head coach Jim Corrigall. College football coaches Nick Saban, Gary Pinkel, and Lou Holtz are also Kent State alumni.
Major League Baseball players to come from Kent State include current players Emmanuel Burriss, Matt Guerrier, Andy Sonnanstine and Dirk Hayhurst. Past MLB players include Gene Michael, Rich Rollins, Dustin Hermanson, Steve Stone, and Thurman Munson. Additional athletic alumni include Canadian professional golfers Corey Conners, Mackenzie Hughes, Jon Mills, and Ryan Yip, American professional golfer Ben Curtis, and Olympians Betty-Jean Maycock in gymnastics and Gerald Tinker in track and field.
References
Further reading
External links
Education in Portage County, Ohio
Public universities and colleges in Ohio
Kent, Ohio
Buildings and structures in Portage County, Ohio
Tourist attractions in Portage County, Ohio
Educational institutions established in 1910
1910 establishments in Ohio | [
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16987 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%20Freas | Kelly Freas | Frank Kelly Freas (August 27, 1922 – January 2, 2005) was an American science fiction and fantasy artist with a career spanning more than 50 years. He was known as the "Dean of Science Fiction Artists" and he was the second artist inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
Early life, education, and personal life
Born in Hornell, New York, Freas (pronounced like "freeze") was the son of two photographers, and was raised in Canada. He was educated at Lafayette High School in Buffalo, where he received training from long-time art teacher Elizabeth Weiffenbach. He entered the United States Army Air Forces right out of high school (Crystal Beach, Ontario, Canada). He flew as camera man for reconnaissance in the South Pacific and painted bomber noses during World War II. He then worked for Curtiss-Wright for a brief period, then went to study at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh and began to work in advertising. His first marriage was in 1948 to Nina Vaccaro, though they later divorced. He later married Pauline (Polly) Bussard in 1952; they had two children, Jacqui and Jerry. Polly died of cancer in January 1987. In 1988 he married (and is survived by) Dr. Laura Brodian.
Career
Freas began his work as a commercial artist in the late 1940s, mostly for television. His goal was to become a science fiction artist.
The fantasy magazine Weird Tales published the first cover art by Freas on its November 1950 issue: "The Piper" illustrating "The Third Shadow" by H. Russell Wakefield. His second was a year later in the same magazine, followed by several Planet Stories or Weird Tales covers and interior illustrations for three Gnome Press books in 1952. With his illustrating career underway, he continued to devise unique and imaginative concepts for other fantasy and science fiction magazines of that period. In a field where airbrushing is common practice, paintings by Freas are notable for his use of bold brush strokes, and a study of his work reveals his experimentation with a wide variety of tools and techniques.
Over the next five decades, he created covers for hundreds of books and magazines (and much more interior artwork), notably Astounding Science Fiction, both before and after its title change to Analog, from 1953 to 2003. He started at Mad magazine in February 1957 and by July 1958 was the magazine's new cover artist; he painted most of its covers until October 1962 (featuring the iconic character, Alfred E. Neuman). He also created cover illustrations for DAW, Signet, Ballantine Books, Avon, all 58 Laser Books (which are now collectors' items), and over 90 covers for Ace books alone. He was editor and artist for the first ten Starblaze books. He illustrated the cover of Jean Shepherd, Ian Ballantine, and Theodore Sturgeon's literary hoax, I, Libertine (Ballantine Books, 1956). That same year he drew cartoon illustrations for Bernard Shir-Cliff's The Wild Reader.
Freas also painted insignia and posters for Skylab I; pinup girls on bombers while in the United States Army Air Forces; comic book covers; the covers of the GURPS worldbooks Lensman and Planet Krishna; and more than 500 saints' portraits for the Franciscans executed simultaneously with his portraits of Alfred E. Neuman for Mad. He was very active in gaming and medical illustration. His cover of Queen's album News of the World (1977) was a pastiche of his October 1953 cover illustration for Tom Godwin's "The Gulf Between" for Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
Freas published several collections of his color and black-and-white artwork in the volumes Frank Kelly Freas: The Art of Science Fiction and Frank Kelly Freas: As Others See it, as well as in a spiral-bound collection of his black-and-white illustrations from Astounding Science Fiction. He also frequently gave art presentations, and his work appeared in numerous exhibitions. He was among several of the inaugural recipients of the Hugo Award for Best Artist in 1955 and was recipient under different names of the next three conferred in 1956, 1958, and 1959. With six more Hugo awards to his name (1970 and 1972–76), he became the first person to receive ten Hugo awards (he was nominated 20 times). No other artist in science fiction has consistently matched his record and output.
Freas was twice a Guest of Honor at Worldcon, at Chicon IV in 1982 and at Torcon 3 in 2003, although a fall suffered shortly before the latter convention precluded him from attending.
He died in West Hills, California and is buried in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth.
Awards
Freas's achievements include the Doctor of Arts, Art Institute of Pittsburgh, December 2003. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2006, the second artist after Chesley Bonestell.
Hugo Awards (11): Hugo Award for Best Artist 1955–56, 1958–59, 1970, 1972–76; fifty-year Retrospective Hugo, 2001 (for 1950 work)
Locus Awards (4), 1972–75, best artist
Frank R. Paul Award, 1977
Inkpot Award, 1979
Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark), 1981
Rova Award, 1981
Lensman Award, 1982
Phoenix Award, 1982
Los Angeles Science Fiction Society Service Award, 1983
Neographics Award, 1985
Daedalus Life Achievement Award, 1987
Art Teacher Emeritus Award, 1988
Best Professional, Media, International Fantasy Expo, 1989
Chesley Awards (3): 1990 with Laura Freas, best 1989 cover illustration; 1994, artistic achievement; 2001, artistic achievement
Numerous Science Fiction Art Show Awards
National Association of Trade and Technical Schools National Hall of Fame, 1991
AnLab (Analog magazine) Reader Polls, Best Cover, 1992 and 2001
Bibliography
New Worlds of Fantasy (1967)
New Worlds of Fantasy#2 (1970)
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
Freas, Frank Kelly. Frank Kelly Freas: The Art of Science Fiction. Norfolk, Virginia: Donning, 1977.
Freas, Frank Kelly. "A Separate Star"
Freas, Frank Kelly. "As He Sees It"
External links
(KellyFreas.com)
Kelly Freas tribute site
"United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VSC4-Z6Y : accessed July 31, 2015), Frank Kelly Freas, January 2, 2005; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
Biography and criticism
Frank Kelly Freas obituary in The Guardian
Bibliography and works
Complete list of Freas' work for MAD Magazine
Time Crime, by H. Beam Piper, illustrated by Freas, from Project Gutenberg
1922 births
2005 deaths
20th-century American painters
Album-cover and concert-poster artists
United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II
American comics artists
American illustrators
American male painters
American speculative fiction artists
Art Institute of Pittsburgh alumni
Artists from Buffalo, New York
Burials at Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery
Fantasy artists
Game artists
Hugo Award-winning artists
Medical illustrators
Painters from New York (state)
People from Hornell, New York
Pulp fiction artists
Role-playing game artists
Science fiction artists
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
United States Army Air Forces soldiers
Inkpot Award winners
Lafayette High School (Buffalo, New York) alumni | [
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16988 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock-knock%20joke | Knock-knock joke | The knock-knock joke is a type of audience-participatory joke cycle, typically ending with a pun. Knock-knock jokes are primarily seen as children's jokes, though there are exceptions.
The scenario is of a person knocking on the front door to a house. The teller of the joke says, "Knock, knock!"; the recipient responds, "Who's there?" The teller gives a name (such as "Noah"), a description (such as "Police"), or something that purports to be a name (such as "Needle"). The other person then responds by asking the caller's surname ("Noah who?" / "Police who?" / "Needle who?"), to which the joke-teller delivers a pun involving the name (" place I can spend the night?" / " let me in—it's cold out here!" / " help with the groceries!").
The formula of the joke is usually followed strictly, though there are cases where it is subverted.
History
A possible source of the joke is William Shakespeare's Macbeth; first performed in 1606. In Act 2, Scene 3 the porter is very hungover from the previous night. During his monologue he uses "Knock, knock! Who's there" as a refrain while he is speaking:
Writing in the Oakland Tribune, Merely McEvoy recalled a style of joke from around 1900 where a person would ask a question such as "Do you know Arthur?", the unsuspecting listener responding with "Arthur who?" and the joke teller answering "Arthurmometer!"
A variation of the format in the form of a children's game was described in 1929. In the game of Buff, a child with a stick thumps it on the ground, and the dialogue ensues:
In 1936, Bob Dunn authored the book Knock Knock: Featuring Enoch Knox, and he is regarded by some as having invented the modern knock-knock joke.
In 1936, the standard knock-knock joke format was used in a newspaper advertisement. That joke was:
A 1936 Associated Press newspaper article said that "What's This?" had given way to "Knock Knock!" as a favorite parlor game. The article also said that "knock knock" seemed to be an outgrowth of making up sentences with difficult words, an old parlor favorite. A popular joke of 1936 was "Knock knock. Who's there? Edward Rex. Edward Rex who? the Coronation." Fred Allen's 30 December 1936 radio broadcast included a humorous wrapup of the year's least important events, including a supposed interview with the man who "invented a negative craze" on 1 April: "Ramrod Dank... the first man to coin a Knock Knock."
The format is so well known that it can be changed to humorous effect. This is shown in this circa 1980 joke:
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting Cow.
Interrupting Cow who? (of course interrupted by unexpected and loud moo!).
Other variations feature an Interrupting pig, Interrupting duck and other equally bothersome animals.
Popular culture
"Knock knock" was the catchphrase of music hall performer Wee Georgie Wood, who was recorded in 1936 saying it in a radio play, but he simply used the words as a reference to his surname and did not use it as part of the well-known joke formula. The format was well known in the UK and US in the 1950s and 1960s before falling out of favor. It then enjoyed a renaissance after the jokes became a regular part of the badinage on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.
References
Joke cycles
Puns
Doors | [
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16989 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangol | Kangol | Kangol is an English clothing company famous for its headwear. The name Kangol reflects the original production where the K was for knitting, the ANG was for angora, and the OL was for wool. Although no Kangol hat has ever actually been manufactured in Australia, the Kangaroo logo was adopted by Kangol in 1983 because Americans commonly asked where they could get "the Kangaroo hat".
Early history
Founded in the 1930s, by Jewish Polish World War I veteran Jacques Spreiregen, Kangol produced hats for workers, golfers, and especially soldiers. In 1938, Spreiregen, who was working in London as an importer, opened a factory at Cleator, Cumbria, England, which he ran with his nephew Joseph Meisner. A second factory was opened at nearby Frizington, and later, under the direction of Spreiregen's younger nephew Sylvain Meisner, a third factory, manufacturing motorcycle helmets and seat belts in Carlisle. They were the major beret suppliers to the armed forces during World War II.
Recent history
Kangol has been owned by Sports Direct since 2006, when it acquired the brand from private-equity fund August Equity Trust. Licences to manufacture and sell Kangol apparel have been sold to many different companies, including D2 and Topshop. In 2002, the Kangol apparel brand was acquired by Kangol Clothing North America LLC, a subsidiary of Chesterfield Manufacturing Corp in Charlotte North Carolina. In 2003, Chesterfield was acquired by Tomasello Inc., which was wholly owned and led by David W. Tomasello. The global rights to Kangol hats have been held by American hatmakers Bollman Hat Company since 2002.
It was announced in February 2009 that Bollman were reviewing their worldwide operations, putting 33 jobs and the future of the Kangol head office in Cleator in doubt. On 6 April 2009, it was announced that the original factory would be converted to a warehouse with the loss of 25 jobs. No employees now remain employed at the company's original site as the outlet shop closed at the end of August 2009. The site in Frizington is now a housing estate, whilst the original Cleator site has been partly demolished to provide a Park & Ride facility for nearby Sellafield and to facilitate other potential redevelopment. However, hats will continue to be made at their sites in Eastern Europe and the United States.
Pop fashion
In the 1960s, designers Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin worked with the company, whose products graced the heads of the rich and famous, including the Beatles and Arnold Palmer, and later Diana, Princess of Wales. The company also supplied uniformed organisations such as the Scout Association.
In the 1980s Kangol berets entered a new phase of fashion history with their adoption by members of the hip-hop community, such as Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Kangol Kid of UTFO, and The Notorious B.I.G.
The brand was popularised even more by the 1991 movie New Jack City. The release of more consciously stylish products in the 1990s such as the furgora (angora-wool mix) Spitfire, was helped by its presence upon the head of Samuel L. Jackson in 1997. Kevin Eubanks, bandleader for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, sported a Kangol beret on an almost nightly basis.
In 2009, Eminem wore the Cotton Twill Army Cap Kangol hat on his Beautiful video.
In popular culture
Slick Rick references Kangol in his songs "La Di Da Di" and "Mona Lisa".
Boogie Boys reference Kangol in their song "A Fly Girl". The lyrics line reads, "Girls look fly in Kangols".
Wesley Snipes as Nino Brown and his gang, the Cash Money Brothers, wear hats by Kangol throughout the movie New Jack City.
Samuel L. Jackson is known for wearing Kangol hats. His character Ordell Robbie wore a Kangol back to front in the movie Jackie Brown.
The hip hop group De La Soul referenced Kangol in the song "Fallin' (featuring Teenage Fanclub) on the soundtrack of the 1993 film Judgment Night with the lines "I knew I blew the whole fandango/When the drum programmer wore a Kangol".
Steve Carell is shown wearing a Kangol hat as Michael Scott in the show The Office, in the episode "Happy Hour" (season 6, episode 21).
Tyler James Williams is shown wearing a Kangol hat as Chris in the show Everybody Hates Chris in the episodes "Everybody Hates DJs" (season 2, episode 17) and "Everybody Hates Gambling" (season 2, episode 19). Furthermore, the character of Drew, played by Tequan Richmond, receives a Kangol hat as a present from his and Chris's father in the episode "Everybody Hates My Man" (season 4, episode 5).
Rapper Dana Dane tells a story of how his straw hat turns into a Kangol in his song, "Cinderfella Dana Dane".
The movie Straight Outta Compton features a scene where Ice Cube gets into a dispute with a New York rapper, eventually telling him "Wearing a Kangol don't make you LL Cool J!"
N.W.A reference Kangol in their song "If It Ain't Ruff," written and performed by MC Ren. The lyrics are "Against a brother on a tip, with a Kangol"
Soul singer Gregory Porter wears a Kangol Summer Spitfire cap on every occasion. The headwear is so synonymous with Gregory, that it has almost become his trademark.
In Big Mouth season 3 episode 1, Andrew wears a Kangol hat to impress his ex.
in Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 5 episode 19 titled "Bachelor/ette Party", Captain Raymond Holt uncharacteristically wears a Kangol hat to comedic effect.
A Kangol 504 worn (backwards) by Dion DiMucci for many years.
References
External links
"Working for Kangol"—BBC Cumbria
Cleator Flax Mill
"Making a Beret for Bette Davis"—BBC Cumbria
1938 establishments in England
Australian-themed retailers
Berets
British brands
Clothing companies of the United Kingdom
Clothing companies established in 1938
Hat companies
Hip hop fashion
Sports Direct | [
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16991 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith%20Moon | Keith Moon | Keith John Moon (23 August 19467 September 1978) was an English drummer for the rock band the Who. He was noted for his unique style and his eccentric, often self-destructive behaviour and addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Moon grew up in Alperton, a suburb of Wembley, in Middlesex, and took up the drums during the early 1960s. After playing with a local band, the Beachcombers, he joined the Who in 1964 before they recorded their first single. Moon was recognised for his drumming style, which emphasised tom-toms, cymbal crashes, and drum fills. Throughout Moon's tenure with the Who, his drum kit steadily grew in size, and (along with Ginger Baker) he has been credited as one of the earliest rock drummers to regularly employ double bass drums in his setup. Moon occasionally collaborated with other musicians and later appeared in films, but considered playing in the Who his primary occupation, and remained a member of the band until his death. In addition to his talent as a drummer, Moon developed a reputation for smashing his kit on stage and destroying hotel rooms on tour. He was fascinated with blowing up toilets with cherry bombs or dynamite, and destroying television sets. Moon enjoyed touring and socialising, and became bored and restless when the Who were inactive. His 21st birthday party in Flint, Michigan, has been cited as a notorious example of decadent behaviour by rock groups.
Moon suffered a number of setbacks during the 1970s, most notably the accidental death of chauffeur Neil Boland and the breakdown of his marriage. He became addicted to alcohol, particularly brandy and champagne, and acquired a reputation for decadence and dark humour; his nickname was "Moon the Loon". After moving to Los Angeles with personal assistant Peter "Dougal" Butler during the mid-1970s, Moon recorded his only solo album, the poorly received Two Sides of the Moon. While touring with the Who, on several occasions he passed out on stage and was hospitalised. By the time of their final tour with him in 1976, and particularly during production of The Kids Are Alright and Who Are You, the drummer's deterioration was evident. Moon moved back to London in 1978, dying in September of that year from an overdose of Heminevrin, a drug intended to treat or prevent symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
Moon's drumming continues to be praised by critics and musicians. He was posthumously inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1982, becoming the second rock drummer to be chosen, and in 2011, Moon was voted the second-greatest drummer in history by a Rolling Stone readers' poll.
Early life
Keith John Moon was born to Alfred Charles (Alf) and Kathleen Winifred (Kit) Moon on 23 August 1946 at Central Middlesex Hospital in northwest London, and grew up in Wembley. He was hyperactive as a boy, with a restless imagination and a particular fondness for The Goon Show and music. Moon attended Alperton Secondary Modern School after failing his eleven plus exam, which precluded his attending a grammar school. His art teacher said in a report: "Retarded artistically. Idiotic in other respects". His music teacher wrote that Moon "has great ability, but must guard against a tendency to show off."
Moon joined his local Sea Cadet Corps band at the age of twelve on the bugle, but found the instrument too difficult to learn and decided to take up drums instead. He was interested in practical jokes and home science kits, with a particular fondness for explosions. On his way home from school, Moon would often go to Macari's Music Studio on Ealing Road to practise on the drums there, learning his basic skills on the instrument. He left school at age fourteen, around Easter in 1961. Moon then enrolled at Harrow Technical College; this led to a job as a radio repairman, enabling him to buy his first drum kit.
Career
Early years
Moon took lessons from one of the loudest contemporary drummers, Screaming Lord Sutch's Carlo Little, at 10 shillings per lesson. Moon's early style was influenced by jazz, American surf music and rhythm and blues, exemplified by noted Los Angeles studio drummer Hal Blaine. His favourite musicians were jazz artists, particularly Gene Krupa (whose flamboyant style he subsequently copied). Moon also admired Elvis Presley's original drummer DJ Fontana, the Shadows' original drummer Tony Meehan and the Pretty Things' Viv Prince. He also enjoyed singing, with a particular interest in Motown. Moon idolised the Beach Boys; Roger Daltrey later said that given the opportunity, Moon would have left to play for the California band even at the peak of the Who's fame.
During this time Moon joined his first serious band: the Escorts, replacing his best friend Gerry Evans. In December 1962 he joined the Beachcombers, a semi-professional London cover band playing hits by groups such as the Shadows. During his time in the group Moon incorporated theatrical tricks into his act, including "shooting" the group's lead singer with a starter pistol. The Beachcombers all had day jobs; Moon, who worked in the sales department at British Gypsum, had the keenest interest in turning professional. In April 1964, aged 17, he auditioned for the Who as a replacement for Doug Sandom. The Beachcombers continued as a local cover band after his departure.
The Who
A commonly cited story of how Moon joined the Who is that he appeared at a show shortly after Sandom's departure, where a session drummer was used. Dressed in ginger clothes and with his hair dyed ginger (future bandmate Pete Townshend later described him as a "ginger vision"), he claimed to his would-be bandmates that he could play better; he played in the set's second half, nearly demolishing the drum kit in the process. In the words of the drummer, "they said go ahead, and I got behind this other guy's drums and did one song-'Road Runner.' I'd several drinks to get me courage up and when I got onstage I went arrgggGhhhh on the drums, broke the bass drum pedal and two skins, and got off. I figured that was it. I was scared to death. Afterwards I was sitting at the bar and Pete came over. He said: 'You ... come 'ere.' I said, mild as you please: 'Yes, yes?' And Roger, who was the spokesman then, said: 'What are you doing next Monday?' I said: 'Nothing.' I was working during the day, selling plaster. He said: 'You'll have to give up work ... there's this gig on Monday. If you want to come, we'll pick you up in the van.' I said: 'Right.' And that was it." Moon later claimed that he was never formally invited to join the Who permanently; when Ringo Starr asked how he had joined the band, he said he had "just been filling in for the last fifteen years."
Moon's arrival in the Who changed the dynamics of the group. Sandom had generally been the peacemaker as Daltrey and Townshend feuded between themselves, but because of Moon's temperament the group now had four members frequently in conflict. "We used to fight regularly", remembered Moon in later years. "John [Entwistle] and I used to have fights – it wasn't very serious, it was more of an emotional spur-of-the moment thing." Moon also clashed with Daltrey and Townshend: "We really have absolutely nothing in common apart from music", he said in a later interview. Although Townshend described him as a "completely different person to anyone I've ever met", the pair had a rapport in the early years and enjoyed practical jokes and improvised comedy. Moon's drumming style affected the band's musical structure; although Entwistle initially found Moon's lack of conventional timekeeping problematic, it created an original sound.
Moon was particularly fond of touring, since it was his only chance to regularly socialise with his bandmates, and was generally restless and bored when not playing live. This later carried over to other aspects of his life, as he acted them out (according to journalist and Who biographer Dave Marsh) "as if his life were one long tour." These antics earned him the nickname "Moon the Loon".
Musical contributions
Moon's style of drumming was considered unique by his bandmates, although they sometimes found his unconventional playing frustrating; Entwistle noted that he tended to play faster or slower according to his mood. "He wouldn't play across his kit", he later added. "He'd play zig-zag. That's why he had two sets of tom-toms. He'd move his arms forward like a skier." Daltrey said that Moon "just instinctively put drum fills in places that other people would never have thought of putting them."
Who biographer John Atkins wrote that the group's early test sessions for Pye Records in 1964 show that "they seemed to have understood just how important was ... Moon's contribution." Contemporary critics questioned his ability to keep time, with biographer Tony Fletcher suggesting that the timing on Tommy was "all over the place." Who producer Jon Astley said, "You didn't think he was keeping time, but he was." Early recordings of Moon's drumming sound tinny and disorganised; it was not until the recording of Who's Next, with Glyn Johns' no-nonsense production techniques and the need to keep time to a synthesizer track, that he began developing more discipline in the studio. Fletcher considers the drumming on this album to be the best of Moon's career.
Unlike contemporary rock drummers such as Ginger Baker and John Bonham, Moon hated drum solos and refused to play them in concert. At a Madison Square Garden show on 10 June 1974, Townshend and Entwistle decided to spontaneously stop playing during "Waspman" to listen to Moon's drum solo. Moon continued briefly and then stopped, shouting "Drum solos are boring!" On 23 June 1977, he made a guest appearance at a Led Zeppelin concert in Los Angeles.
Moon also aspired to sing lead vocal on some songs. While the other three members handled most of the onstage vocals, Moon would attempt to sing backup (particularly on "I Can't Explain"). He provided humorous commentary during song announcements, although sound engineer Bob Pridden preferred to mute his vocal microphone on the mixing desk whenever possible. Moon's knack for making his bandmates laugh around the microphone led them to banish him from the studio when vocals were being recorded; this led to a game in which Moon would sneak in to join the singing. At the end of "Happy Jack", Townshend can be heard saying "I saw ya!" to Moon as he tries to sneak into the studio. The drummer's interest in surf music and his desire to sing led to his performing lead vocals on several early tracks, including "Bucket T" and "Barbara Ann" (Ready Steady Who EP, 1966) and high backing vocals on other songs, such as "Pictures of Lily". Moon's performance on "Bell Boy" (Quadrophenia, 1973) saw him abandon "serious" vocal performances to sing in character, which gave him (in Fletcher's words) "full licence to live up to his reputation as a lecherous drunk"; it was "exactly the kind of performance the Who needed from him to bring them back down to earth."
Moon composed "I Need You", the instrumental "Cobwebs and Strange" (from the album A Quick One, 1966), the single B-sides "In The City" (co-written with Entwistle) and "Girl's Eyes" (from The Who Sell Out sessions featured on Thirty Years of Maximum R&B and a 1995 re-release of The Who Sell Out), "Dogs Part Two" (1969), "Tommy's Holiday Camp" (1969) and "Waspman" (1972). Moon also co-composed "The Ox" (an instrumental from their debut album, My Generation) with Townshend, Entwistle and keyboardist Nicky Hopkins. The setting for "Tommy's Holiday Camp" (from Tommy) was credited to Moon; the song was primarily written by Townshend and, although there is a misconception that Moon sings on it, the album version is Townshend's demo.
The drummer produced the violin solo on "Baba O'Riley". Moon sat in on congas with East of Eden at London's Lyceum Ballroom, and afterwards suggested to violinist Dave Arbus that he play on the track.
Equipment
Moon played a four- and later a five-piece drum kit during his early career. During much of 1964 and 1965 his setups consisted of Ludwig drums and Zildjian cymbals. He began to endorse Premier Drums in late 1965, and remained a loyal customer of the company. His first Premier kit was in red sparkle and featured two high toms. In 1966 Moon moved to an even larger kit, but without the customary hi-hat—at the time he preferred keeping ride rhythms with ride and crash cymbals. His new larger configuration was notable for the presence of two bass drums; he, along with Ginger Baker, has been credited as one of the early pioneers of double bass drumming in rock. This kit was not used at the Who's performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. From 1967 to 1969 Moon used the "Pictures of Lily" drum kit (named for its artwork), which had two bass drums, two floor toms and three mounted toms. In recognition of his loyalty to the company, Premier reissued the kit in 2006 as the "Spirit of Lily".
By 1970 Moon had begun to use timbales, gongs and timpani, and these were included in his setup for the rest of his career. In 1973 Premier's marketing manager, Eddie Haynes, began consulting Moon about specific requirements. At one point, Moon asked Premier to make a white kit with gold-plated fittings. When Haynes said that it would be prohibitively expensive, Moon replied: "Dear boy, do exactly as you feel it should be, but that's the way I want it." The kit was eventually fitted with copper fittings and later given to a young Zak Starkey.
Destroying instruments and other stunts
At an early show at the Railway Tavern in Harrow, Townshend smashed his guitar after accidentally breaking it. When the audience demanded he do it again, Moon kicked over his drum kit. Subsequent live sets culminated in what the band later described as "auto-destructive art", in which band members (particularly Moon and Townshend) elaborately destroyed their equipment. Moon developed a habit of kicking over his drums, claiming that he did so in exasperation at an audience's indifference. Townshend later said, "A set of skins is about $300 [then £96] and after every show he'd just go bang, bang, bang and then kick the whole thing over."
In May 1966, Moon discovered that the Beach Boys' Bruce Johnston was visiting London. After the pair socialised for a few days, Moon and Entwistle brought Johnston to the set of Ready Steady Go!, which made them late for a show with the Who that evening. During the finale of "My Generation", an altercation broke out on stage between Moon and Townshend which was reported on the front page of the New Musical Express the following week. Moon and Entwistle left the Who for a week (with Moon hoping to join the Animals or the Nashville Teens), but they changed their minds and returned.
On the Who's early US package tour at the RKO 58th Street Theatre in New York in March and April 1967, Moon performed two or three shows a day, kicking over his drum kit after every show. Later that year, during their appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he bribed a stagehand to load gunpowder into one of his bass drums; the stagehand used about ten times the standard amount. During the finale of "My Generation", he set off the charge. The intensity of the explosion singed Townshend's hair and embedded a piece of cymbal in Moon's arm. A clip of the incident became the opening scene for the film The Kids Are Alright.
Although Moon was known for kicking over his drum kit, Haynes claimed that it was done carefully and the kit rarely needed repairs. However, stands and foot pedals were frequently replaced; the drummer "would go through them like a knife through butter".
Other work
Music
While Moon generally said he was only interested in working with the Who, he participated in outside musical projects. In 1966 he worked with Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck, pianist Nicky Hopkins and future Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones on the instrumental "Beck's Bolero", which was the B-side to "Hi Ho Silver Lining" and appeared on the album Truth. Moon also played timpani on another track, a cover of Jerome Kern's "Ol' Man River". He was credited on the album as "You Know Who".
Moon may have inspired the name for Led Zeppelin. When he briefly considered leaving the Who in 1966, he spoke with Entwistle and Page about forming a supergroup. Moon (or Entwistle) remarked that a particular suggestion had gone down like a "lead zeppelin" (a play on "lead balloon"). Although that supergroup was never formed, Page remembered the phrase and later adapted it as the name of his new band.
The Beatles became friends with Moon, and this led to occasional collaborations. In 1967, he contributed backing vocals to "All You Need Is Love". On 15 December 1969, Moon joined John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band for a live performance at the Lyceum Theatre in London for a UNICEF charity concert. In 1972 the performance was released as a companion disc to Lennon and Ono's album Some Time in New York City.
Moon's friendship with Entwistle led to an appearance on Smash Your Head Against the Wall, Entwistle's first solo album and the first by a member of the Who. Moon did not play drums on the album; Jerry Shirley did, with Moon providing percussion. Rolling Stones John Hoegel appreciated Entwistle's decision not to let Moon drum, saying that it distanced his album from the familiar sound of the Who.
Moon became involved in solo work when he moved to Los Angeles during the mid-1970s. Track Records-MCA released a Moon solo single in 1974, comprising cover versions of the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry, Baby" and "Teenage Idol". The following year he released his only solo album, entitled Two Sides of the Moon. Although it featured Moon on vocals, he played drums on only three tracks; most of the drumming was left to others (including Ringo Starr, session musicians Curly Smith and Jim Keltner, and actor-musician Miguel Ferrer). The album was received poorly by critics. New Musical Expresss Roy Carr wrote, "Moonie, if you didn't have talent, I wouldn't care; but you have, which is why I'm not about to accept Two Sides of the Moon." Dave Marsh, reviewing the album in Rolling Stone, wrote: "There isn't any legitimate reason for this album's existence." During one of his few televised solo drum performances (for ABC's Wide World), Moon played a five-minute drum solo dressed as a cat on transparent acrylic drums filled with water and goldfish. When asked by an audience member what would happen to the kit, he joked that "even the best drummers get hungry." His performance was not appreciated by animal lovers, several of whom called the station with complaints.
Film
In the 2007 documentary film Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who, Daltrey and Townshend reminisced about Moon's talent for dressing as (and embodying) a variety of characters. They remembered his dream of getting out of music and becoming a Hollywood film actor, although Daltrey did not think Moon had the patience and work ethic required by a professional actor. Who manager Bill Curbishley agreed that Moon "wasn't disciplined enough to actually turn up or commit to doing the stuff."
Nevertheless, the drummer landed several acting roles. His first was in 1971, a cameo in Frank Zappa's 200 Motels as a nun afraid of dying from a drug overdose. Although it only took 13 days to film, fellow cast member Howard Kaylan remembers Moon spending off-camera time at the Kensington Garden Hotel bar instead of sleeping. Moon's next film role was J.D. Clover, drummer for the fictional Stormy Tempest (played by Billy Fury) at a holiday camp during the early days of British rock 'n' roll, in 1973's That'll Be the Day. He reprised the role for the film's 1974 sequel, Stardust, in Jim MacLaine's (David Essex) backing band the Stray Cats and played Uncle Ernie in Ken Russell's 1975 film adaptation of Tommy. Moon's last film appearance was in 1978's Sextette.
Destructive behaviour
Moon led a destructive lifestyle. During the Who's early days he began taking amphetamines, and in a NME interview said his favourite food was "French Blues". He spent his share of the band's income quickly, and was a regular at London clubs such as the Speakeasy and The Bag O'Nails; the combination of pills and alcohol escalated into alcoholism and drug addiction later in his life. "[We] went through the same stages everybody goes through – the bloody drug corridor", he later reflected. "Drinking suited the group a lot better."
According to Townshend, Moon began destroying hotel rooms when the Who stayed at the Berlin Hilton on tour in late 1966. In addition to hotel rooms, Moon destroyed friends' homes and even his own, including throwing furniture from upper-storey windows. Andrew Neill and Matthew Kent estimated that his destruction of hotel toilets and plumbing cost as much as £300,000 ($500,000). These acts, often fuelled by drugs and alcohol, were Moon's way of demonstrating his eccentricity; he enjoyed shocking the public with them. Longtime friend and personal assistant Butler observed, "He was trying to make people laugh and be Mr Funny, he wanted people to love him and enjoy him, but he would go so far. Like a train ride you couldn't stop."
In a limousine on the way to the airport, Moon insisted they return to their hotel, saying "I forgot something." At the hotel he ran back to his room, grabbed the television and threw it out of the window into the swimming pool below. He then jumped back into the limo, saying "I nearly forgot."
Fletcher argues that the Who's lengthy break (15 December 1971 – 11 August 1972) between the end of their 1971 Who's Next Tour and the beginning of the Quadrophenia sessions devastated Moon's health, as without the rigours of lengthy shows and regular touring that had previously kept him in shape, his hard-partying lifestyle took a greater toll on his body. He did not keep a drum kit or practise at Tara, and began to deteriorate physically as a result of his lifestyle. Around the same time he became a severe alcoholic, starting the day with drinks and changing from the "lovable boozer" he presented himself as to a "boorish drunk". David Puttnam recalled, "The drinking went from being a joke to being a problem. On That'll Be the Day it was social drinking. By the time Stardust came round it was hard drinking."
Exploding toilets
Moon's favourite stunt was to flush powerful explosives down toilets. According to Fletcher, Moon's toilet pyrotechnics began in 1965 when he purchased a case of 500 cherry bombs. He moved from cherry bombs to M-80 fireworks to sticks of dynamite, which became his explosive of choice. "All that porcelain flying through the air was quite unforgettable," Moon remembered. "I never realised dynamite was so powerful. I'd been used to penny bangers before." He quickly developed a reputation for destroying bathrooms and blowing up toilets. The destruction mesmerised him, and enhanced his public image as rock's premier hell-raiser. Tony Fletcher wrote that "no toilet in a hotel or changing room was safe" until Moon had exhausted his supply of explosives.
Townshend walked into the bathroom of Moon's hotel room and noticed the toilet had disappeared, with only the S-bend remaining. The drummer explained that since a cherry bomb was about to explode, he had thrown it down the toilet and showed Townshend the case of cherry bombs. "And of course from that moment on," the guitarist remembered, "we got thrown out of every hotel we ever stayed in."
Entwistle recalled being close to Moon on tour and both were often involved in blowing up toilets. In a 1981 Los Angeles Times interview he admitted, "A lot of times when Keith was blowing up toilets I was standing behind him with the matches."
A hotel manager called Moon in his room and asked him to lower the volume on his cassette recorder because it made "too much noise." In response the drummer asked him up to his room, excused himself to go to the bathroom, put a lit stick of dynamite in the toilet and shut the bathroom door. Upon returning, he asked the manager to stay for a moment, as he wanted to explain something. Following the explosion, Moon turned the recorder back on and said, "That, dear boy, was noise. This is the 'Oo."
Flint Holiday Inn incident
On 23 August 1967, on tour opening for Herman's Hermits, Moon celebrated what he said was his 21st birthday (although it was thought at the time to be his 20th) at a Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan. Entwistle later said, "He decided that if it was a publicised fact that it was his 21st birthday, he would be able to drink."
The drummer immediately began drinking upon his arrival in Flint. The Who spent the afternoon visiting local radio stations with Nancy Lewis (then the band's publicist), and Moon posed for a photo outside the hotel in front of a "Happy Birthday Keith" sign put up by the hotel management. According to Lewis, Moon was drunk by the time the band went onstage at Atwood Stadium.
Returning to the hotel, Moon started a food fight and soon cake began flying through the air. The drummer knocked out part of his front tooth; at the hospital, doctors could not give him an anaesthetic (due to his inebriation) before removing the remainder of the tooth. Back at the hotel a mêlée erupted; fire extinguishers were set off, guests (and objects) thrown into the swimming pool and a piano reportedly destroyed. The chaos ended only when police arrived with guns drawn.
A furious Holiday Inn management presented the groups with a bill for $24,000, which was reportedly settled by Herman's Hermits tour manager Edd McCann. Townshend claimed that the Who were banned for life from all of the hotel's properties, but Fletcher wrote that they stayed at a Holiday Inn in Rochester, New York, a week later. He also disputed a widely held belief that Moon drove a Lincoln Continental into the hotel's swimming pool, as claimed by the drummer in a 1972 Rolling Stone interview.
Passing out on stage
Moon's lifestyle began to undermine his health and reliability. During the 1973 Quadrophenia tour, at the Who's debut US date at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, Moon ingested a mixture of tranquillisers and brandy. During the concert, Moon passed out on his drum kit during "Won't Get Fooled Again". The band stopped playing, and a group of roadies carried Moon offstage. They gave him a shower and an injection of cortisone, sending him back onstage after a thirty-minute delay. Moon passed out again during "Magic Bus", and was again removed from the stage. The band continued without him for several songs before Townshend asked, "Can anyone play the drums? – I mean somebody good?" A drummer in the audience, Scot Halpin, came up and played the rest of the show.
During the opening date of the band's March 1976 US tour at the Boston Garden, Moon passed out over his drum kit after two numbers and the show was rescheduled. The next evening Moon systematically destroyed everything in his hotel room, cut himself doing so and passed out. He was discovered by manager Bill Curbishley, who took him to a hospital, telling him "I'm gonna get the doctor to get you nice and fit, so you're back within two days. Because I want to break your fucking jaw ... You have fucked this band around so many times and I'm not having it any more." Doctors told Curbishley that if he had not intervened, Moon would have bled to death. Marsh suggested that at this point Daltrey and Entwistle seriously considered firing Moon, but decided that doing so would make his life worse.
Entwistle has said that Moon and the Who reached their live peak in 1975–76. At the end of the 1976 US tour in Miami that August, the drummer, delirious, was treated in Hollywood Memorial Hospital for eight days. The group was concerned that he would be unable to complete the last leg of the tour, which ended at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on 21 October (Moon's last public show). During the band's recording sabbatical between 1976 and 1978, Moon gained a considerable amount of weight. By the time of the Who's invitation-only show at the Gaumont State Cinema on 15 December 1977 for The Kids are Alright, Moon was visibly overweight and had difficulty sustaining a solid performance. After recording Who Are You, Townshend refused to follow the album with a tour unless Moon stopped drinking, and said that if Moon's playing did not improve he would be fired. Daltrey later denied threatening to fire him, but said that by this time the drummer was out of control.
Financial problems
Because the Who's early stage act relied on smashing instruments, and owing to Moon's enthusiasm for damaging hotels, the group were in debt for much of the 1960s; Entwistle estimated they lost about £150,000. Even when the group became relatively financially stable after Tommy, Moon continued to rack up debts. He bought a number of cars and gadgets, and flirted with bankruptcy. Moon's recklessness with money reduced his profit from the group's 1975 UK tour to £47.35 ().
Personal life and relationships
Birthdate
Before the 1998 release of Tony Fletcher's Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon, Moon's date of birth was presumed to be 23 August 1947. This erroneous date appeared in several otherwise-reliable sources, including the Townshend-authorised biography Before I Get Old: The Story of The Who. The incorrect date had been supplied by Moon in interviews before it was corrected by Fletcher to 1946.
Kim Kerrigan
Moon's first serious relationship was with Kim Kerrigan, whom he started dating in January 1965 after she saw the Who play at Le Disque a Go! Go! in Bournemouth. By the end of the year she discovered she was pregnant. Her parents, who were furious, met with the Moons to discuss their options, and she moved into the Moon family home in Wembley. She and Moon were married on 17 March 1966 at Brent Register Office, and their daughter Amanda was born on 12 July. The marriage (and child) were kept secret from the press until May 1968. Moon was occasionally violent towards Kim: "if we went out after I had Mandy", she later said, "if someone talked to me, he'd lose it. We'd go home and he'd start a fight with me." He loved Amanda, but his absences due to touring and fondness for practical jokes made their relationship uneasy when she was very young. "He had no idea how to be a father", Kim said. "He was too much of a child himself."
From 1971 to 1975 Moon owned Tara, a home in Chertsey where he initially lived with his wife and daughter. The Moons entertained extravagantly at home, and owned a number of cars. Jack McCullogh, then working for Track Records (the Who's label), recalls Moon ordering him to purchase a milk float to store in the garage at Tara.
In 1973 Kim, convinced that neither she nor anyone else could moderate Keith's behaviour, left her husband and took Amanda; she sued for divorce in 1975 and later married Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan. Marsh believes that Moon never truly recovered from the loss of his family. Butler agrees; despite his relationship with Annette Walter-Lax, he believes that Kim was the only woman Moon loved. McLagan commented that Moon "couldn't handle it." Moon would harass them with phone calls, and on one occasion before Kim sued for divorce, he invited McLagan for a drink at a Richmond pub and sent several "heavies" to break into McLagan's home on Fife Road and look for Kim, forcing her to hide in a walk-in closet. She died in a car accident in Austin, Texas, on 2 August 2006.
Annette Walter-Lax
In 1975 Moon began a relationship with Swedish model Annette Walter-Lax, who later said that Moon was "so sweet when he was sober, that I was just living with him in the hope that he would kick all this craziness." She begged Malibu neighbour Larry Hagman to check Moon into a clinic to dry out (as he had attempted to do before), but when doctors recorded Moon's chemical intake at breakfast – a bottle of champagne, Courvoisier and amphetamines – they concluded that there was no hope for his rehabilitation.
Friends
Moon enjoyed being the life of the party. Bill Curbishley remembered that "he wouldn't walk into any room and just listen. He was an attention seeker and he had to have it."
Early in the Who's career, Moon got to know the Beatles. He would join them at clubs, forming a particularly close friendship with Ringo Starr. Moon later became friends with Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band members Vivian Stanshall and "Legs" Larry Smith, and the trio would drink and play practical jokes together. Smith remembers one occasion where he and Moon tore apart a pair of trousers, with an accomplice later looking for one-legged trousers. In the early 1970s Moon helped Stanshall with his "Radio Flashes" radio show for BBC Radio 1, filling in for the vacationing John Peel. Moon filled in for Peel in 1973's "A Touch of the Moon", a series of four programmes produced by John Walters.
Guitarist Joe Walsh enjoyed socialising with Moon. In an interview with Guitar World magazine, he recalled that the drummer "taught me how to break things." In 1974, Moon struck up a friendship with actor Oliver Reed while working on the film version of Tommy. Although Reed matched Moon drink for drink, he appeared on set the next morning ready to perform; Moon, on the other hand, would cost several hours of filming time. Reed later said that Moon "showed me the way to insanity."
Dougal Butler
Peter "Dougal" Butler began working for the Who in 1967, becoming Moon's personal assistant the following year to help him stay out of trouble. He remembers managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp saying, "We trust you with Keith but if you ever want any time off, for a holiday or some sort of rest, let us know and we'll pay for it." Butler never took them up on the offer.
He followed Moon when the drummer relocated to Los Angeles, but felt that the drug culture prevalent at the time was bad for Moon: "My job was to have eyes in the back of my head." Townshend agreed, saying that by 1975 Butler had "no influence over him whatsoever." Although he was a loyal companion to Moon, the lifestyle eventually became too much for him; he phoned Curbishley, saying that they needed to move back to England or one of them might die. Butler quit in 1978, and later wrote of his experiences in a book entitled Full Moon: The Amazing Rock and Roll Life of Keith Moon.
Neil Boland
On 4 January 1970 Moon accidentally killed his friend, driver and bodyguard, Neil Boland, outside the Red Lion pub in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Pub patrons had begun to attack his Bentley; Moon, drunk, began driving to escape them and hit Boland. After an investigation, the coroner ruled Boland's death an accident; Moon, having been charged with a number of offences, received an absolute discharge.
Those close to Moon said that he was haunted by Boland's death for the rest of his life. According to Pamela Des Barres, Moon had nightmares (which woke them both) about the incident and said he had no right to be alive.
Death
In mid-1978 Moon moved into Flat 12, 9 Curzon Place (later Curzon Square), Shepherd Market, Mayfair, London, renting from Harry Nilsson. Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas had died there four years earlier, at the age of 32; Nilsson was concerned about letting the flat to Moon, believing it was cursed. Townshend disagreed, assuring him that "lightning wouldn't strike the same place twice".
After moving in, Moon began a prescribed course of Heminevrin (clomethiazole, a sedative) to alleviate his alcohol withdrawal symptoms. He wanted to get sober, but because of his fear of psychiatric hospitals he wanted to do it at home. Clomethiazole is discouraged for unsupervised detoxification because of its addictive potential, its tendency to induce tolerance, and its risk of death when mixed with alcohol. The pills were prescribed by Geoffrey Dymond, a physician who was unaware of Moon's lifestyle. Dymond prescribed a bottle of 100 pills, instructing him to take one pill when he felt a craving for alcohol but not more than three pills per day.
By September 1978 Moon was having difficulty playing the drums, according to roadie Dave "Cy" Langston. After seeing Moon in the studio trying to overdub drums for The Kids Are Alright, he said, "After two or three hours, he got more and more sluggish, he could barely hold a drum stick."
On 6 September, Moon and Walter-Lax were guests of Paul and Linda McCartney at a preview of a film, The Buddy Holly Story. After dining with the McCartneys at Peppermint Park in Covent Garden, Moon and Walter-Lax returned to their flat. He watched a film (The Abominable Dr. Phibes), and asked Walter-Lax to cook him steak and eggs. When she objected, Moon replied, "If you don't like it, you can fuck off!" These were his last words. Moon then took some clomethiazole tablets. When Walter-Lax checked on him the following afternoon, she discovered he was dead.
Curbishley phoned the flat at around 5 pm looking for Moon, and Dymond gave him the news. Curbishley told Townshend, who informed the rest of the band. Entwistle was giving an interview to French journalists when he was interrupted by a phone call with the news of Moon's death. Trying to tactfully and quickly end the interview, he broke down and wept when the journalist asked him about the Who's future plans.
Moon's death came shortly after the release of Who Are You. On the album cover, he is straddling a chair to hide his weight gain; the words "Not to be taken away" are on the back of the chair. Police determined that there were 32 clomethiazole pills in Moon's system. Six were digested, sufficient to cause his death; the other 26 were undigested when he died. Max Glatt, an authority on alcoholism, wrote in The Sunday Times that Moon should never have been given the drug. Moon was cremated on 13 September 1978 at Golders Green Crematorium in London, and his ashes were scattered in its Gardens of Remembrance.
Townshend persuaded Daltrey and Entwistle to carry on touring as The Who, although he later said that it was his means of coping with Moon's death and "completely irrational, bordering on insane". AllMusic's Bruce Eder said, "When Keith Moon died, the Who carried on and were far more competent and reliable musically, but that wasn't what sold rock records." In November 1978, Faces drummer Kenney Jones joined the Who. Townshend later said that Jones "was one of the few British drummers who could fill Keith's shoes"; Daltrey was less enthusiastic, saying that Jones "wasn't the right style". Keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick, who had rehearsed with Moon earlier in the year, joined the live band as an unofficial member.
Jones left the Who in 1988, and drummer Simon Phillips (who praised Moon's ability to drum over the backing track of "Baba O'Riley") toured with the band the following year. Since 1996, the Who's drummer has been Ringo Starr's son Zak Starkey, who had been given a drum kit by Moon (whom he called "Uncle Keith"). Starkey had previously toured in 1994 with Roger Daltrey.
The London 2012 Summer Olympic Committee contacted Curbishley about Moon performing at the games, 34 years after his death. In an interview with The Times Curbishley quipped, "I emailed back saying Keith now resides in Golders Green Crematorium, having lived up to the Who's anthemic line 'I hope I die before I get old' ... If they have a round table, some glasses and candles, we might contact him."
Legacy
Moon's drumming has been praised by critics. Author Nick Talevski described him as "the greatest drummer in rock", adding that "he was to the drums what Jimi Hendrix was to the guitar." Holly George-Warren, editor and author of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: The First 25 Years, said: "With the death of Keith Moon in 1978, rock arguably lost its single greatest drummer." According to AllMusic critic Bruce Eder, "Moon, with his manic, lunatic side, and his life of excessive drinking, partying, and other indulgences, probably represented the youthful, zany side of rock & roll, as well as its self-destructive side, better than anyone else on the planet." The New Book of Rock Lists ranked Moon No. 1 on its list of "50 Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Drummers",} and he was ranked No. 2 on the 2011 Rolling Stone "Best Drummers of All Time" readers' poll. In 2016, the same magazine ranked him No. 2 in their list of the 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time, behind John Bonham. Adam Budofsky, editor of Drummer magazine, said that Moon's performances on Who's Next and Quadrophenia "represent a perfect balance of technique and passion" and "there's been no drummer who's touched his unique slant on rock and rhythm since."
Several rock drummers, including Neil Peart have cited Moon as an influence. The Jam paid homage to Moon on the second single from their third album, "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight"; the B-side of the single is a Who cover ("So Sad About Us"), and the back cover of the record has a photo of Moon's face. The Jam's single was released about a month after Moon's death. Animal, one of Jim Henson's Muppet characters, may have been based on Keith Moon due to their similar hair, eyebrows, personality and drumming style. Jazz drummer Elvin Jones praised Moon's work during "Underture", as integral to the song's effect.
Ray Davies notably lauded Moon's drumming during his speech for the Kinks' induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1990: "... Keith Moon changed the sound of drumming."
"God bless his beautiful heart ..." Ozzy Osbourne told Sounds a month after the drummer's death. "People will be talking about Keith Moon 'til they die, man. Someone somewhere will say, 'Remember Keith Moon?' Who will remember Joe Bloggs who got killed in a car crash? No one. He's dead, so what? He didn't do anything to talk of."
Clem Burke of Blondie has said "Early on all I cared about was Keith Moon and the Who. When I was about eleven or twelve, my favourite part of drum lessons was the last ten minutes, when I'd get to sit at the drumset and play along to my favourite record. I'd bring in 'My Generation'. At the end of the song, the drums go nuts. 'My Generation' was a turning point for me because before that it was all the Charlie Watts and Ringo type of thing."
In 1998 Tony Fletcher published a biography of Moon, Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon, in the United Kingdom. The phrase "Dear Boy" became a catchphrase of Moon's when, influenced by Kit Lambert, he began affecting a pompous English accent. In 2000, the book was released in the US as Moon (The Life and Death of a Rock Legend). Q Magazine called the book "horrific and terrific reading", and Record Collector said it was "one of rock's great biographies."
In 2008, English Heritage declined an application for Moon to be awarded a blue plaque. Speaking to The Guardian, Christopher Frayling said they "decided that bad behaviour and overdosing on various substances wasn't a sufficient qualification." The UK's Heritage Foundation disagreed with the decision, presenting a plaque which was unveiled on 9 March 2009. Daltrey, Townshend, Robin Gibb and Moon's mother Kit were present at the ceremony.
Discography
Solo albums
Two Sides of the Moon (1975)
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
The Who Biography of Keith Moon
1946 births
1978 deaths
20th-century English musicians
Accidental deaths in London
British rhythm and blues boom musicians
Drug-related deaths in London
English expatriates in the United States
English rock drummers
British male drummers
Golders Green Crematorium
Musicians from London
People from Alperton
Musicians from Wembley
Plastic Ono Band members
The Who members
20th-century British male musicians | [
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16992 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene | Kerosene | Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from (keros) meaning "wax", and was registered as a trademark by Canadian geologist and inventor Abraham Gesner in 1854 before evolving into a generic trademark. It is sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage. The term kerosene is common in much of Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, and the United States, while the term paraffin (or a closely related variant) is used in Chile, eastern Africa, South Africa, Norway, and in the United Kingdom. The term lamp oil, or the equivalent in the local languages, is common in the majority of Asia and the Southeastern United States. Liquid paraffin (called mineral oil in the US) is a more viscous and highly refined product which is used as a laxative. Paraffin wax is a waxy solid extracted from petroleum.
Kerosene is widely used to power jet engines of aircraft (jet fuel), as well as some rocket engines in a highly refined form called RP-1. It is also commonly used as a cooking and lighting fuel, and for fire toys such as poi. In parts of Asia, kerosene is sometimes used as fuel for small outboard motors or even motorcycles. World total kerosene consumption for all purposes is equivalent to about per day.
To prevent confusion between kerosene and the much more flammable and volatile gasoline (petrol), some jurisdictions regulate markings or colourings for containers used to store or dispense kerosene. For example, in the United States, Pennsylvania requires that portable containers used at retail service stations for kerosene be colored blue, as opposed to red (for gasoline) or yellow (for diesel).
The World Health Organization considers kerosene to be a polluting fuel and recommends that "governments and practitioners immediately stop promoting its household use". Kerosene smoke contains high levels of harmful particulate matter, and household use of kerosene is associated with higher risks of cancer, respiratory infections, asthma, tuberculosis, cataracts, and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Properties and grades
Kerosene is a low-viscosity, clear liquid formed from hydrocarbons obtained from the fractional distillation of petroleum between , resulting in a mixture with a density of composed of carbon chains that typically contain between 10 and 16 carbon atoms per molecule. It is miscible in petroleum solvents but immiscible in water.
The distribution of hydrocarbon length in the mixture making up kerosene ranges from a number of carbon atoms of C6 to C20, although typically kerosene predominantly contains C9 to C16 range hydrocarbons.
The ASTM International standard specification D-3699-78 recognizes two grades of kerosene: grades 1-K (less than 0.04% sulfur by weight) and 2-K (0.3% sulfur by weight). 1-K-grade kerosene burns cleaner with fewer deposits, fewer toxins, and less frequent maintenance than 2-K-grade kerosene, and is the preferred grade of kerosene for indoor kerosene heaters and stoves.
Regardless of crude oil source or processing history, kerosene's major components are branched- and straight-chain alkanes and naphthenes (cycloalkanes), which normally account for at least 70% by volume. Aromatic hydrocarbons in this boiling range, such as alkylbenzenes (single ring) and alkylnaphthalenes (double ring), do not normally exceed 25% by volume of kerosene streams. Olefins are usually not present at more than 5% by volume.
The flash point of kerosene is between 37 and 65 °C (100 and 150 °F), and its autoignition temperature is . The freeze point of kerosene depends on grade, with commercial aviation fuel standardized at .
1-K-grade kerosene freezes around −40 °C (−40 °F, 233 K).
Heat of combustion of kerosene is similar to that of diesel fuel; its lower heating value is 43.1 MJ/kg (around 18,500 Btu/lb), and its higher heating value is .
In the United Kingdom, two grades of heating oil are defined. BS 2869 Class C1 is the lightest grade used for lanterns, camping stoves, wick heaters, and mixed with gasoline in some vintage combustion engines as a substitute for tractor vaporising oil. BS 2869 Class C2 is a heavier distillate, which is used as domestic heating oil. Premium kerosene is usually sold in 5- or 20-liter containers from hardware, camping and garden stores, and is often dyed purple. Standard kerosene is usually dispensed in bulk by a tanker and is undyed.
National and international standards define the properties of several grades of kerosene used for jet fuel. Flash point and freezing point properties are of particular interest for operation and safety; the standards also define additives for control of static electricity and other purposes.
History
The process of distilling crude oil/petroleum into kerosene, as well as other hydrocarbon compounds, was first written about in the 9th century by the Persian scholar Rāzi (or Rhazes). In his Kitab al-Asrar (Book of Secrets), the physician and chemist Razi described two methods for the production of kerosene, termed naft abyad (نفط ابيض"white naphtha"), using an apparatus called an alembic. One method used clay as an absorbent, and later the other method using chemicals like ammonium chloride (sal ammoniac). The distillation process was repeated until most of the volatile hydrocarbon fractions had been removed and the final product was perfectly clear and safe to burn. Kerosene was also produced during the same period from oil shale and bitumen by heating the rock to extract the oil, which was then distilled. During the Chinese Ming Dynasty, the Chinese made use of kerosene through extracting and purifying petroleum and then converted it into lamp fuel. The Chinese made use of petroleum for lighting lamps and heating homes as early as 1500 BC.
Illuminating oil from coal and oil shale
Although "coal oil" was well known by industrial chemists at least as early as the 1700s as a byproduct of making coal gas and coal tar, it burned with a smoky flame that prevented its use for indoor illumination. In cities, much indoor illumination was provided by piped-in coal gas, but outside the cities, and for spot lighting within the cities, the lucrative market for fueling indoor lamps was supplied by whale oil, specifically that from sperm whales, which burned brighter and cleaner.
Canadian geologist Abraham Pineo Gesner claimed that in 1846, he had given a public demonstration in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island of a new process he had discovered. He heated coal in a retort, and distilled from it a clear, thin fluid that he showed made an excellent lamp fuel. He coined the name "kerosene" for his fuel, a contraction of keroselaion, meaning wax-oil. The cost of extracting kerosene from coal was high.
Gesner recalled from his extensive knowledge of New Brunswick's geology a naturally occurring asphaltum called albertite. He was blocked from using it by the New Brunswick coal conglomerate because they had coal extraction rights for the province, and he lost a court case when their experts claimed albertite was a form of coal. In 1854, Gesner moved to Newtown Creek, Long Island, New York. There, he secured backing from a group of businessmen. They formed the North American Gas Light Company, to which he assigned his patents.
Despite clear priority of discovery, Gesner did not obtain his first kerosene patent until 1854, two years after James Young's United States patent. Gesner's method of purifying the distillation products appears to have been superior to Young's, resulting in a cleaner and better-smelling fuel. Manufacture of kerosene under the Gesner patents began in New York in 1854 and later in Boston—being distilled from bituminous coal and oil shale. Gesner registered the word "Kerosene" as a trademark in 1854, and for several years, only the North American Gas Light Company and the Downer Company (to which Gesner had granted the right) were allowed to call their lamp oil "Kerosene" in the United States.
In 1848, Scottish chemist James Young experimented with oil discovered seeping in a coal mine as a source of lubricating oil and illuminating fuel. When the seep became exhausted, he experimented with the dry distillation of coal, especially the resinous "boghead coal" (torbanite). He extracted a number of useful liquids from it, one of which he named paraffine oil because at low temperatures, it congealed into a substance that resembled paraffin wax. Young took out a patent on his process and the resulting products in 1850, and built the first truly commercial oil-works in the world at Bathgate in 1851, using oil extracted from locally mined torbanite, shale, and bituminous coal. In 1852, he took out a United States patent for the same invention. These patents were subsequently upheld in both countries in a series of lawsuits, and other producers were obliged to pay him royalties.
Kerosene from petroleum
In 1851, Samuel Martin Kier began selling lamp oil to local miners, under the name "Carbon Oil". He distilled this by a process of his own invention from crude oil. He also invented a new lamp to burn his product. He has been dubbed the Grandfather of the American Oil Industry by historians. Since the 1840s, Kier's salt wells were becoming fouled with petroleum. At first, Kier simply dumped the useless oil into the nearby Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, but later he began experimenting with several distillates of the crude oil, along with a chemist from eastern Pennsylvania.
Ignacy Łukasiewicz, a Polish pharmacist residing in Lviv, and his Hungarian partner had been experimenting with different distillation techniques, trying to improve on Gesner's kerosene process, but using oil from a local petroleum seep. Many people knew of his work, but paid little attention to it. On the night of 31 July 1853, doctors at the local hospital needed to perform an emergency operation, virtually impossible by candlelight. They therefore sent a messenger for Łukasiewicz and his new lamps. The lamp burned so brightly and cleanly that the hospital officials ordered several lamps plus a large supply of fuel. Łukasiewicz realized the potential of his work and quit the pharmacy to find a business partner, and then travelled to Vienna to register his technique with the government. Łukasiewicz moved to the Gorlice region of Poland in 1854, and sank several wells across southern Poland over the following decade, setting up a refinery near Jasło in 1859.
The petroleum discovery at the Drake Well in western Pennsylvania in 1859 caused a great deal of public excitement and investment drilling in new wells, not only in Pennsylvania, but also in Canada, where petroleum had been discovered at Oil Springs, Ontario in 1858, and southern Poland, where Ignacy Łukasiewicz had been distilling lamp oil from petroleum seeps since 1852. The increased supply of petroleum allowed oil refiners to entirely side-step the oil-from-coal patents of both Young and Gesner, and produce illuminating oil from petroleum without paying royalties to anyone. As a result, the illuminating oil industry in the United States completely switched over to petroleum in the 1860s. The petroleum-based illuminating oil was widely sold as Kerosene, and the trade name soon lost its proprietary status, and became the lower-case generic product "kerosene". Because Gesner's original Kerosene had been also known as "coal oil," generic kerosene from petroleum was commonly called "coal oil" in some parts of the United States well into the 20th century.
In the United Kingdom, manufacturing oil from coal (or oil shale) continued into the early 20th century, although increasingly overshadowed by petroleum oils.
As kerosene production increased, whaling declined. The American whaling fleet, which had been steadily growing for 50 years, reached its all-time peak of 199 ships in 1858. By 1860, just two years later, the fleet had dropped to 167 ships. The Civil War cut into American whaling temporarily, but only 105 whaling ships returned to sea in 1866, the first full year of peace, and that number dwindled until only 39 American ships set out to hunt whales in 1876. Kerosene, made first from coal and oil shale, then from petroleum, had largely taken over whaling's lucrative market in lamp oil.
Electric lighting started displacing kerosene as an illuminant in the late 19th century, especially in urban areas. However, kerosene remained the predominant commercial end-use for petroleum refined in the United States until 1909, when it was exceeded by motor fuels. The rise of the gasoline-powered automobile in the early 20th century created a demand for the lighter hydrocarbon fractions, and refiners invented methods to increase the output of gasoline, while decreasing the output of kerosene. In addition, some of the heavier hydrocarbons that previously went into kerosene were incorporated into diesel fuel. Kerosene kept some market share by being increasingly used in stoves and portable heaters.
In 2013, kerosene made up about 0.1 percent by volume of petroleum refinery output in the United States.
Applications
As fuel
Heating and lighting
The fuel, also known as heating oil in the UK and Ireland, remains widely used in kerosene lamps and lanterns in the developing world. Although it replaced whale oil, the 1873 edition of Elements of Chemistry said, "The vapor of this substance [kerosene] mixed with air is as explosive as gunpowder." This may have been due to the common practice of adulterating kerosene with cheaper but more volatile hydrocarbon mixtures, such as naphtha.
Kerosene was a significant fire risk; in 1880, nearly two of every five New York City fires were caused by defective kerosene lamps.
In less-developed countries kerosene is an important source of energy for cooking and lighting. It is used as a cooking fuel in portable stoves for backpackers. As a heating fuel, it is often used in portable stoves, and is sold in some filling stations. It is sometimes used as a heat source during power failures.
Kerosene is widely used in Japan and Chile as a home heating fuel for portable and installed kerosene heaters. In Chile and Japan, kerosene can be readily bought at any filling station or be delivered to homes in some cases.
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, kerosene is often used as a heating fuel in areas not connected to a gas pipeline network. It is used less for cooking, with LPG being preferred because it is easier to light. Kerosene is often the fuel of choice for range cookers such as Rayburn. Additives such as RangeKlene can be put into kerosene to ensure that it burns cleaner and produces less soot when used in range cookers.
The Amish, who generally abstain from the use of electricity, rely on kerosene for lighting at night.
More ubiquitous in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, kerosene space heaters were often built into kitchen ranges, and kept many farm and fishing families warm and dry through the winter. At one time, citrus growers used a smudge pot fueled by kerosene to create a pall of thick smoke over a grove in an effort to prevent freezing temperatures from damaging crops. "Salamanders" are kerosene space heaters used on construction sites to dry out building materials and to warm workers. Before the days of electrically lighted road barriers, highway construction zones were marked at night by kerosene fired, pot-bellied torches. Most of these uses of kerosene created thick black smoke because of the low temperature of combustion.
A notable exception, discovered in the early 19th century, is the use of a gas mantle mounted above the wick on a kerosene lamp. Looking like a delicate woven bag above the woven cotton wick, the mantle is a residue of mineral materials (mostly thorium dioxide), heated to incandescence by the flame from the wick. The thorium and cerium oxide combination produces both a whiter light and a greater fraction of the energy in the form of visible light than a black body at the same temperature would. These types of lamps are still in use today in areas of the world without electricity, because they give a much better light than a simple wick-type lamp does. Recently, a multipurpose lantern that doubles as a cook stove has been introduced in India in areas with no electricity.
Cooking
In countries such as India and Nigeria, kerosene is the main fuel used for cooking, especially by the poor, and kerosene stoves have replaced traditional wood-based cooking appliances. As such, increase in the price of kerosene can have a major political and environmental consequence. The Indian government subsidizes the fuel to keep the price very low, to around 15 U.S. cents per liter as of February 2007, as lower prices discourage dismantling of forests for cooking fuel. In Nigeria an attempt by the government to remove a fuel subsidy that includes kerosene met with strong opposition.
Kerosene is used as a fuel in portable stoves, especially in Primus stoves invented in 1892. Portable kerosene stoves earn a reputation of reliable and durable stove in everyday use, and perform especially well under adverse conditions. In outdoor activities and mountaineering, a decisive advantage of pressurized kerosene stoves over gas cartridge stoves is their particularly high thermal output and their ability to operate at very low temperature in winter or at high altitude. Wick stoves like Perfection's or wickless like Boss continue to be used by the Amish and off grid living and in natural disasters where there is no power available.
Engines
In the early to mid-20th century, kerosene or tractor vaporising oil (TVO) was used as a cheap fuel for tractors and hit 'n miss engines. The engine would start on gasoline, then switch over to kerosene once the engine warmed up. On some engines a heat valve on the manifold would route the exhaust gases around the intake pipe, heating the kerosene to the point where it was vaporized and could be ignited by an electric spark.
In Europe following the Second World War, automobiles were similarly modified to run on kerosene rather than gasoline, which they would have to import and pay heavy taxes on. Besides additional piping and the switch between fuels, the head gasket was replaced by a much thicker one to diminish the compression ratio (making the engine less powerful and less efficient, but able to run on kerosene). The necessary equipment was sold under the trademark "Econom".
During the fuel crisis of the 1970s, Saab-Valmet developed and series-produced the Saab 99 Petro that ran on kerosene, turpentine or gasoline. The project, codenamed "Project Lapponia", was headed by Simo Vuorio, and towards the end of the 1970s, a working prototype was produced based on the Saab 99 GL. The car was designed to run on two fuels. Gasoline was used for cold starts and when extra power was needed, but normally it ran on kerosene or turpentine. The idea was that the gasoline could be made from peat using the Fischer–Tropsch process. Between 1980 and 1984, 3,756 Saab 99 Petros and 2,385 Talbot Horizons (a version of the Chrysler Horizon that integrated many Saab components) were made. One reason to manufacture kerosene-fueled cars was that in Finland kerosene was less heavily taxed than gasoline.
Kerosene is used to fuel smaller-horsepower outboard motors built by Yamaha, Suzuki, and Tohatsu. Primarily used on small fishing craft, these are dual-fuel engines that start on gasoline and then transition to kerosene once the engine reaches optimum operating temperature. Multiple fuel Evinrude and Mercury Racing engines also burn kerosene, as well as jet fuel.
Today, kerosene is mainly used in fuel for jet engines in several grades. One highly refined form of the fuel is known as RP-1, and is often burned with liquid oxygen as rocket fuel. These fuel grade kerosenes meet specifications for smoke points and freeze points. The combustion reaction can be approximated as follows, with the molecular formula C12H26 (dodecane):
2 C12H26(l) + 37 O2(g) → 24 CO2(g) + 26 H2O(g); ∆H˚ = -7513 kJ
In the initial phase of liftoff, the Saturn V launch vehicle was powered by the reaction of liquid oxygen with RP-1. For the five 6.4 meganewton sea-level thrust F-1 rocket engines of the Saturn V, burning together, the reaction generated roughly 1.62 × 1011 watts (J/s) (162 gigawatt) or 217 million horsepower.
Kerosene is sometimes used as an additive in diesel fuel to prevent gelling or waxing in cold temperatures.
Ultra-low sulfur kerosene is a custom-blended fuel used by the New York City Transit Authority to power its bus fleet. The transit agency started using this fuel in 2004, prior to the widespread adoption of ultra-low-sulfur diesel, which has since become the standard. In 2008, the suppliers of the custom fuel failed to tender for a renewal of the transit agency's contract, leading to a negotiated contract at a significantly increased cost.
JP-8, (for "Jet Propellant 8") a kerosene-based fuel, is used by the United States military as a replacement in diesel fueled vehicles and for powering aircraft. JP-8 is also used by the U.S. military and its NATO allies as a fuel for heaters, stoves, tanks and as a replacement for diesel fuel in the engines of nearly all tactical ground vehicles and electrical generators.
In chemistry
Kerosene is used as a diluent in the PUREX extraction process, but it is increasingly being supplanted by dodecane.
In X-ray crystallography, kerosene can be used to store crystals. When a hydrated crystal is left in air, dehydration may occur slowly. This makes the color of the crystal become dull. Kerosene can keep air away from the crystal.
It can be also used to prevent air from re-dissolving in a boiled liquid, and to store alkali metals such as potassium, sodium, and rubidium (with the exception of lithium, which is less dense than kerosene, causing it to float).
Kerosene vapor diffused in air (as from a lamp wick) will burn at a maximum flame temperature of 990 °C (1814 °F). In a stochiometric mixture with oxygen the flame temperature of kerosene can reach 2393 °C (3801 °F).
In entertainment
Kerosene is often used in the entertainment industry for fire performances, such as fire breathing, fire juggling or poi, and fire dancing. Because of its low flame temperature when burnt in free air, the risk is lower should the performer come in contact with the flame. Kerosene is generally not recommended as fuel for indoor fire dancing, as it produces an unpleasant (to some) odor, which becomes poisonous in sufficient concentration. Ethanol was sometimes used instead, but the flames it produces look less impressive, and its lower flash point poses a high risk.
In industry
As a petroleum product miscible with many industrial liquids, kerosene can be used as both a solvent, able to remove other petroleum products, such as chain grease, and as a lubricant, with less risk of combustion when compared to using gasoline. It can also be used as a cooling agent in metal production and treatment (oxygen-free conditions).
In the petroleum industry, kerosene is often used as a synthetic hydrocarbon for corrosion experiments to simulate crude oil in field conditions.
Solvent
Kerosene can be used as an adhesive remover on hard-to-remove mucilage or adhesive left by stickers on a glass surface (such as in show windows of stores).
It can be used to remove candle wax that has dripped onto a glass surface; it is recommended that the excess wax be scraped off prior to applying kerosene via a soaked cloth or tissue paper.
It can be used to clean bicycle and motorcycle chains of old lubricant before relubrication.
It can also be used to thin oil-based paint used in fine art. Some artists even use it to clean their brushes; however, it leaves the bristles greasy to the touch.
Others
It has seen use for water tank mosquito control in Australia, where a temporary thin floating layer above the water protects it until the defective tank is repaired.
Toxicity
The World Health Organization considers kerosene to be a polluting fuel and recommends that “governments and practitioners immediately stop promoting its household use”. Kerosene smoke contains high levels of harmful particulate matter, and household use of kerosene is associated with higher risks of cancer, respiratory infections, asthma, tuberculosis, cataract, and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Ingestion of kerosene is harmful. Kerosene is sometimes recommended as a folk remedy for killing head lice, but health agencies warn against this as it can cause burns and serious illness. A kerosene shampoo can even be fatal if fumes are inhaled.
People can be exposed to kerosene in the workplace by breathing it in, swallowing it, skin contact, and eye contact. The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit of 100 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday.
See also
Adiabatic flame temperature
Aviation fuel
Gasoline gallon equivalent
Kerosene jet fuel
List of CO2 emitted per million Btu of energy from various fuels
Rocket propellant RP-1
Tractor vaporising oil
References
Notes
External links
"Kerosene", Webster Online Dictionary
Article on Gesner
Kerosene Fuel Primer
San Diego Union-Tribune Article
Material Safety Data Sheet
CDC – NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards
Alkanes
American inventions
Aviation fuels
Brands that became generic
Canadian inventions
Chinese inventions
Coolants
Fuels
Hydrocarbon solvents
Iranian inventions
Lubricants
Petroleum products
Polish inventions
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16994 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwashiorkor | Kwashiorkor | Kwashiorkor ( , ) is a form of severe protein malnutrition characterized by edema and an enlarged liver with fatty infiltrates. It is thought to be caused by sufficient calorie intake, but with insufficient protein consumption (or lack of good quality protein), which distinguishes it from marasmus. Recent studies have found that a lack of antioxidant micronutrients such as β-carotene, lycopene, other carotenoids, and vitamin C as well as the presence of aflatoxins may play a role in the development of the disease. However, the exact cause of kwashiorkor is still unknown. Inadequate food supply is correlated with occurrences of kwashiorkor; occurrences in high income countries are rare. It occurs amongst weaning children to ages of about five years old.
Conditions analogous to kwashiorkor were well documented around the world throughout history. However, Jamaican pediatrician Cicely Williams introduced the term in 1935, two years after she published the disease's first formal description. Williams was the first to conduct research on kwashiorkor and differentiate it from other dietary deficiencies. She was the first to suggest that this might be a deficiency of protein. The name is derived from the Ga language of coastal Ghana, translated as "the sickness the baby gets when the new baby comes" or "the disease of the deposed child", and reflecting the development of the condition in an older child who has been weaned from the breast when a younger sibling comes. Breast milk contains amino acids vital to a child's growth. In at-risk populations, kwashiorkor may develop after children are weaned from breast milk and begin consuming a diet high in carbohydrates, including maize, cassava or rice.
Classification
Children with severe malnutrition have an increased risk of serious illness and death.
Kwashiorkor is one of the main forms of childhood malnutrition living in low-income and middle-income countries. Kwashiorkor is oftentimes referred to as severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Severe forms of malnutritions are recognized, including stunting, marasmus, and kwashiorkor. Both kwashiorkor and marasmus fall under the umbrella of deficiencies called Protein Energy Malnutrition (PEM). These diseases are oftentimes discussed together, but can be distinguished. Kwashiorkor is classified by its insufficient protein consumption whereas marasmus is related to general energy deficiency and severe muscle wasting. Kwashiorkor is also distinguished from marasmus by the presence of edema.There is also marasmic kwashiorkor that is the deficiency of both calories and proteins. Although they are both different types of severe acute malnutrition, there was greater consumption of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals seen in those with kwashiorkor compared to those with marasmus.
Wellcome's classification
Wellcome classification is a system for classifying protein-energy malnutrition in children based on weight for their age and based on presence of edema. Other classifications include Gomez classification and Waterlow classification.
Signs and symptoms
The defining sign of kwashiorkor in a malnourished child is pitting edema (particularly swelling of the hands and feet). Unlike marasmus, where the liver and other essential organs are reduced in size, kwashiorkor is characterized by "an enlarged fatty liver, fibrosis, and dysfunction of several organs (such as the liver, kidneys, and nervous system)". Other signs include a distended abdomen, thinning of hair, loss of teeth, skin or hair depigmentation, and dermatitis. Children with kwashiorkor often develop irritability and anorexia. Generally, the disease can be treated by adding protein to the diet; however, it can have a long-term impact on a child's physical and mental development, and in severe cases may lead to death.
In dry climates, marasmus is the more frequent disease associated with malnutrition. Another malnutrition syndrome includes cachexia, although it is often caused by underlying illnesses. These are important considerations in the treatment of individuals with kwashiorkor.
Causes
The precise etiology of kwashiorkor remains unclear. Several hypotheses have been proposed that are associated with and explain some, but not all aspects of the pathophysiology of kwashiorkor. They include, but are not limited to protein deficiency causing hypoalbuminemia, amino acid deficiency, oxidative stress, and gut microbiome changes.
Low protein intake
Kwashiorkor is a severe form of malnutrition associated with a deficiency in dietary protein. The extreme lack of protein causes an osmotic imbalance in the gastrointestinal system causing swelling of the gut diagnosed as an edema or retention of water.
Extreme fluid retention observed in individuals suffering from kwashiorkor is a direct result of irregularities in the lymphatic system and an indication of capillary exchange. The lymphatic system serves three major purposes: fluid recovery, immunity, and lipid absorption. Victims of kwashiorkor commonly exhibit reduced ability to recover fluids, immune system failure, and low lipid absorption, all of which result from a state of severe undernourishment. Fluid recovery in the lymphatic system is accomplished by re-absorption of water and proteins which are then returned to the blood. Compromised fluid recovery results in the characteristic belly distension observed in highly malnourished children.
Capillary exchange between the lymphatic system and the bloodstream is stunted due to the inability of the body to effectively overcome the hydrostatic pressure gradient. Proteins, mainly albumin, are responsible for creating the colloid osmotic pressure (COP) observed in the blood and tissue fluids. The difference in the COP of the blood and tissue is called the oncotic pressure. The oncotic pressure is in direct opposition with the hydrostatic pressure and tends to draw water back into the capillary by osmosis. However, due to the lack of proteins, no substantial pressure gradient can be established to draw fluids from the tissue back into the blood stream. This results in the pooling of fluids, causing the swelling and distention of the abdomen.
The low protein intake leads to some specific signs: edema of the hands and feet, irritability, anorexia, a desquamative rash, hair discolouration, and a large fatty liver. The typical swollen abdomen is due to two causes: ascites because of hypoalbuminemia (low oncotic pressure), and enlarged fatty liver.
Ignorance of nutrition can be a cause. A case was described where parents who fed their child cassava failed to recognize malnutrition because of the edema caused by the syndrome and believed the child was well-nourished despite the lack of dietary protein.
Protein should be supplied only for anabolic purposes. The catabolic needs should be satisfied with carbohydrate and fat. Protein catabolism involves the urea cycle, which is located in the liver and can easily overwhelm the capacity of an already damaged organ. The resulting liver failure can be fatal. This means in individuals suffering from kwashiorkor, protein must be introduced back into the diet gradually. Clinical solutions include weaning the affected with milk products and increasing the intake of proteinaceous material progressively to daily recommended amounts.
Aflatoxins
Recent studies have attempted to pinpoint a relationship between kwashiorkor and high levels of aflatoxins. Aflatoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by the mold Aspergillus flavus, a fungus found in areas with hot and humid climates. These toxins tend to grow and can be found in agricultural crops such as millet, maize, and rice. An analysis found that the presence of aflatoxins was found more frequently and in higher concentrations in individuals with kwashiorkor when compared to individuals with marasmus (another form of severe acute malnutrition). In particular, biological samples showed greater levels of aflatoxins in the brain, heart, kidney, liver, lungs, serum, stool, and urine. Aflatoxins were not found in liver samples of individuals with marasmus. It has been known that the liver organ is the main target of aflatoxins and chronic toxicity can result in immunosuppressive and carcinogenic effects. However, there is currently conflicting evidence to pinpoint a connection between kwashiorkor and aflatoxins. Studies have shown that not all children with kwashiorkor present with detectable aflatoxin levels. It has also been proposed that damage done by aflatoxins may be due to glutathione depletion (another proposed mechanism of the disease) in children with kwashiorkor.
Mechanisms
Peripheral edema and hypoalbuminemia
Kwashiorkor is a form of protein deficiency, which can result in both osmotic imbalances and irregularities in the lymphatic system.
Kwashiorkor is most notable for peripheral edema. The presence of edema in kwashiorkor is correlated with very low albumin concentration (hypoalbuminemia). Edema results from a loss of fluid balance between the hydrostatic and oncotic pressures across the capillary blood vessel walls due to the lack of protein which affects the body's ability to draw fluid from the tissues into the bloodstream. Low albumin concentration influences negatively the strength of oncotic pressure. Failure leads to the fluid buildup in the abdomen, resulting in edema and belly distension.
Furthermore, the release of antidiuretic hormone is stimulated by hypovolemia, also leading to the development of peripheral edema. Plasma renin is also stimulated, promoting sodium retention.
It is important to distinguish the pathophysiology of marasmus and kwashiorkor when it comes to treating malnourished children who may have hypovolemic shock that is cause by an acute loss of salt and water. Children with severe albumin deficiency struggle physiologically to maintain their blood volume.
Low glutathione levels
Kwashiorkor is also marked by low glutathione levels. Glutathione is used in many of the body processes on a molecule level.
It is believed to be related to high oxidant levels commonly seen in people who suffer from starvation and rarely in chronic inflammation. Glutathione serves vital functions including management of oxidative stress which is an imbalance that plays a key role in the pathogenesis of many diseases.
Cysteine is an essential amino acid that acts as the limiting amino acid for glutathione synthesis in humans. Factors that stimulate cysteine uptake by cells will increase glutathione levels and prevent glutathione deficiency in humans under various conditions including protein malnutrition.
Evidence indicates that dietary amino acids balance has an important effect on protein nutrition and therefore on glutathione homeostasis.
Others
A proposed experimental theory suggests that alterations in the microbiome/virone contributes to edematous malnutrition, but further studies are required to understand the mechanism.
Diagnosis
Kwashiorkor, or edematous malnutrition, like many other malnutrition diseases, is indirectly assessed using anthropometry. Kwashiorkor is a subtype of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) characterized by bilateral peripheral pitting edema. According to the World Health Organization, the SAM diagnosis parameters are a "mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) of < 115 mm, weight-for-height/length Z-score (WHZ) of < -3Z and nutritional edema or any combination of these parameters." Additional clinical findings on physical exam include marked muscle atrophy, abdominal distension, dermatitis, and hepatomegaly.
WHO criteria for clinical assessment of malnutrition are based on the degree of wasting (MUAC), stunting (weight-for-height Z-score), and the presence of edema (mild to severe).
Screening
Because it can be difficult to measure weight-for-height Z scores (WHZ) frequently, screening is performed using mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) < 115 mm. To properly screen for severe malnutrition in children, MUAC measurements should be done every month to reduce the risk of complications. Additionally, getting a better sense of what they eat, how often they eat, and any issues they may have with eating, may give more insight on their nutrition and what changes may need to be made to improve it.
Prevention
As for the prevention of childhood malnutrition, there needs to be public health changes such as improving agriculture and improving access to healthcare to effectively reduce the rates of malnutrition in children. By educating individuals of childbearing age on proper nutrition and health during and after pregnancy, they can provide their children with the appropriate nutrients from a young age. By ensuring they are equipped with the proper education and resources, caretakers and infants are in better health, ultimately preventing childhood malnutrition.
Because edema can hide decreased muscle mass, it can be hard to diagnose kwashiorkor in young children; however, if cases are overlooked, children become more susceptible to infections and can ultimately lead to morbidity and mortality. To prevent this from happening, parents can be educated on proper nutrition and the importance of breastfeeding infants to ensure they receive all the nutrients they need.
A diet rich in carbohydrates, fats that make up 10% of the total caloric needs, and proteins that make up 15% of the caloric needs can prevent kwashiorkor.
Proteins can be found in the following foods
Seafood
Peas
Nuts
Seeds
Eggs
Lean meat
Beans
Treatment
WHO guidelines outline 10 general principles for the inpatient management of severely malnourished children.
Treat/prevent hypoglycemia
Treat/prevent hypothermia
Treat/prevent dehydration
Correct electrolyte imbalance
Treat/prevent infection
Correct micronutrient deficiencies
Start cautious feeding
Achieve catch-up growth
Provide sensory stimulation and emotional support
Prepare for follow-up after recovery
Both clinical subtypes of severe acute malnutrition (kwashiorkor and marasmus) are treated similarly. Upon initial treatment, children with kwashiorkor may experience weight loss as their edema resolves. Therefore, after concerns of refeeding syndrome have passed, children may require 120-140% of their estimated caloric needs in order to achieve catch-up growth.
The cause, type, and severity of malnutrition determines what type of treatment would be most appropriate. For primary acute malnutrition, children with no complications are treated at home and are encouraged to either continue breastfeeding (for infants) or start using ready-to-use therapeutic foods (for children). For secondary acute malnutrition, the underlying cause needs to be identified to appropriately treat children. Only after the primary disease is determined can an appropriate dietary plan be made, as fluid, vitamins, and macronutrients may need to be considered to not exacerbate the cause of the malnutrition.
Ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs) and F-75 and F-100 milks were created to provide appropriate nutrition and caloric intake to those experiencing malnutrition. F-75 milk would be ideal when trying to reintroduce food into a malnourished person, and F-100 milk would be used to aid in weight gain. While RUTFs and F-100 milk were made to have the same nutritional value, RUTFs are beneficial as they are dehydrated and do not require much preparation.
Prognosis
Kwashiorkor is associated with a high risk of mortality and long-term complications. Treatment under the guidelines of the World Health Organization has proven to reduce this mortality risk and affected children tend to recover faster than children with other severe malnutrition diseases. However, physical and intellectual capabilities are not fully restored. Growth stunting and chronic disruption of microbiota are commonly observed after recovery.
A high risk of death is identified by a brachial perimeter < 11 cm or by a weight-for-age threshold < −3 z-scores below the median of the WHO child growth standards. In practice, malnourished children with edema are suffering from potentially life-threatening severe malnutrition.
Epidemiology
Kwashiorkor is rare in high income countries. It is mostly observed in low-income and middle income nations and regions such as Southeast Asia, Central America, Congo, Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, South Africa, and Uganda, where poverty is prominent. Occurrences of severe malnutrition also tend to trend higher under conditions of food insecurity, higher prevalence of infectious diseases, lack of access to appropriate care, and poor living situations with inadequate sanitation. Communities experiencing famine are affected the most especially during the rainy season. Prevalence varies, but it affects children of either sex commonly under five years old. "Globally, kwashiorkor indirected accounted for 53% of deaths among children under five between 2000 and 2003 when associated with other common childhood diseases like acute respiratory infections, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS and other causes of perinatal deaths."
When compared to marasmus in developing countries, kwashiorkor has a lower prevalence, "0.2%-1.6% for kwashiorkor and 1.2%-6.8% for marasmus." Factors such as "diet, geographical locations, climate and aflatoxin exposure" are associated with the difference in prevalence for kwashiorkor and marasmus.
History
It is likely that kwashiorkor was commonly seen around the world long before 1933, when Cicely Williams published research which took the Ga name for the disease. There were already many names for the illness which referenced the cessation of breastfeeding, or the consumption of diets which were too high in starch. However, Williams was the first to suggest that this might be a deficiency of protein. Despite publishing in 1933, it was only in 1949 that the World Health Organization officially recognized kwashiorkor as a public health concern. This period also correlated with the promotion of infant formula, often by European colonial powers. The substitution of breastmilk for formula contributed significantly to the increasing visibility of kwashiorkor throughout the twentieth century. Cicely Williams later described the promotion of formula as "the most criminal form of sedition, and that those deaths should be regarded as murder." These arguments underpinned the 1970s Nestlé boycott.
Effects on pharmacokinetics
Those experiencing poverty-related infectious diseases (PRDs) such as malaria and tuberculosis are also likely to be malnourished. Malnutrition can affect the pharmacokinetics of various drugs used to treat PRDs by changing a drug's bioavailability, distribution, and elimination. To optimize treatment of those diseases, there needs to be more research into how severe malnutrition, specifically kwashiorkor, can affect treatment response.
Research directions
Current research and recommendations to manage severe acute malnutrition (SAM), such as kwashiorkor, in children are largely based on expert opinions. Only one-third of the WHO guidelines for management of SAM are based on epidemiological and clinical research. Further studies are needed in order to "improve treatment outcomes in the large number of children with SAM."
See also
Anemia
Emaciation
Starvation
Marasmus
Protein poisoning
References
External links
Protein–energy malnutrition
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16995 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini | Kundalini | In Hinduism, Kundalini (, ) is a form of divine feminine energy (or Shakti) believed to be located at the base of the spine, in the muladhara. It is an important concept in Śhaiva Tantra, where it is believed to be a force or power associated with the divine feminine or the formless aspect of the Goddess. This energy in the body, when cultivated and awakened through tantric practice, is believed to lead to spiritual liberation. Kuṇḍalinī is associated with Parvati or Adi Parashakti, the supreme being in Shaktism; and with the goddesses Bhairavi and Kubjika. The term, along with practices associated with it, was adopted into Hatha yoga in the 9th century. It has since then been adopted into other forms of Hinduism as well as modern spirituality and New age thought.
Kuṇḍalinī awakenings are said to occur by a variety of methods. Many systems of yoga focus on awakening Kuṇḍalinī through: meditation; pranayama breathing; the practice of asana and chanting of mantras. Kundalini Yoga is influenced by Shaktism and Tantra schools of Hinduism. It derives its name from its focus upon the awakening of kundalini energy through regular practice of Mantra, Tantra, Yantra, Asanas or Meditation. The Kuṇḍalinī experience is frequently reported to be a distinct feeling of electric current running along the spine.
Etymology
The concept of Kuṇḍalinī is mentioned in the Upanishads (9th – 7th centuries BCE). The Sanskrit adjective means "circular, annular". It is mentioned as a noun for "snake" (in the sense of "coiled") in the 12th-century Rajatarangini chronicle (I.2). (a noun meaning "bowl, water-pot" is found as the name of a Nāga (serpent deity) in Mahabharata 1.4828). The 8th-century Tantrasadbhava Tantra uses the term kundalī, glossed by David Gordon White as "she who is ring-shaped".
The use of kuṇḍalī as a name for Goddess Durga (a form of Shakti) appears often in Tantrism and Shaktism from as early as the 11th century in the Śaradatilaka. It was adopted as a technical term in Hatha yoga during the 15th century, and became widely used in the Yoga Upanishads by the 16th century. Eknath Easwaran has paraphrased the term as "the coiled power", a force which ordinarily rests at the base of the spine, described as being "coiled there like a serpent".
In Shaiva Tantra
Kuṇḍalinī arose as a central concept in Shaiva Tantra, especially among the Śākta cults like the Kaula. In these Tantric traditions, Kuṇḍalinī is "the innate intelligence of embodied Consciousness". The first possible mention of the term is in the Tantrasadbhāva-tantra (eighth century), though other earlier tantras mention the visualization of Shakti in the central channel and the upward movement of prana or vital force (which is often associated with Kuṇḍalinī in later works). According to David Gordon White, this feminine spiritual force is also termed bhogavati, which has a double meaning of "enjoyment" and "coiled" and signifies her strong connection to bliss and pleasure, both mundane physical pleasure and the bliss of spiritual liberation (moksha), which is the enjoyment of Shiva's creative activity and ultimate union with the Goddess.
In the influential Shakta tradition called Kaula, Kuṇḍalinī is seen as a "latent innate spiritual power", associated with the Goddess Kubjika (lit. "the crooked one"), who is the supreme Goddess (Paradevi). She is also pure bliss and power (Shakti), the source of all mantras, and resides in the six chakras along the central channel. In Shaiva Tantra, various practices like pranayama, bandhas, mantra recitation and tantric ritual were used in order to awaken this spiritual power and create a state of bliss and spiritual liberation.
According to Abhinavagupta, the great tantric scholar and master of the Kaula and Trika lineages, there are two main forms of Kuṇḍalinī, an upward moving Kuṇḍalinī (urdhva) associated with expansion, and a downward moving Kuṇḍalinī (adha) associated with contraction. According to the scholar of comparative religion Gavin Flood, Abhinavagupta links Kuṇḍalinī with "the power that brings into manifestation the body, breath, and experiences of pleasure and pain", with "the power of sexuality as the source of reproduction" and with:
Description
According to William F. Williams, Kundalini is a type of religious experience within the Hindu tradition, within which it is held to be a kind of "cosmic energy" that accumulates at the base of the spine.
When awakened, Kundalini is described as rising up from the muladhara chakra, through the central nadi (called sushumna) inside or alongside the spine reaching the top of the head. The progress of Kundalini through the different chakras is believed to achieve different levels of awakening and a mystical experience, until Kundalini finally reaches the top of the head, Sahasrara or crown chakra, producing an extremely profound transformation of consciousness.
Swami Sivananda Saraswati of the Divine Life Society stated in his book Kundalini Yoga that "Supersensual visions appear before the mental eye of the aspirant, new worlds with indescribable wonders and charms unfold themselves before the Yogi, planes after planes reveal their existence and grandeur to the practitioner and the Yogi gets divine knowledge, power and bliss, in increasing degrees, when Kundalini passes through Chakra after Chakra, making them to bloom in all their glory..."
Kundalini experiences
Invoking Kundalini experiences
Reports about the Sahaja Yoga technique of Kundalini awakening state that the practice can result in a cool breeze felt on the fingertips as well as the fontanel bone area.
Yoga gurus such as Muktananda consider that Kundalini can be awakened by shaktipat (spiritual transmission by a Guru or teacher), or by spiritual practices such as yoga or meditation.
There are two broad approaches to Kundalini awakening: active and passive. The active approach involves systematic physical exercises and techniques of concentration, visualization, pranayama (breath practice) and meditation under the guidance of a competent teacher. These techniques come from any of the four main branches of yoga, and some forms of yoga, such as Kriya yoga, Kundalini yoga and Sahaja yoga which emphasize Kundalini techniques.
The passive approach is instead a path of surrender where one lets go of all the impediments to the awakening rather than trying to actively awaken Kundalini. A chief part of the passive approach is shaktipat where one individual's Kundalini is awakened by another who already has the experience. Shaktipat only raises Kundalini temporarily but gives the student an experience to use as a basis.
Gopi Krishna (yogi) subsequently came to believe "As the ancient writers have said, it is the vital force or prana which is spread over both the macrocosm, the entire Universe, and the microcosm, the human body... The atom is contained in both of these. Prana is life-energy responsible for the phenomena of terrestrial life and for life on other planets in the universe. Prana in its universal aspect is immaterial. But in the human body, Prana creates a fine biochemical substance which works in the whole organism and is the main agent of activity in the nervous system and in the brain. The brain is alive only because of Prana...
The American comparative religions scholar Joseph Campbell describes the concept of Kundalini as "the figure of a coiled female serpent—a serpent goddess not of "gross" but "subtle" substance—which is to be thought of as residing in a torpid, slumbering state in a subtle center, the first of the seven, near the base of the spine: the aim of the yoga then being to rouse this serpent, lift her head, and bring her up a subtle nerve or channel of the spine to the so-called "thousand-petaled lotus" (Sahasrara) at the crown of the head...She, rising from the lowest to the highest lotus center will pass through and wake the five between, and with each waking, the psychology and personality of the practitioner will be altogether and fundamentally transformed."
Hatha yoga
According to the Goraksasataka, or "Hundred Verses of Goraksa", hatha yoga practices such as the mudras mula bandha, uddiyana bandha, and jalandhara bandha, and the pranayama practice of kumbhaka can awaken Kundalini. Another hatha yoga text, the Khecarīvidyā, states that khechari mudra enables one to raise Kundalini and access the stores of amrita in the head, which subsequently flood the body.
Shaktipat
The spiritual teacher Meher Baba emphasized the need for a master when actively trying to awaken Kundalini:
In his book, Building a Noble World, Shiv R. Jhawar describes his Shaktipat experience at Muktananda's public program at Lake Point Tower in Chicago on 16 September 1974 as follows:
Kundalini awakening
The experience of Kundalini awakening can happen when one is either prepared or unprepared.
According to Hindu tradition, in order to be able to integrate this spiritual energy, a period of careful purification and strengthening of the body and nervous system is usually required beforehand. Yoga and Tantra propose that Kundalini can be awakened by a guru (teacher), but body and spirit must be prepared by yogic austerities, such as pranayama, or breath control, physical exercises, visualization, and chanting. The student is advised to follow the path in an open-hearted manner.
Traditionally, people visited ashrams in India to awaken their dormant kundalini energy with regular meditation, mantra chanting, spiritual studies and physical asana practice such as kundalini yoga.
Religious interpretations
Indian interpretations
Kundalini is considered to occur in the chakra and nadis of the subtle body. Each chakra is said to contain special characteristics and with proper training, moving Kundalini through these chakras can help express or open these characteristics.
Kundalini is described as a sleeping, dormant potential force in the human organism. It is one of the components of an esoteric description of the "subtle body", which consists of nadis (energy channels), chakras (psychic centres), prana (subtle energy), and bindu (drops of essence).
Kundalini is described as being coiled up at the base of the spine. The description of the location can vary slightly, from the rectum to the navel. Kundalini is said to reside in the triangular sacrum bone in three and a half coils.
Swami Vivekananda describes Kundalini briefly in his book Raja Yoga as follows:
When Kundalini Shakti is conceived as a goddess, then, when it rises to the head, it unites itself with the Supreme Being of (Lord Shiva). The aspirant then becomes engrossed in deep meditation and infinite bliss. Paramahansa Yogananda in his book God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita states:
Paramahansa Yogananda also states:
Western significance
Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936) – also known by his pseudonym Arthur Avalon – was a British Orientalist whose published works stimulated a far-reaching interest in Hindu philosophy and Yogic practices. While serving as a High Court Judge in Calcutta, he studied Sanskrit and Hindu Philosophy, particularly as it related to Hindu Tantra. He translated numerous original Sanskrit texts and lectured on Indian philosophy, Yoga and Tantra. His book, The Serpent Power: The Secrets of Tantric and Shaktic Yoga became a major source for many modern Western adaptations of Kundalini yoga practice. It presents an academically and philosophically sophisticated translation of, and commentary on, two key Eastern texts: Shatchakranirūpana (Description and Investigation into the Six Bodily Centers) written by Tantrik Pūrnānanda Svāmī (1526) and the Paduka-Pancakā from the Sanskrit of a commentary by Kālīcharana (Five-fold Footstool of the Guru). The Sanskrit term "Kundali Shakti" translates as "Serpent Power". Kundalini is thought to be an energy released within an individual using specific meditation techniques. It is represented symbolically as a serpent coiled at the base of the spine.
When Woodroffe later commented upon the reception of his work he clarified his objective, "All the world (I speak of course of those interested in such subjects) is beginning to speak of Kundalinî Shakti." He described his intention as follows: "We, who are foreigners, must place ourselves in the skin of the Hindu, and must look at their doctrine and ritual through their eyes and not our own."
Western awareness of kundalini was strengthened by the interest of Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung (1875–1961). Jung's seminar on Kundalini yoga presented to the Psychological Club in Zurich in 1932 was widely regarded as a milestone in the psychological understanding of Eastern thought and of the symbolic transformations of inner experience. Kundalini yoga presented Jung with a model for the developmental phases of higher consciousness, and he interpreted its symbols in terms of the process of individuation, with sensitivity towards a new generation's interest in alternative religions and psychological exploration."
In the introduction to Jung's book The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Sonu Shamdasani puts forth "The emergence of depth psychology was historically paralleled by the translation and widespread dissemination of the texts of yoga... for the depth psychologies sought to liberate themselves from the stultifying limitations of Western thought to develop maps of inner experience grounded in the transformative potential of therapeutic practices. A similar alignment of "theory" and "practice" seemed to be embodied in the yogic texts that moreover had developed independently of the bindings of Western thought. Further, the initiatory structure adopted by institutions of psychotherapy brought its social organization into proximity with that of yoga. Hence, an opportunity for a new form of comparative psychology opened up."
The American writer William Buhlman, began to conduct an international survey of out-of-body experiences in 1969 in order to gather information about symptoms: sounds, vibrations and other phenomena, that commonly occur at the time of the OBE event. His primary interest was to compare the findings with reports made by yogis such as Gopi Krishna who have referred to similar phenomena, such as the "vibrational state" as components of their kundalini-related spiritual experience. He explains:
Sri Aurobindo was the other great scholarly authority on Kundalini, with a viewpoint parallel to that of Woodroffe but of a somewhat different slant - this according to Mary Scott, herself a latter-day scholar on Kundalini and its physical basis, and a former member of the Theosophical Society.
New Age
Kundalini references may be found in a number of New Age presentations, and is a word that has been adopted by many new religious movements.
Psychology
According to Carl Jung "... the concept of Kundalini has for us only one use, that is, to describe our own experiences with the unconscious ..." Jung used the Kundalini system symbolically as a means of understanding the dynamic movement between conscious and unconscious processes.
According to Shamdasani, Jung claimed that the symbolism of Kundalini yoga suggested that the bizarre symptomatology that patients at times presented, actually resulted from the awakening of the Kundalini. He argued that knowledge of such symbolism enabled much that would otherwise be seen as the meaningless by-products of a disease process to be understood as meaningful symbolic processes, and explicated the often peculiar physical localizations of symptoms.
The popularization of eastern spiritual practices has been associated with psychological problems in the west. Psychiatric literature notes that "since the influx of eastern spiritual practices and the rising popularity of meditation starting in the 1960s, many people have experienced a variety of psychological difficulties, either while engaged in intensive spiritual practice or spontaneously". Among the psychological difficulties associated with intensive spiritual practice we find "Kundalini awakening", "a complex physio-psychospiritual transformative process described in the yogic tradition". Researchers in the fields of Transpersonal psychology, and Near-death studies have described a complex pattern of sensory, motor, mental and affective symptoms associated with the concept of Kundalini, sometimes called the Kundalini syndrome.
The differentiation between spiritual emergency associated with Kundalini awakening may be viewed as an acute psychotic episode by psychiatrists who are not conversant with the culture. The biological changes of increased P300 amplitudes that occurs with certain yogic practices may lead to acute psychosis. Biological alterations by Yogic techniques may be used to warn people against such reactions.
Some modern experimental research seeks to establish links between Kundalini practice and the ideas of Wilhelm Reich and his followers.
See also
Mystical experience
References
Further reading
External links
Kundalini - An Occult Experience, G. S. Arundale (1938).
Chakras
Energy (esotericism)
Hindu philosophical concepts
Hindu tantra
New Age
Religious practices
Spiritual practice
Tantric practices
Theosophical philosophical concepts
Vitalism
Yoga concepts
Nāgas | [
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16999 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaj%20Munk | Kaj Munk | Kaj Harald Leininger Munk (commonly called Kaj Munk) (13 January 1898 – 4 January 1944) was a Danish playwright and Lutheran pastor, known for his cultural engagement and his martyrdom during the Occupation of Denmark of World War II. He is commemorated as a martyr in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 14 August, alongside Maximilian Kolbe.
Biography
He was born Kaj Harald Leininger Petersen on the island of Lolland, Denmark, and raised by a family named Munk after the death of his parents. From 1924 until his death, Munk was the vicar of Vedersø in Western Jutland. Munk's plays were mostly performed and made public during the 1930s, although many were written in the 1920s. Much of his other work concerns the "philosophy-on-life debate" (religion—Marxism—Darwinism) which marked much of Danish cultural life during this period.
On one occasion, in the early 1930s, in a comment that came back to haunt him in later years, Munk expressed admiration for Hitler (for uniting Germans) and wished a similar unifying figure for Danes. However, Munk's attitude towards Hitler (and Mussolini) turned to outspoken disgust as he witnessed Hitler's persecution of the German Jewish community, and Mussolini's conduct of the war in Ethiopia. In 1938, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published on its front page an open letter to Benito Mussolini written by Kaj Munk criticising the persecutions against Jews.
Early on, Munk was a strong opponent of the German Occupation of Denmark (1940–1945), although he continually opposed the idea of democracy as such, preferring the idea of a "Nordic dictator" who should unite the Nordic countries and keep them neutral during periods of international crisis. His plays Han sidder ved Smeltediglen ("He sits by the melting pot") and Niels Ebbesen were direct attacks on Nazism. The latter, centering on the figure of Niels Ebbesen, a medieval Danish squire considered a national hero for having assassinated an earlier German occupier of Denmark, Count Gerhard III, was a contemporary analogue to World War II-era Denmark. Despite friends who urged Munk to go underground, he continued to preach against Danes who collaborated with the Nazis.
The Gestapo arrested Munk on the night of 4 January 1944, a month after he had defied a Nazi ban and preached the first Advent sermon at the national cathedral in Copenhagen. Munk's body was found in a roadside ditch in rural Hørbylunde near Silkeborg the next morning with a note stating "Swine, you worked for Germany just the same."
Munk's body was returned to his parish church, Vedersø, where it is buried outside the choir. A simple stone cross was also erected on a small hill overlooking the site where Munk's body was dumped.
Half of the January 1944 issue of the resistance newspaper De frie Danske was dedicated to Munk with his portrait filling the front page. The obituary Danmarks store Søn—Kaj Munk (The great son of Denmark—Kaj Munk) filled the next page, followed by excerpts from a new year's sermon he had given. Next came a description of his murder and a photo reportage from his funeral. Lastly the paper featured condemning reactions from influential Scandinavians, namely Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland, Jarl Hemmer, Johannes Jørgensen, Sigrid Undset, Erling Eidem and Harald Bohr.
The Danish government allowed his widow, Lise, to live at the parish house until she died in 1998. The church and parish house were restored as a memorial and opened to the public in 2010.
Playwright
Munk often used a historical background for his plays—among his influences were William Shakespeare, Adam Oehlenschläger, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw. As a playwright, Munk became known for "strong characters"—integrated people who fight wholeheartedly for their ideals (whether good or bad). In his play En Idealist, for example, the "hero" is King Herod whose fight to maintain power is the motive behind all of his acts until he is at last defeated by a show of kindness to the Christ child in a weak moment.
His 1925 play Ordet (The Word) generally is considered to have been his best work; it is an investigation of miracles from the unique (at least, to theatre) viewpoint of one who was not prepared to dismiss them. A family of farmers—of differing degrees of faith—find themselves reconciled to their neighbours through a miracle. A 1943 film adaptation titled The Word was directed by Gustaf Molander. A 1955 film version of Ordet was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, and won numerous awards, including the Golden Lion at the 16th Venice International Film Festival and the 1956 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Munk's plays, many of which have been performed at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, and elsewhere, include:
Pilatus (1917. Published 1937)
Ordet (tr. The Word) (1925)
Kærlighed (1926)
En Idealist (1928)
I Brændingen (1929)
Kardinalen og Kongen (1929)
Cant (1931)
De Udvalgte (1933)
Sejren (1936)
Han sidder ved Smeltediglen (1938)
Egelykke (1940)
Niels Ebbesen (1942)
Før Cannae (1943)
His play Niels Ebbesen has been translated into English (2007) by his granddaughter Arense Lund and Canadian playwright Dave Carley.
See also
Clearing murder
Schalburgtage
References
External links
www.kajmunk.hum.aau.dk
Commemorating Kaj Munk by Sarah Heinrich
Danish monarchists
Danish Lutheran clergy
Danish people of World War II
People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar
20th-century Protestant martyrs
Danish people executed by Nazi Germany
1898 births
1944 deaths
Danish male dramatists and playwrights
20th-century Danish dramatists and playwrights
20th-century male writers | [
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17001 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlrabi | Kohlrabi | Kohlrabi (pronounced ; scientific name Brassica oleracea Gongylodes Group), also called German turnip, is a biennial vegetable, a low, stout cultivar of wild cabbage. It is another cultivar of the same species as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, and gai lan.
It can be eaten raw or cooked. Edible preparations are made with both the stem and the leaves. Despite its common names, it is not the same species as turnip, although both are in the genus Brassica.
Etymology
The name comes from the German Kohl ("cabbage") plus Rübe ~ Rabi (Swiss German variant) ("turnip"), because the swollen stem resembles the latter.
Its Group name Gongylodes (or lowercase and italicized gongylodes or gongyloides as a variety name) means "roundish" in Greek, from (, ‘round’).
In the northern part of Vietnam, it is called (from French chou-rave); in eastern parts of India (West Bengal) and Bangladesh, it is called 'ol kopi'. It is also found in the Kashmir Valley in Northern India and is there known as 'monj-hakh', 'monj' being the round part, and 'hakh' being the leafy part. It is called 'nol khol' in Northern India, 'navalkol' in Maharashtra, 'nūlkōl' (நூல்கோல்) in Tamil, 'nool kol' in Telugu, 'navilu kosu'[ನವಿಲು ಕೋಸು] in Karnataka and in Sri Lanka as 'knol khol' (turnip cabbage). It is also native in Cyprus, where it is known as 'kouloumpra' (). It is eaten in the Czech Republic under name 'kedlubna', while in Slovakia it is known as 'kaleráb'. In Romania, it is the 'gulie' or 'cărălabă', which is similar to the Polish 'kalarepa' and to the Hungarian 'karalábé', all of these last three denominations being adaptations of the German word 'Kohlrabi'.
History
It originated in South Asia and south-east Asia. The first European written record is by the botanist Mattioli in 1554 who wrote that it had “come lately into Italy”. By the end of the 16th century, kohlrabi spread to North Europe and was being grown in Austria, Germany, England, Italy, Spain, Tripoli and parts of the eastern Mediterranean.
Description
Kohlrabi has been created by artificial selection for lateral meristem growth (a swollen, nearly spherical shape); its origin in nature is the same as that of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collard greens, and Brussels sprouts: they are all bred from, and are the same species as, the wild cabbage plant (Brassica oleracea).
The taste and texture of kohlrabi are similar to those of a broccoli stem or cabbage heart, but milder and sweeter, with a higher ratio of flesh to skin. The young stem in particular can be as crisp and juicy as an apple, although much less sweet.
Except for the Gigante cultivar, spring-grown kohlrabi much over 5 cm in size tend to be woody, as do full-grown kohlrabi much over perhaps 10 cm in size; the Gigante cultivar can achieve great size while remaining of good eating quality. The plant matures in 55–60 days after sowing and has good standing ability for up to 30 days after maturity. The approximate weight is 150 g. It grows well in hydroponic systems, producing a large edible bulk without clogging the nutrient troughs.
There are several varieties commonly available, including 'White Vienna', 'Purple Vienna', 'Grand Duke', 'Gigante' (also known as "Superschmelz"), 'Purple Danube', and 'White Danube'. Coloration of the purple types is superficial: the edible parts are all pale yellow. The leafy greens can also be eaten. One commonly used variety grows without a swollen stem, having just leaves and a very thin stem, and is called Haakh. Haakh and Monj are popular Kashmiri dishes made using this vegetable. In the second year, the plant will bloom and develop seeds.
Preparation and use
Kohlrabi stems (the enlarged vegetal part) are surrounded by two distinct fibrous layers that do not soften appreciably when cooked. These layers are generally peeled away prior to cooking or serving raw, with the result that the stems often provide a smaller amount of food than one might assume from their intact appearance.
The bulbous kohlrabi stem is frequently used raw in salad or slaws. It has a texture similar to that of a broccoli stem, but with a flavor that is sweeter and less vegetal.
Kohlrabi leaves are edible and can be used similarly to collard greens and kale, but take longer to cook.
Kohlrabi is an important part of Kashmiri cuisine, where it is called Mŏnji. It is one of the most commonly cooked vegetables, along with collard greens (haakh). It is prepared with its leaves and served with a light soup and eaten with rice.
In Cyprus, it is popularly sprinkled with salt and lemon and served as an appetizer.
Some varieties are grown as feed for cattle.
References
What is Kohlrabi?
External links
PROTAbase on Brassica oleracea (kohlrabi)
Horticultural information on the tasty kohlrabi From the Learn2Grow databases
Kohlrabi and Brussels Sprouts Are European
Brassica oleracea
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17003 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tettigoniidae | Tettigoniidae | Insects in the family Tettigoniidae are commonly called katydids (in Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the United States), or bush crickets. They have previously been known as "long-horned grasshoppers". More than 6,400 species are known. Part of the suborder Ensifera, the Tettigoniidae are the only extant (living) family in the superfamily Tettigonioidea.
They are primarily nocturnal in habit with strident mating calls. Many katydids exhibit mimicry and camouflage, commonly with shapes and colors similar to leaves.
Etymology
The family name Tettigoniidae is derived from the genus Tettigonia, first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. In Latin tettigonia means a kind of small cicada, leafhopper; it is from the Greek τεττιγόνιον tettigonion, the diminutive of the imitative (onomatopoeic) τέττιξ, tettix, cicada. All of these names such as tettix with repeated sounds are onomatopoeic, imitating the stridulation of these insects. The common name katydid is also onomatopoeic and comes from the particularly loud, three-pulsed song, often rendered "ka-ty-did", of the nominate subspecies of the North American Pterophylla camellifolia, whose most common English name is the common true katydid.
Description and life cycle
Description
Tettigoniids range in size from as small as to as large as . The smaller species typically live in drier or more stressful habitats which may lead to their small size. The small size is associated with greater agility, faster development, and lower nutritional needs. Tettigoniids are tree-living insects that are most commonly heard at night during summer and early fall. Tettigoniids may be distinguished from the grasshopper by the length of their filamentous antennae, which may exceed their own body length, while grasshoppers' antennae are always relatively short and thickened.
Life cycle
The lifespan of a katydid is about a year, with full adulthood usually developing very late. Females most typically lay their eggs at the end of summer beneath the soil or in plant stem holes. The eggs are typically oval and laid in rows on the host plant. The way their ovipositor is formed relates to its function where it lays eggs. It consists of up to three pairs of appendages formed to transmit the egg, to make a place for it, and place it properly. Tettigoniids have either sickle-shaped ovipositors which typically lay eggs in dead or living plant matter, or uniform long ovipositors which lay eggs in grass stems. When tettigoniids hatch, the nymphs often look like smaller versions of the adults, but in some species, the nymphs look nothing at all like the adult and rather mimic other species such as spiders and assassin bugs, or flowers, to prevent predation. The nymphs remain in a mimic state only until they are large enough to escape predation. Once they complete their last molt (after about 5 successful molts), they are then prepared to mate.
Distribution
Tettigoniids are found on every continent except Antarctica. The vast majority of katydid species live in the tropical regions of the world. For example, the Amazon basin rain forest is home to over 2000 species of katydids. However, katydids are found in the cool, dry temperate regions, as well, with about 255 species in North America.
Classification
The Tettigoniidae are a large family and have been divided into a number of subfamilies:
The Copiphorinae were previously considered a subfamily, but are now placed as tribe Copiphorini in the subfamily Conocephalinae. The genus Acridoxena is now placed in the tribe Acridoxenini of the Mecopodinae (previously its own subfamily, Acridoxeninae).
Extinct taxa
The Orthoptera species file lists:
†Pseudotettigoniinae (North America, Europe)
†Rammeinae (Europe)
†Tettigoidinae (Australia)
Genera incertae sedis
†Locustites Heer, 1849: 3 spp.
†Locustophanes Handlirsch, 1939: †L. rhipidophorus Handlirsch, 1939
†Prophasgonura Piton, 1940: †P. lineatocollis Piton, 1940
†Protempusa Piton, 1940: †P. incerta Piton, 1940
†Prototettix Giebel, 1856: †P. lithanthraca (Goldenberg, 1854)
The genus †Triassophyllum is extinct and may be placed here or in the Archaeorthoptera.
Ecology
The diet of most tettigoniids includes leaves, flowers, bark, and seeds, but many species are exclusively predatory, feeding on other insects, snails, or even small vertebrates such as snakes and lizards. Some are also considered pests by commercial crop growers and are sprayed to limit growth, but population densities are usually low, so a large economic impact is rare.
Tettigoniids are serious insect pests of karuka (Pandanus julianettii). The species Segestes gracilis and Segestidea montana eat the leaves and can sometimes kill trees. Growers will stuff leaves and grass in between the leaves of the crown to keep insects out.
By observing the head and mouthparts, where differences can be seen in relation to function, it is possible to determine what type of food the tettigoniids consume. Large tettigoniids can inflict a painful bite or pinch if handled, but seldom break the skin.
Some species of bush crickets are consumed by people, such as the nsenene (Ruspolia differens) in Uganda and neighbouring areas.
Communication
The males of tettigoniids have sound-producing organs located on the hind angles of their front wings. In some species, females are also capable of stridulation. Females chirp in response to the shrill of the males. The males use this sound for courtship, which occurs late in the summer. The sound is produced by rubbing two parts of their bodies together, called stridulation. One is the file or comb that has tough ridges; the other is the plectrum is used to produce the vibration. For tettigoniids, the fore wings are used to sing. Tettigoniids produce continuous songs known as trills. The size of the insect, the spacing of the ridges, and the width of the scraper all influence what sound is made.
Many katydids stridulate at a tempo which is governed by ambient temperature, so that the number of chirps in a defined period of time can produce a fairly accurate temperature reading. For American katydids, the formula is generally given as the number of chirps in 15 seconds plus 37 to give the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.
Predation
Some tettigoniids have spines on different parts of their bodies that work in different ways. The Listroscelinae have limb spines on the ventral surfaces of their bodies. This works in a way to confine their prey to make a temporary cage above their mouthparts. The spines are articulated and comparatively flexible, but relatively blunt. Due to this, they are used to cage and not penetrate the prey's body. Spines on the tibiae and the femora are usually more sharp and nonarticulated. They are designed more for penetration or help in the defensive mechanism they might have. This usually works with their diurnal roosting posture to maximize defense and prevent predators from going for their head.
Defense mechanisms
When tettigoniids go to rest during the day, they enter a diurnal roosting posture to maximize their cryptic qualities. This position fools predators into thinking the katydid is either dead or just a leaf on the plant. Various tettigoniids have bright coloration and black apical spots on the inner surfaces of the tegmina, and brightly colored hind wings. By flicking their wings open when disturbed, they use the coloration to fool predators into thinking the spots are eyes. This, in combination with their coloration mimicking leaves, allows them to blend in with their surroundings, but also makes predators unsure which side is the front and which side is the back.
Reproductive behavior
The males provide a nuptial gift for the females in the form of a spermatophylax, a body attached to the males' spermatophore and consumed by the female, to distract her from eating the male's spermatophore and thereby increase his paternity.
Polygamy
The Tettigoniidae have polygamous relationships. The first male to mate is guaranteed an extremely high confidence of paternity when a second male couples at the termination of female sexual refractoriness. The nutrients that the offspring ultimately receive will increase their fitness. The second male to mate with the female at the termination of her refractory period is usually cuckolded.
Competition
The polygamous relationships of the Tettigoniidae lead to high levels of male-male competition. Male competition is caused by the decreased availability of males able to supply nutritious spermaphylanges to the females. Females produce more eggs on a high-quality diet; thus, the female looks for healthier males with a more nutritious spermatophylax. Females use the sound created by the male to judge his fitness. The louder and more fluent the trill, the higher the fitness of the male.
Stress response
Oftentimes in species which produce larger food gifts, the female seeks out the males to copulate. This, however, is a cost to females as they risk predation while searching for males. Also, a cost-benefit tradeoff exists in the size of the spermatophore which the male tettigoniids produce. When males possess a large spermatophore, they benefit by being more highly selected for by females, but they are only able to mate one to two times during their lifetimes. Inversely, male Tettigoniidae with smaller spermatophores have the benefit of being able to mate two to three times per night, but have lower chances of being selected by females. Even in times of nutritional stress, male Tettigoniidae continue to invest nutrients within their spermatophores. In some species, the cost of creating the spermatophore is low, but even in those which it is not low, it is still not beneficial to reduce the quality of the spermatophore, as it would lead to lower reproductive selection and success. This low reproductive success is attributed to some Tettigoniidae species in which the spermatophylax that the female receives as a food gift from the male during copulation increases the reproductive output of the reproduction attempt. However, in other cases, the female receives few, if any, benefits.
The reproductive behavior of bush crickets has been studied in great depth. Studies found that the tuberous bush cricket (Platycleis affinis) has the largest testes in proportion to body mass of any animal recorded. They account for 14% of the insect's body mass and are thought to enable a fast remating rate.
References
External links
North American Katydids with range maps and audio files of katydid songs
Orthoptera families
Extant Jurassic first appearances
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17004 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside%20layer | Kennelly–Heaviside layer | The Heaviside layer, sometimes called the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, named after Arthur E. Kennelly and Oliver Heaviside, is a layer of ionised gas occurring roughly between 90km and 150 km (56 and 93 mi) above the ground — one of several layers in the Earth's ionosphere. It is also known as the E region. It reflects medium-frequency radio waves. Because of this reflective layer, radio waves radiated into the sky can return to Earth beyond the horizon. This "skywave" or "skip" propagation technique has been used since the 1920s for radio communication at long distances, up to transcontinental distances.
Propagation is affected by the time of day. During the daytime the solar wind presses this layer closer to the Earth, thereby limiting how far it can reflect radio waves. Conversely, on the night (lee) side of the Earth, the solar wind drags the ionosphere further away, thereby greatly increasing the range which radio waves can travel by reflection. The extent of the effect is further influenced by the season, and the amount of sunspot activity.
History
Existence of a reflective layer was predicted in 1902 independently and almost simultaneously by the American electrical engineer Arthur Edwin Kennelly (1861–1939) and the British polymath Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925), as an explanation for the propagation of radio waves beyond the horizon observed by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901. However, it was not until 1924 that its existence was shown by British scientist Edward V. Appleton, for which he received the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Physicists resisted the idea of the reflecting layer for one very good reason; it would require total internal reflection, which in turn would require that the speed of light in the ionosphere would be greater than in the atmosphere below it. Since the latter speed is essentially the same as the speed of light in a vacuum ("c"), scientists were unwilling to believe the speed in the ionosphere could be higher. Nevertheless, Marconi had received signals in Newfoundland that were broadcast in England, so clearly there must be some mechanism allowing the transmission to reach that far. The paradox was resolved by the discovery that there were two velocities of light, the phase velocity and the group velocity. The phase velocity can in fact be greater than c, but the group velocity, being capable of transmitting information, cannot, by special relativity, be greater than c. The phase velocity for radio waves in the ionosphere is indeed greater than c, and that makes total internal reflection possible, and so the ionosphere can reflect radio waves. The geometric mean of the phase velocity and the group velocity cannot exceed c, so when the phase velocity goes above c, the group velocity must go below it.
In 1925, Americans Gregory Breit and Merle A. Tuve first mapped the Heaviside layer's variations in altitude. The ITU standard model of absorption and reflection of radio waves by the Heaviside Layer was developed by the British Ionospheric physicist Louis Muggleton in the 1970s.
Etymology
Around 1910, William Eccles proposed the name "Heaviside Layer" for the radio-wave reflecting layer in the upper atmosphere, and the name has subsequently been widely adopted. The name Kennelly–Heaviside layer was proposed in 1925 to give credit to the work of Kennelly, which predated the proposal by Heaviside by several months.
See also
Van Allen Belt
References
Ionosphere
Radio frequency propagation
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17006 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot | Knot | A knot is an intentional complication in cordage which may be practical or decorative, or both. Practical knots are classified by function, including hitches, bends, loop knots, and splices: a hitch fastens a rope to another object; a bend fastens two ends of a rope to each another; a loop knot is any knot creating a loop; and splice denotes any multi-strand knot, including bends and loops. A knot may also refer, in the strictest sense, to a stopper or knob at the end of a rope to keep that end from slipping through a grommet or eye. Knots have excited interest since ancient times for their practical uses, as well as their topological intricacy, studied in the area of mathematics known as knot theory.
History
Knots and knotting have been used and studied throughout history. For example, Chinese knotting is a decorative handicraft art that began as a form of Chinese folk art in the Tang and Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) in China, later popularized in the Ming. Knot theory is the recent mathematical study of knots.
Knots of ancient origin include the bottle sling, bowline, cat's paw, clove hitch, cow hitch, double fisherman's knot, eskimo bowline, figure-eight knot, fisherman's knot, half hitch, kalmyk loop, one-sided overhand bend, overhand knot, overhand loop, reef knot, running bowline, single hitch, thief knot, Turk's head knot, and two half-hitches.
The eleven main knots of Chinese knotting are the four-flower knot, six-flower knot, Chinese button knot, double connection knot, double coin knot, agemaki, cross knot, square knot, Plafond knot, Pan Chang knot, and the good luck knot.
Knots of more recent origin include the friendship knot of Chinese knotting. The sheepshank knot originates from 1627 while the Western Union splice originates from the beginning of telegraphy.
Use
There is a large variety of knots, each with properties that make it suitable for a range of tasks. Some knots are used to attach the rope (or other knotting material) to other objects such as another rope, cleat, ring, or stake. Some knots are used to bind or constrict objects. Decorative knots usually bind to themselves to produce attractive patterns.
Teaching
While some people can look at diagrams or photos and tie the illustrated knots, others learn best by watching how a knot is tied. Knot tying skills are often transmitted by sailors, scouts, climbers, canyoners, cavers, arborists, rescue professionals, stagehands, fishermen, linemen and surgeons. The International Guild of Knot Tyers is an organization dedicated to the promotion of knot tying.
Applications
Truckers in need of securing a load may use a trucker's hitch, gaining mechanical advantage. Knots can save spelunkers from being buried under rock. Many knots can also be used as makeshift tools, for example, the bowline can be used as a rescue loop, and the munter hitch can be used for belaying. The diamond hitch was widely used to tie packages on to donkeys and mules.
In hazardous environments such as mountains, knots are very important. In the event of someone falling into a ravine or a similar terrain feature, with the correct equipment and knowledge of knots a rappel system can be set up to lower a rescuer down to a casualty and set up a hauling system to allow a third individual to pull both the rescuer and the casualty out of the ravine. Further application of knots includes developing a high line, which is similar to a zip line, and which can be used to move supplies, injured people, or the untrained across rivers, crevices, or ravines. Note the systems mentioned typically require carabiners and the use of multiple appropriate knots. These knots include the bowline, double figure eight, munter hitch, munter mule, prusik, autoblock, and clove hitch. Thus any individual who goes into a mountainous environment should have basic knowledge of knots and knot systems to increase safety and the ability to undertake activities such as rappelling.
Knots can be applied in combination to produce complex objects such as lanyards and netting. In ropework, the frayed end of a rope is held together by a type of knot called a whipping knot. Many types of textiles use knots to repair damage. Macramé, one kind of textile, is generated exclusively through the use of knotting, instead of knits, crochets, weaves or felting. Macramé can produce self-supporting three-dimensional textile structures, as well as flat work, and is often used ornamentally or decoratively.
Properties
Strength
Knots weaken the rope in which they are made. When knotted rope is strained to its breaking point, it almost always fails at the knot or close to it, unless it is defective or damaged elsewhere. The bending, crushing, and chafing forces that hold a knot in place also unevenly stress rope fibers and ultimately lead to a reduction in strength. The exact mechanisms that cause the weakening and failure are complex and are the subject of continued study. Special fibers that show differences in color in response to strain are being developed and used to study stress as it relates to types of knots.
Relative knot strength, also called knot efficiency, is the breaking strength of a knotted rope in proportion to the breaking strength of the rope without the knot. Determining a precise value for a particular knot is difficult because many factors can affect a knot efficiency test: the type of fiber, the style of rope, the size of rope, whether it is wet or dry, how the knot is dressed before loading, how rapidly it is loaded, whether the knot is repeatedly loaded, and so on. The efficiency of common knots ranges between 40 and 80% of the rope's original strength.
In most situations forming loops and bends with conventional knots is far more practical than using rope splices, even though the latter can maintain nearly the rope's full strength. Prudent users allow for a large safety margin in the strength of rope chosen for a task due to the weakening effects of knots, aging, damage, shock loading, etc. The working load limit of a rope is generally specified with a significant safety factor, up to 15:1 for critical applications. For life-threatening applications, other factors come into play.
Security
Even if the rope does not break, a knot may still fail to hold. Knots that hold firm under a variety of adverse conditions are said to be more secure than those that do not.
The following sections describe the main ways that knots fail to hold.
Slipping
The load creates tension that pulls the rope back through the knot in the direction of the load. If this continues far enough, the working end passes into the knot and the knot unravels and fails. This behavior can worsen when the knot is repeatedly strained and let slack, dragged over rough terrain, or repeatedly struck against hard objects such as masts and flagpoles.
Even with secure knots, slippage may occur when the knot is first put under real tension. This can be mitigated by leaving plenty of rope at the working end outside of the knot, and by dressing the knot cleanly and tightening it as much as possible before loading. Sometimes, the use of a stopper knot or, even better, a backup knot can prevent the working end from passing through the knot; but if a knot is observed to slip, it is generally preferable to use a more secure knot. Life-critical applications often require backup knots to maximize safety.
Capsizing
To capsize (or spill) a knot is to change its form and rearrange its parts, usually by pulling on specific ends in certain ways. When used inappropriately, some knots tend to capsize easily or even spontaneously. Often the capsized form of the knot offers little resistance to slipping or unraveling. A reef knot, when misused as a bend, can capsize dangerously.
Sometimes a knot is intentionally capsized as a method of tying another knot, as with the "lightning method" of tying a bowline. Some knots, such as the carrick bend, are generally tied in one form then capsized to obtain a stronger or more stable form.
Sliding
In knots that are meant to grip other objects, failure can be defined as the knot moving relative to the gripped object. While the knot itself is not untied, it ceases to perform the desired function. For instance, a simple rolling hitch tied around a railing and pulled parallel to the railing might hold up to a certain tension, then start sliding. Sometimes this problem can be corrected by working-up the knot tighter before subjecting it to load, but usually the problem requires either a knot with more wraps or a rope of different diameter or material.
Releasability
Knots differ in the effort required to untie them after loading. Knots that are very difficult to untie, such as the water knot, are said to "jam" or be jamming knots. Knots that come untied with less difficulty, such as the Zeppelin bend, are referred to as "non-jamming".
Components
Bight
A bight is any curved section, slack part, or loop between the ends of a rope, string, or yarn.
Bitter end
As a ropeworker's term, "bitter end" refers to the end of a rope that is tied off. In British nautical usage, the bitter end is the ship end of the anchor cable, secured by the anchor bitts and the bitter pin in the cable locker under the forecastle. At anchor, the more anchor line that is paid out, the better the anchor's hold. In a storm, if the anchor drags, ships will pay out more and more anchor line until they reach the "bitter end." At this point, they can only hope the anchor holds, hence the expression "hanging on to the bitter end". (A bitt is a metal block with a crosspin for tying lines to, also found on piers.) Also, the working end.
Loop
A curve narrower than a bight but with separate ends.
Elbow
Two crossing points created by an extra twist in a loop or a circle.
Standing end
The standing end is the longer end of the rope not involved in the knot, often shown as unfinished. It is often (but not always) the end of the rope under load after the knot is complete. For example, when a clove hitch ties a boat to a pier, the end going to the boat is the standing end.
Standing part
Section of line between knot and the standing end (seen above).
Turn
A turn or single turn is a curve with crossed legs.
A round turn is the complete encirclement of an object; requires two passes.
Two round turns circles the object twice; requires three passes.
Working end
The active end of a line used in making the knot. May also be called the "running end", "live end", or "tag end".
Working part
Section of line between knot and the working end.
Knot categories
The list of knots is extensive, but common properties allow for a useful system of categorization. For example, loop knots share the attribute of having some kind of an anchor point constructed on the standing end (such as a loop or overhand knot) into which the working end is easily hitched, using a round turn. An example of this is the bowline. Constricting knots often rely on friction to cinch down tight on loose bundles; an example is the Miller's knot. Knots may belong to more than one category.
Bend A knot uniting two lines (for knots joining two ends of the same line, see binding knots or loops). List of bends.
Binding A knot that restricts object(s) by making multiple winds. List of binding knots.
Coil knot Knots used to tie up lines for storage.
Decorative knot A complex knot exhibiting repeating patterns often constructed around and enhancing an object. List of decorative knots.
Hitch A knot tied to a post, cable, ring, or spar. List of hitch knots.
Lashing A knot used to hold (usually) poles together.
Loop A knot used to create a closed circle in a line. List of loop knots.
Plait (or braid)A number of lines interwoven in a simple regular pattern. List of plait knots.
Slip (or running) A knot tied with a hitch around one of its parts. In contrast, a loop is closed with a bend. While a slip knot can be closed, a loop remains the same size. List of slip knots.
Slipped Some knots may be finished by passing a bight rather than the end, for ease of untying. The common shoelace knot is an example, being a reef knot with both ends slipped.
Seizing A knot used to hold two lines or two parts of the same line together. List of seizing knots.
Sennit A number of lines interwoven in a complex pattern. See also Chain sinnet.
Splice A knot formed by interweaving strands of rope rather than whole lines. More time-consuming but usually stronger than simple knots. List of splices.
Stopper A knot tied to hold a line through a hole.
Whipping A binding knot used to prevent another line from fraying.
Basic useful knots
Alpine butterfly knot for a secure loop in the middle of a rope when the ends aren't free
Bowline for tying a loop in the end of a rope, as around one's waist or to secure a ring or grommet. The knot is also used as an anchor knot and is used in many knot systems that are used in mountainous terrain such as a highline or hauling system.
Constrictor knot for making bundles or cinching the neck of a sack, though this knot jams and may need to be cut
Figure-eight knot as a stopper
Grass bend for tying belts together, though insecure with ropes
Monkey's fist used to weight the end of a rope
Prusik for ascending a rope
Reef knot (square knot), a common but insecure binding knot for joining the ends of a piece of cordage wrapped around an object or objects
Sheet bend for joining the ends of two ropes, which need not be the same diameter
Double sheet bend for tying the ends of two dissimilarly sized ropes together
Spanish bowline used to hoist crewmen aloft or suspend them over the side
Versatackle for hoisting heavy loads and tightening rigging
Water knot for tying a knot in flat material such as nylon webbing
Hitches
Anchor bend (or anchor hitch) for tying a rope to a boat anchor
Clove hitch for tying a rope to a pole – simple and won't jam, but not particularly secure and won't work on rectangular shapes
Buntline hitch for tying a rope to a pole or other shape, but can jam
Diamond hitch for packing trail animals
Rolling hitch for securing a rope to a pole when the pull is lengthwise rather than outward, or to tie one rope to the middle of another
Taut-line hitch (or Midshipman's hitch) for forming an adjustable (ratcheting) loop that does not slip smaller under tension
Timber hitch for securing or hauling long narrow loads, with the pull in one direction
Trucker's hitch for clinching down a load
Trick knots
Trick knots are knots that are used as part of a magic trick, a joke, or a puzzle. They are useful for these purposes because they have a deceptive appearance, being easier or more difficult to tie or untie than their appearance would suggest. The easiest trick knot is the slip knot. Other noted trick knots include:
Grief knot. The starkly differing behavior of the knot, depending on how it is arranged, has been exploited as the basis of a parlor trick. When pulling on the standing ends the knot starts slipping and the working ends become crossed. By twisting the working ends so that they uncross and then recross in reverse, the knot's structure capsizes so that it will no longer slip. The twisting motion resembles the turning of a key, "locking" and "unlocking" the knot.
Tom fool's knot, used as a trick knot due to the speed with which it can be made.
Coxcombing
Coxcombing is a decorative knotwork performed by sailors during the Age of Sail.
The general purpose was to dress-up, protect, or help identify specific items and parts of ships and boats.
It is still found today in some whippings and wrappings of small diameter line on boat tillers and ships' wheels to enhance the grip, or to identify rudder amidships.
Knots used in coxcombing include Turk's head knot, Flemish, French whipping, and others.
Knot theory
Knot theory is a branch of topology. It deals with the mathematical analysis of knots, their structure and properties, and with the relationships between different knots. In topology, a knot is a figure consisting of a single loop with any number of crossing or knotted elements: a closed curve in space which may be moved around so long as its strands never pass through each other. As a closed loop, a mathematical knot has no proper ends, and cannot be undone or untied; however, any physical knot in a piece of string can be thought of as a mathematical knot by fusing the two ends. A configuration of several knots winding around each other is called a link. Various mathematical techniques are used to classify and distinguish knots and links. For instance, the Alexander polynomial associates certain numbers with any given knot; these numbers are different for the trefoil knot, the figure-eight knot, and the unknot (a simple loop), showing that one cannot be moved into the other (without strands passing through each other).
Physical theory of friction knots
A simple mathematical theory of hitches has been proposed by Bayman and extended by Maddocks and Keller. It makes predictions that are approximately correct when tested empirically. No similarly successful theory has been developed for knots in general.
Knot tying
Knot tying consists of the techniques and skills employed in tying a knot in rope, nylon webbing, or other articles. The proper tying of a knot can be the difference between an attractive knot and a messy one, and occasionally life and death. It is important to understand the often subtle differences between what works, and what doesn't. For example, many knots "spill" or pull through, particularly if they are not "backed up," usually with a single or double overhand knot to make sure the end of the rope doesn't make its way through the main knot, causing all strength to be lost.
Difficulty
The tying of a knot may be very straightforward (such as with an overhand knot), or it may be more complicated, such as a monkey's fist knot. Tying knots correctly requires an understanding of the type of material being tied (string, cord, monofilament line, kernmantle rope, or nylon webbing). For example, cotton string may be very small and easy to tie with much internal friction to keep it from falling apart once tied, while stiff 5/8" thick kernmantle rope will be very difficult to tie, and may be so slick as to tend to come apart once tied.
Material
The form of the material will influence the tying of a knot as well. Rope is round in cross-section, and has little dependence upon the manner in which the material is tied. Nylon webbing, on the other hand, is flat, and usually "tubular" in construction, meaning that it is spiral-woven, and has a hollow core. In order to retain as much of the strength as possible with webbing, the material must be tied "flat" such that parallel sections do not cross, and that the sections of webbing are not twisted when they cross each other within a knot.
The crossing of strands is important when dealing with round rope in other knots; for example, the figure-eight loop loses strength when strands are crossed while the knot is being "finished" and tightened. Moreover, the standing end or the end from which the hauling will be done must have the greater radius of curvature in the finished knot to maximize the strength of the knot.
Tools
Tools are sometimes employed in the finishing or untying of a knot, such as a fid, a tapered piece of wood that is often used in splicing. With the advent of wire rope, many other tools are used in the tying of "knots." However, for cordage and other non-metallic appliances, the tools used are generally limited to sharp edges or blades such as a sheepsfoot blade, occasionally a fine needle for proper whipping of laid rope, a hot cutter for nylon and other synthetic fibers, and (for larger ropes) a shoe for smoothing out large knots by rolling them on the ground.
Use by animals
The hagfish is known to strip slime from its skin by tying itself into a simple overhand knot, and moving its body to make the knot travel toward the tail. It also uses this action in reverse (tail to head) to pry out flesh after biting into a carcass.
See also
Circuit topology
Chinese knotting
Gordian Knot
International Guild of Knot Tyers
List of knots
Quipu
History of knotting
References
Citations
General sources
Clifford W. Ashley. The Ashley Book of Knots. Doubleday, New York. .
Geoffrey Budworth (1999). The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Knots & Ropework. Annes Publishing Limited. .
John Cassidy (1985). The Klutz Book of Knots. Klutz Press, Palo Alto, California. .
Paul Hasluck with foreward by Des Pawson (2018) The Art of Tying Knots. Endless Mountains Publishing Company. .
Cyrus L. Day. Knots & Splices. International Marine/McGraw-Hill Companies. .
Raoul Graumont. Handbook of Knots. Cornell Maritime Press/Tidewater Publishers. .
R.S. Lee. All The Knots You Need. Algrove Publishing. .
Allen Padgett and Bruce Smith. On Rope. National Speleological Society. .
Des Pawson (2001). Pocket Guide to Knots & Splices. Produced for Propsero Books by RPC Publishing Ltd., London. .
Brion Toss. The Complete Rigger's Apprentice. International Marine/McGraw-Hill Companies. .
J. C. Turner and P. van de Griend (ed.) (1996). History and Science of Knots. World Scientific. .
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17007 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaris | Kanaris | Kanaris may refer to:
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Greek ship Kanaris, several ships named after Konstantinos Kanaris
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17011 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca | Orca | The orca or killer whale (Orcinus orca) is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is recognizable by its black-and-white patterned body. A cosmopolitan species, orcas can be found in all of the world's oceans in a variety of marine environments, from Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas; they are absent only from the Baltic and Black seas, and some areas of the Arctic Ocean.
Orcas have a diverse diet, although individual populations often specialize in particular types of prey. Some feed exclusively on fish, while others hunt marine mammals such as seals and other species of dolphin. They have been known to attack baleen whale calves, and even adult blue whales. Orcas are apex predators, as they have no natural predators. They are highly social; some populations are composed of very stable matrilineal family groups (pods) which are the most stable of any animal species. Their sophisticated hunting techniques and vocal behaviours, which are often specific to a particular group and passed across generations, have been described as manifestations of animal culture.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature assesses the orca's conservation status as data deficient because of the likelihood that two or more orca types are separate species. Some local populations are considered threatened or endangered due to prey depletion, habitat loss, pollution (by PCBs), capture for marine mammal parks, and conflicts with human fisheries. In late 2005, the southern resident orcas, which swim in British Columbia and Washington state waters, were placed on the U.S. Endangered Species list.
Wild orcas are not considered a threat to humans, and no fatal attack on humans has ever been documented. There have been cases of captive orcas killing or injuring their handlers at marine theme parks. Orcas feature strongly in the mythologies of indigenous cultures, and their reputation in different cultures ranges from being the souls of humans to merciless killers.
Naming
Orcas have been commonly referred to as "killer whales", despite being a type of dolphin. Since the 1960s, the use of "orca" instead of "killer whale" has steadily grown in common use.
The genus name Orcinus means "of the kingdom of the dead", or "belonging to Orcus". Ancient Romans originally used orca (pl. orcae) for these animals, possibly borrowing Ancient Greek (óryx), which referred (among other things) to a whale species. As part of the family Delphinidae, the species is more closely related to other oceanic dolphins than to other whales.
They are sometimes referred to as "blackfish", a name also used for other whale species. "Grampus" is a former name for the species, but is now seldom used. This meaning of "grampus" should not be confused with the genus Grampus, whose only member is Risso's dolphin.
Taxonomy and evolution
Orcinus orca is the only recognized extant species in the genus Orcinus, and one of many animal species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae. Konrad Gessner wrote the first scientific description of an orca in his Piscium & aquatilium animantium natura of 1558, part of the larger Historia animalium, based on examination of a dead stranded animal in the Bay of Greifswald that had attracted a great deal of local interest.
The orca is one of 35 species in the oceanic dolphin family, which first appeared about 11 million years ago. The orca lineage probably branched off shortly thereafter. Although it has morphological similarities with the false orca, the pygmy orca and the pilot whales, a study of cytochrome b gene sequences indicates that its closest extant relatives are the snubfin dolphins of the genus Orcaella. However, a more recent (2018) study places the orca as a sister taxon to the Lissodelphininae, a clade that includes Lagenorhynchus and Cephalorhynchus. In contrast, a 2019 phylogenetic study found the orca to be the second most basal member of the Delphinidae, with only the Atlantic white-sided dolphin (Leucopleurus acutus) being more basal.
Types
The three to five types of orcas may be distinct enough to be considered different races, subspecies, or possibly even species (see Species problem). The IUCN reported in 2008, "The taxonomy of this genus is clearly in need of review, and it is likely that O. orca will be split into a number of different species or at least subspecies over the next few years." Although large variation in the ecological distinctiveness of different orca groups complicate simple differentiation into types, research off the west coast of Canada and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s identified the following three types:
Resident: These are the most commonly sighted of the three populations in the coastal waters of the northeast Pacific. Residents' diets consist primarily of fish and sometimes squid, and they live in complex and cohesive family groups called pods. Female residents characteristically have rounded dorsal fin tips that terminate in a sharp corner. They visit the same areas consistently. British Columbia and Washington resident populations are amongst the most intensively studied marine mammals anywhere in the world. Researchers have identified and named over 300 orcas over the past 30 years.
Transient or Bigg's: The diets of these whales consist almost exclusively of marine mammals. Transients generally travel in small groups, usually of two to six animals, and have less persistent family bonds than residents. Transients vocalize in less variable and less complex dialects. Female transients are characterized by more triangular and pointed dorsal fins than those of residents. The grey or white area around the dorsal fin, known as the "saddle patch", often contains some black colouring in residents. However, the saddle patches of transients are solid and uniformly grey. Transients roam widely along the coast; some individuals have been sighted in both southern Alaska and California. Transients are also referred to as Bigg's orca in honour of cetologist Michael Bigg. The term has become increasingly common and may eventually replace the transient label.
Offshore: A third population of orcas in the northeast Pacific was discovered in 1988, when a humpback whale researcher observed them in open water. As their name suggests, they travel far from shore and feed primarily on schooling fish. However, because they have large, scarred and nicked dorsal fins resembling those of mammal-hunting transients, it may be that they also eat mammals and sharks. They have mostly been encountered off the west coast of Vancouver Island and near Haida Gwaii. Offshores typically congregate in groups of 20–75, with occasional sightings of larger groups of up to 200. Little is known about their habits, but they are genetically distinct from residents and transients. Offshores appear to be smaller than the others, and females are characterized by dorsal fin tips that are continuously rounded.
Transients and residents live in the same areas, but avoid each other.
Other populations have not been as well studied, although specialized fish and mammal eating orcas have been distinguished elsewhere. In addition, separate populations of "generalist" (fish- and mammal-eating) and "specialist" (mammal-eating) orcas have been identified off northwestern Europe. As with residents and transients, the lifestyle of these whales appears to reflect their diet; fish-eating orcas in Alaska and Norway have resident-like social structures, while mammal-eating orcas in Argentina and the Crozet Islands behave more like transients.
Three types have been documented in the Antarctic. Two dwarf species, named Orcinus nanus and Orcinus glacialis, were described during the 1980s by Soviet researchers, but most cetacean researchers are skeptical about their status, and linking these directly to the types described below is difficult.
Type A looks like a "typical" orca, a large, black-and-white form with a medium-sized white eye patch, living in open water and feeding mostly on minke whales.
Type B is smaller than type A. It has a large white eye patch. Most of the dark parts of its body are medium grey instead of black, although it has a dark grey patch called a "dorsal cape" stretching back from its forehead to just behind its dorsal fin. The white areas are stained slightly yellow. It feeds mostly on seals.
Type C is the smallest and lives in larger groups than the others. Its eye patch is distinctively slanted forwards, rather than parallel to the body axis. Like type B, it is primarily white and medium grey, with a dark grey dorsal cape and yellow-tinged patches. Its only observed prey is the Antarctic cod.
Type D was identified based on photographs of a 1955 mass stranding in New Zealand and six at-sea sightings since 2004. The first video record of this type was made in 2014 between the Kerguelen and Crozet Islands, and again in 2017 off the coast of Cape Horn, Chile. It is recognizable by its small white eye patch, narrower and shorter than usual dorsal fin, bulbous head (similar to a pilot whale), and smaller teeth. Its geographic range appears to be circumglobal in sub-Antarctic waters between latitudes 40°S and 60°S. Although its diet is not determined, it likely includes fish, as determined by photographs around longline vessels, where Type D orcas appeared to be preying on Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides).
Types B and C live close to the ice pack, and diatoms in these waters may be responsible for the yellowish colouring of both types. Mitochondrial DNA sequences support the theory that these are recently diverged separate species. More recently, complete mitochondrial sequencing indicates the two Antarctic groups that eat seals and fish should be recognized as distinct species, as should the North Pacific transients, leaving the others as subspecies pending additional data. Advanced methods that sequenced the entire mitochondrial genome revealed systematic differences in DNA between different populations. A 2019 study of Type D orcas also found them to be distinct from other populations and possibly even a unique species. Mammal-eating orcas in different regions were long thought likely to be closely related, but genetic testing has refuted this hypothesis.
There are seven identified ecotypes inhabiting isolated ecological niches. Of three orca ecotypes in the Antarctic, one preys on minke whales, the second on seals and penguins, and the third on fish. Another ecotype lives in the eastern North Atlantic, while the three Northeast Pacific ecotypes are labelled the transient, resident and offshore populations described above. Research has supported a proposal to reclassify the Antarctic seal- and fish-eating populations and the North Pacific transients as a distinct species, leaving the remaining ecotypes as subspecies. The first split in the orca population, between the North Pacific transients and the rest, occurred an estimated 700,000 years ago. Such a designation would mean that each new species becomes subject to separate conservation assessments.
Appearance and morphology
Orcas are the largest extant members of the dolphin family. Males typically range from long and weigh in excess of . Females are smaller, generally ranging from and weighing about . Calves at birth weigh about and are about long. The skeleton of the orca is of the typical delphinid structure, but more robust. Its integument, unlike that of most other dolphin species, is characterized by a well-developed dermal layer with a dense network of fascicles of collagen fibres.
The orca typically has a sharply contrasted black-and-white body; being mostly black on the upper side and white on the underside. The entire lower jaw is white and from here, the colouration stretches across the underside to the genital area; narrowing between the flippers then widening some and extending into lateral flank patches close to the end. The tail fluke is also white on the underside while the eyes have white patches behind them and a grey or white "saddle patch" exists behind the dorsal fin and across the back. Males and females also have different patterns of black and white skin in their genital areas. Juveniles have a yellowish colour. Antarctic orcas may have pale grey to nearly white backs. Both albino and melanistic orcas have been documented. Being the most distinctively pigmented cetacean, adult orcas are seldom confused with any other species. When seen from a distance, juveniles can be confused with false orcas or Risso's dolphins.
Orca pectoral fins are large and rounded, resembling paddles, with those of males significantly larger than those of females. Dorsal fins also exhibit sexual dimorphism, with those of males about high, more than twice the size of the female's, with the male's fin more like a tall, elongated isosceles triangle, whereas the female's is shorter and more curved. In the skull, adult males have longer lower jaws than females, as well as larger occipital crests. The snout is blunt and lacks the beak of other species. The orca's teeth are very strong, and its jaws exert a powerful grip; the upper teeth fall into the gaps between the lower teeth when the mouth is closed. The firm middle and back teeth hold prey in place, while the front teeth are inclined slightly forward and outward to protect them from powerful jerking movements.
Orcas have good eyesight above and below the water, excellent hearing, and a good sense of touch. They have exceptionally sophisticated echolocation abilities, detecting the location and characteristics of prey and other objects in the water by emitting clicks and listening for echoes, as do other members of the dolphin family. The mean body temperature of the orca is . Like most marine mammals, orcas have a layer of insulating blubber ranging from thick beneath the skin. The pulse is about 60 heartbeats per minute when the orca is at the surface, dropping to 30 beats/min when submerged.
An individual orca can often be identified from its dorsal fin and saddle patch. Variations such as nicks, scratches, and tears on the dorsal fin and the pattern of white or grey in the saddle patch are unique. Published directories contain identifying photographs and names for hundreds of North Pacific animals. Photographic identification has enabled the local population of orcas to be counted each year rather than estimated, and has enabled great insight into life cycles and social structures.
Range and habitat
Orcas are found in all oceans and most seas. Due to their enormous range, numbers, and density, relative distribution is difficult to estimate, but they clearly prefer higher latitudes and coastal areas over pelagic environments. Areas which serve as major study sites for the species include the coasts of Iceland, Norway, the Valdes Peninsula of Argentina, the Crozet Islands, New Zealand and parts of the west coast of North America, from California to Alaska.
Systematic surveys indicate the highest densities of orcas (>0.40 individuals per 100 km2) in the northeast Atlantic around the Norwegian coast, in the north Pacific along the Aleutian Islands, the Gulf of Alaska and in the Southern Ocean off much of the coast of Antarctica. They are considered "common" (0.20–0.40 individuals per 100 km2) in the eastern Pacific along the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, in the North Atlantic Ocean around Iceland and the Faroe Islands. High densities have also been reported but not quantified in the western North Pacific around the Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk, Kuril Islands, Kamchatka and the Commander Islands and in the Southern Hemisphere off southern Brazil and the tip of southern Africa. They are reported as seasonally common in the Canadian Arctic, including Baffin Bay between Greenland and Nunavut, as well as Tasmania and Macquarie Island. Regularly occurring or distinct populations exist off Northwest Europe, California, Patagonia, the Crozet Islands, Marion Island, southern Australia and New Zealand. The northwest Atlantic population of at least 67 individuals ranges from Labrador and Newfoundland to New England with sightings to Cape Cod and Long Island.
Information for offshore regions and warmer waters is more scarce, but widespread sightings indicate that the orca can survive in most water temperatures. They have been sighted, though more infrequently, in the Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, Banderas Bay on Mexico's west coast and the Caribbean. Over 50 individual whales have been documented in the northern Indian Ocean, including two individuals that were sighted in the Persian Gulf in 2008 and off Sri Lanka in 2015. Those orcas may occasionally enter the Red Sea through the Gulf of Aden. The modern status of the species along coastal mainland China and its vicinity is unknown. Recorded sightings have been made from almost the entire shoreline. A wide-ranging population is likely to exist in the central Pacific, with some sightings off Hawaii. Distinct populations may also exist off the west coast of tropical Africa, and Papua New Guinea. In the Mediterranean, orcas are considered "visitors", likely from the North Atlantic, and sightings become less frequent further east. However, a small year-round population is known to exist in the Strait of Gibraltar, mostly on the Atlantic side. Orcas also appear to regularly occur off the Galápagos Islands.
In the Antarctic, orcas range up to the edge of the pack ice and are believed to venture into the denser pack ice, finding open leads much like beluga whales in the Arctic. However, orcas are merely seasonal visitors to Arctic waters, and do not approach the pack ice in the summer. With the rapid Arctic sea ice decline in the Hudson Strait, their range now extends deep into the northwest Atlantic. Occasionally, orcas swim into freshwater rivers. They have been documented up the Columbia River in the United States. They have also been found in the Fraser River in Canada and the Horikawa River in Japan.
Migration patterns are poorly understood. Each summer, the same individuals appear off the coasts of British Columbia and Washington. Despite decades of research, where these animals go for the rest of the year remains unknown. Transient pods have been sighted from southern Alaska to central California.
Population
Worldwide population estimates are uncertain, but recent consensus suggests a minimum of 50,000 (2006). Local estimates include roughly 25,000 in the Antarctic, 8,500 in the tropical Pacific, 2,250–2,700 off the cooler northeast Pacific and 500–1,500 off Norway. Japan's Fisheries Agency estimated in the 2000s that 2,321 orcas were in the seas around Japan.
Feeding
Orcas are apex predators, meaning that they themselves have no natural predators. They are sometimes called "wolves of the sea", because they hunt in groups like wolf packs. Orcas hunt varied prey including fish, cephalopods, mammals, seabirds, and sea turtles. Different populations or ecotypes may specialize, and some can have a dramatic impact on prey species. However, whales in tropical areas appear to have more generalized diets due to lower food productivity. Orcas spend most of their time at shallow depths, but occasionally dive several hundred metres depending on their prey.
Fish
Fish-eating orcas prey on around 30 species of fish. Some populations in the Norwegian and Greenland sea specialize in herring and follow that fish's autumnal migration to the Norwegian coast. Salmon account for 96% of northeast Pacific residents' diet, including 65% of large, fatty Chinook. Chum salmon are also eaten, but smaller sockeye and pink salmon are not a significant food item. Depletion of specific prey species in an area is, therefore, cause for concern for local populations, despite the high diversity of prey. On average, an orca eats each day. While salmon are usually hunted by an individual whale or a small group, herring are often caught using carousel feeding: the orcas force the herring into a tight ball by releasing bursts of bubbles or flashing their white undersides. They then slap the ball with their tail flukes, stunning or killing up to 15 fish at a time, then eating them one by one. Carousel feeding has only been documented in the Norwegian orca population, as well as some oceanic dolphin species.
In New Zealand, sharks and rays appear to be important prey, including eagle rays, long-tail and short-tail stingrays, common threshers, smooth hammerheads, blue sharks, basking sharks, and shortfin makos. With sharks, orcas may herd them to the surface and strike them with their tail flukes, while bottom-dwelling rays are cornered, pinned to the ground and taken to the surface. In other parts of the world, orcas have preyed on broadnose sevengill sharks, small whale sharks and even great white sharks. Competition between orcas and white sharks is probable in regions where their diets overlap. The arrival of orcas in an area can cause white sharks to flee and forage elsewhere. Orcas appear to target the liver of sharks.
Mammals and birds
Orcas are sophisticated and effective predators of marine mammals. Thirty-two cetacean species have been recorded as prey, from observing orca feeding activity, examining the stomach contents of dead orcas, and seeing scars on the bodies of surviving prey animals. Groups even attack larger cetaceans such as minke whales, grey whales, and, rarely, sperm whales or blue whales. In cases where blue whales are attacked, as many as 50 orcas will join the hunt to successfully kill the larger whale, taking turns trying to harass and drown the blue whale in groups of six to eight to attack when one group becomes exhausted. Predation by orcas on whale calves in high-productivity, high-latitude areas may account for great whale migrations during breeding season to low-productivity tropical waters where orcas are scarcer.
Hunting a large whale usually takes several hours. Orcas generally attack young or weak animals. When hunting a young whale, a group chases it and its mother to exhaustion. Eventually, they separate the pair and surround the calf, drowning it by keeping it from surfacing, and may consume only its jaw and tongue. Pods of female sperm whales sometimes protect themselves by forming a protective circle around their calves with their flukes facing outwards, using them to repel the attackers. Rarely, large orca pods can overwhelm adult female sperm whales, but the ability to overcome an adult bull is not recorded. A once controversial claim that orca pods can also prey upon a fully grown blue whale—Balaenoptera musculus, the largest animal to have ever existed—has been verified in a 2019 event documented at the Bremer Marine Park, off the southern coast of Australia.
Prior to the advent of industrial whaling, great whales may have been the major food source for orcas. The introduction of modern whaling techniques may have aided orcas by the sound of exploding harpoons indicating the availability of prey to scavenge, and compressed air inflation of whale carcasses causing them to float, thus exposing them to scavenging. However, the devastation of great whale populations by unfettered whaling has possibly reduced their availability for orcas, and caused them to expand their consumption of smaller marine mammals, thus contributing to the decline of these as well.
Other marine mammal prey species include nearly 20 species of seal, sea lion and fur seal. Walruses and sea otters are less frequently taken. Often, to avoid injury, orcas disable their prey before killing and eating it. This may involve throwing it in the air, slapping it with their tails, ramming it, or breaching and landing on it. In the Aleutian Islands, a decline in sea otter populations in the 1990s was controversially attributed by some scientists to orca predation, although with no direct evidence. The decline of sea otters followed a decline in harbour seal and Steller sea lion populations, the orca's preferred prey, which in turn may be substitutes for their original prey, now decimated by industrial whaling.
In steeply banked beaches off Península Valdés, Argentina, and the Crozet Islands, orcas feed on South American sea lions and southern elephant seals in shallow water, even beaching temporarily to grab prey before wriggling back to the sea. Beaching, usually fatal to cetaceans, is not an instinctive behaviour, and can require years of practice for the young. Orcas can then release the animal near juvenile whales, allowing the younger whales to practice the difficult capture technique on the now-weakened prey. "Wave-hunting" orcas "spy-hop" to locate Weddell seals, crabeater seals, leopard seals, and penguins resting on ice floes, and then swim in groups to create waves that wash over the floe. This washes the prey into the water, where other orcas lie in wait.
Orcas have also been observed preying on terrestrial mammals, such as deer swimming between islands off the northwest coast of North America. Orca cannibalism has also been reported based on analysis of stomach contents, but this is likely to be the result of scavenging remains dumped by whalers. One orca was also attacked by its companions after being shot. Although resident orcas have never been observed to eat other marine mammals, they occasionally harass and kill porpoises and seals for no apparent reason.
Orcas in many areas may prey on cormorants and gulls. A captive orca at Marineland of Canada discovered it could regurgitate fish onto the surface, attracting sea gulls, and then eat the birds. Four others then learned to copy the behaviour.
Behaviour
Day-to-day orca behaviour generally consists of foraging, travelling, resting and socializing. Orcas frequently engage in surface behaviour such as breaching (jumping completely out of the water) and tail-slapping. These activities may have a variety of purposes, such as courtship, communication, dislodging parasites, or play. Spyhopping is a behaviour in which a whale holds its head above water to view its surroundings. Resident orcas swim alongside porpoises and other dolphins.
Social structure
Orcas are notable for their complex societies. Only elephants and higher primates live in comparably complex social structures. Due to orcas' complex social bonds, many marine experts have concerns about how humane it is to keep them in captivity.
Resident orcas in the eastern North Pacific live in particularly complex and stable social groups. Unlike any other known mammal social structure, resident whales live with their mothers for their entire lives. These family groups are based on matrilines consisting of the eldest female (matriarch) and her sons and daughters, and the descendants of her daughters, etc. The average size of a matriline is 5.5 animals. Because females can reach age 90, as many as four generations travel together. These matrilineal groups are highly stable. Individuals separate for only a few hours at a time, to mate or forage. With one exception, an orca named Luna, no permanent separation of an individual from a resident matriline has been recorded.
Closely related matrilines form loose aggregations called pods, usually consisting of one to four matrilines. Unlike matrilines, pods may separate for weeks or months at a time. DNA testing indicates resident males nearly always mate with females from other pods. Clans, the next level of resident social structure, are composed of pods with similar dialects, and common but older maternal heritage. Clan ranges overlap, mingling pods from different clans. The highest association layer is the community, which consists of pods that regularly associate with each other but share no maternal relations or dialects.
Transient pods are smaller than resident pods, typically consisting of an adult female and one or two of her offspring. Males typically maintain stronger relationships with their mothers than other females. These bonds can extend well into adulthood. Unlike residents, extended or permanent separation of transient offspring from natal matrilines is common, with juveniles and adults of both sexes participating. Some males become "rovers" and do not form long-term associations, occasionally joining groups that contain reproductive females. As in resident clans, transient community members share an acoustic repertoire, although regional differences in vocalizations have been noted.
Orcas of the same sex and age group may engage in physical contact and synchronous surfacing. These behaviours do not occur randomly among individuals in a pod, providing evidence of "friendships".
Vocalizations
Like all cetaceans, orcas depend heavily on underwater sound for orientation, feeding, and communication. They produce three categories of sounds: clicks, whistles, and pulsed calls. Clicks are believed to be used primarily for navigation and discriminating prey and other objects in the surrounding environment, but are also commonly heard during social interactions.
Northeast Pacific resident groups tend to be much more vocal than transient groups in the same waters. Residents feed primarily on Chinook and chum salmon, which are insensitive to orca calls (inferred from the audiogram of Atlantic salmon). In contrast, the marine mammal prey of transients hear whale calls well and thus transients are typically silent. Vocal behaviour in these whales is mainly limited to surfacing activities and milling (slow swimming with no apparent direction) after a kill.
All members of a resident pod use similar calls, known collectively as a dialect. Dialects are composed of specific numbers and types of discrete, repetitive calls. They are complex and stable over time. Call patterns and structure are distinctive within matrilines. Newborns produce calls similar to their mothers, but have a more limited repertoire. Individuals likely learn their dialect through contact with pod members. Family-specific calls have been observed more frequently in the days following a calf's birth, which may help the calf learn them. Dialects are probably an important means of maintaining group identity and cohesiveness. Similarity in dialects likely reflects the degree of relatedness between pods, with variation growing over time. When pods meet, dominant call types decrease and subset call types increase. The use of both call types is called biphonation. The increased subset call types may be the distinguishing factor between pods and inter-pod relations.
Dialects also distinguish types. Resident dialects contain seven to 17 (mean = 11) distinctive call types. All members of the North American west coast transient community express the same basic dialect, although minor regional variation in call types is evident. Preliminary research indicates offshore orcas have group-specific dialects unlike those of residents and transients.
Norwegian and Icelandic herring-eating orcas appear to have different vocalizations for activities like hunting. A population that live in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica have 28 complex burst-pulse and whistle calls.
Intelligence
Orcas have the second-heaviest brains among marine mammals (after sperm whales, which have the largest brain of any animal). They can be trained in captivity and are often described as intelligent, although defining and measuring "intelligence" is difficult in a species whose environment and behavioural strategies are very different from those of humans.
Orcas imitate others, and seem to deliberately teach skills to their kin. Off the Crozet Islands, mothers push their calves onto the beach, waiting to pull the youngster back if needed.
People who have interacted closely with orcas offer numerous anecdotes demonstrating the whales' curiosity, playfulness, and ability to solve problems. Alaskan orcas have not only learned how to steal fish from longlines, but have also overcome a variety of techniques designed to stop them, such as the use of unbaited lines as decoys. Once, fishermen placed their boats several miles apart, taking turns retrieving small amounts of their catch, in the hope that the whales would not have enough time to move between boats to steal the catch as it was being retrieved. A researcher described what happened next:
In other anecdotes, researchers describe incidents in which wild orcas playfully tease humans by repeatedly moving objects the humans are trying to reach, or suddenly start to toss around a chunk of ice after a human throws a snowball.
The orca's use of dialects and the passing of other learned behaviours from generation to generation have been described as a form of animal culture.
Life cycle
Female orcas begin to mature at around the age of 10 and reach peak fertility around 20, experiencing periods of polyestrous cycling separated by non-cycling periods of three to 16 months. Females can often breed until age 40, followed by a rapid decrease in fertility. Orcas are among the few animals that undergo menopause and live for decades after they have finished breeding. The lifespans of wild females average 50 to 80 years. Some are claimed to have lived substantially longer: Granny (J2) was estimated by some researchers to have been as old as 105 years at the time of her death, though a biopsy sample indicated her age as 65 to 80 years. It is thought that orcas held in captivity tend to have shorter lives than those in the wild, although this is subject to scientific debate.
Males mate with females from other pods, which prevents inbreeding. Gestation varies from 15 to 18 months. Mothers usually calve a single offspring about once every five years. In resident pods, births occur at any time of year, although winter is the most common. Mortality is extremely high during the first seven months of life, when 37–50% of all calves die. Weaning begins at about 12 months of age, and is complete by two years. According to observations in several regions, all male and female pod members participate in the care of the young.
Males sexually mature at the age of 15, but do not typically reproduce until age 21. Wild males live around 29 years on average, with a maximum of about 60 years. One male, known as Old Tom, was reportedly spotted every winter between the 1840s and 1930 off New South Wales, Australia, which would have made him up to 90 years old. Examination of his teeth indicated he died around age 35, but this method of age determination is now believed to be inaccurate for older animals. One male known to researchers in the Pacific Northwest (identified as J1) was estimated to have been 59 years old when he died in 2010. Orcas are unique among cetaceans, as their caudal sections elongate with age, making their heads relatively shorter.
Infanticide, once thought to occur only in captive orcas, was observed in wild populations by researchers off British Columbia on December 2, 2016. In this incident, an adult male killed the calf of a female within the same pod, with the adult male's mother also joining in the assault. It is theorized that the male killed the young calf in order to mate with its mother (something that occurs in other carnivore species), while the male's mother supported the breeding opportunity for her son. The attack ended when the calf's mother struck and injured the attacking male. Such behaviour matches that of many smaller dolphin species, such as the bottlenose dolphin.
Conservation
In 2008, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) changed its assessment of the orca's conservation status from conservation dependent to data deficient, recognizing that one or more orca types may actually be separate, endangered species. Depletion of prey species, pollution, large-scale oil spills, and habitat disturbance caused by noise and conflicts with boats are the most significant worldwide threats. In January 2020, the first orca in England and Wales since 2001 was found dead with a large fragment of plastic in its stomach.
Like other animals at the highest trophic levels, the orca is particularly at risk of poisoning from bioaccumulation of toxins, including Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). European harbour seals have problems in reproductive and immune functions associated with high levels of PCBs and related contaminants, and a survey off the Washington coast found PCB levels in orcas were higher than levels that had caused health problems in harbour seals. Blubber samples in the Norwegian Arctic show higher levels of PCBs, pesticides and brominated flame-retardants than in polar bears. A 2018 study published in Science found that global orca populations are poised to dramatically decline due such toxic pollution.
In the Pacific Northwest, wild salmon stocks, a main resident food source, have declined dramatically in recent years. In the Puget Sound region, only 75 whales remain with few births over the last few years. On the west coast of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, seal and sea lion populations have also substantially declined.
In 2005, the United States government listed the southern resident community as an endangered population under the Endangered Species Act. This community comprises three pods which live mostly in the Georgia and Haro Straits and Puget Sound in British Columbia and Washington. They do not breed outside of their community, which was once estimated at around 200 animals and later shrank to around 90. In October 2008, the annual survey revealed seven were missing and presumed dead, reducing the count to 83. This is potentially the largest decline in the population in the past 10 years. These deaths can be attributed to declines in Chinook salmon.
Scientist Ken Balcomb has extensively studied orcas since 1976; he is the research biologist responsible for discovering U.S. Navy sonar may harm orcas. He studied orcas from the Center for Whale Research, located in Friday Harbor, Washington. He was also able to study orcas from "his home porch perched above Puget Sound, where the animals hunt and play in summer months". In May 2003, Balcomb (along with other whale watchers near the Puget Sound coastline) noticed uncharacteristic behaviour displayed by the orcas. The whales seemed "agitated and were moving haphazardly, attempting to lift their heads free of the water" to escape the sound of the sonars. "Balcomb confirmed at the time that strange underwater pinging noises detected with underwater microphones were sonar. The sound originated from a U.S. Navy frigate 12 miles (19 kilometres) distant, Balcomb said." The impact of sonar waves on orcas is potentially life-threatening. Three years prior to Balcomb's discovery, research in the Bahamas showed 14 beaked whales washed up on the shore. These whales were beached on the day U.S. Navy destroyers were activated into sonar exercise. Of the 14 whales beached, six of them died. These six dead whales were studied, and CAT scans of two of the whale heads showed hemorrhaging around the brain and the ears, which is consistent with decompression sickness.
Another conservation concern was made public in September 2008 when the Canadian government decided it was not necessary to enforce further protections (including the Species at Risk Act in place to protect endangered animals along with their habitats) for orcas aside from the laws already in place. In response to this decision, six environmental groups sued the federal government, claiming orcas were facing many threats on the British Columbia Coast and the federal government did nothing to protect them from these threats. A legal and scientific nonprofit organization, Ecojustice, led the lawsuit and represented the David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence, Greenpeace Canada, International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and the Wilderness Committee. Many scientists involved in this lawsuit, including Bill Wareham, a marine scientist with the David Suzuki Foundation, noted increased boat traffic, water toxic wastes, and low salmon population as major threats, putting approximately 87 orcas on the British Columbia Coast in danger.
Underwater noise from shipping, drilling, and other human activities is a significant concern in some key orca habitats, including Johnstone Strait and Haro Strait. In the mid-1990s, loud underwater noises from salmon farms were used to deter seals. Orcas also avoided the surrounding waters. High-intensity sonar used by the Navy disturbs orcas along with other marine mammals. Orcas are popular with whale watchers, which may stress the whales and alter their behaviour, particularly if boats approach too closely or block their lines of travel.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill adversely affected orcas in Prince William Sound and Alaska's Kenai Fjords region. Eleven members (about half) of one resident pod disappeared in the following year. The spill damaged salmon and other prey populations, which in turn damaged local orcas. By 2009, scientists estimated the AT1 transient population (considered part of a larger population of 346 transients), numbered only seven individuals and had not reproduced since the spill. This population is expected to die out.
Orcas are included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meaning international trade (including in parts/derivatives) is regulated.
Relationship with humans
Indigenous cultures
The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast feature orcas throughout their art, history, spirituality and religion. The Haida regarded orcas as the most powerful animals in the ocean, and their mythology tells of orcas living in houses and towns under the sea. According to these myths, they took on human form when submerged, and humans who drowned went to live with them. For the Kwakwaka'wakw, the orca was regarded as the ruler of the undersea world, with sea lions for slaves and dolphins for warriors. In Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka'wakw mythology, orcas may embody the souls of deceased chiefs. The Tlingit of southeastern Alaska regarded the orca as custodian of the sea and a benefactor of humans.
The Maritime Archaic people of Newfoundland also had great respect for orcas, as evidenced by stone carvings found in a 4,000-year-old burial at the Port au Choix Archaeological Site.
In the tales and beliefs of the Siberian Yupik people, orcas are said to appear as wolves in winter, and wolves as orcas in summer. Orcas are believed to assist their hunters in driving walrus. Reverence is expressed in several forms: the boat represents the animal, and a wooden carving hung from the hunter's belt. Small sacrifices such as tobacco or meat are strewn into the sea for them.
Indigenous Ainu tribe often referred to orcas in their folklore and myth as Repun Kamuy (God of Sea/Offshore) to bring fortunes (whales) to the coasts, and there had been traditional funerals for stranded or deceased orcas akin to funerals for other animals such as brown bears.
"Killer" stereotype
In Western cultures, orcas were historically feared as dangerous, savage predators. The first written description of an orca was given by Pliny the Elder circa AD 70, who wrote, "Orcas (the appearance of which no image can express, other than an enormous mass of savage flesh with teeth) are the enemy of [other kinds of whale]... they charge and pierce them like warships ramming."
Of the very few confirmed attacks on humans by wild orcas, none have been fatal. In one instance, orcas tried to tip ice floes on which a dog team and photographer of the Terra Nova Expedition were standing. The sled dogs' barking is speculated to have sounded enough like seal calls to trigger the orca's hunting curiosity. In the 1970s, a surfer in California was bitten, and in 2005, a boy in Alaska who was splashing in a region frequented by harbour seals was bumped by an orca that apparently misidentified him as prey. Unlike wild orcas, captive orcas have made nearly two dozen attacks on humans since the 1970s, some of which have been fatal.
Competition with fishermen also led to orcas being regarded as pests. In the waters of the Pacific Northwest and Iceland, the shooting of orcas was accepted and even encouraged by governments. As an indication of the intensity of shooting that occurred until fairly recently, about 25% of the orcas captured in Puget Sound for aquariums through 1970 bore bullet scars. The U.S. Navy claimed to have deliberately killed hundreds of orcas in Icelandic waters in 1956 with machine guns, rockets, and depth charges.
From July to October 2020 there were at least forty reliable reports of orcas attacking boats off the Atlantic coast of Portugal and Spain, unusual and unprecedented behaviour. The nudging, biting and ramming attacks, on medium-size sailing boats sailing at moderate speed, concentrated on the rudder, with some impacts on the hull. A small group of orcas are believed to be responsible, with three juveniles which have been named black Gladis, white Gladis and grey Gladis, identified as present in most attacks. While the incidents were terrifying, no people were injured. The Portuguese coastguard banned small sailing vessels from a region where several incidents had been reported. It is thought that the behaviour is playful, rather than aggressive or vengeful.
Modern Western attitudes
Western attitudes towards orcas have changed dramatically in recent decades. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, orcas came to much greater public and scientific awareness, starting with the first live-capture and display of an orca known as Moby Doll, a resident harpooned off Saturna Island in 1964. So little was known at the time, it was nearly two months before the whale's keepers discovered what food (fish) it was willing to eat. To the surprise of those who saw him, Moby Doll was a docile, non-aggressive whale who made no attempts to attack humans.
Between 1964 and 1976, 50 orcas from the Pacific Northwest were captured for display in aquaria, and public interest in the animals grew. In the 1970s, research pioneered by Michael Bigg led to the discovery of the species' complex social structure, its use of vocal communication, and its extraordinarily stable mother–offspring bonds. Through photo-identification techniques, individuals were named and tracked over decades.
Bigg's techniques also revealed the Pacific Northwest population was in the low hundreds rather than the thousands that had been previously assumed. The southern resident community alone had lost 48 of its members to captivity; by 1976, only 80 remained. In the Pacific Northwest, the species that had unthinkingly been targeted became a cultural icon within a few decades.
The public's growing appreciation also led to growing opposition to whale–keeping in aquarium. Only one whale has been taken in North American waters since 1976. In recent years, the extent of the public's interest in orcas has manifested itself in several high-profile efforts surrounding individuals. Following the success of the 1993 film Free Willy, the movie's captive star Keiko was returned to the coast of his native Iceland in 2002. The director of the International Marine Mammal Project for the Earth Island Institute, David Phillips, led the efforts to return Keiko to the Iceland waters. Keiko however did not adapt to the harsh climate of the Arctic Ocean, and died a year into his release after contracting pneumonia, at the age of 27. In 2002, the orphan Springer was discovered in Puget Sound, Washington. She became the first whale to be successfully reintegrated into a wild pod after human intervention, crystallizing decades of research into the vocal behaviour and social structure of the region's orcas. The saving of Springer raised hopes that another young orca named Luna, which had become separated from his pod, could be returned to it. However, his case was marked by controversy about whether and how to intervene, and in 2006, Luna was killed by a boat propeller.
Whaling
The earlier of known records of commercial hunting of orcas date to the 18th century in Japan. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the global whaling industry caught immense numbers of baleen and sperm whales, but largely ignored orcas because of their limited amounts of recoverable oil, their smaller populations, and the difficulty of taking them. Once the stocks of larger species were depleted, orcas were targeted by commercial whalers in the mid-20th century. Between 1954 and 1997, Japan took 1,178 orcas (although the Ministry of the Environment claims that there had been domestic catches of about 1,600 whales between late 1940s to 1960s) and Norway took 987. Extensive hunting of orcas, including an Antarctic catch of 916 in 1979–80 alone, prompted the International Whaling Commission to recommend a ban on commercial hunting of the species pending further research. Today, no country carries out a substantial hunt, although Indonesia and Greenland permit small subsistence hunts (see Aboriginal whaling). Other than commercial hunts, orcas were hunted along Japanese coasts out of public concern for potential conflicts with fisheries. Such cases include a semi-resident male-female pair in Akashi Strait and Harimanada being killed in the Seto Inland Sea in 1957, the killing of five whales from a pod of 11 members that swam into Tokyo Bay in 1970, and a catch record in southern Taiwan in the 1990s.
Cooperation with humans
Orcas have helped humans hunting other whales. One well-known example was the orcas of Eden, Australia, including the male known as Old Tom. Whalers more often considered them a nuisance, however, as orcas would gather to scavenge meat from the whalers' catch. Some populations, such as in Alaska's Prince William Sound, may have been reduced significantly by whalers shooting them in retaliation.
Whale watching
Whale watching continues to increase in popularity, but may have some problematic impacts on orcas. Exposure to exhaust gases from large amounts of vessel traffic is causing concern for the overall health of the 75 remaining southern resident orcas (SRKWs) left as of early 2019. This population is followed by approximately 20 vessels for 12 hours a day during the months May–September. Researchers discovered that these vessels are in the line of sight for these whales for 98–99.5% of daylight hours. With so many vessels, the air quality around these whales deteriorates and impacts their health. Air pollutants that bind with exhaust fumes are responsible for the activation of the cytochrome P450 1A gene family. Researchers have successfully identified this gene in skin biopsies of live whales and also the lungs of deceased whales. A direct correlation between activation of this gene and the air pollutants can not be made because there are other known factors that will induce the same gene. Vessels can have either wet or dry exhaust systems, with wet exhaust systems leaving more pollutants in the water due to various gas solubility. A modelling study determined that the lowest-observed-adverse-effect-level (LOAEL) of exhaust pollutants was about 12% of the human dose.
As a response to this, in 2017 boats off the British Columbia coast now have a minimum approach distance of 200 metres compared to the previous 100 metres. This new rule complements Washington State's minimum approach zone of 180 metres that has been in effect since 2011. If a whale approaches a vessel it must be placed in neutral until the whale passes. The World Health Organization has set air quality standards in an effort to control the emissions produced by these vessels.
Captivity
The orca's intelligence, trainability, striking appearance, playfulness in captivity and sheer size have made it a popular exhibit at aquaria and aquatic theme parks. From 1976 to 1997, 55 whales were taken from the wild in Iceland, 19 from Japan, and three from Argentina. These figures exclude animals that died during capture. Live captures fell dramatically in the 1990s, and by 1999, about 40% of the 48 animals on display in the world were captive-born.
Organizations such as World Animal Protection and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation campaign against the practice of keeping them in captivity. In captivity, they often develop pathologies, such as the dorsal fin collapse seen in 60–90% of captive males. Captives have vastly reduced life expectancies, on average only living into their 20s. That said, a 2015 study coauthored by staff at SeaWorld and the Minnesota Zoo suggested no significant difference in survivorship between free-ranging and captive orcas. However, in the wild, females who survive infancy live 46 years on average, and up to 70–80 years in rare cases. Wild males who survive infancy live 31 years on average, and up to 50–60 years. Captivity usually bears little resemblance to wild habitat, and captive whales' social groups are foreign to those found in the wild. Critics claim captive life is stressful due to these factors and the requirement to perform circus tricks that are not part of wild orca behaviour, see above. Wild orcas may travel up to in a day, and critics say the animals are too big and intelligent to be suitable for captivity. Captives occasionally act aggressively towards themselves, their tankmates, or humans, which critics say is a result of stress. Between 1991 and 2010, the bull orca known as Tilikum was involved in the death of three people, and was featured in the critically acclaimed 2013 film Blackfish. Tilikum lived at SeaWorld from 1992 until his death in 2017.
In March 2016, SeaWorld announced that they would be ending their orca breeding program and their theatrical shows. As of 2020, theatrical shows featuring orcas are still ongoing.
See also
List of marine mammal species
List of cetaceans
Livyatan melvillei – occupied a similar ecological niche
Ingrid Visser (researcher) – a New Zealand biologist who swims with wild orcas
Marine biology
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
Orca-Live – Orcas in Johnstone Strait, British Columbia
Salish Sea Hydrophone Network – Listen live to orcas in Washington State, U.S.
Keep Whales Wild
Orca photos
Why are orca called orcas?, HowStuffWorks.com, article by Jacob Silverman
Voices in the Sea - Sounds of the Orca (Killer Whale)
Orca devours great white shark
Pod of orcas vs group of great whites near Seal Island, South Africa
Orcas Preying On Dolphins (Caught On Drone), off the coast of San Clemente
Orcas vs Sperm Whales
Watch: Killer Whales Charge Blue Whale (Rare Drone Footage) | National Geographic
Apex predators
Cosmopolitan species
Oceanic dolphins
Predators
Animals that use echolocation
killer whale
Articles containing video clips
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17012 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim%20Philby | Kim Philby | Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.
Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. After leaving Cambridge, Philby worked as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of France. In 1940 he began working for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). By the end of the Second World War he had become a high-ranking member. In 1949 Philby was appointed first secretary to the British Embassy in Washington and served as chief British liaison with American intelligence agencies. During his career as an intelligence officer, he passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union, including a plot to subvert the communist regime of Albania.
Philby was also responsible for tipping off two other spies under suspicion of espionage, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, both of whom subsequently fled to Moscow in May 1951. The defections of Maclean and Burgess cast suspicion over Philby, resulting in his resignation from MI6 in July 1951. He was publicly exonerated in 1955, after which he resumed his career as both a journalist and a spy for SIS in Beirut, Lebanon. In January 1963, having finally been unmasked as a Soviet agent, Philby defected to Moscow, where he lived until his death in 1988.
Early life
Born in Ambala, Punjab, British India, Harold Adrian Russell Philby was the son of Dora Johnston and St John Philby, an author, Arabist and explorer. St John was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and later a civil servant in Mesopotamia, and advisor to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia.
Nicknamed "Kim" after the boy-spy in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim, Philby attended Aldro preparatory school, an all-boys school located in Shackleford near Godalming in Surrey, England, United Kingdom. In his early teens, he spent some time with the Bedouin in the desert of Saudi Arabia. Following in the footsteps of his father, Philby continued to Westminster School, which he left in 1928 at the age of 16. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history and economics. He graduated in 1933 with a 2:1 degree in Economics.
At Cambridge, Philby showed his "leaning towards communism," in the words of his father St John, who went on to write: "The only serious question is whether Kim definitely intended to be disloyal to the government while in its service."
Upon Philby's graduation, Maurice Dobb, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge and tutor in Economics, introduced him to the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism, an organization based in Paris which attempted to aid the people victimized by Nazi Germany and provide education on oppositions to fascism. The organization was one of several fronts operated by German communist Willi Münzenberg, a member of the Reichstag who had fled to France in 1933.
Early professional career
Vienna
In Vienna, working to aid refugees from Germany, Philby met Litzi Friedmann (born Alice Kohlmann), a young Austrian communist of Hungarian Jewish origins. Philby admired the strength of her political convictions and later recalled that at their first meeting:
A frank and direct person, Litzi came out and asked me how much money I had. I replied £100, which I hoped would last me about a year in Vienna. She made some calculations and announced, "That will leave you an excess of £25. You can give that to the International Organisation for Aid for Revolutionaries. We need it desperately." I liked her determination.
Philby acted as a courier between Vienna and Prague, paying for the train tickets out of his remaining £75 and using his British passport to evade suspicion. He also delivered clothes and money to refugees. Following the Austrofascist victory in the Austrian Civil War, Philby and Friedmann married in February 1934, enabling her to escape to the United Kingdom with him two months later.
It is possible that it was a Viennese-born friend of Friedmann's in London, Edith Tudor Hart – herself, at this time, a Soviet agent – who first approached Philby about the possibility of working for Soviet intelligence. In early 1934, Arnold Deutsch, a Soviet agent, was sent to University College London under the cover of a research appointment, but in reality had been assigned to recruit the brightest students from Britain's top universities. Philby had come to the Soviets' notice earlier that year in Vienna, where he had been involved in demonstrations against the government of Engelbert Dollfuss. In June 1934, Deutsch recruited him to the Soviet intelligence services. Philby later recalled:
Lizzy came home one evening and told me that she had arranged for me to meet a "man of decisive importance". I questioned her about it but she would give me no details. The rendezvous took place in Regents Park. The man described himself as Otto. I discovered much later from a photograph in MI5 files that the name he went by was Arnold Deutsch. I think that he was of Czech origin; about 5 ft 7in, stout, with blue eyes and light curly hair. Though a convinced Communist, he had a strong humanistic streak. He hated London, adored Paris, and spoke of it with deeply loving affection. He was a man of considerable cultural background."
Philby recommended to Deutsch several of his Cambridge contemporaries, including Donald Maclean, who at the time was working in the Foreign Office, as well as Guy Burgess, despite his personal reservations about Burgess's erratic personality.
London and Spain
In London, Philby began a career as a journalist. He took a job at a monthly magazine, the World Review of Reviews, for which he wrote a large number of articles and letters (sometimes under a variety of pseudonyms) and occasionally served as "acting editor."
Philby continued to live in the United Kingdom with his wife for several years. At this point, however, Philby and Friedmann separated. They remained friends for many years following their separation and divorced only in 1946, just following the end of World War II. When the Germans threatened to overrun Paris in 1940, where she was then living at this time, Philby arranged for Friedmann's escape to Britain. In 1936 he began working at a failing trade magazine, the Anglo-Russian Trade Gazette, as editor. After the magazine's owner changed the paper's role to covering Anglo-German trade, Philby engaged in a concerted effort to make contact with Germans such as Joachim von Ribbentrop, at that time the German ambassador in London. He became a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, an organization aiming at rebuilding and supporting a friendly relationship between Germany and the United Kingdom. The Anglo-German Fellowship, at this time, was supported both by the British and German governments, and Philby made many trips to Berlin.
In February 1937, Philby travelled to Seville, Spain, then embroiled in a bloody civil war triggered by the coup d'état of Falangist forces under General Francisco Franco against the democratic government of President Manuel Azaña. Philby worked at first as a freelance journalist; from May 1937, he served as a first-hand correspondent for The Times, reporting from the headquarters of the pro-Franco forces. He also began working for both the Soviet and British intelligence, which usually consisted of posting letters in a crude code to a fictitious girlfriend, Mlle Dupont in Paris, for the Russians. He used a simpler system for MI6 delivering post at Hendaye, France, for the British embassy in Paris. When visiting Paris after the war, he was shocked to discover that the address that he used for Mlle Dupont was that of the Soviet embassy. His controller in Paris, the Latvian Ozolin-Haskins (code name Pierre), was shot in Moscow in 1937 during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. His successor, Boris Bazarov, suffered the same fate two years later during the purges.
Both the British and the Soviets were interested in analyzing the combat performance of the new Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and Panzer I and Panzer II tanks deployed with Falangist forces in Spain. Philby told the British, after a direct question to Franco, that German troops would never be permitted to cross Spain to attack Gibraltar. Philby's Soviet controller at the time, Theodore Maly, reported in April 1937 to the NKVD that he had personally briefed Philby on the need "to discover the system of guarding Franco and his entourage". Maly was one of the Soviet Union's most powerful and influential illegal controllers and recruiters. With the goal of potentially arranging Franco's assassination, Philby was instructed to report on vulnerable points in Franco's security and recommend ways to gain access to him and his staff. However, such an act was never a real possibility; upon debriefing Philby in London on 24 May 1937, Maly wrote to the NKVD, "Though devoted and ready to sacrifice himself, [Philby] does not possess the physical courage and other qualities necessary for this [assassination] attempt."
In December 1937, during the Battle of Teruel, a Republican shell hit just in front of the car in which Philby was travelling with the correspondents Edward J. Neil of the Associated Press, Bradish Johnson of Newsweek, and Ernest Sheepshanks of Reuters. Johnson was killed outright, and Neil and Sheepshanks soon died of their injuries. Philby suffered only a minor head wound. As a result of this accident, Philby, who was well-liked by the Nationalist forces whose victories he trumpeted, was awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco on 2 March 1938. Philby found that the award proved helpful in obtaining access to fascist circles:
"Before then," he later wrote, "there had been a lot of criticism of British journalists from Franco officers who seemed to think that the British in general must be a lot of Communists because so many were fighting with the International Brigades. After I had been wounded and decorated by Franco himself, I became known as 'the English-decorated-by-Franco' and all sorts of doors opened to me."
In 1938, Walter Krivitsky (born Samuel Ginsberg), a former GRU officer in Paris who had defected to France the previous year, travelled to the United States and published an account of his time in "Stalin's secret service". He testified before the Dies Committee (later to become the House Un-American Activities Committee) regarding Soviet espionage within the US. In 1940 he was interviewed by MI5 officers in London, led by Jane Archer. Krivitsky claimed that two Soviet intelligence agents had penetrated the Foreign Office and that a third Soviet intelligence agent had worked as a journalist for a British newspaper during the civil war in Spain. No connection with Philby was made at the time, and Krivitsky was found shot in a Washington hotel room the following year.
Alexander Orlov (born Lev Feldbin; code-name Swede), Philby's controller in Madrid, who had once met him in Perpignan, France, also defected. To protect his family, still living in the USSR, Orlov said nothing about Philby, an agreement Stalin respected. On a short trip back from Spain, Philby tried to recruit Flora Solomon as a Soviet agent; she was the daughter of a Russian banker and gold dealer, a relative of the Rothschilds, and wife of a London stockbroker. At the same time, Burgess was trying to get her into MI6. But the rezident (Russian term for spymaster) in France, probably Pierre at this time, suggested to Moscow that he suspected Philby's motives. Solomon introduced Philby to the woman who would become Philby's second wife, Aileen Furse. Solomon went to work for the British retailer Marks & Spencer.
MI6 career
World War II
In July 1939, Philby returned to The Times office in London. When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Philby's contact with his Soviet controllers was lost and Philby failed to attend the meetings that were necessary for his work. During the Phoney War from September 1939 until the Dunkirk evacuation, Philby worked as The Times first-hand correspondent with the British Expeditionary Force headquarters. After being evacuated from Boulogne on 21 May, he returned to France in mid-June and began representing The Daily Telegraph in addition to The Times. He briefly reported from Cherbourg and Brest, sailing for Plymouth less than 24 hours before France surrendered to Germany in June 1940.
In 1940, on the recommendation of Burgess, Philby joined MI6's Section D, a secret organisation charged with investigating how enemies might be attacked through non-military means. Philby and Burgess ran a training course for would-be saboteurs at Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire. His time at Section D, however, was short-lived; the "tiny, ineffective, and slightly comic" section was soon absorbed by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the summer of 1940. Burgess was arrested in September for drunken driving and was subsequently fired, while Philby was appointed as an instructor on clandestine propaganda at the SOE's finishing school for agents at the Estate of Lord Montagu in Beaulieu, Hampshire.
Philby's role as an instructor of sabotage agents again brought him to the attention of the Soviet Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU). This role allowed him to conduct sabotage and instruct agents on how to properly conduct sabotage. The new London rezident, Ivan Chichayev (code-name Vadim), re-established contact and asked for a list of names of British agents being trained to enter the Soviet Union. Philby replied that none had been sent and that none was undergoing training at that time. This statement was underlined twice in red and marked with two question marks, clearly indicating their confusion and questioning of this, by disbelieving staff at Moscow Central in the Lubyanka, according to Genrikh Borovik, who saw the telegrams much later in the KGB archives.
Philby provided Stalin with advance warning of Operation Barbarossa and of the Japanese intention to strike into southeast Asia instead of attacking the Soviet Union as Hitler had urged. The first was ignored as a provocation, but the second, when this was confirmed by the Russo-German journalist and spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, contributed to Stalin's decision to begin transporting troops from the Far East in time for the counteroffensive around Moscow.
By September 1941, Philby began working for Section Five of MI6, a section responsible for offensive counter-intelligence. On the strength of his knowledge and experience of Franco's Spain, Philby was put in charge of the subsection which dealt with Spain and Portugal. This entailed responsibility for a network of undercover operatives in several cities such as Madrid, Lisbon, Gibraltar and Tangier. At this time, the German Abwehr was active in Spain, particularly around the British naval base of Gibraltar, which its agents hoped to watch with many cameras and radars to track Allied supply ships in the Western Mediterranean. Thanks to British counter-intelligence efforts, of which Philby's Iberian subsection formed a significant part, the project (code-named Bodden) never came to fruition.
During 1942–43, Philby's responsibilities were then expanded to include North Africa and Italy, and he was made the deputy head of Section Five under Major Felix Cowgill, an army officer seconded to SIS. In early 1944, as it became clear that the Soviet Union was likely to once more prove a significant adversary to Britain, SIS re-activated Section Nine, which dealt with anti-communist efforts. In late 1944 Philby, on instructions from his Soviet handler, maneuvered through the system successfully to replace Cowgill as head of Section Nine. Charles Arnold-Baker, an officer of German birth (born Wolfgang von Blumenthal) working for Richard Gatty in Belgium and later transferred to the Norwegian/Swedish border, voiced many suspicions of Philby and Philby's intentions but was ignored time and time again.
While working in Section Five, Philby had become acquainted with James Jesus Angleton, a young American counter-intelligence officer working in liaison with SIS in London. Angleton, later chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Counterintelligence Staff, became suspicious of Philby when he failed to pass on information relating to a British agent executed by the Gestapo in Germany. It later emerged that the agent – known as Schmidt – had also worked as an informant for the Rote Kapelle organisation, which sent information to both London and Moscow. Nevertheless, Angleton's suspicions went unheard.
In late summer 1943, the SIS provided the GRU an official report on the activities of German agents in Bulgaria and Romania, soon to be invaded by the Soviet Union. The NKVD complained to Cecil Barclay, the SIS representative in Moscow, that information had been withheld. Barclay reported the complaint to London. Philby claimed to have overheard discussion of this by chance and sent a report to his controller. This turned out to be identical with Barclay's dispatch, convincing the NKVD that Philby had seen the full Barclay report. A similar lapse occurred with a report from the Imperial Japanese Embassy in Moscow sent to Tokyo. The NKVD received the same report from Richard Sorge but with an extra paragraph claiming that Hitler might seek a separate peace with the Soviet Union. These lapses by Philby aroused intense suspicion in Moscow.
Elena Modrzhinskaya at GUGB headquarters in Moscow assessed all material from the Cambridge Five. She noted that they produced an extraordinary wealth of information on German war plans but next to nothing on the repeated question of British penetration of Soviet intelligence in either London or Moscow. Philby had repeated his claim that there were no such agents. She asked, "Could the SIS really be such fools they failed to notice suitcase-loads of papers leaving the office? Could they have overlooked Philby's Communist wife?" Modrzhinskaya concluded that all were double agents, working essentially for the British.
A more serious incident occurred in August 1945, when Konstantin Volkov, an NKVD agent and vice-consul in Istanbul, requested political asylum in Britain for himself and his wife. For a large sum of money, Volkov offered the names of three Soviet agents inside Britain, two of whom worked in the Foreign Office and a third who worked in counter-espionage in London. Philby was given the task of dealing with Volkov by British intelligence. He warned the Soviets of the attempted defection and travelled personally to Istanbul – ostensibly to handle the matter on behalf of SIS but, in reality, to ensure that Volkov had been neutralised. By the time he arrived in Turkey, three weeks later, Volkov had been removed to Moscow.
The intervention of Philby in the affair and the subsequent capture of Volkov by the Soviets might have seriously compromised Philby's position. However, Volkov's defection had been discussed with the British Embassy in Ankara on telephones which turned out to have been tapped by Soviet intelligence. Additionally, Volkov had insisted that all written communications about him take place by bag rather than by telegraph, causing a delay in reaction that might plausibly have given the Soviets time to uncover his plans. Philby was thus able to evade blame and detection.
A month later Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in Ottawa, took political asylum in Canada and gave the Royal Canadian Mounted Police names of agents operating within the British Empire that were known to him. When Jane Archer (who had interviewed Krivitsky) was appointed to Philby's section he moved her off investigatory work in case she became aware of his past. He later wrote "she had got a tantalising scrap of information about a young English journalist whom the Soviet intelligence had sent to Spain during the Civil War. And here she was plunked down in my midst!"
Philby, "employed in a Department of the Foreign Office", was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1946.
Years after the war, Sir Hardy Amies, who has served as an intelligence officer during the war, recalled that Philby was in his mess; and, on being asked what the infamous spy was like, Hardy quipped, "He was always trying to get information out of me—most significantly the name of my tailor."
Istanbul
In February 1947, Philby was appointed head of British intelligence for Turkey, and posted to Istanbul with his second wife, Aileen, and their family. His public position was that of First Secretary at the British Consulate; in reality, his intelligence work required overseeing British agents and working with the Turkish security services.
Philby planned to infiltrate five or six groups of émigrés into Soviet Armenia or Soviet Georgia. But efforts among the expatriate community in Paris produced just two recruits. Turkish intelligence took them to a border crossing into Georgia but soon afterwards shots were heard. Another effort was made using a Turkish gulet for a seaborne landing, but it never left port. He was implicated in a similar campaign in Albania. Colonel David Smiley, an aristocratic Guards officer who had helped Enver Hoxha and his Communist guerillas to liberate Albania, now prepared to remove Hoxha. He trained Albanian commandos – some of whom were former Nazi collaborators – in Libya or Malta. From 1947, they infiltrated the southern mountains to build support for former King Zog.
The first three missions, overland from Greece, were trouble-free. Larger numbers were landed by sea and air under Operation Valuable, which continued until 1951, increasingly under the influence of the newly formed CIA. Stewart Menzies, head of SIS, disliked the idea, which was promoted by former SOE men now in SIS. Most infiltrators were caught by the Sigurimi, the Albanian Security Service. Clearly there had been leaks and Philby was later suspected as one of the leakers. His own comment was "I do not say that people were happy under the regime but the CIA underestimated the degree of control that the Authorities had over the country." Philby later wrote of his attitude towards the operation in Albania:
The agents we sent into Albania were armed men intent on murder, sabotage and assassination ... They knew the risks they were running. I was serving the interests of the Soviet Union and those interests required that these men were defeated. To the extent that I helped defeat them, even if it caused their deaths, I have no regrets.
Aileen Philby had suffered since childhood from psychological problems which caused her to inflict injuries upon herself. In 1948, troubled by the heavy drinking and frequent depressions that had become a feature of her husband's life in Istanbul, she experienced a breakdown of this nature, staging an accident and injecting herself with urine and insulin to cause skin disfigurations. She was sent to a clinic in Switzerland to recover. Upon her return to Istanbul in late 1948, she was badly burned in an incident with a charcoal stove and returned to Switzerland. Shortly afterward, Philby was moved to the job as chief SIS representative in Washington, D.C., with his family.
Washington, D.C.
In September 1949, the Philbys arrived in the United States. Officially, his post was that of First Secretary to the British Embassy; in reality, he served as chief British intelligence representative in Washington. His office oversaw a large amount of urgent and top-secret communications between the United States and London. Philby was also responsible for liaising with the CIA and promoting "more aggressive Anglo-American intelligence operations". A leading figure within the CIA was Philby's wary former colleague, James Jesus Angleton, with whom he once again found himself working closely. Angleton remained suspicious of Philby, but lunched with him every week in Washington.
However, a more serious threat to Philby's position had come to light. During the summer of 1945, a Soviet cipher clerk had reused a one-time pad to transmit intelligence traffic. This mistake made it possible to break the normally impregnable code. Contained in the traffic (intercepted and decrypted as part of the Venona project) was information that documents had been sent to Moscow from the British Embassy in Washington. The intercepted messages revealed that the British Embassy source (identified as "Homer") travelled to New York City to meet his Soviet contact twice a week. Philby had been briefed on the situation shortly before reaching Washington in 1949; it was clear to Philby that the agent was Donald Maclean, who worked in the British Embassy at the time and whose wife, Melinda, lived in New York. Philby had to help discover the identity of "Homer", but also wished to protect Maclean.
In January 1950, on evidence provided by the Venona intercepts, Soviet atomic spy Klaus Fuchs was arrested. His arrest led to others: Harry Gold, a courier with whom Fuchs had worked, David Greenglass, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The investigation into the British Embassy leak was still ongoing, and the stress of it was exacerbated by the arrival in Washington, in October 1950, of Guy Burgess – Philby's unstable and dangerously alcoholic fellow Soviet spy.
Burgess, who had been given a post as Second Secretary at the British Embassy, took up residence in the Philby family home and rapidly set about causing offence to all and sundry. Aileen Philby resented him and disliked his presence; Americans were offended by his "natural superciliousness" and "utter contempt for the whole pyramid of values, attitudes, and courtesies of the American way of life". J. Edgar Hoover complained that Burgess used British Embassy automobiles to avoid arrest when he cruised Washington in pursuit of homosexual encounters. His dissolution had a troubling effect on Philby; the morning after a particularly disastrous and drunken party, a guest returning to collect his car heard voices upstairs and found "Kim and Guy in the bedroom drinking champagne. They had already been down to the Embassy but being unable to work had come back."
Burgess's presence was problematic for Philby, yet it was potentially dangerous for Philby to leave him unsupervised. The situation in Washington was tense. From April 1950, Maclean had been the prime suspect in the investigation into the Embassy leak. Philby had undertaken to devise an escape plan which would warn Maclean, currently in England, of the intense suspicion he was under and arrange for him to flee. Burgess had to get to London to warn Maclean, who was under surveillance. In early May 1951, Burgess got three speeding tickets in a single day – then pleaded diplomatic immunity, causing an official complaint to be made to the British Ambassador. Burgess was sent back to England, where he met Maclean in his London club.
The SIS planned to interrogate Maclean on 28 May 1951. On 23 May, concerned that Maclean had not yet fled, Philby wired Burgess, ostensibly about his Lincoln convertible abandoned in the Embassy car park. "If he did not act at once it would be too late," the telegram read, "because [Philby] would send his car to the scrap heap. There was nothing more [he] could do." On 25 May, Burgess drove Maclean from his home at Tatsfield, Surrey to Southampton, where both boarded the steamship Falaise to France and then proceeded to Moscow.
London
Burgess had intended to aid Maclean in his escape, not accompany him in it. The "affair of the missing diplomats," as it was referred to before Burgess and Maclean surfaced in Moscow, attracted a great deal of public attention, and Burgess's disappearance, which identified him as complicit in Maclean's espionage, deeply compromised Philby's position. Under a cloud of suspicion raised by his highly visible and intimate association with Burgess, Philby returned to London. There, he underwent MI5 interrogation aimed at ascertaining whether he had acted as a "third man" in Burgess and Maclean's spy ring. In July 1951, he resigned from MI6, preempting his all-but-inevitable dismissal.
Even after Philby's departure from MI6, speculation regarding his possible Soviet affiliations continued. Interrogated repeatedly regarding his intelligence work and his connection with Burgess, he continued to deny that he had acted as a Soviet agent. From 1952, Philby struggled to find work as a journalist, eventually – in August 1954 – accepting a position with a diplomatic newsletter called the Fleet Street Letter. Lacking access to material of value and out of touch with Soviet intelligence, he all but ceased to operate as a Soviet agent.
On 25 October 1955, following revelations in the New York Times, Labour MP Marcus Lipton used parliamentary privilege to ask Prime Minister Anthony Eden if he was determined "to cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr Harold Philby..." This was reported in the British press, leading Philby to threaten legal action against Lipton if he repeated his accusations outside Parliament. Lipton later withdrew his comments. This retraction came about when Philby was officially cleared by Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan on 7 November. The minister told the House of Commons, "I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called 'Third Man', if indeed there was one." Following this, Philby gave a press conference in which – calmly, confidently, and without the stammer he had struggled with since childhood – he reiterated his innocence, declaring, "I have never been a communist."
Later life and defection
Beirut
After being exonerated, Philby was no longer employed by MI6 and Soviet intelligence lost all contact with him. In August 1956 he was sent to Beirut as a Middle East correspondent for The Observer and The Economist. There, his journalism served as cover for renewed work for MI6.
In Lebanon, Philby at first lived in Mahalla Jamil, his father's large household located in the village of Ajaltoun, just outside Beirut. Following the departure of his father and stepbrothers for Saudi Arabia, Philby continued to live alone in Ajaltoun, but took a flat in Beirut after beginning an affair with Eleanor, the Seattle-born wife of New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following Aileen Philby's death in 1957 and Eleanor's subsequent divorce from Brewer, Philby and Eleanor were married in London in 1959 and set up house together in Beirut. From 1960, Philby's formerly marginal work as a journalist became more substantial and he frequently travelled throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Yemen.
In 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn, a major in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, defected to the United States from his diplomatic post in Helsinki. Golitsyn offered the CIA revelations of Soviet agents within American and British intelligence services. Following his debriefing in the US, Golitsyn was sent to SIS for further questioning. The head of MI6, Dick White, only recently transferred from MI5, had suspected Philby as the "third man". Golitsyn proceeded to confirm White's suspicions about Philby's role. Nicholas Elliott, an MI6 officer recently stationed in Beirut who was a friend of Philby's and had previously believed in his innocence, was tasked with attempting to secure Philby's full confession.
It is unclear whether Philby had been alerted, but Eleanor noted that as 1962 wore on, expressions of tension in his life "became worse and were reflected in bouts of deep depression and drinking". She recalled returning home to Beirut from a sight-seeing trip in Jordan to find Philby "hopelessly drunk and incoherent with grief on the terrace of the flat," mourning the death of a little pet fox which had fallen from the balcony. When Nicholas Elliott met Philby in late 1962, the first time since Golitsyn's defection, he found Philby too drunk to stand and with a bandaged head; he had fallen repeatedly and cracked his skull on a bathroom radiator, requiring stitches.
Philby told Elliott that he was "half expecting" to see him. Elliott confronted him, saying, "I once looked up to you, Kim. My God, how I despise you now. I hope you've enough decency left to understand why." Prompted by Elliott's accusations, Philby confirmed the charges of espionage and described his intelligence activities on behalf of the Soviets. However, when Elliott asked him to sign a written statement, he hesitated and requested a delay in the interrogation. Another meeting was scheduled to take place in the last week of January. It has since been suggested that the whole confrontation with Elliott had been a charade to convince the KGB that Philby had to be brought back to Moscow, where he could serve as a British penetration agent of Moscow Centre.
On the evening of 23 January 1963, Philby vanished from Beirut, failing to meet his wife for a dinner party at the home of Glencairn Balfour Paul, First Secretary at the British Embassy. The Dolmatova, a Soviet freighter bound for Odessa, had left Beirut that morning so abruptly that cargo was left scattered over the docks; Philby claimed that he left Beirut on board this ship. However, others maintain that he escaped through Syria, overland to Soviet Armenia and thence to Russia.
It was not until 1 July 1963 that Philby's flight to Moscow was officially confirmed. On 30 July Soviet officials announced that they had granted him political asylum in the USSR, along with Soviet citizenship. When the news broke, MI6 came under criticism for failing to anticipate and block Philby's defection, though Elliott was to claim he could not have prevented Philby's flight. Journalist Ben Macintyre, author of several works on espionage, wrote in his 2014 book on Philby that MI6 might have left open the opportunity for Philby to flee to Moscow to avoid an embarrassing public trial. Philby himself thought this might have been the case, according to Macintyre.
Moscow
Upon his arrival in Moscow in January 1963, Philby discovered that he was not a colonel in the KGB, as he had been led to believe. He was paid 500 rubles a month (average soviet salary in 1960 was 80.6 rubles a month and 122 in 1970) and his family was not immediately able to join him in exile. Philby was under virtual house arrest, guarded, with all visitors screened by the KGB. It was ten years before he was given a minor role in the training of KGB recruits.
Mikhail Lyubimov, his closest KGB contact, explained that this was to guard his safety, but later admitted that the real reason was the KGB's fear that Philby would return to London.
Secret files released to the National Archives in late 2020 indicated that the government had intentionally conducted a campaign to keep Kim Philby's spying confidential "to minimise political embarrassment" and prevented the publication of his memoirs, according to a report by The Guardian. Nonetheless, the information was publicized in 1967 when Philby granted an interview to Murray Sayle of The Times in Moscow. Philby confirmed that he had worked for the KGB and that "his purpose in life was to destroy imperialism".
Philby occupied himself by writing his memoirs, which were published in the UK in 1968 under the title My Silent War; it was not published in the Soviet Union until 1980. In the book, Philby says that his loyalties were always with the communists; he considered himself not to have been a double agent but "a straight penetration agent working in the Soviet interest". Philby continued to read The Times, which was not generally available in the USSR, listened to the BBC World Service, and was an avid follower of cricket.
Philby's award of the Order of the British Empire was cancelled and annulled in 1965. Philby claimed publicly in January 1988 that he did not regret his decisions and that he missed nothing about England except some friends, Colman's mustard, and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. Despite reports to the contrary, Philby's wife claimed in a 1997 interview that the idea of Philby becoming depressed and destitute in Moscow was "a myth". In the same interview, she confirmed that Philby was a heavy drinker when they first met, but later became sober. Certain aspects of Soviet life did indeed disappoint Philby, with his wife claiming he was "particularly irritated by Brezhnev".
Philby found work in the early 1970s in the KGB's Active Measures Department churning out fabricated documents. Working from genuine unclassified and public CIA or US Department of State documents, Philby inserted “sinister” paragraphs regarding US plans. The KGB would stamp the documents “top secret” and begin their circulation. For the Soviets, Philby was an invaluable asset, ensuring the correct use of idiomatic and diplomatic English phrases in their disinformation efforts.
Philby died of heart failure in Moscow in 1988. He was given a hero's funeral, and posthumously awarded numerous medals by the Soviets: Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner, Order of Friendship of Peoples, Order of the Great Patriotic War, Lenin Medal, Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945".
Motivation
In a 1981 lecture to the East German security service, Stasi, Philby attributed the failure of the British Secret Service to unmask him as due in great part to the British class system—it was inconceivable that one "born into the ruling class of the British Empire" would be a traitor—to the amateurish and incompetent nature of the organisation, and to so many in MI6 having so much to lose if he was proven to be a spy. He had the policy of never confessing—a document in his own handwriting was dismissed as a forgery. He said that at the time of his recruitment as a spy there were no prospects of his being useful; he was instructed to make his way into the Secret Service, which took years, starting with journalism and building up contacts in the establishment. He said that there was no discipline there; he made friends with the archivist, which enabled him for years to take secret documents home, many unrelated to his own work, and bring them back the next day; his handler took and photographed them overnight. When he was instructed to remove and replace his boss, Felix Cowgill, he asked if it was proposed "to shoot him or something", but was told to use bureaucratic intrigue. He said "It was a very dirty story—but after all our work does imply getting dirty hands from time to time but we do it for a cause that is not dirty in any way". Commenting on his sabotage of the operation to secretly send thousands of Albanian anti-communist into their Albania to overthrow the communist government, which led to many being killed, Philby rebutted that he helped prevent another World War.
Personal life
In February 1934, Philby married Litzi Friedmann, an Austrian Jewish communist whom he had met in Vienna. They subsequently moved to Britain; however, as Philby assumed the role of a fascist sympathiser, they separated. Litzi lived in Paris before returning to London for the duration of the war; she ultimately settled in East Germany.
While working as a correspondent in Spain, Philby began an affair with Frances Doble, Lady Lindsay-Hogg, an actress and aristocratic divorcée who was an admirer of Franco and Hitler. They travelled together in Spain through August 1939.
In 1940 he began living with Aileen Furse in London. Their first three children, Josephine, John and Tommy Philby, were born between 1941 and 1944. In 1946, Philby finally arranged a formal divorce from Litzi. He and Aileen were married on 25 September 1946, while Aileen was pregnant with their fourth child, Miranda. Their fifth child, Harry George, was born in 1950. Aileen suffered from psychiatric problems, which grew more severe during the period of poverty and suspicion following the flight of Burgess and Maclean. She lived separately from Philby, settling with their children in Crowborough while he lived first in London and later in Beirut. Weakened by alcoholism and frequent sickness, she died of influenza in December 1957.
In 1956, Philby began an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the wife of The New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following Eleanor's divorce, the couple married in January 1959. After Philby defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, Eleanor visited him in Moscow. In November 1964, after a visit to the United States, she returned, intending to settle permanently. In her absence, Philby had begun an affair with Donald Maclean's wife, Melinda. He and Eleanor divorced and she departed Moscow in May 1965. Melinda left Maclean and briefly lived with Philby in Moscow. In 1968 she returned to Maclean.
In 1971, Philby married Rufina Pukhova, a Russo-Polish woman twenty years his junior, with whom he lived until his death in 1988.
In popular culture
Fiction based on actual events
Philby, Burgess and Maclean, a Granada TV drama written by Ian Curteis in 1977, covers the period of the late 1940s, when British intelligence investigated Maclean until 1955 when the British government cleared Philby because it did not have enough evidence to convict him.
Philby has a key role in Mike Ripley's short story Gold Sword published in 'John Creasey's Crime Collection 1990' which was chosen as BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Story to mark the 50th anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 1994.
Cambridge Spies, a 2003 four-part BBC drama, recounts the lives of Philby, Burgess, Blunt and Maclean from their Cambridge days in the 1930s through the defection of Burgess and Maclean in 1951. Philby is played by Toby Stephens.
German author Barbara Honigmann's Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben tells the history of Philby's first wife, Litzi, from the perspective of her daughter.
Belgian comic authors Olivier Neuray and Valerie Lemaire wrote a series of three historical comics entitled "Les Cinq de Cambridge" involving Kim Philby. It was published by Casterman in 2015
Speculative fiction
One of the earliest appearances of Philby as a character in fiction was in the 1974 Gentleman Traitor by Alan Williams, in which Philby goes back to working for British intelligence in the 1970s.
In the 1980 British television film Closing Ranks, a false Soviet defector sent to sow confusion and distrust in British intelligence is unmasked and returned to the Soviet Union. In the final scene, it is revealed that the key information was provided by Philby in Moscow, where he is still working for British intelligence.
In the 1981 Ted Allbeury novel The Other Side of Silence, an elderly Philby arouses suspicion when he states his desire to return to England.
The 1984 Frederick Forsyth novel The Fourth Protocol features an elderly Philby's involvement in a plot to trigger a nuclear explosion in Britain. In the novel, Philby is a much more influential and connected figure in his Moscow exile than he apparently was in reality.
In the 1987 adaptation of the novel, also named The Fourth Protocol, Philby is portrayed by Michael Bilton. Even though he was still alive at the time of the film's release, he is executed by the KGB in the opening scene.
In the 2000 Doctor Who novel Endgame, the Doctor travels to London in 1951 and matches wits with Philby and the rest of the Cambridge Five.
The Tim Powers novel Declare (2001) is partly based on unexplained aspects of Philby's life, providing a supernatural context for his behaviour.
The Robert Littell novel The Company (2002) features Philby as a confidant of former CIA Counter-Intelligence chief James Angleton. The book was adapted for the 2007 TNT television three-part series The Company, produced by Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and John Calley; Philby is portrayed by Tom Hollander.
Philby appears as one of the central antagonists in William F. Buckley Jr.'s 2004 novel Last Call for Blackford Oakes.
The 2013 Jefferson Flanders novel The North Building explores the role of Philby in passing American military secrets to the Soviets during the Korean War.
Daniel Silva's 2018 book, The Other Woman is largely based on Philby's life mission
In alternative histories
The 2003 novel Fox at the Front by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson depicts Philby selling secrets to the Soviet Union during the alternate Battle of the Bulge where German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel turns on the Nazis and assists the Allies in capturing all of Berlin. Before he can sell the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, he is discovered by the British and is killed by members of MI5 who stage his death as a heart attack.
The 2005 John Birmingham novel Designated Targets features a cameo of Philby, under orders from Moscow to assist Otto Skorzeny's mission to assassinate Winston Churchill.
Fictional characters based on Philby
The 1971 BBC television drama Traitor starred John Le Mesurier as Adrian Harris, a character loosely based on Kim Philby.
John le Carré depicts a Philby-like upper-class traitor in the 1974 novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The novel has been adapted as a 1979 TV miniseries, a 2011 film, and radio dramatisations in 1988 and 2009. In real life, Philby had ended le Carré's intelligence officer career by betraying his British agent cover to the Russians.
In the 1977 book The Jigsaw Man by Dorothea Bennett and the 1983 film adaption of it, The Jigsaw Man, "Sir Philip Kimberly" is a former head of the British Secret Service who defected to Russia, who is then given plastic surgery and sent back to Britain on a spy mission.
Under the cover name of 'Mowgli' Philby appears in Duncan Kyle's World War II thriller Black Camelot published in 1978.
John Banville's 1997 novel The Untouchable is a fictionalised biography of Blunt that includes a character based on Philby.
Philby was the inspiration for the character of British intelligence officer Archibald "Arch" Cummings in the 2006 film The Good Shepherd. Cummings is played by Billy Crudup.
The 2005 film A Different Loyalty is an unattributed account taken from Eleanor Philby's book, Kim Philby: The Spy I Loved. The film recounts Philby's love affair and marriage to Eleanor Brewer during his time in Beirut and his eventual defection to the Soviet Union in late January 1963, though the characters based on Philby and Brewer have different names.
In music
In the song "Philby", from the Top Priority album (1979), Rory Gallagher draws parallels between his life on the road and a spy's in a foreign country. Sample lyrics : "Now ain't it strange that I feel like Philby / There's a stranger in my soul / I'm lost in transit in a lonesome city / I can't come in from the cold."
The Philby affair is mentioned in the Simple Minds song "Up on the Catwalk" from their sixth studio album Sparkle in the Rain. The lyrics are: "Up on the catwalk, and you dress in waistcoats / And got brillantino, and friends of Kim Philby."
The song "Angleton", by Russian indie rock band Biting Elbows, focuses largely on Philby's role as a spy from the perspective of James Jesus Angleton.
The song 'Traitor' by Renegade Soundwave from their album Soundclash mentions "Philby, Burgess and Maclean" with the lyrics "snitch, grass, informer, you're a traitor; you can't be trusted and left alone".
The song "Kim Philby", from the self-titled album by Vancouver punk band Terror of Tiny Town (1994) includes the line, "They say he was the third man, but he's number one with us." The lead singer and accordionist of the now defunct band was political satirist Geoff Berner.
Other
The 1993 Joseph Brodsky essay Collector's Item (published in his 1995 book On Grief and Reason) contains a conjectured description of Philby's career, as well as speculations into his motivations and general thoughts on espionage and politics. The title of the essay refers to a postal stamp commemorating Philby issued in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
See also
References
Cited sources
Further reading
Colonel David Smiley, "Irregular Regular", Michael Russell – Norwich – 1994 (). Translated in French by Thierry Le Breton, Au coeur de l'action clandestine des commandos au MI6, L'Esprit du Livre Editions, France, 2008 (). With numerous photographs. Memoirs of a SOE and MI6 officer during the Valuable Project.
Genrikh Borovik, The Philby Files, 1994, published by Little, Brown & Company Limited, Canada, . Introduction by Phillip Knightley.
Phillip Knightley, Philby: KGB Masterspy 2003, published by Andre Deutsch Ltd, London, . 1st American edition has title: The Master Spy: the Story of Kim Philby,
Phillip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century, 1986, published by W.W. Norton & Company, London.
Kim Philby, My Silent War, published by Macgibbon & Kee Ltd, London, 1968, or Granada Publishing, . Introduction by Graham Greene, well known author who worked with and for Philby in British intelligence services.
Bruce Page, David Leitch and Phillip Knightley, Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation, 1968, published by André Deutsch, Ltd., London.
Michael Smith, The Spying Game, 2003, published by Politico's, London.
Richard Beeston, Looking For Trouble: The Life and Times of a Foreign Correspondent, 1997, published by Brassey's, London.
Desmond Bristow, A Game of Moles, 1993, published by Little Brown & Company, London.
Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, 2001, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.
Anthony Cave Brown, "C": The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, Spymaster to Winston Churchill, 1987, published by Macmillan, New York.
John Fisher, Burgess and Maclean, 1977, published by Robert Hale, London.
S. J. Hamrick, Deceiving the Deceivers, 2004, published by Yale University Press, New Haven.
Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove: Chronicles of Wasted Time: Number 2, 1974, published by William Morrow & Company, New York.
Barrie Penrose & Simon Freeman, Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt, 1986, published by Farrar Straus Giroux, New York.
Anthony Cave Brown, 'Treason in the Blood: H. St. John Philby, Kim Philby, and the Spy Case of the Century, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1994, .
Richard C.S. Trahair and Robert Miller, Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations, 2009, published by Enigma Books, New York.
Nigel West, editor, The Guy Liddell Diaries: Vol. I: 1939–1942, 2005, published by Routledge, London
Nigel West & Oleg Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives, 1998, published by Yale University Press, New Haven.
Bill Bristow, "My Father The Spy" Deceptions of an MI6 Officer. Published by WBML Publishers. 2012.
Desmond Bristow. With Bill Bristow. "A Game of Moles" The Deceptions of and MI6 Officer. Published 1993 by Little Brown and Warner.
External links
Annotated bibliography of the Philby Affair
John Philby – Daily Telegraph obituary
File release: Cold War Cambridge spies Burgess and Maclean, The National Archives, 23 October 2015
"Kim Philby: The Spy Who Loved Me" by Charlotte Philby, 12th June 2018
Kim Philby biography at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''
1912 births
1988 deaths
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
British communists
British intelligence personnel who defected to the Soviet Union
English male journalists
British people of the Spanish Civil War
British spies for the Soviet Union
Burials at Kuntsevo Cemetery
KGB officers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Aldro
People educated at Westminster School, London
People from Ambala
People stripped of a British Commonwealth honour
British people in colonial India
Secret Intelligence Service personnel
Soviet spies
World War II spies for the United Kingdom
World War II spies for the Soviet Union
Double agents
Foreign Office personnel of World War II
People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union | [
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17013 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamacite | Kamacite | Kamacite is an alloy of iron and nickel, which is found on Earth only in meteorites. The proportion iron:nickel is between 90:10 and 95:5; small quantities of other elements, such as cobalt or carbon may also be present. The mineral has a metallic luster, is gray and has no clear cleavage although its crystal structure is isometric-hexoctahedral. Its density is about 8 g/cm3 and its hardness is 4 on the Mohs scale. It is also sometimes called balkeneisen.
The name was coined in 1861 and is derived from the Greek root καμακ- "kamak" or κάμαξ "kamaks", meaning vine-pole. It is a major constituent of iron meteorites (octahedrite and hexahedrite types). In the octahedrites it is found in bands interleaving with taenite forming Widmanstätten patterns. In hexahedrites, fine parallel lines called Neumann lines are often seen, which are evidence for structural deformation of adjacent kamacite plates due to shock from impacts.
At times kamacite can be found so closely intermixed with taenite that it is difficult to distinguish them visually, forming plessite. The largest documented kamacite crystal measured .
Physical properties
Kamacite has many unique physical properties including Thomson structures and extremely high density.
Identification
Kamacite is opaque, and its surface generally displays varying shades of gray streaking, or "quilting" patterns. Kamacite has a metallic luster. Kamacite can vary in hardness based on the extent of shock it has undergone, but commonly ranks a four on the mohs hardness scale. Shock increases kamacite hardness, but this is not 100% reliable in determining shock histories as there is a myriad of other reasons the hardness of kamacite could increase.
Kamacite has a measured density of . It has a massive crystal habit but normally individual crystals are indistinguishable in natural occurrences. There are no planes of cleavage present in kamacite which gives it a hackly fracture. Kamacite is magnetic, and isometric which makes it behave optically isometrically.
Kamacite occurs with taenite and a mixed area of kamacite and taenite referred to as plessite.
Taenite contains more nickel (12 to 45 wt. % Ni) than kamacite (which has 5 to 12 wt. % Ni). The increase in nickel content causes taenite to have a face-centered unit cell, whereas kamacite's higher iron content causes its unit cell to be body centered. This difference is caused by nickel and iron having a similar size but different interatomic magnetic and quantum interactions.
Tetragonal phase
There is evidence of a tetragonal phase, observed in X-ray powder tests and later under a microscope. When tested two meteorites gave d-values that could "be indexed on the basis of a tetragonal unit cell, but not on the basis of a cubic or hexagonal unit cell". It has been speculated to be e-iron, a hexagonal polymorph of iron.
Thomson structures
Thomson structures, usually referred to as Widmanstätten patterns are textures often seen in meteorites that contain kamacite. These are bands which are usually alternating between kamacite and taenite. G. Thomson stumbled upon these structures in 1804 after cleaning a specimen with nitric acid he noticed geometric patterns. He published his observations in a French journal but due to the Napoleonic wars the English scientists, who were doing much of the meteorite research of the time, never saw his work. It was not until four years after in 1808 the same patterns were discovered by Count Alois von Beckh Widmanstätten who was heating iron meteorites when he noticed geometric patterns caused by the differing oxidation rates of kamacite and taenite. Widmanstätten told many of his colleagues about these patterns in correspondence leading to them being referred to as Widmanstätten patterns in most literature.
Thomson structures or Widmanstätten patterns are created as the meteorite cools; at high temperatures both iron and nickel have face-centered lattices. When the meteorite is formed it starts out as entirely molten taenite (greater than 1500 °C) and as it cools past 723 °C the primary metastable phase of the alloy changes into taenite and kamacite begins to precipitate out. It is in this window where the meteorite is cooling below 723 °C where the Thomson structures form and they can be greatly affected by the temperature, pressure, and composition of the meteorite.
Optical properties
Kamacite is opaque and can be observed only in reflected light microscopy. It is isometric and therefore behaves isotropically.
Magnetism
As the meteorite cools below 750 °C iron becomes magnetic as it moves into the kamacite phase. During this cooling the meteorite takes on non-conventional thermoremanent magnetization. Thermoremanent magnetization on Earth gives iron minerals formed in the Earth's crust, a higher magnetization than if they were formed in the same field at room temperature. This is a non-conventional thermoremanent magnetization because it appears to be due to a chemical remanent process which is induced as taenite is cooled to kamacite. What makes this especially interesting is this has been shown to account for all of the ordinary chondrites magnetic field which has been shown to be as strong as 0.4 Os.
Crystallography
Kamacite is an isometric mineral with a body centered unit cell. Kamacite is usually not found in large crystals; however the anomalously largest kamacite crystal found and documented measured 92×54×23 centimeters. Even with large crystals being so rare crystallography is extremely important to understand plays an important role in the formation of Thomson structures.
Symmetry
Kamacite forms isometric, hexoctahedral crystals this causes the crystals to have many symmetry elements. Kamacite falls under the 4/m2/m class in the Hermann–Mauguin notation meaning it has three fourfold axes, four threefold axes, and six twofold axes and nine mirror planes. Kamacite has a space group of F m3m.
Unit cell
Kamacite is made up of a repeating unit of α-(Fe, Ni); Fe0+0.9Ni0.1 which makes up cell dimensions of a = 8.603, Z = 54; V = 636.72. The interatomic magnetic and quantum interactions of the iron atoms interacting with each other causes kamacite to have a body centered lattice.
Chemistry
Formula and dominant elements
Kamacite is made up of a repeating unit of α-(Fe, Ni); Fe0+0.9Ni0.1. Besides trace elements, it is normally considered to be made up of 90% iron and 10% nickel but can have a ratio of 95% iron and 5% nickel. This makes iron the dominant element in any sample of kamacite. It is grouped with the native elements in both Dana and Nickel-Strunz classification systems.
Conditions of formation
Kamacite starts to form around 723 °C, where iron splits from being face centered to body centered while nickel remains face centered. To accommodate this areas start to form of higher iron concentration displacing nickel to the areas around it which creates taenite which is the nickel end member.
Trace elements
There has been a great deal of research into kamacite's trace elements. The most notable trace elements in kamacite are gallium, germanium, cobalt, copper, and chromium. Cobalt is the most notable of these where the nickel content varies from 5.26% to 6.81% and the cobalt content can be from 0.25% to 0.77%. All of these trace elements are metallic and their appearance near the kamacite taenite border can give important clues to the environment the meteorite was formed in. Mass spectroscopy has revealed kamacite to contain considerable amounts of platinum to be an average of 16.31 (μg/g), iridium to be an average of 5.40 (μg/g), osmium to be an average of 3.89 (μg/g), tungsten to be an average of 1.97 (μg/g), gold to be an average of 0.75 (μg/g), rhenium to be an average of 0.22 (μg/g). The considerable amounts of cobalt and platinum are the most notable.
Important minor elements, substitutions, solid solutions
Kamacite sulfurization has been done experimentally in laboratory conditions. Sulfurization resulted in three distinct phases: a mono-sulfide solid solution (Fe,Ni,Co)1-xS, a pentlandite phase (Fe,Ni,Co)9-xS8, as well as a P-rich phase. This was done in a lab to construct conditions concurrent with that of the solar nebula. With this information it would be possible to extract information about the thermodynamic, kinetic, and physical conditions of the early solar system. This still remains speculatory as many of the sulfides in meteorites are unstable and have been destroyed. Kamacite also alters to tochilinite (Fe2+5-6(Mg, Fe2+)5S6(OH)10). This is useful for giving clues as to how much the meteorite as a whole has been altered. Kamacite to tochilinite alteration can be seen in petrologic microscopes, scanning electron microscope, and electron microprobe analysis. This can be used to allow researchers to easily index the amount of alteration that has taken place in the sample. This index can be later referenced when analyzing other areas of the meteorite where alteration is not as clear.
Relationship with taenite
Taenite is the nickel rich end member of the kamacite–taenite solid solution. Taenite is naturally occurring on Earth whereas kamacite is only found on Earth when it comes from space. Kamacite forms taenite as it forms and expels nickel to the surrounding area, this area forms taenite. Due to the face centered nature of the kamacite lattice and the body centered nature of the nickel lattice the two make intricate angles when they come in contact with each other. These angles reveal themselves macroscopically in the Thomson structure. Also due to this relationship we get the terms ataxite, hexahedrites and octahedrite. Ataxite refers to meteorites that do not show a grossly hexahedral or octahedral structure. Meteorites composed of 6 wt% or less nickel are often referred to as hexahedrites due to the crystal structure of kamacite being isometric and causing the meteorite to be cubic. Likewise if the meteorite is dominated by the face centered taenite it is called an octahedrite as kamacite will exsolve from the octahedral crystal boundaries of taenite making the meteorite appear octahedral. Both hexahedrites and octahedrite only appear when the meteorite breaks along crystal planes or when prepared to accentuate the Thomson structures therefore many are mistakenly called ataxites ar first.
Chemical explanation of heat
Trace elements have been analyzed in the formation of kamacite at different temperatures but the trace elements in taenite seem better suited to give clues of the formation temperature of the meteorite. As the meteorite cools and taenite and kamacite are sorting out of each other some of the trace elements will prefer to be located in taenite or kamacite. Analyzing the taenite kamacite boundary can give clues to how quickly cooling occurred as well as a myriad of other conditions during formation by the final location of the trace elements.
Stability range
Kamacite is only stable at temperatures below 723 °C or 600 °C (Stacey and Banerjee, 2012), as that is where iron becomes cool enough to arrange in a body centered arrangement. Kamacite is also only stable at low pressures as can be assumed as it only forms in space.
Effect of shock
Metallographic and X-ray diffraction can be used on kamacite to determine the shock history of a meteorite. Using hardness to determine shock histories has been experimented with but was found to be too unreliable. Vickers hardness test was applied to a number of kamacite samples and shocked meteorites were found to have values of 160–170 kg/mm and non-shocked meteorites can have values as high as 244 kg/mm. Shock causes a unique iron transformation structure that is able to be measured using metallographic and X-ray diffraction techniques. After using metallographic and X-ray diffraction techniques to determine shock history it was found that 49% of meteorites found on Earth contain evidence of shock.
Geologic occurrences
Kamacite meteorites have been found on every continent on Earth and have also been found on Mars.
Meteorites
Kamacite is primarily associated with meteorites because it needs high temperatures, low pressures and few other more reactive elements like oxygen. Chondrite meteorites can be split into groups based on the chondrules present. There are three major types: enstatite chondrites, carbonaceous chondrites and ordinary chondrites. Ordinary chondrites are the most abundant type of meteorite found on Earth making up 85% of all meteorites recorded. Ordinary chondrites are thought to have all originated from three different sources thus they come in three types LL, L, and H; LL stands for Low iron, Low metal, L stands for Low iron abundance, and H is High iron content. All ordinary chondrites contain kamacite in decreasing abundance as you move from H to LL chondrites.
Kamacite is also found in many of the less common meteorites mesosiderites and E chondrites. E chondrites are chondrites which are made primarily of enstatite and only account for 2% of meteorites that fall onto the Earth. E chondrites have an entirely different source rock than that of the ordinary chondrites. In analysis of kamacite in E chondrites it was found that they contain generally less nickel then average.
Abundance
Since kamacite is only formed in space and is only found on Earth in meteorites, it has very low abundance on Earth. Its abundance outside our solar system is difficult to determine. Iron, the main component of kamacite, is the sixth most abundant element in the universe and the most abundant of those elements generally considered metallic.
Associated minerals
Taenite, and tochilinite are minerals that are commonly associated with kamacite.
Specific examples
Meteor crater Arizona
Kamacite has been found and studied in Meteor Crater, Arizona. Meteor Crater was the first confirmed meteor impact site on the planet, and was not universally recognized as such till the 1950s. In the 1960s United States Geological Survey discovered kamacite in specimens gathered from around the site tying the mineral to meteorites.
Planets
Kamacite primarily forms on meteorites but has been found on extraterrestrial bodies such as Mars. This was discovered by The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity. The kamacite did not originate on Mars but was put there by a meteorite. This was particularly of interest because the meteorite fell under the lesser known class of mesosiderites. Mesosiderites are very rare on Earth and its occurrence on Mars gives clues to the origin of its larger source rock.
Uses
The primary research use of kamacite is to shed light on a meteorite's history. Whether it is looking at the shock history in the iron structures or the conditions during the formation of the meteorite using the kamacite-taenite boundary understanding kamacite is key to understanding our universe.
Museums, university and photo specimen preparation
Due to the rareness and the generally dull appearance of kamacite it is not popular among private collectors. However many museums and universities have samples of kamacite in their collection. Normally kamacite samples are prepared using polish and acid to show off the Thomson structures. Preparing specimens involves washing them in a solvent, such as Thomson did with nitric acid to bring out the Thomson structures. Then they are heavily polished so they look shiny. Generally the kamacite can be told apart from taenite easily as after this process the kamacite looks slightly darker than the taenite.
Looking to the future
Kamacite and taenite both have the potential to be economically valuable. An option that would make asteroid mining more profitable would be to gather the trace elements. One difficulty would be refining elements such as platinum and gold. Platinum is worth around 12,000 US$/kg and (kamacite contains 16.11 μg/g platinum) and gold is worth around 12,000 US$/kg (kamacite contains 0.52 μg/g gold); however the likeliness of a profitable return is fairly slim. Asteroid mining for space uses could be more practical, as transporting materials from Earth is costly. Similar to current plans of reusing the modules of the International Space Station in other missions, an iron meteorite could be used to build space craft in space. NASA has put forward preliminary plans to build a space ship in space.
See also
References
Mason B., 1962: Meteorites. J. Wiley & Sons, New York
Native element minerals
Nickel minerals
Iron minerals
Meteorite minerals
Magnetic minerals
Cubic minerals
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17015 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaohsiung | Kaohsiung | Kaohsiung City (; Mandarin Chinese: ; Wade–Giles: Kao¹-hsiung²) is a special municipality in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban centre to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsiung city has a population of approximately 2.77 million people and is Taiwan's third most populous city and largest city in southern Taiwan.
Since founding in the 17th century, Kaohsiung has grown from a small trading village into the political and economic centre of southern Taiwan, with key industries such as manufacturing, steel-making, oil refining, freight transport and shipbuilding. It is classified as a "Gamma -" level global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, with some of the most prominent infrastructures in Taiwan. The Port of Kaohsiung is the largest and busiest harbour in Taiwan while Kaohsiung International Airport is the second busiest airport in number of passengers. The city is well-connected to other major cities by high speed and conventional rail, as well as several national freeways. It also hosts the Republic of China Navy fleet headquarters and its naval academy. More recent public works such as Pier-2 Art Center, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts and Kaohsiung Music Center have been aimed at growing the tourism and cultural industries of the city.
Etymology
Hoklo immigrants to the area during the 16th and 17th centuries called the region Takau (). The surface meaning of the associated Chinese characters was "beat the dog". According to one theory, the name Takau originates from the aboriginal Siraya language and translates as "bamboo forest". According to another theory, the name evolved via metathesis from the name of the Makatao tribe, who inhabited the area at the time of European and Hoklo settlement. The Makatao are considered by some to be part of the Siraya tribe.
During the Dutch colonization of southern Taiwan, the area was known as Tancoia to Europeans for a period of about three decades. In 1662, the Dutch were expelled by the Kingdom of Tungning, founded by Ming loyalists of Koxinga. His son, Zheng Jing, renamed the village Banlian-chiu () in 1664.
The name of "Takau" was restored in the late 1670s, when the town expanded drastically with immigrants from mainland China, and was kept through Taiwan's cession to the Japanese Empire in 1895. In his 1903 general history of Taiwan, US Consul to Formosa James W. Davidson relates that "Takow" was already a well-known name in English. In 1920, the name was changed to and administered the area under Takao Prefecture. While the new name had quite a different surface meaning, its pronunciation in Japanese sounded more or less the same as the old name spoken in Hokkien.
After Taiwan was handed to the Republic of China, the name did not change, but the official romanization became Kaohsiung (), derived from the Wade-Giles romanization of the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation for .
The name Takau remains the official name of the city in Austronesian languages of Taiwan such as Rukai, although these are not widely spoken in the city. The name also remains popular locally in the naming of businesses, associations, and events.
History
The written history of Kaohsiung can be traced back to the early 17th century, through archaeological studies have found signs of human activity in the region from as long as 7,000 years ago. Prior to the 17th century, the region was inhabited by the Makatao people of the Siraya tribe, who settled on what they named Takau Isle (translated to 打狗嶼 by Ming Chinese explorers); "Takau" meaning "bamboo forest" in the aboriginal language.
Early history
The earliest evidence of human activity in the Kaohsiung area dates back to roughly 4,700–5,200 years ago. Most of the discovered remnants were located in the hills surrounding Kaohsiung Harbor. Artifacts were found at Shoushan, Longquan Temple, Taoziyuan, Zuoying, Houjing, Fudingjin and Fengbitou. The prehistoric Dapenkeng, Niuchouzi, Dahu, and Niaosong civilizations were known to inhabit the region. Studies of the prehistoric ruins at Longquan Temple have shown that that civilization occurred at roughly the same times as the beginnings of the aboriginal Makatao civilization, suggesting a possible origin for the latter. Unlike some other archaeological sites in the area, the Longquan Temple ruins are relatively well preserved. Prehistoric artifacts discovered have suggested that the ancient Kaohsiung Harbor was originally a lagoon, with early civilizations functioning primarily as Hunter-gatherer societies. Some agricultural tools have also been discovered, suggesting that some agricultural activity was also present.
The first Chinese records of the region were written in 1603 by Chen Di, a member of Ming admiral Shen You-rong's expedition to rid the waters around Taiwan and Penghu of pirates. In his report on the "Eastern Barbarian Lands" (Dong Fan Ji), Chen Di referred to a Ta-kau Isle:
Dutch Formosa
Taiwan became a Dutch colony in 1624, after the Dutch East India Company was ejected from Penghu by Ming forces. At the time, Takau was already one of the most important fishing ports in southern Taiwan. The Dutch named the place Tankoya, and the harbor Tancoia. The Dutch missionary François Valentijn named Takau Mountain "Ape Berg", a name that would find its way onto European navigational charts well into the 18th century. Tankoia was located north of Ape's Hill and a few hours south from Tayouan (modern-day Anping, Tainan) by sail. At the time, a wide shallow bay existed there, sufficient for small vessels. However, constant silting changed the coastline.
During this time, Taiwan was divided into five administrative districts, with Takau belonging to the southernmost district. In 1630, the first large scale immigration of Han Chinese to Taiwan began due to famine in Fujian, with merchants and traders from China seeking to purchase hunting licenses from the Dutch or hide out in aboriginal villages to escape authorities in China.
Qing Dynasty
In 1684, the Qing Dynasty annexed Taiwan and renamed the town Fongshan County (), considering it a part of Taiwan Prefecture. It was first opened as a port during the 1680s and subsequently prospered fairly for generations.
Japanese rule
In 1895, Taiwan was ceded to Japan as part of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Administrative control of the city was moved from New Fongshan Castle to the Fongshan Sub-District of . In November 1901, twenty chō were established in total; was established nearby. In 1909, Hōzan Chō was abolished, and Takow was merged into Tainan Chō.
In 1920, during the tenure of 8th Governor-General Den Kenjirō, districts were abolished in favor of prefectures. Thus the city was administered as under Takao Prefecture.
The Japanese developed Takao, especially the harbor that became the foundation of Kaohsiung to be a port city. Takao was then systematically modernized and connected to the end of North-South Railway. Forming a north–south regional economic corridor from Taipei to Kaohsiung in the 1930s, Japan's Southward Policy set Kaohsiung to become an industrial center. Kaohsiung Harbor was also developed starting from 1894. The city center was relocated several times during the period due to the government's development strategy. Development was initially centered on Ki-au () region but the government began laying railways, upgrading the harbor, and passing new urban plans. New industries such as refinery, machinery, shipbuilding and cementing were also introduced.
Before and during World War II it handled a growing share of Taiwan's agricultural exports to Japan, and was also a major base for Japan's campaigns in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Extremely ambitious plans for the construction of a massive modern port were drawn up. Toward the end of the war, the Japanese promoted some industrial development at Kaohsiung, establishing an aluminum industry based on the abundant hydroelectric power produced by the Sun Moon Lake project in the mountains.
The city was heavily bombed by Task Force 38 and FEAF during World War II between 1944 and 1945.
Republic of China
After control of Taiwan was handed over from Japan to the government of the Republic of China on 25 October 1945, Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County were established as a provincial city and a county of Taiwan Province respectively on 25 December 1945. The official romanization of the name came to be "Kaohsiung", based on the Wade–Giles romanization of the Mandarin reading of the kanji name. Kaohsiung City then consisted of 10 districts, which were Gushan, Lianya (renamed "Lingya" in 1952), Nanzih, Cianjin, Cianjhen, Cijin, Sanmin, Sinsing, Yancheng, and Zuoying.
During this time, Kaohsiung developed rapidly. The port, badly damaged in World War II, was restored. It also became a fishing port for boats sailing to Filipino and Indonesian waters. Largely because of its climate, Kaohsiung overtook Keelung as Taiwan's major port. Kaohsiung also surpassed Tainan to become the second largest city of Taiwan in the late 1970s and Kaohsiung City was upgraded from a provincial city to special municipality on 1 July 1979, by the Executive Yuan with a total of 11 districts. The additional district is Siaogang District, which was annexed from Siaogang Township of Kaohsiung County.
The Kaohsiung Incident, where the government suppressed a commemoration of International Human Rights Day, occurred on 10 December 1979. Since then, Kaohsiung gradually grew into a political center of the Pan-Green population of Taiwan, in opposition to Taipei where the majority population is Kuomintang supporters.
On 25 December 2010, Kaohsiung City merged with Kaohsiung County to form a larger special municipality with administrative centers in Lingya District and Fongshan District.
On 31 July 2014, a series of gas explosions occurred in the Cianjhen and Lingya Districts of the city, killing 31 and injuring more than 300. Five roads were destroyed in an area of nearly near the city center. It was the largest gas explosion in Taiwan's modern history.
Geography
The city sits on the southwestern coast of Taiwan facing the Taiwan Strait, bordering Tainan City to the north, Chiayi and Nantou County to the northwest, Taitung County to its northeast and Pingtung County to the south and southeast. The downtown areas are centered on Kaohsiung Harbor with Cijin Island on the other side of the harbor acting as a natural breakwater. The Love River (Ai River) flows into the harbor through the Old City and downtown. Zuoying Military Harbor lies to the north of Kaohsiung Harbor and the city center. Kaohsiung's natural landmarks include Ape Hill and Mount Banping.
Climate
Located about a degree south of the Tropic of Cancer, Kaohsiung has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen Aw), with monthly mean temperatures between and relative humidity ranging between 71 and 81%.
Kaohsiung's warm climate is very much dictated by its low latitude and its exposure to warm sea temperatures year-round, with the Kuroshio Current passing by the coast of southern Taiwan, and the Central Mountain Range on the northeast blocking out the cool northeastern winds during the winter. The city, therefore, has a noticeably warmer climate than nearby cities located at similar latitudes such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou as well as various cities further south in northern Vietnam, such as Hanoi. Although the climate is classified as tropical, Kaohsiung has a defined cooler season unlike most other cities in Asia classified with this climate but located closer to the equator such as Singapore or Manila. Daily maximum temperature typically exceeds during the warmer season (April to November) and during the cooler season (December to March), with the exception when cold fronts strikes during the winter months, when the daily mean temperature of the city can drop between 10~12 °C depending on the strength of the cold front. Also, besides the high temperatures occurring during the usual summer months, daytime temperatures of inland districts of the city can often exceed from mid-March to late April before the onset of the monsoon season, with clear skies and southwesterly airflows. Average annual rainfall is around , focused primarily from June to August. At more than 2,210 hours of bright sunshine, the city is one of the sunniest areas in Taiwan.
The sea temperature of Kaohsiung Harbor remains above year-round, the second highest of Southern Taiwan after Liuqiu Island. According to recent records, the average temperature of the city has risen around 1 degree Celsius over the past 3 decades, from about in 1983 to around by 2012.
Cityscape
Demographics
As of December 2018, Kaohsiung city has a population of 2,773,533 people, making it the third-largest city after New Taipei and Taichung, and a population density of 939.59 people per square kilometer. Within the city, Fongshan District is the most populated district with a population of 359,519 people, while Sinsing District is the most densely populated district with a population density of 25,820 people per square kilometer.
Ethnic composition
Han Chinese
As in most Taiwanese cities or counties, the majority of the population are Han Chinese. The Chinese are divided into 3 subgroups: Hoklo, Hakka, and Waishengren. The Hoklo and Waishengren mostly live in flatland townships and the city centre, while the majority of the Hakka population lives in the suburbs or rural townships of the northeastern hills.
Indigenous peoples
The indigenous peoples of Kaohsiung, who belong to various ethnic groups that speak languages belonging to the Austronesian language family, live mostly in the mountain indigenous district such as Taoyuan or Namasia. The main indigenous groups in the city include the Bunun, Rukai, Saaroa and the Kanakanavu.
Other ethnicities
As of December 2010, Kaohsiung hosts around 21,000 foreign spouses. Around 12,353 are Mainland Chinese, 4,244 are Vietnamese, around 800 are Japanese and Indonesians and around 4,000 are other Asians or foreigners from Europe or America.
As of April 2013, Kaohsiung hosts 35,074 foreign workers who mainly work as factory workers or foreign maids (not including foreign specialists such as teachers and other professionals). About half of them are Indonesians, with the other half being workers from other Southeast Asian countries, mainly from Vietnam, the Philippines or Thailand.
Economy
Kaohsiung is a major international port and industrial city in the southwest of Taiwan. As an exporting center, Kaohsiung serves the agricultural interior of southern Taiwan, as well as the mountains of the southeast. Major raw material exports include rice, sugar, bananas, pineapples, peanuts (groundnuts) and citrus fruits. The Linhai Industrial Park, on the waterfront, was completed in the mid-1970s and includes a steel mill, shipyard, petrochemical complex, and other industries. The city has an oil refinery, aluminum and cement works, fertilizer factories, sugar refineries, brick and tile works, canning factories, salt-manufacturing factories, and papermaking plants. Designated an export-processing zone in the late 1970s, Kaohsiung also attracted foreign investment to process locally purchased raw materials for export.
The ongoing Nansing Project is a plan to reclaim of land along the coast by 2011. The Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau plans to buy 49 hectares of the reclaimed land to establish a solar energy industrial district that would be in the harbor's free trade zone.
The gross domestic product (GDP) in nominal terms of Kaohsiung City is estimated to be around US$45 billion, and US$90 billion for the metropolitan region. , the GDP per capita in nominal terms was approximately US$24,000.
Despite early success and heavy governmental investment, the city suffers from the economic North–South divide in Taiwan, which continues to be the centre of political debate. There has been public aims to shift the local economy towards tourism and cultural industries, with projects such as Pier-2 Art Center, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts and Kaohsiung Music Center.
Agriculture
The main agricultural produce in Kaohsiung are vegetables, fruits and rice with a total arable land of 473 km2, which accounts to 16% of the total area of the municipality. Kaohsiung has the highest production of guava, jujube and lychee in Taiwan. The main animal husbandry are chicken, dairy cattle, deer, duck, goose, pigs and sheep. The total annual agricultural outcome in Kaohsiung is NT$24.15 billion.
Future investment
Culture
Tourism
Main landmarks of Kaohsiung city include the 85 Sky Tower, the ferris wheel of the Kaohsiung Dream Mall, the Kaohsiung Arena and Port of Kaohsiung. The newly developed city is also known for having a large number of shopping streets, organized night markets and newly developed leisure parks such as the Pier-2 Art Center, E-DA Theme Park, Metropolitan Park, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts and Taroko Park.
Natural attractions of the city include Shoushan (Monkey mountain), the Love River, Cijin Island, Sizihwan, the Dapingding Tropical Botanical Garden and Yushan National Park at the northeastern tip of the city. The city also features various historical attractions such as the Old City of Zuoying, a historical town built during the early 17th century, the Former British Consulate at Takao built during the late 19th century, and various sugar and crop factories built under Japanese rule.
Natural attractions
Kaohsiung city includes a wide range of different natural attractions due to its large size and geographical variation, as it is bordered by the Central Mountain Range in the northeast and the warm South China Sea to the west and southwest. The year-round warm climate allows coral reefs to grow along the coasts around Kaohsiung Harbor, with Shoushan Mountain being a small mountain completely made up of coral reefs and calcium carbonate, while the mountainous districts in the northeast include Taiwan's highest mountain, Yushan. Other notable natural attractions include the Mount Banping, Lotus Pond, and Dongsha Atoll National Park, which is currently inaccessible by the public due to military occupation.
Historical sites
A large number of historical sites and monuments were left in the city after the colonization of the Dutch in the 17th century, the Qing dynasty during the 18th and 19th century and the Japanese empire from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. The city government has protected various sites and monuments from further damage and many have been opened to the public since the early 1980s. Notable historical sites include the Cemetery of Zhenghaijun, Fengshan Longshan Temple, Former British Consulate at Takao, Former Dinglinzihbian Police Station, Meinong Cultural and Creative Center, Former Sanhe Bank, and the Kaohsiung Lighthouse, one of the oldest lighthouses of the city.
Museums
Kaohsiung is home to many museums, including the Chung Li-he Museum, Cijin Shell Museum, Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum, Jiasian Petrified Fossil Museum, Kaohsiung Astronomical Museum, Kaohsiung Hakka Cultural Museum, Kaohsiung Harbor Museum, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung Museum of History, Kaohsiung Museum of Labor, Kaohsiung Vision Museum, Meinong Hakka Culture Museum, National Science and Technology Museum, Republic of China Air Force Museum, Soya-Mixed Meat Museum, Taiwan Pineapple Museum, Taiwan Sugar Museum, Takao Railway Museum, Xiaolin Pingpu Cultural Museum and YM Museum of Marine Exploration Kaohsiung.
Parks and Zoos
As the largest municipality in Taiwan, Kaohsiung has a number of newly built leisure areas and parks. Notable parks or pavilions in the city include the Central Park, Siaogangshan Skywalk Park, Fo Guang Shan Monastery, the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, Spring and Autumn Pavilions, the Love Pier, Singuang Ferry Wharf and Kaohsiung Fisherman's Wharf. Notable zoo in the city includes the Kaohsiung City Shousan Zoo.
Other
Kaohsiung is home to many night markets, such as Jin-Zuan Night Market, Liuhe Night Market Ruifeng Night Market and Zhonghua Street Night Market, and the Kaisyuan Night Market. Other attractions include the Cijin Tianhou Temple, Dome of Light of Kaohsiung MRT's Formosa Boulevard Station, the Kaohsiung Mosque and the Tower of Light of Sanmin District.
Traditional "wet" markets have long been the source of meat, fish, and produce for many residents. With the arrival of Western-style supermarkets in the 1980s and 1990s, such markets have encountered fierce competition. In 1989, the global leader in hypermarkets, Carrefour, entered Asia, opening its first store in Kaohsiung. Due to the success of its Taiwan operation, the French retailer expanded throughout the country and Asia. Jean-Luc Chéreau, the general manager in Taiwan from 1993 to 1999, used this newfound understanding of Chinese culture and ways of doing business with Chinese customers to lead its China expansion starting in 1999. As of February 2020, Carrefour has opened 137 hypermarkets and supermarkets in Taiwan. Despite the fierce competition from "Westernized" supermarkets, Taiwan's traditional markets and mom-and-pop stores remain "one of the most popular retail formats for many Asian families when they purchase daily food items and basic household goods."
Languages
The majority of those living in Kaohsiung can communicate in both Taiwanese Hokkien and Standard Chinese. Some of the elderly who grew up during the Japanese colonization of Taiwan can communicate in Japanese, while most of the younger population has basic English skills.
Since the spread of Standard Chinese after the Nationalist Government retreated to Taiwan in 1949, Hakka Chinese and various Formosan languages are gradually no longer spoken with the new generation and many Formosan languages are therefore classified as moribund or endangered languages by the United Nations. Nowadays, only elder Hakka people mostly living in Meinong, Liouguei, Shanlin and Jiasian districts can communicate in Hakka and elder Taiwanese aborigines living mostly in the rural districts of Namasia and Taoyuan can communicate with the aboriginal languages. The Taiwanese government has established special affairs committees for both the Aboriginals and the Hakkas to protect their language, culture, and minority rights.
Arts
Kaohsiung has rich resources of ocean, mountains and forests which shape a unique and active multi-faceted art and cultural aesthetic in public infrastructure and transport, public art, and city architecture, from MRT stations and city space to art galleries. The "Dome light" in the concourse of Formosa Boulevard Station of Kaohsiung MRT is one of the world's largest public glass works of art. The city also has the Urban Spotlight Arcade spanning along the street in Cianjin District. In October 2018, Weiwuying (the National Kaohsiung Centre for the Arts), designed by Mecanoo, opened.
Religion
The religious population of Kaohsiung is mainly divided into five main religious groups: Buddhists, Taoists, Muslim and Christians (Catholics and Protestants). , Kaohsiung City has 1,481 temples, the second highest in Taiwan after Tainan. Kaohsiung also has 306 churches.
Buddhism
Buddhism is one of the major religions in Taiwan, with over 35% of Taiwan's population identifying as Buddhists. The same applies to Kaohsiung city. Kaohsiung also hosts the largest Buddhist temple in Taiwan, the Fo Guang Shan Monastery with its Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum. There are also other famous Buddhist temples such as Fengshan Longshan Temple and Hong Fa Temple.
Taoism
Around 33% of the Taiwanese population are Taoists, making it the second largest religion of Taiwan. Most people who believe in Taoism also ascribe to Buddhism at the same time, as the differences and boundaries between the two religions are not always clear. Many residents of the area also worship the sea goddess known as Tian Shang Sheng Mu () or Mazu, who is variously syncretized as a Taoist immortal or embodiment of the bodhisattva Guanyin. Her temple on Cijin Island, Chi Jin Mazu Temple, is the oldest in the city, with its original bamboo-and-thatch structure first opened in 1673. The area surrounding it formed the center of the city's early settlement. There are also other prominent Taoist temples such as Fengshan Tiangong Temple, dedicated to the Jade Emperor, Cih Ji Palace, dedicated to Bao Sheng Da Di, Qing Shui Temple, dedicated to Qing Shui Zu Shi and Gushan Daitian Temple dedicated to Wang Ye worship.
Christianity
Christianity is a minority religion in Taiwan. It was first brought onto the island when the Dutch and Spanish colonized Taiwan during the 17th century, mostly to the aboriginals. Kaohsiung currently hosts around 56,000 Christians.
Islam
Besides the majority population of Buddhists and Taoists, Kaohsiung also includes a rather tiny population of Muslims. During the Chinese Civil War, some 20,000 Muslims, mostly soldiers and civil servants, fled mainland China with the Kuomintang government to Taiwan. During the 1980s, another few thousand Muslims from Myanmar and Thailand, whom are mostly descendants of Nationalist soldiers who fled Yunnan as a result of the communist takeover, migrated to Taiwan in search of a better life, resulting in an increase of Muslim population within the country. More recently, with the rise of Indonesian workers working in Taiwan, an estimated number of 88,000 Indonesian Muslims currently live in the country, in addition to the existing 53,000 Taiwanese Muslims. Combining all demographics, Taiwan hosts around 140,000 Muslims, with around 25,000 living in Kaohsiung. Kaohsiung Mosque is the largest mosque in Kaohsiung and the main gathering site of Muslims within the city.
Politics
Government
Sometimes Kaohsiung used to be seen as the political opposite of Taipei. While northern Taiwan leans towards the Pan-Blue Coalition in the state-level elections, southern Taiwan, including Kaohsiung, leaned towards the Pan-Green Coalition since the late 1990s. Frank Hsieh of the Democratic Progressive Party was reelected twice as Mayor of Kaohsiung, where he was widely credited for transforming the city from an industrial sprawl into an attractive modern metropolis. Hsieh resigned from the office of mayor to take up the office of Premier of the Republic of China in 2005. The municipal election, held on 9 December 2006, resulted in a victory for the Democratic Progressive Party's candidate Chen Chu, the first elected female mayor of special municipality in Taiwan, defeating her Kuomintang rival and former deputy mayor, Huang Chun-ying. The current mayor of Kaohsiung City is Chen Chi-mai..
Subdivisions
Kaohsiung is divided into 38 districts, three of which are mountain indigenous districts. There are a total of 651 villages in which each village is subdivided into neighborhoods (鄰). There are 18,584 neighborhoods in Kaohsiung City. Lingya and Fongshan districts are the administrative centers of the city while Lingya and Sinsing Districts are the two most densely populated districts of the city. Kaohsiung has the most numbers of districts among other special municipalities in Taiwan.
Note: There are several romanization systems used in Taiwan. This table contains both Hanyu Pinyin (the official standard of the central government), and Tongyong Pinyin (the official standard of the Kaohsiung City Government). The major order of districts referred to the code of administrative area.
Notable people
Wu Kuo-chu (1970-2006), Taiwanese choreographer
Transportation
Port of Kaohsiung
A major port, through which pass most of Taiwan's marine imports and exports, is located in the city but is not managed by the city government. Instead, it is administrated by Kaohsiung Port Authority, under the Ministry of Transportation. There is a push for Kaohsiung City to annex the Port of Kaohsiung to facilitate better regional planning.
Also known as the "Harbour Capital" of Taiwan, Kaohsiung has always had a strong link with the ocean and maritime transportation. Ferries play a key role in everyday transportation, especially for transportation across the harbor. With five terminals and 23 berths, the Port of Kaohsiung is Taiwan's largest container port and the 13th largest in the world. In 2007 the port reached its handling capacity with a record trade volume of . A new container terminal is under construction, increasing future handling capacity by by 2013.
Kaohsiung is one of the biggest ports in the world for importing shark fins, sold at high prices in the restaurants and shops of Taiwan and China. They are brought in from overseas and are placed out to dry in the sun on residential rooftops near the port.
Kaohsiung International Airport
Kaohsiung City is also home to Taiwan's second-largest international airport, the Kaohsiung International Airport, located in Siaogang District near the city's center. It is one of the three major international airports of Taiwan, serving passengers of the entire southern and southeastern part of the country. However, the size of the airport is relatively small, with short runways compared to other major airports of Taiwan due to its age and its location near the city center, making it impossible for large aircraft such as the Airbus A380 to land at the airport. As a result, plans for runway expansion or building a new airport in replacement have been proposed.
Rapid transit
Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit opened for service in March 2008. The MRT is made up of two lines with 37 stations covering a distance of .
Notably, two of Kaohsiung's MRT stations, Formosa Boulevard Station and Central Park Station, were ranked among the top 50 most beautiful subway systems in the world by Metrobits.org in 2011. In 2012, the two stations respectively are ranked as the 2nd and the 4th among the top 15 most beautiful subway stops in the world by BootsnAll.
Circular Light Rail
The Circular Light Rail Line (also known as the Kaohsiung LRT, Kaohsiung Tram) for Kaohsiung City is a light rail line. Construction of Phase 1, known as the Waterside Light Rail began in June 2013 and is in full operation since September 2017. To combat air pollution, usage of the light rail, was well as buses, was made free of charge for electronic ticket holders from December to February, when air pollution is at its peak.
Railway
The city is served by the Taiwan Railways Administration's Western Line and Pingtung Line. Kaohsiung Main Station is an underground station, replacing the old ground level station. Taiwan High Speed Rail also serves Kaohsiung City at Zuoying Station in northern Kaohsiung City.
Sports
Kaohsiung is home to Taiwan's largest stadium, the National Stadium, and Kaohsiung Arena. National Stadium is Taiwan's largest international-class stadium with a maximum capacity of 55,000 seats.
Kaohsiung hosted the 2009 World Games at the National Stadium. Nearly 6,000 athletes, officials, coaches, referees and others from 103 countries participated in the 2009 Kaohsiung World Games.
Kaohsiung was also home to the Kaohsiung Truth of the ASEAN Basketball League. They were the first team in the history of the league that was based outside Southeast Asia. The team folded in 2017.
Other recent major sporting events held by Kaohsiung include:
2001 Asian Cycling Championships
2005 WPA World Nine-ball Championship
2011 AFC President's Cup
2013 World Modern Pentathlon Championships
2016 Asian Men's U20 Volleyball Championship
WTA Taiwan Open (2016)
2019 U-19 Asia Rugby Championship
Education
Kaohsiung has a number of colleges and junior colleges offering training in commerce, education, maritime technology, medicine, modern languages, nursing, and technology, as well as various international schools and eight national military schools, including the three major military academies of the country, the Republic of China Military Academy, Republic of China Naval Academy and Republic of China Air Force Academy.
Universities
Cheng Shiu University
Kaohsiung Medical University
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology
National Kaohsiung Normal University
National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism
National University of Kaohsiung
National Sun Yat-sen University
I-Shou University
Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages
Fooyin University
High Schools and Junior High Schools
Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Girls' Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Sinsing Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Vocational High School of Commerce
Sansin High School of Commerce And Home Economics Kaohsiung
Kaohsiung Municipal Jhongjheng Senior High School
The Affiliated Senior High School of National Kaohsiung Normal University
FUHWA Senior High School
Saint Dominic's Catholic High School
Kaohsiung Dah Yung Senior High School
Chung-Hwa School of Arts
Taiwan Kaohsiung St. Paul's High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Gushan Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Chung-Cheng Industrial High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Cianjhen Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Rueisiang High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Sanmin Senior High School
Lichih Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Industrial High School
Shu-Te Home economics&Commercial High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Chungshan Senior High School
Guoguang Laboratory School, National Sun Yat-sen University
Kaohsiung Municipal Nanzih Comprehensive Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Siaogang Senior High School
Kao-Feng Vocational High School
The Affiliated Hospitality Senior High School of National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism
Kaohsiung Municipal Sanmin Home Economics & Commerce Vocational High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Tsoying Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Haiching Vocational High School of Technology and Commerce
Kaohsiung Municipal Renwu Senior High School
Kaohsiung MunicipalHsin Chuang Senior High School
National Kangshan Senior High School
National Kangshan Agricultural & Industrial Vocational Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Lujhu Senior High School
Chung Cheng Armed Forces Preparatory School
Cheng Yi Senior High School
National Feng-Shan Senior High School
National FongShan Senior Commercial & Industrial Vocational School
National Feng-Hsin Senior High School
Kaohsiung Municipal Fu Cheng High School
Chung Shan Industrial & Commercial School
Sin-Guang Senior High School
International Schools
Dominican International School Kaohsiung
I-Shou International School
Kaohsiung American School
Kivam Junior High School
Morrison Academy Kaohsiung
Military Schools
Republic of China Air Force Academy
Republic of China Military Academy
Republic of China Naval Academy
(Note: The lists above are not comprehensive.)
Conferences and events
The Kaohsiung Exhibition Center, built by the Kaohsiung City Government, was opened on 14 April 2014. It includes an exhibition space for 1,500 booths, and a convention hall for 2,000 people.
The center hosted the Taiwan International Boat Show in May 2014. Another conference and event-related venue is the newly renovated International Convention Center Kaohsiung in 2013.
Sister cities and twin towns
Kaohsiung is twinned with the following locations.
Barranquilla, Colombia
Belize City, Belize
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Blantyre, Malawi
Busan, South Korea
Cartago, Costa Rica
Cebu, Central Visayas, Philippines
Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States
Da Nang, Vietnam
Dipolog, Zamboanga Peninsula, Philippines
Durban, South Africa
George Town, Penang, Malaysia
Hachiōji, Tokyo, Japan
Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Istanbul, Turkey
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
Kumamoto, Kumamoto, Japan
Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
Macon, Georgia, United States
Malé, Maldives
Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan
Miami, Florida, United States
Mobile, Alabama, United States
Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Panama City, Panama
Pensacola, Florida, United States
Plains, Georgia, United States
Portland, Oregon, United States
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Saint Petersburg, Russia
San Antonio, Texas, United States
San Diego, California, United States
Seattle, Washington, United States
Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia
Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States
Relative location
See also
Administrative divisions of Taiwan
List of cities in Taiwan
Notes
Words in native languages
References
External links
Populated coastal places in Taiwan
Port cities and towns in Taiwan
Populated places established by the Dutch East India Company
1620s establishments in the Dutch Empire
Populated places established in 1662
Municipalities of Taiwan
1662 establishments in Asia | [
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17016 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov | Kuleshov | Kuleshov () and Kuleshova (; feminine) is a common Russian surname that traces its origins to Ukraine
People with this surname include:
Aleksey Kuleshov (b. 1979), a Russian volleyball player
Alla Kuleshova (b. 1945), Russian rower
Arkadi Kuleshov (b. 1914), a Belorussian poet and translator
Lev Kuleshov (1899–1970), a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist, who demonstrated the Kuleshov effect
Mikhail Kuleshov (b. 1981), a Russian ice hockey player
Oleg Kuleshov (b. 1974), a Russian handball player
Vladimir Kuleshov (b. 1986), a Russian footballer
References
Russian-language surnames | [
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17020 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashubians | Kashubians | The Kashubians (; ; ), also known as Cassubians or Kashubs, are a Lechitic (West Slavic) ethnic group native to the historical region of Pomerania, including its eastern part called Pomerelia, in north-central Poland. Their settlement area is referred to as Kashubia. They speak the Kashubian language, which is classified as a separate language closely related to Polish.
The Kashubs are closely related to the Poles and sometimes classified as their subgroup. The Kashubs are grouped with the Slovincians as Pomeranians. Similarly, the Slovincian (now extinct) and Kashubian languages are grouped as Pomeranian languages, with Slovincian (also known as Łeba Kashubian) either a distinct language closely related to Kashubian, or a Kashubian dialect.
Modern Kashubia
Among larger cities, Gdynia (Gdiniô) contains the largest proportion of people declaring Kashubian origin. However, the biggest city of the Kashubia region is Gdańsk (Gduńsk), the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. Between 80.3% and 93.9% of the people in towns such as Linia, Sierakowice, Szemud, Kartuzy, Chmielno, Żukowo, etc. are of Kashubian descent.
The traditional occupations of the Kashubs have been agriculture and fishing. These have been joined by the service and hospitality industries, as well as agrotourism. The main organization that maintains the Kashubian identity is the Kashubian-Pomeranian Association. The recently formed "Odroda" is also dedicated to the renewal of Kashubian culture.
The traditional capital has been disputed for a long time and includes Kartuzy (Kartuzë) among the seven contenders. The biggest cities claiming to be the capital are: Gdańsk (Gduńsk), Wejherowo (Wejrowò), and Bytów (Bëtowò).
Population
The total number of Kashubians (Pomeranians) varies depending on one's definition. A common estimate is that over 500,000 people in Poland are of the Kashubian ethnicity, the estimates range from ca. 500,000 to ca. 570,000. In the Polish census of 2002, only 5,100 people declared Kashubian national identity, although 52,655 declared Kashubian as their everyday language. Most Kashubs declare Polish national identity and Kashubian ethnicity, and are considered both Polish and Kashubian. On the 2002 census there was no option to declare one national identity and a different ethnicity, or more than one ethnicity. On the 2011 census, the number of persons declaring "Kashubian" as their only ethnicity was 16,000, and 233,000 including those who declared Kashubian as first or second ethnicity (together with Polish). In that census, over 108,000 people declared everyday use of Kashubian language. The number of people who can speak at least some Kashubian is higher, around 366,000.
Map (on page 122): http://docplayer.pl/57273906-Instytut-kaszubski-acta-cassubiana-tom-xvii.html
As of 1890, linguist Stefan Ramułt estimated the number of Kashubs (including Slovincians) in Pomerelia as 174,831. He also estimated that at that time there were over 90,000 Kashubs in the United States, around 25,000 in Canada,15,000 in Brazil and 25,000 elsewhere in the world. In total 330,000.
History
Kashubs are a Western Slavic people living on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Kashubs have their own unique language and traditions, having lived somewhat isolated for centuries from the common Polish population.
Historical population
Until the end of the 12th century, the vast majority of inhabitants of Pomerania (Hither, Farther and Eastern) were Slavic-speakers, but the province was quite sparsely populated, with large areas covered by forests and waste lands. During the 13th century, the German began in this region. Slavic dukes of Pomerania such as Barnim I (1220–1278) – despite calling themselves – contributed a lot to the change of ethnic structure by promoting German immigration and granting land to German nobles, monks and clergy. The Slavic ruling dynasty itself started intermarrying with German princesses and became culturally Germanized over time. Wendish commoners became alienated in their own land, their culture replaced by that of newcomers. All of this led to Germanization of most of Slavic Pomeranians and the gradual death of their Slavic language, with the general direction of assimilation and language shift from west to east.
Johannes Bugenhagen wrote that at the beginning of the 16th century the German-Slavic language border was near Koszalin. During the 17th century, the border between areas with mostly German-speaking and mostly Slavic-speaking populations ran more or less along the present-day border between West Pomeranian and Pomeranian Voivodeships.
In year 1612, cartographer Eilhard Lubinus – while working on his map of Pomerania – travelled from the direction of Pollnow towards Treblin on his way to Danzig. While staying in the manor house of Stanislaus Stenzel von Puttkamer in Treblin, he noted in his diary: "we have entered Slavic-inhabited lands, which has surprised us a lot." Later, while returning from Gdańsk to Stettin, Lubinus slept over in Wielka Wieś near Stolp, and noted: "in the whole village, we cannot find even one German-speaker" (which caused communication problems). Lubinus also travelled from Chocimino through Świerzno to Trzebielino, he entered Slavic-inhabited land. During another trip, near Wierzchocino, he was not able to find even one German-speaking person.
Over a century later, in 1772–1778, the area was visited by Johann Bernoulli. He noted that villages owned by Otto Christoph von Podewils – such as Dochow, Zipkow and Warbelin – were inhabited entirely by Slavic-speakers. He also noted that local priests and nobles were making great efforts to weed out Slavic language and turn their subjects into Germans.
Perhaps the earliest census figures on ethnic or national structure of West Prussia and Farther Pomerania are from 1817–1823.
Karl Andree, (Leipzig 1831), gives the total population of West Prussia as 700,000 – including 50% Poles (350,000), 47% Germans (330,000) and 3% Jews (20,000). Kashubians are included with Poles, while Mennonites with Germans.
Modern estimates of Kashubian population in West Prussia in the early 19th century, by county, are given by Leszek Belzyt and Jan Mordawski:
According to Georg Hassel, there were 65,000 Slavic-speakers in the whole Provinz Pommern in 1817–1819. Modern estimates for just eastern parts of Pommern (Western Kashubia) in early 1800s range between 40,000 (Leszek Belzyt) and 25,000 (Jan Mordawski, Zygmunt Szultka). The number declined to between 35,000 and 23,000 (Zygmunt Szultka, Leszek Belzyt) in years 1827–1831. In 1850-1860s there were an estimated 23,000 to 17,000 Slavic-speakers left in Pommern, down to 15,000 in 1892 according to Stefan Ramułt. The number was declining due to Germanisation. The bulk of Slavic population in 19th century Pommern was concentrated in its easternmost counties: especially Bytów (Bütow), Lębork (Lauenburg) and Słupsk (Stolp).
Reichstag elections (1867–1912)
In all constituencies with significant Catholic Kashubian population (Neustadt in Westpr.-Putzig-Karthaus; Berent-Preußisch Stargard-Dirschau; and Konitz-Tuchel), all Reichstag elections in 1867–1912 were won by the Polish Party (Polnische Fraktion, later Polenpartei).
Origin
Kashubs descend from the Slavic Pomeranian tribes, who had settled between the Oder and Vistula Rivers after the Migration Period, and were at various times Polish and Danish vassals. While most Slavic Pomeranians were assimilated during the medieval German settlement of Pomerania (Ostsiedlung), especially in Eastern Pomerania (Pomerelia) some kept and developed their customs and became known as Kashubians.
The tenth century far-traveled Arab writer Al-Masudi – who had great interest in non-Muslim peoples, including the various Slavs of Eastern Europe – mentions a people which he calls Kuhsabin, who were probably Kashubians. The oldest known unambiguous mention of "Kashubia" dates from 19 March 1238 – Pope Gregory IX wrote about Bogislaw I as dux Cassubie – the Duke of Kashubia. The old one dates from the 13th century (a seal of Barnim I from the House of Pomerania, Duke of Pomerania-Stettin). The Dukes of Pomerania hence used "Duke of (the) Kashubia(ns)" in their titles, passing it to the Swedish Crown who succeeded in Swedish Pomerania when the House of Pomerania became extinct.
Administrative history of Kashubia
The westernmost (Slovincian) parts of Kashubia, located in the medieval Lands of Schlawe and Stolp and Lauenburg and Bütow Land, were integrated into the Duchy of Pomerania in 1317 and 1455, respectively, and remained with its successors (Brandenburgian Pomerania and Prussian Pomerania) until 1945, when the area became Polish. The bulk of Kashubia since the 12th century was within the medieval Pomerelian duchies, since 1308 in the Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights, since 1466 within Royal Prussia, an autonomous territory of the Polish Crown, since 1772 within West Prussia, a Prussian province, since 1920 within the Polish Corridor of the Second Polish Republic, since 1939 within the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia of Nazi Germany, and since 1945 within the People's Republic of Poland, and after within the Third Polish Republic.
German and Polish impact
German Ostsiedlung in Kashubia was initiated by the Pomeranian dukes and focused on the towns, whereas much of the countryside remained Kashubian. An exception was the German settled Vistula delta (Vistula Germans), the coastal regions, and the Vistula valley. Following the centuries of interaction between local German and Kashubian population, Aleksander Hilferding (1862) and Alfons Parczewski (1896) confirmed a progressive language shift in the Kashubian population from their Slavonic vernacular to the local German dialect (Low German Ostpommersch, Low German Low Prussian, or High German).
On the other hand, Pomerelia since the Middle Ages was assigned to the Kuyavian Diocese of Leslau and thus retained Polish as the church language. Only the Slovincians in 1534 adopted Lutheranism after the Protestant Reformation had reached the Duchy of Pomerania, while the Kashubes in Pomerelia remained Roman Catholic. The Prussian parliament (Landtag) in Königsberg changed the official church language from Polish to German in 1843 but this decision was soon repealed.
In the 19th century the Kashubian activist Florian Ceynowa undertook efforts to identify the Kashubian language, and its culture and traditions. Although his efforts did not appeal to locals at the time, Kaszubian activists in the present day have claimed that Ceynowa awakened Kashubian self-identity, thereby opposing both Germanisation and Prussian authority, and Polish nobility and clergy. He believed in a separate Kashubian identity and strove for a Russian-led pan-Slavic federacy, He considered Poles "born brothers". Ceynowa was a radical who attempted to take the Prussian garrison in Preussisch Stargard (Starogard Gdański) during 1846 (see Greater Poland uprising), but the operation failed when his 100 combatants, armed only with scythes, decided to abandon the site before the attack was carried out. Although some later Kashubian activists tried to push for a separate identity, they further based their ideas on a misrepresented reading of the journalist and activist Hieronim Derdowski: "There is no Cassubia without Polonia, and no Poland without Cassubia" (Nie ma Kaszeb bez Polonii a bez Kaszeb Polsci"). Further stanzas of Derdowski's tribute also point to the fact that Kaszubs were Poles and could not survive without. The Society of Young Kashubians (Towarzystwo Młodokaszubskie) has decided to follow in this way, and while they sought to create a strong Kashubian identity, at the same time they regarded the Kashubians as "One branch, of many, of the great Polish nation".
The leader of the movement was Aleksander Majkowski, a doctor educated in Chełmno with the Society of Educational Help in Chełmno. In 1912 he founded the Society of Young Kashubians and started the newspaper Gryf. Kashubs voted for Polish lists in elections, which strengthened the representation of Poles in the Pomerania region.
Between 1855 and 1900, about 100,000 Kashubs emigrated to the United States, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia in the so-called Kashubian diaspora, largely for economic reasons. In 1899 the scholar Stefan Ramult named Winona, Minnesota the "Kashubian Capital of America" on account of the Kashubian community's size within the city and its activity. Due to their Catholic faith, the Kashubians became subject to Prussia's Kulturkampf between 1871 and 1878. The Kashubians faced Germanification efforts, including those by evangelical Lutheran clergy. These efforts were successful in Lauenburg (Lębork) and Leba (Łeba), where the local population used the Gothic alphabet. While resenting the disrespect shown by some Prussian officials and Junkers, Kashubians lived in peaceful coexistence with the local German population until World War II, although during the interbellum, the Kashubian ties to Poland were either overemphasized or neglected by Polish and German authors, respectively, in arguments regarding the Polish Corridor.
During the Second World War, Kashubs were considered by the Nazis as being either of "German stock" or "extraction", or "inclined toward Germanness" and "capable of Germanisation", and thus classified third category of Deutsche Volksliste (German ethnic classification list) if ties to the Polish nation could be dissolved. However, Kashubians who were suspected to support the Polish cause, particularly those with higher education, were arrested and executed, the main place of executions being Piaśnica (Gross Plassnitz), where 12,000 were executed. The German administrator of the area Albert Forster considered Kashubians of "low value" and did not support any attempts to create Kashubian nationality. Some Kashubians organized anti-Nazi resistance groups, Gryf Kaszubski (later Gryf Pomorski), and the exiled Zwiazek Pomorski in Great Britain.
When integrated into Poland, those envisioning Kashubian autonomy faced a Communist regime striving for ethnic homogeneity and presenting Kashubian culture as merely folklore. Kashubians were sent to Silesian mines, where they met Silesians facing similar problems. Lech Bądkowski from the Kashubian opposition became the first spokesperson of Solidarność.
Language
In 2011 Population Census about 108,100 people declared Kashubian as their language.
The classification of Kashubian as a language or dialect has been controversial. From a diachronic point of view of historical linguistics, Kashubian, like Slovincian, Polabian and Polish, is a Lechitic West Slavic language, while from a synchronic point of view it is a group of Polish dialects. Given the past nationalist interests of Germans and Poles in Kashubia, Barbour and Carmichel state: "As is always the case with the division of a dialect continuum into separate languages, there is scope here for manipulation."
A "standard" Kashubian language does not exist despite attempts to create one, rather a variety of dialects are spoken that differ significantly from each other. The vocabulary is influenced by both German and Polish.
There are other traditional Slavic ethnic groups inhabiting Pomerania, including the Kociewiacy, Borowiacy and Krajniacy. These dialects tend to fall between Kashubian and the Polish dialects of Greater Poland and Mazovia, with Krajniak dialect indeed heavily influenced by Kashubian, while Borowiak and Kociewiak dialects much more closer to Greater Polish and Mazovian. No obvious Kashubian substrate or any other influence is visible in Kociewiak dialect. This indicates that they are not only descendants of Pomeranians, but also of settlers who arrived in Pomerania from Greater Poland and Masovia during the Middle Ages, from the 10th century onwards.
In the 16th and 17th century Michael Brüggemann (also known as Pontanus or Michał Mostnik), Simon Krofey (Szimon Krofej) and J.M. Sporgius introduced Kashubian into the Lutheran Church. Krofey, pastor in Bütow (Bytow), published a religious song book in 1586, written in Polish but also containing some Kashubian words. Brüggemann, pastor in Schmolsin, published a Polish translation of some works of Martin Luther (catechism) and biblical texts, also containing Kashubian elements. Other biblical texts were published in 1700 by Sporgius, pastor in Schmolsin. His Schmolsiner Perikopen, most of which is written in the same Polish-Kashubian style as Krofey's and Brüggemann's books, also contain small passages ("6th Sunday after Epiphany") written in pure Kashubian. Scientific interest in the Kashubian language was sparked by Christoph Mrongovius (publications in 1823, 1828), Florian Ceynowa and the Russian linguist Aleksander Hilferding (1859, 1862), later followed by Leon Biskupski (1883, 1891), Gotthelf Bronisch (1896, 1898), Jooseppi Julius Mikkola (1897), Kazimierz Nitsch (1903). Important works are S. Ramult's, Słownik jezyka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego, 1893, and Friedrich Lorentz, Slovinzische Grammatik, 1903, Slovinzische Texte, 1905, and Slovinzisches Wörterbuch, 1908. Zdzisław Stieber was involved in producing linguistic atlases of Kashubian (1964–78).
The first activist of the Kashubian national movement was Florian Ceynowa. Among his accomplishments, he documented the Kashubian alphabet and grammar by 1879 and published a collection of ethnographic-historic stories of the life of the Kashubians (Skórb kaszébsko-slovjnckjé mòvé, 1866–1868). Another early writer in Kashubian was Hieronim Derdowski. The Young Kashubian movement followed, led by author Aleksander Majkowski, who wrote for the paper Zrzësz Kaszëbskô as part of the "Zrzëszincë" group. The group would contribute significantly to the development of the Kashubian literary language. Another important writer in Kashubian was Bernard Sychta (1907–1982).
Cultural traditions
Similarly to the traditions in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Pussy willows have been adopted as an alternative to the palm leaves used in Palm Sunday celebrations, which were not obtainable in Kashubia. They were blessed by priests on Palm Sunday, following which parishioners whipped each other with the pussy willow branches, saying Wierzba bije, jô nie bijã. Za tidzéń wiôldżi dzéń, za nocë trzë i trzë są Jastrë ('The willow strikes, it's not me who strikes, in a week, on the great day, in three and three nights, there is the Easter').
The pussy willows, blessed by priests, were treated as sacred charms that could prevent lightning strikes, protect animals, and encourage honey production. They were believed to bring health and good fortune to people as well, and it was traditional for one pussy willow bud to be swallowed on Palm Sunday to promote good health.
According to the old tradition, on Easter Monday the Kashub boys chase girls whipping gently their legs with juniper twigs. This is to bring good fortune in love to the chased girls. This was usually accompanied by a boy's chant Dyngus, dyngus – pò dwa jaja, Nie chcã chleba, leno jaja ('Dyngus, dyngus, for two eggs; I don't want bread but eggs'). Sometimes a girl would be whipped when still in her bed. Girls would give boys painted eggs.
Pottery, one of the ancient Kashubians crafts, has survived to the present day. Famous is Kashubian embroidery and Kashubian embroidering Zukowo school is important intangible cultural heritage.
The Pope John Paul II's visit in June 1987, during which he appealed to the Kashubes to preserve their traditional values including their language, was very important.
Today
In 2005, Kashubian was for the first time made an official subject on the Polish matura exam (roughly equivalent to the English A-Level and French Baccalaureat). This development was seen as an important step in the official recognition and establishment of the language. Today, in some towns and villages in northern Poland, Kashubian is the second language spoken after Polish, and it is taught in some regional schools.
Since 2005 Kashubian enjoys legal protection in Poland as an official regional language. It is the only tongue in Poland with this status. It was granted by an act of the Polish Parliament on 6 January 2005. Old Kashubian culture has partially survived in architecture and folk crafts such as pottery, plaiting, embroidery, amber-working, sculpturing and glasspainting.
In the 2011 census, 233,000 people in Poland declared their identity as Kashubian, 216,000 declaring it together with Polish and 16,000 as their only national-ethnic identity. Kaszëbskô Jednota is an association of people who have the latter view.
Kashubian cuisine
Kashubian cuisine contains many elements from the wider European culinary tradition. Local specialities include:
Czarnina () – a type of soup made of goose blood
Brzadowô zupa – a kind of sweet soup with e.g. apples
Plińce
Prażnica
Genetics
According to a study published in 2015, by far the most common Y-DNA haplogroup among the Kashubs (n=204) who live in Kashubia, is haplogroup R1a, which is carried by 61.8% of Kashubian males. It is followed in frequency by I1 (13.2%), R1b (9.3%), I2 (4.4%), E1b1b (3.4%), J (2.5%), G (2%) and N1 (1.5%). Other haplogroups are 2%. Another study from 2010 (n=64) discovered similar proportions of most haplogroups (R1a - 68.8%, I1 – 12.5%, R1b - 7.8%, I2 – 3.1%, E1b1b - 3.1%), but found also Q1a in 3.1% of Kashubians. This study reported no significant differences between Kashubians from Poland and other Poles as far as Y chromosome polymorphism is regarded. When it comes to mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, according to a January 2013 study, the most common major mtDNA lineages among the Kashubians, each carried by at least 2.5% of their population, include J1 (12.3%), H1 (11.8%), H* (8.9%), T* (5.9%), T2 (5.4%), U5a (5.4%), U5b (5.4%), U4a (3.9%), H10 (3.9%), H11 (3.0%), H4 (3.0%), K (3.0%), V (3.0%), H2a (2.5%) and W (2.5%). Altogether they account for almost 8/10 of the total Kashubian mtDNA diversity.
In a 2013 study, Y-DNA haplogroups among the Polish population indigenous to Kociewie (n=158) were reported as follows:
56.3% R1a, 17.7% R1b, 8.2% I1, 7.6% I2, 3.8% E1b1b, 1.9% N1, 1.9% J and 2% of other haplogroups.
Diaspora
Immigrant Kashubians kept a distinct identity among Polish Canadians and Polish Americans.
In 1858 Polish-Kashubians emigrated to Upper Canada and created the settlement of Wilno, in Renfrew County, Ontario, which still exists. Today Canadian Polish-Kashubians return to Northern Poland in small groups to learn about their heritage.
Kashubian immigrants founded St. Josaphat parish in Chicago's Lincoln Park community in the late 19th century, as well as the parish of Immaculate Heart of Mary in Irving Park, the vicinity of which was dubbed as "Little Cassubia". In the 1870s a fishing village was established in Jones Island in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by Kashubian immigrants. The settlers however did not hold deeds to the land, and the government of Milwaukee evicted them as squatters in the 1940s, with the area soon after turned into industrial park. The last trace of this Milwaukee fishing village that had been settled by Kashubians on Jones Island is in the name of the smallest park in the city, Kaszube's Park.
Notable Kashubs
Lech Bądkowski (1920–1984) writer, journalist, translator, political, cultural, and social activist
Joshua C. Blank (1984- ) historian, author, teacher, Swastak prize winner
Józef Borzyszkowski (1946– ) historian, politician, founder of the Kashubian Institute
Paul Breza (1937– ) American priest, Kashubian-American activist
Jerzy Łysk (1950– ) Kashubian poet, composer, singer and cultural animator, manager of cultural institutions.
Jan Romuald Byzewski (1842–1905) Kashubian-born American priest and social activist
Florian Ceynowa (1817–1881) political activist, writer, linguist, and revolutionary
(1968– ) Father General of the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit
Hieronim Derdowski (1852–1902) Kashubian-born American writer, newspaper editor, and political activist
(1870–1942) auxiliary bishop of Chełmno (now Pelplin)
Jan Gierszewski (1882-1951), Co-founder of the secret WW2 military organization Kashubian Griffin, Code name "Major Rys"
Günter Grass (1927–2015) Nobel Prize-winning German author of Kashubian descent
Marian Jeliński (1949– ) Veterinarian, author, Kashubian activist
Wojciech Kasperski (1981– ) film director, screenwriter
Zenon Kitowski (1962– ) clarinet player
Józef Kos (1900–2007) World War I veteran
Gerard Labuda (1916–2010) historian
Mark Lilla (1956–) American writer, intellectual historian
Aleksander Majkowski (1876–1938) author, publicist, play writer, cultural activist
(1926–2012) author, architect
Paul Mattick (1904–1981) German-American Marxist writer of Kashubian descent
Mestwin II (1220–1294) ruler of united Eastern Pomerania
Jerzy Samp (1951–2015) writer, publicist, historian, and social activist
Wawrzyniec Samp (1939– ) sculptor and graphic artist
Franziska Schanzkowska (1896–1984); a.k.a. Anna Anderson, impostor who claimed to be, Anastasia Romanova, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II
Danuta Stenka (1962– ) actress
Swantopolk II (1195–1266) powerful ruler of Eastern Pomerania
Brunon Synak (1943–2013) professor of sociology and a Kashubian activist
Jerzy Treder (1942–2015), philologist and linguist, known as an expert in Kashubian studies
Jan Trepczyk (1907–1989) poet, songwriter, lexicographer and creator of the Polish-Kashubian dictionary
Donald Tusk (1957– ) historian, politician, leader of Civic Platform, Prime Minister of Poland and President of the European Council
Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg (1759–1830) Prussian Field Marshal of the Napoleonic era
Erich von Manstein (Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Lewinski) (1887–1973), German Field Marshal
Friedrich Bogislav von Tauentzien 1710 in Tawęcino (German:Tauenzien), † 21. März 1791 in Wrocław (Breslau)/ Prussian General
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (1899–1972) Nazi war criminal and pioneer of genocidal anti-partisan tactics
Emil von Zelewski (1854–1891), Prussian officer
Paul Yakabuski (1922–1987), First Kasubian MPP elected in Canada in 1963
In literature
Important for Kashubian literature was Xążeczka dlo Kaszebov by Doctor Florian Ceynowa (1817–1881). Hieronim Derdowski (1852–1902) was another significant author who wrote in Kashubian, as was Doctor Aleksander Majkowski (1876–1938) from Kościerzyna, who wrote the Kashubian national epic The Life and Adventures of Remus. Jan Trepczyk was a poet who wrote in Kashubian, as was Stanisław Pestka. Kashubian literature has been translated into Czech, Polish, English, German, Belarusian, Slovene and Finnish. A considerable body of Christian literature has been translated into Kashubian, including the New Testament and Book of Genesis.
See also
Kashubian alphabet
Kashubian diaspora
Kashubian language
Kashubian studies
Kashubian Americans
References
Further reading
Borzyszkowski J.: The Kashubs, Pomerania and Gdańsk; [transl. by Tomasz Wicherkiewicz] Gdańsk : Instytut Kaszubski : Uniwersytet Gdański ; Elbląg : Elbląska Uczelnia Humanistyczno-Ekonomiczna, 2005,
Obracht-Prondzyński C.: The Kashubs today : culture, language, identity; [transl. by Tomasz Wicherkiewicz Gdańsk : Instytut Kaszubski, 2007,
Szulist W.: Kaszubi w Ameryce : Szkice i materiały, MPiMK-P Wejherowo 2005 (English summary).
"The Kashubs Today"
External links
Kashubs 2002
https://web.archive.org/web/20040926021346/http://www.zk-p.pl/
http://kaszebsko.com/who-we-are-and-what-are-our-objectives.html
http://www.kashub.com/
(Kashubian) https://web.archive.org/web/20080920042828/http://www.kaszubia.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20030218064812/http://republika.pl/modraglina/kaszlink.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20061005201334/http://www.cassubia-slavica.com/
(Kashubian) https://web.archive.org/web/20081106214654/http://www.inyourpocket.com/poland/city/kashubia.html
Canada's Kashubian community celebrates heritage at Wilno
The Wilno Heritage Society
The Polish Cultural Institute and Museum of Winona, Minnesota
Cashubes
Kaszëbskô Mowa: Freeing the Kashubian Language
Ethnic groups in Poland
History of Pomerania
People from Prussia proper
Lechites
Slavic ethnic groups | [
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17022 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst | Karst | Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathering-resistant rocks, such as quartzite, given the right conditions. Subterranean drainage may limit surface water, with few to no rivers or lakes. However, in regions where the dissolved bedrock is covered (perhaps by debris) or confined by one or more superimposed non-soluble rock strata, distinctive karst features may occur only at subsurface levels and can be totally missing above ground.
The study of paleokarst (buried karst in the stratigraphic column) is important in petroleum geology because as much as 50% of the world's hydrocarbon reserves are hosted in carbonate rock, and much of this is found in porous karst systems.
Etymology
The English word karst was borrowed from German in the late 19th century, which entered German much earlier. According to one interpretation the term is derived from the German name for a number of geological, geomorphological, and hydrological features found within the range of the Dinaric Alps, stretching from the northeastern corner of Italy above the city of Trieste, across the Balkan peninsula along the coast of the eastern Adriatic to Kosovo and North Macedonia, where the massif of the Šar Mountains begins, and more specifically the karst zone at the northwesternmost section, described in early topographical research as a plateau, between Italy and Slovenia.
In the local South Slavic languages, all variations of the word are derived from a Romanized Illyrian base (yielding , ), later metathesized from the reconstructed form into forms such as and , . Languages preserving the older, non-metathesized form include , , and ; the lack of metathesis precludes borrowing from any of the South Slavic languages, specifically Slovene. The Slovene common noun was first attested in the 18th century, and the adjective form in the 16th century. As a proper noun, the Slovene form was first attested in 1177.
Ultimately, the word is of Mediterranean origin. It has been suggested that the word may derive from the Proto-Indo-European root 'rock'. The name may also be connected to the oronym Kar(u)sádios oros cited by Ptolemy, and perhaps also to Latin .
Early studies
Johann Weikhard von Valvasor, a pioneer of the study of karst in Slovenia and a fellow of the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge, London, introduced the word karst to European scholars in 1689, describing the phenomenon of underground flows of rivers in his account of Lake Cerknica.
Jovan Cvijić greatly advanced the knowledge of karst regions, so much that he became known as the "father of karst geomorphology". Primarily discussing the karstic regions of the Balkans, Cvijić's 1893 publication Das Karstphänomen describes landforms such as karren, dolines and poljes. In a 1918 publication, Cvijić proposed a cyclical model for karstic landscape development. Karst hydrology emerged as a discipline in the late 1950s and early 1960s in France. Previously, the activities of cave explorers, called speleologists, had been dismissed as more of a sport than a science, meaning that underground karstic caves and their associated watercourses were, from a scientific perspective, understudied.
Development
Karst is most strongly developed in dense carbonate rock, such as limestone, that is thinly bedded and highly fractured. Karst is not typically well developed in chalk, because chalk is highly porous rather than dense, so the flow of groundwater is not concentrated along fractures. Karst is also most strongly developed where the water table is relatively low, such as in uplands with entrenched valleys, and where rainfall is moderate to heavy. This contributes to rapid downward movement of groundwater, which promotes dissolution of the bedrock, whereas standing groundwater becomes saturated with carbonate minerals and ceases to dissolve the bedrock.
Chemistry of dissolution
The carbonic acid that causes karstic features is formed as rain passes through Earth's atmosphere picking up carbon dioxide (CO2), which readily dissolves in the water. Once the rain reaches the ground, it may pass through soil that provides additional CO2 produced by soil respiration. Some of the dissolved carbon dioxide reacts with the water to form a weak carbonic acid solution, which dissolves calcium carbonate. The primary reaction sequence in limestone dissolution is the following:
In very rare conditions, oxidation can play a role. Oxidation played a major role in the formation of ancient Lechuguilla Cave in the US state of New Mexico and is presently active in the Frasassi Caves of Italy. The oxidation of sulfides leading to the formation of sulfuric acid can also be one of the corrosion factors in karst formation. As oxygen (O2)-rich surface waters seep into deep anoxic karst systems, they bring oxygen, which reacts with sulfide present in the system (pyrite or hydrogen sulfide) to form sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Sulfuric acid then reacts with calcium carbonate, causing increased erosion within the limestone formation. This chain of reactions is:
This reaction chain forms gypsum.
Morphology
The karstification of a landscape may result in a variety of large- or small-scale features both on the surface and beneath. On exposed surfaces, small features may include solution flutes (or rillenkarren), runnels, limestone pavement (clints and grikes), collectively called karren or lapiez. Medium-sized surface features may include sinkholes or cenotes (closed basins), vertical shafts, foibe (inverted funnel shaped sinkholes), disappearing streams, and reappearing springs. Large-scale features may include limestone pavements, poljes, and karst valleys. Mature karst landscapes, where more bedrock has been removed than remains, may result in karst towers, or haystack/eggbox landscapes. Beneath the surface, complex underground drainage systems (such as karst aquifers) and extensive caves and cavern systems may form.
Erosion along limestone shores, notably in the tropics, produces karst topography that includes a sharp makatea surface above the normal reach of the sea, and undercuts that are mostly the result of biological activity or bioerosion at or a little above mean sea level. Some of the most dramatic of these formations can be seen in Thailand's Phangnga Bay and at Halong Bay in Vietnam.
Calcium carbonate dissolved into water may precipitate out where the water discharges some of its dissolved carbon dioxide. Rivers which emerge from springs may produce tufa terraces, consisting of layers of calcite deposited over extended periods of time. In caves, a variety of features collectively called speleothems are formed by deposition of calcium carbonate and other dissolved minerals.
Hydrology
Farming in karst areas must take into account the lack of surface water. The soils may be fertile enough, and rainfall may be adequate, but rainwater quickly moves through the crevices into the ground, sometimes leaving the surface soil parched between rains.
A karst fenster (karst window) occurs when an underground stream emerges onto the surface between layers of rock, cascades some distance, and then disappears back down, often into a sinkhole. Rivers in karst areas may disappear underground a number of times and spring up again in different places, usually under a different name (like Ljubljanica, the river of seven names). An example of this is the Popo Agie River in Fremont County, Wyoming. At a site simply named "The Sinks" in Sinks Canyon State Park, the river flows into a cave in a formation known as the Madison Limestone and then rises again down the canyon in a placid pool. A turlough is a unique type of seasonal lake found in Irish karst areas which are formed through the annual welling-up of water from the underground water system.Water supplies from wells in karst topography may be unsafe, as the water may have run unimpeded from a sinkhole in a cattle pasture, through a cave and to the well, bypassing the normal filtering that occurs in a porous aquifer. Karst formations are cavernous and therefore have high rates of permeability, resulting in reduced opportunity for contaminants to be filtered. Groundwater in karst areas is just as easily polluted as surface streams. Sinkholes have often been used as farmstead or community trash dumps. Overloaded or malfunctioning septic tanks in karst landscapes may dump raw sewage directly into underground channels. Geologists are concerned with these negative effects of human activity on karst hydrology which, , supplied about 25% of the global demand for drinkable water.
The karst topography also poses difficulties for human inhabitants. Sinkholes can develop gradually as surface openings enlarge, but progressive erosion is frequently unseen until the roof of a cavern suddenly collapses. Such events have swallowed homes, cattle, cars, and farm machinery. In the United States, sudden collapse of such a cavern-sinkhole swallowed part of the collection of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 2014.
Interstratal karst
Interstratal karst is a karstic landscape which is developed beneath a cover of insoluble rocks. Typically this will involve a cover of sandstone overlying limestone strata undergoing solution. In the United Kingdom for example extensive doline fields have developed at Cefn yr Ystrad, Mynydd Llangatwg and Mynydd Llangynidr in South Wales across a cover of Twrch Sandstone which overlies concealed Carboniferous Limestone, the last-named having been declared a site of special scientific interest in respect of it.
Kegelkarst
Kegelkarst is a type of tropical karst terrain with numerous cone-like hills, formed by cockpits, mogotes, and poljes and without strong fluvial erosion processes. This terrain is found in Cuba, Jamaica, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, southern China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
Pseudokarst
Pseudokarsts are similar in form or appearance to karst features but are created by different mechanisms. Examples include lava caves and granite tors—for example, Labertouche Cave in Victoria, Australia—and paleocollapse features. Mud Caves are an example of pseudokarst.
Paleokarst
Paleokarst or palaeokarst is a development of karst observed in geological history and preserved within the rock sequence, effectively a fossil karst. There are for example palaeokarstic surfaces exposed within the Clydach Valley Subgroup of the Carboniferous Limestone sequence of South Wales which developed as sub-aerial weathering of recently formed limestones took place during periods of non-deposition within the early part of the period. Sedimentation resumed and further limestone strata were deposited on an irregular karstic surface, the cycle recurring several times in connection with fluctuating sea levels over prolonged periods.
Karst forest
Karst areas tend to have unique types of forests. The karst terrain is difficult for humans to traverse, so that their ecosystems are often relatively undisturbed. The soil tends to have a high pH, which encourages growth of unusual species of orchids, palms, mangroves and other plants.
Karst areas
The world's largest limestone karst is Australia's Nullarbor Plain. Slovenia has the world's highest risk of sinkholes, while the western Highland Rim in the eastern United States is at the second-highest risk of karst sinkholes.
In Canada, Wood Buffalo National Park, NWT contains areas of karst sinkholes.
Mexico hosts important karstic regions in the Yucatán Peninsula and Chiapas.
The South China Karst in the provinces of Guizhou, Guangxi, and Yunnan provinces is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Tham Luang Nang Non karstic cave system in northern Thailand was made famous by the 2018 rescue of a junior football team.
List of terms for karst-related features
Abîme, a vertical shaft in karst that may be very deep and usually opens into a network of subterranean passages
Cenote, a deep sinkhole, characteristic of Mexico, resulting from collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath
Doline, also sink or sinkhole, is a closed depression draining underground in karst areas. The name "doline" comes from dolina, meaning "valley", and derives from South Slavic languages.
Foibe, an inverted funnel-shaped sinkhole
Karst window (also known as a "karst fenster"), a feature where a spring emerges briefly, with the water discharge then abruptly disappearing into a nearby sinkhole
Karst spring, a spring emerging from karst, originating a flow of water on the surface
Limestone pavement, a landform consisting of a flat, incised surface of exposed limestone that resembles an artificial pavement
Losing stream, sinking river or ponornica in South Slavic languages.
Polje (karst polje, karst field), a large flat specifically karstic plain. The name "polje" derives from South Slavic languages.
Ponor, same as estavelle, sink or sinkhole in South Slavic languages, where surface flow enters an underground system
Scowle, porous irregular karstic landscape in a region of England.
Turlough (turlach), a type of disappearing lake characteristic of Irish karst.
Uvala, a collection of multiple smaller individual sinkholes that coalesce into a compound sinkhole. The term derives from South Slavic languages (many karst-related terms derive from South Slavic languages, entering scientific vocabulary through early research in the Western Balkan Dinaric Alpine karst).
See also
References
Further reading
Ford, D.C., Williams, P., Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology, John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2007,
Jennings, J.N., Karst Geomorphology, 2nd ed., Blackwell, 1985,
Palmer, A.N., Cave Geology, 2nd Printing, Cave Books, 2009,
Sweeting, M.M., Karst Landforms, Macmillan, 1973,
van Beynen, P. (Ed.), Karst management, Springer, 2011,
Vermeulen, J.J., Whitten, T., "Biodiversity and Cultural Property in the Management of Limestone Resources in East Asia: Lessons from East Asia", The World Bank, 1999,
External links
Speleogenesis Network, a communication platform for physical speleology and karst science research
Speleogenesis and Karst Aquifers – a large glossary of Karst related terms
Acta Carsologica – research papers and reviews in all the fields related to karst
CDK Citizens of the Karst – Citizens of the Karst, a non profit NGO dedicated to the protection of the Puerto Rican Karst (English site available)
The Virtual Cave's page on karst landforms
Karst Information Portal - an open-access digital library linking scientists, managers, and explorers
Landforms
Limestone formations
Geomorphology
Dinaric karst formations
Dinaric Alps
German words and phrases | [
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17023 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%E2%80%93Briand%20Pact | Kellogg–Briand Pact | The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris – officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy – is a 1928 international agreement on peace in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them". The pact was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after. Sponsored by France and the U.S., the Pact is named after its authors, United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect.
A common criticism is that the Kellogg–Briand Pact did not live up to all of its aims, but it has arguably had some success. It was unable to prevent the Second World War, but it was the base for trial and execution of Nazi leaders in 1946. Furthermore declared wars became very rare after 1945. However, it has also been ridiculed for its moralism, legalism and lack of influence on foreign policy. The pact had no mechanism for enforcement, and many historians and political scientists see it as mostly irrelevant and ineffective. However, the pact did serve as the legal basis for the concept of a crime against peace, for which the Nuremberg Tribunal and Tokyo Tribunal tried and executed the top leaders responsible for starting World War II.
With the signing of the Litvinov Protocol in Moscow on February 9, 1929, the Soviet Union and its western neighbors, including Romania, agreed to put the Kellogg–Briand Pact in effect without waiting for other western signatories to ratify. The Bessarabian question had made agreement between Romania and the Soviet Union challenging and dispute between the nations over Bessarabia continued.
Similar provisions to those in the Kellogg–Briand Pact were later incorporated into the Charter of the United Nations and other treaties, which gave rise to a more activist American foreign policy which began with the signing of the pact.
Text
The main text is very short:
Article I
The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.Article IIThe High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.
Parties
After negotiations, the pact was signed in Paris at the French Foreign Ministry by the representatives from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, the Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, and the United States. It took effect on 24 July 1929.
By that date, the following nations had deposited instruments of ratification of the pact:
12 additional parties joined after that date: Persia, Greece, Honduras, Chile, Luxembourg, Danzig, Costa Rica, Mexico, Venezuela, Paraguay, Switzerland and the Dominican Republic for a total of 57 states parties by 1929. Six states joined between 1930 and 1934: Haiti, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Iraq and Brazil. After the Second World War, Barbados declared its accession to the treaty, followed by Fiji (1973), Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica (both 1988), the Czech Republic and Slovakia (after Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1993), and, as a result of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Slovenia (1992), Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (both in 1994). The Free city of Danzig, which had joined the Pact in 1929, ceased to exist in 1939 as it became a regular part of Poland after World War II.
In the United States, the Senate approved the treaty 85–1, with only Wisconsin Republican John J. Blaine voting against over concerns with British imperialism. While the U.S. Senate did not add any reservations to the treaty, it did pass a measure which interpreted the treaty as not infringing upon the United States' right of self-defense and not obliging the nation to enforce it by taking action against those who violated it.
Effect and legacy
The 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect. One month following its conclusion, a similar agreement, General Act for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, was concluded in Geneva, which obliged its signatory parties to establish conciliation commissions in any case of dispute. The pact's central provisions renouncing the use of war, and promoting peaceful settlement of disputes and the use of collective force to prevent aggression, were incorporated into the United Nations Charter and other treaties. Although civil wars continued, wars between established states have been rare since 1945, with a few exceptions such as the Russo-Ukrainian war and various conflicts in the Middle East.
As a practical matter, the Kellogg–Briand Pact did not live up to its primary aims, but has arguably had some success. It did not end war or stop the rise of militarism, and was unable to keep the international peace in succeeding years. Its legacy remains as a statement of the idealism expressed by advocates for peace in the interwar period. However, it also helped to erase the legal distinction between war and peace, because the signatories, having renounced the use of war, began to wage wars without declaring them, as in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939, and the German and Soviet invasions of Poland.
The popular perception of the Kellogg–Briand Pact was best summarized by Eric Sevareid who, in a nationally televised series on American diplomacy between the two world wars, referred to the pact as a "worthless piece of paper". In his history of Europe from 1914 to 1948, historian Ian Kershaw referred to the Pact as "vacuous" and said that it was "a dead letter from the moment it was signed."
While the Pact has been ridiculed for its moralism and legalism and lack of influence on foreign policy, it did lead to a more activist American foreign policy. Legal scholars Scott J. Shapiro and Oona A. Hathaway have argued that the Pact inaugurated "a new era of human history" characterized by the decline of inter-state war as a structuring dynamic of the international system. According to Shapiro and Hathaway one reason for the historical insignificance of the pact was the absence of an enforcement mechanism to compel compliance from signatories, since the pact only calls for violators to "be denied of the benefits furnished by [the] treaty". They also said that the Pact appealed to the West because it promised to secure and protect previous conquests, thus securing their place at the head of the international legal order indefinitely. They wrote in 2017:
As its effects reverberated across the globe, it reshaped the world map, catalyzed the human rights revolution, enabled the use of economic sanctions as a tool of law enforcement, and ignited the explosion in the number of international organizations that regulate so many aspects of our daily lives.For detailed discussion by several scholars see [H-Diplo ROUNDTABLE XXI-15 "https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XXI-15.pdf"]
Hathaway and Shapiro show that between 1816 and 1928 there was on average one military conquest every ten months. After 1945, in very sharp contrast, the number of such conflicts declined to one in every four years.
The pact, in addition to binding the particular nations that signed it, has also served as one of the legal bases establishing the international norms that the threat or use of military force in contravention of international law, as well as the territorial acquisitions resulting from it, are unlawful. The interdiction of aggressive war was confirmed and broadened by the United Nations Charter, which provides in article 2, paragraph 4, that "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." One legal consequence is that it is unlawful to annex territory by force, although other forms of annexation have not been prevented. More broadly, there is now a strong presumption against the legality of using, or threatening, military force against another country. Nations that have resorted to the use of force since the Charter came into effect have typically invoked self-defense or the right of collective defense.
Notably, the pact also served as the legal basis for the concept of a crime against peace. It was for committing this crime that the Nuremberg Tribunal and Tokyo Tribunal tried and executed the top leaders responsible for starting World War II.
Political scientists Julie Bunck and Michael Fowler in 2018 argued that the Pact was:
an important early venture in multilateralism. ... [I]nternational law evolved to circumscribe the use of armed force with legal restrictions. The forcible acquisition of territory by conquest became illegitimate and individual criminal liability might attach to those who pursued it. In criminalizing war Kellogg–Briand played a role in the development of a new norm of behavior in international relations, a norm that continues to play a role in our current international order.
See also
Washington Naval Treaty
References
Notes
Bibliography
Bunck, Julie M., and Michael R. Fowler. "The Kellogg-Briand Pact: A Reappraisal." Tuland Journal of International and Comparative Law 27 #2(2018): 229–76 online.
Hathaway, Oona A. and Scott J. Shapiro. The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (2017), 581 pp. online review
Carroll, Francis M. "War and Peace and International Law: The Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact Reconsidered." Canadian Journal of History (2018) 53#1 : 86–96.
"H-Diplo Roundtable XXI-15 on The Internationalists" online
Further reading
Cavendish, Richard. "The Kellogg–Briand Pact Aims to Bring an End to War". History Today 58.8 (2008): 11+.
Ellis, Lewis Ethan. Frank B. Kellogg and American foreign relations, 1925–1929 (1961).
Ellis, Lewis Ethan. Republican Foreign Policy, 1921–1933 (1968).
Hathaway, Oona A. and Shapiro, Scott J. "International law and its transformation through the outlawry of war". International Affairs (2019) 95#1 pp 45–62
Johnson, Gaynor. "Austen Chamberlain and the Negotiation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928" in Gaynor Johnson, ed. Locarno Revisited: European Diplomacy 1920–1929. (Routledge, 2004) pp 54–67.
Limberg, Michael. In Relation to the Pact': Radical Pacifists and the Kellogg–Briand Pact, 1928–1939". Peace & Change 39.3 (2014): 395–420.
Swanson, David. When the World Outlawed War'' (2011).
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17025 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney | Kidney | The kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped organs found in vertebrates. They are located on the left and right in the retroperitoneal space, and in adult humans are about in length. They receive blood from the paired renal arteries; blood exits into the paired renal veins. Each kidney is attached to a ureter, a tube that carries excreted urine to the bladder.
The kidney participates in the control of the volume of various body fluids, fluid osmolality, acid–base balance, various electrolyte concentrations, and removal of toxins. Filtration occurs in the glomerulus: one-fifth of the blood volume that enters the kidneys is filtered. Examples of substances reabsorbed are solute-free water, sodium, bicarbonate, glucose, and amino acids. Examples of substances secreted are hydrogen, ammonium, potassium and uric acid. The nephron is the structural and functional unit of the kidney. Each adult human kidney contains around 1 million nephrons, while a mouse kidney contains only about 12,500 nephrons. The kidneys also carry out functions independent of the nephrons. For example, they convert a precursor of vitamin D to its active form, calcitriol; and synthesize the hormones erythropoietin and renin.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been recognized as a leading public health problem worldwide. The global estimated prevalence of CKD is 13.4%, and patients with kidney failure needing renal replacement therapy are estimated between 5 and 7 million. Procedures used in the management of kidney disease include chemical and microscopic examination of the urine (urinalysis), measurement of kidney function by calculating the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) using the serum creatinine; and kidney biopsy and CT scan to evaluate for abnormal anatomy. Dialysis and kidney transplantation are used to treat kidney failure; one (or both sequentially) of these are almost always used when renal function drops below 15%. Nephrectomy is frequently used to cure renal cell carcinoma.
Renal physiology is the study of kidney function. Nephrology is the medical specialty which addresses diseases of kidney function: these include CKD, nephritic and nephrotic syndromes, acute kidney injury, and pyelonephritis. Urology addresses diseases of kidney (and urinary tract) anatomy: these include cancer, renal cysts, kidney stones and ureteral stones, and urinary tract obstruction. The word “renal” is an adjective meaning “relating to the kidneys”, and its roots are French or late Latin. Whereas according to some opinions, "renal" should be replaced with "kidney" in scientific writings such as "kidney artery", other experts have advocated preserving the use of renal as appropriate including in "renal artery".
Structure
In humans, the kidneys are located high in the abdominal cavity, one on each side of the spine, and lie in a retroperitoneal position at a slightly oblique angle. The asymmetry within the abdominal cavity, caused by the position of the liver, typically results in the right kidney being slightly lower and smaller than the left, and being placed slightly more to the middle than the left kidney. The left kidney is approximately at the vertebral level T12 to L3, and the right is slightly lower. The right kidney sits just below the diaphragm and posterior to the liver. The left kidney sits below the diaphragm and posterior to the spleen. On top of each kidney is an adrenal gland. The upper parts of the kidneys are partially protected by the 11th and 12th ribs. Each kidney, with its adrenal gland is surrounded by two layers of fat: the perirenal fat present between renal fascia and renal capsule and pararenal fat superior to the renal fascia.
The kidney is a bean-shaped structure with a convex and a concave border. A recessed area on the concave border is the renal hilum, where the renal artery enters the kidney and the renal vein and ureter leave. The kidney is surrounded by tough fibrous tissue, the renal capsule, which is itself surrounded by perirenal fat, renal fascia, and pararenal fat. The anterior (front) surface of these tissues is the peritoneum, while the posterior (rear) surface is the transversalis fascia.
The superior pole of the right kidney is adjacent to the liver. For the left kidney, it is next to the spleen. Both, therefore, move down upon inhalation.
A Danish study measured the median renal length to be on the left side and on the right side in adults. Median renal volumes were on the left and on the right.
Gross anatomy
The functional substance, or parenchyma, of the kidney is divided into two major structures: the outer renal cortex and the inner renal medulla. Grossly, these structures take the shape of eight to 18 cone-shaped renal lobes, each containing renal cortex surrounding a portion of medulla called a renal pyramid. Between the renal pyramids are projections of cortex called renal columns. Nephrons, the urine-producing functional structures of the kidney, span the cortex and medulla. The initial filtering portion of a nephron is the renal corpuscle, which is located in the cortex. This is followed by a renal tubule that passes from the cortex deep into the medullary pyramids. Part of the renal cortex, a medullary ray is a collection of renal tubules that drain into a single collecting duct.
The tip, or papilla, of each pyramid empties urine into a minor calyx; minor calyces empty into major calyces, and major calyces empty into the renal pelvis. This becomes the ureter. At the hilum, the ureter and renal vein exit the kidney and the renal artery enters. Hilar fat and lymphatic tissue with lymph nodes surround these structures. The hilar fat is contiguous with a fat-filled cavity called the renal sinus. The renal sinus collectively contains the renal pelvis and calyces and separates these structures from the renal medullary tissue.
The kidneys possess no overtly moving structures.
Blood supply
The kidneys receive blood from the renal arteries, left and right, which branch directly from the abdominal aorta. Despite their relatively small size, the kidneys receive approximately 20% of the cardiac output. Each renal artery branches into segmental arteries, dividing further into interlobar arteries, which penetrate the renal capsule and extend through the renal columns between the renal pyramids. The interlobar arteries then supply blood to the arcuate arteries that run through the boundary of the cortex and the medulla. Each arcuate artery supplies several interlobular arteries that feed into the afferent arterioles that supply the glomeruli.
Blood drains from the kidneys, ultimately into the inferior vena cava. After filtration occurs, the blood moves through a small network of small veins (venules) that converge into interlobular veins. As with the arteriole distribution, the veins follow the same pattern: the interlobular provide blood to the arcuate veins then back to the interlobar veins, which come to form the renal veins which exiting the kidney .
Nerve supply
The kidney and nervous system communicate via the renal plexus, whose fibers course along the renal arteries to reach each kidney. Input from the sympathetic nervous system triggers vasoconstriction in the kidney, thereby reducing renal blood flow. The kidney also receives input from the parasympathetic nervous system, by way of the renal branches of the vagus nerve; the function of this is yet unclear. Sensory input from the kidney travels to the T10-11 levels of the spinal cord and is sensed in the corresponding dermatome. Thus, pain in the flank region may be referred from corresponding kidney.
Microanatomy
Renal histology is the study of the microscopic structure of the kidney. Distinct cell types include:
Kidney glomerulus parietal cell
Kidney glomerulus podocyte
Kidney proximal tubule brush border cell
Loop of Henle thin segment cell
Thick ascending limb cell
Kidney distal tubule cell
Collecting duct principal cell
Collecting duct intercalated cell
Interstitial kidney cells
Gene and protein expression
About 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and almost 70% of these genes are expressed in normal, adult kidneys. Just over 300 genes are more specifically expressed in the kidney, with only some 50 genes being highly specific for the kidney. Many of the corresponding kidney specific proteins are expressed in the cell membrane and function as transporter proteins. The highest expressed kidney specific protein is uromodulin, the most abundant protein in urine with functions that prevent calcification and growth of bacteria. Specific proteins are expressed in the different compartments of the kidney with podocin and nephrin expressed in glomeruli, Solute carrier family protein SLC22A8 expressed in proximal tubules, calbindin expressed in distal tubules and aquaporin 2 expressed in the collecting duct cells.
Development
The mammalian kidney develops from intermediate mesoderm. Kidney development, also called nephrogenesis, proceeds through a series of three successive developmental phases: the pronephros, mesonephros, and metanephros. The metanephros are primordia of the permanent kidney.
Function
The kidneys excrete a variety of waste products produced by metabolism into the urine. The microscopic structural and functional unit of the kidney is the nephron. It processes the blood supplied to it via filtration, reabsorption, secretion and excretion; the consequence of those processes is the production of urine. These include the nitrogenous wastes urea, from protein catabolism, and uric acid, from nucleic acid metabolism. The ability of mammals and some birds to concentrate wastes into a volume of urine much smaller than the volume of blood from which the wastes were extracted is dependent on an elaborate countercurrent multiplication mechanism. This requires several independent nephron characteristics to operate: a tight hairpin configuration of the tubules, water and ion permeability in the descending limb of the loop, water impermeability in the ascending loop, and active ion transport out of most of the ascending limb. In addition, passive countercurrent exchange by the vessels carrying the blood supply to the nephron is essential for enabling this function.
The kidney participates in whole-body homeostasis, regulating acid–base balance, electrolyte concentrations, extracellular fluid volume, and blood pressure. The kidney accomplishes these homeostatic functions both independently and in concert with other organs, particularly those of the endocrine system. Various endocrine hormones coordinate these endocrine functions; these include renin, angiotensin II, aldosterone, antidiuretic hormone, and atrial natriuretic peptide, among others.
Formation of urine
Filtration
Filtration, which takes place at the renal corpuscle, is the process by which cells and large proteins are retained while materials of smaller molecular weights are filtered from the blood to make an ultrafiltrate that eventually becomes urine. The kidney generates 180 liters of filtrate a day. The process is also known as hydrostatic filtration due to the hydrostatic pressure exerted on the capillary walls.
Reabsorption
Reabsorption is the transport of molecules from this ultrafiltrate and into the peritubular capillary. It is accomplished via selective receptors on the luminal cell membrane. Water is 55% reabsorbed in the proximal tubule. Glucose at normal plasma levels is completely reabsorbed in the proximal tubule. The mechanism for this is the Na+/glucose cotransporter. A plasma level of 350 mg/dL will fully saturate the transporters and glucose will be lost in the urine. A plasma glucose level of approximately 160 is sufficient to allow glucosuria, which is an important clinical clue to diabetes mellitus.
Amino acids are reabsorbed by sodium dependent transporters in the proximal tubule. Hartnup disease is a deficiency of the tryptophan amino acid transporter, which results in pellagra.
Secretion
Secretion is the reverse of reabsorption: molecules are transported from the peritubular capillary through the interstitial fluid, then through the renal tubular cell and into the ultrafiltrate.
Excretion
The last step in the processing of the ultrafiltrate is excretion: the ultrafiltrate passes out of the nephron and travels through a tube called the collecting duct, which is part of the collecting duct system, and then to the ureters where it is renamed urine. In addition to transporting the ultrafiltrate, the collecting duct also takes part in reabsorption.
Hormone secretion
The kidneys secrete a variety of hormones, including erythropoietin, calcitriol, and renin. Erythropoietin is released in response to hypoxia (low levels of oxygen at tissue level) in the renal circulation. It stimulates erythropoiesis (production of red blood cells) in the bone marrow. Calcitriol, the activated form of vitamin D, promotes intestinal absorption of calcium and the renal reabsorption of phosphate. Renin is an enzyme which regulates angiotensin and aldosterone levels.
Blood pressure regulation
Although the kidney cannot directly sense blood, long-term regulation of blood pressure predominantly depends upon the kidney. This primarily occurs through maintenance of the extracellular fluid compartment, the size of which depends on the plasma sodium concentration. Renin is the first in a series of important chemical messengers that make up the renin–angiotensin system. Changes in renin ultimately alter the output of this system, principally the hormones angiotensin II and aldosterone. Each hormone acts via multiple mechanisms, but both increase the kidney's absorption of sodium chloride, thereby expanding the extracellular fluid compartment and raising blood pressure. When renin levels are elevated, the concentrations of angiotensin II and aldosterone increase, leading to increased sodium chloride reabsorption, expansion of the extracellular fluid compartment, and an increase in blood pressure. Conversely, when renin levels are low, angiotensin II and aldosterone levels decrease, contracting the extracellular fluid compartment, and decreasing blood pressure.
Acid–base balance
Two organ systems, the kidneys and lungs, maintain acid–base homeostasis, which is the maintenance of pH around a relatively stable value. The lungs contribute to acid–base homeostasis by regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration. The kidneys have two very important roles in maintaining the acid–base balance: to reabsorb and regenerate bicarbonate from urine, and to excrete hydrogen ions and fixed acids (anions of acids) into urine.
Regulation of osmolality
The kidneys help maintain the water and salt level of the body. Any significant rise in plasma osmolality is detected by the hypothalamus, which communicates directly with the posterior pituitary gland. An increase in osmolality causes the gland to secrete antidiuretic hormone (ADH), resulting in water reabsorption by the kidney and an increase in urine concentration. The two factors work together to return the plasma osmolality to its normal levels.
Measuring function
Various calculations and methods are used to try to measure kidney function. Renal clearance is the volume of plasma from which the substance is completely cleared from the blood per unit time. The filtration fraction is the amount of plasma that is actually filtered through the kidney. This can be defined using the equation. The kidney is a very complex organ and mathematical modelling has been used to better understand kidney function at several scales, including fluid uptake and secretion.
Clinical significance
Nephrology is the subspeciality under Internal Medicine that deals with kidney function and disease states related to renal malfunction and their management including dialysis and kidney transplantation. Urology is the specialty under Surgery that deals with kidney structure abnormalities such as kidney cancer and cysts and problems with urinary tract. Nephrologists are internists, and urologists are surgeons, whereas both are often called "kidney doctors". There are overlapping areas that both nephrologists and urologists can provide care such as kidney stones and kidney related infections.
There are many causes of kidney disease. Some causes are acquired over the course of life, such as diabetic nephropathy whereas others are congenital, such as polycystic kidney disease.
Medical terms related to the kidneys commonly use terms such as renal and the prefix nephro-. The adjective renal, meaning related to the kidney, is from the Latin rēnēs, meaning kidneys; the prefix nephro- is from the Ancient Greek word for kidney, nephros (νεφρός). For example, surgical removal of the kidney is a nephrectomy, while a reduction in kidney function is called renal dysfunction.
Acquired
Diabetic nephropathy
Glomerulonephritis
Hydronephrosis is the enlargement of one or both of the kidneys caused by obstruction of the flow of urine.
Interstitial nephritis
Kidney stones (nephrolithiasis) are a relatively common and particularly painful disorder. A chronic condition can result in scars to the kidneys. The removal of kidney stones involves ultrasound treatment to break up the stones into smaller pieces, which are then passed through the urinary tract. One common symptom of kidney stones is a sharp to disabling pain in the middle and sides of the lower back or groin.
Kidney tumour
Wilms tumor
Renal cell carcinoma
Lupus nephritis
Minimal change disease
In nephrotic syndrome, the glomerulus has been damaged so that a large amount of protein in the blood enters the urine. Other frequent features of the nephrotic syndrome include swelling, low serum albumin, and high cholesterol.
Pyelonephritis is infection of the kidneys and is frequently caused by complication of a urinary tract infection.
Kidney failure
Acute kidney failure
Stage 5 Chronic Kidney Disease
Renal artery stenosis
Renovascular hypertension
Kidney injury and failure
Generally, humans can live normally with just one kidney, as one has more functioning renal tissue than is needed to survive. Only when the amount of functioning kidney tissue is greatly diminished does one develop chronic kidney disease. Renal replacement therapy, in the form of dialysis or kidney transplantation, is indicated when the glomerular filtration rate has fallen very low or if the renal dysfunction leads to severe symptoms.
Dialysis
Dialysis is a treatment that substitutes for the function of normal kidneys. Dialysis may be instituted when approximately 85%-90% of kidney function is lost, as indicated by a glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of less than 15. Dialysis removes metabolic waste products as well as excess water and sodium (thereby contributing to regulating blood pressure); and maintains many chemical levels within the body. Life expectancy is 5–10 years for those on dialysis; some live up to 30 years. Dialysis can occur via the blood (through a catheter or arteriovenous fistula), or through the peritoneum (peritoneal dialysis) Dialysis is typically administered three times a week for several hours at free-standing dialysis centers, allowing recipients to lead an otherwise essentially normal life.
Congenital disease
Congenital hydronephrosis
Congenital obstruction of urinary tract
Duplex kidneys, or double kidneys, occur in approximately 1% of the population. This occurrence normally causes no complications, but can occasionally cause urinary tract infections.
Duplicated ureter occurs in approximately one in 100 live births
Horseshoe kidney occurs in approximately one in 400 live births
Nephroblastoma (Syndromic Wilm's tumour)
Nutcracker syndrome
Polycystic kidney disease
Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease afflicts patients later in life. Approximately one in 1000 people will develop this condition
Autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease is far less common, but more severe, than the dominant condition. It is apparent in utero or at birth.
Renal agenesis. Failure of one kidney to form occurs in approximately one in 750 live births. Failure of both kidneys to form used to be fatal; however, medical advances such as amnioinfusion therapy during pregnancy and peritoneal dialysis have made it possible to stay alive until a transplant can occur.
Renal dysplasia
Unilateral small kidney
Multicystic dysplastic kidney occurs in approximately one in every 2400 live births
Ureteropelvic Junction Obstruction or UPJO; although most cases are congenital, some are acquired.
Diagnosis
Many renal diseases are diagnosed on the basis of a detailed medical history, and physical examination. The medical history takes into account present and past symptoms, especially those of kidney disease; recent infections; exposure to substances toxic to the kidney; and family history of kidney disease.
Kidney function is tested by using blood tests and urine tests. The most common blood test are creatinine, urea and electrolytes. Urine tests such as urinalysis can evaluate for pH, protein, glucose, and the presence of blood. Microscopic analysis can also identify the presence of urinary casts and crystals. The glomerular filtration rate (GFR) can be directly measured ("measured GFR", or mGFR) but this rarely done in everyday practice. Instead, special equations are used to calculate GFR ("estimated GFR", or eGFR).
Imaging
Renal ultrasonography is essential in the diagnosis and management of kidney-related diseases. Other modalities, such as CT and MRI, should always be considered as supplementary imaging modalities in the assessment of renal disease.
Biopsy
The role of the renal biopsy is to diagnose renal disease in which the etiology is not clear based upon noninvasive means (clinical history, past medical history, medication history, physical exam, laboratory studies, imaging studies). In general, a renal pathologist will perform a detailed morphological evaluation and integrate the morphologic findings with the clinical history and laboratory data, ultimately arriving at a pathological diagnosis. A renal pathologist is a physician who has undergone general training in anatomic pathology and additional specially training in the interpretation of renal biopsy specimens.
Ideally, multiple core sections are obtained and evaluated for adequacy (presence of glomeruli) intraoperatively. A pathologist/pathology assistant divides the specimen(s) for submission for light microscopy, immunofluorescence microscopy and electron microscopy.
The pathologist will examine the specimen using light microscopy with multiple staining techniques (hematoxylin and eosin/H&E, PAS, trichrome, silver stain) on multiple level sections. Multiple immunofluorescence stains are performed to evaluate for antibody, protein and complement deposition. Finally, ultra-structural examination is performed with electron microscopy and may reveal the presence of electron-dense deposits or other characteristic abnormalities that may suggest an etiology for the patient's renal disease.
Other animals
In the majority of vertebrates, the mesonephros persists into the adult, albeit usually fused with the more advanced metanephros; only in amniotes is the mesonephros restricted to the embryo. The kidneys of fish and amphibians are typically narrow, elongated organs, occupying a significant portion of the trunk. The collecting ducts from each cluster of nephrons usually drain into an archinephric duct, which is homologous with the vas deferens of amniotes. However, the situation is not always so simple; in cartilaginous fish and some amphibians, there is also a shorter duct, similar to the amniote ureter, which drains the posterior (metanephric) parts of the kidney, and joins with the archinephric duct at the bladder or cloaca. Indeed, in many cartilaginous fish, the anterior portion of the kidney may degenerate or cease to function altogether in the adult.
In the most primitive vertebrates, the hagfish and lampreys, the kidney is unusually simple: it consists of a row of nephrons, each emptying directly into the archinephric duct. Invertebrates may possess excretory organs that are sometimes referred to as "kidneys", but, even in Amphioxus, these are never homologous with the kidneys of vertebrates, and are more accurately referred to by other names, such as nephridia. In amphibians, kidneys and the urinary bladder harbour specialized parasites, monogeneans of the family Polystomatidae.
The kidneys of reptiles consist of a number of lobules arranged in a broadly linear pattern. Each lobule contains a single branch of the ureter in its centre, into which the collecting ducts empty. Reptiles have relatively few nephrons compared with other amniotes of a similar size, possibly because of their lower metabolic rate.
Birds have relatively large, elongated kidneys, each of which is divided into three or more distinct lobes. The lobes consists of several small, irregularly arranged, lobules, each centred on a branch of the ureter. Birds have small glomeruli, but about twice as many nephrons as similarly sized mammals.
The human kidney is fairly typical of that of mammals. Distinctive features of the mammalian kidney, in comparison with that of other vertebrates, include the presence of the renal pelvis and renal pyramids and a clearly distinguishable cortex and medulla. The latter feature is due to the presence of elongated loops of Henle; these are much shorter in birds, and not truly present in other vertebrates (although the nephron often has a short intermediate segment between the convoluted tubules). It is only in mammals that the kidney takes on its classical "kidney" shape, although there are some exceptions, such as the multilobed reniculate kidneys of pinnipeds and cetaceans.
Evolutionary adaptation
Kidneys of various animals show evidence of evolutionary adaptation and have long been studied in ecophysiology and comparative physiology. Kidney morphology, often indexed as the relative medullary thickness, is associated with habitat aridity among species of mammals and diet (e.g., carnivores have only long loops of Henle).
Society and culture
Significance
Egyptian
In ancient Egypt, the kidneys, like the heart, were left inside the mummified bodies, unlike other organs which were removed. Comparing this to the biblical statements, and to drawings of human body with the heart and two kidneys portraying a set of scales for weighing justice, it seems that the Egyptian beliefs had also connected the kidneys with judgement and perhaps with moral decisions.
Hebrew
According to studies in modern and ancient Hebrew, various body organs in humans and animals served also an emotional or logical role, today mostly attributed to the brain and the endocrine system. The kidney is mentioned in several biblical verses in conjunction with the heart, much as the bowels were understood to be the "seat" of emotion – grief, joy and pain. Similarly, the Talmud (Berakhoth 61.a) states that one of the two kidneys counsels what is good, and the other evil.
In the sacrifices offered at the biblical Tabernacle and later on at the temple in Jerusalem, the priests were instructed to remove the kidneys and the adrenal gland covering the kidneys of the sheep, goat and cattle offerings, and to burn them on the altar, as the holy part of the "offering for God" never to be eaten.
India: Ayurvedic system
In ancient India, according to the Ayurvedic medical systems, the kidneys were considered the beginning of the excursion channels system, the 'head' of the Mutra Srotas, receiving from all other systems, and therefore important in determining a person's health balance and temperament by the balance and mixture of the three 'Dosha's – the three health elements: Vatha (or Vata) – air, Pitta – bile, and Kapha – mucus. The temperament and health of a person can then be seen in the resulting color of the urine.
Modern Ayurveda practitioners, a practice which is characterized as pseudoscience, have attempted to revive these methods in medical procedures as part of Ayurveda Urine therapy. These procedures have been called "nonsensical" by skeptics.
Medieval Christianity
The Latin term renes is related to the English word "reins", a synonym for the kidneys in Shakespearean English (e.g. Merry Wives of Windsor 3.5), which was also the time when the King James Version of the Bible was translated. Kidneys were once popularly regarded as the seat of the conscience and reflection, and a number of verses in the Bible (e.g. Ps. 7:9, Rev. 2:23) state that God searches out and inspects the kidneys, or "reins", of humans, together with the heart.
As food
The kidneys, like other offal, can be cooked and eaten.
Kidneys are usually grilled or sautéed, but in more complex dishes they are stewed with a sauce that will improve their flavor. In many preparations, kidneys are combined with pieces of meat or liver, as in mixed grill. Dishes include the British steak and kidney pie, the Swedish hökarpanna (pork and kidney stew), the French rognons de veau sauce moutarde (veal kidneys in mustard sauce) and the Spanish riñones al Jerez (kidneys stewed in sherry sauce) .
History
Kidney stones have been identified and recorded about as long as written historical records exist. The urinary tract including the ureters, as well as their function to drain urine from the kidneys, has been described by Galen in the second century AD.
The first to examine the ureter through an internal approach, called ureteroscopy, rather than surgery was Hampton Young in 1929. This was improved on by VF Marshall who is the first published use of a flexible endoscope based on fiber optics, which occurred in 1964. The insertion of a drainage tube into the renal pelvis, bypassing the uterers and urinary tract, called nephrostomy, was first described in 1941. Such an approach differed greatly from the open surgical approaches within the urinary system employed during the preceding two millennia.
Additional images
See also
Artificial kidney
Holonephros
Nephromegaly
Organ donation
Organ harvesting
Pelvic kidney
World Kidney Day
References
Bibliography
External links
Kidney at the Human Protein Atlas
electron microscopic images of the kidney (Dr. Jastrow's EM-Atlas)
Endocrine system | [
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17026 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kern | Kern | Kern or KERN may refer to:
Places
Kern, Alaska, a ghost town in Alaska
Kern, Austria, see Sankt Marienkirchen am Hausruck
Kern, California, a former unincorporated community in Kern County, California
Kern County, California, a county in the southern Central Valley of the U.S. state of California
Kern River, California, a river which drains an area of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains
Kern, Missouri, an unincorporated community
Boron, California or Kern, California, a census-designated place (CDP) in Kern County, California, United States
Other uses
Kern (surname), a surname
Kern (typography), the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font
Kern (soldier), a light infantry unit in Medieval Irish armies
Kern AG, a German-based international language service company
KERN, an American radio station
Cell (music), melodic kernels, called Kern in German music theory
See also
Cern (disambiguation)
Kerne (disambiguation)
Kernel (disambiguation)
Kerner (disambiguation)
Kerns (disambiguation)
Kirn (disambiguation)
Saoud Qern (born 1987) Saudi soccer player | [
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17027 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit%20%28protocol%29 | Kermit (protocol) | Kermit is a computer file transfer/management protocol and a set of communications software tools primarily used in the early years of personal computing in the 1980s. It provides a consistent approach to file transfer, terminal emulation, script programming, and character set conversion across many different computer hardware and operating system platforms.
Technical
The Kermit protocol supports text and binary file transfers on both full-duplex and half-duplex 8-bit and 7-bit serial connections in a system- and medium-independent fashion, and is implemented on hundreds of different computer and operating system platforms. On full-duplex connections, a Sliding Window Protocol is used with selective retransmission which provides excellent performance and error recovery characteristics. On 7-bit connections, locking shifts provide efficient transfer of 8-bit data. When properly implemented, as in the Columbia University Kermit Software collection, its authors claim performance is equal to or better than other protocols such as ZMODEM, YMODEM, and XMODEM, especially on poor connections. On connections over RS-232 Statistical Multiplexers where some control characters cannot be transmitted, Kermit can be configured to work, unlike protocols like XMODEM that require the connection to be transparent (i.e. all 256 possible values of a byte to be transferable).
Kermit can be used as a means to bootstrap other software, even itself. To distribute Kermit through non 8-bit clean networks Columbia developed .boo, a binary-to-text encoding system similar to BinHex. For instance, IBM PC compatibles and Apple computers with a Compatibility Card installed can connect to otherwise incompatible systems such as a mainframe computer to receive MS-DOS Kermit in .boo format. Users can then type in a "baby Kermit" in BASIC on their personal computers that downloads Kermit and converts it into binary.
Similarly, CP/M machines use many different floppy disk formats, which means that one machine often cannot read disks from another CP/M machine, and Kermit is used as part of a process to transfer applications and data between CP/M machines and other machines with different operating systems. The CP/M file-copy program PIP can usually access a computer's serial (RS-232) port, and if configured to use a very low baud rate (because it has no built-in error correction) can be used to transfer a small, simple version of Kermit from one machine to another over a null modem cable, or failing that, a very simple version of the Kermit protocol can be hand coded in binary in less than 2K using DDT, the CP/M Dynamic Debugging Tool. Once done, the simple version of Kermit can be used to download a fully functional version. That version can then be used to transfer any CP/M application or data.
Newer versions of Kermit included scripting language and automation of commands. The Kermit scripting language evolved from its TOPS-20 EXEC-inspired command language and was influenced syntactically and semantically by ALGOL 60, C, BLISS-10, PL/I, SNOBOL, and LISP.
The correctness of the Kermit protocol has been verified with formal methods.
History
In the late 1970s, users of Columbia University's mainframe computers had only 35 kilobytes of storage per person. Kermit was developed at the university so students could move files between them and floppy disks at various microcomputers around campus, such as IBM or DEC DECSYSTEM-20 mainframes and Intertec Superbrains running CP/M. IBM mainframes used an EBCDIC character set and CP/M and DEC machines used ASCII, so conversion between the two character sets was one of the early functions built into Kermit. The first file transfer with Kermit occurred in April 1981. The protocol was originally designed in 1981 by Frank da Cruz and Bill Catchings.
Columbia University coordinated development of versions of Kermit for many different computers at the university and elsewhere, and distributed the software for free; Kermit for the new IBM Personal Computer became especially popular. In 1986 the university founded the Kermit Project, which took over development and started charging fees for commercial use; the project was financially self-sufficient. For non-commercial use, Columbia University stated that
By 1988 Kermit was available on more than 300 computers and operating systems. The protocol became a de facto data communications standard for transferring files between dissimilar computer systems, and by the early 1990s it could convert multilingual character encodings. Kermit software has been used in many countries, for tasks ranging from simple student assignments to solving compatibility problems aboard the International Space Station. It was ported to a wide variety of mainframe, minicomputer and microcomputer systems down to handhelds and electronic pocket calculators. Most versions had a user interface based on the original TOPS-20 Kermit. Later versions of some Kermit implementations also support network as well as serial connections.
Implementations that are presently supported include C-Kermit (for Unix and OpenVMS) and Kermit 95 (for versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards and OS/2), but other versions remain available as well.
As of 1 July 2011, Columbia University ceased to host this project and released it to open source. In June 2011, the Kermit Project released a beta version of C-Kermit v9.0 under an Open Source Revised 3-Clause BSD License.
As well as the implementations developed and/or distributed by Columbia University, the Kermit protocol was implemented in a number of third-party communications software packages, among others ProComm and ProComm Plus. The term "SuperKermit" was coined by third-party vendors to refer to higher speed Kermit implementations offering features such as full duplex operation, sliding windows, and long packets; however, that term was deprecated by the original Kermit team at Columbia University, who saw these as simply features of the core Kermit protocol.
Naming and copyright
Kermit was named after Kermit the Frog from The Muppets, with permission from Henson Associates. The program's icon in the Apple Macintosh version was a depiction of Kermit the Frog. A backronym was nevertheless created, perhaps to avoid trademark issues, [[PDP-10|KL10]] Error-Free Reciprocal Microprocessor Interchange over TTY lines.
Kermit is an open protocol—anybody can base their own program on it, but some Kermit software and source code is copyright by Columbia University. The final license page said:
See also
IND$FILE
BLAST (protocol)
References
Further reading
External links
Computer-related introductions in 1981
BBS file transfer protocols
Communication software
File transfer protocols
Terminal emulators
Columbia University | [
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17029 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit%20the%20Frog | Kermit the Frog | Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character created and originally performed by Jim Henson. Introduced in 1955, Kermit serves as the everyman protagonist of numerous Muppet productions, most notably Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, as well as in other television series, feature films, specials, and public service announcements through the years. He served as a mascot of The Jim Henson Company and appeared in various Henson projects.
Kermit performed the hit singles "Bein' Green" in 1970 and "Rainbow Connection" in 1979 for The Muppet Movie, the first feature-length film featuring the Muppets. Kermit's original performance of "Rainbow Connection" reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2021. Henson performed Kermit until his death in 1990, and then Steve Whitmire performed Kermit from that time until his dismissal in 2016. Kermit has been performed by Matt Vogel from 2017. He was also voiced by Frank Welker in Muppet Babies and occasionally in other animation projects, and is voiced by Matt Danner in the 2018 reboot of Muppet Babies.
Kermit's iconic look and voice have been recognizable in popular culture worldwide for many decades, and in 2006, the character was credited as the author of Before You Leap: A Frog's Eye View of Life's Greatest Lessons, an "autobiography" told from the perspective of the character himself.
History and development
Kermit the Frog first appeared on May 9, 1955, in the premiere of WRC-TV's Sam and Friends. This prototype Kermit was created from a discarded turquoise spring coat belonging to Jim Henson's mother and two ping pong ball halves for eyes.
Initially, Kermit was a vague lizard-like creature. He subsequently made a number of television appearances before his status as a frog was established in the television special Hey, Cinderella! in 1969. His triangular-pointed collar was added at the time to make him seem more frog-like and to conceal the seam between his head and body. According to Michael K. Frith, the relatively simple construction of the Kermit puppet allows the performer's arm and hand to produce a wide range of expression and gestures.
Naming
The origin of Kermit's name is a subject of some debate. It is often claimed that Kermit was named after Henson's childhood friend Kermit Scott, from Leland, Mississippi. However, Karen Falk, head archivist and board of directors member for the Jim Henson Legacy organization, denies this claim on the Jim Henson Company's website:
Joy DiMenna, the only daughter of Kermit Kalman Cohen who worked as a sound engineer at WBAL-TV during Jim Henson's time with Sam and Friends, recalls that the puppet was named after her father. According to Kermit Cohen's obituary, as well as DiMenna and Lenny Levin, a colleague of Mr. Cohen's at WBAL:
Another common belief is that Kermit was named for Kermit Love, who worked with Henson in designing and constructing Muppets, particularly on Sesame Street, but Love's association with Henson did not begin until well after Kermit's creation and naming, and he always denied any connection between his name and that of the character.
As Sesame Street is localized for some different markets that speak languages other than English, Kermit is often renamed. In Portugal, he is called Cocas, o Sapo (sapo means "toad"), and in Brazil, his name is similar: Caco, o Sapo. In most of Hispanic America, his name is la rana René (René the Frog), while in Spain, he is named Gustavo. In the Arabic version, he is known as Kamel, which is a common Arabic male name that means "perfect". In Hungary, he is called Breki (onomatopoetic).
Characterization and performers
Jim Henson originated the character in 1955 on his local television series, Sam and Friends. Henson himself described Kermit as "kind of easy-going, very likable...sometimes slightly a wiseguy." Frank Oz remarked that Kermit possesses a natural sense of leadership within the Muppets, explaining that "he has all these zany characters and a world around him and he tries to be the center and hold everything together...sometimes he gets too much and blows his top, but essentially he kind of goes with the flow." Brian Henson described his father's performance as Kermit as "coming out of his own personality—was a wry intelligence, a little bit of a naughtiness, but Kermit always loved everyone around and also loved a good prank."
Kermit has often been referred to as Henson's "soft-spoken alter-ego." Many of Henson's colleagues have confirmed how close and inseparable Jim and Kermit's personalities were. Henson's agent Bernie Brillstein has stated straightforwardly that "Kermit was Jim". Author Brian Jay Jones described the relationship accordingly: "The more Jim performed Kermit, the more the two of them seemed to become intertwined…it was becoming harder to tell where the frog ended and Jim began." Henson continued to perform the character until his death in 1990. Henson's last known performance as Kermit was for an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show to promote the television special The Muppets at Walt Disney World. Henson died twelve days after that appearance.
Following Henson's death, veteran Muppet performer Steve Whitmire was named Kermit's new performer. Whitmire claims that Henson had seemingly intended to pass on the role to him before he died, though it was Jane Henson and son Brian who had selected him after her father's death. Whitmire's first public performance as Kermit was at the end of the television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson in 1990. Whitmire explained that his main intent when he inherited Kermit, "was to make sure the character stayed the same and consistent, but didn't become stale and just a copy." Kermit's personality during Whitmire's tenure was widely described as more wholesome, lighthearted, and Pollyanna-ish than Henson's. Several critics of Whitmire's portrayal have come from the Henson family. Brian Henson stated that while Whitmire's performance was "sometimes excellent, and always pretty good", he also elaborated that "Kermit has, as a character, flattened out over time and has become too square and not as vital as it should have been." Cheryl Henson stated that Whitmire performed the character as a "bitter, angry, depressed, victim". He remained Kermit's principal performer until October 2016, when he was dismissed by The Muppets Studio. The Walt Disney Company (owner of The Muppets Studio) cited "unacceptable business conduct" as reason for the dismissal, while Whitmire claims the decision was made due to creative disagreements over Kermit's characterization and prolonged labor union negotiations that delayed his involvement in Muppet productions.
Disney announced that Matt Vogel would become Kermit's new performer on July 10, 2017. Vogel's first official appearance as Kermit was in a "Muppet Thought of the Week” YouTube video.
John Kennedy performed Kermit for Muppets Ahoy!, a 2006 Disney Cruise Line stage show (though Whitmire performed Kermit for the first few shows). Muppet performer Artie Esposito briefly performed Kermit in 2009 for a few personal appearances (an appearance on America's Got Talent, the MTV Video Music Awards, and at the 2009 D23 Expo). Voice actor Frank Welker provided the voice of Baby Kermit on the animated Saturday morning cartoon, Muppet Babies. He also provided the voice of an adult Kermit for a short-lived spin-off, Little Muppet Monsters. Matt Danner voices Baby Kermit on the 2018 reboot of Muppet Babies.
Character biography
A biography has been developed for Kermit the Frog as if he was an actual living performer rather than a puppet character. According to this fictional biography, he was born in Leland, Mississippi, alongside approximately 2,353 siblings, though a 2011 "interview" on The Ellen DeGeneres Show has him state that he was from the swamps of Louisiana.
As portrayed in the 2002 film Kermit's Swamp Years, at the age of 12, he was the first of his siblings to leave the swamp, and one of the first frogs to talk to humans. He is shown in the film encountering a 12-year-old Jim Henson (played by Christian Kriebel) for the first time.
According to The Muppet Movie, Kermit returned to the swamp, where a passing agent (Dom DeLuise) noted he had talent and, thus inspired, he headed to Hollywood, encountering the rest of the Muppets along the way. Together, they were given a standard "rich and famous" contract by Lew Lord (Orson Welles) of Wide World Studios and began their showbiz careers. In Before You Leap, Kermit again references encountering Jim Henson sometime after the events depicted in the course of The Muppet Movie and details their friendship and their partnership in the entertainment industry, crediting Henson as being the individual to whom he owes his fame. At some point after the events of The Muppet Movie, Kermit and the other Muppets begin The Muppet Show, and the characters remain together as a group, before starring in the other Muppet films and Muppets Tonight, with Kermit usually at the core of the stories as the lead protagonist. Kermit is shown in The Muppet Movie as stating that the events of the film are "approximately how it happened" when asked by his nephew Robin about how the Muppets got started.
Fozzie Bear is portrayed as Kermit's best friend—a fact reiterated by Kermit in Before You Leap—and the two were frequently seen together during sketches on The Muppet Show and in other Muppet-related media and merchandise.
On August 4, 2015, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy "announced" that they had ended their romantic relationship. On September 2, 2015, Kermit was stated to have found a new girlfriend, a pig named Denise, but around February 2016, Denise supposedly broke up with Kermit after almost six months together.
Performance
Kermit the Frog is a rather simple hand-rod Muppet, and is usually controlled by one puppeteer. His creator and original performer, Jim Henson, actually built Kermit's head around the size of his own hands (later builds of Kermit have extra padding inside the head to accommodate puppeteers whose hands were smaller than Henson's). The flexibility of the material use to make Kermit means the frog can pull off a wide range of expressions. For example, with a slight adjustment of their fingers, the puppeteer can make Kermit convincingly smile, frown, or act worried.
When it came to creating Kermit's voice, Henson actually took inspiration from an impression by Stan Freberg of Marlon Brando, one that can be heard on some of Freberg's comedy records, including vocals on his versions of "Sh-Boom" and "The Night Before Christmas". Over time, however, Henson's voice for the frog would evolve into an extension of his own natural voice.
Career
Kermit has been featured prominently on both The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. However, he had a prominent career before Sesame Streets debut in 1969, as he starred in Sam and Friends, and numerous Muppets made guest appearances on Today from 1961 and The Ed Sullivan Show from 1966.
Sesame Street
Kermit was one of the original main Muppet characters on Sesame Street. Closely identified with the show, Kermit usually appeared as a lecturer on simple topics, a straight man to another Muppet foil (usually Grover, Herry Monster or Cookie Monster), or a news reporter interviewing storybook characters for Sesame Street News. He sang many songs on the show, including "Bein' Green", and appeared in the 1998 video The Best of Kermit on Sesame Street.
Unlike the rest of the show's Muppets, Kermit was never any property of Sesame Workshop and has rarely been a part of the show's merchandise. When Sesame Workshop bought full ownership of its characters from The Jim Henson Company for $180 million, Kermit was excluded from the deal. The character now belongs to The Muppets Studio, a division of The Walt Disney Company. His first Sesame Street appearance since Disney ownership was in an Elmo's World segment in the show's 40th-season premiere on November 10, 2009. His most recent appearance was in the 2019 television special Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Celebration, where he performed "Bein' Green" with Elvis Costello.
With the Muppets
In The Muppet Show television series, Kermit was the central character, the showrunner, and the long-suffering stage manager of the theater show, trying to keep order amidst the chaos created by the other Muppets. Henson once claimed that Kermit's job on the Muppet Show was much like his own: "trying to get a bunch of crazies to actually get the job done." It was on this show that the running gag of Kermit being pursued by leading lady Miss Piggy developed.
On Muppets Tonight, Kermit was still a main character, although he was the producer rather than frontman. He appeared in many parody sketches such as NYPD Green, City Schtickers, Flippers, and The Muppet Odd Squad, as well as in the Psychiatrist's Office sketch.
Kermit also served as the mascot for The Jim Henson Company, until the sale of the Muppet characters to Disney. A Kermit puppet can be seen at the National Museum of American History.
Kermit appears in Muppet*Vision 3D, an attraction that opened in 1991 and continues to run presently at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The character was also formerly featured in the aforementioned attraction in Disney California Adventure Park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California until its closure in 2014. Kermit also appeared in The Muppets Present...Great Moments in American History at the Magic Kingdom from 2016 to 2020. He also appeared in two parades; Disney Stars and Motor Cars Parade which ran at Disney's Hollywood Studios from 2001 to 2008 and Disney's Honorary VoluntEars Cavalcade which was held during 2010 at the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland.
Filmography
Kermit the Frog has appeared in almost every Muppet production, as well as making guest appearances in other shows and movies.
Below is a list of his more well-known appearances:
Sam and Friends (1955–1961) (TV)
Sesame Street (1969–1990, 1996–2001, 2009) (TV)
Hey, Cinderella! (1969) (TV)
The Muppets on Puppets (1970) (TV)
The Frog Prince (1971) (TV)
The Muppet Musicians of Bremen (1972) (TV)
The Muppets Valentine Show (1974) (TV)
The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence (1975) (TV)
The Muppet Show (1976–1981) (TV)
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977) (TV)
The Muppet Movie (1979)
The Great Muppet Caper (1981)
The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
Muppet Babies (1984–1991) (TV)
Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird (1985)
The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years (1986) (TV)
The Christmas Toy (1986) (TV)
A Muppet Family Christmas (1987) (TV)
The Jim Henson Hour (1989) (TV)
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990) (TV)
The Muppets at Walt Disney World (1990) (TV)
The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson (1990) (TV)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) – Appearance as Bob Cratchit
Muppet Classic Theater (1994) (Direct-to-Video) – Appearance as King Midas and the King in Rumpelstiltskin.
Muppet Treasure Island (1996) – Appearance as Captain Abraham Smollett
Muppets Tonight (1996–1998) (TV)
Muppets from Space (1999)
The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon (2001) (TV)
Kermit's Swamp Years (2002) (Direct-to-Video)
It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) (TV)
Saturday Night Live (1975/76, 2004, 2011) (TV)
The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005) (TV) – Appearance as Himself and The Scarecrow
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007) (cameo)
Studio DC: Almost Live (2008) (TV)
A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (2008) (TV)
The Muppets (2011)
"30 Rock (2012) - Appearance as Himself in "My Whole Life Is Thunder"
Good Luck Charlie (2013) (TV) – Appearance as Himself in "Duncan Dream House"
Lady Gaga and the Muppets Holiday Spectacular (2013) (TV)
Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
The Muppets (2015–2016) (TV)
Muppet Babies (2018–present) (TV)
Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Celebration (2019) (TV)
Muppets Now (2020) (TV)
Amphibia (2020) (TV) – Appearance as the voice of Crumpet the Frog in "Swamp and Sensibility"
The Masked Singer (2021) (TV) – The Snail
Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021) (TV) – Appearance as Himself and a Ghost
Cultural impact
Accolades and commemorations
Kermit was awarded an honorary doctorate of Amphibious Letters on May 19, 1996, at Southampton College, New York, where he also gave a commencement speech. He is also the only "amphibian" to have had the honor of addressing the Oxford Union. A statue of Henson and Kermit was erected on the campus of Henson's alma mater, the University of Maryland, College Park in 2003.
Kermit was also given the honor of being the Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade in 1996. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has featured a Kermit balloon since 1977.
On November 14, 2002, Kermit the Frog received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star is located at 6801 Hollywood Blvd. Kermit has two stars on the Walk of Fame, the other as a member of the collective The Muppets.
On Kermit's 50th birthday in 2005, the United States Postal Service released a set of new stamps with photos of Kermit and some of his fellow Muppets on them. The background of the stamp sheet features a photo of a silhouetted Henson sitting in a window well, with Kermit sitting in his lap looking at him.
Kermit was also the grand marshal for Michigan State University's homecoming parade in 2006.
In 2013, the original Kermit puppet from Sam and Friends was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. for display in the pop culture gallery. In 2015, the Leland Chamber of Commerce in Leland, Mississippi opened a small museum containing puppets and memorabilia dedicated to Kermit.
Kermit's legacy is also deeply entrenched in the science community. One of the famous WP-3D Orion research platforms flown by the NOAA Hurricane Hunters is named after Kermit. The other is named after Miss Piggy. In 2015, the discovery of the Costa Rican glass frog Hyalinobatrachium dianae also attracted viral media attention due to the creature's perceived resemblance to Kermit, with researcher Brian Kubicki quoted as saying "I am glad that this species has ended up getting so much international attention, and in doing so it is highlighting the amazing amphibians that are native to Costa Rica and the need to continue exploring and studying the country's amazing tropical forests".
Guest television appearances
Kermit has made numerous guest appearances on popular television shows, including co-hosting individual episodes of a number of long-running talk shows; among other television media. On April 2, 1979, Kermit guest-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to promote The Muppet Movie. From 1983 to 1995, the French political satire show Le Bébête Show used copies of various Muppets to parody key political figures, and Kermit renamed "Kermitterrand", embodied President François Mitterrand. On May 21, 2018, Kermit and contestant Maddie Poppe performed "Rainbow Connection" live on American Idol.
A still photo of Kermit sitting in his Director's chair with his megaphone in his hand from The Muppet Show appeared on a technical difficulties telop graphic on Metromedia owned-and-operated station KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
As an April Fool's joke, Kermit hosted CNN's Larry King Live in 1994 and interviewed Hulk Hogan. Kermit was also a semi-regular during various incarnations of Hollywood Squares, with other Muppets such as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch also making appearances on the original Hollywood Squares.
In 2020, Kermit appeared on Monday Night Football with other Muppets characters as it was briefly rebranded "Muppet Night Football."
On March 10, 2021, Kermit was the first celebrity to be unmasked on the fifth season of The Masked Singer, having performed in costume as "Snail".
Merchandising
Jim Henson's characters, including the Muppets, have inspired merchandise internationally, with Chris Bensch, chief curator of Rochester, New York's The Strong National Museum of Play, reporting "There seems to have been a particular craze for Kermit the Frog in Japan," likely due to the "cuteness appeal". Baby Kermit plush toys became popular in the 1980s after the success of Muppet Babies. In 1991, one year after Jim Henson died, merchandise featuring Kermit and other Muppet characters was being sold at Disney theme parks, causing Henson Associates to file a lawsuit against Disney for copyright infringement. Henson alleged that the "counterfeit merchandise" falsely indicated that the characters belonged to Disney, although the latter company had the right to exercise use of the characters due to an earlier licensing agreement. The Henson Associates highlighted a T-shirt displaying Kermit, the Disney brand, and a copyright symbol. Disney representative Erwin Okun said the lawsuit was "outrageous" and "an unfortunate break with the legacy of a fine relationship with Disney that Jim Henson left behind". Disney later acquired the Muppets, and thusly, clothes, toys and souvenirs depicting Kermit and the Muppets continued to be sold at Disney theme parks and stores.
The Leland Chamber of Commerce's small Kermit-themed museum set out to preserve some of the dolls and merchandise. In 2016, The New Zealand Herald reported a hat featuring Kermit sipping Lipton tea, associated with the "But That's None of My Business" Internet meme, became a popular seller after basketball player LeBron James drew attention for wearing one.
Kermit in Internet culture
In March 2007, Sad Kermit, an unofficial parody, was uploaded to the website YouTube, showing a store-bought Kermit puppet performing a version of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" in a style similar to Johnny Cash's famous cover version. In contrast to the real Kermit character's usual family-friendly antics, the video shows the puppet engaging in drug abuse, smoking, alcoholism, performing oral sex on Rowlf the Dog, smashing a picture of Miss Piggy (with a breast exposed) and attempting suicide. The video became an Internet meme. The Victoria Times Colonist called it an "online sensation". The Chicago Sun-Times said it "puts the high in 'Hi-ho!'" The London Free Press said "Sad Kermit is in a world of pain". The Houston Press described it as the "world's most revolting web phenomenon". SF Weekly described the unauthorized video as "ironic slandering". Clips have been featured on the Canadian television series The Hour, where host George Stroumboulopoulos speculated that the Kermit version of "Hurt" was inspired by the Cash version rather than that of Nine Inch Nails.
Kermit has also appeared in a popular meme in which he is shown sipping tea, "one used when you sassily point something out, and then slyly back away, claiming that it's not [your] business". The photo is taken from "Be More Kermit," a Lipton advertisement that aired in 2014, and was adapted into the "But That's None of My Business" meme by African American comedians on the Tumblr blog Kermit the Snitch, making appearances on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Charles Pulliam-Moore of the TV station Fusion praised "But That's None of My Business" as "a symbol for the comedic brilliance born out of black communities on the internet," but Stephanie Hayes of Bustle magazine criticized the memes as racist and obscene.
In 2016, a Good Morning America post on Twitter referred to the "But That's None of My Business" meme as "Tea Lizard", becoming the subject of viral online derision. New York magazine replied that, "Kermit is a frog. A frog is an amphibian. A lizard is a reptile. It's just so insulting. Beyond a frog and a lizard both being clearly ectothermic, they couldn't be any more different. Not all green things are the same, you ignorant bastards". Popular Science also addressed the misnomer, writing "Frogs, which are amphibians, have quite a few significant differences from reptiles in how they breathe, their life cycles, whether they have scales or not... there's a lot to absorb here".
In November 2016, a new meme surfaced of Kermit talking to a hooded version of himself which represents the self and its dark inner thoughts. It involves captioning of a screenshot taken from the Muppets Most Wanted movie of Kermit and Constantine looking at each other. In the meme, Constantine is supposed to represent a Sith Lord from Star Wars.
References
External links
Kermit the Frog's character profile at Disney.com
Kermit's commencement address at Southampton College in 1996
Birthplace of the Frog: An Exhibit of Jim Henson's Delta Boyhood
(as himself)
Kermit the Frog on IMDb
Fictional characters from Mississippi
Television characters introduced in 1955
Mascots introduced in 1955
Fictional frogs and toads
Fictional producers
Fictional reporters
Fictional singers
Fictional string musicians
Frog mascots
Television mascots
Corporate mascots
Sesame Street Muppet characters
The Muppets characters
Internet memes
Film and television memes | [
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17031 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHAD | KHAD | Khadamat-e Aetla'at-e Dawlati (Pashto/ literally "State Intelligence Agency", also known as "State Information Services" or "Committee of State Security". Usually referred to by the acronym KHAD), was the main security agency and intelligence agency of Afghanistan. It functioned as the secret police when Afghanistan was occupied by the Soviet Union, during the Soviet–Afghan War.
History
Pre-KHAD
Afghanistan had an intelligence agency known as the Istikhbarat or Intelligence. However, observers have stated it was incompetent with Afghan leaders since it was ineffective as they preferred to use their personal connections instead.
After the events of the Saur Revolution, the PDPA established AGSA (Da Afghanistan da Gato da Saatane Adara or Afghan Agency for Safeguarding National Interest) as its domestic/foreign intelligence agency with Assadullah Sarwari serving as its first director. Sarwari was known for torturing anyone who disagreed with the PDPA. AGSA operations eventually led to an anti-PDPA insurgency.
In September 1979, AGSA was replaced with KAM (Komite-ye Amniyat-e Melli or National Security Committee) under Hafizullah Amin's direction. Several AGSA officials were either placed under surveillance or were arrested.
Aziz Ahmed Akbari was called in to take over from Sarwari when he took refuge in the Soviet Embassy. After two months, Assadullah Amin was appointed by his uncle to lead KAM. KAM did not last long after the Soviets officially entered Afghanistan in 1979.
KHAD establishment
KHAD was created with 1,200 personnel who took over intelligence responsibilities from KAM in December 1979 with most of them being pro-Parchams. It was initially headed by Mohammad Najibullah, alongside Dr.Baha. After Soviet troops were deployed in Afghanistan, KHAD was expanded with Moscow's assistance, which includes sophisticated torture equipment. Najibullah took the opportunity of his post to rise within the PDPA before Major-General Ghulam
Faruq Yaqubi took over KHAD duties in November 1985.
Soviet advisors were known to work alongside KHAD personnel and major decisions are not made without their input. In some instances, KHAD agents accompanied KGB Kaskad (Cascade) operators on anti-mujahideen infiltration ops.
The agency's manpower increased from 1,200 to 25,000 or 30,000 personnel.
KHAD was able to turn some mujahideen groups to work with the PDPA by providing incentives such as small arms or money in return for their loyalty by attending loya jirgas and other pro-PDPA activities. They've worked with the KGB to fund and assist Murtaza Bhutto for his involvement in the hijacking of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 326 and with Baluchistan and Sind dissidents, according to files obtained by Vasili Mitrokhin from KGB files. KHAD's infiltration of various mujahideen groups did help to contribute to some of the infighting.
Post-KHAD
On 9 January 1986, KHAD was changed with its name to WAD (Wazarat-e Amaniat-e Dowlati or Ministry of State Security). It was reported that WAD was placed in charge of controlling the Kabul Garrison. Its budget and size were expanded.
In March 1990, Lieutenant-General Shahnawaz Tanai attempted a coup, which was suppressed by WAD-led forces.
During the civil war in the 1990s, the Northern Alliance recruited ex-KHAD officers and agents to act as their moles operating behind Taliban territory. The Taliban also had ex-KHAD officers and agents among their informants.
Recruitment
Potential KHAD recruits have to be known PDPA members.
Training
Kaskad operators were responsible for training KHAD personnel. Others were trained at the KGB School at Balashikha, Uzbekistan.
Structure
KHAD
KHAD was known to have the following organizational structures in place:
Headquarters
Directorate of Administration and Finance
Directorate of Cadre / Personnel
Directorate of Interrogation
Directorate of Intelligence and Afghan Diplomatic Missions Abroad
Directorate of Post and Parcels
Directorate for Operative Activities for Internal Control of KhAD Personnel
Directorate for Economy and Anti Corruption
Directorate for Counter Rebellion: Two Sub-Directorates covering 16 provinces each. Known to have three military battalions based in Kabul to assist with arrests and other investigative work.
Directorate for Surveillance of Foreign and National Suspects
Directorate of the Press and Educational Institutions
Directorate for the Protection of the Government and its Representatives
Directorate of Propaganda and Counter-Propaganda
Directorate of Telecommunications and Decoding
Directorate for Activities Linked to Infiltration of Mujaheddin
Directorate of Logistics
Directorate for Agents and Informers
Directorate of Analysis and Reporting
Military KhAD: Embedded in the Ministry of Defense to prevent infiltration by mujahideen groups.
Police KhAD: Embedded in the Ministry of Interior to prevent infiltration by mujahideen groups.
Provincial
Administration and Finance
Cadre / Personnel Directorate
Surveillance of foreign and national suspects
Interrogation
Post and Parcels
Operative activities for internal control of KhAD personnel
Propaganda and counter-propaganda
Economy and Anti-Corruption
Press and Educational institutions
Logistics
Counter-Rebellion: 2 Sub-Directorates covering 16 Provinces each
Protection of the government and its representatives
Telecommunication and Decoding
Activities linked to infiltration of Mujaheddin
Agents and Informer Unit
Analysis and Reporting
City District Offices
Rural District Offices
Military and Police KhAD within the respective ministries' structures
While not part of the KHAD structure, Mufreza militias, recruited from tribal and anti-government militias who agreed to work with them, are finally supported by the agency.
WAD
The WAD was known to have the following organizational structures in place:
Directorate-General for Security: Ensure WAD's internal/external security.
Directorate-General for Military Security: Successor of Military KHAD forces.
Directorate-General for the Interior: Successor of Civilian KHAD activities on monitoring anti-government activities in and out of Afghanistan.
Human rights abuses
KHAD was also accused of human rights abuses in the mid-1980s. These included the use of torture, the use of predetermined "show trials" to dispose of political prisoners, and widespread arbitrary arrest and detention. Secret trials and the execution of prisoners without trial were also common.
It was especially active and aggressive in the urban centers, especially in Kabul. Organizations such as Amnesty International continued to publish detailed reports of KHAD's use of torture and of inhumane conditions in the country's prisons and jails.
KHAD also operated eight detention centers in the capital, which were located at KHAD headquarters, at the Ministry of the Interior headquarters, and at a location known as the Central Interrogation Office. The most notorious of the Communist-run detention centers was Pul-e-Charkhi prison, where 27,000 political prisoners are thought to have been murdered. Recently mass graves of executed prisoners have been uncovered dating back to the Soviet era.
On 29 February 2000, when The Netherlands had no diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a disputed report on the involvement of the KHAD on human rights abuses, partly based on secret sources, allegedly biased political sycophants from the side of the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI. Some of its conclusions were already published in the Dutch press before the official publication of the full report. This report, quoted frequently in the cases of Afghan asylum seekers to support the exclusion ground of article 1F of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in the national refugee policy of the Netherlands, was also published in an English translation on 26 April 2001. In 2008, another report on this matter was published by the UNHCR. In this report, some conclusions of the Dutch report were contested.
On 14 October 2005, the District Court in the Hague convicted two high-ranking KhAD officers who sought asylum in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Hesamuddin Hesam and Habibullah Jalalzoy were found guilty of complicity to torture and violations of the laws and customs of war, committed in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Hesam was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. He was the head of the military intelligence service (KhAD-e-Nezamy) and deputy minister of the Ministry of State Security (WAD). Jalalzoy was the head of the unit investigations and interrogations within the military intelligence of the KhAD. He was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment.
On 29 January 2007, the Dutch appeal court upheld the sentences. The judgements were confirmed by the Dutch Supreme Court on 10 July 2008.
On 25 June 2007, the District Court in the Hague acquitted another senior KhAD officer. General Abdullah Faqirzada was one of the deputy heads of the KhAD-e-Nezamy from 1980 until 1987. Although the court held it plausible that Faqirzada was closely involved with the human rights abuses in the military branch of the KhAD, it concluded there was no evidence for his individual involvement nor his command responsibility for the specific crimes the charge was based upon. On 16 July 2009, the Dutch appeal court upheld the acquittal.
Directors of KHAD and its predecessors
Legacy
The National Directorate of Security is treated as the successor of KHAD.
Notes
References
Bibliography
Defunct Afghan intelligence agencies
Collaborators with the Soviet Union
Secret police
Afghanistan–Soviet Union relations | [
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17034 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protea%20cynaroides | Protea cynaroides | Protea cynaroides, also called the king protea, is a flowering plant. It is a distinctive member of Protea, having the largest flower head in the genus. The species is also known as giant protea, honeypot or king sugar bush. It is widely distributed in the southwestern and southern parts of South Africa in the fynbos region.
The king protea is the national flower of South Africa. It also is the flagship of the Protea Atlas Project, run by the South African National Botanical Institute.
The king protea has several colour forms and horticulturists have recognized 81 garden varieties, some of which have injudiciously been planted in its natural range. In some varieties the pink of the flower and red borders of leaves are replaced by a creamy yellow. This unusual flower has a long vase life in flower arrangements, and makes for an excellent dried flower.
Protea cynaroides is adapted to survive wildfires by its thick underground stem, which contains many dormant buds; these will produce the new growth after the fire.
Taxonomy
Protea cynaroides is a species of protea in the huge family Proteaceae. The family comprises about 80 genera with about 1600 species. It has Gondwanan distribution, which means that it is mainly spread across the Southern Hemisphere, from Southern Africa, across to Australia, to South America, although certain species are also found in equatorial Africa, India, southern Asia and Oceania as well.
Protea cynaroides is further placed within the subfamily Proteoideae, which is found mainly in Southern Africa. This subfamily is defined as those species having cluster roots, solitary ovules and indehiscent fruits. Proteoideae is further divided into four tribes: Conospermeae, Petrophileae, Proteae and Leucadendreae. The genus Protea, and hence P. cynaroides, is placed under the tribe Proteae.
Etymology
The name of the plant family Proteaceae as well as the genus Protea, both to which P. cynaroides belongs to, derive from the name of the Greek god Proteus, a deity that was able to change between many forms. This is an appropriate image, seeing as both the family and the genus are known for their astonishing variety and diversity of flowers and leaves.
The specific epithet cynaroides refers to the artichoke-like appearance of the flower-heads: the artichoke belongs to the genus Cynara.
Description
P. cynaroides is a woody shrub with thick stems and large dark green, glossy leaves. Most plants are one metre in height when mature, but may vary according to locality and habitat from in height. The "flowers" of P. cynaroides are actually composite flower heads (termed an inflorescence) with a collection of flowers in the centre, surrounded by large colourful bracts, from about in diameter. Large, vigorous plants produce six to ten flower heads in one season, although some exceptional plants can produce up to forty flower heads on one plant. The colour of the bracts varies from a creamy white to a deep crimson, but the soft pale pink bracts with a silvery sheen are the most prized.
Ecology
Protea cynaroides grows in a harsh environment with dry, hot summers and wet, cold winters. Several adaptions include tough, leathery leaves, which helps to prevent excessive loss of moisture, and a large taproot which penetrates deep into the soil to reach underground moisture. Like most other Proteaceae, P. cynaroides has proteoid roots, roots with dense clusters of short lateral rootlets that form a mat in the soil just below the leaf litter. These enhance solubilisation of nutrients, thus allowing nutrient uptake in the low-nutrient, phosphorus-deficient soils of its native fynbos habitat.
The flowers are fed at by a range of nectarivorous birds, mainly sunbirds and sugarbirds, including the orange-breasted sunbird (Anthobaphes violacea), southern double-collared sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus), malachite sunbird (Nectarinia famosa), and the Cape sugarbird (Promerops cafer). In order to reach the nectar, the bird must push its bill into the inflorescence. As it does so, its bill and face gets brushed with pollen, thereby allowing for possible pollination.
Along with birds, a host of insects are attracted to the flowerhead, such as bees, for example the Cape honeybee, and various beetle species such as rove beetles and the beetles of the huge family Scarabaeidae such as the protea beetle Trichostetha fascicularis and monkey beetles.
Like many other Protea species, P. cynaroides is adapted to an environment in which bushfires are essential for reproduction and regeneration. Most Protea species can be placed in one of two broad groups according to their response to fire: reseeders are killed by fire, but fire also triggers the release of their canopy seed bank, thus promoting recruitment of the next generation; resprouters survive fire, resprouting from a lignotuber or, more rarely, epicormic buds protected by thick bark. P. cynaroides is a resprouter as it shoots up new stems from buds in its thick underground stem after a fire.
Sport
The king protea is the national flower of South Africa and as such lends its name to the national cricket team, whose nickname is "the Proteas" In the early 1990s there was a political debate as to how and if the flower should be incorporated onto the national rugby teams shirts, perhaps replacing the controversial springbok.
Gallery
References
External links
Protea cynaroides info on PlantZAfrica.com - from the South African National Biodiversity Institute
cynaroides
Flora of the Cape Provinces
Garden plants of Southern Africa
National symbols of South Africa | [
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17035 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantele | Kantele | A kantele () or kannel () is a traditional Finnish and Karelian plucked string instrument (chordophone) belonging to the south east Baltic box zither family known as the Baltic psaltery along with Estonian kannel, Latvian kokles, Lithuanian kanklės and Russian gusli.
Construction
Small kantele
Modern instruments with 15 or fewer strings are generally more closely modeled on traditional shapes, and form a category of instrument known as small kantele, in contrast to the modern concert kantele.
The oldest forms of kantele have five or six horsehair strings and a wooden body carved from one piece; more modern instruments have metal strings and often a body made from several pieces. The traditional kantele has neither bridge nor nut, the strings run directly from the tuning pegs to a metal bar (varras) set into wooden brackets (ponsi). Though not acoustically efficient, this construction is part of the distinctive sound of the instrument.
The most typical and traditional tuning of the five-string small kantele is just intonation arrived at via five-limit tuning, often in Dmajor or Dminor. This occurs especially if a kantele is played as a solo instrument or as a part of a folk music ensemble. The major triad is then formed by D1–F1–A1. In modern variants of small kantele, there are often semitone levers for some strings. The most typical lever for a five-string kantele is a switch between F1 and F1, which allows most folk music to be played without retuning. Larger versions of the small kantele often have additional semitone levers, allowing a more varied selection of music to be played without retuning.
Concert kantele
A modern concert kantele can have up to 40 strings. The playing positions of the concert kantele and the small kantele are reversed: for a small kantele, the longest, low-pitched strings are farthest away from the musician's body, whilst for a concert kantele this side of the instrument is nearest, and the short, high-pitched strings are the farthest away. Concert versions have a switch mechanism (similar to semitone levers on a modern folk harp) for making sharps and flats, an innovation introduced by Paul Salminen in the 1920s.
Playing
The kantele has a distinctive bell-like sound. The Finnish kantele generally has a diatonic tuning, though small kanteles with between 5 and 15 strings are often tuned to a gapped mode, missing a seventh and with the lowest pitched strings tuned to a fourth below the tonic, as a drone. Players hold the kantele in their laps or on a small table. There are two main playing techniques, either plucking the strings with the fingers or strumming unstopped strings (sometimes with a matchstick). Small kanteles and concert kanteles have different, though related, repertoires.
Music
There have been strong developments for the kantele in Finland since the mid-20th century, starting with the efforts of modern players such as Martti Pokela in the 1950s and 1960s. Education for playing the instrument starts in schools and music institutes up to conservatories and the Sibelius Academy, the only music university in Finland and the site of significant doctoral research into traditional, western classical and electronic music. A Finnish luthiery, Koistinen Kantele, has also developed an electric kantele, employing pickups similar to those on electric guitars, which has gained popularity amongst Finnish heavy metal musicians such as Amorphis. American harpist Sylvan Grey has recorded two albums of Kantele music featuring her own compositions.
Legendary history
In Finland's national epic, Kalevala, the mage Väinämöinen makes the first kantele from the jawbone of a giant pike and a few hairs from Hiisi's stallion (, excerpt lyrics). The music it makes draws all the forest creatures near to wonder at its beauty.
Later, after grieving at the loss of his kantele, Väinämöinen makes another one from birch, strung with the hair of a willing maiden, and its magic proves equally profound. It is the gift the eternal mage leaves behind when he departs Kaleva at the advent of Christianity.
See also
Psaltery
:Category:Kantele players
References
External links
The Kantele Traditions of Finland. Carl Rahkonen, PhD ethnomusicology thesis. Indiana University Bloomington, 1989
Kantele.net
Baltic psaltery
Finnish musical instruments
National symbols of Finland | [
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17037 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumquat | Kumquat | Kumquats (; , gāmgāt in Cantonese, jīnjú in Standard Mandarin), or cumquats in Australian English, are a group (Citrus japonica) of small fruit-bearing trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae. They were previously classified as forming the now-historical genus Fortunella, or placed within Citrus, .
The edible fruit closely resembles the orange (Citrus sinensis) in color and shape but is much smaller, being approximately the size of a large olive. Kumquat is a fairly cold-hardy citrus.
Etymology
The English name "kumquat" derives from the Cantonese kamkwat ().
Origin
The kumquat plant is native to Southern China. The earliest historical reference to kumquats appears in Imperial literature from the 12th century. They have long been cultivated in other parts of East Asia (Japan and Taiwan), South Asia (India), and Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines). They were introduced to Europe in 1846 by Robert Fortune, collector for the London Horticultural Society, and shortly thereafter were taken to North America.
Description
They are slow-growing evergreen shrubs or short trees that stand tall, with dense branches, sometimes bearing small thorns. The leaves are dark glossy green, and the flowers are white, similar to other citrus flowers, and can be borne singly or clustered within the leaves' axils. Depending on size, the kumquat tree can produce hundreds or even thousands of fruits each year.
Varieties
Citrus taxonomy is complicated and controversial. Different systems place different types of kumquat in different species, or unite them into as few as two species. Historically they were viewed as falling within the genus Citrus, but the Swingle system of citrus taxonomy elevated them to their own genus, Fortunella. Recent phylogenetic analysis suggests they do indeed fall within Citrus. Swingle divided the kumquats into two subgenera, the Protocitrus, containing the primitive Hong Kong kumquat, and Eufortunella, comprising the round, oval kumquat, Meiwa kumquats, to which Tanaka added two others, the Malayan kumquat and the Jiangsu kumquat. Chromosomal analysis suggested that Swingle's Eufortunella represent a single 'true' species, while Tanaka's additional species were revealed to be likely hybrids of Fortunella with other Citrus, so-called xCitrofortunella. One recent genomic analysis concluded there was only one true species of kumquat, but the analysis did not include the Hong Kong variety seen as a distinct species in all earlier analyses. A recent review concluded that genomic data were insufficient to reach a definitive conclusion on which kumquat cultivars represented distinct species.
Round kumquat
The round kumquat, Marumi kumquat or Morgani kumquat (retaining the name Citrus japonica or Fortunella japonica when kumquats are divided into multiple species), is an evergreen tree that produces edible golden-yellow fruit. The fruit is small and usually spherical but can be oval shaped. The peel has a sweet flavor, but the fruit has a distinctly sour center. The fruit can be eaten cooked but is mainly used to make marmalades, jellies, and other spreads. It is grown in Luxembourg and can be used in bonsai cultivation. The plant symbolizes good luck in China and other Asian countries, where it is often kept as a houseplant and given as a gift during the Lunar New Year. Round kumquats are more commonly cultivated than other species due to their high cold tolerance.
Oval kumquat
The oval kumquat or Nagami kumquat (Citrus margarita or Fortunella margarita if dividing Eufortunella kumquats into separate species) is ovoid in shape and typically eaten whole, skin and all. The inside is still quite sour, but the skin has a very sweet flavour, so when eaten together an unusual tart-sweet, refreshing flavour is produced. The fruit ripens mid- to late winter and always crops very heavily, creating a spectacular display against the dark green foliage. The tree tends to be much smaller and dwarf in nature, making it ideal for pots and occasionally bonsai cultivation.
The 'Centennial Variegated' kumquat cultivar arose spontaneously from the oval kumquat. It produces a greater proportion of fruit to peel than the oval kumquat, and the fruit are rounder and sometimes necked. Fruit are distinguishable by their variegation in color, exhibiting bright green and yellow stripes, and by its lack of thorns.
Meiwa kumquat
The Meiwa kumquat (Citrus crassifolia or Fortunella crassifolia) was brought to Japan from China at the end of the 19th century, it has seedy oval fruits and thick leaves, and was characterized as a different species by Swingle. Its fruit is typically eaten skin and all.
Hong Kong kumquat
The Hong Kong kumquat (Citrus hindsii or Fortunella hindsii) produces only pea-sized bitter and acidic fruit with very little pulp and large seeds. It is primarily grown as an ornamental plant, though it is also found in southern China growing in the wild. Not only is it the most primitive of the kumquats, but with the kumquats being the most primitive citrus, Swingle described it as the closest to the ancestral species from which all citrus evolved. While the wild Hong Kong kumquat is tetraploid, there is a commercial diploid variety, the Golden Bean kumquat with slightly larger fruit.
Jiangsu kumquat
The Jiangsu kumquat or Fukushu kumquat (Citrus obovata or Fortunella obovata) bears edible fruit that can be eaten raw, as well as made into jelly and marmalade. The fruit can be round or bell-shaped and is bright orange when fully ripe. The plant can be distinguished from other kumquats by its distinctly round leaves. It is typically grown for its edible fruit and as an ornamental plant; it cannot withstand frost, however, unlike the round kumquat which has a high cold tolerance. These kumquats are often seen near the Yuvraj section of the Nayak Province. Chromosomal analysis showed this variety to be a likely hybrid.
Malayan kumquat
The Malayan kumquat (Fortunella polyandra or Tanaka's Fortunella swinglei - in Citrus it would be C. x swinglei), from the Malay Peninsula where it is known as the "hedge lime" (limau pagar), is another hybrid, perhaps a limequat. It has a thin peel on larger fruit compared to other kumquats.
Cultivation and uses
Kumquats are much hardier than citrus plants such as oranges. The Nagami kumquat requires a hot summer, ranging from 25 °C to 38 °C (77 °F to 100 °F), but can withstand frost down to about without injury.
The fruit is usually consumed whole with its peel and is sometimes used in fruit salads.
In cultivation in the UK, Citrus japonica has gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit (confirmed 2017).
Propagation and pollination
Kumquats do not grow well from seeds and so are vegetatively propagated by using rootstock of another citrus fruit, air layering, or cuttings.
Composition
The essential oil of the kumquat peel contains much of the aroma of the fruit, and is composed principally of limonene, which makes up around 93% of the total. Besides limonene and alpha-pinene (0.34%), both of which are considered monoterpenes, the oil is unusually rich (0.38% total) in sesquiterpenes such as α-bergamotene (0.021%), caryophyllene (0.18%), α-humulene (0.07%) and α-muurolene (0.06%), and these contribute to the spicy and woody flavor of the fruit. Carbonyl compounds make up much of the remainder, and these are responsible for much of the distinctive flavor. These compounds include esters such as isopropyl propanoate (1.8%) and terpinyl acetate (1.26%); ketones such as carvone (0.175%); and a range of aldehydes such as citronellal (0.6%) and 2-methylundecanal. Other oxygenated compounds include nerol (0.22%) and Trans-lialool oxide (0.15%).
Hybrids
Hybrid forms of the kumquat include the following:
Calamansi: mandarin orange x kumquat
Citrangequat: citrange x kumquat
Limequat: key lime x kumquat
Orangequat: Satsuma mandarin x kumquat
Procimequat: limequat x kumquat
Sunquat: Meyer lemon (?) x kumquat
Yuzuquat: yuzu x kumquat
Gallery
See also
Kumquat Festival
References
Further reading
Burkill, I. H. (1931). An enumeration of the species of Paramignya, Atalantia and Citrus, found in Malaya. Gard. Bull. Straits Settlem. 5: 212–220.
Mabberley, D. J. (1998). Australian Citreae with notes on other Aurantioideae (Rutaceae). Telopea 7 (4): 333–344. Available online (pdf).
External links
Citrus
Flora of temperate Asia
Flora of tropical Asia
Fruits originating in East Asia
Garden plants of Asia
Ornamental trees
Fruit trees | [
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17038 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyanite | Kyanite | Kyanite is a typically blue aluminosilicate mineral, found in aluminium-rich metamorphic pegmatites and sedimentary rock. It is the high pressure polymorph of andalusite and sillimanite, and the presence of kyanite in metamorphic rocks generally indicates metamorphism deep in the Earth's crust. Kyanite is also known as disthene or cyanite.
Kyanite is strongly anisotropic, in that its hardness varies depending on its crystallographic direction. In kyanite, this anisotropism can be considered an identifying characteristic, along with its characteristic blue color. Its name comes from the same origin as that of the color cyan, being derived from the Ancient Greek word κύανος. This is generally rendered into English as kyanos or kuanos and means "dark blue".
Kyanite is used as a raw material in the manufacture of ceramics and abrasives, and it is an important index mineral used by geologists to trace metamorphic zones.
Properties
Kyanite is an aluminum silicate mineral, with chemical formula . It is typically patchy blue in color, though it can range from pale to deep blue and can also be gray or white or, infrequently, light green. It typically forms sprays of bladed crystals, but is less commonly found as distinct euhedral (well-shaped) crystals, which are particularly prized by collectors. It has a perfect {100} cleavage plane, parallel to the long axis of the crystal, and a second good cleavage plane {010} that is at an angle of 79 degrees to the {100} clevage plane. Kyanite also shows a parting on {001} at an angle of about 85 degrees to the long axis of the crystal. Cleavage surfaces typically display a pearly luster. Crystals are slightly flexible.
Kyanite's elongated, columnar crystals are usually a good first indication of the mineral, as well as its color (when the specimen is blue). Associated minerals are useful as well, especially the presence of the polymorphs of staurolite, which occur frequently with kyanite. However, the most useful characteristic in identifying kyanite is its anisotropism. If one suspects a specimen to be kyanite, verifying that it has two distinctly different hardness values on perpendicular axes is a key to identification; it has a hardness of 5.5 parallel to {001} and 7 parallel to {100}. Thus, a steel needle will easily scratch a kyanite crystal parallel to its long axis, but the crystal is impervious to being scratched by a steel needle perpendicular to the long axis.
Structure
The kyanite structure can be visualized as a distorted face centered cubic lattice of oxygen ions, with aluminium ions occupying 40% of the octahedral sites and silicon occupying 10% of the tetrahedral sites. The aluminium octahedra form chains along the length of the crystal, half of which are straight and half of which are zigzag, with silica tetrahedra linking the chains together. There is no direct linkage between silica tetraheda, making kyanite a member of the nesosilicate class of silicate minerals.
Occurrence
Kyanite occurs in biotite gneiss, mica schist, and hornfels, which are metamorphic rocks formed at high pressure during regional metamorphism of a protolith rich in aluminium (a pelitic protolith). Kyanite is also occasionally found in granite and pegmatite
and associated quartz veins and is infrequently found in eclogites. It occurs as detrital grains in sedimentary rocks, although it tends to weather rapidly.
It occurs associated with staurolite, andalusite, sillimanite, talc, hornblende, gedrite, mullite and corundum.
Kyanite is one of three common minerals having the composition . Minerals with identical compositions but distinct crystal structure are called polymorphs. The other polymorphs with identical composition to kyanite are andalusite and sillimanite. Kyanite is the polymorph most stable at high pressure, while andalusite is the most stable at lower temperature and pressure and sillimanite is the most stable at higher temperature and lower pressure, with the three polymorphs equally stable at the triple point near 4.2 kbar and . This makes the presence of kyanite in a metamorphic rock an indication of metamorphism at high pressure.
Kyanite is often used as an index mineral to define and trace a metamorphic zone that was subject to a particular degree of metamorphism at great depth in the crust. For example, G. M. Barrow defined kyanite zones and sillimanite zones in his pioneering work on the mineralogy of metamorphic rocks. Barrow was characterizing a region of Scotland that had experienced regional metamorphism at depth. By contrast, the metamorphic zones surrounding the Fanad Pluton of Ireland, which formed by contact metamorphism at a shallower depth in the crust, include andalusite and sillimanite zones but no kyanite zone.
Kyanite is potentially stable at low temperature and pressure. However, under these conditions, the reactions that produces kyanite, such as
never take place, and hydrous aluminosilicate minerals such as muscovite, pyrophyllite, or kaolinite are found instead of kyanite.
Bladed crystals of kyanite are not uncommon, but individual euhedral crystals are prized by collectors. Kyanite occurs in Manhattan schist, formed under extreme pressure as a result of a continental collision during the assembly of the supercontinent of Pangaea. It is also found in pegmatites of the Appalachian Mountains and in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Splendid specimens are found at Pizzo Forno in Switzerland.
Uses
Kyanite is used primarily in refractory and ceramic products, including porcelain plumbing and dishware. It is also used in electronics, electrical insulators and abrasives.
At temperatures above 1100 °C kyanite decomposes into mullite and vitreous silica via the following reaction: 3(Al2O3·SiO2) → 3Al2O3·2SiO2 + SiO2. This transformation results in an expansion. Mullitized kyanite is used to manufacture refractory materials.
Kyanite has been used as a semiprecious gemstone, which may display cat's eye chatoyancy, though this use is limited by its anisotropism and perfect cleavage. Color varieties include recently discovered orange kyanite from Tanzania. The orange color is due to inclusion of small amounts of manganese (Mn3+) in the structure.
References
Specific citations
General references
Mineral Galleries
External links
Gemstones
Aluminium minerals
Nesosilicates
Triclinic minerals
Industrial minerals
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17042 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas%E2%80%93Nebraska%20Act | Kansas–Nebraska Act | The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 () was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce. Douglas introduced the bill intending to open up new lands to develop and facilitate the construction of a transcontinental railroad, but the Kansas–Nebraska Act is most notable for effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise, stoking national tensions over slavery, and contributing to a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas".
The United States had acquired vast amounts of land in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and since the 1840s Douglas had sought to establish a territorial government in a portion of the Louisiana Purchase that was still unorganized. Douglas's efforts were stymied by Senator David Rice Atchison and other Southern leaders who refused to allow the creation of territories that banned slavery; slavery would have been banned because the Missouri Compromise outlawed slavery in the territory north of latitude 36°30' north (except for Missouri). To win the support of Southerners like Atchison, Pierce and Douglas agreed to back the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, with the status of slavery instead decided based on "popular sovereignty". Under popular sovereignty, the citizens of each territory, rather than Congress, would determine whether slavery would be allowed.
Douglas's bill to repeal the Missouri Compromise and organize Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory won approval by a wide margin in the Senate, but faced stronger opposition in the House of Representatives. Though Northern Whigs strongly opposed the bill, the bill passed the House with the support of almost all Southerners and some Northern Democrats. After the passage of the act, pro- and anti-slavery elements flooded into Kansas to establish a population that would vote for or against slavery, resulting in a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas". Douglas and Pierce hoped that popular sovereignty would help bring an end to the national debate over slavery, but the Kansas–Nebraska Act outraged Northerners. The division between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces caused by the Act was the death knell for the ailing Whig Party, which broke apart after the Act. Its Northern remnants would give rise to the anti-slavery Republican Party. The Act, and the tensions over slavery it inflamed, were key events leading to the American Civil War.
Background
In his 1853 inaugural address, President Franklin Pierce expressed hope that the Compromise of 1850 had settled the debate over the issue of slavery in the territories. The compromise had allowed slavery in Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory, which had been acquired in the Mexican–American War. The Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery in territories north of the 36°30′ parallel, remained in place for the other U.S. territories acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, including a vast unorganized territory often referred to as "Nebraska". As settlers poured into the unorganized territory, and commercial and political interests called for a transcontinental railroad through the region, pressure mounted for the organization of the eastern parts of the unorganized territory. Though the organization of the territory was required to develop the region, an organization bill threatened to re-open the contentious debates over slavery in the territories that had taken place during and after the Mexican–American War.
The topic of a transcontinental railroad had been discussed since the 1840s. While there were debates over the specifics, especially the route to be taken, there was a public consensus that such a railroad should be built by private interests, financed by public land grants. In 1845, Stephen A. Douglas, then serving in his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives, had submitted an unsuccessful plan to organize the Nebraska Territory formally, as the first step in building a railroad with its eastern terminus in Chicago. Railroad proposals were debated in all subsequent sessions of Congress with cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Quincy, Memphis, and New Orleans competing to be the jumping-off point for the construction.
Several proposals in late 1852 and early 1853 had strong support, but they failed because of disputes over whether the railroad would follow a northern or a southern route. In early 1853, the House of Representatives passed a bill 107 to 49 to organize the Nebraska Territory in the land west of Iowa and Missouri. In March, the bill moved to the Senate Committee on Territories, which was headed by Douglas. Missouri Senator David Atchison announced that he would support the Nebraska proposal only if slavery were to be permitted. While the bill was silent on this issue, slavery would have been prohibited under the Missouri Compromise in the territory north of 36°30' latitude and west of the Mississippi River. Other Southern senators were as inflexible as Atchison. By a vote of 23 to 17, the Senate voted to table the motion, with every senator from the states south of Missouri voting to table.
During the Senate adjournment, the issues of the railroad and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise became entangled in Missouri politics, as Atchison campaigned for re-election against the forces of Thomas Hart Benton. Atchison was maneuvered into choosing between antagonizing the state's railroad interests or its slaveholders. Finally, he took the position that he would rather see Nebraska "sink in hell" before he would allow it to be overrun by free soilers.
Representatives then generally found lodging in boarding houses when they were in the nation's capital to perform their legislative duties. Atchison shared lodgings in an F Street house shared by the leading Southerners in Congress. He himself was the Senate's President pro tempore. His housemates included Robert T. Hunter (from Virginia, chairman of the Finance Committee), James Mason (from Virginia, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee) and Andrew P. Butler (from South Carolina, chairman of the Judiciary Committee). When Congress reconvened on December 5, 1853, the group, termed the F Street Mess, along with Virginian William O. Goode, formed the nucleus that would insist on slaveholder equality in Nebraska. Douglas was aware of the group's opinions and power and knew that he needed to address its concerns. Douglas was also a fervent believer in popular sovereignty – the policy of letting the voters, almost exclusively white males, of a territory decide whether or not slavery should exist in it.
Iowa Senator Augustus C. Dodge immediately reintroduced the same legislation to organize Nebraska that had stalled in the previous session; it was referred to Douglas's committee on December 14. Douglas, hoping to achieve the support of the Southerners, publicly announced that the same principle that had been established in the Compromise of 1850 should apply in Nebraska.
In the Compromise of 1850, Utah and New Mexico Territories had been organized without any restrictions on slavery, and many supporters of Douglas argued that the compromise had already superseded the Missouri Compromise. The territories were, however, given the authority to decide for themselves whether they would apply for statehood as either free or slaves states whenever they chose to apply. The two territories, however, unlike Nebraska, had not been part of the Louisiana Purchase and had arguably never been subject to the Missouri Compromise.
Congressional action
Introduction of Nebraska bill
The bill was reported to the main body of the Senate on January 4, 1854. It had been modified by Douglas, who had also authored the New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory Acts, to mirror the language from the Compromise of 1850. In the bill, a vast new Nebraska Territory was created to extend from Kansas north all the way to the 49th parallel, the US–Canada border. A large portion of Nebraska Territory would soon be split off into Dakota Territory (1861), and smaller portions transferred to Colorado Territory (1861) and Idaho Territory (1863) before the balance of the land became the State of Nebraska in 1867.
Furthermore, any decisions on slavery in the new lands were to be made "when admitted as a state or states, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission." In a report accompanying the bill, Douglas's committee wrote that the Utah and New Mexico Acts:
The report compared the situation in New Mexico and Utah with the situation in Nebraska. In the first instance, many had argued that slavery had previously been prohibited under Mexican law, just as it was prohibited in Nebraska under the Missouri Compromise. Just as the creation of New Mexico and Utah territories had not ruled on the validity of Mexican law on the acquired territory, the Nebraska bill was neither "affirming nor repealing ... the Missouri act." In other words, popular sovereignty was being established by ignoring, rather than addressing, the problem presented by the Missouri Compromise.
Douglas's attempt to finesse his way around the Missouri Compromise did not work. Kentucky Whig Archibald Dixon believed that unless the Missouri Compromise was explicitly repealed, slaveholders would be reluctant to move to the new territory until slavery was actually approved by the settlers, who would most likely oppose slavery. On January 16 Dixon surprised Douglas by introducing an amendment that would repeal the section of the Missouri Compromise that prohibited slavery north of the 36°30' parallel. Douglas met privately with Dixon and in the end, despite his misgivings on Northern reaction, agreed to accept Dixon's arguments.
A similar amendment was offered in the House by Philip Phillips of Alabama. With the encouragement of the "F Street Mess", Douglas met with them and Phillips to ensure that the momentum for passing the bill remained with the Democratic Party. They arranged to meet with President Franklin Pierce to ensure that the issue would be declared a test of party loyalty within the Democratic Party.
Meeting with Pierce
Pierce was not enthusiastic about the implications of repealing the Missouri Compromise and had barely referred to Nebraska in his State of the Union message delivered December 5, 1853, just a month before. Close advisors Senator Lewis Cass, a proponent of popular sovereignty as far back as 1848 as an alternative to the Wilmot Proviso, and Secretary of State William L. Marcy both told Pierce that repeal would create serious political problems. The full cabinet met and only Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and Secretary of Navy James C. Dobbin supported repeal. Instead, the president and cabinet submitted to Douglas an alternative plan that would have sought out a judicial ruling on the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise. Both Pierce and Attorney General Caleb Cushing believed that the Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional.
Douglas's committee met later that night. Douglas was agreeable to the proposal, but the Atchison group was not. Determined to offer the repeal to Congress on January 23 but reluctant to act without Pierce's commitment, Douglas arranged through Davis to meet with Pierce on January 22 even though it was a Sunday when Pierce generally refrained from conducting any business. Douglas was accompanied at the meeting by Atchison, Hunter, Phillips, and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.
Douglas and Atchison first met alone with Pierce before the whole group convened. Pierce was persuaded to support repeal, and at Douglas' insistence, Pierce provided a written draft, asserting that the Missouri Compromise had been made inoperative by the principles of the Compromise of 1850. Pierce later informed his cabinet, which concurred in the change of direction. The Washington Union, the communications organ for the administration, wrote on January 24 that support for the bill would be "a test of Democratic orthodoxy."
Debate in Senate
On January 23, a revised bill was introduced in the Senate that repealed the Missouri Compromise and split the unorganized land into two new territories: Kansas and Nebraska. The division was the result of concerns expressed by settlers already in Nebraska as well as the senators from Iowa, who were concerned with the location of the territory's seat of government if such a large territory were created. Existing language to affirm the application of all other laws of the United States in the new territory was supplemented by the language agreed on with Pierce: "except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820 [the Missouri Compromise], which was superseded by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures [the Compromise of 1850], and is declared inoperative." Identical legislation was soon introduced in the House.
Historian Allan Nevins wrote that the country then became convulsed with two interconnected battles over slavery. A political battle was being fought in Congress over the question of slavery in the new states that were clearly coming. At the same time, there was a moral debate. Southerners claimed that slavery was beneficent, endorsed by the Bible, and generally good policy, whose expansion must be supported. The publications and speeches of abolitionists, some of them former slaves themselves, were telling Northerners that the supposed beneficence of slavery was a Southern lie, and that enslaving another person was un-Christian, a horrible sin that must be fought. Both battles were "fought with a pertinacity, bitterness, and rancor unknown even in Wilmot Proviso days." In Congress, the freesoilers were at a distinct disadvantage. The Democrats held large majorities in each house, and Douglas, "a ferocious fighter, the fiercest, most ruthless, and most unscrupulous that Congress had perhaps ever known", led a tightly disciplined party. It was in the nation at large that the opponents of Nebraska hoped to achieve a moral victory. The New York Times, which had earlier supported Pierce, predicted that this would be the last straw for Northern supporters of the slavery forces and would "create a deep-seated, intense, and ineradicable hatred of the institution which will crush its political power, at all hazards, and at any cost."
The day after the bill was reintroduced, two Ohioans, Representative Joshua Giddings and Senator Salmon P. Chase, published a free-soil response, "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States":
Douglas took the appeal personally and responded in Congress, when the debate was opened on January 30 before a full House and packed gallery. Douglas biographer Robert W. Johanssen described part of the speech:
The debate would continue for four months, as many Anti-Nebraska political rallies were held across the north. Douglas remained the main advocate for the bill while Chase, William Seward, of New York, and Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, led the opposition. The New-York Tribune wrote on March 2:
The debate in the Senate concluded on March 4, 1854, when Douglas, beginning near midnight on March 3, made a five-and-a-half-hour speech. The final vote in favor of passage was 37 to 14. Free-state senators voted 14 to 12 in favor, and slave-state senators supported the bill 23 to 2.
Debate in House of Representatives
On March 21, 1854, as a delaying tactic in the House of Representatives, the legislation was referred by a vote of 110 to 95 to the Committee of the Whole, where it was the last item on the calendar. Realizing from the vote to stall that the act faced an uphill struggle, the Pierce administration made it clear to all Democrats that passage of the bill was essential to the party and would dictate how federal patronage would be handled. Davis and Cushing, from Massachusetts, along with Douglas, spearheaded the partisan efforts. By the end of April, Douglas believed that there were enough votes to pass the bill. The House leadership then began a series of roll call votes in which legislation ahead of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was called to the floor and tabled without debate.
Thomas Hart Benton was among those speaking forcefully against the measure. On April 25, in a House speech that biographer William Nisbet Chambers called "long, passionate, historical, [and] polemical", Benton attacked the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which he "had stood upon ... above thirty years, and intended to stand upon it to the end—solitary and alone, if need be; but preferring company." The speech was distributed afterward as a pamphlet when opposition to the action moved outside the walls of Congress.
It was not until May 8 that the debate began in the House. The debate was even more intense than in the Senate. While it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that the bill would pass, the opponents went all out to fight it. Historian Michael Morrison wrote:
The floor debate was handled by Alexander Stephens, of Georgia, who insisted that the Missouri Compromise had never been a true compromise but had been imposed on the South. He argued that the issue was whether republican principles, "that the citizens of every distinct community or State should have the right to govern themselves in their domestic matters as they please", would be honored.
The final House vote in favor of the bill was 113 to 100. Northern Democrats supported the bill 44 to 42, but all 45 northern Whigs opposed it. Southern Democrats voted in favor by 57 to 2, and southern Whigs supported it by 12 to 7.
Enactment
President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas–Nebraska Act into law on May 30, 1854.
Aftermath
Immediate responses to the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act fell into two classes. The less common response was held by Douglas's supporters, who believed that the bill would withdraw "the question of slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, committing it to the arbitration of those who were immediately interested in, and alone responsible for, its consequences." In other words, they believed that the Act would leave decisions about whether slavery would be permitted in the hands of the people rather than the Federal government. The far more common response was one of outrage, interpreting Douglas's actions as part of "an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the old world, and free laborers from their own states, and convert it into a dreary despotism." Especially in the eyes of northerners, the Kansas–Nebraska Act was aggression and an attack on the power and beliefs of free states. The response led to calls for public action against the South, as seen in broadsides that advertised gatherings in northern states to discuss publicly what to do about the presumption of the Act.
Douglas and former Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln aired their disagreement over the Kansas–Nebraska Act in seven public speeches during September and October 1854. Lincoln gave his most comprehensive argument against slavery and the provisions of the act in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, in the Peoria Speech. He and Douglas both spoke to the large audience, Douglas first and Lincoln in response, two hours later. Lincoln's three-hour speech presented thorough moral, legal, and economic arguments against slavery and raised Lincoln's political profile for the first time. The speeches set the stage for the Lincoln-Douglas debates four years later, when Lincoln sought Douglas's Senate seat.
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 involving anti-slavery "Free-Staters" and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian", or "Southern" elements in Kansas. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would allow or outlaw slavery, and thus enter the Union as a slave state or a free state.
Pro-slavery settlers came to Kansas mainly from neighboring Missouri. Their influence in territorial elections was often bolstered by resident Missourians who crossed into Kansas solely for voting in such ballots. They formed groups such as the Blue Lodges and were dubbed border ruffians, a term coined by the opponent and abolitionist Horace Greeley. Abolitionist settlers, known as "jayhawkers", moved from the East expressly to make Kansas a free state. A clash between the opposing sides was inevitable.
Successive territorial governors, usually sympathetic to slavery, attempted to maintain the peace. The territorial capital of Lecompton, the target of much agitation, became such a hostile environment for Free-Staters that they set up their own, unofficial legislature at Topeka.
John Brown and his sons gained notoriety in the fight against slavery by murdering five pro-slavery farmers with a broadsword in the Pottawatomie massacre. Brown also helped defend a few dozen Free-State supporters from several hundred angry pro-slavery supporters at Osawatomie.
Effect on Native American tribes
Prior to the organization of the Kansas–Nebraska territory in 1854, the Kansas and Nebraska Territories were consolidated as part of the Indian Territory. Throughout the 1830s, large-scale relocations of Native American tribes to the Indian Territory took place, with many Southeastern nations removed to present-day Oklahoma, a process ordered by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and known as the Trail of Tears, and many Midwestern nations removed by way of treaty to present-day Kansas. Among the latter were the Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia and Peoria, Ioway, and Miami. The passing of the Kansas–Nebraska Act came into direct conflict with the relocations. White American settlers from both the free-soil North and pro-slavery South flooded the Northern Indian Territory, hoping to influence the vote on slavery that would come following the admittance of Kansas and, to a lesser extent, Nebraska to the United States.
In order to avoid and/or alleviate the reservation-settlement problem, further treaty negotiations were attempted with the tribes of Kansas and Nebraska. In 1854 alone, the U.S. agreed to acquire lands in Kansas or Nebraska from several tribes including the Kickapoo, Delaware, Omaha, Shawnee, Otoe and Missouri, Miami, and Kaskaskia and Peoria. In exchange for their land cessions, the tribes largely received small reservations in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma or Kansas in some cases.
For the nations that remained in Kansas beyond 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act introduced a host of other problems. In 1855, white "squatters" built the city of Leavenworth on the Delaware reservation without the consent of either Delaware or the US government. When Commissioner of Indian Affairs George Manypenny ordered for military support in removing the squatters, both the military and the squatters refused to comply, undermining both Federal authority and the treaties in place with Delaware. In addition to the violations of treaty agreements, other promises made were not being kept. Construction and infrastructure improvement projects dedicated in nearly every treaty, for example, took a great deal longer than expected. Beyond that, however, the most damaging violation by white American settlers was the mistreatment of Native Americans and their properties. Personal maltreatment, stolen property, and deforestation have all been cited. Furthermore, the squatters' premature and illegal settlement of the Kansas Territory jeopardized the value of the land, and with it the future of the Indian tribes living on them. Because treaties were land cessions and purchases, the value of the land handed over to the Federal government was critical to the payment received by a given Native nation. Deforestation, destruction of property, and other general injuries to the land lowered the value of the territories that were ceded by the Kansas Territory tribes.
Manypenny's 1856 "Report on Indian Affairs" explained the devastating effect on Indian populations of diseases that white settlers brought to Kansas. Without providing statistics, Indian Affairs Superintendent to the area Colonel Alfred Cumming reported at least more deaths than births in most tribes in the area. While noting intemperance, or alcoholism, as a leading cause of death, Cumming specifically cited cholera, smallpox, and measles, none of which the Native Americans were able to treat. The disastrous epidemics exemplified the Osage people, who lost an estimated 1300 lives to scurvy, measles, smallpox, and scrofula between 1852 and 1856, contributing, in part, to the massive decline in population, from 8000 in 1850 to just 3500 in 1860. The Osage had already encountered epidemics associated with relocation and white settlement. The initial removal acts in the 1830s brought both White American settlers and foreign Native American tribes to the Great Plains and into contact with the Osage people. Between 1829 and 1843, influenza, cholera, and smallpox killed an estimated 1242 Osage Indians, resulting in a population recession of roughly 20 percent between 1830 and 1850.
Destruction of the Whig party
From a political standpoint, the Whig Party had been in decline in the South because of the effectiveness with which it had been hammered by the Democratic Party over slavery. The Southern Whigs hoped that by seizing the initiative on this issue, they would be identified as strong defenders of slavery. Many Northern Whigs broke with them in the Act.
The American party system had been dominated by Whigs and Democrats for decades leading up to the Civil War. But the Whig party's increasing internal divisions had made it a party of strange bedfellows by the 1850s. An ascendant anti-slavery wing clashed with a traditionalist and increasingly pro-slavery southern wing. These divisions came to a head in the 1852 election, where Whig candidate Winfield Scott was trounced by Franklin Pierce. Southern Whigs, who had supported the prior Whig president Zachary Taylor, had been burned by Taylor and were unwilling to support another Whig. Taylor, who despite being a slaveowner, had proved notably anti-slave despite campaigning neutrally on the issue. With the loss of Southern Whig support, and the loss of votes in the North to the Free Soil Party, Whigs seemed doomed. So they were, as they would never again contest a presidential election.
The final nail in the Whig coffin was the Kansas–Nebraska Act. It was also the spark that began the Republican Party, which would take in both Whigs and Free Soilers and create an anti-slavery party that the Whigs had always resisted becoming. The changes of the act were viewed by anti-slavery Northerners as an aggressive, expansionist maneuver by the slave-owning South. Opponents of the Act were intensely motivated and began forming a new party. The Party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs such as Zachariah Chandler and Free Soilers such as Salmon P. Chase.
The first anti-Nebraska local meeting where "Republican" was suggested as a name for a new anti-slavery party was held in a Ripon, Wisconsin schoolhouse on March 20, 1854. The first statewide convention that formed a platform and nominated candidates under the Republican name was held near Jackson, Michigan, on July 6, 1854. At that convention, the party opposed the expansion of slavery into new territories and selected a statewide slate of candidates. The Midwest took the lead in forming state Republican Party tickets; apart from St. Louis and a few areas adjacent to free states, there were no efforts to organize the Party in the southern states. So was born the Republican Party—campaigning on the popular, emotional issue of "free soil" in the frontier—which would capture the White House just six years later.
Later developments
The Kansas–Nebraska Act divided the nation and pointed it toward civil war. Congressional Democrats suffered huge losses in the mid-term elections of 1854, as voters provided support to a wide array of new parties opposed to the Democrats and the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Pierce declared his full opposition to the Republican Party, decrying what he saw as its anti-southern stance, but his perceived pro-Southern actions in Kansas continued to inflame Northern anger.
Partly due to the unpopularity of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Pierce lost his bid for re-nomination at the 1856 Democratic National Convention to James Buchanan. Pierce remains the only elected president who actively sought reelection but was denied his party's nomination for a second term. Republicans nominated John C. Frémont in the 1856 presidential election and campaigned on "Bleeding Kansas" and the unpopularity of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Buchanan won the election, but Frémont carried a majority of the free states. Two days after Buchanan's inauguration, Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered the Dred Scott decision, which asserted that Congress had no constitutional power to exclude slavery in the territories. Douglas continued to support the doctrine of popular sovereignty, but Buchanan insisted that Democrats respect the Dred Scott decision and its repudiation of federal interference with slavery in the territories.
Guerrilla warfare in Kansas continued throughout Buchanan's presidency and extended into the 1860s. Buchanan attempted to admit Kansas as a state under the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, but Kansas voters rejected that constitution in an August 1858 referendum. Anti-slavery delegates won a majority of the elections to the 1859 Kansas constitutional convention, and Kansas won admission as a free state under the anti-slavery Wyandotte Constitution in the final months of Buchanan's presidency.
References
Citations
Sources
excerpt and text search
Burns, Louis F. A History of the Osage People (2004)
Chambers, William Nisbet. Old Bullion Benton: Senator From the New West (1956)
Childers, Christopher. "Interpreting Popular Sovereignty: A Historiographical Essay", Civil War History Volume 57, Number 1, March 2011 pp. 48–70 in Project MUSE
Etcheson, Nicole. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (2006)
Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970) .
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay 1776–1854 (1990) .
Holt, Michael. The Political Crisis of the 1850s (1978)
Huston, James L. Stephen A. Douglas and the dilemmas of democratic equality (2007)
Johannsen. Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas (1973)
Manypenny, George W. Our Indian Wards (1880)
Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997) online edition
Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852–1857 (1947)
Nichols, Roy F. "The Kansas–Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography". Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (September 1956): 187–212. Online at JSTOR
Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (1976), Pulitzer Prize-winning scholarly history.
SenGupta, Gunja. "Bleeding Kansas: A Review Essay". Kansas History 24 (Winter 2001/2002): 318–341. online
Stewart, Matthew G. The Burden of Western History: Kansas, Collective Memory, and the Reunification of the American Empire, 1854–1913 (2014)
Wolff, Gerald W., The Kansas–Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War, (Revisionist Press, 1977), 385 pp.
Wunder, John R. and Joann M. Ross, eds. The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854 (2008), essays by scholars.
External links
An annotated bibliography
Millard Fillmore on the Fugitive Slave and Kansas–Nebraska Acts: Original Letter Shapell Manuscript Foundation
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854: Popular Sovereignty and the Political Polarization over Slavery
Kansas–Nebraska Act and related resources at the Library of Congress
President Pierce's Private Correspondence on the Kansas–Nebraska Act Shapell Manuscript Foundation
Printer-friendly transcript of the act
1854 in American politics
1854 in Kansas Territory
1854 in Nebraska Territory
African-American history of Nebraska
Bleeding Kansas
History of United States expansionism
Legal history of Kansas
Popular sovereignty
Pre-statehood history of Nebraska
United States federal territory and statehood legislation
May 1854 events
Expansion of slavery in the United States
Origins of the American Civil War | [
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17043 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope | Kaleidoscope | A kaleidoscope () is an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces (or mirrors) tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more (parts of) objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a regular symmetrical pattern when viewed from the other end, from repeated reflection. These reflectors are usually enclosed in a tube, often containing on one end a cell with loose, colored pieces of glass or other transparent (and/or opaque) materials to be reflected into the viewed pattern. Rotation of the cell causes motion of the materials, resulting in an ever-changing view being presented.
Etymology
Coined by its Scottish inventor David Brewster, "kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek word καλός (kalos), "beautiful, beauty", εἶδος (eidos), "that which is seen: form, shape" and σκοπέω (skopeō), "to look to, to examine", hence "observation of beautiful forms." It was first published in the patent that was granted on July 10, 1817.
History
Multiple reflection by two or more reflecting surfaces has been known since antiquity and was described as such by Giambattista della Porta in his Magia Naturalis (1558–1589). In 1646, Athanasius Kircher described an experiment with a construction of two mirrors, which could be opened and closed like a book and positioned in various angles, showing regular polygon figures consisting of reflected aliquot sectors of 360°. Mr. Bradley's New Improvements in Planting and Gardening (1717) described a similar construction to be placed on geometrical drawings to show an image with multiplied reflection. However, an optimal configuration that produces the full effects of the kaleidoscope was not recorded before 1815.
In 1814, Sir David Brewster conducted experiments on light polarization by successive reflections between plates of glass and first noted "the circular arrangement of the images of a candle round a center, and the multiplication of the sectors formed by the extremities of the plates of glass". He forgot about it, but noticed a more impressive version of the effect during further experiments in February 1815. A while later he was impressed by the multiplied reflection of a bit of cement that was pressed through at the end of a triangular glass trough, which appeared more regular and almost perfectly symmetrical in comparison to the reflected objects that had been situated further away from the reflecting plates in earlier experiments. This triggered more experiments to find the conditions for the most beautiful and symmetrically perfect conditions. An early version had pieces of colored glass and other irregular objects fixed permanently and was admired by some Members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, including Sir George Mackenzie who predicted its popularity. A version followed in which some of the objects and pieces of glass could move when the tube was rotated. The last step, regarded as most important by Brewster, was to place the reflecting panes in a draw tube with a concave lens to distinctly introduce surrounding objects into the reflected pattern.
Brewster thought his instrument to be of great value in "all the ornamental arts" as a device that creates an "infinity of patterns". Artists could accurately delineate the produced figures of the kaleidoscope by means of the solar microscope (a type of camera obscura device), magic lantern or camera lucida. Brewster believed it would at the same time become a popular instrument "for the purposes of rational amusement". He decided to apply for a patent. British patent no. 4136 "for a new Optical Instrument called "The Kaleidoscope" for exhibiting and creating beautiful Forms and Patterns of great use in all the ornamental Arts" was granted in July 1817. Unfortunately the manufacturer originally engaged to produce the product had shown one of the patent instruments to some of the London opticians to see if he could get orders from them. Soon the instrument was copied and marketed before the manufacturer had prepared any number of kaleidoscopes for sale. An estimated two hundred thousand kaleidoscopes sold in London and Paris in just three months. Brewster figured at most a thousand of these were authorized copies that were constructed correctly, while the majority of the others did not give a correct impression of his invention. Because so relatively few people had experienced a proper kaleidoscope or knew how to apply it to ornamental arts, he decided to publicize a treatise on the principles and the correct construction of the kaleidoscope.
It was thought that the patent was reduced in a Court of Law since its principles were supposedly already known. Brewster stated that the kaleidoscope was different because the particular positions of the object and of the eye, played a very important role in producing the beautiful symmetrical forms. Brewster's opinion was shared by several scientists, including James Watt.
Philip Carpenter originally tried to produce his own imitation of the kaleidoscope, but was not satisfied with the results. He decided to offer his services to Brewster as manufacturer. Brewster agreed and Carpenter's models were stamped "sole maker". Realizing that the company could not meet the level of demand, Brewster gained permission from Carpenter in 1818 for the device to be made by other manufacturers. In his 1819 Treatise on the Kaleidoscope Brewster listed more than a dozen manufacturers/sellers of patent kaleidoscopes. Carpenter's company would keep on selling kaleidoscopes for 60 years.
In 1987, kaleidoscope artist Thea Marshall, working with the Willamette Science and Technology Center, a science museum located in the Eugene, Oregon, designed and constructed a 1,000 square foot traveling mathematics and science exhibition, "Kaleidoscopes: Reflections of Science and Art." With funding from the National Science Foundation, and circulated under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), the exhibition appeared in 15 science museums over a three-year period, reaching more than one million visitors in the United States and Canada. Interactive exhibit modules enabled visitors to better understand and appreciate how kaleidoscopes function.
Variations
General variations
David Brewster defined several variables in his patent and publications:
variations in size (Brewster deemed a length of five to ten inches convenient, for one to four inches he suggested the use of a lens with a focus length equal to the length of the reflectors)
variations in the angle of inclination of the reflecting surfaces. In his patent Brewster deemed 18°, 20° or 22 1/2° most pleasing. In the treatise 45°, 36° and 30° are the primary examples.
variations in material of the reflecting surfaces (plates of plain glass, quicksilvered glass (mirror) or metal, or the reflecting inner surfaces of a solid prism of glass or rock crystal) The choice of material can have some influence of the tint and the quality of the image.
a wide variety of objects, small figures, fragments, liquids and materials of different colors and shapes can be used in object cells (apart from the more usual transparent fragments, for instance twisted pieces of iron or brass wire, or some lace, can produce very fine effects)
Different versions suggested by Brewster
In his patent Brewster perceived two forms for the kaleidoscope:
"most common form": two reflectors, small objects should be placed close to the aperture to be viewed at the other end
"The compound, or telescopic Kaleidoscope": a tube with two reflectors, sliding inside another tube with one to three convex lenses, to be applied to any object at any distance (this was later re-introduced as the teleidoscope)
In his Treatise on the Kaleidoscope (1819) he described the basic form with an object cell:
"simple form": a tube with two reflectors and objects such as pieces of colored glass either fixed or placed loosely in cell on the end of the instrument
Brewster also developed several variations:
"Polycentral Kaleidoscope" with three reflectors at angles of 90°: the infinite pattern of equilateral triangles was deemed "uncommonly splendid" by Brewster
"Polycentral Kaleidoscope" with three reflectors at angles of 90°, 45° and 45°: the pattern is not symmetrically arranged around the centre, but nonetheless deemed "very pleasing" by Brewster
"Polycentral Kaleidoscope" with three reflectors at angles of 90°, 60° and 30°: the pattern with 31 reflected images of the aperture, not symmetrically arranged around the centre. Brewster deemed the effect "very beautiful, particularly when the reflectors are metallic".
"Polycentral Kaleidoscopes" with four reflectors: square or rectangular kaleidoscope with an infinite pattern of squares or rectangles
projection kaleidoscopes by means of the solar microscope or the magic lantern, allowing more people to see the pattern
"Microscopic Kaleidocsope": minute kaleidoscopes (as small as one inch in length) for viewing microscopic objects, have also been worn by women as jewelry
placement of "regularly crystallised bodies or pieces of glass that have received the polarising structure" in front of the aperture, to introduce "the complementary colors of polarised light"
rectangular object plates moving through a groove cut in a cell attached to the ends of the reflector, allow for a greater variety in the motion of loose fragments. With fixed fragments a more calculated sequence of tints and shapes can be composed.
"a vibrating object plate": a smaller object plate containing loose objects can be made to vibrate on its lower edge by a gentle motion of the tube if the kaleidoscope is held horizontally
an colorless object plate, with either colorless pieces of glass or an irregular surface of transparent varnish, can be placed in front of a colorful object plate. The tints and outlines of the colorful pieces are softened by the refraction of the colorless pieces. The colorless objects supply outlines to the pattern. The colorless object plate can also produce fine colorless patterns when used alone.
instead of in an object cell, transparent fragments can be placed on a mirror and be combined with opaque fragments (for instance pieces of brass wire, coloured foils and grains of spelter) for the best effects
an object plate with fixed elements can be placed in cell, if the cell is rotated in front of the aperture the same patterns recur
if the reflectors are kept separate (see Fig. 4 of patent illustration), annular patterns are shown
if the reflectors are placed parallel to each other (see Fig. 5 of patent illustration), rectilinear patterns are shown
Brewster also imagined another application for the kaleidoscope:
a type of color organ: for a harmonic visual composition, with effects similar to musical composition, a very simple piece of machinery could be developed "for introducing objects of different forms and colours for varying the direction of the motion across the angular aperture and for accommodating the velocity of their motion to the effect which it is intended to produce.".
Later variations
Manufacturers and artists have created kaleidoscopes with a wide variety of materials and in many shapes. A few of these added elements that were not previously described by inventor David Brewster:
object cells have been filled with a viscous liquid so the items float and move gracefully through the object cell in response to slight movements from the viewer
wand kaleidoscopes, with a moveable transparent sealed tube containing liquid showing sinking and/or floating objects (usually including glitter) past the end of the reflectors, were introduced in 1990 WildeWood Creative Products in collaboration with Cozy Baker
object wheels or carousels rotating on an axis attached to the center of kaleidoscope can introduce shapes and colors into the kaleidoscope image
exteriors of kaleidoscopes have been crafted into sculptural artworks
large kaleidoscopes have been integrated in the architecture of some buildings
software and digital cameras have been used in high tech kaleidoscopes
Publications
Cozy Baker (d. October 19, 2010)—founder of the Brewster Kaleidoscope Society—collected kaleidoscopes and wrote books about many of the artists making them in the 1970s through 2001. Her book Kaleidoscope Artistry is a limited compendium of kaleidoscope makers, containing pictures of the interior and exterior views of contemporary artworks. Baker is credited with energizing a renaissance in kaleidoscope-making in the US; she spent her life putting kaleidoscope artists and galleries together so they would know each other and encourage each other.
In 1999 a short-lived magazine dedicated to kaleidoscopes—Kaleidoscope Review—was published, covering artists, collectors, dealers, events, and including how-to articles. This magazine was created and edited by Brett Bensley, at that time a well-known kaleidoscope artist and resource on kaleidoscope information. Changed name to The New Kaleidoscope Review, and then switched to a video presentation on YouTube, "The Kaleidoscope Maker."
Applications
Most kaleidoscopes are mass-produced from inexpensive materials, and intended as children's toys. At the other extreme are handmade pieces that display fine craftsmanship. Craft galleries often carry a few kaleidoscopes, while other enterprises specialize in them, carrying dozens of different types from different artists and craftspeople. Most handmade kaleidoscopes are now made in India, Bangladesh, Japan, the US, Russia and Italy, following a long tradition of glass craftsmanship in those countries.
See also
References
External links
Brewster Kaleidoscope Society – international organization for kaleidoscope enthusiasts
Kaleidoscope Mirror Designs
Kaleidoscope Resource (non-profit)
Kaleidoscope Builders' Knowledge Base
Shockwave Flash Kaleidoscope (move mouse around it)
Kaleidoscope Review V2N1 - an issue of The New Kaleidoscope Review
ArtScope - program emitting a visual effect of a kaleidoscope with the number of mirrors from 4 to 98
Traditional toys
Optical toys
Scottish inventions
Articles containing video clips
Patterns
19th-century inventions | [
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17044 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common%20kestrel | Common kestrel | The common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) is a bird of prey species belonging to the kestrel group of the falcon family Falconidae. It is also known as the European kestrel, Eurasian kestrel, or Old World kestrel. In Britain, where no other kestrel species commonly occurs, it is generally just called "kestrel".
This species occurs over a large range. It is widespread in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as occasionally reaching the east coast of North America. It has colonized a few oceanic islands, but vagrant individuals are generally rare; in the whole of Micronesia for example, the species was only recorded twice each on Guam and Saipan in the Marianas.
Description
Common kestrels measure from head to tail, with a wingspan of . Females are noticeably larger, with the adult male weighing , around on average; the adult female weighs , around on average. They are thus small compared with other birds of prey, but larger than most songbirds. Like the other Falco species, they have long wings as well as a distinctive long tail.
Their plumage is mainly light chestnut brown with blackish spots on the upperside and buff with narrow blackish streaks on the underside; the remiges are also blackish. Unlike most raptors, they display sexual colour dimorphism with the male having fewer black spots and streaks, as well as a blue-grey cap and tail. The tail is brown with black bars in females, and has a black tip with a narrow white rim in both sexes. All common kestrels have a prominent black malar stripe like their closest relatives.
The cere, feet, and a narrow ring around the eye are bright yellow; the toenails, bill and iris are dark. Juveniles look like adult females, but the underside streaks are wider; the yellow of their bare parts is paler. Hatchlings are covered in white down feathers, changing to a buff-grey second down coat before they grow their first true plumage.
Behaviour and ecology
In the cool-temperate parts of its range, the common kestrel migrates south in winter; otherwise it is sedentary, though juveniles may wander around in search for a good place to settle down as they become mature. It is a diurnal animal of the lowlands and prefers open habitat such as fields, heaths, shrubland and marshland. It does not require woodland to be present as long as there are alternative perching and nesting sites like rocks or buildings. It will thrive in treeless steppe where there are abundant herbaceous plants and shrubs to support a population of prey animals. The common kestrel readily adapts to human settlement, as long as sufficient swathes of vegetation are available, and may even be found in wetlands, moorlands and arid savanna. It is found from the sea to the lower mountain ranges, reaching elevations up to ASL in the hottest tropical parts of its range but only to about in the subtropical climate of the Himalayan foothills.
Globally, this species is not considered threatened by the IUCN. Its stocks were affected by the indiscriminate use of organochlorines and other pesticides in the mid-20th century, but being something of an r-strategist able to multiply quickly under good conditions it was less affected than other birds of prey. The global population has been fluctuating considerably over the years but remains generally stable; it is roughly estimated at 1–2 million pairs or so, about 20% of which are found in Europe. There has been a recent decline in parts of Western Europe such as Ireland. Subspecies dacotiae is quite rare, numbering less than 1000 adult birds in 1990, when the ancient western Canarian subspecies canariensis numbered about ten times as many birds.
Food and feeding
When hunting, the common kestrel characteristically hovers about above the ground, searching for prey, either by flying into the wind or by soaring using ridge lift. Like most birds of prey, common kestrels have keen eyesight enabling them to spot small prey from a distance. Once prey is sighted, the bird makes a short, steep dive toward the target. It can often be found hunting along the sides of roads and motorways. This species is able to see near ultraviolet light, allowing the birds to detect the urine trails around rodent burrows as they shine in an ultraviolet colour in the sunlight. Another favourite (but less conspicuous) hunting technique is to perch a bit above the ground cover, surveying the area. When the bird spots prey animals moving by, it will pounce on them. They also prowl a patch of hunting ground in a ground-hugging flight, ambushing prey as they happen across it.
Common kestrels eat almost exclusively mouse-sized mammals. Voles, shrews and true mice supply up to three-quarters or more of the biomass most individuals ingest. On oceanic islands (where mammals are often scarce), small birds (mainly passerines) may make up the bulk of its diet. Elsewhere, birds are only an important food during a few weeks each summer when inexperienced fledglings abound. Other suitably sized vertebrates like bats, swifts, frogs and lizards are eaten only on rare occasions. However, kestrels are more likely to prey on lizards in southern latitudes. In northern latitudes, the kestrel is found more often to deliver lizards to their nestlings during midday and also with increasing ambient temperature. Seasonally, arthropods may be a main prey item. Generally, invertebrates like camel spiders and even earthworms, but mainly sizeable insects such as beetles, orthopterans and winged termites will be eaten.
F. tinnunculus requires the equivalent of 4–8 voles a day, depending on energy expenditure (time of the year, amount of hovering, etc.). They have been known to catch several voles in succession and cache some for later consumption. An individual nestling consumes on average 4.2 g/h, equivalent to 67.8 g/d (3–4 voles per day).
Reproduction
The common kestrel starts breeding in spring (or the start of the dry season in the tropics), i.e. April or May in temperate Eurasia and some time between August and December in the tropics and southern Africa. It is a cavity nester, preferring holes in cliffs, trees or buildings; in built-up areas, common kestrels will often nest on buildings, and will reuse the old nests of corvids. The diminutive subspecies dacotiae, the sarnicolo of the eastern Canary Islands is peculiar for nesting occasionally in the dried fronds below the top of palm trees, apparently coexisting with small songbirds which also make their home there. In general, common kestrels will usually tolerate conspecifics nesting nearby, and sometimes a few dozen pairs may be found nesting in a loose colony.
The clutch is normally 3–7 eggs; more eggs may be laid in total but some will be removed during the laying time. This lasts about 2 days per egg laid. The eggs are abundantly patterned with brown spots, from a wash that tinges the entire surface buffish white to large almost-black blotches. Incubation lasts from 4 weeks to one month, both male and female will take shifts incubating the eggs. After the eggs have hatched, the parents share brooding and hunting duties. Only the female feeds the chicks, by tearing apart prey into manageable chunks. The young fledge after 4–5 weeks. The family stays close together for a few weeks, during which time the young learn how to fend for themselves and hunt prey. The young become sexually mature the next breeding season. Female kestrel chicks with blacker plumage have been found to have bolder personalities, indicating that even in juvenile birds plumage coloration can act as a status signal.
Data from Britain shows nesting pairs bringing up about 2–3 chicks on average, though this includes a considerable rate of total brood failures; actually, few pairs that do manage to fledge offspring raise less than 3 or 4. Compared to their siblings, first-hatched chicks have greater survival and recruitment probability, thought to be due to the first-hatched chicks obtaining a higher body condition when in the nest. Population cycles of prey, particularly voles, have a considerable influence on breeding success. Most common kestrels die before they reach 2 years of age; mortality up until the first birthday may be as high as 70%. At least females generally breed at one year of age; possibly, some males take a year longer to maturity as they do in related species. The biological lifespan to death from senescence can be 16 years or more, however; one was recorded to have lived almost 24 years.
Evolution and systematics
This species is part of a clade that contains the kestrel species with black malar stripes, a feature which apparently was not present in the most ancestral kestrels. They seem to have radiated in the Gelasian (Late Pliocene, roughly 2.5–2 mya, probably starting in tropical East Africa, as indicated by mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data analysis and considerations of biogeography. The common kestrel's closest living relative is apparently the nankeen or Australian kestrel (F. cenchroides), which probably derived from ancestral common kestrels settling in Australia and adapting to local conditions less than one million years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene.
The rock kestrel (F. rupicolus), previously considered a subspecies, is now treated as a distinct species.
The lesser kestrel (F. naumanni), which much resembles a small common kestrel with no black on the upperside except wing and tail tips, is probably not very closely related to the present species, and the American kestrel (F. sparverius) is apparently not a true kestrel at all. Both species have much grey in their wings in males, which does not occur in the common kestrel or its close living relatives but does in almost all other falcons.
Subspecies
A number of subspecies of the common kestrel are known, though some are hardly distinct and may be invalid. Most of them differ little, and mainly in accordance with Bergmann's and Gloger's rules. Tropical African forms have less grey in the male plumage.
Falco tinnunculus tinnunculus Linnaeus, 1758
Temperate areas of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia north of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya mountain ranges to the NW Sea of Okhotsk region. Northern Asian populations migrate south in winter, apparently not crossing the Himalayas but diverting to the west.
F. t. rufescens Swainson, 1837
Sahel east to Ethiopia, southwards around Congo basin to S Tanzania and NE Angola.
F. t. interstinctus McClelland, 1840
Has dark heavily marked birds and has a foxed red phase but not reliably identified in the field. Breeds East Asia from Tibet to Korea and Japan, south into Indochina. Winters to the south of its breeding range, from northeastern India to the Philippines (where it is localized, e.g. from Mindanao only two records exist).
F. t. rupicolaeformis (C. L. Brehm, 1855)
Arabian Peninsula except in the desert and across the Red Sea into Africa.
F. t. neglectus Schlegel, 1873
Northern Cape Verde Islands.
F. t. canariensis (Koenig, 1890)
Madeira and western Canary Islands. The more ancient Canaries subspecies.
F. t. dacotiae Hartert, 1913 – Local name: cernícalo
Eastern Canary Islands: Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, Chinijo Archipelago. A more recently evolved subspecies than canariensis.
F. t. objurgatus (Baker, 1929)
Western, Nilgiris and Eastern Ghats of India; Sri Lanka. Heavily marked, has rufous thighs with dark grey head in males.
F. t. archerii (Hartert & Neumann, 1932)
Somalia, coastal Kenya, and Socotra
F. t. alexandri Bourne, 1955
Southwestern Cape Verde Islands.
The common kestrels of Europe living during cold periods of the Quaternary glaciation differed slightly in size from the current population; they are sometimes referred to as the paleosubspecies F. t. atavus (see also Bergmann's rule). The remains of these birds, which presumably were the direct ancestors of the living F. t. tinnunculus (and perhaps other subspecies), are found throughout the then-unglaciated parts of Europe, from the Late Pliocene (ELMA Villanyian/ICS Piacenzian, MN16) about 3 million years ago to the Middle Pleistocene Saalian glaciation which ended about 130,000 years ago, when they finally gave way to birds indistinguishable from those living today. Some of the voles the Ice Age common kestrels ate—such as European pine voles (Microtus subterraneus)—were indistinguishable from those alive today. Other prey species of that time evolved more rapidly (like M. malei, the presumed ancestor of today's tundra vole M. oeconomus), while yet again others seem to have gone entirely extinct without leaving any living descendants—for example Pliomys lenki, which apparently fell victim to the Weichselian glaciation about 100,000 years ago.
In culture
The kestrel is sometimes seen, like other birds of prey, as a symbol of the power and vitality of nature. In "Into Battle" (1915), the war poet Julian Grenfell invokes the superhuman characteristics of the kestrel among several birds, when hoping for prowess in battle:
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) writes on the kestrel in his poem "The Windhover", exalting in their mastery of flight and their majesty in the sky.
A kestrel is also one of the main characters in The Animals of Farthing Wood.
Barry Hines’ novel A Kestrel for a Knave - together with the 1969 film based on it, Ken Loach's Kes - is about a working-class boy in England who befriends a kestrel.
The Pathan name for the kestrel, Bād Khurak, means "wind hover" and in Punjab it is called Larzānak or "little hoverer". It was once used as a decoy to capture other birds of prey in Persia and Arabia. It was also used to train greyhounds meant for hunting gazelles in parts of Arabia. Young greyhounds would be set after jerboa-rats which would also be distracted and forced to make twists and turns by the dives of a kestrel.
Etymology
The name "kestrel" is derived from the French crécerelle which is diminutive for crécelle, which also referred to a bell used by lepers. The word is earlier spelt 'c/kastrel', and is evidenced from the 15th century. The kestrel was once used to drive and keep away pigeons. Archaic names for the kestrel include windhover and windfucker, due to its habit of beating the wind (hovering in air).
The Late Latin falco derives from falx, falcis, a sickle, referencing the claws of the bird. The species name tinnunculus is Latin for "kestrel" from "tinnulus", "shrill".
Footnotes
References
External links
Rock kestrel species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
Common kestrel page at Israel Birding Portal
Kestrel Bird Guide at The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
Text of the Hopkins poem mentioned in the article
Kestrel on-line 2013: Brest, Belarus
Kestrel on-line 2012: Groningen, The Netherlands
Live Streaming of common kestrel nest in Amadora, Portugal
Ageing and sexing (PDF; 5.5 MB) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze
Feathers of common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus)
common kestrel
Falconry
Birds of prey of Africa
Birds of prey of Eurasia
Birds of Macaronesia
Birds described in 1758
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus | [
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17045 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmia%20latifolia | Kalmia latifolia | Kalmia latifolia, the mountain laurel, calico-bush, or spoonwood, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae, that is native to the eastern United States. Its range stretches from southern Maine south to northern Florida, and west to Indiana and Louisiana. Mountain laurel is the state flower of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. It is the namesake of Laurel County in Kentucky, the city of Laurel, Mississippi, and the Laurel Highlands in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Growth
Kalmia latifolia is an evergreen shrub growing tall. The leaves are 3–12 cm long and 1–4 cm wide. The flowers are hexagonal, sometimes appearing to be pentagonal, ranging from light pink to white, and occur in clusters. There are several named cultivars that have darker shades of pink, red and maroon. It blooms in May and June. All parts of the plant are poisonous. The roots are fibrous and matted.
The plant is naturally found on rocky slopes and mountainous forest areas. It thrives in acid soil, preferring a soil pH in the 4.5 to 5.5 range. The plant often grows in large thickets, covering great areas of forest floor. In the Appalachians, it can become a tree but is a shrub farther north. The species is a frequent component of oak-heath forests. In low, wet areas it grows densely, but in dry uplands has a more sparse form. In the southern Appalachians, laurel thickets are referred to as "laurel hells" because it is nearly impossible to pass through one.
Reproduction
Kalmia latifolia is notable for its unusual method of dispensing its pollen. As the flower grows, the filaments of its stamens are bent and brought into tension. When an insect lands on the flower, the tension is released, catapulting the pollen forcefully onto the insect. Experiments have shown the flower capable of flinging its pollen up to 15 cm. Physicist Lyman J. Briggs became fascinated with this phenomenon in the 1950s after his retirement from the National Bureau of Standards and conducted a series of experiments in order to explain it.
Etymology
Kalmia latifolia is also known as ivybush or spoonwood (because Native Americans used to make their spoons out of it).
The plant was first recorded in America in 1624, but it was named after the Finnish explorer and botanist Pehr Kalm (1716–1779), who sent samples to Linnaeus.
The Latin specific epithet latifolia means "with broad leaves" – as opposed to its sister species Kalmia angustifolia, "with narrow leaves".
Despite the name "mountain laurel", Kalmia latifolia is not closely related to the true laurels of the family Lauraceae.
Cultivation
The plant was originally brought to Europe as an ornamental plant during the 18th century. It is still widely grown for its attractive flowers and year-round evergreen leaves. Elliptic, alternate, leathery, glossy evergreen leaves (to 5" long) are dark green above and yellow green beneath and reminiscent of the leaves of rhododendrons. All parts of this plant are toxic if ingested. Numerous cultivars have been selected with varying flower color. Many of the cultivars have originated from the Connecticut Experiment Station in Hamden and from the plant breeding of Dr. Richard Jaynes. Jaynes has numerous named varieties that he has created and is considered the world's authority on Kalmia latifolia.
In the UK the following cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:
'Freckles' – pale pink flowers, heavily spotted
'Little Linda' – dwarf cultivar to
'Olympic Fire' – red buds opening pale pink
'Pink Charm'
Ecology
Kalmia latifolia has been marked as a pollinator plant, supporting and attracting butterflies and hummingbirds.
Wood
The wood of the mountain laurel is heavy and strong but brittle, with a close, straight grain. It has never been a viable commercial crop as it does not grow large enough, yet it is suitable for wreaths, furniture, bowls and other household items. It was used in the early 19th century in wooden-works clocks. Root burls were used for pipe bowls in place of imported briar burls unattainable during World War II. It can be used for handrails or guard rails.
Toxicity
Mountain laurel is poisonous to several animals, including horses, goats, cattle, deer, monkeys, and humans, due to grayanotoxin and arbutin. The green parts of the plant, flowers, twigs, and pollen are all toxic, including food products made from them, such as toxic honey that may produce neurotoxic and gastrointestinal symptoms in humans eating more than a modest amount. Symptoms of toxicity begin to appear about 6 hours following ingestion. Symptoms include irregular or difficulty breathing, anorexia, repeated swallowing, profuse salivation, watering of the eyes and nose, cardiac distress, incoordination, depression, vomiting, frequent defecation, weakness, convulsions, paralysis, coma, and eventually death. Necropsy of animals who have died from spoonwood poisoning show gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
Use by Native Americans
The Cherokee use the plant as an analgesic, placing an infusion of leaves on scratches made over location of the pain. They also rub the bristly edges of ten to twelve leaves over the skin for rheumatism, crush the leaves to rub brier scratches, use an infusion as a wash "to get rid of pests", use a compound as a liniment, rub leaf ooze into the scratched skin of ball players to prevent cramps, and use a leaf salve for healing. They also use the wood for carving.
The Hudson Bay Cree use a decoction of the leaves for diarrhea, but consider the plant to be poisonous.
Gallery
References
External links
Connecticut Botanical Society Profile: Kalmia latifolia
Kalmia latifolia images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
latifolia
Flora of the Appalachian Mountains
Trees of the Northeastern United States
Trees of the Southeastern United States
Trees of the Great Lakes region (North America)
Natural history of the Great Smoky Mountains
Plants used in traditional Native American medicine
Plants described in 1753
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
Symbols of Connecticut
Symbols of Pennsylvania
Garden plants of North America | [
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17047 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KB | KB | KB, kB or kb may stand for:
Businesses and organizations
Banks
KB Kookmin Bank, South Korea
Kaupthing Bank, Iceland
Komerční banka, Czech Republic
Kasikornbank, Thailand
Karafarin Bank, Iran
Libraries
National Library of Sweden ()
National Library of the Netherlands ()
Sport
Kalix BF, a Swedish bandy club
Kjøbenhavns Boldklub, a sports club, Copenhagen, Denmark
Other businesses and organizations
KB Home, a US house builder
KB Lager, Australia
KB Toys, US
K&B, a New Orleans, Louisiana, US drugstore
Druk Air (IATA code: KB), Bhutan airline
People
Kevin Bartlett (Australian rules footballer) (born 1947)
KB (rapper) (born 1988), Kevin Elijah Burgess
KB Killa Beats (born 1983), Zambian record producer
Science and technology
Biology
Kilo-base pair (kb or kbp), length of D/RNA molecule
Computing
Kilobit (kb), 1,000 bits
Kilobyte (kB), 1,000 bytes
Knowledge base
Microsoft Knowledge Base ID prefix
Vehicles
KB series, International Harvester trucks
Isuzu Faster or KB, a pickup truck
Isuzu D-Max or KB, a pickup truck
NZR KB class, a New Zealand steam locomotive
Other uses in science and technology
Boltzmann constant, k or kB
Base dissociation constant Kb
Ebullioscopic constant Kb, relating molality to boiling point elevation
Kauri-butanol value Kb, a measure of solvent performance
Other uses
King's Buildings, a University of Edinburgh campus
Knowledge Bowl, a quiz competition
Former Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath
Kuala Belait, a town in Brunei
WWKB, or KB Radio 1520 | [
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17049 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer%20Rouge | Khmer Rouge | The Khmer Rouge (; ; , ; "Red Khmer") is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Prime Minister Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after his 1970 overthrow.
The Khmer Rouge army was slowly built up in the jungles of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the North Vietnamese army, the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, on the advice of the CCP, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup by Lon Nol who established the pro-American Khmer Republic. Despite a massive American bombing campaign (Operation Freedom Deal) against them, the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War when they captured the Cambodian capital and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge, who were led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan, immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. In 1976, they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.
The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, totalitarian, xenophobic, paranoid, and repressive. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Moha Lout Plaoh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward which had caused the Great Chinese Famine. The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivisation similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency even in the supply of medicine led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide led to the death of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population.
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge were largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China. The regime was removed from power in 1979 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of the Khmer Rouge's forces. The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand, whose government saw them as a buffer force against the Communist Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the Vietnamese and the government of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea until the end of the war in 1989. The Cambodian governments-in-exile (including the Khmer Rouge) held onto Cambodia's United Nations seat (with considerable international support) until 1993, when the monarchy was restored and the name of the Cambodian state was changed to the Kingdom of Cambodia. A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty.
In 1996, a new political party called the Democratic National Union Movement was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge. The organisation was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by a United Nations-backed court which found them guilty of crimes against humanity for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign.
Etymology
The term Khmers rouges, French for red Khmers, was coined by King Norodom Sihanouk and later adopted by English speakers (in the form of the corrupted version Khmer Rouge). It was used to refer to a succession of communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into the Communist Party of Kampuchea and later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. Its military was known successively as the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea.
Ideology
Marxist thought
The movement's ideology was shaped by a power struggle during 1976 in which the so-called Party Centre led by Pol Pot defeated other regional elements of its leadership. The Party Centre's ideology combined elements of Marxism with a strongly xenophobic form of Khmer nationalism. Partly because of its secrecy and changes in how it presented itself, academic interpretations of its political position vary widely, ranging from interpreting it as the "purest" Marxist–Leninist movement to characterising it as an anti-Marxist "peasant revolution". The first interpretation has been criticized by historian Ben Kiernan, who asserts that it comes from a "convenient anti-communist perspective". Its leaders and theorists, most of whom had been exposed to the heavily Stalinist outlook of the French Communist Party during the 1950s, developed a distinctive and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that drew on elements of Stalinism, Maoism and the postcolonial theory of Frantz Fanon. In the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge looked to the model of Enver Hoxha's Albania which they believed was the most advanced communist state then in existence. Many of the regime's characteristics—such as its focus on the rural peasantry rather than the urban proletariat as the bulwark of revolution, its emphasis on Great Leap Forward-type initiatives, its desire to abolish personal interest in human behaviour, its promotion of communal living and eating, and its focus on perceived common sense over technical knowledge—appear to have been heavily influenced by Maoist ideology; however, the Khmer Rouge displayed these characteristics in a more extreme form. Additionally, non-Khmers, who comprised a significant part of the supposedly favored segment of the peasantry, were singled out because of their race. According to Ben Kiernan, this was "neither a communist proletarian revolution that privileged the working class, nor a peasant revolution that favored all farmers".
While the CPK described itself as the "number 1 Communist state" once it was in power, some communist regimes, such as Vietnam, saw it as a Maoist deviation from orthodox Marxism. According to author Rebecca Gidley, the Khmer Rouge "almost immediately erred by implementing a Maoist doctrine rather than following the Marxist–Leninist prescriptions. The Maoist and Khmer Rouge belief that human willpower could overcome material and historical conditions was strongly at odds with mainstream Marxism, which emphasised historical materialism and the idea of history as inevitable progression toward communism. In 1981, following the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, in an attempt to get foreign support, the Khmer Rouge officially renounced communism.
Khmer nationalism
One of the regime's defining characteristics was its Khmer nationalism, which combined an idealisation of the Angkor Empire (802–1431) and the Late Middle Period of Cambodia (1431–1863) with an existential fear for the survival of the Cambodian state, which had historically been liquidated during periods of Vietnamese and Siamese intervention. The spillover of Vietnamese fighters from the Vietnamese–American War further aggravated anti-Vietnamese sentiments: the Khmer Republic under Lon Nol, overthrown by the Khmer Rouge, had promoted Mon-Khmer nationalism and was responsible for several anti-Vietnamese pogroms during the 1970s. Some historians such as Ben Kiernan have stated that the importance the regime gave to race overshadowed its conceptions of class.
Once in power, the Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cham minority and even their partially Khmer offspring. The same attitude extended to the party's own ranks, as senior CPK figures of non-Khmer ethnicity were removed from the leadership despite extensive revolutionary experience and were often killed.
A Vietnamese official called the Khmer Rouge leaders "Hitlerite-fascists", while the General Secretary of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party, Pen Sovan, referred to the Khmer Rouge as a "draconian, dictatorial and fascist regime".
Autarky
The Khmer Rouge's economic policy, which was largely based on the plans of Khieu Samphan, focused on the achievement of national self-reliance through an initial phase of agricultural collectivism. This would then be used as a route to achieve rapid social transformation and industrial and technological development without assistance from foreign powers, a process which the party characterised as a "Super Great Leap Forward".
The party's General Secretary Pol Pot strongly influenced the propagation of the policy of autarky. He was reportedly impressed with the self-sufficient manner in which the mountain tribes of Cambodia lived, which the party believed was a form of primitive communism. Khmer Rouge theory developed the concept that the nation should take "agriculture as the basic factor and use the fruits of agriculture to build industry". In 1975, Khmer Rouge representatives to China said that Pol Pot's belief was that the collectivisation of agriculture was capable of "[creating] a complete communist society without wasting time on the intermediate steps". Society was accordingly classified into peasant "base people", who would be the bulwark of the transformation; and urban "new people", who were to be reeducated or liquidated. The focus of the Khmer Rouge leadership on the peasantry as the base of the revolution was according to Michael Vickery a product of their status as "petty-bourgeois radicals who had been overcome by peasantist romanticism". The opposition of the peasantry and the urban population in Khmer Rouge ideology was heightened by the structure of the Cambodian rural economy, where small farmers and peasants had historically suffered from indebtedness to urban money-lenders rather than suffering from indebtedness to landlords. The policy of evacuating major towns, as well as providing a reserve of easily exploitable agricultural labour, was likely viewed positively by the Khmer Rouge's peasant supporters as removing the source of their debts.
Relationship to religion
Democratic Kampuchea was an atheist state, although its constitution stated that everyone had freedom of religion, or not to hold a religion. However, it specified that what it termed "reactionary religion" would not be permitted. While in practice religious activity was not tolerated, the relationship of the CPK to the majority Cambodian Theravada Buddhism was complex; several key figures in its history such as Tou Samouth and Ta Mok were former monks, along with many lower level cadres, who often proved some of the strictest disciplinarians. While there was extreme harassment of Buddhist institutions, there was a tendency for the CPK regime to internalise and reconfigure the symbolism and language of Cambodian Buddhism so that many revolutionary slogans mimicked the formulae learned by young monks during their training. Some cadres who had previously been monks interpreted their change of vocation as a simple movement from a lower to a higher religion, mirroring attitudes around the growth of Cao Dai in the 1920s.
Buddhist laity seem not to have been singled out for persecution, although traditional belief in the tutelary spirits, or neak ta, rapidly eroded as people were forcibly moved from their home areas. The position with Buddhist monks was more complicated: as with Islam, many religious leaders were killed whereas many ordinary monks were sent to remote monasteries where they were subjected to hard physical labour. The same division between rural and urban populations was seen in the regime's treatment of monks. For instance, those from urban monasteries were classified as "new monks" and sent to rural areas to live alongside "base monks" of peasant background, who were classified as "proper and revolutionary". Monks were not ordered to defrock until as late as 1977 in Kratié Province, where many monks found that they reverted to the status of lay peasantry as the agricultural work they were allocated to involved regular breaches of monastic rules. While there is evidence of widespread vandalism of Buddhist monasteries, many more than were initially thought survived the Khmer Rouge years in fair condition, as did most Khmer historical monuments, and it is possible that stories of their near-total destruction were propaganda issued by the successor People's Republic of Kampuchea. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that nearly 25,000 Buddhist monks were killed by the regime.
The repression of Islam (practised by the country's Cham minority) was extensive. Islamic religious leaders were executed, although some Cham Muslims appear to have been told they could continue devotions in private as long as it did not interfere with work quotas. Mat Ly, a Cham who served as the deputy minister of agriculture under the People's Republic of Kampuchea, stated that Khmer Rouge troops had perpetrated a number of massacres in Cham villages in the Central and Eastern zones where the residents had refused to give up Islamic customs. While François Ponchaud stated that Christians were invariably taken away and killed with the accusation of having links with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, at least some cadres appear to have regarded it as preferable to the "feudal" class-based Buddhism. Nevertheless, it remained deeply suspect to the regime thanks to its close links to French colonialism; Phnom Penh cathedral was razed along with other places of worship.
Interpretations
In analysing the Khmer Rouge regime, scholars place it within historical context. The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 through the Cambodian Civil War, where the United States had supported the opposing regime of Lon Nol and heavily bombed Cambodia, often indiscriminately, with even densely-populated areas being regularly bombed. The bombing was mainly directed at Communist Vietnamese troops, who had been allied to the Khmer Rouge, but it gave the Khmer Rouge a justification to eliminate the pro-Vietnamese faction and other communists in the group. The Cambodian genocide, which is described by many scholars as a genocide, was stopped by Communist Vietnam with the Khmer Rouge's overthrow in 1979. There have been allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge following their overthrow and the United Nations General Assembly voted to continue recognising Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea. South East Asian communism was deeply divided, as China supported the Khmer Rouge, while the Soviet Union and Vietnam opposed it.
There are three interpretations of the Khmer Rouge: totalitarianism, revisionism, and postrevisionism. Historian Ben Kiernan describes their rule as totalitarian but places it within the context of "xenophobic European nationalism", from which came their agrarianism and the establishment of a Great Cambodia, rather than communism or Marxism. Pol Pot's biographers David P. Chandler and Philip Short place more emphasis on their ideological heritage of communism; it was not easy to apply Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin's ideas to Cambodia, and communism was chosen as a way to get rid of French colonialism and transform the feudal society. Another interpretation, as proposed by historian Michael Vickery, is that of a bottom-up, left-wing peasant revolution with the Khmer Rouge as the revolutionaries. The Khmer Rouge was an intellectual group with a middle-class background and a romanticised sympathy for rural poor people but with little to no awareness that their radical policies would lead to such violence; according to this view, the applicability of genocide is rejected and the violence was an unintentional consequence that was beyond the Khmer Rouge's control. For Vickery, communist ideology does not explain the violence any more than those closer to the peasants', such as agrarianism, populism, and nationalism. Vickery wrote of communisms, as different communist factions were opposed to each other and fought against each other, resulting in further escalation of violence.
A synthesis of both interpretations rejects the totalitarian theory in favor of a bottom-up perspective, which emphasises that the peasants did not have revolutionary ambitions. According to this perspective, the Khmer Rouge was able to effectively manipulate the peasants to mobilise them towards collective goals that they did not understand, or where the revolutionaries had no desire to create a new society, which would require a certain level of support and understanding that the Khmer Rouge was not able to win over, but were mainly motivated to tear down the old one and violence became an end in itself.
Origins
Early history
The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases, namely the emergence before World War II of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese; the 10-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967–1968 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea regime from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party.
In 1930, Ho Chi Minh founded the Communist Party of Vietnam by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in northern, central and southern Vietnam during the late 1920s. The party was renamed the Indochinese Communist Party, ostensibly so it could include revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, all of the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the Indochinese communist movement as well as their influence on developments within Cambodia was negligible.
Viet Minh units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French and in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947. The Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing Khmer Issarak bands. On 17 April 1950, the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the United Issarak Front was established. Its leader was Son Ngoc Minh, and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups aided by the Viet Minh occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952, and on the eve of the Geneva Conference in 1954, they controlled as much as one half of the country. In 1951, the ICP was reorganized into three national units, namely the Vietnam Workers' Party, the Lao Issara, and the Kampuchean or Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP). According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have been either Khmer Krom or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia.
According to Democratic Kampuchea's perspective of party history, the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a Long March into North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to harassment and arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's political organization, Sangkum. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labelled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and their associates.
During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth) and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line endorsed by North Vietnam recognized that Sihanouk by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. Advocates of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right-wing and to adopt leftist policies. The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the "feudalist" Sihanouk.
Paris student group
During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975 and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for fax machines and also studied civil engineering). Described by one source as a "determined, rather plodding organizer", Pol Pot failed to obtain a degree, but according to Jesuit priest Father François Ponchaud he acquired a taste for the classics of French literature as well as an interest in the writings of Karl Marx.
Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary, a Chinese-Khmer from South Vietnam. He attended the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Paris Institute of Political Science (more widely known as Sciences Po) in France. Khieu Samphan specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. Hou Yuon studied economics and law; Son Sen studied education and literature; and Hu Nim studied law. Two members of the group, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris while Hu Nim obtained his degree from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family as an older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King Monivong. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith, also known as Ieng Thirith, purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.
At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party. In 1951, the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (but subsequently judged them to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas.
Inside the KSA and its successor organizations, there was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste (Marxist circle). The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952, Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy". A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA, but Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish in 1956 a new group, the Khmer Students Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste.
The doctoral dissertations which were written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that would later become the cornerstones of the policy that was adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization, which challenged the conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development, was that the country had to become self-reliant and end its economic dependency on the developed world. In its general contours, Samphan's work reflected the influence of a branch of the dependency theory school which blamed lack of development in the Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations.
Path to power and reign
KPRP Second Congress
After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first, he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of Kampong Cham Province. After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee", where he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement.
His comrades Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing French-language publication, L'Observateur. The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Samphan by beating, undressing and photographing him in public; as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget". Yet the experience did not prevent Samphan from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government.
In late September 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention and considerable historical rewriting between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK). His ally Nuon Chea, also known as Long Reth, became deputy general secretary, but Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Political Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the renamed party's hierarchy. The name change is significant. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea implied in the 1980s that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second congress of the KPRP.
On 20 July 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. At the WPK's second congress in February 1963, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Samouth's allies Nuon Chea and Keo Meas were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet. From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from his Paris student days controlled the party centre, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese. In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of 34 leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country. Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police.
Sihanouk and the GRUNK
The region where Pol Pot and the others moved to was inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. From the 1950s on, Pol Pot had made frequent visits to the People's Republic of China, receiving political and military training—especially on the theory of dictatorship of the proletariat—from the personnel of the CCP. From November 1965 to February 1966, Pol Pot received training from high-ranking CCP officials such as Chen Boda and Zhang Chunqiao, on topics such as the communist revolution in China, class conflicts, and Communist International. Pol Pot was particularly impressed by the lecture on political purge by Kang Sheng. This experience had enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's "liberated areas". Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk.
In September 1966, the WPK changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret. Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later. The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Sihanouk. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge was officially formed, and its forces launched a national insurgency across Cambodia. Though North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the Cambodian military to effectively counter it. For the next two years, the insurgency grew as Sihanouk did very little to stop it. As the insurgency grew stronger, the party finally openly declared itself to be the Communist Party of Kampuchea.
The political appeal of the Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970. Premier Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk with the support of the National Assembly. Sihanouk, who was in exile in Beijing, made an alliance with the Khmer Rouge on the advice of CCP, and became the nominal head of a Khmer Rouge–dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym GRUNK) backed by China. In 1970 alone, the Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the United Front. Although thoroughly aware of the weakness of Lon Nol's forces and loath to commit American military force to the new conflict in any form other than air power, the Nixon administration supported the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic.
On 29 March 1970, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. Documents uncovered from the Soviet Union archives revealed that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within of Phnom Penh before being pushed back. By June, three months after the removal of Sihanouk, they had swept government forces from the entire northeastern third of the country. After defeating those forces, the North Vietnamese turned the newly won territories over to the local insurgents. The Khmer Rouge also established "liberated" areas in the south and the southwestern parts of the country, where they operated independently of the North Vietnamese.
After Sihanouk showed his support for the Khmer Rouge by visiting them in the field, their ranks swelled from 6,000 to 50,000 fighters. Many of the new recruits for the Khmer Rouge were apolitical peasants who fought in support of the king, not for communism, of which they had little understanding. Sihanouk's popular support in rural Cambodia allowed the Khmer Rouge to extend its power and influence to the point that by 1973 it exercised de facto control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population. By 1975, with the Lon Nol government running out of ammunition, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the government would collapse. On 17 April 1975, there was the Fall of Phnom Penh, as the Khmer Rouge captured the capital.
During the civil war, unparalleled atrocities were executed on both sides. While the civil war was brutal, its estimated death toll has been revised downwards over time.
Foreign involvement
Before 1975
The relationship between the massive carpet bombing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians. Some scholars, including Michael Ignatieff, Adam Jones and Greg Grandin, have cited the United States intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965–1973) as a significant factor which led to increased support for the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry.
According to Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. ... It used the bombing's devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies and its purge of moderate communists and Sihanoukists." Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler writes that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted – it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh", but it also accelerated the collapse of rural society and increased social polarization. Peter Rodman and Michael Lind claim that the United States intervention saved the Lon Nol regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973. Craig Etcheson acknowledged that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge but disputed that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory. William Shawcross writes that the United States bombing and ground incursion plunged Cambodia into the chaos that Sihanouk had worked for years to avoid.
By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge had largely disappeared. On the other hand, the CCP largely "armed and trained" the Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, both during the Cambodian Civil War and the years afterward. In 1970 alone, the Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the National United Front of Kampuchea formed by Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge.
1975–1993
In April 1975, Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and in January 1976, Democratic Kampuchea was established. During the Cambodian genocide, the CCP was the main international patron of the Khmer Rouge, supplying "more than 15,000 military advisers" and most of its external aid. It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing US$1 billion in interest-free economics and military aid and US$20 million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China". In June 1975, Pol Pot and other officials of Khmer Rouge met with Mao Zedong in Beijing, receiving Mao's approval and advice; in addition, Mao also taught Pot his "Theory of Continuing Revolution under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"（). High-ranking CCP officials such as Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help.
Democratic Kampuchea was overthrown by the Vietnamese army in January 1979, and the Khmer Rouge fled to Thailand. However, to counter the power of the Soviet Union and Vietnam, a group of countries including China, the United States, Thailand as well as some Western countries supported the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea to continue holding Cambodia's seat in the United Nations, which was held until 1993, after the Cold War had ended. China has defended its ties with the Khmer Rouge. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said that "the government of Democratic Kampuchea had a legal seat at the United Nations, and had established broad foreign relations with more than 70 countries".
Regime
Leadership
The governing structure of Democratic Kampuchea was split between the state presidium which was headed by Khieu Samphan, the cabinet was led by Pol Pot who was also Democratic Kampuchea's prime minister and the party's own Politburo and Central Committee. All were complicated by a number of political factions which existed in 1975. The leadership of the Party Centre, the faction which was headed by Pol Pot, remained largely unchanged from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. Its leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities. The second significant faction was made up of men who had been active in the pre-1960 party and had stronger links to Vietnam as a result; government documents show that there were several major shifts in power between factions during the period in which the regime was in control.
In 1975–1976, there were several powerful zonal Khmer Rouge leaders who maintained their own armies and had different party backgrounds than the members of the Pol Pot clique, particularly So Phim and Nhim Ros, both of whom were vice presidents of the state presidium and members of the Politburo and Central Committee respectively. A possible military coup attempt was made in May 1976, and its leader was a senior Eastern Zone cadre named Chan Chakrey, who had been appointed deputy secretary of the army's General Staff. A reorganisation which occurred in September 1976, during which Pol Pot was demoted in the state presidium and was later presented as an attempted pro-Vietnamese coup by the Party Center. Over the next two years, So Phim, Nhim Ros, Vorn Vet and many other figures who had been associated with the pre-1960 party were arrested and executed. Phim's execution was followed by that of the majority of the cadres and much of the population of the Eastern Zone that he had controlled. The Party Centre, lacking much in the way of their own military resources, accomplished their seizure of power by forming an alliance with Southwestern Zone leader Ta Mok and Pok, head of the North Zone's troops. Both men were of a purely peasant background and were therefore natural allies of the strongly peasant ideology of the Pol Pot faction.
The Standing Committee of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee during its period of power consisted of the following:
Pol Pot (Saloth Sar), "Brother number 1", General Secretary from 1963 until his death in 1998 and effectively the leader of the movement.
Nuon Chea (Long Bunruot), "Brother number 2", Prime Minister, high status made him Pol Pot's "righthand man"
Ieng Sary (Pol Pot's brother-in-law), "Brother number 3", Deputy Prime Minister
Khieu Samphan, "Brother number 4", President of Democratic Kampuchea
Ta Mok (Chhit Chhoeun), "Brother number 5", Southwest Regional Secretary
Son Sen , "Brother number 89", Defense Minister, Superior of Kang Kek Iew and executed on Pol Pot's orders for treason.
Yun Yat , wife of Son Sen, former Information Minister, executed with Son Sen
Ke Pauk , "Brother number 13" and former secretary of the Northern zone
Ieng Thirith , sister-in-law of Pol Pot, former Social Affairs Minister
Life under the Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from all foreign influences, closing schools, hospitals and some factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, and collectivising agriculture. Khmer Rouge theorists, who developed the ideas of Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan, believed that an initial period of self-imposed economic isolation and national self-sufficiency would stimulate the rebirth of the crafts as well as the rebirth of the country's latent industrial capability.
Evacuation of the cities
In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would only be moved about "two or three kilometers" away from the city and would return in "two or three days". Some witnesses said they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and they were also told that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned. If people refused to evacuate, they would immediately be killed and their homes would be burned to the ground. The evacuees were sent on long marches to the countryside, which killed thousands of children, elderly people and sick people. These were not the first evacuations of civilian populations by the Khmer Rouge because similar evacuations of populations without possessions had been occurring on a smaller scale since the early 1970s.
On arrival at the villages to which they had been assigned, evacuees were required to write brief autobiographical essays. The essay's content, particularly with regard to the subject's activity during the Khmer Republic regime, was used to determine their fate. Military officers and those occupying elite professional roles were usually sent for reeducation, which in practice meant immediate execution or confinement in a labour camp. Those with specialist technical skills often found themselves sent back to cities to restart production in factories which had been interrupted by the takeover. The remaining displaced urban population ("new people"), as part of the regime's drive to increase food production, were placed into agricultural communes alongside the peasant "base people" or "old people". The latter's holdings were collectivised. Cambodians were expected to produce three tons of rice per hectare, whereas before the Khmer Rouge era the average was one ton per hectare.
The lack of agricultural knowledge on the part of the former city dwellers made famine inevitable. The rural peasantry were often unsympathetic, or they were too frightened to assist them. Such acts as picking wild fruit or berries were seen as "private enterprise" and punished with death. Labourers were forced to work long shifts without adequate rest or food, resulting in many deaths through exhaustion, illness and starvation. Workers were executed for attempting to escape from the communes, for breaching minor rules, or after being denounced by colleagues. If caught, offenders were taken off to a distant forest or field after sunset and killed. Unwilling to import Western medicines, the regime turned to traditional medicine instead and placed medical care in the hands of cadres who were only given rudimentary training. The famine, forced labour and lack of access to appropriate services led to a high number of deaths.
Economic policies
Khmer Rouge economic policies took a similarly extreme course. Officially, trade was only restricted to bartering between communes, a policy which the regime developed in order to enforce self-reliance. Banks were raided, and all currency and records were destroyed by fire, thus eliminating any claim to funds. After 1976, the regime reinstated discussion of export in the period after the disastrous effects of its planning began to become apparent. Commercial fishing was banned in 1976.
Family relations
The regulations made by the Angkar (អង្គការ, The Organisation, which was the ruling body) also had effects on the traditional Cambodian family unit. The regime was primarily interested in increasing the young population and one of the strictest regulations prohibited sex outside marriage which was punishable by execution. The Khmer Rouge followed a morality based on an idealised conception of the attitudes of prewar rural Cambodia. Marriage required permission from the authorities, and the Khmer Rouge were strict in only giving permission for people of the same class and level of education to marry. Such rules were applied even more strictly to party cadres. While some refugees spoke of families being deliberately broken up, this appears to have referred mainly to the traditional Cambodian extended family unit, which the regime actively sought to destroy in favour of small nuclear units of parents and children.
The regime promoted arranged marriages, particularly between party cadres. While some academics such as Michael Vickery have noted that arranged marriages were also a feature of rural Cambodia prior to 1975, those conducted by the Khmer Rouge regime often involved people unfamiliar to each other. As well as reflecting the Khmer Rouge obsession with production and reproduction, such marriages were designed to increase people's dependency on the regime by undermining existing family and other loyalties.
Education
It is often concluded that the Khmer Rouge regime promoted functional illiteracy. This statement is not completely incorrect, but it is quite inaccurate. The Khmer Rouge wanted to "eliminate all traces of Cambodia's imperialist past", and its previous culture was one of them. The Khmer Rouge did not want the Cambodian people to be completely ignorant, and primary education was provided to them. Nevertheless, the Khmer Rouge's policies dramatically reduced the Cambodian population's cultural inflow as well as its knowledge and creativity. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to gain full control of all of the information that the Cambodian people received, and spread revolutionary culture among the masses.
Education came to a "virtual standstill" in Democratic Kampuchea. Irrespective of central policies, most local cadres considered higher education useless and as a result, they were suspicious of those who had received it. The regime abolished all literary schooling above primary grades, ostensibly focusing on basic literacy instead. In practice, primary schools were not set up in many areas because of the extreme disruptions which had been caused by the regime's takeover, and most ordinary people, especially "new people", felt that their children were taught nothing worthwhile in those schools which still existed. The exception was the Eastern Zone, which until 1976 was run by cadres who were closely connected with Vietnam rather than the Party Centre, where a more organised system seems to have existed under which children were given extra rations, taught by teachers who were drawn from the "base people" and given a limited number of official textbooks.
Beyond primary education, technical courses were taught in factories to students who were drawn from the favoured "base people". There was a general reluctance to increase people's education in Democratic Kampuchea, and in some districts, cadres were known to kill people who boasted about their educational accomplishments, and it was considered bad form for people to allude to any special technical training. Based on a speech which Pol Pot made in 1978, it appears that he may have ultimately envisaged that illiterate students with approved poor peasant backgrounds could become trained engineers within ten years by doing a lot of targeted studying along with a lot of practical work.
Language reforms
The Khmer language has a complex system of usages to define speakers' rank and social status. During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, these usages were abolished. People were encouraged to call each other "friend" (មិត្ត; mitt) and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as bowing or folding the hands in salutation, known as sampeah. Language was also transformed in other ways. The Khmer Rouge invented new terms. In keeping with the regime's theories on Khmer identity, the majority of new words were coined with reference to Pali or Sanskrit terms, while Chinese and Vietnamese-language borrowings were discouraged. People were told to "forge" (lot dam) a new revolutionary character, that they were the "instruments" (ឧបករណ៍; opokar) of the ruling body known as Angkar (អង្គការ, The Organisation) and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary times (chheu satek arom, or "memory sickness") could result in execution.
Crimes against humanity
Acting through the Santebal, the Khmer Rouge arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone who was suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed enemies:
People with connections to former Cambodian governments, either those of the Khmer Republic or the Sangkum, to the Khmer Republic military, or to foreign governments.
Professionals and intellectuals, including almost everyone with an education and people who understood a foreign language. Many artists, including musicians, writers, and filmmakers were executed including Ros Serey Sothea, Pan Ron and Sinn Sisamouth.
Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic), Muslims and senior Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
"Economic saboteurs" as many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage because of their lack of agricultural ability.
Party cadres who had fallen under political suspicion: the regime tortured and executed thousands of party members during its purges.
The Santebal established over 150 prisons for political opponents; Tuol Sleng is a former high school that was turned into the Santebal headquarters and interrogation center for the highest value political prisoners. Tuol Sleng was operated by the Santebal commander Khang Khek Ieu, more commonly known as Comrade Duch, together with his subordinates Mam Nai and Tang Sin Hean. According to Ben Kiernan, "all but seven of the twenty thousand Tuol Sleng prisoners" were executed. The buildings of Tuol Sleng have been preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. Several of the rooms are now lined with thousands of black-and-white photographs of prisoners that were taken by the Khmer Rouge.
On 7 August 2014, when sentencing two former Khmer Rouge leaders to life imprisonment, Cambodian judge Nil Nonn said there were evidences of "a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia". He said the leaders, Nuon Chea, the regime's chief ideologue and former deputy to late leader Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, together in a "joint criminal enterprise" were involved in murder, extermination, political persecution and other inhumane acts related to the mass eviction of city-dwellers, and executions of enemy soldiers. In November 2018, the trial convicted Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Vietnamese, while Nuon Chea was also found guilty of genocide relating to the Chams.
Number of deaths
According to a 2001 academic source, the most widely accepted estimates of excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge range from 1.5 million to 2 million, although figures as low as 1 million and as high as 3 million have been cited; conventionally accepted estimates of executions range from 500,000 to 1 million, "a third to one half of excess mortality during the period". A 2013 academic source (citing research from 2009) indicates that execution may have accounted for as much as 60% of the total, with 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution.
Historian Ben Kiernan estimates that 1.671 million to 1.871 million Cambodians died as a result of Khmer Rouge policy, or between 21% and 24% of Cambodia's 1975 population. A study by French demographer Marek Sliwinski calculated nearly 2 million unnatural deaths under the Khmer Rouge out of a 1975 Cambodian population of 7.8 million; 33.5% of Cambodian men died under the Khmer Rouge compared to 15.7% of Cambodian women. Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) suggests that the death toll was between 2 million and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching mass grave sites, he estimated that they contained 1.38 million suspected victims of execution. Although considerably higher than earlier and more widely accepted estimates of Khmer Rouge executions, Etcheson argues that these numbers are plausible, given the nature of the mass grave and DC-Cam's methods, which are more likely to produce an under-count of bodies rather than an over-estimate. Demographer Patrick Heuveline estimated that between 1.17 million and 3.42 million Cambodians died unnatural deaths between 1970 and 1979, with between 150,000 and 300,000 of those deaths occurring during the civil war. Heuveline's central estimate is 2.52 million excess deaths, of which 1.4 million were the direct result of violence.
Despite being based on a house-to-house survey of Cambodians, the estimate of 3.3 million deaths promulgated by the Khmer Rouge's successor regime, the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), is generally considered to be an exaggeration; among other methodological errors, the PRK authorities added the estimated number of victims that had been found in the partially-exhumed mass graves to the raw survey results, meaning that some victims would have been double-counted. An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.
Genocide
While the period from 1975 to 1979 is commonly associated with the phrase "the Cambodian genocide", scholars debate whether the legal definition of the crime can be applied generally. While two former leaders were convicted of genocide, this was for treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, the Vietnamese and Cham. The death toll of these two groups, approximately 100,000 people, is roughly 5% of the generally accepted total of two million. The treatment of these groups can be seen to fall under the legal definition of genocide, as they were targeted on the basis of their religion or ethnicity. The vast majority of deaths were of the Khmer ethnic group, which was not a target of the Khmer Rouge. The deaths occurring as a result of targeting these Khmer, whether it was the "new people" or enemies of the regime, was based on political distinctions rather than ethnic or religious. In an interview conducted in 2018, historian David P. Chandler states that crimes against humanity was the term that best fit the atrocities of the regime and that some attempts to characterise the majority of the killings as genocide was flawed and at times politicised.
Internal power struggles and purges
Hou Yuon was one of the first senior leaders to be purged. The Khmer Rouge originally reported that he had been killed in the final battles for Phnom Penh, but he was apparently executed in late 1975 or early 1976. In late 1975, numerous Cambodian intellectuals, professionals and students returned from overseas to support the revolution. These returnees were treated with suspicion and made to undergo reeducation, while some were sent straight to Tuol Sleng. In 1976, the center announced the start of the socialist revolution and ordered the elimination of class enemies. This resulted in the expulsion and execution of numerous people within the party and army who were deemed to be of the wrong class. In mid-1976, Ieng Thirith, minister of social affairs, inspected the northwestern zone. On her return to Phnom Penh she reported that the zone's cadres were deliberately disobeying orders from the center, blaming enemy agents who were trying to undermine the revolution. During 1976, troops formerly from the eastern zone demanded the right to marry without the party's approval. They were arrested and under interrogation implicated their commander who then implicated eastern zone cadres who were arrested and executed.
In September 1976, Keo Meas, who had been tasked with writing a history of the party, was arrested as a result of disputes over the foundation date of the party and its reliance on Vietnamese support. Under torture at Tuol Sleng he confessed that the date chosen was part of a plot to undermine the party's legitimacy and was then executed. In late 1976, with the Kampuchean economy underperforming, Pol Pot ordered a purge of the ministry of commerce, and Khoy Thoun and his subordinates who he had brought from the northern zone were arrested, tortured, and at Tuol Sleng before being executed. Khoy Thoun confessed to having been recruited by the CIA in 1958. The center also ordered troops from the eastern and central zones to purge the northern zone killing or arresting numerous cadres.
At the end of 1976, following disappointing rice harvests in the northwestern zone, the party center ordered a purge of the zone. Troops from the western and southwestern zones were ordered into the northwestern zone. Over the next year, troops killed at least 40 senior cadre and numerous lower ranking leaders. The chaos caused by this purge allowed many peasants to escape the zone and seek refuge in Thailand. In 1977, the center began purging the returnees, sending 148 to Tuol Sleng and continuing a purge of the ministry of foreign affairs where many returnees and intellectuals were suspected of spying for foreign powers. In January, the center ordered eastern and southeastern zone troops to conduct cross-border raids into Vietnam. In March 1977, the center ordered So Phim, the eastern zone commander, to send his troops to the border; however with class warfare purges underway in the eastern zone, many units staged a mutiny and fled into Vietnam. Among the troops defecting in this period was Hun Sen. On 10 April 1977 Hu Nim and his wife were arrested. After three months of interrogation at Tuol Sleng, he confessed to working with the CIA to undermine the revolution following which he and his wife were executed. In July 1977, Pol Pot and Duch sent So Phim a list of "traitors" in the eastern zone, many of whom were So Phim's trusted subordinates. So Phim disputed the list and refused to execute those listed, for the center this implicated So Phim as a traitor. In October 1977, in order to secure the Thai border while focusing on confrontation with Vietnam, Nhim Ros, the northwestern zone leader, was blamed for clashes on the Thai border, acting on behalf of both the Vietnamese and the CIA.
In December 1977, the Vietnamese launched a punitive attack into eastern Cambodia, quickly routing the eastern zone troops including Heng Samrin's Division 4 and further convincing Pol Pot of So Phim's treachery. Son Sen was sent to the eastern zone with center zone troops to aid the defense. In January 1978, following the Vietnamese withdrawal, a purge of the eastern zone began. In March, So Phim called a secret meeting of his closest subordinates advising them that those who had been purged were not traitors and warning them to be wary. During the next month more than 400 eastern zone cadres were sent to Tuol Sleng while two eastern zone division commanders were replaced. During May eastern zone military leaders were called to meetings where they were arrested or killed. So Phim was called to a meeting by Son Sen but refused to attend, instead sending four messengers who failed to return. On 25 May, Son Sen sent two brigades of troops to attack the eastern zone and capture So Phim. Unable to believe he was being purged, So Phim went into hiding and attempted to contact Pol Pot by radio. A meeting was arranged, but instead of Pol Pot a group of center soldiers arrived, and So Phim committed suicide; the soldiers then killed his family.
Many of the surviving eastern zone leaders fled into the jungle where they hid from and fought center zone troops. In October 1978, Chea Sim led a group of 300 people across the border into Vietnam, and the Vietnamese then launched a raid into the eastern zone that allowed Heng Samrin and his group of 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers and followers to seek refuge in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the center decided that the entire eastern zone was full of traitors and embarked on a large scale purge of the area, with over 10,000 killed by July 1978, while thousands were evacuated to other zones to prevent them from defecting to the Vietnamese. The center also stepped up purges nationwide, killing cadres and their families, "old people" and eastern zone evacuees who were regarded as having dubious loyalty.
In September 1978, a purge of the ministry of industry was begun, and in November Pol Pot ordered the arrest of Vorn Vet, the deputy premier for the economy, followed by his supporters. Vorn Vet had previously served as the secretary of the zone around Phnom Penh, had established the Santebal and been Duch's immediate superior. Under torture, Vorn Vet admitted to being an agent of the CIA and the Vietnamese. Unable to reach the borders, ministry of industry personnel who could escape the purge went into hiding in Phnom Penh
Fall
War with Vietnam
Fearing a Vietnamese attack, Pol Pot ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam on 18 April 1978. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages, mostly in the border town of Ba Chúc. Of the 3,157 civilians who had lived in Ba Chúc, only two survived the massacre. These Cambodian forces were repelled by the Vietnamese.
After several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Kampuchea, relations between Kampuchea and Vietnam collapsed by December 1978. On 25 December 1978, the Vietnamese armed forces along with the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, an organization founded by Heng Samrin that included many dissatisfied former Khmer Rouge members, invaded Cambodia and captured Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979. Despite a traditional Cambodian fear of Vietnamese domination, defecting Khmer Rouge activists assisted the Vietnamese and with Vietnam's approval became the core of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea. The new government was quickly dismissed by the Khmer Rouge and China as a "puppet government".
At the same time, the Khmer Rouge retreated west and it continued to control certain areas near the Thai border for the next decade. These included Phnom Malai, the mountainous areas near Pailin in the Cardamom Mountains and Anlong Veng in the Dângrêk Mountains. These Khmer Rouge bases were not self-sufficient and were funded by diamond and timber smuggling, military assistance from China channeled by means of the Thai military, and food smuggled from markets across the border in Thailand.
Place in the United Nations
Despite its deposal, the Khmer Rouge retained its United Nations seat, which was occupied by Thiounn Prasith, an old compatriot of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary from their student days in Paris and one of the 21 attendees at the 1960 KPRP Second Congress. The seat was retained under the name Democratic Kampuchea until 1982 and then under the name Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. Western governments voted in favor of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea retaining Cambodia's seat in the organization over the newly installed Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea, even though it included the Khmer Rouge. In 1988, Margaret Thatcher stated: "So, you'll find that the more reasonable ones of the Khmer Rouge will have to play some part in the future government, but only a minority part. I share your utter horror that these terrible things went on in Kampuchea". On the contrary, Sweden changed its vote in the United Nations and withdrew its support for the Khmer Rouge after many Swedish citizens wrote letters to their elected representatives demanding a policy change towards Pol Pot's regime.
The international proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union goes back to the civil war. The Kingdom of Cambodia was supported by the United States, the Khmer Republic (that eventually took over after the removal of Prince Sihanouk) and South Vietnam. The other side, the National United Front of Kampuchea, was supported by the Khmer Rouge, North-Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union. Cambodia became an instrument for the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The measures that the US employed for Cambodia were seen as preventive acts to stop the communists. These preventive acts included deployment of military troops and other institutions like the UNTAC.
Ramifications of the Vietnamese victory
Vietnam's victory was supported by the Soviet Union and had significant ramifications for the region. The People's Republic of China launched a punitive invasion of northern Vietnam but then retreated, with both sides claiming victory. China, the United States and the ASEAN countries sponsored the creation and the military operations of a Cambodian government in exile, known as the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which included the Khmer Rouge, the republican Khmer People's National Liberation Front and the royalist Funcinpec Party.
Eastern and central Cambodia were firmly under the control of Vietnam and its Cambodian allies by 1980, while the western part of the country continued to be a battlefield throughout the 1980s, and millions of land mines were sown across the countryside. The Khmer Rouge, still led by Pol Pot, was the strongest of the three rebel groups in the Coalition Government, which received extensive military aid from China, Britain and the United States and intelligence from the Thai military. Great Britain and the United States in particular gave aid to the two non-Khmer Rouge members of the coalition.
In an attempt to broaden its support base, the Khmer Rouge formed the Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea in 1979. In 1981, the Khmer Rouge went so far as to officially renounce communism and somewhat moved their ideological emphasis to nationalism and anti-Vietnamese rhetoric instead. Some analysts argue that this change meant little in practice because according to historian Kelvin Rowley the "CPK propaganda had always relied on nationalist rather than revolutionary appeals".
Pol Pot relinquished the Khmer Rouge leadership to Khieu Samphan in 1985; however, he continued to be the driving force behind the Khmer Rouge insurgency, giving speeches to his followers. Journalist Nate Thayer, who spent some time with the Khmer Rouge during that period, commented that despite the international community's near-universal condemnation of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule a considerable number of Cambodians in Khmer Rouge-controlled areas seemed genuinely to support Pol Pot. While Vietnam proposed to withdraw from Cambodia in return for a political settlement that would exclude the Khmer Rouge from power, the rebel coalition government as well as ASEAN, China and the United States, insisted that such a condition was unacceptable. Nevertheless, Vietnam declared in 1985 that it would complete the withdrawal of its forces from Cambodia by 1990 and it did so in 1989, having allowed the Cambodian People's Party government that it had installed there to consolidate its rule and gain sufficient military strength.
After a decade of inconclusive conflict, the pro-Vietnamese Cambodian government and the rebel coalition signed a treaty in 1991 calling for elections and disarmament. However, the Khmer Rouge resumed fighting in 1992, boycotted the election and in the following year rejected its results. It began fighting the Cambodian coalition government which included the former Vietnamese-backed communists (headed by Hun Sen) as well as the Khmer Rouge's former non-communist and monarchist allies (notably Prince Rannaridh).
Ieng Sary led a mass defection from the Khmer Rouge in 1996, with half of its remaining soldiers (about 4,000) switching to the government side and Ieng Sary becoming leader of Pailin Province. A conflict between the two main participants in the ruling coalition caused in 1997 Prince Rannaridh to seek support from some of the Khmer Rouge leaders while refusing to have any dealings with Pol Pot. This resulted in bloody factional fighting among the Khmer Rouge leaders, ultimately leading to Pol Pot's trial and imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot died in April 1998. Khieu Samphan surrendered in December 1998. On 29 December 1998, leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologised for the 1970s genocide. By 1999, most members had surrendered or been captured. In December 1999, Ta Mok and the remaining leaders surrendered, and the Khmer Rouge effectively ceased to exist.
Legacy
Cambodia is seen as the black sheep of South East Asia in which extremism is condoned in a country characterized by very weak economic growth and extensive poverty; this is not limited to the Khmer Rouge, and one core context is war, which has increased the significance of the American bombing in developing the history of Cambodia. Before Lon Nol's coup d'état and the establishment of its anti-communist military regime, Cambodia was ruled by the authoritarian royal Norodom Sihanouk since Cambodian independence from France in the 1950s.
Cambodia has gradually recovered demographically and economically from the Khmer Rouge regime, although the psychological scars affect many Cambodian families and émigré communities. It is noteworthy that Cambodia has a very young population, and by 2003 three-quarters of Cambodians were too young to remember the Khmer Rouge era. Nonetheless, their generation is affected by the traumas of the past. Members of this younger generation may know of the Khmer Rouge only through word of mouth from parents and elders. In part, this is because the government does not require that educators teach children about Khmer Rouge atrocities in the schools; however, Cambodia's Education Ministry started to teach Khmer Rouge history in high schools beginning in 2009.
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established as a Cambodian court with international participation and assistance to bring to trial senior leaders and those most responsible for crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. As of 2020, there are 3 open cases. ECCC's efforts for outreach toward both national and international audience include public trial hearings, study tours, video screenings, school lectures and video archives on the web site.
After claiming to feel great remorse for his part in Khmer Rouge atrocities, Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch), head of a torture centre from which 16,000 men, women and children were sent to their deaths, surprised the court in his trial on 27 November 2009 with a plea for his freedom. His Cambodian lawyer Kar Savuth stunned the tribunal further by issuing the trial's first call for an acquittal of his client even after his French lawyer denied seeking such a verdict. On 26 July 2010, he was convicted and sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. Theary Seng responded: "We hoped this tribunal would strike hard at impunity, but if you can kill 14,000 people and serve only 19 years – 11 hours per life taken – what is that? It's a joke", voicing concerns about political interference. In February 2012, Duch's sentence was increased to life imprisonment following appeals by both the prosecution and defence. In dismissing the defence's appeal, Judge Kong Srim stated that "Duch's crimes were "undoubtedly among the worst in recorded human history" and deserved "the highest penalty available".
Public trial hearings in Phnom Penh are open to the people of Cambodia over the age of 18 including foreigners. In order to assist people's will to participate in the public hearings, the court provides free bus transportation for groups of Cambodians who want to visit the court. Since the commencement of Case 001 trial in 2009 through the end of 2011, 53,287 people participated in the public hearings. ECCC also has hosted Study Tour Program to help villagers in rural areas understand the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. The court provides free transport for them to come to visit the court and meet with court officials to learn about its work, in addition to visits to the genocide museum and the killing fields. ECCC also has visited villages to provide video screenings and school lectures to promote their understanding of the trial proceedings. Furthermore, trials and transcripts are partially available with English translation on the ECCC's website.
Museums
The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide is a former high school building, which was transformed into a torture, interrogation and execution center between 1976 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge called the center S-21. Of the estimated 15,000 to 30,000 prisoners, only seven prisoners survived. The Khmer Rouge photographed the vast majority of the inmates and left a photographic archive, which enables visitors to see almost 6,000 S-21 portraits on the walls. Visitors can also learn how the inmates were tortured from the equipment and facilities exhibited in the buildings. In addition, one of the seven survivors shares his story with visitors at the museum.
The Choeung Ek Killing Fields are located about 15 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Most of the prisoners who were held captive at S-21 were taken to the fields to be executed and deposited in one of the approximately 129 mass graves. It is estimated that the graves contain the remains of over 20,000 victims. After the discovery of the site in 1979, the Vietnamese transformed the site into a memorial and stored skulls and bones in an open-walled wooden memorial pavilion. Eventually, these remains were showcased in the memorial's centerpiece stupa, or Buddhist shrine.
Publications
The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), an independent research institute, published A History of Democratic Kampuchea 1975–1979, the nation's first textbook on the history of the Khmer Rouge. The 74-page textbook was approved by the government as a supplementary text in 2007. The textbook is aiming at standardising and improving the information students receive about the Khmer Rouge years because the government-issued social studies textbook devotes eight or nine pages to the period. The publication was a part of their genocide education project that includes leading the design of a national genocide studies curriculum with the Ministry of Education, training thousands of teachers and 1,700 high schools on how to teach about genocide and working with universities across Cambodia.
Youth for Peace, a Cambodian non-governmental organization (NGO) that offers education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution and reconciliation to Cambodian's youth, published a book titled Behind the Darkness:Taking Responsibility or Acting Under Orders? in 2011. The book is unique in that instead of focusing on the victims as most books do, it collects the stories of former Khmer Rouge, giving insights into the functioning of the regime and approaching the question of how such a regime could take place.
Dialogues
While the tribunal contributes to the memorialization process at national level, some civil society groups promote memorialization at community level. The International Center for Conciliation (ICfC) began working in Cambodia in 2004 as a branch of the ICfC in Boston. ICfC launched the Justice and History Outreach project in 2007 and has worked in villages in rural Cambodia with the goal of creating mutual understanding and empathy between victims and former members of the Khmer Rouge. Following the dialogues, villagers identify their own ways of memorialization such as collecting stories to be transmitted to the younger generations or building a memorial. Through the process, some villagers are beginning to accept the possibility of an alternative viewpoint to the traditional notions of evil associated with anyone who worked for the Khmer Rouge regime.
Media coverage
Radio National Kampuchea as well as private radio stations broadcast programmes on the Khmer Rouge and trials. ECCC has its own weekly radio program on RNK which provides an opportunity for the public to interact with court officials and deepen their understanding of Cases.
Youth for Peace, a Cambodian NGO that offers education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution and reconciliation to Cambodian's youth, has broadcast the weekly radio program You Also Have a Chance since 2009. Aiming at preventing the passing on of hatred and violence to future generations, the program allows former Khmer Rouge to talk anonymously about their past experience.
See also
Alive in the Killing Fields
Cambodian genocide denial
Cambodia Tribunal
Choeung Ek
Classicide
Cold War
Command responsibility
Crimes against humanity under communist regimes
Dap Prampi Mesa Chokchey
Enemies of the People, a documentary film depicting co-director Thet Sambath's quest to find truth and closure in the Killing Fields of Cambodia
Genocides in history
Killing Fields
Mass killings under communist regimes
The Missing Picture, a documentary film illustrating the cruelty inflicted upon Cambodians when Pol Pot came to power through news footage and clay figurines
Operation Menu
S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
Notes
References
Further reading
Affonço, Denise. To the End of Hell: One Woman's Struggle to Survive Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. London: Reportage Press, 2007.
Bizot, Francois. The Gate. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Bultmann, Daniel. "Irrigating a Socialist Utopia: Disciplinary Space and Population Control under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979," Transcience, vol. 3, no. 1 (2012), pp. 40–52.
Chanda, Nayan, Brother Enemy: The War After the War. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
Criddle, JoAn D. To Destroy You Is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987. .
Him, Chanrithy. When Broken Glass Floats: Growing up under the Khmer Rouge, A Memoir. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.
Ngor, Haing. A Cambodian Odyssey. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
Nhem, Boraden. Khmer Rouge: Ideology, Militarism, and the Revolution that Consumed a Generation Praeger, 2013. .
Pran, Dith (Comp.). Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.
Panh, Rithy with Bataille, Christopher. The Elimination: a Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts his Past. Clerkenwell, 2013. A dispassionate interview and analysis of "Duch", who was head of security for the Khmer regime. Written by a surviving victim.
Swain, Jon. River of Time. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. .
Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. .
Olivier Weber, Les Impunis, Un voyage dans la banalité du mal (Robert Laffont, 2013).
Piergiorgio Pescali, S-21 Nella prigione di Pol Pot La Ponga Edizioni, Milan, 2015. .
External links
Pol Pot Kills Himself on the Night of April 15 1998
The Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia
Nuon Chea's 570-page closing brief; his version of Khmer Rouge history.
Cambodia Tribunal Monitor
Khmer Rouge S21 art exhibition at Tuol Sleng from January 26, 2011 to April 26, 2011 by Peter Klashorst
ព្យុហយាត្រាខួបទី១០ឆ្នាំ ថ្ងៃ៧មករា ១៩៧៩ ដល់ ១៩៨៩
Other online sources
Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, a consortium of academic, philanthropic and non-profit organizations which provides free access to videos of the proceedings, relevant news and statements as well as an overview of each case
Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP) at Yale University offers a comprehensive set of resources on the Khmer Rouge and the tribunal including news updates, photographs, databases, literature, maps, overview of US involvement in the Cambodian war and genocide and links to other organizations
Cambodian Genocide Project by Genocide Watch updates the development of the tribunal on the website
Best Movies About Cambodia that you can watch online via Amazon Instant Video
Genocide
Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
Yale University: Cambodian Genocide Program
Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors
PBS Frontline/World: Pol Pot's Shadow
Survivor of the killing fields describes her experience from the Deacon of Death
Cambodia Tales: Khmer Rouge torture and killing paintings
Khmer Rouge Tribunal Updates from Genocide Watch
Genocide of Cham Muslims
Prosecuting starvation at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
A Search For Justice by the Women Forced to Marry Strangers
State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) and Retribution (1979–2004)
Uncategorized
Documentation Center of Cambodia. Retrieved 6 February 2005.
1951 establishments in French Indochina
20th century in Cambodia
Anti-Chinese sentiment in Asia
Anti-Christian sentiment in Asia
Anti-intellectualism
Anti-Japanese sentiment
Anti-Korean sentiment
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment
Communism in Cambodia
Communist terrorism
Far-left politics
History of Cambodia
Nationalism
Rebel groups in Cambodia
Republicanism in Cambodia | [
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17051 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenji%20Sahara | Kenji Sahara | Kenji Sahara (佐原 健二 Sahara Kenji) (born 14 May 1932) is a Japanese actor. He was born in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa. His real name is Masayoshi Kato (加藤 正好 Katō Masayoshi). Initially he used the name Tadashi Ishihara before changing it when he secured the lead role in Rodan (1956).
Selected filmography
Sahara did a lot of work for the Toho Company, the studio that has so far has produced twenty-eight Godzilla movies. He appeared in more of the Godzilla series than any other actor.
Also, he is the actor who was often relied on in most of the films by Directors Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya.
He has appeared in many supporting roles.
Sahara is famous as a mainstay of Toho special-effects movies and the Ultraman series.
Farewell Rabaul (1954)
Godzilla (1954) – as Young Lover on the Sound
Yuki No Koi (1955) – (credited as Tadashi Ishihara)
Seifuku No Otome Tachi (1955) – as Hideya Fujiwara (credited as Tadashi Ishihara)
Aoi Me (1956) – as Jirô Hayashi (credited as Tadashi Ishihara)
Street of Shame (1956)
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) – as Man on Boat
Norihei No Daigaku (1956) – (credited as Tadashi Ishihara)
People of Tokyo, Goodbye (1956) – (credited as Tadashi Ishihara)
Rodan (1956) – as Shigeru Kawamura (credited as Kenji Sawara)
Yoru no kamome (1957)
Meshiro Sanpei monogatari (1957) – as Otsuka
Zoku Sazae-san (1957)
Hikage no musume (1957)
Daigaku no samurai tachi (1957) – as Yamada
The Mysterians (1957) – as Joji Atsumi
Song for a Bride (1958)
The Badger Palace (1958)
Kiuchi yasuto (1958)
Anzukko (1958)
The H-Man (1958) – as Dr. Masada
The Young Beast (1958)
Zokuzoku salaryman shussetai koki (1958)
Josei S.O.S. (1958)
Otona niwa wakaranai: Seishun hakusho (1958)
Salaryman jikkai (1959)
Onna gokoro (1959)
Gokigen musume (1959)Mothra (1961) as Helicopter PilotGorath (1962) as Saiki, Vice Captain of ÔtoriKing Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) as Kazuo FujitaMatango (1963) as Senzō KoyamaAtragon (1963) as Umino, Journalist/Mu AgentMothra vs. Godzilla (1964) as Jiro Torahata, a corrupt business tycoonGhidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965) as a SoldierNone but the Brave (1965) as Cpl. FujimotoWar of the Gargantuas (1966) as Dr. Yuzo MajidaSon of Godzilla (1967) as MorioDestroy All Monsters (1968) as Nishikawa, Moon Base CommanderAll Monsters Attack (1969) as Kenichi MitsukiSpace Amoeba (1970) as Makoto ObataKage Gari Hoero Taihō (1972)Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) as Ship CaptainKarafuto 1945 Summer Hyosetsu no mon (1974) as Toshikazu OkayaTerror of Mechagodzilla (1975) as General SegawaGodzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) as Minister Takayuki SegawaGodzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993) as Minister Takayuki SegawaGodzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) as Minister Takayuki SegawaHitman (1998) as Tsukamoto, a sleazy and notorious ex-yakuza boss who is assassinated by the King of Killers at the beginning of the filmGodzilla: Final Wars (2004) as Hachiro Jinguji
Sahara was also the lead in the first of the Ultra series, Ultra Q. He also appeared in a number of subsequent Ultra series, including:Ultra Q (1966)- as Jun ManjoumeUltra Seven (1967–1968)Return of Ultraman (1971–1972)Ultraman 80 (1980–1981)Ultraman Nexus (2004–2005)Ultraman Mebius (2006–2007)
His latest Ultraman appearance was in the 2008 Ultraman movie, Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers. He also made a cameo in episodes 47 and 48 of Sonic X, being the voice of Dr. Atsumi.
References
External links
Biondi, Robert. Satoko Yoshimaru & Takahiko Mamiya (trans.) Winter 1997. "An Interview with Kenji Sahara: 40 Years of Keeping Godzilla at Bay", Kaiju Fan Online. Originally published in Kaiju Fan''.
1932 births
Living people
Japanese male film actors
People from Kawasaki, Kanagawa | [
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17055 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotoamatsukami | Kotoamatsukami | In Shinto, is the collective name for the first gods which came into existence at the time of the creation of the universe. They were born in Takamagahara, the world of Heaven at the time of the creation. Unlike the later gods, these deities were born without any procreation.
The three deities that first appeared were:
- Central Master
- High Creator
- Divine Creator
A bit later, two more deities came into existence:
- Energy
- Heaven
The next generation of gods that followed was the Kamiyonanayo, which included Izanagi-no-Mikoto and Izanami-no-Mikoto, the patriarch and matriarch of all other Japanese gods, respectively. Afterward, the Kotoamatsukami "hides away" as hitorigami.
Though the Zōkasanshin (three deity of creation) are thought to be genderless, another theory stated Kamimusuhi was the woman and Takamimusubi the man, comparing them with water and fire or with yin and yang.
The theologian Hirata Atsutane identified Amenominakanushi as the spirit of the North Star, master of the seven stars of the Big Dipper.
Strangely, Takamimusubi later reappeared together with Amaterasu as one of the central gods in Takamagahara, and his daughter was the mother of the god Ninigi-no-Mikoto. He also played important roles in the events of the founding of Japan, such as selecting the gods who would tag along with Ninigi and sending the Yatagarasu, the three legged solar crow, to help Emperor Jimmu, who in turn, greatly worshiped him by playing the role of medium priest taking Takami Musubi's identity, in the ceremonies before his Imperial Enthronement. Later, Takamimusubi was worshiped by the Jingi-kan and considered the god of matchmaking. Some Japanese clans also claimed descent from this god, such as the Saeki clan, he is also an Imperial ancestor.
As for Kamimusuhi, he (or she) has strong ties with both the Amatsukami (heavenly gods) and the Kunitsukami (earthly gods) of Izumo mythology. Kamimusuhi is also said to have transformed the grains produced by the food goddess Ōgetsuhime (Ukemochi no kami) after she was slain by Amaterasu's angered brother.
See also
Creation myth
Japanese mythology
Notes
Creation myths
Japanese deities
Shinto kami | [
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17056 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyoshi%20Atsumi | Kiyoshi Atsumi | Kiyoshi Atsumi (渥美 清 Atsumi Kiyoshi), born Yasuo Tadokoro (田所 康雄 Tadokoro Yasuo, 10 March 1928 – 4 August 1996), was a Japanese actor. He was born in Tokyo, and started his career in 1951 as a comedian at a strip-show theater in Asakusa. After two years of fighting pulmonary tuberculosis, he made his debut on TV in 1956 and on film in 1957. His vivid performance of a lovable, innocent man in the film “Dear Mr. Emperor” (Haikei Tenno-Heika-Sama) in 1963 established his reputation as an actor.
Later he became the star of the highly popular Tora-san series of films. His portrayal of the main characters lasted from the original Otoko wa Tsurai yo (translated in English as 'It's Tough being a Man') in 1969 to the 48th film released in 1995, the year before his death. The enduring success of the series made him synonymous with the Tora-san character, and when he died in Tokyo, many Japanese regarded his death as the death of the character Tora-san, not the death of the actor Yasuo Tadokoro or Kiyoshi Atsumi.
Selected filmography
Otorasan daihanjô (1958) - Hatta
Shima no sehiro no oyabun-shû (1961)
Koshinuke nyûipin sodô (1961)
Daite chôdai (1961)
Atomic no obon: Surimasuwayo no maki (1961)
Tôshi reijô (1961) - Nozaki
Atomic no obon, onna oyabuntaiketsu no maki (1961)
Wakaki ni ho Jirocho: Tokaido no tsumujikaze (1962)
Nippon no obaachan (1962) - Policeman
Oedo Hyobanji Binan no Kaoyaku (1962) - Ushi
Kigeki: Danchi oyabun (1962)
Ottamage ningyo monogatari (1962) - Ginji
Sarariman Isshin Tasuke (1962)
Attack Squadron! (1963)
Utae Wakôdotachi (1963) - Taxi driver
Mushukunin-betsuchô (1963) - Ichibei
Tsumujikaze (1963)
Haikei tenno heika sama (1963) - Shosuke Yamada
Gendaikko (1963) - Actor (uncredited)
Okashina yatsu (1963) - Kashô Sanyûtei
Zoku Haikei Tenno Heika Sama (1964) - Zensuke yamaguchi
Gendai kane monogatari (1964)
Haikei sôri daijin sama (1964)
Ore wa bodigado (1964)
Sanpo suru reikyusha (1964)
Baka marudashi (1964)
Bwana Toshi no uta (1965) - Toshi
Izuko e (1966)
Un ga yoke rya (1966)
Kutsukake Tokijiro - yukyo ippiki (1966)
Ohana han (1966)
Kaachan to 11-nin no kodomo (1966) - Teiji Yoshida
Chichiko gusa (1967)
Kigeki: Kyûkô ressha (1967)
Kigeki: Dantai ressha (1967)
Otoko nara furimukuna (1967)
Neon taiheiki (1968)
Kigeki hachurui (1968) - Seki
Moetsukita chizu (1968) - Tashiro
Nippon gerira jidai (1968)
Hakuchû dôdô (1968) - Katsuji 'Watakatsu' Watanabe
Gion matsuri (1968)
Sukurappu shûdan (1968) - Hose
Kigeki hatsumoude resha (1968) - Ueda
Otoko wa tsurai yo (1969) - Torajirô Kuruma
Kigeki: Onna wa dokyô (1969) - Tsutomu
Zoku otoko wa tsurai yo (1969) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Fûten no Tora (1970) - Torajirô Kuruma
Shin otoko wa tsurai yo (1970) - Torajirô Kuruma
Kigeki: Otoko wa aikyo (1970) - Okera no Goro
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Boukyou hen (1970) - Torajiro Kuruma
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) - Cook #1 (Japanese version only) (uncredited)
Where Spring Comes Late (1970)
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Junjô hen (1971) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Funto hen (1971) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro koiuta (1971) - Torajiro Kuruma
Yaruzô mite ore tamegorô (1971)
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Shibamata bojo (1972) - Torajiro Kuruma
Furusato (1972) - Matsushita
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro yumemakura (1972) - Torajiro Kuruma
Aa koe naki tomo (1972) - Tamiji Nishiyama
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro wasurenagusa (1973) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Watashi no tora-san (1973) - Torajiro Kuruma
Tokyo do mannaka (1974)
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro koiyatsure (1974) - Torajiro Kuruma
Castle of Sand (1974) - Movie Theater Manager
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro komoriuta (1974) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro aiaigasa (1975) - Torajiro Kuruma
Harakara (1975)
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Katsushika risshi hen (1975) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro yuuyake koyake (1976) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajirô junjô shishû (1976) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajirô to tonosama (1977) - Torajiro Kuruma
Shiawase no kiiroi hankachi (1977) - Watanabe kakarichô
Yatsuhaka-mura (1977) - Kôsuke Kindaichi
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro gambare! (1977) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro wagamichi wo yuku (1978) - Torajiro Kuruma
Kôtei no inai hachigatsu (1978) - Kubo
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Uwasa no Torajirô (1978) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Tonderu Torajirô (1979) - Torajirô Kuruma
Ore-tachi no kokyogaku (1979)
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajirô haru no yume (1979) - Torajirô Kuruma
Haruka naru yama no yobigoe (1980)
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro haibisukasu no hana (1980) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro kamome uta (1980) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Naniwa no koi no Torajirô (1981) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro kamifusen (1981) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro ajisai no koi (1982) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Hana mo arashi mo Torajirô (1982) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Tabi to onna to Torajirô (1983) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Kuchibue wo fuku Torajirô (1983) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Yogiri ni musebu torajiro (1984) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajirô shinjitsu ichiro (1984) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajirô ren'ai juku (1985) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Shibamata yori ai wo komete (1985) - Torajiro Kuruma
Final Take (1986) - Kihachi
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Shiawase no aoi tori (1986) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Shiretoko bojô (1987) - Torajirô Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro monogatari (1987) - Torajiro Kuruma
Nijushi no hitomi (1987) - Narrator
Dauntaun hirozu (1988) - Havaosuke the dormitory cook
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro sarada kinenbi (1988) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro kokoro no tabiji (1989) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Boku no ojisan (1989) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro no kyuujitsu (1990) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro no kokuhaku (1991) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro no seishun (1992) - Torajiro Kuruma
A Class to Remember (1993)
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro no endan (1993) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Haikei, Kuruma Torajiro sama (1994) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro kurenai no hana (1995) - Torajiro Kuruma
Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro haibisukasu no hana tokubetsu-hen (1997) - Torajiro Kuruma (final film role)
Honours
Medal with Purple Ribbon (1988)
People's Honour Award (1996)
References
"Kiyoshi Atsumi, Actor, 68", The New York Times, 11 August 1996.
1928 births
1996 deaths
Japanese male film actors
Chuo University alumni
Japanese comedians
People's Honour Award winners
20th-century Japanese male actors
Male actors from Tokyo
Japanese male television actors
Recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon
20th-century comedians | [
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17059 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel%20Hynek%20M%C3%A1cha | Karel Hynek Mácha | Karel Hynek Mácha () (16 November 1810 – 5 November 1836) was a Czech romantic poet.
Biography
Mácha grew up in Prague, the son of a foreman at a mill. He learned Latin and German in school. He went on to study law at Prague University; during that time he also became involved in theatre (as an actor he first appeared in Jan Nepomuk Štěpánek's play Czech and German in July 1832 in Benešov), where he met Eleonora Šomková, with whom he had a son out of wedlock. He was fond of travel, enjoying trips into the mountains, and was an avid walker. Eventually he moved to Litoměřice, a quiet town some 60 km from Prague, to prepare for law school exams and to write poetry. Three days before he was to be married to Šomková, just a few weeks after he had begun working as a legal assistant, Mácha overexerted himself while helping to extinguish a fire and soon thereafter died of pneumonia. The day after his death had been scheduled as his wedding day in Prague.
Mácha was buried in Litoměřice in a pauper's grave. Recognition came after his death: in 1939, his remains were exhumed, and they were given a formal state burial at the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague. A statue was erected in his honor in Petřín Park, Prague. In 1937 a biographical film, Karel Hynek Mácha, was made by Zet Molas (a pen name of Zdena Smolová). Lake Mácha () was named after him in 1961.
Macha was honored on a 50 Haleru and a 1 Koruna stamp on 30 April 1936, Scott Catalog # 213–214. The stamp depicts a statue of Macha that is found in Prague and was issued by the postal agency of Czechoslovakia ('Československo'). He was again honored on a 43 koruna postage stamp issued by the postal agency of the Czech Republic ('Česká Pošta') on 10 March 2010. This 43 koruna postage stamp is presented on a miniature souvenir sheet. The Scott catalog number for this postage stamp honoring Macha is Scott #3446.
Karel Mácha was appointed patron saint of the youth collective "De Barries" in 2019.
Works
His lyrical epic poem Máj (May), published in 1836 shortly before his death, was judged by his contemporaries as confusing, too individualistic, and not in harmony with the national ideas. Czech playwright Josef Kajetán Tyl even wrote a parody of Mácha's style, "Rozervanec" (The Chaotic). "Máj" was rejected by publishers, and was published by a vanity press at Mácha's own expense, not long before his early death. Josef Bohuslav Foerster set May for choir and orchestra as his Op.159.
Mácha's genius was discovered and glorified much later by the poets and novelists of the 1850s (e.g., Jan Neruda, Vítězslav Hálek, and Karolina Světlá) and "Máj" is now regarded as the classic work of Czech Romanticism and is considered one of the best Czech poems ever written. It contains forebodings of many of the tendencies of 20th-century literature: existentialism, alienation, isolation, surrealism, and so on.
Mácha also authored a collection of autobiographical sketches titled Pictures From My Life, the 1835–36 novel Cikáni (Gypsies), and several individual poems, as well as a journal in which, among other things, he detailed his sexual encounters with Šomková. The Diary of Travel to Italy describes his journey to Venice, Trieste, and Ljubljana (where he met the Slovene national poet France Prešeren) in 1834. The Secret Diary describes his daily life in autumn 1835 with cipher passages concerning his relationship with Eleonora Šomková.
References
External links
May Twisted Spoon Press edition
Máj (alternate translation)
Mácha's untimely death
Meet ... Czech Poet Karel Hynek (Ignác) Mácha
Karel Hynek Mácha: On Patriotism and Turtle-Doves
Máj Czech online PDF book
1810 births
1836 deaths
Writers from Prague
People from the Kingdom of Bohemia
Czech poets
Czech male poets
Romantic poets
Poètes maudits
19th-century poets
19th-century male writers
Deaths from pneumonia in Austria-Hungary
Burials at Vyšehrad Cemetery | [
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17060 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp | Krupp | The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is famous for their production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp after acquiring Hoesch AG in 1991 and lasting until 1999), was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, and was the premier weapons manufacturer for Germany in both world wars. Starting from the Thirty Years' War until the end of the Second World War, it produced battleships, U-boats, tanks, howitzers, guns, utilities, and hundreds of other commodities.
The dynasty began in 1587 when trader Arndt Krupp moved to Essen and joined the merchants' guild. He began buying vacated real estate from families who fled the city due to the Black Death, and became one of the city's richest men. His descendants produced small guns during the Thirty Years' War and eventually acquired fulling mills, coal mines and an iron forge. During the Napoleonic Wars, Friedrich Krupp founded the Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works) and started smelted steel production in 1816. This led to the company becoming a major industrial power and laid the foundation for the steel empire that would come to dominate the world for nearly a century under his son Alfred. Krupp became the arms manufacturer for the Kingdom of Prussia in 1859, and later the German Empire.
The company produced steel used to build railroads in the United States and to cap the Chrysler Building. During the time of the Third Reich, the Krupp company supported the Nazi regime and used slave labour, which was used by the Nazi Party to help carry out the Holocaust, with Krupp reaping the economic benefit. Krupp used almost 100,000 slave labourers, housed in poor conditions and many worked to death. The company had a workshop near the Auschwitz death camp. Alfried Krupp was convicted as a criminal against humanity for the employment of the prisoners of war, foreign civilians and concentration camp inmates under inhumane conditions in work connected with the conduct of war. He was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment, but served just three and was pardoned (but not acquitted) by John J. McCloy.
Part of this pardoning meant that all of Krupp's holdings were restored. Again, the company rose to become one of the wealthiest companies in Europe. However, this growth did not last indefinitely. In 1967, an economic recession resulted in significant financial loss for the company. In 1999, it merged with Thyssen AG to form the industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp AG.
Controversy has not eluded the Krupp company. Being a major weapons supplier to multiple sides throughout various conflicts, the Krupps were sometimes blamed for the wars themselves or the degree of carnage that ensued.
Overview
Friedrich Krupp (1787–1826) launched the family's metal-based activities, building a pioneering steel foundry in Essen in 1810. His son Alfred (1812–87), known as "the Cannon King" or as "Alfred the Great", invested heavily in new technology to become a significant manufacturer of steel rollers (used to make eating utensils) and railway tyres. He also invested in fluidized hotbed technologies (notably the Bessemer process) and acquired many mines in Germany and France. Unusual for the era, he provided social services for his workers, including subsidized housing and health and retirement benefits.
The company began to make steel cannons in the 1840s—especially for the Russian, Turkish, and Prussian armies. Low non-military demand and government subsidies meant that the company specialized more and more in weapons: by the late 1880s the manufacture of armaments represented around 50% of Krupp's total output. When Alfred started with the firm, it had five employees. At his death twenty thousand people worked for Krupp—making it the world's largest industrial company and the largest private company in the German empire.
Krupp's had a Great Krupp Building with an exhibition of guns at the Columbian Exposition in 1893.
In the 20th century the company was headed by Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1870–1950), who assumed the surname of Krupp when he married the Krupp heiress, Bertha Krupp. After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Krupp works became the center for German rearmament. In 1943, by a special order from Hitler, the company reverted to a sole-proprietorship, with Gustav and Bertha's eldest son Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1907–67) as proprietor.
After Germany's defeat, Gustav was senile and incapable of standing trial, and the Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicted Alfried as a war criminal in the Krupp Trial for "plunder" and for his company's use of slave labor. It sentenced him to 12 years in prison and ordered him to sell 75% of his holdings. In 1951, as the Cold War developed and no buyer came forward, the U.S. occupation authorities released him, and in 1953 he resumed control of the firm.
In 1968, the company became an Aktiengesellschaft and ownership was transferred to the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. In 1999, the Krupp Group merged with its largest competitor, Thyssen AG; the combined company—ThyssenKrupp, became Germany's fifth-largest firm and one of the largest steel producers in the world.
History of the family
Early history
The Krupp family first appeared in the historical record in 1587, when Arndt Krupp joined the merchants' guild in Essen. Arndt, a trader, arrived in town just before an outbreak of the Black Death and became one of the city's wealthiest men by purchasing the property of families who fled the epidemic. After he died in 1624, his son Anton took over the family business; Anton oversaw a gunsmithing operation during the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), which was the first instance of the family's long association with arms manufacturing.
For the next century the Krupps continued to acquire property and became involved in municipal politics in Essen. By the mid-18th-century, Friedrich Jodocus Krupp, Arndt's great-great-grandson, headed the Krupp family. In 1751, he married Helene Amalie Ascherfeld (another of Arndt's great-great-grandchildren); Jodocus died six years later, which left his widow to run the business: a family first. The Widow Krupp greatly expanded the family's holdings over the decades, acquiring a fulling mill, shares in four coal mines, and (in 1800) an iron forge located on a stream near Essen.
Friedrich's era
In 1807 the progenitor of the modern Krupp firm, Friedrich Krupp, began his commercial career at age 19 when the Widow Krupp appointed him manager of the forge. Friedrich's father, the widow's son, had died 11 years previously; since that time, the widow had tutored the boy in the ways of commerce, as he seemed the logical family heir. Unfortunately, Friedrich proved too ambitious for his own good, and quickly ran the formerly profitable forge into the ground. The widow soon had to sell it away.
In 1810, the widow died, and in what would prove a disastrous move, left virtually all the Krupp fortune and property to Friedrich. Newly enriched, Friedrich decided to discover the secret of cast (crucible) steel. Benjamin Huntsman, a clockmaker from Sheffield, had pioneered a process to make crucible steel in 1740, but the British had managed to keep it secret, forcing others to import steel. When Napoleon began his blockade of the British Empire (see Continental System), British steel became unavailable, and Napoleon offered a prize of four thousand francs to anyone who could replicate the British process. This prize piqued Friedrich's interest.
Thus, in 1811 Friedrich founded the Krupp Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works). He realized he would need a large facility with a power source for success, and so he built a mill and foundry on the Ruhr River, which unfortunately proved an unreliable stream. Friedrich spent a significant amount of time and money in the small, waterwheel-powered facility, neglecting other Krupp business, but in 1816 he was able to produce smelted steel. He died in Essen, 8 October 1826 age 39.
Alfred's era
Alfred Krupp (born Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp), son of Friedrich Carl, was born in Essen in 1812. His father's death forced him to leave school at the age of fourteen and take on responsibility for the steel works in companionship with his mother Therese Krupp. Prospects were daunting: his father had spent a considerable fortune in the attempt to cast steel in large ingots, and to keep the works going the widow and family lived in extreme frugality. The young director laboured alongside the workmen by day and carried on his father's experiments at night, while occasionally touring Europe trying to promote Krupp products and make sales. It was during a stay in England that young Alfried became enamored of the country and adopted the English spelling of his name.
For years, the works made barely enough money to cover the workmen's wages. Then, in 1841, Alfred's brother Hermann invented the spoon-roller—which Alfred patented, bringing in enough money to enlarge the factory, steel production, and cast steel blocks. In 1847 Krupp made his first cannon of cast steel. At the Great Exhibition (London) of 1851, he exhibited a 6 pounder made entirely from cast steel, and a solid flawless ingot of steel weighing , more than twice as much as any previously cast. He surpassed this with a ingot for the Paris Exposition in 1855. Krupp's exhibits caused a sensation in the engineering world, and the Essen works became famous.
In 1851, another successful innovation, no-weld railway tyres, began the company's primary revenue stream, from sales to railways in the United States. Alfred enlarged the factory and fulfilled his long-cherished scheme to construct a breech-loading cannon of cast steel. He strongly believed in the superiority of breech-loaders, on account of improved accuracy and speed, but this view did not win general acceptance among military officers, who remained loyal to tried-and-true muzzle-loaded bronze cannon. Alfred soon began producing breech loading howitzers, one of which he gifted to the Prussian court.
Indeed, unable to sell his steel cannon, Krupp gave it to the King of Prussia, who used it as a decorative piece. The king's brother Wilhelm, however, realized the significance of the innovation. After he became regent in 1859, Prussia bought its first 312 steel cannon from Krupp, which became the main arms manufacturer for the Prussian military.
Prussia used the advanced technology of Krupp to defeat both Austria and France in the German Wars of Unification. The French high command refused to purchase Krupp guns despite Napoleon III's support. The Franco-Prussian war was in part a contest of "Kruppstahl" versus bronze cannon. The success of German artillery spurred the first international arms race, against Schneider-Creusot in France and Armstrong in England. Krupp was able to sell, alternately, improved artillery and improved steel shielding to countries from Russia to Chile to Thailand (formerly known as Siam).
In the Panic of 1873, Alfred continued to expand, including the purchase of Spanish mines and Dutch shipping, making Krupp the biggest and richest company in Europe but nearly bankrupting it. He was bailed out with a 30 million Mark loan from a consortium of banks arranged by the Prussian State Bank.
In 1878 and 1879 Krupp held competitions known as Völkerschiessen, which were firing demonstrations of cannon for international buyers. These were held in Meppen, at the largest proving ground in the world; privately owned by Krupp. He took on 46 nations as customers. At the time of his death in 1887, he had 75,000 employees, including 20,200 in Essen. In his lifetime, Krupp manufactured a total of 24,576 guns; 10,666 for the German government and 13,910 for export.
Krupp established the Generalregulativ as the firm's basic constitution. The company was a sole proprietorship, inherited by primogeniture, with strict control of workers. Krupp demanded a loyalty oath, required workers to obtain written permission from their foremen when they needed to use the toilet and issued proclamations telling his workers not to concern themselves with national politics. In return, Krupp provided social services that were unusually liberal for the era, including "colonies" with parks, schools and recreation grounds - while the widows' and orphans' and other benefit schemes insured the men and their families in case of illness or death. Essen became a large company town and Krupp became a de facto state within a state, with "Kruppianer" as loyal to the company and the Krupp family as to the nation and the Hohenzollern family. Krupp's paternalist strategy was adopted by Bismarck as government policy, as a preventive against Social Democratic tendencies, and later influenced the development and adoption of Führerprinzip by Adolf Hitler.
The Krupp social services programme began about 1861, when it was found that there were not sufficient houses in the town for firm employees, and the firm began building dwellings. By 1862 ten houses were ready for foremen, and in 1863 the first houses for workingmen were built in Alt Westend. Neu Westend was built in 1871 and 1872. By 1905, 400 houses were provided, many being given rent free to widows of former workers. A cooperative society was founded in 1868 which became the Consum-Anstalt. Profits were divided according to amounts purchased. A boarding house for single men, the Ménage, was started in 1865 with 200 boarders and by 1905 accommodated 1000. Bath houses were provided and employees received free medical services. Accident, life, and sickness insurance societies were formed, and the firm contributed to their support. Technical and manual training schools were provided.
Krupp was also held in high esteem by the kaiser, who dismissed Julius von Verdy du Vernois and his successor Hans von Kaltenborn for rejecting Krupp's design of the C-96 field gun, quipping, "I've canned three War Ministers because of Krupp, and still they don't catch on!"
Krupp proclaimed he wished to have "a man come and start a counter-revolution" against Jews, socialists and liberals. In some of his odder moods, he considered taking the role himself. According to historian William Manchester, Alfried Krupp, his great grandson, would interpret these outbursts as a prophecy fulfilled by the coming of Hitler.
Krupp's marriage was not a happy one. His wife Bertha (not to be confused with their granddaughter), was unwilling to remain in polluted Essen in Villa Hügel, the mansion which Krupp designed. She spent most of their married years in resorts and spas, with their only child, a son.
Friedrich Alfred's era
After Krupp's death in 1887, his only son, Friedrich Alfred, carried on the work. The father had been a hard man, known as "Herr Krupp" since his early teens. Friedrich Alfred was called "Fritz" all his life, and was strikingly dissimilar to his father in appearance and personality. He was a philanthropist, a rarity amongst Ruhr industrial leaders. Part of his philanthropy supported the study of eugenics.
Fritz was a skilled businessman, though of a different sort from his father. Fritz was a master of the subtle sell, and cultivated a close rapport with the Kaiser, Wilhelm II. Under Fritz's management, the firm's business blossomed further and further afield, spreading across the globe. He focused on arms manufacturing, as the US railroad market purchased from its own growing steel industry.
Fritz Krupp authorized many new products that would do much to change history. In 1890 Krupp developed nickel steel, which was hard enough to allow thin battleship armor and cannon using Nobel's improved gunpowder. In 1892, Krupp bought Gruson in a hostile takeover. It became Krupp-Panzer and manufactured armor plate and ships' turrets. In 1893 Rudolf Diesel brought his new engine to Krupp to construct. In 1896 Krupp bought Germaniawerft in Kiel, which became Germany's main warship builder and built the first German U-boat in 1906.
Fritz married Magda and they had two daughters: Bertha (1886–1957) and Barbara (1887–1972); the latter married Tilo Freiherr von Wilmowsky (1878–1966) in 1907.
Fritz was arrested on 15 October 1902 by Italian police at his retreat on the Mediterranean island of Capri, where he enjoyed the companionship of forty or so adolescent Italian boys. He had a subsequent publicity disaster and was found dead in his chambers not long after. It was alleged suicide, but foul play was suspected and details of the event were vague. His wife was institutionalized for insanity.
Gustav's era
Upon Fritz's death, his teenage daughter Bertha inherited the firm. In 1903, the firm formally incorporated as a joint-stock company, Fried. Krupp Grusonwerk AG. However, Bertha owned all but four shares. Kaiser Wilhelm II felt it was unthinkable for the Krupp firm to be run by a woman. He arranged for Bertha to marry Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, a Prussian courtier to the Vatican and grandson of American Civil War General Henry Bohlen. By imperial proclamation at the wedding, Gustav was given the additional surname "Krupp," which was to be inherited by primogeniture along with the company.
In 1911, Gustav bought Hamm Wireworks to manufacture barbed wire. In 1912, Krupp began manufacturing stainless steel. At this time 50% of Krupp's armaments were sold to Germany, and the rest to 52 other nations. The company had invested worldwide, including in cartels with other international companies. Essen was the company headquarters. In 1913 Germany jailed a number of military officers for selling secrets to Krupp, in what was known as the "Kornwalzer scandal." Gustav was not himself penalized and fired only a single director, Otto Eccius.
After Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, Krupp bought his , in Werfen in the Austrian Alps, and which was a former residence of the Archbishops of Salzburg.
Gustav led the firm through World War I, concentrating almost entirely on artillery manufacturing, particularly following the loss of overseas markets as a result of the Allied blockade. Vickers of England naturally suspended royalty payments during the war (Krupp held the patent on shell fuses, but back-payment was made in 1926).
In 1916, the German government seized Belgian industry and conscripted Belgian civilians for forced labor in the Ruhr. These were novelties in modern warfare and in violation of the Hague Conventions, to which Germany was a signatory. During the war, Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft produced 84 U-boats for the German navy, as well as the Deutschland submarine freighter, intended to ship raw material to Germany despite the blockade. In 1918 the Allies named Gustav a war criminal, but the trials never proceeded.
After the war, the firm was forced to renounce arms manufacturing. Gustav attempted to reorient to consumer products, under the slogan "Wir machen alles!" (we make everything!), but operated at a loss for years. The company laid off 70,000 workers but was able to stave off Socialist unrest by continuing severance pay and its famous social services for workers. The company opened a dental hospital to provide steel teeth and jaws for wounded veterans. It received its first contract from the Prussian State railway, and manufactured its first locomotive.
In 1920, the Ruhr Uprising occurred in reaction to the Kapp Putsch. The Ruhr Red Army, or Rote Soldatenbund, took over much of the demilitarized Rhineland unopposed. Krupp's factory in Essen was occupied, and independent republics were declared, but the German Reichswehr invaded from Westphalia and quickly restored order. Later in the year, Britain oversaw the dismantling of much of Krupp's factory, reducing capacity by half and shipping industrial equipment to France as war reparations.
In the hyperinflation of 1923, the firm printed Kruppmarks for use in Essen, where it was the only stable currency. France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr and established martial law. French soldiers inspecting Krupp's factory in Essen were cornered by workers in a garage, opened fire with a machine gun, and killed thirteen. This incident spurred reprisal killings and sabotage across the Rhineland, and when Krupp held a large, public funeral for the workers, he was fined and jailed by the French. This made him a national hero, and he was granted an amnesty by the French after seven months.
Although Krupp was a monarchist at heart, he cooperated with the Weimar Republic; as a munitions manufacturer his first loyalty was to the government in power. He was deeply involved with the Reichswehr's evasion of the Treaty of Versailles, and secretly engaged in arms design and manufacture. In 1921 Krupp bought Bofors in Sweden as a front company and sold arms to neutral nations including the Netherlands and Denmark. In 1922, Krupp established Suderius AG in the Netherlands, as a front company for shipbuilding, and sold submarine designs to neutrals including the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Finland, and Japan. German Chancellor Wirth arranged for Krupp to secretly continue designing artillery and tanks, coordinating with army chief von Seeckt and navy chief Paul Behncke. Krupp was able to hide this activity from Allied inspectors for five years, and kept up his engineers' skills by hiring them out to Eastern European governments including Russia.
In 1924, the Raw Steel Association (Rohstahlgemeinschaft) was established in Luxembourg, as a quota-fixing cartel for coal and steel, by France, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Germany, however, chose to violate quotas and pay fines, in order to monopolize the Ruhr's output and continue making high-grade steel. In 1926, Krupp began the manufacture of Widia ("Wie Diamant") cobalt-tungsten carbide. In 1928, German industry under Krupp leadership put down a general strike, locking out 250,000 workers, and encouraging the government to cut wages 15%. In 1929, the Chrysler Building was capped with Krupp steel.
Gustav and especially Bertha were initially skeptical of Hitler, who was not of their class. Gustav's skepticism toward the Nazis waned when Hitler dropped plans to nationalize business, the Communists gained seats in the 6 November elections, and Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher suggested a planned economy with price controls. Despite this, as late as the day before President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor, Gustav warned him not to do so. However, after Hitler won power, Gustav became enamoured with the Nazis (Fritz Thyssen described him as "a super-Nazi") to a degree his wife and subordinates found bizarre.
In 1933, Hitler made Gustav chairman of the Reich Federation of German Industry. Gustav ousted Jews from the organization and disbanded the board, establishing himself as the sole-decision maker. Hitler visited Gustav just before the Röhm purge in 1934, which among other things eliminated many of those who actually believed in the "socialism" of "National Socialism." Gustav supported the "Adolf Hitler Endowment Fund of German Industry", administrated by Bormann, who used it to collect millions of Marks from German businessmen. As part of Hitler's secret rearmament program, Krupp expanded from 35,000 to 112,000 employees.
Gustav was alarmed at Hitler's aggressive foreign policy after the Munich Agreement, but by then he was fast succumbing to senility and was effectively displaced by his son Alfried. He was indicted at the Nuremberg Trials but never tried, due to his advanced dementia. He was thus the only German to be accused of being a war criminal after both world wars. He was nursed by his wife in a roadside inn near Blühnbach until his death in 1950, and then cremated and interred quietly, since his adopted name was at that time one of the most notorious in the American Zone.
Alfried's era
As the eldest son of Bertha Krupp, Alfried was destined by family tradition to become the sole heir of the Krupp concern. An amateur photographer and Olympic sailor, he was an early supporter of Nazism among German industrialists, joining the SS in 1931, and never disavowing his allegiance to Hitler.
His father's health began to decline in 1939, and after a stroke in 1941, Alfried took over full control of the firm, continuing its role as main arms supplier to Germany at war. In 1943, Hitler decreed the Lex Krupp, authorizing the transfer of all Bertha's shares to Alfried, giving him the name "Krupp" and dispossessing his siblings.
During the war, Krupp was allowed to take over many industries in occupied nations, including Arthur Krupp steel works in Berndorf, Austria, the Alsacian Corporation for Mechanical Construction (Elsaessische Maschinenfabrik AG, or ELMAG), Robert Rothschild's tractor factory in France, Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia, and Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG (Deschimag) in Bremen. This activity became the basis for the charge of "plunder" at the war crimes trial of Krupp executives after the war.
As another war crime, Krupp used slave labor, both POWs and civilians from occupied countries, and Krupp representatives were sent to concentration camps to select laborers. Treatment of Slavic and Jewish slaves was particularly harsh, since they were considered sub-human in Nazi Germany, and Jews were targeted for "extermination through labor". The number of slaves cannot be calculated due to constant fluctuation but is estimated at 100,000, at a time when the free employees of Krupp numbered 278,000. The highest number of Jewish slave laborers at any one time was about 25,000 in January 1943.
In 1942–1943, Krupp built the Berthawerk factory (named for his mother), near the Markstadt forced labour camp, for production of artillery fuses. Jewish women were used as slave labor there, leased from the SS for 4 Marks a head per day. Later in 1943 it was taken over by Union Werke.
In 1942, although Russia in retreat relocated many factories to the Urals, steel factories were simply too large to move. Krupp took over production, including at the Molotov steel works near Kharkov and Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, and at mines supplying the iron, manganese, and chrome vital for steel production.
The battle of Stalingrad in 1942 convinced Krupp that Germany would lose the war, and he secretly began liquidating 200 million Marks in government bonds. This allowed him to retain much of his fortune and hide it overseas.
Beginning in 1943, Allied bombers targeted the main German industrial district in the Ruhr. Most damage at Krupp's works was actually to the slave labor camps, and German tank production continued to increase from 1,000 to 1,800 per month. However, by the end of the war, with a manpower shortage preventing repairs, the main factories were out of commission.
On 25 July 1943 the Royal Air Force attacked the Krupp Works with 627 heavy bombers, dropping 2,032 long tons of bombs in an Oboe-marked attack. Upon his arrival at the works the next morning, Gustav Krupp suffered a fit from which he never recovered.
After the war, the Ruhr became part of the British Zone of occupation. The British dismantled Krupp's factories, sending machinery all over Europe as war reparations. The Russians seized Krupp's Grusonwerk in Magdeburg, including the formula for tungsten steel. Germaniawerft in Kiel was dismantled, and Krupp's role as an arms manufacturer came to an end. Allied High Commission Law 27, in 1950, mandated the decartelization of German industry.
Meanwhile, Alfried was held in Landsberg prison, where Hitler had been imprisoned in 1924. At the Krupp Trial, held in 1947–1948 in Nuremberg following the main Nuremberg trials, Alfried and most of his co-defendants were convicted of crimes against humanity (plunder and slave labor), while being acquitted of crimes against peace, and conspiracy. Alfried was condemned to 12 years in prison and the "forfeiture of all [his] property both real and personal," making him a pauper. Two years later, on 31 January 1951, John J. McCloy, High Commissioner of the American zone of occupation, issued an amnesty to the Krupp defendants. Much of Alfried's industrial empire was restored, but he was forced to transfer some of his fortune to his siblings, and he renounced arms manufacturing.
By this time, West Germany's Wirtschaftswunder had begun, and the Korean War had shifted the United States's priority from denazification to anti-Communism. German industry was seen as integral to western Europe's economic recovery, the limit on steel production was lifted, and the reputation of Hitler-era firms and industrialists was rehabilitated.
In 1953 Krupp negotiated the Mehlem agreement with the governments of the US, Great Britain and France. Hitler's Lex Krupp was upheld, reestablishing Alfried as sole proprietor, but Krupp mining and steel businesses were sequestered and pledged to be divested by 1959. There is scant evidence that Alfried intended to fulfill his side of the bargain, and he continued to receive royalties from the sequestered industries.
Despite having only 16,000 employees and 16,000 pensioners, Alfried refused to cut pensions. He ended unprofitable businesses including shipbuilding, railway tyres, and farm equipment. He hired Berthold Beitz, an insurance executive, as the face of the company, and began a public relations campaign to promote Krupp worldwide, omitting references to Nazism or arms manufacturing. Beginning with Adenauer, he established personal diplomacy with heads of state, making both open and secret deals to sell equipment and engineering expertise. Expansion was significant in the former colonies of Great Britain and behind the Iron Curtain, in countries eager to industrialize but suspicious of NATO. Krupp built rolling mills in Mexico, paper mills in Egypt, foundries in Iran, refineries in Greece, a vegetable oil processing plant in Sudan, and its own steel plant in Brazil. In India, Krupp rebuilt Rourkela in Odisha as company town similar to his own Essen. In West Germany, Krupp made jet fighters in Bremen, as a joint venture with United Aircraft, and built an atomic reactor in Jülich, partly funded by the government. The company expanded to 125,000 employees worldwide, and in 1959 Krupp was the fourth largest in Europe (after Royal Dutch, Unilever, and Mannesmann), and the 12th largest in the world.
1959 was also Krupp's deadline to sell his sequestered industries, but he was supported by other Ruhr industrialists, who refused to place bids. Krupp not only took back control of those companies in 1960, he used a shell company in Sweden to buy the Bochumer Verein für Gussstahlfabrikation AG, in his opinion the best remaining steel manufacturer in West Germany. The Common Market allowed these moves, effectively ending the Allied policy of decartelization. Alfried was the richest man in Europe, and among the world's handful of billionaires.
The treatment of Jews during the war had remained an issue. In 1951, Adenauer acknowledged that "unspeakable crimes were perpetrated in the name of the German people, which impose upon them the obligation to make moral and material amends." Negotiations with the Claims Conference resulted in the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany. IG Farben, Siemens, Krupp, AEG, Telefunken, and Rheinmetall separately provided compensation to Jewish slave laborers, but Alfried refused to consider compensation to non-Jewish slave laborers.
In the mid-1960s, a series of blows ended the special status of Krupp. A recession in 1966 exposed the company's overextended credit and turned Alfried's cherished mining and steel companies into loss-leaders. In 1967, the West German Federal Tax Court ended sales tax exemptions for private companies, of which Krupp was the largest, and voided the Hitler-era exemption of the company from inheritance tax. Alfried's only son, Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach (1938–1986), would not develop an interest in the family business and was willing to renounce his inheritance. Alfried arranged for the firm to be reorganized as a corporation and a foundation for scientific research, with a generous pension for Arndt. Although Arndt was homosexual, like his great-grandfather Friedrich (Fritz) Krupp, he married but was childless. He was an alcoholic and died of cancer in 1986, aged 48, 399 years after Arndt Krupp arrived in Essen.
From Fried Krupp to Thyssen Krupp
Alfried had married twice, both ending in divorce, and by family tradition he had excluded his siblings from company management. He died in Essen in 1967, and the company's transformation was completed the next year, capitalized at 500 million DM, with Beitz in charge of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation and chairman of the corporation's board until 1989. Between 1968 and 1990 the foundation awarded grants totaling around 360 million DM. In 1969, the coal mines were transferred to Ruhrkohle AG. Stahlwerke Südwestfalen was bought for stainless steel, and Polysius AG and Heinrich Koppers for engineering and the construction of industrial plants.
In the early 1980s, the company spun off all its operating activities and was restructured as a holding company. VDM Nickel-Technologie was bought in 1989, for high-performance materials, mechanical engineering and electronics. That year, Gerhard Cromme became chairman and chief executive of Krupp. After its hostile takeover of rival steelmaker Hoesch AG in 1990–1991, the companies were merged in 1992 as "Fried. Krupp AG Hoesch Krupp," under Cromme. After closing one main steel plant and laying off 20,000 employees, the company had a steelmaking capacity of around eight million metric tons and sales of about 28 billion DM (US$18.9 billion). The new Krupp had six divisions: steel, engineering, plant construction, automotive supplies, trade, and services. After two years of heavy losses, a modest net profit of 40 million DM (US$29.2 million) followed in 1994.
In 1997 Krupp attempted a hostile takeover of the larger Thyssen, but the bid was abandoned after resistance from Thyssen management and protests by its workers. Nevertheless, Thyssen agreed to merge the two firms' flat steel operations, and Thyssen Krupp Stahl AG was created in 1997 as a jointly owned subsidiary (60% by Thyssen and 40% by Krupp). About 6,300 workers were laid off. Later that year, Krupp and Thyssen announced a full merger, which was completed in 1999 with the formation of ThyssenKrupp AG. Cromme and Ekkehard Schulz were named co-chief executives of the new company, operating worldwide in three main business areas: steel, capital goods (elevators and industrial equipment), and services (specialty materials, environmental services, mechanical engineering, and scaffolding services).
Roles played in important historical events
The Franco-Prussian War
The unexpected victory of Prussia over France (19 July 187010 May 1871) demonstrated the superiority of breech-loaded steel cannon over muzzle-loaded brass. Krupp artillery was a significant factor at the battles of Wissembourg and Gravelotte, and was used during the siege of Paris. Krupp's anti-balloon guns were the first anti-aircraft guns. Prussia fortified the major North German ports with batteries that could hit French ships from a distance of 4,000 yards, inhibiting invasion.
Venezuela Crisis
Krupp's construction of the Great Venezuela Railway from 1888 to 1894 raised Venezuelan national debt. Venezuela's suspension of debt payments in 1901 led to gunboat diplomacy of the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903.
Balkan wars
Russia and the Ottoman Empire both bought large quantities of Krupp guns. By 1887, Russia had bought 3,096 Krupp guns, while the Ottomans bought 2,773 Krupp guns. By the start of the Balkan wars the largest export market for Krupp worldwide was Turkey, which purchased 3,943 Krupp guns of various types between 1854 and 1912. The customer in the Balkans was Romania, which purchased 1,450 guns in the same period, while Bulgaria purchased 517 pieces, Greece 356, Austria-Hungary 298, Montenegro 25, and Serbia just 6 guns.
World War I
Krupp produced most of the artillery of the Imperial German Army, including its heavy siege guns: the 1914 420 mm Big Bertha, the 1916 Langer Max, and the seven Paris Guns in 1917 and 1918. In addition, Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft built German warships and submarines in Kiel. During the war Krupp modified also the design of an existing Langer Max gun which they built in Koekelare. The gun called Batterie Pommern was the largest gun of the world in 1917 and was able to shoot shells of ±750 kg from Koekelare to Dunkirk.
Before World War I Krupp had a contract with the British armaments company Vickers and Son Ltd. (formerly Vickers Maxim) to supply Vickers-constructed Maxim machine guns. Conversely, from 1902 Krupp was contracted by Vickers to supply its patented fuses to Vickers bullets. It is known that wounded and deceased German soldiers were found to have spent Vickers bullets with the German inscription "Krupps patent zünder [fuses]" lying around their bodies.
World War II
Krupp received its first order for 135 Panzer I tanks in 1933, and during World War II made tanks, artillery, naval guns, armor plate, munitions and other armaments for the German military. Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft shipyard launched the cruiser Prinz Eugen, as well as many of Germany's U-boats (130 between 1934 and 1945) using preassembled parts supplied by other Krupp factories in a process similar to the construction of the US liberty ships.
In the 1930s, Krupp developed two 800 mm railway guns, the Schwerer Gustav and the Dora. These guns were the biggest artillery pieces ever fielded by an army during wartime, and weighed almost 1,344 tons. They could fire a 7-ton shell over a distance of 37 kilometers. More crucial to the operations of the German military was Krupp's development of the famed 88 mm anti-aircraft cannon which found use as a notoriously effective anti-tank gun.
In an address to the Hitler Youth, Adolf Hitler stated "In our eyes, the German boy of the future must be slim and slender, as fast as a greyhound, tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel" ("... der deutsche Junge der Zukunft muß schlank und rank sein, flink wie Windhunde, zäh wie Leder und hart wie Kruppstahl.")
During the war Germany's industry was heavily bombed. The Germans built large-scale night-time decoys like the Krupp decoy site (German: Kruppsche Nachtscheinanlage) which was a German decoy-site of the Krupp steel works in Essen. During World War II, it was designed to divert Allied airstrikes from the actual production site of the arms factory.
Krupp Industries employed workers conscripted by the Nazi regime from across Europe. These workers were initially paid, but as Nazi fortunes declined they were kept as slave workers. They were abused, beaten, and starved by the thousands, as detailed in the book The Arms of Krupp. Nazi Germany kept two million French POWs captured in 1940 as forced laborers throughout the war. They added compulsory (and volunteer) workers from occupied nations, especially in metal factories. The shortage of volunteers led the Vichy government of France to deport workers to Germany, where they constituted 15% of the labor force by August 1944. The largest number worked in the giant Krupp steel works in Essen. Low pay, long hours, frequent bombings, and crowded air raid shelters added to the unpleasantness of poor housing, inadequate heating, limited food, and poor medical care, all compounded by harsh Nazi discipline. In an affidavit provided at the Nuremberg Trials following the war, Dr. Wilhelm Jaeger, the senior doctor for the Krupp slaves, wrote, "Sanitary conditions were atrocious. At Kramerplatz only ten children's toilets were available for 1200 inhabitants. . . Excretion contaminated the entire floors of these lavatories. The Tatars and Kirghiz suffered most; they collapsed like flies [from] bad housing, the poor quality and insufficient quantity of food, overwork and insufficient rest. . . Countless fleas, bugs and other vermin tortured the inhabitants of these camps. . ." The survivors finally returned home in the summer of 1945 after their liberation by the allied armies.
Krupp industries was prosecuted after the end of war for its support to the Nazi regime and use of forced labour.
Post–World War II
Krupp's trucks were once again produced after the war, but so as to minimize the negative wartime connotations of the Krupp name they were sold as "Südwerke" trucks from 1946 until 1954, when the Krupp name was considered rehabilitated.
The Mustang
Krupp also used the name "Mustang " for some of their products, causing a problem for Ford Motor Company in 1964 when they desired to export their car of the same name to Germany, especially since American military personnel stationed there wanted the new car. Although Krupp offered to sell the Mustang name to Ford for a reasonable price, Ford declined and as a result, badged all Mustangs destined for Germany "T-5." By 1978 Krupp's rights to the Mustang name expired and all Mustangs exported to Germany henceforth retained the Mustang name.
Krupp Steel Works of Essen, Germany, manufactured the spherical pressure chamber of the dive vessel Trieste, the first vessel to take humans to the deepest known point in the oceans, accomplished in 1960. This was a heavy duty replacement for the original pressure sphere (made in Italy by Acciaierie Terni) and was manufactured in three finely machined sections: an equatorial ring and two hemispherical caps. The sphere weighed 13 tonnes in air (eight tonnes in water) with walls that were 12.7 centimetres (5.0 in) thick.
Krupp Steel Works was also contracted in the mid-1960s to construct the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope, which, from 1972 to 2000 was the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world.
Peacetime activities
Railway expansion period
Krupp was the first company to patent a seamless, reliable and strong enough railway tyre for rail freight. Krupp received original contracts in the United States and enjoyed a period of technological superiority while also contributing the majority of rail to the new continental railway system. "Nearly all railroads were using Krupp rails, the New York Central, Illinois Central, Delaware and Hudson, Maine Central, Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, Bangor and Aroostook, Great Northern, Boston and Albany, Florida and East Coast, Texas and Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Mexican National."
Diesel engines
In 1893, a mechanical engineer by the name of Rudolf Diesel approached Gustav with a patent for a "new kind of internal combustion engine employing autoignition of the fuel". He also included his text "Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors". Four years later, the first 3-horsepower diesel engine was produced.
Pronunciation
The common English pronunciations are or . The common German pronunciations are or . Thus the u is usually treated as short in both languages, corresponding logically (in either language's regular orthography) with the doubled consonant that follows. A British documentary on the Krupp family and firm included footage of German-speakers of the 1930s who would have had speaking contact with the family, which attests the long , thus or , rather than what would be the regular German spelling pronunciation, or . The documentary's narration used the English equivalent, . This would seem to indicate that the short u is a spelling pronunciation, but it is nonetheless the most common treatment.
References
Sources
Books
Articles
EC McCreary, "Social Welfare and Business: The Krupp Welfare Program, 1860–1914" (1968) 42(1) The Business History Review 24–49.
Further reading
External links
Official site Thyssenkrupp Essen
Companies based in Essen
Defence companies of Germany
Firearm manufacturers of Germany
Companies involved in the Holocaust
Auschwitz concentration camp
1881 establishments in Germany | [
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17062 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame%20Nkrumah | Kwame Nkrumah | Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.
After twelve years abroad pursuing higher education, developing his political philosophy, and organizing with other diasporic pan-Africanists, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence. He formed the Convention People's Party, which achieved rapid success through its unprecedented appeal to the common voter. He became Prime Minister in 1952 and retained the position when Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957. In 1960, Ghanaians approved a new constitution and elected Nkrumah President.
His administration was primarily socialist as well as nationalist. It funded national industrial and energy projects, developed a strong national education system and promoted a pan-Africanist culture. Under Nkrumah, Ghana played a leading role in African international relations during the decolonization period.
Nkrumah led an authoritarian regime in Ghana, as he repressed political opposition and conducted elections that were not free and fair. In 1964, a constitutional amendment made Ghana a one-party state, with Nkrumah as president for life of both the nation and its party. Nkrumah was deposed in 1966 by the National Liberation Council, under whose supervision, international financial institutions privatized many of the country's state corporations. Nkrumah lived the rest of his life in Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president.
Early life and education
Gold Coast
Kwame Nkrumah was born on 21 September 1909 in Nkroful, Gold Coast (now in Ghana)
. Nkroful was a small village in the Nzema area, in the far southwest of the Gold Coast, close to the frontier with the French colony of the Ivory Coast. His father did not live with the family, but worked in Half Assini where he pursued his goldsmith business until his death. Kwame Nkrumah was raised by his mother and his extended family, who lived together traditionally, with more distant relatives often visiting. He lived a carefree childhood, spent in the village, in the bush, and on the nearby sea. By the naming customs of the Akan people, he was given the name Kwame, the name given to males born on a Saturday. During his years as a student in the United States, though, he was known as Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah, Kofi being the name given to males born on Friday. He later changed his name to Kwame Nkrumah in 1945 in the UK, preferring the name "Kwame". According to Ebenezer Obiri Addo in his study of the future president, the name "Nkrumah", a name traditionally given to a ninth child, indicates that Kwame probably held that place in the house of his father, who had several wives.
His father, Opanyin Kofi Nwiana Ngolomah, came from Nkroful, belonging to Akan tribe of the Asona clan. Sources indicated that Ngolomah stayed at Tarkwa-Nsuaem and dealt in goldsmith business. In addition, Ngolomah was respected for his wise counsel by those who sought his advice on traditional issues and domestic affairs. He died in 1927.
Kwame was the only child of his mother. Nkrumah's mother sent him to the elementary school run by a Catholic mission at Half Assini, where he proved an adept student. A German Roman Catholic priest by the name of George Fischer was said to have profoundly influenced his elementary school education. Although his mother, whose name was Elizabeth Nyanibah (1876/77–1979), later stated his year of birth was 1912, Nkrumah wrote that he was born on 21 September 1909. Nyanibah, who hailed from Nsuaem and belongs to the Agona family, was a fishmonger and petty trader when she married his father. Eight days after his birth, his father named him as Francis Nwia-Kofi after a relative but later his parents named him as Francis Kwame Ngolomah. He progressed through the ten-year elementary programme in eight years. By about 1925 he was a student-teacher in the school, and had been baptized into the Catholic faith. While at the school, he was noticed by the Reverend Alec Garden Fraser, principal of the Government Training College (soon to become Achimota School) in the Gold Coast's capital, Accra. Fraser arranged for Nkrumah to train as a teacher at his school. Here, Columbia-educated deputy headmaster Kwegyir Aggrey exposed him to the ideas of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. Aggrey, Fraser, and others at Achimota taught that there should be close co-operation between the races in governing the Gold Coast, but Nkrumah, echoing Garvey, soon came to believe that only when the black race governed itself could there be harmony between the races.
After obtaining his teacher's certificate from the Prince of Wales' College at Achimota in 1930, Nkrumah was given a teaching post at the Roman Catholic primary school in Elmina in 1931, and after a year there, was made headmaster of the school at Axim. In Axim, he started to get involved in politics and founded the Nzima Literary Society. In 1933, he was appointed a teacher at the Catholic seminary at Amissano. Although the life there was strict, he liked it, and considered becoming a Jesuit. Nkrumah had heard journalist and future Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe speak while a student at Achimota; the two men met and Azikiwe's influence increased Nkrumah's interest in black nationalism. The young teacher decided to further his education. Azikiwe had attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Chester County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, and he advised Nkrumah to enroll there. Nkrumah, who had failed the entrance examination for London University, gained funds for the trip and his education from relatives. He traveled by way of Britain, where he learned, to his outrage, of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, one of the few independent African nations. He arrived in the United States, in October 1935.
United States
According to historian John Henrik Clarke in his article on Nkrumah's American sojourn, "the influence of the ten years that he spent in the United States would have a lingering effect on the rest of his life." Nkrumah had sought entry to Lincoln University some time before he began his studies there. On 1 March 1935, he sent the school a letter noting that his application had been pending for more than a year. When he arrived in New York in October 1935, he traveled to Pennsylvania, where he enrolled despite lacking the funds for the full semester. He soon won a scholarship that provided for his tuition at Lincoln University. He remained short of funds through his time in the US. To make ends meet, he worked in menial jobs, including as a dishwasher. On Sundays, he visited black Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and in New York.
Nkrumah completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology in 1939. Lincoln then appointed him an assistant lecturer in philosophy, and he began to receive invitations to be a guest preacher in Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and New York. In 1939, Nkrumah enrolled at Lincoln's seminary and at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and in 1942, he was initiated into the Mu chapter of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity at Lincoln University. Nkrumah gained a Bachelor of Theology degree from Lincoln in 1942, the top student in the course. He earned from Penn the following year a Master of Arts degree in philosophy and a Master of Science in education. While at Penn, Nkrumah worked with the linguist William Everett Welmers, providing the spoken material that formed the basis of the first descriptive grammar of his native Fante dialect of the Akan language.
Nkrumah spent his summers in Harlem, a center of black life, thought and culture. He found housing and employment in New York City with difficulty and involved himself in the community. He spent many evenings listening to and arguing with street orators, and according to Clarke, Kwame Nkrumah in his years in America stated;
Nkrumah was an activist student, organizing a group of expatriate African students in Pennsylvania and building it into the African Students Association of America and Canada, becoming its president. Some members felt that the group should aspire for each colony to gain independence on its own; Nkrumah urged a Pan-African strategy. Nkrumah played a major role in the Pan-African conference held in New York in 1944, which urged the United States, at the end of the Second World War, to help ensure Africa became developed and free.
His old teacher Aggrey had died in 1929 in the US, and in 1942 Nkrumah led traditional prayers for Aggrey at the graveside. This led to a break between him and Lincoln, though after he rose to prominence in the Gold Coast, he returned in 1951 to accept an honorary degree. Nevertheless, Nkrumah's doctoral thesis remained uncompleted. He had adopted the forename Francis while at the Amissano seminary; in 1945 he took the name Kwame Nkrumah.
Nkrumah read books about politics and divinity, and tutored students in philosophy. In 1943 Nkrumah met Trinidadian Marxist C. L. R. James, Russian expatriate Raya Dunayevskaya, and Chinese-American Grace Lee Boggs, all of whom were members of an American-based Marxist intellectual cohort. Nkrumah later credited James with teaching him "how an underground movement worked". Federal Bureau of Investigation files on Nkrumah, kept from January to May 1945, identify him as a possible communist. Nkrumah was determined to go to London, wanting to continue his education there now that the Second World War had ended. James, in a 1945 letter introducing Nkrumah to Trinidad-born George Padmore in London, wrote: "This young man is coming to you. He is not very bright, but nevertheless do what you can for him because he's determined to throw Europeans out of Africa."
London
Nkrumah returned to London in May 1945 and enrolled at the London School of Economics as a PhD candidate in anthropology. He withdrew after one term and the next year enrolled at University College, with the intent to write a philosophy dissertation on "Knowledge and Logical Positivism". His supervisor, A. J. Ayer, declined to rate Nkrumah as a "first-class philosopher", saying, "I liked him and enjoyed talking to him but he did not seem to me to have an analytical mind. He wanted answers too quickly. I think part of the trouble may have been that he wasn't concentrating very hard on his thesis. It was a way of marking time until the opportunity came for him to return to Ghana." Finally, Nkrumah enrolled in, but did not complete, a study in law at Gray's Inn.
Nkrumah spent his time on political organizing. He and Padmore were among the principal organizers, and co-treasurers, of the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester (15–19 October 1945). The Congress elaborated a strategy for supplanting colonialism with African socialism. They agreed to pursue a federal United States of Africa, with interlocking regional organizations, governing through separate states of limited sovereignty. They planned to pursue a new African culture without tribalism, democratic within a socialist system, synthesizing traditional aspects with modern thinking, and for this to be achieved by nonviolent means if possible. Among those who attended the congress was the venerable W. E. B. Du Bois along with some who later took leading roles in leading their nations to independence, including Hastings Banda of Nyasaland (which became Malawi), Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria.
The congress sought to establish ongoing African activism in Britain in conjunction with the West African National Secretariat (WANS) to work towards the decolonization of Africa. Nkrumah became the secretary of WANS. In addition to seeking to organize Africans to gain their nations' freedom, Nkrumah sought to succour the many West African seamen who had been stranded, destitute, in London at the end of the war, and established a Colored Workers Association to empower and succour them. The U.S. State Department and MI5 watched Nkrumah and the WANS, focusing on their links with Communism. Nkrumah and Padmore established a group called The Circle to lead the way to West African independence and unity; the group aimed to create a Union of African Socialist Republics. A document from The Circle, setting forth that goal, was found on Nkrumah upon his arrest in Accra in 1948, and was used against him by the British authorities.
Return to the Gold Coast
United Gold Coast Convention
The 1946 Gold Coast constitution gave Africans a majority on the Legislative Council for the first time. Seen as a major step towards self-government, the new arrangement prompted the colony's first true political party, founded in August 1947, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). The UGCC sought self-government as quickly as possible. Since the leading members were all successful professionals, they needed to pay someone to run the party, and their choice fell on Nkrumah at the suggestion of Ako Adjei. Nkrumah hesitated, realizing the UGCC was controlled by conservative interests, but decided that the new post gave him huge political opportunities, and accepted. After being questioned by British officials about his communist affiliations, Nkrumah boarded the MV Accra at Liverpool in November 1947 for the voyage home.
After brief stops in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast, he arrived in the Gold Coast, and after a brief stay and reunion with his mother in Tarkwa, began work at the party's headquarters in Saltpond on 29 December 1947 where he worked as a general secretary. Nkrumah quickly submitted plans for branches of the UGCC to be established colony-wide, and for strikes if necessary to gain political ends. This activist stance divided the party's governing committee, which was led by J. B. Danquah. Nkrumah embarked on a tour to gain donations for the UGCC and establish new branches.
Although the Gold Coast was politically more advanced than Britain's other West Africa colonies, there was considerable discontent. Postwar inflation had caused public anger at high prices, leading to a boycott of the small stores run by Arabs which began in January 1948. The cocoa bean farmers were upset because trees exhibiting swollen-shoot disease, but still capable of yielding a crop, were being destroyed by the colonial authorities. There were about 63,000 ex-servicemen in the Gold Coast, many of whom had trouble obtaining employment and felt the colonial government was doing nothing to address their grievances. Nkrumah and Danquah addressed a meeting of the Ex-Service men's Union in Accra on 20 February 1948, which was in preparation for a march to present a petition to the governor. When that demonstration took place on 28 February, there was gunfire from the British, prompting the 1948 Accra riots, which spread throughout the country. According to Nkrumah's biographer, David Birmingham, "West Africa's erstwhile "model colony" witnessed a riot and business premises were looted. The African Revolution had begun."
The government assumed that the UGCC was responsible for the unrest, and arrested six leaders, including Nkrumah and Danquah. The Big Six were incarcerated together in Kumasi, increasing the rift between Nkrumah and the others, who blamed him for the riots and their detention. After the British learned that there were plots to storm the prison, the six were separated, with Nkrumah sent to Lawra. They were freed in April 1948. Many students and teachers had demonstrated for their release, and been suspended; Nkrumah, using his own funds, began the Ghana National College. This, among other activities, led UGCC committee members to accuse him of acting in the party's name without authority. Fearing he would harm them more outside the party than within, they agreed to make him honorary treasurer. Nkrumah's popularity, already large, was increased with his founding of the Accra Evening News, which was not a party organ but was owned by Nkrumah and others. He also founded the Committee on Youth Organization (CYO) as a youth wing for the UGCC. It soon broke away and adopted the motto "Self-Government Now". The CYO united students, ex-servicemen, and market women. Nkrumah recounted in his autobiography that he knew that a break with the UGCC was inevitable, and wanted the masses behind him when the conflict occurred. Nkrumah's appeals for "Free-Dom" appealed to the great numbers of underemployed youths who had come from the farms and villages to the towns. "Old hymn tunes were adapted to new songs of liberation which welcomed traveling orators, and especially Nkrumah himself, to mass rallies across the Gold Coast."
According to a public speech delivered by Prof. Oquaye, he claimed a meeting occurred in Saltpond, a town in the Central region, between Nkrumah and the members of UGCC where Nkrumah was said to have rejected a proposal for the promotion of fundamental human rights.
Convention People's Party
Beginning in April 1949, there was considerable pressure on Nkrumah from his supporters to leave the UGCC and form his own party. On 12 June 1949, he announced the formation of the Convention People's Party (CPP), with the word "convention" chosen, according to Nkrumah, "to carry the masses with us". There were attempts to heal the breach with the UGCC; at one July meeting, it was agreed to reinstate Nkrumah as secretary and disband the CPP. But Nkrumah's supporters would not have it, and persuaded him to refuse the offer and remain at their head.
The CPP adopted the red cockerel as its symbol – a familiar icon for local ethnic groups, and a symbol of leadership, alertness, and masculinity. Party symbols and colors (red, white, and green) appeared on clothing, flags, vehicles, and houses. CPP operatives drove red-white-and-green vans across the country, playing music and rallying public support for the party and especially for Nkrumah. These efforts were wildly successful, especially because previous political efforts in the Gold Coast had focused exclusively on the urban intelligentsia.
The British convened a selected commission of middle-class Africans, including all of the Big Six except Nkrumah, to draft a new constitution that would give Ghana more self-government. Nkrumah saw, even before the commission reported, that its recommendations would fall short of full dominion status, and began to organize a Positive Action campaign. Nkrumah demanded a constituent assembly to write a constitution. When the governor, Charles Arden-Clarke, would not commit to this, Nkrumah called for Positive Action, with the unions beginning a general strike to begin on 8 January 1950. The strike quickly led to violence, and Nkrumah and other CPP leaders were arrested on 22 January, and the Evening News was banned. Nkrumah was sentenced to a total of three years in prison, and he was incarcerated with common criminals in Accra's Fort James.
Nkrumah's assistant, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, ran the CPP in his absence; the imprisoned leader was able to influence events through smuggled notes written on toilet paper. The British prepared for an election for the Gold Coast under their new constitution, and Nkrumah insisted that the CPP contest all seats. The situation had become calmer once Nkrumah was arrested, and the CPP and the British worked together to prepare electoral rolls. Nkrumah stood, from prison, for a directly elected Accra seat. Gbedemah worked to set up a nationwide campaign organization, using vans with loudspeakers to blare the party's message. The UGCC failed to set up a nationwide structure, and proved unable to take advantage of the fact that many of its opponents were in prison.
In the February 1951 legislative election, the first general election to be held under universal franchise in colonial Africa, the CPP was elected in a landslide. The CPP secured 34 of the 38 seats contested on a party basis, with Nkrumah elected for his Accra constituency. The UGCC won three seats, and one was taken by an independent. Arden-Clarke saw that the only alternative to Nkrumah's freedom was the end of the constitutional experiment. Nkrumah was released from prison on 12 February, receiving a rapturous reception from his followers. The following day, Arden-Clarke sent for him and asked him to form a government.
Nkrumah had stolen Arden-Clarke's secretary Erica Powell after she was dismissed and sent home for getting too close to Nkrumah. Powell returned to Ghana in January 1955 to be Nkrumah's private secretary, a position she held for ten years. Powell was very close to him and during their time together time Powell largely wrote Nkrumah's (auto)biography, although this was not admitted until much later.
Leader of Government Business and Prime Minister
Nkrumah faced several challenges as he assumed office. He had never served in government, and needed to learn that art. The Gold Coast was composed of four regions, several former colonies amalgamated into one. Nkrumah sought to unite them under one nationality, and bring the country to independence. Key to meeting the challenges was convincing the British that the CPP's programmes were not only practical, but inevitable, and Nkrumah and Arden-Clarke worked closely together. The governor instructed the civil service to give the fledgling government full support, and the three British members of the cabinet took care not to vote against the elected majority.
Prior to the CPP taking office, British officials had prepared a ten-year plan for development. With demands for infrastructure improvements coming in from all over the colony, Nkrumah approved it in general, but halved the time to five years. The colony was in good financial shape, with reserves from years of cocoa profit held in London, and Nkrumah was able to spend freely. Modern trunk roads were built along the coast and within the interior. The rail system was modernized and expanded. Modern water and sewer systems were installed in most towns, where housing schemes were begun. Construction began on a new harbor at Tema, near Accra, and the existing port, at Takoradi, was expanded. An urgent programme to build and expand schools, from primary to teacher and trade training, was begun. From 1951 to 1956, the number of pupils being educated at the colony's schools rose from 200,000 to 500,000. Nevertheless, the number of graduates being produced was insufficient to the burgeoning civil service's needs, and in 1953, Nkrumah announced that though Africans would be given preference, the country would be relying on expatriate European civil servants for several years.
Nkrumah's title was Leader of Government Business in a cabinet chaired by Arden-Clarke. Quick progress was made, and in 1952, the governor withdrew from the cabinet, leaving Nkrumah as his prime minister, with the portfolios that had been reserved for expatriates going to Africans. There were accusations of corruption, and of nepotism, as officials, following African custom, attempted to benefit their extended families and their tribes. The recommendations following the 1948 riots had included elected local government rather than the existing system dominated by the chiefs. This was uncontroversial until it became clear that it would be implemented by the CPP. That party's majority in the Legislative Assembly passed legislation in late 1951 that shifted power from the chiefs to the chairs of the councils, though there was some local rioting as rates were imposed.
Nkrumah's re-titling as prime minister had not given him additional power, and he sought constitutional reform that would lead to independence. In 1952, he consulted with the visiting Colonial Secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, who indicated that Britain would look favorably on further advancement, so long as the chiefs and other stakeholders had the opportunity to express their views. Initially skeptical of Nkrumah's socialist policies, Britain's MI5 had compiled large amounts of intelligence on Nkrumah through several sources, including tapping phones and mail interception under the code name of SWIFT. Beginning in October 1952, Nkrumah sought opinions from councils and from political parties on reform, and consulted widely across the country, including with opposition groups. The result the following year was a White Paper on a new constitution, seen as a final step before independence. Published in June 1953, the constitutional proposals were accepted both by the assembly and by the British, and came into force in April of the following year. The new document provided for an assembly of 104 members, all directly elected, with an all-African cabinet responsible for the internal governing of the colony. In the election on 15 June 1954, the CPP won 71, with the regional Northern People's Party forming the official opposition.
A number of opposition groups formed the National Liberation Movement. Their demands were for a federal, rather than a unitary government for an independent Gold Coast, and for an upper house of parliament where chiefs and other traditional leaders could act as a counter to the CPP majority in the assembly. They drew considerable support in the Northern Territory and among the chiefs in Ashanti, who petitioned the British queen, Elizabeth II, asking for a Royal Commission into what form of government the Gold Coast should have. This was refused by her government, who in 1955 stated that such a commission should only be used if the people of the Gold Coast proved incapable of deciding their own affairs. Amid political violence, the two sides attempted to reconcile their differences, but the NLM refused to participate in any committee with a CPP majority. The traditional leaders were also incensed by a new bill that had just been enacted, which allowed minor chiefs to appeal to the government in Accra, bypassing traditional chiefly authority. The British were unwilling to leave unresolved the fundamental question as to how an independent Gold Coast should be governed, and in June 1956, the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd announced that there would be another general election in the Gold Coast, and if a "reasonable majority" took the CPP's position, Britain would set a date for independence. The results of the July 1956 election were almost identical to those from four years before, and on 3 August the assembly voted for independence under the name Nkrumah had proposed in April, Ghana. In September, the Colonial Office announced independence day would be 6 March 1957.
The opposition was not satisfied with the plan for independence, and demanded that power be devolved to the regions. Discussions took place through late 1956 and into 1957. Although Nkrumah did not compromise on his insistence on a unitary state, the nation was divided into five regions, with power devolved from Accra, and the chiefs having a role in their governments. On 21 February 1957, the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, announced that Ghana would be a full member of the Commonwealth of Nations with effect from 6 March.
Ghanaian independence
Ghana became independent on 6 March 1957. As the first of Britain's African colonies to gain majority-rule independence, the celebrations in Accra were the focus of world attention; over 100 reporters and photographers covered the events. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent congratulations and his vice president, Richard Nixon, to represent the U.S. at the event. The Soviet delegation urged Nkrumah to visit Moscow as soon as possible. Political scientist Ralph Bunche, an African American, was there for the United Nations, while the Duchess of Kent represented Queen Elizabeth. Offers of assistance poured in from across the world. Even without them, the country seemed prosperous, with cocoa prices high and the potential of new resource development.
As the fifth of March turned to the sixth, Nkrumah stood before tens of thousands of supporters and proclaimed, "Ghana will be free forever." He spoke at the first session of the Ghana Parliament that Independence Day, telling his new country's citizens that "we have a duty to prove to the world that Africans can conduct their own affairs with efficiency and tolerance and through the exercise of democracy. We must set an example to all Africa."
Nkrumah was hailed as the Osagyefo – which means "redeemer" in the Akan language. This independence ceremony included the Duchess of Kent and Governor General Charles Arden-Clarke. With more than 600 reporters in attendance, Ghanaian independence became one of the most internationally reported news events in modern African history.
The flag of Ghana designed by Theodosia Okoh, inverting Ethiopia's green-yellow-red Lion of Judah flag and replacing the lion with a black star. Red symbolizes bloodshed; green stands for beauty, agriculture, and abundance; yellow represents mineral wealth; and the Black Star represents African freedom. The country's new coat of arms, designed by Amon Kotei, includes eagles, a lion, a St. George's Cross, and a Black Star, with copious gold and gold trim. Philip Gbeho was commissioned to compose the new national anthem, "God Bless Our Homeland Ghana".
As a monument to the new nation, Nkrumah opened Black Star Square near Osu Castle in the coastal district of Osu, Accra. This square would be used for national symbolism and mass patriotic rallies.
Under Nkrumah's leadership, Ghana adopted some social democratic policies and practices. Nkrumah created a welfare system, started various community programs, and established schools.
Ghana's leader (1957–1966)
Political developments and presidential election
Nkrumah had only a short honeymoon before there was unrest among his people. The government deployed troops to Togo-land to quell unrest following a disputed plebiscite on membership in the new country. A serious bus strike in Accra stemmed from resentments among the Ga people, who believed members of other tribes were getting preferential treatment in government promotion, and this led to riots there in August. Nkrumah's response was to repress local movements by the Avoidance of Discrimination Act (6 December 1957), which banned regional or tribal-based political parties. Another strike at tribalism fell in Ashanti, where Nkrumah and the CPP got most local chiefs who were not party supporters destooled. These repressive actions concerned the opposition parties, who came together to form the United Party under Kofi Abrefa Busia.
In 1958, an opposition MP was arrested on charges of trying to obtain arms abroad for a planned infiltration of the Ghana Army (GA). Nkrumah was convinced there had been an assassination plot against him, and his response was to have the parliament pass the Preventive Detention Act, allowing for incarceration for up to five years without charge or trial, with only Nkrumah empowered to release prisoners early. According to Nkrumah's biographer, David Birmingham, "no single measure did more to bring down Nkrumah's reputation than his adoption of internment without trial for the preservation of security." Nkrumah intended to bypass the British-trained judiciary, which he saw as opposing his plans when they subjected them to constitutional scrutiny.
Another source of irritation was the regional assemblies, which had been organized on an interim basis pending further constitutional discussions. The opposition, which was strong in Ashanti and the north, proposed significant powers for the assemblies; the CPP wanted them to be more or less advisory. In 1959, Nkrumah used his majority in the parliament to push through the Constitutional Amendment Act, which abolished the assemblies and allowed the parliament to amend the constitution with a simple majority.
Queen Elizabeth II remained sovereign over Ghana from 1957 to 1960. William Hare, 5th Earl of Listowel was the Governor-General, and Nkrumah remained Prime Minister. On 6 March 1960, Nkrumah announced plans for a new constitution which would make Ghana a republic, headed by a president with broad executive and legislative powers. The draft included a provision to surrender Ghanaian sovereignty to a Union of African States. On 19, 23, and 27 April 1960 a presidential election and plebiscite on the constitution were held. The constitution was ratified and Nkrumah was elected president over J. B. Danquah, the UP candidate, 1,016,076 to 124,623. Ghana remained a part of the British-led Commonwealth of Nations.
Opposition to tribalism
Nkrumah also sought to eliminate "tribalism", a source of loyalties held more deeply than those to the nation-state. Thus, as he wrote in Africa Must Unite: "We were engaged in a kind of war, a war against poverty and disease, against ignorance, against tribalism and disunity. We needed to secure the conditions which could allow us to pursue our policy of reconstruction and development." To this end, in 1958, his government passed "An Act to prohibit organizations using or engaging in racial or religious propaganda to the detriment of any other racial or religious community, or securing the election of persons on account of their racial or religious affiliations, or for other purposes in connection therewith." Nkrumah attempted to saturate the country in national flags, and declared a widely disobeyed ban on tribal flags.
Kofi Abrefa Busia of the United Party (Ghana) gained prominence as an opposition leader in the debate over this Act, taking a more classically liberal position and criticizing the ban on tribal politics as repressive. Soon after, he left the country. Nkrumah was also a very flamboyant leader. The New York Times in 1972 wrote: "During his high‐flying days as the leader of Ghana in the 1950s and early 1960s, Kwame Nkrumah was a flamboyant spellbinder. At home, he created a cult of personality and gloried in the title of 'Osagyefo' (Redeemer). Abroad, he rubbed elbows with the world's leaders as the first man to lead an African colony to independence after World War II."
During his tenure as Prime Minister and then President, Nkrumah succeeded in reducing the political importance of the local chieftaincy (e.g., the Akan chiefs and the Asantehene). These chiefs had maintained authority during colonial rule through collaboration with the British authorities; in fact, they were sometimes favored over the local intelligentsia, who made trouble for the British with organizations like the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society. The Convention People's Party had a strained relationship with the chiefs when it came to power, and this relationship became more hostile as the CPP incited political opposition chiefs and criticized the institution as undemocratic. Acts passed in 1958 and 1959 gave the government more power to dis-stool chiefs directly, and proclaimed government of stool land – and revenues. These policies alienated the chiefs and led them to looking favorably on the overthrow of Nkrumah and his Party.
Increased power of the Convention People's Party
In 1962, three younger members of the CPP were brought up on charges of taking part in a plot to blow up Nkrumah's car in a motorcade. The sole evidence against the alleged plotters was that they rode in cars well behind Nkrumah's car. When the defendants were acquitted, Nkrumah sacked the chief judge of the state security court, then got the CPP-dominated parliament to pass a law allowing a new trial. At this second trial, all three men were convicted and sentenced to death, though these sentences were subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. Shortly afterward, the constitution was amended to give the president the power to summarily remove judges at all levels.
In 1964, Nkrumah proposed a constitutional amendment which would make the CPP the only legal party, with Nkrumah as president for life of both nation and party. The amendment passed with 99.91 percent of the vote, an implausibly high total that led observers to condemn the vote as "obviously rigged". Ghana had effectively been a one-party state since independence. The amendment transformed Nkrumah's presidency into a de facto legal dictatorship.
Civil service
After substantial Africanization of the civil service in 1952–60, the number of expatriates rose again from 1960 to 1965. Many of the new outside workers came not from the United Kingdom but from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Italy.
Education
In 1951, the CPP created the Accelerated Development Plan for Education. This plan set up a six-year primary course, to be attended as close to universally as possible, with a range of possibilities to follow. All children were to learn arithmetic, as well as gain "a sound foundation for citizenship with permanent literacy in both English and the vernacular." Primary education became compulsory in 1962. The plan also stated that religious schools would no longer receive funding, and that some existing missionary schools would be taken over by government.
In 1961, Nkrumah laid the first stones in the foundation of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute created to train Ghanaian civil servants as well as promote Pan-Africanism. In 1964, all students entering college in Ghana were required to attend a two-week "ideological orientation" at the institute. Nkrumah remarked that "trainees should be made to realize the party's ideology is religion, and should be practiced faithfully and fervently."
In 1964, Nkrumah brought forth the Seven Year Development Plan for National Reconstruction and Development, which identified education as a key source of development and called for the expansion of secondary technical schools. Secondary education would also include "in-service training programmes". As Nkrumah told Parliament: "Employers, both public and private, will be expected to make a far greater contribution to labor training through individual factory and farm schools, industry-wide training schemes, day release, payment for attendance at short courses and evening classes." This training would be indirectly subsidized with tax credits and import allocations.
In 1952, the Artisan Trading Scheme, arranged with the Colonial Office and UK Ministry of Labor, provided for a few experts in every field to travel to Britain for technical education. Kumasi Technical Institute was founded in 1956. In September 1960, it added the Technical Teacher Training Center. In 1961, the CPP passed the Apprentice Act, which created a general Apprenticeship Board along with committees for each industry.
Culture
Nkrumah was an ardent promoter of pan-Africanism, seeing the movement as the "quest for regional integration of the whole of the African continent". The period of Nkrumah's active political involvement has been described as the "golden age of high pan-African ambitions"; the continent had experienced rising nationalist movements and decolonization by most European colonial powers, and historians have noted that "the narrative of rebirth and solidarity had gained momentum within the pan-Africanist movement". Reflecting his African heritage, Nkrumah frequently eschewed Western fashion, donning a fugu (a Northern attire) made with Southern-produced Kente cloth, a symbol of his identity as a representative of the entire country. He oversaw the opening of the Ghana Museum on 5 March 1957; the Arts Council of Ghana, a wing of the Ministry of Education and Culture, in 1958; the Research Library on African Affairs in June 1961; and the Ghana Film Corporation in 1964. In 1962, Nkrumah opened the Institute of African Studies.
A campaign against nudity in the northern part of the country received special attention from Nkrumah, who reportedly deployed Propaganda Secretary Hannah Cudjoe to respond. Cudjoe also formed the Ghana Women's League, which advanced the Party's agenda on nutrition, raising children, and wearing clothing. The League also led a demonstration against the detonation of French nuclear weapons in the Sahara. Cudjoe was eventually demoted with the consolidation of national women's groups, and marginalized within the Party structure.
Laws passed in 1959 and 1960 designated special positions in parliament to be held by women. Some women were promoted to the CPP Central Committee. Women attended more universities, took up more professions including medicine and law, and went on professional trips to Israel, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc. Women also entered the army and air force. Most women remained in agriculture and trade; some received assistance from the Co-operative Movement.
Nkrumah's image was widely disseminated, for example, on postage stamps and on money, in the style of monarchs – providing fodder for accusations of a Nkrumahist personality cult.
Media
In 1957 Nkrumah created a well-funded Ghana News Agency to generate domestic news and disseminate it abroad. In ten years time the GNA had 8045 km of domestic telegraph line, and maintained stations in Lagos, Nairobi, London, and New York City.
Nkrumah consolidated state control over newspapers, establishing the Ghanaian Times in 1958 and then in 1962 obtaining its competitor, the Daily Graphic, from the Mirror Group of London. As he wrote in Africa Must Unite: "It is part of our revolutionary credo that within the competitive system of capitalism, the press cannot function in accordance with a strict regard for the sacredness of facts, and that the press, therefore, should not remain in private hands." Starting in 1960, he invoked the right of pre-publication censorship of all news.
The Gold Coast Broadcasting Service was established in 1954 and revamped as the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). Many television broadcasts featured Nkrumah, commenting for example on the problematic "insolence and laziness of boys and girls". Before celebrations of May Day, 1963, Nkrumah went on television to announce the expansion of Ghana's Young Pioneers, the introduction of a National Pledge, the beginning of a National Flag salute in schools, and the creation of a National Training program to inculcate virtue and the spirit of service among Ghanaian youth. Quoth Nkrumah (to Parliament, on 15 October 1963), "Ghana's television will not cater for cheap entertainment or commercialism; its paramount objective will be education in its broadest and purest sense."
As per the 1965 Instrument of Incorporation of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting had "powers of direction" over the media, and the President had the power "at any time, if he is satisfied that it is in the national interest to do so, take over the control and management of the affairs or any part of the functions of the Corporation," hiring, firing, reorganizing, and making other commands at will.
Radio programs, designed in part to reach non-reading members of the public, were a major focus of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. In 1961, the GBC formed an external service broadcasting in English, French, Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese, and Hausa. Using four 100-kilowatt transmitters and two 250-kilowatt transmitters, the GBC External Service broadcast 110 hours of Pan-Africanist programming to Africa and Europe each week.
He refused advertising in all media, beginning with the Evening News of 1948.
Economic policy
The Gold Coast had been among the wealthiest and most socially advanced areas in Africa, with schools, railways, hospitals, social security, and an advanced economy.
Nkrumah attempted to rapidly industrialize Ghana's economy. He reasoned that if Ghana escaped the colonial trade system by reducing dependence on foreign capital, technology, and material goods, it could become truly independent.
After the Ten Year Development Plan, Nkrumah brought forth the Second Development Plan in 1959. This plan called for the development of manufacturing: 600 factories producing 100 varieties of product.
The Statutory Corporations Act, passed in November 1959 and revised in 1961 and 1964, created the legal framework for public corporations, which included state enterprises. This law placed the country's major corporations under the direction of government ministers. The State Enterprises Secretariat office was located in Flagstaff House and under the direct control of the president.
After visiting the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China in 1961, Nkrumah apparently became still more convinced of the need for state control of the economy.
Nkrumah's time in office began successfully: forestry, fishing, and cattle-breeding expanded, production of cocoa (Ghana's main export) doubled, and modest deposits of bauxite and gold were exploited more effectively. The construction of a dam on the Volta River (launched in 1961) provided water for irrigation and hydro-electric power, which produced enough electricity for the towns and for a new aluminum plant. Government funds were also provided for village projects in which local people built schools and roads, while free health care and education were introduced.
A Seven-Year Plan introduced in 1964 focused on further industrialization, emphasizing domestic substitutes for common imports, modernization of the building materials industry, machine making, electrification, and electronics.
Energy projects
Nkrumah's advocacy of industrial development, with help of longtime friend and Minister of Finance, Komla Agbeli Gbedema, led to the Volta River Project: the construction of a hydroelectric power plant, the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River in eastern Ghana. The Volta River Project was the centerpiece of Nkrumah's economic program. On 20 February 1958, he told the National Assembly: "It is my strong belief that the Volta River Project provides the quickest and most certain method of leading us towards economic independence." Ghana invoked assistance from the United States, Israel, and the World Bank in constructing the dam.
Kaiser Aluminum agreed to build the dam for Nkrumah, but restricted what could be produced using the power generated. Nkrumah borrowed money to build the dam, and placed Ghana in debt. To finance the debt, he raised taxes on the cocoa farmers in the south. This accentuated regional differences and jealousy. The dam was completed and opened by Nkrumah amidst world publicity on 22 January 1966.
Nkrumah initiated the Ghana Nuclear Reactor Project in 1961, created the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in 1963, and in 1964 laid the first stone in the building of an atomic energy facility.
Cocoa
In 1954 the world price of cocoa rose from £150 to £450 per ton. Rather than allowing cocoa farmers to keep the windfall, Nkrumah appropriated the increased revenue via central government levies, then invested the capital into various national development projects. This policy alienated one of the major constituencies that helped him come to power.
Prices continued to fluctuate. In 1960 one ton of cocoa sold for £250 in London. By August 1965 this price had dropped to £91, one fifth of its value ten years before. The quick price decline caused the government's reliance on the reserves and forced farmers to take a portion of their earning in bonds.
Foreign and military policy
Nkrumah actively promoted a policy of Pan-Africanism from the beginning of his presidency. This entailed the creation of a series of new international organizations, which held their inaugural meetings in Accra. These were:
the First Conference of Independent States, in April 1958;
the more inclusive All-African Peoples' Conference, with representatives from 62 nationalist organizations from across the continent, in December 1958;
the All-African Trade Union Federation, meeting in November 1959, to coordinate the African labour movement;
the Positive Action and Security in Africa conference, in April 1960, discussing Algeria, South Africa, and French nuclear weapons testing;
the Conference of African Women, on 18 July 1960.
Meanwhile, Ghana withdrew from colonial organizations including West Africa Airways Corporation, the West African Currency Board, the West African Cocoa Research Institute, and the West African Court of Appeal.
In the Year of Africa, 1960, Nkrumah negotiated the creation of a Union of African States, a political alliance between Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. Immediately there formed a women's group called Women of the Union of African States.
Nkrumah was a leading figure in the short-lived Casablanca Group of African leaders, which sought to achieve pan-African unity and harmony through deep political, economic, and military integration of the continent in the early 1960s prior to the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
Nkrumah was instrumental in the creation of the OAU in Addis Ababa in 1963. He aspired to create a united military force, the African High Command, which Ghana would substantially lead, and committed to this vision in Article 2 of the 1960 Republican Constitution:"In the confident expectation of an early surrender of sovereignty to a union of African states and territories, the people now confer on Parliament the power to provide for the surrender of the whole or any part of the sovereignty of Ghana."
He was also a proponent of the United Nations, but critical of the Great Powers' ability to control it.
Nkrumah opposed entry of African states into the Common Market of the European Economic Community, a status given to many former French colonies and considered by Nigeria. Instead, Nkrumah advocated, in a speech given on 7 April 1960,
an African common market, a common currency area and the development of communications of all kinds to allow the free flow of goods and services. International capital can be attracted to such viable economic areas, but it would not be attracted to a divided and balkanized Africa, with each small region engaged in senseless and suicidal economic competition with its neighbours.
Armed forces
In 1956, Ghana took control of the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF), Gold Coast Regiment, from the British War Office. This force had formerly been deployed to quell internal dissent, and occasionally to fight in wars: most recently, in World War II, against the Japanese in India and Burma. The most senior officers in this force were British, and, although training of African officers began in 1947, only 28 of 212 officers in December 1956 were indigenous Africans. The British officers still received British salaries, which vastly exceeded those allotted to their Ghanaian counterparts. Concerned about a possible military coup, Nkrumah delayed the placement of African officers in top leadership roles.
Nkrumah quickly established the Ghanaian Air Force, acquiring 14 Beaver airplanes from Canada and setting up a flight school with British instructors. Otters, Caribou, and Chipmunks were to follow. Ghana also obtained four Ilyushin-18 aircraft from the Soviet Union. Preparation began in April 1959 with assistance from India and Israel.
The Ghanaian Navy received two inshore minesweepers with 40- and 20-millimeter guns, the Afadzato and the Yogaga, from Britain in December 1959. It subsequently received the Elmina and the Komenda, seaward defense boats with 40-millimetre guns. The Navy's flagship, and training ship, was the Achimota, a British yacht constructed during World War II. In 1961, the Navy ordered two 600-ton corvettes, the Keta and Kromantse, from Vosper & Company and received them in 1967. It also procured four Soviet patrol boats. Naval officers were trained at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. The Ghanaian military budget rose each year, from $9.35 million (US dollars) in 1958 to $47 million in 1965.
The first international deployment of the Ghanaian armed forces was to Congo (Léopoldville/Kinshasa), where Ghanaian troops were airlifted in 1960 at the beginning of the Congo crisis. One week after Belgian troops occupied the lucrative mining province of Katanga, Ghana dispatched more than a thousand of its own troops to join a United Nations force. The use of British officers in this context was politically unacceptable, and this event occasioned a hasty transfer of officer positions to Ghanaians. The Congo war was long and difficult. On 19 January 1961 the Third Infantry Battalion mutinied. On 28 April 1961, 43 men were massacred in a surprise attack by the Congolese army.
Ghana also gave military support to rebels fighting against Ian Smith's white-minority government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which had unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965.
Relationship with Communist world
In 1961, Nkrumah went on tour through Eastern Europe, proclaiming solidarity with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Nkrumah's clothing changed to the Chinese-supplied Mao suit.
In 1962 Kwame Nkrumah was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union.
Overthrow
In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state visit to North Vietnam and China, his government was overthrown in a violent coup d'état led by the national military and police forces, with backing from the civil service. The conspirators, led by Joseph Arthur Ankrah, named themselves the National Liberation Council and ruled as a military government for three years. Nkrumah did not learn of the coup until he arrived in China. After the coup, Nkrumah stayed in Beijing for four days and Premier Zhou Enlai treated him with courtesy.
Nkrumah alluded to American involvement in the coup in his 1969 memoir Dark Days in Ghana; he may have based this conclusion on documents shown to him by the KGB. In 1978 John Stockwell, former Chief of the Angola Task Force of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), wrote that agents at the CIA's Accra station "maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched". Afterward, "inside CIA headquarters the Accra station was given full, if unofficial credit for the eventual coup. ...None of this was adequately reflected in the agency's written records." Later the same year, Seymour Hersh of The New York Times, citing "first hand intelligence sources," defended Stockwell's account, claiming that "many CIA operatives in Africa considered the agency's role in the overthrow of Dr. Nkrumah to have been pivotal." These claims have never been verified.
Following the coup, Ghana realigned itself internationally, cutting its close ties to Guinea and the Eastern Bloc, accepting a new friendship with the Western Bloc, and inviting the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to take a lead role in managing the economy. With this reversal, accentuated by the expulsion of immigrants and a new willingness to negotiate with apartheid South Africa, Ghana lost a good deal of its stature in the eyes of African nationalists.
Exile, death, tributes and legacy
Nkrumah never returned to Ghana, but he continued to push for his vision of African unity. He lived in exile in Conakry, Guinea, as the guest of President Ahmed Sékou Touré, who made him honorary co-president of the country. Nkrumah read, wrote, corresponded, gardened, and entertained guests. Despite retirement from public office, he felt that he was still threatened by Western intelligence agencies. When his cook died mysteriously, he feared that someone would poison him, and began hoarding food in his room. He suspected that foreign agents were going through his mail, and lived in constant fear of abduction and assassination. In failing health, he flew to Bucharest, Romania, for medical treatment in August 1971. He died of prostate cancer in April 1972 at the age of 62 while in Romania.
Nkrumah was buried in a tomb in the village of his birth, Nkroful, Ghana. While the tomb remains in Nkroful, his remains were transferred to a large national memorial tomb and park in Accra, Ghana.
Over his lifetime, Nkrumah was awarded honorary doctorates by many universities including Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), Moscow State University (USSR), Cairo University (Egypt), Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Humboldt University (East Germany).
In 2000, he was voted African Man of the Millennium by listeners to the BBC World Service, being described by the BBC as a "Hero of Independence", and an "International symbol of freedom as the leader of the first black African country to shake off the chains of colonial rule."According to intelligence documents released by the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Historian, "Nkrumah was doing more to undermine [U.S. government] interests than any other black African."
In September 2009, President John Atta Mills declared 21 September (the 100th anniversary of Kwame Nkrumah's birth) to be Founders' Day, a statutory holiday in Ghana to celebrate the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah. In April 2019, President Akufo-Addo approved the Public Holidays (Amendment) Act 2019 which changed 21 September from Founders' Day to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day.
He generally took a non-aligned Marxist perspective on economics, and believed capitalism had malignant effects that were going to stay with Africa for a long time. Although he was clear on distancing himself from the African socialism of many of his contemporaries, Nkrumah argued that socialism was the system that would best accommodate the changes that capitalism had brought, while still respecting African values. He specifically addresses these issues and his politics in a 1967 essay entitled "African Socialism Revisited":
We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for sociopolitical practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism.
Nkrumah was also best-known politically for his strong commitment to and promotion of pan-Africanism. He was inspired by the writings of black intellectuals such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and George Padmore, and his relationships with them. Much of his understanding and relationship to these men was created during his years in America as a student. Some would argue that his greatest inspiration was Marcus Garvey, although he also had a meaningful relationship with C. L. R. James. Nkrumah looked to these men to craft a general solution to the ills of Africa. To follow in these intellectual footsteps Nkrumah had intended to continue his education in London, but found himself involved in direct activism. Then, motivated by advice from Du Bois, Nkrumah decided to focus on creating peace in Africa. He became a passionate advocate of the "African Personality" embodied in the slogan "Africa for the Africans" earlier popularised by Edward Wilmont Blyden and he viewed political independence as a prerequisite for economic independence. Nkrumah's dedications to pan-Africanism in action attracted these intellectuals to his Ghanaian projects. Many Americans, such as Du Bois and Kwame Ture, moved to Ghana to join him in his efforts. These men are buried there today. His press officer for six years was the Grenadian anticolonialist Sam Morris. Nkrumah's biggest success in this area was his significant influence in the founding of the Organisation of African Unity.
Nkrumah also became a symbol for black liberation in the United States. When in 1958 the Harlem Lawyers Association had an event in Nkrumah's honour, diplomat Ralph Bunche told him:
We salute you, Kwame Nkrumah, not only because you are Prime Minister of Ghana, although this is cause enough. We salute you because you are a true and living representation of our hopes and ideals, of the determination we have to be accepted fully as equal beings, of the pride we have held and nurtured in our African origin, of the freedom of which we know we are capable, of the freedom in which we believe, of the dignity imperative to our stature as men.
In 1961, Nkrumah delivered a speech called "I Speak Of Freedom". During this speech he talked about how "Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world". He mentions how Africa is a land of "vast riches" with mineral resources from that "range from gold and diamonds to uranium and petroleum". Nkrumah says that the reason Africa isn't thriving right now is because the European powers have been taking all the wealth for themselves. If Africa could be independent of European rule, he said, then it could truly flourish and contribute positively to the world. In the ending words of this speech Nkrumah calls his people to action by saying "This is our chance. We must act now. Tomorrow may be too late and the opportunity will have passed, and with it the hope of free Africa's survival". This rallied the nation in a nationalistic movement.
Personal life
Kwame Nkrumah married Fathia Ritzk, an Egyptian Coptic bank worker and former teacher, on the evening of her arrival in Ghana: New Year's Eve, 1957–1958. Fathia's mother refused to bless their marriage, due to reluctance to see another one of her children leave with a foreign husband.
As a married couple, the Nkrumah family had three children: Gamal (born 1959), Samia (born 1960), and Sekou (born 1963). Gamal is a newspaper journalist, while Samia and Sekou are politicians. Nkrumah also has another son, Francis, a paediatrician (born 1962). There appears to be another son, Onsy Anwar Nathan Kwame Nkrumah, born to an Egyptian mother and an additional daughter, Elizabeth. Onsy's claim to be Nkrumah's son is disputed by Nkrumah's other children.
Cultural depictions
In the 2010 book The Other Wes Moore, Nkrumah, during his time in the United States, is noted to have served as a mentor to the author's grandfather for several months upon the immigration of the author's family into the country.
Nkrumah is played by Danny Sapani in the Netflix television series The Crown (season 2, episode 8 "Dear Mrs Kennedy"). The show's portrayal of the historical significance of the Queen's visit to Ghana and dance with Nkrumah has been described as exaggerated.
A golden statue of Nkrumah is a center piece in Ghanaian rapper Serious Klein's 2021 video "Straight Outta Pandemic".
Works by Kwame Nkrumah
"Negro History: European Government in Africa", The Lincolnian, 12 April 1938, p. 2 (Lincoln University, Pennsylvania) – see Special Collections and Archives, Lincoln University
Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957).
Africa Must Unite (1963).
African Personality (1963)
Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965)
Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah (1967).
African Socialism Revisited (1967)
Challenge of the Congo (1967)
Voice From Conakry (1967).
Dark Days in Ghana (1968).
Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968) – first introduction of Pan-African pellet compass.
Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation (1970).
Class Struggle in Africa (1970).
The Struggle Continues (1973).
I Speak of Freedom (1973).
Revolutionary Path (1973).
Festival
For details see Kwame Nkrumah Festival
See also
Nkrumah government
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Arhin, Kwame (1993). The Life and Work of Kwame Nkrumah. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. (08543395X)
Baynham, Simon (1988). The Military and Politics in Nkrumah's Ghana. Westview Special Studies on Africa. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc. (Frederick A. Praeger),
Biney, Ama. "The Legacy of Kwame Nkrumah in Retrospect." Journal of Pan African Studies 2.3 (2008). online, historiography
Biney, Ama. The political and social thought of Kwame Nkrumah (2011).
Biney, Ama. "The Development of Kwame Nkrumah's Political Thought in Exile, 1966–1972." Journal of African History 50.1 (2009): 81–100.
Bretton, Henry L. The rise and fall of Kwame Nkrumah: a study of personal rule in Africa (1967).
Defense Intelligence Agency, "Supplement, Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana", 12-January-1966.
Gerits, Frank. "'When the Bull Elephants Fight': Kwame Nkrumah, Non-Alignment, and Pan-Africanism as an Interventionist Ideology in the Global Cold War (1957–66)." International History Review 37.5 (2015): 951–969.
Gocking, Roger S. The History of Ghana (2005).
Milne, June. Kwame Nkrumah: a biography (1999).
Mwakikagile, Godfrey (2015), Western Involvement in Nkrumah's Downfall. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: New Africa Press.
Omari, T. Peter. Kwame Nkrumah: The anatomy of an African dictatorship (1970).
Pinkney, Robert (1972). Ghana Under Military Rule 1966–1969. London: Methuen & Co Ltd.
Rooney, David. Kwame Nkrumah: The Political Kingdom in the Third World (1988).
Rui Lopes & Víctor Barros (2019) "Amílcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: International, Transnational, and Global Dimensions." The International History Review.
Smertin, Yuri. Kwame Nkrumah. Moscow: Progress Publishers. 1987.
Žák, Tomáš František (2016). "Applying the Weapon of Theory: Comparing the Philosophy of Julius Kambarage Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah". Journal of African Cultural Studies. 28 (2): 147–160. doi:10.1080/13696815.2015.1053798. S2CID 146709996.
External links
Faces of Africa Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and Museum at Nkroful, Western Region
Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park & Museum, Accra
Ghana-pedia Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
Ghana-pedia Operation Cold Chop: The Fall Of Kwame Nkrumah
Dr Kwame Nkrumah
Excerpt from Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
Timeline of events related to the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah
The Kwame Nkrumah Lectures at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, 2007
Kwame Nkrumah Information and Resource Site
Ghana re-evaluates Nkrumah by The Global Post
Dr Kwame Nkrumah's Midnight Speech on the day of Ghana's independence – 6 March 1957.
Newsreel on First Conference of Independent African States
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17063 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanyin | Guanyin | Guanyin, Guan Yin or Kuan Yin () () is the Buddhist bodhisattva associated with compassion. She is the East Asian equivalent of Avalokiteśvara (), and has been adopted by other Eastern religions including Chinese folk religion. She was first given the appellation of "goddess of mercy" or the mercy goddess by Jesuit missionaries in China. The Chinese name Guanyin is short for Guanshiyin, which means "[The One Who] Perceives the Sounds of the World." On the 19th day of the sixth lunar month, Guan Shi Yin's attainment of Buddhahood is celebrated.
Some Buddhists believe that when one of their adherents departs from this world, they are placed by Guanyin in the heart of a lotus, and then sent to the western pure land of Sukhāvatī. Guanyin is often referred to as the "most widely beloved Buddhist Divinity" with miraculous powers to assist all those who pray to her, as is said in the Lotus Sutra and Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra.
Several large temples in East Asia are dedicated to Guanyin including Mount Putuo, Shaolin Monastery, Longxing Temple, Puning Temple, Nanhai Guanyin Temple, Dharma Drum Mountain, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, Shitennō-ji, Sensō-ji, Kiyomizu-dera, Sanjūsangen-dō, and many others. Guanyin's abode and bodhimaṇḍa in India is recorded as being on Mount Potalaka. With the localization of the belief in Guanyin, each area adopted their own Potalaka. In China, Mount Putuo is considered the bodhimaṇḍa of Guanyin. Naksansa is considered to be the Potalaka of Guanyin in Korea. Japan's Potalaka is located at Fudarakusan-ji. Tibet's Potalaka is the Potala Palace.
There are several pilgrimage centers for Guanyin in East Asia. Putuoshan is the main pilgrimage site in China. There is a 33 temple Guanyin pilgrimage in Korea which includes Naksansa. In Japan, there are several pilgrimages associated with Guanyin. The oldest one of them is the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, a pilgrimage through 33 temples with Guanyin shrines. Guanyin is beloved by all Buddhist traditions in a nondenominational way and found in most Tibetan temples under the name Chenrézik (). Guanyin is also beloved and worshipped in the temples in Nepal. The Hiranya Varna Mahavihar located in Patan is one example. Guanyin is also found in some influential Theravada temples such as Gangaramaya Temple, Kelaniya and Natha Devale nearby Temple of the Tooth in Sri Lanka; Guanyin can also be found in Thailand's Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Wat Huay Pla Kang (where the huge statue of her is often mistakenly called the "Big Buddha") and Burma's Shwedagon Pagoda. Statues of Guanyin are a widely depicted subject of Asian art and found in the Asian art sections of most museums in the world.
Etymology and Usage
Avalokitasvara
Guānyīn is a translation from the Sanskrit Avalokitasvara, the name of the Mahāyāna bodhisattva. Another name for this bodhisattva is Guānzìzài (), from Sankrit Avalokiteśvara. It was initially thought that early translators mistook Avalokiteśvara as Avalokitasvara and thus mistranslated Avalokiteśvara as Guānyīn, which explained why Xuanzang translated Avalokiteśvara as Guānzìzài. However, the original form was indeed Avalokitasvara which contained morpheme svara ("sound, noise") and was a compound meaning "sound perceiver", literally "he who looks down upon sound" (i.e., the cries of sentient beings who need his help). This is the exact equivalent of the Chinese translation Guānyīn. This etymology was furthered in the Chinese by the tendency of some Chinese translators, notably Kumārajīva, to use the variant Guānshìyīn, literally "who perceives the world's lamentations"—wherein lok was read as simultaneously meaning both "to look" and "world" (Skt. loka; Ch. 世, shì).
Direct translations from the Sanskrit name Avalokitasvara include:
Chinese: Guanyin (), Guanshiyin ()
Avalokiteśvara
The name Avalokitasvara was later supplanted by the Avalokiteśvara form containing the ending -īśvara, which does not occur in Sanskrit before the seventh century. The original form Avalokitasvara appears in Sanskrit fragments of the fifth century. The original meaning of the name "Avalokitasvara" fits the Buddhist understanding of the role of a bodhisattva. The reinterpretation presenting him as an īśvara shows a strong influence of Śaivism, as the term īśvara was usually connected to the Hindu notion of Śiva as a creator god and ruler of the world.
While some of those who revered Avalokiteśvara upheld the Buddhist rejection of the doctrine of any creator god, Encyclopædia Britannica does cite Avalokiteśvara as the creator god of the world. This position is taken in the widely used Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra with its well-known mantra oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ. In addition, the Lotus Sutra is the first time the Avalokiteśvara is mentioned. Chapter 25 refers to him as Lokeśvara "Lord God of all beings" and Lokanātha "Lord and Protector of all beings" and ascribes extreme attributes of divinity to him.
Direct translations from the Sanskrit name Avalokiteśvara include:
Names in other Asian languages
Due to the devotional popularity of Guanyin in Asia, she is known by many names, most of which are simply the localised pronunciations of "Guanyin" or "Guanshiyin":
The name is pronounced G(w)ūn Yām (Jyutping: g(w)un1 yam1) in Cantonese, also encountered as Kwun Yam in Hong Kong or Kun Iam in Macau in pre-standardised romanizations.
In Hokkien, she is called Kuan Im (POJ: Koan-im) or Kuan Se Im (POJ: Koan-sè-im)
In Malaysian Mandarin, the name is Guanyin Pusa (Guanyin Bodhisattva), Guan Shi Yin Pusa (Guanyin Bodhisattva).
In Tibetan, the name is Chenrézik ().
In Vietnamese, the name is or Quan Thế Âm.
In Japanese, Guanyin is pronounced Kannon (), occasionally Kan'on, or more formally Kanzeon (, the same characters as Guanshiyin); the spelling Kwannon, based on a premodern pronunciation, is sometimes seen. This rendition was used for an earlier spelling of the well-known camera manufacturer Canon Inc., which was named for Guanyin.
In Korean, Guanyin is called Gwan-eum () or Gwanse-eum ().
In Khmer, the name is Preah Mae Kun Si Im. (ព្រះម៉ែ គង់សុីអុិម). She is also called Preah Neang Kun Si Im (ព្រះនាង[princess] គង់សុីអុិម). The word meaning of "Preah" is God/Goddess and "Mae" means Mother. Her full name is always used. When referring about her more than once, the name can be shorten down to her title, Preah Mae (Goddess Mother).
In Thai the pronunciation is a duplicate from Hokkien Kuan Im (), Phra Mae Kuan Im (; Phra Mae means "goddess") or Chao Mae Kuan Im (; Chao Mae usually means "madam", but in this terms, means "goddess").
In Burmese, the name of Guanyin is Kwan Yin Medaw, literally meaning Mother Kwan Yin (Goddess Guanyin) ().
In Indonesian, the name is Kwan Im or Dewi Kwan Im. She is also called Mak Kwan Im "Mother Guanyin".
In Sinhala, the name is Natha Deviyo ().
In Hmong, the name is Kab Yeeb.
In Nepali, the name is Seto Machindranath
In these same countries, the variant Guanzizai "Lord of Contemplation" and its equivalents are also used, such as in the Heart Sutra, among other sources.
Depiction
Lotus Sūtra
The Lotus Sūtra (Sanskrit Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtra) is generally accepted to be the earliest literature teaching about the doctrines of Avalokiteśvara. These are found in the twenty fifth chapter of the Lotus Sūtra. This chapter is devoted to Avalokitesvara, describing him as a compassionate bodhisattva who hears the cries of sentient beings, and who works tirelessly to help those who call upon his name.
The Lotus Sutra describes Avalokiteśvara as a bodhisattva who can take the form of any type of god including Indra or Brahma; any type of Buddha, any type of king or Chakravartin or even any kind of Heavenly Guardian including Vajrapani and Vaisravana as well as any gender male or female, adult or child, human or non-human being, in order to teach the Dharma to sentient beings. Folk traditions in China and other East Asian countries have added many distinctive characteristics and legends to Guanyin c.q. Avalokiteśvara. Avalokiteśvara was originally depicted as a male bodhisattva, and therefore wears chest-revealing clothing and may even sport a light moustache. Although this depiction still exists in the Far East, Guanyin is more often depicted as a woman in modern times. Additionally, some people believe that Guanyin is androgynous or perhaps without gender.
A total of 33 different manifestations of Avalokitasvara are described, including female manifestations, all to suit the minds of various beings. Chapter 25 consists of both a prose and a verse section. This earliest source often circulates separately as its own sūtra, called the Avalokitasvara Sūtra (Ch. ), and is commonly recited or chanted at Buddhist temples in East Asia. The Lotus Sutra and its thirty-three manifestations of Guanyin, of which seven are female manifestations, is known to have been very popular in Chinese Buddhism as early as in the Sui and Tang dynasties. Additionally, Tan Chung notes that according to the doctrines of the Mahāyāna sūtras themselves, it does not matter whether Guanyin is male, female, or genderless, as the ultimate reality is in emptiness (Skt. śūnyatā).
Iconography
Representations of the bodhisattva in China prior to the Song dynasty (960–1279) were masculine in appearance. Images which later displayed attributes of both genders are believed to be in accordance with the Lotus Sutra, where Avalokitesvara has the supernatural power of assuming any form required to relieve suffering, and also has the power to grant children. Because this bodhisattva is considered the personification of compassion and kindness, a mother goddess and patron of mothers and seamen, the representation in China was further interpreted in an all-female form around the 12th century. On occasion, Guanyin is also depicted holding an infant in order to further stress the relationship between the bodhisattva, maternity, and birth. In the modern period, Guanyin is most often represented as a beautiful, white-robed woman, a depiction which derives from the earlier Pandaravasini form.
In some Buddhist temples and monasteries, Guanyin's image is occasionally that of a young man dressed in Northern Song Buddhist robes and seated gracefully. He is usually depicted looking or glancing down, symbolising that Guanyin continues to watch over the world.
In China, Guanyin is generally portrayed as a young woman wearing a flowing white robe, and usually also necklaces symbolic of Indian or Chinese royalty. In her left hand is a jar containing pure water, and the right holds a willow branch. The crown usually depicts the image of Amitābha.
There are also regional variations of Guanyin depictions. In Fujian, for example, a popular depiction of Guanyin is as a maiden dressed in Tang hanfu carrying a fish basket. A popular image of Guanyin as both Guanyin of the South Sea and Guanyin with a Fish Basket can be seen in late 16th-century Chinese encyclopedias and in prints that accompany the novel Golden Lotus.
In Chinese art, Guanyin is often depicted either alone, standing atop a dragon, accompanied by a white cockatoo and flanked by two children or two warriors. The two children are her acolytes who came to her when she was meditating at Mount Putuo. The girl is called Longnü and the boy Shancai. The two warriors are the historical general Guan Yu from the late Han dynasty and the bodhisattva Skanda, who appears in the Chinese classical novel Fengshen Yanyi. The Buddhist tradition also displays Guanyin, or other buddhas and bodhisattvas, flanked with the above-mentioned warriors, but as bodhisattvas who protect the temple and the faith itself. In Pure Land Buddhist traditions, Guanyin is often depicted and venerated with the Buddha Amitabha and the Bodhisattva Mahasthamaprapta as part of a trio collective called the "Three Saints of the West" (Chinese: 西方三聖; Pinyin: Xīfāng sānshèng).
Guanyin in Ancient India
In Chinese mythology, Guanyin (觀音) is the goddess of mercy and considered to be the physical embodiment of compassion. She is an all-seeing, all-hearing being who is called upon by worshipers in times of uncertainty, despair, and fear. Guanyin is originally based on the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. Avalokiteśvara's myth spread throughout China during the advent of Buddhism and mixed with local folklore in a process known as syncretism to become the modern day understanding of Guanyin. He is the one who is the dharma protector and who restores the peace in the world. His idols and temples are mostly found in mountains and hilly terrains (Kurunji regions). He has arupadai veedu (six war homes) in the modern Indian State of Tamil Nadu, which has nothing but temples and the Murugan (Guhn/Kugan, also called Kandhan) idols, which are made with secret herbs by agasthiyar sitthar, and which can produce cosmic energy and the water/milk after getting down from the idol. They are valuable and considered as sacred (it is believed to contain medical properties to cure many diseases since the idol was made with secret herbs).
Localization of Guanyin in East Asia
Manifestations of Guanyin
According to the twenty-fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most popular sacred texts in the Buddhist canon, describes thirty-three specific manifestations that Guanyin can assume to assist other beings seeking salvation. These forms encompass a Buddha, a pratyekabuddha, an arhat, King Brahma, Sakra (Indra), Isvara, Mahesvara (Shiva), a great heavenly general, Vaiśravaṇa, a Cakravartin, a minor king, an elder, a householder, a chief minister, a Brahmin, a bhikkhu, a bhikkhunī, a Upāsaka, a Upāsikā, a wife, a young boy, a young girl, a deva, a nāga, a yaksha, a gandharva, an asura, a garuḍa, a kinnara, a Mahoraga, a human, a non-human and Vajrapani. The Śūraṅgama Sūtra also mentions thirty-two manifestations of Guanyin, which follow closely those in the Lotus Sutra, with the omission of Vajrapani, and the substitution of Vaiśravaṇa (Heavenly King of the North) with the Four Heavenly Kings. These manifestations of Guanyin have been nativized in China and Japan to form a traditional list of iconographic forms corresponding to each manifestation.
Guanyin is also venerated in various other forms. In the Chinese Tiantai and Tangmi and the Japanese Shingon and Tendai traditions, Guanyin can take on six forms, each corresponding to a particular realm of samsara. This grouping originates from the Mohe Zhiguan (Chinese: 摩訶止観; Pinyin: Móhē Zhǐguān) written by the Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi (538–597) and are attested to in various other textual sources, such as the Essential Record of The Efficacy of The Three Jewels (Chinese: 三寶感應要略錄; Pinyin: Sānbǎo Gǎnyìng Yàolüèlù). They are:
Guanyin as Great Mercy (Chinese: 大慈觀音; pinyin: Dàcí Guānyīn), also known as Noble Guanyin (Chinese: 聖觀音; pinyin: Shèng Guānyīn), who corresponds to the preta realm.
Guanyin as Great Compassion (Chinese: 大悲觀音; pinyin: Dàbēi Guānyīn), also known as Thousand-Armed Guanyin (Chinese: 千手觀音; pinyin: Qiānshǒu Guānyīn), who corresponds to the hell realm.
Guanyin of the Universally Shining Great Light (Chinese: 大光普照觀音; pinyin: Dàguāng Pǔzhào Guānyīn), also known as Eleven-Headed Guanyin (Chinese: 十一面觀音; pinyin: Shíyīmiàn Guānyīn), who corresponds to the asura realm.
Guanyin as The Divine Hero (Chinese: 天人丈夫觀音; pinyin: Tiānrén Zhàngfū Guānyīn), also known as Cundī Guanyin (Chinese: 準提觀音; pinyin: Zhǔntí Guānyīn), who corresponds to the human realm.
Guanyin as Mahābrahmā the Profound (Chinese: 大梵深遠觀音; pinyin: Dàfàn Shēnyuǎn Guānyīn), also known as Cintāmaṇicakra Guanyin (Chinese: 如意輪觀音; pinyin: Rúyìlún Guānyīn), who corresponds to the deva realm.
Fearless Lion-like Guanyin (Chinese: 獅子無畏觀音; pinyin: Shīzǐ Wúwèi Guānyīn), also known as Hayagriva Guanyin (Chinese: 馬頭觀音; pinyin: Mǎtóu Guānyīn), who corresponds to the animal realm.
In China, the Thousand-Armed manifestation of Guanyin is the most popular among her different esoteric forms. In the Karandavyuha Sutra, the Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Eyed Guanyin (Chinese: 千手千眼觀音; pinyin: Qiānshǒu Qiānyǎn Guānyīn) is described as being superior to all gods and buddhas of the Indian pantheon. The Sutra also states that "it is easier to count all the leaves of every tree of every forest and all the grains of sand in the universe than to count the blessings and power of Avalokiteshvara". This version of Guanyin with a thousand arms depicting the power of all gods also shows various buddhas in the crown depicting the wisdom of all buddhas. In temples and monasteries in China, iconographic depictions of this manifestation of Guanyin is often combined with iconographic depiction of her Eleven-Headed manifestation to form statues with a thousand arms as well as eleven heads. The mantra associated with this manifestation, the Nīlakaṇṭha Dhāraṇī, is one of the most popular mantras commonly recited in East Asian Buddhism. In Chinese Buddhism, the popularity of the mantra influenced the creation of an esoteric repentance ceremony known as the Ritual of Great Compassion Repentance (Chinese: 大悲懺法會; Pinyin: Dàbēi Chànfǎ Huì) during the Song dynasty (960-1279) by the Tiantai monk Siming Zhili (Chinese: 四明知禮; Pinyin: Sìmíng Zhīlǐ), which is still regularly performed in modern Chinese Buddhist temples in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas Chinese communities. One Chinese Buddhist legend from the Complete Tale of Guanyin and the Southern Seas () presents Guanyin as vowing to never rest until she had freed all sentient beings from saṃsāra or cycle of rebirth. Despite strenuous effort, she realised that there were still many unhappy beings yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, her head split into eleven pieces. The buddha Amitābha, upon seeing her plight, gave her eleven heads to help her hear the cries of those who are suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokiteśvara attempted to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that her two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitābha came to her aid and appointed her a thousand arms to let her reach out to those in need. Many Himalayan versions of the tale include eight arms with which Avalokitesvara skillfully upholds the dharma, each possessing its own particular implement, while more Chinese-specific versions give varying accounts of this number. In Japan, statues of this nature can be found at the Sanjūsangen-dō temple of Kyoto.
In both Chinese Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism, Hayagriva Guanyin (lit. "Horse Headed Guanyin") is venerated as a guardian protector of travel and transportation, especially for cars. His statue is placed at the entrance and exits of some Chinese Buddhist temples to bless visitors. In certain Chinese Buddhist temples, visitors are also allowed to have their license plates enshrined in front of an image of this deity to invoke his protection over their vehicle. He is also counted as one of the 500 Arhats, where he is known as Mǎtóu Zūnzhě 馬頭尊者 (lit. "The Venerable Horse Head"). In Taoism, Hayagriva Guanyin was syncretized and incorporated within the Taoist pantheon as the god Mǎ Wáng 馬王 (lit. Horse King), who is associated with fire. In this form, he is usually portrayed with 6 arms and a third eye on the forehead.
Guanyin's Cundī manifestation is an esoteric form of Guanyin that is venerated widely in China and Japan. The first textual source of Cundī and the Cundī Dhāraṇī is the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra, a sūtra centered around the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara that introduced the popular mantra oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ. This text is first dated to around the late 4th century CE to the early 5th century CE. Cundī and the Cundī Dhāraṇī are also featured in the Cundī Dhāraṇī Sūtra, which was translated three times from Sanskrit into Chinese in the late 7th century and early 8th century by the Indian esoteric masters Divākara (685 CE), Vajrabodhi (723 CE), and Amoghavajra (8th century). In iconographic form, she is depicted with eighteen arms, all wielding different implements and weaponry that symbolize skillful means of the Dharma, sitting on a lotus flower. This manifestation is also referred to as the "Mother of the Seventy Million [Buddhas]" (Chinese: 七俱胝佛母; pinyin: Qījùzhī fómǔ). Her mantra, the Mahācundi Dhāraṇī (Chinese: 準提神咒; pinyin: Zhǔntí Shénzhòu), is one of the Ten Small Mantras (Chinese: 十小咒; pinyin: Shí xiǎo zhòu), which are a collection of dharanis that are commonly recited in Chinese Buddhist temples during morning liturgical services specifically.
Guanyin's Cintāmaṇicakra manifestation is also widely venerated in China and Japan. In iconographic form, this manifestation is often portrayed as having six arms, with his first right hand touches the cheek in a pensive mudra, his second right hand holds a wish granting jewel (cintamani), his third right hand holds prayer beads, his first left hand holds Mount Meru, his second left hand holds a lotus flower and the third left hand holds a Dharma wheel (cakra). Her mantra, the Cintāmaṇicakra Dharani (Chinese: 如意寶輪王陀羅尼; pinyin: Rúyì Bǎolún Wáng Tuóluóní), is also one of the Ten Small Mantras.
In China, it is said that fishermen used to pray to her to ensure safe voyages. The titles Guanyin of the Southern Ocean () and "Guanyin (of/on) the Island" stem from this tradition.
Miaoshan
Another story from the Precious Scroll of Fragrant Mountain () describes an incarnation of Guanyin as the daughter of a cruel king Miaozhuang Wang who wanted her to marry a wealthy but uncaring man. The story is usually ascribed to the research of the Buddhist monk Jiang Zhiqi during the 11th century. The story is likely to have its origin in Taoism. When Jiang penned the work, he believed that the Guanyin we know today was actually a princess called Miaoshan (), who had a religious following on Fragrant Mountain. Despite this there are many variants of the story in Chinese mythology.
According to the story, after the king asked his daughter Miaoshan to marry the wealthy man, she told him that she would obey his command, so long as the marriage eased three misfortunes.
The king asked his daughter what were the three misfortunes that the marriage should ease. Miaoshan explained that the first misfortune the marriage should ease was the suffering people endure as they age. The second misfortune it should ease was the suffering people endure when they fall ill. The third misfortune it should ease was the suffering caused by death. If the marriage could not ease any of the above, then she would rather retire to a life of religion forever.
When her father asked who could ease all the above, Miaoshan pointed out that a doctor was able to do all of these. Her father grew angry as he wanted her to marry a person of power and wealth, not a healer. He forced her into hard labour and reduced her food and drink but this did not cause her to yield.
Every day she begged to be able to enter a temple and become a nun instead of marrying. Her father eventually allowed her to work in the temple, but asked the monks to give her the toughest chores in order to discourage her. The monks forced Miaoshan to work all day and all night while others slept in order to finish her work. However, she was such a good person that the animals living around the temple began to help her with her chores. Her father, seeing this, became so frustrated that he attempted to burn down the temple. Miaoshan put out the fire with her bare hands and suffered no burns. Now struck with fear, her father ordered her to be put to death.
In one version of this legend, when Guanyin was executed, a supernatural tiger took her to one of the more hell-like realms of the dead. However, instead of being punished like the other spirits of the dead, Guanyin played music, and flowers blossomed around her. This completely surprised the hell guardian. The story says that Guanyin, by merely being in that Naraka (hell), turned it into a paradise.
A variant of the legend says that Miaoshan allowed herself to die at the hand of the executioner. According to this legend, as the executioner tried to carry out her father's orders, his axe shattered into a thousand pieces. He then tried a sword which likewise shattered. He tried to shoot Miaoshan down with arrows but they all veered off.
Finally in desperation he used his hands. Miaoshan, realising the fate that the executioner would meet at her father's hand should she fail to let herself die, forgave the executioner for attempting to kill her. It is said that she voluntarily took on the massive karmic guilt the executioner generated for killing her, thus leaving him guiltless. It is because of this that she descended into the Hell-like realms. While there, she witnessed first-hand the suffering and horrors that the beings there must endure, and was overwhelmed with grief. Filled with compassion, she released all the good karma she had accumulated through her many lifetimes, thus freeing many suffering souls back into Heaven and Earth. In the process, that Hell-like realm became a paradise. It is said that Yama, the ruler of hell, sent her back to Earth to prevent the utter destruction of his realm, and that upon her return she appeared on Fragrant Mountain.
Another tale says that Miaoshan never died, but was in fact transported by a supernatural tiger, believed to be the Deity of the Place, to Fragrant Mountain.
The legend of Miaoshan usually ends with Miaozhuang Wang, Miaoshan's father, falling ill with jaundice. No physician was able to cure him. Then a monk appeared saying that the jaundice could be cured by making a medicine out of the arm and eye of one without anger. The monk further suggested that such a person could be found on Fragrant Mountain. When asked, Miaoshan willingly offered up her eyes and arms. Miaozhuang Wang was cured of his illness and went to the Fragrant Mountain to give thanks to the person. When he discovered that his own daughter had made the sacrifice, he begged for forgiveness. The story concludes with Miaoshan being transformed into the Thousand Armed Guanyin, and the king, queen and her two sisters building a temple on the mountain for her. She began her journey to a pure land and was about to cross over into heaven when she heard a cry of suffering from the world below. She turned around and saw the massive suffering endured by the people of the world. Filled with compassion, she returned to Earth, vowing never to leave till such time as all suffering has ended.
After her return to Earth, Guanyin was said to have stayed for a few years on the island of Mount Putuo where she practised meditation and helped the sailors and fishermen who got stranded. Guanyin is frequently worshipped as patron of sailors and fishermen due to this. She is said to frequently becalm the sea when boats are threatened with rocks. After some decades Guanyin returned to Fragrant Mountain to continue her meditation.
Guanyin and Shancai
Legend has it that Shancai (also called Sudhana in Sanskrit) was a disabled boy from India who was very interested in studying the dharma. When he heard that there was a Buddhist teacher on the rocky island of Putuo he quickly journeyed there to learn. Upon arriving at the island, he managed to find Guanyin despite his severe disability.
Guanyin, after having a discussion with Shancai, decided to test the boy's resolve to fully study the Buddhist teachings. She conjured the illusion of three sword-wielding pirates running up the hill to attack her. Guanyin took off and dashed to the edge of a cliff, the three illusions still chasing her.
Shancai, seeing that his teacher was in danger, hobbled uphill. Guanyin then jumped over the edge of the cliff, and soon after this the three bandits followed. Shancai, still wanting to save his teacher, managed to crawl his way over the cliff edge.
Shancai fell down the cliff but was halted in midair by Guanyin, who now asked him to walk. Shancai found that he could walk normally and that he was no longer crippled. When he looked into a pool of water he also discovered that he now had a very handsome face. From that day forth, Guanyin taught Shancai the entire dharma.
Guanyin and Longnü
Many years after Shancai became a disciple of Guanyin, a distressing event happened in the South China Sea. The third son of one of the Dragon Kings was caught by a fisherman while swimming in the form of a fish. Being stuck on land, he was unable to transform back into his dragon form. His father, despite being a mighty Dragon King, was unable to do anything while his son was on land. Distressed, the son called out to all of Heaven and Earth.
Hearing this cry, Guanyin quickly sent Shancai to recover the fish and gave him all the money she had. The fish at this point was about to be sold in the market. It was causing quite a stir as it was alive hours after being caught. This drew a much larger crowd than usual at the market. Many people decided that this prodigious situation meant that eating the fish would grant them immortality, and so all present wanted to buy the fish. Soon a bidding war started, and Shancai was easily outbid.
Shancai begged the fish seller to spare the life of the fish. The crowd, now angry at someone so daring, was about to pry him away from the fish when Guanyin projected her voice from far away, saying "A life should definitely belong to one who tries to save it, not one who tries to take it."
The crowd, realising their shameful actions and desire, dispersed. Shancai brought the fish back to Guanyin, who promptly returned it to the sea. There the fish transformed back to a dragon and returned home. Paintings of Guanyin today sometimes portray her holding a fish basket, which represents the aforementioned tale.
As a reward for Guanyin saving his son, the Dragon King sent his granddaughter, a girl called Longnü ("dragon girl"), to present Guanyin with the Pearl of Light. The Pearl of Light was a precious jewel owned by the Dragon King that constantly shone. Longnü, overwhelmed by the presence of Guanyin, asked to be her disciple so that she might study the dharma. Guanyin accepted her offer with just one request: that Longnü be the new owner of the Pearl of Light.
In popular iconography, Longnü and Shancai are often seen alongside Guanyin as two children. Longnü is seen either holding a bowl or an ingot, which represents the Pearl of Light, whereas Shancai is seen with palms joined and knees slightly bent to show that he was once crippled.
Guanyin and the Filial Parrot
The Precious Scroll of the Parrot () tells the story of a parrot who becomes a disciple of Guanyin. During the Tang Dynasty a small parrot ventures out to search for its mother's favourite food upon which it is captured by a poacher (parrots were quite popular during the Tang Dynasty). When it managed to escape it found out that its mother had already died. The parrot grieved for its mother and provides her with a proper funeral. It then sets out to become a disciple of Guanyin.
In popular iconography, the parrot is coloured white and usually seen hovering to the right side of Guanyin with either a pearl or a prayer bead clasped in its beak. The parrot becomes a symbol of filial piety.
Guanyin and Chen Jinggu
Chen Jinggu is said to be related to Guanyin via the following story. One day in Quanzhou, Fujian, the people needed money to build a bridge. Guanyin turned into an attractive lady and said she would marry any man who could hit her with silver. Many tried, and Guanyin was able to accumulate a lot of silver ingots through this process. Eventually one of the Eight Immortals, Lü Dongbin, helped a merchant hit her hair with some silver.
Guanyin's hair then floated away and became a white demon female snake. The snake would seduce men and kill other women.
Guanyin then disappeared, but she let some of her blood from her finger flow down the river. A woman named Ge Furen (葛妇人 Lady Ge), whose husband was from the Chen family, then drank some of Guanyin's blood from the water and became pregnant, giving birth to Chen Jinggu. Later Chen Jinggu would fight and kill the white demon snake.
As for the merchant, he later reincarnated as Liu Qi (劉杞) and would marry Chen Jinggu.
The story continues with how Chen Jinggu grew up, studied at Lüshan, and eventually saved Northern Fujian from drought while defeating the white demon snake, but at the cost of sacrificing her own child. It is said that she died of either miscarriage or hemorrhage from the self-abortion.
Parallels have also been argued between the tale of Chen Jinggu and another Fujian legend, the tale of Li Ji slays the Giant Serpent.
Quan Am Thi Kinh
Quan Am Thi Kinh () is a Vietnamese verse recounting the life of a woman, Thi Kinh. She was accused falsely of having intended to kill her husband, and when she disguised herself as a man to lead a religious life in a Buddhist temple, she was again falsely blamed for having committed sexual intercourse with a girl named Thi Mau. She was accused of impregnating her, which was strictly forbidden by Buddhist law. However, thanks to her endurance of all indignities and her spirit of self-sacrifice, she could enter into Nirvana and became Goddess of Mercy (Phat Ba Quan Am). P. Q. Phan's 2014 opera is based on this story.
Other manifestations of Guanyin
In China, various native indigenous forms and aspects of Guanyin have been developed, along with associated legends, and portrayed in religious iconography. Aside from religious veneration, many of these manifestations also tended to appear in medieval and modern Chinese Buddhist miracle tales, fantasy fiction novels and plays. Some local forms include:
Shuiyue Guanyin (Chinese: 水月觀音; Pinyin: Shuǐyuè Guānyīn) - "Water-Moon Guanyin". A traditionally masculine form of Guanyin who is closely linked to and sometimes regarded as a further manifestation of the Thousand-Armed Guanyin. Is traditionally invoked for good rebirth, safe childbirth as well as enlightenment. Is usually portrayed in statues and painting as a young man or woman in a relaxed lalitasana pose beside a pond or lake with the moon reflected in the water, with the moon in the water being a metaphor for the Buddhist tenet of Śūnyatā.
Songzi Guanyin (Chinese: 送子觀音; Pinyin: Sòngzi Guānyīn) - "Child-giving Guanyin". An aspect of Guanyin which is closely linked to another manifestation, Baiyi Guanyin. Is primarily venerated as a fertility goddess and frequently invoked in prayers for children. Usually portrayed in statues and painting as a reclining white-robed young woman with a child sitting on her lap. Iconographic forms of this manifestations were noted by European travelers during the Ming and Qing dynasties to bear a striking resemblance to depictions of the Virgin Mary as the Madonna with Child. This manifestation is also syncretized into Taoism and Chinese folk religion as Songzi Niangniang.
Baiyi Guanyin (Chinese: 白衣觀音; Pinyin: Báiyī Guānyīn) - "White Robed Guanyin". A traditionally feminine form of Guanyin who is closely linked to another manifestation, Songzi Guanyin. Like that manifestation, Baiyi Guanyin is usually venerated as a fertility goddess and invoked in prayers for children. Is usually portrayed in statues and painting as a young woman dresses in a white robe which sometimes covers the head, acting as a veil. The significance of the color white in this manifestation was influenced by tantric sutras as well as mandalas such as the Mandala of the Two Realms which frequently depict Guanyin as being clad in white.
Yulan Guanyin (Chinese: 魚籃觀音; Pinyin: Yúlán Guānyīn) - "Fish Basket Guanyin". A form of Guanyin that originates from a legend about Guanyin descending as an avatar in the form of a beautiful young fisherwoman in order to convert a town of vicious, evil men into Buddhists. Usually portrayed in statues and painting as a young woman holding a fish-basket. This manifestation also appears in the popular Ming dynasty novel Journey To The West, one of the Four Classic Chinese Novels, where she uses the fish basket to capture a sea demon.
Nanhai Guanyin (Chinese: 南海觀音; Pinyin: Nánhǎi Guānyīn) - "Guanyin Of The Southern Seas". A form of Guanyin that became popularized after the establishment of Mount Putuo as Guanyin's bodhimaṇḍa and a major Chinese Buddhist pilgrimage center. Is usually portrayed in statues and painting as a young woman in a relaxed rājalīlā pose meditating on Mount Putuo, or Potalaka. Certain iconographic details vary from depiction to depiction, with some including a stand of bamboo before the bodhisattva, or a vase with willow branches, or Shancai and Longnü standing beside her as attendants.
Similarly in Japan, several local manifestations of Guanyin, known there primarily as Kannon or, reflecting an older pronunciation, Kwannon, have also been developed natively, supplanting some Japanese deities, with some having been developed as late as the 20th century. Some local forms include:
Bokefuji Kannon - "Senility-healing Kannon". A 20th century invention by a religious goods manufacturer due to rising concern about senility and dementia. Depicted as a woman with small figures of an elderly man and woman at her feet.
Jibo Kannon - "Compassionate-mother Kannon". Kannon as a woman holding an infant. Became especially popular in Japan when suppressed Christians used the image to represent the Virgin Mary and Christ Child.
Koyasu Kannon - "Safe-childbirth Kannon". Kannon as a woman, holding or often nursing an infant. Predates Jibo Kannon by several centuries. Similarly used by Christians.
Mizuko Kuyō Kannon - "New-born Memorial-service Kannon". (Mizuko Kuyō is a memorial service held for children who are born dead or die shortly after birth.) A woman surrounded by or holding several children. A 20th century development in response to aborted pregnancies as well as stillbirths and spontaneous pregnancy terminations.
Maria Kannon - "Mary Kannon". A statue of the Virgin Mary disguised to look like a statue of Kannon. Often contains a Christian symbol, either obscured on the surface or hidden within the statue. Arose during a time when Christianity was proscribed during the Tokugawa shogunate.
Yōkihi Kannon - "Yang Gui Fei Kannon" (Yang Gui Fei is read as "Yōkihi" in Japan). Yang Guifei was a famed Chinese Tang dynasty era beauty. Despite being depicted as an epitome of feminine beauty Yōkihi Kannon usually sport a moustache designed to desexualise the icon and demonstrate how the capacity for enlightenment does not depend upon a person's sex.
In Tibet, Guanyin is revered under the name Chenrezig. Unlike much of other East Asia Buddhism where Guanyin is usually portrayed as female or androgynous, Chenrezig is revered in male form. While similarities of the female form of Guanyin with the female buddha or boddhisattva Tara are noted—particularly the aspect of Tara called Green Tara—Guanyin is rarely identified with Tara.
Through Guanyin's identity as Avalokitesvara, she is a part of the padmakula (Lotus family) of buddhas. The buddha of the Lotus family is Amitābha, whose consort is Pāṇḍaravāsinī. Guanyin's female form is sometimes said to have been inspired by Pāṇḍaravāsinī.
Association with vegetarianism
Due to her symbolization of compassion, in East Asia, Guanyin is associated with vegetarianism. Buddhist cuisine is generally decorated with her image and she appears in most Buddhist vegetarian pamphlets and magazines. In fact there is a soil named after her called "Guanyin Clay". There are many benefits to eating this clay. Chaoqi (Chinese: 炒祺/炒粸) is a traditional Chinese snack. It is the dough pieces covered with Guanyin Clay, a kind of soil. The primary raw materials for making Chaoqi are flour, edible oil, egg, sugar, salt, and sesame. It has various flavors like milk flavor, sesame flavor, and five spices flavor. This vegetarian snack was traditionally taken on long journeys as the clay also helped to preserve the dough.
Role in East Asian Buddhism
In East Asian Buddhism, Guanyin is the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. Among the Chinese, Avalokiteśvara is almost exclusively called Guanshiyin Pusa (). The Chinese translation of many Buddhist sutras has in fact replaced the Chinese transliteration of Avalokitesvara with Guanshiyin (). Some Taoist scriptures give her the title of Guanyin Dashi, sometimes informally Guanyin Fozu.
In Chinese culture, the popular belief and worship of Guanyin as a goddess by the populace is generally not viewed to be in conflict with the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara's nature. In fact the widespread worship of Guanyin as a "Goddess of Mercy and Compassion" is seen by Buddhists as the boundless salvific nature of bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara at work (in Buddhism, this is referred to as Guanyin's "skillful means", or upaya). The Buddhist canon states that bodhisattvas can assume whatsoever gender and form is needed to liberate beings from ignorance and dukkha. With specific reference to Avalokitesvara, he is stated both in the Lotus Sutra (Chapter 25 "Perceiver of the World's Sounds" or "Universal Gateway"), and the Śūraṅgama Sūtra to have appeared before as a woman or a goddess to save beings from suffering and ignorance. Some Buddhist schools refer to Guanyin both as male and female interchangeably.
Guanyin is immensely popular among Chinese Buddhists, especially those from devotional schools. She is generally seen as a source of unconditional love and, more importantly, as a saviour. In her bodhisattva vow, Guanyin promises to answer the cries and pleas of all sentient beings and to liberate them from their own karmic woes. Based on the Lotus Sutra and the Shurangama sutra, Avalokitesvara is generally seen as a saviour, both spiritually and physically. The sutras state that through his saving grace even those who have no chance of being enlightened can be enlightened, and those deep in negative karma can still find salvation through his compassion.
In Mahayana Buddhism, gender is no obstacle to attaining enlightenment (or nirvana). The Buddhist concept of non-duality applies here. The Vimalakirti Sutras "Goddess" chapter clearly illustrates an enlightened being who is also a female and deity. In the Lotus Sutra, a maiden became enlightened in a very short time span. The view that Avalokiteśvara is also the goddess Guanyin does not seem contradictory to Buddhist beliefs. Guanyin has been a buddha called the "Tathāgata of Brightness of Correct Dharma" ().
In Pure Land Buddhism, Guanyin is described as the "Barque of Salvation". Along with Amitābha and the bodhisattva Mahasthamaprapta, she temporarily liberates beings out of the Wheel of Samsara into the Pure Land, where they will have the chance to accrue the necessary merit so as to be a Buddha in one lifetime. In Chinese Buddhist iconography, Guanyin is often depicted as meditating or sitting alongside one of the Buddhas and usually accompanied by another bodhisattva. The buddha and bodhisattva that are portrayed together with Guanyin usually follow whichever school of Buddhism they represent. In Pure Land Buddhism, for example, Guanyin is frequently depicted on the left of Amitābha, while on the buddha's right is Mahasthamaprapta. Temples that revere the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha usually depict him meditating beside Amitābha and Guanyin.
Even among Chinese Buddhist schools that are non-devotional, Guanyin is still highly venerated. Instead of being seen as an active external force of unconditional love and salvation, the personage of Guanyin is highly revered as the principle of compassion, mercy and love. The act, thought and feeling of compassion and love is viewed as Guanyin. A merciful, compassionate, loving individual is said to be Guanyin. A meditative or contemplative state of being at peace with oneself and others is seen as Guanyin.
In the Mahayana canon, the Heart Sutra is ascribed entirely to Guanyin. This is unique, since most Mahayana Sutras are usually ascribed to Gautama Buddha and the teachings, deeds or vows of the bodhisattvas are described by Shakyamuni Buddha. In the Heart Sutra, Guanyin describes to the arhat Sariputta the nature of reality and the essence of the Buddhist teachings. The famous Buddhist saying "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" () comes from this sutra.
Role in other Eastern religions
Guanyin is an extremely popular goddess in Chinese folk religion and is worshiped in many Chinese communities throughout East and Southeast Asia. In Taoism, records claim Guanyin was a Chinese woman who became an immortal, Cihang Zhenren in Shang dynasty or Xingyin ().
Guanyin is revered in the general Chinese population due to her unconditional love and compassion. She is generally regarded by many as the protector of women and children, perhaps due to iconographic confusion with images of Hariti. By this association, she is also seen as a fertility goddess capable of granting children to couples. An old Chinese superstition involves a woman who, wishing to have a child, offers a shoe to Guanyin. In Chinese culture, a borrowed shoe sometimes is used when a child is expected. After the child is born, the shoe is returned to its owner along with a new pair as a thank you gift.
Guanyin is also seen as the champion of the unfortunate, the sick, the disabled, the poor, and those in trouble. Some coastal and river areas of China regard her as the protector of fishermen, sailors, and generally people who are out at sea, thus many have also come to believe that Mazu, the goddess of the sea, is a manifestation of Guanyin. Due to her association with the legend of the Great Flood, where she sent down a dog holding rice grains in its tail after the flood, she is worshiped as an agrarian and agriculture goddess. In some quarters, especially among business people and traders, she is looked upon as a goddess of fortune. In recent years there have been claims of her being the protector of air travelers.
Guanyin is also a ubiquitous figure found within new religious movements of Asia:
Within the Taiwan-based Yiguandao, Guanyin is called the "Ancient Buddha of the South Sea" () and frequently appears in their fuji. Guanyin is sometimes confused with Yuehui Bodhisattva () due to their similar appearance.
Guanyin is called the "Ancient Buddha of the Holy Religion" () in Zaili teaching and Tiandi teachings. In Zaili teaching, she is the main deity worshipped.
Ching Hai initiates her followers a meditation method called the "Quan Yin Method" to achieve enlightenment; followers also revere Ching Hai as an incarnation of Guanyin.
Shinji Shumeikai acknowledges Guanyin or Kannon in Japanese as the deity of compassion or the Goddess of Mercy, who was actively guiding the founder Meishusama and represents a middle way between Zen and Pure Land Buddhism.
Caodaism considers Guanyin, known as "Quan Am Tathagata" (Quan Âm Như Lai), as a Buddha and a teacher. She represents Buddhist doctrines and traditions as one of the three major lines of Caodaist doctrines (Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism). She also symbolizes utmost patience, harmony, and compassion. According to her Divine messages via seances, her main role is to teach the Tao to female disciples, and guide them towards divinity. Another of her well-known role is to save people from extreme sufferings, e.g. fire, drowning, wrong accusation/ imprisonment, etc. There is even a prayer named "Salvation from sufferings" for followers to cite in dire conditions.
Similarity to the Virgin Mary
Some Buddhist and Christian observers have commented on the similarity between Guanyin and Mary, mother of Jesus. This can be attributed to the representation of Guanyin holding a child in Chinese art and sculpture; it is believed that Guanyin is the patron saint of mothers and grants parents filial children, this apparition is popularly known as the "Child-Sending Guanyin" (). One example of this comparison can be found in Tzu Chi, a Taiwanese Buddhist humanitarian organisation, which noticed the similarity between this form of Guanyin and the Virgin Mary. The organisation commissioned a portrait of Guanyin holding a baby, closely resembling the typical Catholic Madonna and Child painting. Copies of this portrait are now displayed prominently in Tzu Chi affiliated medical centres, especially since Tzu Chi's founder is a Buddhist master and her supporters come from various religious backgrounds.
During the Edo period in Japan, when Christianity was banned and punishable by death, some underground Christian groups venerated Jesus and the Virgin Mary by disguising them as statues of Kannon holding a child; such statues are known as Maria Kannon. Many had a cross hidden in an inconspicuous location.
It is suggested the similarity comes from the conquest and colonization of the Philippines by Spain during the 16th century, when Asian cultures influenced engravings of the Virgin Mary, as evidenced, for example, in an ivory carving of the Virgin Mary by a Chinese carver.
The statue of Guanyin (Gwanse-eum) in Gilsangsa in Seoul, South Korea was sculpted by Catholic sculptor Choi Jong-tae, who modeled the statue after the Virgin Mary in hopes of fostering religious reconciliation in Korean society.
In popular culture
Guanyin is a central character in the popular Chinese mythological epic Journey to the West as well as its various derivative fictional works.
In the 1946 film Three Strangers the titular characters wish for a shared sweepstakes ticket to win before a statue of Guanyin, referred to in the film as Kwan Yin.
For a 2005 Fo Guang Shan TV series, Andy Lau performed the song "Kwun Sai Yam", which emphasizes the idea that everyone can be like Guanyin.
In her 2008 song, "Citizen of the Planet", Alanis Morissette refers to Kwan Yin as a global presidential figure in her idealised version of the world.
In the manga series Hunter x Hunter and its 2011 anime adaptation, the chairman of the hunter's association, Isaac Netero, has the ability to summon a giant statue of Guanyin and use her hundred arms to attack.
In the 2011 Thai movie The Billionaire, also known as Top Secret: Wai Roon Pan Lan (), Guanyin appears to entrepreneur Top (Itthipat Peeradechapan), founder of Tao Kae Noi Seaweed Snacks, providing him inspiration during his period of uncertainty.
Fantasy author Richard Parks has frequently utilized Guanyin as a character in his fiction, most notably in the short stories "A Garden in Hell" (2006) and "The White Bone Fan" (2009), the novella The Heavenly Fox (2011), and the novel All the Gates of Hell (2013).
The Guanshiyin is Jules-Pierre Mao's space yacht in The Expanse novel and TV series.
The 2013 Buddhist film Avalokitesvara, tells the origins of Mount Putuo, the famous pilgrimage site for Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva in China. The film was filmed onsite on Mount Putuo and featured several segments where monks chant the Heart Sutra in Chinese and Sanskrit. Egaku, the protagonist of the film, also chants the Heart Sutra in Japanese.
Kōdai-ji Temple in Kyoto commissioned an android version of Kannon to preach Buddhist scriptures. The android, named Mindar, was unveiled 23 February 2019.
See also
Cihang Zhenren, Taoist counterpart of Guanyin
Kṣitigarbha
Longnü and Sudhana
Lotus Sutra
Manjusri
Queen Mother of the West
Samantabhadra
Tara (Buddhism)
Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage
Mount Putuo, sacred ground of Guanyin
Quan Âm Pagoda (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam
Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, Malacca, Malaysia
Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, Singapore
Wat Plai Laem, Ko Samui, Thailand
Lin Fa Temple, Hong Kong
Kim Tek Ie Temple, Jakarta, Indonesia
Guanyin of Nanshan, the fourteenth tallest statue in the world
Tieguanyin, a variety of oolong named after Guanyin
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
External links
Buddhanet: Kuan Yin Description on Kuan Yin
Guan Yin - the Buddha's Helper Book on Guan Yin for children
Detailed history of Miao Shan Legend of Miao Shan
Heart Sutra Explanation on Kuan Yin and the Heart Sutra
Lotus Sutra: Chapter 25. The universal door of Guanshi Yin Bodhisattva (The bodhisattva who contemplates the sounds of the world) (Translated by The Buddhist Text Translation Society in USA)
Sinicization of Buddhism – White Robe Guan Yin – explanation of how Avalokiteshvara transformed into Guan Yin in Chinese Buddhism
Surangama Sutra English translation of Chapter 5 "The Ear Organ" which mentions Guan Yin.
The Śūraṅgama Sūtra: A New Translation by Buddhist Text Translation Society. Chapter 6 details Kuan Yin's powers.
Tzu-Chi organisation: Kuan Yin, Buddhist perspective
Buddhist goddesses
Childhood goddesses
Chinese goddesses
Journey to the West characters
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17064 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo | Kangaroo | The kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern grey kangaroo, and western grey kangaroo. Kangaroos are indigenous to Australia and New Guinea. The Australian government estimates that 42.8 million kangaroos lived within the commercial harvest areas of Australia in 2019, down from 53.2 million in 2013.
As with the terms "wallaroo" and "wallaby", "kangaroo" refers to a paraphyletic grouping of species. All three refer to members of the same taxonomic family, Macropodidae, and are distinguished according to size. The largest species in the family are called "kangaroos" and the smallest are generally called "wallabies". The term "wallaroos" refers to species of an intermediate size. There are also the tree-kangaroos, another type of macropod, which inhabit the tropical rainforests of New Guinea, far northeastern Queensland and some of the islands in the region. This kind of kangaroo lives in the upper branches of trees. A general idea of the relative size of these informal terms could be:
wallabies: head and body length of 45–105 cm and tail length of 33–75 cm; the dwarf wallaby (the smallest of all known macropod species) is 46 cm long and weighs 1.6 kg;
tree-kangaroos: ranging from Lumholtz's tree-kangaroo: body and head length of 48–65 cm, tail of 60–74 cm, weight of 7.2 kg (16 lb) for males and 5.9 kg (13 lb) for females; to the grizzled tree-kangaroo: length of 75–90 cm (30 to 35 in) and weight of 8–15 kg (18–33 lb);
wallaroos: the black wallaroo (the smallest of the two species) with a tail length of 60–70 cm and weight of 19–22 kg (41.8–48.5 lb) for males and 13 kg (28.6 lb) for females;
kangaroos: a large male can be 2 m (6 ft 7 in) tall and weigh 90 kg (200 lb).
Kangaroos have large, powerful hind legs, large feet adapted for leaping, a long muscular tail for balance, and a small head. Like most marsupials, female kangaroos have a pouch called a marsupium in which joeys complete postnatal development.
Because of its grazing habits, the kangaroo has developed specialized teeth that are rare among mammals. Its incisors are able to crop grass close to the ground and its molars chop and grind the grass. Since the two sides of the lower jaw are not joined or fused together, the lower incisors are farther apart, giving the kangaroo a wider bite. The silica in grass is abrasive, so kangaroo molars are ground down and they actually move forward in the mouth before they eventually fall out, and are replaced by new teeth that grow in the back. This process is known as polyphyodonty and, amongst other mammals, only occurs in elephants and manatees.
The large kangaroos have adapted much better than the smaller macropods to land clearing for pastoral agriculture and habitat changes brought to the Australian landscape by humans. Many of the smaller species are rare and endangered, while kangaroos are relatively plentiful.
The kangaroo is a symbol of Australia, appears on the Australian coat of arms and on some of its currency, and is used as a logo for some of Australia's most well-known organisations, such as Qantas, and as the roundel of the Royal Australian Air Force. The kangaroo is important to both Australian culture and the national image, and consequently there are numerous popular culture references.
Wild kangaroos are shot for meat, leather hides, and to protect grazing land. Kangaroo meat has perceived health benefits for human consumption compared with traditional meats due to the low level of fat on kangaroos.
Terminology
The word kangaroo derives from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru, referring to eastern grey kangaroos. The name was first recorded as "kanguru" on 12 July 1770 in an entry in the diary of Sir Joseph Banks; this occurred at the site of modern Cooktown, on the banks of the Endeavour River, where under the command of Lieutenant James Cook was beached for almost seven weeks to repair damage sustained on the Great Barrier Reef. Cook first referred to kangaroos in his diary entry of 4 August. Guugu Yimithirr is the language of the people of the area.
A common myth about the kangaroo's English name is that it was a Guugu Yimithirr phrase for "I don't know" or "I don't understand". According to this legend, Cook and Banks were exploring the area when they happened upon the animal. They asked a nearby local what the creatures were called. The local responded "kangaroo", said to mean "I don't know/understand", which Cook then took to be the name of the creature. Anthropologist Walter Roth was trying to correct this legend as far back as in 1898, but few took note until 1972 when linguist John B. Haviland in his research with the Guugu Yimithirr people was able to confirm that gangurru referred to a rare large dark-coloured species of kangaroo. However, when Phillip Parker King visited the Endeavour River region in 1819 and 1820, he maintained that the local word was not kangaroo but menuah perhaps referring to a different species of macropod. There are similar, more credible stories of naming confusion, such as with the Yucatán Peninsula.
Kangaroos are often colloquially referred to as "roos". Male kangaroos are called bucks, boomers, jacks, or old men; females are does, flyers, or jills; and the young ones are joeys. The collective noun for a group of kangaroos is a mob, court, or troupe.
Taxonomy and description
There are four extant species that are commonly referred to as kangaroos:
The red kangaroo (Osphranter rufus) is the largest surviving marsupial anywhere in the world. It occupies the arid and semi-arid centre of the country. The highest population densities of the red kangaroo occur in the rangelands of western New South Wales. Red kangaroos are commonly mistaken as the most abundant species of kangaroo, but eastern greys actually have a larger population. A large male can be 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) tall and weighs 90 kg (200 lb).
The eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) is less well-known than the red (outside Australia), but the most often seen, as its range covers the fertile eastern part of the country. The range of the eastern grey kangaroo extends from the top of the Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland down to Victoria, as well as areas of southeastern Australia and Tasmania. Population densities of eastern grey kangaroos usually peak near 100 per km2 in suitable habitats of open woodlands. Populations are more limited in areas of land clearance, such as farmland, where forest and woodland habitats are limited in size or abundance.
The western grey kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus) is slightly smaller again at about 54 kg (119 lb) for a large male. It is found in the southern part of Western Australia, South Australia near the coast, and the Murray–Darling basin. The highest population densities occur in the western Riverina district of New South Wales and in the western areas of the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia. Populations may have declined, particularly in agricultural areas. The species has a high tolerance to the plant toxin sodium fluoroacetate, which indicates a possible origin from the southwest region of Australia.
The antilopine kangaroo (Osphranter antilopinus) is, essentially, the far northern equivalent of the eastern grey and western grey kangaroos. It is sometimes referred to as the antilopine wallaroo, but in behaviour and habitat it is more similar to the red, eastern grey and western grey kangaroos. Like them, it is a creature of the grassy plains and woodlands, and gregarious. Its name comes from its fur, which is similar in colour and texture to that of antelopes. Characteristically, the noses of males swell behind the nostrils. This enlarges nasal passages and allows them to release more heat in hot and humid climates.
In addition, there are about 50 smaller macropods closely related to the kangaroos in the family Macropodidae. Kangaroos and other macropods share a common ancestor with the Phalangeridae from the Middle Miocene. This ancestor was likely arboreal and lived in the canopies of the extensive forests that covered most of Australia at that time, when the climate was much wetter, and fed on leaves and stems. From the Late Miocene through the Pliocene and into the Pleistocene the climate got drier, which led to a decline of forests and expansion of grasslands. At this time, there was a radiation of macropodids characterised by enlarged body size and adaptation to the low quality grass diet with the development of foregut fermentation. The most numerous early macropods, the Balbaridae and the Bulungmayinae, became extinct in the Late Miocene around 5–10 mya. There is dispute over the relationships of the two groups to modern kangaroos and rat-kangaroos. Some argue that the balbarines were the ancestors of rat-kangaroos and the bulungmayines were the ancestors of kangaroos. while others hold the contrary view.
The middle to late bulungmayines, Ganguroo and Wanburoo lacked digit 1 of the hind foot and digits 2 and 3 were reduced and partly under the large digit 4, much like the modern kangaroo foot. This would indicate that they were bipedal. In addition, their ankle bones had an articulation that would have prohibited much lateral movements, an adaptation for bipedal hopping. Species related to the modern grey kangaroos and wallaroos begin to appear in the Pliocene. The red kangaroo appears to be the most recently evolved kangaroo, with its fossil record not going back beyond the Pleistocene era, 1–2 mya.
The first kangaroo to be exhibited in the Western world was an example shot by John Gore, an officer on Captain Cook's ship, HMS Endeavour, in 1770. The animal was shot and its skin and skull transported back to England whereupon it was stuffed (by taxidermists who had never seen the animal before) and displayed to the general public as a curiosity. The first glimpse of a kangaroo for many 18th-century Britons was a painting by George Stubbs.
Comparison with wallabies
Kangaroos and wallabies belong to the same taxonomic family (Macropodidae) and often the same genera, but kangaroos are specifically categorised into the four largest species of the family. The term wallaby is an informal designation generally used for any macropod that is smaller than a kangaroo or a wallaroo that has not been designated otherwise.
Biology and behaviour
Locomotion
Kangaroos are the only large animals to use hopping as a means of locomotion. The comfortable hopping speed for a red kangaroo is about , but speeds of up to can be attained over short distances, while it can sustain a speed of for nearly . During a hop, the powerful gastrocnemius muscles lift the body off the ground while the smaller plantaris muscle, which attaches near the large fourth toe, is used for push-off. Seventy percent of potential energy is stored in the elastic tendons. At slow speeds, it employs pentapedal locomotion, using its tail to form a tripod with its two forelimbs while bringing its hind feet forward. Both pentapedal walking and fast hopping are energetically costly. Hopping at moderate speeds is the most energy efficient, and a kangaroo moving above maintains energy consistency more than similarly sized animals running at the same speed.
Diet
Kangaroos have single-chambered stomachs quite unlike those of cattle and sheep, which have four compartments. They sometimes regurgitate the vegetation they have eaten, chew it as cud, and then swallow it again for final digestion. However, this is a different, more strenuous, activity than it is in ruminants, and does not take place as frequently.
Different species of kangaroos have different diets, although all are strict herbivores. The eastern grey kangaroo is predominantly a grazer, and eats a wide variety of grasses, whereas some other species such as the red kangaroo include significant amounts of shrubs in their diets. Smaller species of kangaroos also consume hypogeal fungi. Many species are nocturnal, and crepuscular, usually spending the hot days resting in shade, and the cool evenings, nights and mornings moving about and feeding.
Absence of digestive methane release
Despite having herbivorous diets similar to ruminants such as cattle, which release large quantities of digestive methane through exhaling and eructation (burping), kangaroos release virtually none. The hydrogen byproduct of fermentation is instead converted into acetate, which is then used to provide further energy. Scientists are interested in the possibility of transferring the bacteria responsible for this process from kangaroos to cattle, since the greenhouse gas effect of methane is 23 times greater than carbon dioxide per molecule.
Social and sexual behavior
Groups of kangaroos are called mobs, courts or troupes, which usually have 10 or more kangaroos in them. Living in mobs can provide protection for some of the weaker members of the group. The size and stability of mobs vary between geographic regions, with eastern Australia having larger and more stable aggregations than in arid areas farther west. Larger aggregations display high amounts of interactions and complex social structures, comparable to that of ungulates. One common behavior is nose touching and sniffing, which mostly occurs when an individual joins a group. The kangaroo performing the sniffing gains much information from smell cues. This behavior enforces social cohesion without consequent aggression. During mutual sniffing, if one kangaroo is smaller, it will hold its body closer to the ground and its head will quiver, which serves as a possible form of submission. Greetings between males and females are common, with larger males being the most involved in meeting females. Most other non-antagonistic behavior occurs between mothers and their young. Mother and young reinforce their bond through grooming. A mother will groom her young while it is suckling or after it is finished suckling. A joey will nuzzle its mother's pouch if it wants access to it.
Sexual activity of kangaroos consists of consort pairs. Oestrous females roam widely and attract the attention of males with conspicuous signals. A male will monitor a female and follow her every movement. He sniffs her urine to see if she is in oestrus, a process exhibiting the flehmen response. The male will then proceed to approach her slowly to avoid alarming her. If the female does not run away, the male will continue by licking, pawing, and scratching her, and copulation will follow. After copulation is over, the male will move on to another female. Consort pairing may take several days and the copulation is also long. Thus, a consort pair is likely to attract the attention of a rival male. As larger males are tending bonds with females near oestrus, smaller males will tend to females that are farther from oestrus. Dominant males can avoid having to sort through females to determine their reproductive status by searching for tending bonds held by the largest male they can displace without a fight.
Fighting has been described in all species of kangaroos. Fights between kangaroos can be brief or long and ritualised. In highly competitive situations, such as males fighting for access to oestrous females or at limited drinking spots, the fights are brief. Both sexes will fight for drinking spots, but long, ritualised fighting or "boxing" is largely done by males. Smaller males fight more often near females in oestrus, while the large males in consorts do not seem to get involved. Ritualised fights can arise suddenly when males are grazing together. However, most fights are preceded by two males scratching and grooming each other. One or both of them will adopt a high standing posture, with one male issuing a challenge by grasping the other male's neck with its forepaw. Sometimes, the challenge will be declined. Large males often reject challenges by smaller males. During fighting, the combatants adopt a high standing posture and paw at each other's heads, shoulders and chests. They will also lock forearms and wrestle and push each other as well as balance on their tails to kick each other in the abdomen.
Brief fights are similar, except there is no forearm locking. The losing combatant seems to use kicking more often, perhaps to parry the thrusts of the eventual winner. A winner is decided when a kangaroo breaks off the fight and retreats. Winners are able to push their opponents backwards or down to the ground. They also seem to grasp their opponents when they break contact and push them away. The initiators of the fights are usually the winners. These fights may serve to establish dominance hierarchies among males, as winners of fights have been seen to displace their opponent from resting sites later in the day. Dominant males may also pull grass to intimidate subordinate ones.
Predators
Kangaroos have a few natural predators. The thylacine, considered by palaeontologists to have once been a major natural predator of the kangaroo, is now extinct. Other extinct predators included the marsupial lion, Megalania and Wonambi. However, with the arrival of humans in Australia at least 50,000 years ago and the introduction of the dingo about 5,000 years ago, kangaroos have had to adapt.
Along with dingoes, introduced species such as foxes, feral cats, and both domestic and feral dogs, pose a threat to kangaroo populations. Kangaroos and wallabies are adept swimmers, and often flee into waterways if presented with the option. If pursued into the water, a large kangaroo may use its forepaws to hold the predator underwater so as to drown it. Another defensive tactic described by witnesses is catching the attacking dog with the forepaws and disembowelling it with the hind legs.
Adaptations
Kangaroos have developed a number of adaptations to a dry, infertile country and highly variable climate. As with all marsupials, the young are born at a very early stage of development—after a gestation of 31–36 days. At this stage, only the forelimbs are somewhat developed, to allow the newborn to climb to the pouch and attach to a teat. In comparison, a human embryo at a similar stage of development would be about seven weeks old, and premature babies born at less than 23 weeks are usually not mature enough to survive. When the joey is born, it is about the size of a lima bean. The joey will usually stay in the pouch for about nine months (180–320 days for the Western Grey) before starting to leave the pouch for small periods of time. It is usually fed by its mother until reaching 18 months.
The female kangaroo is usually pregnant in permanence, except on the day she gives birth; however, she has the ability to freeze the development of an embryo until the previous joey is able to leave the pouch. This is known as embryonic diapause, and will occur in times of drought and in areas with poor food sources. The composition of the milk produced by the mother varies according to the needs of the joey. In addition, the mother is able to produce two different kinds of milk simultaneously for the newborn and the older joey still in the pouch.
Unusually, during a dry period, males will not produce sperm, and females will conceive only if enough rain has fallen to produce a large quantity of green vegetation.
Kangaroos and wallabies have large, elastic tendons in their hind legs. They store elastic strain energy in the tendons of their large hind legs, providing most of the energy required for each hop by the spring action of the tendons rather than by any muscular effort. This is true in all animal species which have muscles connected to their skeletons through elastic elements such as tendons, but the effect is more pronounced in kangaroos.
There is also a link between the hopping action and breathing: as the feet leave the ground, air is expelled from the lungs; bringing the feet forward ready for landing refills the lungs, providing further energy efficiency. Studies of kangaroos and wallabies have demonstrated, beyond the minimum energy expenditure required to hop at all, increased speed requires very little extra effort (much less than the same speed increase in, say, a horse, dog or human), and the extra energy is required to carry extra weight. For kangaroos, the key benefit of hopping is not speed to escape predators—the top speed of a kangaroo is no higher than that of a similarly sized quadruped, and the Australian native predators are in any case less fearsome than those of other countries—but economy: in an infertile country with highly variable weather patterns, the ability of a kangaroo to travel long distances at moderately high speed in search of food sources is crucial to survival.
New research has revealed that a kangaroo's tail acts as a third leg rather than just a balancing strut. Kangaroos have a unique three-stage walk where they plant their front legs and tail first, then push off their tail, followed lastly by the back legs. The propulsive force of the tail is equal to that of both the front and hind legs combined and performs as much work as what a human leg walking can at the same speed.
A DNA sequencing project of the genome of a member of the kangaroo family, the tammar wallaby, was started in 2004. It was a collaboration between Australia (mainly funded by the State of Victoria) and the National Institutes of Health in the US. The tammar's genome was fully sequenced in 2011. The genome of a marsupial such as the kangaroo is of great interest to scientists studying comparative genomics, because marsupials are at an ideal degree of evolutionary divergence from humans: mice are too close and have not developed many different functions, while birds are genetically too remote. The dairy industry could also benefit from this project.
Blindness
Eye disease is rare but not new among kangaroos. The first official report of kangaroo blindness took place in 1994, in central New South Wales. The following year, reports of blind kangaroos appeared in Victoria and South Australia. By 1996, the disease had spread "across the desert to Western Australia". Australian authorities were concerned the disease could spread to other livestock and possibly humans. Researchers at the Australian Animal Health Laboratories in Geelong detected a virus called the Wallal virus in two species of midges, believed to have been the carriers. Veterinarians also discovered fewer than 3% of kangaroos exposed to the virus developed blindness.
Reproduction and life cycle
Kangaroo reproduction is similar to that of opossums. The egg (still contained in the shell membrane, a few micrometres thick, and with only a small quantity of yolk within it) descends from the ovary into the uterus. There it is fertilised and quickly develops into a neonate. Even in the largest kangaroo species (the red kangaroo), the neonate emerges after only 33 days. Usually, only one young is born at a time. It is blind, hairless, and only a few centimetres long; its hindlegs are mere stumps; it instead uses its more developed forelegs to climb its way through the thick fur on its mother's abdomen into the pouch, which takes about three to five minutes. Once in the pouch, it fastens onto one of the four teats and starts to feed. Almost immediately, the mother's sexual cycle starts again. Another egg descends into the uterus and she becomes sexually receptive. Then, if she mates and a second egg is fertilised, its development is temporarily halted. This is known as embryonic diapause, and will occur in times of drought and in areas with poor food sources. Meanwhile, the neonate in the pouch grows rapidly. After about 190 days, the baby (joey) is sufficiently large and developed to make its full emergence out of the pouch, after sticking its head out for a few weeks until it eventually feels safe enough to fully emerge. From then on, it spends increasing time in the outside world and eventually, after about 235 days, it leaves the pouch for the last time. The lifespan of kangaroos averages at six years in the wild to in excess of 20 years in captivity, varying by the species. Most individuals, however, do not reach maturity in the wild.
Interaction with humans
The kangaroo has always been a very important animal for Aboriginal Australians, for its meat, hide, bone, and tendon. Kangaroo hides were also sometimes used for recreation; in particular there are accounts of some tribes (Kurnai) using stuffed kangaroo scrotum as a ball for the traditional football game of marngrook. In addition, there were important Dreaming stories and ceremonies involving the kangaroo. Aherrenge is a current kangaroo dreaming site in the Northern Territory.
Unlike many of the smaller macropods, kangaroos have fared well since European settlement. European settlers cut down forests to create vast grasslands for sheep and cattle grazing, added stock watering points in arid areas, and have substantially reduced the number of dingoes.
Kangaroos are shy and retiring by nature, and in normal circumstances present no threat to humans. In 2003, Lulu, an eastern grey which had been hand-reared, saved a farmer's life by alerting family members to his location when he was injured by a falling tree branch. She received the RSPCA Australia National Animal Valour Award on 19 May 2004.
There are very few records of kangaroos attacking humans without provocation; however, several such unprovoked attacks in 2004 spurred fears of a rabies-like disease possibly affecting the marsupials. The only reliably documented case of a fatality from a kangaroo attack occurred in New South Wales in 1936. A hunter was killed when he tried to rescue his two dogs from a heated fray. Other suggested causes for erratic and dangerous kangaroo behaviour include extreme thirst and hunger. In July 2011, a male red kangaroo attacked a 94-year-old woman in her own backyard as well as her son and two police officers responding to the situation. The kangaroo was capsicum sprayed (pepper sprayed) and later put down after the attack.
Kangaroos-even those that are non domesticated- can communicate with humans, according to a research study.
Conflict with vehicles
Nine out of ten animal collisions in Australia involve kangaroos. A collision with a vehicle is capable of killing a kangaroo. Kangaroos dazzled by headlights or startled by engine noise often leap in front of cars. Since kangaroos in mid-bound can reach speeds of around 50 km/h (31 mph) and are relatively heavy, the force of impact can be severe. Small vehicles may be destroyed, while larger vehicles may suffer engine damage. The risk of harm or death to vehicle occupants is greatly increased if the windscreen is the point of impact. As a result, "kangaroo crossing" signs are commonplace in Australia.
Vehicles that frequent isolated roads, where roadside assistance may be scarce, are often fitted with "roo bars" to minimise damage caused by collision. Bonnet-mounted devices, designed to scare wildlife off the road with ultrasound and other methods, have been devised and marketed.
If a female is the victim of a collision, animal welfare groups ask that her pouch be checked for any surviving joey, in which case it may be removed to a wildlife sanctuary or veterinary surgeon for rehabilitation. Likewise, when an adult kangaroo is injured in a collision, a vet, the RSPCA Australia or the National Parks and Wildlife Service can be consulted for instructions on proper care. In New South Wales, rehabilitation of kangaroos is carried out by volunteers from WIRES. Council road signs often list phone numbers for callers to report injured animals.
Emblems and popular culture
The kangaroo is a recognisable symbol of Australia. The kangaroo and emu feature on the Australian coat of arms. Kangaroos have also been featured on coins, most notably the five kangaroos on the Australian one dollar coin. The Australian Made logo consists of a golden kangaroo in a green triangle to show that a product is grown or made in Australia.
Registered trademarks of early Australian companies using the kangaroo included Yung, Schollenberger & Co. Walla Walla Brand leather and skins (1890); Arnold V. Henn (1892) whose emblem showed a family of kangaroos playing with a skipping rope; Robert Lascelles & Co. linked the speed of the animal with its velocipedes (1896); while some overseas manufacturers, like that of "The Kangaroo" safety matches (made in Japan) of the early 1900s, also adopted the symbol. Even today, Australia's national airline, Qantas, uses a bounding kangaroo for its logo.
The kangaroo appears in Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", while the kangaroo is chased by a dingo, he gives Nqong the Big God's advice, that his legs and tail grew longest before five o'clock.
The kangaroo and wallaby feature predominantly in Australian sports teams names and mascots. Examples include the Australian national rugby league team (the Kangaroos) and the Australian national rugby union team (the Wallabies). In a nation-wide competition held in 1978 for the XII Commonwealth Games by the Games Australia Foundation Limited in 1982, Hugh Edwards' design was chosen; a simplified form of six thick stripes arranged in pairs extending from along the edges of a triangular centre represent both the kangaroo in full flight, and a stylised "A" for Australia.
Kangaroos are well represented in films, television, books, toys and souvenirs around the world. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was a popular 1960s Australian children's television series about a fictional pet kangaroo. Kangaroos are featured in the Rolf Harris song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" and several Christmas carols.
Meat
The kangaroo has been a source of food for indigenous Australians for tens of thousands of years. Kangaroo meat is high in protein and low in fat (about 2%). Kangaroo meat has a high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) compared with other foods, and is a rich source of vitamins and minerals. Low fat diets rich in CLA have been studied for their potential in reducing obesity and atherosclerosis.
Kangaroo meat is sourced from wild animals and is seen by many as the best source of population control programs as opposed to culling them as pests where carcasses are left in paddocks. Kangaroos are harvested by highly skilled, licensed shooters in accordance with a strict code of practice and are protected by state and federal legislation.
Kangaroo meat is exported to many countries around the world. However, it is not considered biblically kosher by Jews or Adventists. It is considered halal according to Muslim dietary standards, because kangaroos are herbivorous.
See also
– biomimetic robot
(symbol)
References
Further reading
External links
Video of Kangaroo giving Birth
Australian Aboriginal culture
Macropods
Marsupials of Australia
National symbols of Australia
Clawed herbivores
Mammal common names
Taxa named by John Edward Gray
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17066 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian%20photography | Kirlian photography | Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939, accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a high-voltage source, an image is produced on the photographic plate.
The technique has been variously known as
"electrography",
"electrophotography",
"corona discharge photography" (CDP),
"bioelectrography",
"gas discharge visualization (GDV)",
"electrophotonic imaging (EPI)", and, in Russian literature, "Kirlianography".
Kirlian photography has been the subject of scientific research, parapsychology research, and art. Paranormal claims have been made about Kirlian photography, but these claims are rejected by the scientific community. To a large extent, it has been used in alternative medicine research.
History
In 1889, Czech B. Navratil coined the word "electrography". Seven years later in 1896, a French experimenter, H. Baraduc, created electrographs of hands and leaves.
In 1898, Polish-Belarusian engineer Jakub Jodko-Narkiewicz demonstrated electrography at the fifth exhibition of the Russian Technical Society.
In 1939, two Czechs, S. Pratt and J. Schlemmer published photographs showing a glow around leaves. The same year, Russian electrical engineer Semyon Kirlian and his wife Valentina developed Kirlian photography after observing a patient in Krasnodar Hospital who was receiving medical treatment from a high-frequency electrical generator. They had noticed that when the electrodes were brought near the patient's skin, there was a glow similar to that of a neon discharge tube.
The Kirlians conducted experiments in which photographic film was placed on top of a conducting plate, and another conductor was attached to a hand, a leaf or other plant material. The conductors were energized by a high-frequency high-voltage power source, producing photographic images typically showing a silhouette of the object surrounded by an aura of light.
In 1958, the Kirlians reported the results of their experiments for the first time. Their work was virtually unknown until 1970, when two Americans, Lynn Schroeder and Sheila Ostrander, published a book, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. High-voltage electrophotography soon became known to the general public as Kirlian photography. Although little interest was generated among western scientists, Russians held a conference on the subject in 1972 at Kazakh State University.
Kirlian photography was used in the former Eastern Bloc in the 1970s. The corona discharge glow at the surface of an object subjected to a high-voltage electrical field was referred to as a "Kirlian aura" in Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1975, soviet scientist Victor Adamenko wrote a dissertation titled Research of the structure of High-frequency electric discharge (Kirlian effect) images. Scientific study of what the researchers called the Kirlian effect was conducted by Victor Inyushin at Kazakh State University.
Early in the 1970s, Thelma Moss and Kendall Johnson at the Center for Health Sciences at the UCLA conducted extensive research into Kirlian photography. Moss led an independent and unsupported parapsychology laboratory that was shut down by the university in 1979.
Overview
Kirlian photography is a technique for creating contact print photographs using high voltage. The process entails placing sheet photographic film on top of a metal discharge plate. The object to be photographed is then placed directly on top of the film. High voltage current is momentarily applied to the object, thus creating an exposure. The corona discharge between the object and the plate due to high-voltage is captured by the film. The developed film results in a Kirlian photograph of the object.
Color photographic film is calibrated to produce faithful colors when exposed to normal light. Corona discharges can interact with minute variations in the different layers of dye used in the film, resulting in a wide variety of colors depending on the local intensity of the discharge. Film and digital imaging techniques also record light produced by photons emitted during corona discharge (see Mechanism of corona discharge).
Photographs of inanimate objects such as a coins, keys and leaves can be made more effectively by grounding the object to the earth, a cold water pipe or to the opposite (polarity) side of the high-voltage source. Grounding the object creates a stronger corona discharge.
Kirlian photography does not require the use of a camera or a lens because it is a contact print process. It is possible to use a transparent electrode in place of the high-voltage discharge plate, for capturing the resulting corona discharge with a standard photo or video camera.
Visual artists such as Robert Buelteman, Ted Hiebert, and Dick Lane have used Kirlian photography to produce artistic images of a variety of subjects.
Research
Kirlian photography has been a subject of scientific research, parapsychology research and pseudoscientific claims.
Scientific research
Results of scientific experiments published in 1976 involving Kirlian photography of living tissue (human finger tips) showed that most of the variations in corona discharge streamer length, density, curvature, and color can be accounted for by the moisture content on the surface of and within the living tissue.
Konstantin Korotkov developed a technique similar to Kirlian photography called "gas discharge visualization" (GDV). Korotkov's GDV camera system consists of hardware and software to directly record, process and interpret GDV images with a computer. Korotkov promotes the device and research in a medical context. Izabela Ciesielska at the Institute of Architecture of Textiles in Poland used Korotkov's GDV camera to evaluate the effects of human contact with various textiles on biological factors such as heart rate and blood pressure, as well as corona discharge images. The experiments captured corona discharge images of subjects' fingertips while the subjects wore sleeves of various natural and synthetic materials on their forearms. The results failed to establish a relationship between human contact with the textiles and the corona discharge images and were considered inconclusive.
Parapsychology research
In 1968, Thelma Moss, a psychology professor, headed the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI), which was later renamed the Semel Institute. The NPI had a laboratory dedicated to parapsychology research and staffed mostly with volunteers. The lab was unfunded, unsanctioned and eventually shut down by the university. Toward the end of her tenure at UCLA, Moss became interested in Kirlian photography, a technique that supposedly measured the "auras" of a living being. According to Kerry Gaynor, one of her former research assistants, "many felt Kirlian photography's effects were just a natural occurrence."
Paranormal claims of Kirlian photography have not been observed or replicated in experiments by the scientific community. The physiologist Gordon Stein has written that Kirlian photography is a hoax that has "nothing to do with health, vitality, or mood of a subject photographed."
Claims
Kirlian believed that images created by Kirlian photography might depict a conjectural energy field, or aura, thought, by some, to surround living things. Kirlian and his wife were convinced that their images showed a life force or energy field that reflected the physical and emotional states of their living subjects. They thought that these images could be used to diagnose illnesses. In 1961, they published their first article on the subject in the Russian Journal of Scientific and Applied Photography. Kirlian's claims were embraced by energy treatments practitioners.
Torn leaf experiment
A typical demonstration used as evidence for the existence of these energy fields involved taking Kirlian photographs of a picked leaf at set intervals. The gradual withering of the leaf was thought to correspond with a decline in the strength of the aura. In some experiments, if a section of a leaf was torn away after the first photograph, a faint image of the missing section sometimes remains when a second photograph was taken. However, if the imaging surface is cleaned of contaminants and residual moisture before the second image is taken, then no image of the missing section will appear.
The living aura theory is at least partially repudiated by demonstrating that leaf moisture content has a pronounced effect on the electric discharge coronas; more moisture creates larger corona discharges. As the leaf dehydrates, the coronas will naturally decrease in variability and intensity. As a result, the changing water content of the leaf can affect the so-called Kirlian aura. Kirlian's experiments did not provide evidence for an energy field other than the electric fields produced by chemical processes and the streaming process of coronal discharges.
The coronal discharges identified as Kirlian auras are the result of stochastic electric ionization processes and are greatly affected by many factors, including the voltage and frequency of the stimulus, the pressure with which a person or object touches the imaging surface, the local humidity around the object being imaged, how well grounded the person or object is, and other local factors affecting the conductivity of the person or object being imaged. Oils, sweat, bacteria, and other ionizing contaminants found on living tissues can also affect the resulting images.
Qi
Scientists such as Beverly Rubik have explored the idea of a human biofield using Kirlian photography research, attempting to explain the Chinese discipline of Qigong. Qigong teaches that there is a vitalistic energy called qi (or chi) that permeates all living things.
Rubik's experiments relied on Konstantin Korotkov's GDV device to produce images, which were thought to visualize these qi biofields in chronically ill patients. Rubik acknowledges that the small sample size in her experiments "was too small to permit a meaningful statistical analysis". Claims that these energies can be captured by special photographic equipment are criticized by skeptics.
In popular culture
Kirlian photography has appeared as a fictional element in numerous books, films, television series, and media productions, including the 1975 film The Kirlian Force, re-released under the more sensational title Psychic Killer. Kirlian photographs have been used as visual components in various media, such as the sleeve of George Harrison's 1973 album Living in the Material World, which features Kirlian photographs of his hand holding a Hindu medallion on the front sleeve and American coins on the back, shot at Thelma Moss's UCLA parapsychology laboratory.
The artwork of David Bowie's 1997 album Earthling has reproductions of Kirlian photographs taken by Bowie. The photographs, which show a crucifix Bowie wore his neck and the imprint of his "forefinger" tip, date to April 1975 when Bowie was living in Los Angeles and fascinated with the paranormal. The photographs were taken before consuming cocaine and 30 minutes afterwards. The after photograph apparently shows a substantial increase in the "aura" around the crucifix and forefinger.
The Cluster novels by science fiction author Piers Anthony uses the concept of the Kirlian Aura as a way to transfer a person's personality into another body, even an alien body, across light years.
See also
Bioelectromagnetism
L-field
List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
Magnetic particle inspection (Magnaflux)
Timeline of Russian innovation
Walter Kilner
Water (2006 film)
Notes
References
Further reading
Becker, Robert and Selden, Gary, The Body Electric:Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, (Quill/Williams Morrow, 1985)
Krippner, S. and Rubin, D., Galaxies of Life, (Gordon and Breach, 1973)
Ostrander, S. and Schroeder, L., Psi Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, (Prentice-Hall 1970)
Iovine, John Kirlian Photography - A Hands on Guide , (McGraw-Hill 1993)
External links
Kirlian Photography and the "Aura", Dr. Rory Coker, Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin
, Victor J. Stenger, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Electrical breakdown
Electrical phenomena
Paranormal
Parapsychology
Photographic techniques
Photography by genre
Photography in the Soviet Union
Pseudoscience
Russian inventions
Soviet inventions | [
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17067 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chios | Chios | Chios (; ) is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the northern Aegean Sea. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. Chios is notable for its exports of mastic gum and its nickname is "the Mastic Island". Tourist attractions include its medieval villages and the 11th-century monastery of Nea Moni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Chios regional unit, which is part of the North Aegean region. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Chios. Locals refer to Chios town as Chora ( literally means land or country, but usually refers to the capital or a settlement at the highest point of a Greek island).
It was also the site of the Chios massacre, in which tens of thousands of Greeks on the island were massacred by Ottoman troops during the Greek War of Independence in 1822.
Geography
Chios island is crescent or kidney shaped, long from north to south, and at its widest, covering an area of . The terrain is mountainous and arid, with a ridge of mountains running the length of the island. The two largest of these mountains, Pelineon () and Epos (), are situated in the north of the island. The center of the island is divided between east and west by a range of smaller peaks, known as Provatas.
Regions
Chios can be divided into five regions:
East coast
Midway up the east coast lie the main population centers, the main town of Chios, and the regions of Vrontados and Kambos. Chios Town, with a population of 32,400, is built around the island's main harbour and medieval castle. The current castle, with a perimeter of , was principally constructed during the time of Genoese and Ottoman rule, although remains have been found dating settlements there back to 2000 B.C. The town was substantially damaged by an earthquake in 1881, and only partially retains its original character.
North of Chios Town lies the large suburb of Vrontados (population 4,500), which claims to be the birthplace of Homer. The suburb lies in the Omiroupoli municipality, and its connection to the poet is supported by an archaeological site known traditionally as "Teacher's Rock".
Southern region (Mastichochória)
In the southern region of the island are the Mastichochoria (literally "Mastic Villages"), the seven villages of Mesta (Μεστά), Pyrgi (Πυργί), Olympi (Ολύμποι), Kalamoti (Καλαμωτń), Vessa (Βέσσα), Lithi (Λιθί), and Elata (Ελάτα), which together have controlled the production of mastic gum in the area since the Roman period. The villages, built between the 14th and 16th centuries, have a carefully designed layout with fortified gates and narrow streets to protect against the frequent raids by marauding pirates. Between Chios Town and the Mastichochoria lie a large number of historic villages including Armolia (Αρμόλια), Myrmighi (Μυρμήγκι), and Kalimassia (Καλλιμασιά). Along the east coast are the fishing villages of Kataraktis (Καταρράκτης) and to the south, Nenita (Νένητα).
Interior
Directly in the centre of the island, between the villages of Avgonyma to the west and Karyes to the east, is the 11th century monastery of Nea Moni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The monastery was built with funds given by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX, after three monks, living in caves nearby, had petitioned him while he was in exile on the island of Lesbos. The monastery had substantial estates attached, with a thriving community until the massacre of 1822. It was further damaged during the 1881 earthquake. In 1952, due to the shortage of monks, Nea Moni was converted to a convent.
Climate
The island's climate is warm and moderate, categorised as Temperate, Mediterranean (Csa), with modest variation due to the stabilising effect of the surrounding sea. Average temperatures normally range from a summer high of to a winter low of in January, although temperatures of over or below freezing can sometimes be encountered.
The island normally experiences steady breezes (average ) throughout the year, with wind direction predominantly northerly ("Etesian" Wind—locally called the "Meltemi") or southwesterly (Sirocco).
Geology
The Chios Basin is a hydrographic sub-unit of the Aegean Sea adjacent to the island of Chios.
History
Etymology
The ancient writer Pausanias tells us that the poet Ion of Chios believed the island received its name from Chios, the son of Poseidon by a nymph of the island, who was born amidst snowfall (Ancient Greek χιών chiōn "snow"). Known as Ophioússa (, "snake island") and Pityoussa (, "pine-tree island") in antiquity, during the later Middle Ages the island was ruled by a number of non-Greek powers and was known as (Genoese), (Italian) and Sakız ( —Ottoman Turkish). The capital during that time was Kastron (, "castle").
Prehistoric period
Archaeological research on Chios has found evidence of habitation dating back at least to the Neolithic era. The primary sites of research for this period have been cave dwellings at Hagio(n) Galas in the north and a settlement and accompanying necropolis in modern-day Emporeio at the far south of the island. Scholars lack information on this period. The size and duration of these settlements have therefore not been well-established.
The British School at Athens under the direction of Sinclair Hood excavated the Emporeio site in 1952–1955, and most current information comes from these digs. The Greek Archaeological Service has also been excavating periodically on Chios since 1970, though much of its work on the island remains unpublished.
The noticeable uniformity in the size of houses at Emporeio leads some scholars to believe that there may have been little social distinction during the Neolithic era on the island. The inhabitants apparently all benefited from agricultural and livestock farming.
It is also widely held by scholars that the island was not occupied by humans during the Middle Bronze Age (2300–1600), though researchers have recently suggested that the lack of evidence from this period may only demonstrate the lack of excavations on Chios and the northern Aegean.
By at least the 11th century BC the island was ruled by a monarchy, and the subsequent transition to aristocratic (or possibly tyrannic) rule occurred sometime over the next four centuries. Future excavations may reveal more information about this period. 9th-century Euboean and Cypriote presence on the island is attested by ceramics, while a Phoenician presence is noted at Erythrae, the traditional competitor of Chios on the mainland.
Archaic and Classical periods
Pherecydes, native to the Aegean, wrote that the island was occupied by the Leleges, Pre Greeks who were reported to be subjected to the Minoans on Crete. They were eventually driven out by invading Ionians.
Chios was one of the original twelve member states of the Ionian League. As a result, Chios, at the end of the 7th century BC, was one of the first cities to strike or mint coins, establishing the sphinx as its symbol. It maintained this tradition for almost 900 years.
In the 6th century BC, Chios' government adopted a constitution similar to that developed by Solon in Athens and later developed democratic elements with a voting assembly and people's magistrates called damarchoi.
In 546 BC, Chios was subjected to the Persian Empire. Chios joined the Ionian Revolt against the Persians in 499 BC. The naval power of Chios during this period is demonstrated by the fact that the Chians had the largest fleet (100 ships) of all of the Ionians at the Battle of Lade in 494 BC. At Lade, the Chian fleet doggedly continued to fight the Persian fleet even after the defection of the Samians and others, but the Chians were ultimately forced to retreat and were again subjected to Persian domination.
The defeat of Persia at the Battle of Mycale in 479 BC meant the liberation of Chios from Persian rule. When the Athenians formed the Delian League, Chios joined as one of the few members who did not have to pay tribute but who supplied ships to the alliance.
By the fifth to fourth centuries BC, the island had grown to an estimated population of over 120,000 (two to three times the estimated population in 2005), based on the huge necropolis at the main city of Chios. It is thought that the majority of the population lived in that area.
In 412 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, Chios revolted against Athens, and the Athenians besieged it. Relief only came the following year when the Spartans were able to raise the siege. In the 4th century BC, Chios was a member of the Second Athenian League but revolted against Athens during the Social War (357–355 BC), and Chios became independent again until the rise of Macedonia.
Hellenistic period
Theopompus returned to Chios with the other exiles in 333 BC after Alexander had invaded Asia Minor and decreed their return, as well as the exile or trial of Persian supporters on the island. Theopompus was exiled again sometime after Alexander's death and took refuge in Egypt.
During this period, the island also had become the largest exporter of Greek wine, which was noted for being of relatively high quality (see "Chian wine"). Chian amphoras, with a characteristic sphinx emblem and bunches of grapes, have been found in nearly every country with whom the ancient Greeks traded. These countries included Gaul, Upper Egypt, and Southern Russia.
Roman period
During the Third Macedonian War, thirty-five vessels allied to Rome, carrying about 1,000 Galatian troops, as well as a number of horses, were sent by Eumenes II to his brother Attalus.
Leaving from Elaea, they were headed to the harbour of Phanae, planning to disembark from there to Macedonia. However, Perseus's naval commander Antenor intercepted the fleet between Erythrae (on the Western coast of Turkey) and Chios.
According to Livy, they were caught completely off-guard by Antenor. Eumenes' officers at first thought the intercepting fleet were friendly Romans, but scattered upon realizing they were facing an attack by their Macedonian enemy, some choosing to abandon ship and swim to Erythrae. Others, crashing their ships into land on Chios, fled toward the city.
The Chians however closed their gates, startled at the calamity. And the Macedonians, who had docked closer to the city anyway, cut the rest of the fleet off outside the city gates, and on the road leading to the city. Of the 1,000 men, 800 were killed, 200 taken prisoner.'
After the Roman conquest Chios became part of the province of Asia.
Pliny remarks upon the islanders' use of variegated marble in their buildings, and their appreciation for such stone above murals or other forms of artificial decoration.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist, Paul the Apostle and their companions passed Chios during Paul's third missionary journey, on a passage from Lesbos to Samos.
Byzantine period
After the permanent division of the Roman Empire in 395 AD, Chios was for six centuries part of the Byzantine Empire. This came to an end when the island was briefly held (1090–97) by Tzachas, a Turkish bey in the region of Smyrna during the first expansion of the Turks to the Aegean coast. However, the Turks were driven back from the Aegean coast by the Byzantines aided by the First Crusade, and the island was restored to Byzantine rule by admiral Constantine Dalassenos.
This relative stability was ended by the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade (1204) and during the turmoil of the 13th century the island's ownership was constantly affected by the regional power struggles. After the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine empire was divided up by the Latin emperors of Constantinople, with Chios nominally becoming a possession of the Republic of Venice. However, defeats for the Latin empire resulted in the island reverting to Byzantine rule in 1225.
Genoese period (1304–1566)
The Byzantine rulers had little influence and through the Treaty of Nymphaeum, authority was ceded to the Republic of Genoa (1261). At this time the island was frequently attacked by pirates, and by 1302–1303 was a target for the renewed Turkish fleets. To prevent Turkish expansion, the island was reconquered and kept as a renewable concession, at the behest of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus, by the Genovese Benedetto I Zaccaria (1304), then admiral to Philip of France. Zaccaria installed himself as ruler of the island, founding the short-lived Lordship of Chios. His rule was benign and effective control remained in the hands of the local Greek landowners. Benedetto Zacharia was followed by his son Paleologo and then his grandsons or nephews Benedetto II and Martino. They attempted to turn the island towards the Latin and Papal powers, and away from the predominant Byzantine influence. The locals, still loyal to the Byzantine Empire, responded to a letter from the emperor and, despite a standing army of a thousand infantrymen, a hundred cavalrymen and two galleys, expelled the Zacharia family from the island (1329) and dissolved the fiefdom.
Local rule was brief. In 1346, a chartered company or Maona (the "Maona di Chio e di Focea") was set up in Genoa to reconquer and exploit Chios and the neighbouring town of Phocaea in Asia Minor. Although the islanders firmly rejected an initial offer of protection, the island was invaded by a Genoese fleet, led by Simone Vignoso, and the castle besieged. Again rule was transferred peacefully, as on 12 September the castle was surrendered and a treaty signed with no loss of privileges to the local landowners as long as the new authority was accepted. The Maona was controlled by the Giustiniani family.
The Genoese, being interested in profit rather than conquest, controlled the trade-posts and warehouses, in particular the trade of mastic, alum, salt and pitch. Other trades such as grain, wine oil and cloth and most professions were run jointly with the locals. After a failed uprising in 1347, and being heavily outnumbered (less than 10% of the population in 1395), the Latins maintained light control over the local population, remaining largely in the town and allowing full religious freedom. In this way the island remained under Genoese control for two centuries. By 1566, when Genoa lost Chios to the Ottoman Empire, there were 12.000 Greeks and 2.500 Genoese (or 17% of the total population) in the island.
Ottoman period: economic prosperity and the Great Destruction
In 1566 Ottoman admiral Piali Pasha captured Chios.
During Ottoman rule, the government and tax gathering again remained in the hands of Greeks and the Turkish garrison was small and inconspicuous.
As well as the Latin and Turkish influx, documents record a small Jewish population from at least 1049 AD. The original Greek (Romaniote) Jews, thought to have been brought over by the Romans, were later joined by Sephardic Jews welcomed by the Ottomans during the Iberian expulsions of the 15th century.
The mainstay of the island's famous wealth was the mastic crop. Chios was able to make a substantial contribution to the imperial treasury while at the same time maintaining only a light level of taxation. The Ottoman government regarded it as one of the most valuable provinces of the Empire.
When the Greek War of Independence broke out, the island's leaders were reluctant to join the revolutionaries, fearing the loss of their security and prosperity. However, in March 1822, several hundred armed Greeks from the neighbouring island of Samos landed in Chios. They proclaimed the revolution and launched attacks against the Turks, at which point islanders decided to join the struggle.
Ottomans landed a large force on the island consequently and put down the rebellion. The Ottoman massacre of Chios expelled, killed or enslaved thousands of the inhabitants of the island.
It wiped out whole villages and affected the Mastichochoria area, the mastic growing villages in the south of the island. It triggered also negative public reaction in Western Europe, as portrayed by Eugène Delacroix, and in the writing of Lord Byron and Victor Hugo. In 1825, Thomas Barker of Bath painted a fresco depicting the Chios Massacre on the walls of Doric House, Bath, Somerset. Finally, Chios was not included in the modern Greek state and remained under Ottoman rule.
In 1881, an earthquake, estimated as 6.5 on the moment magnitude scale, damaged a large portion of the island's buildings and resulted in great loss of life. Reports of the time spoke of 5,500–10,000 fatalities.
Remarkably, despite the terrible devastation, in the later 19th century Chios emerged as the motherland of the modern Greek shipping industry. Indicatively, while in 1764, Chios had 6 vessels with 90 sailors on record, in 1875 there were 104 ships with over 60,000 registered tonnes, and in 1889 were recorded 440 sailing ships of various types with 3,050 sailors. The dynamic development of Chian shipping in the 19th century is further attested by the various shipping related services that were present in the island during this time, such as the creation of the shipping insurance companies Chiaki Thalassoploia (Χιακή Θαλασσοπλοΐα), Dyo Adelfai (Δυο Αδελφαί), Omonoia (Ομόνοια) and the shipping bank Archangelos (Αρχάγγελος) (1863). The boom of Chian shipping took place with the successful transition from sailing vessels to steam. To this end, Chian ship owners were supported by the strong diaspora presence of Chian merchants and bankers, and the connections they had developed with the financing centers of the time (Istanbul, London), the establishment in London of shipping businessmen, the creation of shipping academies in Chios and the expertise of Chian personnel on board.
In independent Greece
Chios joined the rest of independent Greece after the First Balkan War (1912). The Greek Navy liberated Chios in November 1912 in a hard-fought, but brief amphibious operation. The Ottoman Empire recognized Greece's annexation of Chios and the other Aegean islands by the Treaty of London (1913).
Although Greece was officially neutral, the island was occupied by the British during World War I. They landed on 17 February 1916. This may have been due to the island's proximity to the Ottoman Empire and the city of İzmir in particular.
It was affected also by the population exchange after the Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, with the incoming Greek refugees settling in Kastro (previously a Turkish neighborhood) and in new settlements hurriedly built south of Chios town.
The island saw some local violence during the Greek Civil War setting neighbour against neighbour. This ended when the final band of communist fighters was trapped and killed in the orchards of Kampos and their bodies driven through the main town on the back of a truck. In March 1948, the island was used as an internment camp for female political detainees (communists or relatives of guerillas) and their children, who were housed in military barracks near the town of Chios. Up to 1300 women and 50 children were housed in cramped and degrading conditions, until March 1949 when the camp was closed and the inhabitants moved to Trikeri.
The production of mastic was threatened by the Chios forest fire that swept the southern half of the island in August 2012 and destroyed some mastic groves.
By 2015, Chios had become a transit point for refugees and asylum seekers entering the EU from Turkey. A reception and identification centre was formed at VIAL near the village of Chalkeio, however, in 2021 the Greek government announced a new closed reception centre will be built in a more isolated location at Akra Pachy near the village of Pantoukios.
Demographics
According to the 2011 census, Chios has a permanent resident population of 52,674.
Government
The present municipality Chios was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 8 former municipalities, that became municipal units:
Agios Minas
Amani
Chios (town)
Ionia
Kampochora
Kardamyla
Mastichochoria
Omiroupoli
Economy
Commerce
The local merchant shipping community transports several locally grown products including mastic, olives, figs, wine, mandarins, and cherries.
Cuisine
Local specialities of the island include:
Kordelia, pasta
Malathropita
Neratzopita
Mastello (cheese)
Valanes, type of pasta
Sfougato, type of omelette
Mamoulia (dessert)
Masourakia (dessert)
Mastiha (drink)
Souma (drink)
Antimony mines
Sporadically for some time during the early 19th century to 1950s there was mining activity on the island at Keramos Antimony Mines.
Culture
Nea Moni is a monastery with fine mosaics from Constantine IX's reign and a World Heritage Site.
An ancient inscription (at Chios Archaeological Museum) from a fifth-century funerary monument for Heropythos the son of Philaios, traced his family back over fourteen generations to Kyprios at the tenth century BC, before there were any written records in Greece.
Forts
Castle of Chios, a Byzantine fort built in the 10th century
St. George's church
Museums
Chios Byzantine Museum
The Chios Mastic Museum
Archaeological Museum of Chios
Chios Maritime Museum
Traditions
The town of Vrontados is home to a unique Easter celebration, where competing teams of locals gather at the town's two (rival) churches to fire tens of thousands of homemade rockets at the other church's bell tower while the Easter service is going on inside the churches, in what has become known as rouketopolemos.
Sports
F.C. Lailapas (Chios town)
NC Chios, water polo
Panchiakos GS
Media
Alithia TV
Chiakos Laos, newspaper
Politis, newspaper
Dimokratiki, newspaper
Twin town, sister cities
Chios is twinned with:
Brezno, Slovakia
Dinant, Belgium
Ermoupoli, Greece
Genoa, Italy (since 1985)
Guiyang, China
Ortona, Italy
Polykastro, Greece
Notable natives and inhabitants
A native of Chios is known in English as a Chian.
Ancient
Homer (8th century BC), poet. See-History of the Pelopennesian War, by Thucydides, section 3.104.5, wherein Thucydides quotes Homer's self-reference: "A blind old man of Scio's rocky isle."
Oenopides (c. 490 – c. 420 BC), mathematician and geometer
Ion of Chios (484-421 BC), tragedy writer
Hippocrates of Chios (c. 470 – c. 410 BC), notable mathematician, geometer and astronomer
Theopompus of Chios (378 – c. 320 BC), rhetorical historian
Erasistratus of Chios (304–250 BC), pioneering anatomist, royal physician and founder of the ancient medical school of Alexandria, who discovered the linking between organs through the systems of veins, arteries and nerves
Aristo of Chios (c. 260 BC), Stoic philosopher
Claudia Metrodora (c. 54–68 AD), public benefactor
Medieval
Saint Markella (14th century), martyr and saint of the Greek Orthodox church
Leo Kalothetos (1315–1363), provincial governor of the Byzantine empire
Leonard of Chios, Greek Dominican scholar
Giovanni Giustiniani (1418-1453), died during the Fall of Constantinople and buried in Chios
Matrona of Chios (* 15th century, † before 1455), saint of the Greek Orthodox church
Andreas Argenti (saint) († 1465 n. Chr.), neomartyr of the Orthodox Church
Andrea Bianco (15th century), Genoese cartographer resided on Chios
In 1982, Ruth Durlacher hypothesised that Chios was Christopher Columbus's birthplace. Columbus himself said he was from the Republic of Genoa, which included the island of Chios at the time. Columbus was friendly with a number of Chian Genoese families, referenced Chios in his writings and used the Greek language for some of his notes. 'Columbus' remains a common surname on Chios. Other common Greek spellings are: Kouloumbis and Couloumbis.
Vincenzo Giustiniani, Italian banker
Francisco Albo (16th century), pilot of Magellan expedition, the first circumnavigation of the Earth
Leo Allatius (Leone Allacci) (c. 1586–1669), Greek Catholic scholar and theologian
Constantine Rodocanachi (1635–1687) , Ottoman Greek academic, chemist, lexicographer, and physician to Charles II of England
Modern
Scylitzes family, descented from Byzantine times
Mavrokordatos family
Athanasios Parios (1722–1813), Greek hieromonk and notable theologian, philosopher, educator, and hymnographer of his time
Macarius of Corinth (1731–1805), metropolitan bishop of Corinth, mystic and spiritual theological writer
Nikephoros of Chios (ca. 1750–1821), abbot of Nea Moni monastery, theological writer and orthodox saint
Eustratios Argentis (theologian)
Eustratios Argenti (national hero) (1767‒1798), executed with Rigas Velestinlis
Alexandros Kontostavlos (1789–1865), politician
Christophorus Plato Castanis (1814–1866), Ottoman Greek academic, author and classicist, as well as former slave, orphan and refugee to the United States
Alexandros Georgios Paspatis (1814–1891), linguist, historian and physician, researcher of the Romani language and of the history and culture of the Roma people
George Colvocoresses (1816–1872), military officer
Mustapha Khaznadar (1817–1878), was Prime Minister of the Beylik of Tunis
Michel Emmanuel Rodocanachi (1821–1901), trader and banker of London
Andreas Syngros (1830), banker, descented from Chios
George Glarakis (1789-1855), politician, Minister of Education (1838)
Patriarch Constantine V of Constantinople (1833–?)
Ralli Brothers (18th–19th century), founders of major 19th century trading enterprise
Ibrahim Edhem Pasha (1819–1893), Ottoman Grand Vizier
Namık Kemal (1840–1888), one of the principal founders of modern Turkish literature, served as a sub-prefect (exiled in practical terms) of Chios from 1886 to his death on the island in 1888
Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), Ottoman painter, archaeologist
Ioannis Psycharis (1854–1929), philologist, descented from Chios
Ambrosios Skaramagas, merchant
Konstantinos Amantos (1874–1960), Byzantine scholar, professor at the University of Athens, member of the Athens Academy
Stylianos Miliadis, painter
Kostia Vlastos (1883–1967), banker, of the old Vlastos family
John D. Chandris (1890–1942), Greek shipowner
Stavros Livanos (1891–1963), shipping magnate
Ioannis Despotopoulos (1903–1992), architect
Kostas Perrikos (1905–1943), Greek Resistance figure, leader of PEAN
Yiannis Carras, shipowner
Adamantios Lemos (1916–2006), actor
Andreas Papandreou (1919–1996), politician, Prime Minister of Greece
Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021), composer, born on the island
Jani Christou (1926–1970), composer
George P. Livanos (1926–1997), Greek shipowner
Petros Molyviatis, politician
Stamatios Krimigis (1938), NASA space scientist
Takis Fotopoulos (1940), political writer
Adamantios Vassilakis (1942), diplomat
Dimitris Varos (1949), author, poet, journalist
Theodoros Veniamis (1950), shipowner
Mark Palios (1952, of Chian descent), former professional footballer and former chief executive of the English Football Association
Matthew Mirones (1956), New York politician
Nikos Pateras (1963), shipowner
Angeliki Frangou (1965), shipowner
John Sitaras (1972), fitness professional
Ioannis Fountoulis (1988), water polo player
See also
Chian wine
Chian diaspora
References
Further reading
Fanny Aneroussi, Leonidas Mylonadis: The Kampos of Chios in its Heyday: Houses and Surroundings. Translated from the Greek by Antonis Scotiniotis. (Aipos Series, no 12). Akritas Publications, Nea Smyrni 1992, .
Charalambos Th. Bouras: Chios. (Guides to Greece, no 4). National Bank of Greece, Athens 1974.
Charalambos Th. Bouras: Greek Traditional Architecture: Chios. Melissa, Athens 1984.
Athena Zacharou-Loutrari, Vaso Penna, Tasoula Mandala: Chios: History and Art. Translated from the Greek by Athena Dallas-Damis ... (The Monuments of Chios). The Chios Prefecture, Chios 1989. .
Hubert Pernot: En Pays Turc: L’île de Chios. (Dijon, Imprimerie Darantière, Rue Chabot-Charny, 65). Avec 17 mélodies populaires et 118 simili-gravures. J. Maisonneuve, Libraire-Éditeur, Paris 1903. (online)
Arnold C. Smith: The Architecture of Chios: Subsidiary Buildings, Implements and Crafts. Edited by Philip Pandely Argenti. Tison, London 1962.
Michales G. Tsankares, Alkes X. Xanthakes: Chios: hekato chronia photographies, 1850–1950. (Chios: One Hundred Years of Photographs, 1850–1950). Synolo, Athens 1996, .
Eleftherios Yalouris: The Archeology and Early History of Chios. (From the Neolithic Period to the End of the Sixth Century B.C.). University of Oxford, Merton College, dissertation, 1976.
External links
Official Chios website—operated by Chios Prefecture (including tourist guide)
History of Chios
Chios in ancient sources @ attalus.org
Ionian League
Islands of Greece
Islands of the North Aegean
Landforms of Chios (regional unit)
Mediterranean port cities and towns in Greece
Members of the Delian League
Municipalities of the North Aegean
Territories of the Republic of Genoa
Greek city-states
Hellenic Navy bases
Populated places in the ancient Aegean islands
Populated places in ancient Ionia
Populated places in Chios
Natura 2000 in Greece | [
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17068 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds | Kurds | Kurds () or Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. There are exclaves of Kurds in Central Anatolia, Khorasan, and the Caucasus, as well as significant Kurdish diaspora communities in the cities of western Turkey (in particular Istanbul) and Western Europe (primarily in Germany). The Kurdish population is estimated to be between 30 and 45 million.
Kurds speak the Kurdish languages and the Zaza–Gorani languages, which belong to the Western Iranian branch of the Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family.
After World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. However, that promise was broken three years later, when the Treaty of Lausanne set the boundaries of modern Turkey and made no such provision, leaving Kurds with minority status in all of the new countries. Recent history of the Kurds includes numerous genocides and rebellions, along with ongoing armed conflicts in Turkish, Iranian, Syrian, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds in Iraq and Syria have autonomous regions, while Kurdish movements continue to pursue greater cultural rights, autonomy, and independence throughout Kurdistan.
Etymology
The exact origins of the name Kurd are unclear. The underlying toponym is recorded in Assyrian as Qardu and in Middle Bronze Age Sumerian as Kar-da. Assyrian Qardu refers to an area in the upper Tigris basin, and it is presumably reflected in corrupted form in Classical Arabic Ǧūdī, re-adopted in Kurdish as Cûdî. The name would be continued as the first element in the toponym Corduene, mentioned by Xenophon as the tribe who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains north of Mesopotamia in the 4th century BC.
There are, however, dissenting views, which do not derive the name of the Kurds from Qardu and Corduene but opt for derivation from Cyrtii (Cyrtaei) instead.
Regardless of its possible roots in ancient toponymy, the ethnonym Kurd might be derived from a term kwrt- used in Middle Persian as a common noun to refer to "nomads" or "tent-dwellers," which could be applied as an attribute to any Iranian group with such a lifestyle.
The term gained the characteristic of an ethnonym following the Muslim conquest of Persia, as it was adopted into Arabic and gradually became associated with an amalgamation of Iranian and Iranianized tribes and groups in the region.
Sherefxan Bidlisi in the 16th century states that there are four division of "Kurds": Kurmanj, Lur, Kalhor and Guran, each of which speak a different dialect or language variation. Paul (2008) notes that the 16th-century usage of the term Kurd as recorded by Bidlisi, regardless of linguistic grouping, might still reflect an incipient Northwestern Iranian "Kurdish" ethnic identity uniting the Kurmanj, Kalhur, and Guran.
Language
Kurdish (Kurdish: Kurdî or کوردی) is a collection of related dialects spoken by the Kurds. It is mainly spoken in those parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey which comprise Kurdistan. Kurdish holds official status in Iraq as a national language alongside Arabic, is recognized in Iran as a regional language, and in Armenia as a minority language.
Many Kurds are either bilingual or multilingual, speaking the language of their respective nation of origin, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish as a second language alongside their native Kurdish, while those in diaspora communities often speak three or more languages. Turkified and Arabised Kurds often speak little or no Kurdish.
According to Mackenzie, there are few linguistic features that all Kurdish dialects have in common and that are not at the same time found in other Iranian languages.
The Kurdish dialects according to Mackenzie are classified as:
Northern group (the Kurmanji dialect group)
Central group (part of the Sorani dialect group)
Southern group (part of the Xwarin dialect group) including Laki
The Zaza and Gorani are ethnic Kurds, but the Zaza–Gorani languages are not classified as Kurdish.
Population
The number of Kurds living in Southwest Asia is estimated at between 30 and 45 million, with another one or two million living in the Kurdish diaspora. Kurds comprise anywhere from 18 to 25% of the population in Turkey, 15 to 20% in Iraq; 10% in Iran; and 9% in Syria. Kurds form regional majorities in all four of these countries, viz. in Turkish Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan. The Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in West Asia after Arabs, Persians, and Turks.
The total number of Kurds in 1991 was placed at 22.5 million, with 48% of this number living in Turkey, 24% in Iran, 18% in Iraq, and 4% in Syria.
Recent emigration accounts for a population of close to 1.5 million in Western countries, about half of them in Germany.
A special case are the Kurdish populations in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, displaced there mostly in the time of the Russian Empire, who underwent independent developments for more than a century and have developed an ethnic identity in their own right. This groups' population was estimated at close to 0.4 million in 1990.
Religion
Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims who adhere to the Shafiʽi school, while a significant minority adhere to the Hanafi school. Moreover, many Shafi'i Kurds adhere to either one of the two Sufi orders Naqshbandi and Qadiriyya.
Beside Sunni Islam, Alevism and Shia Islam also have millions of Kurdish followers. Other religions with significant Kurdish adherents are Yarsanism and Yazidism.
In recent years, a growing number of Kurds have converted to Zoroastrianism.
Yazidism
Yazidism is another syncretic religion practiced among Kurdish communities, founded by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, a 12th-century mystic from Lebanon. Their numbers exceed 500,000, with some estimates numbering them at 1.2 million worldwide. Its central religious texts are the Kitêba Cilwe and Meshaf Resh.
According to Yazidi beliefs, God created the world but left it in the care of seven holy beings or angels. The most prominent angel is Melek Taus (Kurdish: Tawûsê Melek), the Peacock Angel, God's representative on earth. Yazidis believe in the periodic reincarnation of the seven holy beings in human form. Yazidis who marry non-Yazidis are automatically considered to be converted to the religion of their spouse and therefore are not permitted to call themselves Yazidis.
Their holiest shrine and the tomb of the founder of the religion is located in Lalish, in Shekhan District, Kurdistan Region.
Zoroastrianism
The Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism has had a major influence on the Iranian culture, which Kurds are a part of, and has maintained some effect since the demise of the religion in the Middle Ages. The Iranian philosopher Sohrevardi drew heavily from Zoroastrian teachings. Ascribed to the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster, the faith's Supreme Being is Ahura Mazda. Leading characteristics, such as messianism, the Golden Rule, heaven and hell, and free will influenced other religious systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Christianity, and Islam.
In 2016, the first official Zoroastrian fire temple of Iraqi Kurdistan opened in Sulaymaniyah. Attendees celebrated the occasion by lighting a ritual fire and beating the frame drum or 'daf'. Awat Tayib, the chief of followers of Zoroastrianism in the Kurdistan region, claimed that many were returning to Zoroastrianism but some kept it secret out of fear of reprisals from Islamists.
Christianity
Although historically there have been various accounts of Kurdish Christians, most often these were in the form of individuals, and not as communities. However, in the 19th and 20th century various travel logs tell of Kurdish Christian tribes, as well as Kurdish Muslim tribes who had substantial Christian populations living amongst them. A significant number of these were allegedly originally Armenian or Assyrian, and it has been recorded that a small number of Christian traditions have been preserved. Several Christian prayers in Kurdish have been found from earlier centuries. In recent years some Kurds from Muslim backgrounds have converted to Christianity.
Segments of the Bible were first made available in the Kurdish language in 1856 in the Kurmanji dialect. The Gospels were translated by Stepan, an Armenian employee of the American Bible Society and were published in 1857. Prominent historical Kurdish Christians include the brothers Zakare and Ivane Mkhargrdzeli.
Alevism
History
Antiquity
"The land of Karda" is mentioned on a Sumerian clay tablet dated to the 3rd millennium BC. This land was inhabited by "the people of Su" who dwelt in the southern regions of Lake Van; the philological connection between "Kurd" and "Karda" is uncertain, but the relationship is considered possible. Other Sumerian clay tablets referred to the people, who lived in the land of Karda, as the Qarduchi (Karduchi, Karduchoi) and the Qurti. Karda/Qardu is etymologically related to the Assyrian term Urartu and the Hebrew term Ararat. However, some modern scholars do not believe that the Qarduchi are connected to Kurds.
Qarti or Qartas, who were originally settled on the mountains north of Mesopotamia, are considered as a probable ancestor of the Kurds. The Akkadians were attacked by nomads coming through Qartas territory at the end of 3rd millennium BC and distinguished them as the Guti, speakers of a pre-Iranic language isolate. They conquered Mesopotamia in 2150 BC and ruled with 21 kings until defeated by the Sumerian king Utu-hengal.
Many Kurds consider themselves descended from the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, and even use a calendar dating from 612 BC, when the Assyrian capital of Nineveh was conquered by the Medes. The claimed Median descent is reflected in the words of the Kurdish national anthem: "We are the children of the Medes and Kai Khosrow." However, MacKenzie and Asatrian challenge the relation of the Median language to Kurdish. The Kurdish languages, on the other hand, form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian languages like Median. Some researchers consider the independent Kardouchoi as the ancestors of the Kurds, while others prefer Cyrtians. The term Kurd, however, is first encountered in Arabic sources of the seventh century. Books from the early Islamic era, including those containing legends such as the Shahnameh and the Middle Persian Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan, and other early Islamic sources provide early attestation of the name Kurd. The Kurds have ethnically diverse origins.
During the Sassanid era, in Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan, a short prose work written in Middle Persian, Ardashir I is depicted as having battled the Kurds and their leader, Madig. After initially sustaining a heavy defeat, Ardashir I was successful in subjugating the Kurds. In a letter Ardashir I received from his foe, Ardavan V, which is also featured in the same work, he is referred to as being a Kurd himself. The usage of the term Kurd during this time period most likely was a social term, designating Northwestern Iranian nomads, rather than a concrete ethnic group.
Similarly, in AD 360, the Sassanid king Shapur II marched into the Roman province Zabdicene, to conquer its chief city, Bezabde, present-day Cizre.
He found it heavily fortified, and guarded by three legions and a large body of Kurdish archers. After a long and hard-fought siege, Shapur II breached the walls, conquered the city and massacred all its defenders. Thereafter he had the strategically located city repaired, provisioned and garrisoned with his best troops.
Qadishaye, settled by Kavad in Singara, were probably Kurds and worshiped the martyr Abd al-Masih. They revolted against the Sassanids and were raiding the whole Persian territory. Later they, along with Arabs and Armenians, joined the Sassanids in their war against the Byzantines.
There is also a 7th-century text by an unidentified author, written about the legendary Christian martyr Mar Qardagh. He lived in the 4th century, during the reign of Shapur II, and during his travels is said to have encountered Mar Abdisho, a deacon and martyr, who, after having been questioned of his origins by Mar Qardagh and his Marzobans, stated that his parents were originally from an Assyrian village called Hazza, but were driven out and subsequently settled in Tamanon, a village in the land of the Kurds, identified as being in the region of Mount Judi.
Medieval period
Early Syriac sources use the terms Hurdanaye, Kurdanaye, Kurdaye to refer to the Kurds. According to Michael the Syrian, Hurdanaye separated from Tayaye Arabs and sought refuge with the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus. He also mentions the Persian troops who fought against Musa chief of Hurdanaye in the region of Qardu in 841. According to Barhebreaus, a king appeared to the Kurdanaye and they rebelled against the Arabs in 829. Michael the Syrian considered them as pagan, followers of mahdi and adepts of Magianism. Their mahdi called himself Christ and the Holy Ghost.
In the early Middle Ages, the Kurds sporadically appear in Arabic sources, though the term was still not being used for a specific people; instead it referred to an amalgam of nomadic western Iranian tribes, who were distinct from Persians. However, in the High Middle Ages, the Kurdish ethnic identity gradually materialized, as one can find clear evidence of the Kurdish ethnic identity and solidarity in texts of the 12th and 13th centuries, though, the term was also still being used in the social sense. Since 10th century, Arabic texts including al-Masudi's works, have referred to Kurds as a distinct linguistic group. From 11th century onward, the term Kurd is explicitly defined as an ethnonym and this does not suggest synonymity with the ethnographic category nomad. Al-Tabari wrote that in 639, Hormuzan, a Sasanian general originating from a noble family, battled against the Islamic invaders in Khuzestan, and called upon the Kurds to aid him in battle. However, they were defeated and brought under Islamic rule.
In 838, a Kurdish leader based in Mosul, named Mir Jafar, revolted against the Caliph Al-Mu'tasim who sent the commander Itakh to combat him. Itakh won this war and executed many of the Kurds. Eventually, Arabs conquered the Kurdish regions and gradually converted the majority of Kurds to Islam, often incorporating them into the military, such as the Hamdanids whose dynastic family members also frequently intermarried with Kurds.
In 934, the Daylamite Buyid dynasty was founded, and subsequently conquered most of present-day Iran and Iraq. During the time of rule of this dynasty, Kurdish chief and ruler, Badr ibn Hasanwaih, established himself as one of the most important emirs of the time.
In the 10th-12th centuries, a number of Kurdish principalities and dynasties were founded, ruling Kurdistan and neighbouring areas:
The Shaddadids (951–1174) ruled parts of present-day Armenia and Arran.
The Rawadid (955–1221) ruled Azerbaijan.
The Hasanwayhids (959–1015) ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia.
The Marwanids (990–1096) ruled eastern Anatolia.
The Annazids (990–1117) ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia (succeeded the Hasanwayhids).
The Hazaraspids (1148–1424) ruled southwestern Iran.
The Ayyubids (1171–1341) ruled Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia and parts of southeastern Anatolia and the Arabian Peninsula.
Due to the Turkic invasion of Anatolia, the 11th-century Kurdish dynasties crumbled and became incorporated into the Seljuk Dynasty. Kurds would hereafter be used in great numbers in the armies of the Zengids. Succeeding the Zengids, the Kurdish Ayyubids established themselves in 1171, first under the leadership of Saladin. Saladin led the Muslims to recapture the city of Jerusalem from the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin; also frequently clashing with the Assassins. The Ayyubid dynasty lasted until 1341 when the Ayyubid sultanate fell to Mongolian invasions.
Safavid period
The Safavid Dynasty, established in 1501, also established its rule over Kurdish-inhabited territories. The paternal line of this family actually had Kurdish roots, tracing back to Firuz-Shah Zarrin-Kolah, a dignitary who moved from Kurdistan to Ardabil in the 11th century. The Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 that culminated in what is nowadays Iran's West Azerbaijan Province, marked the start of the Ottoman-Persian Wars between the Iranian Safavids (and successive Iranian dynasties) and the Ottomans. For the next 300 years, many of the Kurds found themselves living in territories that frequently changed hands between Ottoman Turkey and Iran during the protracted series of Ottoman-Persian Wars.
The Safavid king Ismail I (r. 1501–1524) put down a Yezidi rebellion which went on from 1506 to 1510. A century later, the year-long Battle of Dimdim took place, wherein the Safavid king Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) succeeded in putting down the rebellion led by the Kurdish ruler Amir Khan Lepzerin. Thereafter, many Kurds were deported to Khorasan, not only to weaken the Kurds, but also to protect the eastern border from invading Afghan and Turkmen tribes. Other forced movements and deportations of other groups were also implemented by Abbas I and his successors, most notably of the Armenians, the Georgians, and the Circassians, who were moved en masse to and from other districts within the Persian empire.
The Kurds of Khorasan, numbering around 700,000, still use the Kurmanji Kurdish dialect. Several Kurdish noblemen served the Safavids and rose to prominence, such as Shaykh Ali Khan Zanganeh, who served as the grand vizier of the Safavid shah Suleiman I (r. 1666–1694) from 1669 to 1689. Due to his efforts in reforming the declining Iranian economy, he has been called the "Safavid Amir Kabir" in modern historiography. His son, Shahqoli Khan Zanganeh, also served as a grand vizier from 1707 to 1716. Another Kurdish statesman, Ganj Ali Khan, was close friends with Abbas I, and served as governor in various provinces and was known for his loyal service.
Zand period
After the fall of the Safavids, Iran fell under the control of the Afsharid Empire ruled by Nader Shah at its peak. After Nader's death, Iran fell into civil war, with multiple leaders trying to gain control over the country. Ultimately, it was Karim Khan, a Laki general of the Zand tribe who would come to power.
The country would flourish during Karim Khan's reign; a strong resurgence of the arts would take place, and international ties were strengthened. Karim Khan was portrayed as being a ruler who truly cared about his subjects, thereby gaining the title Vakil e-Ra'aayaa (meaning Representative of the People in Persian). Though not as powerful in its geo-political and military reach as the preceding Safavids and Afsharids or even the early Qajars, he managed to reassert Iranian hegemony over its integral territories in the Caucasus, and presided over an era of relative peace, prosperity, and tranquility. In Ottoman Iraq, following the Ottoman–Persian War (1775–76), Karim Khan managed to seize Basra for several years.
After Karim Khan's death, the dynasty would decline in favour of the rival Qajars due to infighting between the Khan's incompetent offspring. It was not until Lotf Ali Khan, 10 years later, that the dynasty would once again be led by an adept ruler. By this time however, the Qajars had already progressed greatly, having taken a number of Zand territories. Lotf Ali Khan made multiple successes before ultimately succumbing to the rivaling faction. Iran and all its Kurdish territories would hereby be incorporated in the Qajar dynasty.
The Kurdish tribes present in Baluchistan and some of those in Fars are believed to be remnants of those that assisted and accompanied Lotf Ali Khan and Karim Khan, respectively.
Ottoman period
When Sultan Selim I, after defeating Shah Ismail I in 1514, annexed Western Armenia and Kurdistan, he entrusted the organisation of the conquered territories to Idris, the historian, who was a Kurd of Bitlis. He divided the territory into sanjaks or districts, and, making no attempt to interfere with the principle of heredity, installed the local chiefs as governors. He also resettled the rich pastoral country between Erzerum and Erivan, which had lain in waste since the passage of Timur, with Kurds from the Hakkari and Bohtan districts. For the next centuries, from the Peace of Amasya until the first half of the 19th century, several regions of the wide Kurdish homelands would be contested as well between the Ottomans and the neighbouring rival successive Iranian dynasties (Safavids, Afsharids, Qajars) in the frequent Ottoman-Persian Wars.
The Ottoman centralist policies in the beginning of the 19th century aimed to remove power from the principalities and localities, which directly affected the Kurdish emirs. Bedirhan Bey was the last emir of the Cizre Bohtan Emirate after initiating an uprising in 1847 against the Ottomans to protect the current structures of the Kurdish principalities. Although his uprising is not classified as a nationalist one, his children played significant roles in the emergence and the development of Kurdish nationalism through the next century.
The first modern Kurdish nationalist movement emerged in 1880 with an uprising led by a Kurdish landowner and head of the powerful Shemdinan family, Sheik Ubeydullah, who demanded political autonomy or outright independence for Kurds as well as the recognition of a Kurdistan state without interference from Turkish or Persian authorities. The uprising against Qajar Persia and the Ottoman Empire was ultimately suppressed by the Ottomans and Ubeydullah, along with other notables, were exiled to Istanbul.
Kurdish nationalism of the 20th century
Kurdish nationalism emerged after World War I with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which had historically successfully integrated (but not assimilated) the Kurds, through use of forced repression of Kurdish movements to gain independence. Revolts did occur sporadically but only in 1880 with the uprising led by Sheik Ubeydullah did the Kurds as an ethnic group or nation make demands. Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II () responded with a campaign of integration by co-opting prominent Kurdish opponents to strengthen Ottoman power with offers of prestigious positions in his government. This strategy appears to have been successful, given the loyalty displayed by the Kurdish Hamidiye regiments during World War I.
The Kurdish ethno-nationalist movement that emerged following World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 largely represented a reaction to the changes taking place in mainstream Turkey, primarily to the radical secularization, the centralization of authority, and to the rampant Turkish nationalism in the new Turkish Republic.
Jakob Künzler, head of a missionary hospital in Urfa, documented the large-scale ethnic cleansing of both Armenians and Kurds by the Young Turks. He has given a detailed account of the deportation of Kurds from Erzurum and Bitlis in the winter of 1916. The Kurds were perceived to be subversive elements who would take the Russian side in the war. In order to eliminate this threat, Young Turks embarked on a large-scale deportation of Kurds from the regions of Djabachdjur, Palu, Musch, Erzurum and Bitlis. Around 300,000 Kurds were forced to move southwards to Urfa and then westwards to Aintab and Marasch. In the summer of 1917 Kurds were moved to Konya in central Anatolia. Through these measures, the Young Turk leaders aimed at weakening the political influence of the Kurds by deporting them from their ancestral lands and by dispersing them in small pockets of exiled communities. By the end of World War I, up to 700,000 Kurds had been forcibly deported and almost half of the displaced perished.
Some of the Kurdish groups sought self-determination and the confirmation of Kurdish autonomy in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, but in the aftermath of World War I, Kemal Atatürk prevented such a result. Kurds backed by the United Kingdom declared independence in 1927 and established the Republic of Ararat. Turkey suppressed Kurdist revolts in 1925, 1930, and 1937–1938, while Iran in the 1920s suppressed Simko Shikak at Lake Urmia and Jaafar Sultan of the Hewraman region, who controlled the region between Marivan and north of Halabja. A short-lived Soviet-sponsored Kurdish Republic of Mahabad (January to December 1946) existed in an area of present-day Iran.
From 1922 to 1924 in Iraq a Kingdom of Kurdistan existed. When Ba'athist administrators thwarted Kurdish nationalist ambitions in Iraq, war broke out in the 1960s. In 1970 the Kurds rejected limited territorial self-rule within Iraq, demanding larger areas, including the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
During the 1920s and 1930s, several large-scale Kurdish revolts took place in Kurdistan. Following these rebellions, the area of Turkish Kurdistan was put under martial law and many of the Kurds were displaced. The Turkish government also encouraged resettlement of Albanians from Kosovo and Assyrians in the region to change the make-up of the population. These events and measures led to long-lasting mutual distrust between Ankara and the Kurds.
Kurdish officers from the Iraqi army [...] were said to have approached Soviet army authorities soon after their arrival in Iran in 1941 and offered to form a Kurdish volunteer force to fight alongside the Red Army. This offer was declined.
During the relatively open government of the 1950s in Turkey, Kurds gained political office and started working within the framework of the Turkish Republic to further their interests, but this move towards integration was halted with the 1960 Turkish coup d'état. The 1970s saw an evolution in Kurdish nationalism as Marxist political thought influenced some in the new generation of Kurdish nationalists opposed to the local feudal authorities who had been a traditional source of opposition to authority; in 1978 Kurdish students would form the militant separatist organization PKK, also known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party in English. The Kurdistan Workers' Party later abandoned Marxism-Leninism.
Kurds are often regarded as "the largest ethnic group without a state", Some researchers, such as Martin van Bruinessen, who seem to agree with the official Turkish position, argue that while some level of Kurdish cultural, social, political and ideological heterogeneity may exist, the Kurdish community has long thrived over the centuries as a generally peaceful and well-integrated part of Turkish society, with hostilities erupting only in recent years.
Michael Radu, who worked for the United States' Pennsylvania Foreign Policy Research Institute, notes that demands for a Kurdish state comes primarily from Kurdish nationalists, Western human-rights activists, and European leftists.
Kurdish communities
Turkey
According to CIA Factbook, Kurds formed approximately 18% of the population in Turkey (approximately 14 million) in 2008. One Western source estimates that up to 25% of the Turkish population is Kurdish (approximately 18–19 million people). Kurdish sources claim there are as many as 20 or 25 million Kurds in Turkey.
In 1980, Ethnologue estimated the number of Kurdish-speakers in Turkey at around five million, when the country's population stood at 44 million. Kurds form the largest minority group in Turkey, and they have posed the most serious and persistent challenge to the official image of a homogeneous society. To deny an existence of Kurds, the Turkish Government used several terms. "Mountain Turks" was a term was initially used by . In 1961, in a foreword to the book Doğu İlleri ve Varto Tarihi of , the Turkish president Cemal Gürsel declared it of utmost importance to proof the Turkishness of the Kurds. Eastern Turk was another euphemism for Kurds from 1980 onwards. Nowadays the Kurds, in Turkey, are still known under the name Easterner (Doğulu).
Several large scale Kurdish revolts in 1925, 1930 and 1938 were suppressed by the Turkish government and more than one million Kurds were forcibly relocated between 1925 and 1938. The use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names were banned and the Kurdish-inhabited areas remained under martial law until 1946. The Ararat revolt, which reached its apex in 1930, was only suppressed after a massive military campaign including destruction of many villages and their populations. By the 1970s, Kurdish leftist organizations such as Kurdistan Socialist Party-Turkey (KSP-T) emerged in Turkey which were against violence and supported civil activities and participation in elections. In 1977, Mehdi Zana a supporter of KSP-T won the mayoralty of Diyarbakir in the local elections. At about the same time, generational fissures gave birth to two new organizations: the National Liberation of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Workers Party.
The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", or "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life. Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. The Kurds are still not allowed to get a primary education in their mother tongue and they do not have a right to self-determination, even though Turkey has signed the ICCPR. There is ongoing discrimination against and "otherization" of Kurds in society.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) is Kurdish militant organization which has waged an armed struggle against the Turkish state for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds. Turkey's military allies the US, the EU, and NATO label the PKK as a terrorist organization while the UN, Switzerland, Russia, China and India have refused to add the PKK to their terrorist list. Some of them have even supported the PKK.
Between 1984 and 1999, the PKK and the Turkish military engaged in open war, and much of the countryside in the southeast was depopulated, as Kurdish civilians moved from villages to bigger cities such as Diyarbakır, Van, and Şırnak, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and even to western Europe. The causes of the depopulation included mainly the Turkish state's military operations, state's political actions, Turkish deep state actions, the poverty of the southeast and PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans which were against them. Turkish State actions have included forced inscription, forced evacuation, destruction of villages, severe harassment, illegal arrests and executions of Kurdish civilians.
Since the 1970s, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Turkey for the thousands of human rights abuses. The judgments are related to executions of Kurdish civilians, torturing, forced displacements systematic destruction of villages, arbitrary arrests murdered and disappeared Kurdish journalists.
Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish female MP from Diyarbakir, caused an uproar in Turkish Parliament after adding the following sentence in Kurdish to her parliamentary oath during the swearing-in ceremony in 1994: "I take this oath for the brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples."
In March 1994, the Turkish Parliament voted to lift the immunity of Zana and five other Kurdish DEP members: Hatip Dicle, Ahmet Turk, Sirri Sakik, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak. Zana, Dicle, Sadak and Dogan were sentenced to 15 years in jail by the Supreme Court in October 1995. Zana was awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights by the European Parliament in 1995. She was released in 2004 amid warnings from European institutions that the continued imprisonment of the four Kurdish MPs would affect Turkey's bid to join the EU. The 2009 local elections resulted in 5.7% for Kurdish political party DTP.
Officially protected death squads are accused of the disappearance of 3,200 Kurds and Assyrians in 1993 and 1994 in the so-called "mystery killings".
Kurdish politicians, human-rights activists, journalists, teachers and other members of intelligentsia were among the victims. Virtually none of the perpetrators were investigated nor punished. Turkish government also encouraged Islamic extremist group Hezbollah to assassinate suspected PKK members and often ordinary Kurds. Azimet Köylüoğlu, the state minister of human rights, revealed the extent of security forces' excesses in autumn 1994:
While acts of terrorism in other regions are done by the PKK; in Tunceli it is state terrorism. In Tunceli, it is the state that is evacuating and burning villages. In the southeast there are two million people left homeless.
Iran
The Kurdish region of Iran has been a part of the country since ancient times. Nearly all Kurdistan was part of Persian Empire until its Western part was lost during wars against the Ottoman Empire. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 Tehran had demanded all lost territories including Turkish Kurdistan, Mosul, and even Diyarbakır, but demands were quickly rejected by Western powers. This area has been divided by modern Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Today, the Kurds inhabit mostly northwestern territories known as Iranian Kurdistan but also the northeastern region of Khorasan, and constitute approximately 7–10% of Iran's overall population (6.5–7.9 million), compared to 10.6% (2 million) in 1956 and 8% (800,000) in 1850.
Unlike in other Kurdish-populated countries, there are strong ethnolinguistical and cultural ties between Kurds, Persians and others as Iranian peoples. Some modern Iranian dynasties like the Safavids and Zands are considered to be partly of Kurdish origin. Kurdish literature in all of its forms (Kurmanji, Sorani, and Gorani) has been developed within historical Iranian boundaries under strong influence of the Persian language. The Kurds sharing much of their history with the rest of Iran is seen as reason for why Kurdish leaders in Iran do not want a separate Kurdish state.
The government of Iran has never employed the same level of brutality against its own Kurds like Turkey or Iraq, but it has always been implacably opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism. During and shortly after the First World War the government of Iran was ineffective and had very little control over events in the country and several Kurdish tribal chiefs gained local political power, even established large confederations. At the same time waves of nationalism from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire partly influenced some Kurdish chiefs in border regions to pose as Kurdish nationalist leaders. Prior to this, identity in both countries largely relied upon religion i.e. Shia Islam in the particular case of Iran. In 19th-century Iran, Shia–Sunni animosity and the describing of Sunni Kurds as an Ottoman fifth column was quite frequent.
During the late 1910s and early 1920s, tribal revolt led by Kurdish chieftain Simko Shikak struck north western Iran. Although elements of Kurdish nationalism were present in this movement, historians agree these were hardly articulate enough to justify a claim that recognition of Kurdish identity was a major issue in Simko's movement, and he had to rely heavily on conventional tribal motives. Government forces and non-Kurds were not the only ones to suffer in the attacks, the Kurdish population was also robbed and assaulted. Rebels do not appear to have felt any sense of unity or solidarity with fellow Kurds. Kurdish insurgency and seasonal migrations in the late 1920s, along with long-running tensions between Tehran and Ankara, resulted in border clashes and even military penetrations in both Iranian and Turkish territory. Two regional powers have used Kurdish tribes as tool for own political benefits: Turkey has provided military help and refuge for anti-Iranian Turcophone Shikak rebels in 1918–1922, while Iran did the same during Ararat rebellion against Turkey in 1930. Reza Shah's military victory over Kurdish and Turkic tribal leaders initiated a repressive era toward non-Iranian minorities. Government's forced detribalization and sedentarization in 1920s and 1930s resulted with many other tribal revolts in Iranian regions of Azerbaijan, Luristan and Kurdistan. In particular case of the Kurds, this repressive policies partly contributed to developing nationalism among some tribes.
As a response to growing Pan-Turkism and Pan-Arabism in region which were seen as potential threats to the territorial integrity of Iran, Pan-Iranist ideology has been developed in the early 1920s. Some of such groups and journals openly advocated Iranian support to the Kurdish rebellion against Turkey. Secular Pahlavi dynasty has endorsed Iranian ethnic nationalism which saw the Kurds as integral part of the Iranian nation. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi has personally praised the Kurds as "pure Iranians" or "one of the most noble Iranian peoples". Another significant ideology during this period was Marxism which arose among Kurds under influence of USSR. It culminated in the Iran crisis of 1946 which included a separatist attempt of KDP-I and communist groups to establish the Soviet puppet government called Republic of Mahabad. It arose along with Azerbaijan People's Government, another Soviet puppet state. The state itself encompassed a very small territory, including Mahabad and the adjacent cities, unable to incorporate the southern Iranian Kurdistan which fell inside the Anglo-American zone, and unable to attract the tribes outside Mahabad itself to the nationalist cause. As a result, when the Soviets withdrew from Iran in December 1946, government forces were able to enter Mahabad unopposed.
Several nationalist and Marxist insurgencies continued for decades (1967, 1979, 1989–96) led by KDP-I and Komalah, but those two organization have never advocated a separate Kurdish state or greater Kurdistan as did the PKK in Turkey. Still, many of dissident leaders, among others Qazi Muhammad and Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, were executed or assassinated. During Iran–Iraq War, Tehran has provided support for Iraqi-based Kurdish groups like KDP or PUK, along with asylum for 1.4 million Iraqi refugees, mostly Kurds. Kurdish Marxist groups have been marginalized in Iran since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 2004 new insurrection started by PJAK, separatist organization affiliated with the Turkey-based PKK and designated as terrorist by Iran, Turkey and the United States. Some analysts claim PJAK do not pose any serious threat to the government of Iran. Cease-fire has been established in September 2011 following the Iranian offensive on PJAK bases, but several clashes between PJAK and IRGC took place after it. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, accusations of "discrimination" by Western organizations and of "foreign involvement" by Iranian side have become very frequent.
Kurds have been well integrated in Iranian political life during reign of various governments. Kurdish liberal political Karim Sanjabi has served as minister of education under Mohammad Mossadegh in 1952. During the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi some members of parliament and high army officers were Kurds, and there was even a Kurdish Cabinet Minister. During the reign of the Pahlavis Kurds received many favours from the authorities, for instance to keep their land after the land reforms of 1962. In the early 2000s, presence of thirty Kurdish deputies in the 290-strong parliament has also helped to undermine claims of discrimination. Some of the more influential Kurdish politicians during recent years include former first vice president Mohammad Reza Rahimi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Mayor of Tehran and second-placed presidential candidate in 2013. Kurdish language is today used more than at any other time since the Revolution, including in several newspapers and among schoolchildren. Many Iranian Kurds show no interest in Kurdish nationalism, particularly Kurds of the Shia faith who sometimes even vigorously reject idea of autonomy, preferring direct rule from Tehran. The issue of Kurdish nationalism and Iranian national identity is generally only questioned in the peripheral Kurdish dominated regions where the Sunni faith is prevalent.
Iraq
Kurds constitute approximately 17% of Iraq's population. They are the majority in at least three provinces in northern Iraq which are together known as Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds also have a presence in Kirkuk, Mosul, Khanaqin, and Baghdad. Around 300,000 Kurds live in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, 50,000 in the city of Mosul and around 100,000 elsewhere in southern Iraq.
Kurds led by Mustafa Barzani were engaged in heavy fighting against successive Iraqi regimes from 1960 to 1975. In March 1970, Iraq announced a peace plan providing for Kurdish autonomy. The plan was to be implemented in four years. However, at the same time, the Iraqi regime started an Arabization program in the oil-rich regions of Kirkuk and Khanaqin. The peace agreement did not last long, and in 1974, the Iraqi government began a new offensive against the Kurds. Moreover, in March 1975, Iraq and Iran signed the Algiers Accord, according to which Iran cut supplies to Iraqi Kurds. Iraq started another wave of Arabization by moving Arabs to the oil fields in Kurdistan, particularly those around Kirkuk. Between 1975 and 1978, 200,000 Kurds were deported to other parts of Iraq.
During the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, the regime implemented anti-Kurdish policies and a de facto civil war broke out. Iraq was widely condemned by the international community, but was never seriously punished for oppressive measures such as the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq.
The genocidal campaign, conducted between 1986 and 1989 and culminating in 1988, carried out by the Iraqi government against the Kurdish population was called Anfal ("Spoils of War"). The Anfal campaign led to destruction of over two thousand villages and killing of 182,000 Kurdish civilians. The campaign included the use of ground offensives, aerial bombing, systematic destruction of settlements, mass deportation, firing squads, and chemical attacks, including the most infamous attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5000 civilians instantly.
After the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991, Iraqi troops recaptured most of the Kurdish areas and 1.5 million Kurds abandoned their homes and fled to the Turkish and Iranian borders. It is estimated that close to 20,000 Kurds succumbed to death due to exhaustion, lack of food, exposure to cold and disease. On 5 April 1991, UN Security Council passed resolution 688 which condemned the repression of Iraqi Kurdish civilians and demanded that Iraq end its repressive measures and allow immediate access to international humanitarian organizations. This was the first international document (since the League of Nations arbitration of Mosul in 1926) to mention Kurds by name. In mid-April, the Coalition established safe havens inside Iraqi borders and prohibited Iraqi planes from flying north of 36th parallel. In October 1991, Kurdish guerrillas captured Erbil and Sulaimaniyah after a series of clashes with Iraqi troops. In late October, Iraqi government retaliated by imposing a food and fuel embargo on the Kurds and stopping to pay civil servants in the Kurdish region. The embargo, however, backfired and Kurds held parliamentary elections in May 1992 and established Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
The Kurdish population welcomed the American troops in 2003 by holding celebrations and dancing in the streets. The area controlled by Peshmerga was expanded, and Kurds now have effective control in Kirkuk and parts of Mosul. The authority of the KRG and legality of its laws and regulations were recognized in the articles 113 and 137 of the new Iraqi Constitution ratified in 2005. By the beginning of 2006, the two Kurdish administrations of Erbil and Sulaimaniya were unified. On 14 August 2007, Yazidis were targeted in a series of bombings that became the deadliest suicide attack since the Iraq War began, killing 796 civilians, wounding 1,562.
Syria
Kurds account for 9% of Syria's population, a total of around 1.6 million people. This makes them the largest ethnic minority in the country. They are mostly concentrated in the northeast and the north, but there are also significant Kurdish populations in Aleppo and Damascus. Kurds often speak Kurdish in public, unless all those present do not. According to Amnesty International, Kurdish human rights activists are mistreated and persecuted. No political parties are allowed for any group, Kurdish or otherwise.
Techniques used to suppress the ethnic identity of Kurds in Syria include various bans on the use of the Kurdish language, refusal to register children with Kurdish names, the replacement of Kurdish place names with new names in Arabic, the prohibition of businesses that do not have Arabic names, the prohibition of Kurdish private schools, and the prohibition of books and other materials written in Kurdish. Having been denied the right to Syrian nationality, around 300,000 Kurds have been deprived of any social rights, in violation of international law. As a consequence, these Kurds are in effect trapped within Syria. In March 2011, in part to avoid further demonstrations and unrest from spreading across Syria, the Syrian government promised to tackle the issue and grant Syrian citizenship to approximately 300,000 Kurds who had been previously denied the right.
On 12 March 2004, beginning at a stadium in Qamishli (a largely Kurdish city in northeastern Syria), clashes between Kurds and Syrians broke out and continued over a number of days. At least thirty people were killed and more than 160 injured. The unrest spread to other Kurdish towns along the northern border with Turkey, and then to Damascus and Aleppo.
As a result of Syrian civil war, since July 2012, Kurds were able to take control of large parts of Syrian Kurdistan from Andiwar in extreme northeast to Jindires in extreme northwest Syria. The Syrian Kurds started the Rojava Revolution in 2013.
Kurdish-inhabited Afrin Canton has been occupied by Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army since the Turkish military operation in Afrin in early 2018. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people were displaced due to the Turkish intervention.
In October 2019, Turkey and the Syrian Interim Government began an offensive into Kurdish-populated areas in Syria, prompting about 100,000 civilians to flee from the area fearing that Turkey would commit an ethnic cleansing.
Transcaucasus
Between the 1930s and 1980s, Armenia was a part of the Soviet Union, within which Kurds, like other ethnic groups, had the status of a protected minority. Armenian Kurds were permitted their own state-sponsored newspaper, radio broadcasts and cultural events. During the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, many non-Yazidi Kurds were forced to leave their homes since both the Azeri and non-Yazidi Kurds were Muslim.
In 1920, two Kurdish-inhabited areas of Jewanshir (capital Kalbajar) and eastern Zangazur (capital Lachin) were combined to form the Kurdistan Okrug (or "Red Kurdistan"). The period of existence of the Kurdish administrative unit was brief and did not last beyond 1929. Kurds subsequently faced many repressive measures, including deportations, imposed by the Soviet government. As a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, many Kurdish areas have been destroyed and more than 150,000 Kurds have been deported since 1988 by separatist Armenian forces.
Diaspora
According to a report by the Council of Europe, approximately 1.3 million Kurds live in Western Europe. The earliest immigrants were Kurds from Turkey, who settled in Germany, Austria, the Benelux countries, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France during the 1960s. Successive periods of political and social turmoil in the region during the 1980s and 1990s brought new waves of Kurdish refugees, mostly from Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, came to Europe.
In recent years, many Kurdish asylum seekers from both Iran and Iraq have settled in the United Kingdom (especially in the town of Dewsbury and in some northern areas of London), which has sometimes caused media controversy over their right to remain.
There have been tensions between Kurds and the established Muslim community in Dewsbury, which is home to very traditional mosques such as the Markazi. Since the beginning of the turmoil in Syria many of the refugees of the Syrian Civil War are Syrian Kurds and as a result many of the current Syrian asylum seekers in Germany are of Kurdish descent.
There was substantial immigration of ethnic Kurds in Canada and the United States, who are mainly political refugees and immigrants seeking economic opportunity. According to a 2011 Statistics Canada household survey, there were 11,685 people of Kurdish ethnic background living in Canada, and according to the 2011 Census, 10,325 Canadians spoke Kurdish languages. In the United States, Kurdish immigrants started to settle in large numbers in Nashville in 1976, which is now home to the largest Kurdish community in the United States and is nicknamed Little Kurdistan. Kurdish population in Nashville is estimated to be around 11,000. The total number of ethnic Kurds residing in the United States is estimated by the US Census Bureau to be 20,591. Other sources claim that there are 20,000 ethnic Kurds in the United States.
Culture
Kurdish culture is a legacy from the various ancient peoples who shaped modern Kurds and their society. As most other Middle Eastern populations, a high degree of mutual influences between the Kurds and their neighbouring peoples are apparent. Therefore, in Kurdish culture elements of various other cultures are to be seen.
However, on the whole, Kurdish culture is closest to that of other Iranian peoples, in particular those who historically had the closest geographical proximity to the Kurds, such as the Persians and Lurs. Kurds, for instance, also celebrate Newroz (21 March) as New Year's Day.
Education
A madrasa system was used before the modern era. Mele are Islamic clerics and instructors.
Women
In general, Kurdish women's rights and equality have improved in the 20th and 21st centuries due to progressive movements within Kurdish society. However, despite the progress, Kurdish and international women's rights organizations still report problems related to gender equality, forced marriages, honor killings and in Iraqi Kurdistan also female genital mutilation (FGM).
Folklore
The Kurds possess a rich tradition of folklore, which, until recent times, was largely transmitted by speech or song, from one generation to the next. Although some of the Kurdish writers' stories were well known throughout Kurdistan; most of the stories told and sung were only written down in the 20th and 21st centuries. Many of these are, allegedly, centuries old.
Widely varying in purpose and style, among the Kurdish folklore one will find stories about nature, anthropomorphic animals, love, heroes and villains, mythological creatures and everyday life. A number of these mythological figures can be found in other cultures, like the Simurgh and Kaveh the Blacksmith in the broader Iranian Mythology, and stories of Shahmaran throughout Anatolia. Additionally, stories can be purely entertaining, or have an educational or religious aspect.
Perhaps the most widely reoccurring element is the fox, which, through cunning and shrewdness triumphs over less intelligent species, yet often also meets his demise. Another common theme in Kurdish folklore is the origin of a tribe.
Storytellers would perform in front of an audience, sometimes consisting of an entire village. People from outside the region would travel to attend their narratives, and the storytellers themselves would visit other villages to spread their tales. These would thrive especially during winter, where entertainment was hard to find as evenings had to be spent inside.
Coinciding with the heterogeneous Kurdish groupings, although certain stories and elements were commonly found throughout Kurdistan, others were unique to a specific area; depending on the region, religion or dialect. The Kurdish Jews of Zakho are perhaps the best example of this; their gifted storytellers are known to have been greatly respected throughout the region, thanks to a unique oral tradition. Other examples are the mythology of the Yezidis, and the stories of the Dersim Kurds, which had a substantial Armenian influence.
During the criminalization of the Kurdish language after the coup d'état of 1980, dengbêj (singers) and çîrokbêj (tellers) were silenced, and many of the stories had become endangered. In 1991, the language was decriminalized, yet the now highly available radios and TV's had as an effect a diminished interest in traditional storytelling. However, a number of writers have made great strides in the preservation of these tales.
Weaving
Kurdish weaving is renowned throughout the world, with fine specimens of both rugs and bags. The most famous Kurdish rugs are those from the Bijar region, in the Kurdistan Province. Because of the unique way in which the Bijar rugs are woven, they are very stout and durable, hence their appellation as the 'Iron Rugs of Persia'. Exhibiting a wide variety, the Bijar rugs have patterns ranging from floral designs, medallions and animals to other ornaments. They generally have two wefts, and are very colorful in design. With an increased interest in these rugs in the last century, and a lesser need for them to be as sturdy as they were, new Bijar rugs are more refined and delicate in design.
Another well-known Kurdish rug is the Senneh rug, which is regarded as the most sophisticated of the Kurdish rugs. They are especially known for their great knot density and high-quality mountain wool. They lend their name from the region of Sanandaj. Throughout other Kurdish regions like Kermanshah, Siirt, Malatya and Bitlis rugs were also woven to great extent.
Kurdish bags are mainly known from the works of one large tribe: the Jaffs, living in the border area between Iran and Iraq. These Jaff bags share the same characteristics of Kurdish rugs; very colorful, stout in design, often with medallion patterns. They were especially popular in the West during the 1920s and 1930s.
Handicrafts
Outside of weaving and clothing, there are many other Kurdish handicrafts, which were traditionally often crafted by nomadic Kurdish tribes. These are especially well known in Iran, most notably the crafts from the Kermanshah and Sanandaj regions. Among these crafts are chess boards, talismans, jewelry, ornaments, weaponry, instruments etc.
Kurdish blades include a distinct jambiya, with its characteristic I-shaped hilt, and oblong blade. Generally, these possess double-edged blades, reinforced with a central ridge, a wooden, leather or silver decorated scabbard, and a horn hilt, furthermore they are often still worn decoratively by older men. Swords were made as well. Most of these blades in circulation stem from the 19th century.
Another distinct form of art from Sanandaj is 'Oroosi', a type of window where stylized wooden pieces are locked into each other, rather than being glued together. These are further decorated with coloured glass, this stems from an old belief that if light passes through a combination of seven colours it helps keep the atmosphere clean.
Among Kurdish Jews a common practice was the making of talismans, which were believed to combat illnesses and protect the wearer from malevolent spirits.
Tattoos
Adorning the body with tattoos (deq in Kurdish) is widespread among the Kurds; even though permanent tattoos are not permissible in Sunni Islam. Therefore, these traditional tattoos are thought to derive from pre-Islamic times.
Tattoo ink is made by mixing soot with (breast) milk and the poisonous liquid from the gall bladder of an animal. The design is drawn on the skin using a thin twig and is injected under the skin using a needle. These have a wide variety of meanings and purposes, among which are protection against evil or illnesses; beauty enhancement; and the showing of tribal affiliations. Religious symbolism is also common among both traditional and modern Kurdish tattoos. Tattoos are more prevalent among women than among men, and were generally worn on feet, the chin, foreheads and other places of the body.
The popularity of permanent, traditional tattoos has greatly diminished among newer generation of Kurds. However, modern tattoos are becoming more prevalent; and temporary tattoos are still being worn on special occasions (such as henna, the night before a wedding) and as tribute to the cultural heritage.
Music and dance
Traditionally, there are three types of Kurdish classical performers: storytellers (çîrokbêj), minstrels (stranbêj), and bards (dengbêj). No specific music was associated with the Kurdish princely courts. Instead, music performed in night gatherings (şevbihêrk) is considered classical. Several musical forms are found in this genre. Many songs are epic in nature, such as the popular Lawiks, heroic ballads recounting the tales of Kurdish heroes such as Saladin. Heyrans are love ballads usually expressing the melancholy of separation and unfulfilled love. One of the first Kurdish female singers to sing heyrans is Chopy Fatah, while Lawje is a form of religious music and Payizoks are songs performed during the autumn. Love songs, dance music, wedding and other celebratory songs (dîlok/narînk), erotic poetry, and work songs are also popular.
Throughout the Middle East, there are many prominent Kurdish artists. Most famous are Ibrahim Tatlises, Nizamettin Arıç, Ahmet Kaya and the Kamkars. In Europe, well-known artists are Darin Zanyar, Sivan Perwer, and Azad.
Cinema
The main themes of Kurdish cinema are the poverty and hardship which ordinary Kurds have to endure. The first films featuring Kurdish culture were actually shot in Armenia. Zare, released in 1927, produced by Hamo Beknazarian, details the story of Zare and her love for the shepherd Seydo, and the difficulties the two experience by the hand of the village elder. In 1948 and 1959, two documentaries were made concerning the Yezidi Kurds in Armenia. These were joint Armenian-Kurdish productions; with H. Koçaryan and Heciye Cindi teaming up for The Kurds of Soviet Armenia, and Ereb Samilov and C. Jamharyan for Kurds of Armenia.
The first critically acclaimed and famous Kurdish films were produced by Yılmaz Güney. Initially a popular, award-winning actor in Turkey with the nickname Çirkin Kral (the Ugly King, after his rough looks), he spent the later part of his career producing socio-critical and politically loaded films. Sürü (1979), Yol (1982) and Duvar (1983) are his best-known works, of which the second won Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival of 1982, the most prestigious award in the world of cinema.
Another prominent Kurdish film director is Bahman Qubadi. His first feature film was A Time for Drunken Horses, released in 2000. It was critically acclaimed, and went on to win multiple awards. Other movies of his would follow this example, making him one of the best known film producers of Iran of today. Recently, he released Rhinos Season, starring Behrouz Vossoughi, Monica Bellucci and Yilmaz Erdogan, detailing the tumultuous life of a Kurdish poet.
Other prominent Kurdish film directors that are critically acclaimed include Mahsun Kırmızıgül, Hiner Saleem and the aforementioned Yilmaz Erdogan. There's also been a number of films set and/or filmed in Kurdistan made by non-Kurdish film directors, such as The Wind Will Carry Us, Triage, The Exorcist, and The Market: A Tale of Trade.
Sports
The most popular sport among the Kurds is football. Because the Kurds have no independent state, they have no representative team in FIFA or the AFC; however a team representing Iraqi Kurdistan has been active in the Viva World Cup since 2008. They became runners-up in 2009 and 2010, before ultimately becoming champion in 2012.
On a national level, the Kurdish clubs of Iraq have achieved success in recent years as well, winning the Iraqi Premier League four times in the last five years. Prominent clubs are Erbil SC, Duhok SC, Sulaymaniyah FC and Zakho FC.
In Turkey, a Kurd named Celal Ibrahim was one of the founders of Galatasaray S.K. in 1905, as well as one of the original players. The most prominent Kurdish-Turkish club is Diyarbakirspor. In the diaspora, the most successful Kurdish club is Dalkurd FF and the most famous player is Eren Derdiyok.
Another prominent sport is wrestling. In Iranian Wrestling, there are three styles originating from Kurdish regions:
Zhir-o-Bal (a style similar to Greco-Roman wrestling), practised in Kurdistan, Kermanshah and Ilam;
Zouran-Patouleh, practised in Kurdistan;
Zouran-Machkeh, practised in Kurdistan as well.
Furthermore, the most accredited of the traditional Iranian wrestling styles, the Bachoukheh, derives its name from a local Khorasani Kurdish costume in which it is practised.
Kurdish medalists in the 2012 Summer Olympics were Nur Tatar, Kianoush Rostami and Yezidi Misha Aloyan; who won medals in taekwondo, weightlifting and boxing, respectively.
Architecture
The traditional Kurdish village has simple houses, made of mud. In most cases with flat, wooden roofs, and, if the village is built on the slope of a mountain, the roof on one house makes for the garden of the house one level higher. However, houses with a beehive-like roof, not unlike those in Harran, are also present.
Over the centuries many Kurdish architectural marvels have been erected, with varying styles. Kurdistan boasts many examples from ancient Iranian, Roman, Greek and Semitic origin, most famous of these include Bisotun and Taq-e Bostan in Kermanshah, Takht-e Soleyman near Takab, Mount Nemrud near Adiyaman and the citadels of Erbil and Diyarbakir.
The first genuinely Kurdish examples extant were built in the 11th century. Those earliest examples consist of the Marwanid Dicle Bridge in Diyarbakir, the Shadaddid Minuchir Mosque in Ani, and the Hisn al Akrad near Homs.
In the 12th and 13th centuries the Ayyubid dynasty constructed many buildings throughout the Middle East, being influenced by their predecessors, the Fatimids, and their rivals, the Crusaders, whilst also developing their own techniques. Furthermore, women of the Ayyubid family took a prominent role in the patronage of new constructions. The Ayyubids' most famous works are the Halil-ur-Rahman Mosque that surrounds the Pool of Sacred Fish in Urfa, the Citadel of Cairo and most parts of the Citadel of Aleppo. Another important piece of Kurdish architectural heritage from the late 12th/early 13th centuries is the Yezidi pilgrimage site Lalish, with its trademark conical roofs.
In later periods too, Kurdish rulers and their corresponding dynasties and emirates would leave their mark upon the land in the form mosques, castles and bridges, some of which have decayed, or have been (partly) destroyed in an attempt to erase the Kurdish cultural heritage, such as the White Castle of the Bohtan Emirate. Well-known examples are Hosap Castle of the 17th century, Sherwana Castle of the early 18th century, and the Ellwen Bridge of Khanaqin of the 19th century.
Most famous is the Ishak Pasha Palace of Dogubeyazit, a structure with heavy influences from both Anatolian and Iranian architectural traditions. Construction of the Palace began in 1685, led by Colak Abdi Pasha, a Kurdish bey of the Ottoman Empire, but the building would not be completed until 1784, by his grandson, Ishak Pasha. Containing almost 100 rooms, including a mosque, dining rooms, dungeons and being heavily decorated by hewn-out ornaments, this Palace has the reputation as being one of the finest pieces of architecture of the Ottoman Period, and of Anatolia.
In recent years, the KRG has been responsible for the renovation of several historical structures, such as Erbil Citadel and the Mudhafaria Minaret.
Genetics
A 2005 study genetically examined three different groups of Zaza and Kurmanji speakers in Turkey and Kurmanji speakers in Georgia. In the study, mtDNA HV1 sequences, eleven Y chromosome bi-allelic markers and 9 Y-STR loci were analyzed to investigate lineage relationship among Kurdish groups. When both mtDNA and Y chromosome data are compared with those of the European, Caucasian, West Asian and Central Asian groups, it has been determined that the Kurdish groups are most closely related to West Asians and the furthest to Central Asians. Among the European and Caucasian groups, Kurds were found to be closer to Europeans than Caucasians when considering mtDNA, and the opposite was true for Y chromosome. This indicates a difference in maternal and paternal origins of Kurdish groups. According to the study, Kurdish groups in Georgia went through a genetic bottleneck while migrating to the Caucasus. It has also been revealed that these groups were not influenced by other Caucasian groups in terms of ancestry. Another phenomenon found in the research was that Zazas are closer to Kurdish groups rather than peoples of Northern Iran, where ancestral Zaza language hypothesized to be spoken before its spread to Anatolia.
11 different Y-DNA haplogroups have been identified in Kurmanji-speaking Kurds in Turkey. Haplogroup I-M170 was the most prevalent with 16.1% of the samples belonging to it, followed by haplogroups J-M172 (13.8%), R1a1 (12.7%), K (12.7%), E (11.5%) and F (11.5%). P1 (8%), P (5.7%), R1 (4.6%), G (2.3%) and C (1.1%) haplogroups were also present in lower proportions. Y-DNA haplogroup diversity were determined to be much lower among Georgian Kurds, as 5 haplogroups were discovered in total, where the dominant haplogroups were P1 (44%) and J-M172 (32%). The lowest Y-DNA haplogroup diversity was observed in Turkmenistan Kurds with only 4 haplogroups in total; F (41%) and R1 (29%) were dominant in this population.
Gallery
See also
Modern Kurdish-majority entities and governments
Kurdistan Region (1992 to date) – Autonomous region in Iraq
Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (2013 to date) – Autonomy of Syria
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Barth, F. 1953. Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan. Bulletin of the University Ethnographic Museum 7. Oslo.
Hansen, H.H. 1961. The Kurdish Woman's Life. Copenhagen. Ethnographic Museum Record 7:1–213.
Leach, E.R. 1938. Social and Economic Organization of the Rowanduz Kurds. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology 3:1–74.
Longrigg, S.H. 1953. Iraq, 1900–1950. London.
Masters, W.M. 1953. Rowanduz. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan.
McKiernan, Kevin. 2006. The Kurds, a People in Search of Their Homeland. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Further reading
Samir Amin (October 2016). The Kurdish Question Then and Now, in Monthly Review, Volume 68, Issue 05
Dundas, Chad. "Kurdish Americans." Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, edited by Thomas Riggs, (3rd ed., vol. 3, Gale, 2014), 3:41-52. online
Eppel, Michael. A People Without a State: The Kurds from the Rise of Islam to the Dawn of Nationalism, 2016, University of Texas Press
Maisel, Sebastian, ed. The Kurds: An Encyclopedia of Life, Culture, and Society. Abc-Clio, 2018.
Shareef, Mohammed. The United States, Iraq and the Kurds: shock, awe and aftermath (Routledge, 2014).
Historiography
Meho, Lokman I., ed. The Kurdish Question in U.S. Foreign Policy: A Documentary Sourcebook (Praeger, 2004).
External links
The Kurdish Institute of Paris Kurdish language, history, books and latest news articles.
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17070 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza%E2%80%93Klein%20theory | Kaluza–Klein theory | In physics, Kaluza–Klein theory (KK theory) is a classical unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism built around the idea of a fifth dimension beyond the common 4D of space and time and considered an important precursor to string theory. Gunnar Nordström had an earlier, similar idea. But in that case, a fifth component was added to the electromagnetic vector potential, representing the Newtonian gravitational potential, and writing the Maxwell equations in five dimensions.
The five-dimensional (5D) theory developed in three steps. The original hypothesis came from Theodor Kaluza, who sent his results to Einstein in 1919, and published them in 1921. Kaluza presented a purely classical extension of general relativity to 5D, with a metric tensor of 15 components. Ten components are identified with the 4D spacetime metric, four components with the electromagnetic vector potential, and one component with an unidentified scalar field sometimes called the "radion" or the "dilaton." Correspondingly, the 5D Einstein equations yield the 4D Einstein field equations, the Maxwell equations for the electromagnetic field, and an equation for the scalar field. Kaluza also introduced the "cylinder condition" hypothesis, that no component of the five-dimensional metric depends on the fifth dimension. Without this assumption, terms are introduced that involve derivatives of the fields with respect to the fifth coordinate. This extra degree of freedom is such that the field equations of fully variable 5D relativity grow enormous in complexity. Standard 4D physics seems to manifest the cylinder condition, and the corresponding simpler mathematics.
In 1926, Oskar Klein gave Kaluza's classical five-dimensional theory a quantum interpretation, to accord with the then-recent discoveries of Heisenberg and Schrödinger. Klein introduced the hypothesis that the fifth dimension was curled up and microscopic, to explain the cylinder condition. Klein suggested that the geometry of the extra fifth dimension could take the form of a circle, with the radius of . Klein also made a contribution to the classical theory by providing a properly normalized 5D metric. Work continued on the Kaluza field theory during the 1930s by Einstein and colleagues at Princeton.
In the 1940s the classical theory was completed, and the full field equations including the scalar field were obtained by three independent research groups: Thiry, working in France on his dissertation under Lichnerowicz; Jordan, Ludwig, and Müller in Germany, with critical input from Pauli and Fierz; and Scherrer working alone in Switzerland. Jordan's work led to the scalar–tensor theory of Brans–Dicke; Brans and Dicke were apparently unaware of Thiry or Scherrer. The full Kaluza equations under the cylinder condition are quite complex, and most English-language reviews as well as the English translations of Thiry contain some errors. The curvature tensors for the complete Kaluza equations were evaluated using tensor algebra software in 2015, verifying results of Ferrari and Coquereaux & Esposito-Farese. The 5D covariant form of the energy-momentum source terms is treated by Williams.
Kaluza hypothesis
In his 1921 paper, Kaluza established all the elements of the classical five-dimensional theory: the metric, the field equations, the equations of motion, the stress–energy tensor, and the cylinder condition. With no free parameters, it merely extends general relativity to five dimensions. One starts by hypothesizing a form of the five-dimensional metric , where Latin indices span five dimensions. Let one also introduce the four-dimensional spacetime metric , where Greek indices span the usual four dimensions of space and time; a 4-vector identified with the electromagnetic vector potential; and a scalar field . Then decompose the 5D metric so that the 4D metric is framed by the electromagnetic vector potential, with the scalar field at the fifth diagonal. This can be visualized as:
.
One can write more precisely
where the index indicates the fifth coordinate by convention even though the first four coordinates are indexed with 0, 1, 2, and 3. The associated inverse metric is
.
This decomposition is quite general and all terms are dimensionless. Kaluza then applies the machinery of standard general relativity to this metric. The field equations are obtained from five-dimensional Einstein equations, and the equations of motion from the five-dimensional geodesic hypothesis. The resulting field equations provide both the equations of general relativity and of electrodynamics; the equations of motion provide the four-dimensional geodesic equation and the Lorentz force law, and one finds that electric charge is identified with motion in the fifth dimension.
The hypothesis for the metric implies an invariant five-dimensional length element :
Field equations from the Kaluza hypothesis
The field equations of the 5-dimensional theory were never adequately provided by Kaluza or Klein because they ignored the scalar field. The full Kaluza field equations are generally attributed to Thiry, who obtained vacuum field equations, although Kaluza originally provided a stress–energy tensor for his theory and Thiry included a stress–energy tensor in his thesis. But as described by Gonner, several independent groups worked on the field equations in the 1940s and earlier. Thiry is perhaps best known only because an English translation was provided by Applequist, Chodos, & Freund in their review book. Applequist et al. also provided an English translation of Kaluza's paper. There are no English translations of the Jordan papers. The first correct English-language Kaluza field equations, including the scalar field, were provided by Williams.
To obtain the 5D field equations, the 5D connections are calculated from the 5D metric , and the 5D Ricci tensor is calculated from the 5D connections.
The classic results of Thiry and other authors presume the cylinder condition:
.
Without this assumption, the field equations become much more complex, providing many more degrees of freedom that can be identified with various new fields. Paul Wesson and colleagues have pursued relaxation of the cylinder condition to gain extra terms that can be identified with the matter fields, for which Kaluza otherwise inserted a stress–energy tensor by hand.
It has been an objection to the original Kaluza hypothesis to invoke the fifth dimension only to negate its dynamics. But Thiry argued that the interpretation of the Lorentz force law in terms of a 5-dimensional geodesic militates strongly for a fifth dimension irrespective of the cylinder condition. Most authors have therefore employed the cylinder condition in deriving the field equations. Furthermore, vacuum equations are typically assumed for which
where
and
The vacuum field equations obtained in this way by Thiry and Jordan's group are as follows.
The field equation for is obtained from
where ,
where , and where is a standard, 4D covariant derivative. It shows that the electromagnetic field is a source for the scalar field. Note that the scalar field cannot be set to a constant without constraining the electromagnetic field. The earlier treatments by Kaluza and Klein did not have an adequate description of the scalar field, and did not realize the implied constraint on the electromagnetic field by assuming the scalar field to be constant.
The field equation for is obtained from
It has the form of the vacuum Maxwell equations if the scalar field is constant.
The field equation for the 4D Ricci tensor is obtained from
where is the standard 4D Ricci scalar.
This equation shows the remarkable result, called the "Kaluza miracle,” that the precise form for the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor emerges from the 5D vacuum equations as a source in the 4D equations: field from the vacuum. This relation allows the definitive identification of with the electromagnetic vector potential. Therefore, the field needs to be rescaled with a conversion constant such that .
The relation above shows that we must have
where is the gravitational constant and is the permeability of free space. In the Kaluza theory, the gravitational constant can be understood as an electromagnetic coupling constant in the metric. There is also a stress–energy tensor for the scalar field. The scalar field behaves like a variable gravitational constant, in terms of modulating the coupling of electromagnetic stress energy to spacetime curvature. The sign of in the metric is fixed by correspondence with 4D theory so that electromagnetic energy densities are positive. It is often assumed that the fifth coordinate is spacelike in its signature in the metric.
In the presence of matter, the 5D vacuum condition can not be assumed. Indeed, Kaluza did not assume it. The full field equations require evaluation of the 5D Einstein tensor
as seen in the recovery of the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor above. The 5D curvature tensors are complex, and most English-language reviews contain errors in either or , as does the English translation of. See for a complete set of 5D curvature tensors under the cylinder condition, evaluated using tensor algebra software.
Equations of motion from the Kaluza hypothesis
The equations of motion are obtained from the five-dimensional geodesic hypothesis in terms of a 5-velocity :
This equation can be recast in several ways, and it has been studied in various forms by authors including Kaluza, Pauli, Gross & Perry, Gegenberg & Kunstatter, and Wesson & Ponce de Leon,
but it is instructive to convert it back to the usual 4-dimensional length element , which is related to the 5-dimensional length element as given above:
Then the 5D geodesic equation can be written for the spacetime components of the 4-velocity,
The term quadratic in provides the 4D geodesic equation plus some electromagnetic terms:
The term linear in provides the Lorentz force law:
This is another expression of the "Kaluza miracle." The same hypothesis for the 5D metric that provides electromagnetic stress–energy in the Einstein equations, also provides the Lorentz force law in the equation of motions along with the 4D geodesic equation. Yet correspondence with the Lorentz force law requires that we identify the component of 5-velocity along the fifth dimension with electric charge:
where is particle mass and is particle electric charge. Thus, electric charge is understood as motion along the fifth dimension. The fact that the Lorentz force law could be understood as a geodesic in 5 dimensions was to Kaluza a primary motivation for considering the 5-dimensional hypothesis, even in the presence of the aesthetically unpleasing cylinder condition.
Yet there is a problem: the term quadratic in
If there is no gradient in the scalar field, the term quadratic in vanishes. But otherwise the expression above implies
For elementary particles, . The term quadratic in should dominate the equation, perhaps in contradiction to experience. This was the main shortfall of the 5-dimensional theory as Kaluza saw it, and he gives it some discussion in his original article.
The equation of motion for is particularly simple under the cylinder condition. Start with the alternate form of the geodesic equation, written for the covariant 5-velocity:
This means that under the cylinder condition, is a constant of the 5-dimensional motion:
Kaluza's hypothesis for the matter stress–energy tensor
Kaluza proposed a 5D matter stress tensor of the form
where is a density and the length element is as defined above.
Then, the spacetime component gives a typical "dust" stress energy tensor:
The mixed component provides a 4-current source for the Maxwell equations:
Just as the five-dimensional metric comprises the 4-D metric framed by the electromagnetic vector potential, the 5-dimensional stress–energy tensor comprises the 4-D stress–energy tensor framed by the vector 4-current.
Quantum interpretation of Klein
Kaluza's original hypothesis was purely classical and extended discoveries of general relativity. By the time of Klein's contribution, the discoveries of Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and de Broglie were receiving a lot of attention. Klein's Nature paper suggested that the fifth dimension is closed and periodic, and that the identification of electric charge with motion in the fifth dimension can be interpreted as standing waves of wavelength , much like the electrons around a nucleus in the Bohr model of the atom. The quantization of electric charge could then be nicely understood in terms of integer multiples of fifth-dimensional momentum. Combining the previous Kaluza result for in terms of electric charge, and a de Broglie relation for momentum , Klein obtained an expression for the 0th mode of such waves:
where is the Planck constant. Klein found cm, and thereby an explanation for the cylinder condition in this small value.
Klein's Zeitschrift für Physik paper of the same year, gave a more detailed treatment that explicitly invoked the techniques of Schroedinger and de Broglie. It recapitulated much of the classical theory of Kaluza described above, and then departed into Klein's quantum interpretation. Klein solved a Schroedinger-like wave equation using an expansion in terms of fifth-dimensional waves resonating in the closed, compact fifth dimension.
Quantum field theory interpretation
Group theory interpretation
In 1926, Oskar Klein proposed that the fourth spatial dimension is curled up in a circle of a very small radius, so that a particle moving a short distance along that axis would return to where it began. The distance a particle can travel before reaching its initial position is said to be the size of the dimension. This extra dimension is a compact set, and construction of this compact dimension is referred to as compactification.
In modern geometry, the extra fifth dimension can be understood to be the circle group U(1), as electromagnetism can essentially be formulated as a gauge theory on a fiber bundle, the circle bundle, with gauge group U(1). In Kaluza–Klein theory this group suggests that gauge symmetry is the symmetry of circular compact dimensions. Once this geometrical interpretation is understood, it is relatively straightforward to replace U(1) by a general Lie group. Such generalizations are often called Yang–Mills theories. If a distinction is drawn, then it is that Yang–Mills theories occur on a flat spacetime, whereas Kaluza–Klein treats the more general case of curved spacetime. The base space of Kaluza–Klein theory need not be four-dimensional spacetime; it can be any (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, or even a supersymmetric manifold or orbifold or even a noncommutative space.
The construction can be outlined, roughly, as follows. One starts by considering a principal fiber bundle P with gauge group G over a manifold M. Given a connection on the bundle, and a metric on the base manifold, and a gauge invariant metric on the tangent of each fiber, one can construct a bundle metric defined on the entire bundle. Computing the scalar curvature of this bundle metric, one finds that it is constant on each fiber: this is the "Kaluza miracle". One did not have to explicitly impose a cylinder condition, or to compactify: by assumption, the gauge group is already compact. Next, one takes this scalar curvature as the Lagrangian density, and, from this, constructs the Einstein–Hilbert action for the bundle, as a whole. The equations of motion, the Euler–Lagrange equations, can be then obtained by considering where the action is stationary with respect to variations of either the metric on the base manifold, or of the gauge connection. Variations with respect to the base metric gives the Einstein field equations on the base manifold, with the energy–momentum tensor given by the curvature (field strength) of the gauge connection. On the flip side, the action is stationary against variations of the gauge connection precisely when the gauge connection solves the Yang–Mills equations. Thus, by applying a single idea: the principle of least action, to a single quantity: the scalar curvature on the bundle (as a whole), one obtains simultaneously all of the needed field equations, for both the spacetime and the gauge field.
As an approach to the unification of the forces, it is straightforward to apply the Kaluza–Klein theory in an attempt to unify gravity with the strong and electroweak forces by using the symmetry group of the Standard Model, SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1). However, an attempt to convert this interesting geometrical construction into a bona-fide model of reality flounders on a number of issues, including the fact that the fermions must be introduced in an artificial way (in nonsupersymmetric models). Nonetheless, KK remains an important touchstone in theoretical physics and is often embedded in more sophisticated theories. It is studied in its own right as an object of geometric interest in K-theory.
Even in the absence of a completely satisfying theoretical physics framework, the idea of exploring extra, compactified, dimensions is of considerable interest in the experimental physics and astrophysics communities. A variety of predictions, with real experimental consequences, can be made (in the case of large extra dimensions and warped models). For example, on the simplest of principles, one might expect to have standing waves in the extra compactified dimension(s). If a spatial extra dimension is of radius R, the invariant mass of such standing waves would be Mn = nh/Rc with n an integer, h being Planck's constant and c the speed of light. This set of possible mass values is often called the Kaluza–Klein tower. Similarly, in Thermal quantum field theory a compactification of the euclidean time dimension leads to the Matsubara frequencies and thus to a discretized thermal energy spectrum.
However, Klein's approach to a quantum theory is flawed and, for example, leads to a calculated electron mass in the order of magnitude of the Planck mass.
Examples of experimental pursuits include work by the CDF collaboration, which has re-analyzed particle collider data for the signature of effects associated with large extra dimensions/warped models.
Brandenberger and Vafa have speculated that in the early universe, cosmic inflation causes three of the space dimensions to expand to cosmological size while the remaining dimensions of space remained microscopic.
Space–time–matter theory
One particular variant of Kaluza–Klein theory is space–time–matter theory or induced matter theory, chiefly promulgated by Paul Wesson and other members of the Space–Time–Matter Consortium. In this version of the theory, it is noted that solutions to the equation
may be re-expressed so that in four dimensions, these solutions satisfy Einstein's equations
with the precise form of the Tμν following from the Ricci-flat condition on the five-dimensional space. In other words, the cylinder condition of the previous development is dropped, and the stress–energy now comes from the derivatives of the 5D metric with respect to the fifth coordinate. Because the energy–momentum tensor is normally understood to be due to concentrations of matter in four-dimensional space, the above result is interpreted as saying that four-dimensional matter is induced from geometry in five-dimensional space.
In particular, the soliton solutions of can be shown to contain the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric in both radiation-dominated (early universe) and matter-dominated (later universe) forms. The general equations can be shown to be sufficiently consistent with classical tests of general relativity to be acceptable on physical principles, while still leaving considerable freedom to also provide interesting cosmological models.
Geometric interpretation
The Kaluza–Klein theory has a particularly elegant presentation in terms of geometry. In a certain sense, it looks just like ordinary gravity in free space, except that it is phrased in five dimensions instead of four.
Einstein equations
The equations governing ordinary gravity in free space can be obtained from an action, by applying the variational principle to a certain action. Let M be a (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, which may be taken as the spacetime of general relativity. If g is the metric on this manifold, one defines the action S(g) as
where R(g) is the scalar curvature and vol(g) is the volume element. By applying the variational principle to the action
one obtains precisely the Einstein equations for free space:
Here, Rij is the Ricci tensor.
Maxwell equations
By contrast, the Maxwell equations describing electromagnetism can be understood to be the Hodge equations of a principal U(1)-bundle or circle bundle with fiber U(1). That is, the electromagnetic field is a harmonic 2-form in the space of differentiable 2-forms on the manifold . In the absence of charges and currents, the free-field Maxwell equations are
where is the Hodge star operator.
Kaluza–Klein geometry
To build the Kaluza–Klein theory, one picks an invariant metric on the circle that is the fiber of the U(1)-bundle of electromagnetism. In this discussion, an invariant metric is simply one that is invariant under rotations of the circle. Suppose this metric gives the circle a total length of . One then considers metrics on the bundle that are consistent with both the fiber metric, and the metric on the underlying manifold . The consistency conditions are:
The projection of to the vertical subspace needs to agree with metric on the fiber over a point in the manifold .
The projection of to the horizontal subspace of the tangent space at point must be isomorphic to the metric on at .
The Kaluza–Klein action for such a metric is given by
The scalar curvature, written in components, then expands to
where is the pullback of the fiber bundle projection . The connection on the fiber bundle is related to the electromagnetic field strength as
That there always exists such a connection, even for fiber bundles of arbitrarily complex topology, is a result from homology and specifically, K-theory. Applying Fubini's theorem and integrating on the fiber, one gets
Varying the action with respect to the component , one regains the Maxwell equations. Applying the variational principle to the base metric , one gets the Einstein equations
with the stress–energy tensor being given by
sometimes called the Maxwell stress tensor.
The original theory identifies with the fiber metric , and allows to vary from fiber to fiber. In this case, the coupling between gravity and the electromagnetic field is not constant, but has its own dynamical field, the radion.
Generalizations
In the above, the size of the loop acts as a coupling constant between the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field. If the base manifold is four-dimensional, the Kaluza–Klein manifold P is five-dimensional. The fifth dimension is a compact space, and is called the compact dimension. The technique of introducing compact dimensions to obtain a higher-dimensional manifold is referred to as compactification. Compactification does not produce group actions on chiral fermions except in very specific cases: the dimension of the total space must be 2 mod 8 and the G-index of the Dirac operator of the compact space must be nonzero.
The above development generalizes in a more-or-less straightforward fashion to general principal G-bundles for some arbitrary Lie group G taking the place of U(1). In such a case, the theory is often referred to as a Yang–Mills theory, and is sometimes taken to be synonymous. If the underlying manifold is supersymmetric, the resulting theory is a super-symmetric Yang–Mills theory.
Empirical tests
No experimental or observational signs of extra dimensions have been officially reported. Many theoretical search techniques for detecting Kaluza–Klein resonances have been proposed using the mass couplings of such resonances with the top quark. An analysis of results from the LHC in December 2010 severely constrains theories with large extra dimensions.
The observation of a Higgs-like boson at the LHC establishes a new empirical test which can be applied to the search for Kaluza–Klein resonances and supersymmetric particles.
The loop Feynman diagrams that exist in the Higgs interactions allow any particle with electric charge and mass to run in such a loop. Standard Model particles besides the top quark and W boson do not make big contributions to the cross-section observed in the decay, but if there are new particles beyond the Standard Model, they could potentially change the ratio of the predicted Standard Model cross-section to the experimentally observed cross-section. Hence a measurement of any dramatic change to the cross-section predicted by the Standard Model is crucial in probing the physics beyond it.
A paper from July 2018 gives some hope for this theory; in the paper they dispute that gravity is leaking into higher dimensions as in brane theory. However the paper does demonstrate that EM and gravity share the same number of dimensions, and this fact lends support to Kaluza–Klein theory; whether the number of dimensions is really 3+1 or in fact 4+1 is the subject of further debate.
See also
Classical theories of gravitation
Complex spacetime
DGP model
Quantum gravity
Compactification (physics)
Randall–Sundrum model
Matej Pavšič
String theory
Supergravity
Superstring theory
Notes
References
https://archive.org/details/sitzungsberichte1921preussi
(Includes reprints of the above articles as well as those of other important papers relating to Kaluza–Klein theory.)
Further reading
The CDF Collaboration, Search for Extra Dimensions using Missing Energy at CDF, (2004) (A simplified presentation of the search made for extra dimensions at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) particle physics facility.)
John M. Pierre, SUPERSTRINGS! Extra Dimensions, (2003).
Chris Pope, Lectures on Kaluza–Klein Theory.
Edward Witten (2014). "A Note On Einstein, Bergmann, and the Fifth Dimension",
Theories of gravitation
Particle physics
Physical cosmology
String theory
Physics beyond the Standard Model | [
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17072 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalsilite | Kalsilite | Kalsilite (KAlSiO4) is a vitreous white to grey feldspathoidal mineral that is found in some potassium-rich lavas, such as from Chamengo Crater in Uganda. It has a relative hardness of 5.5.
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Handbook of Mineralogy
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17073 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangchenjunga | Kangchenjunga | Kangchenjunga, also spelled Kanchenjunga, is the third highest mountain in the world. It rises with an elevation of in a section of the Himalayas called Kangchenjunga Himal delimited in the west by the Tamur River, in the north by the Lhonak Chu and Jongsang La, and in the east by the Teesta River. It lies between India and Nepal, with three of the five peaks, namely Main, Central and South, directly on the border, and the peaks West and Kangbachen in Nepal's Taplejung District.
Until 1852, Kangchenjunga was assumed to be the highest mountain in the world, but calculations based on various readings and measurements made by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1849 came to the conclusion that Mount Everest, known as Peak XV at the time, was the highest. Allowing for further verification of all calculations, it was officially announced in 1856 that Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world.
Kangchenjunga was first climbed on 25 May 1955 by Joe Brown and George Band, who were part of the 1955 British Kangchenjunga expedition. They stopped short of the summit in accordance with the promise given to the Chogyal that the top of the mountain would remain inviolate.
Etymology
Kangchenjunga is the official spelling adopted by Douglas Freshfield, Alexander Mitchell Kellas and the Royal Geographical Society that gives the best indication of the Tibetan pronunciation. Freshfield referred to the spelling used by the Indian Government since the late 19th century. Alternative spellings include Kanchenjunga, Khangchendzonga and Kangchendzönga.
The brothers Hermann, Adolf and Robert Schlagintweit explained the local name 'Kanchinjínga' meaning “The five treasures of the high snow” as originating from the Tibetan word "gangs" meaning snow, ice; "chen" meaning great; "mzod" meaning treasure; "lnga" meaning five.
Local Lhopo people believe that the treasures are hidden but reveal themselves to the devout when the world is in peril; the treasures comprise salt, gold, turquoise and precious stones, sacred scriptures, invincible armor or ammunition, grain and medicine.
Protected areas
The Kangchenjunga landscape is a complex of three distinct ecoregions: the eastern Himalayan broad-leaved and coniferous forests, the Eastern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows and the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands.
The Kangchenjunga transboundary landscape is shared by Nepal, India, Bhutan and China, and comprises 14 protected areas with a total of :
Nepal: Kanchenjunga Conservation Area
Sikkim, India: Khangchendzonga National Park, Varsey Rhododendron Sanctuary, Fambong Lho Wildlife Sanctuary, Kyongnosla Alpine Sanctuary, Maenam Wildlife Sanctuary, Shingba Rhododendron Sanctuary and Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary
Darjeeling, India: Jore Pokhri Wildlife Sanctuary, Singalila National Park, Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary, Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary and Neora Valley National Park
Bhutan: Torsa Strict Nature Reserve
These protected areas are habitats for many globally significant plant species such as rhododendrons and orchids and many endangered flagship species such as snow leopard (Panthera uncia), Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus), red panda (Ailurus fulgens), white-bellied musk deer (Moschus leucogaster), blood pheasant (Ithaginis cruentus) and chestnut-breasted partridge (Arborophila mandellii).
Geography
The Kangchenjunga Himal section of the Himalayas lies both in Nepal and India and encompasses 16 peaks over . In the north, it is limited by the Lhonak Chu, Goma Chu, and Jongsang La, and in the east by the Teesta River. The western limit runs from the Jongsang La down the Gingsang and Kangchenjunga glaciers and the rivers of Ghunsa and Tamur. Kanchenjunga rises about south of the general alignment of the Great Himalayan range about east-southeast of Mount Everest as the crow flies. South of the southern face of Kanchenjunga runs the high Singalila Ridge that separates Sikkim from Nepal and northern West Bengal.
Kangchenjunga and its satellite peaks form a huge mountain massif. The massif's five highest peaks are listed in the following table.
The main ridge of the massif runs from north-northeast to south-southwest and forms a watershed to several rivers. Together with ridges running roughly from east to west they form a giant cross. These ridges contain a host of peaks between . The northern section includes Yalung Kang, Kangchenjunga Central and South, Kangbachen, Kirat Chuli, and Gimmigela Chuli, and runs up to the Jongsang La. The eastern ridge in Sikkim includes Siniolchu. The southern section runs along the Nepal-Sikkim border and includes Kabru I to III. This ridge extends southwards to the Singalila Ridge. The western ridge culminates in the Kumbhakarna, also known as Jannu.
Four main glaciers radiate from the peak, pointing roughly to the northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest. The Zemu glacier in the northeast and the Talung glacier in the southeast drain to the Teesta River; the Yalung glacier in the southwest and the Kangchen glacier in the northwest drain to the Arun and Kosi rivers.
The glaciers spread over the area above approximately , and the glacialized area covers about in total. There are 120 glaciers in the Kanchenjunga Himal, of which 17 are debris-covered. Between 1958 and 1992, more than half of 57 examined glaciers had retreated, possibly due to rising of air temperature.
Kangchenjunga Main is the highest elevation of the Brahmaputra River basin, which forms part of the southeast Asian monsoon regime and is among the globally largest river basins.
Kangchenjunga is one of six peaks above located in the basin of the Koshi river, which is among the largest tributaries of the Ganges.
The Kangchenjunga massif forms also part of the Ganges Basin.
Although it is the third highest peak in the world, Kangchenjunga is only ranked 29th by topographic prominence, a measure of a mountain's independent stature. The key col for Kangchenjunga lies at a height of , along the watershed boundary between Arun and Brahmaputra rivers in Tibet. It is however, the 4th most prominent peak in the Himalaya, after Everest, and the western and eastern anchors of the Himalaya, Nanga Parbat, and Namcha Barwa, respectively.
Climbing routes
There are four climbing routes to reach the summit of Kangchenjunga, three of which are in Nepal from the southwest, northwest, and northeast, and one from northeastern Sikkim in India. To date, the northeastern route from Sikkim has been successfully used only three times. The Indian government has banned expeditions to Kanchenjunga; therefore, this route has been closed since 2000.
Climbing history
Early reconnaissances and attempts
Between April 1848 and February 1849, Joseph Dalton Hooker explored parts of northern Sikkim and eastern Nepal, mainly to collect plants and study the distribution of Himalayan flora. He was based in Darjeeling, and made repeated excursions in the river valleys and into the foothills of Kangchenjunga up to an altitude of .
In spring 1855, the German explorer Hermann Schlagintweit travelled to Darjeeling but was not allowed to proceed further north due to the Nepalese-Tibetan War. In May, he explored the Singalila Ridge up to the peak of Tonglo for a meteorological survey.
In 1879, Sarat Chandra Das and Lama Ugyen-gyatso crossed into Tibet west of "Kanchanjinga" via eastern Nepal and the Tashilhunpo Monastery en route to Lhasa. They returned along the same route in 1881.
In 1883, a party of William Woodman Graham together with two Swiss mountaineers climbed in the area of Kangchenjunga. They were the first who ascended Kabru within below the summit. They crossed the Kang La pass and climbed a peak of nearly from which they examined Jannu. They concluded it was too late in the year for an attempt and returned once again to Darjeeling.
Between October 1885 and January 1886, Rinzin Namgyal surveyed the unexplored north and west sides of Kangchenjunga. He was the first native surveyor to map the circuit of Kangchenjunga and provided sketches of each side of the peak and the adjoining valleys. He also defined the frontiers of Nepal, Tibet, and Sikkim in this area.
In 1899, British mountaineer Douglas Freshfield set out with his party comprising the Italian photographer Vittorio Sella. They were the first mountaineers to examine the lower and upper ramparts, and the great western face of Kangchenjunga, rising from the Kangchenjunga Glacier.
In 1905, a party headed by Aleister Crowley made the first attempt at climbing the mountain. Aleister Crowley had been part of the team attempting the 1902 ascent of K2. The team reached an estimated altitude of on the southwest side of the mountain before turning back. The exact height reached is somewhat unclear; Crowley stated that on 31 August, "We were certainly over and possibly over ", when the team was forced to retreat to Camp 5 by the risk of avalanche. On 1 September, they evidently went further; some members of the team, Reymond, Pache, and Salama, "got over the bad patch" that had forced them to return to Camp 5 the day before, and progressed "out of sight and hearing" before returning to Crowley and the men with packs, who could not cross the dangerous section unassisted with their burdens. It is not clear how far Reymond, Pache, and Salama had ascended – but in summarizing, Crowley ventured "We had reached a height of approximately ." Attempting a "mutinous" late-in-the-day descent from Camp 5 to Camp 3, climber Alexis Pache (who earlier that day had been one of three to ascend possibly higher than any before), and three local porters, were killed in an avalanche. Despite the insistence of one of the men that "the demon of Kangchenjunga was propitiated with the sacrifice", Crowley decided the accident and its ramifications made it impossible to continue the expedition.
In 1907, two Norwegians set about climbing Jongri via the Kabru glacier to the south, an approach apparently rejected by Graham's party. Progress was very slow, partly because of problems with supplies and porters, and presumably also lack of fitness and acclimatisation. However, from a high camp at about they were eventually able to reach a point below the summit before they were turned back by strong winds.
In 1929, the German Paul Bauer led an expedition team that reached on the northeast spur before being turned back by a five-day storm.
In May 1929, the American E. F. Farmer left Darjeeling with native porters, crossed the Kang La into Nepal and climbed up towards the Talung Saddle. When his porters refused to go any further, he climbed alone further upwards through drifting mists but did not return.
In 1930, Günter Dyhrenfurth led an international expedition comprising the German Uli Wieland, Austrian Erwin Schneider, and Englishman Frank Smythe who attempted to climb Kangchenjunga. They failed because of poor weather and snow conditions.
In 1931, Paul Bauer led a second German expedition team who attempted the northeast spur before being turned back by bad weather, illnesses, and deaths. The team, including Peter Aufschnaiter, retreated after climbing 300 m higher than the 1929 attempt.
In 1954, John Kempe led a party comprising J. W. Tucker, S. R. Jackson, G. C. Lewis, T. H. Braham and medical officer D. S. Mathews. They explored the upper Yalung glacier with the intention to discover a practicable route to the great ice-shelf that runs across the southwest face of Kangchenjunga. This reconnaissance led to the route used by the successful 1955 expedition.
First ascent
In 1955, Joe Brown and George Band made the first ascent on 25 May, followed by Norman Hardie and Tony Streather on 26 May. The full team also included John Clegg (team doctor), Charles Evans (team leader), John Angelo Jackson, Neil Mather, and Tom Mackinnon.
The ascent proved that Aleister Crowley's 1905 route (also investigated by the 1954 reconnaissance) was viable. The route starts on the Yalung Glacier to the southwest of the peak, and climbs the Yalung Face, which is high. The main feature of this face is the "Great Shelf", a large sloping plateau at around , covered by a hanging glacier. The route is almost entirely on snow, glacier, and one icefall; the summit ridge itself can involve a small amount of travel on rock. The first ascent expedition made six camps above their base camp, two below the Shelf, two on it, and two above it. They started on 18 April, and everyone was back to base camp by 28 May. Other members of this expedition included John Angelo Jackson and Tom Mackinnon.
Other notable ascents
1973 Yutaka Ageta and Takeo Matsuda of the Japanese expedition summited Kangchenjunga West, also called Yalung Kang, by climbing the southwestern ridge. Matsuda never returned to camp and his body was never found. The expedition concluded that he had fallen during descent when he was separated from Ageta.
1977 The second ascent of Kangchenjunga, by an Indian Army team led by Colonel Narendra Kumar. They completed the northeast spur, the difficult ridge that defeated German expeditions in 1929 and 1931.
1978 Polish teams made the first successful ascents of the summits Kangchenjunga South (Wojciech Wróż and Eugeniusz Chrobak, 19 May) and Kangchenjunga Central (Wojciech Brański, Zygmunt Andrzej Heinrich, Kazimierz Olech, 22 May).
1979 The third ascent, on 16 May, and the first without oxygen, by Doug Scott, Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker establishing a new route on the North Ridge.
1982 6 May sees Ang Dorje, Friedel Mutschlechner, and Reinhold Messner (suffering from amoebic liver abscess) reach the top by a variation on the North Face route without supplemental oxygen.
1983 Pierre Beghin made the first solo ascent. It was accomplished without the use of supplemental oxygen.
1986 On 11 January, Krzysztof Wielicki and Jerzy Kukuczka, Polish climbers, made the first winter ascent. That year Otto Guilherme Gerstenberger Junior (Brazilian) and Johann Krigeer (South African) reach the peak without using supplemental oxygen.
1988 First successful American Expedition; led by Carlos Buhler, from the North Face. Summiting were Buhler, Peter Habeler (Austrian), and Martin Zabaleta (Spanish)
1989 A Soviet expedition successfully traversed all four summits of Kangchenjunga that are higher than 8,000m. Two separate teams traversed the summits in opposite directions.
1989 American Expedition led by Lou Whittaker, with six people summiting on the Northwall: George Dunn, Craig van Hoy, Ed Viesturs, Phil Ershler, Larry Nielson, Greg Wilson.
1991 Slovenian and Joze Rozman attempted the first ascent by a woman. Their bodies were later found below the summit headwall.
1991 Slovenian Andrej Štremfelj and Marko Prezelj completed an alpine-style climb up the south ridge of Kangchenjunga to the south summit (8,494 m).
1992 Carlos Carsolio made the only summit that year. It was in a solo climb without supplementary oxygen.
1992 Wanda Rutkiewicz, the first woman in the world to ascend and descend K2 and a world-renowned Polish climber, died after she insisted on waiting for an incoming storm to pass, which she did not survive.
1995 Benoît Chamoux, Pierre Royer and their Sherpa guide disappeared on 6 October near the summit.
1998 Ginette Harrison was the first woman who climbed Kangchenjunga North face.
2005 Alan Hinkes, a British climber, was the only person to summit in the 50th anniversary of the first ascent year, and it marked his 14th eight-thousander.
2006 Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, an Austrian mountaineer, was the second woman to reach the summit.
2009 Jon Gangdal and Mattias Karlsson reached the summit, becoming, respectively, the first Norwegian and the first Swedish mountaineer to summit this mountain.
2009 Edurne Pasaban, a Spanish mountaineer, reached the summit becoming the first woman to summit twelve eight-thousanders.
In May 2009, Kinga Baranowska was the first Polish woman to reach the summit of Kangchenjunga.
2011 Tunç Fındık became the first Turkish man to reach the peak of Kangchenjunga, his seventh eight thousander, with Swiss partner Guntis Brandts via the British 1955 SW Face route.
2011 Indian mountaineers Basanta Singha Roy and Debasish Biswas of Mountaineers' Association of Krishnanagar (MAK), West Bengal, India, successfully scaled Kangchenjunga Main on 20 May 2011.
In May 2013, five climbers including Hungarian Zsolt Erőss and Péter Kiss reached the summit, but disappeared during the descent.
In May 2014, Bulgarian Boyan Petrov reached the peak without the use of supplemental oxygen. Petrov is a diabetic.
In May 2014, Chhanda Gayen became the first Indian woman to summit. She was killed by an avalanche on the descent.
Despite improved climbing gear the fatality rate of climbers attempting to summit Kanchenjunga is high. Since the 1990s, more than 20% of people died while climbing Kanchenjunga's main peak.
Tourism
Because of its remote location in Nepal and the difficulty involved in accessing it from India, the Kangchenjunga region is not much explored by trekkers. It has, therefore, retained much of its pristine beauty. In Sikkim too, trekking into the Kangchenjunga region has just recently been permitted. The Goecha La trek is gaining popularity amongst tourists. It goes to the Goecha La Pass, located right in front of the huge southeast face of Kangchenjunga. Another trek to Green Lake Basin has recently been opened for trekking. This trek goes to the Northeast side of Kangchenjunga along the famous Zemu Glacier. The film Singalila in the Himalaya is journey around Kangchenjunga.
In myth
The area around Kangchenjunga is said to be home to a mountain deity, called Dzö-nga or "Kangchenjunga Demon", a type of yeti or rakshasa. A British geological expedition in 1925 spotted a bipedal creature which they asked the locals about, who referred to it as the "Kangchenjunga Demon".
For generations, there have been legends recounted by the inhabitants of the areas surrounding Kanchenjunga, both in Sikkim and in Nepal, that there is a valley of immortality hidden on its slopes. These stories are well known to both the original inhabitants of the area, the Lepcha people, and Limbu people and those of the Tibetan Buddhist cultural tradition. In Tibetan, this valley is known as Beyul Demoshong. In 1962 a Tibetan Lama by the name of Tulshuk Lingpa led over 300 followers into the high snow slopes of Kanchenjunga to ‘open the way’ to Beyul Demoshong. The story of this expedition is recounted in the 2011 book A Step Away from Paradise.
In literature
In the Swallows and Amazons series of books by Arthur Ransome, a high mountain (unnamed in the books) is given the name "Kanchenjunga" by the children when they climb it in 1931.
In The Epic of Mount Everest, first published in 1926, Sir Francis Younghusband: " For natural beauty Darjiling (Darjeeling) is surely unsurpassed in the world. From all countries travellers come there to see the famous view of Kangchenjunga, in height, and only distant. Darjiling (Darjeeling) itself is above sea-level and is set in a forest of oaks, magnolia, rhododendrons, laurels and sycamores. And through these forests, the observer looks down the steep mountain-sides to the Rangeet River only above sea-level, and then up and up through tier after tier of forest-clad ranges, each bathed in a haze of deeper and deeper purple, till the line of snow is reached; and then still up to the summit of Kangchenjunga, now so pure and ethereal we can scarcely believe it is part of the solid earth on which we stand; and so high it seems part of the very sky itself."
In 1999, official James Bond author Raymond Benson published High Time to Kill. In this story, a microdot containing a secret formula for aviation technology is stolen by a society called the Union. During their escape, their plane crashes on the slopes of Kangchenjunga. James Bond becomes part of a climbing expedition in order to retrieve the formula.
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, is set partly in Kalimpong, a hill station situated near Kangchenjunga.
In Legend of the Galactic Heroes by Yoshiki Tanaka, which won the Seiun Award for "Best Novel of the Year" in 1988 and was adapted into an anime series by Kitty Films, the capital and holiest temple of the Terraist Cult is on Earth beneath the rubble of Kangchenjunga.
Michelle Paver's 2016 ghost story Thin Air concerns a fictional expedition to climb Kangchenjunga in 1935, and an earlier (also fictional) expedition in 1906.
The book Round Kangchenjunga – A Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration by Douglas Freshfield gives a complete account of his travel around Kangchenjunga.
Further reading
Joseph Dalton Hooker 1855. Himalayan Journals. Assistant-director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Laurence Waddell 1899. Among The Himalayas. Travels in Sikkim. Book includes the exploration of the south of Kangchenjunga.
Aleister Crowley 1905. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapters 51, 52, and 53, tells of the Kangchenjunga Expedition by him and Dr. Jacot-Guillarmod.
Douglas Freshfield 1903. Round Kangchenjunga – A Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration. Edward Arnold, London
Paul Bauer 1937. Himalayan Campaign. Blackwell is the story of Bauer's two attempts in 1929 and 1931, republished as Kangchenjunga Challenge (William Kimber, 1955).
Paul Bauer "The German Attack on Kangchenjunga", The Himalayan Journal, 1930 Vol. II.
Lieut. Col. H.W. Tobin "Exploration and Climbing in The Sikkim Himalaya", The Himalayan Journal, April 1930 Vol. II. Provides the early exploration and climbing attempts on Kangchenjunga.
Prof. G. O. Dyhrenfurth "The International Himalayan Expedition, 1930", The Himalayan Journal, April 1931, Vol. III. Details their attempt on Kangchenjunga.
H.W. Tilman The ascent of Nanda Devi, 7 June 1937, Cambridge University Press. Relates the story of their intention to climb Kangchenjunga.
Irving, R. L. G. 1940. Ten Great Mountains. London, J. M. Dent & Sons
John Angelo Jackson 1955. More than Mountains Book containing data on the 1954 Kangchenjunga reconnaissance. Jackson was also a team member of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga in 1955, also relates the Daily Mail "Abominable Snowman" or Yeti Expedition, when the first trek from Everest to Kangchenjunga was accomplished * . Relevant pages 97 onwards with two detailed maps.
Charles Evans Kangchenjunga The Untrodden Peak, Hodder & Stoughton, Leader of the 1955 expedition. Principal of the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Foreword by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, K.G.
Joe Brown, The Hard Years, tells his version of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga in 1955.
Colonel Narinder Kumar 1978. Kangchenjunga: First ascent from the north-east spur. Vision books. Includes the second ever ascent of Kangchenjunga and the first from the northeast spur on the Indian side of the mountain. See also Himalayan Journal Vol. 36 and 50th Anniversary Edition
Peter Boardman 1982. Sacred Summits: A Climber's Year. Includes the 1979 ascent of Kangchenjunga with Joe Tasker and Doug Scott. Also in The Himalayan Journal Vol 36.
John Angelo Jackson 2005. Adventure Travels in the Himalaya. Indus Publishing. Recounts in more detail the first ascent of Kangchenjunga.
Simon Pierse 2005. Kangchenjunga: Imaging a Himalayan Mountain. University of Wales, School of Art Press, . An anthology of word and image published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first ascents of Kangchenjunga. Well illustrated with reproductions of paintings, prints, and photographs describing the climbing history and cultural significance of the mountain. Preface by George Band.
The above Himalayan Journal references were all also reproduced in the "50th Anniversary of the First Ascent of Kangchenjunga" The Himalayan Club, Kolkata Section 2005.
Pema Wangchuk and Mita Zulca Khangchendzonga: Sacred Summit. The book details the stories and legends celebrated by the communities living in the Kangchenjunga's shadow, goes over the exploits of the early explorers and mountaineers. Chapters cover what Khangchendzonga means to Buddhism, mapping, early explorers, Alexander Kellas, early expeditions, the first ascent in 1955, the Indian Army ascent (1977), the second British ascent (1979), women climbers, the Tiger climbers, the yeti, and more. Profusely illustrated with many period photos.
The Geographer at High Altitudes, Climbing on the Himalaya and other Mountain Ranges, By J. Norman Collie, F.R.S. Edinburgh: David Douglas. 1902.
The Glaciers of Kangchenjunga Douglas Freshfield The Geographical Journal, Vol. 19, No. 4 Apr 1902, pp. 453–472
Round Kangchenjunga. A Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration, Douglas W. Freshfield Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 36, No. 2 1904
C. K. Howard-Bury. 1922. "The Mount Everest Expedition". The Geographical Journal 59 (2): 81–99.
"General Bruce's Illness a Serious handicap" The Times, (British) World Copyright, Lt. R.F.Norton, 19 April 1924. Expedition in the Kangchenjunga area.
Account of a Photographic Expedition to the Southern Glaciers of Kangchenjunga in the Sikkim Himalaya, N. A. Tombazi, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 67, No. 1 Jan 1926, pp. 74–76
An Adventure to Kangchenjunga, Hugh Boustead, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Apr. 1927), pp. 344–350
The Times Literary Supplement, Thursday, 11 December 1930. "The Kangchenjunga Adventure", F.S. Smythe.
Im Kampf um den Himalaja, Paul Bauer. The Kangchenjunga Adventure, F. S. Smythe, Himalaya: Unsere Expedition, G. O. Dyhrenfurth. 1930
The Times Literary Supplement, Thursday, 9 April 1931. "Kangchenjunga", Paul Bauer.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vol. XXVI, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 79, No. 1 Jan 1932, pp. 53–56
Recent Heroes of Modern Adventure, T. C. Bridges; H. Hessell Tiltman, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 81, No. 6 Jun 1933, p. 568
Paul Bauer 1931. Um Den Kantsch: der zweite deutsche Angriff auf den Kangchendzönga, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 81, No. 4 Apr 1933, pp. 362–363
Paul Bauer; Sumner Austin 1938. Himalayan Campaign: The German Attack on Kangchenjunga, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 91, No. 5: 478
Charles Evans; George Band 1956. Kangchenjunga Climbed. The Geographical Journal 122 (1): 1–12.
Charles Evans 1956. "Kangchenjunga: The Untrodden Peak". The Times Literary Supplement.
Lou Whittaker, Memoirs of a Mountain guide, 1994
See also
List of elevation extremes by country
References
External links
Kangchenjunga page on Himalaya-Info.org (German)
Kangchenjunga page on Summitpost.org
Aleister Crowley's detailed account of the 1905 attempt on Kangchenjunga
Kangchenjunga History for a more detailed up to date account of the mountain's history and ascents.
"Kāngchenjunga, India/Nepal" on Peakbagger
– photos
Glacier Research Image Project presents photos tracking 24 years of changes in glaciers at Kangchenjunga.
Mtxplore Mountain Statistics Statistics of Kangchenjunga.
Mountain ranges of Nepal
Landforms of Sikkim
Eight-thousanders of the Himalayas
Sacred mountains
India–Nepal border
International mountains of Asia
Seven Third Summits
Highest points of Indian states and union territories
Tourism in Northeast India
Highest points of countries
Mountains of the Province No. 1
Sacred mountains of Nepal | [
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17076 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenilworth%20Castle | Kenilworth Castle | Kenilworth Castle is a castle in the town of Kenilworth in Warwickshire, England which was founded during the Norman conquest of England; with development through to the Tudor period. It has been described by the architectural historian Anthony Emery as "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant for its scale, form and quality of workmanship". Kenilworth played an important historical role: it was the subject of the six-month-long siege of Kenilworth in 1266, thought to be the longest siege in Medieval English history, and formed a base for Lancastrian operations in the Wars of the Roses. Kenilworth was the scene of the removal of Edward II from the English throne, the perceived French insult to Henry V in 1414 of a gift of tennis balls (said by John Strecche to have prompted the campaign that led to the Battle of Agincourt), and the Earl of Leicester's lavish reception of Elizabeth I in 1575. It has been described as "one of two major castles in Britain which may be classified as water-castles or lake-fortresses...".
The castle was built over several centuries. Founded in the 1120s around a powerful Norman great tower, the castle was significantly enlarged by King John at the beginning of the 13th century. Huge water defences were created by damming the local streams, and the resulting fortifications proved able to withstand assaults by land and water in 1266. John of Gaunt spent lavishly in the late 14th century, turning the medieval castle into a palace fortress designed in the latest perpendicular style. The Earl of Leicester then expanded the castle during his tenure in the 16th century, constructing new Tudor buildings and exploiting the medieval heritage of Kenilworth to produce a fashionable Renaissance palace.
Architecture and landscape
Although now ruined as a result of the slighting, or partial destruction of the castle by Parliamentary forces in 1649 to prevent it being used as a military stronghold after the English Civil War, Kenilworth illustrates five centuries of English military and civil architecture. The castle is built almost entirely from local new red sandstone.
Entrance and outer bailey wall
To the south-east of the main castle lie the Brays, a corruption of the French word braie, meaning an external fortification with palisades. Only earthworks and fragments of masonry remain of what was an extensive 13th-century barbican structure including a stone wall and an external gatehouse guarding the main approach to the castle. The area now forms part of the car park for the castle.
Beyond the Brays are the ruins of the Gallery Tower, a second gatehouse remodelled in the 15th century. The Gallery Tower originally guarded the long, narrow walled-causeway that still runs from the Brays to the main castle. This causeway was called the Tiltyard, as it was used for tilting, or jousting, in medieval times. The Tiltyard causeway acted both as a dam and as part of the barbican defences. To the east of the Tiltyard is a lower area of marshy ground, originally flooded and called the Lower Pool, and to the west an area once called the Great Mere. The Great Mere has been drained and cultivated as a meadow, but it was originally a large lake covering around , dammed by the Tiltyard causeway.
The outer bailey of Kenilworth Castle is usually entered through Mortimer's Tower, today a modest ruin but originally a Norman stone gatehouse, extended in the late 13th and 16th centuries. The outer bailey wall, long and relatively low, was built mainly by King John; it has numerous buttresses but only a few towers, being designed to be defended primarily by the water system of the Great Mere and Lower Pool. The north side of the outer bailey wall was almost entirely destroyed during the slighting. Moving clockwise around the outer bailey from Mortimer's Tower, the defences include a west-facing watergate, which would originally have led onto the Great Mere; the King's gate, a late 17th-century agricultural addition; the Swan Tower, a late 13th-century tower with 16th-century additions, then named after the swans that lived on the Great Mere; the early 13th-century Lunn's Tower; and the 14th-century Water Tower, so named because it overlooked the Lower Pool.
Inner court
Kenilworth's inner court consists of a number of buildings set against a bailey wall, originally of Norman origin. It exploits the defensive value of a natural knoll that rises up steeply from the surrounding area. The 12th-century great tower occupies the knoll itself and forms the north-east corner of the bailey. Ruined during the slighting, the great tower is notable for its huge corner turrets, essentially hugely exaggerated Norman pilaster buttresses. Its walls are thick, and the towers high. Although Kenilworth's great tower is larger, it is similar to that of Brandon Castle near Coventry; both were built by the local Clinton family in the 1120s. The tower can be termed a hall keep, as it is longer than it is wide. The lowest floor is filled with earth, possibly taken from the earlier motte that may have been present on the site, and is further protected by a sloping stone plinth around the base. The tall Tudor windows at the top of the tower date from the 1570s.
Much of the northern part of the inner bailey was built by John of Gaunt, a son of King Edward III, between 1372 and 1380. This part of the castle is considered by historian Anthony Emery to be "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant for its scale, form and quality of workmanship". Gaunt's architectural style emphasised rectangular design, the separation of ground floor service areas from the upper stories and a contrast of austere exteriors with lavish interiors, especially on the 1st floor of the inner bailey buildings. The result is considered "an early example of the perpendicular style".
The most significant of Gaunt's buildings is his great hall. The great hall replaced an earlier sequence of great halls on the same site, and was strongly influenced by Edward III's design at Windsor Castle. The hall consists of a "ceremonial sequence of rooms", approached by a particularly grand staircase, now lost. From the great hall, visitors could look out through huge windows to admire the Great Mere or the inner court. The undercroft to the hall, used by the service staff, was lit with slits, similar to design at the contemporary Wingfield Manor. The roof was built in 1376 by William Wintringham, producing the widest hall, unsupported by pillars, existing in England at the time. There is some debate amongst historians as to whether this roof was a hammerbeam design, a collar and truss-brace design, or a combination of the two.
There was an early attempt at symmetry in the external appearance of the great hall – the Strong and Saintlowe Towers architecturally act as near symmetrical "wings" to the hall itself, while the plinth of the hall is designed to mirror that of the great tower opposite it. An unusual multi-sided tower, the Oriel, provides a counterpoint to the main doorway of the hall and was intended for private entertainment by Gaunt away from the main festivities on major occasions. The Oriel tower is based on Edward III's "La Rose" Tower at Windsor, which had a similar function. Gaunt's Strong Tower is so named for being entirely vaulted in stone across all its floors, an unusual and robust design. The great hall influenced the design of Bolton and Raby castles. The hall's roof design was independently famous and was copied at Arundel Castle and Westminster Hall.
Other parts of the castle built by Gaunt include the southern range of state apartments, Gaunt's Tower and the main kitchen. Although now extensively damaged, these share the same style as the great hall; this would have unified the appearance of Gaunt's palace in a distinct break from the more eclectic medieval tradition of design. Gaunt's kitchen replaced the original 12th-century kitchens, built alongside the great tower in a similar fashion to the arrangement at Conisbrough. Gaunt's new kitchen was twice the size of that in equivalent castles, measuring .
The remainder of the inner court was built by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, in the 1570s. He built a tower now known as Leicester's building on the south edge of the court as a guest wing, extending out beyond the inner bailey wall for extra space. Leicester's building was four floors high and built in a fashionable contemporary Tudor style with "brittle, thin walls and grids of windows". The building was intended to appear well-proportioned alongside the ancient great tower, one of the reasons for its considerable height. Leicester's building set the style for later Elizabethan country house design, especially in the Midlands, with Hardwick Hall being a classic example. Modern viewing platforms, installed in 2014, provide views from Elizabeth I's's former bedroom.
Leicester also built a loggia, or open gallery, beside the great keep to lead to the new formal gardens. The loggia was designed to elegantly frame the view as the observer slowly admired the gardens, and was a new design in the 16th century, only recently imported from Italy.
Base, left-hand and right-hand courts
The rest of Kenilworth Castle's interior is divided into three areas: the base court, stretching between Mortimer's Tower and Leicester's gatehouse; the left-hand court, stretching south-west around the outside of the inner court; and the right-hand court, to the north-west of the inner court. The line of trees that cuts across the base court today is a relatively modern mid-19th century addition, and originally this court would have been more open, save for the collegiate chapel that once stood in front of the stables. Destroyed in 1524, only the chapel's foundations remain. Each of the courts was designed to be used for different purposes: the base court was considered a relatively public area, with the left and right courts used for more private occasions.
Leicester's gatehouse was built on the north side of the base court, replacing an older gatehouse to provide a fashionable entrance from the direction of Coventry. The external design, with its symbolic towers and, originally, battlements, echoes a style popular a century or more before, closely resembling Kirby Muxloe and the Beauchamp gatehouse at Warwick Castle. By contrast the interior, with its contemporary wood panelling, is in the same, highly contemporary Elizabethan fashion of Leicester's building in the inner court. Leicester's gatehouse is one of the few parts of the castle to remain intact. The stables built by John Dudley in the 1550s also survive and lie along the east side of the base court. The stable block is a large building built mostly in stone, but with a timber-framed, decoratively panelled first storey designed in an anachronistic, vernacular style. Both buildings could have easily been seen from Leicester's building and were therefore on permanent display to visitors. Leicester's intent may have been to create a deliberately anachronistic view across the base court, echoing the older ideals of chivalry and romance alongside the more modern aspects of the redesign of the castle.
Garden and landscape
Much of the right-hand court of Kenilworth Castle is occupied by the castle garden. For most of Kenilworth's history the role of the castle garden, used for entertainment, would have been very distinct from that of the surrounding chase, used primarily for hunting. From the 16th century onwards there were elaborate knot gardens in the base court. The gardens today are designed to reproduce as closely as possible the primarily historical record of their original appearance in 1575, with a steep terrace along the south side of the gardens and steps leading down to eight square knot gardens. In Elizabethan gardens "the plants were almost incidental", and instead the design focus was on sculptures, including four wooden obelisks painted to resemble porphyry and a marble fountain with a statue of two Greek mythological figures. A timber aviary contains a range of birds. The original garden was heavily influenced by the Italian Renaissance garden at Villa d'Este.
To the north-west of the castle are earthworks marking the spot of the "Pleasance", created in 1414 by Henry V. The Pleasance was a banqueting house built in the style of a miniature castle. Surrounded by two diamond-shaped moats with its own dock, the Pleasance was positioned on the far side of the Great Mere and had to be reached by boat. It resembled Richard II's retreat at Sheen from the 1380s, and was later copied by his younger brother, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, at Greenwich in the 1430s, as well by his son, John of Lancaster at Fulbrook. The Pleasance was eventually dismantled by Henry VIII and partially moved into the left-hand court inside the castle itself, possibly to add to the anachronistic appearance. These elements were finally destroyed in the 1650s.
History
12th century
Kenilworth Castle was founded in the early 1120s by Geoffrey de Clinton, Lord Chamberlain and treasurer to Henry I. The castle's original form is uncertain. It has been suggested that it consisted of a motte, an earthen mound surmounted by wooden buildings; however, the stone great tower may have been part of the original design. Clinton was a local rival to Roger de Beaumont, the Earl of Warwick and owner of the neighbouring Warwick Castle, and the king made Clinton the sheriff in Warwickshire to act as a counterbalance to Beaumont's power. It appears Clinton had begun to lose the king's favour when in 1130 he was tried for treason, although he was soon acquitted, and when he died in 1133, his son, also called Geoffrey, was only a minor when he inherited his father's estates. These included the family estates at Stewkley and Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire. Geoffrey II built the church of St Michael and All Angels in Stewkley in 1150, which is considered one of the finest surviving original Norman Churches in England. The disputes with Beaumont continued with Geoffrey II and his uncle William de Clinton, until Geoffrey was forced to come to terms with Beaumont and the dispute was eventually settled when he married Beaumont's daughter, Agnes. These disputes and the difficult years of the Anarchy (1135–54), delayed any further development of the castle at Kenilworth.
Henry II succeeded to the throne at the end of the Anarchy but during the revolt of 1173–74 he faced a significant uprising led by his son, Henry, backed by the French crown. The conflict spread across England and Kenilworth was garrisoned by Henry II's forces; Geoffrey II de Clinton died in this period and the castle was taken fully into royal possession, a sign of its military importance. The de Clintons by now had moved to their estates in Buckinghamshire. By this point Kenilworth Castle consisted of the great keep, the inner bailey wall, a basic causeway across the smaller lake that preceded the creation of the Great Mere, and the local chase for hunting.
13th century
Henry's successor, Richard I, paid relatively little attention to Kenilworth, but under King John significant building resumed at the castle. When John was excommunicated in 1208, he embarked on a programme of rebuilding and enhancing several major royal castles. These included Corfe, Odiham, Dover, Scarborough as well as Kenilworth. John spent £1,115 on Kenilworth Castle between 1210 and 1216, building the outer bailey wall in stone and improving the other defences, including creating Mortimer's and Lunn's Towers. He also significantly improved the castle's water defences by damming the Finham and Inchford Brooks, creating the Great Mere. The result was to turn Kenilworth into one of the largest English castles of the time, with one of the largest artificial lake defences in England. Because John had poured so many resources into the building of the castle and considered it an important strategic castle, he appointed household knights such as Robert of Ropsley to act as castellans. John was forced to cede the castle to the baronial opposition as part of the guarantee of the Magna Carta, before it reverted to royal control early in the reign of his son, Henry III.
Henry III granted Kenilworth in 1244 to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who later became a leader in the Second Barons' War (1263–67) against the king, using Kenilworth as the centre of his operations. Initially the conflict went badly for King Henry, and after the Battle of Lewes in 1264 he was forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, under which his son, Prince Edward, was given over to the rebels as a hostage. Edward was taken back to Kenilworth, where chroniclers considered he was held in unduly harsh conditions. Released in early 1265, Edward then defeated Montfort at the Battle of Evesham; the surviving rebels under the leadership of Henry de Hastings, Montfort's constable at Kenilworth, regrouped at the castle the following spring. Edward's forces proceeded to lay siege to the rebels.
The siege of Kenilworth Castle in 1266 was "probably the longest in English history" according to historian Norman Pounds, and at the time was also the largest siege to have occurred in England in terms of the number of soldiers involved. Simon de Monfort's son, Simon de Montfort the Younger, promised in January 1266 to hand over the castle to the king. Five months later this had not happened, and Henry III laid siege to Kenilworth Castle on 21 June. Protected by the extensive water defences, the castle withstood the attack, despite Edward targeting the weaker north wall, employing huge siege towers and even attempting a night attack using barges brought from Chester. The distance between the royal trebuchets and the walls severely reduced their effectiveness, and heavier trebuchets had to be sent for from London. Papal intervention through the legate Ottobuono finally resulted in the compromise of the Dictum of Kenilworth, under which the rebels were allowed to re-purchase their confiscated lands provided they surrendered the castle; the siege ended on 14 December 1266. The water defences at Kenilworth influenced the construction of later castles in Wales, most notably Caerphilly.
Henry granted Kenilworth to his son, Edmund Crouchback, in 1267. Edmund held many tournaments at Kenilworth in the late 13th century, including a huge event in 1279, presided over by the royal favourite Roger de Mortimer, in which a hundred knights competed for three days in the tiltyard in an event called "the Round Table", in imitation of the popular Arthurian legends.
14th century
Edmund Crouchback passed on the castle to his eldest son, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in 1298. Lancaster married Alice de Lacy, which made him the richest nobleman in England. Kenilworth became the primary castle of the Lancaster estates, replacing Bolingbroke, and acted as both a social and a financial centre for Thomas. Thomas built the first great hall at the castle from 1314 to 1317 and constructed the Water Tower along the outer bailey, as well as increasing the size of the chase. Lancaster, with support from many of the other English barons, found himself in increasing opposition to Edward II. War broke out in 1322, and Lancaster was captured at the Battle of Boroughbridge and executed. His estates, including Kenilworth, were confiscated by the crown. Edward and his wife, Isabella of France, spent Christmas 1323 at Kenilworth, amidst major celebrations.
In 1326, however, Edward was deposed by an alliance of Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Edward was eventually captured by Isabella's forces and the custody of the king was assigned to Henry, Earl of Lancaster, who had backed Isabella's invasion. Henry, reoccupying most of the Lancaster lands, was made constable of Kenilworth and Edward was transported there in late 1326; Henry's legal title to the castle was finally confirmed the following year. Kenilworth was chosen for this purpose by Isabella probably both because it was a major fortification, and also because of the symbolism of its former owners' links to popular ideals of freedom and good government. Royal writs were issued in Edward's name by Isabella from Kenilworth until the next year. A deputation of leading barons led by Bishop Orleton was then sent to Kenilworth to first persuade Edward to resign and, when that failed, to inform him that he had been deposed as king. Edward formally resigned as king in the great hall of the castle on 21 January 1327. As the months went by, however, it became clear that Kenilworth was proving a less than ideal location to imprison Edward. The castle was in a prominent part of the Midlands, in an area that held several nobles who still supported Edward and were believed to be trying to rescue him. Henry's loyalty was also coming under question. In due course, Isabella and Mortimer had Edward moved by night to Berkeley Castle, where he died shortly afterwards. Isabella continued to use Kenilworth as a royal castle until her fall from power in 1330.
Henry of Grosmont, the Duke of Lancaster, inherited the castle from his father in 1345 and remodelled the great hall with a grander interior and roof. On his death Blanche of Lancaster inherited the castle. Blanche married John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III; their union, and combined resources, made John the second richest man in England next to the king himself. After Blanche's death, John married Constance, who had a claim to the kingdom of Castile, and John styled himself the king of Castile and León. Kenilworth was one of the most important of his thirty or more castles in England. John began building at Kenilworth between 1373 and 1380 in a style designed to reinforce his royal claims in Iberia. John constructed a grander great hall, the Strong Tower, Saintlowe Tower, the state apartments and the new kitchen complex. He made these renovations before his nephew took over his position. When not campaigning abroad, John spent much of his time at Kenilworth and Leicester, and used Kenilworth even more after 1395 when his health began to decline. In his final years, John made extensive repairs to the whole of the castle complex.
15th century
Many castles, especially royal castles, were left to decay in the 15th century; Kenilworth, however, continued to be used as a centre of choice, forming a late medieval "palace fortress". Henry IV, John of Gaunt's son, returned Kenilworth to royal ownership when he took the throne in 1399 and made extensive use of the castle. Henry V also used Kenilworth extensively, but preferred to stay in the Pleasance, the mock castle he had built on the other side of the Great Mere. According to the contemporary chronicler John Strecche, who lived at the neighbouring Kenilworth Priory, the French openly mocked Henry in 1414 by sending him a gift of tennis balls at Kenilworth. The French aim was to imply a lack of martial prowess; according to Strecche, the gift spurred Henry's decision to fight the Agincourt campaign. The account was used by Shakespeare as the basis for a scene in his play Henry V.
English castles, including Kenilworth, did not play a decisive role during the Wars of the Roses (1455–85), which were fought primarily in the form of pitched battles between the rival factions of the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. With the mental collapse of King Henry VI, Queen Margaret used the Duchy of Lancaster lands in the Midlands, including Kenilworth, as one of her key bases of military support. Margaret removed Henry from London in 1456 for his own safety and until 1461, Henry's court divided almost all its time among Kenilworth, Leicester and Tutbury Castle for the purposes of protection. Kenilworth remained an important Lancastrian stronghold for the rest of the war, often acting as a military balance to the nearby castle of Warwick. With the victory of Henry VII at Bosworth, Kenilworth again received royal attention; Henry visited frequently and had a tennis court constructed at the castle for his use. His son, Henry VIII, decided that Kenilworth should be maintained as a royal castle. He abandoned the Pleasance and had part of the timber construction moved into the base court of the castle.
16th century
The castle remained in royal hands until it was given to John Dudley in 1553. Dudley came to prominence under Henry VIII and became the leading political figure under Edward VI. Dudley was a patron of John Shute, an early exponent of classical architecture in England, and began the process of modernising Kenilworth. Before his execution in 1553 by Queen Mary for attempting to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, Dudley had built the new stable block and widened the tiltyard to its current form.
Kenilworth was restored to Dudley's son, Robert, Earl of Leicester, in 1563, four years after the succession of Elizabeth I to the throne. Leicester's lands in Warwickshire were worth between £500–£700, but Leicester's power and wealth, including monopolies and grants of new lands, depended ultimately on his remaining a favourite of the queen.
Leicester continued his father's modernisation of Kenilworth, attempting to ensure that Kenilworth would attract the interest of Elizabeth during her regular tours around the country. Elizabeth visited in 1566 and 1568, by which time Leicester had commissioned the royal architect Henry Hawthorne to produce plans for a dramatic, classical extension of the south side of the inner court. In the event this proved unachievable and instead Leicester employed William Spicer to rebuild and extend the castle so as to provide modern accommodation for the royal court and symbolically boost his own claims to noble heritage. After negotiation with his tenants, Leicester also increased the size of the chase once again. The result has been termed an English "Renaissance palace".
Elizabeth viewed the partially finished results at Kenilworth in 1572, but the complete effect of Leicester's work was only apparent during the queen's last visit in 1575. Leicester was keen to impress Elizabeth in a final attempt to convince her to marry him, and no expense was spared. Elizabeth brought an entourage of thirty-one barons and four hundred staff for the royal visit that lasted an exceptional nineteen days; twenty horsemen a day arrived at the castle to communicate royal messages. Leicester entertained the Queen and much of the neighbouring region with pageants, fireworks, bear baiting, mystery plays, hunting and lavish banquets. The cost was reputed to have amounted to many thousand pounds, almost bankrupting Leicester, though it probably did not exceed £1,700 in reality. The event was considered a huge success and formed the longest stay at such a property during any of Elizabeth's tours, yet the queen did not decide to marry Leicester.
An inventory of the furnishings of the castle in 1583 including paintings and tapestry runs to 50 pages. Eight tapestries had been bought from Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox with subjects included Josias, Demophon and Achilles, and the History of Noah.<ref>HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L'Isle & Dudley at Penshurst Place, vol. 1 (London, 1925), pp.260-1.</ref> Kenilworth Castle was valued at £10,401 in 1588, when Leicester died without legitimate issue and heavily in debt. In accordance with his will, the castle passed first to his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, and after the latter's death in 1590, to his illegitimate son, Sir Robert Dudley.
17th century
Sir Robert Dudley, having tried and failed to establish his legitimacy in front of the Court of the Star Chamber, went to Italy in 1605. In the same year Sir Thomas Chaloner, governor (and from 1610 chamberlain) to James I's eldest son Prince Henry, was commissioned to oversee repairs to the castle and its grounds, including the planting of gardens, the restoration of fish-ponds and improvement to the game park. During 1611–12 Dudley arranged to sell Kenilworth Castle to Henry, by then Prince of Wales. Henry died before completing the full purchase, which was finalised by his brother, Charles, who bought out the interest of Dudley's abandoned wife, Alice Dudley. When Charles became king, he gave the castle to his wife, Henrietta Maria; he bestowed the stewardship on Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, and after his death gave it to Carey's sons Henry and Thomas. Kenilworth remained a popular location for both King James I and his son Charles, and accordingly was well maintained. The most famous royal visit occurred in 1624, when Ben Jonson's The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth was performed for Charles.
The First English Civil War broke out in 1642. During its early campaigns, Kenilworth formed a useful counterbalance to the Parliamentary stronghold of Warwick. Kenilworth was used by Charles on his advance to Edgehill in October 1642 as a base for raids on Parliamentary strongholds in the Midlands. After the battle, however, the royalist garrison was withdrawn on the approach of Lord Brooke, and the castle was then garrisoned by Parliamentary forces. In April 1643 the new governor of the castle, Hastings Ingram, was arrested as a suspected Royalist double agent. By January 1645 the Parliamentary forces in Coventry had strengthened their hold on the castle, and attempts by Royalist forces to dislodge them from Warwickshire failed. Security concerns continued after the end of the First Civil War in 1646, and in 1649 Parliament ordered the slighting of Kenilworth. One wall of the great tower, various parts of the outer bailey and the battlements were destroyed, but not before the building was surveyed by the antiquarian William Dugdale, who published his results in 1656.
Colonel Joseph Hawkesworth, responsible for the implementation of the slighting, acquired the estate for himself and converted Leicester's gatehouse into a house; part of the base court was turned into a farm, and many of the remaining buildings were stripped for their materials. In 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne, and Hawkesworth was promptly evicted from Kenilworth. The Queen Mother, Henrietta Maria, briefly regained the castle, with the Earls of Monmouth acting as stewards once again, but after her death King Charles II granted the castle to Sir Edward Hyde, whom he later created Baron Hyde of Hindon and Earl of Clarendon. The ruined castle continued to be used as a farm, with the gatehouse as the principal dwelling; the King's Gate was added to the outer bailey wall during this period for the use of farm workers.
18th and 19th centuries
Kenilworth remained a ruin during the 18th and 19th centuries, still used as a farm but increasingly also popular as a tourist attraction. The first guidebook to the castle, A Concise history and description of Kenilworth Castle, was printed in 1777 with many later editions following in the coming decades.See Sharpe, 1825 for the 25th edition of the original guidebook.
The castle's cultural prominence increased after Sir Walter Scott wrote Kenilworth in 1821 describing the royal visit of Queen Elizabeth. Very loosely based on the events of 1575, Scott's story reinvented aspects of the castle and its history to tell the story of "the pathetic, beautiful, undisciplined heroine Amy Robsart and the steely Elizabeth I". Although considered today as a less successful literary novel than some of his other historical works, it popularised Kenilworth Castle in the Victorian imagination as a romantic Elizabethan location. Kenilworth spawned "numerous stage adaptations and burlesques, at least eleven operas, popular redactions, and even a scene in a set of dioramas for home display", including Sir Arthur Sullivan's 1865 cantata The Masque at Kenilworth. J. M. W. Turner painted several watercolours of the castle.
The number of visitors increased, including Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens. Work was undertaken during the 19th century to protect the stonework from further decline, with particular efforts to remove ivy from the castle in the 1860s.
20th and 21st centuries
The castle remained the property of the Clarendons until 1937, when Lord Clarendon found the maintenance of the castle too expensive and sold Kenilworth to the industrialist Sir John Siddeley. Siddeley, whose tax accounting in the 1930s had been at least questionable, was keen to improve his public image and gave over the running of the castle, complete with a charitable donation, to the Commissioner of Works. In 1958 his son gave the castle itself to the town of Kenilworth and English Heritage has managed the property since 1984 and is open to the public. The castle is classed as a Grade I listed building and as a scheduled monument.
Between 2005 and 2009, English Heritage attempted to restore Kenilworth's garden more closely to its Elizabethan form, using as a basis the description in the Langham letter and details from recent archaeological investigations. The reconstruction cost more than £2 million and was criticised by some archaeologists as being a "matter of simulation as much as reconstruction", due to the limited amount of factual information on the nature of the original gardens. In 2008 plans were put forward to re-create and flood the original Great Mere around the castle. As well as re-creating the look of the castle it was hoped that a new mere would be part of the ongoing flood alleviation plan for the area and that the lake could be used for boating and other waterside recreations.
Media appearance
It appeared as the venue of BBC One’s Antiques Roadshow in March 2021, filmed in 2020.
See also
Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
List of castles in England
Notes
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
Especially chapter 6.
External links
Kenilworth Castle on the English Heritage website
British Library, Add. MS 78177, Inventory book of the Earl of Leicester, 1582, includes furnishings at Kenilworth
Castles in Warwickshire
History of Warwickshire
Gardens in Warwickshire
English Heritage sites in Warwickshire
Ruins in Warwickshire
Kenilworth
Tourist attractions in Warwickshire
Scheduled monuments in Warwickshire
Grade I listed buildings in Warwickshire
Historic house museums in Warwickshire
Ruined castles in England
Water castles in the United Kingdom
Grade I listed ruins
Grade I listed castles | [
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17077 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad%20Lorenz | Konrad Lorenz | Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior. He developed an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.
Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early) bond instinctively with the first moving object that they see within the first hours of hatching. Although Lorenz did not discover the topic, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctive bond. In 1936 he met Tinbergen, and the two collaborated in developing ethology as a separate sub-discipline of biology. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Lorenz the 65th most cited scholar of the 20th century in the technical psychology journals, introductory psychology textbooks, and survey responses.
Lorenz's work was interrupted by the onset of World War II and in 1941 he was recruited into the German Army as a medic. In 1944, he was sent to the Eastern Front where he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and spent four years as a German prisoner of war in Soviet Armenia. After the war, he regretted his membership of the Nazi Party.
Lorenz wrote numerous books, some of which, such as King Solomon's Ring, On Aggression, and Man Meets Dog, became popular reading. His last work "Here I Am – Where Are You?" is a summary of his life's work and focuses on his famous studies of greylag geese.
Biography
Lorenz was the son of Adolf Lorenz, a wealthy and distinguished surgeon, and his wife Emma (née Lecher), a physician who had been her husband's assistant. The family lived on a large estate at Altenburg, and had a city apartment in Vienna. He was educated at the Public Schottengymnasium of the Benedictine monks in Vienna.
In his autobiographical essay, published in 1973 in Les Prix Nobel (winners of the prizes are requested to provide such essays), Lorenz credits his career to his parents, who "were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals", and to his childhood encounter with Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which filled him with a great enthusiasm about wild geese."
At the request of his father, Adolf Lorenz, he began a premedical curriculum in 1922 at Columbia University, but he returned to Vienna in 1923 to continue his studies at the University of Vienna. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1928 and became an assistant professor at the Institute of Anatomy until 1935. He finished his zoological studies in 1933 and received his second doctorate (PhD).
While still a student, Lorenz began developing what would become a large menagerie, ranging from domestic to exotic animals. In his popular book King Solomon's Ring, Lorenz recounts that while studying at the University of Vienna he kept a variety of animals at his parents' apartment, ranging from fish to a capuchin monkey named Gloria.
In 1936, at an international scientific symposium on instinct, Lorenz met his great friend and colleague Nikolaas Tinbergen. Together they studied geese—wild, domestic, and hybrid. One result of these studies was that Lorenz "realized that an overpowering increase in the drives of feeding as well as of copulation and a waning of more differentiated social instincts is characteristic of very many domestic animals". Lorenz began to suspect and fear "that analogous processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity." This observation of bird hybrids caused Lorenz to believe that domestication resulting from urbanisation in humans might also cause dysgenic effects, and to argue in two papers that the Nazi eugenics policies against this were therefore scientifically justified.
In 1940 he became a professor of psychology at the University of Königsberg. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941. He sought to be a motorcycle mechanic, but instead he was assigned as a military psychologist, conducting racial studies on humans in occupied Poznań under Rudolf Hippius. The objective was to study the biological characteristics of "German-Polish half-breeds" to determine whether they 'benefitted' from the same work ethics as 'pure' Germans. The degree to which Lorenz participated in the project is unknown, but the project director Hippius referred a couple of times to Lorenz as an "examining psychologist".
Lorenz later described that he once saw transports of concentration camp inmates at Fort VII near Poznań, which made him "fully realize the complete inhumanity of the Nazis".
He was sent to the Russian front in 1944 where he quickly became a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1948. In captivity in Soviet Armenia, he continued to work as a medic and "became tolerably fluent in Russian and got quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors." When he was repatriated, he was allowed to keep the manuscript of a book he had been writing, and his pet starling. He arrived back in Altenberg (his family home, near Vienna) both "with manuscript and bird intact." The manuscript became his 1973 book Behind the Mirror.
The Max Planck Society established the Lorenz Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Buldern, Germany, in 1950. In his memoirs Lorenz described the chronology of his war years differently from what historians have been able to document after his death. He himself claimed that he was captured in 1942, where in reality he was only sent to the front and captured in 1944, leaving out entirely his involvement with the Poznań project.
In 1958, Lorenz transferred to the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discoveries in individual and social behavior patterns" with two other important early ethologists, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. In 1969, he became the first recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
He was a friend and student of renowned biologist Sir Julian Huxley (grandson of "Darwin's bulldog", Thomas Henry Huxley). Famed psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson and Sir Peter Scott were good friends. Lorenz and Karl Popper were childhood friends; many years after they met, during the celebration of Popper's 80 years, they wrote together a book entitled Die Zukunft ist offen.
He retired from the Max Planck Institute in 1973 but continued to research and publish from Altenberg and Grünau im Almtal in Austria. He died on 27 February 1989 in Altenberg.
Personal life
Lorenz married his childhood friend, Margarethe Gebhardt, a gynaecologist, daughter of a market gardener who lived near the Lorenz family; they had a son and two daughters. He lived at the Lorenz family estate, which included a "fantastical neo-baroque mansion", previously owned by his father.
Ethology
Lorenz is recognized as one of the founding fathers of the field of ethology, the study of animal behavior. He is best known for his discovery of the principle of attachment, or imprinting, through which in some species a bond is formed between a newborn animal and its caregiver. This principle had been discovered by Douglas Spalding in the 19th century, and Lorenz's mentor Oskar Heinroth had also worked on the topic, but Lorenz's description of Prägung, imprinting, in nidifugous birds such as greylag geese in his 1935 book Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels ("The Companion in the Environment of Birds") became the foundational description of the phenomenon.
Here, Lorenz used Jakob von Uexküll's concept of Umwelt to understand how the limited perception of animals filtered out certain phenomena with which they interacted instinctively. For example, a young goose instinctively bonds with the first moving stimulus it perceives, whether it be its mother, or a person. Lorenz showed that this behavior of imprinting is what allows the goose to learn to recognize members of its own species, enabling them to be the object of subsequent behavior patterns such as mating. He developed a theory of instinctive behavior that saw behavior patterns as largely innate but triggered through environmental stimuli, for example the hawk/goose effect. He argued that animals have an inner drive to carry out instinctive behaviors, and that if they do not encounter the right stimulus they will eventually engage in the behavior with an inappropriate stimulus.
Lorenz's approach to ethology derived from a skepticism towards the studies of animal behavior done in laboratory settings. He considered that in order to understand the mechanisms of animal behavior, it was necessary to observe their full range of behaviors in their natural context. Lorenz did not carry out much traditional fieldwork but observed animals near his home. His method involved empathizing with animals, often using anthropomorphization to imagine their mental states. He believed that animals were capable of experiencing many of the same emotions as humans.
Tinbergen, Lorenz's friend with whom he conjointly received the Nobel prize, summarized Lorenz's major contribution to ethology as making behavior a topic of biological inquiry, considering behavior a part of an animal's evolutionary equipment. Tinbergen and Lorenz contributed to making Ethology a recognized sub-discipline within Biology and founded the first specialized journal of the field "Ethology" (originally "Zeitschift für Tierpsychologie")
Politics
National Socialism
Lorenz joined the Nazi Party in 1938 and accepted a university chair under the Nazi regime. In his application for party membership he wrote, "I'm able to say that my whole scientific work is devoted to the ideas of the National Socialists." His publications during that time led in later years to allegations that his scientific work had been contaminated by Nazi sympathies. His published writing during the Nazi period included support for Nazi ideas of "racial hygiene" couched in pseudoscientific metaphors.
In his autobiography, Lorenz wrote:
I was frightened—as I still am—by the thought that analogous genetical processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity. Moved by this fear, I did a very ill-advised thing soon after the Germans had invaded Austria: I wrote about the dangers of domestication and, in order to be understood, I couched my writing in the worst of Nazi terminology. I do not want to extenuate this action. I did, indeed, believe that some good might come of the new rulers. The precedent narrow-minded catholic regime in Austria induced better and more intelligent men than I was to cherish this naive hope. Practically all my friends and teachers did so, including my own father who certainly was a kindly and humane man. None of us as much as suspected that the word "selection", when used by these rulers, meant murder. I regret those writings not so much for the undeniable discredit they reflect on my person as for their effect of hampering the future recognition of the dangers of domestication.
After the war, Lorenz denied having been a party member, until his membership application was made public; and he denied having known the extent of the genocide, despite his position as a psychologist in the Office of Racial Policy. He was also shown to have made anti-Semitic jokes on 'Jewish characteristics' in letters to his mentor Heinroth. In 2015, the University of Salzburg posthumously rescinded an honorary doctorate awarded to Lorenz in 1983, citing his party membership and his assertions in his application that he was "always a National Socialist", and that his work "stands to serve National Socialist thought". The university also accused him of using his work to spread "basic elements of the racist ideology of National Socialism".
Ecology
During the final years of his life, Lorenz supported the fledgling Austrian Green Party and in 1984 became the figurehead of the Konrad Lorenz Volksbegehren, a grass-roots movement that was formed to prevent the building of a power plant at the Danube near Hainburg an der Donau and thus the destruction of the surrounding woodland.
Contributions and legacy
Lorenz has been called 'The father of ethology', by Niko Tinbergen. Perhaps Lorenz's most important contribution to ethology was his idea that behavior patterns can be studied as anatomical organs. This concept forms the foundation of ethological research. However, Richard Dawkins called Lorenz a "'good of the species' man", stating that the idea of group selection was "so deeply ingrained" in Lorenz's thinking that he "evidently did not realize that his statements contravened orthodox Darwinian theory."
Together with Nikolaas Tinbergen, Lorenz developed the idea of an innate releasing mechanism to explain instinctive behaviors (fixed action patterns). They experimented with "supernormal stimuli" such as giant eggs or dummy bird beaks which they found could release the fixed action patterns more powerfully than the natural objects for which the behaviors were adapted. Influenced by the ideas of William McDougall, Lorenz developed this into a "psychohydraulic" model of the motivation of behavior, which tended towards group selectionist ideas, which were influential in the 1960s. Another of his contributions to ethology is his work on imprinting. His influence on a younger generation of ethologists; and his popular works, were important in bringing ethology to the attention of the general public.
Lorenz claimed that there was widespread contempt for the descriptive sciences. He attributed this to the denial of perception as the source of all scientific knowledge: "a denial that has been elevated to the status of religion." He wrote that in comparative behavioral research, "it is necessary to describe various patterns of movement, record them, and above all, render them unmistakably recognizable."
There are three research institutions named after Lorenz in Austria: the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) was housed in Lorenz' family mansion at Altenberg before moving to Klosterneuburg in 2013 Discover the KLI; the Konrad Lorenz Forschungsstelle (KLF) at his former field station in Grünau; and the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, an external research facility of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
Vision of the challenges facing humanity
Lorenz predicted the relationship between market economics and the threat of ecological catastrophe. In his 1973 book, Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins, Lorenz addresses the following paradox:
All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering... tends instead to favor humanity's destruction
Lorenz adopts an ecological model to attempt to grasp the mechanisms behind this contradiction. Thus "all species... are adapted to their environment... including not only inorganic components... but all the other living beings that inhabit the locality." p31.
Fundamental to Lorenz's theory of ecology is the function of negative feedback mechanisms, which, in hierarchical fashion, dampen impulses that occur beneath a certain threshold. The thresholds themselves are the product of the interaction of contrasting mechanisms. Thus pain and pleasure act as checks on each other:
To gain a desired prey, a dog or wolf will do things that, in other contexts, they would shy away from: run through thorn bushes, jump into cold water and expose themselves to risks which would normally frighten them. All these inhibitory mechanisms... act as a counterweight to the effects of learning mechanisms... The organism cannot allow itself to pay a price which is not worth paying. p53.
In nature, these mechanisms tend towards a 'stable state' among the living beings of an ecology:
A closer examination shows that these beings... not only do not damage each other, but often constitute a community of interests. It is obvious that the predator is strongly interested in the survival of that species, animal or vegetable, which constitutes its prey. ... It is not uncommon that the prey species derives specific benefits from its interaction with the predator species... pp31–33.
Lorenz states that humanity is the one species not bound by these mechanisms, being the only one that has defined its own environment:
[The pace of human ecology] is determined by the progress of man's technology (p35)... human ecology (economy) is governed by mechanisms of POSITIVE feedback, defined as a mechanism which tends to encourage behavior rather than to attenuate it (p43). Positive feedback always involves the danger of an 'avalanche' effect... One particular kind of positive feedback occurs when individuals OF THE SAME SPECIES enter into competition among themselves... For many animal species, environmental factors keep... intraspecies selection from [leading to] disaster... But there is no force which exercises this type of healthy regulatory effect on humanity's cultural development; unfortunately for itself, humanity has learned to overcome all those environmental forces which are external to itself p44.
Regarding aggression in human beings, Lorenz states:
Let us imagine that an absolutely unbiased investigator on another planet, perhaps on Mars, is examining human behavior on earth, with the aid of a telescope whose magnification is too small to enable him to discern individuals and follow their separate behavior, but large enough for him to observe occurrences such as migrations of peoples, wars, and similar great historical events. He would never gain the impression that human behavior was dictated by intelligence, still less by responsible morality. If we suppose our extraneous observer to be a being of pure reason, devoid of instincts himself and unaware of the way in which all instincts in general and aggression in particular can miscarry, he would be at a complete loss how to explain history at all. The ever-recurrent phenomena of history do not have reasonable causes. It is a mere commonplace to say that they are caused by what common parlance so aptly terms "human nature." Unreasoning and unreasonable human nature causes two nations to compete, though no economic necessity compels them to do so; it induces two political parties or religions with amazingly similar programs of salvation to fight each other bitterly, and it impels an Alexander or a Napoleon to sacrifice millions of lives in his attempt to unite the world under his scepter. We have been taught to regard some of the persons who have committed these and similar absurdities with respect, even as "great" men, we are wont to yield to the political wisdom of those in charge, and we are all so accustomed to these phenomena that most of us fail to realize how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behavior of humanity actually is
Lorenz does not see human independence from natural ecological processes as necessarily bad. Indeed, he states that:
A completely new [ecology] which corresponds in every way to [humanity's] desires... could, theoretically, prove as durable as that which would have existed without his intervention (36).
However, the principle of competition, typical of Western societies, destroys any chance of this:
The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality... Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual. [...] One asks, which is more damaging to modern humanity: the thirst for money or consuming haste... in either case, fear plays a very important role: the fear of being overtaken by one's competitors, the fear of becoming poor, the fear of making wrong decisions or the fear of not being up to snuff... pp45–47.
In this book, Lorenz proposes that the best hope for mankind lies in our looking for mates based on the kindness of their hearts rather than good looks or wealth. He illustrates this with a Jewish story, explicitly described as such.
Lorenz was one of the early scientists who argue that human overpopulation could cause environmental degradation.
Philosophical speculations
In his 1973 book Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge, Lorenz considers the old philosophical question of whether our senses correctly inform us about the world as it is, or provide us only with an illusion. His answer comes from evolutionary biology. Only traits that help us survive and reproduce are transmitted. If our senses gave us wrong information about our environment, we would soon be extinct. Therefore, we can be sure that our senses give us correct information, for otherwise we would not be here to be deceived.
Honours and awards
Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1964
Elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1964
Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in 1969
Gold Medal of the Humboldt Society in 1972
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973
Honorary Doctorate, University of Salzburg, 1983, revoked in 2015
Grand Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband) in 1984
Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art in 1984
Works
Lorenz's best-known books are King Solomon's Ring and On Aggression, both written for a popular audience. His scientific work appeared mainly in journal articles, written in German; it became widely known to English-speaking scientists through its description in Tinbergen's 1951 book The Study of Instinct, though many of his papers were later published in English translation in the two volumes titled Studies in Animal and Human Behavior.
King Solomon's Ring (1949) (Er redete mit dem Vieh, den Vögeln und den Fischen, 1949)
Man Meets Dog (1950) (So kam der Mensch auf den Hund, 1950)
Evolution and Modification of Behaviour (1965)
On Aggression (1966) (Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression, 1963)
Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I (1970)
Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume II (1971)
Motivation of Human and Animal Behavior: An Ethological View. With Paul Leyhausen (1973). New York: D. Van Nostrand Co.
Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge (1973) (Die Rückseite des Spiegels. Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens, 1973)
Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (1974) (Die acht Todsünden der zivilisierten Menschheit, 1973)
The Year of the Greylag Goose (1979) (Das Jahr der Graugans, 1979)
The Foundations of Ethology (1982)
The Waning of Humaneness (1987) (Der Abbau des Menschlichen, 1983)
Here I Am – Where Are You? – A Lifetime's Study of the Uncannily Human Behaviour of the Greylag Goose. (1988). Translated by Robert D. Martin from Hier bin ich – wo bist du?.
The Natural Science of the Human Species: An Introduction to Comparative Behavioral Research – The Russian Manuscript (1944–1948) (1995)
See also
Animal mobbing behavior
Imprinting (psychology)
References
External links
A chapter from On Aggression (1963)
Review of Biologists Under Hitler
Konrad Lorenz Institutes:
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Altenberg
Konrad Lorenz Research Station, Grünau im Almtal
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology
1903 births
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Austrian ornithologists
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Columbia College (New York) alumni
Ethologists
German Army officers of World War II
Austrian military doctors
Scientists from Vienna
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20th-century Austrian zoologists
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Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
Max Planck Society people
Austrian military personnel of World War II | [
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17078 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.%20W.%20Jeter | K. W. Jeter | Kevin Wayne Jeter (born March 26, 1950), is an American science fiction and horror author known for his literary writing style, dark themes, and paranoid, unsympathetic characters. He has written novels set in the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, and has written three sequels to Blade Runner. Jeter also gained recognition for coining the term "steampunks."
Biography
Jeter attended college at California State University, Fullerton where he became friends with James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers, and through them, Philip K. Dick. Jeter was actually the inspiration for "Kevin" in Dick's semi-autobiographical novel, Valis. Many of Jeter's books focus on the subjective nature of reality in a way reminiscent of Dick's.
Philip K. Dick enthusiastically recommended Jeter's early cyberpunk novel, Dr. Adder. Due to its violent and sexually provocative content, it took Jeter around ten years to find a publisher for it. Jeter would also coin the term steampunk, in reference to cyberpunk in a letter to Locus in April 1987, in order to describe the steam-technology, alternate-history works that he published along with his friends, Blaylock and Powers. Jeter's steampunk novels are Morlock Night, Infernal Devices, and its sequel Fiendish Schemes (2013).
As well as his own original novels, K. W. Jeter has written three authorized novel sequels to the critically acclaimed 1982 motion picture Blade Runner, which was adapted from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
Bibliography
Original novels
Seeklight (1975)
The Dreamfields (1976)
Morlock Night (1979; a sequel to H. G. Wells' The Time Machine)
Soul Eater (1983)
Dark Seeker (1987)
Mantis (1987)
Farewell Horizontal (1989)
In the Land of the Dead (1989)
The Night Man (1989)
Alligator Alley (1989), with Mink Mole a.k.a. Tim MacNamara
Madlands (1991)
Wolf Flow (1992)
Noir (1998)
The Kingdom of Shadows (2011)
Death's Apprentice (2012), with Gareth Jefferson Jones
Dr. Adder trilogy
Dr. Adder (1984)
The Glass Hammer (1985)
Death Arms (1987)
George Dower trilogy
Infernal Devices (1987)
Fiendish Schemes (2013)
Grim Expectations (2017)
Novellas
Ninja Two-Fifty (2006)
Star Wars books
The Mandalorian Armor (1998)
Slave Ship (1998)
Hard Merchandise (1999)
Blade Runner sequels
Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995)
Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996)
Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels
Bloodletter (1993)
Warped (1995)
Comic book works
Mister E (DC) (1991)
Star Trek: N-Vector (Wildstorm) (2000)
The Kim Oh Thrillers (as Kim Oh)
Real Dangerous Girl (Editions Herodiade Oct. 2011)
Real Dangerous Job (Editions Herodiade Oct. 2011)
Real Dangerous People (Editions Herodiade Oct. 2011)
Real Dangerous Place (Editions Herodiade July 2012)
Real Dangerous Fun (Editions Herodiade July 2014)
Real Dangerous Ride (Editions Herodiade Mar. 2015)
References
External links
K. W. Jeter website
Cyberpunk timeline at cyberpunkreview.com.
1950 births
Living people
American science fiction writers
American horror writers
Cyberpunk writers
California State University, Fullerton alumni
Writers from San Francisco
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American novelists
American male novelists
Steampunk writers
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American male writers | [
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17079 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay%20Redfield%20Jamison | Kay Redfield Jamison | Kay Redfield Jamison (born June 22, 1946) is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds the post of the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
Education and career
Jamison began her study of clinical psychology at University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1960s, receiving both B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1971. She continued on at UCLA, receiving a C.Phil. in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1975, and became a faculty member at the university. She went on to found and direct the school's Affective Disorders Clinic, a large teaching and research facility for outpatient treatment. She also studied zoology and neurophysiology as an undergraduate at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
After several years as a tenured professor at UCLA, Jamison was offered a position as Assistant Professor and then Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Jamison has given visiting lectures at a number of different institutions while maintaining her professorship at Hopkins. She was distinguished lecturer at Harvard University in 2002 and the Litchfield lecturer at the University of Oxford in 2003. She was Honorary President and Board Member of the Canadian Psychological Association from 2009–2010. In 2010, she was a panelist in the series of discussions on the latest research into the brain, hosted by Charlie Rose with series scientist Eric Kandel on PBS.
Awards and recognition
Jamison has won numerous awards and published over 100 academic articles. She has been named one of the "Best Doctors in the United States" and was chosen by Time as a "Hero of Medicine." She was also chosen as one of the five individuals for the public television series Great Minds of Medicine. Jamison is the recipient of the National Mental Health Association's William Styron Award (1995), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Research Award (1996), the Community Mental Health Leadership Award (1999), and was a 2001 MacArthur Fellowship recipient.
In 2010, Jamison was conferred with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of St Andrews in recognition of all her life's work. In May 2011, The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, New York, made her a Doctor of Divinity honoris causa at its annual Commencement. In 2017 Jamison was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (CorrFRSE).
Academic contributions
Her latest book, Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Biography in 2018.
Her book Manic-Depressive Illness, first published in 1990 and co-authored with psychiatrist Frederick K. Goodwin is considered a classic textbook on bipolar disorder. The Acknowledgements section states that Goodwin "received unrestricted educational grants to support
the production of this book from Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Sanofi", but that although Jamison has "received occasional lecture honoraria
from AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Eli Lilly" she "has received no research support from any pharmaceutical or biotechnology company" and donates her royalties to a non-profit foundation.
Her seminal works among laypeople are her memoir An Unquiet Mind, which details her experience with severe mania and depression, and Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, providing historical, religious, and cultural responses to suicide, as well as the relationship between mental illness and suicide. In Night Falls Fast, Jamison dedicates a chapter to American public policy and public opinion as it relates to suicide. Her second memoir, Nothing Was the Same, examines her relationship with her second husband, the psychiatrist Richard Jed Wyatt, who was Chief of the Neuropsychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health until his death in 2002.
In her study Exuberance: The Passion for Life, she cites research that suggests that 15 percent of people who could be diagnosed as bipolar may never actually become depressed; in effect, they are permanently "high" on life. She mentions President Theodore Roosevelt as an example.
Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament is Jamison's exploration of how bipolar disorder can run in artistic or high-achieving families. As an example, she cites Lord Byron and his relatives.
Jamison wrote An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness in part to help clinicians see what patients find helpful in therapy. J. Wesley Boyd, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts University's School of Medicine, wrote, "Jamison's description [of the debt she owed her psychiatrist] illustrates the importance of merely being present for our patients and not trying to soothe them with platitudes or promises of a better future."
Personal life
Jamison has said she is an "exuberant" person who longs for peace and tranquility but in the end prefers "tumultuousness coupled to iron discipline" to a "stunningly boring life." In An Unquiet Mind, she concluded:
I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one's life, change the nature and direction of one's work, and give final meaning and color to one's loves and friendships.
Jamison was born to Dr. Marshall Verdine Jamison (1916–2012), an officer in the Air Force, and Mary Dell Temple Jamison (1916–2007). Jamison's father, and many others in his family, had bipolar disorder.
As a result of Jamison's military background, she grew up in many different places, including Florida, Puerto Rico, California, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. She has two older siblings, a brother and a sister, who are three years and half a year older, respectively. Her niece is writer Leslie Jamison. Jamison's interest in science and medicine began at a young age and was fostered by her parents. She worked as a candy striper at the hospital on the Andrews Air Force Base .
Jamison moved to California during adolescence, and soon thereafter began to struggle with bipolar disorder. She continued to struggle in college at UCLA. At first she wanted to become a doctor, but because of her increasing manic episodes she decided she could not maintain the rigorous discipline needed for medical school. She then found her calling in psychology. She flourished in this field and was extremely interested in mood disorders. Despite her studies, Jamison did not realize she was bipolar until three months into her first job as a professor in UCLA's Department of Psychology. After her diagnosis, she was put on lithium (medication), a common drug used to contain moods. At times, she would refuse the medication because it impaired her motor skills, but after a greater depression she decided to continue to take it. Jamison once attempted suicide by overdosing on lithium during a severe depressive episode.
Jamison is an Episcopalian, and was married to her first husband, Alain André Moreau, an artist, during her graduate school years. She then married Dr. Richard Wyatt in 1994; they remained married until his death in 2002. Wyatt was a psychiatrist who studied schizophrenia at the National Institutes of Health. Their romance is detailed in her memoir Nothing Was the Same.
In 2010, Jamison married Thomas Traill, a cardiology professor at Johns Hopkins.
Bibliography
(includes a study of Lord Byron's illness)
References
External links
A Conversation With Kay Redfield Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry by Grace Bello, The Atlantic
An Interview with Kay Jamison on Charlie Rose Show - 17 mins video
American women psychologists
American psychologists
American Episcopalians
American memoirists
Bipolar disorder researchers
American non-fiction writers
Writers from Baltimore
Writers from Los Angeles
Writers from Washington, D.C.
Academics of the University of St Andrews
Harvard University staff
Johns Hopkins University faculty
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
MacArthur Fellows
People with bipolar disorder
Suicide prevention
1946 births
Living people
American women academics
21st-century American women | [
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17080 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke | Karaoke | Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese kara "empty" and ōkesutora "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music is an instrumental version of a well-known popular song. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol, changing colour, or music video images, to guide the singer. In Chinese-speaking countries and regions such as mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, a karaoke box is called a KTV. The global karaoke market has been estimated to be worth nearly $10 billion.
History
1960s: Development of audio-visual-recording devices
From 1961 to 1966, the American TV network NBC carried a karaoke-like series, Sing Along with Mitch, featuring host Mitch Miller and a chorus, which superimposed the lyrics to their songs near the bottom of the TV screen for home audience participation. The primary difference between Karaoke and sing-along songs is the absence of the lead vocalist.
Sing-alongs (present since the beginning of singing) fundamentally changed with the introduction of new technology. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, stored audible materials began to dominate the music recording industry and revolutionized the portability and ease of use of band and instrumental music by musicians and entertainers as the demand for entertainers increased globally. This may have been attributable to the introduction of music cassette tapes, technology that arose from the need to customize music recordings and the desire for a "handy" format that would allow fast and convenient duplication of music and thereby meet the requirements of the entertainers' lifestyles and the 'footloose' character of the entertainment industry.
1970s: Development of the karaoke machine
The karaoke-styled machine was developed in various places in Japan. Even before the Invention of the first machines, the word “karaoke” had long been used in Japan’s entertainment industry to refer to the use of instrumental recordings as backing tracks in situations when a live band could not be arranged for a singer. Japanese engineer Shigeichi Negishi, who ran a consumer electronics assembly business in Tokyo, made the first prototype in 1967. He subsequently began mass producing coin-operated versions under the brand name "Sparko Box," making it the first commercially available karaoke machine. For media, it used 8-track cassette tapes of commercially available instrumental recordings. Lyrics were provided in a paper booklet. However, he ran into distribution troubles and ceased production of the Sparko Box shortly thereafter. Another early pioneer was Toshiharu Yamashita, who worked as a singing coach, and in 1970 sold an 8-track playback deck with microphone for sing-alongs.
In 1971, nightclub musician Daisuke Inoue independently invented his own karaoke machine in the city of Kobe. His biggest contribution was understanding the difficulty amateurs had in singing pop songs, recording his own versions of popular songs in keys that made them easier for casual singers. As such he also included a rudimentary reverb function to help mask singers' deficiencies. For these reasons, he is often considered to be the inventor of the modern business model for karaoke, even though he was not the first to create a machine and did not, like Negishi or Yamashita, file a patent. Music has long been part of Japan’s nightlife, and particularly so in the postwar era, when a variety of establishments such as cabarets and hostess clubs emerged to serve the needs of salarymen unwinding and entertaining clients. Music, whether performed for listening or singing along, played a key role. Inoue, a bandleader, drummer, and Electone keyboardist, specialized in leading sing-alongs at nightclubs in Sannnomiya, the entertainment district of the city of Kobe. He grew so popular that he became overbooked, and began recording instrumentals for clients when he could not personally perform for them. Realizing the potential for the market, he commissioned a coin-operated machine that metered out several minutes of singing time. Like Negishi’s, it was based on an 8-Track cassette deck, and Inoue called it the “8 Juke.” Inoue loaned the machines to establishments for free in exchange for a portion of the monthly earnings from the machines. He placed the first 8 Jukes in Sannomiya’s “snack bars,” but they initially failed to take off. Inoue then hired hostesses to ostentatiously sing on them, which successfully sparked interest. This also caused a great deal of friction with Inoue’s fellow musicians, who saw it as drawing customers away from them. Nevertheless karaoke spread throughout Kobe, then, over the course of the Seventies, all of Japan as major manufacturers such as JVC began producing their own versions of the singing machine. Karaoke was long performed mainly in bars and hostess clubs in front of other patrons, but in the Eighties, a new style with private rooms emerged, called karaoke boxes. This became the dominant form of karaoke performance in Japan. In 2004, Daisuke Inoue was awarded the tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Peace Prize for inventing karaoke, "thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."
The patent holder of the karaoke machine is Roberto del Rosario, who is from the Philippines. He developed the karaoke's sing-along system in 1975 and is recognized as the sole holder of a patent for a karaoke system in the world.
Later developments
Shortly after the development of the LaserDisc, Pioneer started to offer Video Karaoke machines in the 1980s. These are capable of displaying lyrics over a video that accompanies the music.
In 1992, a scientist named Yuichi Yasutomo created a networked karaoke system for Brother Industries. Called "tsushin karaoke" ("communications karaoke") it served up songs in MIDI format via phone lines to modem-equipped karaoke machines. This new technology swept Japan; by 1998, 94% of karaoke was being sung on networked karaoke machines. As an early form of music on demand, it could be called the first successful audio streaming service. It also allowed for big data analysis of songs popularity in realtime.
Karaoke soon spread to the rest of Asia and other countries all over the world. In-home karaoke machines soon followed but lacked success in the American and Canadian markets. When creators became aware of this problem, karaoke machines were no longer being sold strictly for the purpose of karaoke but as home theater systems to enhance television watching to "movie theater like quality". Home theater systems took off, and karaoke went from being the main purpose of the stereo system to a side feature.
As more music became available for karaoke machines, more people within the industry saw karaoke as a profitable form of lounge and nightclub entertainment. It is not uncommon for some bars to have karaoke performances seven nights a week. commonly with high-end sound equipment superior to the small, stand-alone consumer versions. Dance floors and lighting effects are also becoming common sights in karaoke bars. Lyrics are often displayed on multiple television screens around the bar.
Technology
A basic karaoke machine consists of a music player, microphone inputs, a means of altering the pitch of the played music, and an audio output. Some low-end machines attempt to provide vocal suppression so that one can feed regular songs into the machine and remove the voice of the original singer; however, this is rarely effective. Most common machines are CD+G, Laser Disc, VCD or DVD players with microphone inputs and an audio mixer built in. CD+G players use a special track called subcode to encode the lyrics and pictures displayed on the screen while other formats natively display both audio and video.
Most karaoke machines have technology that electronically changes the pitch of the music so that amateur singers can choose a key that is appropriate for their vocal range, while maintaining the original tempo of the song. (Old systems which used cassettes changed the pitch by altering playback speed, but none are still on the market, and their commercial use is virtually nonexistent.)
A popular game using karaoke is to type in a random number and call up a song, which participants attempt to sing. In some machines, this game is pre-programmed and may be limited to a genre so that they cannot call up an obscure national anthem that none of the participants can sing. This game has come to be called "Kamikaze Karaoke" or "Karaoke Roulette" in some parts of the United States and Canada.
Many low-end entertainment systems have a karaoke mode that attempts to remove the vocal track from regular audio CDs, using an Out Of Phase Stereo (OOPS) technique. This is done by center channel extraction, which exploits the fact that in most stereo recordings the vocals are in the center. This means that the voice, as part of the music, has equal volume on both stereo channels and no phase difference. To get the quasi-karaoke (mono) track, the left channel of the original audio is subtracted from the right channel. The Sega Saturn also has a "mute vocals" feature that is based on the same principle and is also able to adjust the pitch of the song to match the singer's vocal range.
This crude approach results in the often-poor performance of voice removal. Common effects are hearing the reverb effects on the voice track (due to stereo reverb on the vocals not being in the center); also, other instruments (snare/bass drum, bass guitar and solo instruments) that happen to be mixed into the center get removed, degrading this approach to hardly more than a gimmick in those devices. Recent years have seen the development of new techniques based on the fast Fourier transform. Although still not perfect, the results are usually much better than the old technique, because the stereo left-right comparison can be done on individual frequencies.
Early age
Early karaoke machines used 8-track cartridges (The Singing Machine) and cassette tapes, with printed lyric sheets, but technological advances replaced this with CDs, VCDs, laserdiscs and, currently, DVDs. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pioneer Electronics dominated the international karaoke music video market, producing high quality karaoke music videos (inspired by the music videos such as those on MTV).
In 1992, Taito introduced the X2000, which fetched music via a dial-up telephone network. Its repertoire of music and graphics was limited, but its smaller size and the advantage of continuous updates saw it gradually replace traditional machines. Karaoke machines which are connected via fiber-optic links enabling them to provide instant high-quality music and video are becoming increasingly popular.
Karaoke direct is an Internet division established in 1997 been serving the public online since 1998. They released the first karaoke player that supports MP3+G and now the KDX2000 model supporting karaoke in DIVX Format.
Video games
The earliest karaoke-based music video game, called Karaoke Studio, was released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1985, but its limited computing ability made for a short catalog of songs and therefore reduced replay value. As a result, karaoke games were considered little more than collector's items until they saw release in higher-capacity DVD formats.
Karaoke Revolution, created for the PlayStation 2 by Harmonix and released by Konami in North America in 2003, is a console game in which a single player sings along with on-screen guidance and receives a score based on pitch, timing, and rhythm. The game soon spawned several follow-ups including Karaoke Revolution Vol. 2, Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3, Karaoke Revolution Party Edition, CMT Presents Karaoke Revolution: Country and Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol. While the original Karaoke Revolution was also eventually released for the Microsoft Xbox console in late 2004, the new online-enabled version included the ability to download additional song packs through the console's exclusive Xbox Live service.
A similar series, SingStar, published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, is particularly popular in the European and Australasian markets. Other music video game titles that involve singing by the player include Boogie and its sequel Boogie Superstar, Disney Sing It, Get On Da Mic, the Guitar Hero series starting with World Tour, High School Musical: Sing It!, Lips, the Rock Band series, SingSong, UltraStar, and Xbox Music Mixer.
An Xbox Live App with the same name created by iNiS and powered by The Karaoke Channel/Stingray Karaoke was released on 12 December 2012. The app uses Unreal Engine 3.
VCDs
Many VCD players in Southeast Asia have a built-in karaoke function. On stereo recordings, one speaker will play the music with the vocal track, and the other speaker will play the music without the vocal track. So, to sing karaoke, users play the music-only track through both speakers. In the past, there were only pop-song karaoke VCDs. Nowadays, different types of karaoke VCDs are available. Cantonese opera karaoke VCD is now a big hit among the elderly in China.
On mobile phones
In 2003, several companies started offering a karaoke service on mobile phones, using a Java MIDlet that runs with a text file containing the words and a MIDI file with the music. More usual is to contain the lyrics within the same MIDI file. Often the file extension is then changed from .mid to .kar, both are compatible with the standard for MIDI files.
Researchers have also developed karaoke games for cell phones to boost music database training. In 2006, the Interactive Audio Lab at Northwestern University released a game called Karaoke Callout for the Nokia Series 60 phone. The project has since then expanded into a web-based game and will be released soon as an iPhone application.
Karaoke is now available for the Android, iPhone and other playback devices at many internet storefronts.
On computers and the Internet
Since 2003, much software has been released for hosting karaoke shows and playing karaoke songs on a personal computer. Instead of having to carry around hundreds of CD-Gs or laserdiscs, KJs can "rip" their entire libraries onto their hard drives and play the songs and lyrics from the computer.
Additionally, new software permits singers to sing and listen to one another over the Internet.
Karaoke devices in the 2000s saw a shift towards the use of hard drives to store large collections of karaoke tracks and touch screen devices that allows users to select their songs. This trend was driven by the decline cost of hard drive storage and improvement in touchscreen technology in the consumer space.
In 2010, a new concept of home karaoke system through the use of live streaming from a cloud server emerged. The earliest cloud based streaming device, KaraOK!, was released by StarHub on 14 January 2010, licensing songs from RIMMS. The use of cloud streaming allows for smaller devices with over the air updates compared to costly and bulky hard drive-based systems.
In August 2017, ROXI home music system launched in the UK, and later that year in the US, providing on-demand music streaming and a karaoke singalong feature called Sing with the Stars. ROXI matches songs in its cloud based licensed music streaming catalogue to a lyrics database to provide real time scrolling on-screen lyrics. The music system also uses a hand-held Wii style point and click controller with built-in microphone allowing users to select and sing along to thousands of songs from its catalogue.
In July 2019, YouTube channel Sing King Karaoke reached 6 million subscribers, making it the largest karaoke channel on the platform.
In automobiles
Taxicabs equipped with sound systems and a microphone appeared in South Korea in the 1990s.
Chinese automobile maker Geely Automobile received much press in 2003 for being the first to equip a car, their Beauty Leopard, with a karaoke machine as standard equipment. Europe's first commercial "karaokecab" which was a London TX4 taxi with a karaoke machine inside for occupants of the cab to use to sing whilst in the cab. The idea and installation were made by Richard Harfield of karaokeshop.com and was featured on Channel 4's Big Breakfast and several German TV stations featured the karaokecab. Granada TV also featured the cab, which is now in its 4th vehicle and operates in Bolton, Greater Manchester as Clint's Karaoke Cab. Karaoke is often also found as a feature in aftermarket in-car DVD players.
In 2010, karaoke taxis were available in London, England in the 'Kabeoke' fleet of private hire vehicles.
Tesla's newer cars have an infotainment system that features a "Car-a-oke" app.
Alternative playback devices
The CD+G format of a karaoke disc, which contains the lyrics on a specially encoded subcode track, has heretofore required special—and expensive—equipment to play. Commercial players have come down in price, though, and some unexpected devices (including the Sega Saturn video game console and XBMC Media Center on the first Xbox) can decode the graphics; in fact, karaoke machines, including video and sometimes recording capability, are often popular electronics items for sale in toy stores and electronics stores.
Additionally, there is software for Windows, Pocket PC, Linux, and Macintosh PCs that can decode and display karaoke song tracks, though usually these must be ripped from the CD first, and possibly compressed.
In addition to CD+G and software-based karaoke, microphone-based karaoke players enjoy popularity mainly in North America and some Asian countries such as the Philippines. Microphone-based karaoke players only need to be connected to a TV—and in some cases to a power outlet; in other cases they run on batteries. These devices often support advanced features, such as pitch correction and special sound effects. Some companies offer karaoke content for paid download to extend the song library in microphone-based karaoke systems.
CD+G, DVD, VCD and microphone-based players are most popular for home use. Due to song selection and quality of recordings, CD+G is the most popular format for English and Spanish. It is also important to note that CD+G has limited graphical capabilities, whereas VCD and DVD usually have a moving picture or video background. VCD and DVD are the most common format for Asian singers due to music availability and largely due to the moving picture/video background.
Terms
Jūhachiban
(十八番. also ohako). Many karaoke singers have one song which they are especially good at and which they use to show off their singing abilities. In Japan, this is called jūhachiban in reference to Kabuki Jūhachiban, the 18 best kabuki plays.
Karamovie or Movioke
Karaoke using scenes from movies. Amateur actors replace their favorite movie stars in popular movies. Usually facilitated by software or remote control muting and screen blanking/freezing. Karamovie originated in 2003.
Karaoke jockey or KJ
A karaoke jockey plays and manages the music for a venue. The role of the KJ often includes announcing song titles and whose turn it is to use the microphone.
Hitokara
Singing karaoke alone is called hitokara (ヒトカラ, abbreviation for ひとりカラオケ; ひとり hitori, "one person" or "alone" + カラオケ karaoke) in Japan. Recently this trend has become very popular amongst amateur singers in Japan, India and China.
In culture
Public places
Asia
In Asia, a karaoke box is the most popular type of karaoke venue. A karaoke box is a small or medium-sized room containing karaoke equipment rented by the hour or half-hour, providing a more intimate atmosphere. Karaoke venues of this type are often dedicated businesses, some with multiple floors and a variety of amenities including food service, but hotels and business facilities sometimes provide karaoke boxes as well. In South Korea, karaoke boxes are called norebangs. In Taiwan and China, a karaoke establishment is called a KTV.
In some traditional Chinese restaurants, there are so-called "mahjong-karaoke rooms" where the elderly play mahjong while teenagers sing karaoke. The result is fewer complaints about boredom, but more noise. Noise regulations can be an issue, especially when karaoke is brought into residential areas.
Violent reactions to karaoke singing have made headlines in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, with reports of killings by listeners disturbed by the singing. In the Philippines, at least half a dozen killings of people singing "My Way" caused newspapers there to label the phenomenon "My Way killings"; some bars refuse to allow the song, and some singers refrain from vocalizing it among strangers.
Prostitution has been an issue in certain karaoke boxes in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia despite being illegal in these countries. In Thailand, "karaoke girls" are brought in not only from Thailand but from neighboring countries and are sent to other parts of the world.
Asian karaoke establishments are often fronts for gentlemen's clubs, where men pay for female hosts to drink, sing, and dance with them. In Japan, such a business is called a piano bar.
After the COVID-19 outbreak, karaoke bars in Japan reopened with rules such as mask wearing, mic covers, and singer must face same direction as onlookers.
North America and Europe
A karaoke bar, restaurant, club or lounge is a bar or restaurant that provides karaoke equipment so that people can sing publicly, sometimes on a small stage. Most of these establishments allow patrons to sing for free, with the expectation that sufficient revenue will be made selling food and drink to the singers. Less commonly, the patron wishing to sing must pay a small fee for each song they sing. Both are financially beneficial for the establishment by not having to pay a professional singer or a cabaret tax which is usually applied to any entertainment of more than one person.
Many establishments offer karaoke on a weekly schedule, while some have shows every night. Such establishments commonly invest more in both equipment and song discs, and are often extremely popular, with an hour or more wait between a singer's opportunities to take the stage (called the rotation).
Private karaoke rooms, similar to Asia's karaoke boxes, are commonplace in communities such as Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Houston, TX and San Francisco. Toronto's Koreatown is one example of an area where popularity is growing to the point that private karaoke rooms require reservations on the weekends.
Karaoke is very popular in Scotland with dedicated karaoke venues in most reasonably large towns. Aberdeen is home to a number of notable karaoke bars including Wagleys, The Spirit Level, Bardot's Karaoke Bar, Sing City.
Throughout much of North America, live band karaoke is also popular. With live band karaoke, singers sing with a live band instead of the prerecorded backing track.
Rock critic Rob Sheffield claims that the 1986 music video for the song "Wild Wild Life" by the Talking Heads was the first depiction of karaoke in American popular culture. The video features a variety of characters taking turns singing portions of the song to an audience at a bar. However a karaoke bar in Honolulu called "Sing Sing" is depicted in an episode of the American TV series Magnum, P.I. entitled "The Man from Marseilles" first broadcast on March 14, 1985.
In Italy, karaoke had become popular by early 1994, popularized by television personality Rosario Fiorello who had a karaoke program that appeared weekly on national television.
Karaoke made a brief appearance in Sofia Coppola's 2003 movie Lost in Translation, and it was, three years before, the primary focus of Bruce Paltrow's 2000 film Duets, written by John Bynum and starring Paltrow's daughter Gwyneth and Huey Lewis, "anchor-man" of Huey Lewis and the News.
Also popular among the international performing arts community in Europe, a group of Finnish producers organized an international karaoke competition called KWC (Karaoke World Championships). Their 2011 international karaoke competition has attracted ABC producers to help host America's karaoke competition in Las Vegas Nevada called Karaoke Battle USA. The competition is promised to select 1 male and 1 female contestant to represent the U.S. in the international arena. Largely supported by the Broadway community in Times Square, Pulse Karaoke Lounge sponsored 2011's New York state karaoke finals to select individuals representing New York in the eastern finals.
According to The New York Times, the dozens of karaoke bars in Portland, Oregon make it not just "the capital of karaoke" in the United States, but "one of the most exciting music scenes in America."
Taiwan
In Taiwan, karaoke bars similar to those in Japan and South Korea are called KTVs, which stands for karaoke television. Karaoke is a highly popular form of recreation in Taiwan. The biggest KTV chains in Taiwan are Partyworld Cashbox, Holiday KTV and NewCBParty.
South Korea
A noraebang (Hangul: 노래방) refers to a singing venue in South Korea where private sound-proof rooms are available for rent, equipped for singing – typically microphones, remote controls, a large video screen, couches, and mood décor such as disco lights and tambourines. The term noraebang is a Korean compound word, blending norae (Hangul: 노래, English: song) and bang (Hangul: 방, English: room). It is the regional equivalent to the Karaoke box in Japan.
Singing is an important part of social life in Korea, where people will perform, and be persuaded to perform, an impromptu song at virtually any social occasion. As such, noraebangs are popular and widespread, often identifiable by bright neon signs with musical notes or microphones.
Often the last stop after a night of alcohol-lined entertainment for youths and businesspeople alike,<ref>"Doing Business in Korea" Korean New Zealand Business Council </ref> noraebangs are also a favorite family pastime, and many are surprisingly dry venues. People also frequent noraebangs as a form of stress relief, and some noraebangs cater to those who seek to sing alone.
Philippines
Karaoke (Filipino: videoke) has become a pastime activity in the Philippines especially when entertaining friends at home. Instrumental music (also widely called minus-one) on tapes during the late 1960s particularly with the dominance of pop hits from the Beatles had become favorites. Singing contests during town or barangay festivals and fiestas would attract contestants who carry with them cassette tapes with these instrumentals to perform in their own rendition.
Videoke in the Philippines is also known for the My Way killings, a number of fatal disputes which arose due to the singing of the song "My Way", popularized by Frank Sinatra, in karaoke or "videoke" bars. A The New York Times'' article estimated the number of killings to be about six up to 2010. Another source estimated at least 12 between 2002 and 2012. Opinions differ over whether the possible connection is due to the coincidence that the song was simply frequently sung amid the nation's videoke bars where violence is common or to the aggressive lyrics of the song itself.
Sharp Corporation produced a karaoke party system, HK-Z20, with double cassette decks, one for synchronizing/recording and one for continuous playback. This model became a popular device and had been exported to other countries. One long-running popular device from the 1990s is Kumyoung, an HDD karaoke player that comes with thousands of songs which popular in business such as KTV bars, and karaoke machine rentals. This device also provides singing scores, and later models have a recording feature. In 2000s, home karaoke in the Philippines became popular when Magic Sing, a microphone based karaoke machine was released. It was created by a Korean manufacturer Enter-Tech. It was based on song chips instead of a Hard Drive. It had also score system and many mire just like Kumyoung. There are 2 variants of Magic Sing namely Xtreme Magic Sing and Wow Magic Sing. In 2010s, In-a-Jiffy Enterprises, the owner of WOW brand, ended it’s contract with Enter-Tech ending their distribution of Magic Sing in their own brand and sided with TJ MEDIA which became Grand Videoke, leading only Astra, the sole owner of Xtreme, is the only remaining distibutor of the karaoke microphone. Karaoke brands are currently available, such as The Platinum Karaoke, Megapro Plus, Megasound, HDT (Hyundai Digital Technology), TJ Media, GRAND Videoke, WOW Fiesta, Megavision, Karavision & many others.
Australia
In Australia, karaoke was gradually popularized in the late 1980s. A number of Filipino migrants brought with them their own 'minus-one' music from cassette music tapes and video tapes purchased mainly in the Philippines. A number of Philippine-imported karaoke units with two cassette drives were used in private households. Video TV tapes, mainly consisted of popular and contemporary songs rendered by Filipino artists, and with a mix of English and Tagalog songs were soon used. Projected lyrics on TV screens became very common as the main source of karaoke renditions. These tapes were soon replaced by CD+Gs, but a plug-n-play karaoke microphone that housed a factory built-in songchip loaded with hundreds of karaoke songs quickly became a favourite. This unit would usually be purchased in the Philippines and brought into Australia, becoming a common household item and is popularly used during gatherings.
Commercially, karaoke was first introduced into Australia in 1989 by Robin Hemmings who had seen karaoke operating in Fiji. Prior to this, karaoke was generally unknown to the broader population. Hemmings, of Adelaide, South Australia, offered systems manufactured by Pioneer which used 12in (30 cm) double-sided laser discs containing a maximum of 24 songs with accompanying video track and subtitled lyrics.
Despite some initial resistance, Adelaide hoteliers The Booze Brothers offered limited access to their hotels and the karaoke phenomenon was born. Hemmings business, Karaoke Hire Systems, operated seven machines on a casual rental basis to numerous hotels, clubs and private parties in and around Adelaide with an additional machine on snow-season lease at Jindabyne, NSW. Each system came complete with up to 24 discs containing a maximum of 576 music video tracks. In Adelaide, karaoke reached its zenith in 1991 with virtually every hotel offering at least one karaoke night per week with many having undertaken alterations to their premises with the addition of purpose built stages and sound systems. Karaoke rental suppliers had proliferated during this period and Hemmings is known to have sold his business in late 1991 as a going concern.
Karaoke's popularity in Adelaide waned from mid 1992 and was virtually extinguished by early 1993. Despite periodic attempts by hoteliers and clubs to revitalise karaoke, it has never managed to re-establish its former popularity.
In the mid-2000s, a number of karaoke bars sprouted in Sydney with karaoke boxes frequented by Japanese students and tourists and a few locals, especially on Thursday nights and weekends. A number of clubs such as RSL, League Clubs and restaurants and bars mainly feature karaoke nights to entice more customers and to entertain guests. Sunfly Karaoke is probably the major karaoke brand in Australia as well as the UK.
Production methods
Karaoke is very popular in Asian countries, and many artists distribute a karaoke track at the same time the song is released. The most common form of karaoke nowadays is released in MIDI format with on-screen lyrics on a DVD background video.
In Europe and North America, karaoke tracks are almost never done by the original artist, but are re-recorded by other musicians.
South Korean firms T.J. Media and Kumyoung produce digital music content in MIDI format and manufacture computer music players for the Asian market.
Contests
Since the rise of karaoke around the world, karaoke contests have become a phenomenon of mainstream culture, giving non-professional singers opportunity to showcase their talent, win prizes, and at times, travel the world. Contest participants are usually rated 50% by customer votes and 50% by judges' votes, but this may vary, depending on the venue and the level of competition.
Karaoke World Championship is one of the most popular karaoke contests and has been around since 2003. In September 2011, Karaoke World Championships took place in Killarney, Ireland.
World records
As of 2009, the world record for the most people singing karaoke was at Bristol Motor Speedway in the United States. Over 160,000 people began to sing Garth Brooks' song "Friends in Low Places" before the NASCAR Sharpie 500 race began.
Hungary holds the record for the longest Karaoke marathon with multiple participants for an event organized in the Honey Grill Restaurant by Gabor Dániel Szabó (REVVOX Music). It lasted for 1,011 hours, 1 minute, between 20 July 2011, and 31 August 2011. Each song was over 3 minutes long and the gap between songs was no longer than 30 seconds. No song was repeated in any two-hour period.
The record for the longest Karaoke solo marathon is held by the Italian Leonardo Polverelli, who sang 1,295 songs in 101 hours, 59 minutes, and 15 seconds.
See also
Closed captioning
Fansub
List of English words of Japanese origin
Music Minus One
PowerPoint karaoke
Same language subtitling
Subtitling
Surtitles
Utagoe Kissa
References
External links
Japanese entertainment terms
Party games
Singing
Lyrics
1970s establishments in Japan
Japanese inventions
Wasei-eigo
Portmanteaus
Japanese words and phrases | [
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17083 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keykode | Keykode | Keykode (also written as either KeyKode or KeyCode) is an Eastman Kodak Company advancement on edge numbers, which are letters, numbers and symbols placed at regular intervals along the edge of 35 mm and 16 mm film to allow for frame-by-frame specific identification. It was introduced in 1990.
Keykode is a variation of timecode used in the post-production process which is designed to uniquely identify film frames in a film stock.
Edge numbers
Edge numbers (also called key numbers or footage numbers) are a series of numbers with key lettering printed along the edge of a 35 mm negative at intervals of one foot (16 frames or 64 perforations) and on a 16 mm negative at intervals of six inches (twenty frames). The numbers are placed on the negative at the time of manufacturing by one of two methods:
Latent image exposes the edge of the film while it passes through the perforation machine. This method is primarily used for color negative films.
Visible ink is sometimes used to imprint on the edge of the film – again in manufacturing – at the time of perforations. The ink, which is not affected by photographic chemicals, is normally printed onto the base surface of the film. The numbers are visible on both the raw stock (unexposed) and processed (exposed and developed) film. This method is primarily used for black & white negative film.
The edge numbers serve a number of purposes. Every key frame is numbered with a multi-digit identifier that may be referred to later. In addition, a date of manufacturing is imprinted, then the type of emulsion and the batch number. This information is transferred from the negative (visible once developed) to the positive prints. The print may be edited and handled while the original negative remains safely untouched. When the film editing is complete, the edge numbers on the final cut film correspond back to their identical frames on the original negative so that a conform edit can be made of the original negative to match the work print.
Laboratories can also imprint their own edge numbers on the processed film negative or print to identify the film for their own means. This is normally done in yellow ink. A common workflow for film editing involves edge-coding printed film simultaneously with the film's synchronized audio track, on 35mm magnetic film, so that a foot of film and its synchronized audio have identical edge numbers.
Eastman Kodak began using latent image edge numbering on their manufactured 35mm raw film stocks in 1919.
Keykode
With the popularity of telecine transfers and video edits, Kodak invented a machine readable edge number that could be recorded via computer, read by the editing computer and automatically produce a "cut list" from the video edit of the film.
To do this, Kodak utilized the USS-128 barcode alongside the human-readable edge numbers. They also improved the quality and readability of the human-readable information to make it easier to identify. The Keykode consists of 12 characters in human-readable form followed by the same information in barcode form. Keykode is a form of metadata identifier for film negatives.
Keykode deciphered
An example Keykode:
KU 22 9611 1802+02.3
The first two letters in the Keykode are the manufacturer code (E and K both stand for Kodak, F stands for Fuji, etc.) and the stock identifier, respectively (in this case Kodak's U standing for 5279 emulsion); each manufacturer has different stocks' naming convention for their emulsion codes.
The next six numbers in the Keykode (usually split in 2+4 digits) are the identification number for that roll of film. On Kodak film stocks, it remains consistent for the entire roll. Fuji Stocks will increment this number when the frame number advances past "9999".
Computers read the (optional) frame offset (marked every four perforations on actual film by a single "-" dash) by adding digits to the Keykode after the plus sign. In this case, a frame offset of two frames (with respect to the film foot) is specified. The number of frames within a film foot depends on both the film width and the frame pulldown itself, and can also be uneven within the same roll, but rather repeat periodically (like in the 35mm 3perf. pulldown).
The last (optional), dot-separated number is the perforation offset which, if preceded by a frame offset like in the above example, is a bias within the just-specified frame; otherwise (as interpreted by most DI software) this considered to be an offset within the whole film foot.
EASTMAN 5279 167 3301 122 KD
These numbers are consistent for a whole batch of film and may not change in many rolls. EASTMAN is the film manufacturer, 5279 is the stock type identifier. The next three numbers (167) is the emulsion batch number. The next series of four digits (3301) is the roll and part code, followed by the printer identification number that made the Keykode (122) and finally a two letter date designation (KD). In this case, KD=1997.
See also
35 mm film
Color motion picture film
Film stock
List of motion picture film stocks
Film base
Timecode
References
Kodak Motion Picture Film (H1) (4th ed). Eastman Kodak Company.
The Kodak Worldwide Student Program Student Filmmaker's Handbook: Motion Picture and Television Imaging (H-19) (1991) (2nd Ed). Eastman Kodak Company.
Konigsberg, Ira (1987). The Complete Film Dictionary Meridan PAL books. .
External links
Film production
Film editing
Film and video terminology
Metadata
Kodak
Photographic film markings | [
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17086 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knout | Knout | A knout is a heavy scourge-like multiple whip, usually made of a series of rawhide thongs attached to a long handle, sometimes with metal wire or hooks incorporated. The English word stems from a spelling-pronunciation of a French transliteration of the Russian word кнут (knut), which simply means "whip".
The original
Some claim it was a Tatar invention and was introduced into Russia in the 15th century, perhaps by Grand Duke Ivan III the Great (1462–1505). Others trace the word to Varangians and derive it from the Swedish knutpiska, a kind of whip with knots. Still others maintain it is of generic Germanic origin, not necessarily Scandinavian, comparing it with the German Knute, Dutch knoet (both meaning knout) and with Old Norse knutr, Anglo-Saxon cnotta and English knot.
The Russian knout had different forms. One was a lash of rawhide, long, attached to a wooden handle, long. The lash ended in a metal ring, to which was attached a second lash as long, ending also in a ring, to which in turn was attached a few inches of hard leather ending in a beak-like hook. Another kind consisted of many thongs of skin plaited and interwoven with wire, ending in loose wired ends, like the cat-o-nine tails.
A variation, known as the great knout, consisted of a handle about long, to which was fastened a flat leather thong about twice the length of the handle, terminating with a large copper or brass ring to which was affixed a strip of hide about broad at the ring, and terminating at the end of in a point. This was soaked in milk and dried in the sun to make it harder.
Knouts were used in Russia for flogging as formal corporal punishment of criminals and political offenders. The victim was tied to a post or on a triangle of wood and stripped, receiving the specified number of strokes on the back. A sentence of 100 or 120 lashes was equivalent to a death sentence. Even twenty lashes could maim, and with the specially extended Great Knout, twenty blows could kill, with death sometimes being attributed to the breaking of the spine.
The executioner was usually a criminal who had to pass through a probation and regular training, being let off his own penalties in return for his services. Peter the Great is traditionally accused of knouting his son Alexis to death; the latter was tortured by knouting to extract confessions.
Emperor Nicholas I abolished the punishment by knout in 1845, and replaced it with the pleti, lashes with three thongs which could end in lead balls. They were later abolished throughout Russia and reserved for the penal settlements, mainly in Siberia. Prisoners transported to Siberia in the late 19th century were sometimes branded on their foreheads with irons with the letters VRNK meaning V thief, R robber, and NK punished by the knout. This branding led to the Siberian slang word "varnok", meaning either a settler or deportee.
Elsewhere and metaphoric use
The instrument became synonymous in Western European languages with what was seen as the tyrannical cruelty of the autocratic government of Russia, much as the sjambok brought to mind the apartheid government of South Africa or the bullwhip was associated with the period of slavery and Jim Crow laws in America.
The expression "under the knout" is used to designate any harsh totalitarianism, and by extension its equivalent in a private context, e.g., a grim patriarch ruling his household "with an iron rod". In Dutch, "onder de knoet houden" is commonly used for strict party discipline, e.g., eliminating actual debate when passing a law (compare the whip function in English).
See also
Nagaika
References
External links
Whips | [
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17087 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin%20Tsiolkovsky | Konstantin Tsiolkovsky | Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (; – 19 September 1935) was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist who pioneered astronautic theory. Along with the Frenchman Robert Esnault-Pelterie, the Transylvanian German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket-engineers Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, who contributed to the success of the Soviet space program.
Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about southwest of Moscow. A recluse by nature, his unusual habits made him seem bizarre to his fellow townsfolk.
Early life
Tsiolkovsky was born in Izhevskoye (now in Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast), in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family. His father, Makary Edward Erazm Ciołkowski, was a Polish forester of Roman Catholic faith who emigrated to Russia; his Russian Orthodox mother was of mixed Volga Tatar and Russian origin. His father was successively a forester, teacher, and minor government official. At the age of 10, Konstantin caught scarlet fever and became hard of hearing. When he was 13, his mother died. He was not admitted to elementary schools because of his hearing problem, so he was self-taught. As a reclusive home-schooled child, he passed much of his time by reading books and became interested in mathematics and physics. As a teenager, he began to contemplate the possibility of space travel.
Tsiolkovsky spent three years attending a Moscow library where Russian cosmism proponent Nikolai Fyodorov worked. He later came to believe that colonizing space would lead to the perfection of the human species, with immortality and a carefree existence.
Additionally, inspired by the fiction of Jules Verne, Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of spaceflight and the first person to conceive the space elevator, becoming inspired in 1895 by the newly constructed Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Despite the youth's growing knowledge of physics, his father was concerned that he would not be able to provide for himself financially as an adult and brought him back home at the age of 19 after learning that he was overworking himself and going hungry. Afterwards, Tsiolkovsky passed the teacher's exam and went to work at a school in Borovsk near Moscow. He also met and married his wife Varvara Sokolova during this time. Despite being stuck in Kaluga, a small town far from major learning centers, Tsiolkovsky managed to make scientific discoveries on his own.
The first two decades of the 20th century were marred by personal tragedy. Tsiolkovsky's son Ignaty committed suicide in 1902, and in 1908 many of his accumulated papers were lost in a flood. In 1911, his daughter Lyubov was arrested for engaging in revolutionary activities.
Scientific achievements
Tsiolkovsky stated that he developed the theory of rocketry only as a supplement to philosophical research on the subject. He wrote more than 400 works including approximately 90 published pieces on space travel and related subjects. Among his works are designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multistage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into the vacuum of space, and closed-cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies.
Tsiolkovsky's first scientific study dates back to 1880–1881. He wrote a paper called "Theory of Gases," in which he outlined the basis of the kinetic theory of gases, but after submitting it to the Russian Physico-Chemical Society (RPCS), he was informed that his discoveries had already been made 25 years earlier. Undaunted, he pressed ahead with his second work, "The Mechanics of the Animal Organism". It received favorable feedback, and Tsiolkovsky was made a member of the Society. Tsiolkovsky's main works after 1884 dealt with four major areas: the scientific rationale for the all-metal balloon (airship), streamlined airplanes and trains, hovercraft, and rockets for interplanetary travel.
In 1892, he was transferred to a new teaching post in Kaluga where he continued to experiment. During this period, Tsiolkovsky began working on a problem that would occupy much of his time during the coming years: an attempt to build an all-metal dirigible that could be expanded or shrunk in size.
Tsiolkovsky developed the first aerodynamics laboratory in Russia in his apartment. In 1897, he built the first Russian wind tunnel with an open test section and developed a method of experimentation using it. In 1900, with a grant from the Academy of Sciences, he made a survey using models of the simplest shapes and determined the drag coefficients of the sphere, flat plates, cylinders, cones, and other bodies. Tsiolkovsky's work in the field of aerodynamics was a source of ideas for Russian scientist Nikolay Zhukovsky, the father of modern aerodynamics and hydrodynamics. Tsiolkovsky described the airflow around bodies of different geometric shapes, but because the RPCS did not provide any financial support for this project, he was forced to pay for it largely out of his own pocket.
Tsiolkovsky studied the mechanics of lighter-than-air powered flying machines. He first proposed the idea of an all-metal dirigible and built a model of it. The first printed work on the airship was "A Controllable Metallic Balloon" (1892), in which he gave the scientific and technical rationale for the design of an airship with a metal sheath. Tsiolkovsky was not supported on the airship project, and the author was refused a grant to build the model. An appeal to the General Aviation Staff of the Russian army also had no success. In 1892, he turned to the new and unexplored field of heavier-than-air aircraft. Tsiolkovsky's idea was to build an airplane with a metal frame. In the article "An Airplane or a Birdlike (Aircraft) Flying Machine" (1894) are descriptions and drawings of a monoplane, which in its appearance and aerodynamics anticipated the design of aircraft that would be constructed 15 to 18 years later. In an Aviation Airplane, the wings have a thick profile with a rounded front edge and the fuselage is faired. But work on the airplane, as well as on the airship, did not receive recognition from the official representatives of Russian science, and Tsiolkovsky's further research had neither monetary nor moral support. In 1914, he displayed his models of all-metal dirigibles at the Aeronautics Congress in St. Petersburg but met with a lukewarm response.
Disappointed at this, Tsiolkovsky gave up on space and aeronautical problems with the onset of World War I and instead turned his attention to the problem of alleviating poverty. This occupied his time during the war years until the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Starting in 1896, Tsiolkovsky systematically studied the theory of motion of rocket apparatus. Thoughts on the use of the rocket principle in the cosmos were expressed by him as early as 1883, and a rigorous theory of rocket propulsion was developed in 1896. Tsiolkovsky derived the formula, which he called the "formula of aviation", establishing the relationship between:
change in the rocket's speed ()
exhaust velocity of the engine ()
initial () and final () mass of the rocket
After writing out this equation, Tsiolkovsky recorded the date: 10 May 1897. In the same year, the formula for the motion of a body of variable mass was published in the thesis of the Russian mathematician I. V. Meshchersky ("Dynamics of a Point of Variable Mass," I. V. Meshchersky, St. Petersburg, 1897).
His most important work, published in May 1903, was Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices (). Tsiolkovsky calculated, using the Tsiolkovsky equation, that the horizontal speed required for a minimal orbit around the Earth is 8,000 m/s (5 miles per second) and that this could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. In the article "Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices", it was suggested for the first time that a rocket could perform space flight. In this article and its sequels (1911 and 1914), he developed some ideas of missiles and considered the use of liquid rocket engines.
The outward appearance of Tsiolkovsky's spacecraft design, published in 1903, was a basis for modern spaceship design. The design had a hull divided into three main sections. The pilot and copilot were in the first section, the second and third sections held the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen needed to fuel the spacecraft.
However, the result of the first publication was not what Tsiolkovsky expected. No foreign scientists appreciated his research, which today is a major scientific discipline. In 1911, he published the second part of the work "Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices". Here Tsiolkovsky evaluated the work needed to overcome the force of gravity, determined the speed needed to propel the device into the solar system ("escape velocity"), and examined calculation of flight time. The publication of this article made a splash in the scientific world, Tsiolkovsky found many friends among his fellow scientists.In 1926–1929, Tsiolkovsky solved the practical problem regarding the role played by rocket fuel in getting to escape velocity and leaving the Earth. He showed that the final speed of the rocket depends on the rate of gas flowing from it and on how the weight of the fuel relates to the weight of the empty rocket.
Tsiolkovsky conceived a number of ideas that have been later used in rockets. They include: gas rudders (graphite) for controlling a rocket's flight and changing the trajectory of its center of mass, the use of components of the fuel to cool the outer shell of the spacecraft (during re-entry to Earth) and the walls of the combustion chamber and nozzle, a pump system for feeding the fuel components, the optimal descent trajectory of the spacecraft while returning from space, etc. In the field of rocket propellants, Tsiolkovsky studied a large number of different oxidizers and combustible fuels and recommended specific pairings: liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and oxygen with hydrocarbons. Tsiolkovsky did much fruitful work on the creation of the theory of jet aircraft, and invented his chart Gas Turbine Engine. In 1927, he published the theory and design of a train on an air cushion. He first proposed a "bottom of the retractable body" chassis. However, space flight and the airship were the main problems to which he devoted his life. Tsiolkovsky had been developing the idea of the hovercraft since 1921, publishing a fundamental paper on it in 1927, entitled "Air Resistance and the Express Train" (). In 1929, Tsiolkovsky proposed the construction of multistage rockets in his book Space Rocket Trains ().
Tsiolkovsky championed the idea of the diversity of life in the universe and was the first theorist and advocate of human spaceflight.
Tsiolkovsky never built a rocket; he apparently did not expect many of his theories to ever be implemented.
Hearing problems did not prevent the scientist from having a good understanding of music, as outlined in his work "The Origin of Music and Its Essence."
Later life
Tsiolkovsky supported the Bolshevik Revolution, and eager to promote science and technology, the new Soviet government elected him a member of the Socialist Academy in 1918. He worked as a high school mathematics teacher until retiring in 1920 at the age of 63. In 1921, he received a lifetime pension.
In his late lifetime Tsiolkovsky was honored for his pioneering work. However, from the mid 1920s onwards the importance of his other work was acknowledged, and he was honoured for it and the Soviet state provided financial backing for his research. He was initially popularized in Soviet Russia in 1931–1932 mainly by two writers: Yakov Perelman and Nikolai Rynin. Tsiolkovsky died in Kaluga on 19 September 1935 after undergoing an operation for stomach cancer. He bequeathed his life's work to the Soviet state.
Legacy
Although many called his ideas impractical, Tsiolkovsky influenced later rocket scientists throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun. Soviet search teams at Peenemünde found a German translation of a book by Tsiolkovsky of which "almost every page...was embellished by von Braun's comments and notes." Leading Soviet rocket-engine designer Valentin Glushko and rocket designer Sergey Korolev studied Tsiolkovsky's works as youths, and both sought to turn Tsiolkovsky's theories into reality. In particular, Korolev saw traveling to Mars as the more important priority, until in 1964 he decided to compete with the American Project Apollo for the Moon.
In 1989, Tsiolkovsky was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.
Philosophical work
Tsiolkovsky wrote a book called The Will of the Universe. The Unknown Intelligence in 1928 in which he propounded a philosophy of panpsychism. He believed humans would eventually colonize the Milky Way galaxy. His thought preceded the Space Age by several decades, and some of what he foresaw in his imagination has come into being since his death. Tsiolkovsky also did not believe in traditional religious cosmology, but instead (and to the chagrin of the Soviet authorities) he believed in a cosmic being that governed humans as "marionettes, mechanical puppets, machines, movie characters", thereby adhering to a mechanical view of the universe, which he believed would be controlled in the millennia to come through the power of human science and industry. In a short article in 1933, he explicitly formulated what was later to be known as the Fermi paradox.
He wrote a few works on ethics, espousing negative utilitarianism.
Tributes
In 1964, The Monument to the Conquerors of Space was erected to celebrate the achievements of the Soviet people in space exploration. Located in Moscow, the monument is 107 meters (350 feet) tall and covered with titanium cladding. The main part of the monument is a giant obelisk topped by a rocket and resembling in shape the exhaust plume of the rocket. A statue of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the precursor of astronautics, is located in front of the obelisk.
The State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga now bears his name. His residence during the final months of his life (also in Kaluga) was converted into a memorial museum a year after his death.
The town Uglegorsk in Amur Oblast was renamed Tsiolkovsky by President of Russia Vladimir Putin in 2015.
The crater Tsiolkovskiy (the most prominent crater on the far side of the Moon) was named after him, while asteroid 1590 Tsiolkovskaja was named after his wife. (The Soviet Union obtained naming rights by operating Luna 3, the first space device to successfully transmit images of the side of the Moon not seen from Earth.)
There is a statue of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky directly outside the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
There is a Google Doodle honoring the famous pioneer.
There is a Tsiolkovsky exhibit on display at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, California.
There is a 1 ruble 1987 coin commemorating the 130th anniversary of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's birth.
In popular culture
Tsiolkovsky was consulted for the script to the 1936 Soviet science-fiction film, Kosmicheskiy reys.
In Altman's 1979 post-apocalyptic film Quintet, the motto of the charity house run by the character St. Christopher is taken from Tsiolkovsky: "The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever."
In 1972 science fiction movie Solaris directed by Andrey Tarkovski, a portrait of Tsiolkovsky appears, soon after the beginning of the movie, decorating the wall of the meeting room of the committee discussing the future of `solaristics'.
SF writer Alexander Belyaev has written a book in which a city and a space station are named after him.
A lunar station is named Tsiolkovsky in Stanisław Lem's novel Tales of Pirx the Pilot, story "The Conditional Reflex".
The Soviet ship in Harry Turtledove's 1990 Mars exploration novel A World of Difference is named Tsiolkovsky.
In Princeton physicist and space colony advocate Gerard K. O'Neill's 1981 book of futurism, 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future, the protagonist rides a spaceship named the Konstantin Tsiolokovsky from his home in a space colony at twice the orbital radius of Pluto to the Earth of 2081.
A space station is named Tsiolkovsky 1 in William Gibson's 1981 short story "Hinterlands".
The character Aeolia Schenberg in the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is based on Tsiolkovsky.
The Zvezda module of the International Space Station has photos of Tsiolkovsky and Yuri Gagarin posted on the wall above the aft hatchway.
The Mars-based space elevators in the Horus Heresy novel Mechanicum by Graham McNeill set in the Warhammer 40k universe are called "Tsiolkovsky Towers".
The science ship, SS Tsiolkovsky (NCC-53911) in the 1987 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Naked Now" is named after him.
Episode eight of Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko is called "Tsiolkovsky's Prayer".
In the comic book series Assassin's Creed: The Fall, the leader of the Assassin Order reads from The Will of the Universe.
In a 2015 episode of Murdoch Mysteries, set in about 1905, James Pendrick works with Tsiolkovsky's daughter to build a suborbital rocket based on his ideas and be the first man in space; a second rocket built to the same design is adapted as a ballistic missile for purposes of extortion.
In the 2015 video game SOMA that deals with topics of transhumanism, a character, Neil Tsiolkovsky, is likely named after him.
Works
See also
Cosmonauts Alley, a Russian monument park where Tsiolkovsky is honored
History of the internal combustion engine
Robert Esnault-Pelterie, a Frenchman who independently arrived at Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation
Russian cosmism
Russian philosophy
Timeline of hydrogen technologies
References
Cited sources
Further reading
Review
Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov, S. P. Korolyov and space. First steps. — 1994 M. Nauka, .
External links
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The collection of philosophical works. Biography, books, audiobooks, articles, photographs, video. Russian and English.
Tsiolkovsky's house The house museum of Tsiolkovsky
Virtual Matchbox Labels Museum – Russian labels – Space – Page 2 – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Historic images
Tsiolkovsky from Russianspaceweb.com
Spaceflight or Extinction: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Excerpts from "The Aims of Astronautics", The Call of the Cosmos''
The Foundations of the Space Age. The life and work of Tsiolkovskiy, by Vladimir V. Lytkin, Tsiolkovskiy Museum, Kaluga.
Tsiolkovski: The Cosmic Scientist and His Cosmic Philosophy by Daniel H. Shubin.
The Path To The Stars. Collection Of Science Fiction Works
The Call Of The Cosmos
1857 births
1935 deaths
People from Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast
People from Ryazan Governorate
Russian people of Polish descent
Russian people of Tatar descent
Cosmists
Early rocketry
Early spaceflight scientists
Eccentrics
Rocket science pioneers
Rocket scientists
Russian aerospace engineers
Russian inventors
Russian science fiction writers
Russian scientists
Russian atheists
Soviet scientists
Philosophical cosmologists
Philosophers of ethics and morality
Philosophers of technology
Recipients of the Order of St. Anna, 3rd class
Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (Russian), 3rd class | [
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17090 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAOS | KAOS | KAOS or Kaos may refer to:
People
Kaos One (born 1971), Italian rapper
Kaos of Iberia, an ancient king of Causasian Iberia
Kenny Kaos or Kaos (born 1970), American professional wrestler
Wych Kaosayananda or Kaos (born 1974), Thai film director
Fiction
KAOS (Get Smart), a fictional criminal spy agency in Get Smart
Kaos (film), a 1984 Italian film by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
Kaos (TV series), 2018
The Ancient One (Ronin Warriors) or Kaos, a character from Ronin Warriors
Kaos, a character from Battle Angel Alita
Kaos, pen name of a character in the manga series Comic Girls
Video gaming
Kaos Studios, a defunct video game developer
KAOS, a character in Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!
KAOS, a fictional computer from Red Alert
Kaos, the main antagonist character from the Skylanders video game series
Music
KAOS (FM), a radio station in Olympia, Washington, United States
KAOS FM NZ, radio station in Blenheim, Marlborough, New Zealand
Kaos (Bo Kaspers Orkester album), 2001
Kaos (Anita Tijoux album), 2007
KAOS, a 1958 novelty 45 RPM record by Stanley Ralph Ross and Bob Arbogast
Computing
KAoS, a policy services framework
KAOS (software development), a goal modeling method
KaOS (Linux distribution) a linux distro
Other uses
Kaos Worldwide, a maker of technical clothing systems
Assassin (game) or KAOS (Killing as organized sport), a live-action game
See also
k-os (born 1972)
Radio KAOS (disambiguation)
Chaos (disambiguation) | [
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17091 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khornerstone | Khornerstone | In computer performance testing, Khornerstone is a multipurpose benchmark from Workstation Labs used in various periodicals such as UNIX Review.
The benchmark consists of 22 separate tests, including public domain components (such as Sieve and Dhrystone) as well as proprietary components. Since it contains proprietary components, the source is not free. The results of the 22 tests are normalized, producing a result measured in "Khornerstones".
The benchmark was introduced in 1986 and was commonly used until the mid-1990s.
References
Benchmarks (computing) | [
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17094 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ket | Ket | Ket or KET may refer to:
People
Ket people, a people of Siberia
Ket language, the language of the Ket people
Ket Sivan (born 1981), Cambodian swimmer who specialized in sprint freestyle events
Places
Ket (river), a river in Siberia
Keť, a village in south-west Slovakia
Literature
Ket (Greyhawk), a fictional nation in the Dungeons and Dragons World of Greyhawk campaign setting
Ket and Wig, figures in the Gesta Danorum Danish history
Mythology
Cet mac Mágach, a character in Irish myth
A name of the Celtic legendary figure Ceridwen
Other uses
KET, or Kentucky Educational Television, a non-commercial public television network
Ketamine, a general dissociative anaesthetic
Kettering railway station (National Rail station code KET), a station serving the town of Kettering in Northamptonshire, England
Kengtung Airport, Burma/Myanmar (IATA airport code KET)
Kennedy Town station (MTR station code KET), a station serving the suburb of Kennedy Town in Hong Kong
Key English Test, an international examination sanctioning a basic level of the English language
Key Enabling Technology, the technology that underlies the production of given goods or services
Ket vallomas or Two Confessions, a 1957 Hungarian crime film
The right part of bra–ket notation,
Ket (software), an open source algebra editor
See also
Kit (disambiguation)
Language and nationality disambiguation pages | [
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17095 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary%20Mullis | Kary Mullis | Kary Banks Mullis (December 28, 1944August 7, 2019) was an American biochemist. In recognition of his role in the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith and was awarded the Japan Prize in the same year. PCR became a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by The New York Times as "highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before PCR and after PCR."
Mullis attracted controversy for downplaying humans' role in climate change and for expressing doubts that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS.
Early life
Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, on December 28, 1944. His family had a background in farming in this rural area. As a child, Mullis said, he was interested in observing organisms in the countryside. He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where he attended Dreher High School, graduating in the class of 1962. He recalled his interest in chemistry beginning when he learned how to chemically synthesize and build solid fuel propulsion rockets as a high school student during the 1950s.
He earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, during which time he married his first wife and started a business. He earned his Ph.D. in 1973 in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), in J. B. Neilands' laboratory, which focused on synthesis and structure of bacterial iron transporter molecules. Although he published a sole-author paper in Nature in the field of astrophysics in 1968, he struggled to pass his oral exams (with a colleague recalling that "He didn’t get his propositions right. He didn’t know general biochemistry"), and his dissertation was only accepted after several friends pitched in to "cut all the whacko stuff out of it" while his advisor lobbied the committee to reconsider its initial decision. Mullis himself believed that it was the Nature article that greased the wheels with the committee.
His doctoral dissertation was on the structure of the bacterial siderophore schizokinen J.B. Neilands was known for his groundbreaking work on siderophores, and Mullis was a part of that with his characterization of schizokinen. Following his graduation, Mullis completed postdoctoral fellowships in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center (1973-1977) and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (1977-1979).
Career
After receiving his doctorate, Mullis briefly left science to write fiction before accepting the University of Kansas fellowship. During his postdoctoral work, he managed a bakery for two years. Mullis returned to science at the encouragement of UC Berkeley friend and colleague Thomas White, who secured Mullis' UCSF position and later helped Mullis land a position with the biotechnology company Cetus Corporation of Emeryville, California. Despite little experience in molecular biology, Mullis worked as a DNA chemist at Cetus for seven years, ultimately serving as head of the DNA synthesis lab under White, then the firm's director of molecular and biological research; it was there, in 1983, that Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure.
Mullis acquired a reputation for erratic behavior at Cetus, once threatening to bring a gun to work; he also engaged in "public lovers' quarrels" with his then-girlfriend (a fellow chemist at the company) and "nearly came to blows with another scientist" at a staff party, according to California Magazine. White recalled: "It definitely put me in a tough spot. His behavior was so outrageous that the other scientists thought that the only reason I didn't fire him outright was that he was a friend of mine."
After resigning from Cetus in 1986, Mullis served as director of molecular biology for Xytronyx, Inc. in San Diego for two years. While inventing a UV-sensitive ink at Xytronyx, he became skeptical of the existence of the ozone hole.
Thereafter, Mullis worked intermittently as a consultant for multiple corporations and institutions on nucleic acid chemistry and as an expert witness specializing in DNA profiling. While writing a National Institutes of Health grant progress report on the development of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) test for Specialty Labs, he became skeptical that HIV was the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In 1992, Mullis founded a business to sell pieces of jewelry containing the amplified DNA of deceased famous people such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. In the same year, he also founded Atomic Tags in La Jolla, California. The venture sought to develop technology using atomic-force microscopy and bar-coded antibodies tagged with heavy metals to create highly multiplexed, parallel immunoassays.
Mullis was a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board. In 2014, he was named a distinguished researcher at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in Oakland, California.
PCR and other inventions
In 1983, Mullis was working for Cetus Corporation as a chemist. Mullis recalled told it, while driving in the vicinity of his country home in Mendocino County (with his girlfriend, who also was a chemist at Cetus) he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase; a technique that would allow rapid amplification of a small stretch of DNA and become a standard procedure in molecular biology laboratories. Longtime professional benefactor and supervisor Thomas White reassigned Mullis from his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time after the technique was met with skepticism by their colleagues. Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR on December 16, 1985, but the staff remained circumspect as he continued to produce ambiguous results amid alleged methodological problems, including a perceived lack of "appropriate controls and repetition." In his Nobel Prize lecture, he remarked that the December 16 breakthrough did not make up for his girlfriend breaking up with him: "I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic. Neither [assistant] Fred, empty Beck's bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome."
Other Cetus scientists who were regarded as "top-notch experimentalists", including Randall Saiki, Henry Erlich, and Norman Arnheim, were placed on parallel PCR projects to work on determining if PCR could amplify a specific human gene (betaglobin) from genomic DNA. Saiki generated the needed data and Erlich authored the first paper to include utilization of the technique, while Mullis was still working on the paper that would describe PCR itself. Mullis' 1985 paper with Saiki and Erlich, "Enzymatic Amplification of β-globin Genomic Sequences and Restriction Site Analysis for Diagnosis of Sickle Cell Anemia" — the polymerase chain reaction invention (PCR) — was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 2017.
A drawback of the technique was that the DNA polymerase in the reaction was destroyed by the high heat used at the start of each replication cycle and had to be replaced. In 1986, Saiki started to use Thermophilus aquaticus (Taq) DNA polymerase to amplify segments of DNA. The Taq polymerase was heat resistant and only needed to be added to the reaction once, making the technique dramatically more affordable and subject to automation. This modification of Mullis' invention revolutionized biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, medicine, and forensics. UC Berkeley biologist David Bilder said, "PCR revolutionized everything. It really superpowered molecular biology—which then transformed other fields, even distant ones like ecology and evolution. … It’s impossible to overstate PCR’s impact. The ability to generate as much DNA of a specific sequence as you want, starting from a few simple chemicals and some temperature changes—it’s just magical." Although he received a $10,000 bonus from Cetus for the invention, the company's later sale of the patent to Roche Molecular Systems for $300 million would lead Mullis to condemn White and members of the parallel team as "vultures."
Mullis also invented a UV-sensitive plastic that changes color in response to light.
He founded Altermune LLC in 2011 to pursue new ideas on the immune system. Mullis described the company's product thusly:
In a TED Talk, Mullis describes how the US Government paid $500,000 for Mullis to use this new technology against anthrax. He said the treatment was 100% effective, compared to the previous anthrax treatment which was 40% effective.
Another proof-of-principle of this technology, re-targeting pre-existing antibodies to the surface of a pathogenic strep bacteria using an alpha-gal modified aptamer ("alphamer"), was published in 2015 in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Diego. Mullis said he was inspired to fight this particular strep bacteria because it had killed his friend.
Accreditation of the PCR technique
A concept similar to that of PCR had been described before Mullis' work. Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana and Kjell Kleppe, a Norwegian scientist, authored a paper 17 years earlier describing a process they termed "repair replication" in the Journal of Molecular Biology. Using repair replication, Kleppe duplicated and then quadrupled a small synthetic molecule with the help of two primers and DNA polymerase. The method developed by Mullis used repeated thermal cycling, which allowed the rapid and exponential amplification of large quantities of any desired DNA sequence from an extremely complex template. Later a heat-stable DNA polymerase was incorporated into the process.
His co-workers at Cetus, who were embittered by his abrupt departure from the company, contested that Mullis was solely responsible for the idea of using Taq polymerase in PCR. However, other scientists have written that the "full potential [of PCR] was not realized" until Mullis' work in 1983, and that Mullis' colleagues failed to see the potential of the technique when he presented it to them. As a result, some controversy surrounds the balance of credit that should be given to Mullis versus the team at Cetus. In practice, credit has accrued to both the inventor and the company (although not its individual workers) in the form of a Nobel Prize and a $10,000 Cetus bonus for Mullis and $300 million for Cetus when the company sold the patent to Roche Molecular Systems. After DuPont lost out to Roche on that sale, the company unsuccessfully disputed Mullis' patent on the alleged grounds that PCR had been previously described in 1971. Mullis and Erlich took Cetus' side in the case, and Khorana refused to testify for DuPont; the jury upheld Mullis' patent in 1991. However, in February 1999, the patent of Hoffman-La Roche (United States Patent No. 4,889,818) was found by the courts to be unenforceable, after Dr. Thomas Kunkel testified in the case Hoffman-La Roche v. Promega Corporation on behalf of the defendants (Promega Corporation) that "prior art" (i.e. articles on the subject of Taq polymerase published by other groups prior to the work of Gelfand and Stoffel, and their patent application regarding the purification of Taq polymerase) existed, in the form of two articles, published by Alice Chien et al. in 1976, and A. S. Kaledin et al. in 1980.
The anthropologist Paul Rabinow wrote a book on the history of the PCR method in 1996, in which he discusses whether Mullis "invented" PCR or merely came up with the concept of it.
Views on HIV/AIDS and climate change
Mullis was quoted saying "the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas" has hurt science. He believed that "science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are going to find out," not for what they actually produce.
Mullis wrote that he began to question the AIDS consensus while writing a NIH grant progress report and being unable to find a peer-reviewed reference that HIV was the cause of AIDS. He published an alternative hypothesis for AIDS in 1994, and questioned the scientific validity of the link between HIV and AIDS, leading some to label him an AIDS denialist. Mullis has been criticized for his association with HIV skeptic Peter Duesberg, claiming that AIDS is an arbitrary diagnosis used when HIV antibodies are found in a patient's blood. Seth Kalichman, AIDS researcher and author of Denying AIDS, lists Mullis "among the who's who of AIDS pseudoscientists". A 2007 article in Skeptical Inquirer described Mullis as an "AIDS denialist with scientific credentials [who] has never done any scientific research on HIV or AIDS". According to California Magazine, Mullis' HIV skepticism influenced Thabo Mbeki's denialist policymaking throughout his tenure as president of South Africa from 1999 to 2008, contributing to as many as 330,000 unnecessary deaths. In 2010, Mullis gave a talk at Google at which he was asked about his controversial views on AIDS and HIV. Mullis said "I'm come to the conclusion... that the thing that causes AIDS is not a species of the retroviridae, it's the whole genus. The people who get sick have a whole lot of different versions...that's my feeling."
A 2007 New York Times article listed Mullis as one of several scientists who, after success in their area of research, go on to make unfounded, sometimes bizarre statements in other areas. In his 1998 autobiography, Mullis expressed disagreement with the scientific evidence supporting climate change and ozone depletion, the evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and asserted his belief in astrology. Mullis claimed climate change and HIV/AIDS theories were promulgated as a form of racketeering by environmentalists, government agencies, and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence. The medical and scientific consensus considers these hypotheses as pseudoscience, HIV having been conclusively proven to be the cause of AIDS and global warming strongly shown to be caused by human activities.
Use of hallucinogens
Mullis practiced clandestine chemistry throughout his graduate studies, specializing in the synthesis of LSD; according to his friend Tom White, "I knew he was a good chemist because he'd been synthesizing hallucinogenic drugs at UC Berkeley." He detailed his experiences synthesizing and testing various psychedelic amphetamines and a difficult trip on DET in his autobiography. In a Q&A interview published in the September 1994 issue of California Monthly, Mullis said, "Back in the 1960s and early 1970s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took." During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann said Mullis had told him that LSD had "helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences".
Personal life
Mullis was a surfer and played the guitar. He married four times and had three children by two of his wives. At the time of his death, he had two grandchildren and was survived by his fourth wife, Nancy (née Cosgrove).
Mullis died on August 7, 2019 at his home in Newport Beach, California, from complications of pneumonia.
Selected publications
The Polymerase Chain Reaction, 1994, co-edited with Francious Ferre and Richard A. Gibbs (Basel: Birkhauser) .
Mullis' 1998 autobiography Dancing Naked in the Mind Field () gives his account of the commercial development of PCR, as well as providing insights into his opinions and experiences. In the book, Mullis chronicles his romantic relationships, use of LSD, synthesis and self-testing of novel psychoactive substances, belief in astrology and an encounter with an extraterrestrial in the form of a fluorescent raccoon.
Awards and honors
1990: William Allan Memorial Award of the American Society of Human Genetics, Preis Biochemische Analytik of the German Society of Clinical Chemistry and Boehringer Mannheim
1991: National Biotechnology Award, Gairdner Award, R&D Scientist of the Year, John Scott Award of the City Trusts of Philadelphia
1992: California Scientist of the Year Award
1992: Robert Koch Prize
1993: Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Japan Prize, Thomas A. Edison Award
1994: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of South Carolina
1994: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1998: Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Ronald H. Brown American Innovator Award
2004: Honorary degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from the University of Bologna, Italy
2010: Honorary degree of Doctor honoris causa in the field of biological sciences from Masaryk University, Czech Republic
See also
Luc Montagnier, Nobel laureate who has promoted controversial and unverified health claims
Nobel disease
Nobel Prize controversies
References
Further reading
External links
.
Interviews
.
regarding his views on HIV/AIDS.
1944 births
2019 deaths
American biochemists
American Nobel laureates
Nobel laureates in Chemistry
HIV/AIDS denialists
UC Berkeley College of Chemistry alumni
Georgia Tech alumni
Writers from Columbia, South Carolina
People from Lenoir, North Carolina
Biotechnologists
Psychedelic drug advocates
Scientists from North Carolina
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17096 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey%20Reports | Kinsey Reports | The Kinsey Reports are two scholarly books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), written by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin, and (for Sexual Behavior in the Human Female) Paul Gebhard and published by W.B. Saunders. The two best-selling books were immediately controversial, both within the scientific community and the general public, because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and discussed subjects that had previously been taboo. The validity of Kinsey's methods were also called into question. Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (more widely known as the Kinsey Institute).
The sociological data underlying the analysis and conclusions found in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was collected from approximately 5,300 males over a fifteen-year period. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was based on personal interviews with approximately 6,000 women. In the latter, Kinsey analyzed data for the frequency with which women participate in various types of sexual activity and looked at how factors such as age, social-economic status and religious adherence influence sexual behavior. Comparisons are made of female and male sexual activities. Kinsey's evidence suggested that women were less sexually active than men.
Kinsey's methodology used to collect data has received criticism. It has been suggested that some data in the reports could not have been obtained without collaborations with child molesters. The Kinsey Institute denies this charge, though it acknowledges that men who have had sexual experiences with children were interviewed, with Kinsey balancing what he saw as the need for their anonymity to solicit "honest answers on such taboo subjects" against the likelihood that their crimes would continue. Additionally, concerns over the sample populations used were later addressed by the Kinsey Institute. The conclusion of the Kinsey Institute was that none of Kinsey's original estimates was significantly affected by these data sources.
More recent researchers believe that Kinsey overestimated the rate of same-sex attraction because of flaws in his sampling methods. Nonetheless, his work is considered pioneering and some of the best-known sex research of all time.
Findings
Sexual orientation
Parts of the Kinsey Reports regarding diversity in sexual orientations are frequently used to support the common estimate of 10% for homosexuality in the general population. Instead of three categories (heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual), a seven-point Kinsey scale system was used.
The reports also state that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience. 11.6% of white males (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) throughout their adult lives. The study also reported that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (in the 5 to 6 range).
Seven percent of single females (ages 20–35) and four percent of previously married females (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) on Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale for this period of their lives. 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response, and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were exclusively homosexual in experience/response.
Criticism
Although Kinsey sought to work on a more 'complete' report involving 100,000 interviews and considered the initial 1948 publication to be a sample progress report, academics have criticized the sample selection and sample bias in the reports' methodology. Two main issues cited by researchers are that significant portions of the samples come from prison populations and male prostitutes and that people who volunteer to be interviewed about taboo subjects are likely to create a self-selection bias. Both undermine the usefulness of the sample in terms of determining the tendencies of the overall population. In 1948, the same year as the original publication, a committee of the American Statistical Association, including notable statisticians such as John Tukey, condemned the sampling procedure. Tukey was perhaps the most vocal critic, saying, "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey." Psychologist Abraham Maslow stated that Kinsey did not consider "volunteer bias". The data represented only those volunteering to participate in discussion of taboo topics. Most Americans were reluctant to discuss the intimate details of their sex lives even with their spouses and close friends. Before the publication of Kinsey's reports, Maslow tested Kinsey's volunteers for bias. He concluded that Kinsey's sample was unrepresentative of the general population. In 1954, leading statisticians, including William Gemmell Cochran, Frederick Mosteller, John Tukey, and W. O. Jenkins issued for the American Statistical Association a critique of Kinsey's 1948 report on the human male, stating:
Critics are justified in their objections that many of the most interesting and provocative statements in the [Kinsey 1948] book are not based on the data presented therein, and it is not made clear to the reader on what evidence the statements are based. Further, the conclusions drawn from data presented in the book are often stated by KPM [Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin] in much too bold and confident a manner. Taken cumulatively, these objections amount to saying that much of the writing in the book falls below the level of good scientific writing.
In response, Paul Gebhard, Kinsey's close colleague, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" co-author, and successor as director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, cleaned the Kinsey data of purported contaminants, removing, for example, all material derived from prison populations in the basic sample. In 1979, Gebhard (with Alan B. Johnson) published The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938–1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research. Their conclusion, to Gebhard's surprise he claimed, was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by this bias: that is, the prison population and male prostitutes had the same statistical tendency as those who willingly participated in discussion of previously taboo sexual topics. The results were summarized by historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist Martin Duberman, "Instead of Kinsey's 37% (men who had at least one homosexual experience), Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4%; the 10% figure (men who were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55"), with prison inmates excluded, came to 9.9% for white, college-educated males and 12.7% for those with less education.
More recent researchers have criticized Kinsey's sampling methods and believe that he overestimated the frequency of nonheterosexual behaviors and attractions.
Historian Peter Gay described Sexual Behavior in the Human Male as "methodologically far from persuasive".
Sociologist Edward Laumann stated that the Kinsey Reports were limited to the biology of sex and lacked psychological and clinical information and analysis and that this "meant that sex research did not move into the mainstream of academic credibility. People took their reputations in their hands if they attempted to pursue it." Laumann also acknowledged that "The Kinsey report was a cultural event of enormous consequence."
Kinsey scale
The Kinsey scale is used to measure a person's overall balance of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and takes into account both sexual experience and psychosexual reactions. The scale ranges from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual. An additional category, X, was mentioned to describe those who had "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions," which has been cited by scholars to mean asexuality. The scale was first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) by Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others, and was also prominent in the complementary work Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). Introducing the scale, Kinsey wrote:
The scale is as follows:
Men: 11.6% of white males aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives.
Women: 7% of single females aged 20–35 and 4% of previously married females aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives. 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were given a rating of 5 and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were rated as 6.
Marital coitus
The average frequency of marital sex reported by women was 2.8 times a week in the late teens, 2.2 times a week by age 30, and 1.0 times a week by age 50. Kinsey estimated that approximately 50% of all married males had extramarital sex at some time during their married lives. Among the sample, 26% of females had extramarital sex by their forties. Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 10 females from age 26 to 50 were engaged in extramarital sex. However, Kinsey classified couples who have lived together for at least a year as "married", inflating the statistics for extra-marital sex.
Sadomasochism
12% of females and 22% of males reported having an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story.
Biting
Responses to being bitten:
Methodology
Data was gathered primarily by means of subjective report interviews, conducted according to a structured questionnaire memorized by the experimenters (but not marked on the response sheet in any way). The response sheets were encoded in this way to maintain the confidentiality of the respondents, being entered on a blank grid using response symbols defined in advance. The data were later computerized for processing. All of this material, including the original researchers' notes, remains available from the Kinsey Institute to qualified researchers who demonstrate a need to view such materials. The institute also allows researchers to use statistical software in order to analyze the data.
Context and significance
The Kinsey Reports, which together sold three-quarters of a million copies and were translated into thirteen languages, may be considered as some of the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. They were also associated with a change in the public perception of sexuality. In the 1960s, following the introduction of the first oral contraceptive, this change was to be expressed in the sexual revolution. Additionally, in 1966 Masters and Johnson would publish the first of two texts cataloguing their investigations into the physiology of sex, breaking taboos and misapprehensions similar to those Kinsey had confronted more than a decade earlier in a closely related field.
See also
Kinsey, a film based on the life of Alfred Kinsey
Klein Sexual Orientation Grid
References
External links
Kinsey Institute home page
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female - Project MUSE - Johns Hopkins University
Kinsey's Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale
1940s in LGBT history
1948 non-fiction books
1953 non-fiction books
American non-fiction books
Books by Paul Gebhard
Books by Wardell Pomeroy
English-language books
Non-fiction books about sexuality
Sexology literature
Literature related to the sexual revolution | [
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17098 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendo | Kendo | is a modern Japanese martial art, descended from kenjutsu (one of old Japanese martial arts, swordsmanship), that uses bamboo swords (shinai) as well as protective armor (bōgu). Today, it is widely practiced within Japan and has spread to many other nations across the world.
Kendo is an activity that combines martial arts practices and values with strenuous, sport-like physical activity.
History
Swordsmen in Japan established schools of kenjutsu (the ancestor of kendo). These continued for centuries and form the basis of kendo practice today. Formal kendo exercises known as kata were developed several centuries ago as kenjutsu practice for warriors. They are still studied today, in a modified form.
The introduction of bamboo practice swords and armor to sword training is attributed to during the Shotoku Era (1711–1715). Naganuma developed the use of this armor and established a training method using bamboo swords.
, third son of Naganuma and the 8th headmaster of the Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryū Kenjutsu, is credited with improving the art with Japanese wooden and bamboo swords, according to his gravestone's inscription. He is also credited with refining the armor by adding a metal grille to the headpiece and thick cotton protective coverings to the gauntlets. inherited the tradition from his father Heizaemon in 1708, and the two of them collaborated to improve what would become modern kendo training armor.
Shūsaku Narimasa Chiba , founder of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū Hyōhō (北辰一刀流兵法), introduced gekiken (撃剣) (full contact duels with bamboo swords and training armor) to the curriculum of tradition arts in the 1820s. Due to the large number of students of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū Hyōhō at the end of the Edo period, the use of bamboo swords and armor as a form of practice became popular. Modern kendo techniques, such as Suriage-Men and Oikomi-Men, were originally Hokushin Ittō-ryū techniques, were named by Chiba Shūsaku. After the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s, Sakakibara Kenkichi popularized public gekiken for commercial gain, resulting in increased interest in kendo and kenjutsu.
In 1876, five years after a voluntary surrender of swords, the government banned the use of swords by the surviving samurai and initiated sword hunts. Meanwhile, in an attempt to standardize the sword styles (kenjutsu) used by policemen, Kawaji Toshiyoshi recruited swordsmen from various schools to come up with a unified swordsmanship style. This led to the rise of the Battotai (抜刀隊, lit. Drawn Sword Corps), consisting mainly of sword-wielding policemen. However, it proved difficult to integrate all sword arts, leading to a compromise of ten practice moves (kata) for police training. This integration effort led to the development of modern kendo. In 1878, Kawaji wrote a book on swordsmanship, Gekiken Saikō-ron (Revitalizing Swordsmanship), stressing sword styles should not disappear with modernization, but should be integrated as necessary skills for the police. He draws a particular example from his experience with the Satsuma Rebellion. The Junsa Kyōshūjo (Patrolman's Training Institute), founded in 1879, provided a curriculum that allowed policemen to study gekiken during their off-hours. In the same year, Kawaji wrote another book on swordsmanship, Kendo Saikō-ron (Revitalizing Kendo), defending the significance of such sword art training for the police. While Junsa Kyōshūjo remained active only until 1881, the police continued to support such practice.
The Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (DNBK) was established in 1895 to promote martial arts in Japan. It changed the name of the sporting form of swordsmanship, gekiken, (Kyūjitai: and Shinjitai: , "hitting sword") to kendō in 1920.
Kendo (along with other martial arts) was banned in Japan in 1946 by the occupying powers. This was part of "the removal and exclusion from public life of militaristic and ultra-nationalistic persons" in response to the wartime militarization of martial arts instruction in Japan. The DNBK was also disbanded. Kendo was allowed to return to the curriculum in 1950, first as and then as kendo in 1952.
The All Japan Kendo Federation (AJKF or ZNKR) was founded in 1952, immediately after Japan's independence was restored and the ban on martial arts in Japan was lifted. It was formed on the principle of kendo not as a martial art, but as educational sport and it has continued to be practiced as such to this day.
The International Kendo Federation (FIK) was founded in April 1970. It is an international federation of national and regional kendo federations, and the world governing body for kendo. The FIK is a non-governmental organization, and it aims to promote and popularize kendo, iaido and jodo.
The International Martial Arts Federation (IMAF), established in Kyoto 1952, was the first international organization founded since WWII to promote the development of martial arts worldwide. Today, IMAF includes kendo as one of the Japanese disciplines.
Popular art in Japan
Inscribed in popular culture in Japan, kendo has more than one million followers. Since 2012, it has been one of the disciplines taught in Japanese colleges with judo and sado. The manufacture of armor and shinai is still the object of an artisanal practice and contributes to perpetuate a tradition of small traders.
Kendo belonging to the deep culture participates in the formation of the popular classes and the elites. Ryutaro Hashimoto, Prime Minister of Japan from 1996 to 1998, was 6th dan. He had a small dojo set up in the finance ministry. He reports that “the practice of kendo is associated with success”. In June 1996, he promoted Japanese culture within the framework of the G7 which takes place in Lyon thanks to the drive and the authenticity of the diplomatic relationship established by Mr. Louis Michallet, Consul General of Japan, President-Founder of the Club Lyon-Japon. Ryutaro Hashimoto and Jacques Chirac continued the organization from April 1997 to March 1998 of "The Year of Japan in France", and inaugurated the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris. Today France has some 4,800 kendo practitioners.
Moreover, through the Japanese tradition, kendo is linked with Miyamoto Musashi who belongs to the national treasure of Japan. The Miyamoto Musashi Budokan located in Ōhara-chō built in honor of the samurai regularly hosts all of Japan's kendo schools. As a result, at the 60th Okayama National Sports Meetings in 2005 held at BdkMiyamoto Musa Budokanshi, two official techniques from the Niten School founded by Musashi were incorporated into the International Kendo Federation by the Japanese Minister of Education.
Practitioners
Practitioners of kendo are called , meaning "someone who practices kendo", or occasionally , meaning "swordsman". Additionally, the old term of kendoists is sometimes used.
The Kodansha Meibo, a register of dan graded members of the AJKF, lists (as of September 2007) 1.48 million registered dan graded kendōka in Japan. According to a survey conducted by AJKF, the number of active kendo practitioners in Japan is 477,000, including 290,000 dan holders. From these figures, AJKF estimates that the number of kendōka in Japan is 1.66 million, with over 6 million practitioners worldwide, with registered dan holders and active kendo practitioners without dan grade.
Concept and purpose
In 1975, the All Japan Kendo Federation developed and published "The Concept and Purpose of Kendo" (reproduced below).
Concept
Kendo is a way to discipline the human character through the application of the principles of the katana.
Purpose
To mold the mind and body.
To cultivate a vigorous spirit
And through correct and structured training,
To strive for improvement in the art of Kendo.
To hold in esteem courtesy and honor.
To associate with others with sincerity.
And to forever pursue the cultivation of oneself.
Thus will one be able:
To love one's country and society;
To contribute to the development of culture;
And to promote peace and prosperity among all people.
Equipment and clothing
Kendo is practiced wearing a traditional Japanese style of clothing, and using one or, less commonly two, .
Equipment
The shinai is meant to represent a Japanese sword (katana) and is made up of four bamboo slats which are held together by leather fittings. A modern variation of a shinai with carbon fiber reinforced resin slats is also used.
Kendōka also use hard to practice kata.
Kendo employs strikes involving both one edge and the tip of the shinai or bokutō.
Protective armor is worn to protect specified target areas on the head, arms, and body. The head is protected by a stylized helmet, called , with a to protect the face, a series of hard leather and to protect the throat, and padded to protect the side of the neck and shoulders. The forearms, wrists, and hands are protected by long, thickly padded fabric gloves called . The torso is protected by a , while the waist and groin area are protected by the , consisting of three thick vertical fabric flaps or faulds.
Clothing
The clothing worn under the bōgu comprise a jacket (kendogi or keikogi) and hakama, a garment separated in the middle to form two wide trouser legs.
A is wrapped around the head, under the men, to absorb perspiration and provide a base for the men to fit comfortably.
Modern practice
Kendo training is quite noisy in comparison to some other martial arts or sports. This is because kendōka use a shout, or , to express their fighting spirit when striking. Additionally, kendōka execute , an action similar to a stamp of the front foot, during a strike.
Like some other martial arts, kendōka train and fight barefoot. Kendo is ideally practiced in a purpose-built dōjō, though standard sports halls and other venues are often used. An appropriate venue has a clean and wooden sprung floor, suitable for fumikomi-ashi.
Kendo techniques comprise both strikes and thrusts. Strikes are only made towards specified on the wrists, head, or body, all of which are protected by armor. The targets are men, sayu-men or Yoko-men (upper, left or right side of the men), the right kote at any time, the left kote when it is in a raised position, and the left or right side of the dō. are only allowed to the throat. However, since an incorrectly performed thrust could cause serious injury to the opponent's neck, thrusting techniques in free practice and competition are often restricted to senior dan graded kendōka.
Once a kendōka begins practice in armor, a practice session may include any or all of the following types of practice:
Kirikaeshi
Striking the left and right men target points in succession; practicing centering, distance, and correct technique while building spirit and stamina.
Waza or technique practice in which the student learns and refines the techniques of kendo with a receiving partner.
Short, intense, attack practice which teaches continuous alertness and readiness to attack, as well as building spirit and stamina.
Undirected practice where the kendōka tries all that has been learned during practice against an opponent.
Practice between two kendōka of similar skill level.
Practice where a senior kendōka guides a junior through practice.
Competition practice which may also be judged.
Techniques
Techniques are divided into shikake-waza (to initiate a strike) and ōji-waza (a response to an attempted strike). Kendōka who wish to use such techniques during practice or competitions often practice each technique with a motodachi. This is a process that requires patience. The kendōka and motodachi practice the technique slowly at first; as familiarity and confidence build, they increase the speed to the level used in matches and competitions.
Shikake-waza
These attack techniques are used to create an opening in an opponent by initiating an attack, or striking boldly when the opponent has created an opening. Such techniques include:
Tobikomi-waza
This is a technique used when one's opponent has weak kisei (spirit, vigor) or when they yield an opening under pressure. Always hold kisei and strike quickly.
Hikibana-waza
Body and shinai will lose balance as the initiator strikes or when being attacked. This technique takes advantage of this to help execute a strike. A good example is Hikibana-kote when a strike is made to an opponent's kote as they feel threatened and raise their kensen as the initiator pushes forward.
Katsugi-waza
This provides a surprise attack by lifting the shinai over the initiator's shoulder before striking. Here a skillful use of the kensen and spirited attack is crucial for effective katsugi-waza or luring the opponent into breaking their posture.
Nidan-waza
There are two types. The first is for moving to the next waza after a failed first strike, and the second holds the opponent's attention and posture to create the opening for a second strike. The former requires a continuous rhythm of correct strikes. The latter requires continuous execution of waza, to take advantage of the opponent's opening.
Harai-waza
This can be used if one's opponent's stance has no opening when the opponent tries to attack. The opponent's shinai is either knocked down from above or swept up from below with a resulting strike just when their stance is broken.
Debana-waza
This technique involves striking the opponent as they are about to strike. This is because their concentration will be on striking and their posture will have no flexibility to respond. Thus debana-waza is ideal. This can be to any part of the opponent's body, with valid strikes being: debana-men, debana-kote, and debana-Tsuki.
Oji-waza
These counter-attack techniques are performed by executing a strike after responding or avoiding an attempted strike by the opponent. This can also be achieved by inducing the opponent to attack, then employing one of the Oji-waza.
Nuki-waza
Avoiding an attack from another, then instantly responding. Here, timing has to be correct. A response that is too slow or fast may not be effective. Therefore, close attention to an opponent's every move is required.
Suriage-waza
If struck by an opponent's shinai, this technique sweeps up their shinai in a rising-slide motion, with the right (ura) or left (omote) side of the shinai. Then strike in the direction of their shinai, or at the opening resulting from their composure's collapse. This technique needs to be smooth. That is, don't separate the rising-slide motion and the upward-sweeping motion or it will not be successful. Valid strikes include: men-suriage-men, kote-suriage-men, men-suriage-do, kote-suriage-kote, and Tsuki-suriage-men.
Uchiotoshi-waza
This waza knocks an opponent's shinai to the right or left. This neutralises a potential strike and gives the ideal chance to strike as an opponent is off-balance. For success, the distance between oneself and the opponent has to be correctly perceived, and then one knocks down their shinai before their arm fully extends. Valid strikes include: do-uchiotoshi-men and Tsuki-uchiotoshi-men.
Kaeshi-waza
This technique is a response. As the opponent strikes, the opponent parries their shinai with the initiator's. They then flip over (turn over the hands) and strike their opposite side. Valid strikes include: men-kaeshi-men, men-kaeshi-kote, men-kaeshi-do, kote-kaeshi-men, kote-kaeshi-kote, and do-kaeshi-men.
Rules of Competition
A scorable in a kendo competition (tai-kai) is defined as an accurate strike or thrust made onto a datotsu-bui of the opponent's kendo-gu with the shinai making contact at its datotsu-bu, the competitor displaying high spirits, correct posture and followed by zanshin.
Datotsu-bui or point scoring targets in kendo are defined as:
Men-bu, the top or sides of the head protector (sho-men and sayu-men).
Kote-bu, a padded area of the right or left wrist protector (migi-kote and hidari-kote).
Do-bu, an area of the right or left side of the armour that protects the torso (migi-do and hidari-do).
Tsuki-bu, an area of the head protector in front of the throat (Tsuki-dare).Datotsu-bu of the shinai is the forward, or blade side (jin-bu) of the top third (monouchi) of the shinai.
, or continuation of awareness, must be present and shown throughout the execution of the strike and the kendōka must be mentally and physically ready to attack again.
In competition, there are usually three . Each referee holds a red flag and a white flag in opposing hands. To award a point, a referee raises the flag corresponding to the color of the ribbon worn by the scoring competitor. Usually, at least two referees must agree for a point to be awarded. Play is stopped after each point is awarded.
Kendo competitions are usually a three-point match. The first competitor to score two points, therefore, wins the match. If the time limit is reached and only one competitor has a point, that competitor wins.
In the case of a tie, there are several options:
: The match is declared a draw.
: The match is continued until either competitor scores a point.
: The victor is decided by the referees. The three referees vote for victor by each raising one of their respective flags simultaneously.
Important kendo competitions
The All Japan Kendo Championship is regarded as the most prestigious kendo championship. Despite it being the national championship for only Japanese kendōka, kendo practitioners all over the world consider the All Japan Kendo Championship as the championship with the highest level of competitive kendo. The World Kendo Championships have been held every three years since 1970. They are organised by the International Kendo Federation (FIK) with the support of the host nation's kendo federation. The European championship is held every year, except in those years in which there is a world championship. Kendo is also one of the martial arts in the World Combat Games.
Advancement
Grades
Technical achievement in kendo is measured by advancement in grade, rank or level. The and grading system, created in 1883, is used to indicate one's proficiency in kendo. The dan levels are from to . There are usually six grades below first-dan, known as kyu. The kyu numbering is in reverse order, with being the grade immediately below first dan, and being the lowest grade. There are no visible differences in dress between kendo grades; those below dan-level may dress the same as those above dan-level.
In Japan, kyu ranks are generally held by children. The exam for 1st kyu (ikkyū) is often their first exam and grade. Adults generally will do their 1st dan (shodan) as their first exam. In most other countries outside of Japan, kendoka go through every kyu rank before being eligible for dan ranks.
is the highest dan grade attainable through a test of physical kendo skills. In the AJKF, the grades of and tenth dan () are no longer awarded, but ninth-dan kendōka are still active in Japanese kendo. International Kendo Federation (FIK) grading rules allow national kendo organisations to establish a special committee to consider awarding these grades. Only five now-deceased kendōka were ever admitted to the rank of 10th-dan following the establishment in 1952 of the All Japan Kendo Federation. These five kendōka, all of whom were students of Naitō Takaharu at the Budo Senmon Gakko, are:
Ogawa Kinnosuke 小川 金之助 (1884-1962)- awarded 1957
Moriji Mochida (aka Mochida Moriji) 持田 盛二 (1885-1974)- awarded 1957
Nakano Sousuke 中野 宗助 (1885-1963)- awarded 1957
Saimura Gorou 斎村 五郎 (1887-1969)- awarded 1957
Ooasa Yuuji 大麻 勇次 (1887-1974)- awarded 1962
All examination candidates face a panel of examiners. A larger, more qualified panel is usually assembled to assess the higher dan grades. Kendo examinations typically consist of jitsugi, a demonstration of the skill of the applicants, Nihon Kendo Kata, and a written exam. The eighth-dan kendo exam is extremely difficult, with a reported pass rate of less than 1 percent.
Titles
can be earned in addition to the above dan grades by kendōka of a defined dan grade. These are , , and . The title is affixed to the front of the dan grade when said, for example . The qualifications for each title are below.
KataKata are fixed patterns that teach kendōka the basic elements of swordsmanship. The kata include fundamental techniques of attacking and counter-attacking, and have useful practical application in general kendo. There are ten . These are generally practiced with . Occasionally, real swords or swords with a blunt edge, called or , may be used for display of kata.
All are performed by two people: the , the teacher, and , the student. The uchidachi makes the first move or attack in each kata. As this is a teaching role, the uchidachi is always the losing side, thus allowing the shidachi to learn and to gain confidence.Kata one to seven are performed with both partners using a normal length wooden sword. Kata eight to ten are performed with uchidachi using a normal length weapon and shidachi using a shorter one (kodachi).
The forms of the were finalized in 1933 based on the Dai nihon Teikoku Kendo Kata, composed in 1912. It is impossible to link the individual forms of Dai nihon Teikoku Kendo Kata to their original influences, although the genealogical reference diagram does indicate the masters of the various committees involved, and it is possible from this to determine the influences and origins of Kendo and the Kata.
In 2003, the All Japan Kendo Federation introduced , a set of basic exercises using a bokuto. This form of practice is intended primarily for kendōka up to , but is very useful for all kendo students who are organized under FIK.Kata'' can also be treated as competitions where players are judged upon their performance and technique.
National and international organizations
Many national and regional organizations manage and promote kendo activities outside Japan. The major organizing body is the International Kendo Federation (FIK). The FIK is a non-governmental international federation of national and regional kendo organisations. An aim of the FIK is to provide a link between Japan and the international kendo community and to promote and popularize kendo, iaido and jodo. The FIK was established in 1970 with 17 national federations. The number of affiliated and recognized organizations has increased over the years to 57 (as of May 2015). The FIK is recognized by SportAccord as a 'Full Member'. and by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Other organizations that promote the study of Japanese martial arts, including kendo, are the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (DNBK) and the International Martial Arts Federation (IMAF). The current DNBK has no connection to the pre-war organization, although it shares the same goals. The International Martial Arts Federation (IMAF) was established in Kyoto in 1952 and is dedicated to the promotion and development of the martial arts worldwide, including kendo.
See also
Angampora
Banshay
Bataireacht
Bōjutsu
Fencing
Gatka
Gendai budō - modern Japanese martial arts
Geography of kendo
Iaidō - sword drawing
Jōdō - a martial art using a short wooden staff, or stick
Jūkendō
Kalaripayattu
Kenjutsu
Krabi–krabong
Kumdo - Korean kendo
Kuttu Varisai
Mardani khel
Miyamoto Musashi
Miyamoto Musashi Budokan
Naginata - a martial art using a glave-like weapon
Silambam
Silambam Asia
Swordsmanship
Tahtib
Thang-ta
Varma kalai
World Silambam Association
References
External links
International Kendo Federation (FIK)
All Japan Kendo Federation (AJKF)
Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (DNBK)
http://www.ekf-eu.com/ European Kendo Federation
Dō
Gendai budo
Japanese swordsmanship
Sports originating in Japan | [
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17100 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingfisher | Kingfisher | Kingfishers or Alcedinidae are a family of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania but also can be seen in Europe. They can be found in deep forests near calm ponds and small rivers. The family contains 114 species and is divided into three subfamilies and 19 genera. All kingfishers have large heads, long, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails. Most species have bright plumage with only small differences between the sexes. Most species are tropical in distribution, and a slight majority are found only in forests. They consume a wide range of prey usually caught by swooping down from a perch. While kingfishers are usually thought to live near rivers and eat fish, many species live away from water and eat small invertebrates. Like other members of their order, they nest in cavities, usually tunnels dug into the natural or artificial banks in the ground. Some kingfishers nest in arboreal termite nests. A few species, principally insular forms, are threatened with extinction. In Britain, the word "kingfisher" normally refers to the common kingfisher.
Taxonomy, systematics and evolution
The kingfishers family Alcedinidae is in the order Coraciiformes, which also includes the motmots, bee-eaters, todies, rollers and ground-rollers. The name of the family was introduced (as Alcedia) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is divided into three subfamilies, the tree kingfishers (Halcyoninae), the river kingfishers (Alcedininae) and the water kingfishers (Cerylinae). The name Daceloninae is sometimes used for the tree kingfisher subfamily but it was introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1841 while Halcyoninae introduced by Nicholas Aylward Vigors in 1825 is earlier and has priority. A few taxonomists elevate the three subfamilies to family status. In spite of the word "kingfisher" in their English vernacular names, many of these birds are not specialist fish-eaters; none of the species in Halcyoninae are.
The centre of kingfisher diversity is the Australasian realm, but the group originated in the Indomalayan region around 27 million years ago and invaded the Australasian realm a number of times. Fossil kingfishers have been described from Lower Eocene rocks in Wyoming and Middle Eocene rocks in Germany, around 30–40 million years ago. More recent fossil kingfishers have been described in the Miocene rocks of Australia (5–25 million years old). Several fossil birds have been erroneously ascribed to the kingfishers, including Halcyornis, from the Lower Eocene rocks in Kent, which has also been considered a gull, but is now thought to have been a member of an extinct family.
Amongst the three subfamilies, the Alcedininae are basal to the other two subfamilies. The few species found in the Americas, all from the subfamily Cerylinae, suggest that the sparse representation in the Western Hemisphere resulted from just two original colonising events. The subfamily is a comparatively recent split from the Halcyoninae, diversifying in the Old World as recently as the Miocene or Pliocene.
Description
The smallest species of kingfisher is the African dwarf kingfisher (Ispidina lecontei), which averages in length and between in weight. The largest kingfisher in Africa is the giant kingfisher (Megaceryle maxima), which is in length and in weight. The familiar Australian kingfisher known as the laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) is the heaviest species with females reaching nearly in weight.
The plumage of most kingfishers is bright, with green and blue being the most common colours. The brightness of the colours is neither the product of iridescence (except in the American kingfishers) or pigments, but is instead caused by the structure of the feathers, which causes scattering of blue light (the Tyndall effect). In most species, no overt differences between the sexes exist; when differences occur, they are quite small (less than 10%).
The kingfishers have long, dagger-like bills. The bill is usually longer and more compressed in species that hunt fish, and shorter and more broad in species that hunt prey off the ground. The largest and most atypical bill is that of the shovel-billed kookaburra, which is used to dig through the forest floor in search of prey. They generally have short legs, although species that feed on the ground have longer tarsi. Most species have four toes, three of which are forward-pointing.
The irises of most species are dark brown. The kingfishers have excellent vision; they are capable of binocular vision and are thought in particular to have good colour vision. They have restricted movement of their eyes within the eye sockets, instead using head movements to track prey. In addition, they are capable of compensating for the refraction of water and reflection when hunting prey underwater, and are able to judge depth under water accurately. They also have nictitating membranes that cover the eyes to protect them when they hit the water; the pied kingfisher has a bony plate which slides across the eye when it hits the water.
Distribution and habitat
The kingfishers have a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring throughout the world's tropical and temperate regions. They are absent from the polar regions and some of the world's driest deserts. A number of species have reached islands groups, particularly those in the south and east Pacific Ocean. The Old World tropics and Australasia are the core areas for this group. Europe and North America north of Mexico are very poorly represented, with only one common kingfisher (common kingfisher and belted kingfisher, respectively), and a couple of uncommon or very local species each: (ringed kingfisher and green kingfisher in the southwestern United States, pied kingfisher and white-throated kingfisher in southeastern Europe). The six species occurring in the Americas are four closely related green kingfishers in the genus Chloroceryle and two large crested kingfishers in the genus Megaceryle. Even tropical South America has only five species plus the wintering belted kingfisher. In comparison, the African country of the Gambia has eight resident species in its area.
Individual species may have massive ranges, like the common kingfisher, which ranges from Ireland across Europe, North Africa, and Asia as far as the Solomon Islands in Australasia, or the pied kingfisher, which has a widespread distribution across Africa and Asia. Other species have much smaller ranges, particularly insular species which are endemic to single small islands. The Kofiau paradise kingfisher is restricted to the island of Kofiau off New Guinea.
Kingfishers occupy a wide range of habitats. While they are often associated with rivers and lakes, over half the world's species are found in forests and forested streams. They also occupy a wide range of other habitats. The red-backed kingfisher of Australia lives in the driest deserts, although kingfishers are absent from other dry deserts like the Sahara. Other species live high in mountains, or in open woodland, and a number of species live on tropical coral atolls. Numerous species have adapted to human-modified habitats, particularly those adapted to woodlands, and may be found in cultivated and agricultural areas, as well as parks and gardens in towns and cities.
Behaviour and ecology
Diet and feeding
Kingfishers feed on a wide variety of prey. They are most famous for hunting and eating fish, and some species do specialise in catching fish, but other species take crustaceans, frogs and other amphibians, annelid worms, molluscs, insects, spiders, centipedes, reptiles (including snakes), and even birds and mammals. Individual species may specialise in a few items or take a wide variety of prey, and for species with large global distributions, different populations may have different diets. Woodland and forest kingfishers take mainly insects, particularly grasshoppers, whereas the water kingfishers are more specialised in taking fish. The red-backed kingfisher has been observed hammering into the mud nests of fairy martins to feed on their nestlings. Kingfishers usually hunt from an exposed perch; when a prey item is observed, the kingfisher swoops down to snatch it, then returns to the perch. Kingfishers of all three families beat larger prey on a perch to kill the prey and to dislodge or break protective spines and bones. Having beaten the prey, it is manipulated and then swallowed. Sometimes, a pellet of bones, scales and other indigestible debris is coughed up. The shovel-billed kookaburra uses its massive, wide bill as a shovel to dig for worms in soft mud.
Breeding
Kingfishers are territorial, some species defending their territories vigorously. They are generally monogamous, although cooperative breeding has been observed in some species and is quite common in others, for example the laughing kookaburra, where helpers aid the dominant breeding pair in raising the young.
Like all Coraciiformes, the kingfishers are cavity nesters as well as tree nesters, with most species nesting in holes dug in the ground. These holes are usually in earth banks on the sides of rivers, lakes or man-made ditches. Some species may nest in holes in trees, the earth clinging to the roots of an uprooted tree, or arboreal nests of termites (termitarium). These termite nests are common in forest species. The nests take the form of a small chamber at the end of a tunnel. Nest-digging duties are shared between the genders
. During the initial excavations, the bird may fly at the chosen site with considerable force, and birds have injured themselves fatally while doing this. The length of the tunnels varies by species and location; nests in termitariums are necessarily much shorter than those dug into the earth, and nests in harder substrates are shorter than those in soft soil or sand. The longest tunnels recorded are those of the giant kingfisher, which have been found to be long.
The eggs of kingfishers are invariably white. The typical clutch size varies by species; some of the very large and very small species lay as few as two eggs per clutch, whereas others may lay 10 eggs, the typical is around three to six eggs. Both sexes incubate the eggs. The offspring of the kingfisher usually stay with the parents for 3–4 months.
Status and conservation
A number of species are considered threatened by human activities and are in danger of extinction. The majority of these are forest species with limited distribution, particularly insular species. They are threatened by habitat loss caused by forest clearance or degradation and in some cases by introduced species. The Marquesan kingfisher of French Polynesia is listed as critically endangered due to a combination of habitat loss and degradation caused by introduced cattle, and possibly due to predation by introduced species.
Relationship with humans
Kingfishers are generally shy birds, but in spite of this, they feature heavily in human culture, generally due to the large head supporting its powerful mouth, their bright plumage, or some species' interesting behavior.
For the Dusun people of Borneo, the Oriental dwarf kingfisher is considered a bad omen, and warriors who see one on the way to battle should return home. Another Bornean tribe considers the banded kingfisher an omen bird, albeit generally a good omen.
The sacred kingfisher, along with other Pacific kingfishers, was venerated by the Polynesians, who believed it had control over the seas and waves.
Modern taxonomy also refers to the winds and sea in naming kingfishers after a classical Greek myth. The first pair of the mythical-bird Halcyon (kingfishers) were created from a marriage of Alcyone and Ceyx. As gods, they lived the sacrilege of referring to themselves as Zeus and Hera. They died for this, but the other gods, in an act of compassion, made them into birds, thus restoring them to their original seaside habitat. In addition, special "halcyon days" were granted. These are the seven days on either side of the winter solstice when storms shall never again occur for them. The Halcyon birds' "days" were for caring for the winter-hatched clutch (or brood), but the phrase "Halcyon days" also refers specifically to an idyllic time in the past, or in general to a peaceful time.
Various kinds of kingfishers and human cultural artifacts are named after the couple, in reference to this metamorphosis myth:
The genus Ceyx (within the river kingfishers family) is named after him.
The kingfisher subfamily Halcyoninae (tree kingfishers) is named after his wife, as is the genus Halcyon.
The belted kingfisher's specific name (Megaceryle alcyon) also references her name.
Not all the kingfishers are named in this way. The etymology of kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) is obscure; the term comes from "king's fisher", but why that name was applied is not known.
References
Sources
External links
ARKive – images and movies of the kingfisher (Alcedo atthis)
Kingfisher videos on the Internet Bird Collection
Taxa named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque | [
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17102 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesgrave | Kesgrave | Kesgrave is a town in the English county of Suffolk on the eastern edge of Ipswich. Kesgrave forms part of the wider Ipswich Built-up area.
History
The area was recorded as Gressgrava in the Domesday Book, by the late 15th century its name had become Kesgrave. Kesgrave remained a small agricultural settlement with just a church, inn and a few farmsteads for over 700 years.
In 1921 the population was only 103 housed in 20 dwellings. Since then great changes have taken place.
By 1988 Kesgrave covered an area of more than .
Kesgrave parish council officially adopted the title of a town in January 2000.
Schools
Kesgrave High School is a large 11-18 comprehensive co-educational school with nearly 2000 pupils. A study for Sustrans noted that 61% of the pupils cycled to the school. This is largely due to the installation of a large cycle lane through the local housing development and along the main road. The school actively encourages walking or cycling and provides bicycle storage facilities.
The five primary schools in the immediate vicinity of Kesgrave are Beacon Hill Primary School, Birchwood Primary School, Cedarwood Primary School the building of which was awarded a Civic Trust Award in 2003, Gorseland Primary School and Heath Primary School.
Kesgrave was home to a number of private day and boarding schools based at Kesgrave Hall
St. Edmund's School (1946–1975)
Kesgrave Hall School (1976–1993)
Shawe Manor (1993)
Ryes School (2004–2007)
Gallery
Notable residents
Lawrence Ward, former Serjeant at Arms of the British House of Commons.
See also
Sinks Valley, Kesgrave
References
External links
Kesgrave Community Portal
Photos of Kesgrave
Towns in Suffolk
Civil parishes in Suffolk
Ipswich Districts | [
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17103 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt%20Waldheim | Kurt Waldheim | Kurt Josef Waldheim (; 21 December 1918 – 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia, as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II, raised international controversy.
Early life and education
Waldheim was born in Sankt Andrä-Wördern, near Vienna, on 21 December 1918. His father was a Roman Catholic school inspector of Czech origin named Watzlawick (original Czech spelling Václavík) who changed his name that year as the Habsburg monarchy collapsed. Waldheim served in the Austrian Army (1936–37) and attended the Vienna Consular Academy, where he graduated in 1939. Waldheim's father was active in the Christian Social Party. Waldheim himself was politically unaffiliated during his years at the Academy.
Three weeks after the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Waldheim applied for membership in the National Socialist German Students' League (NSDStB), a division of the Nazi Party. Shortly thereafter he became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing.
On 19 August 1944, he married Elisabeth Ritschel in Vienna; their first daughter, Lieselotte, was born the following year. A son, Gerhard, and another daughter, Christa, followed.
Military service in World War II
In early 1941, Waldheim was drafted into the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany, specifically to the Heer (Army), and posted to the Eastern Front where he served as a squad leader. In December, he was wounded but returned to service in 1942. His service from 1942 to 1945 was the subject of international review in 1985 and 1986. In his 1985 autobiography, he claimed that he was discharged from further service at the front and, for the remainder of the war, finished his law degree at the University of Vienna, in addition to marrying in 1944. After publication, documents and witnesses came to light that revealed Waldheim's military service continued until 1945, during which time he rose to the rank of Oberleutnant.
Service in Yugoslavia and Greece
Waldheim's functions within the staff of German Army's Group E from 1942 until 1945, as determined by the International Commission of Historians, were:
Interpreter and liaison officer with the 5th Alpine Division
(Italy) in Pljevlja from 22 March 1942 to July 1942.
O2 (2nd Assistant Adjutant) to the 1b (General Staff Quartermaster) with Kampfgruppe West in Bosnia in June/August 1942,
Interpreter with the liaison staff attached to the Italian 9th Army in Tirana in early summer 1942,
O1 (1st Assistant Adjutant) to the 1a (General Staff Chief of Operations) in the German liaison staff with the Italian 11th Army and in the staff of the Army Group South in Greece in July/October 1943, and
O3 (3rd Assistant Adjutant) to the 1c (General Staff Chief Intelligence Officer) officer on the staff of Army Group E in Arsakli, Kosovska Mitrovica and Sarajevo from October 1943 to January/February 1945.
By 1943, Waldheim was serving in the capacity of an aide-de-camp in Army Group E which was headed by General Alexander Löhr. In 1986, Waldheim said that he had served only as an interpreter and a clerk and had no knowledge either of reprisals against local Serb civilians or of massacres in neighboring provinces of Yugoslavia. He said that he had known about some of the things that had happened, and had been horrified, but could not see what else he could have done.
Much historical interest has centred on Waldheim's role in Operation Kozara in 1942. According to one post-war investigator, prisoners were routinely shot within only a few hundred metres (yards) of Waldheim's office, and away at the Jasenovac concentration camp. Waldheim later stated that "he did not know about the murder of civilians there".
Waldheim's name appears on the Wehrmachts "honour list" of those responsible for the militarily successful operation. The Nazi puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, awarded Waldheim the Medal of the Crown of King Zvonimir in silver with an oak branches cluster. Decades later, during the lobbying for his election as U.N. Secretary General, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, who had led the Yugoslav Partisans during the war, awarded Waldheim one of the highest Yugoslav orders, not knowing the details of his prior military service.
Waldheim denied that he knew war crimes were taking place in Bosnia at the height of the battles between the Nazis and Tito's partisans in 1943. According to Eli Rosenbaum, in 1944, Waldheim reviewed and approved a packet of anti-Semitic propaganda leaflets to be dropped behind Soviet lines, one of which ended: "Enough of the Jewish war, kill the Jews, come over."
In 1945, Waldheim surrendered to British forces in Carinthia, at which point he said he had fled his command post within Army Group E, where he was serving with General Alexander Löhr.
Diplomatic career
After finishing his studies in law at the University of Vienna Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945. He served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris from 1948, and in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1956. In 1956 he was made Ambassador to Canada, returning to the Ministry in 1960, after which he became the Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations in 1964. For two years beginning in 1968, he was the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Austrian People's Party, before going back as Permanent Representative to the U.N. in 1970. Shortly afterwards, he ran and was defeated in the 1971 Austrian presidential elections.
United Nations Secretary-General
After losing the presidential election, Waldheim ran for Secretary-General of the United Nations in the 1971 selection. Waldheim was supported by the Soviet Union and led the first two rounds of voting. However, he was opposed by China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Waldheim won an accidental victory in the third round of voting when those three permanent members failed to coordinate their vetoes and all abstained. Waldheim succeeded U Thant as United Nations Secretary-General in 1972.
As Secretary-General, Waldheim opened and addressed a number of major international conferences convened under United Nations auspices. These included the third session of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (Santiago, April 1972), the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972), the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (Caracas, June 1974), the Third World Population Conference (Bucharest, August 1974) and the World Food Conference (Rome, November 1974), and the World Conference on Women, 1975 (Mexico City, June 1975). During the later, UN Resolution 3379, which considered Zionism as a form of racism and equated it with South African Apartheid, was approved by impulse of Arab countries, the Soviet bloc, and Non-Aligned Movement countries. His diplomatic efforts particularly in the Middle East were overshadowed by the diplomacy of then U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
On 11 September 1972, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin sent a telegram to Waldheim, copies of which went to Yasser Arafat and Golda Meir. In the telegram, Amin "applauded the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and said Germany was the most appropriate locale for this because it was where Hitler burned more than six million Jews". Amin also called "to expel Israel from the United Nations and to send all the Israelis to Britain, which bore the guilt for creating the Jewish state". Amidst international protest, "the UN spokesman said [in his daily press conference] it was not the secretary-general's practice to comment on telegrams sent him by heads of government. He added that the secretary-general condemned any form of racial discrimination and genocide."
After Operation Entebbe on 7 July 1976 – in which Israeli commandos freed more than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers held captive in Entebbe Airport (Uganda's main airport) by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and German Revolutionary Cells fighters protected by forces of dictator Idi Amin, and where all the hijackers, three hostages, and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed – Waldheim described the raid as a "serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state".
Waldheim ran for a second term in the 1976 UN Secretary-General selection. However, China was still opposed to Waldheim and approached several Third World countries seeking challengers. Outgoing Mexican President Luis Echeverría finally entered the race in October 1976, making Waldheim the only Secretary-General to face a contested re-selection campaign. Waldheim resoundingly defeated Echeverría in the first round of voting. China cast a single symbolic veto against Waldheim in the first round and voted for him in the second round, handing him an easy victory with 14 of 15 votes on the Security Council.
In 1977, Waldheim recorded a greeting for the Voyager Golden Records, a pair of discs containing sounds and images representing the diversity of life and culture on Earth, which were launched into deep space on the Voyager spacecraft. The craft were also inscribed with a written message from then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Waldheim was the first Secretary-General to visit North Korea, in 1979. In 1980, Waldheim flew to Iran in an attempt to negotiate the release of the American hostages held in Tehran, but Ayatollah Khomeini refused to see him. While in Tehran, it was announced that an attempt on Waldheim's life had been foiled. Near the end of his tenure as Secretary-General, Waldheim and British popular musician Paul McCartney organized a series of concerts for the People of Kampuchea to help Cambodia recover from the damage done by Pol Pot.
Waldheim ran for an unprecedented third full term as Secretary-General in the 1981 selection. China was determined to unseat him this time and lined up a strong candidate in Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania. In the first round of voting, Waldheim lost to Salim by one vote. However, Salim was vetoed by the United States, while Waldheim was vetoed by China. The veto duel between China and the United States lasted a record 16 rounds. After six weeks of deadlock, Waldheim and Salim both withdrew from the race. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru won the selection and succeeded Waldheim as Secretary-General of the United Nations. The events of 1981 established a two-term limit on the office, and no Secretary-General since Waldheim has run for a third term.
Presidency of Austria
Election and Waldheim Affair
Waldheim had unsuccessfully sought election as President of Austria in 1971, but his second attempt on 8 June 1986 proved successful. During his campaign for the presidency in 1985, what became known internationally as the "Waldheim affair" began. Before the presidential elections, investigative journalist Alfred Worm revealed in the Austrian weekly news magazine Profil that there had been several omissions about Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945 in his recently published autobiography.
Waldheim had previously claimed to have received a medical discharge after being wounded in winter 1942. His aides at the United Nations even accused the Israeli mission of spreading rumors that he supported the Nazis. Israeli ambassador Yehuda Zvi Blum denied the charges, saying, "We don't believe Waldheim ever supported the Nazis and we never said he did. We have many differences with him, but that isn't one of them."
A short time later, beginning on 4 March 1986, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service in the mounted corps of the SA and had concealed his service as a special missions staff officer (Ordonnanzoffizier) for Germany's Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece, from 1942 to 1944, based primarily on captured German wartime records held at the United States National Archives in Washington, DC, and in other archives. The 23 March 1986 public disclosure by the World Jewish Congress that the organization had unearthed the fact that the United Nations War Crimes Commission concluded after the war that Waldheim was implicated in Nazi mass murder and should be arrested arguably transformed the Waldheim affair into the most sensational of all post-war Nazi scandals.
Waldheim called the allegations, which grew in magnitude in the ensuing months, "pure lies and malicious acts". Nevertheless, he admitted that he had known about German reprisals: "Yes, I knew. I was horrified. But what could I do? I had either to continue to serve or be executed." He said that he had never fired a shot or even seen a partisan. His former immediate superior at the time stated that Waldheim had "remained confined to a desk". Former Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky, of Jewish origin, denounced the actions of the World Jewish Congress as an "extraordinary infamy", adding that Austrians would not "allow the Jews abroad to ... tell us who should be our President".
Part of the reason for the controversy was Austria's refusal to address its national role in the Holocaust (many leading Nazis, including Adolf Hitler, were Austrians, and Austria became part of the Third Reich). Austria refused to pay compensation to victims of Nazism, and from 1970 onwards refused to investigate Austrian citizens who were senior Nazis. Stolen Jewish art remained public property a generation after the Waldheim affair.
Because the revelations leading to the Waldheim affair came shortly before the presidential election, there has been speculation about the background of the affair. Declassified documents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency show that the CIA had been aware of some details of his wartime past since 1945. Information about Waldheim's wartime past was also previously published by a pro-German Austrian newspaper, Salzburger Volksblatt, during the 1971 presidential election campaign, including the claim of an SS membership, but the matter was supposedly regarded as unimportant or even advantageous for the candidate at that time.
In view of the ongoing international controversy, the Austrian government decided to appoint an international committee of historians to examine Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945. Their report found no evidence of any personal involvement in those crimes. Although Waldheim had stated that he was unaware of any crimes taking place, the committee cited evidence that Waldheim must have known about war crimes. The International Committee in February 1988 concluded that Waldheim had been "in close proximity to some Nazi atrocities, knew they were going on and made no attempt to stop them". The committee also noted that "he only had very minor possibilities to act against the injustices happening".
Allegations of war crimes
On 27 April 1987, the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of State announced that evidence amassed in an investigation conducted by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) had established a prima facie case that Waldheim participated in Nazi-sponsored persecution during World War II and therefore that his entry into the United States was prohibited by federal statute. This marked the first time that a head of state had been put on an immigration watchlist. The 232-page internal Department of Justice 9 April 1987 investigative report was released in 1994 by that agency, and it is available at the agency's website. The report catalogues evidence that, the U.S. government concluded, proved that Waldheim had taken part in, among other actions: the transfer of civilian prisoners to the SS for exploitation as slave labor; the mass deportation of civilians—including Jews from Greek islands and the town of Banja Luka, Yugoslavia—to concentration and death camps; the utilization of anti-Semitic propaganda; the mistreatment and execution of Allied prisoners; and reprisal executions of hostages and other civilians.
Additional allegations of participation in Nazi crimes, with citations to captured Nazi documents and other records, were leveled in a 1993 book by Eli Rosenbaum, the former U.S. federal prosecutor who had directed the World Jewish Congress investigation that led to the New York Times' initial exposure of Waldheim's hidden Nazi-era past in 1986. The book also alleged that the Soviet Union was aware of Waldheim's alleged involvement in Nazi crimes and that, after vetoing other candidates in order to get Waldheim installed as U.N. Secretary General in 1972, used that information to extract concessions at the United Nations that facilitated KGB espionage in the United States, and that the CIA's failure to anticipate this possibility was a major failure for the intelligence agency. In a letter to the editor published in Foreign Affairs magazine two years after Rosenbaum's book was released, former Finnish ambassador to the U.N. Max Jakobson (one of the candidates whom the USSR had vetoed) wrote, "The Soviets knew everything about Waldheim. That is why they preferred him."
Throughout his term as President (1986–1992), Waldheim was officially deemed persona non grata by the United States and, officially or informally, by nearly every other nation in the world outside the Arab world.
Later years and death
After his term ended in 1992, Waldheim did not seek re-election. The same year, he was made an honorary member of K.H.V. Welfia Klosterneuburg, a Roman Catholic student fraternity part of the Austrian Cartellverband. In 1994, Pope John Paul II awarded Waldheim a knighthood in the Order of Pius IX and his wife a papal honor. He died on 14 June 2007, at the age of 88 from heart failure. On 23 June, his funeral was held at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, and he was buried at the Presidential Vault in the Zentralfriedhof ("central cemetery").
In his speech at the cathedral, Federal President Heinz Fischer called Waldheim "a great Austrian" who had been wrongfully accused of having committed war crimes. Fischer also praised Waldheim for his efforts to solve international crises and for his contributions to world peace.
At Waldheim's own request, no foreign heads of states or governments were invited to attend his funeral except Hans-Adam II, the Prince of Liechtenstein. Also present was Luis Durnwalder, governor of the Italian province of South Tyrol. Japan and Syria were the only two countries that laid wreaths on his grave. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, issued a message 'voicing sadness'. In a two-page letter, published posthumously by the Austrian Press Agency the day after he died, Waldheim admitted making "mistakes" ("but these were certainly not those of a follower let alone an accomplice of a criminal regime") and asked his critics for forgiveness.
Bibliography
References
Further reading
Bassett, Richard (1988). Waldheim and Austria, Penguin Books.
Herzstein, Robert Edwin (1988). Waldheim, the Missing Years. First ed. New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1988. 303 p., ill. with b&w photos.
Rosenbaum, Eli M. with William Hoffer. Betrayal: The Inside Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.
Office of Special Investigations, United States Department of Justice Criminal Division internal investigative report: In the Matter of Kurt Waldheim, at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-hrsp/legacy/2011/02/04/04-09-87waldheim-rpt.pdf
Eli M. Rosenbaum, "The Kurt Waldheim Affair," in Ronald S. Lauder (Foreword) and Menachem Z. Rosensaft (Editor). The World Jewish Congress, 1936–2016, New York: World Jewish Congress LLC, 2017.
Harold H. Tittmann III, The Waldheim Affair: Democracy Subverted. Dunkirk, NY: Olin Frederick, 2000. .
External links
Kurt Waldheim papers at the United Nations Archives
Austria and Nazism: Owning Up to the Past (A BBC Report)
The Waldheim Report: International Commission of Historians at Google Books
Video of Kurt Waldheim sworn in as UN Secretary-General
GREEK JEWS CHALLENGING WALDHEIM by HENRY KAMM
1918 births
2007 deaths
University of Vienna alumni
Austrian Nazis
Presidents of Austria
Austrian diplomats
Cold War diplomats
Ambassadors of Austria to Canada
Austrian expatriates in Canada
Permanent Representatives of Austria to the United Nations
Secretaries-General of the United Nations
Foreign ministers of Austria
Knights of the Order of Pope Pius IX
Austrian Roman Catholics
Austrian people of Czech descent
People from Tulln District
Burials at the Vienna Central Cemetery
Recipients of the Iron Cross (1939), 2nd class
Austrian officials of the United Nations
German Army officers of World War II
Austrian military personnel of World War II
Austrian military personnel | [
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17104 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%20K6 | AMD K6 | The K6 microprocessor was launched by AMD in 1997. The main advantage of this particular microprocessor is that it was designed to fit into existing desktop designs for Pentium-branded CPUs. It was marketed as a product that could perform as well as its Intel Pentium II equivalent but at a significantly lower price. The K6 had a considerable impact on the PC market and presented Intel with serious competition.
Background
The AMD K6 is a superscalar P5 Pentium-class microprocessor, manufactured by AMD, which superseded the K5.
The AMD K6 is based on the Nx686 microprocessor that NexGen was designing when it was acquired by AMD. Despite the name implying a design evolving from the K5, it is in fact a totally different design that was created by the NexGen team, including chief processor architect Greg Favor, and adapted after the AMD purchase. The K6 processor included a feedback dynamic instruction reordering mechanism, MMX instructions, and a floating-point unit (FPU). It was also made pin-compatible with Intel's Pentium, enabling it to be used in the widely available "Socket 7"-based motherboards. Like the AMD K5, Nx586, and Nx686 before it, the K6 translated x86 instructions on the fly into dynamic buffered sequences of micro-operations. A later variation of the K6 CPU, K6-2, added floating-point-based SIMD instructions, called 3DNow!.
The K6 was originally launched in April 1997, running at speeds of 166 and 200 MHz. It was followed by a 233 MHz version later in 1997. Initially, the AMD K6 processors used a Pentium II-based performance rating (PR2) to designate their speed. The PR2 rating was dropped because the rated frequency of the processor was not the same as the real frequency. The release of the 266 MHz version of this chip was not until the second quarter of 1998, when AMD was able to move to the 0.25-micrometre manufacturing process. The lower voltage and higher multiplier of the K6-266 meant that it was not fully compatible with some Socket 7 motherboards, similar to the later K6-2 processors. The final iteration of the K6 design was released in May 1998, running at 300 MHz.
Features
CPU features table
Models
K6 (Model 6)
8.8 million transistors in 350 nm
L1-Cache: 32 + 32 KB (data + instructions)
MMX
Socket 7
Front side bus: 66 MHz
First release: April 2, 1997
VCore: 2.9 V (166/200) 3.2/3.3 V (233)
Clockrate: 166, 200, 233 MHz
K6 "Little Foot" (Model 7)
CPUID: family 5, model 7, stepping 0
8.8 million transistors in 250 nm
L1-Cache: 32 + 32 KB (data + instructions)
MMX
Socket 7
Front side bus: 66 MHz
First release: January 6, 1998
VCore: 2.2 V
Clockrate: 200, 233, 266, 300 MHz
References
Further reading
Gwennap, Linley (31 March 1997). "K6 Is World's Fastest x86 Chip". Microprocessor Report.
Slater, Michael (28 October 1998). "K6 to Boost AMD's Position in 1997". Microprocessor Report.
External links
AMD K6, first of an impressive dynasty
Technical overview of the AMD-K6 series
technical dissection of the 6th generation x86 CPUs
Computer-related introductions in 1997
K06
Advanced Micro Devices microarchitectures
Superscalar microprocessors
X86 microarchitectures | [
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17105 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K7 | K7 | K7, K07 or K-7 may refer to:
A complete graph with 7 Vertices
Bluebird K7, a high speed hydroplane raced by Donald Campbell
Daewoo Precision Industries K7, a submachine gun with an integrated suppressor
Deep Space Station K7, a fictional space station featured in the Star Trek episodes "The Trouble With Tribbles" and "Trials and Tribble-ations"
K7 (mountain), a mountain of the Karakoram range, in Pakistan
K-7 (Kansas highway), a state highway in Kansas
Kalinin K-7, a heavy experimental aircraft designed and tested in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s
Kronprinsens husarregemente, a Swedish Army cavalry regiment disbanded 1927
Pentax K-7, a DSLR camera by Hoya Corporation
Schleicher K7, a 2-seater glider plane made from wood and steel
Computing
AMD K7, codename for certain AMD CPUs, including the Athlon, Athlon XP, Duron and some Sempron microprocessors
K7 Total Security, a anti-virus software
Music
Ibanez K7, a series of guitars
K7 (musician) (born 1967), American rapper
Studio !K7, German record label
Violin Sonata No. 2 (Mozart), by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Submarines
, a British submarine of the First World War
, a 1914 United States Navy K-class submarine
Ship disambiguation pages | [
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17106 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA9Q | KA9Q | KA9Q, also called KA9Q NOS or simply NOS, was a popular early implementation of TCP/IP and associated protocols for amateur packet radio systems and smaller personal computers connected via serial lines. It was named after the amateur radio callsign of Phil Karn, who first wrote the software for a CP/M system and then ported it to DOS on the IBM PC. As the KA9Q package included source code, many radio amateurs modified it, so many different versions were available at the same time.
KA9Q was later maintained by Anthony Frost (callsign G8UDV) and Adam Goodfellow. It was ported to the Acorn Archimedes by Jonathan Naylor (G4KLX). Until 1995 it was the standard access software provided by British dial-up internet service provider Demon Internet.
Most modern operating systems provide a built-in implementation of TCP/IP protocol; Linux especially includes all the necessary kernel functions and support utilities for TCP/IP over amateur radio systems, as well as basic AX.25 and NET/ROM functionality. Therefore, NOS is regarded as obsolete by its original developer. It still may have its uses for embedded systems that are too small for Linux.
KA9Q is also a name for the IP-over-IP Tunneling protocol.
References
External links
Phil Karn's web page on KA9Q NOS
Amateur radio software
Internet protocols
Packet radio | [
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17112 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC | HMAC | In cryptography, an HMAC (sometimes expanded as either keyed-hash message authentication code or hash-based message authentication code) is a specific type of message authentication code (MAC) involving a cryptographic hash function and a secret cryptographic key. As with any MAC, it may be used to simultaneously verify both the data integrity and authenticity of a message.
HMAC can provide authentication using a shared secret instead of using digital signatures with asymmetric cryptography. It trades off the need for a complex public key infrastructure by delegating the key exchange to the communicating parties, who are responsible for establishing and using a trusted channel to agree on the key prior to communication.
Details
Any cryptographic hash function, such as SHA-2 or SHA-3, may be used in the calculation of an HMAC; the resulting MAC algorithm is termed HMAC-X, where X is the hash function used (e.g. HMAC-SHA256 or HMAC-SHA3-512). The cryptographic strength of the HMAC depends upon the cryptographic strength of the underlying hash function, the size of its hash output, and the size and quality of the key.
HMAC uses two passes of hash computation. The secret key is first used to derive two keys – inner and outer. The first pass of the algorithm produces an internal hash derived from the message and the inner key. The second pass produces the final HMAC code derived from the inner hash result and the outer key. Thus the algorithm provides better immunity against length extension attacks.
An iterative hash function breaks up a message into blocks of a fixed size and iterates over them with a compression function. For example, SHA-256 operates on 512-bit blocks. The size of the output of HMAC is the same as that of the underlying hash function (e.g., 256 and 512 bits in the case of SHA-256 and SHA3-512, respectively), although it can be truncated if desired.
HMAC does not encrypt the message. Instead, the message (encrypted or not) must be sent alongside the HMAC hash. Parties with the secret key will hash the message again themselves, and if it is authentic, the received and computed hashes will match.
The definition and analysis of the HMAC construction was first published in 1996 in a paper by Mihir Bellare, Ran Canetti, and Hugo Krawczyk, and they also wrote RFC 2104 in 1997. The 1996 paper also defined a nested variant called NMAC. FIPS PUB 198 generalizes and standardizes the use of HMACs. HMAC is used within the IPsec, SSH and TLS protocols and for JSON Web Tokens.
Definition
This definition is taken from RFC 2104:
where
H is a cryptographic hash function
m is the message to be authenticated
K is the secret key
K is a block-sized key derived from the secret key, K; either by padding to the right with 0s up to the block size, or by hashing down to less than or equal to the block size first and then padding to the right with zeros
‖ denotes concatenation
⊕ denotes bitwise exclusive or (XOR)
opad is the block-sized outer padding, consisting of repeated bytes valued 0x5c
is the block-sized inner padding, consisting of repeated bytes valued 0x36
Implementation
The following pseudocode demonstrates how HMAC may be implemented. Block size is 512 bits (64 bytes) when using one of the following hash functions: SHA-1, MD5, RIPEMD-128.
hmac
key: Bytes
message: Bytes
hash: Function
blockSize: Integer
outputSize: Integer
block_sized_key = computeBlockSizedKey(key, hash, blockSize)
o_key_pad ← block_sized_key xor [0x5c blockSize]
i_key_pad ← block_sized_key xor [0x36 blockSize]
hash(o_key_pad ∥ hash(i_key_pad ∥ message))
computeBlockSizedKey
key: Bytes
hash: Function
blockSize: Integer
(length(key) > blockSize)
key = hash(key)
(length(key) < blockSize)
Pad(key, blockSize)
key
Design principles
The design of the HMAC specification was motivated by the existence of attacks on more trivial mechanisms for combining a key with a hash function. For example, one might assume the same security that HMAC provides could be achieved with MAC = H(key ∥ message). However, this method suffers from a serious flaw: with most hash functions, it is easy to append data to the message without knowing the key and obtain another valid MAC ("length-extension attack"). The alternative, appending the key using MAC = H(message ∥ key), suffers from the problem that an attacker who can find a collision in the (unkeyed) hash function has a collision in the MAC (as two messages m1 and m2 yielding the same hash will provide the same start condition to the hash function before the appended key is hashed, hence the final hash will be the same). Using MAC = H(key ∥ message ∥ key) is better, but various security papers have suggested vulnerabilities with this approach, even when two different keys are used.
No known extension attacks have been found against the current HMAC specification which is defined as H(key ∥ H(key ∥ message)) because the outer application of the hash function masks the intermediate result of the internal hash. The values of ipad and opad are not critical to the security of the algorithm, but were defined in such a way to have a large Hamming distance from each other and so the inner and outer keys will have fewer bits in common. The security reduction of HMAC does require them to be different in at least one bit.
The Keccak hash function, that was selected by NIST as the SHA-3 competition winner, doesn't need this nested approach and can be used to generate a MAC by simply prepending the key to the message, as it is not susceptible to length-extension attacks.
Security
The cryptographic strength of the HMAC depends upon the size of the secret key that is used. The most common attack against HMACs is brute force to uncover the secret key. HMACs are substantially less affected by collisions than their underlying hashing algorithms alone. In particular, Mihir Bellare proved that HMAC is a PRF under the sole assumption that the compression function is a PRF. Therefore, HMAC-MD5 does not suffer from the same weaknesses that have been found in MD5.
RFC 2104 requires that "keys longer than B bytes are first hashed using H" which leads to a confusing pseudo-collision: if the key is longer than the hash block size (e.g. 64 bytes for SHA-1), then HMAC(k, m) is computed as HMAC(H(k), m).This property is sometimes raised as a possible weakness of HMAC in password-hashing scenarios: it has been demonstrated that it's possible to find a long ASCII string and a random value whose hash will be also an ASCII string, and both values will produce the same HMAC output.
In 2006, Jongsung Kim, Alex Biryukov, Bart Preneel, and Seokhie Hong showed how to distinguish HMAC with reduced versions of MD5 and SHA-1 or full versions of HAVAL, MD4, and SHA-0 from a random function or HMAC with a random function. Differential distinguishers allow an attacker to devise a forgery attack on HMAC. Furthermore, differential and rectangle distinguishers can lead to second-preimage attacks. HMAC with the full version of MD4 can be forged with this knowledge. These attacks do not contradict the security proof of HMAC, but provide insight into HMAC based on existing cryptographic hash functions.
In 2009, Xiaoyun Wang et al. presented a distinguishing attack on HMAC-MD5 without using related keys. It can distinguish an instantiation of HMAC with MD5 from an instantiation with a random function with 297 queries with probability 0.87.
In 2011 an informational RFC 6151 was published to summarize security considerations in MD5 and HMAC-MD5. For HMAC-MD5 the RFC summarizes that – although the security of the MD5 hash function itself is severely compromised – the currently known "attacks on HMAC-MD5 do not seem to indicate a practical vulnerability when used as a message authentication code", but it also adds that "for a new protocol design, a ciphersuite with HMAC-MD5 should not be included".
In May 2011, RFC 6234 was published detailing the abstract theory and source code for SHA-based HMACs.
Examples
Here are some non-empty HMAC values, assuming 8-bit ASCII or UTF-8 encoding:
HMAC_MD5("key", "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog") = 80070713463e7749b90c2dc24911e275
HMAC_SHA1("key", "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog") = de7c9b85b8b78aa6bc8a7a36f70a90701c9db4d9
HMAC_SHA256("key", "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog") = f7bc83f430538424b13298e6aa6fb143ef4d59a14946175997479dbc2d1a3cd8
HMAC_SHA256("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dogThe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", "message") = 5597b93a2843078cbb0c920ae41dfe20f1685e10c67e423c11ab91adfc319d12
References
Notes
Mihir Bellare, Ran Canetti and Hugo Krawczyk, Keying Hash Functions for Message Authentication, CRYPTO 1996, pp. 1–15 (PS or PDF).
Mihir Bellare, Ran Canetti and Hugo Krawczyk, Message authentication using hash functions: The HMAC construction, CryptoBytes 2(1), Spring 1996 (PS or PDF).
External links
RFC2104
Online HMAC Generator / Tester Tool
FIPS PUB 198-1, The Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC)
C HMAC implementation
Python HMAC implementation
Java implementation
Rust HMAC implementation
Message authentication codes
Hashing | [
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17114 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key%20escrow | Key escrow | Key escrow (also known as a "fair" cryptosystem) is an arrangement in which the keys needed to decrypt encrypted data are held in escrow so that, under certain circumstances, an authorized third party may gain access to those keys. These third parties may include businesses, who may want access to employees' secure business-related communications, or governments, who may wish to be able to view the contents of encrypted communications (also known as exceptional access).
The technical problem is a largely structural one. Access to protected information must be provided only to the intended recipient and at least one third party. The third party should be permitted access only under carefully controlled conditions, as for instance, a court order. Thus far, no system design has been shown to meet this requirement fully on a technical basis alone. All proposed systems also require correct functioning of some social linkage, as for instance the process of request for access, examination of request for 'legitimacy' (as by a court), and granting of access by technical personnel charged with access control. All such linkages / controls have serious problems from a system design security perspective. Systems in which the key may not be changed easily are rendered especially vulnerable as the accidental release of the key will result in many devices becoming totally compromised, necessitating an immediate key change or replacement of the system.
On a national level, key escrow is controversial in many countries for at least two reasons. One involves mistrust of the security of the structural escrow arrangement. Many countries have a long history of less than adequate protection of others' information by assorted organizations, public and private, even when the information is held only under an affirmative legal obligation to protect it from unauthorized access. Another is technical concerns for the additional vulnerabilities likely to be introduced by supporting key escrow operations. Thus far, no key escrow system has been designed which meets both objections and nearly all have failed to meet even one.
Key escrow is proactive, anticipating the need for access to keys; a retroactive alternative is key disclosure law, where users are required to surrender keys upon demand by law enforcement, or else face legal penalties. Key disclosure law avoids some of the technical issues and risks of key escrow systems, but also introduces new risks like loss of keys and legal issues such as involuntary self-incrimination. The ambiguous term key recovery is applied to both types of systems.
See also
Cryptography
Key management
Clipper chip
Data Securities International
Related-key attack
Backdoor
References
External links
Encryption Policy: Memo for the Vice President CIA memo to Al Gore on suggested US policy on key recovery, 11. September 1996. Archived from the original on 2012-10-15
Key management | [
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17116 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key%20frame | Key frame | A key frame (or keyframe) in animation and filmmaking is a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. These are called frames because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film or on a digital video editing timeline. A sequence of key frames defines which movement the viewer will see, whereas the position of the key frames on the film, video, or animation defines the timing of the movement. Because only two or three key frames over the span of a second do not create the illusion of movement, the remaining frames are filled with "inbetweens".
Use of key frames as a means to change parameters
In software packages that support animation, especially 3D graphics, there are many parameters that can be changed for any one object. One example of such an object is a light (In 3D graphics, lights function similarly to real-world lights. They cause illumination, cast shadows, and create specular highlights). Lights have many parameters including light intensity, beam size, light color, and the texture cast by the light. Supposing that an animator wants the beam size to change smoothly from one value to another within a predefined period of time, that could be achieved by using key frames. At the start of the animation, a beam size value is set. Another value is set for the end of the animation. Thus, the software program automatically interpolates the two values, creating a smooth transition.
Video editing
In non-linear digital video editing, as well as in video compositing software, a key frame is a frame used to indicate the beginning or end of a change made to a parameter. For example, a key frame could be set to indicate the point at which audio will have faded up or down to a certain level.
Video compression
In video compression, a key frame, also known as an "intra-frame", is a frame in which a complete image is stored in the data stream. In video compression, only changes that occur from one frame to the next are stored in the data stream, in order to greatly reduce the amount of information that must be stored. This technique capitalizes on the fact that most video sources (such as a typical movie) have only small changes in the image from one frame to the next. Whenever a drastic change to the image occurs, such as when switching from one camera shot to another, or at a scene change, a key frame must be created. The entire image for the frame must be output when the visual difference between the two frames is so great that representing the new image incrementally from the previous frame would require more data than recreating the whole image.
Because video compression only stores incremental changes between frames (except for key frames), it is not possible to fast forward or rewind to any arbitrary spot in the video stream. That is because the data for a given frame only represents how that frame was different from the preceding one. For that reason, it is beneficial to include key frames at arbitrary intervals while encoding video. For example, a key frame may be output once for each 10 seconds of video, even though the video image does not change enough visually to warrant the automatic creation of the key frame. That would allow seeking within the video stream at a minimum of 10-second intervals. The down side is that the resulting video stream will be larger in size because many key frames are added when they are not necessary for the frame's visual representation. This drawback, however, does not produce significant compression loss when the bitrate is already set at a high value for better quality (as in the DVD MPEG-2 format).
See also
Blocking (animation)
Morphing
References
Computer graphics
Video
Animation techniques | [
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17120 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurf%C3%BCrstendamm | Kurfürstendamm | The Kurfürstendamm (; colloquially Ku'damm, ) is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin. The street takes its name from the former Kurfürsten (prince-electors) of Brandenburg. The broad, long boulevard can be considered the Champs-Élysées of Berlin and is lined with shops, houses, hotels and restaurants. In particular, many fashion designers have their shops there, as well as several car manufacturers' show rooms.
Description
The avenue includes four lines of plane trees and runs for through the city. It branches off from the Breitscheidplatz, where the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church stand, and leads southwestward up to the district of Grunewald.
At the junction with Joachimstaler Straße it passes the Café Kranzler, successor of the Café des Westens, a famous venue for artists and bohémiens of the pre–World War I era. The Kurfürstendamm U-Bahn station and the Swissôtel Berlin can be found at the same junction. One block farther, near Uhlandstraße U-Bahn station, is the Hotel Bristol Berlin (formerly Kempinski) hotel as well as the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, at the site of a former exhibition hall of the Berlin Secession art association.
At Adenauerplatz the boulevard reaches the district of Wilmersdorf, where it passes the Schaubühne theatre on Lehniner Platz. The more sober western or "upper" end of the Kurfürstendamm is marked by the Berlin-Halensee railway station on the Ringbahn line and the junction with the Bundesautobahn 100 (Stadtring) at the Rathenauplatz roundabout, featuring the long-disputed 1987 "Beton Cadillacs" sculpture by Wolf Vostell.
Luxury boutiques located on the Kurfürstendamm include Aigner, Bally, Bogner, Bottega Veneta, Brunello Cucinelli, Bucherer, Bvlgari, Burberry, Cartier, Chanel, Chopard, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Ermenegildo Zegna, Escada, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Hermès, Hublot, Hugo Boss, Jil Sander, Longchamp, Louis Vuitton, Maybach, MCM, G&H Jewellers (Opening Soon), Michael Kors, Moncler, Philipp Plein, Porsche Design, Prada, Roberto Cavalli, Rolex, Saint Laurent Paris, Salvatore Ferragamo, Steiff, Tumi, Valentino, Versace, Wolford, Wunderkind, and Zilli.
History
Unlike the adjacent streets, the Kurfürstendamm developed out of a historic corduroy road () laid out by the Brandenburg margraves to reach the Grunewald hunting lodge, which was erected about 1542 at the behest of the Hohenzollern elector Joachim II Hector. Although the exact date of the building is unknown, an unnamed causeway leading from the Stadtschloss through the swampy area between the settlements of Charlottenburg (then called Lietzow) and Wilmersdorf to Grunewald is already depicted in a 1685 map. The name Churfürsten Damm was first mentioned between 1767 and 1787.
From 1875 the former bridlepath was embellished as a boulevard with a breadth of on the personal initiative of chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who also proposed the building of the Grunewald mansions colony at its western end. In 1882, Ernst Werner von Siemens presented his Elektromote trolley bus concept at an experimental track near Halensee station. The nearby Lunapark opened in 1909, then Europe's largest amusement park, modelled on Coney Island, where boxer Max Schmeling won his first title of a German Lightheavyweight Champion in 1926. After a long period of decline the park was finally closed in 1933. Large parts are today covered by the Stadtautobahn.
In 1913 the new Marmorhaus cinema opened. A number of major film premieres were held here during the silent era.
Especially during the "Golden Twenties" the Kurfürstendamm area of the "New West" was a centre of leisure and nightlife in Berlin, an era that ended with the Great Depression and the Nazi Machtergreifung in 1933. The shops and businesses owned by Jewish tradespeople became the target of several pogroms, culminating in the "Reichskristallnacht" of 9 November 1938. In World War II the boulevard suffered severe damage from air raids and the Battle of Berlin.
Nevertheless, after the war rebuilding started quickly, and when Berlin was separated into East and West Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm became the leading commercial street of West Berlin in its Wirtschaftswunder days. For that reason, too, John F. Kennedy's tour of West Berlin on June 26, 1963, included a portion of it. A few years later, the Kurfürstendamm became the site of protests and major demonstrations by the German student movement. On 11 April 1968, spokesman Rudi Dutschke was shot in the head while leaving the office of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund on Kurfürstendamm No. 140.
After German reunification the Kurfürstendamm had to compete with central places like Potsdamer Platz, Friedrichstraße, and Alexanderplatz, which led to the closing of numerous cafés and cinemas. It retained the character of a flâneur and upscale shopping street as the western continuation of the Tauentzienstraße with its large department stores.
The globally unique international art project United Buddy Bears was presented in Berlin on the Kurfürstendamm during the summer of 2011.
See also
City West
References
External links
Kurfürstendamm 360° Panorama
kurfuerstendamm.de cityguide
"23rd Hour, 23rd Psalm" Chapter includes midnight visit by Americans to the Ku'damm in 1969-71 period.
Streets in Berlin
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Shopping districts and streets in Germany | [
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17121 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt%20Schwitters | Kurt Schwitters | Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography, and what came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures.
Early influences and the beginnings of Merz, 1887–1922
Hanover
Kurt Schwitters was born on 20 June 1887 in Hanover, at Rumannstraße No.2, now: No. 8, the only child of Eduard Schwitters and his wife Henriette (née Beckemeyer). His father was (co-)proprietor of a ladies' clothes shop. The business was sold in 1898, and the family used the money to buy some properties in Hanover, which they rented out, allowing the family to live off the income for the rest of Schwitters's life in Germany. In 1893, the family moved to Waldstraße (later renamed to Waldhausenstraße), future site of the Merzbau. In 1901, Schwitters suffered his first epileptic seizure, a condition that would exempt him from military service in World War I until late in the war, when conscription was loosened.
After studying art at the Dresden Academy alongside Otto Dix and George Grosz, (although Schwitters seems to have been unaware of their work, or indeed of contemporary Dresden artists Die Brücke), 1909–1915, Schwitters returned to Hanover and started his artistic career as a post-impressionist. In 1911 he took part in his first exhibition, in Hanover. As the First World War progressed his work became darker, gradually developing a distinctive expressionist tone.
Schwitters spent the last one-and-half years of the war working as a drafter in a factory just outside Hanover. He was conscripted into the 73rd Hanoverian Regiment in March 1917, but exempted on medical grounds in June of the same year. By his own account, his time as a draftsman influenced his later work, and inspired him to depict machines as metaphors of human activity.
"In the war [at the machine factory at Wülfen] I discovered my love for the wheel and realized that machines are abstractions of the human spirit."
He married his cousin Helma Fischer on 5 October 1915. Their first son, Gerd, died within a week of birth, 9 September 1916; their second, Ernst, was born on 16 November 1918, and was to remain close to his father for the rest of his life, up to and including a shared exile in Britain together.
In 1918, his art was to change dramatically as a direct consequence of Germany's economic, political, and military collapse at the end of the First World War.
"In the war, things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready ... Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz. It was like a revolution within me, not as it was, but as it should have been."
Der Sturm
Schwitters was to come into contact with Herwarth Walden after exhibiting expressionist paintings at the Hanover Secession in February 1918. He showed two Abstraktionen (semi-abstract expressionist landscapes) at Walden's gallery Der Sturm, in Berlin, in June 1918,. This resulted in meetings with members of the Berlin Avant-garde, including Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, and Jean Arp in the autumn of 1918.
"[I remember] the night he introduced himself in the Café des Westens. "I'm a painter," he said, "and I nail my pictures together." Raoul Hausmann
Whilst Schwitters still created work in an expressionist style into 1919 (and would continue to paint realist pictures up to his death in 1948), the first abstract collages, influenced in particular by recent works by Jean Arp, would appear in late 1918, which Schwitters dubbed Merz after a fragment of found text from the phrase Commerz Und Privatbank (commerce and private bank) in his work Das Merzbild, completed in the winter of 1918–19. By the end of 1919 he had become a well-known artist, after his first one-man exhibition at Der Sturm gallery, in June 1919, and the publication, that August, of the poem An Anna Blume (translated as 'To Anna Flower', or 'To Eve Blossom'), a dadaist, non-sensical love poem.
As Schwitters's first overtures to Zurich and Berlin Dada made explicit mention of Merz pictures, there are no grounds for the widespread claim that he invented Merz because he was rejected by Berlin Dada.
Dada and Merz
Schwitters asked to join Berlin Dada either in late 1918 or early 1919, according to the memoirs of Raoul Hausmann. Hausmann claimed that Richard Huelsenbeck rejected the application because of Schwitters's links to Der Sturm and to Expressionism in general, which were seen by the Dadaists as hopelessly romantic and obsessed with aesthetics.
Ridiculed by Huelsenbeck as 'the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution', he would reply with an absurdist short story Franz Mullers Drahtfrühling, Ersters Kapitel: Ursachen und Beginn der grossen glorreichen Revolution in Revon published in Der Sturm (xiii/11, 1922), which featured an innocent bystander who started a revolution 'merely by being there'.
Hausmann's anecdote about Schwitters asking to join Berlin Dada is, however, somewhat dubious, for there is well-documented evidence that Schwitters and Huelsenbeck were on amicable terms at first. When they first met in 1919, Huelsenbeck was enthusiastic about Schwitters's work and promised his assistance, while Schwitters reciprocated by finding an outlet for Huelsenbeck's Dada publications. When Huelsenbeck visited him at the end of the year, Schwitters gave him a lithograph (which he kept all his life) and though their friendship was by now strained, Huelsenbeck wrote him a conciliatory note. "You know I am well-disposed towards you. I think too that certain disagreements we have both noticed in our respective opinions should not be an impediment to our attack on the common enemy, the bourgeoisie and philistinism." It was not until mid-1920 that the two men fell out, either because of the success of Schwitters's poem An Anna Blume (which Huelsenbeck considered unDadaistic) or because of quarrels about Schwitters's contribution to Dadaco, a projected Dada atlas edited by Huelsenbeck. It is unlikely that Schwitters ever considered joining Berlin Dada, however, for he was under contract to Der Sturm, which offered far better long-term opportunities than Dada's quarrelsome and erratic venture. If Schwitters contacted Dadaists at this time, it was generally because he was searching for opportunities to exhibit his work.
Though not a direct participant in Berlin Dada's activities, Schwitters employed Dadaist ideas in his work, used the word itself on the cover of An Anna Blume, and would later give Dada recitals throughout Europe on the subject with Theo van Doesburg, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp and Raoul Hausmann. In many ways his work was more in tune with Zürich Dada's championing of performance and abstract art than Berlin Dada's agit-prop approach, and indeed examples of his work were published in the last Zürich Dada publication, Der Zeltweg, November 1919, alongside the work of Arp and Sophie Tauber. Whilst his work was far less political than key figures in Berlin Dada, such as George Grosz and John Heartfield, he would remain close friends with various members, including Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, for the rest of his career.
In 1922 Theo van Doesburg organised a series of Dada performances in the Netherlands. Various members of Dada were invited to join, but declined. Eventually the programme comprised acts and performances by Theo van Doesburg, Nelly van Doesburg as Petrò Van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters and sometimes Vilmos Huszàr. The Dada performances took place in various cities, amongst which Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht and The Hague. Schwitters also performed on solo evenings, one of which took place on 13 April 1923 in Drachten, Friesland. Schwitters later on visited Drachten quite frequently, staying with a local painter, . Schwitters created several collages there, probably together with Thijs Rinsema. Their collages can sometimes hardly be distinguished from each other. From 1921 onwards there are signs of correspondence between Schwitters and an intarsia worker. From this co-operation several new works originated, where the collage technique was applied to woodwork, by incorporating several kinds of wood as a means to delineate images and letters. Thijs Rinsema also used this technique.
Merz has been called 'Psychological Collage'. Most of the works attempt to make coherent aesthetic sense of the world around Schwitters, using fragments of found objects. These fragments often make witty allusions to current events. (Merzpicture 29a, Picture with Turning Wheel, 1920 for instance, combines a series of wheels that only turn clockwise, alluding to the general drift Rightwards across Germany after the Spartacist Uprising in January that year, whilst Mai 191(9), alludes to the strikes organized by the Bavarian Workers' and Soldiers' Council.) Autobiographical elements also abound; test prints of graphic designs; bus tickets; ephemera given by friends. Later collages would feature proto-pop mass media images. (En Morn, 1947, for instance, has a print of a blonde young girl included, prefiguring the early work of Eduardo Paolozzi, whilst many works seem to have directly influenced Robert Rauschenberg, who said after seeing an exhibition of Schwitters's work at the Sidney Janis Gallery, 1959, that "I felt like he made it all just for me.")
Whilst these works were usually collages incorporating found objects, such as bus tickets, old wire and fragments of newsprint, Merz also included artists' periodicals, sculptures, sound poems and what would later be called "installations". Schwitters was to use the term Merz for the rest of the decade, but, as Isabel Schulz has noted, 'though the fundamental compositional principles of Merz remained the basis and centre of [Schwitters's] creative work [...] the term Merz disappears almost entirely from the titles of his work after 1931'.
Internationalism, 1922–1937
Merz (periodical)
As the political climate in Germany became more liberal and stable, Schwitters's work became less influenced by Cubism and Expressionism. He started to organize and participate in lecture tours with other members of the international avant-garde, such as Jean Arp, Raoul Hausmann and Tristan Tzara, touring Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and Germany with provocative evening recitals and lectures.
Schwitters published a periodical, also called Merz, between 1923 and 1932, in which each issue was devoted to a central theme. Merz 5 1923, for instance, was a portfolio of prints by Jean Arp, Merz 8/9, 1924, was edited and typeset by El Lissitzky, Merz 14/15, 1925, was a typographical children's story entitled The Scarecrow by Schwitters, Kätte Steinitz and Theo van Doesburg. The last edition, Merz 24, 1932, was a complete transcription of the final draft of the Ursonate, with typography by Jan Tschichold.
His work in this period became increasingly Modernist in spirit, with far less overtly political context and a cleaner style, in keeping with contemporary work by Jean Arp and Piet Mondrian. His friendship around this time with El Lissitzky proved particularly influential, and Merz pictures in this period show the direct influence of Constructivism.
Thanks to Schwitters's lifelong patron and friend Katherine Dreier, his work was exhibited regularly in the US from 1920 onwards. In the late 1920s he became a well-known typographer; his best-known work was the catalogue for the Dammerstocksiedlung in Karlsruhe. After the demise of Der Sturm Gallery in 1924 he ran an advertising agency called Merzwerbe, which held the accounts for Pelikan inks and Bahlsen biscuits, amongst others, and became the official typographer for Hanover town council between 1929 and 1934. Many of these designs, as well as test prints and proof sheets, were to crop up in contemporary Merz pictures. In a manner similar to the typographic experimentation by Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus, and Jan Tschichold's Die neue Typographie, Schwitters experimented with the creation of a new more phonetic alphabet in 1927. Some of his types were cast and used in his work. In the late 1920s Schwitters joined the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation).
The Merzbau
Alongside his collages, Schwitters also dramatically altered the interiors of a number of spaces throughout his life. The most famous was the Merzbau, the transformation of six (or possibly more) rooms of the family house in Hanover, Waldhausenstrasse 5. This took place very gradually; work started in about 1923, the first room was finished in 1933, and Schwitters subsequently extended the Merzbau to other areas of the house until he fled to Norway in early 1937. Most of the house was let to tenants, so that the final extent of the Merzbau was less than is normally assumed. On the evidence of Schwitters's correspondence, by 1937 it had spread to two rooms of his parents' apartment on the ground floor, the adjoining balcony, the space below the balcony, one or two rooms of the attic and possibly part of the cellar. In 1943 it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid.
Early photos show the Merzbau with a grotto-like surface and various columns and sculptures, possibly referring to similar pieces by Dadaists, including the Great Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama by Johannes Baader, shown at the first International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920. Work by Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann and Sophie Tauber, amongst others, were incorporated into the fabric of the installation. By 1933, it had been transformed into a sculptural environment, and three photos from this year show a series of angled surfaces aggressively protruding into a room painted largely in white, with a series of tableaux spread across the surfaces. In his essay 'Ich und meine Ziele' in Merz 21, Schwitters referred to the first column of his work as the Cathedral of Erotic Misery. There is no evidence that he used this name after 1930, however. The first use of the word 'Merzbau' occurs in 1933.
Photos of the Merzbau were reproduced in the journal of the Paris-based group abstraction-création in 1933-34, and were exhibited in MoMA in New York in late 1936.
The Sprengel Museum in Hanover has a reconstruction of the first room of the Merzbau.
Schwitters later created a similar environment in the garden of his house in Lysaker, near Oslo, known as the Haus am Bakken (the house on the slope). This was almost complete when Schwitters left Norway for the United Kingdom in 1940. It burnt down in 1951 and no photos survive. The last Merzbau, in Elterwater, Cumbria, England, remained incomplete on Schwitters's death in January 1948. A further environment that also served as a living space can still be seen on the island of near Molde, Norway. It is sometimes described as a fourth Merzbau, although Schwitters himself only ever referred to three. The interior has now been removed and will eventually be exhibited in the Romsdal Museum in Molde, Norway.
Ursonate
Schwitters composed and performed an early example of sound poetry, Ursonate (1922–1932; a translation of the title is Original Sonata or Primeval Sonata). The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann's poem "fmsbw" which Schwitters heard recited by Hausmann in Prague, 1921. Schwitters first performed the piece on 14 February 1925 at the home of Irmgard Kiepenheuer in Potsdam. He subsequently performed it regularly, both developing and extending it. He published his notations for the recital in the last Merz periodical in 1932, although he would continue to develop the piece for at least the next ten years.
Exile, 1937–1948
Norway
As the political situation in Germany under the Nazis continued to deteriorate throughout the 1930s, Schwitters's work began to be included in the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) touring exhibition organised by the Nazi party from 1933. He lost his contract with Hanover City Council in 1934 and examples of his work in German museums were confiscated and publicly ridiculed in 1935. By the time his close friends Christof and Luise Spengemann and their son Walter were arrested by the Gestapo in August 1936 the situation had clearly become perilous.
On 2 January 1937 Schwitters, wanted for an "interview" with the Gestapo, fled to Norway to join his son Ernst, who had already left Germany on 26 December 1936. His wife Helma decided to remain in Hanover, to manage their four properties. In the same year, his Merz pictures were included in the Entartete Kunst exhibition titled in Munich, making his return impossible.
Helma visited Schwitters in Norway for a few months each year up to the outbreak of World War II. The joint celebrations for his mother Henriette's 80th birthday and his son Ernst's engagement, held in Oslo on 2 June 1939, would be the last time the two met.
Schwitters started a second Merzbau while in exile in Lysaker nearby Oslo, in 1937 but abandoned it in 1940 when the Nazis invaded; this Merzbau was subsequently destroyed in a fire in 1951. His hut on the Norwegian island of Hjertøya, near Molde, is also frequently regarded as a Merzbau. For decades this building was more or less left to rot, but measures have now been taken to preserve the interior.
The Isle of Man
Following Nazi Germany's invasion of Norway, Schwitters was amongst a number of German citizens who were interned by the Norwegian authorities at in Kabelvåg on the Lofoten Islands, Following his release, Schwitters fled to Leith, Scotland with his son and daughter-in-law on the Norwegian patrol vessel between 8 and 18 June 1940. By now officially an 'enemy alien', he was moved between various internment camps in Scotland and England before arriving on 17 July 1940 in Hutchinson Camp in the Isle of Man.
The camp was situated in a collection of terraced houses around Hutchinson Square in Douglas. The camp soon comprised some 1,205 internees by end of July 1940, almost all of whom were German or Austrian. The camp was soon known as "the artists' camp", comprising as it did many artists, writers, university professors and other intellectuals. In this environment, Schwitters was popular as a character, a raconteur and as an artist.
He was soon provided studio space and took on students, many of whom would later become significant artists in their own right. He produced over 200 works during his internment, including more portraits than at any other time in his career, many of which he charged for.
He contributed at least two portraits to the second art exhibition within the camp in November 1940, and in December he contributed (in English) to the camp newsletter, The Camp.
At least in the early days of the camp's existence, there was a shortage of art supplies which meant that the internees had to be resourceful to obtain the materials they needed: they would mix brick dust with sardine oil for paint, dig up clay when out on walks for sculpture, and rip up the lino floors to make cuttings which they then pressed through the clothes mangle to make linocut prints. Schwitters's Merz extension of this included making sculptures in porridge:
"The room stank. A musty, sour, indescribable stink which came from three Dada sculptures which he had created from porridge, no plaster of Paris being available. The porridge had developed mildew and the statues were covered with greenish hair and bluish excrements of an unknown type of bacteria." Fred Uhlman in his memoir
Schwitters was well-liked in the camp and was a welcome distraction from the internment they were suffering. Fellow internees would later recall fondly his curious habits of sleeping under his bed and barking like a dog, as well as his regular Dadaist readings and performances. However, the epileptic condition which had not surfaced since his childhood began to recur whilst in the camp. His son attributed this to Schwitters's depression at internment, which he kept hidden from others in the camp.
For the outside world he always tried to put up a good show, but in the quietness of the room I shared with him [...], his painful disillusion was clearly revealed to me. [...] Kurt Schwitters worked with more concentration than ever during internment to stave off bitterness and hopelessness.
Schwitters applied as early as October 1940 for release (with the appeal written in English: "As artist, I can not be interned for a long time without danger for my art"), but he was refused even after his fellow internees began to be released.
"I am now the last artist here – all the others are free. But all things are equal. If I stay here, then I have plenty to occupy myself. If I am released, then I will enjoy freedom. If I manage to leave for the U.S., then I will be over there. You carry your own joy with you wherever you go." Letter to Helma Schwitters, April 1941.
Schwitters was finally released on 21 November 1941, with the help of an intervention from Alexander Dorner, Rhode Island School of Design.
London
After obtaining his freedom Schwitters moved to London, hoping to make good on the contacts that he had built up over his period of internment. He first moved to an attic flat at 3 St. Stephen's Crescent, Paddington. It was here that he met his future companion, Edith Thomas:
“He knocked on her door to ask how the boiler worked, and that was that. [...] She was 27 – half his age. He called her Wantee, because she was always offering tea." Gretel Hinrichsen quoted in The Telegraph
In London he made contact with and mixed with a range of artists, including Naum Gabo, László Moholy-Nagy and Ben Nicholson. He exhibited in a number of galleries in the city but with little success; at his first solo exhibition at The Modern Art Gallery in December 1944, forty works were displayed, priced between 15 and 40 guineas, but only one was bought.
During his years in London, the shift in Schwitters's work continued towards an organic element that augmented the mass-produced ephemera of previous years with natural forms and muted colours. Pictures such as Small Merzpicture With Many Parts 1945–6, for example, used objects found on a beach, including pebbles and smooth shards of porcelain.
In August 1942 he moved with his son to 39 Westmoreland Road, Barnes, London. In October 1943 he learnt that his Merzbau in Hanover had been destroyed in Allied bombing. In April 1944 he suffered his first stroke, at the age of 56, which left him temporarily paralyzed on one side of his body. His wife Helma died of cancer on 29 October 1944, although Schwitters only heard of her death in December.
The Lake District
Schwitters first visited the Lake District on holiday with Edith Thomas in September 1942. He moved there permanently on 26 June 1945, to 2 Gale Crescent Ambleside. However, after another stroke in February of the following year and further illness, he and Edith moved to a more easily accessible house at 4 Millans Park.
During his time in Ambleside Schwitters created a sequence of proto-pop art pictures, such as For Käte, 1947, after the encouragement from his friend, Käte Steinitz. Having emigrated to the United States in 1936, Steinitz sent Schwitters letters describing life in the emerging consumer society, and wrapped the letters in pages of comics to give a flavour of the new world, which she encouraged Schwitters to 'Merz'.
In March 1947, Schwitters decided to recreate the Merzbau and found a suitable location in a barn at Cylinders Farm, Elterwater, which was owned by Harry Pierce, whose portrait Schwitters had been commissioned to paint. Having been forced by a lack of other income to paint portraits and popularist landscape pictures suitable for sale to the local residents and tourists, Schwitters received notification shortly before his 60th birthday that he had been awarded a £1,000 fellowship to be transferred to him via the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in order to enable him to repair or re-create his previous Merz constructions in Germany or Norway. Instead he used it for the "Merzbarn" in Elterwater. Schwitters worked on the Merzbarn daily, travelling the five miles between his home and the barn, except for when illness kept him away. On 7 January 1948 he received the news that he had been granted British citizenship. The following day, on 8 January, Schwitters died from acute pulmonary edema and myocarditis, in Kendal Hospital.
He was buried on 10 January at St. Mary's Church, Ambleside. His grave was unmarked until 1966 when a stone was erected with the inscription Kurt Schwitters – Creator of Merz. The stone remains as a memorial even though his body was disinterred and reburied in the Engesohde Cemetery in Hanover in 1970, the grave being marked with a marble copy of his 1929 sculpture Die Herbstzeitlose.
Gallery of works
Posthumous reputation
Merzbarn
One entire wall of the Merzbarn was removed to the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle for safe keeping. The shell of the barn remains in Elterwater, near Ambleside.
In 2011 the barn, but not the artwork inside it, was reconstructed in the front courtyard of the Royal Academy in London as part of its exhibition Modern British Sculpture.
Influences
Many artists have cited Schwitters as a major influence, including Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst, Al Hansen, and Arman.
"The language of Merz now finds common acceptance and today there is scarcely an artist working with materials other than paint who does not refer to Schwitters in some way. In his bold and wide-ranging experiments he can be seen as the grandfather of Pop Art, Happenings, Concept Art, Fluxus, multimedia art and post-modernism." Gwendolyn Webster
Art market
Schwitters's Ja-Was?-Bild (1920), an abstract work made of oil, paper, cardboard, fabric, wood and nails, was sold £13.9 million at Christie's London in 2014.
Marlborough Gallery controversy
Schwitters's son, Ernst, largely entrusted the artistic estate of his father to Gilbert Lloyd, director of the Marlborough Gallery. However, Ernst fell victim to a crippling stroke in 1995, moving control of the estate as a whole to Kurt's grandson, Bengt Schwitters. Controversy erupted when Bengt, who has said he has "no interest in art and his grandfather's works", terminated the standing agreement between the family and the Marlborough Gallery. The Marlborough Gallery filed suit against the Schwitters estate in 1996, after confirming Ernst Schwitters's desire to have Mr. Lloyd continue to administer the estate in his will.
Professor Henrick Hanstein, an auctioneer and art expert, provided key testimony in the case, stating that Schwitters was virtually forgotten after his death in exile in England in 1948, and that the Marlborough Gallery had been vital in ensuring the artist's place in art history. The verdict, which was eventually upheld by Norway's highest court, awarded the gallery USD 2.6 million in damages.
Archival and forgeries
Schwitters's visual work has now been completely catalogued in the Catalogue Raisonné. The Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany keeps a catalogue of forgeries. A collage called "Bluebird" chosen for the cover of the catalogue for the Tate Gallery's 1985 Schwitters exhibition was withdrawn from the show after Ernst Schwitters told the gallery that it was a fake.
Legacy
Brian Eno sampled Schwitters's recording of Ursonate for the "Kurt's Rejoinder" track on his 1977 album, Before and after Science.
Electronic music duo Matmos used Ursonate in Schwitt/Urs on Quasi-Objects.
DJ Spooky included Anna Blume in a mix in his Sound Unbound project.
Japanese musician Merzbow took his name from Schwitters.
A fictionalised account of Schwitters's encounter with a boy in London and their dispute over a bus ticket is the subject of Man and Boy: Dada, an opera by Michael Nyman and Michael Hastings.
The German hip-hop band Freundeskreis quoted from his poem An Anna Blume in their hit single "ANNA".
The krautrock band Faust have a song entitled "Dr. Schwitters snippet".
Billy Childish made a short film on Schwitters life, titled The Man with Wheels, (1980, directed by Eugean Doyan).
Chumbawamba include extracts from Ursonate in their song "Ratatatay". The song references George Melly's anecdote about spontaneously reciting Ursonate, in order to scare off a pair of robbers.
Einstürzende Neubauten include samples of member N. U. Unruh reciting Ursonate in the song "Let's Do It A Dada" on the album Alles wieder offen.
Contemporary artists Jutta Koether, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Kenneth Goldsmith, Eline McGeorge and Karl Holmqvist were commissioned to make new installation works in 2009 in response to Kurt Schwitters as part of the Senses exhibition which took place in Ålesund, Norway (2009) and at Chisenhale Gallery, London (2010).
Three members of the band British Sea Power were brought up near Schwitters's home in Cumbria. They have referenced his work in their songs and used a recording of Ursonate at their live shows. Jan Scott Wilkinson of the band contributed to Tate Britain's Schwitters retrospective in 2013.
Tonio K dedicated the track "Merzsuite – Let Us Join Together in a Tune, Umore, Futt Futt Futt" on his album Amerika to Kurt Schwitters.
American author Paul Auster uses the name Anna Blume repeatedly in his works. For example the main character in In the Country of Last Things is named Anna Blume.
Ed Ackerman and Colin Morton's 1986 stop-action animation "Primiti Too Taa" has a soundtrack of part of "Ursonate" and visuals are spellings of the sounds done by an unseen typewriter.
Notes
References
Burns Gamard, Elizabeth. Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery, Princeton Architectural Press 2000,
Cardinal, Roger and Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Schwitters, Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart, 2011. (versions in English and in German)
Crossley, Barbara. The Triumph of Kurt Schwitters, Armitt Trust Ambleside, 2005.
Elderfield, John. Kurt Schwitters, Thames and Hudson, London 1985.
Elsner, John and Roger Cardinal (ed.), The Cultures of Collecting, Reaktion Books, London 1994.
Feaver, William. "Alien at Ambleside", The Sunday Times Magazine, 18 Aug 1974, 27–34
Fiske, Lars and Kverneland, Steffen. Kanon (3 volumes) – A Norwegian comic biography.
Germundson, Curt. "Montage and Totality: Kurt Schwitters' relationship to tradition and avant-garde", in Dafydd Jones (ed.), Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde, Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York 2006, 156–186.
Hausmann, Raoul and Schwitters, Kurt; ed. Jasia Reichardt. PIN, Gaberbocchus Press (1962); Anabas-Verlag, Giessen (1986).
Luke, Megan R., Kurt Schwitters: Space, Image, Exile, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013,
McBride, Patrizia C. "The Game of Meaning: Collage, Montage, And Parody In Kurt Schwitters' Merz." Modernism/Modernity 14.2 (2007): 249–272
McBride, Patrizia. "Montage And Violence In Weimar Culture: Kurt Schwitters' Reassembled Individuals." Contemplating Violence: Critical Studies in Modern German Culture. 245–265. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2011.
Notz, Adrian and Obrist, Hans Ulrich (ed.), 'Processing the Complicated Order. The Merzbau Today'. With contributions by Peter Bissegger, Stefano Boeri, Dietmar Elger, Yona Friedman, Thomas Hirschhorn, Karin Orchard, Gwendolen Webster.
Ramade, Bénédicte. (2005) Dada: L'exposition/The Exhibition, Union-Distribution. .
Rothenberg, Jerome and Pierre Joris (ed.) Kurt Schwitters, poems, performance, pieces, proses, play poetics, Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1993.
Schwitters, Kurt (ed.) Merz 1923–32. Hanover, 1923–1932 [numbered 1–24; nos. 10, 22–23 never published: see also the University of Iowa Dada archive.
Themerson, Stefan. Kurt Schwitters in England 1940–1948, Gaberbocchus Press (1958) [includes poems and writings by Schwitters]
Themerson, Stefan. Kurt Schwitters on a Time-Chart in Typographica 16, December 1967, 29–48
Uhlman, Fred. The Making of an Englishman, Gollancz (1960).
Webster, Gwendolen. 'Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau' doctoral dissertation, Open University 2007.
Webster, Gwendolen. Kurt Merz Schwitters, a Biographical Study, University of Wales Press 1997,
Webster, Gwendolen. Kurt Schwitters and Katherine Dreier in German Life and Letters 1999, vol. 52, no. 4, 443–56.
Exhibition catalogue, In the Beginning was Merz – From Kurt Schwitters to the Present Day, Sprengel Museum Hanover, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2000.
Exhibition catalogue, Kurt Schwitters in Exile: The late work, 1937–1948, Marlborough Fine Art, 1981.
Exhibition catalogue, Kurt Schwitters, Galerie Gmurzynska, 1978.
External links
Gallery of his works, with information on each (German)
Kurt Schwitters Archive, Sprengel Museum, Hanover (information about Schwitters and his work, at present only in German)
Kurt Schwitters Society UK
Scans of Schwitters's publication Merz
Works from the Guggenheim Collection
Cut & Paste: A History of Photomontage
Information on copyright from the Kurt Schwitters Foundation
"Schwitters@Newcastle" a project run by the German Studies Section at the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University
1887 births
1948 deaths
People from Hanover
20th-century German painters
20th-century male artists
German male painters
Dada
Modern artists
Modernist theatre
German graphic designers
Sound poets
German expatriates in Norway
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
Refugees in Norway
World War II civilian prisoners
Prisoners and detainees of Norway
People interned in the Isle of Man during World War II
20th-century German poets
German male poets
Collage artists
German dadaists
20th-century German male writers | [
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17122 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth%20Noland | Kenneth Noland | Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American Color Field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School movement. In 1977, he was honored by a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art in 1978. In 2006, Noland's Stripe Paintings were exhibited at the Tate in London.
Early life and education
A son of Harry Caswell Noland (1896–1975), a pathologist, and his wife, Bessie (1897–1980), Kenneth Clifton Noland was born in Asheville, North Carolina. He had four siblings: David, Bill, Neil, and Harry Jr.
Noland enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1942 after completing high school. As a veteran of World War II, Noland took advantage of the G.I. Bill to study art at the experimental Black Mountain College in his home state of North Carolina. At Black Mountain, where two of his brothers also studied art, Noland studied with Ilya Bolotowsky, a professor who introduced him to neoplasticism and the work of Piet Mondrian. Noland also studied Bauhaus theory and color there under Josef Albers and became interested in Paul Klee—specifically Klee's sensitivity to color.
Career
In 1948 and 1949 Noland worked with Ossip Zadkine in Paris, and had his first exhibition of his paintings there. After returning to the U.S., he taught in Washington, D.C. at Catholic University (1951–1960) and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In the early 1950s he met Morris Louis in D.C. while teaching night classes at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts. He became friends with Louis, and after being introduced by Clement Greenberg to Helen Frankenthaler and seeing her new paintings at her studio in New York City in 1953, he and Louis adopted her "soak-stain" technique of allowing thinned paint to soak into unprimed canvases.
Most of Noland's paintings fall into one of four groups: circles (or targets), chevrons, stripes and shaped canvases. His preoccupation with the relationship of the image to the containing edge of the picture led him to a series of studies of concentric rings or bullseyes, commonly referred to as targets, which, like the one reproduced here called Beginning from 1958, used unlikely color combinations. This also led Noland away from Morris Louis in 1958. In 1964, he was included in the exhibition Post-Painterly Abstraction curated by Clement Greenberg, which traveled the country and helped to firmly establish Color Field painting as an important new movement in the contemporary art of the 1960s. Noland pioneered the shaped canvas, initially with a series of symmetrical and asymmetrical diamonds or chevrons. In these paintings, the edges of the canvas become as structurally important as the center. During the 1970s and 1980s his shaped canvases were highly irregular and asymmetrical. These resulted in increasingly complex structures of highly sophisticated and controlled color and surface integrity.
Instead of painting the canvas with a brush, Noland's style was to stain the canvas with color. This idea sought to remove the artist through brushstrokes. This made the piece about the art, not the artist. He emphasized spatial relationships in his work by leaving unstained, bare canvas as a contrast against the colors used throughout his paintings. Noland used simplified abstraction so the design would not detract from the use of color.
Noland's students included the sculptor Jennie Lea Knight, and painter Alice Mavrogordato.
Personal life
Noland was married to:
Cornelia Langer, a daughter of a Republican U.S. senator from North Dakota, William Langer. The couple married in 1950 and later divorced. They had three children: daughters Cady and Lyndon (a.k.a. Lyn) and a son, William.
Stephanie Gordon, a psychologist, lived with Noland from November 1964 until June 1970. They married in April 1967 and divorced in June 1970.
Peggy L. Schiffer, an art historian and daughter of Dr. Morton A. Schiffer. Married circa 1970, the Nolands had one son, Samuel Jesse.
Paige Rense, editor in chief of Architectural Digest, whom he married in Bennington, Vermont on April 10, 1994. Noland was her fifth husband; her previous spouses included Arthur F. Rense.
Noland had an affair in the 1960s with artist and socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer.
Death
Noland died of kidney cancer at his home in Port Clyde, Maine, on January 5, 2010 at the age of 85.
Exhibitions
Noland had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris in 1948. In 1957, he had his first New York solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery. In 1964, Noland occupied half the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 1965, his work was exhibited at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art and the Jewish Museum (New York). Noland's final solo exhibition, Kenneth Noland Shaped Paintings 1981–82, opened on October 29, 2009 at the Leslie Feely Fine Art Gallery on East 68th Street in New York City and was scheduled to close on January 9, 2010 (though the closing date was later extended to January 16). In 2010, Noland was honored with a solo presentation of his work at the Guggenheim Museum, entitled Kenneth Noland, 1924–2010: A Tribute. In addition, his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a range of international institutions, including the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (1983); Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (1985); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004); Tate, Liverpool (2006); and Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (1986 and 2007).
Selected museum collections
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Australian National Gallery, Canberra
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Albany, New York
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Kunsthaus, Zurich
Kunstmuseum, Basel
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California
Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Tate Gallery, London
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Selected works
Notes
References
Gowing, L (ed.) 1995, A Biographical Dictionary of Artists, Rev. edn, Andromeda Oxford Limited, Oxfordshire.
Further reading
"Kenneth Noland." Contemporary Artists, 4th ed. St. James Press, 1996. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005.
"Kenneth Noland: Color, Format and Abstract Art." Interview by Diane Waldman (1977), in: Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by K. Stiles and P. Selz, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, pp. 94–98.
"Kenneth Noland." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005.
"Painting: Bold Emblems", an 18 April 1969 profile of Kenneth Noland in Time magazine
"Art: Pure, Uncluttered Hedonism", a 2 May 1977 review of Kenneth Noland's work by Robert Hughes of Time magazine
"Painting: Peacock Duo", an 8 May 1965 examination of Kenneth Noland's work
External links
Kenneth Noland in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collection
Tate08 Series: Kenneth Noland: The Stripe Paintings exhibition at Tate Liverpool, England, 2006
TheArtStory.com/Kenneth_Noland
Kenneth Noland at The Phillips Collection
New York Times artblog by Roberta Smith
Noland's works at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York Times Obituary
Washington Post Obituary
The Guardian Obituary and letter from Anthony Caro
The Independent Obituary
American contemporary painters
20th-century American painters
American male painters
Abstract painters
Minimalist artists
Abstract expressionist artists
Artists from New York (state)
Painters from North Carolina
United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Black Mountain College alumni
Artists from Asheville, North Carolina
Military personnel from North Carolina
Deaths from cancer in Maine
Deaths from kidney cancer
1924 births
2010 deaths
20th-century American printmakers | [
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17123 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi | Karachi | Karachi (; ; ; ALA-LC: , , ) is the largest city in Pakistan and the twelfth-largest city in the world. It is the capital of the Pakistani province of Sindh. Ranked as a beta-global city, it is Pakistan's premier industrial and financial centre, with an estimated GDP of $164 billion (PPP) . Karachi is Pakistan's most cosmopolitan city, linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse, as well as one of Pakistan's most secular and socially liberal cities. With its location on the Arabian Sea, Karachi serves as a transport hub, and is home to Pakistan's two largest seaports, the Port of Karachi and Port Bin Qasim, as well as Pakistan's busiest airport, the Jinnah International Airport.
Though the region surrounding and in Karachi has been inhabited for millennia, the city was formally founded as the fortified village of Kolachi in 1729. The settlement drastically increased in importance with the arrival of the British East India Company in the mid-19th century. The British administrations embarked on major projects to transform the city into a major seaport, and connected it with their extensive railway network throughout the Indian subcontinent. At the time of the Partition of British India in 1947, the city was the largest in Sindh with an estimated population of 400,000 people. Following the independence of Pakistan, the city experienced a dramatic shift in population and demography with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from India, coupled with a substantial exodus of its Hindu residents, declining from 51.1 per cent to 1.7 per cent of the total population. The city experienced rapid economic growth following Pakistan's independence, attracting migrants from throughout the country and other regions in South Asia by extension. According to the 2017 national census, Karachi's total population was 16,051,521, with 14.9 million of that figure residing in the urban areas of the city proper. Karachi is one of the world's fastest-growing cities, and has significant communities representing almost every ethnic group in Pakistan. Karachi is home to more than two million Bangladeshi immigrants, a million Afghan refugees, and up to 400,000 Rohingyas from Myanmar.
Karachi is now Pakistan's premier industrial and financial centre. The city has a formal economy estimated to be worth $114 billion , which is the largest in the country. Karachi collects more than a third of Pakistan's tax revenue, and generates approximately 20% of Pakistan's entire GDP. Approximately 30% of Pakistani industrial output is from Karachi, while Karachi's ports handle approximately 95% of Pakistan's foreign trade. Approximately 90% of the multinational corporations operating in Pakistan are headquartered in Karachi. Karachi is considered to be Pakistan's fashion capital, and has hosted the annual Karachi Fashion Week since 2009.
Known as the "City of Lights" in the 1960s and 1970s for its vibrant nightlife, Karachi was beset by sharp ethnic, sectarian, and political conflict in the 1980s with the large-scale arrival of weaponry during the Soviet–Afghan War. The city had become well known for its high rates of violent crime, but recorded crimes sharply decreased following a crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM political party, and Islamist militants, initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. As a result of the operation, Karachi dropped from being ranked the world's 6th-most dangerous city for crime in 2014, to 115th by mid-2021.
Etymology
Before independence, the city was widely known as Karanchi in Urdu, though the English spelling Karachi became more popular over time.
Modern Karachi was reputedly founded in 1729 as the settlement of Kolachi-jo-Goth during the rule of Kalhora dynasty. The new settlement is said to have been named in honour of Mai Kolachi, whose son is said to have slain a man-eating crocodile in the village after his elder brothers had already been killed by it. The name Karachee, a shortened and corrupted version of the original name Kolachi-jo-Goth, was used for the first time in a Dutch report from 1742 about a shipwreck near the settlement.
History
Early history
The region around Karachi has been the site of human habitation for millennia. Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites have been excavated in the Mulri Hills along Karachi's northern outskirts. These earliest inhabitants are believed to have been hunter-gatherers, with ancient flint tools discovered at several sites.
The expansive Karachi region is believed to have been known to the ancient Greeks, and may have been the site of Barbarikon, an ancient seaport which was located at the nearby mouth of the Indus River. Karachi may also have been referred to as Ramya in ancient Greek texts.
The ancient site of Krokola, a natural harbor west of the Indus where Alexander the Great sailed his fleet for Achaemenid Assyria, may have been located near the mouth of Karachi's Malir River, though some believe it was located near Gizri. No other natural harbor exists near the mouth of the Indus that could accommodate a large fleet. Nearchus, who commanded Alexander's naval fleet, also mentioned a hilly island by the name of Morontobara and an adjacent flat island named Bibakta, which colonial historians identified as Karachi's Manora Point and Kiamari (or Clifton), respectively, based on Greek descriptions. Both areas were island until well into the colonial era, when silting in led to them being connected to the mainland.
In 711 CE, Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Sindh and Indus Valley and the port of Debal, from where he launched his forces further into the Indus Valley in 712. Some have identified the port with Karachi, though some argue the location was somewhere between Karachi and the nearby city of Thatta.
Under Mirza Ghazi Beg, the Mughal administrator of Sindh, the development of coastal Sindh and the Indus River Delta was encouraged. Under his rule, fortifications in the region acted as a bulwark against Portuguese incursions into Sindh. In 1553–54, Ottoman admiral Seydi Ali Reis, mentioned a small port along the Sindh coast by the name of Kaurashi which may have been Karachi. The Chaukhandi tombs in Karachi's modern suburbs were built around this time between the 15th and 18th centuries.
Kolachi settlement
19th century Karachi historian Seth Naomal Hotchand recorded that a small settlement of 20–25 huts existed along the Karachi Harbour that was known as Dibro, which was situated along a pool of water known as Kolachi-jo-Kun. In 1725, a band of Baloch settlers from Makran and Kalat had settled in the hamlet after fleeing droughts and tribal feuds.
A new settlement was built in 1729 at the site of Dibro, which came to be known as Kolachi-jo-Goth ("The village of Kolachi"). The new settlement is said to have been named in honour of Mai Kolachi, a resident of the old settlement whose son is said to have slain a man-eating crocodile. Kolachi was about 40 hectares in size, with some smaller fishing villages scattered in its vicinity. The founders of the new fortified settlement were Sindhi Baniyas, and are said to arrived from the nearby town of Kharak Bandar after the harbour there silted in 1728 after heavy rains. Kolachi was fortified, and defended with cannons imported from Muscat, Oman. Under the Talpurs, the Rah-i-Bandar road was built to connect the city's port to the caravan terminals. This road would eventually be further developed by the British into Bandar Road, which was renamed Muhammad Ali Jinnah Road.
The name Karachee was used for the first time in a Dutch document from 1742, in which a merchant ship de Ridderkerk is shipwrecked near the settlement. In 1770s, Karachi came under the control of the Khan of Kalat, which attracted a second wave of Balochi settlers. In 1795, Karachi was annexed by the Talpurs, triggering a third wave of Balochi settlers who arrived from interior Sindh and southern Punjab. The Talpurs built the Manora Fort in 1797, which was used to protect Karachi's Harbor from al-Qasimi pirates.
In 1799 or 1800, the founder of the Talpur dynasty, Mir Fateh Ali Khan, allowed the East India Company under Nathan Crow to establish a trading post in Karachi. He was allowed to build a house for himself in Karachi at that time, but by 1802 was ordered to leave the city. The city continued to be ruled by the Talpurs until it was occupied by forces under the command of John Keane in February 1839.
British control
The British East India Company captured Karachi on 3February 1839 after opened fire and quickly destroyed Manora Fort, which guarded Karachi Harbour at Manora Point. Karachi's population at the time was an estimated 8,000 to 14,000, and was confined to the walled city in Mithadar, with suburbs in what is now the Serai Quarter. British troops, known as the "Company Bahadur" established a camp to the east of the captured city, which became the precursor to the modern Karachi Cantonment. The British further developed the Karachi Cantonment as a military garrison to aid the British war effort in the First Anglo-Afghan War.
Sindh's capital was shifted from Hyderabad to Karachi in 1840 until 1843 when Karachi was annexed to the British Empire after Major General Charles James Napier captured the rest of Sindh following his victory against the Talpurs at the Battle of Miani. Following the 1843 annexation, the entire province was amalgamated into the Bombay Presidency for the next 93 years. A few years later in 1846, Karachi suffered a large cholera outbreak, which led to the establishment of the Karachi Cholera Board (predecessor to the city's civic government).
The city grew under the administration of its new Commissioner, Henry Bartle Edward Frere, who was appointed in the 1850s. Karachi was recognized for its strategic importance, prompting the British to establish the Port of Karachi in 1854. Karachi rapidly became a transportation hub for British India owing to newly built port and rail infrastructure, as well as the increase in agricultural exports from the opening of productive tracts of newly irrigated land in Punjab and interior Sindh. By 1856, the value of goods traded through Karachi reached £855,103, leading to the establishment of merchant offices and warehouses. The population in 1856 is estimated to have been 57,000. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the 21st Native Infantry, then stationed in Karachi, mutinied and declared allegiance to rebel forces in September 1857, though the British were able to quickly defeat the rebels and reassert control over the city.
Following the Rebellion, British colonial administrators continued to develop the city's infrastructure, but continued to neglect localities like Lyari, which was home to the city's original population of Sindhi fishermen and Balochi nomads. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Karachi's port became an important cotton-exporting port, with Indus Steam Flotilla and Orient Inland Steam Navigation Company established to transport cotton from interior Sindh to Karachi's port, and onwards to textile mills in England. With increased economic opportunities, economic migrants from several ethnicities and religions, including Anglo-British, Parsis, Marathis, and Goan Christians, among others, established themselves in Karachi, with many setting-up businesses in the new commercial district of Saddar. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was born in Karachi's Wazir Mansion in 1876 to such migrants from Gujarat. Public building works were undertaken at this time in Gothic and Indo-Saracenic styles, including the construction of Frere Hall in 1865 and the later Empress Market in 1889.
With the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Karachi's position as a major port increased even further. In 1878, the British Raj connected Karachi with the network of British India's vast railway system. In 1887, Karachi Port underwent radical improvements with connection to the railways, along with expansion and dredging of the port, and construction of a breakwater. Karachi's first synagogue was established in 1893. By 1899, Karachi had become the largest wheat-exporting port in the East. In 1901, Karachi's population was 117,000 with a further 109,000 included in the Municipal area.
Under the British, the city's municipal government was established. Known as the Father of Modern Karachi, mayor Seth Harchandrai Vishandas led the municipal government to improve sanitary conditions in the Old City, as well as major infrastructure works in the New Town after his election in 1911. in 1914, Karachi had become the largest wheat-exporting port of the entire British Empire, after large irrigation works in interior Sindh were initiated to increase wheat and cotton yields. By 1924, the Drigh Road Aerodrome was established, now the Faisal Air Force Base.
Karachi's increasing importance as a cosmopolitan transportation hub leads to the influence of non-Sindhis in Sindh's administration. Half the city was born outside of Karachi by as early as 1921. Native Sindhis were upset by this influence, and so 1936, Sindh was re-established as a province separate from the Bombay Presidency with Karachi was once again made capital of Sindh. In 1941, the population of the city had risen to 387,000.
Post-independence
At the dawn of independence following the success of the Pakistan Movement in 1947, Karachi was Sindh's largest city with a population of over 400,000. Partition resulted in the exodus of much of the city's Hindu population, though Karachi, like most of Sindh, remained relatively peaceful compared to cities in Punjab. Riots erupted on 6January 1948, after which most of Sindh's Hindu population left for India, with assistance of the Indian government.
Karachi became the focus for the resettlement of middle-class Muslim Muhajir refugees who fled India, with 470,000 refugees in Karachi by May 1948, leading to a drastic alteration of the city's demography. In 1941, Muslims were 42% of Karachi's population, but by 1951 made up 96% of the city's population. The city's population had tripled between 1941 and 1951. Urdu replaced Sindhi as Karachi's most widely spoken language; Sindhi was the mother tongue of 51% of Karachi in 1941, but only 8.5% in 1951, while Urdu grew to become the mother tongue of 51% of Karachi's population. 100,000 Muhajir refugees arrived annually in Karachi until 1952.
Karachi was selected as the first capital of Pakistan, and was administered as a federal district separate from Sindh beginning in 1948, until the capital was shifted to Rawalpindi in 1958. While foreign embassies shifted away from Karachi, the city is host to numerous consulates and honorary consulates. Between 1958 and 1970, Karachi's role as capital of Sindh was ceased due to the One Unit programme enacted by President Iskander Mirza.
Karachi of the 1960s was regarded as an economic role model around the world, with Seoul, South Korea, borrowing from the city's second "Five-Year Plan". Several examples of Modernist architect were built in Karachi during this period, including the Mazar-e-Quaid mausoleum, the distinct Masjid-e-Tooba, and the Habib Bank Plaza (the tallest building in all of South Asia at the time). The city's population by 1961 had grown 369% compared to 1941. By the mid 1960s, Karachi began to attract large numbers of Pashtun and Punjabis from northern Pakistan.
The 1970s saw a construction boom funded by remittances and investments from the Gulf States, and the appearance of apartment buildings in the city. Real-estate prices soared during this period, leading to a worsening housing crisis. The period also saw labour unrest in Karachi's industrial estates beginning in 1970 that were violently repressed by the government of President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from 1972 onwards. To appease conservative forces, Bhutto banned alcohol in Pakistan, and cracked-down of Karachi's discotheques and cabarets - leading to the closure of Karachi's once-lively nightlife. The city's art scene was further repressed during the rule of dictator General Zia-ul-Haq. Zia's Islamization policies lead the Westernized upper-middle classes of Karachi to largely withdraw from the public sphere, and instead form their own social venues that became inaccessible to the poor.
The 1980s and 1990s saw an influx of almost one million Afghan refugees into Karachi fleeing the Soviet–Afghan War; who were in turn followed in smaller numbers by refugees escaping from post-revolution Iran. At this time, Karachi was also rocked by political conflict, while crime rates drastically increased with the arrival of weaponry from the War in Afghanistan. Conflict between the MQM party, and ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Punjabis was sharp. The party and its vast network of supporters were targeted by Pakistani security forces as part of the controversial Operation Clean-up in 1992an effort to restore peace in the city that lasted until 1994. Anti-Hindu riots also broke out in Karachi in 1992 in retaliation for the demolition of the Babri Mosque in India by a group of Hindu nationalists earlier that year.
The 2010s saw another influx of hundreds of thousands of Pashtun refugees fleeing conflict in North-West Pakistan and the 2010 Pakistan floods. By this point Karachi had become widely known for its high rates of violent crime, usually in relation to criminal activity, gang-warfare, sectarian violence, and extrajudicial killings. Recorded crimes sharply decreased following a controversial crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM party, and Islamist militants initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. As a result of the operation, Karachi went from being ranked the world's 6th most dangerous city for crime in 2014, to 93rd by early 2020.
Geography
Karachi is located on the coastline of Sindh province in southern Pakistan, along the Karachi Harbour, a natural harbour on the Arabian Sea. Karachi is built on a coastal plain with scattered rocky outcroppings, hills and marshlands. Mangrove forests grow in the brackish waters around the Karachi Harbour, and farther southeast towards the expansive Indus River Delta. West of Karachi city is the Cape Monze, locally known as Ras Muari, which is an area characterised by sea cliffs, rocky sandstone promontories and undeveloped beaches.
Karachi lies very close to a major fault line, where the Indian tectonic plate meets the Arabian tectonic plate. Within the city of Karachi are two small ranges: the Khasa Hills and Mulri Hills, which lie in the northwest and act as a barrier between North Nazimabad and Orangi. Karachi's hills are barren and are part of the larger Kirthar Range, and have a maximum elevation of .
Between the hills are wide coastal plains interspersed with dry river beds and water channels. Karachi has developed around the Malir River and Lyari Rivers, with the Lyari shore being the site of the settlement for Kolachi. To the west of Karachi lies the Indus River flood plain.
Climate
Karachi has a hot desert climate (Köppen: BWh) dominated by a long "Summer Season" while moderated by oceanic influence from the Arabian Sea. The city has low annual average precipitation levels (approx. per annum), the bulk of which occurs during the July–August monsoon season. Summers are hot and humid, and Karachi is prone to deadly heatwaves. On the other hand, cool sea breezes typically provide relief during hot summer months, and a text message-based early warning system is now in place which helped prevent any fatalities during an unusually strong heatwave in October 2017. The winter climate is dry and lasts between December and February. It is dry and pleasant in winter relative to the warm hot season that follows, which starts in March and lasts until monsoons arrive in June. Proximity to the sea maintains humidity levels at near-constant levels year-round. Thus, the climate is similar to a humid tropical climate except for low precipitation and occasional temperatures well over 100 F (38 C) due to dry continental influence.
The city's highest monthly rainfall, , occurred in July 1967. The city's highest rainfall in 24 hours occurred on 7August 1953, when about of rain lashed the city, resulting in major flooding.
Karachi's highest recorded temperature is which was recorded on 9May 1938, and the lowest is recorded on 21 January 1934.
Cityscape
The city first developed around the Karachi Harbour, and owes much of its growth to its role as a seaport at the end of the 18th century, contrasted with Pakistan's millennia-old cities such as Lahore, Multan, and Peshawar. Karachi's Mithadar neighbourhood represents the extent of Kolachi prior to British rule.
British Karachi was divided between the "New Town" and the "Old Town", with British investments focused primarily on the New Town. The Old Town was a largely unplanned neighbourhood which housed most of the city's indigenous residents and had no access to sewerage systems, electricity, and water. The New Town was subdivided into residential, commercial, and military areas. Given the strategic value of the city, the British developed the Karachi Cantonment as a military garrison in the New Town to aid the British war effort in the First Anglo-Afghan War.
The city's development was largely confined to the area north of the Chinna Creek prior to independence, although the seaside area of Clifton was also developed as a posh locale under the British, and its large bungalows and estates remain some of the city's most desirable properties. The aforementioned historic areas form the oldest portions of Karachi, and contain its most important monuments and government buildings, with the I. I. Chundrigar Road being home to most of Pakistan's banks, including the Habib Bank Plaza which was Pakistan's tallest building from 1963 until the early 2000s.
Situated on a coastal plain northwest of Karachi's historic core lies the sprawling district of Orangi. North of the historic core is the largely middle-class district of Nazimabad, and upper-middle-class North Nazimabad, which were developed in the 1950s. To the east of the historic core is the area known as Defence, an expansive upscale suburb developed and administered by the Pakistan Army. Karachi's coastal plains along the Arabian Sea south of Clifton were also developed much later as part of the greater Defence Housing Authority project.
Karachi's city limits also include several islands, including Baba and Bhit Islands, Oyster Rocks, and Manora, a former island which is now connected to the mainland by a thin 12-kilometre long shoal known as Sandspit. The city has been described as one divided into sections for those able to afford to live in planned localities with access to urban amenities, and those who live in unplanned communities with inadequate access to such services. Up to 60% of Karachi's residents live in such unplanned communities.
Economy
Karachi is Pakistan's financial and commercial capital. Since Pakistan's independence, Karachi has been the centre of the nation's economy, and remain's Pakistan's largest urban economy despite the economic stagnation caused by sociopolitical unrest during the late 1980s and 1990s. The city forms the centre of an economic corridor stretching from Karachi to nearby Hyderabad, and Thatta.
, Karachi had an estimated GDP (PPP) of $114 billion. , the city's gross domestic product (GDP) by purchasing power parity (PPP) was estimated at $78 billion with a projected average growth rate of 5.5 percent. Karachi contributes the bulk of Sindh's gross domestic product. and accounts for approximately 20% of the total GDP of Pakistan. The city has a large informal economy which is not typically reflected in GDP estimates. The informal economy may constitute up to 36% of Pakistan's total economy, versus 22% of India's economy, and 13% of the Chinese economy. The informal sector employs up to 70% of the city's workforce. In 2018 The Global Metro Monitor Report ranked Karachi's economy as the best performing metropolitan economy in Pakistan.
Today along with Pakistan's continued economic expansion Karachi is now ranked third in the world for consumer expenditure growth with its market anticipated to increase by 6.6% in real terms in 2018 It is also ranked among the top cities in the world by an anticipated increase of a number of households (1.3 million households) with annual income above $20,000 dollars measured at PPP exchange rates by the year 2025. The Global FDI Intelligence Report 2017/2018 published by Financial Times ranks Karachi amongst the top 10 Asia pacific cities of the future for FDI strategy.
Finance and banking
Most of Pakistan's public and private banks are headquartered on Karachi's I. I. Chundrigar Road, which is known as "Pakistan's Wall Street", with a large percentage of the cash flow in the Pakistani economy taking place on I. I. Chundrigar Road. Most major foreign multinational corporations operating in Pakistan have their headquarters in Karachi. Karachi is also home to the Pakistan Stock Exchange, which was rated as Asia's best-performing stock market in 2015 on the heels of Pakistan's upgrade to emerging-market status by MSCI.
Media and technology
Karachi has been the pioneer in cable networking in Pakistan with the most sophisticated of the cable networks of any city of Pakistan,
and has seen an expansion of information and communications technology and electronic media. The city has become a software outsourcing hub for Pakistan. Several independent television and radio stations are based in Karachi, including Business Plus, AAJ News, Geo TV, KTN, Sindh TV, CNBC Pakistan, TV ONE, Express TV, ARY Digital, Indus Television Network, Samaa TV, Abb Takk News, Bol TV, and Dawn News, as well as several local stations.
Industry
Industry contributes a large portion of Karachi's economy, with the city home to several of Pakistan's largest companies dealing in textiles, cement, steel, heavy machinery, chemicals, and food products. The city is home to approximately 30 percent of Pakistan's manufacturing sector, and produces approximately 42 percent of Pakistan's value added in large scale manufacturing. At least 4500 industrial units form Karachi's formal industrial economy. Karachi's informal manufacturing sector employs far more people than the formal sector, though proxy data suggest that the capital employed and value-added from such informal enterprises is far smaller than that of formal sector enterprises. An estimated 63% of the Karachi's workforce is employed in trade and manufacturing.
Karachi Export Processing Zone, SITE, Korangi, Northern Bypass Industrial Zone, Bin Qasim and North Karachi serve as large industrial estates in Karachi. The Karachi Expo Centre also complements Karachi's industrial economy by hosting regional and international exhibitions.
Revenue collection
As home to Pakistan's largest ports and a large portion of its manufacturing base, Karachi contributes a large share of Pakistan's collected tax revenue. As most of Pakistan's large multinational corporations are based in Karachi, income taxes are paid in the city even though income may be generated from other parts of the country. As home to the country's two largest ports, Pakistani customs officials collect the bulk of federal duty and tariffs at Karachi's ports, even if those imports are destined for one of Pakistan's other provinces. Approximately 25% of Pakistan's national revenue is generated in Karachi.
According to the Federal Board of Revenue's 2006–2007 year book, tax and customs units in Karachi were responsible for 46.75% of direct taxes, 33.65% of federal excise tax, and 23.38% of domestic sales tax. Karachi accounts for 75.14% of customs duty and 79% of sales tax on imports, and collects 53.38% of the total collections of the Federal Board of Revenue, of which 53.33% are customs duty and sales tax on imports.
Demographics
Karachi is the most linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse city in Pakistan. The city is a melting pot of ethnolinguistic groups from throughout Pakistan, as well as migrants from other parts of Asia. The 2017 census numerated Karachi's population to be 14,910,352, having grown 2.49% per year since the 1998 census, which had listed Karachi's population at approximately 9.3 million. The city's inhabitants are referred to by the demonym Karachiite in English, and Karāchīwālā in Urdu.
Population
At the end of the 19th century, Karachi had an estimated population of 105,000. By the dawn of Pakistan's independence in 1947, the city had an estimated population of 400,000. The city's population grew dramatically with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from the newly independent Republic of India. Rapid economic growth following independence attracted further migrants from throughout Pakistan and South Asia. The 2017 census numerated Karachi's population to be 14,910,352, having grown 2.49% per year since the 1998 census, which had listed Karachi's population at approximately 9.3 million.
Lower than expected population figures from the census suggest that Karachi's poor infrastructure, law and order situation, and weakened economy relative to other parts of Pakistan made the city less attractive to in-migration than previously thought. The figure is disputed by all the major political parties in Sindh. Karachi's population grew by 59.8% since the 1998 census to 14.9 million, while Lahore city grew 75.3%though Karachi's census district had not been altered by the provincial government since 1998, while Lahore's had been expanded by Punjab's government, leading to some of Karachi's growth to have occurred outside the city's census boundaries. Karachi's population had grown at a rate of 3.49% between the 1981 and 1998 census, leading many analysts to estimate Karachi's 2017 population to be approximately 18 million by extrapolating a continued annual growth rate of 3.49%. Some had expected that the city's population to be between 22 and 30 million, which would require an annual growth rate accelerating to between 4.6% and 6.33%.
Political parties in the province have suggested the city's population has been underestimated in a deliberate attempt to undermine the political power of the city and province. Senator Taj Haider from the PPP claimed he had official documents revealing the city's population to be 25.6 million in 2013, while the Sindh Bureau of Statistics, part of by the PPP-led provincial administration, estimated Karachi's 2016 population to be 19.1 million.
Districts Population Density per Sq.km.
According to 2017 Census, Karachi Central is the most densely populated district not only among six districts of Karachi, but also allover Pakistan with 43,063.51 persons living per square kilometres.
Ethnicity
The oldest portions of modern Karachi reflect the ethnic composition of the first settlement, with Balochis and Sindhis continuing to make up a large portion of the Lyari neighbourhood, though many of the residents are relatively recent migrants. Following Partition, large numbers of Hindus left Pakistan for the newly independent Dominion of India (later the Republic of India), while a larger percentage of Muslim migrant and refugees from India settled in Karachi. The city grew 150% during the ten period between 1941 and 1951 with the new arrivals from India, who made up 57% of Karachi's population in 1951. The city is now considered a melting pot of Pakistan, and is the country's most diverse city.
In 2011, an estimated 2.5 million foreign migrants lived in the city, mostly from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.
Much of Karachi's citizenry descend from Urdu-speaking migrants and refugees from North India who became known by the Arabic term for "Migrant": Muhajir. The first Muhajirs of Karachi arrived in 1946 in the aftermath of the Great Calcutta Killings and subsequent 1946 Bihar riots. The city's wealthy Hindus opposed the resettlement of refugees near their homes, and so many refugees were accommodated in the older and more congested parts of Karachi. The city witnessed a large influx of Muhajirs following Partition, who were drawn to the port city and newly designated federal capital for its white-collar job opportunities. Muhajirs continued to migrate to Pakistan throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, with Karachi remaining the primary destination of Indian Muslim migrants throughout those decades. The Muhajir Urdu-speaking community in the 2017 census forms slightly less than 45% of the city's population. Muhajirs form the bulk of Karachi's middle class. Muhajirs are regarded as the city's most secular community, while other minorities such as Christians and Hindus increasingly regard themselves as part of the Muhajir community.
Karachi is home to a wide array of non-Urdu speaking Muslim peoples from what is now the Republic of India. The city has a sizable community of Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani-speaking refugees. Karachi is also home to a several-thousand member strong community of Malabari Muslims from Kerala in South India. These ethno-linguistic groups are being assimilated in the Urdu-speaking community.
During the period of rapid economic growth in the 1960s, large numbers Pashtuns from the NWFP migrated to Karachi with Afghan Pashtun refugees settling in Karachi during the 80's. By some estimates, Karachi is home to the world's largest urban Pashtun population, with more Pashtun citizens than the FATA. While generally considered to be one of Karachi's most conservative communities, Pashtuns in Karachi generally vote for the secular Awami National Party rather than religious parties. Pashtuns from Afghanistan are regarded as the most conservative community. Pashtuns from Pakistan's Swat Valley, in contrast, are generally seen as more liberal in social outlook. The Pashtun community forms the bulk of manual labourers and transporters. Anatol Lieven of Georgetown University in Qatar wrote in 2021 that due to Pashtuns settling the city, "Karachi (not Kabul, Kandahar or Peshawar) may be the largest Pashtun city in the world."
Migrants from Punjab began settling in Karachi in large numbers in the 1960s, and now make up an estimated 14% of Karachi's population. The community forms the bulk of the city's police force, and also form a large portion of Karachi's entrepreneurial classes and direct a larger portion of Karachi's service-sector economy. The bulk of Karachi's Christian community, which makes up 2.5% of the city's population, is Punjabi.
Despite being the capital of Sindh province, only 6–8% of the city is Sindhi. Sindhis form much of the municipal and provincial bureaucracy. 4% of Karachi's population speaks Balochi as its mother tongue, though most Baloch speakers are of Sheedi heritagea community that traces its roots to Africa.
Following the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and independence of Bangladesh, thousands of Urdu-speaking Biharis arrived in the city, preferring to remain Pakistani rather than live in the newly independent country. Large numbers of Bengalis also migrated from Bangladesh to Karachi during periods of economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s. Karachi is now home to an estimated 2.5 to 3million ethnic Bengalis living in Pakistan. Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, who speak a dialect of Bengali and are sometimes regarded as Bengalis, also live in the city. Karachi is home to an estimated 400,000 Rohingya residents. Large scale Rohingya migration to Karachi made Karachi one of the largest population centres of Rohingyas in the world outside of Myanmar.
Central Asian migrants from Uzbekistan and Kyrghyzstan have also settled in the city. Domestic workers from the Philippines are employed in Karachi's posh locales, while many of the city's teachers hail from Sri Lanka. Expatriates from China began migrating to Karachi in the 1940s, to work as dentists, chefs and shoemakers, while many of their decedents continue to live in Pakistan. The city is also home to a small number of British and American expatriates.
During World War II, about 3,000 Polish refugees from the Soviet Union, with some Polish families who chose to remain in the city after Partition. Post-Partition Karachi also once had a sizable refugee community from post-revolutionary Iran.
Religion
Karachi is one of Pakistan's most religiously diverse cities. Karachiites adhere to numerous sects and sub-sects of Islam, as well as Protestant Christianity, and community of Goan Catholics. The city also is home to large numbers of Hindus, and a small community of Zoroastrians. According to Nichola Khan Karachi is also the world's largest Muslim city.
Prior to Pakistan's independence in 1947, the religious demographics of the city was estimated to be 51.1% Hindu, 42.3% Muslim, with the remaining 7% primarily Christians (both British and native), Sikhs, Jains, with a small number of Jews. Following the independence of Pakistan, the vast majority of Karachi's Sindhi Hindu population left for India while Muslim refugees from India, in turn, settled in the city. The city continued to attract migrants from throughout Pakistan, who were overwhelmingly Muslim, and the city's population nearly doubled again in the 1950s. As a result of continued migration, over 96.5% of the city currently is estimated to be Muslim.
Karachi is overwhelmingly Muslim, though the city is one of Pakistan's most secular cities. Approximately 85% of Karachi's Muslims are Sunnis, while 15% are Shi'ites. Sunnis primarily follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, with Sufism influencing religious practices by encouraging reverence for Sufi saints such as Abdullah Shah Ghazi and Mewa Shah. Shi'ites are predominantly Twelver, with a significant Ismaili minority which is further subdivided into Nizaris, Mustaalis, Dawoodi Bohras, and Sulaymanis.
Approximately 2.5% of Karachi's population is Christian. The city's Christian community is primarily composed of Punjabi Christians, who converted from Sikhism to Christianity during the British Raj. Karachi has a community of Goan Catholics who are typically better-educated and more affluent than their Punjabi co-religionists. They established the posh Cincinnatus Town in Garden East as a Goan enclave. The Goan community dates from 1820 and has a population estimated to be 12,000–15,000 strong. Karachi is served by its own archdiocese, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Karachi.
While most of the city's Hindu population left en masse for India following Pakistan's independence, Karachi still has a large Hindu community with an estimated population of 250,000 based on 2013 data, with several active temples in central Karachi. The Hindu community is split into a more affluent Sindhi Hindu and small Punjabi Hindu group that forms part of Karachi's educated middle class, while poorer Hindus of Rajasthani and Marwari descent form the other part and typically serve as menial and day laborers. Wealthier Hindus live primarily in Clifton and Saddar, while poorer ones live and have temples in Narayanpura and Lyari. Many streets in central Karachi still retain Hindu names, especially in Mithadar, Aram Bagh (formerly Ram Bagh), and Saddar.
Karachi's affluent and influential Parsis have lived in the region in the 12th century, though the modern community dates from the mid 19th century when they served as military contractors and commissariat agents to the British. Further waves of Parsi immigrants from Persia settled in the city in the late 19th century. The population of Parsis in Karachi and throughout South Asia is in continuous decline due to low birth-rates and migration to Western countries. According to Framji Minwalla approximately 1,092 Parsis are left in Pakistan.
Language
Karachi has the largest number of Urdu speakers in Pakistan. As per the 2017 census, the linguistic breakdown of Karachi Division is:
The category of "others" includes Hindko, Brahvi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Dawoodi Bohra, Memon, Marwari, Dari, Brahui, Makrani, Hazara, Khowar, Gilgiti, Burushaski, Balti, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil. The number of Sindhi speakers in Karachi is growing as many are moving from rural areas to the city.
Transportation
Road
Karachi is served by a road network estimated to be approximately in length, serving approximately 3.1 million vehicles per day.
Karachi is served by three "Signal-Free Corridors" which are designed as urban express roads to permit traffic to transverse large distances without the need to stop at intersections and stoplights. The first opened in 2007 and connects Shah Faisal Town in eastern Karachi to the industrial-estates in SITE Town away. The second corridor connects Surjani Town with Shahrah-e-Faisal over a 19-kilometre span, while the third stretch and connects Karachi's urban centre to the Gulistan-e-Johar suburb. A fourth corridor that will link Karachi's centre to Karachi's Malir Town is currently under construction.
Karachi is the terminus of the M-9 motorway, which connects Karachi to Hyderabad. The road is a part of a much larger motorway network under construction as part of the expansive China Pakistan Economic Corridor. From Hyderabad, motorways have been built, or are being constructed, to provide high-speed road access to the northern Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Mansehra to the north of Karachi.
Karachi is also the terminus of the N-5 National Highway which connects the city to the historic medieval capital of Sindh, Thatta. It offers further connections to northern Pakistan and the Afghan border near Torkham, as well as the N-25 National Highway which connects the port city to the Afghan border near Quetta.
Within the city of Karachi, the Lyari Expressway is a controlled-access highway along the Lyari River in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. Lyari Expressway's north-bound and south-bound sections are both complete and open for traffic. This toll highway is designed to relieve congestion in the city of Karachi. To the north of Karachi lies the Karachi Northern Bypass (M10), which starts near the junction of the M9. It then continues north for a few kilometres before turning west, where it intersects the N25.
Rail
Karachi is linked by rail to the rest of the country by Pakistan Railways. The Karachi City Station and Karachi Cantonment Railway Station are the city's two major railway stations. The city has an international rail link, the Thar Express which links Karachi Cantonment Station with Bhagat Ki Kothi station in Jodhpur, India.
The railway system also handles freight linking Karachi port to destinations up-country in northern Pakistan. The city is the terminus for the Main Line-1 Railway which connects Karachi to Peshawar. Pakistan's rail network, including the Main Line-1 Railway is being upgraded as part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, allowing trains to depart Karachi and travel on Pakistani railways at an average speed of versus the average speed currently possible on existing track.
Public transport
Karachi's public transport infrastructure is inadequate and constrained by low levels of investment.
Metrobus
The Pakistani Government is developing the Karachi Metrobus project, which is a multi-line bus rapid transit system currently under construction. The Metrobus project was inaugurated by then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on 25 February 2016. Sharif said the "project will be more beautiful than Lahore Metro Bus". The projects initial launch date was February 2017, but due to the slow pace of work, it is not yet operational.
The Metrobus project has also been criticized for not being accessible for wheelchair users.
Karachi Circular Railway
Karachi Circular Railway is a partially active regional public transit system in Karachi, which serves the Karachi metropolitan area. KCR was fully operational between 1969 and 1999. Since 2001, restoration of the railway and restarting the system had been sought. In November 2020, the KCR partially revived operations.
With its hub at Karachi City station on I. I. Chundrigar Road, KCR's revived operations would extend north to Gadap, east to Dhabeji, south to Kiamari and west to Hub. The revived KCR operation is intended to become an inter-regional public transit system in Karachi, with an aim to connect the city centre with several industrial and commercial districts within the city and the outlying suburbs.
Tramway service
An iconic tramway service was started in 1884 in Karachi but was closed in 1975 because of some reason. However, the revival of tramway service is proposed by Karachi Administrator Iftikhar Ali. Turkey has offered assistance in the revival and launching modern tramway service in Karachi.
Air
Karachi's Jinnah International Airport is the busiest airport of Pakistan with a total of 7.2 million passengers in 2018. The current terminal structure was built in 1992, and is divided into international and domestic sections. Karachi's airport serves as a hub for the flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), as well as for Air Indus, Serene Air and airblue. The airport offers non-stop flights to destinations throughout East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf States, Europe and North America.
Sea
The largest shipping ports in Pakistan are the Port of Karachi and the nearby Port Qasim, the former being the oldest port of Pakistan. Port Qasim is located east of the Port of Karachi on the Indus River estuary. These ports handle 95% of Pakistan's trade cargo to and from foreign ports. These seaports have modern facilities which include bulk handling, containers and oil terminals. The ports are part of the Maritime Silk Road.
Civic administration
City government
Karachi has a fragmented system of civic government. The urban area is divided into six District Municipal Corporations: Karachi East, Karachi West, Karachi Central, Karachi South, Malir, Korangi. Each district is further divided into between 22 and 42 Union Committees. Each Union Committee is represented by seven elected representatives, four of whom can be general candidates of any background; the other three seats are reserved for women, religious minorities, and a union representative or peasant farmer.
Karachi's urban area also includes six cantonments, which are administered directly by the Pakistani military, and include some of Karachi's most desirable real-estate.
Key civic bodies, such as the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and KBCA (Karachi Building Control Authority), among others, are under the direct control of the Government of Sindh. Additionally, Karachi's city-planning authority for undeveloped land, the Karachi Development Authority, is under control of the government, while two new city-planning authorities, the Lyari Development Authority and Malir Development Authority were revived by the Pakistan Peoples Party government in 2011allegedly to patronize their electoral allies and voting banks.
Historical background
In response to a cholera epidemic in 1846, the Karachi Conservancy Board was organized by British administrators to control its spread. The board became the Karachi Municipal Commission in 1852, and the Karachi Municipal Committee the following year. The City of Karachi Municipal Act of 1933 transformed the city administration into the Karachi Municipal Corporation with a mayor, a deputy mayor and 57 councillors. In 1976, the body became the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation.
During the 1900s, Karachi saw its major beautification project under the mayoralty of Harchandrai Vishandas. New roads, parks, residential, and recreational areas were developed as part of this project. In 1948, the Federal Capital Territory of Pakistan was created, comprising approximately of Karachi and surrounding areas, but this was merged into the province of West Pakistan in 1961. In 1996, the metropolitan area was divided into five districts, each with its own municipal corporation.
Union councils (2001–11)
In 2001, during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, five districts of Karachi were merged to form the city district of Karachi, with a three-tier structure. The two most local tiers are composed of 18 towns, and 178 union councils. Each tier focused on elected councils with some common members to provide "vertical linkage" within the federation.
Naimatullah Khan was the first Nazim of Karachi during the Union Council period, while Shafiq-Ur-Rehman Paracha was the first district coordination officer of Karachi. Syed Mustafa Kamal was elected City Nazim of Karachi to succeed Naimatullah Khan in 2005 elections, and Nasreen Jalil was elected as the City Naib Nazim.
Each Union Council had thirteen members elected from specified electorates: four men and two women elected directly by the general population; two men and two women elected by peasants and workers; one member for minority communities; two members are elected jointly as the Union Mayor (Nazim) and Deputy Union Mayor (Naib Nazim). Each council included up to three council secretaries and a number of other civil servants. The Union Council system was dismantled in 2011.
District Municipal Corporations (2011–present)
In July 2011, city district government of Karachi was reverted its original constituent units known as District Municipal Corporations (DMC). The five original DMCs are: Karachi East, Karachi West, Karachi Central, Karachi South and Malir. In November 2013, a sixth DMC, Korangi District was carved out from District East. In August 2020, Sindh cabinet approves formation of the seventh district in Karachi (Keamari District), Keamari District was formed by splitting District West.
The committees for each district devise and enforce land-use and zoning regulations within their district. Each committee also manages water supply, sewage, and roads (except for 28 main arteries, which are managed by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation). Street lighting, traffic planning, markets regulations, and signage are also under the control of the DMCs. Each DMC also maintains its own municipal record archive, and devises its own local budget.
Municipal Administration of Karachi is also run by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), which is responsible for the development and maintenance of main arteries, bridges, drains, several hospitals, beaches, solid waste management, as well as some parks, and the city's firefighting services. The Karachi mayor since 2016 is Waseem Akhtar, with Arshad Hassan serving as Deputy Mayor; both serve as part of the KMC. The Metropolitan Commissioner of the KMC is Dr. Syed Saif-ur-Rehman.
The position of Commissioner of Karachi was created, with Iftikhar Ali Shallwani serving this role. There are six military cantonments, which are administered by the Pakistani Army, and are some of Karachi's most upscale neighbourhoods.
City planning
The Karachi Development Authority (KDA), along with the Lyari Development Authority (LDA) and Malir Development Authority (MDA), is responsible for the development of most undeveloped land around Karachi. KDA came into existence in 1957 with the task of managing land around Karachi, while the LDA and MDA were formed in 1993 and 1994, respectively. KDA under the control of Karachi's local government and mayor in 2001, while the LDA and MDA were abolished. KDA was later placed under the direct control of the Government of Sindh in 2011. The LDA and MDA were also revived by the Pakistan Peoples Party government at the time, allegedly to patronize their electoral allies and voting banks. City-planning in Karachi, therefore, is not locally directed but is instead controlled at the provincial level.
Each District Municipal Corporation regulate land-use in developed areas, while the Sindh Building Control Authority ensures that building construction is in accordance with building & town planning regulations. Cantonment areas, and the Defence Housing Authority are administered and planned by the military.
Municipal services
Water
Municipal water supplies are managed by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB), which supplies 640 million gallons daily (MGD) to the city (excluding the city's steel mills and Port Qasim), of which 440 MGD are filtered/treated. Most of the supply comes from the Indus River, and 90 MGD from the Hub Dam. Karachi's water supply is transported to the city through a complex network of canals, conduits, and siphons, with the aid of pumping and filtration stations. 76% of Karachi households have access to piped water , with private water tankers supplying much of the water required in informal settlements. 18% of residents in a 2015 survey rated their water supply as "bad" or "very bad", while 44% expressed concern at the stability of water supply. By 2015, an estimated 30,000 people were dying due to water-borne diseases annually.
The K-IV water project is under development at a cost of $876 million. It is expected to supply 650 million gallons daily of potable water to the city, the first phase 260 million gallons upon completion.
Sanitation
98% of Karachi's households are connected to the city's underground public sewerage system, largely operated by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB). The KW&SB operates 150 pumping stations, 25 bulk reservoirs, over 10,000 kilometres of pipes, and 250,000 manholes. The city generates approximately 472 million gallons daily (MGD) of sewage, of which 417 MGD are discharged without treatment. KW&SB has the optimum capacity to treat up to 150 MGD of sewage, but uses only about 50 MGD of this capacity. Three treatment plants are available, in SITE Town, Mehmoodabad, and Mauripur. 72% reported in 2015 that Karachi's drainage system overflows or backs up, the highest percentage of all major Pakistani cities. Parts of the city's drainage system overflow on average 2–7 times per month, flooding some city streets.
Households in Orangi self-organized to set-up their own sewerage system under the Orangi Pilot Project, a community service organization founded in 1980. 90% of Orangi streets are now connected to a sewer system built by local residents under the Orangi Pilot Project. Residents of individual streets bear the cost of sewerage pipes, and provide volunteer labour to lay the pipe. Residents also maintain the sewer pipes, while the city municipal administration has built several primary and secondary pipes for the network. As a result of OPP, 96% of Orangi residents have access to a latrine.
The Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) is responsible for the collection and disposal of solid waste, not only in Karachi but throughout the whole province. Karachi has the highest percentage of residents in Pakistan who report that their streets are never cleaned42% of residents in Karachi report their streets are never cleaned, compared to 10% of residents in Lahore. Only 17% of Karachi residents reporting daily street cleaning, compared to 45%
in Lahore. 69% of Karachi residents rely on private garbage collection services, with only 15% relying on municipal garbage collection services. 57% of Karachi residents in a 2015 survey reported that the state of their neighbourhood's cleanliness was either "bad" or "very bad". compared to 35% in Lahore, and 16% in Multan.
Education
Primary and secondary
Karachi's primary education system is divided into five levels: primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary School Certificate); and university programs leading to graduate and advanced degrees. Karachi has both public and private educational institutions. Most educational institutions are gender-based, from primary to university level alongside the co education institutions.
Several of Karachi's schools, such as St Patrick's High School, St Joseph's Convent School and St Paul's English High School, are operated by Christian churches, and among Pakistan's most prestigious schools.
Higher
Karachi is home to several major public universities. Karachi's first public university's date from the British colonial era. The Sindh Madressatul Islam founded in 1885, was granted university status in 2012. Establishment of the Sindh Madressatul Islam was followed by the establishment of the D. J. Sindh Government Science College in 1887, and the institution was granted university status in 2014. The Nadirshaw Edulji Dinshaw University of Engineering and Technology (NED), was founded in 1921, and is Pakistan's oldest institution of higher learning. The Dow University of Health Sciences was established in 1945, and is now one of Pakistan's top medical research institutions.
The University of Karachi, founded in 1951, is Pakistan's largest university with a student population of 24,000. The Institute of Business Administration (IBA), founded in 1955, is the oldest business school outside of North America and Europe, and was set up with technical support from the Wharton School and the University of Southern California. The Dawood University of Engineering and Technology, which opened in 1962, offers degree programmes in petroleum, gas, chemical, and industrial engineering. The Pakistan Navy Engineering College (PNEC), operated by the Pakistan Navy, is associated with the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad.
Karachi is also home to numerous private universities. The Aga Khan University, founded in 1983, is Karachi's oldest private educational institution, and is one of Pakistan's most prestigious medical schools. The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture was founded in 1989, and offers degree programmes in arts and architectural fields. Hamdard University is the largest private university in Pakistan with faculties including Eastern Medicine, Medical, Engineering, Pharmacy, and Law. The National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES-FAST), one of Pakistan's top universities in computer education, operates two campuses in Karachi. Bahria University (BU) founded in 2000, is one of the major general institutions of Pakistan with their campuses in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore offers degree programs in Management Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Psychology. Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology (SSUET) offers degree programmes in biomedical, electronics, telecom and computer engineering. Karachi Institute of Economics & Technology (KIET) has two campuses in Karachi. The Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), founded in 1995 by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, operates a campus in Karachi.
Iqra University
Habib University
Dow University
Jinnah Medical and Dental College
Jinnah Sindh Medical University
Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology
United Medical and Dental College
Liaquat National Medical College
Institute of Cost & Management Accountants of Pakistan (ICMAP)
Institute of Business Management (CBM)
Healthcare
Karachi is a centre of research in biomedicine with at least 30 public hospitals, 80 registered private hospitals and 12 recognized medical colleges, including the Indus Hospital, Lady Dufferin Hospital, Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases, National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Civil Hospital, Combined Military Hospital, PNS Rahat, PNS Shifa, Aga Khan University Hospital, Liaquat National Hospital, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Holy Family Hospital and Ziauddin Hospital. In 1995, Ziauddin Hospital was the site of Pakistan's first bone marrow transplant.
Karachi municipal authorities in October 2017 launched a new early warning system that alerted city residents to a forecasted heatwave. Previous heatwaves had routinely claimed lives in the city, but implementation of the warning system was credited for no reported heat-related fatalities.
Entertainment, arts and culture
Entertainment and shopping malls
Karachi is home to Pakistan and South Asia's largest shopping mall, Lucky One Mall which hosts more than two hundred stores. According to TripAdvisor the city is also home to Pakistan's favorite shopping mall, Dolmen Mall, Clifton which was also featured on CNN and the country's favorite entertainment complex, Port Grand. In 2019 the city is expected to add another mega mall/entertainment complex at Bahria Icon Tower Clifton, Pakistan's tallest skyscraper.
Museums and galleries
Karachi is home to several of Pakistan's most important museums. The National Museum of Pakistan and Mohatta Palace display artwork, while the city also has several private art galleries. The city is also home to the Pakistan Airforce Museum and Pakistan Maritime Museum are also located in the city. Wazir Mansion, the birthplace of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah has also been preserved as a museum open to the public.
Theatre and Cinema
Karachi is home to some of Pakistan's important cultural institutions. The National Academy of Performing Arts, located in the former Hindu Gymkhana, offers diploma courses in performing arts including classical music and contemporary theatre. Karachi is home to groups such as Thespianz Theater, a professional youth-based, non-profit performing arts group, which works on theatre and arts activities in Pakistan.
Though Lahore was considered to be home of Pakistan's film industry, Karachi is home to Urdu cinema and Kara Film Festival annually showcases independent Pakistani and international films and documentaries.
Cinema
Bambino Cinema,
Capri Cinema,
Cinepax Cinema,
Mega Multiplex Cinema – Millennium Mall,
Nueplex Cinemas,
Atrium Mall.
Music
The All Pakistan Music Conference, linked to the 45-year-old similar institution in Lahore, has been holding its annual music festival since its inception in 2004. The National Arts Council (Koocha-e-Saqafat) has musical performances and mushaira.
Tourist attractions
Karachi is a tourist destination for domestic and international tourists. Tourist attractions near Karachi city include:
Museums: Museums located in Karachi include the National Museum of Pakistan, Pakistan Air Force Museum, and Pakistan Maritime Museum.
Parks: Parks located in Karachi include Bagh Ibne Qasim, Boat Basin Park, Mazar-e-Quaid, Karachi Zoo, Hill Park, Safari Park, Bagh-e-Jinnah, PAF Museum Park and Maritime Museum Park.
Social issues
Crime
Sometimes stated to be amongst the world's most dangerous cities, the extent of violent crime in Karachi is not as significant in magnitude as compared to other cities. According to the Numbeo Crime Index 2014, Karachi was the 6th most dangerous city in the world. By the middle of 2016, Karachi's rank had dropped to 31 following the launch of anti-crime operations. By 2018, Karachi's ranking has dropped to 50. In mid 2021, Karachi's ranking fell to 115, ranking it safer than regional cities such as Dhaka (43rd place), Delhi (82nd place), and Bangalore (108th place).
The city's large population results in high numbers of homicides with a moderate homicide rate. Karachi's homicide rates are lower than many Latin American cities, and in 2015 was 12.5 per 100,000lower than the homicide rate of several American cities such as New Orleans and St. Louis. The homicide rates in some Latin American cities such as Caracas, Venezuela and Acapulco, Mexico are in excess of 100 per 100,000 residents, many times greater than Karachi's homicide rate. In 2016, the number of murders in Karachi had dropped to 471, which had dropped further to 381 in 2017.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Karachi was rocked by political conflict while crime rates drastically increased with the arrival of weaponry from the War in Afghanistan. Several of Karachi's criminal mafias became powerful during a period in the 1990s described as "the rule of the mafias." Major mafias active in the city included land mafia, water tanker mafia, transport mafia and a sand and gravel mafia. Karachi's highest death rates occurred in the mid 1990s when Karachi was much smaller. In 1995, 1,742 killings were recorded, when the city had over five million fewer residents.
Karachi Operation
Karachi had become widely known for its high rates of violent crime, but rates sharply decreased following a controversial crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM party, and Islamist militants initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. In 2015, 1,040 Karachiites were killed in either acts of terror or other crimean almost 50% decrease from the 2,023 killed in 2014, and an almost 70% decrease from the 3,251 recorded killed in 2013the highest ever recorded number in Karachi history. Despite a sharp decrease in violent crime, street crime remains high.
With 650 homicides in 2015, Karachi's homicide rate decreased by 75% compared to 2013. In 2017, the number of homicides had dropped further to 381. Extortion crimes decreased by 80% between 2013 and 2015, while kidnappings decreased by 90% during the same period. By 2016, the city registered a total of 21 cases of kidnap for ransom. Terrorist incidents dropped by 98% between 2012 and 2017, according to Pakistan's Interior Ministry. As a result of the Karachi's improved security environment, real-estate prices in Karachi rose sharply in 2015, with a rise in business for upmarket restaurants and cafés.
Ethnic conflict
Insufficient affordable housing infrastructure to absorb growth has resulted in the city's diverse migrant populations being largely confined to ethnically homogenous neighbourhoods. The 1970s saw major labour struggles in Karachi's industrial estates. Violence originated in the city's university campuses, and spread into the city. Conflict was especially sharp between MQM party and ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Punjabis. The party and its vast network of supporters were targeted by Pakistani security forces as part of the controversial Operation Clean-up in 1992, as part of an effort to restore peace in the city that lasted until 1994.
Poor infrastructure
Urban planning and service delivery have not kept pace with Karachi's growth, resulting in the city's low ranking on livability rankings. The city has no cohesive transportation policy, and no official public transit system, though up to 1,000 new cars are added daily to the city's congested streets.
Unable to provide housing to large numbers of refugees shortly after independence, Karachi's authorities first issued "slips" to refugees beginning in 1950 –
which allowed refugees to settle on any vacant land. Such informal settlements are known as katchi abadis, and now approximately half the city's residents live in these unplanned communities.
Architecture
Karachi has a collection of buildings and structures of varied architectural styles. The downtown districts of Saddar and Clifton contain early 20th-century architecture, ranging in style from the neo-classical KPT building to the Sindh High Court Building. Karachi acquired its first neo-Gothic or Indo-Gothic buildings when Frere Hall, Empress Market and St. Patrick's Cathedral were completed. The Mock Tudor architectural style was introduced in the Karachi Gymkhana and the Boat Club. Neo-Renaissance architecture was popular in the 19th century and was the architectural style for St. Joseph's Convent (1870) and the Sind Club (1883). The classical style made a comeback in the late 19th century, as seen in Lady Dufferin Hospital (1898) and the Cantt. Railway Station. While Italianate buildings remained popular, an eclectic blend termed Indo-Saracenic or Anglo-Mughal began to emerge in some locations.
The local mercantile community began acquiring impressive structures. Zaibunnisa Street in the Saddar area (known as Elphinstone Street in British days) is an example where the mercantile groups adopted the Italianate and Indo-Saracenic style to demonstrate their familiarity with Western culture and their own. The Hindu Gymkhana (1925) and Mohatta Palace are examples of Mughal revival buildings. The Sindh Wildlife Conservation Building, located in Saddar, served as a Freemasonic Lodge until it was taken over by the government. There are talks of it being taken away from this custody and being renovated and the Lodge being preserved with its original woodwork and ornate wooden staircase.
Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture is one of the prime examples of Architectural conservation and restoration where an entire Nusserwanjee building from Kharadar area of Karachi has been relocated to Clifton for adaptive reuse in an art school. The procedure involved the careful removal of each piece of timber and stone, stacked temporarily, loaded on the trucks for transportation to the Clifton site, unloaded and re-arranged according to a given layout, stone by stone, piece by piece, and completed within three months.
Architecturally distinctive, even eccentric, buildings have sprung up throughout Karachi. Notable example of contemporary architecture include the Pakistan State Oil Headquarters building. The city has examples of modern Islamic architecture, including the Aga Khan University hospital, Masjid e Tooba, Faran Mosque, Bait-ul Mukarram Mosque, Quaid's Mausoleum, and the Textile Institute of Pakistan. One of the unique cultural elements of Karachi is that the residences, which are two- or three-story townhouses, are built with the front yard protected by a high brick wall. I. I. Chundrigar Road features a range of extremely tall buildings. The most prominent examples include the Habib Bank Plaza, PRC Towers and the MCB Tower which is the tallest skyscraper in Pakistan.
Sports
When it comes to sports Karachi has a distinction, because some sources cite that it was in 1877 at Karachi in (British) India, where the first attempt was made to form a set of rules of badminton and likely place is said to Frere Hall.
Cricket's history in Pakistan predates the creation of the country in 1947. The first ever international cricket match in Karachi was held on 22 November 1935 between Sindh and Australian cricket teams. The match was seen by 5,000 Karachiites. Karachi is also the place that innovated tape ball, a safer and more affordable alternative to cricket.
The inaugural first-class match at the National Stadium was played between Pakistan and India on 26 February 1955 and since then Pakistani national cricket team has won 20 of the 41 Test matches played at the National Stadium. The first One Day International at the National Stadium was against the West Indies on 21 November 1980, with the match going to the last ball.
The national team has been less successful in such limited-overs matches at the ground, including a five-year stint between 1996 and 2001, when they failed to win any matches. The city has been host to a number of domestic cricket teams including Karachi, Karachi Blues, Karachi Greens, and Karachi Whites. The National Stadium hosted two group matches (Pakistan v. South Africa on 29 February and Pakistan v. England on 3March), and a quarter-final match (South Africa v. West Indies on 11 March) during the 1996 Cricket World Cup.
The city has hosted seven editions of the National Games of Pakistan, most recently in 2007.
In 2005, the city hosted the SAFF Championship at this ground, as well as the Geo Super Football League 2007, which attracted capacity crowds during the games. The popularity of golf is increasing, with clubs in Karachi like Dreamworld Resort, Hotel & Golf Club, Arabian Sea Country Club, DA Country & Golf Club. The city has facilities for field hockey (the Hockey Club of Pakistan, UBL Hockey Ground), boxing (KPT Sports Complex), squash (Jahangir Khan Squash Complex), and polo. There are marinas and boating clubs. National Bank of Pakistan Sports Complex is First-class cricket venue and Multi-purpose sports facility in Karachi,
Professional teams of Karachi
Twin towns and sister cities
See also
Cinema in Karachi
Cuisine of Karachi
List of cemeteries in Karachi
List of hospitals in Karachi
List of magazines in Karachi
List of newspapers in Karachi
List of parks and gardens in Karachi
List of people from Karachi
List of streets of Karachi
List of tallest buildings in Karachi
List of tourist attractions in Karachi
List of cultural heritage sites in Karachi
List of television stations in Karachi
List of Union Councils of Karachi
Media in Karachi
Sister cities of Karachi
Transport in Karachi
Growth of the city
References
Bibliography
External links
Karachi at the end of the Raj, film by an unknown British soldier, 1942–1947, Mowgli Productions.
Capitals of Pakistan
Cities in Pakistan
Coastal cities and towns in Pakistan
Former national capitals
Metropolitan areas of Pakistan
Populated places in Sindh
Port cities and towns in Pakistan
Ports and harbours of the Indian Ocean
1729 establishments in Asia
Populated places established in 1729 | [
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17125 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen%20Islands | Kerguelen Islands | The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly but officially , ), also known as the Desolation Islands ( in French), are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic constituting one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large igneous province mostly submerged in the southern Indian Ocean. They are among the most isolated places on Earth, located more than from Madagascar. The islands, along with Adélie Land, the Crozet Islands, Amsterdam and Saint Paul islands, and France's Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean, are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands and are administered as a separate district.
The main island, Grande Terre, is in area, about three quarters of the size of Corsica, and is surrounded by a further 300 smaller islands and islets, forming an archipelago of . The climate is harsh and chilly with frequent high winds throughout the year. The surrounding seas are generally rough and they remain ice-free year-round. There are no indigenous inhabitants, but France maintains a permanent presence of 45 to 100 soldiers, scientists, engineers, and researchers. There are no airports on the islands, so all travel to and from the outside world is conducted by ship.
History
Before being officially catalogued in 1772, the Kerguelen Islands appear as the "Ile de Nachtegal" on Philippe Buache's 1754 map entitled Carte des Terres Australes comprises entre le Tropique du Capricorne et le Pôle Antarctique où se voyent les nouvelles découvertes faites en 1739 au Sud du Cap de Bonne Esperance ('Map of the Southern Lands contained between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Pole, where the new discoveries made in 1739 to the south of the Cape of Good Hope may be seen'). It is possible this early name was after Abel Tasman's ship De Zeeuwsche Nachtegaal. On the Buache map, "Ile de Nachtegal" is located at 43°S, 72°E, about 6° north and 2° east of the accepted location of Grande Terre.
The islands were officially discovered by the French navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec on 12 February 1772. The next day, Charles de Boisguehenneuc landed and claimed the island for the French crown. Yves de Kerguelen organised a second expedition in 1773 and arrived at the "baie de l'Oiseau" by December 1773. On 6 January 1774 he commanded his lieutenant, Henri Pascal de Rochegude, to leave a message notifying any passers-by of the two passages and of the French claim to the islands.
Thereafter, a number of expeditions briefly visited the islands, including the third voyage of Captain James Cook in December 1776. Cook verified and confirmed the passage of de Kerguelen by discovering and annotating the message left by the French navigator.
Soon after its discovery, the archipelago was regularly visited by whalers and sealers (mostly British, American, and Norwegian) who hunted the resident populations of whales and seals to the point of near extinction, including fur seals in the 18th century and elephant seals in the 19th century. The sealing era lasted from 1781 to 1922 during which time 284 sealing visits are recorded, nine of which ended when the vessel was wrecked. Modern industrial sealing, associated with whaling stations, occurred intermittently between 1908 and 1956. Since the end of the whaling and sealing era, most of the islands' species have been able to increase their population again. Relics of the sealing period include try pots, hut ruins, graves and inscriptions.
In 1800, the spent eight months sealing and whaling around the islands. During this time Captain Robert Rhodes, her master, prepared a chart of the islands. That vessel returned to London in April 1801 with 450 tons of sea elephant oil.
In 1825, the British sealer John Nunn and three crew members from Favourite were shipwrecked on Kerguelen until they were rescued in 1827 by Captain Alexander Distant during his hunting campaign.
The islands were not completely surveyed until the Ross expedition of 1840.
The Australian James Kerguelen Robinson (1859–1914) was the first human born south of the Antarctic Convergence, on board the sealing ship Offley in Gulf of Morbihan (Royal Sound then), Kerguelen Island on 11 March 1859.
In 1874–1875, British, German, and U.S. expeditions visited Kerguelen to observe the transit of Venus. For the 1874 transit, George Biddell Airy of the U.K. Royal Observatory organised and equipped five expeditions to different parts of the world. Three of these were sent to the Kerguelen Islands and led by Stephen Joseph Perry, who set up his main observation station at Observatory Bay and two auxiliary stations, one at Thumb Peak led by Sommerville Goodridge, and the second at Supply Bay, led by Cyril Corbet. Observatory Bay was also used by the German Antarctic Expedition, led by Erich Dagobert von Drygalski in 1902–1903. In January 2007, an archaeological excavation was carried out at this site.
In 1877 the French started a coal mining operation, but soon abandoned it.
In 1892, due to German operations in the area, France sent the aviso Eure, under Commander Lieutard, to reassert its claim over the Kerguelen Islands, the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul, and the Crozet Archipelago. In 1924, it was decided to administer these territories (in addition to that portion of Antarctica claimed by France and known as Adélie Land) from Madagascar; as with all Antarctic territorial claims, France's possession on the continent is held in abeyance until a new international treaty is ratified that defines each claimant's rights and obligations.
In 1908, the French explorer Raymond Rallier du Baty made a privately funded expedition to the island. His autobiographical account of the adventure (1917 - 15,000 Miles in a Ketch. Thomas Nelson and Sons: London) describes the months that he spent surveying the island and hunting seals to finance his expedition.
The German auxiliary cruiser called at Kerguelen during December 1940. During their stay the crew performed maintenance and replenished their water supplies. This ship's first fatality of the war occurred when a sailor, Bernhard Herrmann, fell while painting the funnel. He is buried in what is sometimes referred to as "the southernmost German war grave" of World War II.
Kerguelen has been continually occupied since 1950 by scientific research teams, with a population of 50 to 100 personnel frequently present. There is also a French satellite tracking station.
Until 1955, the Kerguelen Islands were administratively part of the French Colony of Madagascar and Dependencies. That same year, they collectively became known as (French Southern and Antarctic Lands) and were administratively part of the French . In 2004 they were permanently transformed into their own entity (keeping the same name) but having inherited another group of five very remote tropical islands, , which are also ruled by France and are dispersed widely throughout the southern Indian Ocean.
Grande Terre
The main island of the archipelago is called . It measures east to west and north to south.
Port-aux-Français, a scientific base, is along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Morbihan on La Grande Terre. Facilities there include scientific-research buildings, a satellite tracking station, dormitories, a hospital, a library, a gymnasium, a pub, and the chapel of Notre-Dame des Vents.
The highest point is Mont Ross in the Gallieni Massif, which rises along the southern coast of the island and has an elevation of . The Cook Ice Cap (), France's largest glacier with an area of about , lies on the west-central part of the island. Overall, the glaciers of the Kerguelen Islands cover just over . Grande Terre has also numerous bays, inlets, fjords, and coves, as well as several peninsulas and promontories. The most important ones are listed below:
Courbet Peninsula
Péninsule Rallier du Baty
Péninsule Gallieni
Péninsule Loranchet
Péninsule Jeanne d'Arc
Presqu'île Ronarc'h
Presqu'île de la Société de Géographie
Presqu'île Joffre
Presqu'île du Prince de Galles
Presqu'île du Gauss
Presqu'île Bouquet de la Grye
Presqu'île d'Entrecasteaux
Presqu'île du Bougainville
Presqu'île Hoche
Notable localities
There are also a number of notable localities, all on La Grande Terre (see also the main map):
Anse Betsy (Betsy Cove) is a former geomagnetic station on Baie Accessible (Accessible Bay), on the north coast of the Courbet Peninsula. On this site an astronomical and geomagnetic observatory was erected on 26 October 1874 by a German research expedition led by Georg Gustav Freiherr von Schleinitz. The primary goal of this station was the 1874 observation of the transit of Venus.
Armor (Base Armor), established in 1983, is located west of Port-aux-Français at the bottom of Morbihan Gulf, for the acclimatization of salmon to the Kerguelen islands.
Baie de l'Observatoire (Observatory Bay) is a former geomagnetic observation station, just west of Port-Aux-Français, on the eastern fringe of the Central Plateau, along the northern shore of the Golfe du Morbihan.
Cabane Port-Raymond is a scientific camp at the head of a fjord cutting into the Courbet Peninsula from the south.
Cap Ratmanoff is the eastmost point of the Kerguelens, and the site of a geomagnetic station.
La Montjoie is a scientific camp on the south shore of Baie Rocheuse, along the northwestern coast of the archipelago.
Molloy (Pointe Molloy) is a former observatory west of the present-day Port-Aux-Français, on the northern shore of the Golfe du Morbihan (Kerguelen). An American expedition led by G. P. Ryan erected a station at this site on 7 September 1874. That station was also established to observe the 1874 transit of Venus.
Port Bizet is a seismographic station on the northeastern coast of Île Longue. This also serves as the principal sheep farm for the island's resident flock of Bizet sheep.
Port Christmas is a former geomagnetic station on Baie de l'Oiseau, in the extreme northwest of the Loranchet Peninsula. It was named by Captain James Cook, who re-discovered the islands and who anchored there on Christmas Day, 1776. This is also the place where Captain Cook coined the name "Desolation Islands" in reference to what he saw as a sterile landscape.
Port Couvreux, a former whaling station, experimental sheep farm, and geomagnetic station is on Baie du Hillsborough, on the southeast coast of Presqu'île Bouquet de la Grye. Starting in 1912, sheep were raised here to create an economic base for future settlement. However, the attempt failed and the last inhabitants had to be evacuated, and the station abandoned, in 1931. The huts remain, as well as a graveyard with five anonymous graves. These are those of the settlers who were unable to survive in the harsh environment.
Port Curieuse, a harbor on the west coast across Île de l'Ouest, was named after the ship La Curieuse, which was used by Raymond Rallier du Baty on his second visit to the islands (1913–14).
Port Douzième (Twelfth Port) is a hut and former geomagnetic station on the southern shore of the Golfe du Morbihan.
Port Jeanne d'Arc is a former whaling station founded by a Norwegian whaling company in 1908, and a former geomagnetic station, and lies in the northwestern corner of Presqu'île Jeanne d'Arc, looking across the Buenos Aires passage to Île Longue ( northeast). The derelict settlement consists of four residential buildings with wooden walls and tin roofs, and a barn. One of the buildings was restored in 1977, and another in 2007.
From 1968 to 1981, a site just east of Port-aux-Français was a launching site for sounding rockets, some for French (Dragon rockets), American (Arcas) or French-Soviet (Eridans) surveys, but at the end mainly for a Soviet program (M-100).
Islands
The following is a list of the most important adjacent islands:
Île Foch in the north of the archipelago, at , the second most important offlier in the Kerguelens.
Île Saint-Lanne Gramont, is to the west of Île Foch in the Golfe Choiseul. It has an area of . Its highest point reaches .
Île du Port, also in the north in the Golfe des Baleiniers is the fourth largest satellite island with an area of . Near its centre it reaches an altitude of .
Île de l'Ouest (west coast, about )
Île Longue (southeast, about )
Îles Nuageuses (northwest, including île de Croÿ, île du Roland, îles Ternay, îles d'Après)
Île de Castries
Îles Leygues (north, including île de Castries, île Dauphine)
Île Violette
Île Australia (also known as Île aux Rennes – Reindeer Island) (western part of the Golfe du Morbihan, area , altitude )
Île Haute (western part of the Golfe du Morbihan, altitude )
Île Mayès
Îles du Prince-de-Monaco (south, in the Audierne bay)
Îles de Boynes (four small islands south of Presqu'ile Rallier du Baty on the main island)
Île Altazin (a small island in the Swains Bay)
Île Gaby (a small island in the Swains Bay)
Île de Croÿ (a small island off the coast of Grand Terre )
Île du Roland (a small island off the coast of Grand Terre )
Economy
Principal activities on the Kerguelen Islands focus on scientific research, mostly earth sciences and biology.
The former sounding rocket range to the east of Port-aux-Français is currently the site of a SuperDARN radar.
Since 1992, the French Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) has operated a satellite and rocket tracking station, located east of Port-aux-Français. CNES needed a tracking station in the Southern Hemisphere, and the French government required that it be located on French territory, rather than in a populated, but foreign, place like Australia or New Zealand.
Agricultural activities were limited until 2007 to raising sheep (about 3,500 Bizet sheep, a breed that is rare in mainland France) on Longue Island for consumption by the occupants of the base, as well as small quantities of vegetables in a greenhouse within the immediate vicinity of the main French base. There are also feral rabbits and sheep that can be hunted, as well as wild birds.
There are also five fishing boats and vessels, owned by fishermen on Réunion Island (a department of France about to the north) who are licensed to fish within the archipelago's exclusive economic zone.
Geology
The Kerguelen Islands form an emerged part of the submerged Kerguelen Plateau, which has a total area nearing . The plateau was built by volcanic eruptions associated with the Kerguelen hotspot, and now lies on the Antarctic Plate.
The major part of the volcanic formations visible on the islands is characteristic of an effusive volcanism, which caused a trap rock formation to start emerging above the level of the ocean 35 million years ago. The accumulation is of a considerable amount; basalt flows, each with a thickness of three to ten metres, stacked on top of each other, sometimes up to a depth of . This form of volcanism creates a monumental relief shaped as stairs of pyramids.
Other forms of volcanism are present locally, such as the strombolian volcano Mont Ross, and the volcano-plutonic complex on the Rallier du Baty Peninsula. Various veins and extrusions of lava such as trachytes, trachyphonolites, and phonolites are common all over the islands.
No eruptive activity has been recorded in historic times, but some fumaroles are still active in the south-west of Grande-Terre island.
A few lignite strata, trapped in basalt flows, reveal fossilised araucarian fragments, dated at about 14 million years of age.
Glaciation caused the depression and tipping phenomena which created the gulfs at the north and east of the archipelago. Erosion caused by the glacial and fluvial activity carved out the valleys and fjords; erosion also created conglomerate detrital complexes, and the plain of the Courbet Peninsula.
The islands are part of a submerged microcontinent called the Kerguelen Subcontinent. The microcontinent emerged substantially above sea level for three periods between 100 million years ago and 20 million years ago. The so-called Kerguelen Subcontinent may have had tropical flora and fauna about 50 million years ago. The Kerguelen Subcontinent finally sank 20 million years ago and is now below sea level. Kerguelen's sedimentary rocks are similar to ones found in Australia and India, indicating they were all once connected. Scientists hope that studying the Kerguelen sub-continent will help them discover how Australia, India, and Antarctica broke apart.
Climate
Kerguelen's climate is oceanic, cold, and extremely windswept. Under the Köppen climate classification, Kerguelen's climate is considered to be an ET or tundra climate, which is technically a form of polar climate, as the average temperature in the warmest month is below . Comparable climates include the Aleutian Islands, Campbell Island (New Zealand), Falkland Islands, Iceland, northern Kamchatka Peninsula, Labrador, and Wollaston Islands.
All climate readings come from the Port-aux-Français base, which has one of the more favourable climates in Kerguelen because of its proximity to the coast and its location in a gulf sheltered from the wind.
The average annual temperature is with an annual range of around . The warmest months of the year include January and February, with average temperatures between . The coldest month of the year is August with an average temperature of . Annual high temperatures rarely surpass , while temperatures in winter have never been recorded below at sea level.
Kerguelen receives frequent precipitation, with snow throughout the year as well as rain. Port-aux-Français receives a modest amount of precipitation ( per year) compared to the west coast which receives an estimated three times as much precipitation per year.
The mountains are frequently covered in snow but can thaw very quickly in rain. Over the course of several decades, many permanent glaciers have shown signs of retreat, with some smaller ones having disappeared completely.
The west coast receives almost continuous wind at an average speed of because the islands are between the Roaring Forties and the Furious Fifties. Wind speeds of are common and can even reach .
Waves up to high are common, but there are many sheltered places where ships can anchor.
Flora and fauna
The islands are part of the Southern Indian Ocean Islands tundra ecoregion that includes several subantarctic islands. Plant life is mainly limited to grasses, mosses, and lichens, although the islands are also known for the indigenous, edible Kerguelen cabbage, a good source of vitamin C to mariners. The main indigenous animals are insects along with large populations of ocean-going seabirds, seals, and penguins.
The wildlife is particularly vulnerable to introduced species; one particular problem has been cats. The main island is the home of a well-established feral cat population, descended from ships' cats. They survive on sea birds and the feral rabbits that were introduced to the islands. There are also populations of wild sheep (Ovis orientalis orientalis) and reindeer.
In the 1950s and 1960s, French geologist Edgar Albert de la Rue began to introduce several species of salmonids. Of the seven species introduced, only brook trout and brown trout survived to establish wild populations.
Coleoptera
Carabidae
Oopterus soledadinus [introduced]
Hydraenidae
Meropathus chuni [endemic]
In popular culture
The islands appear in a number of fictional works. The title character in Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, visits the islands. French writer Jules Verne's 1897 novel An Antarctic Mystery offers a follow up to Poe's book, and revisits the Kerguelen Islands. The 1874 short story "The Tachypomp" by Edward Page Mitchell tells of a hole through the center of the Earth with one end in the United States and the other in "Kerguellen's Land" (which is roughly antipodal to the United States and Canada). The 1880 collection Songs from the Mountains by the Australian poet Henry Kendall contains the poem Beyond Kerguelen. In Rudyard Kipling's poem "McAndrew's Hymn" – about a ship's engineer – there are the lines: "Fra' Cape Town east to Wellington – ye need an engineer.
Fail there – ye've time to weld your shaft – ay, eat it, ere ye're spoke,
Or make Kerguelen under sail – three jiggers burned wi' smoke!"
Henry De Vere Stacpoole set his 1919 novel The Beach of Dreams on the islands. The Kerguelen Islands were the setting for a post-Second World War confrontation between W. E. Johns's recurring hero, Biggles, and the crew of a gold bullion-bearing German U-boat, in the 1948 novel Biggles' Second Case. The fifth book in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, published in 1978, is entitled Desolation Island.
French author Jean-Paul Kauffmann produced a non-fiction account of his 1991 journey to the islands, titled The Arch of Kerguelen: Voyage to the Islands of Desolation.
The islands serve as a main location in the 1998 novel Kilo Class by Patrick Robinson.
In 2000 British journalist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris spent four months on Kerguelen, staying with the researchers at Port-aux-Français. A series of articles were published in The Times in which Parris charted his visit, and a documentary "To The Ends of Earth: Dreaming on Desolation Island" was produced for UK television, which aired on Channel 4.
The islands inspired the 2008 song "The Loneliest Place on the Map" by singer Al Stewart.
On April 1, 2018, YouTube channel Geography Now posted an April Fools' Day video titled Geography Now! LIMBERWISK about a fictional country called Limberwisk with the map of the Kerguelen Islands.
See also
Administrative divisions of France
List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands
List of French overseas islands
Overseas France
References
External links
Including a toponymy index.
Personal site with many pictures
Rocket launches on the Kerguelen Islands
Archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean
Archipelagoes of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands
Tundra
Antarctic ecoregions
Seal hunting
Subantarctic islands
Volcanic islands
Volcanoes of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands
01
Lists of coordinates
French Southern and Antarctic Lands | [
0.3211107850074768,
0.23413880169391632,
-0.11385183781385422,
-0.011440997011959553,
0.23507757484912872,
0.03774978220462799,
0.23991341888904572,
0.05592188239097595,
-0.4669002294540405,
-0.21461467444896698,
-0.7140111327171326,
0.5280866622924805,
0.11146850138902664,
0.6217057704925... |
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