text stringlengths 10 951k | source stringlengths 39 44 |
|---|---|
Reptilia (zoo)
Reptilia is Canada's largest indoor reptile zoo, with of indoor exhibits featuring over 250 reptiles, amphibians and arachnids. It is accredited by CAZA.
Currently there are two Ontario locations, one in Vaughan and one in Whitby.
The original Reptilia zoo was established in Vaughan; it is housed in a facility. In 2018, it opened a second location in Whitby in a former Rona store. In late 2018, it announced plans to create similar zoos in London and Barrie. London City Council rejected the proposal for a reptile zoo in Westmount Mall.
About 250 species of reptiles are in the zoo's collection. Among them is Canada's largest crocodile, a , Nile crocodile named Induna. The zoo also contains a king cobra, pythons, anacondas, poison dart frogs, rattlesnakes, and more. About 75% of animals are rescues, with the remainder either born on location or acquired from other accredited facilities. Of the rescues, many are obtained from previous owners who cannot cope with animals that have achieved their adult size, for which the zoo receives "constant calls". The zoo takes in about 75 such animals every year, many of which are later sent to other facilities.
Each location has a theatre area in which the zoo exhibits interactive reptile shows.
Reptilia provides curriculum compliant educational programs from kindergarten to grade 12 along with specialized post secondary programs for first responders, educators, animal control officers and veterinarians. Educational programs are provided at Reptilia, as well as through the transportation of reptiles to various schools to provide lessons in school classrooms. Lessons are typically of 1 hour duration.
Reptilia interacts closely with other educational organizations, supplying reptiles and other supplies to the Ontario Science Centre, helping the Toronto Zoo with their educational programs, and working with many of the schools in the Greater Toronto Area. Reptilia also has a number of classrooms and party rooms that can be rented out for activities such as birthday parties. Each room is named after a different reptile.
Reptilia provides reptiles along with skilled handlers for film productions, photo shoots, and television. Reptilia has provided reptiles for Guinness, Murdoch Mysteries, , YTV, Daily Planet, and other shows and productions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37308 |
Federal Standard 1037C
Federal Standard 1037C, titled Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms, is a United States Federal Standard issued by the General Services Administration pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended.
This document provides federal departments and agencies a comprehensive source of definitions of terms used in telecommunications and directly related fields by international and U.S. government telecommunications specialists.
As a publication of the U.S. government, prepared by an agency of the U.S. government, it appears to be mostly available as a public domain resource, but a few items are derived from copyrighted sources: where this is the case, there is an attribution to the source.
This standard was superseded in 2001 by American National Standard T1.523-2001, Telecom Glossary 2000, which is published by ATIS. The old standard is still frequently used, because the new standard is protected by copyright, as usual for ANSI standards.
A newer proposed standard is the "ATIS Telecom Glossary 2011", ATIS-0100523.2011. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37310 |
Bruce Lee
Lee Jun-fan (; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973), known professionally as Bruce Lee (), was a Hong Kong American actor, director, martial artist, martial arts instructor and philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA). Lee is considered by commentators, critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West. He is credited with helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films.
The son of Cantonese opera star Lee Hoi-chuen, Lee was born in the Chinatown area of San Francisco, California, on November 27, 1940, to parents from Hong Kong, and was raised with his family in Kowloon, Hong Kong. He was introduced to the film industry by his father and appeared in several films as a child actor. Lee moved to the United States at the age of 18 to receive his higher education at the University of Washington in Seattle, and it was during this time that he began teaching martial arts. His Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, sparking a surge of interest in Chinese nation and Chinese martial arts in the West in the 1970s. The direction and tone of his films dramatically changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in the world.
He is noted for his roles in five feature-length martial arts films in the early 1970s: Lo Wei's "The Big Boss" (1971) and "Fist of Fury" (1972); Golden Harvest's "Way of the Dragon" (1972), directed and written by Lee; Golden Harvest and Warner Brothers' "Enter the Dragon" (1973) and "The Game of Death" (1978), both directed by Robert Clouse. Lee became an iconic figure known throughout the world, particularly among the Chinese, based upon his portrayal of Chinese nationalism in his films and among Asian Americans for defying stereotypes associated with the emasculated Asian male. He trained in the art of Wing Chun and later combined his other influences from various sources into the spirit of his personal martial arts philosophy, which he dubbed Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist). Lee had residences in Hong Kong and Seattle.
Lee died on July 20, 1973 at the age of 32. There was no visible external injury; however, according to autopsy reports, Lee's brain had swollen considerably. The autopsy found Equagesic in his system. When the doctors announced Lee's death, it was officially ruled a "death by misadventure". Since his death, Lee has continued to be a prominent influence on modern combat sport, including judo, karate, mixed martial arts, and boxing. "Time" named Lee one of the .
Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, at the Chinese Hospital in Chinatown, San Francisco. According to the Chinese zodiac, Lee was born in both the hour and the year of the Dragon, which according to tradition is a strong and fortuitous omen. Lee and his parents returned to Hong Kong when he was three months old. Bruce's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was Han Chinese, and his mother, Grace Ho (), was of Eurasian ancestry. Lee's maternal grandfather was Chinese and his maternal grandmother was English. Lee's great uncle, Robert Hotung, was a successful businessman and philanthropist of Dutch and Chinese descent.
Lee's father Lee Hoi-chuen was a famous Cantonese opera star. Because of this, Lee was introduced into films at a very young age and appeared in several films as a child. Lee had his first role as a baby who was carried onto the stage in the film "Golden Gate Girl". As a nine-year-old, he would co-star with his father in "The Kid" in 1950, which was based on a comic book character and was his first leading role. By the time he was 18, he had appeared in twenty films.
After Lee was involved in several street fights, his parents decided that he needed to be trained in the martial arts. Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father, from whom he learned the fundamentals of Wu-style t'ai chi ch'uan.
The largest influence on Lee's martial arts development was his study of Wing Chun. Lee began training in Wing Chun when he was 16 years old under the Wing Chun teacher Yip Man in between late 1956 and 1957, after losing to rival gang members. Yip's regular classes generally consisted of the forms practice, "chi sao" (sticking hands) drills, wooden dummy techniques, and free-sparring. There was no set pattern to the classes. Yip tried to keep his students from fighting in the street gangs of Hong Kong by encouraging them to fight in organized competitions.
After a year into his Wing Chun training, most of Yip Man's other students refused to train with Lee when they learned of his mixed ancestry, as the Chinese were generally against teaching their martial arts techniques to non-Asians. Lee's sparring partner, Hawkins Cheung, states, "Probably fewer than six people in the whole Wing Chun clan were personally taught, or even partly taught, by Yip Man". However, Lee showed a keen interest in Wing Chun and continued to train privately with Yip Man and Wong Shun Leung. Wan Kam Leung, a student of Wong's, witnessed a sparring bout between Wong and Lee and noted the speed and precision with which Lee was able to deliver his kicks. Lee continued to train with Wong Shun Leung after returning to Hong Kong from America.
After attending Tak Sun School (; several blocks from his home at 218 Nathan Road, Kowloon), Lee entered the primary school division of the Catholic La Salle College at the age of 12. In 1956, due to poor academic performance and possibly poor conduct, he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's College, where he would be mentored by Brother Edward, a teacher and coach of the school boxing team. In 1958, Bruce won the Hong Kong schools boxing tournament, knocking out the previous champion in the final.
In the spring of 1959, Lee got into another street fight, and the police were called.
Until his late teens, Lee's street fights became more frequent and included beating the son of a feared triad family. Eventually, Lee's father decided his son should leave Hong Kong to pursue a safer and healthier life in the United States. His parents confirmed the police's fear that this time Lee's opponent had an organized crime background and that there was the possibility that a contract was out for his life.
In April 1959, Lee's parents decided to send him to the United States to stay with his older sister, Agnes Lee (), who was already living with family friends in San Francisco. After several months, he moved to Seattle in 1959 to continue his high school education, where he also worked for Ruby Chow as a live-in waiter at her restaurant. Chow's husband was a co-worker and friend of Lee's father. Lee's elder brother Peter Lee () would also join him in Seattle for a short stay before moving on to Minnesota to attend college. That year Lee also started to teach martial arts. He called what he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu (literally Bruce Lee's Kung Fu). It was basically his approach to Wing Chun. Lee taught friends he met in Seattle, starting with Judo practitioner Jesse Glover, who continued to teach some of Lee's early techniques. Taky Kimura became Lee's first Assistant Instructor and continued to teach his art and philosophy after Lee's death. Lee opened his first martial arts school, named the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, in Seattle.
In December 1960, Lee completed his high school education and received his diploma from Edison Technical School on Capitol Hill in Seattle.
In March 1961, Lee enrolled at the University of Washington and studied dramatic arts, philosophy, psychology, and various other subjects. Despite what Lee himself and many others have stated, Lee's official major was drama rather than philosophy according to a 1999 article in the university's alumni publication.
Lee dropped out of college in early 1964 and moved to Oakland to live with James Yimm Lee. James Lee was twenty years senior to Bruce Lee and a well-known Chinese martial artist in the area. Together, they founded the second Jun Fan martial arts studio in Oakland. James Lee was also responsible for introducing Bruce Lee to Ed Parker, an American martial artist. At the invitation of Parker, Lee appeared in the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships and performed repetitions of two-finger push-ups (using the thumb and the index finger of one hand) with feet at approximately shoulder-width apart. In the same Long Beach event he also performed the "one inch punch." Lee stood upright, his right foot forward with knees bent slightly, in front of a standing, stationary partner. Lee's right arm was partly extended and his right fist approximately away from the partner's chest. Without retracting his right arm, Lee then forcibly delivered the punch to volunteer Bob Baker while largely maintaining his posture, sending Baker backwards and falling into a chair said to be placed behind Baker to prevent injury, though Baker's momentum soon caused him to fall to the floor. Baker recalled, "I told Bruce not to do this type of demonstration again. When he punched me that last time, I had to stay home from work because the pain in my chest was unbearable". It was at the 1964 championships that Lee first met Taekwondo master Jhoon Goo Rhee. The two developed a friendship—a relationship from which they benefited as martial artists. Rhee taught Lee the side kick in detail, and Lee taught Rhee the "non-telegraphic" punch. Rhee learnt what he calls the "accupunch" from Lee and incorporated it into American taekwondo. The "accupunch" is a rapid fast punch that is very difficult to block, based on human reaction time—"the idea is to finish the execution of the punch before the opponent can complete the brain-to-wrist communication."
In Oakland's Chinatown in 1964, Lee had a controversial private match with Wong Jack Man, a direct student of Ma Kin Fung, known for his mastery of Xingyiquan, Northern Shaolin, and T'ai chi ch'uan. According to Lee, the Chinese community issued an ultimatum to him to stop teaching non-Chinese people. When he refused to comply, he was challenged to a combat match with Wong. The arrangement was that if Lee lost, he would have to shut down his school, while if he won, he would be free to teach white people, or anyone else. Wong denied this, stating that he requested to fight Lee after Lee boasted during one of his demonstrations at a Chinatown theatre that he could beat anyone in San Francisco, and that Wong himself did not discriminate against Whites or other non-Chinese people. Lee commented, "That paper had all the names of the sifu from Chinatown, but they don't scare me". Individuals known to have witnessed the match include Cadwell, James Lee (Bruce Lee's associate, no relation), and William Chen, a teacher of T'ai chi ch'uan. Wong and William Chen stated that the fight lasted an unusually long 20–25 minutes. Wong claims that although he had originally expected a serious but polite bout, Lee aggressively attacked him with intent to kill. When Wong presented the traditional handshake, Lee appeared to accept the greeting, but instead, Lee immediately thrust his hand as a spear aimed at Wong's eyes. Forced to defend his life, Wong nonetheless refrained from striking Lee with killing force when the opportunity presented itself because it could have earned him a prison sentence, but used illegal cufflings under his sleeves. The fight ended due to Lee's "unusually winded" condition, as opposed to a decisive blow by either fighter. By contrast, according to Bruce Lee, Linda Lee Cadwell, and James Yimm Lee, the fight lasted a mere 3 minutes with a decisive victory for Lee. In Cadwell's account, "The fight ensued, it was a no-holds-barred fight, it took three minutes. Bruce got this guy down to the ground and said 'Do you give up?' and the man said he gave up". A couple of weeks after the bout, Lee gave an interview claiming that he had defeated an unnamed challenger, which Wong says was an obvious reference to him. In response, Wong published his own account of the fight in the Chinese "Pacific Weekly", a Chinese-language newspaper in San Francisco, with an invitation to a public rematch if Lee was not satisfied with the account. Lee did not respond to the invitation despite his reputation for violently responding to every provocation, and there were no further public announcements by either, though Lee continued to teach white people. Lee had abandoned thoughts of a film career in favour of pursuing martial arts. However, a martial arts exhibition on Long Beach in 1964 eventually led to the invitation by television producer William Dozier for an audition for a role in the pilot for "Number One Son" about Lee Chan, the son of Charlie Chan. The show never materialized, but Dozier saw potential in Lee.
From 1966 to 1967, Lee played the role of Kato alongside the title character played by Van Williams in the TV series produced and narrated by William Dozier titled "The Green Hornet", based on the radio show by the same name. The show lasted only one season (26 episodes), from September 1966 to March 1967. Lee and Williams also appeared as their characters in three crossover episodes of "Batman", another William Dozier-produced television series.
The Green Hornet introduced the adult Bruce Lee to an American audience, and became the first popular American show presenting Asian-style martial arts. The show's director wanted Lee to fight in the typical American style using fists and punches. As a professional martial artist, Lee refused, insisting that he should fight in the style of his expertise. At first, Lee moved so fast that his movements could not be caught on film, so he had to slow them down. After the show was cancelled in 1967, Lee wrote to Dozier thanking him for starting "my career in show business."
In 1967, Lee played a role in one episode of "Ironside."
Jeet Kune Do originated in 1967. After filming one season of "The Green Hornet", Lee found himself out of work and opened The Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. The controversial match with Wong Jack Man influenced Lee's philosophy about martial arts. Lee concluded that the fight had lasted too long and that he had failed to live up to his potential using his Wing Chun techniques. He took the view that traditional martial arts techniques were too rigid and formalized to be practical in scenarios of chaotic street fighting. Lee decided to develop a system with an emphasis on "practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency". He started to use different methods of training such as weight training for strength, running for endurance, stretching for flexibility, and many others which he constantly adapted, including fencing and basic boxing techniques. Lee was influenced by heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, whose footwork he studied and incorporated into his own style.
Lee emphasized what he called "the style of no style". This consisted of getting rid of the formalized approach which Lee claimed was indicative of traditional styles. Lee felt that even the system he now called Jun Fan Gung Fu was too restrictive, and it eventually evolved into a philosophy and martial art he would come to call "Jeet Kune Do" or the "Way of the Intercepting Fist." It is a term he would later regret, because Jeet Kune Do implied specific parameters that styles connote, whereas the idea of his martial art was to exist outside of parameters and limitations.
At the time, two of Lee's martial arts students were Hollywood script writer Stirling Silliphant and actor James Coburn. In 1969 the three worked on a script for a film called "The Silent Flute", and went together on a location hunt to India. The project was not realised at the time, but the 1978 film "Circle of Iron", starring David Carradine, was based on the same plot. In 2010, producer Paul Maslansky was reported to have planned and received funding for a film based on the original script for "The Silent Flute". In 1969, Lee made a brief appearance in the Silliphant-penned film "Marlowe", where he played a hoodlum hired to intimidate private detective Philip Marlowe, (played by James Garner), who uses his martial arts abilities to commit acts of vandalization to intimidate Marlowe. The same year he was credited as the karate advisor in "The Wrecking Crew, the" fourth instalment of the Matt Helm comedy spy-fi film starring Dean Martin. Also that year, Lee acted in one episode of "Here Come the Brides" and "Blondie".
In 1970, he was responsible for fight choreography for "A Walk in the Spring Rain" starring Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, again written by Silliphant.
In 1971, Lee appeared in four episodes of the television series "Longstreet", written by Silliphant. Lee played Li Tsung the martial arts instructor of the title character Mike Longstreet (played by James Franciscus), and important aspects of his martial arts philosophy were written into the script. According to statements made by Lee, and also by Linda Lee Cadwell after Lee's death, in 1971 Lee pitched a television series of his own tentatively titled "The Warrior", discussions of which were also confirmed by Warner Bros. During a December 9, 1971 television interview on "The Pierre Berton Show", Lee stated that both Paramount and Warner Brothers wanted him "to be in a modernized type of a thing, and that they think the Western idea is out, whereas I want to do the Western". According to Cadwell, however, Lee's concept was retooled and renamed "Kung Fu", but Warner Bros. gave Lee no credit. Warner Brothers states that they had for some time been developing an identical concept, created by two writers and producers, Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander. According to these sources, the reason Lee was not cast was in part because of his ethnicity, but more so because he had a thick accent. The role of the Shaolin monk in the Wild West was eventually awarded to then-non-martial-artist David Carradine. In "The Pierre Berton Show" interview, Lee stated he understood Warner Brothers' attitudes towards casting in the series: "They think that business-wise it is a risk. I don't blame them. If the situation were reversed, and an American star were to come to Hong Kong, and I was the man with the money, I would have my own concerns as to whether the acceptance would be there".
Producer Fred Weintraub had advised Lee to return to Hong Kong and make a feature film which he could showcase to executives in Hollywood. Not happy with his supporting roles in the US, Lee returned to Hong Kong. Unaware that "The Green Hornet" had been played to success in Hong Kong and was unofficially referred to as "The Kato Show", he was surprised to be recognized as the star of the show. After negotiating with both Shaw Brothers Studio and Golden Harvest, Lee signed a film contract to star in two films produced by Golden Harvest.
Lee played his first leading role in "The Big Boss" (1971), which proved to be an enormous box office success across Asia and catapulted him to stardom. He soon followed up with "Fist of Fury" (1972), which broke the box office records set previously by "The Big Boss". Having finished his initial two-year contract, Lee negotiated a new deal with Golden Harvest. Lee later formed his own company, Concord Production Inc., with Chow. For his third film, "Way of the Dragon" (1972), he was given complete control of the film's production as the writer, director, star, and choreographer of the fight scenes. In 1964, at a demonstration in Long Beach, California, Lee had met karate champion Chuck Norris. In "Way of the Dragon" Lee introduced Norris to moviegoers as his opponent, their showdown has been characterized as "one of the best fight scenes in martial arts and film history". The role had originally been offered to American karate champion Joe Lewis. "Fist of Fury" and "Way of the Dragon" went on to gross an estimated and worldwide, respectively.
From August to October 1972, Lee began work on his fourth Golden Harvest Film, "Game of Death". He began filming some scenes, including his fight sequence with American basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a former student. Production stopped in November 1972 when Warner Brothers offered Lee the opportunity to star in "Enter the Dragon", the first film to be produced jointly by Concord, Golden Harvest, and Warner Bros. Filming began in Hong Kong in February 1973 and was completed in April 1973. One month into the filming, another production company, Starseas Motion Pictures, promoted Bruce Lee as a leading actor in "Fist of Unicorn", although he had merely agreed to choreograph the fight sequences in the film as a favour to his long-time friend Unicorn Chan. Lee planned to sue the production company, but retained his friendship with Chan. However, only a few months after the completion of "Enter the Dragon", and six days before its July 26, 1973 release, Lee died. "Enter the Dragon" would go on to become one of the year's highest-grossing films and cement Lee as a martial arts legend. It was made for US$850,000 in 1973 (equivalent to $4 million adjusted for inflation as of 2007). "Enter the Dragon" went on to gross an estimated worldwide. The film sparked a brief fad in martial arts, epitomised in songs such as "Kung Fu Fighting" and TV shows like "Kung Fu" (in Enter The Dragon, Lee was a Shaolin Kung Fu master, similar to the role of David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine).
Robert Clouse, the director of "Enter the Dragon", together with Golden Harvest, revived Lee's unfinished film "Game of Death". Lee had shot over 100 minutes of footage, including out-takes, for "Game of Death" before shooting was stopped to allow him to work on "Enter the Dragon". In addition to Abdul-Jabbar, George Lazenby, Hapkido master Ji Han-Jae, and another of Lee's students, Dan Inosanto, were also to appear in the film, which was to culminate in Lee's character, Hai Tien (clad in the now-famous yellow track suit) taking on a series of different challengers on each floor as they make their way through a five-level pagoda. In a controversial move, Robert Clouse finished the film using a look-alike and archive footage of Lee from his other films with a new storyline and cast, which was released in 1978. However, the cobbled-together film contained only fifteen minutes of actual footage of Lee (he had printed many unsuccessful takes) while the rest had a Lee look-alike, Kim Tai Chung, and Yuen Biao as stunt double. The unused footage Lee had filmed was recovered 22 years later and included in the documentary "".
Apart from "Game of Death", other future film projects were planned to feature Lee at the time. In 1972, after the success of "The Big Boss" and "Fist of Fury", a third film was planned by Raymond Chow at Golden Harvest to be directed by Lo Wei, titled "Yellow-Faced Tiger". However, at the time, Lee decided to direct and produce his own script for "Way of the Dragon" instead. Although Lee had formed a production company with Raymond Chow, a period film was also planned from September–November 1973 with the competing Shaw Brothers Studio, to be directed by either Chor Yuen or Cheng Kang, and written by Yi Kang and Chang Cheh, titled "The Seven Sons of the Jade Dragon". Lee had also worked on several scripts himself. A tape containing a recording of Lee narrating the basic storyline to a film tentatively titled "Southern Fist/Northern Leg" exists, showing some similarities with the canned script for "The Silent Flute" ("Circle of Iron"). Another script had the title "Green Bamboo Warrior", set in San Francisco, planned to co-star Bolo Yeung and to be produced by Andrew Vajna who later went on to produce "First Blood". Photoshoot costume tests were also organized for some of these planned film projects.
In 2015, Perfect Storm Entertainment and Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee announced that the series "The Warrior" would be produced and would air on the Cinemax and the filmmaker Justin Lin was chosen to direct the series. Production began on October 22, 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa. The first season will contain 10 episodes. In April 2019, Cinemax renewed the series for a second season.
While best known as a martial artist, Lee also studied drama and Asian and Western philosophy starting while a student at the University of Washington. He was well-read and had an extensive library dominated by martial arts subjects and philosophical texts. His own books on martial arts and fighting philosophy are known for their philosophical assertions, both inside and outside of martial arts circles. His eclectic philosophy often mirrored his fighting beliefs, though he was quick to claim that his martial arts were solely a metaphor for such teachings. He believed that any knowledge ultimately led to self-knowledge, and said that his chosen method of self-expression was martial arts. His influences include Taoism, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Buddhism. Lee's philosophy was very much in opposition to the conservative worldview advocated by Confucianism. John Little states that Lee was an atheist. When asked in 1972 about his religious affiliation, he replied, "none whatsoever", and when asked if he believed in God, he said, "To be perfectly frank, I really do not."
Aside from martial arts and philosophy, which focus on the physical aspect and self-consciousness for truths and principles, Lee also wrote poetry that reflected his emotion and a stage in his life collectively. Many forms of art remain concordant with the artist creating them. Lee's principle of self-expression was applied to his poetry as well. His daughter Shannon Lee said, "He did write poetry; he was really the consummate artist." His poetic works were originally handwritten on paper, then later on edited and published, with John Little being the major author (editor), for Bruce Lee's works. Linda Lee Cadwell (Bruce Lee's wife) shared her husband's notes, poems, and experiences with followers. She mentioned "Lee's poems are, by American standards, rather dark—reflecting the deeper, less exposed recesses of the human psyche". Most of Bruce Lee's poems are categorized as anti-poetry or fall into a paradox. The mood in his poems shows the side of the man that can be compared with other poets such as Robert Frost, one of many well-known poets expressing himself with dark poetic works. The paradox taken from the Yin and Yang symbol in martial arts was also integrated into his poetry. His martial arts and philosophy contribute a great part to his poetry. The free verse form of Lee's poetry reflects his famous quote "Be formless ... shapeless, like water."
On May 10, 1973, Lee collapsed during an automated dialogue replacement session for "Enter the Dragon" at Golden Harvest in Hong Kong. Suffering from seizures and headaches, he was immediately rushed to Hong Kong Baptist Hospital, where doctors diagnosed cerebral edema. They were able to reduce the swelling through the administration of mannitol. The headache and cerebral edema that occurred in his first collapse were later repeated on the day of his death.
On July 20, 1973, Lee was in Hong Kong to have dinner with actor George Lazenby, with whom he intended to make a film. According to Lee's wife Linda, Lee met producer Raymond Chow at 2 p.m. at home to discuss the making of the film "Game of Death". They worked until 4 p.m. and then drove together to the home of Lee's colleague Betty Ting Pei, a Taiwanese actress. The three went over the script at Ting's home, and then Chow left to attend a dinner meeting.
Later, Lee complained of a headache, and Ting gave him the painkiller Equagesic, which contained both aspirin and the tranquilizer meprobamate. Around 7:30 p.m., he went to lie down for a nap. When Lee did not come for dinner, Chow came to the apartment, but he was unable to wake Lee up. A doctor was summoned, and spent ten minutes attempting to revive Lee before sending him by ambulance to Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Lee was declared dead on arrival, at the age of 32.
There was no visible external injury; however, according to autopsy reports, Lee's brain had swollen considerably, from 1,400 to 1,575 grams (a 13 percent increase). The autopsy found Equagesic in his system. On October 15, 2005, Chow stated in an interview that Lee died from an allergic reaction to the tranquilizer meprobamate, the main ingredient in Equagesic, which Chow described as an ingredient commonly used in painkillers. When the doctors announced Lee's death, it was officially ruled a "death by misadventure".
Lee's wife Linda returned to her hometown of Seattle, and had Lee's body buried in Lake View Cemetery in Seattle. Pallbearers at Lee's funeral on July 25, 1973, included Taky Kimura, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Dan Inosanto, Peter Chin, and Lee's brother Robert. Around the time of Lee's death, numerous rumors appeared in the media. Lee's iconic status and untimely death fed many wild rumors and theories. These included murder involving the triads and a supposed curse on him and his family, rumors that persist to the present day.
Donald Teare, a forensic scientist, recommended by Scotland Yard, who had overseen over 1,000 autopsies, was assigned to the Lee case. His conclusion was "death by misadventure" caused by cerebral edema due to a reaction to compounds present in the combination medication Equagesic. Although there was initial speculation that cannabis found in Lee's stomach may have contributed to his death, Teare refuted this, stating that it would "be both 'irresponsible and irrational' to say that [cannabis] might have triggered either the events of Bruce's collapse on May 10 or his death on July 20". Dr. R. R. Lycette, the clinical pathologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, reported at the coroner hearing that the death could not have been caused by cannabis.
At the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con convention, Lee's friend Chuck Norris attributed his death to a reaction to the combination of the muscle-relaxant medication he had been taking since 1968 for a ruptured disc in his back and an "antibiotic" he was given for his headache on the night of his death. In a 2017 episode of the Reelz TV series "", forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Hunter theorized that Lee died of adrenal crisis brought on by the overuse of cortisone, which Lee had been taking since injuring his back in a 1970 weightlifting mishap. Dr. Hunter believes that Lee's exceptionally strong "drive and ambition" played a fundamental role in the martial artist's ultimate demise.
In a 2018 biography, author Matthew Polly consulted with medical experts and theorized that Lee died from cerebral edema caused by over-exertion and heat stroke; and heat stroke was not considered at the time because it was then a poorly-understood condition. Furthermore, Lee had his underarm sweat glands removed in late 1972, in the apparent belief that underarm sweat was unphotogenic on film. Polly further theorized that this caused Lee's body to overheat while practicing in hot temperatures on May 10 and July 20, 1973, resulting in heat stroke that in turn exacerbated the cerebral edema that led to his death.
Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that was founded by Lee, is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA). Lee is considered by commentators, critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West.
He is credited with helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films and was largely responsible for launching the "kung fu craze" of the 1970s. He initially introduced kung fu to the West with American television shows such as "The Green Hornet" and "Kung Fu", before the "kung fu craze" began with the dominance of Hong Kong martial arts films in 1973. Lee's success subsequently inspired a wave of Western martial arts films and television shows throughout the 1970s–1990s (launching the careers of Western martial arts stars such as Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris), as well as the more general integration of Asian martial arts into Western action films and television shows during the 1980s1990s. "Enter the Dragon" has been cited as one of the most influential action films of all time. According to "WhatCulture", Lee films such as "Enter the Dragon" were "directly responsible for huge numbers of people taking up martial arts, helped popularize Eastern cinema in the United States and spawned the 'kung-fu craze' of the '70s" as well as establishing Bruce Lee as the most famous martial artist and launching the careers of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Jim Kelly. Sascha Matuszak of "Vice" said "Enter the Dragon" "is referenced in all manner of media, the plot line and characters continue to influence storytellers today, and the impact was particularly felt in the revolutionizing way the film portrayed African-Americans, Asians and traditional martial arts." Kuan-Hsing Chen and Beng Huat Chua cited fight scenes in Lee films such as "Enter the Dragon" as being influential for the way they pitched "an elemental story of good against evil in such a spectacle-saturated way".
The concept of mixed martial arts was popularized in the West by Bruce Lee via his system of Jeet Kune Do. Lee believed that "the best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt to any style, to be formless, to adopt an individual's own style and not following the system of styles." In 2004, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) founder Dana White called Lee the "father of mixed martial arts" and stated: "If you look at the way Bruce Lee trained, the way he fought, and many of the things he wrote, he said the perfect style was no style. You take a little something from everything. You take the good things from every different discipline, use what works, and you throw the rest away". Numerous fighters in combat sports were inspired by Lee. For example, boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard said he perfected his jab by watching Lee, boxing champion Manny Pacquiao compared his fighting style to Lee, and UFC champion Conor McGregor also compared himself to Lee and said that he believes Lee would've been a champion in UFC if he were to compete in the present day. American taekwondo pioneer Jhoon Goo Rhee learnt from Lee what he calls the "accupunch", which he incorporated into American taekwondo; Rhee later coached heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali and taught him the "accupunch", which Ali used to knockout Richard Dunn in 1975. UFC pound-for-pound champion Jon Jones also cited Lee as inspiration, with Jones known for frequently using the oblique kick to the knee, a technique that was popularized by Lee. Numerous other UFC fighters have cited Lee as their inspiration, with several referring to him as a "godfather" or "grandfather" of MMA.
In Japan, the manga and anime franchises "Fist of the North Star" (1983–1988) and "Dragon Ball" (1984–1995) were inspired by Lee films such as "Enter the Dragon". In turn, "Fist of the North Star" and especially "Dragon Ball" are credited with setting the trends for popular shōnen manga and anime from the 1980s onwards. Similarly in India, Lee films had an influence on Bollywood masala films; after the success of Lee films such as "Enter the Dragon" in India, "Deewaar" (1975) and later Bollywood films incorporated fight scenes inspired by 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films up until the 1990s. Bruce Lee films such as "Enter the Dragon" were also the foundation for fighting games. The "Street Fighter" video game franchise (1987 debut) was inspired by "Enter the Dragon", with the gameplay centered around an international fighting tournament, and each character having a unique combination of ethnicity, nationality and fighting style; "Street Fighter" went on to set the template for all fighting games that followed. The early beat 'em up game "Kung-Fu Master" (1984) was also based on Bruce Lee's "Game of Death". In April 2014, Lee was named a featured character in the combat sports video game "EA Sports UFC", and is playable in multiple weight classes.
Lee was named by "Time" as one of the . In April 2013, he was posthumously awarded the prestigious Founders Award at The Asian Awards.
A theme park dedicated to Lee was built in Jun'an, Guangdong. Mainland Chinese only started watching Bruce Lee films in the 1980s, when videos of classic movies like "The Chinese Connection" became available. Films like "Enter the Dragon" and "Fists of Fury" were banned by Mao as spiritual pollution and rightist sentimentality.
On January 6, 2009, it was announced that Lee's Hong Kong home (41 Cumberland Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong) would be preserved and transformed into a tourist site by Yu Pang-lin. Yu died in 2015 and this plan did not materialize. In 2018, Yu's grandson, Pang Chi-ping, said: "We will convert the mansion into a centre for Chinese studies next year, which provides courses like Mandarin and Chinese music for children."
Lee was trained in Wu Tai Chi Chuan (also known as Ng-ga) and Jing Mo Tam Tui for the twelve sets. Lee was trained in the martial arts Choy Li Fut, Western Boxing, Épée fencing, Judo, Praying Mantis kung fu, Hsing-I, and Jujitsu.
Bruce Lee personally certified only three instructors: Taky Kimura, James Yimm Lee, and Dan Inosanto. Taky Kimura holds a 5th rank in Jun Fan Gung Fu. James Yimm Lee held a 3rd rank in Jun Fan Gung Fu. Inosanto holds the 3rd rank (Instructor) directly from Bruce Lee in Jeet Kune Do, Jun Fan Gung Fu, and Bruce Lee's Tao of Chinese Gung Fu. Other Jeet Kune Do instructors since Lee's death have been certified directly by Dan Inosanto, some with remaining Bruce Lee-signed certificates.
James Yimm Lee, a close friend of Lee, certified a few students including Gary Dill, who studied Jeet Kune Do under James and received permission via a personal letter from him in 1972 to pass on his learning of Jun Fan Gung Fu to others. Taky Kimura, to date, has certified only one person in Jun Fan Gung Fu: his son Andy Kimura. Dan Inosanto continued to teach and certify select students in Jeet Kune Do for over 30 years, making it possible for thousands of martial arts practitioners to trace their training lineage back to Bruce Lee. Prior to his death, Lee told his then only two living instructors Kimura and Inosanto (James Yimm Lee had died in 1972) to dismantle his schools. Both Taky Kimura and Dan Inosanto were allowed to teach small classes thereafter, under the guideline "keep the numbers low, but the quality high".
Bruce also instructed several World Karate Champions including Chuck Norris, Joe Lewis, and Mike Stone. Between the three of them, during their training with Bruce, they won every karate championship in the United States.
In Japan, Junichi Okada is a certified Japanese instructor in Jeet Kune Do.
At and weighing at the time, Lee was renowned for his physical fitness and vigor, achieved by using a dedicated fitness regimen to become as strong as possible. After his match with Wong Jack Man in 1965, Lee changed his approach toward martial arts training. Lee felt that many martial artists of his time did not spend enough time on physical conditioning. Lee included all elements of total fitness—muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility. He used traditional bodybuilding techniques to build some muscle mass, though not overdone, as that could decrease speed or flexibility. At the same time, with respect to balance, Lee maintained that mental and spiritual preparation are fundamental to the success of physical training in martial arts skills. In "Tao of Jeet Kune Do" he wrote:
According to Linda Lee Cadwell, soon after he moved to the United States, Lee started to take nutrition seriously and developed an interest in health foods, high-protein drinks, and vitamin and mineral supplements. He later concluded that achieving a high-performance body was akin to maintaining the engine of a high-performance automobile. Allegorically, as one could not keep a car running on low-octane fuels, one could not sustain one's body with a steady diet of junk food, and with "the wrong fuel", one's body would perform sluggishly or sloppily. Lee also avoided baked goods and refined flour, describing them as providing empty calories that did nothing for his body. He was known for being a fan of Asian cuisine for its variety, and often ate meals with a combination of vegetables, rice, and fish, and drank fresh milk.
Lee's Cantonese birth name was "Lee Jun-fan" (). The name homophonically means "return again", and was given to Lee by his mother, who felt he would return to the United States once he came of age. Because of his mother's superstitious nature, she had originally named him "Sai-fon" (), which is a feminine name meaning "small phoenix". The English name "Bruce" is thought to have been given by the hospital attending physician, Dr. Mary Glover.
Lee had three other Chinese names: Lee Yuen-cham (), a family/clan name; Lee Yuen-kam (), which he used as a student name while he was attending La Salle College, and his Chinese screen name Lee Siu-lung (; "Siu-lung" means "little dragon"). Lee's given name Jun-fan was originally written in Chinese as ; however, the "Jun" () Chinese character was identical to part of his grandfather's name, Lee Jun-biu (). Hence, the Chinese character for "Jun" in Lee's name was changed to the homonym instead, to avoid naming taboo in Chinese tradition.
Lee's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was one of the leading Cantonese opera and film actors at the time and was embarking on a year-long opera tour with his family on the eve of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. Lee Hoi-chuen had been touring the United States for many years and performing in numerous Chinese communities there.
Although many of his peers decided to stay in the US, Lee Hoi-chuen returned to Hong Kong after Bruce's birth. Within months, Hong Kong was invaded and the Lees lived for three years and eight months under Japanese occupation. After the war ended, Lee Hoi-chuen resumed his acting career and became a more popular actor during Hong Kong's rebuilding years.
Lee's mother, Grace Ho, was from one of the wealthiest and most powerful clans in Hong Kong, the Ho-tungs. She was the half-niece of Sir Robert Ho-tung, the Eurasian patriarch of the clan. As such, the young Bruce Lee grew up in an affluent and privileged environment. Despite the advantage of his family's status, the neighborhood in which Lee grew up became overcrowded, dangerous, and full of gang rivalries due to an influx of refugees fleeing communist China for Hong Kong, at that time a British Crown Colony.
Grace Ho is reported as either the adopted or biological daughter of Ho Kom-tong (Ho Gumtong, ) and the half-niece of Sir Robert Ho-tung, both notable Hong Kong businessmen and philanthropists. Bruce was the fourth of five children: Phoebe Lee (), Agnes Lee (), Peter Lee, and Robert Lee.
Grace's parentage remains unclear. Linda Lee, in her 1989 biography "The Bruce Lee Story", suggests that Grace had a German father and was a Catholic. Bruce Thomas, in his influential 1994 biography "Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit", suggests that Grace had a Chinese mother and a German father. Lee's relative Eric Peter Ho, in his 2010 book "Tracing My Children's Lineage", suggests that Grace was born in Shanghai to a Eurasian woman named Cheung King-sin. Eric Peter Ho said that Grace Lee was the daughter of a mixed race Shanghainese woman and her father was Ho Kom Tong. Grace Lee said her mother was English and her father was Chinese. Fredda Dudley Balling said Grace Lee was three-quarters Chinese and one-quarter British.
In the 2018 biography "Bruce Lee: A Life", Matthew Polly identifies Lee's maternal grandfather as Ho Kom-tong, who had often been reported as his adoptive grandfather. Ho's father, Mozes Hartog Bosman, was a Dutch Jewish businessman from Rotterdam. He moved to Hong Kong with the Dutch East India Company and served as the Dutch consul to Hong Kong at one time. He had a Chinese concubine named Sze Tai with whom he had six children, including Ho Kom Tong. Bosman subsequently abandoned his family and immigrated to California. Ho Kom Tong became a wealthy businessman with a wife, 13 concubines, and a British mistress who gave birth to Grace Ho.
His younger brother Robert Lee Jun-fai is a notable musician and singer, his group The Thunderbirds were famous in Hong Kong. A few singles were sung mostly or all in English. Also released was Lee singing a duet with Irene Ryder. Lee Jun-fai lived with Lee in Los Angeles in the United States and stayed. After Lee's death, Lee Jun-fai released an album and the single by the same name dedicated to Lee called "The Ballad of Bruce Lee".While studying at the University of Washington met his future wife Linda Emery, a fellow student studying to become a teacher, whom he married in August 1964. Lee had two children with Linda: Brandon (1965–1993) and Shannon Lee (born 1969). Upon's Lee passing in 1973, she continued to promote Bruce Lee's martial art Jeet Kune Do. wrote the 1975 book "", on which the 1993 feature film "" was based. In 1989, she wrote the book "The Bruce Lee Story." She retired in 2001 from the family estate.
Lee died when his son Brandon was eight years old. While alive, Lee taught Brandon martial arts and would invite him to visit sets. This gave Brandon the desire to act and went on to study the craft. As a young adult, Brandon Lee found some success acting in action orientated pictures such as "Legacy of Rage" (1986), "Showdown in Little Tokyo" (1991), and "Rapid Fire" (1992). In 1993, at the age of 28, Brandon Lee died after being accidentally shot by prop gun on the set of "The Crow".
Lee died when his daughter Shannon was four. In her youth she studied Jeet Kune Do, under Richard Bustillo, one of her father's students. However, her serious studies did not begin until the late 1990s. To train for parts in action movies, she studied Jeet Kune Do with Ted Wong.
Lee's brother Robert with his friends Taky Kimura, Dan Inosanto, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Peter Chin were his pallbearers.
James Coburn was a martial arts student and a friend of Lee. Coburn worked with Lee and Stirling Silliphant on developing "The Silent Flute." Upon Lee's early death, at his funeral Coburn did an eulogy.
Steve McQueen was also martial arts student and a friend of Lee. Both were very competitive of their success. Lee made no secret that he wanted everything McQueen had and would stop at nothing to get it.
Dan Inosanto was a friend and disciple of Lee's who would go on to train Lee's son Brandon.
James Yimm Lee (no relation) was one of Lee's three personally certified 3rd rank instructors and co-founded the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute in Oakland where he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu in Lee's absence. James was responsible for introducing Lee to Ed Parker, the organizer of the Long Beach International Karate Championships where Lee was first introduced to the martial arts community.
Hollywood couple Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate studied martial arts with Lee. Polanski flew Lee to Switzerland to train him. Tate studied with Lee in preparation for her role in "The Wrecking Crew". After Tate was murdered by the Manson Family, Polanski initially suspected Lee.
Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant was a martial arts student and a friend of Lee. Silliphant worked with Lee and James Coburn on developing "The Silent Flute." Lee acted and provided his martial arts expertise in several projects penned by Silliphant, the first in "Marlowe" (1969) where Lee plays Winslow Wong a hoodlum well versed in martial arts, Lee also did fight choreographies for the film "A Walk in the Spring Rain" (1970), and Lee played Li Tsung a Jeet Kune Do instructor who teaches the main character in the tv show "Longstreet" (1971), included in the script were elements of his martial arts philosophy.
Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar studied martial arts and developed a friendship with Lee.
Actor and karate champion Chuck Norris was a friend and training partner of Lee's. After Lee's passing, Norris said he kept in touch with Lee's family, and that their sons Eric Norris and Brandon became friends.
Though Bruce Lee did not appear in commercials during his lifetime, Nokia launched an internet-based campaign in 2008 with staged "documentary-looking" footage of Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with his nunchaku and also igniting matches as they are thrown toward him. The videos went viral on YouTube, creating confusion as some people believed them to be authentic footage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37313 |
Cypherpunk
A cypherpunk is any activist advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since the late 1980s.
Until about the 1970s, cryptography was mainly practiced in secret by military or spy agencies. However, that changed when two publications brought it out of the closet into public awareness: the US government publication of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), a block cipher which became very widely used; and the first publicly available work on public-key cryptography, by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.
The technical roots of Cypherpunk ideas have been traced back to work by cryptographer David Chaum on topics such as anonymous digital cash and pseudonymous reputation systems, described in his paper "Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete" (1985).
In the late 1980s, these ideas coalesced into something like a movement.
In late 1992, Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May and John Gilmore founded a small group that met monthly at Gilmore's company Cygnus Solutions in the San Francisco Bay Area, and was humorously termed "cypherpunks" by Jude Milhon at one of the first meetings - derived from "cipher" and "cyberpunk". In November 2006, the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The Cypherpunks mailing list was started in 1992, and by 1994 had 700 subscribers. At its peak, it was a very active forum with technical discussion ranging over mathematics, cryptography, computer science, political and philosophical discussion, personal arguments and attacks, etc., with some spam thrown in. An email from John Gilmore reports an average of 30 messages a day from December 1, 1996 to March 1, 1999, and suggests that the number was probably higher earlier. The number of subscribers is estimated to have reached 2000 in the year 1997.
In early 1997, Jim Choate and Igor Chudov set up the Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer, a network of independent mailing list nodes intended to eliminate the single point of failure inherent in a centralized list architecture. At its peak, the Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer included at least seven nodes. By mid-2005, al-qaeda.net ran the only remaining node. In mid 2013, following a brief outage, the al-qaeda.net node's list software was changed from Majordomo to GNU Mailman and subsequently the node was renamed to cpunks.org. The CDR architecture is now defunct, though the list administrator stated in 2013 that he was exploring a way to integrate this functionality with the new mailing list software.
For a time, the cypherpunks mailing list was a popular tool with mailbombers, who would subscribe a victim to the mailing list in order to cause a deluge of messages to be sent to him or her. (This was usually done as a prank, in contrast to the style of terrorist referred to as a mailbomber.) This precipitated the mailing list sysop(s) to institute a reply-to-subscribe system. Approximately two hundred messages a day was typical for the mailing list, divided between personal arguments and attacks, political discussion, technical discussion, and early spam.
The cypherpunks mailing list had extensive discussions of the public policy issues related to cryptography and on the politics and philosophy of concepts such as anonymity, pseudonyms, reputation, and privacy. These discussions continue both on the remaining node and elsewhere as the list has become increasingly moribund.
Events such as the GURPS Cyberpunk raid lent weight to the idea that private individuals needed to take steps to protect their privacy. In its heyday, the list discussed public policy issues related to cryptography, as well as more practical nuts-and-bolts mathematical, computational, technological, and cryptographic matters. The list had a range of viewpoints and there was probably no completely unanimous agreement on anything. The general attitude, though, definitely put personal privacy and personal liberty above all other considerations.
The list was discussing questions about privacy, government monitoring, corporate control of information, and related issues in the early 1990s that did not become major topics for broader discussion until ten years or so later. Some list participants were more radical on these issues than almost anyone else.
Those wishing to understand the context of the list might refer to the history of cryptography; in the early 1990s, the US government considered cryptography software a munition for export purposes. (PGP source code was published as a paper book to bypass these regulations and demonstrate their futility.) In 1992, a deal between NSA and SPA allowed export of cryptography based on 40-bit RC2 and RC4 which was considered relatively weak (and especially after SSL was created, there was many contests to break it). The US government had also tried to subvert cryptography through schemes such as Skipjack and key escrow. It was also not widely known that all communications were logged by government agencies (which would later be revealed during the NSA and AT&T scandals) though this was taken as an obvious axiom by list members.
The original cypherpunk mailing list, and the first list spin-off, "coderpunks", were originally hosted on John Gilmore's toad.com, but after a falling out with the sysop over moderation, the list was migrated to several cross-linked mail-servers in what was called the "distributed mailing list." The "coderpunks" list, open by invitation only, existed for a time. "Coderpunks" took up more technical matters and had less discussion of public policy implications. There are several lists today that can trace their lineage directly to the original Cypherpunks list: the cryptography list (cryptography@metzdowd.com), the financial cryptography list (fc-announce@ifca.ai), and a small group of closed (invitation-only) lists as well.
Toad.com continued to run with the existing subscriber list, those that didn't unsubscribe, and was mirrored on the new distributed mailing list, but messages from the distributed list didn't appear on toad.com. As the list faded in popularity, so too did it fade in the number of cross-linked subscription nodes.
To some extent, the cryptography list acts as a successor to cypherpunks; it has many of the people and continues some of the same discussions. However, it is a moderated list, considerably less zany and somewhat more technical. A number of current systems in use trace to the mailing list, including Pretty Good Privacy, /dev/random in the Linux kernel (the actual code has been completely reimplemented several times since then) and today's anonymous remailers.
The basic ideas can be found in "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" (Eric Hughes, 1993): "Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. ... We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy ... We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. ... Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and ... we're going to write it."
Some are or were quite senior people at major hi-tech companies and others are well-known researchers (see list with affiliations below).
The first mass media discussion of cypherpunks was in a 1993 "Wired" article by Steven Levy titled "Crypto Rebels":
The three masked men on the cover of that edition of "Wired" were prominent cypherpunks Tim May, Eric Hughes and John Gilmore.
Later, Levy wrote a book, "Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age",
covering the crypto wars of the 1990s in detail. "Code Rebels" in the title is almost synonymous with cypherpunks.
The term "cypherpunk" is mildly ambiguous. In most contexts it means anyone advocating cryptography as a tool for social change, social impact and expression. However, it can also be used to mean a participant in the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list described below. The two meanings obviously overlap, but they are by no means synonymous.
Documents exemplifying cypherpunk ideas include Timothy C. May's "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" (1992) and "The Cyphernomicon" (1994), "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto".
A very basic cypherpunk issue is privacy in communications and data retention. John Gilmore said he wanted "a guarantee -- with physics and mathematics, not with laws -- that we can give ourselves real privacy of personal communications."
Such guarantees require strong cryptography, so cypherpunks are fundamentally opposed to government policies attempting to control the usage or export of cryptography, which remained an issue throughout the late 1990s. The "Cypherpunk Manifesto" stated "Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act."
This was a central issue for many cypherpunks. Most were passionately opposed to various government attempts to limit cryptography — export laws, promotion of limited key length ciphers, and especially escrowed encryption.
The questions of anonymity, pseudonymity and reputation were also extensively discussed.
Arguably, the possibility of anonymous speech and publication is vital for an open society and genuine freedom of speech — this is the position of most cypherpunks. That the Federalist Papers were originally published under a pseudonym is a commonly-cited example.
In general, cypherpunks opposed the censorship and monitoring from government and police.
In particular, the US government's Clipper chip scheme for escrowed encryption of telephone conversations (encryption supposedly secure against most attackers, but breakable by government) was seen as anathema by many on the list. This was an issue that provoked strong opposition and brought many new recruits to the cypherpunk ranks. List participant Matt Blaze found a serious flaw in the scheme, helping to hasten its demise.
Steven Schear first suggested the warrant canary in 2002 to thwart the secrecy provisions of court orders and national security letters. , warrant canaries are gaining commercial acceptance.
An important set of discussions concerns the use of cryptography in the presence of oppressive authorities. As a result, Cypherpunks have discussed and improved steganographic methods that hide the use of crypto itself, or that allow interrogators to believe that they have forcibly extracted hidden information from a subject. For instance, "Rubberhose" was a tool that partitioned and intermixed secret data on a drive with fake secret data, each of which accessed via a different password. Interrogators, having extracted a password, are led to believe that they have indeed unlocked the desired secrets, whereas in reality the actual data is still hidden. In other words, even its presence is hidden. Likewise, cypherpunks have also discussed under what conditions encryption may be used without being noticed by network monitoring systems installed by oppressive regimes.
As the "Manifesto" says, "Cypherpunks write code"; the notion that good ideas need to be implemented, not just discussed, is very much part of the culture of the mailing list. John Gilmore, whose site hosted the original cypherpunks mailing list, wrote: "We are literally in a race between our ability to build and deploy technology, and their ability to build and deploy laws and treaties. Neither side is likely to back down or wise up until it has definitively lost the race."
Anonymous remailers such as the Mixmaster Remailer were almost entirely a cypherpunk development. Among the other projects they have been involved in were PGP for email privacy, FreeS/WAN for opportunistic encryption of the whole net, Off-the-record messaging for privacy in Internet chat, and the Tor project for anonymous web surfing.
In 1998, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with assistance from the mailing list, built a $200,000 machine that could brute-force a Data Encryption Standard key in a few days. The project demonstrated that DES was, without question, insecure and obsolete, in sharp contrast to the US government's recommendation of the algorithm.
Cypherpunks also participated, along with other experts, in several reports on cryptographic matters.
One such paper was "Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security". It suggested 75 bits was the "minimum" key size to allow an existing cipher to be considered secure and kept in service. At the time, the Data Encryption Standard with 56-bit keys was still a US government standard, mandatory for some applications.
Other papers were critical analysis of government schemes. "The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption", evaluated escrowed encryption proposals. "Comments on the Carnivore System Technical Review". looked at an FBI scheme for monitoring email.
Cypherpunks provided significant input to the 1996 National Research Council report on encryption policy,
"Cryptography's Role In Securing the Information Society" (CRISIS).
This report, commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 1993, was developed via extensive hearings across the nation from all interested stakeholders, by a committee of talented people. It recommended a gradual relaxation of the existing U.S. government restrictions on encryption. Like many such study reports, its conclusions were largely ignored by policy-makers. Later events such as the final rulings in the cypherpunks lawsuits forced a more complete relaxation of the unconstitutional controls on encryption software.
Cypherpunks have filed a number of lawsuits, mostly suits against the US government alleging that some government action is unconstitutional.
Phil Karn sued the State Department in 1994 over cryptography export controls after they ruled that, while the book "Applied Cryptography" could legally be exported, a floppy disk containing a verbatim copy of code printed in the book was legally a munition and required an export permit, which they refused to grant. Karn also appeared before both House and Senate committees looking at cryptography issues.
Daniel J. Bernstein, supported by the EFF, also sued over the export restrictions, arguing that preventing publication of cryptographic source code is an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech. He won, effectively overturning the export law. See "Bernstein v. United States" for details.
Peter Junger also sued on similar grounds, and won.
Cypherpunks encouraged civil disobedience, in particular US law on the export of cryptography. Until 1997, cryptographic code was legally a munition and fall until ITAR, and the key length restrictions in the EAR was not removed until 2000.
In 1995 Adam Back wrote a version of the RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography in three lines of Perl and suggested people use it as an email signature file:
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
Vince Cate put up a web page that invited anyone to become an international arms trafficker; every time someone clicked on the form, an export-restricted item — originally PGP, later a copy of Back's program — would be mailed from a US server to one in Anguilla. This gained overwhelming attention. There was an option to add your name to a list of such traffickers.
In Neal Stephenson's novel "Cryptonomicon" many characters are on the "Secret Admirers" mailing list. This is fairly obviously based on the cypherpunks list, and several well-known cypherpunks are mentioned in the acknowledgements. Much of the plot revolves around cypherpunk ideas; the leading characters are building a data haven which will allow anonymous financial transactions, and the book is full of cryptography.
But, according to the author the book's title is — in spite of its similarity — not based on the Cyphernomicon, an online cypherpunk FAQ document.
Cypherpunk achievements would later also be used on the Canadian e-wallet, the MintChip, and the creation of bitcoin. It was an inspiration for CryptoParty decades later to such an extent that the "Cypherpunk Manifesto" is quoted at the header of its Wiki, and Eric Hughes delivered the keynote address at the Amsterdam CryptoParty on 27 August 2012.
Cypherpunks list participants included many notable computer industry figures. Most were list regulars, although not all would call themselves "cypherpunks". The following is a list of noteworthy cypherpunks and their achievements:
* indicates someone mentioned in the acknowledgements of Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37314 |
Computer-aided design
Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. CAD software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve communications through documentation, and to create a database for manufacturing. CAD output is often in the form of electronic files for print, machining, or other manufacturing operations. The term CADD (for "Computer Aided Design and Drafting") is also used.
Its use in designing electronic systems is known as electronic design automation (EDA). In mechanical design it is known as mechanical design automation (MDA) or computer-aided drafting (CAD), which includes the process of creating a technical drawing with the use of computer software.
CAD software for mechanical design uses either vector-based graphics to depict the objects of traditional drafting, or may also produce raster graphics showing the overall appearance of designed objects. However, it involves more than just shapes. As in the manual drafting of technical and engineering drawings, the output of CAD must convey information, such as materials, processes, dimensions, and tolerances, according to application-specific conventions.
CAD may be used to design curves and figures in two-dimensional (2D) space; or curves, surfaces, and solids in three-dimensional (3D) space.
CAD is an important industrial art extensively used in many applications, including automotive, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries, industrial and architectural design, prosthetics, and many more. CAD is also widely used to produce computer animation for special effects in movies, advertising and technical manuals, often called DCC digital content creation. The modern ubiquity and power of computers means that even perfume bottles and shampoo dispensers are designed using techniques unheard of by engineers of the 1960s. Because of its enormous economic importance, CAD has been a major driving force for research in computational geometry, computer graphics (both hardware and software), and discrete differential geometry.
The design of geometric models for object shapes, in particular, is occasionally called "computer-aided geometric design" ("CAGD").
Starting around the mid 1960s, with the IBM Drafting System, computer-aided design systems began to provide more capability than just an ability to reproduce manual drafting with electronic drafting, the cost-benefit for companies to switch to CAD became apparent. The benefits of CAD systems over manual drafting are the capabilities one often takes for granted from computer systems today; automated generation of bills of materials, auto layout in integrated circuits, interference checking, and many others. Eventually, CAD provided the designer with the ability to perform engineering calculations. During this transition, calculations were still performed either by hand or by those individuals who could run computer programs. CAD was a revolutionary change in the engineering industry, where draftsmen, designers and engineering roles begin to merge. It did not eliminate departments as much as it merged departments and empowered draftsman, designers, and engineers. CAD is an example of the pervasive effect computers were beginning to have on industry.
Current computer-aided design software packages range from 2D vector-based drafting systems to 3D solid and surface modelers. Modern CAD packages can also frequently allow rotations in three dimensions, allowing viewing of a designed object from any desired angle, even from the inside looking out. Some CAD software is capable of dynamic mathematical modeling.
CAD technology is used in the design of tools and machinery and in the drafting and design of all types of buildings, from small residential types (houses) to the largest commercial and industrial structures (hospitals and factories).
CAD is mainly used for detailed engineering of 3D models or 2D drawings of physical components, but it is also used throughout the engineering process from conceptual design and layout of products, through strength and dynamic analysis of assemblies to definition of manufacturing methods of components. It can also be used to design objects such as jewelry, furniture, appliances, etc. Furthermore, many CAD applications now offer advanced rendering and animation capabilities so engineers can better visualize their product designs. 4D BIM is a type of virtual construction engineering simulation incorporating time or schedule related information for project management.
CAD has become an especially important technology within the scope of computer-aided technologies, with benefits such as lower product development costs and a greatly shortened design cycle. CAD enables designers to layout and develop work on screen, print it out and save it for future editing, saving time on their drawings.
Computer-aided design is one of the many tools used by engineers and designers and is used in many ways depending on the profession of the user and the type of software in question.
CAD is one part of the whole digital product development (DPD) activity within the product lifecycle management (PLM) processes, and as such is used together with other tools, which are either integrated modules or stand-alone products, such as:
CAD is also used for the accurate creation of photo simulations that are often required in the preparation of environmental impact reports, in which computer-aided designs of intended buildings are superimposed into photographs of existing environments to represent what that locale will be like, where the proposed facilities are allowed to be built. Potential blockage of view corridors and shadow studies are also frequently analyzed through the use of CAD.
CAD has been proven to be useful to engineers as well. Using four properties which are history, features, parameterization, and high-level constraints. The construction history can be used to look back into the model's personal features and work on the single area rather than the whole model. Parameters and constraints can be used to determine the size, shape, and other properties of the different modeling elements. The features in the CAD system can be used for the variety of tools for measurement such as tensile strength, yield strength, electrical, or electromagnetic properties. Also its stress, strain, timing, or how the element gets affected in certain temperatures, etc.
There are several different types of CAD, each requiring the operator to think differently about how to use them and design their virtual components in a different manner for each.
There are many producers of the lower-end 2D systems, including a number of free and open-source programs. These provide an approach to the drawing process without all the fuss over scale and placement on the drawing sheet that accompanied hand drafting since these can be adjusted as required during the creation of the final draft.
"3D wireframe" is basically an extension of 2D drafting (not often used today). Each line has to be manually inserted into the drawing. The final product has no mass properties associated with it and cannot have features directly added to it, such as holes. The operator approaches these in a similar fashion to the 2D systems, although many 3D systems allow using the wireframe model to make the final engineering drawing views.
"3D "dumb" solids" are created in a way analogous to manipulations of real-world objects (not often used today). Basic three-dimensional geometric forms (prisms, cylinders, spheres, and so on) have solid volumes added or subtracted from them as if assembling or cutting real-world objects. Two-dimensional projected views can easily be generated from the models. Basic 3D solids don't usually include tools to easily allow motion of components, set limits to their motion, or identify interference between components.
There are two types of "3D solid modeling"
Top-end systems offer the capabilities to incorporate more organic, aesthetic, and ergonomic features into designs. Freeform surface modeling is often combined with solids to allow the designer to create products that fit the human form and visual requirements as well as they interface with the machine.
Originally software for CAD systems was developed with computer languages such as Fortran, ALGOL but with the advancement of object-oriented programming methods this has radically changed. Typical modern parametric feature-based modeler and freeform surface systems are built around a number of key C modules with their own APIs. A CAD system can be seen as built up from the interaction of a graphical user interface (GUI) with NURBS geometry or boundary representation (B-rep) data via a geometric modeling kernel. A geometry constraint engine may also be employed to manage the associative relationships between geometry, such as wireframe geometry in a sketch or components in an assembly.
Unexpected capabilities of these associative relationships have led to a new form of prototyping called digital prototyping. In contrast to physical prototypes, which entail manufacturing time in the design. That said, CAD models can be generated by a computer after the physical prototype has been scanned using an industrial CT scanning machine. Depending on the nature of the business, digital or physical prototypes can be initially chosen according to specific needs.
Today, CAD systems exist for all the major platforms (Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac OS X); some packages support multiple platforms.
Currently, no special hardware is required for most CAD software. However, some CAD systems can do graphically and computationally intensive tasks, so a modern graphics card, high speed (and possibly multiple) CPUs and large amounts of RAM may be recommended.
The human-machine interface is generally via a computer mouse but can also be via a pen and digitizing graphics tablet. Manipulation of the view of the model on the screen is also sometimes done with the use of a Spacemouse/SpaceBall. Some systems also support stereoscopic glasses for viewing the 3D model. Technologies which in the past were limited to larger installations or specialist applications have become available to a wide group of users. These include the CAVE or HMDs and interactive devices like motion-sensing technology
CAD software enables engineers and architects to design, inspect and manage engineering projects within an integrated graphical user interface (GUI) on a personal computer system. Most applications support solid modeling with boundary representation (B-Rep) and NURBS geometry, and enable the same to be published in a variety of formats. A geometric modeling kernel is a software component that provides solid modeling and surface modeling features to CAD applications.
Based on market statistics, commercial software from Autodesk, Dassault Systems, Siemens PLM Software, and PTC dominate the CAD industry. The following is a list of major CAD applications, grouped by usage statistics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37315 |
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research.
Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as students, researchers and professors instead of professional journalists. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past (see list of scientific journals). Most journals are highly specialized, although some of the oldest journals such as "Nature" publish articles and scientific papers across a wide range of scientific fields. Scientific journals contain articles that have been peer reviewed, in an attempt to ensure that articles meet the journal's standards of quality, and scientific validity. Although scientific journals are superficially similar to professional magazines, they are actually quite different. Issues of a scientific journal are rarely read casually, as one would read a magazine. The publication of the results of research is an essential part of the scientific method. If they are describing experiments or calculations, they must supply enough details that an independent researcher could repeat the experiment or calculation to verify the results. Each such journal article becomes part of the permanent scientific record.
Articles in scientific journals can be used in research and higher education. Scientific articles allow researchers to keep up to date with the developments of their field and direct their own research. An essential part of a scientific article is citation of earlier work. The impact of articles and journals is often assessed by counting citations (citation impact). Some classes are partially devoted to the explication of classic articles, and seminar classes can consist of the presentation by each student of a classic or current paper. Schoolbooks and textbooks have been written usually only on established topics, while the latest research and more obscure topics are only accessible through scientific articles. In a scientific research group or academic department it is usual for the content of current scientific journals to be discussed in journal clubs. Public funding bodies often require the results to be published in scientific journals. Academic credentials for promotion into academic ranks are established in large part by the number and impact of scientific articles published. Many doctoral programs allow for thesis by publication, where the candidate is required to publish a certain number of scientific articles.
Articles tend to be highly technical, representing the latest theoretical research and experimental results in the field of science covered by the journal. They are often incomprehensible to anyone except for researchers in the field and advanced students. In some subjects this is inevitable given the nature of the content. Usually, rigorous rules of scientific writing are enforced by the editors; however, these rules may vary from journal to journal, especially between journals from different publishers. Articles are usually either original articles reporting completely new results or reviews of current literature. There are also scientific publications that bridge the gap between articles and books by publishing thematic volumes of chapters from different authors. Many journals have a regional focus, specializing in publishing papers from a particular geographic region, like "African Invertebrates".
The history of scientific journals dates from 1665, when the French "Journal des sçavans" and the English "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" first began systematically publishing research results. Over a thousand, mostly ephemeral, were founded in the 18th century, and the number has increased rapidly after that.
Prior to mid-20th century, peer review was not always necessary, but gradually it became essentially compulsory.
The authors of scientific articles are active researchers instead of journalists; typically, a graduate student or a researcher writes a paper with a professor. As such, the authors are unpaid and receive no compensation from the journal. However, their funding bodies may require them to publish in scientific journals. The paper is submitted to the journal office, where the editor considers the paper for appropriateness, potential scientific impact and novelty. If the journal's editor considers the paper appropriate, the paper is submitted to scholarly peer review. Depending on the field, journal and paper, the paper is sent to 1–3 reviewers for evaluation before they can be granted permission to publish. Reviewers are expected to check the paper for soundness of its scientific argument, i.e. if the data collected or considered in the paper support the conclusion offered. Novelty is also key: existing work must be appropriately considered and referenced, and new results improving on the state of the art presented. Reviewers are usually unpaid and not a part of the journal staff—instead, they should be "peers", i.e. researchers in the same field as the paper in question.
The standards that a journal uses to determine publication can vary widely. Some journals, such as "Nature", "Science", "PNAS", and "Physical Review Letters", have a reputation of publishing articles that mark a fundamental breakthrough in their respective fields. In many fields, a formal or informal hierarchy of scientific journals exists; the most prestigious journal in a field tends to be the most selective in terms of the articles it will select for publication, and usually will also have the highest impact factor. In some countries, journal rankings can be utilized for funding decisions and even evaluation of individual researchers, although they are poorly suited for that purpose.
For scientific journals, reproducibility and replicability of the scientific results are core concepts that allow other scientists to check and reproduce the results under the same conditions described in the paper or at least similar conditions and produce similar results with similar measurements of the same measurand or carried out under changed conditions of measurement.
There are several types of journal articles; the exact terminology and definitions vary by field and specific journal, but often include:
The formats of journal articles vary, but many follow the general IMRAD scheme recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Such articles begin with an "abstract", which is a one-to-four-paragraph summary of the paper. The "introduction" describes the background for the research including a discussion of similar research. The "materials and methods" or "experimental" section provides specific details of how the research was conducted. The "results and discussion" section describes the outcome and implications of the research, and the "conclusion" section places the research in context and describes avenues for further exploration.
In addition to the above, some scientific journals such as "Science" will include a news section where scientific developments (often involving political issues) are described. These articles are often written by science journalists and not by scientists. In addition, some journals will include an editorial section and a section for letters to the editor. While these are articles published within a journal, in general they are not regarded as scientific journal articles because they have not been peer-reviewed.
Electronic publishing is a new area of information dissemination. One definition of electronic publishing is in the context of the scientific journal. It is the presentation of scholarly scientific results in only an electronic (non-paper) form. This is from its first write-up, or creation, to its publication or dissemination. The electronic scientific journal is specifically designed to be presented on the internet. It is defined as not being previously printed material adapted, or retooled, and then delivered electronically.
Electronic publishing will likely continue to exist alongside paper publishing for the foreseeable future, since whilst output to a screen is important for browsing and searching, it is not well suited for extensive reading. Formats suitable both for reading on paper, and for manipulation by the reader's computer will need to be integrated. Many journals are electronically available in formats readable on screen via web browsers, as well as in portable document format PDF, suitable for printing and storing on a local desktop or laptop computer. New tools such as JATS and Utopia Documents provide a 'bridge' to the 'web-versions' in that they connect the content in PDF versions directly to the World Wide Web via hyperlinks that are created 'on-the-fly'. The PDF version of an article is usually seen as the version of record, but the matter is subject to some debate.
Electronic counterparts of established print journals already promote and deliver rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed and edited, "published" articles. Other journals, whether spin-offs of established print journals, or created as electronic only, have come into existence promoting the rapid dissemination capability, and availability, on the Internet. In tandem with this is the speeding up of peer review, copyediting, page makeup, and other steps in the process to support rapid dissemination.
Other improvements, benefits and unique values of electronically publishing the scientific journal are easy availability of supplementary materials (data, graphics and video), lower cost, and availability to more people, especially scientists from non-developed countries. Hence, research results from more developed nations are becoming more accessible to scientists from non-developed countries.
Moreover, electronic publishing of scientific journals has been accomplished without compromising the standards of the refereed, peer review process.
One form is the online equivalent of the conventional paper journal. By 2006, almost all scientific journals have, while retaining their peer-review process, established electronic versions; a number have moved entirely to electronic publication. In a similar manner, most academic libraries buy the electronic version and purchase a paper copy only for the most important or most-used titles.
There is usually a delay of several months after an article is written before it is published in a journal, making paper journals not an ideal format for announcing the latest research. Many journals now publish the final papers in their electronic version as soon as they are ready, without waiting for the assembly of a complete issue, as is necessary with paper. In many fields in which even greater speed is wanted, such as physics, the role of the journal at disseminating the latest research has largely been replaced by preprint databases such as arXiv.org. Almost all such articles are eventually published in traditional journals, which still provide an important role in quality control, archiving papers, and establishing scientific credit.
Many scientists and librarians have long protested the cost of journals, especially as they see these payments going to large for-profit publishing houses. To allow their researchers online access to journals, many universities purchase "site licenses", permitting access from anywhere in the university, and, with appropriate authorization, by university-affiliated users at home or elsewhere. These may be quite expensive, sometimes much more than the cost for a print subscription, although this may reflect the number of people who will be using the license—while a print subscription is the cost for one person to receive the journal; a site-license can allow thousands of people to gain access.
Publications by scholarly societies, also known as not-for-profit-publishers, usually cost less than commercial publishers, but the prices of their scientific journals are still usually several thousand dollars a year. In general, this money is used to fund the activities of the scientific societies that run such journals, or is invested in providing further scholarly resources for scientists; thus, the money remains in and benefits the scientific sphere.
Despite the transition to electronic publishing, the serials crisis persists.
Concerns about cost and open access have led to the creation of free-access journals such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS) family and partly open or reduced-cost journals such as the "Journal of High Energy Physics". However, professional editors still have to be paid, and PLoS still relies heavily on donations from foundations to cover the majority of its operating costs; smaller journals do not often have access to such resources.
Based on statistical arguments, it has been shown that electronic publishing online, and to some extent open access, both provide wider dissemination and increase the average number of citations an article receives.
Traditionally, the author of an article was required to transfer the copyright to the journal publisher. Publishers claimed this was necessary in order to protect authors' rights, and to coordinate permissions for reprints or other use. However, many authors, especially those active in the open access movement, found this unsatisfactory, and have used their influence to effect a gradual move towards a license to publish instead. Under such a system, the publisher has permission to edit, print, and distribute the article commercially, but the authors retain the other rights themselves.
Even if they retain the copyright to an article, most journals allow certain rights to their authors. These rights usually include the ability to reuse parts of the paper in the author's future work, and allow the author to distribute a limited number of copies. In the print format, such copies are called reprints; in the electronic format, they are called postprints. Some publishers, for example the American Physical Society, also grant the author the right to post and update the article on the author's or employer's website and on free e-print servers, to grant permission to others to use or reuse figures, and even to reprint the article as long as no fee is charged. The rise of open access journals, in which the author retains the copyright but must pay a publication charge, such as the Public Library of Science family of journals, is another recent response to copyright concerns. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37316 |
The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story fixup by American writer Ray Bradbury, which chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists. The book lies somewhere in between a short story collection and an episodic novel, containing stories originally published in the late 1940s in science fiction magazines. The stories were loosely woven together with a series of short, interstitial vignettes for publication.
"The Martian Chronicles" is a fixup of short stories with new text connecting them into a novel. Bradbury has credited Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" and John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" as influences on the structure of the book. He has called it a "half-cousin to a novel" and "a book of stories pretending to be a novel". As such, it is similar in structure to Bradbury's short story collection, "The Illustrated Man", which also uses a thin frame story to link various unrelated short stories.
"The Martian Chronicles" follows a "future history" structure. The stories, complete in themselves, come together as episodes in a larger sequential narrative framework. The overall structure is in three parts, punctuated by two catastrophes: the near-extinction of the Martians and the parallel near-extinction of the human race.
The first third (set in the period January 1999—April 2000) details the attempts of the Earthmen to reach Mars, and the various ways in which the Martians keep them from returning. In the crucial story, "—And the Moon Be Still as Bright", it is revealed by the fourth exploratory expedition that the Martians have all but perished in a plague caused by germs brought by one of the previous expeditions. This unexpected development sets the stage for the second act (December 2001—November 2005), in which humans from Earth colonize the deserted planet, occasionally having contact with the few surviving Martians, but for the most part preoccupied with making Mars a second Earth. However, as war on Earth threatens, most of the settlers pack up and return home. A global nuclear war ensues, cutting off contact between Mars and Earth. The third act (December 2005—October 2026) deals with the aftermath of the war, and concludes with the prospect of the few surviving humans becoming the new Martians, a prospect already foreshadowed in "—And the Moon Be Still as Bright", and which allows the book to return to its beginning.
This title was first published in hardbound form in the United States in 1950 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. It has been reprinted numerous times by many different publishers since then. A collectible first edition in jacket is highly sought after given the importance of Bradbury's book.
The book was published in the United Kingdom under the title "The Silver Locusts" (1951), with slightly different contents. In some editions the story "The Fire Balloons" was added, and the story "Usher II" was removed to make room for it. In the Spanish-language version, the stories were preceded by a prologue by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
The book was published in 1963 as part of the Time Reading Program with an introduction by Fred Hoyle.
In 1979, Bantam Books published a trade paperback edition with illustrations by Ian Miller.
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years (thus running from 2030 to 2057). (This change counteracts a problem common to near-future stories, where the passage of time overtakes the period in which the story is set; for a list of other works that have fallen prey to this phenomenon, see the List of stories set in a future now past.) This edition includes "The Fire Balloons", and replaces "Way in the Middle of the Air" (a story less topical in 1997 than in 1950) with the 1952 short story "The Wilderness", dated May 2034 (equivalent to May 2003 in the earlier chronology).
Edgar Rice Burroughs's works were key influences. In an article written shortly before his death, Bradbury said the John Carter of Mars books and Harold Foster's 1931 series of Tarzan Sunday comics had such an impact on his life that ""The Martian Chronicles" would never have happened" otherwise. In an introduction he wrote for "The Martian Chronicles", Bradbury cited the Barsoom stories and "Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson as literary influences.
The background of Mars shared by most of the stories, as a desert planet crisscrossed by giant canals built by an ancient civilization to bring water from the polar ice caps, is a common scenario in science fiction of the early 20th century. It stems from early telescope observations of Mars by astronomers from the 19th-century who believed they saw straight lines on the planet, the first of them being the Italian Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877. Schiaparelli called them "canali" (a generic Italian term used for both natural and artificial "grooves" or "channels"), which was popularly mistranslated into English as "canals", man-made water channels. Based on this and other evidence, the idea that Mars was inhabited by intelligent life was put forward by a number of prominent scientists around the turn of the century, notably American astronomer Percival Lowell. This ignited a popular fascination with the planet which has been called "Mars fever". Planetary astronomer Carl Sagan wrote:
Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears.
First published in "Planet Stories", spring 1947.
The stories of the book are arranged in chronological order, starting in January 1999, with the blasting off of the first rocket. "Rocket Summer" is a short vignette which describes Ohio's winter turning briefly into "summer" due to the extreme heat of the rocket's take-off, as well as the reaction of the citizens nearby.
First published as "I'll Not Ask for Wine" in "Maclean's", January 1, 1950.
The following chapter, "Ylla", moves the story to Mars, describing the Martians as having brown skin, yellow eyes, and russet hair. Ylla, a Martian woman trapped in an unromantic marriage, dreams of the coming astronauts through telepathy. Her husband, though he pretends to deny the reality of the dreams, becomes bitterly jealous, sensing his wife's inchoate romantic feelings for one of the astronauts. After taking his gun under the pretense of hunting, he kills astronauts Nathaniel York and "Bert" as soon as they arrive.
First published as "The Spring Night" in "The Arkham Sampler", Winter 1948.
This short vignette tells of Martians throughout Mars who, like Ylla, begin subconsciously picking up stray thoughts from the humans aboard the Second Expedition's ship. As the ship approaches their planet, the Martians begin to adopt aspects of human culture such as playing and singing American songs, without any idea where the inspirations are coming from.
First published in "Thrilling Wonder Stories", August 1948.
This story tells of the "Second Expedition" to Mars. The expedition is a group of four men. The astronauts arrive to find the Martians to be strangely unresponsive to their presence. The one exception to this is a group of Martians in a building who greet them with a parade. Several of the Martians in the building claim to be from Earth or from other planets of the solar system, and the captain slowly realizes that the Martian gift for telepathy allows others to view the hallucinations of the insane, and that they have been placed in an insane asylum. The Martians they have encountered all believed that their unusual appearance was a projected hallucination. Because the "hallucinations" are so detailed and the captain refuses to admit he is not from Earth, Mr. Xxx, a psychiatrist, declares him incurable and kills him. When the "imaginary" crew does not disappear as well, Mr. Xxx shoots and kills them too. Finally, as the "imaginary" rocket remains in existence, Mr. Xxx concludes that he too must be crazy and shoots himself. The ship of the Second Expedition is sold as scrap at a junkyard.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
A man insists that he has a right to be on the next rocket to Mars, because he is a taxpayer. He strongly insists on boarding the ship due to the impending nuclear war on Earth. He is not allowed on the ship and eventually gets taken away by the police.
First published as "Mars is Heaven!" in "Planet Stories", fall 1948.
The arrival and demise of the third group of Americans to land on Mars is described by this story. This time the Martians are prepared for the Earthlings. When the crew arrives, they see an idyllic small town of the 1920s occupied by the long-lost loved ones of the astronauts. The bewildered and happy crew members ignore their captain's orders and disperse to join their supposed family members. The Martians use the memories of the astronauts to lure them into their "old" homes where they are killed in the middle of the night. The next morning, sixteen coffins are carried from sixteen houses and are buried by mourners who sometimes resemble humans and sometimes "something else".
The original short story was set in the 1960s and dealt with characters nostalgic for their childhoods in the Midwestern United States in the 1920s. In the "Chronicles" version, which takes place forty years later but which still relies on 1920s nostalgia, the story contains a brief paragraph about medical treatments that slow the aging process, so that the characters can be traveling to Mars in the 2000s but still remember the 1920s.
First published in "Thrilling Wonder Stories", June 1948.
The next chapter opens with the men of the Fourth Expedition gathering firewood against the cold Martian evening. The scientists have found that all of the Martians have died of chickenpox (brought by one of the first three expeditions)—analogous to the devastation of Native American populations by smallpox. The men, except for the archaeologist Spender and Captain Wilder, become more boisterous. Spender loses his temper when one of his crew-mates starts dropping empty wine bottles into a clear blue canal and knocks him into the canal. When questioned by his captain, Spender replies, "We'll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves," and that "we Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things," referring to Earth. He leaves the rest of the landing party to explore Martian ruins after one crew member vomits on an ancient tile mosaic.
Spender returns to the rest of the expedition. He carries a gun and, claiming to be the last Martian, shoots six of his crew-mates, including one with sympathy towards the Martians from his Cherokee ancestry. Spender flees, and the remaining expedition members give chase. Captain Wilder approaches under a white flag and has a short discussion with Spender about how Martians were better than humans. The reason that the Martians knew how to combine religion and science, without criticizing and fighting as humans did. Spender explains that, if he manages to kill off the expedition, it may delay human colonization of the planet for a few more years, possibly long enough that the expected nuclear war on Earth will protect Mars from human colonization completely. Although he opposes Spender's methods, Captain Wilder somewhat agrees with his attitude towards colonization and wishes a humane death for him. He returns to the others and joins them as they pursue Spender, and before Spender has the opportunity to be killed by anyone else, Wilder shoots him in the chest. Another member of the crew, Parkhill, uses the ruined town as target practice, and is punched in the face by Wilder.
Many of the characters of the Fourth Expedition—Parkhill, Captain Wilder, and Hathaway—re-appear in later stories. This is the first story that focuses on a central motif of "The Martian Chronicles": the colonization of the Western frontier in the United States. Like Spender, Bradbury's message is that some types of colonization are right and others are wrong. Whereas trying to recreate Earth is viewed as wrong, an approach that respects the fallen civilization is right.
In some editions the two stories relating to Spender were combined as one.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
In the previously mentioned version, this short story describes the first settlers coming to Mars, the "Lonely Ones", the ones that came to start over on the planet.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
The next several chapters describe the transformation of Mars into another Earth. Small towns similar to those on Earth begin to grow. In "The Green Morning", Benjamin Driscoll makes it his mission to plant thousands of trees on the red plains to increase oxygen levels. Due to some property of the Martian soil, the trees grow into a mighty forest overnight.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
This vignette concerns the swift colonization of Mars. The title refers to the rockets and settlers which quickly spread across all of Mars.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
This story begins with a conversation between an old man and a young traveler, Tomás Gomez. The older man explains that he came to Mars because he appreciates the new and novel. Even everyday things have become amazing to him once again. He has returned full circle to his childhood. Later, Tomás encounters a Martian named Muhe Ca. Each can see the Mars he is accustomed to, in his own time frame, but the other person is translucent and intangible to him and has the appearance of a phantom. The young man sees ruins where the Martian sees a thriving city, while the Martian sees an ocean where Tomás sees the new Earth settlement. Neither knows if he precedes the other in time, but Bradbury makes the point that any one civilization is ultimately fleeting.
This is the only full-length story in "The Martian Chronicles" that had not previously appeared in another publication.
This story describes the rippling outward of colonization, the first wave being loner, pioneer types, and the second, also Americans, being from the "cabbage tenements and subways" of New York City.
First appeared as "…In This Sign" in "Imagination", April 1951.
A missionary expedition of Episcopal priests from the United States anticipates sins unknown to them on Mars. Instead, they meet ethereal creatures glowing as blue flames in crystal spheres, who have left behind the material world, and thus have escaped sin.
This story appeared only in "The Silver Locusts", the British edition of "The Martian Chronicles", the 1974 edition from The Heritage Press, the September 1979 illustrated trade edition from Bantam Books, the "40th Anniversary Edition" from Doubleday Dell Publishing Group and in the 2001 Book-of-the-Month Club edition. It otherwise appeared in "The Illustrated Man".
First appeared in "Weird Tales", July 1947.
This story describes the building of a Martian town by colonists and how much it was made to resemble an average Midwestern American town. The town was said to have appeared to have been swept up by a tornado on Earth, and brought to Mars.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
Several boys venture into the ruins of Martian cities. They enter houses and play with the debris, imagining that they are on Earth playing with the autumn leaves. They have fun playing "white xylophones"—Martian ribcages. They play with a sense of urgency because the Firemen are due to arrive soon, cleaning and disinfecting the ruins and destroying this source of fun.
First appeared in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction", November 1952.
Two women, Janice Smith and Leonora Holmes, prepare to depart on a rocket to Mars, to find husbands or lovers waiting for them there. Janice muses on the terrors of space, drinks in last memories of the Earth she will soon be leaving, and compares her situation to that of the pioneer women of the 19th-century American frontier.
This story only appears in the 1974 edition of "The Martian Chronicles" by The Heritage Press, the 1979 Bantam Books illustrated trade edition, and the 1997 edition of "The Martian Chronicles". In its original form, the story was dated 2003, and this date is consistent with the other stories. As it appears in the 1997 edition, the date (together with all the other dates) has been shifted ahead 31 years, to May 2034.
First appeared in "Other Worlds", July 1950.
In an unnamed Southern town, a group of white men learn that all African Americans are planning to emigrate to Mars. Samuel Teece, a racist white man, decries their departure as a flood of African Americans passes his hardware store. He tries to stop one man, Belter, from leaving due to an old debt, but others quickly take up a collection on his behalf to pay it off. Next he tries to detain Silly, a younger man who works for him, saying that he signed a contract and must honor it. As Silly protests, claiming that he never signed it, one of Teece's friends volunteers to take his place. Several of Teece's friends stand up to him and intimidate him into letting Silly depart.
As Silly drives off, he yells to Teece, "What you goin' to "do" nights?" - referring to Teece's nightly activities with a gang that had terrorized and lynched blacks in the area. The enraged Teece and a friend give chase in his car, but soon find the road cluttered with the discarded belongings of the rocket passengers. After they return to the hardware store, Teece refuses to watch as the rockets lift off. Wondering how he and his friends will spend their nights from now on, he takes a small triumph in the fact that Silly always addressed him as "Mister" even as he was leaving.
This episode is a depiction of racial prejudice in the United States. However, it was eliminated from the 2006 William Morrow/Harper Collins, and the 2001 DoubleDay Science Fiction reprinting of the book.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles". Not to be confused with the short story "The Naming of Names", first published in "Thrilling Wonder Stories", August 1949, later published as "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed".
This story is about later waves of immigrants to Mars, and how the geography of Mars is now largely named after the people from the first four expeditions (e.g., Spender Hill, Driscoll Forest) rather than after physical descriptions of the terrain.
First published as "Carnival of Madness" in "Thrilling Wonder Stories", April 1950.
"Usher II" is about censorship. William Stendahl is a book lover who has retreated to Mars after the government confiscated and destroyed his vast collection. On Mars, he constructs his image of the perfect haunted mansion, complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks, and thousands of tons of poison to kill every living thing in the surrounding area. He is assisted by Pikes, a film aficionado and former actor whose collection was confiscated and destroyed by the government and who was subsequently banned from performing. When the "Moral Climate Monitors" come to visit, Stendahl and Pikes arrange to kill each of them in ways that allude to different horror masterpieces, culminating in the murder of Inspector Garrett in a sequence reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado". Once Stendahl's persecutors are dead, he and Pikes watch from a helicopter as the house crumbles and sinks into the lake as in Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". At the end of this story, Poe (or Stendahl) hints that the "Moral Climate Monitors" could have avoided these deaths if they had only read the books they banned, since then they would have recognized what was happening to them.
Bradbury hints at past events on Earth, set in 1975–30 years prior to the events in "Usher II". The government sponsored a "Great Burning" of books and made them illegal, which leads to the formation of an underground society of book owners. Those found to possess books had them seized and burned by fire crews. Mars apparently emerged as a refuge from the fascist censorship laws of Earth, until the arrival of a government organization referred to only as "Moral Climates" and their enforcement divisions, the "Dismantlers" and "Burning Crew". Bradbury would reuse the concept of massive government censorship (to the point of abolishing all literature) in his book "Fahrenheit 451".
In 2010, Los Angeles artist Allois, in collaboration with Bradbury, released illustrated copies of "Usher" and "Usher II".
This story also appears in the 2008 Harper Collins/ Voyager edition of "The Illustrated Man."
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
A very brief prelude to the following story, describing the immigration of elderly people to Mars.
First published in "Super Science Stories", November 1949.
LaFarge and his wife Anna have forged a new life for themselves, but they still miss their dead son Tom. A night thunderstorm startles the elderly pair, who see a figure standing outside their home in the rain.
When morning comes, "Tom" is busy helping Anna with chores. LaFarge sees that Anna is somehow unaware of Tom's death, and after speaking privately with him, LaFarge learns that "Tom" is a Martian with an empathic shapeshifting ability: the Martian appears as their dead son to them.
Later that day, Anna insists on a visit to the town. "Tom" is deathly afraid of being so close to so many people. LaFarge promises to keep him close, but at the town they become separated. While searching for "Tom", LaFarge hears that the Spaulding family in town has miraculously found their lost daughter Lavinia. Desperate to avoid a second devastating heartbreak to his wife, LaFarge stands outside Spaulding's home and finds "Tom" now masquerading as Lavinia. He is able to coax "Tom" to come back, and they run desperately back for their boat to leave town. However, everyone "Tom" passes sees someone significant to them—a lost husband, a son, a wanted criminal. The Martian, exhausted from his constant shape-changing, spasms and dies.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
The story of Mars and its inhabitants is continued in a discussion between a priest and a luggage storeowner. Nuclear war is imminent on Earth, and the priest predicts that most of the colonists will return to help.
First published in "Thrilling Wonder Stories", December 1948.
On Mars, former Fourth Expedition member Sam Parkhill has opened a hot-dog stand and is expecting a huge rush of business as soon as the next wave of settlers and workers arrives from Earth. When a lone Martian walks in one night, Parkhill panics and kills him. Other Martians arrive in sand ships, prompting Parkhill and his wife to flee across the desert in their own ship. Once the Martians catch up, they surprise Parkhill by giving him ownership of half the planet. He returns to his hot-dog stand just in time to witness the start of the nuclear war on Earth, which puts an end to the settler flights and his business.
First appeared in "The Martian Chronicles".
The colonists witness a nuclear war on Earth from Mars. They immediately return out of concern for their friends and families, buying up the luggage store owner's entire inventory before they leave.
First published in "Charm", March 1949.
Everybody has left Mars to go to Earth, except Walter Gripp—a single miner who lives in the mountains and does not hear of the departure. At first excited by his find of an empty town, he enjoys himself with money, food, clothes, and movies. He soon realizes he misses human companionship. One night he hears a telephone ringing in someone's home, and suddenly realizes that someone else is alive on Mars. Missing the call, and several others, he sits down with a phone book of Mars and starts dialing at A.
After days of calling without answers, he starts calling hotels. After guessing where he thinks a woman would most likely spend her time, he calls the biggest beauty salon on Mars and is delighted when a woman answers. They talk, but are cut off. Overcome with romantic dreams, he drives hundreds of miles to New Texas City, only to realize that she drove to find him on a back road. He drives back to his town, and meets Genevieve Selsor as he pulls in.
Their meeting is the opposite of what he had hoped for in his dreams; she is unattractive (due to her weight and pallor), foolish, and insipid. After a sullen day, she slyly proposes marriage to him at dinner, as they believe they are the last man and the last woman on Mars. Gripp flees, driving across Mars to another tiny town to spend his life happily alone, avoiding all contact with Genevieve and ignoring any phone he hears ringing.
First published as "Dwellers in Silence" in "Maclean's", September 15, 1948.
Hathaway (the physician/archaeologist from the Fourth Expedition), now retired, is living on Mars with his wife and children in the hills above an old, abandoned settlement, vacated many years ago when everyone returned to Earth at the beginning of the war there. A gifted inventor and tinkerer, he has wired the old ghost town in the valley below so that he can make it come alive at night with lights and sounds as if it were still inhabited. One night, he sees a rocket approaching Mars and sets fire to the old town to attract the attention of those on board.
On board the rocket is his old commander, Captain Wilder (also from the earlier stories about the Fourth Expedition), returning to Mars after twenty years exploring the outer solar system. He and his crew land and are met by Hathaway, now old and suffering from heart disease. Hathaway brings the crew to his house for breakfast and introduces them to his family. Wilder, who remembers meeting Hathaway's wife many years earlier, remarks that she looks remarkably young, while Hathaway has aged considerably. Wilder pales when he and one of his crew realize that Hathaway's son, who gives his age as 23, must be at least in his forties. Wilder sends the crewmember off to the local cemetery to check the headstones. He returns to report that he has found the graves of every member of the family but Hathaway.
Wilder offers to take Hathaway back to Earth, but he declines. In the next moment, Hathaway has a heart attack and dies, begging Wilder not to call his family to his side because they "would not understand". Wilder then confirms that Hathaway's wife and children are actually androids, created by Hathaway after the originals died years ago.
As Wilder prepares to depart, one of the crew returns to the house with a pistol, thinking to put an end to the androids, whose existence seems pointless now that Hathaway is gone, but he returns shortly, having been unable to bring himself to kill the robotic family even knowing that they are not truly human. The rocket departs, and the android family continues on with its meaningless routine.
First published in "Collier's", May 6, 1950.
The story concerns a household in Allendale, California, after the nuclear war has wiped out the population. Though the family is dead, the automated house that had taken care of the family still functions.
The reader learns a great deal about what the family was like from how the robots continue on in their functions. Breakfast is automatically made, clothes are laid out, voice reminders of daily activities are called out, but no one is there. Robotic mice vacuum the home and tidy up. As the day progresses, the rain quits, and the house prepares lunch and opens like a flower to the warm weather. A starving dog, apparently the family pet, whines at the door, is admitted and dies. Outside, a vivid image is given: the family's silhouettes were permanently burned onto the side of the house (as occurred at Hiroshima) when they were vaporized by the nuclear explosion. That night, a storm crashes a tree into the home, starting a fire that the house cannot combat, as the municipal water supply has dried up and failed. By the next morning, the entire house has collapsed except for one wall that announces the date over and over.
The title of the story refers to a bedtime poem recited in the narrative entitled "There Will Come Soft Rains", an actual poem by Sara Teasdale originally published in 1920. In the original story in "Collier's", the story takes place 35 years in the future.
First published in "Planet Stories", summer 1946.
A family salvages a rocket that the government would have used in the nuclear war and leaves Earth on a "fishing trip" to Mars. The family picks a city in which to live and call home, then destroys the rocket so that they cannot return to Earth. They enter and the father burns tax documents and other government papers in a campfire, explaining that he is burning a misguided way of life. A map of Earth is the last thing to be burned. Later, he offers his sons a gift in the form of their new world. He introduces them to the Martians — their own reflections in a canal.
"The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition" published by Subterranean Press (2010) contains "The Other Martian Tales" section:
Boucher and McComas praised "Chronicles" as "a poet's interpretation of future history beyond the limits of any fictional form". In his "Books" column for "F&SF", Damon Knight listed "The Martian Chronicles" on his top-ten science fiction books of the 1950s. Algis Budrys called it "a beautiful Bradbury collection which owes part of its charm to the loose connecting passages", and an exception to the many poor-quality fixups of the 1950s. L. Sprague de Camp, however, declared that Bradbury would improve "when he escapes from the influence of Hemingway and Saroyan", placing him in "the tradition of anti-science-fiction writers [who] see no good in the machine age". Still, de Camp acknowledged that "[Bradbury's] stories have considerable emotional impact, and many will love them".
Sagan listed "The Martian Chronicles" as among the "rare few science‐fiction novels [that] combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity". Robert Crossley (University of Massachusetts Boston) has suggested that the story "Way in the Middle of the Air" might be considered "the single most incisive episode of black and white relations in science fiction by a white author."
The theater debut of "The Martian Chronicles" was at the Cricket Theater (The Ritz) in Northeast Minneapolis in 1976. A musical version is being developed in New York City in 2017.
MGM bought the film rights in 1960 but no film was made.
In 1988, the Soviet Armenian studio Armenfilm produced the feature film "The 13th Apostle", starring Juozas Budraitis, Donatas Banionis, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, based on "The Martian Chronicles". The film was directed by Armenian actor and screenwriter, Suren Babayan.
The Uzbek filmmaker Nozim To'laho'jayev made two films based on sections from the book: 1984's animated short "There Will Come Soft Rains" (Russian: Будет ласковый дождь) and 1987's full-length live action film "Veld" (Russian: Вельд), with one of the subplots based on "The Martian".
In 2011, Paramount Pictures acquired the film rights and will produce a film franchise with John Davis producing through Davis Entertainment.
"The Martian Chronicles" was adapted as a full-length contemporary opera by composer Daniel Levy and librettist Elizabeth Margid. This is the only musical adaptation authorized by Bradbury himself, who turned down Lerner and Loewe in the 1960s when they asked his permission to make a musical based on the novel. The work received its initial readings from the Harriet Lake Festival of New Plays at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater in 2006, and was presented in workshop form in the inaugural season of the Fordham University Lincoln Center Alumni Company in 2008. The NIGHT MEETING episode was presented at Cornelia Street Cafe's ENTERTAINING SCIENCE series on June 9, 2013. The entire work was presented as a staged reading with a cast of Broadway actors at Ars Nova NYC on February 11, 2015. Three scenes were presented as a workshop production with immersive staging, directed by Carlos Armesto of Theatre C and conducted by Benjamin Smoulder at Miami University, Oxford OH on September 17–19, 2015.
"The Martian Chronicles" was adapted for radio in the science fiction radio series "Dimension X". This truncated version contained elements of the stories "Rocket Summer", "Ylla", "–and the Moon Be Still as Bright", "The Settlers", "The Locusts", "The Shore", "The Off Season", "There Will Come Soft Rains", and "The Million-Year Picnic".
"—and the Moon Be Still as Bright" and "There Will Come Soft Rains" were also adapted for separate episodes in the same series. The short stories "Mars Is Heaven" and "Dwellers in Silence" also appeared as episodes of "Dimension X". The latter is in a very different form from the one found in "The Martian Chronicles".
A very abridged spoken word reading of "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "Usher II" was made in 1975 with Leonard Nimoy as narrator.
A BBC Radio 4 adaption, produced by Andrew Mark Sewell as an hour-long programme and starring Derek Jacobi as Captain Wilder, was broadcast on 21 June 2014 as part of the "Dangerous Visions" series.
In 1979 NBC partnered with the BBC to commission "The Martian Chronicles", a three-episode miniseries adaptation running just over four hours. It was written by Richard Matheson and was directed by Michael Anderson. Rock Hudson starred as Wilder, Darren McGavin as Parkhill, Bernadette Peters as Genevieve Selsor, Bernie Casey as Jeff Spender, Roddy McDowall as Father Stone, and Barry Morse as Hathaway, as well as Fritz Weaver. Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring".
The cable television series "The Ray Bradbury Theater" adapted some individual short stories from "The Martian Chronicles" including "Mars is Heaven", "The Earthmen", "And the Moon Be Still as Bright", "Usher II", "The Martian", "Silent Towns", and "The Long Years". Video releases of the series included a VHS tape entitled "Ray Bradbury's Chronicles: The Martian Episodes " with some editions with three episodes and others with five.
Several of the short stories in "The Martian Chronicles" were adapted into graphic novel-style stories in the EC Comics magazines, including "There Will Come Soft Rains" in "Weird Fantasy" #17, "The Million-Year Picnic" in "Weird Fantasy" #21 and "The Silent Towns" in "Weird Fantasy" #22.
In 2011, Hill & Wang published "Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation" as a graphic novel, with art by Dennis Calero.
"The Martian Chronicles" adventure game was published in 1996. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37320 |
Aeneid
The Aeneid ( ; ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.
The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the "Iliad". Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas's wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and his description as a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous "pietas", and fashioned the "Aeneid" into a compelling founding myth or national epic that tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explained the Punic Wars, glorified traditional Roman virtues, and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.
The "Aeneid" is widely regarded as Virgil's masterpiece and one of the greatest works of Latin literature.
The "Aeneid" can be divided into halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books 1–6 (Aeneas's journey to Latium in Italy) and Books 7–12 (the war in Latium). These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil's ambition to rival Homer by treating both the "Odyssey"s wandering theme and the "Iliad"s warfare themes. This is, however, a rough correspondence, the limitations of which should be borne in mind.
Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme ("Arma virumque cano ...", "Of arms and the man I sing ...") and an invocation to the Muse, falling some seven lines after the poem's inception ("Musa, mihi causas memora ...", "O Muse, recount to me the causes ..."). He then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story: the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people. This is consistent with her role throughout the Homeric epics.
Also in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins "in medias res" (into the middle of things), with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. The fleet, led by Aeneas, is on a voyage to find a second home. It has been foretold that in Italy he will give rise to a race both noble and courageous, a race which will become known to all nations. Juno is wrathful, because she had not been chosen in the judgment of Paris, and because her favorite city, Carthage, will be destroyed by Aeneas's descendants. Also, Ganymede, a Trojan prince, was chosen to be the cupbearer to her husband, Jupiter—replacing Juno's daughter, Hebe. Juno proceeds to Aeolus, King of the Winds, and asks that he release the winds to stir up a storm in exchange for a bribe (Deiopea, the loveliest of all her sea nymphs, as a wife). Aeolus agrees to carry out Juno's orders (line 77, "My task is / To fulfill your commands"); the storm then devastates the fleet.
Neptune takes notice: although he himself is no friend of the Trojans, he is infuriated by Juno's intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters, after making sure that the winds would not bother the Trojans again, lest they be punished more harshly than they were this time. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa, where Aeneas rouses the spirits of his men, reassuring them that they have been through worse situations before. There, Aeneas's mother, Venus, in the form of a huntress very similar to the goddess Diana, encourages him and recounts to him the history of Carthage. Eventually, Aeneas ventures into the city, and in the temple of Juno he seeks and gains the favor of Dido, queen of the city. The city has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre and will later become a great imperial rival and enemy to Rome.
Meanwhile, Venus has her own plans. She goes to her son, Aeneas's half-brother Cupid, and tells him to imitate Ascanius (the son of Aeneas and his first wife Creusa). Thus disguised, Cupid goes to Dido and offers the gifts expected from a guest. As Dido cradles the boy during a banquet given in honour of the Trojans, Cupid secretly weakens her sworn fidelity to the soul of her late husband Sychaeus, who was murdered by her brother Pygmalion back in Tyre, by inciting fresh love for Aeneas.
In books 2 and 3, Aeneas recounts to Dido the events that occasioned the Trojans' arrival. He begins the tale shortly after the war described in the "Iliad". Cunning Ulysses devised a way for Greek warriors to gain entry into the walled city of Troy by hiding in a large wooden horse. The Greeks pretended to sail away, leaving a warrior, Sinon, to mislead the Trojans into believing that the horse was an offering and that if it were taken into the city, the Trojans would be able to conquer Greece. The Trojan priest Laocoön saw through the Greek plot and urged the horse's destruction, but his protests fell on deaf ears, so he hurled his spear at the horse. Then, in what would be seen by the Trojans as punishment from the gods, two serpents emerged from the sea and devoured Laocoön, along with his two sons. The Trojans then took the horse inside the fortified walls, and after nightfall the armed Greeks emerged from it, opening the city's gates to allow the returned Greek army to slaughter the Trojans.
In a dream, Hector, the fallen Trojan prince, advised Aeneas to flee with his family. Aeneas awoke and saw with horror what was happening to his beloved city. At first he tried to fight the enemy, but soon he lost his comrades and was left alone to fend off the Greeks. He witnessed the murder of Priam by Achilles' son Pyrrhus. His mother, Venus, appeared to him and led him back to his house. Aeneas tells of his escape with his son, Ascanius, his wife Creusa, and his father, Anchises, after the occurrence of various omens (Ascanius' head catching fire without his being harmed, a clap of thunder and a shooting star). At the city gates, they notice they lost Creusa, and Aeneas goes back into the city to look for her. He only encounters her ghost, who tells him that his destiny is to reach Hesperia, where kingship and a royal spouse await him.
Aeneas continues his account to Dido by telling how, rallying the other survivors, he built a fleet of ships and made landfall at various locations in the Mediterranean: Thrace, where they find the last remains of a fellow Trojan, Polydorus; Delos, where Apollo tells them to leave and to find the land of their forefathers; Crete, which they believe to be that land, and where they build their city (Pergamea) and promptly desert it after a plague proves this is not the place for them; the Strophades, where they encounter the Harpy Celaeno, who tells them to leave her island and to look for Italy, though, she prophecies, they won't find it until hunger forces them to eat their tables; and Buthrotum. This last city had been built in an attempt to replicate Troy. In Buthrotum, Aeneas meets Andromache, the widow of Hector. She is still lamenting the loss of her valiant husband and beloved child. There, too, Aeneas sees and meets Helenus, one of Priam's sons, who has the gift of prophecy. Through him, Aeneas learns the destiny laid out for him: he is divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as "Ausonia" or "Hesperia"), where his descendants will not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world. In addition, Helenus also bids him go to the Sibyl in Cumae.
Heading into the open sea, Aeneas leaves Buthrotum, rounds the south eastern tip of Italy and makes his way towards Sicily (Trinacria). There, they are caught in the whirlpool of Charybdis and driven out to sea. Soon they come ashore at the land of the Cyclopes. There they meet a Greek, Achaemenides, one of Ulysses' men, who has been left behind when his comrades escaped the cave of Polyphemus. They take Achaemenides on board and narrowly escape Polyphemus. Shortly after, at Drepanum, Aeneas' father Anchises dies of old age. Aeneas heads on (towards Italy) and gets deflected to Carthage (by the storm described in book 1). Here, Aeneas ends his account of his wanderings to Dido.
Dido realises that she has fallen in love with Aeneas. Juno seizes upon this opportunity to make a deal with Venus, Aeneas's mother, with the intention of distracting Aeneas from his destiny of founding a city in Italy. Aeneas is inclined to return Dido's love, and during a hunting expedition, a storm drives them into a small covered grove in which Aeneas and Dido presumably made love, an event that Dido takes to indicate a marriage between them. But when Jupiter sends Mercury to remind Aeneas of his duty, he has no choice but to part. At the behest of Mercury's apparition, he leaves clandestinely at night. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by stabbing herself upon a pyre with Aeneas's sword. Before dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas's people and hers; "rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" (4.625, trans. Fitzgerald) is a possible invocation to Hannibal.
Looking back from the deck of his ship, Aeneas sees the smoke of Dido's funeral pyre, and although he does not understand the exact reason behind it, he understands it as a bad omen, considering the angry madness of her love.
Hindered by bad weather from reaching Italy, the Trojans return to where they started at the beginning of book 1. Book 5 then takes place on Sicily and centers on the funeral games that Aeneas organises for the anniversary of his father's death. Aeneas organises celebratory games for the men—a boat race, a foot race, a boxing match, and an archery contest. In all those contests, Aeneas is careful to reward winners and losers, showing his leadership qualities by not allowing antagonism even after foul play. Each of these contests comments on past events or prefigures future events: the boxing match, for instance, is "a preview of the final encounter of Aeneas and Turnus", and the dove, the target during the archery contest, is connected to the deaths of Polites and King Priam in Book 2 and that of Camilla in Book 11. Afterwards, Ascanius leads the boys in a military parade and mock battle, the Lusus Troiae - a tradition he will teach the Latins while building the walls of Alba Longa.
During these events, Juno, via her messenger Iris, who disguises herself as an old woman, incites the Trojan women to burn the fleet and prevent the Trojans from ever reaching Italy, but her plan is thwarted when Ascanius and Aeneas intervene. Aeneas prays to Jupiter to quench the fires, which the god does with a torrential rainstorm. An anxious Aeneas is comforted by a vision of his father, who tells him to go to the underworld to receive a vision of his and Rome's future. In return for safe passage to Italy, the gods, by order of Jupiter, will receive one of Aeneas's men as a sacrifice: Palinurus, who steers Aeneas's ship by night, is put to sleep by Somnus and falls overboard.
Aeneas, with the guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl, descends into the underworld. They pass by crowds of the dead by the banks of the river Acheron and are ferried across by Charon before passing by Cerberus, the three-headed guardian of the underworld. Then Aeneas is shown the fates of the wicked in Tartarus and is warned by the Sibyl to bow to the justice of the gods. He also meets the shade of Dido, who remains unreconcilable. He is then brought to green fields of Elysium. There he speaks with the spirit of his father and is offered a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome.
Upon returning to the land of the living, Aeneas leads the Trojans to settle in Latium, where King Latinus received oracles pointing towards the arrival of strangers and bidding him to marry his daughter Lavinia to the foreigners, and not to Turnus, the ruler of another native people, the Rutuli. Juno, unhappy with the Trojans' favourable situation, summons the fury Alecto from the underworld to stir up a war between the Trojans and the locals. Alecto incites Amata, the Queen of Latium and the wife of Latinus, to demand that Lavinia be married to noble Turnus, and she causes Ascanius to wound a revered deer during a hunt. Hence, although Aeneas wishes to avoid a war, hostilities break out. The book closes with a catalogue of Italic warriors.
Given the impending war, Aeneas seeks help from the Tuscans, enemies of the Rutuli, after having been encouraged to do so in a dream by Tiberinus. At the place where Rome will be, he meets a friendly Greek, King Evander of Arcadia. His son Pallas agrees to join Aeneas and lead troops against the Rutuli. Venus urges her spouse Vulcan to create weapons for Aeneas, which she then presents to Aeneas as a gift. On the shield, the future history of Rome is depicted.
Meanwhile, the Trojan camp is attacked by Turnus—spurred on by Juno, who informs him that Aeneas is away from his camp—and a midnight raid by the Trojans Nisus and Euryalus on Turnus' camp leads to their death. The next day, Turnus manages to breach the gates but is forced to retreat by jumping into the Tiber.
A council of the gods is held, in which Venus and Juno speak before Jupiter, and Aeneas returns to the besieged Trojan camp accompanied by his new Arcadian and Tuscan allies. In the ensuing battle many are slain—notably Pallas, whom Evander has entrusted to Aeneas but who is killed by Turnus. Mezentius, Turnus's close associate, allows his son Lausus to be killed by Aeneas while he himself flees. He reproaches himself and faces Aeneas in single combat—an honourable but essentially futile endeavour leading to his death.
After a short break in which the funeral ceremony for Pallas takes place, the war continues. Another notable native, Camilla, an Amazon character and virgin devoted to Diana, fights bravely but is killed, falling prey to her greed for gold. Arruns, the man who kills her, is struck dead by Diana's sentinel, Opis.
Single combat is proposed between Aeneas and Turnus, but Aeneas is so obviously superior to Turnus that the Rutuli, urged on by Turnus's divine sister, Juturna—who in turn is instigated by Juno—break the truce. Aeneas is injured by an arrow but is soon healed with the help of his mother Venus and returns to the battle. Turnus and Aeneas dominate the battle on opposite wings, but when Aeneas makes a daring attack at the city of Latium (causing the queen of Latium to hang herself in despair), he forces Turnus into single combat once more. In the duel, Turnus's strength deserts him as he tries to hurl a rock, and Aeneas's spear goes through his thigh. As Turnus is on his knees, begging for his life, the epic ends with Aeneas initially tempted to obey Turnus's pleas to spare his life, but then killing him in rage when he sees that Turnus is wearing his friend Pallas's belt over his shoulder as a trophy.
Critics of the "Aeneid" focus on a variety of issues. The tone of the poem as a whole is a particular matter of debate; some see the poem as ultimately pessimistic and politically subversive to the Augustan regime, while others view it as a celebration of the new imperial dynasty. Virgil makes use of the symbolism of the Augustan regime, and some scholars see strong associations between Augustus and Aeneas, the one as founder and the other as re-founder of Rome. A strong teleology, or drive towards a climax, has been detected in the poem. The "Aeneid" is full of prophecies about the future of Rome, the deeds of Augustus, his ancestors, and famous Romans, and the Carthaginian Wars; the shield of Aeneas even depicts Augustus' victory at Actium in 31 BC. A further focus of study is the character of Aeneas. As the protagonist of the poem, Aeneas seems to constantly waver between his emotions and commitment to his prophetic duty to found Rome; critics note the breakdown of Aeneas's emotional control in the last sections of the poem where the "pious" and "righteous" Aeneas mercilessly slaughters the Latin warrior Turnus.
The "Aeneid" appears to have been a great success. Virgil is said to have recited Books 2, 4 and 6 to Augustus; the mention of her son, Marcellus, in book 6 apparently caused Augustus' sister Octavia to faint. The poem was unfinished when Virgil died in 19 BC.
According to tradition, Virgil traveled to Greece around 19 BC to revise the "Aeneid". After meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. Virgil crossed to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, and died in Brundisium harbour on 21 September 19 BC, leaving a wish that the manuscript of the "Aeneid" was to be burned. Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, to disregard that wish, instead ordering the "Aeneid" to be published with as few editorial changes as possible. As a result, the existing text of the "Aeneid" may contain faults which Virgil was planning to correct before publication. However, the only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse that are metrically unfinished (i.e., not a complete line of dactylic hexameter). Other alleged "imperfections" are subject to scholarly debate.
The "Aeneid" was written in a time of major political and social change in Rome, with the fall of the Republic and the Final War of the Roman Republic having torn through society and many Romans' faith in the "Greatness of Rome" severely faltering. However, the new emperor, Augustus Caesar, began to institute a new era of prosperity and peace, specifically through the re-introduction of traditional Roman moral values. The "Aeneid" was seen as reflecting this aim, by depicting the heroic Aeneas as a man devoted and loyal to his country and its prominence, rather than his own personal gains. In addition, the "Aeneid" gives mythic legitimization to the rule of Julius Caesar and, by extension, to his adopted son Augustus, by immortalizing the tradition that renamed Aeneas's son, Ascanius (called Ilus from "Ilium", meaning Troy), "Iulus", thus making him an ancestor of the "gens Julia", the family of Julius Caesar, and many other great imperial descendants as part of the prophecy given to him in the Underworld. (The meter shows that the name "Iulus" is pronounced as 3 syllables, not as "Julus".)
The perceived deficiency of any account of Aeneas's marriage to Lavinia or his founding of the Roman race led some writers, such as the 15th-century Italian poet Maffeo Vegio (through his "Mapheus Vegius" widely printed in the Renaissance), Pier Candido Decembrio (whose attempt was never completed), Claudio Salvucci (in his 1994 epic poem "The Laviniad"), and Ursula K. Le Guin (in her 2008 novel "Lavinia") to compose their own supplements.
Despite the polished and complex nature of the "Aeneid" (legend stating that Virgil wrote only three lines of the poem each day), the number of half-complete lines and the abrupt ending are generally seen as evidence that Virgil died before he could finish the work. Some legends state that Virgil, fearing that he would die before he had properly revised the poem, gave instructions to friends (including the current emperor, Augustus) that the "Aeneid" should be burned upon his death, owing to its unfinished state and because he had come to dislike one of the sequences in Book VIII, in which Venus and Vulcan made love, for its nonconformity to Roman moral virtues. The friends did not comply with Virgil's wishes and Augustus himself ordered that they be disregarded. After minor modifications, the "Aeneid" was published. Because it was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally, the text exhibits less variation than other classical epics.
The first full and faithful rendering of the poem in an Anglic language is the Scots translation by Gavin Douglas—his "Eneados", completed in 1513, which also included Maffeo Vegio's supplement. Even in the 20th century, Ezra Pound considered this still to be the best "Aeneid" translation, praising the "richness and fervour" of its language and its hallmark fidelity to the original. The English translation by the 17th-century poet John Dryden is another important version. Most classic translations, including both Douglas and Dryden, employ a rhyme scheme; most more modern attempts do not.
Recent English verse translations include those by British Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis (1963) which strove to render Virgil's original hexameter line, Allen Mandelbaum (honoured by a 1973 National Book Award), Library of Congress Poet Laureate Robert Fitzgerald (1981), Stanley Lombardo (2005), Robert Fagles (2006), Sarah Ruden (2008), Barry B. Powell (2015), and David Ferry (2017).
As with other classical Latin poetry, the meter is based on the length of syllables rather than the stress, though the interplay of meter and stress is also important. Virgil also incorporated such poetic devices as alliteration, onomatopoeia, synecdoche, and assonance. Furthermore, he uses personification, metaphor and simile in his work, usually to add drama and tension to the scene. An example of a simile can be found in book II when Aeneas is compared to a shepherd who stood on the high top of a rock unaware of what is going on around him. It can be seen that just as the shepherd is a protector of his sheep, so too is Aeneas to his people.
As was the rule in classical antiquity, an author's style was seen as an expression of his personality and character. Virgil's Latin has been praised for its evenness, subtlety and dignity.
The "Aeneid", like other classical epics, is written in dactylic hexameters: each line consists of six metrical feet made up of dactyls (one long syllable followed by two short syllables) and spondees (two long syllables). This epic consists of twelve books, and the narrative is broken up into three sections of four books each, respectively addressing Dido; the Trojans' arrival in Italy; and the war with the Latins. Each book has roughly 700–900 lines. The "Aeneid" comes to an abrupt ending, and scholars have speculated that Virgil died before he could finish the poem.
The Roman ideal of "pietas" ("piety, dutiful respect"), which can be loosely translated from the Latin as a selfless sense of duty toward one's
filial, religious, and societal obligations, was a crux of ancient Roman morality. Throughout the "Aeneid", Aeneas serves as the embodiment of
"pietas", with the phrase "pious Aeneas" occurring 20 times throughout the poem, thereby fulfilling his capacity as the father of the Roman people.
For instance, in Book 2 Aeneas describes how he carried his father Anchises from the burning city of Troy: "No help/ Or hope of help existed./
So I resigned myself, picked up my father,/ And turned my face toward the mountain range." Furthermore, Aeneas ventures into the underworld, thereby fulfilling Anchises'
wishes. His father's gratitude is presented in the text by the following lines: "Have you at last come, has that loyalty/ Your father counted on conquered the journey?
However, Aeneas's "pietas" extends beyond his devotion to his father: we also see several examples of his religious fervour. Aeneas is consistently subservient to the gods, even in actions opposed to his own desires, as he responds to one such divine command, "I sail to Italy not of my own free will."
In addition to his religious and familial "pietas", Aeneas also displays fervent patriotism and devotion to his people, particularly in a military capacity. For instance, as he and his followers leave Troy, Aeneas swears that he will "take up/ The combat once again. We shall not all/ Die this day unavenged."
Aeneas is a symbol of "pietas" in all of its forms, serving as a moral paragon to whom a Roman should aspire.
One of the most recurring themes in the "Aeneid" is that of divine intervention. Throughout the poem, the gods are constantly influencing the main characters and trying to change and impact the outcome, regardless of the fate that they all know will occur. For example, Juno comes down and acts as a phantom Aeneas to drive Turnus away from the real Aeneas and all of his rage from the death of Pallas. Even though Juno knows in the end that Aeneas will triumph over Turnus, she does all she can to delay and avoid this outcome.
Divine intervention occurs multiple times, in Book 4 especially. Aeneas falls in love with Dido, delaying his ultimate fate of traveling to Italy. However, it is actually the gods who inspired the love, as Juno plots:
Dido and the Trojan captain [will come]
To one same cavern. I shall be on hand,
And if I can be certain you are willing,
There I shall marry them and call her his.
A wedding, this will be.
Juno is speaking to Venus, making an agreement and influencing the lives and emotions of both Dido and Aeneas. Later in the same book, Jupiter steps in and restores what is the true fate and path for Aeneas, sending Mercury down to Aeneas's dreams, telling him that he must travel to Italy and leave his new-found lover. As Aeneas later pleads with Dido:
The gods' interpreter, sent by Jove himself –
I swear it by your head and mine – has brought
Commands down through the racing winds!...
I sail for Italy not of my own free will.
Several of the gods try to intervene against the powers of fate, even though they know what the eventual outcome will be. The interventions are really just distractions to continue the conflict and postpone the inevitable. If the gods represent humans, just as the human characters engage in conflicts and power struggles, so too do the gods.
Fate, described as a preordained destiny that men and gods have to follow, is a major theme in the "Aeneid". One example is when Aeneas is reminded of his fate through Jupiter and Mercury while he is falling in love with Dido. Mercury urges, "Think of your expectations of your heir,/ Iulus, to whom the whole Italian realm, the land/ Of Rome, are due." Mercury is referring to Aeneas's preordained fate to found Rome, as well as Rome's preordained fate to rule the world:
He was to be ruler of Italy,
Potential empire, armorer of war;
To father men from Teucer's noble blood
And bring the whole world under law's dominion.
It is important to recognize that there is a marked difference between fate and divine intervention, as even though the gods might remind mortals of their eventual fate, the gods themselves are not in control of it. For example, the opening lines of the poem specify that Aeneas "came to Italy by destiny", but is also harassed by the separate force of "baleful Juno in her sleepless rage". Even though Juno might intervene, Aeneas's fate is set in stone and cannot be changed.
Later in Book 6, when Aeneas visits the underworld, his father Anchises introduces him to the larger fate of the Roman people, as contrasted against his own personal fate to found Rome:
So raptly, everywhere, father and son
Wandered the airy plain and viewed it all.
After Anchises had conducted him
To every region and had fired his love
Of glory in the years to come, he spoke
Of wars that he might fight, of Laurentines,
And of Latinus' city, then of how
He might avoid or bear each toil to come.
From the very beginning of the "Aeneid", violence and conflict are used as a means of survival and conquest. Aeneas's voyage is caused by the Trojan War and the destruction of
Troy. Aeneas describes to Dido in Book 2 the massive amount of destruction that occurs after the Greeks sneak into Troy. He recalls that he asks his men to "defend/ A city
lost in flames. Come, let us die,/ We'll make a rush into the thick of it."
This is one of the first examples of how violence begets violence: even though the Trojans know they have lost the battle, they continue to fight for their country.
This violence continues as Aeneas makes his journey. Dido kills herself in an excessively violent way over a pyre in order to end and escape her worldly problem: being heartbroken
over the departure of her "husband" Aeneas. Queen Dido's suicide is a double edged sword. While releasing herself from the burden of her pain through violence, her last words
implore her people to view Aeneas's people with hate for all eternity:
This is my last cry, as my last blood flows.
Then, O my Tyrians, besiege with hate
His progeny and all his race to come:
Make this your offering to my dust. No love,
No pact must be between our peoples.
Furthermore, her people, hearing of their queen's death, have only one avenue on which to direct the blame: the already-departed Trojans. Thus, Dido's request of her people
and her people's only recourse for closure align in their mutual hate for Aeneas and his Trojans. In effect, Dido's violent suicide leads to the violent nature of the
later relationship between Carthage and Rome.
Finally, when Aeneas arrives in Latium, conflict inevitably arises. Juno sends Alecto, one of the Furies, to cause Turnus to go against Aeneas. In the ensuing battles, Turnus
kills Pallas, who is supposed to be under Aeneas's protection. This act of violence causes Aeneas to be consumed with fury. Although Turnus asks for mercy in their final encounter,
when Aeneas sees that Turnus has taken Pallas' sword belt, Aeneas proclaims:
You in your plunder, torn from one of mine,
Shall I be robbed of you? This wound will come
From Pallas: Pallas makes this offering
And from your criminal blood exacts his due.
This final act of violence shows how Turnus' violence—the act of killing Pallas—inevitably leads to more violence and his own death.
It is possible that the recurring theme of violence in the "Aeneid" is a subtle commentary on the bloody violence contemporary readers would have just experienced during the Late Republican
civil wars. The "Aeneid" potentially explores whether the violence of the civil wars was necessary to establish a lasting peace under Augustus, or whether it would just lead to more violence in the future.
Written during the reign of Augustus, the "Aeneid" presents the hero Aeneas as a strong and powerful leader. The favorable representation of Aeneas parallels
Augustus in that it portrays his reign in a progressive and admirable light, and allows Augustus to be positively associated with the portrayal of Aeneas.
Although Virgil's patron Maecenas was obviously not Augustus himself, he was still a high figure within Augustus' administration and could have personally
benefitted from representing Aeneas in a positive light.
In the "Aeneid", Aeneas is portrayed as the singular hope for the rebirth of the Trojan people. Charged with the preservation of his people by divine authority, Aeneas is symbolic of Augustus' own accomplishments in establishing order after the long period of chaos of the Roman civil wars. Augustus as the light of savior and the last
hope of the Roman people is a parallel to Aeneas as the savior of the Trojans. This parallel functions as propaganda in support of Augustus, as it depicts the Trojan people,
future Romans themselves, as uniting behind a single leader who will lead them out of ruin:
New refugees in a great crowd: men and women
Gathered for exile, young-pitiful people
Coming from every quarter, minds made up,
With their belongings, for whatever lands
I'd lead them to by sea.
Later in Book 6, Aeneas travels to the underworld where he sees his father Anchises, who tells him of his own destiny as well as that of
the Roman people. Anchises describes how Aeneas's descendant Romulus will found the great city of Rome,
which will eventually be ruled by Caesar Augustus:
Turn your two eyes
This way and see this people, your own Romans.
Here is Caesar, and all the line of Iulus,
All who shall one day pass under the dome
Of the great sky: this is the man, this one,
Of whom so often you have heard the promise,
Caesar Augustus, son of the deified,
Who shall bring once again an Age of Gold
To Latium, to the land where Saturn reigned
In early times.
Virgil writes about the fated future of Lavinium, the city that Aeneas will found, which will in turn lead directly to the
golden reign of Augustus. Virgil is using a form of literary propaganda to demonstrate the Augustan
regime's destiny to bring glory and peace to Rome. Rather than use Aeneas indirectly as a positive parallel
to Augustus as in other parts of the poem, Virgil outright praises the emperor in Book 6, referring to Augustus as a harbinger for the glory
of Rome and new levels of prosperity.
The poem abounds with smaller and greater allegories. Two of the debated allegorical sections pertain to the exit from the underworld and to Pallas's belt.
Aeneas's leaving the underworld through the gate of false dreams has been variously interpreted: One suggestion is that the passage simply refers to the time of day at which Aeneas returned to the world of the living; another is that it implies that all of Aeneas's actions in the remainder of the poem are somehow "false". In an extension of the latter interpretation, it has been suggested that Virgil is conveying that the history of the world since the foundation of Rome is but a lie. Other scholars claim that Virgil is establishing that the theological implications of the preceding scene (an apparent system of reincarnation) are not to be taken as literal.
The second section in question is
This section has been interpreted to mean that for the entire passage of the poem, Aeneas who symbolizes "pietas" (reason) in a moment becomes "furor" (fury), thus destroying what is essentially the primary theme of the poem itself. Many have argued over these two sections. Some claim that Virgil meant to change them before he died, while others find that the location of the two passages, at the very end of the so-called Volume I (Books 1–6, the "Odyssey"), and Volume II (Books 7–12, the "Iliad"), and their short length, which contrasts with the lengthy nature of the poem, are evidence that Virgil placed them purposefully there.
The "Aeneid" is a cornerstone of the Western canon, and early (at least by the 2nd century AD) became one of the essential elements of a Latin education, usually required to be memorized. Even after the decline of the Roman Empire, it "remained central to a Latin education". In Latin-Christian culture, the "Aeneid" was one of the canonical texts, subjected to commentary as a philological and educational study, with the most complete commentary having been written by the 4th-century grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus. It was widely held to be the pinnacle of Latin literature, much in the same way that the "Iliad" was seen to be supreme in Greek literature.
The strong influence of the "Aeneid" has been identified in the development of European vernacular literatures—some English works that show its influence being "Beowulf", Layamon's "Brut" (through the source text "Historia Regum Britanniae"), "The Faerie Queene" and Milton's "Paradise Lost". The Italian poet Dante Alighieri was himself profoundly influenced by the "Aeneid", so much so that his magnum opus "The Divine Comedy", itself widely considered central to the western canon, includes a number of quotations from and allusions to the "Aeneid" and features the author Virgil as a major character – the guide of Dante through the realms of the Inferno and Purgatorio. Another continental work displaying the influence of the "Aeneid" is the 16th-century Portuguese epic "Os Lusíadas", written by Luís de Camões and dealing with Vasco da Gama's voyage to India.
The importance of Latin education itself was paramount in Western culture: "from 1600 to 1900, the Latin school was at the center of European education, wherever it was found"; within that Latin school, Virgil was taught at the advanced level and, in 19th-century England, special editions of Virgil were awarded to students who distinguished themselves. In the United States, Virgil and specifically the "Aeneid" were taught in the fourth year of a Latin sequence, at least until the 1960s; the current (2011) Advanced Placement curriculum in Latin continues to assign a central position to the poem: "The AP Latin: Virgil Exam is designed to test the student's ability to read, translate, understand, analyze, and interpret the lines of the "Aeneid" that appear on the course syllabus in Latin."
Many phrases from this poem entered the Latin language, much as passages from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope have entered the English language. One example is from Aeneas's reaction to a painting of the sack of Troy: "Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt"—"These are the tears of things, and our mortality cuts to the heart" ("Aeneid" I, 462). The influence is also visible in very modern work: Brian Friel's "Translations" (a play written in the 1980s, set in 19th-century Ireland), makes references to the classics throughout and ends with a passage from the "Aeneid":
"Urbs antiqua fuit"—there was an ancient city which, 'tis said, Juno loved above all the lands. And it was the goddess's aim and cherished hope that here should be the capital of all nations—should the fates perchance allow that. Yet in truth she discovered that a race was springing from Trojan blood to overthrow some day these Tyrian towers—a people "late regem belloque superbum"—kings of broad realms and proud in war who would come forth for Libya's downfall.
One of the first operas based on the story of the Aeneid was the English composer Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1688). The opera is famous for its aria Dido's Lament ('When I am laid in earth'), of which the first line of the melody is inscribed on the wall by the door of the Purcell Room concert hall in London.
The story of the "Aeneid" was made into the grand opera "Les Troyens" (1856–1858) by the French composer Hector Berlioz.
The "Aeneid" was the basis for the 1962 Italian film "The Avenger".
In the musical "Spring Awakening", based on the play of the same title by Frank Wedekind, schoolboys study the Latin text, and the first verse of Book 1 is incorporated into the number "All That's Known".
Ursula Le Guin's 2008 novel "Lavinia" is a free prose retelling of the last six books of the "Aeneid" narrated by and centered on Aeneas' Latin wife Lavinia, a minor character in the epic poem. It carries the action forward to the crowning of Aeneas' younger son Silvius as king of Latium.
A seventeenth-century popular broadside ballad also appears to recount events from books 1–4 of the "Aeneid," focusing mostly on the relationship between Aeneas and Dido. The ballad, "The Wandering Prince of Troy", presents many similar elements as Virgil's epic, but alters Dido's final sentiments toward Aeneas, as well as presenting an interesting end for Aeneas himself.
A number of parodies and travesties of the "Aeneid" have been made. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37322 |
Marcus Junius Brutus
Marcus Junius Brutus (; 85 BC – 23 October 42 BC), often referred to simply as Brutus, was a Roman senator and the most famous of the assassins of Julius Caesar. After being adopted by an uncle, he used the name Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, but subsequently returned to his birth name.
Brutus was close to General Julius Caesar, the leader of the Populares faction. However, Caesar's attempts to assume greater power for himself put him at greater odds with the Roman elite and members of the Senate. Brutus eventually came to oppose Caesar and fought on the side of the Optimates faction, led by Pompey, against Caesar's forces in the Civil War (49–45 BC). Pompey was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, after which Brutus surrendered to Caesar, who granted him amnesty.
However, the underlying political tensions that led to the war had not been resolved. Due to Caesar's increasingly monarchical behavior, several senators, calling themselves "Liberators", plotted to assassinate him. They recruited Brutus, who took a leading role in the assassination, which was carried out successfully on 15 March 44 BC. The Senate, at the request of the Consul Mark Antony, granted amnesty to the assassins. However, a popular uprising forced Brutus and his brother-in-law, fellow assassin Gaius Cassius Longinus, to leave the City of Rome. In 43 BC Octavian, Caesar's adoptive son, became consul and immediately after taking office passed a resolution declaring Brutus and the other conspirators murderers. This led to a second civil war, in which Antony and Octavian fought the Liberatores led by Brutus and Cassius. The former decisively defeated the outnumbered armies of Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi in October 42 BC. After the battle, Brutus committed suicide. His name has since become synonymous with acts of intimate public betrayal or treason, and is perhaps only rivaled in this regard by the name of Judas.
Marcus Junius Brutus was the son of Marcus Junius Brutus and Servilia of the Servilii Caepiones. He was a member of the gens Junia, one of the most celebrated families in Rome. His ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, led the revolt that overthrew the Etruscan King of Rome, and was dubbed "the founder of the Roman Republic" by the Romans. Marcus Brutus belonged to the last generation of Roman "nobiles" who came of age and began a political career before the collapse of the Republic. His peers included Mark Antony, Publius Licinius Crassus, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Brutus' father was killed by Pompey the Great in dubious circumstances after he had taken part in the rebellion of Lepidus; his mother was the half-sister of Cato the Younger, and later Julius Caesar's mistress. Some sources refer to the possibility of Caesar being his real father, despite Caesar being only fifteen years old when Brutus was born.
Brutus' uncle, Quintus Servilius Caepio, adopted him posthumously in about 59 BC, and Brutus was known officially for a time as Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus before he reverted to using his birth-name. Following Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Brutus revived his adoptive name in order to illustrate his links to another famous tyrannicide, Gaius Servilius Ahala, from whom he was descended.
Brutus held his uncle in high regard and his political career started when he became an assistant to Cato, during his governorship of Cyprus. During this time, he enriched himself by lending money at high rates of interest. Brutus was also active in the province of Cilicia, in the year before Marcus Tullius Cicero was proconsul there; Cicero documents how Brutus profited from money lending to the provincials in his "Letters". He returned to Rome a rich man, where he married Claudia Pulchra. From his first appearance in the Senate, Brutus aligned with the Optimates (the conservative faction) against the First Triumvirate of Marcus Licinius Crassus, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, and Gaius Julius Caesar.
When Caesar's Civil War broke out in 49 BC between Pompey and Caesar, Brutus followed his old enemy and the present leader of the Optimates, Pompey. When the Battle of Pharsalus began on August 9, Caesar ordered his officers to take Brutus prisoner if he gave himself up voluntarily, but to leave him alone and do him no harm if he persisted in fighting against capture. Caesar's concern, given that he and Brutus' mother Servilia had been lovers in their youth, was that Brutus might be his biological son. Indeed, he and Brutus enjoyed a close relationship at this time. Even when Brutus joined Pompey the Great to fight with Caesar and his soldiers, Caesar's main focus was Pompey, but he demanded Brutus be captured alive.
After the defeat of the Optimates at the Battle of Pharsalus, Brutus surrendered and wrote to Caesar with apologies. Caesar immediately forgave him. Caesar then accepted him into his inner circle and made him governor of Gaul when he left for Africa in pursuit of Cato and Metellus Scipio. In 45 BC, Caesar nominated Brutus to serve as urban praetor for the following year.
Also, in June 45 BC, Brutus divorced his wife and married his first cousin, Porcia Catonis, Cato's daughter. According to Cicero the marriage caused a semi-scandal as Brutus failed to state a valid reason for his divorce from Claudia other than he wished to marry Porcia. The marriage also caused a rift between Brutus and his mother, who was resentful of the affection Brutus had for Porcia.
Around this time many senators began to fear Caesar's growing power, following his appointment as dictator in perpetuity. The other senators persuaded Brutus to join the conspiracy against Caesar. Eventually, Brutus decided to move against Caesar after Caesar's alleged king-like behavior prompted him to take action. His wife was the only woman privy to the plot.
The conspirators planned to carry out their plot on the Ides of March (March 15) that same year. On that day, Caesar was delayed going to the Senate because his wife Calpurnia tried to convince him not to go. The conspirators feared the plot had been found out. Brutus persisted, however, waiting for Caesar at the Senate, and allegedly still chose to remain even when a messenger brought him news that would otherwise have caused him to leave.
When Caesar finally did come to the Senate, he was distracted by Tillius Cimber, who presented Caesar with a request to free his exiled brother. Caesar dismissed him, and Cimber subsequently grabbed his toga. "Why this violence?" Caesar asked. At this, the conspirators attacked Caesar. Publius Servilius Casca Longus was allegedly the first to attack him, with a stab to the shoulder, which Caesar blocked. However, upon seeing Brutus was with the conspirators, Caesar covered his face with his toga and resigned himself to his fate. The conspirators attacked in such numbers that they even wounded one another. Brutus is said to have been wounded in the hand and in the legs.
After the assassination, the Senate passed an amnesty on the assassins. This amnesty was proposed by Caesar's friend and co-consul Mark Antony. Nonetheless, uproar among the population against the assassins caused Brutus and the conspirators to leave Rome. Brutus settled in Crete from 44 to 42 BC.
In 43 BC, after Octavian received his consulship from the Roman Senate, one of his first actions was to have the people who had assassinated Julius Caesar declared murderers and enemies of the state. Cicero, angry at Octavian, wrote a letter to Brutus explaining that the forces of Octavian and Mark Antony were divided. Antony had laid siege to the province of Gaul, where he wanted a governorship. In response to this siege, Octavian rallied his troops and fought a series of battles, culminating in the Battle of Mutina, in which Antony was defeated.
Upon hearing that neither Mark Antony nor Octavian had an army large enough to defend Rome, Brutus rallied his troops, which totalled about 17 legions. When Octavian heard that Brutus was on his way to Rome, he made peace with Antony. Their armies, which together totalled about 19 legions, marched to meet Brutus and his ally, fellow assassin Gaius Cassius Longinus, thus beginning the Liberators' civil war. The two sides met in two engagements known as the Battle of Philippi. The first was fought on October 3, 42 BC, in which Brutus defeated Octavian's forces, although Cassius was defeated by Antony's forces, and subsequently committed suicide. The second engagement was fought on October 23, and ended in Brutus' defeat.
After the defeat, he fled into the nearby hills with only about four legions. Knowing his army had been defeated and that he would be captured, Brutus committed suicide by running into his own sword being held by two of his own men. Among his last words were, according to Plutarch, "By all means must we fly; not with our feet, however, but with our hands". Brutus also uttered the well-known verse calling down a curse upon Antony (Plutarch repeats this from the memoirs of Publius Volumnius): "Forget not, Zeus, the author of these crimes" (in the Dryden translation this passage is given as "Punish, great Jove, the author of these ills"). Plutarch wrote that, according to Volumnius, Brutus repeated two verses, but Volumnius was only able to recall the one quoted.
Mark Antony, as a show of great respect, ordered Brutus' body to be wrapped in Antony's most expensive purple mantle (this was later stolen, and Antony had the thief executed). Brutus was cremated, and his ashes were sent to his mother, Servilia. His wife Porcia was reported to have committed suicide upon hearing of her husband's death, although, according to Plutarch (Brutus 53 para 2), there is some dispute as to whether this is the case: Plutarch states that there was a letter in existence that was allegedly written by Brutus mourning the manner of her death.
The phrase "Sic semper tyrannis!" ["thus, ever (or always), to tyrants!"] is attributed to Brutus at Caesar's assassination. The phrase is also the official motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
In 1787, the Anti-Federalist Papers were written under the pseudonym "Brutus" in reference to Caesar's assassin who tried to preserve the Republic.
John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, claimed to be inspired by Brutus. Booth's father, Junius Brutus Booth, was named for Brutus, and Booth (as Mark Antony) and his brother Edwin (as Brutus) had performed in a production of "Julius Caesar" in New York City just six months before the assassination. On the night of the assassination, Booth is alleged to have shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" while leaping to the stage of Ford's Theater. Lamenting the negative reaction to his deed, Booth wrote in his journal on April 21, 1865, while on the run, "[W]ith every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for ... And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat." Booth was also known to be greatly attracted to Caesar himself, having played both Brutus and Caesar upon various stages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37325 |
Circus Maximus
The Circus Maximus (Latin for greatest or largest circus; Italian: Circo Massimo) is an ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium and mass entertainment venue located in Rome, Italy. Situated in the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills, it was the first and largest stadium in ancient Rome and its later Empire. It measured in length and in width and could accommodate over 150,000 spectators. In its fully developed form, it became the model for circuses throughout the Roman Empire. The site is now a public park.
The Circus was Rome's largest venue for "ludi," public games connected to Roman religious festivals. "Ludi" were sponsored by leading Romans or the Roman state for the benefit of the Roman people ("populus Romanus") and gods. Most were held annually or at annual intervals on the Roman calendar. Others might be given to fulfill a religious vow, such as the games in celebration of a triumph. In Roman tradition, the earliest triumphal "ludi" at the Circus were vowed by Tarquin the Proud to Jupiter in the late Regal era for his victory over Pometia.
"Ludi" ranged in duration and scope from one-day or even half-day events to spectacular multi-venue celebrations held over several days, with religious ceremonies and public feasts, horse and chariot racing, athletics, plays and recitals, beast-hunts and gladiator fights. Some included public executions. The greater "ludi" (meaning sport or game in latin) at the Circus began with a flamboyant parade "(pompa circensis)", much like the triumphal procession, which marked the purpose of the games and introduced the participants.
During Rome's Republican era, the aediles organized the games. The most costly and complex of the "ludi" offered opportunities to assess an aedile's competence, generosity, and fitness for higher office. Some Circus events, however, seem to have been relatively small and intimate affairs. In 167 BC, "flute players, scenic artists and dancers" performed on a temporary stage, probably erected between the two central seating banks. Others were enlarged at enormous expense to fit the entire space. A "venatio" held there in 169 BC, one of several in the 2nd century, employed "63 leopards and 40 bears and elephants", with spectators presumably kept safe by a substantial barrier.
As Rome's provinces expanded, existing "ludi" were embellished and new "ludi" invented by politicians who competed for divine and popular support. By the late Republic, "ludi" were held on 57 days of the year; an unknown number of these would have required full use of the Circus. On many other days, charioteers and jockeys would need to practice on its track. Otherwise, it would have made a convenient corral for the animals traded in the nearby cattle market, just outside the starting gate. Beneath the outer stands, next to the Circus' multiple entrances, were workshops and shops. When no games were being held, the Circus at the time of Catullus (mid-1st century BC) was likely "a dusty open space with shops and booths ... a colourful crowded disreputable area" frequented by "prostitutes, jugglers, fortune tellers and low-class performing artists."
Rome's emperors met the ever-burgeoning popular demand for regular "ludi" and the need for more specialised venues, as essential obligations of their office and cult. Over the several centuries of its development, the Circus Maximus became Rome's paramount specialist venue for chariot races. By the late 1st century AD, the Colosseum had been built to host most of the city's gladiator shows and smaller beast-hunts, and most track-athletes competed at the purpose-designed Stadium of Domitian, though long-distance foot races were still held at the Circus. Eventually, 135 days of the year were devoted to "ludi".
Even at the height of its development as a chariot-racing circuit, the circus remained the most suitable space in Rome for religious processions on a grand scale, and was the most popular venue for large-scale "venationes"; in the late 3rd century, the emperor Probus laid on a spectacular Circus show in which beasts were hunted through a veritable forest of trees, on a specially built stage. With the advent of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, "ludi" gradually fell out of favour. The last known beast-hunt at the Circus Maximus took place in 523, and the last known races there were held by Totila in 549.
The Circus Maximus was sited on the level ground of the Valley of Murcia "(Vallis Murcia)", between Rome's Aventine and Palatine Hills. In Rome's early days, the valley would have been rich agricultural land, prone to flooding from the river Tiber and the stream which divided the valley. The stream was probably bridged at an early date, at the two points where the track had to cross it, and the earliest races would have been held within an agricultural landscape, "with nothing more than turning posts, banks where spectators could sit, and some shrines and sacred spots".
In Livy's history of Rome, the first Etruscan king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, built raised, wooden perimeter seating at the Circus for Rome's highest echelons (the equites and patricians), probably midway along the Palatine straight, with an awning against the sun and rain. His grandson, Tarquinius Superbus, added the first seating for citizen-commoners (plebs, or plebeians), either adjacent or on the opposite, Aventine side of the track. Otherwise, the Circus was probably still little more than a trackway through surrounding farmland. By this time, it may have been drained but the wooden stands and seats would have frequently rotted and been rebuilt. The turning posts ("metae"), each made of three conical stone pillars, may have been the earliest permanent Circus structures; an open drainage canal between the posts would have served as a dividing barrier.
The games' sponsor (Latin "editor)" usually sat beside the images of attending gods, on a conspicuous, elevated stand ("pulvinar") but seats at the track's perimeter offered the best, most dramatic close-ups. In 494 BC (very early in the Republican era) the dictator Manius Valerius Maximus and his descendants were granted rights to a curule chair at the southeastern turn, an excellent viewpoint for the thrills and spills of chariot racing. In the 190s BC, stone track-side seating was built, exclusively for senators.
Permanent wooden starting stalls were built in 329 BC. They were gated, brightly painted, and staggered to equalise the distances from each start place to the central barrier. In theory, they might have accommodated up to 25 four-horse chariots (Quadrigas) abreast but when team-racing was introduced, they were widened, and their number reduced. By the late Republican or early Imperial era, there were twelve stalls. Their divisions were fronted by herms that served as stops for spring-loaded gates, so that twelve light-weight, four-horse or two-horse chariots could be simultaneously released onto the track. The stalls were allocated by lottery, and the various racing teams were identified by their colors. Typically, there were seven laps per race. From at least 174 BC, they were counted off using large sculpted eggs. In 33 BC, an additional system of large bronze dolphin-shaped lap counters was added, positioned well above the central dividing barrier "(euripus)" for maximum visibility.
Julius Caesar's development of the Circus, commencing around 50 BC, extended the seating tiers to run almost the entire circuit of the track, barring the starting gates and a processional entrance at the semi-circular end. The track measured approximately 621 m (2,037 ft) in length and 150 m (387 ft) in breadth. A canal was cut between the track perimeter and its seating to protect spectators and help drain the track. The inner third of the seating formed a trackside "cavea". Its front sections along the central straight were reserved for senators, and those immediately behind for "equites". The outer tiers, two thirds of the total, were meant for Roman plebs and non-citizens. They were timber-built, with wooden-framed service buildings, shops and entrance-ways beneath. The total number of seats is uncertain, but was probably in the order of 150,000; Pliny the Elder's estimate of 250,000 is unlikely. The wooden bleachers were damaged in a fire of 31 BC, either during or after construction.
The fire damage of 31 was probably repaired by Augustus (Caesar's successor and Rome's first emperor). He modestly claimed credit only for an obelisk and "pulvinar" at the site but both were major projects. Ever since its quarrying, long before Rome existed, the obelisk had been sacred to Egyptian Sun-gods. Augustus had it brought from Heliopolis at enormous expense, and erected midway along the dividing barrier of the Circus. It was Rome's first obelisk, an exotically sacred object and a permanent reminder of Augustus' victory over his Roman foes and their Egyptian allies in the recent civil wars. Thanks to him, Rome had secured both a lasting peace and a new Egyptian Province. The "pulvinar" was built on monumental scale, a shrine or temple ("aedes") raised high above the trackside seats. Sometimes, while games were in progress, Augustus watched from there, alongside the gods. Occasionally, his family would join him there. This is the Circus described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus as "one of the most beautiful and admirable structures in Rome", with "entrances and ascents for the spectators at every shop, so that the countless thousands of people may enter and depart without inconvenience."
The site remained prone to flooding, probably through the starting gates, until Claudius made improvements there; they probably included an extramural anti-flooding embankment. Fires in the crowded, wooden perimeter workshops and bleachers were a far greater danger. A fire of 36 AD seems to have started in a basket-maker's workshop under the stands, on the Aventine side; the emperor Tiberius compensated various small businesses there for their losses. In AD 64, during Nero's reign, fire broke out at the semi-circular end of the Circus, swept through the stands and shops, and destroyed much of the city. Games and festivals continued at the Circus, which was rebuilt over several years to the same footprint and design.
By the late 1st century AD, the central dividing barrier comprised a series of water basins, or else a single watercourse open in some places and bridged over in others. It offered opportunities for artistic embellishment and decorative swagger, and included the temples and statues of various deities, fountains, and refuges for those assistants involved in more dangerous circus activities, such as beast-hunts and the recovery of casualties during races.
In AD 81 the Senate built a triple arch honoring Titus at the semi-circular end of the Circus, to replace or augment a former processional entrance. The emperor Domitian built a new, multi-storey palace on the Palatine, connected somehow to the Circus; he likely watched the games in autocratic style, from high above and barely visible to those below. Repairs to fire damage during his reign may already have been under way before his assassination.
The risk of further fire-damage, coupled with Domitian's fate, may have prompted Trajan's decision to rebuild the Circus entirely in stone, and provide a new pulvinar in the stands where Rome's emperor could be seen and honoured as part of the Roman community, alongside their gods. Under Trajan, the Circus Maximus found its definitive form, which was unchanged thereafter save for some monumental additions by later emperors, an extensive, planned rebuilding of the starting gate area under Caracalla, and repairs and renewals to existing fabric. Some repairs were unforeseen and extensive, such as those carried out in Diocletian's reign, after the collapse of a seating section killed some 13,000 people.
The southeastern turn of the track ran between two shrines which may have predated the Circus' formal development. One, located at the outer southeast perimeter, was dedicated to the valley's eponymous goddess Murcia, an obscure deity associated with Venus, the myrtle shrub, a sacred spring, the stream that divided the valley, and the lesser peak of the Aventine Hill. The other was at the southeastern turning-post; where there was an underground shrine to Consus, a minor god of grain-stores, connected to the grain-goddess Ceres and to the underworld. According to Roman tradition, Romulus discovered this shrine shortly after the founding of Rome. He invented the Consualia festival, as a way of gathering his Sabine neighbours at a celebration that included horse-races and drinking. During these distractions, Romulus's men then abducted the Sabine daughters as brides. Thus the famous Roman myth of the Rape of the Sabine women had as its setting the Circus and the Consualia.
In this quasi-legendary era, horse or chariot races would have been held at the Circus site. The track width may have been determined by the distance between Murcia's and Consus' shrines at the southeastern end, and its length by the distance between these two shrines and Hercules' Ara Maxima, supposedly older than Rome itself and sited behind the Circus' starting place. The position of Consus' shrine at the turn of the track recalls the placing of shrines to Roman Neptune's Greek equivalent, Poseidon, in Greek hippodromes. In later developments, the altar of Consus, as one of the Circus' patron deities, was incorporated into the fabric of the south-eastern turning post. When Murcia's stream was partly built over, to form a dividing barrier (the "spina" or "euripus") between the turning posts, her shrine was either retained or rebuilt. In the Late Imperial period, both the southeastern turn and the circus itself were sometimes known as "Vallis Murcia". The symbols used to count race-laps also held religious significance; Castor and Pollux, who were born from an egg, were patrons of horses, horsemen, and the equestrian order "(equites)". Likewise, the later use of dolphin-shaped lap counters reinforced associations between the races, swiftness, and Neptune, as god of earthquakes and horses; the Romans believed dolphins to be the swiftest of all creatures. When the Romans adopted the Phrygian Great Mother as an ancestral deity, a statue of her on lion-back was erected within the circus, probably on the dividing barrier.
Sun and Moon cults were probably represented at the Circus from its earliest phases. Their importance grew with the introduction of Roman cult to Apollo, and the development of Stoic and solar monism as a theological basis for the Roman Imperial cult. In the Imperial era, the Sun-god was divine patron of the Circus and its games. His sacred obelisk towered over the arena, set in the central barrier, close to his temple and the finishing line. The Sun-god was the ultimate, victorious charioteer, driving his four-horse chariot ("quadriga") through the heavenly circuit from sunrise to sunset. His partner Luna drove her two-horse chariot ("biga"); together, they represented the predictable, orderly movement of the cosmos and the circuit of time, which found analogy in the Circus track. In Imperial cosmology, the emperor was Sol-Apollo's earthly equivalent, and Luna may have been linked to the empress. Luna's temple, built long before Apollo's, burned down in the Great Fire of 64 AD and was probably not replaced. Her cult was closely identified with that of Diana, who seems to have been represented in the processions that started Circus games, and with Sol Indiges, usually identified as her brother. After the loss of her temple, her cult may have been transferred to Sol's temple on the dividing barrier, or one beside it; both would have been open to the sky.
Temples to several deities overlooked the Circus; most are now lost. The temples to Ceres and Flora stood close together on the Aventine, more or less opposite the Circus' starting gate, which remained under Hercules' protection. Further southeast along the Aventine was a temple to Luna, the moon goddess. Aventine temples to Venus Obsequens, Mercury and Dis (or perhaps Summanus) stood on the slopes above the southeast turn. On the Palatine hill, opposite to Ceres's temple, stood the temple to Magna Mater and, more or less opposite Luna's temple, one to the sun-god Apollo.
Several festivals, some of uncertain foundation and date, were held at the Circus in historical times. The Consualia, with its semi-mythical establishment by Romulus, and the Cerealia, the major festival of Ceres, were probably older than the earliest historically attested "Roman Games" "(Ludi Romani)" held at the Circus in honour of Jupiter in 366 BC. In the early Imperial era, Ovid describes the opening of Cerealia (mid to late April) with a horse race at the Circus, followed by the nighttime release of foxes into the stadium, their tails ablaze with lighted torches. Some early connection is likely between Ceres as goddess of grain crops and Consus as a god of grain storage and patron of the Circus.
After the 6th century, the Circus fell into disuse and decay, and was quarried for building materials. The lower levels, ever prone to flooding, were gradually buried under waterlogged alluvial soil and accumulated debris, so that the original track is now buried 6 meters beneath the modern surface. In the 11th century, the Circus was "replaced by dwellings rented out by the congregation of Saint-Guy." In the 12th century, a watercourse was dug there to drain the soil, and by the 16th century the area was used as a market garden. Many of the Circus's standing structures survived these changes; in 1587, two obelisks were removed from the central barrier by Pope Sixtus V, and one of these was re-sited at the Piazza del Popolo. In 1852 a gas works was built on the site by the Anglo-Italian Gas Society. It remained in situ until 1910 when it was relocated to the edge of Rome. Mid 19th century workings at the circus site uncovered the lower parts of a seating tier and outer portico. Since then, a series of excavations has exposed further sections of the seating, curved turn and central barrier but further exploration has been limited by the scale, depth and waterlogging of the site.
The Circus site now functions as a large park area, in the centre of the city. It is often used for concerts and meetings. The Rome concert of Live 8 (July 2, 2005) was held there. The English band Genesis performed a concert before an estimated audience of 500,000 people in 2007 (this was filmed and released as When in Rome 2007). The Rolling Stones played there in front of 71,527 people on June 22, 2014 for the Italian date of their 14 On Fire tour. The Circus has also hosted victory celebrations, following the Italian World Cup 2006 victory and the A.S. Roma Serie A victory in 1983 and 2001. In May 2019, a new virtual/augmented reality experience, the "Circo Maximo Experience", opened on the site, taking visitors on a journey through the site and its history.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Thra4T80c)- AP Archive. Video of celebrations after Italy won the 2006 World Cup Finals in Germany. http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c195a43af063a416da53a7ec15430ef2. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37328 |
Aldehyde
An aldehyde is a compound containing a functional group with the structure −CHO, consisting of a carbonyl center (a carbon double-bonded to oxygen) with the carbon atom also bonded to hydrogen and to an R group, which is any generic alkyl or side chain. The group—without R—is the aldehyde group, also known as the formyl group. Aldehydes are common in organic chemistry, and many fragrances are or contain aldehydes.
Aldehydes feature an sp2-hybridized, planar carbon center that is connected by a double bond to oxygen and a single bond to hydrogen. The C–H bond is not ordinarily acidic. Because of resonance stabilization of the conjugate base, an α-hydrogen in an aldehyde (not shown in the picture above) is far more acidic, with a p"K"a near 17, compared to the acidity of a typical alkane (p"K"a about 50). This acidification is attributed to (i) the electron-withdrawing quality of the formyl center and (ii) the fact that the conjugate base, an enolate anion, delocalizes its negative charge. Related to (i), the aldehyde group is somewhat polar. The formyl proton itself does not readily undergo deprotonation. The anionic species formally derived from deprotonation of an aldehyde proton, known as an acyl anion, is highly unstable and must be kept at low temperatures. In fact, with the exception of certain hindered dialkylformamides, the synthesis of acyl anions by direct deprotonation is not a feasible route, since the deprotonated species will almost immediately add to the highly reactive carbonyl of the starting material to form an acyloin compound. For this reason, the acidity of the formyl proton is difficult to measure. In the case of HCONiPr2, the acidity of the formyl group was found to be very close to that of diisopropylamine (p"K"a ~ 36). The gas-phase acidity of formaldehyde was found to be , making it more acidic than hydrogen () and ammonia (), but less acidic than water () in the gas phase.
Aldehydes (except those without an alpha carbon, or without protons on the alpha carbon, such as formaldehyde and benzaldehyde) can exist in either the keto or the enol tautomer. Keto–enol tautomerism is catalyzed by either acid or base. Usually the enol is the minority tautomer, but it is more reactive.
At around , the formyl C–H bond is weaker than that of a typical bond between hydrogen and an sp2-hybridized carbon. Thus aldehydes are prone to undergo hydrogen-atom abstraction in the presence of free radicals, a fact accounts for the ease with which aldehydes undergo autoxidation.
The common names for aldehydes do not strictly follow official guidelines, such as those recommended by IUPAC, but these rules are useful. IUPAC prescribes the following nomenclature for aldehydes:
The word "aldehyde" was coined by Justus von Liebig as a contraction of the Latin (dehydrogenated alcohol). In the past, aldehydes were sometimes named after the corresponding alcohols, for example, "vinous aldehyde" for acetaldehyde. ("Vinous" is from Latin "wine", the traditional source of ethanol, cognate with "vinyl".)
The term "formyl group" is derived from the Latin word "ant". This word can be recognized in the simplest aldehyde, formaldehyde (structure shown at top of article), and in the simplest carboxylic acid, formic acid (structure shown at right).
Aldehydes have properties that are diverse and that depend on the remainder of the molecule. Smaller aldehydes are more soluble in water, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde completely so. The volatile aldehydes have pungent odors.
Aldehydes, particularly arylaldehydes, degrade in air via the process of autoxidation. The acyl hydroperoxide is generated, which comproportionates with the starting material to generate two equivalents of the carboxylic acid. Old bottles of benzaldehyde, a liquid, will often accumulate a crusty solid on the bottle cap or even suspended in the bulk liquid. This material is benzoic acid, which can be removed by using a base wash followed by distillation.
The two aldehydes of greatest importance in industry, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, have complicated behavior because of their tendency to oligomerize or polymerize. Formaldehyde in particular is sold as the polymer paraformaldehyde ((CH2O)"n", typically "n" = 50 to 100) as well as the trimer 1,3,5-trioxane (metaformaldehyde). In addition to the inconveniently low-boiling monomer (b.p. 21 °C), acetaldehyde is available as the trimer paraldehyde (a sedative and anticonvulsant) and tetramer metaldehyde (a slug and snail poison). In general, higher aliphatic aldehydes will accumulate a substantial amount of oligomer (mostly trimer) upon long-term storage and must be freshly distilled when a reaction calls for the monomeric starting material. They also tend to hydrate, forming the geminal diol. Formaldehyde is often sold as the aqueous solution, formalin, which is mostly 1,1-methanediol, with a small amount of methanol added as stabilizer. The oligomers/polymers and the hydrates exist in equilibrium with the parent aldehyde, and for "some" synthetic procedures, they can serve as substitutes for the anhydrous monomer.
Aldehydes are readily identified by spectroscopic methods. Using IR spectroscopy, they display a strong "ν"CO band near 1700 cm−1. In their 1H NMR spectra, the formyl hydrogen center absorbs near "δ"H 9.5 to 10, which is a distinctive part of the spectrum. This signal shows the characteristic coupling to any protons on the α carbon with a small coupling constant typically less than 3.0 Hz. The 13C NMR spectra of aldehydes and ketones gives a suppressed (weak) but distinctive signal at "δ"C 190 to 205.
Important aldehydes and related compounds. The aldehyde group (or formyl group) is colored red. From the left: (1) formaldehyde and (2) its trimer 1,3,5-trioxane, (3) acetaldehyde and (4) its enol vinyl alcohol, (5) glucose (pyranose form as α--glucopyranose), (6) the flavorant cinnamaldehyde, (7) the visual pigment retinal, and (8) the vitamin pyridoxal.
Traces of many aldehydes are found in essential oils and often contribute to their favorable odors, e.g. cinnamaldehyde, cilantro, and vanillin. Possibly because of the high reactivity of the formyl group, aldehydes are not common in several of the natural building blocks: amino acids, nucleic acids, lipids. Most sugars, however, are derivatives of aldehydes. These aldoses exist as hemiacetals, a sort of masked form of the parent aldehyde. For example, in aqueous solution only a tiny fraction of glucose exists as the aldehyde.
There are several methods for preparing aldehydes, but the dominant technology is hydroformylation. Illustrative is the generation of butyraldehyde by hydroformylation of propene:
Aldehydes are commonly generated by alcohol oxidation. In industry, formaldehyde is produced on a large scale by oxidation of methanol. Oxygen is the reagent of choice, being "green" and cheap. In the laboratory, more specialized oxidizing agents are used, but chromium(VI) reagents are popular. Oxidation can be achieved by heating the alcohol with an acidified solution of potassium dichromate. In this case, excess dichromate will further oxidize the aldehyde to a carboxylic acid, so either the aldehyde is distilled out as it forms (if volatile) or milder reagents such as PCC are used.
Oxidation of primary alcohols to form aldehydes can be achieved under milder, chromium-free conditions by employing methods or reagents such as IBX acid, Dess–Martin periodinane, Swern oxidation, TEMPO, or the Oppenauer oxidation.
Another oxidation route significant in industry is the Wacker process, whereby ethylene is oxidized to acetaldehyde in the presence of copper and palladium catalysts (acetaldehyde is also produced on a large scale by the hydration of acetylene).
On the laboratory scale, α-hydroxy acids are used as precursors to prepare aldehydes via oxidative cleavage.
Aldehydes are highly reactive and participate in many reactions. From the industrial perspective, important reactions are (a) condensations, e.g. to prepare plasticizers and polyols, and (b) reduction to produce alcohols, especially "oxo-alcohols". From the biological perspective, the key reactions involve addition of nucleophiles to the formyl carbon in the formation of imines (oxidative deamination) and hemiacetals (structures of aldose sugars).
The formyl group can be readily reduced to a primary alcohol (−CH2OH). Typically this conversion is accomplished by catalytic hydrogenation either directly or by transfer hydrogenation. Stoichiometric reductions are also popular, as can be effected with sodium borohydride.
The formyl group readily oxidizes to the corresponding carboxyl group (−COOH). The preferred oxidant in industry is oxygen or air. In the laboratory, popular oxidizing agents include potassium permanganate, nitric acid, chromium(VI) oxide, and chromic acid. The combination of manganese dioxide, cyanide, acetic acid and methanol will convert the aldehyde to a methyl ester.
Another oxidation reaction is the basis of the "silver-mirror test". In this test, an aldehyde is treated with Tollens' reagent, which is prepared by adding a drop of sodium hydroxide solution into silver nitrate solution to give a precipitate of silver(I) oxide, and then adding just enough dilute ammonia solution to redissolve the precipitate in aqueous ammonia to produce [Ag(NH3)2]+ complex. This reagent converts aldehydes to carboxylic acids without attacking carbon–carbon double bonds. The name "silver-mirror test" arises because this reaction produces a precipitate of silver, whose presence can be used to test for the presence of an aldehyde.
A further oxidation reaction involves Fehling's reagent as a test. The Cu2+ complex ions are reduced to a red-brick-coloured Cu2O precipitate.
If the aldehyde cannot form an enolate (e.g., benzaldehyde), addition of strong base induces the Cannizzaro reaction. This reaction results in disproportionation, producing a mixture of alcohol and carboxylic acid.
Nucleophiles add readily to the carbonyl group. In the product, the carbonyl carbon becomes sp3-hybridized, being bonded to the nucleophile, and the oxygen center becomes protonated:
In many cases, a water molecule is removed after the addition takes place; in this case, the reaction is classed as an addition–elimination or addition–condensation reaction. There are many variations of nucleophilic addition reactions.
In the acetalisation reaction, under acidic or basic conditions, an alcohol adds to the carbonyl group and a proton is transferred to form a hemiacetal. Under acidic conditions, the hemiacetal and the alcohol can further react to form an acetal and water. Simple hemiacetals are usually unstable, although cyclic ones such as glucose can be stable. Acetals are stable, but revert to the aldehyde in the presence of acid. Aldehydes can react with water to form hydrates, R−CH(OH)2. These diols are stable when strong electron withdrawing groups are present, as in chloral hydrate. The mechanism of formation is identical to hemiacetal formation.
In alkylimino-de-oxo-bisubstitution, a primary or secondary amine adds to the carbonyl group and a proton is transferred from the nitrogen to the oxygen atom to create a carbinolamine. In the case of a primary amine, a water molecule can be eliminated from the carbinolamine intermediate to yield an imine or its trimer, a hexahydrotriazine This reaction is catalyzed by acid. Hydroxylamine (NH2OH) can also add to the carbonyl group. After the elimination of water, this results in an oxime. An ammonia derivative of the form H2NNR2 such as hydrazine (H2NNH2) or 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine can also be the nucleophile and after the elimination of water, resulting in the formation of a hydrazone, which are usually orange crystalline solids. This reaction forms the basis of a test for aldehydes and ketones.
The cyano group in HCN can add to the carbonyl group to form cyanohydrins, R−CH(OH)CN. In this reaction the CN− ion is the nucleophile that attacks the partially positive carbon atom of the carbonyl group. The mechanism involves a pair of electrons from the carbonyl-group double bond transferring to the oxygen atom, leaving it single-bonded to carbon and giving the oxygen atom a negative charge. This intermediate ion rapidly reacts with H+, such as from the HCN molecule, to form the alcohol group of the cyanohydrin.
Organometallic compounds, such as organolithium reagents, Grignard reagents, or acetylides, undergo nucleophilic addition reactions, yielding a substituted alcohol group. Related reactions include organostannane additions, Barbier reactions, and the Nozaki–Hiyama–Kishi reaction.
In the aldol reaction, the metal enolates of ketones, esters, amides, and carboxylic acids add to aldehydes to form β-hydroxycarbonyl compounds (aldols). Acid or base-catalyzed dehydration then leads to α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds. The combination of these two steps is known as the aldol condensation.
The Prins reaction occurs when a nucleophilic alkene or alkyne reacts with an aldehyde as electrophile. The product of the Prins reaction varies with reaction conditions and substrates employed.
Aldehydes characteristically form "addition compounds" with sodium bisulfite:
This reaction is used as a test for aldehydes.
A dialdehyde is an organic chemical compound with two aldehyde groups. The nomenclature of dialdehydes have the ending "-dial" or sometimes "-dialdehyde". Short aliphatic dialdehydes are sometimes named after the diacid from which they can be derived. An example is butanedial, which is also called succinaldehyde (from succinic acid).
Some aldehydes are substrates for aldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes which metabolize aldehydes in the body. There are toxicities associated with some aldehydes that are related to neurodegenerative disease, heart disease, and some types of cancer.
Of all aldehydes, formaldehyde is produced on the largest scale, about . It is mainly used in the production of resins when combined with urea, melamine, and phenol (e.g., Bakelite). It is a precursor to methylene diphenyl diisocyanate ("MDI"), a precursor to polyurethanes. The second main aldehyde is butyraldehyde, of which about are prepared by hydroformylation. It is the principal precursor to 2-ethylhexanol, which is used as a plasticizer. Acetaldehyde once was a dominating product, but production levels have declined to less than because it mainly served as a precursor to acetic acid, which is now prepared by carbonylation of methanol. Many other aldehydes find commercial applications, often as precursors to alcohols, the so-called oxo alcohols, which are used in detergents. Some aldehydes are produced only on a small scale (less than 1000 tons per year) and are used as ingredients in flavours and perfumes such as Chanel No. 5. These include cinnamaldehyde and its derivatives, citral, and lilial. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37329 |
Josiah Willard Gibbs
Josiah Willard Gibbs (February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in transforming physical chemistry into a rigorous inductive science. Together with James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann, he created statistical mechanics (a term that he coined), explaining the laws of thermodynamics as consequences of the statistical properties of ensembles of the possible states of a physical system composed of many particles. Gibbs also worked on the application of Maxwell's equations to problems in physical optics. As a mathematician, he invented modern vector calculus (independently of the British scientist Oliver Heaviside, who carried out similar work during the same period).
In 1863, Yale awarded Gibbs the first American doctorate in engineering. After a three-year sojourn in Europe, Gibbs spent the rest of his career at Yale, where he was a professor of mathematical physics from 1871 until his death. Working in relative isolation, he became the earliest theoretical scientist in the United States to earn an international reputation and was praised by Albert Einstein as "the greatest mind in American history." In 1901, Gibbs received what was then considered the highest honour awarded by the international scientific community, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London, "for his contributions to mathematical physics."
Commentators and biographers have remarked on the contrast between Gibbs's quiet, solitary life in turn of the century New England and the great international impact of his ideas. Though his work was almost entirely theoretical, the practical value of Gibbs's contributions became evident with the development of industrial chemistry during the first half of the 20th century. According to Robert A. Millikan, in pure science, Gibbs "did for statistical mechanics and thermodynamics what Laplace did for celestial mechanics and Maxwell did for electrodynamics, namely, made his field a well-nigh finished theoretical structure."
Gibbs was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He belonged to an old Yankee family that had produced distinguished American clergymen and academics since the 17th century. He was the fourth of five children and the only son of Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr., and his wife Mary Anna, "née" Van Cleve. On his father's side, he was descended from Samuel Willard, who served as acting President of Harvard College from 1701 to 1707. On his mother's side, one of his ancestors was the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson, the first president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). Gibbs's given name, which he shared with his father and several other members of his extended family, derived from his ancestor Josiah Willard, who had been Secretary of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the 18th century.
The elder Gibbs was generally known to his family and colleagues as "Josiah", while the son was called "Willard". Josiah Gibbs was a linguist and theologian who served as professor of sacred literature at Yale Divinity School from 1824 until his death in 1861. He is chiefly remembered today as the abolitionist who found an interpreter for the African passengers of the ship "Amistad", allowing them to testify during the trial that followed their rebellion against being sold as slaves.
Willard Gibbs was educated at the Hopkins School and entered Yale College in 1854 at the age of 15. At Yale, Gibbs received prizes for excellence in mathematics and Latin, and he graduated in 1858, near the top of his class. He remained at Yale as a graduate student at the Sheffield Scientific School. At age 19, soon after his graduation from college, Gibbs was inducted into the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, a scholarly institution composed primarily of members of the Yale faculty.
Relatively few documents from the period survive and it is difficult to reconstruct the details of Gibbs's early career with precision. In the opinion of biographers, Gibbs's principal mentor and champion, both at Yale and in the Connecticut Academy, was probably the astronomer and mathematician Hubert Anson Newton, a leading authority on meteors, who remained Gibbs's lifelong friend and confidant. After the death of his father in 1861, Gibbs inherited enough money to make him financially independent.
Recurrent pulmonary trouble ailed the young Gibbs and his physicians were concerned that he might be susceptible to tuberculosis, which had killed his mother. He also suffered from astigmatism, whose treatment was then still largely unfamiliar to oculists, so that Gibbs had to diagnose himself and grind his own lenses. Though in later years he used glasses only for reading or other close work, Gibbs's delicate health and imperfect eyesight probably explain why he did not volunteer to fight in the Civil War of 1861–65. He was not conscripted and he remained at Yale for the duration of the war.
In 1863, Gibbs received the first Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in engineering granted in the US, for a thesis entitled "On the Form of the Teeth of Wheels in Spur Gearing", in which he used geometrical techniques to investigate the optimum design for gears. In 1861, Yale had become the first US university to offer a Ph.D. degree and Gibbs's was only the fifth Ph.D. granted in the US in any subject.
After graduation, Gibbs was appointed as tutor at the college for a term of three years. During the first two years, he taught Latin and during the third year, he taught "natural philosophy" (i.e., physics). In 1866, he patented a design for a railway brake and read a paper before the Connecticut Academy, entitled "The Proper Magnitude of the Units of Length", in which he proposed a scheme for rationalizing the system of units of measurement used in mechanics.
After his term as tutor ended, Gibbs traveled to Europe with his sisters. They spent the winter of 1866–67 in Paris, where Gibbs attended lectures at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, given by such distinguished mathematical scientists as Joseph Liouville and Michel Chasles. Having undertaken a punishing regime of study, Gibbs caught a serious cold and a doctor, fearing tuberculosis, advised him to rest on the Riviera, where he and his sisters spent several months and where he made a full recovery.
Moving to Berlin, Gibbs attended the lectures taught by mathematicians Karl Weierstrass and Leopold Kronecker, as well as by chemist Heinrich Gustav Magnus. In August 1867, Gibbs's sister Julia was married in Berlin to Addison Van Name, who had been Gibbs's classmate at Yale. The newly married couple returned to New Haven, leaving Gibbs and his sister Anna in Germany. In Heidelberg, Gibbs was exposed to the work of physicists Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz, and chemist Robert Bunsen. At the time, German academics were the leading authorities in the natural sciences, especially chemistry and thermodynamics.
Gibbs returned to Yale in June 1869 and briefly taught French to engineering students. It was probably also around this time that he worked on a new design for a steam-engine governor, his last significant investigation in mechanical engineering. In 1871, he was appointed Professor of Mathematical Physics at Yale, the first such professorship in the United States. Gibbs, who had independent means and had yet to publish anything, was assigned to teach graduate students exclusively and was hired without salary.
Gibbs published his first work in 1873. His papers on the geometric representation of thermodynamic quantities appeared in the "Transactions of the Connecticut Academy". These papers introduced the use of different type phase diagrams, which were his favorite aids to the imagination process when doing research, rather than the mechanical models, such as the ones that Maxwell used in constructing his electromagnetic theory, which might not completely represent their corresponding phenomena. Although the journal had few readers capable of understanding Gibbs's work, he shared reprints with correspondents in Europe and received an enthusiastic response from James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge. Maxwell even made, with his own hands, a clay model illustrating Gibbs's construct. He then produced two plaster casts of his model and mailed one to Gibbs. That cast is on display at the Yale physics department.
Maxwell included a chapter on Gibbs's work in the next edition of his "Theory of Heat", published in 1875. He explained the usefulness of Gibbs's graphical methods in a lecture to the Chemical Society of London and even referred to it in the article on "Diagrams" that he wrote for the "Encyclopædia Britannica". Prospects of collaboration between him and Gibbs were cut short by Maxwell's early death in 1879, aged 48. The joke later circulated in New Haven that "only one man lived who could understand Gibbs's papers. That was Maxwell, and now he is dead."
Gibbs then extended his thermodynamic analysis to multi-phase chemical systems (i.e., to systems composed of more than one form of matter) and considered a variety of concrete applications. He described that research in a monograph titled "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances", published by the Connecticut Academy in two parts that appeared respectively in 1875 and 1878. That work, which covers about three hundred pages and contains exactly seven hundred numbered mathematical equations, begins with a quotation from Rudolf Clausius that expresses what would later be called the first and second laws of thermodynamics: "The energy of the world is constant. The entropy of the world tends towards a maximum."
Gibbs's monograph rigorously and ingeniously applied his thermodynamic techniques to the interpretation of physico-chemical phenomena, explaining and relating what had previously been a mass of isolated facts and observations. The work has been described as "the "Principia" of thermodynamics" and as a work of "practically unlimited scope". It solidly laid the foundation for physical Chemistry. Wilhelm Ostwald, who translated Gibbs's monograph into German, referred to Gibbs as the "founder of chemical energetics". According to modern commentators,
Gibbs continued to work without pay until 1880, when the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland offered him a position paying $3,000 per year. In response, Yale offered him an annual salary of $2,000, which he was content to accept.
From 1880 to 1884, Gibbs worked on developing the exterior algebra of Hermann Grassmann into a vector calculus well-suited to the needs of physicists. With this object in mind, Gibbs distinguished between the dot and cross products of two vectors and introduced the concept of dyadics. Similar work was carried out independently, and at around the same time, by the British mathematical physicist and engineer Oliver Heaviside. Gibbs sought to convince other physicists of the convenience of the vectorial approach over the quaternionic calculus of William Rowan Hamilton, which was then widely used by British scientists. This led him, in the early 1890s, to a controversy with Peter Guthrie Tait and others in the pages of "Nature".
Gibbs's lecture notes on vector calculus were privately printed in 1881 and 1884 for the use of his students, and were later adapted by Edwin Bidwell Wilson into a textbook, "Vector Analysis", published in 1901. That book helped to popularize the "del" notation that is widely used today in electrodynamics and fluid mechanics. In other mathematical work, he re-discovered the "Gibbs phenomenon" in the theory of Fourier series (which, unbeknownst to him and to later scholars, had been described fifty years before by an obscure English mathematician, Henry Wilbraham).
From 1882 to 1889, Gibbs wrote five papers on physical optics, in which he investigated birefringence and other optical phenomena and defended Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light against the mechanical theories of Lord Kelvin and others. In his work on optics, just as much as in his work on thermodynamics, Gibbs deliberately avoided speculating about the microscopic structure of matter and purposefully confined his research problems to those that can be solved from broad general principles and experimentally confirmed facts. The methods that he used were highly original and the obtained results showed decisively the correctness of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory.
Gibbs coined the term "statistical mechanics" and introduced key concepts in the corresponding mathematical description of physical systems, including the notions of chemical potential (1876), and statistical ensemble (1902). Gibbs's derivation of the laws of thermodynamics from the statistical properties of systems consisting of many particles was presented in his highly influential textbook "Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics", published in 1902, a year before his death.
Gibbs's retiring personality and intense focus on his work limited his accessibility to students. His principal protégé was Edwin Bidwell Wilson, who nonetheless explained that "except in the classroom I saw very little of Gibbs. He had a way, toward the end of the afternoon, of taking a stroll about the streets between his study in the old Sloane Laboratory and his home—a little exercise between work and dinner—and one might occasionally come across him at that time." Gibbs did supervise the doctoral thesis on mathematical economics written by Irving Fisher in 1891. After Gibbs's death, Fisher financed the publication of his "Collected Works". Another distinguished student was Lee De Forest, later a pioneer of radio technology.
Gibbs died in New Haven on April 28, 1903, at the age of 64, the victim of an acute intestinal obstruction. A funeral was conducted two days later at his home on 121 High Street, and his body was buried in the nearby Grove Street Cemetery. In May, Yale organized a memorial meeting at the Sloane Laboratory. The eminent British physicist J. J. Thomson was in attendance and delivered a brief address.
Gibbs never married, living all his life in his childhood home with his sister Julia and her husband Addison Van Name, who was the Yale librarian. Except for his customary summer vacations in the Adirondacks (at Keene Valley, New York) and later at the White Mountains (in Intervale, New Hampshire), his sojourn in Europe in 1866–69 was almost the only time that Gibbs spent outside New Haven. He joined Yale's College Church (a Congregational church) at the end of his freshman year and remained a regular attendant for the rest of his life. Gibbs generally voted for the Republican candidate in presidential elections but, like other "Mugwumps", his concern over the growing corruption associated with machine politics led him to support Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, in the election of 1884. Little else is known of his religious or political views, which he mostly kept to himself.
Gibbs did not produce a substantial personal correspondence and many of his letters were later lost or destroyed. Beyond the technical writings concerning his research, he published only two other pieces: a brief obituary for Rudolf Clausius, one of the founders of the mathematical theory of thermodynamics, and a longer biographical memoir of his mentor at Yale, H. A. Newton. In Edward Bidwell Wilson's view,
According to Lynde Wheeler, who had been Gibbs's student at Yale, in his later years Gibbs
He was a careful investor and financial manager, and at his death in 1903 his estate was valued at $100,000 (roughly $ today). For many years, he served as trustee, secretary, and treasurer of his alma mater, the Hopkins School. US President Chester A. Arthur appointed him as one of the commissioners to the National Conference of Electricians, which convened in Philadelphia in September 1884, and Gibbs presided over one of its sessions. A keen and skilled horseman, Gibbs was seen habitually in New Haven driving his sister's carriage. In an obituary published in the "American Journal of Science", Gibbs's former student Henry A. Bumstead referred to Gibbs's personal character:
Gibbs's papers from the 1870s introduced the idea of expressing the internal energy "U" of a system in terms of the entropy "S", in addition to the usual state-variables of volume "V", pressure "p", and temperature "T". He also introduced the concept of the chemical potential formula_1 of a given chemical species, defined to be the rate of the increase in "U" associated with the increase in the number "N" of molecules of that species (at constant entropy and volume). Thus, it was Gibbs who first combined the first and second laws of thermodynamics by expressing the infinitesimal change in the internal energy, d"U", of a closed system in the form:
formula_2
where "T" is the absolute temperature, "p" is the pressure, d"S" is an infinitesimal change in entropy and d"V" is an infinitesimal change of volume. The last term is the sum, over all the chemical species in a chemical reaction, of the chemical potential, "μ"i, of the "i"th species, multiplied by the infinitesimal change in the number of moles, d"N"i of that species. By taking the Legendre transform of this expression, he defined the concepts of enthalpy, "H" and Gibbs free energy, "G".
This compares to the expression for Helmholtz free energy, "A".
When the Gibbs free energy for a chemical reaction is negative the reaction will proceed spontaneously. When a chemical system is at equilibrium, the change in Gibbs free energy is zero. An equilibrium constant is simply related to the free energy change when the reactants are in their standard states.
Chemical potential is usually defined as partial molar Gibbs free energy.
Gibbs also obtained what later came to be known as the "Gibbs–Duhem equation".
In an electrochemical reaction characterized by an electromotive force ℰ and an amount of transferred charge Q, Gibbs' starting equation becomes formula_7.
The publication of the paper "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances" (1874–78) is now regarded as a landmark in the development of chemistry. In it, Gibbs developed a rigorous mathematical theory for various transport phenomena, including adsorption, electrochemistry, and the Marangoni effect in fluid mixtures. He also formulated the phase rule
formula_8
for the number "F" of variables that may be independently controlled in an equilibrium mixture of "C" components existing in "P" phases. Phase rule is very useful in diverse areas, such as metallurgy, mineralogy, and petrology. It can also be applied to various research problems in physical chemistry.
Together with James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann, Gibbs founded "statistical mechanics", a term that he coined to identify the branch of theoretical physics that accounts for the observed thermodynamic properties of systems in terms of the statistics of ensembles, a collection of many possible states of a system, each assigned a certain probability. He introduced the concept of "phase of a mechanical system". He used the concept to define the microcanonical, canonical, and grand canonical ensembles; all related to the Gibbs measure, thus obtaining a more general formulation of the statistical properties of many-particle systems than Maxwell and Boltzmann had achieved before him.
According to Henri Poincaré, writing in 1904, even though Maxwell and Boltzmann had previously explained the irreversibility of macroscopic physical processes in probabilistic terms, "the one who has seen it most clearly, in a book too little read because it is a little difficult to read, is Gibbs, in his "Elementary Principles of Statistical Mechanics"." Gibbs's analysis of irreversibility, and his formulation of Boltzmann's H-theorem and of the ergodic hypothesis, were major influences on the mathematical physics of the 20th century.
Gibbs was well aware that the application of the equipartition theorem to large systems of classical particles failed to explain the measurements of the specific heats of both solids and gases, and he argued that this was evidence of the danger of basing thermodynamics on "hypotheses about the constitution of matter". Gibbs's own framework for statistical mechanics, based on ensembles of macroscopically indistinguishable microstates, could be carried over almost intact after the discovery that the microscopic laws of nature obey quantum rules, rather than the classical laws known to Gibbs and to his contemporaries. His resolution of the so-called "Gibbs paradox", about the entropy of the mixing of gases, is now often cited as a prefiguration of the indistinguishability of particles required by quantum physics.
British scientists, including Maxwell, had relied on Hamilton's quaternions in order to express the dynamics of physical quantities, like the electric and magnetic fields, having both a magnitude and a direction in three-dimensional space. Following W. K. Clifford in his Elements of Dynamic (1888), Gibbs noted that the product of quaternions could be separated into two parts: a one-dimensional (scalar) quantity and a three-dimensional vector, so that the use of quaternions involved mathematical complications and redundancies that could be avoided in the interest of simplicity and to facilitate teaching. In his Yale classroom notes he defined distinct dot and cross products for pairs of vectors and introduced the now common notation for them. Through the 1901 textbook Vector Analysis prepared by E. B. Wilson from Gibbs notes, he was largely responsible for the development of the vector calculus techniques still used today in electrodynamics and fluid mechanics.
While he was working on vector analysis in the late 1870s, Gibbs discovered that his approach was similar to the one that Grassmann had taken in his "multiple algebra". Gibbs then sought to publicize Grassmann's work, stressing that it was both more general and historically prior to Hamilton's quaternionic algebra. To establish priority of Grassmann's ideas, Gibbs convinced Grassmann's heirs to seek the publication in Germany of the essay "Theorie der Ebbe und Flut" on tides that Grassmann had submitted in 1840 to the faculty at the University of Berlin, in which he had first introduced the notion of what would later be called a vector space (linear space).
As Gibbs had advocated in the 1880s and 1890s, quaternions were eventually all but abandoned by physicists in favor of the vectorial approach developed by him and, independently, by Oliver Heaviside. Gibbs applied his vector methods to the determination of planetary and comet orbits. He also developed the concept of mutually reciprocal triads of vectors that later proved to be of importance in crystallography.
Though Gibbs's research on physical optics is less well known today than his other work, it made a significant contribution to classical electromagnetism by applying Maxwell's equations to the theory of optical processes such as birefringence, dispersion, and optical activity. In that work, Gibbs showed that those processes could be accounted for by Maxwell's equations without any special assumptions about the microscopic structure of matter or about the nature of the medium in which electromagnetic waves were supposed to propagate (the so-called luminiferous ether). Gibbs also stressed that the absence of a longitudinal electromagnetic wave, which is needed to account for the observed properties of light, is automatically guaranteed by Maxwell's equations (by virtue of what is now called their "gauge invariance"), whereas in mechanical theories of light, such as Lord Kelvin's, it must be imposed as an "ad hoc" condition on the properties of the aether.
In his last paper on physical optics, Gibbs concluded that
Shortly afterwards, the electromagnetic nature of light was demonstrated by the experiments of Heinrich Hertz in Germany.
Gibbs worked at a time when there was little tradition of rigorous theoretical science in the United States. His research was not easily understandable to his students or his colleagues, and he made no effort to popularize his ideas or to simplify their exposition to make them more accessible. His seminal work on thermodynamics was published mostly in the "Transactions of the Connecticut Academy", a journal edited by his librarian brother-in-law, which was little read in the US and even less so in Europe. When Gibbs submitted his long paper on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances to the academy, both Elias Loomis and H. A. Newton protested that they did not understand Gibbs's work at all, but they helped to raise the money needed to pay for the typesetting of the many mathematical symbols in the paper. Several Yale faculty members, as well as business and professional men in New Haven, contributed funds for that purpose.
Even though it had been immediately embraced by Maxwell, Gibbs's graphical formulation of the laws of thermodynamics only came into widespread use in the mid 20th century, with the work of László Tisza and Herbert Callen. According to James Gerald Crowther,
On the other hand, Gibbs did receive the major honors then possible for an academic scientist in the US. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1879 and received the 1880 Rumford Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his work on chemical thermodynamics. He was also awarded honorary doctorates by Princeton University and Williams College.
In Europe, Gibbs was inducted as honorary member of the London Mathematical Society in 1892 and elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1897. He was elected as corresponding member of the Prussian and French Academies of Science and received honorary doctorates from the universities of Dublin, Erlangen, and Christiania (now Oslo). The Royal Society further honored Gibbs in 1901 with the Copley Medal, then regarded as the highest international award in the natural sciences, noting that he had been "the first to apply the second law of thermodynamics to the exhaustive discussion of the relation between chemical, electrical and thermal energy and capacity for external work." Gibbs, who remained in New Haven, was represented at the award ceremony by Commander Richardson Clover, the US naval attaché in London.
In his autobiography, mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota tells of casually browsing the mathematical stacks of Sterling Library and stumbling on a handwritten mailing list, attached to some of Gibbs's course notes, which listed over two hundred notable scientists of his day, including Poincaré, Boltzmann, David Hilbert, and Ernst Mach. From this, Rota concluded that Gibbs's work was better known among the scientific elite of his day than the published material suggests. Lynde Wheeler reproduces that mailing list in an appendix to his biography of Gibbs. That Gibbs succeeded in interesting his European correspondents in his work is demonstrated by the fact that his monograph "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances" was translated into German (then the leading language for chemistry) by Wilhelm Ostwald in 1892 and into French by Henri Louis Le Châtelier in 1899.
Gibbs's most immediate and obvious influence was on physical chemistry and statistical mechanics, two disciplines which he greatly helped to found. During Gibbs's lifetime, his phase rule was experimentally validated by Dutch chemist H. W. Bakhuis Roozeboom, who showed how to apply it in a variety of situations, thereby assuring it of widespread use. In industrial chemistry, Gibbs's thermodynamics found many applications during the early 20th century, from electrochemistry to the development of the Haber process for the synthesis of ammonia.
When Dutch physicist J. D. van der Waals received the 1910 Nobel Prize "for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids" he acknowledged the great influence of Gibbs's work on that subject. Max Planck received the 1918 Nobel Prize for his work on quantum mechanics, particularly his 1900 paper on Planck's law for quantized black-body radiation. That work was based largely on the thermodynamics of Kirchhoff, Boltzmann, and Gibbs. Planck declared that Gibbs's name "not only in America but in the whole world will ever be reckoned among the most renowned theoretical physicists of all times."
The first half of the 20th century saw the publication of two influential textbooks that soon came to be regarded as founding documents of chemical thermodynamics, both of which used and extended Gibbs's work in that field: these were "Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Processes" (1923), by Gilbert N. Lewis and Merle Randall, and "Modern Thermodynamics by the Methods of Willard Gibbs" (1933), by Edward A. Guggenheim.
Gibbs's work on statistical ensembles, as presented in his 1902 textbook, has had a great impact in both theoretical physics and in pure mathematics. According to mathematical physicist Arthur Wightman,
Initially unaware of Gibbs's contributions in that field, Albert Einstein wrote three papers on statistical mechanics, published between 1902 and 1904. After reading Gibbs's textbook (which was translated into German by Ernst Zermelo in 1905), Einstein declared that Gibbs's treatment was superior to his own and explained that he would not have written those papers if he had known Gibbs's work.
Gibbs's early papers on the use of graphical methods in thermodynamics reflect a powerfully original understanding of what mathematicians would later call "convex analysis", including ideas that, according to Barry Simon, "lay dormant for about seventy-five years". Important mathematical concepts based on Gibbs's work on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics include the Gibbs lemma in game theory, the Gibbs inequality in information theory, as well as Gibbs sampling in computational statistics.
The development of vector calculus was Gibbs's other great contribution to mathematics. The publication in 1901 of E. B. Wilson's textbook "Vector Analysis", based on Gibbs's lectures at Yale, did much to propagate the use of vectorial methods and notation in both mathematics and theoretical physics, definitively displacing the quaternions that had until then been dominant in the scientific literature.
At Yale, Gibbs was also mentor to Lee De Forest, who went on to invent the triode amplifier and has been called the "father of radio". De Forest credited Gibbs's influence for the realization "that the leaders in electrical development would be those who pursued the higher theory of waves and oscillations and the transmission by these means of intelligence and power." Another student of Gibbs who played a significant role in the development of radio technology was Lynde Wheeler.
Gibbs also had an indirect influence on mathematical economics. He supervised the thesis of Irving Fisher, who received the first Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1891. In that work, published in 1892 as "Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices", Fisher drew a direct analogy between Gibbsian equilibrium in physical and chemical systems, and the general equilibrium of markets, and he used Gibbs's vectorial notation. Gibbs's protegé Edwin Bidwell Wilson became, in turn, a mentor to leading American economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson. In 1947, Samuelson published "Foundations of Economic Analysis", based on his doctoral dissertation, in which he used as epigraph a remark attributed to Gibbs: "Mathematics is a language." Samuelson later explained that in his understanding of prices his "debts were not primarily to Pareto or Slutsky, but to the great thermodynamicist, Willard Gibbs of Yale."
Mathematician Norbert Wiener cited Gibbs's use of probability in the formulation of statistical mechanics as "the first great revolution of twentieth century physics" and as a major influence on his conception of cybernetics. Wiener explained in the preface to his book "The Human Use of Human Beings" that it was "devoted to the impact of the Gibbsian point of view on modern life, both through the substantive changes it has made to working science, and through the changes it has made indirectly in our attitude to life in general."
When the German physical chemist Walther Nernst visited Yale in 1906 to give the Silliman lecture, he was surprised to find no tangible memorial for Gibbs. Nernst donated his $500 lecture fee to the university to help pay for a suitable monument. This was finally unveiled in 1912, in the form of a bronze bas-relief by sculptor Lee Lawrie, installed in the Sloane Physics Laboratory. In 1910, the American Chemical Society established the Willard Gibbs Award for eminent work in pure or applied chemistry. In 1923, the American Mathematical Society endowed the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship, "to show the public some idea of the aspects of mathematics and its applications".
In 1945, Yale University created the J. Willard Gibbs Professorship in Theoretical Chemistry, held until 1973 by Lars Onsager. Onsager, who much like Gibbs, focused on applying new mathematical ideas to problems in physical chemistry, won the 1968 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In addition to establishing the Josiah Willard Gibbs Laboratories and the J. Willard Gibbs Assistant Professorship in Mathematics, Yale has also hosted two symposia dedicated to Gibbs's life and work, one in 1989 and another on the centenary of his death, in 2003. Rutgers University endowed a J. Willard Gibbs Professorship of Thermomechanics, held as of 2014 by Bernard Coleman.
Gibbs was elected in 1950 to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. The oceanographic research ship USNS "Josiah Willard Gibbs" (T-AGOR-1) was in service with the United States Navy from 1958 to 1971. Gibbs crater, near the eastern limb of the Moon, was named in the scientist's honor in 1964.
Edward Guggenheim introduced the symbol "G" for the Gibbs free energy in 1933, and this was used also by Dirk ter Haar in 1966. This notation is now universal and is recommended by the IUPAC. In 1960, William Giauque and others suggested the name "gibbs" (abbreviated gbs.) for the unit of entropy calorie per kelvin, but this usage did not become common, and the corresponding SI unit joule per kelvin carries no special name.
In 1954, a year before his death, Albert Einstein was asked by an interviewer who were the greatest thinkers that he had known. Einstein replied: "Lorentz", adding "I never met Willard Gibbs; perhaps, had I done so, I might have placed him beside Lorentz."
In 1909, the American historian and novelist Henry Adams finished an essay entitled "The Rule of Phase Applied to History", in which he sought to apply Gibbs's phase rule and other thermodynamic concepts to a general theory of human history. William James, Henry Bumstead, and others criticized both Adams's tenuous grasp of the scientific concepts that he invoked, as well as the arbitrariness of his application of those concepts as metaphors for the evolution of human thought and society. The essay remained unpublished until it appeared posthumously in 1919, in "The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma", edited by Henry Adams's younger brother Brooks.
In the 1930s, feminist poet Muriel Rukeyser became fascinated by Willard Gibbs and wrote a long poem about his life and work ("Gibbs", included in the collection "A Turning Wind", published in 1939), as well as a book-length biography ("Willard Gibbs", 1942). According to Rukeyser:
In 1946, "Fortune" magazine illustrated a cover story on "Fundamental Science" with a representation of the thermodynamic surface that Maxwell had built based on Gibbs's proposal. Rukeyser called this surface a "statue of water" and the magazine saw in it "the abstract creation of a great American scientist that lends itself to the symbolism of contemporary art forms." The artwork by Arthur Lidov also included Gibbs's mathematical expression of the phase rule for heterogeneous mixtures, as well as a radar screen, an oscilloscope waveform, Newton's apple, and a small rendition of a three-dimensional phase diagram.
Gibbs's nephew, Ralph Gibbs Van Name, a professor of physical chemistry at Yale, was unhappy with Rukeyser's biography, in part because of her lack of scientific training. Van Name had withheld the family papers from her and, after her book was published in 1942 to positive literary but mixed scientific reviews, he tried to encourage Gibbs's former students to produce a more technically oriented biography. Rukeyser's approach to Gibbs was also sharply criticized by Gibbs's former student and protégé Edwin Wilson. With Van Name's and Wilson's encouragement, physicist Lynde Wheeler published a new biography of Gibbs in 1951.
Both Gibbs and Rukeyser's biography of him figure prominently in the poetry collection "True North" (1997) by Stephanie Strickland. In fiction, Gibbs appears as the mentor to character Kit Traverse in Thomas Pynchon's novel "Against the Day" (2006). That novel also prominently discusses the birefringence of Iceland spar, an optical phenomenon that Gibbs investigated.
In 2005, the United States Postal Service issued the "American Scientists" commemorative postage stamp series designed by artist Victor Stabin, depicting Gibbs, John von Neumann, Barbara McClintock, and Richard Feynman. The first day of issue ceremony for the series was held on May 4 at Yale University's Luce Hall and was attended by John Marburger, scientific advisor to the president of the United States, Rick Levin, president of Yale, and family members of the scientists honored, including physician John W. Gibbs, a distant cousin of Willard Gibbs.
Kenneth R. Jolls, a professor of chemical engineering at Iowa State University and an expert on graphical methods in thermodynamics, consulted on the design of the stamp honoring Gibbs. The stamp identifies Gibbs as a "thermodynamicist" and features a diagram from the 4th edition of Maxwell's "Theory of Heat", published in 1875, which illustrates Gibbs's thermodynamic surface for water. Microprinting on the collar of Gibbs's portrait depicts his original mathematical equation for the change in the energy of a substance in terms of its entropy and the other state variables.
Gibbs's other papers are included in both: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37332 |
Drought
A drought or drouth is an event of prolonged shortages in the water supply, whether atmospheric (below-average precipitation), surface water or ground water. A drought can last for months or years, or may be declared after as few as 15 days. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region and harm to the local economy. Annual dry seasons in the tropics significantly increase the chances of a drought developing and subsequent bush fires. Periods of heat can significantly worsen drought conditions by hastening evaporation of water vapour.
Drought is a recurring feature of the climate in most parts of the world.
Many plant species, such as those in the family Cactaceae (or cacti), have drought tolerance adaptations like reduced leaf area and waxy cuticles to enhance their ability to tolerate drought. Some others survive dry periods as buried seeds. Semi-permanent drought produces arid biomes such as deserts and grasslands. Prolonged droughts have caused mass migrations and humanitarian crisis. Most arid ecosystems have inherently low productivity. The most prolonged drought ever in the world in recorded history occurred in the Atacama Desert in Chile (400 Years).
Drought affect food production and human society, so they are considered a disaster, of natural, supernatural or human cause (which itself could be supernatural causes, malediction, sin, ...). It is among the earliest documented climatic events, present in the Epic of Gilgamesh and tied to the Biblical story of Joseph's arrival in and the later Exodus from Ancient Egypt. Hunter-gatherer migrations in 9,500 BC Chile have been linked to the phenomenon, as has the exodus of early humans out of Africa and into the rest of the world around 135,000 years ago. Rituals exist to prevent or avert drought, rainmaking could go from dances to scapegoating to human sacrifices. Nowadays, those ancient practices are for the most part relegated to folklore and replaced by more rational water management.
People tend to define droughts in three main ways:
The alleviating trend of drought in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain of China based on the daily SPEI. International
Journal of Climatology.2015. Wang, Qianfeng, Shi, Peijun, Lei, Tianjie, Geng, Guangpo, Liu, Jinghui, Mo, Xinyu, Li, Xiaohan, Zhou, Hongkui. and Wu, Jianjun
As a drought persists, the conditions surrounding it gradually worsen and its impact on the local population gradually increases.
Mechanisms of producing precipitation include convective, stratiform, and orographic rainfall. Convective processes involve strong vertical motions that can cause the overturning of the atmosphere in that location within an hour and cause heavy precipitation, while stratiform processes involve weaker upward motions and less intense precipitation over a longer duration. Precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice. Droughts occur mainly in areas where normal levels of rainfall are, in themselves, low. If these factors do not support precipitation volumes sufficiently to reach the surface over a sufficient time, the result is a drought. Drought can be triggered by a high level of reflected sunlight and above average prevalence of high pressure systems, winds carrying continental, rather than oceanic air masses, and ridges of high pressure areas aloft can prevent or restrict the developing of thunderstorm activity or rainfall over one certain region. Once a region is within drought, feedback mechanisms such as local arid air, hot conditions which can promote warm core ridging, and minimal evapotranspiration can worsen drought conditions.
Within the tropics, distinct, wet and dry seasons emerge due to the movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone or Monsoon trough. The dry season greatly increases drought occurrence, and is characterized by its low humidity, with watering holes and rivers drying up. Because of the lack of these watering holes, many grazing animals are forced to migrate due to the lack of water in search of more fertile lands. Examples of such animals are zebras, elephants, and wildebeest. Because of the lack of water in the plants, bushfires are common. Since water vapor becomes more energetic with increasing temperature, more water vapor is required to increase relative humidity values to 100% at higher temperatures (or to get the temperature to fall to the dew point). Periods of warmth quicken the pace of fruit and vegetable production, increase evaporation and transpiration from plants, and worsen drought conditions.
Drier and hotter weather occurs in parts of the Amazon River Basin, Colombia, and Central America during El Niño events. Winters during the El Niño are warmer and drier than average conditions in the Northwest, northern Midwest, and northern Mideast United States, so those regions experience reduced snowfalls. Conditions are also drier than normal from December to February in south-central Africa, mainly in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana. Direct effects of El Niño resulting in drier conditions occur in parts of Southeast Asia and Northern Australia, increasing bush fires, worsening haze, and decreasing air quality dramatically. Drier-than-normal conditions are also in general observed in Queensland, inland Victoria, inland New South Wales, and eastern Tasmania from June to August. As warm water spreads from the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific, it causes extensive drought in the western Pacific. Singapore experienced the driest February in 2014 since records began in 1869, with only 6.3 mm of rain falling in the month and temperatures hitting as high as 35 °C on 26 February. The years 1968 and 2005 had the next driest Februaries, when 8.4 mm of rain fell.
Human activity can directly trigger exacerbating factors such as over farming, excessive irrigation, deforestation, and erosion adversely impact the ability of the land to capture and hold water. In arid climates, the main source of erosion is wind. Erosion can be the result of material movement by the wind. The wind can cause small particles to be lifted and therefore moved to another region (deflation). Suspended particles within the wind may impact on solid objects causing erosion by abrasion (ecological succession). Wind erosion generally occurs in areas with little or no vegetation, often in areas where there is insufficient rainfall to support vegetation.
Loess is a homogeneous, typically nonstratified, porous, friable, slightly coherent, often calcareous, fine-grained, silty, pale yellow or buff, windblown (Aeolian) sediment. It generally occurs as a widespread blanket deposit that covers areas of hundreds of square kilometers and tens of meters thick. Loess often stands in either steep or vertical faces. Loess tends to develop into highly rich soils. Under appropriate climatic conditions, areas with loess are among the most agriculturally productive in the world. Loess deposits are geologically unstable by nature, and will erode very readily. Therefore, windbreaks (such as big trees and bushes) are often planted by farmers to reduce the wind erosion of loess. Wind erosion is much more severe in arid areas and during times of drought. For example, in the Great Plains, it is estimated that soil loss due to wind erosion can be as much as 6100 times greater in drought years than in wet years.
Overall, global warming will result in increased world rainfall. Activities resulting in global climate change are expected to trigger droughts with a substantial impact on agriculture throughout the world, and especially in developing nations. Along with drought in some areas, flooding and erosion could increase in others. Some proposed solutions to global warming that focus on more active techniques, solar radiation management through the use of a space sunshade for one, may also carry with them increased chances of drought.
According to the Special Report on Climate Change and Land of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate change increase drought and desertification. Hundreds of million people are affected. The affected area includes large territories in Africa, Asia, Australia, South America
One can divide the effects of droughts and water shortages into three groups: environmental, economic and social.
Effects vary according to vulnerability. For example, subsistence farmers are more likely to migrate during drought because they do not have alternative food-sources. Areas with populations that depend on water sources as a major food-source are more vulnerable to famine.
Drought can also reduce water quality, because lower water-flows reduce dilution of pollutants and increase contamination of remaining water-sources. Common consequences of drought include:
High levels of microcystin appeared in San Francisco Bay Area salt-water shellfish and fresh-water supplies throughout the state of California in 2016.
Well-known historical droughts include:
The Darfur conflict in Sudan, also affecting Chad, was fueled by decades of drought; combination of drought, desertification and overpopulation are among the causes of the Darfur conflict, because the Arab Baggara nomads searching for water have to take their livestock further south, to land mainly occupied by non-Arab farming people.
Approximately 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan rivers. India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar could experience floods followed by droughts in coming decades. Drought in India affecting the Ganges is of particular concern, as it provides drinking water and agricultural irrigation for more than 500 million people. The west coast of North America, which gets much of its water from glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, also would be affected.
In 2005, parts of the Amazon basin experienced the worst drought in 100 years. A 23 July 2006 article reported Woods Hole Research Center results showing that the forest in its present form could survive only three years of drought. Scientists at the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research argue in the article that this drought response, coupled with the effects of deforestation on regional climate, are pushing the rainforest towards a "tipping point" where it would irreversibly start to die. It concludes that the rainforest is on the brink of being turned into savanna or desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate. According to the WWF, the combination of climate change and deforestation increases the drying effect of dead trees that fuels forest fires.
By far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid lands commonly known as the outback. A 2005 study by Australian and American researchers investigated the desertification of the interior, and suggested that one explanation was related to human settlers who arrived about 50,000 years ago. Regular burning by these settlers could have prevented monsoons from reaching interior Australia. In June 2008 it became known that an expert panel had warned of long term, maybe irreversible, severe ecological damage for the whole Murray-Darling basin if it did not receive sufficient water by October 2008. Australia could experience more severe droughts and they could become more frequent in the future, a government-commissioned report said on July 6, 2008. Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery, predicted that unless it made drastic changes, Perth in Western Australia could become the world's first ghost metropolis, an abandoned city with no more water to sustain its population. The long Australian Millennial drought broke in 2010.
Recurring droughts leading to desertification in East Africa have created grave ecological catastrophes, prompting food shortages in 1984–85, 2006 and 2011. During the 2011 drought, an estimated 50,000 to 150,000 people were reported to have died, though these figures and the extent of the crisis are disputed. In February 2012, the UN announced that the crisis was over due to a scaling up of relief efforts and a bumper harvest. Aid agencies subsequently shifted their emphasis to recovery efforts, including digging irrigation canals and distributing plant seeds.
In 2012, a severe drought struck the western Sahel. The Methodist Relief & Development Fund (MRDF) reported that more than 10 million people in the region were at risk of famine due to a month-long heat wave that was hovering over Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. A fund of about £20,000 was distributed to the drought-hit countries.
Agriculturally, people can effectively mitigate much of the impact of drought through irrigation and crop rotation. Failure to develop adequate drought mitigation strategies carries a grave human cost in the modern era, exacerbated by ever-increasing population densities. President Roosevelt on April 27, 1935, signed documents creating the Soil Conservation Service (SCS)—now the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Models of the law were sent to each state where they were enacted. These were the first enduring practical programs to curtail future susceptibility to drought, creating agencies that first began to stress soil conservation measures to protect farm lands today. It was not until the 1950s that there was an importance placed on water conservation was put into the existing laws (NRCS 2014).
Strategies for drought protection, mitigation or relief include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37335 |
Proleptic Julian calendar
The proleptic Julian calendar is produced by extending the Julian calendar backwards to dates preceding AD 8 when the quadrennial leap year stabilized. The leap years that were actually observed between the implementation of the Julian calendar in 45 BC and AD 8 were erratic: see the Julian calendar article for details.
A calendar obtained by extension earlier in time than its invention or implementation is called the "proleptic" version of the calendar. Likewise, the proleptic Gregorian calendar is occasionally used to specify dates before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. Because the Julian calendar was used before that time, one must explicitly state that a given quoted date is based on the proleptic Gregorian calendar if that is the case.
The Julian calendar itself was introduced by Julius Caesar, and as such is older than the introduction of the Anno Domini era (or the "Common Era"), counting years since the birth of Christ as calculated by Dionysus Exiguus in the 6th century, and widely used in medieval European annals since about the 8th century, notably by Bede. The proleptic Julian calendar uses Anno Domini throughout, including for dates of Late Antiquity when the Julian calendar was in use but Anno Domini wasn't, and for times predating the introduction of the Julian calendar.
Years are given cardinal numbers, using inclusive counting (AD 1 is the first year of the Anno Domini era, immediately preceded by 1 BC, the first year preceding the Anno Domini era, there is no "zeroth" year).
Thus, the year 1 BC of the proleptic Julian calendar is a leap year.
This is to be distinguished from the astronomical year numbering, introduced in 1740 by French astronomer Jacques Cassini, which considers each New Year an integer on a time axis, with year 0 corresponding to 1 BC, and "year −1" corresponding to 2 BC, so that in this system, Julian leap years have a number divisible by four.
The determination of leap years in the proleptic Julian calendar (in either numbering) is distinct from the question of which years were historically considered leap years during the Roman era, due to the leap year error: Between 45 BC and AD 8, the leap day was somewhat unsystematic. Thus there is no simple way to find an equivalent in the proleptic Julian calendar of a date quoted using either the Roman pre-Julian calendar or the Julian calendar before AD 8. The year 46 BC itself is a special case: because of the historical introduction of the Julian calendar in that year, it was allotted 445 days. Before then, the Roman Republican calendar used a system of intercalary months rather than leap days. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37336 |
Paul Lansky
Paul Lansky (born June 18, 1944, in New York) is an American composer.
Paul Lansky (born 1944) is an American composer. He was educated at Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, Queens College and Princeton University, studying with George Perle and Milton Babbitt, among others. He received his Ph.D. in music from Princeton in 1973. His doctoral dissertation consisted of an essay titled "Affine music" and a composition of string quartet. Originally intending to pursue a career in performance, during 1965–66 he played the French horn with the Dorian Wind Quintet. He left the group to attend graduate school. From 1969 until his retirement in 2014 he was on the faculty at Princeton University where he retired as the William Shubael Conant Professor of Music. He chaired the Department from 1991–2000. In 2000 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. In 2009–10 he was the inaugural composer in residence with the Alabama Symphony. In 2016 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received grants and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fromm Foundation and the Koussevitsky foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music America, among others.
Beginning in the mid 1960s Lansky was among the first to experiment with the computer for sound synthesis. Until 2004 this was his predominant focus. Since then he has concentrated on instrumental composition without any electronic involvement.
Sounds originating from "real-world" sources are the predominant focus of Lansky's computer music: traffic, kids in the kitchen, musical instruments, and most of all speech. Electronic synthesis is frequently used but the main sonic resources are transformations of recorded natural sounds. One of his first large pieces, "Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion" (1979) set the stage. It is based on a reading by his wife Hannah MacKay of a famous poem. The piece is not so much a setting of the poem as it is a study of the contours of a live reading of the poem. The work uses a technique known as linear predictive coding, LPC, which was developed in the 1960s by scientists as a data-reduction technique meant to economize on the amount of data needed for digital voice transmission and is used today in some cell phone communication. It allows for the separation of pitch and speed and the pitch contours of the speech can be altered independently of the speed. Each of the six movements explores a different aspect of speech. This led to a series of “chatter” pieces, "Idle Chatter", etc. that fragment the speech into a percussive rap-like texture. Other projects included folksong settings ("Folk Images"), a portrait of a woman ("Things She Carried"), a contemplation of letters and numbers ("Alphabet Book"), sounds of the highway ("Night Traffic", "Ride"), blues harmonica, electric guitar, piano improvisation and casual conversation. The bulk of his approximately 70 electronic compositions are contained on ten solo CDs (see Discography). While there are a few pieces for electronics and live instruments the bulk of Lansky's pieces are recorded "tape" pieces.
Lansky's works have attracted interest in various realms. They have been used by dance companies (Bill T. Jones, Eliot Feld Ballet, New York City Ballet). His works frequently have a rhythmic "groove" that is attractive to dancers. In 2000 he was the co-subject (along with Francis Dhomont) of a documentary film made for the European Arte network by Uli Aumueller, "My Cinema for the Ears" that deals with the use of natural sounds. A four-chord sequence from Lansky's first large computer piece "Mild und leise" (1972) was sampled by the English rock band Radiohead for the track "Idioteque" on their 2000 "Kid A" album.
Lansky used any available computing hardware: IBM mainframes at first (1966–84), then mini and micro computers by DEC, (1984–89), and finally personal computers by NeXT, Silicon Graphics and Apple. During the mainframe era computer time was scarce and expensive, and this prompted Lansky to write his own software package called "Mix", in Fortran. This made it easier to assemble a composition voice-by-voice, section-by-section, even note-by-note, avoiding large expensive runs to create an entire piece at once. Mix had no scheduler (meaning that it could create notes in any order) and thus was not suitable for real-time synthesis. Mix used additive writes to the output device, analogous to overdubbing on tape. When the move was made to minis and micros, Lansky ported Mix to the C programming language and called it CMix. During the late 1990s a group led by Brad Garton at Columbia University created a version with a scheduler, RtCmix, that was capable of real time synthesis. Starting in the mid 1990s Lansky used a well-known software package called SuperCollider. Programs like Cmix and SuperCollider are script-based rather than driven by a graphical interface. (Input data is frequently in the form of a program rather than a notelist.) This facilitated the creation of complex textures in works such as Idle Chatter, which contain thousands of short notes, frequently selected using random methods. This is sometimes called algorithmic composition.
During the mid 1990s Lansky began to be approached by performers who were attracted to the performative-like aspects of his computer music. Percussionists in particular were attracted by pieces such as "Table’s Clear", which resembles a gamelan made of pots and pans, and the "chatter" series. One of his first large percussion pieces was "Threads", 2005, written for the Sō Percussion quartet. Since then there are about a dozen pieces for percussion instruments, alone and in various ensembles. Another focus has been classical guitar, alone and in combination: "Semi-Suite", "With the Grain" (concerto), Partita (guitar and percussion.) A residency with the Alabama Symphony led to several orchestral pieces ("Shapeshifters", "Imaginary Islands"). Significant commissions came from the Library of Congress and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for the wind quintet "The Long and Short of It", and Chamber Music America for a trio for the Janus Trio, "Book of Memory", and for Sō Percussion, "Springs". The 2004 trio for horn, violin and piano, "Etudes and Parodies" won the 2005 International Horn Society prize. Lansky's instrumental music is published by Carl Fischer. The bulk of his computer music as well as much instrumental music is available on Bridge Records.
Most of Lansky's works are basically tonal. In general terms this means the apparent background source for his pitch language is the diatonic scale rather than the chromatic or microtonal scale. He frequently uses traditional tonal syntax. During 1969–72 he collaborated with George Perle on an expansion of Perle's 12-tone tonality, which led to Perle's book of the same name. This approach basically establishes another metric for measuring and relating harmonies that has to do with symmetry. It is related to some music by Bartok. Some of Lansky's work such as "Notes to Self", for piano, and "It All Adds Up", for two pianos, use this approach. Lansky's instrumental music generally eschews extended instrumental techniques. He writes that he scratched that itch with computer music.
A long-term interest of Lansky's is music "about" music. Earlier examples of this are his computer pieces "Guy's Harp", about blues harmonica, and "Not So Heavy Metal", about rock and roll guitar. More recent examples are "Book of Memory", which comments on music from Machaut to Scriabin, "Ancient Echoes", based on late-16th-century dance music, and "Ricercare Plus", inspired by 17th-century counterpoint. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37340 |
Linus Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was an American chemical engineer, chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. "New Scientist" called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time, and as of 2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of four individuals to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger). Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie. He was married to the American human rights activist Ava Helen Pauling.
Pauling was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. His contributions to the theory of the chemical bond include the concept of orbital hybridisation and the first accurate scale of electronegativities of the elements. Pauling also worked on the structures of biological molecules, and showed the importance of the alpha helix and beta sheet in protein secondary structure. Pauling's approach combined methods and results from X-ray crystallography, molecular model building, and quantum chemistry. His discoveries inspired the work of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin on the structure of DNA, which in turn made it possible for geneticists to crack the DNA code of all organisms.
In his later years he promoted nuclear disarmament, as well as orthomolecular medicine, megavitamin therapy, and dietary supplements. None of the latter have gained much acceptance in the mainstream scientific community.
Linus Carl Pauling was born on February 28, 1901, in Portland, Oregon, the firstborn child of Herman Henry William Pauling (1876–1910) and Lucy Isabelle "Belle" Darling (1881–1926). He was named "Linus Carl", in honor of Lucy's father, Linus, and Herman's father, Carl. His father was German while his mother was English.
In 1902, after his sister Pauline was born, Pauling's parents decided to move out of Portland, to find more affordable and spacious living quarters than their one-room apartment. Lucy stayed with her husband's parents in Lake Oswego until Herman brought the family to Salem, where he worked briefly as a traveling salesman for the Skidmore Drug Company. Within a year of Lucile's birth in 1904, Herman Pauling moved his family to Lake Oswego, where he opened his own drugstore. He moved his family to Condon, Oregon, in 1905. By 1906, Herman Pauling was suffering from recurrent abdominal pain. He died of a perforated ulcer on June 11, 1910, leaving Lucy to care for Linus, Lucile and Pauline.
Pauling attributes his interest in becoming a chemist to being amazed by experiments conducted by a friend, Lloyd A. Jeffress, who had a small chemistry lab kit. He later wrote: "I was simply entranced by chemical phenomena, by the reactions in which substances, often with strikingly different properties, appear; and I hoped to learn more and more about this aspect of the world."
In high school, Pauling conducted chemistry experiments by scavenging equipment and material from an abandoned steel plant. With an older friend, Lloyd Simon, Pauling set up Palmon Laboratories in Simon's basement. They approached local dairies offering to perform butterfat samplings at cheap prices but dairymen were wary of trusting two boys with the task, and the business ended in failure.
At age 15, the high school senior had enough credits to enter Oregon State University (OSU), known then as Oregon Agricultural College. Lacking two American history courses required for his high school diploma, Pauling asked the school principal if he could take the courses concurrently during the spring semester. Denied, he left Washington High School in June without a diploma. The school awarded him an honorary diploma 45 years later, after he was awarded two Nobel Prizes.
Pauling held a number of jobs to earn money for his future college expenses, including working part-time at a grocery store for $8 per week (). His mother arranged an interview with the owner of a number of manufacturing plants in Portland, Mr. Schwietzerhoff, who hired him as an apprentice machinist at a salary of $40 per month (). This was soon raised to $50 per month. Pauling also set up a photography laboratory with two friends. In September 1917, Pauling was finally admitted by Oregon State University. He immediately resigned from the machinist's job and informed his mother, who saw no point in a university education, of his plans.
In his first semester, Pauling registered for two courses in chemistry, two in mathematics, mechanical drawing, introduction to mining and use of explosives, modern English prose, gymnastics and military drill. He was active in campus life and founded the school's chapter of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. After his second year, he planned to take a job in Portland to help support his mother. The college offered him a position teaching quantitative analysis, a course he had just finished taking himself. He worked forty hours a week in the laboratory and classroom and earned $100 a month (), enabling him to continue his studies.
In his last two years at school, Pauling became aware of the work of Gilbert N. Lewis and Irving Langmuir on the electronic structure of atoms and their bonding to form molecules. He decided to focus his research on how the physical and chemical properties of substances are related to the structure of the atoms of which they are composed, becoming one of the founders of the new science of quantum chemistry.
Engineering professor Samuel Graf selected Pauling to be his teaching assistant in a mechanics and materials course. During the winter of his senior year, Pauling taught a chemistry course for home economics majors. It was in one of these classes that Pauling met his future wife, Ava Helen Miller.
In 1922, Pauling graduated from Oregon State University (known then as Oregon Agricultural College) with a degree in chemical engineering. He went on to graduate school at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, under the guidance of Roscoe Dickinson and Richard Tolman. His graduate research involved the use of X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of crystals. He published seven papers on the crystal structure of minerals while he was at Caltech. He received his PhD in physical chemistry and mathematical physics, summa cum laude, in 1925.
In 1926, Pauling was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel to Europe, to study under German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, Danish physicist Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in Zürich. All three were experts in the new field of quantum mechanics and other branches of physics. Pauling became interested in how quantum mechanics might be applied in his chosen field of interest, the electronic structure of atoms and molecules. In Zürich, Pauling was also exposed to one of the first quantum mechanical analyses of bonding in the hydrogen molecule, done by Walter Heitler and Fritz London. Pauling devoted the two years of his European trip to this work and decided to make it the focus of his future research. He became one of the first scientists in the field of quantum chemistry and a pioneer in the application of quantum theory to the structure of molecules.
In 1927, Pauling took a new position as an assistant professor at Caltech in theoretical chemistry. He launched his faculty career with a very productive five years, continuing with his X-ray crystal studies and also performing quantum mechanical calculations on atoms and molecules. He published approximately fifty papers in those five years, and created the five rules now known as Pauling's rules. By 1929, he was promoted to associate professor, and by 1930, to full professor. In 1931, the American Chemical Society awarded Pauling the Langmuir Prize for the most significant work in pure science by a person 30 years of age or younger. The following year, Pauling published what he regarded as his most important paper, in which he first laid out the concept of hybridization of atomic orbitals and analyzed the tetravalency of the carbon atom.
At Caltech, Pauling struck up a close friendship with theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who spent part of his research and teaching schedule away from U.C. Berkeley at Caltech every year. Pauling was also affiliated to UC Berkeley as Visiting Lecturer in Physics and Chemistry from 1929 to 1934. Oppenheimer even gave Pauling a stunning personal collection of minerals. The two men planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond: apparently Oppenheimer would supply the mathematics and Pauling would interpret the results. Their relationship soured when Oppenheimer tried to pursue Pauling's wife, Ava Helen. When Pauling was at work, Oppenheimer came to their home and blurted out an invitation to Ava Helen to join him on a tryst in Mexico. She flatly refused, and reported the incident to Pauling. He immediately cut off his relationship with Oppenheimer.
In the summer of 1930, Pauling made another European trip, during which he learned about gas-phase electron diffraction from Herman Francis Mark. After returning, he built an electron diffraction instrument at Caltech with a student of his, Lawrence Olin Brockway, and used it to study the molecular structure of a large number of chemical substances.
Pauling introduced the concept of electronegativity in 1932. Using the various properties of molecules, such as the energy required to break bonds and the dipole moments of molecules, he established a scale and an associated numerical value for most of the elements – the Pauling Electronegativity Scale – which is useful in predicting the nature of bonds between atoms in molecules.
In 1936, Pauling was promoted to Chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech, and to the position of Director of the Gates and Crellin laboratories of Chemistry. He would hold both positions until 1958. Pauling also spent a year in 1948 at the University of Oxford as George Eastman Visiting Professor and Fellow of Balliol.
In the late 1920s, Pauling began publishing papers on the nature of the chemical bond. Between 1937 and 1938, he took a position as George Fischer Baker Non-Resident Lecturer in Chemistry at Cornell University. While at Cornell, he delivered a series of nineteen lectures and completed the bulk of his famous textbook "The Nature of the Chemical Bond". It is based primarily on his work in this area that he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances". Pauling's book has been considered "chemistry's most influential book of this century and its effective bible". In the 30 years after its first edition was published in 1939, the book was cited more than 16,000 times. Even today, many modern scientific papers and articles in important journals cite this work, more than seventy years after the first publication.
Part of Pauling's work on the nature of the chemical bond led to his introduction of the concept of orbital hybridization. While it is normal to think of the electrons in an atom as being described by orbitals of types such as "s" and "p", it turns out that in describing the bonding in molecules, it is better to construct functions that partake of some of the properties of each. Thus the one 2s and three 2p orbitals in a carbon atom can be (mathematically) 'mixed' or combined to make four equivalent orbitals (called sp3 hybrid orbitals), which would be the appropriate orbitals to describe carbon compounds such as methane, or the 2s orbital may be combined with two of the 2p orbitals to make three equivalent orbitals (called sp2 hybrid orbitals), with the remaining 2p orbital unhybridized, which would be the appropriate orbitals to describe certain unsaturated carbon compounds such as ethylene. Other hybridization schemes are also found in other types of molecules.
Another area which he explored was the relationship between ionic bonding, where electrons are transferred between atoms, and covalent bonding, where electrons are shared between atoms on an equal basis. Pauling showed that these were merely extremes, and that for most actual cases of bonding, the quantum-mechanical wave function for a polar molecule AB is a combination of wave functions for covalent and ionic molecules. Here Pauling's "electronegativity" concept is particularly useful; the electronegativity difference between a pair of atoms will be the surest predictor of the degree of ionicity of the bond.
The third of the topics that Pauling attacked under the overall heading of "the nature of the chemical bond" was the accounting of the structure of aromatic hydrocarbons, particularly the prototype, benzene. The best description of benzene had been made by the German chemist Friedrich Kekulé. He had treated it as a rapid interconversion between two structures, each with alternating single and double bonds, but with the double bonds of one structure in the locations where the single bonds were in the other. Pauling showed that a proper description based on quantum mechanics was an intermediate structure which was a blend of each. The structure was a superposition of structures rather than a rapid interconversion between them. The name "resonance" was later applied to this phenomenon. In a sense, this phenomenon resembles those of hybridization and also polar bonding, both described above, because all three phenomena involve combining more than one electronic structure to achieve an intermediate result.
In 1929, Pauling published five rules which help to predict and explain crystal structures of ionic compounds.
These rules concern (1) the ratio of cation radius to anion radius, (2) the electrostatic bond strength, (3) the sharing of polyhedron corners, edges and faces, (4) crystals containing different cations, and (5) the rule of parsimony.
In the mid-1930s, Pauling, strongly influenced by the biologically oriented funding priorities of the Rockefeller Foundation's Warren Weaver, decided to strike out into new areas of interest. Although Pauling's early interest had focused almost exclusively on inorganic molecular structures, he had occasionally thought about molecules of biological importance, in part because of Caltech's growing strength in biology. Pauling interacted with such great biologists as Thomas Hunt Morgan, Theodosius Dobzhanski, Calvin Bridges and Alfred Sturtevant. His early work in this area included studies of the structure of hemoglobin with his student Charles D. Coryell. He demonstrated that the hemoglobin molecule changes structure when it gains or loses an oxygen atom. As a result of this observation, he decided to conduct a more thorough study of protein structure in general. He returned to his earlier use of X-ray diffraction analysis. But protein structures were far less amenable to this technique than the crystalline minerals of his former work. The best X-ray pictures of proteins in the 1930s had been made by the British crystallographer William Astbury, but when Pauling tried, in 1937, to account for Astbury's observations quantum mechanically, he could not.
It took eleven years for Pauling to explain the problem: his mathematical analysis was correct, but Astbury's pictures were taken in such a way that the protein molecules were tilted from their expected positions. Pauling had formulated a model for the structure of hemoglobin in which atoms were arranged in a helical pattern, and applied this idea to proteins in general.
In 1951, based on the structures of amino acids and peptides and the planar nature of the peptide bond, Pauling, Robert Corey and Herman Branson correctly proposed the alpha helix and beta sheet as the primary structural motifs in protein secondary structure. This work exemplified Pauling's ability to think unconventionally; central to the structure was the unorthodox assumption that one turn of the helix may well contain a non-integer number of amino acid residues; for the alpha helix it is 3.7 amino acid residues per turn.
Pauling then proposed that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was a triple helix; his model contained several basic mistakes, including a proposal of neutral phosphate groups, an idea that conflicted with the acidity of DNA. Sir Lawrence Bragg had been disappointed that Pauling had won the race to find the alpha helix structure of proteins. Bragg's team had made a fundamental error in making their models of protein by not recognizing the planar nature of the peptide bond. When it was learned at the Cavendish Laboratory that Pauling was working on molecular models of the structure of DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick were allowed to make a molecular model of DNA. They later benefited from unpublished data from Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College which showed evidence for a helix and planar base stacking along the helix axis. Early in 1953 Watson and Crick proposed a correct structure for the DNA double helix. Pauling later cited several reasons to explain how he had been misled about the structure of DNA, among them misleading density data and the lack of high quality X-ray diffraction photographs. During the time Pauling was researching the problem, Rosalind Franklin in England was creating the world's best images. They were key to Watson's and Crick's success. Pauling did not see them before devising his mistaken DNA structure, although his assistant Robert Corey did see at least some of them, while taking Pauling's place at a summer 1952 protein conference in England. Pauling had been prevented from attending because his passport was withheld by the State Department on suspicion that he had Communist sympathies. This led to the legend that Pauling missed the structure of DNA because of the politics of the day (this was at the start of the McCarthy period in the United States). Politics did not play a critical role. Not only did Corey see the images at the time, but Pauling himself regained his passport within a few weeks and toured English laboratories well before writing his DNA paper. He had ample opportunity to visit Franklin's lab and see her work, but chose not to.
Pauling also studied enzyme reactions and was among the first to point out that enzymes bring about reactions by stabilizing the transition state of the reaction, a view which is central to understanding their mechanism of action. He was also among the first scientists to postulate that the binding of antibodies to antigens would be due to a complementarity between their structures. Along the same lines, with the physicist turned biologist Max Delbrück, he wrote an early paper arguing that DNA replication was likely to be due to complementarity, rather than similarity, as suggested by a few researchers. This was made clear in the model of the structure of DNA that Watson and Crick discovered.
In November 1949, Pauling, Harvey Itano, S. J. Singer and Ibert Wells published "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease" in the journal "Science". It was the first proof of a human disease caused by an abnormal protein, and sickle cell anemia became the first disease understood at the molecular level. Using electrophoresis, they demonstrated that individuals with sickle cell disease have a modified form of hemoglobin in their red blood cells, and that individuals with sickle cell trait have both the normal and abnormal forms of hemoglobin. This was the first demonstration causally linking an abnormal protein to a disease, and also the first demonstration that Mendelian inheritance determines the specific physical properties of proteins, not simply their presence or absence – the dawn of molecular genetics.
His success with sickle cell anemia led Pauling to speculate that a number of other diseases, including mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, might result from flawed genetics. As chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and director of the Gates and Crellin Chemical Laboratories, he encouraged the hiring of researchers with a chemical-biomedical approach to mental illness, a direction not always popular with established Caltech chemists.
In 1951, Pauling gave a lecture entitled "Molecular Medicine". In the late 1950s, Pauling studied the role of enzymes in brain function, believing that mental illness may be partly caused by enzyme dysfunction.
On September 16, 1952, Pauling opened a new research notebook with the words "I have decided to attack the problem of the structure of nuclei." On October 15, 1965, Pauling published his Close-Packed Spheron Model of the atomic nucleus in two well respected journals, "Science" and the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences". For nearly three decades, until his death in 1994, Pauling published numerous papers on his spheron cluster model.
The basic idea behind Pauling's spheron model is that a nucleus can be viewed as a set of "clusters of nucleons". The basic nucleon clusters include the deuteron [np], helion [pnp], and triton [npn]. Even–even nuclei are described as being composed of clusters of alpha particles, as has often been done for light nuclei. Pauling attempted to derive the shell structure of nuclei from pure geometrical considerations related to Platonic solids rather than starting from an independent particle model as in the usual shell model. In an interview given in 1990 Pauling commented on his model:
Pauling had been practically apolitical until World War II. At the beginning of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer invited him to be in charge of the Chemistry division of the project. However, he declined, not wanting to uproot his family.
Pauling did, however, work on research for the military. He was a principal investigator on 14 OSRD contracts. The National Defense Research Committee called a meeting on October 3, 1940, wanting an instrument that could reliably measure oxygen content in a mixture of gases, so that they could measure oxygen conditions in submarines and airplanes. In response Pauling designed the Pauling oxygen meter, which was developed and manufactured by Arnold O. Beckman, Inc. After the war, Beckman adapted the oxygen analyzers for use in incubators for premature babies.
In 1942, Pauling successfully submitted a proposal on "The Chemical Treatment of Protein Solutions in the Attempt to Find a Substitute for Human Serum for Transfusions". His project group, which included J.B. Koepfli and Dan Campbell, developed a possible replacement for human blood plasma in transfusions: polyoxy gelatin (Oxypolygelatin).
Other wartime projects with more direct military applications included work on explosives, rocket propellants and the patent for an armor-piercing shell. In October 1948 Pauling was awarded a Presidential Medal for Merit by President Harry S. Truman. The citation credits him for his "imaginative mind", "brilliant success", and "exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services. In 1949, he served as president of the American Chemical Society.
The aftermath of the Manhattan Project and his wife Ava's pacifism changed Pauling's life profoundly, and he became a peace activist.
In June 1945, a "May-Johnson Bill" began that would become the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (signed August 1, 1946). In November 1945, Pauling spoke to the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP) on atomic weapons; shortly after, wife Ava and he accepted membership. On January 21, 1946, the group met to discuss academic freedom, during which Pauling said, "There is, of course, always a threat to academic freedom – as there is to the other aspects of the freedom and rights of the individual, in the continued attacks which are made on this freedom, these rights, by the selfish, the overly ambitious, the misguided, the unscrupulous, who seek to oppress the great body of mankind in order that they themselves may profit – and we must always be on the alert against this threat, and must fight it with vigor when it becomes dangerous."
In 1946, he joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, chaired by Albert Einstein. Its mission was to warn the public of the dangers associated with the development of nuclear weapons.
His political activism prompted the US State Department to deny him a passport in 1952, when he was invited to speak at a scientific conference in London. In a speech before the US Senate on June 6 of the same year, Senator Wayne Morse publicly denounced the action of the State Department, and urged the Passport Division to reverse its decision. Pauling and his wife Ava were then issued a "limited passport" to attend the aforementioned conference in England. His full passport was restored in 1954, shortly before the ceremony in Stockholm where he received his first Nobel Prize.
Joining Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight other leading scientists and intellectuals, he signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto issued July 9, 1955. He also supported the Mainau Declaration of July 15, 1955, signed by 52 Nobel Prize laureates.
In May 1957, working with Washington University in St. Louis professor Barry Commoner, Pauling began to circulate a petition among scientists to stop nuclear testing. On January 15, 1958, Pauling and his wife presented a petition to United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld calling for an end to the testing of nuclear weapons. It was signed by 11,021 scientists representing fifty countries.
In February 1958, Pauling participated in a publicly televised debate with the atomic physicist Edward Teller about the actual probability of fallout causing mutations. Later in 1958, Pauling published "No more war!", in which he not only called for an end to the testing of nuclear weapons but also an end to war itself . He proposed that a World Peace Research Organization be set up as part of the United Nations to "attack the problem of preserving the peace".
Pauling also supported the work of the St. Louis Citizen's Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI). This group, headed by Barry Commoner, Eric Reiss, M. W. Friedlander and John Fowler, organized a longitudinal study to measure radioactive strontium-90 in the baby teeth of children across North America. The "Baby Tooth Survey," published by Dr. Louise Reiss, demonstrated conclusively in 1961 that above-ground nuclear testing posed significant public health risks in the form of radioactive fallout spread primarily via milk from cows that had ingested contaminated grass. The Committee for Nuclear Information is frequently credited for its significant contribution to supporting the test ban, as is the ground-breaking research conducted by Dr. Reiss and the "Baby Tooth Survey".
Public pressure and the frightening results of the CNI research subsequently led to a moratorium on above-ground nuclear weapons testing, followed by the Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. On the day that the treaty went into force, October 10, 1963, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Pauling the Nobel Peace Prize for 1962. (No prize had previously been awarded for that year.) They described him as "Linus Carl Pauling, who ever since 1946 has campaigned ceaselessly, not only against nuclear weapons tests, not only against the spread of these armaments, not only against their very use, but against all warfare as a means of solving international conflicts." Pauling himself acknowledged his wife Ava's deep involvement in peace work, and regretted that she was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with him.
Many of Pauling's critics, including scientists who appreciated the contributions that he had made in chemistry, disagreed with his political positions and saw him as a naïve spokesman for Soviet communism. In 1960, he was ordered to appear before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which termed him "the number one scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist peace offensive in this country." A headline in "Life" magazine characterized his 1962 Nobel Prize as "A Weird Insult from Norway".
Pauling was a frequent target of the "National Review" magazine. In an article entitled "The Collaborators" in the magazine's July 17, 1962 issue, Pauling was referred to not only as a collaborator, but as a "fellow traveler" of proponents of Soviet-style communism. In 1965, Pauling sued the magazine, its publisher William Rusher, and its editor William F. Buckley, Jr for $1 million. He lost both his libel suits and the 1968 appeal.
His peace activism, his frequent travels, and his enthusiastic expansion into chemical-biomedical research all aroused opposition at Caltech. In 1958, the Caltech Board of Trustees demanded that Pauling step down as chairman of the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Division. Although he had retained tenure as a full professor, Pauling chose to resign from Caltech after he received the Nobel peace prize money. He spent the next three years at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (1963–1967). In 1967, he moved to the University of California at San Diego, but remained there only briefly, leaving in 1969 in part because of political tensions with the Reagan-era board of regents. From 1969 to 1974, he accepted a position as Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University.
During the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson's policy of increasing America's involvement in the Vietnam War caused an anti-war movement that the Paulings joined with enthusiasm. Pauling denounced the war as unnecessary and unconstitutional. He made speeches, signed protest letters and communicated personally with the North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, and gave the lengthy written response to President Johnson. His efforts were ignored by the American government.
Pauling was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR in 1970. He continued his peace activism in the following years. He and his wife Ava helped to found the International League of Humanists in 1974. He was president of the scientific advisory board of the World Union for Protection of Life and also one of the signatories of the Dubrovnik-Philadelphia Statement of 1974/1976. Linus Carl Pauling was an honorary president and member of the International Academy of Science, Munich until the end of his life.
Pauling supported a limited form of eugenics by suggesting that human carriers of defective genes be given a compulsory visible mark - such as a forehead tattoo - to discourage potential mates with the same defect, in order to reduce the number of babies with diseases such as sickle cell anemia.
In 1941, at age 40, Pauling was diagnosed with Bright's disease, a renal disease. Following the recommendations of Thomas Addis, who actively recruited Ava Helen Pauling as "nutritionist, cook, and eventually as deputy 'doctor'", Pauling was able to control the disease with Addis's then-unusual low-protein salt-free diet and vitamin supplements. Thus Pauling's initial – and intensely personal – exposure to the idea of treating disease with vitamin supplements was positive.
In 1965, Pauling read "Niacin Therapy in Psychiatry" by Abram Hoffer and theorized vitamins might have important biochemical effects unrelated to their prevention of associated deficiency diseases. In 1968, Pauling published a brief paper in "Science" entitled "Orthomolecular psychiatry", giving a name to the popular but controversial megavitamin therapy movement of the 1970s, and advocating that "orthomolecular therapy, the provision for the individual person of the optimum concentrations of important normal constituents of the brain, may be the preferred treatment for many mentally ill patients." Pauling coined the term "orthomolecular" to refer to the practice of varying the concentration of substances normally present in the body to prevent and treat disease. His ideas formed the basis of orthomolecular medicine, which is not generally practiced by conventional medical professionals and has been strongly criticized.
In 1973, with Arthur B. Robinson and another colleague, Pauling founded the Institute of Orthomolecular Medicine in Menlo Park, California, which was soon renamed the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Pauling directed research on vitamin C, but also continued his theoretical work in chemistry and physics until his death. In his last years, he became especially interested in the possible role of vitamin C in preventing atherosclerosis and published three case reports on the use of lysine and vitamin C to relieve angina pectoris. During the 1990s, Pauling put forward a comprehensive plan for the treatment of heart disease using lysine and vitamin C. In 1996, a website was created expounding Pauling's treatment which it referred to as Pauling Therapy. Proponents of Pauling Therapy believe that heart disease can be treated and even cured using only lysine and Vitamin C and without drugs or heart operations.
Pauling's work on vitamin C in his later years generated much controversy. He was first introduced to the concept of high-dose vitamin C by biochemist Irwin Stone in 1966. After becoming convinced of its worth, Pauling took 3 grams of vitamin C every day to prevent colds. Excited by his own perceived results, he researched the clinical literature and published "Vitamin C and the Common Cold" in 1970. He began a long clinical collaboration with the British cancer surgeon Ewan Cameron in 1971 on the use of intravenous and oral vitamin C as cancer therapy for terminal patients. Cameron and Pauling wrote many technical papers and a popular book, "Cancer and Vitamin C", that discussed their observations. Pauling made vitamin C popular with the public and eventually published two studies of a group of 100 allegedly terminal patients that claimed vitamin C increased survival by as much as four times compared to untreated patients.
A re-evaluation of the claims in 1982 found that the patient groups were not actually comparable, with the vitamin C group being less sick on entry to the study, and judged to be "terminal" much earlier than the comparison group. Later clinical trials conducted by the Mayo Clinic also concluded that high-dose (10,000 mg) vitamin C was no better than placebo at treating cancer and that there was no benefit to high-dose vitamin C. The failure of the clinical trials to demonstrate any benefit resulted in the conclusion that vitamin C was not effective in treating cancer; the medical establishment concluded that his claims that vitamin C could prevent colds or treat cancer were quackery. Pauling denounced the conclusions of these studies and handling of the final study as "fraud and deliberate misrepresentation", and criticized the studies for using oral, rather than intravenous vitamin C (which was the dosing method used for the first ten days of Pauling's original study). Pauling also criticised the Mayo clinic studies because the controls were taking vitamin C during the trial, and because the duration of the treatment with vitamin C was short; Pauling advocated continued high-dose vitamin C for the rest of the cancer patient's life whereas the Mayo clinic patients in the second trial were treated with vitamin C for a median of 2.5 months. The results were publicly debated at length with considerable acrimony between Pauling and Cameron, and Moertel (the lead author of the Mayo Clinic studies), with accusations of misconduct and scientific incompetence on both sides.
Ultimately the negative findings of the Mayo Clinic studies ended general interest in vitamin C as a treatment for cancer. Despite this, Pauling continued to promote vitamin C for treating cancer and the common cold, working with The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential to use vitamin C in the treatment of brain-injured children. He later collaborated with the Canadian physician Abram Hoffer on a micronutrient regime, including high-dose vitamin C, as adjunctive cancer therapy. A 2009 review also noted differences between the studies, such as the Mayo clinic not using intravenous Vitamin C, and suggested further studies into the role of vitamin C when given intravenously. Results from most clinical trials suggest that modest vitamin C supplementation alone or with other nutrients offers no benefit in the prevention of cancer.
Pauling married Ava Helen Miller on June 17, 1923. The marriage lasted until Ava Pauling's death in 1981. They had four children. Linus Carl Jr. (born 1925) became a psychiatrist; (1931–2003) a crystallographer at University College London; Edward Crellin Pauling (1937–1997) a biologist; and Linda Helen (born 1932) married noted Caltech geologist and glaciologist Barclay Kamb.
Pauling was raised as a member of the Lutheran Church, but later joined the Unitarian Universalist Church. Two years before his death, in a published dialogue with Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, Pauling publicly declared his atheism.
On January 30, 1960, Pauling and his wife were using a cabin about south of Monterey, California, and he decided to go for a walk on a coastal trail. He got lost and tried to climb the rocky cliff, but reached a large overhanging rock about above the ocean. He decided it was safest to stay there, and meanwhile he was reported missing. He spent a sleepless night on the cliff before being found after almost 24 hours.
Pauling died of prostate cancer on August 19, 1994, at 19:20 at home in Big Sur, California. He was 93 years old. A grave marker for Pauling was placed in Oswego Pioneer Cemetery in Lake Oswego, Oregon by his sister Pauline, but Pauling's ashes, along with those of his wife, were not buried there until 2005.
Pauling's discoveries led to decisive contributions in a diverse array of areas including around 350 publications in the fields of quantum mechanics, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, protein structure, molecular biology, and medicine.
His work on chemical bonding marks him as one of the founders of modern quantum chemistry. "The Nature of the Chemical Bond" was the standard work for many years, and concepts like hybridization and electronegativity remain part of standard chemistry textbooks. While his Valence bond approach fell short of accounting quantitatively for some of the characteristics of molecules, such as the color of organometallic complexes, and would later be eclipsed by the molecular orbital theory of Robert Mulliken, Valence Bond Theory still competes, in its modern form, with Molecular Orbital Theory and density functional theory (DFT) as a way of describing the chemical phenomena. Pauling's work on crystal structure contributed significantly to the prediction and elucidation of the structures of complex minerals and compounds. His discovery of the alpha helix and beta sheet is a fundamental foundation for the study of protein structure.
Francis Crick acknowledged Pauling as the "father of molecular biology". His discovery of sickle cell anemia as a "molecular disease" opened the way toward examining genetically acquired mutations at a molecular level.
Pauling's 1951 publication with Robert B. Corey and H. R. Branson, "The Structure of Proteins: Two Hydrogen-Bonded Helical Configurations of the Polypeptide Chain," was a key early finding in the then newly emerging field of molecular biology. This publication was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society presented to the Department of Chemistry, Caltech, in 2017.
Oregon State University completed construction of the $77 million, Linus Pauling Science Center in the late 2000s, now housing a bulk of Oregon State's chemistry classrooms, labs, and instruments.
On March 6, 2008, the United States Postal Service released a 41 cent stamp honoring Pauling designed by artist Victor Stabin. His description reads: "A remarkably versatile scientist, structural chemist Linus Pauling (1901–1994) won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determining the nature of the chemical bond linking atoms into molecules. His work in establishing the field of molecular biology; his studies of hemoglobin led to the classification of sickle cell anemia as a molecular disease." The other scientists on this sheet of stamps included Gerty Cori, biochemist, Edwin Hubble, astronomer, and John Bardeen, physicist.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced on May 28, 2008 that Pauling would be inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. The induction ceremony took place December 15, 2008. Pauling's son was asked to accept the honor in his place.
By proclamation of Gov. John Kitzhaber in the state of Oregon, February 28 has been named "Linus Pauling Day". The Linus Pauling Institute still exists, but moved in 1996 from Palo Alto, California, to Corvallis, Oregon, where it is part of the Linus Pauling Science Center at Oregon State University. The Valley Library Special Collections at Oregon State University contain the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, including digitized versions of Pauling's forty-six research notebooks.
In 1986, Caltech commemorated Linus Pauling with a Symposium and Lectureship. The Pauling Lecture series at Caltech began in 1989 with a lecture by Pauling himself. The Caltech Chemistry Department renamed room 22 of Gates Hall the Linus Pauling Lecture Hall, since Linus spent so much time there.
Other places named after Pauling include Pauling Street in Foothill Ranch, California; Linus Pauling Drive in Hercules, California; Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Hall at Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California; Linus Pauling Middle School in Corvallis, Oregon; and Pauling Field, a small airfield located in Condon, Oregon, where Pauling spent his youth. There is a psychedelic rock band in Houston, Texas, named The Linus Pauling Quartet.
The asteroid 4674 Pauling in the inner asteroid belt, discovered by Eleanor F. Helin, was named after Linus Pauling in 1991, on his 90th birthday.
Linus Torvalds, developer of the Linux kernel, is named after Pauling.
Nobel laureate Peter Agre has said that Linus Pauling inspired him.
In 2010, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory named its distinguished postdoctoral program in his honor, as the Linus Pauling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
Pauling received numerous awards and honors during his career, including the following: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37342 |
Shrapnel shell
Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions which carried many individual bullets close to the target and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike the target individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use, when it was superseded by high-explosive shells for that role. The functioning and principles behind Shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. Shrapnel is named after Major-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), a British artillery officer, whose experiments, initially conducted on his own time and at his own expense, culminated in the design and development of a new type of artillery shell.
The term "shrapnel" nowadays is often used to refer to lethal fragments of the casing of shells and bombs, though this usage strays from the original meaning of the word.
In 1784, Lieutenant Shrapnel of the Royal Artillery began developing an anti-personnel weapon. At the time artillery could use "canister shot" to defend themselves from infantry or cavalry attack, which involved loading a tin or canvas container filled with small iron or lead balls instead of the usual cannonball. When fired, the container burst open during passage through the bore or at the muzzle, giving the effect of an oversized shotgun shell. At ranges of up to 300 m canister shot was still highly lethal, though at this range the shots’ density was much lower, making a hit on a human body less likely. At longer ranges, solid shot or the common shell—a hollow cast-iron sphere filled with black powder—was used, although with more of a concussive than a fragmentation effect, as the pieces of the shell were very large and sparse in number.
Shrapnel's innovation was to combine the multi-projectile shotgun effect of canister shot, with a time fuze to open the canister and disperse the bullets it contained at some distance along the canister's trajectory from the gun. His shell was a hollow cast-iron sphere filled with a mixture of balls and powder, with a crude time fuze. If the fuze was set correctly then the shell would break open, either in front of or above the intended human objective, releasing its contents (of musket balls). The shrapnel balls would carry on with the "remaining velocity" of the shell. In addition to a denser pattern of musket balls, the retained velocity could be higher as well, since the shrapnel shell as a whole would likely have a higher ballistic coefficient than the individual musket balls (see external ballistics).
The explosive charge in the shell was to be just enough to break the casing rather than scatter the shot in all directions. As such his invention increased the effective range of canister shot from to about .
He called his device 'spherical case shot', but in time it came to be called after him; a nomenclature formalised in 1852 by the British Government.
Initial designs suffered from the potentially catastrophic problem that friction between the shot and black powder during the high acceleration down the gun bore could sometimes cause premature ignition of the powder. Various solutions were tried, with limited if any success. However, in 1852 Colonel Boxer proposed using a diaphragm to separate the bullets from the bursting charge; this proved successful and was adopted the following year. As a buffer to prevent lead shot deforming, a resin was used as a packing material between the shot. A useful side effect of using the resin was that the combustion also gave a visual reference upon the shell bursting, as the resin shattered into a cloud of dust.
It took until 1803 for the British artillery to adopt (albeit with great enthusiasm) the shrapnel shell (as "spherical case"). Henry Shrapnel was promoted to major in the same year. The first recorded use of shrapnel by the British was in 1804 against the Dutch at Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam in Suriname. The Duke of Wellington's armies used it from 1808 in the Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo, and he wrote admiringly of its effectiveness.
The design was improved by Captain E. M. Boxer of the Royal Arsenal around 1852 and crossed over when cylindrical shells for rifled guns were introduced. Lieutenant-Colonel Boxer adapted his design in 1864 to produce shrapnel shells for the new rifled muzzle-loader (RML) guns: the walls were of thick cast iron, but the gunpowder charge was now in the shell base with a tube running through the centre of the shell to convey the ignition flash from the time fuze in the nose to the gunpowder charge in the base. The powder charge both shattered the cast iron shell wall and liberated the bullets. The broken shell wall continued mainly forward but had little destructive effect. The system had major limitations: the thickness of the iron shell walls limited the available carrying capacity for bullets but provided little destructive capability, and the tube through the centre similarly reduced available space for bullets.
In the 1870s William Armstrong provided a design with the bursting charge in the head and the shell wall made of steel and hence much thinner than previous cast-iron shrapnel shell walls. While the thinner shell wall and absence of a central tube allowed the shell to carry far more bullets, it had the disadvantage that the bursting charge separated the bullets from the shell casing by firing the case forward and at the same time slowing the bullets down as they were ejected through the base of the shell casing, rather than increasing their velocity. Britain adopted this solution for several smaller calibres (below 6-inch) but by World War I few if any such shells remained.
The final shrapnel shell design, adopted in the 1880s, bore little similarity to Henry Shrapnel's original design other than its spherical bullets and time fuse. It used a much thinner forged steel shell case with a timer fuse in the nose and a tube running through the centre to convey the ignition flash to a gunpowder bursting charge in the shell base. The use of steel allowed a thinner shell wall, allowing space for many more bullets. It also withstood the force of the powder charge without shattering, so that the bullets were fired forward out of the shell case with increased velocity, much like a shotgun. This design came to be adopted by all countries and was in standard use when World War I began in 1914. During the 1880s, when both the old cast-iron and modern forged-steel shrapnel shell designs were in British service, British ordnance manuals referred to the older cast-iron design as "Boxer shrapnel", apparently to differentiate it from the modern steel design.
The modern thin-walled forged-steel design made feasible shrapnel shells for howitzers, which had a much lower velocity than field guns, by using a larger gunpowder charge to accelerate the bullets forward on bursting. The ideal shrapnel design would have had a timer fuze in the shell base to avoid the need for a central tube, but this was not technically feasible due to the need to manually adjust the fuze before firing, and was in any case rejected from an early date by the British due to risk of premature ignition and irregular action.
The size of shrapnel balls in World War I was based on two considerations. One was the premise that a projectile energy of about was required to disable an enemy soldier. A typical World War I field gun shell at its maximum possible range traveling at a velocity of 250 feet/second, plus the additional velocity from the shrapnel bursting charge (about 150 feet per second), would give individual shrapnel bullets a velocity of 400 feet per second and an energy of 60 foot-pounds (81 joules): this was the minimum energy of a single half-inch lead-antimony ball of approximately , or 41-42 balls = 1 pound. Hence this was a typical field gun shrapnel bullet size.
The maximum possible range, typically beyond , was beyond useful shrapnel combat ranges for normal field guns due to loss of accuracy and the fact that at extreme range the projectiles descended relatively steeply and hence the "cone" of bullets covered a relatively small area.
At a more typical combat range of , giving a fairly flat trajectory and hence a long "beaten zone" for the bullets, a typical 3-inch or 75-mm field gun shrapnel shell would have a velocity of approximately 900 feet/second. The bursting charge would add a possible 150 feet/second, giving a bullet velocity of 1,050 feet/second. This would give each bullet approximately 418 foot-pounds: seven times the assumed energy required to disable a man.
For larger guns which had lower velocities, correspondingly larger balls were used so that each individual ball carried enough energy to be lethal.
Most engagements using guns in this size range used direct fire at enemy from to distant, at which ranges the residual shell velocity was correspondingly higher, as in the table - at least in the earlier stages of World War 1.
The other factor was the trajectory. The shrapnel bullets were typically lethal for about from normal field guns after bursting and over from heavy field guns. To make maximum use of these distances a flat trajectory and hence high velocity gun was required. The pattern in Europe was that the armies with higher-velocity guns tended to use heavier bullets because they could afford to have fewer bullets per shell.
The important points to note about shrapnel shells and bullets in their final stage of development in World War I are:
A firsthand description of successful British deployment of shrapnel in a defensive barrage during the Third Battle of Ypres, 1917: ... the air is full of yellow spurts of smoke that burst about 30 feet up and shoot towards the earth - just ahead of each of these yellow puffs the earth rises in a lashed-up cloud - shrapnel - and how beautifully placed - long sweeps of it fly along that slope lashing up a good 200 yards of earth at each burst.
During the initial stages of World War I, shrapnel was widely used by all sides as an anti-personnel weapon. It was the only type of shell available for British field guns (13-pounder, 15 pounder and 18-pounder) until October 1914. Shrapnel was effective against troops in the open, particularly massed infantry (advancing or withdrawing). However, the onset of trench warfare from late 1914 led to most armies decreasing their use of shrapnel in favour of high-explosive. Britain continued to use a high percentage of shrapnel shells. New tactical roles included cutting barbed wire and providing "creeping barrages" to both screen its own attacking troops and suppressing the enemy defenders to prevent them from shooting at their attackers.
In a creeping barrage fire was 'lifted' from one 'line' to the next as the attackers advanced. These lines were typically apart and the lifts were typically 4 minutes apart. Lifting meant that time fuzes settings had to be changed. The attackers tried to keep as close as possible (as little as 25 yards sometimes) to the bursting shrapnel so as to be on top of the enemy trenches when fire lifted beyond them, and before the enemy could get back to their parapets.
While shrapnel made no impression on trenches and other earthworks, it remained the favoured weapon of the British (at least) to support their infantry assaults by suppressing the enemy infantry and preventing them from manning their trench parapets. This was called 'neutralization' and by the second half of 1915 had become the primary task of artillery supporting an attack. Shrapnel was less hazardous to the assaulting British infantry than high explosives - as long as their own shrapnel burst above or ahead of them, attackers were safe from its effects, whereas high-explosive shells bursting short are potentially lethal within 100 yards or more in any direction. Shrapnel was also useful against counter-attacks, working parties and any other troops in the open.
British Expeditionary Force "GHQ Artillery Notes No. 5 Wire-cutting" was issued in June 1916. It prescribed the use of shrapnel for wirecutting, with HE used to scatter the posts and wire when cut. However, there were constraints: the best ranges for 18-pdrs were 1,800–2,400 yards. Shorter ranges meant the flat trajectories might not clear the firers' own parapets, and fuzes could not be set for less than 1,000 yards. The guns had to be overhauled by artificers and carefully calibrated. Furthermore, they needed good platforms with trail and wheels anchored with sandbags, and an observing officer had to monitor the effects on the wire continuously and make any necessary adjustments to range and fuze settings. These instructions were repeated in "GHQ Artillery Notes No. 3 Artillery in Offensive Operations", issued in February 1917 with added detail including the amount of ammunition required per yard of wire frontage. The use of shrapnel for wire-cutting was also highlighted in RA "Training Memoranda No. 2 1939".
Shrapnel provided a useful "screening" effect from the smoke of the black-powder bursting charges when the British used it in "creeping barrages".
One of the key factors that contributed to the heavy casualties sustained by the British at the Battle of the Somme was the perceived belief that shrapnel would be effective at cutting the barbed wire entanglements in no man's land (although it has been suggested that the reason for the use of shrapnel as a wire-cutter at the Somme was because Britain lacked the capacity to manufacture enough HE shell). This perception was reinforced by the successful deployment of shrapnel shells against Germany's barbed wire entanglements in the 1915 Battle of Neuve Chapelle, but the Germans thickened their barbed wire strands after that battle. As a result, shrapnel was later only effective in killing enemy personnel; even if the conditions were correct, with the angle of descent being flat to maximise the number of bullets going through the entanglements, the probability of a shrapnel ball hitting a thin line of barbed wire and successfully cutting it was extremely low. The bullets also had limited destructive effect and were stopped by sandbags, so troops behind protection or in bunkers were generally safe. Additionally, steel helmets, including both the German Stahlhelm and the British Brodie helmet, could resist Shrapnel bullets and protect the wearer from head injury:
... suddenly, with a great clanging thud, I was hit on the forehead and knocked flying onto the floor of the trench... a shrapnel bullet had hit my helmet with great violence, without piercing it, but sufficiently hard to dent it. If I had, as had been usual up until a few days previously, been wearing a cap, then the Regiment would have had one more man killed.
A shrapnel shell was more expensive than a high-explosive one and required higher grade steel for the shell body. They were also harder to use correctly because getting the correct fuze running time was critical in order to burst the shell in the right place. This required considerable skill by the observation officer when engaging moving targets.
An added complication was that the actual fuze running time was affected by the meteorological conditions, with the variation in gun muzzle velocity being an added complication. However, the British used fuze indicators at each gun that determined the correct fuze running time (length) corrected for muzzle velocity.
With the advent of relatively insensitive high explosives which could be used as the filling for shells, it was found that the casing of a properly designed high-explosive shell fragmented effectively . For example, the detonation of an average 105 mm shell produces several thousand high-velocity (1,000 to 1,500 m/s) fragments, a lethal (at very close range) blast overpressure and, if a surface or sub-surface burst, a useful cratering and anti-materiel effect — all in a munition much less complex than the later versions of the shrapnel shell. However, this fragmentation was often lost when shells penetrated soft ground, and because some fragments went in all directions it was a hazard to assaulting troops.
One item of note is the "universal shell", a type of field gun shell developed by Krupp of Germany in the early 1900s. This shell could function as either a shrapnel shell or high explosive projectile. The shell had a modified fuze, and, instead of resin as the packing between the shrapnel balls, TNT was used. When a timed fuze was set the shell functioned as a shrapnel round, ejecting the balls and igniting (not detonating) the TNT, giving a visible puff of black smoke. When allowed to impact, the TNT filling would detonate, becoming a high-explosive shell with a very large amount of low-velocity fragmentation and a milder blast. Due to its complexity it was dropped in favour of a simple high-explosive shell.
During World War I the UK also used shrapnel pattern shells to carry "pots" instead of "bullets". These were incendiary shells with seven pots using a thermite compound.
When World War I began the United States also had what it referred to as the "Ehrhardt high-explosive shrapnel" in its inventory. It appears to be similar to the German design, with bullets embedded in TNT rather than resin, together with a quantity of explosive in the shell nose. Douglas Hamilton mentions this shell type in passing, as "not as common as other types" in his comprehensive treatises on manufacturing shrapnel and high explosive shells of 1915 and 1916, but gives no manufacturing details. Nor does Ethan Viall in 1917. Hence the US appears to have ceased its manufacture early in the war, presumably based on the experience of other combatants.
A new British streamlined shrapnel shell, Mk 3D, had been developed for BL 60 pounder gun in the early 1930s, containing 760 bullets. There was some use of shrapnel by the British in the campaigns in East and North East Africa at the beginning of the war, where 18-pdr and 4.5-in (114 mm) howitzers were used. By World War II shrapnel shells, in the strict sense of the word, fell out of use, the last recorded use of shrapnel being 60 pdr shells fired in Burma in 1943. In 1945 the British conducted successful trials with shrapnel shells fuzed with VT. However, shrapnel was not developed for any of the post World War I guns.
Although not strictly shrapnel, a 1960s weapons project produced splintex shells for 90 and 106 mm recoilless rifles and 105 mm howitzers where it was called a "beehive" round. Unlike the shrapnel shells’ balls, the splintex shells contained flechettes. The result was the 105 mm M546 APERS-T (anti-personnel-tracer) round, first used in the Vietnam War in 1966. The shell consisted of approximately 8,000 one-half gram flechettes arranged in five tiers, a time fuze, body shearing detonators, a central flash tube, a smokeless propellant charge with a dye marker contained in the base and a tracer element. The shell functioned as follows: the time fuze fired, the flash traveled down the flash tube, the shearing detonators fired, and the forward body split into four pieces. The body and first four tiers were dispersed by the projectile's spin, the last tier and visual marker by the powder charge itself. The flechettes spread, mainly due to spin, from the point of burst in an ever-widening cone along the projectile's previous trajectory prior to bursting. The round was complex to make, but is a highly effective anti-personnel weapon — soldiers reported that after beehive rounds were fired during an overrun attack, many enemy dead had their hands nailed to the wooden stocks of their rifles, and these dead could be dragged to mass graves by the rifle. It is said that the name beehive was given to the munition type due to the noise of the flechettes moving through the air resembling that of a swarm of bees.
Though shrapnel rounds are now rarely used, apart from the beehive munitions, there are other modern rounds, that use, or have used, the shrapnel principle. The DM 111 20 mm cannon round used for close range air defense, the flechette-filled 40 mm HVCC (40 x 53 mm HV grenade), the 35 mm cannon (35 × 228 mm) AHEAD ammunition (152 x 3.3 g tungsten cylinders), RWM Schweiz 30 × 173 mm air-bursting munition, five-inch shotgun projectile (KE-ET) and possibly more. Also, many modern armies have canister shot ammunition for tank and artillery guns, the XM1028 round for the 120 mm M256 tank gun being one example (approx 1150 tungsten balls at 1,400 m/s).
At least some anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) use shrapnel-like warheads instead of the more common blast-fragmentation types. As with a blast-frag warhead, the use of this type of warhead does not require a direct body-on-body impact, so greatly reduces tracking and steering accuracy requirements. At a predetermined distance from the incoming re-entry vehicle (RV) the warhead releases, in the case of the ABM warhead by an explosive expulsion charge, an array of mainly rod-like sub-projectiles into the RV's flight path. Unlike a blast-frag warhead, the expulsion charge is only needed to release the sub-projectiles from the main warhead, not to accelerate them to high velocity. The velocity required to penetrate the RV's casing comes from the high terminal velocity of the warhead, similar to the shrapnel shell's principle. The reason for the use of this type of warhead and not a blast-frag is that the fragments produced by a blast-frag warhead cannot guarantee penetration of the RV's casing. By using rod-like sub-projectiles, a much greater thickness of material can be penetrated, greatly increasing the potential for disruption of the incoming RV.
The Starstreak missile uses a similar system, with three metal darts splitting from the missile prior to impact, although in the case of Starstreak these darts are guided. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37345 |
Dominus Iesus
Dominus Iesus () is a declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (known as the "Holy Office"), approved in a Plenary meeting of the Congregation and signed by its then Prefect, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, and of its then Secretary, Archbishop Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, later Cardinal Secretary of State. The declaration was approved by Pope John Paul II and was published on August 6, 2000. It is subtitled "On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church". It is most widely known for its elaboration of the Catholic dogma that the Catholic Church is the sole true Church of Christ.
A Catholic dogma, "Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus" (literally "no salvation outside the Church") has sometimes been interpreted as denying salvation to non-Catholic Christians as well as non-Christians, though Catholic teaching has long stressed the possibility of salvation for persons invincibly ignorant (through no fault of their own) of the Catholic Church's necessity and thus not culpable for lacking communion with the Church. In the 20th century this inclusive approach was expressed in the condemnation of Feeneyism and in the declaration of the Second Vatican Council, which said that "the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator," although this is ambiguous and numerous interpretations have arisen. Vatican II further affirmed that salvation could be available to people who had not even heard of Christ (cf. Acts 17:23)— but that all who gain salvation do so only by membership in the Catholic Church, whether that membership is ordinary (explicit) or by extraordinary means (implicit).
While affirming the teaching of "Lumen gentium" ("Light of the Nations", the 1964 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church that came out of the Second Vatican Council) that the Catholic Church "is the single Church of Christ" and that "[t]his Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church," "Dominus Iesus" offers further comments on what it means for the true Church to "subsist in" the Catholic Church. The document states that, "[w]ith the expression "subsistit in", the Second Vatican Council sought to harmonize two doctrinal statements: on the one hand, that the Church of Christ, despite the divisions which exist among Christians, continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and on the other hand, that 'outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth.'"
The document reserves the word "Church" for bodies that have preserved a "valid episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery." Such bodies, which include the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and the Old Catholic Churches, "are true particular Churches," and the document affirms that "the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of Primacy."
The document uses the term "ecclesial community" (from the Greek word "ecclesia", meaning "church") rather than "Church" for those Christian bodies not named in the preceding paragraph, most notably including all Protestants. The document states that, although such Christian communities "are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church." It further states that such Christian communities, "though we believe they suffer from defects, have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation."
The document declares that, although the Christian church is intended by God to be "the instrument for the salvation of "all" humanity," such beliefs do not "lessen the sincere respect which the Church has for the religions of the world." It does, however, "rule out, in a radical way... a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another'"
The document goes on to affirm the possibility that those who subscribe to non-Christian religions may be saved while insisting that the means of such salvation must be Christ, and not the religion to which such a person subscribes: "If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that "objectively speaking" they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation." The document then immediately reminds Christians that their more direct enjoyment of the means of salvation comes "not from their own merits, but from the grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they shall be more severely judged."
Criticism of the document focused on passages such as the one stating that Protestant bodies "are not Churches in the proper sense" and "suffer from defects" and the one stating that non-Christian religions are "gravely deficient," while paying less attention to the accompanying positive statements about both groups. Some critics questioned the Church's commitment to ecumenism.
In response to these criticisms, Pope John Paul II – who had personally endorsed, ratified, and confirmed "Dominus Iesus" – emphasized on October 2 of that year that this document did not say that non-Christians were denied salvation: "This confession does not deny salvation to non-Christians, but points to its ultimate source in Christ, in whom man and God are united."
John Paul II then issued on December 6 a statement to emphasize further that the Church continued in the position of Vatican II that salvation was available to believers of other faiths:
He further added,
"'But the point of the passage is that all faith communities that baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit bring salvation', said the Rev. John G. Panagiotou, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Pittsburgh, who has degrees in both Catholic and Orthodox theology. 'It affirms that grace is present in all of these confessing communities. It does talk about a uniqueness in the Catholic tradition...but it doesn't say anything derogatory,' Panagiotou said. 'I think the media has taken a big spin on this and made it a polemic instead of explaining what the document really says.'" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37348 |
Liberation theology
Liberation theology is a synthesis of Christian theology and socio-economic analyses, based on far-left politics, particularly Marxism, that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples." In the 1950s and the 1960s, liberation theology was the political praxis of Latin American theologians, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Juan Luis Segundo, and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor."
The Latin American context also produced evangelical advocates of liberation theology, such as Rubem Alves, José Míguez Bonino, and C. René Padilla, who in the 1970s called for integral mission, emphasizing evangelism and social responsibility.
Theologies of liberation have developed in other parts of the world such as black theology in the United States and South Africa, Palestinian liberation theology, Dalit theology in India, and Minjung theology in South Korea.
The best-known form of liberation theology is that which developed within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, arising principally as a moral reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region. The term was coined in 1971 by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement's defining books, "A Theology of Liberation". Other noted exponents include Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Jon Sobrino of El Salvador, and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay.
Latin American liberation theology met opposition in the United States, which accused it of using "Marxist concepts", and led to admonishment by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. While stating that "in itself, the expression "theology of liberation" is a thoroughly valid term", The Vatican rejected certain forms of Latin American liberation theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin and for identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the same privileged class that had long been oppressing indigenous populations from the arrival of Pizarro onward.
A major player in the formation of liberation theology was the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM). Created in 1955 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, CELAM pushed the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) toward a more socially oriented stance. However, CELAM never supported liberation theology as such, since liberation theology was frowned upon by the Vatican, with Pope Paul VI trying to slow the movement after the Second Vatican Council.
More or less at the same time as the initial publications of Latin American liberation theology are also found voices of Black liberation theology and feminist liberation theology.
After the Second Vatican Council, CELAM held two conferences which were important in determining the future of liberation theology: the first was held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968, and the second in Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979. The Medellín conference debated how to apply the teachings of Vatican II to Latin America, and its conclusions were strongly influenced by liberation theology. Although liberation theology grew out of these officially recognized ideas, the Medellín document is not a liberation theology document. It did, however, lay the groundwork, and since then liberation theology has developed rapidly in the Latin American Catholic Church.
Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo was a central figure after the Medellín Conference, who as priest in Bogota he did not attend, and was elected in 1972 as general secretary of CELAM, and then, its president in 1979 (at the Puebla conference). He represented a more orthodox position, becoming a favourite of Pope John Paul II and the "principal scourge of liberation theology." Trujillo's faction became predominant in CELAM after the 1972 Sucre conference, and in the Roman Curia after the CELAM conference in Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979.
Despite the orthodox bishops' predominance in CELAM, a more radical form of liberation theology remained much supported in South America. Thus, the 1979 Puebla Conference was an opportunity for orthodox bishops to reassert control of the radical elements, but they failed. At the Puebla Conference, the orthodox reorientation was met by strong opposition from the liberal part of the clergy, which supported the concept of a "preferential option for the poor". This concept had been approved at the Medellín conference by Ricard Durand, president of the Commission about Poverty.
Pope John Paul II gave the opening speech at the Puebla Conference. The general tone of his remarks was conciliatory. He criticized radical liberation theology, saying, "this idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary, as the subversive of Nazareth, does not tally with the Church's catechesis"; however, he did acknowledge that "the growing wealth of a few parallels the growing poverty of the masses," and affirmed both the "principle" of private property and that the Church "must preach, educate individuals and collectivities, form public opinion, and offer orientations to the leaders of the peoples" towards the goal of a "more just and equitable distribution of goods".
Some liberation theologians, however, including Gustavo Gutiérrez, had been barred from attending the Puebla Conference. Working from a seminary and with aid from sympathetic, liberal bishops, they partially obstructed other clergy's efforts to ensure that the Puebla Conference documents satisfied conservative concerns. Within four hours of the Pope's speech, Gutiérrez and the other priests wrote a 20-page refutation, which was circulated at the conference, and has been claimed to have influenced the final outcome of the conference. According to a socio-political study of liberation theology in Latin America, a quarter of the final Puebla documents were written by theologians who were "not invited" to the conference.
Liberation theology could be interpreted as an attempt to return to the gospel of the early church where Christianity is politically and culturally decentralized.
Liberation theology proposes to fight poverty by addressing its alleged source, the sin of greed. In so doing, it explores the relationship between Christian theology (especially Roman Catholic) and political activism, especially in relation to economic justice, poverty, and human rights. The principal methodological innovation is seeing theology from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed. For example, Jon Sobrino argues that the poor are a privileged channel of God's grace.
Some liberation theologians base their social action upon the Bible scriptures describing the mission of Jesus Christ, as bringing a sword (social unrest), e.g., , , — and "not" as bringing peace (social order). This biblical interpretation is a call to "action" against poverty, and the sin engendering it, to affect Jesus Christ's mission of justice in this world.
Gustavo Gutiérrez gave the movement its name with his 1971 book, "A Theology of Liberation". In this book, Gutiérrez combined populist ideas with the social teachings of the Catholic Church. He was influenced by an existing socialist current in the Church which included organizations such as the Catholic Worker Movement and the "Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne", a Belgian Christian youth worker organization. He was also influenced by Paul Gauthier's "The Poor, Jesus and the Church" (1965). Gutiérrez's book is based on an understanding of history in which the human being is seen as assuming conscious responsibility for human destiny, and yet Christ the Saviour liberates the human race from sin, which is the root of all disruption of friendship and of all injustice and oppression.
Gutiérrez also popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor", which became a slogan of liberation theology and later appeared in addresses of the Pope. Drawing from the biblical motif on the poor, Gutiérrez asserts that God is revealed as having a preference for those people who are “insignificant", "marginalized", “unimportant", "needy", "despised", and "defenseless". Moreover, he makes clear that terminology of "the poor" in scripture has social and economic connotations that etymologically go back to the Greek word, "ptōchos". To be sure, as to not misinterpret Gutiérrez's definition of the term "preferential option", he stresses, "Preference implies the universality of God’s love, which excludes no one. It is only within the framework of this universality that we can understand the preference, that is, 'what comes first'."
Gutiérrez emphasized practice (or, more technically, "praxis") over doctrine. Gutiérrez clarified his position by advocating a circular relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxis seeing the two as having a symbiotic relationship. Gutierrez' reading of prophets condemning oppression and injustice against the poor (i.e., Jeremiah 22:13–17) informs his assertion that to know God (orthodoxy) is to do justice (orthopraxis). Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), however, criticized liberation theology for elevating orthopraxis to the level of orthodoxy. Richard McBrien summarizes this concept as follows:
God is disclosed in the historical "praxis" of liberation. It is the situation, and our passionate and reflective involvement in it, which mediates the Word of God. Today that Word is mediated through the cries of the poor and the oppressed.
Another important hallmark for Gutiérrez's brand of liberation theology is an interpretation of revelation as "history". For example, Gutiérrez wrote:
History is the scene of the revelation God makes of the mystery of his person. His word reaches us in the measure of our involvement in the evolution of history.
Gutiérrez also considered the Church to be the "sacrament of history", an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, thus pointing to the doctrine of universal salvation as the true means to eternal life, and assigning the Church itself to a somewhat temporal role, namely, liberation.
One of the most radical aspects of liberation theology was the social organization, or reorganization, of church practice through the model of Christian base communities. Liberation theology strove to be a bottom-up movement in practice, with biblical interpretation and liturgical practice designed by lay practitioners themselves, rather than by the orthodox Church hierarchy. In this context, sacred text interpretation is understood as "praxis". Liberation theology seeks to interpret the actions of the Catholic Church and the teachings of Jesus Christ from the perspective of the poor and disadvantaged. In Latin America, liberation theologians specifically target the severe disparities between rich and poor in the existing social and economic orders within the nations' political and corporate structures. It is a strong critique of the various economic and social structures, such as an oppressive government, dependence upon First World countries and the traditional hierarchical Church, that allow some to be extremely rich while others are unable to even have safe drinking water.
The journalist and writer Penny Lernoux described this aspect of liberation theology in her numerous and committed writings intended to explain the movement's ideas in North America. Base communities were small gatherings, usually outside of churches, in which the Bible could be discussed, and Mass could be said. They were especially active in rural parts of Latin America where parish priests were not always available, as they placed a high value on lay participation. In May 2007, it was estimated that 80,000 base communities existed in Brazil.
Contemporaneously, Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti, the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil, and Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa are three organizations that make use of liberation theology.
The Brazilian Catholic Church is arguably one of the most theologically progressive Catholic congregations due, in large part, to a history of violent military and political conflicts as well as a divisive socioeconomic climate. During Brazil's military rule from 1964 to 1985, the Catholic Church and its members assumed responsibility to provide services to the poor and disenfranchised, often under threat of persecution. The Vatican II and Medellín conference innovations in liberation theology entered the Brazilian Church as the Brazilian lower classes experienced sharply deteriorating economic and political conditions. Among these were an increase in landownership concentration, a decline in wages and standards of living, and a rise in the military state's political repression and violence, including mass detainment, torture, and the assassination of political opponents.
After decades of repression from the government authorities, the liberationist Catholic Church in Brazil is absent of traditional centralization and encourages an increased lay participation. Faced with a severe priest shortage, much of the Brazilian Catholic Church is organized into Base Ecclesial Communities or, "CEBs" in which the Mass, community spirituality programs, and community needs are led or addressed by a single clergy member or a trained lay member in either a small chapel or an individual's home. The CEBs introduced new social ideas and democratic methods which led to many participants' active involvement in popular movements of Brazil that worked for progressive social change. An example of progressive social change initiated by the CEBs is in Nova Iguaçu. A health program began there to try to organize the population in order to remedy widespread malnutrition, open sewers, and other health hazards. Eventually the neighbourhood initiative reached a national interest level where it then became a mass movement in nearly every neighbourhood. Initiatives like the health program in Nova Iguaçu illustrate how CEBs have helped the transition from military to democratic rule.
While liberation theology has brought about significant progressive reforms in Brazil, anthropologist Robin Nagle questions the effectiveness of Catholic Church theology in Brazil. Nagle concentrates on the conflict between conservatives and liberationists in Recife, Brazil, in 1990. The poor neighbourhood of Morro da Conceição had a liberationist priest named Reginaldo who was expelled by the traditionalist archbishop because the archbishop found Reginaldo's politics and social theology annoying and adverse to his own agenda. When Reginaldo and his followers refused to accept the expulsion and the new priest, the archbishop called in the Military Police. Conversely, the event did not cause a mass response because the liberationist agenda aroused distrust and even hatred among many of its intended audience. The main reason was that it was too much to ask poor parishioners to embrace a Church focused more on the troubles of this life than solace in the next.
While Robin Nagle claims that liberation theology is ineffective for genuine social change, anthropologist Manuel Vásquez argues that liberation theology embraced by CEBs create a twofold effect, because it not only provided moral justification for resistance but it also served as a means to organize the resistance. Many people come to the CEB through conversion experiences, but also because they are keenly concerned with the spiritual and infrastructural needs of their community. Through his fieldwork in working-class neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, Vásquez reveals that CEBs combat disenfranchisement but also serve to overcome the obstacles associated with materialism and globalization. The social and political impact can be viewed in terms of initial consciousness-raising, the motivation for involvement, the sense of community they develop, the experience of grassroots democracy, the direct actions they engage in, and finally, directly political actions.
Anthropologist and author Max Maranhão Piorsky Aires analyzes the influence of liberation theology on the transformation of the indigenous Tapeba people of Brazil from poor, uneducated inhabitants neglected by the state to rights-bearing and involved citizens. Specifically he largely attributes the work of the Brazilian Catholic Church to the progression of the Tapeba. The Catholic Church enlisted state authorities, anthropologists, and journalists to help uncover the identity of neglected indigenous peoples of Brazil. Early recognition by missionaries and followers of liberation theology stimulated indigenous identification of the Tapeba population as a possibility for attaining rights, especially land, health, and education. The Church gathered and contributed historical knowledge of indigenous territory and identity of the Tapeba in Caucaia that ultimately succeeded in the tribes obtaining a legally codified identity as well as a rightful place as Brazilian subjects.
In Gurupá, the Catholic Church employed liberation theology to defend indigenous tribes, farmers, and extractors from land expropriation by federal or corporate forces. New religious ideas, in the form of liberation theology, have fortified and legitimized an evolving political culture of resistance. Meanwhile, the Church-supported Base Ecclesial Communities (CEBs) have promoted stronger social connections among community members that has led to more effective activism in Gurupá. Anthropologist Richard Pace's study of Gurupá revealed that CEBs assured safety in united activism, and, combined with liberation theology, encouraged members to challenge landowner's commercial monopolies and fight for better standards of living. Pace references a specific incident in the CEB of Nossa Senhora de Fátima, in which a community of 24 families of farmers, timber extractors, and traders resisted an extra-regional timber extraction firm. The community negotiated an agreement with the firm that gained them a higher standard of living that included imported goods, increased food availability, and access to health care. While severe social dislocations such as government-initiated capitalist penetration, land expropriation, and poor wages persist, small-farmer activism is fortified by liberation theology and receives structural support from unions, political parties, and church organizations.
In March 1983, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), made ten observations of Gustavo Gutiérrez's theology, accusing Gutiérrez of politically interpreting the Bible in supporting temporal messianism, and stating that the predominance of orthopraxis over orthodoxy in his thought proved a Marxist influence. Ratzinger objected that the spiritual concept of the Church as "People of God" is transformed into a "Marxist myth". In liberation theology he declared, the "'people' is the antithesis of the hierarchy, the antithesis of all institutions, which are seen as oppressive powers. Ultimately anyone who participates in the class struggle is a member of the 'people'; the 'Church of the people' becomes the antagonist of the hierarchical Church."
Ratzinger did praise liberation theology in some respects, including its ideal of justice, its rejection of violence, and its stress on "the responsibility which Christians necessarily bear for the poor and oppressed". He subsequently stated that no one could be neutral in the face of injustice, and referred to the "crimes" of colonialism and the "scandal" of the arms race. Nonetheless, media reports tended to assume that the condemnation of "liberation theology" meant a rejection of such attitudes and an endorsement of conservative politics.
In 1984, it was reported that a meeting occurred between the CDF and the CELAM bishops, during which a rift developed between Ratzinger and some of the bishops, with Ratzinger issuing official condemnations of certain elements of liberation theology. These "Instructions" rejected as Marxist the idea that class struggle is fundamental to history, and rejected the interpretation of religious phenomena such as the Exodus and the Eucharist in exclusively political terms. Ratzinger further stated that liberation theology had a major flaw in that it attempted to apply Christ's sermon on the mount teachings about the poor to present social situations. He asserted that Christ's teaching on the poor meant that we will be judged when we die, with particular attention to how we personally have treated the poor.
Ratzinger also argued that liberation theology is not originally a "grass-roots" movement among the poor, but rather, a creation of Western intellectuals: "an attempt to test, in a concrete scenario, ideologies that have been invented in the laboratory by European theologians" and in a certain sense itself a form of "cultural imperialism". Ratzinger saw this as a reaction to the demise or near-demise of the "Marxist myth" in the West.
Throughout the 1990s, Ratzinger, as prefect of the CDF, continued to condemn these elements in liberation theology, and prohibited dissident priests from teaching such doctrines in the Catholic Church's name. Leonardo Boff was suspended and others were censured. Tissa Balasuriya, in Sri Lanka, was excommunicated. Sebastian Kappen, an Indian theologian, was also censured for his book "Jesus and Freedom". Under Ratzinger's influence, theological formation schools were forbidden from using the Catholic Church's organization and grounds to teach liberation theology in the sense of theology using unacceptable Marxist ideas, not in the broader sense.
According to Roberto Bosca, a historian at Austral University in Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio (later Pope Francis) had "a reputation as an opponent of liberation theology during the 1970s" but he "accepted the premise of liberation theology, especially the option for the poor, but in a 'nonideological' fashion." Before becoming Pope, Bergoglio said, "The option for the poor comes from the first centuries of Christianity. It's the Gospel itself. If you were to read one of the sermons of the first fathers of the Church, from the second or third centuries, about how you should treat the poor, you’d say it was Maoist or Trotskyist. The Church has always had the honor of this preferential option for the poor ... At the Second Vatican Council the Church was redefined as the People of God and this idea really took off at the Second Conference of the Latin-American bishops in Medellín." Bosca said Bergoglio was not opposed to liberation theology itself but to "giving a Catholic blessing to armed insurgency", specifically the Montoneros, who claimed liberation theology as part of their political ideology. Blase Bonpane, a former Maryknoll father and founding director of the Office of the Americas, said "The new pope has not been comfortable with liberation theology."
On September 11, 2013, Pope Francis hosted Gutiérrez in his residence, where he concelebrated mass with Gutiérrez and Gerhard Müller, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Some saw this meeting as a sign of warming relations between the hierarchy and liberation theologians. The same month, "L'Osservatore Romano" published an article by Archbishop Müller praising Gutiérrez. On January 18, 2014, Pope Francis met with Arturo Paoli, an Italian priest whom the Pope knew from Paoli's long service in Argentina. Paoli is recognized as an exponent of liberation theology "avant la lettre" and the meeting was seen as a sign of "reconciliation" between the Vatican and the liberationists.
Miguel d'Escoto, a Maryknoll priest from Nicaragua, had been sanctioned with an "a divinis" suspension from his public functions in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, for political activity in the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Pope Francis lifted the suspension in August 2014, in response to a request by d'Escoto.
At a 2015 press conference in the Vatican hosted by Caritas International, the federation of Catholic relief agencies, Gutiérrez noted that while there had been some difficult moments in the past dialogue with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, liberation theology had never been condemned. Although he saw an increasingly clear emphasis on Church teachings on the poor, he did not consider that liberation theology was undergoing a rehabilitation, since it had never been "dishabilitated".
In January 2019, during the World Youth Day in Panama, Pope Francis discussed changing attitudes to liberation theology during an extended discussion with a group of thirty Jesuits from Central America. He noted that he had a devotion to the martyred Salvadoran Jesuit priest, Rutilio Grande, even before he came to know Óscar Romero well. Francis commented that "Today we old people laugh about how worried we were about liberation theology. What was missing then was communication to the outside about how things really were."
Communist era general of Romania's secret police, Ion Mihai Pacepa, claims that the KGB created liberation theology. Commentators, notably John L. Allen of "Crux" on the left and Damian Thompson of "The Spectator" on the right, have suspected these claims are exaggerated.
In 1983 US vice president George H. W. Bush said he could not comprehend how Catholic theologians could harmonize Catholicism and Marxism and support revolutionaries in Central America. "I'm puzzled. I just don't understand it."
Integral mission or holistic mission is a term coined in Spanish as "misión integral" in the 1970s by members of the evangelical group Latin American Theological Fellowship (or FTL, its Spanish acronym) to describe an understanding of Christian mission which embraces both the evangelism and social responsibility. Since Lausanne 1974, integral mission has influenced a significant number of evangelicals around the world.
The word "integral" is used in Spanish to describe wholeness (as in wholemeal bread or whole wheat). Theologians use it to describe an understanding of Christian mission that affirms the importance of expressing the love of God and neighbourly love through every means possible. Proponents such as C. René Padilla of Ecuador, Samuel Escobar of Peru, and Orlando E. Costas of Puerto Rico have wanted to emphasize the breadth of the Good News and of the Christian mission, and used the word integral to signal their discomfort with conceptions of Christian mission based on a dichotomy between evangelism and social involvement.
The proponents of integral mission argue that the concept of integral mission is nothing new – rather, it is rooted in Scripture and wonderfully exemplified in Jesus’ own ministry. "Integral mission" is only a distinct vocabulary for a holistic understanding of mission that has become important in the past forty years in order to distinguish it from widely held but dualistic approaches that emphasize either evangelism or social responsibility.
The priest Camilo Torres (a leader of the Colombian guerrilla group ELN) celebrated the Eucharist only among those engaged in armed struggle against the army of the Colombian state. He also fought for the ELN.
Black theology refers to a theological perspective which originated in some black churches in the United States and later in other parts of the world, which contextualizes Christianity in an attempt to help those of African descent overcome oppression. It especially focuses on the injustices committed against African Americans and black South Africans during American segregation and apartheid, respectively.
Black theology seeks to liberate people of color from multiple forms of political, social, economic, and religious subjugation and views Christian theology as a theology of liberation—"a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ," writes James Hal Cone, one of the original advocates of the perspective. Black theology mixes Christianity with questions of civil rights, particularly raised by the Black Power movement and the Black Consciousness Movement.
Palestinian liberation theology is an expression of political theology and a contextual theology that represents an attempt by a number of independently working Palestinian theologians from various denominations—mostly Protestant mainline churches—to articulate the gospel message in such a way as to make that liberating gospel relevant to the perceived needs of their indigenous flocks. As a rule, this articulation involves a condemnation of the State of Israel, a theological underpinning of Palestinian resistance to Israel as well as Palestinian national aspirations, and an intense valorization of Palestinian ethnic and cultural identity as guarantors of a truer grasp of the gospel by virtue of the fact that they are inhabitants of the land of Jesus and the Bible. The principal figure in Palestinian liberation theology is the Anglican cleric Naim Ateek, founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37349 |
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (), known as CERN (; ; derived from the name ), is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, the organization is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border and has 23 member states. Israel is the only non-European country granted full membership. CERN is an official United Nations Observer.
The acronym CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory, which in 2016 had 2,500 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,000 users. In the same year, CERN generated 49 petabytes of data.
CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research – as a result, numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN through international collaborations. The main site at Meyrin hosts a large computing facility, which is primarily used to store and analyse data from experiments, as well as simulate events. Researchers need remote access to these facilities, so the lab has historically been a major wide area network hub. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web.
The convention establishing CERN was ratified on 29 September 1954 by 12 countries in Western Europe. The acronym CERN originally represented the French words for (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for building the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, even though the name changed to the current (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1954. According to Lew Kowarski, a former director of CERN, when the name was changed, the abbreviation could have become the awkward OERN, and Werner Heisenberg said that this could "still be CERN even if the name is [not]".
CERN's first president was Sir Benjamin Lockspeiser. Edoardo Amaldi was the general secretary of CERN at its early stages when operations were still provisional, while the first Director-General (1954) was Felix Bloch.
The laboratory was originally devoted to the study of atomic nuclei, but was soon applied to higher-energy physics, concerned mainly with the study of interactions between subatomic particles. Therefore, the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics (), which better describes the research being performed there.
At the sixth session of the CERN Council, which took place in Paris from 29 June - 1 July 1953, the convention establishing the organization was signed, subject to ratification, by 12 states.
The convention was gradually ratified by the 12 founding Member States: Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia.
Several important achievements in particle physics have been made through experiments at CERN. They include:
In September 2011, CERN attracted media attention when the OPERA Collaboration reported the detection of possibly faster-than-light neutrinos. Further tests showed that the results were flawed due to an incorrectly connected GPS synchronization cable.
The 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the developments that resulted in the discoveries of the W and Z bosons. The 1992 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber". The 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs for the theoretical description of the Higgs mechanism in the year after the Higgs boson was found by CERN experiments.
The World Wide Web began as a CERN project named ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 and Robert Cailliau in 1990. Berners-Lee and Cailliau were jointly honoured by the Association for Computing Machinery in 1995 for their contributions to the development of the World Wide Web.
Based on the concept of hypertext, the project was intended to facilitate the sharing of information between researchers. The first website was activated in 1991. On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone. A copy of the original first webpage, created by Berners-Lee, is still published on the World Wide Web Consortium's website as a historical document.
Prior to the Web's development, CERN had pioneered the introduction of Internet technology, beginning in the early 1980s.
More recently, CERN has become a facility for the development of grid computing, hosting projects including the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) and LHC Computing Grid. It also hosts the CERN Internet Exchange Point (CIXP), one of the two main internet exchange points in Switzerland.
CERN operates a network of six accelerators and a decelerator. Each machine in the chain increases the energy of particle beams before delivering them to experiments or to the next more powerful accelerator. Currently (as of 2019) active machines are:
Many activities at CERN currently involve operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the experiments for it. The LHC represents a large-scale, worldwide scientific cooperation project.
The LHC tunnel is located 100 metres underground, in the region between the Geneva International Airport and the nearby Jura mountains. The majority of its length is on the French side of the border. It uses the 27 km circumference circular tunnel previously occupied by the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP), which was shut down in November 2000. CERN's existing PS/SPS accelerator complexes are used to pre-accelerate protons and lead ions which are then injected into the LHC.
Eight experiments (CMS, ATLAS, LHCb, MoEDAL, TOTEM, LHCf, FASER and ALICE) are located along the collider; each of them studies particle collisions from a different aspect, and with different technologies. Construction for these experiments required an extraordinary engineering effort. For example, a special crane was rented from Belgium to lower pieces of the CMS detector into its cavern, since each piece weighed nearly 2,000 tons. The first of the approximately 5,000 magnets necessary for construction was lowered down a special shaft at 13:00 GMT on 7 March 2005.
The LHC has begun to generate vast quantities of data, which CERN streams to laboratories around the world for distributed processing (making use of a specialized grid infrastructure, the LHC Computing Grid). During April 2005, a trial successfully streamed 600 MB/s to seven different sites across the world.
The initial particle beams were injected into the LHC August 2008. The first beam was circulated through the entire LHC on 10 September 2008, but the system failed 10 days later because of a faulty magnet connection, and it was stopped for repairs on 19 September 2008.
The LHC resumed operation on 20 November 2009 by successfully circulating two beams, each with an energy of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The challenge for the engineers was then to try to line up the two beams so that they smashed into each other. This is like "firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other" according to Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology.
On 30 March 2010, the LHC successfully collided two proton beams with 3.5 TeV of energy per proton, resulting in a 7 TeV collision energy. However, this was just the start of what was needed for the expected discovery of the Higgs boson. When the 7 TeV experimental period ended, the LHC revved to 8 TeV (4 TeV per proton) starting March 2012, and soon began particle collisions at that energy. In July 2012, CERN scientists announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle that was later confirmed to be the Higgs boson.
In March 2013, CERN announced that the measurements performed on the newly found particle allowed it to conclude that this is a Higgs boson. In early 2013, the LHC was deactivated for a two-year maintenance period, to strengthen the electrical connections between magnets inside the accelerator and for other upgrades.
On 5 April 2015, after two years of maintenance and consolidation, the LHC restarted for a second run. The first ramp to the record-breaking energy of 6.5 TeV was performed on 10 April 2015. In 2016, the design collision rate was exceeded for the first time. A second two-year period of shutdown begun at the end of 2018.
As of October 2019, the construction is on-going to upgrade the LHC's luminosity in a project called High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). This project should see the LHC accelerator upgraded by 2026 to an order of magnitude higher luminosity.
As part of the HL-LHC upgrade project, also other CERN accelerators and their subsystems are receiving upgrades. Among other work, the LINAC 2 linear accelerator injector was decommissioned, to be replaced by a new injector accelerator, the LINAC 4 in 2020.
CERN, in collaboration with groups worldwide, is investigating two main concepts for future accelerators: A linear electron-positron collider with a new acceleration concept to increase the energy (CLIC) and a larger version of the LHC, a project currently named Future Circular Collider.
The smaller accelerators are on the main Meyrin site (also known as the West Area), which was originally built in Switzerland alongside the French border, but has been extended to span the border since 1965. The French side is under Swiss jurisdiction and there is no obvious border within the site, apart from a line of marker stones.
The SPS and LEP/LHC tunnels are almost entirely outside the main site, and are mostly buried under French farmland and invisible from the surface. However, they have surface sites at various points around them, either as the location of buildings associated with experiments or other facilities needed to operate the colliders such as cryogenic plants and access shafts. The experiments are located at the same underground level as the tunnels at these sites.
Three of these experimental sites are in France, with ATLAS in Switzerland, although some of the ancillary cryogenic and access sites are in Switzerland. The largest of the experimental sites is the Prévessin site, also known as the North Area, which is the target station for non-collider experiments on the SPS accelerator. Other sites are the ones which were used for the UA1, UA2 and the LEP experiments (the latter are used by LHC experiments).
Outside of the LEP and LHC experiments, most are officially named and numbered after the site where they were located. For example, NA32 was an experiment looking at the production of so-called "charmed" particles and located at the Prévessin (North Area) site while WA22 used the Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC) at the Meyrin (West Area) site to examine neutrino interactions. The UA1 and UA2 experiments were considered to be in the Underground Area, i.e. situated underground at sites on the SPS accelerator.
Most of the roads on the CERN Meyrin and Prévessin sites are named after famous physicists, such as Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein.
Since its foundation by 12 members in 1954, CERN regularly accepted new members. All new members have remained in the organization continuously since their accession, except Spain and Yugoslavia. Spain first joined CERN in 1961, withdrew in 1969, and rejoined in 1983. Yugoslavia was a founding member of CERN but quit in 1961. Of the 23 members, Israel joined CERN as a full member on 6 January 2014, becoming the first (and currently only) non-European full member.
The budget contributions of member states are computed based on their GDP.
Associate Members, Candidates:
Three countries have observer status:
Also observers are the following international organizations:
Non-Member States (with dates of Co-operation Agreements) currently involved in CERN programmes are:
CERN also has scientific contacts with the following countries:
International research institutions, such as CERN, can aid in science diplomacy.
CERN has initiated an open access publishing project to convert scientific articles in high energy physics into gold open access by redirecting subscription fees. In the first phase from 2014-2016 3,000 libraries, consortia, research organisations, publishers and funding agencies in various countries participated. All publications by CERN authors are published with gold open access.
Facilities at CERN open to the public include:
CERN also provides daily tours to certain facilities such as the Synchro-cyclotron (CERNs first particle accelerator) and the superconducting magnet workshop. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37351 |
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (, , ; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea.
His initial voyage to India (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and therefore, the West and the Orient. This is widely considered a milestone in world history, as it marked the beginning of a sea-based phase of global multiculturalism. Da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India opened the way for an age of global imperialism and enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. Traveling the ocean route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Mediterranean and traversing the dangerous Arabian Peninsula. The sum of the distances covered in the outward and return voyages made this expedition the longest ocean voyage ever made until then, far longer than a full voyage around the world by way of the Equator.
After decades of sailors trying to reach the Indies, with thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks, da Gama landed in Calicut on 20 May 1498. Unopposed access to the Indian spice routes boosted the economy of the Portuguese Empire, which was previously based along northern and coastal West Africa. The main spices at first obtained from Southeast Asia were pepper and cinnamon, but soon included other products, all new to Europe. Portugal maintained a commercial monopoly of these commodities for several decades. It was not until a century later that other European powers, first the Dutch Republic and England, later France and Denmark, were able to challenge Portugal's monopoly and naval supremacy in the Cape Route.
Da Gama led two of the Portuguese India Armadas, the first and the fourth. The latter was the largest and departed for India four years after his return from the first one. For his contributions, in 1524 da Gama was appointed Governor of India, with the title of Viceroy, and was ennobled as Count of Vidigueira in 1519.
Vasco da Gama remains a leading figure in the history of exploration. Numerous homages worldwide have celebrated his explorations and accomplishments. The Portuguese national epic poem, "Os Lusíadas", was written in his honour by Luís de Camões.
In March 2016 thousands of artifacts and nautical remains were recovered from the wreck of the ship "Esmeralda", one of da Gama's armada, found off the coast of Oman.
Vasco da Gama was born in 1460 or 1469 in the town of Sines, one of the few seaports on the Alentejo coast, southwest Portugal, probably in a house near the church of Nossa Senhora das Salas.
Vasco da Gama's father was Estêvão da Gama, who had served in the 1460s as a knight of the household of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu. He rose in the ranks of the military Order of Santiago. Estêvão da Gama was appointed "alcaide-mór" (civil governor) of Sines in the 1460s, a post he held until 1478; after that he continued as a receiver of taxes and holder of the Order's commendas in the region.
Estêvão da Gama married Isabel Sodré, a daughter of João Sodré (also known as João de Resende), scion of a well-connected family of English origin. Her father and her brothers, Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré, had links to the household of Infante Diogo, Duke of Viseu, and were prominent figures in the military Order of Christ. Vasco da Gama was the third of five sons of Estêvão da Gama and Isabel Sodré – in (probable) order of age: Paulo da Gama, João Sodré, Vasco da Gama, Pedro da Gama and Aires da Gama. Vasco also had one known sister, Teresa da Gama (who married Lopo Mendes de Vasconcelos).
Little is known of da Gama's early life. The Portuguese historian Teixeira de Aragão suggests that he studied at the inland town of Évora, which is where he may have learned mathematics and navigation. It has been claimed that he studied under Abraham Zacuto, an astrologer and astronomer, but da Gama's biographer Subrahmanyam thinks this dubious.
Around 1480, da Gama followed his father (rather than the Sodrés) and joined the Order of Santiago. The master of Santiago was Prince John, who ascended to the throne in 1481 as King John II of Portugal. John II doted on the Order, and the da Gamas' prospects rose accordingly.
In 1492, John II dispatched da Gama on a mission to the port of Setúbal and to the Algarve to seize French ships in retaliation for peacetime depredations against Portuguese shipping – a task that da Gama rapidly and effectively performed.
From the earlier part of the 15th century, Portuguese expeditions organized by Prince Henry the Navigator had been reaching down the African coastline, principally in search of west African riches (notably, gold). They had greatly extended Portuguese maritime knowledge, but had little profit to show for the effort. After Henry's death in 1460, the Portuguese Crown showed little interest in continuing this effort and, in 1469, licensed the neglected African enterprise to a private Lisbon merchant consortium led by Fernão Gomes. Within a few years, Gomes' captains expanded Portuguese knowledge across the Gulf of Guinea, doing business in gold dust, melegueta pepper, ivory and sub-Saharan slaves. When Gomes' charter came up for renewal in 1474, Prince John (future John II), asked his father Afonso V of Portugal to pass the African charter to him.
Upon becoming king in 1481, John II of Portugal set out on many long reforms. To break the monarch's dependence on the feudal nobility, John II needed to build up the royal treasury; he considered royal commerce to be the key to achieving that. Under John II's watch, the gold and slave trade in west Africa was greatly expanded. He was eager to break into the highly profitable spice trade between Europe and Asia, which was conducted chiefly by land. At the time, this was virtually monopolized by the Republic of Venice, who operated overland routes via Levantine and Egyptian ports, through the Red Sea across to the spice markets of India. John II set a new objective for his captains: to find a sea route to Asia by sailing around the African continent.
By the time Vasco da Gama was in his 20s, the king's plans were coming to fruition. In 1487, John II dispatched two spies, Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, overland via Egypt to East Africa and India, to scout the details of the spice markets and trade routes. The breakthrough came soon after, when John II's captain Bartolomeu Dias returned from rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, having explored as far as the Fish River ("Rio do Infante") in modern-day South Africa and having verified that the unknown coast stretched away to the northeast.
An explorer was needed who could prove the link between the findings of Dias and those of da Covilhã and de Paiva, and connect these separate segments into a potentially lucrative trade route across the Indian Ocean.
On 8 July 1497 Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. The distance traveled in the journey around Africa to India and back was greater than around the equator. The navigators included Portugal's most experienced, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro Escobar, João de Coimbra, and Afonso Gonçalves. It is not known for certain how many people were in each ship's crew but approximately 55 returned, and two ships were lost. Two of the vessels were carracks, newly built for the voyage; the others were a caravel and a supply boat.
The four ships were:
The expedition set sail from Lisbon on 8 July 1497. It followed the route pioneered by earlier explorers along the coast of Africa via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands. After reaching the coast of present-day Sierra Leone, da Gama took a course south into the open ocean, crossing the Equator and seeking the South Atlantic westerlies that Bartolomeu Dias had discovered in 1487. This course proved successful and on 4 November 1497, the expedition made landfall on the African coast. For over three months the ships had sailed more than of open ocean, by far the longest journey out of sight of land made by that time.
By 16 December, the fleet had passed the Great Fish River (Eastern Cape, South Africa) – where Dias had anchored – and sailed into waters previously unknown to Europeans. With Christmas pending, da Gama and his crew gave the coast they were passing the name Natal, which carried the connotation of "birth of Christ" in Portuguese.
Vasco da Gama spent 2 to 29 March 1498 in the vicinity of Mozambique Island. Arab-controlled territory on the East African coast was an integral part of the network of trade in the Indian Ocean. Fearing the local population would be hostile to Christians, da Gama impersonated a Muslim and gained audience with the Sultan of Mozambique. With the paltry trade goods he had to offer, the explorer was unable to provide a suitable gift to the ruler. Soon the local populace became suspicious of da Gama and his men. Forced by a hostile crowd to flee Mozambique, da Gama departed the harbor, firing his cannons into the city in retaliation.
In the vicinity of modern Kenya, the expedition resorted to piracy, looting Arab merchant ships that were generally unarmed trading vessels without heavy cannons. The Portuguese became the first known Europeans to visit the port of Mombasa from 7 to 13 April 1498, but were met with hostility and soon departed.
Vasco da Gama continued north, arriving on 14 April 1498 at the friendlier port of Malindi, whose leaders were having a conflict with those of Mombasa. There the expedition first noted evidence of Indian traders. Da Gama and his crew contracted the services of a pilot who used his knowledge of the monsoon winds to guide the expedition the rest of the way to Calicut, located on the southwest coast of India. Sources differ over the identity of the pilot, calling him variously a Christian, a Muslim, and a Gujarati. One traditional story describes the pilot as the famous Arab navigator Ibn Majid, but other contemporaneous accounts place Majid elsewhere, and he could not have been near the vicinity at the time. None of the Portuguese historians of the time mentions Ibn Majid. Vasco da Gama left Malindi for India on 24 April 1498.
The fleet arrived in Kappadu near Kozhikode (Calicut), in Malabar Coast (present day Kerala state of India), on 20 May 1498. The King of Calicut, the Samudiri (Zamorin), who was at that time staying in his second capital at Ponnani, returned to Calicut on hearing the news of the foreign fleets's arrival. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, including a grand procession of at least 3,000 armed Nairs, but an interview with the Zamorin failed to produce any concrete results. When local authorities asked da Gama's fleet, "What brought you hither?", they replied that they had come "in search of Christians and spices." The presents that da Gama sent to the Zamorin as gifts from Dom Manuel – four cloaks of scarlet cloth, six hats, four branches of corals, twelve "almasares", a box with seven brass vessels, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil and a cask of honey – were trivial, and failed to impress. While Zamorin's officials wondered at why there was no gold or silver, the Muslim merchants who considered da Gama their rival suggested that the latter was only an ordinary pirate and not a royal ambassador. Vasco da Gama's request for permission to leave a factor behind him in charge of the merchandise he could not sell was turned down by the King, who insisted that da Gama pay customs duty – preferably in gold – like any other trader, which strained the relation between the two. Annoyed by this, da Gama carried a few Nairs and sixteen fishermen (mukkuva) off with him by force.
Vasco da Gama left Calicut on 29 August 1498. Eager to set sail for home, he ignored the local knowledge of monsoon wind patterns that were still blowing onshore. The fleet initially inched north along the Indian coast, and then anchored in at Anjediva island for a spell. They finally struck out for their Indian Ocean crossing on 3 October 1498. But with the winter monsoon yet to set in, it was a harrowing journey. On the outgoing journey, sailing with the summer monsoon wind, da Gama's fleet crossed the Indian Ocean in only 23 days; now, on the return trip, sailing against the wind, it took 132 days.
Da Gama saw land again only on 2 January 1499, passing before the coastal Somali city of Mogadishu, then under the influence of the Ajuran Empire in the Horn of Africa. The fleet did not make a stop, but passing before Mogadishu, the anonymous diarist of the expedition noted that it was a large city with houses of four or five storeys high and big palaces in its center and many mosques with cylindrical minarets.
Da Gama's fleet finally arrived in Malindi on 7 January 1499, in a terrible state – approximately half of the crew had died during the crossing, and many of the rest were afflicted with scurvy. Not having enough crewmen left standing to manage three ships, da Gama ordered the "São Rafael" scuttled off the East African coast, and the crew re-distributed to the remaining two ships, the "São Gabriel" and the "Berrio". Thereafter, the sailing was smoother. By early March, they had arrived in Mossel Bay, and crossed the Cape of Good Hope in the opposite direction on 20 March, reaching the west African coast by 25 April.
The diary record of the expedition ends abruptly here. Reconstructing from other sources, it seems they continued to Cape Verde, where Nicolau Coelho's "Berrio" separated from Vasco da Gama's "São Gabriel" and sailed on by itself. The "Berrio" arrived in Lisbon on 10 July 1499 and Nicolau Coelho personally delivered the news to King Manuel I and the royal court, then assembled in Sintra. In the meantime, back in Cape Verde, da Gama's brother, Paulo da Gama, had fallen grievously ill. Da Gama elected to stay by his side on Santiago island and handed the "São Gabriel" over to his clerk, João de Sá, to take home. The "São Gabriel" under Sá arrived in Lisbon sometime in late July or early August. Da Gama and his sickly brother eventually hitched a ride with a Guinea caravel returning to Portugal, but Paulo da Gama died en route. Da Gama disembarked at the Azores to bury his brother at the monastery of São Francisco in Angra do Heroismo, and lingered there for a little while in mourning. He eventually took passage on an Azorean caravel and finally arrived in Lisbon on 29 August 1499 (according to Barros), or early September (8th or 18th, according to other sources). Despite his melancholic mood, da Gama was given a hero's welcome and showered with honors, including a triumphal procession and public festivities. King Manuel wrote two letters in which he described da Gama's first voyage, in July and August 1499, soon after the return of the ships. Girolamo Sernigi also wrote three letters describing da Gama's first voyage soon after the return of the expedition.
The expedition had exacted a large cost – two ships and over half the men had been lost. It had also failed in its principal mission of securing a commercial treaty with Calicut. Nonetheless, the small quantities of spices and other trade goods brought back on the remaining two ships demonstrated the potential of great profit for future trade. Vasco da Gama was justly celebrated for opening a direct sea route to Asia. His path would be followed up thereafter by yearly Portuguese India Armadas.
The spice trade would prove to be a major asset to the Portuguese royal treasury, and other consequences soon followed. For example, da Gama's voyage had made it clear that the east coast of Africa, the "Contra Costa", was essential to Portuguese interests; its ports provided fresh water, provisions, timber, and harbors for repairs, and served as a refuge where ships could wait out unfavorable weather. One significant result was the colonization of Mozambique by the Portuguese Crown.
In December 1499, King Manuel I of Portugal rewarded Vasco da Gama with the town of Sines as a hereditary fief (the town his father, Estêvão, had once held as a "commenda"). This turned out to be a complicated affair, for Sines still belonged to the Order of Santiago. The master of the Order, Jorge de Lencastre, might have endorsed the reward – after all, da Gama was a Santiago knight, one of their own, and a close associate of Lencastre himself. But the fact that Sines was awarded by the king provoked Lencastre to refuse out of principle, lest it encourage the king to make other donations of the Order's properties. Da Gama would spend the next few years attempting to take hold of Sines, an effort that would estrange him from Lencastre and eventually prompt da Gama to abandon his beloved Order of Santiago, switching over to the rival Order of Christ in 1507.
In the meantime, da Gama made do with a substantial hereditary royal pension of 300,000 "reis". He was awarded the noble title of "Dom" (lord) in perpetuity for himself, his siblings and their descendants. On 30 January 1502, da Gama was awarded the title of "Almirante dos mares de Arabia, Persia, India e de todo o Oriente" ("Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia, India and all the Orient") – an overwrought title reminiscent of the ornate Castilian title borne by Christopher Columbus (evidently, Manuel must have reckoned that if Castile had an 'Admiral of the Ocean Seas', then surely Portugal should have one too). Another royal letter, dated October 1501, gave da Gama the personal right to intervene and exercise a determining role on "any" future India-bound fleet.
Around 1501, Vasco da Gama married Catarina de Ataíde, daughter of Álvaro de Ataíde, the "alcaide-mór" of Alvor (Algarve), and a prominent nobleman connected by kinship with the powerful Almeida family (Catarina was a first cousin of D. Francisco de Almeida).
The follow-up expedition, the Second India Armada, launched in 1500 under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral with the mission of making a treaty with the Zamorin of Calicut and setting up a Portuguese factory in the city. However, Pedro Cabral entered into a conflict with the local Arab merchant guilds, with the result that the Portuguese factory was overrun in a riot and up to 70 Portuguese were killed. Cabral blamed the Zamorin for the incident and bombarded the city. Thus war broke out between Portugal and Calicut.
Vasco da Gama invoked his royal letter to take command of the 4th India Armada, scheduled to set out in 1502, with the explicit aim of taking revenge upon the Zamorin and force him to submit to Portuguese terms. The heavily armed fleet of fifteen ships and eight hundred men left Lisbon on 12 February 1502. It was followed in April by another squadron of five ships led by his cousin, Estêvão da Gama (the son of Aires da Gama), which caught up to them in the Indian Ocean. The 4th Armada was a veritable da Gama family affair. Two of his maternal uncles, Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré, were pre-designated to command an Indian Ocean naval patrol, while brothers-in-law Álvaro de Ataíde (brother of Vasco's wife Catarina) and Lopo Mendes de Vasconcelos (betrothed to Teresa da Gama, Vasco's sister) captained ships in the main fleet.
On the outgoing voyage, da Gama's fleet opened contact with the East African gold trading port of Sofala and reduced the sultanate of Kilwa to tribute, extracting a substantial sum of gold. On reaching India in October 1502, da Gama's fleet set about capturing any Arab vessel he came across in Indian waters, most notoriously the "Miri", a pilgrim ship from Mecca, whose passengers he massacred in open water. He then appeared before Calicut, demanding redress for the treatment of Cabral. While the Zamorin was willing to sign a new treaty, da Gama made a call to the Hindu king to expel all Muslims from Calicut before beginning negotiations, which was turned down. The Portuguese fleet then bombarded the city for nearly two days from the sea shore, severely damaging the unfortified city. He also captured several rice vessels and cut off the crew's hands, ears and noses, dispatching them with an insulting note to the Zamorin.
The violent treatment meted out by da Gama quickly brought trade along the Malabar Coast of India, upon which Calicut depended, to a standstill. But the Zamorin nonetheless refused to submit to Portuguese terms, and even ventured to hire a fleet of strong warships to challenge da Gama's armada (which da Gama managed to defeat in a naval battle before Calicut harbor). Da Gama loaded up with spices at Cochin and Cannanore, small nearby kingdoms, half-vassal and half-at-war with the Zamorin, whose alliances had been secured by prior Portuguese fleets. The 4th armada left India in early 1503. Da Gama left behind a small squadron of caravels under the command of his uncle, Vicente Sodré, to patrol the Indian coast, to continue harassing Calicut shipping, and to protect the Portuguese factories at Cochin and Cannanore from the Zamorin's inevitable reprisals.
Vasco da Gama arrived back in Portugal in September 1503, effectively having failed in his mission to bring the Zamorin to submission. This failure, and the subsequent more galling failure of his uncle Vicente Sodré to protect the Portuguese factory in Cochin, probably counted against any further rewards. When the Portuguese king Manuel I of Portugal decided to appoint the first governor and viceroy of Portuguese India in 1505, da Gama was conspicuously overlooked, and the post given to Francisco de Almeida.
On his second voyage, Vasco da Gama inflicted acts of cruelty upon competing traders and local inhabitants, which sealed his notoriety in India. During his second voyage to Calicut, da Gama intercepted a ship of Muslim pilgrims at Madayi travelling from Calicut to Mecca. Described in detail by eyewitness Thomé Lopes and chronicler Gaspar Correia, da Gama looted the ship with over 400 pilgrims on board including 50 women, locked in the passengers, the owner and an ambassador from Egypt and burned them to death. They offered their wealth, which "could ransom all the Christian slaves in the Kingdom of Fez and much more" but were not spared. Da Gama looked on through the porthole and saw the women bringing up their gold and jewels and holding up their babies to beg for mercy.
After demanding the expulsion of Muslims from Calicut to the Hindu Zamorin, the latter sent the high priest Talappana Namboothiri (the very same person who conducted da Gama to the Zamorin's chamber during his much celebrated first visit to Calicut in May 1498) for talks. Da Gama called him a spy, ordered the priests' lips and ears to be cut off and after sewing a pair of dog's ears to his head, sent him away.
For the next two decades, Vasco da Gama lived out a quiet life, unwelcome in the royal court and sidelined from Indian affairs. His attempts to return to the favor of Manuel I (including switching over to the Order of Christ in 1507), yielded little. Almeida, the larger-than-life Afonso de Albuquerque and, later on, Albergaria and Sequeira, were the king's preferred point men for India.
After Ferdinand Magellan defected to the Crown of Castile in 1518, Vasco da Gama threatened to do the same, prompting the king to undertake steps to retain him in Portugal and avoid the embarrassment of losing his own "Admiral of the Indies" to Spain. In 1519, after years of ignoring his petitions, King Manuel I finally hurried to give Vasco da Gama a feudal title, appointing him the first Count of Vidigueira, a count title created by a royal decree issued in Évora on 29 December, after a complicated agreement with Dom Jaime, Duke of Braganza, who ceded him on payment the towns of Vidigueira and Vila dos Frades. The decree granted Vasco da Gama and his heirs all the revenues and privileges related, thus establishing da Gama as the first Portuguese count who was not born with royal blood.
After the death of King Manuel I in late 1521, his son and successor, King John III of Portugal set about reviewing the Portuguese government overseas. Turning away from the old Albuquerque clique (now represented by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira), John III looked for a fresh start. Vasco da Gama re-emerged from his political wilderness as an important adviser to the new king's appointments and strategy. Seeing the new Spanish threat to the Maluku Islands as the priority, Vasco da Gama advised against the obsession with Arabia that had pervaded much of the Manueline period, and continued to be the dominant concern of Duarte de Menezes, then-governor of Portuguese India. Menezes also turned out to be incompetent and corrupt, subject to numerous complaints. As a result, John III decided to appoint Vasco da Gama himself to replace Menezes, confident that the magic of his name and memory of his deeds might better impress his authority on Portuguese India, and manage the transition to a new government and new strategy.
By his appointment letter of February 1524, John III granted Vasco da Gama the privileged title of "Viceroy", being only the second Portuguese governor to enjoy that title (the first was Francisco de Almeida in 1505). His second son, Estêvão da Gama was simultaneously appointed "Capitão-mor do Mar da Índia" ('Captain-major of the Indian Sea', commander of the Indian Ocean naval patrol fleet), to replace Duarte's brother, Luís de Menezes. As a final condition, Gama secured from John III of Portugal the commitment to appoint all his sons successively as Portuguese captains of Malacca.
Setting out in April 1524, with a fleet of fourteen ships, Vasco da Gama took as his flagship the famous large carrack "Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai" on her last journey to India, along with two of his sons, Estêvão and Paulo. After a troubled journey (four or five of the ships were lost en route), he arrived in India in September. Vasco da Gama immediately invoked his high viceregent powers to impose a new order in Portuguese India, replacing all the old officials with his own appointments. But Gama contracted malaria not long after arriving, and died in the city of Cochin on Christmas Eve in 1524, three months after his arrival. As per royal instructions, da Gama was succeeded as governor of India by one the captains who had come with him, Henrique de Menezes (no relation to Duarte). Da Gama's sons Estêvão and Paulo immediately lost their posts and joined the returning fleet of early 1525 (along with the dismissed Duarte de Menezes and Luís de Menezes).
Vasco da Gama's body was first buried at St. Francis Church, which was located at Fort Kochi in the city of Kochi, but his remains were returned to Portugal in 1539. The body of Vasco da Gama was re-interred in Vidigueira in a casket decorated with gold and jewels.
The Monastery of the Hieronymites, in Belém, which would become the necropolis of the Portuguese royal dynasty of Aviz, was erected in the early 1500s near the launch point of Vasco da Gama's first journey, and its construction funded by a tax on the profits of the yearly Portuguese India Armadas. In 1880, da Gama's remains and those of the poet Luís de Camões (who celebrated da Gama's first voyage in his 1572 epic poem, "The Lusiad"), were moved to new carved tombs in the nave of the monastery's church, only a few meters away from the tombs of the kings Manuel I and John III, whom da Gama had served.
Vasco da Gama and his wife, Catarina de Ataíde, had six sons and one daughter:
His male line issue became extinct in 1747, though the title went through female line.
Over his numerous years serving the Portuguese crown, da Gama was rewarded with many different titles, distinctions, and offices:
Vasco da Gama is one of the most famous and celebrated explorers from the Age of Discovery. As much as anyone after Henry the Navigator, he was responsible for Portugal's success as an early colonising power. Beside the fact of the first voyage itself, it was his astute mix of politics and war on the other side of the world that placed Portugal in a prominent position in Indian Ocean trade. Following da Gama's initial voyage, the Portuguese crown realized that securing outposts on the eastern coast of Africa would prove vital to maintaining national trade routes to the Far East.
However, his fame is tempered by such incidents and attitudes as displayed in the notorious Pilgrim Ship Incident previously discussed.
The Portuguese national epic, the "Lusíadas" of Luís Vaz de Camões, largely concerns Vasco da Gama's voyages.
The 1865 grand opera "L'Africaine: Opéra en Cinq Actes", composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer from a libretto by Eugène Scribe, prominently includes the character of Vasco da Gama. The events depicted, however, are fictitious. Meyerbeer's working title for the opera was "Vasco da Gama". A 1989 production of the opera by the San Francisco Opera featured noted tenor Plácido Domingo in the role of da Gama. The 19th-century composer Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray composed an eponymous 1872 opera based on da Gama's life and exploits at sea.
The port city of Vasco da Gama in Goa is named after him, as is the crater Vasco da Gama on the Moon. There are three football clubs in Brazil (including Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama) and Vasco Sports Club in Goa that were also named after him. There exists a church in Kochi, Kerala called Vasco da Gama Church, and a private residence on the island of Saint Helena. The suburb of Vasco in Cape Town also honours him.
A few places in Lisbon's Parque das Nações are named after the explorer, such as the Vasco da Gama Bridge, Vasco da Gama Tower and the "Centro Comercial Vasco da Gama" shopping centre. The Oceanário in the Parque das Nações has a mascot of a cartoon diver with the name of "Vasco", who is named after the explorer.
Vasco da Gama was the only explorer on the final pool of Os Grandes Portugueses. Although the final shortlist featured other Age of Discovery related people, they were not actually explorers nor navigators for any matter.
The Portuguese Navy has a class of frigates named after him. There are three "Vasco da Gama" class frigates in total, of which the first one also bears his name.
South African musician Hugh Masekela recorded an anti-colonialist song entitled "Colonial Man", which contains the lyrics "Vasco da Gama was no friend of mine", and another song entitled "Vasco da Gama (The Sailor Man)". Both songs were included in his 1976 album "Colonial Man".
Vasco da Gama appears as an antagonist in the Indian film "Urumi". The film, directed by Santosh Sivan, depicts a failed assassination attempt on da Gama by an Indian.
In March 2016, archaeologists working off the coast of Oman identified a shipwreck believed to be that of the "Esmeralda" from da Gama's 1502–1503 fleet. The wreck was initially discovered in 1998. Later underwater excavations took place between 2013 and 2015 through a partnership between the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Blue Water Recoveries Ltd., a shipwreck recovery company. The vessel was identified through such artifacts as a "Portuguese coin minted for trade with India (one of only two coins of this type known to exist) and stone cannonballs engraved with what appear to be the initials of Vincente Sodré, da Gama's maternal uncle and the commander of the "Esmeralda"." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45080 |
The Puppet Masters
The Puppet Masters is a 1951 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, in which American secret agents battle parasitic invaders from outer space. It was originally serialized in "Galaxy Science Fiction" (September, October, November 1951).
The novel evokes a sense of paranoia and Heinlein repeatedly makes explicit the analogy between the mind-controlling parasites and the Communist Russians, echoing the prevailing Second Red Scare in the United States.
The book takes up the then common theme of sightings of "Flying saucers", the plot assuming that the "saucers" seen in the 1950s were part of a preliminary reconnaissance of Earth, carried out by the extraterrestrials in preparation for a full-fledged invasion sixty years later.
The novel's first scene is set in 2007. Following a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the Western Bloc, which left both sides battered but unbroken, both sides return to a state of Cold War. Washington D.C. and other American cities devastated in nuclear strikes had been completely rebuilt. The Soviet Union and China remain a single bloc dominated by Moscow, and the sharp Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s never happened.
Social customs have changed somewhat, in a way typical for Heinlein's fiction (i.e. having become more liberal, such as marriage contracts being possible with fixed terms, etc.) and ray guns and personal flying cars are commonplace. Space stations exist and colonies have been established on the planet Venus (depicted, as common in SF of the time, as a tropical planet habitable by humans).
Space technology is far more advanced than in the actual first decade of the 21st century. For example, in the last scene, a space warship is sent on a twelve-year trip to Titan, with not only life-support for a large crew, but also enough armaments — presumably nuclear — to confront an entire world on its own.
However, communications satellites have not been thought of, and television broadcasts are still limited to line-of-sight, as they were at the time of writing. This is of critical importance to the plot. The territory of the United States is divided into numerous transmission blocks, which receive television broadcasts from their neighbors and relay them onwards. When the invaders seize one of these blocks, they effectively control all communications within it and can isolate its inhabitants from the outside world, deny the central government any access to them, and consolidate control at their leisure.
The current President - on his second term, and therefore presumably elected in 2000 - had established directly upon being first elected a new intelligece agency, known as The Section. Its creation was never authorized by Congress and its existence is kept secret, being funded by sums diverted from innocuous sounding items in the Budget. It has a disguised underground headquarters in Washington D.C. and a network of similarly disguised branch offices around the US. Unlike the clearly demarked spheres of the FBI and CIA, the Section carries out extensive espionage in Soviet territory, but also conducts operations inside the United States. If ordered to, its agents are ready to shoot and kill American citizens on US soil. The Section's Director, who had been the President's campaign manager, is universally called "The Old Man". Only gradually does the reader learn that he is the protagonist's actual father.
In the summer of 2007, Earth is under clandestine attack. Slug-like creatures, arriving in flying saucers, are attaching themselves to people's backs, taking control of their victims' nervous systems, and manipulating those people as puppets. The Old Man, the head of a clandestine national security agency called the Section, goes to Des Moines, Iowa, with Sam and Mary, two of his best agents, to investigate a flying saucer report, but much more seriously the ominous disappearance of the six agents sent previously. They discover that the slugs are steadily taking over Des Moines, but they cannot convince the US President to declare an emergency.
Sam takes two other agents and returns to Des Moines to get more evidence of the invasion. They fail and are obliged to leave the city quickly, but in the confusion of their fleeing the city's television center a slug sneaks onto one of the agents. Back in Washington the team discovers the slug and captures it, but later it escapes and attaches itself to Sam, using Sam's skills and knowledge to make a clean escape.
Thoroughly puppetized, Sam begins to infiltrate more slugs into the city, using the Constitution Club as a recruiting center. The Old Man captures him, takes him to Section's new headquarters, and coerces Sam into being taken by the slug again. Under drug-induced hypnosis Sam reveals that the slugs come from Titan, the sixth moon of Saturn. Being forced into a traumatic situation strains Sam's relationship with both Mary and the Old Man. Later, Sam finds that the President and Congress are ready to accept the idea that the United States has been infiltrated and they mandate a law that requires people to go naked to demonstrate that they are not carrying slugs.
As the U.S. Army prepares a counter-attack in the most heavily infested areas, Sam goes alone to Kansas City to get an estimate of the number of slugs involved. There he learns that he can kill a slug by crushing it with his hand. He also discovers that the slugs reproduce through fission. Escaping from the city, he returns to Washington too late to stop the counter-attack, which fails.
After a short leave, during which they get married and kill a slug that seems to have been targeting Sam for repossession, Sam and Mary return to work. Together with the Old Man, they go to Pass Christian, Mississippi to inspect a flying saucer that had made a bad landing. Inside the alien ship Mary is overwhelmed by repressed memories from the time she was a child on Venus and had been possessed by a slug. The slug had died from Nine-day Fever, a severe disease native to Venus, but Mary, luckily, had survived the disease.
Adopting biological warfare, the authorities culture Nine-day Fever and its cure in bulk sufficient to cover the country, and then infected slugs are allowed to escape into the heavily infested areas. Several days later thousands of medics are landed in those areas to give the cure to those people whose slugs have died. Sam and the Old Man join the effort in Jefferson City, Missouri, but the Old Man is possessed by the last healthy slug in the city and he knocks Sam out.
Sam regains consciousness in an air-car that the Old Man is flying to the Yucatán, where the slug intends to restart its effort to conquer Humanity. With the car on autopilot, the Old Man slumps over the steering wheel and the slug begins to fission so that it can possess both the Old Man and Sam. In desperation, Sam kicks the controls, causing the air-car to accelerate so sharply that the Old Man is slammed back against the seat forcefully enough to crush the slug. The air-car's emergency system mitigates the resulting crash and Sam and the Old Man wait to be rescued.
Some years later Sam and Mary board a spaceship headed for Saturn on a mission to exterminate the slugs. Sam expresses the hope that a way would be found to save the small elf-like inhabitants of Titan, whom the slugs enslaved before they turned their attention to other planets and with whom Humanity "might get along".
While the invasion was decisively defeated in the US territory, the situation in the rest of the world remains unclear. There is a reference to the slugs having invaded and effectively taken over the Eastern Bloc, some months before invading the United States - but their ignoring basic hygiene had caused a major outbreak of Bubonic Plague, leading to a total breakdown of public order in both Russia and China. It remains unclear, however, if that had the same effect of eliminating the slugs as the planned biological warfare resorted to by the Americans. Sam is seen remarking cynically that "it makes no real difference" - evidently, whether or not the Soviet Union is dominated by slugs, the Cold War will continue.
There is also a reference to Britain refusing to follow the US in having its citizens strip down - though the King was willing to go along, the Anglican Church put a veto on the idea - which means that Britain might be taken over by the slugs. The book makes no mention of what the US would do about that.
Heinlein's original version of the novel was 96,000 words, and was cut to about 60,000 words for both the 1951 book version and the serialization in "Galaxy Science Fiction". For the "Galaxy" version, editor H. L. Gold also did extensive rewriting, to which Heinlein strenuously objected.
In 1990, two years after Heinlein's death, an expanded version was published with the consent of his widow, Virginia Heinlein. This edition contained material that had been cut from the original published version, because the book was deemed to be too long and controversial for the market in 1951. The uncut version seemed more risqué in 1951 than it did decades later. For example, in the uncut version the book begins with Sam waking up in bed with a blonde whom he had casually picked up the evening before, without even bothering to learn her name; the older version omitted all mention of her. The 1951 version does mention that men possessed by the invaders lost all sexual feeling — an essential element in the early parts of the plot; the original publisher completely cut out a reference to the "puppet masters" later discovering human sexuality and embarking upon wild orgies, broadcast live on television in the areas under their control.
Boucher and McComas characterized "The Puppet Masters" as "a thunderously exciting melodrama of intrigue", noting that Heinlein displayed "not only his usual virtues of clear logic, rigorous detail-work, and mastery of indirect exposition", but also unexpected virtues like "a startling facility in suspense devices [and] a powerful ingenuity in plotting". P. Schuyler Miller, noting that the novel's "climactic situations seem to be telegraphed", suggested that Heinlein presented his background situations so effectively that readers solve the story's mysteries more quickly than Heinlein allowed his characters to. In his "Books" column for "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction", Damon Knight selected the novel as one of the 10 best SF books of the 1950s.
The book was also reviewed in the 1951 Jun 15 issue of Kirkus Reviews. The reviewer wrote,
The recurrent enigma of the flying saucer is finally solved when an aerial pieplate is caught with its exhaust down by the F.B.I. of 2007. Hero Sam penetrates the contaminated area, brings a ‘master' back — a gelatinous gray mass which attaches itself to a soldier's body and controls his thought processes. Sam and his girl spot further landings, plan a counter campaign and eventually are able to rid the solar system of its parasites. Exciting, even if it exacts a strong stomach.
An extensive list of the novel's publications can be found on the Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase at http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1358 (Retrieved 2014 Oct 23)
"The Brain Eaters", a 1958 science fiction film directed by Bruno VeSota, bore a number of similarities to Heinlein's novel. Heinlein sued the film's producers, including Executive Producer Roger Corman, for plagiarism, asking $150,000 in damages. The case was settled out of court for $5,000, which included Heinlein's stipulation that his name not be used on screen or in any way with the production. The case halted actor John Payne's intention of producing a film based on Heinlein's novel.
The theme of the novel is echoed in "The Invisibles", an episode of "The Outer Limits" aired in 1964, and also in "", the last episode of the first season of "" in 1967. Similarly, in the story line begun in the "" episode "" and completed in "", aliens from a faraway sector invade the bodies of high-ranking Starfleet admirals in an attempt to compromise the command structure and spearhead an invasion of Earth.
The novel was adapted, with some plot and character changes, into the 1994 film of the same name. The film followed the story rather closely, except for the setting changed to modern-day, thus losing most of the advanced technology, but it was not successful with either the critics or the public. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45081 |
Cad (disambiguation)
CAD is a commonly used acronym for computer-aided design.
CAD or Cad may also refer to: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45082 |
Henry V (play)
Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written near 1599. It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. In the First Quarto text, it was titled "The Cronicle History of Henry the fift", which became "The Life of Henry the Fifth" in the First Folio text.
The play is the final part of a tetralogy, preceded by "Richard II", "Henry IV, Part 1", and "Henry IV, Part 2". The original audiences would thus have already been familiar with the title character, who was depicted in the "Henry IV" plays as a wild, undisciplined young man. In "Henry V", the young prince has matured. He embarks on an expedition to France and, his army badly outnumbered, defeats the French at Agincourt.
The English
"The traitors"
The French
The Elizabethan stage lacked scenery. It begins with a Prologue, in which the Chorus (a lone speaker addressing the audience) apologizes for the limitations of the theatre, wishing there were "a Muse of fire", with real princes and a kingdom for a stage, to do justice to King Henry's story. Then, says the Chorus, King Henry would "[a]ssume the port [bearing] of Mars". The Chorus encourages the audience to use their "imaginary forces" to overcome the limitations of the stage: "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts ... turning the accomplishment of many years / Into an hour-glass".
Shakespeare's plays are in five acts. In "Henry V", the first two deal largely with the king and his decision to invade France, persuaded that through ancestry, he is the rightful heir to the French throne. The French Dauphin, son of King Charles VI, answers Henry's claims with a condescending and insulting gift of tennis balls, "as matching to his youth and vanity."
The Chorus reappears at the beginning of each act to advance the story. At the beginning of Act II, he describes the country's dedication to the war effort: "Now all the youth of England are on fire... They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, / Following the mirror of all Christian kings ..." Act II includes a plot by the Earl of Cambridge and two comrades to assassinate Henry at Southampton. Henry's clever uncovering of the plot and his ruthless treatment of the conspirators show that he has changed from the earlier plays in which he appeared.
In Act III Henry and his troops cross the English Channel to attack the French port of Harfleur. The Chorus appears again: "Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy/And leave your England, as dead midnight still". The French king, says the Chorus, "doth offer him / Catharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry, / Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms." Henry is not satisfied.
At the siege of Harfleur, the English are beaten back at first, but Henry urges them on with one of Shakespeare's best-known speeches. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; / Or close the wall up with our English dead..." After a bloody siege, the English take Harfleur, but Henry's forces are so depleted that he decides not to go on to Paris. Instead, he decides to move up the coast to Calais. The French assemble a powerful army and pursue him.
They surround him near the small town of Agincourt, and in Act IV, the night before the battle, knowing he is outnumbered, Henry wanders around the English camp in disguise, trying to comfort his soldiers and determine what they really think of him. He agonizes about the moral burden of being king, asking God to "steel my soldiers' hearts". Daylight comes, and Henry rallies his nobles with the famous St Crispin's Day Speech (Act IV Scene iii 18–67): "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers".
Armed mostly with longbows, the English surprise the French, and themselves, with an overwhelming victory. The French suffered 10,000 casualties; the English, fewer than 30. "O God, thy arm was here," says Henry.
Act V comes several years later, as the English and French negotiate the Treaty of Troyes, and Henry tries to woo the French princess, Catherine of Valois. Neither speaks the other's language well, but the humour of their mistakes actually helps achieve his aim. The scene ends with the French king adopting Henry as heir to the French throne, and the prayer of the French queen "that English may as French, French Englishmen, receive each other, God speak this Amen."
Before the play concludes, however, the Chorus reappears and ruefully notes, of Henry's own heir's "state, so many had the managing, that they lost France, and made his England bleed, which oft our stage hath shown" – a reminder of the tumultuous reign of Henry VI of England, which Shakespeare had previously brought to the stage in a trilogy of plays: "Henry VI Part 1", "Henry VI Part 2", and "Henry VI Part 3".
As in many of Shakespeare's history and tragedy plays, a number of minor comic characters appear, contrasting with and sometimes commenting on the main plot. In this case, they are mostly common soldiers in Henry's army, and they include Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph from the "Henry IV" plays. The army also includes a Scot, an Irishman, and an Englishman, and Fluellen, a comically stereotyped Welsh soldier whose name is phonetically close to "Llywelyn". The play also deals briefly with the death of Sir John Falstaff, Henry's estranged friend from the "Henry IV" plays, whom Henry had rejected at the end of "Henry IV, Part 2".
Shakespeare's primary source for "Henry V", as for most of his chronicle histories, was Raphael Holinshed's "Chronicles"; the publication of the second edition in 1587 provides a "terminus post quem" for the play. Edward Hall's "The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York" appears also to have been consulted, and scholars have supposed that Shakespeare was familiar with Samuel Daniel's poem on the civil wars. An earlier play, the "Famous Victories of Henry V" is also generally believed to have been a model for the work.
On the basis of an apparent allusion to Essex's mission to quell Tyrone's Rebellion, the play is thought to date from early 1599. "The Chronicle History of Henry the fifth" was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 14 August 1600 by the bookseller Thomas Pavier; the first quarto was published before the end of the year—though by Thomas Millington and John Busby rather than Pavier. Thomas Creede did the printing.
Q1 of "Henry V" is a "bad quarto", a shortened version of the play that might be an infringing copy or reported text. A second quarto, a reprint of Q1, was published in 1602 by Pavier; another reprint was issued as Q3 in 1619, with a false date of 1608—part of William Jaggard's False Folio. The superior text was first printed in the First Folio in 1623.
Readers and audiences have interpreted the play's attitude to warfare in several different ways. On the one hand, it seems to celebrate Henry's invasion of France and military prowess. Alternatively, it can be read as a commentary on the moral and personal cost of war. Shakespeare presents it in all its complexity.
The American critic Norman Rabkin described the play as a picture with two simultaneous meanings. Rabkin argues that the play never settles on one viewpoint towards warfare, Henry himself switching his style of speech constantly, talking of "rape and pillage" during Harfleur, but of patriotic glory in his St Crispin's Day Speech.
Some critics connect the glorification of nationalistic pride and conquest with contemporary English military ventures in Spain and Ireland. The Chorus directly refers to the looked-for military triumphs of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in the fifth act. Henry V himself is sometimes seen as an ambivalent representation of the stage machiavel, combining apparent sincerity with a willingness to use deceit and force to attain his ends.
Other commentators see the play as looking critically at the reason for Henry's violent cause. The noble words of the Chorus and Henry are consistently undermined by the actions of Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym. Pistol talks in a bombastic blank verse that seems to parody Henry's own style of speech. Pistol and his friends, thus, show up the actions of their rulers. Indeed, the presence of the Eastcheap characters from "Henry IV" has been said to emphasise the element of adventurer in Henry's character as monarch.
The play's ambiguity has led to diverse interpretations in performance. Laurence Olivier's 1944 film, made during the Second World War, emphasises the patriotic side, ignoring the fact that the enemy of the play, the French, were in fact allies in that conflict, while Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film stresses the horrors of war. A 2003 Royal National Theatre production featured Henry as a modern war general, ridiculing the Iraq invasion.
In recent years, there has been scholarly debate about whether or not Henry V can be labeled a war criminal. Some denounce the question as anachronistic, arguing that contemporary legal terminology cannot be applied to historical events or figures like those depicted in the play. However, other scholars have pushed back on this view. For instance, Christopher N. Warren looks to Alberico Gentili’s "De armis Romanis", along with "Henry V" itself, to show how early modern thinkers (including Shakespeare) were themselves using juridical approaches to engage with the past. As a result, Warren argues, the question of whether Henry V was a war criminal is not only legitimate, but also “historically appropriate.”
On the other hand, Henry V is portrayed as a great leader, as he keeps his temper when insulted, "we are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us". Henry V also admits to his past mistakes, "did give ourselves to barbarous licence" and is shown to have great confidence, "I will rise there with so full a glory that I will dazzle all the eyes of France".
A mock trial of Henry V for the crimes associated with the legality of the invasion and the slaughter of prisoners was held in Washington, DC in March 2010, drawing from both historical record and Shakespeare's play. Titled "The Supreme Court of the Amalgamated Kingdom of England and France", participating judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The outcome was originally to be determined by an audience vote, but due to a draw, it came down to a judges' decision. The court was divided on Henry's justification for war, but unanimously found him guilty on the killing of the prisoners after applying “the evolving standards of the maturing society”. Previously, the fictional "Global War Crimes Tribunal" ruled that Henry's war was legal, no noncombatant was killed unlawfully, and Henry bore no criminal responsibility for the death of the POWs. The fictional "French Civil Liberties Union", who had instigated the tribunal, then attempted to sue in civil court. The judge concluded that he was bound by the GWCT's conclusions of law and also ruled in favour of the English. The Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion, thus leaving the matter for the Supreme Court's determination.
The Chorus refers to Essex's 1599 campaign in Ireland without any sense that it would end in disaster. The campaign began in late March and was scuttled by late June, strongly suggesting that the play was first performed during that three-month period.
A tradition, impossible to verify, holds that "Henry V" was the first play performed at the new Globe Theatre in the spring of 1599—the Globe would have been the "wooden O" mentioned in the Prologue—but Shapiro argues that the Chamberlain's Men were still at The Curtain when the work was first performed, and that Shakespeare himself probably acted the Chorus. In 1600, the first printed text states that the play had been played "sundry times". The earliest performance for which an exact date is known, however, occurred on 7 January 1605, at Court at Whitehall Palace.
Samuel Pepys saw a "Henry V" in 1664, but it was written by Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, not by Shakespeare. Shakespeare's play returned to the stage in 1723, in an adaptation by Aaron Hill.
The longest-running production of the play in Broadway history was the staging starring Richard Mansfield in 1900 which ran for 54 performances. Other notable stage performances of "Henry V" include Charles Kean (1859), Charles Alexander Calvert (1872), and Walter Hampden (1928).
Major revivals in London during the 20th and 21st centuries include:
In the Shakespeare's Globe's 2012 Globe to Globe festival, "Henry V" was the UK entry, one of 37 and the only one performed in spoken English. Jamie Parker performed the role of Henry.
On British television, the play has been performed as:
In 2017, the Pop-up Globe, the world's first temporary replica of the second Globe Theatre, based in Auckland, New Zealand, performed 34 "Henry V" shows. London-trained Australian actor Chris Huntly-Turner took on the role of Henry, Irish actor Michael Mahony as Chorus, and UK–New Zealand actor Edward Newborn as Pistol/King of France.
Three major film adaptations have been made. The first, "Henry V" (1944), directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, is a colourful and highly stylised version which begins in the Globe Theatre and then gradually shifts to a realistic evocation of the Battle of Agincourt. Olivier's film was made during the Second World War and was intended as a patriotic rallying cry at the time of the invasion of Normandy.
The second major film, "Henry V" (1989), directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, attempts to give a more realistic evocation of the period, and lays more emphasis on the horrors of war. It features a mud-spattered and gruesome Battle of Agincourt.
The third major film, "The King" (2019), starring Timothée Chalamet as Henry V, was adapted from Shakespeare's plays "Henry IV Part I", "Henry IV Part II", and "Henry V".
In 2004, post-modern choreographer David Gordon created a dance-theatre version of the play called "Dancing Henry Five", which mixed William Walton's music written for the Olivier film, recorded speeches from the film itself and by Christopher Plummer, and commentary written by Gordon. The piece premiered at Danspace Project in New York, where it was compared favorably to a production of "Henry IV" (parts 1 and 2) at Lincoln Center. It has been revived three times—in 2005, 2007, and 2011—playing cities across the United States, and received a National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpieces in Dance Award.
"Suite from Henry V" is a 1963 orchestral arrangement of music that composer William Walton wrote for the 1944 Olivier film. The arrangement is by Muir Mathieson, and is in five movements.
"Henry V – A Shakespeare Scenario" is a 50-minute work for narrator, SATB chorus, boys' choir (optional), and full orchestra. The musical content is taken from Walton's score for the Olivier film, edited by David Lloyd-Jones and arranged by Christopher Palmer. It was first performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London, in May 1990. Performers for this premiere were Christopher Plummer (narrator), the Academy Chorus, Choristers of Westminster Cathedral, and Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The conductor was Sir Neville Marriner. A CD of the work with these performers was released by Chandos in 1990.
"O For a Muse of Fire" is a symphonic overture for full orchestra and vocal soloist, written by Darryl Kubian. The work is 12 minutes long, and was premiered by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in March 2015. The work is scored for full orchestra, with vocal soloist. The vocal part incorporates selected lines from the text, and the vocal range is adaptable to different voice types. The soloist for the premiere performances with the New Jersey Symphony was former October Project lead singer (and former Sony Classical artist) Mary Fahl. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45084 |
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is typically a measure of variation at the genetic, species, and ecosystem level. Terrestrial biodiversity is usually greater near the equator, which is the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth, and is richest in the tropics. These tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10 percent of earth's surface, and contain about 90 percent of the world's species. Marine biodiversity is usually highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest, and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, but will be likely to slow in the future.
Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions. More than 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described. The total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037 and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC (trillion tons of carbon). In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of all organisms living on Earth.
The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years. The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago, during the Eoarchean Era after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean Eon. There are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a biogenic substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old meta-sedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland. More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth .. then it could be common in the universe."
Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic eon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion—a period during which the majority of multicellular phyla first appeared. The next 400 million years included repeated, massive biodiversity losses classified as mass extinction events. In the Carboniferous, rainforest collapse led to a great loss of plant and animal life. The Permian–Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago, was the worst; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago and has often attracted more attention than others because it resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The period since the emergence of humans has displayed an ongoing biodiversity reduction and an accompanying loss of genetic diversity. Named the Holocene extinction, the reduction is caused primarily by human impacts, particularly habitat destruction. Conversely, biodiversity positively impacts human health in a number of ways, although a few negative effects are studied.
The United Nations designated 2011–2020 as the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity. and 2021–2030 as the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration According to a 2019 "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" by IPBES, 25% of plant and animal species are threatened with extinction as the result of human activity. ...
"Biodiversity" is most commonly used to replace the more clearly defined and long established terms, species diversity and species richness.
Biologists most often define biodiversity as the "totality of genes, species and ecosystems of a region". An advantage of this definition is that it seems to describe most circumstances and presents a unified view of the traditional types of biological variety previously identified:
An explicit definition consistent with this interpretation was first given in a paper by Bruce A. Wilcox commissioned by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) for the 1982 World National Parks Conference. Wilcox's definition was "Biological diversity is the variety of life forms...at all levels of biological systems (i.e., molecular, organismic, population, species and ecosystem)...".
Biodiversity can be defined genetically as the diversity of alleles, genes and organisms. They study processes such as mutation and gene transfer that drive evolution.
The 1992 United Nations Earth Summit defined "biological diversity" as "the variability among living organisms from all sources, including, 'inter alia', terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems". This definition is used in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
Gaston & Spicer's definition in their book "Biodiversity: an introduction" is "variation of life at all levels of biological organization".
Biodiversity is not evenly distributed, rather it varies greatly across the globe as well as within regions. Among other factors, the diversity of all living things (biota) depends on temperature, precipitation, altitude, soils, geography and the presence of other species. The study of the spatial distribution of organisms, species and ecosystems, is the science of biogeography.
Diversity consistently measures higher in the tropics and in other localized regions such as the Cape Floristic Region and lower in polar regions generally. Rain forests that have had wet climates for a long time, such as Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, have particularly high biodiversity.
Terrestrial biodiversity is thought to be up to 25 times greater than ocean biodiversity. A new method used in 2011, put the total number of species on Earth at 8.7 million, of which 2.1 million were estimated to live in the ocean. However, this estimate seems to under-represent the diversity of microorganisms.
Generally, there is an increase in biodiversity from the poles to the tropics. Thus localities at lower latitudes have more species than localities at higher latitudes. This is often referred to as the latitudinal gradient in species diversity. Several ecological factors may contribute to the gradient, but the ultimate factor behind many of them is the greater mean temperature at the equator compared to that of the poles.
Even though terrestrial biodiversity declines from the equator to the poles, some studies claim that this characteristic is unverified in aquatic ecosystems, especially in marine ecosystems. The latitudinal distribution of parasites does not appear to follow this rule.
In 2016, an alternative hypothesis ("the fractal biodiversity") was proposed to explain the biodiversity latitudinal gradient. In this study, the species pool size and the fractal nature of ecosystems were combined to clarify some general patterns of this gradient. This hypothesis considers temperature, moisture, and net primary production (NPP) as the main variables of an ecosystem niche and as the axis of the ecological hypervolume. In this way, it is possible to build fractal hypervolumes, whose fractal dimension rises to three moving towards the equator.
A biodiversity hotspot is a region with a high level of endemic species that have experienced great habitat loss. The term hotspot was introduced in 1988 by Norman Myers. While hotspots are spread all over the world, the majority are forest areas and most are located in the tropics.
Brazil's Atlantic Forest is considered one such hotspot, containing roughly 20,000 plant species, 1,350 vertebrates and millions of insects, about half of which occur nowhere else. The island of Madagascar and India are also particularly notable. Colombia is characterized by high biodiversity, with the highest rate of species by area unit worldwide and it has the largest number of endemics (species that are not found naturally anywhere else) of any country. About 10% of the species of the Earth can be found in Colombia, including over 1,900 species of bird, more than in Europe and North America combined, Colombia has 10% of the world's mammals species, 14% of the amphibian species and 18% of the bird species of the world. Madagascar dry deciduous forests and lowland rainforests possess a high ratio of endemism. Since the island separated from mainland Africa 66 million years ago, many species and ecosystems have evolved independently. Indonesia's 17,000 islands cover and contain 10% of the world's flowering plants, 12% of mammals and 17% of reptiles, amphibians and birds—along with nearly 240 million people. Many regions of high biodiversity and/or endemism arise from specialized habitats which require unusual adaptations, for example, alpine environments in high mountains, or Northern European peat bogs.
Accurately measuring differences in biodiversity can be difficult. Selection bias amongst researchers may contribute to biased empirical research for modern estimates of biodiversity. In 1768, Rev. Gilbert White succinctly observed of his Selborne, Hampshire ""all nature is so full, that that district produces the most variety which is the most examined.""
Biodiversity is the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution. The origin of life has not been established by science, however, some evidence suggests that life may already have been well-established only a few hundred million years after the formation of the Earth. Until approximately 2.5 billion years ago, all life consisted of microorganisms – archaea, bacteria, and single-celled protozoans and protists.
The history of biodiversity during the Phanerozoic (the last 540 million years), starts with rapid growth during the Cambrian explosion—a period during which nearly every phylum of multicellular organisms first appeared. Over the next 400 million years or so, invertebrate diversity showed little overall trend and vertebrate diversity shows an overall exponential trend. This dramatic rise in diversity was marked by periodic, massive losses of diversity classified as mass extinction events. A significant loss occurred when rainforests collapsed in the carboniferous. The worst was the Permian-Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago. Vertebrates took 30 million years to recover from this event.
The fossil record suggests that the last few million years featured the greatest biodiversity in history. However, not all scientists support this view, since there is uncertainty as to how strongly the fossil record is biased by the greater availability and preservation of recent geologic sections. Some scientists believe that corrected for sampling artifacts, modern biodiversity may not be much different from biodiversity 300 million years ago, whereas others consider the fossil record reasonably reflective of the diversification of life. Estimates of the present global macroscopic species diversity vary from 2 million to 100 million, with a best estimate of somewhere near 9 million, the vast majority arthropods. Diversity appears to increase continually in the absence of natural selection.
The existence of a "global carrying capacity", limiting the amount of life that can live at once, is debated, as is the question of whether such a limit would also cap the number of species. While records of life in the sea show a logistic pattern of growth, life on land (insects, plants and tetrapods) shows an exponential rise in diversity. As one author states, "Tetrapods have not yet invaded 64 percent of potentially habitable modes and it could be that without human influence the ecological and taxonomic diversity of tetrapods would continue to increase exponentially until most or all of the available eco-space is filled."
It also appears that the diversity continues to increase over time, especially after mass extinctions.
On the other hand, changes through the Phanerozoic correlate much better with the hyperbolic model (widely used in population biology, demography and macrosociology, as well as fossil biodiversity) than with exponential and logistic models. The latter models imply that changes in diversity are guided by a first-order positive feedback (more ancestors, more descendants) and/or a negative feedback arising from resource limitation. Hyperbolic model implies a second-order positive feedback. Differences in the strength of the second-order feedback due to different intensities of interspecific competition might explain the faster rediversification of ammonoids in comparison to bivalves after the end-Permian extinction. The hyperbolic pattern of the world population growth arises from a second-order positive feedback between the population size and the rate of technological growth. The hyperbolic character of biodiversity growth can be similarly accounted for by a feedback between diversity and community structure complexity. The similarity between the curves of biodiversity and human population probably comes from the fact that both are derived from the interference of the hyperbolic trend with cyclical and stochastic dynamics.
Most biologists agree however that the period since human emergence is part of a new mass extinction, named the Holocene extinction event, caused primarily by the impact humans are having on the environment. It has been argued that the present rate of extinction is sufficient to eliminate most species on the planet Earth within 100 years.
New species are regularly discovered (on average between 5–10,000 new species each year, most of them insects) and many, though discovered, are not yet classified (estimates are that nearly 90% of all arthropods are not yet classified). Most of the terrestrial diversity is found in tropical forests and in general, the land has more species than the ocean; some 8.7 million species may exist on Earth, of which some 2.1 million live in the ocean.
"Ecosystem services are the suite of benefits that ecosystems provide to humanity." The natural species, or biota, are the caretakers of all ecosystems. It is as if the natural world is an enormous bank account of capital assets capable of paying life sustaining dividends indefinitely, but only if the capital is maintained.
These services come in three flavors:
There have been many claims about biodiversity's effect on these ecosystem services, especially provisioning and regulating services. After an exhaustive survey through peer-reviewed literature to evaluate 36 different claims about biodiversity's effect on ecosystem services, 14 of those claims have been validated, 6 demonstrate mixed support or are unsupported, 3 are incorrect and 13 lack enough evidence to draw definitive conclusions.
Greater species diversity
Greater species diversity
Other sources have reported somewhat conflicting results and in 1997 Robert Costanza and his colleagues reported the estimated global value of ecosystem services (not captured in traditional markets) at an average of $33 trillion annually.
Since the Stone Age, species loss has accelerated above the average basal rate, driven by human activity. Estimates of species losses are at a rate 100–10,000 times as fast as is typical in the fossil record. Biodiversity also affords many non-material benefits including spiritual and aesthetic values, knowledge systems and education.
Agricultural diversity can be divided into two categories: intraspecific diversity, which includes the genetic variation within a single species, like the potato ("Solanum tuberosum") that is composed of many different forms and types (e.g. in the U.S. they might compare russet potatoes with new potatoes or purple potatoes, all different, but all part of the same species, "S. tuberosum").
The other category of agricultural diversity is called interspecific diversity and refers to the number and types of different species. Thinking about this diversity we might note that many small vegetable farmers grow many different crops like potatoes and also carrots, peppers, lettuce, etc.
Agricultural diversity can also be divided by whether it is 'planned' diversity or 'associated' diversity. This is a functional classification that we impose and not an intrinsic feature of life or diversity. Planned diversity includes the crops which a farmer has encouraged, planted or raised (e.g. crops, covers, symbionts, and livestock, among others), which can be contrasted with the associated diversity that arrives among the crops, uninvited (e.g. herbivores, weed species and pathogens, among others).
The control of associated biodiversity is one of the great agricultural challenges that farmers face. On monoculture farms, the approach is generally to eradicate associated diversity using a suite of biologically destructive pesticides, mechanized tools and transgenic engineering techniques, then to rotate crops. Although some polyculture farmers use the same techniques, they also employ integrated pest management strategies as well as more labor-intensive strategies, but generally less dependent on capital, biotechnology, and energy.
Interspecific crop diversity is, in part, responsible for offering variety in what we eat. Intraspecific diversity, the variety of alleles within a single species, also offers us a choice in our diets. If a crop fails in a monoculture, we rely on agricultural diversity to replant the land with something new. If a wheat crop is destroyed by a pest we may plant a hardier variety of wheat the next year, relying on intraspecific diversity. We may forgo wheat production in that area and plant a different species altogether, relying on interspecific diversity. Even an agricultural society that primarily grows monocultures relies on biodiversity at some point.
Monoculture was a contributing factor to several agricultural disasters, including the European wine industry collapse in the late 19th century and the US southern corn leaf blight epidemic of 1970.
Although about 80 percent of humans' food supply comes from just 20 kinds of plants, humans use at least 40,000 species. Many people depend on these species for food, shelter and clothing. Earth's surviving biodiversity provides resources for increasing the range of food and other products suitable for human use, although the present extinction rate shrinks that potential.
Biodiversity's relevance to human health is becoming an international political issue, as scientific evidence builds on the global health implications of biodiversity loss. This issue is closely linked with the issue of climate change, as many of the anticipated health risks of climate change are associated with changes in biodiversity (e.g. changes in populations and distribution of disease vectors, scarcity of fresh water, impacts on agricultural biodiversity and food resources etc.). This is because the species most likely to disappear are those that buffer against infectious disease transmission, while surviving species tend to be the ones that increase disease transmission, such as that of West Nile Virus, Lyme disease and Hantavirus, according to a study done co-authored by Felicia Keesing, an ecologist at Bard College and Drew Harvell, associate director for Environment of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (ACSF) at Cornell University.
The growing demand and lack of drinkable water on the planet presents an additional challenge to the future of human health. Partly, the problem lies in the success of water suppliers to increase supplies and failure of groups promoting the preservation of water resources. While the distribution of clean water increases, in some parts of the world it remains unequal. According to the World Health Organisation (2018), only 71% of the global population used a safely managed drinking-water service.
Some of the health issues influenced by biodiversity include dietary health and nutrition security, infectious disease, medical science and medicinal resources, social and psychological health. Biodiversity is also known to have an important role in reducing disaster risk and in post-disaster relief and recovery efforts.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme a pathogen, like a virus, have more chances to meet resistance in a diverse population. Therefore, in a population genetically similar it expands more easily. For example, the Coronavirus pandemic had less chances to occur in a world with higher biodiversity.
Biodiversity provides critical support for drug discovery and the availability of medicinal resources. A significant proportion of drugs are derived, directly or indirectly, from biological sources: at least 50% of the pharmaceutical compounds on the US market are derived from plants, animals and microorganisms, while about 80% of the world population depends on medicines from nature (used in either modern or traditional medical practice) for primary healthcare. Only a tiny fraction of wild species has been investigated for medical potential. Biodiversity has been critical to advances throughout the field of bionics. Evidence from market analysis and biodiversity science indicates that the decline in output from the pharmaceutical sector since the mid-1980s can be attributed to a move away from natural product exploration ("bioprospecting") in favour of genomics and synthetic chemistry, indeed claims about the value of undiscovered pharmaceuticals may not provide enough incentive for companies in free markets to search for them because of the high cost of development; meanwhile, natural products have a long history of supporting significant economic and health innovation. Marine ecosystems are particularly important, although inappropriate bioprospecting can increase biodiversity loss, as well as violating the laws of the communities and states from which the resources are taken.
Many industrial materials derive directly from biological sources. These include building materials, fibers, dyes, rubber, and oil. Biodiversity is also important to the security of resources such as water, timber, paper, fiber, and food. As a result, biodiversity loss is a significant risk factor in business development and a threat to long-term economic sustainability.
Biodiversity enriches leisure activities such as hiking, birdwatching or natural history study. Biodiversity inspires musicians, painters, sculptors, writers and other artists. Many cultures view themselves as an integral part of the natural world which requires them to respect other living organisms.
Popular activities such as gardening, fishkeeping and specimen collecting strongly depend on biodiversity. The number of species involved in such pursuits is in the tens of thousands, though the majority do not enter commerce.
The relationships between the original natural areas of these often exotic animals and plants and commercial collectors, suppliers, breeders, propagators and those who promote their understanding and enjoyment are complex and poorly understood. The general public responds well to exposure to rare and unusual organisms, reflecting their inherent value.
Philosophically it could be argued that biodiversity has intrinsic aesthetic and spiritual value to mankind "in and of itself". This idea can be used as a counterweight to the notion that tropical forests and other ecological realms are only worthy of conservation because of the services they provide.
Biodiversity supports many ecosystem services:
"There is now unequivocal evidence that biodiversity loss reduces the efficiency by which ecological communities capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients... There is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions through time... Diverse communities are more productive because they contain key species that have a large influence on productivity and differences in functional traits among organisms increase total resource capture... The impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change... Maintaining multiple ecosystem processes at multiple places and times requires higher levels of biodiversity than does a single process at a single place and time."
It plays a part in regulating the chemistry of our atmosphere and water supply. Biodiversity is directly involved in water purification, recycling nutrients and providing fertile soils. Experiments with controlled environments have shown that humans cannot easily build ecosystems to support human needs; for example insect pollination cannot be mimicked, though there have been attempts to create artificial pollinators using unmanned aerial vehicles. The economic activity of pollination alone represented between $2.1–14.6 billion in 2003.
According to Mora and colleagues, the total number of terrestrial species is estimated to be around 8.7 million while the number of oceanic species is much lower, estimated at 2.2 million. The authors note that these estimates are strongest for eukaryotic organisms and likely represent the lower bound of prokaryote diversity. Other estimates include:
News.BBC.co.uk
Since the rate of extinction has increased, many extant species may become extinct before they are described. Not surprisingly, in the animalia the most studied groups are birds and mammals, whereas fishes and arthropods are the least studied animals groups.
During the last century, decreases in biodiversity have been increasingly observed. In 2007, German Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel cited estimates that up to 30% of all species will be extinct by 2050. Of these, about one eighth of known plant species are threatened with extinction. Estimates reach as high as 140,000 species per year (based on Species-area theory). This figure indicates unsustainable ecological practices, because few species emerge each year. Almost all scientists acknowledge that the rate of species loss is greater now than at any time in human history, with extinctions occurring at rates hundreds of times higher than background extinction rates. As of 2012, some studies suggest that 25% of all mammal species could be extinct in 20 years.
In absolute terms, the planet has lost 58% of its biodiversity since 1970 according to a 2016 study by the World Wildlife Fund. The Living Planet Report 2014 claims that "the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish across the globe is, on average, about half the size it was 40 years ago". Of that number, 39% accounts for the terrestrial wildlife gone, 39% for the marine wildlife gone and 76% for the freshwater wildlife gone. Biodiversity took the biggest hit in Latin America, plummeting 83 percent. High-income countries showed a 10% increase in biodiversity, which was canceled out by a loss in low-income countries. This is despite the fact that high-income countries use five times the ecological resources of low-income countries, which was explained as a result of a process whereby wealthy nations are outsourcing resource depletion to poorer nations, which are suffering the greatest ecosystem losses.
A 2017 study published in "PLOS One" found that the biomass of insect life in Germany had declined by three-quarters in the last 25 years. Dave Goulson of Sussex University stated that their study suggested that humans "appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse."
In 2006, many species were formally classified as rare or endangered or threatened; moreover, scientists have estimated that millions more species are at risk which have not been formally recognized. About 40 percent of the 40,177 species assessed using the IUCN Red List criteria are now listed as threatened with extinction—a total of 16,119.
Jared Diamond describes an "Evil Quartet" of habitat destruction, overkill, introduced species and secondary extinctions. Edward O. Wilson prefers the acronym HIPPO, standing for Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, human over-Population and Over-harvesting. The most authoritative classification in use today is IUCN's Classification of Direct Threats ("version 2.0 released in 2016") which has been adopted by major international conservation organizations such as the US Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and BirdLife International.
The 11 main direct threats to conservation are:
1. residential & commercial development
2. farming activities
3. energy production & mining
4. transportation & service corridors
5. biological resource usages
6. human intrusions & activities that alter, destroy, simply disturb habitats and species from exhibiting natural behaviors
7. natural system modifications
8. invasive & problematic species, pathogens & genes
9. pollution
10. catastrophic geological events
11. climate changes
Habitat destruction has played a key role in extinctions, especially in relation to tropical forest destruction. Factors contributing to habitat loss include: overconsumption, overpopulation, land use change, deforestation, pollution (air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination) and global warming or climate change.
Habitat size and numbers of species are systematically related. Physically larger species and those living at lower latitudes or in forests or oceans are more sensitive to reduction in habitat area. Conversion to "trivial" standardized ecosystems (e.g., monoculture following deforestation) effectively destroys habitat for the more diverse species that preceded the conversion. Even the simplest forms of agriculture affect diversity – through clearing/draining the land, discouraging weeds and "pests", and encouraging just a limited set of domesticated plant and animal species. In some countries, property rights or lax law/regulatory enforcement are associated with deforestation and habitat loss.
A 2007 study conducted by the National Science Foundation found that biodiversity and genetic diversity are codependent—that diversity among species requires diversity within a species and "vice versa". "If anyone type is removed from the system, the cycle can break down and the community becomes dominated by a single species."
, the most threatened ecosystems occur in fresh water, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, which was confirmed by the "Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment" organised by the biodiversity platform and the French "Institut de recherche pour le développement" (MNHNP).
Co-extinctions are a form of habitat destruction. Co-extinction occurs when the extinction or decline in one species accompanies similar processes in another, such as in plants and beetles.
A 2019 report has revealed that bees and other pollinating insects have been wiped out of almost a quarter of their habitats across the United Kingdom. The population crashes have been happening since the 1980s and are affecting biodiversity. The increase in industrial farming and pesticide use, combined with diseases, invasive species, and climate change is threatening the future of these insects and the agriculture they support.
Barriers such as large rivers, seas, oceans, mountains and deserts encourage diversity by enabling independent evolution on either side of the barrier, via the process of allopatric speciation. The term invasive species is applied to species that breach the natural barriers that would normally keep them constrained. Without barriers, such species occupy new territory, often supplanting native species by occupying their niches, or by using resources that would normally sustain native species.
The number of species invasions has been on the rise at least since the beginning of the 1900s. Species are increasingly being moved by humans (on purpose and accidentally). In some cases the invaders are causing drastic changes and damage to their new habitats (e.g.: zebra mussels and the emerald ash borer in the Great Lakes region and the lion fish along the North American Atlantic coast). Some evidence suggests that invasive species are competitive in their new habitats because they are subject to less pathogen disturbance. Others report confounding evidence that occasionally suggest that species-rich communities harbor many native and exotic species simultaneously while some say that diverse ecosystems are more resilient and resist invasive plants and animals. An important question is, "do invasive species cause extinctions?" Many studies cite effects of invasive species on natives, but not extinctions. Invasive species seem to increase local (i.e.: alpha diversity) diversity, which decreases turnover of diversity (i.e.: beta diversity). Overall gamma diversity may be lowered because species are going extinct because of other causes, but even some of the most insidious invaders (e.g.: Dutch elm disease, emerald ash borer, chestnut blight in North America) have not caused their host species to become extinct. Extirpation, population decline and homogenization of regional biodiversity are much more common. Human activities have frequently been the cause of invasive species circumventing their barriers, by introducing them for food and other purposes. Human activities therefore allow species to migrate to new areas (and thus become invasive) occurred on time scales much shorter than historically have been required for a species to extend its range.
Not all introduced species are invasive, nor all invasive species deliberately introduced. In cases such as the zebra mussel, invasion of US waterways was unintentional. In other cases, such as mongooses in Hawaii, the introduction is deliberate but ineffective (nocturnal rats were not vulnerable to the diurnal mongoose). In other cases, such as oil palms in Indonesia and Malaysia, the introduction produces substantial economic benefits, but the benefits are accompanied by costly unintended consequences.
Finally, an introduced species may unintentionally injure a species that depends on the species it replaces. In Belgium, "Prunus spinosa" from Eastern Europe leafs much sooner than its West European counterparts, disrupting the feeding habits of the "Thecla betulae" butterfly (which feeds on the leaves). Introducing new species often leaves endemic and other local species unable to compete with the exotic species and unable to survive. The exotic organisms may be predators, parasites, or may simply outcompete indigenous species for nutrients, water and light.
At present, several countries have already imported so many exotic species, particularly agricultural and ornamental plants, that their indigenous fauna/flora may be outnumbered. For example, the introduction of kudzu from Southeast Asia to Canada and the United States has threatened biodiversity in certain areas.
Endemic species can be threatened with extinction through the process of genetic pollution, i.e. uncontrolled hybridization, introgression and genetic swamping. Genetic pollution leads to homogenization or replacement of local genomes as a result of either a numerical and/or fitness advantage of an introduced species.
Hybridization and introgression are side-effects of introduction and invasion. These phenomena can be especially detrimental to rare species that come into contact with more abundant ones. The abundant species can interbreed with the rare species, swamping its gene pool. This problem is not always apparent from morphological (outward appearance) observations alone. Some degree of gene flow is normal adaptation and not all gene and genotype constellations can be preserved. However, hybridization with or without introgression may, nevertheless, threaten a rare species' existence.
Overexploitation occurs when a resource is consumed at an unsustainable rate. This occurs on land in the form of overhunting, excessive logging, poor soil conservation in agriculture and the illegal wildlife trade.
About 25% of world fisheries are now overfished to the point where their current biomass is less than the level that maximizes their sustainable yield.
The overkill hypothesis, a pattern of large animal extinctions connected with human migration patterns, can be used to explain why megafaunal extinctions can occur within a relatively short time period.
In agriculture and animal husbandry, the Green Revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield. Often hybridized breeds originated in developed countries and were further hybridized with local varieties in the developing world to create high yield strains resistant to local climate and diseases. Local governments and industry have been pushing hybridization. Formerly huge gene pools of various wild and indigenous breeds have collapsed causing widespread genetic erosion and genetic pollution. This has resulted in the loss of genetic diversity and biodiversity as a whole.
Genetically modified organisms contain genetic material that is altered through genetic engineering. Genetically modified crops have become a common source for genetic pollution in not only wild varieties, but also in domesticated varieties derived from classical hybridization.
Genetic erosion and genetic pollution have the potential to destroy unique genotypes, threatening future access to food security. A decrease in genetic diversity weakens the ability of crops and livestock to be hybridized to resist disease and survive changes in climate.
Global warming is a major threat to global biodiversity. For example, coral reefs – which are biodiversity hotspots – will be lost within the century if global warming continues at the current rate.
Climate change has proven to affect biodiversity and evidence supporting the altering effects is widespread. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide certainly affects plant morphology and is acidifying oceans, and temperature affects species ranges, phenology, and weather, but, mercifully, the major impacts that have been predicted are still potential futures. We have not documented major extinctions yet, even as climate change drastically alters the biology of many species.
In 2004, an international collaborative study on four continents estimated that 10 percent of species would become extinct by 2050 because of global warming. "We need to limit climate change or we wind up with a lot of species in trouble, possibly extinct," said Dr. Lee Hannah, a co-author of the paper and chief climate change biologist at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International.
A recent study predicts that up to 35% of the world terrestrial carnivores and ungulates will be at higher risk of extinction by 2050 because of the joint effects of predicted climate and land-use change under business-as-usual human development scenarios.
Climate change has advanced the time of evening when Brazilian free-tailed bats ("Tadarida brasiliensis") emerge to feed. This change is believed to be related to the drying of regions as temperatures rise. This earlier emergence exposes the bats to greater predation increased competition with other insectivores who feed in the twilight or daylight hours.
The world's population numbered nearly 7.6 billion as of mid-2017 (which is approximately one billion more inhabitants compared to 2005) and is forecast to reach 11.1 billion in 2100. Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, told a parliamentary inquiry: ""It is self-evident that the massive growth in the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor."" At least until the middle of the 21st century, worldwide losses of pristine biodiverse land will probably depend much on the worldwide human birth rate. Biologists such as Paul R. Ehrlich and Stuart Pimm have noted that human population growth and overconsumption are the main drivers of species extinction.
According to a 2014 study by the World Wildlife Fund, the global human population already exceeds planet's biocapacity – it would take the equivalent of 1.5 Earths of biocapacity to meet our current demands. The report further points that if everyone on the planet had the Footprint of the average resident of Qatar, we would need 4.8 Earths and if we lived the lifestyle of a typical resident of the US, we would need 3.9 Earths.
Rates of decline in biodiversity in this sixth mass extinction match or exceed rates of loss in the five previous mass extinction events in the fossil record. Loss of biodiversity results in the loss of natural capital that supplies ecosystem goods and services. From the perspective of the method known as Natural Economy the economic value of 17 ecosystem services for Earth's biosphere (calculated in 1997) has an estimated value of US$33 trillion (3.3x1013) per year.
In 2019, a summary for policymakers of the largest, most comprehensive study to date of biodiversity and ecosystem services, the "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services", was published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The report was finalized in Paris. The main conclusions:
1. Over the last 50 years, the state of nature has deteriorated at an unprecedented and accelerating rate.
2. The main drivers of this deterioration have been changes in land and sea use, exploitation of living beings, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. These five drivers, in turn, are caused by societal behaviors, from consumption to governance.
3. Damage to ecosystems undermines 35 of 44 selected UN targets, including the UN General Assembly's Sustainable Development Goals for poverty, hunger, health, water, cities' climate, oceans, and land. It can cause problems with food, water and humanity's air supply.
4. To fix the problem, humanity will need a transformative change, including sustainable agriculture, reductions in consumption and waste, fishing quotas and collaborative water management. On page 8 the report proposes on page 8 of the summary " enabling visions of a good quality of life that do not entail ever-increasing material consumption" as one of the main measures. The report states that "Some pathways chosen to achieve the goals related to energy, economic growth, industry and infrastructure and sustainable consumption and production (Sustainable Development Goals 7, 8, 9 and 12), as well as targets related to poverty, food security and cities (Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2 and 11), could have substantial positive or negative impacts on nature and therefore on the achievement of other Sustainable Development Goals".
Conservation biology matured in the mid-20th century as ecologists, naturalists and other scientists began to research and address issues pertaining to global biodiversity declines.
The conservation ethic advocates management of natural resources for the purpose of sustaining biodiversity in species, ecosystems, the evolutionary process and human culture and society.
Conservation biology is reforming around strategic plans to protect biodiversity. Preserving global biodiversity is a priority in strategic conservation plans that are designed to engage public policy and concerns affecting local, regional and global scales of communities, ecosystems and cultures. Action plans identify ways of sustaining human well-being, employing natural capital, market capital and ecosystem services.
In the EU Directive 1999/22/EC zoos are described as having a role in the preservation of the biodiversity of wildlife animals by conducting research or participation in breeding programs.
Removal of exotic species will allow the species that they have negatively impacted to recover their ecological niches. Exotic species that have become pests can be identified taxonomically (e.g., with Digital Automated Identification SYstem (DAISY), using the barcode of life). Removal is practical only given large groups of individuals due to the economic cost.
As sustainable populations of the remaining native species in an area become assured, "missing" species that are candidates for reintroduction can be identified using databases such as the "Encyclopedia of Life" and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
Protected areas are meant for affording protection to wild animals and their habitat which also includes forest reserves and biosphere reserves. Protected areas have been set up all over the world with the specific aim of protecting and conserving plants and animals. Some scientists have called on the global community to designate as protected areas of 30 percent of the planet by 2030, and 50 percent by 2050, in order to mitigate biodiversity loss from anthropogenic causes.
National park and nature reserve is the area selected by governments or private organizations for special protection against damage or degradation with the objective of biodiversity and landscape conservation. National parks are usually owned and managed by national or state governments. A limit is placed on the number of visitors permitted to enter certain fragile areas. Designated trails or roads are created. The visitors are allowed to enter only for study, cultural and recreation purposes. Forestry operations, grazing of animals and hunting of animals are regulated and the exploitation of habitat or wildlife is banned.
Wildlife sanctuaries aim only at the conservation of species and have the following features:
The forests play a vital role in harboring more than 45,000 floral and 81,000 faunal species of which 5150 floral and 1837 faunal species are endemic. Plant and animal species confined to a specific geographical area are called endemic species. In reserved forests, rights to activities like hunting and grazing are sometimes given to communities living on the fringes of the forest, who sustain their livelihood partially or wholly from forest resources or products. The unclassed forests cover 6.4 percent of the total forest area and they are marked by the following characteristics:
In zoological parks or zoos, live animals are kept for public recreation, education and conservation purposes. Modern zoos offer veterinary facilities, provide opportunities for threatened species to breed in captivity and usually build environments that simulate the native habitats of the animals in their care. Zoos play a major role in creating awareness about the need to conserve nature.
In botanical gardens, plants are grown and displayed primarily for scientific and educational purposes. They consist of a collection of living plants, grown outdoors or under glass in greenhouses and conservatories. Also, a botanical garden may include a collection of dried plants or herbarium and such facilities as lecture rooms, laboratories, libraries, museums and experimental or research plantings.
Focusing on limited areas of higher potential biodiversity promises greater immediate return on investment than spreading resources evenly or focusing on areas of little diversity but greater interest in biodiversity.
A second strategy focuses on areas that retain most of their original diversity, which typically require little or no restoration. These are typically non-urbanized, non-agricultural areas. Tropical areas often fit both criteria, given their natively high diversity and relative lack of development.
Global agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, give "sovereign national rights over biological resources" (not property). The agreements commit countries to "conserve biodiversity", "develop resources for sustainability" and "share the benefits" resulting from their use. Biodiverse countries that allow bioprospecting or collection of natural products, expect a share of the benefits rather than allowing the individual or institution that discovers/exploits the resource to capture them privately. Bioprospecting can become a type of biopiracy when such principles are not respected.
Sovereignty principles can rely upon what is better known as Access and Benefit Sharing Agreements (ABAs). The Convention on Biodiversity implies informed consent between the source country and the collector, to establish which resource will be used and for what and to settle on a fair agreement on benefit sharing.
In May 2020, the European Union published its Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The biodiversity strategy is an essential part of the climate change mitigation strategy of the European Union. From the 25% of the European budget that will go to fight climate change, large part will go to restore biodiversity and nature based solutions.
The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 include the next targets:
According to the page, approximately half of the global GDP depend on nature. In Europe many parts of the economy that generate trillions € per year, depend on nature. Only the benefits of Natura 2000 in Europe are €200 - €300 billions per year
Biodiversity is taken into account in some political and judicial decisions:
Uniform approval for use of biodiversity as a legal standard has not been achieved, however. Bosselman argues that biodiversity should not be used as a legal standard, claiming that the remaining areas of scientific uncertainty cause unacceptable administrative waste and increase litigation without promoting preservation goals.
India passed the Biological Diversity Act in 2002 for the conservation of biological diversity in India. The Act also provides mechanisms for equitable sharing of benefits from the use of traditional biological resources and knowledge.
Less than 1% of all species that have been described have been studied beyond simply noting their existence. The vast majority of Earth's species are microbial. Contemporary biodiversity physics is "firmly fixated on the visible [macroscopic] world". For example, microbial life is metabolically and environmentally more diverse than multicellular life (see e.g., extremophile). "On the tree of life, based on analyses of small-subunit ribosomal RNA, visible life consists of barely noticeable twigs. The inverse relationship of size and population recurs higher on the evolutionary ladder—to a first approximation, all multicellular species on Earth are insects". Insect extinction rates are high—supporting the Holocene extinction hypothesis.
The number of morphological attributes that can be scored for diversity study is generally limited and prone to environmental influences; thereby reducing the fine resolution required to ascertain the phylogenetic relationships. DNA based markers- microsatellites otherwise known as "simple sequence repeats" (SSR) were therefore used for the diversity studies of certain species and their wild relatives.
In the case of cowpea, a study conducted to assess the level of genetic diversity in cowpea germplasm and related wide species, where the relatedness among various taxa was compared, primers useful for classification of taxa identified, and the origin and phylogeny of cultivated cowpea classified show that SSR markers are useful in validating with species classification and revealing the center of diversity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45086 |
Karuta
are Japanese playing cards. Playing cards were introduced to Japan by Portuguese traders during the mid-16th century. These early decks were used for trick-taking games. The earliest indigenous "karuta" was invented in the town of Miike in Chikugo Province at around the end of the 16th century. The Miike Karuta Memorial Hall located in Ōmuta, Fukuoka, is the only municipal museum in Japan dedicated specifically to the history of "karuta".
"Karuta" packs are classified into two groups, those that are descended from Portuguese cards and those from "e-awase". "E-awase" originally derived from "kai-awase", which was played with shells but were converted to card format during the early 17th-century. The basic idea of any "e-awase karuta" game is to be able to quickly determine which card out of an array of cards is required and then to grab the card before it is grabbed by an opponent. It is often played by children at elementary school and junior high-school level during class, as an educational exercise. Chinese playing cards of the money-suited and domino types existed in Japan from at least the late 18th century until the early 20th century. Their games would influence those played with the "Hanafuda" pack.
The first indigenous Japanese deck was the "" named after the Tenshō period (1573–92). It was a 48 card deck with the 10s missing like Portuguese decks from that period. It kept the four Latin suits of cups, coins, clubs, and swords along with the three face cards of female knave, knight, and king. In 1633, the Tokugawa shogunate banned these cards, forcing Japanese manufacturers to radically redesign their cards. As a result of Japan's isolationist "Sakoku" policy, karuta would develop separately from the rest of the world. In order to hide the proscription of Portuguese derived cards, makers turned the cards into very abstract designs known as "mekuri karuta". By the mid-20th century, all "mekuri karuta" fell into oblivion with the exception of "Komatsufuda" (Japanese: ) which is used to play Kakkuri, a game similar to Poch, found in Yafune, Fukui prefecture.
The "" (Japanese: ) deck developed in the late 17th century. It has five suits of 15 ranks each for a total of 75 cards. Six of the ranks were face cards. The Portuguese deck used to have dragons on their aces; the Unsun karuta made the aces and dragons separate cards. The order of the court cards change depending on whether it is the trump suit or not just like in Ombre. The new Guru suit used circular whirls ("mitsudomoe") as pips. Unsun Karuta is still used in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto to play "hachinin-meri", a game descended from , a relative of Ombre. This game preserves some very archaic features such as inverted ranking for the pip cards in the three round suits. Inverted ranking is a feature found in Madiao, Khanhoo, Tổ tôm, Ganjifa, Tarot, Ombre, and Maw and is believed to have originated in the very earliest card games.
"Kabufuda" (Japanese: ) is another derivative of "mekuri karuta" but all the suits were made identical. It is used for gambling games such as Oicho-Kabu. They come in decks of 40 cards with designs representing the numbers 1 through 10. There are four cards for each number and the 10 (Jack) is the only face card.
The gambling game of can be played with either a "Harifuda" () or "Hikifuda" () set. "Harifuda" contains seven copies of cards numbered one to six in stylized Chinese numerals for a total of 42 cards. The 48-card "Hikifuda" or "Mamefuda" () has eight copies of cards with one to six coins, similar to the coins of a "mekuri karuta" set. In Tehonbiki, the player tries to guess which number from 1 to 6 the dealer has selected. Some sets may include indicator cards to raise or hedge bets.
"Hanafuda" (Japanese: , lit. "flower cards", also called Hanakaruta) are 48 card decks with flower designs originating from the early 19th century. Instead of being divided by 4 suits with 12 cards each, a hanafuda deck is divided by 12 suits (months) with 4 cards each. Hanafuda games are mostly fishing games. Their mechanics are derived from Chinese rather than European fishing games.
"Uta-garuta" (, lit. "poetry karuta") is a card game in which 100 "waka" poems are written on two sets of 100 cards: one set is yomifuda (, lit. "reading cards"), which have the complete poem taken from the "Ogura Hyakunin Isshu", and the other is torifuda (, lit. "grabbing cards"), which each correspond to a yomifuda and have only the last few lines of the corresponding poem on them. One person is chosen to be the reader. As the reader reads a yomifuda, the players race to find its associated torifuda before anybody else does. It is often possible to identify a poem by its first one or two syllables. This game has traditionally been played on New Year's Day since 1904. Competitive karuta has competitions on various levels with the Japan national championship tournament being held every January at Omi shrine (a Shinto shrine) in Ōtsu, Shiga since 1955.
A few non-matching games exist that use only the yomifuda. Bouzu Mekuri (), is a simple game of chance originating from the Meiji period. (Color Crowns) is a 4-player partnership game that is related to Goita. In both games, the poems are irrelevant, and the only parts of the cards that matter are the appearance of the poets such as their clothing, sex, or social status.
"Ita-karuta" (Japanese: ) is a variation found in Hokkaido. The torifuda are made of wood while the yomifuda remain the same or lack illustrations of the poets. They are used to play a competitive partnership game called "" in which the last half of the poem is read.
"Iroha Karuta" (Japanese: ) is an easier-to-understand matching game for children, similar to Uta-garuta but with 96 cards. Instead of poems, the cards represent the 47 syllables of the hiragana syllabary and adds "kyō" (, "capital") for the 48th (since the syllable "-n" can never start any word or phrase). It uses the old iroha ordering for the syllables which includes two obsolete syllables, "wi" () and "we" (). A typical "torifuda" features a drawing with a "kana" at one corner of the card. Its corresponding "yomifuda" features a proverb connected to the picture with the first syllable being the "kana" displayed on the "torifuda". There are 3 standard Iroha Karuta variants: Kamigata, Edo and Owari. Each variant has its own set of proverbs based on the local dialect and culture. The Kamigata or Kyoto version is the oldest but the Edo version is the most widespread, being found all over Japan. The Owari variant existed only during the latter half of the 19th-century before being supplanted by the Edo version.
"Obake karuta" is an obsolete variation of Iroha Karuta unique to Tokyo. The cards were created in the Edo period and remained popular through the 1910s or 1920s. Each card in the deck features a hiragana syllable and a creature from Japanese mythology; in fact, "obake karuta" means "ghost cards" or "monster cards". Success requires knowledge of Japanese mythology and folklore as players attempt to collect cards that match clues read by a referee. The player who accumulates the most cards by the end of the game wins.
"Obake karuta" is an early example of the common Japanese fascination with classifying monsters and creating new ones. The game is one of the earliest attempts by Japanese companies to categorize legendary creatures, label them, define them, and subsequently market them. As such, it is a precursor to the "Godzilla" films of the 1950s and later. Even more closely, "obake karuta" resembles the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" or "Pokémon Trading Card Game", which also involves collecting cards that represent fabulous creatures. In fact, many Pokémon were designed specifically after creatures from Japanese mythology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45089 |
Hermione Granger
Hermione Jean Granger ( ) is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. She first appears in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", as a new student on her way to Hogwarts. After Harry and Ron save her from a mountain troll in the girls' restroom, she becomes best friends with them and often uses her quick wit, deft recall, and encyclopaedic knowledge to lend aid in dire situations. Rowling has stated that Hermione resembles herself as a young girl, with her insecurity and fear of failure.
The character has had immense popularity. The version of Hermione portrayed by Emma Watson in all eight "Harry Potter" films from "Philosopher's Stone" in 2001 to "Deathly Hallows – Part 2" in 2011 was voted the best female character of all time in a poll conducted amongst Hollywood professionals by "The Hollywood Reporter" in 2016.
Hermione Jean Granger is a Muggle-born Gryffindor, who becomes best friends with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. J.K. Rowling states that she was born on 19 September 1979 and she was nearly twelve when she first attended Hogwarts. She is an overachiever who excels academically and is described by J.K Rowling as a "very logical, upright and good" character. J.K. Rowling adds that Hermione's parents, two Muggle dentists, are a bit bemused by their odd daughter but "very proud of her all the same." They are well aware of the wizarding world and have visited Diagon Alley with her. Hermione was originally intended to have a sister, but the planned sibling did not make an appearance in the first "Harry Potter" novel and, as Rowling noted, it "seemed too late" to introduce the character after all of that. Rowling confirmed in a 2004 interview that Hermione is an only child.
Rowling has described the character of Luna Lovegood as the "anti-Hermione" as they are so very different. Hermione's nemesis at Hogwarts is Pansy Parkinson, a bully based on real-life girls who teased the author during her school days.
Rowling stated that the character of Hermione carries several autobiographical influences: "I did not set out to make Hermione like me but she is...she is an exaggeration of how I was when I was younger." She recalled being called a "little know-it-all" in her youth. Moreover, she states that not unlike herself, "there is a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure" beneath Hermione's swottiness. Finally, according to Rowling, next to Albus Dumbledore, Hermione is the perfect expository character; because of her encyclopaedic knowledge, she can always be used as a plot dump to explain the "Harry Potter" universe. Rowling also states that her feminist conscience is rescued by Hermione, "who's the brightest witch of her age." and is a "very strong female character."
Hermione's first name is taken from a character in William Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale", though Rowling has said that the two characters have little to nothing in common otherwise. Rowling said that she wanted her name to be unusual since if fewer girls shared her name, fewer girls would get teased for it and it seemed that "a pair of professional dentists, who liked to prove how clever they are...gave [her] an unusual name that no-one could pronounce." Her original last name was "Puckle", but Rowling felt the name "did not suit her at all", and so the less frivolous Granger made it into the books and movies.
Hermione first appears in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" when she meets Harry and Ron on the Hogwarts Express, where she mocks Ron for his inability to perform a spell to turn his rat yellow. She proves just how much she knows by declaring that she memorized all the textbooks by heart and by performing the "oculus" spell on Harry to fix his broken glasses. She constantly annoys her peers with her knowledge, so Harry and Ron initially consider her arrogant, especially after she criticises Ron's incantation of the "Levitation" Charm. They heartily dislike her until they rescue her from a troll, for which she is so thankful that she lies to protect them from punishment, thus winning their friendship. Hermione's knack for logic later enables the trio to solve a puzzle that is essential to retrieving the Philosopher's Stone, and she defeats the constrictive Devil's Snare plant by summoning a jet of "bluebell flame".
Hermione is the brains behind the plan to enter the place where the Stone is hidden. She responds to Harry's wariness of Professor Severus Snape and is also suspicious of him. She reveals to Harry and Ron that she does a lot of research in the library, which helped her defeat the Devil's Snare and work out the logic of the potions.
Rowling said on her website that she resisted her editor's requests to remove the troll scene, stating "Hermione is so very arrogant and annoying in the early part of "Philosopher's Stone" that I really felt it needed something (literally) huge to bring her together with Harry and Ron."
Hermione (along with Ron's mother Molly Weasley and a few female students of Hogwarts) develops a liking for Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart as he had written all the books required for the subject of Defence Against The Dark Arts in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". During a morning confrontation between the Gryffindor and Slytherin Quidditch teams, a brawl nearly ensues after Draco Malfoy calls her a "Mudblood", an insulting epithet for Muggle-born wizards when she defends the Gryffindor Quidditch team. She concocts the Polyjuice Potion needed for the trio to disguise themselves as Draco's housemates to collect information about the Heir of Slytherin who has reopened the Chamber of Secrets. However, she is unable to join Harry and Ron in the investigation after the hair plucked from the robes of Slytherin student Millicent Bulstrode (with whom Hermione was previously matched up during Lockhart's ill-fated Duelling Club) was that of her cat, whose appearance she takes on in her human form; it takes several weeks for the effects to completely wear off. Hermione is Petrified by the basilisk after successfully identifying the creature through library research. Though she lies incapacitated in the hospital wing, the information she has found and left behind is crucial to Harry and Ron in their successful mission to solve the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione is revived after Harry kills the basilisk, but she is distraught to learn that all end-of-year exams have been cancelled as a school treat.
Hermione buys a cat named Crookshanks, who takes to chasing Ron's pet rat, Scabbers. Before the start of term, Professor McGonagall secretly gives Hermione a Time-Turner, a device which enables her to go back in time and handle her heavy class schedule, though this is not revealed until the penultimate chapter. Much tension comes into play between Hermione and her two best friends; Harry is furious with her because she told McGonagall that he had received a Firebolt, which was confiscated to be inspected for traces of dark magic. Ron is angry because he feels Crookshanks is responsible for Scabbers' disappearance, while Hermione fiercely maintains that Crookshanks is innocent.
While filling in for Remus Lupin in one Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Snape labels Hermione "an insufferable know-it-all" and penalises Gryffindor after she speaks out of turn in her attempt to describe a werewolf when no one else does. She correctly deduces Lupin's secret after completing Snape's homework assignment from the class. Crookshanks proves vital in exposing Scabbers as Peter Pettigrew, an erstwhile friend of James and Lily Potter, who revealed their whereabouts to Lord Voldemort the night of their murders, and was able to wrongly implicate Sirius Black (revealed to be Harry's godfather) in the Potters' deaths. The Time-Turner enables Hermione and Harry to rescue Sirius and the hippogriff Buckbeak.
Hermione is horrified by the cruelty that house-elves suffer, and establishes S.P.E.W., the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, as an effort to gain basic rights for them. She is Bulgarian Quidditch prodigy Viktor Krum's date at the Yule Ball of the Triwizard Tournament. The proper pronunciation of her name ("Her-my-oh-nee") is interjected into the plot when she teaches it to Krum; the best he can do is "Herm-own-ninny," but she has no problem with it. She later gets into a heated argument with Ron after he accuses her of "fraternising with the enemy" about her friendship with Krum. In the book, Hermione's feelings toward Ron are hinted at when she says that Ron can't see her "like a girl," but Krum could. She supports Harry through the Triwizard Tournament, helping him prepare for each task. At the end of the second task, Krum asks her to come to see him over the summer in Bulgaria, but she politely declines. Near the end of the term, she stops fraudulent tabloid reporter and unregistered Animagus, Rita Skeeter, who had published defamatory material about Hermione, Harry, and Hagrid during the Triwizard Tournament, by holding her Animagus form (a beetle) captive in a jar.
Hermione becomes a Gryffindor prefect along with Ron and befriends Luna Lovegood, but their friendship gets off to a rocky start after Hermione chastises the publication of Luna's father: ""The Quibbler"'s rubbish, everyone knows that." She also lambasts housemate Lavender Brown for believing the "Daily Prophet's" allegations of Harry fabricating stories of Voldemort's return. Ron and Hermione spend much of their time bickering, likely due to their growing romantic feelings toward one another, but they show continued loyalty to Harry. Later, new headmistress Professor Umbridge attempts to ban "The Quibbler" from Hogwarts. This effort becomes moot as Harry's interview about Voldemort's return spreads quickly through the school. One turning point in the series is when Hermione conceives the idea of Harry secretly teaching defensive magic to a small band of students in defiance of the Ministry of Magic's dictum to teach only the subject's basic principles from a textbook, with no hands-on practice. Hermione gets an unexpectedly huge response, and the group becomes the nascent Dumbledore's Army. She is involved in the battle in the Department of Mysteries and seriously injured by a spell from Death Eater Antonin Dolohov, but makes a full recovery.
New Potions professor Horace Slughorn invites Hermione to join his "Slug Club", and she helps Ron retain his spot on the Gryffindor Quidditch team when she casts a spell on Cormac McLaggen, causing him to miss his last save attempt during Keeper tryouts. Hermione's feelings for Ron continue to grow and she decides to make a move by inviting him to Slughorn's Christmas Party, but he romances Lavender instead in retaliation for his belief that Hermione had kissed Krum years earlier. She attempts to get even by dating McLaggen at the Christmas party, but her plan goes awry and she abandons him midway through the party. Ron and Hermione continually feud with each other (Ron is upset with her because she set birds to attack him after seeing him and Lavender kissing; Hermione is mostly mad because of her growing jealousy) until he suffers a near-fatal poisoning from tainted mead, which frightens her enough to reconcile with him. Following Dumbledore's death, Ron and Hermione both vow to stay by Harry's side regardless of what happens. A minor subplot in the book is that Hermione and Harry form a rivalry in Potions, as Hermione is used to coming first in her subjects and is angered that Harry outperforms her undeservedly by following tips and different instructions written in the margins of Harry's potions book by the previous owner. Hermione is also the only one of the trio to successfully pass her Apparition test (Ron failed, albeit barely, and Harry was too young).
In the seventh and final book, Hermione accompanies Harry on his quest to destroy Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes. Before leaving on the quest, she helps ensure the safety of her parents by placing a false memory charm on them, making them think they are Wendell and Monica Wilkins, whose lifetime ambition is to move to Australia. She inherits Dumbledore's copy of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", which allows her to decipher some of the secrets of the Deathly Hallows. She prepared for their departure and journey by placing an Undetectable Extension Charm on a small beaded purse so she can fill the infinite depths of the bag with materials they will need. Hermione's spell saves her and Harry from Lord Voldemort and his snake Nagini in Godric's Hollow, although the ricochet snaps Harry's wand. When she, Ron, and Harry are captured by Snatchers, who are on the hunt for Muggle-borns under the Ministry's orders, Hermione disguises Harry by temporarily disfiguring his face with a Stinging Jinx. She also attempts to pass herself off as former Hogwarts student Penelope Clearwater and a half-blood to avoid persecution, but they are recognised and taken to Malfoy Manor. Bellatrix Lestrange tortures her with the Cruciatus Curse in an attempt to extract information on how Hermione, Harry, and Ron came to possess Godric Gryffindor's sword (which was supposed to be safe in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts). Bellatrix orders for Griphook the goblin to inspect the sword and tell whether it is fake or real. To save Hermione, Harry convinces him to lie to Bellatrix that the sword is a fake. When the others escape their cell, Bellatrix threatens to slit Hermione's throat. Hermione, Harry, Ron and the other prisoners being held in Malfoy Manor are eventually rescued by Dobby.
Hermione later uses Polyjuice Potion to impersonate Bellatrix when the trio attempt to steal Hufflepuff's cup from Gringotts. She, Harry, and Ron join Dumbledore's Army in the Battle of Hogwarts, during which Hermione destroys Hufflepuff's cup in the Chamber of Secrets with a basilisk fang, eliminating another Horcrux. Hermione and Ron also share their first kiss during the battle. In the final battle in the Great Hall, Hermione fights Bellatrix with the help of Ginny Weasley and Luna. However, the three of them are unable to defeat Bellatrix and stop fighting her once Molly Weasley orders them to disengage.
Nineteen years after Voldemort's death, Hermione and Ron have two children, Rose and Hugo. Though the epilogue does not explicitly say Hermione and Ron are married, news articles and other sources treat it as a fact. The two children are named Rose Granger-Weasley and Hugo Granger-Weasley.
In the books, Hermione is described as having "bushy brown hair" and brown eyes. Her front buck teeth, already very large, grow uncontrollably in "Goblet of Fire" after she is affected by a spell cast by Draco Malfoy. Madam Pomfrey attends to her in the hospital wing and, at her request, shrinks the teeth down to a normal size that matches her mouth. In the films, her hair is less bushy and she always has regular teeth.
There is controversy over whether Hermione's skin color was ever categorically established in the books. Some take as proof a line from "Prisoner of Azkaban": "Hermione's white face was sticking out from behind a tree." They interpret this to be a direct description of her skin color. Others interpret it as a description relative to her usual complexion, arising due to fright and anxiety as she watches Harry Potter's attempt to save the hippogriff Buckbeak from execution. J.K. Rowling herself states that Hermione "turned white" in that she "lost colour from her face after a shock."
Conversely, another description from early in "Prisoner of Azkaban" can also be cited: "They were there, both of them, sitting outside Florean Fortescue's Ice-Cream Parlour, Ron looking incredibly freckly, Hermione very brown, both waving frantically at him." Some claim that this is a direct description of her skin color, while others claim that it's a relative description of the results of a tan acquired over the summer break.
Hermione's most prominent features include her prodigious intellect and cleverness. She is levelheaded, book-smart, and always very logical. Throughout the series, Hermione uses the skills of a librarian and teacher to gather the information necessary to defeat Voldemort, the "Dark Lord". When in doubt, it is to the school library that Hermione always turns to. She is often bossy yet unfailingly dutiful and loyal to her friends—a person who can always be counted on. J.K.
Rowling stated that Hermione is a person that, "never strays off the path; she always keeps her attention focused on the job that must be done."
Despite Hermione's intelligence and bossy attitude, Rowling says that Hermione has "quite a lot of vulnerability in her personality," as well as a "sense of insecurity underneath," feels, "utterly inadequate... and to compensate, she tries and strives to be the best at everything at school, projecting a confidence that irritates people." During her Defence Against the Dark Arts exam at the end of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", Hermione reveals that her biggest fear is failure after a Boggart takes the form of Professor McGonagall and tells her that she has failed all her exams.
Hermione is extremely compassionate and is very quick to help others, especially those who are defenceless, such as Neville Longbottom, first-years, House-Elves, fellow Muggle-borns, half-giants like Hagrid, and werewolves like Lupin. It was revealed by J.K. Rowling after the publication of the final book that Hermione's career in the Ministry was to fight for the rights of the oppressed and disenfranchised (such as House-elves or Muggle-borns). Hermione is also very protective of her friends and values them so much that Rowling has suggested that, if Hermione had looked in the Mirror of Erised, she would have seen Harry, Ron, and herself "alive and unscathed, and Voldemort finished." Hermione has also learned to ignore what bullies such as Draco Malfoy say to her, often preventing Harry and Ron from retaliating and thinking of some way to outsmart him. She accepts her status as a Muggle-born witch, and states in "Deathly Hallows" that she is "a Mudblood and proud of it".
Hermione is portrayed during the whole series as an exceptionally talented young witch. J.K. Rowling has stated that Hermione is a "borderline genius." She received ten O.W.L.s, which were nine Outstandings and one Exceeds Expectations. She is the best student in Harry's year and is repeatedly the first student to master any spell or charm introduced in her classes and even from more advanced years, as evidenced when she can conjure a Protean Charm on the D.A.'s fake Galleon coins, which is a N.E.W.T. level charm. She is also the first one of her age to be able to cast non-verbal spells. Hermione is a competent duellist – Rowling has stated that while during the first three books Hermione could have beaten Harry in any magical duel, but by the fourth book Harry had become so good at Defence Against the Dark Arts that he would have defeated Hermione. Hermione did not tend to do as well in subjects that were not learned through books or formal training, as broom flying did not come as naturally to her in her first year as it did to Harry, and she showed no affinity for Divination, which she dropped from her third-year studies. She was also not good at Wizard's Chess, as it was the only thing at which she ever lost to Ron.
Hermione's Patronus is an otter, Rowling's favourite animal. In the Deathly Hallows book, while they enter the Ministry Of Magic under disguise, Hermione impersonates Mafalda Hopkirk. It is also stated that conjuring a Patronus is the only thing she ever has trouble with. Her wand is made of vine wood and dragon heartstring core; vine is the wood ascribed to Hermione's fictional birth month (September) on the Celtic calendar.
Hermione is viewed by many as a feminist icon. In "The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter," the first book-length analysis of the "Harry Potter" series (edited and compiled by Lana A. Whited), a chapter titled "Hermione Granger and the Heritage of Gender," by Eliza T. Dresang, discusses Hermione's role in the series and its relation to feminist debates. The chapter begins with an analysis of Hermione's name and the role of previous characters with the same name in mythology and fiction, and the heritage Hermione has inherited from these characters due to her name. Dresang also emphasises Hermione's parallelism with Rowling herself and how, as Hermione has some attributes from Rowling herself, she must be a strong character.
The chapter also points out the fact that, despite being born to Muggle parents, Hermione's magical abilities are innate. Her "compulsion for study" helps both the character's development, which makes Hermione "a prime example that information brings power", and the plot of the series, as her knowledge of the wizarding world is often used to "save the day". Dresang states that "Harry and Ron are more dependent on Hermione than she is on them." However, she also remarks that Hermione's "hysteria and crying happen far too often to be considered a believable part of the development of Hermione's character and are quite out of line with her core role in the book."
UGO Networks listed Hermione as one of their best heroes of all time, saying, "Most of us can probably recall having a classmate like Hermione when we were in grammar school"—one who "can at first be a little off-putting, but once you get to know her, she's not a bad chick to have on your side". "IGN" also listed Hermione as their second top "Harry Potter" character, praising her character development. In 2016 "The Hollywood Reporter" conducted a poll of Hollywood professionals, including actors, writers and directors, into their favourite female characters of all time, with Hermione topping the poll.
Philip Nel of Kansas State University notes that "Rowling, who worked for Amnesty International, evokes her social activism through Hermione's passion for oppressed elves and the formation of her 'Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare'".
However, in an analysis for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", Rowland Manthrope states that "seven books on, we still only know her as swottish, sensible Hermione—a caricature, not a character."
Emma Watson portrayed Hermione in all eight "Harry Potter" films. Watson's Oxford theatre teacher passed her name on to the casting agents of "Philosopher's Stone", impressed with her school play performances. Though Watson took her audition seriously, she "never really thought she had any chance" of getting the part. The producers were impressed by Watson's self-confidence and she outperformed the thousands of other girls who had applied.
Rowling herself was supportive of Watson after her first screen test. When asked if she thought actors suited the characters, Rowling said, "Yes, I did. Emma Watson in particular was very, very like Hermione when I first spoke to her, I knew she was perfect from that first phone call."
Watson was well-received for the first film; IGN even commented that "from Hermione Granger's perfect introduction to her final scene, Watson is better than I could have possibly imagined. She steals the show." IGN also wrote that her "astute portrayal of Hermione has already become a favourite among fans."
Before the production of "Half-Blood Prince", Watson considered not returning, but eventually decided that "the pluses outweighed the minuses" and that she could not bear to see anyone else play Hermione.
Watson has said that Hermione is a character who makes "brain not beauty cool," and that though Hermione is "slightly socially inept," she is "not ashamed of herself." When filming "Chamber of Secrets", Watson was "adamant" that she wasn't like Hermione, but she reflects that "as I got older, I realised she was the greatest role model a girl could have." In 2007, before the release of "Order of the Phoenix," Watson said, "There are too many stupid girls in the media. Hermione's not scared to be clever. I think sometimes really smart girls dumb themselves down a bit, and that's bad. When I was nine or ten, I would get really upset when they tried to make me look geeky, but now I absolutely love it. I find it's so much pressure to be beautiful. Hermione doesn't care what she looks like. She's a complete tomboy."
Screenwriter Steve Kloves revealed in a 2003 interview that Hermione was his favourite character. "There's something about her fierce intellect coupled with a complete lack of understanding of how she affects people sometimes that I just find charming and irresistible to write."
In "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child", Hermione is played by the Swaziland-born actress Noma Dumezweni, also known for her work in "Linda", "A Raisin in the Sun" and "A Human Being Died That Night". Dumezweni described the role as a "privilege and a responsibility" and said that "we all aspire to be Hermione." The choice of a black actress to play the part led to criticism on social media, which J.K. Rowling described as being by "a bunch of racists", adding that the books never explicitly mentioned her race or skin colour (although she did write in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban "Hermione's white face was sticking out from behind a tree.") and that she has been portrayed as black in fan art. Dumezweni herself called the backlash "so unimaginative", stating that "So many young actors and actresses have told me that they’re so pleased I’m playing Hermione because they can see a version of themselves on the stage."
Dumezweni received praise for her performance; "The Independent" commented that she "did a tremendous job as the stern witch." At the 2017 Laurence Olivier Awards, Dumezweni received the Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her portrayal of Hermione.
Hermione has been parodied in numerous sketches and animated series. On "Saturday Night Live", Hermione was played by Lindsay Lohan. On his show "Big Impression", Alistair McGowan did a sketch called "Louis Potter and the Philosopher's Scone". It featured impressions of Nigella Lawson as Hermione. In 2003, Comic Relief performed a spoof story called "Harry Potter and the Secret Chamberpot of Azerbaijan", in which Miranda Richardson, who plays Rita Skeeter in the Harry Potter films, featured as Hermione. Hermione also features in the "Harry Bladder" sketches in "All That", in which she appears as Herheiny and is portrayed by Lisa Foiles. "The Wedge", an Australian sketch comedy, parodies Hermione and Harry in love on a ""Cooking With..."" show before being caught by Snape. Hermione also appears as Hermione Ranger in "Harry Podder: Dude Where's My Wand?", a play by Desert Star Theater in Utah, written by sisters Laura J., Amy K. and Anna M. Lewis. In the 2008 American comedy film "Yes Man", Allison (played by Zooey Deschanel) accompanies Carl (Jim Carrey) to a Harry Potter-themed party dressed as Hermione.
In "Harry Cover", a French comic book parody of the "Harry Potter" series by Pierre Veys (subsequently translated into Spanish and English), Hermione appears as Harry Cover's friend Hormone. Hermione also appears in "The Potter Puppet Pals" sketches by Neil Cicierega and in the "A Very Potter Musical," "A Very Potter Sequel," and "A Very Potter Senior Year" musicals by StarKid Productions played by Bonnie Gruesen in the first two and Meredith Stepien in the third.
Hermione is the focus of the fan-created web-series, "Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45100 |
Pope Nicholas III
Pope Nicholas III (; c. 1225 – 22 August 1280), born Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 25 November 1277 to his death.
He was a Roman nobleman who had served under eight popes, been made Cardinal-Deacon of "St. Nicola in Carcere Tulliano" by Pope Innocent IV (1243–54), protector of the Franciscans by Pope Alexander IV (1254–61), inquisitor-general by Pope Urban IV (1261–64), and succeeded Pope John XXI (1276–77) after a six-month vacancy in the Holy See resolved in the papal election of 1277, largely through family influence.
The future pope, Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, was born in Rome, a member of the prominent Orsini family of Italy, the eldest son of Roman nobleman Matteo Rosso Orsini by his first wife, Perna Caetani. His father was Lord of Vicovaro, Licenza, Bardella, Cantalupo, Roccagiovine, Galera, Fornello, Castel Sant'Angelo di Tivoli, Nettuno, Civitella, Bomarzo, San Polo and Castelfoglia, of Nerola from 1235; Lord of Mugnano, Santangelo and Monterotondo; Senator of Rome 1241-1243. His brother Giordano was named Cardinal Deacon of San Eustachio by Nicholas III on 12 March 1278. His brother Gentile became Lord of Mugnano, Penna, Nettuno and Pitigliano. Another brother, Matteo Rosso of Montegiordano, was Senator of Rome (probably) in 1279, War Captain of Todi, and Podestà of Siena in 1281. There were five other younger brothers and two sisters.
The Orsini family had already produced several popes: Stephen II (752-757), Paul I (757-767) and Celestine III (1191-1198).
He did not, as some scholars used to think, study at Paris—though his nephew did. His career shows no indication that he was a legal professional or a theologian. He never became a priest, until he became pope in 1277.
Giovanni Gaetano Orsini was one of a dozen men created a cardinal by Pope Innocent IV (Sinibaldo Fieschi) in his first Consistory for the creation of cardinals, on Saturday, May 28, 1244, and was assigned the Deaconry of San Nicola in Carcere. He was a Canon and Prebendary of York, and also of Soissons and Laon In the summer of 1244, he was one of five cardinals who fled to Genoa with Pope Innocent IV. He was at Lyons, and was present in June and July for the Ecumenical Council of Lyons. Cardinal Orsini and the Curia did not return to Italy until May 1251—after the death of Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen. After spending the summer in Genoa, Milan and Brescia, they finally reached Perugia in November 1251, where the Papal Court resided continuously until April 1253. The Curia returned to Rome in mid-October, where Pope and Curia resided continually until the end of April, 1254. In May they went on pilgrimage to Assisi, then visited Anagni, where the Court stayed from June until the second week in October, when they went off in pursuit of Manfred, the claimant to the Hohenstaufen imperial crown. At the beginning of December, the Battle of Foggia took place, and the papal army was routed. Innocent IV died in Naples, where he had taken refuge, on 7 December 1254, and the meeting to elect his successor was therefore held in Naples in the palace in which he had died. Voting began on Friday, 11 December, with ten of the twelve cardinals present, but no candidate received the required votes. But on Saturday, 12 December, Cardinal Rinaldo dei Conti di Segni, the nephew of Pope Gregory IX, who had a reputation of a conciliator, was elected pope. He chose to be called Alexander IV and was crowned on Sunday, December 20, 1254, in the Cathedral of Naples. As for Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, in his first eleven and a half years as a cardinal, he had only spent six months in the city of Rome. A peripatetic Curia had its disadvantages.
Pope Alexander IV and the Curia continued to live in Naples, until the first week of June 1255 when they returned to Anagni, and it was not until mid-November that the Pope was back in Rome. There the Curia stayed until the end of May, 1256, when it was off to Anagni for the summer, until the beginning of December. The problem was that Rome was in the hands of Senator Brancaleone degli Andalo, Count of Casalecchio, since 1252, and the Ghibbelines and Alexander was repeatedly driven out by unruly mobs. Rome was home again until the end of May, 1257, until the summer vacation at Viterbo began. The vacation lasted until the end of October, 1258, when the Court visited Anagni again; they stayed until the beginning of November, 1260. The Pope then was able to reside at the Lateran until the first week of May, 1261, when the Court was off to Viterbo again. Alexander IV died at Viterbo on 25 May 1261. A total of nineteen months was spent in Rome, out of a total of seventy-eight months. Alexander had created no new cardinals, and so the Electoral meeting following his death had only eight participants. The Election was a long-drawn-out one, lasting from 25 May to 29 August 1261. Unable to agree on one of themselves, the Cardinals chose Jacques Pantaléon, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, since 1255, was Papal Legate with the Crusade in the Holy Land. He became Pope Urban IV, and was crowned at Viterbo on 4 September 1261.
Cardinal Orsini was named General Inquisitor by Urban IV on November 2, 1262, the first known Grand Inquisitor.
Cardinal Orsini attended the first Conclave of 1268-1271, and was one of the cardinals who signed the letter of complaint against the authorities and people of Viterbo for their treatment of the cardinals and the Curia. He was one of the six cardinals who were chosen by the rest of the Sacred College on September 1, 1271, to select a compromise candidate for election as pope. He was therefore instrumental in bringing to the papal throne the Archdeacon of Liège, Teobaldo Visconti, who was not a cardinal, and who was not even in Italy, but in the Holy Land on crusade. He traveled with the Curia to France in 1273, and was present at the Ecumenical Council of Lyons. He was not one of the cardinals in the suite of Pope Gregory X when he left Lyons in 1275 to return to Rome, nor was he at Arezzo where the Pope died on 10 January 1276, before reaching the City. He did not attend the first conclave which began on 20 January 1276, and concluded the next day with the election of Peter of Tarantaise, who became Pope Innocent V. Pope Innocent V (Peter of Tarantaise) died in Rome at the Lateran, on 22 June 22, 1276.
The second Conclave of 1276 began, therefore, according to the rules set down by Pope Gregory X, on July 2. Thirteen cardinals were present, including Giovanni Gaetano Orsini. King Charles I of Sicily acted as the Governor of the Conclave, in which position he is said to have been rigorous, but understandably partisan in favor of the French faction. Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi of Genoa was elected on July 11 and chose the name Pope Adrian V. He lived only thirty-nine days longer, dying at Viterbo, where he had gone to meet King Rudolf and avoid the summer heat of Rome. According to Bernardus Guidonis, he was never ordained priest, consecrated bishop or crowned pope ("nondum promotus in sacerdotem nec coronatus nec consecratus"). His one memorable act was to suspend the Constitution of Gregory X "Ubi periculum" which regulated conclaves. He intended, on the advice of his cardinals, to improve Gregory's regulations. Cardinal Orsini was present at the discussion and decision. Shortly after his accession, moreover, Pope Adrian V had wanted King Charles I of Sicily to come to Viterbo to carry out the usual fealty, and sent the Suburbicarian Bishop of Sabina (Bertrand de Saint Martin); Cardinal Giovanni (Orsini), Cardinal Deacon of Saint Nicholas in Carcere Tulliano; and Cardinal Giacomo (Savelli), Cardinal Deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, to effect his wishes. Charles arrived in Viterbo from Rome on July 24. Unfortunately, Pope Adrian died, on August 18, leaving his negotiations with King Charles unfinished.
The third Conclave of 1276 began at the beginning of September in Viterbo, where Adrian V had died. The opening ceremonies, which should have taken place on August 29, had to be delayed for several days because of the riotous behavior of the people of Viterbo. Since Pope Adrian had created no new cardinals, the number of cardinals was twelve; Cardinal Simon de Brion was still in France, serving as Papal Legate. Once the tumults had been put down, however, the cardinals did their business quickly. On September 8, 1276, the senior Cardinal-Bishop, Peter Julian of Lisbon, was elected on the first ballot. He chose to be called John XXI, and on September 20 he was crowned at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Viterbo by Cardinal Giovanni Caetano Orsini. Since John XXI was already a bishop, there was no ordination or consecration necessary. He was the fourth pope of 1276. On 18 October, Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini was appointed Archpriest of St. Peter's, in place of Cardinal Riccardo Annibaldi, who had recently died, and who may have been too ill to participate in the Conclave or the Coronation.
Pope Adrian V's suspension of the regulations of Gregory X, however imperfect they may have been, was under attack. Some critics even claimed that the cardinals who vouched for the truth of the suspension, including Cardinal Peter Julian, were liars, or that the revocation was uncanonical. These were probably the same troublemakers in the Curia who had instigated the disturbances that delayed the Conclave. John XXI immediately struck back, on 30 September 1276, making it perfectly clear that the suspension had taken place and that it was valid. Ptolemy of Lucca states that the issue of this bull of revocation by John XXI was made at the suggestion of Cardinal Giovanni Caetano Orsini. The negotiations which Cardinal Giovanni Caetano had been engaged in with King Charles I were brought to a completion, and Charles swore his oath of fealty to Pope John on 7 October 1276. It appeared that his reign was going to be a successful one, when one day in mid-May 1277, while the Pope was in a new room which he had just had built in the Episcopal Palace in Viterbo, suddenly the roof caved in. There was nothing suspicious about this, since the palace had been under construction since 1268 and was still being worked on. The Pope was severely injured from the falling stones and timber. He lingered in pain for several days (three, or six), and died on 20 May 1277, exactly eight months after his coronation. He had named no cardinals.
Yet another Conclave took place in Viterbo, therefore, with seven cardinals in attendance. Cardinal Simon de Brion was still in France as papal legate. But this was not an easy conclave. Three of the electors belonged to the Angevin faction, and three opposed it. The only surviving Cardinal-Bishop, the Benedictine Bertrand de Saint Martin, wavered back and forth, providing little leadership. The Conclave therefore went on for more than five and a half months. Finally, on the Feast of S. Catherine, 25 November 1277, Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini was elected. He chose the name Nicholas III. The new pope set out immediately for Rome. He was ordained a priest on December 18, consecrated a bishop on December 19, and crowned on the Feast of S. Stephen, 26 December. His election portended serious difficulties, for he was not a candidate of King Charles of Sicily. Quite the contrary, he believed that King Charles had entirely too much influence in church affairs and in the operation of the Papal States.
The lands under direct papal rule were threatened by surrounding powers. In the second quarter of the 13th century, they were threatened by the expansionist policies of the Emperor Frederick II, who aimed to unite his inheritance in the south (Sicily and southern Italy) with his acquisition of the Holy Roman Empire in northern Italy. He spent a great deal of time and energy attempting to gain control over Lombardy and Tuscany, which brought him into direct conflict with the Papacy. Frederick was repeatedly excommunicated by one pope after another. In order to drive off the Hohenstaufen, the Papacy contrived a deal with the brother of Louis IX of France, Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence, who was invited to Italy to assume the crown of Sicily and be a counterweight against the Empire. He was too successful, however, and the Papacy found itself in the deadly embrace of the Angevins. Nicholas' prime goal was to loosen Charles I's grip on the Papacy, Rome, and the lands of the Church.
Nicholas' pontificate, though brief, was marked by several important events. He greatly strengthened the papal position in Italy. On 1 October 1273, Rudolph I of Habsburg, the godson of Frederick II, had been elected King of Germany and King of the Romans. Pope Gregory X had recognized him as King, after some hard negotiation, but the imperial title and coronation were withheld. Pope Nicholas was willing to negotiate, but he refused to crown Rudolf as Emperor until Rudolph had acknowledged all the claims of the Church, including many that were quite dubious. The concordat with Rudolph I of Habsburg was concluded in May 1278. In it the city of Bologna, the Romagna, and the exarchate of Ravenna were guaranteed to the papacy. According to the chronographer Bartholomew of Lucca (Ptolemy of Lucca), he discussed with Rudolph, in general terms at least, the splitting the Holy Roman Empire into four separate kingdoms – Lombardy, Burgundy, Tuscia and Germany – where Rudolph's kingdom would be made hereditary and he himself would be recognized as Holy Roman Emperor.
Nicholas III was even able to persuade King Charles I of Naples and Sicily to give up his position as Roman Senator in 1278, at the conclusion of ten years of tenure, as well as the position of Papal Vicar for Tuscany. In July 1278, Nicholas III issued an epoch-making constitution for the government of Rome, "Fundamenta militantis" which forbade foreigners from taking civil office. It depends for its justification not only on the biblical phrase, "Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam" ("Matthew" 16:18), but also on the forged Donations of Constantine.
Nicholas' father had been a personal friend of Francis of Assisi, and he himself had to focus much of his attention on the Franciscan order. More than 165 of his bulls and letters address the subject. Most importantly, he issued the papal bull "Exiit qui seminat" on 14 August 1279, to settle the strife within the order between the parties of strict and relaxed observance.
He repaired the Lateran Palace and the Vatican at enormous cost, and erected a beautiful country house at Soriano nel Cimino near Viterbo, where he died of a cardiovascular event (sources differ on whether it was a heart-attack or a stroke).
Nicholas III, though a man of learning noted for his strength of character, was known for his excessive nepotism. He elevated three of his closest relatives to the cardinalate and gave others important positions. This nepotism was lampooned both by Dante and in contemporary cartoons, depicting him in his fine robes with three "little bears" ("orsetti", a pun on the family name) hanging on below.
After the death of Nicholas III, in December, 1316, his namesake Giovanni Gaetano Orsini was appointed a cardinal by Pope John XXII. This was not, of course, a case of nepotism. John XXII, was nonetheless a nepotist, having appointed five of his nephews to the cardinalate.
Nicholas III created nine cardinals in one consistory celebrated on 12 March 1278:
Most of these new Cardinals were not of the French party, and among them were five members of religious orders. Two died before the next Conclave, which was to take place on the death of Nicholas III in 1280, and the rest had to be terrorized into voting for a candidate of Charles I of Sicily.
Pope Nicholas III was stricken ill quite unexpectedly. The Curia was residing at the time in the city of Viterbo. Pope Nicholas was at his country retreat at Castro Soriano. According to the "Chronicon Parmense" he was suddenly deprived of consciousness and movement ("privatus subito omni sensu et motu"). Bartholomeus (Ptolemy) of Lucca says, "subito factus apoplecticus, sine loquela moritur" ('suddenly stricken with apoplexy, he died without speaking'). Nicholas was unable to make his confession, and died at his palace at Castro Soriano, in the diocese of Viterbo, on 22 August 1280. He had been pope for two years, eight months, and twenty-eight days. His remains were taken to Rome, where he was buried in the Vatican Basilica, in the Chapel of S. Nicholas. There was an alternative story circulating, as was frequently the case in the sudden deaths of medieval and renaissance popes—that the pope had been poisoned.
Dante, in "The Inferno" (of the "Divine Comedy"), talks briefly to Nicholas III, who was condemned to spend eternity in the Third Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell, reserved for those who committed simony, the ecclesiastical crime of paying for offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church.
In Dante's story, the Simoniacs are placed head-first in holes, flames burning on the soles of their feet (Canto XIX). Nicholas was the chief sinner in these pits, which is demonstrated by the height of the flames on his feet. At first he mistakes Dante for Pope Boniface VIII. When the confusion is cleared up, Nicholas informs Dante that he foresees the damnation (for simony) not only of Boniface VIII, but also Clement V, an even more corrupt pope. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45104 |
Agrigento
Agrigento (; or ; ;
Agrigento was founded on a plateau overlooking the sea, with two nearby rivers, the Hypsas and the Akragas, and a ridge to the north offering a degree of natural fortification. Its establishment took place around 582–580 BC and is attributed to Greek colonists from Gela, who named it "Akragas".
Akragas grew rapidly, becoming one of the richest and most famous of the Greek colonies of "Magna Graecia". It came to prominence under the 6th-century tyrants Phalaris and Theron, and became a democracy after the overthrow of Theron's son Thrasydaeus. At this point the city could have been as large as 100,000 to 200,000 people. Although the city remained neutral in the conflict between Athens and Syracuse, its democracy was overthrown when the city was sacked by the Carthaginians in 406 BC. Akragas never fully recovered its former status, though it revived to some extent under Timoleon in the latter part of the 4th century. During the early 3rd century BC, a tyrant called Phintias declared himself king in Akragas, also controlling a variety of other cities. His kingdom was however not long-lived.
The city was disputed between the Romans and the Carthaginians during the First Punic War. The Romans laid siege to the city in 262 BC and captured it after defeating a Carthaginian relief force in 261 BC and sold the population into slavery. Although the Carthaginians recaptured the city in 255 BC the final peace settlement gave Punic Sicily and with it Akragas to Rome. It suffered badly during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) when both Rome and Carthage fought to control it. The Romans eventually captured Akragas in 210 BC and renamed it "Agrigentum", although it remained a largely Greek-speaking community for centuries thereafter. It became prosperous again under Roman rule and its inhabitants received full Roman citizenship following the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city successively passed into the hands of the Vandalic Kingdom, the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy and then the Byzantine Empire. During this period the inhabitants of Agrigentum largely abandoned the lower parts of the city and moved to the former acropolis, at the top of the hill. The reasons for this move are unclear but were probably related to the destructive coastal raids of the Saracens and other peoples around this time. In 828 AD the Saracens captured the diminished remnant of the city; the Arabic form of its name became () or ().
Following the Norman conquest of Sicily, the city changed its name to the Norman version "Girgenti". In 1087, Norman Count Roger I established a Latin bishopric in the city. Normans built the Castello di Agrigento to control the area. The population declined during much of the medieval period but revived somewhat after the 18th century.
In 1860, as in the rest of Sicily, the inhabitants supported the arrival of Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Expedition of the Thousand (one of the most dramatic events of the Unification of Italy) which marked the end of Bourbon rule. In 1927, Benito Mussolini through the "Decree Law n. 159, July 12, 1927" introduced the current Italianized version of the Latin name. The decision remains controversial as a symbol of Fascism and the eradication of local history. Following the suggestion of Andrea Camilleri, a Sicilian writer of Agrigentine origin, the historic city centre was renamed to the Sicilian name "Girgenti" in 2016. The city suffered a number of destructive bombing raids during World War II.
Agrigento is a major tourist centre due to its extraordinarily rich archaeological legacy. It also serves as an agricultural centre for the surrounding region. Sulphur and potash were mined locally from Minoan times until the 1970s, and were exported worldwide from the nearby harbour of Porto Empedocle (named after the philosopher Empedocles, who lived in ancient Akragas). In 2010, the unemployment rate in Agrigento was 19.2%, almost twice the national average.
Ancient Akragas covers a huge area—much of which is still unexcavated today—but is exemplified by the famous "Valle dei Templi" ("Valley of the Temples", a misnomer, as it is a ridge, rather than a valley). This comprises a large sacred area on the south side of the ancient city where seven monumental Greek temples in the Doric style were constructed during the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Now excavated and partially restored, they constitute some of the largest and best-preserved ancient Greek buildings outside of Greece itself. They are listed as a World Heritage Site.
The best-preserved of the temples are two very similar buildings traditionally attributed to the goddesses Hera Lacinia and Concordia (though archaeologists believe this attribution to be incorrect). The latter temple is remarkably intact, due to its having been converted into a Christian church in 597 AD. Both were constructed to a peripteral hexastyle design. The area around the Temple of Concordia was later re-used by early Christians as a catacomb, with tombs hewn out of the rocky cliffs and outcrops.
The other temples are much more fragmentary, having been toppled by earthquakes long ago and quarried for their stones. The largest by far is the Temple of Olympian Zeus, built to commemorate the Battle of Himera in 480 BC: it is believed to have been the largest Doric temple ever built. Although it was apparently used, it appears never to have been completed; construction was abandoned after the Carthaginian invasion of 406 BC.
The remains of the temple were extensively quarried in the 18th century to build the jetties of Porto Empedocle. Temples dedicated to Hephaestus, Heracles and Asclepius were also constructed in the sacred area, which includes a sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone (formerly known as the Temple of Castor and Pollux); the marks of the fires set by the Carthaginians in 406 BC can still be seen on the sanctuary's stones.
Many other Hellenistic and Roman sites can be found in and around the town. These include a pre-Hellenic cave sanctuary near a Temple of Demeter, over which the Church of San Biagio was built. A late Hellenistic funerary monument erroneously labelled the "Tomb of Theron" is situated just outside the sacred area, and a 1st-century AD "heroon" (heroic shrine) adjoins the 13th century Church of San Nicola a short distance to the north. A sizeable area of the Greco-Roman city has also been excavated, and several classical necropoleis and quarries are still extant.
Much of present-day Agrigento is modern but it still retains a number of medieval and Baroque buildings. These include the 14th century cathedral and the 13th century Church of Santa Maria dei Greci ("St. Mary of the Greeks"), again standing on the site of an ancient Greek temple (hence the name). The town also has a notable archaeological museum displaying finds from the ancient city.
Agrigento is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45105 |
Lord Voldemort
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a fictional character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of "Harry Potter" novels. Voldemort first appeared in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", which was released in 1997. Voldemort appears either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his head in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that "I am Lord Voldemort" is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel believes that "Voldemort" is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin "mors".
Voldemort makes his debut in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survives when Voldemort tries to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort is disembodied, and Harry carries a mysterious scar on his forehead as a result. In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
In the second instalment, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
In the fourth instalment of the series, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very "human" hero, and this is, obviously, there’s a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately "de"humanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Voldemort does not appear in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the prejudicial circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to attack Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
In "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
In "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child", it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Voldemort appears in seven "Harry Potter" films, namely "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2". Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel "Goblet of Fire", but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1" and "Part 2".
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle Sr.—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. However, while he had many traits of a megalomaniac, he did not have all, as one common trait associated with megalomania and narcissists was shifting blame. Voldemort admitted he paid an expensive price in attacking the parents of Harry Potter, and carefully studied what went wrong when reorganizing his Death Eaters, ultimately placing the blame upon himself. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is in the end stronger than his nemesis.
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
"Note: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown."
Notes:
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of old Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, apparently the only child of Thomas and Mary, indulged in the typical pursuits of the upper class in the first half of the twentieth century, socialising with attractive women of his class, riding horses, and enjoying his status in the town.
Rowling revealed in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" that young Merope Gaunt made efforts to get as close to Tom as she could, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Morfin noticed his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. Merope offered Tom a drink laced with a love potion as he rode by one day without his attractive companion, Cecilia. He became infatuated with Merope and they eloped. Within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 and was left to grow up in an orphanage, as Merope had died soon after giving birth.
Readers first learn about the doom of the Riddles in the beginning of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". Tom Riddle, Esq. and his parents were murdered by Tom Marvolo Riddle. The Riddles' gardener Frank Bryce was blamed for the murders in the Muggle world, though he was never charged or tried, while in the wizarding world Morfin Gaunt was framed for them and died in Azkaban prison.
In the film adaptation of "The Goblet of Fire", Voldemort's grandparents were given the names Thomas and Mary Riddle.
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, an infamous vein of mental instability and violence that was reinforced by cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts owned hardly any assets save for a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, which stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents,
but for the opposite reason; their squalor was looked down upon and the vicious behavior of the Gaunt men earned them a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last Gaunt family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents by his nephew. The real culprit was discovered much later by Dumbledore, who visited Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracted Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tried to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin died before the decision could be made. Morfin being the last male Gaunt, the House of Gaunt ended with his death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen", probably because she lived in raggedness, squalour, and abuse. She married Tom Riddle Sr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son, Tom Marvolo Riddle. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has admitted that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort with Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" compared Voldemort with George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, as the two of them "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in "Deathly Hallows" and its control over the "Daily Prophet" and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of "Slate Magazine" also noted similarities between the events of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and the current War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from "The Lord of the Rings"; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite "Harry Potter" character, calling him "truly frightening".
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock!" is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In "The Simpsons" 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as Lord Montymort. A parody of Voldemort appears in "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" as Lord Moldybutt, an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the "Potter Puppet Pals" sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
“Continuing the Magic”, an article in May 21, 2007 issue of "Time", includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the "MAD Magazine" parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's "", a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In "A Very Potter Musical", Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort, to which he responded "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in "The Lego Batman Movie" as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the "Harry Potter" video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in "Lego Dimensions", with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled "" depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Lord Voldemort will reportedly appear in the upcoming 2021 film "", it is currently unknown who will play the character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45106 |
Madeira wine
Madeira is a fortified wine made on the Portuguese Madeira Islands, off the coast of Africa. Madeira is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines which can be consumed on their own as an aperitif to sweet wines usually consumed with dessert. Cheaper cooking versions are often flavoured with salt and pepper for use in cooking, but these are not fit for consumption as a beverage.
The islands of Madeira have a long winemaking history, dating back to the Age of Exploration (approximately from the end of the 15th century) when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, neutral grape spirits were added. On the long sea voyages, the wines would be exposed to excessive heat and movement which transformed the flavour of the wine. This was discovered by the wine producers of Madeira when an unsold shipment of wine returned to the islands after a round trip.
Today, Madeira is noted for its unique winemaking process which involves oxidizing the wine through heat and aging. The younger blends (three and five years old) are produced with artificial methods that heat and accelerate the aging process and the older blends, colheitas and frasqueiras are produced by the canteiro method. Because of these methods of production these wines are very long lived and those produced by the canteiro method will survive for decades and even centuries, even after being opened. Wines that have been in barrels for many decades are often removed and stored in demijohns where they may remain unharmed indefinitely.
Some wines produced in small quantities in Crimea, California and Texas are also referred to as "Madeira" or "Madera"; however, most countries conform to the EU PDO regulations and limit the use of the term "Madeira" or "Madère" to only those wines that come from the Madeira Islands.
The roots of Madeira's wine industry date back to the Age of Exploration, when Madeira was a regular port of call for ships travelling to the East Indies. By the 16th century, records indicate that a well-established wine industry on the island supplied these ships with wine for the long voyages across the sea. The earliest examples of Madeira were unfortified and had the habit of spoiling at sea. However, following the example of Port, a small amount of distilled alcohol made from cane sugar was added to stabilize the wine by boosting the alcohol content (the modern process of fortification using brandy did not become widespread until the 18th century). The Dutch East India Company became a regular customer, picking up large (112 gal/423 l) casks of wine known as "pipes" for their voyages to India.
The intense heat in the holds of the ships had a transforming effect on the wine, as discovered by Madeira producers when one shipment was returned to the island after a long trip. The customer was found to prefer the taste of this style of wine, and Madeira labeled as "vinho da roda" (wines that have made a round trip) became very popular. Madeira producers found that aging the wine on long sea voyages was very costly, so began to develop methods on the island to produce the same aged and heated style. They began storing the wines on trestles at the winery or in special rooms known as "estufas", where the heat of island sun would age the wine.
The 18th century was the "golden age" for Madeira. The wine's popularity extended from the American colonies and Brazil in the New World to Great Britain, Russia, and Northern Africa. The American colonies, in particular, were enthusiastic customers, consuming as much as 95% of all wine produced on the island each year.
Madeira was an important wine in the history of the United States of America. No wine-quality grapes were grown among the thirteen colonies, so imports were needed, with a great focus on Madeira. One of the major events on the road to the American revolution in which Madeira played a key role was the British seizure of John Hancock's sloop on 9 May 1768. Hancock's boat was seized after he had unloaded a cargo of 25 pipes (3,150 gallons) of Madeira, and a dispute arose over import duties. The seizure of "Liberty" caused riots to erupt among the people of Boston.
Madeira was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, and it was used to toast the Declaration of Independence. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams are also said to have appreciated the qualities of Madeira. The wine was mentioned in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. On one occasion, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, of the great quantities of Madeira he consumed while a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress. A bottle of Madeira was used by visiting Captain James Server to christen in 1797. Chief Justice John Marshall was also known to appreciate Madeira, as were his cohorts on the early U.S. Supreme Court.
The mid-19th century ushered an end to the industry's prosperity. First came the 1851 discovery of powdery mildew, which severely reduced production over the next three years. Just as the industry was recovering through the use of the copper-based Bordeaux mixture fungicide, the phylloxera epidemic that had plagued France and other European wine regions reached the island. By the end of the 19th century, most of the island's vineyards had been uprooted, and many were converted to sugar cane production. The majority of the vineyards that did replant chose to use American vine varieties, such as "Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia and Vitis rupestris" or hybrid grape varieties rather than replant with the "Vitis vinifera" varieties that were previously grown.
By the turn of the 20th century, sales started to slowly return to normal, until the industry was rocked again by the Russian Civil War and American Prohibition, which closed off two of Madeira's biggest markets. After the repeal of Prohibition, during a time in which shipping technology had improved, and the ships no longer needed to stop off in Madeira, the island which was directly in the trade winds between Europe and America. The wine became known as The Forgotten Island Wine. The rest of the 20th century saw a downturn for Madeira, both in sales and reputation, as low quality "cooking wine" became primarily associated with the island—much as it had for Marsala.
In 1988, the Symington family of Portugal invested in the Madeira Wine Company which owned many of the Madeira brand names. They asked Bartholomew Broadbent to re-launch Madeira and create a market for it again in America, which he did in 1989, establishing a firm rebirth of Madeira.
Towards the end of 20th century, some producers started a renewed focus on quality—ripping out the hybrid and American vines and replanting with the "noble grape" varieties of Sercial, Verdelho, Bual and Malvasia. The "workhorse" varieties of Tinta Negra Mole now known officially as just Tinta Negra, and Complexa are still present and in high use, but hybrid grapes were officially banned from wine production in 1979. Today, Madeira's primary markets are in the Benelux countries, France, where it is entirely used for cooking, salt and pepper having been added prior to bottling, and Germany; emerging markets are growing in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The island of Madeira has an oceanic climate with some tropical influences. With high rainfall and average mean temperature of 66 °F (19 °C), the threats of fungal grape diseases and botrytis rot are constant viticultural hazards. To combat these threats, Madeira vineyards are often planted on low trellises, known as "latada", that raise the canopy of the vine off the ground similar to a style used in the Vinho Verde region of Portugal. The terrain of the mountainous volcanic island is difficult to cultivate, so vineyards are planted on man-made terraces of red and brown basaltic bedrock. These terraces, known as "poios", are very similar to the terraces of the Douro that make Port wine production possible. The use of mechanical harvesting and vineyard equipment is near impossible, making wine grape growing a costly endeavor on the island. Many vineyards have in the past been ripped up for commercial tourist developments or replanted with such products as bananas for commercial concerns. Some replanting is taking place on the island; however, the tourist trade is generally seen as a more lucrative business than wine-making. Most of the grapes, grown by around 2100 grape growers are from vines planted on small plots of land off of which the grape growers survive by making an income from a variety of different inter-grown crops.
Approximately 85% of Madeira is produced with the red grape, Negra Mole. The four major white grape varieties used for Madeira production are (from sweetest to driest) Malvasia, Bual, Verdelho and Sercial. These varieties also lend their names to Madeira labeling, as discussed below. Occasionally one sees Terrantez, Bastardo and Moscatel varieties, although these are now increasingly rare on the island because of oidium and phylloxera. After the phylloxera epidemic, many wines were "mislabeled" as containing one of these noble grape varieties, which were reinterpreted as "wine styles" rather than true varietal names. Since the epidemic, Tinta Negra or Negra Mole and Complexa are the workhorse varieties on the island, and are found in various concentrations in many blends and vintage wines. Bastardo, Complexa and Tinta Negra are red grape varieties.
Regulations enacted recently by the European Union have applied the rule that 85% of the grapes in the wine must be of the variety on the label. Thus, wines from before the late 19th century (pre-phylloxera) and after the late 20th century conform to this rule. Many "varietally labelled" madeiras, from most of the 20th century, do not. Modern Madeiras which do not carry a varietal label are generally made from Negra Mole.
Other varieties planted on the island, though not legally permitted for Madeira production, include Arnsburger, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the American hybrids Cunningham and Jacquet.
The initial winemaking steps of Madeira start out like most other wines: grapes are harvested, crushed, pressed, and then fermented in either stainless steel or oak casks. The grape varieties destined for sweeter wines – Bual and Malvasia – are often fermented on their skins to leach more phenols from the grapes to balance the sweetness of the wine. The more dry wines – made from Sercial, Verdelho, and Negra Mole – are separated from their skins prior to fermentation. Depending on the level of sweetness desired, fermentation of the wine is halted at some point by the addition of neutral grape spirits.
The wines undergo the "estufagem" aging process to produce Madeira's distinctive flavor.
Colourings such as caramel coloring have been used in the past to give some consistency (see also whiskey), although this practice is decreasing.
What makes Madeira wine production unique is the "estufagem" aging process, meant to duplicate the effect of a long sea voyage on the aging barrels through tropical climates. Three main methods are used to heat age the wine, used according to the quality and cost of the finished wine:
Much of the characteristic flavour of Madeira is due to this practice, which hastens the mellowing of the wine and also tends to check secondary fermentation in as much as it is, in effect, a mild kind of pasteurization. Furthermore, the wine is deliberately exposed to air, causing it to oxidize. The resulting wine has a colour similar to a tawny port wine. Wine tasters sometimes describe a wine which has been exposed to excessive heat during its storage as being cooked or "maderized".
The four major styles of Madeira are synonymous with the names of the four best known white grapes used to produce the wine. Ranging from the driest style to the sweetest style, the Madeira types are:
A fifth noble grape, "Terrantez", almost became extinct on the island but has been making a comeback. Its style ranges in sweetness from that of Verdelho to that of Bual, never being quite as dry as Sercial nor quite as sweet as Malvasia.
Wines made from at least 85% of the noble varieties of Sercial, Verdelho, Bual, and Malvasia are usually labeled based on the amount of time they were aged:
A wine labeled as Finest has been aged for at least three years. This style is usually reserved for cooking.
The terms pale, dark, full and rich can also be included to describe the wine's colour.
Madeira produced from Negra Mole grapes used to be legally restricted to use generic terms on the label to indicate the level of sweetness as "seco" (dry), "meio seco" (medium dry), "meio doce" (medium sweet) and "doce" (sweet). However, in 2015 the Madeira Wine Institute announced that producers may officially recognise Tinta Negra on their front labels, and that all "expressions" must state their bottling date.
Wines listed with "Solera" were made in a style similar to sherry, with fractional blending of wines from different vintages in a solera system. The Solera method of blending is most widely practiced in the Sherry production of Spain. However, the rules for Madeira Soleras are different. When it comes to Sherry, as wine is used for bottling, new wine is added to the barrels of older wine and this continuous addition of young wine to old would result in very little wine being from the original vintage. With Madeira, approximately 50% of a bottle would likely be from the stated year because they are only allowed to add up to 10%, not more than 10 times. Another interesting peculiarity of old Solera Madeiras is that they were initially developed as a result of trying to extend the stocks of vintages when the vines had stopped being productive due to Phylloxera. Therefore, as there was no younger wine to add to the vintage, it was usually older wines which were added. In recent years, vintage Madeiras have been commanding higher prices than Soleras but, from 1966 (when Michael Broadbent started wine auctions at Christie's), until about the end of the 20th Century, Solera Madeiras always fetched a premium at auction over the vintage ones.
A style called "Rainwater" is one of the largest selling styles of Madeira in the United States. This style of wine is lighter and similar in sweetness to Verdelho, but can be expected to be made from Negra Mole, and is primarily used as an apéritif.
Accounts conflict as to how this style was developed. The most common is the name derives from the vineyards on the steep hillsides, where irrigation was difficult, and the vines were dependent on the local rain water for survival. Another theory involves a shipment destined for the American colonies that was accidentally diluted by rainwater while it sat on the docks in Savannah, Georgia or Funchal. Rather than dump the wines, the merchants tried to pass it off as a "new style" of Madeira and were surprised at its popularity among the Americans. Another theory as to how Rainwater was named was when a gentleman in Savannah, Georgia tasted a Madeira and declared "this is as fine as Rainwater."
Exposure to extreme temperature and oxygen accounts for Madeira's stability; an opened bottle will survive unharmed indefinitely. As long as a cork is put into the top of the bottle to prevent the effects of evaporation, fruit flies and dust, a vintage Madeira, once opened, can last for decades. Properly sealed in bottles, it is one of the longest-lasting wines; Madeiras have been known to survive over 200 years in excellent condition. It is not uncommon to see 150-year-old Madeiras for sale at stores that specialize in rare wine. Vintages dating back to 1780 are known to exist. The oldest bottle that has come onto the market is a 1715 Terrantez.
Before the advent of artificial refrigeration, Madeira wine was particularly prized in areas where it was impractical to construct wine cellars (as in parts of the southern United States) because, unlike many other fine wines, it could survive being stored over hot summers without significant damage. In the Americas, Madeira was traditionally stored in the warm attics of houses.
Most Madeira is consumed as wine. Popular uses include apéritifs (pre-meal) and digestifs (post-meal). In Britain it has traditionally been associated with Madeira cake.
Because Madeira has a very high acidity, it can be paired with any food, even citrus or balsamic. Also, although it is sweet, even the Malmsey has a dry finish, so it does not get killed by the sweetness of desserts and pudding. This makes it the most versatile of all dessert wines. Whereas most sweet wines are rendered dry by the sweetness of the dessert, this does not happen with Madeira.
Madeira is also used as a flavor agent in cooking. Lower-quality Madeira wines may be flavored with salt and pepper to prevent their sale as Madeira wine, and then exported for cooking purposes. Madeira wine is commonly used in tournedos Rossini and "sauce madère" (Madeira sauce). Unflavored Madeira may also be used in cooking, such as the dessert dish "Plum in madeira". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45107 |
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette (, ; born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen.
Marie Antoinette's position at court improved when, after eight years of marriage, she started having children. She became increasingly unpopular among the people, however, with the French libelles accusing her of being profligate, promiscuous, harboring sympathies for France's perceived enemies—particularly her native Austria—and her children of being illegitimate. The false accusations of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace damaged her reputation further. During the Revolution, she became known as "Madame Déficit" because the country's financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker.
Several events were linked to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution after the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789. June 1791 attempted flight to Varennes and her role in the War of the First Coalition had disastrous effects on French popular opinion. On 10 August 1792, the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly, and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison on 13 August. On 21 September 1792, the monarchy was abolished. Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793. Marie Antoinette's trial began on 14 October 1793, and two days later she was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution.
Maria Antonia was born on 2 November 1755 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg Empire, and her husband Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. Her godparents were Joseph I and Mariana Victoria, King and Queen of Portugal; Archduke Joseph and Archduchess Maria Anna acted as proxies for their newborn sister. Maria Antonia was born on All Souls Day, a Catholic day of mourning, and during her childhood her birthday was instead celebrated the day before, on All Saint's Day, due to the connotations of the date. Shortly after her birth she was placed under the care of the governess of the imperial children, Countess von Brandeis. Maria Antonia was raised together with her sister, Maria Carolina, who was three years older, and with whom she had a lifelong close relationship. Maria Antonia had a difficult but ultimately loving relationship with her mother, who referred to her as "the little Madame Antoine".
Maria Antonia spent her formative years between the Hofburg Palace and Schönbrunn, the imperial summer residence in Vienna, where on 13 October 1762, when she was seven, she met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two months her junior and a child prodigy. Despite the private tutoring she received, the results of her schooling were less than satisfactory. At the age of 10 she could not write correctly in German or in any language commonly used at court, such as French or Italian, and conversations with her were stilted.
Under the teaching of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Maria Antonia developed into a good musician. She learned to play the harp, the harpsichord and the flute. She sang during the family's evening gatherings, as she had a beautiful voice. She also excelled at dancing, had "exquisite" poise, and loved dolls.
Following the Seven Years' War and the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, Empress Maria Theresa decided to end hostilities with her longtime enemy, King Louis XV of France. Their common desire to destroy the ambitions of Prussia and Great Britain and to secure a definitive peace between their respective countries led them to seal their alliance with a marriage: on 7 February 1770, Louis XV formally requested the hand of Maria Antonia for his eldest surviving grandson and heir, Louis-Auguste, duc de Berry and Dauphin of France.
Maria Antonia formally renounced her rights to Habsburg domains, and on 19 April she was married by proxy to the Dauphin of France at the Augustinian Church in Vienna, with her brother Archduke Ferdinand standing in for the Dauphin. On 14 May she met her husband at the edge of the forest of Compiègne. Upon her arrival in France, she adopted the French version of her name: Marie Antoinette. A further ceremonial wedding took place on 16 May 1770 in the Palace of Versailles and, after the festivities, the day ended with the ritual bedding. The couple's longtime failure to consummate the marriage plagued the reputations of both Louis-Auguste and Marie Antoinette for the next seven years.
The initial reaction to the marriage between Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste was mixed. On the one hand, the Dauphine was beautiful, personable, and well-liked by the common people. Her first official appearance in Paris on 8 June 1773 was a resounding success. On the other hand, those opposed to the alliance with Austria had a difficult relationship with Marie Antoinette, as did others who disliked her for more personal or petty reasons.
Madame du Barry proved a troublesome foe to the new dauphine. She was Louis XV's mistress and had considerable political influence over him. In 1770 she was instrumental in ousting Étienne François, Duc de Choiseul, who had helped orchestrate the Franco-Austrian alliance and Marie Antoinette's marriage, and in exiling his sister, the duchess de Gramont, one of Marie Antoinette's ladies-in-waiting. Marie Antoinette was persuaded by her husband's aunts to refuse to acknowledge du Barry, which some saw as a political blunder that jeopardized Austria's interests at the French court. Marie Antoinette's mother and the Austrian ambassador to France, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, who sent the Empress secret reports on Marie Antoinette's behavior, pressured Marie Antoinette to speak to Madame du Barry, which she grudgingly agreed to do on New Year's Day 1772. She merely commented to her, "There are a lot of people at Versailles today", but it was enough for Madame du Barry, who was satisfied with this recognition, and the crisis passed. Two days after the death of Louis XV in 1774, Louis XVI exiled du Barry to the Abbaye de Pont-aux-Dames in Meaux, pleasing both his wife and aunts. Two and a half years later, at the end of October 1776, Madame du Barry's exile ended and she was allowed to return to her beloved château at Louveciennes, but she was never permitted to return to Versailles.
Upon the death of Louis XV on 10 May 1774, the Dauphin ascended the throne as King Louis XVI of France and Navarre with Marie Antoinette as his Queen. At the outset, the new queen had limited political influence with her husband, who, with the support of his two most important ministers, Chief Minister Maurepas and Foreign Minister Vergennes, blocked several of her candidates from assuming important positions, including Choiseul. The queen did play a decisive role in the disgrace and exile of the most powerful of Louis XV's ministers, the duc d'Aiguillon.
On 24 May 1774, two weeks after the death of Louis XV, the king gifted his wife the Petit Trianon, a small château on the grounds of Versailles that had been built by Louis XV for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Louis XVI allowed Marie Antoinette to renovate it to suit her own tastes; soon rumors circulated that she had plastered the walls with gold and diamonds.
The queen spent heavily on fashion, luxuries, and gambling, though the country was facing a grave financial crisis and the population was suffering. Rose Bertin created dresses for her, and hairstyles such as "poufs", up to three feet (90 cm) high, and the "panache" (a spray of feather plumes). She and her court also adopted the English fashion of dresses made of indienne (a material banned in France from 1686 until 1759 to protect local French woolen and silk industries), percale and muslin. By the time of the Flour War of 1775, a series of riots (due to the high price of flour and bread) had damaged her reputation among the general public. Eventually, Marie Antoinette's reputation was no better than that of the favorites of previous kings. Many French people were beginning to blame her for the degrading economic situation, suggesting the country's inability to pay off its debt was the result of her wasting the crown's money. In her correspondence, Marie Antoinette's mother, Maria Theresa, expressed concern over her daughter's spending habits, citing the civil unrest it was beginning to cause.
As early as 1774, Marie Antoinette had begun to befriend some of her male admirers, such as the baron de Besenval, the duc de Coigny, and Count Valentin Esterházy, and also formed deep friendships with various ladies at court. Most noted was Marie-Louise, Princesse de Lamballe, related to the royal family through her marriage into the Penthièvre family. On 19 September 1774 she appointed her superintendent of her household, an appointment she soon transferred to her new favourite, the duchesse de Polignac.
In 1774, she took under her patronage her former music teacher, the German opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, who remained in France until 1779.
Amidst the atmosphere of a wave of "libelles", the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II came to France incognito, using the name Comte de Falkenstein, for a six-week visit during which he toured Paris extensively and was a guest at Versailles. He met his sister and her husband on 18 April 1777 at the château de la Muette, and spoke frankly to his brother-in-law, curious as to why the royal marriage had not been consummated, arriving at the conclusion that no obstacle to the couple's conjugal relations existed save the queen's lack of interest and the king's unwillingness to exert himself. In a letter to his brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Joseph II described them as "a couple of complete blunderers." He disclosed to Leopold that the inexperienced—then still only 22-year-old—Louis XVI had confided in him the course of action he had been undertaking in their marital bed; saying Louis XVI "introduces the member," but then "stays there without moving for about two minutes," withdraws without having completed the act and "bids goodnight."
Suggestions that Louis suffered from phimosis, which was relieved by circumcision, have been discredited. Nevertheless, following Joseph's intervention, the marriage was finally consummated in August 1777. Eight months later, in April 1778, it was suspected that the queen was pregnant, which was officially announced on 16 May. Marie Antoinette's daughter, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, "Madame Royale", was born at Versailles on 19 December 1778. The child's paternity was contested in the libelles, as were all her children's.
In the middle of the queen's pregnancy two events occurred which had a profound impact on her later life: the return of her friend, the Swedish diplomat Count Axel von Fersen to Versailles for two years, and her brother's claim to the throne of Bavaria, contested by the Habsburg monarchy and Prussia. Marie Antoinette pleaded with her husband for the French to intercede on behalf of Austria. The Peace of Teschen, signed on 13 May 1779, ended the brief conflict, with the queen imposing French mediation at her mother's insistence and Austria's gaining a territory of at least 100,000 inhabitants—a strong retreat from the early French position which was hostile towards Austria. This gave the impression, partially justified, that the queen had sided with Austria against France.
Meanwhile, the queen began to institute changes in court customs. Some of them met with the disapproval of the older generation, such as the abandonment of heavy make-up and the popular wide-hooped panniers. The new fashion called for a simpler feminine look, typified first by the rustic "robe à la polonaise" style and later by the "gaulle", a layered muslin dress Marie Antoinette wore in a 1783 Vigée-Le Brun portrait. In 1780 she began to participate in amateur plays and musicals in a theatre built for her by Richard Mique at the Petit Trianon.
Repayment of the French debt remained a difficult problem, further exacerbated by Vergennes and also by Marie Antoinette's prodding Louis XVI to involve France in Great Britain's war with its North American colonies. The primary motive for the queen's involvement in political affairs in this period may arguably have more to do with court factionalism than any true interest on her part in politics themselves, but she played an important role in aiding the American Revolution by securing Austrian and Russian support for France, which resulted in the establishment of a neutral league that stopped Great Britain's attack, and by weighing indecisively for the nomination of Philippe Henri, marquis de Ségur as Minister of War and Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix, marquis de Castries as Secretary of the Navy in 1780, who helped George Washington to defeat the British in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783.
In 1783, the queen played a decisive role in the nomination of Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a close friend of the Polignacs, as Controller-General of Finances, and of the baron de Breteuil as the Minister of the Royal Household, making him perhaps the strongest and most conservative minister of the reign. The result of these two nominations was that Marie Antoinette's influence became paramount in government, and the new ministers rejected any major change to the structure of the old regime. More than that, the decree by de Ségur, the minister of war, requiring four quarterings of nobility as a condition for the appointment of officers, blocked the access of commoners to important positions in the armed forces, challenging the concept of equality, one of the main grievances and causes of the French Revolution.
Marie Antoinette's second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage early in July 1779, as confirmed by letters between the queen and her mother, although some historians believed that she may have experienced bleeding related to an irregular menstrual cycle, which she mistook for a lost pregnancy. Her third pregnancy was affirmed in March 1781, and on 22 October she gave birth to Louis Joseph Xavier François, Dauphin of France.
Empress Maria Theresa died on 29 November 1780 in Vienna. Marie Antoinette feared that the death of her mother would jeopardize the Franco-Austrian alliance (as well as, ultimately, herself), but her brother, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, wrote to her that he had no intention of breaking the alliance.
A second visit from Joseph II, which took place in July 1781 to reaffirm the Franco-Austrian alliance and also to see his sister, was tainted by false rumours that Marie Antoinette was sending money to him from the French treasury.
Despite the general celebration over the birth of the Dauphin, Marie Antoinette's political influence, such as it was, did greatly benefit Austria. During the Kettle War, in which her brother Joseph attempted to open the Scheldt River for naval passage, Marie Antoinette succeeded in obliging Vergennes to pay huge financial compensation to Austria. Finally, the queen was able to obtain her brother's support against Great Britain in the American Revolution and she neutralized French hostility to his alliance with Russia.
In 1782, after the governess of the royal children, the princesse de Guéméné, went bankrupt and resigned, Marie Antoinette appointed her favorite, the duchesse de Polignac, to the position. This decision met with disapproval from the court as the duchess was considered to be of too modest a birth to occupy such an exalted position. On the other hand, both the king and the queen trusted Mme de Polignac completely, gave her a thirteen-room apartment in Versailles and paid her well. The entire Polignac family benefited greatly from royal favor in titles and positions, but its sudden wealth and lavish lifestyle outraged most aristocratic families, who resented the Polignacs' dominance at court, and also fueled the increasing popular disapproval of Marie Antoinette, mostly in Paris. De Mercy wrote to the Empress: "It is almost unexampled that in so short a time, the royal favor should have brought such overwhelming advantages to a family".
In June 1783, Marie Antoinette's new pregnancy was announced, but on the night of 1–2 November, her 28th birthday, she suffered a miscarriage.
Count Axel von Fersen, after his return from America in June 1783, was accepted into the queen's private society. There were and still claims that the two were romantically involved, but since most of their correspondence has been lost or destroyed, there is no conclusive evidence. In 2016, the "Telegraph's" Henry Samuel announced that researchers at France's Research Centre for the Conservation of Collections (CRCC), "using cutting-edge x-ray and different infrared scanners," had deciphered a letter from her that proved the affair.
Around this time, pamphlets describing farcical sexual deviance including the Queen and her friends in the court were growing in popularity around the country. The "Portefeuille d’un talon rouge" was one of the earliest, including the Queen and a variety of other nobles in a political statement decrying the immoral practices of the court. As time went on, these came to focus more and more on the Queen. They described amorous encounters with a wide range of figures, from the Duchess de Polignac to Louis XV. As these attacks increased, they were connected with the public's dislike of her association with the rival nation of Austria. It was publicly suggested that her supposed behavior was learned at the court of the rival nation, particularly lesbianism, which was known as the "German vice". Her mother again expressed concern for the safety of her daughter, and she began to use Austria's ambassador to France, comte de Mercy, to provide information on Marie Antoinette's safety and movements.
In 1783, the queen was busy with the creation of her "hamlet", a rustic retreat built by her favored architect, Richard Mique, according to the designs of the painter Hubert Robert. Its creation, however, caused another uproar when its cost became widely known. However, the hamlet was not an eccentricity of Marie Antoinette's. It was en vogue at the time for nobles to have recreations of small villages on their properties. In fact, the design was copied from that of the prince de Condé. It was also significantly smaller and less intricate than many other nobles'. Around this time she accumulated a library of 5000 books. Those on music, often dedicated to her, were the most read, though she also liked to read history. She sponsored the arts, in particular music, and also supported some scientific endeavours, encouraging and witnessing the first launch of a "Montgolfière", a hot air balloon.
On 27 April 1784, Beaumarchais's play "The Marriage of Figaro" premiered in Paris. Initially banned by the king due to its negative portrayal of the nobility, the play was finally allowed to be publicly performed because of the queen's support and its overwhelming popularity at court, where secret readings of it had been given by Marie Antoinette. The play was a disaster for the image of the monarchy and aristocracy. It inspired Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro", which premiered in Vienna on 1 May 1786.
On 24 October 1784, putting the baron de Breteuil in charge of its acquisition, Louis XVI bought the Château de Saint-Cloud from the duc d'Orléans in the name of his wife, which she wanted due to their expanding family. She wanted to be able to own her own property. One that was actually hers, to then have the authority to bequeath it to "whichever of my children I wish"; choosing the child she thought could use it rather than it going through patriarchal inheritance laws or whims. It was proposed that the cost could be covered by other sales, such as that of the "château Trompette" in Bordeaux. This was unpopular, particularly with those factions of the nobility who disliked the queen, but also with a growing percentage of the population, who disapproved of a Queen of France independently owning a private residence. The purchase of Saint-Cloud thus damaged the public's image of the queen even further. The château's high price, almost 6 million livres, plus the substantial extra cost of redecorating, ensured that much less money was going towards repaying France's substantial debt.
On 27 March 1785, Marie Antoinette gave birth to a second son, Louis Charles, who bore the title of duc de Normandie. The fact that the birth occurred exactly nine months after Fersen's return did not escape the attention of many, leading to doubt as to the parentage of the child and to a noticeable decline of the queen's reputation in public opinion. The majority of Marie Antoinette's and Louis XVII's biographers believe that the young prince was the biological son of Louis XVI, including Stefan Zweig and Antonia Fraser, who believe that Fersen and Marie Antoinette were indeed romantically involved. Fraser has also noted that the birthdate matches up perfectly with a known conjugal visit from the King. Courtiers at Versailles noted in their diaries that the date of the child's conception in fact corresponded perfectly with a period when the king and the queen had spent much time together, but these details were ignored amid attacks on the queen's character. These suspicions of illegitimacy, along with the continued publication of the "libelles" and never-ending cavalcades of court intrigues, the actions of Joseph II in the Kettle War, the purchase of Saint-Cloud, and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace combined to turn popular opinion sharply against the queen, and the image of a licentious, spendthrift, empty-headed foreign queen was quickly taking root in the French psyche.
A second daughter, her last child, Marie Sophie Hélène Béatrix, "Madame Sophie", was born on 9 July 1786 and lived only eleven months until 19 June 1787.
Marie Antoinette's four live-born children were:
Marie Antoinette began to abandon her more carefree activities to become increasingly involved in politics in her role as Queen of France. By publicly showing her attention to the education and care of her children, the queen sought to improve the dissolute image she had acquired in 1785 from the "Diamond Necklace Affair", in which public opinion had falsely accused her of criminal participation in defrauding the jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge of the price of an expensive diamond necklace they had originally created for Madame du Barry. The main actors in the scandal were Cardinal de Rohan, prince de Rohan-Guéméné, Great Almoner of France, and Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, Comtesse de La Motte, a descendant of an illegitimate child of Henry II of France of the House of Valois. Marie Antoinette had profoundly disliked Rohan since the time he had been the French ambassador to Vienna when she was a child. Despite his high clerical position at the Court, she never addressed a word to him. Others involved were Nicole Lequay, alias "Baronne d'Oliva", a prostitute who happened to look like Marie Antoinette; Rétaux de Villette, a forger; Alessandro Cagliostro, an Italian adventurer; and the Comte de La Motte, Jeanne de Valois' husband. Mme de La Motte tricked Rohan into buying the necklace as a gift to Marie Antoinette, for him to gain the queen's favor.
When the affair was discovered, those involved (except de La Motte and Rétaux de Villette, who both managed to flee) were arrested, tried, convicted, and either imprisoned or exiled. Mme de La Motte was sentenced for life to confinement in the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which also served as a prison for women. Judged by the Parlement, Rohan was found innocent of any wrongdoing and allowed to leave the Bastille. Marie Antoinette, who had insisted on the arrest of the Cardinal, was dealt a heavy personal blow, as was the monarchy, and despite the fact that the guilty parties were tried and convicted, the affair proved to be extremely damaging to her reputation, which never recovered from it.
Suffering from an acute case of depression, the king began to seek the advice of his wife. In her new role and with increasing political power, the queen tried to improve the awkward situation brewing between the assembly and the king. This change of the queen's position signaled the end of the Polignacs' influence and their impact on the finances of the Crown.
Continuing deterioration of the financial situation despite cutbacks to the royal retinue and court expenses ultimately forced the king, the queen and the Minister of Finance, Calonne, at the urging of Vergennes, to call a session of the Assembly of Notables, after a hiatus of 160 years. The assembly was held for the purpose of initiating necessary financial reforms, but the Parlement refused to cooperate. The first meeting took place on 22 February 1787, nine days after the death of Vergennes on 13 February. Marie Antoinette did not attend the meeting and her absence resulted in accusations that the queen was trying to undermine its purpose. The Assembly was a failure. It did not pass any reforms and, instead, fell into a pattern of defying the king. On the urging of the queen, Louis XVI dismissed Calonne on 8 April 1787.
On 1 May 1787, Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse and one of the queen's political allies, was appointed by the king at her urging to replace Calonne, first as Controller-General of Finances and then as Prime Minister. He began to institute more cutbacks at court while trying to restore the royal absolute power weakened by parliament. Brienne was unable to improve the financial situation, and since he was the queen's ally, this failure adversely affected her political position. The continued poor financial climate of the country resulted in the 25 May dissolution of the Assembly of Notables because of its inability to function, and the lack of solutions was blamed on the queen.
France's financial problems were the result of a combination of factors: several expensive wars; a large royal family whose expenditures were paid for by the state; and an unwillingness on the part of most members of the privileged classes, aristocracy, and clergy, to help defray the costs of the government out of their own pockets by relinquishing some of their financial privileges. As a result of the public perception that she had single-handedly ruined the national finances, Marie Antoinette was given the nickname of "Madame Déficit" in the summer of 1787. While the sole fault for the financial crisis did not lie with her, Marie Antoinette was the biggest obstacle to any major reform effort. She had played a decisive role in the disgrace of the reformer ministers of finance, Turgot (in 1776), and Jacques Necker (first dismissal in 1781). If the secret expenses of the queen were taken into account, court expenses were much higher than the official estimate of 7% of the state budget.
The queen attempted to fight back with propaganda portraying her as a caring mother, most notably in the painting by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun exhibited at the " Royal Académie Salon de Paris" in August 1787, showing her with her children. Around the same time, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy escaped from prison and fled to London, where she published damaging slander concerning her supposed amorous affair with the queen.
The political situation in 1787 worsened when, at Marie Antoinette's urging, the "Parlement" was exiled to Troyes on 15 August. It further deteriorated when Louis XVI tried to use a "lit de justice" on 11 November to impose legislation. The new Duc d'Orléans publicly protested the king's actions, and was subsequently exiled to his estate at Villers-Cotterêts. The May Edicts issued on 8 May 1788 were also opposed by the public and parliament. Finally, on 8 August, Louis XVI announced his intention to bring back the Estates General, the traditional elected legislature of the country, which had not been convened since 1614.
While from late 1787 up to his death in June 1789, Marie Antoinette's primary concern was the continued deterioration of the health of the Dauphin, who suffered from tuberculosis, she was directly involved in the exile of the "Parlement", the May Edicts, and the announcement regarding the Estates-General. She did participate in the King Council, the first queen to do this in over 175 years (since Marie de' Medici had been named "Chef du Conseil du Roi", between 1614 and 1617), and she was making the major decisions behind the scene and in the Royal Council.
Marie Antoinette was instrumental in the reinstatement of Jacques Necker as Finance Minister on 26 August, a popular move, even though she herself was worried that it would go against her if Necker proved unsuccessful in reforming the country's finances. She accepted Necker's proposition to double the representation of the Third Estate (tiers état) in an attempt to check the power of the aristocracy.
On the eve of the opening of the Estates-General, the queen attended the mass celebrating its return. As soon as it opened on 5 May 1789, the fracture between the democratic Third Estate (consisting of bourgeois and radical aristocrats) and the conservative nobility of the Second Estate widened, and Marie Antoinette knew that her rival, the Duc d'Orléans, who had given money and bread to the people during the winter, would be acclaimed by the crowd, much to her detriment.
The death of the Dauphin on 4 June, which deeply affected his parents, was virtually ignored by the French people, who were instead preparing for the next meeting of the Estates-General and hoping for a resolution to the bread crisis. As the Third Estate declared itself a National Assembly and took the Tennis Court Oath, and as people either spread or believed rumors that the queen wished to bathe in their blood, Marie Antoinette went into mourning for her eldest son. Her role was decisive in urging the king to remain firm and not concede to popular demands for reforms. In addition, she showed her determination to use force to crush the forthcoming revolution.
The situation escalated on 20 June as the Third Estate, which had been joined by several members of the clergy and radical nobility, found the door to its appointed meeting place closed by order of the king. It thus met at the tennis court in Versailles and took the Tennis Court Oath not to separate before it had given a constitution to the nation.
On 11 July at Marie Antoinette's urging Necker was dismissed and replaced by Breteuil, the queen's choice to crush the Revolution with mercenary Swiss troops under the command of one of her favorites, Pierre Victor, baron de Besenval de Brünstatt. At the news, Paris was besieged by riots that culminated in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July.
On 15 July Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was named commander-in-chief of the newly formed "Garde nationale".
In the days following the storming of the Bastille, for fear of assassination, and ordered by the king, the emigration of members of the high aristocracy began on 17 July with the departure of the comte d'Artois, the Condés, cousins of the king, and the unpopular Polignacs. Marie Antoinette, whose life was as much in danger, remained with the king, whose power was gradually being taken away by the National Constituent Assembly.
The abolition of feudal privileges by the National Constituent Assembly on 4 August 1789 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ("La Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen"), drafted by Lafayette with the help of Thomas Jefferson and adopted on 26 August, paved the way to a Constitutional Monarchy (4 September 1791 – 21 September 1792). Despite these dramatic changes, life at the court continued, while the situation in Paris was becoming critical because of bread shortages in September. On 5 October, a crowd from Paris descended upon Versailles and forced the royal family to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, where they lived under a form of house arrest under the watch of Lafayette's "Garde Nationale", while the Comte de Provence and his wife were allowed to reside in the Petit Luxembourg, where they remained until they went into exile on 20 June 1791.
Marie Antoinette continued to perform charitable functions and attend religious ceremonies, but dedicated most of her time to her children. She also played an important political, albeit not public, role between 1789 and 1791 when she had a complex set of relationships with several key actors of the early period of the French Revolution. One of the most important was Necker, the Prime Minister of Finances ("Premier ministre des finances"). Despite her dislike of him, she played a decisive role in his return to the office. She blamed him for his support of the Revolution and did not regret his resignation in 1790.
Lafayette, one of the former military leaders in the American War of Independence (1775–83), served as the warden of the royal family in his position as commander-in-chief of the "Garde Nationale". Despite his dislike of the queen—he detested her as much as she detested him and at one time had even threatened to send her to a convent—he was persuaded by the mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, to work and collaborate with her, and allowed her to see Fersen a number of times. He even went as far as exiling the Duke of Orléans, who was accused by the queen of fomenting trouble. His relationship with the king was more cordial. As a liberal aristocrat, he did not want the fall of the monarchy but rather the establishment of a liberal one, similar to that of the United Kingdom, based on cooperation between the king and the people, as was to be defined in the Constitution of 1791.
Despite her attempts to remain out of the public eye, Marie Antoinette was falsely accused in the "libelles" of having an affair with Lafayette, whom she loathed, and, as was published in "Le Godmiché Royal" ("The Royal Dildo"), and of having a sexual relationship with the English baroness Lady Sophie Farrell of Bournemouth, a well-known lesbian of the time. Publication of such calumnies continued to the end, climaxing at her trial with an accusation of incest with her son. There is no evidence to support the accusations.
A significant achievement of Marie Antoinette in that period was the establishment of an alliance with Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, the most important lawmaker in the assembly. Like Lafayette, Mirabeau was a liberal aristocrat. He had joined the Third estate and was not against the monarchy, but wanted to reconcile it with the Revolution. He also wanted to be a minister and was not immune to corruption. On the advice of Mercy, Marie Antoinette opened secret negotiations with him and both agreed to meet privately at the château de Saint-Cloud on 3 July 1790, where the royal family was allowed to spend the summer, free of the radical elements who watched their every move in Paris. At the meeting, Mirabeau was much impressed by the queen, and remarked in a letter to Auguste Marie Raymond d'Arenberg, Comte de la Marck, that she was the only person the king had by him: "La Reine est le seul homme que le Roi ait auprès de Lui." An agreement was reached turning Mirabeau into one of her political allies: Marie Antoinette promised to pay him 6000 livres per month and one million if he succeeded in his mission to restore the king's authority.
The only time the royal couple returned to Paris in that period was on 14 July to attend the "Fête de la Fédération", an official ceremony held at the Champ de Mars in commemoration of the fall of the Bastille one year earlier. At least 300,000 persons participated from all over France, including 18,000 national guards, with Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, celebrating a mass at the "autel de la Patrie" ("altar of the fatherland"). The king was greeted at the event with loud cheers of "Long live the king!", especially when he took the oath to protect the nation and to enforce the laws voted by the Constitutional Assembly. There were even cheers for the queen, particularly when she presented the Dauphin to the public.
Mirabeau sincerely wanted to reconcile the queen with the people, and she was happy to see him restoring much of the king's powers, such as his authority over foreign policy, and the right to declare war. Over the objections of Lafayette and his allies, the king was given a suspensive veto allowing him to veto any laws for a period of four years. With time, Mirabeau would support the queen, even more, going as far as to suggest that Louis XVI "adjourn" to Rouen or Compiègne. This leverage with the Assembly ended with the death of Mirabeau in April 1791, despite the attempt of several moderate leaders of the Revolution to contact the queen to establish some basis of cooperation with her.
In March 1791 Pope Pius VI had condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, reluctantly signed by Louis XVI, which reduced the number of bishops from 132 to 93, imposed the election of bishops and all members of the clergy by departmental or district assemblies of electors, and reduced the Pope's authority over the Church. Religion played an important role in the life of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, both raised in the Roman Catholic faith. The queen's political ideas and her belief in the absolute power of monarchs were based on France's long-established tradition of the divine right of kings. On 18 April, as the royal family prepared to leave for Saint-Cloud to attend Easter mass celebrated by a refractory priest, a crowd, soon joined by the "Garde Nationale" (disobeying Lafayette's orders), prevented their departure from Paris, prompting Marie Antoinette to declare to Lafayette that she and her family were no longer free. This incident fortified her in her determination to leave Paris for personal and political reasons, not alone, but with her family. Even the king, who had been hesitant, accepted his wife's decision to flee with the help of foreign powers and counter-revolutionary forces. Fersen and Breteuil, who represented her in the courts of Europe, were put in charge of the escape plan, while Marie Antoinette continued her negotiations with some of the moderate leaders of the French Revolution.
There had been several plots designed to help the royal family escape, which the queen had rejected because she would not leave without the king, or which had ceased to be viable because of the king's indecision. Once Louis XVI finally did commit to a plan, its poor execution was the cause of its failure. In an elaborate attempt known as the Flight to Varennes to reach the royalist stronghold of Montmédy, some members of the royal family were to pose as the servants of an imaginary "Mme de Korff", a wealthy Russian baroness, a role played by Louise-Élisabeth de Croÿ de Tourzel, governess of the royal children.
After many delays, the escape was ultimately attempted on 21 June 1791, but the entire family was arrested less than twenty-four hours later at Varennes and taken back to Paris within a week. The escape attempt destroyed much of the remaining support of the population for the king.
Upon learning of the capture of the royal family, the National Constituent Assembly sent three representatives, Antoine Barnave, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve and Charles César de Fay de La Tour-Maubourg to Varennes to escort Marie Antoinette and her family back to Paris. On the way to the capital they were jeered and insulted by the people as never before. The prestige of the French monarchy had never been at such a low level. During the trip, Barnave, the representative of the moderate party in the Assembly, protected Marie Antoinette from the crowds, and even Pétion took pity on the royal family. Brought safely back to Paris, they were met with total silence by the crowd. Thanks to Barnave, the royal couple was not brought to trial and was publicly exonerated of any crime in relation with the attempted escape.
Marie Antoinette's first Lady of the Bedchamber, Mme Campan, wrote about what happened to the queen's hair on the night of 21–22 June, "...in a single night, it had turned white as that of a seventy-year old woman." ("En une seule nuit ils étaient devenus blancs comme ceux d'une femme de soixante-dix ans.")
After their return from Varennes and until the storming of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792, the queen, her family and entourage were held under tight surveillance by the "Garde Nationale" in the Tuileries, where the royal couple was guarded night and day. Four guards accompanied the queen wherever she went, and her bedroom door had to be left open at night. Her health also began to deteriorate, thus further reducing her physical activities.
On 17 July 1791, with the support of Barnave and his friends, Lafayette's "Garde Nationale" opened fire on the crowd that had assembled on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the deposition of the king. The estimated number of those killed varies between 12 and 50. Lafayette's reputation never recovered from the event and, on 8 October, he resigned as commander of the "Garde Nationale". Their enmity continuing, Marie Antoinette played a decisive role in defeating him in his aims to become the mayor of Paris in November 1791.
As her correspondence shows, while Barnave was taking great political risks in the belief that the queen was his political ally and had managed, despite her unpopularity, to secure a moderate majority ready to work with her, Marie Antoinette was not considered sincere in her cooperation with the moderate leaders of the French Revolution, which ultimately ended any chance to establish a moderate government. Moreover, the view that the unpopular queen was controlling the king further degraded the royal couple's standing with the people, which the Jacobins successfully exploited after their return from Varennes to advance their radical agenda to abolish the monarchy. This situation lasted until the spring of 1792.
Marie Antoinette continued to hope that the military coalition of European kingdoms would succeed in crushing the Revolution. She counted most on the support of her Austrian family. After the death of her brother Joseph in 1790, his successor, Leopold, was willing to support her to a limited degree. Upon Leopold's death in 1792, his son, Francis, a conservative ruler, was ready to support the cause of the French royal couple more vigorously because he feared the consequences of the French Revolution and its ideas for the monarchies of Europe, particularly, for Austria's influence in the continent.
Barnave had advised the queen to call back Mercy, who had played such an important role in her life before the Revolution, but Mercy had been appointed to another foreign diplomatic position and could not return to France. At the end of 1791, ignoring the danger she faced, the "Princesse de Lamballe", who was in London, returned to the Tuileries. As to Fersen, despite the strong restriction imposed on the queen, he was able to see her a final time in February 1792.
Leopold's and Francis II's strong action on behalf of Marie Antoinette led to France's declaration of war on Austria on 20 April 1792. This resulted in the queen being viewed as an enemy, although she was personally against Austrian claims to French territories on European soil. That summer, the situation was compounded by multiple defeats of the French armies by the Austrians, in part because Marie Antoinette passed on military secrets to them. In addition, at the insistence of his wife, Louis XVI vetoed several measures that would have further restricted his power, earning the royal couple the nicknames "Monsieur Veto" and "Madame Veto", nicknames then prominently featured in different contexts, including La Carmagnole.
Barnave remained the most important advisor and supporter of the queen, who was willing to work with him as long as he met her demands, which he did to a large extent. Barnave and the moderates comprised about 260 lawmakers in the new Legislative Assembly; the radicals numbered around 136, and the rest around 350. Initially, the majority was with Barnave, but the queen's policies led to the radicalization of the Assembly and the moderates lost control of the legislative process. The moderate government collapsed in April 1792 to be replaced by a radical majority headed by the "Girondins". The Assembly then passed a series of laws concerning the Church, the aristocracy, and the formation of new national guard units; all were vetoed by Louis XVI. While Barnave's faction had dropped to 120 members, the new "Girondin" majority controlled the legislative assembly with 330 members. The two strongest members of that government were Jean Marie Roland, who was minister of interior, and General Dumouriez, the minister of foreign affairs. Dumouriez sympathized with the royal couple and wanted to save them but he was rebuffed by the queen.
Marie Antoinette's actions in refusing to collaborate with the "Girondins", in power between April and June 1792, led them to denounce the treason of the Austrian comity, a direct allusion to the queen. After Madame Roland sent a letter to the king denouncing the queen's role in these matters, urged by the queen, Louis XVI disbanded the government, thus losing his majority in the Assembly. Dumouriez resigned and refused a post in any new government. At this point, the tide against royal authority intensified in the population and political parties, while Marie Antoinette encouraged the king to veto the new laws voted by the Legislative Assembly in 1792. In August 1791, the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened an invasion of France. This led in turn to a French declaration of war in April 1792, which led to the French Revolutionary Wars and to the events of August 1792, which ended the monarchy.
On 20 June 1792, "a mob of terrifying aspect" broke into the Tuileries, made the king wear the "bonnet rouge" (red Phrygian cap) to show his loyalty to the Republic, insulted Marie Antoinette, accusing her of betraying France, and threatened her life. In consequence, the queen asked Fersen to urge the foreign powers to carry out their plans to invade France and to issue a manifesto in which they threatened to destroy Paris if anything happened to the royal family. The Brunswick Manifesto, issued on 25 July 1792, triggered the events of 10 August when the approach of an armed mob on its way to the Tuileries Palace forced the royal family to seek refuge at the Legislative Assembly. Ninety minutes later, the palace was invaded by the mob, who massacred the Swiss Guards. On 13 August the royal family was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple in the Marais under conditions considerably harsher than those of their previous confinement in the Tuileries.
A week later, several of the royal family's attendants, among them the "Princesse de Lamballe", were taken for interrogation by the Paris Commune. Transferred to the " La Force" prison, after a rapid judgment, Marie Louise de Lamballe was savagely killed on 3 September. Her head was affixed on a pike and paraded through the city to the Temple for the queen to see. Marie Antoinette was prevented from seeing it, but fainted upon learning of it.
On 21 September 1792, the fall of the monarchy was officially declared and the National Convention became the governing body of the French Republic. The royal family name was downgraded to the non-royal "Capets". Preparations began for the trial of the king in a court of law.
Charged with undermining the First French Republic, Louis XVI was separated from his family and tried in December. He was found guilty by the Convention, led by the Jacobins who rejected the idea of keeping him as a hostage. On 15 January 1793, by a majority of one vote, that of Philippe Égalité, he was condemned to death by guillotine and executed on 21 January 1793.
The queen, now called "Widow Capet", plunged into deep mourning. She still hoped her son Louis-Charles, whom the exiled " Comte de Provence", Louis XVI's brother, had recognized as Louis XVI's successor, would one day rule France. The royalists and the refractory clergy, including those preparing the insurrection in Vendée, supported Marie Antoinette and the return to the monarchy. Throughout her imprisonment and up to her execution, Marie Antoinette could count on the sympathy of conservative factions and social-religious groups which had turned against the Revolution, and also on wealthy individuals ready to bribe republican officials to facilitate her escape; These plots all failed. While imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, Marie Antoinette, her children, and Élisabeth were insulted, some of the guards going as far as blowing smoke in the ex-queen's face. Strict security measures were taken to assure that Marie Antoinette was not able to communicate with the outside world. Despite these measures, several of her guards were open to bribery and a line of communication was kept with the outside world.
After Louis' execution, Marie Antoinette's fate became a central question of the National Convention. While some advocated her death, others proposed exchanging her for French prisoners of war or for a ransom from the Holy Roman Emperor. Thomas Paine advocated exile to America. In April 1793, during the Reign of Terror, a Committee of Public Safety dominated by Robespierre was formed, and men such as Jacques Hébert began to call for Marie-Antoinette's trial. By the end of May, the "Girondins" had been chased from power. Calls were also made to "retrain" the eight-year-old Louis XVII, to make him pliant to revolutionary ideas. To carry this out, Louis Charles was separated from his mother on 3 July after a struggle during which his mother fought in vain to retain her son, who was handed over to Antoine Simon, a cobbler and representative of the Paris Commune. Until her removal from the Temple, Marie Antoinette spent hours trying to catch a glimpse of her son, who, within weeks, had been made to turn against her, accusing his mother of wrongdoing.
On the night of 1 August, at 1:00 in the morning, Marie Antoinette was transferred from the Temple to an isolated cell in the Conciergerie as 'Prisoner n° 280'. Leaving the tower she bumped her head against the lintel of a door, which prompted one of her guards to ask her if she was hurt, to which she answered, "No! Nothing now can hurt me." This was the most difficult period of her captivity. She was under constant surveillance, with no privacy. The "Carnation Plot" ("Le complot de l'œillet"), an attempt to help her escape at the end of August, was foiled due to the inability to corrupt all the guards. She was attended by Rosalie Lamorlière, who took care of her as much as she could. At least once she received a visit by a Catholic priest.
Marie Antoinette was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 14 October 1793. Some historians believe the outcome of the trial had been decided in advance by the Committee of Public Safety around the time the Carnation Plot () was uncovered. She and her lawyers were given less than one day to prepare her defense. Among the accusations, many previously published in the "libelles", were: orchestrating orgies in Versailles, sending millions of livres of treasury money to Austria, planning the massacre of the "gardes françaises" (National Guards) in 1792, declaring her son to be the new king of France, and incest, a charge made by her son Louis Charles, pressured into doing so by the radical Jacques Hébert who controlled him. This last accusation drew an emotional response from Marie Antoinette, who refused to respond to this charge, instead of appealing to all mothers present in the room; their reaction comforted her since these women were not otherwise sympathetic to her.
Early on 16 October, Marie Antoinette was declared guilty of the three main charges against her: depletion of the national treasury, conspiracy against the internal and external security of the State, and high treason because of her intelligence activities in the interest of the enemy; the latter charge alone was enough to condemn her to death. At worst, she and her lawyers had expected life imprisonment. In the hours left to her, she composed a letter to her sister-in-law, Madame Élisabeth, affirming her clear conscience, her Catholic faith, and her love and concern for her children. The letter did not reach Élisabeth. Her will was part of the collection of papers of Robespierre found under his bed and were published by Edme-Bonaventure Courtois.
Preparing for her execution, she had to change clothes in front of her guards. She put on a plain white dress, white being the color worn by widowed queens of France. Her hair was shorn, her hands bound painfully behind her back and she was put on a rope leash. Unlike her husband, who had been taken to his execution in a carriage ("carrosse"), she had to sit in an open cart ("charrette") for the hour it took to convey her from the "Conciergerie" via the rue Saint-Honoré thoroughfare to reach the guillotine erected in the Place de la Révolution (the present-day Place de la Concorde). She maintained her composure, despite the insults of the jeering crowd. A constitutional priest was assigned to her to hear her final confession. He sat by her in the cart, but she ignored him all the way to the scaffold.
Marie Antoinette was guillotined at 12:15 p.m. on 16 October 1793. Her last words are recorded as, "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès" or "Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose", after accidentally stepping on her executioner's shoe. Her head was one of which Marie Tussaud was employed to make death masks. Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the Madeleine cemetery located close by in rue d'Anjou. Because its capacity was exhausted the cemetery was closed the following year, on 25 March 1794.
Both Marie Antoinette's and Louis XVI's bodies were exhumed on 18 January 1815, during the Bourbon Restoration, when the "Comte de Provence" ascended the newly reestablished throne as Louis XVIII, King of France and of Navarre. Christian burial of the royal remains took place three days later, on 21 January, in the necropolis of French kings at the Basilica of St Denis.
For many revolutionary figures, Marie Antoinette was the symbol of what was wrong with the old regime in France. The onus of having caused the financial difficulties of the nation was placed on her shoulders by the revolutionary tribunal, and under the new republican ideas of what it meant to be a member of a nation, her Austrian descent and continued correspondence with the competing nation made her a traitor. The people of France saw her death as a necessary step toward completing the revolution. Furthermore, her execution was seen as a sign that the revolution had done its work.
Marie-Antoinette is also known for her taste for fine things, and her commissions from famous craftsmen, such as Jean-Henri Riesener, suggest more about her enduring legacy as a woman of taste and patronage. For instance, a writing table attributed to Riesener, now located at Waddesdon Manor, bears witness to Marie-Antoinette's desire to escape the oppressive formality of court life, when she decided to move the table from the Queen's boudoir de la Meridienne at Versailles to her humble interior, the Petit Trianon. Her favourite objects filled her small, private chateau and reveal aspects of Marie-Antoinette's character that have been obscured by satirical political prints, such as those in Les Tableaux de la Révolution.
Long after her death, Marie Antoinette remains a major historical figure linked with conservatism, the Catholic Church, wealth, and fashion. She has been the subject of a number of books, films, and other media. Politically engaged authors have deemed her the quintessential representative of class conflict, western aristocracy and absolutism. Some of her contemporaries, such as Thomas Jefferson, attributed to her the start of the French Revolution.
The phrase "Let them eat cake" is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence that she ever uttered it, and it is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliché. This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiographical work "Les Confessions", finished in 1767 and published in 1782: ""Enfin Je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande Princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"" ("Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: 'Let them eat brioche). Rousseau ascribes these words to a "great princess", but the purported writing date precedes Marie Antoinette's arrival in France. Some think that he invented it altogether.
In the United States, expressions of gratitude to France for its help in the American Revolution included naming a city Marietta, Ohio in 1788. Her life has been the subject of many films, such as the 2006 film "Marie Antoinette".
In addition to her biological children, Marie Antoinette adopted four children: "Armand" Francois-Michel Gagné (c. 1771–1792), a poor orphan adopted in 1776; Jean Amilcar (c. 1781–1793), a Senegalese slave boy given to the queen as a present by Chevalier de Boufflers in 1787, but whom she instead had freed, baptized, adopted and placed in a pension; Ernestine Lambriquet (1778–1813), daughter of two servants at the palace, who was raised as the playmate of her daughter and whom she adopted after the death of her mother in 1788; and finally "Zoe" Jeanne Louise Victoire (born in 1787), who was adopted in 1790 along with her two older sisters when her parents, an usher and his wife in service of the king, had died.
Of these, only Armand, Ernestine, and Zoe actually lived with the royal family: Jean Amilcar, along with the elder siblings of Zoe and Armand who were also formally foster children of the royal couple, simply lived at the queen's expense until her imprisonment, which proved fatal for at least Amilcar, as he was evicted from the boarding school when the fee was no longer paid, and reportedly starved to death on the street. Armand and Zoe had a position which was more similar to that of Ernestine; Armand lived at court with the king and queen until he left them at the outbreak of the revolution because of his republican sympathies, and Zoe was chosen to be the playmate of the Dauphin, just as Ernestine had once been selected as the playmate of Marie-Therese, and sent away to her sisters in a convent boarding school before the Flight to Varennes in 1791. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45109 |
Lunokhod programme
Lunokhod (, "Moonwalker") was a series of Soviet robotic lunar rovers designed to land on the Moon between 1969 and 1977. Lunokhod 1 was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.
The 1969 Lunokhod 1A (Lunokhod 0, Lunokhod No. 201) was destroyed during launch, the 1970 "Lunokhod 1" and the 1973 "Lunokhod 2" landed on the Moon, and "Lunokhod 3" (Lunokhod No. 205, planned for 1977) was never launched. The successful missions were in operation concurrently with the Zond and Luna series of Moon flyby, orbiter and landing missions.
The Lunokhods were primarily designed to support the Soviet manned Moon missions during the Moon race. Instead, they were used as remote-controlled robots for exploration of the lunar surface and return its pictures after the successful Apollo manned lunar landings and cancellation of the Soviet manned Moon programme.
The Lunokhods were transported to the lunar surface by Luna spacecraft, which were launched by Proton-K rockets. The Moon lander part of the Luna spacecraft for Lunokhods was similar to the one for sample-return missions. The Lunokhods were designed by Alexander Kemurdzhian at Lavochkin.
Not until the 1997 Mars Pathfinder was another remote-controlled vehicle put on an extraterrestrial body. In 2010, nearly forty years after the 1971 loss of signal from "Lunokhod 1", the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed its tracks and final location, and researchers, using a telescopic pulsed-laser rangefinder, detected the robot's retroreflector.
Lunokhod's original primary mission was the back-up for L3 manned Moon expeditions and for the later Zvezda lunar base.
For mission safety, weeks before the manned mission on LK lander, an LK-R lander in unmanned L3 lunar expedition complex and two Lunokhod automated rovers would be sent to the Moon for preliminary study of surface around LK-R and LK sites, for work as radio beacons for precision landings of LK-R and LK, and for visual estimate of status of them. LK-R used as a reserve escape craft in case of disability to start from Moon of LK and Lunokhods used by cosmonaut for transfer to LK-R in necessity and for regular research. This manned version of Lunokhod were additionally equipped with oxygen stock with hose socket, standing pads and manual control for the cosmonaut in front part.
In mid-1968, at the facility KIP-10 or NIP-10 (КИП-10 or НИП-10) in the secret village Shkolnoye ( - closed town Simferopol-28), near Simferopol, a lunodrom (лунодром - Moondrome) was built. It covered an area of one hectare (120 meters by 70 meters) and was very similar to some parts of the lunar surface. It was constructed using more than 3,000 cubic meters of soil, and included 54 craters up to 16 m in diameter and around about 160 rocks of various sizes. The whole area was surrounded with bricks, painted in gray and black. It was used to analyze problems with the Lunokhod chassis and cosmonaut's skill to control one. Closed town Simferopol-28 contained the most significant tracking facility in the Soviet Union, having the largest number of antennas, the largest area, and the most personnel of any of the Soviet tracking facilities. The facility was one of a network of ten facilities which contain earth satellite vehicle tracking equipment and provide command/control for Soviet near-space civil and military events. Additionally, this facility supported all lunar programmes of the Soviet Union, in association with the Evpatoria Deep Space Tracking Facility.
At least four complete vehicles were constructed, with the serial numbers 201, 203, 204 and 205.
After years of secret engineering development and training, the first Lunokhod (vehicle 8ЕЛ№201) was launched on February 19, 1969. Within a few seconds the rocket disintegrated and the first Lunokhod was lost. The rest of the world did not learn of the rocket's valuable payload until years later. The failure resulted in the radioactive heat source, polonium 210, being spread over a large region of Russia.
After the destruction of the original Lunokhod, Soviet engineers began work immediately on another lunar vehicle. "Lunokhod 1" (vehicle 8ЕЛ№203) was the first of two unmanned lunar rovers successfully landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of its Lunokhod programme. The spacecraft which carried "Lunokhod 1" was named "Luna 17". "Lunokhod 1" was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.
"Luna 17" was launched on November 10, 1970 at 14:44:01 UTC. After reaching Earth parking orbit, the final stage of "Luna 17"s launching rocket fired to place it into a trajectory towards the Moon (November 10, 1970 at 14:54 UTC). After two course correction manoeuvres (on November 12 and 14) it entered lunar orbit on November 15, 1970 at 22:00 UTC.
The spacecraft soft-landed on the Moon in the Sea of Rains on November 17, 1970 at 03:47 UTC. The lander had dual ramps from which the payload, "Lunokhod 1", could descend to the surface. At 06:28 UT the rover moved down the ramps and onto the Moon.
To be able to work in a vacuum a special fluoride based lubricant was used for the rover's mechanical parts, and the electric motors, one in each wheel hub, were enclosed in pressurised containers.
The rover ran during the lunar day, stopping occasionally to recharge its batteries using its solar panels. At night, it hibernated until the next sunrise, heated by the radioisotope heater unit.
"Lunokhod 1" was a lunar vehicle formed of a tub-like compartment with a large convex lid on eight independently-powered wheels. Its length was 2.3 metres. It was equipped with a cone-shaped antenna, a highly directional helical antenna, four television cameras, and special extendable devices to impact the lunar soil for density measurements and mechanical property tests.
An X-ray spectrometer, X-ray telescope, Cosmic Ray Detector, and a laser device were also included. The vehicle was powered by batteries which were recharged during the lunar day by a solar cell array mounted on the underside of the lid. During the lunar nights, the lid was closed and a polonium-210 heat source kept the internal components at operating temperature.
The rover stood 135 cm (4 ft 5 in) high and had a mass of 840 kg (1,850 lb). It was about 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) long and 160 cm (4 ft 11 in) wide and had eight wheels each with an independent suspension, motor and brake. The rover had two speeds, approximately .
The rover's payload included cameras (two television and four panoramic telephotometers), a RIFMA X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, an RT-1 X-ray telescope, a PrOP odometer/penetrometer, a RV-2N radiation detector, and a TL laser retroreflector.
"Lunokhod 2" (vehicle 8ЕЛ№204) was the second and more advanced of the two Lunokhod rovers. The launcher put the spacecraft into Earth parking orbit on January 8, 1973, followed by a translunar injection. On January 12, 1973, "Luna 21" was braked into a lunar orbit.
The "Luna 21" spacecraft landed on the Moon to deploy the second Soviet lunar rover, "Lunokhod 2". The primary objectives of the mission were to collect images of the lunar surface, examine ambient light levels to determine the feasibility of astronomical observations from the Moon, perform laser ranging experiments from Earth, observe solar X-rays, measure local magnetic fields, and study mechanical properties of the lunar surface material.
The landing occurred on January 15, 1973 at 23:35 UT in Le Monnier crater (25.85 degrees N, 30.45 degrees E).
After landing the "Lunokhod 2" took television images of the surrounding area, then rolled down a ramp to the surface at 01:14 UT on 1973-01-16. It then took pictures of the "Luna 21" lander and landing site.
The rover was equipped with three slow-scan television cameras, one mounted high on the rover for navigation, which could return high resolution images at different rates—3.2, 5.7, 10.9 or 21.1 seconds per frame (not frames per second). These images were used by the five-man team of controllers on Earth who sent driving commands to the rover in real time. There were four panoramic cameras mounted on the rover.
Power was supplied by a solar panel on the inside of a round hinged lid which covered the instrument bay, which would charge the batteries when opened. A polonium-210 radioactive heat source was used to keep the rover warm during the long lunar nights.
Scientific instruments included a soil mechanics tester, solar X-ray experiment, an astrophotometer to measure visible and ultraviolet light levels, a magnetometer deployed in front of the rover on the end of a 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) boom, a radiometer, a photodetector (Rubin-1) for laser detection experiments, and a French-supplied laser corner reflector.
Lunokhod 3 (vehicle 8ЕЛ№205) was built for a Moon landing in 1977 as "Luna 25", but never flew to the Moon due to lack of launchers and funding. It remains at the NPO Lavochkin museum.
During its 322 Earth days of operations, "Lunokhod 1" travelled and returned more than 20,000 television images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. In addition, it performed twenty-five soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations.
"Lunokhod 2" operated for about four months, covered of terrain, including driving into hilly upland areas and rilles. "Lunokhod 2" held the record for the longest distance of surface travel of any extraterrestrial vehicle until 2014. It sent back 86 panoramic images and over 80,000 television pictures. Many mechanical tests of the Moon's surface, laser ranging measurements, and other experiments were completed during this time.
For comparison, the similarly sized NASA Mars Exploration Rovers, "Spirit" and "Opportunity" had, by their fifth anniversary in January 2009, traveled a total of and transmitted over 125,000 images.
According to a French documentary television film "Tank on the Moon" by Jean Afanassieff, the Lunokhod design returned to the limelight 15 years later due to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster on April 26, 1986. The East German-built remote controlled bulldozers available to Soviet civil defense troops weighed dozens of tons too heavy to operate on the remaining parts of the partially collapsed reactor building roof. Human labourers could not be employed to shovel debris since work shifts were limited to 90-second intervals due to intense ionizing radiation.
Lunokhod designers were called back from retirement, and in two weeks rovers were made which used nuclear decay heat sources for internal rack climate control, their electronic systems were already hardened to partly resist radiation. This benefit allowed the 1986 designers to quickly devise a derived vehicle type for nuclear disaster recovery work. On July 15, two rovers, called STR-1, were delivered to the Chernobyl accident zone and proved useful for clearing debris, earning awards for the designers. Due to extremely high radiation levels, both STR-1 rovers eventually failed, and human workers (later named liquidators) were called in once again.
Until 2010, the final location of "Lunokhod 1" was uncertain by a few kilometers. Lunar laser ranging experiments had failed to detect a return signal from its retroreflector since the 1970s. On March 17, 2010, Albert Abdrakhimov found both the lander and the rover in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image M114185541RC. On April 22, Tom Murphy (UCSD) and Russet McMillan at the Apache Point Observatory detected the robot's retroreflector using the Apache Point telescopic pulsed-laser rangefinder.
"Lunokhod 2" continues to be detected by lunar laser ranging experiments and its position is known to sub-metre accuracy. Ownership of "Lunokhod 2" and the "Luna 21" lander was sold by the Lavochkin Association for in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York (although the catalogue incorrectly lists lot 68A as "Luna 17/Lunokhod 1"). The buyer was computer gaming entrepreneur and astronaut's son Richard Garriott, who is also known by the name of his gaming character Lord British. Garriott stated in a 2001 interview: "I purchased "Lunakod 21" from the Russians. I am now the world's only private owner of an object on a foreign celestial body. Though there are international treaties that say no government shall lay claim to geography off planet earth, I am not a government. Summarily, I claim the Moon in the name of Lord British!" In 2007, Garriott said he is still the owner of "Lunokhod 2". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45114 |
Lunokhod 1
Lunokhod 1 (Луноход, "moon walker" in Russian; "Аппарат 8ЕЛ № 203", "vehicle 8ЕЛ№203") was the first of two robotic lunar rovers landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of its Lunokhod program. The "Luna 17" spacecraft carried "Lunokhod 1" to the Moon in 1970. "Lunokhod 1" was the first remote-controlled robot "rover" to freely move across the surface of an astronomical object beyond the Earth. It was also the first wheeled craft on another celestial body. Lunokhod 0 (No.201), the previous and first attempt to do so, launched in February 1969 but failed to reach orbit.
Although only designed for a lifetime of three lunar days (approximately three Earth months), Lunokhod-1 operated on the lunar surface for eleven lunar days (321 Earth days) and traversed a total distance of 10.54 km.
"Lunokhod 1" was a lunar vehicle formed of a tub-like compartment with a large convex lid on eight independently powered wheels. Its length was . Lunokhod was equipped with a cone-shaped antenna, a highly directional helical antenna, four television cameras, and special extendable devices to test the lunar soil for soil density and mechanical properties. An X-ray spectrometer, an X-ray telescope, cosmic ray detectors, and a laser device were also included. The vehicle was powered by batteries which were recharged during the lunar day by a solar cell array mounted on the underside of the lid. To be able to work in a vacuum, special fluoride-based lubricant was used for the mechanical parts, and the electric motors (one in each wheel hub) were enclosed in pressurized containers. During the lunar nights, the lid was closed, and a polonium-210 radioisotope heater unit kept the internal components at operating temperature. "Lunokhod 1" was intended to operate through three lunar days (approximately three Earth months), but actually operated for eleven lunar days.
"Luna 17" was launched on November 10, 1970 at 14:44:01 UTC. After reaching earth parking orbit, the final stage of "Luna 17"s launching rocket fired to place it into a trajectory towards the Moon (1970-11-10 at 14:54 UTC). After two course correction maneuvers (on November 12 and 14), it entered lunar orbit on November 15, 1970 at 22:00 UTC.
The spacecraft soft-landed on the Moon in the Mare Imbrium ("Sea of Rains") on November 17 at 03:47 UTC. It landed in western Mare Imbrium, about 60 km south of the Promontorium Heraclides. The lander had dual ramps from which the payload, "Lunokhod 1", could descend to the lunar surface. At 06:28 UTC the rover moved onto the Moon's surface.
The rover would run during the lunar day, stopping occasionally to recharge its batteries via the solar panels. At night the rover hibernated until the next sunrise, heated by the radioactive source.
Small craters along its traverse were named unofficially during the mission. The names were officially approved by the IAU in 2012. They are called Albert, Leonid, Kolya, Valera, Borya, Gena, Vitya, Kostya, Igor, Slava, Nikolya, and Vasya.
1970:
1971:
Controllers finished the last communications session with "Lunokhod 1" at 13:05 UT on September 14, 1971. Attempts to re-establish contact were finally discontinued and the operations of "Lunokhod 1" officially ceased on October 4, 1971, the anniversary of Sputnik 1. During its 322 Earth days of operations, "Lunokhod 1" travelled 10,540 metres (6.55 miles) and returned more than 20,000 TV images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. In addition, it performed 25 lunar soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations.
The final location of "Lunokhod 1" was uncertain until 2010, as lunar laser ranging experiments had failed to detect a return signal from it since 1971. On March 17, 2010, Albert Abdrakhimov found both the lander and the rover in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image M114185541RC. In April 2010, the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO) team from the University of California at San Diego used the LRO images to locate the rover closely enough for laser range (distance) measurements. On April 22, 2010 and days following, the team successfully measured the distance several times. The intersection of the spheres described by the measured distances then pinpoint the current location of Lunokhod 1 to within 1 meter. APOLLO is now using "Lunokhod 1"s reflector for experiments, as they discovered, to their surprise, that it was returning much more light than other reflectors on the Moon. According to a NASA press release, APOLLO researcher Tom Murphy said, "We got about 2,000 photons from Lunokhod 1 on our first try. After almost 40 years of silence, this rover still has a lot to say."
By November 2010, the location of the rover had been determined to within about a centimeter. The location near the limb of the Moon, combined with the ability to range the rover even when it is in sunlight, promises to be particularly useful for determining aspects of the Earth–Moon system.
In a report released in May 2013, French scientists at the Côte d'Azur Observatory led by Jean-Marie Torre reported replicating the 2010 laser ranging experiments by American scientists after research using images from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. In both cases, laser pulses were returned from the "Lunokhod 1" retroreflector. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45116 |
Lunokhod 2
Lunokhod 2 (, "moon walker") was the second of two unmanned lunar rovers landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of the Lunokhod programme.
The "Luna 21" spacecraft landed on the Moon and deployed the second Soviet lunar rover, "Lunokhod 2", in January 1973. The primary objectives of the mission were to collect images of the lunar surface, examine ambient light levels to determine the feasibility of astronomical observations from the Moon, perform laser ranging experiments from Earth, observe solar X-rays, measure local magnetic fields, and study the soil mechanics of the lunar surface material.
The rover stood high and had a mass of . It was about long and wide and had eight wheels each with an independent suspension, electric motor and brake. The rover had two speeds, about . "Lunokhod 2" was equipped with three television cameras, one mounted high on the rover for navigation, which could return high resolution images at different frame rates—3.2, 5.7, 10.9 or 21.1 seconds per frame. These images were used by a five-man team of controllers on Earth who sent driving commands to the rover in real time. Power was supplied by a solar panel on the inside of a round hinged lid which covered the instrument bay, which would charge the batteries when opened. A polonium-210 radioisotope heater unit was used to keep the rover warm during the long lunar nights. There were four panoramic cameras mounted on the rover. Scientific instruments included a soil mechanics tester, solar X-ray experiment, an astrophotometer to measure visible and ultraviolet light levels, a magnetometer deployed in front of the rover on the end of a 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) boom, a radiometer, a photodetector (Rubin-1) for laser detection experiments, and a French-supplied laser corner reflector. The lander carried a bas relief of Vladimir Lenin and the State Emblem of the Soviet Union. The lander and rover together massed 1814 kg.
The Proton-K/D launcher put the spacecraft into Earth parking orbit followed by translunar injection. On January 12, 1973 "Luna 21" was braked into a lunar orbit. On January 13 and 14, the perilune was lowered to altitude.
On January 15 after 40 orbits, the braking rocket was fired at altitude, and the craft began to de-orbit. At an altitude of the main thrusters began firing, slowing the fall until a height of was reached. At this point the main thrusters shut down and the secondary thrusters ignited, slowing the fall until the lander was above the surface, where the engine was switched off. Landing occurred at 23:35 UT in Le Monnier crater at 25.85 degrees N, 30.45 degrees E.
After landing, the "Lunokhod 2" took TV images of the surrounding area, then rolled down a ramp to the surface at 01:14 UT on January 16 and took pictures of the "Luna 21" lander and landing site, driving for 30 metres. After a period of charging up its batteries, it took more pictures of the site and the lander, and then set off to explore the moon.
The rover would run during the lunar day, stopping occasionally to recharge its batteries with the solar panels. At night the rover hibernated until the next sunrise, heated by the radioactive source.
On June 4, 1973 it was announced that the program was completed, leading to speculation that the vehicle probably failed in mid-May or could not be revived after the lunar night of May–June.
More recently, Alexander Basilevsky related an account in which on May 9, the rover's open lid touched a crater wall and became covered with dust. When the lid was closed, this dust (a very good insulator) was dumped on to the radiators. The following day, May 10, controllers saw the internal temperature of "Lunokhod 2" climb as it was unable to cool itself, eventually rendering the rover inoperable. On May 11, signal from the rover was lost.
"Lunokhod 2" operated for about four months, and the original estimate was that it covered of terrain, including hilly upland areas and rilles, and sent back 86 panoramic images and over 80,000 TV pictures. Many mechanical tests of the surface, laser ranging measurements, and other experiments were completed during this time. "Lunokhod 2" was thought to have covered based on wheel rotations but Russian scientists at the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK) revised that to an estimated distance of about based on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images of the lunar surface. Subsequent discussions with their American counterparts ended with an agreed-upon final distance of ; an international team has confirmed that the methods used to calculate the two rovers' odometry is consistent and comparable from the Moon to Mars.
The Lunokhod rover held the record for off-Earth roving distance until July 27, 2014, when NASA's Mars "Opportunity" rover exceeded it after having traveled over .
"Lunokhod 2" continues to be detected by lunar laser ranging experiments and its position is known to sub-meter accuracy. On March 17, 2010 Phil Stooke at the University of Western Ontario announced that he had located "Lunokhod 2" in NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images, but later images showed the initial identification was incorrect (the identified point was a mark in the rover tracks near the end of the route, made as "Lunokhod 2" turned around), and the LRO LROC team identified the correct location of the rover in March 2012. Excellent Lunokhod 2 images from LROC were published by Mark Robinson on SESE site of ASU.
Ownership of "Lunokhod 2" and the "Luna 21" lander was sold by the Lavochkin Association for $68,500 in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York. (The catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1).
The buyer was computer gaming entrepreneur and space tourist Richard Garriott (son of the astronaut Owen K. Garriott), who stated in a 2001 interview with "Computer Games Magazine"'s Cindy Yans that:
Garriott later confirmed that he is the owner of "Lunokhod 2". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45119 |
Alans
The Alans () were an Iranian nomadic pastoral people of antiquity.
The name "Alan" is an Iranian dialectal form of "Aryan". Possibly related to the Massagetae, the Alans have been connected by modern historians with the Central Asian Yancai and Aorsi of Chinese and Roman sources, respectively. Having migrated westwards and become dominant among the Sarmatians on the Pontic Steppe, they are mentioned by Roman sources in the 1st century AD. At the time, they had settled the region north of the Black Sea and frequently raided the Parthian Empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire. From 215250 AD, their power on the Pontic Steppe was broken by the Goths.
Upon the Hunnic defeat of the Goths on the Pontic Steppe around 375AD, many of the Alans migrated westwards along with various Germanic tribes. They crossed the Rhine in 406AD along with the Vandals and Suebi, settling in Orléans and Valence. Around 409 AD, they joined the Vandals and Suebi in the crossing of the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, settling in Lusitania and Carthaginensis. The Iberian Alans were soundly defeated by the Visigoths in 418 AD and subsequently surrendered their authority to the Hasdingi Vandals. In 428AD, the Vandals and Alans crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into North Africa, where they founded a powerful kingdom which lasted until its conquest by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century AD.
The Alans who remained under Hunnic rule founded a powerful kingdom in the North Caucasus in the Middle Ages, which ended with the Mongol invasions in the 13th century AD. These Alans are said to be the ancestors of the modern Ossetians.
The Alans spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.
The various forms of "Alan" '; ' (Pinyin) in the 2nd century, "" in the 3rd century and later Alanguo () are derived from Iranian dialectal forms of "Aryan". This word was preserved in the modern Ossetian language in the form of "Allon". These and other variants of "Aryan" (such as "Iran") were common self-designations of the Indo-Iranians, the common ancestors of the Indo-Aryans and Iranian peoples to whom the Alans belonged.
Rarer spellings include "Alauni" or "Halani". The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations "Asi", "As", and "Os" (Romanian ', Bulgarian ', Hungarian ', Russian ', Georgian ""). It is this name that is the root of the modern "Ossetian".
The first mentions of names that historians link with the "Alani" appear at almost the same time in texts from the Mediterranean, Middle East and China.
In the 1st century AD, the Alans migrated westwards from Central Asia, achieving a dominant position among the Sarmatians living between the Don River and the Caspian Sea. The Alans are mentioned in the Vologeses inscription which reads that Vologeses I, the Parthian king between around 51 and 78 AD, in the 11th year of his reign, battled Kuluk, king of the Alani. The 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus supplements this inscription. Josephus reports in the "Jewish Wars" (book7, ch.7.4) how Alans (whom he calls a "Scythian" tribe) living near the Sea of Azov crossed the Iron Gates for plunder (72AD) and defeated the armies of Pacorus, king of Media, and Tiridates, King of Armenia, two brothers of Vologeses I (for whom the above-mentioned inscription was made):
The fact that the Alans invaded Parthia through Hyrcania shows that at the time many Alans were still based north-east of the Caspian Sea. By the early 2nd century AD the Alans were in firm control of the Lower Volga and Kuban. These lands had earlier been occupied by the Aorsi and the Siraces, whom the Alans apparently absorbed, dispersed and/or destroyed, since they were no longer mentioned in contemporaneous accounts. It is likely that the Alans' influence stretched further westwards, encompassing most of the Sarmatian world, which by then possessed a relatively homogenous culture.
In 135 AD, the Alans made a huge raid into Asia Minor via the Caucasus, ravaging Media and Armenia. They were eventually driven back by Arrian, the governor of Cappadocia, who wrote a detailed report ("Ektaxis kata Alanoon" or 'War Against the Alans') that is a major source for studying Roman military tactics.
From 215 to 250 AD, the Germanic Goths expanded south-eastwards and broke the Alan dominance on the Pontic Steppe. The Alans however seem to have had a significant influence on Gothic culture, who became excellent horsemen and adopted the Alanic animal style art. (The Roman Empire, during the chaos of the 3rd century civil wars, suffered damaging raids by the Gothic armies with their heavy cavalry before the Illyrian Emperors adapted to the Gothic tactics, reorganized and expanded the Roman heavy cavalry, and defeated the Goths under Gallienus, Claudius II and Aurelian).
After the Gothic entry to the steppe, many of the Alans seem to have retreated eastwards towards the Don, where they seem to have established contacts with the Huns. Ammianus writes that the Alans were "somewhat like the Huns, but in their manner of life and their habits they are less savage." Jordanes contrasted them with the Huns, noting that the Alans "were their equals in battle, but unlike them in their civilisation, manners and appearance". In the late 4th century, Vegetius conflates Alans and Huns in his military treatise "Hunnorum Alannorumque natio", the "nation of Huns and Alans"and collocates Goths, Huns and Alans, "exemplo Gothorum et Alannorum Hunnorumque".
The 4th century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus noted that the Alans were "formerly called Massagetae," while Dio Cassius wrote that "they are Massagetae." It is likely that the Alans were an amalgamation of various Iranian peoples, including Sarmatians, Massagetae and Sakas. Scholars have connected the Alans to the nomadic state of Yancai mentioned in Chinese sources. The Yancai are first mentioned in connection with late 2nd century BC diplomat Zhang Qian's travels in Chapter 123 of "Shiji" (whose author, Sima Qian, died c. 90 BC). The Yancai of Chinese records has again been equated with the Aorsi, a powerful Sarmatian tribe living between the Don River and the Aral Sea, mentioned in Roman records, in particular Strabo.
The Later Han dynasty Chinese chronicle, the "Hou Hanshu", 88 (covering the period 25–220 and completed in the 5th century), mentioned a report that the steppe land "Yancai" had become a vassal state of the Kangju and was now known as "Alanliao" (阿蘭聊)
Y. A. Zadneprovskiy suggests that the Kangju subjugation of Yancai occurred in the 1st century BC, and that this subjugation caused various Sarmatian tribes, including the Aorsi, to migrate westwards, which played a major role in starting the Migration Period. The 3rd century Weilüe also notes that Yancai was then known to be Alans, although they were no longer vassals of the Kangju.
Around 370, according to Ammianus, the peaceful relations between the Alans and Huns were broken, after the Huns attacked the Don Alans, killing many of them and establishing an alliance with the survivors. These Alans successfully invaded the Goths in 375 together with the Huns. They subsequently accompanied the Huns in their westward expansion.
Following the Hunnic invasion in 370, other Alans, along with other Sarmatians, migrated westward. One of these Alan groups fought together with the Goths in the decisive Battle of Adrianople in 378AD, in which emperor Valens was killed. As the Roman Empire continued to decline, the Alans split into various groups; some fought for the Romans while other joined the Huns, Visigoths or Ostrogoths. A portion of the western Alans joined the Vandals and the Suebi in their invasion of Roman Gaul. Gregory of Tours mentions in his Liber historiae Francorum ("Book of Frankish History") that the Alan king Respendial saved the day for the Vandals in an armed encounter with the Franks at the crossing of the Rhine on December31, 406). According to Gregory, another group of Alans, led by Goar, crossed the Rhine at the same time, but immediately joined the Romans and settled in Gaul.
Under Beorgor ("Beorgor rex Alanorum"), they moved throughout Gaul, till the reign of Petronius Maximus, when they crossed the Alps in the winter of 464, into Liguria, but were there defeated, and Beorgor slain, by Ricimer, commander of the Emperor's forces.
In 442, after it became clear to Aetius that he could no longer rely upon the Huns for support, he turned to Goar and convinced him to move some of his people to settlements in the Orleanais in order to control the bacaudae of Armorica and to keep the Visigoths from expanding their territories northward across the Loire. Goar settled a substantial number of his followers in the Orleanais and the area to the north and personally moved his own capital to the city of Orleans.
Under Goar, they allied with the Burgundians led by Gundaharius, with whom they installed the Emperor Jovinus as usurper. Under Goar's successor Sangiban, the Alans of Orléans played a critical role in repelling the invasion of Attila the Hun at the Battle of Châlons. In 463 the Alans defeated the Goths at the battle of Orléans, and they later defeated the Franks led by Childeric in 466. Around 502-503 Clovis attacked Armorica but he was defeated by the Alans, however the Alans, who, like Clovis, were Christians, desired cordial relations with him to counterbalance the hostile Arian Visigoths who coveted the land north of the Loire. Therefore, an accord was arranged by which Clovis came to rule the various peoples of Armorica and the military strength of the area was integrated into the Merovingian military.
Following the fortunes of the Vandals and Suebi into the Iberian peninsula (Hispania, comprising modern Portugal and Spain) in 409, the Alans led by Respendial settled in the provinces of Lusitania and Carthaginensis. The Kingdom of the Alans was among the first Barbarian kingdoms to be founded. The Siling Vandals settled in Baetica, the Suebi in coastal Gallaecia, and the Asding Vandals in the rest of Gallaecia. Although the newcomers controlled Hispania they were still a tiny minority among a larger Hispano-Roman population, approximately 200,000 out of 6,000,000.
In 418 (or 426 according to some authors), the Alan king, Attaces, was killed in battle against the Visigoths, and this branch of the Alans subsequently appealed to the Asding Vandal king Gunderic to accept the Alan crown. The separate ethnic identity of Respendial's Alans dissolved. Although some of these Alans are thought to have remained in Iberia, most went to North Africa with the Vandals in 429. Later the rulers of the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa styled themselves "Rex Wandalorum et Alanorum" ("King of the Vandals and Alans").
There are some vestiges of the Alans in Portugal, namely in Alenquer (whose name may be Germanic for the "Temple of the Alans", from "Alan Kerk", and whose castle may have been established by them; the Alaunt is still represented in that city's coat of arms), in the construction of the castles of Torres Vedras and Almourol, and in the city walls of Lisbon, where vestiges of their presence may be found under the foundations of the Church of "Santa Luzia".
In the Iberian peninsula the Alans settled in Lusitania (Alentejo) and the Cartaginense provinces. They became known in retrospect for their massive hunting and fighting dog of Molosser type, the Alaunt, which they apparently introduced to Europe. The breed is extinct, but its name is carried by a Spanish breed of dog still called "Alano", traditionally used in boar hunting and cattle herding. The Alano name, however, has historically been used for a number of dog breeds in a few European countries thought to descend from the original dog of the Alans, such as the German mastiff (Great Dane) and the French Dogue de Bordeaux, among others.
The Alans who remained in their original area of settlement north of the Caucasus (and for a time east of the Caspian Sea as well), came into contact and conflict with the Bulgars, the Gökturks, and the Khazars, who drove most of them from the plains and into the mountains.
The Alans converted to Byzantine Orthodoxy in the first quarter of the 10th century, during the patriarchate of Nicholas I Mystikos. Al-Mas‘udi reports that they apostasized in 932, but this seems to have been short-lived. The Alans are collectively mentioned as Byzantine-rite Christians in the 13th century. The Caucasian Alans were the ancestors of the modern Ossetians, whose ethnonym derives from the name "Ās" (very probably the ancient "Aorsi"; al-Ma'sudi mentions "al-Arsiyya" as guards among the Khazars, and the Rus' called the Alans "Yasi"), a sister tribe of the Alans. The "Armenian Geography" uses the name "Ashtigor" for the most westerly located Alans, a name which survives as "Digor" and still refers to the western division of the Ossetians. Furthermore, in Ossetian, "Asi" refers to the region around Mount Elbrus, where they probably formerly lived.
Some of the other Alans remained under the rule of the Huns. Those of the eastern division, though dispersed about the steppes until late medieval times, were forced by the Mongols into the Caucasus, where they remain as the Ossetians. Between the 9th and 12th centuries, they formed a network of tribal alliances that gradually evolved into the Christian kingdom of Alania. Most Alans submitted to the Mongol Empire in 1239–1277. They participated in Mongol invasions of Europe and the Song dynasty in Southern China, and the Battle of Kulikovo under Mamai of the Golden Horde.
In 1253, the Franciscan monk William of Rubruck reported numerous Europeans in Central Asia. It is also known that 30,000 Alans formed the royal guard (Asud) of the Yuan court in Dadu (Beijing). Marco Polo later reported their role in the Yuan dynasty in his book "Il Milione". It is said that those Alans contributed to a modern Mongol clan, Asud. John of Montecorvino, archbishop of Dadu (Khanbaliq), reportedly converted many Alans to Roman Catholic Christianity in addition to Armenians in China. In Poland and Lithuania, Alans were also part of the powerful Clan of Ostoja.
Against the Alans and the Cumans (Kipchaks), the Mongols used divide-and-conquer tactics by first telling the Cumans to stop allying with the Alans and, after the Cumans followed their suggestion, the Mongols then attacked the Cumans after defeating the Alans. Alans were recruited into the Mongol forces with one unit called "Right Alan Guard" which was combined with "recently surrendered" soldiers, Mongols, and Chinese soldiers stationed in the area of the former Kingdom of Qocho and in Besh Balikh the Mongols established a Chinese military colony led by Chinese general Qi Kongzhi (Ch'i Kung-chih). Alan and Kipchak guards were used by Kublai Khan. In 1368 at the end of the Yuan dynasty in China Toghan Temür was accompanied by his faithful Alan guards. Mangu enlisted in his bodyguard half the troops of the Alan prince, Arslan, whose younger son Nicholas took a part in the expedition of the Mongols against Karajang (Yunnan). This Alan imperial guard was still in existence in 1272, 1286 and 1309, and it was divided into two corps with headquarters in the Ling pei province (Karakorúm). In 1254 Rubruquis found a Russian deacon amongst the other Christians at Karakorum. The reason why the earlier Persian word tersa was gradually abandoned by the Mongols in favour of the Syro-Greek word arkon, when speaking of Christians, manifestly is that no specifically Greek Church was ever heard of in China until the Russians had been conquered; besides, there were large bodies of Russian and Alan guards at Peking throughout the last half of the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century, and the Catholics there would not be likely to encourage the use of a Persian word which was most probably applicable in the first instance to the Nestorians they found so degenerated. The Alan guards converted to Catholicism as reported by Odorico. They were a "Russian guard".
It is believed that some Alans resettled to the North (Barsils), merging with Volga Bulgars and Burtas, eventually transforming to Volga Tatars. It is supposed that the Iasi, a group of Alans founded a town in the northeast of Romania (about 1200–1300), near the Prut river, called Iași. The latter became the capital of ancient Moldavia in the Middle Ages.
Alan mercenaries were involved in the affair with the Catalan Company.
Descendants of the Alans, who live in the autonomous republics of Russia and Georgia, speak the Ossetian language which belongs to the Northeastern Iranian language group and is the only remnant of the Scytho-Sarmatian dialect continuum, which once stretched over much of the Pontic steppe and Central Asia. Modern Ossetian has two major dialects: "Digor", spoken in the western part of North Ossetia; and "Iron", spoken in the rest of Ossetia. A third branch of Ossetian, "Jassic" ("Jász"), was formerly spoken in Hungary. The literary language, based on the Iron dialect, was fixed by the national poet, Kosta Khetagurov (1859–1906).
The fourth-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that the Alans were tall, and blond:
In a study conducted in 2014 by V. V.Ilyinskyon on bone fragments from 10 Alanic burials on the Don River, DNA could be abstracted from a total of seven. Four of them turned out to belong to yDNA Haplogroup G2 and six of them had mtDNAI. The fact that many of the samples share the same y- and mtDNA raises the possibility that the tested individuals belonged to the same tribe or even were close relatives. Nevertheless, this is a strong argument for direct Alan ancestry of Ossetians and against the hypothesis that Ossetians are alanized Caucasic speakers, since the major Haplogroup among Ossetians is G2 also.
In 2015 the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow conducted research on various Sarmato-Alan and Saltovo-Mayaki culture Kurgan burials. In this analysis, the two Alan samples from the 4th to 6th century AD had yDNAs G2a-P15 and R1a-z94, while from the three Sarmatian samples from 2nd to 3rd century AD two had yDNA J1-M267 and one possessed R1a.
Also, the three Saltovo-Mayaki samples from 8th to 9th century AD turned out to have yDNAs G, J2a-M410 and R1a-z94 respectively.
A genetic study published in "Nature" in May 2018 examined the remains of six Alans buried in the Caucasus from ca. 100 AD to 1400 AD. The sample of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup R1 and haplogroup Q-M242. One of the Q-M242 samples found in Beslan, North Ossetia from 200 AD found 4 relatives among Chechens from the Shoanoy Teip. . The samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to HV2a1, U4d3, X2f, H13a2c, H5, and W1.
Archaeological finds support the written sources. P. D. Rau (1927) first identified late Sarmatian sites with the historical Alans. Based on the archaeological material, they were one of the Iranian-speaking nomadic tribes that began to enter the Sarmatian area between the middle of the 1st and the 2nd centuries.
The ancient language of the Alans was an Eastern Iranian dialect either identical, or at least closely related, to ancient Eastern Iranian languages. This is confirmed by comparison of the word for horse in various Indo-Iranian languages and the reconstructed Alanic word for horse:
Prior to their Christianisation, the Alans were Indo-Iranian polytheists, subscribing either to the poorly understood Scythian pantheon or to a polytheistic form of Zoroastrianism. Some traditions were directly inherited from the Scythians, like embodying their dominant god in elaborate rituals.
In the 4th5th centuries the Alans were at least partially Christianized by Byzantine missionaries of the Arian church. In the 13th century, invading Mongol hordes pushed the eastern Alans further south into the Caucasus, where they mixed with native Caucasian groups and successively formed three territorial entities each with different developments. Around 1395 Timur's army invaded the Northern Caucasus and massacred much of the Alanian population.
As time went by, Digor in the west came under Kabard and Islamic influence. It was through the Kabardians (an East Circassian tribe) that Islam was introduced into the region in the 17th century. After 1767, all of Alania came under Russian rule, which strengthened Orthodox Christianity in that region considerably. A substantial minority of today's Ossetians are followers of the traditional Ossetian religion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45121 |
Moors
The Moors were the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during the Middle Ages. The Moors initially were the indigenous Maghrebine Berbers. The name was later also applied to Arabs.
Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people, and the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that "The term 'Moors' has no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, North African Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
The term has also been used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims in general, especially those of Arab or Berber descent, whether living in Spain or North Africa. During the colonial era, the Portuguese introduced the names "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors" in South Asia and Sri Lanka, and the Bengali Muslims were also called Moors. In the Philippines, the longstanding Muslim community, which predates the arrival of the Spanish, now self-identifies as the "Moro people", an exonym introduced by Spanish colonizers due to their Muslim faith.
In 711, troops mostly formed by Moors from northern Africa led the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The Iberian peninsula then came to be known in Classical Arabic as al-Andalus, which at its peak included most of Septimania and modern-day Spain and Portugal.
In 827, the Moors occupied Mazara on Sicily, developing it as a port. They eventually went on to consolidate the rest of the island. Differences in religion and culture led to a centuries-long conflict with the Christian kingdoms of Europe, which tried to reclaim control of Muslim areas; this conflict was referred to as the Reconquista. In 1224 the Muslims were expelled from Sicily to the settlement of Lucera, which was destroyed by European Christians in 1300.
The fall of Granada in 1492 marked the end of Muslim rule in Iberia, although a Muslim minority persisted until their expulsion in 1609.
During the classical period, the Romans interacted with, and later conquered, parts of Mauretania, a state that covered modern northern Morocco, western Algeria, and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla. The Berber tribes of the region were noted in the Classics as "Mauri", which was subsequently rendered as "Moors" in English and in related variations in other European languages. "Mauri" (Μαῦροι) is recorded as the native name by Strabo in the early 1st century. This appellation was also adopted into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was "Maurusii" (). The Moors were also mentioned by Tacitus as having revolted against the Roman Empire in 24 AD.
During the Latin Middle Ages, "Mauri" was used to refer to Berbers and Arabs in the coastal regions of Northwest Africa. The 16th century scholar Leo Africanus (c. 1494–1554) identified the Moors ("Mauri") as the native Berber inhabitants of the former Roman Africa Province (Roman Africans). He described Moors as one of five main population groups on the continent alongside Egyptians, Abyssinians (Abassins), Arabians and Cafri (Cafates).
In medieval Romance languages, variations of the Latin word for the Moors (for instance, Italian and Spanish: "moro", French: "maure", Portuguese: "mouro", Romanian: "maur") developed different applications and connotations. The term initially denoted a specific Berber people in western Libya, but the name acquired more general meaning during the medieval period, associated with "Muslim", similar to associations with "Saracens". During the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista, the term Moors included the derogatory suggestion of "infidels".
Apart from these historic associations and context, "Moor" and "Moorish" designate a specific ethnic group speaking Hassaniya Arabic. They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger, and Mali. In Niger and Mali, these peoples are also known as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara.
The authoritative dictionary of the Spanish language does not list any derogatory meaning for the word "moro", a term generally referring to people of Maghrebian origin in particular or Muslims in general. Some authors have pointed out that in modern colloquial Spanish use of the term "moro" is derogatory for Moroccans in particular and Muslims in general.
In the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, many modern Filipinos call the large, local Muslim minority concentrated in Mindanao and other southern islands "Moros". The word is a catch-all term, as "Moro" may come from several distinct ethno-linguistic groups such as the Maranao people. The term was introduced by Spanish colonisers, and has since been appropriated by Filipino Muslims as an endonym, with many self-identifying as members of the "Bangsamoro" "Moro Nation".
"Moreno" can mean "dark-skinned" in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Philippines. Also in Spanish, "morapio" is a humorous name for "wine", especially that which has not been "baptized" or mixed with water, i.e., pure unadulterated wine. Among Spanish speakers, "moro" came to have a broader meaning, applied to both Filipino Moros from Mindanao, and the moriscos of Granada. "Moro" refers to all things dark, as in "Moor", "moreno", etc. It was also used as a nickname; for instance, the Milanese Duke Ludovico Sforza was called "Il Moro" because of his dark complexion.
In Portugal, "mouro" (feminine," moura") may refer to supernatural beings known as enchanted "moura", where "Moor" implies "alien" and "non-Christian". These beings were siren-like fairies with golden or reddish hair and a fair face. They were believed to have magical properties. From this root, the name moor is applied to unbaptized children, meaning not Christian. In Basque, "mairu" means moor and also refers to a mythical people.
Muslims located in South Asia were distinguished by the Portuguese historians into two groups: Mouros da Terra ("Moors of the Land") and the Mouros da Arabia/Mouros de Meca ("Moors from Arabia/Mecca" or "Paradesi Muslims"). The Mouros da Terra were either descendants of any native convert (mostly from any of the former lower or untouchable castes) to Islam or descendants of a marriage alliance between a Middle Eastern individual and an Indian woman.
Within the context of Portuguese colonization, in Sri Lanka (Portuguese Ceylon), Muslims of Arab origin are called "Ceylon Moors", not to be confused with "Indian Moors" of Sri Lanka (see Sri Lankan Moors). Sri Lankan Moors (a combination of "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors") make up 12% of the population. The Ceylon Moors (unlike the Indian Moors) are descendants of Arab traders who settled there in the mid-6th century. When the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, they labelled all the Muslims in the island as Moors as they saw some of them resembling the Moors in North Africa. The Sri Lankan government continues to identify the Muslims in Sri Lanka as "Sri Lankan Moors", sub-categorised into "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors".
The Goan Muslims — a minority community who follow Islam in the western Indian coastal state of Goa — are commonly referred as "Moir" () by Goan Catholics and Hindus. "Moir" is derived from the Portuguese word "mouro" ("Moor").
In the late 7th and early 8th centuries CE, the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate, established after the death of Muhammad, underwent a period of rapid growth. In 647 CE, 40,000 Arabs forced the Byzantine governor of northern Africa to submit and pay tribute, but failed to permanently occupy the region. After an interlude, during which the Muslims fought a civil war, the invasions resumed in 665, seizing Byzantine North Africa up to Bugia over the course of a series of campaigns, lasting until 689. A Byzantine counterattack largely expelled the Arabs but left the region vulnerable. Intermittent war over the inland provinces of North Africa continued for the next two decades. Further civil war delayed the continuation of further conquest, but an Arab assault took Carthage and held it against a Byzantine counterattack.
Although a Christian and pagan Berber rebellion pushed out the Arabs temporarily, the Romanized urban population preferred the Arabs to the Berbers and welcomed a renewed and final conquest that left northern Africa in Muslim hands by 698. Over the next decades, the Berber and urban populations of northern Africa gradually converted to Islam, although for separate reasons. The Arabic language was also adopted. Initially, the Arabs required only vassalage from the local inhabitants rather than assimilation, a process which took a considerable time. The groups that inhabited the Maghreb following this process became known collectively as Moors. Although the Berbers would later expel the Arabs from the Maghreb and form temporarily independent states, that effort failed to dislodge the usage of the collective term.
In 711 the Islamic Arabs and Moors of Berber descent in northern Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar onto the Iberian Peninsula, and in a series of raids they conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania. Their general, Tariq ibn Ziyad, brought most of Iberia under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They continued northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Franks under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.
The Maghreb fell into a civil war in 739 that lasted until 743 known as the Berber Revolt. The Berbers revolted against the Umayyads, putting an end to Eastern dominion over the Maghreb. Despite racial tensions, Arabs and Berbers intermarried frequently. A few years later, the Eastern branch of the Umayyad dynasty was dethroned by the Abbasids and the Umayyad Caliphate overthrown in the Abbasid revolution (746-750). Abd al-Rahman I, who was of Arab-Berber lineage, managed to evade the Abbasids and flee to the Maghreb and then Iberia, where he founded the Emirate of Córdoba and the Andalusian branch of the Umayyad dynasty. The Moors ruled northern Africa and Al-Andalus for several centuries thereafter. Ibn Hazm, the polymath, mentions that many of the Caliphs in the Umayyad Caliphate and the Caliphate of Córdoba were blond and had light eyes. Ibn Hazm mentions that he preferred blondes, and notes that there was much interest in blondes in al-Andalus amongst the rulers and regular Muslims:
The languages spoken in the parts of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule were Andalusian Arabic and Mozarabic; they became extinct after the expulsion of the Moriscos, but Arabic language influence on the Spanish language can still be found today. The Muslims were resisted in parts of the Iberian Peninsula in areas of the northwest (such as Asturias, where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga) and the largely Basque Country in the Pyrenees. Though the number of Moorish colonists was small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam. By 1000, according to Ronald Segal, some 5,000,000 of Iberia's 7,000,000 inhabitants, most of them descended from indigenous Iberian converts, were Muslim. There were also Sub-Saharan Africans who had been absorbed into al-Andalus to be used as soldiers and slaves. The Berber and Sub-Saharan African soldiers were known as "tangerines" because they were imported through Tangier.
The Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Iberia fell under the rule of the Almohad Caliphate in 1153. This second stage was guided by a version of Islam that left behind the more tolerant practices of the past. Al-Andalus broke up into a number of taifas (fiefs), which were partly consolidated under the Caliphate of Córdoba.
The Kingdom of Asturias, a small northwestern Christian Iberian kingdom, initiated the "Reconquista" ("Reconquest") soon after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. The Kingdom of Navarre, the Kingdom of Galicia, the Kingdom of León, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Kingdom of Aragon, the "Marca Hispánica", and the Crown of Castile began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista. In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. The Portuguese side of the Reconquista ended in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve ( – "al-Gharb") under Afonso III. He was the first Portuguese monarch to claim the title "King of Portugal and the Algarve".
The Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in southern Iberia. On 2 January 1492, the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to the armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragón and Isabella I of Castile, the "Catholic Monarchs"). The Moorish inhabitants received no military aid or rescue from other Muslim nations. The remaining Jews were also forced to leave Spain, convert to Roman Catholic Christianity, or be killed for refusing to do so. In 1480, to exert social and religious control, Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to allow the Inquisition in Spain. The Muslim population of Granada rebelled in 1499. The revolt lasted until early 1501, giving the Castilian authorities an excuse to void the terms of the Treaty of Granada (1491). In 1501, Castilian authorities delivered an ultimatum to the Muslims of Granada: they could either convert to Christianity or be expelled.
The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly. They were respectively called "marranos" and "moriscos". However, in 1567 King Philip II directed Moriscos to give up their Arabic names and traditional dress, and prohibited the use of Arabic. In reaction, there was a Morisco uprising in the Alpujarras from 1568 to 1571. In the years from 1609 to 1614, the government expelled Moriscos. The historian Henri Lapeyre estimated that this affected 300,000 out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants.
Some Muslims converted to Christianity and remained permanently in Iberia. This is indicated by a "high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%)" that "attests to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced), driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants." According to historian Richard A. Fletcher, "the number of Arabs who settled in Iberia was very small. 'Moorish' Iberia does at least have the merit of reminding us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e., Berbers from Algeria and Morocco."
In the meantime, Spanish and Portuguese expeditions westward from the New World spread Christianity to India, the Malay peninsula, Indonesia, and the Philippines. By 1521, the ships of Magellan had reached that island archipelago, which they named "Las Islas Filipinas", after Philip II of Spain. In Mindanao, the Spaniards named the kris-bearing people as Moros or 'Moors'. Today this ethnic group in Mindanao, who are generally Filipino Muslim, are called "Moros".
The first Muslim conquest of Sicily began in 827, though it was not until 902 that almost the entire island was in the control of the Aghlabids, with the exception of some minor strongholds in the rugged interior. During that period some parts of southern Italy fell under Muslim control, most notably the port city of Bari, which formed the Emirate of Bari from 847–871. In 909, the Aghlabids was replaced by the Isma'ili rulers of the Fatimid Caliphate. Four years later, the Fatimid governor was ousted from Palermo when the island declared its independence under Emir Ahmed ibn-Kohrob. The language spoken in Sicily under Muslim rule was Siculo-Arabic.
In 1038, a Byzantine army under George Maniakes crossed the strait of Messina. This army included a corps of Normans that saved the situation in the first clash against the Muslims from Messina. After another decisive victory in the summer of 1040, Maniaces halted his march to lay siege to Syracuse. Despite his success, Maniaces was removed from his position, and the subsequent Muslim counter-offensive reconquered all the cities captured by the Byzantines.
The Norman Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, invaded Sicily in 1060. The island was split between three Arab emirs, and the Christian population in many parts of the island rose up against the ruling Muslims. One year later, Messina fell, and in 1072 Palermo was taken by the Normans. The loss of the cities, each with a splendid harbor, dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. Eventually all of Sicily was taken. In 1091, Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians. Islamic authors noted the tolerance of the Norman kings of Sicily. Ali ibn al-Athir wrote: "They [the Muslims] were treated kindly, and they were protected, even against the Franks. Because of that, they had great love for King Roger."
The Muslim problem characterized Hohenstaufen rule in Sicily under Holy Roman Emperors Henry VI and his son, Frederick II. Many repressive measures were introduced by Frederick II to please the popes, who were intolerant of Islam in the heart of Christendom. This resulted in a rebellion by Sicilian Muslims, which in turn triggered organized resistance and systematic reprisals and marked the final chapter of Islam in Sicily. The complete eviction of Muslims and the annihilation of Islam in Sicily was completed by the late 1240s when the final deportations to Lucera took place.
Moorish architecture is the articulated Islamic architecture of northern Africa and parts of Spain and Portugal, where the Moors were dominant between 711 and 1492. The best surviving examples of this architectural tradition are the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra in Granada (mainly 1338–1390), as well as the Giralda in Seville (1184). Other notable examples include the ruined palace city of Medina Azahara (936–1010) and the Mosque of Cristo de la Luz, now a church, in Toledo, the Aljafería in Zaragoza and baths such as those at Ronda and Alhama de Granada.
Moors—or more frequently their heads, often crowned—appear with some frequency in medieval European heraldry, though less so since the Middle Ages. The term ascribed to them in Anglo-Norman "blazon" (the language of English heraldry) is "maure", though they are also sometimes called "moore", "blackmoor", "blackamoor" or "negro". Maures appear in European heraldry from at least as early as the 13th century, and some have been attested as early as the 11th century in Italy, where they have persisted in the local heraldry and vexillology well into modern times in Corsica and Sardinia.
Armigers bearing moors or moors' heads may have adopted them for any of several reasons, to include symbolizing military victories in the Crusades, as a pun on the bearer's name in the canting arms of Morese, Negri, Saraceni, etc., or in the case of Frederick II, possibly to demonstrate the reach of his empire. The arms of Pope Benedict XVI feature a moor's head, crowned and collared red, in reference to the arms of Freising, Germany. In the case of Corsica and Sardinia, the blindfolded moors' heads in the four quarters have long been said to represent the four Moorish emirs who were defeated by Peter I of Aragon and Pamplona in the 11th century, the four moors' heads around a cross having been adopted to the arms of Aragon around 1281–1387, and Corsica and Sardinia having come under the dominion of the king of Aragon in 1297. In Corsica, the blindfolds were lifted to the brow in the 18th century as a way of expressing the island's newfound independence.
The use of Moors (and particularly their heads) as a heraldic symbol has been deprecated in modern North America. For example, the College of Arms of the Society for Creative Anachronism urges applicants to use them delicately to avoid causing offence.
As a large and diffuse ethnic group, the Moors consisted mostly of Berbers from Morocco and Western Algeria, sub-Saharan Africans from Mauritania, Northern Senegal, and Western Mali, Arab Bedouins, and Arab elite mostly from Yemen and Syria. Most writings on Moors applied darkness of skin as a trait for any and every Muslim invader of Europe. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45127 |
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by Scottish novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternatingly slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals: Mole, Rat (a European water vole), Toad, and Badger. They live in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie, and celebrated for its evocation of the nature of the Thames Valley.
In 1908, Grahame retired from his position as secretary of the Bank of England. He moved back to Berkshire, where he had lived as a child, and spent his time by the River Thames, doing much as the animal characters in his book do – to quote, "simply messing about in boats" – and expanding the bedtime stories he had earlier told his son Alastair into a manuscript for the book.
The novel was in its 31st printing when playwright A. A. Milne adapted part of it for the stage as "Toad of Toad Hall" in 1929. In 1949, the first film adaptation was produced by Walt Disney as one of two segments in the package film "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad".
In 2003, "The Wind in the Willows" was listed at #16 in the BBC's survey The Big Read. More than a century after its original publication, it was adapted again for the stage, as a 2014 musical by Julian Fellowes. In his preface, A. A. Milne writes,
Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh. When he was 5, his mother died from puerperal fever, and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave the care of his four children over to their grandmother, who lived in Cookham Dean in Berkshire. There they lived in a spacious but dilapidated home, "The Mount", in extensive grounds by the River Thames, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church.
At Christmas 1865 the chimney of the house collapsed and the children moved to Fern Hill Cottage in Cranbourne, Berkshire. In 1866, their father tried to overcome his drinking problem and took the children back to live with him in Argyll, Scotland, but after a year they returned to their grandmother's house in Cranbourne, where Kenneth lived until he entered St Edward's School, Oxford in 1868. During his early years at St. Edwards the boys were free to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobbled streets, St Giles' Fair, the idyllic upper reaches of the River Thames, and the nearby countryside.
Grahame married Elspeth Thomson, the daughter of Robert William Thomson in 1899, when he was 40; the next year they had their only child, a boy named Alastair (whose nickname was "Mouse") born premature, blind in one eye, and plagued by health problems throughout his life. When Alastair was about four years old, Grahame would tell him bedtime stories, some of which were about a toad, and on his frequent boating holidays without his family he would write further tales of Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger in letters to Alastair.
In 1908 Grahame took early retirement from his job at the Bank of England and moved with his wife and son to an old farmhouse in Blewbury, where he used the bedtime stories he had told Alastair as a basis for the manuscript of "The Wind in the Willows".
With the arrival of spring and fine weather outside, the good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. He has fled his underground home, emerging to take in the air and ends up at the river, which he has never seen before. Here he meets Rat (a water vole), who at this time of year spends all his days in, on and close by the river. Rat takes Mole for a ride in his rowing boat. They get along well and spend many more days boating, with “Ratty” teaching Mole the ways of the river, with the two friends living together in Ratty's riverside home.
One summer day, Rat and Mole disembark near the grand Toad Hall and pay a visit to Toad. Toad is rich, jovial, friendly and kindhearted, but aimless and conceited; he regularly becomes obsessed with current fads, only to abandon them abruptly. Having recently given up boating, Toad's current craze is his horse-drawn caravan. He persuades the reluctant Rat and willing Mole to join him on a trip. Toad soon tires of the realities of camp life, and sleeps in the following day to avoid chores. Later that day, a passing motorcar scares the horse, causing the caravan to overturn into a ditch. Rat threatens to have the law on the car driver, while Mole calms the horse, but Toad's craze for caravan travel is immediately replaced by an obsession with motorcars.
Mole wants to meet the respected but elusive Badger, who lives deep in the Wild Wood, but Rat – knowing that Badger does not appreciate visits – tells Mole to be patient and wait for Badger to pay them a visit himself. Nevertheless, on a snowy winter's day, while the seasonally somnolent Rat dozes, Mole impulsively goes to the Wild Wood to explore, hoping to meet Badger. He gets lost in the woods, sees many "evil faces" among the wood's less-welcoming denizens, succumbs to fright and panic and hides, trying to stay warm, among the sheltering roots of a tree.
Rat wakes to find Mole gone. Guessing his mission from the direction of Mole's tracks and equipping himself with two pistols and a stout cudgel, Rat goes in search, finding him as snow begins to fall in earnest. Attempting to find their way home, Rat and Mole quite literally stumble across Badger's home – Mole barks his shin on the boot scraper on Badger's doorstep. Badger – en route to bed in his dressing gown and slippers – nonetheless warmly welcomes Rat and Mole to his large and cosy underground home, providing them with hot food, dry clothes, and reassuring conversation: "It takes all sorts to make a world."
Badger learns from his visitors that Toad has crashed seven cars, has been in hospital three times, and has spent a fortune on fines. Though nothing can be done at the moment (it being winter), they resolve that when the time is right they will make a plan to protect Toad from himself; they are, after all, his friends, and are worried about his well being.
With the arrival of spring, Badger visits Mole and Rat to take action over Toad's self-destructive obsession. The three of them go to Toad Hall, and Badger tries talking Toad out of his behavior, to no avail. They put Toad under house arrest, with themselves as the guards, until Toad changes his mind. Feigning illness, Toad bamboozles Rat (who is on guard duty at the time) and escapes.
Badger and Mole are cross with Rat for his gullibility, but draw comfort because they need no longer waste their summer guarding Toad. However, Badger and Mole continue to live in Toad Hall in the hope that Toad may return. Meanwhile, Toad orders lunch at The Red Lion Inn, and then sees a motorcar pull into the courtyard. Taking the car, he drives it recklessly and is caught by the police. He is sent to prison for 20 years.
In prison, Toad gains the sympathy of the gaoler's daughter, who helps him to escape disguised as a washerwoman. Though free again, Toad is without money or possessions other than the clothes upon his back. He manages to board a railway engine manned by a sympathetic driver, which is then pursued by a special train loaded with policemen, detectives and prison warders. Toad jumps from the train and, still disguised as a washerwoman, comes across a horse-drawn barge. The barge's female owner offers him a lift in exchange for Toad's services as a washerwoman. After he botches the wash, Toad gets into a fight with the barge woman, who tosses him into the canal. In revenge, Toad makes off with the barge horse, which he then sells to a gypsy.
Toad subsequently flags down a passing car, which happens to be the very one he stole earlier. The car owners, not recognising Toad in his disguise, permit him to drive their car. Once behind the wheel, he is repossessed by his former exuberance and drives furiously, declaring his true identity to the passengers, who then try to seize him. This leads to the car landing in a horse pond, after which Toad flees once more. Pursued by police, he accidentally runs into a river, which carries him by sheer chance to the house of Rat.
Toad now hears from Rat that Toad Hall has been taken over by weasels and stoats from the Wild Wood, who have driven out Mole and Badger. Although upset at the loss of his house, Toad realizes what good friends he has and how badly he has behaved. Badger then arrives and announces that he knows of a secret tunnel into Toad Hall through which the enemies may be attacked. Armed to the teeth, Badger, Rat, Mole and Toad enter through the tunnel and pounce upon the unsuspecting Wild-Wooders who are holding a celebratory party. Having driven away the intruders, Toad holds a banquet to mark his return, during which (for a change) he behaves both quietly and humbly. He makes up for his earlier excesses by seeking out and compensating those he has wronged, and the four friends live out their lives happily ever after.
In addition to the main narrative, the book contains several independent short stories featuring Rat and Mole. These appear for the most part between the chapters chronicling Toad's adventures, and are often omitted from abridgements and dramatisations. The chapter "Dulce Domum" describes Mole's return to his home with Rat where he rediscovers, with Rat's help, a familiar comfort, despite finding it in a terrible mess after his abortive spring clean. "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" tells how Mole and Rat search for Otter's missing son Portly, whom they find in the care of the god Pan. (Pan removes their memories of this meeting ""lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure"".) Finally, in "Wayfarers All", Ratty shows a restless side to his character when he is sorely tempted to join a Sea Rat on his travelling adventures.
The original publication of the book was plain text, with a frontispiece illustrated by Graham Robertson, but many illustrated, comic, and annotated versions have been published over the years. Notable illustrators include Paul Bransom (1913), Nancy Barnhart (1922), Wyndham Payne (1927), Ernest H. Shepard (1931), Arthur Rackham (1940), Richard Cuffari (1966), Tasha Tudor (1966), Michael Hague (1980), Scott McKowen (2005), and Robert Ingpen (2007).
A number of publishers rejected the manuscript. It was published in the UK by Methuen and Co., and later in the US by Scribner. The critics, who were hoping for a third volume in the style of Grahame's earlier works; "The Golden Age" and "Dream Days", generally gave negative reviews. The public loved it, however, and within a few years it sold in such numbers that many reprints were required. In 1909, then sitting US President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Grahame to tell him that he had "read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends".
In "The Enchanted Places", Christopher Robin Milne wrote of "The Wind in the Willows":
Unproduced
The BBC has broadcast a number of radio productions of the story. Dramatisations include:
Abridged readings include:
Other presentation formats:
Mapledurham House in Oxfordshire was an inspiration for Toad Hall, although Hardwick House and Fawley Court also make this claim.
The village of Lerryn, Cornwall claims to be the setting for the book.
Simon Winchester suggested that the character of Ratty was based on Frederick Furnivall, a keen oarsman and acquaintance of Kenneth Grahame. However, Grahame himself said that this character was inspired by his good friend, the writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Grahame wrote this in a signed copy he gave to Quiller-Couch's daughter, Foy Felicia.
"The Scotsman" and "Oban Times" suggested was inspired by the Crinan Canal because Grahame spent some of his childhood in Ardrishaig.
There is a proposal that the idea for the story arose when its author saw a water vole beside the River Pang in Berkshire, southern England. A 29 hectare extension to the nature reserve at Moor Copse, near Tidmarsh Berkshire, was acquired in January 2007 by the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Wildlife Trust.
Peter Ackroyd in his book "Thames: sacred river" asserts that "Quarry Wood, bordering on the river [Thames] at Cookham Dean, is the original of [the] 'Wild Wood' . . . ." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45133 |
Discourse
Discourse (from ) generally denotes written and spoken communications, though its usage differs between various disciplines and approaches. For instance, in semantics and discourse analysis, it is a conceptual generalization of conversation within each modality and context of communication. Moreover, in regard to semantics, discourse is understood as the totality of codified language (i.e., vocabulary) used in a given field of intellectual enquiry and of social practice, such as legal discourse, medical discourse, religious discourse, etc.
In the work of philosopher Michel Foucault, and that of the social theoreticians Foucault inspired, "discourse" describes "an entity of sequences, of signs, in that they are" statements () in conversation. As discourse, a statement is not a unit of semiotic signs, but an abstract construct that allows such signs to assign meaning, thus conveying specific, repeatable communications to, between, and among objects, subjects, and statements. As such, a discourse is composed of semiotic sequences (relations among signs that communicate meaning) between and among objects, subjects, and statements. In simple terms, Foucault's analysis of a "discourse" examines and determines the connections among language, as well as structure and agency. Foucault applied what he called "discursive formation" (), a term that conceptually describes the regular communications (written and spoken) that produce such discourses (e.g. informal conversations), in his analyses of large bodies of knowledge, such as political economy and natural history.
Various understandings of discourse can be seen as being in perpetual conflict with each other in time. Hence, in the course of intellectual enquiry, discourse among researchers features questions of, and answers to, ""What is ...?"" and ""What is not...?,"" conducted according to the meanings (i.e., denotation and connotation) of the concepts (statements) used in the given field of enquiry, such as anthropology, ethnography, sociology, cultural studies, and literary theory, as well as the philosophies of science and feminism.
In semantics, and the more-general discourse analysis, "discourse" is a conceptual generalization of conversation within each modality and context of communication. In this sense, the term is studied in corpus linguistics, the study of language expressed in "corpora" (samples) of "real world" text.
The study of semantics particularizes "discourse" as meaning the totality of codified language (i.e., vocabulary) used in a given field of intellectual enquiry and of social practice, such as legal discourse, medical discourse, religious discourse, etc. In this sense, along with that of Foucault's in the previous section, the analysis of a "discourse" examines and determines the connections among language and structure and agency.
Moreover, because a discourse is a body of text meant to communicate specific data, information, and knowledge, there exist internal relations in the content of a given discourse, as well as external relations among discourses. As such, a discourse does not exist "per se" (in itself), but is related to other discourses, by way of inter-discursive practices.
In formal semantics, discourse representation theory describes the formal semantics of a sentence using predicate logic.
In the general humanities and social sciences, discourse describes a formal way of thinking that can be expressed through language. Discourse is a social boundary that defines what statements can be said about a topic. Many definitions of discourse are largely derived from the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault. In sociology, "discourse" is defined as "any practice (found in a wide range of forms) by which individuals imbue reality with meaning."
Political science sees discourse as closely linked to politics and policy making. Likewise, different theories among various disciplines understand discourse as linked to power and state, insofar as the control of "discourses" is understood as a hold on reality itself (e.g. if a state controls the media, they control the "truth"). In essence, "discourse" is inescapable, since any use of language will have an affect on individual perspectives. In other words, the chosen discourse provides the vocabulary, expressions, and, perhaps, even the style needed to communicate. For example, two notably distinct discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements, describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists."
In psychology, discourses are embedded in different rhetorical genres and meta-genres that constrain and enable them—language talking about language. This is exemplified in the APA's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", which tells of the terms that have to be used in speaking about mental health, thereby mediating meanings and dictating practices of professionals in psychology and psychiatry.
Modern theorists were focused on achieving progress and believed in the existence of natural and social laws which could be used universally to develop knowledge and thus a better understanding of society. Such theorists would be preoccupied with obtaining the "truth" and "reality," seeking to develop theories which contained certainty and predictability. Modernist theorists therefore viewed discourse as being relative to talking or way of talking and understood discourse to be functional. Discourse and language transformations are ascribed to progress or the need to develop new or more "accurate" words to describe new discoveries, understandings, or areas of interest. In modern times, language and discourse are dissociated from power and ideology and instead conceptualized as "natural" products of common sense usage or progress. Modernism further gave rise to the liberal discourses of rights, equality, freedom, and justice; however, this rhetoric masked substantive inequality and failed to account for differences, according to Regnier.
Structuralist theorists, such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Lacan, argue that all human actions and social formations are related to language and can be understood as systems of related elements. This means that the "…individual elements of a system only have significance when considered in relation to the structure as a whole, and that structures are to be understood as self-contained, self-regulated, and self-transforming entities." In other words, it is the structure itself that determines the significance, meaning and function of the individual elements of a system. Structuralism has made an important contribution to our understanding of language and social systems. Saussure's theory of language highlights the decisive role of meaning and signification in structuring human life more generally.
Following the perceived limitations of the modern era, emerged postmodern theory. Postmodern theorists rejected modernist claims that there was one theoretical approach that explained all aspects of society. Rather, postmodernist theorists were interested in examining the variety of experience of individuals and groups and emphasized differences over similarities and common experiences.
In contrast to modern theory, postmodern theory is more fluid, allowing for individual differences as it rejects the notion of social laws. Such theorists shifted away from truth-seeking, and instead sought answers for how truths are produced and sustained. Postmodernists contended that truth and knowledge is plural, contextual, and historically-produced through discourses. Postmodern researchers therefore embarked on analyzing discourses such as texts, language, policies, and practices.
French social theorist Michel Foucault developed a notion of discourse in his early work, namely in the "Archaeology of Knowledge" (1969; ). Iara Lessa (2006) summarizes Foucault's definition of discourse as "systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak." Foucault traces the role of discourses in wider social processes of legitimating and power, emphasizing the construction of current truths, how they are maintained, and what power relations they carry with them. He would later theorize discourse as a medium through which power relations produce speaking subjects.
Foucault (1977, 1980) argued that power and knowledge are inter-related and, thus, every human relationship is a struggle and negotiation of power. Even further, he would state that power is always present and can both produce and constrain the truth. Discourse according to Foucault (1977, 1980, 2003) is related to power as it operates by rules of exclusion. Discourse, therefore, is controlled by: objects, what can be spoken of; ritual, where and how one may speak; and the privileged, who may speak. Coining the phrase power-knowledge, Foucault (1980) would argue that knowledge is both the "creator" of power and the "creation" of power. An object becomes a "node within a network." In "the Archaeology of Knowledge," Foucault uses the example of a book to illustrate a node within a network: a book is not made up of individual words on a page, each of which has meaning, but rather "is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences." The meaning of that book is connected to a larger, overarching web of knowledge and ideas to which it relates.
One of the key discourses that Foucault identified as part of his critique of power-knowledge was that of neoliberalism, which he related very closely to his conceptualization of governmentality in his lectures on biopolitics. This trajectory of Foucault's thinking has been taken up widely within Human Geography. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45134 |
Georg Major
George Major (April 25, 1502 – November 28, 1574) was a Lutheran theologian of the Protestant Reformation. He was born in Nuremberg and died at Wittenberg.
At the age of nine Major was sent to Wittenberg, and in 1521 entered the university there. When Cruciger returned to Wittenberg in 1529, Major was appointed rector of the Johannisschule in Magdeburg, but in 1537 he became court preacher at Wittenberg and was ordained by Martin Luther.
In 1545 he was made professor in the theological faculty, in which his authority increased to such an extent that in the following year the elector sent him to the Conference of Regensburg, where he was soon captivated by the personality of Butzer. Like Philipp Melanchthon, he fled before the disastrous close of the Schmalkald war, and found refuge in Magdeburg. In the summer of 1547, he returned to Wittenberg, and in the same year became cathedral superintendent at Merseburg, although he resumed his activity at the university in the following year.
In the negotiations of the Augsburg Interim, he took the part of Melanchthon in first opposing it and then making concessions. This attitude incurred the enmity of the opponents of the Interim, especially after he cancelled a number of passages in the second edition of his "Psalterium" in which he had violently attacked the position of Maurice, Elector of Saxony, whom he now requested to prohibit all polemical treatises proceeding from Magdeburg, while he condemned the preachers of Torgau who were imprisoned in Wittenberg on account of their opposition to the Interim. He was even accused of accepting bribes from Maurice.
In 1552, Count Hans Georg, who favored the Interim, appointed him superintendent of Eisleben, on the recommendation of Melchior Kling. The orthodox clergy of the County of Mansfeld, however, immediately suspected him of being an interimist and adiaphorist, and he tried to defend his position in public, but his apology resulted in a dispute called the Majoristic Controversy.
At Christmas, 1552, Count Albrecht expelled him without trial and he fled to Wittenberg, where he resumed his activity as professor and member of the Wittenberg Consistory. Thence forth he was an important and active member in the circle of the Wittenberg Philippists.
From 1558 to 1574 he was dean of the theological faculty and repeatedly held the rectorate of the university. He lived long enough to experience the first overthrow of Crypto-Calvinism in the Electorate of Saxony, and Paul Crell, his son-in-law, signed for him at Torgau in May 1574 the articles which repudiated Calvinism and acknowledged the unity of Luther and Melanchthon.
Among his writings, special mention may be made of the following:
as well as commentaries on the Pauline epistles and homilies on the pericopes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45138 |
Chennai
Chennai (, ), also known as Madras ( or , the official name until 1996), is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal, it is a primary cultural, economic and educational centre of south India. According to the 2011 Indian census, it is the sixth-most populous city and fourth-most populous urban agglomeration in India. The city together with the adjoining regions constitutes the Chennai Metropolitan Area, which is the 36th-largest urban area by population in the world. Chennai is among the most-visited Indian cities by foreign tourists. It was ranked the 43rd-most visited city in the world for the year 2015. The Quality of Living Survey rated Chennai as the safest city in India. Chennai attracts 45 percent of health tourists visiting India, and 30 to 40 percent of domestic health tourists. As such, it is termed "India's health capital".
Chennai had the third-largest expatriate population in India, at 35,000 in 2009, 82,790 in 2011 and estimated at over 100,000 by 2016. Tourism-guide publisher Lonely Planet named Chennai as one of the top ten cities in the world to visit in 2015. Chennai is ranked as a beta-level city in the Global Cities Index, and was ranked the best city in India by "India Today" in the 2014 annual Indian city survey. In 2015 Chennai was named the "hottest" city (city worth visiting and worth living in for long term) by the BBC, citing the mixture of both modern and traditional values. National Geographic mentioned Chennai as the only South Asian city to feature in its 2015 "Top 10 food cities" list. Chennai was also named the ninth-best cosmopolitan city in the world by Lonely Planet. In October 2017, Chennai was added to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) list for its rich musical tradition.
The Chennai Metropolitan Area is one of the largest municipal economies of India. Chennai is nicknamed "The Detroit of India", with more than one-third of India's automobile industry being based in the city. Home to the Tamil film industry, Chennai is also known as a major film production centre. Chennai is one of the 100 Indian cities to be developed as a smart city under the Smart Cities Mission.
The name "Chennai" is of Telugu origin. It was derived from the name of a Telugu ruler, Damarla Mudirasa Chennappa Nayakudu, father of Damarla Venkatapathy Nayak, a Nayak ruler who served as a general under Venkata III of the Vijayanagar Empire from whom the British acquired the town in 1639. The first official use of the name "Chennai" is said to be in a sale deed, dated August 1639, to Francis Day of the East India Company, even before the Chennakesava Perumal Temple was built in 1646, while some scholars argue to the contrary.
The name "Madras" is also of native origin, and has been shown to have been in use before the British established a presence in India. A Vijayanagar-era inscription dated to the year 1367 that mentions the port of Mādarasanpattanam, along with other small ports on the east coast, was discovered in 2015 and it was theorised that the aforementioned port is the fishing port of Royapuram. According to some sources, "Madras" is derived from Madraspattinam, a fishing village north of Fort St George. However, it is uncertain whether the name was in use before the arrival of Europeans. British military mapmakers believed Madras was originally "Mundir-raj" or "Mundiraj," which was the name of a Telugu community, Mudiraj, who were the native inhabitants of the city.
There are also suggestions that it may have originated from the Portuguese phrase "Mãe de Deus" or "Madre de Dios", which means "mother of God", due to Portuguese influence on the port city, specifically referring to a Church of St. Mary.
In 1996, the Government of Tamil Nadu officially changed the name from "Madras" to "Chennai". At that time many Indian cities underwent a change of name. However, the name "Madras" continues in occasional use for the city, as well as for places named after the city such as University of Madras, IIT Madras, Madras Institute of Technology, Madras Medical College, Madras Veterinary College, Madras Christian College.
Stone age implements have been found near Pallavaram in Chennai. According to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Pallavaram was a megalithic cultural establishment, and pre-historic communities resided in the settlement.
The region around Chennai has served as an important administrative, military, and economic centre for many centuries. During the 1st century CE, a poet and weaver named Thiruvalluvar lived in the town of Mylapore (a neighbourhood of present Chennai). From the 1st–12th century the region of present Tamil Nadu and parts of South India was ruled by the Cholas.
The Pallavas of Kanchi built the areas of Mahabalipuram and Pallavaram during the reign of Mahendravarman I. They also defeated several kingdoms including the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas who ruled over the area before their arrival. Sculpted caves and paintings have been identified from that period. Ancient coins dating to around 500 BC have also been unearthed from the city and its surrounding areas. A portion of these findings belonged to the Vijayanagara Empire, which ruled the region during the medieval period.
The Portuguese first arrived in 1522 and built a port called "São Tomé" after the Christian apostle, St. Thomas, who is believed to have preached in the area between 52 and 70 CE. In 1612, the Dutch established themselves near Pulicat, north of Chennai.
On 20 August 1639 Francis Day of the East India Company along with the Nayak of Kalahasti Damarla Chennappa Nayakudu, travelled to the Chandragiri palace for an audience with the Vijayanager Emperor Peda Venkata Raya. Day was seeking to obtain a grant for land on the Coromandel coast on which the Company could build a factory and warehouse for their trading activities. He was successful in obtaining the lease of a strip of land about long and inland in return for a yearly sum of five hundred lakh pagodas. On 22 August, he secured the land grant from local Nayak (Damarla Venkatadri Nayaka and his younger brother Aiyappa Nayaka of Poonamallee). The region was then formerly a fishing village known as "Madraspatnam". A year later, the Company built Fort St. George, the first major English settlement in India, which became the nucleus of the growing colonial city and urban Chennai, grew around this Fort. Post independence the fort housed the Tamil Nadu Assembly until the new Secretariat building was opened in 2010, but shortly afterwards it was again moved back to Fort St. George, due to a change in the Government.
In 1746, Fort St. George and Madras were captured by the French under General La Bourdonnais, the Governor of Mauritius, who plundered the town and its outlying villages. The British regained control in 1749 through the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and strengthened the town's fortress wall to withstand further attacks from the French and Hyder Ali, the Sultan of Mysore. They resisted a French siege attempt in 1759 under the leadership of Eyre Coote. In 1769 the city was threatened by Mysore and the British were defeated by Hyder Ali, after which the Treaty of Madras ended the war. By the 18th century, the British had conquered most of the region around Tamil Nadu and the northern modern–day states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, establishing the Madras Presidency with Madras as the capital.
Gradually, the city grew into a major naval base and became the central administrative centre for the British in South India. With the advent of railways in India in the 19th century, the thriving urban centre was connected to other important cities such as Bombay and Calcutta, promoting increased communication and trade with the hinterland. Sir Arthur Lawley was Governor of Madras from 1906 to 1911 and promoted modern agriculture, industry, railways, education, the arts and more democratic governance. The Governor lived in Government House, Fort St George, and had a country home at Guindy, with access to a golf course, hockey pitches, riding stables and the Guindy Horse Racing Track. In the First World War as Red Cross Commissioner in Mesopotamia, he looked after the welfare of Indian soldiers. Madras was the only Indian city to be attacked by the Central Powers during World War I, when an oil depot was shelled by the German light cruiser on 22 September 1914, as it raided shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, causing disruption to shipping.
After India gained its independence in 1947, the city became the capital of Madras State, which was renamed as Tamil Nadu in 1969. The violent agitations of 1965 against the compulsory imposition of Hindi and in support of English in India in the state marked a major shift in the political dynamics of the city and eventually it had a big impact on the whole state. Because of Madras and its people, English now exists in India, otherwise Hindi might have been made the sole official language in India. On 17 July 1996, the city known as Madras was officially renamed Chennai, in line with what was then a nationwide trend to using less Anglicised names. On 26 December 2004, an Indian Ocean tsunami lashed the shores of Chennai, killing 206 people in Chennai and permanently altering the coastline. The 2015 Chennai Floods submerged major portions of the city, killing 269 people and resulting in damages of .
Chennai is located on the south–eastern coast of India in the north–eastern part of Tamil Nadu on a flat coastal plain known as the Eastern Coastal Plains. Its average elevation is around , and its highest point is . Chennai is south of Delhi, southeast of Mumbai, and east of Bangalore by road. Two major rivers flow through Chennai, the Cooum River (or "Koovam") through the centre and the Adyar River to the south. A third river, the Kortalaiyar, travels through the northern fringes of the city before draining into the Bay of Bengal, at Ennore. The estuary of this river is heavily polluted with effluents released by the industries in the region. Adyar and Cooum rivers are heavily polluted with effluents and waste from domestic and commercial sources, the Coumm being so heavily polluted it is regarded as the city's eyesore. A protected estuary on the Adyar forms a natural habitat for several species of birds and animals. The Buckingham Canal, inland, runs parallel to the coast, linking the two rivers. The Otteri Nullah, an east–west stream, runs through north Chennai and meets the Buckingham Canal at Basin Bridge. Several lakes of varying size are located on the western fringes of the city. Some areas of the city have the problem of excess iron content in groundwater.
Chennai's soil is mostly clay, shale and sandstone. Clay underlies most of the city, chiefly Manali, Kolathur, Maduravoyal, K. K. Nagar, Tambaram, Mudichur, Pallavaram Semmencherry, Alapakkam, Vyasarpadi and Anna Nagar. Sandy areas are found along the river banks and coasts, and include areas such as Tiruvottiyur, George Town, Madhavaram, New Washermanpet, Chepauk, Mylapore, Porur, Adyar, Besant Nagar and Uthandi. In these areas, rainwater runoff percolates quickly through the soil. Areas having hard rock surface include Guindy, Nanganallur, Pallikaranai, Alandur, Jaladampet, Velachery, Adambakkam and a part of Saidapet and Perungudi. The ground water table in Chennai is at 4-5m below ground in most of the areas, which was considerably improved and maintained through the mandatory rain water harvesting system. Of the 24.87 km coastline of the city, 3.08 km experiences erosion, with sand accretion along the shoreline can be noticed at the Marina beach and the area between the Ennore Port and Kosasthalaiyar river.
Chennai is classified as being in Seismic Zone III, indicating a moderate risk of damage from earthquakes. Owing to the geotectonic zone the city falls in, the city is considered a potential geothermal energy site. The crust has granite rocks indicating volcanic activities in the past. It is expected that temperatures of around 200 to 300 C° will be available if the ground were drilled 4 to 5 km deep. The region has the oldest rocks in the country dating back to nearly a billion years.
The southern stretch of Chennai's coast from Tiruvanmiyur to Neelangarai are favoured by the endangered olive ridley sea turtles to lay eggs every winter. A large number of cattle egrets, pond herons and other waterbirds can be seen in the rivers of Cooum and Adyar. About 75,000 birds migrate to Chennai every year. Marshy wetlands such as Pallikaranai also play host to a number of migratory birds during the monsoon and winter. Over 300 species of birds have been recorded in the city and its neighbourhood by members of Madras Naturalists' Society since its inception in 1978.
Guindy National Park is a protected area within the city limits. Wildlife conservation and research activities take place at
Arignar Anna Zoological Park including olive ridley sea turtle conservation. Madras Crocodile Bank Trust is a herpetology research station, located south of Chennai. The city's tree cover is estimated to be around 64.06 sq km. The most dominant tree species is the copper pod, followed by Indian beech and Neem. A total of 121 species of trees belonging to 94 genera and 42 families are found in the city. Nearly half of the native plant species in the city's wetlands have disappeared in recent years. The city, which had 85 percent of its area covered with aquatic plants until the 1970s, now has only 25 percent of its area covered with such plants.
Chennai has three rivers and many lakes spread across the city. Urbanization has led to shrinkage of water bodies and wetlands. The quantity of wetlands in the city has decreased from 650 to only 27 currently. The Chennai River Restoration trust set up by the government is working on the restoration of Adyar river. Environmentalist Foundation of India is a volunteering group working towards wildlife conservation and habitat restoration.
The encroachment of urban development on wetlands has gravely hampered the city's sustainability, and contributed both to the city's floods in 2015 and water scarcity crisis in 2019.
Chennai has a dry-summer tropical wet and dry climate (Köppen climate classification: As). The city lies on the thermal equator and is also on the coast, which prevents extreme variation in seasonal temperature. The hottest part of the year is late May to early June, known regionally as "Agni Nakshatram" ("fire star") or as "Kathiri Veyyil", with maximum temperatures around . The coolest part of the year is January, with minimum temperatures around . The lowest recorded temperature was on 11 December 1895 and 29 January 1905. The highest recorded temperature was on 31 May 2003. The average annual rainfall is about .
The city gets most of its seasonal rainfall from the north–east monsoon winds, from mid–October to mid–December. Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal sometimes hit the city. The highest annual rainfall recorded is in 2005. Prevailing winds in Chennai are usually southwesterly between April and October and north-easterly during the rest of the year. Historically, Chennai has relied on the annual rains of the monsoon season to replenish water reservoirs, as no major rivers flow through the area. Chennai has a water table at 2 metres for 60 percent of the year.
The city of Chennai is located on the east coast of India, which is also known as the Coromandel Coast.
Chennai is largely dependent on NE monsoon, since 65% of rains are received in this season. Cyclones and depressions are common features during the season. Cyclones, in particular, are especially unpredictable. They may even move towards Orissa, west Bengal, Bangladesh, and also Myanmar. The season between October and December is referred as the NE monsoon period. Floods are common during this period. In 2015 Chennai received record-breaking rains since 1918, which caused massive floods.
The entire east coast is vulnerable to cyclones during the monsoon period. For example, in 2007 a major cyclone named "Cyclone Sidr" skipped Chennai and headed towards Bangladesh. The result was a failure of NE monsoon in Chennai, that particular year. Even in the past, there has been many occasions where cyclones had a great influence on the monsoon.
As of 2018, the city had a green cover of 14.9 percent, against the World Health Organization recommendation of 9 square meters of green cover per capita in cities. The city had a built-up area of 71 percent. Waterbodies cover an estimated 6 percent of the total area, and at least 8 percent of the area has classified as open space. As of 2017, the total volume of water harvested was 339 mcft and groundwater recharge was 170 mcft.
Chennai city is governed by the Greater Chennai Corporation (formerly "Corporation of Madras"), which was established in 1688. It is the oldest surviving municipal corporation in India and the second oldest surviving corporation in the world. In 2011, the jurisdiction of the Chennai Corporation was expanded from to an area of , dividing into three regions—North, South and Central, which covers 200 wards. The corporation is headed by a mayor, an office presently occupied by Saidai Sa. Duraisamy. The Mayor and councillors of the city are elected through a popular vote by the residents. While the city limit was expanded in 2011, the revised population is yet to be officially announced.
The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) is the nodal agency responsible for planning and development of Chennai Metropolitan Area, which is spread over an area of , covering the Chennai district and parts of Tiruvallur and Kanchipuram districts. The larger suburbs are governed by town municipalities and the smaller ones are governed by town councils called panchayats. Under the gamut of the CMDA are 5 parliamentary and 28 assembly constituencies. The CMDA has drafted an additional Master Plan that aims to develop satellite townships around the city. The city's contiguous satellite towns include Mahabalipuram in the south, Chengalpattu and Maraimalai Nagar in the southwest, and Sriperumpudur, Arakkonam, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur to the west.
Chennai, as the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, houses the state executive and legislative headquarters primarily in the Secretariat Buildings in the Fort St George campus. The Madras High Court, is the highest judicial authority in the state, whose jurisdiction extends across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Chennai has three parliamentary constituencies—Chennai North, Chennai Central and Chennai South—and elects 24 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) to the state legislature.
The Greater Chennai Police is the main law enforcement agency in the city, with a jurisdiction of over catering to over 8.5 million people. It consists of 121 police stations and is headed by a commissioner of police. The Greater Chennai Police is a division of the Tamil Nadu Police, and the administrative control lies with the Tamil Nadu Home Ministry. Chennai City Traffic Police (CCTP) is responsible for the traffic management in the city. The metropolitan suburbs are policed by the Chennai Metropolitan Police, headed by the Chennai Police Commissionerate, and the outer district areas of the CMDA are policed by the Kanchipuram and Thiruvallur police departments.
In 2009, Madras Central Prison, one of the oldest prisons in India, built over of land, was demolished; the prisoners were moved to Puzhal Central Prison.
Since the 19th century, when Western scholars proposed that Dravidian languages, which dominated the southern region of India, formed a different linguistic group to that of the Indo-Aryan languages that are predominant in the north of the subcontinent, the aspects of Tamil nationalism gained prominence. This resulted in the Anti-Hindi agitations in the city and across the state. However, the post-Independence re-organisation of Indian states according to linguistic and ethnic basis has moderated Tamil nationalism, especially the demand for separation from the Indian Union. The Anti-Hindi agitations in mid-1960s made the DMK more popular and more powerful political force in the state. The agitations of the 1960s played a crucial role in the defeat of the Tamil Nadu Congress party in the 1967 elections and the continuing dominance of Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu politics.
Being the capital of the Madras Province that covered a vast area of the Deccan region, Chennai remained the centre of politics in the southern region of India during the British colonial era. After Independence, it remained the centre of political activities of the state of Tamil Nadu. Chennai is the birthplace of the idea of the Indian National Congress, commonly known as the Congress Party. Founded by Indian and British members of the Theosophical Society movement, most notably A.O. Hume, the idea was originally conceived in a private meeting of 17 men after a Theosophical Convention held in the city in December 1884. During the first 50 years of the Indian National Congress, the city played host to its conferences seven times in 1887, 1894, 1898, 1903, 1908, 1914 and 1927, becoming one of the strong bases for the Indian independence movement. After independence, the city hosted the Congress in 1955 in its suburb of Avadi.
Chennai is also the birthplace of several regional political movements since the British era. South Indian Welfare Association, one of the earliest regional parties, was founded in 1916, which later came to be known as the Justice Party, which was the main opposition party to the Indian National Congress in the state. In 1944, the party was renamed Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) by E. V. Ramasami (popularly known as 'Periyar'). The party was a non-political party that demanded the establishment of an independent state called Dravida Nadu. However, due to the differences between its two leaders Periyar and C. N. Annadurai, the party was split. Annadurai left the party to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). The DMK decided to enter into politics in 1956.
The city's water supply and sewage treatment are managed by the Chennai MetroWater Supply and Sewage Board. Water is drawn from Red Hills Lake and Chembarambakkam Lake, the primary water reservoirs of the city, and treated at water treatment plants located at Kilpauk, Puzhal, Chembarambakkam and supplied to the city through 27 water distribution stations. The city receives 530 million liters per day (mld) of water from Krishna River through Telugu Ganga project, 180 mld of water from the Veeranam lake project and 100 mld of water from the Minjur desalination plant, the country's largest sea water desalination plant. However, Chennai is predicted to face a huge deficit of 713 mld in 2026 as the demand is projected at 2,248 mld and supply estimated at only 1,535 mld. The city's sewer system was designed in 1910, with some modifications in 1958. There are 714 public toilets in the city managed by the city corporation, and 2,000 more have been planned by the corporation. The corporation also owns 52 community halls across the city.
The Corporation of Chennai provides civic services to the city. Garbage collection in some of the wards is contracted to Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited, a private company, while the Corporation looks after the removal and processing of solid waste in the others, with a superintendent engineer managing the channels. , eight transfer stations exist within the city for treating the waste. Garbage is dumped in two dump-yards in the city—One in Kodungaiyur and another in Pallikaranai, with a major portion of the latter covering the Pallikaranai marshland. In market areas, the conservancy work is done during the night. Electricity is distributed by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board. Fire services are handled by the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services. The city, along with the suburbs, has 33 operating fire stations.
The Chennai City region has 568 post offices, of which nearly 460 operate from rented premises.
With the history of many neighbourhoods of the city such as Mylapore, Triplicane, and Tiruvanmiyur antedating that of the city, the architecture of Chennai ranges in a wide chronology. The oldest buildings in the city dates from the 7th and 8th centuries CE, which include the Kapaleeshwarar Temple in Mylapore and the Parthasarathy Temple in Triplicane, built in the Dravidian architecture. This architecture includes various styles, such as those of the Pallavas, the Cholas, and the Vijayanagara empires. The associated "Agraharam" architecture, which consists of traditional row houses surrounding a temple, can still be seen in these areas. The heritage temples at Mamallapuram at the outskirts of the city are some of the examples of the Pallava architecture. Chennai ranks second to Kolkata of Indian heritage buildings.
With the advent of the Mugals and the British, the city saw a rise in a blend of Hindu, Islamic and Gothic revival styles, resulting in the distinct Indo-Saracenic style. The architecture for several early institutions such as banking and commerce, railways, press and education, chiefly through the colonial rule, followed the earlier directions of the Neo-Classical and the Indo-Saracenic. The Chepauk Palace in the city, designed by Paul Benfield, is said to be the first Indo-Saracenic building in India. Since then, many of the colonial-era buildings in the city were designed in this style of architecture, which is most apparent around the Fort St. George built in 1640. Most of these were designed by English architects Robert Fellowes Chisholm and Henry Irwin. The best examples of this style include the Madras High Court (built in 1892), Southern Railway headquarters, Ripon Building, Government Museum, Senate House of the University of Madras, Amir Mahal, Bharat Insurance Building, Victoria Public Hall and the College of Engineering. The Triumph of Labour, also known as the Labour statue, at the Marina Beach is an important landmark of Chennai.
The construction of the National Art Gallery in Madras was completed in 1909. The new building, with a stunning façade, was built of pink sandstone brought from Sathyavedu, and formed part of the Madras Museum campus. It was opened, on 23 January 1909, by the Governor of Fort St. George, Sir Arthur Lawley, and called the Victoria Memorial Hall after the Queen-Empress Victoria. The residential architecture in the city was based on the bungalow or the continuous row house prototypes. Gothic revival style buildings include the Chennai Central and Chennai Egmore railway stations. The Santhome Church, which was originally built by the Portuguese in 1523 and is believed to house the remains of the apostle St. Thomas, was rebuilt in 1893 in neo-Gothic style.
By the early 20th century, the art deco too made its entry upon the city's urban landscape. From the 1930s onwards, many buildings in George Town were built in this style, including the United India building (presently housing LIC) and the Burma Shell building (presently the Chennai House), both built in the 1930s, and the Dare House, built in 1940. Other examples include the Bombay Mutual building (presently housing LIC) and the South Indian Chamber of Commerce building.
After Independence, the city witnessed a rise in the Modernism style of architecture. The completion of the LIC Building in 1959, the tallest building in the country at that time, marked the transition from lime-and-brick construction to concrete columns in the region. The presence of the weather radar at the Chennai Port, however, prohibited the construction of buildings taller than 60 m around a radius of 10 km for several decades that followed. In addition, the floor-area ratio (FAR) in the central business district is also 1.5, much less than that of smaller cities of the country. This resulted in the city expanding horizontally, unlike other metropolitan cities where vertical growth is prominent. On the contrary, the peripheral regions, especially on the southern and south-western sides, are experiencing vertical growth with the construction of buildings up to 60 floors.
A resident of Chennai is called a "Chennaite". According to 2011 census, the city had a population of 4,646,732, within the area administered by the Municipal Corporation; that had 11 lakh households, with 51% of them living in rented houses. The city's limits were expanded later in 2011 and its population reached 7,088,000 with Chennai Municipal Corporation being renamed as Greater Chennai Corporation.
As of 2019, 712,000 families live below poverty line, which is about 40 percent of the 1.788 million families in the city.
Tamils form the majority of Chennai's population. English is spoken largely by white-collar workers, often mixed into Tamil. In 2001, out of the 2,937,000 migrants (33.8% of its population) in the city, 61.5% were from other parts of the state, 33.8% were from rest of India and 3.7% were from outside the country. As per the 2001 census, the number of speakers mother tongue wise are as follows, Tamil is spoken by 3,424,107 (78.8%), followed by Telugu by 419,209 (9.7%), Urdu by 180,245 (4.1%), Malayalam by 113,828 (2.6%), Hindi by 104,084 (2.4%), and Kannada by 22,250 (0.5%). Korean, Japanese, French, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, German and Spanish are some of the languages spoken by the 250,000 foreign expatriates residing in the city.
Chennai, along with Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, is one of the few Indian cities that are home to a diverse population of ethno-religious communities. Minorities include Telugus, Marwaris, Gujaratis, Parsis, Sindhis, Odias, Goans, Kannadigas, Anglo-Indians, Bengalis, Punjabi, and Malayalees. As per the religious census of 2011, Chennai's population was 80.73% Hindu, 9.45% Muslim, 7.72% Christian, 1.11% Jain, 0.06% Sikh, 0.06% Buddhist, <0.04% followed other religions and 0.83% followed no religion or did not indicate any religious preference.
In a 2013 survey titled 'Emerging trends in real estate in Asia Pacific 2014', Chennai emerged in the top 25 real estate destinations list in the Asia Pacific region. The city ranked 22nd in the list. There are about 1,240 slums in Chennai home to about 900,000 people.
Per 2011 census, there are 1.1 million households in the city and the residential housing stock available is 1,150,000 – a surplus of about 50,000 houses. About 43,700 of them are kept vacant. In the suburbs of Chennai located in Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts, the figures of vacant houses 56,000 and 71,000, respectively. Of the existing housing stock in the city, about 200,000 houses are not in good condition, necessitating either to rebuild or build new units. About 26,000 households live in houses without any room and another 427,000 families (with an average size of five members) live in small dwelling units with only one room. An earlier estimate shows that there is a need to generate about 420,000 units for low-income groups by 2016.
, an estimated population of 11,116 (0.16 percent) were homeless. Per Supreme Court guidelines, the city needs 65 shelters for the homeless. However, it has only 15, of which eight are functioning and two are under renovation.
As of 2017, there are more than 2.2 million households, with 40 percent of the residents not owning a house.
Chennai is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The city also has one of the oldest museums and art galleries in the countryGovernment Museum, Chennai and The National Art Gallery (Chennai), established in the early 18th century.
The city also hosts two art festivals annually. The "Fort Museum" inside the premises of Fort St. George is an important museum having a noteworthy collection of objects of the British era in its collection. The museum is managed by the Archaeological Survey of India and has in its possession, the first Flag of India hoisted at Fort St George after the declaration of India's Independence on 15 August 1947.
Chennai is a major centre for music, art and culture in India. The city is known for its classical dance shows. In 1930, for the first time in India, Madras University introduced a course of music, as part of the Bachelor of Arts curriculum. The "Madras Music Season", initiated by Madras Music Academy in 1927, is celebrated every year during the month of December. It features performances of traditional Carnatic music by many artists in and around the city. The main folk music in Chennai is Gaana, a combination of various folk musics sung mainly sung in the working-class area of North Chennai.
An arts festival called the Chennai Sangamam, which showcases not only various art of Tamil Nadu, but also from the neighbouring states, like "kalari" (from Kerala), which is a major attraction, is held in January every year. The Speciality of Chennai Sangamam is that the various programmes are held near or at the various famous landmarks in the city so that everyone in the city has access to the programmes and there is no fee charged for entry for any of the programmes. "Pookolam", a form of art that uses coloured flour to create patterns and designs, comes from Kerala, but can be seen in abundance at the time of Onam.
The city has a diverse theatre scene and is one of the important centres for Bharata Natyam, a classical dance form that originated in Tamil Nadu and is the oldest dance of India. An important cultural centre for Bharata Natyam is Kalakshetra, on the beach in the south of the city. In 2012, a group of five Bharatha Natyam dancers from Chennai performed at the "India Campaign" during the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Chennai has been featured in UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) list since October 2017 for its century-old musical tradition. Chennai is also home to some choirs, who during the Christmas season stage various carol performances across the city in Tamil and English.
Chennai is divided into four broad regions: North, Central, South, and West. North Chennai is primarily an industrial area. South Chennai and West Chennai, previously mostly residential, are fast becoming commercial, home to a growing number of information technology firms, financial companies and call centres. The city is expanding quickly along the Old Mahabalipuram Road and the Grand Southern Trunk Road (GST Road) in the south and towards Ambattur, Koyambedu and Sriperumbdur in the west. Central Chennai comprises residential elements, but is primarily home to the downtown area, and surrounding areas, the most visited by travellers to the city. The financial district is also located here.
Recent estimates of the economy of the entire Chennai Metropolitan Area range from $78.6 to $86 billion (PPP GDP), ranking it from fourth- to sixth-most productive metro area of India.
Chennai has a broad industrial base in the automobile, computer, technology, hardware manufacturing and healthcare sectors. , the city is India's second-largest exporter of information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. A major part of India's automobile industry is located in and around the city thus earning it the nickname "Detroit of India". It is known as the Cultural Capital of South India and is the third-most visited city in India by international tourists according to Euromonitor. The city also serves as the location of the Madras Stock Exchange, India's fourth stock exchange, one of four permanently recognised by SEBI, and India's third-largest by trading volume, ranked behind the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India.
Industrialisation in the city dates back to the 16th century, when textile mills manufactured goods which were exported to British during its war with France. According to "Forbes" magazine, Chennai is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world and is ranked among the "Forbes-Top 10 Fastest Growing Cities in the World". It is ranked 4th in hosting the maximum number of "Fortune" 500 companies of India, next only to Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. It also is home to 24 Indian companies having a net worth of more than US$1 billion. , the city has about 34,260 identified companies in its 15 zones, of which 5,196 companies have a paid-up the capital of over 50 lakh.
Chennai has a diversified economic base anchored by the automobile, software services, hardware manufacturing, health care and financial services industries. According to the Confederation of Indian Industry, Chennai is estimated to grow to a US$100 billion economy, 2.5 times its present size, by the year 2025. , with 1 lakh crore investment in the pipeline over 5 years, the city is poised for major industrial investment. Chennai is classified as a global city by GaWC, with a ranking of Beta based on the extent of global reach and financial influence. It is estimated that about 400 financial industry businesses are headquartered in the city, half of which are located in the areas of Mylapore, R. A. Puram, Nungambakkam and T. Nagar.
The city is base to around 40 percent of India's automobile industry and 45 percent of auto components industry. A large number of automotive companies including Royal enfield, Hyundai, Renault, Robert Bosch, Nissan Motors, Ashok Leyland, Yamaha Motor, Daimler AG, Caterpillar Inc., Komatsu Limited, BharatBenz, Ford, BMW and Mitsubishi have manufacturing plants in Chennai. The Heavy Vehicles Factory at Avadi produces military vehicles, including India's main battle tank: "Arjun MBT". The Integral Coach Factory manufactures railway coaches and other rolling stock for Indian Railways. The Ambattur–Padi industrial zone houses many textile manufacturers, and a special economic zone (SEZ) for apparel and footwear manufacturing has been set up in the southern suburbs of the city. Chennai contributes more than 50 percent of India's leather exports.
Many software and software services companies have development centres in Chennai, which contributed 14 percent of India's total software exports of 14,42,140 lakh during 2006–07, making it the second largest Indian city software exporter following Bangalore. The Tidel Park in Chennai was billed as Asia's largest IT park when it was built. Major software companies have their offices set up here, with some of them making Chennai their largest base.
Prominent financial institutions, including the World Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, ABN AMRO, Bank of America, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, HSBC, ING Group, Allianz, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Asian Development Bank, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas Fortis, Irevna, Deutsche Bank and Citibank have back office and development centre operations in the city. Chennai is home to the national level commercial banks Indian Bank and Indian Overseas Bank and many state level co–operative banks, finance and insurance companies. Telecom and Electronics manufacturers based in and around Chennai include Samsung, Nokia Siemens, Motorola, Lenovo, Dell, Force10, Wipro, Flextronics and Siemens among others. Chennai is currently the largest electronics hardware exporter in India, accounting for 45% of the total exports in 2010–11. Telecom giants Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer and chemicals giant Dow Chemicals have research and development facilities in Chennai. The TICEL bio–tech park at Taramani and Golden Jubilee bio–tech park at Siruseri houses biotechnology companies and laboratories. Chennai has a stock exchange called the Madras Stock Exchange.
A study conducted by the National Housing Bank on the residential price index of Indian cities showed that Chennai experienced the highest growth after the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Medical tourism is an important part of Chennai's economy with 45 percent of total medical tourists to India making to Chennai. The Tamil film industry and the Tamil television industry are also significant parts of Chennai's economy. The city also has a permanent exhibition complex in Nandambakkam called the Chennai Trade Centre. It hosted the Tamil Nadu Global Investors Meet in 2019 which was a business summit organised by the Government of Tamil Nadu. With 385 ultra-rich living in the city as of 2013, Chennai is positioned in the sixth place among Indian cities that are home to the country's super-rich. The city is the third largest market in India for luxury cars.
The Reserve Bank of India ranked Chennai as third-largest deposit centre and third-largest credit centre nationwide as of June 2012. Prior to the advent of modern commercial banks, the banking services in the city were offered to the public by "Nattukottai Chettiars" or "Nagarathars", chiefly in and around the neighbourhood of George Town, who offered loans as well as accepted money deposits from the public, in addition to offering loans to the agricultural labourers. Even today, many of the banking offices are housed in heritage structures belonging to the colonial era that are chiefly clustered around Rajaji road in George Town. Chennai is home to the first European-style banking system in India with the establishment of the 'Madras Bank' on 21 June 1683, almost a century before the establishment of the first commercial banks, such as the Bank of Hindustan and the General Bank of India, which were established in 1770 and 1786, respectively. Upon the recommendation of the British Finance Committee on the formation of a government bank, the Madras Bank, then known as the 'Government Bank', started functioning again from 1806. In 1843, the bank merged with the Carnatic Bank (1788), the British Bank of Madras (1795) and the Asiatic Bank (1804) and became the Bank of Madras, which was one of the three Presidency banks of India, the other two being the Bank of Bengal and the Bank of Bombay. In 1921, the three Presidency banks merged to form the Imperial Bank of India, which later became the State Bank of India in 1955.
Chennai is the headquarters of the Indian Bank, the Indian Overseas Bank and the erstwhile Bharat Overseas Bank, which merged with the Indian Overseas Bank in 2007. The city is home to the south zonal office of the Reserve Bank of India, the country's central bank, along with its zonal training centre and Reserve Bank Staff College, one of the two colleges of the bank. The city also houses the permanent back office of the World Bank, which is one of the largest buildings owned by the bank outside its headquarters in Washington, DC. The Chennai office handles corporate financial, accounting, administrative and IT services of the bank, in addition to several value-added operations of the bank that were earlier handled only in its Washington, DC office, including the bank's analytical work in bond valuation which is estimated to be US$100 billion. Several foreign banks have established their branches in the city. The first Sri Lankan Bank in India was established when the Bank of Ceylon opened its branch in Madras on 31 October 1995.
As of 2019, the city corporation maintains about 471 bus route roads and 33,0000 interior roads.
Chennai is one of four Indian cities connected to the rest of the world by undersea fibre-optic cables, the other three being Mumbai, Kochi, and Tuticorin. The city is the landing point of major submarine telecommunication cable networks such as SMW4 (connecting India with Western Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia), i2i (connecting India with Singapore), TIC (connecting India with Singapore), and BRICS (connecting India with Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa). The 3,175-km-long, 8-fiber-paired i2i has the world's largest design capacity of 8.4 terabits per second. Work to lay a 2,300-km undersea optical submarine cable connecting Andaman and Nicobar Islands to mainland India through Chennai, carrying 100 Gb/sec optical waves, is slated to begin in December 2019 and completed by March 2020. It will connect Port Blair and the islands of Havelock, Little Andaman (Hutbay), Car Nicobar, Kamorta, Great Nicobar, Long Island and Rangat with Indian mainland.
, eight mobile phone service companies operate seven GSM networks including Airtel, Aircel, BSNL, Vodafone, Tata Docomo GSM, Idea, Reliance GSM and three CDMA networks including MTS, Relaince CDMA, Tata Docomo CDMA in the city. 2G Mobile internet connections are provided by all the operators and 4G, 3G mobile broadband are provided by few operators in the city. There are four land line companies providing Commercial and domestic broadband Internet services. Chennai was the first Indian city to deploy Wi-Fi internet access in a widespread manner. , there were 9.8 million mobile phone users in Chennai. In 2010, Chennai had the fourth highest number of active Internet users in India, with 2.2 million users. As of 2018, the city topped in broadband speed among Indian cities, with a recorded download speed of 32.67 Mbit/s.
Major power plants in the city include North Chennai Thermal Power Station, GMR Vasavi Diesel Power Plant, Ennore Thermal Power Station, Basin Bridge Gas Turbine Power Station, Madras Atomic Power Station and Vallur Thermal Power Project. According to the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDCO), , the city consumes about 20 percent of the electricity in the state of Tamil Nadu. The peak evening demand of the city is 1,500 MW which is about 50 percent of the state's peak evening demand of 3,000 megawatt. This includes 37 percent consumption by the industrial sector, 30 percent by the domestic sector, 18 percent by the agricultural sector, and 11.5 percent by the commercial sector. The peak power consumption is for four months between May and August, with the city consuming the highest during June because it is when the summer peaks. On 20 June 2013, the city consumed the highest of 52,785 MU.
, the city consumes around 3.83 crore units of power a day or 1,400 crore units annually. Hourly consumption of power in the city is about 2,000 to 3,000 MW. Availability of power in the city has become a concern in recent years due to increasing demand and slow paced addition of power plants, due to which scheduled power cuts have become increasingly common. However, this situation was eradicated by the end of 2014. , the total electricity consumption by the street lamps in the city is 27 MW, costing about per month. The 426 sq km of the city has over 248,000 streetlights, including 88,000 in the newly expanded areas.
Chennai has world-class medical facilities, including both government-run and private hospitals. The government-aided hospitals include General Hospital, Adyar Cancer Institute, TB Sanatorium, and National Institute of Siddha. The National Institute of Siddha is one of the seven apex national-level educational institutions that promote excellence in Indian system of medicine and Ayurveda. Major hospitals in Chennai include Apollo Hospitals, Apollo Speciality Hospital, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Chettinad Health City, MIOT Hospitals, Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Fortis Malar Hospital, Lifeline Hospitals, Vasan Healthcare, Dr Mehta Hospitals, Global Hospitals & Health City, Sankara Nethralaya and Vijaya Medical & Educational Trust. Chennai attracts about 45 percent of health tourists from abroad and 30 percent to 40 percent of domestic health tourists. The city has been termed "India's health capital".
The city has more than 12,500 beds in its hospitals, including about 5,000 in multi-specialty hospitals in the private sector and over 6,000 beds in the public sector. This works to 2.1 beds per 1,000 population against the national average of less than one bed per 1,000 population and the World Health Organization's norms of three beds per 1,000 persons, higher than any other city in the country.
The city generates 4,500 tonnes of garbage every day of which 429 tonnes are plastic waste. The city has three dumpyards, one each at Perungudi, Kodungaiyur, and Pallikaranai. The corporation has planned to close these yards and create four new dumpyards at Malaipattu, Minjur, Vallur and Kuthambakkam villages, ranging in size from to . The civic body also spends 400 crore a year on solid-waste management.
With temples, beaches and centres of historical and cultural significance, including the UNESCO Heritage Site of Mahabalipuram, Chennai is one of the most-visited cities in India. The city serves as the gateway to the southern part of India with tourists landing in the city and then visiting the rest of the region. Chennai was the most-visited Indian city by foreign tourists in 2009 and issued the third-highest number of visas on arrival in 2014. In 2011, Chennai was ranked the 41st-most visited city, with 3,174,500 tourists, a 14 percent increase from 2010. About 830,620 domestic tourists arrived in Chennai in March 2011. Chennai's leading tourist countries-of-origin are Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. In 2015, the city received 4,243,700 foreign tourists, making it the third-most-visited city in India after Delhi and Mumbai and 43rd-most visited city in the world by foreign tourists. , the city had 21 luxury hotels in the five-star category, with over 4,500 rooms in the inventory.
Chennai is the base for Tamil cinema, sometimes nicknamed as "Kollywood", alluding to the neighbourhood of Kodambakkam where a number of film studios are located. Many film personalities have gone on to become politicians including C. N. Annadurai, M. Karunanidhi, M. G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa. Chennai hosts major film studios, including AVM Productions, the oldest surviving studio in India. , there are 120 cinema screens and multiplexes. Major multiplexes include Sathyam Cinemas, Escape cinemas, Devi, Abirami complex and Mayajaal. Chennai's expansive theatre network stages many Tamil plays of many genres: political satire, slapstick comedy, history, mythology and drama. English plays are popular in the city, along with the more common Tamil-language plays.
The zoo, beaches and wildlife parks form the primary recreation areas of the city. Chennai has a 19+ km coastline. Marina Beach spans between the deltas of Cooum and Adyar, and is the second-longest urban beach in the world. Elliot's Beach lies south of the Adyar delta. Covelong Beach lies along the Coromandal Coast. Madras Crocodile Bank Trust is a reptile zoo located south of the city covering an area of and had over 450,000 visitors in 2007. The center has one of the world's largest collections of reptiles and has bred 14 of the 23 existing species of crocodiles and alligators. The Arignar Anna Zoological Park, one of the largest zoological parks in the world, annually attracts nearly 2 million visitors. The city boasts two popular beaches, the Marina and Elliot's. Guindy National Park, a protected area of Tamil Nadu, has a children's park and a snake park, which gained statutory recognition as a medium zoo from the Central Zoo Authority of India in 1995. Chennai is one of the few cities in the world to accommodate a national park, the Guindy National Park, within its limits. An estimated 4.5 percent of the city's area is under green cover. This enables birding. The seven zones of the old corporation limits have about 260 parks, many of which suffer poor maintenance. The city has a per capita park space of 0.41 sq m, which is the least among all metros in India. The eight zones in the newly added areas of the city have about 265 locations that have been identified for development of new parks. The largest park is the 358-acre Tholkappia Poonga, developed to restore the fragile ecosystem of the Adyar estuary. The horticulture department-owned Semmozhi Poonga is a 20-acre downtown botanical garden.
Chennai houses several theme parks, namely MGM Dizzee World and Queen's Land. However, several fatal accidents have occurred in the theme parks. Wonderla plans to open an amusement park in 2017. Other important recreation centres include Madras Boat Club, which is over 140 years old, and Gymkhana Club, which is famous for its 18-hole golf courses. Built in 1867, Madras Boat Club is the second-oldest surviving Indian rowing club.
Chennai is home to several malls, due to its status as an IT hub. Major ones include Express Avenue (EA), Citi Centre, Abirami mega mall, Spencer Plaza, Ampa Skywalk, Phoenix Market City and Forum Vijaya Mall. Chennai is an important gold market in India contributing to 45 percent of the 800-tonne annual national gold uptake. The city is also the base to the World Gold Council's India operations. The city's retail industry is majorly concentrated in T. Nagar which accounts for major share jewellery and clothes sold in Chennai. According to the 2012 report by property consultant Cushman & Wakefield, "Main Streets Across the World", Khader Nawaz Khan Road at Nungambakkam ranked 10th position in the list of 'Top 10 Global Highest Retail Rental Growth Markets 2012', with 36.7 percent jump in rents.
The Chennai International Airport is the fourth-busiest in India in terms of passenger traffic behind New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It handled about 15.2 million passengers in 2013–2014; in terms of international passengers, Chennai is the third-busiest airport behind Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi, and Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai. Chennai handles 400 flights a day, again placing it fourth among Indian airports. The city is connected to major hubs across Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa through more than 30 national and international carriers.
The existing airport is undergoing modernisation and expansion with an addition of , while a new greenfield airport is to be constructed at an estimated cost of 2,000 crore in Sriperumbudur on of land. The new airport is said to be likely to handle cargo spillover traffic from the existing one.
Chennai hosts the headquarters of the Southern Railway. The city has four main railway terminals. Chennai Central, Chennai Egmore, Chennai Beach and Tambaram. Chennai Central station, the city's largest, provides nationwide access, whereas Chennai Egmore provides access to destinations primarily within Tamil Nadu; however, it also handles a few inter–state trains. A fifth terminal has been proposed to decongest Chennai Central. The Chennai suburban railway network, one of the oldest in the country, facilitates transportation within the city. It consists of four broad-gauge sectors terminating at two locations in the city, namely Chennai Central and Chennai Beach. While three sectors are operated on-grade, the fourth sector is primarily an elevated corridor, linking Chennai Beach to Velachery and is connected with the rest of the rail network.
Chennai Metro is a rapid-transit system serving the city and was partially commenced on 29 June 2015. To improve the city's public transportation system and prepare the city for the future commuting needs, the Chennai Metro was planned and approved by the state cabinet during 2007 for which construction began on 2009. Phase I of the Chennai Metro network consists of the Blue Line and the Green Line covering a length of 45.1 kilometres (28.0 mi) consisting of 40 stations with Alandur and Chennai Central serving as interchanges. 55% of the corridors in Phase I are underground and the rest are elevated. The first stretch of Phase I, covering seven stations from Koyambedu to Alandur over a distance of , began operation on 29 June 2015. As of March 2019, the entire Phase 1 stretching from Chennai Central to Alandur on the Green line and Washermanpet to Chennai International Airport on Blue line are commercially operational, bringing the total operational network over 45 km. With this, the entirety of Phase I is operational. In December 2016, it was announced by Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) that Phase-2 of Chennai Metro is set to be for a length of 104 km consisting of 104 stations which was subject to approval from the State and Central governments. The Phase 2 was subsequently approved in late 2018, with certain provisos, and soil testing for the various stations are in full swing with construction set to begin in late 2019/ early 2020. As of April 2019 ridership has risen considerably to around 100,000 daily commuters, post the inaugural of the entire Phase I. Phase I-A, which is an extension of the Blue line from Washermanpet to Thiruvottiyur is expected to be inaugurated by June 2020.
Chennai is connected by the Golden Quadrilateral system of National Highways. It is connected to other Indian cities by four major National Highways (NH) that originate in the city. They are NH 4 to Mumbai (via Bangalore and Pune), NH 5 to Kolkata (linked via NH 6) (via Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar), NH 45 to Theni (via Villupuram, Tiruchirapalli and Dindigul) and NH 205 to Madanapalle (via Tirupati). Chennai is connected to other parts of the state and the Union Territory of Puducherry by state highways.
The government has constructed grade separators and flyovers at major intersections, and built Inner Ring Road and Outer Ring Road. The Gemini flyover, built in 1973, crosses over the arterial road, and eases the traffic movements towards Anna Salai and towards the Kathipara Flyover. , according to the Transport Department, there were 25.8 lakh two–wheelers and 5.6 lakh four–wheelers in the city, and the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) bus fleet were 3,421, equaling 0.1% of all vehicles in the city.
When opened, the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT) was the largest bus station in Asia. It is the main intercity bus station of Chennai, administered by seven government-owned transport corporations, which operate intercity and interstate bus services. There are many private bus companies. The MTC provides an exclusive intracity bus service, consisting of 3,421 buses on 724 routes, which provides transportation to 55.2 lakh passengers daily. The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation operates Volvo air-conditioned services from Chennai to nearby Pondicherry, Vellore, Hosur and Trichy.
The other means of road transport in the city include vans, regionally known as "Maxi Cabs", auto rickshaws, on-call metered taxis and tourist taxis.
Chennai outer ring road is 62.3 km long connecting NH 45 (GST Road) at Perungalathur, NH 4 (GWT Road) at Nazarathpet, NH 205 (CTH Road) at Nemilicherry(Thiruninravur), NH 5 (GNT Road) at Nallur and TPP road at Minjur under the process by Chennai Metropolitan Area.
The city is served by two major ports, Chennai Port, one of the largest artificial ports in India, and Ennore Port. Chennai Port is the largest in the Bay of Bengal, with an annual cargo tonnage of 6.146 crore (2010–2011), and the second-largest container-hub in India, with an annual container volume of 15.23 lakh TEUs (2010–2011). The port handles transportation of automobiles, motorcycles and general industrial cargo. The Ennore Port with an annual cargo tonnage of 1.101 crore (2010–2011), handles coal, ore and other bulk and rock mineral products. Royapuram fishing harbour is used by fishing boats and Kattupalli Shipyard near Ennore Port was inaugurated in January 2013.
Newspaper publishing started in Chennai with the launch of a weekly, "The Madras Courier", in 1785. It was followed by the weeklies "The Madras Gazette" and "The Government Gazette" in 1795. "The Spectator", founded in 1836, was the first English newspaper in Chennai to be owned by an Indian and became the city's first daily newspaper in 1853. The first Tamil newspaper, "Swadesamitran", was launched in 1899. First Telugu journal printed from Madras was "Satya Doota" in 1835 and "Andhra Patrika" found in 1908 was the most successful Telugu newspaper from Madras.
The major English dailies published in Chennai are "The Hindu", "The New Indian Express", "The Deccan Chronicle" and "The Times of India" and many more. The evening dailies are, "The Trinity Mirror" and "The News Today". , "The Hindu" was the city's most read English newspaper, with a daily circulation of 267,349. The major business dailies published from the city are "The Economic Times", "The Hindu Business Line", "Business Standard", "Mint" and "The Financial Express". The major Tamil dailies include the "Dina Thanthi", "Dinakaran", "Dina Mani", "Dina Malar", "The Hindu Tamil", "Tamil Murasu", "Makkal Kural" and "Malai Malar". "Malayala Manorama" and "Mathrubhumi" are the major Malayalam dailies while major Telugu dailies include "Eenadu", "Vaartha", "Andhra Jyothi" and "Sakshi". The one and only Hindi Newspaper published from Chennai is the "Rajasthan Patrika". The Local weekly Newspapers circulated to residents are T. Nagar Times, Pillar Times, Arcot Road Talk, Chrompet Times. Chennai's First Corporate Leisure Newspaper, "The Shopping Express". Magazines published from Chennai include "Ananda Vikatan", "Kumudam", "Kalki", "Kungumam", "Puthiya Thalaimurai","Thuglak", "Frontline" and "Sportstar"
Doordarshan runs two terrestrial television channels and two satellite television channels from its Chennai centre, which was set up in 1974. Private Tamil satellite television networks such as Sun TV, Raj TV, Zee Tamizh, Star Vijay, Jaya TV, Makkal TV, Vasanth TV, Kalaignar TV, Captain TV and PuthiyaThalaimurai TV broadcast out of Chennai. The Sun Network one of India's largest broadcasting companies is based in the city. While the cable TV service is entirely controlled by the state government, direct–to–home (DTH) is available via DD Direct Plus, Dish TV, Tata Sky, Videocon DTH, Sun direct DTH, Reliance Big TV and Digital TV. Chennai is the first city in India to have implemented the Conditional Access System for cable television. Radio broadcasting began in 1924 by the Madras Presidency Radio Club. The radio station at the Rippon Buildings complex was founded in 1930 and was then shifted to All India Radio in 1938. The city has four AM and 11 FM radio stations operated by All India Radio, Anna University and Suryan FM, Radio Mirchi, BIG FM, Hello FM, Radio City, Radio One among others.
Chennai is home to some of the best educational institutions in the country. The city ranks second among Indian metropolitan city centres with a 90.33 percent literacy rate. Chennai has a mix of public and private schools, some of which also receive financial support from the government.
The public school system is managed by the Chennai Corporation with an enrollment of 142,387 students in over 330 schools. Tamil and English are the primary medium of instruction, though some schools also use Telugu and Urdu as medium of instruction in their schools. Public schools run by the Chennai Corporation are all affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board, while private schools may be affiliated with either of the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Education or the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). A few schools are affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) board or the Montessori system. Education in Chennai starts with two years of Kindergarten from age three onward and then follows the Indian 10+2+3 plan, ten years of school, two years of higher secondary education, and three years of undergraduate education.
English is the medium of instruction in the majority of institutions for higher education. The University of Madras, founded in 1857, is one of India's first three modern universities. Colleges for science, arts, and commerce degrees are typically affiliated with the University of Madras, which has six campuses in the city. The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) and the College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University are two well-known centres for engineering education in the city. The Indian Army's Officers Training Academy is also headquartered in the city.
Chennai has a plethora of libraries, including British Council Library, American Library, Connemara Public Library, and Anna Centenary Library. The Connemara Public Library is one of four National Depository Centres in India that receive a copy of all newspapers and books published in the country. The Anna Centenary Library is the largest library in Asia.
Chennai has two CSIR research institutions namely Central Leather Research Institute and Structural Engineering Research Centre. Chennai Book Fair, an annual book fair organised in Chennai by the Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI), is the largest exhibition for Tamil book publishers to display their books. The fair is typically held for about 10 days between the last week of December and the third week of January. The forty-first edition of the fair was held in 2018. Chennai also has Indian Maritime University to impart quality education in maritime management, engineering, and different pre-sea courses. This is the only central university, headquartered in Chennai to impart maritime education in India.
Cricket is the most popular sport in Chennai. It was introduced in 1864 with the foundation of the Madras Cricket Club. The M.A. Chidambaram Stadium established in 1916 is among the oldest cricket stadiums in India. The stadium was also one of the venues of the 1987,1996 and 2011 ICC Cricket World Cups. Chemplast Cricket Ground located at the IIT Madras campus is another important venue for cricket matches. Prominent cricketers from the city include former cricket captains S. Venkataraghavan and Kris Srikkanth. A cricket fast bowling academy called the MRF Pace Foundation, whose coaches include T. A. Sekhar and Glenn Mcgrath, is based in Chennai. Being home to the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team Chennai Super Kings, the city hosted the finals of the IPL's 2011 and 2012 series.
The city's football team Chennaiyin FC competes in the Indian Super League, the country's association football league associated with Asian Football Federation and recognized by FIFA. The club uses the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium nicknamed the Marina Arena as their home ground and are champions of the Indian Super League in 2015 and 2018.
Chennai was the venue of the 1995 South Asian Games. Chennai is home to a World Series Hockey (WSH) team, the Chennai Cheetahs. The Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium is associated with hockey and was venue for the international hockey tournament the 2005 Men's Champions Trophy and the 2007 Men's Asia Cup. The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium is associated for hosting Football and athletic competitions, it also houses a multi–purpose indoor complex for competition in volleyball, basketball and table tennis. Water sports are played in the Velachery Aquatic Complex. Tennis sport is popularising among the city youths, Since 1997 Chennai has been host to the only ATP World Tour event held in India, the Chennai Open which has been shifted to Pune as Maharashtra Open from 2017. Vijay Amritraj, Mahesh Bhupathi Ramesh Krishnan and Somdev Devvarman are tennis players from Chennai.
Chennai is home to Chennai Slam, two-time national champion of India's top professional basketball division, the UBA Pro Basketball League.
Madras Boat Club (founded in 1846) and the Royal Madras Yacht Club (founded by Sir Francis Spring in 1911) promote the sailing sports in Chennai, and organise national and international sailing events. Automobile racing in India has been closely connected with Chennai since its beginnings shortly after independence. Motor racing events are held on a special purpose track in Madras Motor Race Track, Sriperumbudur, which has also been the venue for several international competitions. Formula One driver Karun Chandhok was born in Chennai.
Horse racing is held at the Guindy Race Course, while rowing competitions are hosted at the Madras Boat Club. The city has two 18–hole golf courses, the Cosmopolitan Club and the Gymkhana Club, both established in the late nineteenth century. The city has a rugby union team called the Chennai Cheetahs.
Previous world chess champion Viswanathan Anand grew up in Chennai. Other sports persons of repute from Chennai include table tennis players Sharath Kamal and two–time world carrom champion, Maria Irudayam. Chennai was the host of the World Chess Championship 2013 match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen.
The consular presence in the city dates back to 1794, when William Abbott was appointed US consular agent for South India. , there were 43 foreign representations in Chennai, including consulates general, deputy high commissions and honorary consulates. The American Consulate in Chennai is one of the top adjudication posts in the world and the number one in processing employment-based visas. It was ranked among the top globally in issuing 'L' and 'H' category visas for workers and professionals and was ranked eighth globally in terms of all category of visas being issued.
The Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), which is the office of the field officers in charge of immigration and registration activities in the city, is located at Shastri Bhavan at Haddows Road.
Chennai has sister city relationships with the following cities of the world: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45139 |
Shavian alphabet
The Shavian alphabet (also known as the Shaw alphabet) is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright Bernard Shaw. Shaw set three main criteria for the new alphabet: it should be (1) at least 40 letters; (2) as "phonetic" as possible (that is, letters should have a to phonemes); and (3) distinct from the Latin alphabet to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings".
The Shavian alphabet consists of three types of letters: tall, deep and short. Short letters are vowels, liquids (r, l) and nasals; tall letters (except Yea and Hung ) are voiceless consonants. A tall letter rotated 180° or flipped, with the tall part now extending below the baseline, becomes a deep letter, representing the corresponding voiced consonant (except Haha ). The alphabet is therefore to some extent featural.
There are no separate capital or lowercase letters as in the Latin script; instead of using capitalization to mark proper names, a "naming dot" (·) is placed before a name. All other punctuation and word spacing is similar to conventional orthography.
Each character in the Shavian Alphabet requires only a single stroke to be written on paper. The writing utensil needs to be lifted up only once when writing each character, thus enabling faster writing.
Spelling in "Androcles" follows the phonemic distinctions of British Received Pronunciation except for explicitly indicating vocalic "r" with the above ligatures. Most dialectical variations of English pronunciation can be regularly produced from this spelling, but those who do not make certain distinctions, particularly in the vowels, find it difficult to produce the canonical spellings spontaneously. For instance, most North American dialects merge and (the father–bother merger). Canadian English, as well as many American dialects (particularly in the west and near the Canada–US border), also merge these phonemes with , which is known as the cot–caught merger. In addition, some American dialects merge and before nasal stops (the pin–pen merger).
There is no ability to indicate word stress; however, in most cases the reduction of unstressed vowels is sufficient to distinguish word pairs that are distinguished only by stress in spoken discourse. For instance, convict and convict can be spelled and respectively.
Additionally, certain common words are abbreviated as single letters. The words the" (), "of (), "and" (), to" (), and often for" () are written with the single letters indicated.
Shaw had served from 1926 to 1939 on the BBC's Advisory Committee on Spoken English, which included several exponents of phonetic writing. He also knew Henry Sweet, creator of Current Shorthand (and a prototype for the character of Henry Higgins), although Shaw himself used the shorthand system of Isaac Pitman. All of his interest in spelling and alphabet reform was made clear in Shaw's will of June 1950, in which provision was made for (Isaac) James Pitman, with a grant in aid from the Public Trustee, to establish a Shaw Alphabet. Following Shaw's death in November 1950, and after some legal dispute, the Trustee announced a worldwide competition to design such an alphabet, with the aim of producing a system that would be an economical way of writing and of printing the English language.
A contest for the design of the new alphabet was won by four people, including Ronald Kingsley Read. Read was then appointed to amalgamate the four designs to produce the new alphabet.
Due to the contestation of Shaw's will, the trust charged with developing the new alphabet could afford to publish only one book: a version of Shaw's play "Androcles and the Lion", in a bi-alphabetic edition with both conventional and Shavian spellings. (1962 Penguin Books, London). Copies were sent to major libraries in English-speaking countries.
Between 1963 and 1965, 8 issues of the journal, "Shaw-script", were published by Kingsley Read in Worcester, U.K. The journal used Shaw's Alphabet, and much of the content was submitted by Shaw enthusiasts. In more recent years, there have been several published works of classical literature transliterated into Shavian.
The first, released in 2012, was the works of Edgar Allan Poe entitled "Poe Meets Shaw: The Shaw Alphabet Edition of Edgar Allan Poe", by Tim Browne. This book was published via Shaw Alphabet Books and had two editions in its original release. One, like "Androcles and the Lion", had Shavian side-by-side with the Latin equivalent and the other was a Shavian-only edition.
The second, released in 2013, was an edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", transcribed into Shavian by Thomas Thurman. This was published as a Shaw only edition with no side-by-side Latin equivalent. The Shavian fonts were designed by Michael Everson.
Some disagreement has arisen among the Shavian community in regard to sound–symbol assignments, which have been the topic of frequent arguments. Primarily, this has concerned the alleged reversal of two pairs of letters.
The most frequent disagreement of the letter reversals has been over the Haha–Hung pair. The most convincing evidence suggesting this reversal is in the names of the letters: The unvoiced letter Haha is deep, while the voiced Hung, which suggests a lower position, is tall. This is often assumed to be a clerical error introduced in the rushed printing of the Shavian edition of "Androcles and the Lion". This reversal obscures the system of tall letters as voiceless consonants and deep letters as voiced consonants.
Proponents of traditional Shavian, however, have suggested that Kingsley Read may not have intended for this system to be all-encompassing, though it seems that vertical placement alone served this purpose in an earlier version of Shavian, before the rotations were introduced. Also, Read may have intentionally reversed these letters, perhaps to emphasize that these letters represent unrelated sounds, which happen to occur in complementary distribution.
Both sides of the debate have suggested other reasons, including associations with various styles of Latin letters (namely, the /g/ in /-ing/, often written with a bottom-loop in script) and the effect of letter-height on the coastlines of words, but whether Read considered any of these is uncertain. Since the letter representing the same sound in Read's Quikscript appears identical to "Hung", it is doubtful that Read reversed the letter twice by mistake—he may have thought it best to leave things as they were, mistake or not, especially as a corrected /ng/ might in hasty or careless writing be confused with his new letter for /n/ in Quikscript.
Two other letters that are often alleged to have been reversed—intentionally or not—are Air and Err. Both are ligatures, and their relation to other letters is usually taken as evidence for this reversal.
One of the beliefs that leads to such allegations is that Air "𐑺" is a ligature of the letters Egg "𐑧" and Roar "𐑮". Based on their appearance, one would expect the ligature of these letters to be joined at the bottom and free at the top, yet the opposite is true. Another such belief is that Err "𐑻" is a ligature of the letters Up "𐑳" and Roar "𐑮". Based on their appearance, one would expect the ligature of these letters to be joined at the top and free at the bottom, yet once again, the opposite is true.
Some years after the initial publication of the Shaw alphabet, Read expanded it to create Quikscript, also known as the Read Alphabet. Quikscript is intended to be more useful for handwriting, and to that end is more cursive and uses more ligatures. Many letter forms are roughly the same in both alphabets; see the separate article for more details.
Paul Vandenbrink has created a new alphabet inspired by the Shavian alphabet which takes the controversial step of replacing most of the specific vowel letters with markers indicating which of several sets of vowel types a vowel belongs to, thus reducing the number of vowel distinctions and lessening the written differences between dialectal variations of English.
An adaptation of Shavian to another language, Esperanto, was developed by John Wesley Starling; though not widely used, at least one booklet has been published with transliterated sample texts. As that language is already spelled phonemically, direct conversion from Latin to Shavian letters can be performed, though several ligatures are added for the common combinations of vowels with "n" and "s" and some common short words.
Pronunciations that differ from their English values are marked in bold red.
Shavian was added to the Unicode Standard in April 2003 with the release of version 4.0.
The Unicode block for Shavian is U+10450–U+1047F and is in Plane 1 (the Supplementary Multilingual Plane).
While the Shavian alphabet was added to Unicode 4.0 in 2003, Unicode Shavian fonts are still quite rare. Before it was standardized, fonts were made that include Shavian letters in the places of Roman letters, and/or in an agreed upon location in the Unicode private use area, allocated from the ConScript Unicode Registry and now superseded by the official Unicode standard.
These following fonts contain full Unicode support for Shavian. Windows/Mac/Linux systems need fonts such as these to display the Shavian glyphs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45144 |
Hubble sequence
The Hubble sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies invented by Edwin Hubble in 1926. It is often colloquially known as the Hubble tuning fork diagram because the shape in which it is traditionally represented resembles a tuning fork. In June 2019, however, citizen scientists through Galaxy Zoo reported that the usual Hubble classification, particularly concerning spiral galaxies, may not be supported, and may need updating.
Hubble's scheme divided regular galaxies into three broad classes – ellipticals, lenticulars and spirals – based on their visual appearance (originally on photographic plates). A fourth class contains galaxies with an irregular appearance. The Hubble sequence is the most commonly used system for classifying galaxies, both in professional astronomical research and in amateur astronomy.
On the left (in the sense that the sequence is usually drawn) lie the ellipticals. Elliptical galaxies have relatively smooth, featureless light distributions and appear as ellipses in photographic images. They are denoted by the letter E, followed by an integer "n" representing their degree of ellipticity in the sky. By convention, "n" is ten times the ellipticity of the galaxy, rounded to the nearest integer, where the ellipticity is defined as for an ellipse with semi-major and semi-minor axes of lengths "a" and "b" respectively. The ellipticity increases from left to right on the Hubble diagram, with near-circular (E0) galaxies situated on the very left of the diagram. It is important to note that the ellipticity of a galaxy on the sky is only indirectly related to the true 3-dimensional shape (for example, a flattened, discus-shaped galaxy can appear almost round if viewed face-on or highly elliptical if viewed edge-on). Observationally, the most flattened "elliptical" galaxies have ellipticities "e" = 0.7 (denoted E7). However, from studying the light profiles and the ellipticity profiles, rather than just looking at the images, it was realised in the 1960s that the E5–E7 galaxies are probably misclassified lenticular galaxies with large-scale disks seen at various inclinations to our line-of-sight. Observations of the kinematics of early-type galaxies further confirmed this.
Examples of elliptical galaxies: M49, M59, M60, M87, NGC 4125.
At the centre of the Hubble tuning fork, where the two spiral-galaxy branches and the elliptical branch join, lies an intermediate class of galaxies known as lenticulars and given the symbol S0. These galaxies consist of a bright central bulge, similar in appearance to an elliptical galaxy, surrounded by an extended, disk-like structure. Unlike spiral galaxies, the disks of lenticular galaxies have no visible spiral structure and are not actively forming stars in any significant quantity.
When simply looking at a galaxy's image, lenticular galaxies with relatively face-on disks are difficult to distinguish from ellipticals of type E0–E3, making the classification of many such galaxies uncertain. When viewed edge-on, the disk becomes more apparent and prominent dust-lanes are sometimes visible in absorption at optical wavelengths.
At the time of the initial publication of Hubble's galaxy classification scheme, the existence of lenticular galaxies was purely hypothetical. Hubble believed that they were necessary as an intermediate stage between the highly flattened "ellipticals" and spirals. Later observations (by Hubble himself, among others) showed Hubble's belief to be correct and the S0 class was included in the definitive exposition of the Hubble sequence by Allan Sandage. Missing from the Hubble sequence are the early-type galaxies with intermediate-scale disks, in between the E and S0 type, Martha Liller denoted them ES galaxies in 1966.
Lenticular and spiral galaxies, taken together, are often referred to as disk galaxies. The bulge-to-disk flux ratio in lenticular galaxies can take on a range of values, just as it does for each of the spiral galaxy morphological types (Sa, Sb, etc.).
Examples of lenticular galaxies: M85, M86, NGC 1316, NGC 2787, NGC 5866, Centaurus A.
On the right of the Hubble sequence diagram are two parallel branches encompassing the spiral galaxies. A spiral galaxy consists of a flattened disk, with stars forming a (usually two-armed) spiral structure, and a central concentration of stars known as the bulge. Roughly half of all spirals are also observed to have a bar-like structure, with the bar extending from the central bulge, and the arms begin at the ends of the bar. In the tuning-fork diagram, the regular spirals occupy the upper branch and are denoted by the letter S, while the lower branch contains the barred spirals, given the symbol SB. Both type of spirals are further subdivided according to the detailed appearance of their spiral structures. Membership of one of these subdivisions is indicated by adding a lower-case letter to the morphological type, as follows:
Hubble originally described three classes of spiral galaxy. This was extended by Gérard de Vaucouleurs to include a fourth class:
Although strictly part of the de Vaucouleurs system of classification, the Sd class is often included in the Hubble sequence. The basic spiral types can be extended to enable finer distinctions of appearance. For example, spiral galaxies whose appearance is intermediate between two of the above classes are often identified by appending two lower-case letters to the main galaxy type (for example, Sbc for a galaxy that is intermediate between an Sb and an Sc).
Our own Milky Way is generally classed as SBb or SBc, making it a barred spiral with well-defined arms.
Examples of regular spiral galaxies: M31 (Andromeda Galaxy), M74, M81, M104 (Sombrero Galaxy), M51a (Whirlpool Galaxy), NGC 300, NGC 772.
Examples of barred spiral galaxies: M91, M95, NGC 1097, NGC 1300, NGC1672, NGC 2536, NGC 2903.
Galaxies that do not fit into the Hubble sequence, because they have no regular structure (either disk-like or ellipsoidal), are termed irregular galaxies. Hubble defined two classes of irregular galaxy:
In his extension to the Hubble sequence, de Vaucouleurs called the Irr I galaxies 'Magellanic irregulars', after the Magellanic Clouds – two satellites of the Milky Way which Hubble classified as Irr I. The discovery of a faint spiral structure in the Large Magellanic Cloud led de Vaucouleurs to further divide the irregular galaxies into those that, like the LMC, show some evidence for spiral structure (these are given the symbol Sm) and those that have no obvious structure, such as the Small Magellanic Cloud (denoted Im). In the extended Hubble sequence, the Magellanic irregulars are usually placed at the end of the spiral branch of the Hubble tuning fork.
Examples of irregular galaxies: M82, NGC 1427A, Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud.
Elliptical and lenticular galaxies are commonly referred to together as “early-type” galaxies, while spirals and irregular galaxies are referred to as “late types”. This nomenclature is the source of the common, but erroneous, belief that the Hubble sequence was intended to reflect a supposed evolutionary sequence, from elliptical galaxies through lenticulars to either barred or regular spirals. In fact, Hubble was clear from the beginning that no such interpretation was implied:
The nomenclature, it is emphasized, refers to position in the sequence, and temporal connotations are made at one's peril. The entire classification is purely empirical and without prejudice to theories of evolution...
The evolutionary picture appears to be lent weight by the fact that the disks of spiral galaxies are observed to be home to many young stars and regions of active star formation, while elliptical galaxies are composed of predominantly old stellar populations. In fact, current evidence suggests the opposite: the early Universe appears to be dominated by spiral and irregular galaxies. In the currently favored picture of galaxy formation, present-day ellipticals formed as a result of mergers between these earlier building blocks; while some lenticular galaxies may have formed this way, others may have accreted their disks around pre-existing spheroids. Some lenticular galaxies may also be evolved spiral galaxies, whose gas has been stripped away leaving no fuel for continued star formation, although the galaxy LEDA 2108986 opens the debate on this.
A common criticism of the Hubble scheme is that the criteria for assigning galaxies to classes are subjective, leading to different observers assigning galaxies to different classes (although experienced observers usually agree to within less than a single Hubble type). Although not really a shortcoming, since the 1961 Hubble Atlas of Galaxies, the primary criteria used to assign the morphological type (a, b, c, etc.) has been the nature of the spiral arms, rather than the bulge-to-disk flux ratio, and thus a range of flux ratios exist for each morphological type, as with the lenticular galaxies.
Another criticism of the Hubble classification scheme is that, being based on the appearance of a galaxy in a two-dimensional image, the classes are only indirectly related to the true physical properties of galaxies. In particular, problems arise because of orientation effects. The same galaxy would look very different, if viewed edge-on, as opposed to a face-on or ‘broadside’ viewpoint. As such, the early-type sequence is poorly represented: the ES galaxies are missing from the Hubble sequence, and the E5–E7 galaxies are actually S0 galaxies. Furthermore, the barred ES and barred S0 galaxies are also absent.
Visual classifications are also less reliable for faint or distant galaxies, and the appearance of galaxies can change depending on the wavelength of light in which they are observed.
Nonetheless, the Hubble sequence is still commonly used in the field of extragalactic astronomy and Hubble types are known to correlate with many physically relevant properties of galaxies, such as luminosities, colours, masses (of stars and gas) and star formation rates. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45145 |
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors.
The combination of CP/M and S-100 bus computers was loosely patterned on the MITS Altair, an early standard in the microcomputer industry. This computer platform was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s. CP/M increased the market size for both hardware and software by greatly reducing the amount of programming required to install an application on a new manufacturer's computer. An important driver of software innovation was the advent of (comparatively) low-cost microcomputers running CP/M, as independent programmers and hackers bought them and shared their creations in user groups. CP/M was displaced by DOS soon after the 1981 introduction of the IBM PC.
A minimal 8-bit CP/M system would contain the following components:
The only hardware system that CP/M, as sold by Digital Research, would support was the Intel 8080 Development System. Manufacturers of CP/M-compatible systems customized portions of the operating system for their own combination of installed memory, disk drives, and console devices. CP/M would also run on systems based on the Zilog Z80 processor since the Z80 was compatible with 8080 code. While the Digital Research distributed core of CP/M (BDOS, CCP, core transient commands) did not use any of the Z80-specific instructions, many Z80-based systems used Z80 code in the system-specific BIOS, and many applications were dedicated to Z80-based CP/M machines.
On most machines the bootstrap was a minimal bootloader in ROM combined with some means of minimal bank switching or a means of injecting code on the bus (since the 8080 needs to see boot code at Address 0 for start-up, while CP/M needs RAM there); for others, this bootstrap had to be entered into memory using front-panel controls each time the system was started.
CP/M used the 7-bit ASCII set. The other 128 characters made possible by the 8-bit byte were not standardized. For example, one Kaypro used them for Greek characters, and Osborne machines used the 8th bit set to indicate an underlined character. WordStar used the 8th bit as an end-of-word marker. International CP/M systems most commonly used the ISO 646 norm for localized character sets, replacing certain ASCII characters with localized characters rather than adding them beyond the 7-bit boundary.
In the 8-bit versions, while running, the CP/M operating system loaded into memory had three components:
The BIOS and BDOS were memory-resident, while the CCP was memory-resident unless overwritten by an application, in which case it was automatically reloaded after the application finished running. A number of transient commands for standard utilities were also provided. The transient commands resided in files with the extension .COM on disk.
The BIOS directly controlled hardware components other than the CPU and main memory. It contained functions such as character input and output and the reading and writing of disk sectors. The BDOS implemented the CP/M file system and some input/output abstractions (such as redirection) on top of the BIOS. The CCP took user commands and either executed them directly (internal commands such as DIR to show a directory or ERA to delete a file) or loaded and started an executable file of the given name (transient commands such as PIP.COM to copy files or STAT.COM to show various file and system information). Third-party applications for CP/M were also essentially transient commands.
The BDOS, CCP and standard transient commands were (ideally) the same in all installations of a particular revision of CP/M, but the BIOS portion was always adapted to the particular hardware. Adding memory to a computer, for example, meant that the CP/M system had to be reinstalled with an updated BIOS capable of addressing the additional memory. A utility was provided to patch the supplied BIOS, BDOS and CCP to allow them to be run from higher memory. Once installed, the operating system (BIOS, BDOS and CCP) was stored in reserved areas at the beginning of any disk which would be used to boot the system. On start-up, the bootloader (usually contained in a ROM firmware chip) would load the operating system from the disk in drive codice_1.
By modern standards CP/M was primitive, owing to the extreme constraints on program size. With version 1.0 there was no provision for detecting a changed disk. If a user changed disks without manually rereading the disk directory the system would write on the new disk using the old disk's directory information, ruining the data stored on the disk. From version 1.1 or 1.2 onwards, changing a disk then trying to write to it before its directory was read would cause a fatal error to be signalled. This avoided overwriting the disk but required a reboot and loss of the data that was to be stored on disk.
The majority of the complexity in CP/M was isolated in the BDOS, and to a lesser extent, the CCP and transient commands. This meant that by porting the limited number of simple routines in the BIOS to a particular hardware platform, the entire OS would work. This significantly reduced the development time needed to support new machines, and was one of the main reasons for CP/M's widespread use. Today this sort of abstraction is common to most OSs (a hardware abstraction layer), but at the time of CP/M's birth, OSs were typically intended to run on only one machine platform, and multilayer designs were considered unnecessary.
The Console Command Processor, or CCP, accepted input from the keyboard and conveyed results to the terminal. CP/M itself would work with either a printing terminal or a video terminal. All CP/M commands had to be typed in on the command line. The console would most often display the codice_2 prompt, to indicate the current default disk drive. When used with a video terminal, this would usually be followed by a blinking cursor supplied by the terminal. The CCP would await input from the user.
A CCP internal command, of the form drive letter followed by a colon, could be used to select the default drive. For example, typing codice_3 and pressing enter at the command prompt would change the default drive to B, and the command prompt would then become codice_4 to indicate this change.
CP/M's command-line interface was patterned after the operating systems from Digital Equipment, such as RT-11 for the PDP-11 and OS/8 for the PDP-8.
Commands took the form of a keyword followed by a list of parameters separated by spaces or special characters. Similar to a Unix shell builtin, if an internal command was recognized, it was carried out by the CCP itself. Otherwise it would attempt to find an executable file on the currently logged disk drive and (in later versions) user area, load it, and pass it any additional parameters from the command line. These were referred to as "transient" programs. On completion, CP/M would reload the part of the CCP that had been overwritten by application programs — this allowed transient programs a larger memory space.
The commands themselves could sometimes be obscure. For instance, the command to duplicate files was named codice_5 (Peripheral-Interchange-Program), the name of the old DEC utility used for that purpose. The format of parameters given to a program was not standardized, so that there was no single option character that differentiated options from file names. Different programs could and did use different characters.
The following list of built-in commands are supported by the CP/M Console Command Processor:
Transient commands in CP/M include:
CP/M Plus (CP/M Version 3) includes the following built-in commands:
CP/M 3 allows the user to abbreviate the built-in commands.
Transient commands in CP/M 3 include:
The Basic Disk Operating System, or BDOS, provided access to such operations as opening a file, output to the console, or printing. Application programs would load processor registers with a function code for the operation, and addresses for parameters or memory buffers, and call a fixed address in memory. Since the address was the same independent of the amount of memory in the system, application programs would run the same way for any type or configuration of hardware.
The Basic Input Output System, or BIOS, provided the lowest level functions required by the operating system.
These included reading or writing single characters to the system console and reading or writing a sector of data from the disk. The BDOS handled some of the buffering of data from the diskette, but before CP/M 3.0 it assumed a disk sector size fixed at 128 bytes, as used on single-density 8-inch floppy disks. Since most 5.25-inch disk formats used larger sectors, the blocking and deblocking and the management of a disk buffer area was handled by model-specific code in the BIOS.
Customization was required because hardware choices were not constrained by compatibility with any one popular standard. For example, some manufacturers used a separate computer terminal, while others designed a built-in integrated video display system. Serial ports for printers and modems could use different types of UART chips, and port addresses were not fixed. Some machines used memory-mapped I/O instead of the 8080 I/O address space. All of these variations in the hardware were concealed from other modules of the system by use of the BIOS, which used standard entry points for the services required to run CP/M such as character I/O or accessing a disk block. Since support for serial communication to a modem was very rudimentary in the BIOS or may have been absent altogether, it was common practice for CP/M programs that used modems to have a user-installed overlay containing all the code required to access a particular machine's serial port.
File names were specified as a string of up to eight characters, followed by a period, followed by a file name extension of up to three characters ("8.3" filename format). The extension usually identified the type of the file. For example, codice_6 indicated an executable program file, and codice_7 indicated a file containing ASCII text.
Each disk drive was identified by a drive letter, for example drive codice_8 and drive codice_9. To refer to a file on a specific drive, the drive letter was prefixed to the file name, separated by a colon, e.g. codice_10. With no drive letter prefixed, access was to files on the current default drive.
The "8.3" filename format and the drive letter + colon combination survived into MS-DOS. The drive letter + colon convention has survived in Microsoft Windows and is still used today. In addition, file extensions (for example, codice_11, codice_12 (a compiled file), or codice_13 (an executable file)) are still used to identify file types on many operating systems.
File size was specified as the number of 128 byte "records" (directly corresponding to disk sectors on 8-inch drives) occupied by a file on the disk. There was no generally supported way of specifying byte-exact file sizes. The current size of a file was maintained in the file's File Control Block (FCB) by the operating system. Since many application programs (such as text editors) prefer to deal with files as sequences of characters rather than as sequences of records, by convention text files were terminated with a control-Z character (ASCII SUB, hexadecimal 1A). Determining the end of a text file therefore involved examining the last record of the file to locate the terminating control-Z. This also meant that inserting a control-Z character into the middle of a file usually had the effect of truncating the text contents of the file.
With the advent of larger removable and fixed disk drives, disk de-blocking formulas were employed which resulted in more disk blocks per logical file allocation block. While this allowed for larger file sizes, it also meant that the smallest file which could be allocated increased in size from 1 KB (on single-density drives) to 2 KB (on double-density drives) and so on, up to 32 KB for a file containing only a single byte. This made for inefficient use of disk space if the disk contained a large number of small files.
File modification time stamps were not supported in releases up to CP/M 2.2, but were an optional feature in MP/M and CP/M 3.0.
CP/M 2.2 had no subdirectories in the file structure, but provided 16 numbered user areas to organize files on a disk. To change user one had to simply type "User X" at the command prompt, X being the number of the user wanted; security was non-existent and not believed to be necessary. The user area concept was to make the single-user version of CP/M somewhat compatible with multi-user MP/M systems. A common patch for the CP/M and derivative operating systems was to make one user area accessible to the user independent of the currently set user area. A USER command allowed the user area to be changed to any area from 0 to 15. User 0 was the default. If one changed to another user, such as USER 1, the material saved on the disk for this user would only be available to USER 1; USER 2 would not be able to see it or access it. However, files stored in the USER 0 area were accessible to all other users; their location was specified with a prefatory path, since the files of USER 0 were only visible to someone logged in as USER 0. The user area feature arguably had little utility on small floppy disks, but it was useful for organizing files on machines with hard drives. The intent of the feature was to ease use of the same computer for different tasks. For example, a secretary could do data entry, then, after switching USER areas, another employee could use the machine to do billing without their files intermixing.
The read/write memory between address 0100 hexadecimal and the lowest address of the BDOS was the "Transient Program Area" (TPA) available for CP/M application programs. Although all Z80 and 8080 processors could address 64 kilobytes of memory, the amount available for application programs could vary, depending on the design of the particular computer. Some computers used large parts of the address space for such things as BIOS ROMs, or video display memory. As a result, some systems had more TPA memory available than others. Bank switching was a common technique that allowed systems to have a large TPA while switching out ROM or video memory space as needed. CP/M 3.0 allowed parts of the BDOS to be in bank-switched memory as well.
CP/M came with a Dynamic Debugging Tool, nicknamed DDT (after the insecticide, i.e. a bug-killer), which allowed memory and program modules to be examined and manipulated, and allowed a program to be executed one step at a time.
CP/M originally did not support the equivalent of terminate and stay resident (TSR) programs as under DOS. Programmers could write software that could intercept certain operating system calls and extend or alter their functionality. Using this capability, programmers developed and sold auxiliary desk accessory programs, such as SmartKey, a keyboard utility to assign any string of bytes to any key.
CP/M 3, however, added support for dynamically loadable "Resident System Extensions" (RSX). Similar solutions like RSMs (for "Resident System Modules") were also retrofitted to CP/M 2.2 systems by third-parties.
Although CP/M provided some hardware abstraction to standardize the interface to disk I/O or console I/O, typically application programs still required installation to make use of all the features of such equipment as printers and terminals. Often these were controlled by escape sequences which had to be altered for different devices. For example, the escape sequence to select bold face on a printer would have differed among manufacturers, and sometimes among models within a manufacturer's range. This procedure was not defined by the operating system; a user would typically run an installation program that would either allow selection from a range of devices, or else allow feature-by-feature editing of the escape sequences required to access a function. This had to be repeated for each application program, since there was no central operating system service provided for these devices.
The initializing codes for each model of printer had to be written into the application. To use a program such as Wordstar with more than one printer (say, a fast dot matrix printer or a slower but presentation-quality daisy wheel printer), a separate version of Wordstar had to be prepared, and one had to load the Wordstar version that corresponded to the printer selected (and exiting and reloading to change printers).
Gary Kildall originally developed CP/M during 1974, as an operating system to run on an Intel Intellec-8 development system, equipped with a Shugart Associates 8-inch floppy disk drive interfaced via a custom floppy disk controller. It was written in Kildall's own PL/M ("Programming Language for Microcomputers"). Various aspects of CP/M were influenced by the TOPS-10 operating system of the DECsystem-10 mainframe computer, which Kildall had used as a development environment.
CP/M originally stood for "Control Program/Monitor", a name which implies a resident monitor—a primitive precursor to the operating system. However, during the conversion of CP/M to a commercial product, trademark registration documents filed in November 1977 gave the product's name as "Control Program for Microcomputers". The CP/M name follows a prevailing naming scheme of the time, as in Kildall's PL/M language, and Prime Computer's PL/P ("Programming Language for Prime"), both suggesting IBM's PL/I; and IBM's CP/CMS operating system, which Kildall had used when working at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).
This renaming of CP/M was part of a larger effort by Kildall and his wife/business partner, Dorothy McEwen to convert Kildall's personal project of CP/M and the Intel-contracted PL/M compiler into a commercial enterprise. The Kildalls intended to establish the Digital Research brand and its product lines as synonymous with "microcomputer" in the consumer's mind, similar to what IBM and Microsoft together later successfully accomplished in making "personal computer" synonymous with their product offerings.
Intergalactic Digital Research, Inc. was later renamed via a corporation change-of-name filing to Digital Research, Inc.
By September 1981 Digital Research had sold more than CP/M licenses; "InfoWorld" stated that the actual market was likely larger because of sublicenses. Many different companies produced CP/M-based computers for many different markets; the magazine stated that "CP/M is well on its way to establishing itself as "the" small-computer operating system".
The companies chose to support CP/M because of its large library of software. The Xerox 820 ran the operating system because "where there are literally thousands of programs written for it, it would be unwise not to take advantage of it", Xerox said. (Xerox included a Howard W. Sams CP/M manual as compensation for Digital Research's documentation, which "InfoWorld" in 1982 described as atrocious.) By 1984 Columbia University used the same source code to build Kermit binaries for more than a dozen different CP/M systems, plus a generic version. The operating system was described as a "software bus", allowing multiple programs to interact with different hardware in a standardized way. Programs written for CP/M were typically portable among different machines, usually requiring only the specification of the escape sequences for control of the screen and printer. This portability made CP/M popular, and much more software was written for CP/M than for operating systems that ran on only one brand of hardware. One restriction on portability was that certain programs used the extended instruction set of the Z80 processor and would not operate on an 8080 or 8085 processor. Another was graphics routines, especially in games and graphics programs, which were generally machine-specific as they used direct hardware access for speed, bypassing the OS and BIOS (this was also a common problem in early DOS machines).
Bill Gates claimed that the Apple II family with a Z-80 SoftCard was the single most-popular CP/M hardware platform. Many different brands of machines ran the operating system, some notable examples being the Altair 8800, the IMSAI 8080, the Osborne 1 and Kaypro luggables, and MSX computers. The best-selling CP/M-capable system of all time was probably the Amstrad PCW. In the UK, CP/M was also available on Research Machines educational computers (with the CP/M source code published as an educational resource), and for the BBC Micro when equipped with a Z80 co-processor. Furthermore, it was available for the Amstrad CPC series, the Commodore 128, TRS-80, and later models of the ZX Spectrum. CP/M 3 was also used on the NIAT, a custom handheld computer designed for A.C. Nielsen's internal use with 1 MB of SSD memory.
WordStar, one of the first widely used word processors, and dBase, an early and popular database program for microcomputers, were originally written for CP/M. Two early outliners, KAMAS (Knowledge and Mind Amplification System) and its cut-down successor Out-Think (without programming facilities and retooled for 8080/V20 compatibility) were also written for CP/M, though later rewritten for MS-DOS. Turbo Pascal, the ancestor of Borland Delphi, and Multiplan, the ancestor of Microsoft Excel, also debuted on CP/M before MS-DOS versions became available. Visicalc, the first-ever spreadsheet program, was made available for CP/M. Another company, Sorcim, created its SuperCalc spreadsheet for CP/M, which would go on to become the market leader and de facto standard on CP/M. Supercalc would go on to be a competitor in the spreadsheet market in the MS-DOS world. AutoCAD, a CAD application from Autodesk debuted on CP/M. A host of compilers and interpreters for popular programming languages of the time (such as BASIC, Borland's Turbo Pascal, FORTRAN and even PL/I) were available, among them several of the earliest Microsoft products.
CP/M software often came with installers that adapted it to a wide variety of computers. The source code for BASIC programs was easily accessible, and most forms of copy protection were ineffective on the operating system. A Kaypro II owner, for example, would obtain software on Xerox 820 format, then copy it to and run it from Kaypro-format disks.
The lack of standardized graphics support limited video games, but various character and text-based games were ported, such as "Telengard", "Gorillas", "Hamurabi", "Lunar Lander", along with early interactive fiction including the Zork series and "Colossal Cave Adventure". A text adventure specialist, Infocom was one of the few publishers to consistently release their games in CP/M format. Lifeboat Associates started collecting and distributing user-written "free" software. One of the first was XMODEM, which allowed reliable file transfers via modem and phone line. Another program native to CP/M was the outline processor KAMAS.
IBM System/34 and IBM 3740's single-density, single-sided format is CP/M's standard 8-inch floppy disk format. No standard 5.25-inch CP/M disk format exists, with Kaypro, Morrow Designs, Osborne, and others using their own. "InfoWorld" estimated in September 1981 that "about two dozen formats were popular enough that software creators had to consider them to reach the broadest possible market". JRT Pascal, for example, provided versions on 5.25-inch disk for North Star, Osborne, Apple, Heath hard sector and soft sector, and Superbrain, and one 8-inch version. Ellis Computing also offered its software for both Heath formats, and 16 other 5.25-inch formats including two different TRS-80 CP/M modifications.
Certain disk formats were more popular than others. Most software was available in the Xerox 820 format, and other computers such as the Kaypro II were compatible with it. No single manufacturer, however, prevailed in the 5.25-inch era of CP/M use, and disk formats were often not portable between hardware manufacturers. A software manufacturer had to prepare a separate version of the program for each brand of hardware on which it was to run. With some manufacturers (Kaypro is an example), there was not even standardization across the company's different models. Because of this situation, disk format translation programs, which allowed a machine to read many different formats, became popular and reduced the confusion, as did programs like Kermit which allowed transfer of data and programs from one machine to another using the serial ports that most CP/M machines had.
Various formats were used depending on the characteristics of particular systems and to some degree the choices of the designers. CP/M supported options to control the size of reserved and directory areas on the disk, and the mapping between logical disk sectors (as seen by CP/M programs) and physical sectors as allocated on the disk. There were many ways to customize these parameters for every system but once they had been set, no standardized way existed for a system to load parameters from a disk formatted on another system.
The degree of portability between different CP/M machines depended on the type of disk drive and controller used since many different floppy types existed in the CP/M era in both 8-inch and 5.25-inch format. Disks could be hard or soft sectored, single or double density, single or double sided, 35 track, 40 track, 77 track, or 80 track, and the sector layout, size and interleave could vary widely as well. Although translation programs could allow the user to read disk types from different machines, it also depended on the drive type and controller. By 1982, soft sector, single sided, 40 track 5.25-inch disks had become the most popular format to distribute CP/M software on as they were used by the most common consumer-level machines of that time such as the Apple II, TRS-80, Osborne 1, Kaypro II, and IBM PC. A translation program allowed the user to read any disks on his machine that had a similar format—for example, the Kaypro II could read TRS-80, Osborne, IBM PC, and Epson disks. Other disk types such as 80 track or hard sectored were completely impossible to read. The first half of double sided disks (like the Epson QX-10's) could be read because CP/M accessed disk tracks sequentially with track 0 being the first (outermost) track of side 1 and track 79 (on a 40 track disk) being the last (innermost) track of side 2. Apple II users could not use anything but Apple's GCR format and so had to obtain CP/M software on Apple format disks or else transfer it via serial link.
The fragmented CP/M market, requiring distributors either to stock multiple formats of disks or to invest in multiformat duplication equipment, compared with the more standardized IBM PC disk formats, was a contributing factor to the rapid obsolescence of CP/M after 1981.
One of the last notable CP/M capable machines to appear was the Commodore 128 in 1985, which had a Z80 for CP/M support in addition to its native mode using a 6502-derivative CPU. Using CP/M required either a 1571 or 1581 disk drive which could read soft sector 40 track MFM format disks.
The first computer to use a 3.5-inch floppy drive, the Sony SMC-70, ran CP/M 2.2. The Commodore 128, Bondwell-2 laptop, Micromint/Ciarcia SB-180, MSX and TRS-80 Model 4 (running Montezuma CP/M 2.2) also supported the use of CP/M with 3.5-inch floppy disks. The Amstrad PCW ran CP/M using 3 inch floppy drives at first, and later switched to the 3.5 inch drives.
Although graphics-capable S-100 systems existed from the commercialization of the S-100 bus, CP/M did not provide any standardized graphics support until 1982 with GSX (Graphics System Extension). Owing to the small memory available, graphics was never a common feature associated with 8-bit CP/M operating systems. Most systems could only display rudimentary ASCII art charts and diagrams in text mode or by using a custom character set. Some computers in the Kaypro line and the TRS-80 Model 4 had video hardware supporting block graphics characters, and these were accessible to assembler programmers and BASIC programmers using the CHR$ command. The Model 4 could display 640 by 240 pixel graphics with an optional high resolution board.
In 1979, a multi-user compatible derivative of CP/M was released. MP/M allowed multiple users to connect to a single computer, using multiple terminals to provide each user with a screen and keyboard. Later versions ran on 16-bit processors.
The last 8-bit version of CP/M was version 3, often called CP/M Plus, released in 1983. It incorporated the bank switching memory management of MP/M in a single-user single-task operating system compatible with CP/M 2.2 applications. CP/M 3 could therefore use more than 64 KB of memory on an 8080 or Z80 processor. The system could be configured to support date stamping of files. The operating system distribution software also included a relocating assembler and linker. CP/M 3 was available for the last generation of 8-bit computers, notably the Amstrad PCW, the Amstrad CPC, the ZX Spectrum +3, the Commodore 128, MSX machines and the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4.
There were versions of CP/M for some 16-bit CPUs as well.
The first version in the 16-bit family was CP/M-86 for the Intel 8086 in November 1981. At this point, the original 8-bit CP/M became known by the retronym CP/M-80 to avoid confusion.
CP/M-86 was expected to be the standard operating system of the new IBM PCs, but DRI and IBM were unable to negotiate development and licensing terms. IBM turned to Microsoft instead, and Microsoft delivered PC DOS based on 86-DOS. Although CP/M-86 became an option for the IBM PC after DRI threatened legal action, it never overtook Microsoft's system. Most customers were repelled by the significantly greater price IBM charged for CP/M-86 over PC DOS ( and , respectively).
When Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) put out the Rainbow 100 to compete with IBM, it came with CP/M-80 using a Z80 chip, CP/M-86 or MS-DOS using an 8088 microprocessor, or CP/M-86/80 using both. The Z80 and 8088 CPUs ran concurrently. A benefit of the Rainbow was that it could continue to run 8-bit CP/M software, preserving a user's possibly sizable investment as they moved into the 16-bit world of MS-DOS. A similar dual-processor adaption for the was named CP/M 8-16. The CP/M-86 adaptation for the 8085/8088-based Zenith Z-100 also supported running programs for both of its CPUs.
Soon following CP/M-86, another 16-bit version of CP/M was CP/M-68K for the Motorola 68000. The original version of CP/M-68K in 1982 was written in Pascal/MT+68k, but it was ported to C later on. CP/M-68K, already running on the Motorola EXORmacs systems, was initially to be used in the Atari ST computer, but Atari decided to go with a newer disk operating system called GEMDOS. CP/M-68K was also used on the SORD M68 and M68MX computers.
In 1982 there was also a port from CP/M-68K to the 16-bit Zilog Z8000 for the Olivetti M20, written in C, named CP/M-8000.
These 16-bit versions of CP/M required application programs to be re-compiled for the new CPUs or if they were written in assembly language, to be translated using tools like Digital Research's XLT86, a program written by Gary Kildall in 1981, which translated .ASM source code for the Intel 8080 processor into .A86 source code for the Intel 8086. Using global data flow analysis on 8080 register usage, the translator would also optimize the output for code size and take care of calling conventions, so that CP/M-80 and MP/M-80 programs could be ported to the CP/M-86 and MP/M-86 platforms automatically. XLT86 itself was written in PL/I-80 and was available for CP/M-80 platforms as well as for DEC VMS (for VAX 11/750 or 11/780).
Many expected that CP/M would be the standard operating system for 16-bit computers. In 1980 IBM approached Digital Research, at Bill Gates' suggestion, to license a forthcoming version of CP/M for its new product, the IBM Personal Computer. Upon the failure to obtain a signed non-disclosure agreement, the talks failed, and IBM instead contracted with Microsoft to provide an operating system. The resulting product, MS-DOS, soon began outselling CP/M.
Many of the basic concepts and mechanisms of early versions of MS-DOS resembled those of CP/M. Internals like file-handling data structures were identical, and both referred to disk drives with a letter (codice_1, codice_3, etc.). MS-DOS's main innovation was its FAT file system. This similarity made it easier to port popular CP/M software like WordStar and dBase. However, CP/M's concept of separate user areas for files on the same disk was never ported to MS-DOS. Since MS-DOS had access to more memory (as few IBM PCs were sold with less than 64 KB of memory, while CP/M could run in 16 KB if necessary), more commands were built into the command-line shell, making MS-DOS somewhat faster and easier to use on floppy-based computers.
Although one of the first peripherals for the IBM PC was a SoftCard-like expansion card that let it run 8-bit CP/M software, CP/M rapidly lost market share as the microcomputing market moved to the IBM-compatible platform, and it never regained its former popularity. "Byte" magazine, at the time one of the leading industry magazines for microcomputers, essentially ceased covering CP/M products within a few years of the introduction of the IBM PC. For example, in 1983 there were still a few advertisements for S-100 boards and articles on CP/M software, but by 1987 these were no longer found in the magazine. A 1984 article in "InfoWorld" stated that efforts to introduce CP/M to the home market had been largely unsuccessful and most CP/M software was too expensive for home users, and in 1986 stated that Kaypro had stopped production of their 8-bit CP/M-based models to concentrate on sales of MS-DOS compatible systems, long after most other vendors had ceased production of new equipment and software for CP/M.
Later versions of CP/M-86 made significant strides in performance and usability and were made compatible with MS-DOS. To reflect this compatibility the name was changed, and CP/M-86 became DOS Plus, which in turn became DR-DOS.
ZCPR (the Z80 Command Processor Replacement) was introduced on 2 February 1982 as a drop-in replacement for the standard Digital Research console command processor (CCP) and was initially written by a group of computer hobbyists who called themselves "The CCP Group". They were Frank Wancho, Keith Petersen (the archivist behind Simtel at the time), Ron Fowler, Charlie Strom, Bob Mathias, and Richard Conn. Richard was, in fact, the driving force in this group (all of whom maintained contact through email).
ZCPR1 was released on a disk put out by SIG/M (Special Interest Group/Microcomputers), a part of the Amateur Computer Club of New Jersey.
ZCPR2 was released on 14 February 1983. It was released as a set of ten disks from SIG/M. ZCPR2 was upgraded to 2.3, and also was released in 8080 code, permitting the use of ZCPR2 on 8080 and 8085 systems.
ZCPR3 was released on 14 July 1984, as a set of nine disks from SIG/M. The code for ZCPR3 could also be compiled (with reduced features) for the 8080 and would run on systems that did not have the requisite Z80 microprocessor.
In January 1987, Richard Conn stopped developing ZCPR, and Echelon asked Jay Sage (who already had a privately enhanced ZCPR 3.1) to continue work on it. Thus, ZCPR 3.3 was developed and released. ZCPR 3.3 no longer supported the 8080 series of microprocessors, and added the most features of any upgrade in the ZCPR line.
Features of ZCPR as of version 3 included:
ZCPR3.3 also included a full complement of utilities with considerably extended capabilities. While enthusiastically supported by the CP/M user base of the time, ZCPR alone was insufficient to slow the demise of CP/M.
A number of CP/M-80 derivatives existed in the former East-bloc under various names including SCP (), SCP/M, CP/A, CP/KC, CP/L, CP/KSOB, CP/Z, MICRODOS, BCU880, ZOAZ, OS/M, TOS/M, ZSDOS, M/OS, COS-PSA, DOS-PSA, CSOC, CSOS, CZ-CPM and others. There were also CP/M-86 derivatives named SCP1700, CP/K and K8918-OS. They were produced by the East-German VEB Robotron and others.
A number of behaviors exhibited by Microsoft Windows are a result of backward compatibility with MS-DOS, which in turn attempted some backward compatibility with CP/M. The drive letter and 8.3 filename conventions in MS-DOS (and early Windows versions) were originally adopted from CP/M. The wildcard matching characters used by Windows (? and *) are based on those of CP/M, as are the reserved filenames used to redirect output to a printer ("PRN:"), and the console ("CON:"). The drive names A and B were used to designate the two floppy disk drives that CP/M systems typically used; when hard drives appeared they were designated C, which survived into MS-DOS as the codice_16 command prompt. The control character ^Z marking the end of some text files can also be attributed to CP/M. Various commands in DOS were modelled after CP/M commands, some of them even carried the same name like DIR, REN/RENAME, or TYPE (and ERA/ERASE in DR-DOS).
In 1997 and 1998 Caldera released some CP/M 2.2 binaries and source code under an open source license, also allowing the redistribution and modification of further collected Digital Research files related to the CP/M and MP/M families through Tim Olmstead's "The Unofficial CP/M Web site" since 1997. After Olmstead's death on 12 September 2001, the distribution license was refreshed and expanded by Lineo, who had meanwhile become the owner of those Digital Research assets, on 19 October 2001.
In October 2014, to mark the 40th anniversary of the first presentation of CP/M, the Computer History Museum released early source code versions of CP/M.
, there are a number of active vintage, hobby and retro-computer people and groups, and some small commercial businesses, still developing and supporting compute platforms that use CP/M (mostly 2.2) as the host operating system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45146 |
8-bit computing
The term '8-bit' is also applied to the character sets that could be used on computers with 8-bit bytes, the most well known being various forms of extended ASCII, including the ISO/IEC 8859 series of national character sets especially Latin 1 for English and Western European languages.
The IBM System/360 introduced byte-addressable memory with 8-bit bytes, as opposed to bit-addressable or decimal digit-addressable or word-addressable memory, although its general purpose registers were 32 bits wide, and addresses were contained in the lower 24 bits of those addresses. Different models of System/360 had different internal data path widths; the IBM System/360 Model 30 (1965) implemented the 32-bit System/360 architecture, but had an 8 bit native path width, and performed 32-bit arithmetic 8 bits at a time.
The first widely adopted 8-bit microprocessor was the Intel 8080, being used in many hobbyist computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, often running the CP/M operating system; it had 8-bit data words and 16-bit addresses. The Zilog Z80 (compatible with the 8080) and the Motorola 6800 were also used in similar computers. The Z80 and the MOS Technology 6502 8-bit CPUs were widely used in home computers and second- and third-generation game consoles of the 1970s and 1980s. Many 8-bit CPUs or microcontrollers are the basis of today's ubiquitous embedded systems.
There are 28 (256) different possible values for 8 bits. When unsigned, it has possible values ranging from 0 to 255; when signed, it has -128 to 127.
Eight-bit CPUs use an 8-bit data bus and can therefore access 8 bits of data in a single machine instruction. The address bus is typically a double octet wide (i.e. 16-bit), due to practical and economical considerations. This implies a direct address space of only 64 kB on most 8-bit processors.
The first commercial 8-bit processor was the Intel 8008 (1972) which was originally intended for the Datapoint 2200 intelligent terminal. Most competitors to Intel started off with such character oriented 8-bit microprocessors. Modernized variants of these 8-bit machines are still one of the most common types of processor in embedded systems.
Another notable 8-bit CPU is the MOS Technology 6502; it, and variants of it, were used in a number of personal computers such as the Apple I and Apple II, the Atari 8-bit family, the BBC Micro, and the Commodore PET and Commodore VIC-20, and in a number of video game consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45148 |
Elián González
Elián González Brotons (born December 6, 1993) is a Cuban citizen who became embroiled in a heated international custody and immigration controversy in 2000 involving the governments of Cuba and the United States, his father Juan Miguel González Quintana, his other relatives in Cuba and in Miami, and Miami's Cuban community.
González's mother Elizabeth Brotons Rodríguez drowned in November 1999 while attempting to leave Cuba with González and her boyfriend to get to the United States. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initially placed him with paternal relatives in Miami who sought to keep him in the United States against his father's demands that he be returned to Cuba.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling from the Southern District Court of Florida that only González's father could petition for asylum on the boy's behalf, and not his extended relatives. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and Attorney General Janet Reno sent federal agents who took González from the paternal relatives at gunpoint and returned him to his father in Cuba in June 2000.
The U.S. legislation system enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966, which sought to provide political asylum for Cubans who fled their country in the hopes of a new life. Under the act, Cuban refugees, without visas, entering the United States were paroled, and after a year could apply for permanent resident status. The US also issued 20,000 lottery visas every year to Cuban emigrants under the wet foot, dry foot policy. Under this policy, those who reached the mainland were granted asylum, while those who were intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard were sent back to Cuba.
Elián Gonzalez was a five-year-old boy who was found nestled in an inner tube floating at sea three miles from Florida's Fort Lauderdale coast. Two fishermen found Elián and reluctantly handed him over to the U.S. Coast Guard, as they feared he would be sent back to Cuba under the wet foot, dry foot policy since he had not yet reached land. The Coast Guard assured them that Elián would be taken "ashore for medical reasons," deeming him eligible to stay. Elián was immediately taken to a hospital and treated for dehydration and minor cuts on his body. It was later found that Elián's mother, Elisabet Brotons Rodríguez, and Lázaro Munero García, her common-law husband, had escaped Cárdenas, Cuba, as part of a group with 14 refugees on a boat. However, the others perished in a storm, while a young couple escaped to the shore, and Elián was found.
Once treated, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) provided Elián with a temporary deferral regarding his inspection, and further released Elián to his great-uncle, Lázaro Gonzalez, who lived with his family in Miami's Little Havana. These relatives informed the family in Cárdenas to prepare for an extreme hardship visa waiver. The former were told the next day that "some functionary of the government would be coming to get the boy" as a result of Fidel Castro's having met with Juan Miguel, Elián's father. The involvement of the Cuban Communist leader in the case and the subsequent diplomatic note written to the U.S. Department of State emphasizing the father's demand for Elián's repatriation attracted international attention. This is because Elián had become a "symbol to many exiles" reminding them of the immense politically and economically oppressive conditions in Cuba that forced a mother to risk her child's life in the hopes of escaping to a better place. While Elián escaped both Cuba and death, he soon entered custody battles waged by his father, Miami relatives, and state actors from the U.S. and Cuba.
The international tug of war waged between the Cuban and American actors can be understood through the agendas of Fidel Castro; the Cuban American actor Lazaro Gonzalez representing the Miami relatives and the Miami Cuban expat community; and the U.S. government representative, Attorney General Janet Reno. In the case of Fidel Castro, he sought to showcase his power by first issuing an ultimatum to the U.S. that the boy should be returned to his father within 72 hours.
On January 10, 2000, a Florida state court had ruled that the Florida family court was able to decide the merit of motion related with temporary custody by Lazaro Gonzalez, stating that Elián should stay with the Miami relatives until a further custody hearing. However, Reno declared that the federal courts are responsible for deciding this case, and that the Miami relatives must appeal to the federal court. Here, the objective of Reno was to provide the relatives with a chance to provide "any information" they could that would be "relevant in the decision" ("Reno press conference," 2000). She again emphasized that the INS commissioner had declared that the father speaks for the son, and that his wishes were to have his son returned to him.
Elián González was born December 6, 1993, to divorced parents. On November 21, 1999, González, his mother Elizabeth Brotons Rodríguez, and twelve others left Cuba on a small aluminum boat with a faulty engine; González's mother and ten others died in the crossing. González and the other two survivors floated at sea until they were rescued by two fishermen, who handed them over to the U.S. Coast Guard.
González's cousin Marisleysis said that the boat's motor broke down and they tried in vain to bail out the water with nylon bags, but a storm doomed their efforts. He told her he tried to help get the water out and his mother's boyfriend placed him in an inner tube for safety. "He said afterwards that he fell asleep and that when he woke up he never saw his mother again". He said, "I think she drowned too because she didn't know how to swim".
Nivaldo Fernández Ferran, one of the three survivors on the boat, said "Elizabeth protected her son to the end". According to Ferran, they set out on their trip at 4 am, dragging inflated rubber floats, or inner tubes, in case they needed them. As they encountered bad weather, the boat's engine failed and the craft began to fill with water. After it went under, the passengers clung to the inner tubes in cold water, with waves reaching heights of three to four meters (10 to 13 feet).
Afterwards, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) released González to his paternal great-uncle, Lázaro. According to the "Washington Post", González's father, Juan Miguel González Quintana, had telephoned Lázaro from Cuba on November 22, 1999, to advise that González and his mother had left Cuba without Juan Miguel's knowledge, and to watch for their arrival.
Lázaro González, backed by local Cuban Americans, took the position that the boy should remain in the United States and not be returned to his father. Marisleysis González (Lázaro's adult daughter) became Elián González's caretaker and spokesperson for the paternal relatives. Also, Armando Gutierrez, a local Cuban-American businessman, became a spokesman. At the same time, Juan Miguel, with the support of Cuban authorities, demanded that his son be returned to Cuba.
On January 21, 2000, Elián González's grandmothers, Mariela Quintana and Raquel Rodríguez, flew from Havana to the United States to seek their grandson's return to Cuba. While they were able to meet with the boy only once at the Miami Beach home of Barry University president Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, they journeyed to Washington and met with congressmen and Attorney General Janet Reno. After nine days of media coverage (during which Republican lawmakers acknowledged they did not have the votes to pass a bill to give González U.S. citizenship), they returned to Cuba to "a hero's welcome".
On January 28, the Spanish foreign minister Abel Matutes called for the boy's return to Cuba, stating that international law dictated the return. Meanwhile, the Miami Gonzálezes denied allegations that they had offered Juan Miguel a house and a car if he abandoned the action and joined his son in Miami. Juan Miguel was uninterested in emigrating.
Through January and February, Juan Miguel sent a number of open letters to the U.S. government—published in, among other places, the Cuban newspaper "Granma"—demanding the return of his son and refusing the Miami relatives' demands.
Chicago-based fathers' rights attorney Jeffery M. Leving spearheaded the amicus brief, which set the foundation of the custody case to reunite González with his father in Cuba. Manuel González, Elián Gonzalez's great uncle, later retained Leving to reunite González with his father.
On March 21, Judge Kevin Michael Moore of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida dismissed the relatives' petition for asylum which they had filed on behalf of Elián González. Lázaro vowed to appeal. On March 29, Miami-Dade County mayor Alex Penelas was joined by 22 other civic leaders in a speech in downtown Miami. Penelas indicated that the municipality would not cooperate with Federal authorities on any repatriation of the boy, and would not lend police assets or any other assistance in taking the boy.
On April 14, a video was released in which Elián González tells Juan Miguel that he wants to stay in the United States. However, many thought that he had been coached, as a male voice was heard off-camera directing the young boy. In a September 2005 interview with "60 Minutes" after being sent back to Cuba, González stated that during his stay in the U.S., his family members were "telling me bad things about [my father]", and "were also telling me to tell him that I did not want to go back to Cuba, and I always told them I wanted to."
Elián González remained a subject of media attention as he went to Walt Disney World Resort one day, then met with politicians the next. Throughout the custody battle, opinion polls showed that a majority of Americans believed González should be returned to his father in Cuba, and that doing so was in the boy's best interest.
Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the return of Elián González to his father and set a deadline of April 13, 2000, but the Miami relatives defied the order. Negotiations continued for several days as the house was surrounded by protesters as well as police. The relatives insisted on guarantees that they could live with the child for several months and retain custody, and that González would not be returned to Cuba. Negotiations carried on throughout the night, but Reno claimed that the relatives rejected all workable solutions.
On April 19, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that González must remain in the U.S. until the Miami Gonzálezes could appeal for an asylum hearing in May.
A Florida family court judge revoked Lázaro's temporary custody, clearing the way for González to be returned to his father's custody. On April 20, Reno made the decision to remove González from the house and instructed law enforcement officials to determine the best time to obtain the boy. After being informed of the decision, Marisleysis said to a Justice Department community relations officer, "You think we just have cameras in the house? If people try to come in, they could be hurt."
In the pre-dawn hours of Easter Eve, April 22, agents of the Border Patrol's special BORTAC unit as part of an operation in which more than 130 INS personnel took part approached the house, knocked on the door, and identified themselves. When no one responded, they entered. At the same time, pepper-spray and mace were employed against persons outside who attempted to interfere. In the confusion, Armando Gutierrez called in Alan Diaz, of the Associated Press, to enter the house and entered a room with González, his great uncle's wife Angela Lázaro, her niece, the niece's young son, and Donato Dalrymple (one of the two men who had rescued him from the ocean). They waited in the room listening to agents searching the house. Diaz took a widely publicized photograph of a border patrol agent confronting Dalrymple and the boy.
INS also stated in the days after the raid that they had identified as many as two dozen persons who were "prepared to thwart any government operation", some of whom had concealed weapons while others had criminal records.
Approximately 100 people protested against the raid as it took place, with some calling the INS agents "assassins". Then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani described Border Patrol BORTAC agents involved in the seizure of Elian Gonzalez as "storm troopers" at least six times. Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association reacted with "strong disgust and dismay" to the Nazi imagery and demanded Giuliani's apology. Hillary Clinton, then running against Giuliani for a Senate seat, agreed with FLEOA in asking for an apology. He refused to apologize, though stated his criticism was aimed at Bill Clinton and AG Janet Reno. Giuliani withdrew from the race for unrelated reasons.
Public opinion about the INS raid on the Miami González's house was widely polarized. There were two major focuses in media coverage of the event: the raid and the family reunions. A "Time" magazine issue showed a photo of a joyful González being reunited with his father (the caption says "Papa!"), while "Newsweek" ran an issue that focused on the raid, entitled "Seizing Elián".
Four hours after he was taken from the house in Miami, González and his father were reunited at Andrews Air Force Base. The next day, the White House released a photograph showing a smiling González reunited with his father, which the Miami relatives disputed by claiming that it was a fake González in the photograph. Later, González and his family were taken to the Aspen Institute Wye River Conference Center in Maryland (formerly known as "Wye Plantation"). The media were barred from access to the family.
While the family was still at Andrews, New Hampshire senator Bob Smith, escorting the Miami González relatives, was turned away from the base by guards. The May 5, 2000, "Miami Herald" reported that González was joined by his classmates (without their parents) and his teacher from his hometown, Cárdenas. The newspaper "Granma" released pictures of Elián in the Young Pioneer uniform of Cuba's Communist youth league. On May 6, 2000, attorney Greg Craig took González and Juan Miguel to a dinner in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, hosted by Smith and Elizabeth Bagley.
After González was returned to his father's custody, he remained in the U.S. while the Miami relatives exhausted their legal options. A three-judge federal panel had ruled that he could not go back to Cuba until he was granted an asylum hearing, but the case turned on the right of the relatives to request that hearing on behalf of the boy. On June 1, 2000, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Elián was too young to file for asylum; only his father could speak for him, and the relatives lacked legal standing. On June 28, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision. In the afternoon of the same day, seven months and one week after Elián González left Cuba, he and his family, along with his classmates and teacher, boarded two chartered planes at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, for José Martí International Airport in Havana.
After his return to Cuba, Elián González lived with his father, stepmother, and three brothers in Cárdenas, where his father, Juan Miguel, was a waiter at an Italian restaurant at Josone Park, in Varadero, near Cárdenas. Elián's father was interviewed at the restaurant in 2004 by Keith Morrison of the NBC News program "Dateline NBC" and "Cover to Cover" on CNBC. Juan Miguel filmed a home video on which González was shown doing his arithmetic homework with Juan Miguel in their dining room, going to bed in his bedroom with his two younger half-brothers, and attending karate lessons.
Morrison's TV report also showed an 18th-century building in Cárdenas which was previously used as a fire station and which was renovated and inaugurated on July 14, 2001, as a museum, called "Museo de la Batalla de Ideas" ("Museum of the Battle of Ideas"), which includes an exhibition room dedicated to González, which houses a life-size bronze statue of González raising a clenched fist. The former González home in Miami has similarly been turned into a museum, with the boy's bedroom left unaltered. Juan Miguel is also a member of the National Assembly and has attended events for the Communist Party of Cuba with González, who has been called up to the stage to meet Fidel Castro. Castro also attended a filmed birthday party of González with his schoolmates.
In September 2005, González was interviewed by "60 Minutes" and stated during the interview that Fidel Castro was a friend, and that he considers Castro "not only as a friend but as a father"; González's aunt, Angela González, said she doubted whether the interview represented his true beliefs because of the controls imposed by Cuba on information. In December 2006, an ill Fidel Castro was unable to attend González's 13th birthday celebration, so his brother Raúl attended instead.
On August 16, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of an excessive force lawsuit brought by Dalrymple and others against the Federal Government and Reno.
González joined the Young Communist Union of Cuba in June 2008 shortly after graduating from junior high school. At age 15, he began military school. In a November 2013 speech, González described his time in the United States as "very sad times for me, which marked me for my whole life", asserting that the Cuban Adjustment Act led to the denial of his rights, including "the right to be together with my father, the right to keep my nationality and to remain in my cultural context".
Commentators have suggested that the Elián González affair may have been a factor in voters' decisions in the 2000 United States presidential election, which could have affected the close outcome in Florida. Al Gore's handling of the matter may have angered the predominantly Republican Cuban community over the boy's return to Cuba. Gore initially supported Republican legislation to give the boy and his father permanent residence status, but later supported the administration position. He was attacked by both sides in the dispute for his equivocal position.
In 2015, González was studying to be an industrial engineer, and hoped to marry his high school sweetheart and fiancée after finishing college. He stated that although he did not regret returning to Cuba, he would like to travel to the United States one day "to give my love to the American people". In July 2016, he received a degree in industrial engineering from the University of Matanzas, and read a letter to Fidel Castro from his graduating class, vowing "to fight from whatever trench the revolution demands".
After graduating in 2016, González began working as a technology specialist at a state-run company that makes large plastic water tanks. On Father's Day in 2020, González announced that he was becoming a father himself, with his fiancé being pregnant with a girl.
The saga was portrayed in the 2000 television film, "A Family In Crisis: The Elian Gonzales Story", which starred Esai Morales as Elián's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez; Laura Harring as Elián's cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez; and Alec Roberts in the title role.
"Elián" is a 2017 documentary film directed by Ross McDonnell and Tim Golden, produced by Trevor Birney and executive produced by Alex Gibney. The film details the story of the young Cuban and has exclusive interviews with Elián González and his family in both Cuba and Miami. The film was co-produced by Fine Point Films and Jigsaw Productions and has a voiceover by Raul Esparza. The film premiered on April 19, 2017, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It opened in limited release in May, and appeared on CNN Films in August 2017. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45154 |
Tatian
Tatian of Adiabene, or Tatian the Syrian, Tatian the Assyrian,
(; ; ; ; c. 120 – c. 180 AD) was an Assyrian Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century.
Tatian's most influential work is the Diatessaron, a Biblical paraphrase, or "harmony", of the four gospels that became the standard text of the four gospels in the Syriac-speaking churches until the 5th-century, after which it gave way to the four separate gospels in the Peshitta version.
Concerning the date and place of his birth, little is known beyond what Tatian tells about himself in his "Oratio ad Graecos", chap. xlii ("Ante-Nicene Fathers", ii. 81–82): that he was born in "the land of the Assyrians", scholarly consensus is that he died c. AD 185, perhaps in Adiabene.
He traveled to Rome, where he first encountered Christianity. During his prolonged stay in Rome, according to his own representation, his abhorrence of the pagan cults sparked deep reflections on religious problems. Through the Old Testament, he wrote, he grew convinced of the unreasonableness of paganism. He adopted the Christian religion and became the pupil of Justin Martyr. During this period Christian philosophers competed with Greek sophists. Like Justin, Tatian opened a Christian school in Rome.
Knowledge of Tatian's life following the death of Justin in AD 165 is to some extent obscure. Irenaeus remarks ("Haer.", I., xxvlii. 1, "Ante-Nicene Fathers," i. 353) that after the death of Justin, he was expelled from the church for his Encratitic (ascetic) views. (Eusebius claims he founded the Encratitic sect), as well as for being a follower of the gnostic leader Valentinius. It is clear that Tatian left Rome, perhaps to reside for a while in either Greece or Alexandria, where he may have taught Clement of Alexandria. Epiphanius relates that Tatian established a school in Mesopotamia, the influence of which extended to Antioch in Syria, and was felt in Cilicia and especially in Pisidia.
The early development of the Syrian church furnishes a commentary on the attitude of Tatian in practical life. Thus for Aphrahat baptism conditions the taking of a vow in which the catechumen promises celibacy. This shows how firmly the views of Tatian were established in Syria, and it supports the supposition that Tatian was the missionary of the countries around the Euphrates.
His "Oratio ad Graecos" (Address to the Greeks) condemns paganism as worthless, and praises the reasonableness and high antiquity of Christianity. As early as Eusebius, Tatian was praised for his discussions of the antiquity of Moses and of Jewish legislation, and it was because of this chronological section that his "Oratio" was not generally condemned.
His other major work was the "Diatessaron", a "harmony" or synthesis of the four New Testament Gospels into a combined narrative of the life of Jesus. Ephrem the Syrian referred to it as the "Evangelion da Mehallete" ("The Gospel of the Mixed"), and it was practically the only gospel text used in Syria during the 3rd and 4th centuries.
In the mid 5th century the Diatessaron was replaced in those Syrian churches that used it by the four original Gospels. Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa, ordered the priests and deacons to see that every church should have a copy of the separate Gospels ("Evangelion da Mepharreshe"), and Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, removed more than two hundred copies of the "Diatessaron" from the churches in his diocese. The Syriac Sinaitic manuscript of gospels was produced in between AD 411 and 435 as a result of his edict.
A number of recensions of the "Diatessaron" are extant. The earliest, part of the Eastern family of recensions, is preserved in Ephrem's "Commentary" on Tatian's work, which itself is preserved in two versions: an Armenian translation preserved in two copies, and a copy of Ephrem's original Syriac text from the late 5th/early 6th century, which has been edited by Louis Leloir (Paris, 1966). Other translations include translations made into Arabic, Persian, and Old Georgian. A fragment of a narrative about the Passion found in the ruins of Dura-Europos in 1933 was once thought to have been from the "Diatessaron", but more recent scholarly judgement does not connect it directly to Tatian's work.
The earliest member of the Western family of recensions is the Latin Codex Fuldensis, written at the request of bishop Victor of Capua in 545 AD. Although the text is clearly dependent on the Vulgate, the order of the passages is distinctly how Tatian arranged them. Tatian's influence can be detected much earlier in such Latin manuscripts as the Old Latin translation of the Bible, in Novatian's surviving writings, and in the Roman Antiphony. After the Codex Fuldensis, it would appear that members of the Western family led an underground existence, popping into view over the centuries in an Old High German translation (c. 830), a Dutch (c. 1280), a Venetian manuscript of the 13th century, and a Middle English manuscript from 1400 that was once owned by Samuel Pepys.
In a lost writing entitled "On Perfection according to the Doctrine of the Savior," Tatian designates matrimony as a symbol of the tying of the flesh to the perishable world and ascribed the "invention" of matrimony to the devil. He distinguishes between the old and the new man; the old man is the law, the new man the Gospel. Other lost writings of Tatian include a work written before the "Oratio ad Graecos" that contrasts the nature of man with the nature of the animals, and a "Problematon biblion", which aimed to present a compilation of obscure Scripture sayings.
The starting-point of Tatian's theology is a strict monotheism which becomes the source of the moral life. Originally, the human soul possessed faith in one God, but lost it with the fall.
In consequence, under the rule of demons, man sank into the abominable error of polytheism. By monotheistic faith, the soul is delivered from the material world and from demonic rule and is united with God. God is spirit ("pneuma"), but not the physical or stoical "pneuma;" he was alone before the creation, but he had within himself potentially the whole creation. Some scholars consider Tatian's creation theology as the beginning of teaching "ex nihilo" (creation from "nothing").
The means of creation was the "dynamis logike" ("power expressed in words"). At first there
proceeded from God the Logos who, generated in the beginning, was to produce the world by creating matter from which the whole creation sprang. Creation is penetrated by the "pneuma hylikon", "world spirit," which is common to angels, stars, men, animals, and plants. This world spirit is lower than the divine "pneuma," and becomes in man the "psyche" or "soul," so that on the material side and in his soul man does not differ essentially from the
animals; though at the same time he is called to a peculiar union with the divine spirit, which raises him above the animals. This spirit is the image of God in man, and to it man's immortality is due.
The first-born of the spirits (identified with Satan) fell and caused others to fall, and thus the demons originated. The fall of the spirits was brought about through their desire to separate man from God, in order that he might serve not God but them. Man, however, was implicated in this fall, lost his blessed abode and his soul was deserted by the divine spirit, and sank into the material sphere, in which only a faint reminiscence of God remained alive.
As by freedom man fell, so by freedom he may turn again to God. The Spirit unites with the souls of those who walk uprightly; through the prophets he reminds men of their lost likeness to God. Although Tatian does not mention the name of Jesus, his doctrine of redemption culminates in his Christology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45158 |
Olivine
The mineral olivine () is a magnesium iron silicate with the formula (Mg2+, Fe2+)2. Thus, it is a type of nesosilicate or orthosilicate. The primary component of the Earth's upper mantle, it is a common mineral in Earth's subsurface, but weathers quickly on the surface.
The ratio of magnesium to iron varies between the two endmembers of the solid solution series: forsterite (Mg-endmember: ) and fayalite (Fe-endmember: ). Compositions of olivine are commonly expressed as molar percentages of forsterite (Fo) and fayalite (Fa) ("e.g.", Fo70Fa30). Forsterite's melting temperature is unusually high at atmospheric pressure, almost , while fayalite's is much lower — about . Melting temperature varies smoothly between the two endmembers, as do other properties. Olivine incorporates only minor amounts of elements other than oxygen (O), silicon (Si), magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe). Manganese (Mn) and nickel (Ni) commonly are the additional elements present in highest concentrations.
Olivine gives its name to the group of minerals with a related structure (the olivine group)—which includes tephroite (Mn2SiO4), monticellite (CaMgSiO4), larnite (Ca2SiO4) and kirschsteinite (CaFeSiO4) (commonly also spelled kirschteinite ).
Olivine's crystal structure incorporates aspects of the orthorhombic P Bravais lattice, which arise from each silica (SiO4) unit being joined by metal divalent cations with each oxygen in SiO4 bound to three metal ions. It has a spinel-like structure similar to magnetite but uses one quadrivalent and two divalent cations M22+ M4+O4 instead of two trivalent and one divalent cations.
Olivine gemstones are called peridot and chrysolite.
Olivine rock is usually harder than surrounding rock and stands out as distinct ridges in the terrain. These ridges are often dry with little soil. Drought-resistant Scots pine is one of the few trees that thrive on olivine rock. Olivine pine forest is unique to Norway. It is rare and found on dry olivine ridges in the fjord districts of Sunnmøre and Nordfjord. Olivine rock is hard and base-rich.
Olivine is named for its typically olive-green color, thought to be a result of traces of nickel, though it may alter to a reddish color from the oxidation of iron.
Translucent olivine is sometimes used as a gemstone called peridot ("péridot", the French word for olivine). It is also called chrysolite (or "chrysolithe", from the Greek words for gold and stone). Some of the finest gem-quality olivine has been obtained from a body of mantle rocks on Zabargad Island in the Red Sea.
Olivine occurs in both mafic and ultramafic igneous rocks and as a primary mineral in certain metamorphic rocks. Mg-rich olivine crystallizes from magma that is rich in magnesium and low in silica. That magma crystallizes to mafic rocks such as gabbro and basalt. Ultramafic rocks such as peridotite and dunite can be residues left after extraction of magmas, and typically they are more enriched in olivine after extraction of partial melts. Olivine and high pressure structural variants constitute over 50% of the Earth's upper mantle, and olivine is one of the Earth's most common minerals by volume. The metamorphism of impure dolomite or other sedimentary rocks with high magnesium and low silica content also produces Mg-rich olivine, or forsterite.
Fe-rich olivine fayalite is relatively much less common, but it occurs in igneous rocks in small amounts in rare granites and rhyolites, and extremely Fe-rich olivine can exist stably with quartz and tridymite. In contrast, Mg-rich olivine does not occur stably with silica minerals, as it would react with them to form orthopyroxene ((Mg,Fe)2Si2O6).
Mg-rich olivine is stable to pressures equivalent to a depth of about within Earth. Because it is thought to be the most abundant mineral in Earth's mantle at shallower depths, the properties of olivine have a dominant influence upon the rheology of that part of Earth and hence upon the solid flow that drives plate tectonics. Experiments have documented that olivine at high pressures ("e.g.", 12 GPa, the pressure at depths of about ) can contain at least as much as about 8900 parts per million (weight) of water, and that such water content drastically reduces the resistance of olivine to solid flow. Moreover, because olivine is so abundant, more water may be dissolved in olivine of the mantle than is contained in Earth's oceans.
Mg-rich olivine has also been discovered in meteorites, on the Moon and Mars, falling into infant stars, as well as on asteroid 25143 Itokawa. Such meteorites include chondrites, collections of debris from the early Solar System; and pallasites, mixes of iron-nickel and olivine.
The spectral signature of olivine has been seen in the dust disks around young stars. The tails of comets (which formed from the dust disk around the young Sun) often have the spectral signature of olivine, and the presence of olivine was verified in samples of a comet from the Stardust spacecraft in 2006. Comet-like (magnesium-rich) olivine has also been detected in the planetesimal belt around the star Beta Pictoris.
Minerals in the olivine group crystallize in the orthorhombic system (space group P"bnm") with isolated silicate tetrahedra, meaning that olivine is a nesosilicate. In an alternative view, the atomic structure can be described as a hexagonal, close-packed array of oxygen ions with half of the octahedral sites occupied with magnesium or iron ions and one-eighth of the tetrahedral sites occupied by silicon ions.
There are three distinct oxygen sites (marked O1, O2 and O3 in figure 1), two distinct metal sites (M1 and M2) and only one distinct silicon site. O1, O2, M2 and Si all lie on mirror planes, while M1 exists on an inversion center. O3 lies in a general position.
At the high temperatures and pressures found at depth within the Earth the olivine structure is no longer stable. Below depths of about olivine undergoes an exothermic phase transition to the sorosilicate, wadsleyite and, at about depth, wadsleyite transforms exothermically into ringwoodite, which has the spinel structure. At a depth of about , ringwoodite decomposes into silicate perovskite ((Mg,Fe)SiO3) and ferropericlase ((Mg,Fe)O) in an endothermic reaction. These phase transitions lead to a discontinuous increase in the density of the Earth's mantle that can be observed by seismic methods. They are also thought to influence the dynamics of mantle convection in that the exothermic transitions reinforce flow across the phase boundary, whereas the endothermic reaction hampers it.
The pressure at which these phase transitions occur depends on temperature and iron content. At , the pure magnesium end member, forsterite, transforms to wadsleyite at and to ringwoodite at pressures above . Increasing the iron content decreases the pressure of the phase transition and narrows the wadsleyite stability field. At about 0.8 mole fraction fayalite, olivine transforms directly to ringwoodite over the pressure range . Fayalite transforms to spinel at pressures below . Increasing the temperature increases the pressure of these phase transitions.
Olivine is one of the weaker common minerals on the surface according to the Goldich dissolution series. It alters into iddingsite (a combination of clay minerals, iron oxides and ferrihydrites) readily in the presence of water. Artificially increasing the weathering rate of olivine, e.g. by dispersing fine-grained olivine on beaches, has been proposed as a cheap way to sequester CO2. The presence of iddingsite on Mars would suggest that liquid water once existed there, and might enable scientists to determine when there was last liquid water on the planet.
Norway is the main source of olivine in Europe, particularly in an area stretching from Åheim to Tafjord, and from Hornindal to Flemsøy in the Sunnmøre district. There is also olivine in Eid municipality. About 50% of the world's olivine for industrial use is produced in Norway. At Svarthammaren in Norddal olivine was mined from around 1920 to 1979, with a daily output up to 600 metric tons. Olivine was also obtained from the construction site of the hydro power stations in Tafjord. At Robbervika in Norddal municipality an open-pit mine has been in operation since 1984. The characteristic red color is reflected in several local names with "red" such as "Raudbergvik" (Red rock bay) or "Raudnakken" (Red ridge).
Hans Strøm in 1766 described the olivine's typical red color on the surface and the blue color within. Strøm wrote that in Norddal district large quantities of olivine were broken from the bedrock and used as sharpening stones.
Kallskaret near Tafjord is a nature reserve with olivine.
A worldwide search is on for cheap processes to sequester CO2 by mineral reactions, called enhanced weathering. Removal by reactions with olivine is an attractive option, because it is widely available and reacts easily with the (acid) CO2 from the atmosphere. When olivine is crushed, it weathers completely within a few years, depending on the grain size. All the CO2 that is produced by burning one liter of oil can be sequestered by less than one liter of olivine. The reaction is exothermic but slow. To recover the heat produced by the reaction to produce electricity, a large volume of olivine must be thermally well-isolated. The end-products of the reaction are silicon dioxide, magnesium carbonate, and small amounts of iron oxide.
Olivine is used as a substitute for dolomite in steel works. Olivine is also used to tap blast furnaces in the steel industry, acting as a plug, removed in each steel run.
The aluminium foundry industry uses olivine sand to cast objects in aluminium. Olivine sand requires less water than silica sands while still holding the mold together during handling and pouring of the metal. Less water means less gas (steam) to vent from the mold as metal is poured into the mold.
In Finland, olivine is marketed as an ideal rock for sauna stoves because of its comparatively high density and resistance to weathering under repeated heating and cooling. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45159 |
Peridot
Peridot ( or ) (sometimes called chrysolite) is gem-quality olivine and a silicate mineral with the formula of (Mg, Fe)2SiO4. As peridot is a magnesium-rich variety of olivine (forsterite), the formula approaches Mg2SiO4. Its green color is dependent on the iron contents within the structure of the gem. Peridot occurs in silica-deficient rocks such a volcanic basalt as well as in pallasitic meteorites. Peridot is one of only two gems observed to be formed not in the Earth’s crust, but in molten rock of the upper mantle. Gem-quality peridot is rare to find on Earth's surface due to its susceptibility to weathering during transportation from deep within the mantle to the surface.
In the Middle Ages, the gemstone was considered a stone that could provide healing powers, curing depression and opening the heart. Peridot is the birthstone for the month of August and the 16 year wedding anniversary gemstone.
The origin of the name "peridot" is uncertain. The "Oxford English Dictionary" suggests an alteration of Anglo–Norman (classical Latin -), a kind of opal, rather than the Arabic word , meaning "gem".
The "Middle English Dictionary"s entry on "peridot" includes several variations: , , and — other variants substitute "y" for the "i"s seen here.
The earliest use in England is in the register of the St Albans Abbey, in Latin, and its translation in 1705 is possibly the first use of "peridot" in English. It records that on his death in 1245, Bishop John bequeathed various items, including peridot, to the Abbey.
Peridot is one of the few gemstones that occur in only one color: an olive-green. The intensity and tint of the green, however, depends on the percentage of iron in the crystal structure, so the color of individual peridot gems can vary from yellow, to olive, to brownish-green. In rare cases, peridot may have a medium-dark toned, pure green with no secondary yellow hue or brown mask.
The molecular structure of peridot consist of isomorphic olivine, silicate, magnesium and iron in an orthorhombic crystal system. In an alternative view, the atomic structure can be described as a hexagonal, close-packed array of oxygen ions with half of the octahedral sites occupied with magnesium or iron ions and one-eighth of the tetrahedral sites occupied by silicon ions.
Oxidation of peridot does not occur at natural surface temperature and pressure, but begins to occur slowly at 600°C with rates increasing with temperature. The oxidation of the olivine occurs by initial breakdown of the fayalite component, and subsequent reaction with the forsterite component, to give magnetite and orthopyroxene.
Olivine, of which peridot is a type, is a common mineral in mafic and ultramafic rocks, often found in lava and in peridotite xenoliths of the mantle, which lava carries to the surface; however, gem-quality peridot occurs in only a fraction of these settings. Peridots can also be found in meteorites.
Peridots can be differentiated by size and composition. A peridot formed as a result of volcanic activity tends to contain higher concentrations of lithium, nickel and zinc than those found in meteorites.
Olivine is an abundant mineral, but gem-quality peridot is rather rare due to its chemical instability on Earth's surface. Olivine is usually found as small grains and tends to exist in a heavily weathered state, unsuitable for decorative use. Large crystals of forsterite, the variety most often used to cut peridot gems, are rare; as a result olivine is considered to be precious.
In the ancient world, mining of peridot, called "topazios" then, on St. John's Island in the Red Sea began about 300 B.C.
The principal source of peridot olivine today is the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. It is also mined at another location in Arizona, and in Arkansas, Hawaii, Nevada, and New Mexico at Kilbourne Hole, in the US; and in Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, Kenya, Mexico, Myanmar (Burma), Norway, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania.
Peridot crystals have been collected from some pallasite meteorites. The most commonly studied pallasitic peridot belongs to the Indonesian Jeppara meteorite, but others exist such as the Brenham, Esquel, Fukang, and Imilac meteorites.
Refractive index readings of faceted gems contain indices α = 1.653, β = 1.670, and γ = 1.689 with a corresponding bi-axial birefringence of 0.036. Study of Chinese peridot gem samples determined the specific gravity hydro-statically to be 3.36. The visible-light spectroscopy of the same Chinese peridot samples showed light bands between 493.0 and 481.0 nm, the strongest absorption at 492.0 nm.
Inclusions are common in peridot crystals but the variety depend on the location it is found at. Stones from Pakistan contain silk and rod like inclusions as well as black chromite crystal inclusions surrounded bi-circular cleavage discs resembling lily pads, and finger print inclusions. Brown Mica flakes are more evident in Arizona gems.
The largest cut peridot olivine is a 310 carat (62 g) specimen in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
Peridot has been prized since the earliest civilizations for its protective powers to drive away fears and nightmares. It's believed to carry the gift of inner radiance, sharpening the mind and opening it to new levels of awareness and growth, helping one to recognize and realize one’s destiny and spiritual purpose.
Ancient Egyptians believed that Peridot was sent to Earth by the explosion of a star and carried its healing powers. Peridot is the national gem of Egypt known to locals as the Gem of the Sun.
Peridot is sometimes mistaken for emeralds and other green gems. Notable gemologist George Frederick Kunz discussed the confusion between emeralds and peridot in many church treasures, notably the "Three Magi" treasure in the Dom of Cologne, Germany.
Peridot olivine is the birthstone for the month of August and the 16th wedding anniversary gemstone. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45162 |
Microcline
Microcline (KAlSi3O8) is an important igneous rock-forming tectosilicate mineral. It is a potassium-rich alkali feldspar. Microcline typically contains minor amounts of sodium. It is common in granite and pegmatites. Microcline forms during slow cooling of orthoclase; it is more stable at lower temperatures than orthoclase. Sanidine is a polymorph of alkali feldspar stable at yet higher temperature. Microcline may be clear, white, pale-yellow, brick-red, or green; it is generally characterized by cross-hatch twinning that forms as a result of the transformation of monoclinic orthoclase into triclinic microcline.
The chemical compound name is potassium aluminium silicate, and it is known as E number reference E555.
Microcline may be chemically the same as monoclinic orthoclase, but because it belongs to the triclinic crystal system, the prism angle is slightly less than right angles; hence the name "microcline" from the Greek "small slope." It is a fully ordered triclinic modification of potassium feldspar and is dimorphous with orthoclase. Microcline is identical to orthoclase in many physical properties, and can be distinguished by x-ray or optical examination. When viewed under a polarizing microscope, microcline exhibits a minute multiple twinning which forms a grating-like structure that is unmistakable.
Perthite is either microcline or orthoclase with thin lamellae of exsolved albite.
Amazon stone, or amazonite, is a green variety of microcline. It is not found anywhere in the Amazon Basin, however. The Spanish explorers who named it apparently confused it with another green mineral from that region.
The largest documented single crystals of microcline were found in Devils Hole Beryl Mine, Colorado, US and measured ~50x36x14 m. This could be one of the largest crystals of any material found so far.
Microcline is commonly used for the manufacturing of porcelain.
The chemical compound name is potassium aluminium silicate, and it is known as E number reference E555. It was the subject in 2018 of a Call for technical and toxicological data from the EFSA.
In 2008, it (along with other Aluminum compounds) was the subject of
a Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Food Additives, Flavourings, Processing Aids and Food Contact Materials from the EFSA. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45166 |
Anorthoclase
The mineral anorthoclase ((Na,K)AlSi3O8) is a crystalline solid solution in the alkali feldspar series, in which the sodium-aluminium silicate member exists in larger proportion. It typically consists of between 10 and 36 percent of KAlSi3O8 and between 64 and 90 percent of NaAlSi3O8.
Anorthoclase is an intermediate member of the high albite – sanidine alkali feldspar solid solution series. Intermediate members of this series, high albite, anorthoclase and high sodium sanidine are stable at temperatures of and above. Below 400 to 600 °C only very limited solution exists (less than about 5% on both the low albite and microcline ends). Anorthoclase and high albite exhibit triclinic symmetry, whereas sanidine and the low temperature orthoclase have monoclinic symmetry. If the high temperature intermediate composition alkali feldspars are allowed to cool slowly, exsolution occurs and a perthite structure results.
Anorthoclase occurs in high temperature sodium rich volcanic and hypabyssal (shallow intrusive) rocks. The mineral is typically found as a constituent of the fine grained matrix or as small phenocrysts which may occur as loose crystals in a weathered rock.
It was first described in 1885 for an occurrence on Pantelleria Island, Trapani Province, Sicily. The name is from the Greek αν, ορθός and κλάσις (not cleaving at right-angles), for its oblique cleavage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45167 |
Plagioclase
Plagioclase is a series of tectosilicate (framework silicate) minerals within the feldspar group. Rather than referring to a particular mineral with a specific chemical composition, plagioclase is a continuous solid solution series, more properly known as the plagioclase feldspar series (from the Ancient Greek for "oblique fracture", in reference to its two cleavage angles). This was first shown by the German mineralogist Johann Friedrich Christian Hessel (1796–1872) in 1826. The series ranges from albite to anorthite endmembers (with respective compositions NaAlSi3O8 to CaAl2Si2O8), where sodium and calcium atoms can substitute for each other in the mineral's crystal lattice structure. Plagioclase in hand samples is often identified by its polysynthetic crystal twinning or 'record-groove' effect.
Plagioclase is a major constituent mineral in the Earth's crust, and is consequently an important diagnostic tool in petrology for identifying the composition, origin and evolution of igneous rocks. Plagioclase is also a major constituent of rock in the highlands of the Earth's moon. Analysis of thermal emission spectra from the surface of Mars suggests that plagioclase is the most abundant mineral in the crust of Mars.
The composition of a plagioclase feldspar is typically denoted by its overall fraction of anorthite (%An) or albite (%Ab), and readily determined by measuring the plagioclase crystal's refractive index in crushed grain mounts, or its "extinction angle" in thin section under a polarizing microscope. The extinction angle is an optical characteristic and varies with the albite fraction (%Ab). There are several named plagioclase feldspars that fall between albite and anorthite in the series. The following table shows their compositions in terms of constituent anorthite and albite percentages.
The intermediate members of the plagioclase group are very similar to each other and normally cannot be distinguished except by their optical properties. The specific gravity in each member (albite 2.62) increases 0.02 per 10% increase in anorthite (2.75). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45168 |
The Godfather (novel)
The Godfather is a crime novel by American author Mario Puzo. Originally published in 1969 by G. P. Putnam's Sons, the novel details the story of a fictional Mafia family in New York City (and Long Beach, New York), headed by Vito Corleone. Puzo's dedication for "The Godfather" is ""For Anthony Cleri"". The epigraph for "The Godfather" is ""Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Balzac." The novel covers the years 1945 to 1955 and provides the back story of Vito Corleone from early childhood to adulthood.
The first in a series of novels, "The Godfather" is noteworthy for introducing Italian words like "consigliere", "caporegime", "Cosa Nostra", and "omertà" to an English-speaking audience. It inspired a 1972 film of the same name. Two film sequels, including new contributions by Puzo himself, were made in 1974 and 1990. The first two films are widely held in high esteem as examples of the cinematic arts.
The Corleone family fights a mob war with the Five Families of the New York Mafia in the years after World War II. After Don Vito Corleone is shot by men working for drug dealer Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo, Corleone's two sons, Santino ("Sonny") and Michael, must run the family business with the help of "consigliere" Tom Hagen and the two "caporegimes" Clemenza and Tessio. When Michael murders Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey, a police officer on the drug lord's payroll, the conflict escalates into a full-scale war which results in Sonny's murder and Michael's promotion to the head of the family. Under his retired father's tutelage, Michael orchestrates a plan to relocate the Corleone family's power base to Las Vegas. This culminates in the murder of all of the family's enemies, including his brother-in-law Carlo Rizzi, who played a part in Sonny's murder. Michael then sells the family's businesses in New York and moves the family to Las Vegas.
The Corleone family patriarch is Vito Corleone (The Don), whose surname (Italian for "Lionheart") recalls the town of Corleone, Sicily. His birth name is Vittorio Andolini, but after emigrating to America, he changed it to the name of his home village as one of his few acts of sentimentality. Vito fathered four children: Santino "Sonny" Corleone, Frederico "Fredo" Corleone, Michael "Mike" Corleone, and Constanzia "Connie" Corleone. He also has an informally adopted son, Thomas "Tom" Hagen, who became the Corleone Family's "consigliere" (counselor). Vito Corleone is also godfather to the famous singer and movie star Johnny Fontane. The godfather referred to in the title is generally taken to be Vito. However, the story's main character is Michael Corleone. The novel's central storyline details Michael's destiny to succeed his father as the head of the family empire, despite his desire to lead an Americanized life with his girlfriend (and eventual wife) Kay Adams.
The Corleone family is a criminal organization with national influence, notably protection, gambling and union racketeering. Serving as the Don's underboss is his oldest son, Santino. The operational side of the organization is headed by two "caporegimes", Peter "Pete" Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio. Other significant members of the organization include enforcers Luca Brasi and Albert Neri and upcoming soldier Rocco Lampone.
The novel remained on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for 67 weeks and sold over nine million copies in two years.
The 1972 film adaptation of the novel was released with Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone and Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Mario Puzo assisted with both the writings of the screenplay and other production tasks. The film grossed approximately $269 million worldwide and won various awards, including three Academy Awards, five Golden Globes and one Grammy. The film is considered to be tremendously significant in cinematic history. The sequel, "The Godfather Part II" won six Oscars, and became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The film's plot follows the novel except for such details as backstories of some characters that are excluded, although they were filmed. Some of this footage was included in later re-edited versions such as, "The Godfather Saga." The subplot involving Johnny Fontane in Hollywood was not filmed. The most significant deviation of the film from the novel was that the latter had a more positive ending than the film in which Kay Corleone accepts Michael's decision to take over his father's business. The film ends with Kay's realization of Michael's callousness, a theme that would develop in the second and third films, which are largely not based on the original novel. Vito Corleone's backstory appeared in the second film, with his character portrayed by Robert De Niro.
The video game company Electronic Arts released a video game adaptation of "The Godfather" film on March 21, 2006. The player assumes the role of a "soldier" in the family. Prior to his death, Marlon Brando provided some voice work for Vito, which was eventually deemed unusable and was dubbed over by a Brando impersonator. Francis Ford Coppola said in April 2005 that he was not informed of Paramount's decision to allow the game to be made and he did not approve of it. Al Pacino declined to participate, and his likeness was replaced with a different depiction of Michael Corleone.
In 1984, Puzo's literary sequel to "The Godfather" was published. Titled "The Sicilian", it chronicles the life of "Giuliano" (Salvatore Giuliano) but the Corleone family is featured heavily throughout, Michael Corleone in particular. Chronologically this story sits between Michael's exile to Sicily in 1950 and his return to the United States. For copyright reasons, the Corleone family involvement was cut from the Michael Cimino film adaptation, which is not considered part of the " Godfather" film series.
In 2004, Random House published a sequel to Puzo's "The Godfather", "The Godfather Returns", by Mark Winegardner. A further sequel by Winegardner, "The Godfather's Revenge", was released in 2006. These novels continue the story from Puzo's novel.
"The Godfather Returns" picks up the story immediately after the end of Puzo's "The Godfather". It covers the years 1955 to 1962, as well as providing significant backstory for Michael Corleone's character prior to the events of the first novel. The events of the film "The Godfather Part II" all take place within the timeframe of this novel, but are only mentioned in the background. The novel contains an appendix that attempts to correlate the events of the novels with the events of the films.
"The Godfather's Revenge" covers the years 1963 to 1964.
Continuing Puzo's habit, as seen in "The Godfather", of featuring characters who are close analogs of real-life events and public figures (as Johnny Fontane is an analog of Frank Sinatra), Winegardner features in his two "Godfather" novels analogs of Joseph, John, and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as alleged organized crime figure Carlos Marcello (Carlo Tramonti). In "The Godfather Returns", Winegardner also dramatizes the sweep of organized crime arrests that took place in Apalachin, New York, in 1957.
Winegardner uses all of the characters from the Puzo novels and created a few of his own, most notably Nick Geraci, a Corleone soldier who plays a pivotal role in the sequel novels. Winegardner further develops characters from the original novel, such as Fredo Corleone, Tom Hagen, and Johnny Fontane.
In 2012, a prequel based on an unproduced screenplay by Mario Puzo titled "The Family Corleone", was written by Ed Falco. It tells the story of how Vito Corleone rises to Don and how Sonny Corleone and Tom Hagen enter the family business.
The Corleone family closely resembles the Karamazov family in The Brothers Karamazov: a powerful father, an impulsive oldest son, a philosophical son, a sweet-tempered son, and an adopted stepson who is maintained as an employee. Honoré de Balzac's novel "Le Père Goriot" (1835) has been the inspiration for notable lines that have gained wide popularity in cinema history. Similarly, Puzo opened his 1969 novel with an epigraph popularly attributed to Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." The saying is most likely evolved over time from Balzac's original text: "The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out because it was properly executed."
"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" was included in both the original Puzo novel and in the film adaptation. It is the second-ranking cinematic quote included in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes (2005) by the American Film Institute. Its origin may be from the same work to which Balzac is credited with the opening epigraph. Balzac wrote of Vautrin telling Eugene: "In that case, I will make you an offer that no one would decline."
Large parts of the novel are based upon reality, notably the history of the so-called "Five Families", the Mafia organization in New York and the surrounding area. The novel also includes many allusions to real-life mobsters and their associates. For example, Johnny Fontane is based on Frank Sinatra, and Moe Greene on Bugsy Siegel. In addition, the character of Vito Corleone was a composite of real-life organized crime bosses Frank Costello and Carlo Gambino. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45169 |
Elvish languages (Middle-earth)
J. R. R. Tolkien constructed many Elvish languages. These were the languages spoken by the tribes of his Elves. Tolkien was a philologist by profession, and spent much time on his constructed languages. The Elvish languages were the first thing he imagined for his secondary world of Middle-earth. Tolkien said that his stories grew out of his languages. Tolkien also created scripts for his Elvish languages, of which the best known are the Sarati, the Tengwar, and the Cirth.
J. R. R. Tolkien began to construct his first "Elvin tongue" c. 1910–1911 while he was at the King Edward's School, Birmingham and which he later named "Quenya" (c. 1915). At that time, Tolkien was already familiar with Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and several ancient Germanic languages, Gothic, Old Norse and Old English. He had invented several cryptographic codes (one called Animalic), and two or three constructed languages (one called Naffarin). He then discovered Finnish, which he described many years later as "like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me." He had started his study of the Finnish language to be able to read the Kalevala epic.
Tolkien with his Quenya pursued a double aesthetic goal: "classical and inflected". This urge, in fact, was the motivation for his creation of a 'mythology'. While the language developed, he needed speakers, history for the speakers and all real dynamics, like war and migration: "It was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues".
The Elvish languages underwent countless revisions in grammar, mostly in conjugation and the pronominal system. The Elven vocabulary was not subject to sudden or extreme change; except during the first conceptual stage c. 1910–c. 1920. Tolkien sometimes changed the "meaning" of an Elvish word, but he almost never disregarded it once invented, and he kept on refining its meaning, and countlessly forged new synonyms. Moreover, Elven etymology was in a constant flux. Tolkien delighted in inventing new etymons for his Elvish vocabulary.
From the onset, Tolkien used comparative philology and the tree model as his major tools in his constructed languages. He usually started with the phonological system of the proto-language and then proceeded in inventing for each daughter languages the many mechanisms of sound change needed.
In the early 30s Tolkien decided that the proto-language of the Elves was Valarin, the tongue of the gods or Valar: "The language of the Elves derived in the beginning from the Valar, but they change it even in the learning, and moreover modified and enriched it constantly at all times by their own invention." In his "Comparative Tables" Tolkien describes the mechanisms of sound change in the following daughter languages: "Qenya, Lindarin" (a dialect of Qenya), "Telerin, Old Noldorin" (or "Fëanorian"), "Noldorin" (or "Gondolinian"), "Ilkorin" (esp. of Doriath), "Danian of Ossiriand, East Danian, Taliska, West Lemberin, North Lemberin, and East Lemberin".
In his lifetime J.R.R. Tolkien never ceased to experiment on his constructed languages, and they were subjected to many revisions. They had many grammars with substantial differences between different stages of development. After the publication of "The Lord of the Rings" (1954–1955), the grammar rules of his major Elvish languages Quenya, Telerin and Sindarin went through very few changes (this is late Elvish 1954–1973).
Two magazines ("Vinyar Tengwar", from issue 39 in July 1998, and "Parma Eldalamberon", from issue 11 in 1995) are exclusively devoted to the editing and publishing of J.R.R. Tolkien's gigantic mass of previously unpublished linguistic papers (even those not published by Christopher Tolkien in "The History of Middle-earth"). Almost each year, new Elvish words are published and the grammar rules of the Elvish languages are disclosed. Access to the unpublished documents is severely limited, and the editors have yet not published a comprehensive catalogue of the unpublished linguistic papers they are working on.
The Elvish languages are a family of several related languages and dialects. Here is set briefly the story of the Elvish languages as conceived by Tolkien around 1965. They all originated from:
Tolkien invented two subfamilies (subgroups) of the Elvish languages. "The language of the Quendelie (Elves) was thus very early sundered into the branches Eldarin and Avarin".
The acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) or circumflex accent (â, ê, î, ô, û, ŷ) marks long vowels in the Elvish languages. When writing Common Eldarin forms, Tolkien often used the macron to indicate long vowels. The diaeresis (ä, ë, ö) is normally used to show that a short vowel is to be separately pronounced, that it is not silent or part of a diphthong. For example, the last four letters of "Ainulindalë" represent two syllables, rather than the English word "dale", and the first three letters of "Eärendil" represent two syllables rather than the English word "ear".
Below is a family tree of the Elvish languages, showing how the Primitive Quendian word "kwendī" "people" (later meaning "Elves") was altered in the descendant languages.
There is a tradition of philological study of Elvish languages within the fiction. Elven philologists are referred to by the Quenya term "Lambengolmor". In Quenya, "lambe" means spoken language or verbal communication.
Known members of the Lambengolmor were Rúmil, who invented the first Elvish script (the Sarati), Fëanor who later enhanced and further developed this script into his Tengwar, which later was spread to Middle-earth by the Exiled Noldor and remained in use ever after, and Pengolodh, who is credited with many works, including the "Osanwe-kenta" and the "Lhammas" or "The 'Account of Tongues' which Pengolodh of Gondolin wrote in later days in Tol-eressëa".
Independently of the Lambengolmor, Daeron of Doriath invented the Cirth or Elvish-runes. These were mostly used for inscriptions, and later were replaced by the Tengwar, except among the Dwarves.
Sindarin and Quenya have a very similar pronunciation. The following table gives pronunciation for each letter or cluster in international phonetic script and examples:
Vowels
Consonants (differing from English)
Most samples of the Elvish language done by Tolkien were written out with the Latin alphabet, but within the fiction Tolkien imagined many writing systems for his Elves. The best-known are the "tengwar of Fëanor", but the first system he created, c. 1919, is the "tengwar of Rúmil", also called the sarati.
In chronological order:
Prior to their exile, the Elves of the Second Clan (the Noldor) used first the sarati of Rúmil to record their tongue, Quenya. In Middle-earth, Sindarin was first recorded using the "Elvish runes" or cirth, named later "certar" in Quenya. A runic inscription in Quenya was engraved on the sword of Aragorn (II), Andúril. The swords inscriptions were not revealed in the movie trilogy, nor in the book. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45170 |
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri (, also , ; formally Arma dei Carabinieri, "Arm of Carabineers"; previously "Corpo dei Carabinieri Reali", "Royal Carabineers Corps") are the national gendarmerie of Italy who primarily carry out domestic policing duties. It is one of Italy's main law enforcement agencies, alongside the Polizia di Stato and the Guardia di Finanza. As with the Guardia di Finanza but in contrast to the Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri are a military force. As the fourth branch of the Italian Armed Forces, they come under the authority of the Ministry of Defence; for activities related to inland public order and security, they functionally depend on the Ministry of the Interior. In practice, there is a significant overlap between the jurisdiction of the Polizia di Stato and Carabinieri, who are contacted on separate emergency telephone numbers. Unlike the Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri have responsibility for policing the military, and a number of members regularly participate in military missions abroad.
They were originally founded as the police force of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the forerunner of the Kingdom of Italy. During the process of Italian unification, the Carabinieri were appointed as the "First Force" of the new national military organisation. Although the Carabinieri assisted in the suppression of opposition during the rule of Benito Mussolini, they were also responsible for his downfall and many units were disbanded during World War II by Nazi Germany, which resulted in large numbers of Carabinieri joining the Italian resistance movement.
In 2001, they were separated from the Army to become a separate branch of the Italian Armed Forces. Carabinieri have policing powers that can be exercised at any time and in any part of the country, and they are always permitted to carry their assigned weapon as personal equipment (Beretta 92FS pistols).
The Carabinieri are often referred to as "La Benemerita" (The Reputable or The Meritorious) as they are a trusted and prestigious law enforcement institution in Italy. The first official account of the use of this term to refer to the Carabinieri dates back to June 24, 1864.
Inspired by the French Gendarmerie, the corps was created by King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy with the aim of providing the Kingdom of Sardinia with a police corps. Previously, police duties were managed by the "Dragoni di Sardegna Corps," created in 1726 and composed of volunteers. After French soldiers had occupied Turin at the end of the 18th century and later abandoned it to the Kingdom of Piedmont, the Royal Carabinieri Corps was instituted under the Royal Patents of 13 July 1814.
The name derives from the French word "carabinier", meaning "soldier armed with a carbine."
The new force was divided into divisions on the scale of one division for each province. The divisions were further divided into companies and subdivided into lieutenancies, which commanded and coordinated the local police stations and were distributed throughout the national territory in direct contact with the public.
In 1868, the "Corazzieri" (mounted division) was formed – initially as an escort of honour for the sovereign, and since 1946 for the President of the Republic. The Italian unification saw the number of divisions increased, and on 24 January 1861 the "Carabinieri" were appointed the "First Force" of the new national military organization.
In May 1915 Italian troops marched to encompass South Tyrol, territory of their former allies the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the Fronte italiano campaign. The defenders had sufficient time to prepare strong fortifications there, and in the Carso theatre to the east, and the Italian regiments, under overall command of General Cadorna, found themselves repeatedly repulsed in harsh fighting. The role of the Carabinieri was to act as barrier troops, setting up machine gun posts to control the rear of the attacking regiments and prevent desertion.
During the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini (1922–1943), the Carabinieri were one of the police forces entrusted with suppressing opposition in Italy. During the same period, while part of the Italian African Police (mainly in the late 1930s), they were involved in atrocities in colonial Italian East Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. During World War II they fought in their function as military police against the Allied forces, and against Yugoslav partisans as part of the Italian occupation force in Yugoslavia.
After Mussolini was voted out of office on 25 July 1943, on the orders of the king he was arrested by the Carabinieri as he left the king's private residence in Rome and subsequently imprisoned on Campo Imperatore by Carabinieri forces. After the armistice between Italy and the Allies on 3 September 1943 and the country's split into the fascist Italian Social Republic in the north and the Kingdom of Italy in the south, the Carabinieri split into two groups. In southern Italy the Carabinieri Command for Liberated Italy was founded in Bari, mobilizing new units for the Italian war of liberation. These units were attached to the Italian Liberation Corps and the six Italian Combat Groups of the Italian Co-Belligerent Army, fighting with the Allied forces. In northern Italy the fascist regime organized the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana (composed of Carabinieri, former colonial policemen, Guardia di Finanza and customs police), to employ it as a military police and rapid-deployment anti-guerilla force. GNR was later joined (but not taken over) by the Black Brigades which represented a new militant incarnation of the Fascist party.
Due to the role the Carabinieri had played in the downfall of Mussolini, and since one of the few units which fought the German occupation of Rome were the Granatieri di Sardegna regiments and the II Carabinieri cadet battalion, the Germans did not view the Carabinieri as loyal to the fascist cause, They disarmed the force and began the deportation of 8,000 officers to Germany for forced labour on 6 October 1943; the Italian Colonial Police took over their jobs.
Subsequently, large numbers of Carabinieri joined the Italian resistance movement to fight German and Italian fascists. Nonetheless, some 45,000 officers remained on the job and as of March 1944, this group was the only national security force in Italy.
After the war the Carabinieri counted at least 2,735 fallen and 6,500 wounded, out of approximately 14,000 who had joined the Resistance in northern and central Italy. In Yugoslavia the Carabinieri formed a battalion of the Italian partisan Garibaldi Division, which fought alongside the Yugoslav partisans against German and Croatian Ustaše Forces. The battalion lost over 80% of its members in combat and was awarded the Silver Medal of Military Valor to commemorate the fallen.
One notable act of heroism in this era came from Vice Brigadiere Salvo D'Acquisto, who was executed by the Germans in Palidoro (near Rome) during World War II. D'Acquisto exchanged his life for the lives of citizens due to be executed in retaliation for the killing of a German soldier; instead, he claimed responsibility and was executed for the offence.
Until 2000, the Carabinieri were part of the Italian Army. On 31 March 2000, they were separated to become the fourth branch of the Italian Armed Forces. Interpol summarizes this force (part of the Ministry of Defence) as having a "nationwide remit for crime investigations. It also serves as the military police for the Italian armed forces and can be called upon for national defence action."
According to Europol (the EU's law enforcement agency), the Carabinieri Corps' military duties include "contributing to national defense, participating in military operations in Italy and abroad, executing military police functions and ensuring the security of Italian diplomatic and consular representations". As a national police force, it "carries out public order and security policing, as well as investigative activities on its own initiative or at the request of the judicial authorities". Europol also states that the force is "supplemented by the Specialized Carabinieri Commands, responsible for safeguarding the primary interests of the community: from the protection of the environment, health, work and national cultural heritage, to the observance of community and agri-food regulations, to the suppression of forgery [of] currency".
In recent years Carabinieri units have been dispatched on peacekeeping missions, including Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In 2003, 12 Carabinieri were killed in a suicide bombing on their base in Nasiriyah, near Basra in southern Iraq, in the largest Italian military loss of life in a single action since the Second World War. Recent projects (as of April 2018) include training and assisting the Afghan National Security Forces, the Afghan National Police, and the Afghan National Civil Order Police. In Iraq, Carabinieri have trained 13,000 police officers; during the ISIS destruction of historic sites, Italy dispatched troops from the Carabinieri’s Command to protect cultural heritage.
At the Sea Island Conference of the G8 in 2004, Carabinieri were given a mandate to establish a Centre of Excellence for Stability Police Units to spearhead the development of training and doctrinal standards for civilian police units attached to international peacekeeping missions.
The State Forestry Corps was dissolved on 31 December 2016 and personnel with forestry police function were militarized and absorbed by the Carabinieri.
The corps is headed by the ', consisting of the "Comandante Generale" (a General), the ' ( a Lieutenant General) and the Chief of Staff, all located in Rome. The Chief of Staff directs, coordinates and supervises all activities of the force. It directly supervises the Directors of Administration, Health, Engineering, the motor pool and the Veterinary Commission. On the Deputy Chiefs of Staff depend the National Center for Recruitment and Selection, the Administration National Center and the Legislation Office.
The Carabinieri are organised on a territorial basis for law-enforcement missions. The territorial organization represents the core of the institution; it contains 80 percent of the force and is organized hierarchically in five inter-regional commands, 19 regional commands and 102 provincial commands, 504 Company Commands and
4,672 Station Commands and lieutenancies.
The territorial organization includes three heliborne units:
Outside the territorial organisation, the Specialist and Mobile Units Command "Palidoro" (, based in Rome) controls the Carabinieri Mobile Units Division, the Carabinieri Specialist Units Division and the ROS.
The Carabinieri Specialist Units Division is the Carabinieri formation, established in 2001, dedicated to the performance of specialist police activities and the support to the Territorial Organizations. The Division directs, controls, and coordinates its own units, which carry out tasks related to the protection of Italian artistic heritage, to the currency protection, to the protection of Italian embassies abroad, to the health protection, to the labour policing, to Bank of Italy needs, to the Carabinieri forensics police services. In addition, the Division provides Carabinieri air support.
The Carabinieri Mobile Units Division is located in Rome and has two brigades tasked with mass manoeuvres during emergencies, defending the nation and participating in military operations abroad. It supports public order and territorial control in urban areas, and contributes to the operations of civil authorities in terms of public safety. 1st Mobile Brigade, whose headquarter is located in Rome and includes six Regiments and four Battalions mainly employed in public order tasks. 2nd Mobile Brigade headquartered in Livorno includes the Gruppo di Intervento Speciale special forces group, the 1st Paratroopers Carabinieri Regiment "Tuscania", and the 7th "Trentino-Alto Adige" and 13th "Friuli-Venezia Giulia" regiments, which, together with the Multinational Specialized Unit, are mainly engaged in international missions.
The Gruppo di Intervento Speciale in one of the six Italian special forces.
The ROS ("Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale" or Special Operational Group) is an elite unit founded in 1990 to deal with organised crime (Mafia and others), subversive activities, terrorism and more complex types of crime. An anti-crime section is found in every city and district public prosecutor's office.
Special Tasks Departments are outside the ordinary organisational framework and are used for special missions:
"Corazzieri" (Cuirassiers) are an elite corps and honour guard of the President of the Italian Republic, located in the Quirinal Palace. They are distinguished by their uniforms and height (the minimum height for admission is ). They have almost no other everyday duties, although they may be seen patrolling occasionally. Other departments are in service to constitutional bodies such as the Presidency of the Republic, the Senate, Parliament, the Judiciary, the Prime Minister and the National Council of Economy and Labour. Carabinieri also perform military police and security duties for the Ministry of Defence, military high commands, the offices of the military judiciary and allied military organisations in Italy and abroad. They also have personnel attached to the Department of Public Security in various departments, as well as anti-Mafia and anti-drug investigative task forces. "Carabinieri" officers are charged with surveillance and security at Italian embassies and consulates abroad, performing the same services entrusted to the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group in United States diplomatic and consular offices.
Together with the Polizia di Stato and the Guardia di Finanza, the Carabinieri is also responsible for border control.
The specialized Comando unità per la tutela forestale, ambientale e agroalimentare has headquarter located in Rome and organized in 15 regional command and approximately 700 Station Commands on the territory. It counts 7,000 personnel involved in contrast of illicit agri-foodstuffs, environmental and biodiversity protection, contrast to poaching, contrast to all criminal organizations that, with their activity, affect the environment. In the Unit there are also 29 NOE (Nucleo Operativo Ecologico), nucleus highly specialized in complex investigations in environmental matters against organized crime.
The main battles in which the Carabinieri took part before World War I are:
For its contributions during the First World War, the Corps was awarded its first Gold Medal of Military Valor
In World War II, Carabinieri fought in the following battles:
From 1943 to 1945, the Carabinieri were accountable to the Control Commission of the Allied Military Government (AMGOT). Their reorganization and reform was organized by Colonel Arthur Young, a British police officer seconded as Director of Public Safety and Director of Security.
The Carabinieri were issued a distinctive uniform in black with silver braid around the collar and cuffs, edges trimmed in scarlet and epaulettes in silver. The mounted division had white fringes, and the infantry had light blue. Their headgear was a distinctive
bicorne, popularly called the "lucerna" (in use only for historical uniform and ceremonies).
They still use a version of the historic uniform today for ceremonies.
The full set of different Carabinieri uniforms today is presented here (in Italian).
Carabinieri MP Units wear a dark navy blue beret.
The State Color of the Carabinieri bears the following decorations:
In response to the many and diverse needs of the Carabinieri, the service provides for the use of various types of weapons that are divided into "ordinary" and "special" weapons and supplied to all staff as follows:
Used only by certain departments and under certain circumstances:
Until very recently the Italian police (including the "Carabinieri") operated only Italian-made vehicles, but that changed with the introduction of Land Rover Defenders and Subarus into service. Normal "Carabinieri" patrol vehicles are dark blue with a white roof, with a red stripe along the side. Carabinieri license plates begin with "CC" or previously with "EI" (formerly Esercito Italiano, Italian Army), and a Carabinieri car is traditionally called a "Gazzella" (gazelle). Small or medium-sized cars are used for ordinary patrol work, with larger and more powerful vehicles being used for emergency response, highway patrol, and special services. The vehicles of the "Carabinieri" military police and mobile units are painted in NATO camouflage scheme as done with the other Italian Armed Forces vehicles. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45173 |
Negative binomial distribution
In probability theory and statistics, the negative binomial distribution is a discrete probability distribution that models the number of failures in a sequence of independent and identically distributed Bernoulli trials before a specified (non-random) number of successes (denoted "r") occurs. For example, we can define rolling a 6 on a dice as a success, and rolling any other number as a failure, and ask how many failed rolls will occur before we see the third success ("r" = 3). In such a case, the probability distribution of the number of non-6s that appear will be a negative binomial distribution.
The Pascal distribution (after Blaise Pascal) and Polya distribution (for George Pólya) are special cases of the negative binomial distribution. A convention among engineers, climatologists, and others is to use "negative binomial" or "Pascal" for the case of an integer-valued stopping-time parameter "r", and use "Polya" for the real-valued case.
For occurrences of associated discrete events, like tornado outbreaks, the Polya distributions can be used to give more accurate models than the Poisson distribution by allowing the mean and variance to be different, unlike the Poisson. The negative binomial distribution has a variance formula_1, with the distribution becoming identical to Poisson in the limit formula_2 for a given mean formula_3. This can make the distribution a useful overdispersed alternative to the Poisson distribution, for example for a robust modification of Poisson regression. In epidemiology it has been used to model disease transmission for infectious diseases where the likely number of onward infections may vary considerably from individual to individual and from setting to setting. More generally it may be appropriate where events have positively correlated occurrences causing a larger variance than if the occurrences were independent, due to a positive covariance term.
The term "negative binomial" is likely due to the fact that a certain binomial coefficient that appears in the formula for the probability mass function of the distribution can be written more simply with negative numbers .
Suppose there is a sequence of independent Bernoulli trials. Thus, each trial has two potential outcomes called "success" and "failure". In each trial the probability of success is "p" and of failure is (1 − "p"). We are observing this sequence until a predefined number "r" of successes have occurred. Then the random number of failures we have seen, "X", will have the negative binomial (or Pascal) distribution:
When applied to real-world problems, outcomes of "success" and "failure" may or may not be outcomes we ordinarily view as good and bad, respectively. Suppose we used the negative binomial distribution to model the number of days a certain machine works before it breaks down. In this case "failure" would be the result on a day when the machine worked properly, whereas a breakdown would be a "success". If we used the negative binomial distribution to model the number of goal attempts an athlete makes before scoring "r" goals, though, then each unsuccessful attempt would be a "failure", and scoring a goal would be "success". If we are tossing a coin, then the negative binomial distribution can give the number of tails ("failures") we are likely to encounter before we encounter a certain number of heads ("successes"). In the probability mass function below, "p" is the probability of success, and (1 − "p") is the probability of failure.
The probability mass function of the negative binomial distribution is
where "r" is the number of successes, "k" is the number of failures, and "p" is the probability of success. Here the quantity in parentheses is the binomial coefficient, and is equal to
This quantity can alternatively be written in the following manner, explaining the name "negative binomial":
Note that by the last expression and the binomial series, for every ,
hence the terms of the probability mass function indeed add up to one.
To understand the above definition of the probability mass function, note that the probability for every specific sequence of "r" successes and "k" failures is , because the outcomes of the "k" + "r" trials are supposed to happen independently. Since the "r"th success always comes last, it remains to choose the "k" trials with failures out of the remaining "k" + "r" − 1 trials. The above binomial coefficient, due to its combinatorial interpretation, gives precisely the number of all these sequences of length "k" + "r" − 1.
The cumulative distribution function can be expressed in terms of the regularized incomplete beta function:
It can also be expressed in terms of the cumulative distribution function of the binomial distribution:
Some sources may define the negative binomial distribution slightly differently from the primary one here. The most common variations are where the random variable "X" is counting different things. These variations can be seen in the table here:
Each of these definitions of the negative binomial distribution can be expressed in slightly different but equivalent ways. The first alternative formulation is simply an equivalent form of the binomial coefficient, that is: formula_13. The second alternate formulation somewhat simplifies the expression by recognizing that the total number of trials is simply the number of successes and failures, that is: formula_14. These second formulations may be more intuitive to understand, however they are perhaps less practical as they have more terms.
In negative binomial regression, the distribution is specified in terms of its mean, formula_17, which is then related to explanatory variables as in linear regression or other generalized linear models. From the expression for the mean "m", one can derive formula_18 and formula_19. Then, substituting these expressions in the one for the probability mass function when "r" is real-valued, yields this parametrization of the probability mass function in terms of "m":
The variance can then be written as formula_21. Some authors prefer to set formula_22, and express the variance as formula_23. In this context, and depending on the author, either the parameter "r" or its reciprocal "α" is referred to as the "dispersion parameter", "shape parameter" or "clustering coefficient", or the "heterogeneity" or "aggregation" parameter. The term "aggregation" is particularly used in ecology when describing counts of individual organisms. Decrease of the aggregation parameter "r" towards zero corresponds to increasing aggregation of the organisms; increase of "r" towards infinity corresponds to absence of aggregation, as can be described by Poisson regression.
Pat Collis is required to sell candy bars to raise money for the 6th grade field trip. There are thirty houses in the neighborhood, and Pat is not supposed to return home until five candy bars have been sold. So the child goes door to door, selling candy bars. At each house, there is a 0.6 probability of selling one candy bar and a 0.4 probability of selling nothing.
"What's the probability of selling the last candy bar at the" "n"th "house?"
Successfully selling candy enough times is what defines our stopping criterion (as opposed to failing to sell it), so "k" in this case represents the number of failures and "r" represents the number of successes. Recall that the NegBin("r", "p") distribution describes the probability of "k" failures and "r" successes in "k" + "r" Bernoulli("p") trials with success on the last trial. Selling five candy bars means getting five successes. The number of trials (i.e. houses) this takes is therefore "k" + 5 = "n". The random variable we are interested in is the number of houses, so we substitute "k" = "n" − 5 into a NegBin(5, 0.4) mass function and obtain the following mass function of the distribution of houses (for "n" ≥ 5):
"What's the probability that Pat finishes on the tenth house?"
"What's the probability that Pat finishes on or before reaching the eighth house?"
To finish on or before the eighth house, Pat must finish at the fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth house. Sum those probabilities:
"What's the probability that Pat exhausts all 30 houses in the neighborhood?"
This can be expressed as the probability that Pat does not finish on the fifth through the thirtieth house:
Because of the rather high probability that Pat will sell to each house (60 percent), the probability of her NOT fulfilling her quest is vanishingly slim.
Hospital length of stay is an example of real-world data that can be modelled well with a negative binomial distribution.
The expected total number of successes in a negative binomial distribution with parameters is "rp"/(1 − "p"). To see this, imagine an experiment simulating the negative binomial is performed many times. That is, a set of trials is performed until failures are obtained, then another set of trials, and then another etc. Write down the number of trials performed in each experiment: and set . Now we would expect about successes in total. Say the experiment was performed times. Then there are failures in total. So we would expect , so . See that is just the average number of trials per experiment. That is what we mean by "expectation". The average number of successes per experiment is . This agrees with the mean given in the box on the right-hand side of this page.
When counting the number of successes given the number "r" of failures, the variance is "rp"/(1 − "p")2.
When counting the number of successes before the "r"-th failure, the variance is "r"(1 − "p")/"p"2.
Suppose "Y" is a random variable with a binomial distribution with parameters "n" and "p". Assume "p" + "q" = 1, with "p", "q" ≥ 0, then
Using Newton's binomial theorem, this can equally be written as:
in which the upper bound of summation is infinite. In this case, the binomial coefficient
is defined when "n" is a real number, instead of just a positive integer. But in our case of the binomial distribution it is zero when "k" > "n". We can then say, for example
Now suppose "r" > 0 and we use a negative exponent:
Then all of the terms are positive, and the term
is just the probability that the number of failures before the "r"th success is equal to "k", provided "r" is an integer. (If "r" is a negative non-integer, so that the exponent is a positive non-integer, then some of the terms in the sum above are negative, so we do not have a probability distribution on the set of all nonnegative integers.)
Now we also allow non-integer values of "r". Then we have a proper negative binomial distribution, which is a generalization of the Pascal distribution, which coincides with the Pascal distribution when "r" happens to be a positive integer.
Recall from above that
This property persists when the definition is thus generalized, and affords a quick way to see that the negative binomial distribution is infinitely divisible.
The following recurrence relation holds:
Consider a sequence of negative binomial random variables where the stopping parameter "r" goes to infinity, whereas the probability of success in each trial, "p", goes to zero in such a way as to keep the mean of the distribution constant. Denoting this mean as "λ", the parameter "p" will be "p" = "λ"/("r" + "λ")
Under this parametrization the probability mass function will be
Now if we consider the limit as "r" → ∞, the second factor will converge to one, and the third to the exponent function:
which is the mass function of a Poisson-distributed random variable with expected value "λ".
In other words, the alternatively parameterized negative binomial distribution converges to the Poisson distribution and "r" controls the deviation from the Poisson. This makes the negative binomial distribution suitable as a robust alternative to the Poisson, which approaches the Poisson for large "r", but which has larger variance than the Poisson for small "r".
The negative binomial distribution also arises as a continuous mixture of Poisson distributions (i.e. a compound probability distribution) where the mixing distribution of the Poisson rate is a gamma distribution. That is, we can view the negative binomial as a distribution, where "λ" is itself a random variable, distributed as a gamma distribution with shape = "r" and scale "θ" = or correspondingly rate .
To display the intuition behind this statement, consider two independent Poisson processes, “Success” and “Failure”, with intensities "p" and 1 − "p". Together, the Success and Failure processes are equivalent to a single Poisson process of intensity 1, where an occurrence of the process is a success if a corresponding independent coin toss comes up heads with probability "p"; otherwise, it is a failure. If "r" is a counting number, the coin tosses show that the count of successes before the "r"th failure follows a negative binomial distribution with parameters "r" and "p". The count is also, however, the count of the Success Poisson process at the random time "T" of the "r"th occurrence in the Failure Poisson process. The Success count follows a Poisson distribution with mean "pT", where "T" is the waiting time for "r" occurrences in a Poisson process of intensity 1 − "p", i.e., "T" is gamma-distributed with shape parameter "r" and intensity 1 − "p". Thus, the negative binomial distribution is equivalent to a Poisson distribution with mean "pT", where the random variate "T" is gamma-distributed with shape parameter "r" and intensity 1 − "p". The preceding paragraph follows, because "λ" = "pT" is gamma-distributed with shape parameter "r" and intensity .
The following formal derivation (which does not depend on "r" being a counting number) confirms the intuition.
Because of this, the negative binomial distribution is also known as the gamma–Poisson (mixture) distribution.
Note: The negative binomial distribution was originally derived as a limiting case of the gamma-Poisson distribution.
If "Y""r" is a random variable following the negative binomial distribution with parameters "r" and "p", and support {0, 1, 2, ...}, then "Y""r" is a sum of "r" independent variables following the geometric distribution (on {0, 1, 2, ...}) with parameter 1 − "p". As a result of the central limit theorem, "Y""r" (properly scaled and shifted) is therefore approximately normal for sufficiently large "r".
Furthermore, if "B""s"+"r" is a random variable following the binomial distribution with parameters "s" + "r" and 1 − "p", then
In this sense, the negative binomial distribution is the "inverse" of the binomial distribution.
The sum of independent negative-binomially distributed random variables "r"1 and "r"2 with the same value for parameter "p" is negative-binomially distributed with the same "p" but with "r"-value "r"1 + "r"2.
The negative binomial distribution is infinitely divisible, i.e., if "Y" has a negative binomial distribution, then for any positive integer "n", there exist independent identically distributed random variables "Y"1, ..., "Y""n" whose sum has the same distribution that "Y" has.
The negative binomial distribution NB("r","p") can be represented as a compound Poisson distribution: Let } denote a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables, each one having the logarithmic distribution Log("p"), with probability mass function
Let "N" be a random variable, independent of the sequence, and suppose that "N" has a Poisson distribution with mean . Then the random sum
is NB("r","p")-distributed. To prove this, we calculate the probability generating function "GX" of "X", which is the composition of the probability generating functions "GN" and "G""Y"1. Using
and
we obtain
which is the probability generating function of the NB("r","p") distribution.
The following table describes four distributions related to the number of successes in a sequence of draws:
The negative binomial along with the Poisson and binomial distributions is a member of the (a,b,0) class of distributions. All three of these distributions are special cases of the Panjer distribution. They are also members of the Natural exponential family.
Suppose "p" is unknown and an experiment is conducted where it is decided ahead of time that sampling will continue until "r" successes are found. A sufficient statistic for the experiment is "k", the number of failures.
In estimating "p", the minimum variance unbiased estimator is
The maximum likelihood estimate of "p" is
but this is a biased estimate. Its inverse ("r" + "k")/"r", is an unbiased estimate of 1/"p", however.
The maximum likelihood estimator only exists for samples for which the sample variance is larger than the sample mean. The likelihood function for "N" iid observations ("k"1, ..., "k""N") is
from which we calculate the log-likelihood function
To find the maximum we take the partial derivatives with respect to "r" and "p" and set them equal to zero:
where
Solving the first equation for "p" gives:
Substituting this in the second equation gives:
This equation cannot be solved for "r" in closed form. If a numerical solution is desired, an iterative technique such as Newton's method can be used. Alternatively, the expectation–maximization algorithm can be used.
For the special case where "r" is an integer, the negative binomial distribution is known as the Pascal distribution. It is the probability distribution of a certain number of failures and successes in a series of independent and identically distributed Bernoulli trials. For "k" + "r" Bernoulli trials with success probability "p", the negative binomial gives the probability of "k" successes and "r" failures, with a failure on the last trial. In other words, the negative binomial distribution is the probability distribution of the number of successes before the "r"th failure in a Bernoulli process, with probability "p" of successes on each trial. A Bernoulli process is a discrete time process, and so the number of trials, failures, and successes are integers.
Consider the following example. Suppose we repeatedly throw a die, and consider a 1 to be a "failure". The probability of success on each trial is 5/6. The number of successes before the third failure belongs to the infinite set { 0, 1, 2, 3, ... }. That number of successes is a negative-binomially distributed random variable.
When "r" = 1 we get the probability distribution of number of successes before the first failure (i.e. the probability of the first failure occurring on the ("k" + 1)st trial), which is a geometric distribution:
The negative binomial distribution, especially in its alternative parameterization described above, can be used as an alternative to the Poisson distribution. It is especially useful for discrete data over an unbounded positive range whose sample variance exceeds the sample mean. In such cases, the observations are overdispersed with respect to a Poisson distribution, for which the mean is equal to the variance. Hence a Poisson distribution is not an appropriate model. Since the negative binomial distribution has one more parameter than the Poisson, the second parameter can be used to adjust the variance independently of the mean. See Cumulants of some discrete probability distributions.
An application of this is to annual counts of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic or to monthly to 6-monthly counts of wintertime extratropical cyclones over Europe, for which the variance is greater than the mean. In the case of modest overdispersion, this may produce substantially similar results to an overdispersed Poisson distribution.
The negative binomial distribution is also commonly used to model data in the form of discrete sequence read counts from high-throughput RNA and DNA sequencing experiments.
This distribution was first studied in 1713, by Montmort, as the distribution of the number of trials required in an experiment to obtain a given number of successes. It had previously been mentioned by Pascal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45177 |
Process (computing)
In computing, a process is the instance of a computer program that is being executed by one or many threads. It contains the program code and its activity. Depending on the operating system (OS), a process may be made up of multiple threads of execution that execute instructions concurrently.
While a computer program is a passive collection of instructions, a process is the actual execution of those instructions. Several processes may be associated with the same program; for example, opening up several instances of the same program often results in more than one process being executed.
Multitasking is a method to allow multiple processes to share processors (CPUs) and other system resources. Each CPU (core) executes a single task at a time. However, multitasking allows each processor to switch between tasks that are being executed without having to wait for each task to finish. Depending on the operating system implementation, switches could be performed when tasks perform input/output operations, when a task indicates that it can be switched, or on hardware interrupts.
A common form of multitasking is time-sharing. Time-sharing is a method to allow high responsiveness for interactive user applications. In time-sharing systems, context switches are performed rapidly, which makes it seem like multiple processes are being executed simultaneously on the same processor. This seeming execution of multiple processes simultaneously is called concurrency.
For security and reliability, most modern operating systems prevent direct communication between independent processes, providing strictly mediated and controlled inter-process communication functionality.
In general, a computer system process consists of (or is said to "own") the following resources:
The operating system holds most of this information about active processes in data structures called process control blocks. Any subset of the resources, typically at least the processor state, may be associated with each of the process' threads in operating systems that support threads or "child" processes.
The operating system keeps its processes separate and allocates the resources they need, so that they are less likely to interfere with each other and cause system failures (e.g., deadlock or thrashing). The operating system may also provide mechanisms for inter-process communication to enable processes to interact in safe and predictable ways.
A multitasking operating system may just switch between processes to give the appearance of many processes executing simultaneously (that is, in parallel), though in fact only one process can be executing at any one time on a single CPU (unless the CPU has multiple cores, then multithreading or other similar technologies can be used).
It is usual to associate a single process with a main program, and child processes with any spin-off, parallel processes, which behave like asynchronous subroutines. A process is said to "own" resources, of which an "image" of its program (in memory) is one such resource. However, in multiprocessing systems "many" processes may run off of, or share, the same reentrant program at the same location in memory, but each process is said to own its own "image" of the program.
Processes are often called "tasks" in embedded operating systems. The sense of "process" (or task) is "something that takes up time", as opposed to "memory", which is "something that takes up space".
The above description applies to both processes managed by an operating system, and processes as defined by process calculi.
If a process requests something for which it must wait, it will be blocked. When the process is in the blocked state, it is eligible for swapping to disk, but this is transparent in a virtual memory system, where regions of a process's memory may be really on disk and not in main memory at any time. Note that even portions of active processes/tasks (executing programs) are eligible for swapping to disk, if the portions have not been used recently. Not all parts of an executing program and its data have to be in physical memory for the associated process to be active.
An operating system kernel that allows multitasking needs processes to have certain states. Names for these states are not standardised, but they have similar functionality.
When processes communicate with each other it is called "Inter-process communication" (IPC).
Processes frequently need to communicate, for instance in a shell pipeline, the output of the first process need to pass to the second one, and so on to the other process. It is preferred in a well-structured way not using interrupts.
It is even possible for the two processes to be running on different machines. The operating system (OS) may differ from one process to the other, therefore some mediator(s) (called protocols) are needed.
By the early 1960s, computer control software had evolved from monitor control software, for example IBSYS, to executive control software. Over time, computers got faster while computer time was still neither cheap nor fully utilized; such an environment made multiprogramming possible and necessary. Multiprogramming means that several programs run concurrently. At first, more than one program ran on a single processor, as a result of underlying uniprocessor computer architecture, and they shared scarce and limited hardware resources; consequently, the concurrency was of a "serial" nature. On later systems with multiple processors, multiple programs may run concurrently in "parallel".
Programs consist of sequences of instructions for processors. A single processor can run only one instruction at a time: it is impossible to run more programs at the same time. A program might need some resource, such as an input device, which has a large delay, or a program might start some slow operation, such as sending output to a printer. This would lead to processor being "idle" (unused). To keep the processor busy at all times, the execution of such a program is halted and the operating system switches the processor to run another program. To the user, it will appear that the programs run at the same time (hence the term "parallel").
Shortly thereafter, the notion of a "program" was expanded to the notion of an "executing program and its context". The concept of a process was born, which also became necessary with the invention of re-entrant code. Threads came somewhat later. However, with the advent of concepts such as time-sharing, computer networks, and multiple-CPU shared memory computers, the old "multiprogramming" gave way to true multitasking, multiprocessing and, later, multithreading. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45178 |
Clara Schumann
Clara Josephine Schumann (; née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital from displays of virtuosity to programs of serious works. She also composed solo piano pieces, a piano concerto (her Op. 7), chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.
She grew up in Leipzig, where her father, Friedrich Wieck, was a professional pianist and teacher, and her mother an accomplished singer. She was a child prodigy, trained by her father. She began touring at age eleven, and was successful in Paris and Vienna, among other cities. She married composer Robert Schumann, and the couple had eight children. Together, they encouraged Johannes Brahms and maintained a close relationship with him. She premiered many works by her husband and by Brahms in public.
After Robert Schumann's early death, she continued her concert tours in Europe for decades, frequently with the violinist Joseph Joachim and other chamber musicians. Beginning in 1878, she was an influential piano educator at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt, where she attracted international students. She edited the publication of her husband's work. Schumann died in Frankfurt, but was buried in Bonn beside her husband.
Several films have focused on Schumann's life, the earliest being "Träumerei" ("Dreaming") of 1944. A 2008 film, "Geliebte Clara" ("Beloved Clara"), was directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms. An image of Clara Schumann from an 1835 lithograph by Andreas Staub was featured on the 100 Deutsche Mark banknote from 1989 to 2002. Interest in her compositions began to revive in the late 20th century, and her 2019 bicentenary prompted new books and exhibitions.
Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819 to Friedrich Wieck and his wife Mariane ("née" Tromlitz). Her mother was a famous singer in Leipzig who performed weekly piano and soprano solos at the Gewandhaus. Clara's parents had irreconcilable differences, in part due to her father's unyielding nature. Prompted by an affair between her mother and Adolph Bargiel, her father's friend, the Wiecks were divorced in 1825, with Mariane later marrying Bargiel. Five-year-old Clara remained with her father while Mariane and Bargiel eventually moved to Berlin, limiting contact between Clara and her mother to written letters and occasional visits.
From an early age, Clara's father planned her career and life down to the smallest detail. She started receiving basic piano instruction from her mother at the age of four. After her mother moved out, she began taking daily one-hour lessons from her father. They included subjects such as piano, violin, singing, theory, harmony, composition, and counterpoint. She then had to practice for two hours every day. Her father followed the methods in his own book, "Wiecks pianistische Erziehung zum schönen Anschlag und zum singenden Ton" ("Wieck's Piano Education for a Delicate Touch and a Singing Sound.") Her musical studies came largely at the expense of her broader general education, although she still studied religion and languages under her father's control of the family.
Clara Wieck made her official debut on 28 October 1828 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, at age nine. The same year, she performed at the Leipzig home of Ernst Carus, director of the mental hospital at Colditz Castle. There, she met another gifted young pianist who had been invited to the musical evening, Robert Schumann, who was nine years older. Schumann admired Clara's playing so much that he asked permission from his mother to stop studying law, which had never interested him much, and take music lessons with Clara's father. While taking lessons, he rented a room in the Wieck household and stayed about a year.
From September 1831 to April 1832, Clara toured Paris and other European cities, accompanied by her father. In Weimar, she performed a bravura piece by Henri Herz for Goethe, who presented her with a medal with his portrait and a written note saying: "For the gifted artist Clara Wieck". During that tour, the violinist Niccolò Paganini, who was also in Paris, offered to appear with her. Her Paris recital was poorly attended because many people had fled the city due to an outbreak of cholera. The tour marked her transition from a child prodigy to a young woman performer.
From December 1837 to April 1838, at the age of 18, Wieck performed a series of recitals in Vienna. Franz Grillparzer, Austria's leading dramatic poet, wrote a poem entitled "Clara Wieck and Beethoven" after hearing her perform Beethoven's "Appassionata" sonata during one of these recitals. She performed to sell-out crowds and laudatory critical reviews; Benedict Randhartinger, a friend of Franz Schubert, gave her an autographed copy of Schubert's "Erlkönig", inscribing it "To the celebrated artist, Clara Wieck." Chopin described her playing to Franz Liszt, who came to hear one of Wieck's concerts and subsequently praised her extravagantly in a letter that was published in the Parisian "Revue et Gazette Musicale" and later, in translation, in the Leipzig journal "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik". On 15 March, she was named a "Königliche und Kaiserliche Österreichische Kammer-virtuosin" ("Royal and Imperial Austrian Chamber Virtuoso"), Austria's highest musical honor.
An anonymous music critic, describing her Vienna recitals, said: "The appearance of this artist can be regarded as epoch-making... In her creative hands, the most ordinary passage, the most routine motive acquires a significant meaning, a colour, which only those with the most consummate artistry can give."
Robert Schumann was a little more than nine years older than Wieck. In 1837, when she was 18, he proposed to her and she accepted. Robert then asked her father for her hand in marriage. Friedrich was strongly opposed to the marriage, and refused his permission. Robert and Clara decided to go to court and sue him. The judge allowed the marriage, which took place on 12 September 1840, the day before Clara's 21st birthday, when she attained majority status. From then on, the couple maintained a joint musical and personal diary of their life together.
In February 1854, Robert Schumann had a mental collapse, attempted suicide, and was admitted, at his request, to a sanatorium in the village of Endenich near Bonn, where he stayed for the last two years of his life. In March 1854, Brahms, Joachim, Albert Dietrich, and Julius Otto Grimm spent time with Clara Schumann, playing music for her and with her to divert her mind from the tragedy. Brahms composed some private piano pieces for her to console her: four piano pieces and a set of variations on a theme by Robert Schumann that she had also written variations on a year earlier, as her Op. 20. The music by Brahms was not intended to be published, but for her alone. Brahms later thought to publish them anonymously, but eventually they were issued as his four Ballades, Op. 10, and "Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann", Op. 9. Brahms dedicated the variations to both Schumanns, hoping that Robert would be released soon and rejoined with his family.
For the entire two years of Robert Schumann's stay at the institution, his wife was not permitted to visit him, while Brahms visited him regularly. When it was apparent that Robert was near death, she was finally admitted to see him. He appeared to recognize her, but could only speak a few words. Robert Schumann died two days later, on 29 July 1856.
The Schumanns first met violinist Joseph Joachim in November 1844, when he was 14 years old. A year later Clara Schumann wrote in her diary that in a concert on 11 November 1845, "little Joachim was very much liked. He played a new violin concerto by Felix Mendelssohn, which is said to be wonderful." In May 1853 they heard Joachim play the solo part in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. She wrote that he played "with a finish, a depth of poetic feeling, his whole soul in every note, so ideally, that I have never heard violin-playing like it, and I can truly say that I have never received so indelible an impression from any virtuoso." A lasting friendship developed between Clara and Joseph, which for more than forty years never failed her in things great or small, never wavered in its loyalty.
Over her career, Schumann gave over 238 concerts with Joachim in Germany and Britain, more than with any other artist. The two were particularly noted for their playing of Beethoven's violin sonatas.
In early 1853, the then-unknown 20-year-old Johannes Brahms met Joachim and made a very favorable impression. Brahms received from him a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, and thus presented himself at the Schumanns' home in Düsseldorf. Brahms played some of his piano solo compositions for the Schumanns, and they were deeply impressed. Robert published an article highly lauding Brahms, and Clara wrote in the diary that Brahms "seemed as if sent straight from God".
During Robert Schumann's last years, confined to an asylum, Brahms was a strong presence for the Schumann family. His letters indicate his strong feelings for Clara. Their relationship has been interpreted as somewhere between friendship and love, and Brahms always maintained the utmost respect for her, as a woman and a talented musician.
Brahms played his First Symphony for her before its premiere. She gave some advice about the Adagio, which he took to heart. She expressed her appreciation of the Symphony as a whole, but mentioned her dissatisfaction with the endings of the third and fourth movements. She was the first to perform many of his works in public, including the "Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel", a solo piano work written by Brahms in 1861.
Clara Schumann first toured England in April 1856, while her husband was still living but unable to travel. She was invited to play in a London Philharmonic Society concert by conductor William Sterndale Bennett, a good friend of Robert's. She was displeased with the little time spent on rehearsals: "They call it a rehearsal here if a piece is played through once." She wrote that musical "artists" in England "allow themselves to be treated as inferiors." She was happy, though, to hear the cellist Alfredo Piatti play with "a tone, a bravura, a certainty, such as I never heard before". In May 1856, she played Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor with the New Philharmonic Society conducted by Dr Wylde, who as she said had "led a dreadful rehearsal" and "could not grasp the rhythm of the last movement". Still, she returned to London the following year and continued to perform in Britain for the next 15 years.
In October–November 1857, Schumann and Joachim went on a recital tour to Dresden and Leipzig. St. James's Hall in London, which opened in 1858, hosted a series of "Popular Concerts" of chamber music. Joachim visited London annually beginning in 1866. Schumann also spent many years in London participating in the Popular Concerts with Joachim and the celebrated Italian cellist Carlo Alfredo Piatti. Second violinist Joseph Ries (brother of composer Ferdinand Ries) and violist J. B. Zerbini usually played on the same concert programs. George Bernard Shaw, the leading playwright and also a music critic, wrote that the Popular Concerts helped greatly to spread and enlighten musical taste in England.
In January 1867, Schumann toured Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, along with Joachim, Piatti, Ries, and Zerbini. Two sisters, Louisa and Susanna Pyne, singers and managers of an opera company in England, and a man named Saunders, made all the arrangements. She was accompanied by her oldest daughter Marie, who wrote from Manchester to her friend Rosalie Leser that in Edinburgh the pianist "was received with tempestuous applause and had to give an encore, so had Joachim. Piatti, too, is always tremendously liked." Marie also wrote: "For the longer journeys we had a saloon [car], comfortably furnished with arm-chairs and sofas... the journey ... was very comfortable." On this occasion, the musicians were not "treated as inferiors".
Schumann still performed actively in the 1870s and 1880s. She performed extensively and regularly throughout Germany during these decades, and had engagements in Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland. She continued her annual winter-spring concert tours of England, giving 16 of them between 1865 and 1888, often with violinist Joachim.
She took a break from concert performances, beginning in January 1874, cancelling her usual England tour due to an arm injury. In July she consulted a doctor, who having massaged the arm, advised her to practice for only one hour a day. She rested for the remainder of the year before returning to the concert stage in March 1875. She had not fully recovered, and experienced more neuralgia in her arm again in May, reporting that she "could not write on account of my arm". By October 1875, she had recovered enough to begin another tour in Germany.
In addition to solo piano recitals, chamber music, and accompanying singers, she continued to perform frequently with orchestras. In 1877 she performed Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto in Berlin, with Woldemar Bargiel conducting, her half-brother by her mother's second marriage, and had tremendous success. In 1883, she performed Beethoven's "Choral Fantasy" with the newly-formed Berlin Philharmonic, and was enthusiastically celebrated, although she was playing with an injured hand in great pain, having fallen on a staircase the previous day. Later that year she played Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto (with her own cadenzas) with Joachim conducting the same orchestra, again to great acclaim.
In 1885, Schumann once again joined Joachim conducting Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor, again playing her own cadenzas. The following day, she played her husband's Piano Concerto with Bargiel conducting. "I think I played fresher than ever", she wrote to Brahms, "What I liked very much about the concert was that I was able to give Woldemar the direction of it, who had longed for such an opportunity for years."
She played her last public concert in Frankfurt on 12 March 1891. The last work she played was Brahms's "Variations on a Theme by Haydn", in a version for two pianos, with James Kwast.
In 1878, Schumann was appointed the first piano teacher of the new Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt. She had chosen Frankfurt among offers from Stuttgart, Hannover, and Berlin, because the director, Joachim Raff, had accepted her conditions: she could not teach more than 1-1/2 hours per day, was free to teach at her home, and had four months of vacation and time off for short tours in winter. She demanded two assistants, with her daughters Marie and Eugenie in mind.
She was the only woman on the faculty. Her fame attracted students from abroad, including Britain and the United States. She trained only advanced pupils, mostly young women, while her two daughters gave lessons to beginners. Among her 68 known students who made a musical career were Natalia Janotha, Fanny Davies, Nanette Falk, Amina Goodwin, Carl Friedberg, Leonard Borwick, Ilona Eibenschütz, Adelina de Lara, Marie Olson, and Mary Wurm. The Konservatorium held events to celebrate her 50th year on stage in 1878 and her 60th career anniversary ten years later. She held the teaching post until 1892 and contributed greatly to the improvement of modern piano playing technique.
Schumann suffered a stroke on 26 March 1896, and died on 20 May at age 76. She was buried in Bonn at Alter Friedhof next to her husband, according to her own wish.
Robert Schumann gave his wife a diary on their wedding day. His first entry indicates that it should act as an autobiography of the family's personal lives, especially of the couple, and of their desires and accomplishments in the arts. It also functioned as a record of their artistic endeavors and growth. She fully accepted the arrangement of a shared diary as evidenced by her many entries. It demonstrates her loyal love for her husband, with a desire to combine two lives into one artistically, although this life-long goal involved risks.
The couple remained joint partners in both family life and their careers. She premiered many of his works, from solo piano works to her own piano versions of his orchestral works.
She often took charge of finances and general household affairs. Part of her responsibility included earning money by giving concerts, though she continued to play throughout her life, not just for the income but because she was an artist by training and nature. The burden of family duties increased over time and narrowed her ability as an artist. As a flourishing composer's wife, she was limited in her own explorations.
She was the main breadwinner for her family and the sole one after her husband was hospitalized and then died. She gave concerts and taught, and she did most of the work of organizing her own concert tours. She hired a housekeeper and a cook to keep house while she was away on her long tours.
Clara and Robert Schumann had eight children:
Her life was punctuated by tragedy. Her husband was permanently institutionalized after a mental collapse. Her eldest living son Ludwig suffered from mental illness like his father and, in her words, eventually had to be "buried alive" in an institution. She became deaf in later life, and she often needed a wheelchair. Not only did her husband predecease her, but also four of their children. Their first son, Emil, died in 1847, aged only 1. Their daughter Julie died in 1872, leaving two small children aged only 2 and 7, then raised by their grandmother. In 1879, their son Felix died aged 24. In 1891, their son Ferdinand died at the age of 41, leaving his children to her care.
Their oldest child Marie was of great support and help to her mother, taking the position of household cook. Marie also dissuaded her mother from continuing to burn letters that she had received from Brahms which he had asked her to destroy. Another daughter, Eugenie, who had been too young when her father died to remember him, wrote a book, "Erinnerungen" (Memoirs), published in 1925, covering her parents and Brahms.
Schumann famously rescued her children from violence during the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. On the evening of 3 May, Robert and Clara heard that the revolution against King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony for not accepting the "constitution for a German Confederation" had arrived in Dresden. Most family members left and hid in a "neighbourhood security brigade", but on 7 May, she bravely walked back to Dresden to rescue her three children who had been left with a maid, defying a pack of armed men who confronted her, then walked back out of the city through the dangerous areas again.
During her lifetime, Schumann was an internationally renowned concert pianist. Over 1,300 concert programs from her performances throughout Europe between 1831 through 1889 have been preserved. She championed the works of her husband and other contemporaries such as Brahms, Chopin and Mendelssohn.
The Schumanns were admirers of Chopin, especially of "Variations on "Là ci darem la mano"", and she played the piece herself. When she was 14 and her future husband 23, he wrote to her:
In her early years, her repertoire, selected by her father, was showy and in the style common to the time, with works by Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Adolf von Henselt, Sigismond Thalberg, Henri Herz, Johann Peter Pixis, Carl Czerny and her own compositions. She turned to including compositions by Baroque composers such as Domenico Scarlatti and Johann Sebastian Bach, but performed especially contemporary music by Chopin, Mendelssohn and her husband, whose music did not attain popularity until the 1850s.
In 1835, she performed her Piano Concerto in A minor with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, conducted by Mendelssohn. On 4 December 1845, she premiered Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in Dresden. Following the advice of Brahms she performed Mozart's Piano Concerto in C minor at the Hanoverian court and in Leipzig. Her busiest years as a performer were between 1856 and 1873, after her husband's death. During this period, she experienced success as a performer in Britain, where her 1865 performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto in G major was met with enormous applause. As a chamber musician, she often gave concerts with violinist Joachim. In her later career, she frequently accompanied lieder singers in recitals.
As part of the broad musical education given to her by her father, Clara Wieck learned to compose, and from childhood to middle age she produced a good body of work. Clara wrote that "composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound". Her Op. 1 was "Quatre Polonaises pour le pianoforte" composed in 1831, and Op. 5 "4 Pièces caractéristiques" in 1836, all piano pieces for her recitals. She wrote her Piano Concerto in A minor at age 14, with some help from her future husband. She planned a second piano concerto, but only a "Konzertsatz" in F minor from 1847 survived.
After her marriage, she turned to lieder and choral works. The couple wrote and published one joint composition in 1841, setting a cycle of poems by Friedrich Rückert called "Liebesfrühling" ("Spring of Love") in "Zwölf Lieder auf F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling", her Op. 12 and his Op. 37. Her chamber works include the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 (1846) and Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op. 22 (1853), inspired by her husband's birthday. They were dedicated to Joachim, who performed them for George V of Hanover, who declared them a "marvellous, heavenly pleasure".
As she grew older, she became more preoccupied with other responsibilities in life and found it hard to compose regularly, writing, "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose – there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" Her husband also expressed concern about the effect on her composing output:
She produced one to eight compositions every year beginning at age 11, until her output stopped in 1848, producing only a choral work that year for her husband's birthday and leaving her second piano concerto unfinished. These two works, while reserved for her opus 18 and 19, were never published. Five years later, however, when she was 34 in 1853, the year she met Brahms, she engaged in a flurry of composing, resulting in 16 pieces that year: a set of piano variations on an "Album Leaf" of her husband (his Op. 99 No. 4), eight "Romances" for piano solo and for violin and piano, and seven songs. These works were published a year later, after Robert's confinement, as her Op. 20 through 23.
For the next 43 years of her life, she only composed piano transcriptions of works by her husband and Brahms, including 41 transcriptions of Robert Schumann's lieder (commissioned by a publisher in 1872), and a short piano duet commissioned for a friend's wedding anniversary in 1879. In the last year of her life, she left several sketches for piano preludes, designed for piano students, as well as some published cadenzas for her performances of Beethoven and Mozart piano concertos.
Most of Clara Schumann's music was never played by anyone else and largely forgotten until a resurgence of interest in the 1970s. Today her compositions are increasingly performed and recorded.
Schumann was the authoritative editor, aided by Brahms and others, of her husband's works for the publishing firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. She also edited 20 sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, letters ("Jugendbriefe") by her husband in 1885, and his piano works with fingering and other instructions ("Fingersatz und Vortragsbezeichnungen") in 1886.
In the early 1840s the Schumanns were interested in the works of Franz Liszt and his young composer friends of what eventually became known as the New German School, but in the second half of the decade they both became openly hostile toward Liszt because of their more musically conservative outlook and beliefs, Clara more so than Robert, as she had long been the more conservative aesthete in the Schumann marriage. By the mid-1850s, after Robert's decline, the young Brahms had joined the cause, and to promote her ideals and protect what she saw as an attack on her husband's beliefs, she, Brahms, and Joseph Joachim formed a group of conservative musicians who defended Robert Schumann's critical ideals of the legacy and respectability of music, the pinnacle of which had been Beethoven.
The opposing side of this "War of the Romantics", a group of radical progressives in music (most of them from Weimar) led by Liszt and Richard Wagner, desired to not live under the shadow of Beethoven, but to transcend the old forms and ideas of what music had been and instead create what music "should" be for the future. The Weimar school promoted the idea of "program music", while both the Schumanns and Brahms of the Leipzig/Berlin school were strict in their stance that music must and can only be "absolute music", a term derisively coined by Wagner.
One of Clara Schumann's difficulties with Liszt stemmed from a philosophical difference in performance practice. He believed that the artist, through physical and emotional performance, interpreted music for the audience. When he performed, Liszt flailed his arms, tossed his head, and pursed his lips., inspiring a Lisztomania across Europe which has been compared to the Beatlemania of female fans of The Beatles over a century later. Clara, in contrast, came to believe that the personality of the musician should be suppressed so that the composer's vision would be clearly evident to listeners.
Partisans led active campaigns with public demonstrations at concerts, writings published in the press denigrating reputations, and other public slights designed to embarrass their adversaries. Brahms published a manifesto for the "Serious Music" side on 4 May 1861, signed by Clara Schumann, Joachim, Albert Dietrich, Woldemar Bargiel, and twenty others, which decried the purveyors of the "Music of the Future" as "contrary to the innermost spirit of music, strongly to be deplored and condemned". The "New Weimar Club", a formal society with Liszt at its center, held an anniversary celebration of the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik", the magazine Robert Schumann had founded, in his birthplace Zwickau, and conspicuously neglected to invite members of the opposing party, including his widow, Clara. Clara Schumann ceased to perform any of Liszt's works, and she suppressed her husband's dedication to Liszt of his "Fantasie in C major" when she published his complete works. When she heard that Liszt and Richard Wagner would be participating in a Beethoven centenary festival in Vienna in 1870, she refused to attend.
In describing the works of the opposing school, Clara Schumann was particularly scathing of Wagner, writing of his "Tannhäuser", that he "wears himself out in atrocities", describing "Lohengrin" as "horrible", and referring to "Tristan und Isolde" as "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life". She also complained that Wagner had spoken of her husband, Mendelssohn, and Brahms in a "scornful" way. Wagner had poked fun at the musical conservatives in an essay, portraying them as "a musical temperance society" awaiting a Messiah. She held Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony in very low esteem and wrote to Brahms, describing it as "a horrible piece". Bruckner's symphonies were seen as representative of the New Music due to their advanced harmony, massive orchestration and extended time-scale. Schumann was more impressed, however, with the early First Symphony in F minor by Richard Strauss; this was before Strauss began composing the highly programmatic music for which he later became famous.
Though Brahms secretly held Wagner's music in high esteem, and eventually publicly praised Liszt's works as well, and several of the proponents and signers of the manifesto, including Joachim, relented and joined the "other side", and the controversy died down, Clara Schumann remained steadfast in her disapproval of the New German School's music during her lifetime.
Although Schumann was not widely recognized as a composer for many years after her death, she made a lasting impression as a pianist. Trained by her father to play by ear and memorize, she gave public performances from memory as early as age thirteen, a fact noted as exceptional by her reviewers. She was one of the first pianists to perform from memory, making it the standard for concerts. She was also instrumental in changing the kind of programs expected of concert pianists. In her early career, before her marriage, she played the customary bravura pieces designed to showcase the artist's technique, often in the form of arrangements or variations on popular themes from operas, written by virtuosos such as Thalberg, Herz, or Henselt. As it was customary to play one's own compositions, she included at least one of her own works in every program, such as Variations on a Theme by Bellini (Op. 8) and the popular Scherzo (Op. 10). However, as she became a more independent artist, her repertoire contained mainly music by leading composers.
Schumann influenced pianists through her teaching, which emphasized expression and a singing tone, with technique subordinated to the intentions of the composer. One of her students, Mathilde Verne, carried her teaching to England where she taught, among others, Solomon. Another of her students, Carl Friedberg, carried the tradition to the Juilliard School in America, where his students included Malcolm Frager and Bruce Hungerford.
She was also instrumental in getting the works of Robert Schumann recognized, appreciated and added to the repertoire. She promoted his works tirelessly throughout her life.
Clara Schumann has been portrayed on screen many times. "Träumerei" ("Dreaming"), the oldest known Schumann film, premiered on 3 May 1944 in Zwickau. Possibly the best-known film is "Song of Love (1947)" starring Katharine Hepburn as Clara, Paul Henreid as Robert, and Robert Walker as Brahms.
In 1954, Loretta Young portrayed her on "The Loretta Young Show" in Season 1, Episode 26: "The Clara Schumann Story" (first aired on 21 March 1954), in which she supports the composing career of her husband, played by George Nader, alongside Shelley Fabares and Carleton G. Young.
Two more recent German films are "Frühlingssinfonie" ("Spring Symphony") (1983), starring Nastassja Kinski as Clara, and the 2008 Helma Sanders-Brahms' film "Geliebte Clara" ("Beloved Clara"), where she is portrayed by Martina Gedeck.
An image of Clara Schumann from an 1835 lithograph by Andreas Staub was featured on the 100 Deutsche Mark banknote from 2 January 1989 until the adoption of the euro on 1 January 2002. The back of the banknote shows a grand piano she played and the exterior of Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium, where she taught. The great hall of the conservatory's new building is named after her.
"Books"
"Encyclopedias"
"Newspapers"
"Online sources" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45181 |
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (; ; born Samuel Wilder, June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-born American film director and screenwriter whose career spanned more than five decades. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of the Hollywood Golden Age of cinema. With "The Apartment", Wilder became the first person to win Academy Awards as producer, director, and screenwriter for the same film.
Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, he left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He moved to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay for the romantic comedy "Ninotchka", starring Greta Garbo. Wilder established his directorial reputation with an adaption of James M. Cain's "Double Indemnity" (1944), a film noir. Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with crime novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story, "The Lost Weekend" (1945), about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed "Sunset Boulevard", as well as "Stalag 17" in 1953.
From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces "The Seven Year Itch" (1955) and "Some Like It Hot" (1959), and satires such as "The Apartment" (1960). He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder was recognized with the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Samuel Wilder ( "Shmuel Vildr") was born on June 22, 1906 to a family of Austrian Jews in Sucha Beskidzka. His parents were Eugenia ("née" Dittler) and Max Wilder. He was nicknamed "Billie" by his mother (he changed this to "Billy" after arriving in America). He had an elder brother, William Lee Wilder (1904–1982), who also became a screenwriter, film producer, and director. His parents had a successful and well-known cake shop in Sucha's train station and unsuccessfully tried to persuade their son to join the family business. Soon the family moved to Vienna, where Wilder attended school. Instead of attending the University of Vienna, Wilder became a journalist. In 1926, jazz band leader Paul Whiteman was on tour in Vienna when he met and was interviewed by Wilder, a fan of Whiteman's band. Whiteman liked young Wilder enough that he took him with the band to Berlin, where Wilder was able to make more connections in the entertainment field. Before achieving success as a writer, he allegedly worked as a taxi dancer in Berlin.
After writing crime and sports stories as a stringer for local newspapers, he was eventually offered a regular job at a Berlin tabloid. Developing an interest in film, he began working as a screenwriter. He collaborated with several other novices (with Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak) on the 1929 feature "People on Sunday". He wrote the screenplay for the 1931 film adaptation of a novel by Erich Kästner, "Emil and the Detectives". After the rise of Adolf Hitler, Wilder, Jewish, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut with the 1934 film "Mauvaise Graine". He relocated to Hollywood prior to its release.
Wilder's mother, grandmother, and stepfather all died in the Holocaust. For decades it was assumed that it happened at Auschwitz, but while researching Polish and Israeli archives, his Austrian biographer Andreas Hutter discovered in 2011 that they were murdered in different locations: his mother, Eugenia "Gitla" Siedlisker, in 1943 at Plaszow; his stepfather, Bernard "Berl" Siedlisker, in 1942 at Belzec; and his grandmother, Balbina Baldinger, died in 1943 in the ghetto in Nowy Targ.
After arriving in Hollywood in 1933, Wilder continued his career as a screenwriter. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939, having spent time in Mexico waiting for the US government after his six-month visa had expired in 1934, an episode reflected in his 1941 "Hold Back the Dawn". Wilder's first significant success was "Ninotchka" in 1939, a collaboration with fellow German immigrant Ernst Lubitsch. This romantic comedy starred Greta Garbo (generally known as a tragic heroine in film melodramas), and was popularly and critically acclaimed. With the byline, "Garbo Laughs!", it also took Garbo's career in a new direction. The film also marked Wilder's first Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer Charles Brackett (although their collaboration on "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" and "Midnight" had been well received). For twelve years Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett, from 1938 through 1950. He followed "Ninotchka" with a series of box office hits in 1942, including his "Hold Back the Dawn" and "Ball of Fire", as well as his directorial feature debut, "The Major and the Minor".
His third film as director, "Double Indemnity" (1944) was a major hit. A "film noir", nominated for Best Director and Screenplay, it was co-written with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler, although the two men did not get along. "Double Indemnity" not only set conventions for the "noir" genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and voice-over narration), but was also a landmark in the battle against Hollywood censorship. The original James M. Cain novel "Double Indemnity" featured two love triangles and a murder plotted for insurance money. While the book was highly popular with the reading public, it had been considered unfilmable under the Hays Code, because adultery was central to its plot. "Double Indemnity" is credited by some as the first true film noir, combining the stylistic elements of "Citizen Kane" with the narrative elements of "The Maltese Falcon" (1941).
During the liberation of concentration camps in 1945, the Psychological Warfare Department (PWD) of the United States Department of War produced an American propaganda documentary film directed by Billy Wilder. The film known as "Death Mills", or , was intended for German audiences to educate them about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. For the German version, "Die Todesmühlen", Hanuš Burger is credited as the writer and director, while Wilder supervised the editing. Wilder is credited with the English-language version.
Two years later, Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story, "The Lost Weekend" (1945), the first major American film to make a serious examination of alcoholism, another difficult theme under the Production Code. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the dark and cynical "Sunset Boulevard", which paired rising star William Holden with Gloria Swanson. Swanson played Norma Desmond, a reclusive silent film star who, with delusions of her greatness from a bygone era, dreams of a comeback. Holden portrays an aspiring screenwriter who can't make ends meet and becomes a kept man to her. It was critically acclaimed and marked the end of Wilder's long writing partnership with Charles Brackett. In 1951, Wilder followed "Sunset Boulevard" with "Ace in the Hole" (a.k.a. "The Big Carnival"), a tale of media exploitation of a caving accident. The idea for the film had been pitched over the phone to Wilder's secretary by Victor Desny. Desny sued Wilder for breach of an implied contract in the California copyright case "Wilder v Desny", ultimately receiving a settlement of $14,350. Although a critical and commercial failure at the time, its reputation has grown over the years.
In the 1950s, Wilder also directed two adaptations of Broadway plays, the prisoner of war drama "Stalag 17" (1953), which resulted in a Best Actor Oscar for William Holden, and the Agatha Christie mystery "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957). In the mid-1950s, Wilder became interested in doing a film with one of the classic slapstick comedy acts of the Hollywood Golden Age. He first considered, and rejected, a project to star Laurel and Hardy. He then held discussions with Groucho Marx concerning a new Marx Brothers comedy, tentatively titled "A Day at the U.N." This project was abandoned when Chico Marx died in 1961.
From the mid-1950s onwards, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces "The Seven Year Itch" (1955) and "Some Like It Hot" (1959), satires such as "The Apartment" (1960), and the romantic comedy "Sabrina" (1954). Wilder's humor is sometimes sardonic. In "Love in the Afternoon" (1957), a young and innocent Audrey Hepburn does not wish to be young or innocent with playboy Gary Cooper, and pretends to be a married woman in search of extramarital amusement. The film was Wilder's first collaboration with writer-producer I. A. L. Diamond, an association that continued until the end of both men's careers.
In 1959, United Artists released Wilder's Prohibition-era farce "Some Like It Hot" without a Production Code seal of approval, withheld due to the film's unabashed sexual comedy, including a central cross-dressing theme. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play musicians who disguise themselves as women to escape pursuit by a Chicago gang. Curtis's character courts a singer played by Marilyn Monroe, while Lemmon is wooed by Joe E. Brown—setting up the film's final joke in which Lemmon reveals that his character is a man and Brown blandly replies "Well, nobody's perfect". A box office success, the film was lightly regarded during its original release. But its critical reputation grew prodigiously; in 2000, the American Film Institute selected it as the best American comedy ever made. In 2012, the British Film Institute decennial Sight and Sound poll of the world's film critics rated it as the 43rd best movie ever made, and the second-highest-ranking comedy.
After winning three Academy Awards for 1960's "The Apartment" (for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay), Wilder's career slowed. His Cold War farce "One, Two, Three" (1961) featured a rousing comic performance by James Cagney. It was followed by films including "Irma la Douce" and "Kiss Me, Stupid". Wilder gained his last Oscar nomination for his screenplay "The Fortune Cookie" (UK: "Meet Whiplash Willie") (1966). His 1970 film "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" was intended as a major roadshow release, but was heavily cut by the studio and has never been fully restored. Later films such as "Fedora" (1978) and "Buddy Buddy" (1981) failed to impress critics or the public.
Wilder's directorial choices reflected his belief in the primacy of writing. He avoided, especially in the second half of his career, the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Wilder's pictures have tight plotting and memorable dialogue. Despite his conservative directorial style, his subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. Once a subject was chosen, he would begin to visualize in terms of specific artists. His belief was that no matter how talented the actor, none were without limitations and the end result would be better if you bent the script to their personality rather than force a performance beyond their limitations. Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing silent era legends Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in "Sunset Boulevard".
For "Stalag 17", Wilder squeezed an Oscar-winning performance out of a reluctant William Holden (Holden had wanted to make his character more likable; Wilder refused). Wilder sometimes cast against type for major parts such as Fred MacMurray in "Double Indemnity" and "The Apartment". MacMurray had become Hollywood's highest-paid actor portraying a decent, thoughtful character in light comedies, melodramas, and musicals; Wilder cast him as a womanizing schemer. Humphrey Bogart shed his tough-guy image to give one of his warmest performances in "Sabrina". James Cagney, not usually known for comedy, was memorable in a high-octane comic role for Wilder's "One, Two, Three". Wilder coaxed a very effective performance out of Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot".
In total, he directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity", Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend", William Holden in "Sunset Boulevard" and "Stalag 17", Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard", Erich von Stroheim in "Sunset Boulevard", Nancy Olson in "Sunset Boulevard", Robert Strauss in "Stalag 17", Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina", Charles Laughton in "Witness for the Prosecution", Elsa Lanchester in "Witness for the Prosecution", Jack Lemmon in "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment", Jack Kruschen in "The Apartment", Shirley MacLaine in "The Apartment" and "Irma la Douce" and Walter Matthau in "The Fortune Cookie". Milland, Holden and Matthau won Oscars for their performances in Wilder films. Wilder mentored Jack Lemmon and was the first director to pair him with Walter Matthau, in "The Fortune Cookie" (1966). Wilder had great respect for Lemmon, calling him the hardest working actor he had ever met. Lemmon starred in seven of Wilder's films.
Some say that Wilder's films often lacked any discernible political tone or sympathies, which was not unintentional. He was less interested in current political fashions than in human nature and the issues that confronted ordinary people. He was not affected by the Hollywood blacklist, and had little sympathy for those who were. Of the blacklisted 'Hollywood Ten' Wilder said, "Of the ten, two had talent, and the rest were just unfriendly." In general, Wilder had an intense dislike for formula and genre films.
Others say that his films derive their parodies from the politics of the world around him, capitalist and Communist, and that Wilder opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He co-created the “Committee for the First Amendment”, of 500 Hollywood personalities and stars to “support those professionals called upon to testify before the HUAC who had classified themselves as hostile with regard to the interrogations and the interrogators”. Some anti-Communists wanted those in the cinema industry to take oaths of allegiance. The Screen Directors Guild had a vote by show of hands. Only John Huston and Wilder opposed. Huston said, "I am sure it was one of the bravest things that Billy, as a naturalized German, had ever done. There were 150 to 200 directors at this meeting, and here Billy and I sat alone with our hands raised in protest against the loyalty oath."
Wilder reveled in poking fun at those who took politics too seriously. In "Ball of Fire", his burlesque queen 'Sugarpuss' points at her sore throat and complains "Pink? It's as red as the "Daily Worker" and twice as sore." Later, she gives the overbearing and unsmiling housemaid the name "Franco". Wilder is sometimes confused with director William Wyler; the confusion is understandable, as both were German-speaking Jews with similar backgrounds and names. However, their output as directors was quite different: Wyler preferred to direct epics and heavy dramas, while Wilder was noted for his comedies and film noir type dramas.
Wilder was recognized with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Wilder became well known for owning one of the finest and most extensive art collections in Hollywood, mainly collecting modern art. As he described it in the mid-80s, "It's a sickness. I don't know how to stop myself. Call it bulimia if you want – or curiosity or passion. I have some Impressionists, some Picassos from every period, some mobiles by Calder. I also collect tiny Japanese trees, glass paperweights, and Chinese vases. Name an object and I collect it." Wilder's artistic ambitions led him to create a series of works of his own. By the early 90s, Wilder had amassed many plastic-artistic constructions, many of which were made in collaboration with artist Bruce Houston. In 1993, art dealer Louis Stern, a longtime friend, helped organize an exhibition of Wilder's work at his Beverly Hills gallery. The exhibition was titled "Billy Wilder's Marché aux Puces" and the "Variations on the Theme of Queen Nefertete" segment was an unqualified crowd pleaser. This series featured busts of the Egyptian queen wrapped "à la" Christo, or splattered "à la" Jackson Pollock, or sporting a Campbell's soup can in homage to Andy Warhol.
Wilder married Judith Coppicus on December 22, 1936. The couple had twins, Victoria and Vincent (born 1939), but Vincent died shortly after birth. They divorced in 1946. Wilder met Audrey Young at Paramount Pictures on the set of "The Lost Weekend" in 1945, and she became his second wife on June 30, 1949. They stayed together until his death.
Wilder died in 2002 of pneumonia at the age of 95 after battling health problems, including cancer, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles near Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Marilyn Monroe's crypt is located in the same cemetery. Wilder died the same day as two other comedy legends: Milton Berle and Dudley Moore. The next day, French newspaper "Le Monde" titled its front-page obituary, "Billy Wilder dies. Nobody's perfect." – quoting the final gag line in "Some Like It Hot".
Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter. He is responsible for two of the film noir era's most definitive films in "Double Indemnity" and "Sunset Boulevard". Along with Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers, he leads the list of films on the American Film Institute's list of 100 funniest American films with five films written as well as having the honor of holding the top spot on it with "Some Like it Hot". Also on the list are "The Apartment" and "The Seven Year Itch" which he directed, and "Ball of Fire" and "Ninotchka" which he co-wrote. The American Film Institute has ranked four of Wilder's films among their top 100 American films of the 20th century: "Sunset Boulevard" (no. 12), "Some Like It Hot" (no. 14), "Double Indemnity" (no. 38) and "The Apartment" (no. 93). For the tenth anniversary edition of their list, the AFI moved "Sunset Boulevard" to No. 16, "Some Like it Hot" to No. 22, "Double Indemnity" to No. 29 and "The Apartment" to No. 80.
Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba said in his acceptance speech for the 1993 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so, thank you, Mr. Wilder." According to Trueba, Wilder called him the day after and told him: "Fernando, it's God." French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius also thanked Billy Wilder in the 2012 Best Picture Oscar acceptance speech for "The Artist" by saying "I would like to thank the following three people, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, and I would like to thank Billy Wilder." Wilder's 12 Academy Award nominations for screenwriting were a record until 1997 when Woody Allen received a 13th nomination for "Deconstructing Harry".
Wilder received twenty one nominations at the Academy Awards; thirteen for his screenwriting, and eight for his direction. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for "The Lost Weekend" (1945), and "The Apartment" (1960). The former was named the Best American Film at the Cannes Film Festival, and the latter also won him the BAFTA Award for Best Film. Wilder garnered eight Directors Guild of America Award nominations with the sole win for his work on "The Apartment". He received seven nominations at the Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Director for "The Lost Weekend" and "Sunset Boulevard" (1950). He won seven Writers Guild of America Awards including two Laurel Awards for Screenwriting Achievement. He garnered lifetime achievement awards including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the BAFTA Fellowship, the David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures, and the Honorary Golden Bear from the Berlin International Film Festival. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45185 |
Paul Muni
Paul Muni (born Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund; September 22, 1895 – August 25, 1967) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American stage and film actor who grew up in Chicago. Muni was a five-time Academy Award nominee, with one win. He started his acting career in the Yiddish theater. During the 1930s, he was considered one of the most prestigious actors at the Warner Bros. studio, and was given the rare privilege of choosing which parts he wanted.
His acting quality, usually playing a powerful character, such as the lead in "Scarface" (1932), was partly a result of his intense preparation for his parts, often immersing himself in study of the real character's traits and mannerisms. He was also highly skilled in using makeup techniques, a talent he learned from his parents, who were also actors, and from his early years on stage with the Yiddish theater in Chicago. At the age of 12, he played the stage role of an 80-year-old man; in one of his films, "Seven Faces," he played seven different characters.
He made 22 films and won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the 1936 film "The Story of Louis Pasteur". He also starred in numerous Broadway plays and won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role in the 1955 production of "Inherit the Wind".
His Hebrew name was Meshilem; he was also called Frederich Meier Weisenfreund, born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, Galicia, which was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time of his birth. His parents were Salli and Phillip Weisenfreund. He learned Yiddish as his first language. When he was seven, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1902; they settled in Chicago.
As a boy, he was known as "Moony". He started his acting career in the Yiddish theatre in Chicago with his parents, who were both actors. As a teenager, he developed a skill in creating makeup, which enabled him to play much older characters. Film historian Robert Osborne notes that Muni's makeup skills were so creative that for most of his roles, "he transformed his appearance so completely, he was dubbed 'the new Lon Chaney.'" In his first stage role at the age of 12, Muni played the role of an 80-year-old man.
He was quickly recognized by Maurice Schwartz, who signed him up with his Yiddish Art Theater. Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni were cousins to Charles M. Fritz, who was a notable actor during the Great Depression.
A 1925 "New York Times" article singled out Sam Kasten's and Muni's performances at the People's Theater as among the highlights of that year's Yiddish theater season, describing them as second only to Ludwig Satz.
Muni began acting on Broadway in 1926. His first role was that of an elderly Jewish man in the play "We Americans", written by playwrights Max Siegel and Milton Herbert Gropper. It was the first time that he ever acted in English.
In 1921, he married Bella Finkel (February 8, 1898 – October 1, 1971), an actress in the Yiddish theatre. They remained married until Muni's death in 1967.
In 1929, Muni was signed by Fox. His name was simplified and anglicized to Paul Muni (he had the nickname "Moony" when young). His acting talents were quickly recognized and he received an Oscar nomination for his first film, "The Valiant" (1929), although the film did poorly at the box office. His second film, "Seven Faces" (also 1929), was also a financial failure. Unhappy with the roles offered him, he returned to Broadway, where he starred in a major hit play, "Counsellor at Law".
Paul Muni soon returned to Hollywood to star in such harrowing pre-Code films as the original "Scarface" and "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (both 1932). For the second, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. The acclaim that Muni received as a result of this performance so impressed Warner Bros. that they signed him to a long-term contract, publicizing him as "the screen's greatest actor."
"Scarface", part of a cycle of gangster films at the time, was written by Ben Hecht and directed by Howard Hawks. Critic Richard Corliss noted in 1974 that, while it was a serious gangster film, it also "manages both to congratulate journalism for its importance and to chastise it for its chicanery, by underlining the newspapers' complicity in promoting the underworld image."
In 1935, Muni persuaded Warner Bros. to take a financial risk by producing the historical biography "The Story of Louis Pasteur". This became Muni's first of many biographical roles. He starred as a crusading scientist who fights derision in his native country to prove that his medical theories will save lives. Until that film, most Warner Bros. stories originated from current events and major news stories, with the notable exceptions of George Arliss's earlier biographical films "Disraeli", "Alexander Hamilton", and "Voltaire". The sudden success of "Pasteur" gave Warner's "box office gold", notes Osborne. Muni won an Oscar for his performance (as had Arliss for his performance in "Disraeli" six years earlier).
He played other historical figures, including Émile Zola, a "man of conscience", in "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. The film won Best Picture and was interpreted as indirectly attacking the repression of Nazi Germany. He also played the lead role in "Juarez" (1939).
In 1937, Muni played a Chinese peasant with a new bride in a film adaptation of Pearl Buck's novel "The Good Earth". It co-starred Luise Rainer as his wife; she won an Academy Award for her part. The film was a recreation of a revolutionary period in China, and included special effects for a locust attack and the overthrow of the government. Because Muni was not of Asian descent, when producer Irving Thalberg offered him the role, he said, "I'm about as Chinese as [President] Herbert Hoover."
Dissatisfied with life in Hollywood, Muni chose not to renew his contract. He returned to the screen only occasionally in later years, for such roles as Frédéric Chopin's teacher in "A Song to Remember" (1945). In 1946, he starred in a rare comic performance, "Angel on My Shoulder", playing a gangster whose early death prompts the Devil (played by Claude Rains) to make mischief by putting his soul into the body of a judge. His new identity turns the former criminal into a model citizen.
Muni then focused most of his energies on stage work, and occasionally on television roles. In 1946, he appeared on Broadway in "A Flag is Born", written by Ben Hecht, to help promote the creation of a Jewish state in Israel. This play was directed by Luther Adler and co-starred Marlon Brando. Years later, in response to a question put to him by Alan King, Brando stated that Muni was the greatest actor he ever saw. At London's Phoenix Theatre on July 28, 1949, Muni began a run as Willy Loman in the first English production of "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller. He took over from Lee J. Cobb, who had played the principal role in the original Broadway production. Both productions were directed by Elia Kazan.
In 1952 Muni traveled to Italy to star in Imbarco a mezzanotte directed by Joseph Losey; partly as an act of solidarity and support for blacklisted friends living there in exile.
A few years later, during 1955 and 1956, Muni had his biggest stage success in the United States as the crusading lawyer, Henry Drummond (based on Clarence Darrow), in "Inherit the Wind", winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. In late August 1955, Muni was forced to withdraw from the play due to a serious eye ailment causing deterioration in his eyesight. He was later replaced by actor Melvyn Douglas.
In early September 1955, Muni, then 59 years old, was diagnosed with a tumor of the left eye. The eye was removed in an operation at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. His right eye was reported to be normal. In early December 1955, Muni returned to his starring role as Henry Drummond in the play "Inherit the Wind".
His last movie role was as an aging doctor in "The Last Angry Man" (1959), and he was again nominated for an Oscar. After that, Muni mostly retired from acting to deal with failing eyesight and other health problems. He made his final screen appearance on television, in a guest role on the dramatic series "Saints and Sinners" in 1962.
Muni was noted for his intense preparation for his roles, especially the biographies. While preparing for "The Story of Louis Pasteur", Muni said, "I read most everything that was in the library, and everything I could lay my hands on that had to do with Pasteur, with Lister, or with his contemporaries." He did the same in preparing for his role as Henry Drummond, based on Clarence Darrow, in the play "Inherit the Wind". He read what he could find, talked to people who knew Darrow personally, and studied physical mannerisms from photographs of him. "To Paul Muni, acting was not just a career, but an obsession", writes "The New York Times". They note that despite his enormous success both on Broadway and in films, "he threw himself into each role with a sense of dedication." Playwright Arthur Miller commented that Muni "was pursued by a fear of failure."
As Muni was born into an acting family, with both of his parents professional actors, "he learned his craft carefully and thoroughly." On stage, "a Muni whisper could reach the last balcony of any theater", writes the "Times". It wrote that his style "had drawn into it the warmth of the Yiddish stage", in which he made his debut at the age of 12. In addition, his technique in using makeup "was a work of art." Combined with acting which followed no "method", he perfected his control of voice and gestures into an acting style that was "unique."
Film historian David Shipman described Muni as "an actor of great integrity", noting he meticulously prepared for his roles. Muni was widely recognized as eccentric if talented: he objected to anyone wearing red in his presence, and he could often be found between sessions playing his violin. Over the years, he became increasingly dependent on his wife, Bella, a dependence which increased as his failing eyesight turned to blindness in his final years. Muni was "inflexible on matters of taste and principle", once turning down an $800,000 movie contract because he was not happy with the studio's choice of film roles.
Although Muni was considered one of the best film actors of the 1930s, some film critics such as David Thomson and Andrew Sarris, accuse him of overacting.
German director William Dieterle, who directed him in his three biopics, also frequently accused him of overacting, despite his respect for the actor.
In his private life, Muni was considered "exceedingly shy", and was discomfited to be recognized while out shopping or dining. He enjoyed reading and going for walks with his wife in secluded sections of Central Park. He always arrived at the theater by 7:30 pm to prepare for that night's performance. After retiring from acting, he lived in California, in what was considered an "austere" setting, where he and his wife enjoyed their privacy. In his den, which he called his "Shangri-La", he spent time reading books and listening to the radio. Muni died of a heart disorder in Montecito, California, in 1967, aged 71. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood.
Muni has four official Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning for "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936) and receiving official nominations for "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932), "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937), and "The Last Angry Man" (1959). His nomination for the film "The Valiant" (1929) is unofficial. The reason for this being that at the 2nd Academy Awards, no acting nominees were announced, only the Best Actor and Actress winners were announced, with the Academy Awards official site stating "Although not official nominations, the additional names in each category, according to in-house records, were under consideration by various boards of judges". Muni's performance in "Black Fury" was not nominated for an Oscar (see note below filmography).
Referring to his childhood during the Great Depression, Hawkeye Pierce in the "Hawkeye" episode of the television series "M*A*S*H*", said, "You knew where you stood in those days. Franklin Roosevelt was always president, Joe Louis was always the champ, and Paul Muni played everybody."
Muni and George Raft appeared as characters in the fifth season of "Boardwalk Empire", meeting with Al Capone to discuss the film "Scarface". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45188 |
Brandy
Brandy is a liquor produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume (70–120 US proof) and is typically consumed as an after-dinner digestif. Some brandies are aged in wooden casks. Others are coloured with caramel colouring to imitate the effect of aging, and some are produced using a combination of both aging and colouring. Varieties of wine brandy can be found across the winemaking world. Among the most renowned are Cognac and Armagnac from southwestern France.
In a broader sense, the term "brandy" also denotes liquors obtained from the distillation of pomace (yielding pomace brandy), or mash or wine of any other fruit (fruit brandy). These products are also called "eau de vie" (which translates to "water of life").
The origins of brandy are tied to the development of distillation. While the process was known in classical times, it was not used for significant beverage production until the 15th century. In the early 16th century French brandy helped kickstart the triangle trade when it replaced Portuguese fortified wine at the center of the trade due to its higher alcohol content and ease of shipping. Canoemen and guards on the African side of the trade were generally paid in brandy. By the late 17th century rum had replaced brandy as the exchange alcohol of choice in the triangle trade.
Initially wine was distilled as a preservation method and as a way to make it easier for merchants to transport. It is also thought that wine was originally distilled to lessen the tax which was assessed by volume. The intent was to add the water removed by distillation back to the brandy shortly before consumption. It was discovered that after having been stored in wooden casks, the resulting product had improved over the original distilled spirit. In addition to removing water, the distillation process led to the formation and decomposition of numerous aromatic compounds, fundamentally altering the composition of the distillate from its source. Non-volatile substances such as pigments, sugars, and salts remained behind in the still. As a result, the taste of the distillate was often quite unlike that of the original source.
As described in the 1728 edition of "Cyclopaedia", the following method was used to distill brandy:
A cucurbit was filled half full of the liquor from which brandy was to be drawn and then raised with a little fire until about one-sixth part was distilled, or until that which falls into the receiver was entirely flammable. This liquor, distilled only once, was called "spirit of wine" or "brandy". Purified by another distillation (or several more), this was then called "spirit of wine rectified". The second distillation was made in "balneo mariae" and in a glass cucurbit, and the liquor was distilled to about one half the quantity. This was further rectified as long as the operator thought necessary to produce brandy.
To shorten these several distillations, which were long and troublesome, a chemical instrument was invented that reduced them to a single distillation. To test the purity of the rectified spirit of wine, a portion was ignited. If the entire contents were consumed by a fire without leaving any impurities behind, then the liquor was good. Another, better test involved putting a little gunpowder in the bottom of the spirit. If the gunpowder could ignite after the spirit was consumed by fire, then the liquor was good.
As most brandies have been distilled from grapes, the regions of the world producing excellent brandies have roughly paralleled those areas producing grapes for viniculture. At the end of the 19th century, the western European markets, including by extension their overseas empires, were dominated by French and Spanish brandies and eastern Europe was dominated by brandies from the Black Sea region, including Bulgaria, the Crimea, and Georgia. In 1884, David Sarajishvili founded his brandy factory in Tbilisi, Georgia, a crossroads for Turkish, Central Asian, and Persian trade routes and a part of the Russian Empire at the time.
Except for few major producers, brandy production and consumption tend to have a regional character and thus production methods significantly vary. Wine brandy is produced from a variety of grape cultivars. A special selection of cultivars, providing distinct aroma and character, is used for high-quality brandies, while cheaper ones are made from whichever wine is available.
Brandy is made from so-called base wine, which significantly differs from regular table wines. It is made from early grapes in order to achieve higher acid concentration and lower sugar levels. Base wine generally contains smaller amount (up to 20 mg/l) of sulphur than regular wines, as it creates undesired copper(II) sulfate in reaction with copper in the pot stills. The yeast sediment produced during the fermentation may or may not be kept in the wine, depending on the brandy style.
Brandy is distilled from the base wine in two phases. In the first, large part of water and solids is removed from the base, obtaining so-called "low wine", basically a concentrated wine with 28–30% ABV. In the second stage, low wine is distilled into brandy. The liquid exits the pot still in three phases, referred to as the "heads", "heart" and "tails" respectively. The first part, the "head," has an alcohol concentration of about 83% (166 US proof) and an unpleasant odour. The weak portion on the end, "tail", is discarded along with the head, and they are generally mixed with another batch of low wine, thereby entering the distillation cycle again. The middle heart fraction, richest in aromas and flavours, is preserved for later maturation.
Distillation does not simply enhance the alcohol content of wine. The heat under which the product is distilled and the material of the still (usually copper) cause chemical reactions to take place during distillation. This leads to the formation of numerous new volatile aroma components, changes in relative amounts of aroma components in the wine, and the hydrolysis of components such as esters.
Brandy is usually produced in pot stills (batch distillation), but the column still can also be used for continuous distillation. Distillate obtained in this manner has a higher alcohol concentration (approximately 90% ABV) and is less aromatic. Choice of the apparatus depends on the style of brandy produced. Cognac and South African brandy are examples of brandy produced in batches while many American brandies use fractional distillation in column stills.
After distillation, the unaged brandy is placed into oak barrels to mature. Usually, brandies with a natural golden or brown colour are aged in oak casks (single-barrel aging). Some brandies, particularly those from Spain, are aged using the solera system, where the producer changes the barrel each year. After a period of aging, which depends on the style, class and legal requirements, the mature brandy is mixed with distilled water to reduce alcohol concentration and bottled. Some brandies have caramel colour and sugar added to simulate the appearance of barrel aging.
Brandy is traditionally served at room temperature (neat) from a snifter, a wine glass or a tulip glass. When drunk at room temperature, it is often slightly warmed by holding the glass cupped in the palm or by gentle heating. Excessive heating of brandy may cause the alcohol vapour to become too strong, causing its aroma to become overpowering. Brandy drinkers who like their brandy warmed may ask for the glass to be heated before the brandy is poured.
Brandy may be added to other beverages to make several popular cocktails; these include the Brandy Sour, the Brandy Alexander, the Sidecar, the Brandy Daisy, and the Brandy Old Fashioned.
Brandy is a common deglazing liquid used in making pan sauces for steak and other meat. It is used to create a more intense flavour in some soups, notably onion soup.
In English Christmas cooking, brandy is a common flavouring in traditional foods such as Christmas cake, brandy butter, and Christmas pudding. It is also commonly used in drinks such as mulled wine, drunk during the festive season.
Brandy is used to flambé dishes such as crêpe Suzette and cherries jubilee while serving. Brandy is traditionally poured over Christmas pudding and set alight. The flames consume most of the alcohol but the pudding is left with a distinctive flavour.
The term "brandy" is a shortening of "brandywine", which was derived from the Dutch word "brandewijn", itself derived from "gebrande wijn", which literally means "burned wine".
In the general colloquial usage of the term, brandy may also be made from pomace and from fermented fruit other than grapes.
If a beverage comes from a particular fruit (or multiple fruits) other than exclusively grapes, or from the must of such fruit, it may be referred to as a "fruit brandy" or "fruit spirit" or named using the specific fruit, such as "peach brandy", rather than just generically as "brandy". If pomace is the raw material, the beverage may be called "pomace brandy", "marc brandy", "grape marc", "fruit marc spirit", or "grape marc spirit"; "marc" being the pulp residue after the juice has been pressed from the fruit.
Grape pomace brandy may be designated as "grappa" or "grappa brandy". Apple brandy may be referred to as "applejack". There is also a product called "grain brandy" that is made from grain spirits.
Within particular jurisdictions, there are specific regulatory requirements regarding the labelling of products identified as brandy. For example:
Within the European Union, the German term "Weinbrand" is legally equivalent to the English term "brandy", but outside the German-speaking countries it is particularly used to designate brandy from Austria and Germany.
Brandy has a traditional age grading system, although its use is unregulated outside of Cognac and Armagnac. These indicators can usually be found on the label near the brand name:
In the case of Brandy de Jerez, the Consejo Regulador de la Denominacion Brandy de Jerez classifies it according to:
Russian brandies (traditionally called "Cognac" within the country), as well as brandies from many other post-Soviet states (except Armenia) use the traditional Russian grading system that is similar to the French one, but extends it significantly: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45189 |
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria von Weber (18 or 19 November 1786 5 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, and was one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school.
Weber was born in Eutin, Bishopric of Lübeck, the eldest of the three children of and his second wife, Genovefa Weber, a Viennese singer. He was baptized Catholic on November 20 1786 to the name Carl Friedrich Ernst, the second name Maria appeared only later. His brother and sister died as infants. Both his parents were Catholic and originally came from the far south of Germany. The "von" was an affectation of his father, who was not actually an aristocrat.
In April 1779 Franz Anton had been appointed director of the prince-bishopric orchestra Eutin which, however, was dissolved 1781 because of spending caps. He changed to the position of Eutin's municipal music director. Dissatisfied with this position he took his leave in 1787 and founded a theatre company in Hamburg. After a transitional stay in Vienna, he joined the theatre company of Johann Friedrich Toscani and Peter Carl Santorini, who performed in Kassel, Marburg and Hofgeismar. He tried repeatedly to establish a lasting company of his own but only accomplished interludes which lasted for a year or two.
Franz Anton's half-brother, Fridolin, married Cäcilia Stamm and had four musical daughters, Josepha, Aloysia, Constanze and Sophie, all of whom became notable singers. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart attempted to woo Aloysia, composing several pieces for her. But after she rejected his advances, Mozart went on to marry Constanze. So Mozart's wife was a cousin of Carl Maria von Weber.
A gifted violinist, Franz Anton had ambitions of turning Carl into a child prodigy like Franz's nephew-by-marriage, Mozart. Carl was born with a congenital hip disease and did not begin to walk until he was four. But by then, he was already a capable singer and pianist.
Franz Anton gave Carl Maria a comprehensive education, which was however interrupted by the family's frequent moves. In 1796, Carl Maria continued his musical education in Hildburghausen, where he was instructed by the oboist Johann Peter Heuschkel. After moving to Salzburg (autumn 1797) Carl Maria studied with Michael Haydn (starting 1798), the younger brother of Joseph Haydn, who agreed to teach Carl Maria free of charge.
The time in Salzburg was overshadowed by the death of Carl Maria's mother Genovefa on 13 March 1798,
who succumbed to tuberculosis. His one-year-old sister Antonetta died at the end of the year on 29 December 1798 in Munich.
A travel to Josef Haydn in Vienna (presumably in hope of advanced lectures) remained fruitless.
In autumn 1798 Weber moved to Munich where he studied singing with Johann Evangelist Wallishauser and composing with Johann Nepomuk Kalcher who supervised Weber's first opera, "Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins" ("The Power of Love and Wine"). Like other compositions of that period this opera is lost. Six fughettas for piano of the twelve-year-old Weber were published in Leipzig.
Carl Maria's musical education was amended by the manual basics of lithography which he learned in the workshop of Alois Senefelder, the inventor of the process, and Franz Gleißner (autumn 1799).
A set of his "Variations for the Pianoforte" was lithographed by Weber himself.
In 1800, the family moved to Freiberg in Saxony, where Weber, then 14 years old, wrote an opera called "Das stumme Waldmädchen" ("The Silent Forest Maiden"). It was produced at the Freiberg and Chemnitz theatre and later in Saint Petersburg (1804), Vienna (1805/1805) and Prague (1806). The young Weber also began to publish articles as a music critic, for example in the "Leipziger Neue Zeitung" in 1801.
In 1801, the family returned to Salzburg, where Weber resumed his studies with Michael Haydn. Carl Maria composed his third opera "Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn" (Peter Schmoll and His Neighbours) which was positively received by his teacher. After a concert tour in 1802 the Webers returned to Augsburg where "Peter Schmoll" presumably premiered.
In mid 1803 Carl Maria continued his studies in Vienna with Georg Joseph Vogler, known as Abbé Vogler, founder of three important music schools (in Mannheim, Stockholm, and Darmstadt). Another famous pupil of Vogler in Darmstadt was Jakob Meyer Beer, later better known as Giacomo Meyerbeer, who became a close friend of Weber. In letters they addressed each other as "brother".
Vogler recommended his 17-year-old pupil Carl Maria to the post of Director at the Breslau Opera in 1804, who was offered and accepted the mission. Weber sought to reform the Opera by pensioning off older singers, expanding the orchestra, and tackling a more challenging repertoire. His ambitious and dedicated work as director of the orchestra was acknowledged though his tempi were frequently criticized as too fast. As the daily routine did not leave sufficient time for own creative work, Weber abandoned the prolongation of his two-year appointment.
After an interlude at the court of Duke Eugen (I.) of Württemberg, who resided in Silesia, Weber served from 1807 to 1810 in Stuttgart as private secretary to Duke Ludwig, brother of King Frederick I of Württemberg. Weber's time in Württemberg was plagued with troubles. He fell deeply into debt and became entangled in financial manipulations of his employer, e.g. the sale of confirmations of ducal service which exempted from military service. Carl Maria was arrested and charged with embezzlement and bribery. As he could disprove the allegations one restricted the case to civil law because one did not want to compromise the conjectured manipulator, the brother of the king. Weber accepted to pay his debts (last payment 1816) and was banished from Württemberg together with his father.
As sobering side effect Weber started to keep a diary to list his expenses, sent and received letters and occasional comments of special events.
Nevertheless, Carl remained prolific as a composer during this period, writing a quantity of religious music, mainly for the Catholic mass. This however earned him the hostility of reformers working for the re-establishment of traditional chant in liturgy.
In 1810, Weber visited several cities throughout Germany; 1811 was a pivotal year in his career when he met and worked with the Munich court clarinetist Heinrich Baermann and composed the Concertino in E Major, Op. 26, J. 109, and the two concerti J. 114 and J. 118 for him; from December 1811 through March 1812, Weber went on tour with Baermann playing the clarinet works, and it was some of the final concerts on this tour that changed public, critical and royal opinions of Weber's work, and helped him to mount a successful performance of "Silvana" in Berlin later that year; from 1813 to 1816 he was director of the Opera in Prague; from 1816 to 1817 he worked in Berlin, and from 1817 onwards he was director of the prestigious Opera in Dresden, working hard to establish a German opera, in reaction to the Italian opera which had dominated the European music scene since the 18th century. On 4 November 1817, he married Caroline Brandt, a singer who created the title role of "Silvana". In 1819, he wrote perhaps his most famous piano piece, "Invitation to the Dance".
The successful premiere of "Der Freischütz" on 18 June 1821 in Berlin led to performances all over Europe. On the very morning of the premiere, Weber finished his "Konzertstück in F minor for Piano and Orchestra", and he premiered it a week later.
In 1823, Weber composed his first (and only) full-length, through-written opera "Euryanthe" to a libretto by Helmina von Chézy, several passages of which (notably the music for the villainous couple Lysiart and Eglantine) anticipate the early, romantic operas of Richard Wagner. In 1824, Weber received an invitation from The Royal Opera, London, to compose and produce "Oberon", based on Christoph Martin Wieland's poem of the same name. Weber accepted the invitation, and in 1826 he travelled to England, to finish the work and conduct the premiere on 12 April.
Weber was already suffering from tuberculosis when he visited London. He conducted the premiere and twelve sold-out performances of "Oberon" in London during April and in May, and despite his rapidly worsening health, he continued to fulfill commitments for private concerts and benefits.
He died in his sleep during the night on 5 June 1826 at the home of his good friend and host Sir George Smart; he was 39 years old. He was buried in London.
18 years later in December 1844 his remains were transferred to the family burial plot in the Old Catholic Cemetery (Alter Katholischer Friedhof) in Dresden at the side of his youngest son Alexander, who at the age of 19 had died of measles seven weeks before. The simple gravestone, designed by Gottfried Semper, lies against the northern boundary wall.
The eulogy at the reburial was delivered by Richard Wagner.
Weber's unfinished opera "Die drei Pintos" ("The Three Pintos") was originally given by his widow to Giacomo Meyerbeer for completion; it was eventually completed by Gustav Mahler, who conducted the first performance in Leipzig on 20 January 1888.
Weber's operas "Der Freischütz", "Euryanthe" and "Oberon" greatly influenced the development of the "Romantische Oper" (Romantic opera) in Germany. This is discussed at length in "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians" referred to in the sources. "Der Freischütz" came to be regarded as the first German opera, "Euryanthe" developed the "Leitmotif" technique to an unprecedented degree, while "Oberon" may have influenced Mendelssohn's music for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and, at the same time, revealed Weber's lifelong interest in the music of non-Western cultures. This interest was first manifested in Weber's incidental music for Schiller's translation of Gozzi's "Turandot", for which he used a Chinese melody, making him the first Western composer to use an Asian tune that was not of the pseudo-Turkish kind popularized by Mozart and others.
Weber's compositions for clarinet, bassoon, and horn occupy an important place in the musical repertoire. His compositions for the clarinet, which include two concertos, a concertino, a quintet, a duo concertante, and variations on a theme from his opera "Silvana", are regularly performed today. His Concertino for Horn and Orchestra requires the performer to simultaneously produce two notes by humming while playing—a technique known as "multiphonics". His bassoon concerto and the "Andante e Rondo ungarese" (a reworking of a piece originally for viola and orchestra) are also popular with bassoonists.
Weber's contribution to vocal and choral music is also significant. His body of Catholic religious music was highly popular in 19th-century Germany, and he composed one of the earliest song cycles, "Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten" ("[Four] Temperaments on the Loss of a Lover"). Weber was also notable as one of the first conductors to conduct without a piano or violin.
Weber's orchestration has also been highly praised and emulated by later generations of composers – Berlioz referred to him several times in his "Treatise on Instrumentation" while Debussy remarked that the sound of the Weber orchestra was obtained through the scrutiny of the soul of each instrument.
His operas influenced the work of later opera composers, especially in Germany, such as Marschner, Meyerbeer and Wagner, as well as several nationalist 19th-century composers such as Glinka. Homage has been paid to Weber by 20th-century composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Mahler (who completed Weber's unfinished comic opera "Die drei Pintos" and made revisions of "Euryanthe" and "Oberon") and Hindemith (composer of the popular "Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber", based on lesser-known keyboard works and the incidental music to "Turandot").
Weber also wrote music journalism and was interested in folksong, and learned lithography to engrave his own works.
A brilliant pianist himself, Weber composed four sonatas, two concertos and the "Konzertstück in F minor" (concert piece), which influenced composers such as Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn. The "" provided a new model for the one-movement concerto in several contrasting sections (such as Liszt's, who often played the work), and was acknowledged by Stravinsky as the model for his "Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra". Weber's shorter piano pieces, such as the "Invitation to the Dance", were later orchestrated by Berlioz, while his "Polacca Brillante" was later set for piano and orchestra by Liszt. However, Weber's piano music all but disappeared from the repertoire. One possible reason for this is that Weber had very large hands and delighted in writing music that suited them. There are several recordings of the major works for the solo piano, including complete recordings of the piano sonatas and the shorter piano pieces, and there are recordings of the individual sonatas by Claudio Arrau (1st sonata), Alfred Cortot and Emil Gilels (2nd sonata), Sviatoslav Richter (3rd sonata) and Leon Fleisher (4th sonata). The "Invitation to the Dance", although better known in Berlioz's orchestration (as part of the ballet music for a Paris production of "Der Freischütz"), has long been played and recorded by pianists (e.g., Benno Moiseiwitsch [in Carl Tausig's arrangement]). "Invitation to the Dance" also served as the thematic basis for Benny Goodman's swing theme song for the radio program "Let's Dance".
Notes
Sources | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45190 |
Lp space
In mathematics, the spaces are function spaces defined using a natural generalization of the -norm for finite-dimensional vector spaces. They are sometimes called Lebesgue spaces, named after Henri Lebesgue , although according to the Bourbaki group they were first introduced by Frigyes Riesz . spaces form an important class of Banach spaces in functional analysis, and of topological vector spaces. Because of their key role in the mathematical analysis of measure and probability spaces, Lebesgue spaces are used also in the theoretical discussion of problems in physics, statistics, finance, engineering, and other disciplines.
In statistics, measures of central tendency and statistical dispersion, such as the mean, median, and standard deviation, are defined in terms of metrics, and measures of central tendency can be characterized as solutions to variational problems.
In penalized regression, "L1 penalty" and "L2 penalty" refer to penalizing either the norm of a solution's vector of parameter values (i.e. the sum of its absolute values), or its norm (its Euclidean length). Techniques which use an L1 penalty, like LASSO, encourage solutions where many parameters are zero. Techniques which use an L2 penalty, like ridge regression, encourage solutions where most parameter values are small. Elastic net regularization uses a penalty term that is a combination of the norm and the norm of the parameter vector.
The Fourier transform for the real line (or, for periodic functions, see Fourier series), maps to (or to ) respectively, where and . This is a consequence of the Riesz–Thorin interpolation theorem, and is made precise with the Hausdorff–Young inequality.
By contrast, if , the Fourier transform does not map into .
Hilbert spaces are central to many applications, from quantum mechanics to stochastic calculus. The spaces and are both Hilbert spaces. In fact, by choosing a Hilbert basis (i.e., a maximal orthonormal subset of or any Hilbert space), one sees that all Hilbert spaces are isometric to , where is a set with an appropriate cardinality.
The length of a vector in the -dimensional real vector space is usually given by the Euclidean norm:
The Euclidean distance between two points and is the length of the straight line between the two points. In many situations, the Euclidean distance is insufficient for capturing the actual distances in a given space. An analogy to this is suggested by taxi drivers in a grid street plan who should measure distance not in terms of the length of the straight line to their destination, but in terms of the rectilinear distance, which takes into account that streets are either orthogonal or parallel to each other. The class of -norms generalizes these two examples and has an abundance of applications in many parts of mathematics, physics, and computer science.
For a real number , the -norm or -norm of is defined by
The absolute value bars are unnecessary when is a rational number and, in reduced form, has an even numerator.
The Euclidean norm from above falls into this class and is the -norm, and the -norm is the norm that corresponds to the rectilinear distance.
The -norm or maximum norm (or uniform norm) is the limit of the -norms for . It turns out that this limit is equivalent to the following definition:
See -infinity.
For all , the -norms and maximum norm as defined above indeed satisfy the properties of a "length function" (or norm), which are that:
Abstractly speaking, this means that together with the -norm is a Banach space. This Banach space is the -space over .
The grid distance or rectilinear distance (sometimes called the "Manhattan distance") between two points is never shorter than the length of the line segment between them (the Euclidean or "as the crow flies" distance). Formally, this means that the Euclidean norm of any vector is bounded by its 1-norm:
This fact generalizes to -norms in that the -norm of any given vector does not grow with :
For the opposite direction, the following relation between the -norm and the -norm is known:
This inequality depends on the dimension of the underlying vector space and follows directly from the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality.
In general, for vectors in where :
In for , the formula
defines an absolutely homogeneous function for ; however, the resulting function does not define a norm, because it is not subadditive. On the other hand, the formula
defines a subadditive function at the cost of losing absolute homogeneity. It does define an F-norm, though, which is homogeneous of degree .
Hence, the function
defines a metric. The metric space is denoted by .
Although the -unit ball around the origin in this metric is "concave", the topology defined on by the metric is the usual vector space topology of , hence is a locally convex topological vector space. Beyond this qualitative statement, a quantitative way to measure the lack of convexity of is to denote by the smallest constant such that the multiple of the -unit ball contains the convex hull of , equal to . The fact that for fixed we have
shows that the infinite-dimensional sequence space defined below, is no longer locally convex.
There is one norm and another function called the "norm" (with quotation marks).
The mathematical definition of the norm was established by Banach's "Theory of Linear Operations". The space of sequences has a complete metric topology provided by the F-norm
which is discussed by Stefan Rolewicz in "Metric Linear Spaces". The -normed space is studied in functional analysis, probability theory, and harmonic analysis.
Another function was called the "norm" by David Donoho—whose quotation marks warn that this function is not a proper norm—is the number of non-zero entries of the vector . Many authors abuse terminology by omitting the quotation marks. Defining , the zero "norm" of is equal to
This is not a norm because it is not homogeneous. For example, scaling the vector by a positive constant does not change the "norm". Despite these defects as a mathematical norm, the non-zero counting "norm" has uses in scientific computing, information theory, and statistics–notably in compressed sensing in signal processing and computational harmonic analysis. The associated defective "metric" is known as Hamming distance.
The -norm can be extended to vectors that have an infinite number of components (sequences), which yields the space . This contains as special cases:
The space of sequences has a natural vector space structure by applying addition and scalar multiplication coordinate by coordinate. Explicitly, the vector sum and the scalar action for infinite sequences of real (or complex) numbers are given by:
Define the -norm:
Here, a complication arises, namely that the series on the right is not always convergent, so for example, the sequence made up of only ones, , will have an infinite -norm for . The space is then defined as the set of all infinite sequences of real (or complex) numbers such that the -norm is finite.
One can check that as increases, the set grows larger. For example, the sequence
is not in , but it is in for , as the series
diverges for (the harmonic series), but is convergent for .
One also defines the -norm using the supremum:
and the corresponding space of all bounded sequences. It turns out that
if the right-hand side is finite, or the left-hand side is infinite. Thus, we will consider spaces for .
The -norm thus defined on is indeed a norm, and together with this norm is a Banach space. The fully general space is obtained—as seen below—by considering vectors, not only with finitely or countably-infinitely many components, but with ""arbitrarily many components""; in other words, functions. An integral instead of a sum is used to define the -norm.
In complete analogy to the preceding definition one can define the space formula_19 over a general index set formula_20 (and formula_21) as
where convergence on the right means that only countably many summands are nonzero (see also Unconditional convergence).
With the norm
the space formula_19 becomes a Banach space.
In the case where formula_20 is finite with formula_26 elements, this construction yields with the formula_27-norm defined above.
If formula_20 is countably infinite, this is exactly the sequence space formula_29 defined above.
For uncountable sets formula_20 this is a non-separable Banach space which can be seen as the locally convex direct limit of formula_29-sequence spaces.
The index set formula_20 can be turned into a measure space by giving it the discrete σ-algebra and the counting measure. Then the formula_19 is just a special cases of the more general formula_34-space (see below).
An space may be defined as a space of measurable functions for which the formula_27-th power of the absolute value is Lebesgue integrable, where functions which agree almost everywhere are identified. More generally, let and be a measure space. Consider the set of all measurable functions from to or whose absolute value raised to the -th power has a finite integral, or equivalently, that
The set of such functions forms a vector space, with the following natural operations:
for every scalar .
That the sum of two -th power integrable functions is again -th power integrable follows from the inequality
In fact, more is true. "Minkowski's inequality" says the triangle inequality holds for . Thus the set of -th power integrable functions, together with the function , is a seminormed vector space, which is denoted by formula_41.
This can be made into a normed vector space in a standard way; one simply takes the quotient space with respect to the kernel of . Since for any measurable function , we have that if and only if almost everywhere, the kernel of does not depend upon ,
In the quotient space, two functions and are identified if almost everywhere. The resulting normed vector space is, by definition,
For , the space is defined as follows. We start with the set of all measurable functions from to or which are bounded. Again two such functions are identified if they are equal almost everywhere. Denote this set by . For a function in this set, the essential supremum of its absolute value serves as an appropriate norm:
As before, if there exists such that , then
For is a Banach space. The fact that is complete is often referred to as the Riesz-Fischer theorem. Completeness can be checked using the convergence theorems for Lebesgue integrals.
When the underlying measure space is understood, is often abbreviated , or just . The above definitions generalize to Bochner spaces.
Similar to the spaces, is the only Hilbert space among spaces. In the complex case, the inner product on is defined by
The additional inner product structure allows for a richer theory, with applications to, for instance, Fourier series and quantum mechanics. Functions in are sometimes called quadratically integrable functions, square-integrable functions or square-summable functions, but sometimes these terms are reserved for functions that are square-integrable in some other sense, such as in the sense of a Riemann integral .
If we use complex-valued functions, the space is a commutative C*-algebra with pointwise multiplication and conjugation. For many measure spaces, including all sigma-finite ones, it is in fact a commutative von Neumann algebra. An element of defines a bounded operator on any space by multiplication.
For the spaces are a special case of spaces, when , and is the counting measure on . More generally, if one considers any set with the counting measure, the resulting space is denoted . For example, the space is the space of all sequences indexed by the integers, and when defining the -norm on such a space, one sums over all the integers. The space , where is the set with elements, is with its -norm as defined above. As any Hilbert space, every space is linearly isometric to a suitable , where the cardinality of the set is the cardinality of an arbitrary Hilbertian basis for this particular .
The dual space (the Banach space of all continuous linear functionals) of for has a natural isomorphism with , where is such that (i.e. ). This isomorphism associates with the functional defined by
The fact that is well defined and continuous follows from Hölder's inequality. is a linear mapping which is an isometry by the extremal case of Hölder's inequality. It is also possible to show (for example with the Radon–Nikodym theorem, see) that any can be expressed this way: i.e., that is "onto". Since is onto and isometric, it is an isomorphism of Banach spaces. With this (isometric) isomorphism in mind, it is usual to say simply that is the dual Banach space of .
For , the space is reflexive. Let be as above and let be the corresponding linear isometry. Consider the map from to , obtained by composing with the transpose (or adjoint) of the inverse of :
This map coincides with the canonical embedding of into its bidual. Moreover, the map is onto, as composition of two onto isometries, and this proves reflexivity.
If the measure on is sigma-finite, then the dual of is isometrically isomorphic to (more precisely, the map corresponding to is an isometry from onto ).
The dual of is subtler. Elements of can be identified with bounded signed "finitely" additive measures on that are absolutely continuous with respect to . See ba space for more details. If we assume the axiom of choice, this space is much bigger than except in some trivial cases. However, Saharon Shelah proved that there are relatively consistent extensions of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZF + DC + "Every subset of the real numbers has the Baire property") in which the dual of is .
Colloquially, if , then contains functions that are more locally singular, while elements of can be more spread out. Consider the Lebesgue measure on the half line . A continuous function in might blow up near but must decay sufficiently fast toward infinity. On the other hand, continuous functions in need not decay at all but no blow-up is allowed. The precise technical result is the following. Suppose that . Then:
Neither condition holds for the real line with the Lebesgue measure. In both cases the embedding is continuous, in that the identity operator is a bounded linear map from
and to in the second.
(This is a consequence of the closed graph theorem
and properties of spaces.) Indeed, if the domain has finite measure,
one can make the following explicit calculation using Hölder's inequality
leading to
The constant appearing in the above inequality is optimal, in the sense that the operator norm of the identity is precisely
the case of equality being achieved exactly when -a.e.
Throughout this section we assume that: .
Let be a measure space. An "integrable simple function" on is one of the form
where is scalar, has finite measure and formula_54 is the indicator function of the set formula_55, for . By construction of the integral, the vector space of integrable simple functions is dense in .
More can be said when is a normal topological space and its Borel –algebra, i.e., the smallest –algebra of subsets of containing the open sets.
Suppose is an open set with . It can be proved that for every Borel set contained in , and for every , there exist a closed set and an open set such that
It follows that there exists a continuous Urysohn function on that is on and on , with
If can be covered by an increasing sequence of open sets that have finite measure, then the space of –integrable continuous functions is dense in . More precisely, one can use bounded continuous functions that vanish outside one of the open sets .
This applies in particular when and when is the Lebesgue measure. The space of continuous and compactly supported functions is dense in . Similarly, the space of integrable "step functions" is dense in ; this space is the linear span of indicator functions of bounded intervals when , of bounded rectangles when and more generally of products of bounded intervals.
Several properties of general functions in are first proved for continuous and compactly supported functions (sometimes for step functions), then extended by density to all functions. For example, it is proved this way that translations are continuous on , in the following sense:
where
Let be a measure space. If , then can be defined as above: it is the vector space of those measurable functions such that
As before, we may introduce the -norm , but does not satisfy the triangle inequality in this case, and defines only a quasi-norm. The inequality , valid for implies that
and so the function
is a metric on . The resulting metric space is complete; the verification is similar to the familiar case when .
In this setting satisfies a "reverse Minkowski inequality", that is for in
This result may be used to prove Clarkson's inequalities, which are in turn used to establish the uniform convexity of the spaces for .
The space for is an F-space: it admits a complete translation-invariant metric with respect to which the vector space operations are continuous. It is also locally bounded, much like the case . It is the prototypical example of an F-space that, for most reasonable measure spaces, is not locally convex: in or , every open convex set containing the function is unbounded for the -quasi-norm; therefore, the vector does not possess a fundamental system of convex neighborhoods. Specifically, this is true if the measure space contains an infinite family of disjoint measurable sets of finite positive measure.
The only nonempty convex open set in is the entire space . As a particular consequence, there are no nonzero linear functionals on : the dual space is the zero space. In the case of the counting measure on the natural numbers (producing the sequence space ), the bounded linear functionals on are exactly those that are bounded on , namely those given by sequences in . Although does contain non-trivial convex open sets, it fails to have enough of them to give a base for the topology.
The situation of having no linear functionals is highly undesirable for the purposes of doing analysis. In the case of the Lebesgue measure on , rather than work with for , it is common to work with the Hardy space whenever possible, as this has quite a few linear functionals: enough to distinguish points from one another. However, the Hahn–Banach theorem still fails in for .
The vector space of (equivalence classes of) measurable functions on is denoted . By definition, it contains all the , and is equipped with the topology of "convergence in measure". When is a probability measure (i.e., ), this mode of convergence is named "convergence in probability".
The description is easier when is finite. If is a finite measure on , the function admits for the convergence in measure the following fundamental system of neighborhoods
The topology can be defined by any metric of the form
where is bounded continuous concave and non-decreasing on , with and when (for example, . Such a metric is called Lévy-metric for . Under this metric the space is complete (it is again an F-space). The space is in general not locally bounded, and not locally convex.
For the infinite Lebesgue measure on , the definition of the fundamental system of neighborhoods could be modified as follows
The resulting space coincides as topological vector space with , for any positive –integrable density .
Let be a measure space, and a measurable function with real or complex values on . The distribution function of is defined for by
If is in for some with , then by Markov's inequality,
A function is said to be in the space weak , or , if there is a constant such that, for all ,
The best constant for this inequality is the -norm of , and is denoted by
The weak coincide with the Lorentz spaces , so this notation is also used to denote them.
The -norm is not a true norm, since the triangle inequality fails to hold. Nevertheless, for in ,
and in particular .
In fact, one has
and raising to power and taking the supremum in one has
Under the convention that two functions are equal if they are equal almost everywhere, then the spaces are complete .
For any the expression
is comparable to the -norm. Further in the case , this expression defines a norm if . Hence for the weak spaces are Banach spaces .
A major result that uses the -spaces is the Marcinkiewicz interpolation theorem, which has broad applications to harmonic analysis and the study of singular integrals.
As before, consider a measure space . Let be a measurable function. The -weighted space is defined as , where means the measure defined by
or, in terms of the Radon–Nikodym derivative, the norm for is explicitly
As -spaces, the weighted spaces have nothing special, since is equal to . But they are the natural framework for several results in harmonic analysis ; they appear for example in the Muckenhoupt theorem: for , the classical Hilbert transform is defined on where denotes the unit circle and the Lebesgue measure; the (nonlinear) Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator is bounded on . Muckenhoupt's theorem describes weights such that the Hilbert transform remains bounded on and the maximal operator on .
One may also define spaces on a manifold, called the intrinsic spaces of the manifold, using densities.
Given a measure space and a locally-convex space , one may also define a spaces of -integrable E-valued functions in a number of ways. The most common of these being the spaces of Bochner integrable and Pettis-integrable functions. Using the tensor product of locally convex spaces, these may be respectively defined as formula_77 and formula_78; where formula_79 and formula_80respectively denote the projective and injective tensor products of locally convex spaces. When is a nuclear space, Grothendieck showed that these two constructions are indistinguishable. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45194 |
Injective function
In mathematics, an injective function (also known as injection, or one-to-one function) is a function that maps distinct elements of its domain to distinct elements of its codomain. In other words, every element of the function's codomain is the image of "at most" one element of its domain. The term "one-to-one function" must not be confused with "one-to-one correspondence" that refers to bijective functions, which are functions such that each element in the codomain is an image of exactly one element in the domain.
A homomorphism between algebraic structures is a function that is compatible with the operations of the structures. For all common algebraic structures, and, in particular for vector spaces, an "injective homomorphism" is also called a "monomorphism". However, in the more general context of category theory, the definition of a monomorphism differs from that of an injective homomorphism. This is thus a theorem that they are equivalent for algebraic structures; see for more details.
A function "f" that is not injective is sometimes called many-to-one.
Let "f" be a function whose domain is a set "X". The function "f" is said to be injective provided that for all "a" and "b" in "X", whenever , then ; that is, implies . Equivalently, if , then .
Symbolically,
which is logically equivalent to the contrapositive,
More generally, when "X" and "Y" are both the real line R, then an injective function is one whose graph is never intersected by any horizontal line more than once. This principle is referred to as the "horizontal line test".
Functions with left inverses are always injections. That is, given , if there is a function such that for every ,
Conversely, every injection "f" with non-empty domain has a left inverse "g", which can be defined by fixing an element "a" in the domain of "f" so that "g"("x") equals the unique preimage of "x" under "f" if it exists and "g"("x") = "a" otherwise.
The left inverse "g" is not necessarily an inverse of "f", because the composition in the other order, , may differ from the identity on "Y". In other words, an injective function can be "reversed" by a left inverse, but is not necessarily invertible, which requires that the function is bijective.
In fact, to turn an injective function into a bijective (hence invertible) function, it suffices to replace its codomain "Y" by its actual range . That is, let such that for all "x" in "X"; then "g" is bijective. Indeed, "f" can be factored as , where is the inclusion function from "J" into "Y".
More generally, injective partial functions are called partial bijections.
A proof that a function "f" is injective depends on how the function is presented and what properties the function holds.
For functions that are given by some formula there is a basic idea.
We use the definition of injectivity, namely that if , then .
Here is an example:
Proof: Let . Suppose . So ⇒ ⇒ . Therefore, it follows from the definition that "f" is injective.
There are multiple other methods of proving that a function is injective. For example, in calculus if "f" is a differentiable function defined on some interval, then it is sufficient to show that the derivative is always positive or always negative on that interval. In linear algebra, if "f" is a linear transformation it is sufficient to show that the kernel of "f" contains only the zero vector. If "f" is a function with finite domain it is sufficient to look through the list of images of each domain element and check that no image occurs twice on the list.
A graphical approach for a real-valued function "f" of a real variable "x" is the horizontal line test. If every horizontal line intersects the curve of "f(x)" in at most one point, then "f" is injective or one-to-one. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45196 |
Inverse element
In abstract algebra, the idea of an inverse element generalises the concepts of negation (sign reversal) (in relation to addition) and reciprocation (in relation to multiplication). The intuition is of an element that can 'undo' the effect of combination with another given element. While the precise definition of an inverse element varies depending on the algebraic structure involved, these definitions coincide in a group.
The word 'inverse' is derived from that means 'turned upside down', 'overturned'.
Let formula_1 be a set closed under a binary operation formula_2 (i.e., a magma). If formula_3 is an identity element of formula_4 (i.e., "S" is a unital magma) and formula_5, then formula_6 is called a left inverse of formula_7 and formula_7 is called a right inverse of formula_6. If an element formula_10 is both a left inverse and a right inverse of formula_11, then formula_10 is called a two-sided inverse, or simply an inverse, of formula_11. An element with a two-sided inverse in formula_1 is called invertible in formula_1. An element with an inverse element only on one side is left invertible or right invertible. A unital magma in which all elements are invertible is called a loop. A loop whose binary operation satisfies the associative law is a group.
Just like formula_4 can have several left identities or several right identities, it is possible for an element to have several left inverses or several right inverses (but note that their definition above uses a "two-sided" identity formula_3). It can even have several left inverses "and" several right inverses.
If the operation formula_2 is associative then if an element has both a left inverse and a right inverse, they are equal. In other words, in a monoid (an associative unital magma) every element has at most one inverse (as defined in this section). In a monoid, the set of (left and right) invertible elements is a group, called the group of units of formula_1, and denoted by formula_20 or "H"1.
A left-invertible element is left-cancellative, and analogously for right and two-sided.
The definition in the previous section generalizes the notion of inverse in group relative to the notion of identity. It's also possible, albeit less obvious, to generalize the notion of an inverse by dropping the identity element but keeping associativity, i.e., in a semigroup.
In a semigroup "S" an element "x" is called (von Neumann) regular if there exists some element "z" in "S" such that "xzx" = "x"; "z" is sometimes called a pseudoinverse. An element "y" is called (simply) an inverse of "x" if "xyx" = "x" and "y" = "yxy". Every regular element has at least one inverse: if "x" = "xzx" then it is easy to verify that "y" = "zxz" is an inverse of "x" as defined in this section. Another easy to prove fact: if "y" is an inverse of "x" then "e" = "xy" and "f" = "yx" are idempotents, that is "ee" = "e" and "ff" = "f". Thus, every pair of (mutually) inverse elements gives rise to two idempotents, and "ex" = "xf" = "x", "ye" = "fy" = "y", and "e" acts as a left identity on "x", while "f" acts a right identity, and the left/right roles are reversed for "y". This simple observation can be generalized using Green's relations: every idempotent "e" in an arbitrary semigroup is a left identity for "Re" and right identity for "Le". An intuitive description of this fact is that every pair of mutually inverse elements produces a local left identity, and respectively, a local right identity.
In a monoid, the notion of inverse as defined in the previous section is strictly narrower than the definition given in this section. Only elements in the Green class "H"1 have an inverse from the unital magma perspective, whereas for any idempotent "e", the elements of "H"e have an inverse as defined in this section. Under this more general definition, inverses need not be unique (or exist) in an arbitrary semigroup or monoid. If all elements are regular, then the semigroup (or monoid) is called regular, and every element has at least one inverse. If every element has exactly one inverse as defined in this section, then the semigroup is called an inverse semigroup. Finally, an inverse semigroup with only one idempotent is a group. An inverse semigroup may have an absorbing element 0 because 000 = 0, whereas a group may not.
Outside semigroup theory, a unique inverse as defined in this section is sometimes called a quasi-inverse. This is generally justified because in most applications (e.g., all examples in this article) associativity holds, which makes this notion a generalization of the left/right inverse relative to an identity.
A natural generalization of the inverse semigroup is to define an (arbitrary) unary operation ° such that ("a"°)° = "a" for all "a" in "S"; this endows "S" with a type 2,1 algebra. A semigroup endowed with such an operation is called a "U"-semigroup. Although it may seem that "a"° will be the inverse of "a", this is not necessarily the case. In order to obtain interesting notion(s), the unary operation must somehow interact with the semigroup operation. Two classes of "U"-semigroups have been studied:
Clearly a group is both an "I"-semigroup and a *-semigroup. A class of semigroups important in semigroup theory are completely regular semigroups; these are "I"-semigroups in which one additionally has "aa"° = "a"°"a"; in other words every element has commuting pseudoinverse "a"°. There are few concrete examples of such semigroups however; most are completely simple semigroups. In contrast, a subclass of *-semigroups, the *-regular semigroups (in the sense of Drazin), yield one of best known examples of a (unique) pseudoinverse, the Moore–Penrose inverse. In this case however the involution "a"* is not the pseudoinverse. Rather, the pseudoinverse of "x" is the unique element "y" such that "xyx" = "x", "yxy" = "y", ("xy")* = "xy", ("yx")* = "yx". Since *-regular semigroups generalize inverse semigroups, the unique element defined this way in a *-regular semigroup is called the generalized inverse or Penrose–Moore inverse.
All examples in this section involve associative operators, thus we shall use the terms left/right inverse for the unital magma-based definition, and quasi-inverse for its more general version.
Every real number formula_10 has an additive inverse (i.e., an inverse with respect to addition) given by formula_22. Every nonzero real number formula_10 has a multiplicative inverse (i.e., an inverse with respect to multiplication) given by formula_24 (or formula_25). By contrast, zero has no multiplicative inverse, but it has a unique quasi-inverse, "formula_26" itself.
A function formula_27 is the left (resp. right) inverse of a function formula_28 (for function composition), if and only if formula_29 (resp. formula_30) is the identity function on the domain (resp. codomain) of formula_28. The inverse of a function formula_28 is often written formula_33, but this notation is sometimes ambiguous. Only bijections have two-sided inverses, but "any" function has a quasi-inverse, i.e., the full transformation monoid is regular. The monoid of partial functions is also regular, whereas the monoid of injective partial transformations is the prototypical inverse semigroup.
The lower and upper adjoints in a (monotone) Galois connection, "L" and "G" are quasi-inverses of each other, i.e. "LGL" = "L" and "GLG" = "G" and one uniquely determines the other. They are not left or right inverses of each other however.
A square matrix formula_34 with entries in a field formula_35 is invertible (in the set of all square matrices of the same size, under matrix multiplication) if and only if its determinant is different from zero. If the determinant of formula_34 is zero, it is impossible for it to have a one-sided inverse; therefore a left inverse or right inverse implies the existence of the other one. See invertible matrix for more.
More generally, a square matrix over a commutative ring formula_37 is invertible if and only if its determinant is invertible in formula_37.
Non-square matrices of full rank have several one-sided inverses:
The left inverse can be used to determine the least norm solution of formula_43, which is also the least squares formula for regression and is given by formula_44
No rank deficient matrix has any (even one-sided) inverse. However, the Moore–Penrose inverse exists for all matrices, and coincides with the left or right (or true) inverse when it exists.
As an example of matrix inverses, consider:
So, as "m" < "n", we have a right inverse, formula_46 By components it is computed as
The left inverse doesn't exist, because
which is a singular matrix, and cannot be inverted. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45199 |
Universal algebra
Universal algebra (sometimes called general algebra) is the field of mathematics that studies algebraic structures themselves, not examples ("models") of algebraic structures.
For instance, rather than take particular groups as the object of study, in universal algebra one takes the class of groups as an object of study.
In universal algebra, an algebra (or algebraic structure) is a set "A" together with a collection of operations on "A". An "n"-ary operation on "A" is a function that takes "n" elements of "A" and returns a single element of "A". Thus, a 0-ary operation (or "nullary operation") can be represented simply as an element of "A", or a "constant", often denoted by a letter like "a". A 1-ary operation (or "unary operation") is simply a function from "A" to "A", often denoted by a symbol placed in front of its argument, like ~"x". A 2-ary operation (or "binary operation") is often denoted by a symbol placed between its arguments, like "x" ∗ "y". Operations of higher or unspecified "arity" are usually denoted by function symbols, with the arguments placed in parentheses and separated by commas, like "f"("x","y","z") or "f"("x"1...,"x""n"). Some researchers allow infinitary operations, such as formula_1 where "J" is an infinite index set, thus leading into the algebraic theory of complete lattices. One way of talking about an algebra, then, is by referring to it as an algebra of a certain type formula_2, where formula_2 is an ordered sequence of natural numbers representing the arity of the operations of the algebra.
After the operations have been specified, the nature of the algebra is further defined by axioms, which in universal algebra often take the form of identities, or equational laws. An example is the associative axiom for a binary operation, which is given by the equation "x" ∗ ("y" ∗ "z") = ("x" ∗ "y") ∗ "z". The axiom is intended to hold for all elements "x", "y", and "z" of the set "A".
A collection of algebraic structures defined by identities is called a variety or equational class. Some authors consider varieties to be the main focus of universal algebra.
Restricting one's study to varieties rules out:
The study of equational classes can be seen as a special branch of model theory, typically dealing with structures having operations only (i.e. the type can have symbols for functions but not for relations other than equality), and in which the language used to talk about these structures uses equations only.
Not all algebraic structures in a wider sense fall into this scope. For example, ordered groups involve an ordering relation, so would not fall within this scope.
The class of fields is not an equational class because there is no type (or "signature") in which all field laws can be written as equations (inverses of elements are defined for all "non-zero" elements in a field, so inversion cannot be added to the type).
One advantage of this restriction is that the structures studied in universal algebra can be defined in any category that has "finite products". For example, a topological group is just a group in the category of topological spaces.
Most of the usual algebraic systems of mathematics are examples of varieties, but not always in an obvious way, since the usual definitions often involve quantification or inequalities.
As an example, consider the definition of a group. Usually a group is defined in terms of a single binary operation ∗, subject to the axioms:
This definition of a group does not immediately fit the point of view of universal algebra, because the axioms of the identity element and inversion are not stated purely in terms of equational laws which hold universally "for all ..." elements, but also involve the existential quantifier "there exists ...". The group axioms can be phrased as universally quantified equations by specifying, in addition to the binary operation ∗, a nullary operation "e" and a unary operation ~, with ~"x" usually written as "x"−1. The axioms become:
To summarize, the usual definition has:
while the universal algebra definition has:
A key point is that the extra operations do not add information, but follow uniquely from the usual definition of a group. Although the usual definition did not uniquely specify the identity element "e", an easy exercise shows it is unique, as is each inverse element.
The universal algebra point of view is well adapted to category theory. For example, when defining a group object in category theory, where the object in question may not be a set, one must use equational laws (which make sense in general categories), rather than quantified laws (which refer to individual elements). Further, the inverse and identity are specified as morphisms in the category. For example, in a topological group, the inverse must not only exist element-wise, but must give a continuous mapping (a morphism). Some authors also require the identity map to be a closed inclusion (a cofibration).
Most algebraic structures are examples of universal algebras.
Examples of relational algebras include semilattices, lattices, and Boolean algebras.
We assume that the type, formula_2, has been fixed. Then there are three basic constructions in universal algebra: homomorphic image, subalgebra, and product.
A homomorphism between two algebras "A" and "B" is a function "h": "A" → "B" from the set A to the set B such that, for every operation "f""A" of A and corresponding "f""B" of B (of arity, say, "n"), "h"("f""A"("x"1...,"x""n")) = "f""B"("h"("x"1)...,"h"("x""n")). (Sometimes the subscripts on "f" are taken off when it is clear from context which algebra the function is from.) For example, if "e" is a constant (nullary operation), then "h"("e""A") = "e""B". If ~ is a unary operation, then "h"(~"x") = ~"h"("x"). If ∗ is a binary operation, then "h"("x" ∗ "y") = "h"("x") ∗ "h"("y"). And so on. A few of the things that can be done with homomorphisms, as well as definitions of certain special kinds of homomorphisms, are listed under the entry Homomorphism. In particular, we can take the homomorphic image of an algebra, "h"("A").
A subalgebra of "A" is a subset of "A" that is closed under all the operations of "A". A product of some set of algebraic structures is the cartesian product of the sets with the operations defined coordinatewise.
In addition to its unifying approach, universal algebra also gives deep theorems and important examples and counterexamples. It provides a useful framework for those who intend to start the study of new classes of algebras.
It can enable the use of methods invented for some particular classes of algebras to other classes of algebras, by recasting the methods in terms of universal algebra (if possible), and then interpreting these as applied to other classes. It has also provided conceptual clarification; as J.D.H. Smith puts it, ""What looks messy and complicated in a particular framework may turn out to be simple and obvious in the proper general one.""
In particular, universal algebra can be applied to the study of monoids, rings, and lattices. Before universal algebra came along, many theorems (most notably the isomorphism theorems) were proved separately in all of these classes, but with universal algebra, they can be proven once and for all for every kind of algebraic system.
The 1956 paper by Higgins referenced below has been well followed up for its framework for a range of particular algebraic systems, while his 1963 paper is notable for its discussion of algebras with operations which are only partially defined, typical examples for this being categories and groupoids. This leads on to the subject of higher-dimensional algebra which can be defined as the study of algebraic theories with partial operations whose domains are defined under geometric conditions. Notable examples of these are various forms of higher-dimensional categories and groupoids.
Universal algebra provides a natural language for the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). CSP refers to an important class of computational problems where, given a relational algebra and an existential sentence formula_7 over this algebra, the question is to find out whether formula_7 can be satisfied in . The algebra is often fixed, so that refers to the problem whose instance is only the existential sentence formula_7.
It is proved that every computational problem can be formulated as for some algebra .
For example, the "n"-coloring problem can be stated as CSP of the algebra formula_10, i.e. an algebra with formula_11 elements and a single relation, inequality.
The dichotomy conjecture (proved in April 2017) states that if is a finite algebra, then is either P or NP-complete.
Universal algebra has also been studied using the techniques of category theory. In this approach, instead of writing a list of operations and equations obeyed by those operations, one can describe an algebraic structure using categories of a special sort, known as Lawvere theories or more generally algebraic theories. Alternatively, one can describe algebraic structures using monads. The two approaches are closely related, with each having their own advantages.
In particular, every Lawvere theory gives a monad on the category of sets, while any "finitary" monad on the category of sets arises from a Lawvere theory. However, a monad describes algebraic structures within one particular category (for example the category of sets), while algebraic theories describe structure within any of a large class of categories (namely those having finite products).
A more recent development in category theory is operad theory – an operad is a set of operations, similar to a universal algebra, but restricted in that equations are only allowed between expressions with the variables, with no duplication or omission of variables allowed. Thus, rings can be described as the so-called "algebras" of some operad, but not groups, since the law formula_12 duplicates the variable "g" on the left side and omits it on the right side. At first this may seem to be a troublesome restriction, but the payoff is that operads have certain advantages: for example, one can hybridize the concepts of ring and vector space to obtain the concept of associative algebra, but one cannot form a similar hybrid of the concepts of group and vector space.
Another development is partial algebra where the operators can be partial functions. Certain partial functions can also be handled by a generalization of Lawvere theories known as essentially algebraic theories.
Another generalization of universal algebra is model theory, which is sometimes described as "universal algebra + logic".
In Alfred North Whitehead's book "A Treatise on Universal Algebra," published in 1898, the term "universal algebra" had essentially the same meaning that it has today. Whitehead credits William Rowan Hamilton and Augustus De Morgan as originators of the subject matter, and James Joseph Sylvester with coining the term itself.
At the time structures such as Lie algebras and hyperbolic quaternions drew attention to the need to expand algebraic structures beyond the associatively multiplicative class. In a review Alexander Macfarlane wrote: "The main idea of the work is not unification of the several methods, nor generalization of ordinary algebra so as to include them, but rather the comparative study of their several structures." At the time George Boole's algebra of logic made a strong counterpoint to ordinary number algebra, so the term "universal" served to calm strained sensibilities.
Whitehead's early work sought to unify quaternions (due to Hamilton), Grassmann's Ausdehnungslehre, and Boole's algebra of logic. Whitehead wrote in his book:
Whitehead, however, had no results of a general nature. Work on the subject was minimal until the early 1930s, when Garrett Birkhoff and Øystein Ore began publishing on universal algebras. Developments in metamathematics and category theory in the 1940s and 1950s furthered the field, particularly the work of Abraham Robinson, Alfred Tarski, Andrzej Mostowski, and their students.
In the period between 1935 and 1950, most papers were written along the lines suggested by Birkhoff's papers, dealing with free algebras, congruence and subalgebra lattices, and homomorphism theorems. Although the development of mathematical logic had made applications to algebra possible, they came about slowly; results published by Anatoly Maltsev in the 1940s went unnoticed because of the war. Tarski's lecture at the 1950 International Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge ushered in a new period in which model-theoretic aspects were developed, mainly by Tarski himself, as well as C.C. Chang, Leon Henkin, Bjarni Jónsson, Roger Lyndon, and others.
In the late 1950s, Edward Marczewski emphasized the importance of free algebras, leading to the publication of more than 50 papers on the algebraic theory of free algebras by Marczewski himself, together with Jan Mycielski, Władysław Narkiewicz, Witold Nitka, J. Płonka, S. Świerczkowski, K. Urbanik, and others.
Starting with William Lawvere's thesis in 1963, techniques from category theory have become important in universal algebra. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45200 |
Submarine communications cable
A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried telegraphy traffic, establishing the first instant telecommunications links between continents, such as the first transatlantic telegraph cable which became operational on 16 August 1858. Subsequent generations of cables carried telephone traffic, then data communications traffic. Modern cables use optical fibre technology to carry digital data, which includes telephone, Internet and private data traffic.
Modern cables are typically about in diameter and weigh around for the deep-sea sections which comprise the majority of the run, although larger and heavier cables are used for shallow-water sections near shore. Submarine cables first connected all the world's continents (except Antarctica) when Java was connected to Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia in 1871 in anticipation of the completion of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line in 1872 connecting to Adelaide, South Australia, and thence to the rest of Australia.
After William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone had introduced their working telegraph in 1839, the idea of a submarine line across the Atlantic Ocean began to be thought of as a possible triumph of the future. Samuel Morse proclaimed his faith in it as early as 1840, and in 1842, he submerged a wire, insulated with tarred hemp and India rubber, in the water of New York Harbor, and telegraphed through it. The following autumn, Wheatstone performed a similar experiment in Swansea Bay. A good insulator to cover the wire and prevent the electric current from leaking into the water was necessary for the success of a long submarine line. India rubber had been tried by Moritz von Jacobi, the Prussian electrical engineer, as far back as the early 19th century.
Another insulating gum which could be melted by heat and readily applied to wire made its appearance in 1842. Gutta-percha, the adhesive juice of the "Palaquium gutta" tree, was introduced to Europe by William Montgomerie, a Scottish surgeon in the service of the British East India Company. Twenty years earlier, Montgomerie had seen whips made of gutta-percha in Singapore, and he believed that it would be useful in the fabrication of surgical apparatus. Michael Faraday and Wheatstone soon discovered the merits of gutta-percha as an insulator, and in 1845, the latter suggested that it should be employed to cover the wire which was proposed to be laid from Dover to Calais. In 1847 William Siemens, then an officer in the army of Prussia, laid the first successful underwater cable using gutta percha insulation, across the Rhine between Deutz and Cologne. In 1849, Charles Vincent Walker, electrician to the South Eastern Railway, submerged a two-mile wire coated with gutta-percha off the coast from Folkestone, which was tested successfully.
In August 1850, having earlier obtained a concession from the French government, John Watkins Brett's English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company laid the first line across the English Channel, using the converted tugboat "Goliath". It was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without any other protection, and was not successful. However, the experiment served to secure renewal of the concession, and in September 1851, a protected core, or true, cable was laid by the reconstituted Submarine Telegraph Company from a government hulk, "Blazer", which was towed across the Channel.
In 1853, more successful cables were laid, linking Great Britain with Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and crossing The Belts in Denmark. The British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company completed the first successful Irish link on May 23 between Portpatrick and Donaghadee using the collier "William Hutt". The same ship was used for the link from Dover to Ostend in Belgium, by the Submarine Telegraph Company. Meanwhile, the Electric & International Telegraph Company completed two cables across the North Sea, from Orford Ness to Scheveningen, the Netherlands. These cables were laid by "Monarch", a paddle steamer which later became the first vessel with permanent cable-laying equipment.
In 1858, the steamship "Elba" was used to lay a telegraph cable from Jersey to Guernsey, on to Alderney and then to Weymouth, the cable being completed successfully in September of that year. Problems soon developed with eleven breaks occurring by 1860 due to storms, tidal and sand movements, and wear on rocks. A report to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1860 set out the problems to assist in future cable-laying operations.
The first attempt at laying a transatlantic telegraph cable was promoted by Cyrus West Field, who persuaded British industrialists to fund and lay one in 1858. However, the technology of the day was not capable of supporting the project; it was plagued with problems from the outset, and was in operation for only a month. Subsequent attempts in 1865 and 1866 with the world's largest steamship, the SS "Great Eastern", used a more advanced technology and produced the first successful transatlantic cable. "Great Eastern" later went on to lay the first cable reaching to India from Aden, Yemen, in 1870.
From the 1850s until 1911, British submarine cable systems dominated the most important market, the North Atlantic Ocean. The British had both supply side and demand side advantages. In terms of supply, Britain had entrepreneurs willing to put forth enormous amounts of capital necessary to build, lay and maintain these cables. In terms of demand, Britain's vast colonial empire led to business for the cable companies from news agencies, trading and shipping companies, and the British government. Many of Britain's colonies had significant populations of European settlers, making news about them of interest to the general public in the home country.
British officials believed that depending on telegraph lines that passed through non-British territory posed a security risk, as lines could be cut and messages could be interrupted during wartime. They sought the creation of a worldwide network within the empire, which became known as the All Red Line, and conversely prepared strategies to quickly interrupt enemy communications. Britain's very first action after declaring war on Germany in World War I was to have the cable ship "Alert" (not the CS "Telconia" as frequently reported) cut the five cables linking Germany with France, Spain and the Azores, and through them, North America. Thereafter, the only way Germany could communicate was by wireless, and that meant that Room 40 could listen in.
The submarine cables were an economic benefit to trading companies, because owners of ships could communicate with captains when they reached their destination and give directions as to where to go next to pick up cargo based on reported pricing and supply information. The British government had obvious uses for the cables in maintaining administrative communications with governors throughout its empire, as well as in engaging other nations diplomatically and communicating with its military units in wartime. The geographic location of British territory was also an advantage as it included both Ireland on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean and Newfoundland in North America on the west side, making for the shortest route across the ocean, which reduced costs significantly.
A few facts put this dominance of the industry in perspective. In 1896, there were 30 cable-laying ships in the world, 24 of which were owned by British companies. In 1892, British companies owned and operated two-thirds of the world's cables and by 1923, their share was still 42.7 percent. During World War I, Britain's telegraph communications were almost completely uninterrupted, while it was able to quickly cut Germany's cables worldwide.
Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, British cable expanded eastward, into the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. An 1863 cable to Bombay (now Mumbai), India, provided a crucial link to Saudi Arabia. In 1870, Bombay was linked to London via submarine cable in a combined operation by four cable companies, at the behest of the British Government. In 1872, these four companies were combined to form the mammoth globe-spanning Eastern Telegraph Company, owned by John Pender. A spin-off from Eastern Telegraph Company was a second sister company, the Eastern Extension, China and Australasia Telegraph Company, commonly known simply as "the Extension". In 1872, Australia was linked by cable to Bombay via Singapore and China and in 1876, the cable linked the British Empire from London to New Zealand.
The first trans-Pacific cables providing telegraph service were completed in 1902 and 1903, linking the US mainland to Hawaii in 1902 and Guam to the Philippines in 1903. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji were also linked in 1902 with the trans-Pacific segment of the All Red Line. Japan was connected into the system in 1906. Service beyond Midway Atoll was abandoned in 1941 due to World War II, but the remainder remained in operation until 1951 when the FCC gave permission to cease operations.
The first trans-Pacific telephone cable was laid from Hawaii to Japan in 1964, with an extension from Guam to The Philippines. Also in 1964, the Commonwealth Pacific Cable System (COMPAC), with 80 telephone channel capacity, opened for traffic from Sydney to Vancouver, and in 1967, the South East Asia Commonwealth (SEACOM) system, with 160 telephone channel capacity, opened for traffic. This system used microwave radio from Sydney to Cairns (Queensland), cable running from Cairns to Madang (Papua New Guinea), Guam, Hong Kong, Kota Kinabalu (capital of Sabah, Malaysia), Singapore, then overland by microwave radio to Kuala Lumpur. In 1991, the North Pacific Cable system was the first regenerative system (i.e., with repeaters) to completely cross the Pacific from the US mainland to Japan. The US portion of NPC was manufactured in Portland, Oregon, from 1989 to 1991 at STC Submarine Systems, and later Alcatel Submarine Networks. The system was laid by Cable & Wireless Marine on the "CS Cable Venture".
Transatlantic cables of the 19th century consisted of an outer layer of iron and later steel wire, wrapping India rubber, wrapping gutta-percha, which surrounded a multi-stranded copper wire at the core. The portions closest to each shore landing had additional protective armour wires. Gutta-percha, a natural polymer similar to rubber, had nearly ideal properties for insulating submarine cables, with the exception of a rather high dielectric constant which made cable capacitance high. William Thomas Henley had developed a machine in 1837 for covering wires with silk or cotton thread that he developed into a wire wrapping capability for submarine cable with a factory in 1857 that became W.T. Henley's Telegraph Works Co., Ltd. The India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company, established by the Silver family and giving that name to a section of London, furnished cores to Henley's as well as eventually making and laying finished cable. In 1870 William Hooper established Hooper's Telegraph Works to manufacture his patented vulcanized rubber core, at first to furnish other makers of finished cable, that began to compete with the gutta-percha cores. The company later expanded into complete cable manufacture and cable laying, including the building of the first cable ship specifically designed to lay transatlantic cables.
Gutta-percha and rubber were not replaced as a cable insulation until polyethylene was introduced in the 1930s. Even then, the material was only available to the military and the first submarine cable using it was not laid until 1945 during World War II across the English Channel. In the 1920s, the American military experimented with rubber-insulated cables as an alternative to gutta-percha, since American interests controlled significant supplies of rubber but did not have easy access to gutta-percha manufacturers. The 1926 development by John T. Blake of deproteinized rubber improved the impermeability of cables to water.
Many early cables suffered from attack by sea life. The insulation could be eaten, for instance, by species of "Teredo" (shipworm) and "Xylophaga". Hemp laid between the steel wire armouring gave pests a route to eat their way in. Damaged armouring, which was not uncommon, also provided an entrance. Cases of sharks biting cables and attacks by sawfish have been recorded. In one case in 1873, a whale damaged the Persian Gulf Cable between Karachi and Gwadar. The whale was apparently attempting to use the cable to clean off barnacles at a point where the cable descended over a steep drop. The unfortunate whale got its tail entangled in loops of cable and drowned. The cable repair ship "Amber Witch" was only able to winch up the cable with difficulty, weighed down as it was with the dead whale's body.
Early long-distance submarine telegraph cables exhibited formidable electrical problems. Unlike modern cables, the technology of the 19th century did not allow for in-line repeater amplifiers in the cable. Large voltages were used to attempt to overcome the electrical resistance of their tremendous length but the cables' distributed capacitance and inductance combined to distort the telegraph pulses in the line, reducing the cable's bandwidth, severely limiting the data rate for telegraph operation to 10–12 words per minute.
As early as 1816, Francis Ronalds had observed that electric signals were retarded in passing through an insulated wire or core laid underground, and outlined the cause to be induction, using the analogy of a long Leyden jar. The same effect was noticed by Latimer Clark (1853) on cores immersed in water, and particularly on the lengthy cable between England and The Hague. Michael Faraday showed that the effect was caused by capacitance between the wire and the earth (or water) surrounding it. Faraday had noticed that when a wire is charged from a battery (for example when pressing a telegraph key), the electric charge in the wire induces an opposite charge in the water as it travels along. In 1831, Faraday described this effect in what is now referred to as Faraday's law of induction. As the two charges attract each other, the exciting charge is retarded. The core acts as a capacitor distributed along the length of the cable which, coupled with the resistance and inductance of the cable, limits the speed at which a signal travels through the conductor of the cable.
Early cable designs failed to analyse these effects correctly. Famously, E.O.W. Whitehouse had dismissed the problems and insisted that a transatlantic cable was feasible. When he subsequently became electrician of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, he became involved in a public dispute with William Thomson. Whitehouse believed that, with enough voltage, any cable could be driven. Thomson believed that his law of squares showed that retardation could not be overcome by a higher voltage. His recommendation was a larger cable. Because of the excessive voltages recommended by Whitehouse, Cyrus West Field's first transatlantic cable never worked reliably, and eventually short circuited to the ocean when Whitehouse increased the voltage beyond the cable design limit.
Thomson designed a complex electric-field generator that minimized current by resonating the cable, and a sensitive light-beam mirror galvanometer for detecting the faint telegraph signals. Thomson became wealthy on the royalties of these, and several related inventions. Thomson was elevated to Lord Kelvin for his contributions in this area, chiefly an accurate mathematical model of the cable, which permitted design of the equipment for accurate telegraphy. The effects of atmospheric electricity and the geomagnetic field on submarine cables also motivated many of the early polar expeditions.
Thomson had produced a mathematical analysis of propagation of electrical signals into telegraph cables based on their capacitance and resistance, but since long submarine cables operated at slow rates, he did not include the effects of inductance. By the 1890s, Oliver Heaviside had produced the modern general form of the telegrapher's equations, which included the effects of inductance and which were essential to extending the theory of transmission lines to the higher frequencies required for high-speed data and voice.
While laying a transatlantic telephone cable was seriously considered from the 1920s, the technology required for economically feasible telecommunications was not developed until the 1940s. A first attempt to lay a pupinized telephone cable failed in the early 1930s due to the Great Depression.
TAT-1 (Transatlantic No. 1) was the first transatlantic telephone cable system. Between 1955 and 1956, cable was laid between Gallanach Bay, near Oban, Scotland and Clarenville, Newfoundland and Labrador. It was inaugurated on September 25, 1956, initially carrying 36 telephone channels.
In the 1960s, transoceanic cables were coaxial cables that transmitted frequency-multiplexed voiceband signals. A high-voltage direct current on the inner conductor powered repeaters (two-way amplifiers placed at intervals along the cable). The first-generation repeaters remain among the most reliable vacuum tube amplifiers ever designed. Later ones were transistorized. Many of these cables are still usable, but have been abandoned because their capacity is too small to be commercially viable. Some have been used as scientific instruments to measure earthquake waves and other geomagnetic events.
In 1942, Siemens Brothers of New Charlton, London, in conjunction with the United Kingdom National Physical Laboratory, adapted submarine communications cable technology to create the world's first submarine oil pipeline in Operation Pluto during World War II.
In the 1980s, fibre-optic cables were developed. The first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fibre was TAT-8, which went into operation in 1988. A fibre-optic cable comprises multiple pairs of fibres. Each pair has one fibre in each direction. TAT-8 had two operational pairs and one backup pair.
Modern optical fibre repeaters use a solid-state optical amplifier, usually an Erbium-doped fibre amplifier. Each repeater contains separate equipment for each fibre. These comprise signal reforming, error measurement and controls. A solid-state laser dispatches the signal into the next length of fibre. The solid-state laser excites a short length of doped fibre that itself acts as a laser amplifier. As the light passes through the fibre, it is amplified. This system also permits wavelength-division multiplexing, which dramatically increases the capacity of the fibre.
Repeaters are powered by a constant direct current passed down the conductor near the centre of the cable, so all repeaters in a cable are in series. Power feed equipment is installed at the terminal stations. Typically both ends share the current generation with one end providing a positive voltage and the other a negative voltage. A virtual earth point exists roughly halfway along the cable under normal operation. The amplifiers or repeaters derive their power from the potential difference across them.
The optic fibre used in undersea cables is chosen for its exceptional clarity, permitting runs of more than between repeaters to minimize the number of amplifiers and the distortion they cause.
The rising demand for these fibre-optic cables outpaced the capacity of providers such as AT&T. Having to shift traffic to satellites resulted in lower-quality signals. To address this issue, AT&T had to improve its cable-laying abilities. It invested $100 million in producing two specialized fibre-optic cable laying vessels. These included laboratories in the ships for splicing cable and testing its electrical properties. Such field monitoring is important because the glass of fibre-optic cable is less malleable than the copper cable that had been formerly used. The ships are equipped with thrusters that increase manoeuvrability. This capability is important because fibre-optic cable must be laid straight from the stern, which was another factor that copper-cable-laying ships did not have to contend with.
Originally, submarine cables were simple point-to-point connections. With the development of submarine branching units (SBUs), more than one destination could be served by a single cable system. Modern cable systems now usually have their fibres arranged in a self-healing ring to increase their redundancy, with the submarine sections following different paths on the ocean floor. One reason for this development was that the capacity of cable systems had become so large that it was not possible to completely backup a cable system with satellite capacity, so it became necessary to provide sufficient terrestrial backup capability. Not all telecommunications organizations wish to take advantage of this capability, so modern cable systems may have dual landing points in some countries (where back-up capability is required) and only single landing points in other countries where back-up capability is either not required, the capacity to the country is small enough to be backed up by other means, or having backup is regarded as too expensive.
A further redundant-path development over and above the self-healing rings approach is the "Mesh Network" whereby fast switching equipment is used to transfer services between network paths with little to no effect on higher-level protocols if a path becomes inoperable. As more paths become available to use between two points, the less likely it is that one or two simultaneous failures will prevent end-to-end service.
As of 2012, operators had "successfully demonstrated long-term, error-free transmission at 100 Gbps across Atlantic Ocean" routes of up to , meaning a typical cable can move tens of terabits per second overseas. Speeds improved rapidly in the previous few years, with 40 Gbit/s having been offered on that route only three years earlier in August 2009.
Switching and all-by-sea routing commonly increases the distance and thus the round trip latency by more than 50%. For example, the round trip delay (RTD) or latency of the fastest transatlantic connections is under 60 ms, close to the theoretical optimum for an all-sea route. While in theory, a great circle route (GCP) between London and New York City is only , this requires several land masses (Ireland, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and the isthmus connecting New Brunswick to Nova Scotia) to be traversed, as well as the extremely tidal Bay of Fundy and a land route along Massachusetts' north shore from Gloucester to Boston and through fairly built up areas to Manhattan itself. In theory, using this partial land route could result in round trip times below 40 ms (which is the speed of light minimum time), and not counting switching. Along routes with less land in the way, round trip times can approach speed of light minimums in the long term.
Currently 99% of the data traffic that is crossing oceans is carried by undersea cables. The reliability of submarine cables is high, especially when (as noted above) multiple paths are available in the event of a cable break. Also, the total carrying capacity of submarine cables is in the terabits per second, while satellites typically offer only 1,000 megabits per second and display higher latency. However, a typical multi-terabit, transoceanic submarine cable system costs several hundred million dollars to construct.
As a result of these cables' cost and usefulness, they are highly valued not only by the corporations building and operating them for profit, but also by national governments. For instance, the Australian government considers its submarine cable systems to be "vital to the national economy". Accordingly, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has created protection zones that restrict activities that could potentially damage cables linking Australia to the rest of the world. The ACMA also regulates all projects to install new submarine cables.
Submarine cables are important to the modern military as well as private enterprise. The US military, for example, uses the submarine cable network for data transfer from conflict zones to command staff in the United States. Interruption of the cable network during intense operations could have direct consequences for the military on the ground.
Almost all fibre-optic cables from TAT-8 in 1988 until approximately 1997 were constructed by consortia of operators. For example, TAT-8 counted 35 participants including most major international carriers at the time such as AT&T Corporation. Two privately financed, non-consortium cables were constructed in the late 1990s, which preceded a massive, speculative rush to construct privately financed cables that peaked in more than $22 billion worth of investment between 1999 and 2001. This was followed by the bankruptcy and reorganization of cable operators such as Global Crossing, 360networks, FLAG, Worldcom, and Asia Global Crossing.
There has been an increasing tendency in recent years to expand submarine cable capacity in the Pacific Ocean (the previous bias always having been to lay communications cable across the Atlantic Ocean which separates the United States and Europe). For example, between 1998 and 2003, approximately 70% of undersea fiber-optic cable was laid in the Pacific. This is in part a response to the emerging significance of Asian markets in the global economy.
Although much of the investment in submarine cables has been directed toward developed markets such as the transatlantic and transpacific routes, in recent years there has been an increased effort to expand the submarine cable network to serve the developing world. For instance, in July 2009, an underwater fibre-optic cable line plugged East Africa into the broader Internet. The company that provided this new cable was SEACOM, which is 75% owned by Africans. The project was delayed by a month due to increased piracy along the coast.
Antarctica is the only continent not yet reached by a submarine telecommunications cable. All phone, video, and e-mail traffic must be relayed to the rest of the world via satellite links that have limited availability and capacity. Bases on the continent itself are able to communicate with one another via radio, but this is only a local network. To be a viable alternative, a fibre-optic cable would have to be able to withstand temperatures of as well as massive strain from ice flowing up to per year. Thus, plugging into the larger Internet backbone with the high bandwidth afforded by fibre-optic cable is still an as-yet infeasible economic and technical challenge in the Antarctic.
Cables can be broken by fishing trawlers, anchors, earthquakes, turbidity currents, and even shark bites. Based on surveying breaks in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, it was found that between 1959 and 1996, fewer than 9% were due to natural events. In response to this threat to the communications network, the practice of cable burial has developed. The average incidence of cable faults was 3.7 per per year from 1959 to 1979. That rate was reduced to 0.44 faults per 1,000 km per year after 1985, due to widespread burial of cable starting in 1980. Still, cable breaks are by no means a thing of the past, with more than 50 repairs a year in the Atlantic alone, and significant breaks in 2006, 2008, and 2009.
The propensity for fishing trawler nets to cause cable faults may well have been exploited during the Cold War. For example, in February 1959, a series of 12 breaks occurred in five American trans-Atlantic communications cables. In response, a United States naval vessel, the USS "Roy O. Hale", detained and investigated the Soviet trawler "Novorosiysk". A review of the ship's log indicated it had been in the region of each of the cables when they broke. Broken sections of cable were also found on the deck of the "Novorosiysk". It appeared that the cables had been dragged along by the ship's nets, and then cut once they were pulled up onto the deck to release the nets. The Soviet Union's stance on the investigation was that it was unjustified, but the United States cited the Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables of 1884 to which Russia had signed (prior to the formation of the Soviet Union) as evidence of violation of international protocol.
Shore stations can locate a break in a cable by electrical measurements, such as through spread-spectrum time-domain reflectometry (SSTDR), a type of time-domain reflectometry that can be used in live environments very quickly. Presently, SSTDR can collect a complete data set in 20 ms. Spread spectrum signals are sent down the wire and then the reflected signal is observed. It is then correlated with the copy of the sent signal and algorithms are applied to the shape and timing of the signals to locate the break.
A cable repair ship will be sent to the location to drop a marker buoy near the break. Several types of grapples are used depending on the situation. If the sea bed in question is sandy, a grapple with rigid prongs is used to plough under the surface and catch the cable. If the cable is on a rocky sea surface, the grapple is more flexible, with hooks along its length so that it can adjust to the changing surface. In especially deep water, the cable may not be strong enough to lift as a single unit, so a special grapple that cuts the cable soon after it has been hooked is used and only one length of cable is brought to the surface at a time, whereupon a new section is spliced in. The repaired cable is longer than the original, so the excess is deliberately laid in a "U" shape on the seabed. A submersible can be used to repair cables that lie in shallower waters.
A number of ports near important cable routes became homes to specialized cable repair ships. Halifax, Nova Scotia was home to a half dozen such vessels for most of the 20th century including long-lived vessels such as the CS "Cyrus West Field", CS "Minia" and "CS Mackay-Bennett". The latter two were contracted to recover victims from the sinking of the RMS "Titanic". The crews of these vessels developed many new techniques and devices to repair and improve cable laying, such as the "plough".
Underwater cables, which cannot be kept under constant surveillance, have tempted intelligence-gathering organizations since the late 19th century. Frequently at the beginning of wars, nations have cut the cables of the other sides to redirect the information flow into cables that were being monitored. The most ambitious efforts occurred in World War I, when British and German forces systematically attempted to destroy the others' worldwide communications systems by cutting their cables with surface ships or submarines. During the Cold War, the United States Navy and National Security Agency (NSA) succeeded in placing wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines in Operation Ivy Bells.
The main point of interaction of cables with marine life is in the benthic zone of the oceans where the majority of cable lies. Studies in 2003 and 2006 indicated that cables pose minimal impacts on life in these environments. In sampling sediment cores around cables and in areas removed from cables, there were few statistically significant differences in organism diversity or abundance. The main difference was that the cables provided an attachment point for anemones that typically could not grow in soft sediment areas. Data from 1877 to 1955 showed a total of 16 cable faults caused by the entanglement of various whales. Such deadly entanglements have entirely ceased with improved techniques for placement of modern coaxial and fibre-optic cables which have less tendency to self-coil when lying on the seabed.
Submarine cables are problematic from the security perspective because maps of submarine cables are widely available. Publicly available maps are necessary so that shipping can avoid damaging vulnerable cables by accident. However, the availability of the locations of easily damaged cables means the information is also easily accessible to criminal agents. Governmental wiretapping also presents cybersecurity issues.
Submarine cables are suffering from the inherent issue stemming from the historically established practice of cable laying. Since the cable connection is usually done by the private consortia, there is a problem with responsibility in the beginning. Firstly, deciding the responsibility inside consortium can prove tricky on itself, since there is not a one clearly leading company which could be designed as responsible it could lead to confusion when it is needed to decide who should be taking care about the cable. Secondly, it is hard to navigate the issue of cable damage through the international legal regime, since the regime was signed by and design for the states, not for private companies. Thus it is hard to decide who should be responsible for the damage costs and repairs, the company who built the cable, the company who paid the cable, the government from where the cable originated, or the government where the cable ends.
Another legal issue from which is the internal submarine cable regime suffering is the ageing of the legal system, for example, Australia still uses the fines which were priced during the signing of the 1884 submarine cable treaty and sides which commits transgressions over the cables are fined with, for today almost irrelevant, 2000 Australian dollars.
Submarine communication cables have had a wide variety of influences over society. As well as allowing effective intercontinental trading and supporting stock exchanges, they greatly influenced international diplomatic conduct. Before the existence of submarine communication connection diplomats had much more power in their hands since their direct supervisors (governments of the countries which they represented) could not immediately check on them. Getting instructions to the diplomats in a foreign country often took weeks or even months. Diplomats had to use their own initiative in negotiations with foreign countries with only an occasional check from their government. This slow connection resulted in diplomats engaging in leisure activities while they waited for orders. The expansion of telegraph cables greatly reduced the response time needed to instruct diplomats. Over time, this led to a general decrease in prestige and power of individual diplomats within international politics and signalled a professionalization of the diplomatic corps who had to abandon their leisure activities.
The Newfoundland earthquake of 1929 broke a series of transatlantic cables by triggering a massive undersea mudslide. The sequence of breaks helped scientists chart the progress of the mudslide.
In 1986 during prototype and pre-production testing of the TAT-8 fiber-optic cable and its lay down procedures conducted by AT&T in the Canary Islands area, shark bite damage to the cable occurred. This revealed that sharks will dive to depths of , a depth which surprised marine biologists who until then thought that sharks were not active at such depths. The TAT-8 submarine cable connection was opened in 1988.
In July 2005, a portion of the SEA-ME-WE 3 submarine cable located south of Karachi that provided Pakistan's major outer communications became defective, disrupting almost all of Pakistan's communications with the rest of the world, and affecting approximately 10 million Internet users.
On 26 December 2006, the 2006 Hengchun earthquake rendered numerous cables between Taiwan and Philippines inoperable.
In March 2007, pirates stole an section of the T-V-H submarine cable that connected Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong, afflicting Vietnam's Internet users with far slower speeds. The thieves attempted to sell the 100 tons of cable as scrap.
The 2008 submarine cable disruption was a series of cable outages, two of the three Suez Canal cables, two disruptions in the Persian Gulf, and one in Malaysia. It caused massive communications disruptions to India and the Middle East.
In April 2010, the undersea cable SEA-ME-WE 4 was under an outage. The Southeast Asia – Middle East – Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) submarine communications cable system, which connects Southeast Asia and Europe, was reportedly cut in three places, off Palermo, Italy.
The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami damaged a number of undersea cables that make landings in Japan, including:
In February 2012, breaks in the EASSy and TEAMS cables disconnected about half of the networks in Kenya and Uganda from the global Internet.
In March 2013, the SEA-ME-WE-4 connection from France to Singapore was cut by divers near Egypt.
In November 2014 the SEA-ME-WE 3 stopped all traffic from Perth, Australia, to Singapore due to an unknown cable fault.
In August 2017, a fault in IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) undersea cable near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, disrupted the internet in Pakistan. The IMEWE submarine cable is an ultra-high capacity fibre optic undersea cable system which links India and Europe via the Middle East. The 12,091 km long cable has nine terminal stations, operated by leading telecom carriers from eight countries.
AAE-1, spanning over , connects Southeast Asia to Europe via Egypt. Construction was finished in 2017. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45206 |
Communications satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunications signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. Communications satellites are used for television, telephone, radio, internet, and military applications. There are about 2,000 communications satellites in Earth's orbit, used by both private and government organizations. Many are in geostationary orbit above the equator, so that the satellite appears stationary at the same point in the sky, so the satellite dish antennas of ground stations can be aimed permanently at that spot and do not have to move to track it.
The high frequency radio waves used for telecommunications links travel by line of sight and so are obstructed by the curve of the Earth. The purpose of communications satellites is to relay the signal around the curve of the Earth allowing communication between widely separated geographical points. Communications satellites use a wide range of radio and microwave frequencies. To avoid signal interference, international organizations have regulations for which frequency ranges or "bands" certain organizations are allowed to use. This allocation of bands minimizes the risk of signal interference.
The concept of the geostationary communications satellite was first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke, along with Vahid K. Sanadi building on work by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In October 1945, Clarke published an article titled "Extraterrestrial Relays" in the British magazine "Wireless World". The article described the fundamentals behind the deployment of artificial satellites in geostationary orbits for the purpose of relaying radio signals. Thus, Arthur C. Clarke is often quoted as being the inventor of the communications satellite and the term 'Clarke Belt' employed as a description of the orbit.
Decades later a project named Communication Moon Relay was a telecommunication project carried out by the United States Navy. Its objective was to develop a secure and reliable method of wireless communication by using the Moon as a passive reflector and a natural communications satellite.
The first artificial Earth satellite was Sputnik 1. Put into orbit by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, it was equipped with an on-board radio-transmitter that worked on two frequencies: 20.005 and 40.002 MHz. Sputnik 1 was launched as a major step in the exploration of space and rocket development. However, it was not placed in orbit for the purpose of sending data from one point on earth to another.
The first satellite to relay communications was Pioneer 1, an intended lunar probe. Though the spacecraft only made it about halfway to the moon, it flew high enough to carry out the proof of concept relay of telemetry across the world, first from Cape Canaveral to Manchester, England; then from Hawaii to Cape Canaveral; and finally, across the world from Hawaii to Manchester.
The first satellite purpose-built to relay communications was NASA's Project SCORE in 1958, which used a tape recorder to store and forward voice messages. It was used to send a Christmas greeting to the world from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Courier 1B, built by Philco, launched in 1960, was the world's first active repeater satellite.
The first artificial satellite used solely to further advances in global communications was a balloon named Echo 1. Echo 1 was the world's first artificial communications satellite capable of relaying signals to other points on Earth. It soared above the planet after its Aug. 12, 1960 launch. Launched by NASA, Echo 1 was a aluminized PET film balloon that served as a passive reflector for radio communications. The world's first inflatable satellite — or "satelloon", as they were informally known — helped lay the foundation of today's satellite communications. The idea behind a communications satellite is simple: Send data up into space and beam it back down to another spot on the globe. Echo 1 accomplished this by essentially serving as an enormous mirror, 10 stories tall, that could be used to reflect communications signals.
There are two major classes of communications satellites, "passive" and "active". Passive satellites only reflect the signal coming from the source, toward the direction of the receiver. With passive satellites, the reflected signal is not amplified at the satellite, and only a very small amount of the transmitted energy actually reaches the receiver. Since the satellite is so far above Earth, the radio signal is attenuated due to free-space path loss, so the signal received on Earth is very, very weak. Active satellites, on the other hand, amplify the received signal before retransmitting it to the receiver on the ground. Passive satellites were the first communications satellites, but are little used now.
Telstar was the second active, direct relay communications satellite. Belonging to AT&T as part of a multi-national agreement between AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories, NASA, the British General Post Office, and the French National PTT (Post Office) to develop satellite communications, it was launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral on July 10, 1962, in the first privately sponsored space launch. Relay 1 was launched on December 13, 1962, and it became the first satellite to transmit across the Pacific Ocean on November 22, 1963.
An immediate antecedent of the geostationary satellites was the Hughes Aircraft Company's Syncom 2, launched on July 26, 1963. Syncom 2 was the first communications satellite in a geosynchronous orbit. It revolved around the earth once per day at constant speed, but because it still had north-south motion, special equipment was needed to track it. Its successor, Syncom 3 was the first geostationary communications satellite. Syncom 3 obtained a geosynchronous orbit, without a north-south motion, making it appear from the ground as a stationary object in the sky.
Beginning with the Viking program, all Mars landers, aside from Mars Pathfinder, have used orbiting spacecraft as communications satellites for relaying their data to Earth. The landers use UHF transmitters to send their data to the orbiters, which then relay the data to Earth using either X band or Ka band frequencies. These higher frequencies, along with more powerful transmitters and larger antennas, permit the orbiters to send the data much faster than the landers could manage transmitting directly to Earth, which conserves valuable time on the receiving antennas.
Communications satellites usually have one of three primary types of orbit, while other orbital classifications are used to further specify orbital details.
As satellites in MEO and LEO orbit the Earth faster, they do not remain visible in the sky to a fixed point on Earth continually like a geostationary satellite, but appear to a ground observer to cross the sky and "set" when they go behind the Earth. Therefore, to provide continuous communications capability with these lower orbits requires a larger number of satellites, so one will always be in the sky for transmission of communication signals. However, due to their relatively small distance to the Earth their signals are stronger.
A low Earth orbit (LEO) typically is a circular orbit about above the earth's surface and, correspondingly, a period (time to revolve around the earth) of about 90 minutes.
Because of their low altitude, these satellites are only visible from within a radius of roughly from the sub-satellite point. In addition, satellites in low earth orbit change their position relative to the ground position quickly. So even for local applications, many satellites are needed if the mission requires uninterrupted connectivity.
Low-Earth-orbiting satellites are less expensive to launch into orbit than geostationary satellites and, due to proximity to the ground, do not require as high signal strength ("Recall that signal strength falls off as the square of the distance from the source, so the effect is dramatic)". Thus there is a trade off between the number of satellites and their cost.
In addition, there are important differences in the onboard and ground equipment needed to support the two types of missions.
A group of satellites working in concert is known as a satellite constellation. Two such constellations, intended to provide satellite phone services, primarily to remote areas, are the Iridium and Globalstar systems. The Iridium system has 66 satellites.
It is also possible to offer discontinuous coverage using a low-Earth-orbit satellite capable of storing data received while passing over one part of Earth and transmitting it later while passing over another part. This will be the case with the CASCADE system of Canada's CASSIOPE communications satellite. Another system using this store and forward method is Orbcomm.
A MEO is a satellite in orbit somewhere between above the earth's surface. MEO satellites are similar to LEO satellites in functionality. MEO satellites are visible for much longer periods of time than LEO satellites, usually between 2 and 8 hours. MEO satellites have a larger coverage area than LEO satellites. A MEO satellite's longer duration of visibility and wider footprint means fewer satellites are needed in a MEO network than a LEO network. One disadvantage is that a MEO satellite's distance gives it a longer time delay and weaker signal than a LEO satellite, although these limitations are not as severe as those of a GEO satellite.
Like LEOs, these satellites do not maintain a stationary distance from the earth. This is in contrast to the geostationary orbit, where satellites are always from the earth.
Typically the orbit of a medium earth orbit satellite is about above earth. In various patterns, these satellites make the trip around earth in anywhere from 2 to 8 hours.
In 1962, the communications satellite, Telstar, was launched. It was a medium earth orbit satellite designed to help facilitate high-speed telephone signals. Although it was the first practical way to transmit signals over the horizon, its major drawback was soon realized. Because its orbital period of about 2.5 hours did not match the Earth's rotational period of 24 hours, continuous coverage was impossible. It was apparent that multiple MEOs needed to be used in order to provide continuous coverage.
To an observer on Earth, a satellite in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, in a fixed position in the sky. This is because it revolves around the Earth at Earth's own angular velocity (one revolution per sidereal day, in an equatorial orbit).
A geostationary orbit is useful for communications because ground antennas can be aimed at the satellite without their having to track the satellite's motion. This is relatively inexpensive.
In applications that require many ground antennas, such as DirecTV distribution, the savings in ground equipment can more than outweigh the cost and complexity of placing a satellite into orbit.
By 2000, Hughes Space and Communications (now Boeing Satellite Development Center) had built nearly 40 percent of the more than one hundred satellites in service worldwide. Other major satellite manufacturers include Space Systems/Loral, Orbital Sciences Corporation with the Star Bus series, Indian Space Research Organisation, Lockheed Martin (owns the former RCA Astro Electronics/GE Astro Space business), Northrop Grumman, Alcatel Space, now Thales Alenia Space, with the Spacebus series, and Astrium.
Geostationary satellites must operate above the equator and therefore appear lower on the horizon as the receiver gets farther from the equator. This will cause problems for extreme northerly latitudes, affecting connectivity and causing multipath interference (caused by signals reflecting off the ground and into the ground antenna).
Thus, for areas close to the North (and South) Pole, a geostationary satellite may appear below the horizon. Therefore, Molniya orbit satellites have been launched, mainly in Russia, to alleviate this problem.
Molniya orbits can be an appealing alternative in such cases. The Molniya orbit is highly inclined, guaranteeing good elevation over selected positions during the northern portion of the orbit. (Elevation is the extent of the satellite's position above the horizon. Thus, a satellite at the horizon has zero elevation and a satellite directly overhead has elevation of 90 degrees.)
The Molniya orbit is designed so that the satellite spends the great majority of its time over the far northern latitudes, during which its ground footprint moves only slightly. Its period is one half day, so that the satellite is available for operation over the targeted region for six to nine hours every second revolution. In this way a constellation of three Molniya satellites (plus in-orbit spares) can provide uninterrupted coverage.
The first satellite of the Molniya series was launched on April 23, 1965 and was used for experimental transmission of TV signals from a Moscow uplink station to downlink stations located in Siberia and the Russian Far East, in Norilsk, Khabarovsk, Magadan and Vladivostok. In November 1967 Soviet engineers created a unique system of national TV network of satellite television, called Orbita, that was based on Molniya satellites.
In the United States, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) was established in 1994 to consolidate the polar satellite operations of
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). NPOESS manages a number of satellites for various purposes; for example, METSAT for meteorological satellite, EUMETSAT for the European branch of the program, and METOP for meteorological operations.
These orbits are sun synchronous, meaning that they cross the equator at the same local time each day. For example, the satellites in the NPOESS (civilian) orbit will cross the equator, going from south to north, at times 1:30 P.M., 5:30 P.M., and 9:30 P.M.
Communications Satellites are usually composed of the following subsystems:
The bandwidth available from a satellite depends upon the number of transponders provided by the satellite. Each service (TV, Voice, Internet, radio) requires a different amount of bandwidth for transmission. This is typically known as link budgeting and a network simulator can be used to arrive at the exact value.
Allocating frequencies to satellite services is a complicated process which requires international coordination and planning. This is carried out under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
To facilitate frequency planning, the world is divided into three regions:
Region 1: Europe, Africa, what was formerly the Soviet Union, and Mongolia
Region 2: North and South America and Greenland
Region 3: Asia (excluding region 1 areas), Australia, and the southwest Pacific
Within these regions, frequency bands are allocated to various satellite services, although a given service may be allocated different frequency bands in different regions. Some of the services provided by satellites are:
The first and historically most important application for communication satellites was in intercontinental long distance telephony. The fixed Public Switched Telephone Network relays telephone calls from land line telephones to an earth station, where they are then transmitted to a geostationary satellite. The downlink follows an analogous path. Improvements in submarine communications cables through the use of fiber-optics caused some decline in the use of satellites for fixed telephony in the late 20th century.
Satellite communications are still used in many applications today. Remote islands such as Ascension Island, Saint Helena, Diego Garcia, and Easter Island, where no submarine cables are in service, need satellite telephones. There are also regions of some continents and countries where landline telecommunications are rare to nonexistent, for example large regions of South America, Africa, Canada, China, Russia, and Australia. Satellite communications also provide connection to the edges of Antarctica and Greenland. Other land use for satellite phones are rigs at sea, a back up for hospitals, military, and recreation. Ships at sea, as well as planes, often use satellite phones.
Satellite phone systems can be accomplished by a number of means. On a large scale, often there will be a local telephone system in an isolated area with a link to the telephone system in a main land area. There are also services that will patch a radio signal to a telephone system. In this example, almost any type of satellite can be used. Satellite phones connect directly to a constellation of either geostationary or low-Earth-orbit satellites. Calls are then forwarded to a satellite teleport connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network .
As television became the main market, its demand for simultaneous delivery of relatively few signals of large bandwidth to many receivers being a more precise match for the capabilities of geosynchronous comsats. Two satellite types are used for North American television and radio: Direct broadcast satellite (DBS), and Fixed Service Satellite (FSS).
The definitions of FSS and DBS satellites outside of North America, especially in Europe, are a bit more ambiguous. Most satellites used for direct-to-home television in Europe have the same high power output as DBS-class satellites in North America, but use the same linear polarization as FSS-class satellites. Examples of these are the Astra, Eutelsat, and Hotbird spacecraft in orbit over the European continent. Because of this, the terms FSS and DBS are more so used throughout the North American continent, and are uncommon in Europe.
Fixed Service Satellites use the C band, and the lower portions of the Ku band. They are normally used for broadcast feeds to and from television networks and local affiliate stations (such as program feeds for network and syndicated programming, live shots, and backhauls), as well as being used for distance learning by schools and universities, business television (BTV), Videoconferencing, and general commercial telecommunications. FSS satellites are also used to distribute national cable channels to cable television headends.
Free-to-air satellite TV channels are also usually distributed on FSS satellites in the Ku band. The Intelsat Americas 5, Galaxy 10R and AMC 3 satellites over North America provide a quite large amount of FTA channels on their Ku band transponders.
The American Dish Network DBS service has also recently used FSS technology as well for their programming packages requiring their SuperDish antenna, due to Dish Network needing more capacity to carry local television stations per the FCC's "must-carry" regulations, and for more bandwidth to carry HDTV channels.
A direct broadcast satellite is a communications satellite that transmits to small DBS satellite dishes (usually 18 to 24 inches or 45 to 60 cm in diameter). Direct broadcast satellites generally operate in the upper portion of the microwave Ku band. DBS technology is used for DTH-oriented (Direct-To-Home) satellite TV services, such as DirecTV, DISH Network and Orby TV in the United States, Bell TV and Shaw Direct in Canada, Freesat and Sky in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand and DSTV in South Africa.
Operating at lower frequency and lower power than DBS, FSS satellites require a much larger dish for reception (3 to 8 feet (1 to 2.5 m) in diameter for Ku band, and 12 feet (3.6 m) or larger for C band). They use linear polarization for each of the transponders' RF input and output (as opposed to circular polarization used by DBS satellites), but this is a minor technical difference that users do not notice. FSS satellite technology was also originally used for DTH satellite TV from the late 1970s to the early 1990s in the United States in the form of TVRO (TeleVision Receive Only) receivers and dishes. It was also used in its Ku band form for the now-defunct Primestar satellite TV service.
Some satellites have been launched that have transponders in the Ka band, such as DirecTV's SPACEWAY-1 satellite, and Anik F2. NASA and ISRO have also launched experimental satellites carrying Ka band beacons recently.
Some manufacturers have also introduced special antennas for mobile reception of DBS television. Using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology as a reference, these antennas automatically re-aim to the satellite no matter where or how the vehicle (on which the antenna is mounted) is situated. These mobile satellite antennas are popular with some recreational vehicle owners. Such mobile DBS antennas are also used by JetBlue Airways for DirecTV (supplied by LiveTV, a subsidiary of JetBlue), which passengers can view on-board on LCD screens mounted in the seats.
Satellite radio offers audio broadcast services in some countries, notably the United States. Mobile services allow listeners to roam a continent, listening to the same audio programming anywhere.
A satellite radio or subscription radio (SR) is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communications satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals.
Satellite radio offers a meaningful alternative to ground-based radio services in some countries, notably the United States. Mobile services, such as SiriusXM, and Worldspace, allow listeners to roam across an entire continent, listening to the same audio programming anywhere they go. Other services, such as Music Choice or Muzak's satellite-delivered content, require a fixed-location receiver and a dish antenna. In all cases, the antenna must have a clear view to the satellites. In areas where tall buildings, bridges, or even parking garages obscure the signal, repeaters can be placed to make the signal available to listeners.
Initially available for broadcast to stationary TV receivers, by 2004 popular mobile direct broadcast applications made their appearance with the arrival of two satellite radio systems in the United States: Sirius and XM Satellite Radio Holdings. Later they merged to become the conglomerate SiriusXM.
Radio services are usually provided by commercial ventures and are subscription-based. The various services are proprietary signals, requiring specialized hardware for decoding and playback. Providers usually carry a variety of news, weather, sports, and music channels, with the music channels generally being commercial-free.
In areas with a relatively high population density, it is easier and less expensive to reach the bulk of the population with terrestrial broadcasts. Thus in the UK and some other countries, the contemporary evolution of radio services is focused on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) services or HD Radio, rather than satellite radio.
Amateur radio operators have access to amateur satellites, which have been designed specifically to carry amateur radio traffic. Most such satellites operate as spaceborne repeaters, and are generally accessed by amateurs equipped with UHF or VHF radio equipment and highly directional antennas such as Yagis or dish antennas. Due to launch costs, most current amateur satellites are launched into fairly low Earth orbits, and are designed to deal with only a limited number of brief contacts at any given time. Some satellites also provide data-forwarding services using the X.25 or similar protocols.
After the 1990s, satellite communication technology has been used as a means to connect to the Internet via broadband data connections. This can be very useful for users who are located in remote areas, and cannot access a broadband connection, or require high availability of services.
Communications satellites are used for military communications applications, such as Global Command and Control Systems. Examples of military systems that use communication satellites are the MILSTAR, the DSCS, and the FLTSATCOM of the United States, NATO satellites, United Kingdom satellites (for instance Skynet), and satellites of the former Soviet Union. India has launched its first Military Communication satellite GSAT-7, its transponders operate in UHF, F, C and bands. Typically military satellites operate in the UHF, SHF (also known as X-band) or EHF (also known as Ka band) frequency bands. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45207 |
Cripple Creek, Colorado
Cripple Creek is the Statutory City that is the county seat of Teller County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 1,189 at the 2010 United States Census. Cripple Creek is a former gold mining camp located southwest of Colorado Springs near the base of Pikes Peak. The Cripple Creek Historic District, which received National Historic Landmark status in 1961, includes part or all of the city and the surrounding area. The city is now a part of the Colorado Springs, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area.
For many years, Cripple Creek's high valley, at an elevation of , was considered no more important than a cattle pasture. Many prospectors avoided the area after the "Mount Pisgah hoax", a mini gold rush caused by salting (adding gold to worthless rock).
On the 20th of October, 1890, Robert Miller "Bob" Womack discovered a rich ore and the last great Colorado gold rush began. Thousands of prospectors flocked to the region, and before long Winfield Scott Stratton located the famous Independence lode, one of the largest gold strikes in history. In three years, the population increased from five hundred to ten thousand. Although $500 million worth of gold ore was dug from Cripple Creek, Womack died penniless on 10 August 1909.
In 1896, Cripple Creek suffered two disastrous fires. The first occurred on April 25, destroying half of the city, including much of the business district. Four days later, another fire destroyed much of the remaining half. The city was rebuilt in a period of a few months; most historic buildings today date back to 1896.
By 1900, Cripple Creek and its sister city, Victor, were substantial mining communities.
During the 1890s, many of the miners in the Cripple Creek area joined a miners' union, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). A significant strike took place in 1894, marking one of the few times in history that a sitting governor called out the national guard to protect miners from anti-union violence by forces under the control of the mine owners. By 1903, the allegiance of the state government had shifted, and Governor James Peabody sent the Colorado National Guard into Cripple Creek with the goal of destroying union power in the gold camps. The WFM strike of 1903 and the governor's response precipitated the Colorado Labor Wars, a struggle that took many lives.
The 1904 silent film short, "Tracked by Bloodhounds; or, A Lynching at Cripple Creek", directed by Harry Buckwalter, was filmed in the area.
Through 2005, the Cripple Creek district produced about 23.5 million troy ounces (979 1/6 troy tons; 731 metric tons) of gold. The underground mines are mostly idle, except for a few small operations. There are significant underground deposits remaining which may become feasible to mine in the future. Large scale open pit mining and cyanide heap leach extraction of near-surface ore material, left behind by the old time miners as low grade, has taken place since 1994 east of Cripple Creek, near its sister city of Victor, Colorado.
The current mining operation is conducted by Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company (CC&V), run currently by Newmont Mining. The mine operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Mine operations, maintenance, and processing departments work a rotating day/night schedule in 12-hour shifts.
With many empty storefronts and picturesque homes, Cripple Creek once drew interest as a ghost town. At one point, the population dropped to a few hundred, although Cripple Creek was never entirely deserted. In the 1970s and 1980s, travelers on photo safari might find themselves in a beautiful decaying historic town. A few restaurants and bars catered to tourists, who could pass weathered empty homes with lace curtains hanging in broken windows.
Colorado voters allowed Cripple Creek to establish legalized gambling in 1991. Cripple Creek is currently more of a gambling and tourist town than a ghost town. Casinos now occupy many historic buildings. Casino gambling has been successful in bringing revenue and vitality back into the area. It also provides funding for the "State Historical Fund", administered by the Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. In 2012, Colorado casinos produced over $104 million in tax revenue for these programs.
The gold-bearing area of the Cripple Creek district was the core of an ancient volcano within the central Colorado volcanic field, last active over 30 million years ago during the Oligocene. Free or native gold was found near the surface but at depth unoxidized gold tellurides and sulfides were found.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land.
The community takes its name from nearby Cripple Creek.
As of the census of 2000, there were 1,115 people, 494 households, and 282 families residing in the city. The population density was 988.7 people per square mile (381.0/km²). There were 737 housing units at an average density of 653.5 per square mile (251.8/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 92.29% White, 0.90% African American, 2.15% Native American, 0.81% Asian, 1.43% from other races, and 2.42% from two or more races. 6.01% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 494 households out of which 23.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.7% were married couples living together, 7.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 42.9% were non-families. 30.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 4.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.26 and the average family size was 2.82.
In the city, the population was spread out with 22.2% under the age of 18, 10.4% from 18 to 24, 29.2% from 25 to 44, 30.2% from 45 to 64, and 8.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 104.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 100.0 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $39,261, and the median income for a family was $41,685. Males had a median income of $27,600 versus $25,000 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,607. About 4.7% of families and 6.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 3.8% of those under age 18 and 6.1% of those age 65 or over.
Students are served by the Cripple Creek-Victor High School.
The Cripple Creek and Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad, a narrow gauge train ride from Cripple Creek passes several small ghost towns, goldmines, and glory holes. The Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine provides tours into a real gold mine led by a real gold miner.
In 2006 Cripple Creek broke ground on the new Pikes Peak Heritage Center. Constructed at a cost over $2.5 million, the building is over of educational displays. State of the art electronics are used throughout the building and there is also a theatre showing historical films about the area. Newly named the Cripple Creek Heritage Center, admission is free.
Cripple Creek is also home to the Butte Opera House, a theatre first managed by the Mackin family (previous owners of the Imperial Hotel and producers of a long-running, much-loved melodrama theatre company). The Butte is currently the home of the Mountain Rep Theatre Company that produces plays, musicals, and classic melodramas year-round, including such shows as "Forever Plaid, Hot Night in the Old Town, A Cripple Creek Christmas Carol", "The Rocky Horror Show," and "The Christmas Donkey""."
Cripple Creek features many events throughout the year like the Cripple Creek Ice Festival, Donkey Derby Days, the July 4 Celebration, and a Gold Camp Christmas.
Cripple Creek is home to the following casinos:
Cripple Creek is served by the Cripple Creek-Victor School District RE-1. The district has one elementary school and one junior/senior high school, including Cresson Elementary School and Cripple Creek-Victor Junior/Senior High School. Principal of the Jr/Sr High School is Tory Richey and Les Lindauer is the Superintendent of Schools. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45210 |
Belarusian language
Belarusian (; ) is an East Slavic language spoken by Belarusians. It is the official language of Belarus, along with Russian. It is additionally spoken in parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine by Belarusian minorities in those countries.
Before Belarus gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the language was only known in English as "Byelorussian" or "Belorussian", transliterating the Russian name, , or alternatively as "White Ruthenian" () or "White Russian". Following independence, it has acquired the additional name "Belarusian".
As one of the East Slavic languages, Belarusian shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are all mutually intelligible, effectively forming a dialect continuum. Its predecessor stage is known as Ruthenian (14th to 17th centuries), in turn descended from Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries).
In the first Belarus Census of 1999, the Belarusian language was declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens (36.7% of the population). About 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their "mother tongue". Other sources, such as Ethnologue, put the figure at approximately 2.5 million active speakers.
According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is actively used by only 11.9% of Belarusians. Approximately 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52.5% can only read and speak it.
In the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, the Belarusian language is stated to be vulnerable.
Although closely related to other East Slavic languages, especially Ukrainian, Belarusian phonology is distinct in a number of ways. The phoneme inventory of the modern Belarusian language consists of 45 to 54 phonemes: 6 vowels and 39 to 48 consonants, depending on how they are counted. When the nine geminate consonants are excluded as mere variations, there are 39 consonants, and excluding rare consonants further decreases the count. The number 48 includes "all" consonant sounds, including variations and rare sounds, which may be semantically distinct in the modern Belarusian language.
The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic script, which was first used as an alphabet for the Old Church Slavonic language. The modern Belarusian form was defined in 1918, and consists of thirty-two letters. Before that, Belarusian had also been written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet (Łacinka / Лацінка), the Belarusian Arabic alphabet (by Lipka Tatars) and the Hebrew alphabet (by Belarusian Jews). The Glagolitic script has been used, sporadically, until the 11th or 12th century.
There are several systems of romanizing (transliterating) written Belarusian texts; see Romanization of Belarusian. Rarely is the Belarusian Latin alphabet used.
Standardized Belarusian grammar in its modern form was adopted in 1959, with minor amendments in 1985 and 2008. It was developed from the initial form set down by Branislaw Tarashkyevich (first printed in Vilnius, 1918)., and it is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of Minsk-Vilnius region. Historically, there have been several other alternative standardized forms of Belarusian grammar.
Belarusian grammar is mostly synthetic and partly analytic, and overall quite similar to Russian grammar. Belarusian orthography, however, differs significantly from Russian orthography in some respects, due to the fact that it is a phonetic orthography that closely represents the surface phonology, whereas Russian orthography represents the underlying morphophonology.
The most significant instance of this is found in the representation of vowel reduction, and in particular "akannye", the merger of unstressed /a/ and /o/, which exists in both Russian and Belarusian. Belarusian always spells this merged sound as , whereas Russian uses either or , according to what the "underlying" phoneme is (determined by identifying the related words where the vowel is being stressed or, if no such words exist, by either etymology or pronunciation in dialects that lack the merger). This means that Belarusian noun and verb paradigms, in their written form, have numerous instances of alternations between written and , whereas no such alternations exist in the corresponding written paradigms in Russian. This can significantly complicate the foreign speakers' task of learning these paradigms; on the other hand, though, it makes spelling easier for native speakers.
Besides the standardized lect, there are two main dialects of the Belarusian language, the North-Eastern and the South-Western. In addition, there is a transitional Middle Belarusian dialect group and the separate West Palyesian dialect group.
The North-Eastern and the South-Western dialects are separated by a hypothetical line Ashmyany–Minsk–Babruysk–Homyel, with the area of the Middle Belarusian dialect group placed on and along this line.
The North-Eastern dialect is chiefly characterized by the "soft sounding R" () and "strong akanye" (), and the South-Western dialect is chiefly characterized by the "hard sounding R" () and "moderate akanye" ().
The West Polesian dialect group is a dialiect of Ukrainian and is separated by the conventional line Pruzhany–Ivatsevichy–Telekhany–Luninyets–Stolin.
There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian languages. Belarusian has 80% mutual intelligibility with Ukrainian, 75% with Russian, and 41% with the Polish language.
Within East Slavic, the Belarusian language is most closely related to Ukrainian.
The modern Belarusian language was redeveloped on the base of the vernacular spoken remnants of the Ruthenian language, surviving in the ethnic Belarusian territories in the 19th century. The end of the 18th century (the times of the Divisions of Commonwealth) is the usual conventional borderline between the Ruthenian and Modern Belarusian stages of development.
By the end of the 18th century, (Old) Belarusian was still common among the minor nobility in eastern part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (in the territory of present-day Belarus). Jan Czeczot in the 1840s had mentioned that even his generation's grandfathers preferred speaking (Old) Belarusian. (According to A. N. Pypin, the Belarusian language was spoken in some areas among the minor nobility during the 19th century.) In its vernacular form, it was the language of the smaller town dwellers and of the peasantry and it had been the language of oral folklore. Teaching in Belarusian was conducted mainly in schools run by the Basilian order.
The development of Belarusian in the 19th century was strongly influenced by the political conflict in the territories of the former GDL, between the Russian Imperial authorities, trying to consolidate their rule over the "joined provinces", and the Polish and Polonised nobility, trying to bring back its pre-Partitions rule (see also: Polonization in times of Partitions).
In summary, the first two decades of the 19th century had seen the unprecedented prosperity of Polish culture and language in the former GDL lands, and had prepared the era of such famous "Belarusians by birth – Poles by choice," as Mickiewicz and Syrokomla. The era had seen the effective completion of the Polonization of the lowest level of the nobility, the further reduction of the area of use of contemporary Belarusian, and the effective folklorization of Belarusian culture.
Due both to the state of the people's education and to the strong positions of Polish and Polonized nobility, it was only after the 1880s–1890s that the educated Belarusian element, still shunned because of "peasant origin", began to appear in state offices.
In 1846, ethnographer Pavel Shpilevskiy prepared a Belarusian grammar (using the Cyrillic alphabet) on the basis of the folk dialects of the Minsk region. However, the Russian Academy of Sciences refused to print his submission, on the basis that it had not been prepared in a sufficiently scientific manner.
From the mid-1830s ethnographic works began to appear, and tentative attempts to study the language were instigated (e.g., Shpilevskiy's grammar). The Belarusian literary tradition began to re-form, based on the folk language, initiated by the works of Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich. "See also": Jan Czeczot, Jan Barszczewski.
At the beginning of the 1860s, both the Russian and Polish parties in Belarusian lands had begun to realise that the decisive role in the upcoming conflicts was shifting to the peasantry, overwhelmingly Belarusian. So a large amount of propaganda appeared, targeted at the peasantry and written in Belarusian; notably, the anti-Russian, anti-Tsarist, anti-Eastern Orthodox "Manifesto" and the newspaper "Peasants' Truth" (1862–1863) by Kalinowski, and anti-Polish, anti-Revolutionary, pro-Orthodox booklets and poems (1862).
The advent of the all-Russian "narodniki" and Belarusian national movements (late 1870s–early 1880s) renewed interest in the Belarusian language (See also: Homan (1884), Bahushevich, Yefim Karskiy, Dovnar-Zapol'skiy, Bessonov, Pypin, Sheyn, Nosovich). The Belarusian literary tradition was also renewed ("see also": F. Bahushevich). It was in these times that F. Bahushevich made his famous appeal to Belarusians: "Do not forsake our language, lest you pass away" ().
In course of the 1897 Russian Empire Census, about 5.89 million people declared themselves speakers of Belarusian.
The end of the 19th century, however, still showed that the urban language of Belarusian towns remained either Polish or Russian. The same census showed that towns with a population greater than 50,000 had fewer than a tenth Belarusian speakers. This state of affairs greatly contributed to a perception that Belarusian was a "rural" and "uneducated" language.
However, the census was a major breakthrough for the first steps of the Belarusian national self-awareness and identity, since it clearly showed to the Imperial authorities and the still-strong Polish minority that the population and the language were neither Polish nor Russian.
The rising influence of Socialist ideas advanced the emancipation of the Belarusian language still further ("see also:" Belarusian Socialist Assembly, Circle of Belarusian People's Education and Belarusian Culture, Belarusian Socialist Lot, Socialist Party "White Russia", Alaiza Pashkievich, Nasha Dolya). The fundamental works of Yefim Karskiy marked a turning point in the scientific perception of Belarusian. The ban on publishing books and papers in Belarusian was officially removed (25 December 1904). The unprecedented surge of national feeling in the 20th century, especially among the workers and peasants, particularly after the events of 1905, gave momentum to the intensive development of Belarusian literature and press (See also: Naša niva, Yanka Kupala, Yakub Kolas).
During the 19th and early 20th century, there was no normative Belarusian grammar. Authors wrote as they saw fit, usually representing the particularities of different Belarusian dialects. The scientific groundwork for the introduction of a truly scientific and modern grammar of the Belarusian language was laid down by the linguist Yefim Karskiy.
By the early 1910s, the continuing lack of a codified Belarusian grammar was becoming intolerably obstructive in the opinion of uniformitarian prescriptivists. Then Russian academician Shakhmatov, chair of the Russian language and literature department of St. Petersburg University, approached the board of the Belarusian newspaper "Naša niva" with a proposal that a Belarusian linguist be trained under his supervision in order to be able to create documentation of the grammar. Initially, the famous Belarusian poet Maksim Bahdanovich was to be entrusted with this work. However, Bahdanovich's poor health (tuberculosis) precluded his living in the climate of St. Petersburg, so Branislaw Tarashkyevich, a fresh graduate of the Vilnya Liceum No. 2, was selected for the task.
In the Belarusian community, great interest was vested in this enterprise. The already famous Belarusian poet Yanka Kupala, in his letter to Tarashkyevich, urged him to "hurry with his much-needed work". Tarashkyevich had been working on the preparation of the grammar during 1912–1917, with the help and supervision of Shakhmatov and Karskiy. Tarashkyevich had completed the work by the autumn of 1917, even moving from the tumultuous Petrograd of 1917 to the relative calm of Finland in order to be able to complete it uninterrupted.
By the summer of 1918, it became obvious that there were insurmountable problems with the printing of Tarashkyevich's grammar in Petrograd: a lack of paper, type and qualified personnel. Meanwhile, his grammar had apparently been planned to be adopted in the workers' and peasants' schools of Belarus that were to be set up, so Tarashkyevich was permitted to print his book abroad. In June 1918, he arrived in Vilnius, via Finland. The Belarusian Committee petitioned the administration to allow the book to be printed. Finally, the first edition of the "Belarusian grammar for schools" was printed (Vil'nya, 1918).
There existed at least two other contemporary attempts at codifying the Belarusian grammar. In 1915, Rev. Balyaslaw Pachopka had prepared a Belarusian grammar using the Latin script. Belarusian linguist S. M. Nyekrashevich considered Pachopka's grammar unscientific and ignorant of the principles of the language. But Pachopka's grammar was reportedly taught in an unidentified number of schools, from 1918 for an unspecified period. Another grammar was supposedly jointly prepared by A. Lutskyevich and Ya. Stankyevich, and differed from Tarashkyevich's grammar somewhat in the resolution of some key aspects.
On 22 December 1915, Paul von Hindenburg issued an order on schooling in German Army-occupied territories in the Russian Empire (Ober Ost), banning schooling in Russian and including the Belarusian language in an exclusive list of four languages made mandatory in the respective native schooling systems (Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish, Yiddish). School attendance was not made mandatory, though. Passports at this time were bilingual, in German and in one of the "native languages". Also at this time, Belarusian preparatory schools, printing houses, press organs were opened ("see also:" Homan (1916)).
After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, the Belarusian language became an important factor in political activities in the Belarusian lands ("see also:" Central Council of Belarusian Organisations, Great Belarusian Council, First All-Belarusian Congress, Belnatskom). In the Belarusian People's Republic, Belarusian was used as the only official language (decreed by Belarusian People's Secretariat on 28 April 1918). Subsequently, in the Belarusian SSR, Belarusian was decreed to be one of the four (Belarusian, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish) official languages (decreed by Central Executive Committee of BSSR in February 1921).
A decree of 15 July 1924 confirmed that the Belarusian, Russian, Yiddish and Polish languages had equal status in Soviet Belarus.
In the BSSR, Tarashkyevich's grammar had been officially accepted for use in state schooling after its re-publication in unchanged form, first in 1922 by Yazep Lyosik under his own name as "Practical grammar. P[art]. I", then in 1923 by the Belarusian State Publishing House under the title "Belarusian language. Grammar. Ed. I. 1923", also by "Ya. Lyosik".
In 1925, Lyosik added two new chapters, addressing the orthography of compound words and partly modifying the orthography of assimilated words. From this point on, Belarusian grammar had been popularized and taught in the educational system in that form. The ambiguous and insufficient development of several components of Tarashkyevich's grammar was perceived to be the cause of some problems in practical usage, and this led to discontent with the grammar.
In 1924–25, Lyosik and his brother Anton Lyosik prepared and published their project of orthographic reform, proposing a number of radical changes. A fully phonetic orthography was introduced. One of the most distinctive changes brought in was the principle of akanye (), wherein unstressed "o", pronounced in both Russian and Belarusian as /a/, is written as "а".
The Belarusian Academic Conference on Reform of the Orthography and Alphabet was convened in 1926. After discussions on the project, the Conference made resolutions on some of the problems. However, the Lyosik brothers' project had not addressed all the problematic issues, so the Conference was not able to address all of those.
As the outcome of the conference, the Orthographic Commission was created to prepare the project of the actual reform. This was instigated on 1 October 1927, headed by S. Nyekrashevich, with the following principal guidelines of its work adopted:
During its work in 1927–29, the Commission had actually prepared the project for spelling reform. The resulting project had included both completely new rules and existing rules in unchanged and changed forms, some of the changes being the work of the Commission itself, and others resulting from the resolutions of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926), re-approved by the Commission.
Notably, the use of the "Ь" (soft sign) before the combinations "consonant+iotified vowel" ("softened consonants"), which had been previously denounced as highly redundant (e.g., in the proceedings of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926)), was cancelled. However, the complete resolution of the highly important issue of the orthography of unstressed "Е" ("IE") was not achieved.
Both the resolutions of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926) and the project of the Orthographic Commission (1930) caused much disagreement in the Belarusian academic environment. Several elements of the project were to be put under appeal in the "higher (political) bodies of power".
In West Belarus, under Polish rule, the Belarusian language was at a disadvantage. Schooling in the Belarusian language was obstructed, and printing in Belarusian experienced political oppression.
The prestige of the Belarusian language in the Western Belarus during the period hinged significantly on the image of the BSSR being the "true Belarusian home". This image, however, was strongly disrupted by the "purges" of "national-democrats" in BSSR (1929–30) and by the subsequent grammar reform (1933).
Tarashkyevich's grammar was re-published five times in Western Belarus. However, the 5th edition (1929) (reprinted verbatim in Belarus in 1991 and often referred to) was the version diverging from the previously published one, which Tarashkyevich had prepared disregarding the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926) resolutions.
In 1929–30, the Communist authorities of Soviet Belarus made a series of drastic crackdowns against the supposed "national-democratic counter-revolution" (informally "nats-dems" ()). Effectively, entire generations of Socialist Belarusian national activists in the first quarter of the 20th century were wiped out of political, scientific and social existence. Only the most famous cult figures (e.g. Yanka Kupala) were spared.
However, a new power group in Belarusian science quickly formed during these power shifts, under the virtual leadership of the Head of the Philosophy Institute of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, academician S. Ya. Vol’fson (). The book published under his editorship, "Science in Service of Nats-Dems’ Counter-Revolution" (1931), represented the new spirit of political life in Soviet Belarus.
The Reform of Belarusian Grammar (1933) had been brought out quite unexpectedly, supposedly [Stank 1936], with the project published in the central newspaper of the Belarusian Communist Party ("Zviazda)" on 1933-06-28 and the decree of the Council of People's Commissars (Council of Ministers) of BSSR issued on 1933-08-28, to gain the status of law on 1933-09-16.
There had been some post-facto speculations, too, that the 1930 project of the reform (as prepared by people who were no longer seen as politically "clean"), had been given for the "purification" to the "nats-dems" competition in the Academy of Sciences, which would explain the "block" nature of the differences between the 1930 and 1933 versions. Peculiarly, Yan Stankyevich in his notable critique of the reform [Stank 1936] failed to mention the 1930 project, dating the reform project to 1932.
The reform resulted in the grammar officially used, with further amendments, in Byelorussian SSR and modern Belarus. Sometimes this grammar is called the "official" grammar of the Belarusian language, to distinguish it from the "pre-reform" grammar, known as the "classic" grammar or Taraškievica (Tarashkevitsa). It is also known as "narkamauka", after the word "narkamat", a Belarusian abbreviation for People's Commissariat (ministry). The latter term bears a derogatory connotation.
The officially announced causes for the reform were:
The reform had been accompanied by a fervent press campaign directed against the "nats-dems not yet giving up."
The decree had been named "On Changing and Simplifying Belarusian Spelling" (), but the bulk of the changes had been introduced into the grammar. Yan Stankyevich in his critique of the reform talked about 25 changes, with one of them being strictly orthographical and 24 relating to both orthography and grammar. [Stank 1936]
Many of the changes in the orthography proper ("stronger principle of AH-ing," "no redundant soft sign," "uniform "nye" and "byez"") were, in fact, simply implementations of earlier proposals made by people who had subsequently suffered political suppression (e.g., Yazep Lyosik, Lastowski, Nyekrashevich, 1930 project). [Padluzhny 2004]
The morphological principle in the orthography had been strengthened, which also had been proposed in 1920s.
The "removal of the influences of the Polonisation" had been represented, effectively, by the:
The "removing of the artificial barriers between the Russian and Belarusian languages" (virtually the often-quoted "Russification of the Belarusian language", which may well happen to be a term coined by Yan Stankyevich) had, according to Stankyevich, moved the normative Belarusian morphology and syntax closer to their Russian counterparts, often removing from use the indigenous features of the Belarusian language. [Stank 1936]
Stankyevich also observed that some components of the reform had moved the Belarusian grammar to the grammars of other Slavonic languages, which would hardly be its goal. [Stank 1936]
In West Belarus, there had been some voices raised against the reform, chiefly by the non-Communist/non-socialist wing of the Belarusian national scene. Yan Stankyevich was named to the Belarusian Scientific Society, Belarusian National Committee and Society of the Friends of Belarusian Linguistics at Wilno University. Certain political and scientific groups and figures went on using the pre-reform orthography and grammar, however, thus multiplying and differing versions.
However, the reformed grammar and orthography had been used, too, for example during the process of Siarhei Prytytski in 1936.
During the Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany (1941–1944), the Belarusian collaborationists influenced newspapers and schools to use the Belarusian language. This variant did not use any of the post-1933 changes in vocabulary, orthography and grammar. Much publishing in Belarusian Latin script was done. In general, in the publications of the Soviet partisan movement in Belarus, the normative 1934 grammar was used.
After the Second World War, several major factors influenced the development of the Belarusian language. The most important was the implementation of the "rapprochement and unification of Soviet people" policy, which resulted by the 1980s in the Russian language effectively and officially assuming the role of the principal means of communication, with Belarusian relegated to a secondary role. The post-war growth in the number of publications in the Belarusian language in BSSR drastically lagged behind those in Russian. The use of Belarusian as the main language of education was gradually limited to rural schools and humanitarian faculties. The BSSR counterpart of the USSR law "On strengthening of ties between school and real life and on the further development of popular education in the USSR" (1958), adopted in 1959, along with introduction of a mandatory 8-year school education, made it possible for the parents of pupils to opt for non-mandatory studying of the "second language of instruction," which would be Belarusian in a Russian language school and vice versa. However, for example in the 1955/56 school year, there were 95% of schools with Russian as the primary language of instruction, and 5% with Belarusian as the primary language of instruction.
That was the source of concern for the nationally minded and caused, for example, the series of publications by Barys Sachanka in 1957–61 and the text named "Letter to a Russian Friend" by Alyaksyey Kawka (1979). The BSSR Communist party leader Kirill Mazurov made some tentative moves to strengthen the role of Belarusian language in the second half of the 1950s. However, the support for the Belarusian language could also be easily considered "too strong" and even identified with the support of "Belarusian nationalists and fascists".
After the beginning of Perestroika and the relaxing of political control in the late 1980s, a new campaign in support of the Belarusian language was mounted in BSSR, expressed in the "Letter of 58" and other publications, producing a certain level of popular support and resulting in the BSSR Supreme Soviet ratifying the "Law on Languages" (""; 26 January 1990) requiring the strengthening of the role of Belarusian in state and civic structures.
A discussion on problems in Belarusian orthography and on the further development of the language was held from 1935–1941. From 1949–1957 this continued, although it was deemed there was a need to amend some unwarranted changes to the 1933 reform. The Orthography Commission, headed by Yakub Kolas, set up the project in about 1951, but it was approved only in 1957, and the normative rules were published in 1959. This grammar had been accepted as normative for the Belarusian language since then, receiving minor practical changes in the 1985 edition.
A project to correct parts of the 1959 grammar was conducted from 2006 to 2007.
The process of government support for "Belarusization" began even before the breakup of the Soviet Union, with the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR passing a law on languages in 1990 that aimed for the gradual increase in prestige and general use of the Belarusian language over the next 10 years, followed by the creation that same year of a National Language Program to support this endeavor. After Belarus became independent in 1991, support for the cause Belarusian language gained in prestige and popular interest, with the post-Soviet Belarusian government continued creating policies to actively promote the use of the Belarusian language, especially in education. The creation of the 1994 Constitution declared Belarusian to be the sole official language, though Russian was given the status as "language of inter-ethnic communication". However, the implementation of the 1992–94 "Law on Languages" took place in such a way that it provoked public protests and was dubbed "Landslide Belarusization" and "undemocratic" by those opposing it in 1992–94.
In a controversial referendum held on 14 May 1995 the Belarusian language lost its exclusive status as the only state language. State support for Belarusian language and culture in general has dwindled since then, and Russian is dominant in everyday life in today's Belarus. In a 2006 article, Roy Medvedev compared the position of the Belarusian language in Belarus with that of the Irish language in the Republic of Ireland.
A spelling reform of the official Belarusian language, making the spelling of some words more similar to Taraškievič's system, was decided on July 23, 2008, and went into effect on September 1, 2010.
Under the regime of the authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko, members of the Belarusian speaking minority in Belarus complained about discrimination against the Belarusian language in Belarus.
Despite a formally equal status of Russian and Belarusian, Russian is primarily used by the Belarusian government, and cases of discrimination against the Belarusian language are not rare, even though the discrimination is not institutionalized. Authorities occasionally make minor concessions to demands for a widening of the usage of the Belarusian language.
Organizations promoting Belarusian language such as the Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society were reported being object of attacks by Belarus-based Russian neo-Nazi groups in the 1990s and 2000s.
The Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society has reported about the following categories of violations of the rights of Belarusian speakers in Belarus:
Belarusian speakers are facing numerous obstacles when trying to arrange Belarusian language education for their children. there are no Belarusian-language universities in the country.
In its 2016 country human rights on Belarus report, the US State Department also stated that there was "discrimination against ... those who sought to use the Belarusian language." "Because the government viewed many proponents of the Belarusian language as political opponents, authorities continued to harass and intimidate academic and cultural groups that sought to promote Belarusian and routinely rejected proposals to widen use of the language," the report said.
In the 2010s the situation of Belarusian has started to change slightly due to the efforts of language-advocacy institutions, of individual representatives of such educational, cultural, scientific and linguistic organizations as the Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society, the Belarus Academy of Sciences, the Belarusian Writers' Union, and in response to the endeavours of pro-Belarusian public figures from the media and communication field, musicians, philosophers, entrepreneurs and benefactors. And despite the language losing its exclusive position in the wake of the 1995 Belarusian referendum, new signs of the spread of Belarusian have appeared, trickling down into Belarusian society — with advertising campaigns supporting the cause (outdoor billboards promoting and acquainting people with the Belarusian language, branding campaigns for the leading telecommunication providers like Velcom, etc.), the simplified version of the Belarusian Latin alphabet on the metro map being introduced into the messages of the transport network, dedicated advertising festivals like AD!NAK upholding marketing communication in Belarusian, and informal language-courses (such as Mova Nanova, Mova ci kava, Movavedy) having sprung up in Minsk and around Belarus and spurring further interest of people, especially of young people, in developing good Belarusian communication skills in everyday life.
There exists an alternative literary norm of the Belarusian language, named (). The promoters and users of it prevalently refer to it as ("Classic orthography").
There are a number of names under which the Belarusian language has been known, both contemporary and historical. Some of the most dissimilar are from the Old Belarusian period.
Belarusian is represented by the ISO 639 code "be" or "bel", or more specifically by IETF language tags "be-1959acad" (so-called "Academic" ["governmental"] variant of Belarusian as codified in 1959) or "be-tarask" (Belarusian in Taraskievica orthography). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45213 |
Ali G
Alistair Leslie Graham, better known as Ali G, is a satirical fictional character created and performed by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Originally appearing on Channel 4's "The 11 O'Clock Show", and subsequently as the title character of Channel 4's "Da Ali G Show" in 2000 and on HBO in 2003–2004, he is also the title character of the film "Ali G Indahouse". In a 2001 poll by Channel 4 Ali G was ranked eighth on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.
In December 2007, in an interview with "The Daily Telegraph", Baron Cohen announced that Ali G, along with Borat, had been retired. However, Ali G returned at the 2012 British Comedy Awards to accept Baron Cohen's Outstanding Achievement Award, causing controversy by making jokes about Kate Middleton and Jimmy Savile. Ali G returned to television with "Ali G Rezurection" in 2014. "Rezurection" features new introductions by Ali G to some old highlights of "Da Ali G Show".
Ali G is a fictional stereotype of a British suburban male "chav" who imitates urban black British hip hop culture and British Jamaican culture, particularly through hip hop, reggae, drum and bass and jungle music, as well as speaking in rude boy-style English with borrowed expressions from Jamaican Patois. Ali G was part of a group called "Staines Massif", and grew up near Staines in Langley, Berkshire. He also lived part of his life in Staines (now called Staines-upon-Thames), north Surrey, 16 miles south-west of London. Baron Cohen has stated that BBC Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood was an influence on the development of his character – Westwood used to host Radio 1's Rap Show and speaks in a Multicultural London English dialect. Ali G's middle-class credentials mirror Westwood's: the latter was brought up in Lowestoft, Suffolk as a bishop's son.
Prior to his character's first appearance on "The 11 O'Clock Show", Baron Cohen had portrayed a similar character named MC Jocelyn Cheadle-Hume on a show he presented called "F2F", which ran on the ITV/Sky owned satellite channel Granada Talk TV. While chatting to a group of skateboarders, in character, Baron Cohen realised that people could be led to believe his character was real, and filmed a number of segments which were ordered off-air by London Weekend Television.
Ali G, a showy, well-educated, faux-streetwise poseur with a deeply stereotypical view of the world, first came to prominence on Channel 4's "The 11 O'Clock Show" as the "voice of da yoof" in 1998. He interviewed various public figures in the United Kingdom, always either embarrassing his interviewee by displaying a mixture of uninformed political incorrectness, or getting the interview 'victim' to agree to some breathtaking inaccuracy or insult.
Other examples of his bold interviewing style include getting Lindsay Urwin, the Bishop of Horsham, to admit that God created the Universe, and then asked him, "And since then, [God]'s just chilled?" Ali G asked the Bishop about God's appearance, to which the Bishop replied, "Well, he's sort of Jesus-shaped." During an interview with James Ferman (former director of the British Board of Film Classification), Ali G asks whether his made-up vulgarities would restrict a film to an over-18 audience, and suggests that film censorship be performed by younger persons who understand contemporary slang. In an interview with the chairman of the Arts Council of England Gerry Robinson Ali G's first question was: ""Why is the arts so – excuse me French, but – crap?""
Ali G was in a series of ads for the 2005–06 NBA season, in which he used his brand of off-kilter journalism to interview various NBA stars. The spots were directed by Spike Lee.
Ali G was also featured in the music video "Music" by Madonna as her limo driver. He complains that her "babylons" are not as big as they appear to be on TV and calls her "Maradona" when asking to be in her next video.
Ali G most recently appeared at the 88th Academy Awards. Baron Cohen did not tell the ceremony's producers beforehand that he would appear on stage as his Ali G character instead of himself. He and his wife, actress Isla Fisher, locked themselves in the bathroom for 40 minutes to secretly put on his costume, after telling people he had food poisoning.
Ali G is the leader of a fictional gang called "Da West Staines Massif", who currently lives in his grandmother's garage in a semi-detached house at 36 Cherry Blossom Close, in the heart of the "Staines Ghetto". He was educated at what he calls "da Matthew Arnold Skool", which is a real school in Staines.
Staines, a commuter town to the west of London, is completely different from the inner city ghetto that Ali G claims. In the same comic vein, he also makes reference to other similar stockbroker belt towns in the area, such as Egham, Langley and Englefield Green. Despite the incongruous nature of his hometown, he purports to exemplify inner city culture. Ali's full name is later revealed to be Alistair Leslie Graham (revealed in the eponymous film, much to his embarrassment).
Ali G speaks a comical patois in keeping with his delusions of being black with Jamaican ancestry and peppered with such catchphrases as "Aight" or "Aiii" (alright), "Booyakasha", "Big up Yaself", "Wagwaan", "West Side", "Batty Boy" "Respek", "For Real", "Punani", "Check It", "Wicked" and "Keep It Real". His trademark hand gesture closely resembles the "dip snap".
Although Baron Cohen has repeatedly stated that Ali G is a parody of suburban, privileged youth acting in a way that they think is typical of black people, some commentators have opined that the force of the humour is derived from stereotypes of blacks, not poseur whites. According to this view of the character, the suburban background written into Ali G's character serves as a false alibi.
The comedian Felix Dexter has said that he appreciated the humour of an innocent ignoramus confronting an expert with neither understanding the other, but felt that "a lot of the humour is laughing at black street culture and it is being celebrated because it allows the liberal middle classes to laugh at that culture in a safe context where they can retain their sense of political correctness". Fellow comedian Victoria Wood criticised Baron Cohen's style of comedy, saying that his "endless setting up of victims" was "tiresome" and akin to "laughing at lunatics". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45214 |
Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (born 13 October 1971) is an English actor, comedian, writer, director and film producer. He is known for his creation and portrayal of several fictional satirical characters, including Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gehard and Admiral General Aladeen. Like his idol Peter Sellers, Baron Cohen adopts a variety of accents and guises for his characters. He interacts with unsuspecting subjects, who do not realise they have been set up for self-revealing ridicule. On these interactions, "The Observer" states, "his career has been built on winding people up, while keeping a deadpan face".
Baron Cohen's other work includes voicing King Julien XIII in the "Madagascar" film series (2005–2012) and appearing in films such as "" (2006), "" (2007), "Hugo" (2011), and "Les Misérables" (2012). He made a cameo as a BBC News Anchor in "" (2013). In 2016, Baron Cohen appeared in the comedy film "Grimsby" and co-starred in the fantasy sequel "Alice Through the Looking Glass". Two years later, he created and starred in "Who Is America?" (2018) for Showtime, his first television project since "Da Ali G Show", for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy. The following year, Baron Cohen portrayed Eli Cohen in the limited series "The Spy" for OCS and Netflix, for which he received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Miniseries or Television Film.
Baron Cohen was named Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards for "The 11 O'Clock Show", and since then, he has received two BAFTA Awards for "Da Ali G Show", several Emmy nominations, a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the feature film "Borat". After the release of "Borat", Baron Cohen said he would retire Borat and Ali G because the public had become too familiar with the characters. After the release of "Brüno", he said he would retire that character. At the 2012 British Comedy Awards, he received the Outstanding Achievement Award, accepting the award while reprising his Ali G character. In 2013, he received the BAFTA Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy.
In 2018, "The Times" named Baron Cohen among the 30 best living comedians, and in 2019 a panel on the television channel Gold included him in a list of the greatest ever British comedians.
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen was born on 13 October 1971 in Hammersmith to Jewish parents. His mother, photographer Daniella Naomi ("née" Weiser), was born in Israel. His father, Gerald Baron Cohen (1932–2016), a clothing store owner, was born in London and raised in Wales. Baron Cohen was raised Jewish and is fluent in Hebrew.
Baron Cohen's maternal family were German Jewish emigrants to Israel. His paternal family were also Ashkenazi Jews, who moved to Pontypridd and London in the United Kingdom. His paternal grandfather, Morris Cohen, added "Baron" to his surname. His maternal grandmother, who lived in Haifa, Israel, trained as a ballet dancer in Germany. He has two older brothers: Erran and Amnon. Erran is a composer and has worked on several of Sacha's films. Baron Cohen's cousin Simon is an autism researcher.
Baron Cohen was educated at The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, an independent school in Elstree, Hertfordshire, read History at Christ's College, Cambridge and graduated in 1993 with upper-second-class honours. As an undergraduate, Baron Cohen wrote his thesis on the American civil rights movement. While a member of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, Baron Cohen performed in plays such as "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Cyrano de Bergerac", as well as in Habonim Dror Jewish theatre.
Growing up, Baron Cohen was a fan of Monty Python and Peter Cook, but his greatest comedic influence was Peter Sellers. Known for portraying a wide range of comic characters using different accents and guises, Sellers was referred to by Baron Cohen as "the most seminal force in shaping [his] early ideas on comedy". After leaving university, Baron Cohen worked for a time as a fashion model. By the early 1990s, he was hosting a weekly programme on Windsor cable television's local broadcasts with Carol Kirkwood, who later became a BBC weather forecaster. In 1995, Channel 4 was planning a replacement for its series "The Word", and disseminated an open call for new television presenters. Baron Cohen sent in a tape of himself in the character of Kristo, an Albanian fictional television reporter (who developed into the Kazakh Borat Sagdiyev), which caught the attention of a producer. Baron Cohen hosted "Pump TV" from 1995 to 1996.
In 1996, Baron Cohen began presenting the youth chat programme "F2F" for Granada Talk TV and had a small role in an advert for McCain Microchips, as a chef in a commercial entitled "Ping Pong". He took clown training in Paris, at the École Philippe Gaulier, studying under master-clown Philippe Gaulier. Of his former pupil, Gaulier says: "He was a good clown, full of spirit". Baron Cohen made his first feature film appearance in the British comedy "The Jolly Boys' Last Stand" (2000). Also in 2000, he played the part of Super Greg for a series of TV advertisements for Lee Jeans; the advertisements never aired, but the website for Super Greg created an internet sensation.
Baron Cohen appeared during two-minute sketches as his fashion reporter Brüno on the Paramount Comedy Channel during 1998. He shot to fame with his comic character Ali G, a fictional stereotype of a British suburban male "chav" who imitates urban black British hip hop culture and British Jamaican culture, as well as speaking in rude boy-style English with borrowed expressions from Jamaican Patois. Hailing from Staines (a suburban town in Surrey, to the west of London), Ali G started appearing on the British television show "The 11 O'Clock Show" on Channel 4, which first aired on 8 September 1998. A year after the première of the show, "GQ" named Baron Cohen comedian of the year. He won Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards, and at the British Academy Television Awards he was nominated for Best British Entertainment Performance.
"Da Ali G Show" began in 2000, and won the BAFTA for Best Comedy in the following year. Also in 2000, Baron Cohen as Ali G appeared as the limousine driver in Madonna's 2000 video "Music", directed by Jonas Åkerlund, who was also responsible for directing the titles for "Da Ali G Show". Baron Cohen is a supporter of the UK charity telethon Comic Relief, which is broadcast on the BBC, and as Ali G interviewed David Beckham and wife Victoria in 2001.
In a 2001 Channel 4 poll Ali G was ranked eighth on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. In 2002, Ali G was the central character in the feature film "Ali G Indahouse", in which he is elected to the British Parliament and foils a plot to bulldoze a community centre in his home town, Staines. His television show was exported to the United States in 2003, with new episodes set there, for HBO.
At the 2012 British Comedy Awards, 13 years after winning Best Newcomer at the 1999 Comedy Awards, Baron Cohen accepted the Outstanding Achievement Award from Sir Ben Kingsley in the guise of Ali G, and stated: "I is grown up now. I ain't living in my nan's house anymore. I is living in her garage".
Ali G's interviews with celebrities (often politicians) gained notoriety partly because the subjects were not privy to the joke that Ali G, rather than being a real interviewer, was a comic character played by Baron Cohen. According to "Rolling Stone" magazine, Baron Cohen would always enter the interview area in character as Ali G, carrying equipment and appearing to be an inconspicuous crew member. He would arrive with a suited man, whom the interviewee naturally thought was the interviewer. Baron Cohen, as Ali G, would sit down to begin conducting the interview by asking the interviewee some preliminary questions. The interviewee, however, would remain under the impression that the smartly-dressed director would be conducting the interview until short notice prior to cameras rolling: this would grant an advantage of surprise, whereby the interviewee would be less likely to opt out of the Ali interview prior to its start.
The Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev was first developed for short skits on "F2F" on Granada Television in the UK that Baron Cohen presented in 1996–1997, with the character at this time being known as Alexi Krickler. The character remained dormant while Baron Cohen concentrated on his Ali G persona, but with the subsequent success of Ali G Baron Cohen revisited his Borat character. Borat's sense of humour derives from his mocking of society through outrageous sociocultural viewpoints, his deadpan violation of social taboos and use of vulgar language and behaviour.
"", a feature film with Borat Sagdiyev at the centre, was screened at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and released in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2006, in the United States on 3 November 2006 and Australia 23 November 2006. The film follows Sagdiyev as he and his colleague Azamat Bagatov travel the US to produce a documentary about life in the country, all the while Sagdiyev attempts to enter into marriage with celebrity Pamela Anderson. The film is a mockumentary which includes interviews with various Americans that poke fun at American culture, as well as sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and jingoism. It debuted at the No. 1 spot in the US, taking in an estimated $26.4 million in just 837 theatres averaging $31,600 per theatre.
Baron Cohen won the 2007 Golden Globe in the "Best Actor – Musical or Comedy" category, his sixth such award. Although Borat was up for "Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy", the film lost to "Dreamgirls". On 23 January 2007, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He shared his nomination with the film's co-writers, Ant Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer, and Todd Phillips.
Aside from the comic elements of his characters, Baron Cohen's performances are interpreted by some as reflecting uncomfortable truths about his audience. He juxtaposes his own Jewish heritage with the anti-Semitism of his character Borat.
In 2007, Baron Cohen published a travel guide as Borat, with dual titles: "Borat: Touristic Guidings To Minor Nation of U.S. and A." and "Borat: Touristic Guidings To Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan". On 21 December 2007, Baron Cohen announced he was retiring the character of Borat.
Another alter ego Sacha Baron Cohen performed as is 'Brüno', a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion show presenter who often lures his unwitting subjects into making provocative statements and engaging in embarrassing behaviour, as well as leading them to contradict themselves, often in the same interview. Brüno asks the subjects to answer "yes or no" questions with either "Vassup" (what's up) or "Ich don't think so" (No); these are occasionally substituted with "Ach, ja!" (Ah yes!) or "Nicht, nicht" ("Nicht" means "not" in German). In one segment on "Da Ali G Show", he encouraged his guest to answer questions with either "Keep them in the ghetto" or "Train to Auschwitz".
Brüno's main comedic satire pertains to the vacuity and inanity of the fashion and clubbing world. In May 2009, at the MTV Movie Awards, Baron Cohen appeared as Brüno wearing a white angel costume, a white jockstrap, white go-go boots, and white wings; and did an aerial stunt where he dropped from a height (using wires) onto Eminem. Baron Cohen landed with his face on Eminem's crotch, with his crotch in Eminem's face, prompting Eminem to exit the venue with fellow rappers D12. Eminem later admitted to staging the stunt with Baron Cohen. After an intense bidding war that included such Hollywood powerhouses as DreamWorks, Sony, and 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures won and paid a reported $42.5 million for the film rights. A number of shill companies and websites were created in order to draw potential interviewees into interviews by creating an illusion of legitimacy. The film was released in July 2009.
Baron Cohen's 2012 film, "The Dictator", was described by its press as "the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed". Baron Cohen played Admiral General Aladeen, a dictator from a fictional country called the Republic of Wadiya. "Borat" and "Brüno" film director Larry Charles directed the film. The main target of the film's satire was Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was still alive when the film was written. The producers of the film were concerned it would anger Gaddafi, possibly even resulting in a terrorist attack, so they released deliberate misinformation saying that the film was loosely based on a romance novel written by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
On 26 February 2012, Baron Cohen was allegedly banned from attending the 84th Academy Awards in his role as Admiral General Aladeen but the rumour was denied by the Academy, saying "we haven't banned him, he is lying" but made it clear that "Cohen is not welcome to use the red carpet as a platform for a promotional stunt". Baron Cohen eventually appeared at the awards' red carpet with a pair of uniformed female bodyguards, holding an urn which he claimed was filled with the ashes of Kim Jong-il. The "ashes", which Baron Cohen admitted to Howard Stern on the Tuesday, 8 May 2012 episode of "The Howard Stern Show" were flour, were "accidentally" spilt onto Ryan Seacrest.
Baron Cohen portrays various characters in "Who Is America?", the most prominent and controversial being Erran Morad, an Israeli anti-terrorism expert. The character is referred to as a colonel (and later captain, general, major, sergeant, brigadier, sergeant corporal and lieutenant) in the Israeli military and a former agent of Mossad (or "not in the Mossad," as he often interjects). Before "Who Is America?" aired on Showtime, some conservative public figures made statements saying that Baron Cohen had deceived them while in character. Hours before the premiere, Showtime uploaded the "Kinderguardians" segment on their YouTube channel, in which Morad explains to Philip Van Cleave, the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, of the proposal of a new program where children ages 3 to 16 are armed with guns. He also interviews other conservatives, such as Dana Rohrabacher, Joe Wilson, and Joe Walsh, who are openly supportive. Only Matt Gaetz expresses skepticism of Morad's proposal and declines to be in his video.
In the second episode, Morad teaches Jason Spencer, a Republican state representative from Georgia, how to detect and repel terrorists by taking pictures up a woman's burqa with a selfie stick, walking backwards while baring his buttocks, and yelling racial epithets. After the airing of the episode, Spencer initially refused to step down, stating that he was exploited by the producers. He eventually did step down on 31 July 2018, leaving the seat vacant. In May 2018, Spencer lost his primary to a political novice, Steven Sainz, but was expected to serve the rest of his term until November.
In an interview with former Tory MP politician Neil Hamilton in 2000, Ali G offered Hamilton what was allegedly cannabis, which Hamilton accepted and smoked, creating some minor controversy in the British media.
At the 2006 MTV Movie Awards, Borat introduced Gnarls Barkley's performance of "Crazy", where he made a comment about Jessica Simpson, saying that he liked her mouth and that he could see it clearly through her denim pants.
At the 2006 UK premiere of "Borat", he arrived in Leicester Square in a cart pulled by a mule and a number of "Kazakh women," announcing: "Good evening, gentleman and prostitutes. After this, I stay in a hotel in Kings Cross. We will all drink, wrestle with no clothes on and shoot dogs from the window".
Baron Cohen has been criticised for the racist or prejudiced comments his characters have made (see "Da Ali G Show"). HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer has replied to criticism concerning Baron Cohen's characters, "Through his alter-egos, he delivers an obvious satire that exposes people's ignorance and prejudice in much the same way "All in the Family" did years ago". Regarding his portrayal as the anti-Semitic Borat, Baron Cohen says the segments are a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry", rather than a display of racism by Baron Cohen himself. "Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice", Baron Cohen explains. Addressing the same topic in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, Baron Cohen said, "I think that's quite an interesting thing with Borat, which is people really let down their guard with him because they're in a room with somebody who seems to have these outrageous opinions. They sometimes feel much more relaxed about letting their own outrageous, politically incorrect, prejudiced opinions come out".
Baron Cohen, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, says he also wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference in that genocide. "When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic". Regarding the enthusiastic response to his song, "In My Country There Is Problem" (also known as "Throw the Jew Down the Well"), he says, "Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism".
Baron Cohen walked onto the runway during the Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada fashion show in Milan on 26 September 2008. In the character of one of his alter-egos Brüno, he was wearing a costume made of velcro. He appeared on the stage with a blanket and items of clothing stuck to his velcro suit. Lights were turned off while security intervened and escorted him off the stage, and the fashion show resumed normally shortly thereafter. Baron Cohen and his team allegedly accessed the fashion show using fake IDs.
The government of Kazakhstan threatened Baron Cohen with legal action following the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards ceremony in Lisbon, and the authority in charge of the country's country-code top-level domain name removed the website that he had created for his character Borat (previously: http://www.borat.kz) for alleged violation of the law—specifically, registering for the domain under a false name. "The New York Times", among others, has reported that Baron Cohen (in character as Borat) replied: "I'd like to state that I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my government decision to sue this Jew". He was, however, defended by Dariga Nazarbayeva, a politician and the daughter of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stated, "We should not be afraid of humour and we shouldn't try to control everything..." The deputy foreign minister of Kazakhstan later invited Baron Cohen to visit the country, stating that he could learn that "women drive cars, wine is made of grapes, and Jews are free to go to synagogues". After the success of the "Borat" film, the Kazakh government, including the president, altered their stance on Baron Cohen's parody, tacitly recognising the invaluable press coverage the controversy created for their country.
Baron Cohen encountered another problem around his Borat character. Two of the three University of South Carolina students who appear in "Borat" sued the filmmakers, alleging that they were duped into signing release forms while drunk, and that false promises were made that the footage was for a documentary that would never be screened in the US. On 11 December 2006, a Los Angeles judge denied the pair a restraining order to remove them from the film. The lawsuit was dismissed in February 2007.
On 22 May 2009, a charity worker at a seniors' bingo game sued Baron Cohen, claiming an incident shot for "Brüno" at a charity bingo tournament left her disabled. However, the worker later retracted her statement, saying the "actor never struck her", but that he "beat her down emotionally to the point she's now confined to a wheelchair". The scene did not make the final cut for the film. The case was dismissed in late November 2009 on Anti-SLAPP grounds, with all lawyer's fees to be paid by the charity worker. The dismissal was appealed and upheld on 12 September 2011.
On 30 April 2010, Palestinian Christian grocer Ayman Abu Aita, of the West Bank and former member of Fatah, filed a lawsuit against Baron Cohen, alleging that he had been defamed by false accusations that he was a terrorist in the movie "Bruno". Aita included David Letterman in the suit based on comments made during a 7 July 2009 appearance by Baron Cohen on the "Late Show with David Letterman". Unlike the other lawsuits, Aita did not sign a release form, and his case centered around whether Baron Cohen's portrayal of Aita was false, not whether he was defrauded. In September 2012, the defamation claim was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and the court case was dismissed.
In 2018, former Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) of Alabama sued Baron Cohen for $95 million relating to a mock interview in "Who is America?" and allegations of paedophilia.
Baron Cohen guest-starred in the fifth season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", with Dustin Hoffman, as a guide to Heaven. He also provided the voice of the ring-tailed lemur king, King Julien, in DreamWorks Animation's film series, "Madagascar", and appeared as Will Ferrell's arch rival, the French Formula One speed demon Jean Girard, in the hit "" (2006). He also appeared alongside Johnny Depp in the film "" ,(2007), as Signor Adolfo Pirelli, co-starred in Martin Scorsese's adventure film "Hugo" (2011), and portrayed Thénardier in the 2012 film version of the musical "Les Misérables". He appeared as a BBC News Anchor in "" (2013).
For much of the early part of his career, Baron Cohen tended to avoid doing interviews out of character. However, in 2004, he did the talk show circuit appearing as himself on "Late Show with David Letterman", "The Opie and Anthony Show", "The Howard Stern Show", and others in order to promote the forthcoming season of his show on HBO. He was also interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" and did an interview with "Rolling Stone", published in November 2006, that the magazine labelled as "his only interview as himself". He also appeared in an interview out of character with Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" on 4 January 2007.
Baron Cohen has twice presented the MTV Europe Music Awards, first as Ali G on 8 November 2001, in Frankfurt, Germany, and then as Borat on 3 November 2005 in Lisbon, Portugal. Baron Cohen appeared out of character to accept an award at the British Comedy Awards in December 2006. He said at the time that Borat could not make it to the awards as "he's guest of honour at the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran", referring to the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.
"Borat" director Larry Charles explains that Baron Cohen generally appears in character partly to "protect his weakness", by focusing public interest on his characters rather than himself. His other reason, "Newsweek" claims, is that Baron Cohen is fiercely private: "...according to the UK press, his publicists denied that he attended a party for the London premiere of "Borat" and that a party even occurred".
In September 2010, representatives for Cohen confirmed that he was set to play Freddie Mercury in the "Bohemian Rhapsody" biopic about the rock singer. He dropped out of the project in July 2013, citing "creative differences" between him and the surviving members of Queen. Queen guitarist Brian May later said that even though the band and Baron Cohen were on good terms, they felt that Baron Cohen's presence would be "distracting". The role was later played by Rami Malek.
Baron Cohen shot a spread with supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio for "Marie Claire" magazine to promote the film "Brüno".
"Sports Illustrated"'s 6 November 2006 issue contains a column called "Skater vs. Instigator", which illustrates various amusing "parallels" between Baron Cohen and figure skater Sasha Cohen, ranging from their mutually held personal significance of the number 4, to their shared romantic interests in redheads.
Baron Cohen was featured in the Time 100 list for 2007.
In 2010, Baron Cohen guest-starred in "The Simpsons" episode, "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed", as Jakob, a quick-tempered Israeli tour guide.
In Baron Cohen's "Grimsby" (2016; "The Brothers Grimsby" in the US), he plays the football hooligan brother of a British MI6 spy. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a failure at the box office.
On 3 November 2016, it was announced that Baron Cohen will headline the American remake of the Danish comedy "Klown".
In October 2018, it was announced that Baron Cohen would portray political activist/anarchist Abbie Hoffman in the drama film "The Trial of the Chicago 7", with Aaron Sorkin set to write and direct.
In 2019, Baron Cohen was awarded an International Leadership Award by the Anti-Defamation League for leadership in fighting bigotry and prejudice. In accepting the award, Baron Cohen directed criticism at internet companies, singling out Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter as part of "the biggest propaganda machine in history".
In June 2020 Baron Cohen crashed the alt-right "March For Our Rights 3" protest in Washington, a counter-protests to the March for Our Lives demonstration as a result of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Baron Cohen sang a song telling listeners to attack liberals, CNN, the World Health Organization, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and “mask-wearers". Baron Cohen's security stopped the organizers from taking him off the stage and turning off the power.
Baron Cohen first acted in theatrical productions featuring the Socialist-Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror.
He spent a year in Israel volunteering at Kibbutzim Rosh HaNikra and Beit HaEmek as part of the Shnat Habonim Dror, as well as taking part in the programme Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz for Jewish youth movement leaders.
According to Baron Cohen, "I wouldn't say I am a religious Jew. I am proud of my Jewish identity and there are certain things I do and customs I keep". He tries to keep kosher and attends synagogue about twice a year.
Baron Cohen first met actress Isla Fisher in 2002, at a party in Sydney, Australia. The couple became engaged in 2004. Subsequent to Fisher's conversion to Judaism, the two married on 15 March 2010 in Paris, France in a Jewish ceremony. Baron Cohen and Fisher have three children.
On 28 December 2015, Baron Cohen and his wife Isla Fisher donated £335,000 ($500,000) to Save the Children as part of a programme to vaccinate children in northern Syria against measles, and the same amount to the International Rescue Committee also aimed at helping Syrian refugees. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45218 |
Staines-upon-Thames
Staines-upon-Thames, formerly Staines, is a town on the River Thames in Surrey, England, within the borough of Spelthorne. At or near the Roman settlement of Pontibus, it became Stanes and then Staines. The town lies within the historic county boundaries of Middlesex, being transferred to Surrey in 1965.
The town is inside the M25 motorway, south-west of Charing Cross. It is within the London Commuter Belt and the Greater London Urban Area, and adjoins part of the Green Belt. Passing along the edge of the town and crossing Staines Bridge is the Thames Path National Trail.
The larger Staines-upon-Thames post town includes the villages of Stanwell, Laleham and Wraysbury. Owing to the long association of Staines Bridge with a medieval causeway (levee) on the opposite bank of the river, the post town also includes part of Egham Hythe, which contains a significant business area within the county, and some of the town's oldest listed buildings.
The long-standing parish boundaries are those of a strip parish that ranges from above sea level. Staines-upon-Thames has many parks, leisure centres, a football club and several multinational research/technology company offices. The centre of Heathrow Airport is to the north-east and Staines railway station is a main stop on the London Waterloo to Reading line and the Windsor & Eton Riverside line.
The name derives from Middle English "stanes", from Old English "" ("stones").
Evidence of neolithic settlement has been found at Yeoveney on Staines Moor. There has been a crossing of the River Thames at Staines since Roman times. The emperor Claudius invaded Britain in AD 43. Staines was settled the same year. Within a decade, some sort of first Staines Bridge would have been needed for the Roman road later known as the Devil's Highway between Londinium (London) and Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester). Pontibus, Latin for "at the bridges" in the early 3rd-century Antonine Itinerary, has long been guessed to refer to Staines, but that may be wrong since the Itinerary's mileages actually point some distance away (possibly to the south end of Virginia Water Lake). More than one bridge might have traversed Church Island. Ad Pontem was an altogether different place.
The Middlesex section of the Domesday Book records the manor "Stanes" as a property held by Westminster Abbey. It was stated to have 19 hides of land and had 6 mills worth £3, 4s, 0d; 2 weirs worth 6s, 8d; 24 ploughs; meadows for 24 ploughs; and some cattle. It rendered £35.
A boundary stone on the bank of the River Thames dated 1280 still remains, indicating the western limit of the City of London's jurisdiction over the Thames. Although familiarly known as the 'London Stone', it is not to be confused with the more famous – and probably more ancient – London Stone in Cannon Street in the City of London.
The barons assembled at Staines before they met King John at Runnymede in 1215, and Stephen Langton held a consecration there shortly after the sealing of Magna Carta. Kings and other important people must have passed through the town on many occasions: the church bells were rung several times in 1670, for instance, when the king and queen went through Staines. Between 1642 and 1648 during the Civil War, there were skirmishes on Staines Moor and numerous troop movements over Staines Bridge. The parish remained largely agricultural until the mid-19th century.
Staines was a regular staging post with coaching inns. It was used for an overnight horse change on The Trafalgar Way in 1805, announcing the victory over the combined French and Spanish fleet and the death of Nelson. Samuel Lewis mentions the place in his 1848 "Topographical Dictionary of England", saying that "The town, which has been much improved of late, consists principally of one wide street, containing several good houses, terminating at the river."
In the 19th century the Church of England lost all its secular maintenance and relief functions (run by the vestries). However, as Staines's local government is unparished, the parish boundary of the village of Laleham is the one used in road signs and official naming. Stanwell, forming its own wards, lost land in and around Leaside, north of the River Ash in the 20th century to Staines.
Laleham remains, as it was in the mid-19th century, a long tranche beginning east of the north-south Sweep's Ditch which runs south to the tip of the Penton Hook peninsula of the River Thames. Spelthorne Borough Council is one of the few Surrey districts divided completely equally in terms of number of councillors per wards yet the population of Laleham is insufficient to elect three councillors. Laleham does share a post town, and has a large sports ground named after Laleham and Staines. It instead forms one half of the ward "Riverside [Staines] and Laleham", parts A and D of Spelthorne's 009 division in the United Kingdom Census 2011.
The town was a major producer of linoleum after the formation of the Linoleum Manufacturing Company in 1864 by its inventor, Frederick Walton. Linoleum became the main industry of the town and was a major employer in the area until the 1960s. In 1876 about 220 and in 1911 about 350 people worked in the plant. By 1957 it employed some 300 people and in 1956 the factory produced about 2675 m2 of linoleum each week. The term 'Staines Lino' became a worldwide name but the factory was closed around 1970 and is the site is now occupied by the Two Rivers shopping centre, completed about 2000. A bronze statue of two lino workers in Staines High Street commemorates the Staines Lino Factory. The Spelthorne Museum has a display dedicated to the Linoleum Manufacturing Company.
The Lagonda car factory was on the site of Sainsbury's supermarket in Egham Hythe.
The town was the site of the Staines air disaster in 1972, at the time the worst air crash in Britain until the Lockerbie disaster of 1988. (Since the Lockerbie crash was a terrorist act in Scotland, the Staines crash remains England's worst air disaster, and Britain's worst air "accident".) The crash was commemorated in June 2004 by the opening of a dedicated garden near the crash site, created at the request of relatives, and the unveiling of a stained glass window at St Mary's Church, where a memorial service was held.
In 1894 the Local Government Act 1894 created the Staines Urban District. This status conferred additional powers and responsibilities compared with the few Rural Districts in Middlesex County Council. In 1965, under the London Government Act 1963, Middlesex, apart from the Staines, Sunbury-on-Thames and Potters Bar Urban Districts, became part of Greater London. Staines and Sunbury were transferred to Surrey and Potters Bar to Hertfordshire. In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, the Staines Urban District was combined with Sunbury-on-Thames Urban District to form the present-day borough of Spelthorne. Staines remains associated with the historical county of Middlesex through certain cultural and sporting affiliations, and until 1996 for postal purposes.
The town changed its official name to "Staines-upon-Thames" on 20 May 2012.
On 15 December 2011, Spelthorne Borough Council resolved by 25 votes to 4 with 6 abstentions (including all the councillors for Staines ward itself) to change the name of the town to Staines-upon-Thames, to try to boost the local economy by promoting its riverside location, and reportedly to discourage association with Sasha Baron Cohen’s fictional character Ali G, as well as rock band Hard-Fi, who described Staines as "a ghost town".
The name change proposal originated with Spelthorne Business Forum. 428 responses to a public consultation were in favour and 234 opposed, but there were some public objections, including one from Staines Town Football Club which attempted to present 134 signatures to the council, but they were not received. Adopting the name change, the council resolved to call on residents, businesses and public organisations to use the name Staines-upon-Thames, and to call on Surrey County Council and Runnymede Borough Council to use Staines-upon-Thames for all official business. Following a day of celebrations in the town, including a regatta on the river, the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey, Dame Sarah Goad DCVO, formally changed the name on 20 May 2012 at 2 pm. Royal Mail adopted the new name in mid-2013, having previously stated that the name would remain as Staines on the Postcode Address File.
The town's proximity to London, Heathrow Airport and the M25 motorway has attracted a number of companies: Bupa (healthcare), and Wood Group Kenny (oil & gas) have major offices here, while Siemens Building Automation Division and British Gas (part of Centrica) have their national headquarters here. Samsung R&D Institute UK (SRUK), Samsung's UK R&D division, is based in the town.
The town centre is fairly compact and mainly focused on a wide pedestrianised High Street. A market is held every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday in the High Street. A moderately-sized shopping centre, Elmsleigh, is behind the High Street. The Two Rivers retail park was opened in 2002, and is bisected by the confluence of the rivers Wraysbury and Colne. Staines has at least three parades of convenience shops and local professional services. A range of pubs host live music evenings. The town is the home of indie rock band Hard-Fi.
The original manor of Staines became derelict and was demolished. Staines Bridge spans the Thames with a three arch structure completed in 1832. Until the 14th century, Staines was the tidal limit, but this is now downstream at Teddington – a replica London Stone exists in the Lammas Recreation Ground.
The administrative offices of Spelthorne Borough Council are by one of the town's more linear parks. In the early 2000s, a public landscape area was constructed by the riverside conservation area with seating and sculptures to enhance the waterfront as a place to walk. The 'Town Hall' is a stuccoed Victorian blend of Italian and Flemish styles in a small market square, converted into an Art Centre in the 1990s, and later turned into a pub (now closed). Elaborate Georgian shophouses line Clarence Street (named after William, Duke of Clarence, who became King William IV). Church Street and Lammas Lane house the oldest properties clustered around the parish church of St Mary.
Most neighbourhoods have green spaces such as (Staines Moor, Shortwood Common, Knowle Green, Leacroft, the Lammas and the sports fields and farms on the borders of Laleham. The last two are riverside parks with picnic areas and playgrounds. Many of the parks belonged to former grand houses: see Laleham for Lord Lucan's 'Laleham House' which became a Roman Catholic abbey for a century. Since the late 20th century, listed luxury apartments in the post town have been created there and at Duncroft Manor.
The town has the following schools:
Several other schools have previously existed in the town, including:
The nearest further education institution to Staines is Brooklands College (formerly Spelthorne College) in neighbouring Ashford, about 3 miles to the east. Royal Holloway, University of London is 3 miles west of the town centre, off the A30 between Egham and Englefield Green.
Two affiliated senior association football clubs bear the name of Staines, namely Staines Town F.C. (senior status), and Staines Lammas F.C. (intermediate status). Staines Town plays at the newly rebuilt Wheatsheaf Park ground and is a member of Isthmian League Premier Division. Staines Town has a strong rivalry with Hampton & Richmond Borough F.C.. Staines Lammas was champion of the Combined Counties League Division One in the 2007–08 season.the club runs various age group teams. Staines also has several successful junior football clubs: Staines Town, Staines Lammas and Staines Albion, as well as girls' clubs Kempton Girls FC — Colne Valley and the U11, one of the best girls' junior clubs in Surrey.
Staines Rugby Football Club used to play at the Lammas (a recreation ground in the town also known as the Ashby Recreation Ground). The club moved to The Reeves (on Snakey Lane, Hanworth) in the 1960s but kept its name. It has teams named Swans, Cobs and Mucky Ducks. The Club is in Herts/Middlesex 1 league and has mini and youth sections.
Staines Boat Club is immediately across the bridge in Egham Hythe and competes at a national level.
Staines Swimming Club founded in the early 1900s and affiliated to the Amateur Swimming Association is based at Spelthorne Leisure Centre and provides competitive swimming from inter-club level up to national level.
Spelthorne Volleyball Club, also based at Spelthorne Leisure Centre, provides volleyball to a wide range of abilities and age groups.
Clubs in the borough cater to sailing, cricket, hockey, running, rambling, martial arts (jujitsu), rifle & pistol shooting, bowls, chess, bridge, snooker, darts, pool, poker, and a district table tennis league.
The town is also home to TS "Thamesis", Staines and Egham Sea Cadet Corps. This is a uniformed youth organisation for young people aged between 10 and 18 years old. It meets at The Lammas.
Motorcycle speedway racing was staged at a stadium in Wraysbury Road. Events in 1938 and 1939 are well-known, but it is possible that a venue was active from at least 1931, for a team named Staines raced at Caxton Speedway (near Cambridge, 1931 – 1933 inclusive). The stadium was also used for greyhound racing, as well as 'novelty' events such as cheetah racing.
Staines Stadium was famous from 1955 to 1960 during the early days of stock car racing in England, and featured in the 1955 feature film "Stock Car" among others.
Other sports formerly held in Staines include: boxing (there were weekly programmes off the High Street in the 1930s, and local hearsay suggests bare-knuckle events were held at the Crooked Billet earlier in the 20th century); wrestling (bouts were included in boxing programmes of the 1930s); motorcycle football (a club existed in the 1960s; and American football (a short-lived team called Staines Removers entered the Budweiser League in 1988, but failed to start the season, although they did play some friendly matches at their base on The Lammas).
Staines railway station is a stop on all services between London Waterloo station and (for the South West Main Line), (for the Great Western Main Line) and . Semi-fast services serve the Waterloo to Reading Line, being the operator's secondary main line. Taxis are available from the station. The bus station is a five-minute walk from the railway station, with services in all directions including to Thorpe Park and Royal Holloway College. Staines-upon-Thames is also a short distance south of Heathrow Airport.
There were proposals to build a new railway line, Airtrack, connecting the South West Main Line and/or London Gatwick to Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5 station. As part of these proposals, the former Staines High Street railway station was to be rebuilt by Two Rivers Shopping Centre and the High Street in the direction of Wraysbury railway station, using a generally unused arc from north to south in the town centre, towards Weybridge on the South West Main Line. In 2011 the Department for Transport announced it had decided that this would not proceed because extra trains would delay road traffic using the level crossing at Egham. The existing Staines station would have an additional platform built instead on the relevant arc.
The average level of accommodation in the region composed of detached houses was 28%, the average that was apartments was 22.6%.
The proportion of households in the town who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings (plus a negligible % of households living rent-free).
Neighbouring towns and villages are Egham, Wraysbury, Ashford, Stanwell, Laleham and Chertsey. About 3 miles north east of Staines-upon-Thames is Heathrow airport. The area across the Thames between Egham and Staines-upon-Thames town centres is a ward called Egham Hythe.
A number of local newspapers are available in Staines-upon-Thames; these include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45220 |
Asparagus
Asparagus, or garden asparagus, folk name sparrow grass, scientific name Asparagus officinalis, is a perennial flowering plant species in the genus "Asparagus". Its young shoots are used as a spring vegetable.
It was once classified in the lily family, like the related "Allium" species, onions and garlic. However, genetic research places lilies, "Allium", and asparagus in three separate families—the Liliaceae, Amaryllidaceae, and Asparagaceae, respectively—with the Amaryllidaceae and Asparagaceae being grouped together in the order Asparagales. Sources differ as to the native range of "Asparagus officinalis", but generally include most of Europe and western temperate Asia. It is widely cultivated as a vegetable crop.
Asparagus is a herbaceous, perennial plant growing to tall, with stout stems with much-branched, feathery foliage. The "leaves" are in fact needle-like cladodes (modified stems) in the axils of scale leaves; they are long and broad, and clustered four to 15 together, in a rose-like shape. The root system is adventitious and the root type is fasciculated. The flowers are bell-shaped, greenish-white to yellowish, long, with six tepals partially fused together at the base; they are produced singly or in clusters of two or three in the junctions of the branchlets. It is usually dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants, but sometimes hermaphrodite flowers are found. The fruit is a small red berry 6–10 mm diameter, which is poisonous to humans.
Plants native to the western coasts of Europe (from northern Spain to northwest Germany, north Ireland, and Great Britain) are treated as "Asparagus officinalis" subsp. "prostratus" , distinguished by its low-growing, often prostrate stems growing to only high, and shorter cladodes long. It is treated as a distinct species, "Asparagus prostratus" , by some authors.
Asparagus has been used as a vegetable owing to its distinct flavor, and in medicine due to its diuretic properties and its purported function as an aphrodisiac. It is pictured as an offering on an Egyptian frieze dating to 3000 BC. In ancient times, it was also known in Syria and in Spain. Greeks and Romans ate it fresh when in season, and dried the vegetable for use in winter. Roman Epicureans froze its sprouts high in the Alps for the Feast of Epicurus. Emperor Augustus created the "Asparagus Fleet" for hauling the vegetable, and coined the expression "faster than cooking asparagus" for quick action.
A recipe for cooking asparagus is given in one of the oldest surviving collections of recipes (Apicius's third-century BC "De re coquinaria", Book III). In the second century AD, the Greek physician Galen, highly respected within Roman society, mentioned asparagus as a beneficial herb, but as dominance of the Roman empire waned, asparagus' medicinal value drew little attention
until 's "The Perfumed Garden". That piece of writing celebrates its purported aphrodisiacal power that the Indian "Ananga Ranga" attributes to "special phosphorus elements" that also counteract fatigue.
By 1469, asparagus was cultivated in French monasteries. Asparagus appears to have been little noticed in England until 1538, and in Germany until 1542.
The "points d'amour" ("love tips") were served as a delicacy to Madame de Pompadour.
Asparagus was brought to North America by European settlers at least as early as 1655. Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutch immigrant to New Netherland, mentions asparagus in his description of Dutch farming practices in the New World. Asparagus was grown by British immigrants as well; in 1685, one of William Penn's advertisements for Pennsylvania included asparagus in a long list of crops that grew well in the American climate.
Only young asparagus shoots are commonly eaten: once the buds start to open ("ferning out"), the shoots quickly turn woody.
Water makes up 93% of asparagus's composition. Asparagus is low in calories and is very low in sodium. It is a good source of vitamin B6, calcium, magnesium, and zinc, and a very good source of dietary fibre, protein, beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, thiamin, riboflavin, rutin, niacin, folic acid, iron, phosphorus, potassium, copper, manganese, and selenium, as well as chromium, a trace mineral that regulates the ability of insulin to transport glucose from the bloodstream into cells. The amino acid asparagine gets its name from asparagus, as the asparagus plant is relatively rich in this compound.
The shoots are prepared and served in a number of ways around the world, typically as an appetizer or vegetable side dish. In Asian-style cooking, asparagus is often stir-fried. Cantonese restaurants in the United States often serve asparagus stir-fried with chicken, shrimp, or beef. It may also be quickly grilled over charcoal or hardwood embers, and is also used as an ingredient in some stews and soups. In recent years, asparagus eaten raw, as a component of a salad, has regained popularity.
Asparagus can also be pickled and stored for several years. Some brands label shoots prepared in this way as "marinated".
Stem thickness indicates the age of the plant (and not the age of the stalk), with the thicker stems coming from older plants. Older, thicker stalks can be woody, although peeling the skin at the base removes the tough layer. Peeled asparagus will poach much faster. The bottom portion of asparagus often contains sand and soil, so thorough cleaning is generally advised before cooking. Plants bearing seeds produce spears that are smaller and thinner, and plants without seeds produce larger and thicker spears. Thickness and thinness are not an indication of tenderness or toughness. The stalks are thick or thin from the moment they sprout from the ground.
Green asparagus is eaten worldwide, though the availability of imports throughout the year has made it less of a delicacy than it once was. In Europe, however, the "asparagus season is a highlight of the foodie calendar"; in the UK this traditionally begins on 23 April and ends on Midsummer Day. As in continental Europe, due to the short growing season and demand for local produce, asparagus commands a premium price.
White asparagus is very popular in Europe and western Asia. White asparagus is the result of applying a blanching technique while the asparagus shoots are growing. To cultivate white asparagus, the shoots are covered with soil as they grow, i.e. earthed up; without exposure to sunlight, no photosynthesis starts, and the shoots remain white. Compared to green asparagus, the locally cultivated so-called "white gold" or "edible ivory" asparagus, also referred to as "the royal vegetable", is believed to be less bitter and much more tender. Freshness is very important, and the lower ends of white asparagus must be peeled before cooking or raw consumption.
Only seasonally on the menu, asparagus dishes are advertised outside many restaurants, usually from late April to June. For the French style, asparagus is often boiled or steamed and served with Hollandaise sauce, White sauce, melted butter or most recently with olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Tall, narrow asparagus cooking pots allow the shoots to be steamed gently, their tips staying out of the water.
During the German "Spargelsaison" or "Spargelzeit" ("asparagus season" or "asparagus time"), the asparagus season that traditionally finishes on 24 June, roadside stands and open-air markets sell about half of the country's white asparagus consumption.
In India, especially in Maharashtra state it is not usually cultivated but it grows naturally in the farms during monsoon. Farmers from rural area and some tribal people use the young asparagus plants as a vegetable in their meals.
Since asparagus often originates in maritime habitats, it thrives in soils that are too saline for normal weeds to grow. Thus, a little salt was traditionally used to suppress weeds in beds intended for asparagus; this has the disadvantage that the soil cannot be used for anything else. Some places are better for growing asparagus than others. The fertility of the soil is a large factor. "Crowns" are planted in winter, and the first shoots appear in spring; the first pickings or "thinnings" are known as sprue asparagus. Sprue has thin stems.
A breed of "early season asparagus" that can be harvested two months earlier than usual was announced by a UK grower in early 2011. This variety does not need to lie dormant and blooms at rather than the usual .
Purple asparagus differs from its green and white counterparts in having high sugar and low fibre levels. Purple asparagus was originally developed in Italy, near the city of Albenga and commercialized under the variety name 'Violetto d' Albenga'. Since then, breeding work has continued in the United States and New Zealand, creating the 'Pacific Purple' variety.
Asparagus is said to be a useful companion plant for tomatoes, as the tomato plant repels the asparagus beetle. Asparagus may repel some harmful root nematodes that affect tomato plants.
The top asparagus importers (2016) were the United States (214,735 tonnes), followed by Germany (24,484 tonnes), and Canada (19,224 tonnes).
China is by far the world's largest producer: in 2017 it produced 7,845,162 tonnes, followed by Peru with 383,098 tonnes and Mexico with 245,681 tonnes. U.S. production was concentrated in California, Michigan, and Washington.
The annual production for white asparagus in Germany is 57,000 tonnes (61% of consumer demand).
When grown under tunnels, growers can extend the harvest season. In the UK, it is estimated that the asparagus harvest season can begin as early as mid-February and continue into late autumn by growing cold-resistant cultivars under heated polytunnels. Furthermore, late season harvests can be achieved using 'reverse season growth' where spears are left to fern between March–August and harvested in September–October.
In Asia, an alternative approach to cultivating asparagus has been employed and is referred to as 'Mother Stalk Method' where three to five stalks per plant are allowed to develop into fern, while harvesting adjacent spears.
The green crop is significant enough in California's Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta region that the city of Stockton holds a festival every year to celebrate it. In Michigan, Hart hosts an annual festival complete with a parade and asparagus queen; The Vale of Evesham in Worcestershire is the largest producer within Northern Europe, celebrating with the annual British Asparagus Festival involving auctions of the best crop, an "Asparagus Run" modelled on the Beaujolais Run and a weekend "Asparafest" music festival.
Many German cities hold an annual "Spargelfest" (asparagus festival) celebrating the harvest of white asparagus. Schwetzingen claims to be the "Asparagus Capital of the World", and during its festival, an Asparagus Queen is crowned. The Bavarian city of Nuremberg feasts a week long in April, with a competition to find the fastest asparagus peeler in the region; this usually involves generous amounts of the local wines and beers being consumed to aid the spectators' appreciative support.
Helmut Zipner holds the world record in asparagus peeling.
"A. officinalis" is widely known simply as "asparagus", and may be confused with unrelated plant species also known as "asparagus", such as "Ornithogalum pyrenaicum" known as "Prussian asparagus" for its edible shoots.
The English word "asparagus" derives from classical Latin, but the plant was once known in English as "sperage", from the Medieval Latin "sparagus". This term itself derives from the Greek "aspharagos" or "asparagos", and the Greek term originates from the Persian "asparag", meaning "sprout" or "shoot". Asparagus was also corrupted in some places to "sparrow grass"; indeed, John Walker wrote in 1791 that ""Sparrowgrass" is so general that "asparagus" has an air of stiffness and pedantry".
The name 'sparrow grass' was still in common use in rural East Anglia, England well into the twentieth century.
In Turkish, asparagus is known as "kuşkonmaz", literally "[a] bird won't land [on it]", in reference to the shape of the plant.
In India specially in Maharashtra state it is not cultivated but it grows naturally in the farms during Mansoon. Farmers from rural area and some tribal people use this aspargus early plants for vegitable.
It is called as 'Sasur / Susar Muli' (ससूर/ सुसर मुळी) in Marathi i.a.local language of Maharashtra State of India.
The effect of eating asparagus on urine excreted afterwards has long been observed:
[Asparagus] cause a powerful and disagreeable smell in the urine, as everybody knows.
asparagus... affects the urine with a foetid smell (especially if cut when they are white) and therefore have been suspected by some physicians as not friendly to the kidneys; when they are older, and begin to ramify, they lose this quality; but then they are not so agreeable.
A few Stems of Asparagus eaten, shall give our Urine a disagreeable Odour...
Asparagus "...transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume."
Asparagus contains asparagusic acid. When the vegetable is digested, this chemical is broken down into a group of related sulfur-containing compounds.
Debate exists about the universality of producing the sulfurous smell, as well as the ability to detect it. Originally, this was thought to be because some people digested asparagus differently from others, so some excreted odorous urine after eating asparagus, and others did not. In the 1980s, three studies from France, China, and Israel published results showing that producing odorous urine from asparagus was a common human characteristic. The Israeli study found that from their 307 subjects, all of those who could smell "asparagus urine" could detect it in the urine of anyone who had eaten asparagus, even if the person who produced it could not detect it. A 2010 study found variations in both production of odorous urine and the ability to detect the odor, but that these were not tightly related. Most people are thought to produce the odorous compounds after eating asparagus, but the differing abilities of various individuals to detect the odor at increasing dilutions suggests a genetically determined specific sensitivity.
In 2010, the company 23andMe published a genome-wide association study on whether participants have "ever noticed a peculiar odor when you pee after eating asparagus?" This study pinpointed a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in a cluster of olfactory genes associated with the ability to detect the odor. While this SNP did not explain all of the difference in detection between people, it provides support for the theory that genetic differences occur in olfactory receptors that lead people to be unable to smell these odorous compounds.
Certain compounds in asparagus are metabolized to yield ammonia and various sulfur-containing degradation products, including various thiols and thioesters, which give urine a characteristic smell.
Some of the volatile organic compounds responsible for the smell are:
Subjectively, the first two are the most pungent, while the last two (sulfur-oxidized) give a sweet aroma. A mixture of these compounds form a "reconstituted asparagus urine" odor. This was first investigated in 1891 by Marceli Nencki, who attributed the smell to methanethiol. These compounds originate in the asparagus as asparagusic acid and its derivatives, as these are the only sulfur-containing compounds unique to asparagus. As these are more present in young asparagus, this accords with the observation that the smell is more pronounced after eating young asparagus. The biological mechanism for the production of these compounds is less clear.
The onset of the asparagus urine smell is remarkably rapid while the decline is slower. The smell has been reported to be detectable 15 to 30 minutes after ingestion and subsides with a half-life of approximately 4 hours. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46319 |
Flatfish
A flatfish is a member of the ray-finned demersal fish order Pleuronectiformes, also called the Heterosomata, sometimes classified as a suborder of Perciformes. In many species, both eyes lie on one side of the head, one or the other migrating through or around the head during development. Some species face their left sides upward, some face their right sides upward, and others face either side upward.
Many important food fish are in this order, including the flounders, soles, turbot, plaice, and halibut. Some flatfish can camouflage themselves on the ocean floor.
Over 800 described species are placed into 16 families. Broadly, the flatfishes are divided into two suborders, Psettodoidei and Pleuronectoidei, with > 99% of the species diversity found within the Pleuronectoidei. The largest families are Soleidae, Bothidae and Cynoglossidae with more than 150 species each. There also exist two monotypic families (Paralichthodidae and Oncopteridae). Some families are the results of relatively recent splits. For example, the Achiridae were classified as a subfamily of Soleidae in the past, and the Samaridae were considered a subfamily of the Pleuronectidae. The families Paralichthodidae, Poecilopsettidae, and Rhombosoleidae were also traditionally treated as subfamilies of Pleuronectidae, but are now recognised as families in their own right. The Paralichthyidae has long been indicated to be paraphyletic, with the formal description of Cyclopsettidae in 2019 resulting in the split of this family as well.
The taxonomy of some groups is in need of a review, as the last monograph covering the entire order was John Roxborough Norman's "Monograph of the Flatfishes" published in 1934. In particular, "Tephrinectes sinensis" may represent a family-level lineage and requires further evaluation e.g.. New species are described with some regularity and undescribed species likely remain.
Hybrids are well known in flatfishes. The Pleuronectidae, of marine fishes, have the largest number of reported hybrids. Two of the most famous intergeneric hybrids are between the European plaice ("Pleuronectes platessa") and European flounder ("Platichthys flesus") in the Baltic Sea, and between the English sole ("Parophrys vetulus") and starry flounder ("Platichthys stellatus") in Puget Sound. The offspring of the latter species pair is popularly known as the hybrid sole and was initially believed to be a valid species in its own right.
Flatfishes are found in oceans worldwide, ranging from the Arctic, through the tropics, to Antarctica. Species diversity is centered in the Indo-West Pacific and declines following both latitudinal and longitudinal gradients away from the Indo-West Pacific. Most species are found in depths between 0 and , but a few have been recorded from depths in excess of . None have been confirmed from the abyssal or hadal zones. An observation of a flatfish from the Bathyscaphe Trieste at the bottom of the Mariana Trench at a depth of almost has been questioned by fish experts, and recent authorities do not recognize it as valid. Among the deepwater species, "Symphurus thermophilus" lives in congregating around "ponds" of sulphur at hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. No other flatfish is known from hydrothermal vents. Many species will enter brackish or fresh water, and a smaller number of soles (families Achiridae and Soleidae) and tonguefish (Cynoglossidae) are entirely restricted to fresh water.
The most obvious characteristic of the flatfish is its asymmetry, with both eyes lying on the same side of the head in the adult fish. In some families, the eyes are usually on the right side of the body (dextral or right-eyed flatfish), and in others, they are usually on the left (sinistral or left-eyed flatfish). The primitive spiny turbots include equal numbers of right- and left-sided individuals, and are generally less asymmetrical than the other families. Other distinguishing features of the order are the presence of protrusible eyes, another adaptation to living on the seabed (benthos), and the extension of the dorsal fin onto the head.
The surface of the fish facing away from the sea floor is pigmented, often serving to camouflage the fish, but sometimes with striking coloured patterns. Some flatfishes are also able to change their pigmentation to match the background, in a manner similar to some cephalopods. The side of the body without the eyes, facing the seabed, is usually colourless or very pale.
In general, flatfishes rely on their camouflage for avoiding predators, but some have conspicuous eyespots (e.g., "Microchirus ocellatus") and several small tropical species (at least "Aseraggodes", "Pardachirus" and "Zebrias") are poisonous. Juveniles of "Soleichthys maculosus" mimic toxic flatworms of the genus "Pseudobiceros" in both colours and swimming mode. Conversely, a few octopus species have been reported to mimic flatfishes in colours, shape and swimming mode.
The flounders and spiny turbots eat smaller fish, and have well-developed teeth. They sometimes seek prey in the midwater, away from the bottom, and show fewer extreme adaptations than other families. The soles, by contrast, are almost exclusively bottom-dwellers, and feed on invertebrates. They show a more extreme asymmetry, and may lack teeth on one side of the jaw.
Flatfishes range in size from "Tarphops oligolepis", measuring about in length, and weighing , to the Atlantic halibut, at and .
Flatfishes lay eggs that hatch into larvae resembling typical, symmetrical, fish. These are initially elongated, but quickly develop into a more rounded form. The larvae typically have protective spines on the head, over the gills, and in the pelvic and pectoral fins. They also possess a swim bladder, and do not dwell on the bottom, instead dispersing from their hatching grounds as plankton.
The length of the planktonic stage varies between different types of flatfishes, but eventually they begin to metamorphose into the adult form. One of the eyes migrates across the top of the head and onto the other side of the body, leaving the fish blind on one side. The larva also loses its swim bladder and spines, and sinks to the bottom, laying its blind side on the underlying surface.
In 2008, a 50-million-year-old fossil, "Amphistium", was identified as an early relative of the flatfish and transitional fossil. In a typical modern flatfish, the head is asymmetric, with both eyes on one side of the head. In "Amphistium", the transition from the typical symmetric head of a vertebrate is incomplete, with one eye placed near the top of the head. The researchers concluded, "the change happened gradually, in a way consistent with evolution via natural selection—not suddenly, as researchers once had little choice but to believe."
…bony fish as a rule have a marked tendency to be flattened in a vertical direction…. It was natural, therefore, that when the ancestors of [flatfish] took to the sea bottom, they should have lain on one "side"…. But this raised the problem that one eye was always looking down into the sand and was effectively useless. In evolution this problem was solved by the lower eye ‘moving’ round to the upper side.
Flatfish is considered a Whitefish because of the high concentration of oils within its liver. Its lean flesh makes for a unique flavor that differs from species to species. Methods of cooking include grilling, pan-frying, baking and deep-frying. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46331 |
Flat tax
A flat tax (short for flat-rate tax) is a tax system with a constant marginal rate, usually applied to individual or corporate income. A true flat tax would be a proportional tax, but implementations are often progressive and sometimes regressive depending on deductions and exemptions in the tax base. There are various tax systems that are labeled "flat tax" even though they are significantly different.
Flat tax proposals differ in how the subject of the tax is defined.
A true flat-rate tax is a system of taxation where one tax rate is applied to all personal income with no deductions.
Where deductions are allowed, a 'flat tax' is a progressive tax with the special characteristic that, above the maximum deduction, the marginal rate on all further income is constant. Such a tax is said to be marginally flat above that point. The difference between a true flat tax and a marginally flat tax can be reconciled by recognizing that the latter simply excludes certain types of income from being defined as taxable income; hence, both kinds of tax are flat on taxable income.
Modified flat taxes have been proposed which would allow deductions for a very few items, while still eliminating the vast majority of existing deductions. Charitable deductions and home mortgage interest are the most discussed examples of deductions that would be retained, as these deductions are popular with voters and are often used. Another common theme is a single, large, fixed deduction. This large fixed deduction would compensate for the elimination of various existing deductions and would simplify taxes, having the side-effect that many (mostly low income) households will not have to file tax returns.
Designed by economists at the Hoover Institution, Hall–Rabushka is a flat tax on consumption. Principally, Hall–Rabushka accomplishes a consumption tax effect by taxing income and then excluding investment. Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka have consulted extensively in designing the flat tax systems in Eastern Europe.
The negative income tax (NIT), which Milton Friedman proposed in his 1962 book "Capitalism and Freedom", is a type of flat tax. The basic idea is the same as a flat tax with personal deductions, except that when deductions exceed income, the taxable income is allowed to become negative rather than being set to zero. The flat tax rate is then applied to the resulting "negative income," resulting in a "negative income tax" that the government would owe to the household—unlike the usual "positive" income tax, which the household owes the government.
For example, let the flat rate be 20%, and let the deductions be $20,000 per adult and $7,000 per dependent. Under such a system, a family of four making $54,000 a year would owe no tax. A family of four making $74,000 a year would owe tax amounting to 0.20 × (74,000 − 54,000) = $4,000, as would be the case under a flat tax system with deductions. Families of four earning less than $54,000 per year, however, would experience a "negative" amount of tax (that is, the family would receive money from the government instead of paying to the government). For example, if the family earned $34,000 a year, it would receive a check for $4,000. The NIT is intended to replace not just the USA's income tax, but also many benefits low income American households receive, such as food stamps and Medicaid. The NIT is designed to avoid the welfare trap—effective high marginal tax rates arising from the rules reducing benefits as market income rises. An objection to the NIT is that it is welfare without a work requirement. Those who would owe negative tax would be receiving a form of welfare without having to make an effort to obtain employment. Another objection is that the NIT subsidizes industries employing low-cost labor, but this objection can also be made against current systems of benefits for the working poor.
A capped flat tax is one in which income is taxed at a flat rate until a specified cap amount is reached. For example, the United States Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax is 6.2% of gross compensation up to a limit (in 2019, up to $132,900 of earnings, for a maximum tax of $8239.80). This cap has the effect of turning a nominally flat tax into a regressive tax.
In devising a flat tax system, several recurring issues must be enumerated, principally with deductions and the identification of when money is earned.
Since a central tenet of the flat tax is to minimize the compartmentalization of incomes into myriad special or sheltered cases, a vexing problem is deciding when income occurs. This is demonstrated by the taxation of interest income and stock dividends. The shareholders own the company and so the company's profits belong to them. If a company is taxed on its profits, then the funds paid out as dividends have already been taxed. It's a debatable question if they should subsequently be treated as income to the shareholders and thus subject to further tax. A similar issue arises in deciding if interest paid on loans should be deductible from the taxable income since that interest is in-turn taxed as income to the loan provider. There is no universally agreed answer to what is fair. For example, in the United States, dividends are not deductible but mortgage interest is deductible. "Thus a Flat Tax proposal is not fully defined until it differentiates new untaxed income from a pass-through of already taxed income."
Taxes, in addition to providing revenue, can be potent instruments of policy. For example, it is common for governments to encourage social policy such as home insulation or low income housing with tax credits rather than constituting a ministry to implement these policies. In a flat tax system with limited deductions such policy administration, mechanisms are curtailed. In addition to social policy, flat taxes can remove tools for adjusting economic policy as well. For example, in the United States, short-term capital gains are taxed at a higher rate than long-term gains as means to promote long-term investment horizons and damp speculative fluctuation. "Thus, if one assumes that government should be active in policy decisions such as this, then claims that flat taxes are cheaper/simpler to administer than others are incomplete until they factor in costs for alternative policy administration."
In general, the question of how to eliminate deductions is fundamental to the flat tax design; deductions dramatically affect the effective "flatness" in the tax rate. Perhaps the single biggest necessary deduction is for business expenses. If businesses were not allowed to deduct expenses, businesses with a profit margin below the flat tax rate could never earn any money since the tax on revenues would always exceed the earnings. For example, grocery stores typically earn pennies on every dollar of revenue; they could not pay a tax rate of 25% on revenues unless their markup exceeded 25%. Thus, corporations must be able to deduct operating expenses even if individual citizens cannot. A practical dilemma now arises as to identifying what is an expense for a business.
For example, if a peanut butter producer purchases a jar manufacturer, is that an expense (since they have to purchase jars somehow) or a sheltering of their income through investment? Flat tax systems can differ greatly in how they accommodate such gray areas. For example, the "9-9-9" flat tax proposal would allow businesses to deduct purchases but not labor costs. (This effectively taxes labor-intensive industrial revenue at a higher rate.) How deductions are implemented will dramatically change the effective total tax, and thus the flatness of the tax. "Thus, a flat tax proposal is not fully defined unless the proposal includes a differentiation between deductible and non-deductible expenses."
Flat tax benefits higher income brackets progressively due to decline in marginal value. For example, if a flat tax system has a large per-citizen deductible (such as the "Armey" scheme below), then it is a progressive tax. As a result, the term Flat Tax is actually a shorthand for the more proper marginally flat tax.
One type of flat tax would be imposed on all income once; at the source of the income. Hall and Rabushka (1995) includes a proposed amendment to the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that would implement the variant of the flat tax they advocate. This amendment, only a few pages long, would replace hundreds of pages of statutory language (although most statutory language in taxation statutes is "not" directed at specifying graduated tax rates).
As it now stands, the U.S. Internal Revenue Code is over several million words long, and contains many loopholes, deductions, and exemptions which, advocates of flat taxes claim, render the collection of taxes and the enforcement of tax law complicated and inefficient.
It is further argued that current tax law slows economic growth by distorting economic incentives, and by allowing, even encouraging, tax avoidance. With a flat tax, there are fewer incentives than in the current system to create tax shelters, and to engage in other forms of tax avoidance.
Flat tax critics contend that a flat tax system could be created with many loopholes, or a progressive tax system without loopholes, and that a progressive tax system could be as simple, or simpler, than a flat tax system. A simple progressive tax would also discourage tax avoidance.
Under a pure flat tax without deductions, every tax period a company would make a single payment to the government covering the taxes on the employees and the taxes on the company profit. For example, suppose that in a given year, a company called ACME earns a profit of 3 million, spends 2 million in wages, and spends 1 million on other expenses that under the tax law is taxable income to recipients, such as the receipt of stock options, bonuses, and certain executive privileges. Given a flat rate of 15%, ACME would then owe the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) (3M + 2M + 1M) × 0.15 = 900,000. This payment would, in one fell swoop, settle the tax liabilities of ACME's employees as well as the corporate taxes owed by ACME. Most employees throughout the economy would never need to interact with the IRS, as all tax owed on wages, interest, dividends, royalties, etc. would be withheld at the source. The main exceptions would be employees with incomes from personal ventures. The "Economist" claims that such a system would reduce the number of entities required to file returns from about 130 million individuals, households, and businesses, as at present, to a mere 8 million businesses and self-employed.
However, this simplicity depends on the absence of deductions of any kind being allowed (or at least no variability in the deductions of different people). Furthermore, if income of differing types are segregated (e.g., pass-through, long term cap gains, regular income, etc.) then complications ensue. For example, if realized capital gains were subject to the flat tax, the law would require brokers and mutual funds to calculate the realized capital gain on all sales and redemption. If there were a gain, a tax equal to 15% of the amount of the gain would be withheld and sent to the IRS. If there were a loss, the amount would be reported to the IRS. The loss would offset gains, and then the IRS would settle up with taxpayers at the end of the period. Lacking deductions, this scheme cannot be used to implement economic and social policy indirectly by tax credits and thus, as noted above, the simplifications to the government's revenue collection apparatus might be offset by new government ministries required to administer those policies.
The Russian Federation is considered a prime case of the success of a flat tax; the real revenues from its Personal Income Tax rose by 25.2% in the first year after the Federation introduced a flat tax, followed by a 24.6% increase in the second year, and a 15.2% increase in the third year.
The Russian example is often used as proof of the validity of this analysis, despite an International Monetary Fund study in 2006 which found that there was no sign "of Laffer-type behavioral responses generating revenue increases from the tax cut elements of these reforms" in Russia or in other countries.
Taxes other than the income tax (for example, taxes on sales and payrolls) tend to be regressive. Hence, making the income tax flat could result in a regressive overall tax structure. Under such a structure, those with lower incomes tend to pay a "higher" proportion of their income in total taxes than the affluent do. The fraction of household income that is a return to capital (dividends, interest, royalties, profits of unincorporated businesses) is positively correlated with total household income. Hence a flat tax limited to wages would seem to leave the wealthy better off. Modifying the tax base can change the effects. A flat tax could be targeted at income (rather than wages), which could place the tax burden equally on all earners, including those who earn income primarily from returns on investment. Tax systems could utilize a flat sales tax to target all consumption, which can be modified with rebates or exemptions to remove regressive effects (such as the proposed Fair Tax in the U.S.).
A flat tax system and income taxes overall are not inherently border-adjustable; meaning the tax component embedded into products via taxes imposed on companies (including corporate taxes and payroll taxes) are not removed when exported to a foreign country "(see Effect of taxes and subsidies on price)". Taxation systems such as a sales tax or value added tax can remove the tax component when goods are exported and apply the tax component on imports. The domestic products could be at a disadvantage to foreign products (at home and abroad) that are border-adjustable, which would impact the global competitiveness of a country. However, it's possible that a flat tax system could be combined with tariffs and credits to act as border adjustments (the proposed "Border Tax Equity Act" in the U.S. attempts this). Implementing an income tax with a border adjustment tax credit is a violation of the World Trade Organization agreement. Tax exemptions (allowances) on low income wages, a component of most income tax systems could mitigate this issue for high labour content industries like textiles that compete Globally.
In a subsequent section, various proposals for flat tax-like schemes are discussed, these differ mainly on how they approach with the following issues of deductions, defining income, and policy implementation.
Most countries tax personal income at the national level using progressive rates, but some use a flat rate. Most countries that have or had a flat tax on personal income at the national level are former communist countries or islands.
In some countries, subdivisions are allowed to tax personal income in addition to the national government. Many of these subdivisions use a flat rate, even if their national government uses progressive rates. Examples are all counties and municipalities of the Nordic countries, all prefectures and municipalities of Japan, and some subdivisions of Italy and of the United States.
The table below lists jurisdictions where the personal income tax imposed by all levels of government is a flat rate. It includes independent countries and other autonomous jurisdictions. The tax rate listed is the one that applies to income from work, but does not include mandatory contributions to social security. In some jurisdictions, different rates (also flat) apply to other types of income, such as from investments.
The table below lists subnational jurisdictions that tax personal income at a flat rate, in addition to the progressive rates used by their national government. The tax rates listed are those that apply to income from work, except as otherwise noted. Where a range of rates is listed, it means that the flat rate varies by location, not progressive rates.
Despite not having a permanent population, some jurisdictions tax the local income of temporary workers, using a flat rate.
"Economic Concepts"
"Tax Systems" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46334 |
Passerine
A passerine is any bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or songbirds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by the arrangement of their toes (three pointing forward and one back), which facilitates perching, amongst other features specific to their evolutionary history in Australaves.
With more than 140 families and some 6,500 identified species, Passeriformes is the largest order of birds and among the most diverse orders of terrestrial vertebrates. Passerines are divided into three suborders: Acanthisitti (New Zealand wrens), Tyranni (suboscines) and Passeri (oscines). The passerines contain several groups of brood parasites such as the viduas, cuckoo-finches, and the cowbirds. Most passerines are omnivorous, while the shrikes are carnivorous.
The terms "passerine" and "Passeriformes" are derived from the scientific name of the house sparrow, "Passer domesticus", and ultimately from the Latin term "passer", which refers to sparrows and similar small birds.
The order is divided into three suborders, Tyranni (suboscines), Passeri (oscines), and the basal Acanthisitti. Oscines have the best control of their syrinx muscles among birds, producing a wide range of songs and other vocalizations (though some of them, such as the crows, do not sound musical to human beings); some such as the lyrebird are accomplished imitators. The acanthisittids or New Zealand wrens are tiny birds restricted to New Zealand, at least in modern times; they were long placed in Passeri.
Most passerines are smaller than typical members of other avian orders. The heaviest and altogether largest passerines are the thick-billed raven and the larger races of common raven, each exceeding and . The superb lyrebird and some birds-of-paradise, due to very long tails or tail coverts, are longer overall. The smallest passerine is the short-tailed pygmy tyrant, at and .
The foot of a passerine has three toes directed forward and one toe directed backward, called anisodactyl arrangement, and the hind toe (hallux) joins the leg at approximately the same level as the front toes. This arrangement enables passerine birds to easily perch upright on branches. The toes have no webbing or joining, but in some cotingas, the second and third toes are united at their basal third.
The leg of passerine birds contains an additional special adaptation for perching. A tendon in the rear of the leg running from the underside of the toes to the muscle behind the tibiotarsus will automatically be pulled and tighten when the leg bends, causing the foot to curl and become stiff when the bird lands on a branch. This enables passerines to sleep while perching without falling off.
Most passerine birds have 12 tail feathers but the superb lyrebird has 16, and several spinetails in the family Furnariidae have 10, 8, or even 6, as is the case of Des Murs's wiretail. Species adapted to tree trunk climbing such as woodcreeper and treecreepers have stiff tail feathers that are used as props during climbing. Extremely long tails used as sexual ornaments are shown by species in different families. A well-known example is the long-tailed widowbird.
The chicks of passerines are altricial: blind, featherless, and helpless when hatched from their eggs. Hence, the chicks require extensive parental care. Most passerines lay coloured eggs, in contrast with nonpasserines, most of whose eggs are white except in some ground-nesting groups such as Charadriiformes and nightjars, where camouflage is necessary, and in some parasitic cuckoos, which match the passerine host's egg. Vinous-throated parrotbill has two egg colours, white and blue. This can prevent the brood parasitic Common cuckoo.
Clutches vary considerably in size: some larger passerines of Australia such as lyrebirds and scrub-robins lay only a single egg, most smaller passerines in warmer climates lay between two and five, while in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, hole-nesting species like tits can lay up to a dozen and other species around five or six.
The family Viduidae do not build their own nests, instead, they lay eggs in other birds' nests.
The evolutionary history of the passerine families and the relationships among them remained rather mysterious until the late 20th century. In many cases, passerine families were grouped together on the basis of morphological similarities that, it is now believed, are the result of convergent evolution, not a close genetic relationship. For example, the wrens of the Americas and Eurasia; those of Australia; and those of New Zealand look superficially similar and behave in similar ways, and yet belong to three far-flung branches of the passerine family tree; they are as unrelated as it is possible to be while remaining Passeriformes.
Much research remains to be done, but advances in molecular biology and improved paleobiogeographical data gradually are revealing a clearer picture of passerine origins and evolution that reconciles molecular affinities, the constraints of morphology and the specifics of the fossil record. The first passerines are now thought to have evolved in the Southern Hemisphere in the late Paleocene or early Eocene, around 50 million years ago.
The initial split was between the New Zealand wrens (Acanthisittidae) and all other passerines, and the second split involved the Tyranni (suboscines) and the Passeri (oscines or songbirds). The latter experienced a great radiation of forms out of the Australian continent. A major branch of the Passeri, parvorder Passerida, expanded deep into Eurasia and Africa, where a further explosive radiation of new lineages occurred. This eventually led to three major Passerida lineages comprising about 4,000 species, which in addition to the Corvida and numerous minor lineages make up songbird diversity today. Extensive biogeographical mixing happens, with northern forms returning to the south, southern forms moving north, and so on.
Perching bird osteology, especially of the limb bones, is rather diagnostic. However, the early fossil record is poor because the first Passeriformes were apparently on the small side of the present size range, and their delicate bones did not preserve well. Queensland Museum specimens F20688 (carpometacarpus) and F24685 (tibiotarsus) from Murgon, Queensland, are fossil bone fragments initially assigned to Passeriformes. However, the material is too fragmentary and their affinities have been questioned. Several more recent fossils from the Oligocene of Europe, such as "Wieslochia", "Jamna", and "Resoviaornis", are more complete and definitely represent early passeriforms, although their exact position in the evolutionary tree is not known.
From the Bathans Formation at the Manuherikia River in Otago, New Zealand, MNZ S42815 (a distal right tarsometatarsus of a tui-sized bird) and several bones of at least one species of saddleback-sized bird have recently been described. These date from the Early to Middle Miocene (Awamoan to Lillburnian, 19–16 mya).
In Europe, perching birds are not too uncommon in the fossil record from the Oligocene onward, but most are too fragmentary for a more definite placement:
That suboscines expanded much beyond their region of origin is proven by several fossil from Germany such as a broadbill (Eurylaimidae) humerus fragment from the Early Miocene (roughly 20 mya) of , Germany, the Late Oligocene carpometacarpus from France listed above, and "Wieslochia", among others. Extant Passeri super-families were quite distinct by that time and are known since about 12–13 mya when modern genera were present in the corvoidean and basal songbirds. The modern diversity of Passerida genera is known mostly from the Late Miocene onwards and into the Pliocene (about 10–2 mya). Pleistocene and early Holocene lagerstätten (<1.8 mya) yield numerous extant species, and many yield almost nothing but extant species or their chronospecies and paleosubspecies.
In the Americas, the fossil record is more scant before the Pleistocene, from which several still-existing suboscine families are documented. Apart from the indeterminable MACN-SC-1411 (Pinturas Early/Middle Miocene of Santa Cruz Province, Argentina), an extinct lineage of perching birds has been described from the Late Miocene of California, United States: the Palaeoscinidae with the single genus "Palaeoscinis". ""Palaeostruthus" eurius" (Pliocene of Florida) probably belongs to an extant family, most likely passeroidean.
The Passeriformes is currently divided into three suborders: Acanthisitti (New Zealand wrens), Tyranni (suboscines) and Passeri (oscines). The Passeri has been traditionally subdivided into two major groups recognized now as Corvida and Passerida respectively containing the large superfamilies Corvoidea and Meliphagoidea, as well as minor lineages, and the superfamilies Sylvioidea, Muscicapoidea, and Passeroidea but this arrangement has been found to be oversimplified. Since the mid-2000s, literally, dozens of studies have investigated the phylogeny of the Passeriformes and found that many families from Australasia traditionally included in the Corvoidea actually represent more basal lineages within oscines. Likewise, the traditional three-superfamily arrangement within the Passeri has turned out to be far more complex and will require changes in classification.
Major "wastebin" families such as the Old World warblers and Old World babblers have turned out to be paraphyletic and are being rearranged. Several taxa turned out to represent highly distinct lineages, so new families had to be established, some of them – like the stitchbird of New Zealand and the Eurasian bearded reedling – monotypic with only one living species. In the Passeri alone, a number of minor lineages will eventually be recognized as distinct superfamilies. For example, the kinglets constitute a single genus with less than 10 species today but seem to have been among the first perching bird lineages to diverge as the group spread across Eurasia. No particularly close relatives of them have been found among comprehensive studies of the living Passeri, though they might be fairly close to some little-studied tropical Asian groups. Nuthatches, wrens, and their closest relatives as currently grouped in a distinct super-family Certhioidea.
This list is in taxonomic order, placing related families next to one another. The families listed are those recognised by the International Ornithologists' Union (IOC). The order and the division into infraorders, parvorders and superfamilies follows the phylogenetic analysis published by Carl Oliveros and colleagues in 2019. The relationships between the families in the suborder Tyranni (suboscines) were all well determined but some of the nodes in Passeri (oscines) were unclear owing to the rapid splitting of the lineages.
Living Passeriformes based on the "Taxonomy in Flux family phylogenetic tree" by John Boyd. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46336 |
Independent city
An independent city or independent town is a city or town that does not form part of another general-purpose local government entity (such as a province).
In the Holy Roman Empire, and to a degree in its successor states the German Confederation and the German Empire, so-called "free imperial cities" (nominative singular "freie Reichsstadt", nominative plural "freie Reichsstädte") held the legal status of imperial immediacy, according to which they were not subinfeudated to any vassal ruler and were instead subject to the authority of the Emperor alone. Examples included Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, along with others that gained and/or lost the privileges of immediacy over the course of the Empire's history.
A number of countries have made their national capitals into separate entities.
Examples include:
In countries with a federal structure, the federal capital is often separate from other jurisdictions in the country, and frequently has a unique system of government.
Examples include:
In Taiwan Area under the administrative division system of the Republic of China, some cities are directly administered by the Executive Yuan, some are administered by provinces (the province of Taiwan is nominal), and some are subordinate to counties. The centrally-administered (Taipei City, Kaohsiung City, New Taipei City, Taichung City, Tainan City, and Taoyuan City) and province-administered ones are like independent cities under this definition.
In addition to its nine provinces, South Korea has seven province-level "metropolitan cities." By far the largest among these in terms of population is the capital, Seoul, called a "teukbyeol-si" (특별시; literally, special city), which is home to more than 20% of the entire population of the country. The remaining six independent cities are called "gwangyeok-si" (광역시; literally, large city) whose names are: Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Incheon, Gwangju, and Ulsan.
Historically, these independent cities have been carved from the province that surrounds them. Consequently, they typically share a strong regional and cultural identity with the adjoining province(s). For instance, Gwangju, located at the center of Jeolla region, is heavily associated with the region. Seoul and Incheon are said to make up the National Capital Area along with the densely populated Gyeonggi that almost completely encompasses them.
One interesting relic of the newer independent cities is that, in some cases, the government administrative buildings ("docheong") of the provinces they were once a part of are still located within city boundaries, meaning that these provinces have capitals that are not within their borders.
On July 1, 2012, Yeongi-gun, Chungcheongnam-do absorbed parts of Cheonan, Gongju and Cheongju, and became independent from Chungcheongnam-do as Sejong Special Self-governing City under the Special Act on the Installation of Sejong City. Currently, the population of Sejong Special Self-governing City is lower than that of the aforementioned metropolitan cities, but the population is increasing with the construction of a mixed-use administrative city. In 2006, the ruling party floated a proposal to completely eliminate all current province and independent-city borders. This plan would divide the entire republic into fifty or sixty city- or county-level administrations, similar to the system in Japan. The plan was intended to help reduce regional discrimination and animosity by eliminating provincial identity.
Many major cities in the Philippines are independent cities, classified as either "highly urbanized" or "independent component" cities. These cities are administratively and legally not subject to a province, and thus do not share their tax revenues with any province. In practise, most cities are often still grouped with provinces that they were partitioned from for the sake of convenience and simplicity. The national government and its agencies serve these cities through sub-offices for each region, to which the cities are indirectly subject. There are 38 such cities, with 16 being located in Metro Manila (including the City of Manila, the national capital); eight in the rest of Luzon and its surrounding islands; seven in the Visayas island group; and seven in Mindanao and its surrounding islands.
Vietnam has five municipalities that are not part of any of the Vietnam's provinces. This includes Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam; and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the most populous city of Vietnam.
In Austria, a similar concept is the "statutory city".
The Brčko District is independent of both Entities that constitute Bosnia and Herzegovina (Republika Srpska and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina). All other cities and municipalities are under the jurisdiction of the Entity (in Republika Srpska) or under the jurisdiction of cantons (Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The Dayton Peace Agreement afforded the special designation as a district, while also creating the Office of the High Representative that currently oversees the district of Brčko .
The capital city of Sofia has the status of oblast (region).
The capital city of Zagreb has the status equal to županija (county), whereas all other cities and municipalities are under a county jurisdiction.
Historically, Croatian cities became independent by being named a "royal free city".
The city of Paris is both a "département" and a "commune"; it is the only French city with this status. The Council of Paris ("Conseil de Paris") exercises functions similar to those of a departmental council ("conseil départemental") and a city council ("conseil municipal"). However, Paris and the "départements" closest to it are part of the Île-de-France région.
In Germany most of the federal states are subdivided into administrative districts called Kreise, each of which normally includes several towns or cities. However, a number of the more important cities are not part of a "Kreis", but are instead themselves each equivalent in status and functions to a "Kreis". Such cities are known as "Kreisfreie Städte" (literally, "district-free cities") – or, in the case of Baden-Württemberg, "Stadtkreise" ("urban districts").
There are currently 110 "Kreisfreie Städte" (or equivalents). Of these, the 22 largest are:
[a]: Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen are also federal states in their own right.
[b]: Effectively a "Kreisfreie Stadt", although the city is "de jure" a part of the special-status Hanover Region.
In Hungary, 23 of the cities are "cities with county rights". These cities have equal rights with the 19 counties of Hungary.
Cork, Dublin and Galway are governed by independent city councils.
In Norway, Oslo is both a municipality (kommune) and a county (fylke) within itself.
In Poland, many of the biggest cities comprise their own "city counties" (formally "cities with county rights"). They are suitably marked on the list of counties in Poland.
In the Russian Federation, Moscow and Saint Petersburg are both subjects of the federation and cities themselves. Russia also considers the Crimean city of Sevastopol to be a federal city of Russia, but this is not recognized by the majority of states who see the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation as unlawful.
In Spain, there exist two so-called "autonomous cities", Ceuta and Melilla, which are located on the North African coast surrounded by Morocco and have been under Spanish jurisdiction since the 15th century. Spain is a highly decentralized state organized in autonomous communities. These two cities hold their special status because they are not large enough to be considered regions on their own. Nonetheless, they function as autonomous communities with a high degree of self-administration and law-making powers.
In Ukraine, the cities of Kiev and Sevastopol are part of the country constituent regions along with the autonomous republic of Crimea (ARK), and 24 other oblasts (see Oblasts of Ukraine).
In the UK, having city status gives the city's local government no additional inherent powers; city status depends on a grant from the monarch and merely confers on the place so designated the right to call itself a city. Many cities and large urban areas are unitary authorities, meaning they have their own local government, separate from the surrounding county. (However, a number of large urban areas have a number of unitary authorities, such as Greater Manchester, which mean they do not have a unified, citywide local government.) County borough referred to a borough or a city, independent of county council control in England and Wales from 1889 to 1974 with the term continuing in use in Northern Ireland. Wales re-introduced the term in 1994 for use with certain unitary authorities.
In the Canadian province of Ontario, the same type of city is referred to as a single-tier municipality (there are also separated municipalities). In Quebec, they are often called separated cities, as they are not Regional County Municipalities. The vast majority of cities, towns, and villages in Alberta are separate from their surrounding county/municipal district. In Manitoba, all incorporated cities, towns, and villages are classified as separate urban municipalities and are fully independent from surrounding rural municipalities; unincorporated communities, including local urban districts, remain part of their surrounding rural municipalities. New Brunswick, all county government was abolished in 1967. Therefore, in theory, all cities, townships, and settlements in New Brunswick could be considered independent cities.
There are 41 independent cities in the United States. Of these, 38 are in Virginia. They are called 'independent' because they are not in the territory of any county or counties. Independent cities in Virginia may, however, serve as county seats for neighboring counties.
The three independent cities outside Virginia are Baltimore, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; and Carson City, Nevada.
New York City displays many features associated with independent cities but is, in fact, a "sui generis" municipality that is coextensive with five counties. Counties invariably are administrative divisions of state government. In the case of New York City, however, they are also administrative divisions of "city" government. As city administrative divisions, the five counties are called boroughs, retaining the label 'county' as state administrative divisions. For three out of the five boroughs, the borough and county have different names: the borough of Manhattan is the County of New York; Brooklyn is Kings County; and Staten Island is Richmond County. For the remaining two boroughs, Queens and the Bronx, the county and borough share the same name.
Another similar entity is a consolidated city-county. An independent city is not even nominally part of any county, whereas for a consolidated city and county, the county at least nominally exists. In some cases, such as Indianapolis, Indiana, the largest city in a county is consolidated with the county government while smaller communities continue to operate within the same county but separately from Indianapolis. In other cases, such as The City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, and The City and County of San Francisco, California, there is a complete consolidation of municipality and county. San Francisco, for example, has a chief executive called "Mayor", a term normally associated with city government, but the legislative body is called "Board of Supervisors", which is otherwise associated with county government in California.
Washington, D.C., meanwhile, effectively functions in varying ways as an independent city, consolidated city-county, and state all in one, although it has special Constitutional status as the "district constituting the seat of government of the United States," and is not part of a county or a state. In 1871, the cities of Washington and Georgetown and the County of Washington were consolidated into a single local government. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46341 |
Roberto Benigni
Roberto Remigio Benigni (; born 27 October 1952) is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director. He gained International fame for writing, directing and starring in the film "Life Is Beautiful" (1997), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 71st Oscars Ceremony (the film also won Best Foreign Language Film).
Benigni made his acting debut in 1977's "Berlinguer, I Love You", which he also wrote, and was directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. Benigni's directorial debut was the 1983 anthology film "Tu mi turbi", which was also the acting debut of his wife, Nicoletta Braschi. In 1986, Benigni made his first English-language film, "Down by Law", written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, with whom Benigni would make two more films: "Night on Earth" (1991) and "Coffee and Cigarettes" (2003).
In 1988, Benigni was acclaimed for the film "The Little Devil", which he directed, wrote and starred in. Costarring American actor Walter Matthau and Braschi, the film was shot in alternating takes in both Italian and English. Benigni continued to have success and acclaim as a director with "Johnny Stecchino" (1991) and "The Monster", and portrayed Inspector Clouseau's son in "Son of the Pink Panther" (1993), an American-Italian co-production filmed in English, directed by Blake Edwards.
His subsequent directorial efforts, "Pinocchio" (2002), in which he played the title character, and "The Tiger and the Snow" (2005), received mixed reviews.
While he has not directed another film since 2005, Benigni has continued to act on stage and film, touring Italy with his one-man show "TuttoDante", and starred in the films "To Rome with Love" (2012), directed by Woody Allen, and as Mister Geppetto in Matteo Garrone's 2019 adaptation of "Pinocchio".
Benigni was born in Manciano La Misericordia (a "frazione" of Castiglion Fiorentino), the son of Isolina Papini (1919–2004), a fabric maker, and Luigi Benigni (1919–2004), a bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer. He has three sisters: Bruna (born 1945), Albertina (born 1947) and Anna (born 1948). He was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy; he still considers himself a believer. His first experiences as a theatre actor took place in 1971, in Prato. During that autumn he moved to Rome where he took part in some experimental theatre shows, some of which he also directed. In 1975, Benigni had his first theatrical success with "Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia", written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.
Benigni became widely known in Italy in the 1970s for a television series called "Onda Libera", on RAI2, produced by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the satirical piece "The Hymn of the Body Purged" ("L'inno del corpo sciolto", a scatological song about the joys of defecation). A great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship. His first film was 1977's "Berlinguer, I Love You" ("Berlinguer ti voglio bene"), also by Bertolucci.
His popularity increased with "L'altra domenica" (1976/9), another TV show of Arbore's in which Benigni portrayed a lazy film critic who never watches the films he's asked to review. Bernardo Bertolucci then cast him in a small speechless role as a window upholsterer in the film "La Luna" which had limited American distribution due to its subject matter.
In 1980 he met Cesenate actress Nicoletta Braschi, who became his wife on 26 December 1991 and who has starred in most of the films he has directed.
In June 1983 he appeared during a public political demonstration by the Italian Communist Party, with which he was a sympathiser, and on this occasion he lifted and cradled the party's national leader Enrico Berlinguer. It was an unprecedented act, given that until that moment Italian politicians were proverbially serious and formal. Benigni was censored again in the 1980s for calling Pope John Paul II something impolite during an important live TV show ("Wojtylaccio", meaning "Bad Wojtyla" in Italian, but with a friendly meaning in Tuscan dialect).
Benigni's first film as director was "Tu mi turbi" ("You Upset Me") in 1983. This film was also his first collaboration with Braschi.
In 1984, he played in "Non ci resta che piangere" ("Nothing Left to Do but Cry") with comic actor Massimo Troisi. The story was a fable in which the protagonists are suddenly thrown back in time to the 15th century, just a little before 1492. They start looking for Christopher Columbus in order to stop him from discovering the Americas (for very personal reasons), but are not able to reach him.
Beginning in 1986, Benigni starred in three films by American director Jim Jarmusch. In "Down By Law" (1986) (which in Italy had its title spelled "Daunbailò", in Italian phonetics) he played Bob, an innocent foreigner living in the United States, convicted of manslaughter, whose irrepressible good humour and optimism help him to escape and find love. (The film also starred Braschi as his beloved.) In "Night on Earth", (1991) he played a cabbie in Rome, who causes his passenger, a priest, great discomfort and a heart attack by confessing his bizarre sexual experiences. Later, he also starred in the first of Jarmusch's series of short films, "Coffee and Cigarettes" (2003).
In 1990, he was a member of the Jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.
In 1993, he starred in "Son of the Pink Panther", directed by veteran Blake Edwards. Benigni played Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau's illegitimate son who is assigned to save the Princess of Lugash. The film bombed in the US, but was a hit in his homeland.
Benigni had a rare serious role in Federico Fellini's last film, "La voce della luna" ("The Voice of the Moon") (1989). In earlier years Benigni had started a long-lasting collaboration with screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami, for a series of films which scored great success in Italy: "Il piccolo diavolo" ("The Little Devil") with Walter Matthau, "Johnny Stecchino" ("Johnny Toothpick"), and "Il mostro" ("The Monster").
Benigni is widely known outside Italy for his 1997 tragicomedy "Life Is Beautiful" ("La vita è bella"), filmed in Arezzo, also written by Cerami. The film is about an Italian Jewish man who tries to protect his son's innocence during his internment at a Nazi concentration camp, by telling him that the Holocaust is an elaborate game and he must adhere very carefully to the rules to win. Benigni's father had spent three years in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and "La vita è bella" is based in part on his father's experiences. Benigni was also inspired by the story of Holocaust survivor Rubino Romeo Salmonì. Although the story and presentation of the film had been discussed during production with different Jewish groups to limit the offense it might cause, the film was attacked by some critics who accused it of presenting the Holocaust without much suffering, and some who considered that "laughing at everything" was not appropriate. More favourable critics praised Benigni's artistic daring and skill to create a sensitive comedy involving the tragedy, a challenge that Charlie Chaplin confessed he would not have done with "The Great Dictator" had he been aware of the horrors of the Holocaust.
In 1998, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards. At the 1999 ceremony, the film was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (which Benigni accepted as the film's director), Best Original Dramatic Score (the score by Nicola Piovani), and Benigni received the award for Best Actor (the first for a male performer in a non-English-speaking role, and only the third overall acting Oscar for non-English-speaking roles).
Famously, giddy with delight after "Life Is Beautiful" was announced as the Best Foreign Language Film, Benigni climbed over and then stood on the backs of the seats in front of him and applauded the audience before proceeding to the stage. After winning his Best Actor Oscar later in the evening, he said in his acceptance speech, "This is a terrible mistake because I used up all my English!" To close his speech, Benigni quoted the closing lines of Dante's "Divine Comedy", referencing "the love that moves the sun and all the stars." At the following year's ceremony, when he read the nominees for Best Actress (won by Hilary Swank for "Boys Don't Cry"), host Billy Crystal playfully appeared behind him with a large net to restrain Benigni if he got excessive with his antics again. On a 1999 episode of "Saturday Night Live", host Ray Romano played him in a sketch parodying his giddy behavior at the ceremony.
Benigni played one of the main characters in "Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar" as Detritus, a corrupt Roman provincial governor who wants to kill Julius Caesar, thereby seizing control of the Roman Republic.
As a director, his 2002 film "Pinocchio," the most expensive film in Italian cinema, performed well in Italy, but it bombed in North America, with a 0% critics' score at Rotten Tomatoes. He was also named as the Worst Actor for his role as Pinocchio, in the 23rd Golden Raspberry Awards. The original Italian version received six nominations at the David di Donatello Awards, winning two, as well as winning one of the two awards it was nominated for at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists.
That same year, he gave a typically energetic and revealing interview to Canadian filmmaker Damian Pettigrew for "" (2002), a cinematic portrait of the maestro that was nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards, Europe's equivalent of the Oscars. The film went on to win the prestigious Rockie Award for Best Arts Documentary at the Banff World Television Festival (2002) and the "Coup de Coeur" at the International Sunnyside of the Doc Marseille (2002).
In 2003, Benigni was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the Foundation's NIAF Special Achievement Award in Entertainment.
His film "La tigre e la neve" ("The Tiger and the Snow," 2005) is a love story set during the initial stage of the Iraq War.
On 15 October 2005, he performed an impromptu strip tease on Italy's most watched evening news program, removing his shirt and draping it over the newscaster's shoulders. Prior to removing his shirt, Benigni had already hijacked the opening credits of the news program, jumping behind the newscaster and announcing: "Berlusconi has resigned!" (Benigni is an outspoken critic of media tycoon and then former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.) The previous day, he had led a crowd of thousands in Rome on Friday in protest at the center-right government's decision to cut state arts funding by 35 percent.
On 2 February 2007, he was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. On 22 April 2008, the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa was conferred on him by the University of Malta, celebrated by a "Settimana Dantesca" including Benigni's first stage appearance at a university and the premiere of his performing with Dante scholar Robert Hollander.
In 2012, he starred in the Woody Allen film, "To Rome with Love".
Benigni is an improvisatory poet ("poesia estemporanea" is a form of art popularly followed and practiced in Tuscany), appreciated for his explanation and recitations of Dante's "Divina Commedia" from memory.
During 2006 and 2007, Benigni had a lot of success touring Italy with his 90-minute "one man show" "TuttoDante" ("Everything About Dante"). Combining current events and memories of his past narrated with an ironic tone, Benigni then begins a journey of poetry and passion through the world of the Divine Comedy.
"TuttoDante" has been performed in numerous Italian piazzas, arenas, and stadiums for a total of 130 shows, with an estimated audience of about one million spectators. Over 10 million more spectators watched the TV show, "Il V canto dell’Inferno" ("The 5th Song of Hell"), broadcast by Rai Uno on 29 November 2007, with re-runs on Rai International.
Benigni began North American presentations of "TuttoDante" with an announcement that he learned English to bring the gift of Dante's work to English speakers. The English performance incorporates dialectic discussion of language and verse and is a celebration of modernity and the concept of human consciousness as created by language.
Benigni brought "TuttoDante" to the United States, Canada and Argentina in the TuttoDante Tour between 2008-2009 with performances in San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. Benigni was feted in San Francisco at a special reception held by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in his honor on May 24, 2009. Following his U.S. premiere Benigni performed his last presentation on 16 June 2009, in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he was awarded "Honorary Citizenship of the City of Buenos Aires" in a ceremony held at the Legislative Palace in homage to the notable Italian diaspora and culture in Argentina.
Roberto Benigni is also a singer-songwriter. Among his recorded performances are versions of Paolo Conte's songs.
In 1999, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.
In addition to numerous film awards, Benigni has garnered honorary degrees from universities worldwide:
The Europe List, the largest survey on European culture, established that the top three films in European culture are | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46344 |
Arthur Treacher's
Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips is a fast food seafood restaurant chain. At the peak of its popularity in the late 1970s, it had about 800 stores. As of November 2019, there are believed to be only seven stand-alone locations remaining: three in Ohio, two in New York, and two in New Jersey (one of which is located inside the Molly Pitcher Service Area of the New Jersey Turnpike). Some Nathan's Famous locations also offer select Arthur Treacher's menu items. The menu offers fried seafood or chicken, accompanied by chips. Its main competitors were Long John Silver's and Captain D's.
The chain is the namesake of Arthur Treacher (1894–1975), an English character actor typecast as "the perfect butler" for his performances as Jeeves, as a butler in several Shirley Temple films, and the role of Constable Jones in ' "Mary Poppins". At the time the chain was founded, Treacher was best known as the announcer and sidekick on the popular "The Merv Griffin Show". Whether Treacher actually had a financial involvement in the restaurants is unknown (in interviews he refused to say), but he "served as a spokesman for the restaurant chain in its early years, underscoring the British character of its food." In a 1975 interview, New England franchise vice president M. John Elliott claimed the fish recipe to be the actor's own, brought over from the United Kingdom.
The franchise company was started in 1969 as National Fast Food Corp. National Fast Food's principals at the time included S. Robert Davis, Dave Thomas and L. S. Hartzog. S. Robert Davis was a real estate developer who built and leased several Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken properties. S. Robert Davis's friend Dave Thomas, who went on to found Wendy's, sold his Colonel Sanders franchises back to that company for $3,000,000. L.S. Hartzog ran a chain of bakeries selling biscuits to Colonel Sanders franchisees nationally.
In 1970, Fisher Foods swapped capital with and licensed franchises from National, with a total of 550 franchises sold (106 to Fisher alone), but only 99 stores were actually in operation. Long John Silver's, Captain D's, Skipper's and Alfie's Fish & Chips likewise employed the fish franchise concept about the same time. Aided by Arthur Treacher's advertisements, these companies introduced British fish and chips to northeastern America, albeit four years after Salt's Fish & Chips (later renamed H. Salt, Esq. Authentic English Fish and Chips) introduced British fish and chips to America in California.
By the early 1970s, National Fast Food had become Orange Co. Under this name, Davis conducted an aggressive expansion campaign from 1972 through 1976. Lacking equity, he relied on generous sale-leaseback agreements. Under the terms of these agreements, Orange Co. would sell to investors sites for new restaurants and then sign long leases unconditionally guaranteeing to continue lease payments if the restaurants failed.
On November 21, 1979, Orange Co. sold Arthur Treacher's to Mrs. Paul's. However, under the terms of its original sale-leaseback agreements, Orange Co. remained liable for millions of dollars of payments to investors.
The "Cod Wars" between the United Kingdom and Iceland during the 1970s had caused cod prices to double, and Mrs. Paul's responded by promptly replacing the Icelandic cod in Arthur Treacher's recipe with less expensive pollock that was oilier and of inferior quality. The move exacerbated tensions with franchisees – some of whom had already withheld a total of $5 million in royalties for what they perceived to be a steadily declining level of service. Litigation arising from the conflict eventually reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
After losing the case to the franchisees and having no way to compensate them, Mrs. Paul's sold Arthur Treacher's to Lumara Foods of America Inc. in March 1982. Lumara Foods filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code four months later.
The company was subsequently bought by a group of investors and the corporate offices were relocated to Youngstown, Ohio. It went into bankruptcy in 1983. Two years later, it was merged into a shell company by Jim Cataland.
From 1985 to 1993, Cataland slowly expanded the company again. In 1993, money from a new group of investors was used to introduce a more modern seafood concept; to buy additional stores; and to move the company from its base operations in Youngstown, Ohio, to Jacksonville, Florida.
In the mid-1980s, franchises in Detroit, Michigan were converted by their owner to a new chain called Seafood Bay. Arthur Treacher's purchased six Seafood Bay locations back in 1997, but was unsuccessful in reverting them.
The company experimented with co-branding, forming an alliance with Arby's (which got its start in the Youngstown suburb of Boardman) for co-branded locations. One such location existed in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. However, by the late 1990s, Arby's parent Triarc removed the Arthur Treacher's portions of its co-branded Arby's. Today, Arthur Treacher's primary co-branding partner is Nathan's Famous.
The company holding the Arthur Treacher's trademark was acquired by PAT Franchise Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of TruFoods Systems, Inc., in 2002. Nathan's Famous bought the exclusive rights to market the Arthur Treacher's trademark and sell their products co-branded with Nathan's Own concepts Kenny Rogers Roasters and Miami Subs in 2006; however, PAT Franchise Systems has a license agreement with NF Treachers to sell Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips franchises in eight states.
, in addition to Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, TruFoods Systems operated the following franchises: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46345 |
Jack McDevitt
Jack McDevitt (born April 14, 1935) is an American science fiction author whose novels frequently deal with attempts to make contact with alien races, and with archaeology or xenoarchaeology. His two main series are the Alex Benedict series and the Priscilla Hutchins series.
McDevitt's first published story was "The Emerson Effect" in "The Twilight Zone Magazine" in 1981. Five years later, he published his first novel, "The Hercules Text", about the discovery of an intelligently conceived signal whose repercussions threaten human civilization. This novel set the tone for many of McDevitt's following novels, which focused on making first contact. Frequently this theme is mixed with both trepidation before the unknown and a sense of wonder at the universe.
With "The Engines of God" (1994), McDevitt introduced the idea of a universe that was once teeming with intelligent life, but contains only their abandoned artifacts by the time humans arrive on the scene. Although it was initially written as a standalone novel, the main character of "The Engines of God", pilot Priscilla Hutchins, has since appeared in seven more books, "Deepsix" (2001), "Chindi" (2002), "Omega" (2003), "Odyssey" (2006), "Cauldron" (2007), "StarHawk" (2013), and The Long Sunset (2018). The mystery surrounding the destructive "Omega Clouds" (which are introduced in "The Engines of God") is left unexplored until "Omega".
McDevitt's novels frequently raise questions which he does not attempt to answer. He prefers to leave ambiguities to puzzle and intrigue his readers: "Some things are best left to the reader's very able imagination." The SF Site's Steven H Silver has written about this:
The novel "Seeker" won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has been nominated for the Nebula Award sixteen times; "Seeker" is his only win.
McDevitt went to La Salle University, where a short story of his won the annual "Freshman Short Story Contest" and was published in the school's literary magazine, "Four Quarters". As McDevitt explained in an interview, "I was on my way. Then I read "David Copperfield" and realized I could never write at that level, and therefore I should find something else to do. I joined the Navy, drove a cab, became an English teacher, took a customs inspector's job on the northern border, and didn't write another word for a quarter-century." McDevitt received a master's degree in literature from Wesleyan University in 1971. He returned to writing when his wife, Maureen, encouraged him to try his hand at it in 1980. , McDevitt lives near Brunswick, Georgia. In 2005, he donated his archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.
The short stories "Melville on Iapetus" (1983), "Promises to Keep" (1984), "Oculus" (2002), "The Big Downtown" (2005), "Kaminsky at War" (2006), "Maiden Voyage" (2012), "Waiting at the Altar" (2012), and "The Cat's Pajamas" (2012) are also set in the Academy universe.
The short stories "In the Tower" (1987) and "A Voice in the Night" (2013) are also set in the Alex Benedict universe. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46356 |
Sashimi
The word "sashimi" means "pierced body", i.e. "刺身" = "sashimi", where 刺 し = "sashi" (pierced, stuck) and 身 = "mi" (body, meat). This word dates from the Muromachi period and was possibly coined when the word "切る" = "kiru" (cut), the culinary step, was considered too inauspicious to be used by anyone other than samurai. This word may derive from the culinary practice of sticking the fish's tail and fin to the slices for the purpose of identifying the fish being eaten.
Another possibility for the name is the traditional method of harvesting. ""Sashimi"-grade" fish is caught by individual handline. As soon as the fish is landed, its brain is pierced with a sharp spike, and it is placed in slurried ice. This spiking is called the ikejime process, and the instantaneous death means that the fish's flesh contains a minimal amount of lactic acid. This means that the fish will keep fresh on ice for about ten days, without turning white or otherwise degrading.
Many non-Japanese use the terms "sashimi" and sushi interchangeably, but the two dishes are distinct and separate. Sushi refers to any dish made with vinegared rice. While raw fish is one traditional sushi ingredient, many sushi dishes contain seafood that has been cooked, and others have no seafood at all. "Sashimi" by contrast is always served on its own.
"Sashimi" is often the first course in a formal Japanese meal, but it can also be the main course, presented with rice and miso soup in separate bowls. Japanese chefs consider "sashimi" the finest dish in Japanese formal dining and recommend that it be eaten before other strong flavors affect the palate.
The sliced seafood that composes the main ingredient is typically draped over a garnish. The typical garnish is Asian white radish, "daikon", shredded into long thin strands, or single leaves of the herb "shiso" (perilla)
"Sashimi" is popularly served with a dipping sauce (soy sauce) and condiments such as wasabi paste, grated fresh ginger, grated fresh garlic, or ponzu for meat "sashimi", and such garnishes as shiso and shredded daikon radish.
Wasabi paste is sometimes mixed directly into soy sauce as a dipping sauce, which is generally not done when eating sushi (which itself normally includes "wasabi"). Another way to flavor soy sauce with wasabi is to place the wasabi mound into the soy sauce dish and then pour it in. This allows the wasabi to infuse the soy sauce more subtly. A reputed motivation for serving wasabi with "sashimi" (and also "gari", pickled ginger), besides its flavor, is killing harmful bacteria and parasites that could be present in raw seafood. Other garnishes, more common in Japan than overseas, include red water pepper sprouts and a small chrysanthemum . The chrysanthemum, unlike other garnishes, is not intended to be eaten but put as preservative, and in cheap service (such as at supermarkets) may be substituted with a plastic flower.
To highlight the delicate flavor as well as for texture, the chef cuts fish into different thicknesses by variety of the fish, its age and by the season. The "hira-zukuri" cut (literally "flat slice"), is the standard cut for most "sashimi". Typically this style of cut is the size of a domino and thick. Tuna, salmon, and kingfish are most commonly cut in this style. The "usu-zukuri" cut (literally "thin slice"), is an extremely thin, diagonally cut slice that is mostly used to cut firm fish, such as bream, whiting, and flounder. The dimensions of this fish is usually long and wide. The "kaku-zukuri" cut (literally "square slice"), is the style in which "sashimi" is cut into small cubes that are on each side. The "ito-zukuri" cut (literally "thread slice"), is the style in which the fish is cut into fine strips, less than in diameter The fish typically cut with the "ito-zukuri" style include garfish and squid; squid dish prepared in "ito-zukuri" is also called "ika sōmen" and you dip them in dashi or "men-tsuyu" like eating "sōmen" noodle.
Popular main ingredients for sashimi include:
Some sashimi ingredients, such as octopus, are sometimes served cooked given their chewy nature. Most seafood, such as tuna, salmon, and squid, are served raw. "Tataki" (たたき or 叩き, "pounded") is a type of sashimi that is quickly and lightly seared on the outside, leaving it raw inside.
Less common, but not unusual, sashimi ingredients are vegetarian items, such as yuba (bean curd skin), and raw red meats, such as beef (known as "gyuunotataki)" or horse (known as "basashi)". Chicken "sashimi" (known as "toriwasa)" is considered by some to be a delicacy; the Nagoya kōchin, French "poulet de Bresse" and its American derivative, the blue foot chicken, are favored by many for this purpose, as, besides their taste, they are certified to be free of "Salmonella". Chicken sashimi is sometimes slightly braised or seared on the outside.
Food cut into small pieces and eaten with wasabi and soy sauce may be called sashimi in Japan, including the following ingredients. Like bamboo shoots, the food is enjoyed raw to appreciate the freshness, and producers and farmers offer those sashimi at their properties in top season. Some of the vegetables are enjoyed as thin sliced strips and called sashimi while they resemble fish meat, like avocado as salmon and konnyaku as puffer fish.
As a raw food, consuming sashimi can result in foodborne illness when bacteria or parasites are present; for example, anisakiasis is a disease caused by the accidental ingestion of larval nematodes in the family Anisakidae, primarily "Anisakis simplex" but also "Pseudoterranova decipiens". In addition, incorrectly prepared Fugu fish may contain tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin.
Another type of food borne illness that could occur after consuming tainted sashimi is Diphyllobothriasis. This disease is an infection within the intestines that occurs when the tapeworm "Diphyllobothrium latum" is consumed. Common fish such as trout, salmon, pike, and sea bass harbor this parasitic larvae in their muscles. Due to the innovation of the chilled transport system paired with the salmon and trout consumption, an increasing number of cases have been recorded annually in northern Japan due to the spread of this disease.
Traditionally, fish that spend at least part of their lives in brackish or fresh water were considered unsuitable for sashimi because of the possibility of parasites. For example, salmon, an anadromous fish, is not traditionally eaten straight out of the river. A study in Seattle, Washington, showed that all wild salmon had roundworm larvae capable of infecting people, while farm-raised salmon did not have any roundworm larvae. However a study commissioned by the Pew Foundation found that total organic contaminants were consistently and significantly more concentrated in the farmed salmon as a group than in wild salmon.
Freezing is often used to kill parasites. According to European Union regulations, freezing fish at −20 °C (−4 °F) for 24 hours kills parasites. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends freezing at −35 °C (−31 °F) for 15 hours, or at −20 °C (−4 °F) for 7 days.
While Canada does not federally regulate freezing fish, British Columbia and Alberta voluntarily adhere to guidelines similar to the FDA's. Ontario attempted to legislate freezing as part of raw food handling requirements, though this was soon withdrawn due to protests by the industry that the subtle flavors and texture of raw fish would be destroyed by freezing. Instead, Ontario has decided to consider regulations on how raw fish must be handled prior to serving.
Some fish for sashimi are treated with carbon monoxide to keep the flesh red for a longer time in storage. This practice can make spoiled fish appear fresh.
Eating chicken sashimi is a serious food poisoning risk. Despite it being on menus, it is hard to find, and many chefs cook it incorrectly. It is often prepared by cooking or searing for 10 seconds, which is not enough time to kill off harmful bacteria such as campylobacter and salmonella. Chicken sashimi is also often sourced at certain restaurants from the thigh, liver and outer breast, where more harmful bacteria tend to grow.
With the constant amount of fishing, bluefin tuna population rates have been steadily declining. A proposed solution has been farming bluefin tuna in fisheries, but this poses a problem in that the captive fish are not raised from spawn, but rather from small wild fish that are netted and transported to the farms, mostly in the Mediterranean; however, Japanese scientists have found a way to successfully breed and raise the fish entirely in captivity. Despite this technical accomplishment, this may not lead to a viable solution to maintain a sustainable bluefin population, because chefs and consumers see wild bluefin to be more appetizing, and look down upon farmed bluefin. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46360 |
Edward I of England
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots (), was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Before his accession to the throne, he was commonly referred to as The Lord Edward. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved from an early age in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons. In 1259, he briefly sided with a baronial reform movement, supporting the Provisions of Oxford. After reconciliation with his father, however, he remained loyal throughout the subsequent armed conflict, known as the Second Barons' War. After the Battle of Lewes, Edward was hostage to the rebellious barons, but escaped after a few months and defeated the baronial leader Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Within two years the rebellion was extinguished and, with England pacified, Edward joined the Ninth Crusade to the Holy Land. He was on his way home in 1272 when he was informed that his father had died. Making a slow return, he reached England in 1274 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
Edward spent much of his reign reforming royal administration and common law. Through an extensive legal inquiry, he investigated the tenure of various feudal liberties, while the law was reformed through a series of statutes regulating criminal and property law. Increasingly, however, Edward's attention was drawn towards military affairs. After suppressing a minor rebellion in Wales in 1276–77, Edward responded to a second rebellion in 1282–83 with a full-scale war of conquest. After a successful campaign, he subjected Wales to English rule, built a series of castles and towns in the countryside and settled them with English people. Next, his efforts were directed towards the Kingdom of Scotland. Initially invited to arbitrate a succession dispute, Edward claimed feudal suzerainty over Scotland. The war that followed continued after Edward's death, even though the English seemed victorious at several points. Simultaneously, Edward found himself at war with France (a Scottish ally) after King Philip IV of France had confiscated the Duchy of Gascony, which until then had been held in personal union with the Kingdom of England. Although Edward recovered his duchy, this conflict relieved English military pressure against Scotland. At the same time there were problems at home. In the mid-1290s, extensive military campaigns required high levels of taxation, and Edward met with both lay and ecclesiastical opposition. These crises were initially averted, but issues remained unsettled. When the King died in 1307, he left to his son Edward II an ongoing war with Scotland and many financial and political problems.
Edward I was a tall man (6'2") for his era, hence the nickname "Longshanks". He was temperamental, and this, along with his height, made him an intimidating man, and he often instilled fear in his contemporaries. Nevertheless, he held the respect of his subjects for the way he embodied the medieval ideal of kingship, as a soldier, an administrator and a man of faith. Modern historians are divided on their assessment of Edward: while some have praised him for his contribution to the law and administration, others have criticised him for his uncompromising attitude towards his nobility. Currently, Edward I is credited with many accomplishments during his reign, including restoring royal authority after the reign of Henry III, establishing Parliament as a permanent institution and thereby also a functional system for raising taxes, and reforming the law through statutes. At the same time, he is also often criticised for other actions, such as his brutal conduct towards the Welsh and Scots, and issuing the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, by which the Jews were expelled from England. The Edict remained in effect for the rest of the Middle Ages, and it was over 350 years until it was formally overturned under Oliver Cromwell in 1657.
Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster on the night of 17–18 June 1239, to King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence.
"Edward" is an Anglo-Saxon name, and was not commonly given among the aristocracy of England after the Norman conquest, but Henry was devoted to the veneration of Edward the Confessor, and decided to name his firstborn son after the saint. Among his childhood friends was his cousin Henry of Almain, son of King Henry's brother Richard of Cornwall. Henry of Almain would remain a close companion of the prince, both through the civil war that followed, and later during the crusade. Edward was in the care of Hugh Giffard – father of the future Chancellor Godfrey Giffard – until Bartholomew Pecche took over at Giffard's death in 1246.
There were concerns about Edward's health as a child, and he fell ill in 1246, 1247, and 1251. Nonetheless, he became an imposing man; at 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) he towered over most of his contemporaries, and hence perhaps his epithet "Longshanks", meaning "long legs" or "long shins". The historian Michael Prestwich states that his "long arms gave him an advantage as a swordsman, long thighs one as a horseman. In youth, his curly hair was blond; in maturity it darkened, and in old age it turned white. [His features were marred by a drooping left eyelid.] His speech, despite a lisp, was said to be persuasive."
In 1254, English fears of a Castilian invasion of the English province of Gascony induced King Henry to arrange a politically expedient marriage between fifteen-year-old Edward and thirteen-year-old Eleanor, the half-sister of King Alfonso X of Castile. They were married on 1 November 1254 in the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Castile. As part of the marriage agreement, Edward received grants of land worth 15,000 marks a year. Although the endowments King Henry made were sizeable, they offered Edward little independence. He had already received Gascony as early as 1249, but Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, had been appointed as royal lieutenant the year before and, consequently, drew its income, so in practice Edward derived neither authority nor revenue from this province. The grant he received in 1254 included most of Ireland, and much land in Wales and England, including the earldom of Chester, but King Henry retained much control over the land in question, particularly in Ireland, so Edward's power was limited there as well, and the King derived most of the income from those lands.
From 1254 to 1257, Edward was under the influence of his mother's relatives, known as the Savoyards, the most notable of whom was Peter II of Savoy, the Queen's uncle. After 1257, Edward increasingly fell in with the Poitevin or Lusignan faction – the half-brothers of his father Henry III – led by such men as William de Valence. This association was significant, because the two groups of privileged foreigners were resented by the established English aristocracy, and they would be at the centre of the ensuing years' baronial reform movement. There were tales of unruly and violent conduct by Edward and his Lusignan kinsmen, which raised questions about Edward's personal qualities. The next years would be formative on his character.
Edward had shown independence in political matters as early as 1255, when he sided with the Soler family in Gascony, in the ongoing conflict between the Soler and Colomb families. This ran contrary to his father's policy of mediation between the local factions. In May 1258, a group of magnates drew up a document for reform of the King's government – the so-called Provisions of Oxford – largely directed against the Lusignans. Edward stood by his political allies and strongly opposed the Provisions. The reform movement succeeded in limiting the Lusignan influence, however, and gradually Edward's attitude started to change. In March 1259, he entered into a formal alliance with one of the main reformers, Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester. Then, on 15 October 1259, he announced that he supported the barons' goals, and their leader, Simon de Montfort.
The motive behind Edward's change of heart could have been purely pragmatic; Montfort was in a good position to support his cause in Gascony. When the King left for France in November, Edward's behaviour turned into pure insubordination. He made several appointments to advance the cause of the reformers, causing his father to believe that Edward was considering a coup d'état. When the King returned from France, he initially refused to see his son, but through the mediation of the Earl of Cornwall and Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, the two were eventually reconciled. Edward was sent abroad, and in November 1260 he again united with the Lusignans, who had been exiled to France.
Back in England, early in 1262, Edward fell out with some of his former Lusignan allies over financial matters. The next year, King Henry sent him on a campaign in Wales against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, with only limited results. Around the same time, Montfort, who had been out of the country since 1261, returned to England and reignited the baronial reform movement. It was at this pivotal moment, as the King seemed ready to resign to the barons' demands, that Edward began to take control of the situation. Whereas he had so far been unpredictable and equivocating, from this point on he remained firmly devoted to protecting his father's royal rights. He reunited with some of the men he had alienated the year before – among them his childhood friend, Henry of Almain, and John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey – and retook Windsor Castle from the rebels. Through the arbitration of King Louis IX of France, an agreement was made between the two parties. This so-called Mise of Amiens was largely favourable to the royalist side, and laid the seeds for further conflict.
The years 1264–1267 saw the conflict known as the Second Barons' War, in which baronial forces led by Simon de Montfort fought against those who remained loyal to the King. The first scene of battle was the city of Gloucester, which Edward managed to retake from the enemy. When Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby, came to the assistance of the rebels, Edward negotiated a truce with the Earl, the terms of which Edward later broke. He then captured Northampton from Simon de Montfort the Younger before embarking on a retaliatory campaign against Derby's lands. The baronial and royalist forces finally met at the Battle of Lewes, on 14 May 1264. Edward, commanding the right wing, performed well, and soon defeated the London contingent of Montfort's forces. Unwisely, however, he followed the scattered enemy in pursuit, and on his return found the rest of the royal army defeated. By the agreement known as the Mise of Lewes, Edward and his cousin Henry of Almain were given up as hostages to Montfort.
Edward remained in captivity until March, and even after his release he was kept under strict surveillance. Then, on 28 May, he managed to escape his custodians and joined up with Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, who had recently defected to the King's side.
Montfort's support was now dwindling, and Edward retook Worcester and Gloucester with relatively little effort. Meanwhile, Montfort had made an alliance with Llywelyn and started moving east to join forces with his son Simon. Edward managed to make a surprise attack at Kenilworth Castle, where the younger Montfort was quartered, before moving on to cut off the earl of Leicester. The two forces then met at the second great encounter of the Barons' War, the Battle of Evesham, on 4 August 1265. Montfort stood little chance against the superior royal forces, and after his defeat he was killed and mutilated on the field.
Through such episodes as the deception of Derby at Gloucester, Edward acquired a reputation as untrustworthy. During the summer campaign, though, he began to learn from his mistakes, and acted in a way that gained the respect and admiration of his contemporaries. The war did not end with Montfort's death, and Edward participated in the continued campaigning. At Christmas, he came to terms with Simon the Younger and his associates at the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, and in March he led a successful assault on the Cinque Ports. A contingent of rebels held out in the virtually impregnable Kenilworth Castle and did not surrender until the drafting of the conciliatory Dictum of Kenilworth. In April it seemed as if Gloucester would take up the cause of the reform movement, and civil war would resume, but after a renegotiation of the terms of the Dictum of Kenilworth, the parties came to an agreement. Edward, however, was little involved in the settlement negotiations following the wars; at this point his main focus was on planning his forthcoming crusade.
Edward took the crusader's cross in an elaborate ceremony on 24 June 1268, with his brother Edmund Crouchback and cousin Henry of Almain. Among others who committed themselves to the Ninth Crusade were Edward's former adversaries – like the Earl of Gloucester, though de Clare did not ultimately participate. With the country pacified, the greatest impediment to the project was providing sufficient finances. King Louis IX of France, who was the leader of the crusade, provided a loan of about £17,500. This, however, was not enough; the rest had to be raised through a tax on the laity, which had not been levied since 1237. In May 1270, Parliament granted a tax of a twentieth, in exchange for which the King agreed to reconfirm Magna Carta, and to impose restrictions on Jewish money lending. On 20 August Edward sailed from Dover for France. Historians have not determined the size of the force with any certainty, but Edward probably brought with him around 225 knights and altogether fewer than 1000 men.
Originally, the Crusaders intended to relieve the beleaguered Christian stronghold of Acre, but King Louis had been diverted to Tunis. Louis and his brother Charles of Anjou, the King of Sicily, decided to attack the emirate to establish a stronghold in North Africa. The plans failed when the French forces were struck by an epidemic which, on 25 August, took the life of Louis himself. By the time Edward arrived at Tunis, Charles had already signed a treaty with the emir, and there was little else to do but return to Sicily. The crusade was postponed until the following spring, but a devastating storm off the coast of Sicily dissuaded Charles and Louis's successor Philip III from any further campaigning. Edward decided to continue alone, and on 9 May 1271 he finally landed at Acre.
By then, the situation in the Holy Land was a precarious one. Jerusalem had fallen in 1244, and Acre was now the centre of the Christian state. The Muslim states were on the offensive under the Mamluk leadership of Baibars, and were now threatening Acre itself. Though Edward's men were an important addition to the garrison, they stood little chance against Baibars' superior forces, and an initial raid at nearby St Georges-de-Lebeyne in June was largely futile. An embassy to the Ilkhan Abaqa (1234–1282) of the Mongols helped bring about an attack on Aleppo in the north, which helped to distract Baibars' forces. In November, Edward led a raid on Qaqun, which could have served as a bridgehead to Jerusalem, but both the Mongol invasion and the attack on Qaqun failed. Things now seemed increasingly desperate, and in May 1272 Hugh III of Cyprus, who was the nominal king of Jerusalem, signed a ten-year truce with Baibars. Edward was initially defiant, but an assassination attempt by a Syrian Nizari (Assassin) supposedly sent by Baibars in June 1272 forced him to abandon any further campaigning. Although he managed to kill the assassin, he was struck in the arm by a dagger feared to be poisoned, and became severely weakened over the following months.
It was not until 24 September that Edward left Acre. Arriving in Sicily, he was met with the news that his father had died on 16 November 1272. Edward was deeply saddened by this news, but rather than hurrying home at once, he made a leisurely journey northwards. This was due partly to his still-poor health, but also to a lack of urgency. The political situation in England was stable after the mid-century upheavals, and Edward was proclaimed king after his father's death, rather than at his own coronation, as had until then been customary. In Edward's absence, the country was governed by a royal council, led by Robert Burnell. The new king embarked on an overland journey through Italy and France, where among other things he visited Pope Gregory X. Only on 2 August 1274 did he return to England, and he was crowned on 19 August.
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd enjoyed an advantageous situation in the aftermath of the Barons' War. Through the 1267 Treaty of Montgomery, he officially obtained land he had conquered in the Four Cantrefs of Perfeddwlad and was recognised in his title of Prince of Wales. Armed conflicts nevertheless continued, in particular with certain dissatisfied Marcher Lords, such as Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, Roger Mortimer and Humphrey de Bohun, 3rd Earl of Hereford. Problems were exacerbated when Llywelyn's younger brother Dafydd and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys, after failing in an assassination attempt against Llywelyn, defected to the English in 1274. Citing ongoing hostilities and Edward's harbouring of his enemies, Llywelyn refused to do homage to the King. For Edward, a further provocation came from Llywelyn's planned marriage to Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort.
In November 1276, war was declared. Initial operations were launched under the captaincy of Mortimer, Edward's brother Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick. Support for Llywelyn was weak among his own countrymen. In July 1277 Edward invaded with a force of 15,500, of whom 9,000 were Welshmen. The campaign never came to a major battle, and Llywelyn soon realised he had no choice but to surrender. By the Treaty of Aberconwy in November 1277, he was left only with the land of Gwynedd, though he was allowed to retain the title of Prince of Wales.
When war broke out again in 1282, it was an entirely different undertaking. For the Welsh, this war was over national identity, enjoying wide support, provoked particularly by attempts to impose English law on Welsh subjects. For Edward, it became a war of conquest rather than simply a punitive expedition, like the former campaign. The war started with a rebellion by Dafydd, who was discontented with the reward he had received from Edward in 1277. Llywelyn and other Welsh chieftains soon joined in, and initially the Welsh experienced military success. In June, Gloucester was defeated at the Battle of Llandeilo Fawr. On 6 November, while John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, was conducting peace negotiations, Edward's commander of Anglesey, Luke de Tany, decided to carry out a surprise attack. A pontoon bridge had been built to the mainland, but shortly after Tany and his men crossed over, they were ambushed by the Welsh and suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Moel-y-don. The Welsh advances ended on 11 December, however, when Llywelyn was lured into a trap and killed at the Battle of Orewin Bridge. The conquest of Gwynedd was complete with the capture in June 1283 of Dafydd, who was taken to Shrewsbury and executed as a traitor the following autumn.
Further rebellions occurred in 1287–88 and, more seriously, in 1294, under the leadership of Madog ap Llywelyn, a distant relative of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. This last conflict demanded the King's own attention, but in both cases the rebellions were put down.
By the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan, the Principality of Wales was incorporated into England and was given an administrative system like the English, with counties policed by sheriffs. English law was introduced in criminal cases, though the Welsh were allowed to maintain their own customary laws in some cases of property disputes. After 1277, and increasingly after 1283, Edward embarked on a full-scale project of English settlement of Wales, creating new towns like Flint, Aberystwyth and Rhuddlan. Their new residents were English migrants, with the local Welsh banned from living inside them, and many were protected by extensive walls.
An extensive project of castle-building was also initiated, under the direction of Master James of Saint George, a prestigious architect whom Edward had met in Savoy on his return from the crusade. These included the Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech Castles, intended to act both as fortresses and royal palaces for the King. His programme of castle building in Wales heralded the introduction of the widespread use of arrowslits in castle walls across Europe, drawing on Eastern influences. Also a product of the Crusades was the introduction of the concentric castle, and four of the eight castles Edward founded in Wales followed this design. The castles made a clear, imperial statement about Edward's intentions to rule North Wales permanently, and drew on imagery associated with the Byzantine Roman Empire and King Arthur in an attempt to build legitimacy for his new regime.
In 1284, King Edward had his son Edward (later Edward II) born at Caernarfon Castle, probably to make a deliberate statement about the new political order in Wales. David Powel, a 16th-century clergyman, suggested that the baby was offered to the Welsh as a prince "that was borne in Wales and could speake never a word of English", but there is no evidence to support this account. In 1301 at Lincoln, the young Edward became the first English prince to be invested with the title of Prince of Wales, when the King granted him the Earldom of Chester and lands across North Wales. The King seems to have hoped that this would help in the pacification of the region, and that it would give his son more financial independence.
Edward never again went on crusade after his return to England in 1274, but he maintained an intention to do so, and took the cross again in 1287. This intention guided much of his foreign policy, until at least 1291. To stage a European-wide crusade, it was essential to prevent conflict between the greater princes on the continent. A major obstacle to this was represented by the conflict between the French Capetian House of Anjou ruling southern Italy, and the Kingdom of Aragon in Spain. In 1282, the citizens of Palermo rose up against Charles of Anjou and turned for help to Peter III of Aragon, in what has become known as the Sicilian Vespers. In the war that followed, Charles of Anjou's son, Charles of Salerno, was taken prisoner by the Aragonese. The French began planning an attack on Aragon, raising the prospect of a large-scale European war. To Edward, it was imperative that such a war be avoided, and in Paris in 1286 he brokered a truce between France and Aragon that helped secure Charles' release. As far as the crusades were concerned, however, Edward's efforts proved ineffective. A devastating blow to his plans came in 1291, when the Mamluks captured Acre, the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land.
After the fall of Acre, Edward's international role changed from that of a diplomat to an antagonist. He had long been deeply involved in the affairs of his own Duchy of Gascony. In 1278 he assigned an investigating commission to his trusted associates Otto de Grandson and the chancellor Robert Burnell, which caused the replacement of the seneschal Luke de Tany. In 1286, Edward visited the region himself and stayed for almost three years. The perennial problem, however, was the status of Gascony within the kingdom of France, and Edward's role as the French king's vassal. On his diplomatic mission in 1286, Edward had paid homage to the new king, Philip IV, but in 1294 Philip declared Gascony forfeit when Edward refused to appear before him in Paris to discuss the recent conflict between English, Gascon, and French sailors that had resulted in several French ships being captured, along with the sacking of the French port of La Rochelle.
Eleanor of Castile had died on 28 November 1290. The couple loved each other and like his father, Edward was very devoted to his wife and was faithful to her throughout their married lives — a rarity among monarchs of the time. He was deeply affected by her death. He displayed his grief by erecting twelve so-called Eleanor crosses, one at each place where her funeral cortège stopped for the night. As part of the peace accord between England and France in 1294, it was agreed that Edward should marry Philip IV's half-sister Margaret, but the marriage was delayed by the outbreak of war.
Edward made alliances with the German king, the Counts of Flanders and Guelders, and the Burgundians, who would attack France from the north. However, the alliances proved volatile and Edward was facing trouble at home at the time, both in Wales and Scotland. It was not until August 1297 that he was finally able to sail for Flanders, at which time his allies there had already suffered defeat. The support from Germany never materialised, and Edward was forced to seek peace. His marriage to Margaret in 1299 ended the war, but the whole affair had proven both costly and fruitless for the English.
The relationship between the nations of England and Scotland by the 1280s was one of relatively harmonious coexistence. The issue of homage did not reach the same level of controversy as it did in Wales; in 1278 King Alexander III of Scotland paid homage to Edward I, but apparently only for the lands he held of Edward in England. Problems arose only with the Scottish succession crisis of the early 1290s. In the years from 1281 to 1284, King Alexander's three children died in quick succession, then the King himself died in 1286, leaving as heir to the Scottish throne his three-year-old granddaughter, Margaret. By the Treaty of Birgham, it was agreed that Margaret should marry King Edward's then six-year-old son Edward of Carnarvon, though Scotland would remain free of English overlordship.
Margaret, by now seven years of age, sailed from Norway for Scotland in the autumn of 1290, but fell ill on the way and died in Orkney. This left the country without an obvious heir, and led to the succession dispute known to history as the Great Cause.
Even though as many as fourteen claimants put forward their claims to the title, the real contest was between John Balliol and Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale. The Scottish magnates made a request to Edward to conduct the proceedings and administer the outcome, but not to arbitrate in the dispute. The actual decision would be made by 104 auditors - 40 appointed by Balliol, 40 by Brus and the remaining 24 selected by Edward I from senior members of the Scottish political community. At Birgham, with the prospect of a personal union between the two realms, the question of suzerainty had not been of great importance to Edward. Now he insisted that, if he were to settle the contest, he had to be fully recognised as Scotland's feudal overlord. The Scots were reluctant to make such a concession, and replied that since the country had no king, no one had the authority to make this decision. This problem was circumvented when the competitors agreed that the realm would be handed over to Edward until a rightful heir had been found. After a lengthy hearing, a decision was made in favour of John Balliol on 17 November 1292.
Even after Balliol's accession, Edward still continued to assert his authority over Scotland. Against the objections of the Scots, he agreed to hear appeals on cases ruled on by the court of guardians that had governed Scotland during the interregnum. A further provocation came in a case brought by Macduff, son of Malcolm II, Earl of Fife, in which Edward demanded that Balliol appear in person before the English Parliament to answer the charges. This the Scottish King did, but the final straw was Edward's demand that the Scottish magnates provide military service in the war against France. This was unacceptable; the Scots instead formed an alliance with France and launched an unsuccessful attack on Carlisle. Edward responded by invading Scotland in 1296 and taking the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed in a particularly bloody attack. At the Battle of Dunbar, Scottish resistance was effectively crushed. Edward confiscated the Stone of Destiny – the Scottish coronation stoneand brought it to Westminster placing it in what became known as King Edward's Chair; he deposed Balliol and placed him in the Tower of London, and installed Englishmen to govern the country. The campaign had been very successful, but the English triumph would only be temporary.
Edward had a reputation for a fierce temper, and he could be intimidating; one story tells of how the Dean of St Paul's, wishing to confront Edward over the high level of taxation in 1295, fell down and died once he was in the King's presence. When Edward of Caernarfon demanded an earldom for his favourite Gaveston, the King erupted in anger and supposedly tore out handfuls of his son's hair. Some of his contemporaries considered Edward frightening, particularly in his early days. The "Song of Lewes" in 1264 described him as a leopard, an animal regarded as particularly powerful and unpredictable.
Despite these frightening character traits, however, Edward's contemporaries considered him an able, even an ideal, king. Though not loved by his subjects, he was feared and respected. He met contemporary expectations of kingship in his role as an able, determined soldier and in his embodiment of shared chivalric ideals. In religious observance he also fulfilled the expectations of his age: he attended chapel regularly and gave alms generously.
Edward took a keen interest in the stories of King Arthur, which were highly popular in Europe during his reign. In 1278 he visited Glastonbury Abbey to open what was then believed to be the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere, recovering "Arthur's crown" from Llywelyn after the conquest of North Wales, while, as noted above, his new castles drew upon the Arthurian myths in their design and location. He held "Round Table" events in 1284 and 1302, involving tournaments and feasting, and chroniclers compared him and the events at his court to Arthur. In some cases Edward appears to have used his interest in the Arthurian myths to serve his own political interests, including legitimising his rule in Wales and discrediting the Welsh belief that Arthur might return as their political saviour.
Soon after assuming the throne, Edward set about restoring order and re-establishing royal authority after the disastrous reign of his father. To accomplish this, he immediately ordered an extensive change of administrative personnel. The most important of these was the appointment of Robert Burnell as chancellor, a man who would remain in the post until 1292 as one of the King's closest associates. Edward then replaced most local officials, such as the escheators and sheriffs. This last measure was done in preparation for an extensive inquest covering all of England, that would hear complaints about abuse of power by royal officers. The inquest produced the set of so-called Hundred Rolls, from the administrative subdivision of the hundred. The second purpose of the inquest was to establish what land and rights the crown had lost during the reign of Henry III.
The Hundred Rolls formed the basis for the later legal inquiries called the "Quo warranto" proceedings. The purpose of these inquiries was to establish by what warrant () various liberties were held. If the defendant could not produce a royal licence to prove the grant of the liberty, then it was the Crown's opinionbased on the writings of the influential thirteenth-century legal scholar Henry de Bractonthat the liberty should revert to the king.
Both the Statute of Westminster 1275 and Statute of Westminster 1285 codified the existing law in England. By enacting the Statute of Gloucester in 1278 the King challenged baronial rights through a revival of the system of general eyres (royal justices to go on tour throughout the land) and through a significant increase in the number of pleas of quo warranto to be heard by such eyres.
This caused great consternation among the aristocracy, who insisted that long use in itself constituted licence. A compromise was eventually reached in 1290, whereby a liberty was considered legitimate as long as it could be shown to have been exercised since the coronation of Richard the Lionheart in 1189. Royal gains from the "Quo warranto" proceedings were insignificant; few liberties were returned to the King. Edward had nevertheless won a significant victory, in clearly establishing the principle that all liberties essentially emanated from the Crown.
The 1290 statute of "Quo warranto" was only one part of a wider legislative effort, which was one of the most important contributions of Edward's reign. This era of legislative action had started already at the time of the baronial reform movement; the Statute of Marlborough (1267) contained elements both of the Provisions of Oxford and the Dictum of Kenilworth. The compilation of the Hundred Rolls was followed shortly after by the issue of Westminster I (1275), which asserted the royal prerogative and outlined restrictions on liberties. In the Mortmain (1279), the issue was grants of land to the church. The first clause of Westminster II (1285), known as "De donis conditionalibus", dealt with family settlement of land, and entails. Merchants (1285) established firm rules for the recovery of debts, while Winchester (1285) dealt with peacekeeping on a local level. "Quia emptores" (1290)issued along with "Quo warranto"set out to remedy land ownership disputes resulting from alienation of land by subinfeudation. The age of the great statutes largely ended with the death of Robert Burnell in 1292.
Edward I's frequent military campaigns put a great financial strain on the nation. There were several ways through which the King could raise money for war, including customs duties, money lending and lay subsidies. In 1275, Edward I negotiated an agreement with the domestic merchant community that secured a permanent duty on wool. In 1303, a similar agreement was reached with foreign merchants, in return for certain rights and privileges. The revenues from the customs duty were handled by the Riccardi, a group of bankers from Lucca in Italy. This was in return for their service as money lenders to the crown, which helped finance the Welsh Wars. When the war with France broke out, the French king confiscated the Riccardi's assets, and the bank went bankrupt. After this, the Frescobaldi of Florence took over the role as money lenders to the English crown.
Another source of crown income was represented by the English Jews. The Jews were the King's personal property, and he was free to tax them at will. By 1280, the Jews had been exploited to a level at which they were no longer of much financial use to the crown, but they could still be used in political bargaining. Their usury businessa practice forbidden to Christianshad made many people indebted to them and caused general popular resentment. In 1275, Edward had issued the Statute of the Jewry, which outlawed usury and encouraged the Jews to take up other professions; in 1279, in the context of a crack-down on coin-clippers, he arrested all the heads of Jewish households in England and had around 300 of them executed. In 1280, he ordered all Jews to attend special sermons, preached by Dominican friars, with the hope of persuading them to convert, but these exhortations were not followed. The final attack on the Jews in England came in the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, whereby Edward formally expelled all Jews from England. This not only generated revenues through royal appropriation of Jewish loans and property, but it also gave Edward the political capital to negotiate a substantial lay subsidy in the 1290 Parliament. The expulsion, which was reversed in 1656, followed a precedent set by other European rulers: Philip II of France had expelled all Jews from his own lands in 1182; John I, Duke of Brittany, drove them out of his duchy in 1239; and in the late 1240s Louis IX of France had expelled the Jews from the royal demesne before his first passage to the East.
Edward held Parliament on a reasonably regular basis throughout his reign. In 1295, however, a significant change occurred. For this Parliament, in addition to the secular and ecclesiastical lords, two knights from each county and two representatives from each borough were summoned. The representation of commons in Parliament was nothing new; what was new was the authority under which these representatives were summoned. Whereas previously the commons had been expected simply to assent to decisions already made by the magnates, it was now proclaimed that they should meet with the full authority ("plena potestas") of their communities, to give assent to decisions made in Parliament. The King now had full backing for collecting lay subsidies from the entire population. Lay subsidies were taxes collected at a certain fraction of the moveable property of all laymen. Whereas Henry III had only collected four of these in his reign, Edward I collected nine. This format eventually became the standard for later Parliaments, and historians have named the assembly the "Model Parliament".
The incessant warfare of the 1290s put a great financial demand on Edward's subjects. Whereas the King had only levied three lay subsidies until 1294, four such taxes were granted in the years 1294–97, raising over £200,000. Along with this came the burden of prises, seizure of wool and hides, and the unpopular additional duty on wool, dubbed the "maltolt". The fiscal demands on the King's subjects caused resentment, and this resentment eventually led to serious political opposition. The initial resistance was not caused by the lay taxes, however, but by clerical subsidies. In 1294, Edward made a demand of a grant of one half of all clerical revenues. There was some resistance, but the King responded by threatening with outlawry, and the grant was eventually made. At the time, the archbishopric of Canterbury was vacant, since Robert Winchelsey was in Italy to receive consecration. Winchelsey returned in January 1295 and had to consent to another grant in November of that year. In 1296, however, his position changed when he received the papal bull "Clericis laicos". This bull prohibited the clergy from paying taxes to lay authorities without explicit consent from the Pope. When the clergy, with reference to the bull, refused to pay, Edward responded with outlawry. Winchelsey was presented with a dilemma between loyalty to the King and upholding the papal bull, and he responded by leaving it to every individual clergyman to pay as he saw fit. By the end of the year, a solution was offered by the new papal bull "Etsi de statu", which allowed clerical taxation in cases of pressing urgency.
Opposition from the laity took longer to surface. This resistance focused on two things: the King's right to demand military service, and his right to levy taxes. At the Salisbury parliament of February 1297, Earl Marshal Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk, objected to a royal summons of military service. Bigod argued that the military obligation only extended to service alongside the King; if the King intended to sail to Flanders, he could not send his subjects to Gascony. In July, Bigod and Humphrey de Bohun, 3rd Earl of Hereford and Constable of England, drew up a series of complaints known as the Remonstrances, in which objections to the extortionate level of taxation were voiced. Undeterred, Edward requested another lay subsidy. This one was particularly provocative, because the King had sought consent only from a small group of magnates, rather than from representatives from the communities in parliament. While Edward was in Winchelsea, preparing for the campaign in Flanders, Bigod and Bohun turned up at the Exchequer to prevent the collection of the tax. As the King left the country with a greatly reduced force, the kingdom seemed to be on the verge of civil war. What resolved the situation was the English defeat by the Scots at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. The renewed threat to the homeland gave king and magnates common cause. Edward signed the "Confirmatio cartarum"a confirmation of "Magna Carta" and its accompanying Charter of the Forestand the nobility agreed to serve with the King on a campaign in Scotland.
Edward's problems with the opposition did not end with the Falkirk campaign. Over the following years he would be held up to the promises he had made, in particular that of upholding the Charter of the Forest. In the parliament of 1301, the King was forced to order an assessment of the royal forests, but in 1305 he obtained a papal bull that freed him from this concession. Ultimately, it was a failure in personnel that spelt the end of the opposition against Edward. Bohun died late in 1298, after returning from the Falkirk campaign. In 1302 Bigod arrived at an agreement with the King that was beneficial for both: Bigod, who had no children, made Edward his heir, in return for a generous annual grant. Edward finally got his revenge on Winchelsey in 1305, when Clement V was elected pope. Clement was a Gascon sympathetic to the King, and on Edward's instigation had Winchelsey suspended from office.
Edward had reason to believe that he had completed the conquest of Scotland when he left the country in 1296, but resistance soon emerged under the leadership of Andrew de Moray in the north and William Wallace in the south. On 11 September 1297, a large English force under the leadership of John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey, and Hugh de Cressingham was routed by a much smaller Scottish army led by Wallace and Moray at Stirling Bridge. The defeat sent shockwaves into England, and preparations for a retaliatory campaign started immediately. Soon after Edward returned from Flanders, he headed north. On 22 July 1298, in the only major battle he had fought since Evesham in 1265, Edward defeated Wallace's forces at the Battle of Falkirk. Edward, however, was not able to take advantage of the momentum, and the next year the Scots managed to recapture Stirling Castle. Even though Edward campaigned in Scotland both in 1300, when he successfully besieged Caerlaverock Castle and in 1301, the Scots refused to engage in open battle again, preferring instead to raid the English countryside in smaller groups.
The defeated Scots appealed to Pope Boniface VIII to assert a claim of overlordship to Scotland in place of the English. His papal bull addressed to King Edward in these terms was firmly rejected on Edward's behalf by the Barons' Letter of 1301. The English managed to subdue the country by other means, however. In 1303, a peace agreement was reached between England and France, effectively breaking up the Franco-Scottish alliance. Robert the Bruce, the grandson of the claimant to the crown in 1291, had sided with the English in the winter of 1301–02. By 1304, most of the other nobles of the country had also pledged their allegiance to Edward, and this year the English also managed to re-take Stirling Castle. A great propaganda victory was achieved in 1305 when Wallace was betrayed by Sir John de Menteith and turned over to the English, who had him taken to London where he was publicly executed. With Scotland largely under English control, Edward installed Englishmen and collaborating Scots to govern the country.
The situation changed again on 10 February 1306, when Robert the Bruce murdered his rival John III Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, and a few weeks later, on 25 March, was crowned King of Scotland by Isobel, sister of the Earl of Buchan. Bruce now embarked on a campaign to restore Scottish independence, and this campaign took the English by surprise. Edward was suffering ill health by this time, and instead of leading an expedition himself, he gave different military commands to Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, and Henry Percy, 1st Baron Percy, while the main royal army was led by the Prince of Wales. The English initially met with success; on 19 June, Aymer de Valence routed Bruce at the Battle of Methven. Bruce was forced into hiding, while the English forces recaptured their lost territory and castles.
Edward acted with unusual brutality against Bruce's family, allies, and supporters. His sister, Mary, was imprisoned in a cage at Roxburgh Castle for four years. Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, who had crowned Bruce, was held in a cage at Berwick Castle. His younger brother Neil was executed by being hanged, drawn, and quartered; he had been captured after he and his garrison held off Edward's forces who had been seeking his wife Elizabeth, daughter Marjorie, sisters Mary and Christina, and Isabella.
It was clear that Edward now regarded the struggle not as a war between two nations, but as the suppression of a rebellion of disloyal subjects. This brutality, though, rather than helping to subdue the Scots, had the opposite effect, and rallied growing support for Bruce.
In February 1307, Bruce resumed his efforts and started gathering men, and in May he defeated Valence at the Battle of Loudoun Hill. Edward, who had rallied somewhat, now moved north himself. On the way, however, he developed dysentery, and his condition deteriorated. On 6 July he encamped at Burgh by Sands, just south of the Scottish border. When his servants came the next morning to lift him up so that he could eat, he died in their arms.
Various stories emerged about Edward's deathbed wishes; according to one tradition, he requested that his heart be carried to the Holy Land, along with an army to fight the infidels. A more dubious story tells of how he wished for his bones to be carried along on future expeditions against the Scots. Another account of his deathbed scene is more credible; according to one chronicle, Edward gathered around him Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln; Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick; Aymer de Valence; and Robert de Clifford, 1st Baron de Clifford, and charged them with looking after his son Edward. In particular they should make sure that Piers Gaveston was not allowed to return to the country. This wish, however, the son ignored, and had his favourite recalled from exile almost immediately. The new king, Edward II, remained in the north until August, but then abandoned the campaign and headed south. He was crowned king on 25 February 1308.
Edward I's body was brought south, lying in state at Waltham Abbey, before being buried in Westminster Abbey on 27 October. There are few records of the funeral, which cost £473. Edward's tomb was an unusually plain sarcophagus of Purbeck marble, without the customary royal effigy, possibly the result of the shortage of royal funds after the King's death. The sarcophagus may normally have been covered over with rich cloth, and originally might have been surrounded by carved busts and a devotional religious image, all since lost. The Society of Antiquaries of London opened the tomb in 1774, finding that the body had been well preserved over the preceding 467 years, and took the opportunity to determine the King's original height. Traces of the Latin inscription "Edwardus Primus Scottorum Malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva" ("Here is Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, 1308. Keep the Vow") can still be seen painted on the side of the tomb, referring to his vow to avenge the rebellion of Robert Bruce. This resulted in Edward being given the epithet the "Hammer of the Scots" by historians, but is not contemporary in origin, having been added by the Abbot John Feckenham in the 16th century.
The first histories of Edward in the 16th and 17th centuries drew primarily on the works of the chroniclers, and made little use of the official records of the period. They limited themselves to general comments on Edward's significance as a monarch, and echoed the chroniclers' praise for his accomplishments. During the 17th century, the lawyer Edward Coke wrote extensively about Edward's legislation, terming the King the "English Justinian", after the renowned Byzantine lawmaker, Justinian I. Later in the century, historians used the available record evidence to address the role of parliament and kingship under Edward, drawing comparisons between his reign and the political strife of their own century. 18th-century historians established a picture of Edward as an able, if ruthless, monarch, conditioned by the circumstances of his own time.
The influential Victorian historian William Stubbs instead suggested that Edward had actively shaped national history, forming English laws and institutions, and helping England to develop a parliamentary and constitutional monarchy. His strengths and weaknesses as a ruler were considered to be emblematic of the English people as a whole. Stubbs' student, Thomas Tout, initially adopted the same perspective, but after extensive research into Edward's royal household, and backed by the research of his contemporaries into the early parliaments of the period, he changed his mind. Tout came to view Edward as a self-interested, conservative leader, using the parliamentary system as "the shrewd device of an autocrat, anxious to use the mass of the people as a check upon his hereditary foes among the greater baronage."
Historians in the 20th and 21st century have conducted extensive research on Edward and his reign. Most have concluded this was a highly significant period in English medieval history, some going further and describing Edward as one of the great medieval kings, although most also agree that his final years were less successful than his early decades in power. Three major academic narratives of Edward have been produced during this period. F. M. Powicke's volumes, published in 1947 and 1953, forming the standard works on Edward for several decades, were largely positive in praising the achievements of his reign, and in particular his focus on justice and the law. In 1988, Michael Prestwich produced an authoritative biography of the King, focusing on his political career, still portraying him in sympathetic terms, but highlighting some of the consequences of his failed policies. Marc Morris's biography followed in 2008, drawing out more of the detail of Edward's personality, and generally taking a harsher view of his weaknesses and less pleasant characteristics. Considerable academic debate has taken place around the character of Edward's kingship, his political skills, and in particular his management of his earls, and the degree to which this was collaborative or repressive in nature.
There is also a great difference between English and Scottish historiography on King Edward. G. W. S. Barrow, in his biography on Robert the Bruce, accused Edward of ruthlessly exploiting the leaderless state of Scotland to obtain a feudal superiority over the kingdom followed by his determination to reduce it to nothing more than an English possession. The same view of Edward as a conquering tyrant is presented in Evan Macleod Barron's massive overview of the Scottish War of Independence.
Edward married twice:
By his first wife Eleanor of Castile, Edward had at least fourteen children, perhaps as many as sixteen. Of these, five daughters survived into adulthood, but only one son outlived his father, King Edward II (1307–1327). He was reportedly concerned with his son's failure to live up to the expectations of an heir to the crown, and at one point decided to exile the prince's favourite Piers Gaveston. Edward's children with Eleanor were:
By Margaret of France, Edward had two sons, both of whom lived to become adults, and a daughter who died as a child. The Hailes Abbey chronicle indicates that John Botetourt may have been Edward's illegitimate son; however, the claim is unsubstantiated. His progeny by Margaret of France were: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46373 |
Diatom
Diatoms ("diá-tom-os" 'cut in half', from "diá", 'through' or 'apart'; and the root of "tém-n-ō", 'I cut'.) are a major group of algae, specifically microalgae, found in the oceans, waterways and soils of the world. Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the Earth's biomass: they generate about 20 to 50 percent of the oxygen produced on the planet each year, take in over 6.7 billion metric tons of silicon each year from the waters in which they live, and contribute nearly half of the organic material found in the oceans. The shells of dead diatoms can reach as much as a half-mile (800 m) deep on the ocean floor, and the entire Amazon basin is fertilized annually by 27 million tons of diatom shell dust transported by transatlantic winds from the African Sahara, much of it from the Bodélé Depression, which was once made up of a system of fresh-water lakes.
Diatoms are unicellular: they occur either as solitary cells or in colonies, which can take the shape of ribbons, fans, zigzags, or stars. Individual cells range in size from 2 to 200 micrometers. In the presence of adequate nutrients and sunlight, an assemblage of living diatoms doubles approximately every 24 hours by asexual multiple fission; the maximum life span of individual cells is about six days. Diatoms have two distinct shapes: a few ("centric diatoms") are "radially" symmetric, while most ("pennate diatoms") are broadly "bilaterally" symmetric. A unique feature of diatom anatomy is that they are surrounded by a cell wall made of silica (hydrated silicon dioxide), called a frustule. These frustules have structural coloration due to their photonic nanostructure, prompting them to be described as "jewels of the sea" and "living opals". Movement in diatoms primarily occurs passively as a result of both water currents and wind-induced water turbulence; however, male gametes of centric diatoms have flagella, permitting active movement for seeking female gametes. Similar to plants, diatoms convert light energy to chemical energy by photosynthesis, although this shared autotrophy evolved independently in both lineages. Unusually for autotrophic organisms, diatoms possess a urea cycle, a feature that they share with animals, although this cycle is used to different metabolic ends in diatoms. The family "Rhopalodiaceae" also possess a cyanobacterial endosymbiont called a spheroid body. This endosymbiont has lost its photosynthetic properties, but has kept its ability to perform nitrogen fixation, allowing the diatom to fix atmospheric nitrogen.
The study of diatoms is a branch of phycology. Diatoms are classified as eukaryotes, organisms with a membrane-bound cell nucleus, that separates them from the prokaryotes archaea and bacteria. Diatoms are a type of plankton called phytoplankton, the most common of the plankton types. Diatoms also grow attached to benthic substrates, floating debris, and on macrophytes. They comprise an integral component of the periphyton community. Another classification divides plankton into eight types based on size: in this scheme, diatoms are classed as microalgae. Several systems for classifying the individual diatom species exist. Fossil evidence suggests that diatoms originated during or before the early Jurassic period, which was about 150 to 200 million years ago.
Diatoms are used to monitor past and present environmental conditions, and are commonly used in studies of water quality. Diatomaceous earth (diatomite) is a collection of diatom shells found in the earth's crust. They are soft, silica-containing sedimentary rocks which are easily crumbled into a fine powder and typically have a particle size of 10 to 200 μm. Diatomaceous earth is used for a variety of purposes including for water filtration, as a mild abrasive, in cat litter, and as a dynamite stabilizer.
Diatoms are 2 to 200 micrometers in length. Their yellowish-brown chloroplasts, the site of photosynthesis, are typical of heterokonts, having four membranes and containing pigments such as the carotenoid fucoxanthin. Individuals usually lack flagella, but they are present in male gametes of the centric diatoms and have the usual heterokont structure, except they lack the hairs (mastigonemes) characteristic in other groups.
Diatoms are often referred as "jewels of the sea" or "living opals" due to their optical properties. The biological function of this structural coloration is not clear, but it is speculated that it may be related to communication, camouflage, thermal exchange and/or UV protection.
Diatoms build intricate hard but porous cell walls called frustules composed primarily of silica. This siliceous wall can be highly patterned with a variety of pores, ribs, minute spines, marginal ridges and elevations; all of which can be used to delineate genera and species.
The cell itself consists of two halves, each containing an essentially flat plate, or valve and marginal connecting, or girdle band. One half, the hypotheca, is slightly smaller than the other half, the epitheca. Diatom morphology varies. Although the shape of the cell is typically circular, some cells may be triangular, square, or elliptical. Their distinguishing feature is a hard mineral shell or frustule composed of opal (hydrated, polymerized silicic acid).
Most centric and araphid pennate diatoms are nonmotile, and their relatively dense cell walls cause them to readily sink. Planktonic forms in open water usually rely on turbulent mixing of the upper layers of the oceanic waters by the wind to keep them suspended in sunlit surface waters. Many planktonic diatoms have also evolved features that slow their sinking rate, such as spines or the ability to grow in colonial chains. These adaptations increase their surface area to volume ratio and drag, allowing them to stay suspended in the water column longer. Individual cells may regulate buoyancy via an ionic pump.
Some pennate diatoms are capable of a type of locomotion called "gliding", which allows them to move across surfaces via adhesive mucilage secreted through the raphe (an elongated slit in the valve face). In order for a diatom cell to glide, it must have a solid substrate for the mucilage to adhere to.
Cells are solitary or united into colonies of various kinds, which may be linked by siliceous structures; mucilage pads, stalks or tubes; amorphous masses of mucilage; or by threads of chitin (polysaccharide), which are secreted through strutted processes of the cell.
Diatoms are mainly photosynthetic; however a few are obligate heterotrophs and can live in the absence of light provided an appropriate organic carbon source is available.
Diatom cells are contained within a unique silica cell wall known as a frustule made up of two valves called thecae, that typically overlap one another. The biogenic silica composing the cell wall is synthesised intracellularly by the polymerisation of silicic acid monomers. This material is then extruded to the cell exterior and added to the wall. In most species, when a diatom divides to produce two daughter cells, each cell keeps one of the two-halves and grows a smaller half within it. As a result, after each division cycle, the average size of diatom cells in the population gets smaller. Once such cells reach a certain minimum size, rather than simply divide, they reverse this decline by forming an auxospore. This expands in size to give rise to a much larger cell, which then returns to size-diminishing divisions. Auxospore production is almost always linked to meiosis and sexual reproduction.
The exact mechanism of transferring silica absorbed by the diatom to the cell wall is unknown. Much of the sequencing of diatom genes comes from the search for the mechanism of silica uptake and deposition in nano-scale patterns in the frustule. The most success in this area has come from two species, "Thalassiosira pseudonana", which has become the model species, as the whole genome was sequenced and methods for genetic control were established, and "Cylindrotheca fusiformis", in which the important silica deposition proteins silaffins were first discovered. Silaffins, sets of polycationic peptides, were found in "C. fusiformis" cell walls and can generate intricate silica structures. These structures demonstrated pores of sizes characteristic to diatom patterns. When "T. pseudonana" underwent genome analysis it was found that it encoded a urea cycle, including a higher number of polyamines than most genomes, as well as three distinct silica transport genes. In a phylogenetic study on silica transport genes from 8 diverse groups of diatoms, silica transport was found to generally group with species. This study also found structural differences between the silica transporters of pennate (bilateral symmetry) and centric (radial symmetry) diatoms. The sequences compared in this study were used to create a diverse background in order to identify residues that differentiate function in the silica deposition process. Additionally, the same study found that a number of the regions were conserved within species, likely the base structure of silica transport.
These silica transport proteins are unique to diatoms, with no homologs found in other species, such as sponges or rice. The divergence of these silica transport genes is also indicative of the structure of the protein evolving from two repeated units composed of five membrane bound segments, which indicates either gene duplication or dimerization. The silica deposition that takes place from the membrane bound vesicle in diatoms has been hypothesized to be a result of the activity of silaffins and long chain polyamines. This Silica Deposition Vesicle (SDV) has been characterized as an acidic compartment fused with Golgi-derived vesicles. These two protein structures have been shown to create sheets of patterned silica in-vivo with irregular pores on the scale of diatom frustules. One hypothesis as to how these proteins work to create complex structure is that residues are conserved within the SDV's, which is unfortunately difficult to identify or observe due to the limited number of diverse sequences available. Though the exact mechanism of the highly uniform deposition of silica is as yet unknown, the "Thalassiosira pseudonana" genes linked to silaffins are being looked to as targets for genetic control of nanoscale silica deposition.
A feature of diatoms is the urea cycle, which links them evolutionarily to animals. This was discovered in research carried out by Andrew Allen, Chris Bowler and colleagues. Their findings, published in 2011, that diatoms have a functioning urea cycle was highly significant, since prior to this, the urea cycle was thought to have originated with the metazoans which appeared several hundreds of millions of years after the diatoms. Their study showed that while diatoms and animals use the urea cycle for different ends, they are seen to be evolutionarily linked in such a way that animals and plants are not.
Major pigments of diatoms are chlorophylls a and c, beta-carotene, fucoxanthin, diatoxanthin and diadinoxanthin.
Storage products are chrysolaminarin and lipids.
Reproduction among these organisms is asexual by binary fission, during which the diatom divides into two parts, producing two "new" diatoms with identical genes. Each new organism receives one of the two frustules – one larger, the other smaller – possessed by the parent, which is now called the epitheca; and is used to construct a second, smaller frustule, the hypotheca. The diatom that received the larger frustule becomes the same size as its parent, but the diatom that received the smaller frustule remains smaller than its parent. This causes the average cell size of this diatom population to decrease. It has been observed, however, that certain taxa have the ability to divide without causing a reduction in cell size. Nonetheless, in order to restore the cell size of a diatom population for those that do endure size reduction, sexual reproduction and auxospore formation must occur.
Vegetative cells of diatoms are diploid (2N) and so meiosis can take place, producing male and female gametes which then fuse to form the zygote. The zygote sheds its silica theca and grows into a large sphere covered by an organic membrane, the auxospore. A new diatom cell of maximum size, the initial cell, forms within the auxospore thus beginning a new generation. Resting spores may also be formed as a response to unfavourable environmental conditions with germination occurring when conditions improve.
Diatoms are mostly non-motile; however, sperm found in some species can be flagellated, though motility is usually limited to a gliding motion. In centric diatoms, the small male gametes have one flagellum while the female gametes are large and non-motile (oogamous). Conversely, in pennate diatoms both gametes lack flagella (isoogamous). Certain araphid species, that is pennate diatoms without a raphe (seam), have been documented as anisogamous and are, therefore, considered to represent a transitional stage between centric and raphid pennate diatoms, diatoms with a raphe.
Certain species of bacteria in oceans and lakes can accelerate the rate of dissolution of silica in dead and living diatoms by using hydrolytic enzymes to break down the organic algal material.
Diatoms are divided into two groups that are distinguished by the shape of the frustule: the "centric diatoms" and the "pennate diatoms".
Pennate diatoms are bilaterally symmetric. Each one of their valves have openings that are slits along the raphes and their shells are typically elongated parallel to these raphes. They generate cell movement through cytoplasm that streams along the raphes, always moving along solid surfaces.
Centric diatoms are radially symmetric. They are composed of upper and lower valves – "epitheca" and "hypotheca" – each consisting of a valve and a girdle band that can easily slide underneath each other and expand to increase cell content over the diatoms progression. The cytoplasm of the centric diatom is located along the inner surface of the shell and provides a hollow lining around the large vacuole located in the center of the cell. This large, central vacuole is filled by a fluid known as "cell sap" which is similar to seawater but varies with specific ion content. The cytoplasmic layer is home to several organelles, like the chloroplasts and mitochondria. Before the centric diatom begins to expand, its nucleus is at the center of one of the valves and begins to move towards the center of the cytoplasmic layer before division is complete. Centric diatoms have a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on from which axis the shell extends, and if spines are present.
Diatoms belong to a large group called the heterokonts, which include both autotrophs such as golden algae and kelp; and heterotrophs such as water moulds. The classification of heterokonts is still unsettled: they may be designated a division, phylum, kingdom, or something intermediate to those. Consequently, diatoms are ranked anywhere from a class, usually called Diatomophyceae or Bacillariophyceae, to a division, usually called Bacillariophyta, with corresponding changes in the ranks of their subgroups.
More than 200 genera of living diatoms are known, with an estimated 100,000 extant species.
Based on the fact that pennate diatoms either do or do not have a longitudinal groove in the valve, called a "raphe", a 1990 classification by Round, Crawford & Mann divides the diatoms (as Bacillarophyta) into three classes, "centric" (22 orders); "pennate without a raphe" (12 orders); and "pennate with a raphe" (11 orders), as follows:
An alternate classification for the diatoms based on clades is as follows:
Another systematic approach to classification was proposed in 1995, the Hoek, Mann and Jahns system.
Heterokont chloroplasts appear to derive from those of red algae, rather than directly from prokaryotes as occurred in plants. This suggests they had a more recent origin than many other algae. However, fossil evidence is scant, and only with the evolution of the diatoms themselves do the heterokonts make a serious impression on the fossil record.
The earliest known fossil diatoms date from the early Jurassic (~185 Ma ago), although the molecular clock and sedimentary evidence suggests an earlier origin. It has been suggested that their origin may be related to the end-Permian mass extinction (~250 Ma), after which many marine niches were opened. The gap between this event and the time that fossil diatoms first appear may indicate a period when diatoms were unsilicified and their evolution was cryptic. Since the advent of silicification, diatoms have made a significant impression on the fossil record, with major fossil deposits found as far back as the early Cretaceous, and with some rocks such as diatomaceous earth, being composed almost entirely of them.
Although diatoms may have existed since the Triassic, the timing of their ascendancy and "take-over" of the silicon cycle occurred more recently. Prior to the Phanerozoic (before 544 Ma), it is believed that microbial or inorganic processes weakly regulated the ocean's silicon cycle. Subsequently, the cycle appears dominated (and more strongly regulated) by the radiolarians and siliceous sponges, the former as zooplankton, the latter as sedentary filter-feeders primarily on the continental shelves. Within the last 100 My, it is thought that the silicon cycle has come under even tighter control, and that this derives from the ecological ascendancy of the diatoms.
However, the precise timing of the "take-over" remains unclear, and different authors have conflicting interpretations of the fossil record. Some evidence, such as the displacement of siliceous sponges from the shelves, suggests that this takeover began in the Cretaceous (146 Ma to 66 Ma), while evidence from radiolarians suggests "take-over" did not begin until the Cenozoic (66 Ma to present).
The expansion of grassland biomes and the evolutionary radiation of grasses during the Miocene is believed to have increased the flux of soluble silicon to the oceans, and it has been argued that this promoted the diatoms during the Cenozoic era. Recent work suggests that diatom success is decoupled from the evolution of grasses, although both diatom and grassland diversity increased strongly from the middle Miocene.
Diatom diversity over the Cenozoic has been very sensitive to global temperature, particularly to the equator-pole temperature gradient. Warmer oceans, particularly warmer polar regions, have in the past been shown to have had substantially lower diatom diversity. Future warm oceans with enhanced polar warming, as projected in global-warming scenarios, could thus in theory result in a significant loss of diatom diversity, although from current knowledge it is impossible to say if this would occur rapidly or only over many tens of thousands of years.
The fossil record of diatoms has largely been established through the recovery of their siliceous frustules in marine and non-marine sediments. Although diatoms have both a marine and non-marine stratigraphic record, diatom biostratigraphy, which is based on time-constrained evolutionary originations and extinctions of unique taxa, is only well developed and widely applicable in marine systems. The duration of diatom species ranges have been documented through the study of ocean cores and rock sequences exposed on land. Where diatom biozones are well established and calibrated to the geomagnetic polarity time scale (e.g., Southern Ocean, North Pacific, eastern equatorial Pacific), diatom-based age estimates may be resolved to within <100,000 years, although typical age resolution for Cenozoic diatom assemblages is several hundred thousand years.
Diatoms preserved in lake sediments are widely used for paleoenvironmental reconstructions of Quaternary climate, especially for closed-basin lakes which experience fluctuations in water depth and salinity.
The Cretaceous record of diatoms is limited, but recent studies reveal a progressive diversification of diatom types. The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which in the oceans dramatically affected organisms with calcareous skeletons, appears to have had relatively little impact on diatom evolution.
Although no mass extinctions of marine diatoms have been observed during the Cenozoic, times of relatively rapid evolutionary turnover in marine diatom species assemblages occurred near the Paleocene–Eocene boundary, and at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary. Further turnover of assemblages took place at various times between the middle Miocene and late Pliocene, in response to progressive cooling of polar regions and the development of more endemic diatom assemblages.
A global trend toward more delicate diatom frustules has been noted from the Oligocene to the Quaternary. This coincides with an increasingly more vigorous circulation of the ocean's surface and deep waters brought about by increasing latitudinal thermal gradients at the onset of major ice sheet expansion on Antarctica and progressive cooling through the Neogene and Quaternary towards a bipolar glaciated world. This caused diatoms to take in less silica for the formation of their frustules. Increased mixing of the oceans renews silica and other nutrients necessary for diatom growth in surface waters, especially in regions of coastal and oceanic upwelling.
In 2002, the first insights into the properties of the "Phaeodactylum tricornutum" gene repertoire were described using 1,000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Subsequently, the number of ESTs was extended to 12,000 and the diatom EST database was constructed for functional analyses. These sequences have been used to make a comparative analysis between "P. tricornutum" and the putative complete proteomes from the green alga "Chlamydomonas reinhardtii", the red alga "Cyanidioschyzon merolae", and the diatom "Thalassiosira pseudonana". The diatom EST database now consists of over 200,000 ESTs from "P. tricornutum" (16 libraries) and "T. pseudonana" (7 libraries) cells grown in a range of different conditions, many of which correspond to different abiotic stresses.
In 2004, the entire genome of the centric diatom, "Thalassiosira pseudonana" (32.4 Mb) was sequenced, followed in 2008 with the sequencing of the pennate diatom, "Phaeodactylum tricornutum" (27.4 Mb). Comparisons of the two reveal that the "P. tricornutum" genome includes fewer genes (10,402 opposed to 11,776) than "T. pseudonana"; no major synteny (gene order) could be detected between the two genomes. "T. pseudonana" genes show an average of ~1.52 introns per gene as opposed to 0.79 in "P. tricornutum", suggesting recent widespread intron gain in the centric diatom. Despite relatively recent evolutionary divergence (90 million years), the extent of molecular divergence between centrics and pennates indicates rapid evolutionary rates within the Bacillariophyceae compared to other eukaryotic groups. Comparative genomics also established that a specific class of transposable elements, the Diatom Copia-like retrotransposons (or CoDis), has been significantly amplified in the "P. tricornutum" genome with respect to "T. pseudonana", constituting 5.8 and 1% of the respective genomes.
Diatom genomics brought much information about the extent and dynamics of the endosymbiotic gene transfer (EGT) process. Comparison of the "T. pseudonana" proteins with homologs in other organisms suggested that hundreds have their closest homologs in the Plantae lineage. EGT towards diatom genomes can be illustrated by the fact that the "T. pseudonana" genome encodes six proteins which are most closely related to genes encoded by the "Guillardia theta" (cryptomonad) nucleomorph genome. Four of these genes are also found in red algal plastid genomes, thus demonstrating successive EGT from red algal plastid to red algal nucleus (nucleomorph) to heterokont host nucleus. More recent phylogenomic analyses of diatom proteomes provided evidence for a prasinophyte-like endosymbiont in the common ancestor of chromalveolates as supported by the fact the 70% of diatom genes of Plantae origin are of green lineage provenance and that such genes are also found in the genome of other stramenopiles. Therefore, it was proposed that chromalveolates are the product of serial secondary endosymbiosis first with a green algae, followed by a second one with a red algae that conserved the genomic footprints of the previous but displaced the green plastid. However, phylogenomic analyses of diatom proteomes and chromalveolate evolutionary history will likely take advantage of complementary genomic data from under-sequenced lineages such as red algae.
In addition to EGT, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) can occur independently of an endosymbiotic event. The publication of the "P. tricornutum" genome reported that at least 587 "P. tricornutum" genes appear to be most closely related to bacterial genes, accounting for more than 5% of the "P. tricornutum" proteome. About half of these are also found in the "T. pseudonana" genome, attesting their ancient incorporation in the diatom lineage.
Diatoms are a widespread group and can be found in the oceans, in fresh water, in soils, and on damp surfaces. They are one of the dominant components of phytoplankton in nutrient-rich coastal waters and during oceanic spring blooms, since they can divide more rapidly than other groups of phytoplankton. Most live pelagically in open water, although some live as surface films at the water-sediment interface (benthic), or even under damp atmospheric conditions. They are especially important in oceans, where they contribute an estimated 45% of the total oceanic primary production of organic material. Spatial distribution of marine phytoplankton species is restricted both horizontally and vertically.
Planktonic diatoms in freshwater and marine environments typically exhibit a "boom and bust" (or ""bloom" and bust") lifestyle. When conditions in the upper mixed layer (nutrients and light) are favourable (as at the spring), their competitive edge and rapid growth rate enables them to dominate phytoplankton communities ("boom" or "bloom"). As such they are often classed as opportunistic r-strategists ("i.e." those organisms whose ecology is defined by a high growth rate, "r").
Diatoms contribute in a significant way to the modern oceanic silicon cycle: they are the source of the vast majority of biological production.
The freshwater diatom "Didymosphenia geminata", commonly known as "Didymo," causes severe environmental degradation in water-courses where it blooms, producing large quantities of a brown jelly-like material called "brown snot" or "rock snot". This diatom is native to Europe and is an invasive species both in the antipodes and in parts of North America. The problem is most frequently recorded from Australia and New Zealand.
When conditions turn unfavourable, usually upon depletion of nutrients, diatom cells typically increase in sinking rate and exit the upper mixed layer ("bust"). This sinking is induced by either a loss of buoyancy control, the synthesis of mucilage that sticks diatoms cells together, or the production of heavy "resting spores". Sinking out of the upper mixed layer removes diatoms from conditions unfavourable to growth, including grazer populations and higher temperatures (which would otherwise increase cell metabolism). Cells reaching deeper water or the shallow seafloor can then rest until conditions become more favourable again. In the open ocean, many sinking cells are lost to the deep, but refuge populations can persist near the thermocline.
Ultimately, diatom cells in these resting populations re-enter the upper mixed layer when vertical mixing entrains them. In most circumstances, this mixing also replenishes nutrients in the upper mixed layer, setting the scene for the next round of diatom blooms. In the open ocean (away from areas of continuous upwelling), this cycle of bloom, bust, then return to pre-bloom conditions typically occurs over an annual cycle, with diatoms only being prevalent during the spring and early summer. In some locations, however, an autumn bloom may occur, caused by the breakdown of summer stratification and the entrainment of nutrients while light levels are still sufficient for growth. Since vertical mixing is increasing, and light levels are falling as winter approaches, these blooms are smaller and shorter-lived than their spring equivalents.
In the open ocean, the diatom (spring) bloom is typically ended by a shortage of silicon. Unlike other minerals, the requirement for silicon is unique to diatoms and it is not regenerated in the plankton ecosystem as efficiently as, for instance, nitrogen or phosphorus nutrients. This can be seen in maps of surface nutrient concentrations – as nutrients decline along gradients, silicon is usually the first to be exhausted (followed normally by nitrogen then phosphorus).
Because of this bloom-and-bust cycle, diatoms are believed to play a disproportionately important role in the export of carbon from oceanic surface waters (see also the biological pump). Significantly, they also play a key role in the regulation of the biogeochemical cycle of silicon in the modern ocean.
Diatoms are ecologically successful, and occur in virtually every environment that contains water – not only oceans, seas, lakes, and streams, but also soil and wetlands. The use of silicon by diatoms is believed by many researchers to be the key to this ecological success. Raven (1983) noted that, relative to organic cell walls, silica frustules require less energy to synthesize (approximately 8% of a comparable organic wall), potentially a significant saving on the overall cell energy budget. In a now classic study, Egge and Aksnes (1992) found that diatom dominance of mesocosm communities was directly related to the availability of silicic acid – when concentrations were greater than 2 µmol m−3, they found that diatoms typically represented more than 70% of the phytoplankton community. Other researchers have suggested that the biogenic silica in diatom cell walls acts as an effective pH buffering agent, facilitating the conversion of bicarbonate to dissolved CO2 (which is more readily assimilated). More generally, notwithstanding these possible advantages conferred by their use of silicon, diatoms typically have higher growth rates than other algae of the same corresponding size.
Diatoms may be obtained from multiple sources.
Marine diatoms can be collected by direct water sampling, and benthic forms can be secured by scraping barnacles, oyster and other shells.
Diatoms are frequently present as a brown, slippery coating on submerged stones and sticks, and may be seen to "stream" with river current. The surface mud of a pond, ditch, or lagoon will almost always yield some diatoms.
Living diatoms are often found clinging in great numbers to filamentous algae, or forming gelatinous masses on various submerged plants. "Cladophora" is frequently covered with "Cocconeis", an elliptically shaped diatom; "Vaucheria" is often covered with small forms.
Since diatoms form an important part of the food of molluscs, tunicates, and fishes, the alimentary tracts of these animals often yield forms that are not easily secured in other ways.
Diatoms can be made to emerge by filling a jar with water and mud, wrapping it in black paper and letting direct sunlight fall on the surface of the water. Within a day, the diatoms will come to the top in a scum and can be isolated.
Decomposition and decay of diatoms leads to organic and inorganic (in the form of silicates) sediment, the inorganic component of which can lead to a method of analyzing past marine environments by corings of ocean floors or bay muds, since the inorganic matter is embedded in deposition of clays and silts and forms a permanent geological record of such marine strata (see siliceous ooze).
Diatoms, and their shells (frustules) as diatomite or diatomaceous earth, are important industrial resources used for fine polishing and liquid filtration. The complex structure of their microscopic shells has been proposed as a material for nanotechnology.
Diatomite is considered to be a natural nano material and has many uses and applications such as: production of various ceramic products, construction ceramics, refractory ceramics, special oxide ceramics, for production of humidity control materials, used as filtration material, material in the cement production industry, initial material for production of prolonged-release drug carriers, absorption material in an industrial scale, production of porous ceramics, glass industry, used as catalyst support, as a filler in plastics and paints, purification of industrial waters, pesticide holder, as well as for improving the physical and chemical characteristics of certain soils, and other uses.
Diatoms are also used to help determine the origin of materials containing them, including seawater.
The main goal of diatom analysis in forensics is to differentiate a death by submersion from a post-mortem immersion of a body in water. Laboratory tests may reveal the presence of diatoms in the body. Since the silica-based skeletons of diatoms do not readily decay, they can sometimes be detected even in heavily decomposed bodies. As they do not occur naturally in the body, if laboratory tests show diatoms in the corpse that are of the same species found in the water where the body was recovered, then it may be good evidence of drowning as the cause of death. The blend of diatom species found in a corpse may be the same or different from the surrounding water, indicating whether the victim drowned in the same site in which the body was found.
The deposition of silica by diatoms may also prove to be of utility to nanotechnology. Diatom cells repeatedly and reliably manufacture valves of various shapes and sizes, potentially allowing diatoms to manufacture micro- or nano-scale structures which may be of use in a range of devices, including: optical systems; semiconductor nanolithography; and even vehicles for drug delivery. With an appropriate artificial selection procedure, diatoms that produce valves of particular shapes and sizes might be evolved for cultivation in chemostat cultures to mass-produce nanoscale components. It has also been proposed that diatoms could be used as a component of solar cells by substituting photosensitive titanium dioxide for the silicon dioxide that diatoms normally use to create their cell walls. Diatom biofuel producing solar panels have also been proposed.
The first diatom formally described in scientific literature, the colonial "Bacillaria paradoxa", was discovered in 1783 by Danish naturalist Otto Friedrich Müller. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46374 |
Perkin Warbeck
Perkin Warbeck (c. 1474 – 23 November 1499) was a pretender to the English throne. Warbeck claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, who was the second son of Edward IV and one of the so-called "Princes in the Tower". Richard, were he alive, would have been the rightful claimant to the throne, assuming that his elder brother Edward V was dead, and that he was legitimate – a contentious point.
Due to the uncertainty as to whether Richard had died (either of some natural cause or from having been murdered in the Tower of London) or whether he had somehow survived, Warbeck's claim gained some support. Followers may have truly believed Warbeck was Richard, or may have supported him simply because of their desire to overthrow the reigning king, Henry VII, and reclaim the throne. Given the lack of knowledge regarding Richard's fate, and having received support outside England, Warbeck emerged as a significant threat to the newly established Tudor dynasty; Henry declared Warbeck an impostor.
Warbeck made several landings in England backed by small armies but met strong resistance from the King's men and surrendered in Hampshire in 1497. After his capture, he retracted his claim, writing a confession in which he said he was a Fleming born in Tournai around 1474. Dealing with Warbeck cost Henry VII over £13,000 (), putting a strain on Henry's weak state finances.
Perkin Warbeck's personal history is fraught with many unreliable and varying statements. Warbeck said that he was Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, the younger son of King Edward IV, who had disappeared mysteriously along with his brother Edward V after Richard, Duke of Gloucester usurped the throne following the elder Edward's death in 1483. After Warbeck was captured and interrogated in 1497 under the eye of King Henry VII, another version of his life was published, based on his confession. This confession is considered by many historians to be possibly only partially true as it was procured under duress. According to the confession, Warbeck was born to a man called John Osbeck (also known as Jehan de Werbecque). Osbeck, who was married to Warbeck's mother Katherine de Faro, was Flemish and held the occupation of comptroller to the city of Tournai, in present-day Belgium. These family ties are backed up by several municipal archives of Tournai which mention most of the people whom Warbeck declared he was related to. He was taken to Antwerp by his mother at around age ten to learn Dutch. From here, he was undertaken by several masters around Antwerp and Middelburg before being employed by a local English merchant named John Strewe for a few months.
After his time in the Netherlands, Warbeck yearned to visit other countries and was hired by a Breton merchant. This merchant eventually brought Warbeck to Cork, Ireland in 1491 when he was about 17, and there he learned to speak English. Warbeck then claims that upon seeing him dressed in silk clothes, some of the citizens of Cork who were Yorkists demanded to do "him the honour as a member of the Royal House of York." He said they did this because they were resolved in gaining revenge on the King of England; they decided that he would claim to be the younger son of the late King Edward IV.
Warbeck first claimed the English throne at the court of Burgundy in 1490, where jeton coins were minted for him. Warbeck explained his (i.e. Richard of Shrewsbury's) mysterious disappearance by claiming that his brother Edward V had been murdered, but he had been spared by his brother's (unidentified) murderers because of his age and "innocence". However, he had been made to swear an oath not to reveal his true identity for "a certain number of years". From 1483 to 1490, he claimed he had lived on the continent of Europe under the protection of Yorkist loyalists, but when his main guardian, Sir Edward Brampton, returned to England, he was left free. He then declared his true identity.
In 1491, Warbeck landed in Ireland in the hope of gaining support for his claim as Lambert Simnel had four years previously. His cause was promoted by John Atwater, a former Mayor of Cork and ardent Yorkist, who may have been instrumental in helping him assume the identity of Richard. However, little support for an active rebellion was found and Warbeck was forced to return to mainland Europe. There his fortunes improved. He was first received by Charles VIII of France, but in 1492 was expelled under the terms of the Treaty of Etaples, by which Charles had agreed not to shelter rebels against Henry VII. Charles VIII agreed to withdraw all backing from Warbeck after an English expedition had laid siege to Boulogne. He was publicly recognized as Richard of Shrewsbury by Margaret of Burgundy, widow of Charles the Bold, sister of Edward IV, and thus the aunt of the Princes in the Tower. Whether Margaret – who left England to marry before either of her nephews were born – truly believed that the pretender was her nephew Richard, or whether she considered him a fraud but supported him anyway, is unknown, but she tutored him in the ways of the Yorkist court.
Henry complained to Philip of Habsburg, Duke of Burgundy, about the harbouring of the pretender, and, since he was ignored, imposed a trade embargo on Burgundy, cutting off important Burgundian trade connections with England. The pretender was also welcomed by various other monarchs and was known in international diplomacy as the Duke of York. At the invitation of Duke Philip's father, King Maximilian I, in 1493, he attended the funeral of the Emperor Frederick III and was recognised as King Richard IV of England.
Pro-Yorkist sympathy in England involved important figures making it known that they were prepared to back Warbeck's claims. These included Lord Fitzwater, Sir Simon Montfort, Sir Thomas Thwaites (ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer), Sir William Stanley (the Lord Chamberlain) and Sir Robert Clifford. Clifford went over to mainland Europe and wrote back to his friends to confirm Warbeck's real identity as Prince Richard.
King Henry ordered the group of supporters to be rounded up and put on trial. All were duly arrested, together with William D'Aubeney, Thomas Cressener, Thomas Astwode, Robert Ratcliff and others. Lord Fitzwater was sent as a prisoner to Calais and later beheaded for trying to bribe his gaolers.
In show trials in January 1495 all the conspirators were initially condemned to death, although six, including Thwaites, were then pardoned and their sentences commuted to imprisonment and fines. Within days Sir Simon Montfort, Robert Ratcliff and William D'Aubeney were beheaded at Tower Hill and Cressener and Astwode pardoned at the block. Later the same month Sir William Stanley was also beheaded. Other members of the group were imprisoned and fined. Sir Robert Clifford was pardoned and rewarded for revealing the names of the conspirators.
On 3 July 1495, funded by Margaret of Burgundy, Warbeck landed at Deal in Kent, hoping for a show of popular support. They were confronted by locals loyal to Henry VII in the ensuing Battle of Deal. Warbeck's small army was routed and 150 of the pretender's troops were killed without Warbeck even disembarking. He was forced to retreat almost immediately, this time to Ireland. There he found support from Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Desmond, and laid siege to Waterford, but, meeting resistance, he fled to Scotland. Henry pardoned Warbeck's Irish supporters, remarking drily that "I suppose they will crown an ape next".
Warbeck was well-received by James IV of Scotland, who realised that his presence gave him international leverage. As Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain were negotiating an alliance with Henry VII, James IV knew that Spain would help him in his struggles with England in order to prevent the situation escalating into war with France. Spanish ambassadors arrived in Edinburgh, and later Pedro de Ayala was established as a resident ambassador during the crisis. Warbeck married Lady Catherine Gordon, a daughter of George Gordon, 2nd Earl of Huntly. The marriage was celebrated in Edinburgh with a tournament. James gave Warbeck clothes for the wedding and armour covered with purple silk.
Historian Katie Stevenson suggests the clothing bought for the tournament shows Warbeck fought in a team with the king and four knights. A copy of a love letter in Latin obtained by Pedro de Ayala is thought to be Warbeck's proposal to Lady Catherine. However, James' biographer Norman Macdougall comments that it is clear that nobody, with the possible exception of Margaret of Burgundy, took seriously his claim to be the prince; his marriage to a junior Scots noblewoman was scarcely what might be expected for a potential king of England.
In September 1496, James IV prepared to invade England with Warbeck. A red, gold and silver banner was made for Warbeck as the Duke of York; James's armour was gilded and painted; and the royal artillery was prepared. John Ramsay of Balmain (who called himself Lord Bothwell) described the events for Henry VII. He saw Roderic de Lalanne, a Flemish knight, arrive with two little ships and 60 German soldiers and meet James IV and talk to Warbeck. In Edinburgh Castle Ramsay saw two great French guns called 'curtalds,' 10 falconets or little serpentines, and 30 iron breech loading 'cart guns' with 16 close-carts or wagons for the munitions. He estimated the invasion force would last only four to five days in England before it ran out of provisions. He suggested, from the safety of Berwick upon Tweed, that the Scots could be vanquished by a modest English force attacking from north and south in a pincer movement.
The Scottish host assembled near Edinburgh and James IV and Warbeck offered prayers at Holyrood Abbey on 14 September, and on the next day at St Triduana's Chapel and Our Lady Kirk of Restalrig. On 19 September the Scottish army was at Ellem and on 21 September 1496 they crossed the River Tweed at Coldstream. Miners set to work to demolish the tower of Hetoune (Castle Heaton) on 24 September, but the army quickly retreated when resources were expended, and hoped-for support for Perkin Warbeck in Northumberland failed to materialise. According to an English record, the Scots penetrated four miles into England with royal banner displayed, and destroyed three or four little towers (or Bastle houses). They left on 25 September 1496 when an English army commanded by Lord Neville approached from Newcastle. When news of this invasion reached Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, on 21 October 1496, he wrote to his ambassador in Spain, to request the Spanish monarchs make peace between England and Scotland. The peace mission was entrusted to Pedro de Ayala.
Later, wishing to be rid of Warbeck, James IV provided a ship called the "Cuckoo" and a hired crew under a Breton captain which returned Perkin to Waterford in shame in July 1497. James IV made peace with England by signing the Treaty of Ayton at St Dionysius's Church in Ayton in Berwickshire. Once again Perkin attempted to lay siege to Waterford, but this time his effort lasted only eleven days before he was forced to flee Ireland, chased by four English ships. According to some sources, by this time he was left with only 120 men on two ships.
On 7 September 1497, Warbeck landed at Whitesand Bay, two miles north of Land's End, in Cornwall hoping to capitalise on the Cornish people's resentment in the aftermath of their uprising only three months earlier. Warbeck proclaimed that he could put a stop to extortionate taxes levied to help fight a war against Scotland and was warmly welcomed. He was declared "Richard IV" on Bodmin Moor and his Cornish army some 6000 strong entered Exeter before advancing on Taunton. Henry VII sent his chief general, Giles Daubeney, 1st Baron Daubeney, to attack the Cornish and when Warbeck heard that the King's scouts were at Glastonbury he panicked and deserted his army.
Warbeck was captured at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire where he surrendered. Henry VII reached Taunton on 4 October 1497, where he received the surrender of the remaining Cornish army. The ringleaders were executed and others fined. Warbeck was imprisoned, first at Taunton, then at the Tower of London, where he was "paraded through the streets on horseback amid much hooting and derision of the citizens".
Warbeck was initially treated well by Henry. As soon as he confessed to being an impostor, he was released from the Tower of London, and was given accommodation at Henry's court. He was even allowed to be present at royal banquets. He was, however, kept under guard and was not allowed to sleep with his wife, who was living under the protection of the queen.
After 18 months at court, Warbeck tried to escape. He was quickly recaptured. He was then held in the Tower, initially in solitary confinement, and later alongside Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick; the two tried to escape in 1499. Captured once again, Warbeck was led from the Tower to Tyburn, London on 23 November 1499, where he read out a confession and was hanged. Warbeck's Irish ally John Atwater was also executed at Tyburn on the same day. The Earl of Warwick was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28 November 1499.
Warbeck was buried in Austin Friars, London. The presumed site of his unmarked grave still exists as the Dutch Church, Austin Friars.
His story was featured in Francis Bacon's 1622 work "History of the Reign of King Henry VII".
Perkin reportedly resembled Edward IV in appearance, which has led to speculation that he might have been Edward's illegitimate son, or at least had some genuine connection with the York family. Francis Bacon believed he was one of Edward's many illegitimate children. It has also been suggested that he was a son of one of Edward's siblings, either Richard III or Margaret of York, Warbeck's first major sponsor.
Some authors, for example Horace Walpole, have even gone as far as to claim that Warbeck actually "was" Richard, Duke of York, although there is little academic support for this view.
Warbeck's story subsequently attracted writers, most notably the dramatist John Ford, who dramatized the story in his play "Perkin Warbeck", first performed in the 1630s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46375 |
Monmouth
Monmouth ( , ; meaning "town on the Monnow") is the historic county town of Monmouthshire in Wales and also a community. Situated where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, of the border with England. The town is northeast of Cardiff, and west of London. It is within the Monmouthshire local authority, and the parliamentary constituency of Monmouth. Monmouth's population in the 2011 census was 10,508, rising from 8,877 in 2001.
The town was the site of a small Roman fort, Blestium, and became established after the Normans built a castle here after 1067. Its medieval stone gated bridge is the only one of its type remaining in Britain. The castle later came into the possession of the House of Lancaster, and was the birthplace of King Henry V in 1386. In 1536, it became the county town of Monmouthshire.
A market town and a focus of educational and cultural activities for the surrounding rural area, Monmouth has become a tourism centre at the heart of the Wye Valley.
The name Monmouth is an English contraction of 'Monnow-mouth'. The Welsh name for the river, "Mynwy", which may originally have meant "fast-flowing", was anglicised as Monnow. The town was originally known in Welsh as "Abermynwy" ("mouth of the Monnow"), replaced by "Trefynwy" ("Monnow town" – the initial "m" of "Mynwy" mutating in Welsh to "f" pronounced /v/) by the 1600s.
Excavations undertaken by the Monmouth Archaeological Society on sites along Monnow Street have uncovered a wealth of information about the early history of the town. Indeed, the Council for British Archaeology have designated Monmouth as one of the top ten towns in Britain for archaeology.
Evidence of a Bronze Age boat building community, including three long channels adjoining the site of a now-vanished lake, was discovered in September 2013, during archaeological investigations by the Monmouth Archaeological Society of the Parc Glyndwr housing development site, immediately north-west of the town.
The excavations later revealed the remains of a Neolithic crannog. The dwelling was constructed on stilts on a man-made island away from the lake shore in water up to deep. Oak timbers had been "skillfully" cut with stone or flint axes to form stilts, of posts and poles, which "probably" rested on three parallel fully-grown tree 'sleeper beams', up to wide, laid horizontally on the lakebed. Timbers from the structure were radiocarbon dated to 4867 years before present (BP).
The first recorded settlement at Monmouth was the small Roman fort of "Blestium", one of a network of military bases established on the frontiers of the Roman occupation. This was connected by road to the larger Roman towns at "Glevum" (Gloucester) and "Isca Augusta" (Caerleon). Archaeologists have found Roman pottery and coins within the modern town centre. During the later Roman period, between the 2nd and late 4th centuries, it appears to have been a centre for iron working, using the local iron ores and charcoal also worked at nearby "Gobannium" (Abergavenny) and "Ariconium" (near Ross-on-Wye).
After the end of Roman rule in Britain, the area was at the southern edge of the Welsh kingdom of Ergyng. The only evidence of continuing settlement at Monmouth is a record of a 7th-century church, at an unknown location within the town, dedicated to the Welsh saint Cadoc. In 1056, the area was devastated by the Welsh prince Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, on his way with an army of Welsh, Saxons and Danes to defeat Ralph, Earl of Hereford, and sack the Saxon "burh" at Hereford, to the north.
Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the Earldom of Hereford was given to William FitzOsbern of Breteuil, Normandy, one of King William's closest allies, who was responsible for defending the area against the Welsh. A new castle was built at Monmouth, holding commanding views over the surrounding area from a sound defensive site and exerting control over both river crossings and the area's important resources of farmland, timber and minerals. Initially it would have been a motte and bailey castle, later rebuilt in stone, and refortified and developed over time. A town grew up around it, and a Benedictine priory was established around 1075 by Withenoc, a Breton who became lord of Monmouth after Roger, the son of William fitzOsbern, was disgraced. The priory may have once been the residence of the monk Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was born around 1100 and is best known for writing the chronicle "Historia Regum Britanniae" ("History of the Kings of Britain").
The town was recorded in the Domesday Book, and expanded thereafter. There was early burgage development along Monnow Street, and the suburb of Overmonnow, west of the river and protected by a defensive moat called the Clawdd-du or Black ditch, began to develop by the 12th century. Charters from the period refer to the town's trade in iron, and to forges making use of local ore and charcoal. The cinders produced by the forges formed heaps, and were used in building foundations; the name of Cinderhill Street in Overmonnow dates from this period.
During the period of turmoil between the supporters of King Henry III and the barons who sought to curtail his power, the town was the scene of a major battle in 1233, in which the king's forces were routed by the troops of Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. Later, the castle was extended by Henry's son Edmund Crouchback, after he became Earl of Lancaster in 1267. In about 1300, town walls were built, and the bridge over the Monnow was fortified. The bridge, now pedestrianised, remains in place today, the only such fortified bridge in Britain and reputedly one of only three similar crossings in Europe.
King Edward II was briefly imprisoned at Monmouth Castle in 1326 after being overthrown by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, the Earl of March. In the mid 14th century, the castle and town came into the possession of the House of Lancaster through the marriage of John of Gaunt to Blanche of Lancaster. John of Gaunt strengthened the castle, adding the Great Hall, and the castle became a favourite residence of the House of Lancaster. In 1387, John of Gaunt's grandson was born to Mary de Bohun, in the Queen's Chamber within the gatehouse of Monmouth Castle, while his father Henry Bolingbroke was hunting in the area. The boy was known as Henry of Monmouth before his coronation as Henry V; supported by longbowmen from the area, he won the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Monmouth's links with Henry are commemorated in the naming of the main town square, Agincourt Square, and in the statue of Henry on the front of the Shire Hall.
From the 14th century onwards, the town became noted for the production of woollen Monmouth caps. However, as a border town, its prosperity suffered after nearby areas, including Usk and Grosmont, were devastated through attacks by supporters of Owain Glyndŵr around 1405, though Monmouth itself did not come under attack.
File:Old map of Monmouth, Wales.jpg|thumb|right|400px|alt=1610 Map of Monmouth by John Speed, roll over the image to link to the places shown|1610 Map of Monmouth by John Speed, roll over the image to link to the places shown.
rect 505 863 602 979 Church of St Thomas the Martyr
poly 1640 886 1667 914 1779 980 1781 1058 1612 968 Butcher's Rowe (now Church Street)
circle 1599 731 100 Monmouth Castle
poly 1442 849 1641 888 1613 966 1443 936 1412 866 The Bailey (now Agincourt Square)
rect 1782 825 1925 974 St Mary's Priory Church
rect 2113 1278 2233 1379 Wye Bridge
poly 1474 1485 1557 1390 1642 1395 1841 1409 1988 1349 2207 1312 2207 1347 2043 1378 1927 1421 1822 1452 1741 1454 1596 1433 1552 1442 1517 1485 River Wye
poly 362 1486 568 1321 646 729 716 688 1366 704 1561 607 1676 644 1907 616 1993 642 2203 778 2203 795 1949 646 1872 642 1753 666 1551 627 1473 650 1348 725 1066 730 731 710 674 748 594 1317 533 1386 403 1489 River Monnow
rect 601 823 694 880 Monnow Bridge
desc bottom-left
In 1536, Henry VIII imposed the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, abolishing the powers of the Marcher Lords and integrating the administration of England and Wales. A new shire was created covering the area west of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, and Monmouth became its county town. The town gained representation in the English Parliament at the same time, and its priory was dissolved. In 1605, James I granted Monmouth a town charter by letters patent. The granting of the charter included the charge that the town "at all perpetual future times ... be and remain a town and borough of Peace and Quiet, to the example and terror of the wicked and reward of the good". The layout of the town as depicted in Speed's map of 1610 would be easily recognisable to present day inhabitants, with the layout of the main axis clearly visible from the castle via the main street, Monnow Street, to the bridge. Monnow Street is a typical market street, in being wide in the middle (for those selling) and narrow at each end, to help prevent livestock escaping.
Monmouth School was founded by William Jones in 1614. The castle changed hands three times during the English Civil War, and Oliver Cromwell passed through on his way to retaking Chepstow Castle and laying siege to Pembroke Castle in 1648. Monmouth castle was slighted after the wars ended, but the town itself grew in prosperity. Great Castle House, built in 1673, is now the home of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia), the oldest regiment in the British Army. The Shire Hall was built in 1724, and was used for the local Assizes, with the area beneath the building serving as the town market.
By the end of the 18th century, the town had become a popular centre for visitors undertaking the "Wye Tour", an excursion by boat through the scenic Wye Valley taking in the picturesque sights of Ross-on-Wye, Goodrich, Tintern, Chepstow and elsewhere. Poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, and Robert Southey, as well as painter J. M. W. Turner, were among those who visited the area.
The town was visited in 1802 by Admiral Horatio Nelson, who knew the importance of the area's woodland in providing timber for the British Navy and approved a Naval Temple built in his honour on the nearby Kymin Hill. Wooden ships up to 500 tons were built at a shipyard just south of Monmouth bridge until the new bridge at Chepstow was opened in 1816. Priory Street, the town's first bypass, was built in the 1830s, with the town slaughterhouse beneath. In 1840, at Monmouth's Shire Hall, Chartist protesters John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones became the last men in Britain to be sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered after being found guilty of treason following riots in Newport that led to 20 deaths. The sentences were later commuted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land.
Until the establishment of an official police force in 1857, Monmouth had a parish constable assisted by beadles to keep law and order. The appointed constables held office for a year and were often men who had experience in other local government or community roles. William Fuller who held office as Monmouth's constable for over twenty years in the early to mid 19th century, also served as Inspector of Nuisances, Chief of the Fire Brigade, Inspector of Weights and Measures, Clerk of the Market, and Conservator of the Wye.
Fuller is also recorded as having rescued people from drowning, acted as emergency midwife, and rescued a woman from a flooded house. The types of crime that Fuller and subsequent police officers had to deal with in and around Monmouth as the century progressed were recorded in detail in the local newspapers, the Merlin and the Monmouthshire Beacon. These crimes included theft of livestock, clothing, food, valuables, fuel (wood and coal); assault; vandalism; highway robbery; fraud; passing counterfeit coin; prostitution, and indecent exposure, as well as the more serious crimes of concealing the death of an infant, carnal knowledge without consent, and murder. The constable would have been present in court at Shire Hall when many of these cases came before the Quarter Sessions or Assizes. Once the court had passed sentence there was a wide range of punishment available to the authorities. Capital offences were dealt with at Monmouth County Gaol, as were whippings and sentences of hard labour. Although a police force of four constables and a sergeant was established in Monmouth in 1836, uncertain finances meant that within two years the force was reduced to just two constables.
Four railways were built to serve Monmouth between 1857 and 1883: the Coleford, Monmouth, Usk and Pontypool Railway, the Ross and Monmouth Railway, the Wye Valley Railway, and the Coleford Railway. All of these closed between 1917 and 1964.
In 1896 a hydroelectric power station was built on the River Monnow at Osbaston, providing electrical power to the town until 1953. A new hydroelectric station was built on the same site and has operated since 2009, typically generating 670,000kWh annually.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Monmouth had close links with the Rolls family, who built a mansion at The Hendre just outside the town. In 1904, Charles Rolls established a new car making business with Henry Royce, but in 1910 he was killed in an aeroplane crash at the age of 32; he is commemorated by a statue in Agincourt Square. St Mary's Church contains a memorial to the men of who lost their lives in HMS "Monmouth", which was sunk with all hands on 1 November 1914, by German cruisers SMS "Scharnhorst" and SMS "Gneisenau" off the Chilean Coast at the Battle of Coronel; the church hosts an annual service in remembrance. Seven Royal Navy ships have been named after the town, including a Type 23 frigate launched in 1991 which is still in operation.
Monmouth remained a relatively sedate and quiet small town for most of the 20th century; its passenger rail services ended in 1959, but its road connections greatly improved with the new A40 bypassing the town in 1966, and later connecting the town to the motorway system. These improved communications contributed to the development of the town, with suburbs extending beyond the rivers Wye and Monnow to the south-east, west and north of the old town centre.
Monmouth is in an area of Devonian old red sandstone, at the point where the River Wye is joined by its tributary, the River Monnow, and immediately north of the point at which the smaller River Trothy flows into the Wye from the west. Immediately to the south, the Wye enters a valley, incised into sandstone and, in particular, carboniferous limestone. The town is surrounded by wooded hills to its north, east and south, including Buckholt Wood (), The Kymin (), and The Graig (), with more gently undulating terrain to the west. The town centre itself is sited on a low-lying spur between the floodplains of the Wye and Monnow, and has frequently suffered from severe flooding. The water-meadows to the north and south of the town centre, known respectively as Vauxhall Fields and Chippenham Mead, have generally remained free of development.
In climatic terms, the town is located between those areas around the Severn Estuary which show a maritime influence, and the cooler and drier conditions of the English Midlands further inland. The nearby Ross-on-Wye weather station shows average daily maximum temperatures ranging from in January to in July, with 1504 hours of sunshine per year, and an average annual rainfall of .
Monmouth is located beside the A40 dual carriageway road that links the M4 motorway at Newport in South Wales with the M50 motorway at Ross-on-Wye; this connects in turn with the M5 motorway south of Worcester in the West Midlands. The A40 passed through the town centre until 1966, when it was reopened as a relief road on land between the town centre and the River Wye. South of the town, the road passes through a short tunnel beneath Gibraltar Hill; to the north east of the town, it follows the line of the Wye valley. The town is linked to Chepstow in the south and Hereford in the north by the A466 road. Regular bus services run between the town and Hereford, Ross-on-Wye, Coleford, Chepstow, Newport and Abergavenny. The nearest major airports to Monmouth are at Bristol () and Cardiff (). London Heathrow Airport is away.
Monmouth has been without passenger rail services since January 1959 although goods trains ran until 1964. Monmouth's main railway station, known as Monmouth Troy, was a coal distribution depot and a base for heavy goods vehicles for many years after its closure as a part of the rail network, but the building has now been dismantled and re-erected at Winchcombe railway station on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway. The other station at Monmouth was Monmouth May Hill on the Ross and Monmouth Railway, built on the opposite bank of the River Wye to the town centre. This operated for many years as Monmouth Sawmills and Gas Works after its closure as part of the rail network.
Monmouth is administered by Monmouthshire County Council, one of the 22 unitary local authorities in Wales formed in 1996. Its offices were located until 2012 at the former Gwent County Hall at Croesyceiliog, Cwmbran; most staff are now in offices at Usk and Magor. The town elects four county councillors, for the wards of Dixton with Osbaston, Drybridge, Overmonnow, and Wyesham; currently, two councillors are Independent and two are Conservatives. The town also has its own Town Council, comprising 16 councillors elected every four years.
Monmouth had a mayor and burgesses in medieval times, and the town gained its first charter, from Henry VI, in 1447. It was included within the Hundred of Skenfrith after the county of Monmouthshire was formed. Following the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, the town elected a Borough Council, comprising a mayor, aldermen and councillors. In 1974 that Corporation was abolished, and the town became part of the much larger Monmouth District (becoming Monmouth Borough in 1988), which until 1996 formed one of the five districts of Gwent.
The town was first represented in Parliament in 1536, when it was allocated one seat and the shire two further seats. By the late 17th century, the electorate of the three seats comprised the resident freemen of Monmouth, Newport and Usk, and after the Great Reform Act of 1832 the constituency was generally referred to as the Monmouth Boroughs. The Representation of the People Act 1918 led to Newport becoming a parliamentary borough in its own right, and Monmouth was included in the new Monmouth county constituency. The town has remained part of the Monmouth constituency in subsequent elections, although the constituency boundary has changed several times. Notable MPs for the area have included the industrialist Crawshay Bailey from 1852 to 1868; Peter Thorneycroft, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1957–58 and Chairman of the Conservative Party 1975–81, who was the town's MP from 1945 to 1966; and John Stradling Thomas, MP from 1970 to 1991. The constituency has returned a Conservative MP at most recent elections; the current member is David Davies, first elected in 2005. In elections for the Welsh Assembly, the town is part of the Monmouth constituency; the current MS is Nick Ramsay (Conservative). Until January 2020 Monmouth was within the Wales constituency for the European Parliament.
The Laws in Wales Acts created an anomaly in that, although Monmouthshire was noted as being in the 'Country or Dominion of Wales', it was made directly responsible to the courts of Westminster rather than falling under the Court of Great Sessions in Wales. Ecclesiastically, until 1836 the town of Monmouth fell within the diocese of Hereford, rather than that of Llandaff. These arrangements gave rise to the widespread belief that the area was part of England rather than Wales, although most legislation for Wales was applied to it using the phrase "Wales and Monmouthshire". Following the Welsh Church Act 1914, the Church in Wales established the Diocese of Monmouth in 1921, and in 1949, Monmouthshire was included within the remit of the Council for Wales and Monmouthshire, an appointed precursor of the Welsh Office. The issue of whether Monmouth should be considered as part of Wales for administrative purposes was finally clarified in law by the Local Government Act 1972, which incorporated Monmouthshire within Wales.
Monmouth developed primarily as a market town, and agricultural centre, rather than as a centre of industry. The wool industry was important in its early growth, and the town was a centre for the production of the very popular knitted and felted Monmouth caps, from the 15th century onwards. Historically, Monmouth also had iron and tinplate works, together with paper and corn mills. The town was also an important river port, with warehouses and wharves along the Wye later removed for the building of the A40 relief road.
Monmouth is now primarily a centre for service industries and tourism, and its good road communications have encouraged commuting to larger centres in the West Midlands, South Wales, and Bristol. The Monmouth and District Chamber of Trade and Commerce represents businesses in the town and aims to support and encourage their development.
The town has a variety of both national and independent shops, many of which are in Monnow Street. Supermarkets include Waitrose, Cooperative Food, Marks & Spencer Food, Iceland, and (at Wyesham) Lidl. The town also has a full range of banks and many independent cafes and restaurants. Church Street, a cobbled pedestrianised street, contains craft shops, a book shop, a traditional greengrocer, chemist, coffee shops and restaurants. Monmouth has been a Fairtrade town since 2005. A regular market takes place close to the Monnow Bridge, and occasionally in the traditional market place in Agincourt Square. There are numerous public houses in the centre of the town, including the Old Nags Head, the Queen's Head, the Punch House, the Griffin, the Gloucester, the Vinetree, the King's Head (Wetherspoon), the Three Horseshoes, the Green Dragon and the Gatehouse.
The record company Nimbus Records is located at Wyastone Leys near the town, and just over the border in England.
According to the 2001 census, Monmouth had relatively high proportions of its population working in the retail and wholesale sectors of the economy (19.5%, compared with 16.3% for Wales as a whole), education (11.8%, compared with 8.1% across Wales), and property services (10.8%, compared with 8.5% across Wales). The proportion working in manufacturing was lower than the average (16.5% compared with 17.3% across Wales), as was the proportion in public administration (4.3% compared with 6.8% across Wales). In terms of occupational groups, the proportion of residents in managerial and professional posts was higher than average (30.1% compared with 22.7% across Wales), and the proportions in administrative and processing work were lower (8.7% in each group, compared with 12.2% and 10.2% respectively across Wales).
The usual resident population in the 2001 census was 8,877. Of that total, 1,760 (19.8%) were aged 15 or younger; 1,227 (13.8%) between 16 and 29; 1,687 (21.1%) between 30 and 44; 1,849 (20.8%) between 45 and 59; 1,386 (15.6%) between 60 and 74; and 968 (10.9%) aged 75 or over. The median age of residents was 42, in comparison to a Wales-wide median age of 39. The town's population increased from 5,504 in 1961 to 8,877 in 2001, a growth of 61% over forty years.
There are three Primary Schools in the town: Kymin View, Osbaston, and Overmonnow. A Welsh language parent-and-toddler group "" operates with the support of .
The town is served by Monmouth Comprehensive School which had over 1,600 pupils in 2012. Welsh medium secondary education is provided at Ysgol Gyfun Gwynllyw in Pontypool.
The Monmouth School is a "family" of 5 boarding and day schools. There is a pre-prep school for boys and girls aged 3-7, two schools for boys (a prep school for junior boys aged 7-11, and a senior school for boys aged 11-18) and two schools for girls (a prep school for junior girls aged 7-11, and a senior school for girls aged 11-18).
offers short courses at its "Learn IT Centre". Monmouth University of the Third Age (U3A) offers educational and leisure activities for retired and semi-retired people.
Health care services are provided by the Aneurin Bevan Health Board, part of the National Health Service. Following the closure of the Cottage Hospital in 2006, health services are provided at the Monnow Vale Integrated Health and Social Care Facility.
The "Bridges Community Centre" in Drybridge House adjacent to the Health and Social Care Facility provides support services to disadvantaged and vulnerable people.
In the 2001 census, 74.2% of the town's resident population gave their religion as Christian, with 16.7% stating "no religion". Minority religions included Muslim (0.2%), Sikh (0.2%), and Buddhist (0.2%).
Monmouth contains churches of several denominations. Within the Church in Wales, the Monmouth Group of Parishes includes the Priory Church of St Mary, which holds regular weekly services. The church was founded as a Benedictine priory around 1075. It fell into ruin after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, but was rebuilt as a parish church in 1737, and then completely rebuilt again in 1882. The church spire is prominent in views of, and within, the town. Other Anglican churches in the local group of parishes are St Thomas' at Overmonnow, and the churches at Mitchel Troy, Wonastow and Buckholt. The Diocese of Monmouth, the cathedral of which is the Cathedral Church of St Woolos in Newport, is one of the six dioceses of the Church in Wales. The churches at Wyesham and Dixton, though within the boundaries of Wales, are administered by the Church of England, and fall within the Diocese of Hereford.
St Mary's Roman Catholic Church was the first Catholic church to be built in Wales after the Reformation, and its construction followed the relaxation of laws against Catholics in 1778. The building was extended on several occasions in the 19th century. Monmouth Methodist Church is noted for both its exterior and interior architectural features. The Baptist Church was founded in 1818, though the current church was not constructed until 1907. There is a Christian Fellowship church at Wyesham.
Monmouth was named one of the best places to live in Wales in 2017.
The Welsh language and culture are actively promoted in the area under the auspices of the Monmouth & District Welsh Society "(Cymdeithas Gymraeg Trefynwy a'r Cylch)".
The town's small traditional theatre and cinema, the Savoy Theatre, on Church Street, is believed to be the oldest working theatre in Wales. Monmouth is also home to the Blake Theatre, which opened in 2004. Local performance groups include the Off Centre Theatre Company, Monmouth Operatic Society, Monmouth Choral Society, and the Merlin Society, one of the largest music societies in the country. The Monmouthshire Show (formerly the Monmouth Show) has been held each year, traditionally on the last Thursday of August, since 1919, though its history can be traced back to 1857. Prior to that there had been an agricultural society in the town dating back to the 1790s, which held ploughing competitions. The show, now held on the third Saturday in July, is the largest one-day agricultural show in Wales, with over 350 trade stands.
The Monmouth Festival, a free nine-day music festival, has been running every year since 1982 and is one of the largest free music festivals in Europe. The town also holds the Rockfield Country Music Festival and the Monmouth Women's Festival each year. An annual regatta is held, each May, and a raft race takes place each year for the St David's Foundation.
The Monmouth Museum, formerly the Nelson Museum, is home to one of the largest collections of Nelson material, bequeathed to the town by Lady Llangattock, mother of Charles Rolls. It also displays the only known example of an original Monmouth cap, dating from the 16th century. A small Regimental Museum established in 1989 is housed in Great Castle House, a former town house built on the site of part of Monmouth Castle.
Monmouth is twinned with the French town of Carbonne, and Waldbronn in Germany.
Location scenes for two episodes of the BBC drama series "Doctor Who" were filmed in Monmouth: "The Unquiet Dead" (2005) and "The Next Doctor" (2008).
Monmouth is home to Monmouth Town F.C., a football club founded around 1905 and enjoying a relatively successful run of form. Monmouth Town F.C. plays in the Welsh Football League Division One at the Chippenham Sports Ground, located at Blestium Street.
The town has a leisure centre, on the site of the comprehensive school, with a 20m x 10m swimming pool. In 2011 the swimming pool underwent a £300,000 refurbishment.
There is an 18-hole golf course on the edge of the town, as well as the Rolls Golf Club at The Hendre. Monmouth is also home to Monmouth Rowing Club, taking advantage of the River Wye. There are also cricket, bowls and rugby clubs.
Monmouth has been established as a tourist centre for some 200 years. It is in close proximity to the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley. Tourist attractions within the town include the castle, the museum, the Nelson Garden and the Shire Hall where the Tourist Information Centre and visitor centre is located. The area is also attractive to walkers. Both the Offa's Dyke Path, a long distance footpath beginning in Chepstow and finishing in North Wales, and the Wye Valley Walk passing through the town.
Monmouth is the current training base for the Welsh Men's National Lacrosse team. The team trained at Monmouth Girls School in preparation for the 2014 world championships.
On 20 May 2020 the specialist international beekeeping charity organisation Bees for Development announced that Monmouth had become a "Bee Town", the first of its kind in the UK. As well as being home to the charity, the town hosts an annual Bee Festival" various bee-themed events, and its County and Town Councils have special policies in place for pollinators.
People associated with Monmouth include Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Oxford-based cleric, born in about 1100 and believed to be originally from the area, who wrote "Historia Regum Britanniae", the "History of British Kings". Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford and Guardian of England, died at the castle in 1295, and King Edward II was briefly imprisoned there in 1326. The future Henry V, the victor at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, was born in the castle in 1386. Philip Evans, Jesuit priest and martyr, was born in the town in 1645.
Horatio Nelson visited Monmouth on several occasions, and in 1802 after giving his approval to the Kymin Naval Temple gave a speech In the Beaufort, a local inn, in which he praised the local people and their dedicated loyalty to the monarchy of the United Kingdom. After his death, the garden where he famously dined with Lady Hamilton after the speech was named the Nelson Garden. A museum dedicated to him is also in Monmouth.
William Allen was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions in the Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879), and is buried in Monmouth Cemetery. Despite severe wounds, he and Frederick Hitch kept communication with the hospital open, enabling its patients to be withdrawn.
Rockfield Studios, situated just outside the town, are where the band Queen recorded parts of their hit single "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1975, and where Oasis recorded their multi-million selling album "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" in 1995. Musician Dave Edmunds, a "permanent fixture" at Rockfield Studios for twenty years, lives in the town. Other former or current residents of the area have included poet and singer-songwriter Jake Thackray, rugby international and commentator Eddie Butler, television presenter Kate Humble, historian and TV presenter Professor Saul David, and astrologer Russell Grant.
Monmouth is the home of composer, organist and choirmaster Robert Jones.
Monmouth is the focus of MonmouthpediA, the first Wikipedia GLAM project to cover a whole town, creating Wikipedia articles on interesting and notable features and aspects of the town. It uses QRpedia QR codes to deliver articles to users, in English, Welsh or alternative languages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46376 |
Edward III of England
Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377) also known as Edward of Windsor before his accession, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from January 1327 until his death. He is noted for his military success and for restoring royal authority after the disastrous and unorthodox reign of his father, Edward II. Edward III transformed the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe. His 50-year reign was the second-longest in medieval English history, and saw vital developments in legislation and government, in particular the evolution of the English Parliament, as well as the ravages of the Black Death. He outlived his eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, and the throne passed to his grandson, Richard II.
Edward was crowned at age fourteen after his father was deposed by his mother, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer. At age seventeen he led a successful coup d'état against Mortimer, the de facto ruler of the country, and began his personal reign. After a successful campaign in Scotland he declared himself rightful heir to the French throne in 1337. This started what became known as the Hundred Years' War. Following some initial setbacks, this first phase of the war went exceptionally well for England; victories at Crécy and Poitiers led to the highly favourable Treaty of Brétigny, in which England made territorial gains, and Edward renounced his claim to the French throne. This phase would become known as the Edwardian War. Edward's later years were marked by international failure and domestic strife, largely as a result of his inactivity and poor health.
Edward was a temperamental man but capable of unusual clemency. He was in many ways a conventional king whose main interest was warfare. Admired in his own time and for centuries after, he was denounced as an irresponsible adventurer by later Whig historians such as Bishop William Stubbs, but modern historians credit him with some significant achievements.
Edward was also the last common ancestor of the House of Lancaster and York. The Wars of the Roses were fought between the two houses for the succession after Edward's grandson Richard was deposed.
Edward was born at Windsor Castle on 13 November 1312, and was often called Edward of Windsor in his early years. The reign of his father, Edward II, was a particularly problematic period of English history. One source of contention was the king's inactivity, and repeated failure, in the ongoing war with Scotland. Another controversial issue was the king's exclusive patronage of a small group of royal favourites. The birth of a male heir in 1312 temporarily improved Edward II's position in relation to the baronial opposition. To bolster further the independent prestige of the young prince, the king had him created Earl of Chester at only twelve days of age.
In 1325, Edward II was faced with a demand from his brother-in-law, Charles IV of France, to perform homage for the English Duchy of Aquitaine. Edward was reluctant to leave the country, as discontent was once again brewing domestically, particularly over his relationship with the favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger. Instead, he had his son Edward created Duke of Aquitaine in his place and sent him to France to perform the homage. The young Edward was accompanied by his mother Isabella, who was the sister of King Charles, and was meant to negotiate a peace treaty with the French. While in France, Isabella conspired with the exiled Roger Mortimer to have Edward deposed. To build up diplomatic and military support for the venture, Isabella had her son engaged to the twelve-year-old Philippa of Hainault. An invasion of England was launched and Edward II's forces deserted him completely. Isabella and Mortimer summoned a parliament, and the king was forced to relinquish the throne to his son, who was proclaimed king in London on 25 January 1327. The new king was crowned as Edward III at Westminster Abbey on 1 February at the age of 14.
It was not long before the new reign also met with other problems caused by the central position at court of Mortimer, who was now the de facto ruler of England. Mortimer used his power to acquire noble estates and titles, and his unpopularity grew with the humiliating defeat by the Scots at the Battle of Stanhope Park in County Durham, and the ensuing Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton, signed with the Scots in 1328. Also the young king came into conflict with his guardian. Mortimer knew his position in relation to the king was precarious and subjected Edward to disrespect. The tension increased after Edward and Philippa, who had married at York Minster on 24 January 1328, had a son, Edward of Woodstock, on 15 June 1330. Eventually, the king decided to take direct action against Mortimer. Aided by his close companion William Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu, and a small number of other trusted men, Edward took Mortimer by surprise at Nottingham Castle on 19 October 1330. Mortimer was executed and Edward III's personal reign began.
Edward III was not content with the peace agreement made in his name, but the renewal of the war with Scotland originated in private, rather than royal initiative. A group of English magnates known as The Disinherited, who had lost land in Scotland by the peace accord, staged an invasion of Scotland and won a great victory at the Battle of Dupplin Moor in 1332. They attempted to install Edward Balliol as king of Scotland in place of the infant David II, but Balliol was soon expelled and was forced to seek the help of Edward III. The English king responded by laying siege to the important border town of Berwick and defeated a large relieving army at the Battle of Halidon Hill. He reinstated Balliol on the throne and received a substantial amount of land in southern Scotland. These victories proved hard to sustain, as forces loyal to David II gradually regained control of the country. In 1338, Edward III was forced to agree to a truce with the Scots.
One reason for the change of strategy towards Scotland was a growing concern for the relationship between England and France. As long as Scotland and France were in an alliance, the English were faced with the prospect of fighting a war on two fronts. The French carried out raids on English coastal towns, leading to rumours in England of a full-scale French invasion. In 1337, Philip VI of France confiscated the English king's Duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu. Instead of seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict by paying homage to the French king, as his father had done, Edward responded by laying claim to the French crown as the grandson of Philip IV. The French rejected this based on the precedents for agnatic succession set in 1316 and 1322. Instead, they upheld the rights of Philip IV's nephew, King Philip VI (an agnatic descendant of the House of France), thereby setting the stage for the Hundred Years' War (see family tree below). In the early stages of the war, Edward's strategy was to build alliances with other Continental rulers. In 1338, Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, named Edward vicar-general of the Holy Roman Empire and promised his support. As late as 1373, the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 established an Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. These measures produced few results; the only major military victory in this phase of the war was the English naval victory at Sluys on 24 June 1340, which secured its control of the English Channel.
Meanwhile, the fiscal pressure on the kingdom caused by Edward's expensive alliances led to discontent at home. The regency council at home was frustrated by the mounting national debt, while the king and his commanders on the Continent were angered by the failure of the government in England to provide sufficient funds. To deal with the situation, Edward himself returned to England, arriving in London unannounced on 30 November 1340. Finding the affairs of the realm in disorder, he purged the royal administration of a great number of ministers and judges. These measures did not bring domestic stability, and a stand-off ensued between the king and John de Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, during which Stratford's relatives Robert Stratford, Bishop of Chichester, and Henry de Stratford were temporarily stripped of title and imprisoned respectively. Stratford claimed that Edward had violated the laws of the land by arresting royal officers. A certain level of conciliation was reached at the parliament of April 1341. Here Edward was forced to accept severe limitations to his financial and administrative freedom, in return for a grant of taxation. Yet in October the same year, the king repudiated this statute and Archbishop Stratford was politically ostracised. The extraordinary circumstances of the April parliament had forced the king into submission, but under normal circumstances the powers of the king in medieval England were virtually unlimited, a fact that Edward was able to exploit.
Historian Nicholas Rodger called Edward III's claim to be the "Sovereign of the Seas" into question, arguing there was hardly any royal navy before the reign of Henry V (1413–22). Despite Rodger's view, King John had already developed a royal fleet of galleys and had attempted to establish an administration for these ships and others which were arrested (privately owned ships pulled into royal/national service). Henry III, his successor, continued this work. Notwithstanding the fact that he, along with his predecessor, had hoped to develop a strong and efficient naval administration, their endeavours produced one that was informal and mostly ad hoc. A formal naval administration emerged during Edward's reign which was composed of lay administrators and headed by William de Clewre, Matthew de Torksey, and John de Haytfield successively with them being titled "Clerk of the King's Ships". Sir Robert de Crull was the last to fill this position during Edward III's reign and would have the longest tenure in this position. It was during his tenure that Edward's naval administration would become a base for what evolved during the reigns of successors such as Henry VIII's "Council of Marine" and "Navy Board" and Charles I's "Board of Admiralty". Rodger also argues that for much of the fourteenth century, the French had the upper hand, apart from Sluys in 1340 and, perhaps, off Winchelsea in 1350. Yet, the French never invaded England and King John II of France died in captivity in England. There was a need for an English navy to play a role in this and to handle other matters, such as the insurrection of the Anglo-Irish lords and acts of piracy.
By the early 1340s, it was clear that Edward's policy of alliances was too costly, and yielded too few results. The following years saw more direct involvement by English armies, including in the Breton War of Succession, but these interventions also proved fruitless at first. Edward defaulted on Florentine loans of 1,365,000 florins, resulting in the ruin of the lenders.
A major change came in July 1346, when Edward staged a major offensive, sailing for Normandy with a force of 15,000 men. His army sacked the city of Caen, and marched across northern France, to meet up with English forces in Flanders. It was not Edward's initial intention to engage the French army, but at Crécy, just north of the Somme, he found favourable terrain and decided to fight a pursuing army led by Philip VI. On 26 August, the English army defeated a far larger French army in the Battle of Crécy. Shortly after this, on 17 October, an English army defeated and captured King David II of Scotland at the Battle of Neville's Cross. With his northern borders secured, Edward felt free to continue his major offensive against France, laying siege to the town of Calais. The operation was the greatest English venture of the Hundred Years' War, involving an army of 35,000 men. The siege started on 4 September 1346, and lasted until the town surrendered on 3 August 1347.
After the fall of Calais, factors outside of Edward's control forced him to wind down the war effort. In 1348, the Black Death struck England with full force, killing a third or more of the country's population. This loss of manpower led to a shortage of farm labour, and a corresponding rise in wages. The great landowners struggled with the shortage of manpower and the resulting inflation in labour cost. To curb the rise in wages, the king and parliament responded with the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349, followed by the Statute of Labourers in 1351. These attempts to regulate wages could not succeed in the long run, but in the short term they were enforced with great vigour. All in all, the plague did not lead to a full-scale breakdown of government and society, and recovery was remarkably swift. This was to a large extent thanks to the competent leadership of royal administrators such as Treasurer William Edington and Chief Justice William de Shareshull.
It was not until the mid-1350s that military operations on the Continent were resumed on a large scale. In 1356, Edward's eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, won an important victory in the Battle of Poitiers. The greatly outnumbered English forces not only routed the French, but captured the French king John II and his youngest son, Philip. After a succession of victories, the English held great possessions in France, the French king was in English custody, and the French central government had almost totally collapsed. There has been a historical debate as to whether Edward's claim to the French crown originally was genuine, or if it was simply a political ploy meant to put pressure on the French government. Regardless of the original intent, the stated claim now seemed to be within reach. Yet a campaign in 1359, meant to complete the undertaking, was inconclusive. In 1360, therefore, Edward accepted the Treaty of Brétigny, whereby he renounced his claims to the French throne, but secured his extended French possessions in full sovereignty.
While Edward's early reign had been energetic and successful, his later years were marked by inertia, military failure and political strife. The day-to-day affairs of the state had less appeal to Edward than military campaigning, so during the 1360s Edward increasingly relied on the help of his subordinates, in particular William Wykeham. A relative upstart, Wykeham was made Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1363 and Chancellor in 1367, though due to political difficulties connected with his inexperience, the Parliament forced him to resign the chancellorship in 1371. Compounding Edward's difficulties were the deaths of his most trusted men, some from the 1361–62 recurrence of the plague. William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury, Edward's companion in the 1330 coup, died as early as 1344. William de Clinton, 1st Earl of Huntingdon, who had also been with the king at Nottingham, died in 1354. One of the earls created in 1337, William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton, died in 1360, and the next year Henry of Grosmont, perhaps the greatest of Edward's captains, succumbed to what was probably plague. Their deaths left the majority of the magnates younger and more naturally aligned to the princes than to the king himself.
Increasingly, Edward began to rely on his sons for the leadership of military operations. The king's second son, Lionel of Antwerp, attempted to subdue by force the largely autonomous Anglo-Irish lords in Ireland. The venture failed, and the only lasting mark he left were the suppressive Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. In France, meanwhile, the decade following the Treaty of Brétigny was one of relative tranquillity, but on 8 April 1364 John II died in captivity in England, after unsuccessfully trying to raise his own ransom at home. He was followed by the vigorous Charles V, who enlisted the help of the capable Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France. In 1369, the French war started anew, and Edward's son John of Gaunt was given the responsibility of a military campaign. The effort failed, and with the Treaty of Bruges in 1375, the great English possessions in France were reduced to only the coastal towns of Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne.
Military failure abroad, and the associated fiscal pressure of constant campaigns, led to political discontent at home. The problems came to a head in the parliament of 1376, the so-called Good Parliament. The parliament was called to grant taxation, but the House of Commons took the opportunity to address specific grievances. In particular, criticism was directed at some of the king's closest advisors. Lord Chamberlain William Latimer, 4th Baron Latimer, and Steward of the Household John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby, were dismissed from their positions. Edward's mistress, Alice Perrers, who was seen to hold far too much power over the ageing king, was banished from court. Yet the real adversary of the Commons, supported by powerful men such as Wykeham and Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March, was John of Gaunt. Both the king and Edward of Woodstock were by this time incapacitated by illness, leaving Gaunt in virtual control of government. Gaunt was forced to give in to the demands of parliament, but at its next convocation, in 1377, most of the achievements of the Good Parliament were reversed.
Edward did not have much to do with any of this; after around 1375 he played a limited role in the government of the realm. Around 29 September 1376 he fell ill with a large abscess. After a brief period of recovery in February 1377, the king died of a stroke at Sheen on 21 June. He was succeeded by his ten-year-old grandson, King Richard II, son of Edward of Woodstock, since Woodstock himself had died on 8 June 1376.
The middle years of Edward's reign were a period of significant legislative activity. Perhaps the best-known piece of legislation was the Statute of Labourers of 1351, which addressed the labour shortage problem caused by the Black Death. The statute fixed wages at their pre-plague level and checked peasant mobility by asserting that lords had first claim on their men's services. In spite of concerted efforts to uphold the statute, it eventually failed due to competition among landowners for labour. The law has been described as an attempt "to legislate against the law of supply and demand", which made it doomed to fail. Nevertheless, the labour shortage had created a community of interest between the smaller landowners of the House of Commons and the greater landowners of the House of Lords. The resulting measures angered the peasants, leading to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
The reign of Edward III coincided with the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the papacy at Avignon. During the wars with France, opposition emerged in England against perceived injustices by a papacy largely controlled by the French crown. Papal taxation of the English Church was suspected to be financing the nation's enemies, while the practice of provisions – the Pope providing benefices for clerics – caused resentment in the English population. The statutes of Provisors and Praemunire, of 1350 and 1353 respectively, aimed to amend this by banning papal benefices, as well as limiting the power of the papal court over English subjects. The statutes did not sever the ties between the king and the Pope, who were equally dependent upon each other.
Other legislation of importance includes the Treason Act 1351. It was precisely the harmony of the reign that allowed a consensus on the definition of this controversial crime. Yet the most significant legal reform was probably that concerning the Justices of the Peace. This institution began before the reign of Edward III but, by 1350, the justices had been given the power not only to investigate crimes and make arrests, but also to try cases, including those of felony. With this, an enduring fixture in the administration of local English justice had been created.
Parliament as a representative institution was already well established by the time of Edward III, but the reign was nevertheless central to its development. During this period, membership in the English baronage, formerly a somewhat indistinct group, became restricted to those who received a personal summons to parliament. This happened as parliament gradually developed into a bicameral institution, composed of a House of Lords and a House of Commons. Yet it was not in the Lords, but in the Commons that the greatest changes took place, with the expanding political role of the Commons. Informative is the Good Parliament, where the Commons for the first time – albeit with noble support – were responsible for precipitating a political crisis. In the process, both the procedure of impeachment and the office of the Speaker were created. Even though the political gains were of only temporary duration, this parliament represented a watershed in English political history.
The political influence of the Commons originally lay in their right to grant taxes. The financial demands of the Hundred Years' War were enormous, and the king and his ministers tried different methods of covering the expenses. The king had a steady income from crown lands, and could also take up substantial loans from Italian and domestic financiers. To finance warfare, he had to resort to taxation of his subjects. Taxation took two primary forms: levy and customs. The levy was a grant of a proportion of all moveable property, normally a tenth for towns and a fifteenth for farmland. This could produce large sums of money, but each such levy had to be approved by parliament, and the king had to prove the necessity. The customs therefore provided a welcome supplement, as a steady and reliable source of income. An "ancient duty" on the export of wool had existed since 1275. Edward I had tried to introduce an additional duty on wool, but this unpopular "maltolt", or "unjust exaction", was soon abandoned. Then, from 1336 onwards, a series of schemes aimed at increasing royal revenues from wool export were introduced. After some initial problems and discontent, it was agreed through the Ordinance of the Staple of 1353 that the new customs should be approved by parliament, though in reality they became permanent.
Through the steady taxation of Edward III's reign, parliament – and in particular the Commons – gained political influence. A consensus emerged that in order for a tax to be just, the king had to prove its necessity, it had to be granted by the community of the realm, and it had to be to the benefit of that community. In addition to imposing taxes, parliament would also present petitions for redress of grievances to the king, most often concerning misgovernment by royal officials. This way the system was beneficial for both parties. Through this process the commons, and the community they represented, became increasingly politically aware, and the foundation was laid for the particular English brand of constitutional monarchy.
Central to Edward III's policy was reliance on the higher nobility for purposes of war and administration. While his father had regularly been in conflict with a great portion of his peerage, Edward III successfully created a spirit of camaraderie between himself and his greatest subjects. Both Edward I and Edward II had been limited in their policy towards the nobility, allowing the creation of few new peerages during the sixty years preceding Edward III's reign. Edward III reversed this trend when, in 1337, as a preparation for the imminent war, he created six new earls on the same day.
At the same time, Edward expanded the ranks of the peerage upwards, by introducing the new title of duke for close relatives of the king. Furthermore, he bolstered the sense of community within this group by the creation of the Order of the Garter, probably in 1348. A plan from 1344 to revive the Round Table of King Arthur never came to fruition, but the new order carried connotations from this legend by the circular shape of the garter. Edward's wartime experiences during the Crécy campaign (1346–7) seem to have been a determining factor in his abandonment of the Round Table project. It has been argued that the total warfare tactics employed by the English at Crécy in 1346 were contrary to Arthurian ideals and made Arthur a problematic paradigm for Edward, especially at the time of the institution of the Garter. There are no formal references to King Arthur and the Round Table in the surviving early fifteenth-century copies of the Statutes of the Garter, but the Garter Feast of 1358 did involve a round table game. Thus there was some overlap between the projected Round Table fellowship and the actualized Order of the Garter. Polydore Vergil tells of how the young Joan of Kent – allegedly the king's favourite at the time – accidentally dropped her garter at a ball at Calais. King Edward responded to the ensuing ridicule of the crowd by tying the garter around his own knee with the words "honi soit qui mal y pense" – shame on him who thinks ill of it.
This reinforcement of the aristocracy and the emerging sense of national identity must be seen in conjunction with the war in France. Just as the war with Scotland had done, the fear of a French invasion helped strengthen a sense of national unity, and nationalise the aristocracy that had been largely Anglo-Norman since the Norman conquest. Since the time of Edward I, popular myth suggested that the French planned to extinguish the English language, and as his grandfather had done, Edward III made the most of this scare. As a result, the English language experienced a strong revival; in 1362, a Statute of Pleading ordered English to be used in law courts, and the year after, Parliament was for the first time opened in English. At the same time, the vernacular saw a revival as a literary language, through the works of William Langland, John Gower and especially "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer. Yet the extent of this Anglicisation must not be exaggerated. The statute of 1362 was in fact written in the French language and had little immediate effect, and parliament was opened in that language as late as 1377. The Order of the Garter, though a distinctly English institution, included also foreign members such as John IV, Duke of Brittany, and Sir Robert of Namur.
Edward III enjoyed unprecedented popularity in his own lifetime, and even the troubles of his later reign were never blamed directly on the king himself. His contemporary Jean Froissart wrote in his "Chronicles" that "His like had not been seen since the days of King Arthur". This view persisted for a while but, with time, the image of the king changed. The Whig historians of a later age preferred constitutional reform to foreign conquest and accused Edward of ignoring his responsibilities to his own nation. Bishop Stubbs, in his work "The Constitutional History of England", states:
This view is challenged in a 1960 article titled "Edward III and the Historians", in which May McKisack points out the teleological nature of Stubbs' judgement. A medieval king could not be expected to work towards some future ideal of a parliamentary monarchy as if it were good in itself; rather, his role was a pragmatic one—to maintain order and solve problems as they arose. At this, Edward excelled. Edward had also been accused of endowing his younger sons too liberally and thereby promoting dynastic strife culminating in the Wars of the Roses. This claim was rejected by K.B. McFarlane, who argued that this was not only the common policy of the age, but also the best. Later biographers of the king such as Mark Ormrod and Ian Mortimer have followed this historiographical trend. The older negative view has not completely disappeared; as recently as 2001, Norman Cantor described Edward as an "avaricious and sadistic thug" and a "destructive and merciless force".
From what is known of Edward's character, he could be impulsive and temperamental, as was seen by his actions against Stratford and the ministers in 1340/41. At the same time, he was well known for his clemency; Mortimer's grandson was not only absolved, but came to play an important part in the French wars, and was eventually made a Knight of the Garter. Both in his religious views and his interests, Edward was a conventional man. His favourite pursuit was the art of war and, in this, he conformed to the medieval notion of good kingship. As a warrior he was so successful that one modern military historian has described him as the greatest general in English history. He seems to have been unusually devoted to his wife, Queen Philippa. Much has been made of Edward's sexual licentiousness, but there is no evidence of any infidelity on his part before Alice Perrers became his lover, and by that time the queen was already terminally ill. This devotion extended to the rest of the family as well; in contrast to so many of his predecessors, Edward never experienced opposition from any of his five adult sons.
Edward's claim on the French throne was based on his descent from King Philip IV of France, through his mother Isabella. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46377 |
Aquitaine
Aquitaine ( , , ; ; ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: "Aguiéne"), archaic "Guyenne"/"Guienne" (), is a historical region of southwestern France and a former administrative region of the country. Since 1 January 2016 it has been part of the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It is situated in the far southwest corner of Metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It is composed of the five departments of Dordogne, Lot-et-Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes and Gironde. In the Middle Ages, Aquitaine was a kingdom and a duchy, whose boundaries fluctuated considerably.
There are traces of human settlement by prehistoric peoples, especially in the Périgord, but the earliest attested inhabitants in the south-west were the Aquitani, who were not proper Celtic people, but more akin to the Iberians (see Gallia Aquitania). Although a number of different languages and dialects were in use in the area during ancient times, it is most likely that the prevailing language of Aquitaine during the late pre-historic to Roman period was an early form of the Basque language. This has been demonstrated by various Aquitanian names and words that were recorded by the Romans, and which are currently easily readable as Basque. Whether this Aquitanian language (Proto-Basque) was a remnant of a Vasconic language group that once extended much farther, or it was generally limited to the Aquitaine/Basque region is not known. One reason the language of Aquitaine is important is because Basque is the last surviving non-Indo-European language in western Europe and it has had some effect on the languages around it, including Spanish and, to a lesser extent, French.
The original Aquitania (named after the inhabitants) at the time of Caesar's conquest of Gaul included the area bounded by the Garonne River, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Ocean. The name may stem from Latin 'aqua', maybe derived from the town "Aquae Augustae", "Aquae Tarbellicae" or just "Aquis" (Dax, Akize in modern Basque) or as a more general geographical feature.
Under Augustus' Roman rule, since 27 BC the province of Aquitania was further stretched to the north to the River Loire, thus including proper Gaul tribes along with old Aquitani south of the Garonne (cf. Novempopulania and Gascony) within the same region.
In 392, the Roman imperial provinces were restructured as "Aquitania Prima" (north-east), "Aquitania Secunda" (centre) and "Aquitania Tertia", better known as "Novempopulania" in the south-west.
Accounts of Aquitania during the Early Middle Ages are a blur, lacking precision, but there was much unrest. The Visigoths were called into Gaul as "foederati", legalizing their status within the Empire. Eventually they established themselves as the "de facto" rulers in south-west Gaul as central Roman rule collapsed. Visigoths established their capital in Toulouse, but their tenure on Aquitaine was feeble. In 507, they were expelled south to Hispania after their defeat in the Battle of Vouillé by the Franks, who became the new rulers in the area to the south of the Loire.
The Roman Aquitania Tertia remained in place as Novempopulania, where a duke was appointed to hold a grip over the Basques (Vascones/Wascones, rendered "Gascons" in English). These dukes were quite detached from central Frankish overlordship, sometimes governing as independent rulers with strong ties to their kinsmen south of the Pyrenees. As of 660, the foundations for an independent Aquitaine/Vasconia polity were established by the duke Felix of Aquitaine, a magnate ("potente(m)") from Toulouse, probably of Gallo-Roman stock. Despite its nominal submission to the Merovingians, the ethnic make-up of the new Aquitanian realm was not Frankish, but Gallo-Roman north of the Garonne and in main towns and Basque, especially south of the Garonne.
A united Basque-Aquitanian realm reached its heyday under Odo the Great's rule. In 721, the Aquitanian duke fended Umayyad troops ("Sarracens") off at Toulouse, but in 732 (or 733, according to Roger Collins), an Umayyad expedition commanded by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi defeated Odo next to Bordeaux, and went on to loot its way up to Poitiers. Odo was required to pledge allegiance to the Frankish Charles Martel in exchange for help against the advancing Arab forces. Basque-Aquitanian self-rule temporarily came to a halt, definitely in 768 after the assassination of Waifer.
In 781, Charlemagne decided to proclaim his son Louis King of Aquitaine within the Carolingian Empire, ruling over a realm comprising the Duchy of Aquitaine and the Duchy of Vasconia. He suppressed various Basque ("Gascon") uprisings, even venturing into the lands of Pamplona past the Pyrenees after ravaging Gascony, with a view to imposing his authority also in the Vasconia to south of Pyrenees. According to his biography, he achieved everything he wanted and after staying overnight in Pamplona, on his way back his army was attacked in Roncevaux in 812, but narrowly escaped an engagement at the Pyrenean passes.
Seguin (Sihiminus), count of Bordeaux and Duke of Vasconia, seemed to have attempted a detachment from the Frankish central authority on Charlemagne's death. The new emperor Louis the Pious reacted by removing him from his capacity, which stirred the Basques into rebellion. The king in turn sent his troops to the territory, obtaining their submission in two campaigns and killing the duke, while his family crossed the Pyrenees and continued to foment risings against Frankish power. In 824, the 2nd Battle of Roncevaux took place, in which counts Aeblus and Aznar, Frankish vassals from the Duchy of Vasconia sent by the new King of Aquitaine, Pepin, were captured by the joint forces of Iñigo Arista and the Banu Qasi.
Before Pepin's death, emperor Louis had appointed a new king in 832, his son Charles the Bald, while the Aquitanian lords elected Pepin II as king. This struggle for control of the kingdom led to a constant period of war between Charles, loyal to his father and the Carolingian power, and Pepin II, who relied more on the support of Basque and Aquitanian lords.
Despite the early conquest of southern Gaul by the Franks after the Battle of Vouillé in 507, the Frankish element was feeble south of the Loire, where Gothic and Gallo-Roman Law prevailed and a small Frankish settlement took place. However scarce, some Frankish population and nobles settled down in regions like Albigeois, Carcassone (on the fringes of Septimania), Toulouse, and Provence and Lower Rhone (the last two not in Aquitaine). After the death of the king Dagobert I, the Merovingian tenure south of the Loire became largely nominal, with the actual power being in the hands of autonomous regional leaders and counts. The Franks may have become largely assimilated to the preponderant Gallo-Roman culture by the 8th century, but their names were well in use by the ruling class, like Odo. Still, in the Battle of Toulouse, the Aquitanian duke Odo was said to be leading an army of Aquitanians and Franks.
On the other hand, the Franks did not mix with the Basques, keeping separate paths. In the periods before and after the Muslim thrust, the Basques are often cited in several accounts stirring against Frankish attempts to subdue Aquitaine (stretching up to Toulouse) and Vasconia, pointing to a not preponderant but clearly significant Basque presence in the former too. Recorded evidence points to their deployment across Aquitaine in a military capacity as a mainstay of the Duke's forces. 'Romans' are cited as living in the cities of Aquitaine, as opposed to the Franks (mid 8th century).
After the 843 Treaty of Verdun, the defeat of Pepin II and the death of Charles the Bald, the Kingdom of Aquitaine (subsumed in West Francia) ceased to have any relevance and the title of King of Aquitaine took on a nominal value. In 1058, the Duchy of Vasconia (Gascony) and Aquitaine merged under the rule of William VIII, Duke of Aquitaine.
The title "Duke of Aquitaine" was held by the counts of Poitiers from the 10th to the 12th century.
Aquitaine passed to France in 1137 when the duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII of France, but their marriage was annulled in 1152. When Eleanor's new husband became King Henry II of England in 1154, the area became an English possession, and a cornerstone of the Angevin Empire. Aquitaine remained English until the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453, when it was annexed by France.
During the three hundred years that the region was ruled by the Kings of England, links between Aquitaine and England strengthened, with large quantities of wine produced in southwestern France being exported to London, Southampton, and other English ports. In fact, so much wine and other produce was being exported to London and sold that by the start of the Hundred Years' War the profits from Aquitaine were the principal source of the English King's income per annum.
The region served as a stronghold for the Protestant Huguenots during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who suffered persecution at the hands of the French Catholics. The Huguenots called upon the English crown for assistance against Cardinal Richelieu.
From the 13th century until the French Revolution, Aquitaine was usually known as Guyenne.
Aquitaine consists of 3,150,890 inhabitants, equivalent to 6% of the total French population.
The region of Aquitaine forms the 6th most populated region in France.
French is the official language of the region. Many residents also have some knowledge of Basque, of a variety of Occitan (Gascon, Limousin, or Languedocien), or of the Poitevin-Saintongeais dialect of French.
In 2005, 78,000 children were learning Occitan as a second language in state schools and 2,000 were enrolled in Occitan-medium private schools.
Basque speakers number about 73,000, concentrated in the far south of the region:
Bordeaux is the largest city in Aquitaine. It is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department. It is the capital of Aquitaine, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department. Bordeaux is famous for its wine industry. Apart from Bordeaux, there are also other important cities in Aquitaine.
The region is home to many successful sports teams. In particular worth mentioning are:
Football
Rugby union is particularly popular in the region. Clubs include:
Basketball
Bull-fighting is also popular in the region.
Major surfing championships regularly take place on Aquitaine's coast. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46378 |
East Anglia
East Anglia is a geographical area in the East of England. The area included has varied but the legally defined NUTS 2 statistical unit comprises the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, including the City of Peterborough unitary authority area. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a tribe whose name originated in Anglia, northern Germany.
Definitions of what constitutes East Anglia vary. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia, established in the 6th century, originally consisted of the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and expanded west into at least part of Cambridgeshire. The modern NUTS 2 statistical unit of East Anglia comprises Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (including the City of Peterborough unitary authority). Those three counties have formed the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia since 1976, and were the subject of a possible government devolution package in 2016.
Essex has sometimes been included in definitions of East Anglia, including by the London Society of East Anglians. However, the Kingdom of Essex to the south, was a separate element of the Heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England and did not identify as Angles but Saxons. The county of Essex by itself forms a NUTS 2 statistical unit in the East of England region.
Other definitions of the area have been used or proposed over the years. For example, the Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1969, which followed the Royal Commission on the Reform of Local Government, recommended the creation of eight provinces in England. The proposed East Anglia province would have included northern Essex, southern Lincolnshire and a small part of Northamptonshire as well as Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
The kingdom of East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but the Isle of Ely also became part of it upon the marriage of East Anglian princess Etheldreda. It was formed around 520 by merging the North and South Folk, Angles who had settled in the former lands of the Iceni during the previous century, and it was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms as defined in the 12th century writings of Henry of Huntingdon. East Anglia has been cited by a number of scholars as being a region where settlement of continental Germanic speakers was particularly early and dense, possibly following a depopulation in the fourth century.
A 2016 study found that modern East Anglians share a strong genetic affinity with Anglo-Saxon era skeletons found in Cambridgeshire and Durham, but differ substantially from Iron Age and Roman era skeletons, which are more similar to the Welsh. This was taken to support a major influence of the Anglo-Saxon migrations on the genetic makeup of East Anglia.
East Anglia was the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England for a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around 616, and its King Raedwald was Bretwalda (overlord of the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms). However, this did not last; the Mercians defeated it twice over the next 40 years, and East Anglia continued to weaken in relation to the other kingdoms. Offa of Mercia finally had king Æthelberht killed in 794 and took control of the kingdom himself. Independence was temporarily restored by rebellion in 825, but the Danes killed King Edmund on 20 November 869 and captured the kingdom. Edward the Elder incorporated East Anglia into the Kingdom of England, and it later became an earldom.
Much of East Anglia remained marshland and bogs until the 17th century, despite some engineering work in the form of sea barriers constructed by the Roman Empire. The alluvial land was converted into wide swaths of productive arable land by a series of systematic drainage projects, mainly using drains and river diversions along the lines of Dutch practice. In the 1630s, thousands of Puritan families from East Anglia emigrated to New England in America, taking much East Anglian culture with them that can still be traced today. East Anglia based much of its earnings on wool, textiles, and arable farming and was a rich area of England until the Industrial Revolution caused a manufacturing and development shift to the Midlands and the North.
During the Second World War, the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces constructed many airbases in East Anglia for the heavy bomber fleets of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Nazi-occupied Europe. East Anglia was ideally suited to airfield construction, as it includes large areas of open, level terrain and is close to mainland Europe. Many of the airfields can still be seen today, particularly from aerial photographs, and a few remain in use, the most prominent being Norwich International Airport. Pillboxes were erected in 1940 to help defend the nation against invasion, and they can also be found throughout the area at strategic points.
East Anglia is bordered to the north and east by the North Sea, to the south by the estuary of the River Thames and shares an undefined land border to the west with the rest of England. Much of northern East Anglia is flat, low-lying and marshy (such as the Fens of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk), although the extensive drainage projects of the past centuries actually make this one of the driest areas in the UK. Inland much of the rest of Suffolk and Norfolk is gently undulating, with glacial moraine ridges providing some areas of steeper areas relief. The supposed flatness of the Norfolk landscape is noted in literature, such as Noël Coward's "Private Lives" – "Very flat, Norfolk".
On the north-west corner East Anglia is bordered by a bay known as The Wash, where owing to deposits of sediment and land reclamation, the coastline has altered markedly within historical times; several towns once on the coast of the Wash (notably King's Lynn) are now some distance inland. Conversely, over to the east on the coast exposed to the North Sea the coastline is subject to rapid erosion and has shifted inland significantly since historic times.
Major rivers include Suffolk's Stour, running through country beloved of the painter John Constable, and the River Nene. The River Cam is a tributary of the Great Ouse and gives its name to Cambridge, whilst Norwich sits on the River Yare and River Wensum. The River Orwell flows through Ipswich and has its mouth, along with the Stour at Felixstowe. The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads form a network of waterways between Norwich and the coast and are popular for recreational boating. The Ouse flows into the Wash at King's Lynn.
Major urban areas in East Anglia include the cities of Norwich, Cambridge and Peterborough, and the town of Ipswich. Smaller towns and cities include Bury St Edmunds, Ely, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn. Much of the area is still rural in nature with many villages surrounded by agricultural land.
The climate of East Anglia is generally dry and mild. Temperatures range from an average of 1–10 °C in the winter to 12–22 °C in the summer, although it is not uncommon for daily temperatures to fall and rise significantly outside these averages. Although water plays a significant role in the Fenland and Broadland landscapes, the area is among the driest in the United Kingdom and during the summer months, tinder-dry conditions are frequently experienced, occasionally resulting in field and heath fires. Many areas receive less than 700mm of rainfall a year and this is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. Sunshine totals tend to be higher towards the coastal areas.
Transport in East Anglia consists of an extensive road and rail network. Main A roads, such as the A12 and A47 link the area to the rest of the UK, and the A14 links the Midlands to the Port of Felixstowe. This is the busiest container port in the UK, dealing with over 40% of UK container traffic and is a major gateway port into the country. There is very little motorway within East Anglia.
Rail links include the Great Eastern Main Line from Norwich to London Liverpool Street and the West Anglia Main Line connecting Cambridge to London. Sections of the East Coast Main Line run through the area and Peterborough is an important interchange on this line. The area is linked to the Midlands and north-west England by rail and has a number of local rail services, such as the Bittern Line from Norwich to Sheringham.
East Anglia is ideal for cycling and National Cycle Route 1 passes through it. Cambridge has the largest proportion of its residents in the UK cycling to work with 25% commuting by bicycle. The city is also home to the Cambridgeshire guided busway, which at 13.3 miles (21.4 km) was the longest stretch of guided bus-way in the world when it opened in 2011.
The only major commercial airport is Norwich Airport, although London Stansted Airport, the fourth busiest passenger airport in the UK, lies just south of Cambridge in north-west Essex.
The University of Cambridge, established at the start of the 13th century and in the town of the same name, is East Anglia's best-known institution of higher learning, and is among the oldest and most famous universities in the world. Other institutions include the University of East Anglia (in Norwich), University of Essex, Norwich University of the Arts, Anglia Ruskin University (based in Cambridge), University of Suffolk (based in Ipswich) and University Centre Peterborough.
Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft Enterprise Zone, an enterprise zone initiated by New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, was announced in 2011 and launched in April 2012. It includes six sites with a total area of , which have attracted a number of energy-related businesses. The sites are Beacon Park and South Denes in Great Yarmouth, Mobbs Way, Riverside Road and South Lowestoft Industrial Estate in Lowestoft and Ellough Business Park in Ellough near Beccles. There is also an enterprise zone in Cambridgeshire, Alconbury Enterprise Campus in Huntingdon.
A shield of three golden crowns, placed two above one, on a blue background has been used as a symbol of East Anglia for centuries. The coat of arms was ascribed by medieval heralds to the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia and the Wuffingas dynasty which ruled it. The arms are effectively identical to the coat of arms of Sweden.
The three crowns appear, carved in stone, on the baptismal font (c.1400) in the parish church of Saxmundham, and on the 15th century porch of Woolpit church, both in Suffolk. They also appear in local heraldry and form part of the arms of the diocese of Ely and the arms of the borough of Bury St Edmunds, where the crowns are shown pierced with arrows to represent the martyrdom of Edmund the Martyr, the last king of East Anglia. Other users of the arms include the former Isle of Ely County Council, the Borough of Colchester and the University of East Anglia. The flag of Cambridgeshire (adopted in 2015) includes the three gold crowns on a blue field.
The East Anglian flag as it is known today was proposed by George Henry Langham and adopted in 1902 by the London Society of East Anglians (established in 1896). It superimposes the three crowns in a blue shield on a St George's cross.
East Anglia features heavily in English literature, notably in Noël Coward's "Private Lives" and the history of its waterways and drainage forms the backdrop to Graham Swift's novel "Waterland". The area also figures in works by L.P. Hartley, Arthur Ransome and Dorothy L. Sayers, among many others.
"Suffolk pink" and similar pastel colours of whitewash are commonly seen on houses in Suffolk, Norfolk and their neighbouring counties.
East Anglia has a wide range of holiday resorts that range from the traditional coastal towns of Felixstowe and Lowestoft in Suffolk and Great Yarmouth and Hunstanton in Norfolk, to small fishing villages like Aldeburgh and Southwold in Suffolk. Other tourist attractions include historic towns and cities like Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge and Ely as well as areas such as Constable Country, the Broads and the North Norfolk coast. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46379 |
Coaxial cable
Coaxial cable, or coax (pronounced ) is a type of electrical cable consisting of an inner conductor surrounded by a concentric conducting shield, with the two separated by a dielectric (insulating material); many coaxial cables also have a protective outer sheath or jacket. The term "coaxial" refers to the inner conductor and the outer shield sharing a geometric axis.
Coaxial cable is a type of transmission line, used to carry high frequency electrical signals with low losses. It is used in such applications as telephone trunklines, broadband internet networking cables, high speed computer data busses, cable television signals, and connecting radio transmitters and receivers to their antennas. It differs from other shielded cables because the dimensions of the cable and connectors are controlled to give a precise, constant conductor spacing, which is needed for it to function efficiently as a transmission line.
Coaxial cable was used in the first (1858) and following transatlantic cable installations, but its theory wasn't described until 1880 by English physicist, engineer, and mathematician Oliver Heaviside, who patented the design in that year (British patent No. 1,407).
Coaxial cable is used as a transmission line for radio frequency signals. Its applications include feedlines connecting radio transmitters and receivers to their antennas, computer network (e.g., Ethernet) connections, digital audio (S/PDIF), and distribution of cable television signals. One advantage of coaxial over other types of radio transmission line is that in an ideal coaxial cable the electromagnetic field carrying the signal exists only in the space between the inner and outer conductors. This allows coaxial cable runs to be installed next to metal objects such as gutters without the power losses that occur in other types of transmission lines. Coaxial cable also provides protection of the signal from external electromagnetic interference.
Coaxial cable conducts electrical signal using an inner conductor (usually a solid copper, stranded copper or copper plated steel wire) surrounded by an insulating layer and all enclosed by a shield, typically one to four layers of woven metallic braid and metallic tape. The cable is protected by an outer insulating jacket. Normally, the outside of the shield is kept at ground potential and a signal carrying voltage is applied to the center conductor. The advantage of coaxial design is that with differential mode, equal push-pull currents on the inner conductor, and inside of the outer conductor, the signal's electric and magnetic fields are restricted to the dielectric, with little leakage outside the shield. Further, electric and magnetic fields outside the cable are largely kept from interfering with signals inside the cable, if unequal currents are filtered out at the receiving end of the line. This property makes coaxial cable a good choice both for carrying weak signals, that cannot tolerate interference from the environment, and for stronger electrical signals, that must not be allowed to radiate or couple into adjacent structures or circuits. Larger diameter cables and cables with multiple shields have less leakage.
Common applications of coaxial cable include video and CATV distribution, RF and microwave transmission, and computer and instrumentation data connections.
The characteristic impedance of the cable (formula_1) is determined by the dielectric constant of the inner insulator and the radii of the inner and outer conductors. In radio frequency systems, where the cable length is comparable to the wavelength of the signals transmitted, a uniform cable characteristic impedance is important to minimize loss. The source and load impedances are chosen to match the impedance of the cable to ensure maximum power transfer and minimum standing wave ratio. Other important properties of coaxial cable include attenuation as a function of frequency, voltage handling capability, and shield quality.
Coaxial cable design choices affect physical size, frequency performance, attenuation, power handling capabilities, flexibility, strength, and cost. The inner conductor might be solid or stranded; stranded is more flexible. To get better high-frequency performance, the inner conductor may be silver-plated. Copper-plated steel wire is often used as an inner conductor for cable used in the cable TV industry.
The insulator surrounding the inner conductor may be solid plastic, a foam plastic, or air with spacers supporting the inner wire. The properties of the dielectric insulator determine some of the electrical properties of the cable. A common choice is a solid polyethylene (PE) insulator, used in lower-loss cables. Solid Teflon (PTFE) is also used as an insulator, and exclusively in plenum-rated cables. Some coaxial lines use air (or some other gas) and have spacers to keep the inner conductor from touching the shield.
Many conventional coaxial cables use braided copper wire forming the shield. This allows the cable to be flexible, but it also means there are gaps in the shield layer, and the inner dimension of the shield varies slightly because the braid cannot be flat. Sometimes the braid is silver-plated. For better shield performance, some cables have a double-layer shield. The shield might be just two braids, but it is more common now to have a thin foil shield covered by a wire braid. Some cables may invest in more than two shield layers, such as "quad-shield", which uses four alternating layers of foil and braid. Other shield designs sacrifice flexibility for better performance; some shields are a solid metal tube. Those cables cannot be bent sharply, as the shield will kink, causing losses in the cable. When a foil shield is used a small wire conductor incorporated into the foil makes soldering the shield termination easier.
For high-power radio-frequency transmission up to about 1 GHz, coaxial cable with a solid copper outer conductor is available in sizes of 0.25 inch upward. The outer conductor is corrugated like a bellows to permit flexibility and the inner conductor is held in position by a plastic spiral to approximate an air dielectric. One brand name for such cable is "Heliax".
Coaxial cables require an internal structure of an insulating (dielectric) material to maintain the spacing between the center conductor and shield. The dielectric losses increase in this order: Ideal dielectric (no loss), vacuum, air, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), polyethylene foam, and solid polyethylene. A low relative permittivity allows for higher-frequency usage. An inhomogeneous dielectric needs to be compensated by a non-circular conductor to avoid current hot-spots.
While many cables have a solid dielectric, many others have a foam dielectric that contains as much air or other gas as possible to reduce the losses by allowing the use of a larger diameter center conductor. Foam coax will have about 15% less attenuation but some types of foam dielectric can absorb moisture—especially at its many surfaces — in humid environments, significantly increasing the loss. Supports shaped like stars or spokes are even better but more expensive and very susceptible to moisture infiltration. Still more expensive were the air-spaced coaxials used for some inter-city communications in the mid-20th century. The center conductor was suspended by polyethylene discs every few centimeters. In some low-loss coaxial cables such as the RG-62 type, the inner conductor is supported by a spiral strand of polyethylene, so that an air space exists between most of the conductor and the inside of the jacket. The lower dielectric constant of air allows for a greater inner diameter at the same impedance and a greater outer diameter at the same cutoff frequency, lowering ohmic losses. Inner conductors are sometimes silver-plated to smooth the surface and reduce losses due to skin effect. A rough surface extends the current path and concentrates the current at peaks, thus increasing ohmic loss.
The insulating jacket can be made from many materials. A common choice is PVC, but some applications may require fire-resistant materials. Outdoor applications may require the jacket to resist ultraviolet light, oxidation, rodent damage, or direct burial. Flooded coaxial cables use a water blocking gel to protect the cable from water infiltration through minor cuts in the jacket. For internal chassis connections the insulating jacket may be omitted.
Twin-lead transmission lines have the property that the electromagnetic wave propagating down the line extends into the space surrounding the parallel wires. These lines have low loss, but also have undesirable characteristics. They cannot be bent, tightly twisted, or otherwise shaped without changing their characteristic impedance, causing reflection of the signal back toward the source. They also cannot be buried or run along or attached to anything conductive, as the extended fields will induce currents in the nearby conductors causing unwanted radiation and detuning of the line. Coaxial lines largely solve this problem by confining virtually all of the electromagnetic wave to the area inside the cable. Coaxial lines can therefore be bent and moderately twisted without negative effects, and they can be strapped to conductive supports without inducing unwanted currents in them, so long as provisions are made to ensure differential mode signal push-pull currents in the cable.
In radio-frequency applications up to a few gigahertz, the wave propagates primarily in the transverse electric magnetic (TEM) mode, which means that the electric and magnetic fields are both perpendicular to the direction of propagation. However, above a certain cutoff frequency, transverse electric (TE) or transverse magnetic (TM) modes can also propagate, as they do in a hollow waveguide. It is usually undesirable to transmit signals above the cutoff frequency, since it may cause multiple modes with different phase velocities to propagate, interfering with each other. The outer diameter is roughly inversely proportional to the cutoff frequency. A propagating surface-wave mode that does not involve or require the outer shield but only a single central conductor also exists in coax but this mode is effectively suppressed in coax of conventional geometry and common impedance. Electric field lines for this [TM] mode have a longitudinal component and require line lengths of a half-wavelength or longer.
Coaxial cable may be viewed as a type of waveguide. Power is transmitted through the radial electric field and the circumferential magnetic field in the TEM00 transverse mode. This is the dominant mode from zero frequency (DC) to an upper limit determined by the electrical dimensions of the cable.
The ends of coaxial cables usually terminate with connectors. Coaxial connectors are designed to maintain a coaxial form across the connection and have the same impedance as the attached cable. Connectors are usually plated with high-conductivity metals such as silver or tarnish-resistant gold. Due to the skin effect, the RF signal is only carried by the plating at higher frequencies and does not penetrate to the connector body. Silver however tarnishes quickly and the silver sulfide that is produced is poorly conductive, degrading connector performance, making silver a poor choice for this application.
Coaxial cable is a particular kind of transmission line, so the circuit models developed for general transmission lines are appropriate. See Telegrapher's equation.
In the following section, these symbols are used:
The best coaxial cable impedances in high-power, high-voltage, and low-attenuation applications were experimentally determined at Bell Laboratories in 1929 to be 30, 60, and 77 Ω, respectively. For a coaxial cable with air dielectric and a shield of a given inner diameter, the attenuation is minimized by choosing the diameter of the inner conductor to give a characteristic impedance of 76.7 Ω. When more common dielectrics are considered, the best-loss impedance drops down to a value between 52–64 Ω. Maximum power handling is achieved at 30 Ω.
The approximate impedance required to match a centre-fed dipole antenna in free space (i.e., a dipole without ground reflections) is 73 Ω, so 75 Ω coax was commonly used for connecting shortwave antennas to receivers. These typically involve such low levels of RF power that power-handling and high-voltage breakdown characteristics are unimportant when compared to attenuation. Likewise with CATV, although many broadcast TV installations and CATV headends use 300 Ω folded dipole antennas to receive off-the-air signals, 75 Ω coax makes a convenient 4:1 balun transformer for these as well as possessing low attenuation.
The arithmetic mean between 30 Ω and 77 Ω is 53.5 Ω; the geometric mean is 48 Ω. The selection of 50 Ω as a compromise between power-handling capability and attenuation is in general cited as the reason for the number. 50 Ω also works out tolerably well because it corresponds approximately to the feedpoint impedance of a half-wave dipole, mounted approximately a half-wave above "normal" ground (ideally 73 Ω, but reduced for low-hanging horizontal wires).
RG-62 is a 93 Ω coaxial cable originally used in mainframe computer networks in the 1970s and early 1980s (it was the cable used to connect IBM 3270 terminals to IBM 3274/3174 terminal cluster controllers). Later, some manufacturers of LAN equipment, such as Datapoint for ARCNET, adopted RG-62 as their coaxial cable standard. The cable has the lowest capacitance per unit-length when compared to other coaxial cables of similar size.
All of the components of a coaxial system should have the same impedance to avoid internal reflections at connections between components. Such reflections may cause signal attenuation and ghosting TV picture display; multiple reflections may cause the original signal to be followed by more than one echo. In analog video or TV systems, this causes ghosting in the image. Reflections also introduce standing waves, which cause increased losses and can even result in cable dielectric breakdown with high-power transmission (see Impedance matching). Briefly, if a coaxial cable is open, the termination has nearly infinite resistance, this causes reflections; if the coaxial cable is short-circuited, the termination resistance is nearly zero, there will be reflections with the opposite polarity. Reflection will be nearly eliminated if the coaxial cable is terminated in a pure resistance equal to its impedance.
Taking the characteristic impedance at high frequencies,
formula_24
One should also know the inductance and capacitance of the two concentric cylindrical conductors which is the coaxial cable. By definition formula_25 and getting the electric field by the formula of electric field of an infinite line,
formula_26
where formula_27 is charge,formula_28 is the permittivity of free space, formula_29 is the radial distance and formula_30 is the unit vector in the direction away from the axis. The voltage, V, is
formula_31
where formula_4 is the inner diameter of the outer conductor and formula_3 is the diameter of the inner conductor. The capacitance can then be solved by substitution,
formula_34
and the inductance is taken from Ampere's Law for two concentric conductors (coaxial wire) and with the definition of inductance,
formula_35 and formula_36
where formula_37 is magnetic induction, formula_38 is the permeability of free space, formula_39 is the magnetic flux and formula_40 is the differential surface. Taking the inductance per meter,
formula_41,
Substituting the derived capacitance and inductance,
formula_42
Signal leakage is the passage of electromagnetic fields through the shield of a cable and occurs in both directions. Ingress is the passage of an outside signal into the cable and can result in noise and disruption of the desired signal. Egress is the passage of signal intended to remain within the cable into the outside world and can result in a weaker signal at the end of the cable and radio frequency interference to nearby devices. Severe leakage usually results from improperly installed connectors or faults in the cable shield.
For example, in the United States, signal leakage from cable television systems is regulated by the FCC, since cable signals use the same frequencies as aeronautical and radionavigation bands. CATV operators may also choose to monitor their networks for leakage to prevent ingress. Outside signals entering the cable can cause unwanted noise and picture ghosting. Excessive noise can overwhelm the signal, making it useless.
An ideal shield would be a perfect conductor with no holes, gaps, or bumps connected to a perfect ground. However, a smooth solid highly conductive shield would be heavy, inflexible, and expensive. Such coax is used for straight line feeds to commercial radio broadcast towers. More economical cables must make compromises between shield efficacy, flexibility, and cost, such as the corrugated surface of flexible hardline, flexible braid, or foil shields. Since shields cannot be perfect conductors, current flowing on the inside of the shield produces an electromagnetic field on the outer surface of the shield.
Consider the skin effect. The magnitude of an alternating current in a conductor decays exponentially with distance beneath the surface, with the depth of penetration being proportional to the square root of the resistivity. This means that, in a shield of finite thickness, some small amount of current will still be flowing on the opposite surface of the conductor. With a perfect conductor (i.e., zero resistivity), all of the current would flow at the surface, with no penetration into and through the conductor. Real cables have a shield made of an imperfect, although usually very good, conductor, so there must always be some leakage.
The gaps or holes, allow some of the electromagnetic field to penetrate to the other side. For example, braided shields have many small gaps. The gaps are smaller when using a foil (solid metal) shield, but there is still a seam running the length of the cable. Foil becomes increasingly rigid with increasing thickness, so a thin foil layer is often surrounded by a layer of braided metal, which offers greater flexibility for a given cross-section.
Signal leakage can be severe if there is poor contact at the interface to connectors at either end of the cable or if there is a break in the shield.
To greatly reduce signal leakage into or out of the cable, by a factor of 1000, or even 10,000, superscreened cables are often used in critical applications, such as for neutron flux counters in nuclear reactors.
Superscreened cables for nuclear use are defined in IEC 96-4-1, 1990, however as there have been long gaps in the construction of nuclear power stations in Europe, many existing installations are using superscreened cables to the UK standard AESS(TRG) 71181 which is referenced in IEC 61917.
A continuous current, even if small, along the imperfect shield of a coaxial cable can cause visible or audible interference. In CATV systems distributing analog signals the potential difference between the coaxial network and the electrical grounding system of a house can cause a visible "hum bar" in the picture. This appears as a wide horizontal distortion bar in the picture that scrolls slowly upward. Such differences in potential can be reduced by proper bonding to a common ground at the house. See ground loop.
External fields create a voltage across the inductance of the outside of the outer conductor between sender and receiver. The effect is less when there are several parallel cables, as this reduces the inductance and, therefore, the voltage. Because the outer conductor carries the reference potential for the signal on the inner conductor, the receiving circuit measures the wrong voltage.
The transformer effect is sometimes used to mitigate the effect of currents induced in the shield. The inner and outer conductors form the primary and secondary winding of the transformer, and the effect is enhanced in some high-quality cables that have an outer layer of mu-metal. Because of this 1:1 transformer, the aforementioned voltage across the outer conductor is transformed onto the inner conductor so that the two voltages can be cancelled by the receiver. Many sender and receivers have means to reduce the leakage even further. They increase the transformer effect by passing the whole cable through a ferrite core one or more times.
Common mode current occurs when stray currents in the shield flow in the same direction as the current in the center conductor, causing the coax to radiate. They are the opposite of the desired "push-pull" differential mode currents, where the signal currents on the inner and outer conductor are equal and opposite.
Most of the shield effect in coax results from opposing currents in the center conductor and shield creating opposite magnetic fields that cancel, and thus do not radiate. The same effect helps ladder line. However, ladder line is extremely sensitive to surrounding metal objects, which can enter the fields before they completely cancel. Coax does not have this problem, since the field is enclosed in the shield. However, it is still possible for a field to form between the shield and other connected objects, such as the antenna the coax feeds. The current formed by the field between the antenna and the coax shield would flow in the same direction as the current in the center conductor, and thus not be canceled. Energy would radiate from the coax itself, affecting the radiation pattern of the antenna. With sufficient power this could be a hazard to people near the cable. A properly placed and properly sized balun can prevent common mode radiation in coax. An isolating transformer or blocking capacitor can be used to couple a coaxial cable to equipment, where it is desirable to pass radio-frequency signals but to block direct current or low-frequency power.
Most coaxial cables have a characteristic impedance of either 50, 52, 75, or 93 Ω. The RF industry uses standard type-names for coaxial cables. Thanks to television, RG-6 is the most commonly used coaxial cable for home use, and the majority of connections outside Europe are by F connectors.
A series of standard types of coaxial cable were specified for military uses, in the form "RG-#" or "RG-#/U". They date from World War II and were listed in "MIL-HDBK-216" published in 1962. These designations are now obsolete. The RG designation stands for Radio Guide; the U designation stands for Universal. The current military standard is MIL-SPEC MIL-C-17. MIL-C-17 numbers, such as "M17/75-RG214", are given for military cables and manufacturer's catalog numbers for civilian applications. However, the RG-series designations were so common for generations that they are still used, although critical users should be aware that since the handbook is withdrawn there is no standard to guarantee the electrical and physical characteristics of a cable described as "RG-# type". The RG designators are mostly used to identify compatible connectors that fit the inner conductor, dielectric, and jacket dimensions of the old RG-series cables.
Dielectric material codes
VF is the Velocity Factor; it is determined by the effective formula_6 and formula_11
There are also other designation schemes for coaxial cables such as the URM, CT, BT, RA, PSF and WF series.
Short coaxial cables are commonly used to connect home video equipment, in ham radio setups, and in NIM. While formerly common for implementing computer networks, in particular Ethernet ("thick" 10BASE5 and "thin" 10BASE2), twisted pair cables have replaced them in most applications except in the growing consumer cable modem market for broadband Internet access.
Long distance coaxial cable was used in the 20th century to connect radio networks, television networks, and Long Distance telephone networks though this has largely been superseded by later methods (fibre optics, T1/E1, satellite).
Shorter coaxials still carry cable television signals to the majority of television receivers, and this purpose consumes the majority of coaxial cable production. In 1980s and early 1990s coaxial cable was also used in computer networking, most prominently in Ethernet networks, where it was later in late 1990s to early 2000s replaced by UTP cables in North America and STP cables in Western Europe, both with 8P8C modular connectors.
Micro coaxial cables are used in a range of consumer devices, military equipment, and also in ultra-sound scanning equipment.
The most common impedances that are widely used are 50 or 52 ohms, and 75 ohms, although other impedances are available for specific applications. The 50 / 52 ohm cables are widely used for industrial and commercial two-way radio frequency applications (including radio, and telecommunications), although 75 ohms is commonly used for broadcast television and radio.
Coax cable is often used to carry data/signals from an antenna to a receiver—from a satellite dish to a satellite receiver, from a television antenna to a television receiver, from a radio mast to a radio receiver, etc.
In many cases, the same single coax cable carries power in the opposite direction, to the antenna, to power the low-noise amplifier.
In some cases a single coax cable carries (unidirectional) power and bidirectional data/signals, as in DiSEqC.
Hard line is used in broadcasting as well as many other forms of radio communication. It is a coaxial cable constructed using round copper, silver or gold tubing or a combination of such metals as a shield. Some lower-quality hard line may use aluminum shielding, aluminum however is easily oxidized and unlike silver oxide, aluminum oxide drastically loses effective conductivity. Therefore, all connections must be air and water tight. The center conductor may consist of solid copper, or copper-plated aluminum. Since skin effect is an issue with RF, copper plating provides sufficient surface for an effective conductor. Most varieties of hardline used for external chassis or when exposed to the elements have a PVC jacket; however, some internal applications may omit the insulation jacket. Hard line can be very thick, typically at least a half inch or 13 mm and up to several times that, and has low loss even at high power. These large-scale hard lines are almost always used in the connection between a transmitter on the ground and the antenna or aerial on a tower. Hard line may also be known by trademarked names such as Heliax (CommScope), or Cablewave (RFS/Cablewave). Larger varieties of hardline may have a center conductor that is constructed from either rigid or corrugated copper tubing. The dielectric in hard line may consist of polyethylene foam, air, or a pressurized gas such as nitrogen or desiccated air (dried air). In gas-charged lines, hard plastics such as nylon are used as spacers to separate the inner and outer conductors. The addition of these gases into the dielectric space reduces moisture contamination, provides a stable dielectric constant, and provides a reduced risk of internal arcing. Gas-filled hardlines are usually used on high-power RF transmitters such as television or radio broadcasting, military transmitters, and high-power amateur radio applications but may also be used on some critical lower-power applications such as those in the microwave bands. However, in the microwave region, "waveguide" is more often used than hard line for transmitter-to-antenna, or antenna-to-receiver applications. The various shields used in hardline also differ; some forms use rigid tubing, or pipe, while others may use a corrugated tubing, which makes bending easier, as well as reduces kinking when the cable is bent to conform. Smaller varieties of hard line may be used internally in some high-frequency applications, in particular in equipment within the microwave range, to reduce interference between stages of the device.
Radiating or leaky cable is another form of coaxial cable which is constructed in a similar fashion to hard line, however it is constructed with tuned slots cut into the shield. These slots are tuned to the specific RF wavelength of operation or tuned to a specific radio frequency band. This type of cable is to provide a tuned bi-directional "desired" leakage effect between transmitter and receiver. It is often used in elevator shafts, US Navy Ships, underground transportation tunnels and in other areas where an antenna is not feasible. One example of this type of cable is Radiax (CommScope).
RG-6 is available in four different types designed for various applications. In addition, the core may be copper clad steel (CCS) or bare solid copper (BC). "Plain" or "house" RG-6 is designed for indoor or external house wiring. "Flooded" cable is infused with waterblocking gel for use in underground conduit or direct burial. "Messenger" may contain some waterproofing but is distinguished by the addition of a steel messenger wire along its length to carry the tension involved in an aerial drop from a utility pole. "Plenum" cabling is expensive and comes with a special Teflon-based outer jacket designed for use in ventilation ducts to meet fire codes. It was developed since the plastics used as the outer jacket and inner insulation in many "Plain" or "house" cabling gives off poisonous gas when burned.
Triaxial cable or triax is coaxial cable with a third layer of shielding, insulation and sheathing. The outer shield, which is earthed (grounded), protects the inner shield from electromagnetic interference from outside sources.
Twin-axial cable or twinax is a balanced, twisted pair within a cylindrical shield. It allows a nearly perfect differential mode signal which is "both" shielded "and" balanced to pass through. Multi-conductor coaxial cable is also sometimes used.
Semi-rigid cable is a coaxial form using a solid copper outer sheath. This type of coax offers superior screening compared to cables with a braided outer conductor, especially at higher frequencies. The major disadvantage is that the cable, as its name implies, is not very flexible, and is not intended to be flexed after initial forming. (See "hard line")
Conformable cable is a flexible reformable alternative to semi-rigid coaxial cable used where flexibility is required. Conformable cable can be stripped and formed by hand without the need for specialized tools, similar to standard coaxial cable.
Rigid line is a coaxial line formed by two copper tubes maintained concentric every other meter using PTFE-supports. Rigid lines cannot be bent, so they often need elbows. Interconnection with rigid line is done with an inner bullet/inner support and a flange or connection kit. Typically, rigid lines are connected using standardised EIA RF Connectors whose bullet and flange sizes match the standard line diameters. For each outer diameter, either 75 or 50 ohm inner tubes can be obtained.
Rigid line is commonly used indoors for interconnection between high power transmitters and other RF-components, but more rugged rigid line with weatherproof flanges is used outdoors on antenna masts, etc. In the interests of saving weight and costs, on masts and similar structures the outer line is often aluminium, and special care must be taken to prevent corrosion.
With a flange connector, it is also possible to go from rigid line to hard line. Many broadcasting antennas and antenna splitters use the flanged rigid line interface even when connecting to flexible coaxial cables and hard line.
Rigid line is produced in a number of different sizes:
At the start of analogue satellite TV broadcasts in the UK by BskyB, a 75 ohm cable referred to as "RG6" was used. This cable had a 1 mm copper core, air-spaced polyethylene dielectric and copper braid on an aluminium foil shield. When installed outdoors without protection, the cable was affected by UV radiation, which cracked the PVC outer sheath and allowed moisture ingress. The combination of copper, aluminium, moisture and air caused rapid corrosion, sometimes resulting in a 'snake swallowed an egg' appearance. Consequently, despite the higher cost, the RG6 cable was dropped in favour of CT100 when BSKYB launched its digital broadcasts.
From around 1999 to 2005 (when CT100 manufacturer Raydex went out of business), CT100 remained the 75 ohm cable of choice for satellite TV and especially BskyB. It had an air-spaced polyethylene dielectric, a 1 mm solid copper core and copper braid on copper foil shield. CT63 was a thinner cable in 'shotgun' style, meaning that it was two cables moulded together and was used mainly by BskyB for the twin connection required by the "Sky+" satellite TV receiver, which incorporated a hard drive recording system and a second, independent tuner.
In 2005, these cables were replaced by WF100 and WF65, respectively, manufactured by Webro and having a similar construction but a foam dielectric that provided the same electrical performance as air-spaced but was more robust and less likely to be crushed.
At the same time, with the price of copper steadily rising, the original RG6 was dropped in favour of a construction that used a copper-clad steel core and aluminium braid on aluminium foil. Its lower price made it attractive to aerial installers looking for a replacement for the so-called "low-loss" cable traditionally used for UK terrestrial aerial installations. This cable had been manufactured with a decreasing number of strands of braid, as the price of copper increased, such that the shielding performance of cheaper brands had fallen to as low as 40 percent. With the advent of digital terrestrial transmissions in the UK, this low-loss cable was no longer suitable.
The new RG6 still performed well at high frequencies because of the skin effect in the copper cladding. However, the aluminium shield had a high DC resistance and the steel core an even higher one. The result is that this type of cable could not reliably be used in satellite TV installations, where it was required to carry a significant amount of current, because the voltage drop affected the operation of the low noise block downconverter (LNB) on the dish.
A problem with all the aforementioned cables, when passing current, is that electrolytic corrosion can occur in the connections unless moisture and air are excluded. Consequently, various solutions to exclude moisture have been proposed. The first was to seal the connection by wrapping it with self-amalgamating rubberised tape, which bonds to itself when activated by stretching. The second proposal, by the American Channel Master company (now owned by Andrews corp.) at least as early as 1999, was to apply silicone grease to the wires making connection. The third proposal was to fit a self-sealing plug to the cable. All of these methods are reasonably successful if implemented correctly.
Coaxial cable insulation may degrade, requiring replacement of the cable, especially if it has been exposed to the elements on a continuous basis. The shield is normally grounded, and if even a single thread of the braid or filament of foil touches the center conductor, the signal will be shorted causing significant or total signal loss. This most often occurs at improperly installed end connectors and splices. Also, the connector or splice must be properly attached to the shield, as this provides the path to ground for the interfering signal.
Despite being shielded, interference can occur on coaxial cable lines. Susceptibility to interference has little relationship to broad cable type designations (e.g. RG-59, RG-6) but is strongly related to the composition and configuration of the cable's shielding. For cable television, with frequencies extending well into the UHF range, a foil shield is normally provided, and will provide total coverage as well as high effectiveness against high-frequency interference. Foil shielding is ordinarily accompanied by a tinned copper or aluminum braid shield, with anywhere from 60 to 95% coverage. The braid is important to shield effectiveness because (1) it is more effective than foil at preventing low-frequency interference, (2) it provides higher conductivity to ground than foil, and (3) it makes attaching a connector easier and more reliable. "Quad-shield" cable, using two low-coverage aluminum braid shields and two layers of foil, is often used in situations involving troublesome interference, but is less effective than a single layer of foil and single high-coverage copper braid shield such as is found on broadcast-quality precision video cable.
In the United States and some other countries, cable television distribution systems use extensive networks of outdoor coaxial cable, often with in-line distribution amplifiers. Leakage of signals into and out of cable TV systems can cause interference to cable subscribers and to over-the-air radio services using the same frequencies as those of the cable system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46380 |
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck ( , ; – 9 July 1441) was a painter from the County of Loon (present day Belgium) active in Bruges. He is one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. The surviving records of his early life indicate that he was born around 1380–1390, most likely in Maaseik (then Maaseyck, hence his name), in present-day Belgium. He took employment in the Hague around 1422, when he was already a master painter with workshop assistants, and employed as painter and "valet de chambre" with John III the Pitiless, ruler of Holland and Hainaut. He was then employed in Lille as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy after John's death in 1425, until he moved to Bruges in 1429 where he lived until his death. He was highly regarded by Philip and undertook a number of diplomatic visits abroad, including to Lisbon in 1428 to explore the possibility of a marriage contract between the duke and Isabella of Portugal.
About 20 surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him, as well as the "Ghent Altarpiece" and the illuminated miniatures of the Turin-Milan Hours, all dated between 1432 and 1439. Ten are dated and signed with a variation of his motto ALS ICH KAN ("As I (Eyck) can"), a pun on his name, which he typically painted in Greek characters.
Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subject matter, including altarpieces, single-panel religious figures and commissioned portraits. His work includes single panels, diptychs, triptychs, and polyptych panels. He was well paid by Philip, who sought that the painter was secure financially and had artistic freedom so that he could paint "whenever he pleased". Van Eyck's work comes from the International Gothic style, but he soon eclipsed it, in part through a greater emphasis on naturalism and realism. He achieved a new level of virtuosity through his developments in the use of oil paint. He was highly influential, and his techniques and style were adopted and refined by the Early Netherlandish painters.
Little is known of Jan van Eyck's early life and neither the date nor place of his birth is documented. The first extant record of his life comes from the court of John of Bavaria at The Hague where, between 1422 and 1424, payments were made to "Meyster Jan den malre" (Master Jan the painter) who was then a court painter with the rank of valet de chambre, with at first one and then two assistants. This suggests a date of birth of 1395 at the latest. However, his apparent age in the London probable self-portrait of 1433 suggests to most scholars a date closer to 1380. He was identified in the late 16th century as having been born in Maaseik, a borough of the prince-bishopric of Liège. His last name however is related to the place Bergeijk, due to genealogical information related to the coat-of-arms with three millrinds; that information also implies that he stems from the Lords of Rode (Sint-Oedenrode).
Elisabeth Dhanens rediscovered in the quarterly state "the fatherly blazon, in gold, three millrinds of lauric acid", similar to other families that descend from the Lords of Rode in the quarter of Peelland in the 'meierij van 's-Hertogenbosch'.
His daughter Lievine was in a nunnery in Maaseik after her father's death.The notes on his preparatory drawing for "Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati" are written in the Maasland dialect.
He had a sister Margareta, and at least two brothers, Hubert (died 1426), with whom he probably served his apprenticeship and Lambert (active between 1431 and 1442), both also painters, but the order of their births has not been established. Another significant, and rather younger, painter who worked in Southern France, Barthélemy van Eyck, is presumed to be a relation. It is not known where Jan was educated, but he had knowledge of Latin and used the Greek and Hebrew alphabets in his inscriptions, indicating that he was schooled in the classics. This level of education was rare among painters, and would have made him more attractive to the cultivated Philip.
Van Eyck served as official to John of Bavaria-Straubing, ruler of Holland, Hainault and Zeeland. By this time he had assembled a small workshop and was involved in redecorating the Binnenhof palace in The Hague. After John's death in 1425 he moved to Bruges and came to the attention of Philip the Good c. 1425. His emergence as a collectable painter generally follows his appointment to Philip's court, and from this point his activity in the court is comparatively well documented. He served as court artist and diplomat, and was a senior member of the Tournai painters' guild. On 18 October 1427, the Feast of St. Luke, he travelled to Tournai to attend a banquet in his honour, also attended by Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden.
A court salary freed him from commissioned work, and allowed a large degree of artistic freedom. Over the following decade van Eyck's reputation and technical ability grew, mostly from his innovative approaches towards the handling and manipulating of oil paint. Unlike most of his peers his reputation never diminished and he remained well regarded over the following centuries. His revolutionary approach to oil was such that a myth, perpetuated by Giorgio Vasari, arose that he had invented oil painting.
His brother Hubert van Eyck collaborated on Jan's most famous works, the "Ghent Altarpiece", generally art historians believe it was begun c. 1420 by Hubert and completed by Jan in 1432. Another brother, Lambert, is mentioned in Burgundian court documents, and may have overseen his brother's workshop after Jan's death.
Considered revolutionary within his lifetime, van Eyck's designs and methods were heavily copied and reproduced. His motto, one of the first and still most distinctive signatures in art history, "ALS ICH KAN" ("AS I CAN"), a pun on his name, first appeared in 1433 on "Portrait of a Man in a Turban", which can be seen as indicative of his emerging self-confidence at the time. The years between 1434 and 1436 are generally considered his high point when he produced works including the "Madonna of Chancellor Rolin", "Lucca Madonna" and "Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele". He married the much younger Margaret probably around 1432, about the same time he bought a house in Bruges; she is unmentioned before he relocated, while the first of their two children was born in 1434. Very little is known of Margaret; even her maiden name is lost – contemporary records refer to her mainly as "Damoiselle Marguerite". She may have been of aristocratic birth, though from the lower nobility, evidenced from her clothes in the portrait which are fashionable but not of the sumptuousness worn by the bride in the "Arnolfini Portrait". Later, as the widow of a renowned painter Margaret was afforded a modest pension by the city of Bruges after Jan's death. At least some of this income was invested in lottery.
Van Eyck undertook a number of journeys on Philip the Duke of Burgundy's behalf between 1426 and 1429, described in records as "secret" commissions, for which he was paid multiples of his annual salary. Their precise nature is still unknown, but they seem to involve his acting as envoy of the court. In 1426 he departed for "certain distant lands", possibly to the Holy Land, a theory given weight by the topographical accuracy of Jerusalem in "The Three Marys at the Tomb", a painting completed by members of his workshop c. 1440.
A better documented commission was the journey to Lisbon along with a group intended to prepare the ground for the Duke's wedding to Isabella of Portugal. Van Eyck's was tasked with painting the bride, so that the Duke could visualise her before their marriage. Because Portugal was ridden with plague, their court was itinerant and the Dutch party met them at the out-of-the-way castle of Avis. Van Eyck spent nine months there, returning to the Netherlands with Isabella as a bride to be; the couple married on Christmas Day of 1429. The princess was probably not particularly attractive, and that is exactly how Van Eyck conveyed her in the now lost portrait. Typically he showed his sitters as dignified, yet did not hide their imperfections. After his return, he was preoccupied with completing the "Ghent Altarpiece", which was consecrated on 6 May 1432 at Saint Bavo Cathedral during an official ceremony for Philip. Records from 1437 say that he was held in high esteem by the upper ranks of Burgundian nobility and was employed in foreign commissions.
Jan van Eyck died on 9 July 1441, in Bruges. He was buried in the graveyard of the Church of St Donatian. As a mark of respect, Philip made a one-off payment to Jan's widow Margaret, to a value equal to the artist's annual salary. He left behind many unfinished works to be completed by his workshop journeymen. After his death, Lambert van Eyck ran the workshop, as Jan's reputation and stature steadily grew. Early in 1442 Lambert had the body exhumed and placed inside St. Donatian's Cathedral.
In 1449 he was mentioned by the Italian humanist and antiquarian Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli as a painter of note and ability, and was recorded by Bartolomeo Facio in 1456.
Jan van Eyck produced paintings for private clients in addition to his work at the court. Foremost among these is the "Ghent Altarpiece" painted for the merchant, financier and politician Jodocus Vijdts and his wife Elisabeth Borluut. Started sometime before 1426 and completed by 1432, the polyptych is seen as representing "the final conquest of reality in the North", differing from the great works of the Early Renaissance in Italy by virtue of its willingness to forgo classical idealisation in favor of the faithful observation of nature.
Even though it may be assumed – given the demand and fashion – that he produced a number of triptychs, only the "Dresden altarpiece" survives, although a number of extant portraits may be wings of dismantled polyptychs. Tell-tale signs are hinges on original frames, the sitter's orientation, and praying hands or the inclusion of iconographical elements in an otherwise seemingly secular portrait.
About 20 surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him, all dated between 1432 and 1439. Ten, including the "Ghent Altarpiece", are dated and signed with a variation of his motto, ALS ICH KAN. In 1998 Holland Cotter estimated that "only two dozen or so paintings...attributed...with varying degrees of confidence, along with some drawings and a few pages from...the Turin-Milan Hours". He described the "complex relationship and tension between art historians and holding museums in assigning authorship. Of the 40 or so works considered originals in the mid 80s, around ten are now vigorously contested by leading researchers as workshop".
Since 1901 Jan van Eyck has often been credited as the anonymous artist known as Hand G of the Turin-Milan Hours. If this is correct, the Turin illustrations are the only known works from his early period; according to Thomas Kren the earlier dates for Hand G precede any known panel painting in an Eyckian style, which "raise[s] provocative questions about the role that manuscript illumination may have played in the vaunted verisimilitude of Eyckian oil painting".
The evidence for attributing van Eyck rests on part on the fact that although the figures are mostly of the International Gothic type, they reappear in some of his later work. In addition, there are coats of arms connected with the Wittelsbach family with whom he had connections in the Hague, while some of the figures in the miniatures echo the horsemen in the "Ghent Altarpiece".
Most of the Turin-Milan Hours were destroyed by fire in 1904 and survive only in photographs and copies; only three pages at most attributed to Hand G now survive, those with large miniatures of the "Birth of John the Baptist", the "Finding of the True Cross" and the "Office of the Dead" (or "Requiem Mass"), with the "bas-de-page" miniatures and initials of the first and last of these The "Office of the Dead" is often seen as recalling Jan's 1438–1440 "Madonna in the Church". Four more were lost in 1904: all the elements of the pages with the miniatures called "The Prayer on the Shore" (or "Duke William of Bavaria at the Seashore", the "Sovereign's prayer" etc.), and the night-scene of the "Betrayal of Christ" (which was already described by Durrieu as "worn" before the fire), the "Coronation of the Virgin" and its bas-de-page, and the large picture only of the seascape "Voyage of St Julian & St Martha".
Except for the "Ghent Altarpiece", van Eyck's religious works feature the Virgin Mary as the central figure. She is typically seated, wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the hem of her dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon ("Virgin of Tenderness"). She is sometimes shown reading a Book of Hours. She usually wears red. In the 1432 "Ghent Altarpiece" Mary wears a crown adorned with flowers and stars. She is dressed as a bride, and reads from a girdle book draped with green cloth, perhaps an element borrowed from Robert Campin's "Virgin Annunciate". The panel contains a number of motifs that later reappear in later works; she is already Queen of Heaven, wearing a crown adorned with flowers and stars.
Van Eyck usually presents Mary as an apparition before a donor kneeling in prayer to the side. The idea of a saint appearing before a layperson was common in Northern donor portraits of the period. In "Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele" (1434–1436), the Canon seems to have just paused momentarily to reflect on a passage from his hand-held bible as the Virgin and Child with two saints appear before him, as if embodiments of his prayer.
Mary's role in his works should be viewed in the context of the contemporary cult and worship surrounding her. In the early 15th century Mary grew in importance as an intercessor between the divine and members of the Christian faith. The concept of purgatory as an intermediary state that each soul had to pass through before admission to heaven was at its height. Prayer was the most obvious means of decreasing time in limbo, while the wealthy could commission new churches, extensions to existing ones, or devotional portraits. At the same time, there was a trend towards the sponsorship of requiem masses, often as part of the terms of a will, a practice that Joris van der Paele actively sponsored. With this income he endowed the churches with embroidered cloths and metal accessories such as chalices, plates and candlesticks.
Eyck usually gives Mary three roles: Mother of Christ; the personification of the "Ecclesia Triumphans"; or Queen of Heaven.
The idea of Mary as a metaphor for the Church itself is especially strong in his later paintings. In "Madonna in the Church" she dominates the cathedral; her head is almost level with the approximately sixty feet high gallery. Art historian Otto Pächt describes the interior of "Madonna in the Church" as a "throne room" which envelops her as if a "carrying case". This distortion of scale is found in a number of other of his Madonna paintings, including "Annunciation". Her monumental stature borrows from the works of 12th- and 13th-century Italian artists such as Cimabue and Giotto, who in turn reflect a tradition reaching back to an Italo-Byzantine type and emphasis her identification with the cathedral itself. Art historians in the 19th century thought the work was executed early in van Eyck's career and attributed her scale as the mistake of a relatively immature painter. The idea that her size represents her embodiment as the church was first suggested by Erwin Panofsky in 1941. Till-Holger Borchert says that van Eyck did not paint "the Madonna in a church", but as "the Church".
Van Eyck's later works contain very exact architectural details, but are not modeled on any actual historical buildings. He probably sought to create an ideal and perfect space for Mary's apparition, and was more concerned with their visual impact rather than physical possibility.
The Marian paintings are characterized by complex depictions of both physical space and light sources. Many of van Eyck's religious works contain a reduced interior space that is nonetheless subtly managed and arranged to convey a sense of intimacy without feeling constricted. The "Madonna of Chancellor Rolin" is lit from both from the central portico and side windows, while the floor-tiles in comparison to other elements shows that the figures are only about six feet from the columned loggia screen, and that Rolin might have had to squeeze himself through the opening to get out that way. The different elements of the cathedral in "Madonna in the Church " are so specifically detailed, and the elements of Gothic and contemporary architecture so well delineated, that many art and architecture historians have concluded that he must have had enough architectural knowledge to make nuanced distinctions. Given the accuracy of the descriptions, many scholars have tried to link the painting with particular buildings. But in all the buildings in van Eyck's work, the structure is imagined and probably an idealized formation of what he viewed as a perfect architectural space. This can be seen from the many examples of features that would be unlikely in a contemporary church, including the placing of a round arched triforium above a pointed colonnade in the Berlin work.
The Marian works are heavily lined with inscriptions. The lettering on the arched throne above Mary in the "Ghent Altarpiece" is taken from a passage from the Book of Wisdom (7:29): "She is more beautiful than the sun and the army of the stars; compared to the light she is superior. She is truly the reflection of eternal light and a spotless mirror of God". Wording from the same source on the hem of her robe, on the frame of "Madonna in the Church" and on her dress in "Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele", reads "EST ENIM HAEC SPECIOSIOR SOLE ET SUPER OMNEM STELLARUM DISPOSITIONEM. LUCI CONPARATA INVENITUR PRIOR" Although inscriptions are present in all of van Eyck's paintings, they are predominant in his Marian paintings, where they seem to serve a number of functions. They breathe life into portraits and give voice to those worshiping Mary but also play a functional role; given that contemporary religious works were commissioned for private devotion, the inscriptions may have been intended to be read as an incantation or personalized indulgence prayers. Harbison notes that van Eyck's privately commissioned works are unusually heavily inscribed with prayer, and that the words may have served a similar function to prayer tablets, or more properly "Prayer Wings", as seen in the London "Virgin and Child" triptych.
Van Eyck was highly sought after as a portrait artist. Growing affluence across northern Europe meant that portraiture was no longer the preserve of royalty or the high aristocracy. An emerging merchant middle class and growing awareness of humanist ideas of individual identity led to a demand for portraits.
Van Eyck's portraits are characterized by his manipulation of oil paint and meticulous attention to detail; his keen powers of observation and his tendency to apply layers of thin translucent glazes to create intensity of color and tone. He pioneered portraiture during the 1430s and was admired as far away as Italy for the naturalness of his depictions. Today, nine three-quarters view portraits are attributed to him. His style was widely adopted, most notably by van der Weyden, Petrus Christus and Hans Memling.
The small "Portrait of a Man with a Blue Chaperon" of c. 1430 is his earliest surviving portrait. It evidences many of the elements that were to become standard in his portraiture style, including the three-quarters view (a type he revived from antiquity which soon spread across Europe), directional lighting, elaborate headdress, and for the single portraits, the framing of the figure within an undefined narrow space, set against a flat black background. It is noted for its realism and acute observation of the small details of the sitter's appearance; the man has a light beard of one or two days' growth, a reoccurring feature in van Eyck's early male portraits, where the sitter is often either unshaven, or according to Lorne Campbell "rather inefficiently shaved". Campbell lists other van Eyck unshaven sitters; "Niccolò Albergati" (1431), "Jodocus Vijdt" (1432), "Jan van Eyck?" (1433), "Joris van der Paele" (c. 1434–1436), "Nicolas Rolin" (1435) and "Jan de Leeuw" (1436).
Notes made on the reverse of his paper study for the "Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati" give insight to Eyck's approach. Of his aspiration to record beard growth he wrote, "die stoppelen vanden barde wal grijsachtig" ("the stubble of the beard grizzled"). On the other aspects of his attempts to record the old man's face he noted, "the iris of the eye, near the back of the pupil, brownish yellow. On the contours next to the white, bluish ... the white also yellowish ..."
The "Léal Souvenir" portrait of 1432 continues the adherence to realism and acute observation of the small details of the sitter's appearance. However, by his later works, the sitter placed at more of a distance, and the attention to detail less marked. The descriptions are less forensic, more of an overview, while the forms are broader and flatter. Even in his early works, his descriptions of the model are not faithful reproductions; parts of the sitters face or form were altered to either present a better composition or fit an ideal. He often altered the relative proportions of his models' head and body to focus on the elements of their features that interested him. This led him to distort reality in this paintings; in the portrait of his wife he altered the angle of her nose, and gave her a fashionably high forehead that nature had not.
The stone parapet at the base of the canvas of "Léal Souvenir" is painted as if to simulate marked or scarred stone and contains three separate layers of inscriptions, each rendered in an illusionistic manner, giving the impression they are chiseled onto stone. van Eyck often set the inscriptions as if in the sitters voice, so that they "appear to be speaking". Examples include the "Portrait of Jan de Leeuw" which reads "... Jan de [Leeuw], who first opened his eyes on the Feast of St Ursula [21 October], 1401. Now Jan van Eyck has painted me, you can see when he began it. 1436". In "Portrait of Margaret van Eyck" of 1439 the lettering acclaims "My husband Johannes completed me in the year 1439 on 17 June, at the age of 33. As I can."
Hands play a special significance in van Eyck's paintings and at least one is prominently held up. In his early portraits the sitters are often shown holding objects indicative of their profession. The man in "Léal Souvenir" may have been a legal professional as he holds a scroll resembling a legal document.
The "Arnolfini Portrait" of 1432 is filled with illusionism and symbolism, as is the 1435 "Madonna of Chancellor Rolin", commissioned to display Rolin's power, influence and piety.
Van Eyck incorporated a wide variety of iconographic elements, often conveying what he saw as a co-existence of the spiritual and material worlds. The iconography was embedded in the work unobtrusively; typically the references comprised small but key background details. His use of symbolism and biblical references is characteristic of his work, a handling of religious iconography he pioneered, with his innovations taken up and developed by van der Weyden, Memling and Christus. Each employed rich and complex iconographical elements to create a heightened sense of contemporary beliefs and spiritual ideals.
Craig Harbison describes the blending of realism and symbolism as perhaps "the most important aspect of early Flemish art". The embedded symbols were meant to meld into the scenes and "was a deliberate strategy to create an experience of spiritual revelation." Van Eyck's religious paintings in particular "always present the spectator with a transfigured view of visible reality". To him the day-to-day is harmoniously steeped in symbolism, such that, according to Harbison, "descriptive data were rearranged ... so that they illustrated not earthly existence but what he considered supernatural truth." This blend of the earthly and heavenly evidences van Eyck's belief that the "essential truth of Christian doctrine" can be found in "the marriage of secular and sacred worlds, of reality and symbol". He depicts overly large Madonnas, whose unrealistic size shows the separation between the heavenly from earthly, but placed them in everyday settings such as churches, domestic chambers or seated with court officials.
Yet the earthly churches are heavily decorated with heavenly symbols. A heavenly throne is clearly represented in some domestic chambers (for example in the "Lucca Madonna"). More difficult to discern are the settings for paintings such as "Madonna of Chancellor Rolin", where the location is a fusion of the earthly and celestial. Van Eyck's iconography is often so densely and intricately layered that a work has to be viewed multiple times before even the most obvious meaning of an element is apparent. The symbols were often subtly woven into the paintings so that they only became apparent after close and repeated viewing, while much of the iconography reflects the idea that, according to John Ward, there is a "promised passage from sin and death to salvation and rebirth".
Van Eyck was the only 15th-century Netherlandish painter to sign his canvases. His motto always contained variants of the words "ALS ICH KAN" (or a variant) – "As I Can", or "As Best I Can", which forms a pun on his name. The aspirated "ICH" instead of the Brabantian "IK" is derived from his native Limburgish. The signature is sometimes inscribed using Greek lettering such as "AAE IXH XAN". The word "Kan" derives from the Middle Dutch word "kunnen" related to the Dutch word "kunst" or to the German "Kunst" ("art").
The words may be related to a type of formula of modesty sometimes seen in medieval literature, where the writer prefaces his work with an apology for a lack of perfection, although, given the typical lavishness of the signatures and mottos, it may merely be a playful reference. Indeed, his motto is sometimes recorded in a manner intended to mimic Christ's monogram "IHC XPC", for example in his c 1440 "Portrait of Christ". Further, as the signature is often a variant of "I, Jan van Eyck was here", it can be seen as a, perhaps somewhat arrogant, assertion of both the faithfulness and trustworthiness of the record and the quality of the work ("As I (K)Can").
The habit of signing his work ensured that his reputation survived, and attribution has not been as difficult and uncertain as with other first generation artists of the early Netherlandish school. The signatures are usually completed in a decorative script, often of a kind reserved for legal documents, as can be seen in "Léal Souvenir" and the "Arnolfini Portrait", the latter of which is signed "Johannes de eyck fuit hic 1434" ("Jan van Eyck was here 1434"), a way of recording his presence.
Many of van Eyck's paintings are heavily inscribed, in lettering of Greek, Latin or vernacular Dutch. Campbell sees in many examples a "certain consistency which suggest that he himself had painted them", rather than they are later additions. The letterings seem to serve different functions depending on the type of work on which they appear. In his single panel portraits they give voice to the sitter, most notably in "Portrait of Margaret van Eyck", where the Greek lettering on the frame translates as "My husband Johannes completed me in the year 1439 on 17 June, at the age of 33. As I can." By contrast the inscriptions on his public, formal religious commissions are written from the point of view of the patron, and there to underscore his piousness, charity and dedication to the saint who he is shown accompanying. This can be seen in his "Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele", reads An inscription on the lower imitation frame refers to the donation, "Joris van der Paele, canon of this church, had this work made by painter Jan van Eyck. And he founded two chaplaincies here in the choir of the Lord. 1434. He only completed it in 1436, however."
Exceptionally for his time, van Eyck often signed and dated his frames, then considered an integral part of the work -
the two were often painted together, and while the frames were constructed by a body of craftsmen separate to the master's workshop, their work was often considered as equal in skill to that of the painter.
He designed and painted the frames for his single head portraits to look like imitation stone, with the signature or other inscriptions giving the impression that they had been chiseled into the stone. The frames serve other illusionistic purposes; in "Portrait of Isabella of Portugal", described by the frame, her eyes gaze coyly but directly out of the painting, as she rests her hands on the edge of a faux stone parapet. With this gesture Isabella extends her presence out of the pictorial space and into that of the viewer.
Many of the original frames are lost and known only through copies or inventory records. The London "Portrait of a Man" was likely half of a double portrait or pendant; the last record of the original frames contained many inscriptions, but not all were original; the frames were often overpainted by later artists. "Portrait of Jan de Leeuw" also bears its original frame, which is painted over to look like bronze.
Many of his frames are heavily inscribed, which serves a dual purpose. They are decorative but also function to set the context for the significance of the imagery, similar to the function of margins in medieval manuscripts. Pieces such as the "Dresden Tryptich" were usually commissioned for private devotion, and van Eyck would have expected the viewer to contemplate text and imagery in unison. The interior panels of the small 1437 "Dresden Triptych" are outlined with two layers of painted bronze frames, inscribed with mostly Latin lettering. The texts are drawn from a variety of sources, in the central frames from biblical descriptions of the assumption, while the inner wings are lined with fragments of prayers dedicated to saints Michael and Catherine.
Members of his workshop completed works based on his designs in the years after his death in the summer of 1441. This was not unusual; the widow of a master would often carry on the business after his death. It is thought that either his wife Margaret or brother Lambert took over after 1441. Such works include the "Ince Hall Madonna", "Saint Jerome in His Study", a "Madonna of Jan Vos" ("Virgin and Child with St Barbara and Elizabeth") c. 1443, and others. A number of designs were reproduced by second-generation Netherlandish artists of the first rank, including Petrus Christus, who painted a version of the "Exeter Madonna".
Members of his workshop also finished incomplete paintings after his death. The upper portions of the right hand panel of the "Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych" are generally considered the work of a weaker painter with a less individual style. It is thought that van Eyck died leaving the panel unfinished but with completed underdrawings, and the upper area was finished by workshop members or followers.
Three works are confidently attributed to him, but they are known only from copies. "Portrait of Isabella of Portugal" dates to his 1428 visit to Portugal for Philip to draw up a preliminary marriage agreement with the daughter of John I of Portugal. From surviving copies, it can be deduced that there were two other "painted-on" frames apart from the actual oak frame, one of which was lettered with gothic inscription to the top, while a faux stone parapet provided support for her hands to rest upon.
Two extant copies of his "Woman Bathing" were made in the 60 years after his death, but it is known mostly through its appearance in Willem van Haecht's expansive 1628 painting "The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest", a view of a collector's gallery containing many other identifiable old masters. "Woman Bathing" bears many similarities to "Arnolfini Portrait", including an interior with a bed and a small dog, a mirror and its reflection, a chest of drawers and clogs on the floor; more broadly similar are the attendant woman's dress, the outline of her figure, and the angle from which she faces.
In the earliest significant source on van Eyck, a 1454 biography in Genoese humanist Bartolomeo Facio's "De viris illustribus", Jan van Eyck is named "the leading painter" of his day. Facio places him among the best artists of the early 15th century, along with Rogier van der Weyden, Gentile da Fabriano, and Pisanello. It is particularly interesting that Facio shows as much enthusiasm for Netherlandish painters as he does for Italian painters. This text sheds light on aspects of Jan van Eyck's production now lost, citing a bathing scene owned by a prominent Italian, but mistakenly attributing to van Eyck a world map painted by another. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46381 |
Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour (c. 150824 October 1537) was Queen of England from 1536 to 1537 as the third wife of King Henry VIII. She succeeded Anne Boleyn as queen consort following the latter's execution in May 1536. She died of postnatal complications less than two weeks after the birth of her only child, a son who became King Edward VI. She was the only wife of the King to receive a queen's funeral, and his only consort to be buried beside him in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
Jane, the daughter of Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth was most likely born at Wulfhall, Wiltshire, although West Bower Manor in Somerset has also been suggested, Her birth date is not recorded; various accounts use anywhere from 1504 to 1509, but it is generally estimated as occurring in or around 1508. Through her maternal grandfather, she was a descendant of King Edward III's son Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence. Because of this, she and King Henry VIII were fifth cousins. She shared a great-grandmother, Elizabeth Cheney, with his second and fifth wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
Jane was not as highly educated as Henry's first and second wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. She could read and write a little, but was much better at needlework and household management, which were considered much more necessary for women. Her needlework was reported to be beautiful and elaborate; some of her work survived as late as 1652, when it is recorded to have been given to the Seymour family. After her death, it was noted that Henry was an "enthusiastic embroiderer."
Jane became a maid-of-honour in 1532 to Queen Catherine, but may have served her as early as 1527, and went on to serve Queen Anne with her sister Elizabeth . The first report of Henry VIII's interest in Jane was in February 1536, about three months before Anne's execution.
Jane was highly praised for her gentle, peaceful nature, being referred to as "gentle a lady as ever I knew" by John Russell and being named as "the Pacific" by the Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys for her peacemaking efforts at court. According to Chapuys, she was of middling stature and very pale; he also commented that she was not of much beauty. However, John Russell stated that she was "the fairest of all the King's wives." Polydore Vergil commented that she was "a woman of the utmost charm in both character and appearance." She was regarded as a meek, gentle, simple, and chaste woman, whose large family made her a suitable candidate to give birth to many children.
Henry VIII was betrothed to Jane on 20 May 1536, just one day after Anne Boleyn's execution. They were married at the Palace of Whitehall, Whitehall, London, in the Queen's closet by Bishop Gardiner on 30 May 1536. As a wedding gift he made her a grant of 104 manors in four counties as well as a number of forests and hunting chases for her jointure, the income to support her during their marriage. She was publicly proclaimed queen on 4 June 1536. Her well-publicised sympathy for the late Queen Catherine and her daughter Mary showed her to be compassionate and made her a popular figure with the common people and most of the courtiers. She was never crowned because of plague in London, where the coronation was to take place. Henry may have been reluctant to have her crowned before she had fulfilled her duty as a queen consort by bearing him a son and a male heir.
As queen, Jane was said to be strict and formal. The lavish entertainments, gaiety, and extravagance of the queen's household, which had reached its peak during the time of Anne Boleyn, was replaced by a strict enforcement of decorum. For example, she banned the French fashions that Anne had introduced. Politically, Jane appears to have been conservative. Her only reported involvement in national affairs, in 1536, was when she asked for pardons for participants in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Henry is said to have rejected this, reminding her of the fate her predecessor met with when she "meddled in his affairs". Her motto as a queen was ""Bound to obey and serve"."
Jane formed a close relationship with her stepdaughter Mary. Jane put forth much effort to restore Mary to court and to the royal succession, behind any children that she might have with Henry. She brought up the issue of Mary's restoration both before and after she became queen. While she was unable to restore Mary to the line of succession, she was able to reconcile her with Henry. Eustace Chapuys wrote to Emperor Charles V of her compassion and efforts on behalf of Mary's return to favour. A letter from Mary to her shows that Mary was grateful to her. While it was she who first pushed for the restoration, Mary and Elizabeth were not reinstated to the succession until Henry's sixth wife, Catherine Parr, convinced him to do so.
By Christmas of 1536, Jane was pregnant but subsequently lost the child. In January 1537, Jane conceived again. During her pregnancy, she developed a craving for quail, which Henry ordered for her from Calais and Flanders. During the summer, she took no public engagements and led a relatively quiet life, being attended by the royal physicians and the best midwives in the kingdom. She went into confinement in September 1537 and gave birth to the coveted male heir, the future King Edward VI, at two o'clock in the morning on 12 October 1537 at Hampton Court Palace. Edward was christened on 15 October 1537, without his mother in attendance, as was the custom. He was the only legitimate son of Henry VIII to survive infancy. Both of his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were present and carried Edward's train during the ceremony.
Jane's labour had been difficult, lasting two days and three nights, probably because the baby was not well positioned. After the christening, it became clear that she was seriously ill. She died on 24 October 1537 at Hampton Court Palace. Within a few weeks of her death, there were conflicting testimonies concerning the cause of her demise. In retrospect from the current day, there are various speculations that have been offered. According to King Edward's biographer, Jennifer Loach, her death may have been due to an infection from a retained placenta. According to Alison Weir, she may have succumbed to puerperal fever following a bacterial infection contracted during the birth. The same author has also speculated, after medical consultation, that the cause of her death was a pulmonary embolism.
Jane was buried on 12 November 1537 in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle after the funeral in which her stepdaughter Mary acted as chief mourner. A procession of 29 mourners followed Mary, one for every year of Queen Jane's life. She was the only one of Henry's wives to receive a queen's funeral.
After her death, Henry wore black for the next three months. He married Anne of Cleves two years later, although marriage negotiations were tentatively begun soon after Jane's death. He put on weight during his widowerhood, becoming obese and swollen and developing diabetes and gout. Historians have speculated she was his favourite wife because she gave birth to a male heir. When he died in 1547, he was buried beside her, on his request, in the grave he had made for her.
Jane gave the King the son he so desperately desired, helped to restore Mary to the succession and her father's affections, and used her influence to bring about the advancement of her family. Two of her brothers, Thomas and Edward, used her memory to improve their own fortunes. Thomas was rumoured to have been pursuing the future Elizabeth I, but married the queen dowager Catherine Parr instead. In the reign of the young King Edward VI, Edward set himself up as Lord Protector and de facto ruler of the kingdom. Both eventually fell from power, and were executed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46383 |
Richard Cromwell
Richard Cromwell (4 October 162612 July 1712) was an English statesman who was the second Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and son of the first Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell.
On his father's death Richard became Lord Protector but lacked authority. He tried to mediate between the army and civil society and allowed a Parliament containing many disaffected Presbyterians and Royalists to sit. Suspicions that civilian councillors were intent on supplanting the army were brought to a head by an attempt to prosecute a major-general for actions against a Royalist. The army made a threatening show of force against Richard and may have had him in detention. He formally renounced power nine months after succeeding.
Although a Royalist revolt was crushed by recalled civil war figure General John Lambert, who then prevented the Rump Parliament from reconvening and created a Committee of Safety, Lambert found his troops melted away in the face of General George Monck's advance from Scotland. Monck then presided over the Restoration of 1660. Richard Cromwell subsisted in straitened circumstances after his resignation. He went abroad and lived in relative obscurity for the remainder of his life. He eventually returned to his English estate, dying in his eighties. He has no living descendants.
Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 4 October 1626, the third son of Oliver Cromwell and his wife Elizabeth. Little is known of his childhood. He and his three brothers were educated at Felsted School in Essex close to their mother's family home. There is no record of his attending university. In May 1647, he became a member of Lincoln's Inn. He may have served as a captain in Thomas Fairfax's lifeguard during the late 1640s, but the evidence is inconclusive.
In 1649 Cromwell married Dorothy Maijor, daughter of Richard Maijor, a member of the Hampshire gentry. He and his wife then moved to Maijor's estate at Hursley in Hampshire. During the 1650s they had nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Cromwell was named a Justice of the Peace for Hampshire and sat on various county committees. During this period Cromwell seems to have been a source of concern for his father, who wrote to Richard Maijor saying, "I would have him mind and understand business, read a little history, study the mathematics and cosmography: these are good, with subordination to the things of God. Better than idleness, or mere outward worldly contents. These fit for public services, for which a man is born".
Oliver Cromwell had risen from being an unknown member of Parliament in his forties to being a commander of the New Model Army, which emerged victorious from the English Civil War. When he returned from a final campaign in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell became disillusioned at inconclusive debates in the Rump Parliament between Presbyterians and other schools of thought within Protestantism. Parliamentarian suspicion of anything smacking of Catholicism, which was strongly associated with the Royalist side in the war, led to enforcement of religious precepts that left moderate Anglicans barely tolerated.
A Puritan regime strictly enforced the Sabbath, and banned almost all form of public celebration, even at Christmas. Cromwell attempted to reform the government through an army-nominated assembly known as Barebone's Parliament, but the proposals were so unworkably radical that he was forced to end the experiment after a few months. Thereafter, a written constitution created the position of Lord Protector for Cromwell and from 1653 until his death in 1658, he ruled with all the powers of a monarch, while Richard took on the role of heir.
In 1653, Cromwell was passed over as a member of Barebone's Parliament, although his younger brother Henry was a member of it. Neither was he given any public role when his father was made Lord Protector in the same year; however, he was elected to the First Protectorate Parliament as M.P. for Huntingdon and the Second Protectorate Parliament as M.P. for Cambridge University.
Under the Protectorate's constitution, Oliver Cromwell was required to nominate a successor, and from 1657 he involved Richard much more heavily in the politics of the regime. He was present at the second installation of his father as Lord Protector in June, having played no part in the first installation. In July he was appointed chancellor of Oxford University, and in December was made a member of the Council of State.
Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658, and Richard was informed on the same day that he was to succeed him. Some controversy surrounds the succession. A letter by John Thurloe suggests that Cromwell nominated his son orally on 30 August, but other theories claim either that he nominated no successor, or that he put forward Charles Fleetwood, his son-in-law.
Richard was faced by two immediate problems. The first was the army, which questioned his position as commander given his lack of military experience. The second was the financial position of the regime, with a debt estimated at £2 million. As a result, Cromwell's Privy council decided to call a parliament in order to redress these financial problems on 29 November 1658 (a decision which was formally confirmed on 3 December 1658). Under the terms of the Humble Petition and Advice, this Parliament was called using the traditional franchise (thus moving away from the system under the Instrument of Government whereby representation of rotten boroughs was cut in favour of county towns). This meant that the government was less able to control elections and therefore unable to manage the parliament effectively. As a result, when this Third Protectorate Parliament first sat on 27 January 1659 it was dominated by moderate Presbyterians, crypto-royalists and a small number of vociferous Commonwealthsmen (or Republicans).
The "Other House" of Parliament – a body which had been set up under the Humble Petition and Advice to act as a balance on the Commons – was also revived. It was this second parliamentary chamber and its resemblance to the House of Lords (which had been abolished in 1649) that dominated this Parliamentary session. Republican malcontents gave filibustering speeches about the inadequacy of the membership of this upper chamber (especially its military contingent) and also questioned whether it was indicative of the backsliding of the Protectorate regime in general and its divergence from the "Good Old Cause" for which parliamentarians had originally engaged in civil war. Reviving this House of Lords in all but name, they argued, was but a short step to returning to the Ancient Constitution of King, Lords and Commons.
At the same time, the officers of the New Model Army became increasingly wary about the government's commitment to the military cause. The fact that Cromwell lacked military credentials grated with men who had fought on the battlefields of the English Civil War to secure their nation's liberties. Moreover, the new Parliament seemed to show a lack of respect for the army which many military men found alarming. In particular, there were fears that Parliament would make military cuts to reduce costs, and by April 1659 the army's general council of officers had met to demand higher taxation to fund the regime's costs.
Their grievances were expressed in a petition to Cromwell on 6 April 1659 which he forwarded to the Parliament two days later. Yet Parliament did not act on the army's suggestions; instead they shelved this petition and increased the suspicion of the military by bringing articles of impeachment against William Boteler on 12 April 1659, who was alleged to have mistreated a royalist prisoner while acting as a major-general under Oliver Cromwell in 1655. This was followed by two resolutions in the Commons on 18 April 1659 which stated that no more meetings of army officers should take place without the express permission of both the Lord Protector and Parliament, and that all officers should swear an oath that they would not subvert the sitting of Parliament by force.
These direct affronts to military prestige were too much for the army grandees to bear and set in motion the final split between the civilian-dominated Parliament and the army, which would culminate in the dissolution of Parliament and Cromwell's ultimate fall from power. When Cromwell refused a demand by the army to dissolve Parliament, troops were assembled at St. James's Palace. Cromwell eventually gave in to their demands and on 22 April, Parliament was dissolved and the Rump Parliament recalled on 7 May 1659.
In the subsequent month, Cromwell did not resist and refused an offer of armed assistance from the French ambassador, although it is possible he was being kept under house arrest by the army. On 25 May, after the Rump agreed to pay his debts and provide a pension, Cromwell delivered a formal letter resigning the position of Lord Protector. "Richard was never formally deposed or arrested, but allowed to fade away. The Protectorate was treated as having been from the first a mere usurpation".
He continued to live in the Palace of Whitehall until July, when he was forced by the Rump to return to Hursley. Royalists rejoiced at Cromwell's fall, and many satirical attacks surfaced, in which he was given the unflattering nicknames "Tumbledown Dick" and "Queen Dick".
During the political difficulties of the winter of 1659, there were rumours that Cromwell was to be recalled as Protector, but these came to nothing. In July 1660, Cromwell left for France, never to see his wife again. While there, he went by a variety of pseudonyms, including John Clarke. He later travelled around Europe, visiting various European courts. As a visiting Englishman, he was once invited to dine with Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, who was unaware of who he was. At dinner, the prince questioned Cromwell about affairs in England and observed, "Well, that Oliver, tho' he was a traitor and a villain, was a brave man, had great parts, great courage, and was worthy to command; but that Richard, that coxcomb and poltroon, was surely the basest fellow alive; what is become of that fool?" Cromwell replied, "He was betrayed by those he most trusted, and who had been most obliged by his father". Cromwell departed the following morning. During this period of voluntary exile, he wrote many letters to his family back in England; these letters are now held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office in Huntingdon.
In 1680 or 1681, he returned to England and lodged with the merchant Thomas Pengelly in Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, living off the income from his estate in Hursley. He died on 12 July 1712 at the age of 85. His body was returned to Hursley and interred in a vault beneath All Saints' Parish Church, where a memorial tablet to him has been placed in recent years. Until 29 January 2012, when Queen Elizabeth II surpassed Cromwell's age at death (85 years 282 days), he was the longest-lived ruler or ex-ruler of Britain.
Cromwell has been depicted in historical films. They include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46386 |
Incubus (1966 film)
Incubus () is a 1966 American horror film directed by Leslie Stevens. Filmed entirely in the constructed language Esperanto, the film stars William Shatner, shortly before he would begin his work on "". The film's cinematography was by Conrad Hall, who went on to win three Academy Awards for his work on the films "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "American Beauty", and "Road to Perdition".
"Incubus" was the second feature film to use Esperanto, following the 1964 film "Angoroj". The use of Esperanto was intended to create an eerie, otherworldly feeling, and Stevens prohibited dubbing the film into other languages; however, on the "Special Features" section of the DVD the makers claim that Esperanto was used because of perceived greater international sales. Esperanto speakers are generally disappointed by the pronunciation of the language by the cast of "Incubus". The film was considered to be lost for many years, until a copy was found in Paris in 1996.
The film is set in the village of Nomen Tuum (Latin, "your name"), which has a well that can heal the sick and make a person more beautiful. Because of the latter, many conceited or corrupt individuals come to the village for this cosmetic effect. The village has notoriety for its magical water, as well as being a ground for darkness and demons. Along the village, succubi entice the tainted souls who come to Nomen Tuum and lead them to their deaths in order to offer their souls to Hell/the God of Darkness. A prominent young succubus named Kia (Allyson Ames) loathes the routine of herding sinners to hell. Kia claims her powers are being wasted, and needs something/someone more stimulating as her prey. Her sister succubus, Amael (Eloise Hardt), warns Kia of the danger that a pure soul will bring: love. Kia persists anyway and attempts to find a clergyman to seduce into darkness. After watching their behaviour, however, she realizes these men are just as iniquitous and shrewd as her previous victims.
She soon stumbles upon a suitable victim: Marc (Shatner), a young soldier, who with his sister Arndis (Ann Atmar) comes to the sacred water in order to heal his battle wounds. Kia then continues to follow the siblings and pretends to be lost. After a brief eclipse, Kia convinces Marc to accompany her to the sea. During the eclipse, Arndis becomes blind from looking into the sky. Disoriented, she stumbles around in order to find Marc. Marc and Kia quickly become attracted to each other.
Marc will not have closer relations with Kia except if they are married. As Kia sleeps, Marc takes her to the village cathedral. Kia flees from the cathedral, bewildered by the sight of Christ and the saints. She is repulsed by both the Godly images and Marc's pure love. His purity makes her ill.
Amael and Kia meditate revenge on Marc for "defiling her" with an "act of love". Amael summons an incubus (Milos Milos) that attempts to kill Marc and rapes and murders Arndis. As Marc prays for his sister he makes the sign of the cross and the lurking demons cringe in horror. Defending himself from the incubus' attack, he appears to have killed him and Amael tells him he has the sin of murder on his hands. Kia follows Marc, who is dying, to the cathedral where she professes her love for him. The resurrected incubus intervenes and claims she belongs to the God of Darkness. Kia defies him and makes the sign of the cross, surprising even herself. The incubus transforms into a goat and wrestles her to the ground.
After the struggle she claims, "I belong to the God of Light," and crawls toward Marc, who immediately embraces her. The final scene shows the couple staring in disbelief at the boundary of the cathedral, with the goat gazing back at them.
† Uncredited
After the ABC Television Network cancelled producer Leslie Stevens' science fiction series "The Outer Limits" in 1965, Stevens wrote a horror script to make use of the talents of the "Outer Limits" team he had brought together – including cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and composer Dominic Frontiere – with an eye to marketing it to art houses.
Stevens and producer Anthony M. Taylor wanted a device to make the film unique, and, to this end, chose Esperanto as the film's language. The script was translated into Esperanto, and the actors rehearsed for 10 days to learn their lines phonetically, but no one was present on the set to correct their pronunciation during shooting.
Principal photography took place over 18 days in May 1965. Location shooting took place at Big Sur Beach and at the Mission San Antonio de Padua near Fort Hunter Liggett in Monterey County. Concerned that the authorities would not grant permission to shoot a horror film in these places, especially the Mission, Stevens concocted a cover story that the film was actually called "Religious Leaders of Old Monterey", and showed the script, in Esperanto, but with stage directions and descriptions about monks and farmers.
The premiere of "Incubus" took place at the San Francisco Film Festival on October 26, 1966, where, according to producer Taylor, a group of 50 to 100 Esperanto enthusiasts "screamed and laughed" at the actors' poor pronunciation of the language. Partly because of its Esperanto dialogue, and partly because of the scandal of actor Milos Milos taking his own life and that of his girlfriend Carolyn Mitchell, Taylor and Stevens were unable to find any distribution for the film except in France, where it premiered in November 1966.
"Incubus" was considered a lost film for many years. When producer Anthony Taylor attempted to prepare "Incubus" for home video release in 1993, he was told by the company that stored the negative, film elements, and prints, that all were missing and presumed to have been destroyed in a fire. Three years later, a print was discovered in the permanent collection of the Cinémathèque Française in Paris. However, not only was that print in poor condition, it had French subtitles. A new master was created by frame-by-frame optical printing, and English subtitles were superimposed over the French ones. The Sci Fi Channel funded the restoration from that print and a home video DVD was released in 2001.
Dennis Schwartz of "Ozus’ World Movie Reviews" awarded the film a grade C+, criticizing the films "thin" story, and Shatner's performance, but commended the film's atmosphere, cinematography, and ability to engage in spite of its flaws. "TV Guide" rated the film one out of four stars, calling it " Inept, pretentious, and dull once the novelty wears off, but handsomely shot in Big Sur." Bill Burke from "HorrorNews.net" praised the film's cinematography, surreal atmosphere, and uniqueness, calling it "a noble attempt at bargain basement surrealism".
Notes
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46387 |
George II of Great Britain
George II (George Augustus; ; 30 October / 9 November 1683 – 25 October 1760) was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 (O.S.) until his death in 1760.
George is the most recent British monarch born outside Great Britain: he was born and brought up in northern Germany. The Act of Settlement 1701 and the Acts of Union 1707 positioned his grandmother, Sophia of Hanover, and her Protestant descendants to inherit the British throne. After the deaths of Sophia and Anne, Queen of Great Britain, in 1714, his father, the Elector of Hanover, became George I of Great Britain. In the first years of his father's reign as king, George was associated with opposition politicians, until they rejoined the governing party in 1720.
As king from 1727, George exercised little control over British domestic policy, which was largely controlled by the Parliament of Great Britain. As elector, he spent twelve summers in Hanover, where he had more direct control over government policy. He had a difficult relationship with his eldest son, Frederick, who supported the parliamentary opposition. During the War of the Austrian Succession, George participated at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743, and thus became the last British monarch to lead an army in battle. In 1745 supporters of the Catholic claimant to the British throne, James Francis Edward Stuart ("The Old Pretender"), led by James's son Charles Edward Stuart ("The Young Pretender" or "Bonnie Prince Charlie"), attempted and failed to depose George in the last of the Jacobite rebellions. Frederick died unexpectedly in 1751, nine years before his father, so George II was ultimately succeeded by his grandson, George III.
For two centuries after George II's death, history tended to view him with disdain, concentrating on his mistresses, short temper, and boorishness. Since then, reassessment of his legacy has led scholars to conclude that he exercised more influence in foreign policy and military appointments than previously thought.
George was born in the city of Hanover in Germany, followed by his sister, Sophia Dorothea, three years later. Their parents, George Louis, Hereditary Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg (later King George I of Great Britain), and Sophia Dorothea of Celle, both committed adultery. In 1694 the marriage was dissolved on the pretext that Sophia had abandoned her husband. She was confined to Ahlden House and denied access to her two children, who probably never saw their mother again.
George spoke only French, the language of diplomacy and the court, until the age of four, after which he was taught German by one of his tutors, Johann Hilmar Holstein. In addition to French and German, he also learnt English and Italian, and studied genealogy, military history, and battle tactics with particular diligence.
George's second cousin once removed, Queen Anne, ascended the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1702. She had no surviving children, and by the Act of Settlement 1701, the English Parliament designated Anne's closest Protestant blood relatives, George's grandmother Sophia and her descendants, as Anne's heirs in England and Ireland. Consequently, after his grandmother and father, George was third in line to succeed Anne in two of her three realms. He was naturalized as an English subject in 1705 by the Sophia Naturalization Act, and in 1706 he was made a Knight of the Garter and created Duke and Marquess of Cambridge, Earl of Milford Haven, Viscount Northallerton, and Baron Tewkesbury in the Peerage of England. England and Scotland united in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and jointly accepted the succession as laid down by the English Act of Settlement.
George's father did not want his son to enter into a loveless arranged marriage as he had, and wanted him to have the opportunity of meeting his bride before any formal arrangements were made. Negotiations from 1702 for the hand of Princess Hedvig Sophia of Sweden, Dowager Duchess and regent of Holstein-Gottorp, came to nothing. In June 1705, under the false name "Monsieur de Busch", George visited the Ansbach court at its summer residence in Triesdorf to investigate "incognito" a marriage prospect: Caroline of Ansbach, the former ward of his aunt Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia. The English envoy to Hanover, Edmund Poley, reported that George was so taken by "the good character he had of her that he would not think of anybody else". A marriage contract was concluded by the end of July. On 22 August / 2 September 1705 Caroline arrived in Hanover for her wedding, which was held the same evening in the chapel at Herrenhausen.
George was keen to participate in the war against France in Flanders, but his father refused to let him to join the army in an active role until he had a son and heir. In early 1707 George's hopes were fulfilled when Caroline gave birth to a son, Frederick. In July Caroline fell seriously ill with smallpox, and George caught the infection after staying by her side devotedly during her illness. They both recovered. In 1708 George participated in the Battle of Oudenarde in the vanguard of the Hanoverian cavalry; his horse and a colonel immediately beside him were killed, but George survived unharmed. The British commander, Marlborough, wrote that George "distinguished himself extremely, charging at the head of and animating by his example [the Hanoverian] troops, who played a good part in this happy victory". Between 1709 and 1713 George and Caroline had three more children, all girls: Anne, Amelia, and Caroline.
By 1714 Queen Anne's health had declined, and British Whigs, who supported the Hanoverian succession, thought it prudent for one of the Hanoverians to live in England to safeguard the Protestant succession on Anne's death. As George was a peer of the realm (as Duke of Cambridge), it was suggested that he be summoned to Parliament to sit in the House of Lords. Both Anne and George's father refused to support the plan, although George, Caroline, and Sophia were all in favour. George did not go. Within the year both Sophia and Anne were dead, and George's father was king.
George and his father sailed for England from The Hague on 16/27 September 1714 and arrived at Greenwich two days later. The following day, they formally entered London in a ceremonial procession. George was given the title of Prince of Wales. Caroline followed her husband to Britain in October with their daughters, while Frederick remained in Hanover to be brought up by private tutors. London was like nothing George had seen before; it was 50 times larger than Hanover, and the crowd was estimated at up to one and a half million spectators. George courted popularity with voluble expressions of praise for the English, and claimed that he had no drop of blood that was not English.
In July 1716, the king returned to Hanover for six months, and George was given limited powers, as "Guardian and Lieutenant of the Realm", to govern in his father's absence. He made a royal progress through Chichester, Havant, Portsmouth, and Guildford in southern England. Spectators were allowed to see him dine in public at Hampton Court Palace. An attempt on his life at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in which one person was shot dead before the assailant was brought under control, boosted his high public profile.
His father distrusted or was jealous of George's popularity, which contributed to the development of a poor relationship between them. The birth in 1717 of George's second son, Prince George William, proved to be a catalyst for a family quarrel; the king, supposedly following custom, appointed Lord Chamberlain Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, as one of the baptismal sponsors of the child. The king was angered when George, who disliked Newcastle, verbally insulted the duke at the christening, which the duke misunderstood as a challenge to a duel. George and Caroline were temporarily confined to their apartments on the order of the king, who subsequently banished his son from St James's Palace, the king's residence. The Prince and Princess of Wales left court, but their children remained in the care of the king.
George and Caroline missed their children, and were desperate to see them. On one occasion, they secretly visited the palace without the approval of the king; Caroline fainted and George "cried like a child". The king partially relented and permitted them to visit once a week, though he later allowed Caroline unconditional access. The following February, George William died, with his father by his side.
Banned from the palace and shunned by his own father, the Prince of Wales was identified for the next several years with opposition to George I's policies, which included measures designed to increase religious freedom in Great Britain and expand Hanover's German territories at the expense of Sweden. His new London residence, Leicester House, became a frequent meeting place for his father's political opponents, including Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Townshend, who had left the government in 1717.
The king visited Hanover again from May to November 1719. Instead of appointing George to the guardianship, he established a regency council. In 1720, Walpole encouraged the king and his son to reconcile, for the sake of public unity, which they did half-heartedly. Walpole and Townshend returned to political office, and rejoined the ministry. George was soon disillusioned with the terms of the reconciliation; his three daughters who were in the care of the king were not returned and he was still barred from becoming regent during the king's absences. He came to believe that Walpole had tricked him into the rapprochement as part of a scheme to regain power. Over the next few years, Caroline and he lived quietly, avoiding overt political activity. They had three more children: William, Mary, and Louisa, who were brought up at Leicester House and Richmond Lodge, George's summer residence.
In 1721, the economic disaster of the South Sea Bubble allowed Walpole to rise to the pinnacle of government. Walpole and his Whig Party were dominant in politics, as the king feared that the Tories would not support the succession laid down in the Act of Settlement. The power of the Whigs was so great that the Tories would not come to hold power for another half-century.
George I died on 11/22 June 1727 during one of his visits to Hanover, and George II succeeded him as king and elector at the age of 43. The new king decided not to travel to Germany for his father's funeral, which far from bringing criticism led to praise from the English who considered it proof of his fondness for England. He suppressed his father's will because it attempted to split the Hanoverian succession between George II's future grandsons rather than vest all the domains (both in Britain and Hanover) in a single person. Both British and Hanoverian ministers considered the will unlawful, as George I did not have the legal power to determine the succession personally. Critics supposed that George II hid the will to avoid paying out his father's legacies.
George II was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 11/22 October 1727. George Frideric Handel was commissioned to write four new anthems for the coronation, including "Zadok the Priest".
It was widely believed that George would dismiss Walpole, who had distressed him by joining his father's government, and replace him with Sir Spencer Compton. George asked Compton, rather than Walpole, to write his first speech as king, but Compton asked Walpole to draft it. Caroline advised George to retain Walpole, who continued to gain royal favour by securing a generous civil list (a fixed annual amount set by Parliament for the king's official expenditure) of £800,000, equivalent to £ today. Walpole commanded a substantial majority in Parliament and George had little choice but to retain him or risk ministerial instability. Compton was ennobled as Lord Wilmington the following year.
Walpole directed domestic policy, and after the resignation of his brother-in-law Townshend in 1730 also controlled George's foreign policy. Historians generally believe that George played an honorific role in Britain, and closely followed the advice of Walpole and senior ministers, who made the major decisions. Although the king was eager for war in Europe, his ministers were more cautious. A truce was agreed in the Anglo-Spanish War, and George unsuccessfully pressed Walpole to join the War of the Polish Succession on the side of the German states. In April 1733 Walpole withdrew an unpopular excise bill that had gathered strong opposition, including from within his own party. George lent Walpole support by dismissing the bill's opponents from their court offices.
George II's relationship with his son Frederick, Prince of Wales, worsened during the 1730s. Frederick had been left behind in Germany when his parents came to England, and they had not met for 14 years. In 1728, he was brought to England, and swiftly became a figurehead of the political opposition. When George visited Hanover in the summers of 1729, 1732 and 1735, he left his wife to chair the regency council in Britain rather than his son. Meanwhile, rivalry between George II and his brother-in-law and first cousin Frederick William I of Prussia led to tension along the Prussian–Hanoverian border, which eventually culminated in the mobilization of troops in the border zone and suggestions of a duel between the two kings. Negotiations for a marriage between the Prince of Wales and Frederick William's daughter Wilhelmine dragged on for years but neither side would make the concessions demanded by the other, and the idea was shelved. Instead, the prince married Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha in April 1736.
In May 1736, George returned to Hanover, which resulted in unpopularity in England; a satirical notice was even pinned to the gates of St James's Palace decrying his absence. "Lost or strayed out of this house", it read, "a man who has left a wife and six children on the parish." The king made plans to return in the face of inclement December weather; when his ship was caught in a storm, gossip swept London that he had drowned. Eventually, in January 1737, he arrived back in England. Immediately he fell ill, with piles and a fever, and withdrew to his bed. The Prince of Wales put it about that the king was dying, with the result that George insisted on getting up and attending a social event to disprove the gossip-mongers.
When the Prince of Wales applied to Parliament for an increase in his allowance, an open quarrel broke out. The king, who had a reputation for meanness, offered a private settlement, which Frederick rejected. Parliament voted against the measure, but George reluctantly increased his son's allowance on Walpole's advice. Further friction between them followed when Frederick excluded the king and queen from the birth of his daughter in July 1737 by bundling his wife, who was in labour, into a coach and driving off in the middle of the night. George banished him and his family from the royal court, much as his own father had done to him, except that he allowed Frederick to retain custody of his children.
Soon afterwards, George's wife Caroline died on 20 November 1737 (O.S.). He was deeply affected by her death, and to the surprise of many displayed "a tenderness of which the world thought him before utterly incapable". On her deathbed she told her sobbing husband to remarry, to which he replied, "Non, j'aurai des maîtresses!" (French for "No, I shall have mistresses!"). It was common knowledge that George had already had mistresses during his marriage, and he had kept Caroline informed about them. Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suffolk, had moved to Hanover with her husband during the reign of Queen Anne, and had been one of Caroline's women of the bedchamber. She was his mistress from before the accession of George I until November 1734. She was followed by Amalie von Wallmoden, later Countess of Yarmouth, whose son, Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden, may have been fathered by George. Johann Ludwig was born while Amalie was still married to her husband, and George did not acknowledge him publicly as his own son.
Against Walpole's wishes, but to George's delight, Britain reopened hostilities with Spain in 1739. Britain's conflict with Spain, the War of Jenkins' Ear, became part of the War of the Austrian Succession when a major European dispute broke out upon the death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740. At issue was the right of Charles's daughter, Maria Theresa, to succeed to his Austrian dominions. George spent the summers of 1740 and 1741 in Hanover, where he was more able to intervene directly in European diplomatic affairs in his capacity as elector.
Prince Frederick campaigned actively for the opposition in the 1741 British general election, and Walpole was unable to secure a stable majority. Walpole attempted to buy off the prince with the promise of an increased allowance and offered to pay off his debts, but Frederick refused. With his support eroded, Walpole retired in 1742 after over 20 years in office. He was replaced by Spencer Compton, Lord Wilmington, whom George had originally considered for the premiership in 1727. Wilmington, however, was a figurehead; actual power was held by others, such as Lord Carteret, George's favourite minister after Walpole. When Wilmington died in 1743, Henry Pelham took his place at the head of the government.
The pro-war faction was led by Carteret, who claimed that French power would increase if Maria Theresa failed to succeed to the Austrian throne. George agreed to send 12,000 hired Hessian and Danish mercenaries to Europe, ostensibly to support Maria Theresa. Without conferring with his British ministers, George stationed them in Hanover to prevent enemy French troops from marching into the electorate. The British army had not fought in a major European war in over 20 years, and the government had badly neglected its upkeep. George had pushed for greater professionalism in the ranks, and promotion by merit rather than by sale of commissions, but without much success. An allied force of Austrian, British, Dutch, Hanoverian and Hessian troops engaged the French at the Battle of Dettingen on 16/27 June 1743. George personally accompanied them, leading them to victory, thus becoming the last British monarch to lead troops into battle. Though his actions in the battle were admired, the war became unpopular with the British public, who felt that the king and Carteret were subordinating British interests to Hanoverian ones. Carteret lost support, and to George's dismay resigned in 1744.
Tension grew between the Pelham ministry and George, as he continued to take advice from Carteret and rejected pressure from his other ministers to include William Pitt the Elder in the Cabinet, which would have broadened the government's support base. The king disliked Pitt because he had previously opposed government policy and attacked measures seen as pro-Hanoverian. In February 1746, Pelham and his followers resigned. George asked Lord Bath and Carteret to form an administration, but after less than 48 hours they returned the seals of office, unable to secure sufficient parliamentary support. Pelham returned to office triumphant, and George was forced to appoint Pitt to the ministry.
George's French opponents encouraged rebellion by the Jacobites, the supporters of the Roman Catholic claimant to the British throne, James Francis Edward Stuart, often known as the Old Pretender. Stuart was the son of James II, who had been deposed in 1688 and replaced by his Protestant relations. Two prior rebellions in 1715 and 1719 had failed. In July 1745, the Old Pretender's son, Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender, landed in Scotland, where support for his cause was highest. George, who was summering in Hanover, returned to London at the end of August. The Jacobites defeated British forces in September at the Battle of Prestonpans, and then moved south into England. The Jacobites failed to gain further support, and the French reneged on a promise of help. Losing morale, the Jacobites retreated back into Scotland. On 16/27 April 1746, Charles faced George's military-minded son Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, in the Battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The ravaged Jacobite troops were routed by the government army. Charles escaped to France, but many of his supporters were caught and executed. Jacobitism was all but crushed; no further serious attempt was made at restoring the House of Stuart. The War of the Austrian Succession continued until 1748, when Maria Theresa was recognized as Archduchess of Austria. The peace was celebrated by a fête in Green Park, London, for which Handel composed "Music for the Royal Fireworks".
In the general election of 1747 the Prince of Wales again campaigned actively for the opposition but Pelham's party won easily. Like his father before him, the Prince entertained opposition figures at his house in Leicester Square. When the Prince of Wales died suddenly in 1751, his eldest son, Prince George, became heir apparent. The king commiserated with the Dowager Princess of Wales and wept with her. As her son would not reach the age of majority until 1756, a new British Regency Act was passed to make her regent, assisted by a council led by the Duke of Cumberland, in case of George II's death. The king also made a new will, which provided for Cumberland to be sole regent in Hanover. After the death of his daughter Louisa at the end of the year, George lamented, "This has been a fatal year for my family. I lost my eldest son – but I am glad of it ... Now [Louisa] is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young: I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers."
In 1754 Pelham died, to be succeeded by his elder brother, the Duke of Newcastle. Hostility between France and Britain, particularly over the colonization of North America, continued. Fearing a French invasion of Hanover, George aligned himself with Prussia (ruled by his nephew, Frederick the Great), Austria's enemy. Russia and France allied with Austria, their former enemy. A French invasion of the British-held island of Minorca led to the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756. Public disquiet over British failures at the start of the conflict led to Newcastle's resignation and the appointment of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, as prime minister and William Pitt the Elder as Secretary of State for the Southern Department. In April the following year George dismissed Pitt in an attempt to construct an administration more to his liking. Over the succeeding three months attempts to form another stable ministerial combination failed. In June Lord Waldegrave held the seals of office for only four days. By the start of July Pitt was recalled, and Newcastle returned as prime minister. As Secretary of State, Pitt guided policy relating to the war. Great Britain, Hanover, and Prussia and their allies Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel were pitted against other European powers, including France, Austria, Russia, Sweden and Saxony. The war involved multiple theatres from Europe to North America and India, where British dominance increased with the victories of Robert Clive over French forces and their allies at the Battle of Arcot and the Battle of Plassey.
George's son, the Duke of Cumberland, commanded the king's troops in northern Germany. In 1757 Hanover was invaded and George gave Cumberland full powers to conclude a separate peace, but by September he was furious at Cumberland's negotiated settlement, which he felt greatly favoured the French. George said his son had "ruined me and disgraced himself". Cumberland, by his own choice, resigned his military offices, and George revoked the peace deal on the grounds that the French had infringed it by disarming Hessian troops after the ceasefire.
In the "annus mirabilis" of 1759 British forces captured Quebec and Guadeloupe. A French plan to invade Britain was defeated following naval battles at Lagos and Quiberon Bay, and a resumed French advance on Hanover was halted by a joint British–Hanoverian force at the Battle of Minden.
By October 1760 George II was blind in one eye and hard of hearing. On the morning of 25 October he rose as usual at 6:00 am, drank a cup of hot chocolate, and went to his close stool alone. After a few minutes, his valet heard a loud crash and entered the room to find the king on the floor; his physician, Frank Nicholls, recorded that he "appeared to have just come from his necessary-stool, and as if going to open his escritoire".
The king was lifted into his bed, and Princess Amelia was sent for; before she reached him, he was dead. At the age of nearly 77 he had lived longer than any of his English or British predecessors. A post-mortem revealed that the king had died as the result of a thoracic aortic dissection. He was succeeded by his grandson George III, and buried on 11 November in Westminster Abbey. He left instructions for the sides of his and his wife's coffins to be removed so that their remains could mingle. He is the most recent monarch to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
George donated the royal library to the British Museum in 1757, four years after the museum's foundation. He had no interest in reading, or in the arts and sciences, and preferred to spend his leisure hours stag-hunting on horseback or playing cards. In 1737, he founded the Georg August University of Göttingen, the first university in the Electorate of Hanover, and visited it in 1748. The asteroid 359 Georgia was named in his honour at the University in 1902. He served as the Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin, between 1716 and 1727; and in 1754 issued the charter for King's College in New York City, which later became Columbia University. The province of Georgia, founded by royal charter in 1732, was named after him.
During George II's reign British interests expanded throughout the world, the Jacobite challenge to the Hanoverian dynasty was extinguished, and the power of ministers and Parliament in Britain became well-established. Nevertheless, in the memoirs of contemporaries such as Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole, George is depicted as a weak buffoon, governed by his wife and ministers. Biographies of George written during the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth century relied on these biased accounts. Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, scholarly analysis of surviving correspondence has indicated that George was not as ineffective as previously thought. Letters from ministers are annotated by George with pertinent remarks and demonstrate that he had a grasp of and interest in foreign policy in particular. He was often able to prevent the appointment of ministers or commanders he disliked, or sideline them into lesser offices. This academic reassessment, however, has not totally eliminated the popular perception of George II as a "faintly ludicrous king". His parsimony, for example, may have opened him to ridicule, though his biographers observe that parsimony is preferable to extravagance. Lord Charlemont excused George's short temper by explaining that sincerity of feeling is better than deception, "His temper was warm and impetuous, but he was good-natured and sincere. Unskilled in the royal talent of dissimulation, he always was what he appeared to be. He might offend, but he never deceived." Lord Waldegrave wrote, "I am thoroughly convinced that hereafter, when time shall have wore away those specks and blemishes which sully the brightest characters, and from which no man is totally exempt, he will be numbered amongst those patriot kings, under whose government the people have enjoyed the greatest happiness". George may not have played a major role in history, but he was influential at times and he upheld constitutional government. Elizabeth Montagu said of him, "With him our laws and liberties were safe, he possessed in a great degree the confidence of his people and the respect of foreign governments; and a certain steadiness of character made him of great consequence in these unsettled times ... His character would not afford subject for epic poetry, but will look well in the sober page of history."
In Britain:
George II's full style was "George the Second, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Archtreasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire".
When George became Prince of Wales in 1714, he was granted the royal arms with an inescutcheon of gules plain in the Hanoverian quarter differenced overall by a label of three points argent. The crest included the single arched coronet of his rank. As king, he used the royal arms as used by his father undifferenced.
Caroline's ten pregnancies resulted in eight live births. One of their children died in infancy, and seven lived to adulthood. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46389 |
Edward IV of England
Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, and again from 11 April 1471 until his death. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions between 1455 and 1487. Edward was the eldest son of Richard, Duke of York, a rival claimant to the throne and the leader of the opposition to King Henry VI. When Richard was killed in battle in December 1460, Edward inherited his claim to the throne. In the first few months of 1461 he commanded victorious forces in the battles of Mortimer's Cross and Towton, and became king.
Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464 led to his falling out with his mentor, Richard Neville Earl of Warwick, known as the "Kingmaker". Edward's reign was interrupted by a revolt in 1470-1471, led by Warwick and backed by the French, which briefly re-installed Henry VI as king. Edward regained the throne after finding refuge and funds in Flanders, winning the Battle of Barnet and entering London. He quickly consolidated his position by defeating the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, following which King Henry was found dead in the Tower of London.
Edward reigned twelve more years. In 1475 he invaded France, but the campaign was short-lived and resulted in the Treaty of Picquigny. Edward reigned for another eight years but died suddenly in 1483. Since his heir apparent, Edward, was still a minor, he named his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Lord Protector. After Edward's death, his children were declared illegitimate by Gloucester who then ascended the throne as Richard III before himself being killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Edward nevertheless became an ancestor of Tudor and Stuart monarchs through his daughter, Elizabeth of York, who married Richard's rival, King Henry VII.
Edward, Earl of March, was born at Rouen in Normandy, eldest surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. Historians generally dismiss later claims of illegitimacy as politically motivated propaganda; Edward, his brother Clarence, and their sister Margaret were physically very similar, all three being tall and blonde, in contrast to their short, dark, father. When his younger brother Richard of Gloucester declared his nephews illegitimate, he did so on the grounds Edward's marriage to their mother was invalid.
Richard of York was a lineal descendant of Edward III, and heir to Henry VI, from 1447 until the birth of Edward of Westminster in 1453. Less than a year old when he came to the throne in September 1422, Henry's reign was punctuated by mental illness, economic decline and ; by 1453, only Calais remained of the once extensive English possessions in France. This led to a power struggle between supporters of the Crown, or Lancastrians, and a Yorkist faction, led by Richard and the Earl of Salisbury. Henry's incapacities meant the Lancastrians were led by his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset.
Somerset was executed after defeat at St Albans in 1455, and York appointed Lord Protector; an uneasy peace continued until 1459, when Margaret and Henry Beaufort felt strong enough to challenge him. He fled England with his two eldest sons, Edward and Edmund, accompanied by Salisbury, and his son Richard, Earl of Warwick. After returning in July 1460, they captured Henry at Northampton, but when York claimed the throne for himself, he was abandoned by many of his supporters. Edward was sent to deal with a Lancastrian insurgency in Wales, Warwick remained in London, while York, Salisbury, and Edmund marched north to suppress another in Yorkshire. Defeated at Wakefield on 30 December, all three were killed, and their heads later displayed on Micklegate Bar.
His father's death made Edward leader of the Yorkist faction; at this stage of his career, contemporaries like Philippe de Commines described him as handsome, affable, and energetic. Unusually tall for the period at , he was an impressive sight in armour, and took care to wear splendid clothes. This was done deliberately to contrast him with Henry, whose physical and mental frailties undermined his position.
On 2 February 1461, Edward won a hard-fought victory at Mortimer's Cross. The battle was preceded by a meteorological phenomenon known as parhelion, or three suns, which he took as his emblem, the "Sun in splendour. However, this was offset by Warwick's defeat at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February, the Lancastrians regaining custody of Henry VI. The two met in London, where Edward was hastily crowned king, before marching north, where the two sides met at the Battle of Towton. Fought on 29 March in the middle of a snowstorm, it was the bloodiest battle ever to take place on English soil, and ended in a decisive Yorkist victory.
Estimates of the dead range from 9,000 to 20,000; figures are uncertain, as most of the mass graves were emptied or moved over the centuries, while corpses were generally stripped of clothing or armour before burial. Nevertheless, casualties among the Lancastrian nobility were enormous, and explains the enduring bitterness among those who survived. Since 1996, excavations have uncovered over 50 skeletons from the battle; an analysis of their injuries shows the brutality of the contest, including extensive post-mortem mutilations.
Margaret fled to Scotland with Edward of Westminster, while Edward returned to London for his coronation. Henry VI remained at large for over a year, but was caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London. There was little point in killing him while his son remained alive, since this would have transferred the Lancastrian claim from a frail captive to one who was young and free.
Most of the nobility had either remained loyal to Henry or stayed neutral, forcing Edward to rely heavily on the Nevilles. Consolidating the regime initially took precedence, but John Neville's victory at the 1464 Battle of Hexham seemed to end the Lancastrian threat. This exposed internal divisions, some over policy, but more significantly Warwick's encouragement of the perception he was the senior partner.
Although Edward preferred Burgundy as an ally, he allowed Warwick to negotiate a treaty with Louis XI of France; it included a suggested marriage between Edward and Anne of France or Bona of Savoy, daughter and sister-in-law of the French king respectively. In October 1464, Warwick was enraged to discover that on 1 May, Edward had secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, a widow with two sons, whose Lancastrian husband, John Grey of Groby, died at Towton. If nothing else, it was a clear demonstration he was not in control of Edward, despite suggestions to the contrary.
Edward's motives have been widely discussed by contemporaries and historians alike. Elizabeth's mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, came from the upper nobility, but her father, Richard Woodville, was a middle ranking provincial knight. Edward's Privy Council told him with unusual frankness, "she was no wife for a prince such as himself, for she was not the daughter of a duke or earl."
The marriage was certainly unwise and unusual, although not unknown; Henry VI's mother, Catherine of Valois, married her chamberlain, Owen Tudor, while Edward's grandson Henry VIII created the Church of England to marry Anne Boleyn. By all accounts, Elizabeth possessed considerable charm of person and intellect, while Edward was used to getting what he wanted.
Historians generally accept the marriage was an impulsive decision, but differ on whether it was also a "calculated political move". One view is the low status of the Woodvilles was part of the attraction, since unlike the Nevilles, they were reliant on Edward and thus more likely to remain loyal. Others argue if this was his purpose, there were far better options available; all agree it had significant political implications that impacted the rest of Edward's reign.
Unusually for the period, 12 of the new queen's siblings survived into adulthood, creating a large pool of competitors for offices and estates, as well as in the matrimony market. Her sisters made a series of advantageous unions, including that of Catherine Woodville to Henry Stafford, later Duke of Buckingham, Anne Woodville to William, heir to the Earl of Essex, and Eleanor Woodville with Anthony Grey, heir to the Earl of Kent.
In 1467, Edward dismissed his Lord Chancellor, Warwick's brother George Neville, Archbishop of York. Warwick responded by building an alliance with Edward's disaffected younger brother and current heir, George, Duke of Clarence, who held estates adjacent to the Neville heartland in the north. Concerned by this, Edward blocked a proposed marriage between Clarence and Warwick's eldest daughter Isabel.
In early July, Clarence travelled to Calais, where he married Isabel in a ceremony conducted by George Neville and overseen by Warwick. The three men issued a 'remonstrance', listing alleged abuses by the Woodvilles and other advisors close to Edward. They returned to London, where they assembled an army to remove these 'evil councillors' and establish good government.
With Edward still in the north, the royal army was defeated by a Neville force at Edgecote Moor on 26 July 1469. After the battle, Edward was held in Middleham Castle; on 12 August, Earl Rivers and his younger son John Woodville were executed at Kenilworth. However, it soon became clear there was little support for Warwick or Clarence; Edward was released in September and resumed the throne.
Outwardly, the situation remained unchanged, but tensions persisted and Edward did nothing to reduce the Nevilles' sense of vulnerability. The Percys, traditional rivals of the Neville family in the North, fought for Lancaster at Towton; their titles and estates were confiscated and given to Warwick's brother John Neville. In early 1470, Edward reinstated Henry Percy as Earl of Northumberland; John was compensated with the title Marquess of Montagu, but this was a significant demotion for a key supporter.
In March 1470, Warwick and Clarence exploited a private feud to initiate a full-scale revolt; when it was defeated, the two fled to France in May 1470. Seeing an opportunity, Louis persuaded Warwick to negotiate with his long-time enemy, Margaret of Anjou; she eventually agreed, first making him kneel before her in silence for fifteen minutes. With French support, Warwick landed in England on 9 September 1470 and announced his intention to restore Henry. By now, the Yorkist regime was deeply unpopular and the Lancastrians rapidly assembled an army of over 30,000; when John Neville switched sides, Edward was forced into exile in Bruges.
Edward took refuge in Flanders, part of the Duchy of Burgundy, accompanied by a few hundred men, including his younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Anthony Woodville and William Hastings. The Duchy was ruled by Charles the Bold, husband of his sister Margaret; he provided minimal help, something Edward never forgot.
The restored Lancastrian regime faced the same issue that dominated Henry's previous reign. Mental and physical frailties made him incapable of ruling and resulted in an internal struggle for control, made worse because the coalition that put him back on the throne consisted of bitter enemies. Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, held Warwick responsible for his fathers death in 1455, while he had executed his elder brother in 1464; Warwick and Clarence quickly found themselves isolated by the new regime.
Backed by wealthy Flemish merchants, in March 1471 Edward landed near Hull, close to his estates in Yorkshire. Supporters were initially reluctant to commit; the key northern city of York opened its gates only when he claimed to be seeking the return of his dukedom, like Henry IV seventy years earlier. The first significant contingent to join was a group of 600 men under William Parr and Sir James Harrington. Parr fought against the Yorkists at Edgecote in 1469 and his defection confirmed Clarence's decision to switch sides; as they marched south, more recruits came in, including 3,000 at Leicester.
Edward entered London unopposed and took Henry prisoner; Warwick was defeated and killed at the Battle of Barnet on 14 April, while a second Lancastrian army was destroyed at the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May. 16 year old Edward of Westminster died on the battlefield, with surviving leaders like Somerset executed shortly afterwards. This was followed by Henry's death a few days later; a contemporary chronicle claimed this was due to "melancholy," but it is generally assumed he was killed on Edward's orders.
Although the Lancastrian cause seemed at an end, the regime was destabilised by an ongoing quarrel between Clarence and his brother Gloucester. The two were married to Isabel Neville and Anne Neville respectively, Warwick's daughters by Anne Beauchamp and heirs to their mother's considerable inheritance. Many of the estates held by the brothers had been granted by Edward, who could also remove them, making them dependent on his favour. This was not the case with property acquired through marriage and explains the importance of this dispute.
The last significant rebellion ended in March 1474 with the surrender of the Earl of Oxford, who survived to command the Lancastrian army at Bosworth in 1485. Clarence was widely suspected of involvement, a factor in his eventual death in the Tower on 18 February 1478; claims he "drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine", appear to have been a joke by Edward, referring to his favourite drink.
In 1475, Edward allied with Burgundy, and declared war on France. However, with Duke Charles focused on besieging Neuss, Louis opened negotiations and soon after Edward landed at Calais, the two signed the Treaty of Picquigny. Edward received an immediate payment of 75,000 crowns, plus a yearly pension of 50,000 crowns, thus allowing him to recoup the costs of his army.
In 1482, he backed an attempt to usurp the Scottish throne by Alexander Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany, brother of James III of Scotland. Gloucester invaded Scotland and took the town of Edinburgh, but not the far more formidable castle, where James was being held by his own nobles. Albany switched sides and without siege equipment, the English army was forced to withdraw, with little to show for an expensive campaign, apart from the capture of Berwick Castle.
Edward's health began to fail, and he became subject to an increasing number of ailments; his physicians attributed this in part to a habitual use of emetics, which allowed him to gorge himself at meals, then return after vomiting to start again. He fell fatally ill at Easter 1483, but survived long enough to add codicils to his will, the most important naming his brother as Protector after his death. He died on 9 April 1483 and was buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. His twelve-year-old son, Edward V of England, was never crowned, Gloucester becoming Richard III in July.
The cause of Edward's death is uncertain; allegations of poison were common in an era when lack of medical knowledge meant death often had no obvious explanation. Other suggestions include pneumonia or malaria, although both were well-known and easy to describe. One contemporary attributed it to apoplexy brought on by excess, which fits with what is known of his physical habits.
While the War of the Roses has been documented by numerous historians, Edward as an individual is less well known; 19th century historians like William Stubbs generally dismissed him as a bloodthirsty nonentity. The most comprehensive modern biography was written by Charles Ross in 1974, who concluded that Edward’s greatest apparent achievement – the peace and stability of his latter years – was squandered in short-term aggrandisement. Ross states Edward ’remains the only king in English history since 1066 in active possession of his throne who failed to secure the safe succession of his son. His lack of political foresight is largely to blame for the unhappy aftermath of his early death.’
Commentators observe a marked difference between his first period as king, and the second. The failure of attempts to reconcile former enemies like Somerset meant he was noticeably more ruthless after 1471, including the execution of his brother Clarence. In his youth, Edward was a capable and charismatic military commander, who led from the front, but as he grew older, the energy noted by contemporaries became less apparent.
One effect of this was that Parliament became increasingly reluctant to approve taxes for wars which he failed to prosecute, then used the funds instead to finance his household expenditures. Under his rule, ownership of the Duchy of Lancaster was transferred to the Crown, where it remains today. In 1478, his staff prepared the so-called 'Black Book', a comprehensive review of government finances, still in use a century later. He invested heavily in business ventures with the City of London, which he used as an additional source of funding.
Although the economy recovered from the depression of 1450 to 1470, Edward's spending habitually exceeded income; on his death in 1483, the Crown had less than £1,200 in cash. His close relationship with the London branch of the Medici Bank ended in its bankruptcy; in 1517, the Medicis were still seeking repayment of Edward's debts.
Economics was closely linked to foreign policy; Edward's reign was dominated by the three sided diplomatic contest between England, France, and Burgundy, with two of the three seeking to ally against the third. As Flemish merchants were the largest buyers of English wool, Edward was generally pro-Burgundian, although Duke Charles' reluctance to support him in 1471 impacted their relationship. The death of Charles in 1477 led to the 1482 Treaty of Arras; Flanders, along with the lands known as the Burgundian Netherlands, became part of the Holy Roman Empire, and France acquired the rest. Edward and his successors lost much of their leverage as a result.
Edward's court was described by a visitor from Europe as "the most splendid ... in all Christendom". He spent large amounts on expensive status symbols to show off his power and wealth as king of England, while his collecting habits show an eye for style and an interest in scholarship, particularly history. He acquired fine clothes, jewels, and furnishings, as well as a collection of beautifully illuminated historical and literary manuscripts, many made specially for him by craftsmen in Bruges.
These included books for both entertainment and instruction, whose contents reveal his interests. They focus on the lives of great rulers, including Julius Caesar, historical chronicles, and instructional and religious works. In 1476, William Caxton established the first English printing press in the outbuildings of Westminster Abbey; on 18 November 1477, he produced Sayengis of the Philosophres, translated into English for Edward by Anthony Woodville.
It is not known where or how Edward's library was stored, but it is recorded that he transferred volumes from the Great Wardrobe to Eltham Palace and that he had a yeoman "to kepe the king's bookes". More than forty of his books survive intact from the 15th century, which suggests they were carefully stored, and are now included in the Royal Collection of manuscripts, held by the British Library.
Edward spent large sums on Eltham Palace, including the still-extant Great Hall, site of a feast for 2,000 people in December 1482, shortly before his death in April. He also began a major upgrade of St George's Chapel, Windsor, where he was buried in 1483; later completed by Henry VII, it was badly damaged during the First English Civil War, and little of the original work remains.
Edward had ten children by Elizabeth Woodville, seven of whom survived him; they were declared illegitimate under the 1483 Titulus Regius, an act repealed by Henry VII, who married his eldest daughter, Elizabeth.
Edward had numerous mistresses, including Lady Eleanor Talbot and Elizabeth Lucy, possibly daughter of Thomas Waite (or Wayte), of Southampton. The most famous was Jane Shore, later compelled by Richard to perform public penance at Paul's Cross; Sir Thomas More claimed this backfired, since "albeit she were out of al array save her kyrtle only: yet went she so fair & lovely … that her great shame wan her much praise."
He had several acknowledged illegitimate children;
There are claims for many others, including Mary, second wife of Henry Harman of Ellam, and Isabel Mylbery (born circa 1470), who married John Tuchet, son of John Tuchet, 6th Baron Audley. However, the evidence for these is circumstantial.
His eldest son Edward was made Prince of Wales when he was seven months old and given his own household at the age of three. Based in Ludlow Castle, he was supervised by his uncle, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, who also acted as his regent for the Council of Wales and the Marches. The historical consensus is Edward and Richard were killed, probably between July to September 1483; debate on who gave the orders, and why, continues, although their uncle Richard was the beneficiary.
By mid-August, Elizabeth Woodville was certain of their death; after her initial grief turned to fury, she opened secret talks with Margaret Beaufort. She promised her support in return for Henry's agreement to marry her eldest daughter Elizabeth of York. In December 1483, Henry swore an oath to do so, which he duly carried out after his coronation in October 1485.
Prior to his succession, Richard III declared Edward and Richard illegitimate, on the grounds his brother's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was invalid. The Titulus Regius argued Edward had agreed to marry Lady Eleanor Talbot, rendering his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville void. Both parties were dead, but Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, claimed to have carried out the ceremony. The Titulus was annulled by Henry VII, since his marriage to her daughter Elizabeth added legitimacy to his claim; Stillington died in prison in 1491.
Despite this apparent resolution, the Yorkist cause continued well into the 16th century. The most famous are the pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck but Yorkist challengers remained a concern for Henry VII and his son. In 1541, Henry VIII executed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, daughter of the Duke of Clarence, while a number of attempts were made on the life of her son, the last legitimate direct heir, Cardinal Reginald Pole, who died in 1558. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46390 |
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald ("né" James McDonald Ramsay; 12 October 18669 November 1937) was a British statesman who was the first Labour Party politician to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 and then in 1929–31. From 1931 to 1935, he headed a National Government dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members. MacDonald was later vehemently denounced by and expelled from the party he had helped to found.
MacDonald, along with Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson, was one of the three principal founders of the Labour Party in 1900. He was chairman of the Labour MPs before 1914 and, after an eclipse in his career caused by his opposition to the First World War, he was Leader of the Labour Party from 1922. The second Labour Government (1929–31) was dominated by the Great Depression. He formed the National Government to carry out spending cuts to defend the gold standard, but it had to be abandoned after the Invergordon Mutiny, and he called a general election in 1931 seeking a "doctor's mandate" to fix the economy. The National coalition won an overwhelming landslide and the Labour Party was reduced to a rump of around 50 seats in the House of Commons. His health deteriorated and he stood down as Prime Minister in 1935, remaining as Lord President of the Council until retiring in 1937. He died later that year.
MacDonald's speeches, pamphlets and books made him an important theoretician. Historian John Shepherd states that "MacDonald's natural gifts of an imposing presence, handsome features and a persuasive oratory delivered with an arresting Highlands accent made him the iconic Labour leader". After 1931, MacDonald was repeatedly and bitterly denounced by the Labour movement as a traitor to its cause. Since the 1960s, historians have defended his reputation, emphasising his earlier role in building up the Labour Party, dealing with the Great Depression, and as a putative forerunner of the political realignments of the 1990s and 2000s.
MacDonald was born at Gregory Place, Lossiemouth, Morayshire, Scotland, the illegitimate son of John MacDonald, a farm labourer, and Anne Ramsay, a housemaid. Registered at birth as James McDonald (sic) Ramsay, he was known as Jaimie MacDonald. Illegitimacy could be a serious handicap in 19th-century Presbyterian Scotland, but in the north and northeast farming communities this was less of a problem; in 1868 a report of the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture noted that the illegitimacy rate was around 15%—nearly every sixth person was born out of wedlock. MacDonald's mother had worked as a domestic servant at Claydale farm, near Alves, where his father was also employed. They were to have been married, but the wedding never took place, either because the couple quarrelled and chose not to marry, or because Anne's mother, Isabella Ramsay, stepped in to prevent her daughter from marrying a man she deemed unsuitable.
Ramsay MacDonald received an elementary education at the Free Church of Scotland school in Lossiemouth from 1872 to 1875, and then at Drainie parish school. He left school at the end of the summer term in 1881, at the age of 15, and began work on a nearby farm. In December 1881, he was appointed a pupil teacher at Drainie parish school. In 1885, he left to take up a position as an assistant to Mordaunt Crofton, a clergyman in Bristol who was attempting to establish a Boys' and Young Men's Guild at St Stephen's Church. In Bristol Ramsay MacDonald joined the Democratic Federation, a Radical organisation, which changed its name a few months later to the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). He remained in the group when it left the SDF to become the Bristol Socialist Society. In early 1886 he moved to London.
Following a short period of work addressing envelopes at the National Cyclists' Union in Fleet Street, he found himself unemployed and forced to live on the small amount of money he had saved from his time in Bristol. MacDonald eventually found employment as an invoice clerk in the warehouse of Cooper, Box and Co. During this time he was deepening his socialist credentials, and engaged himself energetically in C. L. Fitzgerald's Socialist Union which, unlike the SDF, aimed to progress socialist ideals through the parliamentary system. MacDonald witnessed the Bloody Sunday of 13 November 1887 in Trafalgar Square, and in response, had a pamphlet published by the "Pall Mall Gazette", entitled "Remember Trafalgar Square: Tory Terrorism in 1887".
MacDonald retained an interest in Scottish politics. Gladstone's first Irish Home Rule Bill inspired the setting-up of a Scottish Home Rule Association in Edinburgh. On 6 March 1888, MacDonald took part in a meeting of London-based Scots, who, upon his motion, formed the London General Committee of the Scottish Home Rule Association. For a while he supported home rule for Scotland, but found little support among London's Scots. However, MacDonald never lost his interest in Scottish politics and home rule, and in "Socialism: critical and constructive", published in 1921, he wrote: "The Anglification of Scotland has been proceeding apace to the damage of its education, its music, its literature, its genius, and the generation that is growing up under this influence is uprooted from its past."
Politics in the 1880s was still of less importance to MacDonald than furthering his education. From 1886-87, MacDonald studied botany, agriculture, mathematics, and physics.at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution (now Birkbeck, University of London) but his health suddenly failed him due to exhaustion one week before his examinations, which put an end to any thought of a scientific career. He would however, later be appointed a Governor of the institution in 1895, and continued to have a great fondness for the mission of Birkbeck into his later years.
In 1888, MacDonald took employment as private secretary to Thomas Lough who was a tea merchant and a Radical politician. Lough was elected as the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for West Islington, in 1892. Many doors now opened to MacDonald: he had access to the National Liberal Club as well as the editorial offices of Liberal and Radical newspapers; he made himself known to various London Radical clubs among Radical and labour politicians. MacDonald gained valuable experience in the workings of electioneering. At the same time he left Lough's employment to branch out as a freelance journalist. Elsewhere, as a member of the Fabian Society for some time, MacDonald toured and lectured on its behalf at the London School of Economics and elsewhere.
The Trades Union Congress had created the Labour Electoral Association (LEA) and entered into an unsatisfactory alliance with the Liberal Party in 1886. In 1892, MacDonald was in Dover to give support to the candidate for the LEA in the General Election, who was well beaten. MacDonald impressed the local press and the Association and was adopted as its candidate, announcing that his candidature would be under a Labour Party banner. He denied the Labour Party was a wing of the Liberal Party but saw merit in a working political relationship. In May 1894, the local Southampton Liberal Association was trying to find a labour-minded candidate for the constituency. Two others joined MacDonald to address the Liberal Council: one was offered but turned down the invitation, while MacDonald failed to secure the nomination despite strong support among Liberals.
In 1893, Keir Hardie had formed the Independent Labour Party (ILP) which had established itself as a mass movement. In May 1894 MacDonald applied for membership, and was accepted. He was officially adopted as the ILP candidate for one of the Southampton seats on 17 July 1894 but was heavily defeated at the election of 1895. MacDonald stood for Parliament again in 1900 for one of the two Leicester seats and although he lost was generously accused of splitting the Liberal vote to allow the Conservative candidate to win. That same year he became Secretary of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), the forerunner of the Labour Party, allegedly in part because many delegates confused him with prominent London trade unionist Jimmie MacDonald when they voted for "Mr. James R. MacDonald". MacDonald retained membership of the ILP; while it was not a Marxist organisation it was more rigorously socialist than the once and future Labour Party in which the ILP members would operate as a "ginger group" for many years.
As Party Secretary, MacDonald negotiated an agreement with the leading Liberal politician Herbert Gladstone (son of the late Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone), which allowed Labour to contest a number of working class seats without Liberal opposition, thus giving Labour its first breakthrough into the House of Commons. He married Margaret Ethel Gladstone, who was unrelated to the Gladstones of the Liberal Party, in 1896. Although not wealthy, Margaret MacDonald was comfortably off, and this allowed them to indulge in foreign travel, visiting Canada and the United States in 1897, South Africa in 1902, Australia and New Zealand in 1906 and India several times.
It was during this period that MacDonald and his wife began a long friendship with the social investigator and reforming civil servant Clara Collet with whom he discussed women's issues. She was an influence on MacDonald and other politicians in their attitudes towards women's rights. In 1901, he was elected to the London County Council for Finsbury Central as a joint Labour–Progressive Party candidate, but he was disqualified from the register in 1904 due to his absences abroad.
In 1906, the LRC changed its name to the "Labour Party", amalgamating with the ILP. In that same year, MacDonald was elected MP for Leicester along with 28 others, and became one of the leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party. These Labour MPs undoubtedly owed their election to the 'Progressive Alliance' between the Liberals and Labour, a minor party supporting the Liberal governments of Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith. MacDonald became the leader of the left wing of the party, arguing that Labour must seek to displace the Liberals as the main party of the left.
In 1911 MacDonald became "Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party", the leader of the party. He was the chief intellectual leader of the party, paying little attention to class warfare and much more to the emergence of a powerful state as it exemplified the Darwinian evolution of an ever more complex society. He was an Orthodox Edwardian progressive, keen on intellectual discussion, and averse to agitation.
Within a short period, his wife became ill with blood poisoning and died. This deeply and permanently affected MacDonald.
MacDonald had always taken a keen interest in foreign affairs and knew from his visit to South Africa, just after the Boer War had ended, what the effects of modern conflict would be. Although the Parliamentary Labour Party generally held an anti-war opinion, when war was declared in August 1914, patriotism came to the fore. After the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, warned the House of Commons on 3 August that war with Germany was likely, MacDonald responded by declaring that "this country ought to have remained neutral". In the "Labour Leader" he claimed that the real cause of the war was the "policy of the balance of power through alliance".
The Party supported the government in its request for £100,000,000 of war credits and, as MacDonald could not, he resigned from the party Chairmanship. Arthur Henderson became the new leader, while MacDonald took the party Treasurer's post. Despite his opposition to the war, MacDonald visited the Western Front in December 1914 with the approval of Lord Kitchener. MacDonald and General Seeley set off for the front at Ypres and soon found themselves in the thick of an action in which both behaved with the utmost coolness. Later, MacDonald was received by the Commander-in-Chief at St Omer and made an extensive tour of the front. Returning home, he paid a public tribute to the courage of the French troops, but said nothing then or later of having been under fire himself.
During the early part of the war, he was extremely unpopular and was accused of treason and cowardice. Former Liberal Party MP and publisher Horatio Bottomley attacked him through his magazine "John Bull" in September 1915, by publishing an article carrying details of MacDonald's birth and his so-called deceit in not disclosing his real name. His illegitimacy was no secret and he had not seemed to have suffered by it, but, according to the journal he had, by using a false name, gained access to parliament falsely and should suffer heavy penalties and have his election declared void. MacDonald received much internal support, but the way in which the disclosures were made public had affected him. He wrote in his diary:
...I spent hours of terrible mental pain. Letters of sympathy began to pour in upon me. ... Never before did I know that I had been registered under the name of Ramsay, and cannot understand it now. From my earliest years, my name has been entered in lists, like the school register, etc. as MacDonald.
In August 1916 the Moray Golf Club passed a resolution declaring that MacDonald's anti-war activities "had endangered the character and interests of the club" and that he had forfeited his right to membership. In January 1917 MacDonald published "National Defence", in which he argued that open diplomacy and disarmament were necessary to prevent future wars.
As the war dragged on, his reputation recovered but he still lost his seat in the 1918 "Coupon Election", which saw the Liberal David Lloyd George's coalition government win a large majority. The election campaign in Leicester West focused on MacDonald's opposition to the war, with MacDonald writing after his defeat: "I have become a kind of mythological demon in the minds of the people".
MacDonald denounced the Treaty of Versailles: "We are beholding an act of madness unparalleled in history".
MacDonald stood for Parliament in the 1921 Woolwich East by-election and lost. His opponent, Captain Robert Gee, had been awarded the Victoria Cross at Cambrai; MacDonald tried to counter this by having ex-soldiers appear on his platforms. MacDonald also promised to pressure the government into converting the Woolwich Arsenal to civilian use. Horatio Bottomley intervened in the by-election, opposing MacDonald's election because of his anti-war record. Bottomley's influence may have been decisive in MacDonald's failure to be elected as there were under 700 votes difference between Gee and MacDonald.
In 1922, MacDonald was returned to the House as MP for Aberavon in Wales, with a vote of 14,318 against 11,111 and 5,328 for his main opponents. His rehabilitation was complete; the Labour "New Leader" magazine opined that his election was, "enough in itself to transform our position in the House. We have once more a voice which must be heard."
By now, the party was reunited and MacDonald was re-elected as Leader. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan examines his newfound stature:
At the 1922 election, Labour replaced the Liberals as the main opposition party to the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin, making MacDonald Leader of the Opposition. By now, he had moved away from the Labour left and abandoned the socialism of his youth: he strongly opposed the wave of radicalism that swept through the labour movement in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and became a determined enemy of Communism. Unlike the French Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Labour Party did not split and the Communist Party of Great Britain remained small and isolated.
In 1922, MacDonald visited Palestine. In a later account of his visit, he contrasted Zionist pioneers with 'the rich plutocratic Jew'. MacDonald believed the latter "was the true economic materialist. He is the person whose views upon life make one anti-Semitic. He has no country, no kindred. Whether as a sweater or a financier, he is an exploiter of everything he can squeeze. He is behind every evil that Governments do, and his political authority, always exercised in the dark, is greater than that of Parliamentary majorities. He is the keenest of brains and the bluntest of consciences. He detests Zionism because it revives the idealism of his race, and has political implications which threaten his economic interests"
MacDonald became noted for "woolly" rhetoric such as the occasion at the Labour Party Conference of 1930 at Llandudno when he appeared to imply unemployment could be solved by encouraging the jobless to return to the fields "where they till and they grow and they sow and they harvest". Equally, there were times when it was unclear what his policies were. There was already some unease in the party about what he would do if Labour was able to form a government.
At the 1923 election, the Conservatives had lost their majority, and when they lost a vote of confidence in the House in January 1924, King George V called on MacDonald to form a minority Labour government, with the tacit support of the Liberals under Asquith from the corner benches. He became the first Labour Prime Minister, the first from a working-class background and one of the very few without a university education.
MacDonald had never held office but demonstrated energy, executive ability, and political astuteness. He consulted widely within his party, making the Liberal Lord Haldane the Lord Chancellor, and Philip Snowden Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took the foreign office himself. Besides himself, ten other cabinet members came from working class origins, a dramatic breakthrough in British history. His first priority was to undo the perceived damage caused by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, by settling the reparations issue and coming to terms with Germany. The king noted in his diary, "He wishes to do the right thing... Today, 23 years ago, dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!"
While there were no major labour strikes during his term, MacDonald acted swiftly to end those that did erupt. When the Labour Party executive criticised the government, he replied that, "public doles, Poplarism [local defiance of the national government], strikes for increased wages, limitation of output, not only are not Socialism, but may mislead the spirit and policy of the Socialist movement". The Government lasted only nine months and did not have a majority in either House of the Parliament, but it was still able to support the unemployed with the extension of benefits and amendments to the Insurance Acts. In a personal triumph for John Wheatley, Minister for Health, a Housing Act was passed, which greatly expanded municipal housing for low paid workers.
MacDonald had long been a leading spokesman for internationalism in the Labour movement; at first, he verged on pacifism. He founded the Union of Democratic Control in early 1914 to promote international socialist aims, but it was overwhelmed by the war. His 1916 book, "National Defence", revealed his own long-term vision for peace. Although disappointed at the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty, he supported the League of Nations – but, by 1930, he felt that the internal cohesion of the British Empire and a strong, independent British defence programme might turn out to be the wisest British government policy.
MacDonald moved in March 1924 to end construction work on the Singapore military base, despite strong opposition from the Admiralty. He believed the building of the base would endanger the disarmament conference; the First Sea Lord Lord Beatty considered the absence of such a base as dangerously imperilling British trade and territories East of Aden and could mean the security of the British Empire in the Far East being dependent on the goodwill of Japan.
In June 1924, MacDonald convened a conference in London of the wartime Allies and achieved an agreement on a new plan for settling the reparations issue and French occupation of the Ruhr. German delegates joined the meeting, and the London Settlement was signed. It was followed by an Anglo-German commercial treaty. Another major triumph for MacDonald was the conference held in London in July and August 1924 to deal with the implementation of the Dawes Plan. MacDonald, who accepted the popular view of the economist John Maynard Keynes of German reparations as impossible to pay, pressured French Premier Édouard Herriot until many concessions were made to Germany.
A British onlooker commented, "The London Conference was for the French 'man in the street' one long Calvary ... as he saw M. Herriot abandoning one by one the cherished possessions of French preponderance on the Reparations Commission, the right of sanctions in the event of German default, the economic occupation of the Ruhr, the French-Belgian railroad Régie, and finally, the military occupation of the Ruhr within a year." MacDonald was proud of what had been achieved, which was the pinnacle of his short-lived administration's achievements. In September, he made a speech to the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva, the main thrust of which was for general European disarmament, which was received with great acclaim.
MacDonald recognised the Soviet Union and MacDonald informed Parliament in February 1924 that negotiations would begin to negotiate a treaty with the Soviet Union. The treaty was to cover Anglo-Soviet trade and the repayment of the British bondholders, who had lent billions to the pre-revolutionary Russian government and been rejected by the Bolsheviks. There were, in fact, two proposed treaties: one would cover commercial matters, and the other would cover a fairly vague future discussion on the problem of the bondholders. If the treaties were signed, the British government would conclude a further treaty and guarantee a loan to the Bolsheviks. The treaties were popular neither with the Conservatives nor with the Liberals, who, in September, criticised the loan so vehemently that negotiation with them seemed impossible.
However, the government's fate was determined by the "Campbell Case", the abrogation of prosecuting the left-wing newspaper the "Workers' Weekly" for inciting servicemen to mutiny. The Conservatives put down a censure motion, to which the Liberals added an amendment. MacDonald's Cabinet resolved to treat both motions as matters of confidence. The Liberal amendment was carried, and the King granted MacDonald a dissolution of Parliament the following day. The issues that dominated the election campaign were the Campbell Case and the Russian treaties, which soon combined into the single issue of the Bolshevik threat.
On 25 October 1924, just four days before the election, the "Daily Mail" reported that a letter had come into its possession which purported to be a letter sent from Grigory Zinoviev, the President of the Communist International, to the British representative on the Comintern Executive. The letter was dated 15 September and so before the dissolution of parliament: it stated that it was imperative for the agreed treaties between Britain and the Bolsheviks to be ratified urgently. The letter said that those Labour members who could apply pressure on the government should do so. It went on to say that a resolution of the relationship between the two countries would "assist in the revolutionising of the international and British proletariat ... make it possible for us to extend and develop the ideas of Leninism in England and the Colonies".
The government had received the letter before the publication in the newspapers. It had protested to the Bolsheviks' London chargé d'affaires and had already decided to make public the contents of the letter with details of the official protest. But it had not been swift-footed enough.
Historians mostly agree the letter was a forgery, but it closely reflected attitudes current in the Comintern. In any case, it had little impact on the Labour vote, which actually increased. It was the collapse of the Liberal Party that led to the Conservative landslide. However, many Labourites for years blamed their defeat on the Letter by misunderstanding the political forces at work.
Despite all that had gone on, the result of the election was not disastrous for Labour. The Conservatives were returned decisively, gaining 155 seats for a total of 413 members of parliament. Labour lost 40 seats, but held on to 151. The Liberals lost 118 seats (leaving them with only 40) and their vote fell by over a million. The real significance of the election was that the Liberal Party, which Labour had displaced as the second largest political party in 1922, was now clearly the third party.
The strong majority held by the Conservatives gave Baldwin a full term during which the government had to deal with the 1926 General Strike. Unemployment remained high but relatively stable at just over 10% and, apart from 1926, strikes were at a low level. At the May 1929 election, Labour won 288 seats to the Conservatives' 260, with 59 Liberals under Lloyd George holding the balance of power. MacDonald was increasingly out of touch with his supposedly safe Welsh seat at Aberavon; he largely ignored the district, and had little time or energy to help with its increasingly difficult problems regarding coal disputes, strikes, unemployment and poverty. The miners expected a wealthy man who would fund party operations, but he had no money. He disagreed with the increasingly radical activism of party leaders in the district, as well as the permanent agent, and the South Wales Mineworkers' Federation. He moved to Seaham Harbour in County Durham, a safer seat, to avoid a highly embarrassing defeat.
Baldwin resigned and MacDonald again formed a minority government, at first with Lloyd George's cordial support. This time, MacDonald knew he had to concentrate on domestic matters. Arthur Henderson became Foreign Secretary, with Snowden again at the Exchequer. JH Thomas became Lord Privy Seal with a mandate to tackle unemployment, assisted by the young radical Oswald Mosley. Margaret Bondfield was appointed as Minister of Labour, becoming the first-ever woman cabinet minister.
MacDonald's second government was in a stronger parliamentary position than his first, and in 1930 he was able to raise unemployment pay, pass an act to improve wages and conditions in the coal industry (i.e. the issues behind the General Strike) and pass a housing act which focused on slum clearances. However, an attempt by the Education Minister Charles Trevelyan to introduce an act to raise the school-leaving age to 15 was defeated by opposition from Roman Catholic Labour MPs, who feared that the costs would lead to increasing local authority control over faith schools.
In international affairs he also convened the Round Table conferences in London with the political leaders of India, at which he offered them responsible government, but not independence or even Dominion status. In April 1930 he negotiated the London Naval Treaty, limiting naval armaments, with France, Italy, Japan, and the United States.
MacDonald's government had no effective response to the economic crisis which followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Philip Snowden was a rigid exponent of orthodox finance and would not permit any deficit spending to stimulate the economy, despite the urgings of Oswald Mosley, David Lloyd George and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Mosley put forward a memorandum in January 1930, calling for the public control of imports and banking as well as an increase in pensions to boost spending power. When this was repeatedly turned down, Mosley resigned from the government in February 1931 and formed the New Party. He later converted to Fascism.
By the end of 1930, unemployment had doubled to over two and a half million. The government struggled to cope with the crisis and found itself attempting to reconcile two contradictory aims: achieving a balanced budget to maintain sterling on the gold standard, and maintaining assistance to the poor and unemployed, at a time when tax revenues were falling. During 1931, the economic situation deteriorated, and pressure from orthodox economists for sharp cuts in government spending increased. Under pressure from its Liberal allies, as well as the Conservative opposition who feared that the budget was unbalanced, Snowden appointed a committee headed by Sir George May to review the state of public finances. The May Report of July 1931, urged large public-sector wage cuts and large cuts in public spending, notably in payments to the unemployed, to avoid a budget deficit.
Although there was a narrow majority in the Cabinet for drastic reductions in spending, the minority included senior ministers such as Arthur Henderson who made it clear they would resign rather than acquiesce in the cuts. With this unworkable split, on 24 August 1931, MacDonald submitted his resignation and then agreed, on the urging of King George V, to form a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals. With Henderson taking the lead, MacDonald, Snowden, and Thomas were quickly expelled from the Labour Party. They responded by forming a new National Labour group, which provided a nominal party base for the expelled MPs, but received little support in the country or the unions. Great anger in the labour movement greeted MacDonald's move. Riots took place in protest in Glasgow and Manchester. Many in the Labour Party viewed this as a cynical move by MacDonald to rescue his career, and accused him of 'betrayal'. MacDonald, however, argued that the sacrifice was for the common good.
In the 1931 general election, the National Government won 554 seats, comprising 473 Conservatives, 13 National Labour, 68 Liberals (Liberal National and Liberal) and various others, while Labour, now led by Arthur Henderson won only 52 and the Lloyd George Liberals four. Henderson and his deputy J. R. Clynes both lost their seats in Labour's worst-ever rout. Labour's disastrous performance at the 1931 election greatly increased the bitterness felt by MacDonald's former colleagues towards him. MacDonald was genuinely upset to see the Labour Party so badly defeated at the election. He had regarded the National Government as a temporary measure, and had hoped to return to the Labour Party.
The National Government's huge majority left MacDonald with the largest mandate ever won by a British Prime Minister at a democratic election, but MacDonald had only a small following of National Labour men in Parliament. He was ageing rapidly, and was increasingly a figurehead. In control of domestic policy were Conservatives Stanley Baldwin as Lord President and Neville Chamberlain the chancellor of the exchequer, together with National Liberal Walter Runciman at the Board of Trade. MacDonald, Chamberlain and Runciman devised a compromise tariff policy, which stopped short of protectionism while ending free trade and, at the 1932 Ottawa Conference, cementing commercial relations within the Commonwealth.
Besides his preference for a cohesive British Empire and a protective tariff, he felt an independent British defence programme would be the wisest policy. However, budget pressures and a strong popular pacifist sentiment, forced a reduction in the military and naval budgets. MacDonald involved himself heavily in foreign policy. Assisted by the National Liberal leader and Foreign Secretary John Simon, he continued to lead British delegations to international conferences, including the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Lausanne Conference in 1932, and the Stresa Conference in 1935. He went to Rome in March 1933 to facilitate Nazi Germany's return to the concert of European powers and to continue the policy of appeasement. On 16 August 1932 he granted the Communal Award upon India, partitioning it into separate electorates for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Untouchables. Most important of all, he presided at the world economic conference in London in June 1933. Nearly every nation was represented, but no agreement was possible. The American president torpedoed the conference with a bombshell message that the US would not stabilise the depreciating dollar. The failure marked the end of international economic co-operation for another decade.
MacDonald was deeply affected by the anger and bitterness caused by the fall of the Labour government. He continued to regard himself as a true Labour man, but the rupturing of virtually all his old friendships left him an isolated figure. One of the only other leading Labour figures to join the government, Philip Snowden, was a firm believer in free trade and resigned from the government in 1932 following the introduction of tariffs after the Ottawa agreement.
By 1933 MacDonald's health was so poor that his doctor had to personally supervise his trip to Geneva. By 1934 MacDonald's mental and physical health declined further, and he became an increasingly ineffective leader as the international situation grew more threatening. His speeches in Commons and at international meetings became incoherent. One observer noted how "Things ... got to the stage where nobody knew what the Prime Minister was going to say in the House of Commons, and, when he did say it, nobody understood it". Newspapers did not report MacDonald denying to reporters that he was seriously ill because he only had "loss of memory". His pacifism, which had been widely admired in the 1920s, led Winston Churchill and others to accuse him of failure to stand up to the threat of Adolf Hitler. His government began the negotiations for the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
In these years he was irritated by the attacks of Lucy, Lady Houston, the strongly nationalistic proprietor of the "Saturday Review". Lady Houston believed that MacDonald was under the control of the Soviets and amused the nation by giving MacDonald such epithets as the 'Spider of Lossiemouth,' and hanging a large sign in electric lights from the rigging of her luxury yacht, the "Liberty." According to some versions it read 'Down the Ramsay MacDonald,' and to others 'To Hell with Ramsay MacDonald.' Lady Houston also sent agents to disrupt his election campaigns. In 2020 new research revealed how she purchased three letters, supposedly written by Ramsay MacDonald to Soviet officials but actually the work of an American forger. In 1935 Lady Houston stated that she intended to publish them but eventually handed them over to Special Branch, and MacDonald's solicitors entered a legal battle with her.
MacDonald was aware of his fading powers, and in 1935 he agreed to a timetable with Baldwin to stand down as Prime Minister after King George V's Silver Jubilee celebrations in May 1935. He resigned on 7 June in favour of Baldwin, and remained in the cabinet, taking the largely honorary post of Lord President vacated by Baldwin.
After Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936, MacDonald declared that he was "pleased" that the Treaty of Versailles was "vanishing", expressing his hope that the French had been taught a "severe lesson".
At the 1935 election MacDonald was defeated at Seaham by Emanuel Shinwell. Shortly after he was elected at a by-election in January 1936 for the Combined Scottish Universities seat, but his physical and mental health collapsed in 1936. King George V died a week before voting began in the Scottish by-election, and MacDonald deeply mourned his death, paying tribute to him in his diary as "a gracious and kingly friend whom I have served with all my heart". There had been a genuine mutual affection between the two; the King is said to have regarded MacDonald as his favourite prime minister.
A sea voyage was recommended to restore MacDonald's health, but he died on board the liner at sea on 9 November 1937, aged 71 with his youngest daughter Sheila. His funeral was in Westminster Abbey on 26 November. After cremation, his ashes were buried alongside his wife Margaret at Spynie in his native Morayshire.
For half a century, MacDonald was demonised by the Labour Party as a turncoat who consorted with the enemy and drove the Labour Party to its nadir. Later, however, scholarly opinion raised his status as an important founder and leader of the Labour Party, and a man who held Britain together during its darkest economic times.
MacDonald's expulsion from Labour along with his National Labour Party's coalition with the Conservatives, combined with the decline in his physical and mental powers after 1931, left him a discredited figure at the time of his death, destined to receive years of unsympathetic treatment from generations of Labour-inclined British historians. The events of 1931, with the downfall of the Labour government and his coalition with the Conservatives, led to MacDonald becoming one of the most reviled figures in the history of the Labour Party, with many of his former supporters accusing him of betraying the party he had helped create. MacNeill Weir, MacDonald's former parliamentary private secretary, published the first major biography "The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald" in 1938. Weir demonised MacDonald for obnoxious careerism, class betrayal and treachery. Clement Attlee in his autobiography "As it Happened" (1954) called MacDonald's decision to abandon the Labour government in 1931 "the greatest betrayal in the political history of the country". The coming of war in 1939 led to a search for the politicians who had appeased Hitler and failed to prepare Britain; MacDonald was grouped among the "Guilty Men".
By the 1960s, while union activists maintained their hostile attitude, scholars wrote with more appreciation of his challenges and successes. Finally in 1977 he received a long scholarly biography that historians have judged to be "definitive." Labour MP David Marquand, a trained historian who later became a professor of politics, wrote "Ramsay MacDonald" with the stated intention of giving MacDonald his due for his work in founding and building the Labour Party, and in trying to preserve peace in the years between the two world wars. He argued also to place MacDonald's fateful decision in 1931 in the context of the crisis of the times and the limited choices open to him. Marquand praised the prime minister's decision to place national interests before that of party in 1931. He also emphasised MacDonald's lasting intellectual contribution to socialism and his pivotal role in transforming Labour from an outside protest group to an inside party of government.
Scholarly analysis about the economic decisions taken in the inter-war period such as the return to the Gold Standard in 1925, and MacDonald's desperate efforts to defend it in 1931, has changed. Robert Skidelsky, in his classic account of the 1929–31 government, "Politicians and the Slump" (1967), compared the orthodox policies advocated by leading politicians of both parties unfavourably with the more radical, proto-Keynesian measures proposed by David Lloyd George and Oswald Mosley. But in the preface to the 1994 edition Skidelsky argued that recent experience of currency crises and capital flight made it hard to be critical of politicians who wanted to achieve stability by cutting so-called "labour costs" and defending the value of the currency. In 2004 Marquand advanced a similar argument:
In the harsher world of the 1980s and 1990s it was no longer obvious that Keynes was right in 1931 and the bankers wrong. Pre-Keynesian orthodoxy had come in from the cold. Politicians and publics had learned anew that confidence crises feed on themselves; that currencies can collapse; that the public credit can be exhausted; that a plummeting currency can be even more painful than deflationary expenditure cuts; and that governments which try to defy the foreign exchange markets are apt to get their—and their countries'—fingers burnt. Against that background MacDonald's response to the 1931 crisis increasingly seemed not just honourable and consistent, but right ... he was the unacknowledged precursor of the Blairs, the Schröders, and the Clintons of the 1990s and 2000s.
Ramsay MacDonald married Margaret Ethel Gladstone (no relation to Prime Minister William Gladstone) in 1896. The marriage was a very happy one, and they had six children, including Malcolm MacDonald (1901–81), who had a distinguished career as a politician, colonial governor and diplomat, and Ishbel MacDonald (1903–82), who was very close to her father. Another son, Alister Gladstone MacDonald (1898–1993) was a conscientious objector in the First World War, serving in the Friends' Ambulance Unit; he became a prominent architect who worked on promoting the planning policies of his father's government, and specialised in cinema design. MacDonald was devastated by Margaret's death from blood poisoning in 1911, and had few significant personal relationships after that time, apart from with Ishbel, who acted as his consort while he was Prime Minister and cared for him for the rest of his life. Following his wife's death, MacDonald commenced a relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville.
In the 1920s and 1930s he was frequently entertained by the society hostess Lady Londonderry, which was much disapproved of in the Labour Party since her husband was a Conservative cabinet minister.
Ramsay MacDonald's religious life was varied, starting as a devout Christian and incrementally moving across his life into organised humanism, particularly the British Ethical movement. MacDonald's father held firm Calvinist beliefs, but as an adult Ramsay would join the Church of Scotland. Subsequently, he became interested in the Unitarian movement during his time in London, and led Unitarian worship sessions. His interest in Unitarianism led him to discover the Ethical Church, an early humanist association affiliated with the Union of Ethical Societies (today known as Humanists UK), which he joined as a member. He regularly attended services at the South Place Ethical Society (now Conway Hall), and became intensely involved in Union of Ethical Societies, and friends with its founder, Stanton Coit. Ramsay would write regularly in Stanton Coit's "Ethical World", a humanist publication. On more than one occasion, he had been elected chair of the Union at its annual meeting, evidencing the significance of his commitment to organised humanism. He was Chair/President of the organisation from 1900-1901.
MacDonald's unpopularity in the country following his stance against Britain's involvement in the First World War spilled over into his private life. In 1916, he was expelled from Moray Golf Club in Lossiemouth for being deemed to bring the club into disrepute because of his pacifist views. The manner of his expulsion was regretted by some members but an attempt to re-instate him by a vote in 1924 failed. However, a Special General Meeting held in 1929 finally voted for his reinstatement. By this time, MacDonald was Prime Minister for the second time. He felt the initial expulsion very deeply and refused to take up the final offer of membership, which he had framed and mounted.
In 1930, MacDonald was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) under Statute 12. He was awarded honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degrees by the universities of Wales, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford and McGill and George Washington University.
The novel "Fame is the Spur" (1940) by Howard Spring is thought to be based on the life of MacDonald. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46391 |
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, (; 25 May 1713 – 10 March 1792) was a British nobleman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1762 to 1763 under George III. He was arguably the last important favourite in British politics. He was the first Prime Minister from Scotland following the Acts of Union in 1707 and the first Tory to have held the post. He was also elected as the first President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland when it was founded in 1780.
He was born in Parliament Close, close to St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh on 25 May 1713, the son of James Stuart, 2nd Earl of Bute, and his wife, Lady Anne Campbell. He attended Eton College from midsummer 1724 to Whitsun 1730. He went on to study civil law at the Universities of Groningen (1730–32) and Leiden (1732–34) in the Netherlands, graduating from the latter with a degree in civil law.
A close relative of the Clan Campbell (his mother was a daughter of the 1st Duke of Argyll), Bute succeeded to the Earldom of Bute (named after the Isle of Bute) upon the death of his father, James Stuart, 2nd Earl of Bute, in 1723. He was brought up thereafter by his maternal uncles, the 2nd Duke of Argyll and Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll, 1st and only Earl of Ilay. In August 1735, he eloped with Mary Wortley Montagu, whose parents Sir Edward and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were slow to consent to the marriage. In 1737, he was elected a Scottish representative peer; despite being in London in December of that year, he did not participate in deliberations in the House of Lords. Because of his support for Argyll against Walpole, he was not re-elected in 1741. For the next several years he retired to his estates in Scotland to manage his affairs and indulge his interest in botany.
In 1745, Bute moved to Westminster, London, where his family rented a house at Twickenham for forty-five pounds per annum. He met Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1747 at the Egham Races and became a close friend. After the Prince's death in 1751, Bute was appointed tutor to Prince George, the new Prince of Wales. Bute arranged for the Prince and his brother Prince Edward to follow a course of lectures on natural philosophy by the itinerant lecturer Stephen Demainbray. This led to an interest in natural philosophy on the part of the young prince and may have led to George III's collection of natural philosophical instruments. Bute furthermore became close to Prince Frederick's widow, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the Dowager Princess of Wales, and it was rumoured that the couple were having an affair. Indeed, one of the Prince of Wales's associates, John Horne Tooke, published a scandalous pamphlet alluding to the liaison, but the rumours were almost certainly untrue, since Bute held sincere religious beliefs against adultery and, by all indications, appeared happily married.
In 1780, Bute was elected as the first President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Because of the influence he had over his pupil, Bute expected to rise quickly to political power following George's accession to the throne in 1760, but his plans were premature. It would first be necessary to remove both the incumbent Prime Minister (the Duke of Newcastle) and arguably the even more powerful Secretary of State for the Southern Department (William Pitt the Elder). The Government of the day, buoyed by recent successes in the Seven Years' War, was popular, however, and did well at the general election which, as was customary at the time, took place on the accession of the new monarch.
Supported by the King, Bute manoeuvred himself into power by first allying himself with Newcastle against Pitt over the latter's desire to declare war on Spain. Once thwarted in his designs against Spain by Bute and Newcastle, Pitt resigned his post as Secretary of State for the Southern Department. Next, Bute forced Newcastle's resignation as Prime Minister when he found himself in a small minority within the government over the level of funding and direction of the Seven Years' War. Re-elected as a Scottish representative peer in 1760, Bute was appointed the "de facto" Prime Minister after the resignations of Pitt and Newcastle, thus ending a long period of Whig dominance.
Bute's premiership was notable for the negotiation of the Treaty of Paris (1763) which concluded the Seven Years' War. In so doing, Bute had to soften his previous stance in relation to concessions given to France in that he agreed that the important fisheries in Newfoundland be returned to France without Britain's possession of Guadeloupe in return.
After peace was concluded, Bute and the King decided that Britain's military expenditure should not exceed its prewar levels, but they thought a large presence was necessary in America to deal with the French and Spanish threat. They therefore charged the colonists for the increased military levels, thus catalysing the resistance to taxes which led to the American Revolution. Bute also introduced a cider tax of four shillings per hogshead in 1763 to help finance the Seven Years' War.
King George began to see through Bute and turned against him after being criticised for an official speech which the press recognised as Bute's own work.
The journalist John Wilkes published a newspaper, "The North Briton", in which both Bute and the Dowager Princess of Wales were savagely satirised. Bute resigned as prime minister shortly afterwards, although he remained in the House of Lords as a Scottish representative peer until 1780. He remained friendly with the Dowager Princess of Wales, but her attempts to reconcile him with George III proved futile.
For the remainder of his life, Bute remained at his estate in Hampshire, where he built himself a mansion called High Cliff near Christchurch. From there he continued his pursuit of botany and became a major literary and artistic patron. Among his beneficiaries were Samuel Johnson, Tobias Smollett, Robert Adam, William Robertson and John Hill. He also gave considerably to the Scottish universities. He financed Alberto Fortis's travels into Dalmatia. His botanical work culminated in the publication of "Botanical Tables Containing the Families of British Plants" in 1785. Even after his retirement, Bute was accused by many Americans in the years leading up to the American Revolutionary War as having an undue corrupting influence over the British government. He died at his home in South Audley Street, Grosvenor Square, Westminster, from complications of a fall suffered while staying at Highcliffe, and was buried at Rothesay on the Isle of Bute.
The flowering plant genus "Stewartia" is named after him. According to historian John Naish, the 18th-century expression "Jack Boot" meaning a stupid person originated as disparagement of Stuart's performance as Prime Minister.
Bute purchased Luton Hoo, or Luton Park, from Francis Herne MP in 1763 for the sum of £94,700. Recognising that the existing buildings were unsuitable, Bute commissioned the neoclassical architect Robert Adam to oversee the redesign of the estate house. Initial designs were unsatisfactory and, coupled with the sale of Bute House, Adams submitted new designs for a larger complex, which Bute further adjusted to include five book rooms and seven water closets. The building also housed an extensive art collection, particularly paintings of the Dutch and Flemish schools. A fire in March 1771 "did considerable damage" according to contemporary reports. The project was completed by 1773 but not according to the full plan, the second phase of which was abandoned. Dr. Samuel Johnson visiting the house in 1781 is quoted as saying, "This is one of the places I do not regret coming to see...in the house magnificence is not sacrificed to convenience, nor convenience to magnificence".
He died on 10 March 1792 at his London address, South Audley Street off Grosvenor Square.
In 1736 he married Mary Wortley Montagu. They had at least eleven children: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46393 |
Swansea
Swansea (; ) is a coastal city and county, officially known as the City and County of Swansea () in Wales. The county area includes Swansea Bay () and the Gower Peninsula. Swansea's position on the southwest coast of Wales is within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan and the ancient Welsh commote of Gŵyr. Swansea is the second largest city in Wales and the twenty-fifth largest city in the United Kingdom. Swansea had a population of 241,300 in 2014; the second most populous local authority area in Wales after Cardiff. Together with Neath and Port Talbot, Swansea formed a wider Urban Area of 300,352 in 2011.
During the 19th-century industrial heyday, Swansea was the key centre of the copper-smelting industry, earning the nickname "Copperopolis".
Archaeological finds in the Swansea area come mostly from the Gower Peninsula, and include items from the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. The Romans occupied the area.
The two largest rivers in the region are the Tawe which passes through the city centre and the Loughor which marks the northern border with Carmarthenshire. The Welsh name, "Abertawe", translates to "Mouth of the Tawe". It first appears 1150 as "Aper Tyui".
Swansea is thought to have developed as a Viking trading post. Its English name may derive from "Sveinn's island"Old Norse: Sveinseythe reference to an island may refer either to a bank at the mouth of the River Tawe or to an area of raised ground in marshes. An alternative explanation derives the place name from the Norse personal name "Sweyn" and "ey", which can mean "inlet". This explanation supports the tradition that the city was founded by King Sweyn Forkbeard (reigned in Denmark from 986 to 1014). The name is pronounced Swans-y ), not Swan-sea.
The earliest known form of the modern name, "Sweynesse", appears in the first charter, granted sometime between 1158 and 1184 by William de Newburgh, 3rd Earl of Warwick. The charter gave Swansea the status of a borough, granting the townsmen (called burgesses) certain rights to develop the area. In 1215 King John granted a second charter, in which the name appears as "Sweyneshe". A town seal which is believed to date from this period names the town as "Sweyse".
Following the Norman conquest, a marcher lordship was granted by Henry I under the title of Gower. It included land around Swansea Bay as far as the River Tawe, the manor of Kilvey beyond the Tawe, and the peninsula itself. Swansea was designated chief town of the lordship and received a borough charter at some point between 1158 and 1184 (and a more elaborate one in 1304).
From the early 1700s to the late 1800s, Swansea was the world's leading copper-smelting area. Numerous smelters along the River Tawe received copper and other metal ores shipped from Cornwall and Devon, as well as from North and South America, Africa, and Australia. The industry declined severely in the late 1800s, and none of the smelters is now active.
The port of Swansea initially traded in wine, hides, wool, cloth and later in coal. After the invention of the reverbatory furnace in the late 1600s, copper smelting was able to use coal rather than more-expensive charcoal. At the same time, the mines of Cornwall were increasing copper production. Swansea became the ideal place to smelt the Cornish copper ores, being close to the coalfields of South Wales and having an excellent port to receive ships carrying Cornish copper ore. Because each ton of copper ore smelted used about three tons of coal, it was more economical to ship the copper ore to Wales rather than send the coal to Cornwall.
The first copper smelter at Swansea was established in 1717, followed by many more. Once smelting was established, the smelters began receiving high-grade ore and ore concentrates from around the world. More coal mines opened to meet demand from northeast Gower to Clyne and Llangyfelach. In the 1850s Swansea had more than 600 furnaces, and a fleet of 500 oceangoing ships carrying out Welsh coal and bringing back metal ore from around the world. At that time most of the copper matte produced in the United States was sent to Swansea for refining. .
Smelters also processed arsenic, zinc, tin, and other metals. Nearby factories produced tinplate and pottery. The Swansea smelters became so adept at recovering gold and silver from complex ores that in the 1800s they received ore concentrates from the United States, for example from Arizona in the 1850s, and Colorado in the 1860s.
The city expanded rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was termed "Copperopolis". From the late 17th century to 1801, Swansea's population grew by 500%—the first official census (in 1841) indicated that, with 6,099 inhabitants, Swansea had become significantly larger than Glamorgan's county town, Cardiff, and was the second most populous town in Wales behind Merthyr Tydfil (which had a population of 7,705). However, the census understated Swansea's true size, as much of the built-up area lay outside the contemporary boundaries of the borough; the total population was actually 10,117. Swansea's population was later overtaken by Merthyr in 1821 and by Cardiff in 1881, although in the latter year Swansea once again surpassed Merthyr. Much of Swansea's growth was due to migration from within and beyond Wales—in 1881 more than a third of the borough's population had been born outside Swansea and Glamorgan, and just under a quarter outside Wales.
Copper smelting at Swansea declined in the late 1800s for a number of reasons. Copper mining in Cornwall declined. The price of copper dropped from £112 in 1860 to £35 in the 1890s. In the early 1900s, mining shifted to lower-grade copper deposits in North and South America, and the lower-grade ore could not support transportation to Swansea.
The Swansea and Mumbles Railway was built in 1804 to move limestone from the quarries of Mumbles and coal from the Clyne valley to Swansea and to the markets beyond. It carried the world's first fare-paying rail passengers on the day the British Parliament abolished the transportation of slaves from Africa. It later moved from horse power to steam locomotion, and finally converting to electric trams, before closing in January 1960, in favour of motor buses.
Through the 20th century, heavy industries in the town declined, leaving the Lower Swansea Valley filled with derelict works and mounds of waste products from them. The Lower Swansea Valley Scheme (which still continues) reclaimed much of the land. The present Enterprise Zone was the result and, of the many original docks, only those outside the city continue to work as docks; North Dock is now Parc Tawe and South Dock became the Marina.
In the Second World War, Swansea's industrial importance made it a target of German bombing, and much of the town centre was destroyed during the Swansea Blitz on the 19, 20 and 21 February 1941 (the 'Three Nights Blitz').
In 1969 Swansea was granted city status to mark Prince Charles's investiture as the Prince of Wales. The Prince made the announcement on 3 July 1969 during a tour of Wales. Swansea obtained the further right to have a Lord Mayor in 1982.
Within the city centre are the ruins of the castle, the Marina, the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea Museum, the Dylan Thomas Centre, the Environment Centre, and the Market, which is the largest covered market in Wales.
It backs onto the Quadrant Shopping Centre, which opened in 1978, and the adjoining St David's Centre opened in 1982. Other notable modern buildings include the BT Tower (formerly the GPO tower) built around 1970, Alexandra House opened in 1976, County Hall opened in July 1982. Swansea Leisure Centre opened in 1977; it has undergone extensive refurbishment which retained elements of the original structure and re-opened in March 2008.
The "City and County of Swansea" local authority area is bordered by unitary authorities of Carmarthenshire to the north, and Neath Port Talbot to the east. The Urban Subdivision of Swansea covers all urbanised areas within the city boundary, with a population of 179,485, it is considerably smaller than the unitary authority.
The local government area is in size, about 2% of the area of Wales. It includes a large amount of open countryside and a central urban and suburban belt.
In 1887, Swansea was a township at the mouth of the river Tawe, covering in the county of Glamorgan. There were three major extensions to the boundaries of the borough, first in 1835, when Morriston, St Thomas, Landore, St John-juxta-Swansea, and part of Llansamlet parish were added, and again in 1889 when areas around Cwmbwrla and Trewyddfa were included, and in 1918 when the borough was enlarged to include the whole of the ancient parish of Swansea, the southern part of Llangyfelach parish, all of Llansamlet parish, Oystermouth Urban District and Brynau parish.
In 1889, Swansea attained county borough status, and it was granted city status in 1969, which was inherited by the Swansea district when it was formed by the merger of the borough and Gower Rural District in 1974. In 1996, Swansea became one of 22 unitary authorities with the addition of part of the former Lliw Valley Borough. The new authority received the name 'City and County of Swansea' ().
Swansea was once a staunch stronghold of the Labour Party which, until 2004, had overall control of the council for 24 years. The Liberal Democrats were the largest group in the administration that took control of Swansea Council in the 2004 local elections until the 2012 council elections saw the council return to Labour control. For 2009/2010, the Lord Mayor of Swansea was Councillor Alan Lloyd, and in 2010/2011 Richard Lewis was the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor changes in May each year.
The Welsh Parliament constituencies are:
The city is also part of the South Wales West regional constituency and is served by Suzy Davies MS (Conservative), Bethan Jenkins MS (Plaid Cymru), Caroline Jones MS (UKIP) and Dai Lloyd MS (Plaid Cymru).
The UK parliamentary constituencies in Swansea are:
Swansea may be divided into four physical areas. The geology is complex, providing diverse scenery. The Gower Peninsula to the west was the first area in the United Kingdom to be designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Apart from the southeast corner, the whole of the Gower Peninsula is within the AONB. Swansea has numerous urban and country parklands. The region has featured regularly in the Wales in Bloom awards.
To the north are the Lliw uplands which are mainly open moorland, reaching the foothills of the Black Mountain range. To the east is the coastal strip around Swansea Bay. Cutting through the middle from the southeast to the northwest is the urban and suburban zone stretching from the Swansea city centre to the towns of Gorseinon and Pontarddulais.
The most populated areas of Swansea are Morriston, Sketty and the city centre. The chief urbanised area radiates from the city centre towards the north, south and west; along the coast of Swansea Bay to Mumbles; up the Swansea Valley past Landore and Morriston to Clydach; over Townhill and Mayhill to Cwmbwrla, Penlan, Treboeth and Fforestfach; through Uplands, Sketty, Killay to Dunvant; and east of the river from St. Thomas to Bonymaen, Llansamlet and Birchgrove. A second urbanised area is focused on a triangle defined by Gowerton, Gorseinon and Loughor along with the satellite communities of Penllergaer and Pontarddulais. About three-quarters of Swansea is on the coast—the Loughor Estuary, Swansea Bay and the Bristol Channel.
The geology of the Gower Peninsula ranges from Carboniferous Limestone cliffs along its southern edge from Mumbles to Worm's Head and the salt-marshes and dune systems of the Loughor estuary to the north. The eastern, southern and western coasts of the peninsula are lined with numerous sandy beaches both wide and small, separated by steep cliffs. The South Wales Coalfield reaches the coast in the Swansea area. This had a great bearing on the development of the city of Swansea and other nearby towns such as Morriston. The inland area is covered by large swathes of grassland common overlooked by sandstone heath ridges including the prominent Cefn Bryn. The traditional agricultural landscape consists in a patchwork of fields characterised by walls, stone-faced banks and hedgerows. Valleys cut through the peninsula and contain rich deciduous woodland.
Much of Swansea is hilly with the main area of upland being located in the council ward of Mawr. Areas up to range across the central section: Kilvey Hill, Townhill and Llwynmawr separate the centre of Swansea from its northern suburbs. Cefn Bryn, a ridge of high land, is the backbone of the Gower Peninsula. Rhossili Down, Hardings Down and Llanmadoc Hill are up to high. The highest point is located Penlle'r Castell at on the northern border with Carmarthenshire.
Swansea has a temperate oceanic climate. As part of a coastal region, it experiences a milder climate than inland. Swansea is exposed to rain-bearing winds from the Atlantic. During spring and summer, temperatures in Swansea can reach the high twenties Celsius.
From 1804 until the 1920s, Swansea experienced continuous population growth. The 1930s and 1940s was a period of slight decline. In the 1950s and 1960s the population grew and then fell in the 1970s. The population grew again in the 1980s only to fall again in the 1990s. In the 21st century, Swansea is experiencing a small amount of population growth; the local authority area had an estimated population of 228,100 in 2007.
Around 82% of the population were born in Wales and 13% born in England; 13.4% were Welsh speakers.
The population of the Swansea built-up area within the unitary authority boundaries in 2011 was about 179,485, and the council population was 238,700. The other built-up areas within the unitary authority are centred on Gorseinon and Pontarddulais. In 2011, the Gorseinon built-up area had a population of 20,581 and the Pontarddulais built-up area had a population of 9,073.
The wider urban area, including most of Swansea Bay, has a total population of 300,352, making it the third largest urban area in Wales and the 27th largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Over 218,000 individuals are white; 1,106 are of mixed race; 2,215 are Asian – mainly Bangladeshi (1,015); 300 are black; and 1,195 belong to other ethnic groups.
The Office for National Statistics 2010 mid-year population estimate for the City & County of Swansea is 232,500.
The Royal Institution of South Wales was founded in 1835 as the Swansea Literary and Philosophical Society.
The Grand Theatre in the centre of the city is a Victorian theatre which celebrated its centenary in 1997 and which has a capacity of a little over a thousand people. It was opened by the celebrated opera singer Adelina Patti and was refurbished from 1983 to 1987. The annual programme ranges from pantomime and drama to opera and ballet.
Fluellen Theatre Company is a professional theatre company based in Swansea who perform at the Grand Theatre and the Dylan Thomas Centre. The Taliesin building on the university campus has a theatre, opened in 1984. Other theatres include the Dylan Thomas Theatre (formerly the Little Theatre) near the marina, and one in Penyrheol Leisure Centre near Gorseinon. In the summer, outdoor Shakespeare performances are a regular feature at Oystermouth Castle, and Singleton Park is the venue for a number of parties and concerts, from dance music to outdoor Proms. A folk festival is held on Gower. Standing near Victoria Park on the coast road is the Patti Pavilion; this was the Winter Garden from Adelina Patti's Craig-y-Nos estate in the upper Swansea valley, which she donated to the town in 1918. It is used as a venue for music shows and fairs. The Brangwyn Hall is a multi-use venue with events such as the graduation ceremonies for Swansea University. Every autumn, Swansea hosts a Festival of Music and the Arts, when international orchestras and soloists visit the Brangwyn Hall. The Brangwyn Hall is praised for its acoustics for recitals, orchestral pieces and chamber music alike.
Swansea is home to the Palace Theatre. Located at 156 High Street, it is recognisable for its distinctive wedge shape. Originally built in 1888 as a traditional music hall, the building's original name was the 'Pavilion'. During its lifetime, the building has been used as a bingo hall as well as a nightclub.
In 2018 Singleton Park, Swansea was the home-city for BBC Music's 'Biggest Weekend' featuring Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Sam Smith, Florence + The Machine and others. Priority was given to Swansea residents in purchasing tickets for this one-off 'day festival' (over 2 days); tickets were priced at £18 a day and all 60,000 tickets (30,000 for each day) sold out almost instantly.
Swansea hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1863, 1891, 1907, 1926, 1964, 1982 and 2006. The 2006 event occupied the site of the former Felindre tinplate works to the north of the city and featured a strikingly pink main tent. In 2009 Swansea Council launched Wales's only week long St David's Week festival in venues throughout the city. The Beginning and Do Not Go Gentle are Festivals in the Uplands area of the city where Dylan Thomas was born and lived for 23 years.
There are many Welsh language chapels and churches in the area. Welsh-medium education is a popular and growing choice for both English- and Welsh-speaking families. Just over 1,600 secondary pupils were educated through the medium of Welsh in 2017. Nearly double this figure, 3,063 pupils are currently educated through the medium of Welsh in the primary sector. The 2014 Swansea Pre-School survey showed that 35% of parents across the City and County of Swansea would select a Welsh education for their children if there was a local Welsh school available to them. 45% of the rural council ward Mawr are able to speak Welsh, as can 38% of the ward of Pontarddulais. Clydach, Kingsbridge and Upper Loughor all have levels of more than 20%. By contrast, the urban St. Thomas has one of the lowest figures in Wales, at 6.4%, a figure only barely lower than Penderry and Townhill wards.
Local produce includes cockles and laverbread sourced from the Loughor estuary. Salt marsh lamb, raised in the salt marshes of the estuary, is also a local speciality.
The city has three Grade One listed buildings: Swansea Castle, the Tabernacle Chapel, Morriston and the Swansea Guildhall. Swansea Castle was an impressive building occupying a strategic position above the River Tawe. The ruins that are visible today date from the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Today, the castle is hemmed in by modern buildings. The Tabernacle Chapel at Morriston was built in 1872 by John Humphreys of Swansea. A unique feature is the use of semi-circular arches. The building has been described as the "Nonconformist Cathedral of Wales" and has been listed as Grade I on the basis that it is "the most ambitious grand chapel in Wales, its interior and fittings remain virtually unaltered". The Guildhall is one of the main office buildings in the centre of the city and was designed by Percy Thomas and opened in 1934. It is faced in white Portland stone and includes a tall clock-tower which makes it a landmark. The building comprises the City Hall, the Brangwyn Hall concert venue and the County Law Courts. It is considered "the most important building in Wales of its period".
In addition to these there are a number of Grade II* listed buildings; Ebenezer Baptist Chapel and its Hall in Ebenezer Street; the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery; the Midland Bank building; the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Kingsway, along with its Hall and School blocks; the Offices of Associated British Ports in Pier Street; the Royal Institution of South Wales building, now Swansea Museum in Victoria Road; and the Old Guildhall in Somerset Place.
The poet Dylan Thomas is perhaps the best-known. He was born in the town and grew up at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Uplands, where he lived for 23 years and produced two-thirds of his published work from his tiny bedroom which has been faithfully recreated as it may have been in 1934 and is open for house tours, events, Edwardian dinner parties and overnight stays. There is a memorial to him in the nearby Cwmdonkin Park; his take on Swansea was that it was an "ugly lovely town". In the 1930s Thomas was a member of a group of local artists, writers and musicians known as The Kardomah Gang, as they frequently met in the Kardomah Café which was in Castle Street, Swansea until bombed during the second World War.
Throughout the 19th century, the Vivian family did much to develop Swansea into a city. Their wealth and influence came from large copper mining, smelting and trading businesses in Swansea (Vivian & Sons), and is still visible today in their former family residences: Singleton Abbey (now used by Swansea University), Sketty Hall, Clyne Castle and Clyne Gardens. Henry Vivian became the first Lord Swansea in 1893.
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in Swansea. He was educated at the state-sector Dynevor School, Swansea before reading theology at Christ's College, Cambridge. Catherine Zeta-Jones was born and raised in Swansea and still owns a home in Mumbles. Swansea is the home town of Non Stanford, the 2013 ITU Triathlon World Champion. The thriller writer, Mark Ellis was educated in Swansea.
People from Swansea are known locally as Swansea Jacks, or just Jacks. The source of this nickname is not clear. Some attribute it to Swansea Jack, the life-saving dog.
Swansea City A.F.C. (founded 1912) is the city's main football association team. Originally playing at the Vetch Field, they moved to the Liberty Stadium at the start of the 2005–2006 season, winning promotion to League One in their final year at their old stadium. The team presently play in the English Championship, after spending seven seasons in the English Premier League. The Football Association of Wales had decided that for the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign, Wales would play all of their home ties at either the Cardiff City Stadium or the Liberty Stadium.
Swansea has four association football clubs that play in the Welsh football league system: Swansea University F.C., Garden Village, South Gower and West End.
Swansea is home to Swansea Rugby Football Club (Swansea RFC), a founder member of the Welsh Rugby Union and one of the most important teams in the early history of Welsh rugby union. Playing out of St Helens Rugby and Cricket Ground the club not only produced several of the greatest Welsh rugby superstars, including Billy Bancroft and Billy Trew, they also hosted national touring sides from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Known as the 'All Whites', Swansea kept a constant supply of players that filled the Welsh ranks in the early history of the game. In 1935 Swansea became the first club side to beat the All Blacks.
In 2003, Swansea RFC merged with Neath RFC to form the Ospreys. Swansea RFC remained at St Helen's in semi-professional form, but the Ospreys moved into the Liberty Stadium in Landore for the start of the 2005–2006 season. Neath-Swansea rugby games used to be hotly contested matches, such that there was some debate about whether a team incorporating both areas was possible. The team came fifth in the Celtic League in their first year of existence and topped that league in their second year. By 2012 they had won the league a record four times.
St Helens Rugby and Cricket Ground is the home of Swansea RFC and Glamorgan County Cricket Club have previously played matches there. In this ground, Sir Garfield Sobers hit six sixes in one over; the first time this was achieved in a game of first-class cricket. The final ball landed on the ground past the Cricketers' pub just outside the ground. It is also the home of the tallest floodlight stand in Europe.
Swansea's rugby league side plays from Swansea in the small town of Ystalyfera. They are known as the Swansea Valley Miners but were formed as the Swansea Bulls in 2002.
The Swansea Bowls Stadium opened in early 2008. The stadium hosted the World Indoor Singles and Mixed Pairs Championship in April 2008 and the Gravelles Welsh International Open Bowls Championships in 2009.
In 2001, 158,457 people in the local authority area (71 per cent) stated their religion to be Christian, 44,286 (20 per cent) no religion, 16,800 (7.5 per cent) did not state a religion and 2,167 were Muslim. There are small communities of other religions, each making up a little under 1 per cent of the total population.
Swansea is part of the Anglican Diocese of Swansea and Brecon and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Menevia. The Catholic see is based in Swansea at St. Joseph's Cathedral in the Greenhill area.
Swansea, like Wales in general, has seen many Non-conformist religious revivals. In 1904, Evan Roberts, a miner from Loughor (Llwchwr), just outside Swansea, was the leader of what has been called one of the world's greatest Protestant religious revivals. Within a few months about 100,000 people were converted. This revival in particular had a profound effect on Welsh society. Swansea is covered by the Swansea and Gower Methodist Circuit.
The Ebenezer Baptist Church dates from November 1875 when the foundation stone was laid for Tabernacle chapel in Skinner Street. The first pastor, the Rev. J. D. Jones, was called in February 1876 and the new building was opened in July that year. The church was served by a number of ministers until 1911 when the Rev. R. J. Willoughby came to the church. The church has an organ by Harrison & Harrison.
The Norwegian Church is a Grade II listed building in the docklands area of the city. The church building was originally located at Newport Docks. The building consists of a Seaman's Mission to the west end and a single gothic church to the east end. It was originally built as a place of worship for Norwegian sailors when they visited the UK. It was relocated to Swansea in 1910 at a site directly opposite the Sainsbury's supermarket on the River Tawe.
The city is home to 10% of the total Welsh Muslim population; Swansea's Muslim community is raising money to open a new central mosque and community centre in the former St. Andrew's United Reformed Church. This would replace the existing central Mosque on St Helens Road and be in addition to the other three existing mosques (Swansea University Mosque, Hafod Mosque, Imam Khoei Mosque).
Swansea is represented in Buddhism with the Dharmavajra Kadampa Buddhist Centre, Pulpung Changchub Dargyeling (Kagyu Tradition) and a branch of the international Dzogchen Community (Nyingma Tradition). Swansea Synagogue and Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall are both located in the Uplands area. Around 160 people in Swansea indicated they were Jewish in the 2011 census.
Swansea City Centre is undergoing a £1 billion transformation scheme. A large area of the city is earmarked for redevelopment. A new city-centre retail precinct is planned involving demolition of the dilapidated St. David's Shopping Centre which has three or four traders, about 13% of the retail space in the centre and the Quadrant Shopping Centre. Including relocation of the Tesco Superstore near to the city's Sainsbury's store in Parc Tawe, the new retail precinct will be almost four times the size of the Quadrant Centre. The city centre is also being brightened up with street art and new walkways, along with the first phase of the David Evans – Castle Street development. New green spaces will be provided in conjunction with the proposed Quadrant Square and Grand Theatre Square. Redevelopment of the Oxford Street car park and Lower Oxford Street arcades are also planned.
At the sea front, The Tower, Meridian Quay is now Wales's tallest building at a height of with a restaurant on the top (29th) floor. It was under construction adjacent Swansea Marina until 2010.
Swansea originally developed as centre for metals and mining, especially the copper industry, from the beginning of the 18th century. The industry reached its apogee in the 1880s, when 60% of the copper ores imported to Britain were smelted in the Lower Swansea valley. However, by the end of the Second World War these heavy industries were in decline, and over the post-war decades Swansea shared in the general trend towards a post-industrial, service sector economy.
Of the 105,900 people estimated to work within the City and County of Swansea, over 90% are employed in the service sectors, with relatively high shares (compared to the Welsh and UK averages) in "public administration, education & health" and "banking, finance & insurance", and correspondingly high proportions of employment in occupations associated with the service sector, including professional, administrative/secretarial and sales/customer service occupations. The local authority believes this pattern reflects Swansea's role as a service centre for South West Wales.
Economic activity and employment rates in Swansea were slightly above the Welsh average in October 2008, but lower than the UK average. In 2005, GVA per head in Swansea was £14,302 – nearly 4% above the Welsh average but 20% below the UK average. Median full-time earnings in Swansea were £21,577 in 2007, almost identical to the Welsh average.
Swansea is home to the DVLA headquarters in Morriston, which employs around 6,000 people in the city. Other major employers in the city are Admiral Group, HSBC, Virgin Media, Swansea Bay University Health Board, BT and Amazon.co.uk. Virgin Atlantic also maintains its largest worldwide contact centre in Swansea; including reservations, sales, baggage claims, and customer relations.
Swansea University has a campus in Singleton Park overlooking Swansea Bay. Its engineering department is recognised as a centre of excellence with pioneering work on computational techniques for solving engineering design problems. The department of physics is renowned for its research achievements at the frontiers of theoretical physics, particularly in the areas of elementary particle physics and string theory. Many other departments including history, computer science and German have been awarded an "Excellent" inspection ratings. In 2015 Swansea University opened a new Bay Campus situated in the Jersey Marine area of Swansea. The university was awarded "The Times" Higher Education Supplement Award for the UK's "best student experience" in 2005. In 2017, Swansea University Medical School was ranked as the third best medical school in the United Kingdom, behind Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Other establishments for further and higher education in the city include University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Gower College Swansea. Trinity Saint David was formed on 18 November 2010 through the merger of University of Wales Lampeter and Trinity University college Carmarthen under Lampeter's royal charter of 1828. On 1 August 2013, Swansea Metropolitan University became part of University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD). Swansea Metropolitan University was particularly well known for its Architectural Glass department, as well as its Teaching and Transport & Logistics degrees. Trinity Saint David also took over the Swansea Business School, which was formerly part of the Metropolitan University. It continues to provide higher education in the field on business including an MBA programme.
In the local authority area, there is one nursery school; six infant schools and five junior schools. There are 77 primary schools, eleven of which are Welsh-Medium, and six of which are voluntary aided. There are 15 comprehensive schools under the remit of the local education authority, of which two are Welsh-medium. In addition, there are six special schools.
The oldest school in Swansea is Bishop Gore School, founded in 1682. The largest comprehensive school is Olchfa School. There is one Roman Catholic comprehensive school – Bishop Vaughan Catholic Comprehensive School. Other secondary schools include Birchgrove Comprehensive School, Cefn Hengoed Community School, Dylan Thomas School, Pentrehafod Comprehensive School, Morriston Comprehensive School and Gowerton School. There are 11 Welsh-medium secondary schools in Swansea, including Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Gŵyr and Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Bryn Tawe.
Independent schools in Swansea include Ffynone House School and Oakleigh House School.
The local newspaper is the Swansea edition of the South Wales Evening Post. The Swansea Herald of Wales was a free newspaper which was distributed every week to residential addresses until 2011 when the paper ceased to be in print. The Cardiff edition of the free daily paper Metro is distributed throughout the city. The council also produces a free monthly newspaper called the Swansea Leader. Swansea Life is a monthly lifestyle magazine published and distributed in Swansea.
Swansea is served by three local radio stations – the Contemporary Hit Radio-formatted 96.4 The Wave on FM and DAB, its sister station Swansea Sound on 1170MW and DAB and lastly, the Adult Contemporary-orientated 102.1 Swansea Bay Radio on FM and DAB. The city also has a community radio station Radio Tircoed. It is also served by two regional radio stations: Heart South Wales on its Swansea area frequency (106.0FM) and Nation Radio on its Swansea area frequency (107.3FM) and DAB.
The patients and staff at Singleton Hospital can listen to the hospital radio station, Radio City 1386AM and Swansea University also runs its own radio station, Xtreme Radio, on 1431 AM. Providing the DAB service, the local multiplex called Swansea SW Wales is broadcast from Kilvey Hill. This transmitter also provides digital terrestrial television in the Swansea area. As well as Kilvey Hill the city is in the catchment areas of the Wenvoe transmitter (in the Vale of Glamorgan) and the Carmel transmitter in Carmarthenshire.
Since 1924, the BBC has maintained a studio in the city; Dylan Thomas worked here in the interwar years, when the studio was used for the BBC Regional Programme. Currently it has facilities to broadcast live radio and television and is listed as a BBC regional studio.
In mid-2008, the BBC included Swansea in its "Big Screen" project, and a large live permanent television screen has been sited in Castle Square.
Independent filmmakers Undercurrents and Studio8 are based in Swansea, and the city plays host to the BeyondTV Film Festival. BeyondTV is annual event organised by Undercurrents to showcase the best of activism filmmakers. Swansea has also hosted the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival, where past-winning directors have included Gareth Evans, Anthony James, Alun D Pughe and Andrew Jones.
Swansea has been used as a location for films such as "Only Two Can Play", "Submarine" and "Twin Town", the TV series "Mine All Mine" and in episodes of "Doctor Who".
Swansea was the first city in Wales to feature in its own version of the board game Monopoly. The Swansea edition of Monopoly features 33 local landmarks, including the Mumbles Pier and the National Waterfront Museum; the game has been produced in both English and Welsh.
Swansea was also featured in a television documentary titled Swansea Love Story as part of the Rule Britannia series on VBS.tv. The film is of a rather graphic nature and features heroin users as well as community members affected by the narcotic while trying to provide some explanation for the increase in use. Swansea was featured in several Yes Minister series as an undesirable civil service posting, in particular the vehicle licensing centre.
Swansea is also the hometown of Edward Kenway, the main protagonist of . This is because Matt Ryan, the voice actor of Edward, is from Swansea.
Swansea is policed by the South Wales Police. The regional headquarters for the Swansea area is Swansea Central Police Station.
Ambulance services are provided by the Welsh Ambulance Service, and fire services by the Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service. Swansea Airport is one of the country's three Wales Air Ambulance bases, the others being Welshpool and Caernarfon.
Local public healthcare services are operated by Swansea Bay University Health Board, who operate two hospitals in Swansea, Singleton Hospital and Morriston Hospital; the latter provides Accident and Emergency services. Singleton Hospital has one of Wales's three radiotherapy departments.
Waste management services are coordinated by the local council, which deals with refuse collection and recycling and operates five civic amenity sites.
The electricity Distribution Network Operator supplying Swansea is Western Power Distribution.
Welsh Water provides drinking water supply and wastewater services to Swansea. There is a water treatment works at Crymlyn Burrows. Reservoirs which supply Swansea include the Cray reservoir and the Lliw Reservoirs, which are operated by Welsh Water.
The Local Gas Distribution company is Wales and West Utilities.
There was a high rate of car crime during the 1990s. In 2002, the BBC described Swansea as a "black spot for car crime". Car crime is a central theme in the film "Twin Town", which was set in and around Swansea and Port Talbot.
The football violence that Swansea experienced during the 1970s–1990s has considerably reduced, the only major clashes occurring between Swansea City supporters and Cardiff City supporters. Many matches between these sides have ended in violence in both Swansea and Cardiff. These two clubs have a long history of intense rivalry, being described in the media as "tribal".
The M4 motorway, with junctions 44 to 47, bypasses Swansea, replacing the A48 as the main east–west route. Both the M4 and the A48 connect with Neath, Port Talbot and Cardiff to the east and Carmarthen to the west. The A483 dual carriageway links the city centre with the motorway at junction 42 to the east and junction 47 to the north west.
On departing Swansea to the north, the A483 multiplexes with the A48 before continuing through mid Wales and terminating at Chester. The A4067 connecting Mumbles with the city centre and continuing up the Swansea Valley towards Brecon is also a dual carriageway for much of its route through Swansea. Other notable local roads include the A484, which provides a link from Fforestfach west to Llanelli, and the A4118, the main route westwards from the city centre across Gower to Port Eynon.
Swansea railway station is approximately a ten-minute walk from Swansea bus station. Services calling at Swansea operate to Llanelli, Carmarthen, Haverfordwest, Milford Haven, Tenby, Pembroke Dock and Fishguard Harbour (connecting with the Stena Line to Rosslare Europort and Irish Rail to Dublin Connolly) to the west, Shrewsbury to the northeast via the Heart of Wales Line with four trains each way, Monday–Saturday, and Cardiff Central, Newport, Bristol Parkway, Swindon, Reading and London Paddington to the east run by Great Western Railway. There are also suburban stations in Gowerton, Llansamlet and in Pontarddulais which are served by Transport for Wales.
Swansea Airport is a minor aerodrome situated in the Gower providing recreational flights only. Further development of the airport is strongly resisted by the local communities and environmental groups. Swansea is served by Cardiff Airport, east, in the Vale of Glamorgan, which provides scheduled domestic and international flights. It is approximately 40 minutes away by road or 70 minutes by rail. Pembrey Airport, to the west offers charter flights to a few European destinations.
Swansea Marina to the south of the city centre has berths for 410 leisure boats. An addition 200 berths for leisure boats are located near the mouth of the River Tawe. Further leisure boating berths are being constructed at the Prince of Wales Dock in the Swansea Docks complex. The Swansea Docks complex is owned and operated by Associated British Ports and is used to handle a range of cargo ranging from agribulks and coal to timber and steel. Swansea Docks consists of three floating docks and a ferry terminal.
Fastnet Line operated a Swansea Cork Ferry roll-on/roll-off service until November 2011, when the service was ended. A proposal for a catamaran-based passenger ferry service from Ilfracombe to Swanseascheduled to begin in time for Easter in 2010 has yet to launch. It would have had two return trips a day taking around 50 minutes each way and carried cycles.
Bus routes within Swansea are operated predominantly by First Cymru, while smaller bus and coach operators such as NAT Group, South Wales Transport, Lewis Coaches, First Call Travel and DANSA also operate some routes in the city, most of which serving Swansea bus station. First operates the Swansea Metro, a road-based FTR bus rapid transit route, introduced between Morriston Hospital and Singleton Hospital in 2009, and a shuttle bus (Service X10) to Cardiff Central bus station calling at Bridgend Designer Outlet. In late 2015 the fleet of Wright StreetCar articulated buses that served the Swansea Metro route were removed from service and replaced with standard non-articulated Wright StreetLite vehicles.
Veolia used to operate the rural services around the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw Valley branded Gower Explorer and Lliw Link respectively. Since Veolia's withdrawal from Swansea, these services were operated by First Cymru for several years, and are now operated by NAT Group.
Swansea direct coach services are:
Park and ride services are operated from car parks at Landore and Fabian Way. During busy periods of the year, additional services are operated from the Brynmill recreation ground.
Subsidised services to Fforestfach were cut in 2015 due to local authority financial constraints.
There are four dedicated cycle routes in the local authority's area:
City cruiser pedal vehicles are being introduced to the city centre in a joint venture between the council and Swansea Business Improvement District.
In November 2007 a new bridge was completed over the Fabian Way which provides a one way park and ride bus lane and a shared-use pedestrian and NCN route 4 cycle way. The leaf-shaped bridge was shortlisted for the 2008 Structural Steel Design Awards.
A number of beaches around Swansea Bay are promoted to visitors. Surfing is possible at Langland Bay, Caswell Bay and Llangennith, with the latter winning accolades from two national newspapers for the quality of its waves. The five-mile promenade from the Marina to Mumbles offers views across Swansea Bay. The seaside village of Mumbles has a Victorian pier, small, independent shops and boutiques, restaurants and cafes. The south coast of Gower is the chief magnet for walkers, with a path stretching from Mumbles Head across the cliff tops, beaches and coastal woodland to Rhossili.
On the Waterfront, Swansea Bay has a five-mile (8 km) sweep of coastline which features a beach, promenade, children's lido, leisure pool, marina and maritime quarter featuring the museums the National Waterfront Museum and Swansea Museum, the oldest museum in Wales. Also situated in the maritime quarter is the Dylan Thomas Centre, which celebrates the life and work of the author with its permanent exhibition 'Dylan Thomas – Man and Myth', and Mission Gallery, a unique art gallery also in the heart of the Maritime Quarter which hosts a range of exhibitions from various art disciplines; it also host a craft space, with ranging works from local and international artists. The Dylan Thomas Centre is the focal point for the annual Dylan Thomas Festival (27 October – 9 November). There is a permanent exhibition at the Dylan Thomas Birthplace and Home for 23 years in Uplands which has been restored to its condition as a new house when bought by the Thomas family in 1914 a few months before Dylan was born in the front bedroom. The SA1 Waterfront area is the latest development for living, dining and leisure.
Swansea Bay, Mumbles and Gower are home to various parks and gardens and almost 20 nature reserves. Clyne Gardens is home to a collection of plants set in parkland and host to 'Clyne in Bloom' in May. Singleton Park has acres of parkland, a botanical garden, a boating lake with pedal boats, and crazy golf. Plantasia is a tropical hothouse pyramid featuring three climatic zones, housing a variety of unusual plants, including several species which are extinct in the wild, and monkeys, reptiles, fish and a butterfly house. Other parks include Cwmdonkin Park, where Dylan Thomas played as a child, and Victoria Park which is close to the promenade on the seafront.
Oxwich Bay on the Gower Peninsula was named the most beautiful beach in Britain by travel writers who visited more than 1,000 beaches around the world in search of the perfect sands (2007). "The Travel Magazine" praised Oxwich for "magnificent and unspoilt" scenery and as a "great place for adults and children to explore". It has over three miles (5 km) of sand and "The Guardian" named it one of Britain's blue-riband top 10 category beaches (2007). "The Independent" newspaper hailed Rhossili Bay as "the British supermodel of beaches" (2006) and the best beach in Britain for breathtaking cliffs (2007), whilst "The Sunday Times" listed it as one of the 25 best beaches in the world (2006). Thanks to its clear air and lovely golden sand, this romantic stretch of sand was voted the best place in the UK to watch the sun set ("Country Living" magazine 2005) and one of the top romantic spots in the country ("The Guardian" 2007).
Llangennith Beach, with its soft sands, consistent beach break and great facilities, was listed as the best place to learn how to surf in Britain by The Observer (2006) and one of the 10 'classic surfing beaches by "The Guardian" (2007). Gower also claims Britain's Best Beach, Three Cliffs Bay. The Gower landmark topped the BBC Holiday Hit Squad nationwide competition (2006) and was voted Britain's best camping beach by "The Independent" thanks to its superb setting and quiet location (2007). Three Cliffs Bay also made the final of the ITV series Britain's Favourite View – the only nomination in Wales and backed by singer Katherine Jenkins. Nearby Brandy Cove came sixth in an online poll to find the UK's top beach for the baby boomer generation (2006). Beaches which won 2006 Blue Flag Beach Awards are: Bracelet Bay, Caswell Bay, Langland Bay, Port Eynon Bay and Swansea Marina (one of the few Blue Flag Marinas in Wales). All of these beaches also won a Seaside Award 2006. Limeslade was awarded the Rural Seaside Award and the Green Coast Award. Other Green Coast Awards went to Pwll Du, Rhossili Bay and Tor Bay.
Swansea has a range of activities including sailing, water skiing, surfing, and other watersports, walking and cycling. Part of the Celtic Trail and the National Cycle Network, Swansea Bay provides a range of traffic-free cycle routes including along the seafront and through Clyne Valley Country Park. The Cycling Touring Club CTC has a local group in the area. Swansea Bay, Mumbles and Gower have a selection of golf courses.
Prior to closure in 2003, Swansea Leisure Centre was one of the top ten visitor attractions in the Wales; it has been redeveloped as an indoor waterpark, rebranded the 'LC', and was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 7 March 2008. The Wales National Pool is in Swansea.
Swansea has a number of pubs, bars, clubs, restaurants and a casino. Swansea had two casinos until 30 August 2012 when Aspers closed. The majority of city centre bars are situated on Wind Street, with various chains represented including JD Wetherspoon, Revolution, Varsity, Yates's and Walkabout. Some venues feature live music. The Mumbles Mile, described by the BBC as "one of Wales's best-known pub crawls", declined in the early 21st century and a number of local pubs were converted into flats or restaurants.
Swansea is twinned with:
It also has a friendship link with Nantong, China.
The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the City of Swansea. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46394 |
Ninja
A or was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. The functions of a ninja included espionage, deception, and surprise attacks. Their covert methods of waging irregular warfare were deemed dishonorable and beneath the honor of the samurai. Though "shinobi" proper, as specially trained spies and mercenaries, appeared in the 15th century during the Sengoku period, antecedents may have existed as early as the 12th century.
In the unrest of the Sengoku period, mercenaries and spies for hire became active in Iga Province and the adjacent area around the village of Kōga, and it is from these areas that much of the knowledge regarding the ninja is drawn. Following the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate in the 17th century, the ninja faded into obscurity. A number of "shinobi" manuals, often based on Chinese military philosophy, were written in the 17th and 18th centuries, most notably the "Bansenshukai" (1676).
By the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), "shinobi" had become a topic of popular imagination and mystery in Japan. Ninjas figured prominently in legend and folklore, where they were associated with legendary abilities such as invisibility, walking on water and control over natural elements. As a consequence, their perception in popular culture is based more on such legends and folklore than on the covert actors of the Sengoku period.
"Ninja" is the "on'yomi" (Early Middle Chinese–influenced) reading of the two kanji "忍者". In the native "kun'yomi" reading, it is pronounced "shinobi", a shortened form of the transcription "shinobi-no-mono" (忍の者).
The word "shinobi" appears in the written record as far back as the late 8th century in poems in the "Man'yōshū". The underlying connotation of "shinobi" (忍) means "to steal away; to hide" and—by extension—"to forbear", hence its association with stealth and invisibility. "Mono" (者) means "a person".
Historically, the word "ninja" was not in common use, and a variety of regional colloquialisms evolved to describe what would later be dubbed ninja. Along with "shinobi", some examples include "monomi" ("one who sees"), "nokizaru" ("macaque on the roof"), "rappa" ("ruffian"), "kusa" ("grass") and "Iga-mono" ("one from Iga"). In historical documents, "shinobi" is almost always used.
"Kunoichi" (くノ一）is, originally, an argot which means "woman"; it supposedly comes from the characters くノ一 (pronounced "ku", "no" and "ichi"), which make up the three strokes that form the kanji for "woman" (女). In fictions written in the modern era "kunoichi" means "female ninja".
In the West, the word "ninja" became more prevalent than "shinobi" in the post–World War II culture, possibly because it was more comfortable for Western speakers. In English, the plural of "ninja" can be either unchanged as "ninja", reflecting the Japanese language's lack of grammatical number, or the regular English plural "ninjas".
Despite many popular folktales, historical accounts of the ninja are scarce. Historian Stephen Turnbull asserts that the ninja were mostly recruited from the lower class, and therefore little literary interest was taken in them. The social origin of the ninja is seen as the reason they agree to operate in secret, trading their service for money without honor and glory. The scarcity of historical accounts is also demonstrated in war epics such as "The Tale of Hōgen" "(Hōgen Monogatari)" and "The Tale of the Heike" "(Heike Monogatari)", which focus mainly on the aristocratic samurai, whose deeds were apparently more appealing to the audience.
Historian Kiyoshi Watatani states that the ninja were trained to be particularly secretive about their actions and existence:
The title "ninja" has sometimes been attributed retrospectively to the semi-legendary 4th-century prince Yamato Takeru. In the "Kojiki", the young Yamato Takeru disguised himself as a charming maiden and assassinated two chiefs of the Kumaso people. However, these records take place at a very early stage of Japanese history, and they are unlikely to be connected to the "shinobi" of later accounts. The first recorded use of espionage was under the employment of Prince Shōtoku in the 6th century. Such tactics were considered unsavory even in early times, when, according to the 10th-century "Shōmonki", the boy spy Koharumaru was killed for spying against the insurgent Taira no Masakado. Later, the 14th-century war chronicle "Taiheiki" contained many references to "shinobi" and credited the destruction of a castle by fire to an unnamed but "highly skilled "shinobi"".
It was not until the 15th century that spies were specially trained for their purpose. It was around this time that the word "shinobi" appeared to define and clearly identify ninja as a secretive group of agents. Evidence for this can be seen in historical documents, which began to refer to stealthy soldiers as "shinobi" during the Sengoku period. Later manuals regarding espionage are often grounded in Chinese military strategy, quoting works such as "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.
The ninja emerged as mercenaries in the 15th century, where they were recruited as spies, raiders, arsonists and even terrorists. Amongst the samurai, a sense of ritual and decorum was observed, where one was expected to fight or duel openly. Combined with the unrest of the Sengoku period, these factors created a demand for men willing to commit deeds considered disreputable for conventional warriors. By the Sengoku period, the "shinobi" had several roles, including spy ("kanchō"), scout ("teisatsu"), surprise attacker ("kishu"), and agitator ("konran"). The ninja families were organized into larger guilds, each with their own territories. A system of rank existed. A "jōnin" ("upper person") was the highest rank, representing the group and hiring out mercenaries. This is followed by the "chūnin" ("middle person"), assistants to the "jōnin". At the bottom was the "genin" ("lower person"), field agents drawn from the lower class and assigned to carry out actual missions.
The Iga and Kōga clans have come to describe families living in the province of Iga (modern Mie Prefecture) and the adjacent region of Kōka (later written as "Kōga"), named after a village in what is now Shiga Prefecture. From these regions, villages devoted to the training of ninja first appeared. The remoteness and inaccessibility of the surrounding mountains may have had a role in the ninja's secretive development. Historical documents regarding the ninja's origins in these mountainous regions are considered generally correct. The chronicle "Go Kagami Furoku" writes, of the two clans' origins:
Likewise, a supplement to the "Nochi Kagami", a record of the Ashikaga shogunate, confirms the same Iga origin:
A distinction is to be made between the ninja from these areas, and commoners or samurai hired as spies or mercenaries. Unlike their counterparts, the Iga and Kōga clans produced professional ninja, specifically trained for their roles. These professional ninja were actively hired by "daimyōs" between 1485 and 1581, until Oda Nobunaga invaded Iga Province and wiped out the organized clans. Survivors were forced to flee, some to the mountains of Kii, but others arrived before Tokugawa Ieyasu, where they were well treated. Some former Iga clan members, including Hattori Hanzō, would later serve as Tokugawa's bodyguards.
Following the Battle of Okehazama in 1560, Tokugawa employed a group of eighty Kōga ninja, led by Tomo Sukesada. They were tasked to raid an outpost of the Imagawa clan. The account of this assault is given in the "Mikawa Go Fudoki", where it was written that Kōga ninja infiltrated the castle, set fire to its towers, and killed the castellan along with two hundred of the garrison. The Kōga ninja are said to have played a role in the later Battle of Sekigahara (1600), where several hundred Kōga assisted soldiers under Torii Mototada in the defence of Fushimi Castle. After Tokugawa's victory at Sekigahara, the Iga acted as guards for the inner compounds of Edo Castle, while the Kōga acted as a police force and assisted in guarding the outer gate. In 1614, the initial "winter campaign" at the Siege of Osaka saw the ninja in use once again. Miura Yoemon, a ninja in Tokugawa's service, recruited "shinobi" from the Iga region, and sent 10 ninja into Osaka Castle in an effort to foster antagonism between enemy commanders. During the later "summer campaign", these hired ninja fought alongside regular troops at the Battle of Tennōji.
A final but detailed record of ninja employed in open warfare occurred during the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638). The Kōga ninja were recruited by "shōgun" Tokugawa Iemitsu against Christian rebels led by Amakusa Shirō, who made a final stand at Hara Castle, in Hizen Province. A diary kept by a member of the Matsudaira clan, the "Amakusa Gunki", relates: "Men from Kōga in Ōmi Province who concealed their appearance would steal up to the castle every night and go inside as they pleased."
The Ukai diary, written by a descendant of Ukai Kanemon, has several entries describing the reconnaissance actions taken by the Kōga.
Suspecting that the castle's supplies might be running low, the siege commander Matsudaira Nobutsuna ordered a raid on the castle's provisions. Here, the Kōga captured bags of enemy provisions, and infiltrated the castle by night, obtaining secret passwords. Days later, Nobutsuna ordered an intelligence gathering mission to determine the castle's supplies. Several Kōga ninja—some apparently descended from those involved in the 1562 assault on an Imagawa clan castle—volunteered despite being warned that chances of survival were slim. A volley of shots was fired into the sky, causing the defenders to extinguish the castle lights in preparation. Under the cloak of darkness, ninja disguised as defenders infiltrated the castle, capturing a banner of the Christian cross. The Ukai diary writes,
As the siege went on, the extreme shortage of food later reduced the defenders to eating moss and grass. This desperation would mount to futile charges by the rebels, where they were eventually defeated by the shogunate army. The Kōga would later take part in conquering the castle:
With the fall of Hara Castle, the Shimabara Rebellion came to an end, and Christianity in Japan was forced underground. These written accounts are the last mention of ninja in war.
Mie University founded the world’s first research centre devoted to the ninja in 2017. A graduate master course opened in 2018. It is located in Iga (now Mie Prefecture). There are approximately 3 student enrollments per year. Students must pass an admission test about Japanese history and be able to read historical ninja documents. Scientific researchers and scholars of different disciplines study ancient documents and how it can be utilized in the modern world.
In 2020, the 45 year old Genichi Mitsuhashi was the first student to graduate from the master course of ninja studies at Mie University. For 2 years he studied historical records and the traditions of the martial art. Similar to the original ninja, by day he was a farmer and grew vegetables while he did ninja studies and trained martial arts in the afternoon.
In the early 18th century, shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune founded the "oniwaban" ("garden keepers"), an intelligence agency and secret service. Members of the "oniwaban" were agents involved in collecting information on "daimyōs" and government officials. The secretive nature of the "oniwaban"—along with the earlier tradition of using Iga and Kōga clan members as palace guards—have led some sources to define the "oniwabanshū" as "ninja". This portrayal is also common in later novels and "jidaigeki". However, there is no written link between the earlier "shinobi" and the later "oniwaban".
The ninja were stealth soldiers and mercenaries hired mostly by "daimyōs". Their primary roles were those of espionage and sabotage, although assassinations were also attributed to ninja. Although they were considered the anti-samurai and were disdained by those belonging to the samurai class, they were necessary for warfare and were even employed by the samurai themselves to carry out operations that were forbidden by bushidō.
In his "Buke Myōmokushō", military historian Hanawa Hokinoichi writes of the ninja:
Espionage was the chief role of the ninja. With the aid of disguises, the ninja gathered information on enemy terrain and building specifications, as well as obtaining passwords and communiques. The aforementioned supplement to the "Nochi Kagami" briefly describes the ninja's role in espionage:
Later in history, the Kōga ninja would become regarded as agents of the Tokugawa "bakufu", at a time when the "bakufu" used the ninja in an intelligence network to monitor regional "daimyōs" as well as the Imperial court.
Arson was the primary form of sabotage practiced by the ninja, who targeted castles and camps.
The "Tamon-in Nikki" (16th century)—a diary written by abbot Eishun of Kōfuku-ji temple—describes an arson attack on a castle by men of the Iga clans.
In 1558, Rokkaku Yoshikata employed a team of ninja to set fire to Sawayama Castle. A "chūnin" captain led a force of 48 ninja into the castle by means of deception. In a technique dubbed "bakemono-jutsu" ("ghost technique"), his men stole a lantern bearing the enemy's family crest ("mon"), and proceeded to make replicas with the same "mon". By wielding these lanterns, they were allowed to enter the castle without a fight. Once inside, the ninja set fire to the castle, and Yoshitaka's army would later emerge victorious. The mercenary nature of the "shinobi" is demonstrated in another arson attack soon after the burning of Sawayama Castle. In 1561, commanders acting under Kizawa Nagamasa hired three Iga ninja of "genin" rank to assist the conquest of a fortress in Maibara. Rokkaku Yoshitaka, the same man who had hired Iga ninja just years earlier, was the fortress holder—and target of attack. The "Asai Sandaiki" writes of their plans: "We employed "shinobi-no-mono" of Iga... They were contracted to set fire to the castle". However, the mercenary "shinobi" were unwilling to take commands. When the fire attack did not begin as scheduled, the Iga men told the commanders, who were not from the region, that they could not possibly understand the tactics of the "shinobi". They then threatened to abandon the operation if they were not allowed to act on their own strategy. The fire was eventually set, allowing Nagamasa's army to capture the fortress in a chaotic rush.
The best-known cases of assassination attempts involve famous historical figures. Deaths of famous persons have sometimes been attributed to assassination by ninja, but the secretive natures of these scenarios have made them difficult to prove. Assassins were often identified as ninja later on, but there is no evidence to prove whether some were specially trained for the task or simply a hired thug.
The warlord Oda Nobunaga's notorious reputation led to several attempts on his life. In 1571, a Kōga ninja and sharpshooter by the name of Sugitani Zenjubō was hired to assassinate Nobunaga. Using two arquebuses, he fired two consecutive shots at Nobunaga, but was unable to inflict mortal injury through Nobunaga's armor. Sugitani managed to escape, but was caught four years later and put to death by torture. In 1573, Manabe Rokurō, a vassal of "daimyō" Hatano Hideharu, attempted to infiltrate Azuchi Castle and assassinate the sleeping Nobunaga. However, this also ended in failure, and Manabe was forced to commit suicide, after which his body was openly displayed in public. According to a document, the "Iranki", when Nobunaga was inspecting Iga province—which his army had devastated—a group of three ninja shot at him with large-caliber firearms. The shots flew wide of Nobunaga, however, and instead killed seven of his surrounding companions.
The ninja Hachisuka Tenzō was sent by Nobunaga to assassinate the powerful "daimyō" Takeda Shingen, but ultimately failed in his attempts. Hiding in the shadow of a tree, he avoided being seen under the moonlight, and later concealed himself in a hole he had prepared beforehand, thus escaping capture.
An assassination attempt on Toyotomi Hideyoshi was also thwarted. A ninja named Kirigakure Saizō (possibly Kirigakure Shikaemon) thrust a spear through the floorboards to kill Hideyoshi, but was unsuccessful. He was "smoked out" of his hiding place by another ninja working for Hideyoshi, who apparently used a sort of primitive "flamethrower". Unfortunately, the veracity of this account has been clouded by later fictional publications depicting Saizō as one of the legendary Sanada Ten Braves.
Uesugi Kenshin, the famous "daimyō" of Echigo Province, was rumored to have been killed by a ninja. The legend credits his death to an assassin who is said to have hidden in Kenshin's lavatory, and fatally injured Kenshin by thrusting a blade or spear into his anus. While historical records showed that Kenshin suffered abdominal problems, modern historians have generally attributed his death to stomach cancer, esophageal cancer or cerebrovascular disease.
In battle, the ninja were also used to cause confusion amongst the enemy. A degree of psychological warfare in the capturing of enemy banners can be seen illustrated in the "Ōu Eikei Gunki", composed between the 16th and 17th centuries:
A variety of countermeasures were taken to prevent the activities of the ninja. Precautions were often taken against assassinations, such as weapons concealed in the lavatory, or under a removable floorboard. Buildings were constructed with traps and trip wires attached to alarm bells.
Japanese castles were designed to be difficult to navigate, with winding routes leading to the inner compound. Blind spots and holes in walls provided constant surveillance of these labyrinthine paths, as exemplified in Himeji Castle. Nijō Castle in Kyoto is constructed with long "nightingale" floors, which rested on metal hinges ("uguisu-bari") specifically designed to squeak loudly when walked over. Grounds covered with gravel also provided early notice of unwanted intruders, and segregated buildings allowed fires to be better contained.
The skills required of the ninja have come to be known in modern times as , but it is unlikely they were previously named under a single discipline, rather distributed among a variety of espionage and survival skills. Some view "ninjutsu" as evidence that ninja were not simple mercenaries because texts contained not only information on combat training, but also information about daily needs, which even included mining techniques. The guidance provided for daily work also included elements that enable the ninja to understand the martial qualities of even the most menial task. These factors show how the "ninjutsu" established among the ninja class the fundamental principle of adaptation.
The first specialized training began in the mid-15th century, when certain samurai families started to focus on covert warfare, including espionage and assassination. Like the samurai, ninja were born into the profession, where traditions were kept in, and passed down through the family. According to Turnbull, the ninja was trained from childhood, as was also common in samurai families.
Outside the expected martial art disciplines, a youth studied survival and scouting techniques, as well as information regarding poisons and explosives. Physical training was also important, which involved long distance runs, climbing, stealth methods of walking and swimming. A certain degree of knowledge regarding common professions was also required if one was expected to take their form in disguise. Some evidence of medical training can be derived from one account, where an Iga ninja provided first-aid to Ii Naomasa, who was injured by gunfire in the Battle of Sekigahara. Here the ninja reportedly gave Naomasa a "black medicine" meant to stop bleeding.
With the fall of the Iga and Kōga clans, "daimyōs" could no longer recruit professional ninja, and were forced to train their own "shinobi". The "shinobi" was considered a real profession, as demonstrated in the bakufu's 1649 law on military service, which declared that only "daimyōs" with an income of over 10,000 "koku" were allowed to retain "shinobi". In the two centuries that followed, a number of "ninjutsu" manuals were written by descendants of Hattori Hanzō as well as members of the Fujibayashi clan, an offshoot of the Hattori. Major examples include the "Ninpiden" (1655), the "Bansenshukai" (1675), and the "Shōninki" (1681).
Modern schools that claim to train "ninjutsu" arose from the 1970s, including that of Masaaki Hatsumi (Bujinkan), Stephen K. Hayes (To-Shin Do), and Jinichi Kawakami (Banke Shinobinoden). The lineage and authenticity of these schools are a matter of controversy.
The ninja did not always work alone. Teamwork techniques exist: For example, in order to scale a wall, a group of ninja may carry each other on their backs, or provide a human platform to assist an individual in reaching greater heights. The "Mikawa Go Fudoki" gives an account where a coordinated team of attackers used passwords to communicate. The account also gives a case of deception, where the attackers dressed in the same clothes as the defenders, causing much confusion. When a retreat was needed during the Siege of Osaka, ninja were commanded to fire upon friendly troops from behind, causing the troops to charge backwards in order to attack a perceived enemy. This tactic was used again later on as a method of crowd dispersal.
Most "ninjutsu" techniques recorded in scrolls and manuals revolve around ways to avoid detection, and methods of escape. These techniques were loosely grouped under corresponding natural elements. Some examples are:
The use of disguises is common and well documented. Disguises came in the form of priests, entertainers, fortune tellers, merchants, "rōnin", and monks. The "Buke Myōmokushō" states,
A mountain ascetic ("yamabushi") attire facilitated travel, as they were common and could travel freely between political boundaries. The loose robes of Buddhist priests also allowed concealed weapons, such as the "tantō". Minstrel or "sarugaku" outfits could have allowed the ninja to spy in enemy buildings without rousing suspicion. Disguises as a "komusō", a mendicant monk known for playing the "shakuhachi", were also effective, as the large "basket" hats traditionally worn by them concealed the head completely.
Ninja utilized a large variety of tools and weaponry, some of which were commonly known, but others were more specialized. Most were tools used in the infiltration of castles. A wide range of specialized equipment is described and illustrated in the 17th-century "Bansenshukai", including climbing equipment, extending spears, rocket-propelled arrows, and small collapsible boats.
While the image of a ninja clad in black garb ("shinobi shōzoku") is prevalent in popular media, there is no written evidence for such attire. Instead, it was much more common for the ninja to be disguised as civilians. The popular notion of black clothing is likely rooted in artistic convention; early drawings of ninja showed them dressed in black in order to portray a sense of invisibility. This convention was an idea borrowed from the puppet handlers of "bunraku" theater, who dressed in total black in an effort to simulate props moving independently of their controls. Despite the lack of hard evidence, it has been put forward by some authorities that black robes, perhaps slightly tainted with red to hide bloodstains, was indeed the sensible garment of choice for infiltration.
Clothing used was similar to that of the samurai, but loose garments (such as leggings) were tucked into trousers or secured with belts. The "tenugui", a piece of cloth also used in martial arts, had many functions. It could be used to cover the face, form a belt, or assist in climbing.
The historicity of armor specifically made for ninja cannot be ascertained. While pieces of light armor purportedly worn by ninja exist and date to the right time, there is no hard evidence of their use in ninja operations. Depictions of famous persons later deemed ninja often show them in samurai armor. There were lightweight concealable types of armour made with "kusari" (chain armour) and small armor plates such as "karuta" that could have been worn by ninja including "katabira" (jackets) made with armour hidden between layers of cloth. Shin and arm guards, along with metal-reinforced hoods are also speculated to make up the ninja's armor.
Tools used for infiltration and espionage are some of the most abundant artifacts related to the ninja. Ropes and grappling hooks were common, and were tied to the belt. A collapsible ladder is illustrated in the "Bansenshukai", featuring spikes at both ends to anchor the ladder. Spiked or hooked climbing gear worn on the hands and feet also doubled as weapons. Other implements include chisels, hammers, drills, picks and so forth.
The "kunai" was a heavy pointed tool, possibly derived from the Japanese masonry trowel, which it closely resembles. Although it is often portrayed in popular culture as a weapon, the "kunai" was primarily used for gouging holes in walls. Knives and small saws ("hamagari") were also used to create holes in buildings, where they served as a foothold or a passage of entry. A portable listening device ("saoto hikigane") was used to eavesdrop on conversations and detect sounds.
The "mizugumo" was a set of wooden shoes supposedly allowing the ninja to walk on water. They were meant to work by distributing the wearer's weight over the shoes' wide bottom surface. The word "mizugumo" is derived from the native name for the Japanese water spider ("Argyroneta aquatica japonica"). The "mizugumo" was featured on the show "MythBusters", where it was demonstrated unfit for walking on water. The "ukidari", a similar footwear for walking on water, also existed in the form of a flat round bucket, but was probably quite unstable. Inflatable skins and breathing tubes allowed the ninja to stay underwater for longer periods of time.
Despite the large array of tools available to the ninja, the "Bansenshukai" warns one not to be overburdened with equipment, stating "a successful ninja is one who uses but one tool for multiple tasks".
Although shorter swords and daggers were used, the "katana" was probably the ninja's weapon of choice, and was sometimes carried on the back. The katana had several uses beyond normal combat. In dark places, the scabbard could be extended out of the sword, and used as a long probing device. The sword could also be laid against the wall, where the ninja could use the sword guard ("tsuba") to gain a higher foothold. The katana could even be used as a device to stun enemies before attacking them, by putting a combination of red pepper, dirt or dust, and iron filings into the area near the top of the scabbard, so that as the sword was drawn the concoction would fly into the enemy's eyes, stunning him until a lethal blow could be made. While straight swords were used before the invention of the katana, the straight "ninjatō" has no historical precedent and is likely a modern invention.
An array of darts, spikes, knives, and sharp, star-shaped discs were known collectively as "shuriken". While not exclusive to the ninja, they were an important part of the arsenal, where they could be thrown in any direction. Bows were used for sharpshooting, and some ninjas' bows were intentionally made smaller than the traditional "yumi" (longbow). The chain and sickle ("kusarigama") was also used by the ninja. This weapon consisted of a weight on one end of a chain, and a sickle ("kama") on the other. The weight was swung to injure or disable an opponent, and the sickle used to kill at close range.
Explosives introduced from China were known in Japan by the time of the Mongol Invasions in the 13th century. Later, explosives such as hand-held bombs and grenades were adopted by the ninja. Soft-cased bombs were designed to release smoke or poison gas, along with fragmentation explosives packed with iron or ceramic shrapnel.
Along with common weapons, a large assortment of miscellaneous arms were associated with the ninja. Some examples include poison, "makibishi" (caltrops), cane swords ("shikomizue"), land mines, "fukiya" (blowguns), poisoned darts, acid-spurting tubes, and firearms. The "happō", a small eggshell filled with blinding powder ("metsubushi"), was also used to facilitate escape.
Superhuman or supernatural powers were often associated with the ninja. Some legends include flight, invisibility, shapeshifting, the ability to "split" into multiple bodies ("bunshin"), the summoning of animals ("kuchiyose"), and control over the five classical elements. These fabulous notions have stemmed from popular imagination regarding the ninja's mysterious status, as well as romantic ideas found in later Japanese art of the Edo period. Magical powers were sometimes rooted in the ninja's own efforts to disseminate fanciful information. For example, Nakagawa Shoshujin, the 17th-century founder of Nakagawa-ryū, claimed in his own writings ("Okufuji Monogatari") that he had the ability to transform into birds and animals.
Perceived control over the elements may be grounded in real tactics, which were categorized by association with forces of nature. For example, the practice of starting fires in order to cover a ninja's trail falls under "katon-no-jutsu" ("fire techniques").
The ninja's adaption of kites in espionage and warfare is another subject of legends. Accounts exist of ninja being lifted into the air by kites, where they flew over hostile terrain and descended into, or dropped bombs on enemy territory. Kites were indeed used in Japanese warfare, but mostly for the purpose of sending messages and relaying signals. Turnbull suggests that kites lifting a man into midair might have been technically feasible, but states that the use of kites to form a human "hang glider" falls squarely in the realm of fantasy.
"Kuji-kiri" is an esoteric practice which, when performed with an array of hand "seals" ("kuji-in"), was meant to allow the ninja to enact superhuman feats.
The "kuji" ("nine characters") is a concept originating from Daoism, where it was a string of nine words used in charms and incantations. In China, this tradition mixed with Buddhist beliefs, assigning each of the nine words to a Buddhist deity. The "kuji" may have arrived in Japan via Buddhism, where it flourished within Shugendō. Here too, each word in the "kuji" was associated with Buddhist deities, animals from Taoist mythology, and later, Shinto kami. The "mudrā", a series of hand symbols representing different Buddhas, was applied to the "kuji" by Buddhists, possibly through the esoteric "Mikkyō" teachings. The "yamabushi" ascetics of Shugendō adopted this practice, using the hand gestures in spiritual, healing, and exorcism rituals. Later, the use of "kuji" passed onto certain "bujutsu" (martial arts) and "ninjutsu" schools, where it was said to have many purposes. The application of "kuji" to produce a desired effect was called "cutting" ("kiri") the "kuji". Intended effects range from physical and mental concentration, to more incredible claims about rendering an opponent immobile, or even the casting of magical spells. These legends were captured in popular culture, which interpreted the "kuji-kiri" as a precursor to magical acts.
On February 25, 2018, Yamada Yūji, the professor of Mie University and historian Nakanishi Gō announced that they had identified three people who were successful in early modern Ureshino, including the ninja Benkei Musō (弁慶夢想). Musō is thought to be the same person as Denrinbō Raikei (伝林坊頼慶), the Chinese disciple of Marume Nagayoshi. It came as a shock when the existence of a foreign samurai was verified by authorities.
Many famous people in Japanese history have been associated or identified as ninja, but their status as ninja are difficult to prove and may be the product of later imagination. Rumors surrounding famous warriors, such as Kusunoki Masashige or Minamoto no Yoshitsune sometimes describe them as ninja, but there is little evidence for these claims.
Some well known examples include:
The image of the ninja entered popular culture in the Edo period, when folktales and plays about ninja were conceived. Stories about the ninja are usually based on historical figures. For instance, many similar tales exist about a "daimyō" challenging a ninja to prove his worth, usually by stealing his pillow or weapon while he slept. Novels were written about the ninja, such as "Jiraiya Gōketsu Monogatari", which was also made into a kabuki play. Fictional figures such as Sarutobi Sasuke would eventually make their way into comics and television, where they have come to enjoy a culture hero status outside their original mediums.
Ninja appear in many forms of Japanese and Western popular media, including books ("Kōga Ninpōchō"), television ("Ninja Warrior"), animation (""), movies ("Ninja Assassin"), video games ("", "Tenchu", "Shinobi"), anime ("Naruto", "Ninja Scroll"), manga ("Basilisk") and American comic books ("Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"). From ancient Japan to the modern world media, popular depictions range from the realistic to the fantastically exaggerated, both fundamentally and aesthetically. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46396 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.