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Transgender rights
A person may be considered to be a transgender person if their gender identity is inconsistent or not culturally associated with the sex they were assigned at birth and consequently also with the gender role and social status that is typically associated with that sex. They may have, or may intend to establish, a new gender status that accords with their gender identity. "Transsexual" is generally considered a subset of "transgender", but some transsexual people reject being labelled "transgender".
Globally, most legal jurisdictions recognize the two traditional gender identities and social roles, man and woman, but tend to exclude any other gender identities and expressions. However, there are some countries which recognize, by law, a third gender. There is now a greater understanding of the breadth of variation outside the typical categories of "man" and "woman", and many self-descriptions are now entering the literature, including "pangender", "genderqueer", "polygender", and "agender". Medically and socially, the term "transsexualism" is being replaced with "gender identity" or "gender dysphoria", and terms such as "transgender people", "trans men", and "trans women" are replacing the category of transsexual people.
This raises many legal issues and aspects of being transgender. Most of these issues are generally considered a part of family law, especially the issues of marriage and the question of a transgender person benefiting from a partner's insurance or social security.
The degree of legal recognition provided to transgender people varies widely throughout the world. Many countries now legally recognise sex reassignments by permitting a change of legal gender on an individual's birth certificate. Many transsexual people have permanent surgery to change their body, sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) or semi-permanently change their body by hormonal means, hormone replacement therapy (HRT). In many countries, some of these modifications are required for legal recognition. In a few, the legal aspects are directly tied to health care; i.e. the same bodies or doctors decide whether a person can move forward in their treatment and the subsequent processes automatically incorporate both matters.
In some jurisdictions, transgender people (who are considered non-transsexual) can benefit from the legal recognition given to transsexual people. In some countries, an explicit medical diagnosis of "transsexualism" is (at least formally) necessary. In others, a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria", or simply the fact that one has established a non-conforming gender role, can be sufficient for some or all of the legal recognition available. The DSM-V recognizes gender dysphoria as an official diagnosis.
The Constitution of South Africa forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, gender and sexual orientation (amongst other grounds). The Constitutional Court has indicated that "sexual orientation" includes transsexuality.
In 2003 Parliament enacted the Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act, which allows a transgender person who has undergone medical or surgical gender reassignment to apply to the Department of Home Affairs to have the sex description altered on their birth record. Once the birth record is altered they can be issued with a new birth certificate and identity document, and are considered "for all purposes" to be of the new sex.
In September 2017, the Botswana High Court ruled that the refusal of the Registrar of National Registration to change a transgender man's gender marker was "unreasonable and violated his constitutional rights to dignity, privacy, freedom of expression, equal protection of the law, freedom from discrimination and freedom from inhumane and degrading treatment". LGBT activists celebrated the ruling, describing it as a great victory. At first, the Botswana Government announced it would appeal the ruling, but decided against it in December, supplying the trans man in question with a new identity document that reflects his gender identity.
A similar case, where a transgender woman sought to change her gender marker to female, was heard in December 2017. The High Court ruled that the Government must recognise her gender identity. She dedicated her victory to "every single trans diverse person in Botswana".
In 2009 the Chinese government made it illegal for minors to change their officially listed gender, stating that sexual reassignment surgery, available to only those over the age of twenty, was required in order to apply for a revision of their identification card and residence registration.
In early 2014 the Shanxi province started allowing minors to apply for the change with the additional information of their guardian's identification card. This shift in policy allows post-surgery marriages to be recognized as heterosexual and therefore legal.
Transgender youth in China face many challenges. One study found that Chinese parents report 0.5% (1:200) of their 6 to 12-year boys and 0.6% (1:167) of girls often or always ‘state the wish to be the other gender’. 0.8% (1.125) of 18- to 24-year-old university students who are birth-assigned males (whose sex/gender as indicated on their ID card is male) report that the ‘sex/gender I feel in my heart’ is female, while another 0.4% indicating that their perceived gender was ‘other’. Among birth-assigned females, 2.9% (1:34) indicated they perceived their gender as male, while another 1.3% indicating ‘other’.
The Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong ruled that a transsexual woman has the right to marry her boyfriend. The ruling was made on 13 May 2013.
On 16 September 2013, Eliana Rubashkyn a transgender woman claimed that she was discriminated and sexually abused by the customs officers, including being subjected to invasive body searches and denied usage of a female toilet, although Hong Kong officers denied the allegations. After being released, she applied for and was granted refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), rendering her effectively stateless awaiting acceptance to a third country.
In April 2014, the Supreme Court of India declared transgender to be a 'third gender' in Indian law. The transgender community in India (made up of Hijras and others) has a long history in India and in Hindu mythology. Justice KS Radhakrishnan noted in his decision that, "Seldom, our society realizes or cares to realize the trauma, agony and pain which the members of Transgender community undergo, nor appreciates the innate feelings of the members of the Transgender community, especially of those whose mind and body disown their biological sex", adding:
Beginning in the mid-1980s, transgender individuals were officially recognized by the government and allowed to undergo sex reassignment surgery.
Officially the leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa declaring sex reassignment surgery permissible for "diagnosed transsexuals". The government provides up to half the cost for those needing financial assistance, and a sex change is recognised on the birth certificate. Despite this, Iran's transgender people face discrimination in society. Founded in 2007 by Maryam Khatoon Molkara the Iranian Society to Support Individuals with Gender Identity Disorder (نجمن حمایت از بیماران مبتلا به اختلالات هویت جنسیایران) is Iran's main transsexual organization.
Additionally, the Iranian government's response to homosexuality is to pressure lesbian and gay individuals, who are not in fact transsexual, towards sex reassignment surgery. Eshaghian's documentary, "Be Like Others", chronicles a number of stories of Iranian gay men who feel transitioning is the only way to avoid further persecution, jail, or execution. Maryam Khatoon Molkara—who convinced Khomeini to issue the fatwa on transsexuality—confirmed that some people who undergo operations are gay rather than transsexual.
On 10 July 2003, the National Diet of Japan unanimously approved a new law that enables transsexual people to amend their legal sex. It is called "" (Act on Special Cases in Handling Gender for People with Gender Identity Disorder) The law, effective on 16 July 2004, however, has controversial conditions which demand the applicants be both unmarried and childless. On 28 July 2004, Naha Family Court in Okinawa Prefecture returned a verdict to a transsexual woman in her 20s, allowing her family registry record or koseki to be amended as she was born a female. It is generally believed to be the first court approval under the new law. Since 2018 sex reassignment surgeries are paid for by the Japanese government, who are covered by the Japanese national health insurance as long as patients are not receiving hormone treatment and do not have any other pre-existing conditions. However applicants are required to be at least 20 years old, single, sterile, have no children under 20 (the age of majority in Japan), as well as to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to receive a diagnosis of “Gender Identity Disorder”, also known as gender dysphoria in western countries. Once completed the patient has to only pay 30% of the surgery costs.
There is no legislation expressly allowing transsexuals to legally change their gender in Malaysia. The relevant legislations are the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1957 and National Registration Act 1959. Therefore, judges currently exercise their discretion in interpreting the law and defining the gender. There are conflicting decisions on this matter. There is a case in 2003 where the court allowed a transsexual to change her gender indicated in the identity card, and granted a declaration that she is a female. However, in 2005, in another case, the court refused to amend the gender of a transsexual in the identity card and birth certificate. Both cases applied the United Kingdom case of Corbett v Corbett in defining legal gender.
In 2018, Islamabad, Pakistan passed a Transgender protection bill, (Transgender Person (Protection of Rights) Act) which implements transgender people's right in identity, and anti-discrimination laws. Laws include recognition of trans identity in legal documents such as passports, ID cards, and driver licenses, and prohibiting discrimination in employment, schools, work-place, public transit, healthcare..etc, as well as the right for inheritance in accordance to their chosen gender. Furthermore, the bill obligates the government to build protection centers and safe houses be built for the transgender community.
Before the British invasion, Hindustanis considered gender ambiguity and transgender identity a norm, anti LGBT+ laws were implemented by the British to co-ordinate with theirs in England. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and other religious minorities did not feel passionate hatred towards people with LGBT identity according to historical records. In many ways, the creation of laws which support the LGBT community can be regarded as an act of Decolonization
In 2009, the Pakistan Supreme Court ruled in favor of the transgender community. The landmark ruling stated that as citizens they were entitled to the equal benefit and protection of the law and called upon the government to take steps to protect transgender people from discrimination and harassment. Pakistan's chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was the architect of major extension of rights to Pakistan's transgender community during his term.
Fun Fact: Several transgender individuals were trusted members in Mughal (Muslim emperors of pre-colonial india) courts
And there are anti-discrimination laws in the provision of goods and services for transgender or transsexual individuals
(known as Khuwaja Sira, formerly hijra, or Third Gender).
The Court of cassation, the highest court in Jordan allowed a Transsexual Woman to change her legal Name and Sex to Female in 2014 after she brought forth Medical Reports from Australia. The head of the Jordanian Department of civil Status and Passports stated that two to three cases of change of sex reach the department annually, all based on Medical Reports and Court orders.
The Supreme Court of the Philippines Justice Leonardo Quisumbing on 12 September 2008, allowed Jeff Cagandahan, 27, to change both his birth certificate, gender and name from Jennifer to Jeff, to male: "We respect respondent’s congenital condition and his mature decision to be a male. Life is already difficult for the ordinary person. We cannot but respect how respondent deals with his unordinary state and thus help make his life easier, considering the unique circumstances in this case. In the absence of a law on the matter, the court will not dictate on respondent concerning a matter so innately private as one's sexuality and lifestyle preferences, much less on whether or not to undergo medical treatment to reverse the male tendency due to rare medical condition, congenital adrenal hyperplasia. In the absence of evidence that respondent is an 'incompetent,' and in the absence of evidence to show that classifying respondent as a male will harm other members of society [...] the court affirms as valid and justified the respondent's position and his personal judgment of being a male." Court records showed that – at 6, he had small ovaries; at 13, his ovarian structure was minimized and he had no breasts and did not menstruate. The psychiatrist testified that "he has both male and female sex organs, but was genetically female, and that since his body secreted male hormones, his female organs did not develop normally." The Philippines National Institutes of Health said "people with congenital adrenal hyperplasia lack an enzyme needed by the adrenal gland to make the hormones cortisol and aldosterone.
This, however, only applies to cases involving congenital adrenal hyperplasia and other intersex situations. The Philippine Supreme Court has also ruled that Filipino citizens do not have the right to legally change their sex on official documents (driver's license, passport, birth certificate, Social Security records, etc.) if they are transsexual and have undergone sexual reassignment surgery. The Court said that if the man, now anatomically a female, were to be allowed to legally change his sex it would have "serious and wide-ranging legal and public policy consequences," citing the institution of marriage in particular.
In South Korea, it is possible for transgender individuals to change their legal gender, although it depends on the decision of the judge for each case. Since the 1990s, however, it has been approved in most of the cases. The legal system in Korea does not prevent marriage once a person has changed their legal gender.
In 2006, the Supreme Court of Korea ruled that transsexuals have the right to alter their legal papers to reflect their reassigned sex. A trans woman can be registered, not only as female, but also as being "born as a woman."
While same-sex marriage is not approved by South Korean law, a transsexual woman obtains the marital status of 'female' automatically when she marries to a man, even if she has previously been designated as "male."
In 2013 a court ruled that transsexuals can change their legal sex without undergoing genital surgery.
Transgender people in Taiwan need to undergo genital surgery (removal of primary sex organs) in order to register gender change on both the identity card and the birth certificate. The surgery requires approval of two psychiatrists, and the procedure is "not" covered by the National Health Insurance. The government conducted public consultations on the elimination of surgery requirements back in 2015, but no concrete changes have been made since then.
In 2018, the government unveiled the new chip-embedded identity card, scheduled to be issued in late 2020. Gender will not be explicitly displayed on the physical card, although the second digit of national identification number reveals gender information anyway (“1” for male; “2” for female). With the inception of new identity card, a third gender option (using digit “7” as the second digit of national identification number) will be available to transgender persons alike. However, it raises concerns that the practice could stigmatize transgender persons, instead of respecting their gender identity. Details of the third-gender option policy are yet to be released.
After same-sex marriage law became effective on May 24, 2019, transgender persons could marry a person of the same registered gender.
A majority of countries in Europe give transgender people the right to at least change their first name, most of which also provide a way of changing birth certificates. Several European countries recognize the right of transgender people to marry in accordance with their post-operative sex. Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Spain, and the United Kingdom all recognize this right. The Convention on the recognition of decisions regarding a sex change provides regulations for mutual recognition of sex change decisions and has been signed by five European countries and ratified by Spain and the Netherlands.
In Finland, people wishing to change their legal gender must be sterilized or "for some other reason infertile". A recommendation from the UN Human Rights Council to eliminate the sterilization requirement was rejected by the Finnish government in 2017.
In France, there is currently no law that defines sex-change procedures. However, it is possible to ask for a sex- or a name change before the Court. The judge decides to grant or refuse the change.
Since 1980, Germany has a law that regulates the change of first names and legal gender. It is called (Law about the change of first name and determination of gender identity in special cases (Transsexual law – TSG)). Requirements that applicants for a change in gender were infertile post-surgery declared unconstitutional by supreme court ruling in a 2011.
On 10 October 2017, the Greek Parliament passed, by a comfortable majority, the "Legal Gender Recognition Bill" which grants the transgender people in Greece the right to change their legal gender freely by abolishing any conditions and requirements, such as undergoing any medical interventions, sex reassignment surgeries or sterilisation procedures to have their gender legally recognized on their IDs. The bill grants this right to anyone aged 17 and older. However, even underaged children between the age of 15 and 17 will have access to the legal gender recognition process, but under certain conditions, such as obtaining a certificate from a medical council. The bill was opposed by the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church, the Communist Party of Greece, Golden Dawn and New Democracy.
The Legal Gender Recognition Bill followed a 20 July 2016 decision of the County Court of Athens, which ruled that a person who wants to change their legal gender on the Registry Office files is no longer obliged to already have undergone a sex reassignment surgery. This decision was applied by the Court on a case-by-case basis.
In the Republic of Ireland, it was not possible for a transsexual person to alter their birth certificate until 2015. The High Court took a case by Lydia Foy in 2002 that was turned down, as a birth certificate was deemed to be a historical document.
On July 15, 2015, Ireland passed the Gender Recognition Act of 2015 that allows legal gender changes without the requirement of medical intervention or assessment by the state. Such change is possible through self-determination for any person aged 18 or over resident in Ireland and registered on Irish registers of birth or adoption. Persons aged 16 to 18 years must secure a court order to exempt them from the normal requirement to be at least 18. Ireland is one of four legal jurisdictions in the world where people may legally change gender through self-determination.
The first milestone sentence in the case of gender shifting was given by Warsaw's Voivode Court in 1964. The court reasoned that it be possible, in face of civil procedure and acting on civil registry records, to change one's legal gender after their genital reassignment surgery had been conducted. In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that in some cases, when the attributes of the individual's preferred gender were predominant, it is possible to change one's legal gender even before genital reassignment surgery.
In 2011, Anna Grodzka, the first transgender MP in the history of Europe who underwent a genital reassignment operation was appointed. In the Polish Parliamentary Election 2011 she gained 19 337 votes (45 079 voted for her party in the constituency) in the City of Kraków and came sixth in her electoral district (928 914 people, voter turnout 55,75%). Grodzka is reportedly the only transsexual person with ministerial responsibilities in the world since 10 November 2011 (as of 2015).
The law allows an adult person to change their legal gender without any requirements. Minors aged 16 and 17 are able to do so with parental consent and a psychological opinion, confirming that their decision has been taken freely and without any outside pressure. The law also prohibits both direct and indirect discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics, and bans non-consensual sex assignment treatment and/or surgical intervention on intersex children
In Romania it is legal for transgender people to change their first name to reflect their gender identity based on personal choice. Since 1996, it has been possible for someone who has gone through genital reassignment surgery to change their legal gender in order to reflect their post-operative sex. Transgender people then have the right to marry in accordance with their post-operative sex.
The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 made it illegal to discriminate on the ground of anatomical sex in employment, education, and the provision of housing, goods, facilities and services. The Equality Act 2006 introduced the Gender Equality Duty in Scotland, which made public bodies obliged to take seriously the threat of harassment or discrimination of transsexual people in various situations. In 2008, the Sex Discrimination (Amendment of Legislation) Regulations extended existing regulation to outlaw discrimination when providing goods or services to transsexual people. The Equality Act 2010 officially adds "gender reassignment" as a "protected characteristic.".
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 effectively granted full legal recognition for binary transgender people. In contrast to some systems elsewhere in the world, the Gender Recognition process does not require applicants to be post-operative. They need only demonstrate that they have suffered gender dysphoria, have lived as "your new gender" for two years, and intend to continue doing so until death.
Jurisdiction over legal classification of sex in Canada is assigned to the provinces and territories. This includes legal change of gender classification.
And on June 19, 2017 Bill C-16, after having passed the legislative process in the House of Commons of Canada and the Senate of Canada, became law upon receiving Royal Assent which put it into immediate force. The law updated the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to include "gender identity and gender expression" as protected grounds from discrimination, hate publications and advocating genocide. The bill also added "gender identity and expression" to the list of aggravating factors in sentencing, where the accused commits a criminal offence against an individual because of those personal characteristics. Similar transgender laws also exist in all the provinces and territories. Conversion therapy is banned in the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, and the city of Vancouver, though the Nova Scotia law is hampered by a clause that allows "mature minors" between the ages of 16 and 18 to consent.
Jurisdiction over legal classification of sex in Mexico is assigned to the states and Mexico City. This includes legal change of gender classification.
On 13 March 2004, amendments to the Mexico City Civil Code that allow transgender people to change their gender and name on their birth certificates, took effect.
In September 2008, the PRD-controlled Mexico City Legislative Assembly approved a law, in a 37-17 vote, making gender changes easier for transgender people.
On 13 November 2014, the Legislative Assembly of Mexico City unanimously (46-0) approved a gender identity law. The law makes it easier for transgender people to change their legal gender. Under the new law, they simply have to notify the Civil Registry that they wish to change the gender information on their birth certificates. Sex reassignment surgery, psychological therapies or any other type of diagnosis are no longer required. The law took effect in early 2015. On 13 July 2017, the Michoacán Congress approved (22-1) a gender identity law. Nayarit approved (23-1) a similar law on 20 July 2017.
On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that for the purposes of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination on the basis of transgender status is also discrimination because of sex.
Regardless of the legal sex classification determined by a state or territory, the federal government may make its own determination of sex classification for federally issued documents. For instance, the U.S. Department of State requires a medical certification of "appropriate clinical treatment for transition to the updated gender (male or female)" to amend the gender designation on a U.S. passport, but sex reassignment surgery is not a requirement to obtain a U.S. passport in the updated gender. This leaves transgender Americans subject to inconsistent and often discriminatory regulations when seeking healthcare.
South America has some of the most progressive legislation in the world regarding transgender rights. Bolivia and Ecuador are among the few countries worldwide that offer constitutional protection against discrimination based on gender identity. Transgender persons are allowed to change their name and gender on legal documents in a majority of countries. Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay allow individuals to change their name and gender without undergoing medical treatment, sterilization or judicial permission. In Peru a judicial order is required.
In 2012 the Argentine Congress passed the Ley de Género (Gender Law), which allows individuals over 18 to change the gender marker in their DNI (national ID) on the basis of a written declaration only. Argentina thus became the first country to adopt a gender recognition policy based entirely on individual autonomy, without any requirement for third party diagnosis, surgeries or obstacles of any type.
The Gender Identity law allows individuals over 18 to legally change their name, gender and photography on legal documents. No surgeries or judicial order are required. The law took effect on August 1, 2016.
Changing legal gender assignment in Brazil is legal according to the Superior Court of Justice of Brazil, as stated in a decision rendered on October 17, 2009.
And in 2008, Brazil's public health system started providing free sexual reassignment operations in compliance with a court order. Federal prosecutors had argued that sexual reassignment surgery was covered under a constitutional clause guaranteeing medical care as a basic right.
Patients must be at least 18 years old and diagnosed as transsexuals with no other personality disorders, and must undergo psychological evaluation with a multidisciplinary team for at least two years, begins with 16 years old.
The national average is of 100 surgeries per year, according to the Ministry of Health of Brazil.
Chile bans all discrimination and hate crimes based on gender identity and gender expression. The Gender Identity Law, in effect since 2019, recognizes the right to self-perceived gender identity, allowing people over 14 years to change their name and gender on all official documents without prohibitive requirements. Since 1974, the change of gender had been possible in the country through a judicial process.
Since 2015, a Colombian person may change their legal gender and name manifesting their solemn will before a notar, no surgeries or judicial order required.
Since 2016, Ecuadorians are allowed to change their birth name and gender identity (instead of the sex assigned at birth) on legal documents and national ID cards. The person who wants to change the word "sex" for "gender" in the identity card shall present two witnesses to accredit the self-determination of the applicant.
In Peru transgender persons can change their legal gender and name after complying with certain requirements that may become psychological and psychiatric evaluations, a medical intervention or sex reassignment surgery. A judicial permission is required.
In November 2016, the Constitutional Court of Peru determined that transsexuality is not a pathology and recognized the right to gender identity. However, favorable judicial decisions on gender change have been appealed.
Since 2019, transgender people can self-identify their gender and update their legal name, without approval from a judge after the approval of the Comprehensive Law for Trans Persons. The new law creates scholarships for trans people to access education, a monthly pension for transgender people born before 1975 and also requires government services to employ a minimum of 1% of the transgender population. It also now acknowledges the self-identification of non-binary people.
In October 2009, lawmakers passed the Gender identity law allowing transgender people over the age of 18 to change their name and legal gender on all official documents. Surgery, diagnosis or hormone therapy were not a requirement but a judicial permission was required.
Birth certificates are within the jurisdiction of the states, whereas marriage and passports are matters for the Commonwealth. All Australian jurisdictions now recognise the affirmed sex of an individual, with varying requirements. In the landmark case "New South Wales Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages v Norrie" [2014] the High Court of Australia held that the "Births Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1995" (NSW) did not require a person having undergone genital reassignment surgery to identify as either a man or a woman. The ruling permits a gender registration of "non-specific".
Passports are issued in the preferred gender, without requiring a change to birth certificates or citizenship certificates. A letter is needed from a medical practitioner which certifies that the person has had or is receiving appropriate treatment.
Australia was the only country in the world to require the involvement and approval of the judiciary (Family Court of Australia) with respect to allowing transgender children access to hormone replacement therapy. This ended in late 2017, when the Family Court issued a landmark ruling establishing that, in cases where there is no dispute between a child, their parents, and their treating doctors, hormone treatment can be prescribed without court permission.
The Constitution of Fiji which was promulgated in September 2013 includes a provision banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.
Gender changes are legal in Guam. In order for transgender people to change their legal gender in Guam, they must provide the Office of Vital Statistics a sworn statement from a physician that they have undergone sex reassignment surgery. The Office will subsequently amend the birth certificate of the requester.
Currently, the Human Rights Act 1993 does not explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender. Whilst it is believed that gender identity is protected under the laws preventing discrimination on the basis of either sex or sexual orientation, it is not known how this applies to those who have not had, or will not have, gender reassignment surgery.
Transgender persons in the Northern Mariana Islands may change their legal gender following sex reassignment surgery and a name change. The "Vital Statistics Act of 2006", which took effect in March 2007, states that: "Upon receipt of a certified copy of an order of the CNMI Superior Court indicating the sex of an individual born in the CNMI has been changed by surgical procedure and whether such individual’s name has been changed, the certificate of birth of such individual shall be amended as prescribed by regulation."
In Samoa crimes motivated by sexual orientation and/or gender identity are criminalized under Section 7(1)(h) of the "Sentencing Act 2016". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18330 |
Ligase
In biochemistry, a ligase is an enzyme that can catalyze the joining of two large molecules by forming a new chemical bond, usually with accompanying hydrolysis of a small pendant chemical group on one of the larger molecules or the enzyme catalyzing the linking together of two compounds, e.g., enzymes that catalyze joining of C-O, C-S, C-N, etc. In general, a ligase catalyzes the following reaction:
or sometimes
where the lowercase letters can signify the small, dependent groups. Ligase can join two complementary fragments of nucleic acid and repair single stranded breaks that arise in double stranded DNA during replication.
The common names of ligases often include the word "ligase", such as DNA ligase, an enzyme commonly used in molecular biology laboratories to join together DNA fragments. Other common names for ligases include the word "synthetase", because they are used to synthesize new molecules.
Biochemical nomenclature has sometimes distinguished synthetases from synthases and sometimes treated the words as synonyms. Under one definition, synthases "do not" use energy from nucleoside triphosphates (such as ATP, GTP, CTP, TTP, and UTP), whereas synthetases "do" use nucleoside triphosphates. It is also said that a synthase is a lyase (a lyase is an enzyme that catalyzes the breaking of various chemical bonds by means other than hydrolysis and oxidation, often forming a new double bond or a new ring structure) and does not require any energy, whereas a synthetase is a ligase (a ligase is an enzyme that binds two chemicals or compounds) and thus requires energy. However, the Joint Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature (JCBN) dictates that "synthase" can be used with any enzyme that catalyses synthesis (whether or not it uses nucleoside triphosphates), whereas "synthetase" is to be used synonymously.
Ligases are classified as EC 6 in the EC number classification of enzymes. Ligases can be further classified into six subclasses:
Some ligases associate with biological membranes as peripheral membrane proteins or anchored through a single transmembrane helix, for example certain ubiquitin ligase related proteins.
The word "ligase" uses combining forms of "lig-" (from the Latin verb "ligāre", "to bind" or "to tie together") + "-ase" (denoting an enzyme), yielding "binding enzyme". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18331 |
Logo (programming language)
Logo is an educational programming language, designed in 1967 by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon. "Logo" is not an acronym: the name was coined by Feurzeig while he was at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and derives from the Greek "logos", meaning "word" or "thought".
A general-purpose language, Logo is widely known for its use of turtle graphics, in which commands for movement and drawing produced line or vector graphics, either on screen or with a small robot termed a turtle. The language was conceived to teach concepts of programming related to Lisp and only later to enable what Papert called "body-syntonic reasoning", where students could understand, predict, and reason about the turtle's motion by imagining what they would do if they were the turtle. There are substantial differences among the many dialects of Logo, and the situation is confused by the regular appearance of turtle graphics programs that are named Logo.
Logo is a multi-paradigm adaptation and dialect of Lisp, a functional programming language. There is no standard Logo, but UCBLogo has the best facilities for handling lists, files, I/O, and recursion in scripts, and can be used to teach all computer science concepts, as UC Berkeley lecturer Brian Harvey did in his "Computer Science Logo Style" trilogy.
Logo is usually an interpreted language, although compiled Logo dialects (such as Lhogho and Liogo) have been developed. Logo is not case-sensitive but retains the case used for formatting purposes.
Logo was created in 1967 at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), a Cambridge, Massachusetts research firm, by Wally Feurzeig, Cynthia Solomon, and Seymour Papert. Its intellectual roots are in artificial intelligence, mathematical logic and developmental psychology. The first four years of Logo research, development and teaching work was done at BBN. The first implementation of Logo, called Ghost, was written in LISP on a PDP-1. The goal was to create a mathematical land where children could play with words and sentences. Modeled on LISP, the design goals of Logo included accessible power and informative error messages. The use of virtual Turtles allowed for immediate visual feedback and debugging of graphic programming.
The first working Logo turtle robot was created in 1969. A display turtle preceded the physical floor turtle. Modern Logo has not changed very much from the basic concepts predating the first turtle. The first turtle was a tethered floor roamer, not radio-controlled or wireless. At BBN Paul Wexelblat developed a turtle named Irving that had touch sensors and could move forwards, backwards, rotate, and ding its bell. The earliest year-long school users of Logo were in 1968–69 at Muzzey Jr. High in Lexington, Massachusetts. The virtual and physical turtles were first used by fifth-graders at the Bridge School in the same city in 1970–71.
Logo's most-known feature is the turtle (derived originally from a robot of the same name), an on-screen "cursor" that showed output from commands for movement and small retractable pen, together producing line graphics. It has traditionally been displayed either as a triangle or a turtle icon (though it can be represented by any icon). Turtle graphics were added to the Logo language by Seymour Papert in the late 1960s to support Papert's version of the turtle robot, a simple robot controlled from the user's workstation that is designed to carry out the drawing functions assigned to it using a small retractable pen set into or attached to the robot's body.
As a practical matter, the use of turtle geometry instead of a more traditional model mimics the actual movement logic of the turtle robot. The turtle moves with commands that are relative to its own position, "LEFT 90" means spin left by 90 degrees. Some Logo implementations, particularly those that allow the use of concurrency and multiple turtles, support collision detection and allow the user to redefine the appearance of the turtle cursor, essentially allowing the Logo turtles to function as sprites.
Multiple turtles are supported by MSWLogo, as well as 3D graphics. Input from COM ports and LPT ports are also allowed by MSWLogo through windows GUI. Interrupts can be triggered via keyboard and mouse events. Simple GIF animations may also be produced on MSWLogo version 6.5 with the "gifsave" command.
Turtle geometry is also sometimes used in environments other than Logo as an alternative to a strictly coordinate-addressed graphics system. For instance, the idea of turtle graphics is also useful in Lindenmayer system for generating fractals.
Some modern derivatives of Logo allow thousands of independently moving turtles. There are two popular implementations: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's StarLogo and Northwestern University Center for Connected Learning's (CCL) NetLogo. They allow exploring emergent phenomena and come with many experiments in social studies, biology, physics, and other areas. NetLogo is widely used in agent-based simulation in the biological and social sciences.
Although there is no one agreed-upon standard, there is a broad consensus on core aspects of the language. As of March 2020 there were 308 implementations and dialects of Logo, each with its own strengths. Most of those 308 are no longer in wide use, but many are still under active development. Commercial Logos that are still widely used in schools include "MicroWorlds Logo" and "Imagine Logo".
ObjectLOGO is a variant of Logo with object-oriented programming extensions and lexical scoping. Version 2.7 was sold by Digitool, Inc. It is no longer being developed or supported, and does not run on versions of the Mac operating system later than version 7.5.
Lego Logo was a version of Logo which could manipulate robotic Lego bricks attached to a computer. It was implemented on the Apple II computing platform and was used in American and other grade schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Lego Logo was a precursor to Scratch.
Acornsoft Logo is a commercial implementation of Logo for the 8-bit BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. Acornsoft Logo was developed for Acorn Computers as a full implementation of Logo. It features multiple screen turtles and four-channel sound. It was provided on two 16kB ROMs, with utilities and drivers as accompanying software.
Logo was a primary influence on the Smalltalk programming language. It is also the main influence on the Etoys educational programming environment and language, which is essentially a Logo variant written in Squeak (itself a variant of Smalltalk). Logo influenced the procedure/method model in AgentSheets and AgentCubes to program agents similar to the notion of a turtle in Logo. Logo provided the underlying language for Boxer. Boxer was developed at University of California, Berkeley and MIT and is based on a "literacy model", making it easier to use for nontechnical people.
KTurtle is a variation of Logo implemented at Qt for the KDE environment loosely based on Logo.
Two more results of Logo's influence are Kojo, a variant of Scala, and Scratch, a visual, drag-and-drop language which runs in a web browser.
In 2015, Cubetto, an educational robotics system for children aged three years and older, was developed through crowd-sourced funding. Cubetto was influenced both by LOGO and by Montessori. Cubetto features a small cubic Turtle that turns only through 90 degrees. Cubetto has been described as an update of the button-box MIT LOGO system TORTIS. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18334 |
Last rites
The last rites, in Catholicism, are the last prayers and ministrations given to an individual of the faith, when possible, shortly before death. They may be administered to those awaiting execution, mortally injured, or terminally ill. Last rites cannot be performed on people who have already died.
What in the judgment of the Roman Catholic Church are properly described as the Last Rites are Viaticum (Holy Communion administered to someone who is dying), and the ritual prayers of Commendation of the Dying, and Prayers for the Dead.
The sacrament of Anointing of the Sick is usually postponed until someone is near death. Anointing of the Sick has been thought to be exclusively for the dying, though it can be received at any time. Extreme Unction (Final Anointing) is the name given to Anointing of the Sick when received during last rites. If administered to someone who is not just ill but near death, Anointing of the Sick is generally accompanied by celebration of the sacraments of Penance and Viaticum. The order of the three is important and should be given in the order of Penance (confessing one’s sins), then Anointing of the Sick, and finally the Viaticum.
Although these three (Penance, Anointing of the sick, and Viaticum) are not, in the proper sense, the Last Rites, they are sometimes mistakenly spoken of as such.
The Eucharist given as Viaticum is the only sacrament essentially associated with dying: "The celebration of the Eucharist as Viaticum is the sacrament proper to the dying Christian".
In the Roman Ritual's "Pastoral Care of the Sick: Rites of Anointing and Viaticum", Viaticum is the only sacrament dealt with in "Part II: Pastoral Care of the Dying". Within that part, the chapter on Viaticum is followed by two more chapters, one on "Commendation of the Dying", with short texts, mainly from the Bible, a special form of the litany of the saints, and other prayers, and the other on "Prayers for the Dead". A final chapter provides "Rites for Exceptional Circumstances", namely, the "Continuous Rite of Penance, Anointing, and Viaticum", "Rite for Emergencies", and "Christian Initiation for the Dying". The last of these concerns the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation to those who have not received them.
In addition, the priest has authority to bestow a blessing in the name of the Pope on the dying person, to which a plenary indulgence is attached.
In the Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, the last rites consist of the Sacred Mysteries (sacraments) of Confession and the reception of Holy Communion.
Following these sacraments, when a person dies, there are a series of prayers known as "The Office at the Parting of the Soul From the Body". This consists of a blessing by the priest, the usual beginning, and after the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 50. Then a Canon to the Theotokos is chanted, entitled, "On behalf of a man whose soul is departing, and who cannot speak". This is an elongated poem speaking in the person of the one who is dying, asking for forgiveness of sin, the mercy of God, and the intercession of the saints. The rite is concluded by three prayers said by the priest, the last one being said "at the departure of the soul."
There is an alternative rite known as "The Office at the Parting of the Soul from the Body When a Man has Suffered for a Long Time". The outline of this rite is the same as above, except that Psalm 70 and Psalm 143 precede Psalm 50, and the words of the canon and the prayers are different.
The rubric in the Book of Needs (priest's service book) states, "With respect to the Services said at the parting of the soul, we note that if time does not permit to read the whole Canon, then customarily just one of the prayers, found at the end of the Canon, is read by the Priest at the moment of the parting of the soul from the body."
As soon as the person has died the priest begins "The Office After the Departure of the Soul From the Body" (also known as "The First Pannikhida").
In the Orthodox Church Holy Unction is not considered to be solely a part of a person's preparation for death, but is administered to any Orthodox Christian who is ill, physically or spiritually, to ask for God's mercy and forgiveness of sin. There is an abbreviated form of Holy Unction to be performed for a person in imminent danger of death, which does not replace the full rite in other cases. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18337 |
Lamorna
Lamorna () is a village, valley and cove in west Cornwall, England, UK. It is on the Penwith peninsula approximately south of Penzance and lies within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB); almost a third of Cornwall has AONB designation, with the same status and protection as a National Park. Lamorna became popular with artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is also known for former residents Derek and Jean Tangye who farmed land and wrote "The Minack Chronicles".
First recorded as "Nansmorno" (in 1305), than "Nansmurnou" (1309), "Nansmorne" (1319), "Nansmornou" (1339), "Nansmorna" (1387) and "Namorna" (1388). In Cornish "Nans" means valley, and the 2nd element is possibly "mor", which means sea.
Lamorna Cove is at the SE end of a north-west to south-east valley. The cove is delineated by Carn-du (Black Rock) on the eastern side and Lamorna Point on the western side. The parish boundary runs along the stream with the civil parish of Paul on the NE side and St Buryan to the SW. The valley is privately owned from The Wink (public house) down to the cove, which is reached by a narrow lane to the car park and quay. The small village, half a mile inland, was originally known as Nantewas. The South West Coast Path passes around the cove.
The first record of tin streaming is in the 1380s when Alan Hoskyn was killed (murder was not proven) during a dispute with Trewoofe, after the stream was diverted. Mounds along the stream are evidence of past activity. Kemyel Mill was operated by the Hoskyn family from at least the 14th century until the 1920s, but is now a gift shop under different ownership. There were two mills: one milled corn for animal feed, and the other flour. Both mills are grade II listed buildings.
In the 17th century a privateer vessel owned by the Penrose family was regularly moored in the cove, but she was wrecked during a storm. At one time five cannon were on the sea floor in of water, and one is now at Stoney Cross, Leicestershire where it is used at an underwater archaeological training area. A number of silver coins found in 1984 and 1985 include one dated 1653. The wreck is a popular diving site.
A school for fifty to sixty infant boys and girls opened for the first time in the village in March 1881. The schoolroom, with a screen at the eastern end, was paid for by Canon Coulson and built on land on which he owned the freehold. The room converted to a mission room for Anglicans by removing a screen to reveal a chancel; the converted chapel had a capacity of 70–80 for services. Previously children had to go to St Buryan, some 4 km away, for schooling.
The valley is now tree-covered, but until around the 1950s the stream- and hillside were grazed by cows, horses and pigs. On the slopes, daffodils and early potatoes were grown; the flowers were sent to markets at Covent Garden (London), Birmingham and Wales.
The local community radio station is Coast FM (formerly Penwith Radio), which broadcasts on 96.5 and 97.2 FM.
Waste tips on the eastern side of the cove are a reminder of the granite quarries first opened by John Freeman, on St Aubyn land, in 1849 and continued working until 1911. Famous buildings and constructions include Admiralty Pier at Dover, London County Council offices, the Thames Embankment and Portland Breakwater. Stone from the cove was also used locally to build the Bishop Rock Lighthouse, Mousehole north pier and the Wolf Rock Lighthouse. Granite was dragged by chains to an iron pier, where the stream enters the sea, and transported by ship. A plinth weighing 20 tons was sent to The Great Exhibition of 1851 by sea but eventually, due to the hazards of loading ships, granite was sent by road via Kemyal and Paul Hill through Newlyn, to the cutting yards in Wherrytown. The present quay was built in the late 19th century, possibly rebuilt on an older quay, and is a grade II listed building. A quarry on the west side of the cove failed due to the high quartz content of the granite. An area of and known as the ″Lamorna Harbour Works″ was put up for auction at the Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, City of London on 16 June 1881. The property, on both sides of the valley, included ″the exceedingly valuable″ granite quarry with harbour, wharf and pier, a powder magazine, lime and mill house, carpenter's shops, 12 horse-power water-wheel, foreman's residence and a "substantial and superior" dwelling-house. Despite the 1881 sale claiming the granite quarry was ″exceeding valuable″, Freeman and Sons only employed four men at the quarry two years later and the average-sized blocks were of inferior quality compared with the quarry at nearby Sheffield.
The Lamorna Cove Hotel, built in the 1870s and known as Cliffe House, was originally the quarry manager's home, and had a school and chapel (with bell tower) for the quarry workers and their families. It was first used as a hotel in the 1920s. During the Second World War the hotel was occupied by seven French fishing families who fished out of Newlyn.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Lamorna became popular with artists of the Newlyn School. It is particularly associated with the artist S J "Lamorna" Birch who lived there from 1908. The colony included Birch, Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and Harold Knight. This period is dramatised in the 1998 novel "Summer in February" by Jonathan Smith, which was adapted for the 2013 movie directed by Christopher Menaul. Lamorna was also the home of the jeweller Ella Naper and her husband, the painter Charles, who built Trewoofe House. The Lamorna Arts Festival was launched in 2009 to celebrate the original Lamorna Colony and today's Lamorna art community.
Lamorna has been immortalised in the song "Way Down to Lamorna", about a wayward husband receiving his comeuppance from his wife. The song is beloved of many Cornish singers, including Brenda Wootton.
The actor Robert Newton (1905–1956) was educated in Lamorna and his ashes were scattered in the sea off Lamorna by his son, Nicholas Newton.
The authors Derek Tangye and Jean Tangye lived above Lamorna where he wrote his famous books "The Minack Chronicles". A piece of land called "Oliver Land" has been preserved as a wildlife sanctuary in memory of the couple. Lamorna was the village used in the novel "The Memory Garden" by Rachel Hore (2007) and was a location used for the shooting of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 thriller "Straw Dogs". "Lamorna Cove" was the title of a poem by W. H. Davies published in 1929.
The name of Lamorna's pub, The Wink, alludes to smuggling, "the wink" being a signal that contraband could be obtained. The pub is the subject of a novel by Martha Grimes, entitled "The Lamorna Wink". The interior contains an important collection of maritime artefacts.
The Lamorna Pottery was founded in 1947 by Christopher James Ludlow (known as Jimmy) and Derek Wilshaw. It is currently a working pottery, gift shop and café. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18338 |
Law of multiple proportions
In chemistry, the law of multiple proportions states that if two elements form more than one compound between them, then the ratios of the masses of the second element which combine with a fixed mass of the first element will always be ratios of small whole numbers. This law is sometimes called Dalton's Law, named after John Dalton, the chemist who first expressed it.
For example, Dalton knew that the element carbon forms two oxides by combining with oxygen in different proportions. A fixed mass of carbon, say 100 grams, may react with 133 grams of oxygen to produce one oxide, or with 266 grams of oxygen to produce the other. The ratio of the masses of oxygen that can react with 100 grams of carbon is 266:133 = 2:1, a ratio of small whole numbers. Dalton interpreted this result in his atomic theory by proposing (correctly in this case) that the two oxides have one and two oxygen atoms respectively for each carbon atom. In modern notation the first is CO (carbon monoxide) and the second is CO2 (carbon dioxide).
John Dalton first expressed this observation in 1804. A few years previously, the French chemist Joseph Proust had proposed the "law of definite proportions", which expressed that the elements combined to form compounds in certain well-defined proportions, rather than mixing in just any proportion; and Antoine Lavoisier proved the law of conservation of mass, which helped out Dalton. Careful study of the actual numerical values of these proportions led Dalton to propose his law of multiple proportions. This was an important step toward the atomic theory that he would propose later that year, and it laid the basis for chemical formulas for compounds.
Another example of the law can be seen by comparing ethane (C2H6) with propane (C3H8). The weight of hydrogen which combines with 1 g carbon is 0.252 g in ethane and 0.224 g in propane. The ratio of those weights is 1.125, which can be expressed as the ratio of two small numbers 9:8.
The law of multiple proportions is best demonstrated using simple compounds. For example, if one tried to demonstrate it using the hydrocarbons decane (chemical formula C10H22) and undecane (C11H24), one would find that 100 grams of carbon could react with 18.46 grams of hydrogen to produce decane or with 18.31 grams of hydrogen to produce undecane, for a ratio of hydrogen masses of 121:120, which is hardly a ratio of "small" whole numbers.
The law fails with non-stoichiometric compounds and also doesn't work well with polymers and oligomers.
The law of multiple proportions was a key proof of atomic theory, but it is uncertain whether Dalton discovered the law of multiple proportions by accident and then used atomic theory to explain it, or whether his law was a hypothesis he proposed in order to investigate the validity of atomic theory.
In 1792, Bertrand Pelletier discovered that a certain amount of tin will combine with a certain amount of oxygen to form one tin oxide, or twice the amount of oxygen to form a different oxide. Joseph Proust confirmed Pelletier's discovery and provided measurements of the composition: one tin oxide is 87 parts tin and 13 parts oxygen, and the other is 78.4 parts tin and 21.6 parts oxygen. These were likely tin(II) oxide (SnO) and tin dioxide (SnO2), and their actual compositions are 88.1% tin—11.9% oxygen, and 78.7% tin—21.3% oxygen.
Scholars who have reviewed the writings of Proust found that he had enough data to have discovered the law of multiple proportions himself, but somehow he did not. With regards to the aforementioned tin oxides, had Proust adjusted his figures for a tin content of 100 parts for both oxides, he would have noticed that 100 parts of tin will combine with either 14.9 or 27.6 parts of oxygen. 14.9 and 27.6 form a ratio of 1:1.85, which is 1:2 if one forgives experimental error. It seems this did not occur to Proust, but it occurred to Dalton. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18339 |
Law of averages
The law of averages is the commonly held belief that a particular outcome or event will over certain periods of time occur at a frequency that is similar to its probability. Depending on context or application it can be considered a valid common-sense observation or a misunderstanding of probability. This notion can lead to the gambler's fallacy when one becomes convinced that a particular outcome must come soon simply because it has not occurred recently (e.g. believing that because three consecutive coin flips yielded "heads", the next coin flip must be virtually guaranteed to be "tails").
As invoked in everyday life, the "law" usually reflects wishful thinking or a poor understanding of statistics rather than any mathematical principle. While there is a real theorem that a random variable will reflect its underlying probability over a very large sample, the law of averages typically assumes that unnatural short-term "balance" must occur. Typical applications also generally assume no bias in the underlying probability distribution, which is frequently at odds with the empirical evidence.
The gambler's fallacy is a particular misapplication of the law of averages in which the gambler believes that a particular outcome is more likely because it has not happened recently, or (conversely) that because a particular outcome has recently occurred, it will be less likely in the immediate future.
As an example, consider a roulette wheel that has landed on red in three consecutive spins. An onlooker might apply the law of averages to conclude that on its next spin it must (or at least is much more likely to) land on black. Of course, the wheel has no memory and its probabilities do not change according to past results. So even if the wheel has landed on red in ten or a hundred consecutive spins, the probability that the next spin will be black is still no more than 48.6% (assuming a "fair" European wheel with only one green zero; it would be exactly 50% if there were no green zero and the wheel were fair, and 47.4% for a fair American wheel with one green "0" and one green "00"). Similarly, there is no statistical basis for the belief that lottery numbers which haven't appeared recently are due to appear soon. (There is some value in choosing lottery numbers that are, in general, less "popular" than others — not because they are any more or less likely to come up, but because the largest prizes are usually shared among all of the people who chose the winning numbers. The unpopular numbers are just as likely to come up as the popular numbers are, and in the event of a big win, one would likely have to share it with fewer other people. See parimutuel betting.)
On the other hand, in some locales, modern slot machines are rigged so they "do" give wins a certain proportion of the time — the results are not truly random. This is carefully managed so as to encourage people to keep playing, while the casino takes its designated amount of profit.
Another application of the law of averages is a belief that a sample's behaviour must line up with the expected value based on population statistics. For example, suppose a fair coin is flipped 100 times. Using the law of averages, one might predict that there will be 50 heads and 50 tails. While this is the single most likely outcome, there is only an 8% chance of it occurring. Predictions based on the law of averages are even less useful if the sample does not reflect the population.
In this example, one tries to increase the probability of a rare event occurring at least once by carrying out more trials. For example, a job seeker might argue, "If I send my résumé to enough places, the law of averages says that someone will eventually hire me." Assuming a non-zero probability, it is true that conducting more trials increases the overall likelihood of the desired outcome. However, there is no particular number of trials that guarantees that outcome; rather, the probability that it will already have occurred approaches but never quite reaches 100%.
The Steve Goodman song "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" mentions the Law of Averages in reference to the Chicago Cubs lack of championship success. At the time Goodman recorded the song in 1981, the Cubs had not won a National League championship since the year the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan (1945), and had not won a World Series since 1908. This futility would continue until the Cubs would finally win both in 2016. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18340 |
AvtoVAZ
AvtoVAZ (), formerly known as VAZ (Volzhsky Avtomobilny Zavod) (ВАЗ, Во́лжский автомоби́льный заво́д, or Volga Automobile Plant), is a Russian automobile manufacturer. It is best known for its flagship series of Lada vehicles. In the Soviet Union, its products used various names, including Zhiguli, Oka, and Sputnik which were phased out in the 1990s and replaced by Lada for the Russian market. Starting in December 2019, AvtoVAZ has been selling Niva cars with Chevrolet branding. That is set to end in August 2020.
The company is a subsidiary of the Alliance Rostec Auto company, in which French Groupe Renault holds a controlling 67.61% stake. AvtoVAZ is a consolidated subsidiary of Groupe Renault. AvtoVAZ produces over 400,000 cars a year, under its Lada brand as well as cars of Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance brands Renault, Nissan and Datsun. The AvtoVAZ factory is the largest car manufacturer in Russia and Eastern Europe.
The company was established in 1966 in cooperation with Fiat, with Viktor Polyakov (later Minister of Automobile Industry) as director, and Vladimir Solovyov as chief designer, and intended to produce popular economy cars that would meet the growing demand for personal transport. It was set up as a collaboration between Italy and the Soviet Union and built on the banks of the Volga River in 1966. A new town, Tolyatti, named after the Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti, was built around the factory. The cost of the VAZ plant was estimated at $800 million in 1970 (equivalent to $ billion in ). The plant contained many of the automation systems being developed by Fiat's various subsidiaries (which were eventually amalgamated as Comau), so the Togliatti factory acted as a trial before Fiat implemented them in its plants in Italy.
The car brand to be produced ("Zhiguli") was envisaged as a "people's car" like the Citroën 2CV or the VW Type 1. Production was intended to be 220,000 cars a year, beginning in 1971 (other sources listed 300,000 in 1971); car production actually began before the plant was finished in 1970. The VAZ trademark, at first, was a silver Volga boat on a red pentagonal background, with "Togliatti" superposed in Cyrillic (Тольятти); the first badges, manufactured in Turin, mistakenly had the Cyrillic "Я" rendered "R" instead (Тольʀтти), making them collector's items.
Although the company was not as vertically integrated as other Soviet enterprises, for example it purchased components from a variety of suppliers over which it exerted little control., unlike Western automakers, a large proportion of the components for the cars were made entirely in-house - for example the Togliatti works contained its own foundry for manufacturing steel from raw iron ore, and even made its own tyres and glass from raw materials.
The first VAZ-2101 was produced on 22 April 1970, the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth. About 22,000 VAZ-2101s were built in 1970, with capacity at the end of 1973 reaching 660,000 a year; 21 December, the one millionth 2101 was built. A third production line was added in October 1974, boosting output to 2,230 cars a day. The same year, total VAZ production reached 1.5 million.
The VAZ plant was described as 'ultra-modern' by the Chicago Tribune in a 1973 article. Production reached 750,000 cars a year in 1975, making the Tolyatti plant the third most productive in the world. Between 1977 and 1981, AvtoVAZ acquired 30 welding robots from Japanese firms.
The original, Fiat-based models included the VAZ-2101 sedan and the VAZ-2102 estate. 1972 saw the introduction of a deluxe version of the sedan, VAZ-2103, which was based on the Fiat 124 Special and featured a new 1.5 L engine and twin headlights. In 1974, the original VAZ-2101 was updated with new engines and interiors, whereas the VAZ-2102 underwent the same improvements in 1976. The body style with two round headlights was manufactured until 1988.
The VAZ-2106, introduced in December 1975 as an updated version of the VAZ-2103, was based on the 1972 Fiat 124 Special T, featuring different interiors and new 1.6 L engine. The 2106 was one of the most popular rear-wheel drive AvtoVAZ models in the past; its production ended in 2001 from Tolyatti, but continued at Izhavto (Izhevsk), ending there in December 2005.
In 1974, VAZ was given permission to begin producing Wankel engines under licence from NSU. Work began in 1976, with a single-rotor Lada appearing in 1978; the first 250 of these went on sale in the summer of 1980.
After having built a number of prototypes and experimental vehicles, AvtoVAZ designers launched the first car entirely of their own design, the VAZ-2121 Niva, in 1977. This highly popular and innovative SUV was made with off-road use in mind, featuring a gearbox with a central differential lock lever as well as a low- and high-range selector lever.
The VAZ-2105, based on the Fiat 124 mechanicals but modernised and restyled, was introduced in 1979 and marketed outside the Soviet Union under the Riva or Laika trade names, depending on the country. Square headlights and new body panels distinguish this car from the earlier models. The 2105 was third best selling automobile platform after the Volkswagen Beetle and the Ford Model T, and one of the longest production run platforms alongside the Volkswagen Beetle, the Hindustan Ambassador and the Volkswagen Type 2.
In May 1980, a series of mass strikes at the Togliatti plant involving hundreds of thousands of workers were reported by the western press. In 1982 the VAZ-2107, a deluxe version of the 2105, was introduced; it featured a better engine, refined interiors and a chrome radiator grille. In 1984, the VAZ-2104 station wagon completed the line-up.
Based on the success of the Niva, the design department prepared a new family of front-wheel drive models by 1984, which was of a completely domestic design. Production started with the VAZ-2108 "Sputnik" three-door hatchback, the series was commercially known as Samara. It was the first front-wheel drive serial car built in the Soviet Union after the LuAZ-
969V. The Samara engine was mostly designed and produced in-house, had a new single overhead camshaft (SOHC) design and was driven by a more modern rubber belt. The five-door VAZ-2109 hatchback followed in 1987, and the four-door 1.5 L sedan, the VAZ-21099, was introduced in 1990. The same year, the front sides and radiator grille were restyled on the whole Samara range.
A white 2108 would become the nine millionth Lada built, on 24 May 1985, with the ten millionth, on 9 October 1986, also a 2108. The twelve millionth, a right-hand drive 2109, was produced 6 July 1989.
The VAZ-1111 Oka micro-car was introduced in 1988, and in 1991 the production was transferred to the KamAZ and SeAZ factories.
By the late 1980s AvtoVAZ was suffering from the deterioration of its capital goods such as tools and machinery, resulting from insufficient levels of investment over a long period. Unproductive and antiquated management techniques also contributed to the decline, as did the absence of market competition.
The first privately owned AvtoVAZ dealership was established by Boris Berezovsky in 1989. Dealerships quickly turned into criminal rackets that at times simply stole cars from the factory.
In June 1991 Bear Stearns was hired by the Soviet government to conduct an appraisal of AvtoVAZ and negotiate a venture with a Western partner, in preparation for the privatization of the company. An independent trade union was started during the same year, as workers deemed the traditional trade union to be too close to the interests of management.
In January 1993 AvtoVaz was re-established as a joint-stock company under Russian law. The company came to be controlled by the management, including Vladimir Kadannikov, head of AvtoVAZ. It was listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange. As with many other privatized post-Soviet companies the financial situation at AvtoVAZ was dire, with workers being unpaid for months at a time.
In 1994 Boris Berezovsky’s dealership company, called Logovaz, accounted for nearly 10% of the domestic sales of AvtoVAZ. Despite the state of the Russian economy at the time demand for AvtoVAZ cars remained buoyant, but widespread corruption in the distribution network led the company to accumulate massive debts.
The 110-series sedan was introduced in 1995, two years late on its original 1993 deadline. Development costs for the car were estimated at $2 billion. The 2111 station wagon followed in 1998 and the 2112 hatchback completed the range in 2001. A five-door version of the Niva, the VAZ-2131, was introduced in 1995.
By 1995 car sales, distribution and spare parts at AvtoVAZ were all controlled by criminal organizations. This situation was made possible by the close relationship that existed between the criminals and part of the management. Additionally, gangsters were used to control the workers and break strikes.
By late 1996 AvtoVAZ had become the country's largest tax debtor, owing $2.4 billion in unpaid taxes. In 1997, the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched Operation Cyclone, an investigation which ultimately uncovered evidence that gangsters connected to AvtoVAZ had carried out at least 65 murders of company managers, dealers and business rivals.
The 1998 Russian financial crisis improved the company's market position, by improving the effectiveness of export sales and making imported cars too expensive for most Russians. The VAZ-2120 Nadezhda, a minivan based on the Lada Niva, was introduced in 1998. In the second half of the 1990s some efforts were made to improve the quality of production, but in 1999 there were still nearly 50,000 cases of cars being assembled with missing parts.
In 2001 GM-AvtoVAZ, a joint-venture with General Motors, was established. Increased competition from foreign car manufacturers saw the company's share of the Russian market fall to 49% in 2002, compared to 56% four years earlier. In 2003, VAZ presented the concept car Lada Revolution, an open single seater sports car powered by a 1.6 L engine producing . Production of the Wankel engine used on some Lada models (mostly the police versions) stopped in 2004.
2005 saw the introduction of the new Kalina B-segment lineup to the market. AvtoVAZ has built a new modern plant for this model and is hoping to sell some 200,000 cars annually. The Kalina had been originally designed in the early 1990s, and its launch was repeatedly delayed, exemplifying the company's difficulty in bringing products to market in time.
In October 2005 the control of the company, which had until then been exercised by subsidiaries of AvtoVAZ connected to Kadannikov, was transferred to Rosoboronexport. March 2007 saw the start of production of Lada Priora, a restyled and modernised 110-series model.
In March 2008, Renault purchased a 25% stake in AvtoVAZ in a US$1 billion deal, with Rostec retaining the remaining 75%. The deal was agreed at a time when the Russian car market was booming.
The onset of the Great Recession caused considerable problems to the company. By April 2009 AvtoVAZ was on the verge of bankruptcy, which was only avoided because of $600 million bailout from the Russian government.
As an anti-crisis measure, the Russian government introduced a car scrappage scheme in March 2010. Avtovaz sales doubled in the second quarter of 2010 as a result, and the company returned to profit. By the end of 2010, automotive production in Russia had returned to pre-crisis levels.
In 2011 production of the classic Fiat 124-based 2105 and 2107 series models was completely moved from the Togliatti plant to the IzhAvto plant near Izhevsk, to make space for the company's forthcoming 2016 model. In April 2012, AvtoVAZ confirmed the end of the model 2107 (Lada Riva or Lada Nova), after more than forty years.
Sales of the Lada Granta, a subcompact car developed in collaboration with Renault, started in December 2011. The Lada Largus was launched in the Russian market in the middle of July 2012.
In August 2012, the Lada XRAY concept car was launched at the Moscow International Automobile Salon. The XRAY was designed by chief designer Steve Mattin, formerly of Volvo and Mercedes-Benz. The second generation of the Lada Kalina, basically a facelifted first generation, was also revealed at the 2012 Moscow International Motor Show. The Kalina is also produced as the more powerful version named Lada Kalina Sport.
On 3 May 2012, the Renault-Nissan alliance has signed letter of intent to raise its stake in Avtovaz to 51.01%. On 12 December 2012, the Renault–Nissan Alliance formed a joint venture with Rostekhnologii (Alliance Rostec Auto BV) with the aim of becoming the long-term controlling shareholder of AvtoVAZ.
In the same year, it was announced that Avtovaz and Sollers plan to jointly produce vehicles in Kazakhstan. The plant, which will be open in 2016, will be built in Ust-Kamenogorsk, in the eastern part of the country, and will produce around 120,000 cars a year.
In November 2013, Bo Andersson joined AvtoVAZ as CEO, the first non-Russian to head the company. He became involved in conflicts with local suppliers, which he accused of supplying low-quality products.
The takeover of AvtoVAZ was completed in June 2014, and the two companies of the Renault-Nissan Alliance took a combined 67.1% stake of Alliance Rostec, which in turn acquired a 74.5% of AvtoVAZ, thereby giving Renault and Nissan indirect control over the Russian manufacturer.
In 2014, AvtoVAZ sold 448,114 vehicles, down 16.3 percent comparing to the previous year, due to the overall market slowdown in Russia. The total production of the Togliatti factory is 910,000 vehicles. By 2014 the company's liabilities exceeded assets by 68 billion rubles, for UK based Ernst & Young to express “significant doubt” about the company's “ability to continue as a going concern”.
In 2014, the Largus got a new modification, the Lada Largus Cross. In the fall of 2014 AvtoVAZ began production of a new Kalina model, the Lada Kalina Cross.
Production of the Lada Vesta, based on a new b\C platform developed by AvtoVAZ in cooperation with Renault-Nissan Alliance, started on September 25, 2015, at Lada Izhevsk manufacturing site. For the first time in LADA history, one year has passed between concept-car and start of production. Lada XRAY is the first compact city crossover in company’s history. Starts of sales was held on February 14, 2016.
Total Lada sales in 2015 amounted to 269,096 cars, of which 207,389 were built by AvtoVAZ in Tolyatti, while the rest were made by Lada Izhevsk, giving the company a 17.9% share of the Russian automotive market.
In March 2016 Nicolas Maure became the company's CEO. In April 2016, Carlos Ghosn, Renault-Nissan Chairman, ceded his AvtoVAZ chairmanship position to Sergey Skvortsov, Deputy General Director of Russian state-owned Rostec, the minority shareholder in Avtovaz.
Despite massive layoffs since 2008, in 2016 the company remained unprofitable.
In October 2016 Renault invested $1.33 billion in another recapitalization of AvtoVAZ, this time without involvement from Nissan, making the company a subsidiary of the French group. In September 2017 Nissan sold its AvtoVAZ stake to Renault for €45 million.
In December 2018, Renault and Rostec completed the acquisition of all AvtoVAZ shares through their Alliance Rostec venture. The company then delisted from the Moscow Exchange. In 2018 AvtoVAZ posted a net profit of $90.5 million, its first positive result in a decade. In June 2019 Rostec announced it would reduce its stake in AvtoVAZ to 25%.
In December 2019, AvtoVAZ acquired General Motors' stake in their GM-AvtoVAZ joint venture. As part of the deal, AvtoVAZ is set to use the Chevrolet branding for the Niva models until August 2020, before replacing it with Lada.
After its re-establishment as a joint stock company in January 1993, the ownership structure of AvtoVAZ became opaque, with two different management groups controlling the majority of the shares, one led by company chairman Kadannikov, holding 33.2% through the AVVA company, while another group held 19.2% through the AFC company. AvtoVAZ, in turn, owned over 80% of AVVA, which was said to be under the influence of Boris Berezovsky.
, AvtoVAZ's owner is Alliance Rostec Auto B.V., which is a joint venture of Renault and Russian company Rostec. Renault owns a controlling 67.61% stake of Alliance Rostec Auto, while Rostec owns a 32.39%. Following a recapitalization of AvtoVAZ in 2016, Renault holds over 50% of the company, making it a subsidiary of the French group.
Production sites for Lada vehicles in Russia:
Exports of AvtoVAZ vehicles to the West began in 1974; Ladas were sold as in several Western nations during the 1970s and 1980s, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, though trade sanctions banned their export to the United States. Under the original agreement with Fiat, the car could not be sold in competition with the 124 until its replacement (the Fiat 131 Mirafiori) had been released and all Fiat production of the 124 had ceased.
Economic instability in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, tightening emissions and safety legislation meant that AvtoVAZ withdrew from most Western markets by the late 1997. In later years, Lada is again exported. The Lada is marketed in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chile, Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Lebanon, Moldova, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, South Ossetia, Serbian Republic, Syria, Peru and Jordan.
In 2015, 28,461 Lada cars were exported, mostly to Kazakhstan (14,278 vehicles), Azerbaijan (4,690), Belarus (2,360), Egypt (2,128) and Germany (1,515).
In 1970, AvtoVAZ CEO Viktor Polyakov set the task to create sport versions of the Lada 2101. The engines were built in Italy, whereas fine tuning was done by engineers in Togliatti. In 1971, three sport cars based on the 2101 model took part in the Soviet Winter Rally Championship. Later in the same year, a VAZ-Autoexport team earned their first prize, the Silver Cup in the 1971 Tour d'Europe.
In the 1970s–1980s, the Autoexport racing team, using different Lada models, participated in different motorsport competitions. A special Zhiguli class was created for the Soviet Rally Championship. There were different rally and track races featuring Avtovaz sports cars. In 1978, a Lada Niva took part in the famous Dakar Rally. It was also successful in a number of international competitions. In 1981, Guy Moerenhout Racing made two special models for Lada Belgium: Lada 21011 RS Sport, model with two Weber carburetors and special sport equipment, and Lada Niva Dream, with big wing extension, special colours and larger wheels. In the late 1990s, Lada Canada supported a rally operation in the Canadian Rally Championship, winning in the 'Production 1750' class on numerous occasions.
In 2012, the Lada Granta Cup was launched. The first stage of the new race series began in Moscow on the Myachkovo race track.
In 2008, AvtoVAZ took part in the WTCC World Championship, raced and developed by Russian Bears Motorsport, although badged as a factory team. The team raced the Lada 110 in the 2008 season, but ran a trio of Lada Prioras in the 2009 WTCC. The team scored their first championship points at Imola with renowned BTCC two-time champion James Thompson.
Lada withdrew from the WTCC for the 2010 season, but returned in 2012, with TMS Sport entering a Lada Granta WTCC for Thompson in two rounds. The team added a second car for the 2013 season, driven by Alexey Dudukalo, and achieved their best result to date, finishing fifth in their home race in Russia.
In 2013, AvtoVAZ returned to the WTCC championship. The team received a new car: the Lada Granta WTCC with the new driver, WTCC World Champion Robert Huff.
The team returned for the 2014 World Touring Car Championship season, again fielding a Granta. Since the beginning of 2015, the Lada team takes part in the WTCC as Lada Sport Rosneft. Starting with the 2015 season, Lada Sport currently uses Lada Vesta.
HC Lada Togliatti, an ice hockey team currently playing in the VHL, takes its name from the marque. They won two league titles as well as the 1996 European Cup.
Lada sponsored Aldershot Football Club of the English Football League for two seasons leading up their bankruptcy in 1992. Lada also sponsored Colo Colo (Chile) during their championship season in 1991.
Lada sponsored the Renault F1 Team in 2010 after they signed Russia's first Formula One driver Vitaly Petrov. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18352 |
Lundy
Lundy is an English island in the Bristol Channel. It forms part of the district of Torridge in the county of Devon.
About long and wide, Lundy has had a long and turbulent history, frequently changing hands between the British crown and various usurpers. In the 1920s, one self-proclaimed king, Martin Harman, tried to issue his own coinage and was fined by the House of Lords. In 1941, two German Heinkel He 111 bombers crash landed on the island, their crews captured. In 1969, Lundy was purchased by British millionaire Jack Hayward, who donated it to the National Trust. It is managed by the Landmark Trust, a conservation charity that derives its income from day trips and holiday lettings. As of 2007, the island had a population of 28.
As a steep, rocky island, often shrouded by fog, Lundy has been the scene of many shipwrecks, and the remains of its old lighthouse installations are of both historic and scientific interest. Its present-day lighthouses are fully automated, one of them solar-powered.
Lundy has a rich bird life, as it lies on major migration routes, and attracts many vagrant as well as indigenous species. It also boasts a variety of marine habitats, with rare seaweeds, sponges and corals. In 2010, the island became Britain's first Marine Conservation Zone.
In summer, visitors reach Lundy by boat from Bideford or Ilfracombe, and in winter by helicopter from Hartland Point. Kayakers can also kayak to the island. A local tourist curiosity is the special "Puffin" postage stamp, a category known by philatelists as "local carriage labels", a collectors' item.
Lundy is the largest island in the Bristol Channel. It lies off the coast of Devon, England, about a third of the distance across the channel from Devon to South Wales. Lundy gives its name to a British sea area and is one of the islands of England.
Lundy is included in the district of Torridge with a resident population of 28 people in 2007. These include a warden, a ranger, an island manager, a farmer, bar and house-keeping staff, and volunteers. Most live in and around the village at the south of the island. Most visitors are day-trippers, although there are 23 holiday properties and a camp site for over-night visitors, most at the south of the island.
In a 2005 opinion poll of "Radio Times" readers, Lundy was named as Britain's tenth greatest natural wonder. The island has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and it was England's first statutory Marine Nature reserve, and the first Marine Conservation Zone, because of its unique flora and fauna. It is managed by the Landmark Trust on behalf of the National Trust.
The name "Lundy" is believed to come from the old Norse word for "puffin island" (compare Lundey in Iceland), ' being the Old Norse word for a puffin and ', an island, although an alternative explanation has been suggested with "Lund" referring to a copse, or wooded area. It is known in Welsh as "Ynys Wair", 'Gwair's Island', in reference to an alternative name for the wizard Gwydion.
Lundy has evidence of visitation or occupation from the Mesolithic period onward, with Neolithic flintwork, Bronze Age burial mounds, four inscribed gravestones from the early medieval period, and an early medieval monastery (possibly dedicated to St Elen or St Helen).
Beacon Hill Cemetery was excavated by Charles Thomas in 1969. The cemetery contains four inscribed stones, dated to the 5th or 6th century AD. The site was originally enclosed by a curvilinear bank and ditch, which is still visible in the southwest corner. However, the other walls were moved when the Old Light was constructed in 1819. Celtic Christian enclosures of this type were common in Western Britain and are known as ' in Welsh and ' in Cornish. There are surviving examples in Luxulyan, in Cornwall; Mathry, Meidrim and Clydau in Wales; and Stowford, Jacobstowe, Lydford and Instow, in Devon.
Thomas proposed a five-stage sequence of site usage:
Twenty-three cist graves were found during this excavation. Considering that the excavation only uncovered a small area of the cemetery, there may be as many as 100 graves.
Four Celtic inscribed stones have been found in Beacon Hill Cemetery:
Lundy was granted to the Knights Templar by Henry II in 1160. The Templars were a major international maritime force at this time, with interests in North Devon, and almost certainly an important port at Bideford or on the River Taw in Barnstaple. This was probably because of the increasing threat posed by the Norse sea raiders; however, it is unclear whether they ever took possession of the island. Ownership was disputed by the Marisco family who may have already been on the island during King Stephen's reign. The Mariscos were fined, and the island was cut off from necessary supplies. Evidence of the Templars' weak hold on the island came when King John, on his accession in 1199, confirmed the earlier grant.
In 1235 William de Marisco was implicated in the murder of Henry Clement, a messenger of Henry III. Three years later, an attempt was made to kill Henry III by a man who later confessed to being an agent of the Marisco family. William de Marisco fled to Lundy where he lived as a virtual king. He built a stronghold in the area now known as Bulls' Paradise with thick walls.
In 1242, Henry III sent troops to the island. They scaled the island's cliff and captured William de Marisco and 16 of his "subjects". Henry III built the castle (sometimes referred to as the Marisco Castle) in an attempt to establish the rule of law on the island and its surrounding waters. In 1275 the island is recorded as being in the Lordship of King Edward I but by 1322 it was in the possession of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster and was among the large number of lands seized by Edward II following Lancaster's execution for rebelling against the King.At some point in the 13th century the monks of the Cistercian order at Cleeve Abbey held the rectory of the island.
Over the next few centuries, the island was hard to govern. Trouble followed as both English and foreign pirates and privateers – including other members of the Marisco family – took control of the island for short periods. Ships were forced to navigate close to Lundy because of the dangerous shingle banks in the fast flowing River Severn and Bristol Channel, with its tidal range of , one of the greatest in the world. This made the island a profitable location from which to prey on passing Bristol-bound merchant ships bringing back valuable goods from overseas.
In 1627 a group known as the Salé Rovers, from the Republic of Salé (now Salé in Morocco) occupied Lundy for five years. These Barbary Pirates, under the command of a Dutch renegade named Jan Janszoon, flew an Ottoman flag over the island. Some captured Europeans were held on Lundy before being sent to Algiers to be sold as slaves. From 1628 to 1634 the island was plagued by pirate ships of French, Basque, English and Spanish origin. These incursions were eventually ended by Sir John Penington, but in the 1660s and as late as the 1700s the island still fell prey to French privateers.
In the English Civil War, Thomas Bushell held Lundy for King Charles I, rebuilding Marisco Castle and garrisoning the island at his own expense. He was a friend of Francis Bacon, a strong supporter of the Royalist cause and an expert on mining and coining. It was the last Royalist territory held between the first and second civil wars. After receiving permission from Charles I, Bushell surrendered the island on 24 February 1647 to Richard Fiennes, representing General Fairfax. In 1656, the island was acquired by Lord Saye and Sele.
The late 18th and early 19th centuries were years of lawlessness on Lundy, particularly during the ownership of Thomas Benson (1708-1772), a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1747 and Sheriff of Devon, who notoriously used the island for housing convicts whom he was supposed to be deporting. Benson leased Lundy from its owner, John Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Gower (1694–1754) (who was an heir of the Grenville family of Bideford and of Stowe, Kilkhampton in Cornwall), at a rent of £60 per annum and contracted with the Government to transport a shipload of convicts to Virginia, but diverted the ship to Lundy to use the convicts as his personal slaves. Later Benson was involved in an insurance swindle. He purchased and insured the ship "Nightingale" and loaded it with a valuable cargo of pewter and linen. Having cleared the port on the mainland, the ship put into Lundy, where the cargo was removed and stored in a cave built by the convicts, before setting sail again. Some days afterwards, when a homeward-bound vessel was sighted, the "Nightingale" was set on fire and scuttled. The crew were taken off the stricken ship by the other ship, which landed them safely at Clovelly.
Sir Vere Hunt, 1st Baronet of Curragh, a rather eccentric Irish politician and landowner, and unsuccessful man of business, purchased the island from John Cleveland in 1802 for £5,270 (£ today). Sir Vere Hunt planted in the island a small, self-contained Irish colony with its
own constitution and divorce laws, coinage and stamps. The tenants came from Sir Vere Hunt's Irish estate and they experienced agricultural difficulties while on the island. This led Sir Vere Hunt to seek someone who would take the island off his hands, failing in his attempt to sell the island to the British Government as a base for troops. After the 1st Baronet's death his son, Sir Aubrey (Hunt) de Vere, 2nd Baronet, also had great difficulty in securing any profit from the property. In the 1820s John Benison agreed to purchase the island for £4,500 but then refused to complete sale as he felt that the 2nd Baronet could not make out a good title in respect of the sale terms, namely that the island was free from tithes and taxes.
William Hudson Heaven purchased Lundy in 1834, as a summer retreat and for the shooting, at a cost of 9,400 guineas (£9,870, or £ today). He claimed it to be a "free island", and successfully resisted the jurisdiction of the mainland magistrates. Lundy was in consequence sometimes referred to as "the kingdom of Heaven". It belongs in fact to the county of Devon, and has always been part of the hundred of Braunton. Many of the buildings on the island today, including St. Helen's Church, designed by the architect John Norton, and Millcombe House (originally known simply as the Villa), date from the Heaven period. The Georgian-style villa was built in 1836. However, the expense of building the road from the beach (no financial assistance being provided by Trinity House, despite their regular use of the road following the construction of the lighthouses), the villa and the general cost of running the island had a ruinous effect on the family's finances, which had been damaged by reduced profits from their sugar plantations in Jamaica.
In 1957 a message in a bottle from one of the seamen of was washed ashore between Babbacombe and Peppercombe in Devon. The letter, dated 15 August 1843 read: "Dear Brother, Please e God i be with y against Michaelmas. Prepare y search Lundy for y Jenny ivories. Adiue William, Odessa". The bottle and letter are on display at the Portledge Hotel at Fairy Cross, in Devon, England. was a three-masted full-rigged ship reputed to be carrying ivory and gold dust that was wrecked on Lundy on 20 February 1797 at a place thereafter called Jenny's Cove. Some ivory was apparently recovered some years later but the leather bags supposed to contain gold dust were never found.
William Heaven was succeeded by his son the Reverend Hudson Grosset Heaven who, thanks to a legacy from Sarah Langworthy (née Heaven), was able to fulfill his life's ambition of building a stone church on the island. St Helen's was completed in 1896, and stands today as a lasting memorial to the Heaven period. It has been designated by English Heritage a Grade II listed building. He is said to have been able to afford either a church or a new harbour. His choice of the church was not however in the best financial interests of the island. The unavailability of the money for re-establishing the family's financial soundness, coupled with disastrous investment and speculation in the early 20th century, caused severe financial hardship.
Hudson Heaven died in 1916, and was succeeded by his nephew, Walter Charles Hudson Heaven. With the outbreak of the First World War, matters deteriorated seriously, and in 1918 the family sold Lundy to Augustus Langham Christie. In 1924, the Christie family sold the island along with the mail contract and the MV "Lerina" to Martin Coles Harman, who proclaimed himself a king. Harman issued two coins of Half Puffin and One Puffin denominations in 1929, nominally equivalent to the British halfpenny and penny, resulting in his prosecution under the United Kingdom's Coinage Act of 1870. The House of Lords found him guilty in 1931, and he was fined £5 with fifteen guineas (£5 + £15.75) expenses. The coins were withdrawn and became collectors' items. In 1965 a "fantasy" restrike four-coin set, a few in gold, was issued to commemorate 40 years since Harman purchased the island. Harman's son, John Pennington Harman was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross during the Battle of Kohima, India in 1944. There is a memorial to him at the VC Quarry on Lundy. Martin Coles Harman died in 1954.
Residents did not pay taxes to the United Kingdom and had to pass through customs when they travelled to and from Lundy Island. Although the island was ruled as a virtual fiefdom, its owner never claimed to be independent of the United Kingdom, in contrast to later territorial "micronations".
Following the death of Harman's son Albion in 1968, Lundy was put up for sale in 1969. Jack Hayward, a British millionaire, purchased the island for £150,000 (£ today) and gave it to the National Trust, who leased it to the Landmark Trust. The Landmark Trust has managed the island since then, deriving its income from arranging day trips, letting out holiday cottages and from donations. In May 2015 a sculpture by Antony Gormley was erected on Lundy. It is one of five life-sized sculptures, "Land", placed near the centre and at four compass points of the UK in a commission by the Landmark Trust, to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The others are at Lowsonford (Warwickshire), Saddell Bay (Scotland), the Martello Tower (Aldeburgh, Suffolk), and Clavell Tower (Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset).
The island is visited by over 20,000 day-trippers a year, but during September 2007 had to be closed for several weeks owing to an outbreak of Norovirus.
An inaugural Lundy Island half-marathon took place on 8 July 2018 with 267 competitors.
Near the end of a voyage from Africa to Bristol, the British merchant ship was wrecked on the coast of Lundy in January 1797. Only her first mate survived. The site of the tragedy () has since been known as Jenny's Cove.
Steaming in heavy fog, the Royal Navy battleship ran hard aground near Shutter Rock on Lundy's southwest corner at about 2:00 a.m. on 30 May 1906. Thinking they were aground at Hartland Point on the English mainland, a landing party went ashore for help, only finding out where they were after encountering the lighthouse keeper at the island's north light.
Strenuous efforts by the Royal Navy to salvage the badly damaged battleship during the summer of 1906 failed, and in 1907 it was decided to give up and sell her for scrap. "Montagu" was scrapped at the scene over the next fifteen years. Diving clubs still visit the site, where armour plate and live 12-inch (305-millimetre) shells remain on the seabed.
During the Second World War two German Heinkel He 111 bombers crash landed on the island in 1941. The first was on 3 March, when all the crew survived and were taken prisoner.
The second was on 1 April when the pilot was killed and the other crew members were taken prisoner. This plane had bombed a British ship and one engine was damaged by anti aircraft fire, forcing it to crash land. Most of the metal was salvaged, although a few remains can be found at the crash site to date. Reportedly to avoid reprisals the crew concocted a story that they were on a reconnaissance mission.
The island of Lundy is long from north to south by a little over wide, with an area of . The highest point on Lundy is Beacon Hill, above sea level. A few yards off the northeastern coast is Seal's Rock which is so called after the seals which rest on and inhabit the islet. It is less than wide. Near the jetty is a small pocket beach.
The island is primarily composed of granite of 59.8 ± 0.4 – 58.4 ± 0.4 million years (from the Palaeocene epoch), with slate at the southern end; the plateau soil is mainly loam, with some peat. Among the igneous dykes cutting the granite are a small number composed of a unique orthophyre. This was given the name Lundyite in 1914, although the term – never precisely defined – has since fallen into disuse.
Lundy island lies on the borderline where the North Atlantic Ocean and the Bristol Channel meet, so it has quite a mild climate. Lundy has cool, wet winters and mild, wet summers. It is often windy. Fog is frequently experienced. The record high temperature is 28.8 °C (83.8 °F) on 2 August 1990, and the record low temperature is -4.5 °C (23.9 °F) recorded just six months later on 7 February 1991.
Lundy Island is in the USDA 9a plant hardiness zone.
The vegetation on the plateau is mainly dry heath, with an area of waved Calluna heath towards the northern end of the island, which is also rich in lichens, such as "Teloschistes flavicans" and several species of Cladonia and Parmelia.
Other areas are either a dry heath/acidic grassland mosaic, characterised by heaths and western gorse ("Ulex gallii"), or semi-improved acidic grassland in which Yorkshire fog ("Holcus lanatus") is abundant. Tussocky (Thrift) (Holcus/Armeria) communities occur mainly on the western side, and some patches of bracken ("Pteridium aquilinum") on the eastern side.
There is one endemic plant species, the Lundy cabbage "(Coincya wrightii)", a species of primitive brassica.
By the 1980s the eastern side of the island had become overgrown by rhododendrons "(Rhododendron ponticum)" which had spread from a few specimens planted in the garden of Millcombe House in Victorian times, but in recent years significant efforts have been made to eradicate this non-native plant.
Two invertebrate taxa are endemic to Lundy, with both feeding on the endemic Lundy cabbage ("Coincya wrightii"). These are the Lundy cabbage flea beetle ("Psylliodes luridipennis"), a species of leaf beetle (family Chrysomelidae) and the Lundy cabbage weevil ("Ceutorhynchus contractus" var. "pallipes"), a variety of true weevil (family Curculionidae). In addition, the Lundy cabbage is the main host of a flightless form of "Psylliodes napi" (another species of flea beetle) and a wide variety of other invertebrate species which are not endemic to the island. Another resident invertebrate of note is "Atypus affinis", the only British species of purseweb spider.
The population of puffins ("Fratercula arctica") on the island declined in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as a consequence of depredations by brown and black rats ("Rattus rattus") and possibly also as a result of commercial fishing for sand eels, the puffins' principal prey. Since the elimination of rats in 2006, seabird numbers have increased and by 2019 the number of puffins had risen to 375 and the number of Manx shearwaters to 5,504 pairs.
As an isolated island on major migration routes, Lundy has a rich bird life and is a popular site for birdwatching. Large numbers of black-legged kittiwake ("Rissa tridactyla") nest on the cliffs, as do razorbill ("Alca torda"), guillemot ("Uria aalge"), herring gull ("Larus argentatus"), lesser black-backed gull ("Larus fuscus"), fulmar ("Fulmarus glacialis"), shag ("Phalacrocorax aristotelis"), oystercatcher ("Haematopus ostralegus"), skylark ("Alauda arvensis"), meadow pipit ("Anthus pratensis"), common blackbird ("Turdus merula"), robin ("Erithacus rubecula") and linnet ("Carduelis cannabina"). There are also smaller populations of peregrine falcon ("Falco peregrinus") and raven ("Corvus corax").
Lundy has attracted many vagrant birds, in particular species from North America. The island's bird list totals 317 species. This has included the following species, each of which represents the sole British record: Ancient murrelet, eastern phoebe and eastern towhee. Records of bimaculated lark, American robin and common yellowthroat were also firsts for Britain (American robin has also occurred two further times on Lundy). Veerys in 1987 and 1997 were Britain's second and fourth records, a Rüppell's warbler in 1979 was Britain's second, an eastern Bonelli's warbler in 2004 was Britain's fourth, and a black-faced bunting in 2001 Britain's third.
Other British Birds rarities that have been sighted (single records unless otherwise indicated) are: Little bittern, glossy ibis, gyrfalcon (3 records), little and Baillon's crakes, collared pratincole, semipalmated (5 records), least (2 records), white-rumped and Baird's (2 records) sandpipers, Wilson's phalarope, laughing gull, bridled tern, Pallas's sandgrouse, great spotted, black-billed and yellow-billed (3 records) cuckoos, European roller, olive-backed pipit, citrine wagtail, Alpine accentor, thrush nightingale, red-flanked bluetail, black-eared (2 records) and desert wheatears, White's, Swainson's (3 records), and grey-cheeked (2 records) thrushes, Sardinian (2 records), Arctic (3 records), Radde's and western Bonelli's warblers, Isabelline and lesser grey shrikes, red-eyed vireo (7 records), two-barred crossbill, yellow-rumped and blackpoll warblers, yellow-breasted (2 records) and black-headed (3 records) buntings, rose-breasted grosbeak (2 records), bobolink and Baltimore oriole (2 records).
Lundy is home to an unusual range of introduced mammals, including a distinct breed of wild pony, the Lundy pony, as well as Soay sheep ("Ovis aries"), sika deer ("Cervus nippon"), and feral goats ("Capra aegagrus hircus"). Unusually, 20% of the rabbits ("Leporidae") on the island are melanistic compared with 4% which is typical in the UK.
Other mammals which have made the island their home include the grey seal ("Halichoerus grypus") and the pygmy shrew ("Sorex minutus"). Until their elimination in 2006 in order to protect the nesting seabirds, Lundy was one of the few places in the UK where the black rat ("Rattus rattus") could be found regularly.
In 1971 a proposal was made by the Lundy Field Society to establish a marine reserve, and the survey was led by Dr Keith Hiscock, supported by a team of students from Bangor University. Provision for the establishment of statutory Marine Nature Reserves was included in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and on 21 November 1986 the Secretary of State for the Environment announced the designation of a statutory reserve at Lundy.
There is an outstanding variety of marine habitats and wildlife, and a large number of rare and unusual species in the waters around Lundy, including some species of seaweed, branching sponges, sea fans and cup corals.
In 2003 the first statutory No Take Zone (NTZ) for marine nature conservation in the UK was set up in the waters to the east of Lundy island. In 2008 this was declared as having been successful in several ways including the increasing size and number of lobsters within the reserve, and potential benefits for other marine wildlife. However, the no take zone has received a mixed reaction from local fishermen.
On 12 January 2010 the island became Britain's first Marine Conservation Zone designated under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, designed to help to preserve important habitats and species.
There are two ways to get to Lundy, depending on the time of year. In the summer months (April to October) visitors are carried on the Landmark Trust's own vessel, MS "Oldenburg", which sails from both Bideford and Ilfracombe. Sailings are usually three days a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, with additional sailings on Wednesdays during July and August. The voyage takes on average two hours, depending on ports, tides and weather. The "Oldenburg" was first registered in Bremen, Germany in 1958 and has been sailing to Lundy since being bought by the Lundy Company Ltd in 1985.
In the winter months (November to March) the island is served by a scheduled helicopter service from Hartland Point. The helicopter operates on Mondays and Fridays, with flights between 12 noon and 2 pm. The heliport is a field at the top of Hartland Point, not far from the Beacon.
A grass runway of is available, allowing access to small STOL aircraft skilfully piloted.
Properly equipped and experienced canoeists can kayak to the island from Hartland Point or Lee Bay. This takes 4 to 6 hours depending on wind and tides.
Entrance to Lundy is free for anyone arriving by scheduled transport. Visitors arriving by non-scheduled transport are charged an entrance fee, currently (May 2016) £6.00, and there is an additional charge payable by those using light aircraft. Anyone arriving on Lundy by non-scheduled transport is also charged an additional fee for transporting luggage to the top of the island.
In 2007, Derek Green, Lundy's general manager, launched an appeal to raise £250,000 to save the Beach Road, which had been damaged by heavy rain and high seas. The road was built in the first half of the 19th century to provide people and goods with safe access to the top of the island, above the only jetty. The fund-raising was completed on 10 March 2009.
Foundations for a lighthouse on Lundy were laid in 1787, but the first lighthouse (now known as the Old Light) was not built until Trinity House obtained a 999-year lease in 1819. The granite tower, on the summit of Chapel Hill, was designed by Daniel Asher Alexander, and built by Joseph Nelson at a cost of £36,000. Because the site, Beacon Hill, is above sea level, the highest base for a lighthouse in Britain, the light was often obscured by fog. To counter this problem, a Fog Signal Battery, equipped with a pair of 18-pound guns, was built about 1861; guncotton rockets replaced these fog signal guns in 1878.
The lighthouse had two lights: the lower a fixed white light and the upper a quick flashing white light, showing every 60 seconds (both lights were provided by Argand lamps fitted with parabolic reflectors). The flashing characteristic was an innovation at the time, however, the speed of revolution gave the impression it was a fixed light with no flashes detectable. This, combined with poor visibility, may have contributed to the grounding, at Cefn Sidan, of the "La Jeune Emma", bound from Martinique to Cherbourg in 1828. 13 of the 19 on board drowned, including Adeline Coquelin, the 12-year-old niece of Napoleon Bonaparte's divorced wife Joséphine de Beauharnais. The following year the lower light was moved from a window part-way down the tower into a new lantern room at the base of the tower, with the hope that this would be less affected by fog.
Ongoing attempts were made to improve the quality of the main light. In 1842 a new rotating optic was installed: manufactured by Cookson & Co. of Newcastle, it combined dioptric lenses with mirrors and displayed a white flash every two minutes. This arrangement was replaced in 1857 by a large (first-order) 8-sided revolving catadioptric optic manufactured by Chance Brothers giving the light a range (in fine weather) of over . (The following year, the dioptric section of the old 1842 optic was refurbished and installed in South Bishop Lighthouse.) Further attempts at improvement were made in 1889, when the frequency of the flash was increased to once every minute from once every two.
Owing to the ongoing complaints about the difficulty of sighting the light in fog, the lighthouse was abandoned in 1897 when the North and South Lundy lighthouses were built. The Old Light and the associated keepers' houses are kept open by the Landmark Trust.
The current Lundy North and Lundy South lighthouses were built in 1897 at the extremities of the island to replace the Old Light. Designed by Sir Thomas Matthews, both lighthouses are painted white and are run and maintained by Trinity House.
The North lighthouse is tall, slightly taller than the south one, and has a focal plane of . It was originally lit by a 5-wick Trinity House oil burner, but this was replaced in the early 20th century with a Matthews triple-mantle (3x) petroleum vapour burner (PVB), which was itself replaced with a Hood single-mantle () PVB in the 1920s. (Oil was lifted up from a small quay using a sled and winch, and then transported using a small railway (again winch-powered), the remains of which can be still seen). The 3.5-ton lens assembly was the first in Britain to be supported on a mercury trough; manufactured by Barbier & Benard of Paris, it was a first-order revolving four-panel optic in a 'bi-valve' configuration (i.e. 2 sets of 2 panels arranged back-to-back), which displayed a group-flashing characteristic, flashing twice every 20 seconds.
When built the North lighthouse was provided with a two-tone fog siren, housed in an engine house immediately to the north (seaward) side of the tower; it sounded through a pair of upright curved horns mounted on the roof and was powered by a pair of Hornsby oil engines. The fog signal was replaced in 1929 with a more powerful 12-inch siren, installed along with a pair of conical resonators in a cast-iron turret, which was added to the engine room roof; twin Gardner T-type diesel engines were installed at the same time to drive the air compressors. New Ruston & Hornsby diesel engines were installed in 1969 to generate electricity for a new triple-frequency electric fog signal, which sounded two blasts every thirty seconds from a curved stack of 72 Tannoy speakers built on to the front of the engine house; it was decommissioned in 1988.
In 1971 the lighthouse was converted to electricity, and the old lamp and optic were decommissioned; they were replaced by a discharge bulb, fed from the generators, and a 4th-order revolving optic mounted on an AGA gearless pedestal. The optic, made up of four twin-panel lenses, continued to flash twice every twenty seconds (with a slightly increased range of ). In 1976 the keepers were withdrawn and the light was monitored from the South lighthouse until 1985 when it was fully automated. The North lighthouse was further modernised in 1991 and converted to solar power, since when the light itself has been provided by a small rotating beacon mounted on top of the old fog horn building rather than in the tower; it produces a quick white flash every 15 seconds. In 2018 Trinity House applied for planning permission to install a new light back within the lantern of the tower.
The South lighthouse is set in a somewhat more spacious site; the tower is tall. When built, equipment from the old Lundy Lighthouse was reused in this tower, where it remained in use until 1962. It displayed a single flash every 30 seconds.
In contrast to the North, the South lighthouse sounded an explosive fog signal; initially discharged manually from the lantern gallery, in 1908 a small building was constructed (where there is now a helicopter pad) containing an automated apparatus provided by the Clockwork Explosive Fog Signal Company of Victoria. It remained in use until 1964 when it was replaced by a set of 'supertyfon' air horns, eight in number, placed in a housing on top of the lantern. Thirty years later, just prior to the automation of the South light, the supertyfon was itself replaced by an electric emitter, installed alongside it.
The South lighthouse has a focal length of and displays a quick white flash every 5 seconds. It can be seen as a small white dot from Hartland Point, to the southeast. It was automated and converted to solar power in 1994. A small (fourth-order) optic, in use since 1962, was removed at this time; (in 2001 it was installed in Dungeness Lighthouse where it remains in use). In its place in the lantern room there is now a smaller rotating beacon manufactured by the Dutch firm Orga.
There is a small power station comprising three Cummins B and C series diesel engines, offering an approximately 150 kVA 3-phase supply to most of the island buildings. Waste heat from the engine jackets is used for a district heating pipe. There are also plans to collect the waste heat from the engine exhaust heat gases to feed into the district heat network to improve the efficiency further. The power is normally switched off between 00:00 and 06:30.
Lundy has 23 holiday properties, sleeping between one and 14 people. These include a lighthouse, a castle and a Victorian mansion. Many of the buildings are constructed from the island's granite.
The island also has a campsite, at the south of the island in the field next to the shop. It has hot and cold running water, with showers and toilets, in an adjacent building.
The island is popular with rock climbers, having the UK's longest continuous slab climb, "The Devil's Slide".
Lundy has been designated by Natural England as national character area 159, one of England's natural regions.
The island is an unparished area of Torridge district in the county of Devon, but was formerly a civil parish. It forms part of the ward of Clovelly Bay. It is part of the constituency electing the Member of Parliament for Torridge and West Devon and the South West England constituency for the European Parliament.
In 2013 the island became a separate Church of England ecclesiastical parish.
Owing to a decline in population and lack of interest in the mail contract, the GPO ended its presence on Lundy at the end of 1927. For the next two years Harman handled the mail to and from the island without charge.
On 1 November 1929, he decided to offset the expense by issuing two postage stamps (½ puffin in pink and 1 puffin in blue). One puffin is equivalent to one English penny. The printing of Puffin stamps continues to this day and they are available at face value from the Lundy Post Office. One used to have to stick Lundy stamps on the back of the envelope; but Royal Mail now allows their use on the front of the envelope, but placed on the left side, with the right side reserved for the Royal Mail postage stamp or stamps. Lundy stamps are cancelled by a circular Lundy handstamp. The face value of the Lundy Island stamps covers the cost of postage of letters and postcards from the island to the Bideford Post Office on the mainland for onward delivery to their final destination anywhere in the world. The Lundy Post Office gets a bulk rate discount for mailing letters and postcards from Bideford.
Lundy stamps are a type of postage stamp known to philatelists as "local carriage labels" or "local stamps". Issues of increasing value were made over the years, including air mail, featuring a variety of people. Many are now highly sought-after by collectors. The market value of the early issues has risen substantially over the years. For the many thousands of annual visitors Lundy stamps have become part of the collection of the many British Local Posts collectors. The first catalogues of these stamps included Gerald Rosen's 1970 "Catalogue of British Local Stamps". Later specialist catalogues include "Stamps of Lundy Island" by Stanley Newman, first published in 1984, "Phillips Modern British Locals CD Catalogue", published since 2003, and "Labbe's Specialised Guide to Lundy Island Stamps", published since 2005 and now in its 11th Edition. Labbe's Guide is considered the gold standard of Lundy catalogues owing to its extensive approach to varieties, errors, specialised items and "fantasy" issues.
There is a comprehensive collection of these stamps in the Chinchen Collection, donated by Barry Chinchen to the British Library Philatelic Collections in 1977 and now held by the British Library. This is also the home of the Landmark Trust Lundy Island Philatelic Archive which includes artwork, texts and essays as well as postmarking devices and issued stamps.
A ship named "Lundy Island", 3,095 tons, was captured and sunk on 10 January 1917 by the SMS "Seeadler", a windjammer of the German navy, flying the Norwegian flag.
Lundy figures in the 1919 novel "Last of the Grenvilles" (1919) by Frederick Harcourt Kitchin (published under his pseudonym, Bennett Copplestone).
The island is mentioned in a section of W. N. P. Barbellion's "Journal Of A Disappointed Man" (1919), titled "On Lundy Island".
Lundy has prominently featured in John Bellairs' juvenile gothic mystery "The Secret of the Underground Room" (1990). The plot highlights several geographical and historical points of interest, including the (De) Marisco family.
In 2012, "James May's Toy Stories" featured a successful attempt to fly a B. A. Swallow (a self-propelled glider) from Ilfracombe to the island.
In 2016, Lundy featured as one of the segments in "The Darkest Hour", Series 2 / Episode 4 of BBC Radio 4's "Wireless Nights", with Jarvis Cocker. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18353 |
Lindow Man
Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat-cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find, described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s", caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected in comparison to those found in the rest of Europe.
At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and he may have been someone of high status, as his body shows little evidence of heavy or rough work. There has been debate over the reason for Lindow Man's death, because the nature of his demise was violent and perhaps ritualistic. After a last meal of charred bread, Lindow Man was strangled, hit on the head, and his throat cut. Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that Lindow Man was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period.
The recovered body has been preserved by freeze-drying and is on permanent display at the British Museum, although it occasionally travels to other venues such as the Manchester Museum.
Lindow Moss is a peat bog in Lindow, an area of Wilmslow, Cheshire, which has been used as common land since the medieval period. It formed after the last ice age, one of many such peat bogs in north-east Cheshire and the Mersey basin that formed in hollows caused by melting ice. Investigations have not yet discovered settlement or agricultural activity around the edge of Lindow Moss that would have been contemporary with Lindow Man; however, analysis of pollen in the peat suggests there was some cultivation in the vicinity.
Once covering over , the bog has now shrunk to a tenth of its original size. It is a dangerous place; an 18th-century writer recorded people drowning there. For centuries the peat from the bog was used as fuel, and it continued to be extracted until the 1980s, by which time the process had been mechanised. Lindow Moss is a lowland raised mire; this type of peat bog often produces the best preserved bog bodies, allowing more detailed analysis. Lowland raised mires occur mainly in northern England and extend south to the Midlands. Lindow Man is one of 27 bodies to be recovered from such areas.
The preservation of bog bodies is dependent on a set of specific physical conditions, which can occur in peat bogs. A sphagnum moss bog must have a temperature lower than 4 °C at the time of deposition of the body. The subsequent average annual temperature must be lower than 10 °C. Moisture must be stable in the bog year-round: it cannot dry out.
Sphagnum moss affects the chemistry of nearby water, which becomes highly acidic relative to a more natural environment (a pH of roughly 3.3 to 4.5). The concentration of dissolved minerals also tends to be low. Dying moss forms layers of sediment and releases sugars and humic acids which consume oxygen. Since the surface of the water is covered by living moss, water becomes anaerobic. As a result, human tissues buried in the bog tend to tan rather than decaying.
On 13 May 1983, two peat workers at Lindow Moss, Andy Mould and Stephen Dooley, noticed an unusual object—about the size of a football—on the elevator taking peat to the shredding machine. They removed the object for closer inspection, joking that it was a dinosaur egg. Once the peat had been removed, their discovery turned out to be a decomposing, incomplete human head with one eye and some hair intact.
Forensics identified the skull as belonging to a European woman, probably aged 30–50.
Police initially thought the skull was that of Malika Reyn-Bardt, who had disappeared in 1960 and was the subject of an ongoing investigation. While in prison on another charge, her husband, Peter Reyn-Bardt, had boasted that he had killed his wife and buried her in the back garden of their bungalow, which was on the edge of the area of mossland where peat was being dug. The garden had been examined but no body was found. When Reyn-Bardt was confronted with the discovery of the skull from Lindow Moss, he confessed to the murder of his wife.
The skull was later radiocarbon dated, revealing it to be nearly 2,000 years old. "Lindow Woman", as it became known, dated from around 210 AD. This emerged shortly before Reyn-Bardt went to trial, but he was convicted on the evidence of his confession.
A year later a further discovery was made at Lindow Moss, just south-west of the Lindow Woman. On 1 August 1984, Andy Mould, who had been involved in the discovery of Lindow Woman, took what he thought was a piece of wood off the elevator of the peat-shredding machine. He threw the object at Eddie Slack, his workmate. When it hit the ground, peat fell off the object and revealed it to be a human foot. The police were called and the foot was taken away for examination.
Rick Turner, the Cheshire County Archaeologist, was notified of the discovery and succeeded in finding the rest of the body, which later became known as Lindow Man. Some skin had been exposed and had started to decay, so to prevent further deterioration of the body, it was re-covered with peat. The complete excavation of the block containing the remains was performed on 6 August. Until it could be dated, it was moved to the Macclesfield District General Hospital for storage. As the body of Malika Reyn-Bardt had still not been found, it was initially thought possible the body might be hers, until it was determined to be male, and radiocarbon dated.
The owners of the land on which Lindow Man was found donated the body to the British Museum, and on 21 August it was transported to London.
At the time, the body was dubbed "Pete Marsh" by Middlesex Hospital radiologists, a name subsequently adopted by local journalists, as was the similar "Pete Bogg".
The find was announced to the press during the second week of investigation.
As the best preserved bog body found in Britain, its discovery caused a domestic media sensation and received global coverage. Sparking excitement in the country's archaeological community, who had long expected such a find, it was hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 1980s. A "Q.E.D." documentary about Lindow Man broadcast by the BBC in 1985 attracted 10 million viewers.
Lindow Man's official name is Lindow II, as there are other finds from the area: Lindow I (Lindow Woman) refers to a human skull, Lindow III to a "fragmented headless body", and Lindow IV to the upper thigh of an adult male, possibly that of Lindow Man. After the discovery of Lindow Man, there were no further archaeological excavations at Lindow Moss until 1987. A large piece of skin was found by workmen on the elevator on 6 February 1987. On this occasion, the police left the investigation to the archaeologists. Over 70 pieces were found, constituting Lindow III. Although the bone was not as well preserved as that of Lindow Man, the other tissues survived in better condition. The final discovery was that of Lindow IV on 14 June 1988. Part of a left leg and buttocks were found on the elevator, from a site just west of where Lindow Man was found. Nearly three months later, on 12 September, a right thigh was discovered in the peat on the bucket of a digger. The proximity of the discovery sites, coupled with the fact that the remains were shown to come from an adult male, means that Lindow IV is probably part of Lindow Man.
Lindow Man marked the first discovery in Britain of a well-preserved bog body; its condition was comparable to that of Grauballe Man and Tollund Man from Denmark. Before Lindow Man was found, it was estimated that 41 bog bodies had been found in England and Wales and 15 in Scotland. Encouraged by the discovery of Lindow Man, a gazetteer was compiled, which revealed a far higher number of bog bodies: over 85 in England and Wales and over 36 in Scotland. Prior to the discovery of the bodies in Lindow Moss, British bog bodies had been a relatively neglected subject compared to European examples. The interest caused by Lindow Man led to more in-depth research of accounts of discoveries in bogs since the 17th century; by 1995, the numbers had changed to 106 in England and Wales and 34 in Scotland. The remains covered a large time frame.
In life, Lindow Man would have measured between 5'6" and 5'8" (1.68 and 1.73 m) tall and weighed about . It was possible to ascertain that his age at death was around the mid-20s. The body retains a trimmed beard, moustache, and sideburns of brown hair, as well as healthy teeth with no visible cavities, and manicured fingernails, indicating he did little heavy or rough work. Apart from a fox-fur armband, Lindow Man was discovered completely naked. When he died, Lindow Man was suffering from slight osteoarthritis and an infestation of whipworm and maw worm. As a result of decalcification of the bones and pressure from the peat under which Lindow Man was buried, his skull was distorted. While some preserved human remains may contain DNA, peat bogs such as Lindow Moss are generally poor for such a purpose, and it is unlikely that DNA could be recovered from Lindow Man.
Lindow Man and Lindow III were found to have elevated levels of copper on their skin. The cause for this was uncertain as there could have been natural causes, although a study by Pyatt "et al." proposed that the bodies may have been painted with a copper-based pigment. To test this, skin samples were taken from places likely to be painted and tested against samples from areas where painting was unlikely. It was found that the copper content of the skin of the torso was higher than the control areas, suggesting that the theory of Pyatt "et al." may have been correct. However, the conclusion was ambiguous as the overall content was above that expected of a male, and variations across the body may have been due to environmental factors. Similarly, green deposits were found in the hair, originally thought to be a copper-based pigment used for decoration, but it was later found to be the result of a reaction between the keratin in the hair and the acid of the peat bog.
Dating Lindow Man is problematic as samples from the body and surrounding peat have produced dates spanning a 900-year period. Although the peat encasing Lindow Man has been radiocarbon dated to about 300 BC, Lindow Man himself has a different date. Early tests at different laboratories returned conflicting dates for the body; later tests suggested a date between 2 BC and 119 AD. There has been a tendency to ascribe the body to the Iron Age period rather than Roman due to the interpretation that Lindow Man's death may have been a ritual sacrifice or execution. Explanations for why the peat in which he was found is much older have been sought. Archaeologist P. C. Buckland suggests that as the stratigraphy of the peat appears undisturbed, Lindow Man may have been deposited into a pool that was already some 300 years old. Geographer K. E. Barber has argued against this hypothesis, saying that pools at Lindow Moss would have been too shallow, and suggests that the peat may have been peeled back to allow the burial and then replaced, leaving the stratigraphy apparently undisturbed.
Lindow Man's last meal was preserved in his stomach and intestines and was analysed in some detail. It was hoped that investigations into the contents of the stomach would shed light on the contemporary diet, as was the case with Grauballe Man and Tollund Man in the 1950s. The analysis of the contents of the digestive system of bog bodies had become one of the principal endeavours of investigating such remains. Analysis of the grains present revealed his diet to be mostly of cereals. He probably ate slightly charred bread, although the burning may have had ritual significance rather than being an accident. Some mistletoe pollen was also found in the stomach, indicating that Lindow Man died in March or April.
One of the conclusions of the study was that the people buried in Lindow Moss may have had a less varied diet than their European counterparts. According to Jody Joy, curator of the Iron Age collection at the British Museum, the importance of Lindow Man lies more in how he lived rather than how he died, as the circumstances surrounding his demise may never be fully established.
As the peat was cleaned off the body in the laboratory, it became clear that Lindow Man had suffered a violent death. The injuries included a V-shaped, cut on top of his head; a possible laceration at the back of the head, ligature marks on the neck where a sinew cord was found, a possible wound on the right side of the neck, a possible stab wound in the upper right chest, a broken neck, and a fractured rib. Xeroradiography revealed that the blow on top of the head (causing the V-shaped cut) was caused by a relatively blunt object; it had fractured the skull and driven fragments into the brain. Swelling along the edges of the wound indicated that Lindow Man had lived after being struck. The blow, possibly from a small axe, would have caused unconsciousness, but Lindow Man could have survived for several hours afterwards. The ligature marks on the neck were caused by tightening the sinew cord found around his neck, possibly a garrotte or necklace.
It is not possible to confirm whether some injuries took place before or after death, due to the body's state of decay. This is the case for the wound in the upper right chest and the laceration on the back of the skull. The cut on the right of the neck may have been the result of the body becoming bloated, causing the skin to split; however, the straight edges to the wound suggest that it may have been caused by a sharp instrument, such as a knife. The ligature marks on the neck may have occurred after death. In some interpretations of Lindow Man's death, the sinew is a garrotte used to break the man's neck. However, Robert Connolly, a lecturer in physical anthropology, suggests that the sinew may have been ornamental and that ligature marks may have been caused by the body swelling when submerged. The rib fracture may also have occurred after death, perhaps during the discovery of the body, but is included in some narratives of Lindow Man's death. The broken neck would have proven the fatal injury, whether caused by the sinew cord tightening around the neck or by blows to the back of the head. After death, Lindow Man was deposited into Lindow Moss face down.
Archaeologist Don Brothwell considers that many of the older bodies need re-examining with modern techniques, such as those used in the analysis of Lindow Man. The study of bog bodies, including these found in Lindow Moss, has contributed to a wider understanding of well-preserved human remains, helping to develop new methods in analysis and investigation. The use of sophisticated techniques, such as computer tomography (CT) scans, has marked the investigation of the Lindow bodies as particularly important. Such scans allow the reconstruction of the body and internal examination. Of the 27 bodies recovered from lowland raised mires in England and Wales, only those from Lindow Moss and the remains of Worsley Man have survived, together with a shoe from another body. The remains have a date range from the early 1st to the 4th centuries. Investigation into the other bodies relies on contemporary descriptions of the discovery.
The physical evidence allows a general reconstruction of how Lindow Man was killed, although some details are debated, but it does not explain why he was killed. In North West England, there is little evidence for religious or ritual activity in the Iron Age period. What evidence does survive is usually in the form of artefacts recovered from peat bogs. Late Iron Age burials in the region often took the form of a crouched inhumation, sometimes with personal ornaments. Although dated to the mid-1st century AD, the type of burial of Lindow Man was more common in the pre-historic period. In the latter half of the 20th century, scholars widely believed that bog bodies demonstrating injuries to the neck or head area were examples of ritual sacrifice. Bog bodies were associated with Germanic and Celtic cultures, specifically relating to head worship.
According to Brothwell, Lindow Man is one of the most complex examples of "overkill" in a bog body, and possibly has ritual meaning as it was "extravagant" for a straightforward murder. Archaeologists John Hodgson and Mark Brennand suggest that bog bodies may have been related to religious practice, although there is division in the academic community over this issue. In the case of Lindow Man, scholars debate whether the killing was murder or done as part of ritual. Anne Ross, an expert on Iron Age religion, proposed that the death was an example of human sacrifice and that the "triple death" (throat cut, strangled, and hit on the head) was an offering to several different gods. The wide date range for Lindow Man's death (2 BC to 119 AD) means he may have met his demise after the Romans conquered northern England in the 60s AD. As the Romans outlawed human sacrifice, such timing would open up other possibilities. This conclusion was emphasised by historian Ronald Hutton, who challenged the interpretation of sacrificial death. Connolly suggests that as Lindow Man was found naked, he could have been the victim of a violent robbery.
Joy said,
"The jury really is still out on these bodies, whether they were aristocrats, priests, criminals, outsiders, whether they went willingly to their deaths or whether they were executed – but Lindow was a very remote place in those days, an unlikely place for an ambush or a murder".
Environment and situation are the crucial factors that determine how corpses decay. For instance, corpses will decay differently depending on the weather, the way they are buried, and the medium in which they are buried. Peat slows the decay of corpses. It was feared that, once Lindow Man was removed from that environment, which had preserved the body for nearly 2,000 years, the remains would rapidly start to deteriorate, so steps were taken to ensure preservation. After rejecting methods that had been used to maintain the integrity of other bog bodies, such as the "pit-tanning" used on Grauballe Man, which took a year and a half, scientists settled on freeze-drying. In preparation, the body was covered in a solution of 15% polyethylene glycol 400 and 85% water to prevent its becoming distorted. The body was then frozen solid and the ice vaporised to ensure Lindow Man did not shrink. Afterwards, Lindow Man was put in a specially constructed display case to control the environment, maintaining the temperature at and the humidity at 55%.
Lindow Man is held in the British Museum. Before the remains were transferred there, people from North West England launched an unsuccessful campaign to keep the body in Manchester. The bog body has been on temporary display in other venues: at the Manchester Museum on three occasions, April to , March to , and to ; and at the Great North Museum in Newcastle from August to . The 2008–09 Manchester display, titled "Lindow Man: A Bog Body Mystery Exhibition at the Manchester Museum", won the category "Best Archaeological Innovation" in the 2010 British Archaeological Awards, run by the Council for British Archaeology.
Critics have complained that, by museum display of the remains, the body of Lindow Man has been objectified rather than treated with the respect due the dead. This is part of a wider discussion about the scientific treatment of human remains and museum researchers and archaeologists using them as information sources. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18356 |
Lombok
Lombok is an island in West Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia. It forms part of the chain of the Lesser Sunda Islands, with the Lombok Strait separating it from Bali to the west and the Alas Strait between it and Sumbawa to the east. It is roughly circular, with a "tail" (Sekotong Peninsula) to the southwest, about across and a total area of about . The provincial capital and largest city on the island is Mataram.
Lombok is somewhat similar in size and density, and shares some cultural heritage with the neighboring island of Bali to the west. However, it is administratively part of West Nusa Tenggara, along with the larger and more sparsely populated island of Sumbawa to the east. Lombok is surrounded by a number of smaller islands locally called Gili.
The island is home to some 3.35 million Indonesians as recorded in the decennial 2014 census.
Lombok is under the administration of the Governor of the province of West Nusa Tenggara ("Nusa Tenggara Barat"). The province is administered from the provincial capital of Mataram in West Lombok.
The island is administratively divided into four "kabupaten" (regencies) and one "kota" (city). They are as follows, with their areas and populations at the 2010 Census and according to the latest (January 2014) official estimates:
The 14th century Majapahit manuscript Nagarakretagama canto 14 mentioned "Lombok Mirah" as one of island identified under Majapahit suzerainty. Other than the "Babad Lombok" document which records the 1257 Samalas eruption, little is known about Lombok before the seventeenth century. Before this time it was made up of numerous competing and feuding petty states each of which were presided over by a Sasak 'prince'. This disunity was taken advantage of by the neighbouring Balinese who took control of western Lombok in the early seventeenth century.
The Makassarese meanwhile invaded eastern Lombok from their colonies in neighbouring Sumbawa. The Dutch had first visited Lombok in 1674 and the Dutch East India Company concluded its first treaty with the Sasak Princess of Lombok. The Balinese had managed to take over the whole island by 1750, but Balinese infighting resulted in the island being split into four feuding Balinese kingdoms. In 1838, the Mataram kingdom brought its rivals under control.
Relations between the Sasak and Balinese in western Lombok were largely harmonious and intermarriage was common. In the island's east, however, relations were less cordial and the Balinese maintained control from garrisoned forts. While Sasak village government remained in place, the village head became little more than a tax collector for the Balinese. Villagers became a kind of serf and Sasak aristocracy lost much of its power and land holdings.
During one of the many Sasak peasant rebellions against the Balinese, Sasak chiefs sent envoys to the Dutch in Bali and invited them to rule Lombok. In June 1894, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies, Van der Wijck, signed a treaty with Sasak rebels in eastern Lombok. He sent a large army to Lombok and the Balinese raja capitulated to Dutch demands. (see Dutch intervention in Lombok) The younger princes however overruled the raja and attacked and pushed back the Dutch. The Dutch counterattacked overrunning Mataram and the raja surrendered. The entire island was annexed to the Netherlands East Indies in 1895. The Dutch ruled over Lombok's 500,000 people with a force of no more than 250 by cultivating the support of the Balinese and Sasak aristocracy. The Dutch are remembered in Lombok as liberators from Balinese hegemony.
During World War II a Japanese invasion force comprising elements of the 2nd Southern Expeditionary Fleet invaded and occupied the Lesser Sunda Islands, including the island of Lombok. They sailed from Soerabaja harbour at 09:00 hrs on 8 March 1942 and proceeded towards Lombok Island. On 9 March 1942 at 17:00 hrs the fleet sailed into port of Ampenan on Lombok Island. The Dutch defenders were soon defeated and the island occupied.
Following the cessation of hostilities the Japanese forces occupying Indonesia were withdrawn and Lombok returned temporarily to Dutch control. Following the subsequent Indonesian independence from the Dutch, the Balinese and Sasak aristocracy continued to dominate Lombok. In 1958, the island was incorporated into the province of West Nusa Tenggara with Mataram becoming the provincial capital. Mass killings of communists occurred across the island following the abortive coup attempt in Jakarta and Central Java. During President Suharto's New Order administration (1967–1998), Lombok experienced a degree of stability and development but not to the extent of the boom and wealth in Java and Bali. Crop failures led to famine in 1966 and food shortages in 1973. The national government's "transmigrasi" program moved a lot of people out of Lombok. The 1980s saw external developers and speculators instigate a nascent tourism boom although local's share of earnings was limited. Indonesia's political and economic crises of the late 1990s hit Lombok hard. In January 2000, riots broke out across Mataram with Christians and ethnic Chinese the main victims, with alleged "agents provocateur" from outside Lombok. Tourism slumped, but in recent years has seen a renewed growth.
The July 2018 Lombok earthquake killed 20 people and injured hundreds more, the earthquake caused significant damage to Lombok island and was the foreshock of a larger earthquake that followed eight days later. The 5 August 2018 Lombok earthquake had a moment magnitude of 7.0, and it caused catastrophic damage to North Lombok and also caused damage to nearby Bali; it caused over 550 deaths and more than 7000 are injured. Another Lombok earthquake occurred on 19 August 2018, killing 13 people and damaging 1800 buildings.
The island is to the immediate east of the Lombok Strait which marks the biogeographical division between the fauna of the Indomalayan realm and the distinctly different fauna of Australasia; this distinction, known as the "Wallace Line" (or "Wallace's Line") takes its name from Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Wallace was the first person to comment on the division between the two regions, as well as on the abrupt boundary between the two biomes. Lombok is part of the Lesser Sundas deciduous forests ecoregion.
To the east of Lombok lies the Alas Strait, a narrow body of water separating the island of Lombok from the nearby island of Sumbawa.
The island's topography is dominated by the centrally-located stratovolcano Mount Rinjani, the second-highest volcano in Indonesia, which rises to , making Lombok the 8th-highest island. The most recent eruption of Rinjani occurred in September 2016 at Gunung Barujari. In a 2010 eruption, ash was reported as rising into the atmosphere from the Barujari cone in Rinjani's caldera lake of Segara Anak. Lava flowed into the caldera lake, raising its temperature, while ash fall damaged crops on the slopes of Rinjani. The volcano and its crater lake, Segara Anak (child of the sea), are protected by the Gunung Rinjani National Park established in 1997. Recent evidence indicates an ancient volcano, Mount Samalas, of which now only a caldera remains, was the source of the 1257 Samalas eruption, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, which caused worldwide changes in weather.
The highlands of Lombok are forest-clad and mostly undeveloped. The lowlands are highly cultivated. Rice, soybeans, coffee, tobacco, cotton, cinnamon, cacao, cloves, cassava, corn, coconuts, copra, bananas and vanilla are the major crops grown in the fertile soils of the island. The southern part of the island is fertile but drier, especially toward the southern coastline.
Lombok is surrounded by many islets, including:
The water supply in Lombok is stressed and this places strain both upon the water supply of the provincial capital, Mataram, and upon that of the island in general. The southern and central areas are reported to be the most critically affected. West Nusa Tenggara province in general is threatened with a water crisis caused by increasing forest and water table damage and degradation. 160 thousand hectares of a total of 1960 thousand hectares are thought to have been affected. The Head of Built Environment and Security Forest Service Forest West Nusa Tenggara Andi Pramari stated in Mataram on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 that, "If this situation is not addressed it can be expected that within five years it may be difficult for people to obtain water in this part of NTB (West Nusa Tenggara). Not only that, the productivity of agriculture in value added will fall, and the residents are experiencing water deficiency in their wells". High cases of timber theft in the region of NTB are contributing to this problem.
In September 2010 in Central Lombok, some villagers reportedly walked for several hours to fetch a single pail of water. Nieleando, a small coastal village about 50 kilometers from the provincial capital, Mataram, has seen dry wells for years. It has been reported that occasionally the problem escalates sufficiently for disputes and fighting between villagers to occur. The problems have been reported to be most pronounced in the districts of Jonggat, Janapria, Praya Timur, Praya Barat, Praya Barat Daya and Pujut. In 2010 provincial authorities declared all six districts drought areas. Sumbawa, the other main island of the province, also experienced severe drought in 2010, making it a province-wide issue.
Areas in southern Lombok Island were classified as arid and prone to water shortages due to low rainfall and lack of water sources. On May 2011, groundbreaking began on Pandanduri dam construction, which will span about 430 hectares and cost an estimated Rp.800 billion ($92.8 million). When finished, the dam will accommodate about 25.7 million cubic meters of water and be able to irrigate 10,350 hectares of farmland. Project construction was expected to last five years.
The island's inhabitants are 85% Sasak, whose origins are thought to have migrated from Java in the first millennium BC. Other residents include an estimated 10–15% Balinese, with the small remainder being Tionghoa-peranakan, Javanese, Sumbawa and Arab Indonesians.
The Sasak population are culturally and linguistically closely related to the Balinese, but unlike the Hindu Balinese, the majority are Muslim and the landscape is punctuated with mosques and minarets. Islamic traditions and holidays influence the Island's daily activities.
In 2008 the Island of Lombok had 866,838 households and an average of 3.635 persons per household.
The 2014 census recorded a population of 4,773,795 people in the province of NTB, of which 70.24% reside on Lombok, giving it a population of 3,352,988 at that date.
The island's indigenous Sasak people are predominantly Muslim however before the arrival of Islam Lombok experienced a long period of Hindu and Buddhist influence that reached the island through Java. A minority Balinese Hindu culture remains in Lombok. Islam may have first been brought to Lombok by traders arriving from Sumbawa in the 17th century who then established a following in eastern Lombok. Other accounts describe the first influences arriving in the first half of the sixteenth century. The palm leaf manuscript Babad Lombok which contains the history of Lombok describes how Sunan Prapen was sent by his father The Susuhunan Ratu of Giri on a military expedition to Lombok and Sumbawa in order to convert the population and propagate the new religion. However, the new religion took on a highly syncretistic character, frequently mixing animist and Hindu-Buddhist beliefs and practices with Islam.
A more orthodox version of Islam increased in popularity in the early twentieth century. The Indonesian government religionization programs (acquiring of a religion) in Lombok during 1967 and 1968 led to a period of some considerable confusion in religious allegiances and practices. These religionization programs later led to the emergence of more conformity in religious practices in Lombok. The Hindu minority religion is still practised in Lombok alongside the majority Muslim religion.
Hinduism is followed by ethnic Balinese and by a minority of the indigenous Sasak. All the main Hindu religious ceremonies are celebrated in Lombok and there are many villages throughout Lombok that have a Hindu majority population. According to local legends two of the oldest villages on the island, Bayan, and Sembalun, were founded by a prince of Majapahit. According to the 2010 population census declared adherents of Hinduism numbered 101,000 people with the highest concentration in the Mataram Regency where they accounted for 14% of the population. The Ditjen Bimas Hindu (DBH)/ Hindu Religious Affairs Directorate's own analysis conducted in close association with Hindu communities throughout the country found that the number of Hindus in the population is much higher than counted in the government census. The survey carried out in 2012 found the Hindu population of Lombok to be 445,933. This figure is more in line with the commonly stated view that 10–15% of the Islands population is Hindu.
The Nagarakertagama, the 14th-century palm leaf poem that was found on Lombok places the island as one of the vassals of the Majapahit empire. This manuscript contained detailed descriptions of the Majapahit Kingdom and also affirmed the importance of Hindu-Buddhism in the Majapahit empire by describing temple, palaces and several ceremonial observances.
Christianity is practised by a small minority including some ethnic Chinese and immigrants from Bali and East Nusa Tenggara. There are Roman Catholic churches and parishes in Ampenan, Mataram, Praya and Tanjung. There is a catholic hospital in Mataram as well. Two Buddhist temples can be visited in and around Tanjung where about 800 Buddhists live.
The history of a small Arab community in Lombok has history dating back to early settlement by traders from Yemen. The community is still evident mainly in Ampenan, the old Port of Mataram. Due to the siting of a UNHCR refugee centre in Lombok some refugees from middle eastern countries have intermarried with Lombok people.
A non-orthodox Islamic group found only on Lombok are the Wektu Telu ("Three times"), who pray three times daily, instead of the five times stipulated in the Quran. Waktu Telu beliefs are entwined with animism, and is influenced not only by Islam, but also Hinduism and pantheistic beliefs. There are also remnants of Boda who maintain Pagan Sasak beliefs and could be representative of an original Sasak culture, undiluted by later Islamic innovations.
Many influences of animist belief prevail within the Sasak people, most of whom believe in the existence of spirits or "ghosts". They regard both food and prayer as indispensable whenever they seek to communicate with spirits, including the dead and ritualistic traditional practices endure. Traditional magic is practised to ward off evil and illness and to seek solutions to disputations and antipathy. Magic may be practised by an individual alone but normally a person experienced in such things is sought out to render a service. Normally money or gifts are made to this person and the most powerful practitioners are treated with considerable respect.
Many of the visitors to Lombok and much of the islands goods come across the Lombok Strait by sea or air links from Bali. Only separate the two islands. Lombok is often marketed as "an unspoiled Bali," or "Bali's sister island." With support from the central government, Lombok and Sumbawa are being developed as Indonesia's second destination for international and domestic tourism. Lombok has retained a more natural, uncrowded and undeveloped environment, which attract travelers who come for its relaxed pace and the opportunity to explore the island's unspoiled natural environment. The more contemporary marketing campaigns for Lombok/Sumbawa seek to differentiate from Bali and promote the island of Lombok as a standalone destination. The opening of the Lombok International Airport on 1 October 2011 assisted in this endeavor.
Nusa Tenggara Barat and Lombok may be considered economically depressed by First World standards and a large majority of the population live in poverty. Still, the island is fertile, has sufficient rainfall in most areas for agriculture, and possesses a variety of climate zones. Consequently, food in abundant quantity and variety is available inexpensively at local farmer's markets, though locals still suffer from famine due to drought and subsistence farming. A family of 4 can eat rice, vegetables, and fruit for as little as US$0.50. Even though a family's income may be as small as US$1.00 per day from fishing or farming, many families are able to live a contented and productive life on a low income. However, the people of Lombok are coming under increasing pressure from rising food and fuel prices. Access to housing, education and health services remains difficult for many of the island's indigenous population although public education is free throughout the province and elementary schools are tried to be present in even remote areas.
The percentage of the population living in poverty in urban areas of Nusa Tenggara Barat in 2008 was 29.47% and in 2009 it was 28.84%. For those living in rural areas in 2008 it was 19.73% and in 2009 it reduced marginally to 18.40%. For combined urban and village the figures were 23.81% and in 2009 it fell slightly to 22.78%.
In Mataram in 2008 the percentage of the population that was unmarried was 40.74%, married 52.01%, divorced 2.51% and widowed 4.75%.
Tourism is an important source of income on Lombok. The most developed tourism area of the island is on the west coast of the island and is centered about the township of Senggigi. The immediate surrounds of the township contain the most developed tourism facilities. The west coast coastal tourism strip is spread along a strip following the coastal road north from Mataram and the old airport at Ampenan. The principal tourism area extends to Tanjung in the northwest at the foot of Mount Rinjani and includes the Sire and Medana Peninsulas and the highly popular Gili Islands lying immediately offshore. These three small islands are most commonly accessed by boat from Bangsal near Pemenang, Teluk Nare a little to the south, or from further south at Senggigi and Mangsit beach. Many hotels and resorts offer accommodations ranging from budget to luxurious. Recently direct fast boat services have been running from Bali making a direct connection to the Gili islands. Although rapidly changing in character, the Gili islands still provide both a lay-back backpacker's retreat and a high-class resort destination.
Other tourist destinations include Mount Rinjani, Gili Bidara, Gili Lawang, Narmada Park and Mayura Park and Kuta (distinctly different from Kuta, Bali). Sekotong, in southwest Lombok, is popular for its numerous and diverse scuba diving locations.
The Kuta area is also famous for its largely deserted, white sand beaches. The Smalltown is rapidly developing since the opening of the International airport in Praya. Increasing amounts of surfers from around the globe come here seeking out perfect surf and the slow and rustic feel of Lombok. South Lombok surfing is considered some of the best in the world. Large polar lows push up through the Indian Ocean directing long range, high period swell from as far south as Heard Island from late March through to September or later. This coincided with the dry season and South-East trade winds that blow like clockwork. Lombok is famous for its diversity of breaks, which includes world-renowned "Desert Point" at Banko Banko in the southwest of the island.
The northern west coast near Tanjung has many new upmarket hotel and villa developments centered about the Sire and Medana peninsular nearby to the Gili islands and a new boating marina at Medana Bay. These new developments complement the already existing five-star resorts and a large golf course already established there.
Tourist development started in the mid-1980s when Lombok attracted attention as an 'unspoiled' alternative to Bali. Initially, low budget bungalows proliferated at places like the Gili islands and Kuta, Lombok on the South Coast. These tourist accommodations were largely owned by and operated by local business entrepreneurs. Areas in proximity to the airport, places like Senggigi, experienced rampant land speculation for prime beachfront land by big businesses from outside Lombok.
In the 1990s the national government in Jakarta began to take an active role in planning for and promoting Lombok's tourism. Private organizations like the Bali Tourism Development Corporation (BTDC) and the Lombok Tourism Development Corporation (LTDC) were formed. LTDC prepared detailed land use plans with maps and areas zoned for tourist facilities. Large hotels provide primary employment for the local population. Ancillary business, ranging from restaurants to art shops have been started by local businessmen. These businesses provide secondary employment for local residents.
The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and the fall of Suharto regime in 1998 marked the beginning a decade of setbacks for tourism. Spurred by rapid devaluation of the currency and the transition to true democracy caused all of Indonesia to experience a period of domestic unrest. Many of Indonesian Provinces struggled with elements of the population desiring autonomy or independence from the Republic of Indonesia. At the same time, fanatical Islamic terrorism in Indonesia further aggravated domestic unrest across the archipelago.
In January 2000, radical Islamic agitators from the newly formed Jemaah Islamiyah provoked religious and ethnic violence in the Ampenan area of Mataram and the southern area of Senggigi. Many foreign expatriates and tourists were temporarily evacuated to Bali. Numerous foreign embassies issued Travel Warnings advising of the potential danger of traveling to Indonesia.
Subsequently, the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2005 Bali bombings and the Progress of the SARS outbreak in Asia all dramatically impacted tourism activities in Lombok. Tourism was slow to return to Lombok, provoked in part by a worldwide reluctance to travel because of global tensions. Only since 2007–2008, when most developed countries lifted their Travel Warnings has tourism recovered to pre-2000 levels.
The years leading up to 2010 has seen a rapid revival and promotion of tourism recovery in the tourism industry. The number of visitors has far surpassed pre-2000 levels. All signs indicate the long-term trend will see a steady increase in the number of visitor arrivals.
Both the local government and many residents recognize that tourism and services related to tourism will continue to be a major source of income for the island. The island's natural environment and the customary hospitality of its residents make it an obvious tourist destination.
Lombok retains the allure of an undeveloped and natural environment. Tourism visits to this tropical island are increasing again as both international and local tourists are re-discovering the charms of Lombok. With this new interest comes the development of a number of boutique resorts on the island providing quality accommodation, food, and drinks in near proximity to the relatively unspoiled countryside.
The Indonesian government is actively promoting both Lombok and neighboring Sumbawa as Indonesia's number two tourist destination after Bali. Then–President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Ministry of Cultural and Tourism and the regional Governor had made public statements supporting the development of Lombok as a tourism destination and setting a goal of 1 million visitors annually by the year 2012 for the combined destination of Lombok and Sumbawa. This has seen infrastructure improvements to the island including road upgrades and the construction of a much delayed new International airport in the islands south. Bali Tourism Development Corporation (BTDC) has been empowered to develop Mandalika Resort Area at southern part of the island, extending from Kuta along 8 kilometers of sandy beach. Despite this, Sumbawa retains a very rustic feel compared to Lombok.
Lombok International Airport ("Bandara Internasional Lombok") is south west of the small regional city of Praya in South central Lombok. It commenced operations on 1 October 2011. It replaced Selaparang airport near Ampenan. It is the only operational international airport within the province of West Nusa Tenggara ("Nusa Tenggara Barat").
Selaparang Airport in Ampenan was closed for operations on the evening of 30 September 2011. It previously provided facilities for domestic services to Java, Bali, and Sumbawa and international services to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur via Surabaya and Jakarta. It was the island's original airport and is situated on Jalan Adi Sucipto on the north western outskirts of Mataram. The terminals and basic airport infrastructure remain intact but it is closed to all civil airline traffic.
Lembar Harbor seaport in the southwest has shipping facilities and a ferry for road vehicles and passenger services. In 2013, the gross tonnage is 4.3 million Gross Tonnages or increase by 72 percent from 2012 data means in Lombok and West Nusa Tenggara the economy progress significantly.
Labuhan Lombok ferry port on the east coast provides a ferry for road vehicles and passenger services to Poto Tano on Sumbawa.
Pelni Shipping Line provides a national network of passenger ship services throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Pelni have offices in Ampenan.
Flights from Ngurah Rai International Airport to Zainuddin Abdul Madjid International Airport take about 40 minutes. Lombok international airport is located in southwest Lombok, 1.5 hours drive to Senggigi main tourist areas in the west Lombok, 2 hours drive to the jetty of Teluk Nara before you cross to Gili Islands and about 30 minutes drive to Kuta south Lombok.
Public Ferries depart from Padang Bai (Southeast Bali) and Lembar (Southwest Lombok) every hour, taking a minimum of 4–5 hours make the crossing in either direction.
Fastboat services are available from various departure points on Bali and principally serve the Gili Islands, with some significant onward traffic to the Lombok mainland. Arrival points on Lombok are dependent upon the operator, at either Teluk Nare/Teluk Kodek, Bangsal harbour or the township of Senggigi, all on the northwest coast. Operating standards vary widely. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18360 |
Lego
Lego ( , ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance's "world's most powerful brand". At certain points, investing in Lego sets was more valuable than investing in gold.
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase , which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which had been patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and released in 1947. Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto, "only the best is good enough" () was created in 1936. This motto, which is still used today, was created by Christiansen to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. By 1951 plastic toys accounted for half of the Lego company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine "Legetøjs-Tidende" ("Toy Times"), visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, felt that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their locking ability was limited and they were not versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer. The modern Lego brick design was patented on 28 January 1958.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of simple blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children.
In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program.
In May 2013, the largest model ever created was displayed in New York City and was made of over 5 million bricks; a 1:1 scale model of an X-wing fighter. Other records include a tower and a railway.
In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as the "world's most powerful brand."
Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many forms of cultural works, including books, films and art work. It has even been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the US, Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group.
In 1998, Lego bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variation in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each piece remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made in the current time, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each Lego piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at these markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first stage is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based upon the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and for testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation, for marketing and packaging.
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order their custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from a strong, resilient plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds at pressures between 25 and 150 tonnes, and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres, to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds, to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required. Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego has a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic it currently uses in its bricks.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico and Kladno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of Lego bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in "BusinessWeek" in 2006, Lego could be considered the world's No. 1 tire manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tires a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
In December 2012, the BBC's "More or Less" radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine "how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick?" Using a hydraulic testing machine, the engineering department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons; since an average 2×2 Lego brick has a mass of , according to their calculations it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack in height.
Private tests have shown several thousand assembly-disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out, although Lego tests show fewer cycles.
In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using bio-derived polyethylene to make its botanical elements (parts such as leaves, bushes and trees).
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, robots, pirates, trains, Vikings, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City (a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973) and Lego Technic (a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977).
Over the years, Lego has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and even some from video games. These include "Batman", "Indiana Jones", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Harry Potter", "Star Wars", and "Minecraft". Although some of the licensed themes, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, Lego has expressed a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes, and less upon licensed themes related to movie releases.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest Lego sets commercially produced was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces.
Lego also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and has continued to expand and update this range ever since. The roots of the product originate from a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name is taken from a paper by Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism, and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.
The programmable Lego brick which is at the heart of these robotics sets has undergone several updates and redesigns, with the latest being called the 'EV3' brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorms EV3. The set includes sensors that detect touch, light, sound and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader.
The intelligent brick can be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers, and is downloaded onto the brick via Bluetooth or a USB cable. There are also several unofficial programs and compatible programming languages that have been made to work with the brick, and many books have been written to support this community.
There are several robotics competitions which use the Lego robotics sets. The earliest is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr.FLL) for students ages 6–9 and FIRST Lego League (FLL) for students ages 9–16 (age 9–14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico). Jr.FLL and FLL offer real-world engineering challenges to participants. FLL uses Lego-based robots to complete tasks. Jr.FLL participants build models out of Lego elements. In its 2010 season, there were 16,070 FLL teams in over 55 countries. In its 2010 season, there were 2,147 Jr.FLL teams with 12,882 total student participants in the United States and Canada. The international RoboCup Junior football competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have now been harnessed for use in Iko Creative Prosthetic System, a prosthetic limbs system designed for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb. Iko is the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporates myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contains an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, the company's robotics line, which lets the wearer build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.
The definitive shape of the Lego bricks, with the inner tubes, was patented by the Lego Group in 1958. Several competitors have attempted to take advantage of Lego's popularity by producing blocks of similar dimensions, and advertising them as being compatible with Lego bricks. In 2002, Lego sued the CoCo Toy Company in Beijing for copyright infringement over its "Coko bricks" product. CoCo was ordered to cease manufacture of the products, publish a formal apology and pay damages. Lego sued the English company Best-Lock Construction Toys in German courts in 2004 and 2009; the Federal Patent Court of Germany denied Lego trademark protection for the shape of its bricks for the latter case. In 2005, the Lego Company sued Canadian company Mega Bloks for trademark violation, but the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Mega Bloks' rights to sell their product. In 2010, the European Court of Justice ruled that the eight-peg design of the original Lego brick "merely performs a technical function [and] cannot be registered as a trademark."
First launched in 1996, the Lego website has developed over the years, and provides many extra services beyond an online store and a product catalogue. There are also moderated message boards that were founded in 2001. The site also includes instruction booklets for all Lego sets dating back to 2002.
"My Lego Network" is a social networking site that involves items, blueprints, ranks, badges which are earned for completing certain tasks, trading and trophies called masterpieces which allow users to progress to go to the next rank. The website has a built in inbox which allows users to send pre written messages to one another. The Lego Network includes automated non-player characters within called "Networkers", who are able to do things which normal users cannot do, sending custom messages, and selling masterpieces and blueprints. The site also has modules which are set up on the user's page that give the user items, or that display picture compositions. Before My Lego Network, there were Lego Club Pages, which essentially held the same purpose, although the design lacked complex interaction.
Merlin Entertainments operates eight Legoland amusement parks, the original in Billund, Denmark, the second in Windsor, England, the third in Günzburg, Germany, the fourth in Carlsbad, California, the fifth in Winter Haven, Florida, the sixth in Iskandar Puteri, Malaysia, the seventh in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the eighth in Nagoya, Japan. A ninth is planned to open in 2020 in Goshen, New York, United States, and a tenth in 2022 in Shanghai, China. On 13 July 2005, the control of 70% of the Legoland parks was sold for $460 million to the Blackstone Group of New York while the remaining 30% is still held by Lego Group. There are also eight Legoland Discovery Centres, two in Germany, four in the United States, one in Japan and one in the United Kingdom. Two Legoland Discovery Centres opened in 2013: one at the Westchester Ridge Hill shopping complex in Yonkers, New York, and one at the Vaughan Mills in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. Another opened at the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in 2014.
Lego operates 132 so-called "Lego Store" retail shops. There are stores at the Downtown Disney shopping complexes at Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts as well as in Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The opening of each store is celebrated with weekend-long event in which a Master Model Builder creates, with the help of volunteers—most of whom are children—a larger-than-life Lego statue, which is then displayed at the new store for several weeks.
Since around 2000, the Lego Group has been promoting "Lego Serious Play", a form of business consultancy fostering creative thinking, in which team members build metaphors of their organizational identities and experiences using Lego bricks. Participants work through imaginary scenarios using visual three-dimensional Lego constructions, imaginatively exploring possibilities in a serious form of play.
Lego branched out into the video game market in 1997 by founding Lego Media International Limited, and "Lego Island" was released that year by Mindscape. After this Lego released titles such as "Lego Creator" and "Lego Racers".
After Lego closed down their publishing subsidiary, they moved on to a partnership with Traveller's Tales, and went on to make games like "", "", "", and many more including the very well-received "Lego Marvel Super Heroes" game, featuring New York City as the overworld and including Marvel characters from the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and more. More recently, Lego has created a game based on "The Lego Movie", due to its popularity.
Lego Games launched in 2009, was a series of Lego-themed board games designed by Cephas Howard and Reiner Knizia in which the players usually build the playing board out of Lego bricks and then play with Lego-style players. Examples of the games include "Minotaurus", in which players roll dice to move characters within a brick-build labyrinth, "Creationary", in which players must build something which appears on a card, or "Ramses Pyramid", in which players collect gems and climb up a customisable pyramid. Like many board games, the games use dice. In Lego Games, the dice are Lego, with Lego squares with symbols on Lego studs on the dice, surrounded by rubber. The games vary from simple to complex, some are similar to "traditional" board games, while others are completely different.
The first official Lego film was the straight-to-DVD release of in 2003 developed by Creative Capers Entertainment and distributed by Miramax Home Entertainment. Several other straight-to-DVD computer animated Bionicle sequels and Hero Factory movies were produced in the following years. "" was released on DVD in February 2010, a computer-animated film made by Tinseltown Toons.
"The Lego Movie", a feature film based on Lego toys, was released by Warner Bros. in February 2014. It featured Chris Pratt in the lead role, with substantial supporting characters voiced by Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Alison Brie, Will Ferrell and Nick Offerman. A contest was held for contestants to submit designs for vehicles to be used in the film. After the release of "The Lego Movie", independent Canadian toy retailers reported issues with shortages of Lego products and cited cancellations of Lego pre-orders without warning as a motive to stock compatible, rival products.
A spin-off of "The Lego Movie", entitled "The Lego Batman Movie", directed by Chris McKay was released in the US in February 2017.
In June 2013, it was reported that Warner Bros. was developing a feature film adaptation of Lego Ninjago. Brothers Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman were attached to write the adaptation, while Dan Lin and Roy Lee, along with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, were announced as producers. The film, "The Lego Ninjago Movie", was released in September 2017. A computer-generated animated series based on "" began in 2011, and another based on "Legends of Chima" began in 2013. A television series of "Lego City" has also been announced.
Lego has an ongoing deal with publisher Dorling Kindersley (DK), who are producing a series of illustrated hardback books looking at different aspects of the construction toy. The first was "The Ultimate Lego Book", published in 1999. More recently, in 2009, the same publisher produced "The LEGO Book", which was sold within a slipcase along with "Standing Small: A celebration of 30 years of the LEGO minifigure", a smaller book focused on the minifigure. In 2012, a revised edition was published. Also in 2009, DK also published books on Lego Star Wars and a range of Lego-based sticker books.
Although no longer being published in the United States by Scholastic, books covering events in the Bionicle storyline are written by Greg Farshtey. They are still being published in Europe by AMEET. Bionicle comics, also written by Farshtey, are compiled into graphic novels and were released by Papercutz. This series ended in 2009, after nine years.
There is also the Lego Club and Brickmaster magazine, the latter discontinued in 2011.
Kabooki, a Danish company founded in 1993, produces clothes branded as "Lego Wear" under licence from the Lego Group. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18362 |
Li people
The Li, Lizu, or Hlai are a Kra–Dai speaking ethnic group, one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. The vast majority live off the southern coast of China on Hainan Island, where they are the largest minority ethnic group. Divided into the five branches of the Qi (Gei), Ha, Run (Zwn), Sai (Tai, Jiamao), and Meifu (Moifau), the Li have their own distinctive culture and customs.
Li is the Chinese transcription of their native name, which is "Hlai". They are sometimes also known as the "Sai" or "Say". During China's Sui Dynasty, their ancestors were known by various names, including "Lǐliáo" (), a general term encompassing several non-Han ethnic groups in Southern China. The name Li first is recorded during the Later Tang period (923–937 CE).
The Li are believed to be descendants of the Rau people, Kra-Dai speaking tribes of ancient China, who settled on the island thousands of years ago. DNA analysis carried out amongst the modern Li population indicate a close relationship with populations in the southern Chinese province of Guangxi, most of them have Y-DNA O1a and O1b.
During the Japanese occupation of Hainan (1939–1945), the Li suffered extremely heavily due to their communist resistance activities especially in the western Hainan. Li villages were frequently targeted for extermination and rape by Nationalist and Japanese soldiers. In four towns alone, the Japanese slaughtered more than 10,000 Li people. In another incident, Nationalist forces massacred over 7,000 Li in a village. Nationalist officers had 9,000 Li and 3,000 Miao executed after tricking them to the war fronts during a fake conscription campaign. As the Nationalists retreated with over 1.5 million civilians that they evacuated to the hills with, they massacred and stole food from the ethnic Li as well as other tribal peoples. The Nationalists executed 2,180 Miao women and children of Baisha and Baoting uprising origin. Tens of thousands of Li were also killed in Japanese labour camps, as unlike other Chinese civilians they and the Tanka were not evacuated by Chinese Nationalists to safety zones. Undercover Nationalist agents pretending to work for the Japanese observed how Japanese commanders gunned down thousands of Li while trying to escape the camp.
They are held in high esteem by the Beijing government because they fought on the side of the CPC against Chinese Nationalist rule during the Chinese Civil War. Hainan Li-Miao Autonomous Prefecture was created in 1952 (abolished in 1988). Ironically, the Li continued suffering far greater deaths than the rest of ethnic groups on the island as they were specifically subjected to violent and intensive collectivastion campaigns implemented on the Li by communists authorities that lead to widespread starvation deaths among the Li.
The Li speak the Hlai languages, a member of the Kra–Dai language family, but most can understand or speak Hainanese and Standard Chinese. The language spoken natively by the Sai (also known as Tai or Jiamao) subgroup has been noted for its dissimilarity to the dialects or languages spoken by the other subgroups of the Li.
Among the Li, the women have a custom of tattooing their arms and backs after a certain age is reached.
The Li play a traditional wind instrument called "kǒuxiāo" (), and another called "lìlāluó" (). The Li people were considered to be barbaric and primitive and were among the lower classes in Hainan. The Li in Wenchang assimilated into the local population and pretended to be Hainanese while most of the Li population was exterminated in most other parts of Hainan only a small portion of the Li survived and fled to the mountains where they still maintain a Li identity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18364 |
Luminance
Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through, is emitted from, or is reflected from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle.
Brightness is the term for the "subjective" impression of the "objective" luminance measurement standard (see for the importance of this contrast).
The SI unit for luminance is candela per square metre (cd/m2), as defined by the International System of Units (SI is from the French "Système international d'unités") standard for the modern metric system. A non-SI term for the same unit is the nit. The unit in the Centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS) (which predated the SI system) is the stilb, which is equal to one candela per square centimetre or 10 kcd/m2.
Luminance is often used to characterize emission or reflection from flat, diffuse surfaces. Luminance levels indicate how much luminous power could be detected by the human eye looking at a particular surface from a particular angle of view. Luminance is thus an indicator of how bright the surface will appear. In this case, the solid angle of interest is the solid angle subtended by the eye's pupil.
Luminance is used in the video industry to characterize the brightness of displays. A typical computer display emits between 50 and . The sun has a luminance of about at noon.
Luminance is invariant in geometric optics. This means that for an ideal optical system, the luminance at the output is the same as the input luminance.
For real, passive optical systems, the output luminance is "at most" equal to the input. As an example, if one uses a lens to form an image that is smaller than the source object, the luminous power is concentrated into a smaller area, meaning that the illuminance is higher at the image. The light at the image plane, however, fills a larger solid angle so the luminance comes out to be the same assuming there is no loss at the lens. The image can never be "brighter" than the source.
Retinal damage can occur when the eye is exposed to high luminance. Damage can occur because of local heating of the retina. Photochemical effects can also cause damage, especially at short wavelengths.
A luminance meter is a device used in photometry that can measure the luminance in a particular direction and with a particular solid angle. The simplest devices measure the luminance in a single direction while imaging luminance meters measure luminance in a way similar to the way a digital camera records color images.
The luminance of a specified point of a light source, in a specified direction, is defined by the derivative
where
If light travels through a lossless medium, the luminance does not change along a given light ray. As the ray crosses an arbitrary surface "S", the luminance is given by
where
More generally, the luminance along a light ray can be defined as
where
The luminance of a reflecting surface is related to the illuminance it receives:
where the integral covers all the directions of emission , and
In the case of a perfectly diffuse reflector (also called a Lambertian reflector), the luminance is isotropic, per Lambert's cosine law. Then the relationship is simply
A variety of units have been used for luminance, besides the candela per square metre.
One candela per square metre is equal to: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18365 |
Lycos
Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and is a subsidiary of Kakao.
The word "Lycos" is short for "Lycosidae", which is Latin for "wolf spider".
Lycos is a university spin-off that began in May 1994 as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Lycos Inc. was formed with approximately US$2 million in venture capital funding from CMGI. Bob Davis became the CEO and first employee of the new company in 1995, and concentrated on building the company into an advertising-supported web portal, led by Bill Townsend, who served as Vice President, Advertising. Lycos enjoyed several years of growth during the 1990s and became the most visited online destination in the world in 1999, with a global presence in more than 40 countries.
In April 1996, the company completed the fastest initial public offering from inception to offering in NASDAQ (LCOS) history, ending its first day with a market value of $300 million. It also became the first search engine to go public, before its big rivals Yahoo! and Excite. In 1997, it became one of the first profitable Internet businesses in the world. In 1998, Lycos acquired Tripod.com for $58 million in an attempt to "break into the portal market".
Lycos started offering e-mail services in October 1997.
Lycos Europe was a joint venture between Lycos and the Bertelsmann transnational media corporation, but it has always been a distinct corporate entity. Although Lycos Europe remains the largest of Lycos's overseas ventures, several other Lycos subsidiaries also entered into joint venture agreements including Lycos Canada, Lycos Korea and Lycos Asia.
Lycos was one of the most popular websites on the internet, ranking 8th in 1997, and peaking at 4th in both 1999 and 2001.
Near the peak of the dot-com bubble on May 16, 2000, Lycos announced its intent to be acquired by Terra Networks, the Internet arm of the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, for $12.5 billion. The acquisition price represented a return of nearly 3,000 times the company's initial venture capital investment and about 20 times its initial public offering valuation. The transaction closed in October 2000 and the merged company was renamed Terra Lycos, although the Lycos brand continued to be used in the United States. Overseas, the company continued to be known as Terra Networks.
Having been set back by the dot-com bubble burst, Lycos abandoned its own search crawler in late 2001, and started using FAST.
In August 2004, Terra announced that it was selling Lycos to Seoul, South Korea–based Daum Communications Corporation, now Kakao, for $95.4 million in cash, less than 2% of Terra's initial multibillion-dollar investment. In October 2004, the transaction closed and the company name was changed back to Lycos.
Under new ownership, Lycos began to refocus its strategy. The company moved away from being a search-centric portal and toward a community destination for broadband entertainment content. With a new management team in place, Lycos also began divesting properties that were not core to its new strategy. In July 2006, Wired News, which had been part of Lycos since the purchase of Wired Digital in 1998, was sold to Condé Nast Publications and re-merged with "Wired Magazine". The Lycos Finance division, best known for Quote.com and RagingBull.com, was sold to FT Interactive Data Corporation in February 2006, while its online dating site, Matchmaker.com, was sold to Date.com. In 2006, Lycos regained ownership of the Lycos trademark from Carnegie Mellon University, allowing the company to rename to Lycos, Inc.
During 2006, Lycos introduced several media services, including Lycos Phone which combined video chat, real-time video on demand, and an MP3 player. In November 2006, Lycos began to roll out applications centered on social media, including its video application, Lycos Cinema, that featured simultaneous watch and chat functionality. In February 2007, Lycos MIX was launched, allowing users to pull video clips from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video and MySpace Video. Lycos MIX also allowed users to create playlists where other users could add video comments and chat in real-time.
As part of a corporate restructuring to focus on mobile, social networks and location-based services, Daum sold Lycos for $36 million in August 2010 to Ybrant Digital, an Internet marketing company based in Hyderabad, India. Ybrant Digital paid $20 million at signing and there has been a legal dispute over magnitude of the second installment between Ybrant and Daum. In 2018, a New York court ruled in favor of Daum and appointed Daum (by then merged with Kakao) as receiver of Ybrant's 56% ownership interest in Lycos.
In May 2012, Lycos announced the appointment of former employee Rob Balazy as CEO of Media division of Lycos.
In September 2014, Ed Noel was appointed in place of Rob and manages the operations under the title of General Manager of Lycos Media.
In June 2015, Lycos announced a pair of wearable devices, called Band and Ring.
Lycos Internet was renamed Brightcom Group in May 2018. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18366 |
Luton Town F.C.
Luton Town Football Club () is a professional association football club based in the town of Luton, Bedfordshire, England, that competes in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1885, it is nicknamed 'the Hatters' and affiliated to the Bedfordshire County Football Association. The team plays its home matches at Kenilworth Road, where it has been based since 1905. The club's history includes major trophy wins, several financial crises, numerous promotions and relegations, and some spells of sustained success. It was perhaps most prominent between 1982 and 1992, when it was a member of English football's top division, at that time the First Division; the team won its only major honour, the Football League Cup, in 1988. Luton Town have a long-standing rivalry with nearby club Watford.
The club was the first in southern England to turn professional, making payments to players as early as 1890 and turning fully professional a year later. It joined the Football League before the 1897–98 season, left in 1900 because of financial problems, and rejoined in 1920. Luton reached the First Division in 1955–56 and contested a major final for the first time when playing Nottingham Forest in the 1959 FA Cup Final. The team was then relegated from the top division in 1959–60, and demoted twice more in the following five years, playing in the Fourth Division from the 1965–66 season. However, it was promoted back to the top level by 1974–75.
Luton Town's most recent successful period began in 1981–82, when the club won the Second Division, and thereby gained promotion to the First. Luton defeated Arsenal 3–2 in the 1988 Football League Cup Final and remained in the First Division until relegation at the end of the 1991–92 season. Between 2007 and 2009, financial difficulties caused the club to fall from the second tier of English football to the fifth in successive seasons. The last of these relegations came during the 2008–09 season, when 30 points were docked from Luton's record for various financial irregularities. Luton thereafter spent five seasons in non-League football before winning the Conference Premier in 2013–14, securing promotion back into the Football League.
Luton Town Football Club was formed on 11 April 1885. Before this there were many clubs in the town, the most prominent of which were Luton Wanderers and Luton Excelsior. A Wanderers player, George Deacon, came up with the idea of a 'Town' club which would include all the best players in Luton. Wanderers secretary Herbert Spratley seized upon Deacon's idea and arranged a secret meeting on 13 January 1885 at the St Matthews school rooms in High Town. The Wanderers committee resolved to rename the club Luton Town—which was not well received by the wider community. The local newspapers referred to the club as 'Luton Town (late Wanderers)'. When George Deacon and John Charles Lomax then arranged a public meeting with the purpose of forming a 'Luton Town Football Club', Spratley protested, saying there was already a Luton Town club; and the atmosphere was tense when the meeting convened in the town hall on 11 April 1885. The meeting, attended by most football lovers in the town, heard about Spratley's secret January meeting and voted down his objections. The motion to form a 'Luton Town Football Club', put forward by G H Small and seconded by E H Lomax, was carried. A club committee was elected by ballot and the team colours were agreed to be pink and dark blue shirts and caps.
Initially based at Excelsior's Dallow Lane ground, Luton Town began making payments to certain individual players in 1890. The following year, Luton became the first club in southern England to be fully professional. The club was a founder member of the Southern Football League in the 1894–95 season and finished as runners-up in its first two seasons. It then left to help form the United League and came second in that league's inaugural season before joining the Football League (then based mostly in northern and central England) for 1897–98, concurrently moving to a new ground at Dunstable Road. The club continued to enter a team to the United League for two more seasons, and won the title in 1897–98. Poor attendance, high wages and the high travel and accommodation costs that resulted from Luton's distance from the northern heartlands of the Football League crippled the club financially, and made it too expensive to compete in that league. A return to the Southern League was therefore arranged for the 1900–01 season.
Eight years after arriving at Dunstable Road, Luton moved again, settling at their current ground, Kenilworth Road, in 1905. Captain and left winger Bob Hawkes became Luton's first international player when he was picked to play for England against Ireland on 16 February 1907. A poor 1911–12 season saw Luton relegated to the Southern League's Second Division; the club won promotion back two years later. After the First World War broke out, Luton took part in The London Combination during 1915–16, and afterwards filled each season with friendly matches. A key player of the period was Ernie Simms, a forward. Simms was invalided back to England after being wounded on the Italian front, but recovered enough to regain his place in the Luton team and scored 40 goals during the 1916–17 season.
The Luton side first played in the white and black colours which it has retained for much of its history during the 1920–21 season, when the club rejoined the Football League; the players had previously worn an assortment of colour combinations, most permanently sky blue shirts with white shorts and navy socks. Such was the quality of Luton's team at this time that despite playing in the third tier, a fixture between Ireland and England at Windsor Park on 22 October 1921 saw three Luton players on the pitch—Louis Bookman and Allan Mathieson for Ireland, and the club's top goalscorer, Simms, for England. However, after Luton finished fourth in the division, the squad was broken up as Simms, Bookman and Mathieson joined South Shields, Port Vale and Exeter City respectively. Luton stayed in the Third Division South until 1936–37, when the team finished top and won promotion to the Second Division, at that time the second tier of English football. During the promotion season, striker Joe Payne scored 55 goals in 39 games; during the previous season he had scored 10 in one match against Bristol Rovers, which remains a Football League record today.
During the early 1950s, one of Luton's greatest sides emerged under manager Dally Duncan. The team included Gordon Turner, who went on to become Luton's all-time top goalscorer, Bob Morton, who holds the record for the most club appearances, and Syd Owen, an England international. During this period, Luton sides also featured two England international goalkeepers, Ron Baynham and Bernard Streten, as well as Irish internationals Seamus Dunne, Tom Aherne and George Cummins. This team reached the top flight for the first time in 1955–56, after finishing the season in second place behind Birmingham City on goal average. A few years of success followed, including an FA Cup Final appearance against Nottingham Forest in 1958–59; at the end of the season, Owen was voted FWA Footballer of the Year. However, the club was relegated the following season and, by 1964–65, was playing in the fourth tier.
In yo-yo club fashion, Luton were to return. A team including Bruce Rioch, John Moore and Graham French won the Fourth Division championship in 1967–68 under the leadership of former player Allan Brown; two years later Malcolm Macdonald's goals helped them to another promotion, while comedian Eric Morecambe became a director of the club. Luton Town won promotion back to the First Division in 1973–74, but were relegated the following season by a solitary point. Former Luton player David Pleat was made manager in 1978, and by 1982–83 the team was back in the top flight. The team which Pleat assembled at Kenilworth Road was notable at the time for the number of black players it included; during an era when many English squads were almost entirely white, Luton often fielded a mostly black team. Talented players such as Ricky Hill, Brian Stein and Emeka Nwajiobi made key contributions to the club's success during this period, causing it to accrue "a richer history of black stars than any in the country", in the words of journalist Gavin Willacy.
On the last day of the 1982–83 season, the club's first back in the top tier, it narrowly escaped relegation: playing Manchester City at Maine Road, Luton needed to win to stay up, while City could escape with a draw. A late winner by Yugoslavian substitute Raddy Antić saved the team and prompted Pleat to dance across the pitch performing a "jig of joy", an image that has become iconic. The club achieved its highest ever league position, seventh, under John Moore in 1986–87, and, managed by Ray Harford, won the Football League Cup a year later with a 3–2 win over Arsenal. With ten minutes left on the clock and Arsenal 2–1 ahead, a penalty save from stand-in goalkeeper Andy Dibble sparked a late Luton rally: Danny Wilson equalised, before Brian Stein scored the winner with the last kick of the match. The club reached the League Cup Final once more in 1988–89, but lost 3–1 to Nottingham Forest.
The club was relegated from the top division at the end of the 1991–92 season, and sank to the third tier four years later. Luton stayed in the third-tier Second Division until relegation at the end of the 2000–01 season. Under the management of Joe Kinnear, who had arrived halfway through the previous season, the team won promotion from the fourth tier at the first attempt. "Controversial" owner John Gurney unsettled the club in 2003, terminating Kinnear's contract on his arrival in May; Gurney replaced Kinnear with Mike Newell before leaving Luton as the club entered administration. Newell's team finished as champions of the rebranded third-tier Football League One in 2004–05.
While Newell's place was taken first by Kevin Blackwell and later former player Mick Harford, the team was then relegated twice in a row, starting in 2006–07, and spent the latter part of the 2007–08 season in administration, thus incurring a ten-point deduction from that season's total. The club then had a total of 30 points docked from its 2008–09 record by the Football Association and the Football League for financial irregularities dating back several years. These deductions proved to be too large an obstacle to overcome, but Luton came from behind in the final of the Football League Trophy to win the competition for the first time.
Relegation meant that 2009–10 saw Luton playing in the Conference Premier, a competition in which the club had never before participated. The club unsuccessfully contested the promotion play-offs three times in four seasons during their time as a non-League club, employing five different managers. In the 2012–13 FA Cup fourth round, Luton won their away tie against Premier League club Norwich City 1–0 and, in doing so, became the first non-League team to beat a side from England's top division since 1989. In the 2013–14 season, under the management of John Still, Luton won the Conference Premier title with three games to spare, and thereby secured a return to the Football League from 2014–15. After reaching the League Two play-offs in 2016–17, when they were beaten 6–5 on aggregate by Blackpool in the semi-final, Luton were promoted back to League One the following season as runners-up. Luton achieved a second successive promotion in 2018–19, after they won the League One title, marking the club's return to the Championship after a 12-year absence.
The club's nickname, "the Hatters", reflects Luton's historical connection with the hat making trade, which has been prominent there since the 17th century. The nickname was originally a variant on the now rarely seen straw-plaiters. Supporters of the club are also called Hatters.
The club is associated with two very different colour schemes—white and black (first permanently adopted in 1920), and orange, navy and white (first used in 1973, and worn by the team as of the 2015–16 season). Luton mainly wore a combination of light blue and white before 1920, when white shirts and black shorts were first adopted. These colours were retained for over half a century, with the colour of the socks varying between white and black, until Luton changed to orange, navy and white at the start of the 1973–74 season. Luton began playing in white shirts, shorts and socks in 1979, with the orange and navy motif reduced to trim; navy shorts were adopted in 1984. This palette was retained until the 1999–2000 season, when the team played in orange shirts and blue shorts. From 2000 to 2008, Luton returned to white shirts and black shorts; orange was included as trim until 2007. The white, navy and orange palette favoured in the 1980s was brought back in 2008, following the results of a club poll, but a year later the colours were changed yet again, this time to a predominantly orange strip with white shorts. Navy shorts were readopted in 2011. Luton are wearing orange shirts, navy shorts and white socks during the 2015–16 season.
Luton Town have traditionally used the town's crest as its own in a manner similar to many other teams. The club's first badge was a white eight-pointed star, which was emblazoned across the team's shirts (then a deep cochineal red) in 1892. Four years later a crest comprising the club's initials intertwined was briefly adopted. The shirts were thereafter plain until 1933, when Luton first adopted a badge depicting a straw boater, which appeared on Luton shirts. The letters "LTFC" were added in 1935, and this basic design remained until 1947. The club then played without a badge until 1970, when the club began to wear the town crest regularly, having first done so in the 1959 FA Cup Final.
In 1973, concurrently with the club's switch to the orange kit, a new badge was introduced featuring the new colours. The new emblem depicted a stylised orange football, bearing the letters "Lt", surrounded by the club's name in navy blue text. In 1987, the club switched back to a derivative of the town emblem, with the shield portion of the heraldic crest becoming the team's badge; the only similarity with the previous design was the inclusion of the club name around the shield in navy blue. The "rainbow" badge, introduced in 1994, featured the town crest below an orange and blue bow which curved around to meet two footballs, positioned on either side of the shield, with the club name underneath. This badge was used until 2005, when a replacement very similar to the 1987 version was adopted, featuring black text rather than blue and a straw boater in place of the outstretched arm depicted in the older design. The club's founding year, 1885, was added in 2008. The badge was altered once more during the 2009–10 pre-season, with the red of the town crest being replaced with orange to better reflect the club colours.
The first sponsor to appear on a Luton Town shirt was Tricentrol, a local motor company based in Dunstable, who sponsored the club from March 1980 to 1982; the deal was worth £50,000. Subsequent sponsors have been Bedford Trucks (1982 to 1990), Vauxhall (1990 to 1991), Universal Salvage Auctions (1991 to 1999), SKF (1999 to 2003), Travel Extras (2003 to 2005), Electrolux (2005 to 2008), Carbrini Sportswear (2008 to 2009), EasyJet and NICEIC (concurrently, 2009 to 2015), and Barnfield College and NICEIC (concurrently, 2015 to 2016). Since June 2016, the club's kit has been sponsored by NICEIC and SsangYong Motor UK.
The club released the song "Hatters, Hatters", a collaboration between the Luton team and the Bedfordshire-based musical comedy group the Barron Knights, in 1974. Eight years later another song featuring vocals by the Luton players, "We're Luton Town", was released to celebrate the club's promotion to the First Division.
Luton Town's first ground was at Dallow Lane, the former ground of Excelsior. The ground was next to the Dunstable to Luton railway line, and players regularly claimed to have trouble seeing the ball because of smoke from the trains. A damaging financial loss during 1896–97 forced Luton to sell the stadium to stay afloat and, as a result, the club moved across the tracks to a stadium between the railway and Dunstable Road. The Dunstable Road ground was opened by Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, who also donated £50 towards the £800 building costs. When the site was sold for housing in 1905, the club was forced to move again at short notice, to its present Kenilworth Road site, in time for the start of the 1905–06 season.
The stadium now has an all-seater capacity of 10,356 and is situated in the Bury Park area of Luton. It was named after the road that runs along one end of it, although the official address of the club is 1 Maple Road. Opposite the eponymous Kenilworth Stand is the Oak Road End, which has evolved from a stand first used exclusively by Luton supporters, then later by away supporters, and now used by both except in times of high ticket demand from away clubs. The Main Stand is flanked by the David Preece Stand, and opposite them stands a row of executive boxes. These boxes replaced the Bobbers Stand in 1986, as the club sought to maximise income.
The original Main Stand burnt down in 1921, and was replaced by the current stand before the 1922–23 season. The ground underwent extensive redevelopment during the 1930s, and the capacity by the start of the Second World War was 30,000. Floodlights were installed before the 1953–54 season, but it was 20 years before any further modernisation was carried out. In 1973 the Bobbers Stand became all-seated, and in 1985 the grass pitch was replaced with an artificial playing surface; it quickly became unpopular and was derided as "the plastic pitch".
A serious incident involving hooliganism before, during and after a match against Millwall in 1985 caused the club's then chairman, Conservative MP David Evans, to introduce a scheme effective from the start of 1986–87 banning all visiting supporters from the ground, and requiring home fans to carry membership cards when attending matches. Conversion to an all-seater ground also began in 1986. Away fans returned for 1990–91, and grass a year later. The David Preece Stand was erected in 1991, and the conversion of the Kenilworth Stand to an all-seater was completed in 2005.
The club first expressed an interest in building a new stadium away from Kenilworth Road in 1955, the year it won promotion to the First Division for the first time. Even then the ground was small compared to those of most First and Second Division clubs, and its location made significant redevelopment difficult. The team has since made several attempts to relocate. Leaving Luton for the nearby new town of Milton Keynes was unsuccessfully proposed several times, most notably in the 1980s. The club sold Kenilworth Road to Luton Council in 1989, and has since leased it. A planning application for a new 20,000-seater indoor stadium, the "Kohlerdome" proposed by chairman David Kohler in 1995, was turned down by the Secretary of State in 1998, and Kohler left soon after.
In 2007, the club's then-owners proposed a controversial plan to relocate to a site near Junction 12 of the M1 motorway, near Harlington and Toddington. A planning application was made on the club's behalf by former chairman Cliff Bassett, but the application was withdrawn almost immediately following the club's takeover in 2008. In 2009, the club began an independent feasibility study to determine a viable location to move to. The club did not rule out redeveloping Kenilworth Road and, in October 2012, entered talks to buy the stadium back from Luton Borough Council. By 2015, these plans had been dropped in favour of a move to a new location, with managing director Gary Sweet confirming that the club was in a position to "buy land, secure the best possible professional advice ... and to see the [planning] application process through to the receipt of consent."
In April 2016, the club announced its intention to build and move into a 17,500-capacity stadium on the Power Court site in central Luton. Planning permission for this ground, with potential to expand to 23,000 seats, was granted by Luton Borough Council on 16 January 2019.
During the 2014–15 season, Luton Town had an average home league attendance of 8,702—the second highest in League Two behind only Portsmouth. In the 2013–14 season, when the club were in the Conference Premier, the club had significantly higher support than the other clubs in its league, with an average home attendance of 7,387; more than twice compared to the second highest of 3,568. Average attendances at Kenilworth Road fell with the installation of seats and the club's reduction in stature, dropping from 13,452 in 1982–83 to their 2014–15 level—a slump of 35% over 32 years. A supporters' trust, Trust in Luton, owns shares in the club and elects a representative to the club's board. The club's official supporters' group, Luton Town Supporters' Club, merged with Trust in Luton in 2014. The club is associated with another supporters' group, the breakaway Loyal Luton Supporters Club. Trust in Luton has, since March 2014, held the legal right to veto any changes to the club's identity, including name, nickname, colours, club crest and mascot.
The club produces an official match programme for home games, "Talk of the Town". A character known as Happy Harry, a smiling man wearing a straw boater, serves as the team's mascot and appears on the Kenilworth Road pitch before matches. In December 2014, after the seafront statue of Eric Morecambe in his birthplace Morecambe was restored, Luton and Morecambe F.C. jointly announced that the winners of future Luton–Morecambe fixtures would be awarded the "Eric Morecambe Trophy".
Luton Town supporters maintain a bitter rivalry with Hertfordshire-based Watford. Watford have remained the higher ranked team at the end of every season since 1997. However, overall Luton still hold the superior record in the fixture between the two clubs; out of 118 competitive matches there have been 53 Luton victories and 36 for Watford, with 29 draws. A more recent survey taken in August 2019 showed that there was also animosity between Luton Town fans and those of West London club Queens Park Rangers. Other rivalries include Millwall, Oxford United, Stevenage and Cambridge United.
The record for the most appearances for Luton is held by Bob Morton, who turned out for Luton 562 times in all competitions. Morton also holds the record for the most Football League appearances for the club, with 495. Fred Hawkes holds the record for the most league appearances for Luton, having played in 509 league matches. Six players, Gordon Turner, Andy Rennie, Brian Stein, Ernie Simms, Herbert Moody and Steve Howard, have scored more than 100 goals for Luton.
The first player to be capped while playing for Luton was left winger Robert Hawkes, who took to the field for England against Ireland at Goodison Park on 16 February 1907. The most capped player is Mal Donaghy, who earned 58 Northern Ireland caps while at the club. The first player to score in an international match was Joe Payne, who scored twice in his only game for England against Finland on 20 May 1937. Payne also holds the Football League record for the most goals in a game—he hit 10 past Bristol Rovers on 13 April 1936.
The club's largest wins have been a 15–0 victory over Great Yarmouth Town on 21 November 1914 in the FA Cup and a 12–0 win over Bristol Rovers in the Third Division South on 13 April 1936. Luton's heaviest loss was a 9–0 defeat against Small Heath in the Second Division on 12 November 1898.
Luton's highest home attendances are 30,069 against Blackpool in the FA Cup on 4 March 1959 and 27,911 against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the First Division on 5 November 1955.
The highest transfer fee received for a Luton Town player is the fee Leicester City paid for Luton-born full-back James Justin on 28 June 2019. The most expensive player Luton Town have ever bought was Croatian goalkeeper Simon Sluga, who cost €1.5m from HNK Rijeka on 19 July 2019.
The youngest player to make a first-team appearance for Luton Town is Connor Tomlinson at 15 years and 199 days old in the EFL Trophy, replacing Zane Banton as a 92nd-minute substitute in a 2–1 win over Gillingham on 30 August 2016, after the club were given permission for him to play from his headteacher.
The club operates a Development Squad, made up of contracted senior players, youth team scholars and trialists, which plays in the Southern Division of The Central League. The club also fields an under-18 team in the Football League Youth Alliance South East Conference. Luton's youth set-up consists of ten Soccer Centres across Bedfordshire and North Hertfordshire, two Centres of Excellence (one in Luton, one in Dunstable), and an Academy in Baldock that caters for players in the under-9 to under-16 age groups. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18367 |
Lunar calendar
A lunar calendar is a calendar based on the monthly cycles of the Moon's phases (synodic months), in contrast to solar calendars, whose annual cycles are based only directly on the solar year. The most commonly used calendar, the Gregorian calendar, is a solar calendar system that originally evolved out of a lunar calendar system. A purely lunar calendar is also distinguished from a lunisolar calendar, whose lunar months are brought into alignment with the solar year through some process of intercalation. The details of when months begin varies from calendar to calendar, with some using new, full, or crescent moons and others employing detailed calculations.
Since each lunation is approximately days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 3 seconds, or days), it is common for the months of a lunar calendar to alternate between 29 and 30 days. Since the period of 12 such lunations, a lunar year, is only 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes, 34 seconds ( days), purely lunar calendars lose around 11 days per year relative to the Gregorian calendar. In purely lunar calendars, which do not make use of intercalation, like the Islamic calendar, the lunar months cycle through all the seasons of a solar year over the course of a 33 lunar-year cycle.
Although the Gregorian calendar is in common and legal use in most countries, traditional lunar and lunisolar calendars continue to be used throughout the Old World to determine religious festivals and national holidays. Examples of such holidays include Ramadan (Islamic calendar); Easter; the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mongolian New Year (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mongolian calendars); the Nepali New Year (Nepali calendar); the Mid-Autumn Festival and Chuseok (Chinese and Korean calendars); Loi Krathong (Thai calendar); Sunuwar calendar; Vesak/Buddha's Birthday (Buddhist calendar); Diwali (Hindu calendars); and Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew calendar).
A lunar calendar was found at Warren Field in Scotland and has been dated to , during the Mesolithic period. Some scholars argue for lunar calendars still earlier—Rappenglück in the marks on a year-old cave painting at Lascaux and Marshack in the marks on a year-old bone baton—but their findings remain controversial. Scholars have argued that ancient hunters conducted regular astronomical observations of the Moon back in the Upper Palaeolithic. Samuel L. Macey dates the earliest uses of the Moon as a time-measuring device back to 28,000-30,000 years ago.
Most calendars referred to as "lunar" calendars are in fact lunisolar calendars. Their months are based on observations of the lunar cycle, with intercalation being used to bring them into general agreement with the solar year. The solar "civic calendar" that was used in ancient Egypt showed traces of its origin in the earlier lunar calendar, which continued to be used alongside it for religious and agricultural purposes. Present-day lunisolar calendars include the Chinese, Vietnamese, Hindu, and Thai calendars.
Synodic months are 29 or 30 days in length, making a lunar year of 12 months about 11 days shorter than a solar year. Some lunar calendars do not use intercalation, such as most Islamic calendars. For those that do, such as the Hebrew calendar, the most common form of intercalation is to add an additional month every second or third year. Some lunisolar calendars are also calibrated by annual natural events which are affected by lunar cycles as well as the solar cycle. An example of this is the lunar calendar of the Banks Islands, which includes three months in which the edible palolo worms mass on the beaches. These events occur at the last quarter of the lunar month, as the reproductive cycle of the palolos is synchronized with the moon.
Lunar and lunisolar calendars differ as to which day is the first day of the month. In some lunisolar calendars, such as the Chinese calendar, the first day of a month is the day when an astronomical new moon occurs in a particular time zone. In others, such as some Hindu calendars, each month begins on the day after the full moon or the new moon. Others were based in the past on the first sighting of a lunar crescent, such as the Hebrew calendar and the Hijri calendar.
The length of each lunar cycle varies slightly from the average value. In addition, observations are subject to uncertainty and weather conditions. Thus to avoid uncertainty about the calendar, there have been attempts to create fixed arithmetical rules to determine the start of each calendar month.
The average length of the synodic month is days. Thus it is convenient if months generally alternate between 29 and 30 days (sometimes termed respectively “"hollow"” and “"full"”). The distribution of "hollow" and "full" months can be determined using continued fractions, and examining successive approximations for the length of the month in terms of fractions of a day. In the list below, after the number of days listed in the numerator of the fraction in the first columns, an integer number of months as listed in the denominator have been completed; the second column records the deviation accumulated with respect to the true synodic month duration and the time needed to achieve that deviation:
These fractions can be used to construct a lunar calendar, or in combination with a solar calendar to produce a lunisolar calendar. A 49-month cycle was proposed as the basis of an alternative Easter computation by Isaac Newton around 1700. The tabular Islamic calendar's 360-month cycle is equivalent to 24×15 months, minus a correction of one day.
Time travel in the Dark (TV series) "occurs in increments of 33 years because the wormhole is only activated when the sun and moon align." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18369 |
Mount Lykaion
Mount Lykaion (, "Lýkaion Óros"; ) is a mountain in Arcadia, Greece. Lykaion has two peaks: "Stefani" to the north and St. Ilias (, "Agios Īlías") to the south where the altar of Zeus is located.
The northern peak is higher, 1,421 m, than the southern, 1,382 m (). Mount Lykaion was sacred to Zeus Lykaios, who was said to have been born and brought up on it, and was the home of Pelasgus and his son Lycaon, who were said to have founded the ritual of Zeus practiced on its summit. This seems to have involved a human sacrifice and a feast in which the man who received the portion of a human victim was changed to a wolf, as Lycaon had been after sacrificing a child. The altar of Zeus consists of a great mound of ashes with a retaining wall. It was said that no shadows fell within the precincts and that any who entered it died within the year. The sanctuary of Zeus played host to athletic games held every four years, the "Lykaia".
Archaeological excavations were first carried out in 1897 by K. Kontopoulos for the Greek Archaeological Service, followed by K. Kourouniotes between 1902 and 1909.
The Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project, a joint effort of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Arizona began work at the site in 2004, with the aim of continuing the topographical survey begun in 1996 and carrying out a full topographical and architectural analysis not only of the altar and "temenos", but of the nearby valley where the Lykaian Games were held. The detailed digital records and drawings of every architectural stone block. To date, a complete map of the area has been made, including not only the Ash Altar and "temenos", but also two fountains, including the Hagno fountain mentioned by Pausanias, the hippodrome, the stadium, a building that was probably a bathhouse, the "xenon" (hotel), a stoa, several rows of seats, and a group of statue bases.
Many of these buildings seem to have been planned in relation to each other: the baths at the northern end of the hippodrome are on the same alignment as it is, and the stoa, the "xenon", the lower fountain, and the rows of seats all appear to have been built in an intentionally similar alignment. Just to the north of the stoa four rows of seats were excavated, with the remains of a group of stelae and statue bases nearby. These would have bordered the hippodrome's southern edge, and correspond to an earlier excavated row of seats on the south-eastern edge of the racetrack. The majority of the spectators of events in the hippodrome, however, would have sat on the surrounding hills.
Mt. Lykaion, its religious significance, and its quadrennial athletic games appear with some frequency in the ancient literary sources. The 2nd-century Greek geographer Pausanias provides the greatest amount of information in the eighth book of his "Description of Greece", where he discusses Lykaion's mythological, historical, and physical characteristics in detail. More isolated references occur, however, in sources ranging from Plato to Virgil.
Pausanias states that the Arcadians claimed Cretea atop Mt. Lykaion as the birthplace of Zeus, although tradition had handed down at least two other locations for Zeus’ birth.
Lycaon, son of Pelasgus, the mythical founder of the Greek race, is said to have instituted the worship of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, giving the god the epithet Lykaios and establishing games in his honor. The "Bibliotheca", a Roman-era mythological compendium, adds the story that Lycaon attempted to test Zeus’ omniscience by tricking him into eating a sacrifice mixed with human flesh. In punishment, Zeus slew Lycaon and his fifty sons. Other sources, including the Roman poet Ovid, claim instead that Lycaon's punishment was transformation into a wolf, an early example of lycanthropy.
According to Pausanias and the Greek historian Polybius, an inscribed pillar ("stele") was erected near the altar of Zeus on Mt. Lykaion during the Second Messenian War, a revolt against the Spartans. The inscription supposedly commemorated the execution of Aristocrates of Arcadia, who had betrayed the Messenian hero Aristomenes at the battle of the Great Trench.
Thucydides, a Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, writes that the Spartan king Pleistoanax lived on Mt. Lykaion while in exile from the mid-440s BC until 427, where he built a house straddling the sacred region ("temenos") of Zeus to avoid further persecution.
In his "Stratagems", the 2nd-century Macedonian rhetorician Polyaenus describes a battle between the Spartans and Demetrius of Macedon in 294 BC. Mt. Lykaion extended between the camps of the two sides, causing some consternation among the Macedonians due to their unfamiliarity with the terrain. Nevertheless, Demetrius’ forces won the battle with relative ease.
Polybius and Plutarch, a Greek author writing under the Roman empire, cite a battle at Mt. Lykaion in 227 BC between the Achaean League under Aratus and the Spartans under Cleomenes III. Although the details are vague, both authors make it clear that the Achaeans were defeated and that Aratus was believed (mistakenly) to have been killed.
Mt. Lykaion was an important site of religious worship in ancient Greece. Pausanias describes a sanctuary of Pan surrounded by a grove of trees. At the sanctuary were bases of statues, which by Pausanias’ time had been deprived of the statues themselves, as well as a hippodrome, where the athletic games had once been held. References to Lykaian Pan are especially abundant in Latin poetry, as for instance in Virgil's epic, the "Aeneid": “"Lupercal / Parrhasio dictum Panos de more Lycaei",” “...the Lupercal, named after the Parrhasian worship of Lykaian Pan,” and in Horace's Odes: “"Velox amoenum saepe Lucretilem / mutat Lycaeo Faunus",” “Often swift Faunus [Pan] exchanges Lykaion for pleasant Lucretilis.”
Pausanias records the presence of a mound of earth on the highest point of the mountain, an altar to Zeus Lykaios. He describes two pillars near the altar which had once been topped by golden eagles. Although Pausanias alludes to secret sacrifices which took place on this altar, he explains that he was reluctant to inquire into these rites due to their extreme antiquity. Pausanias also discusses the "temenos" of Zeus, a sacred precinct which humans were forbidden to enter. He notes the common belief that any person entering the "temenos" would die within a year, along with the legend that all creatures, human and animal alike, cast no shadow while inside the sacred area.
The athletic competitions at Lykaion, held every four years, receive occasional mention in the literary record. Authors are in disagreement as to when exactly the games were first instituted: Aristotle is said to have ranked the Lykaion games fourth in order of institution after the Eleusinia, the Panathenaia, and the Argive games, while Pausanias argues for the Lykaian competition's priority to the Panathenaia. Pliny the Elder, an imperial Roman polymath, states that the games at Lykaion were the first to introduce gymnastic competition. The ancient Greek lyric poet Pindar records the victories of several athletes in his "Victory Odes", and two inscribed "stelae" recently excavated from the Lykaian hippodrome provide information about the events, participants, and winners at the games.
After 1832, when Greece had gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, European travelers and scholars began to systematically tour Sparta and the Peloponnese. Ernst Curtius, Charles Beulé, and Guillaume Blouet published scholarly studies of the area, and discussions of the region appeared in German and British travelogues as well. Many of these writers used Pausanias as their guide to the geography and sights of the region, but were also concerned to correlate modern Greek place-names with ancient evidence.
Beulé described the hippodrome and surrounding area, including large stones that he assumed formed had formed the seats of the judges and magistrates, and the remains of a building he called a temple to Pan, but which probably corresponds to the stoa of the modern excavations. The German writer Ross described the bathhouse and its ancient but still-visible cisterns, which site he noted the locals called the Skaphidia.
Mt. Lykaion was initially excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service, first in 1897 by archaeologist K. Kontopoulos and again in 1902 by K. Kourouniotes. Kontopoulos dug several trial trenches near the hippodrome and the altar. Kourouniotes's excavations of the altar and surrounding area (the "temenos") were particularly informative; he learned that the altar consisted of a raised mound of blackened earth as described by Pausanias. Excavation of the earth of the altar yielded burnt stones, small animal (cow and pig) bones, tiny pottery fragments, iron knives, clay figures, coins from Aegina, a clay figure of a bird, and two small bronze tripods. Further trenches dug in the "temenos" produced several bronze figures, some iron objects, and roof tiles. In 1909 Kourouniotes excavated an area at the east of the mountain and beneath the summit, the site of the hippodrome, stadium, and bathhouse.
Since Kourouniotes's excavation, anthropologists and scholars of Arcadian religion have studied the site in terms of its development as a sanctuary, but there was no further systematic or scientific investigation until 1996, when Dr. David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a topographical and architectural survey of the site. Romano continued his work with the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Arizona. A preliminary planning phase of cleaning and surveying took place in 2004 and 2005, and was followed by a five-year excavation program beginning in June 2006. A two-year period during which the findings will be studied is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011.
The hippodrome at Mount Lykaion, located in a valley below and to the north of the altar, is the only extant hippodrome from Greek antiquity, and is therefore crucial to our understanding of Greek athletic festivals. The hippodrome was constructed on roughly a north-south orientation with a retaining wall of about 140 meters along the eastern side curving around the northern end. Modern excavations have discovered portions tapering column drums that may belonged to the turning posts at either end of the race-course, from whose location it appears that the hippodrome could have had a length of 320 meters and a width of 140. A bath building is being excavated about 35 meters to the northeast of the hippodrome; a large portion of it appears to have been dedicated to a cistern, and large stone basins from the middle of the structure have been uncovered
The Lykaian hippodrome is further unique in apparently having encompassed the stadium racecourse. The early 20th century excavator of Lykaion, Kouriouniotis discovered stone blocks in the middle of the hippodrome that would have formed the starting line of the stadium. The topological survey of 1996 confirmed 6 starting line blocks, four of which were grouped together and were thus possibly found near their original orientation and position. From this, archaeologist David Romano speculated that a stadium racecourse of 170–180 meters would have been enclosed within the hippodrome. The apparently double-use of the space is particularly interesting because inscriptional evidence concerning the Lykaian Games of the 4th century BCE indicates that horse and foot-races were held during the same festivals, and possibly on the same day.
Two inscriptions were uncovered in the excavations of Kouriouniotis that give the names of winning athletes in the various contests of the Lykaian Games that were held every four years between 320 and 304 BCE. These contests included footraces for men and for boys, various chariot races with teams of adult and juvenile horses, boxing, wrestling, and a pentathlon.
A circular altar of blackened earth about 1.5 meters in height and 30 meters in diameter seems to date from before the migration of Indo-European peoples into the area. The excavations of Kourouniotes in 1903 of the altar and its nearby "temenos" determined definite cult activity at the Lykaion altar from the late 7th century b.c.e, including animals bones, miniature tripods, knives, and statuettes of Zeus holding an eagle and a lightning bolt. These objects were primarily found in the "temenos". The earth-altar may correspond to a Linear B mention of an "open-fire altar"; Linear B (14th–13th centuries BCE) inscriptions also give the first mentions of offerings to Zeus and of the sacred precinct (temenos) near the altar, such as has been excavated at Lykaion.
Excavation in 2007 revealed pottery fragments and signs of activity in the ash altar believed to have been used as early as 3000 BCE. Nearby Olympia (only 22 miles away) has a similar ash altar, and both settlements held ancient athletic games. The extremely early date of activity at Lykaion could suggest that these customs originated there. Stratigraphic analysis from the most recent excavations showed prehistoric human activity at the altar site, which seems to have been in continuous use from the Late Neolithic period through to the Hellenistic era. A number of drinking vessels and bones of sheep and goats from the Late Helladic period indicates that the altar was the site of Mycenean drinking and feasting rituals, probably in honor of Zeus. An especially interesting discovery was a seal ring from the Late Minoan period (1500–1400 BCE), which could indicate some interaction between Mt. Lykaion and Crete, both of which are given as the birthplace of Zeus by ancient sources.
Recent excavations of a 30-meter ash altar on Mount Lykaion in Greece, once worshipped as the birthplace of Zeus, have revealed a 3000-year-old skeleton of an adolescent boy thought to be a human sacrifice, The Boston Globe reports. The altar is not a cemetery, the researchers note, and the skeleton was lined with stones, showing that it was not a typical human burial. Plato and other ancient writers linked Mount Lykaion specifically to human sacrifices to Zeus—the legends say a sacrificed boy would be cooked with sacrificed animal meat and those who consumed the human portion would become a wolf for 9 years. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18372 |
Lake Eyre
Lake Eyre ( ), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, contains the lowest natural point in Australia, at approximately below sea level (AHD), and, on the rare occasions that it fills, is the largest lake in Australia, covering . The shallow endorheic lake is the depocentre of the vast Lake Eyre basin and is found in Northern South Australia, some north of Adelaide.
When the lake is full, it has the same salinity level as the sea, but as the lake dries up and the water evaporates, salinity increases.
The lake was named by Europeans in honour of Edward John Eyre, who was the first European to see it, in 1840. The lake's official name was changed in December 2012 to combine the name "Lake Eyre" with the indigenous name, Kati Thanda. The native title over the lake and surrounding region is held by the Arabana people.
Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre is in the deserts of central Australia, in northern South Australia. The Lake Eyre Basin is a large endorheic system surrounding the lakebed, the lowest part of which is filled with the characteristic salt pan caused by the seasonal expansion and subsequent evaporation of the trapped waters. Even in the dry season, there is usually some water remaining in Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, normally collecting in over 200 smaller sub-lakes within its margins. The lake was formed by aeolian processes after tectonic upwarping occurred to the south subsequent to the end of the Pleistocene epoch.
During the rainy season, rivers from the north-east part of the Lake Eyre Basin—in outback (south-west and central) Queensland—flow towards the lake through the Channel Country. The amount of water from the monsoon determines whether water will reach the lake and, if it does, how deep the lake will get. The average rainfall in the area of the lake is per year.
The altitude usually attributed to Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre refers to the deepest parts of the lake floor, in Belt Bay and the Madigan Gulf. The shoreline lies at . The lake is the area of maximum deposition of sediment in the Lake Eyre Basin.
Lake Eyre is divided into two sections which are joined by the Goyder Channel. These are known as Lake Eyre North, which is in length and wide, and Lake Eyre South, which measures . The salt crusts are thickest—up to —in the southern Belt Bay, Jackboot Bay and Madigan Gulf sub-basins of Lake Eyre North.
Since 1883, proposals have been made to flood Lake Eyre with seawater brought to the basin via a canal or pipeline. The purpose was, in part, to increase evaporation and thereby increase rainfall in the region downwind of an enlarged Lake Eyre. The added rainfall has been modeled as small. Due to the basin's low elevation below sea level and the region's high annual evaporation rate (between ), such schemes have generally been considered impractical, as it is likely that accumulation of salt deposits would rapidly block the engineered channel. At a rate of evaporation per day, a viaduct flowing a would supply enough water to create a sea. If brine water was not sent back to the ocean, it would precipitate of salt every year.
The salinity in the lake increases as the salt crust dissolves over a period of six months of a major flood, resulting in a massive fish kill. When over deep, the lake is no more salty than the sea, but salinity increases as the water evaporates, with saturation occurring at about a depth. The lake takes on a pink hue when saturated, due to the presence of beta-carotene pigment caused by the alga "Dunaliella salina".
"Wangkangurru ("also known as "Arabana/Wangkangurru, Wangganguru, Wanggangurru, Wongkangurru)" is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken on Wangkangurru country. It is closely related to Arabana language of South Australia. The Wangkangurru language region was traditionally in the South Australian-Queensland border region taking in Birdsville and extending south towards Innamincka and Lake Eyre, including the local government areas of the Shire of Diamantina as well as the Outback Communities Authority of South Australia"."
Typically a flood occurs every three years, a flood every decade, and a fill or near fill a few times a century. The water in the lake soon evaporates, with a minor or medium flood drying by the end of the following summer. Most of the water entering the lakes arrives via Warburton River.
In strong La Niña years, the lake can fill. Since 1885, this has occurred in 1886–1887, 1889–1890, 1916–1917, 1950, 1955, 1974–1977, and 1999–2001, with the highest flood of in 1974. Local rain can also fill Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre to , as occurred in 1984 and 1989. Torrential rain in January 2007 took about six weeks to reach the lake but only placed a small amount of water into it.
When recently flooded, the lake is almost fresh, and native freshwater fish, including bony bream ("Nematolosa erebi"), the Lake Eyre Basin sub-species of golden perch ("Macquaria ambigua") and various small hardyhead species ("Craterocephalus" spp.) can survive in it.
The 2009 Lake Eyre flood peaked at deep in late May, which is a quarter of its maximum recorded depth of . of water crossed the Queensland–South Australian border with most of it coming from massive floods in the Georgina River. However, owing to the very low rainfall in the lower reaches of these rivers (contrasting with heavy rainfall in the upper catchments), the greater proportion soaked into the desert or evaporated en route to the lake, leaving less than in the lake, which covered an area of , or 12% of the total. As the flood did not start filling the lake's deepest point (Belt Bay) until late March, little bird life appeared, preferring instead to nest in the upper reaches of the Lake Eyre Basin, north of Birdsville, where large lakes appeared in January as a result of monsoonal rain.
The high rainfall in summer 2010 sent flood water into the Diamantina, Georgina and Cooper Creek catchments of the Lake Eyre basin, with the Cooper Creek reaching the lake for the first time since 1990. The higher rainfall prompted many different birds to migrate back to the area for breeding.
Heavy local rain in early March 2011 in the Stuart Creek and Warriner catchments filled Lake Eyre South, with Lake Eyre North about 75 per cent covered with water firstly from the Neales and Macumba Rivers, and later from the Warburton River.
In late 2015, water began flowing into Lake Eyre following heavy rain in the north-east of the state.
In late March 2019, floodwaters began arriving as a result of torrential rains in northern Queensland in January. In the past, the water had taken anywhere from three to 10 months to reach the lake, but this time it arrived in two. The first flooding would be closely followed by another surge, following rains produced by Cyclone Trevor. Traditional owners and graziers agree that it is essential that the river run its course and should not be harvested during floods, as any interference in the natural systems could damage the ecosystem.
The Lake Eyre Yacht Club is a dedicated group of sailors who sail on the lake's floods, including recent trips in 1997, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2009. A number of trailer sailers sailed on Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre in 1975, 1976, and 1984, when the flood depth reached . In July 2010 The Yacht Club held its first regatta since 1976 and its first on Lake Killamperpunna, a freshwater lake on Cooper Creek. The Cooper had reached Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre for the first time since 1990.
When the lake is full, a notable phenomenon is that around midday the surface can often become very flat. The surface then reflects the sky in a way that leaves both the horizon and water surface virtually impossible to see. The commodore of the Lake Eyre Yacht Club has stated that sailing during this time has the appearance of sailing in the sky.
Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre has been a site for various land speed record attempts on its salt flats, similar to those found in the Bonneville Salt Flats, especially those by Donald Campbell with the Bluebird-Proteus CN7.
Phytoplankton in the lake includes "Nodularia spumigena" and a number of species of "Dunaliella".
Birds such as pelicans and banded stilts are drawn to a filled lake from southern coastal regions of Australia, and from as far afield as Papua New Guinea. During the 1989–1990 flood, it was estimated that 200,000 pelicans, 80% of Australia's total population, came to feed & roost at Lake Eyre. Scientists are presently unable to determine how such birds appear able to detect the filling of the lake, even when hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from the basin.
The extent of the lake is covered by two protected areas declared by the Government of South Australia - the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park and the Elliot Price Conservation Park.
Lake Eyre is on the list of wetlands of national importance known as A Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia.
Lake Eyre has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) known as the Lake Eyre Important Bird Area, because, when flooded, it supports major breeding events of the Banded stilt and Australian pelican, as well as over 1% of the world populations of Red-necked avocets, Sharp-tailed sandpipers, Red-necked stints, Silver gulls and Caspian terns. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18374 |
Locksmithing
Locksmithing is the science and art of making and defeating locks.
Locksmithing is a traditional trade and in most countries requires completion of an apprenticeship. The level of formal education required varies from country to country, from a simple training certificate awarded by an employer, to a full diploma from an engineering college (such as in Australia) in addition to time spent working as an apprentice.
A lock is a mechanism that secures buildings, rooms, cabinets, objects, or other storage facilities. A "smith" of any type is one who shapes metal pieces, often using a forge or mould, into useful objects or to be part of a more complex structure. Locksmithing, as its name implies, is the assembly and designing of locks and their respective keys.
Locks have been constructed for over 2500 years, initially out of wood and later out of metal. Historically, locksmiths would make the entire lock, working for hours hand cutting screws and doing much file-work. Lock designs became significantly more complicated in the 18th century, and locksmiths often specialised in repairing or designing locks. After the rise of cheap mass production, the vast majority of locks are repaired by swapping of parts or like-for-like replacement or upgraded to modern mass-production items. Until more recently, safes and strongboxes were the exceptions to this, and to this day large vaults are custom designed and built at great cost, as the cost of this is lower than the very limited scope for mass production would allow, and the risk of a copy being obtained and defeated as practice is removed.
Although fitting of keys to replace lost keys to automobiles and homes and the changing of keys for homes and businesses to maintain security are still an important part of locksmithing, locksmiths today are primarily involved in the installation of higher quality lock-sets and the design, implementation and management of keying and key control systems. Most locksmiths also do electronic lock servicing, such as making keys for transponder-equipped vehicles and the implementation and application of access control systems protecting individuals and assets for many large institutions.
In terms of physical security, a locksmith's work frequently involves making a determination of the level of risk to an individual or institution and then recommending and implementing appropriate combinations of equipment and policies to create "security layers" which exceed the reasonable gain to an intruder or attacker. The more different security layers are implemented, the more the requirement for additional skills and knowledge and tools to defeat them all. But because each layer comes at an expense to the customer, the application of appropriate levels without exceeding reasonable costs to the customer is often very important and requires a skilled and knowledgeable locksmith to determine.
Locksmiths may be commercial (working out of a storefront), mobile (working out of a vehicle), institutional (employed by an institution) or investigatory (forensic locksmiths) or may specialise in one aspect of the skill, such as an automotive lock specialist, a master key system specialist or a safe technician. Many are also security consultants, but not every security consultant has the skills and knowledge of a locksmith. Locksmiths are frequently certified in specific skill areas or to a level of skill within the trade. This is separate from certificates of completion of training courses. In determining skill levels, certifications from manufacturers or locksmith associations are usually more valid criteria than certificates of completion. Some locksmiths decide to call themselves "Master Locksmiths" whether they are fully trained or not, and some training certificates appear quite authoritative.
In the UK, there is no current government regulation for locksmithing, so effectively anyone can trade and operate as a locksmith with no skill or knowledge of the industry.
In Ireland, licensing for locksmiths was introduced in 2016, with locksmiths having to obtain a PSA license.
The majority of locksmiths also work on any existing door hardware, not just locking mechanisms. This includes door closer's, door hinges, electric strikes, frame repairs and other door hardware.
The issue of full disclosure was first raised in the context of locksmithing, in a 19th-century controversy regarding whether weaknesses in lock systems should be kept secret in the locksmithing community, or revealed to the public.
According to A. C. Hobbs:
A commercial, and in some respects a social doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.
Rogues knew a good deal about lock-picking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have lately done. If a lock, let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever maker, is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is to the interest of honest persons to know this fact, because the dishonest are tolerably certain to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of the knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.
It cannot be too earnestly urged that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties. Some time ago, when the reading public was alarmed at being told how London milk is adulterated, timid persons deprecated the exposure, on the plea that it would give instructions in the art of adulterating milk; a vain fear, milkmen knew all about it before, whether they practised it or not; and the exposure only taught purchasers the necessity of a little scrutiny and caution, leaving them to obey this necessity or not, as they pleased. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18375 |
Loran-C
Loran-C was a "hyperbolic" radio navigation system that allowed a receiver to determine its position by listening to low frequency radio signals transmitted by fixed land-based radio beacons. Loran-C combined two different techniques to provide a signal that was both long-range and highly accurate, traits that had formerly been at odds. The disadvantage was the expense of the equipment needed to interpret the signals, which meant that Loran-C was used primarily by militaries after it was first introduced in 1957.
By the 1970s the cost, weight and size of electronics needed to implement Loran-C had been dramatically reduced due to the introduction of solid-state electronics, and especially the use of early microcontrollers to interpret the signal. Low-cost and easy-to-use Loran-C units became common from the late 1970s, especially in the early 1980s, leading to the earlier LORAN system being turned off in favour of installing more Loran-C stations around the world. Loran-C became one of the most common and widely used navigation systems for large areas of North America, Europe, Japan and the entire Atlantic and Pacific areas. The Soviet Union operated a nearly identical system, CHAYKA.
The introduction of civilian satellite navigation in the 1990s led to a very rapid drop-off in Loran-C use. Discussions about the future of Loran-C began in the 1990s, and several turn-off dates were announced and then cancelled. In 2010 the United States and Canadian systems were shut down, along with shared Loran-C/CHAYKA stations with Russia. Several other chains remained active, and some had been upgraded for continued use. At the end of 2015, navigation chains in most of Europe were turned off. In December 2015 in the United States, there was also renewed discussion of funding an eLoran system and NIST was offering to fund development of a microchip-sized eLoran receiver for distribution of timing signals.
Recent United States legislation, such as the National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2017 and other bills, has been introduced that may resurrect Loran.
The original LORAN was proposed by Alfred Lee Loomis at a meeting of the Microwave Committee. The United States Army Air Corps were interested in the concept for aircraft navigation, and after some discussion they returned a requirement for a system offering accuracy of about at a range of , and a maximum range as great as for high-flying aircraft. The Microwave Committee, by this time organized into what would become the MIT Radiation Laboratory, took up development as Project 3. During the initial meetings, a member of the UK liaison team, Taffy Bowen, mentioned that he was aware the British were also working on a similar concept, but had no information on its performance.
The development team, led by Loomis, made rapid progress on the transmitter design and tested several systems during 1940 before settling on a 3 MHz design. Extensive signal-strength measurements were made by mounting a conventional radio receiver in a station wagon and driving around the eastern states. However, the custom receiver design and its associated cathode-ray tube displays proved to be a bigger problem. In spite of several efforts to design around the problem, instability in the display prevented accurate measurements.
By this time the team had become much more familiar with the British Gee system, and were aware of their related work on "strobes", a time base generator that produced well-positioned "pips" on the display that could be used for accurate measurement. They met with the Gee team in 1941, and immediately adopted this solution. This meeting also revealed that Project 3 and Gee called for almost identical systems, with similar performance, range and accuracy, but Gee had already completed basic development and was entering into initial production, making Project 3 superfluous.
In response, the Project 3 team told the Army Air Force to adopt Gee, and realigned their own efforts to provide long-range navigation on the oceans. This led to United States Navy interest, and a series of experiments quickly demonstrated that systems using the basic Gee concept, but operating at a lower frequency around 2 MHz would offer reasonable accuracy on the order of a few miles over distances on the order of , at least at night when signals of this frequency range were able to skip off the ionosphere. Rapid development followed, and a system covering the western Atlantic was operational in 1943. Additional stations followed, first covering the European side of the Atlantic, and then a large expansion in the Pacific. By the end of the war, there were 72 operational LORAN stations and as many as 75,000 receivers.
In 1958 the operation of the LORAN system was handed over to the United States Coast Guard, which renamed the system "Loran-A", the lower-case name being introduced at that time.
There are two ways to implement the timing measurements needed for a hyperbolic navigation system, pulse timing systems like Gee and LORAN, and phase-timing systems like the Decca Navigator System.
The former requires sharp pulses of signal, and their accuracy is generally limited to how rapidly the pulses can be turned on and off, which is a function of the carrier frequency. There is an ambiguity in the signal; the same measurements can be valid at two locations relative to the broadcasters, but in normal operation, they are hundreds of kilometres apart, so one possibility can be eliminated.
The second system uses constant signals ("continuous wave") and takes measurements by comparing the phase of two signals. This system is easy to use even at very low frequencies. However, its signal is ambiguous over the distance of a wavelength, meaning there are hundreds of locations that will return the same signal. Decca referred to these ambiguous locations as "cells". This demands some other navigation method to be used in conjunction to pick which cell the receiver is within, and then using the phase measurements to place the receiver accurately within the cell.
Numerous efforts were made to provide some sort of secondary low-accuracy system that could be used with a phase-comparison system like Decca in order to resolve the ambiguity. Among the many methods were a directional broadcast systems known as POPI, and a variety of systems combining pulse-timing for low-accuracy navigation and then using phase-comparison for fine adjustment. Decca themselves had set aside one frequency, "9f", for testing this concept, but did not have the chance to do so until much later. Similar concepts were also used in the experimental Navarho system in the United States.
It was known from the start of the LORAN project that the same CRT displays that showed the LORAN pulses could, when suitably magnified, also show the individual waves of the intermediate frequency. This meant that pulse-matching could be used to get a rough fix, and then the operator could gain additional timing accuracy by lining up the individual waves within the pulse, like Decca. This could either be used to greatly increase the accuracy of LORAN, or alternately, offer similar accuracy using much lower carrier frequencies, and thus greatly extend range. This would require the transmitter stations to be synchronized both in time and phase, but much of this problem had been solved by Decca engineers.
The long-range option was of considerable interest to the Coast Guard, who set up an experimental system known as LF LORAN in 1945. This operated at much lower frequencies than the original LORAN, at 180 kHz, and required very long balloon-borne antennas. Testing was carried out throughout the year, including several long-distance flights as far as Brazil. The experimental system was then sent to Canada where it was used during Operation Muskox in the Arctic. Accuracy was found to be at , a significant advance over LORAN. With the ending of Muskox it was decided to keep the system running under what became known as "Operation Musk Calf", run by a group consisting of the United States Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Corps of Signals. The system ran until September 1947.
This led to another major test series, this time by the newly-formed United States Air Force, known as Operation Beetle. Beetle was located in the far north, on the Canada-Alaska border, and used new guy-stayed steel towers, replacing the earlier system's balloon-lofted cable antennas. The system became operational in 1948 and ran for two years until February 1950. Unfortunately, the stations proved poorly sited, as the radio transmission over the permafrost was much shorter than expected and synchronization of the signals between the stations using ground waves proved impossible. The tests also showed that the system was extremely difficult to use in practice; it was easy for the operator to select the wrong sections of the waveforms on their display, leading to significant real-world inaccuracy.
In 1946 the Rome Air Development Center sent out contracts for longer-ranged and more-accurate navigation systems that would be used for long-range bombing navigation. As the United States Army Air Forces were moving towards smaller crews, only three in the Boeing B-47 Stratojet for instance, a high degree of automation was desired. Two contracts were accepted; Sperry Gyroscope proposed the CYCLAN system (CYCLe matching LorAN) which was broadly similar to LF LORAN but with additional automation, and Sylvania proposed Whyn using continuous wave navigation like Decca, but with additional coding using frequency modulation. In spite of great efforts, Whyn could never be made to work, and was abandoned.
CYCLAN operated by sending the same LF LORAN-like signals on two frequencies, LF LORAN's 180 kHz and again on 200 kHz. The associated equipment would look for a rising amplitude that indicated the start of the signal pulse, and then use sampling gates to extract the carrier phase. Using two receivers solved the problem of mis-aligning the pulses, because the phases would only align properly between the two copies of the signal when the same pulses were being compared. None of this was trivial; using the era's tube-based electronics, the experimental CYCLAN system filled much of a semi-trailer.
CYCLAN proved highly successful, so much so that it became increasingly clear that the problems that led the engineers to use two frequencies were simply not as bad as expected. It appeared that a system using a single frequency would work just as well, given the right electronics. This was especially good news, as the 200 kHz frequency was interfering with existing broadcasts, and had to be moved to 160 kHz during testing.
Through this period the issue of radio spectrum use was becoming a major concern, and had led to international efforts to decide on a frequency band suitable for long-range navigation. This process eventually settled on the band from 90 to 100 kHz. CYCLAN appeared to suggest that accuracy at even lower frequencies was not a problem, and the only real concern was the expense of the equipment involved.
The success of the CYCLAN system led to a further contract with Sperry in 1952 for a new system with the twin goals of working in the 100 kHz range while being equally accurate, less complex and less expensive. These goals would normally be contradictory, but the CYCLAN system gave all involved the confidence that these could be met. The resulting system was known as Cytac.
To solve the complexity problem, a new circuit was developed to properly time the sampling of the signal. This consisted of a circuit to extract the envelope of the pulse, another to extract the derivative of the envelope, and finally another that subtracted the derivative from the envelope. The result of this final operation would become negative during a very specific and stable part of the rising edge of the pulse, and this zero-crossing was used to trigger a very short-time sampling gate. This system replaced the complex system of clocks used in CYCLAN. By simply measuring the time between the zero-crossings of the master and slave, pulse-timing was extracted.
The output of the envelope sampler was also sent to a phase-shifter that adjusted the output of a local clock that locked to the master carrier using a phase-locked loop. This retained the phase of the master signal long enough for the slave signal to arrive. Gating on the slave signal was then compared to this master signal in a phase detector, and a varying voltage was produced depending on the difference in phase. This voltage represented the fine-positioning measurement.
The system was generally successful during testing through 1953, but there were concerns raised about the signal power at long ranges, and the possibility of jamming. This led to further modifications of the basic signal. The first was to broadcast a series of pulses instead of just one, broadcasting more energy during a given time and improving the ability of the receivers to tune in a useful signal. They also added a fixed 45° phase shift to every pulse, so simple continuous-wave jamming signals could be identified and rejected.
The Cytac system underwent an enormous series of tests across the United States and offshore. Given the potential accuracy of the system, even minor changes to the groundwave synchronization were found to cause errors that could be eliminated — issues such as the number of rivers the signal crossed caused predictable delays that could be measured and then factored into navigation solutions. This led to a series of "correction contours" that could be added to the received signal to adjust for these concerns, and these were printed on the Cytac charts. Using prominent features on dams as target points, a series of tests demonstrated that the uncorrected signals provided accuracy on the order of 100 yards, while adding the correction contour adjustments reduced this to the order of ten yards.
It was at this moment that the United States Air Force, having taken over these efforts while moving from the United States Army Air Forces, dropped their interest in the project. Although the reasons are not well recorded, it appears the idea of a fully automated bombing system using radio aids was no longer considered possible. The AAF had been involved in missions covering about 1000 km (the distance from London to Berlin) and the Cytac system would work well at these ranges, but as the mission changed to trans-polar missions of 5,000 km or more, even Cytac did not offer the range and accuracy needed. They turned their attention to the use of inertial platforms and Doppler radar systems, cancelling work on Cytac as, well as a competing system known as Navarho.
Around this period the United States Navy began work on a similar system using combined pulse and phase comparison, but based on the existing LORAN frequency of 200 kHz. By this time the United States Navy had handed operational control of the LORAN system to the Coast Guard, and it was assumed the same arrangement would be true for any new system as well. Thus, the United States Coast Guard was given the choice of naming the systems, and decided to rename the existing system Loran-A, and the new system Loran-B.
With Cytac fully developed and its test system on the east coast of the United States mothballed, the United States Navy also decided to re-commission Cytac for tests in the long-range role. An extensive series of tests across the Atlantic were carried out by the USCGC "Androscoggin" (WHEC-68) starting in April 1956. Meanwhile, Loran-B proved to have serious problems keeping their transmitters in phase, and that work was abandoned. Minor changes were made to the Cytac systems to further simplify it, including a reduction in the pulse-chain spacing from 1200 to 1000 µs, the pulse rate changed to 20 pps to match the existing Loran-A system, and the phase-shifting between pulses to an alternating 0, 180-degree shift instead of 45 degrees at every pulse within the chain.
The result was Loran-C. Testing of the new system was intensive, and over water flights around Bermuda demonstrated that 50% of fixes lay within a circle. This was a dramatic improvement over the original Loran-A, meeting the accuracy of the Gee system, but at much greater range. The first chain were set up using the original experimental Cytac system, along with a second in the Mediterranean in 1957. Further chains covering the North Atlantic and large areas of the Pacific followed. At the time global charts were printed with shaded sections representing the area where a accurate fix could be obtained under most operational conditions. Loran-C operated in the 90 kHz to 110 kHz frequency range.
Loran-C had originally been designed to be highly automated, allowing the system to be operated more rapidly than the original LORAN's multi-minute measurement. It was also operated in "chains" of linked stations, allowing a fix to be made by simultaneously comparing two slaves to a single master. The downside of this approach was that the required electronic equipment, built using 1950s-era tube technology, was very large. Looking for companies with knowledge of seaborne, multi-channel phase-comparison electronics led, ironically, to Decca, who built the AN/SPN-31, the first widely used Loran-C receiver. The AN/SPN-31 weighed over and had 52 controls.
Airborne units followed, and an adapted AN/SPN-31 was tested in an Avro Vulcan in 1963. By the mid-1960s, units with some transistorization were becoming more common, and a chain was set up in Vietnam to support the United States' war efforts there. A number of commercial airline operators experimented with the system as well, using it for navigation on the great circle route between North America and Europe. However, inertial platforms ultimately became more common in this role.
In 1969, Decca sued the United States Navy for patent infringement, producing ample documentation of their work on the basic concept as early as 1944, along with the "missing" 9f frequency at 98 kHz that had been set aside for experiments using this system. Decca won the initial suit, but the judgement was overturned on appeal when the Navy claimed "wartime expediency".
When Loran-C became widespread, the United States Air Force once again became interested in using it as a guidance system. They proposed a new system layered on top of Loran-C, using it as the coarse guidance signal in much the same way that pulses were the coarse guidance and phase-comparison used for fine. To provide an extra-fine guidance signal, Loran-D interleaved another train of eight pulses immediately after the signals from one of the existing Loran-C stations, folding the two signals together. This technique became known as "Supernumary Interpulse Modulation" (SIM). These were broadcast from low-power portable transmitters, offering relatively short-range service of high accuracy.
Loran-D was used only experimentally during war-games in the 1960s from a transmitter set in the UK. The system was also used in a limited fashion during the Vietnam War, combined with the Pave Spot laser designator system, a combination known as Pave Nail. Using mobile transmitters, the AN/ARN-92 LORAN navigation receiver could achieve accuracy on the order of , which the Spot system improved to about . The SIM concept became a system for sending additional data.
At about the same time, Motorola proposed a new system using pseudo-random pulse-chains. This mechanism ensures that no two chains within a given period (on the order of many seconds) will have the same pattern, making it easy to determine if the signal is a groundwave from a recent transmission or a multi-hop signal from a previous one. The system, Multi-User Tactical Navigation Systems (MUTNS) was used briefly but it was found that Loran-D met the same requirements but had the added advantage of being a standard Loran-C signal as well. Although MUTNS was unrelated to the Loran systems, it was sometimes referred to as Loran-F.
In spite of its many advantages, the high cost of implementing a Loran-C receiver made it uneconomical for many users. Additionally, as military users upgraded from Loran-A to Loran-C, large numbers of surplus Loran-A receivers were dumped on the market. This made Loran-A popular in spite of being less accurate and fairly difficult to operate. By the early 1970s the introduction of integrated circuits combining a complete radio receiver began to greatly reduce the complexity of Loran-A measurements, and fully automated units the size of a stereo receiver became common. For those users requiring higher accuracy, Decca had considerable success with their Decca Navigator system, and produced units that combined both receivers, using Loran to eliminate the ambiguities in Decca.
The same rapid development of microelectronics that made Loran-A so easy to operate worked equally well on the Loran-C signals, and the obvious desire to have a long-range system that could also provide enough accuracy for lake and harbour navigation led to the "opening" of the Loran-C system to public use in 1974. Civilian receivers quickly followed, and dual-system A/C receivers were also common for a time. The switch from A to C was extremely rapid, due largely to rapidly falling prices which led to many users' first receiver being Loran-C. By the late 1970s the Coast Guard decided to turn off Loran-A, in favour of adding additional Loran-C stations to cover gaps is its coverage. The original Loran-A network was shut down in 1979 and 1980, with a few units used in the Pacific for some time. Given the widespread availability of Loran-A charts, many Loran-C receivers included a system for converting coordinates between A and C units.
One of the reasons for Loran-C's opening to the public was the move from Loran to new forms of navigation, including inertial navigation systems, Transit and OMEGA, meant that the security of Loran was no longer as stringent as it was as a primary form of navigation. As these newer systems gave way to GPS through the 1980s and 90s, this process repeated itself, but this time the military was able to separate GPS's signals in such a way that it could provide both secure military and insecure civilian signals at the same time. GPS was more difficult to receive and decode, but by the 1990s the required electronics were already as small and inexpensive as Loran-C, leading to rapid adoption that has become largely universal.
Although Loran-C was largely redundant by 2000, it has not universally disappeared due to a number of concerns. One is that the GPS system can be jammed through a variety of means; although the same is true of Loran-C, the transmitters are close-at-hand and can be adjusted if need be. More importantly, there are effects that might cause the GPS system to become unusable over wide areas, notably space weather events and potential EMP events. Loran, located entirely under the atmosphere, offers more resilience to these sorts of issues. There has been considerable debate about the relative merits of keeping the Loran-C system operational as a result of considerations like these.
In November 2009, the United States Coast Guard announced that Loran-C was not needed by the U.S. for maritime navigation. This decision left the fate of LORAN and eLORAN in the United States to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Per a subsequent announcement, the U.S. Coast Guard, in accordance with the DHS Appropriations Act, terminated the transmission of all U.S. LORAN-C signals on 8 February 2010. On 1 August 2010 the U.S. transmission of the Russian American signal was terminated, and on 3 August 2010 all Canadian signals were shut down by the USCG and the CCG.
The European Union had decided that the potential security advantages of Loran are worthy not only of keeping the system operational, but upgrading it and adding new stations. This is part of the wider Eurofix system which combines GPS, Galileo and nine Loran stations into a single integrated system.
However, in 2014, Norway and France both announced that all of their remaining transmitters, which make up a significant part of the Eurofix system, would be shut down on 31 December 2015. The two remaining transmitters in Europe (Anthorn, UK and Sylt, Germany) would no longer be able to sustain a positioning and navigation Loran service, with the result that the UK announced its trial eLoran service would be discontinued from the same date.
In conventional navigation, measuring one's location, or "taking a fix", is accomplished by taking two measurements against well known locations. In optical systems this is typically accomplished by measuring the angle to two landmarks, and then drawing lines on a nautical chart at those angles, producing an intersection that reveals the ship's location. Radio methods can also use the same concept with the aid of a radio direction finder, but due to the nature of radio propagation, such instruments are subject to significant errors, especially at night. More accurate radio navigation can be made using pulse timing or phase comparison techniques, which rely on the time-of-flight of the signals. In comparison to angle measurements, these remain fairly steady over time, and most of the effects that change these values are fixed objects like rivers and lakes that can be accounted for on charts.
Timing systems can reveal the absolute distance to an object, as is the case in radar. The problem in the navigational case is that the receiver has to know when the original signal was sent. In theory, one could synchronize an accurate clock to the signal before leaving port, and then use that to compare the timing of the signal during the voyage. However, in the 1940s no suitable system was available that could hold an accurate signal over the time span of an operational mission.
Instead, radio navigation systems adopted the "multilateration" concept. which is based on the difference in times (or phase) instead of the absolute time. The basic idea is that it is relatively easy to synchronize two ground stations, using a signal shared over a phone line for instance, so one can be sure that the signals received were sent at exactly the same time. They will not be received at exactly the same time, however, as the receiver will receive the signal from the closer station first. Timing the difference between two signals can be easily accomplished, first by physically measuring them on a cathode-ray tube, or simple electronics in the case of phase comparison.
The difference in signal timing does not reveal the location by itself. Instead, it determines a series of locations where that timing is possible. For instance, if the two stations are 300 km apart and the receiver measures no difference in the two signals, that implies that the receiver is somewhere along a line equidistant between the two. If the signal from one is received exactly 100 µs, then the receiver is closer to one station than the other. Plotting all the locations where one station is 30 km closer than the other produces a curved line. Taking a fix is accomplished by making two such measurements with different pairs of stations, and then looking up both curves on a navigational chart. The curves are known as "lines of position" or LOP.
In practice, radio navigation systems normally use a "chain" of three or four stations, all synchronized to a "master" signal that is broadcast from one of the stations. The others, the "secondaries", are positioned so their LOPs cross at acute angles, which increases the accuracy of the fix. So for instance, a given chain might have four stations with the master in the center, allowing a receiver to pick the signals from two secondaries that are currently as close to right angles as possible given their current location. Modern systems, which know the locations of all the broadcasters, can automate which stations to pick.
In the case of LORAN, one station remains constant in each application of the principle, the "primary", being paired up separately with two other "secondary" stations. Given two secondary stations, the time difference (TD) between the primary and first secondary identifies one curve, and the time difference between the primary and second secondary identifies another curve, the intersections of which will determine a geographic point in relation to the position of the three stations. These curves are referred to as "TD lines".
In practice, LORAN is implemented in integrated regional arrays, or "chains", consisting of one "primary" station and at least two (but often more) "secondary" stations, with a uniform "group repetition interval" (GRI) defined in microseconds. The amount of time before transmitting the next set of pulses is defined by the distance between the start of transmission of primary to the next start of transmission of primary signal.
The secondary stations receive this pulse signal from the primary, then wait a preset number of milliseconds, known as the "secondary coding delay", to transmit a response signal. In a given chain, each secondary's coding delay is different, allowing for separate identification of each secondary's signal. (In practice, however, modern LORAN receivers do not rely on this for secondary identification.)
Every LORAN chain in the world uses a unique Group Repetition Interval, the number of which, when multiplied by ten, gives how many microseconds pass between pulses from a given station in the chain. In practice, the delays in many, but not all, chains are multiples of 100 microseconds. LORAN chains are often referred to by this designation, "e.g.", GRI 9960, the designation for the LORAN chain serving the Northeastern United States.
Due to the nature of hyperbolic curves, a particular combination of a primary and two secondary stations can possibly result in a "grid" where the grid lines intersect at shallow angles. For ideal positional accuracy, it is desirable to operate on a navigational grid where the grid lines are closer to right angles (orthogonal) to each other. As the receiver travels through a chain, a certain selection of secondaries whose TD lines initially formed a near-orthogonal grid can become a grid that is significantly skewed. As a result, the selection of one or both secondaries should be changed so that the TD lines of the new combination are closer to right angles. To allow this, nearly all chains provide at least three, and as many as five, secondaries.
Where available, common marine nautical charts include visible representations of TD lines at regular intervals over water areas. The TD lines representing a given primary-secondary pairing are printed with distinct colors, and note the specific time difference indicated by each line. On a nautical chart, the denotation for each Line of Position from a receiver, relative to axis and color, can be found at the bottom of the chart. The color on official charts for stations and the timed-lines of position follow no specific conformance for the purpose of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). However, local chart producers may color these in a specific conformance to their standard. Always consult the chart notes, administrations Chart1 reference, and information given on the chart for the most accurate information regarding surveys, datum, and reliability.
There are three major factors when considering signal delay and propagation in relation to LORAN-C:
The chart notes should indicate whether ASF corrections have been made (Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) charts, for example, include them). Otherwise, the appropriate correction factors must be obtained before use.
Due to interference and propagation issues suffered from land features and artificial structures such as tall buildings, the accuracy of the LORAN signal can be degraded considerably in inland areas (see Limitations). As a result, nautical charts will not show TD lines in those areas, to prevent reliance on LORAN-C for navigation.
Traditional LORAN receivers display the time difference between each pairing of the primary and one of the two selected secondary stations, which is then used to find the appropriate TD line on the chart. Modern LORAN receivers display latitude and longitude coordinates instead of time differences, and, with the advent of time difference comparison and electronics, provide improved accuracy and better position fixing, allowing the observer to plot their position on a nautical chart more easily. When using such coordinates, the datum used by the receiver (usually WGS84) must match that of the chart, or manual conversion calculations must be performed before the coordinates can be used.
Each LORAN station is equipped with a suite of specialized equipment to generate the precisely timed signals used to modulate / drive the transmitting equipment. Up to three commercial cesium atomic clocks are used to generate 5 MHz and pulse per second (or 1 Hz) signals that are used by timing equipment to generate the various GRI-dependent drive signals for the transmitting equipment.
While each U.S.-operated LORAN station is supposed to be synchronized to within 100 ns of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the actual accuracy achieved as of 1994 was within 500 ns.
LORAN-C transmitters operate at peak powers of 100–4,000 kilowatts, comparable to longwave broadcasting stations. Most use 190–220 metre tall mast radiators, insulated from ground. The masts are inductively lengthened and fed by a loading coil (see: electrical length). A well known-example of a station using such an antenna is Rantum. Free-standing tower radiators in this height range are also used. Carolina Beach uses a free-standing antenna tower. Some LORAN-C transmitters with output powers of 1,000 kW and higher used extremely tall mast radiators (see below). Other high power LORAN-C stations, like George, used four T-antennas mounted on four guyed masts arranged in a square.
All LORAN-C antennas are designed to radiate an omnidirectional pattern. Unlike longwave broadcasting stations, LORAN-C stations cannot use backup antennas because the exact position of the antenna is a part of the navigation calculation. The slightly different physical location of a backup antenna would produce Lines of Position different from those of the primary antenna.
LORAN suffers from electronic effects of weather and the ionospheric effects of sunrise and sunset. The most accurate signal is the groundwave that follows the Earth's surface, ideally over seawater. At night the indirect skywave, bent back to the surface by the ionosphere, is a problem as multiple signals may arrive via different paths (multipath interference). The ionosphere's reaction to sunrise and sunset accounts for the particular disturbance during those periods. Geomagnetic storms have serious effects, as with any radio based system.
LORAN uses ground-based transmitters that only cover certain regions. Coverage is quite good in North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim.
The absolute accuracy of LORAN-C varies from . Repeatable accuracy is much greater, typically from .
LORAN Data Channel (LDC) is a project underway between the FAA and United States Coast Guard to send low bit rate data using the LORAN system. Messages to be sent include station identification, absolute time, and position correction messages. In 2001, data similar to Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) GPS correction messages were sent as part of a test of the Alaskan LORAN chain. As of November 2005, test messages using LDC were being broadcast from several U.S. LORAN stations.
In recent years, LORAN-C has been used in Europe to send differential GPS and other messages, employing a similar method of transmission known as EUROFIX.
A system called SPS (Saudi Positioning System), similar to EUROFIX, is in use in Saudi Arabia. GPS differential corrections and GPS integrity information are added to the LORAN signal. A combined GPS/LORAN receiver is used, and if a GPS fix is not available it automatically switches over to LORAN.
As LORAN systems are maintained and operated by governments, their continued existence is subject to public policy. With the evolution of other electronic navigation systems, such as satellite navigation systems, funding for existing systems is not always assured.
Critics, who have called for the elimination of the system, state that the LORAN system has too few users, lacks cost-effectiveness, and that GNSS signals are superior to LORAN. Supporters of continued and improved LORAN operation note that LORAN uses a strong signal, which is difficult to jam, and that LORAN is an independent, dissimilar, and complementary system to other forms of electronic navigation, which helps ensure availability of navigation signals.
On 26 February 2009, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget released the first blueprint for the Fiscal Year 2010 budget. This document identified the LORAN-C system as "outdated" and supported its termination at an estimated savings of $36 million in 2010 and $190 million over five years.
On 21 April 2009 the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released inputs to the FY 2010 Concurrent Budget Resolution with backing for the continued support for the LORAN system, acknowledging the investment already made in infrastructure upgrades and recognizing the studies performed and multi-departmental conclusion that eLORAN is the best backup to GPS.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, wrote that the committee recognized the priority in "Maintaining LORAN-C while transitioning to eLORAN" as means of enhancing the national security, marine safety and environmental protection missions of the Coast Guard.
Senator Collins, the ranking member on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs wrote that the President's budget overview proposal to terminate the LORAN-C system is inconsistent with the recent investments, recognized studies and the mission of the U.S. Coast Guard. The committee also recognizes the $160 million investment already made toward upgrading the LORAN-C system to support the full deployment of eLORAN.
Further, the Committees also recognize the many studies which evaluated GPS backup systems and concluded both the need to back up GPS and identified eLORAN as the best and most viable backup. "This proposal is inconsistent with the recently released (January 2009) Federal Radionavigation Plan (FRP), which was jointly prepared by DHS and the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Transportation (DOT). The FRP proposed the eLORAN program to serve as a Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) backup to GPS (Global Positioning System)."
On 7 May 2009, President Barack Obama proposed cutting funding (approx. $35 million/year) for LORAN, citing its redundancy alongside GPS. In regard to the pending Congressional bill, H.R. 2892, it was subsequently announced that "[t]he Administration supports the Committee's aim to achieve an orderly termination through a phased decommissioning beginning in January 2010, and the requirement that certifications be provided to document that the LORAN-C termination will not impair maritime safety or the development of possible GPS backup capabilities or needs."
Also on 7 May 2009, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, released a report citing the very real potential for the GPS system to degrade or fail in light of program delays which have resulted in scheduled GPS satellite launches slipping by up to three years.
On 12 May 2009 the March 2007 Independent Assessment Team (IAT) report on LORAN was released to the public. In its report the ITA stated that it "unanimously recommends that the U.S. government complete the eLORAN upgrade and commit to eLORAN as the national backup to GPS for 20 years." The release of the report followed an extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle waged by industry representatives against the federal government. Originally completed 20 March 2007 and presented to the co-sponsoring Department of Transportation and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Executive Committees, the report carefully considered existing navigation systems, including GPS. The unanimous recommendation for keeping the LORAN system and upgrading to eLORAN was based on the team's conclusion that LORAN is operational, deployed and sufficiently accurate to supplement GPS. The team also concluded that the cost to decommission the LORAN system would exceed the cost of deploying eLORAN, thus negating any stated savings as offered by the Obama administration and revealing the vulnerability of the U.S. to GPS disruption.
In November 2009, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that the LORAN-C stations under its control would be closed down for budgetary reasons after 4 January 2010 provided the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security certified that LORAN is not needed as a backup for GPS.
On 7 January 2010, Homeland Security published a notice of the permanent discontinuation of LORAN-C operation. Effective 2000 UTC 8 February 2010, the United States Coast Guard terminated all operation and broadcast of LORAN-C signals in the United States. The United States Coast Guard transmission of the Russian American CHAYKA signal was terminated on 1 August 2010. The transmission of Canadian LORAN-C signals was terminated on 3 August 2010.
With the potential vulnerability of GNSS systems, and their own propagation and reception limitations, renewed interest in LORAN applications and development has appeared. Enhanced LORAN, also known as eLORAN or E-LORAN, comprises an advancement in receiver design and transmission characteristics which increase the accuracy and usefulness of traditional LORAN. With reported accuracy as good as ± 8 meters, the system becomes competitive with unenhanced GPS. eLORAN also includes additional pulses which can transmit auxiliary data such as Differential GPS (DGPS) corrections, as well ensure data integrity against spoofing.
eLORAN receivers now use "all in view" reception, incorporating signals from all stations in range, not solely those from a single GRI, incorporating time signals and other data from up to forty stations. These enhancements in LORAN make it adequate as a substitute for scenarios where GPS is unavailable or degraded.
In recent years the United States Coast Guard has reported several episodes of GPS interference in the Black Sea. South Korea has claimed that North Korea has jammed GPS near the border, interfering with airplanes and ships. By 2018, the United States will build a new eLoran system as a complement to and backup for the GPS system. And the South Korean government has already pushed plans to have three eLoran beacons active by 2019, which is enough to provide accurate corrections for all shipments in the region if North Korea (or anyone else) tries to block GPS again.
On 31 May 2007, the UK Department for Transport (DfT), via the General Lighthouse Authorities (GLA), awarded a 15-year contract to provide a state-of-the-art enhanced LORAN (eLORAN) service to improve the safety of mariners in the UK and Western Europe. The service contract was to operate in two phases, with development work and further focus for European agreement on eLORAN service provision from 2007 through 2010, and full operation of the eLORAN service from 2010 through 2022. The first eLORAN transmitter was situated at Anthorn Radio Station Cumbria, UK, and was operated by Babcock International (previously Babcock Communications).
eLORAN: The UK government granted approval for seven differential eLoran ship-positioning technology stations to be built along the south and east coasts of the UK to help counter the threat of jamming of global positioning systems. They were set to reach initial operational capability by summer 2014. The General Lighthouse Authorities (GLAs) of the UK and Ireland announced 31 October 2014 the initial operational capability of UK maritime eLoran. Seven differential reference stations provided additional position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information via low-frequency pulses to ships fitted with eLoran receivers. The service was to help ensure they could navigate safely in the event of GPS failure in one of the busiest shipping regions in the world, with expected annual traffic of 200,000 vessels by 2020.
Despite these plans, in light of the decision by France and Norway to cease Loran transmissions on 31 December 2015, the UK announced at the start of that month that its eLoran service would be discontinued on the same day.
A list of LORAN-C transmitters. Stations with an antenna tower taller than 300 metres (984 feet) are shown in bold. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18376 |
Linear timecode
Linear (or Longitudinal) Timecode (LTC) is an encoding of SMPTE timecode data in an audio signal, as defined in SMPTE 12M specification. The audio signal is commonly recorded on a VTR track or other storage media. The bits are encoded using the biphase mark code (also known as "FM"): a 0 bit has a single transition at the start of the bit period. A 1 bit has two transitions, at the beginning and middle of the period. This encoding is self-clocking. Each frame is terminated by a 'sync word' which has a special predefined sync relationship with any video or film content.
A special bit in the linear timecode frame, the "biphase mark correction" bit, ensures that there are an even number of AC transitions in each timecode frame.
The sound of linear timecode is a jarring and distinctive noise and has been used as a sound-effects shorthand to imply "telemetry" or "computers".
In broadcast video situations, the LTC generator should be tied into house black burst, as should all devices using timecode, to ensure correct color framing and correct synchronization of all digital clocks. When synchronizing multiple clock-dependent digital devices together with video, such as digital audio recorders, the devices must be connected to a common word clock signal that is derived from the house black burst signal. This can be accomplished by using a generator that generates both black burst and video-resolved word clock, or by synchronizing the master digital device to video, and synchronizing all subsequent devices to the word clock output of the master digital device (and to LTC).
Made up of 80 bits per frame, where there may be 24, 25 or 30 frames per second, LTC timecode varies from 960 Hz (binary zeros at 24 frames/s) to 2400 Hz (binary ones at 30 frames/s), and thus is comfortably in the audio frequency range. LTC can exist as either a balanced or unbalanced signal, and can be treated as an audio signal in regards to distribution. Like audio, LTC can be distributed by standard audio wiring, connectors, distribution amplifiers, and patchbays, and can be ground-isolated with audio transformers. It can also be distributed via 75 ohm video cable and video distribution amplifiers, although the voltage attenuation caused by using a 75 ohm system may cause the signal to drop to a level that can not be read by some equipment.
Care has to be taken with analog audio to avoid audible 'breakthrough' (aka "crosstalk") from the LTC track to the audio tracks.
LTC care:
Longitudinal SMPTE timecode should be played back at a middle-level when recorded on an audio track, as both low and high levels will introduce distortion.
The basic format is an 80-bit code that gives the time of day to the second, and the frame number within the second. Values are stored in binary-coded decimal, least significant bit first.
There are thirty-two bits of user data, usually used for a reel number and date. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18379 |
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919), was a British scientist who made extensive contributions to both theoretical and experimental physics. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Among many honors, he received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies." He served as President of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908 and as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1908 to 1919.
Rayleigh provided the first theoretical treatment of the elastic scattering of light by particles much smaller than the light's wavelength, a phenomenon now known as "Rayleigh scattering", which notably explains why the sky is blue. He studied and described transverse surface waves in solids, now known as "Rayleigh waves". He contributed extensively to fluid dynamics, with concepts such as the Rayleigh number (a dimensionless number associated with natural convection), Rayleigh flow, the Rayleigh–Taylor instability, and Rayleigh's criterion for the stability of Taylor–Couette flow. He also formulated the circulation theory of aerodynamic lift. In optics, Rayleigh proposed a well known criterion for angular resolution. His derivation of the Rayleigh–Jeans law for classical black-body radiation later played an important role in birth of quantum mechanics (see Ultraviolet catastrophe). Rayleigh's textbook "The Theory of Sound" (1877) is still used today by acousticians and engineers.
Strutt was born on 12 November 1842 at Langford Grove in Maldon, Essex. In his early years he suffered from frailty and poor health. He attended Eton College and Harrow School (each for only a short period), before going on to the University of Cambridge in 1861 where he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree (Senior Wrangler and 1st Smith's Prize) in 1865, and a Master of Arts in 1868. He was subsequently elected to a Fellowship of Trinity. He held the post until his marriage to Evelyn Balfour, daughter of James Maitland Balfour, in 1871. He had three sons with her. In 1873, on the death of his father, John Strutt, 2nd Baron Rayleigh, he inherited the Barony of Rayleigh.
He was the second Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge (following James Clerk Maxwell), from 1879 to 1884. He first described dynamic soaring by seabirds in 1883, in the British journal "Nature". From 1887 to 1905 he was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution.
Around the year 1900 Rayleigh developed the "duplex" (combination of two) theory of human sound localisation using two binaural cues, interaural phase difference (IPD) and interaural level difference (ILD) (based on analysis of a spherical head with no external pinnae). The theory posits that we use two primary cues for sound lateralisation, using the difference in the phases of sinusoidal components of the sound and the difference in amplitude (level) between the two ears.
During the First World War, he was president of the government's "Advisory Committee for Aeronautics", which was located at the National Physical Laboratory, and chaired by Richard Glazebrook.
In 1919, Rayleigh served as President of the Society for Psychical Research. As an advocate that simplicity and theory be part of the scientific method, Rayleigh argued for the principle of similitude.
Rayleigh was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 12 June 1873, and served as president of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908. From time to time Rayleigh participated in the House of Lords; however, he spoke up only if politics attempted to become involved in science.
He died on 30 June 1919, at his home in Witham, Essex. He was succeeded, as the 4th Lord Rayleigh, by his son Robert John Strutt, another well-known physicist. Lord Rayleigh was buried in the graveyard of All Saints' Church in Terling in Essex.
Rayleigh was an Anglican. Though he did not write about the relationship of science and religion, he retained a personal interest in spiritual matters. When his scientific papers were to be published in a collection by the Cambridge University Press, Strutt wanted to include a religious quotation from the Bible, but he was discouraged from doing so, as he later reported:
Still, he had his wish and the quotation was printed in the five-volume collection of scientific papers. In a letter to a family member, he wrote about his rejection of materialism and spoke of Jesus Christ as a moral teacher:
He held an interest in parapsychology and was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). He was not convinced of spiritualism but remained open to the possibility of supernatural phenomena. Rayleigh was the president of the SPR in 1919. He gave a presidential address in the year of his death but did not come to any definite conclusions.
The lunar crater "Rayleigh" as well as the Martian crater "Rayleigh" were named in his honour. The asteroid 22740 Rayleigh was named after him on 1 June 2007. A type of surface waves are known as Rayleigh waves. The rayl, a unit of specific acoustic impedance, is also named for him. Rayleigh was also awarded with (in chronological order):
Lord Rayleigh was among the original recipients of the Order of Merit (OM) in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902, and received the order from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 8 August 1902.
He received the degree of "Doctor mathematicae (honoris causa)" from the Royal Frederick University on 6 September 1902, when they celebrated the centennial of the birth of mathematician Niels Henrik Abel.
Sir William Ramsay, his co-worker in the investigation to discover Argon described Rayleigh as "the greatest man alive" while speaking to Lady Ramsay during his last illness.
H. M. Hyndman said of Rayleigh that "no man ever showed less consciousness of great genius". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18381 |
Lunisolar calendar
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures whose date indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year. If the solar year is defined as a tropical year, then a lunisolar calendar will give an indication of the season; if it is taken as a sidereal year, then the calendar will predict the constellation near which the full moon may occur. As with all calendars which divide the year into months there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months. In this case ordinary years consist of twelve months but every second or third year is an embolismic year, which adds a thirteenth intercalary, embolismic, or leap month.
Their months are based on the regular cycle of the Moon's phases. So lunisolar calendars are lunar calendars with – in contrast to them – additional intercalation rules being used to bring them into a rough agreement with the solar year and thus with the seasons.
The main other type of calendar is a solar calendar.
The Hebrew, Jain, Buddhist, Hindu and Kurdish as well as the traditional Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Mongolian and Korean calendars (in the east Asian cultural sphere), plus the ancient Hellenic, Coligny, and Babylonian calendars are all lunisolar. Also, some of the ancient pre-Islamic calendars in south Arabia followed a lunisolar system. The Chinese, Coligny and
Hebrew lunisolar calendars track more or less the tropical year whereas the Buddhist and Hindu lunisolar calendars track the sidereal year. Therefore, the first three give an idea of the seasons whereas the last two give an idea of the position among the constellations of the full moon. The Tibetan calendar was influenced by both the Chinese and Buddhist calendars. The Germanic peoples also used a lunisolar calendar before their conversion to Christianity.
The Islamic calendar is lunar, but not a lunisolar calendar because its date is not related to the Sun. The civil versions of the Julian and Gregorian calendars are solar, because their dates do not indicate the Moon phase – however, both the Gregorian and Julian calendars include undated lunar calendars that allow them to calculate the Christian celebration of Easter, so both are lunisolar calendars in that respect.
A rough idea of the frequency of the intercalary or leap month in all lunisolar calendars can be obtained by the following calculation, using approximate lengths of months and years in days:
Intercalation of leap months is frequently controlled by the "epact", which is the difference between the lunar and solar years (approximately 11 days). The Metonic cycle, used in the Hebrew calendar and the Julian and Gregorian ecclesiastical calendars, adds seven months during every nineteen-year period. The classic Metonic cycle can be reproduced by assigning an initial epact value of 1 to the last year of the cycle and incrementing by 11 each year. Between the last year of one cycle and the first year of the next the increment is 12. This adjustment, the "saltus lunae", causes the epacts to repeat every 19 years. When the epact goes above 29 an intercalary month is added and 30 is subtracted. The intercalary years are numbers 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19. Both the Hebrew calendar and the Julian calendar use this sequence.
The Buddhist and Hebrew calendars restrict the leap month to a single month of the year; the number of common months between leap months is, therefore, usually 36, but occasionally only 24 months. Because the Chinese and Hindu lunisolar calendars allow the leap month to occur after or before (respectively) any month but use the true motion of the Sun, their leap months do not usually occur within a couple of months of perihelion, when the apparent speed of the Sun along the ecliptic is fastest (now about 3 January). This increases the usual number of common months between leap months to roughly 34 months when a doublet of common years occurs, while reducing the number to about 29 months when only a common singleton occurs.
An alternative way of dealing with the fact that a solar year does not contain an integer number of months is by including uncounted time in the year that does not belong to any month. Some Coast Salish peoples used a calendar of this kind. For instance, the Chehalis began their count of lunar months from the arrival of spawning chinook salmon (in Gregorian calendar October), and counted 10 months, leaving an uncounted period until the next chinook salmon run.
The Gregorian calendar has a lunisolar calendar, which is used to determine the date of Easter. The rules are in the Computus.
The following is a list of lunisolar calendars: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18382 |
Leonids
The Leonids ( ) are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel–Tuttle, which are also known for their spectacular meteor storms that occur about every 33 years. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. Their proper Greek name should be Leon"t"ids (Λεοντίδαι, "Leontídai"), but the word was initially constructed as a Greek/Latin hybrid and it has been used since. They peak in the month of November.
Earth moves through the meteoroid stream of particles left from the passages of a comet. The stream comprises solid particles, known as meteoroids, ejected by the comet as its frozen gases evaporate under the heat of the Sun when it is close enough – typically closer than Jupiter's orbit. The Leonids are a fast moving stream which encounter the path of Earth and impact at 72 km/s. Larger Leonids which are about 10 mm across have a mass of half a gram and are known for generating bright (apparent magnitude −1.5) meteors. An annual Leonid shower may deposit 12 or 13 tons of particles across the entire planet.
The meteoroids left by the comet are organized in trails in orbits similar to—though different from—that of the comet. They are differentially disturbed by the planets, in particular Jupiter and to a lesser extent by radiation pressure from the sun, the Poynting–Robertson effect, and the Yarkovsky effect. These trails of meteoroids cause meteor showers when Earth encounters them. Old trails are spatially not dense and compose the meteor shower with a few meteors per minute. In the case of the Leonids, that tends to peak around November 18, but some are spread through several days on either side and the specific peak changes every year. Conversely, young trails are spatially very dense and the cause of meteor outbursts when the Earth enters one. The Leonids also produce meteor storms (large outbursts) about every 33 years, which exceed 1,000 meteors per hour, in contrast to the sporadic background (5 to 8 meteors per hour) and the shower background (several per hour).
The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or storms, can be among the most spectacular. Because of the storm of 1833 and the recent developments in scientific thought of the time (see for example the identification of Halley's Comet), the Leonids have had a major effect on the development of the scientific study of meteors, which had previously been thought to be atmospheric phenomena. Although it has been suggested the Leonid meteor shower and storms have been noted in ancient times, it was the meteor storm of 1833 that broke into people's modern day awareness – it was of truly superlative strength. One estimate of the peak rate is over one hundred thousand meteors an hour, but another, done as the storm abated, estimated in excess of 240,000 meteors during the nine hours of the storm, over the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains.
It was marked by several nations of Native Americans: the Cheyenne established a peace treaty and the Lakota calendar was reset. Abolitionists including Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass as well as slave-owners took note and others. The New York Evening Post carried a series of articles on the event including reports from Canada to Jamaica, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18383 |
Labarum
The labarum () was a "vexillum" (military standard) that displayed the "Chi-Rho" symbol ☧, a christogram formed from the first two Greek letters of the word "Christ" (, or Χριστός) — "Chi" (χ) and "Rho" (ρ). It was first used by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.
Ancient sources draw an unambiguous distinction between the two terms "labarum" and "Chi-Rho", even though later usage sometimes regards the two as synonyms. The name labarum was applied both to the original standard used by Constantine the Great and to the many standards produced in imitation of it in the Late Antique world, and subsequently.
Beyond its derivation from Latin "labarum", the etymology of the word is unclear. The Oxford English Dictionary offers no further derivation from within Latin. Some derive it from Latin /labāre/ 'to totter, to waver' (in the sense of the "waving" of a flag in the breeze) or "laureum [vexillum]" ("laurel standard"). An origin as a loan into Latin from a Celtic language or Basque has also been postulated. There is a traditional Basque symbol called the lauburu; though the name is only attested from the 19th century onwards the motif occurs in engravings dating as early as the 2nd century AD.
On the evening of October 27, 312 AD, with his army preparing for the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the emperor Constantine I claimed to have had a vision which led him to believe he was fighting under the protection of the Christian God.
Lactantius states that, in the night before the battle, Constantine was commanded in a dream to "delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers". Obeying this command, "he marked on their shields the letter X, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of Christ". Having had their shields marked in this fashion, Constantine's troops readied themselves for battle.
From Eusebius, two accounts of a battle survive. The first, shorter one in the "Ecclesiastical History" leaves no doubt that God helped Constantine but does not mention any vision. In his later "Life of Constantine", Eusebius gives a detailed account of a vision and stresses that he had heard the story from the emperor himself. According to this version, Constantine with his army was marching somewhere (Eusebius does not specify the actual location of the event, but it clearly is not in the camp at Rome) when he looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek words "Ἐν Τούτῳ Νίκα". The traditionally employed Latin translation of the Greek is "in hoc signo vinces"— literally "In this sign, you will conquer." However, a direct translation from the original Greek text of Eusebius into English gives the phrase "By this, conquer!"
At first he was unsure of the meaning of the apparition, but the following night he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the sign against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the labarum, the military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against Licinius, showing the Chi-Rho sign.
Those two accounts have been merged in popular notion into Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign on the evening before the battle. Both authors agree that the sign was not readily understandable as denoting Christ, which corresponds with the fact that there is no certain evidence of the use of the letters chi and rho as a Christian sign before Constantine. Its first appearance is on a Constantinian silver coin from c. 317, which proves that Constantine did use the sign at that time. He made extensive use of the Chi-Rho and the labarum later in the conflict with Licinius.
The vision has been interpreted in a solar context (e.g. as a solar halo phenomenon), which would have been reshaped to fit with the Christian beliefs of the later Constantine.
An alternate explanation of the intersecting celestial symbol has been advanced by George Latura, which claims that Plato's visible god in "Timaeus" is in fact the intersection of the Milky Way and the Zodiacal Light, a rare apparition important to pagan beliefs that Christian bishops reinvented as a Christian symbol.
"A Description of the Standard of the Cross, which the Romans now call the Labarum."
"Now it was made in the following manner. A long spear, overlaid with gold, formed the figure of the cross by means of a transverse bar laid over it. On the top of the whole was fixed a wreath of gold and precious stones; and within this, the symbol of the Saviour’s name, two letters indicating the name of Christ by means of its initial characters, the letter P being intersected by X in its centre: and these letters the emperor was in the habit of wearing on his helmet at a later period. From the cross-bar of the spear was suspended a cloth, a royal piece, covered with a profuse embroidery of most brilliant precious stones; and which, being also richly interlaced with gold, presented an indescribable degree of beauty to the beholder. This banner was of a square form, and the upright staff, whose lower section was of great length, of the pious emperor and his children on its upper part, beneath the trophy of the cross, and immediately above the embroidered banner."
"The emperor constantly made use of this sign of salvation as a safeguard against every adverse and hostile power, and commanded that others similar to it should be carried at the head of all his armies."
The labarum does not appear on any of several standards depicted on the Arch of Constantine, which was erected just three years after the battle. If Eusebius' oath-confirmed account of Constantine's vision and the role it played in his victory and conversion can be trusted, then a grand opportunity for the kind of political propaganda that the Arch was built to present was missed. Many historians have argued that in the early years after the battle, the Emperor had not yet decided to give clear public support to Christianity, whether from a lack of personal faith or because of fear of religious friction. The arch's inscription does say that the Emperor had saved the "res publica" INSTINCTV DIVINITATIS MENTIS MAGNITVDINE ("by greatness of mind and by instinct [or impulse] of divinity"). Continuing the iconography of his predecessors, Constantine's coinage at the time was inscribed with solar symbolism, interpreted as representing "Sol Invictus" (the Unconquered Sun), Helios, Apollo, or Mithras, but in 325 and thereafter the coinage ceases to be explicitly pagan, and Sol Invictus disappears. And although Eusebius' "Historia Ecclesiae" further reports that Constantine had a statue of himself "holding the sign of the Savior [the cross] in his right hand" erected after his victorious entry into Rome, there are no other reports to confirm such a monument.
Historians still dispute whether Constantine was the first Christian Emperor to support a peaceful transition to Christianity during his rule, or an undecided pagan believer until middle age, and also how strongly influenced he was in his political-religious decisions by his Christian mother St. Helena.
As for the labarum itself, there is little evidence for its use before 317. In the course of Constantine's second war against Licinius in 324, the latter developed a superstitious dread of Constantine's standard. During the attack of Constantine's troops at the Battle of Adrianople the guard of the labarum standard were directed to move it to any part of the field where his soldiers seemed to be faltering. The appearance of this talismanic object appeared to embolden Constantine's troops and dismay those of Licinius. At the final battle of the war, the Battle of Chrysopolis, Licinius, though prominently displaying the images of Rome's pagan pantheon on his own battle line, forbade his troops from actively attacking the labarum, or even looking at it directly.
Constantine felt that both Licinius and Arius were agents of Satan, and associated them with the serpent described in the Book of Revelation (). Constantine represented Licinius as a snake on his coins.
Eusebius stated that in addition to the singular labarum of Constantine, other similar standards (labara) were issued to the Roman army. This is confirmed by the two labara depicted being held by a soldier on a coin of Vetranio (illustrated) dating from 350.
A later Byzantine manuscript indicates that a jewelled labarum standard believed to have been that of Constantine was preserved for centuries, as an object of great veneration, in the imperial treasury at Constantinople. The labarum, with minor variations in its form, was widely used by the Christian Roman emperors who followed Constantine.
A miniature version of the labarum became part of the imperial regalia of Byzantine rulers, who were often depicted carrying it in their right hands.
The term "labarum" can be generally applied to any ecclesiastical banner, such as those carried in religious processions.
"The Holy Lavaro" were a set of early national Greek flags, blessed by the Greek Orthodox Church. Under these banners the Greeks united throughout the Greek Revolution (1821), a war of liberation waged against the Ottoman Empire.
Labarum also gives its name (Labaro) to a suburb of Rome adjacent to Prima Porta, one of the sites where the 'Vision of Constantine' is placed by tradition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18384 |
Laconia
Laconia or Lakonia (, , ) is a historical and administrative region of Greece located on the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparta. The word "laconic"—to speak in a blunt, concise way—is derived from the name of this region, a reference to the ancient Spartans who were renowned for their verbal austerity and blunt, often pithy remarks.
Laconia is bordered by Messenia to the west and Arcadia to the north and is surrounded by the Myrtoan Sea to the east and by the Laconian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It encompasses Cape Malea and Cape Tainaron and a large part of the Mani Peninsula. The Mani Peninsula is in the west region of Laconia. The islands of Kythira and Antikythera lie to the south, but they administratively belong to the Attica regional unit of islands. The island, Elafonisos, situated between the Laconian mainland and Kythira, is part of Laconia.
The Eurotas is the longest river in the prefecture. The valley of the Eurotas is predominantly an agricultural region that contains many citrus groves, olive groves, and pasture lands. It is the location of the largest orange production in the Peloponnese and probably in all of Greece. "Lakonia", a brand of orange juice, is based in Amykles.
The main mountain ranges are the Taygetus in the west and the Parnon in the northeast. Taygetus, known as Pentadaktylos ("five-fingers") throughout the Middle Ages, is west of Sparta and the Eurotas valley. It is the highest mountain in Laconia and the Peloponnese and is mostly covered with pine trees. Two roads join the Messenia and Laconia prefectures: one is a tortuous mountain pass through Taygetus and the other bypasses the mountain via the Mani district to the south.
The stalactite cave, Dirou, a major tourist attraction, is located south of Areopolis in the southwest of Laconia.
Laconia has a Mediterranean climate with warm winters and hot summers. Snow is rare on the coast throughout the winter but is very common in the mountains.
Evidence of Neolithic settlement in southern Laconia has been found during excavations of the Alepotrypa cave site. In ancient Greece, this was the principal region of the Spartan state. For much of classical antiquity the Spartan sphere of influence expanded to Messenia, whose inhabitants (the Helots) were enslaved. Significant archaeological recovery exists at the Vaphio-tomb site in Laconia. Found here is advanced Bronze Age art as well as evidence of cultural associations with the contemporaneous Minoan culture on Crete. Laconia was at war with the Kingdom of Macedonia and saw several battles; at the end of the Mycenaean period, the population of Laconia sharply declined. From the early-2nd century BC until 395 AD, it was a part of the Roman Empire.
In the medieval period, Laconia formed part of the Byzantine Empire. Following the Fourth Crusade, it was gradually conquered by the Frankish Principality of Achaea. In the 1260s, however, the Byzantines recovered Mystras and other fortresses in the region and managed to evict the Franks from Laconia, which became the nucleus of a new Byzantine province. By the mid-14th century, this evolved into the Despotate of Morea, held by the last Greek ruling dynasty, the Palaiologoi. With the fall of the Despotate to the Ottomans in 1460, Laconia was conquered as well.
With the exception of a 30-year interval of Venetian rule, Laconia remained under Ottoman control until the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence of 1821. Following independence, Sparta was selected as the capital of the modern prefecture, and its economy and agriculture expanded. With the incorporation of the British-ruled Ionian Islands into Greece in 1864, Elafonissos became part of the prefecture. After World War II and the Greek Civil War, its population began to somewhat decline, as people moved from the villages toward the larger cities of Greece and abroad.
In 1992, a devastating fire ruined the finest olive crops in the northern part of the prefecture, and affected the area of Sellasia along with Oinountas and its surrounding areas. Firefighters, helicopters and planes battled for days to put out the horrific fire.
The Mani portion along with Gytheio became famous in Greece for filming episodes of "Vendetta", broadcast on Mega Channel throughout Greece and abroad on Mega Cosmos.
In early 2006, flooding ruined olive and citrus crops as well as properties and villages along the Eurotas river. In the summer 2006, a terrible fire devastated a part of the Mani Peninsula, ruining forests, crops, and numerous villages.
The regional unit, Laconia, is subdivided into five municipalities. These are (number as in the map in the infobox):
As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, regional unit Laconia was created out of the former prefecture Laconia (). The prefecture had the same territory as the present regional unit. At the same time, the municipalities were reorganised, according to the table below.
"Note:" Provinces no longer hold any legal status in Greece.
The main cities and towns of Laconia are (ranked by 2011 census population): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18386 |
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn (officially abbreviated "Limburg a. d. Lahn") is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.
Limburg lies in western Hessen between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn.
The town lies roughly centrally in a basin within the Rhenish Slate Mountains which is surrounded by the low ranges of the Taunus and Westerwald and called the Limburg Basin ("Limburger Becken"). Owing to the favourable soil and climate, the Limburg Basin stands as one of Hesse's richest agricultural regions and moreover, with its convenient Lahn crossing, it has been of great importance to transport since the Middle Ages. Within the basin, the Lahn's otherwise rather narrow lower valley broadens out noticeably, making Limburg's mean elevation only 117 m above sea level.
Limburg forms, together with the town of Diez, a middle centre (in terms of Central place theory) but partially functions as an upper centre to western Middle Hesse.
Limburg's residential neighbourhoods reach beyond the town limits; the neighbouring centres of Elz and Diez run seamlessly together.
Surrounding towns and communities are the community of Elz and the town of Hadamar in the north, the community of Beselich in the northeast, the town of Runkel in the east, the communities of Villmar and Brechen in the southeast, the community of Hünfelden in the south (all in Limburg-Weilburg), the community of Holzheim in the southwest, and the town of Diez and the communities of Aull and Gückingen in the west (all in the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate).
The nearest major cities are Wetzlar and Gießen to the north east, Wiesbaden and Frankfurt to the south and Koblenz to the west.
The town consists of eight formerly autonomous "Ortsteile" or villages, listed here by population.
Blumenrod is also often called a constituent community, although this is actually only a big residential neighbourhood in the main town's south end. Its landmark is the "Domäne Blumenrod", a former manor house that has been restored and remodelled by the Limburg Free Evangelical community.
Limburg's biggest outlying centre is Lindenholzhausen (3,329 residents as of June 2006); the second biggest is Linter.
The derivation of the name “Limburg” is not quite clear and may well hearken back to a castle built here ("Burg" means "castle" in German). In 910 the town was first mentioned as "Lintpurc". Two of the popular theories are:
About 800 A.D., the first castle buildings arose on the Limburg crags. This was probably designed for the protection of a ford over the river Lahn. In the decades that followed, the town developed under the castle's protection. Limburg is first mentioned in documents in 910 under the name of "Lintpurc" when Louis the Child granted Konrad Kurzbold an estate in the community on which he was to build a church. Konrad Kurzbold laid the foundation stone for Saint George's Monastery Church, where he was also buried. The community soon increased in importance with the monastery's founding and profited from the lively goods trade on the "Via Publica".
In 1150, a wooden bridge was built across the Lahn. The long-distance road from Cologne to Frankfurt am Main subsequently ran through Limburg. In the early 13th century, Limburg Castle was built in its current form. Shortly afterwards, the town passed into the ownership of the Lords of Ysenburg. In 1214, the community was granted town rights. Remains of the fortification wall from the years 1130, 1230 and 1340 with a maximum length of roughly one thousand metres indicate to this day the blossoming town's quick development in the Middle Ages. There is proof of a mint in Limburg in 1180.
One line of the Lords of Ysenburg resided from 1258 to 1406 at Limburg Castle and took their name from their seat, Limburg. From this line came the House of Limburg-Stirum and also Imagina of Isenburg-Limburg, German King Adolf's wife.
The ruling class among the mediaeval townsfolk were rich merchant families whose houses stood right near the castle tower and were surrounded by the first town wall once it was built. The area of today's Rossmarkt ("Horse Market"), in which many simple craftsmen lived, was only brought within the fortifications once the second town wall was built. The inhabitants there, however, unlike the merchant élite, were accorded no entitlement to a voice in town affairs and were not allowed to send representatives to the town council. Nevertheless, they had to bear the main financial burden of running the town. Only in 1458 were they allowed to send two representatives to town council.
Saint George's Cathedral ("Sankt-Georgs-Dom") built on the old monastery church's site, and also called "Georgsdom", was consecrated in 1235. On 14 May 1289, a devastating fire wiped out great parts of the inner town, although these were subsequently rebuilt. One of the houses built at that time was the Römer 2-4-6, which is today one of Germany's oldest half-timbered houses. In 1337, Limburg's Jews were expelled from the town. Only in 1341 were they once again able to settle in the town, by royal decree. In 1344 a half share of the town was pledged to the Electorate of Trier, and in 1420, the town passed wholly into the ownership of Trier. This event, along with another town fire in 1342, the Black Death in 1349, 1356 and 1365, but above all the rise of the Territorial Princes, led to a gradual decline. In 1315 and 1346, the old stone Lahn Bridge was built (presumably in two sections).
Against the background of the German Peasants' War, unrest also arose among the townsfolk in 1525. After the Elector of Trier had demanded that the townsmen turn a Lutheran preacher out of the town, a board made up of townsmen who were ineligible for council functions handed the council a 30-point comprehensive list of demands on 24 May. It dealt mainly with financial participation and equality in taxation, trade and building issues with the merchant class. In the days that followed, these demands were reduced in negotiations between the council and the board to 16 points, which were likely also taken up with the Elector afterwards. On 5 August, however, Archbishop Richard ordered the council to overturn all concessions to the townsmen. Furthermore, a ban on assembly was decreed, and the ineligible townsmen were stripped of their right to send two representatives to council.
In 1806, Limburg came into the possession of the newly founded Duchy of Nassau. In 1818 the town wall was torn down. In 1827 the town was raised to a Catholic episcopal seat. In 1866 the Duchy and with it Limburg passed to Prussia in the wake of the Austro-Prussian War. As of 1862, Limburg became a railway hub and from 1886 a district seat. In 1892, the Pallottines settled in town, but only the men; the women came in 1895.
During World War I there was a major prisoner of war camp at Limburg an der Lahn. Many Irish members of the British Army were interned there until the end of the war and at one stage they were visited by the Irish republican leader Roger Casement in an attempt to win recruits for the forthcoming Irish rebellion.
From 1919 to 1923, Limburg was the "capital" of a short-lived state called Free State Bottleneck (or "Freistaat Flaschenhals" in German) because it was the nearest unoccupied town to the Weimar Republic.
The municipal election held on 6 March 2016 yielded the following results:
The town's mayor is currently Marius Hahn (SPD).
In 1956, a "Patenschaft" – roughly, a sponsorship – was undertaken for Sudeten Germans driven out of the town of Mährisch Neustadt in the Sternberg district.
Limburg is a traditional transport hub. Already in the Middle Ages, the "Via Publica" crossed the navigable Lahn here. Today the A 3 (Emmerich–Oberhausen–Cologne–Frankfurt–Nuremberg–Passau) and "Bundesstraße" 8, which both follow the "Via Publica's" alignment as closely as possible, run through the town. "Bundesstraße" 49 links Limburg to Koblenz towards the west and Wetzlar and Gießen towards the east. The section between Limburg and Wetzlar is currently being widened to four lanes. This section as far as Obertiefenbach is also known as "Die lange Meil" ("The Long Mile"). "Bundesstraße" 54 links Limburg on the one hand with Siegen to the north and on the other by way of Diez with Wiesbaden, which may likewise be reached over "Bundesstraße" 417 ("Hühnerstraße").
As early as 1248, a wooden bridge spanned the Lahn, but was replaced after the flooding in 1306 by a stone bridge, the "Alte Lahnbrücke". Other road bridges are the "Lahntalbrücke Limburg" (1964) on the A 3, the "Lahnbrücke" near Staffel and the "Neue Lahnbrücke" from 1968, over which run the "Bundesstraßen" before they cross under the inner town through the "Schiedetunnel", a bypass tunnel.
Once the "Lahntalbahn" had been built, Limburg was joined to the railway network in 1862. Limburg railway station developed into a transport hub. Eschhofen station is also in Limburg. Other railway lines are the "Unterwesterwaldbahn", the "Oberwesterwaldbahn" and the Main-Lahn Railway. At Niedernhausen station on the "Main-Lahn Railway", transfer to the "Ländchesbahn" to Wiesbaden is possible. With the exception of the upper section of the "Lahntalbahn" and express lines to Koblenz and Frankfurt, which are still served by Deutsche Bahn, all railway lines are run by Vectus Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH, based in Limburg.
Once the InterCityExpress Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line had been built, Limburg acquired an ICE station. It is the only railway station in Germany at which exclusively ICE trains stop. The high-speed rail line crosses the Lahn over the "Lahntalbrücke" and then dives into the "Limburger Tunnel".
The nearest airport is Frankfurt Airport, 63 km away on the A 3. Travel time there on the ICE is roughly 20 minutes. Cologne Bonn Airport is 110 km away and can be reached on the ICE in 44 minutes.
The Lahn between Lahnstein and Wetzlar is a "Bundeswasserstraße" ("Federal waterway"). Since the "Lahntalbahn's" expansion, however, the waterway's importance has been declining. It is used mainly by tourists with small motorboats, canoes and rowboats. Limburg is the landing site of the tourboat "Wappen von Limburg".
Limburg has four schools which lead to, among other qualifications, the Abitur:
Professional training schools:
Hauptschulen and Realschulen:
Libraries:
The hospital perched on the Schafsberg overlooking the town has at its disposal 433 beds and 15 specialist departments.
In Limburg there are various sport clubs; some are even represented in "Bundesligen", and even at the world level.
The Evangelical Church offers with its "Jugendfreizeitstätte Limburg" (JFS for short, meaning "Youth Leisure Place") a meeting place for youth with many events. With table football, Internet café and many events, this institution is not only church-based, with two staff and a "Zivildienstleistender" supporting the visitors not only with their problems.
The "Mütterzentrum Limburg" is a family meeting place for those with or without children on Hospitalstraße. The club is supported by the town of Limburg and the "Bundesland" of Hesse and offers among other things a parents' service that looks after children, a broad array of course offerings for children and adults, a miniature kindergarten and a café.
The cabaret troupe "Thing", founded more than 25 years ago, moved after a short time from its initial home in the outlying centre of Staffel to the Josef-Kohlmaier-Halle, a civic event hall, where its stage can now be found in the hall's club rooms. The troupe is run by an independent acting club. On the programme are chanson, cabaret, literature and jazz as well as folk, Rock and performances by singer-songwriters. It makes a point of furthering young artists. Each month, three or four events are staged.
The dedication of "Thing" was recognized on 6 December 2003 when the "Kulturpreis Mittelhessen" ("Middle Hesse Culture Prize") was awarded to it.
Limburg Cathedral has a famous boys' choir, the Limburger Domsingknaben, which trains at Musical Boarding School in Hadamar, and an excellent girls' choir, the Mädchenkantorei Limburg, both singing at the Limburg Cathedral and internationally.
In Limburg there are several museums. The most important are:
Only a few towns, like Limburg, have been able to keep a full set of nearly unscathed mediaeval buildings. The formerly walled town core between St. George's Cathedral, Grabenstraße (a street marking the old town moat) and the 600-year-old Lahn Bridge thus stands today as a whole under monumental protection.
The "Altstadt" ("Old Town") boasts a fine cathedral and is full of narrow streets with timber-frame houses, dating mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries. That's why it is located on the German Timber-Frame Road.
(limited to those featuring in Wikipedia (EN) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18389 |
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; ; , ; – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin from 1941. He later officially joined the Politburo in 1946.
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 he was responsible for organising the Katyn massacre. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state, and acted as the "de facto" Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units responsible for barrier troops and Soviet partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front during World War II. Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labour camps, and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret detention facilities for scientists and engineers known as "sharashkas".
Beria attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "our Himmler". After the war, he organised the Communist takeover of the state institutions in Central Europe and Eastern Europe and political repressions in these countries. Beria's uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it absolute priority, and the project was completed in under five years.
After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika, alongside Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov, that briefly led the country in Stalin's place. A coup d'état by Nikita Khrushchev, with help from Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov in June 1953, removed Beria from power. He was arrested on charges of 357 counts of rape and treason. He was sentenced to death and was executed on 23 December 1953.
Beria was born in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi, in the Sukhum Okrug of the Kutais Governorate (now Gulripshi District, "de facto" Republic of Abkhazia, or Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire). He was from the Mingrelian ethnic subgroup and grew up in a Georgian Orthodox family. Beria's mother, Marta Jaqeli (1868–1955), was deeply religious and church-going (she spent much time in church and died in a church building). She was previously married and widowed before marrying Beria's father, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria (1872–1922), a landowner from Abkhazia. Beria also had a brother (name unknown), and a deaf sister named Anna.
In his autobiography, Lavrentiy Beria mentioned only his sister and his niece, implying that his brother was (or any other siblings were) dead or had no relationship with Beria after he left Merkheuli. Beria attended a technical school in Sukhumi, and joined the Bolsheviks in March 1917 while a student in the Baku Polytechnicum (subsequently known as the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy). As a student, Beria distinguished himself in mathematics and the sciences. The Polytechnicum's curriculum concentrated on the petroleum industry.
Beria also worked for the anti-Bolshevik Mussavatists in Baku. After the Red Army captured the city on 28 April 1920, Beria was saved from execution because there was not enough time to arrange his shooting and replacement, and Sergei Kirov possibly intervened. While in prison, he formed a connection with Nina Gegechkori (1905–1991) his cellmate's niece, and they eloped on a train. She was 17, a trained scientist from an aristocratic family.
In 1919, at the age of twenty, Beria started his career in state security when the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic hired him while he was still a student at the Polytechnicum. In 1920 or 1921 (accounts vary) Beria joined the Cheka, the original Bolshevik secret police. At that time, a Bolshevik revolt took place in the Menshevik-controlled Democratic Republic of Georgia, and the Red Army subsequently invaded. The Cheka became heavily involved in the conflict, which resulted in the defeat of the Mensheviks and the formation of the Georgian SSR. By 1922, Beria was deputy head of the Georgian branch of Cheka's successor, the OGPU.
In 1924, he led the repression of a Georgian nationalist uprising, after which up to 10,000 people were executed. For this display of "Bolshevik ruthlessness", Beria was appointed head of the "secret-political division" of the Transcaucasian OGPU and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
In 1926, Beria became head of the Georgian OGPU; Sergo Ordzhonikidze, head of the Transcaucasian party, introduced him to fellow-Georgian Iosef Dzhughashvili, later known as Joseph Stalin. As a result, Beria became an ally in Stalin's rise to power. During his years at the helm of the Georgian OGPU, Beria effectively destroyed the intelligence networks that Turkey and Iran had developed in the Soviet Caucasus, while successfully penetrating the governments of these countries with his agents. He also took over Stalin's holiday security.
Beria was appointed Secretary of the Communist Party in Georgia in 1931, and for the whole Transcaucasian region in 1932. He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1934. During this time, he began to attack fellow members of the Georgian Communist Party, particularly Gaioz Devdariani, who served as Minister of Education of the Georgian SSR. Beria ordered the executions of Devdariani's brothers George and Shalva, who held important positions in the Cheka and the Communist Party respectively.
He reportedly won Stalin's favour in the early 1930s, after faking a conspiracy to assassinate the Soviet leader that he then claimed to have foiled. By 1935, Beria had become one of Stalin's most trusted subordinates. He cemented his place in Stalin's entourage with a lengthy oration titled, "On the History of the Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia" (later published as a book), which emphasised Stalin's role. When Stalin's purge of the Communist Party and government began in 1934 after the assassination of Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov (1 December 1934), Beria ran the purges in Transcaucasia. He used the opportunity to settle many old scores in the politically turbulent Transcaucasian republics.
In June 1937, he said in a speech, "Let our enemies know that anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party of Lenin and Stalin, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed."
In August 1938, Stalin brought Beria to Moscow as deputy head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the ministry which oversaw the state security and police forces. Under Nikolai Yezhov, the NKVD carried out the Great Purge: the imprisonment or execution of millions of people throughout the Soviet Union as alleged "enemies of the people". By 1938, however, the oppression had become so extensive that it was damaging the infrastructure, economy and even the armed forces of the Soviet state, prompting Stalin to wind the purge down. Stalin had voted to appoint Georgy Malenkov as head of the NKVD, but he was over-ruled. In September, Beria was appointed head of the Main Administration of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD, and in November he succeeded Yezhov as NKVD head. Yezhov was executed in 1940, and one account says he was personally strangled by Beria. The NKVD was purged next, with half of its personnel replaced by Beria loyalists, many of them from the Caucasus.
Although Beria's name is closely identified with the Great Purge because of his activities while deputy head of the NKVD, his leadership of the organisation marked an easing of the repression begun under Yezhov. Over 100,000 people were released from the labour camps. The government officially admitted that there had been some injustice and "excesses" during the purges, which were blamed entirely on Yezhov. The liberalisation was only relative: arrests and executions continued, and in 1940, as war approached, the pace of the purges again accelerated. During this period, Beria supervised deportations of people identified as political enemies from Poland and the Baltic states after Soviet occupation of those regions.
In March 1939, Beria became a candidate member of the Communist Party's Politburo. Although he did not become a full member until 1946, he was already one of the senior leaders of the Soviet state. In 1941, Beria was made a Commissar General of State Security, the highest quasi-military rank within the Soviet police system of that time, effectively comparable to a Marshal of the Soviet Union.
On 5 March 1940, after the Gestapo–NKVD Third Conference was held in Zakopane, Beria sent a note (no. 794/B) to Stalin in which he stated that the Polish prisoners of war kept at camps and prisons in western Belarus and Ukraine were enemies of the Soviet Union, and recommended their execution. Most of them were military officers, but there were also intelligentsia, doctors, priests, and others in a total of 22,000 people. With Stalin's approval, Beria's NKVD executed them in what became known as the Katyn massacre.
From October 1940 to February 1942, the NKVD under Beria carried out a new purge of the Red Army and related industries. In February 1941, Beria became Deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and in June, following Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, he became a member of the State Defense Committee (GKO). During World War II, he took on major domestic responsibilities and mobilised the millions of people imprisoned in NKVD Gulag camps into wartime production. He took control of the manufacture of armaments, and (with Georgy Malenkov) aircraft and aircraft engines. This was the beginning of Beria's alliance with Malenkov, which later became of central importance.
In 1944, as the Germans were driven from Soviet soil, Beria was in charge of dealing with the various ethnic minorities accused of anti-sovietism and/or collaboration with the invaders, including the Balkars, Karachays, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Pontic Greeks, and Volga Germans. All these groups were deported to Soviet Central Asia (see "Population transfer in the Soviet Union").
In December 1944, Beria's NKVD was assigned to supervise the Soviet atomic bomb project ("Task No. 1"), which built and tested a bomb by 29 August 1949. The project was extremely labour-intensive. At least 330,000 people, including 10,000 technicians, were involved. The Gulag system provided tens of thousands of people for work in uranium mines and for the construction and operation of uranium processing plants. They also constructed test facilities, such as those at Semipalatinsk and in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The NKVD also ensured the necessary security for the project.
In July 1945, as Soviet police ranks were converted to a military uniform system, Beria's rank was officially converted to that of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Although he had never held a traditional military command, Beria made a significant contribution to the victory of the Soviet Union in World War II through his organisation of wartime production and his use of partisans. Stalin personally never thought much of it, and neither commented publicly on his performance nor awarded him recognition (i.e. Order of Victory), as he did for most other Soviet Marshals.
Abroad, Beria had met with Kim Il-sung, the future leader of North Korea, several times when the Soviet troops had declared war on Japan and occupied the northern half of Korea from August 1945. Beria recommended that Stalin install a communist leader in the occupied territories.
With Stalin nearing 70, a concealed struggle for succession amongst his entourage dominated Kremlin politics in the post-war years. At the end of the war, Andrei Zhdanov seemed the most likely candidate. Zhdanov had served as the Communist Party leader in Leningrad during the war, and by 1946 had charge of all cultural matters. After 1946, Beria formed an alliance with Malenkov to counter Zhdanov's rise.
In January 1946, Beria resigned as chief of the NKVD while retaining general control over national security matters as Deputy Prime Minister and Curator of the Organs of State Security under Stalin. However, the new NKVD chief, Sergei Kruglov, was not a Beria man. Also, by the summer of 1946, Beria's man Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov was replaced as head of the Ministry for State Security (MGB) by Viktor Abakumov. Abakumov had headed SMERSH from 1943 to 1946; his relationship with Beria involved close collaboration (since Abakumov owed his rise to Beria's support and esteem), but also rivalry. Stalin had begun to encourage Abakumov to form his own network inside the MGB to counter Beria's dominance of the power ministries. Kruglov and Abakumov moved expeditiously to replace Beria's men in the security apparatus leadership with new people. Very soon, Deputy Minister Stepan Mamulov of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs was the only close Beria ally left outside foreign intelligence, on which Beria kept a grip. In the following months, Abakumov started carrying out important operations without consulting Beria, often working in tandem with Zhdanov, and on Stalin's direct orders. These operations were aimed by Stalininitially tangentially, but with time more directlyat Beria.
One of the first such moves involved the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee affair, which commenced in October 1946 and eventually led to the murder of Solomon Mikhoels and the arrest of many other members. This affair damaged Beria; not only had he championed the creation of the committee in 1942, but his own entourage included a substantial number of Jews.
After Zhdanov died suddenly in August 1948, Beria and Malenkov consolidated their power by means of a purge of Zhdanov's associates in the so-called "Leningrad Affair". Those executed included Zhdanov's deputy, Alexey Kuznetsov; the economic chief, Nikolai Voznesensky; the Party head in Leningrad, Pyotr Popkov; and the Prime Minister of the Russian Republic, Mikhail Rodionov.
During the postwar years, Beria supervised installation of Communist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe and hand-picked the Soviet-backed leaders. Starting in 1948, Abakumov initiated several investigations against these leaders, which culminated with the arrest in November 1951 of Rudolf Slánský, Bedřich Geminder, and others in Czechoslovakia. These men were frequently accused of Zionism, "rootless cosmopolitanism", and providing weapons to Israel. Such charges deeply disturbed Beria, as he had directly ordered the sale of large amounts of Czech arms to Israel. Altogether, 14 Czechoslovak Communist leaders, 11 of them Jewish, were tried, convicted, and executed (see Slánský trial). Similar investigations in Poland and other Soviet satellite countries occurred at the same time.
In 1951, Abakumov was replaced by Semyon Ignatyev, who further intensified the anti-Semitic campaign. On 13 January 1953, the biggest anti-Semitic affair in the Soviet Union started with an article in "Pravda"it began what became known as the Doctors' plot, in which a number of the country's prominent Jewish physicians were accused of poisoning top Soviet leaders and arrested. Concurrently, the Soviet press began an anti-Semitic propaganda campaign, euphemistically termed the "struggle against rootless cosmopolitanism". Initially, 37 men were arrested, but the number quickly grew into hundreds. Scores of Soviet Jews were dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to the Gulag, or executed. The "Doctors' plot" was presumably invented by Stalin as an excuse to dismiss Beria and replace him with Ignatiev or some other MGB functionary. A few days after Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Beria freed all the arrested doctors, announced that the entire matter was fabricated, and arrested the MGB functionaries directly involved.
In other international issues, Beria (along with Mikoyan) correctly foresaw the victory (1949–1950) of Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War and greatly helped the Chinese Communists by letting them use Soviet-occupied Manchuria as a staging area and arranging large weapons shipments to the People's Liberation Army, mainly from the recently captured equipment of the Japanese Kwantung Army.
At Beria's trial in 1953, it became known that he had committed numerous rapes during the years he was NKVD chief. Simon Sebag-Montefiore, a biographer of Stalin, concluded the information "reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity". After his death, charges of sexual abuse and rape were disputed by people close to him including his wife Nina and his son Sergo.
According to official testimony, in Soviet archives, of Colonel Rafael Semyonovich Sarkisov and Colonel Sardion Nikolaevich Nadaraiatwo of Beria's bodyguardson warm nights during the war Beria was often driven around Moscow in his limousine. He would point out young women to be taken to his mansion, where wine and a feast awaited them. After dining, Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them. Beria's bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left the house. Accepting it implied that the sex had been consensual; refusal would mean arrest. Sarkisov reported that after one woman rejected Beria's advances and ran out of his office, Sarkisov mistakenly handed her the flowers anyway. The enraged Beria declared, "Now it's not a bouquet, it's a wreath! May it rot on your grave!" The NKVD arrested the woman the next day.
Women also submitted to Beria's sexual advances in exchange for the promise of freedom for imprisoned relatives. In one case, Beria picked up Tatiana Okunevskaya, a well-known Soviet actress, under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo. Instead he took her to his dacha, where he offered to free her father and grandmother from prison if she submitted. He then raped her, telling her: "Scream or not, it doesn't matter." In fact Beria knew that Okunevskaya's relatives had been executed months earlier. Okunevskaya was arrested shortly afterwards and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived.
Beria's sexually predatory nature was well known to the Politburo, and though Stalin took an indulgent viewpoint (considering Beria's wartime importance), he expressed distrust of Beria. In one instance, when Stalin learned his daughter Svetlana was alone with Beria at his house, he telephoned her and told her to leave immediately. When Beria complimented Alexander Poskrebyshev's daughter on her beauty, Poskrebyshev quickly pulled her aside and instructed her, "Don't ever accept a lift from Beria." After taking an interest in Marshal of the Soviet Union Kliment Voroshilov's daughter-in-law during a party at their summer dacha, Beria shadowed their car closely all the way back to the Kremlin, terrifying Voroshilov's wife.
Before and during the war, Beria directed Sarkisov to keep a list of the names and phone numbers of his sexual encounters. Eventually, he ordered Sarkisov to destroy the list as a security risk, but Sarkisov retained a secret copy. When Beria's fall from power began, Sarkisov passed the list to Viktor Abakumov, the former wartime head of SMERSH and now chief of the MGBthe successor to the NKVD. Abakumov was already aggressively building a case against Beria. Stalin, who was also seeking to undermine Beria, was thrilled by the detailed records kept by Sarkisov, demanding: "Send me everything this asshole writes down!" Sarkisov reported that Beria had contracted syphilis during the war, for which he was secretly treated (a fact Beria later admitted during his interrogation). The Russian government acknowledged Sarkisov's handwritten list of Beria's victims in 2003; the victims' names will be released in 2028.
Evidence suggests that Beria murdered some of these women. In the mid 1990s, the skeletal remains of several young women were discovered in the garden of his Moscow villa (now the Tunisian Embassy). According to Martin Sixsmith, in a BBC documentary, "Beria spent his nights having teenagers abducted from the streets and brought here for him to rape. Those who resisted were strangled and buried in his wife's rose garden."
The testimony of Sarkisov and Nadaraia has been partially corroborated by Edward Ellis Smith, an American who served in the U.S. embassy in Moscow after the war. According to historian Amy Knight, "Smith noted that Beria's escapades were common knowledge among embassy personnel because his house was on the same street as a residence for Americans, and those who lived there saw girls brought to Beria's house late at night in a limousine."
Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria had, immediately after Stalin's stroke, gone about "spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him". When Stalin showed signs of consciousness, Beria dropped to his knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria immediately stood and spat. Stalin's aide Vasili Lozgachev reported that Beria and Malenkov were the first members of the Politburo to see Stalin's condition when he was found unconscious. They arrived at Stalin's dacha at Kuntsevo at 03:00 on 2 March, after being called by Khrushchev and Bulganin. The latter two did not want to risk Stalin's wrath by checking themselves. Lozgachev tried to explain to Beria that the unconscious Stalin (still in his soiled clothing) was "sick and needed medical attention". Beria angrily dismissed his claims as panic-mongering and quickly left, ordering him, "Don't bother us, don't cause a panic and don't disturb Comrade Stalin!" Calling a doctor was deferred for a full 12 hours after Stalin was rendered paralysed, incontinent and unable to speak. This decision is noted as "extraordinary" by the historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore but also consistent with the standard Stalinist policy of deferring all decision-making (no matter how necessary or obvious) without official orders from higher authority.
Beria's decision to avoid immediately calling a doctor was tacitly supported (or at least not opposed) by the rest of the Politburo, which was rudderless without Stalin's micromanagement and paralysed by a legitimate fear he would suddenly recover and take reprisals on anyone who had dared to act without his orders. Stalin's suspicion of doctors in the wake of the Doctors' Plot was well known at the time of his sickness; his private physician was already being tortured in the basement of the Lubyanka for suggesting the leader required more bed rest.
After Stalin's death, Beria claimed to have killed him. This aborted a final purge of Old Bolsheviks Mikoyan and Molotov, for which Stalin had been laying the groundwork in the year prior to his death. Shortly after Stalin's death, Beria announced triumphantly to the Politburo that he had "done [Stalin] in" and "saved [us] all", according to Molotov's memoirs. The assertion that Stalin was poisoned by Beria's associates has been supported by Edvard Radzinsky and other authors.
After Stalin's death, Beria's ambitions sprang into full force. In the uneasy silence following the cessation of Stalin's last agonies, Beria was the first to dart forward to kiss his lifeless form (a move likened by Sebag-Montefiore to "wrenching a dead King's ring off his finger"). While the rest of Stalin's inner circle (even Molotov, saved from certain liquidation) stood sobbing unashamedly over the body, Beria reportedly appeared "radiant", "regenerated" and "glistening with ill-concealed relish". When Beria left the room, he broke the sombre atmosphere by shouting loudly for his driver, his voice echoing with what Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva called "the ring of triumph unconcealed". Alliluyeva noticed how the Politburo seemed openly frightened of Beria and unnerved by his bold display of ambition. "He's off to take power," Mikoyan recalled muttering to Khrushchev. That prompted a "frantic" dash for their own limousines to intercept him at the Kremlin.
After Stalin's death, Beria was appointed First Deputy Premier and reappointed head of the MVD, which he merged with the MGB. His close ally Malenkov was the new Premier and initially the most powerful man in the post-Stalin leadership. Beria was second most powerful, and given Malenkov's personal weakness, was poised to become the power behind the throne and ultimately leader himself. Khrushchev became Party Secretary. Voroshilov became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e., the head of state).
Beria undertook some measures of liberalisation immediately after Stalin's death. He reorganised the MVD and drastically reduced its economic power and penal responsibilities. A number of costly construction projects such as the Salekhard–Igarka Railway were scrapped, and the remaining industrial enterprises became affiliated under corresponding economic ministries. The Gulag system was transferred to the Ministry of Justice, and a mass release of over a million prisoners was announced, although only prisoners convicted for "non-political" crimes have been released. The amnesty, therefore, led to a substantial increase in crime and would later be used against Beria by his rivals.
To consolidate power, Beria also took steps to recognise the rights of non-Russian nationalities. He questioned the traditional policy of Russification and encouraged local officials to assert their own identities. He first turned to Georgia, where Stalin's fabricated Mingrelian affair was called off and the republic's key posts were replaced by pro-Beria Georgians. Beria's policies in Ukraine alarmed Khrushchev, for whom Ukraine was a power base. Khrushchev then tried to draw Malenkov to his side, warning that "Beria is sharpening his knives".
Khrushchev opposed the alliance between Beria and Malenkov but he was initially unable to challenge them. Khrushchev's opportunity came in June 1953 when a spontaneous uprising against the East German Communist regime broke out in East Berlin. Based on Beria's statements, other leaders suspected that in the wake of the uprising, he might be willing to trade the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War for massive aid from the United States, as had been received in World War II. The cost of the war still weighed heavily on the Soviet economy. Beria craved the vast financial resources that another (more sustained) relationship with the United States could provide. Beria gave Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania serious prospects of national autonomy, possibly similarly to other Soviet satellite states in Europe. Beria said of East Germany "It's not even a real state but one kept in being only by Soviet troops."
The East German uprising convinced Molotov, Malenkov, and Nikolai Bulganin that Beria's policies were dangerous and destabilising to Soviet power. Within days of the events in Germany, Khrushchev persuaded the other leaders to support a Party "coup" against Beria; Beria's principal ally Malenkov abandoned him.
Beria was chairman of the Council of Ministers and an influential Politburo member and saw himself as Stalin's successor, while wider Politburo members had contrasting thoughts on future leadership. On 26 June 1953, Beria was arrested and held in an undisclosed location near Moscow. Accounts of Beria's fall vary considerably. By the most likely account, Khrushchev prepared an elaborate ambush, convening a meeting of the Presidium on 26 June, where he suddenly launched a scathing attack on Beria, accusing him of being a traitor and spy in the pay of British intelligence. Beria was taken completely by surprise. He asked, "What's going on, Nikita Sergeyevich? Why are you picking fleas in my trousers?" Molotov and others quickly spoke against Beria one after the other, followed by a motion by Khrushchev for his instant dismissal.
When Beria finally realised what was happening and plaintively appealed to Malenkov (an old friend and crony) to speak for him, Malenkov silently hung his head and pressed a button on his desk. This was the pre-arranged signal to Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov and a group of armed officers in a nearby room, who burst in and arrested Beria.
Beria was taken first to the Moscow guardhouse and then to the bunker of the headquarters of Moscow Military District. Defence Minister Nikolai Bulganin ordered the Kantemirovskaya Tank Division and Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division to move into Moscow to prevent security forces loyal to Beria from rescuing him. Many of Beria's subordinates, proteges and associates were also arrested, among them Vsevolod Merkulov, Bogdan Kobulov, Sergey Goglidze, Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik, and Lev Vlodzimirskiy. "Pravda" did not announce Beria's arrest until 10 July, crediting it to Malenkov and referring to Beria's "criminal activities against the Party and the State".
Beria and the others were tried by a "special session" () of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on 23 December 1953 with no defence counsel and no right of appeal. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Konev was the chairman of the court.
Beria was found guilty of:
Beria and all the other defendants were sentenced to death on 23 December 1953. The other six defendants were shot immediately after the trial ended. Beria was executed separately; he allegedly pleaded on his knees before collapsing to the floor wailing. He was shot through the forehead by General Pavel Batitsky. His final moments bore great similarity to those of his own predecessor, NKVD Chief Nikolai Yezhov, who begged for his life before his execution in 1940. Beria's body was cremated and the remains buried in a forest near Moscow.
Beria is the central character in "Good Night, Uncle Joe" by Canadian playwright David Elendune. The play is a fictionalised account of the events leading up to Stalin's death.
Georgian film director Tengiz Abuladze based the character of dictator Varlam Aravidze on Beria in his 1984 film "Repentance". Although banned in the Soviet Union for its semi-allegorical critique of Stalinism, it premiered at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, winning the FIPRESCI Prize, Grand Prize of the Jury, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
Beria was played by British actor Bob Hoskins in the 1991 film "Inner Circle", and by David Suchet in "Red Monarch". Simon Russell Beale played Beria in the 2017 satirical film "The Death of Stalin".
In the 1958 CBS production of "The Plot to Kill Stalin" for "Playhouse 90", Beria was portrayed by E. G. Marshall. In the 1992 HBO movie "Stalin", Roshan Seth was cast as Beria.
Beria appears in the third episode ("Superbomb") of the four-part 2007 BBC docudrama series "Nuclear Secrets", played by Boris Isarov. In the 2008 BBC documentary series "", Beria was portrayed by Polish actor .
He was also an important character in the 2013 Russian mini-series "Kill Stalin", produced by Star Media.
Richard Condon's 1959 novel "The Manchurian Candidate" describes brainwashed Raymond Shaw, the "perfectly prefabricated assassin", as "this dream by Lavrenti Beria".
In the 1964 science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, "Hard to Be a God", Beria is personified in the character Don Reba who serves as the king's minister of defence.
At the opening of Kingsley Amis' "The Alteration", Lavrentiy Beria figures as "Monsignor Laurentius", paired with the similarly black-clad cleric "Monsignor Henricus" of the Holy Office (i.e., the Inquisition); the one to whom Beria was compared by Stalin in our own timeline: Heinrich Himmler. In the novel, both men are on the same side, serving an alternate-world Catholic Empire.
Beria is a significant character in the alternate history/alien invasion novel series "Worldwar" by Harry Turtledove as well as the "Axis of Time" series by John Birmingham
In the 1981 novel "Noble House" by James Clavell set in 1963 Hong Kong, the main character Ian Dunross received from Alan Medford Grant a set of secret documents regarding a Soviet spy-ring in Hong Kong code-named "Sevrin". The document was signed by an LB, believed by Grant (and the mysterious Tip Tok-Toh) to be Lavrentiy Beria (written as Lavrenti Beria in the novel).
Beria is a significant character in the opening chapters of the 1998 novel "Archangel" by British novelist Robert Harris.
Beria is a minor character in the 2009 novel "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" by Jonas Jonasson. Beria is described as the boss of the Soviet state's security and is in attendance at a meal with the main character and Stalin.
In 2012, his alleged personal diary from 1938 to 1953 was published in Russia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18390 |
Lyonel Feininger
Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist. He was born and grew up in New York City, traveling to Germany at 16 to study and perfect his art. He started his career as a cartoonist in 1894 and met with much success in this area. He was also a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for magazines and newspapers in the USA and Germany. At the age of 36, he started to work as a fine artist. He also produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid 1950s, but he kept these primarily within his circle of friends. He was also a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.
Lyonel Feininger was born to German-American violinist and composer Karl Feininger and American singer Elizabeth Feininger. He was born and grew up in New York City, but traveled to Germany at the age of 16 in 1887 to study. In 1888, he moved to Berlin and studied at the Königliche Akademie Berlin under Ernst Hancke. He continued his studies at art schools in Berlin with Karl Schlabitz, and in Paris with sculptor Filippo Colarossi. He started as a caricaturist for several magazines including "Harper's Round Table", "Harper's Young People", "Humoristische Blätter", "Lustige Blätter", "Das Narrenschiff", "Berliner Tageblatt" and "Ulk".
In 1900, he met Clara Fürst, daughter of the painter . He married her in 1901, and they had two daughters. In 1905, he separated from his wife after meeting Julia Berg. He married Berg in 1908 and the couple had three boys.
The artist was represented with drawings at the exhibitions of the annual Berlin Secession in the years 1901 through 1903.
Feininger's career as cartoonist started in 1894. He was working for several German, French and American magazines. In February 1906, when a quarter of Chicago's population was of German descent, James Keeley, editor of The "Chicago Tribune" traveled to Germany to procure the services of the most popular humor artists. He recruited Feininger to illustrate two comic strips "The Kin-der-Kids" and "Wee Willie Winkie's World" for the "Chicago Tribune". The strips were noted for their fey humor and graphic experimentation. He also worked as a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines in both the United States and Germany. Later, Art Spiegelman wrote in "The New York Times Book Review," that Feininger's comics have "achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium."
Feininger started working as a fine artist at the age of 36. He was a member of the "Berliner Sezession" in 1909, and he was associated with German expressionist groups: Die Brücke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four). His first solo exhibit was at Sturm Gallery in Berlin, 1917. When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany in 1919, Feininger was his first faculty appointment, and became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop.
From 1909 until 1921, Feininger spent summer vacations on the island of Usedom to recover and to get new inspiration. Typical of works from this period were marine settings from the shores of the Baltic See (Ostsee). He continued to create paintings and drawings of Benz for the rest of his life, even after returning to live in the United States. A tour of the sites appearing in the works of Feininger follows a path with markers in the ground to guide visitors.
He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist woodcut 'cathedral'. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. Among the students who attended his workshops were Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (German/Australian (1893–1965), Hans Friedrich Grohs (German 1892 - 1981), and Margarete Koehler-Bittkow (German/American, 1898–1964).
When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the situation became unbearable for Feininger and his wife. The Nazi Party declared his work to be "degenerate". They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the 'degenerate art' ("Entartete Kunst") in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in Munich. He taught at Mills College before returning to New York. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955.
In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.
Feininger produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid-1950s. He kept his photographic work within his circle of friends, and it was not shared with the public in his lifetime. He gave some prints away to his colleagues Walter Gropius and Alfred H. Barr Jr..
Feininger also had intermittent activity as a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.
His sons, Andreas Feininger and T. Lux Feininger, both became noted artists, the former as a photographer and the latter as a photographer and painter. T. Lux Feininger died July 7, 2011 at the age of 101.
A major retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's work was put on in 2011-2012: it opened initially at the Whitney Museum of American Art, June 30 through October 16, 2011, subsequently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, January 1 through May 13, 2012. The exhibition is described as "the first in Feininger's native country in more than forty-five years, and the first ever to include the full breadth of his art" and as "accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph with a feature essay that provides a broad overview of Feininger's career..." Many critics have argued that the artist's work was at its most mature around 1910 in works in which the power of Feininger as illustrator balance his abstract side; however, we have to consider the possibility that Feininger used cubism as a more artistically succinct tool to establish his version of the concept known as the objective correlative.
Feininger was also a composer: in tandem with the Whitney retrospective, the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein, at Carnegie Hall on 21 October 2011, performed three orchestral fugues written by Feininger. Barbara Haskell, curator of the Whitney exhibit, wrote that for his entire life, Feininger credited Bach with having been his "master in painting."
At a 2001 Christie's auction in London, Feininger's painting "The Green Bridge" (1909) was sold for £2.42 million.
At a 2007 Sotheby’s auction in New York, Feininger’s oil painting "Jesuits III" (1915) sold for $23,280,000.
At a 2017 Sotheby's auction in New York, Feininger's oil painting "Fin de séance" (1910) sold for $5,637,500. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18391 |
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities that have biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (they have died), or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. Biology is the science concerned with the study of life.
There is currently no consensus regarding the definition of life. One popular definition is that organisms are open systems that maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, have a life cycle, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, reproduce and evolve. Other definitions sometimes include non-cellular life forms such as viruses and viroids.
Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity. Life on Earth first appeared as early as 4.28 billion years ago, soon after ocean formation 4.41 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. The earliest known life forms are microfossils of bacteria. Researchers generally think that current life on Earth descends from an RNA world, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18393 |
La Espero
"La Espero" () is a poem written by Polish-Jewish doctor L. L. Zamenhof (1859–1917), the initiator of the Esperanto language. The song is often used as the anthem of Esperanto, and is now usually sung to a triumphal march composed by Félicien Menu de Ménil in 1909 (although there is an earlier, less martial tune created in 1891 by Claes Adelsköld, as well as a number of others less well-known). It is sometimes referred to as the hymn of the Esperanto movement.
Some Esperantists object to the use of terms like "hymn" or "anthem" for "La Espero", arguing that these terms have religious and nationalist overtones respectively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18398 |
Loonie
The loonie (), formally the Canadian one-dollar coin, is a gold-coloured coin that was introduced in 1987 and is produced by the Royal Canadian Mint at its facility in Winnipeg. The most prevalent versions of the coin show a common loon, a bird found throughout Canada, on the reverse and Queen Elizabeth II, the nation's head of state, on the obverse. Various commemorative and specimen-set editions of the coin with special designs replacing the loon on the reverse have been minted over the years.
The coin's outline is an 11-sided curve of constant width. Its diameter of 26.5 mm and its 11-sidedness matched that of the already-circulating Susan B. Anthony dollar in the United States, and its thickness of 1.95 mm was a close match to the latter's 2.0 mm. Its gold colour differed from the silver-coloured Anthony dollar; however, the succeeding Sacagawea and Presidential dollars matched the loonie's overall hue. Other coins using a curve of constant width include the 7-sided British twenty pence and fifty pence coins (the latter of which has similar size and value to the loonie, but is silver in colour).
After its introduction, the coin became a metonym for the Canadian dollar: media often discuss the rate at which the "loonie" is trading against other currencies. The nickname "loonie" became so widely recognized that in 2006, the Royal Canadian Mint secured the rights to it. When the Canadian two-dollar coin was introduced in 1996, it was in turn nicknamed the "toonie" (a portmanteau of "two" and "loonie").
Canada first minted a silver dollar coin in 1935 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of George V's reign as king. The voyageur dollar, so named because it featured an Indigenous person and a French voyageur paddling a canoe on the reverse, was minted in silver until 1967, after which it was composed primarily of nickel. The coins did not see wide circulation, mainly due to their size and weight; the nickel version weighed and was in diameter, and was itself smaller than the silver version.
By 1982, the Royal Canadian Mint had begun work on a new composition for the dollar coin that it hoped would lead to increased circulation. At the same time, vending machine operators and transit systems were lobbying the Government of Canada to replace the dollar banknotes with more widely circulating coins. A Commons committee recommended in 1985 that the dollar bill be eliminated despite a lack of evidence that Canadians would support the move. The government argued that it would save between $175 million and $250 million over 20 years by switching from bills that had a lifespan of less than a year to coins that would last two decades.
The government announced on March 25, 1986, that the new dollar coin would be launched the following year as a replacement for the dollar bill, which would be phased out. It was expected to cost $31.8 million to produce the first 300 million coins, but through seigniorage (the difference between the cost of production and the coin's value), expected to make up to $40 million a year on the coins. From the proceeds, a total of $60 million over five years was dedicated toward funding the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
The failure of the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin in the United States had been considered and it was believed Americans refused to support the coin due to its similarity to their quarter coin and its lack of esthetic appeal. In announcing the new Canadian dollar coin, the government stated it would be the same overall size as the Susan B. Anthony coin – slightly larger than a quarter – to allow for compatibility with American manufactured vending machines, but would be eleven-sided and gold-coloured.
It was planned that the coin would continue using the voyageur theme of its predecessor, but the master dies that had been struck in Ottawa were lost in transit en route to the Mint's facility at Winnipeg. A Commons committee struck to investigate the loss discovered that the Mint had no documented procedures for transport of master dies and that it had shipped them via a local courier in a bid to save $43.50. It was also found to be the third time that the Mint had lost master dies within five years. An internal review by the Royal Canadian Mint argued that while a policy existed to ship the obverse and reverse dies separately, the new coin dies were packaged separately but were part of the same shipment. The Mint also disagreed with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's contention that the dies were simply lost in transit, believing instead that they were stolen. The dies were never recovered.
Fearing the possibility of counterfeiting, the government approved a new design for the reverse, replacing the voyageur with a Robert-Ralph Carmichael design of a common loon floating in water. The coin was immediately nicknamed the "loonie" across English Canada, and became known as a "huard", French for "loon", in Quebec. The loonie entered circulation on June 30, 1987, as 40 million coins were introduced into major cities across the country. Over 800 million loonies had been struck by the coin's 20th anniversary.
After a 21-month period in which the loonie and $1 note were produced concurrently with each other, the Bank of Canada ceased production of the dollar banknote. The final dollar bills were printed on June 30, 1989. Initial support for the coin was mixed, but withdrawing the banknote forced acceptance of the coin.
The loonie has subsequently gained iconic status within Canada, and is now regarded as a national symbol. The term "loonie" has since become synonymous with the Canadian dollar itself. The town of Echo Bay, Ontario, home of Robert-Ralph Carmichael, erected a large loonie monument in his honour in 1992 along the highway, similar to Sudbury's 'Big Nickel'.
Officials for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics invited the National Hockey League's ice making consultant, Dan Craig, to oversee the city's E Center arena, where the ice hockey tournament was being held. Craig invited a couple of members from the ice crew in his hometown of Edmonton to assist. One of them, Trent Evans, secretly placed a loonie at centre ice. He originally placed a dime, but added the loonie after the smaller coin quickly vanished as the ice surface was built up. He placed the coins after realizing there was no target at centre ice for referees to aim for when dropping the puck for a faceoff. A thin yellow dot was painted on the ice surface over the coins, though the loonie was faintly visible to those who knew to look for it.
Keeping the coin a secret, Evans told only a few people of its placement and swore them to secrecy. Among those told were the players of the men's and women's teams. Both Canadian teams went on to win gold medals. Several members of the women's team kissed the spot where the coin was buried following their victory. After the men won their final, the coin was dug up and given to Wayne Gretzky, the team's executive-director, who revealed the existence of the "lucky loonie" at a post-game press conference.
The lucky loonie quickly became a piece of Canadian lore. The original lucky loonie was donated to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and Canadians have subsequently hidden loonies at several international competitions. Loonies were buried in the foundations of facilities built for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Capitalizing on the tradition, the Royal Canadian Mint has released a commemorative edition "lucky loonie" for each Olympic Games since 2004.
The weight of the coin was originally specified as 108 grains, equivalent to 6.998 grams. The coin's diameter is 26.5mm.
When introduced, loonie coins were made of Aureate, a bronze-electroplated nickel combination. Beginning in 2007, some loonie blanks also began to be produced with a cyanide-free brass plating process. In the spring of 2012, the composition switched to multi-ply brass-plated steel. As a result, the weight dropped from 7.00 to 6.27 grams. This has resulted in the 2012 loonie not being accepted in some vending machines. The Toronto Parking Authority estimates that at about $345 per machine, it will cost about $1 million to upgrade almost 3,000 machines to accept the new coins. The Mint states that multi-ply plated steel technology, already used in Canada's smaller coinage, produces an electromagnetic signature that is harder to counterfeit than that for regular alloy coins; also, using steel provides cost savings and avoids fluctuations in price or supply of nickel.
On April 10, 2012, the Royal Canadian Mint announced design changes to the loonie and toonie, which include new security features.
Alongside the regular minting of the loonie with the standard image of the common loon on the coin's reverse, the Royal Canadian Mint has also released commemorative editions of the one-dollar coin for a variety of occasions. These coins have a circulation-grade finish and have been made available to the public in five-coin packs and in 25-coin rolls in addition to being released directly into circulation.
The Terry Fox Loonie was unveiled in 2005 and designed by Senior Engraver Stanley Witten. The coin depicts the Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and cancer research activist Terry Fox.
Following his design of the 2005 Terry Fox loonie, Witten told the Ottawa Citizen that "while sculpting the design, I wanted to capture Terry fighting the elements, running against the wind, towering over wind-bent trees on a lonely stretch of Canadian wilderness."
In 1997, 2002, and each year since 2004, the Royal Canadian Mint has issued a one-dollar coin that depicts a different and unique image of a bird on the coin's reverse. These special loonies have limited mintages and are available only in the six-coin specimen sets.
Footnotes
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18400 |
Laminar flow
In fluid dynamics, laminar flow is characterized by fluid particles following smooth paths in layers, with each layer moving smoothly past the adjacent layers with little or no mixing. At low velocities, the fluid tends to flow without lateral mixing, and adjacent layers slide past one another like playing cards. There are no cross-currents perpendicular to the direction of flow, nor eddies or swirls of fluids. In laminar flow, the motion of the particles of the fluid is very orderly with particles close to a solid surface moving in straight lines parallel to that surface.
Laminar flow is a flow regime characterized by high momentum diffusion and low momentum convection.
When a fluid is flowing through a closed channel such as a pipe or between two flat plates, either of two types of flow may occur depending on the velocity and viscosity of the fluid: laminar flow or turbulent flow. Laminar flow occurs at lower velocities, below a threshold at which the flow becomes turbulent. The velocity is determined by a dimensionless parameter characterizing the flow called the Reynolds number, which also depends on the viscosity and density of the fluid and dimensions of the channel. Turbulent flow is a less orderly flow regime that is characterized by eddies or small packets of fluid particles, which result in lateral mixing. In non-scientific terms, laminar flow is "smooth", while turbulent flow is "rough".
The type of flow occurring in a fluid in a channel is important in fluid-dynamics problems and subsequently affects heat and mass transfer in fluid systems. The dimensionless Reynolds number is an important parameter in the equations that describe whether fully developed flow conditions lead to laminar or turbulent flow. The Reynolds number is the ratio of the inertial force to the shearing force of the fluid: how fast the fluid is moving relative to how viscous it is, irrespective of the scale of the fluid system. Laminar flow generally occurs when the fluid is moving slowly or the fluid is very viscous. As the Reynolds number increases, such as by increasing the flow rate of the fluid, the flow will transition from laminar to turbulent flow at a specific range of Reynolds numbers, the laminar–turbulent transition range depending on small disturbance levels in the fluid or imperfections in the flow system. If the Reynolds number is very small, much less than 1, then the fluid will exhibit Stokes, or creeping, flow, where the viscous forces of the fluid dominate the inertial forces.
The specific calculation of the Reynolds number, and the values where laminar flow occurs, will depend on the geometry of the flow system and flow pattern. The common example is flow through a pipe, where the Reynolds number is defined as
where:
For such systems, laminar flow occurs when the Reynolds number is below a critical value of approximately 2,040, though the transition range is typically between 1,800 and 2,100.
For fluid systems occurring on external surfaces, such as flow past objects suspended in the fluid, other definitions for Reynolds numbers can be used to predict the type of flow around the object. The particle Reynolds number Rep would be used for particle suspended in flowing fluids, for example. As with flow in pipes, laminar flow typically occurs with lower Reynolds numbers, while turbulent flow and related phenomena, such as vortex shedding, occur with higher Reynolds numbers.
Laminar airflow is used to separate volumes of air, or prevent airborne contaminants from entering an area. Laminar flow hoods are used to exclude contaminants from sensitive processes in science, electronics and medicine. Air curtains are frequently used in commercial settings to keep heated or refrigerated air from passing through doorways. A laminar flow reactor (LFR) is a reactor that uses laminar flow to study chemical reactions and process mechanisms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18401 |
Luanda
Luanda (), is the capital and largest city in Angola. It is Angola's primary port, and its major industrial, cultural and urban centre. Located on Angola's northern Atlantic coast, Luanda is Angola's administrative centre, its chief seaport, and also the capital of the Luanda Province. Luanda and its metropolitan area is the most populous Portuguese-speaking capital city in the world, with over 8 million inhabitants in 2019 (a third of Angola's population).
Among the oldest colonial cities of Africa, it was founded in January 1576 as "São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda" by Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais. The city served as the centre of the slave trade to Brazil before its prohibition. At the start of the Angolan Civil War in 1975, most of the white Portuguese left as refugees, principally for Portugal. Luanda's population increased greatly from refugees fleeing the war, but its infrastructure was inadequate to handle the increase. This also caused the exacerbation of slums, or musseques, around Luanda. The city is currently undergoing a major reconstruction, with many large developments taking place that will alter its cityscape significantly.
The industries present in the city include the processing of agricultural products, beverage production, textile, cement, newly car assembly plants, construction materials, plastics, metallurgy, cigarettes and shoes. The city is also notable as an economic centre for oil, and a refinery is located in the city. Luanda has been considered one of the most expensive cities in the world for expatriates. The inhabitants of Luanda are mostly members of the ethnic group of the Ambundu, but in recent times there has been an increase of the number of the Bakongo and the Ovimbundu. There exists a European population, consisting mainly of Portuguese. Luanda was the main host city for the matches of the 2010 African Cup of Nations.
Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda on 25 January 1576 as "São Paulo da Assumpção de Loanda", with one hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. In 1618, the Portuguese built the fortress called "Fortaleza São Pedro da Barra", and they subsequently built two more: Fortaleza de São Miguel (1634) and Forte de São Francisco do Penedo (1765-6). Of these, the Fortaleza de São Miguel is the best preserved.
Luanda was Portugal's bridgehead from 1627, except during the Dutch rule of Luanda, from 1640 to 1648, as Fort Aardenburgh. The city served as the centre of slave trade to Brazil from circa 1550 to 1836. The slave trade was conducted mostly with the Portuguese colony of Brazil; Brazilian ships were the most numerous in the port of Luanda. This slave trade also involved local merchants and warriors who profited from the trade. During this period, no large scale territorial conquest was intended by the Portuguese; only a few minor settlements were established in the immediate hinterland of Luanda, some on the last stretch of the Kwanza River.
In the 17th century, the Imbangala became the main rivals of the Mbundu in supplying slaves to the Luanda market. In the 1750s, between 5,000 and 10,000 slaves were annually sold. By this time, Angola, a Portuguese colony, was in fact like a colony of Brazil, paradoxically another Portuguese colony. A strong degree of Brazilian influence was noted in Luanda until the Independence of Brazil in 1822.
In the 19th century, still under Portuguese rule, Luanda experienced a major economic revolution. The slave trade was abolished in 1836, and in 1844, Angola's ports were opened to foreign shipping. By 1850, Luanda was one of the greatest and most developed Portuguese cities in the vast Portuguese Empire outside Continental Portugal, full of trading companies, exporting (together with Benguela) palm and peanut oil, wax, copal, timber, ivory, cotton, coffee, and cocoa, among many other products. Maize, tobacco, dried meat, and cassava flour are also produced locally. The Angolan bourgeoisie was born by this time.
In 1889, Governor Brito Capelo opened the gates of an aqueduct which supplied the city with water, a formerly scarce resource, laying the foundation for major growth.
Throughout Portugal's dictatorship, known as the Estado Novo, Luanda grew from a town of 61,208 with 14.6% of those inhabitants being white in 1940, to a wealthy cosmopolitan major city of 475,328 in 1970 with 124,814 Europeans (26.3%) and around 50,000 mixed race inhabitants.
Like most of Portuguese Angola, the cosmopolitan city of Luanda was not affected by the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974); economic growth and development in the entire region reached record highs during this period. In 1972, a report called Luanda the "Paris of Africa".
By the time of Angolan independence in 1975, Luanda was a modern city. The majority of its population was African, but it was dominated by a strong minority of white Portuguese origin.
After the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 1974, with the advent of independence and the start of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), most of the white Portuguese Luandans left as refugees, principally for Portugal, with many travelling overland to South Africa. There was an immediate crisis, however, as the local African population lacked the skills and knowledge needed to run the city and maintain its well-developed infrastructure.
The large numbers of skilled technicians among the force of Cuban soldiers sent in to support the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government in the Angolan Civil War were able to make a valuable contribution to restoring and maintaining basic services in the city.
In the following years, however, slums called "musseques" — which had existed for decades — began to grow out of proportion and stretched several kilometres beyond Luanda's former city limits as a result of the decades-long civil war, and because of the rise of deep social inequalities due to large-scale migration of civil war refugees from other Angolan regions. For decades, Luanda's facilities were not adequately expanded to handle this huge increase in the city's population.
After 2002, with the end of the civil war and high economic growth rates fuelled by the wealth provided by the increasing oil and diamond production, major reconstruction started.
Luanda has also become one of the world's most expensive cities.
The central government supposedly allocates funds to all regions of the country, but the capital region receives the bulk of these funds. Since the end of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), stability has been widespread in the country, and major reconstruction has been going on since 2002 in those parts of the country that were damaged during the civil war.
Luanda has been of major concern because its population had multiplied and had far outgrown the capacity of the city, especially because much of its infrastructure (water, electricity, roads etc.) had become obsolete and degraded.
Luanda has been undergoing major road reconstruction in the 21st century, and new highways are planned to improve connections to Cacuaco, Viana, Samba, and the new airport.
Major social housing is also being constructed to house those who reside in slums, which dominate the landscape of Luanda. A large Chinese firm has been given a contract to construct the majority of replacement housing in Luanda. The Angolan minister of health recently stated poverty in Angola will be overcome by an increase in jobs and the housing of every citizen.
Luanda is divided into two parts, the "Baixa de Luanda" (lower Luanda, the old city) and the "Cidade Alta" (upper city or the new part). The "Baixa de Luanda" is situated next to the port, and has narrow streets and old colonial buildings. However, new constructions have by now covered large areas beyond these traditional limits, and a number of previously independent nuclei — like Viana — were incorporated into the city.
Until 2011, the former Luanda Province comprised what now forms five municipalities. In 2011 the Province was enlarged by the addition of two additional municipalities transferred from Bengo Province, namely Icolo e Bengo, and Quiçama. Excluding these additions, the five municipalities comprise Greater Luanda:
Two new municipalities have been created within Greater Luanda since 2017: Talatona and Kilamba-Kiaxi
The city of Luanda is divided in six urban districts: Ingombota, Angola Quiluanje, Maianga, Rangel, Samba and Sambizanga.
In Samba and Sambizanga, more high-rise developments are to be built. The capital Luanda is growing constantly - and in addition, increasingly beyond the official city limits and even provincial boundaries.
Luanda is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop. It is also the location of most of Angola's educational institutions, including the private Catholic University of Angola and the public University of Agostinho Neto. It is also the home of the colonial Governor's Palace and the Estádio da Cidadela (the "Citadel Stadium"), Angola's main stadium, with a total seating capacity of 60,000.
Luanda has a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification: "BSh"). The climate is warm to hot but surprisingly dry, owing to the cool Benguela Current, which prevents moisture from easily condensing into rain. Frequent fog prevents temperatures from falling at night even during the completely dry months from May to October. Luanda has an annual rainfall of , but the variability is among the highest in the world, with a co-efficient of variation above 40 percent. Observed records since 1858 range from in 1958 to in 1916. The short rainy season in March and April depends on a northerly counter current bringing moisture to the city: it has been shown clearly that weakness in the Benguela Current can increase rainfall about sixfold compared with years when that current is strong.
The inhabitants of Luanda are primarily members of African ethnic groups, mainly Ambundu, Ovimbundu, and Bakongo. The official and the most widely used language is Portuguese, although several Bantu languages are also used, chiefly Kimbundu, Umbundu, and Kikongo.
The population of Luanda has grown dramatically in recent years, due in large part to war-time migration to the city, which is safe compared to the rest of the country. Luanda, however, in 2006 saw an increase in violent crime, particularly in the shanty towns that surround the colonial urban core.
There is a sizable minority population of European origin, especially Portuguese (about 260,000), as well as Brazilians. In recent years, mainly since the mid-2000s, immigration from Portugal has increased due to greater opportunities present in Angola's booming economy. There is a sprinkling of immigrants from other African countries as well, including a small expatriate South African community. A small number of people of Luanda are of mixed race — European/Portuguese and native African. Over the last decades, a significant Chinese community has formed, as has a much smaller Vietnamese community.
Among the places of worship, they are predominantly Christian churches and temples:
As the economic and political center of Angola, Luanda is similarly the epicenter of Angolan culture. The city is home to numerous cultural institutions, including the Sindika Dokolo Foundation.
The city hosts the annual Luanda International Jazz Festival, since 2009.
The city is home to numerous museums, including:
Other monuments in the city include:
Around one-third of Angolans live in Luanda, 53% of whom live in poverty. Living conditions in Luanda are poor for most of the people, with essential services such as safe drinking water and electricity still in short supply, and severe shortcomings in traffic conditions. On the other hand, luxury constructions for the benefit of the wealthy minority are booming.
Luanda is one of the world's most expensive cities for resident foreigners.
New import tariffs imposed in March 2014 made Luanda even more expensive. As an example, a half-litre tub of vanilla ice-cream at the supermarket was reported to cost US$31. The higher import tariffs applied to hundreds of items, from garlic to cars. The stated aim was to try to diversify the heavily oil-dependent economy and nurture farming and industry, sectors which have remained weak. These tariffs have caused much hardship in a country where the average salary was US$260 per month in 2010, the latest year for which data was available. However, the average salary in the booming oil industry was over 20 times higher at US$5,400 per month.
Manufacturing includes processed foods, beverages, textiles, cement and other building materials, plastic products, metalware, cigarettes, and shoes/clothes. Petroleum (found in nearby off-shore deposits) is refined in the city, although this facility was repeatedly damaged during the Angolan Civil War of 1975–2002. Luanda has an excellent natural harbour; the chief exports are coffee, cotton, sugar, diamonds, iron, and salt.
The city also has a thriving building industry, an effect of the nationwide economic boom experienced since 2002, when political stability returned with the end of the civil war. Economic growth is largely supported by oil extraction activities, although great diversification is taking place. Large investment (domestic and international), along with strong economic growth, has dramatically increased construction of all economic sectors in the city of Luanda. In 2007, the first modern shopping mall in Angola was established in the city at Belas Shopping mall.
Luanda is the starting point of the Luanda railway that goes due east to Malanje. The civil war left the railway non-functional, but the railway has been restored up to Dondo and Malanje.
The main airport of Luanda is Quatro de Fevereiro Airport, which is the largest in the country. Currently, a new international airport, Angola International Airport is under construction southeast of the city, a few kilometres from Viana, which was expected to be opened in 2011. However, as the Angolan government did not continue to make the payments due to the Chinese enterprise in charge of the construction, the firm suspended its work in 2010.
The Port of Luanda serves as the largest port of Angola and is one of the busiest ports in Africa.. Major expansion of this port is also taking place. In 2014, a new port is being developed at Dande, about 30 km to the north.
Luanda's roads are in a poor state of repair, but are currently undergoing an extensive reconstruction process by the government in order to relieve traffic congestion in the city. Major road repairs can be found taking place in nearly every neighbourhood, including a major 6-lane highway connected Luanda to Viana.
Public transit is provided by the suburban services of the Luanda Railway, by the public company TCUL, and by a large fleet of privately owned collective taxis as white-blue painted minibuses called "Candongueiro". Candongueiros are usually Toyota Hiace vans, that are built to carry 12 people, although the candongueiros usually carry at least 15 people. They charge from 100 to 200 kwanzas per trip. They are known to disobey traffic rules, for example not stopping at signs and driving over pavements and aisles.
In 2019, the Luanda Light Rail network with an estimated cost of US $3 billion was announced to begin construction in 2020.
International schools:
Universities:
In 2013 Luanda together with Namibe, today's Moçâmedes, hosted the 2013 FIRS Men's Roller Hockey World Cup, the first time that a World Cup of roller hockey was held in Africa. The city is home to the Desportivo do Bengo football club.
Luanda is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18402 |
Logical positivism
Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism.
Flourishing in several European centres through the 1930s, the movement sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims by converting philosophy into "scientific philosophy", which, according to the logical positivists, ought to share the bases and structures of empirical sciences' best examples, such as Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Despite its ambition to overhaul philosophy by studying and mimicking the extant conduct of empirical science, logical positivism became erroneously stereotyped as a movement to regulate the scientific process and to place strict standards on it.
After World War II, the movement shifted to a milder variant, logical empiricism, led mainly by Carl Hempel, who, during the rise of Nazism, had immigrated to the United States. In the ensuing years, the movement's central premises, still unresolved, were heavily criticised by leading philosophers, particularly Willard van Orman Quine and Karl Popper, and even, within the movement itself, by Hempel. By 1960, the movement had run its course. Soon, publication of Thomas Kuhn's landmark book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", dramatically shifted academic philosophy's focus. By then, neopositivism was "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".
Logical positivists culled from Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language the verifiability principle or criterion of meaningfulness. As in Ernst Mach's phenomenalism, whereby the mind knows only actual or potential sensory experience, verificationists took all sciences' basic content to be only sensory experience. And some influence came from Percy Bridgman's musings that others proclaimed as operationalism, whereby a physical theory is understood by what laboratory procedures scientists perform to test its predictions. In verificationism, only the "verifiable" was scientific, and thus meaningful (or "cognitively meaningful"), whereas the unverifiable, being unscientific, were meaningless "pseudostatements" (just "emotively meaningful"). Unscientific discourse, as in ethics and metaphysics, would be unfit for discourse by philosophers, newly tasked to organize knowledge, not develop new knowledge.
Logical positivism is sometimes stereotyped as forbidding talk of unobservables, such as microscopic entities or such notions as causality and general principles, but that is an exaggeration. Rather, most neopositivists viewed talk of unobservables as metaphorical or elliptical: direct observations phrased abstractly or indirectly. So "theoretical terms" would garner meaning from "observational terms" via "correspondence rules", and thereby "theoretical laws" would be reduced to "empirical laws". Via Bertrand Russell's logicism, reducing mathematics to logic, physics' mathematical formulas would be converted to symbolic logic. Via Russell's logical atomism, ordinary language would break into discrete units of meaning. Rational reconstruction, then, would convert ordinary statements into standardized equivalents, all networked and united by a logical syntax. A scientific theory would be stated with its method of verification, whereby a logical calculus or empirical operation could verify its falsity or truth.
In the late 1930s, logical positivists fled Germany and Austria for Britain and the United States. By then, many had replaced Mach's phenomenalism with Otto Neurath's physicalism, whereby science's content is not actual or potential sensations, but instead is entities publicly observable. Rudolf Carnap, who had sparked logical positivism in the Vienna Circle, had sought to replace "verification" with simply "confirmation". With World War II's close in 1945, logical positivism became milder, "logical empiricism", led largely by Carl Hempel, in America, who expounded the covering law model of scientific explanation. Logical positivism became a major underpinning of analytic philosophy, and dominated philosophy in the English-speaking world, including philosophy of science, while influencing sciences, but especially social sciences, into the 1960s. Yet the movement failed to resolve its central problems, and its doctrines were increasingly criticized, most trenchantly by Willard Van Orman Quine, Norwood Hanson, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Carl Hempel.
"Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", by the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, introduced the view of philosophy as "critique of language", offering the possibility of a theoretically principled distinction of intelligible versus nonsensical discourse. "Tractatus" adhered to a correspondence theory of truth (versus a coherence theory of truth). Wittgenstein's influence also shows in some versions of the verifiability principle. In tractarian doctrine, truths of logic are tautologies, a view widely accepted by logical positivists who were also influenced by Wittgenstein's interpretation of probability although, according to Neurath, some logical positivists found "Tractatus" to contain too much metaphysics.
Gottlob Frege began the program of reducing mathematics to logic, continued it with Bertrand Russell, but lost interest in this logicism, and Russell continued it with Alfred North Whitehead in their "Principia Mathematica", inspiring some of the more mathematical logical posivists, such as Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap. Carnap's early anti-metaphysical works employed Russell's theory of types. Carnap envisioned a universal language that could reconstruct mathematics and thereby encode physics. Yet Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem showed this impossible except in trivial cases, and Alfred Tarski's undefinability theorem shattered all hopes of reducing mathematics to logic. Thus, a universal language failed to stem from Carnap's 1934 work "Logische Syntax der Sprache" ("Logical Syntax of Language"). Still, some logical positivists, including Carl Hempel, continued support of logicism.
In Germany, Hegelian metaphysics was a dominant movement, and Hegelian successors such as F H Bradley explained reality by postulating metaphysical entities lacking empirical basis, drawing reaction in the form of positivism. Starting in the late 19th century, there was a "back to Kant" movement. Ernst Mach's positivism and phenomenalism were a major influence.
The Vienna Circle, gathering around University of Vienna and Café Central, was led principally by Moritz Schlick. Schlick had held a neo-Kantian position, but later converted, via Carnap's 1928 book "Der logische Aufbau der Welt", that is, "The Logical Structure of the World". A 1929 pamphlet written by Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the Vienna Circle's positions. Another member of Vienna Circle to later prove very influential was Carl Hempel. A friendly but tenacious critic of the Circle was Karl Popper, whom Neurath nicknamed the "Official Opposition".
Carnap and other Vienna Circle members, including Hahn and Neurath, saw need for a weaker criterion of meaningfulness than verifiability. A radical "left" wing—led by Neurath and Carnap—began the program of "liberalization of empiricism", and they also emphasized fallibilism and pragmatics, which latter Carnap even suggested as empiricism's basis. A conservative "right" wing—led by Schlick and Waismann—rejected both the liberalization of empiricism and the epistemological nonfoundationalism of a move from phenomenalism to physicalism. As Neurath and somewhat Carnap posed science toward social reform, the split in Vienna Circle also reflected political views.
The Berlin Circle was led principally by Hans Reichenbach.
Both Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap had been influenced by and sought to define logical positivism versus the neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer—the then leading figure of Marburg school, so called—and against Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Logical positivists especially opposed Martin Heidegger's obscure metaphysics, the epitome of what logical positivism rejected. In the early 1930s, Carnap debated Heidegger over "metaphysical pseudosentences". Despite its revolutionary aims, logical positivism was but one view among many vying within Europe, and logical positivists initially spoke their language.
As the movement's first emissary to the New World, Moritz Schlick visited Stanford University in 1929, yet otherwise remained in Vienna and was murdered at the University, reportedly by a deranged student, in 1936. That year, a British attendee at some Vienna Circle meetings since 1933, A. J. Ayer saw his "Language, Truth and Logic", written in English, import logical positivism to the English-speaking world. By then, the Nazi Party's 1933 rise to power in Germany had triggered flight of intellectuals. In exile in England, Otto Neurath died in 1945. Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel—Carnap's protégé who had studied in Berlin with Reichenbach—settled permanently in America. Upon Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, remaining logical positivists, many of whom were also Jewish, were targeted and continued flight. Logical positivism thus became dominant in the English-speaking world.
Concerning reality, the necessary is a state true in all possible worlds—mere logical validity—whereas the contingent hinges on the way the particular world is. Concerning knowledge, the "a priori" is knowable before or without, whereas the "a posteriori" is knowable only after or through, relevant experience. Concerning statements, the "analytic" is true via terms' arrangement and meanings, thus a tautology—true by logical necessity but uninformative about the world—whereas the "synthetic" adds reference to a state of facts, a contingency.
In 1739, David Hume cast a fork aggressively dividing "relations of ideas" from "matters of fact and real existence", such that all truths are of one type or the other. By Hume's fork, truths by relations among ideas (abstract) all align on one side (analytic, necessary, "a priori"), whereas truths by states of actualities (concrete) always align on the other side (synthetic, contingent, "a posteriori"). Of any treatises containing neither, Hume orders, "Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion".
Thus awakened from "dogmatic slumber", Immanuel Kant quested to answer Hume's challenge—but by explaining how metaphysics is possible. Eventually, in his 1781 work, Kant crossed the tines of Hume's fork to identify another range of truths by necessity—synthetic "a priori", statements claiming states of facts but known true before experience—by arriving at transcendental idealism, attributing the mind a constructive role in phenomena by arranging sense data into the very experience "space", "time", and "substance". Thus, Kant saved Newton's law of universal gravitation from Hume's problem of induction by finding uniformity of nature to be "a priori" knowledge. Logical positivists rejected Kant's synthethic "a priori", and adopted Hume's fork, whereby a statement is either analytic and "a priori" (thus necessary and verifiable logically) or synthetic and "a posteriori" (thus contingent and verifiable empirically).
Early, most logical positivists proposed that all knowledge is based on logical inference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. In the 1936 and 1937 papers "Testability and meaning", individual terms replace sentences as the units of meaning. Further, theoretical terms no longer need to acquire meaning by explicit definition from observational terms: the connection may be indirect, through a system of implicit definitions. Carnap also provided an important, pioneering discussion of disposition predicates.
The logical positivists' initial stance was that a statement is "cognitively meaningful" only if some finite procedure conclusively determines its truth. By this verifiability principle, only statements verifiable either by their analyticity or by empiricism were "cognitively meaningful". Metaphysics, ontology, as well as much of ethics failed this criterion, and so were found "cognitively meaningless". Moritz Schlick, however, did not view ethical or aesthetic statements as cognitively meaningless. "Cognitive meaningfulness" was variously defined: having a truth value; corresponding to a possible state of affairs; intelligible or understandable as are scientific statements.
Ethics and aesthetics were subjective preferences, while theology and other metaphysics contained "pseudostatements", neither true nor false. This meaningfulness was cognitive, although other types of meaningfulness—for instance, emotive, expressive, or figurative—occurred in metaphysical discourse, dismissed from further review. Thus, logical positivism indirectly asserted Hume's law, the principle that "is" statements cannot justify "ought" statements, but are separated by an unbridgeable gap. A. J. Ayer's 1936 book asserted an extreme variant—the boo/hooray doctrine—whereby all evaluative judgments are but emotional reactions.
In an important pair of papers in 1936 and 1937, "Testability and meaning", Carnap replaced "verification" with "confirmation", on the view that although universal laws cannot be verified they can be confirmed. Later, Carnap employed abundant logical and mathematical methods in researching inductive logic while seeking to provide an account of probability as "degree of confirmation", but was never able to formulate a model. In Carnap's inductive logic, every universal law's degree of confirmation is always zero. In any event, the precise formulation of what came to be called the "criterion of cognitive significance" took three decades (Hempel 1950, Carnap 1956, Carnap 1961).
Carl Hempel became a major critic within the logical positivism movement. Hempel criticized the postivist thesis that empirical knowledge is restricted to "Basissätze"/"Beobachtungssätze"/"Protokollsätze" (basic statements or observation statements or protocol statements). Hempel elucidated the paradox of confirmation.
The second edition of A. J. Ayer's book arrived in 1946, and discerned "strong" versus "weak" forms of verification. Ayer concluded, "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience", but is verifiable in the weak sense "if it is possible for experience to render it probable". And yet, "no proposition, other than a tautology, can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis". Thus, all are open to weak verification.
Upon the global defeat of Nazism, and the removal from philosophy of rivals for radical reform—Marburg neo-Kantianism, Husserlian phenomenology, Heidegger's "existential hermeneutics"—and while hosted in the climate of American pragmatism and commonsense empiricism, the neopositivists shed much of their earlier, revolutionary zeal. No longer crusading to revise traditional philosophy into a new "scientific philosophy", they became respectable members of a new philosophy subdiscipline, "philosophy of science". Receiving support from Ernest Nagel, logical empiricists were especially influential in the social sciences.
Comtean positivism had viewed science as "description", whereas the logical positivists posed science as "explanation", perhaps to better realize the envisioned unity of science by covering not only fundamental science—that is, fundamental physics—but the special sciences, too, for instance biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and economics. The most widely accepted concept of scientific explanation, held even by neopositivist critic Karl Popper, was the deductive-nomological model (DN model). Yet DN model received its greatest explication by Carl Hempel, first in his 1942 article "The function of general laws in history", and more explicitly with Paul Oppenheim in their 1948 article "Studies in the logic of explanation".
In the DN model, the stated phenomenon to be explained is the "explanandum"—which can be an event, law, or theory—whereas premises stated to explain it are the "explanans". Explanans must be true or highly confirmed, contain at least one law, and entail the explanandum. Thus, given initial conditions "C1, C2 . . . Cn" plus general laws "L1, L2 . . . Ln", event "E" is a deductive consequence and scientifically explained. In the DN model, a law is an unrestricted generalization by conditional proposition—"If A, then B"—and has empirical content testable. (Differing from a merely true regularity—for instance, "George always carries only $1 bills in his wallet"—a law suggests what "must" be true, and is consequent of a scientific theory's axiomatic structure.)
By the Humean empiricist view that humans observe sequences of events, (not cause and effect, as causality and causal mechanisms are unobservable), the DN model neglects causality beyond mere constant conjunction, first event "A" and then always event "B". Hempel's explication of the DN model held natural laws—empirically confirmed regularities—as satisfactory and, if formulated realistically, approximating causal explanation. In later articles, Hempel defended the DN model and proposed a probabilistic explanation, inductive-statistical model (IS model). the DN and IS models together form the "covering law model", as named by a critic, William Dray. Derivation of statistical laws from other statistical laws goes to deductive-statistical model (DS model). Georg Henrik von Wright, another critic, named it "subsumption theory", fitting the ambition of theory reduction.
Logical positivists were generally committed to "Unified Science", and sought a common language or, in Neurath's phrase, a "universal slang" whereby all scientific propositions could be expressed. The adequacy of proposals or fragments of proposals for such a language was often asserted on the basis of various "reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one special science to the terms of another, putatively more fundamental. Sometimes these reductions consisted of set-theoretic manipulations of a few logically primitive concepts (as in Carnap's "Logical Structure of the World", 1928). Sometimes, these reductions consisted of allegedly analytic or "a priori" deductive relationships (as in Carnap's "Testability and meaning"). A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept.
As in Comtean positivism's envisioned unity of science, neopositivists aimed to network all special sciences through the covering law model of scientific explanation. And ultimately, by supplying boundary conditions and supplying bridge laws within the covering law model, all the special sciences' laws would reduce to fundamental physics, the fundamental science.
After World War II, key tenets of logical positivism, including its atomistic philosophy of science, the verifiability principle, and the fact/value gap, drew escalated criticism. It was clear that empirical claims cannot be verified to be universally true. Thus, as initially stated, the verifiability criterion made universal statements meaningless, and even made statements beyond empiricism for technological but not conceptual reasons meaningless, which would pose significant problems for science. These problems were recognized within the movement, which hosted attempted solutions—Carnap's move to "confirmation", Ayer's acceptance of "weak verification"—but the program drew sustained criticism from a number of directions by the 1950s. Even philosophers disagreeing among themselves on which direction general epistemology ought to take, as well as on philosophy of science, agreed that the logical empiricist program was untenable, and it became viewed as self-contradictory. The verifiability criterion of meaning was itself unverified. Notable critics included Nelson Goodman, Willard Van Orman Quine, Norwood Hanson, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, J L Austin, Peter Strawson, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.
Although an empiricist, American logician Willard Van Orman Quine published the 1951 paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", which challenged conventional empiricist presumptions. Quine attacked the analytic/synthetic division, which the verificationist program had been hinged upon in order to entail, by consequence of Hume's fork, both necessity and aprioricity. Quine's ontological relativity explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief, the speaker's conception of the entire world. Quine later proposed naturalized epistemology.
In 1958, Norwood Hanson's "Patterns of Discovery" undermined the division of observation versus theory, as one can predict, collect, prioritize, and assess data only via some horizon of expectation set by a theory. Thus, any dataset—the direct observations, the scientific facts—is laden with theory.
An early, tenacious critic was Karl Popper whose 1934 book "Logik der Forschung", arriving in English in 1959 as "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", directly answered verificationism. Popper heeded the problem of induction as rendering empirical verification logically impossible, and the deductive fallacy of affirming the consequent reveals any phenomenon's capacity to host more than one logically possible explanation. Accepting scientific method as hypotheticodeduction, whose inference form is denying the consequent, Popper finds scientific method unable to proceed without falsifiable predictions. Popper thus identifies falsifiability to demarcate not "meaningful" from "meaningless" but simply "scientific" from "unscientific"—a label not in itself unfavorable.
Popper finds virtue in metaphysics, required to develop new scientific theories. And an unfalsifiable—thus unscientific, perhaps metaphysical—concept in one era can later, through evolving knowledge or technology, become falsifiable, thus scientific. Popper also found science's quest for truth to rest on values. Popper disparages the "pseudoscientific", which occurs when an unscientific theory is proclaimed true and coupled with seemingly scientific method by "testing" the unfalsifiable theory—whose predictions are confirmed by necessity—or when a scientific theory's falsifiable predictions are strongly falsified but the theory is persistently protected by "immunizing stratagems", such as the appendage of "ad hoc" clauses saving the theory or the recourse to increasingly speculative hypotheses shielding the theory.
Popper's "scientific" epistemology is falsificationism, which finds that no number, degree, and variety of empirical successes can either verify or confirm scientific theory. Falsificationism finds science's aim as "corroboration" of scientific theory, which strives for scientific realism but accepts the maximal status of strongly corroborated verisimilitude ("truthlikeness"). Explicitly denying the positivist view that all knowledge is scientific, Popper developed the "general" epistemology critical rationalism, which finds human knowledge to evolve by "conjectures and refutations". Popper thus acknowledged the value of the positivist movement, driving evolution of human understanding, but claimed that he had "killed positivism".
With his landmark, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962), Thomas Kuhn critically destabilized the verificationist program, which was presumed to call for foundationalism. (But already in the 1930s, Otto Neurath had argued for nonfoundationalism via coherentism by likening science to a boat (Neurath's boat) that scientists must rebuild at sea.) Although Kuhn's thesis itself was attacked even by opponents of neopositivism, in the 1970 postscript to "Structure", Kuhn asserted, at least, that there was no algorithm to science—and, on that, even most of Kuhn's critics agreed.
Powerful and persuasive, Kuhn's book, unlike the vocabulary and symbols of logic's formal language, was written in natural language open to the layperson. Kuhn's book was first published in a volume of "International Encyclopedia of Unified Science"—a project begun by logical positivists but co-edited by Neurath whose view of science was already nonfoundationalist as mentioned above—and some sense unified science, indeed, but by bringing it into the realm of historical and social assessment, rather than fitting it to the model of physics. Kuhn's ideas were rapidly adopted by scholars in disciplines well outside natural sciences, and, as logical empiricists were extremely influential in the social sciences, ushered academia into postpositivism or postempiricism.
The "received view" operates on the "correspondence rule" that states, "The observational terms are taken as referring to specified phenomena or phenomenal properties, and the only interpretation given to the theoretical terms is their explicit definition provided by the correspondence rules". According to Hilary Putnam, a former student of Reichenbach and of Carnap, the dichotomy of observational terms versus theoretical terms introduced a problem within scientific discussion that was nonexistent until this dichotomy was stated by logical positivists. Putnam's four objections:
Putnam also alleged that positivism was actually a form of metaphysical idealism by its rejecting scientific theory's ability to garner knowledge about nature's unobservable aspects. With his "no miracles" argument, posed in 1974, Putnam asserted scientific realism, the stance that science achieves true—or approximately true—knowledge of the world as it exists independently of humans' sensory experience. In this, Putnam opposed not only the positivism but other instrumentalism—whereby scientific theory is but a human tool to predict human observations—filling the void left by positivism's decline.
By the late 1960s, logical positivism had become exhausted. Interviewed in the late 1970s, A. J. Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false". After some laughter, he says that "it was true in spirit." Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism, Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era of postpositivism. John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".
Logical positivism's fall reopened debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of the world beyond human experience (scientific realism) versus whether it is but a human tool to predict human experience (instrumentalism). Meanwhile, it became popular among philosophers to rehash the faults and failures of logical positivism without investigation of it. Thereby, logical positivism has been generally misrepresented, sometimes severely. Arguing for their own views, often framed versus logical positivism, many philosophers have reduced logical positivism to simplisms and stereotypes, especially the notion of logical positivism as a type of foundationalism. In any event, the movement helped anchor analytic philosophy in the English-speaking world, and returned Britain to empiricism. Without the logical positivists, who have been tremendously influential outside philosophy, especially in psychology and social sciences, intellectual life of the 20th century would be unrecognizable.
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Lorentz transformation
In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a one-parameter family of linear transformations from a coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant velocity (the parameter) relative to the former. The respective inverse transformation is then parametrized by the negative of this velocity. The transformations are named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz.
The most common form of the transformation, parametrized by the real constant formula_1 representing a velocity confined to the -direction, is expressed as
where and are the coordinates of an event in two frames, where the primed frame is seen from the unprimed frame as moving with speed along the -axis, is the speed of light, and formula_3 is the Lorentz factor. When speed "v" is much smaller than "c", the Lorentz factor is negligibly different from 1, but as "v" approaches "c", formula_4 grows without bound. The value of "v" must be smaller than "c" for the transformation to make sense.
Expressing the speed as formula_5 an equivalent form of the transformation is
Frames of reference can be divided into two groups: inertial (relative motion with constant velocity) and non-inertial (accelerating, moving in curved paths, rotational motion with constant angular velocity, etc.). The term "Lorentz transformations" only refers to transformations between "inertial" frames, usually in the context of special relativity.
In each reference frame, an observer can use a local coordinate system (usually Cartesian coordinates in this context) to measure lengths, and a clock to measure time intervals. An event is something that happens at a point in space at an instant of time, or more formally a point in spacetime. The transformations connect the space and time coordinates of an event as measured by an observer in each frame.
They supersede the Galilean transformation of Newtonian physics, which assumes an absolute space and time (see Galilean relativity). The Galilean transformation is a good approximation only at relative speeds much less than the speed of light. Lorentz transformations have a number of unintuitive features that do not appear in Galilean transformations. For example, they reflect the fact that observers moving at different velocities may measure different distances, elapsed times, and even different orderings of events, but always such that the speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames. The invariance of light speed is one of the postulates of special relativity.
Historically, the transformations were the result of attempts by Lorentz and others to explain how the speed of light was observed to be independent of the reference frame, and to understand the symmetries of the laws of electromagnetism. The Lorentz transformation is in accordance with Albert Einstein's special relativity, but was derived first.
The Lorentz transformation is a linear transformation. It may include a rotation of space; a rotation-free Lorentz transformation is called a Lorentz boost. In Minkowski space, the mathematical model of spacetime in special relativity, the Lorentz transformations preserve the spacetime interval between any two events. This property is the defining property of a Lorentz transformation. They describe only the transformations in which the spacetime event at the origin is left fixed. They can be considered as a hyperbolic rotation of Minkowski space. The more general set of transformations that also includes translations is known as the Poincaré group.
Many physicists—including Woldemar Voigt, George FitzGerald, Joseph Larmor, and Hendrik Lorentz himself—had been discussing the physics implied by these equations since 1887. Early in 1889, Oliver Heaviside had shown from Maxwell's equations that the electric field surrounding a spherical distribution of charge should cease to have spherical symmetry once the charge is in motion relative to the aether. FitzGerald then conjectured that Heaviside's distortion result might be applied to a theory of intermolecular forces. Some months later, FitzGerald published the conjecture that bodies in motion are being contracted, in order to explain the baffling outcome of the 1887 aether-wind experiment of Michelson and Morley. In 1892, Lorentz independently presented the same idea in a more detailed manner, which was subsequently called FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis. Their explanation was widely known before 1905.
Lorentz (1892–1904) and Larmor (1897–1900), who believed the luminiferous aether hypothesis, also looked for the transformation under which Maxwell's equations are invariant when transformed from the aether to a moving frame. They extended the FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis and found out that the time coordinate has to be modified as well ("local time"). Henri Poincaré gave a physical interpretation to local time (to first order in "v"/"c", the relative velocity of the two reference frames normalized to the speed of light) as the consequence of clock synchronization, under the assumption that the speed of light is constant in moving frames. Larmor is credited to have been the first to understand the crucial time dilation property inherent in his equations.
In 1905, Poincaré was the first to recognize that the transformation has the properties of a mathematical group,
and named it after Lorentz.
Later in the same year Albert Einstein published what is now called special relativity, by deriving the Lorentz transformation under the assumptions of the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light in any inertial reference frame, and by abandoning the mechanistic aether as unnecessary.
An "event" is something that happens at a certain point in spacetime, or more generally, the point in spacetime itself. In any inertial frame an event is specified by a time coordinate "ct" and a set of Cartesian coordinates to specify position in space in that frame. Subscripts label individual events.
From Einstein's second postulate of relativity follows
in all inertial frames for events connected by "light signals". The quantity on the left is called the "spacetime interval" between events and . The interval between "any two" events, not necessarily separated by light signals, is in fact invariant, i.e., independent of the state of relative motion of observers in different inertial frames, as is shown using homogeneity and isotropy of space. The transformation sought after thus must possess the property that
where are the spacetime coordinates used to define events in one frame, and are the coordinates in another frame. First one observes that is satisfied if an arbitrary -tuple of numbers are added to events and . Such transformations are called "spacetime translations" and are not dealt with further here. Then one observes that a "linear" solution preserving the origin of the simpler problem
solves the general problem too. (A solution satisfying the left formula automatically satisfies the right formula, see polarization identity.) Finding the solution to the simpler problem is just a matter of look-up in the theory of classical groups that preserve bilinear forms of various signature. First equation in can be written more compactly as
where refers to the bilinear form of signature on exposed by the right hand side formula in . The alternative notation defined on the right is referred to as the "relativistic dot product". Spacetime mathematically viewed as endowed with this bilinear form is known as Minkowski space . The Lorentz transformation is thus an element of the group Lorentz group , the Lorentz group or, for those that prefer the other metric signature, (also called the Lorentz group). One has
which is precisely preservation of the bilinear form which implies (by linearity of and bilinearity of the form) that is satisfied. The elements of the Lorentz group are rotations and "boosts" and mixes thereof. If the spacetime translations are included, then one obtains the "inhomogeneous Lorentz group" or the Poincaré group.
The relations between the primed and unprimed spacetime coordinates are the Lorentz transformations, each coordinate in one frame is a linear function of all the coordinates in the other frame, and the inverse functions are the inverse transformation. Depending on how the frames move relative to each other, and how they are oriented in space relative to each other, other parameters that describe direction, speed, and orientation enter the transformation equations.
Transformations describing relative motion with constant (uniform) velocity and without rotation of the space coordinate axes are called "boosts", and the relative velocity between the frames is the parameter of the transformation. The other basic type of Lorentz transformations is rotations in the spatial coordinates only, these are also inertial frames since there is no relative motion, the frames are simply tilted (and not continuously rotating), and in this case quantities defining the rotation are the parameters of the transformation (e.g., axis–angle representation, or Euler angles, etc.). A combination of a rotation and boost is a "homogeneous transformation", which transforms the origin back to the origin.
The full Lorentz group also contains special transformations that are neither rotations nor boosts, but rather reflections in a plane through the origin. Two of these can be singled out; spatial inversion in which the spatial coordinates of all events are reversed in sign and temporal inversion in which the time coordinate for each event gets its sign reversed.
Boosts should not be conflated with mere displacements in spacetime; in this case, the coordinate systems are simply shifted and there is no relative motion. However, these also count as symmetries forced by special relativity since they leave the spacetime interval invariant. A combination of a rotation with a boost, followed by a shift in spacetime, is an "inhomogeneous Lorentz transformation", an element of the Poincaré group, which is also called the inhomogeneous Lorentz group.
A "stationary" observer in frame defines events with coordinates . Another frame moves with velocity relative to , and an observer in this "moving" frame defines events using the coordinates .
The coordinate axes in each frame are parallel (the and axes are parallel, the and axes are parallel, and the and axes are parallel), remain mutually perpendicular, and relative motion is along the coincident axes. At , the origins of both coordinate systems are the same, . In other words, the times and positions are coincident at this event. If all these hold, then the coordinate systems are said to be in standard configuration, or synchronized.
If an observer in records an event , then an observer in records the "same" event with coordinates
where is the relative velocity between frames in the -direction, is the speed of light, and
(lowercase gamma) is the Lorentz factor.
Here, is the "parameter" of the transformation, for a given boost it is a constant number, but can take a continuous range of values. In the setup used here, positive relative velocity is motion along the positive directions of the axes, zero relative velocity is no relative motion, while negative relative velocity is relative motion along the negative directions of the axes. The magnitude of relative velocity cannot equal or exceed , so only subluminal speeds are allowed. The corresponding range of is .
The transformations are not defined if is outside these limits. At the speed of light () is infinite, and faster than light () is a complex number, each of which make the transformations unphysical. The space and time coordinates are measurable quantities and numerically must be real numbers.
As an active transformation, an observer in F′ notices the coordinates of the event to be "boosted" in the negative directions of the axes, because of the in the transformations. This has the equivalent effect of the "coordinate system" F′ boosted in the positive directions of the axes, while the event does not change and is simply represented in another coordinate system, a passive transformation.
The inverse relations ( in terms of ) can be found by algebraically solving the original set of equations. A more efficient way is to use physical principles. Here is the "stationary" frame while is the "moving" frame. According to the principle of relativity, there is no privileged frame of reference, so the transformations from to must take exactly the same form as the transformations from to . The only difference is moves with velocity relative to (i.e., the relative velocity has the same magnitude but is oppositely directed). Thus if an observer in notes an event , then an observer in notes the "same" event with coordinates
and the value of remains unchanged. This "trick" of simply reversing the direction of relative velocity while preserving its magnitude, and exchanging primed and unprimed variables, always applies to finding the inverse transformation of every boost in any direction.
Sometimes it is more convenient to use (lowercase beta) instead of , so that
which shows much more clearly the symmetry in the transformation. From the allowed ranges of and the definition of , it follows . The use of and is standard throughout the literature.
The Lorentz transformations can also be derived in a way that resembles circular rotations in 3d space using the hyperbolic functions. For the boost in the direction, the results are
where (lowercase zeta) is a parameter called "rapidity" (many other symbols are used, including ). Given the strong resemblance to rotations of spatial coordinates in 3d space in the Cartesian xy, yz, and zx planes, a Lorentz boost can be thought of as a hyperbolic rotation of spacetime coordinates in the xt, yt, and zt Cartesian-time planes of 4d Minkowski space. The parameter is the hyperbolic angle of rotation, analogous to the ordinary angle for circular rotations. This transformation can be illustrated with a Minkowski diagram.
The hyperbolic functions arise from the "difference" between the squares of the time and spatial coordinates in the spacetime interval, rather than a sum. The geometric significance of the hyperbolic functions can be visualized by taking or in the transformations. Squaring and subtracting the results, one can derive hyperbolic curves of constant coordinate values but varying , which parametrizes the curves according to the identity
Conversely the and axes can be constructed for varying coordinates but constant . The definition
provides the link between a constant value of rapidity, and the slope of the axis in spacetime. A consequence these two hyperbolic formulae is an identity that matches the Lorentz factor
Comparing the Lorentz transformations in terms of the relative velocity and rapidity, or using the above formulae, the connections between , , and are
Taking the inverse hyperbolic tangent gives the rapidity
Since , it follows . From the relation between and , positive rapidity is motion along the positive directions of the axes, zero rapidity is no relative motion, while negative rapidity is relative motion along the negative directions of the axes.
The inverse transformations are obtained by exchanging primed and unprimed quantities to switch the coordinate frames, and negating rapidity since this is equivalent to negating the relative velocity. Therefore,
The inverse transformations can be similarly visualized by considering the cases when and .
So far the Lorentz transformations have been applied to "one event". If there are two events, there is a spatial separation and time interval between them. It follows from the linearity of the Lorentz transformations that two values of space and time coordinates can be chosen, the Lorentz transformations can be applied to each, then subtracted to get the Lorentz transformations of the differences;
with inverse relations
where (uppercase delta) indicates a difference of quantities; e.g., for two values of coordinates, and so on.
These transformations on "differences" rather than spatial points or instants of time are useful for a number of reasons:
A critical requirement of the Lorentz transformations is the invariance of the speed of light, a fact used in their derivation, and contained in the transformations themselves. If in the equation for a pulse of light along the direction is , then in the Lorentz transformations give , and vice versa, for any .
For relative speeds much less than the speed of light, the Lorentz transformations reduce to the Galilean transformation
in accordance with the correspondence principle. It is sometimes said that nonrelativistic physics is a physics of "instantaneous action at a distance".
Three counterintuitive, but correct, predictions of the transformations are:
The use of vectors allows positions and velocities to be expressed in arbitrary directions compactly. A single boost in any direction depends on the full relative velocity vector with a magnitude that cannot equal or exceed , so that .
Only time and the coordinates parallel to the direction of relative motion change, while those coordinates perpendicular do not. With this in mind, split the spatial position vector as measured in , and as measured in , each into components perpendicular (⊥) and parallel ( ‖ ) to ,
then the transformations are
where · is the dot product. The Lorentz factor retains its definition for a boost in any direction, since it depends only on the magnitude of the relative velocity. The definition with magnitude is also used by some authors.
Introducing a unit vector in the direction of relative motion, the relative velocity is with magnitude and direction , and vector projection and rejection give respectively
Accumulating the results gives the full transformations,
\end{align}
The projection and rejection also applies to . For the inverse transformations, exchange and to switch observed coordinates, and negate the relative velocity (or simply the unit vector since the magnitude is always positive) to obtain
\end{align}
The unit vector has the advantage of simplifying equations for a single boost, allows either or to be reinstated when convenient, and the rapidity parametrization is immediately obtained by replacing and . It is not convenient for multiple boosts.
The vectorial relation between relative velocity and rapidity is
and the "rapidity vector" can be defined as
each of which serves as a useful abbreviation in some contexts. The magnitude of is the absolute value of the rapidity scalar confined to , which agrees with the range .
Defining the coordinate velocities and Lorentz factor by
taking the differentials in the coordinates and time of the vector transformations, then dividing equations, leads to
The velocities and are the velocity of some massive object. They can also be for a third inertial frame (say "F"′′), in which case they must be "constant". Denote either entity by X. Then X moves with velocity relative to F, or equivalently with velocity relative to F′, in turn F′ moves with velocity relative to F. The inverse transformations can be obtained in a similar way, or as with position coordinates exchange and , and change to .
The transformation of velocity is useful in stellar aberration, the Fizeau experiment, and the relativistic Doppler effect.
The Lorentz transformations of acceleration can be similarly obtained by taking differentials in the velocity vectors, and dividing these by the time differential.
In general, given four quantities and and their Lorentz-boosted counterparts and , a relation of the form
implies the quantities transform under Lorentz transformations similar to the transformation of spacetime coordinates;
The decomposition of (and ) into components perpendicular and parallel to is exactly the same as for the position vector, as is the process of obtaining the inverse transformations (exchange and to switch observed quantities, and reverse the direction of relative motion by the substitution ).
The quantities collectively make up a "four-vector", where is the "timelike component", and the "spacelike component". Examples of and are the following:
For a given object (e.g., particle, fluid, field, material), if or correspond to properties specific to the object like its charge density, mass density, spin, etc., its properties can be fixed in the rest frame of that object. Then the Lorentz transformations give the corresponding properties in a frame moving relative to the object with constant velocity. This breaks some notions taken for granted in non-relativistic physics. For example, the energy of an object is a scalar in non-relativistic mechanics, but not in relativistic mechanics because energy changes under Lorentz transformations; its value is different for various inertial frames. In the rest frame of an object, it has a rest energy and zero momentum. In a boosted frame its energy is different and it appears to have a momentum. Similarly, in non-relativistic quantum mechanics the spin of a particle is a constant vector, but in relativistic quantum mechanics spin depends on relative motion. In the rest frame of the particle, the spin pseudovector can be fixed to be its ordinary non-relativistic spin with a zero timelike quantity , however a boosted observer will perceive a nonzero timelike component and an altered spin.
Not all quantities are invariant in the form as shown above, for example orbital angular momentum does not have a timelike quantity, and neither does the electric field nor the magnetic field . The definition of angular momentum is , and in a boosted frame the altered angular momentum is . Applying this definition using the transformations of coordinates and momentum leads to the transformation of angular momentum. It turns out transforms with another vector quantity related to boosts, see relativistic angular momentum for details. For the case of the and fields, the transformations cannot be obtained as directly using vector algebra. The Lorentz force is the definition of these fields, and in it is while in it is . A method of deriving the EM field transformations in an efficient way which also illustrates the unit of the electromagnetic field uses tensor algebra, given below.
Throughout, italic non-bold capital letters are 4×4 matrices, while non-italic bold letters are 3×3 matrices.
Writing the coordinates in column vectors and the Minkowski metric as a square matrix
the spacetime interval takes the form (T denotes transpose)
and is invariant under a Lorentz transformation
where Λ is a square matrix which can depend on parameters.
The set of all Lorentz transformations Λ in this article is denoted formula_30. This set together with matrix multiplication forms a group, in this context known as the "Lorentz group". Also, the above expression is a quadratic form of signature (3,1) on spacetime, and the group of transformations which leaves this quadratic form invariant is the indefinite orthogonal group O(3,1), a Lie group. In other words, the Lorentz group is O(3,1). As presented in this article, any Lie groups mentioned are matrix Lie groups. In this context the operation of composition amounts to matrix multiplication.
From the invariance of the spacetime interval it follows
and this matrix equation contains the general conditions on the Lorentz transformation to ensure invariance of the spacetime interval. Taking the determinant of the equation using the product rule gives immediately
Writing the Minkowski metric as a block matrix, and the Lorentz transformation in the most general form,
carrying out the block matrix multiplications obtains general conditions on to ensure relativistic invariance. Not much information can be directly extracted from all the conditions, however one of the results
is useful; always so it follows that
The negative inequality may be unexpected, because multiplies the time coordinate and this has an effect on time symmetry. If the positive equality holds, then is the Lorentz factor.
The determinant and inequality provide four ways to classify Lorentz Transformations ("herein LTs for brevity"). Any particular LT has only one determinant sign "and" only one inequality. There are four sets which include every possible pair given by the intersections ("n"-shaped symbol meaning "and") of these classifying sets.
where "+" and "−" indicate the determinant sign, while "↑" for ≥ and "↓" for ≤ denote the inequalities.
The full Lorentz group splits into the union ("u"-shaped symbol meaning "or") of four disjoint sets
A subgroup of a group must be closed under the same operation of the group (here matrix multiplication). In other words, for two Lorentz transformations and from a particular set, the composite Lorentz transformations and must be in the same set as and . This is not always the case: the composition of two antichronous Lorentz transformations is orthochronous, and the composition of two improper Lorentz transformations is proper. In other words, while the sets formula_37, formula_38, formula_39, and formula_40 all form subgroups, the sets containing improper and/or antichronous transformations without enough proper orthochronous transformations (e.g. formula_41, formula_42, formula_43) do not form subgroups.
If a Lorentz covariant 4-vector is measured in one inertial frame with result formula_44, and the same measurement made in another inertial frame (with the same orientation and origin) gives result formula_45, the two results will be related by
where the boost matrix formula_47 represents the Lorentz transformation between the unprimed and primed frames and formula_48 is the velocity of the primed frame as seen from the unprimed frame. The matrix is given by
where formula_50 is the magnitude of the velocity and formula_51 is the Lorentz factor. This formula represents a passive transformation, as it describes how the coordinates of the measured quantity changes from the unprimed frame to the primed frame. The active transformation is given by formula_52.
If a frame is boosted with velocity relative to frame , and another frame is boosted with velocity relative to , the separate boosts are
and the composition of the two boosts connects the coordinates in and ,
Successive transformations act on the left. If and are collinear (parallel or antiparallel along the same line of relative motion), the boost matrices commute: . This composite transformation happens to be another boost, , where is collinear with and .
If and are not collinear but in different directions, the situation is considerably more complicated. Lorentz boosts along different directions do not commute: and are not equal. Also, each of these compositions is "not" a single boost, but they are still Lorentz transformations they each preserve the spacetime interval. It turns out the composition of any two Lorentz boosts is equivalent to a boost followed or preceded by a rotation on the spatial coordinates, in the form of or . The and are composite velocities, while and are rotation parameters (e.g. axis-angle variables, Euler angles, etc.). The rotation in block matrix form is simply
where is a 3d rotation matrix, which rotates any 3d vector in one sense (active transformation), or equivalently the coordinate frame in the opposite sense (passive transformation). It is "not" simple to connect and (or and ) to the original boost parameters and . In a composition of boosts, the matrix is named the Wigner rotation, and gives rise to the Thomas precession. These articles give the explicit formulae for the composite transformation matrices, including expressions for .
In this article the axis-angle representation is used for . The rotation is about an axis in the direction of a unit vector , through angle (positive anticlockwise, negative clockwise, according to the right-hand rule). The "axis-angle vector"
will serve as a useful abbreviation.
Spatial rotations alone are also Lorentz transformations they leave the spacetime interval invariant. Like boosts, successive rotations about different axes do not commute. Unlike boosts, the composition of any two rotations is equivalent to a single rotation. Some other similarities and differences between the boost and rotation matrices include:
The most general proper Lorentz transformation includes a boost and rotation together, and is a nonsymmetric matrix. As special cases, and . An explicit form of the general Lorentz transformation is cumbersome to write down and will not be given here. Nevertheless, closed form expressions for the transformation matrices will be given below using group theoretical arguments. It will be easier to use the rapidity parametrization for boosts, in which case one writes and .
The set of transformations
with matrix multiplication as the operation of composition forms a group, called the "restricted Lorentz group", and is the special indefinite orthogonal group SO+(3,1). (The plus sign indicates that it preserves the orientation of the temporal dimension).
For simplicity, look at the infinitesimal Lorentz boost in the x direction (examining a boost in any other direction, or rotation about any axis, follows an identical procedure). The infinitesimal boost is a small boost away from the identity, obtained by the Taylor expansion of the boost matrix to first order about ,
where the higher order terms not shown are negligible because is small, and is simply the boost matrix in the "x" direction. The derivative of the matrix is the matrix of derivatives (of the entries, with respect to the same variable), and it is understood the derivatives are found first then evaluated at ,
For now, is defined by this result (its significance will be explained shortly). In the limit of an infinite number of infinitely small steps, the finite boost transformation in the form of a matrix exponential is obtained
where the limit definition of the exponential has been used (see also characterizations of the exponential function). More generally
The axis-angle vector and rapidity vector are altogether six continuous variables which make up the group parameters (in this particular representation), and the generators of the group are and , each vectors of matrices with the explicit forms
These are all defined in an analogous way to above, although the minus signs in the boost generators are conventional. Physically, the generators of the Lorentz group correspond to important symmetries in spacetime: are the "rotation generators" which correspond to angular momentum, and are the "boost generators" which correspond to the motion of the system in spacetime. The derivative of any smooth curve with in the group depending on some group parameter with respect to that group parameter, evaluated at , serves as a definition of a corresponding group generator , and this reflects an infinitesimal transformation away from the identity. The smooth curve can always be taken as an exponential as the exponential will always map smoothly back into the group via for all ; this curve will yield again when differentiated at .
Expanding the exponentials in their Taylor series obtains
which compactly reproduce the boost and rotation matrices as given in the previous section.
It has been stated that the general proper Lorentz transformation is a product of a boost and rotation. At the "infinitesimal" level the product
is commutative because only linear terms are required (products like and count as higher order terms and are negligible). Taking the limit as before leads to the finite transformation in the form of an exponential
The converse is also true, but the decomposition of a finite general Lorentz transformation into such factors is nontrivial. In particular,
because the generators do not commute. For a description of how to find the factors of a general Lorentz transformation in terms of a boost and a rotation "in principle" (this usually does not yield an intelligible expression in terms of generators and ), see Wigner rotation. If, on the other hand, "the decomposition is given" in terms of the generators, and one wants to find the product in terms of the generators, then the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff formula applies.
Lorentz generators can be added together, or multiplied by real numbers, to obtain more Lorentz generators. In other words, the set of all Lorentz generators
together with the operations of ordinary matrix addition and multiplication of a matrix by a number, forms a vector space over the real numbers. The generators form a basis set of "V", and the components of the axis-angle and rapidity vectors, , are the coordinates of a Lorentz generator with respect to this basis.
Three of the commutation relations of the Lorentz generators are
where the bracket is known as the "commutator", and the other relations can be found by taking cyclic permutations of x, y, z components (i.e. change x to y, y to z, and z to x, repeat).
These commutation relations, and the vector space of generators, fulfill the definition of the Lie algebra formula_73. In summary, a Lie algebra is defined as a vector space "V" over a field of numbers, and with a binary operation [ , ] (called a Lie bracket in this context) on the elements of the vector space, satisfying the axioms of bilinearity, alternatization, and the Jacobi identity. Here the operation [ , ] is the commutator which satisfies all of these axioms, the vector space is the set of Lorentz generators "V" as given previously, and the field is the set of real numbers.
Linking terminology used in mathematics and physics: A group generator is any element of the Lie algebra. A group parameter is a component of a coordinate vector representing an arbitrary element of the Lie algebra with respect to some basis. A basis, then, is a set of generators being a basis of the Lie algebra in the usual vector space sense.
The exponential map from the Lie algebra to the Lie group,
provides a one-to-one correspondence between small enough neighborhoods of the origin of the Lie algebra and neighborhoods of the identity element of the Lie group. It the case of the Lorentz group, the exponential map is just the matrix exponential. Globally, the exponential map is not one-to-one, but in the case of the Lorentz group, it is surjective (onto). Hence any group element in the connected component of the identity can be expressed as an exponential of an element of the Lie algebra.
Lorentz transformations also include parity inversion
which negates all the spatial coordinates only, and time reversal
which negates the time coordinate only, because these transformations leave the spacetime interval invariant. Here is the 3d identity matrix. These are both symmetric, they are their own inverses (see involution (mathematics)), and each have determinant −1. This latter property makes them improper transformations.
If is a proper orthochronous Lorentz transformation, then is improper antichronous, is improper orthochronous, and is proper antichronous.
Two other spacetime symmetries have not been accounted for. For the spacetime interval to be invariant, it can be shown that it is necessary and sufficient for the coordinate transformation to be of the form
where "C" is a constant column containing translations in time and space. If "C" ≠ 0, this is an inhomogeneous Lorentz transformation or Poincaré transformation. If "C" = 0, this is a homogeneous Lorentz transformation. Poincaré transformations are not dealt further in this article.
Writing the general matrix transformation of coordinates as the matrix equation
allows the transformation of other physical quantities that cannot be expressed as four-vectors; e.g., tensors or spinors of any order in 4d spacetime, to be defined. In the corresponding tensor index notation, the above matrix expression is
where lower and upper indices label covariant and contravariant components respectively, and the summation convention is applied. It is a standard convention to use Greek indices that take the value 0 for time components, and 1, 2, 3 for space components, while Latin indices simply take the values 1, 2, 3, for spatial components. Note that the first index (reading left to right) corresponds in the matrix notation to a "row index". The second index corresponds to the column index.
The transformation matrix is universal for all four-vectors, not just 4-dimensional spacetime coordinates. If is any four-vector, then in tensor index notation
Alternatively, one writes
in which the primed indices denote the indices of A in the primed frame. This notation cuts risk of exhausting the Greek alphabet roughly in half.
For a general -component object one may write
where is the appropriate representation of the Lorentz group, an matrix for every . In this case, the indices should "not" be thought of as spacetime indices (sometimes called Lorentz indices), and they run from to . E.g., if is a bispinor, then the indices are called "Dirac indices".
There are also vector quantities with covariant indices. They are generally obtained from their corresponding objects with contravariant indices by the operation of "lowering an index"; e.g.,
where is the metric tensor. (The linked article also provides more information about what the operation of raising and lowering indices really is mathematically.) The inverse of this transformation is given by
where, when viewed as matrices, is the inverse of . As it happens, . This is referred to as "raising an index". To transform a covariant vector , first raise its index, then transform it according to the same rule as for contravariant -vectors, then finally lower the index;
But
I. e., it is the -component of the "inverse" Lorentz transformation. One defines (as a matter of notation),
and may in this notation write
Now for a subtlety. The implied summation on the right hand side of
is running over "a row index" of the matrix representing . Thus, in terms of matrices, this transformation should be thought of as the "inverse transpose" of acting on the column vector . That is, in pure matrix notation,
This means exactly that covariant vectors (thought of as column matrices) transform according to the dual representation of the standard representation of the Lorentz group. This notion generalizes to general representations, simply replace with .
If and are linear operators on vector spaces and , then a linear operator may be defined on the tensor product of and , denoted according to
From this it is immediately clear that if and are a four-vectors in , then transforms as
The second step uses the bilinearity of the tensor product and the last step defines a 2-tensor on component form, or rather, it just renames the tensor .
These observations generalize in an obvious way to more factors, and using the fact that a general tensor on a vector space can be written as a sum of a coefficient (component!) times tensor products of basis vectors and basis covectors, one arrives at the transformation law for any tensor quantity . It is given by
_\mu {\Lambda^{\beta'}}_\nu \cdots {\Lambda^{\zeta'}}_\rho
where is defined above. This form can generally be reduced to the form for general -component objects given above with a single matrix () operating on column vectors. This latter form is sometimes preferred; e.g., for the electromagnetic field tensor.
Lorentz transformations can also be used to illustrate that the magnetic field and electric field are simply different aspects of the same force — the electromagnetic force, as a consequence of relative motion between electric charges and observers. The fact that the electromagnetic field shows relativistic effects becomes clear by carrying out a simple thought experiment.
The electric and magnetic fields transform differently from space and time, but exactly the same way as relativistic angular momentum and the boost vector.
The electromagnetic field strength tensor is given by
in SI units. In relativity, the Gaussian system of units is often preferred over SI units, even in texts whose main choice of units is SI units, because in it the electric field and the magnetic induction have the same units making the appearance of the electromagnetic field tensor more natural. Consider a Lorentz boost in the -direction. It is given by
where the field tensor is displayed side by side for easiest possible reference in the manipulations below.
The general transformation law becomes
For the magnetic field one obtains
For the electric field results
Here, is used. These results can be summarized by
and are independent of the metric signature. For SI units, substitute . refer to this last form as the view as opposed to the "geometric view" represented by the tensor expression
and make a strong point of the ease with which results that are difficult to achieve using the view can be obtained and understood. Only objects that have well defined Lorentz transformation properties (in fact under "any" smooth coordinate transformation) are geometric objects. In the geometric view, the electromagnetic field is a six-dimensional geometric object in "spacetime" as opposed to two interdependent, but separate, 3-vector fields in "space" and "time". The fields (alone) and (alone) do not have well defined Lorentz transformation properties. The mathematical underpinnings are equations and that immediately yield . One should note that the primed and unprimed tensors refer to the "same event in spacetime". Thus the complete equation with spacetime dependence is
Length contraction has an effect on charge density and current density , and time dilation has an effect on the rate of flow of charge (current), so charge and current distributions must transform in a related way under a boost. It turns out they transform exactly like the space-time and energy-momentum four-vectors,
or, in the simpler geometric view,
One says that charge density transforms as the time component of a four-vector. It is a rotational scalar. The current density is a 3-vector.
The Maxwell equations are invariant under Lorentz transformations.
Equation hold unmodified for any representation of the Lorentz group, including the bispinor representation. In one simply replaces all occurrences of by the bispinor representation ,
The above equation could, for instance, be the transformation of a state in Fock space describing two free electrons.
A general "noninteracting" multi-particle state (Fock space state) in quantum field theory transforms according to the rule
where is the Wigner rotation and is the representation of . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18404 |
Luminiferous aether
Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light.
The aether hypothesis was the topic of considerable debate throughout its history, as it required the existence of an invisible and infinite material with no interaction with physical objects. As the nature of light was explored, especially in the 19th century, the physical qualities required of an aether became increasingly contradictory. By the late 1800s, the existence of the aether was being questioned, although there was no physical theory to replace it.
The negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) suggested that the aether did not exist, a finding that was confirmed in subsequent experiments through the 1920s. This led to considerable theoretical work to explain the propagation of light without an aether. A major breakthrough was the theory of relativity, which could explain why the experiment failed to see aether, but was more broadly interpreted to suggest that it was not needed. The Michelson-Morley experiment, along with the blackbody radiator and photoelectric effect, was a key experiment in the development of modern physics, which includes both relativity and quantum theory, the latter of which explains the particle-like nature of light.
In the 17th century, Robert Boyle was a proponent of an aether hypothesis. According to Boyle, the aether consists of subtle particles, one sort of which explains the absence of vacuum and the mechanical interactions between bodies, and the other sort of which explains phenomena such as magnetism (and possibly gravity) that are, otherwise, inexplicable on the basis of purely mechanical interactions of macroscopic bodies, "though in the ether of the ancients there was nothing taken notice of but a diffused and very subtle substance; yet we are at present content to allow that there is always in the air a swarm of steams moving in a determinate course between the north pole and the south".
Christiaan Huygens's "Treatise on Light" (1690) hypothesized that light is a wave propagating through an aether. He and Isaac Newton could only envision light waves as being longitudinal, propagating like sound and other mechanical waves in fluids. However, longitudinal waves necessarily have only one form for a given propagation direction, rather than two polarizations like transverse wave. Thus, longitudinal waves can not explain birefringence, in which two polarizations of light are refracted differently by a crystal. In addition, Newton rejected light as waves in a medium because such a medium would have to extend everywhere in space, and would thereby "disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies" (the planets and comets) and thus "as it is of no use, and hinders the Operation of Nature, and makes her languish, so there is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected".
Isaac Newton contended that light is made up of numerous small particles. This can explain such features as light's ability to travel in straight lines and reflect off surfaces. Newton imagined that light particles as non-spherical "corpuscles", with different "sides" that give rise to birefringence. But the particle theory of light can not satisfactorily explain refraction and diffraction. To explain refraction, Newton's Third Book of "Opticks" (1st ed. 1704, 4th ed. 1730) postulated an "aethereal medium" transmitting vibrations faster than light, by which light, when overtaken, is put into "Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission", which caused refraction and diffraction. Newton believed that these vibrations were related to heat radiation:
Is not the Heat of the warm Room convey'd through the vacuum by the Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum? And is not this Medium the same with that Medium by which Light is refracted and reflected, and by whose Vibrations Light communicates Heat to Bodies, and is put into Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission?
In contrast to the modern understanding that heat radiation and light are both electromagnetic radiation, Newton viewed heat and light as two different phenomena. He believed heat vibrations to be excited "when a Ray of Light falls upon the Surface of any pellucid Body". He wrote, "I do not know what this Aether is", but that if it consists of particles then they must be exceedingly smaller than those of Air, or even than those of Light: The exceeding smallness of its Particles may contribute to the greatness of the force by which those Particles may recede from one another, and thereby make that Medium exceedingly more rare and elastic than Air, and by consequence exceedingly less able to resist the motions of Projectiles, and exceedingly more able to press upon gross Bodies, by endeavoring to expand itself.
In 1720, James Bradley carried out a series of experiments attempting to measure stellar parallax by taking measurements of stars at different times of the year. As the Earth moves around the sun, the apparent angle to a given distant spot changes. By measuring those angles the distance to the star can be calculated based on the known orbital circumference of the Earth around the sun. He failed to detect any parallax, thereby placing a lower limit on the distance to stars.
During these experiments, Bradley also discovered a related effect; the apparent positions of the stars did change over the year, but not as expected. Instead of the apparent angle being maximized when the Earth was at either end of its orbit with respect to the star, the angle was maximized when the Earth was at its fastest sideways velocity with respect to the star. This effect is now known as stellar aberration.
Bradley explained this effect in the context of Newton's corpuscular theory of light, by showing that the aberration angle was given by simple vector addition of the Earth's orbital velocity and the velocity of the corpuscles of light, just as vertically falling raindrops strike a moving object at an angle. Knowing the Earth's velocity and the aberration angle, this enabled him to estimate the speed of light.
Explaining stellar aberration in the context of an aether-based theory of light was regarded as more problematic. As the aberration relied on relative velocities, and the measured velocity was dependent on the motion of the Earth, the aether had to be remaining stationary with respect to the star as the Earth moved through it. This meant that the Earth could travel through the aether, a physical medium, with no apparent effect – precisely the problem that led Newton to reject a wave model in the first place.
A century later, Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean Fresnel revived the wave theory of light when they pointed out that light could be a transverse wave rather than a longitudinal wave; the polarization of a transverse wave (like Newton's "sides" of light) could explain birefringence, and in the wake of a series of experiments on diffraction the particle model of Newton was finally abandoned. Physicists assumed, moreover, that like mechanical waves, light waves required a medium for propagation, and thus required Huygens's idea of an aether "gas" permeating all space.
However, a transverse wave apparently required the propagating medium to behave as a solid, as opposed to a gas or fluid. The idea of a solid that did not interact with other matter seemed a bit odd, and Augustin-Louis Cauchy suggested that perhaps there was some sort of "dragging", or "entrainment", but this made the aberration measurements difficult to understand. He also suggested that the "absence" of longitudinal waves suggested that the aether had negative compressibility. George Green pointed out that such a fluid would be unstable. George Gabriel Stokes became a champion of the entrainment interpretation, developing a model in which the aether might be (by analogy with pine pitch) rigid at very high frequencies and fluid at lower speeds. Thus the Earth could move through it fairly freely, but it would be rigid enough to support light.
In 1856, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch measured the numerical value of the ratio of the electrostatic unit of charge to the electromagnetic unit of charge. They found that the ratio equals the product of the speed of light and the square root of two. The following year, Gustav Kirchhoff wrote a paper in which he showed that the speed of a signal along an electric wire was equal to the speed of light. These are the first recorded historical links between the speed of light and electromagnetic phenomena.
James Clerk Maxwell began working on Michael Faraday's lines of force. In his 1861 paper "" he modelled these magnetic lines of force using a sea of molecular vortices that he considered to be partly made of aether and partly made of ordinary matter. He derived expressions for the dielectric constant and the magnetic permeability in terms of the transverse elasticity and the density of this elastic medium. He then equated the ratio of the dielectric constant to the magnetic permeability with a suitably adapted version of Weber and Kohlrausch's result of 1856, and he substituted this result into Newton's equation for the speed of sound. On obtaining a value that was close to the speed of light as measured by Hippolyte Fizeau, Maxwell concluded that light consists in undulations of the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.
Maxwell had, however, expressed some uncertainties surrounding the precise nature of his molecular vortices and so he began to embark on a purely dynamical approach to the problem. He wrote another paper in 1864, entitled "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", in which the details of the luminiferous medium were less explicit. Although Maxwell did not explicitly mention the sea of molecular vortices, his derivation of Ampère's circuital law was carried over from the 1861 paper and he used a dynamical approach involving rotational motion within the electromagnetic field which he likened to the action of flywheels. Using this approach to justify the electromotive force equation (the precursor of the Lorentz force equation), he derived a wave equation from a set of eight equations which appeared in the paper and which included the electromotive force equation and Ampère's circuital law. Maxwell once again used the experimental results of Weber and Kohlrausch to show that this wave equation represented an electromagnetic wave that propagates at the speed of light, hence supporting the view that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
The apparent need for a propagation medium for such Hertzian waves can be seen by the fact that they consist of orthogonal electric (E) and magnetic (B or H) waves. The E waves consist of undulating dipolar electric fields, and all such dipoles appeared to require separated and opposite electric charges. Electric charge is an inextricable property of matter, so it appeared that some form of matter was required to provide the alternating current that would seem to have to exist at any point along the propagation path of the wave. Propagation of waves in a true vacuum would imply the existence of electric fields without associated electric charge, or of electric charge without associated matter. Albeit compatible with Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic induction of electric fields could not be demonstrated in vacuum, because all methods of detecting electric fields required electrically charged matter.
In addition, Maxwell's equations required that all electromagnetic waves in vacuum propagate at a fixed speed, "c". As this can only occur in one reference frame in Newtonian physics (see Galilean relativity), the aether was hypothesized as the absolute and unique frame of reference in which Maxwell's equations hold. That is, the aether must be "still" universally, otherwise "c" would vary along with any variations that might occur in its supportive medium. Maxwell himself proposed several mechanical models of aether based on wheels and gears, and George Francis FitzGerald even constructed a working model of one of them. These models had to agree with the fact that the electromagnetic waves are transverse but never longitudinal.
By this point the mechanical qualities of the aether had become more and more magical: it had to be a fluid in order to fill space, but one that was millions of times more rigid than steel in order to support the high frequencies of light waves. It also had to be massless and without viscosity, otherwise it would visibly affect the orbits of planets. Additionally it appeared it had to be completely transparent, non-dispersive, incompressible, and continuous at a very small scale. Maxwell wrote in "Encyclopædia Britannica":
Aethers were invented for the planets to swim in, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia, to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another, and so on, until all space had been filled three or four times over with aethers. ... The only aether which has survived is that which was invented by Huygens to explain the propagation of light.
Contemporary scientists were aware of the problems, but aether theory was so entrenched in physical law by this point that it was simply assumed to exist. In 1908 Oliver Lodge gave a speech on behalf of Lord Rayleigh to the Royal Institution on this topic, in which he outlined its physical properties, and then attempted to offer reasons why they were not impossible. Nevertheless, he was also aware of the criticisms, and quoted Lord Salisbury as saying that "aether is little more than a nominative case of the verb "to undulate"". Others criticized it as an "English invention", although Rayleigh jokingly stated it was actually an invention of the Royal Institution.
By the early 20th century, aether theory was in trouble. A series of increasingly complex experiments had been carried out in the late 19th century to try to detect the motion of the Earth through the aether, and had failed to do so. A range of proposed aether-dragging theories could explain the null result but these were more complex, and tended to use arbitrary-looking coefficients and physical assumptions. Lorentz and FitzGerald offered within the framework of Lorentz ether theory a more elegant solution to how the motion of an absolute aether could be undetectable (length contraction), but if their equations were correct, the new special theory of relativity (1905) could generate the same mathematics without referring to an aether at all. Aether fell to Occam's Razor.
The two most important models, which were aimed to describe the relative motion of the Earth and aether, were Augustin-Jean Fresnel's (1818) model of the (nearly) stationary aether including a partial aether drag determined by Fresnel's dragging coefficient,
and George Gabriel Stokes' (1844)
model of complete aether drag. The latter theory was not considered as correct, since it was not compatible with the aberration of light, and the auxiliary hypotheses developed to explain this problem were not convincing. Also, subsequent experiments as the Sagnac effect (1913) also showed that this model is untenable. However, the most important experiment supporting Fresnel's theory was Fizeau's 1851 experimental confirmation of Fresnel's 1818 prediction that a medium with refractive index "n" moving with a velocity "v" would increase the speed of light travelling through the medium in the same direction as "v" from "c"/"n" to:
That is, movement adds only a fraction of the medium's velocity to the light (predicted by Fresnel in order to make Snell's law work in all frames of reference, consistent with stellar aberration). This was initially interpreted to mean that the medium drags the aether along, with a "portion" of the medium's velocity, but that understanding became very problematic after Wilhelm Veltmann demonstrated that the index "n" in Fresnel's formula depended upon the wavelength of light, so that the aether could not be moving at a wavelength-independent speed. This implied that there must be a separate aether for each of the infinitely many frequencies.
The key difficulty with Fresnel's aether hypothesis arose from the juxtaposition of the two well-established theories of Newtonian dynamics and Maxwell's electromagnetism. Under a Galilean transformation the equations of Newtonian dynamics are invariant, whereas those of electromagnetism are not. Basically this means that while physics should remain the same in non-accelerated experiments, light would not follow the same rules because it is travelling in the universal "aether frame". Some effect caused by this difference should be detectable.
A simple example concerns the model on which aether was originally built: sound. The speed of propagation for mechanical waves, the speed of sound, is defined by the mechanical properties of the medium. Sound travels 4.3 times faster in water than in air. This explains why a person hearing an explosion underwater and quickly surfacing can hear it again as the slower travelling sound arrives through the air. Similarly, a traveller on an airliner can still carry on a conversation with another traveller because the sound of words is travelling along with the air inside the aircraft. This effect is basic to all Newtonian dynamics, which says that everything from sound to the trajectory of a thrown baseball should all remain the same in the aircraft flying (at least at a constant speed) as if still sitting on the ground. This is the basis of the Galilean transformation, and the concept of frame of reference.
But the same was not supposed to be true for light, since Maxwell's mathematics demanded a single universal speed for the propagation of light, based, not on local conditions, but on two measured properties, the permittivity and permeability of free space, that were assumed to be the same throughout the universe. If these numbers did change, there should be noticeable effects in the sky; stars in different directions would have different colours, for instance.
Thus at any point there should be one special coordinate system, "at rest relative to the aether". Maxwell noted in the late 1870s that detecting motion relative to this aether should be easy enough—light travelling along with the motion of the Earth would have a different speed than light travelling backward, as they would both be moving against the unmoving aether. Even if the aether had an overall universal flow, changes in position during the day/night cycle, or over the span of seasons, should allow the drift to be detected.
Although the aether is almost stationary according to Fresnel, his theory predicts a positive outcome of aether drift experiments only to "second" order in formula_2, because Fresnel's dragging coefficient would cause a negative outcome of all optical experiments capable of measuring effects to "first" order in formula_2. This was confirmed by the following first-order experiments, which all gave negative results. The following list is based on the description of Wilhelm Wien (1898), with changes and additional experiments according to the descriptions of Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1910) and Jakob Laub (1910):
Besides those optical experiments, also electrodynamic first-order experiments were conducted, which should have led to positive results according to Fresnel. However, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1895) modified Fresnel's theory and showed that those experiments can be explained by a stationary aether as well:
While the "first"-order experiments could be explained by a modified stationary aether, more precise "second"-order experiments were expected to give positive results, however, no such results could be found.
The famous Michelson–Morley experiment compared the source light with itself after being sent in different directions, looking for changes in phase in a manner that could be measured with extremely high accuracy. In this experiment, their goal was to determine the velocity of the Earth through the aether. The publication of their result in 1887, the null result, was the first clear demonstration that something was seriously wrong with the aether hypothesis (Michelson's first experiment in 1881 was not entirely conclusive). In this case the MM experiment yielded a shift of the fringing pattern of about 0.01 of a fringe, corresponding to a small velocity. However, it was incompatible with the expected aether wind effect due to the Earth's (seasonally varying) velocity which would have required a shift of 0.4 of a fringe, and the error was small enough that the value may have indeed been zero. Therefore, the null hypothesis, the hypothesis that there was no aether wind, could not be rejected. More modern experiments have since reduced the possible value to a number very close to zero, about 10−17.
A series of experiments using similar but increasingly sophisticated apparatuses all returned the null result as well. Conceptually different experiments that also attempted to detect the motion of the aether were the Trouton–Noble experiment (1903), whose objective was to detect torsion effects caused by electrostatic fields, and the experiments of Rayleigh and Brace (1902, 1904), to detect double refraction in various media. However, all of them obtained a null result, like Michelson–Morley (MM) previously did.
These "aether-wind" experiments led to a flurry of efforts to "save" aether by assigning to it ever more complex properties, while only few scientists, like Emil Cohn or Alfred Bucherer, considered the possibility of the abandonment of the aether hypothesis. Of particular interest was the possibility of "aether entrainment" or "aether drag", which would lower the magnitude of the measurement, perhaps enough to explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. However, as noted earlier, aether dragging already had problems of its own, notably aberration. In addition, the interference experiments of Lodge (1893, 1897) and Ludwig Zehnder (1895), aimed to show whether the aether is dragged by various, rotating masses, showed no aether drag. A more precise measurement was made in the Hammar experiment (1935), which ran a complete MM experiment with one of the "legs" placed between two massive lead blocks. If the aether was dragged by mass then this experiment would have been able to detect the drag caused by the lead, but again the null result was achieved. The theory was again modified, this time to suggest that the entrainment only worked for very large masses or those masses with large magnetic fields. This too was shown to be incorrect by the Michelson–Gale–Pearson experiment, which detected the Sagnac effect due to Earth's rotation (see Aether drag hypothesis).
Another, completely different attempt to save "absolute" aether was made in the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction hypothesis, which posited that "everything" was affected by travel through the aether. In this theory the reason the Michelson–Morley experiment "failed" was that the apparatus contracted in length in the direction of travel. That is, the light was being affected in the "natural" manner by its travel through the aether as predicted, but so was the apparatus itself, cancelling out any difference when measured. FitzGerald had inferred this hypothesis from a paper by Oliver Heaviside. Without referral to an aether, this physical interpretation of relativistic effects was shared by Kennedy and Thorndike in 1932 as they concluded that the interferometer's arm contracts and also the frequency of its light source "very nearly" varies in the way required by relativity.
Similarly the Sagnac effect, observed by G. Sagnac in 1913, was immediately seen to be fully consistent with special relativity. In fact, the Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment in 1925 was proposed specifically as a test to confirm the relativity theory, although it was also recognized that such tests, which merely measure absolute rotation, are also consistent with non-relativistic theories.
During the 1920s, the experiments pioneered by Michelson were repeated by Dayton Miller, who publicly proclaimed positive results on several occasions, although they were not large enough to be consistent with any known aether theory. However, other researchers were unable to duplicate Miller's claimed results. Over the years the experimental accuracy of such measurements has been raised by many orders of magnitude, and no trace of any violations of Lorentz invariance has been seen. (A later re-analysis of Miller's results concluded that he had underestimated the variations due to temperature.)
Since the Miller experiment and its unclear results there have been many more experimental attempts to detect the aether. Many experimenters have claimed positive results. These results have not gained much attention from mainstream science, since they contradict a large quantity of high-precision measurements, all the results of which were consistent with special relativity.
Between 1892 and 1904, Hendrik Lorentz developed an electron-aether theory, in which he introduced a strict separation between matter (electrons) and aether. In his model the aether is completely motionless, and won't be set in motion in the neighborhood of ponderable matter. Contrary to earlier electron models, the electromagnetic field of the aether appears as a mediator between the electrons, and changes in this field cannot propagate faster than the speed of light. A fundamental concept of Lorentz's theory in 1895 was the "theorem of corresponding states" for terms of order v/c. This theorem states that an observer moving relative to the aether makes the same observations as a resting observer, after a suitable change of variables. Lorentz noticed that it was necessary to change the space-time variables when changing frames and introduced concepts like physical length contraction (1892) to explain the Michelson–Morley experiment, and the mathematical concept of local time (1895) to explain the aberration of light and the Fizeau experiment. This resulted in the formulation of the so-called Lorentz transformation by Joseph Larmor (1897, 1900) and Lorentz (1899, 1904), whereby (it was noted by Larmor) the complete formulation of local time is accompanied by some sort of time dilation of electrons moving in the aether. As Lorentz later noted (1921, 1928), he considered the time indicated by clocks resting in the aether as "true" time, while local time was seen by him as a heuristic working hypothesis and a mathematical artifice. Therefore, Lorentz's theorem is seen by modern authors as being a mathematical transformation from a "real" system resting in the aether into a "fictitious" system in motion.
The work of Lorentz was mathematically perfected by Henri Poincaré, who formulated on many occasions the Principle of Relativity and tried to harmonize it with electrodynamics. He declared simultaneity only a convenient convention which depends on the speed of light, whereby the constancy of the speed of light would be a useful postulate for making the laws of nature as simple as possible. In 1900 and 1904 he physically interpreted Lorentz's local time as the result of clock synchronization by light signals. In June and July 1905 he declared the relativity principle a general law of nature, including gravitation. He corrected some mistakes of Lorentz and proved the Lorentz covariance of the electromagnetic equations. However, he used the notion of an aether as a perfectly undetectable medium and distinguished between apparent and real time, so most historians of science argue that he failed to invent special relativity.
Aether theory was dealt another blow when the Galilean transformation and Newtonian dynamics were both modified by Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, giving the mathematics of Lorentzian electrodynamics a new, "non-aether" context. Unlike most major shifts in scientific thought, special relativity was adopted by the scientific community remarkably quickly, consistent with Einstein's later comment that the laws of physics described by the Special Theory were "ripe for discovery" in 1905. Max Planck's early advocacy of the special theory, along with the elegant formulation given to it by Hermann Minkowski, contributed much to the rapid acceptance of special relativity among working scientists.
Einstein based his theory on Lorentz's earlier work. Instead of suggesting that the mechanical properties of objects changed with their constant-velocity motion through an undetectable aether, Einstein proposed to deduce the characteristics that any successful theory must possess in order to be consistent with the most basic and firmly established principles, independent of the existence of a hypothetical aether. He found that the Lorentz transformation must transcend its connection with Maxwell's equations, and must represent the fundamental relations between the space and time coordinates of inertial frames of reference. In this way he demonstrated that the laws of physics remained invariant as they had with the Galilean transformation, but that light was now invariant as well.
With the development of the special theory of relativity, the need to account for a single universal frame of reference had disappeared – and acceptance of the 19th-century theory of a luminiferous aether disappeared with it. For Einstein, the Lorentz transformation implied a conceptual change: that the concept of position in space or time was not absolute, but could differ depending on the observer's location and velocity.
Moreover, in another paper published the same month in 1905, Einstein made several observations on a then-thorny problem, the photoelectric effect. In this work he demonstrated that light can be considered as particles that have a "wave-like nature". Particles obviously do not need a medium to travel, and thus, neither did light. This was the first step that would lead to the full development of quantum mechanics, in which the wave-like nature "and" the particle-like nature of light are both considered as valid descriptions of light. A summary of Einstein's thinking about the aether hypothesis, relativity and light quanta may be found in his 1909 (originally German) lecture "The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation".
Lorentz on his side continued to use the aether hypothesis. In his lectures of around 1911, he pointed out that what "the theory of relativity has to say ... can be carried out independently of what one thinks of the aether and the time". He commented that "whether there is an aether or not, electromagnetic fields certainly exist, and so also does the energy of the electrical oscillations" so that, "if we do not like the name of 'aether', we must use another word as a peg to hang all these things upon". He concluded that "one cannot deny the bearer of these concepts a certain substantiality".
In later years there have been a few individuals who advocated a neo-Lorentzian approach to physics, which is Lorentzian in the sense of positing an absolute true state of rest that is undetectable and which plays no role in the predictions of the theory. (No violations of Lorentz covariance have ever been detected, despite strenuous efforts.) Hence these theories resemble the 19th century aether theories in name only. For example, the founder of quantum field theory, Paul Dirac, stated in 1951 in an article in Nature, titled "Is there an Aether?" that "we are rather forced to have an aether". However, Dirac never formulated a complete theory, and so his speculations found no acceptance by the scientific community.
When Einstein was still a student in the Zurich Polytechnic in 1900, he was very interested in the idea of aether. His initial proposal of research thesis was to do an experiment to measure how fast the Earth was moving through the aether. "The velocity of a wave is proportional to the square root of the elastic forces which cause [its] propagation, and inversely proportional to the mass of the aether moved by these forces."
In 1916, after Einstein completed his foundational work on general relativity, Lorentz wrote a letter to him in which he speculated that within general relativity the aether was re-introduced. In his response Einstein wrote that one can actually speak about a "new aether", but one may not speak of motion in relation to that aether. This was further elaborated by Einstein in some semi-popular articles (1918, 1920, 1924, 1930).
In 1918 Einstein publicly alluded to that new definition for the first time. Then, in the early 1920s, in a lecture which he was invited to give at Lorentz's university in Leiden, Einstein sought to reconcile the theory of relativity with Lorentzian aether. In this lecture Einstein stressed that special relativity took away the last mechanical property of the aether: immobility. However, he continued that special relativity does not necessarily rule out the aether, because the latter can be used to give physical reality to acceleration and rotation. This concept was fully elaborated within general relativity, in which physical properties (which are partially determined by matter) are attributed to space, but no substance or state of motion can be attributed to that "aether" (by which he meant curved space-time).
In another paper of 1924, named "Concerning the Aether", Einstein argued that Newton's absolute space, in which acceleration is absolute, is the "Aether of Mechanics". And within the electromagnetic theory of Maxwell and Lorentz one can speak of the "Aether of Electrodynamics", in which the aether possesses an absolute state of motion. As regards special relativity, also in this theory acceleration is absolute as in Newton's mechanics. However, the difference from the electromagnetic aether of Maxwell and Lorentz lies in the fact, that "because it was no longer possible to speak, in any absolute sense, of simultaneous states at different locations in the aether, the aether became, as it were, four-dimensional since there was no objective way of ordering its states by time alone". Now the "aether of special relativity" is still "absolute", because matter is affected by the properties of the aether, but the aether is not affected by the presence of matter. This asymmetry was solved within general relativity. Einstein explained that the "aether of general relativity" is not absolute, because matter is influenced by the aether, just as matter influences the structure of the aether.
The only similarity of this relativistic aether concept with the classical aether models lies in the presence of physical properties in space, which can be identified through geodesics. As historians such as John Stachel argue, Einstein's views on the "new aether" are not in conflict with his abandonment of the aether in 1905. As Einstein himself pointed out, no "substance" and no state of motion can be attributed to that new aether. Einstein's use of the word "aether" found little support in the scientific community, and played no role in the continuing development of modern physics.
Footnotes
Citations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18406 |
LAME
LAME is a software encoder that converts a digitized WAV audio file into the MP3 audio coding file format. LAME is a free software project that was first released in 1998, and has incorporated many improvements since then, including an improved psychoacoustic model. The LAME encoder vastly outperforms early encoders like L3enc.
LAME is required by some programs. In many programs released as free software (e.g., Audacity), LAME must be linked for MP3 support. This avoided including LAME itself, which used patented techniques, and so required patent licenses in many countries.
The name LAME is a recursive acronym for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder".
Around mid-1998, Mike Cheng created LAME 1.0 as a set of modifications against the "8Hz-MP3" encoder source code. After some quality concerns raised by others, he decided to start again from scratch based on the "dist10" MPEG reference software sources. His goal was only to speed up the dist10 sources, and leave its quality untouched. That branch (a patch against the reference sources) became Lame 2.0. The project quickly became a team project. Mike Cheng eventually left leadership and started working on tooLAME (an MP2 encoder).
Mark Taylor then started pursuing increased quality in addition to better speed, and released version 3.0 featuring gpsycho, a new psychoacoustic model he developed.
A few key improvements, in chronological order:
Like all MP3 encoders, LAME implemented techniques covered by patents owned by the Fraunhofer Society and others. The developers of LAME did not license the technology described by these patents. Distributing compiled binaries of LAME, its libraries, or programs that derive from LAME in countries where those patents have been granted may have constituted infringement, but since April 23, 2017, all of these patents have expired.
The LAME developers stated that, since their code was only released in source code form, it should only be considered as an educational description of an MP3 encoder, and thus did not infringe any patent in itself. They also advised users to obtain relevant patent licenses before including a compiled version of the encoder in a product. Some software was released using this strategy: companies used the LAME library, but obtained patent licenses.
In the course of the 2005 Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal, there were reports that the Extended Copy Protection rootkit included on some Sony Compact Discs had portions of the LAME library without complying with the terms of the LGPL. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18408 |
Leszek Miller
Leszek Cezary Miller (Polish pronunciation: ; born 3 July 1946) is a Polish political scientist and politician. He has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since July 2019.
From 1989 to 1990 was a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party. From 2001 to 2004 was a Prime Minister of Poland. Miller was the leader of the Democratic Left Alliance from 1999 to 2004 and again from 2011 to 2016.
Leszek Miller is the great-grandson of Eliasz, son of Mośek and Sura Miller, born in 1840 in Kutno. Eliasz Miller converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1869 in Nieborów.
Leszek Miller was born in Żyrardów, Miller comes from a poor, working-class family: His father was a tailor and his mother a needlewoman. His parents broke up when Miller was six months old. His father, Florian Miller left the family and Leszek has never maintained any contact with him. His mother brought him up in a religious spirit – following her wish, he was even, for some time, an altar server in their church.
Due to hard living conditions, after graduation from a vocational school, 17-year-old Miller got a job in the Textile Linen Plant in Żyrardów, while continuing his education in the evenings at the Vocational Secondary School of Electric Power Engineering. He soon completed his military service on the ORP Bielik submarine.
In 1969, Miller married Aleksandra, three years his junior, in church. They had a son, Leszek Junior ( August 2018), and a granddaughter, Monika.
Miller started his political career as an activist of the Socialist Youth Union, where he held the position of Chairman of the Plant Board, soon becoming a member of the Town Committee. After the military service, in 1969, he joined the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), People's Poland's communist party.
Many people were pressured to join PZPR in order to advance in their careers or to pursue higher education. Miller used his affiliation with the Communist party to effectively advance in his studies and professional goals.
In 1973 and 1974, Miller was the Secretary of the PZPR Plant Committee. With the party's recommendation, he started political sciences studies at the party's Higher School of Political Sciences ("Wyższa Szkoła Nauk Społecznych"), graduating in 1977. After graduation, Miller worked at the PZPR Central Committee, supervising the Group, and later on the Department of Youth, Physical Education and Tourism.
In July 1986, Miller was elected as First Secretary of the PZPR Provincial Committee in Skierniewice. In December 1988, he returned to Warsaw, due to his promotion to the position of the Secretary of the PZPR Central Committee. As a representative of the government side, he took part in the session of the historic "Round Table", where, together with Andrzej Celiński, he co-chaired the sub-team for youth issues (the only one that closed the session without signing the agreement). In 1989, he became a member of the PZPR Political Bureau.
After the PZPR was dissolved, Miller became a co-founder of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (till March 1993, he was Secretary General, then Deputy Chairman and, from December 1997, the Chairman of that party). In December 1999, at the Founding Congress of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), he was elected its Chairman, holding the function continuously until February 2004. In 1997-2001 he was the Chairman of the SLD’s caucus.
In 1989, he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate as a representative of Skierniewice Province. In subsequent elections (1991), Miller was a leader on the election list of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic in Łódź and, following a considerable success in elections, he won a seat in the Sejm, becoming Chairman of the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic. In three subsequent elections to the Sejm, he ran each time from Łódź, each time gaining more and more votes (from 50 thousand in 1991 up to 146 thousand in 2001); he held a seat in Parliament until 2005.
Through all that time he remained one of the leading politicians on the left wing. In the early 1990s, together with Mieczysław Rakowski, he was suspected in the case of the so-called "Moscow loan". After revealing that affair in 1991, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz called Miller to abstain from taking an MP's oath due to accusations laid against him. When Miller was cleared of the charges, Prime Minister Cimoszewicz appointed him later as the Minister in Charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers and in 1997 the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration in his government. In turn, Cimoszewicz later became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Miller’s cabinet.
From 1993 to 1996, Miller was the Minister of Labour and Social Policy in the governments of Waldemar Pawlak and Józef Oleksy respectively. In 1996, he was nominated as Senior Minister in charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers. He then got the nickname “The Chancellor”.
Miller played an important role in concluding the case of Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, for which he was severely criticised within his political circle. A similar disapproval was expressed after Miller’s support for the Concordat and the candidature of Leszek Balcerowicz to the position of President of the National Bank of Poland.
During the period of the Solidarity Electoral Action’s government, Miller was in charge of the parliamentary opposition, leading the political fight with the governing party. He was also consolidating the majority of significant left-wing groups around his person. In 1999, he succeeded in establishing one uniform political party – the Democratic Left Alliance – which turned out to be very successful in following elections.
Following the victory of the Left (41% vs. 12% of the subsequent party) in the Parliamentary Election in 2001, on 19 October 2001, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski appointed Miller Prime Minister and obliged to nominate the government. The new government won the parliamentary vote of confidence on 26 October 2001 (306:140 votes with one abstention). The 16-person cabinet of Prime Minister Miller has been the smallest government of the Polish Republic so far.
Miller’s government faced a difficult economic situation in Poland, including an unemployment rate above 18%, a high level of public debt, and economic stagnation. At the end of Miller’s term, economic growth exceeded 6%; still, it was too slow to reduce the unemployment rate. During his term, the unpopular program of cuts in public expenses was implemented, together with a hardly successful reform of health care financing. The reforms of the tax system and of the Social Insurance Institution were continued, and the attempt to settle the mass-media market failed. Taxes were significantly lowered – to 19% for companies and for persons running business activity – and the act of freedom in business activity was voted through. A radical, structural reform of secret services was implemented (the State Security Office was dissolved and replaced by the Internal Security Agency and the Intelligence Agency).
Simultaneously, institutional and legal adjustments were continued, resulting from the accession to the European Union. The Accession conditions were negotiated, being the main strategic goal of Miller’s cabinet. On 13 December 2002, at the summit in Copenhagen (Denmark), Prime Minister Leszek Miller completed the negotiations with the European Union. On 16 April 2003 in Athens, Miller, together with Cimoszewicz, signed the Accession Treaty, bringing Poland into the European Union. Miller’s government, in collaboration with various political and social forces, organized the accession referendum with a successful outcome. On 7 and 8 June 2003, 77.45% of the referendum participants voted in favor of Poland’s accession to the European Union. The referendum turn-out reached 58.85%.
Miller’s government, together with President Kwaśniewski, made a decision (March 2003) to join the international coalition and deploy Polish troops to Iraq, targeting at overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s government. Miller was also a co-signatory of "the letter of 8", signed by eight European prime ministers, supporting the US position on Iraq. Already in 2002, Miller gave permission to the U.S. government to run a secret CIA prison at Stare Kiejkuty military training center, three hours north of Warsaw. Years later he is facing accusations of acting anti-constitutionally by having tolerated the imprisonment and torture of prisoners.
On 4 December 2003, Leszek Miller suffered injuries in a helicopter crash near Warsaw.
At the end of its term of office, Miller’s government had the lowest public support of any government since 1989. It was mainly caused by the continuing high unemployment rate, corruption scandals, with Rywingate on top, and by the attempt of fulfilling the plan of reducing social spending (the Hausner’s plan). In result of criticism in his own party, the Democratic Left Alliance, in February 2004, Miller resigned from chairing the party. Miller was criticized for an excessively liberal approach and for stressing the role of free-market mechanisms in economy. He was reproached for his acceptance of a flat tax, which ran counter to the left-wing doctrine. He was also identified with the “chieftain-like style” of leadership. On 26 March 2004, following the decision of the Speaker of the Parliament, Marek Borowski, to found a new dissenting party, the Social Democracy of Poland, Miller decided to resign from the position of Prime Minister on 2 May 2004, a day after Poland’s accession to the EU. On 1 May 2004, together with President Kwaśniewski, he was in Dublin, taking part in the Grand Ceremony of the accession of 10 states, including Poland, to the European Union.
In 2005, despite the support of the Łódź Branch of the Democratic Left Alliance, Miller was not registered on the election list to the Parliament. At the same time, he was offered to run for Senate but refused. Retirement of the old activists was presented in media as “inflow of new blood into the Democratic Left Alliance”. After the election, Miller became active in journalism, writing mainly for the “Wprost” weekly on liberal economic concepts and current political issues. In the first half of 2005, he stayed at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., implementing a research project: “Status of the new Poland in the Eastern Europe’s space”.
In September 2007, the former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller become affiliated with Samoobrona, when he decided to run for the Sejm from their lists. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18414 |
Basis (linear algebra)
In mathematics, a set of elements (vectors) in a vector space is called a basis, if every element of may be written in a unique way as a (finite) linear combination of elements of . The coefficients of this linear combination are referred to as components or coordinates on of the vector. The elements of a basis are called .
Equivalently is a basis if its elements are linearly independent and every element of is a linear combination of elements of . In more general terms, a basis is a linearly independent spanning set.
A vector space can have several bases; however all the bases have the same number of elements, called the dimension of the vector space.
A basis of a vector space over a field (such as the real numbers or the complex numbers ) is a linearly independent subset of that spans .
This means that a subset of is a basis if it satisfies the two following conditions:
The scalars formula_8 are called the coordinates of the vector with respect to the basis , and by the first property they are uniquely determined.
A vector space that has a finite basis is called finite-dimensional. In this case, the finite subset can be taken as itself to check for linear independence in the above definition.
It is often convenient or even necessary to have an ordering on the basis vectors, e.g. for discussing orientation, or when one considers the scalar coefficients of a vector with respect to a basis, without referring explicitly to the basis elements. In this case, the ordering is necessary for associating each coefficient to the corresponding basis element. This ordering can be done by numbering the basis elements. For example, when dealing with ("m", "n")-matrices, the element (in the th row and th column) can be referred to the th element of a basis consisting of the ("m", "n")-unit-matrices (varying column-indices before row-indices). For emphasizing that an order has been chosen, one speaks of an ordered basis, which is therefore not simply an unstructured set, but e.g. a sequence, or an indexed family, or similar; see "Ordered bases and coordinates" below.
Many properties of finite bases result from the Steinitz exchange lemma, which states that, for any vector space , given a finite spanning set and a linearly independent set of elements of , one may replace well-chosen elements of by the elements of to get a spanning set containing , having its other elements in , and having the same number of elements as .
Most properties resulting from the Steinitz exchange lemma remain true when there is no finite spanning set, but their proofs in the infinite case generally require the axiom of choice or a weaker form of it, such as the ultrafilter lemma.
If is a vector space over a field , then:
If is a vector space of dimension , then:
Let be a vector space of finite dimension over a field , and
be a basis of . By definition of a basis, every in may be written, in a unique way, as
where the coefficients formula_22 are scalars (that is, elements of ), which are called the "coordinates" of over . However, if one talks of the "set" of the coefficients, one loses the correspondence between coefficients and basis elements, and several vectors may have the same "set" of coefficients. For example, formula_23 and formula_24 have the same set of coefficients , and are different. It is therefore often convenient to work with an ordered basis; this is typically done by indexing the basis elements by the first natural numbers. Then, the coordinates of a vector form a sequence similarly indexed, and a vector is completely characterized by the sequence of coordinates. An ordered basis is also called a frame, a word commonly used, in various contexts, for referring to a sequence of data allowing defining coordinates.
Let, as usual, formula_13 be the set of the -tuples of elements of . This set is an -vector space, with addition and scalar multiplication defined component-wise. The map
is a linear isomorphism from the vector space formula_13 onto . In other words, formula_13 is the coordinate space of , and the -tuple formula_29 is the coordinate vector of .
The inverse image by formula_30 of formula_31 is the -tuple formula_32 all of whose components are 0, except the th that is 1. The formula_32 form an ordered basis of formula_16 which is called its standard basis or canonical basis. The ordered basis is the image by formula_30 of the canonical basis of formula_17
It follows from what precedes that every ordered basis is the image by a linear isomorphism of the canonical basis of formula_16 and that every linear isomorphism from formula_13 onto may be defined as the isomorphism that maps the canonical basis of formula_13 onto a given ordered basis of . In other words it is equivalent to define an ordered basis of , or a linear isomorphism from formula_13 onto .
Let be a vector space of dimension over a field . Given two (ordered) bases formula_41 and formula_42 of , it is often useful to express the coordinates of a vector with respect to formula_43 in terms of the coordinates with respect to formula_44 This can be done by the "change-of-basis formula", that is described below. The subscripts "old" and "new" have been chosen because it is customary to refer to formula_43 and formula_46 as the "old basis" and the "new basis", respectively. It is useful to describe the old coordinates in terms of the new ones, because, in general, one has expressions involving the old coordinates, and if one wants to obtain equivalent expressions in terms of the new coordinates; this is obtained by replacing the old coordinates by their expressions in terms of the new coordinates.
Typically, the new basis vectors are given by their coordinates over the old basis, that is,
If formula_48 and formula_49 are the coordinates of a vector over the old and the new basis respectively, the change-of-basis formula is
for .
This formula may be concisely written in matrix notation. Let be the matrix of the formula_51 and
be the column vectors of the coordinates of in the old and the new basis respectively, then the formula for changing coordinates is
The formula can be proven by considering the decomposition of the vector on the two bases: one has
and
The change-of-basis formula results then from the uniqueness of the decomposition of a vector over a basis, here formula_57 that is
for .
If one replaces the field occurring in the definition of a vector space by a ring, one gets the definition of a module. For modules, linear independence and spanning sets are defined exactly as for vector spaces, although "generating set" is more commonly used than that of "spanning set".
Like for vector spaces, a "basis" of a module is a linearly independent subset that is also a generating set. A major difference with the theory of vector spaces is that not every module has a basis. A module that has a basis is called a "free module". Free modules play a fundamental role in module theory, as they may be used for describing the structure of non-free modules through free resolutions.
A module over the integers is exactly the same thing as an abelian group. Thus a free module over the integers is also a free abelian group. Free abelian groups have specific properties that are not shared by modules over other rings. Specifically, every subgroup of a free abelian group is a free abelian group, and, if is a subgroup of a finitely generated free abelian group (that is an abelian group that has a finite basis), there is a basis formula_15 of and an integer such that formula_60 is a basis of , for some nonzero integers formula_61 For details, see .
In the context of infinite-dimensional vector spaces over the real or complex numbers, the term (named after Georg Hamel) or algebraic basis can be used to refer to a basis as defined in this article. This is to make a distinction with other notions of "basis" that exist when infinite-dimensional vector spaces are endowed with extra structure. The most important alternatives are orthogonal bases on Hilbert spaces, Schauder bases, and Markushevich bases on normed linear spaces. In the case of the real numbers R viewed as a vector space over the field Q of rational numbers, Hamel bases are uncountable, and have specifically the cardinality of the continuum, which is the cardinal number formula_62 where formula_63 is the smallest infinite cardinal, the cardinal of the integers.
The common feature of the other notions is that they permit the taking of infinite linear combinations of the basis vectors in order to generate the space. This, of course, requires that infinite sums are meaningfully defined on these spaces, as is the case for topological vector spaces – a large class of vector spaces including e.g. Hilbert spaces, Banach spaces, or Fréchet spaces.
The preference of other types of bases for infinite-dimensional spaces is justified by the fact that the Hamel basis becomes "too big" in Banach spaces: If "X" is an infinite-dimensional normed vector space which is complete (i.e. "X" is a Banach space), then any Hamel basis of "X" is necessarily uncountable. This is a consequence of the Baire category theorem. The completeness as well as infinite dimension are crucial assumptions in the previous claim. Indeed, finite-dimensional spaces have by definition finite bases and there are infinite-dimensional ("non-complete") normed spaces which have countable Hamel bases. Consider formula_64, the space of the sequences formula_65 of real numbers which have only finitely many non-zero elements, with the norm formula_66 Its standard basis, consisting of the sequences having only one non-zero element, which is equal to 1, is a countable Hamel basis.
In the study of Fourier series, one learns that the functions {1} ∪ { sin("nx"), cos("nx") : "n" = 1, 2, 3, ... } are an "orthogonal basis" of the (real or complex) vector space of all (real or complex valued) functions on the interval [0, 2π] that are square-integrable on this interval, i.e., functions "f" satisfying
The functions {1} ∪ { sin("nx"), cos("nx") : "n" = 1, 2, 3, ... } are linearly independent, and every function "f" that is square-integrable on [0, 2π] is an "infinite linear combination" of them, in the sense that
for suitable (real or complex) coefficients "a""k", "b""k". But many square-integrable functions cannot be represented as "finite" linear combinations of these basis functions, which therefore "do not" comprise a Hamel basis. Every Hamel basis of this space is much bigger than this merely countably infinite set of functions. Hamel bases of spaces of this kind are typically not useful, whereas orthonormal bases of these spaces are essential in Fourier analysis.
The geometric notions of an affine space, projective space, convex set, and cone have related notions of "basis". An affine basis for an "n"-dimensional affine space is formula_69 points in general linear position. A ' is formula_70 points in general position, in a projective space of dimension "n". A ' of a polytope is the set of the vertices of its convex hull. A consists of one point by edge of a polygonal cone. See also a Hilbert basis (linear programming).
For a probability distribution in R"n" with a probability density function, such as the equidistribution in an "n"-dimensional ball with respect to Lebesgue measure, it can be shown that "n" randomly and independently chosen vectors will form a basis with probability one, which is due to the fact that "n" linearly dependent vectors x1, ..., x"n" in R"n" should satisfy the equation (zero determinant of the matrix with columns x"i"), and the set of zeros of a non-trivial polynomial has zero measure. This observation has led to techniques for approximating random bases.
It is difficult to check numerically the linear dependence or exact orthogonality. Therefore, the notion of ε-orthogonality is used. For spaces with inner product, "x" is ε-orthogonal to "y" if formula_71 (that is, cosine of the angle between "x" and "y" is less than ε).
In high dimensions, two independent random vectors are with high probability almost orthogonal, and the number of independent random vectors, which all are with given high probability pairwise almost orthogonal, grows exponentially with dimension. More precisely, consider equidistribution in "n"-dimensional ball. Choose "N" independent random vectors from a ball (they are independent and identically distributed). Let "θ" be a small positive number. Then for
"N" random vectors are all pairwise ε-orthogonal with probability . This "N" growth exponentially with dimension "n" and formula_72 for sufficiently big "n". This property of random bases is a manifestation of the so-called "measure concentration phenomenon".
The figure (right) illustrates distribution of lengths N of pairwise almost orthogonal chains of vectors that are independently randomly sampled from the "n"-dimensional cube as a function of dimension, "n". A point is first randomly selected in the cube. The second point is randomly chosen in the same cube. If the angle between the vectors was within then the vector was retained. At the next step a new vector is generated in the same hypercube, and its angles with the previously generated vectors are evaluated. If these angles are within then the vector is retained. The process is repeated until the chain of almost orthogonality breaks, and the number of such pairwise almost orthogonal vectors (length of the chain) is recorded. For each "n", 20 pairwise almost orthogonal chains where constructed numerically for each dimension. Distribution of the length of these chains is presented.
Let V be any vector space over some field F.
Let X be the set of all linearly independent subsets of V.
The set X is nonempty since the empty set is an independent subset of V,
and it is partially ordered by inclusion, which is denoted, as usual, by .
Let Y be a subset of X that is totally ordered by ,
and let LY be the union of all the elements of Y (which are themselves certain subsets of V).
Since (Y, ⊆) is totally ordered, every finite subset of LY is a subset of an element of Y,
which is a linearly independent subset of V,
and hence every finite subset of LY is linearly independent.
Thus LY is linearly independent, so LY is an element of X.
Therefore, LY is an upper bound for Y in (X, ⊆):
it is an element of X, that contains every element Y.
As X is nonempty, and every totally ordered subset of (X, ⊆) has an upper bound in X, Zorn's lemma asserts that X has a maximal element. In other words, there exists some element Lmax of X satisfying the condition that whenever Lmax ⊆ L for some element L of X, then L = Lmax.
It remains to prove that Lmax is a basis of V. Since Lmax belongs to X, we already know that Lmax is a linearly independent subset of V.
If there were some vector w of V that is not in the span of Lmax, then w would not be an element of Lmax either.
Let Lw = Lmax ∪ {w}. This set is an element of X, that is, it is a linearly independent subset of V (because w is not in the span of Lmax, and Lmax is independent). As Lmax ⊆ Lw, and Lmax ≠ Lw (because Lw contains the vector w that is not contained in Lmax), this contradicts the maximality of Lmax. Thus this shows that Lmax spans V.
Hence Lmax is linearly independent and spans V. It is thus a basis of V, and this proves that every vector space has a basis.
This proof relies on Zorn's lemma, which is equivalent to the axiom of choice. Conversely, it has been proved that if every vector space has a basis, then the axiom of choice is true. Thus the two assertions are equivalent. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18420 |
Linear algebra
Linear algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning linear equations such as
linear maps such as
and their representations in vector spaces and through matrices.
Linear algebra is central to almost all areas of mathematics. For instance, linear algebra is fundamental in modern presentations of geometry, including for defining basic objects such as lines, planes and rotations. Also, functional analysis may be basically viewed as the application of linear algebra to spaces of functions. Linear algebra is also used in most sciences and engineering areas, because it allows modeling many natural phenomena, and efficiently computing with such models. For nonlinear systems, which cannot be modeled with linear algebra, linear algebra is often used for dealing with first-order approximations, using the fact that the differential of a multivariate function at a point is the linear map that best approximates the function near that point.
The procedure for solving simultaneous linear equations now called Gaussian elimination appears in the ancient Chinese mathematical text Chapter Eight: "Rectangular Arrays" of "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art". Its use is illustrated in eighteen problems, with two to five equations.
Systems of linear equations arose in Europe with the introduction in 1637 by René Descartes of coordinates in geometry. In fact, in this new geometry, now called Cartesian geometry, lines and planes are represented by linear equations, and computing their intersections amounts to solving systems of linear equations.
The first systematic methods for solving linear systems used determinants, first considered by Leibniz in 1693. In 1750, Gabriel Cramer used them for giving explicit solutions of linear systems, now called Cramer's rule. Later, Gauss further described the method of elimination, which was initially listed as an advancement in geodesy.
In 1844 Hermann Grassmann published his "Theory of Extension" which included foundational new topics of what is today called linear algebra. In 1848, James Joseph Sylvester introduced the term "matrix", which is Latin for "womb".
Linear algebra grew with ideas noted in the complex plane. For instance, two numbers "w" and "z" in ℂ have a difference "w" – "z", and the line segments formula_3 are of the same length and direction. The segments are equipollent. The four-dimensional system ℍ of quaternions was started in 1843. The term "vector" was introduced as "v" = "x" i + "y" j + "z" k representing a point in space. The quaternion difference "p" – "q" also produces a segment equipollent to formula_4
Other hypercomplex number systems also used the idea of a linear space with a basis.
Arthur Cayley introduced matrix multiplication and the inverse matrix in 1856, making possible the general linear group. The mechanism of group representation became available for describing complex and hypercomplex numbers. Crucially, Cayley used a single letter to denote a matrix, thus treating a matrix as an aggregate object. He also realized the connection between matrices and determinants, and wrote "There would be many things to say about this theory of matrices which should, it seems to me, precede the theory of determinants".
Benjamin Peirce published his "Linear Associative Algebra" (1872), and his son Charles Sanders Peirce extended the work later.
The telegraph required an explanatory system, and the 1873 publication of A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism instituted a field theory of forces and required differential geometry for expression. Linear algebra is flat differential geometry and serves in tangent spaces to manifolds. Electromagnetic symmetries of spacetime are expressed by the Lorentz transformations, and much of the history of linear algebra is the history of Lorentz transformations.
The first modern and more precise definition of a vector space was introduced by Peano in 1888; by 1900, a theory of linear transformations of finite-dimensional vector spaces had emerged. Linear algebra took its modern form in the first half of the twentieth century, when many ideas and methods of previous centuries were generalized as abstract algebra. The development of computers led to increased research in efficient algorithms for Gaussian elimination and matrix decompositions, and linear algebra became an essential tool for modelling and simulations.
See also and .
Until the 19th century, linear algebra was introduced through systems of linear equations and matrices. In modern mathematics, the presentation through "vector spaces" is generally preferred, since it is more synthetic, more general (not limited to the finite-dimensional case), and conceptually simpler, although more abstract.
A vector space over a field (often the field of the real numbers) is a set equipped with two binary operations satisfying the following axioms.
Elements of are called "vectors", and elements of "F" are called "scalars". The first operation, "vector addition", takes any two vectors and and outputs a third vector . The second operation, "scalar multiplication", takes any scalar and any vector and outputs a new . The axioms that addition and scalar multiplication must satisfy are the following. (In the list below, and are arbitrary elements of , and and are arbitrary scalars in the field .)
The first four axioms mean that is an abelian group under addition.
An element of a specific vector space may have various nature; for example, it could be a sequence, a function, a polynomial or a matrix. Linear algebra is concerned with those properties of such objects that are common to all vector spaces.
Linear maps are mappings between vector spaces that preserve the vector-space structure. Given two vector spaces and over a field , a linear map (also called, in some contexts, linear transformation or linear mapping) is a map
that is compatible with addition and scalar multiplication, that is
for any vectors in and scalar in .
This implies that for any vectors in and scalars in , one has
When "V" = "W" are the same vector space, a linear map formula_8 is also known as a "linear operator" on "V".
A bijective linear map between two vector spaces (that is, every vector from the second space is associated with exactly one in the first) is an isomorphism. Because an isomorphism preserves linear structure, two isomorphic vector spaces are "essentially the same" from the linear algebra point of view, in the sense that they cannot be distinguished by using vector space properties. An essential question in linear algebra is testing whether a linear map is an isomorphism or not, and, if it is not an isomorphism, finding its range (or image) and the set of elements that are mapped to the zero vector, called the kernel of the map. All these questions can be solved by using Gaussian elimination or some variant of this algorithm.
The study of those subsets of vector spaces that are in themselves vector spaces under the induced operations is fundamental, similarly as for many mathematical structures. These subsets are called linear subspaces. More precisely, a linear subspace of a vector space over a field is a subset of such that and are in , for every , in , and every in . (These conditions suffice for implying that is a vector space.)
For example, given a linear map formula_5, the image "T(V)" of "V", and the inverse image formula_10 of 0 (called kernel or null space), are linear subspaces of "W" and "V", respectively.
Another important way of forming a subspace is to consider linear combinations of a set of vectors: the set of all sums
where are in , and are in form a linear subspace called the span of . The span of is also the intersection of all linear subspaces containing . In other words, it is the (smallest for the inclusion relation) linear subspace containing .
A set of vectors is linearly independent if none is in the span of the others. Equivalently, a set of vector is linearly independent if the only way to express the zero vector as a linear combination of elements of is to take zero for every coefficient formula_12
A set of vectors that spans a vector space is called a spanning set or generating set. If a spanning set is "linearly dependent" (that is not linearly independent), then some element of is in the span of the other elements of , and the span would remain the same if one remove from . One may continue to remove elements of until getting a "linearly independent spanning set". Such a linearly independent set that spans a vector space is called a basis of . The importance of bases lies in the fact that there are together minimal generating sets and maximal independent sets. More precisely, if is a linearly independent set, and is a spanning set such that formula_13 then there is a basis such that formula_14
Any two bases of a vector space have the same cardinality, which is called the dimension of ; this is the dimension theorem for vector spaces. Moreover, two vector spaces over the same field are isomorphic if and only if they have the same dimension.
If any basis of (and therefore every basis) has a finite number of elements, is a "finite-dimensional vector space". If is a subspace of , then . In the case where is finite-dimensional, the equality of the dimensions implies .
If "U"1 and "U"2 are subspaces of "V", then
where formula_16denotes the span of formula_17
Matrices allow explicit manipulation of finite-dimensional vector spaces and linear maps. Their theory is thus an essential part of linear algebra.
Let be a finite-dimensional vector space over a field , and be a basis of (thus is the dimension of ). By definition of a basis, the map
is a bijection from formula_19 the set of the sequences of elements of , onto . This is an isomorphism of vector spaces, if formula_20 is equipped of its standard structure of vector space, where vector addition and scalar multiplication are done component by component.
This isomorphism allows representing a vector by its inverse image under this isomorphism, that is by the coordinates vector formula_21 or by the column matrix
If is another finite dimensional vector space (possibly the same), with a basis formula_23 a linear map from to is well defined by its values on the basis elements, that is formula_24 Thus, is well represented by the list of the corresponding column matrices. That is, if
for , then is represented by the matrix
with rows and columns.
Matrix multiplication is defined in such a way that the product of two matrices is the matrix of the composition of the corresponding linear maps, and the product of a matrix and a column matrix is the column matrix representing the result of applying the represented linear map to the represented vector. It follows that the theory of finite-dimensional vector spaces and the theory of matrices are two different languages for expressing exactly the same concepts.
Two matrices that encode the same linear transformation in different bases are called similar. It can be proved that two matrices are similar if and only if one can transform one in the other by elementary row and column operations. For a matrix representing a linear map from to , the row operations correspond to change of bases in and the column operations correspond to change of bases in . Every matrix is similar to an identity matrix possibly bordered by zero rows and zero columns. In terms of vector spaces, this means that, for any linear map from to , there are bases such that a part of the basis of is mapped bijectively on a part of the basis of , and that the remaining basis elements of , if any, are mapped to zero. Gaussian elimination is the basic algorithm for finding these elementary operations, and proving these results.
A finite set of linear equations in a finite set of variables, for example, formula_27 or formula_28 is called a system of linear equations or a linear system.
Systems of linear equations form a fundamental part of linear algebra. Historically, linear algebra and matrix theory has been developed for solving such systems. In the modern presentation of linear algebra through vector spaces and matrices, many problems may be interpreted in terms of linear systems.
For example, let
be a linear system.
To such a system, one may associate its matrix
and its right member vector
Let be the linear transformation associated to the matrix . A solution of the system () is a vector
such that
that is an element of the preimage of by .
Let () be the associated homogeneous system, where the right-hand sides of the equations are put to zero:
The solutions of () are exactly the elements of the kernel of or, equivalently, .
The Gaussian-elimination consists of performing elementary row operations on the augmented matrix
for putting it in reduced row echelon form. These row operations do not change the set of solutions of the system of equations. In the example, the reduced echelon form is
showing that the system () has the unique solution
It follows from this matrix interpretation of linear systems that the same methods can be applied for solving linear systems and for many operations on matrices and linear transformations, which include the computation of the ranks, kernels, matrix inverses.
A linear endomorphism is a linear map that maps a vector space to itself.
If has a basis of elements, such an endomorphism is represented by a square matrix of size .
With respect to general linear maps, linear endomorphisms and square matrices have some specific properties that make their study an important part of linear algebra, which is used in many parts of mathematics, including geometric transformations, coordinate changes, quadratic forms, and many other part of mathematics.
The "determinant" of a square matrix is defined to be
where formula_37 is the group of all permutations of elements,
formula_38 is a permutation, and formula_39 the parity of the permutation.
A matrix is invertible if and only if the determinant is invertible (i.e., nonzero if the scalars belong to a field).
Cramer's rule is a closed-form expression, in terms of determinants, of the solution of a system of linear equations in unknowns. Cramer's rule is useful for reasoning about the solution, but, except for or , it is rarely used for computing a solution, since Gaussian elimination is a faster algorithm.
The "determinant of an endomorphism" is the determinant of the matrix representing the endomorphism in terms of some ordered basis. This definition makes sense, since this determinant is independent of the choice of the basis.
If is a linear endomorphism of a vector space over a field , an "eigenvector" of is a nonzero vector of such that for some scalar in . This scalar is an "eigenvalue" of .
If the dimension of is finite, and a basis has been chosen, and may be represented, respectively, by a square matrix and a column matrix ; the equation defining eigenvectors and eigenvalues becomes
Using the identity matrix , whose entries are all zero, except those of the main diagonal, which are equal to one, this may be rewritten
As is supposed to be nonzero, this means that is a singular matrix, and thus that its determinant formula_42 equals zero. The eigenvalues are thus the roots of the polynomial
If is of dimension , this is a monic polynomial of degree , called the characteristic polynomial of the matrix (or of the endomorphism), and there are, at most, eigenvalues.
If a basis exists that consists only of eigenvectors, the matrix of on this basis has a very simple structure: it is a diagonal matrix such that the entries on the main diagonal are eigenvalues, and the other entries are zero. In this case, the endomorphism and the matrix are said to be diagonalizable. More generally, an endomorphism and a matrix are also said diagonalizable, if they become diagonalizable after extending the field of scalars. In this extended sense, if the characteristic polynomial is square-free, then the matrix is diagonalizable.
A symmetric matrix is always diagonalizable. There are non-diagonalizable matrices, the simplest being
(it cannot be diagonalizable since its square is the zero matrix, and the square of a nonzero diagonal matrix is never zero).
When an endomorphism is not diagonalizable, there are bases on which it has a simple form, although not as simple as the diagonal form. The Frobenius normal form does not need of extending the field of scalars and makes the characteristic polynomial immediately readable on the matrix. The Jordan normal form requires to extend the field of scalar for containing all eigenvalues, and differs from the diagonal form only by some entries that are just above the main diagonal and are equal to 1.
A linear form is a linear map from a vector space over a field to the field of scalars , viewed as a vector space over itself. Equipped by pointwise addition and multiplication by a scalar, the linear forms form a vector space, called the dual space of , and usually denoted formula_45
If formula_46 is a basis of (this implies that is finite-dimensional), then one can define, for , a linear map formula_47 such that formula_48 and formula_49 if . These linear maps form a basis of formula_50 called the dual basis of formula_51 (If is not finite-dimensional, the formula_52 may be defined similarly; they are linearly independent, but do not form a basis.)
For in , the map
is a linear form on formula_45 This defines the canonical linear map from into formula_55 the dual of formula_50 called the bidual of . This canonical map is an isomorphism if is finite-dimensional, and this allows identifying with its bidual. (In the infinite dimensional case, the canonical map is injective, but not surjective.)
There is thus a complete symmetry between a finite-dimensional vector space and its dual. This motivates the frequent use, in this context, of the bra–ket notation
for denoting .
Let
be a linear map. For every linear form on , the composite function is a linear form on . This defines a linear map
between the dual spaces, which is called the dual or the transpose of .
If and are finite dimensional, and is the matrix of in terms of some ordered bases, then the matrix of formula_60 over the dual bases is the transpose formula_61 of , obtained by exchanging rows and columns.
If elements of vector spaces and their duals are represented by column vectors, this duality may be expressed in bra–ket notation by
For highlighting this symmetry, the two members of this equality are sometimes written
Besides these basic concepts, linear algebra also studies vector spaces with additional structure, such as an inner product. The inner product is an example of a bilinear form, and it gives the vector space a geometric structure by allowing for the definition of length and angles. Formally, an "inner product" is a map
that satisfies the following three axioms for all vectors "u", "v", "w" in "V" and all scalars "a" in "F":
In R, it is symmetric.
We can define the length of a vector "v" in "V" by
and we can prove the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality:
In particular, the quantity
and so we can call this quantity the cosine of the angle between the two vectors.
Two vectors are orthogonal if formula_72. An orthonormal basis is a basis where all basis vectors have length 1 and are orthogonal to each other. Given any finite-dimensional vector space, an orthonormal basis could be found by the Gram–Schmidt procedure. Orthonormal bases are particularly easy to deal with, since if "v" = "a"1 "v"1 + ... + "an vn", then formula_73.
The inner product facilitates the construction of many useful concepts. For instance, given a transform "T", we can define its Hermitian conjugate "T*" as the linear transform satisfying
If "T" satisfies "TT*" = "T*T", we call "T" normal. It turns out that normal matrices are precisely the matrices that have an orthonormal system of eigenvectors that span "V".
There is a strong relationship between linear algebra and geometry, which started with the introduction by René Descartes, in 1637, of Cartesian coordinates. In this new (at that time) geometry, now called Cartesian geometry, points are represented by Cartesian coordinates, which are sequences of three real numbers (in the case of the usual three-dimensional space). The basic objects of geometry, which are lines and planes are represented by linear equations. Thus, computing intersections of lines and planes amounts to solving systems of linear equations. This was one of the main motivations for developing linear algebra.
Most geometric transformation, such as translations, rotations, reflections, rigid motions, isometries, and projections transform lines into lines. It follows that they can be defined, specified and studied in terms of linear maps. This is also the case of homographies and Möbius transformations, when considered as transformations of a projective space.
Until the end of 19th century, geometric spaces were defined by axioms relating points, lines and planes (synthetic geometry). Around this date, it appeared that one may also define geometric spaces by constructions involving vector spaces (see, for example, Projective space and Affine space) It has been shown that the two approaches are essentially equivalent. In classical geometry, the involved vector spaces are vector spaces over the reals, but the constructions may be extended to vector spaces over any field, allowing considering geometry over arbitrary fields, including finite fields.
Presently, most textbooks, introduce geometric spaces from linear algebra, and geometry is often presented, at elementary level, as a subfield of linear algebra.
Linear algebra is used in almost all areas of mathematics, thus making it relevant in almost all scientific domains that use mathematics. These applications may be divided into several wide categories.
The modeling of our ambient space is based on geometry. Sciences concerned with this space use geometry widely. This is the case with mechanics and robotics, for describing rigid body dynamics; geodesy for describing Earth shape; perspectivity, computer vision, and computer graphics, for describing the relationship between a scene and its plane representation; and many other scientific domains.
In all these applications, synthetic geometry is often used for general descriptions and a qualitative approach, but for the study of explicit situations, one must compute with coordinates. This requires the heavy use of linear algebra.
Functional analysis studies function spaces. These are vector spaces with additional structure, such as Hilbert spaces. Linear algebra is thus a fundamental part of functional analysis and its applications, which include, in particular, quantum mechanics (wave functions).
Most physical phenomena are modeled by partial differential equations. To solve them, one usually decomposes the space in which the solutions are searched into small, mutually interacting cells. For linear systems this interaction involves linear functions. For nonlinear systems, this interaction is often approximated by linear functions. In both cases, very large matrices are generally involved. Weather forecasting is a typical example, where the whole Earth atmosphere is divided in cells of, say, 100 km of width and 100 m of height.
Nearly all scientific computations involve linear algebra. Consequently, linear algebra algorithms have been highly optimized. BLAS and LAPACK are the best known implementations. For improving efficiency, some of them configure the algorithms automatically, at run time, for adapting them to the specificities of the computer (cache size, number of available cores, ...).
Some processors, typically graphics processing units (GPU), are designed with a matrix structure, for optimizing the operations of linear algebra.
This section presents several related topics that do not appear generally in elementary textbooks on linear algebra, but are commonly considered, in advanced mathematics, as parts of linear algebra.
The existence of multiplicative inverses in fields is not involved in the axioms defining a vector space. One may thus replace the field of scalars by a ring , and this gives a structure called module over , or -module.
The concepts of linear independence, span, basis, and linear maps (also called module homomorphisms) are defined for modules exactly as for vector spaces, with the essential difference that, if is not a field, there are modules that do not have any basis. The modules that have a basis are the free modules, and those that are spanned by a finite set are the finitely generated modules. Module homomorphisms between finitely generated free modules may be represented by matrices. The theory of matrices over a ring is similar to that of matrices over a field, except that determinants exist only if the ring is commutative, and that a square matrix over a commutative ring is invertible only if its determinant has a multiplicative inverse in the ring.
Vector spaces are completely characterized by their dimension (up to an isomorphism). In general, there is not such a complete classification for modules, even if one restricts oneself to finitely generated modules. However, every module is a cokernel of a homomorphism of free modules.
Modules over the integers can be identified with abelian groups, since the multiplication by an integer may identified to a repeated addition. Most of the theory of abelian groups may be extended to modules over a principal ideal domain. In particular, over a principal ideal domain, every submodule of a free module is free, and the fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups may be extended straightforwardly to finitely generated modules over a principal ring.
There are many rings for which there are algorithms for solving linear equations and systems of linear equations. However, these algorithms have generally a computational complexity that is much higher than the similar algorithms over a field. For more details, see Linear equation over a ring.
In multilinear algebra, one considers multivariable linear transformations, that is, mappings that are linear in each of a number of different variables. This line of inquiry naturally leads to the idea of the dual space, the vector space "V"∗ consisting of linear maps where "F" is the field of scalars. Multilinear maps can be described via tensor products of elements of "V"∗.
If, in addition to vector addition and scalar multiplication, there is a bilinear vector product , the vector space is called an algebra; for instance, associative algebras are algebras with an associate vector product (like the algebra of square matrices, or the algebra of polynomials).
Vector spaces that are not finite dimensional often require additional structure to be tractable. A normed vector space is a vector space along with a function called a norm, which measures the "size" of elements. The norm induces a metric, which measures the distance between elements, and induces a topology, which allows for a definition of continuous maps. The metric also allows for a definition of limits and completeness - a metric space that is complete is known as a Banach space. A complete metric space along with the additional structure of an inner product (a conjugate symmetric sesquilinear form) is known as a Hilbert space, which is in some sense a particularly well-behaved Banach space. Functional analysis applies the methods of linear algebra alongside those of mathematical analysis to study various function spaces; the central objects of study in functional analysis are L"p" spaces, which are Banach spaces, and especially the "L2" space of square integrable functions, which is the only Hilbert space among them. Functional analysis is of particular importance to quantum mechanics, the theory of partial differential equations, digital signal processing, and electrical engineering. It also provides the foundation and theoretical framework that underlies the Fourier transform and related methods. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18422 |
Labia majora
The labia majora (singular: "labium majus") are two prominent longitudinal cutaneous folds that extend downward and backward from the mons pubis to the perineum. Together with the labia minora they form the labia of the vulva.
The labia majora are homologous to the male scrotum.
"Labia majora" is the Latin plural for big ("major") lips; the singular is "labium majus." The Latin term "labium/labia" is used in anatomy for a number of usually paired parallel structures, but in English it is mostly applied to two pairs of parts of female external genitals (vulva)—labia majora and labia minora. Labia majora are commonly known as the outer lips, while labia minora (Latin for "small lips"), which run alongside between them, are referred to as the inner lips. Traditionally, to avoid confusion with other lip-like structures of the body, the labia of female genitals were termed by anatomists in Latin as "labia majora ("or "minora) pudendi."
Embryologically, they develop from labioscrotal folds. It means that they develop in the female foetus from the same previously sexually undifferentiated anatomical structure as the scrotum, the sac of skin below the penis in males.
The same process of sex differentiation concerns other male and female reproductive organs (see List of related male and female reproductive organs), with some organs of both sexes developing similar, yet not identical, structure and functions (like the gonads - male testicles and female ovaries, like male and female urethras, erectile corpus cavernosum penis and prepuce in the penis (foreskin) and the corpus cavernosum clitoridis in the clitoris and (clitoral hood) and their frenula). But other male and female sex organs become absolutely different and unique, like the internal female genitalia.
The scrotum and labia majora develop to have both similarities and crucial differences. Like the scrotum, labia majora after puberty may become of a darker color than the skin outside them, and, similarly, also grow pubic hair on their external surface (the female genitals on accompanying photos are shaved to show their structure clearer). But, during sexual differentiation of the foetus, labioscrotal folds in the males normally fuse longitudinally in the middle, forming a sack for male gonads (testicles) to descend into it from the pelvis, while in the females these folds normally do not fuse, forming the two labia majora and the pudendal cleft between them. Female gonads (ovaries) do not descend from the pelvis, thus the structure of labia majora may seem simpler (just fatty tissue covered with skin) and of lesser significance for functioning of the female body as a whole than the scrotum with testicles for males. The ridge or groove remaining of the fusion can be traced on the scrotum.
In some cases of intersex with disorders of sex development male/female genitalia may look ambiguous for either gender with phallus too small for a typical penis yet too big for a clitoris, with external urethral opening in an atypical location, and with labia/scrotum fully or partially fused but without descended gonads in them. Undescended testicles, though, may also occur in otherwise generally healthy male infants.
The labia majora constitute the lateral boundaries of the pudendal cleft, which contains the labia minora, interlabial sulci, clitoral hood, clitoral glans, frenulum clitoridis, the Hart's Line, and the vulval vestibule, which contains the external openings of the urethra and the vagina. Each labium majus has two surfaces, an outer, pigmented and covered with strong, pubic hair; and an inner, smooth and beset with large sebaceous follicles. The labia majora are covered with squamous epithelium. Between the two there is a considerable quantity of areolar tissue, fat, and a tissue resembling the dartos tunic of the scrotum, besides vessels, nerves, and glands. The labia majora are thicker in front, and form the anterior labial commissure where they meet below the mons pubis. Posteriorly, they are not really joined, but appear to become lost in the neighboring integument, ending close to, and nearly parallel to, each other. Together with the connecting skin between them, they form another commissure the posterior labial commissure which is also the posterior boundary of the pudendum. The interval between the posterior commissure and the anus, from 2.5 to 3 cm in length, constitutes the perineum. The anterior region of the perineum is known as the urogenital triangle which separates it from the anal region. Between the labia majora and the inner thighs are the labiocrural folds. Between the labia majora and labia minora are the interlabial sulci. Labia majora atrophy after menopause.
The fat pad of the labia majora can be used as a graft, often as a so-called "Martius labial fat pad graft", and can be used, for example, in urethrolysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18423 |
Labia minora
The labia minora (Latin for "smaller lips," singular: "labium minus" "smaller lip"), also known as the inner labia, inner lips, vaginal lips or nymphae, are two flaps of skin on either side of the human vaginal opening in the vulva, situated between the labia majora (Latin for "larger lips;" also called outer labia, or outer lips). The labia minora vary widely in size, color and shape from individual to individual.
The labia minora are homologous to the male urethral surface of the penis.
The labia minora extend from the clitoris obliquely downward, laterally, and backward on either side of the vulval vestibule, ending between the bottom of the vulval vestibule and the labia majora. The posterior ends (bottom) of the labia minora are usually joined across the middle line by a fold of skin, named the frenulum of labia minora or fourchette.
On the front, each lip forks dividing into two portions surrounding the clitoris. The upper part of each lip passes above the clitoris to meet the upper part of the other lip—which will often be a little larger or smaller—forming a fold which overhangs the glans clitoridis (clitoral tip or head); this fold is named the clitoral hood. The lower part passes beneath the glans clitoridis and becomes united to its under surface, forming, with the inner lip of the opposite side, the "frenulum clitoridis".
The clitoral hood, analogously to the foreskin of the penis in men and also termed, like the latter, by the Latin word "prepuce", serves to cover most of the time the shaft and sometimes the glans (which is very sensitive to the touch) to protect the clitoris from mechanical irritation and from dryness. Yet the hood is movable and can slide during clitoral erection or be pulled upwards a little for greater exposure of the clitoris to sexual stimulation.
The frenulum (Latin for "little bridle") is an elastic band of tissue attached by its one end to the clitoral shaft and glans and by its other end to the prepuce. It allows two-way shifting of the clitoral hood: firstly, it can extend to let the hood be moved upwards to expose the glans for stimulation or hygienic cleansing, and secondly, it contracts to pull the hood back to protect it.
On the opposed surfaces of the labia minora are numerous sebaceous glands not associated with hair follicles. They are lined by stratified squamous epithelium on those surfaces.
Like the whole area of the vulval vestibule, the mucus secreted by those glands protects the labia from dryness and mechanical irritation.
Being thinner than the outer labia, the inner labia can be also more narrow than the former, or wider than labia majora, thus protruding in the pudendal cleft and making the term "minora" (Latin for smaller) essentially inapplicable in these cases.
The reception of wider and/or longer labia varies considerably between different people, with some men and women stressing the beauty of bigger labia while other women who have such ones complain of some discomfort either from mechanical irritation by their tighter clothes or from their own or their peers' negative attitude to the image of less compact female genitalia than is stereotypical for them.
They can also be smooth or frilled, the latter being more typical of longer or wider inner labia.
From 2003 to 2004, researchers from the Department of Gynaecology, Elizabeth Garret Anderson Hospital in London, measured the labia and other genital structures of 50 women from the age of 18 to 50, with a mean age of 35.6. The study has since been criticized for its "small and homogenous sample group" consisting primarily of white women. The results were:
Due to the frequent portrayal of the pudendal cleft without protrusion in art and pornography, there has been a rise in the popularity of labiaplasty, surgery to alter the labia - usually, to make them smaller. On the other hand, there is an opposite movement of labia stretching. Its proponents stress the beauty of long labia and their positive role in sexual stimulation of both partners.
Labiaplasty is also sometimes sought by women who have asymmetrical labia minora to adjust the shape of the structures towards identical size.
Labia stretching has traditionally been practised in some African nations in the East and South and the South Pacific.
The inner lips serve to protect from mechanical irritation, dryness and infections the highly sensitive area of the vulval vestibule with vaginal and urethral openings in it between them. During vaginal sexual intercourse they may contribute to stimulation of the whole vestibule area, the clitoris and the vagina of the woman and the penis of her partner. Stimulation of the clitoris may occur through tension of the clitoral hood and its frenulum by inner labia pulling at them. During sexual arousal they are lubricated by the mucus secreted in the vagina and around it to make penetration painless and protect them from irritation.
As the female external urethral opening (meatus) is also situated between labia minora, they may play a role in guiding the stream of the urine during female urination.
Being very sensitive by their structure to any irritation, and situated in the excretion area where traces of urine, vaginal discharge, smegma and even feces may be present, the inner lips may be susceptible to inflammatory infections of the vulva such as vulvitis.
The likelihood of inflammation may be reduced through appropriate regular hygienic cleansing of the whole vulval vestibule, using water and medically tested cleansing agents designed for vulvas. To avoid contamination of the vulva with fecal bacteria, it is recommended that the vulva is washed only from front to back, from mons pubis to the perineum and anus. Apart from water and special liquid cleansing agents (lotions), there are commercially available wet wipes for female intimate hygiene. Some women wipe the vulval vestibule dry with toilet tissue after urination to avoid irritation and infections from residual drops of the urine in the area.
However, incorrect choice of cleansing agents, or their incorrect application, may itself cause labial irritation and require medical attention. Over-vigorous rubbing of the labia of little girls while washing, combined with the lack of estrogen in their bodies, may lead to the mostly pediatric condition known as labial fusion. If fused labia prevent urination, urine may accumulate and cause pain and inflammation.
In adult females, irritation of the area may be caused by wearing too-tight underwear (especially where wider inner labia protrude in the pudendal cleft); while G-strings, which rub against the labia during body movements, may cause irritation or lead to infection from bacteria transferred from either the external environment or the anus. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18424 |
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term "masochism" is derived from his name, invented by his contemporary, the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name.
During his lifetime, Sacher-Masoch was well known as a man of letters, in particular a utopian thinker who espoused socialist and humanist ideals in his fiction and non-fiction. Most of his works remain untranslated into English. Until recently, his novel "Venus in Furs" was his only book commonly available in English, but an English translation by William Holmes of "Die Gottesmutter" was released in 2015 as "The Mother of God".
Von Sacher-Masoch was born in the city of Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine), the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, at the time a province of the Austrian Empire, into the Roman Catholic family of an Austrian civil servant, Leopold Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Sacher, and Charlotte von Masoch, a Ukrainian noblewoman. The father later combined his surname with his wife's 'von Masoch', at the request of her family (she was the last of the line). Von Sacher served as a Commissioner of the Imperial Police Forces in Lemberg, and he was recognised with a new title of nobility as Sacher-Masoch awarded by the Austrian Emperor.
Leopold studied law, history and mathematics at Graz University, and after graduating moved back to Lemberg where he became a professor. His early, non-fictional publications dealt mostly with Austrian history. At the same time, Masoch turned to the folklore and culture of his homeland, Galicia. Soon he abandoned lecturing and became a free man of letters. Within a decade his short stories and novels prevailed over his historical non-fiction works, though historical themes continued to imbue his fiction.
Panslavist ideas were prevalent in Masoch's literary work, and he found a particular interest in depicting picturesque types among the various ethnicities that inhabited Galicia. From the 1860s to the 1880s he published a number of volumes of "Jewish Short Stories", "Polish Short Stories", "Galician Short Stories", "German Court Stories" and "Russian Court Stories". His works were published in translation in Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and French.
In 1869, Sacher-Masoch conceived a grandiose series of short stories under the collective title "Legacy of Cain" that would represent the author's aesthetic "Weltanschauung". The cycle opened with the manifesto "The Wanderer" that brought out misogynist themes that became peculiar to Masoch's writings. Of the six planned volumes, only the first two were ever completed. By the middle of the 1880s, Masoch abandoned the "Legacy of Cain". Nevertheless, the published volumes of the series included Masoch's best-known stories, and of them, "Venus in Furs" (1869) is the most famous today. The short novel expressed Sacher-Masoch's fantasies and fetishes (especially for dominant women wearing fur). He did his best to live out his fantasies with his mistresses and wives.
Sacher-Masoch edited the Leipzig-based monthly literary magazine "Auf der Höhe. Internationale Review" ("At the Pinnacle. International Review"), which was published from October, 1881 to September, 1885. This was a progressive magazine aimed at tolerance and integration for Jews in Saxony, as well as for the emancipation of women with articles on women's education and suffrage.
In his later years, he worked against local antisemitism through an association for adult education called the "Oberhessischer Verein für Volksbildung" (OVV), founded in 1893 with his second wife, Hulda Meister, who had also been his assistant for some years.
Fanny Pistor was an emerging literary writer. She met Sacher-Masoch after she contacted him, under the assumed name and fictitious title of Baroness Bogdanoff, for suggestions on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication.
On 9 December 1869, Sacher-Masoch and Pistor, who was by then his mistress, signed a contract making him her slave for a period of six months, with the stipulation that the Baroness wear furs as often as possible, especially when she was in a cruel mood. Sacher-Masoch took the alias of "Gregor", a stereotypical male servant's name, and assumed a disguise as the servant of the Baroness. The two travelled by train to Italy. As in "Venus in Furs", he traveled in the third-class compartment, while she had a seat in first-class, arriving in Venice (Florence, in the novel), where they were not known, and would not arouse suspicion.
Sacher-Masoch pressured his first wife – Aurora von Rümelin, whom he married in 1873 – to live out the experience of the book, against her preferences. Sacher-Masoch found his family life to be unexciting, and eventually got a divorce and married his assistant.
In 1875, Masoch wrote "The Ideals of Our Time", an attempt to give a portrait of German society during its Gründerzeit period.
In his late fifties, his mental health began to deteriorate, and he spent the last years of his life under psychiatric care. According to official reports, he died in Lindheim, Altenstadt, Hesse, in 1895. It is also claimed that he died in an asylum in Mannheim in 1905.
Sacher-Masoch is the great-great-uncle to the British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull on the side of her mother, the Viennese Baroness Eva Erisso.
The term "masochism" was coined in 1886 by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) in his book "Psychopathia Sexualis":
Sacher-Masoch was not pleased with Krafft-Ebing's assertions. Nevertheless, details of Masoch's private life were obscure until Aurora von Rümelin's memoirs, "Meine Lebensbeichte" (My Life Confession; 1906), were published in Berlin under the pseudonym Wanda v. Dunajew. The following year, a French translation, "Confession de Ma Vie" (1907) by "Wanda von Sacher-Masoch", was printed in Paris by Mercure de France. An English translation of the French edition was published as "The Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch" (1991) by RE/Search Publications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18425 |
Lithography
Lithography () is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by German author and actor Alois Senefelder as a cheap method of publishing theatrical works. Lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or other suitable material.
Lithography originally used an image drawn with oil, fat, or wax onto the surface of a smooth, level lithographic limestone plate. The stone was treated with a mixture of acid and gum arabic, "etching" the portions of the stone that were not protected by the grease-based image. When the stone was subsequently moistened, these etched areas retained water; an oil-based ink could then be applied and would be repelled by the water, sticking only to the original drawing. The ink would finally be transferred to a blank paper sheet, producing a printed page. This traditional technique is still used in some fine art printmaking applications.
In modern lithography, the image is made of a polymer coating applied to a flexible plastic or metal plate. The image can be printed directly from the plate (the orientation of the image is reversed), or it can be offset, by transferring the image onto a flexible sheet (rubber) for printing and publication.
As a printing technology, lithography is different from intaglio printing (gravure), wherein a plate is either engraved, etched, or stippled to score cavities to contain the printing ink; and woodblock printing or letterpress printing, wherein ink is applied to the raised surfaces of letters or images. Today, most types of high-volume books and magazines, especially when illustrated in colour, are printed with offset lithography, which has become the most common form of printing technology since the 1960s.
The related term "photolithography" refers to the use of photographic images in lithographic printing, whether these images are printed directly from a stone or from a metal plate, as in offset printing. "Photolithography" is used synonymously with "offset printing". The technique as well as the term were introduced in Europe in the 1850s. Beginning in the 1960s, photolithography has played an important role in the fabrication and mass production of integrated circuits in the microelectronics industry.
Lithography uses simple chemical processes to create an image. For instance, the positive part of an image is a water-repelling ("hydrophobic") substance, while the negative image would be water-retaining ("hydrophilic"). Thus, when the plate is introduced to a compatible printing ink and water mixture, the ink will adhere to the positive image and the water will clean the negative image. This allows a flat print plate to be used, enabling much longer and more detailed print runs than the older physical methods of printing (e.g., intaglio printing, letterpress printing).
Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1796. In the early days of lithography, a smooth piece of limestone was used (hence the name "lithography": "lithos" () is the ancient Greek word for stone). After the oil-based image was put on the surface, a solution of gum arabic in water was applied, the gum sticking only to the non-oily surface. During printing, water adhered to the gum arabic surfaces and was repelled by the oily parts, while the oily ink used for printing did the opposite.
Lithography works because of the mutual repulsion of oil and water. The image is drawn on the surface of the print plate with a fat or oil-based medium (hydrophobic) such as a wax crayon, which may be pigmented to make the drawing visible. A wide range of oil-based media is available, but the durability of the image on the stone depends on the lipid content of the material being used, and its ability to withstand water and acid. After the drawing of the image, an aqueous solution of gum arabic, weakly acidified with nitric acid is applied to the stone. The function of this solution is to create a hydrophilic layer of calcium nitrate salt, , and gum arabic on all non-image surfaces. The gum solution penetrates into the pores of the stone, completely surrounding the original image with a hydrophilic layer that will not accept the printing ink. Using lithographic turpentine, the printer then removes any excess of the greasy drawing material, but a hydrophobic molecular film of it remains tightly bonded to the surface of the stone, rejecting the gum arabic and water, but ready to accept the oily ink.
When printing, the stone is kept wet with water. Naturally the water is attracted to the layer of gum and salt created by the acid wash. Printing ink based on drying oils such as linseed oil and varnish loaded with pigment is then rolled over the surface. The water repels the greasy ink but the hydrophobic areas left by the original drawing material accept it. When the hydrophobic image is loaded with ink, the stone and paper are run through a press that applies even pressure over the surface, transferring the ink to the paper and off the stone.
Senefelder had experimented during the early 19th century with multicolor lithography; in his 1819 book, he predicted that the process would eventually be perfected and used to reproduce paintings. Multi-color printing was introduced by a new process developed by Godefroy Engelmann (France) in 1837 known as chromolithography. A separate stone was used for each color, and a print went through the press separately for each stone. The main challenge was to keep the images aligned ("in register"). This method lent itself to images consisting of large areas of flat color, and resulted in the characteristic poster designs of this period.
"Lithography, or printing from soft stone, largely took the place of engraving in the production of English commercial maps after about 1852. It was a quick, cheap process and had been used to print British army maps during the Peninsula War. Most of the commercial maps of the second half of the 19th century were lithographed and unattractive, though accurate enough."
High-volume lithography is used presently to produce posters, maps, books, newspapers, and packaging—just about any smooth, mass-produced item with print and graphics on it. Most books, indeed all types of high-volume text, are now printed using offset lithography.
For offset lithography, which depends on photographic processes, flexible aluminum, polyester, mylar or paper printing plates are used instead of stone tablets. Modern printing plates have a brushed or roughened texture and are covered with a photosensitive emulsion. A photographic negative of the desired image is placed in contact with the emulsion and the plate is exposed to ultraviolet light. After development, the emulsion shows a reverse of the negative image, which is thus a duplicate of the original (positive) image. The image on the plate emulsion can also be created by direct laser imaging in a CTP (Computer-To-Plate) device known as a platesetter. The positive image is the emulsion that remains after imaging. Non-image portions of the emulsion have traditionally been removed by a chemical process, though in recent times plates have come available that do not require such processing.
The plate is affixed to a cylinder on a printing press. Dampening rollers apply water, which covers the blank portions of the plate but is repelled by the emulsion of the image area. Hydrophobic ink, which is repelled by the water and only adheres to the emulsion of the image area, is then applied by the inking rollers.
If this image were transferred directly to paper, it would create a mirror-type image and the paper would become too wet. Instead, the plate rolls against a cylinder covered with a rubber "blanket", which squeezes away the water, picks up the ink and transfers it to the paper with uniform pressure. The paper passes between the blanket cylinder and a counter-pressure or impression cylinder and the image is transferred to the paper. Because the image is first transferred, or "offset" to the rubber blanket cylinder, this reproduction method is known as "offset lithography" or "offset printing".
Many innovations and technical refinements have been made in printing processes and presses over the years, including the development of presses with multiple units (each containing one printing plate) that can print multi-color images in one pass on both sides of the sheet, and presses that accommodate continuous rolls ("webs") of paper, known as web presses. Another innovation was the continuous dampening system first introduced by Dahlgren, instead of the old method (conventional dampening) which is still used on older presses, using rollers covered with molleton (cloth) that absorbs the water. This increased control of the water flow to the plate and allowed for better ink and water balance. Current dampening systems include a "delta effect or vario", which slows the roller in contact with the plate, thus creating a sweeping movement over the ink image to clean impurities known as "hickies".
This press is also called an ink pyramid because the ink is transferred through several layers of rollers with different purposes. Fast lithographic 'web' printing presses are commonly used in newspaper production.
The advent of desktop publishing made it possible for type and images to be modified easily on personal computers for eventual printing by desktop or commercial presses. The development of digital imagesetters enabled print shops to produce negatives for platemaking directly from digital input, skipping the intermediate step of photographing an actual page layout. The development of the digital platesetter during the late 20th century eliminated film negatives altogether by exposing printing plates directly from digital input, a process known as computer to plate printing.
Microlithography and nanolithography refer specifically to lithographic patterning methods capable of structuring material on a fine scale. Typically, features smaller than 10 micrometers are considered microlithographic, and features smaller than 100 nanometers are considered nanolithographic. Photolithography is one of these methods, often applied to semiconductor device fabrication. Photolithography is also commonly used for fabricating microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices. Photolithography generally uses a pre-fabricated photomask or reticle as a master from which the final pattern is derived.
Although photolithographic technology is the most commercially advanced form of nanolithography, other techniques are also used. Some, for example electron beam lithography, are capable of much greater patterning resolution (sometimes as small as a few nanometers). Electron beam lithography is also important commercially, primarily for its use in the manufacture of photomasks. Electron beam lithography as it is usually practiced is a form of maskless lithography, in that a mask is not required to generate the final pattern. Instead, the final pattern is created directly from a digital representation on a computer, by controlling an electron beam as it scans across a resist-coated substrate. Electron beam lithography has the disadvantage of being much slower than photolithography.
In addition to these commercially well-established techniques, a large number of promising microlithographic and nanolithographic technologies exist or are being developed, including nanoimprint lithography, interference lithography, X-ray lithography, extreme ultraviolet lithography, magnetolithography and scanning probe lithography. Some of these new techniques have been used successfully for small-scale commercial and important research applications.
Surface-charge lithography, in fact Plasma desorption mass spectrometry can be directly patterned on polar dielectric crystals via pyroelectric effect,
Diffraction lithography.
During the first years of the 19th century, lithography had only a limited effect on printmaking, mainly because technical difficulties remained to be overcome. Germany was the main center of production in this period. Godefroy Engelmann, who moved his press from Mulhouse to Paris in 1816, largely succeeded in resolving the technical problems, and during the 1820s lithography was adopted by artists such as Delacroix and Géricault. After early experiments such as "Specimens of Polyautography" (1803), which had experimental works by a number of British artists including Benjamin West, Henry Fuseli, James Barry, Thomas Barker of Bath, Thomas Stothard, Henry Richard Greville, Richard Cooper, Henry Singleton, and William Henry Pyne, London also became a center, and some of Géricault's prints were in fact produced there. Goya in Bordeaux produced his last series of prints by lithography—"The Bulls of Bordeaux" of 1828. By the mid-century the initial enthusiasm had somewhat diminished in both countries, although the use of lithography was increasingly favored for commercial applications, which included the prints of Daumier, published in newspapers. Rodolphe Bresdin and Jean-François Millet also continued to practice the medium in France, and Adolf Menzel in Germany. In 1862 the publisher Cadart tried to initiate a portfolio of lithographs by various artists, which was not successful but included several prints by Manet. The revival began during the 1870s, especially in France with artists such as Odilon Redon, Henri Fantin-Latour and Degas producing much of their work in this manner. The need for strictly limited editions to maintain the price had now been realized, and the medium became more accepted.
In the 1890s, color lithography gained success in part by the emergence of Jules Chéret, known as the "father of the modern poster", whose work went on to inspire a new generation of poster designers and painters, most notably Toulouse-Lautrec, and former student of Chéret, Georges de Feure. By 1900 the medium in both color and monotone was an accepted part of printmaking.
During the 20th century, a group of artists, including Braque, Calder, Chagall, Dufy, Léger, Matisse, Miró, and Picasso, rediscovered the largely undeveloped artform of lithography thanks to the Mourlot Studios, also known as "Atelier Mourlot", a Parisian printshop founded in 1852 by the Mourlot family. The Atelier Mourlot originally specialized in the printing of wallpaper; but it was transformed when the founder's grandson, Fernand Mourlot, invited a number of 20th-century artists to explore the complexities of fine art printing. Mourlot encouraged the painters to work directly on lithographic stones in order to create original artworks that could then be executed under the direction of master printers in small editions. The combination of modern artist and master printer resulted in lithographs that were used as posters to promote the artists' work.
Grant Wood, George Bellows, Alphonse Mucha, Max Kahn, Pablo Picasso, Eleanor Coen, Jasper Johns, David Hockney, Susan Dorothea White, and Robert Rauschenberg are a few of the artists who have produced most of their prints in the medium. M. C. Escher is considered a master of lithography, and many of his prints were created using this process. More than other printmaking techniques, printmakers in lithography still largely depend on access to good printers, and the development of the medium has been greatly influenced by when and where these have been established.
As a special form of lithography, the serilith process is sometimes used. Seriliths are mixed media original prints created in a process in which an artist uses the lithograph and serigraph processes. The separations for both processes are hand-drawn by the artist. The serilith technique is used primarily to create fine art limited print editions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18426 |
Library management
Library management is a sub-discipline of institutional management that focuses on specific issues faced by libraries and library management professionals. Library management encompasses normal managerial tasks, as well as intellectual freedom and fundraising responsibilities. Issues faced in library management frequently overlap with those faced in managing non-profit organizations.
The basic functions of library management include, but are not limited to: planning and negotiating the acquisition of materials, Interlibrary Loan (ILL) requests, stacks maintenance, overseeing fee collection, event planning, fundraising, and human resources.
Most of the libraries that store physical media like books, periodicals, film, and other objects adhere to some derivative of the Dewey Decimal System as their method for tagging, storing, and retrieving materials based on unique identifiers. The use of such systems have caused librarians to develop and leverage common constructs that act as tools for both library professionals and library users alike. These constructs include master catalogs, domain catalogs, indexes, unique identifiers, unique identifier tokens, and artifacts .
An important aspect of library management is planning and maintaining library facilities. Successful planning is defined as "active planning that ensures an organization will have the right people in the right place at the right time for right job" Planning the construction of new libraries or remodeling those that exist is integral since user needs are often changing. To supplement their operating budget, managers often secure funding through donor gifts and fundraising. Many facilities have begun including cafes, Friends of the Library spaces, and even exhibits to help generate additional revenue. These areas should be taken into account when planning for building expansions.
The site for new construction must be found, then the building must be designed, constructed, and eventually evaluated. Once established, it is important that the building is regularly maintained. This may be completed by delegating tasks to maintenance personnel or by hiring an outside company through bids.
Disaster planning must be taken into account in the library context as well: not only the impact of a disaster on the library, but the library's potential role as a support service just after a disaster.
The Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) is a division of the American Library Association that provides leaders with webinars, conferences, and a variety of industry publications, in addition to funding through awards and grants. LLAMA membership includes a free subscription to the online quarterly magazine "Library Leadership & Management", as well as discounts on other publications and related conferences.
The "Journal of Library Administration" began in 1980 and is currently published by Routledge eight times per year. It is a peer-reviewed academic journal that discusses issues pertaining to library management. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18430 |
English longbow
The English longbow was a powerful medieval type of longbow (a tall bow for archery) about long used by the English and Welsh for hunting and as a weapon in warfare. English use of longbows was effective against the French during the Hundred Years' War, particularly at the start of the war in the battles of Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346), and Poitiers (1356), and perhaps most famously at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). They were less successful after this, with longbowmen having their lines broken at the Battle of Verneuil (1424) though the English won a decisive victory, and being completely routed at the Battle of Patay (1429) when they were charged before they had set up their defensive position.
No English longbows survive from the period when the longbow was dominant (c. 1250–1450 AD), probably because bows became weaker, broke, and were replaced rather than being handed down through generations. More than 130 bows survive from the Renaissance period, however. More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the "Mary Rose", a ship of Henry VIII's navy that sank at Portsmouth in 1545.
A longbow must be long enough to allow its user to draw the string to a point on the face or body, and the length therefore varies with the user. In continental Europe it was generally seen as any bow longer than . The Society of Antiquaries of London says it is of in length. Richard Bartelot, of the Royal Artillery Institution, said that the bow was of yew, long, with a arrow. Gaston III, Count of Foix, wrote in 1388 that a longbow should be "of yew or boxwood, seventy inches [] between the points of attachment for the cord". Historian Jim Bradbury said they were an average of about 5 feet and 8 inches. All but the last estimate were made before the excavation of the "Mary Rose", where bows were found ranging in length from with an average length of .
Estimates for the draw of these bows varies considerably. Before the recovery of the "Mary Rose", Count M. Mildmay Stayner, Recorder of the British Long Bow Society, estimated the bows of the Medieval period drew , maximum, and W. F. Paterson, Chairman of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, believed the weapon had a supreme draw weight of only . Other sources suggest significantly higher draw weights. The original draw forces of examples from the "Mary Rose" are estimated by Robert Hardy at at a draw length; the full range of draw weights was between . The draw length was used because that is the length allowed by the arrows commonly found on the "Mary Rose".
A modern longbow's draw is typically or less, and by modern convention measured at . Historically, hunting bows usually had draw weights of , which is enough for all but the very largest game and which most reasonably fit adults can manage with practice. Today, there are few modern longbowmen capable of using bows accurately.
A record of how boys and men trained to use the bows with high draw weights survives from the reign of Henry VII.
What Latimer meant when he describes laying his body into the bow was described thus:
The preferred material to make the longbow was yew, although ash, elm and other woods were also used. Gerald of Wales speaking of the bows used by the Welsh men of Gwent, says: "They are made neither of horn, ash nor yew, but of elm; ugly unfinished-looking weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large and strong, and equally capable of use for long or short shooting". The traditional construction of a longbow consists of drying the yew wood for 1 to 2 years, then slowly working the wood into shape, with the entire process taking up to four years. (This can be done far more quickly by working the wood down when wet, as a thinner piece of wood will dry much faster.) The bow stave is shaped into a D-section. The outer "back" of sapwood, approximately flat, follows the natural growth rings; modern bowyers often thin the sapwood, while in the "Mary Rose" bows the back of the bow was the natural surface of the wood, only the bark is removed. The inner side ("belly") of the bow stave consists of rounded heartwood. The heartwood resists compression and the outer sapwood performs better in tension. This combination in a single piece of wood (a self bow) forms a natural "laminate", somewhat similar in effect to the construction of a composite bow. Longbows will last a long time if protected with a water-resistant coating, traditionally of "wax, resin and fine tallow".
The trade of yew wood to England for longbows was such that it depleted the stocks of yew over a huge area. The first documented import of yew bowstaves to England was in 1294. In 1350 there was a serious shortage, and Henry IV of England ordered his royal bowyer to enter private land and cut yew and other woods. In 1470 compulsory practice was renewed, and hazel, ash, and laburnum were specifically allowed for practice bows. Supplies still proved insufficient, until by the Statute of Westminster 1472, every ship coming to an English port had to bring four bowstaves for every tun. Richard III of England increased this to ten for every tun. This stimulated a vast network of extraction and supply, which formed part of royal monopolies in southern Germany and Austria. In 1483, the price of bowstaves rose from two to eight pounds per hundred, and in 1510 the Venetians obtained sixteen pounds per hundred.
In 1507 the Holy Roman Emperor asked the Duke of Bavaria to stop cutting yew, but the trade was profitable, and in 1532 the royal monopoly was granted for the usual quantity "if there are that many". In 1562, the Bavarian government sent a long plea to the Holy Roman Emperor asking him to stop the cutting of yew and outlining the damage done to the forests by its selective extraction, which broke the canopy and allowed wind to destroy neighbouring trees. In 1568, despite a request from Saxony, no royal monopoly was granted because there was no yew to cut, and the next year Bavaria and Austria similarly failed to produce enough yew to justify a royal monopoly.
Forestry records in this area in the 17th century do not mention yew, and it seems that no mature trees were to be had. The English tried to obtain supplies from the Baltic, but at this period bows were being replaced by guns in any case.
Bowstrings are made of hemp, flax or silk, and attached to the wood via horn "nocks" that fit onto the end of the bow. Modern synthetic materials (often Dacron) are now commonly also used for strings.
A wide variety of arrows were shot from the English longbow. Variations in length, fletchings and heads are all recorded. Perhaps the greatest diversity lies in hunting arrows, with varieties like broad-arrow, wolf-arrow, dog-arrow, Welsh arrow and Scottish arrow being recorded. War arrows were ordered in the thousands for medieval armies and navies, supplied in sheaves normally of 24 arrows. For example, between 1341 and 1359 the English crown is known to have obtained 51,350 sheaves (1,232,400 arrows).
Only one significant group of arrows, found at the wreck of the "Mary Rose", has survived. Over 3500 arrows were found, mainly made of poplar but also of ash, beech and hazel. Analysis of the intact specimens shows their length to vary from , with an average length of . Because of the preservation conditions of the "Mary Rose", no arrowheads survived. However, many heads have survived in other places, which has allowed typologies of arrowheads to be produced, the most modern being the Jessop typology. The most common arrowheads in military use were the short bodkin point (Jessop M10) and a small barbed arrow (Jessop M4).
Longbows were very difficult to master because the force required to deliver an arrow through the improving armour of medieval Europe was very high by modern standards. Although the draw weight of a typical English longbow is disputed, it was at least and possibly more than . Considerable practice was required to produce the swift and effective combat shooting required. Skeletons of longbow archers are recognisably affected, with enlarged left arms and often osteophytes on left wrists, left shoulders and right fingers.
It was the difficulty in using the longbow that led various monarchs of England to issue instructions encouraging their ownership and practice, including the Assize of Arms of 1252 and Edward III of England's declaration of 1363:
If the people practised archery, it would be that much easier for the king to recruit the proficient longbowmen he needed for his wars. Along with the improving ability of gunfire to penetrate plate armour, it was the long training needed by longbowmen that eventually led to their being replaced by musketeers.
The range of the medieval weapon is not accurately known, with much depending on both the power of the bow and the type of arrow. It has been suggested that a flight arrow of a professional archer of Edward III's time would reach but the longest mark shot at on the London practice ground of Finsbury Fields in the 16th century was . In 1542, Henry VIII set a minimum practice range for adults using flight arrows of ; ranges below this had to be shot with heavy arrows. Modern experiments broadly concur with these historical ranges. A 667 N (150 lbf) "Mary Rose" replica longbow was able to shoot a arrow and a a distance of . In 2012, Joe Gibbs shot a livery arrow with a 170 lbf yew bow. The effective combat range of longbowmen was generally lower than what could be achieved on the practice range as sustained shooting was tiring and the rigors of campaigning would sap soldiers' strength. Writing 30 years after the Mary Rose sank, Barnabe Rich estimated that if 1,000 English archers were mustered then after one week only 100 of them would be able to shoot farther than 200 paces, while 200 would not be able to shoot farther than 180 paces.
In an early modern test by Saxton Pope, a direct hit from a steel bodkin point penetrated Damascus mail armour.
A 2006 test was made by Matheus Bane using a draw (at 28") bow, shooting at 10 yards; according to Bane's calculations, this would be approximately equivalent to a bow at 250 yards. Measured against a replica of the thinnest contemporary gambeson (padded jacket) armour, a 905 grain needle bodkin and a 935 grain curved broadhead penetrated over . (gambeson armour could be up to twice as thick as the coat tested; in Bane's opinion such a thick coat would have stopped bodkin arrows but not the cutting force of broadhead arrows.) Against "high quality riveted maille", the needle bodkin and curved broadhead penetrated 2.8". Against a coat of plates, the needle bodkin achieved 0.3" penetration. The curved broadhead did not penetrate but caused 0.3" of deformation of the metal. Results against plate armour of "minimum thickness" (1.2mm) were similar to the coat of plates, in that the needle bodkin penetrated to a shallow depth, the other arrows not at all. In Bane's view, the plate armour would have kept out all the arrows if thicker or worn with more padding.
Other modern tests described by Bane include those by Williams (which concluded that longbows could "not" penetrate mail, but in Bane's view did not use a realistic arrow tip), Robert Hardy's tests (which achieved broadly similar results to Bane), and a "Primitive Archer" test which demonstrated that a longbow could penetrate a plate armour breastplate. However, the "Primitive Archer" test used a longbow at very short range, generating 160 joules (vs. 73 for Bane and 80 for Williams), so probably not representative of battles of the time.
Tests conducted by Mark Stretton examined the effects of heavier war shafts (as opposed to lighter hunting or distance-shooting 'flight arrows'). The quarrel-like 102-gram arrow from a yew 'self bow' (with a draw weight of 144lbs at 32 inches) while travelling at 47.23 metres per second yielded 113.76 joules, more kinetic energy than the lighter broad-heads while achieving 90% of the range. The short, heavy quarrel-form bodkin could penetrate a replica brigandine at up to 40° from perpendicular.
In 2011, Mike Loades conducted an experiment in which short bodkin arrows were shot at a range of by bows of - powerful bows at less than normal battlefield range. The target was covered in a riveted mail over a fabric armour of deerskin over 24 linen layers. While most arrows went through the mail layer, none fully penetrated the textile armour.
Other research has also concluded that later medieval armour, such as that of the Italian city-state mercenary companies, was effective at stopping contemporary arrows.
Computer analysis by Warsaw University of Technology in 2017 has estimated that heavy bodkin-point arrows could penetrate typical plate armour of the time at up to . However, the depth of penetration would be slight at that range, a mere 14mm on average; penetration increased as the range closed or against armour lesser than the best quality available at the time, but with 24mm being the highest penetration depth estimated at 25 m range, it was unlikely to be deadly.
Gerald of Wales commented on the power of the Welsh longbow in the 12th century:
Against massed men in armour, massed longbows were murderously effective on many battlefields.
Strickland and Hardy suggest that "even at a range of 240 yards heavy war arrows shot from bows of poundages in the mid- to upper range possessed by the Mary Rose bows would have been capable of killing or severely wounding men equipped with armour of wrought iron. Higher-quality armour of steel would have given considerably greater protection, which accords well with the experience of Oxford's men against the elite French vanguard at Poitiers in 1356, and des Ursin's statement that the French knights of the first ranks at Agincourt, which included some of the most important (and thus best-equipped) nobles, remained comparatively unhurt by the English arrows".
Archery was described by contemporaries as ineffective against steel plate armour in the Battle of Neville's Cross (1346), the siege of Bergerac (1345), and the Battle of Poitiers (1356); such armour became available to European knights and men at arms of fairly modest means by the middle of the 14th century, though never to all soldiers in any army. Longbowmen were, however, effective at Poitiers, and this success stimulated changes in armour manufacture partly intended to make armoured men less vulnerable to archery. Nevertheless, at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and for some decades thereafter, English longbowmen continued to be an effective battlefield force.
Following the Battle of Crécy, the longbow did not always prove as effective. For example, at the Battle of Poitiers (1356), the French men-at-arms formed a shield wall with which Geoffrey le Baker recounts "protecting their bodies with joined shields, [and] turned their faces away from the missiles. So the archers emptied their quivers in vain".
Modern tests and contemporary accounts agree therefore that well-made plate armour could protect against longbows. However, this did not necessarily make the longbow ineffective; thousands of longbowmen were deployed in the English victory at Agincourt against plate armoured French knights in 1415. Clifford Rogers has argued that while longbows might not have been able to penetrate steel breastplates at Agincourt they could still penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs. Most of the French knights advanced on foot but, exhausted by walking across wet muddy terrain in heavy armour enduring a "terrifying hail of arrow shot", they were overwhelmed in the melee.
Less heavily armoured soldiers were more vulnerable than knights. For example, enemy crossbowmen were forced to retreat at Crécy when deployed without their protecting pavises. Horses were generally less well protected than the knights themselves; shooting the French knights' horses from the side (where they were less well armoured) is described by contemporary accounts of the Battle of Poitiers (1356), and at Agincourt John Keegan has argued that the main effect of the longbow would have been in injuring the horses of the mounted French knights.
A typical military longbow archer would be provided with between 60 and 72 arrows at the time of battle. Most archers would not shoot arrows at the maximum rate, as it would exhaust even the most experienced man. "With the heaviest bows [a modern war bow archer] does not like to try for more than six a minute." Not only do the arms and shoulder muscles tire from the exertion, but the fingers holding the bowstring become strained; therefore, actual rates of shooting in combat would vary considerably. Ranged volleys at the beginning of the battle would differ markedly from the closer, aimed shots as the battle progressed and the enemy neared. On the battlefield English archers stored their arrows stabbed upright into the ground at their feet, reducing the time it took to nock, draw and loose.
Arrows were not unlimited, so archers and their commanders took every effort to ration their use to the situation at hand. Nonetheless, resupply during battle was available. Young boys were often employed to run additional arrows to longbow archers while in their positions on the battlefield. "The longbow was the machine gun of the Middle Ages: accurate, deadly, possessed of a long range and rapid rate of fire, the flight of its missiles was likened to a storm".
In tests against a moving target simulating a galloping knight it took some approximately seven seconds to draw, aim and loose an armour-piercing heavy arrow using a replica war bow. It was found that in the seven seconds between the first and second shots the target advanced 70 yards and that the second shot occurred at such close range that, if it was a realistic contest, running away was the only option.
A Tudor English author expects eight shots from a longbow in the same time as five from a musket. He points out that the musket also shoots at a flatter trajectory, so is more likely to hit its target and its shot is likely to be more damaging in the event of a hit. The advantage of early firearms lay in the lower training requirements, the opportunity to take cover while shooting, flatter trajectory, and greater penetration.
The only way to remove an arrow cleanly was to tie a piece of cloth soaked in water to the end of it and push it through the victim's wound and out the other side this was extremely painful. Specialised tools have existed since ancient times: Diocles (successor of Hippocrates) devised the graphiscos, a form of cannula with hooks, and the duck-billed forceps (allegedly invented by Heras of Cappadocia) was employed during the medieval period to extract arrows from places where bone prevented the arrow being pushed through.
Henry, Prince of Wales, later Henry V, was wounded in the face by an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403). The royal physician John Bradmore had a tool made that consisted of a pair of smooth tongs. Once carefully inserted into the socket of the arrowhead, the tongs screwed apart until they gripped its walls and allowed the head to be extracted from the wound. Prior to the extraction, the hole made by the arrow shaft was widened by inserting larger and larger dowels of elder pith wrapped in linen down into the entry wound. The dowels were soaked in honey, now known to have antiseptic properties. The wound was then dressed with a poultice of barley and honey mixed in turpentine (pre-dating Ambroise Paré but whose therapeutic use of turpentine was inspired by Roman medical texts that may have been familiar to Bradmore). After 20 days, the wound was free of infection.
The word may have been coined to distinguish the longbow from the crossbow. The first recorded use of the term "longbow", as distinct from simply 'bow', is possibly in a 1386 administrative document which refers in Latin to "arcus vocati longbowes", "bows called 'longbows'", though unfortunately the reading of the last word in the original document is not certain. A 1444 will proved in York bequeaths "a sadil, alle my longe bowis, a bedde".
The origins of the English longbow are disputed. While it is hard to assess the significance of military archery in pre-Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxon warfare, it is clear that archery played a prominent role under the Normans, as the story of the Battle of Hastings shows. Their Anglo-Norman descendants also made use of military archery, as exemplified by their victory at the Battle of the Standard in 1138. During the Anglo-Norman invasions of Wales, Welsh bowmen took a heavy toll of the invaders and Welsh archers would feature in English armies from this point on. However, historians dispute whether this archery used a different kind of bow to the later English Longbow. Traditionally it has been argued that prior to the beginning of the 14th century, the weapon was a self bow between four and five feet in length, known since the 19th century as the shortbow. This weapon, drawn to the chest rather than the ear, was much weaker. However, in 1985, Jim Bradbury reclassified this weapon as the "ordinary wooden bow", reserving the term shortbow for short composite bows and arguing that longbows were a developed form of this ordinary bow. Strickland and Hardy in 2005 took this argument further, suggesting that the shortbow was a myth and all early English bows were a form of longbow. In 2011, Clifford Rogers forcefully restated the traditional case based upon a variety of evidence, including a large scale iconographic survey. In 2012, Richard Wadge added to the debate with an extensive survey of record, iconographic and archaeological evidence, concluding that longbows co-existed with shorter self-wood bows in England in the period between the Norman conquest and the reign of Edward III, but that powerful longbows shooting heavy arrows were a rarity until the later 13th century. Whether or not there was a technological revolution at the end of the 13th century therefore remains in dispute. What is agreed, however, is that the English longbow as an effective weapon system evolved in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
The longbow decided many medieval battles fought by the English and Welsh, the most significant of which were the Battle of Crécy (1346) and the Battle of Agincourt (1415), during the Hundred Years' War and followed earlier successes, notably at the Battle of Falkirk (1298) and the Battle of Halidon Hill (1333) during the Wars of Scottish Independence. They were less successful after this, with longbowmen having their lines broken at the Battle of Verneuil (1424), and being routed at the Battle of Patay (1429) when they were charged before they had set up their defences, and with the war-ending Battle of Castillon (1453) being decided by the French artillery.
The longbow was also used against the English by their Welsh neighbours. The Welsh used the longbow mostly in a different manner than the English. In many early period English campaigns, the Welsh used the longbow in ambushes, often at point blank range that allowed their missiles to penetrate armour and generally do a lot of damage.
Although longbows were much faster and more accurate than the black-powder weapons which replaced them, longbowmen always took a long time to train because of the years of practice necessary before a war longbow could be used effectively (examples of longbows from the "Mary Rose" typically had draws greater than ). In an era in which warfare was usually seasonal, and non-noble soldiers spent part of the year working at farms, the year-round training required for the effective use of the longbow was a challenge. A standing army was an expensive proposition to a medieval ruler. Mainland European armies seldom trained a significant longbow corps. Due to their specialized training, English longbowmen were sought as mercenaries in other European countries, most notably in the Italian city-states and in Spain.
The White Company, comprising men-at-arms and longbowmen and commanded by Sir John Hawkwood, is the best known English Free Company of the 14th century. The powerful Hungarian king, Louis the Great, is an example of someone who used longbowmen in his Italian campaigns.
Longbows remained in use until around the 16th century, when advances in firearms made gunpowder weapons a significant factor in warfare and such units as arquebusiers and grenadiers began appearing. Despite this, the English Crown made numerous efforts to continue to promote archery practice by banning other sports and fining people for not possessing bows. Indeed, just before the English Civil War, a pamphlet by William Neade entitled "The Double-Armed Man" advocated that soldiers be trained in both the longbow and pike; although this advice was followed only by a few town militias.
The Battle of Flodden (1513) was "a landmark in the history of archery, as the last battle on English soil to be fought with the longbow as the principal weapon..." The last recorded use of bows in an English battle may have been a skirmish at Bridgnorth, in October 1642, during the Civil War, when an impromptu town militia, armed with bows, proved effective against un-armoured musketeers. Longbowmen remained a feature of the Royalist Army, but were not used by the Roundheads.
Longbows have been in continuous production and use for sport and for hunting to the present day, but since 1642 they have been a minority interest, and very few have had the high draw weights of the medieval weapons. Other differences include the use of a stiffened non-bending centre section, rather than a continuous bend.
Serious military interest in the longbow faded after the seventeenth century but occasionally schemes to resurrect its military use were proposed. Benjamin Franklin was a proponent in the 1770s; the Honourable Artillery Company had an archer company between 1784 and 1794, and a man named Richard Mason wrote a book proposing the arming of militia with pike and longbow in 1798. Donald Featherstone also records a Lt. Col. Richard Lee of 44th Foot advocated the military use of the longbow in 1792. There is a record of the use of the longbow in action as late as WWII, when Jack Churchill is credited with a longbow kill in France in 1940. The weapon was certainly considered for use by Commandos during the war but it is not known whether it was used in action.
The idea that there was a standard formation for English longbow armies was argued by Alfred Byrne in his influential work on the battles of the Hundred Years' War, "The Crecy War". This view was challenged by Jim Bradbury in his book "The Medieval Archer" and more modern works are more ready to accept a variety of formations.
In summary, however, the usual English deployment in the 14th and 15th centuries was as follows:
In the 16th century, these formations evolved in line with new technologies and techniques from the continent. Formations with a central core of pikes and bills were flanked by companies of "shot" made up of a mixture of archers and arquebusiers, sometimes with a skirmish screen of archers and arquebusiers in front.
More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the "Mary Rose", a ship of Henry VIII's navy that capsized and sank at Portsmouth in 1545. It is an important source for the history of the longbow, as the bows, archery implements and the skeletons of archers have been preserved. The bows range in length from with an average length of . The majority of the arrows were made of poplar, others were made of beech, ash and hazel. Draw lengths of the arrows varied between with the majority having a draw length of . The head would add 5–15 cm depending on type, though some 2–4.5 cm must be allowed for the insertion of the shaft into the socket.
The longbows on the "Mary Rose" were in excellent finished condition. There were enough bows to test some to destruction which resulted in draw forces of 450 N (100 lbf) on average. However, analysis of the wood indicated that they had degraded significantly in the seawater and mud, which had weakened their draw forces. Replicas were made and when tested had draw forces of from 445 N to 823 N (100 to 185 lbf).
In 1980, before the finds from the "Mary Rose", Robert E. Kaiser published a paper stating that there were five known surviving longbows:
The importance of the longbow in English culture can be seen in the legends of Robin Hood, which increasingly depicted him as a master archer, and also in the "Song of the Bow", a poem from "The White Company" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
During the reign of Henry III the Assize of Arms of 1252 required that all "citizens, burgesses, free tenants, villeins and others from 15 to 60 years of age" should be armed. The poorest of them were expected to have a halberd and a knife, and a bow if they owned land worth more than £2. This made it easier for the King to raise an army, but also meant that the bow was a weapon commonly used by rebels during the Peasants' Revolt. From the time that the yeoman class of England became proficient with the longbow, the nobility in England had to be careful not to push them into open rebellion.
It has been conjectured that yew trees were commonly planted in English churchyards to have readily available longbow wood. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18432 |
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of "Playboy" magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obscenity. The first issue of "Playboy" was published in 1953 featuring Marilyn Monroe in a nude calendar shoot; it sold over 50,000 copies.
Hefner extended the Playboy brand into a world network of Playboy Clubs. He also resided in luxury mansions where Playboy "playmates" shared his wild partying life, fueling keen media interest. He was an advocate of "sexual liberation" and "freedom of expression", and he was a political activist in the Democratic Party and for the causes of First Amendment rights, animal rescue, and the restoration of the Hollywood Sign.
Hefner was born in Chicago on April 9, 1926, the first child of Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), an accountant, and his wife Grace Caroline (Swanson) Hefner (1895–1997) who worked as a teacher. His parents were from Nebraska. He had a younger brother, Keith (1929–2016). His mother was of Swedish ancestry, and his father was German and English.
Through his father's line, Hefner was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He described his family as "conservative, Midwestern, [and] Methodist". His mother had wanted him to become a missionary.
He attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served from 1944 to 1946 as a U.S. Army writer for a military newspaper. Hefner graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a double minor in Creative Writing and Art, having earned his degree in two and a half years. After graduation, he took a semester of graduate courses in Sociology at Northwestern University, but dropped out soon after.
In January 1952, Hefner left his job as a copywriter for "Esquire" after he was denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he took out a mortgage loan of $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors (including $1,000 from his mother—"not because she believed in the venture," he told "E!" in 2006, "but because she believed in her son") to launch "Playboy", which was initially going to be called "Stag Party". The first issue was published in December 1953 and featured Marilyn Monroe from a 1949 nude calendar shoot she did under a pseudonym when she was in financial distress before she was famous. Monroe did not consent to her pictures to be used by Hefner and she was not compensated by Hefner for them. That first issue sold more than 50,000 copies. (Hefner never met Monroe, but he bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992 for $75,000.)
"Esquire" magazine rejected Charles Beaumont's science fiction story "The Crooked Man" in 1955, so Hefner agreed to publish it in "Playboy." The story highlighted straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. The magazine received angry letters, so Hefner responded, "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too." In 1961, Hefner watched Dick Gregory perform at the Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, and he hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club. Gregory attributed the launch of his career to that night.
Hefner promoted a "bon vivant" lifestyle in his magazine and in the TV shows that he hosted "Playboy's Penthouse" (1959–1960) and "Playboy After Dark" (1969–1970). He was also the chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, the publishing group which operates the magazine.
On June 4, 1963, Hefner was arrested for promoting obscene literature after he published an issue of "Playboy" featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield in bed with a man present. The case went to trial and resulted in a hung jury.
In the 1960s, Hefner created "private key" clubs that were racially diverse. During the civil rights movement in 1966, Hefner sent Alex Haley to interview George Lincoln Rockwell, much to Rockwell's surprise because Haley was black. Rockwell had founded the American Nazi Party, described by some as the "American Hitler". Rockwell agreed to meet with Haley only after gaining assurance that he was not Jewish, although Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout the interview. The interview was recreated in "" in 1979, with James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell; Brando won a Primetime Emmy Award for his portrayal of Rockwell. Haley had also interviewed Malcolm X in 1963 and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 for the newly established 1962 "playboy interview"; all three interviewees were assassinated by 1968.
In 1970, Hefner stated that "militant feminists" are "unalterably opposed to the romantic boy-girl society that Playboy promotes" and ordered an article in his magazine against them. In the 1993 "The Simpsons" episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Hefner voiced himself. In 1999, Hefner financed the Clara Bow documentary "Discovering the It Girl". "Nobody has what Clara had," he said. "She defined an era and made her mark on the nation". Hefner guest-starred as himself in the 2000 "Sex and the City" episode "Sex and Another City". In 2005, he guest-starred on the HBO shows "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Entourage". He guest-starred as himself in a 2006 episode of Seth Green's "Robot Chicken" on the late-night programming block Adult Swim. In the 2007 "Family Guy" episode "Airport '07", he voiced himself. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television and made several movie appearances as himself. In 2009, he received a "worst supporting actor" nomination for a Razzie award for his performance as himself in "Miss March". On his official Twitter account, he joked about this nomination: "Maybe I didn't understand the character."
Brigitte Berman's documentary "" was released on July 30, 2010. He had previously granted full access to documentary filmmaker and television producer Kevin Burns for the A&E "Biography" special "Hugh Hefner: American Playboy" in 1996. Hefner and Burns later collaborated on numerous other television projects, most notably on "The Girls Next Door", a reality series that ran for six seasons (2005–2009) and 90 episodes. Hefner also made a voice-only appearance as himself in the 2011 film "Hop".
In 2012, Hefner announced that his youngest son Cooper would succeed him as the public face of "Playboy".
Hefner was known to friends and family simply as "Hef". He married Northwestern University student Mildred ("Millie") Williams in 1949, and they had daughter Christie (b. 1952) and son David (b. 1955). Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had an affair while he was away in the army. He called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 "E! True Hollywood Story" profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to have sex with other women, out of guilt for her own infidelity and in the hope that it would preserve their marriage. The two were divorced in 1959.
Hefner remade himself as a "bon vivant" and man about town, a lifestyle that he promoted in his magazine and TV shows. He admitted to being "'involved' with maybe eleven out of twelve months' worth of Playmates" during some years. Donna Michelle, Marilyn Cole, Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Barbi Benton, Karen Christy, Sondra Theodore, and Carrie Leigh were a few of his many lovers; Leigh filed a $35 million palimony suit against him. In 1971, he acknowledged that he experimented in bisexuality. Also in 1971, he established a second residence in Los Angeles with the acquisition of Playboy Mansion West, and he moved there permanently from Chicago in 1975.
On March 7, 1985, Hefner had a minor stroke at age 58, and he re-evaluated his lifestyle and made several changes. He toned down the wild, all-night parties, and daughter Christie took over the operation of the Playboy empire in 1988. The following year, he married Playmate of the Year Kimberley Conrad; they were 36 years apart in age. The couple had sons Marston Glenn (born 1990) and Cooper (born 1991). The "E! True Hollywood Story" profile noted that the notorious Playboy Mansion had been transformed into a family-friendly homestead. He and Conrad separated in 1998 and she moved into the house next door to the mansion. Hefner filed for divorce from Conrad in 2009 after an 11-year separation, citing irreconcilable differences. He has stated that he only remained nominally married to her for the sake of their children, and their youngest child had just turned 18. The divorce was finalized in 2010.
Hefner became known for moving an ever-changing coterie of young women into the Playboy Mansion, including twins Mandy and Sandy Bentley. He dated as many as seven women concurrently. He also dated Brande Roderick, Izabella St. James, Tina Marie Jordan, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson. Madison, Wilkinson, and Marquardt appeared on "The Girls Next Door" depicting their lives at the Playboy Mansion. In October 2008, all three of them decided to leave the mansion.
In January 2009, Hefner began a relationship with Crystal Harris; she joined the Shannon Twins after his previous "number one girlfriend" Holly Madison had ended their seven-year relationship. On December 24, 2010, he became engaged to Harris, but she broke off their engagement on June 14, 2011, five days before their planned wedding. The July issue of "Playboy" reached store shelves and customer's homes within days of the wedding date; it featured Harris on the cover and in a photo spread, as well. The headline on the cover read "Introducing America's Princess, Mrs. Crystal Hefner". Hefner and Harris subsequently reconciled and married on December 31, 2012.
Hefner's brother Keith died at age 87 on April 8, 2016, one day before Hefner's 90th birthday.
In January 2016, the Playboy Mansion was put on the market for $200 million, on condition that Hugh Hefner would continue to work and live in the mansion. Later that year it was sold to Daren Metropoulos, a principal at private equity firm Metropoulos & Company, for $100 million. Metropoulos planned to reconnect the Playboy Mansion property with a neighboring estate that he purchased in 2009, combining the two for a 7.3 acre (3-hectare) compound as his own private residence.
In May 2017, Eugena Washington was the last Playmate of the Year to be announced by Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.
The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award was created by Christie Hefner "to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans."
He donated and raised money for the Democratic Party. In 2011, he referred to himself as an independent due to dissatisfaction with both the Democratic and Republican parties. Nonetheless, in 2012, he supported Barack Obama's reelection campaign.
In 1978, Hefner helped organize fund-raising efforts that led to the restoration of the Hollywood Sign. He hosted a gala fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion and contributed $27,000 (or 1/9 of the total restoration costs) by purchasing the letter Y in a ceremonial auction.
Hefner donated $100,000 to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts to create a course called "Censorship in Cinema", and $2 million to endow a chair for the study of American film. In 2007, the university's audiovisual archive at the Norris Theater received a donation from Hefner and was renamed to the Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive in his honor.
Both through his charitable foundation and individually, Hefner also contributed to charities and other organizations outside the sphere of politics and publishing, throwing fundraiser events for Much Love Animal Rescue as well as Generation Rescue, an anti-vaccinationist campaign organization supported by Jenny McCarthy.
On November 18, 2010, Children of the Night founder and president Dr. Lois Lee presented Hefner with the organization's first-ever Founder's Hero of the Heart Award in appreciation for his unwavering dedication, commitment and generosity.
On April 26, 2010, Hefner donated the last $900,000 sought by a conservation group for a land purchase needed to stop the development of the famed vista of the Hollywood Sign. "Sylvilagus palustris hefneri", an endangered subspecies of marsh rabbit, is named after him in honor of financial support that he provided.
The Barbi Twins who are among a notable cohort of celebrity Playmates, including Pamela Anderson and Hefner's third wife Crystal Harris, praised the publishing icon for providing centerfolds and extended members of the Playboy family with a platform for activism and advocacy on behalf of animal populations in need.
Hefner supported legalizing same-sex marriage, and he stated that a fight for gay marriage was "a fight for all our rights. Without it, we will turn back the sexual revolution and return to an earlier, puritanical time."
Hefner died at his home in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California, on September 27, 2017, at the age of 91. The cause was sepsis brought on by an "E. coli" infection.
He is interred at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, in the crypt beside Marilyn Monroe, for which he paid $75,000 in 1992. "Spending eternity next to Marilyn is an opportunity too sweet to pass up," Hefner had told the "Los Angeles Times" in 2009.
Suzanne Moore wrote in "The Guardian" that Hefner threatened to file a lawsuit against her for calling him a "pimp". Defending her position, Moore argued that "he was a man who bought and sold women to other men". She further stated that "part of Hefner's business acumen was to make the selling of female flesh respectable and hip, to make soft porn acceptable." Julie Bindel argued in "The Independent" that Hefner "caused immeasurable damage by turning porn and therefore the buying and selling of women's bodies into a legitimate business." Robin Abcarian wrote in the "Los Angeles Times" that Hefner "probably did more to mainstream the exploitation of women's bodies than any other figure in American history," adding that he "managed to convince many women that taking off their clothes for men's pleasure was not just empowering, but a worthy goal in itself." She further stated that Hefner "embodied the aesthetic notion that images of women — and women themselves — exist to please men."
Hefner's former girlfriend Holly Madison said that he "would encourage competition—and body image issues—between his multiple live-in girlfriends. His legacy is full of evidence of the exploitation of women for professional gain." Ed Stetzer wrote in "Christianity Today" that Hefner would have the residence systematically cleaned whenever Christie Hefner visited in order "to keep the realities from his own daughter". Stetzer further lamented the consequences of Hefner's role as a "general" of the "sexual revolution":
On October 3, 2017, it was announced that Jared Leto would play Hugh Hefner in a biopic directed by Brett Ratner with the screenplay by Jeff Nathanson. However, the film was indefinitely put on hold and it was confirmed that Leto would not portray Hefner following sexual harassment allegations against Ratner on November 2, 2017.
The Amazon original series "" was released in 2017. It stars Matt Whelan in the title role, along with Emmett Skilton and Chelsie Preston Crayford. The first season was released on April 7, composed of ten episodes. The series is a combination of interviews, archival footage (including moments found in Hefner's vast personal collection), and cinematic re-enactments that cover the launch of the magazine as well as the next six decades of Hefner's personal life and career. The series was filmed in Auckland, New Zealand. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14279 |
Hafizullah Amin
Hafizullah Amin (Pashto/; born 1 August 1929 – 27 December 1979) was an Afghan communist politician during the Cold War. Amin was born in Paghman and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his career as a teacher. After a few years in that occupation, he went to the United States to study. He would visit the United States a second time before moving permanently to Afghanistan, and starting his career in radical politics. He ran as a candidate in the 1965 parliamentary election but failed to secure a seat. Amin was the only Khalqist elected to parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election, thus increasing his standing within the party. He was one of the leading organizers of the Saur Revolution which overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud Khan. In 1979 he named himself president, prime minister, and chairman of the Khalq wing. He has been described as "ruthless" and a "radical Marxist".
Amin's short-lived presidency was marked by controversies from beginning to end. He came to power by disposing of his predecessor Nur Muhammad Taraki and later ordering his death. Amin made attempts to win support from those who revolted against the communist regime which had begun under Taraki, but his government was unable to solve this problem. Many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's harshest measures, such as ordering thousands of executions. Thousands of people disappeared without trace during his time in office. The Soviet Union, which was dissatisfied with Amin, intervened in Afghanistan while invoking the Twenty-Year Treaty of Friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Amin was assassinated by the Soviets on 27 December 1979 as part of Operation Storm-333, having ruled for slightly longer than three months.
Hafizullah Amin was born to a Ghilzai Pashtun family in the Qazi Ghel village in Paghman on 1 August 1929. His father, a civil servant, died when he was still very young. Thanks to his brother Abdullah, a primary school teacher, Amin was able to attend both primary and secondary school, which in turn allowed him to attend Kabul University (KU). After studying mathematics there, he also graduated from the Darul Mualimeen Teachers College in Kabul, and became a teacher. Amin later became vice-principal of the Darul Mualimeen College, and then principal of the prestigious Avesina High School, and in 1957 left Afghanistan for Columbia University in New York City, where he earned MA in education. It was at Columbia that Amin became attracted to Marxism, and in 1958 he became a member of the university's Socialist Progressive Club. When he returned to Afghanistan, Amin became a teacher at Kabul University, and later, for the second time, the principal of Avesina High School. During this period Amin became acquainted with Nur Muhammad Taraki, a communist. Around this time, Amin quit his position as principal of Avesina High School to become principal of the Darul Mualimeen College.
It is alleged that Amin became radicalised during his second stay in the United States in 1962, when he enrolled in a work-study group at the University of Wisconsin. Amin studied in the doctoral programme at the Columbia University Teachers College, but started to neglect his studies in favour of politics; in 1963 he became head of the Afghan students' association at the college. When he returned to Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, the route flew to Afghanistan by way of Moscow. There, Amin met the Afghan ambassador to the Soviet Union, his old friend Ali Ahmad Popel, a previous Afghan Minister of Education. During his short stay, Amin became even more radicalised. Some people, Nabi Misdaq for instance, do not believe he travelled through Moscow, but rather West Germany and Lebanon. By the time he had returned to Afghanistan, the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had already held its founding congress, which was in 1965. Amin ran as a candidate for the PDPA in the 1965 parliamentary election, and lost by a margin of less than fifty votes.
In 1966, when the PDPA Central Committee was expanded, Amin was elected as a non-voting member, and in the spring of 1967 he gained full membership. Amin's standing in the Khalq faction of the PDPA increased when he was the only Khalqist elected to parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. When the PDPA split along factional lines in 1967, between Khalqists led by Nur and Parchamites led by Babrak Karmal, Amin joined the Khalqists. As a member of parliament, Amin tried to win over support from the Pashtun people in the armed forces. According to a biography about Amin, he used his position as member of parliament to fight against imperialism, feudalism, and Reactionary tendencies, and fought against the "rotten" regime, the monarchy. Amin himself said that he used his membership in parliament to pursue the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. Relations between Khalqists and Parchamites deteriorated during this period. Amin, the only Khalq member of parliament, and Babrak Karmal, the only Parcham member of parliament, did not cooperate with each other. Amin would later, during his short stint in power, mention these events with bitterness. Following the arrest of fellow PDPA members Dastagir Panjsheri and Saleh Mohammad Zeary in 1969, Amin became one of the party's leading members, and was still a pre-eminent party member by the time of their release in 1973.
From 1973 until the PDPA unification in 1977, Amin was second only to Taraki in the Khalqist PDPA. When the PDPA ruled Afghanistan, their relationship was referred to as a disciple (Amin) following his mentor (Taraki). This official portrayal of the situation was misleading; their relationship was more work-oriented. Taraki needed Amin's "tactical and strategic talents"; Amin's motivations are more uncertain, but it is commonly believed that he associated with Taraki to protect his own position. Amin had attracted many enemies during his career, the most notable being Karmal. According to the official version of events, Taraki protected Amin from party members or others who wanted to hurt the PDPA and the country.
When Mohammed Daoud Khan ousted the monarchy, and established the Republic of Afghanistan, the Khalqist PDPA offered its support for the new regime if it established a National Front which presumably included the Khalqist PDPA itself. The Parchamite PDPA had already established an alliance with Daoud at the beginning of his regime, and Karmal called for the dissolution of the Khalqist PDPA. Karmal's call for dissolution only worsened relations between the Khalqist and Parchamite PDPA. However, Taraki and Amin were lucky; Karmal's alliance actually hurt the Parchamites' standing in Afghan politics. Some communists in the armed forces became disillusioned with the government of Daoud, and turned to the Khalqist PDPA because of its apparent independence. Parchamite association with the Daoud government indirectly led to the Khalqist-led PDPA coup of 1978, popularly referred to as the Saur Revolution. From 1973 until the 1978 coup, Amin was responsible for organising party work in the Afghan armed forces. According to the official version, Amin "met patriotic liaison officers day or night, in the desert or the mountains, in the fields or the forests, enlightening them on the basis of the principles of the working class ideology." Amin's success in recruiting military officers lay in the fact that Daoud "betrayed the left" soon after taking power. When Amin began recruiting military officers for the PDPA, it was not difficult for him to find disgruntled military officers. In the meantime, relations between the Parchamite and Khalqist PDPA deteriorated; in 1973 it was rumoured that Major Zia Mohammadzai, a Parchamite and head of the Republican Guard, planned to assassinate the entire Khalqist leadership. The plan, if true, failed because the Khalqists found out about it.
The assassination attempt proved to be a further blow to relations between the Parchamites and Khalqists. The Parchamites deny that they ever planned to assassinate the Khalqist leadership, but historian Beverley Male argues that Karmal's subsequent activities give credence to the Khalqist view of events. Because of the Parchamite assassination attempt, Amin pressed the Khalqist PDPA to seize power in 1976 by ousting Daoud. The majority of the PDPA leadership voted against such a move. The following year, in 1977, the Parchamites and Khalqists officially reconciled, and the PDPA was unified. The Parchamite and Khalqist PDPAs, which had separate general secretaries, politburos, central committees and other organisational structures, were officially unified in the summer of 1977. One reason for unification was that the international communist movement, represented by the Communist Party of India, Iraqi Communist Party and the Communist Party of Australia, called for party unification.
On 18 April 1978 Mir Akbar Khyber, the chief ideologue of the Parcham faction, was killed; he was commonly believed to have been assassinated by the Daoud government. Khyber's assassination initiated a chain of events which led to the PDPA taking power eleven days later, on 27 April. The assassin was never caught, but Anahita Ratebzad, a Parchamite, believed that Amin had ordered the assassination. Khyber's funeral evolved into a large anti-government demonstration. Daoud, who did not understand the significance of the events, began a mass arrest of PDPA members seven days after Khyber's funeral. Amin, who organised the subsequent revolution against Daoud, was one of the last Central Committee members to be arrested by the authorities. His late arrest can be considered as proof of the regime's lack of information; Amin was the leading revolutionary party organiser. The government's lack of awareness was proven by the arrest of Taraki – Taraki's arrest was the pre-arranged signal for the revolution to commence. When Amin found out that Taraki had been arrested, he ordered the revolution to begin at 9 am on 27 April. Amin, in contrast to Taraki, was not imprisoned, but instead put under house arrest. His son, Abdur Rahman, was still allowed freedom of movement. The revolution was successful, thanks to overwhelming support from the Afghan military; for instance, it was supported by Defence Minister Ghulam Haidar Rasuli, Aslam Watanjar the commander of the ground forces, and the Chief of Staff of the Afghan Air Force, Abdul Qadir.
After the Saur revolution, Taraki was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and retained his post as PDPA general secretary. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamites; Karmal became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council while Amin became Minister of Foreign Affairs and a Deputy Prime Minister, and Mohammad Aslam Watanjar became a Deputy Prime Minister. The two Parchamites Abdul Qadir and Mohammad Rafi became Minister of National Defence and Minister of Public Works respectively. According to Angel Rasanayagam, the appointment of Amin, Karmal and Watanjar as Deputy Prime Ministers led to the establishment of three cabinets; the Khalqists were answerable to Amin, the Parchamites were answerable to Karmal, and the military officers (who were Parchamites) were answerable to Watanjar. The first conflict between the Khalqists and Parchamites arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to the military officers who participated in the Saur Revolution. Amin, who had previously opposed the appointment of military officers to the PDPA leadership, switched sides; he now supported their elevation. The PDPA Politburo voted in favour of giving membership to the military officers; the victors (the Khalqists) portrayed the Parchamites as opportunists, implying that the Parchamites had ridden the revolutionary wave, but not actually participated in the revolution. To make matters worse for the Parchamites, the term Parcham was, according to Taraki, a word synonymous with factionalism.
On 27 June 1978, three months after the revolution, Amin managed to outmaneuver the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting. The meeting decided that the Khalqists had exclusive rights to formulate and decide policy, a policy which left the Parchamites impotent. Karmal was exiled, but was able to establish a network with the remaining Parchamites in government. A coup to overthrow Amin was planned for September. Its leading members in Afghanistan were Qadir, the defence minister, and Army Chief of Staff General Shahpur Ahmedzai. The coup was planned for 4 September, on the Festival of Eid, because soldiers and officers would be off duty. The conspiracy failed when the Afghan ambassador to India told the Afghan leadership about the plan. A purge was initiated, and Parchamite ambassadors were recalled; few returned, for example Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah both stayed in their assigned countries.
The Afghan people revolted against the PDPA government when the government introduced several socialist reforms, including land reforms. By early 1979, twenty-five out of Afghanistan's twenty-eight provinces were unsafe because of armed resistance against the government. On 29 March 1979, the Herat uprising began; the uprising turned the revolt into an open war between the Mujahideen and the Afghan government. It was during this period that Amin became Kabul's strongman. Shortly after the Herat uprising had been crushed, the Revolutionary Council convened to ratify the new Five-Year Plan, the Afghan–Soviet Friendship Treaty, and to vote on whether or not to reorganise the cabinet and to enhance the power of the executive (the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council). While the official version of events said that all issues were voted on democratically at the meeting, the Revolutionary Council held another meeting the following day to ratify the new Five-Year Plan and to discuss the reorganisation of the cabinet.
Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, was able to persuade Aslam Watanjar, Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy and Sherjan Mazdoryar to become part of a conspiracy against Amin. These three men put pressure on Taraki, who by this time believed that "he really was the 'great leader'", to sack Amin from office. It is unknown if Amin knew anything about the conspiracy against him, but it was after the cabinet reorganisation that he talked about his dissatisfaction. On 26 March the PDPA Politburo and the Council of Ministers approved the extension of the powers of the executive branch, and the establishment of the Homeland Higher Defence Council (HHDC) to handle security matters. Many analysts of the day regarded Amin's appointment as Prime Minister as an increase in his powers at the expense of Taraki. However, the reorganisation of the cabinet and the strengthening of Taraki's position as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, had reduced the authority of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was, due to the strengthening of the executive, now appointed by the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. While Amin could appoint and dismiss new ministers, he needed Taraki's consent to actually do so. Another problem for Amin was that while the Council of Ministers was responsible to the Revolutionary Council and its chairman, individual ministers were only responsible to Taraki. When Amin became Prime Minister, he was responsible for planning, finance and budgetary matters, the conduct of foreign policy, and for order and security. The order and security responsibilities had been taken over by the HHDC, which was chaired by Taraki. While Amin was HHDC Deputy chairman, the majority of HHDC members were members of the anti-Amin faction. For instance, the HHDC membership included Watanjar the Minister of National Defence, Interior Minister Mazdoryar, the President of the Political Affairs of the Armed Forces Mohammad Iqbal, Mohammad Yaqub, the Chief of the General Staff, the Commander of the Afghan Air Force Nazar Mohammad and Assadullah Sarwari the head of ASGA, the Afghan secret police.
The order of precedence had been institutionalised, whereby Taraki was responsible for defence and Amin responsible for assisting Taraki in defence related matters. Amin's position was given a further blow by the democratisation of the decision-making process, which allowed its members to contribute; most of them were against Amin. Another problem for Amin was that the office of HHDC Deputy chairman had no specific functions or powers, and the appointment of a new defence minister who opposed him drastically weakened his control over the Ministry of National Defence. The reorganisation of ministers was a further blow to Amin's position; he had lost control of the defence ministry, the interior ministry and the ASGA. Amin still had allies at the top, many of them in strategically important positions, for instance, Yaqub was his brother-in-law and the Security Chief in the Ministry of Interior was Sayed Daoud Taroon, who was also later appointed to the HHDC as an ordinary member in April. Amin succeeded in appointing two more of his allies to important positions; Mohammad Sediq Alemyar as Minister of Planning and Khayal Mohammad Katawazi as Minister of Information and Culture; and Faqir Mohammad Faqir was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in April 1978. Amin's political position was not secure when Alexei Yepishev, the Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy, visited Kabul. Yepishev met personally with Taraki on 7 April, but never met with Amin. The Soviets were becoming increasingly worried about Amin's control over the Afghan military. Even so, during Yepishev's visit Amin's position was actually strengthened; Taroon was appointed Taraki's aide-de-camp.
Soon after, at two cabinet meetings, the strengthening of the executive powers of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council was proven. Even though Amin was Prime Minister, Taraki chaired the meetings instead of him. Amin's presence at these two meetings was not mentioned at all, and it was made clear that Taraki, through his office as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, also chaired the Council of Ministers. Another problem facing Amin was Taraki's policy of autocracy; he tried to deprive the PDPA Politburo of its powers as a party and state decision-making organ. The situation deteriorated when Amin personally warned Taraki that "the prestige and popularity of leaders among the people has no common aspect with a personality cult."
Factionalism within the PDPA made it ill-prepared to handle the intensified counter-revolutionary activities in the country. Amin tried to win support for the communist government by depicting himself as a devout Muslim. Taraki and Amin blamed different countries for helping the counter-revolutionaries; Amin attacked the United Kingdom and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and played down American and Chinese involvement, while Taraki blamed American imperialism and Iran and Pakistan for supporting the uprising. Amin's criticism of the United Kingdom and the BBC fed on the traditional anti-British sentiments held by rural Afghans. In contrast to Taraki, "Amin bent over backwards to avoid making hostile reference to", China, the United States or other foreign governments. Amin's cautious behavior was in deep contrast to the Soviet Union's official stance on the situation; it seemed, according to Beverley Male, that the Soviet leadership tried to force a confrontation between Afghanistan and its enemies. Amin also tried to appease the Shia communities by meeting with their leaders; despite this, a section of the Shia leadership called for the continuation of the resistance. Subsequently, a revolt broke out in a Shia populated district in Kabul; this was the first sign of unrest in Kabul since the Saur Revolution. To add to the government's problems, Taraki's ability to lead the country was questioned – he was a heavy drinker and was not in good health. Amin on the other hand was characterised in this period by portrayals of strong self-discipline. In the summer of 1979 Amin began to disassociate himself from Taraki. On 27 June Amin became a member of the PDPA Politburo, the leading decision-making body in Afghanistan.
In-mid July the Soviets made their view official when "Pravda" wrote an article about the situation in Afghanistan; the Soviets did not wish to see Amin become leader of Afghanistan. This triggered a political crisis in Afghanistan, as Amin initiated a policy of extreme repression, which became one of the main reasons for the Soviet intervention later that year. On 28 July, a vote in the PDPA Politburo approved Amin's proposal of creating a collective leadership with collective decision-making; this was a blow to Taraki, and many of his supporters were replaced by pro-Amin PDPA members. Ivan Pavlovsky, the Commander of the Soviet Ground Forces, visited Kabul in mid-August to study the situation in Afghanistan. Amin, in a speech just a few days after Pavlovsky's arrival, said that he wanted closer relations between Afghanistan and the People's Republic of China; in the same speech he hinted that he had reservations about Soviet meddling in Afghanistan. He likened Soviet assistance to Afghanistan with Vladimir Lenin's assistance to the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Taraki, a delegate to the conference held by the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, met personally with Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the Afghanistan situation on 9 September. Shah Wali, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was a supporter of Amin, did not participate in the meeting. This, according to Beverley Male, "suggested that some plot against Amin was in preparation".
Taraki was instructed to stop-over in Moscow, where the Soviet leaders urged him to remove Amin from power as per the KGB's decision, because Amin posed danger. Amin's trusted aid, Daoud Taroon, informed Amin of the meeting and the KGB's plan. In Kabul, Taraki's aides, the Gang of Four (consisting of Watanjar, Mazdoryar, Gulabzoi and Sarwari), planned a plot to assassinate Amin, but it failed as Amin was informed of this. Within hours of Taraki's return to Kabul on 11 September, Taraki convened the cabinet "ostensibly to report on the Havana Summit". Instead of reporting on the summit, Taraki tried to dismiss Amin as Prime Minister. Amin, aware of the murder plot, demanded the Gang of Four to be removed from their posts, but Taraki laughed it off. Taraki sought to neutralise Amin's power and influence by requesting that he serve overseas as an ambassador. Amin turned down the proposal, shouting "You are the one who should quit! Because of drink and old age you have taken leave of your senses."
On 13 September, Taraki invited Amin to the presidential palace for lunch with him and the Gang of Four. Amin turned down the offer, stating he would prefer their resignation rather than lunching with them. Soviet ambassador Puzanov persuaded Amin to make the visit to the Presidential Palace along with Taroon, the Chief of Police, and Nawab Ali, an intelligence officer. Inside the palace on 14 September, bodyguards within the building opened fire on the visitors. Taroon was killed but Amin only sustained an injury and escaped. Amin drove to the Ministry of Defence building, put the Army on high alert and ordered Taraki's arrest. At 6:30 pm tanks from the 4th Armoured Corps entered the city and stood at government buildings. Shortly afterwards, Amin returned to the palace with a contingent of Army officers, and placed Taraki under arrest. The Gang of Four, however, had "disappeared" and sought refuge in the Soviet Embassy.
After Taraki's arrest, the Soviets tried to rescue Taraki (or, according to other sources, kidnap Amin) via the embassy or Bagram Air Base but the strength of Amin's officers repelled their decision to make a move. Amin was told by the Soviets not to punish Taraki and strip him and his comrades of their positions, but Amin ignored them. Amin reportedly discussed the incident with Leonid Brezhnev, and indirectly asked for the permission to kill Taraki, to which Brezhnev replied that it was his choice. Amin, who now believed he had the full support of the Soviets, ordered the death of Taraki. It is believed Taraki was suffocated with pillows on 8 October 1979. The Afghan media would report that the ailing Taraki had died, omitting any mention of his murder. Taraki's murder shocked and upset Brezhnev.
Following Taraki's fall from power, Amin was elected Chairman of the Presidum of the Revolutionary Council and General Secretary of the PDPA Central Committee by the PDPA Politburo. The election of Amin as PDPA General Secretary and the removal of Taraki from all party posts was unanimous. The only members of the cabinet replaced when Amin took power were the Gang of Four – Beverley Male saw this as "a clear indication that he had their [the ministers'] support". Amin's rise to power was followed by a policy of moderation, and attempts to persuade the Afghan people that the regime was not anti-Islamic. Amin's government began to invest in the reconstruction, or reparation, of mosques. He also promised the Afghan people freedom of religion. Religious groups were given copies of the Quran, and Amin began to refer to Allah in speeches. He even claimed that the Saur Revolution was "totally based on the principles of Islam". The campaign proved to be unsuccessful, and many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's totalitarian behavior. Amin's rise to power was officially endorsed by the Jamiatul Ulama on 20 September 1979. Their endorsement led to the official announcement that Amin was a pious Muslim – Amin thus scored a point against the counter-revolutionary propaganda which claimed the communist regime was atheist. Amin also tried to increase his popularity with tribal groups, a feat Taraki had been unable or unwilling to achieve. In a speech to tribal elders Amin was defensive about the Western way he dressed; an official biography was published which depicted Amin in traditional Pashtun clothes. During his short stay in power, Amin became committed to establishing a collective leadership; when Taraki was ousted, Amin promised "from now on there will be no one-man government..."
Attempting to pacify the population, Amin released a list of 18,000 people who had been executed, and blamed the executions on Taraki. The total number of arrested during Taraki's and Amin's combined reign number between 17,000 and 45,000. Amin was not liked by the Afghan people. During his rule, opposition to the communist regime increased, and the government lost control of the countryside. The state of the Afghan military deteriorated; due to desertions the number of military personnel in the Afghan army decreased from 100,000 in the immediate aftermath of the Saur Revolution, to somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000. Another problem Amin faced was the KGB's penetration of the PDPA, the military and the government bureaucracy. While Amin's position in Afghanistan was becoming more perilous by the day, his enemies who were exiled in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were agitating for his removal. Babrak Karmal, the Parchamite leader, met several leading Eastern Bloc figures during this period, and Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy and Assadullah Sarwari wanted to exact revenge upon Amin.
When Amin became leader, he tried to reduce Afghanistan's dependence on the Soviet Union. To accomplish this, he aimed to balance Afghanistan's relations with the Soviet Union by strengthening relations with Pakistan and Iran. The Soviets were concerned when they received reports that Amin had met personally with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading anti-communists in Afghanistan. His general untrustworthiness and his unpopularity amongst Afghans made it more difficult for Amin to find new "foreign patrons". Amin's involvement in the death of Adolph Dubs, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan, strained his relations with the United States. He tried to improve relations by reestablishing contact, met with three different American chargé d'affaires, and was interviewed by an American correspondent. But this did not improve Afghanistan's standing in the eyes of the United States Government. After the third meeting with Amin, J. Bruce Amstutz, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan from 1979 to 1980, believed the wisest thing to do was to maintain "a low profile, trying to avoid issues, and waiting to see what happens". In early December 1979, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed a joint summit meeting between Amin and Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the President of Pakistan. The Pakistani Government, accepting a modified version of the offer, agreed to send Agha Shahi, the Pakistani foreign minister, to Kabul for talks. In the meanwhile, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistani's secret police, continued to train Mujahideen fighters who opposed the communist regime.
Contrary to popular belief, the Soviet leadership headed by Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin and the Politburo, were not eager to send troops to Afghanistan. The Soviet Politburo decisions were guided by a Special Commission on Afghanistan, which consisted of Yuri Andropov the KGB chairman, Andrei Gromyko the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Defence Minister Dmitriy Ustinov, and Boris Ponomarev, the head of the International Department of the Central Committee. The Politburo was opposed to the removal of Taraki and his subsequent murder. According to Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, "Events developed so swiftly in Afghanistan that essentially there was little opportunity to somehow interfere in them. Right now our mission is to determine our further actions, so as to preserve our position in Afghanistan and to secure our influence there." Although Afghan–Soviet relations deteriorated during Amin's short stint in power, he was invited on an official visit to Moscow by Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, because of the Soviet leadership's satisfaction with his party and state-building policy. Not everything went as planned, and Andropov talked about "the undesirable turn of events" taking place in Afghanistan under Amin's rule. Andropov also brought up the ongoing political shift in Afghanistan under Amin; the Soviets were afraid that Amin would move Afghanistan's foreign policy from a pro-Soviet position to a pro-United States position. By early-to-mid December 1979, the Soviet leadership had established an alliance with Babrak Karmal and Assadullah Sarwari.
Amin kept a portrait of Joseph Stalin on his desk. When Soviet officials criticized him of his brutality, Amin replied "Comrade Stalin showed us how to build socialism in a backward country."
As it turned out, the relationship between Puzanov and Amin broke down. Amin started a smear campaign to discredit Puzanov. This in turn led to an assassination attempt against Amin, in which Puzanov participated. The situation was worsened by the KGB accusing Amin of misrepresenting the Soviet position on Afghanistan in the PDPA Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council. The KGB also noted an increase in anti-Soviet agitation by the government during Amin's rule, and harassment against Soviet citizens increased under Amin. A group of senior politicians reported to the Soviet Central Committee that it was necessary to do "everything possible" to prevent a change in political orientation in Afghanistan. However, the Soviet leadership did not advocate intervention at this time, and instead called for increasing its influence in the Amin leadership to expose his "true intentions". A Soviet Politburo assessment referred to Amin as "a power-hungry leader who is distinguished by brutality and treachery". Amongst the many sins they alleged were his "insincerity and duplicity" when dealing with the Soviet Union, creating fictitious accusations against PDPA-members who opposed him, indulging in a policy of nepotism, and his tendency to conduct a more "balanced policy" towards First World countries. According to the former senior Soviet diplomat, Oleg Grinevsky, the KGB was becoming increasingly convinced that Amin couldn't be counted on to effectively deal with the insurgency and preserve the survival of the Afghan Marxist state.
By the end of October the Special Commission on Afghanistan, which consisted of Andropov, Gromyko, Ustinov and Ponomarev, wanted to end the impression that the Soviet government supported Amin's leadership and policy. The KGB's First Chief Directorate was put under orders that something had to be done about Afghanistan, and several of its personnel were assembled to deal with the task. Andropov fought hard for Soviet intervention, saying to Brezhnev that Amin's policies had destroyed the military and the government's capabilities to handle the crisis by use of mass repression. The plan, according to Andropov, was to assemble a small force to intervene and remove Amin from power and replace him with Karmal. The Soviet Union declared its plan to intervene in Afghanistan on 12 December 1979, and the Soviet leadership initiated Operation Storm-333 (the first phase of the intervention) on 27 December 1979.
The leadership of the USSR had no need for Amin to remain alive. Andropov's special respresentative in Afghanistan, General Boris Ivanov, recommended for Amin to attend a conciliatory dinner with his political mentor, who had become an enemy of Amin, so that Amin's chef could poison Amin. The same persons arranged for this dinner as had participated in the previous failed attempted assassination by Taraki on 14 September, however, Amin miraculously survived the poisoning because the doctors at the Soviet embassy, who did not know that "special reconnaissance officers" were trying to kill Amin, mistakenly saved the severely poisoned Amin. Since Amin, who was very loyal to the USSR, had survived two attempted assassinations that had been approved by the USSR, the decision was made to eliminate him through a bloody coup at Amin's residence, the Taj Beck Palace.
Amin trusted the Soviet Union until the very end, despite the deterioration of official relations, and was unaware that the tide in Moscow had turned against him since he ordered Taraki's death. When the Afghan intelligence service handed Amin a report that the Soviet Union would invade the country and topple him, Amin claimed that the report was a product of imperialism. His view can be explained by the fact that the Soviet Union, after several months, finally gave in to Amin's demands and sent troops into Afghanistan to secure the PDPA government. Contrary to common Western belief, Amin was informed of the Soviet decision to send troops into Afghanistan. General Tukharinov, commander of the 40th Army, met with Afghan Major General Babadzhan to talk about Soviet troop movements before the Soviet army's intervention. On 25 December, Dmitry Ustinov issued a formal order, stating that "[t]he state frontier of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan is to be crossed on the ground and in the air by forces of the 40th Army and the Air Force at 1500 hrs on 25 December". This was the formal beginning of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
Concerned for his safety, on 20 December Amin moved from the Presidential Palace, located in the centre of Kabul, to the Tajbeg Palace, which had previously been the headquarters of the Central Army Corps of the Afghan military. The palace was formidable, with walls strong enough to withstand artillery fire. According to Rodric Braithwaite, "its defences had been carefully and intelligently organised". All roads to the palace had been mined, with the exception of one, which had heavy machine guns and artillery positioned to defend it. To make matters worse for the Soviets, the Afghans had established a second line of defence which consisted of seven posts, "each manned by four sentries armed with a machine gun, a mortar, and automatic rifles". The external defences of the palace were handled by the Presidential Guard, which consisted of 2,500 troops and three T-54 tanks. Several Soviet commanders involved in the assassination of Amin thought the plan to attack the palace was "crazy". Although the military had been informed by the Soviet leadership through their commanders, Yuri Drozdov and Vasily Kolesnik, that the president was a "CIA agent" who had betrayed the Saur Revolution, many Soviet soldiers hesitated; despite what their commanders had told them, it seemed implausible that Amin, the leader of the PDPA government, was an American double agent. Despite several objections, the plan to assassinate Amin went ahead.
Before resorting to killing Amin by brute force, the Soviets had tried to poison him as early as 13 December (but nearly killed his nephew instead) and to kill him with a sniper shot on his way to work (this proved impossible as the Afghans had improved their security measures). They even tried to poison Amin just hours before the assault on the Presidential Palace on 27 December. Amin had organised a lunch for party members to show guests his palace and to celebrate Ghulam Dastagir Panjsheri's return from Moscow. Panjsheri's return improved the mood even further; he boasted that the Soviet divisions had already crossed the border, and that he and Gromyko always kept in contact with each other. During the meal, Amin and several of his guests lost consciousness as they had been poisoned. Luckily for Amin, but unfortunately for the Soviets, he survived his encounter with death, because the carbonation of the Coca-Cola he was drinking diluted the toxic agent. Mikhail Talybov, a KGB agent, was given responsibility for the poisonings.
The assault on the palace began shortly afterward. During the attack Amin still believed the Soviet Union was on his side, and told his adjutant, "The Soviets will help us". The adjutant replied that it was the Soviets who were attacking them; Amin initially replied that this was a lie. Only after he tried but failed to contact the Chief of the General Staff, he muttered, "I guessed it. It's all true". There are various accounts of how Amin died, but the exact details have never been confirmed. Amin was either killed by a deliberate attack or died by a "random burst of fire". Amin's son was fatally wounded and died shortly after. His daughter was wounded, but survived. It was Gulabzoy who had been given orders to kill Amin and Watanjar who later confirmed his death. The men of Amin's family were all executed, while the women including his daughter were imprisoned at Pul-e-Charkhi prison until being released by President Najibullah in early 1992. After Amin's death on 27 December 1979, Radio Kabul broadcast Babrak Karmal's pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people, saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed". Karmal was installed by the Soviets as the new president, while the Soviet Army began its intervention in Afghanistan that would last for nine years.
On 2 January 1980 on the PDPA's 15th anniversary, Karmal who was now the new General Secretary called Amin a "conspirator, professional criminal and recognised spy of the U.S.", as reported in the "Kabul New Times". Anahita Ratebzad, the education minister, said about Amin: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14280 |
Heavy water
Heavy water (deuterium oxide, ', ') is a form of water that contains a larger than normal amount of the hydrogen isotope deuterium ( or D, also known as "heavy hydrogen"), rather than the common hydrogen-1 isotope ( or H, also called protium) that makes up most of the hydrogen in normal water. The presence of deuterium gives the water different nuclear properties, and the increase of mass gives it slightly different physical and chemical properties when compared to normal water.
Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope with a nucleus containing a neutron and a proton; the nucleus of a protium (normal hydrogen) atom consists of just a proton. The additional neutron makes a deuterium atom roughly twice as heavy as a protium atom.
A molecule of heavy water has two deuterium atoms in place of the two protium atoms of ordinary "light" water. The weight of a heavy water molecule, however, is not substantially different from that of a normal water molecule, because about 89% of the molecular weight of water comes from the single oxygen atom rather than the two hydrogen atoms. The colloquial term 'heavy water' refers to a highly enriched water mixture that contains mostly deuterium oxide , but also some hydrogen-deuterium oxide (HDO) and a smaller amount of ordinary hydrogen oxide . For instance, the heavy water used in CANDU reactors is 99.75% enriched by hydrogen atom-fraction—meaning that 99.75% of the hydrogen atoms are of the heavy type. For comparison, ordinary water (the "ordinary water" used for a deuterium standard) contains only about 156 deuterium atoms per million hydrogen atoms, meaning that 0.0156% of the hydrogen atoms are of the heavy type.
Heavy water is not radioactive. In its pure form, it has a density about 11% greater than water, but is otherwise physically and chemically similar. Nevertheless, the various differences in deuterium-containing water (especially affecting the biological properties) are larger than in any other commonly occurring isotope-substituted compound because deuterium is unique among heavy stable isotopes in being twice as heavy as the lightest isotope. This difference increases the strength of water's hydrogen-oxygen bonds, and this in turn is enough to cause differences that are important to some biochemical reactions. The human body naturally contains deuterium equivalent to about five grams of heavy water, which is harmless. When a large fraction of water (> 50%) in higher organisms is replaced by heavy water, the result is cell dysfunction and death.
Heavy water was first produced in 1932, a few months after the discovery of deuterium. With the discovery of nuclear fission in late 1938, and the need for a neutron moderator that captured few neutrons, heavy water became a component of early nuclear energy research. Since then, heavy water has been an essential component in some types of reactors, both those that generate power and those designed to produce isotopes for nuclear weapons. These heavy water reactors have the advantage of being able to run on natural uranium without using graphite moderators that pose radiological and dust explosion hazards in the decommissioning phase. Most modern reactors use enriched uranium with ordinary water as the moderator.
Semiheavy water, HDO, exists whenever there is water with light hydrogen (protium, ) and deuterium (D or ) in the mix. This is because hydrogen atoms (hydrogen-1 and deuterium) are rapidly exchanged between water molecules. Water containing 50% H and 50% D in its hydrogen actually contains about 50% HDO and 25% each of and , in dynamic equilibrium.
In normal water, about 1 molecule in 3,200 is HDO (one hydrogen in 6,400 is in the form of D), and heavy water molecules () only occur in a proportion of about 1 molecule in 41 million (i.e. one in 6,4002). Thus semiheavy water molecules are far more common than "pure" (homoisotopic) heavy water molecules.
Water enriched in the heavier oxygen isotopes and is also commercially available, e.g., for use as a non-radioactive isotopic tracer. It is "heavy water" as it is denser than normal water ( is approximately as dense as , is about halfway between and )—but is rarely called heavy water, since it does not contain the deuterium that gives D2O its unusual nuclear and biological properties. It is more expensive than D2O due to the more difficult separation of 17O and 18O. H218O is also used for production of fluorine-18 for radiopharmaceuticals and radiotracers and for positron emission tomography.
Tritiated water contains tritium (3H) in place of protium (1H) or deuterium (2H), and therefore it is radioactive.
The physical properties of water and heavy water differ in several respects. Heavy water is less dissociated than light water at given temperature, and the true concentration of D+ ions is less than ions would be for a light water sample at the same temperature. The same is true of OD− vs. ions. For heavy water Kw D2O (25.0 °C) = 1.35 × 10−15, and [D+] must equal [OD−] for neutral water. Thus pKw D2O = p[OD−] + p[D+] = 7.44 + 7.44 = 14.87 (25.0 °C), and the p[D+] of neutral heavy water at 25.0 °C is 7.44.
The pD of heavy water is generally measured using pH electrodes giving a pH (apparent) value, or pHa, and at various temperatures a true acidic pD can be estimated from the directly pH meter measured pHa, such that pD+ = pHa (apparent reading from pH meter) + 0.41. The electrode correction for alkaline conditions is 0.456 for heavy water. The alkaline correction is then pD+ = pHa(apparent reading from pH meter) + 0.456. These corrections are slightly different from the differences in p[D+] and p[OD-] of 0.44 from the corresponding ones in heavy water.
Heavy water is 10.6% denser than ordinary water, and heavy water's physically different properties can be seen without equipment if a frozen sample is dropped into normal water, as it will sink. If the water is ice-cold the higher melting temperature of heavy ice can also be observed: it melts at 3.7 °C, and thus does not melt in ice-cold normal water.
An early experiment reported not the "slightest difference" in taste between ordinary and heavy water. However, rats given a choice between distilled normal water and heavy water were able to avoid the heavy water based on smell, and it may have a different taste. Some humans have reported that heavy water produces a "burning sensation or sweet flavor".
No physical properties are listed for "pure" semi-heavy water, because it is unstable as a bulk liquid. In the liquid state, a few water molecules are always in an ionised state, which means the hydrogen atoms can exchange among different oxygen atoms. Semi-heavy water could, in theory, be created via a chemical method, but it would rapidly transform into a dynamic mixture of 25% light water, 25% heavy water, and 50% semi-heavy water. However, if it were made in the gas phase and directly deposited into a solid, semi heavy water in the form of ice could be stable. This is due to collisions between water vapour molecules being almost completely negligible in the gas phase at standard temperatures, and once crystallized, collisions between the molecules cease altogether due to the rigid lattice structure of solid ice.
The American scientist and Nobel laureate Harold Urey discovered the isotope deuterium in 1931 and was later able to concentrate it in water. Urey's mentor Gilbert Newton Lewis isolated the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis in 1933. George de Hevesy and Erich Hofer used heavy water in 1934 in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body. The history of large-quantity production and use of heavy water, in early nuclear experiments, is described below.
Emilian Bratu and Otto Redlich studied the autodissociation of heavy water in 1934.
Different isotopes of chemical elements have slightly different chemical behaviors, but for most elements the differences are far too small to have a biological effect. In the case of hydrogen, larger differences in chemical properties among protium (light hydrogen), deuterium, and tritium occur, because chemical bond energy depends on the reduced mass of the nucleus–electron system; this is altered in heavy-hydrogen compounds (hydrogen-deuterium oxide is the most common species) more than for heavy-isotope substitution involving other chemical elements. The isotope effects are especially relevant in biological systems, which are very sensitive to even the smaller changes, due to isotopically-influenced properties of water when it acts as a solvent.
Heavy water is the only known chemical substance that affects the period of circadian oscillations, consistently increasing the length of each cycle. The effect has been demonstrated in unicellular organisms, green plants, isopods, insects, birds, mice, and hamsters. The mechanism is unknown.
To perform their tasks, enzymes rely on their finely-tuned networks of hydrogen bonds, both in the active center with their substrates, and outside the active center, to stabilize their tertiary structures. As a hydrogen bond with deuterium is slightly stronger than one involving ordinary hydrogen, in a highly deuterated environment, some normal reactions in cells are disrupted.
Particularly hard-hit by heavy water are the delicate assemblies of mitotic spindle formations necessary for cell division in eukaryotes. Plants stop growing and seeds do not germinate when given only heavy water, because heavy water stops eukaryotic cell division. The deuterium cell is larger and is a modification of the direction of division. The cell membrane also changes, and it reacts first to the impact of heavy water. In 1972 it was demonstrated that an increase in the percentage content of deuterium in water reduces plant growth. Research conducted on the growth of prokaryote microorganisms in artificial conditions of a heavy hydrogen environment showed that in this environment, all the hydrogen atoms of water could be replaced with deuterium. Experiments showed that bacteria can live in 98% heavy water. However, all concentrations over 50% were found to kill plants.
Experiments with mice, rats, and dogs have shown that a degree of 25% deuteration causes (sometimes irreversible) sterility, because neither gametes nor zygotes can develop. High concentrations of heavy water (90%) rapidly kill fish, tadpoles, flatworms, and "Drosophila". Mammals (for example, rats) given heavy water to drink die after a week, at a time when their body water approaches about 50% deuteration. The mode of death appears to be the same as that in cytotoxic poisoning (such as chemotherapy) or in acute radiation syndrome (though deuterium is not radioactive), and is due to deuterium's action in generally inhibiting cell division. It is more toxic to malignant cells than normal cells but the concentrations needed are too high for regular use. As may occur in chemotherapy, deuterium-poisoned mammals die of a failure of bone marrow (producing bleeding and infections) and of intestinal-barrier functions (producing diarrhea and loss of fluids).
Despite the problems of plants and animals in living with too much deuterium, prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria, which do not have the mitotic problems induced by deuterium, may be grown and propagated in fully deuterated conditions, resulting in replacement of all hydrogen atoms in the bacterial proteins and DNA with the deuterium isotope.
In higher organisms, full replacement with heavy isotopes can be accomplished with other non-radioactive heavy isotopes (such as carbon-13, nitrogen-15, and oxygen-18), but this cannot be done for deuterium. This is a consequence of the ratio of nuclear masses between the isotopes of hydrogen, which is much greater than for any other element.
Deuterium oxide is used to enhance boron neutron capture therapy, but this effect does not rely on the biological or chemical effects of deuterium, but instead on deuterium's ability to moderate (slow) neutrons without capturing them.
Because it would take a very large amount of heavy water to replace 25% to 50% of a human being's body water (water being in turn 50–75% of body weight) with heavy water, accidental or intentional poisoning with heavy water is unlikely to the point of practical disregard. Poisoning would require that the victim ingest large amounts of heavy water without significant normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable toxic effects.
Oral doses of heavy water in the range of several grams, as well as heavy oxygen 18O, are routinely used in human metabolic experiments. (See doubly labeled water testing.) Since one in about every 6,400 hydrogen atoms is deuterium, a 50 kg human containing 32 kg of body water would normally contain enough deuterium (about 1.1 g) to make 5.5 g of pure heavy water, so roughly this dose is required to double the amount of deuterium in the body.
A loss of blood pressure may partially explain the reported incidence of dizziness upon ingestion of heavy water. However, it is more likely that this symptom can be attributed to altered vestibular function.
Although many people associate heavy water primarily with its use in nuclear reactors, pure heavy water is not radioactive. Commercial-grade heavy water is slightly radioactive due to the presence of minute traces of natural tritium, but the same is true of ordinary water. Heavy water that has been used as a coolant in nuclear power plants contains substantially more tritium as a result of neutron bombardment of the deuterium in the heavy water (tritium is a health risk when ingested in large quantities).
In 1990, a disgruntled employee at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in Canada obtained a sample (estimated as about a "half cup") of heavy water from the primary heat transport loop of the nuclear reactor, and loaded it into a cafeteria drink dispenser. Eight employees drank some of the contaminated water. The incident was discovered when employees began leaving bioassay urine samples with elevated tritium levels. The quantity of heavy water involved was far below levels that could induce heavy water toxicity, but several employees received elevated radiation doses from tritium and neutron-activated chemicals in the water. This was not an incident of heavy water poisoning, but rather radiation poisoning from other isotopes in the heavy water.
Some news services were not careful to distinguish these points, and some of the public were left with the impression that heavy water is normally radioactive and more severely toxic than it actually is. Even if pure heavy water had been used in the water cooler indefinitely, it is not likely the incident would have been detected or caused harm, since no employee would be expected to get much more than 25% of their daily drinking water from such a source.
On Earth, deuterated water, HDO, occurs naturally in normal water at a proportion of about 1 molecule in 3,200. This means that 1 in 6,400 hydrogen atoms is deuterium, which is 1 part in 3,200 by weight (hydrogen weight). The HDO may be separated from normal water by distillation or electrolysis and also by various chemical exchange processes, all of which exploit a kinetic isotope effect. With the partial enrichment also occurring in natural bodies of water under particular evaporation conditions. (For more information about the isotopic distribution of deuterium in water, see Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water.)
In theory, deuterium for heavy water could be created in a nuclear reactor, but separation from ordinary water is the cheapest bulk production process.
The difference in mass between the two hydrogen isotopes translates into a difference in the zero-point energy and thus into a slight difference in the speed of the reaction. Once HDO becomes a significant fraction of the water, heavy water becomes more prevalent as water molecules trade hydrogen atoms very frequently. Production of pure heavy water by distillation or electrolysis requires a large cascade of stills or electrolysis chambers and consumes large amounts of power, so the chemical methods are generally preferred.
The most cost-effective process for producing heavy water is the dual temperature exchange sulfide process (known as the Girdler sulfide process) developed in parallel by Karl-Hermann Geib and Jerome S. Spevack in 1943.
An alternative process, patented by Graham M. Keyser, uses lasers to selectively dissociate deuterated hydrofluorocarbons to form deuterium fluoride, which can then be separated by physical means. Although the energy consumption for this process is much less than for the Girdler sulfide process, this method is currently uneconomical due to the expense of procuring the necessary hydrofluorocarbons.
As noted, modern commercial heavy water is almost universally referred to, and sold as, deuterium oxide. It is most often sold in various grades of purity, from 98% enrichment to 99.75–99.98% deuterium enrichment (nuclear reactor grade) and occasionally even higher isotopic purity.
Argentina is the main producer of heavy water, using an ammonia/hydrogen exchange based plant supplied by Switzerland's Sulzer company. It is also a major exporter to Canada, Germany, the US and other countries. The heavy water production facility located in Arroyito is the world's largest heavy water production facility. Argentina produces of heavy water per year using not the H2S bithermal method, but the "monothermal ammonia-hydrogen isotopic exchange".
In October 1939, Soviet physicists Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Yulii Borisovich Khariton concluded that heavy water and carbon were the only feasible moderators for a natural uranium reactor, and in August 1940, along with Georgy Flyorov, submitted a plan to the Russian Academy of Sciences calculating that 15 tons of heavy water were needed for a reactor. With the Soviet Union having no uranium mines at the time, young Academy workers were sent to Leningrad photographic shops to buy uranium nitrate, but the entire heavy water project was halted in 1941 when German forces invaded during Operation Barbarossa.
By 1943, Soviet scientists had discovered that all scientific literature relating to heavy water had disappeared from the West, which Flyorov in a letter warned Soviet leader Joseph Stalin about, and at which time there was only 2–3 kg of heavy water in the entire country. In late 1943, the Soviet purchasing commission in the U.S. obtained 1 kg of heavy water and a further 100 kg in February 1945, and upon World War II ending, the NKVD took over the project.
In October 1946, as part of the Russian Alsos, the NKVD deported to the Soviet Union from Germany the German scientists who had worked on heavy water production during the war, including Karl-Hermann Geib, the inventor of the Girdler sulfide process. These German scientists worked under the supervision of German physical chemist Max Volmer at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow with the plant they constructed producing large quantities of heavy water by 1948.
During the Manhattan Project the United States constructed three heavy water production plants as part of the P-9 Project at Morgantown Ordnance Works, near Morgantown, West Virginia; at the Wabash River Ordnance Works, near Dana and Newport, Indiana; and at the Alabama Ordnance Works, near Childersburg and Sylacauga, Alabama. Heavy water was also acquired from the Cominco plant in Trail, British Columbia, Canada. The Chicago Pile-3 experimental reactor used heavy water as a moderator and went critical in 1944. The three domestic production plants were shut down in 1945 after producing around 20 metric tons of product (around 20,000 litres). The Wabash plant was reopened and began resumption of heavy water production in 1952.
In 1953, the United States began using heavy water in plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River Site. The first of the five heavy water reactors came online in 1953, and the last was placed in cold shutdown in 1996. The SRS reactors were heavy water reactors so that they could produce both plutonium and tritium for the US nuclear weapons program.
The U.S. developed the Girdler sulfide chemical exchange production process—which was first demonstrated on a large scale at the Dana, Indiana plant in 1945 and at the Savannah River Plant, South Carolina in 1952. DuPont operated the SRP for the USDOE until 1 April 1989, when Westinghouse took it over.
India is one of the world's largest producers of heavy water through its Heavy Water Board and also exports to countries like Republic of Korea and the US. Development of heavy water process in India happened in three phases: The first phase (late 1950s to mid-1980s) was a period of technology development, the second phase was of deployment of technology and process stabilisation (mid-1980s to early 1990s) and third phase saw consolidation and a shift towards improvement in production and energy conservation.
In the 1930s, it was suspected by the United States and Soviet Union that Austrian chemist Fritz Johann Hansgirg built a pilot plant for the Empire of Japan in Japanese ruled northern Korea to produce heavy water by using a new process he had invented.
In 1934, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial heavy water plant at Vemork, Tinn, with a capacity of 12 tonnes per year. From 1940 and throughout World War II, the plant was under German control and the Allies decided to destroy the plant and its heavy water to inhibit German development of nuclear weapons. In late 1942, a planned raid called Operation Freshman by British airborne troops failed, both gliders crashing. The raiders were killed in the crash or subsequently executed by the Germans.
On the night of 27 February 1943 Operation Gunnerside succeeded. Norwegian commandos and local resistance managed to demolish small, but key parts of the electrolytic cells, dumping the accumulated heavy water down the factory drains.
On 16 November 1943, the Allied air forces dropped more than 400 bombs on the site. The Allied air raid prompted the Nazi government to move all available heavy water to Germany for safekeeping. On 20 February 1944, a Norwegian partisan sank the ferry M/F "Hydro" carrying heavy water across Lake Tinn, at the cost of 14 Norwegian civilian lives, and most of the heavy water was presumably lost. A few of the barrels were only half full, and therefore could float, and may have been salvaged and transported to Germany.
Recent investigation of production records at Norsk Hydro and analysis of an intact barrel that was salvaged in 2004 revealed that although the barrels in this shipment contained water of pH 14—indicative of the alkaline electrolytic refinement process—they did not contain high concentrations of D2O. Despite the apparent size of the shipment, the total quantity of pure heavy water was quite small, most barrels only containing 0.5–1% pure heavy water. The Germans would have needed a total of about 5 tons of heavy water to get a nuclear reactor running. The manifest clearly indicated that there was only half a ton of heavy water being transported to Germany. "Hydro" was carrying far too little heavy water for one reactor, let alone the 10 or more tons needed to make enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon.
Israel admitted running the Dimona reactor with Norwegian heavy water sold to it in 1959. Through re-export using Romania and Germany, India probably also used Norwegian heavy water.
As part of its contribution to the Manhattan Project, Canada built and operated a to per month (design capacity) electrolytic heavy water plant at Trail, British Columbia, which started operation in 1943.
The Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) design of power reactor requires large quantities of heavy water to act as a neutron moderator and coolant. AECL ordered two heavy water plants, which were built and operated in Atlantic Canada at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia (by Deuterium of Canada Limited) and Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia (by General Electric Canada). These plants proved to have significant design, construction and production problems. Consequently, AECL built the Bruce Heavy Water Plant (), which it later sold to Ontario Hydro, to ensure a reliable supply of heavy water for future power plants. The two Nova Scotia plants were shut down in 1985 when their production proved unnecessary.
The Bruce Heavy Water Plant (BHWP) in Ontario was the world's largest heavy water production plant with a capacity of 1600 tonnes per year at its peak (800 tonnes per year per full plant, two fully operational plants at its peak). It used the Girdler sulfide process to produce heavy water, and required 340,000 tonnes of feed water to produce one tonne of heavy water. It was part of a complex that included eight CANDU reactors, which provided heat and power for the heavy water plant. The site was located at Douglas Point/Bruce Nuclear Generating Station near Tiverton, Ontario, on Lake Huron where it had access to the waters of the Great Lakes.
AECL issued the construction contract in 1969 for the first BHWP unit (BHWP A). Commissioning of BHWP A was done by Ontario Hydro from 1971 through 1973, with the plant entering service on June 28, 1973 and design production capacity being achieved in April 1974. Due to the success of BHWP A and the large amount of heavy water that would be required for the large numbers of upcoming planned CANDU nuclear power plant construction projects, Ontario Hydro commissioned three additional heavy water production plants for the Bruce site (BHWP B, C, and D). BHWP B was placed into service in 1979. These first two plants were significantly more efficient than planned, and the number of CANDU construction projects ended up being significantly lower than originally planned, which led to the cancellation of construction on BHWP C & D. In 1984 BHWP A was shut down. By 1993 Ontario Hydro had produced enough heavy water to meet all of its anticipated domestic needs (which were lower than expected due to improved efficiency in the use and recycling of heavy water), so they shut down and demolished half of the capacity of BHWP B. The remaining capacity continued to operate in order to fulfill demand for heavy water exports until it was permanently shut down in 1997, after which the plant was gradually dismantled and the site cleared.
AECL is currently researching other more efficient and environmentally benign processes for creating heavy water. This is essential for the future of the CANDU reactors since heavy water represents about 15–20% of the total capital cost of each CANDU plant.
Since 1996 a plant for production of heavy water was being constructed at Khondab near Arak. On 26 August 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad inaugurated the expansion of the country's heavy-water plant. Iran has indicated that the heavy-water production facility will operate in tandem with a 40 MW research reactor that had a scheduled completion date in 2009.
Iran produced deuterated solvents in early 2011 for the first time.
The core of the IR-40 is supposed to be re-designed based on the nuclear agreement in July 2015.
Iran is permitted to store only of heavy water. Iran exports excess production after exceeding their allotment making Iran the world's third largest exporter of heavy water.
The 50 MWth heavy water and natural uranium research reactor at Khushab, in Punjab province, is a central element of Pakistan's program for production of plutonium, deuterium and tritium for advanced compact warheads (i.e. thermonuclear weapons). Pakistan succeeded in acquiring a tritium purification and storage plant and deuterium and tritium precursor materials from two German firms.
Romania used to produce heavy water at the now decommissioned Drobeta Girdler sulfide plant for domestic and export purposes.
France operated a small plant during the 1950s and 1960s.
Heavy water exists in elevated concentration in the hypolimnion of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. It is likely that similar elevated concentrations exist in lakes with similar limnology, but this is only 4% enrichment (24 vs 28) and surface waters are usually enriched in by evaporation to even greater extend by faster evaporation.
Deuterium oxide is used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy when using water as solvent if the nuclide of interest is hydrogen. This is because the signal from light-water (1H2O) solvent molecules interfere with observing the signal from the molecule of interest dissolved in it. Deuterium has a different magnetic moment and therefore does not contribute to the 1H-NMR signal at the hydrogen-1 resonance frequency.
For some experiments, it may be desirable to identify the labile hydrogens on a compound, that is hydrogens that can easily exchange away as H+ ions on some positions in a molecule. With addition of D2O, sometimes referred to as a "D2O shake", labile hydrogens exchange away and are substituted by deuterium (2H) atoms. These positions in the molecule then do not appear in the 1H-NMR spectrum.
Deuterium oxide is often used as the source of deuterium for preparing specifically labelled isotopologues of organic compounds. For example, C-H bonds adjacent to ketonic carbonyl groups can be replaced by C-D bonds, using acid or base catalysis. Trimethylsulfoxonium iodide, made from dimethyl sulfoxide and methyl iodide can be recrystallized from deuterium oxide, and then dissociated to regenerate methyl iodide and dimethyl sulfoxide, both deuterium labelled. In cases where specific double labelling by deuterium and tritium is contemplated, the researcher must be aware that deuterium oxide, depending upon age and origin, can contain some tritium.
Deuterium oxide is often used instead of water when collecting FTIR spectra of proteins in solution. H2O creates a strong band that overlaps with the amide I region of proteins. The band from D2O is shifted away from the amide I region.
Heavy water is used in certain types of nuclear reactors, where it acts as a neutron moderator to slow down neutrons so that they are more likely to react with the fissile uranium-235 than with uranium-238, which captures neutrons without fissioning.
The CANDU reactor uses this design. Light water also acts as a moderator, but because light water absorbs more neutrons than heavy water, reactors using light water for a reactor moderator must use enriched uranium rather than natural uranium, otherwise criticality is impossible. A significant fraction of outdated power reactors, such as the RBMK reactors in the USSR, were constructed using normal water for cooling but graphite as a moderator. However, the danger of graphite in power reactors (graphite fires in part led to the Chernobyl disaster) has led to the discontinuation of graphite in standard reactor designs.
Because they do not require uranium enrichment, heavy water reactors are more of a concern in regards to nuclear proliferation. The breeding and extraction of plutonium can be a relatively rapid and cheap route to building a nuclear weapon, as chemical separation of plutonium from fuel is easier than isotopic separation of U-235 from natural uranium.
Among current and past nuclear weapons states, Israel, India, and North Korea first used plutonium from heavy water moderated reactors burning natural uranium, while China, South Africa and Pakistan first built weapons using highly enriched uranium.
In the U.S., however, the first experimental atomic reactor (1942), as well as the Manhattan Project Hanford production reactors that produced the plutonium for the Trinity test and Fat Man bombs, all used pure carbon (graphite) neutron moderators combined with normal water cooling pipes. They functioned with neither enriched uranium nor heavy water. Russian and British plutonium production also used graphite-moderated reactors.
There is no evidence that civilian heavy water power reactors—such as the CANDU or Atucha designs—have been used to produce military fissile materials. In nations that do not already possess nuclear weapons, nuclear material at these facilities is under IAEA safeguards to discourage any diversion.
Due to its potential for use in nuclear weapons programs, the possession or import/export of large industrial quantities of heavy water are subject to government control in several countries. Suppliers of heavy water and heavy water production technology typically apply IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) administered safeguards and material accounting to heavy water. (In Australia, the "Nuclear Non-Proliferation (Safeguards) Act 1987".) In the U.S. and Canada, non-industrial quantities of heavy water (i.e., in the gram to kg range) are routinely available without special license through chemical supply dealers and commercial companies such as the world's former major producer Ontario Hydro.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Sudbury, Ontario uses 1,000 tonnes of heavy water on loan from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. The neutrino detector is underground in a mine, to shield it from muons produced by cosmic rays. SNO was built to answer the question of whether or not electron-type neutrinos produced by fusion in the Sun (the only type the Sun should be producing directly, according to theory) might be able to turn into other types of neutrinos on the way to Earth. SNO detects the Cherenkov radiation in the water from high-energy electrons produced from electron-type neutrinos as they undergo charged current (CC) interactions with neutrons in deuterium, turning them into protons and electrons (however, only the electrons are fast enough to produce Cherenkov radiation for detection).
SNO also detects neutrino electron scattering (ES) events, where the neutrino transfers energy to the electron, which then proceeds to generate Cherenkov radiation distinguishable from that produced by CC events. The first of these two reactions is produced only by electron-type neutrinos, while the second can be caused by all of the neutrino flavors. The use of deuterium is critical to the SNO function, because all three "flavours" (types) of neutrinos may be detected in a third type of reaction as well, neutrino-disintegration, in which a neutrino of any type (electron, muon, or tau) scatters from a deuterium nucleus (deuteron), transferring enough energy to break up the loosely bound deuteron into a free neutron and proton via a neutral current (NC) interaction.
This event is detected when the free neutron is absorbed by 35Cl− present from NaCl deliberately dissolved in the heavy water, causing emission of characteristic capture gamma rays. Thus, in this experiment, heavy water not only provides the transparent medium necessary to produce and visualize Cherenkov radiation, but it also provides deuterium to detect exotic mu type (μ) and tau (τ) neutrinos, as well as a non-absorbent moderator medium to preserve free neutrons from this reaction, until they can be absorbed by an easily detected neutron-activated isotope.
Heavy water is employed as part of a mixture with H218O for a common and safe test of mean metabolic rate in humans and animals undergoing their normal activities.
Tritium is the active substance in self-powered lighting and controlled nuclear fusion, its other uses including autoradiography and radioactive labeling. It is also used in nuclear weapon design for boosted fission weapons and initiators. Some tritium is created in heavy water moderated reactors when deuterium captures a neutron. This reaction has a small cross-section (probability of a single neutron-capture event) and produces only small amounts of tritium, although enough to justify cleaning tritium from the moderator every few years to reduce the environmental risk of tritium escape.
Producing a lot of tritium in this way would require reactors with very high neutron fluxes, or with a very high proportion of heavy water to nuclear fuel and very low neutron absorption by other reactor material. The tritium would then have to be recovered by isotope separation from a much larger quantity of deuterium, unlike production from lithium-6 (the present method), where only chemical separation is needed.
Deuterium's absorption cross section for thermal neutrons is 0.52 millibarns (5.2 × 10−32 m2; 1 barn = 10−28 m2), while those of oxygen-16 and oxygen-17 are 0.19 and 0.24 millibarns, respectively. 17O makes up 0.038% of natural oxygen, making the overall cross section 0.28 millibarns. Therefore, in D2O with natural oxygen, 21% of neutron captures are on oxygen, rising higher as 17O builds up from neutron capture on 16O. Also, 17O may emit an alpha particle on neutron capture, producing radioactive carbon-14. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14283 |
History of science and technology
The history of science and technology (HST) is a field of history that examines how the understanding of the natural world (science) and the ability to manipulate it (technology) have changed over the millennia and centuries. This academic discipline also studies the cultural, economic, and political impacts of scientific innovation.
Histories of science were originally written by practicing and retired scientists, starting primarily with William Whewell, as a way to communicate the virtues of science to the public. In the early 1930s, after a famous paper given by the Soviet historian Boris Hessen, was focused into looking at the ways in which scientific practices were allied with the needs and motivations of their context. After World War II, extensive resources were put into teaching and researching the discipline, with the hopes that it would help the public better understand both Science and Technology as they came to play an exceedingly prominent role in the world. In the 1960s, especially in the wake of the work done by Thomas Kuhn, the discipline began to serve a very different function, and began to be used as a way to critically examine the scientific enterprise.
History of science and technology is a well developed field in India. At least three generations of scholars can be identified.
The first generation includes D.D.Kosambi, Dharmpal, Debiprasad Chattopadhyay and Rahman. The second generation mainly consists of Ashis Nandy, Deepak Kumar, Dhruv Raina, S. Irfan Habib, Shiv Visvanathan, Gyan Prakash, Stan Lourdswamy, V.V. Krishna, Itty Abraham, Richard Grove, Kavita Philip, Mira Nanda and Rob Anderson. There is an emergent third generation that includes scholars like Abha Sur and Jahnavi Phalkey.
Departments and Programmes
The National Institute of Science, Technolology and Development Studies had a research group active in the 1990s which consolidated social history of science as a field of research in India.
Currently there are several institutes and university departments offering HST programmes.
Ukraine
Academic study of the history of science as an independent discipline was launched by George Sarton at Harvard with his book "Introduction to the History of Science" (1927) and the "Isis" journal (founded in 1912). Sarton exemplified the early 20th century view of the history of science as the history of great men and great ideas. He shared with many of his contemporaries a Whiggish belief in history as a record of the advances and delays in the march of progress. The History of Science was not a recognized subfield of American history in this period, and most of the work was carried out by interested Scientists and Physicians rather than professional Historians. With the work of I. Bernard Cohen at Harvard, the history of Science became an established subdiscipline of history after 1945.
Historiography of science
History of science as a discipline | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14285 |
Holographic principle
The holographic principle is a tenet of string theories and a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region—such as a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind who combined his ideas with previous ones of 't Hooft and Charles Thorn. As pointed out by Raphael Bousso, Thorn observed in 1978 that string theory admits a lower-dimensional description in which gravity emerges from it in what would now be called a holographic way. The prime example of holography is the AdS/CFT correspondence.
The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which conjectures that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius "squared", and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the informational content of all the objects that have fallen into the hole might be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon. The holographic principle resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory.
However, there exist classical solutions to the Einstein equations that allow values of the entropy larger than those allowed by an area law, hence in principle larger than those of a black hole. These are the so-called "Wheeler's bags of gold". The existence of such solutions conflicts with the holographic interpretation, and their effects in a quantum theory of gravity including the holographic principle are not fully understood yet.
The anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, sometimes called Maldacena duality or gauge/gravity duality, is a conjectured relationship between two kinds of physical theories. On one side are anti-de Sitter spaces (AdS) which are used in theories of quantum gravity, formulated in terms of string theory or M-theory. On the other side of the correspondence are conformal field theories (CFT) which are quantum field theories, including theories similar to the Yang–Mills theories that describe elementary particles.
The duality represents a major advance in our understanding of string theory and quantum gravity. This is because it provides a non-perturbative formulation of string theory with certain boundary conditions and because it is the most successful realization of the holographic principle.
It also provides a powerful toolkit for studying strongly coupled quantum field theories. Much of the usefulness of the duality results from the fact that it is a strong-weak duality: when the fields of the quantum field theory are strongly interacting, the ones in the gravitational theory are weakly interacting and thus more mathematically tractable. This fact has been used to study many aspects of nuclear and condensed matter physics by translating problems in those subjects into more mathematically tractable problems in string theory.
The AdS/CFT correspondence was first proposed by Juan Maldacena in late 1997. Important aspects of the correspondence were elaborated in articles by Steven Gubser, Igor Klebanov, and Alexander Markovich Polyakov, and by Edward Witten. By 2015, Maldacena's article had over 10,000 citations, becoming the most highly cited article in the field of high energy physics.
An object with relatively high entropy is microscopically random, like a hot gas. A known configuration of classical fields has zero entropy: there is nothing random about electric and magnetic fields, or gravitational waves. Since black holes are exact solutions of Einstein's equations, they were thought not to have any entropy either.
But Jacob Bekenstein noted that this leads to a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. If one throws a hot gas with entropy into a black hole, once it crosses the event horizon, the entropy would disappear. The random properties of the gas would no longer be seen once the black hole had absorbed the gas and settled down. One way of salvaging the second law is if black holes are in fact random objects with an entropy that increases by an amount greater than the entropy of the consumed gas.
Bekenstein assumed that black holes are maximum entropy objects—that they have more entropy than anything else in the same volume. In a sphere of radius "R", the entropy in a relativistic gas increases as the energy increases. The only known limit is gravitational; when there is too much energy the gas collapses into a black hole. Bekenstein used this to put an upper bound on the entropy in a region of space, and the bound was proportional to the area of the region. He concluded that the black hole entropy is directly proportional to the area of the event horizon. Gravitational time dilation causes time, from the perspective of a remote observer, to stop at the event horizon. Due to the natural limit on maximum speed of motion, this prevents falling objects from crossing the event horizon no matter how close they get to it. Since any change in quantum state requires time to flow, so all objects and their quantum information state stays imprinted on the event horizon. Bekenstein concluded that from the perspective of any remote observer, the black hole entropy is directly proportional to the area of the event horizon.
Stephen Hawking had shown earlier that the total horizon area of a collection of black holes always increases with time. The horizon is a boundary defined by light-like geodesics; it is those light rays that are just barely unable to escape. If neighboring geodesics start moving toward each other they eventually collide, at which point their extension is inside the black hole. So the geodesics are always moving apart, and the number of geodesics which generate the boundary, the area of the horizon, always increases. Hawking's result was called the second law of black hole thermodynamics, by analogy with the law of entropy increase, but at first, he did not take the analogy too seriously.
Hawking knew that if the horizon area were an actual entropy, black holes would have to radiate. When heat is added to a thermal system, the change in entropy is the increase in mass-energy divided by temperature: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14286 |
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. An industrialized city in the Golden Horseshoe at the west end of Lake Ontario, Hamilton has a population of 536,917, and its census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington and Grimsby, has a population of 747,545. The city is southwest of Toronto, with which the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) is formed.
On January 1, 2001, the current boundaries of Hamilton were created through the amalgamation of the original city with other municipalities of the Regional Municipality of Hamilton–Wentworth. Residents of the city are known as Hamiltonians. Since 1981, the metropolitan area has been listed as the ninth largest in Canada and the third largest in Ontario.
Hamilton is home to the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, the Bruce Trail, McMaster University, Redeemer University College and Mohawk College. McMaster University is ranked 4th in Canada and 77th in the world by Times Higher Education Rankings 2018–19.
In pre-colonial times, the Neutral First Nation used much of the land but were gradually driven out by the Five (later Six) Nations (Iroquois) who were allied with the British against the Huron and their French allies. A member of the Iroquois Confederacy provided the route and name for Mohawk Road, which originally included King Street in the lower city.
Following the United States gaining independence after their American Revolutionary War, in 1784, about 10,000 United Empire Loyalists settled in Upper Canada (what is now southern Ontario), chiefly in Niagara, around the Bay of Quinte, and along the St. Lawrence River between Lake Ontario and Montreal. The Crown granted them land in these areas to develop Upper Canada and to compensate them for losses in the United States. With former First Nations lands available for purchase, these new settlers were soon followed by many more Americans, attracted by the availability of inexpensive, arable land. At the same time, large numbers of Iroquois who had allied with Britain arrived from the United States and were settled on reserves west of Lake Ontario as compensation for lands they lost in what was now the United States. During the War of 1812, British regulars and Canadian militia defeated invading American troops at the Battle of Stoney Creek, fought in what is now a park in eastern Hamilton.
The town of Hamilton was conceived by George Hamilton (a son of a Queenston entrepreneur and founder, Robert Hamilton), when he purchased farm holdings of James Durand, the local Member of the British Legislative Assembly, shortly after the War of 1812. Nathaniel Hughson, a property owner to the north, cooperated with George Hamilton to prepare a proposal for a courthouse and jail on Hamilton's property. Hamilton offered the land to the crown for the future site. Durand was empowered by Hughson and Hamilton to sell property holdings which later became the site of the town. As he had been instructed, Durand circulated the offers at York during a session of the Legislative Assembly, which established a new Gore District, of which the Hamilton townsite was a member.
Initially, this town was not the most important centre of the Gore District. An early indication of Hamilton's sudden prosperity occurred in 1816, when it was chosen over Ancaster, Ontario to be the new Gore District's administrative centre. Another dramatic economic turnabout for Hamilton occurred in 1832 when a canal was finally cut through the outer sand bar that enabled Hamilton to become a major port. A permanent jail was not constructed until 1832, when a cut-stone design was completed on Prince's Square, one of the two squares created in 1816. Subsequently, the first police board and the town limits were defined by statute on February 13, 1833. Official city status was achieved on June 9, 1846, by an act of Parliament, 9 Victoria Chapter 73.
By 1845, the population was 6,475. In 1846, there were useful roads to many communities as well as stagecoaches and steamboats to Toronto, Queenston, and Niagara. Eleven cargo schooners were owned in Hamilton. Eleven churches were in operation. A reading room provided access to newspapers from other cities and from England and the U.S. In addition to stores of all types, four banks, tradesmen of various types, and sixty-five taverns, industry in the community included three breweries, ten importers of dry goods and groceries, five importers of hardware, two tanneries, three coachmakers, and a marble and a stone works.
As the city grew, several prominent buildings were constructed in the late 19th century, including the Grand Lodge of Canada in 1855, West Flamboro Methodist Church in 1879 (later purchased by Dufferin Masonic Lodge in 1893), a public library in 1890, and the Right House department store in 1893. The first commercial telephone service in Canada, the first telephone exchange in the British Empire, and the second telephone exchange in all of North America were each established in the city between 1877–78. The city had several interurban electric street railways and two inclines, all powered by the Cataract Power Co.
Though suffering through the Hamilton Street Railway strike of 1906, with industrial businesses expanding, Hamilton's population doubled between 1900 and 1914. Two steel manufacturing companies, Stelco and Dofasco, were formed in 1910 and 1912, respectively. Procter & Gamble and the Beech-Nut Packing Company opened manufacturing plants in 1914 and 1922, respectively, their first outside the US. Population and economic growth continued until the 1960s. In 1929 the city's first high-rise building, the Pigott Building, was constructed; in 1930 McMaster University moved from Toronto to Hamilton, in 1934 the second Canadian Tire store in Canada opened here; in 1940 the airport was completed; and in 1948, the Studebaker assembly line was constructed. Infrastructure and retail development continued, with the Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway opening in 1958, and the first Tim Hortons store in 1964.
Since then, many of the large industries have moved or shut down operations in restructuring that also affected the United States. The economy has shifted more toward the service sector, such as transportation, education, and health services.
On January 1, 2001, the new city of Hamilton was formed from the amalgamation of Hamilton and its five neighbouring municipalities: Ancaster, Dundas, Flamborough, Glanbrook, and Stoney Creek. Before amalgamation, the "old" City of Hamilton had 331,121 residents and was divided into 100 neighbourhoods. The former region of Hamilton-Wentworth had a population of 490,268. The amalgamation created a single-tier municipal government ending subsidization of its suburbs. The new amalgamated city has 519,949 people in more than 100 neighbourhoods, and surrounding communities.
In 1997 there was a devastating fire at the Plastimet plastics plant. Approximately 300 firefighters battled the blaze, and many sustained severe chemical burns and inhaled volatile organic compounds when at least 400 tonnes of PVC plastic were consumed in the fire.
Hamilton is in Southern Ontario on the western end of the Niagara Peninsula and wraps around the westernmost part of Lake Ontario; most of the city, including the downtown section, is on the south shore. Hamilton is in the geographic centre of the Golden Horseshoe. Its major physical features are Hamilton Harbour, marking the northern limit of the city, and the Niagara Escarpment running through the middle of the city across its entire breadth, bisecting the city into "upper" and "lower" parts. The maximum high point is 250m (820') above the level of Lake Ontario.
According to all records from local historians, this district was called "Attiwandaronia" by the native Neutral people. The first aboriginals to settle in the Hamilton area called the bay "Macassa", meaning "beautiful waters". Hamilton is one of 11 cities showcased in the book, "Green City: People, Nature & Urban Places" by Quebec author Mary Soderstrom, which examines the city as an example of an industrial powerhouse co-existing with nature. Soderstrom credits Thomas McQuesten and family in the 1930s who "became champions of parks, greenspace and roads" in Hamilton.
Hamilton Harbour is a natural harbour with a large sandbar called the Beachstrip. This sandbar was deposited during a period of higher lake levels during the last ice age, and extends southeast through the central lower city to the escarpment. Hamilton's deep sea port is accessed by ship canal through the beach strip into the harbour and is traversed by two bridges, the QEW's Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway and the lower Canal Lift Bridge.
Between 1788 and 1793, the townships at the Head-of-the-Lake were surveyed and named. The area was first known as The Head-of-the-Lake for its location at the western end of Lake Ontario. John Ryckman, born in Barton township (where present day downtown Hamilton is), described the area in 1803 as he remembered it: "The city in 1803 was all forest. The shores of the bay were difficult to reach or see because they were hidden by a thick, almost impenetrable mass of trees and undergrowth ... Bears ate pigs, so settlers warred on bears. Wolves gobbled sheep and geese, so they hunted and trapped wolves. They also held organized raids on rattlesnakes on the mountainside. There was plenty of game. Many a time have I seen a deer jump the fence into my back yard, and there were millions of pigeons which we clubbed as they flew low."
George Hamilton, a settler and local politician, established a town site in the northern portion of Barton Township in 1815. He kept several east–west roads which were originally Indian trails, but the north–south streets were on a regular grid pattern. Streets were designated "East" or "West" if they crossed James Street or Highway 6. Streets were designated "North" or "South" if they crossed King Street or Highway 8. The townsite's design, likely conceived in 1816, was commonplace. George Hamilton employed a grid street pattern used in most towns in Upper Canada and throughout the American frontier. The eighty original lots had frontages of fifty feet; each lot faced a broad street and backed onto a twelve-foot lane. It took at least a decade to sell all the original lots, but the construction of the Burlington Canal in 1823, and a new court-house in 1827 encouraged Hamilton to add more blocks around 1828–9. At this time he included a market square in an effort to draw commercial activity on to his lands, but the town's natural growth occurred to the north of Hamilton's plot.
The Hamilton Conservation Authority owns, leases or manages about of land with the city operating of parkland at 310 locations. Many of the parks are along the Niagara Escarpment, which runs from Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula in the north, to Queenston at the Niagara River in the south, and provides views of the cities and towns at Lake Ontario's western end. The hiking path Bruce Trail runs the length of the escarpment. Hamilton is home to more than 100 waterfalls and cascades, most of which are on or near the Bruce Trail as it winds through the Niagara Escarpment. Visitors can often be seen swimming in the waterfalls during the summertime, although it is strongly recommended to stay away from the water: much of the watershed of the Chedoke and Red Hill creeks originates in storm sewers running beneath neighbourhoods atop the Niagara escarpment, and water quality in many of Hamilton's waterfalls is seriously degraded. High "e. coli" counts are regularly observed through testing by McMaster University near many of Hamilton's waterfalls, sometimes exceeding the provincial limits for recreational water use by as much as 400 times. The storm sewers in upstream neighbourhoods carry polluted runoff from streets and parking lots, as well as occasional raw sewage from sanitary lines that were improperly connected to the storm sewers instead of the separate sanitary sewer system. Notably, in March 2020 it was revealed that as much as 24 billion litres of untreated wastewater has been leaking into the Chedoke creek and Cootes' Paradise areas since at least 2014 due to insufficiencies in the city's sewerage and storm water management systems.
Hamilton's climate is humid-continental, characterized by changeable weather patterns. In the Köppen classification, Hamilton it is on the Dfb/Dfa border found in southern Ontario because the average temperature in July is , although the east falls on the hot summer subtype towards Niagara Falls. However, its climate is moderate compared with most of Canada. Hamilton's location on an embayment at the southwestern corner of Lake Ontario with an escarpment that divides the city's upper and lower parts results in noticeable disparities in weather over short distances. This is also the case with pollution levels, which depending on localized winds patterns or low clouds can be high in certain areas mostly originating from the city's steel industry mixed with regional vehicle pollution. With a July average of exactly , the lower city is in a pocket of the found at the southwestern end of Lake Ontario (between Hamilton and Toronto and eastward into the Niagara Peninsula), while the upper reaches of the city fall into the .
The airport's open, rural location and higher altitude (240m vs. 85m ASL downtown) results in lower temperatures, generally windier conditions, and higher snowfall amounts than lower, built-up areas of the city. One exception is on early spring afternoons; when colder than air lake temperatures keep shoreline areas significantly cooler, under the presence of an east or north-east onshore flow.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Hamilton was 41.1 °C (106 °F) on 14 July 1868. The coldest temperature ever recorded was -30.6 °C (-23 °F) on 25 January 1884.
Hamilton's local attractions include the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, the National Historic Site, Dundurn Castle (the residence of an Allan MacNab, the 8th Premier of Canada West), the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the African Lion Safari Park, the Cathedral of Christ the King, the Workers' Arts and Heritage Centre, and the Hamilton Museum of Steam & Technology
, there are 40 pieces in the city's Public Art Collection. The works are owned and maintained by the city. Information and the locations of each piece in Public Art Collection can be viewed on this interactive map.
Founded in 1914, the Art Gallery of Hamilton is Ontario's third largest public art gallery. The gallery has over 9,000 works in its permanent collection that focus on three areas: 19th century European, Historical Canadian and Contemporary Canadian.
The McMaster Museum of Art (MMA), founded at McMaster University in 1967, houses and exhibits the university's art collection of more than 7,000 objects, including historical, modern and contemporary art, the Levy Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and a collection of over 300 German Expressionist prints.
Hamilton has an active theatre scene, with the professional company Theatre Aquarius, plus long-time amateur companies, the Players' Guild of Hamilton and Hamilton Theatre Inc.. Many smaller theatre companies have also opened in the past decade, bringing a variety of theatre to the area.
Growth in the arts and culture sector has garnered media attention for Hamilton. A 2006 article in "The Globe and Mail", entitled "Go West, Young Artist", focused on the Hamilton's growing art scene. The Factory: Hamilton Media Arts Centre, opened a new home on James Street North in 2006. Art galleries have sprung up on streets across the city: James Street, King William Street, Locke Street and King Street.The opening of the Downtown Arts Centre on Rebecca Street has spurred creative activities in the core. The Community Centre for Media Arts (CCMA) continues to operate in downtown Hamilton. The CCMA works with marginalized populations and combines new media services with arts education and skills development programming.
Supercrawl is a large community arts and music festival that takes place in September in the James Street North area of the city. In 2018, Supercrawl celebrated its 10th anniversary with over 220,000 visitors.
In March 2015, Hamilton was host to the JUNO Awards, which featured performances by Hedley, Alanis Morissette and Magic!. The award ceremony was held at the FirstOntario Centre in downtown Hamilton. During JUNOfest, hundreds of local acts performed across the city, bringing thousands of tourists.
Hamilton hosted Canada's first major international athletic event, the first Commonwealth Games (then called the British Empire Games) in 1930. Hamilton bid for the Commonwealth Games in 2010 but lost to New Delhi. On November 7, 2009, in Guadalajara, Mexico, it was announced Toronto would host the 2015 Pan Am Games after beating out two rival South American cities, Lima, Peru and Bogotá, Colombia. The city of Hamilton co-hosted the Games with Toronto. Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger said "the Pan Am Games will provide a 'unique opportunity for Hamilton to renew major sport facilities giving Hamiltonians a multi-purpose stadium, a 50-metre swimming pool, and an international-calibre velodrome to enjoy for generations to come'." Hamilton's major sports complexes include Tim Hortons Field and FirstOntario Centre.
Hamilton is represented by the Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League. The team traces their origins to the 1869 "Hamilton Foot Ball Club". Hamilton is also home to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame museum. The museum hosts an annual induction event in a week-long celebration that includes school visits, a golf tournament, a formal induction dinner and concludes with the Hall of Fame game involving the local CFL Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Tim Hortons Field. The 109th championship game of the Canadian Football League, the Grey Cup, is scheduled to be played in Hamilton in 2021.
In 2019, Forge FC debuted as Hamilton's soccer team in the Canadian Premier League. The team plays at Tim Hortons Field and share the venue with the Tiger-Cats. They finished their inaugural season as champions of the league.
In 2019, the Hamilton Honey Badgers will debut as Hamilton's basketball team in the Canadian Elite Basketball League. The team plays its home games at the FirstOntario Centre.
Hamilton hosted an NHL team in the 1920s called the Hamilton Tigers. The team folded after a players' strike in 1925. Research in Motion CEO Jim Balsillie has shown interest in bringing another NHL team to southern Ontario. The NHL's Phoenix Coyotes filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and have included within their Chapter 11 reorganization a plan to sell the team to Balsillie and move the team and its operations to Hamilton, Ontario. In late September, however, the bankruptcy judge did not rule in favour of Balsillie.
The Around the Bay Road Race circumnavigates Hamilton Harbour. Although it is not a marathon distance, it is the longest continuously held long distance foot race in North America. The local newspaper also hosts the amateur Spectator Indoor Games.
In addition to team sports, Hamilton is home to an auto race track, Flamboro Speedway and Canada's fastest half-mile harness horse racing track, Flamboro Downs. Another auto race track, Cayuga International Speedway, is near Hamilton in the Haldimand County community of Nelles Corners, between Hagersville and Cayuga.
The most important economic activity in Ontario is manufacturing, and the Toronto–Hamilton region is the country's most highly industrialized area. The area from Oshawa, Ontario around the west end of Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls, with Hamilton at its centre, is known as the Golden Horseshoe and had a population of approximately 8.1 million people in 2006. The phrase was first used by Westinghouse President Herbert H. Rogge in a speech to the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, on January 12, 1954. "Hamilton in 50 years will be the forward cleat in a golden horseshoe of industrial development from Oshawa to the Niagara River ... 150 miles long and wide...It will run from Niagara Falls on the south to about Oshawa on the north and take in numerous cities and towns already there, including Hamilton and Toronto."
With sixty percent of Canada's steel produced in Hamilton by Stelco and Dofasco, the city has become known as the Steel Capital of Canada. After nearly declaring bankruptcy, Stelco returned to profitability in 2004. On August 26, 2007 United States Steel Corporation acquired Stelco for C$38.50 in cash per share, owning more than 76 percent of Stelco's outstanding shares. On September 17, 2014, US Steel Canada announced it was applying for bankruptcy protection and it would close its Hamilton operations.
A stand-alone subsidiary of Arcelor Mittal, the world's largest steel producer, Dofasco produces products for the automotive, construction, energy, manufacturing, pipe and tube, appliance, packaging, and steel distribution industries. It has approximately 7,300 employees at its Hamilton plant, and the four million tons of steel it produces each year is about 30% of Canada's flat-rolled sheet steel shipments. Dofasco was North America's most profitable steel producer in 1999, the most profitable in Canada in 2000, and a long-time member of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. Ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice to divest itself of the Canadian company, Arcelor Mittal has been allowed to retain Dofasco provided it sells several of its American assets.
As per the 2016 Canadian census, 24.69% of the city's population was not born in Canada. Between 2001 and 2006, the foreign-born population increased by 7.7% while the total population of the Hamilton census metropolitan area (CMA) grew by 4.3%.
Hamilton is home to 26,330 immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2001 and 2010 and 13,150 immigrants who arrived between 2011 and 2016.
Hamilton maintains significant Italian, English, Scottish, German and Irish ancestry. 130,705 Hamiltonians claim English heritage, while 98,765 indicate their ancestors arrived from Scotland, 87,825 from Ireland, 62,335 from Italy, 50,400 from Germany.
In February 2014, the city's council voted to declare Hamilton a sanctuary city, offering municipal services to undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation.
Hamilton also has a notable French community for which provincial services are offered in French. In Ontario, urban centres where there are at least 5000 Francophones, or where at least 10% of the population is francophone, are designated areas where bilingual provincial services have to be offered. As per the 2016 census, the Francophone community maintains a population of 6,760, while 30,530 residents, or 5.8% of the city's population, have knowledge of both official languages. The Franco-Ontarian community of Hamilton boasts two school boards, the public "Conseil scolaire Viamonde" and the Catholic "Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir", which operate five schools (2 secondary and 3 elementary). Additionally, the city maintains a Francophone community health centre that is part of the LHIN (Centre de santé communautaire Hamilton/Niagara), a cultural centre (Centre français Hamilton), three daycare centres, a provincially funded employment centre (Options Emploi), a community college site (Collège Boréal) and a community organization that supports the development of the francophone community in Hamilton (ACFO Régionale Hamilton).
The top countries of birth for the newcomers living in Hamilton in the 1990s were: former Yugoslavia, Poland, India, China, the Philippines, and Iraq.
Children aged 14 years and under accounted for 16.23% of the city's population, a decline of 1.57% from the 2011 census. Hamiltonians aged 65 years and older constituted 17.3% of the population, an increase of 2.4% since 2011. The city's average age is 41.3 years.
54.9% of Hamiltonians are married or in a common-law relationship, while 6.4% of city residents are divorced. Same-sex couples (married or in common-law relationships) constitute 0.08% (2,710 individuals) of the partnered population in Hamilton.
The most described religion in Hamilton is Christianity although other religions brought by immigrants are also growing. The 2011 census indicates 67.6% of the population adheres to a Christian denomination, with Catholics being the largest at 34.3% of the city's population. The Christ the King Cathedral is the seat of the Diocese of Hamilton. Other denominations include the United Church (6.5%), Anglican (6.4%), Presbyterian (3.1%), Christian Orthodox (2.9%), and other denominations (9.8%). Other religions with significant populations include Islam (3.7%), Buddhist (0.9%), Sikh (0.8%), Hindu (0.8%), and Jewish (0.7%). Those with no religious affiliation accounted for 24.9% of the population.
Environics Analytics, a geodemographic marketing firm that created 66 different "clusters" of people complete with profiles of how they live, what they think and what they consume, sees a future Hamilton with younger upscale Hamiltonians—who are tech savvy and university educated—choosing to live in the downtown and surrounding areas rather than just visiting intermittently. More two and three-storey townhouses and apartments will be built on downtown lots; small condos will be built on vacant spaces in areas such as Dundas, Ainslie Wood and Westdale to accommodate newly retired seniors; and more retail and commercial zones will be created.
The homicide rate in Hamilton in 2018 was 1.17 per 100,000 population. Hamilton ranked first in Canada for police-reported hate crimes in 2016, with 12.5 hate crimes per 100,000 population. Organized crime also has a notable presence in Hamilton with three centralized Mafia organizations in Hamilton, the Luppino crime family, the Papalia crime family, and the Musitano crime family.
Citizens of Hamilton are represented at all three levels of Canadian government - federal, provincial, and municipal. Following the 2015 Federal Election, representation in the Parliament of Canada will consist of five Members of Parliament representing the federal ridings of Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, Hamilton Centre, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Hamilton Mountain, and Flamborough—Glanbrook. This election marked the first time Hamilton will have five Members of Parliament representing areas wholly within Hamilton's city boundaries, with previous boundaries situating rural ridings across municipal lines.
Provincially, there are five elected Members of Provincial Parliament who serve in the Legislature of Ontario. Leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party and Leader of the Official Opposition, Andrea Horwath, represents Hamilton Centre, Paul Miller (NDP) represents Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, Monique Taylor (NDP) represents Hamilton Mountain, Sandy Shaw (NDP) represents Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, and Progressive Conservative Donna Skelly represents Flamborough—Glanbrook.
Hamilton's municipal government has a mayor, elected citywide, and 15 city councillors, elected individually by each of the city's wards, to serve on the Hamilton City Council. Presently, Hamilton's mayor is Fred Eisenberger, elected on October 22, 2018 to a third term. Additionally, both Public and Catholic school board trustees are elected for defined areas ranging from two trustees for multiple wards to a single trustee for an individual ward.
The province grants the Hamilton City Council authority to govern through the Municipal Act of Ontario. As with all municipalities, the Province of Ontario has supervisory privilege over the municipality and the power to redefine, restrict or expand the powers of all municipalities in Ontario.
The Criminal Code of Canada is the chief piece of legislation defining criminal conduct and penalty. The Hamilton Police Service is chiefly responsible for the enforcement of federal and provincial law. Although the Hamilton Police Service has authority to enforce, bylaws passed by the Hamilton City Council are mainly enforced by Provincial Offences Officers employed by the City of Hamilton.
The Canadian Military maintains a presence in Hamilton, with the John Weir Foote Armoury in the downtown core on James Street North, housing the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry as well as the 11th Field Hamilton-Wentworth Battery and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada. The Hamilton Reserve Barracks on Pier Nine houses the naval reserve division , 23 Service Battalion and the 23 Field Ambulance.
Hamilton is home to several post-secondary institutions that have created many direct and indirect jobs in education and research. McMaster University moved to the city in 1930 and now has some 30,000 students, of which almost two-thirds come from outside the Hamilton region. Brock University of St. Catharines, Ontario has a satellite campus used primarily for teacher education in Hamilton. Colleges in Hamilton include:
From 1995 to 2001, the city was home to a satellite campus of the defunct francophone Collège des Grands-Lacs.
Three school boards administer public education for students from kindergarten through high school. The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board manages 114 public schools, while the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board operates 55 schools in the greater Hamilton area. The Conseil scolaire Viamonde operates one elementary and one secondary school (École secondaire Georges-P.-Vanier), and the Conseil scolaire de district catholique Centre-Sud operates two elementary schools and one secondary school. Calvin Christian School, Providence Christian School and Timothy Christian School are independent Christian elementary schools. Hamilton District Christian High School, Rehoboth Christian High School and Guido de Bres Christian High School are independent Christian high schools in the area. Both HDCH and Guido de Brès participate in the city's interscholastic athletics. Hillfield Strathallan College is on the West Hamilton mountain and is a CAIS member, non-profit school for children from early Montessori ages through grade twelve and has around 1,300 students. Columbia International College is Canada's largest private boarding high school, with 1,700 students from 73 countries.
The Dundas Valley School of Art is an independent art school which has served the Hamilton region since 1964. Students range from 4 years old to senior citizens and enrollment as of February 2007 was close to 4,000. In 1998, a new full-time diploma programme was launched as a joint venture with McMaster University.
The Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts is home to many of the area's talented young actors, dancers, musicians, singers and visual artists. The school has a keyboard studio, spacious dance studios, art and sculpting studios, gallery space and a 300-seat recital hall. HCA offers over 90 programs for ages 3–93, creating a "united nations" of arts under one roof.
The Hamilton Literacy Council is a non-profit organization that provides basic (grades 1–5 equivalent) training in reading, writing, and math to English-speaking adults. The council's service is free, private, and one-to-one. It started to assist adults with their literacy skills in 1973.
Hamilton is home to two think tanks, the Centre for Cultural Renewal and Cardus, which deals with social architecture, culture, urbanology, economics and education and also publishes the "LexView Policy Journal" and "Comment Magazine".
The primary highways serving Hamilton are Highway 403 and the QEW. Other highways connecting Hamilton include Highway 5, Highway 6 and Highway 8. Public transportation is provided by the Hamilton Street Railway, which operates an extensive local bus system. Hamilton and Metrolinx will build a provincially-funded LRT line (Hamilton LRT) in the early 2020s.
Intercity public transportation, including frequent service to Toronto, is provided by GO Transit. The Hamilton GO Centre, formerly the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway station, is a commuter rail station on the Lakeshore West line of GO Transit. While Hamilton is not directly served by intercity rail, the Lakeshore West line does offer an off-peak bus connection and a peak-hours rail connection to Aldershot station in Burlington, which doubles as the VIA Rail station for both Burlington and Hamilton.
In the 1940s, the John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport was a wartime air force training station. Today, managed by TradePort International Corporation, passenger traffic at the Hamilton terminal has grown from 90,000 in 1996 to approximately 900,000 in 2002 with mostly domestic and vacation destinations in the United States, Mexico and Central America. The airport's mid-term growth target for its passenger service is five million air travelers annually. The airport's air cargo sector has 24–7 operational capability and strategic geographic location, allowing its capacity to increase by 50% since 1996; 91,000 metric tonnes (100,000 tons) of cargo passed through the airport in 2002. Courier companies with operations at the airport include United Parcel Service and Cargojet Canada. In 2003, the city began developing a 30-year growth management strategy which called, in part, for a massive aerotropolis industrial park centred on Hamilton Airport. Advocates of the aerotropolis proposal, now known as the "Airport Employment Growth District", tout it as a solution to the city's shortage of employment lands. The closest other international airport to Hamilton is Toronto Pearson International Airport, located northeast of the city in Mississauga.
A report by Hemson Consulting identified an opportunity to develop of greenfields (the size of the Royal Botanical Gardens) that could create an estimated 90,000 jobs by 2031. A proposed aerotropolis industrial park at Highway 6 and 403, has been debated at City Hall for years. Opponents feel the city needs to do more investigation about the cost to taxpayers.
Hamilton also plays a major role in Ontario's marine shipping industry as the Port of Hamilton is Ontario's busiest port handling between 9 to 12 million tonnes of cargo annually.
The city is served by the Hamilton Health Sciences hospital network of five hospitals with more than 1,100 beds: Hamilton General Hospital, Juravinski Hospital, McMaster University Medical Centre (which includes McMaster Children's Hospital), St. Peter's Hospital and West Lincoln Memorial Hospital. Other buildings under Hamilton Health Sciences include Juravinski Cancer Centre, Regional Rehabilitation Centre, Ron Joyce Children's Health Centre, and the West End Clinic and Urgent Care Centre. Hamilton Health Sciences is the largest employer in the Hamilton area and serves as academic teaching hospital affiliated with McMaster University and Mohawk College. The only hospital in Hamilton not under Hamilton Health Sciences is St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, which has 777 beds and three Campuses. This healthcare group provides inpatient and outpatient services, and mental illness or addiction help.
Hamilton is a sister city with Flint, Michigan, and its young amateur athletes compete in the CANUSA Games, held alternatively in the two cities since 1958. Flint and Hamilton hold the distinction of having the oldest continuous sister-city relationship between a U.S. and Canadian city, since 1957.
Other sister cities with Hamilton include:
Other city relationships: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14288 |
Hussites
The Hussites ( or "Kališníci"; "Chalice People") were a Czech pre-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus, who became the best known representative of the Bohemian Reformation.
The Hussite movement began in the Kingdom of Bohemia and quickly spread throughout the remaining Lands of the Bohemian Crown, including Moravia and Silesia. It also made inroads into the northern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary (now Slovakia), but was rejected and gained infamy for the plundering behavior of the Hussite soldiers. There were also very small temporary communities in Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania which moved to Bohemia after being confronted with religious intolerance. It was a regional movement that failed to expand anywhere farther. Hussites emerged as a majority Utraquist movement with a significant Taborite faction, and smaller regional ones that included Adamites, Orebites and Orphans. Major Hussite theologians included Petr Chelcicky, Jerome of Prague, and others. A number of Czech national heroes were Hussite, including Jan Žižka, who led a fierce resistance to five consecutive crusades proclaimed on Hussite Bohemia by the Papacy. Hussites were one of the most important forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. This predominantly religious movement was propelled by social issues and strengthened Czech national awareness.
After the Council of Constance lured Jan Hus in with a letter of indemnity, then tried him for heresy and put him to death at the stake on 6 July 1415, the Hussites fought the Hussite Wars (1420–1434) for their religious and political cause. After the Hussite Wars ended, the Catholic-supported Utraquist side came out victorious from conflict with the Taborites and became the most common representation of the Hussite faith in Bohemia. Catholics and Utraquists were emancipated in Bohemia after the religious peace of Kutná Hora in 1485.
Bohemia and Moravia, or what is now the territory of the Czech Republic, remained majority Hussite for two centuries until Roman Catholicism was reimposed by the Holy Roman Emperor after the 1620 Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War. That event and centuries of Habsburg persecution caused Hussite traditions to be merely represented in the Moravian Church, Unity of the Brethren and the refounded Czechoslovak Hussite churches among present-day Christians.
The arrest of Hus in 1414 caused considerable resentment in Czech lands. The authorities of both countries appealed urgently and repeatedly to King Sigismund to release Jan Hus.
When news of his death at the Council of Constance in 1415 arrived, disturbances broke out, directed primarily against the clergy and especially against the monks. Even the Archbishop narrowly escaped from the effects of this popular anger. The treatment of Hus was felt to be a disgrace inflicted upon the whole country and his death was seen as a criminal act. King Wenceslaus, prompted by his grudge against Sigismund, at first gave free vent to his indignation at the course of events in Constance. His wife openly favoured the friends of Hus. Avowed Hussites stood at the head of the government.
A league was formed by certain lords, who pledged themselves to protect the free preaching of the Gospel upon all their possessions and estates and to obey the power of the Bishops only where their orders accorded with the injunctions of the Bible. The university would arbitrate any disputed points. The entire Hussite nobility joined the league. Other than verbal protest of the council's treatment of Hus, there was little evidence of any actions taken by the nobility until 1417. At that point several of the lesser nobility and some barons, signatories of the 1415 protest letter, removed Romanist priests from their parishes, replacing them with priests willing to give communion in both wine and bread. The chalice of wine became the central identifying symbol of the Hussite movement. If the king had joined, its resolutions would have received the sanction of the law; but he refused, and approached the newly formed Roman Catholic League of lords, whose members pledged themselves to support the king, the Catholic Church, and the Council. The prospect of a civil war began to emerge.
Pope Martin V as Cardinal Otto of Colonna had attacked Hus with relentless severity. He energetically resumed the battle against Hus's teaching after the enactments of the Council of Constance. He wished to eradicate completely the doctrine of Hus, for which purpose the co-operation of King Wenceslaus had to be obtained. In 1418, Sigismund succeeded in winning his brother over to the standpoint of the council by pointing out the inevitability of a religious war if the heretics in Bohemia found further protection. Hussite statesmen and army leaders had to leave the country and Roman Catholic priests were reinstated. These measures caused a general commotion which hastened the death of King Wenceslaus by a paralytic stroke in 1419. His heir was Sigismund.
Hussitism organised itself during the years 1415–1419. From the beginning, there formed two parties, with a smaller number of people withdrawing from both parties around the pacifist Petr Chelčický, whose teachings would form the foundation of the Unitas Fratrum.
The moderate party, who followed Hus more closely, sought to conduct reform while leaving the whole hierarchical and liturgical order of the Church untouched.
The more radical party identified itself more boldly with the doctrines of John Wycliffe, sharing his passionate hatred of the monastic clergy, and his desire to return the Church to its supposed condition during the time of the apostles. This required the removal of the existing hierarchy and the secularisation of ecclesiastical possessions. The radicals preached the ""sufficientia legis Christi""—the divine law (i.e. the Bible) is the sole rule and canon for human society, not only in the church, but also in political and civil matters. They rejected therefore, as early as 1416, everything that they believed had no basis in the Bible, such as the veneration of saints and images, fasts, superfluous holidays, the oath, intercession for the dead, auricular Confession, indulgences, the sacraments of Confirmation and the Anointing of the Sick; they admitted laymen and women to the preacher's office, and chose their own priests. But above all they clung to Wycliffe's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, denying transubstantiation, and this is the principal point by which they are distinguished from the moderate party.
The programme of the more conservative Hussites (the moderate party) is contained in the Four Articles of Prague, which were written by Jakoubek ze Stříbra and agreed upon in July 1420, promulgated in the Latin, Czech, and German languages. The full text is about two pages long, but they are often summarized as:
The views of the moderate Hussites were widely represented at the University and among the citizens of Prague; they were therefore called the Prague Party, but also Calixtines (Latin "calix" chalice) or Utraquists (Latin "utraque" both), because they emphasized the second article of Prague, and the chalice became their emblem.
The radicals (the radical party) had their gathering-places all around the country. Their first armed assault fell on the small town of Ústí, on the river Lužnice, south of Prague (today's Sezimovo Ústí). However, as the place did not prove to be defensible, they settled in the remains of an older town upon a hill not far away and founded a new town, which they named Tábor (after the traditional name of the mountain on which Jesus was expected to return; see Mark 13); hence they were called Táborité (Taborites). They comprised the essential force of the radical Hussites. Their aim was to destroy the enemies of the law of God, and to defend his kingdom (which had been expected to come in a short time) by the sword. Their end-of-world visions did not come true. In order to preserve their settlement and spread their ideology, they waged bloody wars; in the beginning they observed a strict regime, inflicting the severest punishment equally for murder, as for less severe faults as adultery, perjury and usury, and also tried to apply rigid Biblical standards to the social order of the time. The Taborites usually had the support of the Orebites (later called Orphans), an eastern Bohemian sect of Hussitism based in Hradec Králové.
Hussites were not a unitary movement, but a diverse one with multiple factions that held different views and opposed each other in the Hussite Wars.
Hussites can be divided into:
The news of the death of King Wenceslaus in 1419 produced a great commotion among the people of Prague. A revolution swept over the country: churches and monasteries were destroyed, and church property was seized by the Hussite nobility. It was then, and remained till much later, in question whether Bohemia was a hereditary or an elective monarchy, especially as the line through which Sigismund claimed the throne had accepted that the Kingdom of Bohemia was an elective monarchy elected by the nobles, and thus the regent of the kingdom (Čeněk of Wartenberg) also explicitly stated that Sigismund had not been elected as reason for Sigismund's claim to not be accepted. Sigismund could get possession of "his" kingdom only by force of arms. Pope Martin V called upon Catholics of the West to take up arms against the Hussites, declaring a crusade, and there followed twelve years of warfare.
The Hussites initially campaigned defensively, but after 1427 they assumed the offensive. Apart from their religious aims, they fought for the national interests of the Czechs. The moderate and radical parties were united, and they not only repelled the attacks of the army of crusaders but crossed the borders into neighboring countries. On March 23, 1430, Joan of Arc dictated a letter that threatened to lead a crusading army against the Hussites unless they returned to the Catholic faith, but her capture by English and Burgundian troops two months later would keep her from carrying out this threat.
Eventually, the opponents of the Hussites found themselves forced to consider an amicable settlement. They invited a Bohemian embassy to appear at the Council of Basel. The discussions began on 10 January 1432, centering chiefly on the four articles of Prague. No agreement emerged. After repeated negotiations between the Basel Council and Bohemia, a Bohemian–Moravian state assembly in Prague accepted the ""Compacta"" of Prague on 30 November 1433. The agreement granted communion in both kinds to all who desired it, but with the understanding that Christ was entirely present in each kind. Free preaching was granted conditionally: the Church hierarchy had to approve and place priests, and the power of the bishop must be considered. The article which prohibited the secular power of the clergy was almost reversed.
The Taborites refused to conform. The Calixtines united with the Roman Catholics and destroyed the Taborites at the Battle of Lipany on (30 May 1434). From that time, the Taborites lost their importance, though the Hussite movement would continue in Poland for another five years, until the Royalist forces of Poland defeated the Polish Hussites at the Battle of Grotniki. The state assembly of Jihlava in 1436 confirmed the ""Compacta"" and gave them the sanction of law. This accomplished the reconciliation of Bohemia with Rome and the Western Church, and at last Sigismund obtained possession of the Bohemian crown. His reactionary measures caused a ferment in the whole country, but he died in 1437. The state assembly in Prague rejected Wyclif's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which was obnoxious to the Utraquists, as heresy in 1444. Most of the Taborites now went over to the party of the Utraquists; the rest joined the "Brothers of the Law of Christ" () (see Unity of the Brethren; also Bohemian Brethren and Moravian Church).
In 1462, Pope Pius II declared the ""Compacta"" null and void, prohibited communion in both kinds, and acknowledged King George of Podebrady as king on condition that he would promise an unconditional harmony with the Roman Church. This he refused, but his successor, King Vladislaus II, favored the Roman Catholics and proceeded against some zealous clergymen of the Calixtines. The troubles of the Utraquists increased from year to year. In 1485, at the Diet of Kutná Hora, an agreement was made between the Roman Catholics and Utraquists that lasted for thirty-one years. It was only later, at the Diet of 1512, that the equal rights of both religions were permanently established. The appearance of Martin Luther was hailed by the Utraquist clergy, and Luther himself was astonished to find so many points of agreement between the doctrines of Hus and his own. But not all Utraquists approved of the German Reformation; a schism arose among them, and many returned to the Roman doctrine, while other elements had organised the ""Unitas Fratrum"" already in 1457.
Under Emperor Maximilian II, the Bohemian state assembly established the ""Confessio Bohemica"", upon which Lutherans, Reformed, and Bohemian Brethren agreed. From that time forward Hussitism began to die out. After the Battle of White Mountain on 8 November 1620 the Roman Catholic Faith was re-established with vigour, which fundamentally changed the religious conditions of the Czech lands.
Leaders and members of Unitas Fratrum were forced to choose to either leave the many and varied southeastern principalities of what was the Holy Roman Empire (mainly Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia and parts of Germany and its many states), or to practice their beliefs secretly. As a result, members were forced underground and dispersed across northwestern Europe. The largest remaining communities of the Brethren were located in Lissa (Leszno) in Poland, which had historically strong ties with the Czechs, and in small, isolated groups in Moravia. Some, among them Jan Amos Comenius, fled to western Europe, mainly the Low Countries. A settlement of Hussites in Herrnhut, Saxony, now Germany, in 1722 caused the emergence of the Moravian Church.
In 1918, as a result of World War I, the Czech lands regained independence from Austria-Hungary controlled by the Habsburg monarchy as Czechoslovakia (due to Masaryk and Czechoslovak legions with Hussite tradition, in the name of the troops).
Today, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church claims to be the modern successor of the Hussite tradition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14291 |
Hausdorff dimension
In mathematics, Hausdorff dimension is a measure of "roughness", or more specifically, fractal dimension, that was first introduced in 1918 by mathematician Felix Hausdorff. For instance, the Hausdorff dimension of a single point is zero, of a line segment is 1, of a square is 2, and of a cube is 3. That is, for sets of points that define a smooth shape or a shape that has a small number of corners—the shapes of traditional geometry and science—the Hausdorff dimension is an integer agreeing with the usual sense of dimension, also known as the topological dimension. However, formulas have also been developed that allow calculation of the dimension of other less simple objects, where, solely on the basis of their properties of scaling and self-similarity, one is led to the conclusion that particular objects—including fractals—have non-integer Hausdorff dimensions. Because of the significant technical advances made by Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch allowing computation of dimensions for highly irregular or "rough" sets, this dimension is also commonly referred to as the "Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimension."
The Hausdorff dimension, more specifically, is a further dimensional number associated with a given set, where the distances between all members of that set are defined. Such a set is termed a metric space. The dimension is drawn from the extended real numbers, formula_1, as opposed to the more intuitive notion of dimension, which is not associated to general metric spaces, and only takes values in the non-negative integers.
In mathematical terms, the Hausdorff dimension generalizes the notion of the dimension of a real vector space. That is, the Hausdorff dimension of an "n"-dimensional inner product space equals "n". This underlies the earlier statement that the Hausdorff dimension of a point is zero, of a line is one, etc., and that irregular sets can have noninteger Hausdorff dimensions. For instance, the Koch snowflake shown at right is constructed from an equilateral triangle; in each iteration, its component line segments are divided into 3 segments of unit length, the newly created middle segment is used as the base of a new equilateral triangle that points outward, and this base segment is then deleted to leave a final object from the iteration of unit length of 4. That is, after the first iteration, each original line segment has been replaced with N=4, where each self-similar copy is 1/S = 1/3 as long as the original. Stated another way, we have taken an object with Euclidean dimension, D, and reduced its linear scale by 1/3 in each direction, so that its length increases to N=SD. This equation is easily solved for D, yielding the ratio of logarithms (or natural logarithms) appearing in the figures, and giving—in the Koch and other fractal cases—non-integer dimensions for these objects.
The Hausdorff dimension is a successor to the simpler, but usually equivalent, box-counting or Minkowski–Bouligand dimension.
The intuitive concept of dimension of a geometric object "X" is the number of independent parameters one needs to pick out a unique point inside. However, any point specified by two parameters can be instead specified by one, because the cardinality of the real plane is equal to the cardinality of the real line (this can be seen by an argument involving interweaving the digits of two numbers to yield a single number encoding the same information). The example of a space-filling curve shows that one can even map the real line to the real plane surjectively (taking one real number into a pair of real numbers in a way so that all pairs of numbers are covered) and "continuously", so that a one-dimensional object completely fills up a higher-dimensional object.
Every space filling curve hits some points multiple times, and does not have a continuous inverse. It is impossible to map two dimensions onto one in a way that is continuous and continuously invertible. The topological dimension, also called Lebesgue covering dimension, explains why. This dimension is "n" if, in every covering of "X" by small open balls, there is at least one point where "n" + 1 balls overlap. For example, when one covers a line with short open intervals, some points must be covered twice, giving dimension "n" = 1.
But topological dimension is a very crude measure of the local size of a space (size near a point). A curve that is almost space-filling can still have topological dimension one, even if it fills up most of the area of a region. A fractal has an integer topological dimension, but in terms of the amount of space it takes up, it behaves like a higher-dimensional space.
The Hausdorff dimension measures the local size of a space taking into account the distance between points, the metric. Consider the number "N"("r") of balls of radius at most "r" required to cover "X" completely. When "r" is very small, "N"("r") grows polynomially with 1/"r". For a sufficiently well-behaved "X", the Hausdorff dimension is the unique number "d" such that N("r") grows as 1/"rd" as "r" approaches zero. More precisely, this defines the box-counting dimension, which equals the Hausdorff dimension when the value "d" is a critical boundary between growth rates that are insufficient to cover the space, and growth rates that are overabundant.
For shapes that are smooth, or shapes with a small number of corners, the shapes of traditional geometry and science, the Hausdorff dimension is an integer agreeing with the topological dimension. But Benoit Mandelbrot observed that fractals, sets with noninteger Hausdorff dimensions, are found everywhere in nature. He observed that the proper idealization of most rough shapes you see around you is not in terms of smooth idealized shapes, but in terms of fractal idealized shapes:
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
For fractals that occur in nature, the Hausdorff and box-counting dimension coincide. The packing dimension is yet another similar notion which gives the same value for many shapes, but there are well documented exceptions where all these dimensions differ.
Let "X" be a metric space. If "S" ⊂ "X" and "d" ∈ [0, ∞), the "d"-dimensional unlimited Hausdorff content of "S" is defined by
In other words, formula_3 is the infimum of the set of numbers formula_4 such that there is some (indexed) collection of balls formula_5 covering "S" with "ri" > 0 for each "i" ∈ "I" that satisfies formula_6. (Here, we use the standard convention that inf Ø = ∞.)
The Hausdorff outer measure is different from the unbounded Hausdorff content in that rather than considering all possible coverings of "S", we see what happens when the sizes of the balls go to zero. This is for formula_7, we define the "d"-dimensional Hausdorff outer measure of "S" as
The Hausdorff dimension of "X" is defined by
Equivalently, dimH("X") may be defined as the infimum of the set of "d" ∈ [0, ∞) such that the "d"-dimensional Hausdorff measure of "X" is zero. This is the same as the supremum of the set of "d" ∈ [0, ∞) such that the "d"-dimensional Hausdorff measure of "X" is infinite (except that when this latter set of numbers "d" is empty the Hausdorff dimension is zero).
Let "X" be an arbitrary separable metric space. There is a topological notion of inductive dimension for "X" which is defined recursively. It is always an integer (or +∞) and is denoted dimind("X").
Theorem. Suppose "X" is non-empty. Then
Moreover,
where "Y" ranges over metric spaces homeomorphic to "X". In other words, "X" and "Y" have the same underlying set of points and the metric "d""Y" of "Y" is topologically equivalent to "d""X".
These results were originally established by Edward Szpilrajn (1907–1976), e.g., see Hurewicz and Wallman, Chapter VII.
The Minkowski dimension is similar to, and at least as large as, the Hausdorff dimension, and they are equal in many situations. However, the set of rational points in [0, 1] has Hausdorff dimension zero and Minkowski dimension one. There are also compact sets for which the Minkowski dimension is strictly larger than the Hausdorff dimension.
If there is a measure μ defined on Borel subsets of a metric space "X" such that "μ"("X") > 0 and "μ"("B"("x", "r")) ≤ "rs" holds for some constant "s" > 0 and for every ball "B"("x", "r") in "X", then dimHaus("X") ≥ "s". A partial converse is provided by Frostman's lemma.
If formula_12 is a finite or countable union, then
This can be verified directly from the definition.
If "X" and "Y" are non-empty metric spaces, then the Hausdorff dimension of their product satisfies
This inequality can be strict. It is possible to find two sets of dimension 0 whose product has dimension 1. In the opposite direction, it is known that when "X" and "Y" are Borel subsets of R"n", the Hausdorff dimension of "X" × "Y" is bounded from above by the Hausdorff dimension of "X" plus the upper packing dimension of "Y". These facts are discussed in Mattila (1995).
Many sets defined by a self-similarity condition have dimensions which can be determined explicitly. Roughly, a set "E" is self-similar if it is the fixed point of a set-valued transformation ψ, that is ψ("E") = "E", although the exact definition is given below.
Theorem. Suppose
are contractive mappings on R"n" with contraction constant "rj" < 1. Then there is a unique "non-empty" compact set "A" such that
The theorem follows from Stefan Banach's contractive mapping fixed point theorem applied to the complete metric space of non-empty compact subsets of R"n" with the Hausdorff distance.
To determine the dimension of the self-similar set "A" (in certain cases), we need a technical condition called the "open set condition" (OSC) on the sequence of contractions ψ"i".
There is a relatively compact open set "V" such that
where the sets in union on the left are pairwise disjoint.
The open set condition is a separation condition that ensures the images ψ"i"("V") do not overlap "too much".
Theorem. Suppose the open set condition holds and each ψ"i" is a similitude, that is a composition of an isometry and a dilation around some point. Then the unique fixed point of ψ is a set whose Hausdorff dimension is "s" where "s" is the unique solution of
The contraction coefficient of a similitude is the magnitude of the dilation.
We can use this theorem to compute the Hausdorff dimension of the Sierpinski triangle (or sometimes called Sierpinski gasket). Consider three non-collinear points "a"1, "a"2, "a"3 in the plane R2 and let ψ"i" be the dilation of ratio 1/2 around "ai". The unique non-empty fixed point of the corresponding mapping ψ is a Sierpinski gasket and the dimension "s" is the unique solution of
Taking natural logarithms of both sides of the above equation, we can solve for "s", that is: "s" = ln(3)/ln(2). The Sierpinski gasket is self-similar and satisfies the OSC. In general a set "E" which is a fixed point of a mapping
is self-similar if and only if the intersections
where "s" is the Hausdorff dimension of "E" and "Hs" denotes Hausdorff measure. This is clear in the case of the Sierpinski gasket (the intersections are just points), but is also true more generally:
Theorem. Under the same conditions as the previous theorem, the unique fixed point of ψ is self-similar. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14294 |
Heckler & Koch
Heckler & Koch GmbH (HK; ) is a German defense manufacturing company that manufactures handguns, rifles, submachine guns, and grenade launchers. The company is located in Oberndorf am Neckar in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, and also has subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, France and the United States.
The Heckler & Koch Group comprises Heckler & Koch GmbH, Heckler & Koch Defense, NSAF Ltd., and Heckler & Koch France SAS. The company's motto is ""Keine Kompromisse!"" (No Compromises!). HK provides firearms for many military and paramilitary units, including the SAS, KMar, the US Navy SEALs, Delta Force, HRT, Canada's Joint Task Force 2, the German KSK and GSG 9, and many other counter-terrorist and hostage rescue teams.
Their products include the MP5, UMP submachine guns, the G3, HK417 battle rifles, the HK33, G36, HK416 assault rifles, the MG5, HK21 General-purpose machine guns, the MP7 personal defense weapon, the USP series of handguns, and the PSG1 sniper rifle. All HK firearms are named by a prefix and the official designation, with suffixes used for variants.
HK has a history of innovation in firearms, such as the use of polymers in weapon designs and the use of an integral rail for flashlights on handguns. HK also developed modern polygonal rifling, noted for its high accuracy, increased muzzle velocity and barrel life. Not all its technologically ambitious designs have become commercially successful products (for instance, the advanced but now abandoned G11 military rifle, which fired caseless high-velocity ammunition). In its extensive product range, HK has used the following operating systems for small arms: blowback operation, short-recoil, roller-delayed blowback, gas-delayed blowback, and gas operation (via Short-stroke piston).
With the fall of Germany at the end of World War II, Oberndorf came under French control, and the entire Waffenfabrik Mauser AG factory was dismantled by French occupying forces. All factory records were destroyed on orders of the local French Army commander. In 1948, three former Mauser engineers, Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch, and Alex Seidel, saved what they could from the factory and used what they salvaged to start a machine tool plant in the vacant factory that became known as the Engineering Office Heckler & Co.
On December 28, 1949, the Engineering Office Heckler & Co. changed its name and was registered officially as Heckler & Koch GmbH. Initially the new company manufactured machine tools, bicycle and sewing machine parts, gauges and other precision parts.
In 1956, Heckler & Koch responded to the West German government's tender for a new infantry rifle for the Bundeswehr (German Federal Army) with the proposal of the G3 battle rifle, which was based on the Spanish CETME rifle. The German government awarded Heckler & Koch the tender and by 1959 declared the G3 the standard rifle of the Bundeswehr. Later on in 1961, Heckler & Koch developed the 7.62×51mm HK21 general-purpose machine gun, based on the G3 battle rifle.
In 1966, Heckler & Koch introduced the HK54 machine pistol, which eventually launched in 1969 as the MP5 machine pistol. Two years later, the company introduced the 5.56×45mm HK33 assault rifle, a smaller version of the G3 battle rifle chambered in 5.56mm NATO.
In 1974, Heckler & Koch diversified into two more areas, HK Defense and Law Enforcement Technology and HK Hunting and Sports Firearms. Since then HK has designed and manufactured more than 100 different types of firearms and devices for the world's military and law enforcement organizations as well as sports shooters and hunters.
In 1990, Heckler & Koch completed two decades of development of their revolutionary caseless weapon system and produced prototypes of the HK G11. The company also produced prototypes of the HK G41 military rifle intended for the Bundeswehr. Due to the international political climate at the time (East and West Germany uniting and defense budget cuts) the company was unable to secure funded contracts from the German government to support production of either weapon system and became financially vulnerable. The next year, Heckler & Koch was sold to British Aerospace's Royal Ordnance division.
During 1994 and 1995, the German government awarded Heckler & Koch contracts for producing an updated standard assault rifle and updated standard sidearm for the Bundeswehr. Heckler & Koch developed and produced the Project HK50, a lightweight carbon fiber–reinforced polymer assault rifle, which became the HK G36 assault rifle. In addition, Heckler & Koch produced the HK P8 derived as a variant of its "Universale Selbstladepistole" (USP) series of handguns (which had been in production since 1989). The P8 was adopted as the standard handgun for the Bundeswehr in 1994 and the G36 in 1995.
As the result of a 1999 merger between British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems, Heckler & Koch was owned by the resulting BAE Systems; it was contracted to refurbish the British Army's SA80 rifles (which had been built by Royal Ordnance) This contract entailed a modification programme to the SA80 series of rifles to address a number of reliability issues with the SA80. In 2002, BAE Systems restructured and sold Heckler & Koch to a group of private investors, who created the German group holding company "HK Beteiligungs" GmbH.
In 2003, HK Beteiligungs GmbH's business organization restructured as Heckler & Koch "Jagd und Sportwaffen" GmbH (HKJS) and its business was separated into the two business areas similar to the 1974 business mission areas, Defense and Law Enforcement and Sporting Firearms.
In 2004, Heckler & Koch was awarded a major handgun contract for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, worth a potential $26.2 million for up to 65,000 handguns. This contract ranks as the single largest handgun procurement contract in US law enforcement history.
HK was contracted by the United States Army to produce the kinetic energy subsystem (see: kinetic projectiles or kinetic energy penetrator) of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, a planned replacement for the M16/M203 grenade launcher combination. The OICW was designed to fire 5.56 mm bullets and 25 mm grenades. The kinetic energy component was also developed separately as the XM8, though both the OICW and XM8 are now indefinitely suspended.
Heckler & Koch developed a Colt M4 carbine variant, marketed as the HK416. HK replaced the direct impingement system used by the Stoner design on the original M16 with a short-stroke piston operating system.
There is no indication that the rifle will be adopted by the United States Armed Forces other than in the Marine Corps as the IAR or M27, but the elite Delta Force and other United States special operations units have fielded the HK416 in combat, and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has called for "free and open competition" to determine whether the army should buy the HK416 or continue to purchase more M4 carbines. Incoming Secretary of the Army Pete Geren agreed in July 2007 to hold a "dust chamber" test pitting the M4 against HK's HK416 and XM8, as well as the rival Fabrique Nationale's SOF Combat Assault Rifle (SCAR) design. Coburn had threatened to stop Geren's Senate confirmation if he did not agree to the test. The HK XM8 and FN SCAR had the fewest failures in the test, closely followed by the HK416, while the M4 had by far the most. In 2007, the Norwegian Army became the first to field the HK416 as a standard-issue rifle.
HK sells its pistols in the United States to both law enforcement and civilian markets. The company has locations in Virginia, New Hampshire, and Georgia.
H&K has been accused of shipping small arms to conflict regions such as Bosnia and Nepal, and has licensed its weapons for production by governments with poor human rights records such as Sudan, Thailand and Burma. It has been argued that the company effectively evaded EU export restrictions when these licenses sold HK weapons to conflict zones including Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone.
According to the newspaper "Stuttgarter Nachrichten" (31 August 2011), as well as the state broadcaster ARD, a large stockpile of G36 assault rifles fell into rebel hands during the August 2011 attack on Muammar Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli. It is unclear how many were exported to Libya and by whom.
On December 11, 2011 federal, state and local Mexican police officers used battle rifles to fire on Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College students and peasant organizations to disperse a blockade on Mexican Federal Highway 95D, resulting in the deaths of students Jorge Alexis Herrera and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús. According to media reports, 7.62×51mm NATO round cases were found at the crime scene which were of the same caliber as rounds spent by H&K G3 rifles.
In Iguala and Cocula, corrupt police officers and cartelmen are known to have used H&K G36 rifles during the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping on September 26–27, 2013. At least six teaching students were murdered by cartelmen and corrupt local police, and 43 others are missing and presumed dead. Other than the six identified persons, no other bodies have been found, and are believed to be have been incinerated.
As a result of efforts by civil society and human rights organizations in Mexico and Germany, H&K and two of its former employees were brought before the Provincial Court of Stuttgart. After 10 months of trial, on February 21, 2019, the court convicted them of illegally selling arms to Mexican governmental institutions which failed to acknowledge their due observance of human rights. The two former employees (sales manager Sahlmann and administrative employee Beuter) had been found to have used fraudulent permits in the sale of 4,700 rifles and large quantities of ammunition. H&K was issued a fine of 3.7 million euros, and the two men received suspended sentences of 17 and 22 months. The spokesman of the Presidency of the Republic of Mexico, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, said that the amount of the fine should go to the victims and their families.
Format: Abbreviation = "German Text" ("English Text") | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14296 |
Heckler & Koch MP5
The MP5 () is a 9x19mm Parabellum submachine gun, developed in the 1960s by a team of engineers from the German small arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch GmbH (H&K) of Oberndorf am Neckar. There are over 100 variants of the MP5, including some semi-automatic versions.
The MP5 is one of the most widely used submachine guns in the world, having been adopted by 40 nations and numerous military, law enforcement, intelligence, and security organizations. It was widely used by SWAT teams in North America, but has largely been supplanted by M16 variants in the 21st century.
In 1999, Heckler & Koch developed the Heckler & Koch UMP, the MP5's successor; both are available . However, it has not been met with the same level of success.
Heckler & Koch, encouraged by the success of the G3 automatic rifle, developed a family of small arms consisting of four types of firearms all based on a common G3 design layout and operating principle. The first type was chambered for 7.62×51mm NATO, the second for the 7.62×39mm M43 round, the third for the intermediate 5.56×45mm NATO caliber, and the fourth type for the 9×19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge. The MP5 was created within the fourth group of firearms and was initially known as the HK54.
Work on the MP5 began in 1964 and two years later it was adopted by the German Federal Police, border guard and army special forces, referring to as the "MP64" or later "MP5". The MP5A1 was introduced in the late '60s, which the first model to have the iconic ring front sight and the slimline handguard. In 1970, the MP5A2 and MP5A3 was introduced. It also had its first film "The Millions Games" released on October 18, 1970. In 1974, the MP5SD was introduced, which is a suppressed variant of the MP5. It was used in the Vietnam War in 1975 by the Green Berets. In 1976, the MP5K was introduced as a request for a variant for South America. In 1977, the standard 20 & 30 round, curved steel magazines were introduced for the MP5A2 and MP5A3 design. In 1978, the Tropical forearm was introduced to be produced with the MP5.
In 1980, the MP5 achieved iconic status as a result of British special forces regiment the SAS when they stormed the Iranian Embassy in London, live on television, rescuing hostages and killing five terrorists during Operation Nimrod.
The MP5 has become a mainstay of SWAT units of law enforcement agencies in the United States since then. However, in the late 1990s, as a result of the North Hollywood shootout, police special response teams have supplanted most MP5s with AR-15-based rifles.
The MP5 is manufactured under license in several nations including Greece (formerly at EBO – Hellenic Arms Industry, currently at ΕΑΣ – Hellenic Defense Systems), Iran (Defense Industries Organization), Mexico (SEDENA), Pakistan (Pakistan Ordnance Factories), Saudi Arabia, Sudan (Military Industry Corporation), Turkey (MKEK), and the United Kingdom (initially at Royal Ordnance, later diverted to Heckler & Koch Great Britain).
The primary version of the MP5 family is the MP5A2, which is a lightweight, air-cooled, selective fire delayed blowback operated 9×19mm Parabellum weapon with a roller-delayed bolt. It fires from a closed bolt (bolt forward) position.
The fixed, free floating, cold hammer-forged barrel has 6 right-hand grooves with a 1 in 250 mm (1:10 in) rifling twist rate and is pressed and pinned into the receiver.
The first MP5 models used a double-column straight box magazine, but since 1977, slightly curved, steel magazines are used with a 15-round capacity (weighing 0.12 kg) or a 30-round capacity (0.17 kg empty).
The adjustable iron sights (closed type) consist of a rotating rear diopter drum and a front post installed in a hooded ring. The rear sight is mechanically adjustable for both windage and elevation with the use of a special tool, being adjusted at the factory for firing at with standard FMJ 9×19mm NATO ammunition. The rear sight drum provides four apertures of varying diameters used to adjust the diopter system, according to the user's preference and tactical situation. Changing between apertures does not change the point of impact down range. For accurate shooting the user should select the smallest aperture that still allows an equal circle of light between the rear sight aperture and the outside of the front sight hood ring.
The MP5 has a hammer firing mechanism. The trigger group is housed inside an interchangeable polymer trigger module (with an integrated pistol grip) and equipped with a three-position fire mode selector that serves as the manual safety toggle. The "S" or "Sicher" position in white denotes weapon safe, "E" or "Einzelfeuer" in red represents single fire, and "F" or "Feuerstoß" (also marked in red) designates continuous fire. The SEF symbols appear on both sides of the plastic trigger group. The selector lever is actuated with the thumb of the shooting hand and is located only on the left side of the original SEF trigger group or on both sides of the ambidextrous trigger groups. The safety/selector is rotated into the various firing settings or safety position by depressing the tail end of the lever. Tactile clicks (stops) are present at each position to provide a positive stop and prevent inadvertent rotation. The "safe" setting disables the trigger by blocking the hammer release with a solid section of the safety axle located inside the trigger housing.
The non-reciprocating cocking handle is located above the handguard and protrudes from the cocking handle tube at approximately a 45° angle. This rigid control is attached to a tubular piece within the cocking lever housing called the cocking lever support, which in turn makes contact with the forward extension of the bolt group. It is not however connected to the bolt carrier and therefore cannot be used as a forward assist to fully seat the bolt group. The cocking handle is held in a forward position by a spring detent located in the front end of the cocking lever support which engages in the cocking lever housing. The lever is locked back by pulling it fully to the rear and rotating it slightly clockwise where it can be hooked into an indent in the cocking lever tube.
The bolt rigidly engages the barrel extension—a cylindrical component welded to the receiver into which the barrel is pinned. The delay mechanism is of the same design as that used in the G3 rifle. The two-part bolt consists of a bolt head with rollers and a bolt carrier. The heavier bolt carrier lies up against the bolt head when the weapon is ready to fire and inclined planes on the front locking piece lie between the rollers and force them out into recesses in the barrel extension.
When fired, expanding propellant gases produced from the burning powder in the cartridge exert rearward pressure on the bolt head transferred through the base of the cartridge case as it is propelled out of the chamber. A portion of this force is transmitted through the rollers projecting from the bolt head, which are cammed inward against the inclined flanks of the locking recesses in the barrel extension and to the angled shoulders of the locking piece. The selected angles of the recesses and the incline on the locking piece produce a velocity ratio of about 4:1 between the bolt carrier and the bolt head. This results in a calculated delay, allowing the projectile to exit the barrel and gas pressure to drop to a safe level before the case is extracted from the chamber.
The delay results from the amount of time it takes for enough recoil energy to be transferred through to the bolt carrier in a sufficient quantity for it to be driven to the rear against the force of inertia of the bolt carrier and the forward pressure exerted against the bolt by the recoil spring. As the rollers are forced inward they displace the locking piece and propel the bolt carrier to the rear. The bolt carrier's rearward velocity is four times that of the bolt head since the cartridge remains in the chamber for a short period of time during the initial recoil impulse. After the bolt carrier has traveled rearward 4 mm, the locking piece is withdrawn fully from the bolt head and the rollers are compressed into the bolt head. Only once the locking rollers are fully cammed into the bolt head can the entire bolt group continue its rearward movement in the receiver, breaking the seal in the chamber and continuing the feeding cycle.
Since the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridge is relatively low powered, the bolt does not have an anti-bounce device like the G3, but instead the bolt carrier contains of tungsten granules that prevent the bolt group from bouncing back after impacting the barrel extension. The weapon has a fluted chamber that enhances extraction reliability by bleeding gases backwards into the shallow flutes running along the length of the chamber to prevent the cartridge case from expanding and sticking to the chamber walls (since the bolt is opened under relatively high barrel pressure). A spring extractor is installed inside the bolt head and holds the case securely until it strikes the ejector arm and is thrown out of the ejection port to the right of the receiver. The lever-type ejector is located inside the trigger housing (activated by the movement of the recoiling bolt).
In the early 1970s, HK introduced a conversion kit for the MP5 that enables it to use rimfire ammunition (.22 LR). This unit consists of a barrel insert, a bolt group and two 20-round magazines. This modification reduces the cyclic rate to 650 rounds/min. It was sold mostly to law enforcement agencies as a way to train recruits on handling the MP5. It used ammunition that was cheaper and had a lower recoil than 9×19mm Parabellum. This reduced training costs and built up skill and confidence in the operators before transitioning them to the full-bore model.
Threading is provided at the muzzle to work with certain muzzle devices made by Heckler & Koch, including: a slotted flash suppressor, blank firing attachment (marked with a red-painted band denoting use with blank ammunition only), an adapter for launching rifle grenades (for use with rifle-style grenades with an inside diameter of 22 mm using a special grenade launching cartridge) and a cup-type attachment used to launch tear gas grenades. An optional three-lugged barrel is also available for mounting a quick-detachable suppressor.
The receiver housing has a proprietary claw-rail mounting system that permits the attachment of a standard Heckler & Koch quick-detachable scope mount (also used with the G3, HK33 and G3SG/1). It can be used to mount daytime optical sights (telescopic 4×24), night sights, reflex sights and laser pointers. The mount features two spring-actuated bolts, positioned along the base of the mount, which exert pressure on the receiver to hold the mount in the same position at all times assuring zero retention. All versions of the quick-detachable scope mount provide a sighting tunnel through the mount so that the shooter can continue to use the fixed iron sights with the scope mount attached to the top of the receiver.
A Picatinny rail adapter can be placed on top that locks into the claw rails. This allows the mounting of STANAG scopes and has a lower profile than the claw-rail system.
Aftermarket replacement handguards with Picatinny rails are available. Single-rail models have a Picatinny rail along the bottom and triple-rail models have rails along the bottom and sides. They allow the mounting of accessories like flashlights, laser pointers, target designators, vertical foregrips, and bipods.
The MP5A2 has a fixed buttstock (made of a synthetic polymer), whereas the compact "MP5A3" has a retractable metal stock. The stockless "MP5A1" has a buttcap with a sling mount for concealed carry; the MP5K series was a further development of this idea.
The "MP5A4" (fixed stock) and "MP5A5" (sliding stock) models, which were introduced in 1974, are available with four-position trigger groups. The pistol grips are straight, lacking the contoured grip and thumb groove of the "MP5A1", "MP5A2", and "MP5A3". The selector lever stops are marked with bullet pictograms rather than letters or numbers (each symbol represents the number of bullets that will be fired when the trigger is pulled and held rearward with a full magazine inserted in the weapon) and are fully ambidextrous (the selector lever is present on each side of the trigger housing). The additional setting of the fire selector, one place before the fully automatic setting, enables a two or three-shot burst firing mode.
A variant with the last trigger group designated the MP5-N (N—Navy) was developed in 1986 for the United States Navy. This model has a collapsible stock, a tritium-illuminated front sight post and a threaded barrel for use with a stainless steel sound suppressor made by Knight's Armament Company together with quieter subsonic ammunition. It had ambidextrous controls, a straight pistol grip, pictogram markings, and originally had a four-position selector (Safe, Semi-Auto, 3-Round Burst, Full Auto). This was replaced with a similar three-position ambidextrous selector after an improperly-reassembled trigger group spontaneously fired during an exercise. The "Navy"-style ambidextrous trigger group later became standard, replacing the classic "SEF".
H&K offers dedicated training variants of these weapons, designated "MP5A4PT" and "MP5A5PT" (PT—Plastic Training), modified to fire a plastic 9×19mm PT training cartridge produced by Dynamit Nobel of Germany. These weapons operate like the standard MP5 but have a floating chamber and both rollers have been omitted from the bolt to function properly when firing the lighter plastic projectiles. To help identify these weapons blue dots were painted on their cocking handles and additional lettering provided. The PT variant can be configured with various buttstocks and trigger groups and was developed for the West German Police and Border Guard.
The "MP5SFA2" (SF – single-fire) was developed in 1986 in response to the American FBI solicitation for a "9 mm Single-fire Carbine". It is the same as the MP5A2 but is fitted with an ambidextrous semi-automatic only trigger group. The "MP5SFA3" is similar except it has a retractable metal stock like the MP5A3. Versions delivered after December 1991 are assembled with select-fire bolt carriers allowing fully automatic operation when used with the appropriate trigger module.
The semi-automatic "MP5SF" models are widely used by British police forces including London's Metropolitan Police Service Specialist Firearms Command, Diplomatic Protection Group, Authorised firearms officers, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to name a few.
The two-position trigger unit was used in the single-fire "HK94" carbine that was produced specifically for the civilian market with a barrel.
In 1974, H&K initiated design work on a sound-suppressed variant of the MP5, designated the MP5SD (SD—"Schalldämpfer", German for "sound suppressor"), which features an integral but detachable aluminium sound suppressor and a lightweight bolt. The weapon's barrel has 30 ports drilled forward of the chamber through which escaping gases are diverted to the surrounding sealed tubular casing that is screwed onto threading on the barrel's external surface just prior to the ported segment. The suppressor itself is divided into two stages; the initial segment surrounding the ported barrel serves as an expansion chamber for the propellant gases, reducing gas pressure to slow down the acceleration of the projectile. The second, decompression stage occupies the remaining length of the suppressor tube and contains a stamped metal helix separator with several compartments which increase the gas volume and decrease its temperature, deflecting the gases as they exit the muzzle, so muffling the exit report. The bullet leaves the muzzle at subsonic velocity, so it does not generate a sonic shock wave in flight. As a result of reducing the barrel's length and venting propellant gases into the suppressor, the bullet's muzzle velocity was lowered anywhere from 16% to 26% (depending on the ammunition used) while maintaining the weapon's automation and reliability. The weapon was designed to be used with standard supersonic ammunition with the suppressor on at all times.
The MP5SD is produced exclusively by H&K in several versions: the MP5SD1 and MP5SD4 (both have a receiver end cap instead of a buttstock), MP5SD2 and MP5SD5 (equipped with a fixed synthetic buttstock) and the MP5SD3 and MP5SD6 (fitted with a collapsible metal stock). The MP5SD1, MP5SD2 and MP5SD3 use a standard 'SEF' trigger group (from the MP5A2 and MP5A3), while the MP5SD4, MP5SD5, and MP5SD6 use the 'Navy' trigger group—a trigger module with a mechanically limited 3-round burst mode and ambidextrous selector controls (from the MP5A4 and MP5A5). A suppressed version was produced for the U.S. Navy—designated the MP5SD-N, which is a version of the MP5SD3 with a retractable metal stock, front sight post with tritium-illuminated dot and a stainless steel suppressor. This model has a modified cocking handle support to account for the slightly larger outside diameter of the suppressor. The design of the suppressor allows the weapon to be fired with water inside, should water enter the device during operation in or near water.
In 1976, a shortened machine pistol version of the MP5A2 was introduced; the "MP5K" (K from the German word "Kurz" = "short") was designed for close quarters battle use by clandestine operations and special services. The MP5K does not have a shoulder stock (the receiver end was covered with a flat end cap, featuring a buffer on the inside and a sling loop on the outside), and the bolt and receiver were shortened at the rear. The resultant lighter bolt led to a higher rate of fire than the standard MP5. The barrel, cocking handle and its cover were shortened and a vertical foregrip was used to replace the standard handguard. The barrel ends at the base of the front sight, which prevents the use of any sort of muzzle device.
The MP5K is produced (by Heckler & Koch and under license in Iran and Turkey) in four different versions: the MP5K, "MP5KA4", "MP5KA1", "MP5KA5", where the first two variants have adjustable, open-type iron sights (with a notched rotary drum), and the two remaining variants – fixed open sights; however, the front sight post was changed and a notch was cut into the receiver top cover. The MP5K retained the capability to use optical sights through the use of an adapter.
A civilian semiautomatic derivative of the MP5K known as the SP89 was produced that had a foregrip with a muzzle guard in place of the vertical grip.
In 1991, a further variant of the MP5K was developed, designated the "MP5K-PDW" (PDW—Personal Defense Weapon) that retained the compact dimensions of the MP5K but restored the fire handling characteristics of the full-size MP5A2. The MP5K-PDW uses a side-folding synthetic shoulder stock (made by the U.S. company Choate Machine and Tool), a "Navy" trigger group, a front sight post with a built-in tritium insert and a slightly lengthened threaded, three-lug barrel (analogous to the MP5-N). The stock can be removed and replaced with a receiver endplate; a rotary drum with apertures from the MP5A2 can also be used.
In 1992, Heckler & Koch introduced the "MP5/10" (chambered in 10mm Auto) and "MP5/40" (chambered for the .40 S&W cartridge), which are based on the MP5A4 and MP5A5. These weapons were assembled in fixed and retractable stock configurations (without a separate designation) and are fed from translucent 30-round polymer box magazines. These weapons include a bolt hold-open device, which captures the bolt group in its rear position after expending the last cartridge from the magazine. The bolt is then released by pressing a lever positioned on the left side of the receiver. Both weapons use a barrel with 6 right-hand grooves and a 380 mm (1:15 in) twist rate, and like the MP5-N, both have a 3-lugged muzzle device and a tritium-illuminated front sight aiming dot.
Problems with the MP5/10 and MP5/40 led to their discontinuation in 2000, although Heckler & Koch continues to provide support and spare parts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14297 |
Ham
Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking. As a processed meat, the term "ham" includes both whole cuts of meat and ones that have been mechanically formed.
Ham is made around the world, including a number of regional specialties, such as Westphalian ham and some varieties of Spanish "jamón". In addition, numerous ham products have specific geographical naming protection, such as prosciutto di Parma in Europe, and Smithfield ham in the US.
The preserving of pork leg as ham has a long history, with Cato the Elder writing about the "salting of hams" in his "De Agri Cultura" tome around 160 BC.
There are claims that the Chinese were the first people to mention the production of cured ham. Larousse Gastronomique claims an origin from Gaul. It was certainly well established by the Roman period, as evidenced by an import trade from Gaul mentioned by Marcus Terentius Varro in his writings.
The modern word "ham" is derived from the Old English "ham" or "hom" meaning the hollow or bend of the knee, from a Germanic base where it meant "crooked". It began to refer to the cut of pork derived from the hind leg of a pig around the 15th century.
Because of the preservation process, ham is a compound foodstuff or ingredient, being made up of the original meat, as well as the remnants of the preserving agent(s), such as salt, but it is still recognised as a food in its own right.
Ham is produced by curing raw pork by salting, also known as dry curing, or brining, also known as wet curing. Additionally, smoking may be employed.
Besides salt, several ingredients may be used to obtain flavoring and preservation, from black pepper (e.g. Prosciutto Toscano) to saffron (e.g. the "Zafferano di San Gimignano").
Traditional dry cure hams may use only salt as the curative agent, such as with San Daniele or Parma hams, although this is comparatively rare. This process involves cleaning the raw meat, covering it in salt while it is gradually pressed draining all the blood. Specific herbs and spices may be used to add flavour during this step. The hams are then washed and hung in a dark, temperature-regulated place until dry. It is then hung to air for another period of time.
The duration of the curing process varies by the type of ham, with, for example, Serrano ham curing in 9–12 months, Parma hams taking more than 12 months, and Iberian ham taking up to 2 years to reach the desired flavour characteristics. Some dry cured hams, such as the Jinhua ham, take approximately 8 to 10 months to complete.
Most modern dry cure hams also use nitrites (either sodium nitrite or potassium nitrate), which are added along with the salt. Nitrates are used because they prevent bacterial growth and, in a reaction with the meat's myoglobin, give the product a desirable dark red color. The amount and mixture of salt and nitrites used have an effect on the shrinkage of the meat. Because of the toxicity of nitrite (the lethal dose of nitrite for humans is about 22 mg per kg body weight), some areas specify a maximum allowable content of nitrite in the final product. Under certain conditions, especially during cooking, nitrites in meat can react with degradation products of amino acids, forming nitrosamines, which are known carcinogens.
The dry curing of ham involves a number of enzymatic reactions. The enzymes involved are proteinases (cathepsins – B, D, H & L, and calpains) and exopeptidases (peptidase and aminopeptidase). These enzymes cause proteolysis of muscle tissue, which creates large numbers of small peptides and free amino acids, while the adipose tissue undergoes lipolysis to create free fatty acids. Salt and phosphates act as strong inhibitors of proteolytic activity. Animal factors influencing enzymatic activity include age, weight, and breed. During the process itself, conditions such as temperature, duration, water content, redox potential, and salt content all have an effect.
The salt content in dry-cured ham varies throughout a piece of meat, with gradients determinable through sampling and testing or non-invasively through CT scanning.
Wet-cured hams are brined, which involves the immersion of the meat in a brine, sometimes with other ingredients such as sugar also added for flavour. Meat is typically kept in the brine for around 3 to 14 days. Wet curing also has the effect of increasing volume and weight of the finished product, by about 4%.
The wet curing process can also be achieved by pumping the curing solution into the meat. This can be quicker, increase the weight of the finished product by more than immersion, and ensure a more even distribution of salt through the meat. This process is quicker than traditional brining, normally being completed in a few days.
Ham can also be additionally preserved through smoking, in which the meat is placed in a smokehouse (or equivalent) to be cured by the action of smoke.
The main flavor compounds of smoked ham are guaiacol, and its 4-, 5-, and 6-methyl derivatives as well as 2,6-dimethylphenol. These compounds are produced by combustion of lignin, a major constituent of wood used in the smokehouse.
In many countries the term is now protected by statute, with a specific definition. For instance, in the United States, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) says that "the word 'ham', without any prefix indicating the species of animal from which derived, shall be used in labeling only in connection with the hind legs of swine".
In addition to the main categories, some processing choices can affect legal labeling. For instance, in the United States, a "smoked" ham must have been smoked by hanging over burning wood chips in a smokehouse or an atomized spray of liquid smoke such that the product appearance is equivalent; a "hickory-smoked" ham must have been smoked using only hickory. However, injecting "smoke flavor" is not legal grounds for claiming the ham was "smoked"; these are labeled "smoke flavor added". Hams can only be labeled "honey-cured" if honey was at least 50% of the sweetener used, is at least 3% of the formula, and has a discernible effect on flavor. So-called "lean" and "extra lean" hams must adhere to maximum levels of fat and cholesterol per 100 grams of product.
Whole fresh pork leg can be labeled as "fresh ham" in the United States.
A number of hams worldwide have some level of protection of their unique characteristics, usually relating to their method of preservation or location of production or processing. Dependent on jurisdiction, rules may prevent any other product being sold with the particular appellation, such as through the European protected geographical indication.
Ham is typically used in its sliced form, often as a filling for sandwiches and similar foods, such as in the ham sandwich and ham and cheese sandwich. Other variations include toasted sandwiches such as the croque-monsieur and the Cubano. It is also a popular topping for pizza in the United States.
In the United Kingdom, a pork leg cut, either whole or sliced, that has been cured but requires additional cooking is known as gammon. Gammons were traditional cured before being cut from a side of pork along with bacon. When cooked, gammon is ham. Such roasts are a traditional part of British Christmas dinners.
As a processed meat, there has been concern over the health effects of ham consumption. A meta-analysis study from 2012 has shown a statistically relevant correlation between processed meat consumption and the risk of pancreatic cancer, with an increase in consumption of per day leading to a 19% increase in risk.
This supported earlier studies, including the 2007 study "", by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, which reviewed more than 7,000 studies published worldwide. Among the recommendations was that, except for very rare occasions, people should avoid eating ham or other processed meats – cured, smoked, salted or chemically preserved meat products such as bacon, hot dogs, sausage, salami, and pastrami. The report states that once an individual reaches the weekly limit for red meat, every of processed meat consumed a day increases cancer risk by 21%.
A European cohort study from 2013 also positively correlated processed meat consumption with higher all-cause mortality, with an estimation that 3.3% of the deaths amongst participants could have been prevented by consuming less than of | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14299 |
British Aerospace HOTOL
HOTOL, for Horizontal Take-Off and Landing, was a 1980s British design for a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spaceplane that was to be powered by an airbreathing jet engine. Development was being conducted by a consortium led by Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace (BAe).
Designed as a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) reusable winged launch vehicle, HOTOL was to be fitted with a unique air-breathing engine, the RB545 or Swallow, that was under development by British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce. The propellant for the engine technically consisted of a combination of liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen; however, it was to employ a new means of dramatically reducing the amount of oxidizer needed to be carried on board by utilising atmospheric oxygen as the spacecraft climbed through the lower atmosphere. Since the oxidizer typically represents the majority of the takeoff weight of a rocket, HOTOL was to be considerably smaller than normal pure-rocket designs, roughly the size of a medium-haul airliner such as the McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80.
While HOTOL's proof-of-concept design study was being carried out, attempts were made by both industry and the British government to establish international cooperation to develop, produce, and deploy the spacecraft. In spite of American interest in the programme, there was little appetite amongst the members of the European Space Agency (ESA), and the British government was not prepared to depart from ESA cooperation. Additionally, technical issues were encountered, and there were allegations that comparisons with alternative launch systems such as conventional rocket vehicle using similar construction techniques failed to show much advantage to HOTOL. In 1989, funding for the project ended. The termination of development work on HOTOL led to the formation of Reaction Engines Limited (REL) to develop and produce Skylon, a proposed spacecraft based on HOTOL technologies, including its engine.
The ideas behind HOTOL originated from work done by British Engineer Alan Bond in the field of pre-cooled jet engines. Bond had specifically performed this research with the intention of producing a viable engine for powering a space launch system. In 1982, British Aerospace (BAe), which was Europe's principal satellite-builder, began studying a prospective new launch system with the aim of providing launch costs that were 20 per cent of the American Space Shuttle operated by NASA. BAe became aware of work by British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce on a suitable engine, and soon conceived of an unmanned, fully reuseable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) winged spaceplane as a launch vehicle.
Thus, the project had soon became a joint venture between BAe and Rolls-Royce, led by John Scott-Scott and Dr Bob Parkinson. Early on, there was an ambition to 'Europeanise' the project and to involve other nations in its development and manufacture as it was recognised that an estimated £4 billion would be needed to fund full-scale development. In August 1984, BAe unveiled a public display of the HOTOL satellite launcher project and released details on its proposed operations.
In December 1984, a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) memorandum noted that West Germany was interested in the program, while France had adopted a critical attitude towards HOTOL, which the ministry viewed as potentially due to it being seen as a competitor to French-led projects. According to the Minister of Trade and Industry Geoffrey Pattie, French diplomatic pressure to gather support for its own proposed Hermes space vehicle had inadvertently generated support and interest amongst European Space Agency (ESA) members in the HOTOL project. Despite this climate of tentative interest and possible European support, there was a general attitude of reluctance within the British government to take the lead on a new space launcher.
In March 1985, there were claims that Rolls-Royce was in the process of conducting licensing talks for HOTOL engine technology with American propulsion company Rocketdyne. In April 1985, Pattie wrote to Secretary of State for Defence Michael Heseltine to propose a two-year £3 million proof of concept study be performed under a public-private partnership arrangement, consisting of £1 million provided by the UK government and the remainder being financed by Rolls-Royce and BAe themselves. Pattie reasoned that the project would serve Britain's "strategic capability, and that tests of key technologies could foster international collaboration. According to aerospace publication Flight International, the support of the Ministry of Defense (MoD) was critical as the design of HOTOL's engine had been classified.
In July 1985, Rolls-Royce's technical director Gordon Lewis stated that the firm sought the involvement of the Royal Aircraft Establishment's (RAE) propulsion group, and that Rolls-Royce was not prepared to invest its own funds into engine development for HOTOL. By the second half of 1985, work had commenced on the two-year concept-of-proof study. Early on, there was considerable pressure to demonstrate the project's feasibility and credibility in advance of final decisions being taken by the ESA on the Hermes and what would become the Ariane 5 launch system, thus the work concentrated on the validation of critical technologies involved.
By November 1985, DTI and RAE discussions noted that Rolls-Royce were seeking American data on ramjet technology to support their work on the engine, which it referred to by the name "Swallow". Reportedly, the United States Air Force were interested in the technology used in the Swallow engine for its own purposes. In November 1985, discussions between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Minister without portfolio David Young and US President Ronald Reagan's scientific advisor George Keyworth noted American interest in collaboration on developing hypersonic vehicles such as HOTOL, and that a prototype could be flying as early as 1990.
According to British government files, neither BAe nor the MoD were enthusiastic for the prospects of American involvement in the programme, expressing reluctance out of a belief that the outcome of such a move could result in the UK becoming a junior member in a project that it once led. There was also a belief that if Britain chose to pair up with the United States, it would find itself frozen out of work on future European launchers. However, Rolls-Royce viewed transatlantic cooperation as necessary. BAe's head of future business, Peter Conchie, stated that, if possible, HOTOL should become a part of the European space framework. In early 1986, the British government formally approved the two-year study.
In December 1984, project management consultant David Andrews issued an eight-page critique of the programme, noting that the design was optimised for the ascent while exposing itself to extended thermal loads during descent due to a low level of drag. He also claimed that the vehicle offered no capability that was not already available; BAe responded that the criticisms made had been answered. In April 1985, the Ministry of Defence's research and development department deputy controller James Barnes claimed that HOTOL lacked a justification, and that there was no defence requirement for such vehicles. He also noted that the "engineering problems are considerable" and that it was unlikely to enter service until the 2020s; Barnes also observed the HOTOL engine to be "ingenious".
In November 1985, the RAE issued an assessment of HOTOL's study proposal; the organisation believe that HOTOL would take up to 20 years to develop, rather than the 12-year timetable that had been envisioned by industry. The RAE also projected that the project would have an estimated total cost of £5 billion (as of its value in 1985), £750 million of which would be required in a six-year definition phase and an estimated £25 million in a pre-definition feasibility study.
During development, it was found that the comparatively heavy rear-mounted engine moved the centre of mass of the vehicle rearwards. This meant that the vehicle had to be designed to push the centre of drag as far rearward as possible to ensure stability during the entire flight regime. Redesign of the vehicle to do this required a large mass of hydraulic systems, which cost a significant proportion of the payload, and made the economics unclear. In particular, some of the analysis seemed to indicate that similar technology applied to a pure rocket approach would give approximately the same performance at less cost.
By 1989, the outlook for HOTOL had become bleak; from the onset of the project, support between the British government and industrial partners had been uneven, while the United States had emerged as the only foreign nation that showed willingness to contribute to the programme, in part because of the secrecy surrounding the program. There was little prospect for European involvement, the ESA having elected to pursue development of what would become the Ariane 5, a conventional space launch system. Rolls-Royce withdrew from the project, judging the eventual market for the engine was unlikely to be large enough to repay the development costs. The British government declined to offer further funding for HOTOL. The project was almost at the end of its design phase while much of the plans remained in a speculative state; the craft was reportedly still dogged with aerodynamic problems and operational disadvantages at this point.
A cheaper redesign, Interim HOTOL or HOTOL 2, which was to be launched from the back of a modified Antonov An-225 "Mriya" transport aircraft, was promoted by BAe in 1991; however, this proposal was rejected as well. The design for Interim HOTOL was to have dispensed with an air-breathing engine cycle and was designed to use a more conventional mix of LOX and liquid hydrogen as fuel instead.
In 1989, HOTOL co-creator Alan Bond and engineers John Scott-Scott and Richard Varvill formed Reaction Engines Limited (REL) which has since been working on a new air-breathing engine, SABRE, which used alternative designs to work around (and improve upon) the Rolls-Royce patents, and the Skylon vehicle intended to solve the problems of HOTOL. They first published these engine and spacecraft concepts in 1993, and have since been developing the core technologies, particularly the engine and its frost-controlled pre-cooler; initially supported by private funding, but latterly with support from the European Space Agency, the British National Space Centre, the United Kingdom Space Agency, BAe, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. REL plan to demonstrate a flight-ready pre-cooler operating under simulated flight conditions in 2018, and statically test a demonstration engine core in 2020.
HOTOL was envisioned as an unmanned, fully reuseable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) winged spaceplane. The unmanned craft was intended to put a payload of around 7 to 8 tonnes in orbit, at 300 km altitude. It was intended to take off from a runway, mounted on the back of a large rocket-boosted trolley that would help get the craft up to "working speed". The engine was intended to switch from jet propulsion to pure rocket propulsion at 26–32 km high, by which time the craft would be travelling at Mach 5 to 7. After reaching low Earth orbit (LEO), HOTOL was intended to re-enter the atmosphere and glide down to land on a conventional runway (approx 1,500 metres minimum). Only a single payload would have been carried at a time as BAe had judged this to be more economic as it removed any need for satellite interfacing and allowed for missions to be tailored to individual requirements.
During its high-altitude phase, its flight control system would have been linked to ground stations and to space-based global navigation system navigation, while radar would have been used during the take-off and landing phases. In additional to the placing of satellites into geosynchronous orbit or LOE, HOTOL was also projected as being able to also perform the retrieval of satellites and hardware from LOE. BAe promotional material depicts HOTOL docking with the International Space Station (ISS), a feat that the company claimed would have required manned operation as automated systems were not capable of performing such docking manoeuvres at that time. HOTOL was designed to conduct fully automated unmanned flights; however, it had been intended at a later stage to potentially re-introduce a pilot. Manned operations would have required the installation of a dedicated pressurised module within the payload bay.
As designed, HOTOL would have been 62 metres long, 12.8 metres high, a fuselage diameter of 5.7 meters and a wingspan of 19.7 metres. It featured a wing design that had been derived from that of Concorde; its large area resulted in relatively low wing loading, which would have resulted in lower reentry temperatures (never rising above 1,400 °C). Built out of carbon composite materials, there would have been no need for the use of insulating tiles akin to those that comprised the Space Shuttle thermal protection system. The internally stowed landing gear would have been too small to carry the weight of the fully fuelled rocket, so emergency landings would have required the fuel to be dumped.
The RB545, which was given the name "Swallow" by its manufacturer, British engine maker Rolls-Royce, was an air-breathing rocket engine. It would have functioned as an integrated dual-role powerplant, having been capable of air-breathing while operating within the atmosphere and operating in a similar manner to that of a rocket when having attained close to and within LEO. This engine would have also been capable of powering the spacecraft to hypersonic speeds. It was a crucial element of the programme, having been publicly attributed as "the heart of Hotol's very low launch costs".
The exact details of this engine were covered by the Official Secrets Act of the United Kingdom; consequently, there is relatively little public information about its development and on its operation. However, material was later declassified when government policy changed to prevent the keeping of secret patents without an attributed justification.
Within the atmosphere, air is taken in through two vertically mounted intake ramps, then the flow would be split, passing the correct amount to the pre-coolers, and the excess to spill ducts. Hydrogen from the fuel tanks would be passed through two heat exchangers to pre-cool the air prior to entering a high overall pressure-ratio turbojet-like engine cycle — the heated hydrogen driving a turbine to compress and feed the cooled air into the rocket engine, where it was combusted with some of the hydrogen used to cool the air. The majority of the remaining hot hydrogen was released from the back of the engine, with a small amount drawn off to reheat the air in the spill ducts in a ramjet arrangement to produce "negative intake momentum drag." These ramjets were typically depicted as two glowing red circles below the rocket engines in pictures of HOTOL.
To prevent the pre-coolers from icing up, the first pre-cooler cooled the air to around 10 degrees above freezing point, to liquefy the water vapour in the air. Then LOX would have been injected into the airflow to drop the temperature to flash freezing the water into microscopic ice crystals, sufficiently cold that they wouldn't melt due to kinetic heating if they struck the second pre-cooler elements. A water trap could have been added after the first pre-cooler if operating conditions resulted in an excess of moisture.
When it was no longer possible to use the atmosphere for combustion, the RB545 would switch to using on-board liquid oxygen (LOX) to burn with the hydrogen as a high-efficiency hydrogen/oxygen rocket. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14301 |
Hammerhead shark
The hammerhead sharks are a group of sharks that form the family Sphyrnidae, so named for the unusual and distinctive structure of their heads, which are flattened and laterally extended into a "hammer" shape called a cephalofoil. Most hammerhead species are placed in the genus "Sphyrna", while the winghead shark is placed in its own genus, "Eusphyra". Many, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, functions have been postulated for the cephalofoil, including sensory reception, manoeuvering, and prey manipulation. Hammerheads are found worldwide in warmer waters along coastlines and continental shelves. Unlike most sharks, some hammerhead species usually swim in schools during the day, becoming solitary hunters at night. Some of these schools can be found near Malpelo Island in Colombia, the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, Cocos Island off Costa Rica, near Molokai in Hawaii, and off southern and eastern Africa.
The known species range from in length and weigh from . They are usually light gray and have a greenish tint. Their bellies are white, which allows them to blend into the ocean when viewed from the bottom and sneak up on their prey. Their heads have lateral projections which give them a hammer-like shape.
Hammerheads have disproportionately small mouths compared to other shark species. They are also known to form schools during the day, sometimes in groups over 100. In the evening, like other sharks, they become solitary hunters. "National Geographic" explains that hammerheads can be found in warm tropical waters, but during the summer, they participate in a mass migration to search for cooler waters.
Since sharks do not have mineralized bones and rarely fossilize, their teeth alone are commonly found as fossils. The hammerheads seem closely related to the carcharhinid sharks that evolved during the mid-Tertiary period. According to DNA studies, the ancestor of the hammerheads probably lived in the Miocene epoch about 20 million years ago.
Using mitochondrial DNA, a phylogenetic tree of the hammerhead sharks showed the winghead shark as its most basal member. As the winghead shark has proportionately the largest "hammer" of the hammerhead sharks, this suggests that the first ancestral hammerhead sharks also had large hammers.
Fossils show that hammerheads might have evolved earlier during the Paleocene.
The hammer-like shape of the head may have evolved at least in part to enhance the animal's vision. The positioning of the eyes, mounted on the sides of the shark's distinctive hammer head, allows 360° of vision in the vertical plane, meaning the animals can see above and below them at all times. The shape of the head was previously thought to help the shark find food, aiding in close-quarters maneuverability, and allowing sharp turning movement without losing stability. However, the unusual structure of its vertebrae has been found to be instrumental in making the turns correctly, more often than the shape of its head, though it would also shift and provide lift. From what is known about the winghead shark, the shape of the hammerhead apparently has to do with an evolved sensory function. Like all sharks, hammerheads have electroreceptory sensory pores called ampullae of Lorenzini. The pores on the shark's head lead to sensory tubes, which detect electricity given off by other living creatures. By distributing the receptors over a wider area, like a larger radio antenna, hammerheads can sweep for prey more effectively.
Reproduction occurs only once a year for hammerhead sharks, and usually occurs with the male shark biting the female shark violently until she agrees to mate with him. The hammerhead sharks exhibit a viviparous mode of reproduction with females giving birth to live young. Like other sharks, fertilization is internal, with the male transferring sperm to the female through one of two intromittent organs called claspers. The developing embryos are at first sustained by a yolk sac. When the supply of yolk is exhausted, the depleted yolk sac transforms into a structure analogous to a mammalian placenta (called a "yolk sac placenta" or "pseudoplacenta"), through which the mother delivers sustenance until birth. Once the baby sharks are born, they are not taken care of by the parents in any way. Usually, a litter consists of 12 to 15 pups, except for the great hammerhead, which gives birth to litters of 20 to 40 pups. These baby sharks huddle together and swim toward warmer water until they are old enough and large enough to survive on their own.
In 2007, the bonnethead shark was found to be capable of asexual reproduction via automictic parthenogenesis, in which a female's ovum fuses with a polar body to form a zygote without the need for a male. This was the first shark known to do this.
Hammerhead sharks eat a large range of prey such as fish (including other sharks), squid, octopus, and crustaceans. Stingrays are a particular favorite. These sharks are often found swimming along the bottom of the ocean, stalking their prey. Their unique heads are used as a weapon when hunting down prey. The hammerhead shark uses its head to pin down stingrays and eats the ray when the ray is weak and in shock. The great hammerhead, tending to be larger and more aggressive than most hammerheads, occasionally engages in cannibalism, eating other hammerhead sharks, including its own young. In addition to the typical animal prey, bonnetheads have been found to feed on seagrass, which sometimes makes up as much as half their stomach contents. They may swallow it unintentionally, but they are able to partially digest it. This is the only known case of a potentially omnivorous species of shark.
According to the International Shark Attack File, humans have been subject to 17 documented, unprovoked attacks by hammerhead sharks within the genus "Sphyrna" since 1580 AD. No human fatalities have been recorded.
The great and the scalloped hammerheads are listed on the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) 2008 Red List as endangered, whereas the smalleye hammerhead is listed as vulnerable. The status given to these sharks is as a result of overfishing and demand for their fins, an expensive delicacy. Among others, scientists expressed their concern about the plight of the scalloped hammerhead at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston. The young swim mostly in shallow waters along shores all over the world to avoid predators.
Shark fins are prized as a delicacy in certain countries in Asia (such as China), and overfishing is putting many hammerhead sharks at risk of extinction. Fishermen who harvest the animals typically cut off the fins and toss the remainder of the fish, which is often still alive, back into the sea. This practice, known as finning, is lethal to the shark.
In native Hawaiian culture, sharks are considered to be gods of the sea, protectors of humans, and cleaners of excessive ocean life. Some of these sharks are believed to be family members who died and have been reincarnated into shark form. However, some sharks are considered man-eaters, also known as "niuhi". These sharks include great white sharks, tiger sharks, and bull sharks. The hammerhead shark, also known as "mano kihikihi", is not considered a man-eater or "niuhi"; it is considered to be one of the most respected sharks of the ocean, an "aumakua". Many Hawaiian families believe that they have an "aumakua" watching over them and protecting them from the "niuhi". The hammerhead shark is thought to be the birth animal of some children. Hawaiian children who are born with the hammerhead shark as an animal sign are believed to be warriors and are meant to sail the oceans. Hammerhead sharks rarely pass through the waters of Maui, but many Maui natives believe that their swimming by is a sign that the gods are watching over the families, and the oceans are clean and balanced.
The relatively small bonnethead is regular at public aquariums as it has proven easier to keep in captivity than the larger hammerhead species, and it has been bred at a handful of facilities. Nevertheless, at up to in length and with highly specialized requirements, very few private aquarists have the experience and resources necessary to maintain a bonnethead in captivity. The larger hammerhead species can reach more than twice that size and are considered difficult, even compared to most other similar-sized sharks (such as "Carcharhinus" species, lemon shark and sand tiger shark) regularly kept by public aquariums. They are particularly vulnerable during transport between facilities, may rub on surfaces in tanks, and may collide with rocks, causing injuries to their heads, so they require very large, specially adapted tanks. As a consequence, relatively few public aquariums have kept them for long periods. The scalloped hammerhead is the most frequently maintained large species, and it has been kept long term at public aquariums in most continents, but primarily in North America, Europe, and Asia. In 2014, less than 15 public aquariums in the world kept scalloped hammerheads. Great hammerheads have been kept at a few facilities in North America, including Atlantis Paradise Island Resort (Bahamas), Adventure Aquarium (New Jersey), Georgia Aquarium (Atlanta), Mote Marine Laboratory (Florida), and the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay (Las Vegas). Smooth hammerheads have also been kept in the past.
In March 2013, three endangered, commercially valuable sharks, the hammerheads, the oceanic whitetip, and porbeagle, were added to Appendix II of CITES, bringing shark fishing and commerce of these species under licensing and regulation.
Among Torres Strait Islanders, the hammerhead shark, known as the Beizam, is a powerful totem, and often represented in cultural artefacts such as the elaborate headdresses worn for ceremonial dances, known as dhari or dari. Sharks are associated with law and order. Renowned artist Ken Thaiday Snr is known for his representations of beizam in his sculptural dari and other works. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14306 |
Hall effect
The Hall effect is the production of a voltage difference (the Hall voltage) across an electrical conductor, transverse to an electric current in the conductor and to an applied magnetic field perpendicular to the current. It was discovered by Edwin Hall in 1879. For clarity, the original effect is sometimes called the ordinary Hall effect to distinguish it from other "Hall effects" which have different physical mechanisms.
The Hall coefficient is defined as the ratio of the induced electric field to the product of the current density and the applied magnetic field. It is a characteristic of the material from which the conductor is made, since its value depends on the type, number, and properties of the charge carriers that constitute the current.
The modern theory of electromagnetism was systematized by James Clerk Maxwell in the paper "On Physical Lines of Force", which was published in four parts between 1861-1862. While Maxwell's paper established a solid mathematical basis for electromagnetic theory, the detailed mechanisms of the theory were still being explored. One such question was about the details of the interaction between magnets and electric current, including whether magnetic fields interacted with the conductors or the electric current itself. In 1879 Edwin Hall was exploring this interaction, and discovered the Hall effect while he was working on his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Eighteen years before the electron was discovered, his measurements of the tiny effect produced in the apparatus he used were an experimental tour de force, published under the name "On a New Action of the Magnet on Electric Currents".
The Hall effect is due to the nature of the current in a conductor. Current consists of the movement of many small charge carriers, typically electrons, holes, ions (see Electromigration) or all three. When a magnetic field is present, these charges experience a force, called the Lorentz force. When such a magnetic field is absent, the charges follow approximately straight, 'line of sight' paths between collisions with impurities, phonons, etc. However, when a magnetic field with a perpendicular component is applied, their paths between collisions are curved, thus moving charges accumulate on one face of the material. This leaves equal and opposite charges exposed on the other face, where there is a scarcity of mobile charges. The result is an asymmetric distribution of charge density across the Hall element, arising from a force that is perpendicular to both the 'line of sight' path and the applied magnetic field. The separation of charge establishes an electric field that opposes the migration of further charge, so a steady electric potential is established for as long as the charge is flowing.
In classical electromagnetism electrons move in the opposite direction of the current (by convention "current" describes a theoretical "hole flow"). In some metals and semiconductors it "appears" "holes" are actually flowing because the direction of the voltage is opposite to the derivation below.
For a simple metal where there is only one type of charge carrier (electrons), the Hall voltage can be derived by using the Lorentz force and seeing that, in the steady-state condition, charges are not moving in the -axis direction. Thus, the magnetic force on each electron in the -axis direction is cancelled by a -axis electrical force due to the buildup of charges. The term is the drift velocity of the current which is assumed at this point to be holes by convention. The term is negative in the -axis direction by the right hand rule.
In steady state, , so , where is assigned in the direction of the -axis, (and not with the arrow of the induced electric field as in the image (pointing in the direction), which tells you where the field caused by the electrons is pointing).
In wires, electrons instead of holes are flowing, so and . Also . Substituting these changes gives
The conventional "hole" current is in the negative direction of the electron current and the negative of the electrical charge which gives where is charge carrier density, is the cross-sectional area, and is the charge of each electron. Solving for formula_3 and plugging into the above gives the Hall voltage:
If the charge build up had been positive (as it appears in some semiconductors), then the assigned in the image would have been negative (positive charge would have built up on the left side).
The Hall coefficient is defined as
where is the current density of the carrier electrons, and is the induced electric field. In SI units, this becomes
(The units of are usually expressed as m3/C, or Ω·cm/G, or other variants.) As a result, the Hall effect is very useful as a means to measure either the carrier density or the magnetic field.
One very important feature of the Hall effect is that it differentiates between positive charges moving in one direction and negative charges moving in the opposite. The Hall effect offered the first real proof that electric currents in metals are carried by moving electrons, not by protons. The Hall effect also showed that in some substances (especially p-type semiconductors), it is more appropriate to think of the current as positive "holes" moving rather than negative electrons. A common source of confusion with the Hall effect is that holes moving to the left are really electrons moving to the right, so one expects the same sign of the Hall coefficient for both electrons and holes. This confusion, however, can only be resolved by modern quantum mechanical theory of transport in solids.
The sample inhomogeneity might result in spurious sign of the Hall effect, even in ideal van der Pauw configuration of electrodes. For example, positive Hall effect was observed in evidently n-type semiconductors. Another source of artifact, in uniform materials, occurs when the sample's aspect ratio is not long enough: the full Hall voltage only develops far away from the current-introducing contacts, since at the contacts the transverse voltage is shorted out to zero.
When a current-carrying semiconductor is kept in a magnetic field, the charge carriers of the semiconductor experience a force in a direction perpendicular to both the magnetic field and the current. At equilibrium, a voltage appears at the semiconductor edges.
The simple formula for the Hall coefficient given above is usually a good explanation when conduction is dominated by a single charge carrier. However, in semiconductors and many metals the theory is more complex, because in these materials conduction can involve significant, simultaneous contributions from both electrons and holes, which may be present in different concentrations and have different mobilities. For moderate magnetic fields the Hall coefficient is
or equivalently
with
Here is the electron concentration, the hole concentration, the electron mobility, the hole mobility and the elementary charge.
For large applied fields the simpler expression analogous to that for a single carrier type holds.
Although it is well known that magnetic fields play an important role in star formation, research models indicate that Hall diffusion critically influences the dynamics of gravitational collapse that forms protostars.
For a two-dimensional electron system which can be produced in a MOSFET, in the presence of large magnetic field strength and low temperature, one can observe the quantum Hall effect, in which the Hall conductance undergoes quantum Hall transitions to take on the quantized values.
The spin Hall effect consists in the spin accumulation on the lateral boundaries of a current-carrying sample. No magnetic field is needed. It was predicted by Mikhail Dyakonov and V. I. Perel in 1971 and observed experimentally more than 30 years later, both in semiconductors and in metals, at cryogenic as well as at room temperatures.
For mercury telluride two dimensional quantum wells with strong spin-orbit coupling, in zero magnetic field, at low temperature, the quantum spin Hall effect has been recently observed.
In ferromagnetic materials (and paramagnetic materials in a magnetic field), the Hall resistivity includes an additional contribution, known as the anomalous Hall effect (or the extraordinary Hall effect), which depends directly on the magnetization of the material, and is often much larger than the ordinary Hall effect. (Note that this effect is "not" due to the contribution of the magnetization to the total magnetic field.) For example, in nickel, the anomalous Hall coefficient is about 100 times larger than the ordinary Hall coefficient near the Curie temperature, but the two are similar at very low temperatures. Although a well-recognized phenomenon, there is still debate about its origins in the various materials. The anomalous Hall effect can be either an "extrinsic" (disorder-related) effect due to spin-dependent scattering of the charge carriers, or an "intrinsic" effect which can be described in terms of the Berry phase effect in the crystal momentum space (-space).
The Hall effect in an ionized gas (plasma) is significantly different from the Hall effect in solids (where the Hall parameter is always much less than unity). In a plasma, the Hall parameter can take any value. The Hall parameter, , in a plasma is the ratio between the electron gyrofrequency, , and the electron-heavy particle collision frequency, :
where
The Hall parameter value increases with the magnetic field strength.
Physically, the trajectories of electrons are curved by the Lorentz force. Nevertheless, when the Hall parameter is low, their motion between two encounters with heavy particles (neutral or ion) is almost linear. But if the Hall parameter is high, the electron movements are highly curved. The current density vector, , is no longer collinear with the electric field vector, . The two vectors and make the Hall angle, , which also gives the Hall parameter:
Hall probes are often used as magnetometers, i.e. to measure magnetic fields, or inspect materials (such as tubing or pipelines) using the principles of magnetic flux leakage.
Hall effect devices produce a very low signal level and thus require amplification. While suitable for laboratory instruments, the vacuum tube amplifiers available in the first half of the 20th century were too expensive, power consuming, and unreliable for everyday applications. It was only with the development of the low cost integrated circuit that the Hall effect sensor became suitable for mass application. Many devices now sold as Hall effect sensors in fact contain both the sensor as described above plus a high gain integrated circuit (IC) amplifier in a single package. Recent advances have further added into one package an analog-to-digital converter and I²C (Inter-integrated circuit communication protocol) IC for direct connection to a microcontroller's I/O port.
Hall effect devices (when appropriately packaged) are immune to dust, dirt, mud, and water. These characteristics make Hall effect devices better for position sensing than alternative means such as optical and electromechanical sensing.
When electrons flow through a conductor, a magnetic field is produced. Thus, it is possible to create a non-contacting current sensor. The device has three terminals.
A sensor voltage is applied across two terminals and the third provides a voltage proportional to the current being sensed. This has several advantages; no additional resistance (a "shunt", required for the most common current sensing method) need to be inserted in the primary circuit. Also, the voltage present on the line to be sensed is not transmitted to the sensor, which enhances the safety of measuring equipment.
Magnetic flux from the surroundings (such as other wires) may diminish or enhance the field the Hall probe intends to detect, rendering the results inaccurate. Also, as Hall voltage is often on the order of millivolts, the output from this type of sensor cannot be used to directly drive actuators but instead must be amplified by a transistor-based circuit.
Ways to measure mechanical positions within an electromagnetic system, such as a brushless direct current motor, include (1) the Hall effect, (2) optical position encoder (e.g., absolute and incremental encoders) and (3) induced voltage by moving the amount of metal core inserted into a transformer. When Hall is compared to photo-sensitive methods, it is harder to get absolute position with Hall. Hall detection is also sensitive to stray magnetic fields.
Hall effect sensors are readily available from a number of different manufacturers, and may be used in various sensors such as rotating speed sensors (bicycle wheels, gear-teeth, automotive speedometers, electronic ignition systems), fluid flow sensors, current sensors, and pressure sensors. Common applications are often found where a robust and contactless switch or potentiometer is required. These include: electric airsoft guns, triggers of electropneumatic paintball guns, go-cart speed controls, smart phones, and some global positioning systems.
Hall sensors can detect stray magnetic fields easily, including that of Earth, so they work well as electronic compasses: but this also means that such stray fields can hinder accurate measurements of small magnetic fields. To solve this problem, Hall sensors are often integrated with magnetic shielding of some kind. For example, a Hall sensor integrated into a ferrite ring (as shown) can reduce the detection of stray fields by a factor of 100 or better (as the external magnetic fields cancel across the ring, giving no residual magnetic flux). This configuration also provides an improvement in signal-to-noise ratio and drift effects of over 20 times that of a bare Hall device.
The range of a given feedthrough sensor may be extended upward and downward by appropriate wiring. To extend the range to lower currents, multiple turns of the current-carrying wire may be made through the opening, each turn adding to the sensor output the same quantity; when the sensor is installed onto a printed circuit board, the turns can be carried out by a staple on the board. To extend the range to higher currents, a current divider may be used. The divider splits the current across two wires of differing widths and the thinner wire, carrying a smaller proportion of the total current, passes through the sensor.
A variation on the ring sensor uses a split sensor which is clamped onto the line enabling the device to be used in temporary test equipment. If used in a permanent installation, a split sensor allows the electric current to be tested without dismantling the existing circuit.
The output is proportional to both the applied magnetic field and the applied sensor voltage. If the magnetic field is applied by a solenoid, the sensor output is proportional to the product of the current through the solenoid and the sensor voltage. As most applications requiring computation are now performed by small digital computers, the remaining useful application is in power sensing, which combines current sensing with voltage sensing in a single Hall effect device.
By sensing the current provided to a load and using the device's applied voltage as a sensor voltage it is possible to determine the power dissipated by a device.
Hall effect devices used in motion sensing and motion limit switches can offer enhanced reliability in extreme environments. As there are no moving parts involved within the sensor or magnet, typical life expectancy is improved compared to traditional electromechanical switches. Additionally, the sensor and magnet may be encapsulated in an appropriate protective material. This application is used in brushless DC motors.
Hall effect sensors, affixed to mechanical gauges that have magnetized indicator needles, can translate the physical position or orientation of the mechanical indicator needle into an electrical signal that can be used by electronic indicators, controls or communications devices.
Commonly used in distributors for ignition timing (and in some types of crank and camshaft position sensors for injection pulse timing, speed sensing, etc.) the Hall effect sensor is used as a direct replacement for the mechanical breaker points used in earlier automotive applications. Its use as an ignition timing device in various distributor types is as follows. A stationary permanent magnet and semiconductor Hall effect chip are mounted next to each other separated by an air gap, forming the Hall effect sensor. A metal rotor consisting of windows and tabs is mounted to a shaft and arranged so that during shaft rotation, the windows and tabs pass through the air gap between the permanent magnet and semiconductor Hall chip. This effectively shields and exposes the Hall chip to the permanent magnet's field respective to whether a tab or window is passing through the Hall sensor. For ignition timing purposes, the metal rotor will have a number of equal-sized tabs and windows matching the number of engine cylinders. This produces a uniform square wave output since the on/off (shielding and exposure) time is equal. This signal is used by the engine computer or ECU to control ignition timing. Many automotive Hall effect sensors have a built-in internal NPN transistor with an open collector and grounded emitter, meaning that rather than a voltage being produced at the Hall sensor signal output wire, the transistor is turned on providing a circuit to ground through the signal output wire.
The sensing of wheel rotation is especially useful in anti-lock braking systems. The principles of such systems have been extended and refined to offer more than anti-skid functions, now providing extended vehicle handling enhancements.
Some types of brushless DC electric motors use Hall effect sensors to detect the position of the rotor and feed that information to the motor controller. This allows for more precise motor control.
Applications for Hall effect sensing have also expanded to industrial applications, which now use Hall effect joysticks to control hydraulic valves, replacing the traditional mechanical levers with contactless sensing. Such applications include mining trucks, backhoe loaders, cranes, diggers, scissor lifts, etc.
A Hall-effect thruster (HET) is a relatively low power device that is used to propel some spacecraft, after it gets into orbit or farther out into space. In the HET, atoms are ionized and accelerated by an electric field. A radial magnetic field established by magnets on the thruster is used to trap electrons which then orbit and create an electric field due to the Hall effect. A large potential is established between the end of the thruster where neutral propellant is fed, and the part where electrons are produced; so, electrons trapped in the magnetic field cannot drop to the lower potential. They are thus extremely energetic, which means that they can ionize neutral atoms. Neutral propellant is pumped into the chamber and is ionized by the trapped electrons. Positive ions and electrons are then ejected from the thruster as a quasineutral plasma, creating thrust.
The Corbino effect is a phenomenon involving the Hall effect, but a disc-shaped metal sample is used in place of a rectangular one. Because of its shape the Corbino disc allows the observation of Hall effect–based magnetoresistance without the associated Hall voltage.
A radial current through a circular disc, subjected to a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of the disc, produces a "circular" current through the disc.
The absence of the free transverse boundaries renders the interpretation of the Corbino effect simpler than that of the Hall effect. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14307 |
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. Originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933, it was officially renamed Hoover Dam for President Herbert Hoover by a joint resolution of Congress in 1947.
Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc., which began construction of the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.
Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume (when it is full). The dam is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction; nearly a million people tour the dam each year. The heavily traveled U.S. Route 93 (US 93) ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.
As the United States developed the Southwest, the Colorado River was seen as a potential source of irrigation water. An initial attempt at diverting the river for irrigation purposes occurred in the late 1890s, when land speculator William Beatty built the Alamo Canal just north of the Mexican border; the canal dipped into Mexico before running to a desolate area Beatty named the Imperial Valley. Though water from the Imperial Canal allowed for the widespread settlement of the valley, the canal proved expensive to maintain. After a catastrophic breach that caused the Colorado River to fill the Salton Sea, the Southern Pacific Railroad spent $3 million in 1906–07 to stabilize the waterway, an amount it hoped in vain would be reimbursed by the Federal Government. Even after the waterway was stabilized, it proved unsatisfactory because of constant disputes with landowners on the Mexican side of the border.
As the technology of electric power transmission improved, the Lower Colorado was considered for its hydroelectric-power potential. In 1902, the Edison Electric Company of Los Angeles surveyed the river in the hope of building a rock dam which could generate . However, at the time, the limit of transmission of electric power was , and there were few customers (mostly mines) within that limit. Edison allowed land options it held on the river to lapse—including an option for what became the site of Hoover Dam.
In the following years, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), known as the Reclamation Service at the time, also considered the Lower Colorado as the site for a dam. Service chief Arthur Powell Davis proposed using dynamite to collapse the walls of Boulder Canyon, north of the eventual dam site, into the river. The river would carry off the smaller pieces of debris, and a dam would be built incorporating the remaining rubble. In 1922, after considering it for several years, the Reclamation Service finally rejected the proposal, citing doubts about the unproven technique and questions as to whether it would in fact save money.
In 1922, the Reclamation Service presented a report calling for the development of a dam on the Colorado River for flood control and electric power generation. The report was principally authored by Davis, and was called the Fall-Davis report after Interior Secretary Albert Fall. The Fall-Davis report cited use of the Colorado River as a federal concern because the river's basin covered several states, and the river eventually entered Mexico. Though the Fall-Davis report called for a dam "at or near Boulder Canyon", the Reclamation Service (which was renamed the Bureau of Reclamation the following year) found that canyon unsuitable. One potential site at Boulder Canyon was bisected by a geologic fault; two others were so narrow there was no space for a construction camp at the bottom of the canyon or for a spillway. The Service investigated Black Canyon and found it ideal; a railway could be laid from the railhead in Las Vegas to the top of the dam site. Despite the site change, the dam project was referred to as the "Boulder Canyon Project".
With little guidance on water allocation from the Supreme Court, proponents of the dam feared endless litigation. A Colorado attorney proposed that the seven states which fell within the river's basin (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming) form an interstate compact, with the approval of Congress. Such compacts were authorized by Article I of the United States Constitution but had never been concluded among more than two states. In 1922, representatives of seven states met with then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Initial talks produced no result, but when the Supreme Court handed down the "Wyoming v. Colorado" decision undermining the claims of the upstream states, they became anxious to reach an agreement. The resulting Colorado River Compact was signed on November 24, 1922.
Legislation to authorize the dam was introduced repeatedly by two California Republicans, Representative Phil Swing and Senator Hiram Johnson, but representatives from other parts of the country considered the project as hugely expensive and one that would mostly benefit California. The 1927 Mississippi flood made Midwestern and Southern congressmen and senators more sympathetic toward the dam project. On March 12, 1928, the failure of the St. Francis Dam, constructed by the city of Los Angeles, caused a disastrous flood that killed up to 600 people. As that dam was a curved-gravity type, similar in design to the arch-gravity as was proposed for the Black Canyon dam, opponents claimed that the Black Canyon dam's safety could not be guaranteed. Congress authorized a board of engineers to review plans for the proposed dam. The Colorado River Board found the project feasible, but warned that should the dam fail, every downstream Colorado River community would be destroyed, and that the river might change course and empty into the Salton Sea. The Board cautioned: "To avoid such possibilities, the proposed dam should be constructed on conservative if not ultra-conservative lines."
On December 21, 1928, President Coolidge signed the bill authorizing the dam. The Boulder Canyon Project Act appropriated $165 million for the Hoover Dam along with the downstream Imperial Dam and All-American Canal, a replacement for Beatty's canal entirely on the U.S. side of the border. It also permitted the compact to go into effect when at least six of the seven states approved it. This occurred on March 6, 1929, with Utah's ratification; Arizona did not approve it until 1944.
Even before Congress approved the Boulder Canyon Project, the Bureau of Reclamation was considering what kind of dam should be used. Officials eventually decided on a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, the design of which was overseen by the Bureau's chief design engineer John L. Savage. The monolithic dam would be thick at the bottom and thin near the top, and would present a convex face towards the water above the dam. The curving arch of the dam would transmit the water's force into the abutments, in this case the rock walls of the canyon. The wedge-shaped dam would be thick at the bottom, narrowing to at the top, leaving room for a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona.
On January 10, 1931, the Bureau made the bid documents available to interested parties, at five dollars a copy. The government was to provide the materials; but the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million bid bond was to accompany each bid; the winner would have to post a $5 million performance bond. The contractor had seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue.
The Wattis Brothers, heads of the Utah Construction Company, were interested in bidding on the project, but lacked the money for the performance bond. They lacked sufficient resources even in combination with their longtime partners, Morrison-Knudsen, which employed the nation's leading dam builder, Frank Crowe. They formed a joint venture to bid for the project with Pacific Bridge Company of Portland, Oregon; Henry J. Kaiser & W. A. Bechtel Company of San Francisco; MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. of Los Angeles; and the J.F. Shea Company of Portland, Oregon. The joint venture was called Six Companies, Inc. as Bechtel and Kaiser were considered one company for purposes of Six in the name. The name was descriptive and was an inside joke among the San Franciscans in the bid, where "Six Companies" was also a Chinese benevolent association in the city. There were three valid bids, and Six Companies' bid of $48,890,955 was the lowest, within $24,000 of the confidential government estimate of what the dam would cost to build, and five million dollars less than the next-lowest bid.
The city of Las Vegas had lobbied hard to be the headquarters for the dam construction, closing its many speakeasies when the decision maker, Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur, came to town. Instead, Wilbur announced in early 1930 that a model city was to be built in the desert near the dam site. This town became known as Boulder City, Nevada. Construction of a rail line joining Las Vegas and the dam site began in September 1930.
Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed people converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as "Ragtown". When construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934. "Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was prevented by the construction contract, while the number of blacks employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets.
As part of the contract, Six Companies, Inc. was to build Boulder City to house the workers. The original timetable called for Boulder City to be built before the dam project began, but President Hoover ordered work on the dam to begin in March 1931 rather than in October. The company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, to house 480 single men at what became known as River Camp. Workers with families were left to provide their own accommodations until Boulder City could be completed, and many lived in Ragtown. The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging . Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26, 1931.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), though much-reduced from their heyday as militant labor organizers in the early years of the century, hoped to unionize the Six Companies workers by capitalizing on their discontent. They sent eleven organizers, several of whom were arrested by Las Vegas police. On August 7, 1931, the company cut wages for all tunnel workers. Although the workers sent the organizers away, not wanting to be associated with the "Wobblies", they formed a committee to represent them with the company. The committee drew up a list of demands that evening and presented them to Crowe the following morning. He was noncommittal. The workers hoped that Crowe, the general superintendent of the job, would be sympathetic; instead he gave a scathing interview to a newspaper, describing the workers as "malcontents".
On the morning of the 9th, Crowe met with the committee and told them that management refused their demands, was stopping all work, and was laying off the entire work force, except for a few office workers and carpenters. The workers were given until 5 p.m. to vacate the premises. Concerned that a violent confrontation was imminent, most workers took their paychecks and left for Las Vegas to await developments. Two days later, the remainder were talked into leaving by law enforcement. On August 13, the company began hiring workers again, and two days later, the strike was called off. While the workers received none of their demands, the company guaranteed there would be no further reductions in wages. Living conditions began to improve as the first residents moved into Boulder City in late 1931.
A second labor action took place in July 1935, as construction on the dam wound down. When a Six Companies manager altered working times to force workers to take lunch on their own time, workers responded with a strike. Emboldened by Crowe's reversal of the lunch decree, workers raised their demands to include a $1-per-day raise. The company agreed to ask the Federal government to supplement the pay, but no money was forthcoming from Washington. The strike ended.
Before the dam could be built, the Colorado River needed to be diverted away from the construction site. To accomplish this, four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. These tunnels were in diameter. Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than . The contract required these tunnels to be completed by October 1, 1933, with a $3,000-per-day fine to be assessed for any delay. To meet the deadline, Six Companies had to complete work by early 1933, since only in late fall and winter was the water level in the river low enough to safely divert.
Tunneling began at the lower portals of the Nevada tunnels in May 1931. Shortly afterward, work began on two similar tunnels in the Arizona canyon wall. In March 1932, work began on lining the tunnels with concrete. First the base, or invert, was poured. Gantry cranes, running on rails through the entire length of each tunnel were used to place the concrete. The sidewalls were poured next. Movable sections of steel forms were used for the sidewalls. Finally, using pneumatic guns, the overheads were filled in. The concrete lining is thick, reducing the finished tunnel diameter to . The river was diverted into the two Arizona tunnels on November 13, 1932; the Nevada tunnels were kept in reserve for high water. This was done by exploding a temporary cofferdam protecting the Arizona tunnels while at the same time dumping rubble into the river until its natural course was blocked.
Following the completion of the dam, the entrances to the two outer diversion tunnels were sealed at the opening and halfway through the tunnels with large concrete plugs. The downstream halves of the tunnels following the inner plugs are now the main bodies of the spillway tunnels. The inner diversion tunnels were plugged at approximately one-third of their length, beyond which they now carry steel pipes connecting the intake towers to the power plant and outlet works. The inner tunnels' outlets are equipped with gates that can be closed to drain the tunnels for maintenance.
To protect the construction site from the Colorado River and to facilitate the river's diversion, two cofferdams were constructed. Work on the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had not yet been diverted. The cofferdams were designed to protect against the possibility of the river's flooding a site at which two thousand men might be at work, and their specifications were covered in the bid documents in nearly as much detail as the dam itself. The upper cofferdam was high, and thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. It contained of material.
When the cofferdams were in place and the construction site was drained of water, excavation for the dam foundation began. For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During this excavation, approximately of material was removed. Since the dam was an arch-gravity type, the side-walls of the canyon would bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore, the side-walls were excavated too, to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. Shovels for the excavation came from the Marion Power Shovel Company.
The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers". While suspended from the top of the canyon with ropes, the high-scalers climbed down the canyon walls and removed the loose rock with jackhammers and dynamite. Falling objects were the most common cause of death on the dam site; the high scalers' work thus helped ensure worker safety. One high scaler was able to save a life in a more direct manner: when a government inspector lost his grip on a safety line and began tumbling down a slope towards almost certain death, a high scaler was able to intercept him and pull him into the air. The construction site had, even then, become a magnet for tourists; the high scalers were prime attractions and showed off for the watchers. The high scalers received considerable media attention, with one worker dubbed the "Human Pendulum" for swinging co-workers (and, at other times, cases of dynamite) across the canyon. To protect themselves against falling objects, some high scalers took cloth hats and dipped them in tar, allowing them to harden. When workers wearing such headgear were struck hard enough to inflict broken jaws, they sustained no skull damage. Six Companies ordered thousands of what initially were called "hard boiled hats" (later "hard hats") and strongly encouraged their use.
The cleared, underlying rock foundation of the dam site was reinforced with grout, forming a grout curtain. Holes were driven into the walls and base of the canyon, as deep as into the rock, and any cavities encountered were to be filled with grout. This was done to stabilize the rock, to prevent water from seeping past the dam through the canyon rock, and to limit "uplift"—upward pressure from water seeping under the dam. The workers were under severe time constraints due to the beginning of the concrete pour, and when they encountered hot springs or cavities too large to readily fill, they moved on without resolving the problem. A total of 58 of the 393 holes were incompletely filled. After the dam was completed and the lake began to fill, large numbers of significant leaks into the dam caused the Bureau of Reclamation to look into the situation. It found that the work had been incompletely done, and was based on less than a full understanding of the canyon's geology. New holes were drilled from inspection galleries inside the dam into the surrounding bedrock. It took nine years (1938–47) under relative secrecy to complete the supplemental grout curtain.
The first concrete was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, the potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a serious problem. Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were to be built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the resulting stresses would cause the dam to crack and crumble. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as and high. Each five-foot form contained a set of steel pipes; cool riverwater would be poured through the pipes, followed by ice-cold water from a refrigeration plant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints.
The concrete was delivered in huge steel buckets and almost 7 feet in diameter; Crowe was awarded two patents for their design. These buckets, which weighed when full, were filled at two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side, and were delivered to the site in special railcars. The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 9-inch or 23 cm stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. Although there are myths that men were caught in the pour and are entombed in the dam to this day, each bucket deepened the concrete in a form by only , and Six Companies engineers would not have permitted a flaw caused by the presence of a human body.
A total of of concrete was used in the dam before concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935. In addition, were used in the power plant and other works. More than of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. Overall, there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Concrete cores were removed from the dam for testing in 1995; they showed that "Hoover Dam's concrete has continued to slowly gain strength" and the dam is composed of a "durable concrete having a compressive strength exceeding the range typically found in normal mass concrete". Hoover Dam concrete is not subject to alkali–silica reaction (ASR), as the Hoover Dam builders happened to use nonreactive aggregate, unlike that at downstream Parker Dam, where ASR has caused measurable deterioration.
With most work finished on the dam itself (the powerhouse remained uncompleted), a formal dedication ceremony was arranged for September 30, 1935, to coincide with a western tour being made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The morning of the dedication, it was moved forward three hours from 2 p.m. Pacific time to 11 a.m.; this was done because Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had reserved a radio slot for the President for 2 p.m. but officials did not realize until the day of the ceremony that the slot was for 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Despite the change in the ceremony time, and temperatures of , 10,000 people were present for the President's speech, in which he avoided mentioning the name of former President Hoover, who was not invited to the ceremony. To mark the occasion, a three-cent stamp was issued by the United States Post Office Department—bearing the name "Boulder Dam", the official name of the dam between 1933 and 1947. After the ceremony, Roosevelt made the first visit by any American president to Las Vegas.
Most work had been completed by the dedication, and Six Companies negotiated with the government through late 1935 and early 1936 to settle all claims and arrange for the formal transfer of the dam to the Federal Government. The parties came to an agreement and on March 1, 1936, Secretary Ickes formally accepted the dam on behalf of the government. Six Companies was not required to complete work on one item, a concrete plug for one of the bypass tunnels, as the tunnel had to be used to take in irrigation water until the powerhouse went into operation.
There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. The first was J. G. Tierney, a surveyor who drowned on December 20, 1922, while looking for an ideal spot for the dam. The last death on the project's official fatality list occurred on December 20, 1935, when an "electrician's helper," Patrick Tierney, the son of J. G. Tierney, fell from an intake tower. Included in the fatality list are three workers, who took their own lives onsite, one in 1932 and two in 1933. Ninety-six of the deaths occurred during construction at the site. Of the 112 fatalities, 91 were Six Companies employees, three were BOR employees, and one was a visitor to the site, with the remainder employees of various contractors not part of Six Companies.
Not included in the official number of fatalities were deaths that were recorded as pneumonia. Workers alleged that this diagnosis was a cover for death from carbon monoxide poisoning (brought on by the use of gasoline-fueled vehicles in the diversion tunnels), and a classification used by Six Companies to avoid paying compensation claims. The site's diversion tunnels frequently reached , enveloped in thick plumes of vehicle exhaust gases. A total of 42 workers were recorded as having died from pneumonia and were not included in the above total; none were listed as having died from carbon monoxide poisoning. No deaths of non-workers from pneumonia were recorded in Boulder City during the construction period.
The initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam. The Bureau of Reclamation, more concerned with the dam's functionality, adorned it with a Gothic-inspired balustrade and eagle statues. This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the supervising architect to the Bureau of Reclamation, was brought in to redesign the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project. He designed sculpted turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona — both states are in different time zones, but since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the clocks display the same time for more than half the year.
At Kaufmann's request, Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True's design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist. With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals — lizards, serpents, birds — and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. In these works, which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern.
With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised for the pipes and machinery an innovative color-coding which was implemented throughout all BOR projects. True's consulting artist job lasted through 1942; it was extended so he could complete design work for the Parker, Shasta and Grand Coulee dams and power plants. True's work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in "The New Yorker", part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme".
Complementing Kaufmann and True's work, sculptor Oskar J.W. Hansen designed many of the sculptures on and around the dam. His works include the monument of dedication plaza, a plaque to memorialize the workers killed and the bas-reliefs on the elevator towers. In his words, Hansen wanted his work to express "the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment", because "[t]he building of Hoover Dam belongs to the sagas of the daring." Hansen's dedication plaza, on the Nevada abutment, contains a sculpture of two winged figures flanking a flagpole.
Surrounding the base of the monument is a terrazzo floor embedded with a "star map". The map depicts the Northern Hemisphere sky at the moment of President Roosevelt's dedication of the dam. This is intended to help future astronomers, if necessary, calculate the exact date of dedication. The bronze figures, dubbed "Winged Figures of the Republic", were both formed in a continuous pour. To put such large bronzes into place without marring the highly polished bronze surface, they were placed on ice and guided into position as the ice melted. Hansen's bas-relief on the Nevada elevator tower depicts the benefits of the dam: flood control, navigation, irrigation, water storage, and power. The bas-relief on the Arizona elevator depicts, in his words, "the visages of those Indian tribes who have inhabited mountains and plains from ages distant."
Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation and abutments. The excavation of this U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933. Filling of Lake Mead began February 1, 1935, even before the last of the concrete was poured that May. The powerhouse was one of the projects uncompleted at the time of the formal dedication on September 30, 1935; a crew of 500 men remained to finish it and other structures. To make the powerhouse roof bombproof, it was constructed of layers of concrete, rock, and steel with a total thickness of about , topped with layers of sand and tar.
In the latter half of 1936, water levels in Lake Mead were high enough to permit power generation, and the first three Allis Chalmers built Francis turbine-generators, all on the Nevada side, began operating. In March 1937, one more Nevada generator went online and the first Arizona generator by August. By September 1939, four more generators were operating, and the dam's power plant became the largest hydroelectricity facility in the world. The final generator was not placed in service until 1961, bringing the maximum generating capacity to 1,345 megawatts at the time. Original plans called for 16 large generators, eight on each side of the river, but two smaller generators were installed instead of one large one on the Arizona side for a total of 17. The smaller generators were used to serve smaller communities at a time when the output of each generator was dedicated to a single municipality, before the dam's total power output was placed on the grid and made arbitrarily distributable.
Before water from Lake Mead reaches the turbines, it enters the intake towers and then four gradually narrowing penstocks which funnel the water down towards the powerhouse. The intakes provide a maximum hydraulic head (water pressure) of as the water reaches a speed of about . The entire flow of the Colorado River passes through the turbines. The spillways and outlet works (jet-flow gates) are rarely used. The jet-flow gates, located in concrete structures above the river and also at the outlets of the inner diversion tunnels at river level, may be used to divert water around the dam in emergency or flood conditions, but have never done so, and in practice are used only to drain water from the penstocks for maintenance. Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4 megawatt Pelton turbine-generators that power Hoover Dam's own operations is a maximum capacity of 2080 megawatts. The annual generation of Hoover Dam varies. The maximum net generation was 10.348 TWh in 1984, and the minimum since 1940 was 2.648 TWh in 1956. The average power generated was 4.2 TWh/year for 1947–2008. In 2015, the dam generated 3.6 TWh.
The amount of electricity generated by Hoover Dam has been decreasing along with the falling water level in Lake Mead due to the prolonged drought in the 2010s and high demand for the Colorado River's water. Lake Mead fell to a new record low elevation of on July 1, 2016 before beginning to rebound slowly. Under its original design, the dam would no longer be able to generate power once the water level fell below , which might have occurred in 2017 had water restrictions not been enforced. To lower the minimum power pool elevation from , five wide-head turbines, designed to work efficiently with less flow, were installed. Due to the low water levels, by 2014 it was providing power only during periods of peak demand. Water levels were maintained at over in 2018 and 2019.
Control of water was the primary concern in the building of the dam. Power generation has allowed the dam project to be self-sustaining: proceeds from the sale of power repaid the 50-year construction loan, and those revenues also finance the multimillion-dollar yearly maintenance budget. Power is generated in step with and only with the release of water in response to downstream water demands.
Lake Mead and downstream releases from the dam also provide water for both municipal and irrigation uses. Water released from the Hoover Dam eventually reaches several canals. The Colorado River Aqueduct and Central Arizona Project branch off Lake Havasu while the All-American Canal is supplied by the Imperial Dam. In total, water from Lake Mead serves 18 million people in Arizona, Nevada and California and supplies the irrigation of over of land.
In 2018, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) proposed a $3 billion pumped hydro storage project—a "battery" of sorts—that would use wind and solar power to recirculate water back up to Lake Mead from a pumping station downriver.
Electricity from the dam's powerhouse was originally sold pursuant to a fifty-year contract, authorized by Congress in 1934, which ran from 1937 to 1987. In 1984, Congress passed a new statute which set power allocations to southern California, Arizona, and Nevada from the dam from 1987 to 2017. The powerhouse was run under the original authorization by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison; in 1987, the Bureau of Reclamation assumed control. In 2011, Congress enacted legislation extending the current contracts until 2067, after setting aside 5% of Hoover Dam's power for sale to Native American tribes, electric cooperatives, and other entities. The new arrangement began on October 1, 2017.
The Bureau of Reclamation reports that the energy generated under the contracts ending in 2017 was allocated as follows:
The dam is protected against over-topping by two spillways. The spillway entrances are located behind each dam abutment, running roughly parallel to the canyon walls. The spillway entrance arrangement forms a classic side-flow weir with each spillway containing four and steel-drum gates. Each gate weighs and can be operated manually or automatically. Gates are raised and lowered depending on water levels in the reservoir and flood conditions. The gates cannot entirely prevent water from entering the spillways but can maintain an extra of lake level.
Water flowing over the spillways falls dramatically into , spillway tunnels before connecting to the outer diversion tunnels, and reentering the main river channel below the dam. This complex spillway entrance arrangement combined with the approximate elevation drop from the top of the reservoir to the river below was a difficult engineering problem and posed numerous design challenges. Each spillway's capacity of was empirically verified in post-construction tests in 1941.
The large spillway tunnels have only been used twice, for testing in 1941 and because of flooding in 1983. Both times, when inspecting the tunnels after the spillways were used, engineers found major damage to the concrete linings and underlying rock. The 1941 damage was attributed to a slight misalignment of the tunnel invert (or base), which caused cavitation, a phenomenon in fast-flowing liquids in which vapor bubbles collapse with explosive force. In response to this finding, the tunnels were patched with special heavy-duty concrete and the surface of the concrete was polished mirror-smooth. The spillways were modified in 1947 by adding flip buckets, which both slow the water and decrease the spillway's effective capacity, in an attempt to eliminate conditions thought to have contributed to the 1941 damage. The 1983 damage, also due to cavitation, led to the installation of aerators in the spillways. Tests at Grand Coulee Dam showed that the technique worked, in principle.
There are two lanes for automobile traffic across the top of the dam, which formerly served as the Colorado River crossing for U.S. Route 93. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, authorities expressed security concerns and the Hoover Dam Bypass project was expedited. Pending the completion of the bypass, restricted traffic was permitted over Hoover Dam. Some types of vehicles were inspected prior to crossing the dam while semi-trailer trucks, buses carrying luggage, and enclosed-box trucks over long were not allowed on the dam at all, and were diverted to U.S. Route 95 or Nevada State Routes 163/68. The four-lane Hoover Dam Bypass opened on October 19, 2010. It includes a composite steel and concrete arch bridge, the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, downstream from the dam.
With the opening of the bypass, through traffic is no longer allowed across Hoover Dam; dam visitors are allowed to use the existing roadway to approach from the Nevada side and cross to parking lots and other facilities on the Arizona side.
Hoover Dam opened for tours in 1937 after its completion, but following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it was closed to the public when the United States entered World War II, during which only authorized traffic, in convoys, was permitted. After the war, it reopened September 2, 1945, and by 1953, annual attendance had risen to 448,081. The dam closed on November 25, 1963, and March 31, 1969, days of mourning in remembrance of Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower. In 1995, a new visitors' center was built, and the following year, visits exceeded one million for the first time. The dam closed again to the public on September 11, 2001; modified tours were resumed in December and a new "Discovery Tour" was added the following year. Today, nearly a million people per year take the tours of the dam offered by the Bureau of Reclamation. Increased security concerns by the government have led to most of the interior structure being inaccessible to tourists. As a result, few of True's decorations can now be seen by visitors.
The changes in water flow and use caused by Hoover Dam's construction and operation have had a large impact on the Colorado River Delta. The construction of the dam has been implicated in causing the decline of this estuarine ecosystem. For six years after the construction of the dam, while Lake Mead filled, virtually no water reached the mouth of the river. The delta's estuary, which once had a freshwater-saltwater mixing zone stretching south of the river's mouth, was turned into an inverse estuary where the level of salinity was higher close to the river's mouth.
The Colorado River had experienced natural flooding before the construction of the Hoover Dam. The dam eliminated the natural flooding, threatening many species adapted to the flooding, including both plants and animals. The construction of the dam devastated the populations of native fish in the river downstream from the dam. Four species of fish native to the Colorado River, the Bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, Humpback chub, and Razorback sucker, are listed as endangered.
During the years of lobbying leading up to the passage of legislation authorizing the dam in 1928, the press generally referred to the dam as "Boulder Dam" or as "Boulder Canyon Dam", even though the proposed site had shifted to Black Canyon. The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 (BCPA) never mentioned a proposed name or title for the dam. The BCPA merely allows the government to "construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon".
When Secretary Wilbur spoke at the ceremony starting the building of the railway between Las Vegas and the dam site on September 17, 1930, he named the dam "Hoover Dam", citing a tradition of naming dams after Presidents, though none had been so honored during their terms of office. Wilbur justified his choice on the ground that Hoover was "the great engineer whose vision and persistence ... has done so much to make [the dam] possible". One writer complained in response that "the Great Engineer had quickly drained, ditched, and dammed the country."
After Hoover's election defeat in 1932 and the accession of the Roosevelt administration, Secretary Ickes ordered on May 13, 1933, that the dam be referred to as "Boulder Dam". Ickes stated that Wilbur had been imprudent in naming the dam after a sitting president, that Congress had never ratified his choice, and that it had long been referred to as Boulder Dam. Unknown to the general public, Attorney General Homer Cummings informed Ickes that Congress had indeed used the name "Hoover Dam" in five different bills appropriating money for construction of the dam. The official status this conferred to the name "Hoover Dam" had been noted on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado on December 12, 1930, but was likewise ignored by Ickes.
When Ickes spoke at the dedication ceremony on September 30, 1935, he was determined, as he recorded in his diary, "to try to nail down for good and all the name Boulder Dam." At one point in the speech, he spoke the words "Boulder Dam" five times within thirty seconds. Further, he suggested that if the dam were to be named after any one person, it should be for California Senator Hiram Johnson, a lead sponsor of the authorizing legislation. Roosevelt also referred to the dam as Boulder Dam, and the Republican-leaning "Los Angeles Times", which at the time of Ickes' name change had run an editorial cartoon showing Ickes ineffectively chipping away at an enormous sign "HOOVER DAM," reran it showing Roosevelt reinforcing Ickes, but having no greater success.
In the following years, the name "Boulder Dam" failed to fully take hold, with many Americans using both names interchangeably and mapmakers divided as to which name should be printed. Memories of the Great Depression faded, and Hoover to some extent rehabilitated himself through good works during and after World War II. In 1947, a bill passed both Houses of Congress unanimously restoring the name "Hoover Dam." Ickes, who was by then a private citizen, opposed the change, stating, "I didn't know Hoover was that small a man to take credit for something he had nothing to do with."
Hoover Dam was recognized as a National Civil Engineering Landmark in 1984. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985, cited for its engineering innovations.
Other sources | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14308 |
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or, in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels ("Tom Sawyer Abroad" and "Tom Sawyer, Detective") and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a direct sequel to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer".
The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist over 20 years before the work was published, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.
Perennially popular with readers, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. The book was widely criticized upon release because of its extensive use of coarse language. Throughout the 20th century, and despite arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist, criticism of the book continued due to both its perceived use of racial stereotypes and its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger".
In order of appearance:
The story begins in fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri (based on the actual town of Hannibal, Missouri), on the shore of the Mississippi River "forty to fifty years ago" (the novel having been published in 1884). Huckleberry "Huck" Finn (the protagonist and first-person narrator) and his friend, Thomas "Tom" Sawyer, have each come into a considerable sum of money as a result of their earlier adventures (detailed in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"). Huck explains how he is placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her stringent sister, Miss Watson, are attempting to "sivilize" him and teach him religion. Finding civilized life confining, his spirits are raised somewhat when Tom Sawyer helps him to escape one night past Miss Watson's slave Jim, to meet up with Tom's gang of self-proclaimed "robbers". Just as the gang's activities begin to bore Huck, he is suddenly interrupted by the reappearance of his shiftless father, "Pap", an abusive alcoholic. Knowing that Pap would only spend the money on alcohol, Huck is successful in preventing Pap from acquiring his fortune; however, Pap kidnaps Huck and leaves town with him.
Pap forcibly moves Huck to his isolated cabin in the woods along the Illinois shoreline. Because of Pap's drunken violence and imprisonment of Huck inside the cabin, Huck, during one of his father's absences, elaborately fakes his own death, escapes from the cabin, and sets off downriver. He settles comfortably, on Jackson's Island. Here, Huck reunites with Jim, Miss Watson's slave. Jim has also run away after he overheard Miss Watson planning to sell him "down the river" to presumably more brutal owners. Jim plans to make his way to the town of Cairo in Illinois, a free state, so that he can later buy the rest of his enslaved family's freedom. At first, Huck is conflicted about the sin and crime of supporting a runaway slave, but as the two talk in-depth and bond over their mutually held superstitions, Huck emotionally connects with Jim, who increasingly becomes Huck's close friend and guardian. After heavy flooding on the river, the two find a raft (which they keep) as well as an entire house floating on the river (Chapter 9: "The House of Death Floats By"). Entering the house to seek loot, Jim finds the naked body of a dead man lying on the floor, shot in the back. He prevents Huck from viewing the corpse.
To find out the latest news in town, Huck dresses as a girl and enters the house of Judith Loftus, a woman new to the area. Huck learns from her about the news of his own supposed murder; Pap was initially blamed, but since Jim ran away he is also a suspect and a reward for Jim's capture has initiated a manhunt. Mrs. Loftus becomes increasingly suspicious that Huck is a boy, finally proving it by a series of tests. Huck develops another story on the fly and explains his disguise as the only way to escape from an abusive foster family. Once he is exposed, she nevertheless allows him to leave her home without commotion, not realizing that he is the allegedly murdered boy they have just been discussing. Huck returns to Jim to tell him the news and that a search party is coming to Jackson's Island that very night. The two hastily load up the raft and depart.
After a while, Huck and Jim come across a grounded steamship. Searching it, they stumble upon two thieves discussing murdering a third, but they flee before being noticed. They are later separated in a fog, making Jim intensely anxious, and when they reunite, Huck tricks Jim into thinking he dreamed the entire incident. Jim is not deceived for long and is deeply hurt that his friend should have teased him so mercilessly. Huck becomes remorseful and apologizes to Jim, though his conscience troubles him about humbling himself to a black man.
Traveling onward, Huck and Jim's raft is struck by a passing steamship, again separating the two. Huck is given shelter on the Kentucky side of the river by the Grangerfords, an "aristocratic" family. He befriends Buck Grangerford, a boy about his age, and learns that the Grangerfords are engaged in a 30-year blood feud against another family, the Shepherdsons. The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons go to the same church, which ironically preaches brotherly love. The vendetta finally comes to a head when Buck's older sister elopes with a member of the Shepherdson clan. In the resulting conflict, all the Grangerford males from this branch of the family are shot and killed, including Buck, whose horrific murder Huck witnesses. He is immensely relieved to be reunited with Jim, who has since recovered and repaired the raft.
Near the Arkansas-Missouri-Tennessee border, Jim and Huck take two on-the-run grifters aboard the raft. The younger man, who is about thirty, introduces himself as the long-lost son of an English duke (the Duke of Bridgewater). The older one, about seventy, then trumps this outrageous claim by alleging that he himself is the Lost Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and rightful King of France. The "duke" and "king" soon become permanent passengers on Jim and Huck's raft, committing a series of confidence schemes upon unsuspecting locals all along their journey. To divert public suspicion from Jim, they pretend he is a runaway slave who has been recaptured, but later paint him blue and call him the "Sick Arab" so that he can move about the raft without bindings.
On one occasion, the swindlers advertise a three-night engagement of a play called "The Royal Nonesuch". The play turns out to be only a couple of minutes' worth of an absurd, bawdy sham. On the afternoon of the first performance, a drunk called Boggs is shot dead by a gentleman named Colonel Sherburn; a lynch mob forms to retaliate against Sherburn; and Sherburn, surrounded at his home, disperses the mob by making a defiant speech describing how true lynching should be done. By the third night of "The Royal Nonesuch", the townspeople prepare for their revenge on the duke and king for their money-making scam, but the two cleverly skip town together with Huck and Jim just before the performance begins.
In the next town, the two swindlers then impersonate brothers of Peter Wilks, a recently deceased man of property. To match accounts of Wilks's brothers, the king attempts an English accent and the duke pretends to be a deaf-mute while starting to collect Wilks's inheritance. Huck decides that Wilks's three orphaned nieces, who treat Huck with kindness, do not deserve to be cheated thus and so he tries to retrieve for them the stolen inheritance. In a desperate moment, Huck is forced to hide the money in Wilks's coffin, which is abruptly buried the next morning. The arrival of two new men who seem to be the real brothers throws everything into confusion, so that the townspeople decide to dig up the coffin in order to determine which are the true brothers, but, with everyone else distracted, Huck leaves for the raft, hoping to never see the duke and king again. Suddenly, though, the two villains return, much to Huck's despair. When Huck is finally able to get away a second time, he finds to his horror that the swindlers have sold Jim away to a family that intends to return him to his proper owner for the reward. Defying his conscience and accepting the negative religious consequences he expects for his actions—"All right, then, I'll go to hell!"—Huck resolves to free Jim once and for all.
Huck learns that Jim is being held at the plantation of Silas and Sally Phelps. The family's nephew, Tom, is expected for a visit at the same time as Huck's arrival, so Huck is mistaken for Tom and welcomed into their home. He plays along, hoping to find Jim's location and free him; in a surprising plot twist, it is revealed that the expected nephew is, in fact, Tom Sawyer. When Huck intercepts the real Tom Sawyer on the road and tells him everything, Tom decides to join Huck's scheme, pretending to be his own younger half-brother, Sid, while Huck continues pretending to be Tom. In the meantime, Jim has told the family about the two grifters and the new plan for "The Royal Nonesuch", and so the townspeople capture the duke and king, who are then tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.
Rather than simply sneaking Jim out of the shed where he is being held, Tom develops an elaborate plan to free him, involving secret messages, a hidden tunnel, snakes in a shed, a rope ladder sent in Jim's food, and other elements from adventure books he has read, including an anonymous note to the Phelps warning them of the whole scheme. During the actual escape and resulting pursuit, Tom is shot in the leg, while Jim remains by his side, risking recapture rather than completing his escape alone. Although a local doctor admires Jim's decency, he has Jim arrested in his sleep and returned to the Phelps. After this, events quickly resolve themselves. Tom's Aunt Polly arrives and reveals Huck and Tom's true identities to the Phelps family. Jim is revealed to be a free man: Miss Watson died two months earlier and freed Jim in her will, but Tom (who already knew this) chose not to reveal this information to Huck so that he could come up with an artful rescue plan for Jim. Jim tells Huck that Huck's father (Pap Finn) has been dead for some time (he was the dead man they found earlier in the floating house), and so Huck may now return safely to St. Petersburg. Huck declares that he is quite glad to be done writing his story, and despite Sally's plans to adopt and civilize him, he intends to flee west to Indian Territory.
"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" explores themes of race and identity. A complexity exists concerning Jim's character. While some scholars point out that Jim is good-hearted and moral, and he is not unintelligent (in contrast to several of the more negatively depicted white characters), others have criticized the novel as racist, citing the use of the word "nigger" and emphasizing the stereotypically "comic" treatment of Jim's lack of education, superstition and ignorance.
At the same time, readers should understand that this book was made during the mid 19th century during the Civil War so the term "nigger" was used quite often without punishment.
Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught. Twain, in his lecture notes, proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience" and goes on to describe the novel as "...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".
To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery within an ostensibly moral system, Twain has Huck's father enslave his son, isolate him, and beat him. When Huck escapes, he then immediately encounters Jim "illegally" doing the same thing. The treatments both of them receive are radically different, especially in an encounter with Mrs. Judith Loftus who takes pity on who she presumes to be a runaway apprentice, Huck, yet boasts about her husband sending the hounds after a runaway slave, Jim.
Some scholars discuss Huck's own character, and the novel itself, in the context of its relation to African-American culture as a whole. John Alberti quotes Shelley Fisher Fishkin, who writes in her 1990s book "Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices", "by limiting their field of inquiry to the periphery," white scholars "have missed the ways in which African-American voices shaped Twain's creative imagination at its core." It is suggested that the character of Huckleberry Finn illustrates the correlation, and even interrelatedness, between white and black culture in the United States.
The original illustrations were done by E.W. Kemble, at the time a young artist working for "Life" magazine. Kemble was hand-picked by Twain, who admired his work. Hearn suggests that Twain and Kemble had a similar skill, writing that:
Whatever he may have lacked in technical grace ... Kemble shared with the greatest illustrators the ability to give even the minor individual in a text his own distinct visual personality; just as Twain so deftly defined a full-rounded character in a few phrases, so too did Kemble depict with a few strokes of his pen that same entire personage.
As Kemble could afford only one model, most of his illustrations produced for the book were done by guesswork. When the novel was published, the illustrations were praised even as the novel was harshly criticized. E.W. Kemble produced another set of illustrations for Harper's and the American Publishing Company in 1898 and 1899 after Twain lost the copyright.
Twain initially conceived of the work as a sequel to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" that would follow Huckleberry Finn through adulthood. Beginning with a few pages he had removed from the earlier novel, Twain began work on a manuscript he originally titled "Huckleberry Finn's Autobiography." Twain worked on the manuscript off and on for the next several years, ultimately abandoning his original plan of following Huck's development into adulthood. He appeared to have lost interest in the manuscript while it was in progress, and set it aside for several years. After making a trip down the Hudson River, Twain returned to his work on the novel. Upon completion, the novel's title closely paralleled its predecessor's: "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade)".
Mark Twain composed the story in pen on notepaper between 1876 and 1883. Paul Needham, who supervised the authentication of the manuscript for Sotheby's books and manuscripts department in New York in 1991, stated, "What you see is [Clemens'] attempt to move away from pure literary writing to dialect writing". For example, Twain revised the opening line of "Huck Finn" three times. He initially wrote, "You will not know about me", which he changed to, "You do not know about me", before settling on the final version, "You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'; but that ain't no matter." The revisions also show how Twain reworked his material to strengthen the characters of Huck and Jim, as well as his sensitivity to the then-current debate over literacy and voting.
A later version was the first typewritten manuscript delivered to a printer.
Demand for the book spread outside of the United States. "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was eventually published on December 10, 1884, in Canada and the United Kingdom, and on February 18, 1885, in the United States. The illustration on page 283 became a point of issue after an engraver, whose identity was never discovered, made a last-minute addition to the printing plate of Kemble's picture of old Silas Phelps, which drew attention to Phelps' groin. Thirty thousand copies of the book had been printed before the obscenity was discovered. A new plate was made to correct the illustration and repair the existing copies.
In 1885, the Buffalo Public Library's curator, James Fraser Gluck, approached Twain to donate the manuscript to the library. Twain did so. Later it was believed that half of the pages had been misplaced by the printer. In 1991, the missing first half turned up in a steamer trunk owned by descendants of Gluck's. The library successfully claimed possession and, in 1994, opened the Mark Twain Room to showcase the treasure.
In relation to the literary climate at the time of the book's publication in 1885, Henry Nash Smith describes the importance of Mark Twain's already established reputation as a "professional humorist", having already published over a dozen other works. Smith suggests that while the "dismantling of the decadent Romanticism of the later nineteenth century was a necessary operation," "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" illustrated "previously inaccessible resources of imaginative power, but also made vernacular language, with its new sources of pleasure and new energy, available for American prose and poetry in the twentieth century."
While it was clear that the publication of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was controversial from the outset, Norman Mailer, writing in "The New York Times" in 1984, concluded that Twain's novel was not initially "too unpleasantly regarded." In fact, Mailer writes: "the critical climate could hardly anticipate T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway's encomiums 50 years later," reviews that would remain longstanding in the American consciousness.
Alberti suggests that the academic establishment responded to the book's challenges both dismissively and with confusion. During Twain's time, and today, defenders of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" "lump all nonacademic critics of the book together as extremists and ‘censors' thus equating the complaints about the book's ‘coarseness' from the genteel bourgeois trustees of the Concord Public Library in the 1880s with more recent objections based on race and civil rights."
Upon issue of the American edition in 1885 several libraries banned it from their shelves. The early criticism focused on what was perceived as the book's crudeness. One incident was recounted in the newspaper the "Boston Transcript":
The Concord (Mass.) Public Library committee has decided to exclude Mark Twain's latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The library and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.
Writer Louisa May Alcott criticized the book's publication as well, saying that if Twain "[could not] think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them".
Twain later remarked to his editor, "Apparently, the Concord library has condemned Huck as 'trash and only suitable for the slums.' This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!"
In 1905, New York's Brooklyn Public Library also banned the book due to "bad word choice" and Huck's having "not only itched but scratched" within the novel, which was considered obscene. When asked by a Brooklyn librarian about the situation, Twain sardonically replied: I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.
Many subsequent critics, Ernest Hemingway among them, have deprecated the final chapters, claiming the book "devolves into little more than minstrel-show satire and broad comedy" after Jim is detained. Although Hemingway declared, "All modern American literature comes from" "Huck Finn", and hailed it as "the best book we've had", he cautioned, "If you must read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys . That is the real end. The rest is just cheating." Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Powers states in his Twain biography ("Mark Twain: A Life") that "Huckleberry Finn endures as a consensus masterpiece despite these final chapters", in which Tom Sawyer leads Huck through elaborate machinations to rescue Jim. However, Ralph Ellison argues that "Hemingway missed completely the structural, symbolic and moral necessity for that part of the plot in which the boys rescue Jim. Yet it is precisely this part which gives the novel its significance."
In his introduction to "The Annotated Huckleberry Finn", Michael Patrick Hearn writes that Twain "could be uninhibitedly vulgar", and quotes critic William Dean Howells, a Twain contemporary, who wrote that the author's "humor was not for most women". However, Hearn continues by explaining that "the reticent Howells found nothing in the proofs of Huckleberry Finn so offensive that it needed to be struck out".
Much of modern scholarship of "Huckleberry Finn" has focused on its treatment of race. Many Twain scholars have argued that the book, by humanizing Jim and exposing the fallacies of the racist assumptions of slavery, is an attack on racism. Others have argued that the book falls short on this score, especially in its depiction of Jim. According to Professor Stephen Railton of the University of Virginia, Twain was unable to fully rise above the stereotypes of black people that white readers of his era expected and enjoyed, and, therefore, resorted to minstrel show-style comedy to provide humor at Jim's expense, and ended up confirming rather than challenging late-19th century racist stereotypes.
In one instance, the controversy caused a drastically altered interpretation of the text: in 1955, CBS tried to avoid controversial material in a televised version of the book, by deleting all mention of slavery and omitting the character of Jim entirely.
Because of this controversy over whether "Huckleberry Finn" is racist or anti-racist, and because the word "nigger" is frequently used in the novel (a commonly used word in Twain's time which has since become vulgar and taboo), many have questioned the appropriateness of teaching the book in the U.S. public school system—this questioning of the word "nigger" is illustrated by a school administrator of Virginia in 1982 calling the novel the "most grotesque example of racism I've ever seen in my life". According to the American Library Association, "Huckleberry Finn" was the fifth most frequently challenged book in the United States during the 1990s.
There have been several more recent cases involving protests for the banning of the novel. In 2003, high school student Calista Phair and her grandmother, Beatrice Clark, in Renton, Washington, proposed banning the book from classroom learning in the Renton School District, though not from any public libraries, because of the word "nigger". Clark filed a request with the school district in response to the required reading of the book, asking for the novel to be removed from the English curriculum. The two curriculum committees that considered her request eventually decided to keep the novel on the 11th grade curriculum, though they suspended it until a panel had time to review the novel and set a specific teaching procedure for the novel's controversial topics.
In 2009, a Washington state high school teacher called for the removal of the novel from a school curriculum. The teacher, John Foley, called for replacing "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" with a more modern novel. In an opinion column that Foley wrote in the "Seattle Post Intelligencer", he states that all "novels that use the ‘N-word' repeatedly need to go." He states that teaching the novel is not only unnecessary, but difficult due to the offensive language within the novel with many students becoming uncomfortable at "just hear[ing] the N-word." He views this change as "common sense," with Obama's election into office as a sign that Americans "are ready for a change," and that by removing these books from the reading lists, they would be following this change.
In 2016, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was removed from a public school district in Virginia, along with the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird", due to their use of racial slurs.
Publishers have made their own attempts at easing the controversy by way of releasing editions of the book with the word "nigger" replaced by less controversial words. A 2011 edition of the book, published by NewSouth Books, employed the word "slave" (although being incorrectly addressed to a freed man), and did not use the term "Injun." Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben said he hoped the edition would be more friendly for use in classrooms, rather than have the work banned outright from classroom reading lists due to its language.
According to publisher Suzanne La Rosa "At NewSouth, we saw the value in an edition that would help the works find new readers. If the publication sparks good debate about how language impacts learning or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain's works will be more emphatically fulfilled." Another scholar, Thomas Wortham, criticized the changes, saying the new edition "doesn't challenge children to ask, 'Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?'"
Two similarly expurged editions of the book were published in 2011. The Hipster Huckleberry Finn employed the word "hipster". The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Robotic Edition employed the word "robot", and included modified illustrations in which Jim was replaced with a robot character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14311 |
Harpsichord
A harpsichord (, , , , ) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual and harpsichords may have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a lute stop, which simulates the sound of a plucked lute. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it.
The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. The harpsichord was widely used in Renaissance and Baroque music, both as an accompaniment instrument and as a soloing instrument. During the Baroque era, the harpsichord was a standard part of the continuo group, the musicians who performed the basso continuo part that acted as the foundation for many musical pieces in this era. During the late 18th century, with the development of the fortepiano (and then the increasing use of the piano in the 19th century) the harpsichord gradually disappeared from the musical scene (except in opera, where it continued to be used to accompany recitative). In the 20th century, it made a resurgence, being used in historically informed performances of older music, in new compositions, and, in rare cases, in certain styles of popular music (e.g., Baroque pop).
The harpsichord was most likely invented in the late Middle Ages. By the 16th century, harpsichord makers in Italy were making lightweight instruments with low string tension. A different approach was taken in the Southern Netherlands starting in the late 16th century, notably by the Ruckers family. Their harpsichords used a heavier construction and produced a more powerful and distinctive tone. They included the first harpsichords with two keyboards, used for transposition.
The Flemish instruments served as the model for 18th-century harpsichord construction in other nations. In France, the double keyboards were adapted to control different choirs of strings, making a more musically flexible instrument. Instruments from the peak of the French tradition, by makers such as the Blanchet family and Pascal Taskin, are among the most widely admired of all harpsichords, and are frequently used as models for the construction of modern instruments. In England, the Kirkman and Shudi firms produced sophisticated harpsichords of great power and sonority. German builders extended the sound repertoire of the instrument by adding sixteen foot and two foot choirs; these instruments have recently served as models for modern builders.
In the late 18th century the harpsichord was supplanted by the piano and almost disappeared from view for most of the 19th century: an exception was its continued use in opera for accompanying recitative, but the piano sometimes displaced it even there. Twentieth-century efforts to revive the harpsichord began with instruments that used piano technology, with heavy strings and metal frames. Starting in the middle of the 20th century, ideas about harpsichord making underwent a major change, when builders such as Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, and Martin Skowroneck sought to re-establish the building traditions of the Baroque period. Harpsichords of this type of historically informed building practice dominate the current scene.
Harpsichords vary in size and shape, but all have the same basic mechanism. The player depresses a key that rocks over a pivot in the middle of its length. The other end of the key lifts a jack (a long strip of wood) that holds a small plectrum (a wedge-shaped piece of quill, often made of plastic in the 21st century), which plucks the string. When the player releases the key, the far end returns to its rest position, and the jack falls back; the plectrum, mounted on a tongue mechanism that can swivel backwards away from the string, passes the string without plucking it again. As the key reaches its rest position, a felt damper atop the jack stops the string's vibrations. These basic principles are explained in detail below.
Each string is wound around a "tuning pin", normally at the end of the string closer to the player. When rotated with a wrench or tuning hammer, the tuning pin adjusts the tension so that the string sounds the correct pitch. Tuning pins are held tightly in holes drilled in the "pinblock" or "wrestplank", an oblong hardwood plank. Proceeding from the tuning pin, a string next passes over the "nut", a sharp edge that is made of hardwood and is normally attached to the wrestplank. The section of the string beyond the nut forms its "vibrating length", which is plucked and creates sound.
At the other end of its vibrating length, the string passes over the bridge, another sharp edge made of hardwood. As with the nut, the horizontal position of the string along the bridge is determined by a vertical metal pin inserted into the bridge, against which the string rests. The bridge itself rests on a "soundboard", a thin panel of wood usually made of spruce, fir or—in some Italian harpsichords—cypress. The soundboard efficiently transmits the vibrations of the strings into vibrations in the air; without a soundboard, the strings would produce only a very feeble sound. A string is attached at its far end by a loop to a "hitchpin" that secures it to the case.
While many harpsichords have one string per note, more elaborate harpsichords can have two or more strings for each note. When there are multiple strings for each note, these additional strings are called "choirs" of strings. This provides two advantages: the ability to vary volume and ability to vary tonal quality. Volume is increased when the mechanism of the instrument is set up by the player (see below) so that the press of a single key plucks more than one string. Tonal quality can be varied in two ways. First, different choirs of strings can be designed to have distinct tonal qualities, usually by having one set of strings plucked closer to the nut, which emphasizes the higher harmonics, and produces a "nasal" sound quality. The mechanism of the instrument, called "stops" (following the use of the term in pipe organs) permits the player to select one choir or the other. Second, having one key pluck two strings at once changes not just volume but also tonal quality; for instance, when two strings tuned to the same pitch are plucked simultaneously, the note is not just louder but also richer and more complex.
A particularly vivid effect is obtained when the strings plucked simultaneously are an octave apart. This is normally heard by the ear not as two pitches but as one: the sound of the higher string is blended with that of the lower one, and the ear hears the lower pitch, enriched in tonal quality by the additional strength in the upper harmonics of the note sounded by the higher string.
When describing a harpsichord it is customary to specify its choirs of strings, often called its disposition. To describe the pitch of the choirs of strings, pipe organ terminology is used. Strings at eight foot pitch (8') sound at the normal expected pitch, strings at four foot pitch (4') sound an octave higher. Harpsichords occasionally include a sixteen-foot (16') choir (one octave lower than eight-foot) or a two-foot (2') choir (two octaves higher; quite rare). When there are multiple choirs of strings, the player is often able to control which choirs sound. This is usually done by having a set of jacks for each choir, and a mechanism for "turning off" each set, often by moving the upper register (through which the jacks slide) sideways a short distance, so that their plectra miss the strings. In simpler instruments this is done by manually moving the registers, but as the harpsichord evolved, builders invented levers, knee levers and pedal mechanisms to make it easier to change registration.
Harpsichords with more than one keyboard (this usually means two keyboards, stacked one on top of the other in a step-wise fashion, as with pipe organs) provide flexibility in selecting which strings play, since each manual can be set to control the plucking of a different set of strings. This means that a player can have, say, an 8' manual and a 4' manual ready for use, enabling him to switch between them to obtain higher (or lower) pitches or different tone. In addition, such harpsichords often have a mechanism (the "coupler") that couples manuals together, so that a single manual plays both sets of strings.
The most flexible system is the French "shove coupler", in which the lower manual slides forward and backward. In the backward position, "dogs" attached to the upper surface of the lower manual engage the lower surface of the upper manual's keys. Depending on choice of keyboard and coupler position, the player can select any of the sets of jacks labeled in "figure 4" as A, or B and C, or all three.
The English "dogleg" jack system (also used in Baroque Flanders) does not require a coupler. The jacks labeled A in Figure 5 have a "dogleg" shape that permits either keyboard to play A. If the player wishes to play the upper 8' from the upper manual only and not from the lower manual, a stop handle disengages the jacks labeled A and engages instead an alternative row of jacks called "lute stop" (not shown in the Figure). A lute stop is used to imitate the gentle sound of a plucked lute.
Some early harpsichords used a short octave for the lowest register. The rationale behind this system was that the low notes F and G are seldom needed in early music. Deep bass notes typically form the root of the chord, and F and G chords were seldom used at this time. In contrast, low C and D, both roots of very common chords, are sorely missed if a harpsichord with lowest key E is tuned to match the keyboard layout. When scholars specify the pitch range of instruments with this kind of short octave, they write "C/E", meaning that the lowest note is a C, played on a key that normally would sound E.
The wooden case holds in position all of the important structural members: pinblock, soundboard, hitchpins, keyboard, and the jack action. It usually includes a solid bottom, and also internal bracing to maintain its form without warping under the tension of the strings. Cases vary greatly in weight and sturdiness: Italian harpsichords are often of light construction; heavier construction is found in the later Flemish instruments and those derived from them.
The case also gives the harpsichord its external appearance and protects the instrument. A large harpsichord is, in a sense, a piece of furniture, as it stands alone on legs and may be styled in the manner of other furniture of its place and period. Early Italian instruments, on the other hand, were so light in construction that they were treated rather like a violin: kept for storage in a protective outer case, and played after taking it out of its case and placing it on a table. Such tables were often quite high – until the late 18th century people usually played standing up. Eventually, harpsichords came to be built with just a single case, though an intermediate stage also existed: the "false inner–outer", which for purely aesthetic reasons was built to look as if the outer case contained an inner one, in the old style. Even after harpsichords became self-encased objects, they often were supported by separate stands, and some modern harpsichords have separate legs for improved portability.
Many harpsichords have a lid that can be raised, a cover for the keyboard, and a music stand for holding sheet music and scores.
Harpsichords have been decorated in a great many different ways: with plain buff paint (e.g. some Flemish instruments), with paper printed with patterns, with leather or velvet coverings, with chinoiserie, or occasionally with highly elaborate painted artwork.
The virginal is a smaller and simpler rectangular form of the harpsichord having only one string per note; the strings run parallel to the keyboard, which is on the long side of the case.
A spinet is a harpsichord with the strings set at an angle (usually about 30 degrees) to the keyboard. The strings are too close together for the jacks to fit between them. Instead, the strings are arranged in pairs, and the jacks are in the larger gaps between the pairs. The two jacks in each gap face in opposite directions, and each plucks a string adjacent to the gap.
The English diarist Samuel Pepys mentions his "tryangle" several times. This was not the percussion instrument that we call triangle today; rather, it was a name for octave-pitched spinets, which were triangular in shape.
A clavicytherium is a harpsichord with the soundboard and strings mounted vertically facing the player, the same space-saving principle as an upright piano. In a clavicytherium, the jacks move horizontally without the assistance of gravity, so that clavicytherium actions are more complex than those of other harpsichords.
Ottavini are small spinets or virginals at four-foot pitch. Harpsichords at octave pitch were more common in the early Renaissance, but lessened in popularity later on. However, the ottavino remained very popular as a domestic instrument in Italy until the 19th century. In the Low Countries, an ottavino was commonly paired with an 8' virginals, encased in a small cubby under the soundboard of the larger instrument. The ottavino could be removed and placed on top of the virginal, making, in effect, a double manual instrument. These are sometimes called 'mother-and-child' or 'double' virginals.
The archicembalo, built in the 16th century, had an unusual keyboard layout, designed to accommodate variant tuning systems demanded by compositional practice and theoretical experimentation. More common were instruments with split sharps, also designed to accommodate the tuning systems of the time.
The folding harpsichord was an instrument that could be folded up to make it more compact, thus facilitating travelling with it.
Pedal harpsichord: Occasionally, harpsichords were built which included another set or sets of strings underneath and played by foot-operated pedal keyboard which trigger the plucking of the lowest-pitched keys of the harpsichord. Although there are no known extant pedal harpsichords from the 18th century or before, from Adlung (1758): the lower set of usually 8' strings "...is built like an ordinary harpsichord, but with an extent of two octaves only. The jacks are similar, but they will benefit from being arranged back to back, since the two [bass] octaves take as much space as four in an ordinary harpsichord Prior to 1980 when Keith Hill introduced his design for a pedal harpsichord, most pedal harpsichords were built based on the designs of extant pedal pianos from the 19th century, in which the instrument is as wide as the pedalboard. While these were mostly intended as practice instruments for organists, a few pieces are believed to have been written specifically for the pedal harpsichord. However, the set of pedals can augment the sound from any piece performed on the instrument, as demonstrated on several albums by E. Power Biggs.
On the whole, earlier harpsichords have smaller ranges than later ones, although there are many exceptions. The largest harpsichords have a range of just over five octaves, and the smallest have under four. Usually, the shortest keyboards were given extended range in the bass with a "short octave". The traditional pitch range for a 5-octave instrument is F1–F6 (FF–f‴).
Tuning pitch is often taken to be A4 = 415 Hz, roughly a semitone lower than the modern standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. An accepted exception is for French baroque repertoire, which is often performed with a = 392 Hz, approximately a semitone lower again. See Jean-Philippe Rameau's "Treatise on Harmony" (1722) [Dover Publications], Book One, chapter five, for insight into French baroque tuning; "Since most of these semitones are absolutely necessary in the tuning of organs and other similar instruments, the following chromatic system has been drawn up." Tuning an instrument nowadays usually starts with setting an A; historically it would commence from a C or an F.
Some modern instruments are built with keyboards that can shift sideways, allowing the player to align the mechanism with strings at either A = 415 Hz or A = 440 Hz. If a tuning other than equal temperament is used, the instrument requires retuning once the keyboard is shifted.
The great bulk of the standard repertoire for the harpsichord was written during its first historical flowering, the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
The first music written specifically for solo harpsichord was published around the early 16th century. Composers who wrote solo harpsichord music were numerous during the whole Baroque era in European countries including Italy, Germany, England and France. Solo harpsichord compositions included dance suites, fantasias, and fugues. Among the most famous composers who wrote for the harpsichord were the members of English virginal school of the late Renaissance, notably William Byrd (ca. 1540–1623). In France, a great number of highly characteristic solo works were created and compiled into four books of "ordres" by François Couperin (1668–1733). Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) began his career in Italy but wrote most of his solo harpsichord works in Spain; his most famous work is his series of 555 harpsichord sonatas. Perhaps the most celebrated composers who wrote for the harpsichord were Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1759), who composed numerous suites for harpsichord, and especially J. S. Bach (1685–1750), whose solo works (for instance, the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations), continue to be performed very widely, often on the piano. Bach was also a pioneer of the harpsichord concerto, both in works designated as such, and in the harpsichord part of his Fifth Brandenburg Concerto.
Two of the most prominent composers of the Classical era, Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), wrote harpsichord music. For both, the instrument featured in the earlier period of their careers,
Through the 19th century, the harpsichord was almost completely supplanted by the piano. In the 20th century, composers returned to the instrument, as they sought out variation in the sounds available to them. Under the influence of Arnold Dolmetsch, the harpsichordists Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (1872–1951) and in France, Wanda Landowska (1879–1959), were at the forefront of the instrument's renaissance. Concertos for the instrument were written by Francis Poulenc (the "Concert champêtre", 1927–28), and Manuel de Falla. Elliott Carter's "Double Concerto" is scored for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras. For a detailed account of music composed for the revived harpsichord, see Contemporary harpsichord.
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Hair
Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.
The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and fine vellus hair. Most common interest in hair is focused on hair growth, hair types, and hair care, but hair is also an important biomaterial primarily composed of protein, notably alpha-keratin.
Attitudes towards different forms of hair, such as hairstyles and hair removal, vary widely across different cultures and historical periods, but it is often used to indicate a person's personal beliefs or social position, such as their age, sex, or religion.
The word "hair" usually refers to two distinct structures:
Hair fibers have a structure consisting of several layers, starting from the outside:
Each strand of hair is made up of the medulla, cortex, and cuticle. The innermost region, the medulla, is not always present and is an open, unstructured region. The highly structural and organized cortex, or second of three layers of the hair, is the primary source of mechanical strength and water uptake. The cortex contains melanin, which colors the fiber based on the number, distribution and types of melanin granules. The shape of the follicle determines the shape of the cortex, and the shape of the fiber is related to how straight or curly the hair is. People with straight hair have round hair fibers. Oval and other shaped fibers are generally more wavy or curly. The cuticle is the outer covering. Its complex structure slides as the hair swells and is covered with a single molecular layer of lipid that makes the hair repel water. The diameter of human hair varies from . There are two million small, tubular glands and sweat glands that produce watery fluids that cool the body by evaporation. The glands at the opening of the hair produce a fatty secretion that lubricates the hair.
Hair growth begins inside the hair follicle. The only "living" portion of the hair is found in the follicle. The hair that is visible is the hair shaft, which exhibits no biochemical activity and is considered "dead". The base of a hair's root (the "bulb") contains the cells that produce the hair shaft. Other structures of the hair follicle include the oil producing sebaceous gland which lubricates the hair and the arrector pili muscles, which are responsible for causing hairs to stand up. In humans with little body hair, the effect results in goose bumps.
The "root of the hair" ends in an enlargement, the "hair bulb", which is whiter in color and softer in texture than the shaft, and is lodged in a follicular involution of the epidermis called the hair follicle. The bulb of hair consists of fibrous connective tissue, glassy membrane, external root sheath, internal root sheath composed of epithelium stratum (Henle's layer) and granular stratum (Huxley's layer), cuticle, cortex and medulla.
All natural hair colors are the result of two types of hair pigments. Both of these pigments are melanin types, produced inside the hair follicle and packed into granules found in the fibers. Eumelanin is the dominant pigment in brown hair and black hair, while pheomelanin is dominant in red hair. Blond hair is the result of having little pigmentation in the hair strand. Gray hair occurs when melanin production decreases or stops, while poliosis is hair (and often the skin to which the hair is attached), typically in spots, that never possessed melanin at all in the first place, or ceased for natural genetic reasons, generally, in the first years of life.
Hair grows everywhere on the external body except for mucus membranes and glabrous skin, such as that found on the palms of the hands, soles of the feet, and lips.
Hair follows a specific growth cycle with three distinct and concurrent phases: anagen, catagen, and telogen phases; all three occur simultaneously throughout the body. Each has specific characteristics that determine the length of the hair.
The body has different types of hair, including vellus hair and androgenic hair, each with its own type of cellular construction. The different construction gives the hair unique characteristics, serving specific purposes, mainly, warmth and protection.
Hair exists in a variety of textures. Three main aspects of hair texture are the curl pattern, volume, and consistency. The derivations of hair texture are not fully understood. All mammalian hair is composed of keratin, so the make-up of hair follicles is not the source of varying hair patterns. There are a range of theories pertaining to the curl patterns of hair. Scientists have come to believe that the shape of the hair shaft has an effect on the curliness of the individual's hair. A very round shaft allows for fewer disulfide bonds to be present in the hair strand. This means the bonds present are directly in line with one another, resulting in straight hair.
The flatter the hair shaft becomes, the curlier hair gets, because the shape allows more cysteines to become compacted together resulting in a bent shape that, with every additional disulfide bond, becomes curlier in form. As the hair follicle shape determines curl pattern, the hair follicle size determines thickness. While the circumference of the hair follicle expands, so does the thickness of the hair follicle. An individual's hair volume, as a result, can be thin, normal, or thick. The consistency of hair can almost always be grouped into three categories: fine, medium, and coarse. This trait is determined by the hair follicle volume and the condition of the strand. Fine hair has the smallest circumference, coarse hair has the largest circumference, and medium hair is anywhere between the other two. Coarse hair has a more open cuticle than thin or medium hair causing it to be the most porous.
There are various systems that people use to classify their curl patterns. Being knowledgeable of an individual's hair type is a good start to knowing how to take care of one's hair. There is not just one method to discovering one's hair type. Additionally it is possible, and quite normal to have more than one kind of hair type, for instance having a mixture of both type 3a & 3b curls.
The Andre Walker Hair Typing System is the most widely used system to classify hair. The system was created by the hairstylist of Oprah Winfrey, Andre Walker. According to this system there are four types of hair: straight, wavy, curly, kinky.
This is a method which classifies the hair by curl pattern, hair-strand thickness and overall hair volume.
Many mammals have fur and other hairs that serve different functions. Hair provides thermal regulation and camouflage for many animals; for others it provides signals to other animals such as warnings, mating, or other communicative displays; and for some animals hair provides defensive functions and, rarely, even offensive protection. Hair also has a sensory function, extending the sense of touch beyond the surface of the skin. Guard hairs give warnings that may trigger a recoiling reaction.
While humans have developed clothing and other means of keeping warm, the hair found on the head serves primarily as a source of heat insulation and cooling (when sweat evaporates from soaked hair) as well as protection from ultra-violet radiation exposure. The function of hair in other locations is debated. Hats and coats are still required while doing outdoor activities in cold weather to prevent frostbite and hypothermia, but the hair on the human body does help to keep the internal temperature regulated. When the body is too cold, the arrector pili muscles found attached to hair follicles stand up, causing the hair in these follicles to do the same. These hairs then form a heat-trapping layer above the epidermis. This process is formally called piloerection, derived from the Latin words 'pilus' ('hair') and 'erectio' ('rising up'), but is more commonly known as 'having goose bumps' in English. This is more effective in other mammals whose fur fluffs up to create air pockets between hairs that insulate the body from the cold. The opposite actions occur when the body is too warm; the arrector muscles make the hair lie flat on the skin which allows heat to leave.
In some mammals, such as hedgehogs and porcupines, the hairs have been modified into hard spines or quills. These are covered with thick plates of keratin and serve as protection against predators. Thick hair such as that of the lion's mane and grizzly bear's fur do offer some protection from physical damages such as bites and scratches.
Displacement and vibration of hair shafts are detected by hair follicle nerve receptors and nerve receptors within the skin. Hairs can sense movements of air as well as touch by physical objects and they provide sensory awareness of the presence of ectoparasites. Some hairs, such as eyelashes, are especially sensitive to the presence of potentially harmful matter.
The eyebrows provide moderate protection to the eyes from dirt, sweat and rain. They also play a key role in non-verbal communication by displaying emotions such as sadness, anger, surprise and excitement. In many other mammals, they contain much longer, whisker-like hairs that act as tactile sensors.
The eyelash grows at the edges of the eyelid and protects the eye from dirt. The eyelash is to humans, camels, horses, ostriches etc., what whiskers are to cats; they are used to sense when dirt, dust, or any other potentially harmful object is too close to the eye. The eye reflexively closes as a result of this sensation.
Hair has its origins in the common ancestor of mammals, the synapsids, about 300 million years ago. It is currently unknown at what stage the synapsids acquired mammalian characteristics such as body hair and mammary glands, as the fossils only rarely provide direct evidence for soft tissues. Skin impression of the belly and lower tail of a pelycosaur, possibly "Haptodus" shows the basal synapsid stock bore transverse rows of rectangular scutes, similar to those of a modern crocodile. An exceptionally well-preserved skull of "Estemmenosuchus", a therapsid from the Upper Permian, shows smooth, hairless skin with what appears to be glandular depressions, though as a semi-aquatic species it might not have been particularly useful to determine the integument of terrestrial species. The oldest undisputed known fossils showing unambiguous imprints of hair are the Callovian (late middle Jurassic) "Castorocauda" and several contemporary haramiyidans, both near-mammal cynodonts. More recently, studies on terminal Permian Russian coprolites may suggest that non-mammalian synapsids from that era had fur. If this is the case, these are the oldest hair remnants known, showcasing that fur occurred as far back as the latest Paleozoic.
Some modern mammals have a special gland in front of each orbit used to preen the fur, called the harderian gland. Imprints of this structure are found in the skull of the small early mammals like "Morganucodon", but not in their cynodont ancestors like "Thrinaxodon".
The hairs of the fur in modern animals are all connected to nerves, and so the fur also serves as a transmitter for sensory input. Fur could have evolved from sensory hair (whiskers). The signals from this sensory apparatus is interpreted in the neocortex, a chapter of the brain that expanded markedly in animals like "Morganucodon" and "Hadrocodium". The more advanced therapsids could have had a combination of naked skin, whiskers, and scutes. A full pelage likely did not evolve until the therapsid-mammal transition. The more advanced, smaller therapsids could have had a combination of hair and scutes, a combination still found in some modern mammals, such as rodents and the opossum.
The high interspecific variability of the size, color, and microstructure of hair often enables the identification of species based on single hair filaments.
In varying degrees most mammals have some skin areas without natural hair. On the human body, glabrous skin is found on the ventral portion of the fingers, palms, soles of feet and lips, which are all parts of the body most closely associated with interacting with the world around us, as are the labia minora and glans penis. There are four main types of mechanoreceptors in the glabrous skin of humans: Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel's discs, and Ruffini corpuscles.
The naked mole-rat ("Heterocephalus glaber") has evolved skin lacking in general, pelagic hair covering, yet has retained long, very sparsely scattered tactile hairs over its body. Glabrousness is a trait that may be associated with neoteny.
The general hairlessness of humans in comparison to related species may be due to loss of functionality in the pseudogene KRTHAP1 (which helps produce keratin) in the human lineage about 240,000 years ago. On an individual basis, mutations in the gene HR can lead to complete hair loss, though this is not typical in humans. Humans may also lose their hair as a result of hormonal imbalance due to drugs or pregnancy.
In order to comprehend why humans are essentially hairless, it is essential to understand that mammalian body hair is not merely an aesthetic characteristic; it protects the skin from wounds, bites, heat, cold, and UV radiation. Additionally, it can be used as a communication tool and as a camouflage. To this end, it can be concluded that benefits stemming from the loss of human body hair must be great enough to outweigh the loss of these protective functions by nakedness.
Humans are the only primate species that have undergone significant hair loss and of the approximately 5000 extant species of mammal, only a handful are effectively hairless. This list includes elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, walruses, some species of pigs, whales and other cetaceans, and naked mole rats. Most mammals have light skin that is covered by fur, and biologists believe that early human ancestors started out this way also. Dark skin probably evolved after humans lost their body fur, because the naked skin was vulnerable to the strong UV radiation as explained in the Out of Africa hypothesis. Therefore, evidence of the time when human skin darkened has been used to date the loss of human body hair, assuming that the dark skin was needed after the fur was gone.
It was expected that dating the split of the ancestral human louse into two species, the head louse and the pubic louse, would date the loss of body hair in human ancestors. However, it turned out that the human pubic louse does not descend from the ancestral human louse, but from the gorilla louse, diverging 3.3 million years ago. This suggests that humans had lost body hair (but retained head hair) and developed thick pubic hair prior to this date, were living in or close to the forest where gorillas lived, and acquired pubic lice from butchering gorillas or sleeping in their nests.
The evolution of the body louse from the head louse, on the other hand, places the date of clothing much later, some 100,000 years ago.
The sweat glands in humans could have evolved to spread from the hands and feet as the body hair changed, or the hair change could have occurred to facilitate sweating. Horses and humans are two of the few animals capable of sweating on most of their body, yet horses are larger and still have fully developed fur. In humans, the skin hairs lie flat in hot conditions, as the arrector pili muscles relax, preventing heat from being trapped by a layer of still air between the hairs, and increasing heat loss by convection.
Another hypothesis for the thick body hair on humans proposes that Fisherian runaway sexual selection played a role (as well as in the selection of long head hair), (see types of hair and vellus hair), as well as a much larger role of testosterone in men. Sexual selection is the only theory thus far that explains the sexual dimorphism seen in the hair patterns of men and women. On average, men have more body hair than women. Males have more terminal hair, especially on the face, chest, abdomen, and back, and females have more vellus hair, which is less visible. The halting of hair development at a juvenile stage, vellus hair, would also be consistent with the neoteny evident in humans, especially in females, and thus they could have occurred at the same time. This theory, however, has significant holdings in today's cultural norms. There is no evidence that sexual selection would proceed to such a drastic extent over a million years ago when a full, lush coat of hair would most likely indicate health and would therefore be more likely to be selected "for", not against, and not all human populations today have sexual dimorphism in body hair.
A further hypothesis is that human hair was reduced in response to ectoparasites. The "ectoparasite" explanation of modern human nakedness is based on the principle that a hairless primate would harbor fewer parasites. When our ancestors adopted group-dwelling social arrangements roughly 1.8 mya, ectoparasite loads increased dramatically. Early humans became the only one of the 193 primate species to have fleas, which can be attributed to the close living arrangements of large groups of individuals. While primate species have communal sleeping arrangements, these groups are always on the move and thus are less likely to harbor ectoparasites. Because of this, selection pressure for early humans would favor decreasing body hair because those with thick coats would have more lethal-disease-carrying ectoparasites and would thereby have lower fitness.
Another view is proposed by James Giles, who attempts to explain hairlessness as evolved from the relationship between mother and child, and as a consequence of bipedalism. Giles also connects romantic love to hairlessness.
Another hypothesis is that humans' use of fire caused or initiated the reduction in human hair.
Evolutionary biologists suggest that the genus "Homo" arose in East Africa approximately 2.5 million years ago. They devised new hunting techniques. The higher protein diet led to the evolution of larger body and brain sizes. Jablonski postulates that increasing body size, in conjunction with intensified hunting during the day at the equator, gave rise to a greater need to rapidly expel heat. As a result, humans evolved the ability to sweat: a process which was facilitated by the loss of body hair.
Another factor in human evolution that also occurred in the prehistoric past was a preferential selection for neoteny, particularly in females. The idea that adult humans exhibit certain neotenous (juvenile) features, not evinced in the great apes, is about a century old. Louis Bolk made a long list of such traits, and Stephen Jay Gould published a short list in "Ontogeny and Phylogeny". In addition, paedomorphic characteristics in women are often acknowledged as desirable by men in developed countries. For instance, vellus hair is a juvenile characteristic. However, while men develop longer, coarser, thicker, and darker terminal hair through sexual differentiation, women do not, leaving their vellus hair visible.
Jablonski asserts head hair was evolutionarily advantageous for pre-humans to retain because it protected the scalp as they walked upright in the intense African (equatorial) UV light. While some might argue that, by this logic, humans should also express hairy shoulders because these body parts would putatively be exposed to similar conditions, the protection of the head, the seat of the brain that enabled humanity to become one of the most successful species on the planet (and which also is very vulnerable at birth) was arguably a more urgent issue (axillary hair in the underarms and groin were also retained as signs of sexual maturity). Sometime during the gradual process by which "Homo erectus" began a transition from furry skin to the naked skin expressed by Homo sapiens, hair texture putatively gradually changed from straight hair (the condition of most mammals, including humanity's closest cousins—chimpanzees) to Afro-textured hair or 'kinky' (i.e. tightly coiled). This argument assumes that curly hair better impedes the passage of UV light into the body relative to straight hair (thus curly or coiled hair would be particularly advantageous for light-skinned hominids living at the equator).
It is substantiated by Iyengar's findings (1998) that UV light can enter into straight human hair roots (and thus into the body through the skin) via the hair shaft. Specifically, the results of that study suggest that this phenomenon resembles the passage of light through fiber optic tubes (which do not function as effectively when kinked or sharply curved or coiled). In this sense, when hominids (i.e. Homo Erectus) were gradually losing their straight body hair and thereby exposing the initially pale skin underneath their fur to the sun, straight hair would have been an adaptive liability. By inverse logic, later, as humans traveled farther from Africa and/or the equator, straight hair may have (initially) evolved to aid the entry of UV light into the body during the transition from dark, UV-protected skin to paler skin.
Some conversely believe that tightly coiled hair that grows into a typical Afro-like formation would have greatly reduced the ability of the head and brain to cool because although African people's hair is much less dense than its European counterpart's, in the intense sun the effective 'woolly hat' that such hair produced would have been a disadvantage. However, such anthropologists as Nina Jablonski oppositely argue about this hair texture. Specifically, Jablonski's assertions suggest that the adjective "woolly" in reference to Afro-hair is a misnomer in connoting the high heat insulation derivable from the true wool of sheep. Instead, the relatively sparse density of Afro-hair, combined with its springy coils actually results in an airy, almost sponge-like structure that in turn, Jablonski argues, more likely facilitates an increase in the circulation of cool air onto the scalp. Further, wet Afro-hair does not stick to the neck and scalp unless totally drenched and instead tends to retain its basic springy puffiness because it less easily responds to moisture and sweat than straight hair does. In this sense, the trait may enhance comfort levels in intense equatorial climates more than straight hair (which, on the other hand, tends to naturally fall over the ears and neck to a degree that provides slightly enhanced comfort levels in cold climates relative to tightly coiled hair).
Furthermore, some interpret the ideas of Charles Darwin as suggesting that some traits, such as hair texture, were so arbitrary to human survival that the role natural selection played was trivial. Hence, they argue in favor of his suggestion that sexual selection may be responsible for such traits. However, inclinations towards deeming hair texture "adaptively trivial" may root in certain cultural value judgments more than objective logic. In this sense the possibility that hair "texture" may have played an adaptively significant role cannot be completely eliminated from consideration. In fact, while the sexual selection hypothesis cannot be ruled out, the asymmetrical distribution of this trait vouches for environmental influence. Specifically, if hair texture were simply the result of adaptively arbitrary human aesthetic preferences, one would expect that the global distribution of the various hair textures would be fairly random. Instead, the distribution of Afro-hair is strongly skewed toward the equator.
Further, it is notable that the most pervasive expression of this hair texture can be found in sub-Saharan Africa; a region of the world that abundant genetic and paleo-anthropological evidence suggests, was the relatively recent (≈200,000-year-old) point of origin for modern humanity. In fact, although genetic findings (Tishkoff, 2009) suggest that sub-Saharan Africans are the most genetically diverse continental group on Earth, Afro-textured hair approaches ubiquity in this region. This points to a strong, long-term selective pressure that, in stark contrast to most other regions of the genomes of sub-Saharan groups, left little room for genetic variation at the determining loci. Such a pattern, again, does not seem to support human sexual aesthetics as being the sole or primary cause of this distribution.
A group of studies have recently shown that genetic patterns at the EDAR locus, a region of the modern human genome that contributes to hair texture variation among most individuals of East Asian descent, support the hypothesis that (East Asian) straight hair likely developed in this branch of the modern human lineage subsequent to the original expression of tightly coiled natural afro-hair. Specifically, the relevant findings indicate that the EDAR mutation coding for the predominant East Asian 'coarse' or thick, straight hair texture arose within the past ≈65,000 years, which is a time frame that covers from the earliest of the 'Out of Africa' migrations up to now.
Ringworm is a fungal disease that targets hairy skin.
Premature greying of hair is another condition that results in greying before the age of 20 years in Whites, before 25 years in Asians, and before 30 years in Africans.
Hair care involves the hygiene and cosmetology of hair including hair on the scalp, facial hair (beard and moustache), pubic hair and other body hair. Hair care routines differ according to an individual's culture and the physical characteristics of one's hair. Hair may be colored, trimmed, shaved, plucked, or otherwise removed with treatments such as waxing, sugaring, and threading.
Depilation is the removal of hair from the surface of the skin. This can be achieved through methods such as shaving. Epilation is the removal of the entire hair strand, including the part of the hair that has not yet left the follicle. A popular way to epilate hair is through waxing.
Shaving is accomplished with bladed instruments, such as razors. The blade is brought close to the skin and stroked over the hair in the desired area to cut the terminal hairs and leave the skin feeling smooth. Depending upon the rate of growth, one can begin to feel the hair growing back within hours of shaving. This is especially evident in men who develop a five o'clock shadow after having shaved their faces. This new growth is called stubble. Stubble typically appears to grow back thicker because the shaved hairs are blunted instead of tapered off at the end, although the hair never actually grows back thicker.
Waxing involves using a sticky wax and strip of paper or cloth to pull hair from the root. Waxing is the ideal hair removal technique to keep an area hair-free for long periods of time. It can take three to five weeks for waxed hair to begin to resurface again. Hair in areas that have been waxed consistently is known to grow back finer and thinner, especially compared to hair that has been shaved with a razor.
Laser hair removal is a cosmetic method where a small laser beam pulses selective heat on dark target matter in the area that causes hair growth without harming the skin tissue. This process is repeated several times over the course of many months to a couple of years with hair regrowing less frequently until it finally stops; this is used as a more permanent solution to waxing or shaving. Laser removal is practiced in many clinics along with many at-home products.
Because the hair on one's head is normally longer than other types of body hair, it is cut with scissors or clippers. People with longer hair will most often use scissors to cut their hair, whereas shorter hair is maintained using a trimmer. Depending on the desired length and overall health of the hair, periods without cutting or trimming the hair can vary.
Cut hair may be used in wigs. Global imports of hair in 2010 was worth $US 1.24 billion.
Hair has great social significance for human beings.
It can grow on most external areas of the human body, except on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet (among other areas). Hair is most noticeable on most people in a small number of areas, which are also the ones that are most commonly trimmed, plucked, or shaved. These include the face, ears, head, eyebrows, legs, and armpits, as well as the pubic region. The highly visible differences between male and female body and facial hair are a notable secondary sex characteristic.
The world's longest documented hair belongs to Xie Qiuping (China), at 5.627 m (18 ft 5.54 in) when measured on 8 May 2004. She has been growing her hair since 1973, from the age of 13.
Healthy hair indicates health and youth (important in evolutionary biology). Hair color and texture can be a sign of ethnic ancestry. Facial hair is a sign of puberty in men. White hair is a sign of age or genetics, which may be concealed with hair dye (not easily for some), although many prefer to assume it (especially if it is a poliosis characteristic of the person since childhood). Male pattern baldness is a sign of age, which may be concealed with a toupee, hats, or religious and cultural adornments. Although drugs and medical procedures exist for the treatment of baldness, many balding men simply shave their heads. In early modern China, the queue was a male hairstyle worn by the Manchus from central Manchuria and the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty; hair on the front of the head was shaved off above the temples every ten days, mimicking male-pattern baldness, and the rest of the hair braided into a long pigtail.
Hairstyle may be an indicator of group membership. During the English Civil War, the followers of Oliver Cromwell decided to crop their hair close to their head, as an act of defiance to the curls and ringlets of the king's men. This led to the Parliamentary faction being nicknamed Roundheads. Recent isotopic analysis of hair is helping to shed further light on sociocultural interaction, giving information on food procurement and consumption in the 19th century
. Having bobbed hair was popular among the flappers in the 1920s as a sign of rebellion against traditional roles for women. Female art students known as the "cropheads" also adopted the style, notably at the Slade School in London, England. Regional variations in hirsutism cause practices regarding hair on the arms and legs to differ. Some religious groups may follow certain rules regarding hair as part of religious observance. The rules often differ for men and women.
Many subcultures have hairstyles which may indicate an unofficial membership. Many hippies, metalheads, and Indian sadhus have long hair, as well many older indie kids. Many punks wear a hairstyle known as a mohawk or other spiked and dyed hairstyles; skinheads have short-cropped or completely shaved heads. Long stylized bangs were very common for emos, scene kids and younger indie kids in the 2000s and early 2010s, among people of both genders.
Heads were shaved in concentration camps, and head-shaving has been used as punishment, especially for women with long hair. The shaven head is common in military haircuts, while Western monks are known for the tonsure. By contrast, among some Indian holy men, the hair is worn extremely long.
In the time of Confucius (5th century BCE), the Chinese grew out their hair and often tied it, as a symbol of filial piety.
Regular hairdressing in some cultures is considered a sign of wealth or status. The dreadlocks of the Rastafari movement were despised early in the movement's history. In some cultures, having one's hair cut can symbolize a liberation from one's past, usually after a trying time in one's life. Cutting the hair also may be a sign of mourning.
Tightly coiled hair in its natural state may be worn in an Afro. This hairstyle was once worn among African Americans as a symbol of racial pride. Given that the coiled texture is the natural state of some African Americans' hair, or perceived as being more "African", this simple style is now often seen as a sign of self-acceptance and an affirmation that the beauty norms of the (eurocentric) dominant culture are not absolute. It is important to note that African Americans as a whole have a variety of hair textures, as they are not an ethnically homogeneous group, but an ad-hoc of different racial admixtures.
The film "Easy Rider" (1969) includes the assumption that the two main characters could have their long hairs forcibly shaved with a rusty razor when jailed, symbolizing the intolerance of some conservative groups toward members of the counterculture. At the conclusion of the Oz obscenity trials in the UK in 1971, the defendants had their heads shaved by the police, causing public outcry. During the appeal trial, they appeared in the dock wearing wigs. A case where a 14-year-old student was expelled from school in Brazil in the mid-2000s, allegedly because of his fauxhawk haircut, sparked national debate and legal action resulting in compensation.
Women's hair may be hidden using headscarves, a common part of the "hijab" in Islam and a symbol of modesty required for certain religious rituals in Eastern Orthodoxy. Russian Orthodox Church requires all married women to wear headscarves inside the church; this tradition is often extended to all women, regardless of marital status. Orthodox Judaism also commands the use of scarves and other head coverings for married women for modesty reasons. Certain Hindu sects also wear head scarves for religious reasons. Sikhs have an obligation not to cut hair (a Sikh cutting hair becomes 'apostate' which means fallen from religion) and men keep it tied in a bun on the head, which is then covered appropriately using a turban. Multiple religions, both ancient and contemporary, require or advise one to allow their hair to become dreadlocks, though people also wear them for fashion. For men, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and other religious groups have at various times recommended or required the covering of the head and sections of the hair of men, and some have dictates relating to the cutting of men's facial and head hair. Some Christian sects throughout history and up to modern times have also religiously proscribed the cutting of women's hair. For some Sunni madhabs, the donning of a kufi or topi is a form of sunnah. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14313 |
Hawker Siddeley Harrier
The Hawker Siddeley Harrier is a British military aircraft. It was the first of the Harrier Jump Jet series of aircraft and was developed in the 1960s as the first operational ground attack and reconnaissance aircraft with vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) capabilities and the only truly successful V/STOL design of that era. The Harrier was developed directly from the Hawker Siddeley Kestrel prototype aircraft, following the cancellation of a more advanced supersonic aircraft, the Hawker Siddeley P.1154. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) ordered the Harrier GR.1 and GR.3 variants in the late 1960s. It was exported to the United States as the AV-8A, for use by the US Marine Corps (USMC), in the 1970s.
During the Harrier's service the RAF positioned the bulk of the aircraft in West Germany to defend against a potential invasion of Western Europe by the Warsaw Pact forces; the unique abilities of the Harrier allowed the RAF to disperse their forces away from vulnerable airbases. The USMC used their Harriers primarily for close air support, operating from amphibious assault ships, and, if needed, forward operating bases. Harrier squadrons saw several deployments overseas. The Harrier's ability to operate with minimal ground facilities and very short runways allowed it to be used at locations unavailable to other fixed-wing aircraft. The Harrier received criticism for having a high accident rate and for a time-consuming maintenance process.
In the 1970s the British Aerospace Sea Harrier was developed from the Harrier for use by the Royal Navy (RN) on s. The Sea Harrier and the Harrier fought in the 1982 Falklands War, in which the aircraft proved to be crucial and versatile. The RN Sea Harriers provided fixed-wing air defence while the RAF Harriers focused on ground-attack missions in support of the advancing British land force. The Harrier was also extensively redesigned as the AV-8B Harrier II and British Aerospace Harrier II by the team of McDonnell Douglas and British Aerospace. The innovative Harrier family and its Rolls-Royce Pegasus engines with thrust vectoring nozzles have generated long-term interest in V/STOL aircraft.
The Harrier's design was derived from the Hawker P.1127. Prior to developing the P.1127 Hawker Aircraft had been working on a replacement for the Hawker Hunter, the Hawker P.1121. The P.1121 was cancelled after the release of the British Government's 1957 Defence White Paper, which advocated a policy shift away from manned aircraft and towards missiles. This policy resulted in the termination of the majority of aircraft development projects then underway for the British military. Hawker sought to quickly move on to a new project and became interested in Vertical Take Off/Landing (VTOL) aircraft, which did not need runways. According to Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine this interest may have been stimulated by the presence of Air Staff Requirement 345, which sought a V/STOL ground attack fighter for the Royal Air Force.
Design work on the P.1127 was formally started in 1957 by Sir Sydney Camm, Ralph Hooper of Hawker Aircraft, and Stanley Hooker (later Sir Stanley Hooker) of the Bristol Engine Company. The close cooperation between Hawker, the airframe company, and Bristol, the engine company, was viewed by project engineer Gordon Lewis as one of the key factors that allowed the development of the Harrier to continue in spite of technical obstacles and political setbacks. Rather than using rotors or a direct jet thrust, the P.1127 had an innovative vectored thrust turbofan engine, the Pegasus. The Pegasus I was rated at of thrust and first ran in September 1959. A contract for two development prototypes was signed in June 1960 and the first flight followed in October 1960. Of the six prototypes built, three crashed, including one during an air display at the 1963 Paris Air Show.
In 1961 the United Kingdom, the United States and West Germany jointly agreed to purchase nine aircraft developed from the P.1127, for the evaluation of the performance and potential of V/STOL aircraft. These aircraft were built by Hawker Siddeley and were designated "Kestrel FGA.1" by the UK. The Kestrel was strictly an evaluation aircraft and to save money the Pegasus 5 engine was not fully developed as intended, only having of thrust instead of the projected . The Tripartite Evaluation Squadron numbered ten pilots; four each from the UK and US and two from West Germany. The Kestrel's first flight took place on 7 March 1964.
A total of 960 sorties had been made during the trials, including 1,366 takeoffs and landings, by the end of evaluations in November 1965. One aircraft was destroyed in an accident and six others were transferred to the United States, assigned the US designation "XV-6A Kestrel", and underwent further testing. The two remaining British-based Kestrels were assigned to further trials and experimentation at RAE Bedford with one being modified to use the uprated Pegasus 6 engine.
At the time of the development of the P.1127 Hawker and Bristol had also undertaken considerable development work on a supersonic version, the Hawker Siddeley P.1154, to meet a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) requirement issued for such an aircraft. The design used a single Bristol Siddeley BS100 engine with four swivelling nozzles, in a fashion similar to the P.1127, and required the use of plenum chamber burning (PCB) to achieve supersonic speeds. The P.1154 won the competition to meet the requirement against strong competition from other aircraft manufacturers such as Dassault Aviation's Mirage IIIV. The French government did not accept the decision and withdrew; the NATO requirement was cancelled shortly after in 1965.
The Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy planned to develop and introduce the supersonic P.1154 independently of the cancelled NATO requirement. This ambition was complicated by the conflicting requirements between the two services—while the RAF wanted a low-level supersonic strike aircraft, the Navy sought a twin-engine air defence fighter. Following the election of the Labour Government of 1964 the P.1154 was cancelled, as the Royal Navy had already begun procurement of the McDonnell Douglas Phantom II and the RAF placed a greater importance on the BAC TSR-2's ongoing development. Work continued on elements of the project, such as a supersonic PCB-equipped Pegasus engine, with the intention of developing a future Harrier variant for the decades following cancellation.
Following the collapse of the P.1154's development the RAF began considering a simple upgrade of the existing subsonic Kestrel and issued Requirement ASR 384 for a V/STOL ground attack jet. Hawker Siddeley received an order for six pre-production aircraft in 1965, designated "P.1127 (RAF)", of which the first made its maiden flight on 31 August 1966. An order for 60 production aircraft, designated as Harrier GR.1, was received in early 1967. The aircraft was named after the Harrier, a small bird of prey.
The Harrier GR.1 made its first flight on 28 December 1967. It officially entered service with the RAF on 1 April 1969 and the Harrier Conversion Unit at RAF Wittering received its first aircraft on 18 April. The aircraft were built in two factories—one in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, and the other at Dunsfold Aerodrome, Surrey—and underwent initial testing at Dunsfold. The ski-jump technique for launching Harriers from Royal Navy aircraft carriers was extensively trialled at RNAS Yeovilton from 1977. Following these tests ski-jumps were added to the flight decks of all RN carriers from 1979 onwards, in preparation for the new variant for the navy, the Sea Harrier.
In the late 1960s the British and American governments held talks on producing Harriers in the United States. Hawker Siddeley and McDonnell Douglas formed a partnership in 1969 in preparation for American production, but Congressman Mendel Rivers and the House Appropriations Committee held that it would be cheaper to produce the AV-8A on the pre-existing production lines in the United Kingdom—hence all AV-8A Harriers were purchased from Hawker Siddeley. Improved Harrier versions with better sensors and more powerful engines were developed in later years. The USMC received 102 AV-8A and 8 TAV-8A Harriers between 1971 and 1976.
The Harrier was typically used as a ground attack aircraft, though its manoeuvrability also allows it to effectively engage other aircraft at short ranges. The Harrier is powered by a single Pegasus turbofan engine mounted in the fuselage. The engine is fitted with two air intakes and four vectoring nozzles for directing the thrust generated: two for the bypass flow and two for the jet exhaust. Several small reaction nozzles are also fitted, in the nose, tail and wingtips, for the purpose of balancing during vertical flight. It has two landing gear units on the fuselage and two outrigger landing gear units, one near each wing tip. The Harrier is equipped with four wing and three fuselage pylons for carrying a variety of weapons and external fuel tanks.
The Kestrel and the Harrier were similar in appearance, though approximately 90 per cent of the Kestrel's airframe was redesigned for the Harrier. The Harrier was powered by the more powerful Pegasus 6 engine; new air intakes with auxiliary blow-in doors were added to produce the required airflow at low speed. Its wing was modified to increase area and the landing gear was strengthened. Several hardpoints were installed, two under each wing and one underneath the fuselage; two ADEN cannon gun pods could also be fitted to the underside of the fuselage. The Harrier was outfitted with updated avionics to replace the basic systems used in the Kestrel; a navigational-attack system incorporating an inertial navigation system, originally for the P.1154, was installed and information was presented to the pilot by a head-up display and a moving map display.
The Harrier's VTOL abilities allowed it to be deployed from very small prepared clearings or helipads as well as normal airfields. It was believed that, in a high-intensity conflict, air bases would be vulnerable and likely to be quickly knocked out. The capability to scatter Harrier squadrons to dozens of small "alert pads" on the front lines was highly prized by military strategists and the USMC procured the aircraft because of this ability. Hawker Siddeley noted that STOL operation provided additional benefits over VTOL operation, saving fuel and allowing the aircraft to carry more ordnance.
"I still don't believe the Harrier. Think of the millions that have been spent on VTO in America and Russia, and quite a bit in Europe, and yet the only vertical take-off aircraft which you can call a success is the Harrier. When I saw the Harrier hovering and flying backwards under control, I reckoned I'd seen everything. And it's not difficult to fly." -Thomas Sopwith
The Harrier, while serving for many decades in various forms, has been criticised on multiple issues; in particular a high accident rate, though Nordeen notes that several conventional single-engine strike aircraft like the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and LTV A-7 Corsair II had worse accident rates. The "Los Angeles Times" reported in 2003 that the Harrier "...has amassed the highest major accident rate of any military plane now in service. Forty-five Marines have died in 148 noncombat accidents". Colonel Lee Buland of the USMC declared the maintenance of a Harrier to be a "challenge"; the need to remove the wings before performing most work upon the engine, including engine replacements, meant the Harrier required considerable man-hours in maintenance, more than most aircraft. Buland noted however that the maintenance difficulties were unavoidable in order to create a V/STOL aircraft.
The Pegasus turbofan jet engine, developed in tandem with the P.1127 then the Harrier, was designed specifically for V/STOL manoeuvring. Bristol Siddeley developed it from their earlier conventional Orpheus turbofan engine as the core with Olympus compressor blades for the fan. The engine's thrust is directed through the four rotatable nozzles. The engine is equipped for water injection to increase thrust and takeoff performance in hot and high altitude conditions; in normal V/STOL operations the system would be used in landing vertically with a heavy weapons load. The water injection function had originally been added following the input of US Air Force Colonel Bill Chapman, who worked for the Mutual Weapons Development Team. Water injection was necessary in order to generate maximum thrust, if only for a limited time, and was typically used during landing, especially in high ambient temperatures.
The aircraft was initially powered by the Pegasus 6 engine which was replaced by the more powerful Pegasus 11 during the Harrier GR.1 to GR.3 upgrade process. The primary focus throughout the engine's development was on achieving high performance with as little weight as possible, tempered by the amount of funding that was available. Following the Harrier's entry to service the focus switched to improving reliability and extending engine life; a formal joint US–UK Pegasus Support Program operated for many years and spent a £3-million annual budget to develop engine improvements. Several variants have been released; the latest is the Pegasus 11–61 (Mk 107), which provides 23,800 lbf (106 kN) thrust, more than any previous engine.
The Harrier has been described by pilots as "unforgiving". The aircraft is capable of both forward flight (where it behaves in the manner of a typical fixed-wing aircraft above its stall speed), as well as VTOL and STOL manoeuvres (where the traditional lift and control surfaces are useless) requiring skills and technical knowledge usually associated with helicopters. Most services demand great aptitude and extensive training for Harrier pilots, as well as experience in piloting both types of aircraft. Trainee pilots are often drawn from highly experienced and skilled helicopter pilots.
In addition to normal flight controls, the Harrier has a lever for controlling the direction of the four vectoring nozzles. It is viewed by senior RAF officers as a significant design success, that to enable and control the aircraft's vertical flight required only a single lever added in the cockpit. For horizontal flight, the nozzles are directed rearwards by shifting the lever to the forward position; for short or vertical takeoffs and landings, the lever is pulled back to point the nozzles downwards.
The Harrier has two control elements not found in conventional fixed-wing aircraft: the thrust vector and the reaction control system. The thrust vector refers to the slant of the four engine nozzles and can be set between 0° (horizontal, pointing directly backwards) and 98° (pointing down and slightly forwards). The 90° vector is normally deployed for VTOL manoeuvring. The reaction control is achieved by manipulating the control stick and is similar in action to the cyclic control of a helicopter. While irrelevant during forward flight mode, these controls are essential during VTOL and STOL manoeuvres.
The wind direction is a critical factor in VTOL manoeuvres. The procedure for vertical takeoff involves facing the aircraft into the wind. The thrust vector is set to 90° and the throttle is brought up to maximum, at which point the aircraft leaves the ground. The throttle is trimmed until a hover state is achieved at the desired altitude. The short-takeoff procedure involves proceeding with normal takeoff and then applying a thrust vector (less than 90°) at a runway speed below normal takeoff speed; usually the point of application is around . For lower takeoff speeds the thrust vector is greater. The reaction control system involves a thrusters at key points in the aircraft's fuselage and nose, also the wingtips. Thrust from the engine can be temporarily syphoned to control and correct the aircraft's pitch and roll during vertical flight.
Rotating the vectored thrust nozzles into a forward-facing position during normal flight is called vectoring in forward flight, or "VIFFing". This is a dog-fighting tactic, allowing for more sudden braking and higher turn rates. Braking could cause a chasing aircraft to overshoot and present itself as a target for the Harrier it was chasing, a combat technique formally developed by the USMC for the Harrier in the early 1970s.
The two largest users of the Harrier were the Royal Air Force and the United States Marine Corps (USMC). The exported model of the aircraft operated by the USMC was designated the AV-8A Harrier, which was broadly similar to the RAF's Harrier GR.1. Changes included the removal of all magnesium components, which corroded quickly at sea, and the integration of American radios and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems; furthermore the outer pylons, unlike the RAF aircraft, were designed from delivery to be equipped with self-defence AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missiles. Most of the AV-8As had been delivered with the more powerful Pegasus engine used in the GR.3 instead of the one used in the earlier GR.1. Two-seat Harriers were operated for training purposes; the body was stretched and a taller tail fin added. The RAF trained in the T.2 and T.4 versions, while T.4N and T.8 were training versions the Navy's Sea Harrier, with appropriate fittings. The US and Spain flew the TAV-8A and TAV-8S, respectively.
All RAF GR.1s and the initial AV-8As were fitted with the Ferranti FE541 inertial navigation/attack suite, but these were replaced in the USMC Harriers by a simpler Interface/Weapon Aiming Computer to aid quick turnaround between missions. The Martin-Baker ejection seats were also replaced by the Stencel SEU-3A in the American aircraft. The RAF had their GR.1 aircraft upgraded to the GR.3 standard, which featured improved sensors, a nose-mounted laser tracker, the integration of electronic countermeasure (ECM) systems and a further upgraded Pegasus Mk 103. The USMC upgraded their AV-8As to the AV-8C configuration; this programme involved the installation of ECM equipment and adding a new inertial navigation system to the aircraft's avionics. Substantial changes were the Lift Improvement Devices, to increase VTOL performance; at the same time several airframe components were restored or replaced to extend the life of the aircraft. Spain's Harriers, designated AV-8S or VA.1 Matador for the single-seater and TAV-8S or VAE.1 for the two-seater, were almost identical to USMC Harriers differing only in the radios fitted.
The Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (FAA) operated a substantially modified variant of the Harrier, the British Aerospace Sea Harrier. The Sea Harrier was intended for multiple naval roles and was equipped with radar and Sidewinder missiles for air combat duties as part of fleet air defence. The Sea Harrier was also fitted with navigational aids for carrier landings, modifications to reduce corrosion by seawater and a raised bubble-canopy covered cockpit for better visibility. The aircraft were later equipped to use AIM-120 AMRAAM beyond-visual-range anti-aircraft missiles and the more advanced Blue Vixen radar for longer range air-to-air combat, as well as Sea Eagle missiles for conducting anti-ship missions.
The McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II is the latest Harrier variant, a second-generation series to replace the first generation of Harrier jets already in service; all the above variants of the Harrier have mainly been retired with the Harrier II taking their place in the RAF, USMC and FAA. In the 1970s the United Kingdom considered two options for replacing their existing Harriers: joining McDonnell Douglas (MDD) in developing the BAE Harrier II, or the independent development of a "Big Wing" Harrier. This proposal would have increased the wing area from , allowing for significant increases in weapons load and internal fuel reserves. The option of cooperation with MDD was chosen in 1982 over the more risky isolated approach.
The first RAF squadron to be equipped with the Harrier GR.1, No. 1 Squadron, started to convert to the aircraft at RAF Wittering in April 1969. An early demonstration of the Harrier's capabilities was the participation of two aircraft in the "Daily Mail" Transatlantic Air Race in May 1969, flying between St Pancras railway station, London and downtown Manhattan with the use of aerial refuelling. The Harrier completed the journey in 6 hours 11 minutes. Two Harrier squadrons were established in 1970 at the RAF's air base in Wildenrath to be part of its air force in Germany; another squadron was formed there two years later. In 1977, these three squadrons were moved forward to the air base at Gütersloh, closer to the prospective front line in the event of an outbreak of a European war. One of the squadrons was disbanded and its aircraft distributed between the other two.
In RAF service, the Harrier was used in close air support (CAS), reconnaissance, and other ground-attack roles. The flexibility of the Harrier led to a long-term heavy deployment in West Germany as a conventional deterrent and potential strike weapon against Soviet aggression; from camouflaged rough bases the Harrier was expected to launch attacks on advancing armour columns from East Germany. Harriers were also deployed to bases in Norway and Belize, a former British colony. No. 1 Squadron was specifically earmarked for Norwegian operations in the event of war, operating as part of Allied Forces Northern Europe. The Harrier's capabilities were necessary in the Belize deployment, as it was the only RAF combat aircraft capable of safely operating from the airport's short runway; British forces had been stationed in Belize for several years due to tensions over a Guatemalan claim to Belizean territory; the forces were withdrawn in 1993, two years after Guatemala recognized the independence of Belize.
In the Falklands War in 1982, 10 Harrier GR.3s of No. 1 Squadron operated from the aircraft carrier . As the RAF Harrier GR.3 had not been designed for naval service, the 10 aircraft had to be rapidly modified prior to the departure of the task force. Special sealants against corrosion were applied and a new deck-based inertial guidance aid was devised to allow the RAF Harrier to land on a carrier as easily as the Sea Harrier. Transponders to guide aircraft back to the carriers during night-time operations were also installed, along with flares and chaff dispensers.
As there was little space on the carriers, two requisitioned merchant container ships, and , were modified with temporary flight decks and used to carry Harriers and helicopters to the South Atlantic. The Harrier GR.3s focused on providing close air support to the ground forces on the Falklands and attacking Argentine positions; suppressing enemy artillery was often a high priority. Sea Harriers were also used in the war, primarily conducting fleet air defence and combat air patrols against the threat of attacking Argentine fighters. However, both Sea Harriers and Harrier GR.3s were used in ground-attack missions against the main airfield and runway at Stanley.
If most of the Sea Harriers had been lost, the GR.3s would have replaced them in air patrol duties, even though the Harrier GR.3 was not designed for air defence operations; as such the GR.3s quickly had their outboard weapons pylons modified to take air-to-air Sidewinder missiles. From 10 to 24 May 1982, prior to British forces landing in the Falklands, a detachment of three GR.3s provided air defence for Ascension Island until three F-4 Phantom IIs arrived to take on this responsibility. During the Falklands War, the greatest threats to the Harriers were deemed to be surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and small arms fire from the ground. In total, four Harrier GR.3s and six Sea Harriers were lost to ground fire, accidents, or mechanical failure. More than 2,000 Harrier sorties were conducted during the conflict—equivalent to six sorties per day per aircraft.
Following the Falklands war, British Aerospace explored the Skyhook, a new technique to operate Harriers from smaller ships. Skyhook would have allowed the launching and landing of Harriers from smaller ships by holding the aircraft in midair by a crane; secondary cranes were to hold weapons for rapid re-arming. This would potentially have saved fuel and allowed for operations in rougher seas. The system was marketed to foreign customers, and it was speculated that Skyhook could be applied to large submarines such as the Russian , but the system attracted no interest.
The first generation of Harriers did not see further combat with the RAF after the Falklands War, although they continued to serve for years afterwards. As a deterrent against further Argentine invasion attempts, No. 1453 Flight RAF was deployed to the Falkland Islands from August 1983 to June 1985. However the second generation Harrier IIs saw action in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The first generation Hawker Siddeley airframes were replaced by the improved Harrier II, which had been developed jointly between McDonnell Douglas and British Aerospace.
The United States Marine Corps began showing a significant interest in the aircraft around the time the first RAF Harrier squadron was established in 1969, and this motivated Hawker Siddeley to further develop the aircraft to encourage a purchase. Although there were concerns in Congress about multiple coinciding projects in the close air support role, the Marine Corps were enthusiastic about the Harrier and managed to overcome efforts to obstruct its procurement.
The AV-8A entered service with the Marine Corps in 1971, replacing other aircraft in the Marines' attack squadrons. The service became interested in performing ship-borne operations with the Harrier. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt promoted the concept of a Sea Control Ship, a 15,000-ton light carrier equipped with Harriers and helicopters, to supplement the larger aircraft carriers of the US Navy. An amphibious assault ship, , was converted into the "Interim Sea Control Ship" and operated as such between 1971 and 1973 with the purpose of studying the limits and possible obstacles for operating such a vessel. Since then the Sea Control Ship concept has been subject to periodic re-examinations and studies, often in the light of budget cuts and questions over the use of supercarriers.
Other exercises were performed to demonstrate the AV-8A's suitability for operating from various amphibious assault ships and aircraft carriers, including a deployment of 14 Harriers aboard for six months in 1976. The tests showed, amongst other things, that the Harrier was capable of performing in weather where conventional carrier aircraft could not. In support of naval operations, the USMC devised and studied several methods to further integrate the Harrier. One result was "Arapaho", a stand-by system to rapidly convert civilian cargo ships into seagoing platforms for operating and maintaining a handful of Harriers, to be used to augment the number of available ships to deploy upon.
When the reactivation of the s was under consideration, a radical design for a battleship-carrier hybrid emerged that would have replaced the ship's rear turret with a flight deck, complete with a hangar and two ski jumps, for operating several Harriers. However, the USMC considered the need for naval gunfire support to be a greater priority than additional platforms for carrier operations, while the cost and delay associated with such elaborate conversions was significant, and the concept was dropped.
The Marines Corps' concept for deploying the Harriers in a land-based expeditionary role focused on aggressive speed. Harrier forward bases and light maintenance facilities were to be set up in under 24 hours on any prospective battle area. The forward bases, containing one to four aircraft, were to be located from the forward edge of battle (FEBA), while a more established permanent airbase would be located around from the FEBA. The close proximity of forward bases allowed for a far greater sortie rate and reduced fuel consumption.
The AV-8A's abilities in air-to-air combat were tested by the Marine Corps by conducting mock dogfights with McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs; these exercises trained pilots to use the vectoring-in-forward-flight (VIFF) capability to outmanoeuvre their opponents and showed that the Harriers could act as effective air-to-air fighters at close range. The success of Harrier operations countered scepticism of V/STOL aircraft, which had been judged to be expensive failures in the past. Marine Corps officers became convinced of the military advantages of the Harrier and pursued extensive development of the aircraft.
Starting in 1979, the USMC began upgrading their AV-8As to the AV-8C configuration—the work focused mainly on extending useful service lives and improving VTOL performance. The AV-8C and the remaining AV-8A Harriers were retired by 1987. These were replaced by the Harrier II, designated as the AV-8B, which was introduced into service in 1985. The performance of the Harrier in USMC service led to calls for the United States Air Force to procure Harrier IIs in addition to the USMC's own plans, but these never resulted in Air Force orders. Since the late 1990s, the AV-8B has been slated to be replaced by the F-35B variant of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, a more modern V/STOL jet aircraft.
Like the next generation AV-8Bs, nevertheless, the AV-8A/C Harriers suffered many accidents, with around 40 aircraft lost and some 30 pilots killed during the 1970s and 1980s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14314 |
Hawker Harrier
The Hawker Harrier was an experimental biplane torpedo bomber aircraft built by Hawker Aircraft to a specification issued in the 1920s for the RAF.
In , the British Air Ministry laid down specifications for a high altitude bomber to replace the Hawker Horsley and for a coastal torpedo bomber (Specifications 23/25 and 24/25). As these specifications were similar, the Air Ministry announced that a single competition would be held to study aircraft submitted for both specifications.
Sydney Camm of Hawker Aircraft designed the Harrier to meet the requirements of Specification 23/25, with the prototype ("J8325") first flying in February , the first of the competitors for the two specifications to fly. The Harrier was a two-seat biplane with single-bay wings powered by a geared Bristol Jupiter VIII radial engine. It was armed with one .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine gun and one .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis gun carrying a maximum of of bombs.
The prototype Harrier was tested at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A & AEE) at Martlesham Heath in November 1927, where, while it met the requirements of Specification 23/25 and had satisfactory handling, the geared engine meant that it was underpowered, and it had an inferior bombload to the Hawker Horsley, the aircraft it was meant to replace. It was therefore modified to carry a torpedo. On testing the modified aircraft, however, it was found to still be underpowered, being incapable of taking off with a torpedo, gunner and full fuel load. It was therefore not considered further, the competition ultimately being won by the Vickers Vildebeest.
The prototype was used by Bristol as an engine testbed, flying with the Bristol Hydra and the Bristol Orion engines. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14315 |
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi (; 22 May 1907 – 3 March 1983), known by the pen name Hergé (; ), was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating "The Adventures of Tintin", the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. He was also responsible for two other well-known series, "Quick & Flupke" (1930–1940) and "The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko" (1936–1957). His works were executed in his distinct "ligne claire" drawing style.
Born to a lower-middle-class family in Etterbeek, Brussels, Hergé began his career by contributing illustrations to Scouting magazines, developing his first comic series, "The Adventures of Totor", for "Le Boy-Scout Belge" in 1926. Working for the conservative Catholic newspaper "Le Vingtième Siècle", he created "The Adventures of Tintin" in 1929 on the advice of its editor Norbert Wallez. Revolving around the actions of boy reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, the series' early installments — "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets", "Tintin in the Congo", and "Tintin in America" — were designed as conservative propaganda for children. Domestically successful, after serialisation the stories were published in book form, with Hergé continuing the series and also developing both the "Quick & Flupke" and "Jo, Zette and Jocko" series for "Le Vingtième Siècle". Influenced by his friend Zhang Chongren, from 1934 Hergé placed far greater emphasis on conducting background research for his stories, resulting in increased realism from "The Blue Lotus" onward. Following the German occupation of Belgium in 1940, "Le Vingtième Siècle" was closed, but Hergé continued his series in "Le Soir", a popular newspaper controlled by the Nazi administration.
After the Allied liberation of Belgium in 1944, "Le Soir" was shut down and its staff — including Hergé — accused of having been collaborators. An official investigation was launched, and while no charges were brought against Hergé, in subsequent years he repeatedly faced accusations of having been a traitor and collaborator. With Raymond Leblanc he established "Tintin" magazine in 1946, through which he serialised new "Adventures of Tintin" stories. As the magazine's artistic director, he also oversaw the publication of other successful comics series, such as Edgar P. Jacobs' "Blake and Mortimer". In 1950 he established Studios Hergé as a team to aid him in his ongoing projects; prominent staff members Jacques Martin and Bob de Moor greatly contributed to subsequent volumes of "The Adventures of Tintin". Amid personal turmoil following the collapse of his first marriage, he produced "Tintin in Tibet", his personal favourite of his works. In later years he became less prolific, and unsuccessfully attempted to establish himself as an abstract artist.
Hergé's works have been widely acclaimed for their clarity of draughtsmanship and meticulous, well-researched plots. They have been the source of a wide range of adaptations, in theatre, radio, television, cinema, and computer gaming. He remains a strong influence on the comic book medium, particularly in Europe. He is widely celebrated in Belgium: a Hergé Museum was established in Louvain-la-Neuve in 2009.
Georges Prosper Remi was born on 22 May 1907 in his parental home in Etterbeek, Brussels, a central suburb in the capital city of Belgium. His was a lower-middle-class family. His Walloon father, Alexis Remi, worked in a confectionery factory, whilst his Flemish mother, Elisabeth Dufour, was a housewife. Married on 18 January 1905, they moved into a house at 25 rue Cranz (now 33 rue Philippe Baucq), where Hergé was born, although a year later they moved to a house at 34 rue de Theux. His primary language was his father's French, but growing up in the bilingual Brussels, he also learned Dutch, developing a Marollien accent from his maternal grandmother. A younger brother, Paul, was born five years after Hergé. Like most Belgians, his family belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, though they were not particularly devout. He later characterised his life in Etterbeek as dominated by a monochrome grey, considering it extremely boring. Biographer Benoît Peeters suggested that this childhood melancholy might have been exacerbated through being sexually abused by a maternal uncle.
Remi developed a love of cinema, favouring Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" and the films of Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton; his later work in the comic strip medium displayed an obvious influence from them in style and content. Although not a keen reader, he enjoyed the novels of British and American authors, such as "Huckleberry Finn", "Treasure Island", "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Pickwick Papers", as well as the novels of Frenchman Alexandre Dumas. Drawing as a hobby, he sketched out scenes from daily life along the edges of his school books. Some of these illustrations were of German soldiers, because his four years of primary schooling at the Ixelles Municipal School No. 3 coincided with World War I, during which Brussels was occupied by the German army. In 1919, his secondary education began at the secular Place de Londres in Ixelles, but in 1920 he was moved to Saint-Boniface School, an institution controlled by the archbishop where the teachers were Roman Catholic priests. Remi proved a successful student, being awarded prizes for excellence. He completed his secondary education in July 1925 at the top of his class.
Aged 12, Remi joined the Boy Scout brigade attached to Saint-Boniface School, becoming troop leader of the Squirrel Patrol and earning the name "Curious Fox" ("Renard curieux"). With the Scouts, he travelled to summer camps in Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Spain, and in the summer of 1923 his troop hiked 200 miles across the Pyrenees. His experiences with Scouting would have a significant influence on the rest of his life, sparking his love of camping and the natural world, and providing him with a moral compass that stressed personal loyalty and keeping one's promises.
His Scoutmaster, Rene Weverbergh, encouraged his artistic ability, and published one of Remi's drawings in the newsletter of the Saint-Boniface Scouts, "Jamais Assez" ("Never Enough"): his first published work. When Weverbergh became involved in the publication of "Boy-Scout", the newsletter of the Federation of Scouts, he published more of Remi's illustrations, the first of which appeared in the fifth issue, from 1922. Remi continued publishing cartoons, drawings and woodcuts in subsequent issues of the newsletter, which was soon renamed "Le Boy-Scout Belge" ("The Belgian Boy Scout"). During this time, he experimented with different pseudonyms, using "Jérémie" and "Jérémiades" before settling on "Hergé", the French pronunciation of his reversed initials (R.G.) His work was first published under this name in December 1924.
Alongside his stand-alone illustrations, in July 1926 Hergé began production of a comic strip for "Le Boy-Scout Belge", "Les Aventures de Totor" ("The Adventures of Totor"), which continued intermittent publication until 1929. Revolving around the adventures of a Boy Scout patrol leader, the comic initially featured written captions underneath the scenes, but Hergé began to experiment with other forms of conveying information, including speech balloons. Illustrations were also published in "Le Blé qui lève" ("The Wheat That Grows") and other publications of the Catholic Association of Belgian Young People, and Hergé produced a book jacket for Weverbergh's novel, "The Soul of the Sea". Being young and inexperienced, still learning his craft, Hergé sought guidance from an older cartoonist, Pierre Ickx, and together they founded the short-lived "Atelier de la Fleur de Lys" (AFL), an organisation for Christian cartoonists.
After graduating from secondary school in 1925, Hergé enrolled in the École Saint-Luc art school, but finding the teaching boring, he left after one lesson. He hoped for a job as an illustrator alongside Ickx at "Le Vingtième Siècle" ("The Twentieth Century") — a conservative "Catholic Newspaper of Doctrine and Information" — but no positions were available. Instead he got a job in the paper's subscriptions department, starting in September 1925. Despising the boredom of this position, he enlisted for military service before he was called up, and in August 1926 was assigned to the Dailly barracks at Schaerbeek. Joining the first infantry regiment, he was also bored by his military training, but continued sketching and producing episodes of "Totor".
Toward the end of his military service, in August 1927, Hergé met the editor of "Le Vingtième Siècle", the Abbé Norbert Wallez, a vocal fascist who kept a signed photograph of the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini on his desk. Impressed by Hergé's repertoire, Wallez agreed to give him a job as a photographic reporter and cartoonist for the paper, something for which Hergé always remained grateful, coming to view the Abbé as a father figure. Supplemented by commissions for other publications, Hergé illustrated a number of texts for "The Children's Corner" and the literary pages; the illustrations of this period show his interest in woodcuts and the early prototype of his "ligne claire" style.
Beginning a series of newspaper supplements in late 1928, Wallez founded a supplement for children, "Le Petit Vingtième" ("The Little Twentieth"), which subsequently appeared in "Le Vingtième Siècle" every Thursday. Carrying strong Catholic and fascist messages, many of its passages were explicitly anti-semitic. For this new venture, Hergé illustrated "L'Extraordinaire Aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet" ("The Extraordinary Adventure of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonnet"), a comic strip authored by one of the paper's sport columnists, which told the story of two boys, one of their little sisters, and her inflatable rubber pig. Hergé was unsatisfied, and eager to write and draw a comic strip of his own. He was fascinated by new techniques in the medium — such as the systematic use of speech bubbles — found in such American comics as George McManus' "Bringing Up Father", George Herriman's "Krazy Kat" and Rudolph Dirks's "The Katzenjammer Kids", copies of which had been sent to him from Mexico by the paper's reporter Léon Degrelle, stationed there to report on the Cristero War.
Hergé developed a character named Tintin as a Belgian boy reporter who could travel the world with his fox terrier, Snowy — "Milou" in the original French — basing him in large part on his earlier character of Totor and also on his own brother, Paul. Degrelle later falsely claimed that Tintin had been based on him, while he and Hergé fell out when Degrelle used one of his designs without permission; they settled out-of-court. Although Hergé wanted to send his character to the United States, Wallez instead ordered him to set his adventure in the Soviet Union, acting as a work of anti-socialist propaganda for children. The result, "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets", began serialisation in "Le Petit Vingtième" on 10 January 1929, and ran until 8 May 1930. Popular in Francophone Belgium, Wallez organized a publicity stunt at the Gare de Nord station, following which he organized the publication of the story in book form. The popularity of the story led to an increase in sales, and so Wallez granted Hergé two assistants, Eugène Van Nyverseel and Paul "Jam" Jamin.
In January 1930, Hergé introduced "Quick & Flupke" ("Quick et Flupke"), a new comic strip about two street kids from Brussels, in the pages of "Le Petit Vingtième". At Wallez's direction, in June he began serialisation of the second Tintin adventure, "Tintin in the Congo", designed to encourage colonial sentiment towards the Belgian Congo. Authored in a paternalistic style that depicted the Congolese as childlike idiots, in later decades it would be accused of racism; however, at the time it was un-controversial and popular, with further publicity stunts held to increase sales. For the third adventure, "Tintin in America", serialised from September 1931 to October 1932, Hergé finally got to deal with a scenario of his own choice, although he used the work to push an anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist agenda in keeping with the paper's ultra-conservative ideology. Although the "Adventures of Tintin" had been serialised in the French Catholic "Cœurs Vaillants" ("Brave Hearts") since 1930, he was soon receiving syndication requests from Swiss and Portuguese newspapers too. Though wealthier than most Belgians at his age, and despite increasing success, he remained an unfazed "conservative young man" dedicated to his work.
Hergé sought work elsewhere too, creating "The Lovable Mr. Mops" cartoon for the Bon Marché department store, and "The Adventures of Tim the Squirrel Out West" for the rival L'Innovation department store.
At the offices of in 1928, Hergé met the woman who would become his first wife, Germaine Kieckens (1906 – 26 October 1995). A redhead described by Pierre Assouline as "elegant and popular", she had obtained work as the secretary for Norbert Wallez. At the time of her birth, her parents were relatively elderly, and having lost an earlier child they were particularly overprotective of her. Greatly admiring Wallez, whom she looked up to as a father figure, she adopted his fascist political beliefs. She was appointed editor of , a supplement for women for which Hergé sometimes drew the cover. She also began writing articles for using the pseudonym Tantine. The first 500 copies of "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" were numbered and signed by Hergé using Tintin's signature, with Snowy's paw print being drawn next to it by Kieckens.
In 1930, Hergé escorted her home from work almost every night, though she expressed little romantic interest in him at the time. Instead she desired an older, or more mature man, such as the Abbé himself. Wallez however encouraged the two to enter into a relationship, and one evening at the Taverne du Palace she indicated to Hergé that she would be interested in a relationship.
On 20 July 1932 Hergé and Kieckens were married; although neither of them were entirely happy with the union, they had been encouraged to do so by Wallez, who insisted that all his single staff married and who personally carried out the wedding ceremony at the Saint-Roch Church in Laeken. Spending their honeymoon in Vianden, Luxembourg, the couple moved into an apartment in the rue Knapen, Schaerbeek.
In November 1932 Hergé announced that the following month he would send Tintin on an adventure to Asia. Although initially titled "The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter, in the Orient", it would later be renamed "Cigars of the Pharaoh". A mystery story, the plot began in Egypt before proceeding to Arabia and India, during which the recurring characters of Thomson and Thompson and Rastapopoulos were introduced. Through his friend Charles Lesne, Hergé was hired to produce illustrations for the company Casterman, and in late 1933 they proposed taking over the publication of both "The Adventures of Tintin" and "Quick and Flupke" in book form, to which Hergé agreed; the first Casterman book was the collected volume of "Cigars". Continuing to subsidise his comic work with commercial advertising, in January 1934 he also founded the "Atelier Hergé" advertising company with two partners, but it was liquidated after six months.
After Wallez was removed from the paper's editorship in August 1933 following a scandal, Hergé became despondent; in March 1934 he tried to resign, but was encouraged to stay after his monthly salary was increased from 2000 to 3000 francs and his workload was reduced, with Jamin taking responsibility for the day-to-day running of "Le Petit Vingtième".
From February to August 1934 Hergé serialised "Popol Out West" in "Le Petit Vingtième", a story using animal characters that was a development of the earlier "Tim the Squirrel" comic.
From August 1934 to October 1935, "Le Petit Vingtième" serialised Tintin's next adventure, "The Blue Lotus", which was set in China and dealt with the recent Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Hergé had been greatly influenced in the production of the work by his friend Zhang Chongren, a Catholic Chinese student studying at Brussels' Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, to whom he had been introduced in May 1934. Zhang gave him lessons in Taoist philosophy, Chinese art and Chinese calligraphy, influencing not only his artistic style, but also his general outlook on life. As a token of appreciation Hergé added a fictional "Chang Chong-Chen" to "The Blue Lotus", a young Chinese boy who meets and befriends Tintin. For "The Blue Lotus", Hergé devoted far more attention to accuracy, resulting in a largely realistic portrayal of China. As a result, "The Blue Lotus" has been widely hailed as "Hergé's first masterpiece" and a benchmark in the series' development. Casterman published it in book form, also insisting that Hergé include colour plates in both the volume and in reprints of "America" and "Cigars". In 1936, they also began production of Tintin merchandise, something Hergé supported, having ideas of an entire shop devoted to "The Adventures of Tintin", something that would come to fruition 50 years later. Nevertheless, while his serialised comics proved lucrative, the collected volumes sold less well, something Hergé blamed on Casterman, urging them to do more to market his books.
Hergé's next Tintin story, "The Broken Ear" (1935–1937), was the first for which the plot synopsis had been outlined from the start, being a detective story that took Tintin to South America. It introduced the character of General Alcazar, and also saw Hergé introduce the first fictional countries into the series, San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico, two republics based largely on Bolivia and Paraguay. The violent elements within "The Broken Ear" upset the publishers of "Cœurs Vaillants", who asked Hergé to create a more child-appropriate story for them. The result was "The Adventures of Jo, Zette, and Jocko", a series about a young brother and sister and their pet monkey. The series began with "The Secret Ray", which was serialised in "Cœurs Vaillants" and then "Le Petit Vingtième", and continued with "The Stratoship H-22". Hergé nevertheless disliked the series, commenting that the characters "bored me terribly." Now writing three series simultaneously, Hergé was working every day of the year, and felt stressed.
The next Tintin adventure was "The Black Island" (1937–1938), which saw the character travel to Britain to battle counterfeiters and introduced a new antagonist, the German Dr. Müller. Hergé followed this with "King Ottokar's Sceptre" (1938–1939), in which Tintin saves the fictional Eastern European country of Syldavia from being invaded by its expansionist neighbour, Borduria; the event was an anti-fascist satire of Nazi Germany's expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakia. In May 1939, Hergé moved to a new house in Watermael-Boitsfort, although following the German invasion of Poland, he was conscripted into the Belgian army and temporarily stationed in Herenthout. Demobbed within the month, he returned to Brussels and adopted a more explicit anti-German stance when beginning his next Tintin adventure, "Land of Black Gold", which was set in the Middle East and featured Dr. Müller sabotaging oil lines.
During this period, Hergé also contributed to "L'Ouest" ("The West"), a newspaper run by his friend Raymond de Becker. "L'Ouest" urged Belgium to remain neutral in World War II, a stance Hergé supported, creating the "Mr Bellum" strip to argue this position. Hergé was invited to visit China by Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who had enjoyed "The Blue Lotus", although due to the political situation in Europe, this was not possible. He was re-mobilized in December, and stationed in Antwerp, from where he continued to send the Tintin strip to "Le Petit Vingtième". However, he fell ill with sinusitis and boils and was declared unfit for military service in May 1940. That same day, Germany invaded Belgium. "Le Vingtième Siècle" was shut down, part way through the serialisation of "Land of Black Gold".
As the Belgian Army clashed with the invading Germans, Hergé and his wife fled by car to France along with tens of thousands of other Belgians, first staying in Paris and then heading south to Puy-de-Dôme, where they remained for six weeks. On 28 May, King Leopold III of the Belgians surrendered the country to the German army to prevent further killing; a move that Hergé supported. He followed the king's request that all of those Belgians who had fled the country return, arriving back in Brussels on 30 June. There, he found that his house had been occupied as an office for the German army's "Propagandastaffel", and also faced financial trouble, as he owed back taxes yet was unable to access his financial reserves. All Belgian publications were now under the control of the German occupying force, who refused permission to continue publication. Instead, Hergé was offered employment as a cartoonist for by its editor, the Rexist Victor Matthys, but Hergé perceived as an explicitly political publication, and thus declined the position.
Instead, he took up a position with , Belgium's largest Francophone daily newspaper. Confiscated from its original owners, the German authorities had permitted "Le Soir" to be re-opened under the directorship of De Doncker, although it remained firmly under Nazi control, supporting the German war effort and espousing anti-Semitism. After joining the "Le Soir" team on 15 October, Hergé was involved in the creation of a children's supplement, "Soir-Jeunesse", aided by Jamin and Jacques Van Melkebeke. He relaunched "The Adventures of Tintin" with a new story, "The Crab with the Golden Claws", in which Tintin pursued drug smugglers in North Africa; the story was a turning point in the series for its introduction of Captain Haddock, who would become a major character in the rest of the "Adventures". This story, like the subsequent "Adventures of Tintin" published in "Le Soir", would reject the political themes present in earlier stories, instead remaining firmly neutral. Hergé also included new "Quick & Flupke" gags in the supplement, as well as illustrations for serialised stories by Edgar Allan Poe and the Brothers Grimm.
In May 1941, a paper shortage led to the "Soir-Jeunesse" being reduced to four pages, with the length of the Tintin strip being cut by two thirds. Several weeks later the supplement disappeared altogether, with "The Crab with the Golden Claws" being moved into "Le Soir" itself, where it became a daily strip. While some Belgians were upset that Hergé was willing to work for a newspaper controlled by the occupying Nazi administration, he was heavily enticed by the size of 's readership, which reached 600,000. With Van Melkebeke, Hergé put together two Tintin plays. The first, "Tintin in the Indies", appeared at Brussels' Theatre des Galeries in April 1941, while the second, "Mr Boullock's Disappearance", was performed there in December. From October 1941 to May 1942, "Le Soir" serialised Hergé's next Tintin adventure, "The Shooting Star", followed by publication as a single volume by Casterman. In keeping with "Le Soir"s editorial standpoint, "The Shooting Star" espoused an anti-Semitic and anti-American attitude, with the antagonist being a wealthy Jewish American businessman; it would thus prove particularly controversial in the post-war period, although Hergé denied any malicious anti-Semitic intention.
Casterman felt that the black-and-white volumes of "The Adventures of Tintin" were not selling as well as colour comic books, and thus that the series should be produced in colour. At the same time, Belgium was facing a paper-shortage, with Casterman wishing to cut down the volumes from 120-pages in length to 62. Hergé was initially sceptical, but ultimately agreed to their demands in February 1942. For these new editions, Casterman introduced a four-colour system, although Hergé insisted that colour should remain secondary to line, and that it would not be used for shading. To cope with this additional workload, Hergé approached a friend whom he had met through Van Melkebeke, Edgar P. Jacobs, to aid him as a cartoonist and colourist. Jacobs could only work on the project part-time, and so in March 1942, Hergé also employed a woman named Alice Devos to aid him. In July 1942, Hergé then procured an agent, Bernard Thièry, who took 40% of his commissions; their working relationship would be strained. With their assistance, from 1942 to 1947, Hergé adapted most of his previous "Adventures of Tintin" into 62-page colour versions.
Hergé's next "Adventure of Tintin" would be "The Secret of the Unicorn", serialised in "Le Soir" from June 1942. He had collaborated closely with Van Melkebeke on this project, who had introduced many elements from the work of Jules Verne into the detective story, in which Tintin and Haddock searched for parchments revealing the location of hidden pirate treasure. "The Secret of the Unicorn" marked the first half of a story arc that was completed in "Red Rackham's Treasure", serialised in "Le Soir" from February 1943; in this story, Tintin and Haddock search for the pirate's treasure in the Caribbean, with the character of Professor Calculus being introduced to the series. Following "Red Rackham's Treasure", Hergé drew illustrations for a serialised story titled "Dupont et Dupond, détectives" ("Thomson and Thompson, Detectives"), authored by the newspaper's crime editor, Paul Kinnet.
In September 1943, De Becker was removed as editor of "Le Soir" for stating that although the Nazis were motivated "by undoubted good will, [they were also] extremely out of touch with reality". Although Hergé was close to De Becker, he decided to remain at the newspaper, which came under the editorship of Max Hodeige. In autumn 1943, Hergé had decided that he wanted Jacobs to collaborate with him on "The Adventures of Tintin". Although initially hesitant, Jacobs eventually agreed, adopting the paid position in January 1944. Jacobs and Hergé became close collaborators and greatly influenced each other, while together they developed the plot for the next "Adventure of Tintin", "The Seven Crystal Balls", which began serialisation in "Le Soir" in December 1943.
As the Allied troops liberated Brussels from German occupation, "Le Soir" ceased publication on 2 September 1944, partway through its serialisation of "The Seven Crystal Balls". Hergé was arrested on 3 September, having been named as a collaborator in a Resistance document known as the "Gallery of Traitors". This would be the first of four incidents in which Hergé was arrested — by the State Security, the Judiciary Police, the Belgian National Movement, and the Front for Independence respectively — during the course of which he spent one night in jail. On 5 September the entire staff of "Le Soir" were fired and a new editorial team introduced, while on 8 September the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) issued a proclamation announcing that "any journalist who had helped produce a newspaper during the occupation was for the time being barred from practising his profession." Blacklisted, Hergé was now unemployed. Further, he was publicly lampooned as a collaborator by a newspaper closely associated with the Belgian Resistance, "La Patrie", which issued a satirical strip titled "The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Nazis".
The period witnessed widespread recriminations against accused collaborators, with military courts condemning 30,000 on minor charges and 25,000 on more serious charges; of those, 5,500 were sentenced to life imprisonment or capital punishment. A judiciary inquiry into Hergé's case was launched by the deputy public prosecutor, Mr Vinçotte, although in his report he urged lenience, stating that "I am inclined to close the case. I believe it would bring ridicule on the judicial system to go after an inoffensive children's book author and illustrator. On the other hand, Hergé worked for "Le Soir" during the war, and his illustrations are what made people buy the newspaper." Although unable to work for the press, Hergé continued to re-draw and colour the older "Adventures of Tintin" for publication in book form by Casterman, completing the second version of "Tintin in the Congo" and starting on "King Ottokar's Sceptre". Casterman supported Hergé throughout his ordeal, for which he always remained grateful. Attempting to circumvent his blacklisting, with Jacobs he began producing comics under the anonymous pseudonym of "Olav", but upon sending them to publishers found none who would accept them. Although this period allowed him an escape from the pressure of daily production which had affected most of his working life, he also had to deal with family problems: His brother Paul returned to Brussels from a German prisoner-of-war camp, although their mother had become highly delusional and was moved to a psychiatric hospital.
In October 1945, Hergé was approached by Raymond Leblanc, a former member of a conservative Resistance group, the National Royalist Movement, and his associates André Sinave and Albert Debaty. The trio were planning on launching a weekly magazine for children, and Leblanc — who had fond childhood memories of "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" — thought Hergé would be ideal for it. Hergé agreed, and Leblanc obtained clearance papers for him, allowing him to work. Concerned about the judicial investigation into Hergé's wartime affiliations, Leblanc convinced William Ugeux, a leader of the Belgian Resistance who was now in charge of censorship and certificates of good citizenship, to look into the comic creator's file. Ugeux concluded that Hergé had been "a blunderer rather than a traitor" for his work at "Le Soir". The decision as to whether Hergé would stand trial belonged to the general auditor of the Military Tribunal, Walter Jean Ganshof van der Meersch. He closed the case on 22 December 1945, declaring that "in regard to the particularly inoffensive character of the drawings published by Remi, bringing him before a war tribunal would be inappropriate and risky".
Now free from threat of prosecution, Hergé continued to support his colleagues at "Le Soir" who were being charged as collaborators; six of them were sentenced to death, and others to lengthy prison sentences. Among those sentenced to death was Hergé's friend, Jamin, although his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In May 1946, Hergé was issued a certificate of good citizenship, which became largely necessary to obtain employment in post-war Belgium. Celebrations were marred by his mother's death in April 1946; she was aged 60. Harry Thompson has described this post-war period as the "greatest upheaval" of Hergé's life. Hergé later described it as "an experience of absolute intolerance. It was horrible, horrible!" He considered the post-war trials of alleged collaborators a great injustice inflicted upon many innocent people, and never forgave Belgian society for the way that he had been treated, although he hid this from his public persona.
Sinave devised the idea of naming their new magazine "Tintin", believing that this would attract a wide audience. The Dutch-language edition produced for release in Belgium's Flemish north was titled "Kuifje" after the character's Dutch-language name. Adopting the slogan of "The Newspaper for the Young Aged 7 to 77", the magazine also used a logo featuring the Tintin character himself. The capital for the project had been put up by those involved: as executive director, Leblanc provided 50%, while its managing director Georges Lallemand provided 40% and Hergé, its artistic director, provided 10%. Hergé assembled a group of associates to aid him, including Van Melkebeke, Jacobs, Paul Cuvelier, and Jacques Laudy. Van Melkebeke was initially appointed editor-in-chief, although he was arrested for having worked for the collaborationist "Le Nouveau journal" shortly after, with his involvement in the project thus being kept secret so as to avoid further controversy. Van Melkebeke continued to provide work for the magazine under pseudonyms, although this ceased during his imprisonment from December 1947 to October 1949.
The first issue of "Tintin" magazine was published on 26 September 1946. Hergé was assigned to produce a two-page spread each week, and began by concluding "The Seven Crystal Balls" before embarking on its successor story, "Prisoners of the Sun". Alongside Hergé's "Adventures of Tintin", the magazine also included Laudy's "The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers" and Jacobs' "The Secret of the Swordfish", the first in his new "Blake and Mortimer" series. While the magazine was in competition with a number of rivals, most notably "Spirou", famous for serialising the "Lucky Luke" and "Buck Danny" comics, it proved an immediate success, with 60,000 copies being sold in three days of its release. Its publication resulted in a massive boost to Hergé's book sales too.
In 1947 a Belgian film adaptation of "The Crab with the Golden Claws" was produced, and believing that cinematic adaptations were a good way to proceed, Hergé contacted Disney Studios in the United States; they declined his offer to adapt "The Adventures of Tintin" for the silver screen. In May 1947 the artistic collaboration between Hergé and Jacobs ended after an argument. Hergé had been jealous of the immediate success of Jacobs' "Blake and Mortimer" series, and had turned down Jacobs' request that he be credited as co-creator of the new "Adventures of Tintin". That same month, Hergé broke from his manager, Thiery, after discovering that the latter had been siphoning off money for himself.
Many Belgians were highly critical of the magazine due to its connections with Hergé, who was still deemed a collaborator and traitor by many; "La Soir" and "La Cité" publicly criticised the decision without referring to him by name while "Le Quotidien" and "Le Drapeau Rouge" specifically singled him out for denunciation. Hergé believed that the children's author Jeanne Cappe was behind many of these accusations, and threatened her with a lawsuit. Unhappy with life in Belgium, Hergé made plans to emigrate to Argentina, a nation that was welcoming many Europeans who had supported the defeated Axis powers and which had a thriving comic book scene. Ultimately, he changed his mind, for reasons that have remained unknown; it is possible that he was unable to secure any promise of work in the South American country.
In May, Hergé and Germaine holidayed near to Gland on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where they were accompanied by a friend of theirs, a young woman named Rosane. During the holiday, Hergé and Rosane embarked on an extra-marital affair. He felt guilty, and returned to Brussels in June. Privately, he expressed the view that he had been led to commit such an act, which he viewed as immoral, through the influence of "amoral friends" with whom he was associating. Hoping to reignite the passion and stability of his marriage, he arranged for him and Germaine to return to Switzerland soon after; here they argued, and embarked on a temporary separation. Remaining in Switzerland, he visited King Leopold III, who was then holidaying in Prégny, before briefly returning to Brussels in July. Back in Switzerland, he embarked on an affair with a married woman, although again informed Germaine before setting off to spend time in the Ardennes. In August, the couple sought to reunite by holidaying together in Brittany, but there they broke up again and Hergé returned to his lover in Switzerland. In September he finally returned to Brussels, but with his close friend Marcel Dehaye then spent time in a retreat at the Abbey of Notre-Dame-de-Scourmont. That month, he revived "Land of Black Gold" — the "Adventure of Tintin" that had been interrupted by the German invasion of 1940 — and began serialising it in "Tintin" magazine. However, the story was again interrupted, this time for twelve weeks as Hergé took a further unannounced holiday to Gland, greatly annoying many of his colleagues.
Although they retained respect for each other, Hergé's repeated absences had created a tense situation between himself and Leblanc. After a lengthy search, Leblanc had found a publisher willing to produce an edition of "Tintin" magazine in France: Georges Dargaud's Le Lombard, which began production of a French edition in October 1948. However, Hergé was unhappy that Leblanc had appointed André Frenez as Van Melkebeke's replacement as editor-in-chief, describing Frenez as "a cold functionary". Hergé was stubborn and uncompromising as the magazine's artistic director, known for strongly criticising the work of old friends like Pierre Ickx if he felt that they did not meet his exacting standards. He was particularly critical of the work of two of the newly hired staff at "Tintin" and "Kuifje", Jacques Martin and Willy Vandersteen, encouraging them to change their artistic style to better reflect his own preferences. To Leblanc, he expressed the concern that most of those working at "Tintin" were better illustrators than storytellers. He also opined that "Tintin" was not keeping up with the times and what he perceived as the increased maturity of children, encouraging the magazine to better reflect current events and scientific developments.
On 6 April 1950 Hergé established Studios Hergé as a public company. The Studios were based in his Avenue Delleur house in Brussels, with Hergé making a newly purchased country house in Céroux-Mousty his and Germaine's main residence. The Studios would provide both personal support to Hergé and technical support for his ongoing work. Initially with only three employees, this would rise to fifteen, with all working on Hergé's projects. He hired Bob de Moor as his primary apprentice at the Studios in March 1951. Impressed by Jacques Martin's work on "The Golden Sphinx", Hergé persuaded Martin to join the Studios in January 1954; Martin insisted on bringing with him his own two assistants, Roger Leloup and Michel Demarets. During the early 1950s, a number of those convicted for collaborating with the Nazi occupiers were freed from prison. Sympathetic to their plight, Hergé lent money to some and aided others in getting jobs at "Tintin" magazine, much to Leblanc's annoyance. For instance, as well as lending him money, Hergé used his connections to secure Raymond de Becker a job in Switzerland as a book shop sales inspector. He also hired those associated with collaboration for his Studios; his new colourist, Josette Baujot, was the wife of a recently assassinated member of the Walloon Legion, and his new secretary, Baudouin van der Branden de Reeth, had served a prison sentence for working at "Le Nouveau Journal" during the occupation.
Hergé had developed the idea of setting an "Adventure of Tintin" on the moon while producing "Prisoners of the Sun". He began serialisation of "Destination Moon", the first of a two part arc followed by "Explorers on the Moon", in "Tintin" magazine in March 1950. In September 1950, Hergé broke off the story, feeling the need for a break from work, having fallen back into clinical depression. He and Germaine went on holiday to Gland before returning to Brussels in late September. Many readers sent letters to "Tintin" asking why "Explorers on the Moon" was no longer being serialised, with a rumour emerging that Hergé had died. "Explorers of the Moon" would resume after an eighteen-month hiatus, returning in April 1952. Alongside his work on the new stories, Hergé also made use of the Studios in revising more of his early works.
In February 1952, Hergé was involved in a car crash in which Germaine's leg was shattered; she had to have a steel rod implanted in it, and was confined to a wheelchair for several months. Their relationship was further strained when they received news of Wallez' death in September 1952. His friendship with Van Melkebeke also broke apart in this period, in part due to advice gained from an alleged clairvoyant, Bertje Janueneau, upon whom both Hergé and Germaine were increasingly relying for guidance. In January 1955 a young woman named Fanny Vlamynck was hired as a colourist at the Studios. Hergé embarked on an extramarital affair with her in November 1956, with the rest of the studio staff soon finding out. Germaine grew suspicious of her husband's affections for Fanny, but was also experiencing a strong romantic attraction to her ballroom dance partner. Hergé and Germaine went on a cruise for the former's fiftieth birthday in May 1957, in which they visited Casablanca, Rabat, Palermo, and Rome, and in October went on a second holiday, this time to Ostend. Following this, he revealed his affair with Fanny to Germaine. He began experiencing traumatic dreams dominated by the colour white, and seeking to explain them he visited Franz Ricklin, a psychoanalyst who was a student of Carl Jung in Zürich in May 1959. In February 1960 he returned to Switzerland, and upon his arrival back in Brussels he began renting an apartment in Uccle, away from Germaine. His relationship with Germaine had ended, although due to restrictions under Belgian law he was unable to obtain a divorce until seventeen years later.
In September 1958, "Tintin" magazine moved its headquarters to a newly constructed building near the Gare du Midi. Hergé continued to feud with Leblanc over the direction of the magazine; his constant absences had led to him being replaced as artistic director, and he demanded that he be reinstated. Leblanc relented in early 1965, although Hergé soon departed to Sardinia for six weeks. In October 1965 Leblanc appointed the cartoonist Greg to be editor-in-chief of the magazine, believing him capable of reforming the paper to remain relevant to the youth of the day. By this point, "Tintin" magazine was at its commercial peak, with sales of 600,000 a week, although Hergé had lost much of his interest in it.
Hergé's book sales were higher than ever, and translations were being produced for the British, Spanish, and Scandinavian markets. He was receiving international press attention, with articles on his work appearing in "France-Observateur", "The Listener", and "The Times Literary Supplement". Paul Vandromme authored an un-critical book on Hergé, "Le Monde de Tintin" ("The World of Tintin"), published by Éditions Gallimard; Hergé vetoed the inclusion of a proposed preface by Roger Nimier after finding its praise for his own work too embarrassing. Radio adaptations of "The Adventures of Tintin" were produced, as was an animated cartoon series produced by Belvision Studios, "Hergé's Adventures of Tintin". Two live-action films were also produced, "Tintin and the Golden Fleece" (1961) and "Tintin and the Blue Oranges" (1964), the former of which Hergé had been closely involved with.
Developing an interest in modern art, in the early 1960s Hergé befriended the art dealer Marcel Stal, owner of the Carrefour gallery in Brussels. He was a particular fan of the work of Constant Permeke, Jakob Smits, Lucio Fontana, and Jean-Pierre Raynaurd, as well as the pop art movement, in particular the work of Roy Lichtenstein. He built up his own personal collection, which consisted of both modern paintings as well as African art and Chinese ceramics. In 1962, Hergé decided he wanted to paint. He chose Louis Van Lint, one of the most respected Belgian abstract painters at the time, whose work he liked a lot, to be his private teacher. Hergé took up painting as a hobby, producing abstract art works which were influenced by the styles of Joan Miró and Serge Poliakoff. He showed his work to the art historian Léo Van Puyvelde, who was the chief conservator of the Musées des Beaux-Arts, who believed that they showed promise, but that Hergé's real talent lay with cartooning. Hergé abandoned painting shortly after, having produced 37 paintings in all. Spending less time on new "Adventures of Tintin", from June to December 1965 "Tintin" magazine serialised a redrawn and newly coloured version of "The Black Island" prepared by staff at Studios Hergé. Supported by his studio, Hergé produced "The Calculus Affair" between 1954 until 1956 which was followed by "The Red Sea Sharks" in 1956 to 1957.
In the 1960s, Hergé became increasingly annoyed at the success of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's "Asterix" comic book series, which various commentators had described as eclipsing "The Adventures of Tintin" as the foremost comic in the Franco-Belgian tradition. Hoping to imitate the success of the recent animated films "Asterix the Gaul" (1967) and "Asterix and Cleopatra" (1968), Hergé agreed to the production of two animated Belvision films based on the "Adventures of Tintin". The first, "Tintin and the Temple of the Sun" (1969), was based on pre-existing comics, whereas the second, "Tintin and the Lake of Sharks" (1972) was an original story written by Greg. In 1982 the American filmmaker Steven Spielberg requested the film rights for a live-action adaptation of one of "The Adventures of Tintin", a prospect that excited Hergé, but the project never came to fruition at the time.
In October 1971, the journalist Numa Sadoul conducted a wide-ranging interview with Hergé, in which the latter opened up about many of the problems he had experienced in his personal life. Sadoul planned to publish the interview as a book, but Hergé made many alterations to the transcript, both to improve its prose and to remove sections which cast him in a negative light. Editors at Casterman then removed even further sections, particularly those in which Hergé expressed a negative view of Catholicism. The interview was published as "Tintin et moi" ("Tintin and I", also called "Tintin and Me") in 1975. Hergé followed this by agreeing to be the subject of a documentary film produced by Henri Roane, "Moi, Tintin" ("I, Tintin"), which premiered in 1975. In January 1977 he attended an early comic book convention at Angoulême, where he was widely heralded as one of the masters of the discipline. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of "The Adventures of Tintin" in 1979, a celebratory event was held at Brussels' Hilton hotel, while an exhibit on "Le Musée imaginaire de Tintin" ("The Imaginary Museum of Tintin") was held at the Palais de Beaux-Arts.
In April 1971 Hergé visited the United States for the first time, primarily to visit a liver specialist in Rochester, Minnesota; however, on the trip he also visited a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, but was shocked at the conditions in which their inhabitants lived. On this visit he also spent time in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Kansas City. In April 1972 he travelled to New York City for an international conference on the strip cartoon, and there presented Mayor John Lindsay with a cartoon of Tintin visiting the city and also met with the pop artist Andy Warhol. Several years later, in 1977, Warhol visited Europe, where he produced a pop art portrait of Hergé. In April 1973, Hergé took up an invite to visit Taiwan by the nation's government, in recognition of his promotion of Chinese culture in "The Blue Lotus". During the visit he also spent time in Thailand and Bali.
Hergé had long sought to regain contact with his old friend Zhang Chongren, with whom he had lost contact. He regularly asked any Chinese people that he met if they knew of Zhang, and in 1979 had some success when a staff member in a Brussels Chinese restaurant revealed that he was Zhang's godson. Hergé was thus able to re-establish contact with his old friend. The journalist Gérard Valet organised for Zhang to visit Brussels so that he and Hergé could be re-united. The event took place in March 1981, and was heavily publicised; Hergé however found the situation difficult, disliking the press attention and finding that he and Zhang had grown distant during the intervening years.
In June 1970, Hergé's father died, and after the funeral he holidayed near Lake Geneva. In 1974, his assistant Branden suffered a stroke and was left unable to write, with Hergé replacing him with a young man, Alain Baran, who Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline later termed Hergé's "surrogate son". In March 1977, Hergé's divorce with Germaine was finalised; although Hergé continued to visit her and financially support her, Germaine took the divorce badly, viewing it as a further betrayal. Hergé was then able to marry Fanny several weeks later, in a low-key ceremony on 20 May; he was 70 years old and she 42.
In 1979, Hergé was diagnosed with osteomyelofibrosis, necessitating a complete blood transfusion. His need for blood transfusions had increased, as he came to require them every two weeks, and then every week.
On 25 February 1983, Hergé suffered cardiac arrest and was hospitalised in intensive care at Brussels' Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc. He died there on 3 March. His death received front page coverage in numerous francophone newspapers, including "Libération" and "Le Monde". In his will, he had left Fanny as his sole heir.
In November 1986, Fanny closed Studios Hergé, replacing it with the Hergé Foundation.
In 1988, "Tintin" magazine itself was discontinued.
Only the works marked * have been translated into English
Hergé was a highly private person, being described by biographer Harry Thompson as "reserved [and] unostentatious". According to his biographer Pierre Sterckx, Hergé appeared "very conventional" in public, but in reality was "extremely erudite, with an insatiable curiosity, constantly on the watch". He greatly enjoyed walking in the countryside, gardening, and art collecting, and he was a fan of jazz music. Although he disliked making public or press appearances, Hergé insisted on personally responding to all fan mail received, which took up a considerable part of his time. He stated that "not replying to children's letters would be to betray their dreams." Friends described him as a humorous man, known particularly for his self-deprecating jokes. Colleagues described Hergé as egocentric, an assessment he agreed with. He was known to be authoritarian in dealing with his assistants and refused to share credit with them for their part in his work. Sterckx noted that "on the one hand he could be distant, even frosty, but on the other he was affectionate".
Throughout his first marriage he had a number of affairs with other women. He had no children, having been rendered sterile by radiation treatment, but in the 1950s offered to adopt his brother Paul's two children, Denise and George, when their parents were experiencing trouble in their relationship. Paul declined the offer, with Denise and George later noting that they had no great affection for Hergé, deeming him awkward around children. Hergé was raised as a Catholic, although was never a devout practitioner of the religion. His adherence to Catholicism declined in later life as he developed a keen interest in Taoism, and became an agnostic. He was a fan of the "Tao Te Ching" and Arnaud Desjardins' "The Path to Wisdom", as well as Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics" and the work of Jean-Émile Charon.
Politically, Hergé was a fervent royalist, and remained so throughout his life, also believing in the unity of Belgium. In his early life, Hergé was "close to the traditional right-wing" of Belgian society, with Sterckx noting that through his work he was "plunged into rightist, even extreme right-wing circles". According to Harry Thompson, such political ideas were not unusual in middle-class circles in Belgium of the 1920s and early 1930s, where "patriotism, Catholicism, strict morality, discipline and naivety were so inextricably bound together in everyone's lives that right-wing politics were an almost inevitable by-product. It was a world view shared by everyone, distinguished principally by its complete ignorance of the world." When Hergé took responsibility for , he followed Wallez's instruction and allowed the newspaper to contain explicitly pro-fascist and anti-semitic sentiment. Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès noted that the character of Tintin was a personification of the "New Youth" concept which was promoted by the European far right. Under Wallez's guidance, the early "Adventures of Tintin" contained explicit political messages for its young readership. "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" was a work of anti-socialist propaganda, while "Tintin in the Congo" was designed to encourage colonialist sentiment toward the Belgian Congo, and "Tintin in America" was designed as a work of anti-Americanism heavily critical of capitalism, commercialism, and industrialisation.
In contrast to Hergé's involvement in Belgium's right-wing, Sterckx thought the cartoonist to have been "a liberal and independent spirit", someone who was "the very opposite of a conservative [or] a reactionary of the right". Michael Farr asserted that Hergé had "an acute political conscience" during his earlier days, as exemplified by his condemnation of racism in the United States evident in "Tintin in America". Literary critic Tom McCarthy went further, remarking that "Tintin in America" represented the emergence of a "left-wing counter tendency" in Hergé's work that rebelled against his right-wing milieu and which was particularly critical of wealthy capitalists and industrialists. This was furthered in "The Blue Lotus", in which Hergé rejected his "classically right-wing" ideas to embrace an anti-imperialist stance, and in a contemporary "Quick & Flupke" strip in which he lampooned the far right leaders of Germany and Italy, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Although many of his friends and colleagues did so in the mid-1930s, Hergé did not join the far-right Rexist Party, later asserting that he "had always had an aversion to it" and commenting that "to throw my heart and soul into an ideology is the opposite of who I am."
Hergé faced repeated accusations of racism due to his portrayal of various ethnic groups throughout "The Adventures of Tintin". According to McCarthy, in "Tintin in the Congo" Hergé represented the Congolese as "good at heart, but backwards and lazy, in need of European mastery". Thompson argued that Hergé had not written the book to be "deliberately racist" and that it reflected the average early 20th-century Belgian view of the Congolese, which was more patronising than malevolent. The book provoked no controversy at the time, coming to be perceived as racist only in the latter half of the 20th century.
In the following adventure, "Tintin in America", Hergé depicted members of the Blackfoot tribe of Native Americans as "gullible, even naive", though it was nevertheless "broadly sympathetic" to their culture and plight, depicting their oppression at the hands of the United States Army. In "The Blue Lotus", he depicted the Japanese as militaristic and buck-toothed, which has also drawn accusations of racism.
Hergé has also been accused of utilising anti-semitic stereotypes. The character of Rastapopoulos has been claimed to be based on anti-semitic stereotypes, despite Hergé's protestations that the character was Greek, and not Jewish.
From his early years, Hergé was openly critical of racism. He lambasted the pervasive racism of United States society in a prelude comment to "Tintin in America" published in "Le Petit Vingtième" on 20 August 1931, and ridiculed racist attitudes toward the Chinese in "The Blue Lotus". Peeters asserted that "Hergé was no more racist than the next man", an assessment shared by Farr, who after meeting Hergé in the 1980s commented that "you couldn't have met someone who was more open and less racist". In contrast, President of the International "Bande Dessinée" Society Laurence Grove opined that Hergé adhered to prevailing societal trends in his work, and that "When it was fashionable to be a Nazi, he was a Nazi. When it was fashionable to be a colonial racist, that's what he was."
Assouline described Hergé as "the personification of Belgium".
According to the UNESCO's Index Translationum, Hergé is the ninth-most-often-translated French-language author, the second-most-often-translated Belgian author after Georges Simenon, and the second-most-often-translated French-language comics author behind René Goscinny. He also had an asteroid, 1652 Hergé, within the main belt, named after him in 1953.
A cartoon version of Hergé makes a number of cameo appearances in Ellipse-Nelvana's "The Adventures of Tintin" TV cartoon series. An animated version of Hergé also makes a cameo appearance at the start of the 2011 motion capture film, "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn", directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Peter Jackson, where he is depicted as a street cartoonist drawing a portrait of Tintin at the start of the film.
The Musée Hergé is located in the centre of Louvain-la-Neuve, a city to the south of Brussels. This location was originally chosen for the Museum in 2001. The futuristic building was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning French architect Christian de Portzamparc and cost €15 million to build. On the centenary of the birth of Hergé, 22 May 2007, the museum's first stone was laid. The museum opened its doors in June 2009.
The idea of a museum dedicated to the work of Hergé can be traced back to the end of the 1970s, when Hergé was still alive. After his death in 1983, Hergé's widow, Fanny, led the efforts, undertaken at first by the Hergé Foundation and then by the new Studios Hergé, to catalogue and choose the artwork and elements that would become part of the Museum's exhibitions.
The Hergé Museum contains eight permanent galleries displaying original artwork by Hergé, and telling the story of his life and career which had not previously been visible to the public. The Museum also houses a temporary exhibition gallery. Although Tintin features prominently in the museum, Hergé's other comic strip characters, such as Jo, Zette and Jocko, and Quick and Flupke, as well as his work as a graphic designer, are also present. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14317 |
Horned God
The Horned god is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism.
The term "Horned god" itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorphic god partly based on historical horned deities.
The Horned god represents the male part of the religion's duotheistic theological system, the consort of the female Triple goddess of the Moon or other Mother goddess.
In common Wiccan belief, he is associated with nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting, and the life cycle. Whilst depictions of the deity vary, he is always shown with either horns or antlers upon his head, often depicted as being theriocephalic (having a beast's head), in this way emphasizing "the union of the divine and the animal", the latter of which includes humanity.
In traditional Wicca (British Traditional Wicca), he is generally regarded as a dualistic god of twofold aspects: bright and dark, night and day, summer and winter, the Oak King and the Holly King. In this dualistic view, his two horns symbolize, in part, his dual nature. (The use of horns to symbolize duality is also reflected in the phrase "on the horns of a dilemma.") The three aspects of the Goddess and the two aspects of the Horned god are sometimes mapped on to the five points of the Pentagram, although which points correspond to which deity aspects varies. In some other systems, he is represented as a triune god, split into three aspects that reflect those of the Triple goddess: the Youth (Warrior), the Father, and the Sage.
The Horned god has been explored within several psychological theories and has become a recurrent theme in fantasy literature.
In traditional and mainstream Wicca, the Horned God is viewed as the divine male principality, being both equal and opposite to the Goddess. The Wiccan god himself can be represented in many forms, including as the Sun God, the Sacrificed God and the Vegetation God, although the Horned God is the most popular representation. The pioneers of the various Wiccan or Witchcraft traditions, such as Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente and Robert Cochrane, all claimed that their religion was a continuation of the pagan religion of the Witch-Cult following historians who had purported the Witch-Cult's existence, such as Jules Michelet and Margaret Murray.
For Wiccans, the Horned God is "the personification of the life force energy in animals and the wild" and is associated with the wilderness, virility and the hunt. Doreen Valiente writes that the Horned God also carries the souls of the dead to the underworld.
Wiccans generally, as well as some other neopagans, tend to conceive of the universe as polarized into gender opposites of male and female energies. In traditional Wicca, the Horned God and the Goddess are seen as equal and opposite in gender polarity. However, in some of the newer traditions of Wicca, and especially those influenced by feminist ideology, there is more emphasis on the Goddess, and consequently the symbolism of the Horned God is less developed than that of the Goddess.
In Wicca the cycle of the seasons is celebrated during eight sabbats called The Wheel of the Year. The seasonal cycle is imagined to follow the relationship between the Horned God and the Goddess. The Horned God is born in winter, impregnates the Goddess and then dies during the autumn and winter months and is then reborn by the Goddess at Yule. The different relationships throughout the year are sometimes distinguished by splitting the god into aspects, the Oak King and the Holly King. The relationships between the Goddess and the Horned God are mirrored by Wiccans in seasonal rituals. There is some variation between Wiccan groups as to which sabbat corresponds to which part of the cycle. Some Wiccans regard the Horned God as dying at Lammas, August 1; also known as Lughnasadh, which is the first harvest sabbat. Others may see him dying at Mabon, the autumn equinox, or the second harvest festival. Still other Wiccans conceive of the Horned God dying on October 31, which Wiccans call Samhain, the ritual of which is focused on death. He is then reborn on Winter Solstice, December 21.
Other important dates for the Horned God include Imbolc when, according to Valiente, he leads a wild hunt. In Gardnerian Wicca, the Dryghten prayer recited at the end of every ritual meeting contains the lines referring to the Horned God:
According to Sabina Magliocco, Gerald Gardner says (in 1959's "The Meaning of Witchcraft") that The Horned God is an Under-god, a mediator between an unknowable supreme deity and the people. (In Wiccan liturgy in the Book of Shadows, this conception of an unknowable supreme deity is referred to as "Dryghtyn." It is not a personal god, but rather an impersonal divinity similar to the Tao of Taoism.)
Whilst the Horned God is the most common depiction of masculine divinity in Wicca, he is not the only representation. Other examples include the Green Man and the Sun God. In traditional Wicca, however, these other representations of the Wiccan god are subsumed or amalgamated into the Horned God, as aspects or expressions of him. Sometimes this is shown by adding horns or antlers to the iconography. The Green Man, for example, may be shown with branches resembling antlers; and the Sun God may be depicted with a crown or halo of solar rays, that may resemble horns. These other conceptions of the Wiccan god should not be regarded as displacing the Horned God, but rather as elaborating on various facets of his nature. Doreen Valiente has called the Horned God "the eldest of gods" in both The Witches Creed and also in her Invocation To The Horned God.
Wiccans believe that The Horned God, as Lord of Death, is their "comforter and consoler" after death and before reincarnation; and that he rules the Underworld or Summerland where the souls of the dead reside as they await rebirth. Some, such as Joanne Pearson, believe that this is based on the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna's descent into the underworld, though this has not been confirmed.
Doreen Valiente, a former High Priestess of the Gardnerian tradition, claimed that Gerald Gardner's Bricket Wood coven referred to the god as Cernunnos, or Kernunno, which is a Latin word, discovered on a stone carving found in France, meaning "the Horned One". Valiente claimed that the coven also referred to the god as Janicot, which she theorised was of Basque origin, and Gardner also used this name in his novel "High Magic's Aid".
Stewart Farrar, a High Priest of the Alexandrian tradition referred to the Horned God as Karnayna, which he believed was a corruption of the word Cernunnos. The historian Ronald Hutton has suggested that it instead came from the Arabic term Dhul-Qarnayn which meant "Horned One". Margaret Murray had mentioned this information in her 1933 book "The God of the Witches", and Hutton theorised that Alex Sanders had taken it from there, enjoying the fact that he shared his name with the ancient Macedonian emperor. Prudence Jones has suggested that the name may instead derive from Karneios, a Spartan deity conflated with Apollo as a subordinate consort to Diana.
In the writings of Charles Cardell and Raymond Howard, the god was referred to as Atho. Howard had a wooden statue of Atho's head which he claimed was 2200 years old, but the statue was stolen in April 1967. Howard's son later admitted that his father had carved the statue himself.
In Cochrane's Craft, which was founded by Robert Cochrane, the Horned God was often referred to by a Biblical name; Tubal-cain, who, according to the Bible was the first blacksmith. In this neopagan concept, the god is also referred to as Brân, a Welsh mythological figure, Wayland, the smith in Germanic mythology, and Herne, a horned figure from English folklore.
In the neopagan tradition of Stregheria, founded by Raven Grimassi and loosely inspired by the works of Charles Godfrey Leland, the Horned God goes by several names, including Dianus, Faunus, Cern, and Actaeon.
In the Hinduism, the Horned God is referred to Pashupati, See Pashupati seal.
Sherry Salman considers the image of the Horned God in Jungian terms, as an archetypal protector and mediator of the outside world to the objective psyche. In her theory the male psyche's 'Horned God' frequently compensates for inadequate fathering.
When first encountered, the figure is a dangerous, 'hairy chthonic wildman' possessed of kindness and intelligence. If repressed, later in life The Horned God appears as the lord of the Otherworld, or Hades. If split off entirely, he leads to violence, substance abuse and sexual perversion. When integrated he gives the male an ego 'in possession of its own destructiveness' and for the female psyche gives an effective animus relating to both the physical body and the psyche.
In considering the Horned God as a symbol recurring in women's literature, Richard Sugg suggests the Horned God represents the 'natural Eros', a masculine lover subjugating the social-conformist nature of the female shadow, thus encompassing a combination of the shadow and animus. One such example is Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights". Sugg goes on to note that female characters who are paired with this character usually end up socially ostracised, or worse – in an inverted ending to the male hero-story.
Following the work of Robert Bly in the Mythopoetic men's movement, John Rowan proposes the Horned God as a "Wild Man" be used as a fantasy image or "sub-personality" helpful to men in humanistic psychology, and escaping from "narrow societal images of masculinity" encompassing excessive deference to women and paraphillia.
Many horned deities are known to have been worshipped in various cultures throughout history. Evidence for horned gods appear very early in the human record. The so-called Sorcerer dates from perhaps 13,000 BCE. Twenty-one red deer headdresses, made from the skulls of the red deer and likely fitted with leather laces, have been uncovered at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr. They are thought to date from roughly 9,000 BCE. Several theories have been created to establish historical roots for modern Neopagan worship of a Horned God.
Following the writings of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage and others, Margaret Murray, in her 1921 book "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe", proposed the theory that the witches of the early-modern period were remnants of a pagan cult and that the Christian Church had declared the god of the witches was in fact the Devil. Without recourse to any specific representation of this deity, Murray speculates that the head coverings common in inquisition-derived descriptions of the devil "may throw light on one of the possible origins of the cult."
In 1931 Murray published a sequel, "The God of the Witches", which tries to gather evidence in support of her witch-cult theory. In Chapter 1 "The Horned God". Murray claims that various depictions of humans with horns from European and Indian sources, ranging from the paleolithic French cave painting of "The Sorcerer" to the Indic Pashupati to the modern English Dorset Ooser, are evidence for an unbroken, Europe-wide tradition of worship of a singular Horned God. Murray derived this model of a horned god cult from James Frazer and Jules Michelet.
In dealing with "The Sorcerer", the earliest evidence claimed, Murray based her observations on a drawing by Henri Breuil, which some modern scholars such as Ronald Hutton claim is inaccurate. Hutton states that modern photographs show the original cave art lacks horns, a human torso or any other significant detail on its upper half. However, others, such as celebrated prehistorian Jean Clottes, assert that Breuil's sketch is indeed accurate. Clottes stated that "I have seen it myself perhaps 20 times over the years".
Breuil considered his drawing to represent a shaman or magician - an interpretation which gives the image its name. Murray having seen the drawing called Breuil's image "the first depiction of a deity", an idea which Breuil and others later adopted.
Murray also used an inaccurate drawing of a mesolithic rock-painting at Cogul in northeast Spain as evidence of group religious ceremony of the cult, although the central male figure is not horned. The illustration she used of the Cogul painting leaves out a number of figures, human and animal, and the original is more likely a sequence of superimposed but unrelated illustrations, rather than a depiction of a single scene.
Despite widespread criticism of Murray's scholarship some minor aspects of her work continued to have supporters.
The popular image of the Greek god Pan was removed from its classical context in the writings of the Romantics of the 18th century and connected with their ideals of a pastoral England. This, along with the general public's increasing lack of familiarity of Greek mythology at the time led to the figure of Pan becoming generalised as a 'horned god', and applying connotations to the character, such as benevolence that were not evident in the original Greek myths which in turn gave rise to the popular acceptance of Murray's hypothetical horned god of the witches.
The reception of "Aradia" amongst Neopagans has not been entirely positive. Clifton suggests that modern claims of revealing an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition, for example those of Leo Martello and Raven Grimassi, must be "match[ed] against", and compared with the claims in "Aradia". He further suggests that a lack of comfort with "Aradia" may be due to an "insecurity" within Neopaganism about the movement's claim to authenticity as a religious revival.
Valiente offers another explanation for the negative reaction of some neopagans; that the identification of Lucifer as the god of the witches in "Aradia" was "too strong meat" for Wiccans who were used to the gentler, romantic paganism of Gerald Gardner and were especially quick to reject any relationship between witchcraft and Satanism.
In 1985 Classical historian Georg Luck, in his "Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds", theorised that the origins of the Witch-cult may have appeared in late antiquity as a faith primarily designed to worship the Horned God, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos, a horned god of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan/Faunus, a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans, those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided the prototype for later Christian conceptions of the Devil, and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches.
Eliphas Levi's image of "Baphomet" serves as an example of the transformation of the Devil into a benevolent fertility deity and provided the prototype for Murray's horned god. Murray's central thesis that images of the Devil were actually of deities and that Christianity had demonised these worshippers as following Satan, is first recorded in the work of Levi in the fashionable 19th-century Occultist circles of England and France. Levi created his image of Baphomet, published in his "Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie" (1855), by combining symbolism from diverse traditions, including the "Diable" card of the 16th and 17th century Tarot of Marseille. Lévi called his image "The Goat of Mendes", possibly following Herodotus' account that the god of Mendes—the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt—was depicted with a goat's face and legs. Herodotus relates how all male goats were held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman publicly copulated with a goat. E. A. Wallis Budge writes,
Margaret Murray's theory of the historical origins of the Horned God has been used by Wiccans to create a myth of historical origins for their religion. There is no verifiable evidence to support claims that the religion originates earlier than the mid-20th century.
Modern scholarship has disproved Margaret Murray's theory, however various horned gods and mother goddesses were indeed worshipped in the British Isles during the ancient and early Medieval periods.
The "father of Wicca", Gerald Gardner, who adopted Margaret Murray's thesis, claimed Wicca was a modern survival of an ancient pan-European pagan religion. Gardner states that he had reconstructed elements of the religion from fragments, incorporating elements from Freemasonry, the Occult, and Theosophy, which came together in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where Gardner met Aleister Crowley, whose influence became the basis for Wiccan magical practices.
Gerald Gardner was initiated into the O.T.O. by Aleister Crowley and subsequently went on to found the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Various scholars on early Wiccan history, such as Ronald Hutton, Philip Heselton, and Leo Ruickbie concur that witchcraft's early rituals, as devised by Gardner, contained much from Crowley's writings such as the Gnostic Mass. The third degree initiation ceremony in Gardnerian Wicca (including the Great Rite) is derived almost completely from the Gnostic Mass.
Georg Luck, repeats part of Murray's theory, stating that the Horned God may have appeared in late antiquity, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos, an antlered god of the Continental Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan/Faunus, a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans, those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided the prototype for later Christian conceptions of the devil, and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches.
In 1908's "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame, in Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", Ratty and Mole meet a mystical horned being, powerful, fearsome and kind. Grahame's work was a significant part of the cultural milieu which stripped the Greek god Pan of his cultural identity in favor of an unnamed, generic horned deity which led to Murray's thesis of historical origins.
Outside of works that predate the publication of Murray's thesis, horned god motifs and characters appear in fantasy literature that draws upon her work and that of her followers.
In the novel "Childhood's End" (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke, all humans have a collective premonition, also described as a memory of the future, of horned aliens which arrive to usher in a new phase of human evolution. The collective subconscious image of the horned aliens is what accounts for mankind's image of the devil or Satan. This theme is also explored in the "Doctor Who" story "The Dæmons" in 1971, where the local superstitions around a landmark known as The Devil's Hump prove to be based on reality, as aliens from the planet Dæmos have been affecting man's progress over the millennia and the Hump actually contains a spacecraft. The only Dæmon to appear is a classic interpretation of a horned satyr-like being with hooves.
In the critically acclaimed and influential 1950s TV series created by Nigel Kneale, "Quatermass and the Pit", depictions of supernatural horned entities, with specific reference to prehistoric cave-art and shamanistic horned head-dress are revealed to be a "race-memory" of psychic Martian grasshoppers, manifested at the climax of the film by a fiery horned god.
Murray's theories has been seen to have had influence on "The Blood on Satan's Claw" (1971), where a murderous female-led cult worships a horned deity named Behemoth.
Marion Zimmer Bradley, who acknowledges the influence of Murray, uses the figure of the "horned god" in her feminist fantasy transformation of Arthurian myth, "Mists of Avalon" (1984), and portrays ritualistic incest between King Arthur as the representative of the horned god and his sister Morgaine as the "spring maiden".
In the popular video game "", its expansion "" has a plot enemy known as Hircine, the Daedric god of the Hunt, who appears as a horned man with the face of a deer skull. He condemned his "hounds" (werewolves) to walk the mortal ground during the Bloodmoon until a champion defeats him or Bloodmoon falls. When in combat, Hircine appears as a horned wolf or bear.
The 1992 "Discworld" novel "Lords and Ladies", by Terry Pratchett, features a King of the Elves who is strongly reminiscent of the Horned God. Although not worshipped by the witches who are the heroines of the book (indeed, quite the reverse), they temporarily ally themselves with him out of necessity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14318 |
Haggis
Haggis () is a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal's stomach though now often in an artificial casing instead. According to the 2001 English edition of the "Larousse Gastronomique": "Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour".
It is believed that food similar to haggis (though not so named)—perishable offal quickly cooked inside an animal's stomach, all conveniently available after a hunt—was eaten from ancient times.
Although the name "hagws" or "hagese" was first recorded in England c. 1430, the dish is considered traditionally of Scottish origin. It is even the national dish, as a result of Scots poet Robert Burns' poem "Address to a Haggis" of 1787. Haggis is traditionally served with "neeps and tatties", boiled and mashed separately, and a dram (a glass of Scotch whisky), especially as the main course of a Burns Supper.
Haggis is popularly assumed to be of Scottish origin, but many countries have produced similar dishes, albeit with different names. However, the recipes as known and standardised now are distinctly Scottish. The first known written recipes for a dish of the name, made with offal and herbs, are as "hagese", in the verse cookbook "Liber Cure Cocorum" dating from around 1430 in Lancashire, north west England, and, as "hagws of a schepe" from an English cookbook also of c. 1430.
The Scottish poem, "Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy", which is dated before 1520 (the generally accepted date prior to the death of William Dunbar, one of the composers), refers to 'haggeis'.
An early printed recipe for haggis appears in 1615 in "The English Huswife" by Gervase Markham. It contains a section entitled "Skill in Oate meale": "The use and vertues of these two severall kinds of Oate-meales in maintaining the Family, they are so many (according to the many customes of many Nations) that it is almost impossible to recken all"; and then proceeds to give a description of "oat-meale mixed with blood, and the Liver of either Sheepe, Calfe or Swine, maketh that pudding which is called the Haggas or Haggus, of whose goodnesse it is in vaine to boast, because there is hardly to be found a man that doth not affect them." (Gervase Markham, "The English Huswife")
Food writer Alan Davidson suggests that the ancient Romans were the first known to have made products of the haggis type. Haggis was "born of necessity, as a way to utilize the least expensive cuts of meat and the innards as well".
Clarissa Dickson Wright says that it "came to Scotland in a longship [i.e., from Scandinavia] even before Scotland was a single nation". She cites etymologist Walter William Skeat as further suggestion of possible Scandinavian origins: Skeat claimed that the "hag–" element of the word is derived from the Old Norse "haggw" or the Old Icelandic "hoggva" ("höggva" meaning 'to chop' in modern Icelandic), Modern Scots "hag", meaning 'to hew' or strike with a sharp weapon, relating to the chopped-up contents of the dish.
In her book, "The Haggis: A Little History", Dickson Wright suggests that haggis was invented as a way of cooking quick-spoiling offal near the site of a hunt, without the need to carry along an additional cooking vessel. The liver and kidneys could be grilled directly over a fire, but this treatment was unsuitable for the stomach, intestines, or lungs. Chopping up the lungs and stuffing the stomach with them and whatever fillers might have been on hand, then boiling the assembly – probably in a vessel made from the animal's hide – was one way to make sure these parts were not wasted.
In the absence of hard facts as to haggis' origins, popular folklore has provided some notions. One is that the dish originates from the days of the old Scottish cattle drovers. When the men left the Highlands to drive their cattle to market in Edinburgh, the women would prepare rations for them to eat during the long journey down through the glens. They used the ingredients that were most readily available in their homes and conveniently packaged them in a sheep's stomach allowing for easy transportation during the journey. Other speculations have been based on Scottish slaughtering practices. When a chieftain or laird required an animal to be slaughtered for meat (whether sheep or cattle) the workmen were allowed to keep the offal as their share.
A joke sometimes maintained is that a haggis is a small Scottish animal with longer legs on one side, so that it can run around the steep hills of the Scottish highlands without falling over. According to one poll, 33 percent of American visitors to Scotland believed haggis to be an animal.
Haggis is traditionally served as part of the Burns supper on or near January 25, the birthday of Scotland's national poet Robert Burns. Burns wrote the poem "Address to a Haggis", which starts "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!" In Burns's lifetime haggis was a common dish of the poor as it was nourishing yet very cheap, being made from leftover parts of sheep otherwise discarded.
Haggis is widely available in supermarkets in Scotland all year, with cheaper brands normally packed in artificial casings, rather than stomachs. Sometimes haggis is sold in tins or a container which can be cooked in a microwave or conventional oven. Some commercial haggis is largely made from pig, rather than sheep, offal. Kosher haggis, not only pork-free but fully conformant to Jewish dietary laws, is produced.
Haggis is often served in Scottish fast-food establishments, in the shape of a large sausage and deep fried in batter. Together with chips, this comprises a "haggis supper". A "haggis burger" is a patty of fried haggis served on a bun. A "haggis pakora" is another deep fried variant, available in some Indian restaurants in Scotland. Haggis can be used as an ingredient in other dishes, even pizza, rather than the main part of a dish.
A traditional haggis recipe describes haggis as "sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased in the animal's stomach and boiled". Ingredients are sheep stomach, heart and lungs of one lamb, onions, oatmeal, salt, pepper, stock, and water, with optional ingredients dried coriander, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It can be boiled, baked, or deep fried.
In the north-east of Scotland, from Aberdeen northwards, in addition to the customary neeps and tatties, haggis is commonly served with mince.
Vegetarian haggis was first available commercially in 1984, and now can account for between 25 - 40% of haggis sales. It substitutes various pulses, nuts and vegetables for the meat. Oats and barley may be included as may different types of lentils, split peas, aduki beans, kidney beans, borlotti beans, peanuts, other nuts and mushrooms, onions, and carrots.
Haggis remains popular with Scottish immigrants in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, owing to the strong influence of Scottish culture, especially for Burns Suppers. It can easily be made in any country, but is sometimes imported from Scotland. A recipe from the Canadian province of New Brunswick uses pork and bakes it in a loaf pan.
In 1971 it became illegal to import haggis into the US from the UK due to a ban on food containing sheep lung, which constitutes 10–15% of the traditional recipe. The ban encompasses all lungs, as fluids such as stomach acid and phlegm may enter the lung during slaughter. The situation was further complicated in 1989 when all UK beef and lamb was banned from importation to the US due to a BSE crisis. In 2010 a spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture stated that they were reviewing the ban on beef and lamb products, but that the ban on food containing sheep lung would remain in force.
As haggis cannot be exported to the United States, it is instead made there, sometimes by Scottish companies. One such uses what is stated to be the same 150-year-old recipe and ingredients as in Scotland, except that sheep lung is not used, and the casing is always artificial. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14320 |
Hank Aaron
Henry Louis Aaron (born February 5, 1934), nicknamed "Hammer" or "Hammerin' Hank," is an American retired Major League Baseball (MLB) right fielder who serves as the senior vice president of the Atlanta Braves. He played 21 seasons for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves in the National League (NL) and two seasons for the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League (AL), from 1954 through 1976. Aaron held the MLB record for career home runs for 33 years, and he still holds several MLB offensive records. He hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955 through 1973, and is one of only two players to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times. In 1999, "The Sporting News" ranked Aaron fifth on its "100 Greatest Baseball Players" list.
Aaron was born and raised in and around Mobile, Alabama. Aaron had seven siblings, including Tommie Aaron, who played major-league baseball with him. He appeared briefly in the Negro American League and in minor league baseball before starting his major league career. By his final MLB season, Aaron was the last Negro league baseball player on a major league roster.
Aaron played the vast majority of his MLB games in right field, though he appeared at several other infield and outfield positions. In his last two seasons, he was primarily a designated hitter. Aaron was an NL All-Star for 20 seasons and an AL All-Star for 1 season, from 1955 through 1975. Aaron holds the record for the most All-Star Game selections (25), and is tied with Willie Mays and Stan Musial for the most All-Star Games played (24). He was a Gold Glove winner for three seasons. In 1957, he was the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) when the Milwaukee Braves won the World Series. He won the NL Player of the Month award in May 1958 and June 1967. Aaron holds the MLB records for the most career runs batted in (RBI) (2,297), extra base hits (1,477), and total bases (6,856). Aaron is also in the top five for career hits (3,771) and runs (2,174). He is one of only four players to have at least seventeen seasons with 150 or more hits. Aaron is in second place in home runs (755) and at-bats (12,364), and in third place in games played (3,298). At the time of his retirement, Aaron held most of the game's key career power hitting records.
In 1982, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Since his retirement, Aaron has held front office roles with the Atlanta Braves. In 1999, MLB introduced the Hank Aaron Award to recognize the top offensive players in each league. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. He was named a 2010 Georgia Trustee by the Georgia Historical Society in recognition of accomplishments that reflect the ideals of Georgia's founders. Aaron resides near Atlanta.
Aaron was born in Mobile, Alabama to Herbert Aaron, Sr. and Estella Aaron. He had seven siblings. Tommie Aaron, one of his brothers, also went on to play Major League Baseball. By the time Aaron retired, he and his brother held the record for most career home runs by a pair of siblings (768). They were also the first siblings to appear in a League Championship Series as teammates.
While he was born in a section of Mobile referred to as "Down the Bay", he spent most of his youth in Toulminville. Aaron grew up in a poor family. His family could not afford baseball equipment, so he practiced by hitting bottle caps with sticks. He would create his own bats and balls out of materials he found on the streets. His boyhood idol was baseball star Jackie Robinson. Aaron attended Central High School as a freshman and a sophomore. Like most high schools, they did not have organized baseball, so he played outfield and third base for the Mobile Black Bears, a semipro team. Aaron was a member of the Boy Scouts of America.
Although he batted cross-handed (as a right-handed hitter, with his left hand above his right), Aaron established himself as a power hitter. As a result, in 1949, at the age of 15, Aaron had his first tryout with an MLB franchise, the Brooklyn Dodgers; however, he did not make the team. After this, Aaron returned to school to finish his secondary education, attending the Josephine Allen Institute, a private high school in Alabama. During his junior year, Aaron first joined the Pritchett Athletics, followed by the Mobile Black Bears, an independent Negro league team. While on the Bears, Aaron earned $3 per game ($ today), which was a dollar more than he got while on the Athletics.
On November 20, 1951, baseball scout Ed Scott signed Aaron to a contract on behalf of the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League, where he played for three months.
He started play as a , shortstop, and earned $200 per month. As a result of his standout play with the Indianapolis Clowns, Aaron received two offers from MLB teams via telegram, one from the New York Giants and the other from the Boston Braves. Years later, Aaron remembered:
I had the Giants' contract in my hand. But the Braves offered fifty dollars a month more. That's the only thing that kept Willie Mays and me from being teammates – fifty dollars.
While with the Clowns he experienced some overt racism. His team was in Washington, D.C.
We had breakfast while we were waiting for the rain to stop, and I can still envision sitting with the Clowns in a restaurant behind Griffith Stadium and hearing them break all the plates in the kitchen after we finished eating. What a horrible sound. Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me: here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they'd have washed them.
The Howe Sports Bureau credits Aaron with a .366 batting average in 26 official Negro league games, with five home runs, 33 runs batted in (RBI), 41 hits, and nine stolen bases.
The Braves purchased Aaron from the Clowns for $10,000, which GM John Quinn thought was a steal, as he stated that he felt that Aaron was a $100,000 property. On June 12, 1952, Aaron signed with Braves' scout Dewey Griggs. During this time, he picked up the nickname "pork chops" because it "was the only thing I knew to order off the menu". A teammate later said, "the man ate pork chops three meals a day, two for breakfast".
The Braves assigned Aaron to the Eau Claire Bears, the Braves' Northern League Class-C farm team. The 1952 season proved to be very beneficial for Aaron. Playing in the infield, Aaron continued to develop as a ballplayer and made the Northern League's All-Star team. He broke his habit of hitting cross-handed and adopted the standard hitting technique. By the end of the season, he had performed so well that the league made him the unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year. Although he appeared in just 87 games, he scored 89 runs, had 116 hits, nine home runs, and 61 RBI. In addition, Aaron hit for a .336 batting average. During his minor league experience, he was very homesick and faced constant racism, but his brother, Herbert Jr., told him not to give up the opportunity.
In 1953, the Braves promoted him to the Jacksonville Braves, their Class-A affiliate in the South Atlantic League. Helped by Aaron's performance, the Braves won the league championship that year. Aaron led the league in runs (115), hits (208), doubles (36), RBI (125), total bases (338), and batting average (.362). He won the league's Most Valuable Player Award, and had such a dominant year that one sportswriter was prompted to say, "Henry Aaron led the league in everything except hotel accommodations." Aaron's time with the Braves did not come without problems. He was one of the first African Americans to play in the league. The 1950s were a period of racial segregation in parts of the United States, especially the southeastern portion of the country. When Aaron traveled around Jacksonville, Florida, and the surrounding areas, he was often separated from his team because of Jim Crow laws. In most circumstances, the team was responsible for arranging housing and meals for its players, but Aaron often had to make his own arrangements. The Braves' manager, Ben Geraghty, tried his best to help Aaron on and off the field. Former Braves minor league player and sportswriter Pat Jordan said, "Aaron gave [Geraghty] much of the credit for his own swift rise to stardom."
That same year, Aaron met his future wife, Barbara Lucas. The night they met, Lucas decided to attend the Braves' game. Aaron singled, doubled, and hit a home run in the game. On October 6, Aaron and Lucas married. In 1958, Aaron's wife noted that during the offseason he liked "to sit and watch those shooting westerns". He also enjoyed cooking and fishing.
Aaron spent the winter of 1953 playing in Puerto Rico. Mickey Owen, the team's manager, helped Aaron with his batting stance. Until then, Aaron had hit most pitches to left field or center field, but after working with Owen, Aaron was able to hit the ball more effectively all over the field. During his stay in Puerto Rico, Owen also helped Aaron transition from second base to the outfield. Aaron had not played well at second base, but Owen noted that Aaron could catch fly balls and throw them well from the outfield to the infield.
The stint in Puerto Rico also allowed Aaron to avoid being drafted into military service. Though the Korean War was over, people were still being drafted. The Braves were able to speak to the draft board, making the case that Aaron could be the player to integrate the Southern Association the following season with the Atlanta Crackers. The board appears to have been convinced, as Aaron was not drafted.
In 1954, Aaron attended spring training with the major league club. Although he was on the roster of its farm club, Milwaukee manager Charley Grimm later stated, "From the start, he did so well I knew we were going to have to carry him." On March 13, 1954, Milwaukee Braves left fielder Bobby Thomson fractured his ankle while sliding into second base during a spring training game. The next day, Aaron made his first spring training start for the Braves' major league team, playing in left field and hitting a home run. This led Hank Aaron to a major league contract, signed on the final day of spring training, and a Braves uniform with the number five. On April 13, Aaron made his major league debut and was hitless in five at-bats against the Cincinnati Reds' left-hander Joe Nuxhall. In the same game, Eddie Mathews hit two home runs, the first of a record 863 home runs the pair would hit as teammates. On April 15, Aaron collected his first major league hit, a double off Cardinals' pitcher Vic Raschi. Aaron hit his first major league home run on April 23, also off Raschi. Over the next 122 games, Aaron batted .280 with 13 homers before he suffered a fractured ankle on September 5. He then changed his number to 44, which would turn out to look like a "lucky number" for the slugger. Aaron would hit 44 home runs in four different seasons, and he hit his record-breaking 715th career home run off Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, who coincidentally also wore number 44.
At this point, Aaron was known to family and friends primarily as "Henry". Braves' public relations director Don Davidson, observing Aaron's quiet, reserved nature, began referring to him publicly as "Hank" in order to suggest more accessibility. The nickname quickly gained currency, but "Henry" continued to be cited frequently in the media, both sometimes appearing in the same article, and Aaron would answer to either one. During his rookie year, his other well-known nicknames, "Hammerin' Hank" (by teammates) and "Bad Henry" (by opposing pitchers) are reported to have arisen.
Considerably later in his career, Aaron coined "Stone-fingers", which would prove a popular handle for one of baseball's more colorful characters, the famously distance-hitting but defensively challenged first baseman Dick Stuart, reportedly "delight[ing]" even its recipient.
Aaron hit .314 with 27 home runs and 106 RBI, in 1955. He was named to the NL All-Star roster for the first time; it was the first of a record 21 All-Star selections and first of a record 25 All-Star Game appearances. In 1956, Aaron hit .328 and captured the first of two NL batting titles. He was also named "The Sporting News" NL Player of the Year. In 1957, Aaron won his only NL MVP Award, as he had his first brush with the triple crown. He batted .322, placing third, and led the league in home runs and runs batted in. On September 23, 1957 in Milwaukee, Aaron hit a two-run walk-off home run against the St. Louis Cardinals, clinching the pennant for the Braves. After touching home plate he was carried off the field by his teammates. It was the only pennant-clinching walk-off home run in major league history in a non-playoff regular season game. Milwaukee went on to win the World Series against the New York Yankees, the defending champions, 4 games to 3. Aaron did his part by hitting .393 with three homers and seven RBI. On December 15, 1957, his wife Barbara gave birth to twins. Two days later, one of the children died. In 1958, Aaron hit .326, with 30 home runs and 95 RBI. He led the Braves to another pennant, but this time they lost a seven-game World Series to the Yankees. Aaron finished third in the MVP race and he received his first of three Gold Glove Awards. During the next several years, Aaron had some of his best games and best seasons as a major league player. On June 21, 1959, against the San Francisco Giants, he hit three two-run home runs. It was the only time in his career that he hit three home runs in a game.
In 1963, Aaron nearly won the triple crown. He led the league with 44 home runs and 130 RBI and finished third in batting average. In that season, Aaron became the third player to steal 30 bases and hit 30 home runs in a single season. Despite that, he again finished third in the MVP voting. The Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta after the 1965 season. On May 10, 1967, he hit an inside-the-park home run against Jim Bunning in Philadelphia. It was his only inside-the-park home run of his career. In 1968, Aaron was the first Atlanta Braves player to hit his 500th career home run, and in 1970, he was the first Atlanta Brave to reach 3,000 career hits.
During his days in Atlanta, Aaron reached a number of milestones; he was only the eighth player ever to hit 500 career home runs, with his 500th coming against Mike McCormick of the San Francisco Giants on July 14, 1968—exactly one year after former Milwaukee Braves teammate Eddie Mathews had hit his 500th. Aaron was, at the time, the second-youngest player to reach that plateau. On July 31, 1969, Aaron hit his 537th home run, passing Mickey Mantle's total; this moved Aaron into third place on the career home run list, after Willie Mays and Babe Ruth. At the end of the 1969 season, Aaron again finished third in the MVP voting.
In 1970, Aaron reached two more career milestones. On May 17, Aaron collected his 3,000th hit, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds, the team against which he played in his first major-league game. Aaron established the record for most seasons with thirty or more home runs in the National League. On April 27, 1971, Aaron hit his 600th career home run, the third major league player ever to do so. On July 13, Aaron hit a home run in the All-Star Game (played at Detroit's Tiger Stadium) for the first time. He hit his 40th home run of the season against the Giants' Jerry Johnson on August 10, which established a National League record for most seasons with 40 or more home runs (seven). At age 37, he hit a career-high 47 home runs during the season (along with a career-high .669 slugging percentage) and finished third in MVP voting for the sixth time. During the strike-shortened season of 1972, Aaron tied and then surpassed Willie Mays for second place on the career home run list. Aaron also knocked in the 2,000th run of his career and hit a home run in the first All-Star game played in Atlanta. As the year came to a close, Aaron broke Stan Musial's major-league record for total bases (6,134). Aaron finished the season with 673 career home runs.
Aaron himself downplayed the "chase" to surpass Babe Ruth, while baseball enthusiasts and the national media grew increasingly excited as he closed in on the 714 career home runs record. Aaron received thousands of letters every week during the summer of 1973, including hate mail; the Braves ended up hiring a secretary to help him sort through it.
Aaron (then age 39) hit 40 home runs in 392 at-bats, ending the 1973 season one home run short of the record. He hit home run number 713 on September 29, 1973, and with one day remaining in the season, many expected him to tie the record. But in his final game that year, playing against the Houston Astros (managed by Leo Durocher, who had once roomed with Babe Ruth), he was unable to achieve this. After the game, Aaron said his only fear was that he might not live to see the 1974 season.
He was the recipient of death threats during the 1973–1974 offseason and a large assortment of hate mail from people who did not want to see Aaron break Ruth's nearly sacrosanct home run record. The threats extended to those providing positive press coverage of Aaron. Lewis Grizzard, then sports editor of the "Atlanta Journal", reported receiving numerous phone calls calling journalists "nigger lovers" for covering Aaron's chase. While preparing the massive coverage of the home run record, he quietly had an obituary written, afraid that Aaron might be murdered.
"Sports Illustrated" pointedly summarized the racist vitriol that Aaron was forced to endure:
Is this to be the year in which Aaron, at the age of thirty-nine, takes a moon walk above one of the most hallowed individual records in American sport...? Or will it be remembered as the season in which Aaron, the most dignified of athletes, was besieged with hate mail and trapped by the cobwebs and goblins that lurk in baseball's attic?
At the end of the 1973 season, Aaron received a plaque from the US Postal Service for receiving more mail (930,000 pieces) than any person excluding politicians. Aaron received an outpouring of public support in response to the bigotry. Newspaper cartoonist Charles Schulz created a series of "Peanuts" strips printed in August 1973 in which Snoopy attempts to break the Ruth record, only to be besieged with hate mail. Lucy says in the August 11 strip, "Hank Aaron is a great player... but you! If you break Babe Ruth's record, it'll be a disgrace!" Coincidentally, Snoopy was only one home run short of tying the record (and finished the season as such when Charlie Brown got picked off during Snoopy's last at-bat), and as it turned out, Aaron finished the 1973 season one home run short of Ruth. Babe Ruth's widow, Claire Hodgson, denounced the racism and declared that her husband would have enthusiastically cheered Aaron's attempt at the record. As the 1974 season began, Aaron's pursuit of the record caused a small controversy. The Braves opened the season on the road in Cincinnati with a three-game series against the Cincinnati Reds. Braves management wanted him to break the record in Atlanta, and were therefore going to have Aaron sit out the first three games of the season. But Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ruled that he had to play two games in the first series. He played two out of three, tying Babe Ruth's record, April 4, 1974, in his very first at bat—on his first swing of the season—off Reds pitcher Jack Billingham, but did not hit another home run in the series.
The Braves returned to Atlanta, and on April 8, 1974, a crowd of 53,775 people showed up for the game—a Braves attendance record. The game was also broadcast nationally on NBC. In the fourth inning, Aaron hit home run number 715 off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. Although Dodgers outfielder Bill Buckner nearly went over the outfield fence trying to catch it, the ball flew into the Braves' bullpen, where relief pitcher Tom House caught it. While cannons were fired in celebration, two college students sprinted onto the field and jogged alongside Aaron for part of his circuit around the bases, temporarily startling him. A very youthful Craig Sager actually interviewed Aaron between third and home for a television station, WXLT (now WWSB-Channel 40) in Sarasota. As the fans cheered wildly, Aaron's parents ran onto the field as well. Braves announcer Milo Hamilton, calling the game on WSB radio, described the scene as Aaron broke the record:
Meanwhile, Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully addressed the racial tension—or apparent lack thereof—in his call of the home run: "What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron... And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months." On October 2, 1974, Aaron hit his 733rd home run in his last at bat as a Braves player. Thirty days later, after Aaron decided not to retire, the Braves traded him to the Milwaukee Brewers for Roger Alexander and Dave May. The trade re-united Aaron with former teammate Del Crandall, who was now managing the Brewers. On May 1, 1975, Aaron broke baseball's all-time RBI record, previously held by Ruth with 2,213. That year, he also played in his last and 24th All-Star Game (25th All-Star Game selection); he lined out to Dave Concepción as a pinch-hitter in the second inning. This All-Star Game, like the first one he played in 1955, was before a home crowd at Milwaukee County Stadium.
Aaron hit his 755th and final home run on July 20, 1976, at Milwaukee County Stadium off Dick Drago of the California Angels, which stood as the MLB career home run record until it was broken in 2007 by Barry Bonds. Over the course of his record-breaking 23-year career, Aaron had a batting average of .305 with 163 hits a season, while hitting an average of just over 32 home runs a year and knocking home 99 runs batted in (RBIs) a year. He had 100+ RBIs in a season 15 times, including a record of 13 in a row.
After the 1976 season, Aaron rejoined the Braves as an executive. On August 1, 1982, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, having received votes on 97.8 percent of the ballots, second only to Ty Cobb, who had received votes on 98.2% of the ballot in the inaugural 1936 Hall of Fame election. Aaron was then named the Braves' vice president and director of player development. This made him one of the first minorities in Major League Baseball upper-level management.
Since December 1980, he has served as senior vice president and assistant to the Braves' president. He is the corporate vice president of community relations for TBS, a member of the company's board of directors and the vice president of business development for The Airport Network. On January 21, 2007, Major League Baseball announced the sale of the Atlanta Braves. In that announcement, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig also announced that Aaron would be playing a major role in the management of Braves, forming programs through major league baseball that will encourage the influx of minorities into baseball. Aaron founded the Hank Aaron Rookie League program.
His autobiography, "I Had a Hammer" was published in 1990. The book's title is a play on his nickname, "The Hammer" or "Hammerin' Hank," and the title of the folk song "If I Had a Hammer." Aaron now owns Hank Aaron BMW of south Atlanta in Union City, Georgia, where he gives an autographed baseball with every car sold. Aaron also owns Mini, Land Rover, Toyota, Hyundai and Honda dealerships throughout Georgia, as part of the Hank Aaron Automotive Group. Aaron sold all but the Toyota dealership in McDonough in 2007. Additionally, Aaron owns a chain of 30 restaurants around the country. During the 2006 season, San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth and moved into second place on the all-time home run list, attracting growing media coverage as he drew closer to Aaron's record. Playing off the intense interest in their perceived rivalry, Aaron and Bonds made a television commercial that aired during Super Bowl XLI, shortly before the start of the 2007 baseball season, in which Aaron jokingly tried to persuade Bonds to retire before breaking the record. As Bonds began to close in on the record during the 2007 season, Aaron let it be known that, although he recognized Bonds' achievements, he would not be present when Bonds broke the record. There was considerable speculation that this was a snubbing of Bonds based on the widespread belief that Bonds had used performance-enhancing drugs and steroids to aid his achievement. However, some observers looked back on Aaron's personal history, pointing out that he had downplayed his own breaking of Babe Ruth's all-time record and suggesting Aaron was simply treating Bonds in a similar fashion. In a later interview with Atlanta sportscasting personality Chris Dimino, Aaron made it clear his reluctance to attend any celebration of a new home run record was based upon his personal conviction that baseball is not about breaking records, but simply playing to the best of one's potential. After Bonds hit his record-breaking 756th home run on August 7, 2007, Aaron made a surprise appearance on the JumboTron video screen at AT&T Park in San Francisco to congratulate Bonds on his accomplishment:
Aaron lives in the Atlanta area. In July 2013, media reported that his home was burglarized. Jewelry and two BMW vehicles were stolen. The cars were later recovered.
Aaron's first marriage was to Barbara Lucas in 1953. They had five children: Gary, Lary, Dorinda, Gaie and Hank Jr. He divorced Barbara in 1971, and married Billye Suber Williams on November 13, 1973. With his second wife, he had one child, Ceci.
Aaron is a long time fan of the Cleveland Browns, having attended many games in disguise in their "Dog Pound" seating section.
Aaron was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1976, from the NAACP.
In 1977, Hank Aaron received the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award.
In 1982, Aaron was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility. In 1988 Aaron was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame for his time spent on the Milwaukee Braves.
In 1999, MLB created the Hank Aaron Award, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Aaron's surpassing of Babe Ruth's career home run mark of 714 home runs and to honor Aaron's contributions to baseball. The award is given annually to the baseball hitters voted the most effective in each respective league. That same year, baseball fans named Aaron to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hank Aaron on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
When the city of Atlanta was converting Centennial Olympic Stadium into a new baseball stadium, many local residents hoped the stadium would be named for Hank Aaron. When the stadium was instead named Turner Field (after Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner), a section of Capitol Avenue running past the stadium was renamed Hank Aaron Drive. The stadium's street number is 755, after Aaron's total number of home runs; the 755 street number was retained for Turner Field's replacement, Truist Park. In April 1997, a new baseball facility for the AA Mobile Bay Bears constructed in Aaron's hometown of Mobile, Alabama was named Hank Aaron Stadium. Georgia State University acquired Turner Field, since rebuilt as Georgia State Stadium, in 2017, and university officials plan to build a new baseball park on the former Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium site, incorporating the left field wall where Aaron hit his record-breaking home run.
On February 5, 1999, at his 65th birthday celebration, Major League Baseball announced the introduction of the Hank Aaron Award. The award honors the best overall offensive performer in the American and National League. It was the first major award to be introduced in more than thirty years and had the distinction of being the first award named after a player who was still alive. Later that year, he ranked fifth on "The Sporting News" list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
In July 2000 and again in July 2002, Aaron threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, played at Turner Field and Miller Park, respectively.
On January 8, 2001, Hank Aaron was presented with the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President George W. Bush in June 2002.
In 2001, a recreational trail in Milwaukee connecting Miller Park with Lake Michigan along the Menomonee River was dedicated as the "Hank Aaron State Trail." Hank Aaron was on hand for the dedication. Aaron is on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.
In 2002, Aaron was honored with the "Lombardi Award of Excellence" from the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation. The award was created to honor Coach Lombardi's legacy, and is awarded annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of the Coach.
Aaron dedicated the new exhibit "Hank Aaron-Chasing the Dream" at the Baseball Hall of Fame on April 25, 2009. Statues of Aaron stand outside the front entrance of both Turner Field and Miller Park. There is also a statue of him as an eighteen-year-old shortstop outside Carson Park in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he played his first season in the Braves' minor league system.
He was named a 2010 Georgia Trustee by the Georgia Historical Society, in conjunction with the Governor of Georgia, to recognize accomplishments and community service that reflect the ideals of the founding body of Trustees, which governed the Georgia colony from 1732 to 1752. In January 2016 Aaron received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette from Akihito, the Emperor of Japan.
In 2011, President of Princeton University Shirley M. Tilghman awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree to Hank Aaron. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14321 |
Holy Grail
The Holy Grail (, , ) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Different traditions describe it as a cup, dish or stone with miraculous powers that provide happiness, eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often in the custody of the Fisher King. The term "holy grail" is often used to denote an elusive object or goal that is sought after for its great significance.
A "grail", wondrous but not explicitly holy, first appears in "Perceval, le Conte du Graal", an unfinished romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Chrétien's story attracted many continuators, translators and interpreters in the later 12th and early 13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who perceived the Grail as a stone. In the late 12th century, Robert de Boron wrote in "Joseph d'Arimathie" that the Grail was Jesus's vessel from the Last Supper, which Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ's blood at the crucifixion. Thereafter, the Holy Grail became interwoven with the legend of the Holy Chalice, the Last Supper cup, a theme continued in works such as the Vulgate Cycle, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, as well as "Le Morte d'Arthur".
The word , as it is earliest spelled, comes from Old French or , cognate with Old Provençal and Old Catalan "gresal", meaning "a cup or bowl of earth, wood, or metal" (or other various types of vessels in different Occitan dialects). The most commonly accepted etymology derives it from Latin or via an earlier form, , a derivative of or , which was, in turn, borrowed from Greek (, a large wine-mixing vessel). Alternative suggestions include a derivative of , a name for a type of woven basket that came to refer to a dish, or a derivative of Latin meaning "'by degree', 'by stages', applied to a dish brought to the table in different stages or services during a meal".
In the 15th century, English writer John Hardyng invented a fanciful new etymology for Old French (or ), meaning "Holy Grail", by parsing it as , meaning "royal blood". This etymology was used by some later medieval British writers such as Thomas Malory, and became prominent in the conspiracy theory developed in the book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", in which refers to the Jesus bloodline.
The literature surrounding the Grail can be divided into two groups. The first concerns King Arthur's knights visiting the Grail castle or questing after the object. The second concerns the Grail's history in the time of Joseph of Arimathea.
The nine works from the first group are:
Of the second group there are:
The Grail was considered a bowl or dish when first described by Chrétien de Troyes. There, it is a processional salver, a tray, used to serve at a feast. Hélinand of Froidmont described a grail as a "wide and deep saucer" ("scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda"); other authors had their own ideas. Robert de Boron portrayed it as the vessel of the Last Supper. "Peredur son of Efrawg" had no Grail as such, presenting the hero instead with a platter containing his kinsman's bloody, severed head.
The Grail is first featured in "Perceval, le Conte du Graal" ("The Story of the Grail") by Chrétien de Troyes, who claims he was working from a source book given to him by his patron, Count Philip of Flanders. In this incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191, the object has not yet acquired the implications of holiness it would have in later works. While dining in the magical abode of the Fisher King, Perceval witnesses a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before him at each course of the meal. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabras. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated "graal", or "grail".
Chrétien refers to this object not as "The Grail" but as "a grail" ("un graal"), showing the word was used, in its earliest literary context, as a common noun. For Chrétien a grail was a wide, somewhat deep dish or bowl, interesting because it contained not a pike, salmon, or lamprey, as the audience may have expected for such a container, but a single Communion wafer which provided sustenance for the Fisher King's crippled father. Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through all of this and wakes up the next morning alone. He later learns that if he had asked the appropriate questions about what he saw, he would have healed his maimed host, much to his honour. The story of the Wounded King's mystical fasting is not unique; several saints were said to have lived without food besides communion, for instance Saint Catherine of Genoa. This may imply that Chrétien intended the Communion wafer to be the significant part of the ritual, and the Grail to be a mere prop.
Though Chrétien's account is the earliest and most influential of all Grail texts, it was in the work of Robert de Boron that the Grail truly became the "Holy Grail" and assumed the form most familiar to modern readers in its Christian context. In his verse romance "Joseph d'Arimathie", composed between 1191 and 1202, Robert tells the story of Joseph of Arimathea acquiring the chalice of the Last Supper to collect Christ's blood upon his removal from the cross. Joseph is thrown in prison, where Christ visits him and explains the mysteries of the blessed cup. Upon his release, Joseph gathers his in-laws and other followers and travels to the west. He founds a dynasty of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.
The authors of the Vulgate Cycle used the Grail as a symbol of divine grace; Galahad, illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine, the world's greatest knight and the Grail Bearer at the castle of Corbenic, is destined to achieve the Grail, his spiritual purity making him a greater warrior than even his illustrious father. The "Queste del Saint Graal" ("The Quest of The Holy Grail") tells also of the adventures of various Knights of the Round Table in their eponymous quest, some of them including Percival as Galahad's on-and-off companions. Galahad and the interpretation of the Grail involving him were picked up in the 15th century by Thomas Malory in "Le Morte d'Arthur" and remain popular today.
In "Parzival", Wolfram von Eschenbach, citing the authority of a certain (probably fictional) Kyot the Provençal, claimed the Grail was a Stone, the sanctuary of the neutral angels who took neither side during Lucifer's rebellion. It is called "Lapsit exillis", which in alchemy is the name of the Philosopher's stone.
Scholars have long speculated on the origins of the Holy Grail before Chrétien, suggesting that it may contain elements of the trope of magical cauldrons from Celtic mythology and later Welsh mythology combined with Christian legend surrounding the Eucharist, the latter found in Eastern Christian sources, conceivably in that of the Byzantine Mass, or even Persian sources. The view that the "origin" of the Grail legend should be seen as deriving from Celtic mythology was championed by Roger Sherman Loomis, Alfred Nutt and Jessie Weston. Loomis traced a number of parallels between Medieval Welsh literature and Irish material and the Grail romances, including similarities between the "Mabinogion"s Bran the Blessed and the Arthurian Fisher King, and between Bran's life-restoring cauldron and the Grail.
The opposing view dismissed the "Celtic" connections as spurious and interpreted the legend as essentially Christian in origin. Joseph Goering has identified sources for Grail imagery in 12th-century wall paintings from churches in the Catalan Pyrenees (now mostly removed to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), which present unique iconic images of the Virgin Mary holding a bowl that radiates tongues of fire, images that predate the first literary account by Chrétien de Troyes. Goering argues that they were the original inspiration for the Grail legend.
Psychologists Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz used analytical psychology to interpret the Grail as a series of symbols in their book "The Grail Legend". This expanded on interpretations by Carl Jung, which were later invoked by Joseph Campbell.
Richard Barber (2004) argued that the Grail legend is connected to the introduction of "more ceremony and mysticism" surrounding the sacrament of the Eucharist in the high medieval period, proposing that the first Grail stories may have been connected to the "renewal in this traditional sacrament". Daniel Scavone (1999, 2003) has argued that the "Grail" in origin referred to the Shroud of Turin. Goulven Peron (2016) suggested that the Holy Grail may reflect the horn of the river-god Achelous as described by Ovid in the "Metamorphoses".
In the wake of the Arthurian romances, several artifacts came to be identified as the Holy Grail in medieval relic veneration. These artifacts are said to have been the vessel used at the Last Supper, but other details vary. Despite the prominence of the Grail literature, traditions about a Last Supper relic remained rare in contrast to other items associated with Jesus' last days, such as the True Cross and Holy Lance.
One tradition predates the Grail romances: in the 7th century, the pilgrim Arculf reported that the Last Supper chalice was displayed near Jerusalem. In the wake of Robert de Boron's Grail works, several other items came to be claimed as the true Last Supper vessel. In the late 12th century, one was said to be in Byzantium; Albrecht von Scharfenberg's Grail romance "Der Jüngere Titurel" associated it explicitly with the Arthurian Grail, but claimed it was only a copy. This item was said to have been looted in the Fourth Crusade and brought to Troyes in France, but it was lost during the French Revolution.
Two relics associated with the Grail survive today. The "Sacro Catino" (Sacred Basin, also known as the Genoa Chalice) is a green glass dish held at the Genoa Cathedral said to have been used at the Last Supper. Its provenance is unknown, and there are two divergent accounts of how it was brought to Genoa by Crusaders in the 12th century. It was not associated with the Last Supper until later, in the wake of the Grail romances; the first known association is in Jacobus da Varagine's chronicle of Genoa in the late 13th century, which draws on the Grail literary tradition. The Catino was moved and broken during Napoleon's conquest in the early 19th century, revealing that it is glass rather than emerald.
The Holy Chalice of Valencia is an agate dish with a mounting for use as a chalice. The bowl may date to Greco-Roman times, but its dating is unclear, and its provenance is unknown before 1399, when it was gifted to Martin I of Aragon. By the 14th century an elaborate tradition had developed that this object was the Last Supper chalice. This tradition mirrors aspects of the Grail material, with several major differences, suggesting a separate tradition entirely. It is not associated with Joseph of Arimathea or Jesus' blood; it is said to have been taken to Rome by Saint Peter and later entrusted to Saint Lawrence. Early references do not call the object the "Grail"; the first evidence connecting it to the Grail tradition is from the 15th century. The monarchy sold the cup in the 15th century to Valencia Cathedral, where it remains a significant local icon.
Several objects were identified with the Holy Grail in the 17th century. In the 20th century, a series of new items became associated with it. These include the Nanteos Cup, a medieval wooden bowl found near Rhydyfelin, Wales; a glass dish found near Glastonbury, England; and the Antioch chalice, a 6th-century silver-gilt object that became attached to the Grail legend in the 1930s.
In the modern era, a number of places have become associated with the Holy Grail. One of the most prominent is Glastonbury in Somerset, England. Glastonbury was associated with King Arthur and his resting place of Avalon by the 12th century. In the 13th century, a legend arose that Joseph of Arimathea was the founder of Glastonbury Abbey. Early accounts of Joseph at Glastonbury focus on his role as the evangelist of Britain rather than as the custodian of the Holy Grail, but from the 15th century, the Grail became a more prominent part of the legends surrounding Glastonbury. Interest in Glastonbury resurged in the late 19th century, inspired by renewed interest in the Arthurian legend and contemporary spiritual movements centered on ancient sacred sites. In the late 19th century, John Goodchild hid a glass bowl near Glastonbury; a group of his friends, including Wellesley Tudor Pole, retrieved the cup in 1906 and promoted it as the original Holy Grail. Glastonbury and its Holy Grail legend have since become a point of focus for various New Age and Neopagan groups.
In the early 20th century, esoteric writers identified Montségur, a stronghold of the heretical Cathar sect in the 13th century, as the Grail castle. Similarly, the 14th-century Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian, Scotland, became attached to the Grail legend in the mid-20th century when a succession of conspiracy books identified it as a secret hiding place of the Grail.
Since the 19th century, the Holy Grail has been linked to various conspiracy theories. In 1818, Austrian pseudohistorical writer Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall connected the Grail to contemporary myths surrounding the Knights Templar that cast the order as a secret society dedicated to mystical knowledge and relics. In Hammer-Purgstall's work, the Grail is not a physical relic but a symbol of the secret knowledge that the Templars sought. There is no historical evidence linking the Templars to a search for the Grail, but subsequent writers have elaborated on the Templar theories.
Starting in the early 20th century, writers, particularly in France, further connected the Templars and Grail to the Cathars. In 1906, French esoteric writer Joséphin Péladan identified the Cathar castle of Montségur with Munsalväsche or Montsalvat, the Grail castle in Wolfram's "Parzival". This identification has inspired a wider legend asserting that the Cathars possessed the Holy Grail. According to these stories, the Cathars guarded the Grail at Montségur, and smuggled it out when the castle fell in 1244.
Beginning in 1933, German writer Otto Rahn published a series of books tying the Grail, Templars, and Cathars to modern German nationalist mythology. According to Rahn, the Grail was a symbol of a pure Germanic religion repressed by Christianity. Rahn's books inspired interest in the Grail in Nazi occultism and led to Heinrich Himmler's abortive sponsorship of Rahn's search for the Grail, as well as many subsequent conspiracy theories and fictional works about the Nazis searching for the Grail.
In the late 20th century, writers Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln created one of the most widely known conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail. The theory first appeared in the BBC documentary series "Chronicle" in the 1970s, and was elaborated upon in the bestselling 1982 book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". The theory combines myths about the Templars and Cathars with various other legends and a prominent hoax about a secret order called the Priory of Sion. According to this theory, the Holy Grail is not a physical object, but a symbol of the bloodline of Jesus. The blood connection is based on the etymology reading "san greal" (holy grail) as "sang real" (royal blood), which dates to the 15th century. The narrative developed here is that Jesus was not divine, and had children with Mary Magdalene, who took the family to France where their descendants became the Merovingians dynasty. While the Catholic Church worked to destroy the dynasty, they were protected by the Priory of Sion and their associates, including the Templars, Cathars, and other secret societies. The book, its arguments, and its evidence have been widely criticized by scholars, but it has had a vast influence on conspiracy and alternate history books. It has also inspired fiction, most notably Dan Brown's 2003 novel "The Da Vinci Code" and its 2006 film adaptation.
The combination of hushed reverence, chromatic harmonies and sexualized imagery in Richard Wagner's final music drama "Parsifal", premiered in 1882, developed this theme, associating the grail – now periodically producing blood – directly with female fertility. The high seriousness of the subject was also epitomized in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting in which a woman modeled by Alexa Wilding holds the Grail with one hand, while adopting a gesture of blessing with the other.
A major mural series depicting the Quest for the Holy Grail was done by the artist Edwin Austin Abbey during the first decade of the 20th century for the Boston Public Library. Other artists, including George Frederic Watts and William Dyce, also portrayed grail subjects.
The story of the Grail and of the quest to find it became increasingly popular in the 19th century, referred to in literature such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Arthurian cycle "Idylls of the King". A sexualised interpretation of the grail, now identified with female genitalia, appeared in 1870 in Hargrave Jennings' book "The Rosicrucians, Their Rites and Mysteries".
In the cinema, the Holy Grail debuted in the 1904 silent film "Parsifal", an adaptation of Wagner's opera by Edwin S. Porter. More recent cinematic adaptations include Costain's "The Silver Chalice" made into a 1954 film by Victor Saville and Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" turned into a 2006 film by Ron Howard. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14322 |
Hunt the Wumpus
Hunt the Wumpus is a text-based adventure game developed by Gregory Yob in 1973. In the game, the player moves through a series of connected caves, arranged in a dodecahedron, as they hunt a monster named the Wumpus. The turn-based game has the player trying to avoid fatal bottomless pits and "super bats" that will move them around the cave system; the goal is to fire one of their "crooked arrows" through the caves to kill the Wumpus. Yob created the game in early 1973 due to his annoyance at the multiple hide-and-seek games set in caves in a grid pattern, and it and multiple variations were sold via mail order by Yob and the People's Computer Company. The source code to the game was published in "Creative Computing" in 1975 and republished in "The Best of Creative Computing" the following year.
The game sparked multiple variations and expanded versions and was ported to several systems, including the TI-99/4A home computer. It has been cited as an early example of the survival horror genre, and was listed in 2012 on "Time"s All-Time 100 greatest video games list. The Wumpus monster has appeared in several forms in media since 1973, including other video games, a novella, and "" cards.
"Hunt the Wumpus" is a text-based adventure game set in a series of caves connected by tunnels. In one of the twenty caves is a "Wumpus", which the player is attempting to kill. Additionally, two of the caves contain bottomless pits, while two others contain "super bats" which will pick up the player and move them to a random cave. The game is turn-based; each cave is given a number by the game, and each turn begins with the player being told which cave they are in and which caves are connected to it by tunnels. The player then elects to either move to one of those connected caves or shoot one of their five "crooked arrows", named for their ability to change direction while in flight. Each cave is connected to three others, and the system as a whole is equivalent to a dodecahedron.
The caves are in complete darkness, so the player cannot see into adjacent caves; instead, upon moving to a new empty cave, the game describes if they can smell a Wumpus, hear a bat, or feel a draft from a pit in one of the connected caves. Entering a cave with a pit ends the game due to the player falling in, while entering the cave with the Wumpus startles them; the Wumpus will either move to another cave or remain and kill the player. If the player chooses to fire an arrow, they first select how many caves, up to five, that the arrow will travel through, and then enters each cave that the arrow moves through. If the player enters a cave number that is not connected to where the arrow is, the game picks a valid option at random. If the arrow hits the player while it is travelling, the player loses; if it hits the Wumpus, they win. If the arrow does not hit anything, then the Wumpus is startled and may move to a new cave; unlike the player, the Wumpus is not affected by super bats or pits. If the Wumpus moves to the player's location, they lose.
In early 1973, Gregory Yob was looking through some of the games published by the People's Computer Company (PCC), and grew annoyed that there were multiple games, including "Hurkle" and "Mugwump", that had the player "hide and seek" in a 10 by 10 grid. Yob was inspired to make a game that used a non-grid pattern, where the player would move through points connected through some other type of topology. Yob came up with the name "Hunt the Wumpus" that afternoon, and decided from there that the player would traverse through rooms arranged in a non-grid pattern, with a monster called a Wumpus somewhere in them. Yob chose a dodecahedron because it was his favorite platonic solid, and because he had once made a kite shaped like one. From there, Yob added the arrows to shoot between rooms, terming it the "crooked arrow" as it would need to change directions to go through multiple caves, and decided that the player could only sense nearby caves by smell, as a light would wake the Wumpus up. He then added the bottomless pits, and a couple days later the super bats. Finally, feeling that players would want to create a map, he made the cave map fixed and gave each cave a number. Yob later claimed that, to his knowledge, most players did not create maps of the cave system, nor follow his expected strategy of carefully moving around the system to determine exactly where the Wumpus was before firing an arrow. While playtesting the game, Yob found it unexciting that the Wumpus always stayed in one place, and so changed it to be able to move. He then delivered a copy of the game, written in BASIC, to the PCC.
In May 1973, one month after he had finished coding the game, Yob went to a conference at Stanford University and discovered that in the section of the conference where the PCC had set up computer terminals, multiple players were engrossed in playing "Wumpus", making it, in his opinion, a hit game. The PCC first mentioned the game in its newsletter in September 1973 as a "cave game" that would be available to order through them soon, and gave it a full two-page description in its next issue in November 1973. Tapes containing "Wumpus" were sold via mail order by both the PCC and Yob himself. The PCC description was republished along with source code in its book "What to Do After You Hit Return" in 1977, while a description of the game and its source code was published in "Creative Computing" in its October 1975 issue, and republished in "The Best of Creative Computing" the following year. It also appeared in other books of BASIC games, such as "Computer Programs in BASIC" in 1981.
Multiple versions of "Hunt the Wumpus" were created and distributed after the game's release. Yob made "Wumpus 2" and "Wumpus 3", beginning immediately after finishing the original game, with "Wumpus 2" adding different cave arrangements and "Wumpus 3" adding more hazards. The source code for "Wumpus 2" was published in "Creative Computing" and republished in "The Best of Creative Computing 2" (1977), along with a description of "Wumpus 3". The PCC announced in the same November 1973 newsletter issue as it discussed the original game that a version from them titled "Super Wumpus" would be available soon, and listed it in its order catalog in its January 1974 issue. In 1978, a book titled "Superwumpus", by Jack Emmerichs, was published containing source code for both BASIC and assembly language versions of his unrelated version of "Hunt the Wumpus".
In addition to the original BASIC games, versions of "Hunt the Wumpus" have been created for numerous other systems. Yob had seen or heard of versions in several languages, such as IBM RPG and Fortran, by 1975. A version in C, written in November 1973 by Ken Thompson, creator of the Unix operating system, was released in 1974; a later C version can still be found in the bsdgames package on modern BSD and Linux operating systems. A version was released for the HP-41C calculator in 1981, and a commercial port for the TI-99/4A home computer was published by Texas Instruments in 1980, with graphics and a torus shape of caves displayed in a grid pattern instead of a dodecahedron.
"Hunt the Wumpus" has been cited as an early example of a survival horror game; the book "Vampires and Zombies" claims that it was an early example of the genre, while the paper "Restless dreams in Silent Hill" states that "from a historical perspective the genre's roots lie in "Hunt the Wumpus"". Other sources, however, such as the book "The World of Scary Video Games", claim that the game lacks elements needed for a "horror" game, as the player hunts rather than is hunted by the Wumpus, and nothing in the game is explicitly intended to frighten the player, making it more of an early adventure or puzzle game. Kevin Cogger of 1Up.com claimed that "Wumpus", whether or not it is an adventure game, "introduced a number of concepts that would come to define the adventure genre", such as presenting the game from the perspective of the player-character, and non-grid-based map design. In 2012, "Hunt the Wumpus" was listed on "Time"s All-Time 100 greatest video games list. The Wumpus monster has appeared in several different forms of media, including a "Hunted Wumpus" "" card, the 1983 video game "M.U.L.E.", and Cory Doctorow's 2011 novella "The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow". The textbook , with editions published since 1995, uses a version of this game as one of the examples. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14323 |
Hearst Communications
Hearst Communications, often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American mass media and business information conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, television channels, and television stations, including the "San Francisco Chronicle", the "Houston Chronicle", "Cosmopolitan" and "Esquire". It owns 50% of the A&E Networks cable network group and 20% of the sports cable network group ESPN, both in partnership with The Walt Disney Company.
The conglomerate also owns several business-information companies, including Fitch Ratings and First Databank.
The company was founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, and the Hearst family remains involved in its ownership and management.
In 1880, George Hearst, mining entrepreneur and U.S. senator, bought the "San Francisco Daily Examiner." In 1887, he turned the "Examiner" over to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who that year founded the Hearst Corporation. The younger Hearst eventually built readership for the "Examiner" from 15,000 to over 20 million. Hearst began to purchase and launched other newspapers, including the "New York Journal" in 1895 and the "Los Angeles Examiner" in 1903.
In 1903, Hearst created "Motor" magazine, the first title in his company's magazine division. He acquired "Cosmopolitan" in 1905, and "Good Housekeeping" in 1911. The company entered the book publishing business in 1913 with the formation of Hearst's International Library. Hearst began producing film features in the mid-1910s, creating one of the earliest animation studios: the International Film Service, turning characters from Hearst newspaper strips into film characters.
Hearst bought the "Atlanta Georgian" in 1912, the "San Francisco Call" and the "San Francisco Post" in 1913, the "Boston Advertiser" and the "Washington Times" (unrelated to the present-day paper) in 1917, and the "Chicago Herald" in 1918 (resulting in the "Herald-Examiner").
In 1919, Hearst's book publishing division was renamed Cosmopolitan Book.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst owned the biggest media conglomerate in the world, which included a number of magazines and newspapers in major cities. Hearst also began acquiring radio stations to complement his papers. Hearst saw financial challenges in the early 1920s, when he was using company funds to build Hearst Castle in San Simeon and support movie production at Cosmopolitan Productions. This eventually led to the merger of the magazine "Hearst International" with "Cosmopolitan" in 1925.
Despite some financial troubles, Hearst began extending its reach in 1921, purchasing the "Detroit Times", "The Boston Record," and the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer." Hearst then added the "Los Angeles Herald" and "Washington Herald," as well as the "Oakland Post-Enquirer", the "Syracuse Telegram" and the "Rochester Journal-American" in 1922. He continued his buying spree into the mid-1920s, purchasing the "Baltimore News" (1923), the "San Antonio Light" (1924), the "Albany Times Union" (1924), and "The Milwaukee Sentinel" (1924). In 1924, Hearst entered the tabloid market in New York City with "The New York Mirror", meant to compete with the "New York Daily News".
In addition to print and radio, Hearst established Cosmopolitan Pictures in the early 1920s, distributing his films under the newly created Metro Goldwyn Mayer. In 1929, Hearst and MGM created the Hearst Metrotone newsreels.
The Great Depression hurt Hearst and his publications. Cosmopolitan Book was sold to Farrar & Rinehart in 1931. After two years of leasing them to Eleanor "Cissy" Patterson (of the McCormick-Patterson family that owned the "Chicago Tribune"), Hearst sold her the "Washington Times" and "Herald" in 1939; she merged them to form the "Washington Times-Herald". That year he also bought the "Milwaukee Sentinel" from Paul Block (who bought it from the Pfisters in 1929), absorbing his afternoon "Wisconsin News" into the morning publication. Also in 1939, he sold the "Atlanta Georgian" to Cox Newspapers, which merged it with the "Atlanta Journal".
Hearst, with his chain now owned by his creditors after a 1937 liquidation, also had to merge some of his morning papers into his afternoon papers. In Chicago, he combined the morning "Herald-Examiner" and the afternoon "American" into the "Herald-American" in 1939. This followed the 1937 combination of the New York "Evening Journal" and the morning "American" into the "New York Journal-American", the sale of the "Omaha Daily Bee" to the "World-Herald". Abandoning the morning market was harmful in the long run for Hearst's media holdings as most of his remaining newspapers became afternoon papers. Newspapers in Rochester, Syracuse and Fort Worth were sold or closed.
Afternoon papers were a profitable business in pre-television days, often outselling their morning counterparts featuring stock market information in early editions, while later editions were heavy on sporting news with results of baseball games and horse races. Afternoon papers also benefited from continuous reports from the battlefront during World War II. After the war, however, both television news and suburbs experienced an explosive growth; thus, evening papers were more affected than those published in the morning, whose circulation remained stable while their afternoon counterparts' sales plummeted. Another major blow was the fact that beginning in the 1950s, football and baseball games were being played later in the afternoon to fit television schedules and now stretched through early in the evening, preventing afternoon papers from publishing all the results.
In 1947, Hearst produced an early television newscast for the DuMont Television Network: "I.N.S. Telenews", and in 1948 he became the owner of one of the first television stations in the country, WBAL-TV in Baltimore.
The earnings of Hearst's three morning papers, the "San Francisco Examiner", the "Los Angeles Examiner", and "The Milwaukee Sentinel", supported the company's money-losing afternoon publications such as the "Los Angeles Herald-Express", the "New York Journal-American", and the "Chicago American". The company sold the latter paper in 1956 to the "Chicago Tribune"s owners, who changed it to the tabloid-size "Chicago Today" in 1969 and ceased publication in 1974). In 1960, Hearst also sold the "Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph" to the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" and the "Detroit Times" to "The Detroit News". After a lengthy strike it sold the "Milwaukee Sentinel" to the afternoon "Milwaukee Journal" in 1962. The same year Hearst's Los Angeles papers – the morning "Examiner" and the afternoon "Herald-Express" – merged to become the evening "Los Angeles Herald-Examiner". The 1962-63 New York City newspaper strike left the city with no papers for over three months, with the "Journal-American" one of the earliest strike targets of the Typographical Union. The "Boston Record" and the "Evening American" merged in 1961 as the "Record-American" and in 1964, the "Baltimore News-Post" became the "Baltimore News-American".
In 1953 Hearst Magazines bought "Sports Afield" magazine, which it published until 1999 when it sold the journal to Robert E. Petersen. In 1958, Hearst's International News Service merged with E.W. Scripps' United Press, forming United Press International as a response to the growth of the Associated Press and Reuters. The following year Scripps-Howard's "San Francisco News" merged with Hearst's afternoon "San Francisco Call-Bulletin". Also in 1959, Hearst acquired the paperback book publisher Avon Books.
In 1965, the Hearst Corporation began pursuing Joint Operating Agreements (JOA's). It reached the first agreement with the DeYoung family, proprietors of the afternoon "San Francisco Chronicle", which began to produce a joint Sunday edition with the "Examiner". In turn, the "Examiner" became an evening publication, absorbing the "News-Call-Bulletin". The following year, the "Journal-American" reached another JOA with another two landmark New York City papers: the "New York Herald Tribune" and Scripps-Howard's "World-Telegram and Sun" to form the "New York World Journal Tribune" (recalling the names of the city's mid-market dailies), which collapsed after only a few months.
The 1962 merger of the "Herald-Express" and "Examiner" in Los Angeles led to the termination of many journalists who began to stage a 10-year strike in 1967. The effects of the strike accelerated the pace of the company's demise, with the "Herald Examiner" ceasing publication November 2, 1989.
Hearst moved into hardcover publishing by acquiring Arbor House in 1978 and William Morrow and Company in 1981.
In 1982, the company sold the "Boston Herald American" —the result of the 1972 merger of Hearst's "Record-American & Advertiser" with the "Herald-Traveler" — to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which renamed the paper as "The Boston Herald", competing to this day with the "Boston Globe".
In 1986, Hearst bought the "Houston Chronicle" and that same year closed the 213-year-old "Baltimore News-American" after a failed attempt to reach a JOA with A.S. Abell Company, the family who published "The Baltimore Sun" since its founding in 1837. Abell sold the paper several days later to the Times-Mirror syndicate of the Chandlers' "Los Angeles Times", also competitor to the evening "Los Angeles Herald-Examiner", which folded in 1989.
In 1993, Hearst closed the "San Antonio Light" after it purchased the rival "San Antonio Express-News" from Murdoch.
On November 8, 1990, Hearst Corporation acquired the remaining 20% stake of ESPN, Inc. from RJR Nabisco for a price estimated between $165 million and $175 million. The other 80% has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. Over the last 25 years, the ESPN investment is said to have accounted for at least 50% of total Hearst Corp profits and is worth at least $13 billion.
In 1999, Hearst sold its Avon and Morrow book publishing activities to HarperCollins.
In 2000, the Hearst Corp. pulled another "switcheroo" by selling its flagship and "Monarch of the Dailies", the afternoon "San Francisco Examiner", and acquiring the long-time competing, but now larger morning paper, "San Francisco Chronicle" from the Charles de Young family. The "San Francisco Examiner" is now published as a daily freesheet.
In December 2003, Marvel Entertainment acquired "Cover Concepts" from Hearst, to extend Marvel's demographic reach among public school children.
In 2009, A&E Networks acquired Lifetime Entertainment Services, with Hearst ownership increasing to 42%.
In 2009, the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" switched to a digital-only format, leaving the "Albany Times-Union" as the only remaining Hearst paper from the interwar period still owned by the company. In 2010, Hearst acquired digital marketing agency iCrossing.
In 2011, Hearst absorbed more than 100 magazine titles from the Lagardere group for more than $700 million and became a challenger of Time Inc ahead of Condé Nast. In December 2012, Hearst Corporation partnered again with NBCUniversal to launch Esquire Network.
On February 20, 2014, Hearst Magazines International appointed Gary Ellis to the new position, Chief Digital Officer. That December, DreamWorks Animation sold a 25% stake in AwesomenessTV for $81.25 million to Hearst.
In January 2017, Hearst announced that it had acquired a majority stake in Litton Entertainment. Its CEO, Dave Morgan, was a former employee of Hearst.
On January 23, 2017, Hearst announced that it had acquired the business operations of The Pioneer Group from fourth-generation family owners Jack and John Batdorff. The Pioneer Group was a Michigan-based communications network that circulates print and digital news to local communities across the state. In addition to daily newspapers, "The Pioneer" and "Manistee News Advocate", Pioneer published three weekly papers and four local shopper publications, and operated a digital marketing services business. The acquisition brought Hearst Newspapers to publishing 19 daily and 61 weekly papers.
Other 2017 acquisitions include the "New Haven Register" and associated papers from Digital First Media, and the Alton, Illinois, "Telegraph" and Jacksonville, Illinois, "Journal-Courier" from Civitas Media.
In October 2017, Hearst announced it would acquire the magazine and book businesses of Rodale, with some sources reporting the purchase price as about $225 million. The transaction was expected to close in January following government approvals.
A non-exhaustive list of its current properties and investments includes:
Under William Randolph Hearst's will, a common board of thirteen trustees (its composition fixed at five family members and eight outsiders) administers the Hearst Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the trust that owns (and selects the 24-member board of) the Hearst Corporation (immediate parent of Hearst Communications which shares the same officers). The foundations shared ownership until tax law changed to prevent this.
In 2009, it was estimated to be the largest private company managed by trustees in this way. As of 2017, the trustees are:
The trust dissolves when all family members alive at the time of Hearst's death in August 1951 have died. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14325 |
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement. He first rose to prominence with the publication of "" (1967), a book for which he spent a year living and riding with the Hells Angels motorcycle gang to write a first-hand account of the lives and experiences of its members.
In 1970, he wrote an unconventional magazine feature titled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for "Scanlan's Monthly", which both raised his profile and established him as a writer with counterculture credibility. It also set him on a path to establishing his own subgenre of New Journalism that he called "Gonzo", which was essentially an ongoing experiment in which the writer becomes a central figure and even a participant in the events of the narrative.
Thompson remains best known for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (1971), a book first serialized in "Rolling Stone" in which he grapples with the implications of what he considered the failure of the 1960s counterculture movement. It was adapted on film twice: loosely in "Where the Buffalo Roam" starring Bill Murray as Thompson in 1980, and directly in 1998 by director Terry Gilliam in a film starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. The "Doonesbury" cartoon character Duke – who was modeled after Thompson – pens an essay about "my shoplifting conviction" titled "Fear and Loathing at Macy's Menswear", a reference to Thompson's book.
Politically minded, Thompson ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, in 1970 on the Freak Power ticket. He became well known for his dislike of Richard Nixon, whom he claimed represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character". He covered Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign for "Rolling Stone" and later collected the stories in book form as "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72".
Thompson's output notably declined from the mid-1970s, as he struggled with the consequences of fame, and he complained that he could no longer merely report on events, as he was too easily recognized. He was also known for his lifelong use of alcohol and illegal narcotics, his love of firearms, and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism. He often remarked: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
Thompson committed suicide at the age of 67, following a series of health problems. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were fired out of a cannon in a ceremony funded by his friend Johnny Depp and attended by friends including then-Senator John Kerry and Jack Nicholson. Hari Kunzru wrote, "the true voice of Thompson is revealed to be that of American moralist ... one who often makes himself ugly to expose the ugliness he sees around him."
Thompson was born into a middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky, the first of three sons of Virginia Ray Davison (1908, Springfield, Kentucky – March 20, 1998, Louisville), who worked as head librarian at the Louisville Free Public Library and Jack Robert Thompson (September 4, 1893, Horse Cave, Kentucky – July 3, 1952, Louisville), a public insurance adjuster and World War I veteran. His parents were introduced to each other by a friend from Jack's fraternity at the University of Kentucky in September 1934, and married on November 2, 1935. The Guardian journalist Nicholas Lezard, stated that Thompson's first name, Hunter, came from an ancestor on his mother's side, the Scottish surgeon John Hunter. A more likely explanation is that Thompson’s first and middle name, Hunter Stockton, came from his maternal grandparents, Prestly Stockton Ray and Lucille Hunter.
On December 2, 1943, when Thompson was six years old, the family settled at 2437 Ransdell Avenue in the affluent Cherokee Triangle neighborhood of The Highlands. On July 3, 1952, when Thompson was 14 years old, his father, aged 58, died of myasthenia gravis. Hunter and his brothers were raised by their mother. Virginia worked as a librarian to support her children, and is described as having become a "heavy drinker" following her husband's death.
Interested in sports and athletically inclined from a young age, Thompson co-founded the Hawks Athletic Club while attending I.N. Bloom Elementary School, which led to an invitation to join Louisville's Castlewood Athletic Club, a club for adolescents that prepared them for high-school sports. Ultimately, he never joined any sports teams in high school.
Thompson attended I.N. Bloom Elementary School, Highland Middle School, and Atherton High School, before transferring to Louisville Male High School in September 1952. Also in 1952, he was accepted as a member of the Athenaeum Literary Association, a school-sponsored literary and social club that dated to 1862. Its members at the time, generally drawn from Louisville's wealthy upper-class families, included Porter Bibb, who later became the first publisher of "Rolling Stone" at Thompson's behest. During this time, Thompson read and admired J. P. Donleavy's "The Ginger Man".
As an Athenaeum member, Thompson contributed articles to and helped produce the club's yearbook "The Spectator". The group ejected Thompson in 1955, citing his legal problems. Charged as an accessory to robbery after being in a car with the perpetrator, Thompson was sentenced to 60 days in Kentucky's Jefferson County Jail. He served 31 days and, a week after his release, enlisted in the United States Air Force. While he was in jail, the school superintendent refused him permission to take his high-school final examinations, and as a result he did not graduate.
Thompson completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and transferred to Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois, to study electronics. He applied to become an aviator, but the Air Force's aviation-cadet program rejected his application. In 1956, he transferred to Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. While serving at Eglin, he took evening classes at Florida State University. At Eglin, he landed his first professional writing job as sports editor of "The Command Courier" by lying about his job experience. As sports editor, Thompson traveled around the United States with the Eglin Eagles football team, covering its games. In early 1957, he wrote a sports column for "The Playground News", a local newspaper in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. His name did not appear on the column because Air Force regulations forbade outside employment.
Thompson was discharged from the Air Force in November 1957 as an airman first class, his commanding officer having recommended him for an early honorable discharge. "In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy," chief of information services Colonel William S. Evans wrote to the Eglin personnel office. "Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members."
After leaving the Air Force, Thompson worked as sports editor for a newspaper in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania before relocating to New York City. There he audited several courses at the Columbia University School of General Studies. During this time he worked briefly for "Time" as a copy boy for $51 a week. While working, he used a typewriter to copy F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" in order to learn about the writing styles of the authors. In 1959 "Time" fired him for insubordination. Later that year he worked as a reporter for "The Middletown Daily Record" in Middletown, New York. He was fired from this job after damaging an office candy machine and arguing with the owner of a local restaurant who happened to be an advertiser with the paper.
In 1960, Thompson moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to take a job with the sporting magazine "El Sportivo", which folded soon after his arrival. Thompson applied for a job with the Puerto Rican English-language daily "The San Juan Star", but its managing editor, future novelist William J. Kennedy, turned him down. Nonetheless, the two became friends. After the demise of "El Sportivo", Thompson worked as a stringer for the "New York Herald Tribune" and for a few stateside papers on Caribbean issues, with Kennedy working as his editor. After returning to the United States, Thompson hitchhiked along U.S. Highway 40, eventually ending up in Big Sur working as a security guard and caretaker at Slates Hot Springs for an eight-month period in 1961, just before it became the Esalen Institute. While there, he published his first magazine feature (in the nationally distributed "Rogue" magazine) on the artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur.
During this period, Thompson wrote two novels, "Prince Jellyfish" and "The Rum Diary", and submitted many short stories to publishers – with little success. "The Rum Diary", based on Thompson's experiences in Puerto Rico, was not published until .
From May 1962 to May 1963, Thompson traveled to South America as a correspondent for a Dow Jones-owned weekly newspaper, the "National Observer". In Brazil, he spent several months as a reporter for the "Brazil Herald", the country's only English-language daily, published in Rio de Janeiro. His longtime girlfriend Sandra Dawn Conklin (or Sandy Conklin Thompson, subsequently Sondi Wright) later joined him in Rio. They married on May 19, 1963, shortly after returning to the United States, and lived briefly in Aspen, Colorado, where they had a son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson (born March 23, 1964). Hunter and Sandy divorced in 1980.
In 1964, the family relocated to Glen Ellen, California, where Thompson continued to write for the "National Observer" on an array of domestic subjects. One story told of his 1964 visit to Ketchum, Idaho, to investigate the reasons for Ernest Hemingway's suicide. While there, he stole a pair of elk antlers hanging above the front door of Hemingway's cabin. Thompson severed his ties with the "Observer" after his editor refused to print his review of Tom Wolfe's 1965 essay-collection "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby", and moved to San Francisco. He immersed himself in the drug and hippie culture taking root in the area, and soon began writing for the Berkeley underground paper "Spider".
In 1965, Carey McWilliams, editor of "The Nation", hired Thompson to write a story about the Hells Angels motorcycle club in California. The article appeared on May 17, 1965, and after that Thompson received several book offers and spent the next year living and riding with the club. The relationship broke down when the bikers perceived that Thompson was exploiting them for personal gain and demanded a share of the profits from his writings. An argument at a party resulted in Thompson suffering a savage beating (or "stomping", as the Angels referred to it). Random House published the hard-cover "" in 1966, and the fight between Thompson and the Angels was well-marketed. CBC Television even broadcast an encounter between Thompson and Hell's Angel Skip Workman before a live studio audience.
A reviewer for "The New York Times" praised the work as an "angry, knowledgeable, fascinating, and excitedly written book", that shows the Hells Angels "not so much as dropouts from society but as total misfits, or unfits—emotionally, intellectually and educationally unfit to achieve the rewards, such as they are, that the contemporary social order offers". The reviewer also praised Thompson as a "spirited, witty, observant, and original writer; his prose crackles like motorcycle exhaust".
Following the book's publication, Thompson appeared as himself on the February 20, 1967, episode of the game show "To Tell The Truth", receiving all four votes by the panel members.
Following the success of "Hell's Angels", Thompson successfully sold articles to several national magazines, including "The New York Times Magazine", "Esquire", "Pageant", and "Harper's".
In 1967, shortly before the Summer of Love, Thompson wrote "The 'Hashbury' is the Capital of the Hippies" for "The New York Times Magazine". He criticized San Francisco's hippies as devoid of both the political convictions of the New Left and the artistic core of the Beats, resulting in a culture overrun with young people who spent their time in the pursuit of drugs. "The thrust is no longer for 'change' or 'progress' or 'revolution', but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been — perhaps should have been — and strike a bargain for survival on purely personal terms," he wrote.
By late 1967, Thompson and his family moved back to Colorado and rented a house in Woody Creek, a small mountain hamlet outside Aspen. In early 1969, Thompson received a $15,000 royalty check for the paperback sales of "Hell's Angels" and used two-thirds of the money for a down payment on a modest home and property where he would live for the rest of his life. He named the house Owl Farm and often described it as his "fortified compound".
In early 1968, Thompson signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. According to Thompson's letters and his later writings, at this time, he planned to write a book called "The Joint Chiefs" about "the death of the American Dream." He used a $6,000 advance from Random House to travel the 1968 Presidential campaign trail and attend the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago for research. From his hotel room in Chicago, Thompson watched the clashes between police and protesters, which he wrote had a great effect on his political views. The book was never finished, and the theme of the death of the American dream was carried over into his later work. The contract with Random House was eventually fulfilled with the 1972 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". He also signed a deal with Ballantine Books in 1968 to write a satirical book called "The Johnson File" about Lyndon B. Johnson. A few weeks after the contract was signed, however, Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election, and the deal was cancelled.
In 1970, Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, as part of a group of citizens running for local offices on the "Freak Power" ticket. The platform included promoting the decriminalization of drugs (for personal use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of profiteering), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy pedestrian malls, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, disarming all police forces, and renaming Aspen "Fat City" to deter investors. Thompson, having shaved his head, referred to the crew cut-wearing Republican candidate as "my long-haired opponent".
With polls showing him with a slight lead in a three-way race, Thompson appeared at "Rolling Stone" magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand, and declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and wished to write about the "Freak Power" movement. Thus, Thompson's first article in "Rolling Stone" was published as "The Battle of Aspen" with the byline "By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff)". Despite the publicity, Thompson narrowly lost the election. While carrying the city of Aspen, he garnered only 44% of the county-wide vote in what had become a two-way race. The Republican candidate agreed to withdraw a few days before the election to consolidate the anti-Thompson votes, in return for the Democrats withdrawing their candidate for county commissioner. Thompson later remarked that the "Rolling Stone" article mobilized his opposition far more than his supporters.
Also in 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for the short-lived new journalism magazine "Scanlan's Monthly". For that article, editor Warren Hinckle paired Thompson with illustrator Ralph Steadman, who drew expressionist illustrations with lipstick and eyeliner. Thompson and Steadman collaborated regularly after that. Although it was not widely read, the article was the first to use the techniques of Gonzo journalism, a style Thompson later employed in almost every literary endeavor. The manic first-person subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of sheer desperation; he was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook.
The first use of the word "Gonzo" to describe Thompson's work is credited to the journalist Bill Cardoso, who first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire primary. In 1970, Cardoso (who was then the editor of "The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine") wrote to Thompson praising the "Kentucky Derby" piece as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." According to Steadman, Thompson took to the word right away and said, "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo." Thompson's first published use of the word appears in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas": "Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it "now": pure Gonzo journalism."
The book for which Thompson gained most of his fame had its genesis during the research for "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan", an exposé for "Rolling Stone" on the 1970 killing of the Mexican-American television journalist Rubén Salazar. Salazar had been shot in the head at close range with a tear-gas canister fired by officers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. One of Thompson's sources for the story was Oscar Zeta Acosta, a prominent Mexican-American activist and attorney. Finding it difficult to talk in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, Thompson and Acosta decided to travel to Las Vegas, and take advantage of an assignment by "Sports Illustrated" to write a 250-word photograph caption on the Mint 400 motorcycle race held there.
What was to be a short caption quickly grew into something else entirely. Thompson first submitted to "Sports Illustrated" a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote, "aggressively rejected." "Rolling Stone" publisher Jann Wenner was said to have liked "the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it", Thompson later wrote.
The result of the trip to Las Vegas became the 1972 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which first appeared in the November 1971 issues of "Rolling Stone" as a two-part series. It is written as a first-person account by a journalist named Raoul Duke on a trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Gonzo, his "300-pound Samoan attorney", to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400". During the trip, Duke and his companion (always referred to as "my attorney") become sidetracked by a search for the American Dream, with "two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls."
Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim, including being heralded by "The New York Times" as "by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope". "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and introduced his Gonzo journalism techniques to a wide public.
Beginning in late 1971, Thompson wrote extensively for "Rolling Stone" on the election campaigns of President Richard Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern. The articles were soon combined and published as "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72". As the title suggests, Thompson spent nearly all of his time traveling the "campaign trail", focusing largely on the Democratic Party's primaries. Nixon, as the Republican incumbent, performed little campaign work, while McGovern competed with rival candidates Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. Thompson was an early supporter of McGovern and wrote unflattering coverage of the rival campaigns in the increasingly widely read "Rolling Stone".
Thompson went on to become a fierce critic of Nixon, both during and after his presidency. After Nixon's death in 1994, Thompson described him in "Rolling Stone" as a man who "could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time", and said "his casket [should] have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [He] was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it." Following Nixon's pardon by Gerald Ford in 1974, Hunter ruminated on the roughly $400,000 pension Nixon maneuvered his way into, by resigning before being formally indicted. While "The Washington Post" was lamenting Nixon's "lonely and depressed" state after being forced from the White House, Hunter wrote that '[i]f there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his [Nixon's] rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.' There was however one passion shared by Thompson and Nixon: a love of football, discussed in "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72".
Thompson's journalistic work began to seriously suffer after his trip to Africa to cover the Rumble in the Jungle—the world heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali—in 1974. He missed the match while intoxicated at his hotel, and did not submit a story to the magazine. As Wenner put it to the film critic Roger Ebert in the 2008 documentary "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson", "After Africa, he just couldn't write. He couldn't piece it together".
Plans for Thompson to cover the 1976 presidential campaign for "Rolling Stone" and later publish a book fell through after Wenner canceled the project without informing Thompson. Wenner then assigned Thompson to travel to Vietnam to cover what appeared to be the end of the Vietnam War. Thompson arrived in Saigon just as South Vietnam was collapsing and as other journalists were leaving the country. Again, Wenner pulled the plug on the project. The incidents strained Thompson's relationship with Wenner and "Rolling Stone."
From the late 1970s on, most of Thompson's literary output appeared as a four-volume series of books entitled "The Gonzo Papers". Beginning with "The Great Shark Hunt" in 1979 and ending with "Better Than Sex" in 1994, the series is largely a collection of rare newspaper and magazine pieces from the pre-gonzo period, along with almost all of his "Rolling Stone" pieces.
Starting around 1980, Thompson became more reclusive. Aside from paid appearances, he largely retreated to his compound in Woody Creek, rejecting projects and assignments or failing to complete them. Despite a lack of new material, Wenner kept Thompson on the "Rolling Stone" masthead as chief of the "National Affairs Desk", a position he held until his death.
In 1980, Thompson divorced wife Sandra Conklin. The same year marked the release of "Where the Buffalo Roam", a loose film adaptation based on Thompson's early 1970s work, starring Bill Murray as the writer. Murray eventually became one of Thompson's trusted friends. Later that year, Thompson relocated to Hawaii to research and write, "The Curse of Lono", a Gonzo-style account of the 1980 Honolulu Marathon. Extensively illustrated by Ralph Steadman, the piece first appeared in "Running" in 1981 as "The Charge of the Weird Brigade" and was later excerpted in "Playboy" in 1983.
In 1983, he covered the U.S. invasion of Grenada, but did not write or discuss the experiences until the publication of "Kingdom of Fear" in 2003. Later that year, at the behest of Terry McDonell, he wrote "A Dog Took My Place", an exposé for "Rolling Stone" of the scandalous Roxanne Pulitzer divorce case and what he called the "Palm Beach lifestyle". The story included dubious insinuations of bestiality, but was widely considered to be a return by Thompson to his proper form. In 1985, Thompson accepted an advance to write about "couples pornography" for "Playboy". As part of his research, he spent evenings at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre striptease club in San Francisco. The experience evolved into an as-yet-unpublished novel tentatively entitled "The Night Manager".
Thompson next accepted a role as weekly media columnist and critic for "The San Francisco Examiner." The position was arranged by former editor and fellow "Examiner" columnist Warren Hinckle. His editor at "The Examiner", David McCumber described, "One week it would be acid-soaked gibberish with a charm of its own. The next week it would be incisive political analysis of the highest order."
Many of these columns were collected in "" (1988) and "" (1990), a collection of autobiographical reminiscences, articles, and previously unpublished material.
Throughout the early 1990s, Thompson claimed to be at work on a novel entitled "Polo Is My Life". It was briefly excerpted in "Rolling Stone" in 1994, and Thompson himself described it in 1996 as "a sex book — you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It's about the manager of a sex theater who's forced to leave and flee to the mountains. He falls in love and gets in even more trouble than he was in the sex theater in San Francisco". The novel was slated to be released by Random House in 1999, and was even assigned , but was never published.
Thompson continued to publish irregularly in "Rolling Stone", ultimately contributing 17 pieces to the magazine between 1984 and 2004. "Fear and Loathing in Elko," published in 1992, was a well-received fictional rallying cry against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. "Trapped in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" was a largely factual account of an interview with Bill Clinton at a Little Rock, Arkansas, steakhouse. Rather than traveling the campaign trail as he had done in previous presidential elections, Thompson monitored the proceedings on cable television; "Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie", his account of the 1992 presidential campaign, is composed of reactive faxes to "Rolling Stone". In 1994, the magazine published "He Was a Crook", a "scathing" obituary of Richard Nixon.
In November 2004, "Rolling Stone" published Thompson's final magazine feature "The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004", a brief account of the 2004 presidential election in which he compared the outcome of the "Bush v. Gore" court case to the Reichstag fire and formally endorsed Senator John Kerry, a longtime friend, for president.
Thompson's work gained renewed attention with the release of the film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". New editions of the book were published, introducing Thompson's work to a new generation of readers. The same year, an early novel, "The Rum Diary", was published, as were the two volumes of collected letters.
Thompson's next, and penultimate, collection, "Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century", was widely publicized as Thompson's first memoir. Published in 2003, it combined new material (including reminiscences of the O'Farrell Theater), selected newspaper and digital clippings, and other older works.
Thompson finished his journalism career in the same way it had begun: Writing about sports. From 2000 until his death in 2005, he wrote a weekly column for ESPN.com's Page 2 entitled "Hey, Rube." In 2004, Simon & Schuster collected some of the columns from the first few years and released them in mid-2004 as "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness".
Thompson married assistant Anita Bejmuk on April 23, 2003.
At 5:42 pm on February 20, 2005, Thompson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at Owl Farm, his "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado. His son Juan, daughter-in-law Jennifer, and grandson were visiting for the weekend. His wife Anita, who was at the Aspen Club, was on the phone with him as he cocked the gun. According to the "Aspen Daily News", Thompson asked her to come home to help him write his ESPN column, then set the receiver on the counter. Anita said she mistook the cocking of the gun for the sound of his typewriter keys and hung up as he fired. Will and Jennifer were in the next room when they heard the gunshot, but mistook the sound for a book falling and did not check on Thompson immediately. Juan Thompson found his father's body. According to the police report and Anita's cell phone records, he called the sheriff's office half an hour later, then walked outside and fired three shotgun blasts into the air to "mark the passing of his father". The police report stated that in Thompson's typewriter was a piece of paper with the date "Feb. 22 '05" and a single word, "counselor".
Thompson's inner circle told the press that he had been depressed and always found February a "gloomy" month, with football season over and the harsh Colorado winter weather. He was also upset over his advancing age and chronic medical problems, including a hip replacement; he would frequently mutter "This kid is getting old." "Rolling Stone" published what Doug Brinkley described as a suicide note written by Thompson to his wife, titled "Football Season Is Over". It read:
Thompson's collaborator and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:
On August 20, 2005, in a private funeral, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon. This was accompanied by red, white, blue, and green fireworks—all to the tune of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man". The cannon was placed atop a tower which had the shape of a , a symbol originally used in his 1970 campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. The plans for the monument were initially drawn by Thompson and Steadman, and were shown as part of an "Omnibus" program on the BBC titled "Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision" (1978). It is included as a special feature on the second disc of the 2004 Criterion Collection DVD release of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", and labeled as "Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood".
According to his widow, Anita, the $3 million funeral was funded by actor Johnny Depp, who was a close friend of Thompson’s. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out." An estimated 280 people attended, including U.S. Senators John Kerry and George McGovern; "60 Minutes" correspondents Ed Bradley and Charlie Rose; actors Jack Nicholson, John Cusack, Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, and Josh Hartnett; musicians Lyle Lovett, John Oates and David Amram, and artist and long-time friend Ralph Steadman.
Thompson is often credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of writing that blurs distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. His work and style are considered to be a major part of the New Journalism literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which attempted to break free from the purely objective style of mainstream reportage of the time. Thompson almost always wrote in the first person, while extensively using his own experiences and emotions to color "the story" he was trying to follow.
Despite him having personally described his work as "Gonzo", it fell to later observers to articulate what the term actually meant. While Thompson's approach clearly involved injecting himself as a participant in the events of the narrative, it also involved adding invented, metaphoric elements, thus creating, for the uninitiated reader, a seemingly confusing amalgam of facts and fiction notable for the deliberately blurred lines between one and the other. Thompson, in a 1974 interview in "Playboy" addressed the issue himself, saying, "Unlike Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese, I almost never try to reconstruct a story. They're both much better reporters than I am, but then, I don't think of myself as a reporter." Tom Wolfe would later describe Thompson's style as "... part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention and wilder rhetoric." Or as one description of the differences between Thompson and Wolfe's styles would elaborate, "While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment."
The majority of Thompson's most popular and acclaimed work appeared within the pages of "Rolling Stone" magazine. Along with Joe Eszterhas and David Felton, Thompson was instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism; indeed, Thompson was the only staff writer of the epoch never to contribute a music feature to the magazine. Nevertheless, his articles were always peppered with a wide array of pop music references ranging from Howlin' Wolf to Lou Reed. Armed with early fax machines wherever he went, he became notorious for haphazardly sending sometimes illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices as an issue was about to go to press.
Robert Love, Thompson's editor of 23 years at "Rolling Stone", wrote, "the dividing line between fact and fancy rarely blurred, and we didn't always use italics or some other typographical device to indicate the lurch into the fabulous. But if there were living, identifiable humans in a scene, we took certain steps ... Hunter was a close friend of many prominent Democrats, veterans of the ten or more presidential campaigns he covered, so when in doubt, we'd call the press secretary. 'People will believe almost any twisted kind of story about politicians or Washington,' he once said, and he was right."
Discerning the line between the fact and the fiction of Thompson's work presented a practical problem for editors and fact-checkers of his work. Love called fact-checking Thompson's work "one of the sketchiest occupations ever created in the publishing world", and "for the first-timer ... a trip through a journalistic fun house, where you didn't know what was real and what wasn't. You knew you had better learn enough about the subject at hand to know when the riff began and reality ended. Hunter was a stickler for numbers, for details like gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and caliber, and there was no faking it."
Thompson often used a blend of fiction and fact when portraying himself in his writing, as well, sometimes using the name Raoul Duke as an author surrogate whom he generally described as a callous, erratic, self-destructive journalist who constantly drank alcohol and took hallucinogenic drugs. Fantasizing about causing bodily harm to others was also a characteristic in his work used to comedic effect and an example of his brand of humor.
In the late '60s, Thompson acquired the title of "Doctor" from the Universal Life Church.
A number of critics have commented that as he grew older, the line that distinguished Thompson from his literary self became increasingly blurred. Thompson admitted during a 1978 BBC interview that he sometimes felt pressured to live up to the fictional self that he had created, adding, "I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict — most often, as a matter of fact. ... I'm leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."
Thompson's writing style and eccentric persona gave him a cult following in both literary and drug circles, and his cult status expanded into broader areas after being portrayed three times in major motion pictures. Hence, both his writing style and persona have been widely imitated, and his likeness has even become a popular costume choice for Halloween.
Thompson was a firearms and explosives enthusiast (in his writing and in life) and owned a vast collection of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and various automatic and semiautomatic weapons, along with numerous forms of gaseous crowd-control and many homemade devices. He was a proponent of the right to bear arms and privacy rights. A member of the National Rifle Association, Thompson was also co-creator of the Fourth Amendment Foundation, an organization to assist victims in defending themselves against unwarranted search and seizure.
Part of his work with the Fourth Amendment Foundation centered around support of Lisl Auman, a Colorado woman who was sentenced for life in 1997 under felony murder charges for the death of police officer Bruce VanderJagt, despite contradictory statements and dubious evidence. Thompson organized rallies, provided legal support, and co-wrote an article in the June 2004 issue of "Vanity Fair" outlining the case. The Colorado Supreme Court eventually overturned Auman's sentence in March 2005, shortly after Thompson's death, and Auman is now free. Auman's supporters claim Thompson's support and publicity resulted in the successful appeal.
Thompson was also an ardent supporter of drug legalization and became known for his detailed accounts of his own drug use. He was an early supporter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and served on the group's advisory board for over 30 years, until his death. He told an interviewer in 1997 that drugs should be legalized "[a]cross the board. It might be a little rough on some people for a while, but I think it's the only way to deal with drugs. Look at Prohibition; all it did was make a lot of criminals rich."
In a 1965 letter to his friend Paul Semonin, Thompson explained an affection for the Industrial Workers of the World, "I have in recent months come to have a certain feeling for Joe Hill and the Wobbly crowd who, if nothing else, had the right idea. But not the right mechanics. I believe the IWW was probably the last human concept in American politics." In another letter to Semonin, Thompson wrote that he agreed with Karl Marx, and compared him to Thomas Jefferson. In a letter to William Kennedy, Thompson confided that he was "coming to view the free enterprise system as the single greatest evil in the history of human savagery." In the documentary "Breakfast with Hunter", Hunter S. Thompson is seen in several scenes wearing different Che Guevara T-shirts. Additionally, actor and friend Benicio del Toro has stated that Thompson kept a "big" picture of Che in his kitchen. Thompson wrote on behalf of African-American rights and the civil rights movement. He strongly criticized the dominance in American society of what he called "white power structures".
After the September 11 attacks, Thompson voiced skepticism regarding the official story on who was responsible for the attacks. He speculated to several interviewers that it may have been conducted by the U.S. government or with the government's assistance, though readily admitting he had no way to prove his theory.
In 2004, Thompson wrote: "[Richard] Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for—but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush–Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him."
Thompson's widow established two scholarship funds at Columbia University School of General Studies for U.S. military veterans and the University of Kentucky for journalism students.
Thompson wrote a number of books, publishing from 1966 to the end of his life. His best-known works include "Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs", "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", and "The Rum Diary".
As a journalist over the course of decades, Thompson published numerous articles in various periodicals. He wrote for many publications, including "Rolling Stone", "Esquire", "The Boston Globe", "Chicago Tribune", "The New York Times", "The San Francisco Examiner", "Time", "Vanity Fair", "The San Juan Star", and "Playboy". He was also guest editor for a single edition of "The Aspen Daily News". A collection of 100 of his columns from "The San Francisco Examiner" was published in 1988 as "Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s". A collection of his articles for "Rolling Stone" was released in 2011 as "Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writings of Hunter S. Thompson". The book was edited by the magazine's co-founder and publisher, Jann S. Wenner, who also provided an introduction to the collection.
Thompson wrote many letters, which were his primary means of personal communication. He made carbon copies of all his letters, usually typed, a habit begun in his teenaged years.
"The Fear and Loathing Letters" is a three-volume collection of selections from Thompson's correspondence, edited by the historian Douglas Brinkley. The first volume, "The Proud Highway", was published in 1997, and contains letters from 1955 to 1967. "Fear and Loathing in America" was published in 2000 and contains letters dating from 1968 to 1976. A third volume, titled "The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977–2005", was edited by Douglas Brinkley and published by Simon & Schuster in 2005. As of March 2019, it has yet to be sold to the public. It contains a special introduction by Johnny Depp.
Accompanying the eccentric and colorful writing of Hunter Thompson, illustrations by British artist Ralph Steadman offer visual representations of the Gonzo style. Steadman and Thompson developed a close friendship, and often traveled together. Though his illustrations occur in most of Thompson's books, they are conspicuously featured in full-page color in Thompson's "The Curse of Lono", set in Hawaii.
Thompson was an avid amateur photographer throughout his life, and his photos have been exhibited since his death at art galleries in the United States and United Kingdom. In late 2006, AMMO Books published a limited-edition, 224-page collection of Thompson photos called "Gonzo: Photographs by Hunter S. Thompson", with an introduction by Johnny Depp. Thompson's snapshots were a combination of the subjects he was covering, stylized self-portraits, and artistic still life photos. The "London Observer" called the photos "astonishingly good" and noted that "Thompson's pictures remind us, brilliantly in every sense, of very real people, real colours."
The film "Where the Buffalo Roam" (1980) depicts heavily fictionalized attempts by Thompson to cover the Super Bowl and the 1972 U.S. presidential election. It stars Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as Thompson's attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, referred to in the movie as Carl Lazlo, Esq.
The 1998 film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was directed by Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam and starred Johnny Depp (who moved into Thompson's basement to "study" Thompson's persona before assuming his role in the film) as Raoul Duke and Benicio del Toro as Oscar Zeta Acosta. The film has achieved something of a cult following.
In the 2001 film "Ali", Thompson is briefly portrayed by actor Lee Cummings.
The film adaptation of Thompson's novel "The Rum Diary" was released in October 2011, also starring Johnny Depp as the main character, Paul Kemp. The novel's premise was inspired by Thompson's own experiences in Puerto Rico. The film was written and directed by Bruce Robinson.
At a press junket for "The Rum Diary" shortly before the film's release, Depp said that he would like to adapt "The Curse of Lono", "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved", and "Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs" for the big screen: "I'd just keep playing Hunter. There's a great comfort in it for me, because I get a great visit with my old friend who I miss dearly."
"Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision" (1978) is an extended television profile by the BBC. It can be found on disc 2 of The Criterion Collection edition of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".
The Mitchell brothers, owners of the O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, made a documentary about Thompson in 1988 called "Hunter S. Thompson: The Crazy Never Die".
Wayne Ewing created three documentaries about Thompson. The film "Breakfast with Hunter" (2003) was directed and edited by Ewing. It documents Thompson's work on the movie "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", his arrest for drunk driving, and his subsequent fight with the court system. "When I Die" (2005) is a video chronicle of making Thompson's final farewell wishes a reality, and documents the send-off itself. "Free Lisl: Fear and Loathing in Denver" (2006) chronicles Thompson's efforts in helping to free Lisl Auman, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the shooting of a police officer, a crime she did not commit. All three films are only available online.
In "Come on Down: Searching for the American Dream" (2004) Thompson gives director Adamm Liley insight into the nature of the American Dream over drinks at the Woody Creek Tavern.
"" (2006) was directed by Tom Thurman, written by Tom Marksbury, and produced by the Starz Entertainment Group. The original documentary features interviews with Thompson's inner circle of family and friends, but the thrust of the film focuses on the manner in which his life often overlapped with numerous Hollywood celebrities who became his close friends, such as Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Thompson's wife Anita, son Juan, former Senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, writers Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley, actors Gary Busey and Harry Dean Stanton, and the illustrator Ralph Steadman among others.
"Blasted!!! The Gonzo Patriots of Hunter S. Thompson" (2006), produced, directed, photographed, and edited by Blue Kraning, is a documentary about the scores of fans who volunteered their privately owned artillery to fire the ashes of the late author, Hunter S. Thompson. "Blasted!!!" premiered at the 2006 Starz Denver International Film Festival, part of a tribute series to Hunter S. Thompson held at the Denver Press Club.
In 2008, Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney ("", "Taxi to the Dark Side") wrote and directed a documentary on Thompson, titled "". The film premiered on January 20, 2008, at the Sundance Film Festival. Gibney uses intimate, never-before-seen home videos, interviews with friends, enemie, and lovers, and clips from films adapted from Thompson's material to document his turbulent life.
Lou Stein's adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was performed at the Battersea Theatre. Stein persuades London's "Time Out" magazine to put Thompson up for a fortnight, in exchange for him writing a cover story to publicize the play. Thompson does not write the story, but does rampage around London on "Time Out" 's expense account. The play was revived for the Vault Fringe Festival in 2014.
"GONZO: A Brutal Chrysalis" is a one-man show about Thompson written by Paul Addis, who also played the author. Set in the writing den of Thompson's Woody Creek home, the show portrays his life between 1968 and 1971. James Cartee began playing the role soon after Addis's arrest in 2009, and again after Addis's death in 2012. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14328 |
Historicism
Historicism is the idea of attributing meaningful significance to space and time, such as historical period, geographical place, and local culture. Historicism tends to be hermeneutic because it values cautious, rigorous, and contextualized interpretation of information; or relativist, because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental and immutable interpretations.
The term "historicism" ("Historismus") was coined by German philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel. Over time it has developed different and somewhat divergent meanings. Elements of historicism appear in the writings of French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) and Italian philosopher G. B. Vico (1668–1744), and became more fully developed with the dialectic of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), influential in 19th-century Europe. The writings of Karl Marx, influenced by Hegel, also include historicism. The term is also associated with the empirical social sciences and with the work of Franz Boas.
Post-structuralism uses the term "New Historicism", which has some associations with both anthropology and Hegelianism.
The theological use of the word denotes the interpretation of biblical prophecy as being related to church history.
The approach differs from individualist theories of knowledge such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of traditions. Historicism may be contrasted with reductionist theories—which assumes that all developments can be explained by fundamental principles (such as in economic determinism)—or with theories that posit that historical changes occur at random.
The Austrian-English philosopher Karl Popper condemned historicism along with the determinism and holism which he argued formed its basis. In his "Poverty of Historicism", he identified historicism with the opinion that there are "inexorable laws of historical destiny", which opinion he warned against. If this seems to contrast with what proponents of historicism argue for, in terms of contextually relative interpretation, this happens, according to Popper, only because such proponents are unaware of the type of causality they ascribe to history. Talcott Parsons criticized historicism as a case of idealistic fallacy in "The Structure of Social Action" (1937).
Hegel viewed the realization of human freedom as the ultimate purpose of history, which could only be achieved through the creation of the perfect state. And this progressive history would only occur through a dialectical process: namely, the tension between the purpose of humankind (freedom), the position that humankind currently finds itself, and mankind's attempt to bend the current world into accord with its nature. However, because humans are often not aware of the goal of both humanity and history, the process of achieving freedom is necessarily one of self-discovery. Hegel also saw the progress toward freedom being conducted by the "spirit" (Geist), a seemingly supernatural force that directed all human actions and interactions. Yet Hegel makes clear that the spirit is a mere abstraction, and only comes into existence "through the activity of finite agents." Thus, Hegel's determining forces of history may not have a metaphysical nature, despite the fact that many of Hegel's opponents and interpreters have understood Hegel's philosophy of history as a metaphysical and determinist view of history. For example, Karl Popper in his book "The Poverty of Historicism" interpreted Hegel's philosophy of history as metaphysical and deterministic, referring to it as "Historicism".
Hegel's historicism also suggests that any human society and all human activities such as science, art, or philosophy, are defined by their history. Consequently, their essence can be sought only by understanding said history. The history of any such human endeavor, moreover, not only continues but also reacts against what has gone before; this is the source of Hegel's famous dialectic teaching usually summarized by the slogan "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis". (Hegel did not use these terms, although Johann Fichte did.) Hegel's famous aphorism, "Philosophy is the history of philosophy," describes it bluntly.
Hegel's position is perhaps best illuminated when contrasted against the atomistic and reductionist opinion of human societies and social activities self-defining on an "ad hoc" basis through the sum of dozens of interactions. Yet another contrasting model is the persistent metaphor of a social contract. Hegel considers the relationship between individuals and societies as organic, not atomic: even their social discourse is mediated by language, and language is based on etymology and unique character. It thus preserves the culture of the past in thousands of half-forgotten metaphors. To understand why a person is the way he is, you must examine that person in his society: and to understand that society, you must understand its history, and the forces that influenced it. The "Zeitgeist", the "Spirit of the Age," is the concrete embodiment of the most important factors that are acting in human history at any given time. This contrasts with teleological theories of activity, which suppose that the end is the determining factor of activity, as well as those who believe in a tabula rasa, or blank slate, opinion, such that individuals are defined by their interactions.
These ideas can be interpreted variously. The Right Hegelians, working from Hegel's opinions about the organicism and historically determined nature of human societies, interpreted Hegel's historicism as a justification of the unique destiny of national groups and the importance of stability and institutions. Hegel's conception of human societies as entities greater than the individuals who constitute them influenced nineteenth-century romantic nationalism and its twentieth-century excesses. The Young Hegelians, by contrast, interpreted Hegel's thoughts on societies influenced by social conflict for a doctrine of social progress, and attempted to manipulate these forces to cause various results. Karl Marx's doctrine of "historical inevitabilities" and historical materialism is one of the more influential reactions to this part of Hegel's thought. Significantly, Karl Marx's theory of alienation argues that capitalism disrupts traditional relationships between workers and their work.
Hegelian historicism is related to his ideas on the means by which human societies progress, specifically the dialectic and his conception of logic as representing the inner essential nature of reality. Hegel attributes the change to the "modern" need to interact with the world, whereas ancient philosophers were self-contained, and medieval philosophers were monks. In his History of Philosophy Hegel writes:
In modern times things are very different; now we no longer see philosophic individuals who constitute a class by themselves. With the present day all difference has disappeared; philosophers are not monks, for we find them generally in connection with the world, participating with others in some common work or calling. They live, not independently, but in the relation of citizens, or they occupy public offices and take part in the life of the state. Certainly they may be private persons, but if so, their position as such does not in any way isolate them from their other relationship. They are involved in present conditions, in the world and its work and progress. Thus their philosophy is only by the way, a sort of luxury and superfluity. This difference is really to be found in the manner in which outward conditions have taken shape after the building up of the inward world of religion. In modern times, namely, on account of the reconciliation of the worldly principle with itself, the external world is at rest, is brought into order — worldly relationships, conditions, modes of life, have become constituted and organized in a manner which is conformable to nature and rational. We see a universal, comprehensible connection, and with that individuality likewise attains another character and nature, for it is no longer the plastic individuality of the ancients. This connection is of such power that every individuality is under its dominion, and yet at the same time can construct for itself an inward world.
This opinion that entanglement in society creates an indissoluble bond with expression, would become an influential question in philosophy, namely, the requirements for individuality. It would be considered by Nietzsche, John Dewey and Michel Foucault directly, as well as in the work of numerous artists and authors. There have been various responses to Hegel's challenge. The Romantic period emphasized the ability of individual genius to transcend time and place, and use the materials from their heritage to fashion works which were beyond determination. The modern would advance versions of John Locke's infinite malleability of the human animal. Post-structuralism would argue that since history is not present, but only the image of history, that while an individual era or power structure might emphasize a particular history, that the contradictions within the story would hinder the very purposes that the history was constructed to advance.
In the context of anthropology and other sciences which study the past, historicism has a different meaning. Historical Particularism is associated with the work of Franz Boas. His theory used the diffusionist concept that there were a few "cradles of civilization" which grew outwards, and merged it with the idea that societies would adapt to their circumstances. The school of historicism grew in response to unilinear theories that social development represented adaptive fitness, and therefore existed on a continuum. While these theories were espoused by Charles Darwin and many of his students, their application as applied in social Darwinism and general evolution characterized in the theories of Herbert Spencer and Leslie White, historicism was neither anti-selection, nor anti-evolution, as Darwin never attempted nor offered an explanation for cultural evolution. However, it attacked the notion that there was one normative spectrum of development, instead emphasizing how local conditions would create adaptations to the local environment. Julian Steward refuted the viability of globally and universally applicable adaptive standards proposing that culture was honed adaptively in response to the idiosyncrasies of the local environment, the cultural ecology, by specific evolution. What was adaptive for one region might not be so for another. This conclusion has likewise been adopted by modern forms of biological evolutionary theory.
The primary method of historicism was empirical, namely that there were so many requisite inputs into a society or event, that only by emphasizing the data available could a theory of the source be determined. In this opinion, grand theories are unprovable, and instead intensive field work would determine the most likely explanation and history of a culture, and hence it is named "historicism."
This opinion would produce a wide range of definition of what, exactly, constituted culture and history, but in each case the only means of explaining it was in terms of the historical particulars of the culture itself.
Since the 1950s, when Jacques Lacan and Foucault argued that each epoch has its own knowledge system, within which individuals are inexorably entangled, many post-structuralists have used "historicism" to describe the opinion that all questions must be settled within the cultural and social context in which they are raised. Answers cannot be found by appeal to an external truth, but only within the confines of the norms and forms that phrase the question. This version of historicism holds that there are only the raw texts, markings and artifacts that exist in the present, and the conventions used to decode them. This school of thought is sometimes given the name of "New Historicism".
The same term, "new historicism" is also used for a school of literary scholarship which interprets a poem, drama, etc. as an expression of or reaction to the power-structures of its society. Stephen Greenblatt is an example of this school.
Within the context of 20th-century philosophy, debates continue as to whether ahistorical and immanent methods were sufficient to understand meaning—that is to say, "what you see is what you get" positivism—or whether context, background and culture are important beyond the mere need to decode words, phrases and references. While post-structural historicism is relativist in its orientation, that is, it sees each culture as its own frame of reference, a large number of thinkers have embraced the need for historical context, not because culture is self-referential, but because there is no more compressed means of conveying all of the relevant information except through history. This opinion is often seen as deriving from the work of Benedetto Croce. Recent historians using this tradition include Thomas Kuhn.
In Christianity, the term "historicism" refers to the confessional Protestant form of prophetical interpretation which holds that the fulfillment of biblical prophecy has occurred throughout history and continues to occur; as opposed to other methods which limit the time-frame of prophecy-fulfillment to the past or to the future.
There is also a particular opinion in ecclesiastical history and in the history of dogmas which has been described as historicist by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical "Humani generis". "They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries."
The social theory of Karl Marx, with respect to modern scholarship, has an ambiguous relation to historicism. Critics of Marx have understood his theory as historicist since its very genesis. However, the issue of historicism has been debated even among Marxists: the charge of historicism has been made against various types of Marxism, typically disparaged by Marxists as "vulgar" Marxism.
Marx himself expresses critical concerns with this historicist tendency in his Theses on Feuerbach:
Western Marxists such as Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci and the early Georg Lukacs emphasise the roots of Marx's thought in Hegel. They interpret Marxism as an historically relativist philosophy, which views ideas (including Marxist theory) as necessary products of the historical circumstances that create them. In this view, Marxism is not an objective social science, but rather a theoretical expression of the class consciousness of the working class within an historical process. This understanding of Marxism is strongly criticised by the structural Marxist Louis Althusser, who affirms that Marxism is an objective science, autonomous from interests of society and class.
Karl Popper used the term "historicism" in his influential books "The Poverty of Historicism" and "The Open Society and Its Enemies", to mean: "an approach to the social sciences which assumes that "historical prediction" is their primary aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history". Karl Popper wrote with reference to Hegel's theory of history, which he criticized extensively. However, there is wide dispute whether Popper's description of "historicism" is an accurate description of Hegel, or more his characterisation of his own philosophical antagonists, including Marxist-Leninist thought, then widely held as posing a challenge to the philosophical basis of the West, as well as theories such as Spengler's which drew predictions about the future course of events from the past.
In "The Open Society and Its Enemies", Popper attacks "historicism" and its proponents, among whom (as well as Hegel) he identifies and singles out Plato and Marx—calling them all "enemies of the open society". The objection he makes is that historicist positions, by claiming that there is an inevitable and deterministic pattern to history, abrogate the democratic responsibility of each one of us to make our own free contributions to the evolution of society, and hence lead to totalitarianism.
Another of his targets is what he terms "moral historicism", the attempt to infer moral values from the course of history; in Hegel's words, that "history is the world's court of justice". This may take the form of conservatism (former might is right), positivism (might is right) or futurism (presumed coming might is right). As against these, Popper says that he does not believe "that success proves anything or that history is our judge". Futurism must be distinguished from prophecies that the right will prevail: these attempt to infer history from ethics, rather than ethics from history, and are therefore historicism in the normal sense rather than moral historicism.
He also attacks what he calls "Historism", which he regards as distinct from historicism. By historism, he means the tendency to regard every argument or idea as completely accounted for by its historical context, as opposed to assessing it by its merits. In Popperian terms, the "New Historicism" is an example of historism rather than of historicism proper.
Leo Strauss used the term "historicism" and reportedly termed it the single greatest threat to intellectual freedom insofar as it denies any attempt to address injustice-pure-and-simple (such is the significance of historicism's rejection of "natural right" or "right by nature"). Strauss argued that historicism "rejects political philosophy" (insofar as this stands or falls by questions of permanent, trans-historical significance) and is based on the belief that "all human thought, including scientific thought, rests on premises which cannot be validated by human reason and which came from historical epoch to historical epoch." Strauss further identified R. G. Collingwood as the most coherent advocate of historicism in the English language. Countering Collingwood's arguments, Strauss warned against historicist social scientists' failure to address real-life problems—most notably that of tyranny—to the extent that they relativize (or "subjectivize") all ethical problems by placing their significance strictly in function of particular or ever-changing socio-material conditions devoid of inherent or "objective" "value." Similarly, Strauss criticized Eric Voegelin's abandonment of ancient political thought as guide or vehicle in interpreting modern political problems.
In his books, "Natural Right and History" and "On Tyranny", Strauss offers a complete critique of historicism as it emerges in the works of Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger. Many believe that Strauss also found historicism in Edmund Burke, Tocqueville, Augustine, and John Stuart Mill. Although it is largely disputed whether Strauss himself was a historicist, he often indicated that historicism grew out of and against Christianity and was a threat to civic participation, belief in human agency, religious pluralism, and, most controversially, an accurate understanding of the classical philosophers and religious prophets themselves. Throughout his work, he warns that historicism, and the understanding of progress that results from it, expose us to tyranny, totalitarianism, and democratic extremism. In his exchange with Alexandre Kojève in "On Tyranny", Strauss seems to blame historicism for Nazism and Communism. In a collection of his works by Kenneth Hart entitled "Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity", he argues that Islam, traditional Judaism, and ancient Greece, share a concern for sacred law that makes them especially susceptible to historicism, and therefore to tyranny. Strauss makes use of Nietzsche's own critique of progress and historicism, although Strauss refers to Nietzsche himself (no less than to Heidegger) as a "radical historicist" who articulated a philosophical (if only untenable) justification for historicism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14329 |
Hunter College
Hunter College is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, a public university in New York City. The college offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also administers Hunter College High School and Hunter College Elementary School.
Hunter was founded in 1870 as a women's college; it first admitted male freshmen in 1946. The main campus has been located on Park Avenue since 1873. In 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated Franklin Delano Roosevelt's and her former townhouse to the college; the building was reopened in 2010 as the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. The college has a 57% graduation rate within six years.
Hunter College has its origins in the 19th-century movement for normal school training which swept across the United States. Hunter descends from the Female Normal and High School (later renamed the Normal College of the City of New York), established in New York City in 1870. Founded by Irish immigrant Thomas Hunter, who was president of the school during the first 37 years, it was originally a women's college for training teachers. The school, which was housed in an armory and saddle store at Broadway and East Fourth Street in Manhattan, was open to all qualified women, irrespective of race, religion or ethnic background. At the time most women's colleges had racial or ethno-religious admissions criteria.
Created by the New York State Legislature, Hunter was deemed the only approved institution for those seeking to teach in New York City. The school incorporated an elementary and high school for gifted children, where students practiced teaching. In 1887, a kindergarten was established as well. (Today, the elementary school and the high school still exist at a different location, and are now called the Hunter College Campus Schools.)
During Thomas Hunter's tenure as president of the school, Hunter became known for its impartiality regarding race, religion, ethnicity, financial or political favoritism; its pursuit of higher education for women; its high entry requirements; and its rigorous academics. The first female professor at the school, Helen Gray Cone, was elected to the position in 1899. The college's student population quickly expanded, and the college subsequently moved uptown, in 1873, into a new red brick Gothic structure facing Park Avenue between 68th and 69th Streets. It was one of several public institutions built at the time on a Lenox Hill lot that had been set aside by the city for a park, before the creation of Central Park.
In 1888 the school was incorporated as a college under the statutes of New York State, with the power to confer the degree of A.B. This led to the separation of the school into two "camps": the "Normals", who pursued a four-year course of study to become licensed teachers, and the "Academics", who sought non-teaching professions and the Bachelor of Arts degree. After 1902 when the "Normal" course of study was abolished, the "Academic" course became standard across the student body.
In 1913 the east end of the building, housing the elementary school, was replaced by Thomas Hunter Hall, a new limestone Tudor building facing Lexington Avenue and designed by C. B. J. Snyder. The following year the Normal College became Hunter College in honor of its first president. At the same time, the college was experiencing a period of great expansion as increasing student enrollments necessitated more space. The college reacted by establishing branches in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. By 1920, Hunter College had the largest enrollment of women of any municipally financed college in the United States. In 1930, Hunter's Brooklyn campus merged with City College's Brooklyn campus, and the two were spun off to form Brooklyn College.
In 1936 fire destroyed the 1873 Gothic building facing Park Avenue, and by 1940 the Public Works Administration replaced it with the Modernist north building, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon along with Harrison & Fouilhoux.
The late 1930s saw the construction of Hunter College in the Bronx (later known as the Bronx Campus). During the Second World War, Hunter leased the Bronx Campus buildings to the United States Navy who used the facilities to train 95,000 women volunteers for military service as WAVES and SPARS. When the Navy vacated the campus, the site was briefly occupied by the nascent United Nations, which held its first Security Council sessions at the Bronx Campus in 1946, giving the school an international profile.
In 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated a town house at 47–49 East 65th Street in Manhattan to the college. The house had been a home for the future President and First Lady. Today it is known as The Roosevelt House of Public Policy and opened in fall 2010 as an academic center hosting prominent speakers.
Hunter became the women's college of the municipal system, and in the 1950s, when City College became coeducational, Hunter started admitting men to its Bronx campus. In 1964, the Manhattan campus began admitting men also. The Bronx campus subsequently became Lehman College in 1968.
In 1968–1969, Black and Puerto Rican students struggled to get a department that would teach about their history and experience. These and supportive students and faculty expressed this demand through building take-overs, rallies, etc. In Spring 1969, Hunter College established Black and Puerto Rican Studies (now called Africana/Puerto Rican and Latino Studies). An "open admissions" policy initiated in 1970 by the City University of New York opened the school's doors to historically underrepresented groups by guaranteeing a college education to any and all who graduated from NYC high schools. Many African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Puerto Ricans, and students from the developing world made their presence felt at Hunter, and even after the end of "open admissions" still comprise a large part of the school's student body. As a result of this increase in enrollment, Hunter opened new buildings on Lexington Avenue during the early 1980s. In further advancing Puerto Rican studies, Hunter became home to the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños ("Center for Puerto Rican Studies" or simply "Centro") in 1982.
Today, Hunter College is a comprehensive teaching and research institution. Of the more than 20,000 students enrolled at Hunter, nearly 5,000 are enrolled in a graduate program, the most popular of which are education and social work. Although less than 28% of students are the first in their families to attend college, the college maintains its tradition of concern for women's education, with nearly three out of four students being female. In 2006, Hunter became home to the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, which will run training programs for young women to build their leadership, public speaking, business and advocacy skills.
In recent years, the college has integrated its undergraduate and graduate programs to successfully make advanced programs in fields such as (Psychology and Biology) – "PhD Program", (Education) – "Master's Program", (Mathematics) – "Master's Program", -"PhD Program" (Biology & Chemistry) – "Biochemistry", (Accounting) – "Master's Program" along with the highly competitive (Economics) – "Master's Program" to which only a select few students may enter based on excellent scholarship and performance, and less than half will earn a master's degree by maintaining a nearly perfect academic record and performing thesis research.
Although far from the polar regions, Hunter is a member institution of the University of the Arctic, a network of schools providing education accessible to northern students.
Hunter College is anchored by its main campus at East 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, a modern complex of three towers – the East, West, and North Buildings – and Thomas Hunter Hall, all interconnected by skywalks. The college's official street address is 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065. (Formerly bearing the ZIP code of 10021, the code changed on July 1, 2007 in accordance with the United States Postal Service's plan to split the 10021 ZIP code.) The address is based on the North Building, which stretches from 68th to 69th Streets along Park Avenue.
The main campus is situated two blocks east of Central Park, as well as many of New York's most prestigious cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asia Society Museum, and the Frick Collection. The New York City Subway's 68th Street–Hunter College station () on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line is directly underneath, and serves the entire campus. Adjacent to the staircase to the station, in front of the West Building, sat an iconic Hunter sculpture, "Tau", created by late Hunter professor and respected artist Tony Smith. The sculpture has been removed as of October 2018 due to restoration purposes.
The main campus is home to the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education. It features numerous facilities that serve not only Hunter, but the surrounding community, and is particularly well known as a center for the arts. The Assembly Hall, which seats more than 2,000, is a major performance site; the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, a 675-seat proscenium theatre, has over 100,000 visitors annually and hosts over 200 performances each season; the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall is a fully equipped concert space with 148 seats; the Frederick Loewe Theatre, a 50 x black box performance space is the site of most department performances; and the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery hosts professionally organized art exhibits.
Students have access to specialized learning facilities at the main campus, including the Dolciani Mathematics Learning Center, the Leona and Marcy Chanin Language Center, and the Physical Sciences Learning Center. A respected research institution, Hunter has numerous research laboratories in the natural and biomedical sciences. These labs accommodate post-docs, PhD students from the CUNY Graduate School, and undergraduate researchers.
College sports and recreational programs are served by the Hunter Sportsplex, located below the West Building.
Hunter has two satellite campuses: The Silberman School of Social Work Building, located on 3rd Avenue between East 118th and East 119th Streets, which houses the School of Social Work, the School of Urban Public Health, and the Brookdale Center on Aging; and the Brookdale Campus, located at East 25th Street and 1st Avenue, which houses the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, the Schools of the Health Professions, the Health Professions Library and several research centers and computer labs.
The Brookdale Campus is the site of the Hunter dormitory, which is home to over 600 undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a limited number of nurses employed at Bellevue Hospital. Prior to the opening of City College's new "Towers," the Brookdale complex was the City University's only dormitory facility.
Hunter College owns and operates property outside of its main campuses, including the MFA Building, Roosevelt House, Baker Theatre Building, Silberman School of Social Work, and the Hunter College Campus Schools. The MFA Building, located on West 41st Street between 9th and 10th Avenues, is a space that is the site of most BFA and MFA exhibitions. Roosevelt House, located on East 65th Street, is the historic family home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Hunter's Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute is now located there, honoring the public policy commitments of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Baker Theatre Building located on 149 East 67th Street, New York, NY 10065 is the home of Hunter's Department of Theatre thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Hunter trustee Patty Baker ’82 and her husband, Jay. The Silberman School of Social Work is located between 118th and 119th street on 3rd Ave. The Hunter Campus Schools—Hunter College High School and Hunter College Elementary School—are publicly funded schools for the intellectually gifted. Located at East 94th Street, the Campus Schools are among the nation's oldest and largest elementary and secondary schools of their kind.
Hunter library collections are housed in the Leon and Toby Cooperman Library (the main library), the Zabar Art Library at East 68th Street in the North Building, the Health Professions Library at the Brookdale Campus, and the Social Work Library at the Silberman School of Social Work building. There is a small library at the Roosevelt House building. Together, these libraries hold over 760,000 volumes, more than 2,100 current print periodical subscriptions and approximately 10,000 in electronic format, 1,168,000 microforms, 13,000 videos and music CDs, 250,000 art slides, and 40,000+ digital images. The CUNY+ online catalog of university-wide holdings and remote online databases are accessible at all Hunter libraries.
Under the guidance of the Presidential Task Force on the Library, created in the fall of 2006, the Leon and Toby Cooperman Library has undergone several improvements in the areas of facilities, holdings, and services. The library now features wireless capability, a redesigned student lounge and circulation desk, improved lighting, and expanded electronic resources. Additionally, the college has extended library hours, hired more library staff, and instituted a laptop loan program for students. More improvements are planned for the future, as part of an initiative to fully modernize the library.
Hunter is organized into four schools: The School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Education, the School of the Health Professions, and the School of Social Work. The college is highly selective, with an admissions acceptance rate of 36% in Fall 2018. Hunter offers 70 programs leading to a BA or BS degree; 10 BA-MA joint degree programs; and 75 graduate programs.
They may study within the fields of fine arts, the humanities, the language arts, the sciences, the social sciences, and the applied arts and sciences, as well as in professional areas in accounting, education, health sciences, and nursing. Regardless of area of concentration, all Hunter students are encouraged to have broad exposure to the liberal arts; Hunter was one of the first colleges in the nation to pass a 12-credit curriculum requirement for pluralism and diversity courses.
Hunter has 673 full-time and 886 part-time faculty members, and 20,844 students—15,718 undergraduates and 5,126 graduates. Over 50% of Hunter's students belong to ethnic minority groups. The class of 2011 represented 60 countries and speaks 59 different languages. Seventy-one percent of these students were born outside the United States or have at least one foreign-born parent. SAT and high school GPA scores for the entering Fall 2012 class of freshmen had an SAT score 25th–75th percentile range of 1090 to 1280 and high school GPA 25th–75th percentile range of 85% to 92%.
According to the "Best Value Colleges for 2010," a ranking published by The Princeton Review and "U.S.A. Today", Hunter is the nation's number 2 "Best Value" in public colleges (on the basis of the analysis of over 10 factors in three areas: academics, costs of attendance, and financial aid). The Princeton Review's 2011 edition of the "Best 373 Colleges" includes Hunter as one of the best colleges or universities in the United States. Hunter also was cited among the "Best Northeastern Colleges", one of five regional guides published by the Princeton Review. It is ranked 284th on Forbes' college rankings list.
The 2011 edition of "America's Best Colleges," published by "U.S. News & World Report", places the college 8th among public universities in the north in the "Best Universities-Master's" category, and among the 574 public and private institutions in this category, Hunter is in the first tier with a rank of 39. Hunter is 3rd in the nation among master's institutions in the number of students awarded Fulbright grants, according to the October 2009 ranking compiled by the "Chronicle of Higher Education".
In the most recent edition of U.S. News and World Report Ranking of Graduate Fine Arts Programs, Hunter has been ranked 23rd best in the United States. Hunter's MFA Programs in Studio Art (Painting and Sculpture) and Studio Art (Painting and Drawing) have both been ranked 9th best in the nation. In 2017, Artsy included Hunter's in the list of "Top 15 Art Schools in the United States." The admission to Hunter's MFA Programs in Studio Art is highly competitive, with the average acceptance rate of 8% as of 2018.
Hunter offers several honors programs, including the Macaulay Honors College and the Thomas Hunter Honors Program. The Macaulay Honors College, a CUNY-wide honors program, supports the undergraduate education of academically gifted students. University Scholars benefit from a full tuition scholarship (up to the value of in-state tuition only as of Fall 2013, effectively restricting it to NY state residents), personalized advising, early registration, access to internships, and study abroad opportunities. All scholars at Hunter are given the choice of either a free dormitory room at the Brookdale Campus for two years or a yearly stipend.
The Thomas Hunter Honors Program offers topical interdisciplinary seminars and academic concentrations designed to meet students’ individual interests. The program is open to outstanding students pursuing a BA and is orchestrated under the supervision of an Honors Council. It can be combined with, or replace, a formal departmental major/minor.
Hunter offers other honors programs, including Honors Research Training Programs and Departmental Honors opportunities, The Muse Scholar program, the Jenny Hunter program, the Athena program, and the Yalow program.
In addition to these honors programs, several honors societies are based at Hunter, including Phi Beta Kappa (PBK). A small percentage of Hunter students are invited to join Hunter's Nu chapter of PBK, which has existed at the college since 1920. Less than 10% of the nation's liberal arts colleges qualify academically for a PBK chapter.
The Hunter College student body is governed by the Undergraduate Student Government and the Graduate Student Association (GSA), both of which offer a wide range of activities and services.
Hunter offers approximately 150 clubs that reflect the diverse interests of its student body. These organizations range from the academic to the athletic, and from the religious/spiritual to the visual and performing arts. There are even clubs based on specific interests, such as "Russian Club", which offers a look at Russian life and culture and "InterVarsity Christian Fellowship" an organization whose vision is to "transform students and faculty, renew the campus, and develop world changers. "
National – Social
National – Service
Local – Social
Local – Service
Non-Greek
Hunter College has a campus radio station, "WHCS", which once broadcast at 590AM but is now solely online. "The Envoy" is the main campus newspaper, published bi-weekly during the academic year. Its literary and art magazine "The Olivetree Review" offers opportunities for publishing student prose, poetry, drama, and art. Other publications include "Culture Magazine" (fashion and lifestyle), "Hunted Hero Comics" (comics and graphic stories), "The Photographer's Collective" (photography), "Nursing Student Press" (medical news and articles), Spoon University (culinary online publication), "Psych News" (psychology), "The Wistarion" (yearbook), "SABOR" (Spanish language and photography/now defunct), "Revista De La Academia" (Spanish language/now defunct), the "Islamic Times" (now defunct), "Political Paradigm" (political science/now defunct), "Hakol" (Jewish interest/now defunct), and "Spoof" (humor/now defunct). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14330 |
Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, musician, radio host, director and producer. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group. Following the breakup of the group, Shearer co-wrote the film "Real Life" (1979) with Albert Brooks and worked as a writer on Martin Mull's television series "Fernwood 2 Night".
Shearer was a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" between 1979 and 1980, and 1984 and 1985. Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in the film "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984), a satirical rockumentary, which became a hit. In 1989, he joined the cast of the animated sitcom "The Simpsons"; he provides voices for characters including Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, Dr. Hibbert and more. Shearer has appeared in films including "The Truman Show" (1998) and "A Mighty Wind" (2003), and has directed two, "Teddy Bears' Picnic" (2002) and "The Big Uneasy" (2010). Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program "Le Show", incorporating satire, music, and sketch comedy. He has written three books.
Shearer has won a Primetime Emmy Award and has received several other Emmy and Grammy Award nominations. He has been married to singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. He became an artist in residence at Loyola University, New Orleans in 2013.
Shearer was born December 23, 1943, in Los Angeles, the son of Dora Warren (née Kohn; d. 2008), a bookkeeper, and Mack Shearer. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Austria and Poland. Starting when Shearer was four years old, he had a piano teacher whose daughter worked as a child actress. The piano teacher later decided to make a career change and become a children's agent, since she knew people in the business through her daughter's work. The teacher asked Shearer's parents for permission to take him to an audition. Several months later, she called Shearer's parents and told them that she had gotten Shearer an audition for the radio show "The Jack Benny Program". Shearer received the role when he was seven years old. He described Jack Benny as "very warm and approachable ... He was a guy who dug the idea of other people on the show getting laughs, which sort of spoiled me for other people in comedy." Shearer said in an interview that one person who "took him under his wing" and was one of his best friends during his early days in show business was voice actor Mel Blanc, who voiced many animated characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Barney Rubble. Shearer made his film debut in the film "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" (1953), in which he had a small part, and appeared in "The Robe" (also 1953). Throughout his childhood and teenage years he worked in television, film, and radio. In 1957, Shearer played the precursor to the Eddie Haskell character in the pilot episode of the television series "Leave It to Beaver". After the filming, Shearer's parents said they did not want him to be a regular in a series. Instead they wanted him to just do occasional work so that he could have a normal childhood. Shearer and his parents made the decision not to accept the role in the series if it was picked up by a television network.
Shearer attended UCLA as a political science major in the early 1960s and decided to quit show business to become a "serious person". However, he says this lasted approximately a month, and he joined the staff of the "Daily Bruin", UCLA's school newspaper, during his first year. He was editor of the college humor magazine ("Satyr"), including the June 1964 parody "Preyboy". He also worked as a newscaster at KRLA, a top 40 radio station in Pasadena, during this period. According to Shearer, after graduating, he had "a very serious agenda going on, and it was 'Stay Out of the Draft'." He attended graduate school at Harvard University for one year and worked at the state legislature in Sacramento. In 1967 and 1968, he was a high school teacher, teaching English and social studies. He left teaching following "disagreements with the administration".
From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group that included David Lander, Richard Beebe and Michael McKean. The group consisted of "a bunch of newsmen" at KRLA 1110, "the number two station" in Los Angeles. They wanted to do more than just straight news, so they hired comedians who were talented vocalists. Shearer heard about it from a friend so he brought over a tape to the station and nervously gave it to the receptionist. He found out he was hired that same day. The group's radio show was canceled in 1970 by KRLA and in 1971 by KPPC-FM, so they started performing in various clubs and concert venues. While at KRLA, Shearer also interviewed Creedence Clearwater Revival for the "Pop Chronicles" music documentary. In 1973, Shearer appeared as Jim Houseafire on "How Time Flys", an album by The Firesign Theatre's David Ossman. The Credibility Gap broke up in 1976 when Lander and McKean left to perform in the sitcom "Laverne & Shirley". Shearer started working with Albert Brooks, producing one of Brooks' albums and co-writing the film "Real Life" (1979). Shearer also started writing for Martin Mull's television series "Fernwood 2 Night". In the mid-1970s, he started working with Rob Reiner on a pilot for ABC. The show, which starred Christopher Guest, Tom Leopold and McKean, was not picked up.
In August 1979, Shearer was hired as a writer and cast member on "Saturday Night Live", one of the first additions to the cast, and an unofficial replacement for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who were both leaving the show. Al Franken recommended Shearer to "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels. Shearer describes his experience on the show as a "living hell" and "not a real pleasant place to work." He did not get along well with the other writers and cast members and states that he was not included with the cast in the opening montage (although he was added to the montage for latter episodes of the 1979–80 season) and that Lorne Michaels had told the rest of the cast that he was just a writer. Michaels left "Saturday Night Live" at the end of the fifth season, taking the entire cast with him. Shearer told new executive producer Jean Doumanian that he was "not a fan of Lorne's" and offered to stay with the show if he was given the chance to overhaul the program and bring in experienced comedians, like Christopher Guest. However, Doumanian turned him down, so he decided to leave with the rest of the cast.
In 1984, while promoting the film "This Is Spinal Tap", Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean performed on "Saturday Night Live". All three members were offered the chance to join the show in the 1984–1985 season. Shearer accepted because he was treated well by the producers and he thought the backstage environment had improved but later stated that he "didn't realize that guests are treated better than the regulars." Guest also accepted the offer while McKean rejected it, although he would join the cast in 1994. Dick Ebersol, who replaced Lorne Michaels as the show's producer, said that Shearer was "a gifted performer but a pain in the butt. He's just so demanding on the preciseness of things and he's very, very hard on the working people. He's just a nightmare-to-deal-with person." In January 1985, Shearer left the show for good, partially because he felt he was not being used enough. Martin Short said Shearer "wanted to be creative and Dick [Ebersol] wanted something else. ... I think he felt his voice wasn't getting represented on the show. When he wouldn't get that chance, it made him very upset."
Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Rob Reiner's film "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984). Shearer, Reiner, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest received a deal to write a first draft of a screenplay for a company called Marble Arch. They decided that the film could not be written and instead filmed a 20-minute demo of what they wanted to do. It was eventually greenlighted by Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio at Embassy Pictures. The film satirizes the wild personal behavior and musical pretensions of hard rock and heavy metal bands, as well as the hagiographic tendencies of rockumentaries of the time. The three core members of the band Spinal Tap—David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel—were portrayed by McKean, Shearer and Guest respectively. The three actors play their musical instruments and speak with mock English accents throughout the film. There was no script, although there was a written breakdown of most of the scenes, and many of the lines were ad-libbed. It was filmed in 25 days.
Shearer said in an interview that "The animating impulse was to do rock 'n' roll right. The four of us had been around rock 'n' roll and we were just amazed by how relentlessly the movies got it wrong. Because we were funny people it was going to be a funny film, but we wanted to get it right." When they tried to sell it to various Hollywood studios, they were told that the film would not work. The group kept saying, "No, this is a story that's pretty familiar to people. We're not introducing them to anything they don't really know," so Shearer thought it would at least have some resonance with the public. The film was only a modest success upon its initial release but found greater success, and developed a cult following, after its video release. In 2000, the film was ranked 29th on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy movies in American cinema and it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Shearer, Guest and McKean have since worked on several projects as their Spinal Tap characters. They released three albums: "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984), "Break Like the Wind" (1992) and "Back from the Dead" (2009). In 1992, Spinal Tap appeared in an episode of "The Simpsons" called "The Otto Show". The band has played several concerts, including at Live Earth in London on July 7, 2007. In anticipation of the show, Rob Reiner directed a short film entitled "Spinal Tap". In 2009, the band released "Back from the Dead" to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of the film. The album features re-recorded versions of songs featured in "This Is Spinal Tap" and its soundtrack, and five new songs. The band performed a one-date "world tour" at London's Wembley Arena on June 30, 2009. The Folksmen, a mock band featured in the film "A Mighty Wind" that is also made up of characters played by Shearer, McKean and Guest, was the opening act for the show.
Shearer is known for his work as a voice actor on "The Simpsons". Matt Groening, the creator of the show, was a fan of Shearer's work, while Shearer was a fan of a column Groening used to write. Shearer was asked if he wanted to be in the series, but he was initially reluctant because he thought the recording sessions would be too much trouble. He felt voice acting was "not a lot of fun" because traditionally, voice actors record their parts separately. He was told that the actors would record their lines together and after three calls, executive producer James L. Brooks managed to convince Shearer to join the cast. Shearer's first impression of "The Simpsons" was that it was funny. Shearer, who thought it was a "pretty cool" way to work, found it peculiar that the members of the cast were adamant about not being known to the public as the people behind the voices.
Shearer provides voices for Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Dr. Hibbert, Lenny Leonard, Otto Mann, Rainier Wolfcastle, Scratchy, Kang, Dr. Marvin Monroe, and Judge Snyder, among others. He has described all of his regular characters' voices as "easy to slip into. ... I wouldn't do them if they weren't easy." Shearer modeled Mr. Burns's voice on the two actors Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Reagan. Shearer says that Burns is the most difficult character for him to voice because it is rough on his vocal cords and he often needs to drink tea and honey to soothe his voice. He describes Burns as his favorite character, saying he "like[s] Mr. Burns because he is pure evil. A lot of evil people make the mistake of diluting it. Never adulterate your evil." Shearer is also the voice of Burns' assistant Smithers, and is able to perform dialogue between the two characters in one take. In the episode "Bart's Inner Child", Harry Shearer said "wow" in the voice of Otto, which was then used when Otto was seen jumping on a trampoline. Ned Flanders had been meant to be just a neighbor that Homer was jealous of, but because Shearer used "such a sweet voice" for him, Flanders was broadened to become a Christian and a sweet guy that someone would prefer to live next to over Homer. Dr. Marvin Monroe's voice was based on psychiatrist David Viscott. Monroe has been retired since the seventh season because voicing the character strained Shearer's throat.
In 2004, Shearer criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now." Shearer has also been vocal about "The Principal and the Pauper" (season nine, 1997), one of the most controversial episodes of "The Simpsons". Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Principal Seymour Skinner, a recurring character since the first season, was an impostor. The episode has been criticized by both Shearer and Groening. In a 2001 interview, Shearer recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience." Due to scheduling and availability conflicts, Shearer decided not to participate in "The Simpsons Ride", which opened in 2008, so none of his characters have vocal parts and many do not appear in the ride at all. In a 2010 interview on "The Howard Stern Show", Shearer alluded that the reason he was not part of the ride was because he would not be getting paid for it.
Until 1998, Shearer was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing for casting of new voices. The dispute, however, was resolved and Shearer received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode. The dispute was resolved a month later, and Shearer's pay rose to $250,000 per episode. After salary re-negotiations in 2008, the voice actors received $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Shearer and the other cast members accepted a 30% pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode. On May 13, 2015, Shearer announced he was leaving the show. After the other voice actors signed a contract for the same pay, Shearer refused, stating it was not enough. Al Jean made a statement from the producers saying "the show must go on," but did not elaborate on what might happen to the characters Shearer voiced. On July 7, 2015, Shearer agreed to continue with the show, on the same terms as the other voice actors.
Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program "Le Show". The program is a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy that takes aim at the "mega morons of the mighty media". It is carried on many National Public Radio and other public radio stations throughout the United States. Since the merger of SIRIUS and XM satellite radio services the program is no longer available on either. The show has also been made available as a podcast on iTunes and by WWNO. On the weekly program Shearer alternates between DJing, reading and commenting on the news of the day after the manner of Mort Sahl, and performing original (mostly political) comedy sketches and songs. In 2008, Shearer released a music CD called "Songs of the Bushmen", consisting of his satirical numbers about former President George W. Bush on "Le Show". Shearer says he criticizes both Republicans and Democrats equally, and also says that "the iron law of doing comedy about politics is you make fun of whoever is running the place" and that "everyone else is just running around talking. They are the ones who are actually doing something, changing people's lives for better or for worse. Other people the media calls 'satirists' don't work that way."
Since encountering satellite news feeds when he worked on "Saturday Night Live", Shearer has been fascinated with the contents of the video that does not air. Shearer refers to these clips as found objects. "I thought, wow, there is just an unending supply of this material, and it's wonderful and fascinating and funny and sometimes haunting – but it's always good," said Shearer. He collects this material and uses it on "Le Show" and on his website. In 2008, he assembled video clips of newsmakers from this collection into an art installation titled "The Silent Echo Chamber" which was exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The exhibit was also displayed in 2009 at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain and in 2010 at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center.
In 2006 Shearer appeared with Brian Hayes in four episodes of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom "Not Today, Thank You", playing Nostrils, a man so ugly he cannot stand to be in his own presence. He was originally scheduled to appear in all six episodes but had to withdraw from recording two due to a problem with his work permit. On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category.
Shearer's first feature film as director "Teddy Bears' Picnic", which he also wrote, was released in 2002. The plot is based on Bohemian Grove, which hosts a three-week encampment of some of the most powerful men in the world. The film was not well received by critics. It garnered a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with all 19 reviews being determined as negative and received a rating of 32 out of 100 (signifying "generally negative reviews") on Metacritic from 10 reviews. In 2003, he co-wrote "J. Edgar! The Musical" with Tom Leopold, which spoofed J. Edgar Hoover's relationship with Clyde Tolson. It premiered at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado and starred Kelsey Grammer and John Goodman.
Shearer, Guest and McKean starred in the folk music mockumentary "A Mighty Wind" (2003), portraying a band called The Folksmen. The film was written by Guest and Eugene Levy, and directed by Guest. Shearer had a major role in the Guest-directed parody of Oscar politicking "For Your Consideration" released in 2006. He played Victor Allan Miller, a veteran actor who is convinced that he is going to be nominated for an Academy Award. He also appeared as a news anchor in "Godzilla" (1998) with fellow "The Simpsons" cast members Hank Azaria and Nancy Cartwright. His other film appearances include "The Right Stuff" (1983), "The Fisher King" (1991), "The Truman Show" (1998), "Small Soldiers" (also 1998), and "EdTV" (1999). He also directed and appeared in the television program "Portrait of a White Marriage" (1988), a sequel to "The History of White People in America".
Shearer has also worked as a columnist for the "Los Angeles Times Magazine", but decided that it "became such a waste of time to bother with it." His columns have also been published in "Slate" and "Newsweek". Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at "The Huffington Post". Shearer has written three books. "Man Bites Town", published in 1993, is a collection of columns that he wrote for "The Los Angeles Times" between 1989 and 1992. Published in 1999, "It's the Stupidity, Stupid" analyzed the hatred some people had for then-President Bill Clinton. Shearer believes that Clinton became disliked because he had an affair with "the least powerful, least credentialed women cleared into his official compound." His most recent book is "Not Enough Indians", his first novel. Published in 2006, it is a comic novel about Native Americans and gambling. Without the "pleasures of collaboration" and "spontaneity and improvisation which characterize his other projects", "Not Enough Indians" was a "struggle" for Shearer to write. He said that "the only fun thing about it was having written it. It was lonely, I had no deal for it and it took six years to do. It was a profoundly disturbing act of self-discipline."
Shearer has released five solo comedy albums: "It Must Have Been Something I Said" (1994), "Dropping Anchors" (2006), "Songs Pointed and Pointless" (2007), "Songs of the Bushmen" (2008) and "Greed and Fear" (2010). His most recent CD, "Greed and Fear" is mainly about Wall Street economic issues, rather than politics like his previous albums. Shearer decided to make the album when he"started getting amused by the language of the economic meltdown – when 'toxic assets' suddenly became 'troubled assets,' going from something poisoning the system to just a bunch of delinquent youth with dirty faces that needed not removal from the system but just ... understanding." In May 2006, Shearer received an honorary doctorate from Goucher College.
Shearer is the director of "The Big Uneasy" (2010), a documentary film about the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. Narrated by actor John Goodman, the film describes levee failures and catastrophic flooding in the New Orleans metropolitan area, and includes extended interviews with former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden, Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Maria Garzino, an engineer and contract specialist for the Los Angeles district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The film is critical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its management of flood protection projects in Southern Louisiana. Shearer draws on numerous technical experts to maintain that Hurricane Katrina's "... tragic floods creating widespread damage were caused by manmade errors in engineering and judgment." On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 24 reviews, with an average rating of 6.85/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Big Uneasy offers an admittedly uneven - yet still worthy and well-intentioned - look at a horrific disaster's aftermath."
Shearer married folk singer Penelope Nichols in 1974. They divorced in 1977. He has been married to Welsh singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. In 2005, the couple launched their own record label called Courgette Records. Shearer has homes in Santa Monica, California, the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Notting Hill, London. He first went to New Orleans in 1988 and has attended every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since.
Shearer often speaks and writes about the failure of the Federal levee system which flooded New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, blasting the coverage of it in the mainstream media and criticizing the role of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Prior to the DVD release of his film, "The Big Uneasy", Shearer would hold screenings of the film at different venues and take questions from audience members.
Shearer was the last of the six regular voice actors from "The Simpsons" to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. His win came for the season 25 episode "Four Regrettings and a Funeral". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14331 |
High fantasy
High fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, defined either by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot. The term "high fantasy" was coined by Lloyd Alexander in a 1971 essay, "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance" (originally given at the New England Round Table of Children's Librarians in October 1969).
High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the "real" or "primary" world. This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements.
The romances of William Morris, such as "The Well at the World's End", set in an imaginary medieval world, are sometimes regarded as the first examples of high fantasy. The works of J. R. R. Tolkien—especially "The Lord of the Rings"—are regarded as archetypal works of high fantasy. Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" is another example of a high fantasy series.
Many high fantasy stories are told from the viewpoint of one main hero. Often, much of the plot revolves around their heritage or mysterious nature. In many novels the hero is an orphan or unusual sibling, often with an extraordinary talent for magic or combat. They begin the story young, if not as an actual child. In other works the hero is a completely developed individual with a unique character and spirit.
The hero often begins as a childlike figure, but matures rapidly, experiencing a considerable gain in fighting/problem-solving abilities along the way. The plot of the story often depicts the hero's fight against the evil forces as a "bildungsroman".
The progress of the story leads to the character's learning the nature of the unknown forces against them, that they constitute a force with great power and malevolence.
Good versus evil is a common theme in high fantasy, and the character of evil is often an important theme in a work of high fantasy, as in "The Lord of the Rings". Indeed, the importance of the concepts of good and evil can be regarded as the distinguishing mark between high fantasy and sword and sorcery. In many works of high fantasy, this conflict marks a deep concern with moral issues; in other works, the conflict is a power struggle, with, for instance, wizards behaving irresponsibly whether they are "good" or "evil".
There is often some evil that must be defeated, sometimes, a mysterious Dark Lord, often obsessed with taking over the world and killing the main hero. The evil character is sometimes an evil wizard or sorcerer, or sometimes a kind of god or demon. The antagonist usually commands a large army or a group of highly feared servants, and the protagonists appear outmatched.
Role-playing games such as "Dungeons & Dragons" with campaign settings like "Greyhawk" by Gary Gygax, "Dragonlance" by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis and "Forgotten Realms" by Ed Greenwood are a common basis for many fantasy books and many other authors continue to contribute to the settings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14336 |
Human sexual activity
Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone (e.g., masturbation) to acts with another person (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penetrative sex, oral sex, etc.) in varying patterns of frequency, for a wide variety of reasons. Sexual activity usually results in sexual arousal and physiological changes in the aroused person, some of which are pronounced while others are more subtle. Sexual activity may also include conduct and activities which are intended to arouse the sexual interest of another or enhance the sex life of another, such as strategies to find or attract partners (courtship and display behaviour), or personal interactions between individuals (for instance, foreplay or BDSM). Sexual activity may follow sexual arousal.
Human sexual activity has sociological, cognitive, emotional, behavioural and biological aspects; these include personal bonding, sharing emotions and the physiology of the reproductive system, sex drive, sexual intercourse and sexual behaviour in all its forms.
In some cultures, sexual activity is considered acceptable only within marriage, while premarital and extramarital sex are taboo. Some sexual activities are illegal either universally or in some countries or subnational jurisdictions, while some are considered contrary to the norms of certain societies or cultures. Two examples that are criminal offences in most jurisdictions are sexual assault and sexual activity with a person below the local age of consent.
Sexual activity can be classified in a number of ways: acts which involve one person (also called autoeroticism) such as masturbation, or two or more people such as vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex or mutual masturbation. Penetrative sex between two people may be described as sexual intercourse, but definitions vary. If there are more than two participants in a sex act, it may be referred to as group sex. Autoerotic sexual activity can involve use of dildos, vibrators, butt plugs, and other sex toys, though these devices can also be used with a partner.
Sexual activity can be classified into the gender and sexual orientation of the participants, as well as by the relationship of the participants. For example, the relationships can be ones of marriage, intimate partners, casual sex partners or anonymous. Sexual activity can be regarded as conventional or as alternative, involving, for example, fetishism, paraphilia, or BDSM activities. Fetishism can take many forms ranging from the desire for certain body parts, for example large breasts, navels or foot worship. The object of desire can often be shoes, boots, lingerie, clothing, leather or rubber items. Some non-conventional autoerotic practices can be dangerous. These include erotic asphyxiation and self-bondage. The potential for injury or even death that exists while engaging in the partnered versions of these fetishes (choking and bondage, respectively) becomes drastically increased in the autoerotic case due to the isolation and lack of assistance in the event of a problem.
Sexual activity can be consensual, which means that both or all participants agree to take part and are of the age that they can consent, or it may take place under force or duress, which is often called sexual assault or rape. In different cultures and countries, various sexual activities may be lawful or illegal in regards to the age, gender, marital status or other factors of the participants, or otherwise contrary to social norms or generally accepted sexual morals.
In evolutionary psychology and behavioral ecology, human mating strategies are a set of behaviors used by individuals to attract, select, and retain mates. Mating strategies overlap with reproductive strategies, which encompass a broader set of behaviors involving the timing of reproduction and the trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring (see life history theory).
Relative to other animals, human mating strategies are unique in their relationship with cultural variables such as the institution of marriage. Humans may seek out individuals with the intention of forming a long-term intimate relationship, marriage, casual relationship, or friendship. The human desire for companionship is one of the strongest human drives. It is an innate feature of human nature, and may be related to the sex drive. The human mating process encompasses the social and cultural processes whereby one person may meet another to assess suitability, the courtship process and the process of forming an interpersonal relationship. Commonalities, however, can be found between humans and nonhuman animals in mating behavior (see animal sexual behavior).
The physiological responses during sexual stimulation are fairly similar for both men and women and there are four phases.
Sexual dysfunction is the inability to react emotionally or physically to sexual stimulation in a way projected of the average healthy person; it can affect different stages in the sexual response cycles, which are desire, excitement and orgasm. In the media, sexual dysfunction is often associated with men, but in actuality, it is more commonly observed in females (43 percent) than males (31 percent).
Sexual activity can lower blood pressure and overall stress levels, regardless of age. It serves to release tension, elevate mood, and possibly create a profound sense of relaxation, especially in the postcoital period. From a biochemical perspective, sex causes the release of endorphins and increases levels of white blood cells that actually boost the immune system. A study published in the journal Biological Psychology described how men who had had sex the previous night responded better to stressful situations, it suggested that if a person is regularly sexual, they're regularly relaxed, and when the person is relaxed, they cope better with stressful situations. A 2007 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior 36, (no. 3 (June 2007): 357–68) reported that sexual behavior with a partner on one day significantly predicted lower negative mood and stress, and higher positive mood, on the following day. Though it's usually a stress reliever, sex can become stressful when partners worry about their performance.
People engage in sexual activity for any of a multitude of possible reasons. Although the primary evolutionary purpose of sexual activity is reproduction, research on college students suggested that people have sex for four general reasons: "physical attraction", as a "means to an end", to increase "emotional connection", and to "alleviate insecurity".
Most people engage in sexual activity because of pleasure they derive from the arousal of their sexuality, especially if they can achieve orgasm. Sexual arousal can also be experienced from foreplay and flirting, and from fetish or BDSM activities, or other erotic activities. Most commonly, people engage in sexual activity because of the sexual desire generated by a person to whom they feel sexual attraction; but they may engage in sexual activity for the physical satisfaction they achieve in the absence of attraction for another, as in the case of casual or social sex. At times, a person may engage in a sexual activity solely for the sexual pleasure of their partner, such as because of an obligation they may have to the partner or because of love, sympathy or pity they may feel for the partner.
A person may engage in sexual activity for purely monetary considerations, or to obtain some advantage from either the partner or the activity. A man and woman may engage in sexual intercourse with the objective of conception. Some people engage in hate sex, which occurs between two people who strongly dislike or annoy each other. It is related to the idea that opposition between two people can heighten sexual tension, attraction and interest.
It has been shown that sexual activity plays a large part in the interaction of social species. Joan Roughgarden, in her book "Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People," postulates that this applies equally to humans as it does to other social species. She explores the purpose of sexual activity and demonstrates that there are many functions facilitated by such activity including pair bonding, group bonding, dispute resolution and reproduction.
Research has found that people also engage in sexual activity for reasons associated with self-determination theory. The self-determination theory can be applied to a sexual relationship when the participants have positive feelings associated with the relationship. These participants do not feel guilty or coerced into the partnership. Researchers have proposed the model of self-determined sexual motivation. The purpose of this model is to connect self-determination and sexual motivation. This model has helped to explain how people are sexually motivated when involved in self-determined dating relationships. This model also links the positive outcomes, (satisfying the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) gained from sexual motivations.
According to the completed research associated with this model, it was found that people of both sexes who engaged in sexual activity for self-determined motivation had more positive psychological well-being. While engaging in sexual activity for self-determined reasons, the participants also had a higher need for fulfillment. When this need was satisfied, they felt better about themselves. This was correlated with greater closeness to their partner and higher overall satisfaction in their relationship. Though both sexes engaged in sexual activity for self-determined reasons, there were some differences found between males and females. It was concluded that females had more motivation than males to engage in sexual activity for self-determined reasons. Females also had higher satisfaction and relationship quality than males did from the sexual activity. Overall, research concluded that psychological well-being, sexual motivation, and sexual satisfaction were all positively correlated when dating couples partook in sexual activity for self-determined reasons.
The frequency of sexual activity might range from zero (sexual abstinence) to 15 or 20 times a week. In the United States, the average frequency of sexual intercourse for married couples is 2 to 3 times a week. It is generally recognized that postmenopausal women experience declines in frequency of sexual intercourse and that average frequency of intercourse declines with age. According to the Kinsey Institute, the average frequency of sexual intercourse in the US for individuals who have partners is 112 times per year (age 18–29), 86 times per year (age 30–39), and 69 times per year (age 40–49).
The age at which adolescents tend to become sexually active varies considerably between different cultures and from time to time. (See Prevalence of virginity.) The first sexual act of a child or adolescent is sometimes referred to as the sexualization of the child, and may be considered as a milestone or a change of status, as the loss of virginity or innocence. Youth are legally free to have intercourse after they reach the age of consent.
A 1999 survey of students indicated that approximately 40% of ninth graders across the United States report having had sexual intercourse. This figure rises with each grade. Males are more sexually active than females at each of the grade levels surveyed. Sexual activity of young adolescents differs in ethnicity as well. A higher percent of African American and Hispanic adolescents are shown to be more sexually active than White adolescents.
Research on sexual frequency has also been conducted solely on female adolescents who engage in sexual activity. Female adolescents tended to engage in more sexual activity due to positive mood. In female teenagers, engaging in sexual activity was directly positively correlated with being older, greater sexual activity in the previous week or prior day, and more positive mood the previous day or the same day as the sexual activity occurred. Decreased sexual activity was associated with prior or current day negative mood or menstruating.
Although opinions differ, others suggest that sexual activity is an essential part of humans, and that teenagers need to experience sex. According to a research study, sexual experiences help teenagers understand pleasure and satisfaction. In relation to hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, it stated that teenagers can positively benefit from sexual activity. The cross-sectional study was conducted in 2008 and 2009 at a rural upstate New York community. Teenagers who had their first sexual experience at age 16 revealed a higher well-being than those who were sexually inexperienced or who were first sexually active at a later age of 17. Furthermore, teenagers who had their first sexual experience at age 15 or younger, or who had many sexual partners were not negatively affected and did not have associated lower well-being.
Sexual activity is an innately physiological function, but like other physical activity, it comes with risks. There are four main types of risks that may arise from sexual activity: unwanted pregnancy, contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI/STD), physical injury, and psychological injury.
Any sexual activity that involves the introduction of semen into a woman's vagina, such as during sexual intercourse, or even contact of semen with her vulva, may result in a pregnancy. To reduce the risk of unintended pregnancies, some people who engage in penile-vaginal sex may use contraception, such as birth control pills, a condom, diaphragms, spermicides, hormonal contraception or sterilization. The effectiveness of the various contraceptive methods in avoiding pregnancy varies considerably.
Sexual activity that involves skin-to-skin contact, exposure to an infected person's bodily fluids or mucous membranes carries the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection. People may not be able to detect that their sexual partner has one or more STIs, for example if they are asymptomatic (show no symptoms). The risk of STIs can be reduced by safe sex practices, such as using condoms. Both partners may opt be tested for STIs before engaging in sex. The exchange of body fluids is not necessary to contract an infestation of crab lice. Crab lice typically are found attached to hair in the pubic area but sometimes are found on coarse hair elsewhere on the body (for example, eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, mustache, chest, armpits, etc.). Pubic lice infestations (pthiriasis) are spread through direct contact with someone who is infested with the louse.
Some STIs like HIV/AIDS can also be contracted by using IV drug needles after their use by an infected person, as well as through childbirth or breastfeeding.
Typically, older men and women maintaining interest in sexual interest and activity could be therapeutic; it is a way of expressing their love and care for one another. Factors such as biological and psychological factors, diseases, mental conditions, boredom with the relationship, and widowhood have been found to contribute with the common decrease in sexual interest and activity in old age. National sex surveys given in Finland in the 1990s revealed aging men had a higher incidence of sexual intercourse compared to aging women and that women were more likely to report a lack of sexual desire compared to men. Regression analysis, factors considered important to female sexual activity included: sexual desire, valuing sexuality, and a healthy partner, while high sexual self-esteem, good health, and active sexual history were important to male sexual activity. Both genders in the study agreed they needed good health, good sexual functioning, positive sexual self-esteem, and a sexually skilful partner to maintain sexual desire.
Heterosexuality is the romantic or sexual attraction to the opposite sex. Heterosexual sexual practices are subject to laws in many places. In some countries, mostly those where religion has a strong influence on social policy, marriage laws serve the purpose of encouraging people to have sex only within marriage. Sodomy laws were seen as discouraging same-sex sexual practices, but may affect opposite-sex sexual practices. Laws also ban adults from committing sexual abuse, committing sexual acts with anyone under an age of consent, performing sexual activities in public, and engaging in sexual activities for money (prostitution). Though these laws cover both same-sex and opposite-sex sexual activities, they may differ in regard to punishment, and may be more frequently (or exclusively) enforced on those who engage in same-sex sexual activities.
Different-sex sexual practices may be monogamous, serially monogamous, or polyamorous, and, depending on the definition of sexual practice, abstinent or autoerotic (including masturbation). Additionally, different religious and political movements have tried to influence or control changes in sexual practices including courting and marriage, though in most countries changes occur at a slow rate.
Homosexuality is the romantic or sexual attraction to the same sex. People with a homosexual orientation can express their sexuality in a variety of ways, and may or may not express it in their behaviors. Research indicates that many gay men and lesbians want, and succeed in having, committed and durable relationships. For example, survey data indicate that between 40% and 60% of gay men and between 45% and 80% of lesbians are currently involved in a romantic relationship.
It is possible for a person whose sexual identity is mainly heterosexual to engage in sexual acts with people of the same sex. Gay and lesbian people who pretend to be heterosexual are often referred to as being closeted (hiding their sexuality in "the closet"). "Closet case" is a derogatory term used to refer to people who hide their sexuality. Making that orientation public can be called "coming out of the closet" in the case of voluntary disclosure or "outing" in the case of disclosure by others against the subject's wishes (or without their knowledge). Among some communities (called "men on the DL" or "down-low"), same-sex sexual behavior is sometimes viewed as solely for physical pleasure. Men who have sex with men, as well as women who have sex with women, or men on the "down-low" may engage in sex acts with members of the same sex while continuing sexual and romantic relationships with the opposite sex.
People who engage exclusively in same-sex sexual practices may not identify themselves as gay or lesbian. In sex-segregated environments, individuals may seek relationships with others of their own gender (known as situational homosexuality). In other cases, some people may experiment or explore their sexuality with same (or different) sex sexual activity before defining their sexual identity. Despite stereotypes and common misconceptions, there are no forms of sexual acts exclusive to same-sex sexual behavior that cannot also be found in opposite-sex sexual behavior, except those involving the meeting of the genitalia between same-sex partners – tribadism (generally vulva-to-vulva rubbing, commonly known by its "scissoring" position) and frot (generally penis-to-penis rubbing).
People who have a romantic or sexual attraction to both sexes are referred to as bisexual. People who have a distinct but not exclusive preference for one sex/gender over the other may also identify themselves as bisexual. Like gay and lesbian individuals, bisexual people who pretend to be heterosexual are often referred to as being closeted.
Pansexuality (also referred to as omnisexuality) may or may not be subsumed under bisexuality, with some sources stating that bisexuality encompasses sexual or romantic attraction to all gender identities. Pansexuality is characterized by the potential for aesthetic attraction, romantic love, or sexual desire towards people without regard for their gender identity or biological sex. Some pansexuals suggest that they are gender-blind; that gender and sex are insignificant or irrelevant in determining whether they will be sexually attracted to others. As defined in the "Oxford English Dictionary," pansexuality "encompasses all kinds of sexuality; not limited or inhibited in sexual choice with regards to gender or practice".
Alex Comfort and others propose three potential social aspects of sexual intercourse in humans, which are not mutually exclusive: reproductive, relational, and recreational. The development of the contraceptive pill and other highly effective forms of contraception in the mid- and late 20th century has increased people's ability to segregate these three functions, which still overlap a great deal and in complex patterns. For example: A fertile couple may have intercourse while using contraception to experience sexual pleasure (recreational) and also as a means of emotional intimacy (relational), thus deepening their bonding, making their relationship more stable and more capable of sustaining children in the future (deferred reproductive). This same couple may emphasize different aspects of intercourse on different occasions, being playful during one episode of intercourse (recreational), experiencing deep emotional connection on another occasion (relational), and later, after discontinuing contraception, seeking to achieve pregnancy (reproductive, or more likely reproductive and relational).
Most world religions have sought to address the moral issues that arise from people's sexuality in society and in human interactions. Each major religion has developed moral codes covering issues of sexuality, morality, ethics etc. Though these moral codes do not address issues of sexuality directly, they seek to regulate the situations which can give rise to sexual interest and to influence people's sexual activities and practices. However, the effect of religious teaching has at times been limited. For example, though most religions disapprove of extramarital sexual relations, it has always been widely practiced. Nevertheless, these religious codes have always had a strong influence on peoples' attitudes to issues of modesty in dress, behavior, speech etc.
On the other hand, some people adopt the view that pleasure is its own justification for sexual activity. Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.
Human sexual activity, like many other kinds of activity engaged in by humans, is generally influenced by social rules that are culturally specific and vary widely. These social rules are referred to as sexual morality (what can and can not be done by society's rules) and sexual norms (what is and is not expected).
Sexual ethics, morals, and norms relate to issues including deception/honesty, legality, fidelity and consent. Some activities, known as sex crimes in some locations, are illegal in some jurisdictions, including those conducted between (or among) consenting and competent adults (examples include sodomy law and adult-adult incest).
Some people who are in a relationship but want to hide polygamous activity (possibly of opposite sexual orientation) from their partner, may solicit consensual sexual activity with others through personal contacts, online chat rooms, or, advertising in select media.
Swinging, on the other hand, involves singles or partners in a committed relationship engaging in sexual activities with others as a recreational or social activity. The increasing popularity of swinging is regarded by some as arising from the upsurge in sexual activity during the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Some people engage in various sexual activities as a business transaction. When this involves having sex with, or performing certain actual sexual acts for another person in exchange for money or something of value, it is called prostitution. Other aspects of the adult industry include phone sex operators, strip clubs, and pornography.
Social gender roles can influence sexual behavior as well as the reaction of individuals and communities to certain incidents; the World Health Organization states that, "Sexual violence is also more likely to occur where beliefs in male sexual entitlement are strong, where gender roles are more rigid, and in countries experiencing high rates of other types of violence." Some societies, such as those where the concepts of family honor and female chastity are very strong, may practice violent control of female sexuality, through practices such as honor killings and female genital mutilation.
The relation between gender equality and sexual expression is recognized, and promotion of equity between men and women is crucial for attaining sexual and reproductive health, as stated by the UN International Conference on Population and Development Program of Action:
BDSM is a variety of erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged in by people who do not consider themselves as practicing BDSM, inclusion in the BDSM community or subculture is usually dependent on self-identification and shared experience. BDSM communities generally welcome anyone with a non-normative streak who identifies with the community; this may include cross-dressers, extreme body modification enthusiasts, animal players, latex or rubber aficionados, and others.
B/D, a form of BDSM, is bondage and discipline. Bondage includes the restraint of the body or mind. D/S means "dominant and submissive." A dominant is someone who takes control of someone who wishes to give up control. A submissive is someone who gives up the control to a person who wishes to take control. S/M (sadism and masochism) means an individual who takes pleasure in the humiliation or pain of others. Masochism means an individual who takes pleasure from their own pain or humiliation.
Unlike the usual "power neutral" relationships and play styles commonly followed by couples, activities and relationships within a BDSM context are often characterized by the participants' taking on complementary, but unequal roles; thus, the idea of informed consent of both the partners becomes essential. Participants who exert sexual dominance over their partners are known as dominants or tops, while participants who take the passive, receiving, or obedient role are known as submissives or bottoms.
Individuals are also sometimes abbreviated when referred to in writing, so a dominant person may be referred to as a "dom" for a man or a woman. Sometimes a woman may choose to use the female specific term "Domme". Both terms are pronounced the same when spoken. Individuals who can change between top/dominant and bottom/submissive roles—whether from relationship to relationship or within a given relationship—are known as "switches". The precise definition of roles and self-identification is a common subject of debate within the community.
In a 2013 study, the researchers state that BDSM is a sexual act where they play role games, use restraint, use power exchange,
use suppression and pain is sometimes involved depending on individual(s). The study serves to challenge the widespread notion that BDSM could be in some way linked to psychopathology. According to the findings, one who participates in BDSM may have greater strength socially and mentally as well as greater independence than those who do not practice BDSM. It suggests that people who participate in BDSM play have higher subjective well-being, and that this might be due to the fact that BDSM play requires extensive communication. Before any sexual act occurs, the partners must discuss their agreement of their relationship. They discuss how long the play will last, the intensity, their actions, what each participant needs or desires. The sexual acts are all recorded as consensual and pleasurable to both parties.
In a 2015 study, interviewed BDSM participants have mentioned that the activities have helped to create higher levels of connection, intimacy, trust and communication between partners. The study suggests that dominants and submissives exchange control for each other's pleasure and to satisfy a need. The participants have remarked that they enjoy pleasing their partner in any way they can and many surveyed have felt that this is one of the best things about BDSM. It gives a submissive pleasure to do things in general for their dominant. Where a Dominant enjoys making their encounters all about the submissive. They enjoy doing things that makes their submissive happy. The findings indicate that the surveyed submissives and dominants found BDSM play more pleasurable and fun. The participants have also mentioned improvements in their personal growth, romantic relationships, sense of community and self, the dominant's confidence, and their coping with everyday things by giving them a psychological release.
There are many laws and social customs which prohibit, or in some way affect sexual activities. These laws and customs vary from country to country, and have varied over time. They cover, for example, a prohibition to non-consensual sex, to sex outside marriage, to sexual activity in public, besides many others. Many of these restrictions are non-controversial, but some have been the subject of public debate.
Most societies consider it a serious crime to force someone to engage in sexual acts or to engage in sexual activity with someone who does not consent. This is called sexual assault, and if sexual penetration occurs it is called rape, the most serious kind of sexual assault. The details of this distinction may vary among different legal jurisdictions. Also, what constitutes effective consent in sexual matters varies from culture to culture and is frequently debated. Laws regulating the minimum age at which a person can consent to have sex (age of consent) are frequently the subject of debate, as is adolescent sexual behavior in general. Some societies have forced marriage, where consent may not be required.
Many locales have laws that limit or prohibit same-sex sexual activity.
In the West, sex before marriage is not illegal. There are social taboos and many religions condemn pre-marital sex. In many Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Oman, Mauritania, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Yemen, any form of sexual activity outside marriage is illegal. Those found guilty, especially women, may be forced to wed the sexual partner, publicly beaten, or stoned to death. In many African and native tribes, sexual activity is not viewed as a privilege or right of a married couple, but rather as the unification of bodies and is thus not frowned upon.
Other studies have analyzed the changing attitudes about sex that American adolescents have outside marriage. Adolescents were asked how they felt about oral and vaginal sex in relation to their health, social, and emotional well-being. Overall, teenagers felt that oral sex was viewed as more socially positive amongst their demographic. Results stated that teenagers believed that oral sex for dating and non-dating adolescents was less threatening to their overall values and beliefs than vaginal sex was. When asked, teenagers who participated in the research viewed oral sex as more acceptable to their peers, and their personal values than vaginal sex.
The laws of each jurisdiction set the minimum age at which a young person is allowed to engage in sexual activity. This age of consent is typically between 14 and 18 years, but laws vary. In many jurisdictions, age of consent is a person's mental or functional age. As a result, those above the set age of consent may still be considered unable to legally consent due to mental immaturity. Many jurisdictions regard any sexual activity by an adult involving a child as child sexual abuse.
Age of consent may vary by the type of sexual act, the sex of the actors, or other restrictions such as abuse of a position of trust. Some jurisdictions also make allowances for young people engaged in sexual acts with each other.
Most jurisdictions prohibit sexual activity between certain close relatives. These laws vary to some extent; such acts are called incestuous.
Non-consensual sexual activity or subjecting an unwilling person to witnessing a sexual activity are forms of sexual abuse, as well as (in many countries) certain non-consensual paraphilias such as frotteurism, telephone scatophilia (indecent phonecalls), and non-consensual exhibitionism and voyeurism (known as "indecent exposure" and "peeping tom" respectively).
People sometimes exchange sex for money or access to other resources. Work takes place under many varied circumstances. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including (and most commonly) "john." Prostitution is one of the branches of the sex industry. The legal status of prostitution varies from country to country, from being a punishable crime to a regulated profession. Estimates place the annual revenue generated from the global prostitution industry to be over $100 billion. Prostitution is sometimes referred to as "the world's oldest profession". Prostitution may be a voluntary individual activity or facilitated or forced by pimps.
Survival sex is a form of prostitution engaged in by people in need, usually when homeless or otherwise disadvantaged people trade sex for food, a place to sleep, or other basic needs, or for drugs. The term is used by sex trade and poverty researchers and aid workers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14337 |
Hydraulic ram
A hydraulic ram, or hydram, is a cyclic water pump powered by hydropower. It takes in water at one "hydraulic head" (pressure) and flow rate, and outputs water at a higher hydraulic head and lower flow rate. The device uses the water hammer effect to develop pressure that allows a portion of the input water that powers the pump to be lifted to a point higher than where the water originally started. The hydraulic ram is sometimes used in remote areas, where there is both a source of low-head hydropower and a need for pumping water to a destination higher in elevation than the source. In this situation, the ram is often useful, since it requires no outside source of power other than the kinetic energy of flowing water.
In 1772, John Whitehurst of Cheshire, United Kingdom, invented a manually controlled precursor of the hydraulic ram called the "pulsation engine" and installed the first one at Oulton, Cheshire to raise water to a height of . In 1783, he installed another in Ireland. He did not patent it, and details are obscure, but it is known to have had an air vessel.
The first self-acting ram pump was invented by the Frenchman Joseph Michel Montgolfier (best known as a co-inventor of the hot air balloon) in 1796 for raising water in his paper mill at Voiron. His friend Matthew Boulton took out a British patent on his behalf in 1797. The sons of Montgolfier obtained a British patent for an improved version in 1816, and this was acquired, together with Whitehurst's design, in 1820 by Josiah Easton, a Somerset-born engineer who had just moved to London.
Easton's firm, inherited by his son James (1796–1871), grew during the nineteenth century to become one of the more important engineering manufacturers in the United Kingdom, with a large works at Erith, Kent. They specialised in water supply and sewerage systems worldwide, as well as land drainage projects. Eastons had a good business supplying rams for water supply purposes to large country houses, farms, and village communities. Some of their installations still survived as of 2004, one such example being at the hamlet of Toller Whelme, in Dorset. Until about 1958 when the mains water arrived, the hamlet of East Dundry just south of Bristol had three working rams – their noisy "thump" every minute or so resonated through the valley night and day: these rams served farms that needed much water for their dairy herds.
The firm closed in 1909, but the ram business was continued by James R. Easton. In 1929, it was acquired by Green & Carter of Winchester, Hampshire, who were engaged in the manufacturing and installation of Vulcan and Vacher Rams.
The first US patent was issued to Joseph Cerneau (or Curneau) and Stephen (Étienne) S. Hallet (1755-1825) in 1809. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14340 |
Homininae
Homininae, also called "African hominids" or "African apes", is a subfamily of Hominidae. It includes two tribes, with their extant as well as extinct species: 1) the tribe Hominini (with the genus "Homo" including modern humans and numerous extinct species; the subtribe Australopithecina, comprising at least two extinct genera; and the subtribe Panina, represented only by the genus "Pan", which includes common chimpanzees and bonobos)―and 2) the tribe Gorillini (gorillas). Alternatively, the genus "Pan" is sometimes considered to belong to its own third tribe, Panini. Homininae comprises all hominids that arose after orangutans (subfamily Ponginae) split from the line of great apes. The Homininae cladogram has three main branches, which lead to gorillas (through the tribe Gorillini), and to humans and chimpanzees via the tribe Hominini and subtribes Hominina and Panina (see the evolutionary tree below). There are two living species of Panina (chimpanzees and bonobos) and two living species of gorillas, but only one extant human species. Traces of extinct "Homo" species, including "Homo floresiensis" and "Homo denisova", have been found with dates as recent as 40,000 years ago. Organisms in this subfamily are described as hominine or hominines (not to be confused with the terms hominins or hominini).
Until 1970, the family (and term) Hominidae meant humans only; the non-human great apes were assigned to the family Pongidae. Later discoveries led to revised classifications, with the great apes then united with humans (now in subfamily Homininae) as members of family Hominidae
By 1990, it was recognized that gorillas and chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to orangutans, leading to their (gorillas and chimpanzees) placement in subfamily Homininae as well.
The subfamily Homininae can be further subdivided into three branches: the tribe Gorillini (gorillas), the tribe Hominini with subtribes Panina (chimpanzees) and Hominina (humans and their extinct relatives), and the extinct tribe Dryopithecini. The Late Miocene fossil "Nakalipithecus nakayamai", described in 2007, is a basal member of this clade, as is, perhaps, its contemporary "Ouranopithecus"; that is, they are not assignable to any of the three extant branches. Their existence suggests that the Homininae tribes diverged not earlier than about 8 million years ago (see Human evolutionary genetics).
Today, chimpanzees and gorillas live in tropical forests with acid soils that rarely preserve fossils. Although no fossil gorillas have been reported, four chimpanzee teeth about 500,000 years old have been discovered in the East-African rift valley (Kapthurin Formation, Kenya), where many fossils from the human lineage (hominins) have been found. This shows that some chimpanzees lived close to "Homo" ("H. erectus" or "H. rhodesiensis") at the time; the same is likely true for gorillas.
Homininae
The age of the subfamily Homininae (of the Homininae-Ponginae last common ancestor) is estimated at some 14 to 12.5 million years ("Sivapithecus").
Its separation into Gorillini and Hominini (the "gorilla-human last common ancestor", GHLCA) is estimated to have occurred at about (TGHLCA) during the late Miocene, close to the age of "Nakalipithecus nakayamai".
There is evidence there was interbreeding of Gorillas and the Pan-Homo ancestors until right up to the Pan-Homo split.
Recent studies of "Ardipithecus ramidus" (4.4 million years old) and "Orrorin tugenensis" (6 million years old) suggest some degree of bipedalism. "Australopithecus" and early "Paranthropus" may have been bipedal. Very early hominins such as "Ardipithecus ramidus" may have possessed an arboreal type of bipedalism.
There has been a gradual increase in brain volume (brain size) as the ancestors of modern humans progressed along the timeline of human evolution, starting from about 600 cm3 in "Homo habilis" up to 1500 cm3 in "Homo neanderthalensis". However, modern "Homo sapiens" have a brain volume slightly smaller (1250 cm3) than Neanderthals, women have a brain slightly smaller than men and the Flores hominids ("Homo floresiensis"), nicknamed hobbits, had a cranial capacity of about 380 cm3 (considered small for a chimpanzee), about a third of the "Homo erectus" average. It is proposed that they evolved from "H. erectus" as a case of insular dwarfism. In spite of their smaller brain, there is evidence that "H. floresiensis" used fire and made stone tools at least as sophisticated as those of their proposed ancestors "H. erectus". In this case, it seems that for intelligence, the structure of the brain is more important than its size.
Sexuality is related to family structure and partly shapes it. The involvement of fathers in education is quite unique to humans, at least when compared to other Homininae. Concealed ovulation and menopause in women both also occur in a few other primates however, but are uncommon in other species. Testis and penis size seems to be related to family structure: monogamy or promiscuity, or harem, in humans, chimpanzees or gorillas, respectively. The levels of sexual dimorphism are generally seen as a marker of sexual selection. Studies have suggested that the earliest hominins were dimorphic and that this lessened over the course of the evolution of the genus "Homo", correlating with humans becoming more monogamous, whereas gorillas, who live in harems, show a large degree of sexual dimorphism. Concealed (or "hidden") ovulation means that the phase of fertility is not detectable in women, whereas chimpanzees advertise ovulation via an obvious swelling of the genitals. Women can be partly aware of their ovulation along the menstrual phases, but men are essentially unable to detect ovulation in women. Most primates have semi-concealed ovulation, thus one can think that the common ancestor had semi-concealed ovulation, that was inherited by gorillas, and that later evolved in concealed ovulation in humans and advertised ovulation in chimpanzees. Menopause also occurs in rhesus monkeys, and possibly in chimpanzees, but does not in gorillas and is quite uncommon in other primates (and other mammal groups).
http://www.bas.bg/en/2019/11/07/remains-of-a-new-hominid-from-germany-more-than-11-5-million-years-old-change-our-views-on-the-evolution-of-great-apes-and-humans/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14347 |
Homo habilis
Homo habilis ("handy man") is a species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.3–1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, "H. habilis" was highly contested, with many researchers recommending it be synonymised with "Australopithecus africanus", the only other early hominin known at the time, but "H. habilis" received more recognition as time went on and more relevant discoveries were made. By the 1980s, "H. habilis" was proposed as being a human ancestor, directly evolving into "Homo erectus" which directly led to modern humans. This viewpoint is now debated. Several specimens with insecure species identification were assigned to "H. habilis", leading to arguments for splitting, namely into ""H. rudolfensis"" and ""H. gautengensis"" of which only the former has received wide support.
Like contemporary "Homo", "H. habilis" brain size generally varied from . The body proportions of "H. habilis" are only known from 2 highly fragmentary skeletons, and is based largely on assuming a similar anatomy to the earlier australopithecines. Because of this, it has also been proposed "H. habilis" be moved to the genus "Australopithecus" as Australopithecus habilis. However, the interpretation of "H. habilis" as a small-statured human with inefficient long distance travel capabilities has been challenged. The presumed female specimen OH 62 is traditionally interpreted as having been in height and in weight, but assuming more humanlike proportions about and . Nonetheless, "H. habilis" was likely at least partially arboreal like australopithecines. Early hominins are typically reconstructed as having thick hair and marked sexual dimorphism with males much larger than females, though relative male and female size is not definitively known.
"H. habilis" manufactured the Oldowan stone tool industry and mainly used tools in butchering. Early "Homo", compared to australopithecines, are generally thought to have consumed high quantities of meat, and in the case of "H. habilis", scavenged meat. Typically, early hominins are interpreted as having lived in polygynous societies, though this is highly speculative. Assuming "H. habilis" society was similar to that of modern savanna chimps and baboons, groups may have numbered 70–85 members, with multiple males to defend against open savanna predators, such as big cats, hyenas, and crocodiles. "H. habilis" coexisted with "H. rudolfensis", "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus", and "Paranthropus boisei".
The first recognised remains—OH 7, a partial juvenile skull and hand and foot bones dating to 1.75 million years ago (mya)—were discovered in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1960 by Jonathan Leakey. However, the actual first remains—OH 4, a molar—were discovered by the Leakeys' senior assistant Heselon Mukiri in 1959, but this was not realised at the time. By this time, palaeoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey (Jonathan's parents) had spent 29 years excavating in Olduvai Gorge for early hominin remains, but had instead recovered mainly other animal remains as well as the Oldowan stone tool industry. The industry had been ascribed to "Paranthropus boisei" (at the time ""Zinjanthropus"") in 1959 as it was the first and only hominin recovered in the area, but this was revised upon OH 7's discovery. In 1964, Louis, South African palaeoanthropologist Phillip V. Tobias, and British primatologist John R. Napier officially assigned the remains into the genus "Homo" as, on recommendation by Australian anthropologist Raymond Dart, "H. habilis", the specific name meaning "able, handy, mentally skilful, vigorous" in Latin. The specimen's association with the Oldowan (then considered evidence of advanced cognitive ability) was also used as justification for classifying it into "Homo". OH 7 was designated the holotype specimen.
After description, it was hotly debated if "H. habilis" should be reclassified into "Australopithecus africanus" (the only other early hominin known at the time), in part because the remains were so old and at the time "Homo" was presumed to have evolved in Asia (with the australopithecines having no living descendants), and the brain size was smaller than what Wilfrid Le Gros Clark proposed in 1955 when considering "Homo". The classification "H. habilis" began to receive wider acceptance as more fossil elements and species were being unearthed. In 1983, Tobias proposed that "A. africanus" was a direct ancestor of "Paranthropus" and "Homo" (the two were sister taxa), and that "A. africanus" evolved into "H. habilis" which evolved into "H. erectus" which evolved into modern humans (by a process of cladogenesis). He further said that there was a major evolutionary leap between "A. africanus" and "H. habilis", and thereupon human evolution progressed gradually because "H. habilis" brain size had nearly doubled compared to australopithecine predecessors. However, OH 24, at the time the oldest "H. habilis" specimen, was similar to the younger OH 13, which showed there was no evolutionary progression through the lineage.
Many had accepted Tobias' model and assigned Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene hominin remains outside the range of "Paranthropus" and "H. erectus" into "H. habilis". For non-skull elements, this was done on the basis of size as there was a lack of clear diagnostic characteristics. Because of these practices, the range of variation for the species became quite wide, and the terms "H. habilis" sensu stricto ("in the strict sense") and "H. habilis" sensu lato ("in the broad sense") were in use to distinguish, respectively, between the Olduvai morph and more discrepant morphs. To address this, in 1985, English palaeoanthropologist Bernard Wood proposed that the comparatively massive skull KNM-ER 1470 from Lake Turkana, Kenya, discovered in 1972 and assigned to "H. habilis", actually represented a different species, now referred to as "Homo rudolfensis", but it is also argued that instead it represents a male specimen whereas other "H. habilis" specimens are female. In 2010, Australian archaeologist Darren Curoe proposed splitting off South African "H. habilis" into a new species, "Homo gautengensis".
In 1986, OH 62, a fragmentary skeleton, was discovered by American anthropologist Tim D. White in association with "H. habilis" skull fragments, definitively establishing "H. habilis" skeletal anatomy for the first time, and revealing more "Australopithecus"-like than "Homo"-like features. Because of this, as well as similarities in dental adaptations, Wood and biological anthropologist Mark Collard suggested moving the species to "Australopithecus" in 1999. However, reevaluation of OH 62 to a more humanlike physiology, if correct, would cast doubt on this. The discovery of the 1.8 Ma Georgian Dmanisi skulls, in the early 2000s, which exhibit several similarities with early "Homo" has led to suggestions that all contemporary groups of early "Homo" in Africa, including "H. habilis" and "H. rudolfensis", are the same species and should be assigned to "H. erectus".
There is still no wide consensus as to whether or not "H. habilis" is ancestral to "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus" or is an offshoot of the human line, and whether or not all specimens assigned to "H. habilis" are correctly assigned or the species is an assemblage of different "Australopithecus" and "Homo" species. Nonetheless, "H. habilis" and "H. rudolfensis" generally are recognised members of the genus at the base of the family tree, with arguments for synonymisation or removal from the genus not widely adopted.
Though it is now largely agreed upon that "Homo" evolved from "Australopithecus", the timing and placement of this split has been much debated, with many "Australopithecus" species having been proposed as the ancestor. The discovery of LD 350-1, the oldest "Homo" specimen, dating to 2.8 mya, in the Afar Region of Ethiopia may indicate that the genus evolved from "A. afarensis" around this time. The species LD 350-1 belongs to could be the ancestor of "H. habilis", but this is unclear. The oldest "H. habilis" specimen, A.L. 666-1, dates to 2.3 mya, but is anatomically more derived (features less ancestral, or basal, traits) than the younger OH 7, suggesting derived and basal morphs lived concurrently, and that the "H. habilis" lineage began before 2.3 mya. Based on 2.1 million year old stone tools from Shangchen, China, "H. habilis" or an ancestral species may have dispersed across Asia. The youngest "H. habilis" specimen, OH 13, dates to about 1.65 mya.
It has generally been thought that brain size increased along the human line especially rapidly at the transition between species, with "H. habilis" brain size smaller than that of "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus", jumping from about in "H. habilis" to about in "H. ergaster" and "H. erectus". However, a 2015 study showed that the brain sizes of "H. habilis", "H. rudolfensis", and "H. ergaster" generally ranged between after reappraising the brain volume of OH 7 from to . This does, nonetheless, indicate a jump from australopithecines brain size which generally ranged from . The brain anatomy of all "Homo" features an expanded cerebrum in comparison to australopithecines. The pattern of striations on the teeth of OH 65 slanting right could indicate right handedness, and handedness is associated with major reorganisation of the brain and the lateralisation of brain function between the left and right hemispheres. This could be implicated in tool use. In modern humans, lateralisation is weakly associated with language. The tooth rows of "H. habilis" were V-shaped as opposed to U-shaped in later "Homo", and the mouth jutted outwards (was prognathic), though the face was flat from the nose up.
Based on the fragmentary skeletons OH 62 (presumed female) and KNM-ER 3735 (presumed male), "H. habilis" body anatomy has generally been considered to have been more apelike than even that of the earlier "A. afarensis" and consistent with an at least partially arboreal lifestyle in the trees as is assumed in australopithecines. Based on OH 62 and assuming comparable body dimensions to australopithecines, "H. habilis" has generally been interpreted as having been small-bodied like australopithecines, with OH 62 generally estimated at about in height and in weight. However, assuming longer, modern humanlike legs, OH 62 would have been about and , and KNM-ER 3735 about the same size. For comparison, modern human men and women in the year 1900 averaged and respectively. It is generally assumed that pre-"H. ergaster" hominins, including "H. habilis", exhibited notable sexual dimorphism with males markedly bigger than females. However, relative female body mass is unknown in this species. Early hominins, including "H. habilis", are thought to have had thick body hair coverage like modern non-human apes because they appear to have inhabited cooler regions and are thought to have had a less active lifestyle than (presumed hairless) post-"ergaster" species, and so probably required thick body hair to stay warm. Based on dental development rates, "H. habilis" is assumed to have had an accelerated growth rate compared to modern humans, more like that of modern non-human apes.
The arms of "H. habilis" and australopithecines have generally been considered to have been proportionally long and so adapted for climbing and swinging. However, the humerus to femur ratio of OH 62 and the "A. afarensis" specimen AL 288-1 are both within the range of variation for modern humans, and KNM-ER 3735 is close to the modern human average, so it may be unsafe to assume apelike proportions. Nonetheless, the humerus of OH 62 measured long and the ulna (forearm) , which is closer to the proportion seen in chimps. The hand bones of OH 7 suggest precision gripping, important in dexterity, as well as adaptations for climbing. In regard to the femur, traditionally comparisons with AL 288-1 have been used to reconstruct stout legs for "H. habilis", but the more gracile OH 24 femur (either belonging to "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus" or "P. boisei") may be a more apt comparison. In this instance, "H. habilis" would have had longer, humanlike legs and have been effective long-distance travellers as is assumed to have been the case in "H. ergaster". However, estimating the unpreserved length of a fossil is highly problematic. The thickness of the limb bones in OH 62 is more similar to chimps than "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus" and modern humans, which may indicate different load bearing capabilities more suitable for arboreality in "H. habilis". The strong fibula of OH 35 (though this may belong to "P. boisei") is more like that of non-human apes, and consistent with arboreality and vertical climbing. OH 8, a foot, is better suited for terrestrial movement than the foot of "A. afarensis", though still retains many apelike features consistent with climbing. However, the foot has projected toe bone and compacted mid-foot joint structures, which restricts rotation in the hind and front parts of the foot and is implicated in the plantar arch elastic spring mechanism which generates energy while running (but not walking). This could possibly indicate "H. habilis" was capable of some degree of endurance running, which is typically thought to have evolved later in "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus".
Typically, "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus" is considered to have been the first human to have lived in a monogamous society, and all preceding hominins were polygynous. However, it is highly difficult to speculate with accuracy the group dynamics of early hominins. The degree of sexual dimorphism and the size disparity between males and females is often used to correlate between polygyny with a high degree and monogamy with a low degree based on general trends (though not without exceptions) seen in modern primates. Further, early hominin anatomy is poorly known and is largely based on few specimens, and sex has to be arbitrarily determined in large part based on perceived size and apparent robustness in the absence of more reliable elements in sex identification (namely the pelvis). Mating systems are also based on dental anatomy, but early hominins possess a mosaic anatomy of different traits not seen in together in modern primates; the enlarged cheek teeth would suggest marked size-related dimorphism and thus intense male–male conflict over mates and a polygynous society, but the small canines should indicate the opposite. Other selective pressures, including diet, can also dramatically impact dental anatomy. The spatial distribution of tools and processed animal bones at the FLK Zinj and PTK sites in Olduvai Gorge indicate the inhabitants used this area as a communal butchering and eating grounds, as opposed to the nuclear family system of modern hunter gatherers where the group is subdivided into smaller units each with their own butchering and eating grounds.
The behaviour of early "Homo", including "H. habilis", is sometimes modelled on that of savanna chimps and baboons. These communities consist of several males (as opposed to a harem society) in order to defend the group on the dangerous and exposed habitat, sometimes engaging in a group display of throwing sticks and stones against enemies and predators. "H. habilis" and contemporary hominins were likely predated upon by the large carnivores of the time, such as (in Olduvai Gorge) the hunting hyena "Chasmaporthetes nitidula", the leopard, the saber-toothed cats "Dinofelis" and "Megantereon", and possibly crocodiles such as "Crocodylus anthropophagus". In 1993, American palaeoanthropologist Leslie C. Aiello and British evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar estimated that "H. habilis" group size ranged from 70–85 members—on the upper end of chimp and baboon group size—based on trends seen in neocortex size and group size in modern non-human primates.
"H. habilis" coexisted with "H. rudolfensis", "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus", and "P. boisei". It is unclear how all of these species interacted. To explain why "P. boisei" was associated with Olduwan tools despite not being the knapper, Leakey and colleagues, when describing "H. habilis", suggested that one possibility was "P. boisei" was killed by "H. habilis", perhaps as food. However, when describing "P. boisei" 5 years earlier, Louis Leakey said, "There is no reason whatever, in this case, to believe that the skull represents the victim of a cannibalistic feast by some hypothetical more advanced type of man."
It is typically thought that the diets of "H. habilis" and other early "Homo" had a greater proportion of meat than "Australopithecus", and that this led to brain growth. The main hypotheses regarding this are: meat is energy- and nutrient-rich and put evolutionary pressure on developing enhanced cognitive skills to facilitate strategic scavenging and monopolise fresh carcasses, or meat allowed the large and calorie-expensive ape gut to decrease in size allowing this energy to be diverted to brain growth. Alternatively, it is also suggested that early "Homo", in a drying climate with scarcer food options, relied primarily on underground storage organs (such as tubers) and food sharing, which facilitated social bonding among both male and female group members. However, unlike what is presumed for "H. ergaster" and later "Homo", short-statured early "Homo" are generally considered to have been incapable of endurance running and hunting, and the long and "Australopithecus"-like forearm of "H. habilis" could indicate early "Homo" were still arboreal to a degree. Also, organised hunting and gathering is thought to have emerged in "H. ergaster". Nonetheless, the proposed food-gathering models to explain large brain growth necessitate increased daily travel distance. It has also been argued that "H. habilis" instead had long, modern humanlike legs and was fully capable of effective long distance travel, while still remaining at least partially arboreal.
Large incisor size in "H. habilis" compared to "Australopithecus" predecessors implies this species relied on incisors more. The bodies of the mandibles of "H. habilis" and other early "Homo" are thicker than those of modern humans and all living apes, more comparable to "Australopithecus". The mandibular body resists torsion from the bite force or chewing, meaning their jaws could produce unusually powerful stresses while eating. The greater molar cusp relief in "H. habilis" compared to "Australopithecus" suggests the former used tools to fracture tough foods (such as pliable plant parts or meat), otherwise the cusps would have been more worn down. Nonetheless, the jaw adaptations for processing mechanically challenging food indicates technological advancement did not greatly affect diet.
It is thought "H. habilis" derived meat from scavenging rather than hunting (scavenger hypothesis), acting as a confrontational scavenger and stealing kills from smaller predators such as jackals or cheetahs. Fruit was likely also an important dietary component, indicated by dental erosion consistent with repetitive exposure to acidity. Based on dental microwear-texture analysis, "H. habilis" (like other early "Homo") likely did not regularly consume tough foods. Microwear-texture complexity is, on average, somewhere between that of tough-food eaters and leaf eaters (folivores), and points to an increasingly generalized and omnivorous diet.
"H. habilis" is associated with the Early Stone Age Oldowan stone tool industry. Individuals likely used these tools primarily to butcher and skin animals and crush bones, but also sometimes to saw and scrape wood and cut soft plants. Knappers appear to have carefully selected lithic cores and knew that certain rocks would break in a specific way when struck hard enough and on the right spot, and they produced several different types, including choppers, polyhedrons, and discoids. Nonetheless, specific shapes were likely not thought of in advance, and probably stem from a lack of standardisation in producing such tools as well as the types of raw materials at the knappers' disposal. For example, spheroids are common at Olduvai which features an abundance of large quartz and quartzite pieces, whereas Koobi Fora lacks spheroids and provided predominantly basalt lava rocks. Unlike the later Acheulean culture invented by "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus", Oldowan technology does not require planning and foresight to manufacture, and thus does not indicate high cognition in Oldowan knappers, though it does require a degree of coordination and some knowledge of mechanics. Oldowan tools infrequently exhibit retouching and were probably discarded immediately after use.
The Olduwan was first reported in 1934, but it was not until the 1960s that it become widely accepted as the earliest culture, dating to 1.8 mya, and as having been manufactured by "H. habilis". Since then, more discoveries have placed the origins of material culture substantially backwards in time, with the Oldowan being discovered in Ledi-Geraru and Gona in Ethiopia dating to 2.6 mya, perhaps associated with the evolution of the genus. Australopithecines are also known to have manufactured tools, such as the 3.3 Ma Lomekwi stone tool industry, and some evidence of butchering from about 3.4 mya. Nonetheless, the comparatively sharp-edged Oldowan culture was a major innovation from australopithecine technology, and it would have allowed different feeding strategies and the ability to process a wider range of foods, which would have been advantageous in the changing climate of the time. It is unclear if the Oldowan was independently invented or if it was the result of hominin experimentation with rocks over hundreds of thousands of years across multiple species.
In 1962, a circle made with volcanic rocks was discovered in Olduvai Gorge. At intervals, rocks were piled up to high. Mary Leakey suggested the rock piles were used to support poles stuck into the ground, possibly to support a windbreak or a rough hut. Some modern day nomadic tribes build similar low-lying rock walls to build temporary shelters upon, bending upright branches as poles and using grasses or animal hide as a screen. Dating to 1.75 mya, it is the oldest claimed evidence of architecture. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14348 |
Harmonica
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica include diatonic, chromatic, tremolo, octave, orchestral, and bass versions. A harmonica is played by using the mouth (lips and tongue) to direct air into or out of one (or more) holes along a mouthpiece. Behind each hole is a chamber containing at least one reed. A harmonica reed is a flat, elongated spring typically made of brass, stainless steel, or bronze, which is secured at one end over a slot that serves as an airway. When the free end is made to vibrate by the player's air, it alternately blocks and unblocks the airway to produce sound.
Reeds are tuned to individual pitches. Tuning may involve changing a reed’s length, the weight near its free end, or the stiffness near its fixed end. Longer, heavier, and springier reeds produce deeper, lower sounds; shorter, lighter, and stiffer reeds make higher-pitched sounds. If, as on most modern harmonicas, a reed is affixed above or below its slot rather than in the plane of the slot, it responds more easily to air flowing in the direction that initially would push it into the slot, i.e., as a closing reed. This difference in response to air direction makes it possible to include both a blow reed and a draw reed in the same air chamber and to play them separately without relying on flaps of plastic or leather (valves, wind-savers) to block the nonplaying reed.
An important technique in performance is bending, causing a drop in pitch by making embouchure adjustments. Bending isolated reeds is possible, as on chromatic and other harmonica models with wind-savers, but also to both lower, and raise (overbend, overblow, overdraw) the pitch produced by pairs of reeds in the same chamber, as on a diatonic or other unvalved harmonica. Such two-reed pitch changes actually involve sound production by the normally silent reed, the opening reed (for instance, the blow reed while the player is drawing).
The basic parts of the harmonica are the comb, reed plates, and cover plates.
The comb is the main body of the instrument, which, when assembled with the reed plates, forms air chambers for the reeds. The term "comb" may originate from the similarity between this part of a harmonica and a hair comb. Harmonica combs were traditionally made from wood, but now are also made from plastic (ABS) or metal (including titanium for high-end instruments). Some modern and experimental comb designs are complex in the way that they direct the air.
Dispute exists among players about whether comb material affects the tone of a harmonica. Those saying no argue that unlike the soundboard of a piano or the top piece of a violin or guitar, a harmonica's comb is neither large enough nor able to vibrate freely enough to substantially augment or change the sound. Among those saying yes are those who are convinced by their ears. Few dispute, however, that comb surface smoothness and air tightness when mated with the reed plates can greatly affect tone and playability. The main advantage of a particular comb material over another one is its durability. In particular, a wooden comb can absorb moisture from the player's breath and contact with the tongue. This can cause the comb to expand slightly, making the instrument uncomfortable to play, and to then contract, potentially compromising air tightness. Various types of wood and treatments have been devised to reduce the degree of this problem.
An even more serious problem with wooden combs, especially in chromatic harmonicas (with their thin dividers between chambers), is that, as the combs expand and shrink over time, cracks can form in the combs, because the comb is held immobile by nails, resulting in disabling leakage. Serious players devote significant effort to restoring wood combs and sealing leaks. Some players used to soak wooden-combed harmonicas (diatonics, without wind-savers) in water to cause a slight expansion, which they intended to make the seal between the comb, reed plates, and covers more airtight. Modern wooden-combed harmonicas are less prone to swelling and contracting, but modern players still dip their harmonicas in water for the way it affects tone and ease of bending notes.
The reed plate is a grouping of several reeds in a single housing. The reeds are usually made of brass, but steel, aluminium, and plastic are occasionally used. Individual reeds are usually riveted to the reed plate, but they may also be welded or screwed in place. Reeds fixed on the inner side of the reed plate (within the comb's air chamber) respond to blowing, while those fixed on the outer side respond to suction.
Most harmonicas are constructed with the reed plates screwed or bolted to the comb or each other. A few brands still use the traditional method of nailing the reed plates to the comb. Some experimental and rare harmonicas also have had the reed plates held in place by tension, such as the WWII-era all-American models. If the plates are bolted to the comb, the reed plates can be replaced individually. This is useful because the reeds eventually go out of tune through normal use, and certain notes of the scale can fail more quickly than others.
A notable exception to the traditional reed plate design is the all-plastic harmonicas designed by Finn Magnus in the 1950s, in which the reed and reed plate were molded out of a single piece of plastic. The Magnus design had the reeds, reed plates, and comb made of plastic and either molded or permanently glued together.
Cover plates cover the reed plates and are usually made of metal, though wood and plastic have also been used. The choice of these is personal; because they project sound, they determine the tonal quality of the harmonica. Two types of cover plates are used: traditional open designs of stamped metal or plastic, which are simply there to be held; and enclosed designs (such as the Hohner Meisterklasse and Super 64, Suzuki Promaster and SCX), which offer a louder tonal quality. From these two basic types, a few modern designs have been created, such as the Hohner CBH-2016 chromatic and the Suzuki Overdrive diatonic, which have complex covers that allow for specific functions not usually available in the traditional design. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, harmonicas not uncommonly had special features on the covers, such as bells, which could be rung by pushing a button.
Wind-savers are one-way valves made from thin strips of plastic, knit paper, leather, or Teflon glued to the reed plate. They are typically found in chromatic harmonicas, chord harmonicas, and many octave-tuned harmonicas. Wind-savers are used when two reeds share a cell and leakage through the nonplaying reed would be significant. For example, when a draw note is played, the valve on the blow reed-slot is sucked shut, preventing air from leaking through the inactive blow reed. An exception to this is the now-discontinued Hohner XB-40, on which valves are placed not to isolate single reeds, but rather to isolate entire chambers from being active, a design that made playing traditional blues bends possible on all reeds.
The mouthpiece is placed between the air chambers of the instrument and the player's mouth. This can be integral with the comb (the diatonic harmonicas; the Hohner Chrometta); part of the cover (as in Hohner's CX-12); or may be a separate unit, secured by screws, which is typical of chromatics. In many harmonicas, the mouthpiece is purely an ergonomic aid designed to make playing more comfortable. However, in the traditional slider-based chromatic harmonica, it is essential to the functioning of the instrument because it provides a groove for the slide.
Since the 1950s, many blues harmonica players have amplified their instrument with microphones and tube amplifiers. One of the early innovators of this approach was Marion "Little Walter" Jacobs, who played the harmonica near a "Bullet" microphone marketed for use by radio taxi dispatchers. This gave his harmonica tone a "punchy" midrange sound that could be heard above an electric guitar. Also, tube amplifiers produce a natural growling overdrive when cranked at higher volumes, which adds body, fullness, and "grit" to the sound. Little Walter also cupped his hands around the instrument, tightening the air around the harp, giving it a powerful, distorted sound, somewhat reminiscent of a saxophone, hence the term "Mississippi saxophone". Some harmonica players in folk use a regular vocal microphone, such as a Shure SM 58, for their harmonica, which gives a clean, natural sound.
As technology in amplification has progressed, harmonica players have introduced other effects units to their rigs, as well, such as reverb, tremolo, delay, octave, additional overdrive pedals, and chorus effect. John Popper of Blues Traveler uses a customized microphone that encapsulates several of these effects into one handheld unit, as opposed to several units in sequence. Many harmonica players still prefer tube amplifiers to solid-state ones, owing to the perceived difference in tone generated by the vacuum tubes. Players perceive tubes as having a "warmer" tone and a more "natural" overdrive sound. Many amplifiers designed for electric guitar are also used by harmonica players, such as the Kalamazoo Model Two, Fender Bassman, and the Danelectro Commando. Some expensive, handmade boutique amplifiers, however, are built from the ground up with characteristics that are optimal for amplified harmonica.
Harmonica players who play the instrument while performing on another instrument with their hands (e.g., an acoustic guitar) often use an accessory called a neck rack or harmonica holder to position the instrument in front of their mouths. A harmonica holder clamps the harmonica between two metal brackets, which are attached to a curved loop of metal that rests on the shoulders. The original harmonica racks were made from wire or coat hangers. Models of harmonica racks vary widely by quality and ease of use, and experimenting with more than one model of harmonica rack is often needed to find one that feels suitable for each individual player. This device is used by folk musicians, one-man bands, and singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Tom Harmon, Neil Young, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and blues singers Jimmy Reed and John Hammond Jr.
The chromatic harmonica uses a button-activated sliding bar to redirect air from the hole in the mouthpiece to the selected reed-plate, though one design—the "Machino-Tone"—controlled airflow by means of a lever-operated flap on the rear of the instrument. Also, a "hands-free" modification to the Hohner 270 (12-hole) lets the player shift the tones by moving the mouthpiece up and down with the lips, leaving the hands free to play another instrument. While the Richter-tuned 10-hole chromatic is intended to play in only one key, the 12-, 14-, and 16-hole models (which are tuned to equal temperament) allow the musician to play in any key desired with only one harmonica. This harp can be used for any style, including Celtic, classical, jazz, or blues (commonly in third position).
Strictly speaking, diatonic denotes any harmonica designed to play in a single key—though the standard Richter-tuned harmonica diatonic can play other keys by forcing its reeds to play tones that are not part of its basic scale. Depending on the country, "diatonic harmonica" may mean either the tremolo harmonica (in East Asia) or blues harp (In Europe and North America). Other diatonic harmonicas include octave harmonicas.
Here is the note layout for a standard diatonic in the key of G major:
Each hole is the same interval (here, a perfect fifth) from its key of C counterpart; on the diatonic scale, a G is a perfect fifth from C. The interval between keys can be used to find the note layout of any standard diatonic.
The distinguishing feature of the tremolo-tuned harmonica is that it has two reeds per note, with one slightly sharp and the other slightly flat. This provides a unique wavering or warbling sound created by the two reeds being slightly out of tune with each other and the difference in their subsequent waveforms interacting with each other (its beat). The East Asian version, which can produce all 12 semitones, is used often in East Asian rock and pop music.
Orchestral harmonicas are primarily designed for use in ensemble playing.
There are eight kinds of orchestral melody harmonica; the most common are the horn harmonicas often found in East Asia. These consist of a single large comb with blow-only reed-plates on the top and bottom. Each reed sits inside a single cell in the comb. One version mimics the layout of a piano or mallet instrument, with the natural notes of a C diatonic scale in the lower reed plate and the sharps and flats in the upper reed plate in groups of two and three holes with gaps in between like the black keys of a piano. Another version has one "sharp" reed directly above its "natural" on the lower plate, with the same number of reeds on both plates (therefore including E and B).
Horn harmonicas are available in several pitch ranges, with the lowest pitched starting two octaves below middle C and the highest beginning on middle C itself; they usually cover a two- or three-octave range. They are chromatic instruments and are usually played in an East Asian harmonica orchestra instead of the "push-button" chromatic harmonica that is more common in the European and American tradition. Their reeds are often larger, and the enclosing "horn" gives them a different timbre, so that they often function in place of a brass section. In the past, they were referred to as horn harmonicas.
The other type of orchestral melodic harmonica is the polyphonia, (though some are marked "chromatica"). These have all twelve chromatic notes laid out on the same row. In most cases, they have both blow and draw of the same tone, though the No. 7 is blow only, and the No. 261, also blow only, has two reeds per hole, tuned an octave apart (all these designations refer to products of M. Hohner).
The chord harmonica has up to 48 chords: major, seventh, minor, augmented and diminished for ensemble playing. It is laid out in four-note clusters, each sounding a different chord on inhaling or exhaling. Typically each hole has two reeds for each note, tuned to one octave of each other. However, less expensive models often have only one reed per note. Quite a few orchestra harmonicas are also designed to serve as both bass and chord harmonica, with bass notes next to chord groupings. There are also other chord harmonicas, such as the Chordomonica (which operates similar to a chromatic harmonica), and the junior chord harmonicas (which typically provide six chords).
The Suzuki SSCH-56 Compact Chord harmonica is a 48-chord harmonica built in a 14-hole chromatic harmonica enclosure. The first three holes play a major chord on blow and draw, with and without the slide. Holes 2, 3, and 4 play a diminished chord; holes 3, 4, and 5 play a minor chord; and holes 4, 5, and 6 play an augmented, for a total of sixteen chords. This pattern is repeated starting on hole 5, a whole step higher; and again starting on hole 9, for a total of 48 chords.
The ChengGong harmonica has a main body, and a sliding mouthpiece. The body is a 24-hole diatonic harmonica that ranges from B2 to D6 (covering 3 octaves). Its 11-hole mouthpiece can slide along the front of the harmonica, which gives numerous chord choices and voicings (seven triads, three 6th chords, seven 7th chords, and seven 9th chords, for a total of 24 chords). As well, it is capable of playing single-note melodies and double stops over a range of three diatonic octaves. Unlike conventional harmonicas, blowing and drawing produce the same notes because its tuning is closer to the note layout of a typical East Asian tremolo harmonica or the Polyphonias.
The pitch pipe is a simple specialty harmonica that provides a reference pitch to singers and other instruments. The only difference between some early pitch-pipes and harmonicas is the name of the instrument, which reflected the maker's target audience. Chromatic pitch pipes, which are used by singers and choirs, give a full chromatic (12-note) octave. Pitch pipes are also sold for string players, such as violinists and guitarists; these pitch pipes usually provide the notes corresponding to the open strings.
Vibrato is a technique commonly used while playing the harmonica and many other instruments, to give the note a 'shaking' sound. This technique can be accomplished in a number of ways. The most common way is to change how the harmonica is held. For example, the vibrato effect can be achieved by opening and closing the hands around the harmonica very rapidly. The vibrato might also be achieved via rapid glottal (vocal fold) opening and closing, especially on draws (inhalation) simultaneous to bending, or without bending. This obviates the need for cupping and waving the hands around the instrument during play. An effect similar to vibrato is that of the 'trill' (or 'roll', or 'warble, or 'shake'); this technique has the player move their lips between two holes very quickly, either by shaking the head in a rapid motion or moving the harmonica from side to side within the embouchure. This gives a quick pitch-alternating technique that is slightly more than vibrato and achieves the same aural effect on sustained notes, albeit by using two different tones instead of varying the amplitude of one.
In addition to the 19 notes readily available on the diatonic harmonica, players can play other notes by adjusting their embouchure and forcing the reed to resonate at a different pitch. This technique is called bending, a term possibly borrowed from guitarists, who literally bend a string to subtly change the pitch. Bending also creates the glissandos characteristic of much blues harp and country harmonica playing. Bends are essential for most blues and rock harmonica due to the soulful sounds the instrument can bring out. The "wail" of the blues harp typically requires bending. In the 1970s, Howard Levy developed the over bending technique (also known as "overblowing" and "overdrawing".) Over Bending, combined with bending, allowed players to play the entire chromatic scale.
In addition to playing the diatonic harmonica in its original key, it is also possible to play it in other keys by playing in other "positions" using different keynotes. Using just the basic notes on the instrument would mean playing in a specific mode for each position. For example the Mixolydian mode (root note is the second draw or third blow), produces a major dominant seventh key that is frequently used by blues players because it contains the harmonically rich dominant seventh note, while the Dorian mode (root note is four draw) produces a minor dominant seventh key. Harmonica players (especially blues players) have developed terminology around different "positions," which can be confusing to other musicians, for example the slang terminology for the most common positions (1st being 'straight', 2nd being 'cross', 3rd being 'slant', etc.).
Another technique, seldom used to its full potential, is altering the size of the mouth cavity to emphasize certain natural overtones. When this technique is employed while playing chords, care must be taken in overtone selection as the overtones stemming from the non-root pitch can cause extreme dissonance.
Harmonica players who amplify their instrument with microphones and tube amplifiers, such as blues harp players, also have a range of techniques that exploit properties of the microphone and the amplifier, such as changing the way the hands are cupped around the instrument and the microphone or rhythmically breathing or chanting into the microphone while playing.
The harmonica was developed in Europe in the early part of the 19th century. Free-reed instruments like the Chinese sheng were fairly common in East Asia since ancient times. They became relatively well known in Europe after being introduced by the French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718–1793), who lived in Qing-era China. Around 1820, free-reed designs began being created in Europe. Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann is often cited as the inventor of the harmonica in 1821, but other inventors developed similar instruments at the same time. In 1829, Charles Wheatstone developed a mouth-organ under the name "Aeolina" (inspired by the Aeolian harp). Mouth-blown free-reed instruments appeared in the United States, South America, the United Kingdom and Europe at roughly the same time. These instruments were made for playing classical music.
The harmonica first appeared in Vienna, where harmonicas with chambers were sold before 1824 (see also Anton Reinlein and Anton Haeckl). Richter tuning, invented by Joseph Richter (who also is credited with inventing the blow and draw mechanism), was created in 1826 and was eventually adopted nearly universally. In Germany, violin manufacturer Johann Georg Meisel from Klingenthal bought a harmonica with chambers (Kanzellen) at an exhibition in Braunschweig in 1824. He and the ironworker Langhammer copied the instruments in Graslitz three miles away; by 1827 they had produced hundreds of harmonicas. Many others followed in Germany and also nearby Bohemia that would later become Czechoslovakia. In 1829, Johann Wilhelm Rudolph Glier also began making harmonicas.
In 1830, Christian Messner, a cloth maker and weaver from Trossingen, copied a harmonica his neighbour had brought from Vienna. He had such success that eventually his brother and some relatives also started to make harmonicas. From 1840 onwards, his nephew Christian Weiss was also involved in the business. By 1855, there were at least three harmonica-making businesses: C. A. Seydel Söhne, Christian Messner & Co., and Württ. Harmonikafabrik Ch. Weiss. (Currently, only C.A. Seydel is still in business.) Owing to competition between the harmonica factories in Trossingen and Klingenthal, machines were invented to punch the covers for the reeds.
In 1857, Matthias Hohner, a clockmaker from Trossingen, started producing harmonicas. Eventually he became the first to mass-produce them. He used a mass-produced wooden comb that he had made by machine-cutting firms. By 1868, he began supplying the United States. By the 1920s, the diatonic harmonica had largely reached its modern form. Other types followed soon thereafter, including the various tremolo and octave harmonicas.
By the late 19th century, harmonica production was a big business, having evolved into mass production. New designs were still developed in the 20th century, including the chromatic harmonica, first made by Hohner in 1924, the bass harmonica, and the chord harmonica. In the 21st century, radical new designs have been developed and are still being introduced into the market, such as the Suzuki Overdrive, Hohner XB-40, and the ill-fated Harrison B-Radical.
Diatonic harmonicas were designed primarily for playing German and other European folk music and have succeeded well in those styles. Over time, the basic design and tuning proved adaptable to other types of music such as the blues, country, old-time and more. The harmonica was a success almost from the very start of production, and while the center of the harmonica business has shifted from Germany, the output of the various harmonica manufacturers is still very high. Major companies are now found in Germany ( and Hohner – the dominant manufacturer in the world), Japan (Suzuki, Tombo – the manufacturer of the popular Lee Oskar harmonica, and Yamaha also made harmonicas until the 1970s), China (Huang, Easttop, Johnson, Leo Shi, Suzuki, Hohner, Swan, AXL), and Brazil (Hering, Bends). The United States had two significant harmonica manufacturers, and both were based in Union, New Jersey. One was Magnus Harmonica Corporation, whose founder Finn Magnus is credited with the development of plastic harmonica reeds. The other was Wm. Kratt Company, which, founded by German-American William Jacob "Bill" Kratt Sr., originally made pitch pipes and later, in 1952, secured a patent for combs made of plastic. Both companies ceased harmonica production. The only recent American contender in the harmonica market was Harrison Harmonicas, which folded in July 2011. It was announced soon thereafter that the rights to the Harrison design had been sold to another company to finish production of orders already placed. In October 2012, it was revealed that a Beloit, Wisconsin, investment corporation, R&R Opportunities, had bought the assets of Harrison Harmonicas and that a feasibility study was under way to assess the possibilities of continued production of the Harrison B-Radical harmonica. Recently, responding to increasingly demanding performance techniques, the market for high-quality instruments has grown.
Some time before Hohner began manufacturing harmonicas in 1857, he shipped some to relatives who had emigrated to the United States. Its music rapidly became popular, and the country became an enormous market for Hohner's goods. US president Abraham Lincoln carried a harmonica in his pocket, and harmonicas provided solace to soldiers on both the Union and Confederate sides of the American Civil War. Frontiersmen Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid played the instrument, and it became a fixture of the American musical landscape.
Harmonicas were heard on a handful of recordings in the early 1900s, generally labeled as a "mouth organ". The first jazz or traditional music recordings of harmonicas were made in the U.S. in the mid-1920s. Recordings known at the time as "race records", intended for the black market of the southern states, included solo recordings by DeFord Bailey and duo recordings with a guitarist (Hammie Nixon, Walter Horton, or Sonny Terry). Hillbilly styles were also recorded, intended for white audiences, by Frank Hutchison, Gwen Foster and several other musicians. There are also recordings featuring the harmonica in jug bands, of which the Memphis Jug Band is the most famous. But the harmonica still represented a toy instrument in those years and was associated with the poor. It is also during those years that musicians started experimenting with new techniques such as tongue-blocking, hand effects and the most important innovation of all, the second position, or cross-harp.
A significant contributor to the expanding popularity of the harmonica was a New York-based radio program called the "Hohner Harmony Hour", which taught listeners how to play. Listeners could play along with the program to increase their proficiency. The radio program gained wide popularity after the unveiling of the 1925 White House Christmas tree, which was adorned with fifty harmonicas.
The harmonica's versatility brought it to the attention of classical musicians during the 1930s. American Larry Adler was one of the first harmonica players to perform major works written for the instrument by the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud, and Arthur Benjamin.
Harmonicas were in short supply in the United States during World War II. Wood and metal materials for harmonicas were in short supply because of military demand. Furthermore, the primary harmonica manufacturers were based in Germany and Japan, the enemies of the United States and the Allied forces in the war. During this time, Finn Haakon Magnus, a Danish-American factory worker and entrepreneur, developed and perfected the molded plastic harmonica. The plastic harmonica used molded plastic combs and far fewer pieces than traditional metal or wood harmonicas, which made the harmonica more economical to mass-produce and more sanitary. Though the plastic reeds in these harmonicas produced a less distinctive (and, to many ears, inferior) sound than their metallic counterparts, Magnus harmonicas and several imitators soon became commonplace, particularly among children. The patent for the plastic comb, however, was awarded to William Kratt of Wm. Kratt Company in 1952. During World War II, the War Department allotted a rationed supply of brass to Kratt's factory so they could continue to produce harmonicas that the Red Cross distributed to American troops overseas to boost morale.
In 1898, the harmonica was brought to Japan, where the Tremolo harmonica was the most popular instrument. After about 30 years, the Japanese developed scale tuning and semitone harmonicas that could play Japanese folk songs.
In Europe and the United States, tremolo harmonica uses the Richter tuning, developed in Germany. In 1913, Shōgo Kawaguchi (), known in Japan as the "Father of the harmonica", devised an alternate tuning, which is more suited to playing Japanese folk tunes. This tuning is also suited to local music throughout East Asia, and harmonicas using the tuning became popular in the region.
Initial diatonic harmonica tunings were major key only. In 1931, Hiderō Satō () announced the development of a minor key harmonica. There are two types of minor key tunings, "natural minor" suitable for folk and contemporary music, and Latin American music, and the "harmonic minor" suitable for some famous Japanese pieces.
The harmonica started to gain popularity in Hong Kong in the 1930s. Individual tremolo harmonica players from China moved to Hong Kong and established numerous harmonica organizations such as The Chinese Y.M.C.A. Harmonica Orchestra, the China Harmonica Society, and the Heart String Harmonica Society. During the 1950s, chromatic harmonica became popular in Hong Kong, and players such as Larry Adler and John Sebastian Sr. were invited to perform.
Local players such as Lau Mok () and Fung On () promoted the chromatic harmonica. The chromatic harmonica gradually became the main instrument used by the Chinese Y.M.C.A. Harmonica Orchestra. The Chinese YMCA Harmonica Orchestra started in the 1960s, with 100 members, most of whom played harmonicas. Non-harmonica instruments were also used, such as double bass, accordion, piano, and percussion such as timpani and xylophone.
In the 1970s, the Haletone Harmonica Orchestra () was set up at Wong Tai Sin Community Centre. Fung On and others continued to teach harmonica and also set up harmonica orchestras. In the 1980s, numbers of harmonica students steadily decreased. In the 1990s, harmonica players from Hong Kong began to participate in international harmonica competitions, including the World Harmonica Festival in Germany and the Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival. In the 2000s, the Hong Kong Harmonica Association (H.K.H.A.) () was established.
The history of the harmonica in Taiwan began around 1945. By the 1980s, though, as living standards improved, many instruments once beyond the budgets of most Taiwanese started to become more accessible and popular in preference to the harmonica.
Playing the harmonica requires inhaling and exhaling strongly against resistance. This action helps develop a strong diaphragm and deep breathing using the entire lung volume. Pulmonary specialists have noted that playing the harmonica resembles the kind of exercise used to rehabilitate COPD patients such as using a PFLEX inspiratory muscle trainer or the inspiratory spirometer. Learning to play a musical instrument also offers motivation in addition to the exercise component. Many pulmonary rehabilitation programs therefore have begun to incorporate the harmonica.
The concertina, diatonic and chromatic accordions and the melodica are all free-reed instruments that developed alongside the harmonica. Indeed, the similarities between harmonicas and so-called "diatonic" accordions or melodeons is such that in German the name for the former is "Mundharmonika" and the latter "Handharmonika," which translate as "mouth harmonica" and "hand harmonica." In Scandinavian languages, an accordion is called variants of "trekkspill" (pull play) or "trekkharmonika" whereas a harmonica is called "munnspill" (mouth play) or "mundharmonika" (mouth harmonica). The names for the two instruments in the Slavic languages are also either similar or identical. The harmonica shares similarities to all other free-reed instruments by virtue of the method of sound production.
The glass harmonica has the word "harmonica" in its name, but it is not related to free-reed instruments. The glass harmonica is a musical instrument formed from a nested set of graduated glass cups mounted sideways on an axle. Each of the glass cups is tuned to a different note, and they are arranged in a scalar order. It is played by touching the rotating cups with wetted fingers, causing them to vibrate and produce a sustained "singing" tone. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14349 |
Hops
Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant "Humulus lupulus." They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to which, in addition to bitterness, they impart floral, fruity, or citrus flavours and aromas. Hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine. The hop plant is a vigorous, climbing, herbaceous perennial, usually trained to grow up strings in a field called a hopfield, hop garden (nomenclature in the South of England), or hop yard (in the West Country and US) when grown commercially. Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, with different types used for particular styles of beer.
The first documented use of hops in beer is from the 9th century, though Hildegard of Bingen, 300 years later, is often cited as the earliest documented source. Before this period, brewers used a "gruit", composed of a wide variety of bitter herbs and flowers, including dandelion, burdock root, marigold, horehound (the old German name for horehound, "Berghopfen", means "mountain hops"), ground ivy, and heather. Early documents include mention of a hop garden in the will of Charlemagne's father, Pepin III.
Hops are also used in brewing for their antibacterial effect over less desirable microorganisms and for purported benefits including balancing the sweetness of the malt with bitterness and a variety of flavours and aromas. Historically, traditional herb combinations for beers were believed to have been abandoned when beers made with hops were noticed to be less prone to spoilage.
The first documented hop cultivation was in 736, in the Hallertau region of present-day Germany, although the first mention of the use of hops in brewing in that country was 1079. However, in a will of Pepin the Short, the father of Charlemagne, hop gardens were left to the Cloister of Saint-Denis in 768. Not until the 13th century did hops begin to start threatening the use of gruit for flavouring. Gruit was used when the nobility levied taxes on hops. Whichever was taxed made the brewer then quickly switch to the other. In Britain, hopped beer was first imported from Holland around 1400, yet hops were condemned as late as 1519 as a "wicked and pernicious weed". In 1471, Norwich, England, banned use of the plant in the brewing of ale ("beer" was the name for fermented malt liquors bittered with hops; only in recent times are the words often used as synonyms).
In Germany, using hops was also a religious and political choice in the early 16th century. There was no tax on hops to be paid to the Catholic church, unlike on gruit. For this reason the Protestants preferred hopped beer.
Hops used in England were imported from France, Holland and Germany with import duty paid for those; it was not until 1524 that hops were first grown in the southeast of England (Kent) when they were introduced as an agricultural crop by Dutch farmers. Therefore, in the hop industry there are many words which originally were Dutch words (see oast house). Hops were then grown as far north as Aberdeen, near breweries for convenience of infrastructure.
According to Thomas Tusser's 1557 "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry":
"The hop for his profit I thus do exalt,It strengtheneth drink and it flavoureth malt;And being well-brewed long kept it will last,And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast."
In England there were many complaints over the quality of imported hops, the sacks of which were often contaminated by stalks, sand or straw to increase their weight. As a result, in 1603, King James I approved an Act of Parliament banning the practice by which "the Subjects of this Realm have been of late years abused &c. to the Value of £20,000 yearly, besides the Danger of their Healths".
Hop cultivation was begun in the present-day United States in 1629 by English and Dutch farmers. Before prohibition, cultivation was mainly centred around New York, California, Oregon, and Washington state. Problems with powdery mildew and downy mildew devastated New York's production by the 1920s, and California only produces hops on a small scale.
Hop bars were used before modern machinery was invented to make the holes for the hop poles.
Hops production is concentrated in moist temperate climates, with much of the world's production occurring near the 48th parallel north. Hop plants prefer the same soils as potatoes and the leading potato-growing states in the United States are also major hops-producing areas; however, not all potato-growing areas can produce good hops naturally: soils in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, for example, lack the boron that hops prefer. Historically, hops were not grown in Ireland, but were imported from England. In 1752 more than 500 tons of English hops were imported through Dublin alone.
Important production centres today are the Hallertau in Germany, the Žatec (Saaz) in the Czech Republic, the Yakima (Washington) and Willamette (Oregon) valleys, and western Canyon County, Idaho (including the communities of Parma, Wilder, Greenleaf, and Notus). The principal production centres in the UK are in Kent (which produces Kent Goldings hops), Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. Essentially all of the harvested hops are used in beer making.
Although hops are grown in most of the continental United States and Canada, cultivation of hops for commercial production requires a particular environment. As hops are a climbing plant, they are trained to grow up trellises made from strings or wires that support the plants and allow them significantly greater growth with the same sunlight profile. In this way, energy that would have been required to build structural cells is also freed for crop growth.
The hop plant's reproduction method is that male and female flowers develop on separate plants, although occasionally a fertile individual will develop which contains both male and female flowers. Because pollinated seeds are undesirable for brewing beer, only female plants are grown in hop fields, thus preventing pollination. Female plants are propagated vegetatively, and male plants are culled if plants are grown from seeds.
Hop plants are planted in rows about apart. Each spring, the roots send forth new bines that are started up strings from the ground to an overhead trellis. The cones grow high on the bine, and in the past, these cones were picked by hand. Harvesting of hops became much more efficient with the invention of the mechanical hops separator, patented by Emil Clemens Horst in 1909.
Harvest comes near the end of summer when the bines are pulled down and the flowers are taken to a hop house or oast house for drying. Hop houses are two-story buildings, of which the upper story has a slatted floor covered with burlap. Here the flowers are poured out and raked even. A heating unit on the lower floor is used to dry the hops. When dry, the hops are moved to a press, a sturdy box with a plunger. Two long pieces of burlap are laid into the hop press at right angles, the hops are poured in and compressed into bales.
Hop cones contain different oils, such as lupulin, a yellowish, waxy substance, an oleoresin, that imparts flavour and aroma to beer. Lupulin contains lupulone and humulone, which possess antibiotic properties, suppressing bacterial growth favoring brewer's yeast to grow. After lupulin has been extracted in the brewing process the papery cones are discarded.
The need for massed labor at harvest time meant hops-growing had a big social impact. Around the world, the labor-intensive harvesting work involved large numbers of migrant workers who would travel for the annual hops harvest. Whole families would participate and live in hoppers' huts, with even the smallest children helping in the fields. The final chapters of W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" and a large part of George Orwell's "A Clergyman's Daughter" contain vivid descriptions of London families participating in this annual hops harvest. In England, many of those picking hops in Kent were from eastern areas of London. This provided a break from urban conditions that was spent in the countryside. People also came from Birmingham and other Midlands cities to pick hops in the Malvern area of Worcestershire. Some photographs have been preserved.
Particularly in Kent, because of a shortage of small-denomination coin of the realm, many growers issued their own currency to those doing the labor. In some cases, the coins issued were adorned with fanciful hops images, making them quite beautiful.
In the US, Prohibition had a major impact on hops productions, but remnants of this significant industry in West and Northwest US are still noticeable in the form of old hop kilns that survive throughout Sonoma County, among others. Florian Dauenhauer, of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, became a manufacturer of hop-harvesting machines in 1940, in part because of the hop industry's importance to the county. This mechanization helped destroy the local industry by enabling large-scale mechanized production, which moved to larger farms in other areas. Dauenhauer Manufacturing remains a current producer of hop harvesting machines.
In addition to water, cellulose, and various proteins, the chemical composition of hops consists of compounds important for imparting character to beer.
Probably the most important chemical compound within hops are the alpha acids or humulones. During wort boiling, the humulones are thermally isomerized into iso-alpha acids or "isohumulones", which are responsible for the bitter taste of beer.
Hops contain beta acids or lupulones. These are desirable for their aroma contributions to beer.
The main components of hops essential oils are terpene hydrocarbons consisting of myrcene, humulene and caryophyllene. Myrcene is responsible for the pungent smell of fresh hops. Humulene and its oxidative reaction products may give beer its prominent hop aroma. Together, myrcene, humulene, and caryophyllene represent 80 to 90% of the total hops essential oil.
Xanthohumol is the principal flavonoid in hops. The other well-studied prenylflavonoids are 8-prenylnaringenin and isoxanthohumol. Xanthohumol is under basic research for its potential properties, while 8-prenylnaringenin is a potent phytoestrogen.
Hops are usually dried in an oast house before they are used in the brewing process.
Undried or "wet" hops are sometimes (since ca.1990) used.
The wort (sugar-rich liquid produced from malt) is boiled with hops before it is cooled down and yeast is added, to start fermentation.
The effect of hops on the finished beer varies by type and use, though there are two main hop types: bittering and aroma. Bittering hops have higher concentrations of alpha acids, and are responsible for the large majority of the bitter flavour of a beer. European (so-called "noble") hops typically average 5–9% alpha acids by weight (AABW), and the newer American cultivars typically range from 8–19% AABW. Aroma hops usually have a lower concentration of alpha acids (~5%) and are the primary contributors of hop aroma and (nonbitter) flavour. Bittering hops are boiled for a longer period of time, typically 60–90 minutes, to maximize the isomerization of the alpha acids. They often have inferior aromatic properties, as the aromatic compounds evaporate during the boil.
The degree of bitterness imparted by hops depends on the degree to which alpha acids are isomerized during the boil, and the impact of a given amount of hops is specified in International Bitterness Units. Unboiled hops are only mildly bitter. On the other hand, the nonbitter flavour and aroma of hops come from the essential oils, which evaporate during the boil.
Aroma hops are typically added to the wort later to prevent the evaporation of the essential oils, to impart "hop taste" (if during the final 30 minutes of boil) or "hop aroma" (if during the final 10 minutes, or less, of boil). Aroma hops are often added after the wort has cooled and while the beer ferments, a technique known as "dry hopping", which contributes to the hop aroma. Farnesene is a major component in some hops. The composition of hop essential oils can differ between varieties and between years in the same variety, having a significant influence on flavour and aroma.
Today, a substantial amount of "dual-use" hops are used, as well. These have high concentrations of alpha acids and good aromatic properties. These can be added to the boil at any time, depending on the desired effect. Hop acids also contribute to and stabilize the foam qualities of beer.
Flavours and aromas are described appreciatively using terms which include "grassy", "floral", "citrus", "spicy", "piney", "lemony", "grapefruit", and "earthy".
Many pale lagers have fairly low hop influence, while lagers marketed as Pilsener or brewed in the Czech Republic may have noticeable noble hop aroma. Certain ales (particularly the highly hopped style known as India Pale Ale, or IPA) can have high levels of hop bitterness.
Brewers may use software tools to control the bittering levels in the boil and adjust recipes to account for a change in the hop bill or seasonal variations in the crop that may lead to the need to compensate for a difference in alpha acid contribution. Data may be shared with other brewers via BeerXML allowing the reproduction of a recipe allowing for differences in hop availability.
There are many different varieties of hops used in brewing today. Historically, hops varieties were identified by geography (such as Hallertau, Spalt, and Tettnang from Germany), by the farmer who is recognized as first cultivating them (such as Goldings or Fuggles from England), or by their growing habit (e.g., Oregon Cluster).
Around 1900, a number of institutions began to experiment with breeding specific hop varieties. The breeding program at Wye College in Wye, Kent, was started in 1904 and rose to prominence through the work of Prof. E. S. Salmon. Salmon released Brewer's Gold and Brewer's Favorite for commercial cultivation in 1934, and went on to release more than two dozen new cultivars before his death in 1959. Brewer's Gold has become the ancestor of the bulk of new hop releases around the world since its release.
Wye College continued its breeding program and again received attention in the 1970s, when Dr. Ray A. Neve released Wye Target, Wye Challenger, Wye Northdown, Wye Saxon and Wye Yeoman. More recently, Wye College and its successor institution Wye Hops Ltd., have focused on breeding the first dwarf hop varieties, which are easier to pick by machine and far more economical to grow. Wye College have also been responsible for breeding hop varieties that will grow with only 12 hours of daily light for the South African hop farmers. Wye College was closed in 2009 but the legacy of their hop breeding programs, particularly that of the dwarf varieties, is continuing as already the US private and public breeding programs are using their stock material.
Particular hop varieties are associated with beer regions and styles, for example pale lagers are usually brewed with European (often German, Polish or Czech) noble hop varieties such as Saaz, Hallertau and Strissel Spalt. British ales use hop varieties such as Fuggles, Goldings and W.G.V. North American beers often use Cascade hops, Columbus hops, Centennial hops, Willamette, Amarillo hops and about forty more varieties as the US have lately been the more significant breeders of new hop varieties, including dwarf hop varieties.
Hops from New Zealand, such as Pacific Gem, Motueka and Nelson Sauvin, are used in a "Pacific Pale Ale" style of beer with increasing production in 2014.
The term "noble hops" is a marketing term that traditionally refers to varieties of hops low in bitterness and high in aroma. They are the European cultivars or races Hallertau, Tettnanger, Spalt, and Saaz. Some proponents assert that the English varieties Fuggle, East Kent Goldings and Goldings might qualify as "noble hops" due to the similar composition, but such terms never applied to English varieties. Their low relative bitterness, but strong aroma, are often distinguishing characteristics of European-style lagers, such as Pilsener, Dunkel, and Oktoberfest/Märzen. In beer, they are considered aroma hops (as opposed to bittering hops); see Pilsner Urquell as a classic example of the Bohemian Pilsener style, which showcases noble hops.
As with grapes, the location where hops are grown affects the hops' characteristics. Much as Dortmunder beer may within the EU be labelled "Dortmunder" only if it has been brewed in Dortmund, noble hops may officially be considered "noble" only if they were grown in the areas for which the hop varieties (races) were named.
Noble hops are characterized through analysis as having an aroma quality resulting from numerous factors in the essential oil, such as an alpha:beta ratio of 1:1, low alpha-acid levels (2–5%) with a low cohumulone content, low myrcene in the hop oil, high humulene in the oil, a ratio of humulene:caryophyllene above three, and poor storability resulting in them being more prone to oxidation. In reality, this means they have a relatively consistent bittering potential as they age, due to beta-acid oxidation, and a flavor that improves as they age during periods of poor storage.
In addition to beer, hops are used in herbal teas and in soft drinks. These soft drinks include Julmust (a carbonated beverage similar to soda that is popular in Sweden during December), Malta (a Latin American soft drink) and kvass. Hops can be eaten, the young shoots of the vine are edible and can be cooked similar to asparagus.
Hops may be used in herbal medicine in a way similar to valerian, as a treatment for anxiety, restlessness, and insomnia. A pillow filled with hops is a popular folk remedy for sleeplessness, and animal research has shown a sedative effect. The relaxing effect of hops may be due, in part, to the specific degradation product from alpha acids, 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol, as demonstrated from nighttime consumption of non-alcoholic beer. 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol is structurally similar to tert-amyl alcohol which was historically used as an anesthetic. Hops tend to be unstable when exposed to light or air and lose their potency after a few months' storage.
Hops are of interest for hormone replacement therapy and are under basic research for potential relief of menstruation-related problems.
Dermatitis sometimes results from harvesting hops. Although few cases require medical treatment, an estimated 3% of the workers suffer some type of skin lesions on the face, hands, and legs. Hops are toxic to dogs.
Hops and hops picking form the milieu and atmosphere in the British detective novel, "Death in the Hop Fields" (1937) by John Rhode. The novel was subsequently issued in the United States under the title, "The Harvest Murder". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14352 |
Huey, Dewey, and Louie
Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck are triplet cartoon characters created in 1937 by writer Ted Osborne and cartoonist Al Taliaferro, and are owned by The Walt Disney Company. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are the nephews of Donald Duck and the great-nephews of Scrooge McDuck. Like their uncles, the boys are anthropomorphic white ducks with yellow-orange bills and feet. They typically wear shirts and colorful baseball caps, which are sometimes used to distinguish them. Huey, Dewey and Louie have made several animated appearances in both films and television, but comics remain their primary medium. The trio are collectively the 11th most published comic book characters in the world, and outside of the superhero genre, second only to Donald.
While the boys were originally created as mischief-makers to provoke Donald's famous temper, later appearances showed them to be heroes in their own right and valuable assets to him and Scrooge on their adventures. All three of the boys are members of the fictional scouting organization the Junior Woodchucks.
Huey, Dewey, and Louie were the idea of Al Taliaferro, the artist for the "Silly Symphony" comic strip, which featured Donald Duck. The Walt Disney Productions Story Dept. on February 5, 1937, sent Taliaferro a memo recognizing him as the source of the idea for the planned short, "Donald's Nephews". The nephews debuted in Taliaferro's comic strip, which by this time had been renamed "Donald Duck", on Sunday, October 17, 1937, beating the theatrical release of "Donald's Nephews" by almost six months. The names were devised by Disney gag man Dana Coty, who took them from Huey Long, Thomas Dewey, and Louis Schmitt, an animator at the Disney Studio in the 1930s and 1940s. Taliaferro's introduction of the nephews emulated the three nephews in the Happy Hooligan comic strip and was also influenced by Mickey Mouse's nephews, Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse.
In translations of Disney works the nephews have different local-sounding names that often follow the repetition (parachesis) of the English names. Examples include Hugo, Paco and Luis (American Spanish); Jorgito, Juanito and Jaimito (European Spanish); and Tick, Trick and Track (German).
Huey, Dewey, and Louie are the sons of Donald's sister Della Duck; in "Donald's Nephews", their mother is instead named Dumbella. In the original theatrical shorts, they were originally sent to visit Donald for only one day; in the comics, the three were sent to stay with Donald on a temporary basis, until their father came back from the hospital (the boys ended up sending him there after a practical joke of putting firecrackers under his chair). In both the comics and animated shorts, the boys' parents were never heard from or mentioned again after these instances, with the boys ending up permanently living with Donald. All four of them live in the fictional city of Duckburg, in the fictional state of Calisota.
The three ducklings are noted for their identical appearances and personalities. A running joke involves the three sometimes even finishing each other's sentences. In the theatrical shorts, Huey, Dewey, and Louie often behave in a rambunctious and mischievous manner, and they sometimes commit retaliation or revenge on their uncle Donald Duck. In the comics, however, as developed by Al Taliaferro and Carl Barks, the young ducks are more usually portrayed as well-behaved, preferring to assist their uncle Donald Duck and great-uncle Scrooge McDuck in the adventure at hand. In the early Barks comics, the ducklings were still wild and unruly, but their character improved considerably due to their membership in the Junior Woodchucks and the good influence of their wise old great-grandmother Elvira Coot "Grandma" Duck. According to Don Rosa, Huey, Dewey and Louie became members of the Junior Woodchucks when they were around 11 years old.
In early comic books and shorts, the caps of Huey, Dewey, and Louie were colored randomly, depending on the whim of the colorist.
On few occasions until 1945 and most every cartoon short afterward, all three nephews wore identical outfits (most commonly red). It wasn't until the 1980s when it became established that Huey is dressed in red, Dewey in blue, and Louie in green. Disney's archivist Dave Smith, in "Disney A to Z", said, "Note that the brightest hue of the three is red (Huey), the color of water, dew, is blue (Dewey), and that leaves Louie, and leaves are green." A few random combinations appear in early Disney merchandise and books, such as orange and yellow. Another combination that shows up from time to time is Huey in blue, Dewey in green, and Louie in red. In-story, this inconsistency is explained away as a result of the ducklings borrowing each other's clothes.
In Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics the trio have occasionally been known to dress in their usual outfits, but rather than have their usual colors they all wear black (or the same dark color), rendering them visually identical, leaving their hat color available if they care to be distinguished.
The Don Rosa story "An Eye for Detail" in Donald Duck comics was based around Donald spending so much time trying to tell his three nephews apart that he developed a heightened sense of sight.
Clarence Nash, Donald's voice actor, gave the voices to the boys in the cartoon shorts, making them just as unintelligible as Donald's. Huey, Dewey, and Louie were all voiced by Russi Taylor in "DuckTales". In "Quack Pack", they were voiced by Jeannie Elias, Pamela Segall, and Elizabeth Daily, respectively. Tony Anselmo voiced the characters in "Down and Out with Donald Duck" (1987), "Mickey Mouse Works", "Disney's House of Mouse", and "Have a Laugh!" shorts, but Russi Taylor still voiced the trio in other projects, such as the video games "" and "Mickey's Speedway USA", and the direct-to-video films "Mickey's Once" and "Twice Upon a Christmas". Russi Taylor also reprised her role as the nephews in the "" video game and the post-2013 "Mickey Mouse" shorts until her death in 2019. Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz and Bobby Moynihan voice the brothers in the 2017 reboot.
On a few occasions, an artist by error drew four nephews and the error was not noticed but was published. This fourth nephew has been named Phooey Duck by Disney comic editor Bob Foster.
One short Egmont-licensed Disney comic (called "Much Ado About Phooey" in the English-language version) used Phooey as a character and explained Phooey's sporadic appearances as a freak incident of nature. (The Swedish text in the two speech balloons says "It is a fourth nephew! An exact copy of the others! / Yes, it's probably best that I explain".) Phooey also made a cameo appearance in the 2017 "DuckTales" animated series episode, "A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill!", during a dream sequence.
After the era of theatrical shorts ended, they appeared in:
In the 1988 film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", Huey, Dewey, and Louie appear in a picture on a newspaper in Eddie Valiant's office. In 1990, the boys also made an appearance in the anti-drug TV special "Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue". They also make a cameo in "Mickey's Christmas Carol".
They also appeared with Uncle Scrooge but without Donald in "Scrooge McDuck and Money".
Within the comics, Huey, Dewey, and Louie often play a major role in most stories involving either their uncle Donald or great-uncle Scrooge McDuck, accompanying them on most of their adventures. Also seen in the comics is the boys' membership in the Boy Scouts of America-like organization, the Junior Woodchucks, including their use of the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, a manual containing all manner of information on virtually every subject possible (however, there are some resources, such as the ancient libraries of Tralla La, that hold information not found in the guidebook). This excellent youth organization, which has twin goals of preserving knowledge and preserving the environment, was instrumental in transforming the three brothers from little hellions to upstanding young ducks.
In Disney comic writer Don Rosa's (unofficial) continuity, Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck were born around 1940 in Duckburg. True to his jocular style, Rosa occasionally makes subtle references to the untold mystery of the three boys' life: What became of their parents? In his epic comic series, "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck", Rosa pictures how Scrooge first met Donald and his nephews, saying: "I'm not used to relatives, either! The few I had seem to have... disappeared!" Huey, Dewey, and Louie answer: "We know how "that" feels, Unca Scrooge!"
In "Some Heir Over the Rainbow" by Carl Barks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, along with Donald Duck and Gladstone Gander, are tested by Scrooge McDuck, who wants to pick an heir to his fortune. Using the legend of a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, Scrooge secretly gives US$ 3,000 (One thousand to Huey, Dewey, and Louie, another for Gladstone, and the last one for Donald). Donald uses his money for a down payment of a new car, now being $1,000 in debt. Gladstone, considering himself too lucky to need the money this soon, hides the money for when and if he needs it, causing Scrooge to consider him a better option than Donald. Huey, Dewey, and Louie lend their money to a man who claims to need the money to search for a treasure. Initially thinking they were tricked out of the money, Scrooge actually considers leaving his fortune to Gladstone, even though he sees that as ""an awful injustice to the world"", but the man actually finds the treasure and pays the kids back. Scrooge makes Huey, Dewey, and Louie his heirs. Although this is disregarded in a number of later comics, it seems to be the most solidly canon indication of Scrooge's plans.
They later starred in the 1987 animated television series "DuckTales", in which they appeared in adventures with their great-uncle, Scrooge McDuck (Donald having enlisted in the U.S. Navy). The boys' personalities in this series were mainly based on their comic book appearances versus the theatrical shorts.
A new adaptation of the series, once again titled "DuckTales", features the three brothers as well, albeit with distinct designs, voices, and personalities like in "Quack Pack", who move to Scrooge's house with Donald after the boat where they lived is destroyed by accident. In the new installment, the brothers also travel in adventures with Scrooge, now with Donald in tow. The first episode also shows an image of Della, the triplets' mother, who also traveled the world in adventures with Donald and Scrooge. This iteration also changed Dewey's real name to Dewford, while making Deuteronomy his middle name, and Louie's real name to Llewellyn, a fact which he seems to be embarrassed by. In season 2, it's revealed Della intended to name them "Jet, Turbo, and Rebel", but after she disappeared, Donald named them instead. Phooey Duck has also been occasionally referenced as an imaginary fourth brother made up by the other three. In "Whatever Happened to Donald Duck?!", Dewey locates a photo of himself and his brothers from when they were still eggs along with a fourth yellow egg, which he quickly identifies as Phooey. He is then told that the "egg" is only a mustard stain. In "A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill!", while the boys and their friends are trapped in a lucid dream, they imagine Phooey to life for a brief cameo.
Huey, Dewey, and Louie also starred in the 1990s series "Quack Pack", in which the three were portrayed as teenagers. In "Quack Pack", the boys were given distinct personalities, with Huey serving as the group's leader, Dewey as a computer whiz, and Louie as enjoying sports. After "Quack Pack", the boys were reverted to their original ages in future appearances, including 2000s series "Mickey Mouse Works", and then re-aged in "House of Mouse". On "House of Mouse", they served as the house band in a variety of different styles (most commonly as 'The Quackstreet Boys'). They also feature prominently, in a segment of the computer-animated film, "Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas" from 2004.
Huey, Dewey, and Louie appear in the third "Magical Quest" game. The object of the game is to rescue them from the clutches of the villainous King Pete. The trio also appear in "Quackshot" piloting Donald's plane as he travels the world in search of a lost treasure.
They also appear in "The Lucky Dime Caper" for the Sega Master system, where they are kidnapped by Magica De Spell. Donald must find Scrooge's lucky dime and barter for their safety.
They also appear in "", aiding Donald to rescue Daisy and beat Gladstone to her, while he rescues their hexed play toys.
They even appear in "Mickey's Speedway USA" as unlockable lightweight characters.
They also appear in "DuckTales", aiding their Uncle Scrooge in finding treasure.
They also appear on "", where they appear as DJ's on certain music tracks
In "Kingdom Hearts" they work in the item shop in the First District of Traverse Town. In "Kingdom Hearts II", they individually run an item shop (Huey), a weapon shop (Louie), and an accessory shop (Dewey) in Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden. In both endings, they are all seen going back to Disney Castle. They reappear in "" in Disney Town, recreating Ice Cream flavors, this time with a speaking role. They appear once more in the mobile game "Kingdom Hearts Unchained" as special Support medals that grant the player's other medals a set amount of experience points based on the medal's star value. They appear in the Tram Common area of Twilight Town in "Kingdom Hearts III", where they each take turns running the gummi shop. In all of their Kingdom Hearts appearances, they appear similar to their appearance in the original DuckTales.
Huey, Dewey and Louie appear as characters only at Tokyo Disney and Disneyland Paris.
Huey, Dewey and Louie only appeared in seasonal Parades Easter, Halloween and Christmas 2011 after a long absence. They also appeared in the Countdown Party Parade 2011.
Huey, Dewey and Louie appear more regularly in Paris. They appeared during the Christmas season 2010 in their daytime and nighttime Parades at the Disneyland Park ""Disneyland Paris's Magic Kingdom"" Disney's Once Upon a Dream Parade and in the Disney's Fantillusion Parade in glittery outfits. They made another appearance at Disneyland Paris for meet and greet at the Disneyland Hotel on April 2, 2011 the day of the Press Event for the launch of their new season "Magical Moments Festival". They also appeared at the Disney's Once Upon a Dream Parade at the Disneyland Park in special outfits for the Parade and at the Disney's Stars 'n' Cars Parade at the Walt Disney Studios Park in a unique directors outfits.
The Three Nephews appeared at Disneyland Paris's Halloween season 2011. They have their own show during "Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Parties" at the Disneyland Park in Disneyland Paris, titled "Huey, Dewey and Louie's Trick or Treat Party". They also made an appearance for meet and greet at Disneyland Paris's "Disney's Halloween Party" on October 31, 2011. This is the first time ever that the three nephews appear for meet and greet at any of the Disney Parks for regular park guests. They were also part of the Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve 2011/2012 celebrations at the Disneyland Hotel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14356 |
Hammurabi
Hammurabi () was the sixth king of the First Babylonian dynasty of the Amorite tribe, reigning from c. 1792 BC to c. 1750 BC (according to the Middle Chronology). He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health. During his reign, he conquered Elam and the city-states of Larsa, Eshnunna, and Mari. He ousted Ishme-Dagan I, the king of Assyria, and forced his son Mut-Ashkur to pay tribute, bringing almost all of Mesopotamia under Babylonian rule.
Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. Unlike earlier Sumerian law codes, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu, which had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, the Law of Hammurabi was one of the first law codes to place greater emphasis on the physical punishment of the perpetrator. It prescribed specific penalties for each crime and is among the first codes to establish the presumption of innocence. Although its penalties are extremely harsh by modern standards, they were intended to limit what a wronged person was permitted to do in retribution. The Code of Hammurabi and the Law of Moses in the Torah contain numerous similarities.
Hammurabi was seen by many as a god within his own lifetime. After his death, Hammurabi was revered as a great conqueror who spread civilization and forced all peoples to pay obeisance to Marduk, the national god of the Babylonians. Later, his military accomplishments became de-emphasized and his role as the ideal lawgiver became the primary aspect of his legacy. For later Mesopotamians, Hammurabi's reign became the frame of reference for all events occurring in the distant past. Even after the empire he built collapsed, he was still revered as a model ruler, and many kings across the Near East claimed him as an ancestor. Hammurabi was rediscovered by archaeologists in the late nineteenth century and has since become seen as an important figure in the history of law.
Hammurabi was an Amorite First Dynasty king of the city-state of Babylon, and inherited the power from his father, Sin-Muballit, in . Babylon was one of the many largely Amorite ruled city-states that dotted the central and southern Mesopotamian plains and waged war on each other for control of fertile agricultural land. Though many cultures co-existed in Mesopotamia, Babylonian culture gained a degree of prominence among the literate classes throughout the Middle East under Hammurabi. The kings who came before Hammurabi had founded a relatively minor City State in 1894 BC, which controlled little territory outside of the city itself. Babylon was overshadowed by older, larger, and more powerful kingdoms such as Elam, Assyria, Isin, Eshnunna, and Larsa for a century or so after its founding. However, his father Sin-Muballit had begun to consolidate rule of a small area of south central Mesopotamia under Babylonian hegemony and, by the time of his reign, had conquered the minor city-states of Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar.
Thus Hammurabi ascended to the throne as the king of a minor kingdom in the midst of a complex geopolitical situation. The powerful kingdom of Eshnunna controlled the upper Tigris River while Larsa controlled the river delta. To the east of Mesopotamia lay the powerful kingdom of Elam, which regularly invaded and forced tribute upon the small states of southern Mesopotamia. In northern Mesopotamia, the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I, who had already inherited centuries old Assyrian colonies in Asia Minor, had expanded his territory into the Levant and central Mesopotamia, although his untimely death would somewhat fragment his empire.
The first few years of Hammurabi's reign were quite peaceful. Hammurabi used his power to undertake a series of public works, including heightening the city walls for defensive purposes, and expanding the temples. In , the powerful kingdom of Elam, which straddled important trade routes across the Zagros Mountains, invaded the Mesopotamian plain. With allies among the plain states, Elam attacked and destroyed the kingdom of Eshnunna, destroying a number of cities and imposing its rule on portions of the plain for the first time.
In order to consolidate its position, Elam tried to start a war between Hammurabi's Babylonian kingdom and the kingdom of Larsa. Hammurabi and the king of Larsa made an alliance when they discovered this duplicity and were able to crush the Elamites, although Larsa did not contribute greatly to the military effort. Angered by Larsa's failure to come to his aid, Hammurabi turned on that southern power, thus gaining control of the entirety of the lower Mesopotamian plain by .
As Hammurabi was assisted during the war in the south by his allies from the north such as Yamhad and Mari, the absence of soldiers in the north led to unrest. Continuing his expansion, Hammurabi turned his attention northward, quelling the unrest and soon after crushing Eshnunna. Next the Babylonian armies conquered the remaining northern states, including Babylon's former ally Mari, although it is possible that the conquest of Mari was a surrender without any actual conflict.
Hammurabi entered into a protracted war with Ishme-Dagan I of Assyria for control of Mesopotamia, with both kings making alliances with minor states in order to gain the upper hand. Eventually Hammurabi prevailed, ousting Ishme-Dagan I just before his own death. Mut-Ashkur, the new king of Assyria, was forced to pay tribute to Hammurabi.
In just a few years, Hammurabi succeeded in uniting all of Mesopotamia under his rule. The Assyrian kingdom survived but was forced to pay tribute during his reign, and of the major city-states in the region, only Aleppo and Qatna to the west in the Levant maintained their independence. However, one stele of Hammurabi has been found as far north as Diyarbekir, where he claims the title "King of the Amorites".
Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated to the reigns of Hammurabi and his successors, have been discovered, as well as 55 of his own letters. These letters give a glimpse into the daily trials of ruling an empire, from dealing with floods and mandating changes to a flawed calendar, to taking care of Babylon's massive herds of livestock. Hammurabi died and passed the reins of the empire on to his son Samsu-iluna in , under whose rule the Babylonian empire quickly began to unravel.
The Code of Hammurabi is not the earliest surviving law code; it is predated by the Code of Ur-Nammu, the Laws of Eshnunna, and the Code of Lipit-Ishtar. Nonetheless, the Code of Hammurabi shows marked differences from these earlier law codes and ultimately proved more influential.
The Code of Hammurabi was inscribed on a stele and placed in a public place so that all could see it, although it is thought that few were literate. The stele was later plundered by the Elamites and removed to their capital, Susa; it was rediscovered there in 1901 in Iran and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The code of Hammurabi contains 282 laws, written by scribes on 12 tablets. Unlike earlier laws, it was written in Akkadian, the daily language of Babylon, and could therefore be read by any literate person in the city. Earlier Sumerian law codes had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, but the Code of Hammurabi instead focused on physically punishing the perpetrator. The Code of Hammurabi was one of the first law code to place restrictions on what a wronged person was allowed to do in retribution.
The structure of the code is very specific, with each offense receiving a specified punishment. The punishments tended to be very harsh by modern standards, with many offenses resulting in death, disfigurement, or the use of the "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Lex Talionis "Law of Retaliation") philosophy. The code is also one of the earliest examples of the idea of presumption of innocence, and it also suggests that the accused and accuser have the opportunity to provide evidence. However, there is no provision for extenuating circumstances to alter the prescribed punishment.
A carving at the top of the stele portrays Hammurabi receiving the laws from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice, and the preface states that Hammurabi was chosen by Shamash to bring the laws to the people. Parallels between this narrative and the giving of the Covenant Code to Moses by Yahweh atop Mount Sinai in the Biblical Book of Exodus and similarities between the two legal codes suggest a common ancestor in the Semitic background of the two. Nonetheless, fragments of previous law codes have been found and it is unlikely that the Mosaic laws were directly inspired by the Code of Hammurabi. Some scholars have disputed this; David P. Wright argues that the Jewish Covenant Code is "directly, primarily, and throughout" based upon the Laws of Hammurabi. In 2010, a team of archaeologists from Hebrew University discovered a cuneiform tablet dating to the eighteenth or seventeenth century BC at Hazor in Israel containing laws clearly derived from the Code of Hammurabi.
Hammurabi was honored above all other kings of the second millennium BC and he received the unique honor of being declared to be a god within his own lifetime. The personal name "Hammurabi-ili" meaning "Hammurabi is my god" became common during and after his reign. In writings from shortly after his death, Hammurabi is commemorated mainly for three achievements: bringing victory in war, bringing peace, and bringing justice. Hammurabi's conquests came to be regarded as part of a sacred mission to spread civilization to all nations. A stele from Ur glorifies him in his own voice as a mighty ruler who forces evil into submission and compels all peoples to worship Marduk. The stele declares: "The people of Elam, Gutium, Subartu, and Tukrish, whose mountains are distant and whose languages are obscure, I placed into [Marduk's] hand. I myself continued to put straight their confused minds." A later hymn also written in Hammurabi's own voice extols him as a powerful, supernatural force for Marduk:
I am the king, the brace that grasps wrongdoers, that makes people of one mind,
I am the great dragon among kings, who throws their counsel in disarray,
I am the net that is stretched over the enemy,
I am the fear-inspiring, who, when lifting his fierce eyes, gives the disobedient the death sentence,
I am the great net that covers evil intent,
I am the young lion, who breaks nets and scepters,
I am the battle net that catches him who offends me.
After extolling Hammurabi's military accomplishments, the hymn finally declares: "I am Hammurabi, the king of justice." In later commemorations, Hammurabi's role as a great lawgiver came to be emphasized above all his other accomplishments and his military achievements became de-emphasized. Hammurabi's reign became the point of reference for all events in the distant past. A hymn to the goddess Ishtar, whose language suggests it was written during the reign of Ammisaduqa, Hammurabi's fourth successor, declares: "The king who first heard this song as a song of your heroism is Hammurabi. This song for you was composed in his reign. May he be given life forever!" For centuries after his death, Hammurabi's laws continued to be copied by scribes as part of their writing exercises and they were even partially translated into Sumerian.
During the reign of Hammurabi, Babylon usurped the position of "most holy city" in southern Mesopotamia from its predecessor, Nippur. Under the rule of Hammurabi's successor Samsu-iluna, the short-lived Babylonian Empire began to collapse. In northern Mesopotamia, both the Amorites and Babylonians were driven from Assyria by Puzur-Sin a native Akkadian-speaking ruler, . Around the same time, native Akkadian speakers threw off Amorite Babylonian rule in the far south of Mesopotamia, creating the Sealand Dynasty, in more or less the region of ancient Sumer. Hammurabi's ineffectual successors met with further defeats and loss of territory at the hands of Assyrian kings such as Adasi and Bel-ibni, as well as to the Sealand Dynasty to the south, Elam to the east, and to the Kassites from the northeast. Thus was Babylon quickly reduced to the small and minor state it had once been upon its founding.
The "coup de grace" for the Hammurabi's Amorite Dynasty occurred in 1595 BC, when Babylon was sacked and conquered by the powerful Hittite Empire, thereby ending all Amorite political presence in Mesopotamia. However, the Indo-European-speaking Hittites did not remain, turning over Babylon to their Kassite allies, a people speaking a language isolate, from the Zagros mountains region. This Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylon for over 400 years and adopted many aspects of the Babylonian culture, including Hammurabi's code of laws. Even after the fall of the Amorite Dynasty, however, Hammurabi was still remembered and revered. When the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte I raided Babylon in 1158 BC and carried off many stone monuments, he had most of the inscriptions on these monuments erased and new inscriptions carved into them. On the stele containing Hammurabi's laws, however, only four or five columns were wiped out and no new inscription was ever added. Over a thousand years after Hammurabi's death, the kings of Suhu, a land along the Euphrates river, just northwest of Babylon, claimed him as their ancestor.
In the late nineteenth century, the Code of Hammurabi became a major center of debate in the heated "Babel und Bibel" ("Babylon and Bible") controversy in Germany over the relationship between the Bible and ancient Babylonian texts. In January 1902, the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch gave a lecture at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in front of the Kaiser and his wife, in which he argued that the Mosaic Laws of the Old Testament were directly copied off the Code of Hammurabi. Delitzsch's lecture was so controversial that, by September 1903, he had managed to collect 1,350 short articles from newspapers and journals, over 300 longer ones, and twenty-eight pamphlets, all written in response to this lecture, as well as the preceding one about the Flood story in the "Epic of Gilgamesh". These articles were overwhelmingly critical of Delitzsch, though a few were sympathetic. The Kaiser distanced himself from Delitzsch and his radical views and, in fall of 1904, Delitzsch was forced to give his third lecture in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main rather than in Berlin. The putative relationship between the Mosaic Law and the Code of Hammurabi later became a major part of Delitzsch's argument in his 1920–21 book "Die große Täuschung" ("The Great Deception") that the Hebrew Bible was irredeemably contaminated by Babylonian influence and that only by eliminating the human Old Testament entirely could Christians finally believe in the true, Aryan message of the New Testament. In the early twentieth century, many scholars believed that Hammurabi was Amraphel, the King of Shinar in the Book of Genesis 14:1. This view has now been largely rejected, and Amraphael's existence is not attested in any writings from outside the Bible.
Because of Hammurabi's reputation as a lawgiver, his depiction can be found in several United States government buildings. Hammurabi is one of the 23 lawgivers depicted in marble bas-reliefs in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in the United States Capitol. A frieze by Adolph Weinman depicting the "great lawgivers of history", including Hammurabi, is on the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court building. At the time of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Army's 1st Hammurabi Armoured Division was named after the ancient king as part of an effort to emphasize the connection between modern Iraq and the pre-Arab Mesopotamian cultures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14358 |
Huygens–Fresnel principle
The Huygens–Fresnel principle (named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel) is a method of analysis applied to problems of wave propagation both in the far-field limit and in near-field diffraction and also reflection. It states that every point on a wavefront is itself the source of spherical wavelets, and the secondary wavelets emanating from different points mutually interfere. The sum of these spherical wavelets forms the wavefront.
In 1678, Huygens proposed that every point to which a luminous disturbance reaches becomes a source of a spherical wave; the sum of these secondary waves determines the form of the wave at any subsequent time. He assumed that the secondary waves travelled only in the "forward" direction and it is not explained in the theory why this is the case. He was able to provide a qualitative explanation of linear and spherical wave propagation, and to derive the laws of reflection and refraction using this principle, but could not explain the deviations from rectilinear propagation that occur when light encounters edges, apertures and screens, commonly known as diffraction effects. The resolution of this error was finally explained by David A. B. Miller in 1991. The resolution is that the source is a dipole (not the monopole assumed by Huygens), which cancels in the reflected direction.
In 1818, Fresnel showed that Huygens's principle, together with his own principle of interference could explain both the rectilinear propagation of light and also diffraction effects. To obtain agreement with experimental results, he had to include additional arbitrary assumptions about the phase and amplitude of the secondary waves, and also an obliquity factor. These assumptions have no obvious physical foundation but led to predictions that agreed with many experimental observations, including the Arago spot.
Poisson was a member of the French Academy, which reviewed Fresnel's work. He used Fresnel's theory to predict that a bright spot ought to appear in the center of the shadow of a small disc, and deduced from this that the theory was incorrect. However, Arago, another member of the committee, performed the experiment and showed that the prediction was correct. (Lisle had observed this fifty years earlier.) This was one of the investigations that led to the victory of the wave theory of light over the then predominant corpuscular theory.
The Huygens–Fresnel principle provides a reasonable basis for understanding and predicting the classical wave propagation of light. However, there are limitations to the principle, and not all experts agree that it is an accurate representation of reality—for instance, Melvin Schwartz argued that "Huygens' principle actually does give the right answer but for the wrong reasons". The source further states though, "However, Schwartz was expressing the classical (i.e., late 19th century) view of electromagnetism. The propagation of light in quantum field theory actually is consistent with the very interpretation of Huygens’ principle that Schwartz regarded as nonsense." See Huygens' Theory and the Modern Photon Wave function below.
Kirchhoff's diffraction formula provides a rigorous mathematical foundation for diffraction, based on the wave equation. The arbitrary assumptions made by Fresnel to arrive at the Huygens–Fresnel equation emerge automatically from the mathematics in this derivation.
A simple example of the operation of the principle can be seen when an open doorway connects two rooms and a sound is produced in a remote corner of one of them. A person in the other room will hear the sound as if it originated at the doorway. As far as the second room is concerned, the vibrating air in the doorway is the source of the sound.
Consider the case of a point source located at a point P0, vibrating at a frequency "f". The disturbance may be described by a complex variable "U"0 known as the complex amplitude. It produces a spherical wave with wavelength λ, wavenumber "k" = 2π/λ. Within a constant of proportionality, the complex amplitude of the primary wave at the point Q located at a distance "r"0 from P0 is:
Note that magnitude decreases in inverse proportion to the distance travelled, and the phase changes as "k" times the distance travelled.
Using Huygens's theory and the principle of superposition of waves, the complex amplitude at a further point P is found by summing the contributions from each point on the sphere of radius "r"0. In order to get agreement with experimental results, Fresnel found that the individual contributions from the secondary waves on the sphere had to be multiplied by a constant, −"i"/λ, and by an additional inclination factor, "K"(χ). The first assumption means that the secondary waves oscillate at a quarter of a cycle out of phase with respect to the primary wave, and that the magnitude of the secondary waves are in a ratio of 1:λ to the primary wave. He also assumed that "K"(χ) had a maximum value when χ = 0, and was equal to zero when χ = π/2, where χ is the angle between the normal of the primary wave front and the normal of the secondary wave front. The complex amplitude at P, due to the contribute of secondary waves, is then given by:
where "S" describes the surface of the sphere, and "s" is the distance between Q and P.
Fresnel used a zone construction method to find approximate values of "K" for the different zones, which enabled him to make predictions that were in agreement with experimental results.
The various assumptions made by Fresnel emerge automatically in Kirchhoff's diffraction formula, to which the Huygens–Fresnel principle can be considered to be an approximation. Kirchhoff gave the following expression for "K"(χ):
"K" has a maximum value at χ = 0 as in the Huygens–Fresnel principle; however, "K" is not equal to zero at χ = π/2, but at χ = π.
Huygens' theory served as a fundamental explanation of the wave nature of light interference and was further developed by Fresnel and Young but did not fully resolve all observations such as the low-intensity double-slit experiment first performed by G. I. Taylor in 1909. It was not until the early and mid-1900s that quantum theory discussions, particularly the early discussions at the 1927 Brussels Solvay Conference, where Louis de Broglie proposed his de Broglie hypothesis that the photon is guided by a wave function. The wave function presents a much different explanation of the observed light and dark bands in a double slit experiment. In this conception, the photon follows a path which is a random choice of one of many possible paths. These possible paths form the pattern: in dark areas, no photons are landing, and in bright areas, many photons are landing. The set of possible photon paths is determined by the surroundings: the photon's originating point (atom), the slit, and the screen. The wave function is a solution to this geometry. The wave function approach was further proven by additional double-slit experiments in Italy and Japan in the 1970s and 1980s with electrons.
Huygens' principle can be seen as a consequence of the homogeneity of space—space is uniform in all locations. Any disturbance created in a sufficiently small region of homogenous space (or in a homogenous medium) propagates from that region in all geodesic directions. The waves produced by this disturbance, in turn, create disturbances in other regions, and so on. The superposition of all the waves results in the observed pattern of wave propagation.
Homogeneity of space is fundamental to quantum field theory (QFT) where the wave function of any object propagates along all available unobstructed paths. When integrated along all possible paths, with a phase factor proportional to the action, the interference of the wave-functions correctly predicts observable phenomena. Every point on the wavefront acts as the source of secondary wavelets that spread out in the light cone with the same speed as the wave. The new wavefront is found by constructing the surface tangent to the secondary wavelets.
In 1900, Jacques Hadamard observed that Huygens' principle was broken when the number of spatial dimensions is even. From this, he developed a set of conjectures that remain an active topic of research. In particular, it has been discovered that Huygens' principle holds on a large class of homogenous spaces derived from the Coxeter group (so, for example, the Weyl groups of simple Lie algebras).
The traditional statement of Huygens' principle for the D'Alembertian gives rise to the KdV hierarchy; analogously, the Dirac operator gives rise to the AKNS hierarchy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14359 |
Honey
Honey is a sweet, viscous food substance made by honey bees and some related insects. Bees produce honey from the sugary secretions of plants (floral nectar) or from secretions of other insects (such as honeydew), by regurgitation, enzymatic activity, and water evaporation. Bees store honey in wax structures called honeycombs. The variety of honey produced by honey bees (the genus "Apis") is the best-known, due to its worldwide commercial production and human consumption. Honey is collected from wild bee colonies, or from hives of domesticated bees, a practice known as beekeeping or apiculture.
Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and has about the same relative sweetness as sucrose (table sugar). It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor when used as a sweetener. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey, so sealed honey does not spoil, even after thousands of years.
Honey use and production have a long and varied history as an ancient activity. Several cave paintings in Cuevas de la Araña in Spain depict humans foraging for honey at least 8,000 years ago.
Honey is produced by bees collecting nectar and honeydew for use as sugars consumed to support metabolism of muscle activity during foraging or to be stored as a long-term food supply. During foraging, bees access part of the nectar collected to support metabolic activity of flight muscles, with the majority of collected nectar destined for regurgitation, digestion, and storage as honey. In cold weather or when other food sources are scarce, adult and larval bees use stored honey as food.
By contriving for bee swarms to nest in human-made hives, people have been able to semidomesticate the insects and harvest excess honey. In the hive or in a wild nest, the three types of bees are:
Leaving the hive, a foraging bee collects sugar-rich flower nectar, sucking it through its proboscis and placing it in its proventriculus (honey stomach or crop), which lies just dorsal to its food stomach. The honey stomach holds about 40 mg of nectar, or roughly 50% of the bee's unloaded weight, which can require over a thousand flowers and more than an hour to fill. The nectar generally begins with a water content of 70 to 80%. Salivary enzymes and proteins from the bee's hypopharyngeal gland are added to the nectar to begin breaking down the sugars, raising the water content slightly. The forager bees then return to the hive, where they regurgitate and transfer nectar to the hive bees. The hive bees then use their honey stomachs to ingest and regurgitate the nectar, forming bubbles between their mandibles repeatedly until it is partially digested. The bubbles create a large surface area per volume and a portion of the water is removed through evaporation. Bee digestive enzymes hydrolyze sucrose to a mixture of glucose and fructose, and break down other starches and proteins, increasing the acidity.
The bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and digestion for as long as 20 minutes, passing the nectar from one bee to the next, until the product reaches the honeycombs in storage quality. It is then placed in honeycomb cells and left unsealed while still high in water content (about 50 to 70%) and natural yeasts which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the newly formed honey to ferment. Bees are among the few insects that can generate large amounts of body heat, and the hive bees constantly regulate the hive temperature, either heating with their bodies or cooling with water evaporation, to maintain a fairly constant temperature of about in the honey-storage areas. The process continues as hive bees flutter their wings constantly to circulate air and evaporate water from the honey to a content around 18%, raising the sugar concentration beyond the saturation point and preventing fermentation. The bees then cap the cells with wax to seal them. As removed from the hive by a beekeeper, honey has a long shelf life and will not ferment if properly sealed.
Some wasp species, such as "Brachygastra lecheguana" and "Brachygastra mellifica" found in South and Central America, are known to feed on nectar and produce honey.
Some wasps, such as "Polistes versicolor", consume honey, alternating between feeding on pollen in the middle of their lifecycles and feeding on honey, which can better provide for their energy needs.
Honey is collected from wild bee colonies or from domesticated beehives. On average, a hive will produce about of honey per year. Wild bee nests are sometimes located by following a honeyguide bird.
To safely collect honey from a hive, beekeepers typically pacify the bees using a bee smoker. The smoke triggers a feeding instinct (an attempt to save the resources of the hive from a possible fire), making them less aggressive, and obscures the pheromones the bees use to communicate. The honeycomb is removed from the hive and the honey may be extracted from it either by crushing or by using a honey extractor. The honey is then usually filtered to remove beeswax and other debris.
Before the invention of removable frames, bee colonies were often sacrificed to conduct the harvest. The harvester would take all the available honey and replace the entire colony the next spring. Since the invention of removable frames, the principles of husbandry led most beekeepers to ensure that their bees have enough stores to survive the winter, either by leaving some honey in the beehive or by providing the colony with a honey substitute such as sugar water or crystalline sugar (often in the form of a "candyboard"). The amount of food necessary to survive the winter depends on the variety of bees and on the length and severity of local winters.
Many animal species are attracted to wild or domestic sources of honey.
Because of its composition and chemical properties, honey is suitable for long-term storage, and is easily assimilated even after long preservation. Honey, and objects immersed in honey, have been preserved for centuries. The key to preservation is limiting access to humidity. In its cured state, honey has a sufficiently high sugar content to inhibit fermentation. If exposed to moist air, its hydrophilic properties pull moisture into the honey, eventually diluting it to the point that fermentation can begin.
The long shelf life of honey is attributed to an enzyme found in the stomach of bees. The bees mix glucose oxidase with expelled nectar they previously consumed, creating two byproducts – gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which are partially responsible for honey acidity and suppression of bacterial growth.
Honey is sometimes adulterated by the addition of other sugars, syrups, or compounds to change its flavor or viscosity, reduce cost, or increase the fructose content to stave off crystallization. Adulteration of honey has been practiced since ancient times, when honey was sometimes blended with plant syrups such as maple, birch, or sorghum and sold to customers as pure honey. Sometimes crystallized honey was mixed with flour or other fillers, hiding the adulteration from buyers until the honey was liquefied. In modern times the most common adulterant became clear, almost-flavorless corn syrup; the adulterated mixture can be very difficult to distinguish from pure honey.
According to the Codex Alimentarius of the United Nations, any product labeled as "honey" or "pure honey" must be a wholly natural product, although labeling laws differ between countries. In the United States, according to the National Honey Board (NHB; supervised by the United States Department of Agriculture), "honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance... this includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners".
Isotope ratio mass spectrometry can be used to detect addition of corn syrup and cane sugar by the carbon isotopic signature. Addition of sugars originating from corn or sugar cane (C4 plants, unlike the plants used by bees, and also sugar beet, which are predominantly C3 plants) skews the isotopic ratio of sugars present in honey, but does not influence the isotopic ratio of proteins. In an unadulterated honey, the carbon isotopic ratios of sugars and proteins should match. Levels as low as 7% of addition can be detected.
In 2018, global production of honey was 1.9million tonnes, led by China with 24% of the world total (table). Other major producers were Turkey, Iran, Ukraine, United States, India, and Russia.
Over its history as a food, the main uses of honey are in cooking, baking, desserts, as a spread on bread, as an addition to various beverages such as tea, and as a sweetener in some commercial beverages.
Possibly the world's oldest fermented beverage, dating from 9,000 years ago, mead ("honey wine") is the alcoholic product made by adding yeast to honey-water must and fermenting it for weeks or months. The yeast "Saccharomyces cerevisiae" is commonly used in modern mead production.
Primary fermentation usually takes 28 to 56 days, after which the must is placed in a secondary fermentation vessel for 6 to 9 months of aging. Durations of primary and secondary fermentation producing satisfactory mead may vary considerably according to numerous factors, such as floral origin of the honey and its natural sugar and microorganism contents, must water percentage, pH, additives used, and strain of yeast, among others. Although supplementation of the must with nitrogen, salt, or vitamins has been tested to improve mead qualities, no evidence suggests that adding nutrients reduced fermentation time or improved quality. Cell immobilization methods, however, proved effective for enhancing mead quality.
Mead varieties include drinks called metheglin (with spices or herbs), melomel (with fruit juices, such as grape, specifically called pyment), hippocras (with cinnamon), and sack mead (high concentration of honey), many of which have been developed as commercial products numbering in the hundreds in the United States. Honey is also used to make mead beer, called "braggot".
The physical properties of honey vary, depending on water content, the type of flora used to produce it (pasturage), temperature, and the proportion of the specific sugars it contains. Fresh honey is a supersaturated liquid, containing more sugar than the water can typically dissolve at ambient temperatures. At room temperature, honey is a supercooled liquid, in which the glucose precipitates into solid granules. This forms a semisolid solution of precipitated glucose crystals in a solution of fructose and other ingredients.
The density of honey typically ranges between 1.38 and 1.45 kg/l at 20 °C.
The melting point of crystallized honey is between , depending on its composition. Below this temperature, honey can be either in a metastable state, meaning that it will not crystallize until a seed crystal is added, or, more often, it is in a "labile" state, being saturated with enough sugars to crystallize spontaneously. The rate of crystallization is affected by many factors, but the primary factor is the ratio of the main sugars: fructose to glucose. Honeys that are supersaturated with a very high percentage of glucose, such as brassica honey, crystallize almost immediately after harvesting, while honeys with a low percentage of glucose, such as chestnut or tupelo honey, do not crystallize. Some types of honey may produce few but very large crystals, while others produce many small crystals.
Crystallization is also affected by water content, because a high percentage of water inhibits crystallization, as does a high dextrin content. Temperature also affects the rate of crystallization, with the fastest growth occurring between . Crystal nuclei (seeds) tend to form more readily if the honey is disturbed, by stirring, shaking, or agitating, rather than if left at rest. However, the nucleation of microscopic seed-crystals is greatest between . Therefore, larger but fewer crystals tend to form at higher temperatures, while smaller but more-numerous crystals usually form at lower temperatures. Below 5 °C, the honey will not crystallize, thus the original texture and flavor can be preserved indefinitely.
Honey is a supercooled liquid when stored below its melting point, as is normal. At very low temperatures, honey does not freeze solid; rather its viscosity increases. Like most viscous liquids, the honey becomes thick and sluggish with decreasing temperature. At , honey may appear or even feel solid, but it continues to flow at very low rates. Honey has a glass transition between . Below this temperature, honey enters a glassy state and becomes an amorphous solid (noncrystalline).
The viscosity of honey is affected greatly by both temperature and water content. The higher the water percentage, the more easily honey flows. Above its melting point, however, water has little effect on viscosity. Aside from water content, the composition of most types of honey also has little effect on viscosity. At , honey with 14% water content generally has a viscosity around 400 poise, while a honey containing 20% water has a viscosity around 20 poise. Viscosity increases very slowly with moderate cooling; a honey containing 16% water, at , has a viscosity around 2 poise, while at , the viscosity is around 70 poise. With further cooling, the increase in viscosity is more rapid, reaching 600 poise at around . However, while honey is viscous, it has low surface tension of 50–60 mJ/m2, making its wettability similar to water, glycerin, or most other liquids. The high viscosity and wettability of honey cause stickiness, which is a time-dependent process in supercooled liquids between the glass-transition temperature (Tg) and the crystalline-melting temperature.
Most types of honey are Newtonian liquids, but a few types have non-Newtonian viscous properties. Honeys from heather or manuka display thixotropic properties. These types of honey enter a gel-like state when motionless, but liquefy when stirred.
Because honey contains electrolytes, in the form of acids and minerals, it exhibits varying degrees of electrical conductivity. Measurements of the electrical conductivity are used to determine the quality of honey in terms of ash content.
The effect honey has on light is useful for determining the type and quality. Variations in its water content alter its refractive index. Water content can easily be measured with a refractometer. Typically, the refractive index for honey ranges from 1.504 at 13% water content to 1.474 at 25%. Honey also has an effect on polarized light, in that it rotates the polarization plane. The fructose gives a negative rotation, while the glucose gives a positive one. The overall rotation can be used to measure the ratio of the mixture. Honey may vary in color between pale yellow and dark brown, but other bright colors may occasionally be found, depending on the source of the sugar harvested by the bees.
Honey has the ability to absorb moisture directly from the air, a phenomenon called hygroscopy. The amount of water the honey absorbs is dependent on the relative humidity of the air. Because honey contains yeast, this hygroscopic nature requires that honey be stored in sealed containers to prevent fermentation, which usually begins if the honey's water content rises much above 25%. Honey tends to absorb more water in this manner than the individual sugars allow on their own, which may be due to other ingredients it contains.
Fermentation of honey usually occurs after crystallization, because without the glucose, the liquid portion of the honey primarily consists of a concentrated mixture of fructose, acids, and water, providing the yeast with enough of an increase in the water percentage for growth. Honey that is to be stored at room temperature for long periods of time is often pasteurized, to kill any yeast, by heating it above .
Like all sugar compounds, honey caramelizes if heated sufficiently, becoming darker in color, and eventually burns. However, honey contains fructose, which caramelizes at lower temperatures than glucose. The temperature at which caramelization begins varies, depending on the composition, but is typically between . Honey also contains acids, which act as catalysts for caramelization. The specific types of acids and their amounts play a primary role in determining the exact temperature. Of these acids, the amino acids, which occur in very small amounts, play an important role in the darkening of honey. The amino acids form darkened compounds called melanoidins, during a Maillard reaction. The Maillard reaction occurs slowly at room temperature, taking from a few to several months to show visible darkening, but speeds up dramatically with increasing temperatures. However, the reaction can also be slowed by storing the honey at colder temperatures.
Unlike many other liquids, honey has very poor thermal conductivity of 0.5 W/(m⋅K) at 13% water content (compared to 401 W/(m⋅K) of copper), taking a long time to reach thermal equilibrium. Due to its high kinematic viscosity honey does not transfer heat through momentum diffusion (convection) but rather through thermal diffusion (more like a solid), so melting crystallized honey can easily result in localized caramelization if the heat source is too hot or not evenly distributed. However, honey takes substantially longer to liquefy when just above the melting point than at elevated temperatures. Melting 20 kg of crystallized honey at can take up to 24 hours, while 50 kg may take twice as long. These times can be cut nearly in half by heating at ; however, many of the minor substances in honey can be affected greatly by heating, changing the flavor, aroma, or other properties, so heating is usually done at the lowest temperature and for the shortest time possible.
The average pH of honey is 3.9, but can range from 3.4 to 6.1. Honey contains many kinds of acids, both organic and amino. However, the different types and their amounts vary considerably, depending on the type of honey. These acids may be aromatic or aliphatic (nonaromatic). The aliphatic acids contribute greatly to the flavor of honey by interacting with the flavors of other ingredients.
Organic acids comprise most of the acids in honey, accounting for 0.17–1.17% of the mixture, with gluconic acid formed by the actions of glucose oxidase as the most prevalent. Minor amounts of other organic acids are present, consisting of formic, acetic, butyric, citric, lactic, malic, pyroglutamic, propionic, valeric, capronic, palmitic, and succinic, among many others.
Individual honeys from different plant sources contain over 100 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which play a primary role in determining honey flavors and aromas. VOCs are carbon-based compounds that readily vaporize into the air, providing aroma, including the scents of flowers, essential oils, or ripening fruit. The typical chemical families of VOCs found in honey include hydrocarbons, aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, esters, acids, benzenes, furans, pyrans, norisoprenoids, and terpenes, among many others and their derivatives. The specific VOCs and their amounts vary considerably between different types of honey obtained by bees foraging on different plant sources. By example, when comparing the mixture of VOCs in different honeys in one review, longan honey had a higher amount of volatiles (48 VOCs), while sunflower honey had the lowest number of volatiles (8 VOCs).
VOCs are primarily introduced into the honey from the nectar, where they are excreted by the flowers imparting individual scents. The specific types and concentrations of certain VOCs can be used to determine the type of flora used to produce monofloral honeys. The specific geography, soil composition and acidity used to grow the flora also have an effect on honey aroma properties, such as a "fruity" or "grassy" aroma from longan honey, or a "waxy" aroma from sunflower honey. Dominant VOCs in one study were linalool oxide, trans-linalool oxide, 2-phenylacetaldehyde, benzyl ethanol, isophorone, and methyl nonanoate.
VOCs can also be introduced from the bodies of the bees, be produced by the enzymatic actions of digestion, or from chemical reactions that occur between different substances within the honey during storage, and therefore may change, increase, or decrease over long periods of time. VOCs may be produced, altered, or greatly affected by temperature and processing. Some VOCs are heat labile, and are destroyed at elevated temperatures, while others can be created during non-enzymatic reactions, such as the Maillard reaction. VOCs are responsible for nearly all of the aroma produced by a honey, which may be described as "sweet", "flowery", "citrus", "almond" or "rancid", among other terms. In addition, VOCs play a large role in determining the specific flavor of the honey, both through the aromas and flavor. VOCs from honeys in different geographic regions can be used as floral markers of those regions, and as markers of the bees that foraged the nectars.
Honey is classified by its floral source, and divisions are made according to the packaging and processing used. Regional honeys are also identified. In the USA, honey is also graded on its color and optical density by USDA standards, graded on the Pfund scale, which ranges from 0 for "water white" honey to more than 114 for "dark amber" honey.
Generally, honey is classified by the floral source of the nectar from which it was made. Honeys can be from specific types of flower nectars or can be blended after collection. The pollen in honey is traceable to floral source and therefore region of origin. The rheological and melissopalynological properties of honey can be used to identify the major plant nectar source used in its production.
Most commercially available honey is a blend of two or more honeys differing in floral source, color, flavor, density, or geographic origin.
Polyfloral honey, also known as wildflower honey, is derived from the nectar of many types of flowers. The taste may vary from year to year, and the aroma and the flavor can be more or less intense, depending on which flowers are blooming.
Monofloral honey is made primarily from the nectar of one type of flower. Monofloral honeys have distinctive flavors and colors because of differences between their principal nectar sources. To produce monofloral honey, beekeepers keep beehives in an area where the bees have access, as far as possible, to only one type of flower. In practice a small proportion of any monofloral honey will be from other flower types. Typical examples of North American monofloral honeys are clover, orange blossom, sage, tupelo, buckwheat, fireweed, mesquite, sourwood, and blueberry. Some typical European examples include thyme, thistle, heather, acacia, dandelion, sunflower, lavender, honeysuckle, and varieties from lime and chestnut trees. In North Africa (e.g. Egypt), examples include clover, cotton, and citrus (mainly orange blossoms). The unique flora of Australia yields a number of distinctive honeys, with some of the most popular being yellow box, blue gum, ironbark, bush mallee, Tasmanian leatherwood, and macadamia.
Instead of taking nectar, bees can take honeydew, the sweet secretions of aphids or other plant sap-sucking insects. Honeydew honey is very dark brown in color, with a rich fragrance of stewed fruit or fig jam, and is not as sweet as nectar honeys. Germany's Black Forest is a well-known source of honeydew-based honeys, as well as some regions in Bulgaria, Tara (mountain) in Serbia, and Northern California in the United States. In Greece pine honey, a type of honeydew honey, constitutes 60–65% of honey production. Honeydew honey is popular in some areas, but in other areas, beekeepers have difficulty selling the stronger-flavored product.
The production of honeydew honey has some complications and dangers. This honey has a much larger proportion of indigestibles than light floral honeys, thus causing dysentery to the bees, resulting in the death of colonies in areas with cold winters. Good beekeeping management requires the removal of honeydew prior to winter in colder areas. Bees collecting this resource also have to be fed protein supplements, as honeydew lacks the protein-rich pollen accompaniment gathered from flowers.
Generally, honey is bottled in its familiar liquid form, but it is sold in other forms, and can be subjected to a variety of processing methods.
Countries have differing standards for grading honey.
In the US, honey grading is performed voluntarily based upon USDA standards. USDA offers inspection and grading "as on-line (in-plant) or lot inspection...upon application, on a fee-for-service basis." Honey is graded based upon a number of factors, including water content, flavor and aroma, absence of defects, and clarity. Honey is also classified by color, though it is not a factor in the grading scale.
The honey grade scale is:
India certifies honey grades based on additional factors, such as the Fiehe's test, and other empirical measurements.
High-quality honey can be distinguished by fragrance, taste, and consistency. Ripe, freshly collected, high-quality honey at should flow from a knife in a straight stream, without breaking into separate drops. After falling down, the honey should form a bead. The honey, when poured, should form small, temporary layers that disappear fairly quickly, indicating high viscosity. If not, it indicates honey with excessive water content of over 20%, not suitable for long-term preservation.
In jars, fresh honey should appear as a pure, consistent fluid, and should not set in layers. Within a few weeks to a few months of extraction, many varieties of honey crystallize into a cream-colored solid. Some varieties of honey, including tupelo, acacia, and sage, crystallize less regularly. Honey may be heated during bottling at temperatures of to delay or inhibit crystallization. Overheating is indicated by change in enzyme levels, for instance, diastase activity, which can be determined with the Schade or the Phadebas methods. A fluffy film on the surface of the honey (like a white foam), or marble-colored or white-spotted crystallization on a container's sides, is formed by air bubbles trapped during the bottling process.
A 2008 Italian study determined that nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy can be used to distinguish between different honey types, and can be used to pinpoint the area where it was produced. Researchers were able to identify differences in acacia and polyfloral honeys by the differing proportions of fructose and sucrose, as well as differing levels of aromatic amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine. This ability allows greater ease of selecting compatible stocks.
One hundred grams of honey provides about of energy with no significant amounts of essential nutrients. Composed of 17% water and 82% carbohydrates, honey has low content of fat, dietary fiber, and protein.
A mixture of sugars and other carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose (about 38%) and glucose (about 32%), with remaining sugars including maltose, sucrose, and other complex carbohydrates. Its glycemic index ranges from 31 to 78, depending on the variety. The specific composition, color, aroma, and flavor of any batch of honey depend on the flowers foraged by bees that produced the honey.
One 1980 study found that mixed floral honey from several United States regions typically contains the following:
A 2013 NMR spectroscopy study of 20 different honeys from Germany found that their sugar contents comprised:
The average ratio was 56% fructose to 44% glucose, but the ratios in the individual honeys ranged from a high of 64% fructose and 36% glucose (one type of flower honey; table 3 in reference) to a low of 50% fructose and 50% glucose (a different floral source). This NMR method was not able to quantify maltose, galactose, and the other minor sugars as compared to fructose and glucose.
Honey is a popular folk treatment for burns and other skin injuries. Preliminary evidence suggests that it aids in the healing of partial thickness burns 4–5 days faster than other dressings, and moderate evidence suggests that post-operative infections treated with honey heal faster and with fewer adverse events than with antiseptic and gauze. The evidence for the use of honey in various other wound treatments is of low quality, and firm conclusions cannot be drawn. Evidence does not support the use of honey-based products for the treatment of venous stasis ulcers or ingrown toenail. Several medical-grade honey products have been approved by the FDA for use in treating minor wounds and burns.
Honey has long been used as a topical antibiotic by practitioners of traditional and herbal medicine. Honey's antibacterial effects were first demonstrated by the Dutch scientist Bernardus Adrianus van Ketel in 1892. Since then, numerous studies have shown that honey has broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, although potency varies widely between different honeys. Due to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the last few decades, there has been renewed interest in researching the antibacterial properties of honey. Components of honey under preliminary research for potential antibiotic use include methylglyoxal, hydrogen peroxide, and royalisin (also called defensin-1).
For chronic and acute coughs, a Cochrane review found no strong evidence for or against the use of honey. For treating children, the systematic review concluded with moderate to low evidence that honey probably helps more than no treatment, diphenhydramine, and placebo at giving relief from coughing. Honey does not appear to work better than dextromethorphan at relieving coughing in children.
The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency recommends avoiding giving over-the-counter cough and common cold medication to children under six, and suggests "a homemade remedy containing honey and lemon is likely to be just as useful and safer to take", but warns that honey should not be given to babies because of the risk of infant botulism. The World Health Organization recommends honey as a treatment for coughs and sore throats, including for children, stating that no reason exists to believe it is less effective than a commercial remedy. Honey is recommended by one Canadian physician for children over the age of one for the treatment of coughs, as it is deemed as effective as dextromethorphan and more effective than diphenhydramine.
The use of honey has been recommended as a temporary intervention for known or suspected button cell battery ingestions to reduce the risk and severity of injury to the esophagus caused by the battery prior to its removal.
There is no evidence that honey is beneficial for treating cancer, although honey may be useful for controlling side effects of radiation therapy or chemotherapy used to treat cancer.
Consumption is sometimes advocated as a treatment for seasonal allergies due to pollen, but scientific evidence to support the claim is inconclusive. Honey is generally considered ineffective for the treatment of allergic conjunctivitis.
Although the majority of calories in honey is from fructose, honey does not cause increased weight gain and fructose by itself is not an independent factor for weight gain.
Honey is generally safe when taken in typical food amounts, but it may have various, potential adverse effects or interactions in combination with excessive consumption, existing disease conditions, or drugs. Included among these are mild reactions to high intake, such as anxiety, insomnia, or hyperactivity in about 10% of children, according to one study. No symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, or hyperactivity were detected with honey consumption compared to placebo, according to another study. Honey consumption may interact adversely with existing allergies, high blood sugar levels (as in diabetes), or anticoagulants used to control bleeding, among other clinical conditions.
People who have a weakened immune system may be at risk of bacterial or fungal infection from eating honey, although there is no high-quality clinical evidence that this occurs commonly.
Infants can develop botulism after consuming honey contaminated with "Clostridium botulinum" endospores.
Infantile botulism shows geographical variation. In the UK, only six cases were reported between 1976 and 2006, yet the U.S. has much higher rates: 1.9 per 100,000 live births, 47.2% of which are in California. While the risk honey poses to infant health is small, taking the risk is not recommended until after one year of age, and then giving honey is considered safe.
Mad honey intoxication is a result of eating honey containing grayanotoxins. Honey produced from flowers of rhododendrons, mountain laurels, sheep laurel, and azaleas may cause honey intoxication. Symptoms include dizziness, weakness, excessive perspiration, nausea, and vomiting. Less commonly, low blood pressure, shock, heart rhythm irregularities, and convulsions may occur, with rare cases resulting in death. Honey intoxication is more likely when using "natural" unprocessed honey and honey from farmers who may have a small number of hives. Commercial processing, with pooling of honey from numerous sources, is thought to dilute any toxins.
Toxic honey may also result when bees are proximate to tutu bushes ("Coriaria arborea") and the vine hopper insect ("Scolypopa australis"). Both are found throughout New Zealand. Bees gather honeydew produced by the vine hopper insects feeding on the tutu plant. This introduces the poison tutin into honey. Only a few areas in New Zealand (the Coromandel Peninsula, Eastern Bay of Plenty and the Marlborough Sounds) frequently produce toxic honey. Symptoms of tutin poisoning include vomiting, delirium, giddiness, increased excitability, stupor, coma, and violent convulsions. To reduce the risk of tutin poisoning, humans should not eat honey taken from feral hives in the risk areas of New Zealand. Since December 2001, New Zealand beekeepers have been required to reduce the risk of producing toxic honey by closely monitoring tutu, vine hopper, and foraging conditions within of their apiary. Intoxication is rarely dangerous.
In myths and folk medicine, honey was used both orally and topically to treat various ailments including gastric disturbances, ulcers, skin wounds, and skin burns by ancient Greeks and Egyptians, and in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine.
Honey collection is an ancient activity. A Mesolithic rock painting in a cave in Valencia, Spain, dating back at least 8,000 years, depicts two honey foragers collecting honey and honeycomb from a wild bees' nest. The figures are depicted carrying baskets or gourds, and using a ladder or series of ropes to reach the nest. Humans followed the greater honeyguide bird to wild beehives; this behavior may have evolved with early hominids. The oldest known honey remains were found in Georgia during the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline: archaeologists found honey remains on the inner surface of clay vessels unearthed in an ancient tomb, dating back between 4,700 and 5,500 years. In ancient Georgia, several types of honey were buried with a person for their journey into the afterlife, including linden, berry, and meadow-flower varieties.
In ancient Egypt honey was used to sweeten cakes, biscuits, and other foods. Ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern peoples also used honey for embalming the dead. In ancient Greece, honey was produced from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. In 594 BC beekeeping around Athens was so widespread that Solon passed a law about it: "He who sets up hives of bees must put them away from those already installed by another". Greek archaeological excavations of pottery located ancient hives. According to Columella, Greek beekeepers of the Hellenistic period did not hesitate to move their hives over rather long distances to maximize production, taking advantage of the different vegetative cycles in different regions. The spiritual and supposed therapeutic use of honey in ancient India was documented in both the Vedas and the Ayurveda texts.
In ancient Greek religion, the food of Zeus and the twelve Gods of Olympus was honey in the form of nectar and ambrosia.
In Hinduism, honey ("Madhu") is one of the five elixirs of life ("Panchamrita"). In temples, honey is poured over the deities in a ritual called "Madhu abhisheka". The "Vedas" and other ancient literature mention the use of honey as a great medicinal and health food.
In Jewish tradition, honey is a symbol for the new year, "Rosh Hashanah". At the traditional meal for that holiday, apple slices are dipped in honey and eaten to bring a sweet new year. Some "Rosh Hashanah" greetings show honey and an apple, symbolizing the feast. In some congregations, small straws of honey are given out to usher in the new year.
The Hebrew Bible contains many references to honey. In the Book of Judges, Samson found a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of a lion (14:8). Biblical law covered offerings made in the temple to God. The Book of Leviticus says that "Every grain offering you bring to the Lord must be made without yeast, for you are not to burn any yeast or honey in a food offering presented to the Lord" (2:11). In the Books of Samuel, Jonathan is forced into a confrontation with his father King Saul after eating honey in violation of a rash oath Saul has made. Proverbs 16:24 in the JPS Tanakh 1917 version says "Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul, and health to the bones." Book of Exodus famously describes the Promised Land as a "land flowing with milk and honey" (33:3). However, most Biblical commentators write that the original Hebrew in the Bible (דבש "devash") refers to the sweet syrup produced from the juice of dates ("silan"). In 2005 an apiary dating from the 10th century B.C. was found in Tel Rehov, Israel that contained 100 hives, estimated to produce half a ton of honey annually. Pure honey is considered kosher (permitted to be eaten by religious Jews), though it is produced by a flying insect, a non-kosher creature; eating other products of non-kosher animals is forbidden.
In Buddhism, honey plays an important role in the festival of "Madhu Purnima", celebrated in India and Bangladesh. The day commemorates Buddha's making peace among his disciples by retreating into the wilderness. According to legend, while he was there a monkey brought him honey to eat. On "Madhu Purnima", Buddhists remember this act by giving honey to monks. The monkey's gift is frequently depicted in Buddhist art.
The Christian New Testament () says that John the Baptist lived for a long of time in the wilderness on a diet of locusts and honey.
In Islam, an entire chapter (Surah) in the Qur'an is called "an-Nahl" (the Bees). According to his teachings ("hadith"), Muhammad strongly recommended honey for healing purposes. The Qur'an promotes honey as a nutritious and healthy food, saying: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14361 |
Hengist and Horsa
Hengist and Horsa are legendary brothers said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century. Tradition lists Hengist as the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.
According to early sources, Hengist and Horsa arrived in Britain at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet. For a time, they served as mercenaries for Vortigern, King of the Britons, but later they turned against him (British accounts have them betraying him in the Treachery
of the Long Knives). Horsa was killed fighting the Britons, but Hengist successfully conquered Kent, becoming the forefather of its kings.
A figure named Hengest, who may be identifiable with the leader of British legend, appears in the "Finnesburg Fragment" and in "Beowulf".
Legends of horse-associated founding brothers are attested among other Germanic peoples and appear in other Indo-European cultures. As a result, scholars have theorized a pan-Germanic mythological origin for Hengist and Horsa, stemming originally from divine twins found in Proto-Indo-European religion.
The Old English names "Hengest" and "Horsa" mean "stallion" and "horse" respectively.
The original Old English word for a horse was "eoh". "Eoh" derives from the Proto-Indo-European base "*ekwo", hence Latin "equus" which gave rise to the modern English words "equine" and "equestrian". "Hors" is derived from the Proto-Indo-European base "*kurs", to run, which also gave rise to "hurry, carry" and "current" (the latter two are borrowings from French). "Hors" eventually replaced "eoh", fitting a pattern elsewhere in Germanic languages where the original names of sacred animals are abandoned for adjectives; for example, the word "bear", meaning 'the brown one'. While the "Ecclesiastical History" and the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" refer to the brother as "Horsa", in the "History of the Britons" his name is simply "Hors". It has been suggested that "Horsa" may be a pet form of a compound name with the first element "horse".
In his 8th century "Ecclesiastical History", Bede records that the first chieftains among the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in England were said to have been Hengist and Horsa. He relates that Horsa was killed in battle against the Britons and was thereafter buried in East Kent, where at the time of writing a monument still stood to him. According to Bede, Hengist and Horsa were the sons of Wictgils, son of Witta, son of Wecta, son of Woden.
The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", which exists in nine manuscripts and fragments, compiled from the 9th to the 12th centuries, records that in the year 449 Hengist and Horsa were invited to Britain by Vortigern to assist his forces in fighting the Picts. They landed at Eopwinesfleot (Ebbsfleet), and went on to defeat the Picts wherever they fought them. Hengist and Horsa sent word home to Germany describing "the worthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land" and asked for assistance. Their request was granted and support arrived. Afterward, more people arrived in Britain from "the three powers of Germany; the Old Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes". The Saxons populated Essex, Sussex, and Wessex; the Jutes Kent, the Isle of Wight, and part of Hampshire; and the Angles East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria (leaving their original homeland, Angeln, deserted). The Worcester Chronicle (Chronicle D, compiled in the 11th century), and the Peterborough Chronicle (Chronicle E, compiled in the 12th century), include the detail that these forces were led by the brothers Hengist and Horsa, sons of Wihtgils, son of Witta, son of Wecta, son of Woden, but this information is not included in the A, B, C, or F versions.
In the entry for the year 455 the "Chronicle" details that Hengist and Horsa fought with Vortigern at Aylesford and that Horsa died there. Hengist took control of the kingdom with his son Esc. In 457, Hengist and Esc fought against British forces in Crayford "and there slew four thousand men". The Britons left the land of Kent and fled to London. In 465, Hengest and Esc fought again at the Battle of Wippedesfleot, probably near Ebbsfleet, and slew twelve British leaders. In the year 473, the final entry in the "Chronicle" mentioning Hengist or Horsa, Hengist and Esc are recorded as having taken "immense booty" and the Britons having "fled from the English like fire".
The 9th century "History of the Britons", attributed to the Briton Nennius, records that, during the reign of Vortigern in Britain, three vessels that had been exiled from Germany arrived in Britain, commanded by Hengist and Horsa. The narrative then gives a genealogy of the two: Hengist and Horsa were sons of Guictglis, son of Guicta, son of Guechta, son of Vouden, son of Frealof, son of Fredulf, son of Finn, son of Foleguald, son of Geta. Geta was said to be the son of a god, yet "not of the omnipotent God and our Lord Jesus Christ," but rather "the offspring of one of their idols, and whom, blinded by some demon, they worshipped according to the custom of the heathen." In 447 AD, Vortigern received Hengist and Horsa "as friends" and gave to the brothers the Isle of Thanet.
After the Saxons had lived on Thanet for "some time" Vortigern promised them supplies of clothing and other provisions on condition that they assist him in fighting the enemies of his country. As the Saxons increased in number the Britons became unable to keep their agreement, and so told them their assistance was no longer needed and they should go home.
Vortigern allowed Hengist to send for more of his countrymen to come over to fight for him. Messengers were sent to "Scythia", where "a number" of warriors were selected, and, with sixteen ships, the messengers returned. With the men came Hengist's beautiful daughter. Hengist prepared a feast, inviting Vortigern, Vortigern's officers, and Ceretic, his translator. Prior to the feast, Hengist enjoined his daughter to serve the guests plenty of wine and ale so that they would become drunk. At the feast Vortigern became enamored with her and promised Hengist whatever he liked in exchange for her betrothal. Hengist, having "consulted with the Elders who attended him of the Angle race," demanded Kent. Without the knowledge of the then-ruler of Kent, Vortigern agreed.
Hengist's daughter was given to Vortigern, who slept with her and deeply loved her. Hengist told him that he would now be both his father and adviser and that he would know no defeat with his counsel, "for the people of my country are strong, warlike, and robust." With Vortigern's approval, Hengist would send for his son and his brother to fight against the Scots and those who dwelt near the wall. Vortigern agreed and Ochta and Ebissa arrived with 40 ships, sailed around the land of the Picts, conquered "many regions," and assaulted the Orkney Islands. Hengist continued to send for more ships from his country, so that some islands where his people had previously dwelt are now free of inhabitants.
Vortigern had meanwhile incurred the wrath of Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre (by taking his own daughter for a wife and having a son by her) and had gone into hiding at the advice of his counsel. But at length his son Vortimer engaged Hengist and Horsa and their men in battle, drove them back to Thanet and there enclosed them and beset them on the western flank. The war waxed and waned; the Saxons repeatedly gained ground and were repeatedly driven back. Vortimer attacked the Saxons four times: first enclosing the Saxons in Thanet, secondly fighting at the river Derwent, the third time at Epsford, where both Horsa and Vortigern's son Catigern died, and lastly "near the stone on the shore of the Gallic sea," where the Saxons were defeated and fled to their ships.
After a "short interval" Vortimer died and the Saxons became established, "assisted by foreign pagans." Hengist convened his forces and sent to Vortigern an offer of peace. Vortigern accepted, and Hengist prepared a feast to bring together the British and Saxon leaders. However, he instructed his men to conceal knives beneath their feet. At the right moment, Hengist shouted "nima der sexa" (get your knives) and his men massacred the unsuspecting Britons. However, they spared Vortigern, who ransomed himself by giving the Saxons Essex, Sussex, Middlesex, and other unnamed districts.
Germanus of Auxerre was acclaimed as commander of the British forces. By praying, singing hallelujah and crying to God, the Saxons were driven to the sea. Germanus then prayed for three days and nights at Vortigern's castle and fire fell from heaven and engulfed the castle. Vortigern, Hengist's daughter, Vortigern's other wives, and all other inhabitants burned to death. Potential alternate fates for Vortigern are provided. However, the Saxons continued to increase in numbers, and after Hengist died his son Ochta succeeded him.
In his pseudo-historical twelfth century work "The History of the Kings of Britain", Geoffrey of Monmouth adapted and greatly expanded the account in the "History of the Britons". Hengist and Horsa appear in books 6 and 8:
Geoffrey records that three brigantines or long galleys arrived in Kent, full of armed men and commanded by two brothers, Hengist and Horsa. Vortigern was then staying at Dorobernia (Canterbury), and ordered that the "tall strangers" be received peacefully and brought to him. When Vortigern saw the company, he immediately observed that the brothers "excelled all the rest both in nobility and in gracefulness of person." He asked what country they had come from and why they had come to his kingdom. Hengist ("whose years and wisdom entitled him to precedence") replied that they had left their homeland of Saxony to offer their services to Vortigern or some other prince, as part of a Saxon custom in which, when the country became overpopulated, able young men were chosen by lot to seek their fortunes in other lands. Hengist and Horsa were made generals over the exiles, as befitted their noble birth.
Vortigern was aggrieved when he learned that the strangers were pagans, but nonetheless rejoiced at their arrival, since he was surrounded by enemies. He asked Hengist and Horsa if they would help him in his wars, offering them land and "other possessions." They accepted the offer, settled on an agreement, and stayed with Vortigern at his court. Soon after, the Picts came from Alba with an immense army and attacked the northern parts of Vortigern's kingdom. In the ensuing battle "there was little occasion for the Britons to exert themselves, for the Saxons fought so bravely, that the enemy, formerly victorious, were speedily put to flight."
In gratitude Vortigern increased the rewards he had promised to the brothers. Hengist was given "large possessions of lands in Lindsey for the subsistence of himself and his fellow-soldiers." A "man of experience and subtilty," Hengist told Vortigern that his enemies assailed him from every quarter, and that his subjects wished to depose him and make Aurelius Ambrosius king. He asked the king to allow him to send word to Saxony for more soldiers. Vortigern agreed, adding that Hengist could invite over whom he pleased and that "you shall have no refusal from me in whatever you shall desire."
Hengist bowed low in thanks, and made a further request, that he be made a consul or prince, as befitted his birth. Vortigern responded that it was not in his power to do this, reasoning that Hengist was a foreign pagan and would not be accepted by the British lords. Hengist asked instead for leave to build a fortress on a piece of land small enough that it could be encircled by a leather thong. Vortigern granted this and ordered Hengist to invite more Saxons.
After executing Vortigern's orders, Hengist took a bull's hide and made it into a single thong, which he used to encircle a carefully chosen rocky place (perhaps at Caistor in Lindsey). Here he built the castle of "Kaercorrei", or in Saxon "Thancastre": "thong castle."
The messengers returned from Germany with eighteen ships full of the best soldiers they could get, as well as Hengist's beautiful daughter Rowena. Hengist invited Vortigern to see his new castle and the newly arrived soldiers. A banquet was held in Thancastre, at which Vortigern drunkenly asked Hengist to let him marry Rowena. Horsa and the men all agreed that Hengist should allow the marriage, on the condition that Vortigern give him Kent.
Vortigern and Rowena were immediately married and Hengist was given Kent. The king was delighted with his new wife, but he incurred the hatred of his nobles and of his three sons.
As his new father-in-law, Hengist made further demands of Vortigern:
Vortigern agreed. Upon receiving the invitation, Octa, Ebissa, and another lord, Cherdich, immediately left for Britain with three hundred ships. Vortigern received them kindly, and gave them ample gifts. With their assistance, Vortigern defeated his enemies in every engagement. All the while Hengist continued inviting over yet more ships, adding to his numbers daily. Witnessing this, the Britons tried to get Vortigern to banish the Saxons, but on account of his wife he would not. Consequently, his subjects turned against him and took his son Vortimer for their king. The Saxons and the Britons, led by Vortimer, met in four battles. In the second, Horsa and Vortimer's brother, Catigern, slew one another. By the fourth battle, the Saxons had fled to Thanet, where Vortimer besieged them. When the Saxons could no longer bear the British onslaughts, they sent out Vortigern to ask his son to allow them safe passage back to Germany. While discussions were taking place, the Saxons boarded their ships and left, leaving their wives and children behind.
The victorious Vortimer was poisoned by Rowena, and Vortigern returned to the throne. At his wife's request he invited Hengist back to Britain, but instructed him to bring only a small retinue. Hengist, knowing Vortimer to be dead, instead raised an army of 300,000 men. When Vortigern caught word of the imminent arrival of the vast Saxon fleet, he resolved to fight them. Rowena alerted her father of this, who, after considering various strategies, resolved to make a show of peace and sent ambassadors to Vortigern.
The ambassadors informed Vortigern that Hengist had only brought so many men because he did not know of Vortimer's death and feared further attacks from him. Now that there was no threat, Vortigern could choose from among the men the ones he wished to return to Germany. Vortigern was greatly pleased by these tidings, and arranged to meet Hengist on the first of May at the monastery of Ambrius.
Before the meeting, Hengist ordered his soldiers to carry long daggers beneath their clothing. At the signal "Nemet oure Saxas" (get your knives), the Saxons fell upon the unsuspecting Britons and massacred them, while Hengist held Vortigern by his cloak. 460 British barons and consuls were killed, as well as some Saxons whom the Britons beat to death with clubs and stones. Vortigern was held captive and threatened with death until he resigned control of Britain's chief cities to Hengist. Once free, he fled to Cambria.
In Cambria, Merlin prophesied to Vortigern that the brothers Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon, who had fled to Armorica as children after Vortigern killed their brother and father, would return to have their revenge and defeat the Saxons. They arrived the next day, and, after rallying the dispersed Britons, Aurelius was proclaimed king. Aurelius marched into Cambria and burned Vortigern alive in his tower, before setting his sights upon the Saxons.
Hengist was struck by terror at the news of Vortigern's death and fled with his army beyond the Humber. He took courage at the approach of Aurelius and selected the bravest among his men to defend. Hengist told these chosen men not to be afraid of Aurelius, for he had brought less than 10,000 Armorican Britons (the native Britons were hardly worth taking into account), while there were 200,000 Saxons. Hengist and his men advanced towards Aurelius in a field called Maisbeli (probably Ballifield, near Sheffield), intending to take the Britons by surprise, but Aurelius anticipated them.
As they marched to meet the Saxons, Eldol, Duke of Gloucester, told Aurelius that he greatly wished to meet Hengist in combat, noting that "one of the two of us should die before we parted." He explained that he had been at the Treachery of the Long Knives, but had escaped when God threw him a stake to defend himself with, making him the only Briton present to survive. Meanwhile, Hengist was placing his troops into formation, giving directions, and walking through the lines of troops, "the more to spirit them up."
With the armies in formation, battle began between the Britons and Saxons, both sides shedding "no small loss of blood." Eldol focused on attempting to find Hengist, but had no opportunity to fight him. "By the especial favour of God," the Britons took the upper hand, and the Saxons withdrew and made for Kaerconan (Conisbrough). Aurelius pursued them, killing or enslaving any Saxon he met on the way. Realizing Kaerconan would not hold against Aurelius, Hengist stopped outside the town and ordered his men to make a stand, "for he knew that his whole security now lay in his sword."
Aurelius reached Hengist, and a "most furious" fight ensued, with the Saxons maintaining their ground despite heavy losses. They came close to winning before a detachment of horses from the Armorican Britons arrived. When Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, arrived, Eldol knew the day was won and grabbed Hengist's helmet, dragging him into the British ranks. The Saxons fled. Hengist's son Octa retreated to York and his kinsman Eosa to Alclud (Dumbarton).
Three days after the battle, Aurelius called together a council of principal officers to decide what would be done with Hengist. Eldol's brother Eldad, Bishop of Gloucester, said:
Consequently, Eldol drew Hengist out of the city and cut off his head. Aurelius, "who showed moderation in all his conduct," arranged for him to be buried and for a mound to be raised over his corpse, according to the custom of pagans. Octa and Eosa surrendered to Aurelius, who granted them the country bordering Scotland and made a firm covenant with them.
Hengist is briefly mentioned in "Prologue", the first book of the "Prose Edda", written by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century. In "Prologue", a euhemerized account of Germanic history is given, including that Woden put three of his sons in charge of Saxony. The ruler of eastern Saxony was Veggdegg, one of whose sons was Vitrgils, the father of Vitta, the father of Hengist.
On farmhouses in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, horse-head gables were referred to as "Hengst und Hors" as late as around 1875. Rudolf Simek notes that these horse-head gables can still be seen today, and says that the horse-head gables confirm that Hengist and Horsa were originally considered mythological, horse-shaped beings. Martin Litchfield West comments that the horse heads may have been remnants of pagan religious practices in the area.
A Hengest appears in line 34 of the "Finnsburg Fragment", which describes the legendary Battle of Finnsburg. In "Beowulf", a scop recites a composition summarizing the Finnsburg events, including information not provided in the fragment. Hengest is mentioned in lines 1082 and 1091.
Some scholars have proposed that the figure mentioned in both of these references is one and the same as the Hengist of the Hengist and Horsa accounts, though Horsa is not mentioned in either source. In his work "Finn and Hengest", J.R.R. Tolkien argued that Hengist was a historical figure, and that Hengist came to Britain after the events recorded in the "Finnsburg Fragment" and "Beowulf". Patrick Sims-Williams is more skeptical of the account, suggesting that Bede's Canterbury source, which he relied on for his account of Hengist and Horsa in the "Ecclesiastical History", had confused two separate traditions.
Several sources attest that the Germanic peoples venerated a divine pair of twin brothers. The earliest reference to this practice derives from Timaeus (c. 345 – c. 250 BC). Timaeus records that the Celts of the North Sea were especially devoted to what he describes as Castor and Pollux. In his work "Germania", Tacitus records the veneration of the Alcis, whom he identifies with Castor and Pollux. Germanic legends mention various brothers as founding figures. The 1st- or 2nd-century historian Cassius Dio cites the brothers Raos and Raptos as the leaders of the Astings. According to Paul the Deacon's 8th century "History of the Lombards", the Lombards migrated southward from Scandinavia led by Ibur and Aio, while Saxo Grammaticus records in his 12th century "Deeds of the Danes" that this migration was prompted by Aggi and Ebbi. In related Indo-European cultures, similar traditions are attested, such as the Dioscuri. Scholars have theorized that these divine twins in Indo-European cultures stem from divine twins in prehistoric Proto-Indo-European culture.
J. P. Mallory comments on the great importance of the horse in Indo-European religion, as exemplified "most obviously" by various mythical brothers appearing in Indo-European legend, including Hengist and Horsa:
In his 17th-century work "Monumenta Britannica", John Aubrey ascribes the Uffington White Horse hill figure to Hengist and Horsa, stating that "the White Horse was their Standard at the Conquest of Britain". However, elsewhere he ascribes the origins of the horse to the pre-Roman Britons, reasoning that the horse resembles certain Iron Age British coins. As a result, advocates of a Saxon origin of the figure debated with those favouring an ancient British origin for three centuries after Aubrey's findings. In 1995, using optically stimulated luminescence dating, David Miles and Simon Palmer of the Oxford Archaeological Unit assigned the Uffington White Horse to the late Bronze Age.
The Brothers Grimm identified Hengist with Aschanes, mythical first King of the Saxons, in their notes for legend number 413 of their "German Legends". Editor and translator Donald Ward, in his commentary on the tale, regards the identification as untenable on linguistic grounds.
Hengist and Horsa have appeared in a variety of media in the modern period. Written between 1616 and 1620, Thomas Middleton's play "Hengist, King of Kent" features portrayals of both Hengist and Horsa (as "Hersus"). On July 6, 1776, the first committee for the production of the Great Seal of the United States convened. One of three members of the committee, Thomas Jefferson, proposed that one side of the seal feature Hengist and Horsa, "the Saxon chiefs from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we assumed".
"Hengist and Horsus" appear as antagonists in the play "Vortigern and Rowena", which was touted as a newly discovered work by William Shakespeare in 1796, but was soon revealed as a hoax by William Henry Ireland. The pair have plaques in the Walhalla Temple at Regensburg, Bavaria, which honours distinguished figures of German history.
During World War II, two British military gliders took their names from the brothers: the Slingsby Hengist and the Airspeed Horsa. The 20th-century American poet Robinson Jeffers composed a poem titled "Ode to Hengist and Horsa".
In 1949, Prince Georg of Denmark came to Pegwell Bay in Kent to dedicate the longship "Hugin", commemorating the landing of Hengest and Horsa at nearby Ebbsfleet 1500 years earlier in 449 AD.
Though Hengist and Horsa are not referenced in the medieval tales of King Arthur, some modern Arthurian tales do link them. For example, in Mary Stewart's "Merlin Trilogy" it is King Arthur who kills Hengist. In Alfred Duggan's "Conscience of the King", Hengist plays a major role in the early career of Cerdic Elesing, legendary founder of the kingdom of Wessex. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14365 |
Hero System
The Hero System is a generic role-playing game system that was developed from the superhero RPG "Champions". After "Champions" fourth edition was released in 1989, a stripped-down version of its ruleset with no superhero or other genre elements was released as "The Hero System Rulesbook" in 1990. As a spinoff of "Champions", the "Hero System" is considered to have started with 4th edition (as it is mechanically identical to "Champions" 4th edition), rather than on its own with a 1st edition. However, the first three editions of the game are typically referred to as "Champions", rather than the Hero System, as the game for its first three editions was not sold as a universal toolkit, instead largely focusing on superheroes.
The "Hero System" is used as the underlying mechanics of other Hero Games role-playing games such as "Fantasy Hero", "Star Hero", and "Pulp Hero". It is characterized by point-based character creation and the rigor with which it measures character abilities. It uses only six-sided dice.
The "Hero System" uses "Champions"' key system features. Tasks are resolved using three six-sided dice and power effects (especially damage) are resolved by rolling a number of dice based on the power's strength.
Like "Champions", it uses a tool-kit approach to creating effects. While the system does have more typical features of many RPGs, such as a skill system, most abilities in the "Hero System" rules are listed as generic "powers". Most powers are meant to be able to model a vast number of potential effects. When creating a character, a player decides on what effect they wish to create, then constructs this effect by consulting the powers in the rulebook. Most powers have a set of modifiers that alter their base performance to more finely-tune their representation of the effect desired. Each such modifier makes the power more or less capable, and correspondingly more or less expensive to purchase with character points (the "currency" used to buy powers; see the section following). The result is that many effects are possible from exactly the same base power. For example, while systems such as Dungeons & Dragons would list a wide variety of separate ranged attack powers that deal damage (such as a fireball, a lightning bolt, an acid spray, a magic missile, and dozens more), the vast majority of such effects in the "Hero System" would be constructed out of the same base two powers, "Blast" or "Killing Attack".
The "Hero System" rules only define an ability's very basic mechanical effects—the player is the one who defines what the ability looks like when used. For example, if a player wishes to model the ability to project a jet of fire, they could choose the "Blast" power. However, the power's text has no mention of what it looks like or how it operates beyond some very base notes concerning damage and range. To make it a jet of fire, the player simply states that this Blast is a jet of fire. To some degree this is simply cosmetic. However, in the game, that power now is treated as a fire attack, with all that implies as decided by the gamemaster in each situation: it has the possibility of starting secondary fires; it looks, smells and sounds like a jet of fire; will not work in water; will terrify people with a phobia of fire; etc. The system does have mechanical effect alterations as well: a Blast could be altered by any number of power modifiers such as "Explosion", "Area of Effect", "Megascale", etc.: both advantages and disadvantages are available. As players are typically attempting to model something with at least a partial real-life analogue, limitations on a power are as much about making it more accurate a representation as they are making it less expensive to purchase (for example, to model a firearm, the limitation that it requires ammunition is expected, regardless of the fact that this happens to make a firearm cost fewer character points). The system also allows players to construct very exacting modifiers not specifically detailed in the base rules. For example, a player could define one or more powers as not working when the moon is full, or when it is Tuesday, or any other limitation that the player can imagine and the gamemaster feels is applicable.
Also like "Champions", the "Hero System" uses a point-based system for character creation. Instead of templates which define what a character is, how it performs mechanically, and the new abilities gained after a certain amount of play, a player is given a fixed number of points and allowed to create what they want. As this is a much more freeform process than in most games, the system encourages close involvement between players and gamemasters to ensure that all participants have the same understanding regarding the type of effects permitted, relative power levels, and the like.
Each player creates his character starting with a pool of points to buy abilities (such as the aforementioned "Energy Blast" and "Armor"), increase characteristics (such as "Strength" and "Intelligence") and buy skills (such as "Computer Programming" and "Combat Driving"). This pool can be increased by taking disadvantages for your character (such as being hunted by an enemy, a dependency of some sort or having people who depend on your character in some way). The initial pool, as well as the final pool size, is determined by the Game Master (GM), as well as the point limits on each individual ability.
Unlike the d20 System and many other game systems, experience awards are in the form of character points, which have the same value as those used in character creation and can be applied directly to the character's abilities upon receipt.
The powers system are the variables players can manipulate in the characters of Hero System. The powers in the Hero System are categorized roughly as follows:
Within each of these categories are multiple Powers that have more specialized effects. Thus for the movement category there are powers that can be used for Running, Swimming, Climbing, Leaping, Gliding, Flying, Tunneling through solid surfaces, and even Teleportation. For certain game genres there are even powers for traveling to other dimensions or moving faster than light.
Also, many Powers appear in at least two categories. For example, most Attack Powers are also Standard Powers, and Size Powers are basically just a subcategory of Body-Affecting Powers. Darkness is in three categories — Standard, Attack, and Sense-Affecting.
Each power has a base point cost for a given effect. This could be, for example, a certain number of points per six-sided-die (or "d6") of damage inflicted upon a foe.
Powers can have both advantages and limitations. Both are modifiers applied at different stages in calculating cost. These modifiers are typically changes of ±¼, but can range up to ±2 or even higher.
After the base cost is calculated, advantages are applied. These, which can make a power more useful, typically expand its effectiveness or make it more powerful, and thus make it more expensive. Once advantages are applied, the base cost becomes the Active Cost.
The Active Cost is calculated as an intermediate step as it is required to calculate certain figures, such as range, END usage, difficulty of activation rolls, and other things.
The formula for calculating the Active Cost is:
Once Active Cost is calculated, limitations are applied. These represent shortcomings in the power, lessened reliability or situations in which the power can not be used. Limitations are added separately as positive numbers, even though they are listed as negative.
The Real Cost of the power is then determined by:
The Real Cost is the amount the character must actually pay for the Power.
The rules also include schemes for providing a larger number of powers to a character for a given cost. These power frameworks reduce the cost either by requiring the group of powers to have a common theme as in an Elemental Control Framework, or by limiting the number of powers that can be active at one time with a Multipower Framework. Powers within a framework can share common limitations, further reducing the cost. A third type of power framework, the Variable Power Pool (VPP), trades thrift for flexibility. With it, powers can be arbitrarily chosen on the fly, granting enhanced in-game flexibility. The price is a premium on points, called the Control Cost. Additionally, it is marked as potentially unbalancing, so not all GMs will permit VPP's.
Elemental Controls were eliminated in the Sixth Edition.
Although several games based on what would become known as the "Hero System" were published in the 1980s, including "Champions", "Danger International", "Justice, Inc.", "Robot Warriors" and the original versions of "Fantasy Hero" and "Star Hero", each of the RPGs was self-contained, much as Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing games are. The "Hero System" itself was not released as an independent entity until 1990, as Steve Jackson Games' "GURPS" ("Generic Universal Roleplaying System") became more popular. As a joint venture between Hero Games and Iron Crown Enterprises, a stand-alone "Hero System Rulebook" was published alongside the fourth edition of Champions. The content was identical to the opening sections of the Champions rules, but all genre-related material was removed. Afterward, genre books such as "Ninja Hero" (written by Aaron Allston) and "Fantasy Hero" were published as sourcebooks for the "Hero System Rulebook" as opposed to being independent games.
With the collapse of the Hero-ICE alliance, the "Hero System" went into limbo for several years. The "Champions" franchise released a new version under the Fuzion system, which had been a joint development with R. Talsorian Games, called "Champions: the New Millennium". Although two editions were published, it was very poorly received by "Champions" fans. In 2001, a reconstituted Hero Games was formed under the leadership of Steven S. Long, who had written several books for the earlier version of the system. It regained the rights to the "Hero System" and to the "Champions" trademark.
In 2001, the Fifth Edition of the "Hero System Rulebook" was released, incorporating heavy revisions by Long. A large black hardcover, it was critically well received and attained a degree of commercial success. (Following problems with fragile bindings on Fourth Edition rulebooks, the planned binding for the larger Fifth Edition was tested using a clothes dryer.) The Fifth Edition is often referred to as "FREd", which is a backronym for "Fifth Rules Edition". The name actually comes from Steve S. Long's reply when asked what the standard abbreviation for the Fifth Edition would be: "I don't care if you call it 'Fred', as long as you buy it." This was made the unofficial nickname by several replies on the same board affirming it after a reply from Willpower, who coined the backronym by saying, "OK. FREd it is, "Fifth Rules Edition"!"
A revised version () was issued in 2004, along with "Hero System Sidekick", a condensed version of the rulebook with a cover price of under $10. Fans often call the revised Fifth Edition "Fiver," ReFREd," or "5ER" (from "Fifth Edition revised"; "Fiver" also alludes to "Watership Down"). This rulebook is so big (592 pages) that some fans speculated that it might be bulletproof, and it did indeed stop some bullets when tested by Hero Games staffers.
On February 28, 2008, Cryptic Studios purchased the "Champions" intellectual property, and sold the rights back to Hero Games to publish the 6th edition books. One of the new features will be to allow players to adapt their "Champions Online" characters to the pen-and-paper game.
In late 2009, Hero Games released the 6th Edition of the Hero System. The game has so far had a mostly positive reception, with little in the way of 'Edition Wars'. The largest rules change was the removal of Figured Characteristics (meaning that character stats that were previously linked intrinsically—such as Speed automatically increasing when sufficient amounts of Dexterity were purchased—were no longer connected, and instead bought entirely separately). Other, more minor rules changes include folding Armor and Force field into Resistant Defense and reestablishing Regeneration as a separate power. The rules were released in two volumes, with the first covering character creation in depth and the second describing campaigns and the running of games. The new genre book for Champions came out shortly thereafter, and a new "Fantasy Hero" was released in the summer of 2010. A new version of Sidekick was released in late 2009 under the title "The Hero System Basic Rulebook", while an "Advanced Player Guide" was published that had additional options for character creation. Other recent releases included a large book of pre-constructed Powers, a set of pre-generated Martial Arts styles, abilities and skills, a large bestiary, a new grimoire for Fantasy Hero and a three-volume set of villains for "Champions". A new edition of "Star Hero" was released in 2011, along with a second "Advanced Player Guide".
On 28 November 2011, Hero Games announced a restructuring, with Darren Watts and long-time developer Steven S. Long relinquishing their full-time statuses to work freelance. In late 2012 "Champions Complete" was released, which contained all of the core 6th edition rules as well as enough information to play a superhero campaign in a single 240-page book. This compact presentation reflected criticism that the 6th edition rules had become too unwieldy.
Hero Games now maintains an irregular release schedule, with a minimal staff, and has successfully used Kickstarter to raise funds for new projects. One of these new products, "Fantasy Hero Complete", was released in early 2015.
"Heromaker", an MS-DOS program, was distributed with some versions of Champions. Today, "Hero Designer" for the Fifth and Sixth Editions is available on several platforms, and is supported by numerous character packs and other extensions linked to Hero Games book releases. In late 2008, Hero released a licensed RPG for Aaron Williams's popular comic PS238 using a simplified version of the Fifth Edition rules. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14368 |
James L. Jones
James Logan Jones Jr. (born December 19, 1943) is a retired United States Marine Corps general and a former United States National Security Advisor. During his military career, he served as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1999 to January 2003, and Commander, United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2003 to 2006. Jones retired from the Marine Corps on February 1, 2007, after 40 years of service.
After retiring from the Marine Corps, Jones remained involved in national security and foreign policy issues. In 2007, Jones served as chairman of the Congressional Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, which investigated the capabilities of the Iraqi police and armed forces. In November 2007, he was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of State as special envoy for Middle East security. He served as chairman of the Atlantic Council from June 2007 to January 2009, when he assumed the post of National Security Advisor which he held until November 2010.
Jones was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 19, 1943. He is the son of Charlotte Ann (née Ground) and James L. Jones Sr., a decorated Marine in World War II who was an officer in the Observer Group and the commanding officer of its successor, the Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion. Having spent his formative years in France, where he attended the American School of Paris, he returned to the United States, graduating from Groveton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, then attended Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, from which he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1966. Jones, who is tall, played forward on the Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team.
In January 1967, Jones was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Upon completion of The Basic School at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, in October 1967, he was ordered to South Vietnam, where he served as a platoon and company commander with Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines. While overseas, he was promoted to first lieutenant in June 1968.
Returning to the United States in December 1968, Jones was assigned to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, where he served as a company commander until May 1970. He then received orders to Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., for duties as a company commander, serving in this assignment until July 1973. While at this post, he was promoted to captain in December 1970. From July 1973 until June 1974, he was a student at the Amphibious Warfare School, Marine Corps University, Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.
In November 1974, Jones received orders to report to the 3rd Marine Division at Marine Corps Base Camp Smedley D. Butler, Okinawa, Japan, where he served as the commander of Company H, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, until December 1975.
From January 1976 to August 1979, Jones served in the Officer Assignments Section at Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, D.C. During this assignment, he was promoted to major in July 1977. Remaining in Washington, his next assignment was as the Marine Corps liaison officer to the United States Senate, where he served until July 1984. In this assignment, his first commander was John McCain, then a United States Navy captain. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in September 1982.
Jones was selected to attend the National War College in Washington, D.C. Following graduation in June 1985, he was assigned to command the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, 1st Marine Division, at Camp Pendleton, California, from July 1985 to July 1987.
In August 1987, Jones returned to Headquarters Marine Corps, where he served as senior aide to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. He was promoted to colonel in April 1988, and became the Military Secretary to the Commandant of the Marine Corps in February 1989. During August 1990, Jones was assigned as the commanding officer of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (24th MEU) at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
During his tour with the 24th MEU, Jones participated in Operation Provide Comfort in Northern Iraq and Turkey. He was advanced to brigadier general on April 23, 1992. Jones was assigned to duties as deputy director, J-3, United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, on July 15, 1992. During this tour of duty, he was reassigned as chief of staff, Joint Task Force Provide Promise, for operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.
Returning to the United States, Jones was advanced to the rank of major general in July 1994 and was assigned as commanding general, 2nd Marine Division, Marine Forces Atlantic, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. Jones next served as director, Expeditionary Warfare Division (N85), Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, during 1996, then as the deputy chief of staff for plans, policies, and operations, Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, D.C. He was advanced to lieutenant general on July 18, 1996. His next assignment was as the military assistant to the Secretary of Defense.
On April 21, 1999, Jones was nominated for appointment to the grade of general and assignment as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps. He was promoted to general on June 30, 1999, and assumed the post on July 1, 1999. He served as commandant until January 2003, turning over the reins to General Michael Hagee.
Among other innovations during his tenure as Marine Corps commandant, Jones oversaw the Marine Corps' development of MARPAT camouflage uniforms, and the adoption of the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. These replaced M81 Woodland uniforms and the LINE combat system, respectively.
Jones assumed duties as the commander of United States European Command (EUCOM) on January 16, 2003, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) the following day. He was the first Marine Corps general to serve as SACEUR/EUCOM commander.
The Marine Corps had only recently begun to take on a larger share of high-level assignments in the Department of Defense. In December 2006, Jones was one of five serving Marine Corps four-star general officers who outranked the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James T. Conway in terms of seniority and time in grade — the others being Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace; former commandant General Michael Hagee; commander of United States Strategic Command General James E. Cartwright; and Assistant Commandant General Robert Magnus.
As SACEUR, Jones led the Allied Command Operations (ACO), comprising NATO's military forces in Europe, from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium. Jones relinquished command as SACEUR on December 7, 2006, and was succeeded by United States Army General John Craddock. Jones was reported to have declined an opportunity to succeed General John P. Abizaid as commander of United States Central Command. He retired from the Marine Corps on February 1, 2007.
Jones' personal decorations include (Foreign and non-U.S. personal and unit decorations are in order of precedence based on military guidelines and award date):
Following his retirement from the military, Jones became president of the Institute for 21st Century Energy, an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce; he also served as chair of the board of directors of the Atlantic Council of the United States from June 2007 until January 2009, when he assumed the post of National Security Advisor. Jones also served as a member of the guiding coalition for the Project on National Security Reform, as well as chairman of the Independent Commission on the Iraqi Security Forces. He was a member of the board of directors of The Boeing Company from June 21, 2007, to December 15, 2008, serving on the company's Audit and Finance Committees. Jones was also a member of the board of directors of Cross Match Technologies, a privately held biometric solutions company, from October 2007 to January 2009.
Jones was employed on the board of trustees of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan think-tank, from 2007 to 2008, and then began serving again in 2011. He was a member of the board of directors of Chevron Corporation from May 28, 2008 to December 5, 2008, serving on the Board Nominating and Governance and Public Policy Committees.
According to the first report since Jones re-entered government service in January 2009, Jones earned a salary and bonus of $900,000 from the US Chamber, as well as director fees of $330,000 from the Boeing Company and $290,000 from the Chevron Corporation.
Jones is an investor in the company Dynology operated by his son, Jim Jones. During the 2008 presidential Election, it operated e-mail communications for the McCain campaigh. Later, it developed military social media tools used in psychological operations developed during the Iraq war for commercial purposes used to influence the 2016 Presidential Election.
After leaving the Obama administration, Jones returned as a Fellow at the US Chamber in 2011.
The board of directors of General Dynamics has elected Jones to be a director of the corporation, effective August 3, 2011. Also, on January 13, 2012, Jones joined Deloitte Consulting LLP as a senior adviser who will work with Federal and commercial consulting clients within Deloitte's Department of Defense and Intel segments. In early 2013, Jones joined OxiCool Inc's Advisory Board.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Jones twice to be Deputy Secretary of State after Robert Zoellick resigned. He declined.
On May 25, 2007, Congress created an Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq to investigate for 120 days the capabilities of the Iraq armed forces and police. Jones served as chairman of that commission and reported on Congress on September 6, 2007, noting serious deficiencies in the Iraq Interior Ministry and in the Iraq National Police.
Rice appointed Jones as a special envoy for Middle East security on November 28, 2007, to work with both Israelis and Palestinians on security issues.
Jones serves as a Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), where he works on a variety of national security and energy-related issues. Jones is also a co-chair of BPC's Energy Project.
Jones is an Advisory Board Member of Spirit of America, a 501(c)(3) organization that supports the safety and success of Americans serving abroad and the local people and partners they seek to help.
On December 1, 2008, President-elect Obama announced Jones as his selection for National Security Advisor. The National Security Advisor is appointed by the president without confirmation by the United States Senate.
The selection surprised people because, as Michael Crowley reported, "The two men didn't meet until Obama's foreign policy aide, Mark Lippert, arranged a 2005 sit-down, and, as of this October, Jones had only spoken to Obama twice". Crowley speculated that Jones' record suggests he is "someone who, unencumbered by strong ideological leanings, can evaluate ideas dispassionately whether they come from left or right", and, "This is probably why Obama picked him". Jones was also picked because he is well respected and likely to possess the skills to navigate the other prestigious and powerful cabinet members.
Though he didn't know Gates especially well, both men shared long experience in the national security establishment (Gates was in the Air Force and previously headed the CIA). Jones and Clinton had a more direct connection from her tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The two were said to have particularly clicked at a 2005 conference on security policy in Munich. Jones hosted a small private dinner that included Clinton and South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, among others; at the end of the convivial evening, according to one person present, Jones followed Clinton out to her car to visit in private.
Jones assumed the post when Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009. He announced his resignation as National Security Advisor on October 8, 2010, and was succeeded by Thomas E. Donilon.
In March 2013, Jones was quoted comparing the conditions for Iranians in a US camp in Iraq with the conditions of detention for captives held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps.
While addressing the Iranian American Cultural Society of Michigan, Jones said Guantanamo captives "are treated far better" than the Iranian internees. Jones criticized other aspects of the Obama administration's policy on Iran. "Foreign Policy magazine" noted that Jones had not volunteered whether he had been paid for this speaking engagement.
Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who hired Jones as his military assistant, said that Jones has a placid demeanor and a "methodical approach to problems—he's able to view issues at both the strategic and tactical level".
Jones was also responsible for convincing country music artist Toby Keith that he should record and publish his popular concert hit "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16544 |
James Lovelock
James Ephraim Lovelock, (born 26 July 1919) is an independent scientist, environmentalist, and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system.
With a PhD in medicine, Lovelock began his career performing cryopreservation experiments on rodents, including successfully thawing frozen specimens. His methods were influential in the theories of cryonics (the cryopreservation of humans). He invented the electron capture detector, and using it, became the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. While designing scientific instruments for NASA, he developed the Gaia hypothesis.
In the 2000s, he proposed a method of climate engineering to restore carbon dioxide-consuming algae. He has been an outspoken member of Environmentalists for Nuclear, asserting that fossil fuel interests have been behind opposition to nuclear energy, citing the effects of carbon dioxide as being more harmful to the environment, and warning of global warming due to the greenhouse effect. He has written several environmental science books based upon the Gaia hypothesis since the late 1970s.
James Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City. Nell, his mother, won a scholarship to a grammar school but was unable to take it up, and started work at 13 in a pickle factory. His father, Tom, had served six months hard labour for poaching in his teens and was illiterate until attending technical college, and later ran a book shop. The family moved to London, where Lovelock's dislike of authority made him, by his own account, an unhappy pupil at Strand School.
Lovelock could not afford to go to university, something which he believes helped prevent him becoming overspecialised and aided the development of Gaia theory.
After leaving school Lovelock worked at a photography firm, attending Birkbeck College during the evenings, before being accepted to study chemistry at the University of Manchester, where he was a student of the Nobel Prize laureate Professor Alexander Todd. Lovelock worked at a Quaker farm before a recommendation from his professor led to him taking up a Medical Research Council post, working on ways of shielding soldiers from burns. Lovelock refused to use the shaved and anaesthetised rabbits that were used as burn victims, and exposed his own skin to heat radiation instead, an experience he describes as "exquisitely painful". His student status enabled temporary deferment of military service during the Second World War, but he registered as a conscientious objector. He later abandoned his conscientious objection in the light of Nazi atrocities, and tried to enlist in the armed forces, but was told that his medical research was too valuable for the enlistment to be approved.
In 1948, Lovelock received a PhD degree in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He spent the next two decades working at London's National Institute for Medical Research. In the United States, he has conducted research at Yale, Baylor College of Medicine, and Harvard University.
In the mid-1950s, Lovelock experimented with the cryopreservation of rodents, determining that hamsters could be frozen with 60% of the water in the brain crystallized into ice with no adverse effects recorded. Other organs were shown to be susceptible to damage. The results were influential in the theories of cryonics.
A lifelong inventor, Lovelock has created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which were designed for NASA in its planetary exploration program. It was while working as a consultant for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis, for which he is most widely known.
In early 1961, Lovelock was engaged by NASA to develop sensitive instruments for the analysis of extraterrestrial atmospheres and planetary surfaces. The Viking program, which visited Mars in the late 1970s, was motivated in part to determine whether Mars supported life, and many of the sensors and experiments that were ultimately deployed aimed to resolve this issue. During work on a precursor of this program, Lovelock became interested in the composition of the Martian atmosphere, reasoning that many life forms on Mars would be obliged to make use of it (and, thus, alter it). However, the atmosphere was found to be in a stable condition close to its chemical equilibrium, with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen, but with an overwhelming abundance of carbon dioxide. To Lovelock, the stark contrast between the Martian atmosphere and chemically dynamic mixture of the Earth's biosphere was strongly indicative of the absence of life on Mars. However, when they were finally launched to Mars, the Viking probes still searched (unsuccessfully) for extant life there. Further experiments to search for life on Mars have been carried out by further space probes, most recently NASA'S 2012 Curiosity Rover.
Lovelock had invented the electron capture detector, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of CFCs and their role in stratospheric ozone depletion. After studying the operation of the Earth's sulphur cycle, Lovelock and his colleagues, Robert Jay Charlson, Meinrat Andreae and Stephen G. Warren developed the CLAW hypothesis as a possible example of biological control of the Earth's climate.
Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. He served as the president of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) from 1986 to 1990, and has been an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford (formerly Green College, Oxford) since 1994.
As an independent scientist, inventor, and author, Lovelock worked out of a barn-turned-laboratory he called his "experimental station" located in a wooded valley on the Devon/Cornwall border in the South West England.
In 1988 he made an extended appearance on the Channel 4 television programme "After Dark", alongside Heathcote Williams and Petra Kelly, among others.
On 8 May 2012, he appeared on the Radio Four series "The Life Scientific", talking to Jim al-Khalili about the Gaia hypothesis. On the programme, he mentioned how his ideas had been received by various people, including Jonathan Porritt. He also mentioned how he had a claim for inventing the microwave oven. He later explained this claim in an interview with "The Manchester Magazine". Lovelock said that he did create an instrument during his time studying causes of damage to living cells and tissue, which had, according to him, "almost everything you would expect in an ordinary microwave oven". He invented the instrument for the purpose of heating up frozen hamsters in a way that caused less suffering to the animals, as opposed to the traditional way which involved putting red hot spoons on the animals' chest to heat them up. He believes that at the time, nobody had gone that far and made an embodiment of an actual microwave oven. However, he does not claim to have been the first person to have the idea of using microwaves for cooking.
After the development of his electron capture detector, in the late 1960s, Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. He found a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland and, in a partially self-funded research expedition in 1972, went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic aboard the research vessel RRS "Shackleton". He found the gas in each of the 50 air samples that he collected but, not realising that the breakdown of CFCs in the stratosphere would release chlorine that posed a threat to the ozone layer, concluded that the level of CFCs constituted "no conceivable hazard". He has since stated that he meant "no conceivable toxic hazard".
However, the experiment did provide the first useful data on the ubiquitous presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. The damage caused to the ozone layer by the photolysis of CFCs was later discovered by Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina. After hearing a lecture on the subject of Lovelock's results, they embarked on research that resulted in the first published paper that suggested a link between stratospheric CFCs and ozone depletion in 1974 (for which Sherwood and Molina later shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Paul Crutzen).
Drawing from the research of Alfred C. Redfield and G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Lovelock first formulated the hypothesis in the 1960s resulting from his work for NASA concerned with detecting life on Mars, the Gaia hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the Earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism. Named after the Greek goddess Gaia at the suggestion of novelist William Golding, the hypothesis postulates that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that acts to sustain life.
While the hypothesis was readily accepted by many in the environmentalist community, it has not been widely accepted within the scientific community as a whole. Among its most prominent critics were the evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins, Ford Doolittle, and Stephen Jay Gould, a convergence of opinion among a trio whose views on other scientific matters often diverged. These (and other) critics have questioned how natural selection operating on individual organisms can lead to the evolution of planetary-scale homeostasis.
In response to this Lovelock, together with Andrew Watson, published the computer model Daisyworld in 1983, that postulated a hypothetical planet orbiting a star whose radiant energy is slowly increasing or decreasing. In the non-biological case, the temperature of this planet simply tracks the energy received from the star. However, in the biological case, ecological competition between "daisy" species with different albedo values produces a homeostatic effect on global temperature. When energy received from the star is low, black daisies proliferate since they absorb a greater fraction of the heat, but when energy input is high, white daisies predominate since they reflect excess heat. As the white and black daisies have contrary effects on the planet's overall albedo and temperature, changes in their relative populations stabilise the planet's climate and to keep temperature within an optimal range despite fluctuations in energy from the star. Lovelock argued that Daisyworld, although a parable, illustrates how conventional natural selection operating on individual organisms can still produce planetary-scale homeostasis.
In Lovelock's 2006 book, "The Revenge of Gaia", he argues that the lack of respect humans have had for Gaia, through the damage done to rainforests and the reduction in planetary biodiversity, is testing Gaia's capacity to minimize the effects of the addition of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This eliminates the planet's negative feedbacks and increases the likelihood of homeostatic positive feedback potential associated with runaway global warming. Similarly the warming of the oceans is extending the oceanic thermocline layer of tropical oceans into the Arctic and Antarctic waters, preventing the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminating the algal blooms of phytoplankton on which oceanic food chains depend. As phytoplankton and forests are the main ways in which Gaia draws down greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, taking it out of the atmosphere, the elimination of this environmental buffering will see, according to Lovelock, most of the earth becoming uninhabitable for humans and other life-forms by the middle of this century, with a massive extension of tropical deserts. (In 2012, Lovelock distanced himself from these conclusions, saying he had "gone too far" in describing the consequences of climate change over the next century in this book.)
In his 2009 book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia", he rejects scientific models that disagree with the findings that sea levels are rising and Arctic ice is melting faster than the models predict. He suggests that we may already be beyond the tipping point of terrestrial climate resilience into a permanently hot state. Given these conditions, Lovelock expects human civilization will be hard-pressed to survive. He expects the change to be similar to the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum when atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 450 ppm, and the temperature of the Arctic Ocean was 23 °C.
Lovelock has become concerned about the threat of global warming from the greenhouse effect. In 2004 he caused a media sensation when he broke with many fellow environmentalists by pronouncing that "only nuclear power can now halt global warming". In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels that has the capacity to both fulfill the large scale energy needs of humankind while also reducing greenhouse emissions. He is an open member of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy.
In 2005, against the backdrop of renewed UK government interest in nuclear power, Lovelock again publicly announced his support for nuclear energy, stating, "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy". Although these interventions in the public debate on nuclear power are recent, his views on it are longstanding. In his 1988 book "The Ages of Gaia" he states: I have never regarded nuclear radiation or nuclear power as anything other than a normal and inevitable part of the environment. Our prokaryotic forebears evolved on a planet-sized lump of fallout from a star-sized nuclear explosion, a supernova that synthesised the elements that go to make our planet and ourselves.
In "The Revenge of Gaia" (2006), where he puts forward the concept of sustainable retreat, Lovelock writes:A television interviewer once asked me, "But what about nuclear waste? Will it not poison the whole biosphere and persist for millions of years?" I knew this to be a nightmare fantasy wholly without substance in the real world... One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States' Savannah River nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War. Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets... I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organisations devoted to decommissioning power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide.
In 2019 Lovelock said he thought difficulties in getting nuclear power going again were due to propaganda, that "the coal and oil business fight like mad to tell bad stories about nuclear", and that "the greens played along with it. There’s bound to have been some corruption there — I’m sure that various green movements were paid some sums on the side to help with propaganda".
Writing in the British newspaper "The Independent" in January 2006, Lovelock argued that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century. He has been quoted in "The Guardian" that 80% of humans will perish by 2100 AD, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. He further predicted, the average temperature in temperate regions would increase by as much as 8 °C and by up to 5 °C in the tropics, leaving much of the world's land uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming, with northerly migrations and new cities created in the Arctic. He predicted much of Europe will have become uninhabitable having turned to desert and Britain will have become Europe's "life-raft" due to its stable temperature caused by being surrounded by the ocean. He suggested that "we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can."
In a March 2010 interview with "The Guardian" newspaper, he said that democracy might have to be "put on hold" to prevent climate change. He continued:
Statements from 2012 portray Lovelock as continuing his concern over global warming while at the same time criticizing extremism and suggesting alternatives to oil, coal and the green solutions he does not support.
In an April 2012 interview, aired on MSNBC, Lovelock stated that he had been "alarmist", using the words "All right, I made a mistake," about the timing of climate change and noted the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and the book "The Weather Makers" as examples of the same kind of alarmism. Lovelock still believes the climate to be warming although the rate of change is not as he once thought, he admitted that he had been "extrapolating too far." He believes that climate change is still happening, but it will be felt farther in the future. Of the claims "the science is settled" on global warming he states: He criticizes environmentalists for treating global warming like a religion.
In the MSNBC article Lovelock is quoted as proclaiming: In a follow up interview Lovelock stated his support for natural gas; he now favors fracking as a low-polluting alternative to coal. He opposes the concept of "sustainable development", where modern economies might be powered by wind turbines, calling it meaningless drivel. He keeps a poster of a wind turbine to remind himself how much he detests them.
In "Novacene" (2019) Lovelock proposes that benevolent superintelligence may take over and save the ecosystem, and states that the machines will need to keep organic life around to keep the planet's temperature habitable for electronic life. On the other hand, if instead life becomes entirely electronic, "so be it: we played our part and newer, younger actors are already appearing on stage".
In September 2007, Lovelock and Chris Rapley proposed the construction of ocean pumps to pump water up from below the thermocline to "fertilize algae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom". The basic idea was to accelerate the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean by increasing primary production and enhancing the export of organic carbon (as marine snow) to the deep ocean. A scheme similar to that proposed by Lovelock and Rapley is already being independently developed by a commercial company.
The proposal attracted widespread media attention and criticism. Commenting on the proposal, Corinne Le Quéré, a University of East Anglia researcher, said "It doesn’t make sense. There is absolutely no evidence that climate engineering options work or even go in the right direction. I’m astonished that they published this. Before any geoengineering is put to work a massive amount of research is needed – research which will take 20 to 30 years". Other researchers have claimed that "this scheme would bring water with high natural "p"CO2 levels (associated with the nutrients) back to the surface, potentially causing exhalation of CO2". Lovelock subsequently said that his proposal was intended to stimulate interest and research would be the next step.
Sustainable retreat is a concept developed by James Lovelock in order to define the necessary changes to human settlement and dwelling at the global scale with the purpose of adapting to global warming and preventing its expected negative consequences on humans.
Lovelock thinks the time is past for sustainable development, and that we have come to a time when development is no longer sustainable. Therefore, we need to retreat. Lovelock states the following in order to explain the concept:
The concept of sustainable retreat emphasized a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs with lower levels and/or less environmentally harmful types of resources.
Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. His nomination reads:
Lovelock has been awarded a number of prestigious prizes including the Tswett Medal (1975), the American Chemical Society Award in Chromatography (1980), the World Meteorological Organization Norbert Gerbier–MUMM Award (1988), the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences (1990) and the Royal Geographical Society Discovery Lifetime award (2001). In 2006 he received the Wollaston Medal, the Geological Society of London's highest award, whose previous recipients include Charles Darwin . Lovelock was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the study of the Science and Atmosphere in the 1990 New Year Honours and a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) for services to Global Environment Science in the 2003 New Year Honours.
Lovelock married Helen Hyslop in 1942, and they had four children and lived together until 1989 when Helen died of multiple sclerosis. He fell in love with his second wife, Sandy, at the age of 73.
Lovelock believes that "you would find the life of me and my wife Sandy to be an unusually happy one in simple beautiful but unpretentious surroundings."
Lovelock became a centenarian in 2019.
In March 2012, the National Portrait Gallery unveiled a new portrait of Lovelock by British artist Michael Gaskell (2011). The collection also has two photographic portraits by Nick Sinclair (1993) and Paul Tozer (1994). The archive of the Royal Society of Arts has a 2009 image taken by Anne-Katrin Purkiss. Lovelock agreed to sit for sculptor Jon Edgar in Devon during 2007, as part of The Environment Triptych (2008) along with heads of Mary Midgley and Richard Mabey. A bronze head is in the collection of the sitter and the terracotta is in the archive of the artist.
Interviews | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16545 |
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946), better known as simply Joachim von Ribbentrop, was Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany from 1938 until 1945.
Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's notice as a well-travelled businessman with more knowledge of the outside world than most senior national socialists and as a perceived authority on foreign affairs. He offered his house Schloss Fuschl for the secret meetings in January 1933 that resulted in Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany. He became a close confidant of Hitler, to the disgust of some party members, who thought him superficial and lacking in talent. He was appointed ambassador to the Court of St James's, the royal court of the United Kingdom, in 1936 and then Foreign Minister of Germany in February 1938.
Before World War II, he played a key role in brokering the Pact of Steel (an alliance with Fascist Italy) and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact). He favoured retaining good relations with the Soviets, and opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union. In the autumn of 1941, due to American aid to Britain and the increasingly frequent "incidents" in the North Atlantic between U-boats and American warships guarding convoys to Britain, Ribbentrop worked for the failure of the Japanese-American talks in Washington and for Japan to attack the United States. He did his utmost to support a declaration of war on the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor. From 1941 onwards, Ribbentrop's influence declined.
Arrested in June 1945, Ribbentrop was convicted and sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials for his role in starting World War II in Europe and enabling the Holocaust. On 16 October 1946, he became the first of the Nuremberg defendants to be executed by hanging.
Joachim von Ribbentrop was born in Wesel, Rhenish Prussia, to Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop, a career army officer, and his wife Johanne Sophie Hertwig.
From 1904 to 1908, Ribbentrop took French courses at Lycée Fabert in Metz, the German Empire's most powerful fortress. A former teacher later recalled Ribbentrop "was the most stupid in his class, full of vanity and very pushy". His father was cashiered from the Prussian Army in 1908 for repeatedly disparaging Kaiser Wilhelm II for his alleged homosexuality, and the Ribbentrop family was often short of money.
For the next 18 months, the family moved to Arosa, Switzerland, where the children continued to be taught by French and English private tutors, and Ribbentrop spent his free time skiing and mountaineering.
Following the stay in Arosa, Ribbentrop was sent to Britain for a year to improve his knowledge of English.
Fluent in both French and English, young Ribbentrop lived at various times in Grenoble, France and London, before travelling to Canada in 1910.
He worked for the Molsons Bank on Stanley Street in Montreal, and then for the engineering firm M. P. and J. T. Davis on the Quebec Bridge reconstruction. He was also employed by the National Transcontinental Railway, which constructed a line from Moncton to Winnipeg. He worked as a journalist in New York City and Boston but returned to Germany to recover from tuberculosis. He returned to Canada and set up a small business in Ottawa importing German wine and champagne. In 1914, he competed for Ottawa's famous Minto ice-skating team and participated in the Ellis Memorial Trophy tournament in Boston in February.
When the First World War began later in 1914, Ribbentrop left Canada, which as part of the British Empire was at war with Germany, and moved to the neutral United States. On 15 August 1914, he sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey, on the Holland-America ship "The Potsdam", bound for Rotterdam, and on his return to Germany enlisted in the Prussian 12th Hussar Regiment.
Ribbentrop served first on the Eastern Front, then was transferred to the Western Front. He earned a commission and was awarded the Iron Cross. In 1918, 1st Lieutenant Ribbentrop was stationed in Istanbul as a staff officer. During his time in Turkey, he became a friend of another staff officer, Franz von Papen.
In 1919, Ribbentrop met Anna Elisabeth Henkell ("Annelies" to her friends), the daughter of a wealthy Wiesbaden wine producer. They were married on 5 July 1920, and Ribbentrop began to travel throughout Europe as a wine salesman. He and Annelies had five children together. In 1925 his aunt, Gertrud von Ribbentrop, adopted him, which allowed him to add the nobiliary particle "von" to his name.
In 1928, Ribbentrop was introduced to Adolf Hitler as a businessman with foreign connections who "gets the same price for German champagne as others get for French champagne". Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff, with whom Ribbentrop had served in the 12th Torgau Hussars in the First World War, arranged the introduction. Ribbentrop and his wife joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party on 1 May 1932. Ribbentrop began his political career that summer by offering to be a secret emissary between Chancellor of Germany Franz von Papen, his old wartime friend, and Hitler. His offer was initially refused. Six months later, however, Hitler and Papen accepted his help.
Their change of heart occurred after General Kurt von Schleicher ousted Papen in December 1932. This led to a complex set of intrigues in which Papen and various friends of president Paul von Hindenburg negotiated with Hitler to oust Schleicher. On 22 January 1933, State Secretary Otto Meissner and Hindenburg's son Oskar met Hitler, Hermann Göring, and Wilhelm Frick at Ribbentrop's home in Berlin's exclusive Dahlem district. Over dinner, Papen made the fateful concession that if Schleicher's government were to fall, he would abandon his demand for the Chancellorship and instead use his influence with President Hindenburg to ensure Hitler got the Chancellorship.
Ribbentrop was not popular with the Nazi Party's "Alte Kämpfer" (Old Fighters); they nearly all disliked him. British historian Laurence Rees described Ribbentrop as "the Nazi almost all the other leading Nazis hated". Joseph Goebbels expressed a common view when he confided to his diary that "Von Ribbentrop bought his name, he married his money and he swindled his way into office". Ribbentrop was among the few who could meet with Hitler at any time without an appointment, however, unlike Goebbels or Göring.
During most of the Weimar Republic era, Ribbentrop was apolitical and displayed no anti-Semitic prejudices. A visitor to a party Ribbentrop threw in 1928 recorded that Ribbentrop had no political views beyond a vague admiration for Gustav Stresemann, fear of Communism, and a wish to restore the monarchy. Several Berlin Jewish businessmen who did business with Ribbentrop in the 1920s and knew him well later expressed astonishment at the vicious anti-Semitism he later displayed in the Third Reich, saying that they did not see any indications he had held such views. As a partner in his father-in-law's champagne firm, Ribbentrop did business with Jewish bankers and organised the Impegroma Importing Company ("Import und Export großer Marken") with Jewish financing.
Ribbentrop became Hitler's favourite foreign-policy adviser, partly by dint of his familiarity with the world outside Germany but also by flattery and sycophancy. One German diplomat later recalled, "Ribbentrop didn't understand anything about foreign policy. His sole wish was to please Hitler". In particular, Ribbentrop acquired the habit of listening carefully to what Hitler was saying, memorizing his pet ideas and then later presenting Hitler's ideas as his own, a practice that much impressed Hitler as proving Ribbentrop was an ideal National Socialist diplomat. Ribbentrop quickly learned that Hitler always favoured the most radical solution to any problem and accordingly tendered his advice in that direction as a Ribbentrop aide recalled:
When Hitler said 'Grey', Ribbentrop said 'Black, black, black'. He always said it three times more, and he was always more radical. I listened to what Hitler said one day when Ribbentrop wasn't present: 'With Ribbentrop it is so easy, he is always so radical. Meanwhile, all the other people I have, they come here, they have problems, they are afraid, they think we should take care and then I have to blow them up, to get strong. And Ribbentrop was blowing up the whole day and I had to do nothing. I had to break – much better!'
Another factor that aided Ribbentrop's rise was Hitler's distrust of and disdain for Germany's professional diplomats. He suspected that they did not entirely support his revolution. However, the Foreign Office diplomats loyally served the government and rarely gave Hitler grounds for criticism. The Foreign Office diplomats were ultranationalist, authoritarian and anti-Semitic. As a result, there was enough overlap in values between both groups to allow most of them to work comfortably for the Nazis. Nonetheless, Hitler never quite trusted the Foreign Office and was on the lookout for someone to carry out his foreign policy goals.
The Nazis and Germany's professional diplomats shared a goal in destroying the Treaty of Versailles and restoring Germany as a great power. In October 1933, German Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath presented a note at the World Disarmament Conference announcing that it was unfair that Germany should remain disarmed by Part V of the Versailles treaty and demanded for the other powers to disarm to Germany's level or to Part V and allow Germany "Gleichberechtigung" ("equality of armaments"). When France rejected Neurath's note, Germany stormed out of the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference. It all but announced its intention of unilaterally violating Part V. Consequently, there were several calls in France that autumn for a preventive war to put an end to the Nazi regime while Germany was still more-or-less disarmed.
However, in November, Ribbentrop arranged a meeting between Hitler and the French journalist Fernand de Brinon, who wrote for the newspaper "Le Matin". During the meeting, Hitler stressed what he claimed to be his love of peace and his friendship towards France. Hitler's meeting with Brinon had a huge effect on French public opinion and helped to put an end to the calls for a preventive war. It convinced many in France that Hitler was a man of peace, who wanted to do away only with Part V of the Versailles Treaty.
In 1934, Hitler named Ribbentrop Special Commissioner for Disarmament. In his early years, Hitler's goal in foreign affairs was to persuade the world that he wished to reduce the defence budget by making idealistic but very vague disarmament offers (in the 1930s, disarmament described arms limitation agreements). At the same time, the Germans always resisted making concrete arms-limitations proposals, and they went ahead with increased military spending on grounds that other powers would not take up German arms-limitation offers. Ribbentrop was tasked with ensuring that the world remained convinced that Germany sincerely wanted an arms-limitation treaty, but he ensured that no such treaty was ever developed.
On 17 April 1934, French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou issued the so-called "Barthou note", which led to concerns on the part of Hitler that the French would ask for sanctions against Germany for violating Part V of the Versailles treaty. Ribbentrop volunteered to stop the rumoured sanctions and visited London and Rome. During his visits, Ribbentrop met with British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and asked them to postpone the next meeting of the Bureau of Disarmament in exchange for which Ribbentrop offered nothing in return other than promising better relations with Berlin. The meeting of the Bureau of Disarmament went ahead as scheduled, but because no sanctions were sought against Germany, Ribbentrop could claim a success.
In August 1934, Ribbentrop founded an organization linked to the Nazi Party called the "Büro Ribbentrop" (later renamed the "Dienststelle Ribbentrop"). It functioned as an alternative foreign ministry. The "Dienststelle Ribbentrop", which had its offices directly across from the Foreign Office's building on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin, had in its membership a collection of "Hitlerjugend" alumni, dissatisfied businessmen, former reporters, and ambitious Nazi Party members, all of whom tried to conduct a foreign policy independent of and often contrary to the official Foreign Office. The Dienststelle served as an informal tool for the implementation of the foreign policy of Hitler, consciously bypassing the traditional foreign policy institutions and diplomatic channels of the German Foreign Office. However, the Dienststelle also competed with other Nazi party units active in the area of foreign policy, such as the foreign organization of the Nazis (NSDAP/AO) led by Ernst Bohle and Nazi party office of foreign affairs (APA) led by Alfred Rosenberg. With the appointment of Ribbentrop to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in February 1938, the Dienststelle itself lost its importance, and about a third of the staff of the office followed Ribbentrop to the Foreign Office.
Ribbentrop engaged in diplomacy on his own, such as when he visited France and met Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. During their meeting, Ribbentrop suggested for Barthou to meet Hitler at once to sign a Franco-German non-aggression pact. Ribbentrop wanted to buy time to complete German rearmament by removing preventive war as a French policy option. The Barthou-Ribbentrop meeting infuriated Neurath, since the Foreign Office had not been informed.
Although the "Dienststelle Ribbentrop" was concerned with German relations in every part of the world, it emphasised Anglo-German relations, as Ribbentrop knew that Hitler favoured an alliance with Britain. As such, Ribbentrop greatly worked during his early diplomatic career to realize Hitler's dream of an anti-Soviet Anglo-German alliance. Ribbentrop made frequent trips to Britain, and upon his return he always reported to Hitler that most British people longed for an alliance with Germany. In November 1934, Ribbentrop met with George Bernard Shaw, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Lord Cecil and Lord Lothian. On the basis of Lord Lothian's praise for the natural friendship between Germany and Britain, Ribbentrop informed Hitler that all elements of British society wished for closer ties with Germany. His report delighted Hitler, causing him to remark that Ribbentrop was the only person who told him "the truth about the world abroad". Because the Foreign Office's diplomats were not so sunny in their appraisal of the prospects for an alliance, Ribbentrop's influence with Hitler increased. Ribbentrop's personality, with his disdain for diplomatic niceties, meshed with what Hitler felt should be the relentless dynamism of a revolutionary regime.
Hitler rewarded Ribbentrop by appointing him "Reich" Minister Ambassador-Plenipotentiary at Large. In that capacity, Ribbentrop negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) in 1935 and the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936.
Neurath did not think it possible to achieve the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. To discredit his rival, he appointed Ribbentrop head of the delegation sent to London to negotiate it. Once the talks began, Ribbentrop issued an ultimatum to Sir John Simon, informing him that if Germany's terms were not accepted in their entirety, the German delegation would go home. Simon was angry with that demand, and walked out of the talks. However, to everyone's surprise, the next day the British accepted Ribbentrop's demands, and the AGNA was signed in London on 18 June 1935 by Ribbentrop and Sir Samuel Hoare, the new British Foreign Secretary. The diplomatic success did much to increase Ribbentrop's prestige with Hitler, who called the day the AGNA was signed "the happiest day in my life". He believed it marked the beginning of an Anglo-German alliance, and ordered celebrations throughout Germany to mark the event.
Immediately after the AGNA was signed, Ribbentrop followed up with the next step that was intended to create the Anglo-German alliance, the "Gleichschaltung" (co-ordination) of all societies demanding the restoration of Germany's former colonies in Africa. On 3 July 1935, it was announced that Ribbentrop would head the efforts to recover Germany's former African colonies. Hitler and Ribbentrop believed that demanding colonial restoration would pressure the British into making an alliance with the "Reich" on German terms. However, there was a difference between Ribbentrop and Hitler: Ribbentrop sincerely wished to recover the former German colonies, but for Hitler, colonial demands were just a negotiating tactic. Germany would renounce its demands in exchange for a British alliance.
The Anti-Comintern Pact in November 1936 marked an important change in German foreign policy. The Foreign Office had traditionally favoured a policy of friendship with China, and an informal Sino-German alliance had emerged by the late 1920s. Neurath very much believed in maintaining Germany's good relations with China and mistrusted Japan. Ribbentrop was opposed to the Foreign Office's pro-China orientation and instead favoured an alliance with Japan. To that end, Ribbentrop often worked closely with General Hiroshi Ōshima, who served first as the Japanese military attaché and then as ambassador in Berlin, to strengthen German-Japanese ties, despite furious opposition from the Wehrmacht and the Foreign Office, which preferred closer Sino-German ties.
The origins of the Anti-Comintern Pact went back to the summer and autumn of 1935, when in an effort to square the circle between seeking a "rapprochement" with Japan and Germany's traditional alliance with China, Ribbentrop and Ōshima devised the idea of an anticommunist alliance as a way to bind China, Japan and Germany together. However, when the Chinese made it clear that they had no interest in such an alliance (especially given that the Japanese regarded Chinese adhesion to the proposed pact as way of subordinating China to Japan), both Neurath and War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg persuaded Hitler to shelve the proposed treaty to avoid damaging Germany's good relations with China. Ribbentrop, who valued Japanese friendship far more than that of the Chinese, argued that Germany and Japan should sign the pact without Chinese participation. By November 1936, a revival of interest in a German-Japanese pact in both Tokyo and Berlin led to the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact in Berlin. When the Pact was signed, invitations were sent to Italy, China, Britain and Poland to join. However, of the invited powers, only the Italians would ultimately sign. The Anti-Comintern Pact marked the beginning of the shift on Germany's part from China's ally to Japan's ally.
In 1935, Ribbentrop arranged for a series of much-publicised visits of First World War veterans to Britain, France and Germany. Ribbentrop persuaded the Royal British Legion and many French veterans' groups to send delegations to Germany to meet German veterans as the best way to promote peace. At the same time, Ribbentrop arranged for members of the "Frontkämpferbund", the official German World War I veterans' group, to visit Britain and France to meet veterans there. The veterans' visits and attendant promises of "never again" did much to improve the "New Germany's" image in Britain and France. In July 1935, Brigadier Sir Francis Featherstone-Godley led the British Legion's delegation to Germany. The Prince of Wales, the Legion's patron, made a much-publicized speech at the Legion's annual conference in June 1935 that stated that he could think of no better group of men than those of the Legion to visit and carry the message of peace to Germany and that he hoped that Britain and Germany would never fight again. As for the contradiction between German rearmament and his message of peace, Ribbentrop argued to whoever would listen that the German people had been "humiliated" by the Versailles Treaty, Germany wanted peace above all and German violations of Versailles were part of an effort to restore Germany's "self-respect". By the 1930s, much of British opinion had been convinced that the treaty was monstrously unfair and unjust to Germany, so as a result, many in Britain, such as Thomas Jones, Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, were very open to Ribbentrop's message that European peace would be restored if only the Treaty of Versailles could be done away with.
In August 1936, Hitler appointed Ribbentrop ambassador to the United Kingdom with orders to negotiate an Anglo-German alliance. Ribbentrop arrived to take up his position in October 1936. Ribbentrop's time in London was marked by an endless series of social gaffes and blunders that worsened his already-poor relations with the British Foreign Office.
Invited to stay as a house guest of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry at Wynyard Hall in County Durham, in November 1936, he was taken to a service in Durham Cathedral, and the hymn "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" was announced. As the organ played the opening bars, identical to the German national anthem, Ribbentrop gave the Nazi salute and had to be restrained by his host.
At his wife's suggestion, Ribbentrop hired the Berlin interior decorator Martin Luther to assist with his move to London and help realise the design of the new German embassy that Ribbentrop had built there (he felt that the existing embassy was insufficiently grand). Luther proved to be a master intriguer and became Ribbentrop's favourite hatchet man.
Ribbentrop did not understand the limited role in government exercised by 20th-century British monarchs. He thought that King Edward VIII, Emperor of India, could dictate British foreign policy if he wanted. He convinced Hitler that he had Edward's support, but that was as much a delusion as his belief that he had impressed British society. In fact, Ribbentrop often displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of British politics and society. During the abdication crisis in December 1936, Ribbentrop reported to Berlin that it had been precipitated by an anti-German Jewish-Masonic-reactionary conspiracy to depose Edward, whom Ribbentrop represented as a staunch friend of Germany, and that civil war would soon break out in Britain between supporters of Edward and those of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Ribbentrop's civil war predictions were greeted with incredulity by the British people who heard them.
Ribbentrop had a habit of summoning tailors from the best British firms, making them wait for hours and then sending them away without seeing him but with instructions to return the next day, only to repeat the process. That did immense damage to his reputation in British high society, as London's tailors retaliated by telling all their well-off clients that Ribbentrop was impossible to deal with. In an interview, his secretary Reinhard Spitzy stated, "He [Ribbentrop] behaved very stupidly and very pompously and the British don't like pompous people". In the same interview, Spitzy called Ribbentrop "pompous, conceited and not too intelligent" and stated he was an utterly insufferable man to work for.
In addition, Ribbentrop chose to spend as little time as possible in London to stay close to Hitler, which irritated the British Foreign Office immensely, as Ribbentrop's frequent absences prevented the handling of many routine diplomatic matters. ("Punch" referred to him as the ""Wandering Aryan"" for his frequent trips home.) As Ribbentrop alienated more and more people in Britain, "Reichsmarschall" Hermann Göring warned Hitler that Ribbentrop was a "stupid ass". Hitler dismissed Göring's concerns: "But after all, he knows quite a lot of important people in England." That remark led Göring to reply ""Mein Führer", that may be right, but the bad thing is, they know "him"".
In February 1937, Ribbentrop committed a notable social gaffe by unexpectedly greeting George VI with the "German greeting", a stiff-armed Nazi salute: the gesture nearly knocked over the King, who was walking forward to shake Ribbentrop's hand at the time. Ribbentrop further compounded the damage to his image and caused a minor crisis in Anglo-German relations by insisting that henceforward all German diplomats were to greet heads of state by giving and receiving the stiff-arm fascist salute. The crisis was resolved when Neurath pointed out to Hitler that under Ribbentrop's rule, if the Soviet ambassador were to give the Communist clenched-fist salute, Hitler would be obliged to return it. On Neurath's advice, Hitler disavowed Ribbentrop's demand that King George receive and give the "German greeting".
Most of Ribbentrop's time was spent demanding that Britain either sign the Anti-Comintern Pact or return the former German colonies in Africa. However, he also devoted considerable time to courting what he called the "men of influence" as the best way to achieve an Anglo-German alliance. He believed that the British aristocracy comprised some sort of secret society that ruled from behind the scenes, and that if he could befriend enough members of Britain's "secret government" he could bring about the alliance. Almost all of the initially-favourable reports Ribbentrop provided to Berlin about the alliance's prospects were based on friendly remarks about the "New Germany" that came from British aristocrats such as Lord Londonderry and Lord Lothian. The rather cool reception that Ribbentrop received from British Cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats did not make much of an impression on him at first. This British governmental view, summarised by Robert, Viscount Cranborne, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was that Ribbentrop always was a second-rate man.
In 1935, Sir Eric Phipps, the British Ambassador to Germany, complained to London about Ribbentrop's British associates in the Anglo-German Fellowship. He felt that they created "false German hopes as in regards to British friendship and caused a reaction against it in England, where public opinion is very naturally hostile to the Nazi regime and its methods". In September 1937, the British Consul in Munich, writing about the group that Ribbentrop had brought to the Nuremberg Rally, reported that there were some "serious persons of standing among them" but that an equal number of Ribbentrop's British contingent were "eccentrics and few, if any, could be called representatives of serious English thought, either political or social, while they most certainly lacked any political or social influence in England". In June 1937, when Lord Mount Temple, the Chairman of the Anglo-German Fellowship, asked to see Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after meeting Hitler in a visit arranged by Ribbentrop, Robert Vansittart, the British Foreign Office's Permanent Under-Secretary of State, wrote a memo stating that:
The P.M. [Prime Minister] should certainly not see Lord Mount Temple – nor should the S[ecretary] of S[tate]. We really must put a stop to this eternal butting in of amateurs – and Lord Mount Temple is a particularly silly one. These activities – which are practically confined to Germany – render impossible the task of diplomacy.
After Vansittart's memo, members of the Anglo-German Fellowship ceased to see Cabinet ministers after they went on Ribbentrop-arranged trips to Germany.
In February 1937, before a meeting with the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Halifax, Ribbentrop suggested to Hitler for Germany, Italy and Japan to begin a worldwide propaganda campaign with the aim of forcing Britain to return the former German colonies in Africa. Hitler turned down the idea down, but nonetheless during his meeting with Lord Halifax, Ribbentrop spent much of the meeting demanding for Britain to sign an alliance with Germany and to return the former German colonies. The German historian Klaus Hildebrand noted that as early as the Ribbentrop–Halifax meeting the differing foreign policy views of Hitler and Ribbentrop were starting to emerge, with Ribbentrop more interested in restoring the pre-1914 German "Imperium" in Africa than the conquest of Eastern Europe. Following the lead of Andreas Hillgruber, who argued that Hitler had a "Stufenplan" (stage by stage plan) for world conquest, Hildebrand argued that Ribbentrop may not have fully understood what Hitler's "Stufenplan" was or that in pressing so hard for colonial restoration, he was trying to score a personal success that might improve his standing with Hitler. In March 1937, Ribbentrop attracted much adverse comment in the British press when he gave a speech at the Leipzig Trade Fair in Leipzig in which he declared that German economic prosperity would be satisfied "through the restoration of the former German colonial possessions, or by means of the German people's own strength." The implied threat that if colonial restoration did not occur, the Germans would take back their former colonies by force attracted a great deal of hostile commentary on the inappropriateness of an ambassador threatening his host country in such a manner.
Ribbentrop's negotiating style, a mix of bullying bluster and icy coldness coupled with lengthy monologues praising Hitler, alienated many. The American historian Gordon A. Craig once observed that of all the voluminous memoir literature of the diplomatic scene of 1930s Europe, there are only two positive references to Ribbentrop. Of the two references, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, the German military attaché in London, commented that Ribbentrop had been a brave soldier in World War I, and the wife of the Italian Ambassador to Germany, Elisabetta Cerruti, called Ribbentrop "one of the most diverting of the Nazis". In both cases, the praise was limited, with Cerruti going on to write that only in the Third Reich was it possible for someone as superficial as Ribbentrop to rise to be a minister of foreign affairs, and Geyr von Schweppenburg called Ribbentrop an absolute disaster as ambassador in London. The British historian/television producer Laurence Rees noted for his 1997 series "" that every single person interviewed for the series who knew Ribbentrop expressed a passionate hatred for him. One German diplomat, Herbert Richter, called Ribbentrop "lazy and worthless", while another, Manfred von Schröder, was quoted as saying Ribbentrop was "vain and ambitious". Rees concluded, "No other Nazi was so hated by his colleagues".
In November 1937, Ribbentrop was placed in a highly-embarrassing situation since his forceful advocacy of the return of the former German colonies led British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos to offer to open talks on returning the former German colonies in return for which the Germans would make binding commitments to respect their borders in Central and Eastern Europe. Since Hitler was not interested in obtaining the former colonies, especially if the price was a brake on expansion into Eastern Europe, Ribbentrop was forced to turn down the Anglo-French offer that he had largely brought about. Immediately after turning down the Anglo-French offer on colonial restoration, Ribbentrop, for reasons of pure malice, ordered the "Reichskolonialbund" to increase the agitation for the former German colonies, a move that exasperated both the Foreign Office and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ribbentrop's inability to achieve the alliance that he had been sent to conclude frustrated him, as he feared it could cost him Hitler's favour, and it made him a bitter Anglophobe. As the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, noted in his diary in late 1937, Ribbentrop had come to hate Britain with all the "fury of a woman scorned". Ribbentrop and Hitler, for that matter, never understood that British foreign policy aimed at the appeasement of Germany, not an alliance with it.
When Ribbentrop traveled to Rome in November 1937 to oversee Italy's adhesion to the Anti-Comintern Pact, he made clear to his hosts that the pact was really directed against Britain. As Ciano noted in his diary, the Anti-Comintern Pact was "anti-Communist in theory, but in fact unmistakably anti-British". Believing himself to be in a state of disgrace with Hitler over his failure to achieve the British alliance, Ribbentrop spent December 1937 in a state of depression and, together with his wife, wrote two lengthy documents for Hitler that denounced Britain. In the first report to Hitler, which was presented on 2 January 1938, Ribbentrop stated that "England is our most dangerous enemy". In the same report, Ribbentrop advised Hitler to abandon the idea of a British alliance and instead embrace the idea of an alliance of Germany, Japan and Italy to destroy the British Empire.
Ribbentrop wrote in his "Memorandum for the "Führer"" that "a change in the status quo in the East to Germany's advantage can only be accomplished by force" and that the best way to achieve it was to build a global anti-British alliance system. Besides converting the Anti-Comintern Pact into an anti-British military alliance, Ribbentrop argued that German foreign policy should work to "winning over all states whose interests conform directly or indirectly to ours." By the last statement, Ribbentrop clearly implied that the Soviet Union should be included in the anti-British alliance system he had proposed.
In early 1938, Hitler asserted his control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, in part by sacking Neurath. On 4 February 1938, Ribbentrop succeeded Neurath as Foreign Minister. Ribbentrop's appointment has always generally as an indication that German foreign policy was moving in a more radical direction. In contrast to Neurath's cautious and less bellicose nature, Ribbentrop unequivocally supported war in 1938 and 1939.
Ribbentrop's time as Foreign Minister can be divided into three periods. In the first, from 1938 to 1939, he tried to persuade other states to align themselves with Germany for the coming war. In the second, from 1939 to 1943, Ribbentrop attempted to persuade other states to enter the war on Germany's side or at least to maintain pro-German neutrality. He was also involved in Operation Willi, an attempt to convince the former King Edward VIII to lobby his brother, now the king, on behalf of Germany. Many historians have suggested that Hitler was prepared to reinstate the Duke of Windsor as king in the hope of establishing a fascist Britain. If Edward would agree to work openly with the Third Reich, he would be given financial assistance and would hopefully come to be a "compliant" king. Reportedly, 50 million Swiss francs were set aside for that purpose. The plan was never concluded.
In the final phase, from 1943 to 1945, he had the task of trying to keep Germany's allies from leaving her side. During the course of all three periods, Ribbentrop met frequently with leaders and diplomats from Italy, Japan, Romania, Spain, Bulgaria, and Hungary. During all of that time, Ribbentrop feuded with various other Nazi leaders. As time went by, Ribbentrop started to oust the Foreign Office's old diplomats from their senior positions and replace them with men from the "Dienststelle". As early as 1938, 32% of the offices in the Foreign Ministry were held by men who previously served in the "Dienststelle".
One of Ribbentrop's first acts as Foreign Minister was to achieve a total volte-face in Germany's Far Eastern policies. Ribbentrop was instrumental in February 1938 in persuading Hitler to recognize the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and to renounce German claims upon its former colonies in the Pacific, which were now held by Japan. By April 1938, Ribbentrop had ended all German arms shipments to China and had all of the German Army officers serving with the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek recalled, with the threat that the families of the officers in China would be sent to concentration camps if the officers did not return to Germany immediately. In return, the Germans received little thanks from the Japanese, who refused to allow any new German businesses to be set up in the part of China they had occupied and continued with their policy of attempting to exclude all existing German and all other Western businesses from Japanese-occupied China. At the same time, the end of the informal Sino-German alliance led Chiang to terminate all concessions and contracts held by German companies in Kuomintang China.
Ernst von Weizsäcker, the State Secretary from 1938 to 1943, opposed the general trend in German foreign policy towards attacking Czechoslovakia and feared that it might cause a general war that Germany would lose. Weizsäcker had no moral objections to the idea of destroying Czechoslovakia but opposed only the timing of the attack. He favoured the idea of a "chemical" destruction of Czechoslovakia in which Germany, Hungary and Poland would close their frontiers to destabilise Czechoslovakia economically. He strongly disliked Ribbentrop's idea of a "mechanical" destruction of Czechoslovakia by war, which he saw as too risky. However, despite all of their reservations and fears about Ribbentrop, whom they saw as recklessly seeking to plunge Germany into a general war before the "Reich" was ready, neither Weizsäcker nor any of the other professional diplomats were prepared to confront their chief.
Before the Anglo-German summit at Berchtesgaden on 15 September 1938, the British Ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, and Weizsäcker worked out a private arrangement for Hitler and Chamberlain to meet with no advisers present as a way of excluding the ultrahawkish Ribbentrop from attending the talks. Hitler's interpreter, Paul Schmidt, later recalled that it was "felt that our Foreign Minister would prove a disturbing element" at the Berchtesgaden summit. In a moment of pique at his exclusion from the Chamberlain-Hitler meeting, Ribbentrop refused to hand over Schmidt's notes of the summit to Chamberlain, a move that caused much annoyance on the British side. Ribbentrop spent the last weeks of September 1938 looking forward very much to the German-Czechoslovak war that he expected to break out on 1 October 1938. Ribbentrop regarded the Munich Agreement as a diplomatic defeat for Germany, as it deprived Germany of the opportunity to wage the war to destroy Czechoslovakia that Ribbentrop wanted to see. The Sudetenland issue, which was the ostensible subject of the German-Czechoslovak dispute, had been a pretext for German aggression. During the Munich Conference, Ribbentrop spent much of his time brooding unhappily in the corners. Ribbentrop told the head of Hitler's Press Office, Fritz Hesse, that the Munich Agreement was "first-class stupidity... All it means is that we have to fight the English in a year, when they will be better armed... It would have been much better if war had come now". Like Hitler, Ribbentrop was determined that in the next crisis, Germany would not have its professed demands met in another Munich-type summit and that the next crisis to be caused by Germany would result in the war that Chamberlain had "cheated" the Germans out of at Munich.
In the aftermath of Munich, Hitler was in a violently anti-British mood caused in part by his rage over being "cheated" out of the war to "annihilate" Czechoslovakia that he very much wanted to have in 1938 and in part by his realisation that Britain would neither ally itself nor stand aside in regard to Germany's ambition to dominate Europe. As a consequence, Britain was considered after Munich to be the main enemy of the "Reich", and as a result, the influence of ardently Anglophobic Ribbentrop correspondingly rose with Hitler.
Partly for economic reasons, and partly out of fury over being "cheated" out of war in 1938, Hitler decided to destroy the rump state of Czecho-Slovakia, as Czechoslovakia had been renamed in October 1938, early in 1939. Ribbentrop played an important role in setting in motion the crisis that was to result in the end of Czecho-Slovakia by ordering German diplomats in Bratislava to contact Father Jozef Tiso, the premier of the Slovak regional government, and pressure him to declare independence from Prague. When Tiso proved reluctant to do so on the grounds that the autonomy that had existed since October 1938 was sufficient for him and that to completely sever links with the Czechs would leave Slovakia open to being annexed by Hungary, Ribbentrop had the German embassy in Budapest contact the regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy. Horthy was advised that the Germans might be open to having more of Hungary restored to its former borders and that the Hungarians should best start concentrating troops on their northern border at once if they were serious about changing their frontiers. Upon hearing of the Hungarian mobilization, Tiso was presented with the choice of either declaring independence, with the understanding that the new state would be in the German sphere of influence, or seeing all of Slovakia absorbed into Hungary. As a result, Tiso had the Slovak regional government issue a declaration of independence on 14 March 1939; the ensuing crisis in Czech-Slovak relations was used as a pretext to summon Czecho-Slovak President Emil Hácha to Berlin over his "failure" to keep order in his country. On the night of 14–15 March 1939, Ribbentrop played a key role in the German annexation of the Czech part of Czecho-Slovakia by bullying Hácha into transforming his country into a German protectorate at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. On 15 March 1939, German troops occupied the Czech areas of Czecho-Slovakia, which then became the "Reich" Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
On 20 March 1939, Ribbentrop summoned Lithuanian Foreign Minister Juozas Urbšys to Berlin and informed him that if a Lithuanian plenipotentiary did not arrive at once to negotiate to turn over the Memelland to Germany the Luftwaffe would raze Kaunas to the ground. As a result of Ribbentrop's ultimatum on 23 March, the Lithuanians agreed to return Memel (modern Klaipėda, Lithuania) to Germany.
In March 1939, Ribbentrop assigned the largely ethnically Ukrainian Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia region of Czecho-Slovakia, which had just proclaimed its independence as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, to Hungary, which then proceeded to annex it after a short war. This was significant as there had been many fears in the Soviet Union in the 1930s that the Germans would use Ukrainian nationalism as a tool to break up the Soviet Union. The establishment of an autonomous Ukrainian region in Czecho-Slovakia in October 1938 had promoted a major Soviet media campaign against its existence on the grounds that this was part of a Western plot to support separatism in Soviet Ukraine. By allowing the Hungarians to destroy Europe's only Ukrainian state, Ribbentrop had signified that Germany was not interested, at least for now, in sponsoring Ukrainian nationalism. That, in turn, helped to improve German-Soviet relations by demonstrating that German foreign policy was now primarily anti-Western rather than anti-Soviet.
In December 1938, during the visit of the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Paris to sign the largely meaningless French-German non-aggression pact, Ribbentrop had conversations with Bonnet that he later claimed included a promise to him that France would recognize all of Eastern Europe as Germany's exclusive sphere of influence.
Initially, Germany hoped to transform Poland into a satellite state, but by March 1939, German demands had been rejected by the Poles three times, which led Hitler to decide, with enthusiastic support from Ribbentrop, upon the destruction of Poland as the main German foreign policy goal of 1939. On 21 March 1939, Hitler first went public with his demand that Danzig rejoin the "Reich" and for "extra-territorial" roads across the Polish Corridor. That marked a significant escalation of the German pressure on Poland, which had been confined to private meetings between German and Polish diplomats. The same day, on 21 March 1939, Ribbentrop presented a set of demands to the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski about Poland allowing the Free City of Danzig to return to Germany in such violent and extreme language that it led to the Poles to fear their country was on the verge of an immediate German attack. Ribbentrop had used such extreme language, particularly his remark that if Germany had a different policy towards the Soviet Union then Poland would cease to exist, that it led to the Poles ordering partial mobilisation and placing their armed forces on the highest state of alert on 23 March 1939. In a protest note at Ribbentrop's behaviour, Poland's Foreign Minister Józef Beck reminded him that Poland was an independent country and not some sort of German protectorate that Ribbentrop could bully at will. Ribbentrop, in turn, sent out instructions to the German Ambassador in Warsaw, Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, that if Poland agreed to the German demands, Germany would ensure that Poland could partition Slovakia with Hungary and be ensured of German support for annexing Ukraine. If the Poles rejected his offer, Poland would be considered an enemy of the "Reich". On 26 March, in an extremely-stormy meeting with the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski, Ribbentrop accused the Poles of attempting to bully Germany by their partial mobilisation and violently attacked them for offering consideration only of the German demand about the "extra-territorial" roads. The meeting ended with Ribbentrop screaming that if Poland invaded the Free City of Danzig, Germany would go to war to destroy Poland. When the news of Ribbentrop's remarks was leaked to the Polish press, despite Beck's order to the censors on 27 March, it caused anti-German riots in Poland with the local Nazi Party headquarters in the mixed town of Lininco destroyed by a mob. On 28 March, Beck told Moltke that any attempt to change the status of Danzig unilaterally would be regarded by Poland as a "casus belli". Though the Germans were not planning an attack on Poland in March 1939, Ribbentrop's bullying behaviour towards the Poles destroyed any faint chance Poland allowing Danzig to return to Germany.
The German occupation of the Czech areas of Czecho-Slovakia on 15 March, in total contravention of the Munich Agreement, which had been signed less than six months before, infuriated British and French public opinion and lost Germany any sympathy. Such was the state of public fury that it appeared possible for several days afterwards that the Chamberlain government might fall because of a backbench rebellion. Even Ribbentrop's standard line that Germany was only reacting to an unjust Versailles treaty and wanted peace with everyone, which had worked so well in the past, failed to carry weight. Reflecting the changed mood, Conservative MP Alfred Duff Cooper wrote in a letter to "The Times":
Some of us are getting rather tired of the sanctimonious attitude which seeks to take upon our shoulders the blame for every crime committed in Europe. If Germany had been left stronger in 1919 she would sooner have been in a position to do what she is doing today.
Moreover, the British government had genuinely believed in the German claim that it was only the Sudetenland that concerned it and that Germany was not seeking to dominate Europe. By occupying the Czech parts of Czecho-Slovakia, Germany lost all credibility for its claim to be only righting the alleged wrongs of Versailles.
Shortly afterwards, false reports spread in mid-March 1939 by the Romanian minister in London, Virgil Tilea, that his country was on the verge of an immediate German attack, led to a dramatic U-turn in the British policy of resisting commitments in Eastern Europe. Ribbentrop truthfully denied that Germany was going to invade Romania. But his denials were expressed in almost identical language to the denials that he had issued in early March, when he had denied that anything was being planned against the Czechs; thus they actually increased the "Romanian war scare" of March 1939. From the British point of view, it was regarded as highly desirable to keep Romania and its oil out of German hands. Since Germany itself had hardly any sources of oil, the ability of the Royal Navy to impose a blockade represented a British trump card to deter and, if necessary, win a war. If Germany were to occupy oil-rich Romania, that would undercut all of the British strategic assumptions on Germany's need to import oil from the Americas. Since Poland was regarded as the East European state with the most powerful army, Poland had to be tied to Britain as the best way of ensuring Polish support for Romania; it was the obvious "quid pro quo" that Britain would have to do something for Polish security if the Poles were to be induced to do something for Romanian security.
On 31 March 1939, Chamberlain announced before the House of Commons the British "guarantee" of Poland, which committed Britain to go to war to defend Polish independence, though pointedly the "guarantee" excluded Polish frontiers. As a result of the "guarantee" of Poland, Hitler began to speak with increasing frequency of a British "encirclement" policy, which he used as the excuse for denouncing, in a speech before the "Reichstag" on 28 April 1939, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the Non-Aggression Pact with Poland.
In late March, Ribbentrop had the German "chargé d'affaires" in Turkey, Hans Kroll, start pressuring Turkey into an alliance with Germany. The Turks assured Kroll that they had no objection to Germany making the Balkans its economic sphere of influence but would regard any move to make the Balkans into a sphere of German political influence as most unwelcome.
In April 1939, when Ribbentrop announced at a secret meeting of the senior staff of the Foreign Office that Germany was ending talks with Poland and was instead going to destroy it in an operation late that year, the news was greeted joyfully by those present. Anti-Polish feelings had long been rampant in the agency and so, in marked contrast to their cool attitude about attacking Czechoslovakia in 1938, diplomats such as Weizsäcker were highly enthusiastic about the prospect of war with Poland in 1939. Professional diplomats such as Weizsäcker who had never accepted the legitimacy of Poland, which they saw as an "abomination" created by the Versailles Treaty, were wholehearted in their support of a war to wipe Poland off the map. The degree of unity within the German government with both the diplomats and the military united in their support of Hitler's anti-Polish policy, which stood in contrast to their views the previous year about destroying Czechoslovakia, very much encouraged Hitler and Ribbentrop with their chosen course of action.
In April 1939, Ribbentrop received intelligence that Britain and Turkey were negotiating an alliance intended to keep Germany out of the Balkans. On 23 April 1939, Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu told the British ambassador of Turkish fears of Italian claims of the Mediterranean as "Mare Nostrum" and German control of the Balkans, and he suggested an Anglo-Soviet-Turkish alliance as the best way of countering the Axis. As the Germans had broken the Turkish diplomatic codes, Ribbentrop was well aware as he warned in a circular to German embassies that Anglo-Turkish talks had gone much further "than what the Turks would care to tell us". Ribbentrop appointed Franz von Papen Germany's ambassador in Turkey with instructions to win it to an alliance with Germany. Ribbentrop had been attempting to appoint Papen as an ambassador to Turkey since April 1938. His first attempt ended in failure when Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who remembered Papen well with considerable distaste from World War I, refused to accept him as ambassador and complained in private the nomination of Papen must have been meant as some sort of German sick joke. The German embassy in Ankara had been vacant ever since the retirement of the previous ambassador Friedrich von Keller in November 1938, and Ribbentrop was able to get the Turks to accept Papen as ambassador only when the Saracoğlu complained to Kroll in April 1939 about when the Germans were ever going to send a new ambassador. Papen's attempt to address Turkish fears of Italian expansionism by getting Ribbentrop to have Count Galeazzo Ciano promise the Turks that they had nothing to fear from Italy backfired when the Turks found the Italo-German effort to have been patronising and insulting.
Instead of focusing on talking to the Turks, Ribbentrop and Papen became entangled in a feud over Papen's demand to bypass Ribbentrop and to send his dispatches straight to Hitler. As a former chancellor, Papen had granted the privilege of bypassing the Foreign Minister while he was ambassador to Austria. Ribbentrop's friendship with Papen, which went back to 1918, ended over that issue. At the same time, Ribbentrop took to shouting at the Turkish Ambassador in Berlin, Mehemet Hamdi Arpag, as part of the effort to win Turkey over as a German ally. Ribbentrop believed that Turks were so stupid that one had to shout at to make them understand. One of the consequences of Ribbentrop's heavyhanded behaviour was the signing of the Anglo-Turkish alliance on 12 May 1939.
From early 1939 onwards, Ribbentrop had become the leading advocate within the German government of reaching an understanding with the Soviet Union as the best way of pursuing both the short-term anti-Polish and long-term anti-British foreign policy goals. Ribbentrop first seems to have considered the idea of a pact with the Soviet Union after an unsuccessful visit to Warsaw in January 1939, when the Poles again refused Ribbentrop's demands about Danzig, the "extra-territorial" roads across the Polish Corridor and the Anti-Comintern Pact. During the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact negotiations, Ribbentrop was overjoyed by a report from his ambassador in Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, of a speech by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin before the 18th Party Congress in March 1939 that was strongly anti-Western, which Schulenburg reported meant that the Soviet Union might be seeking an accord with Germany. Ribbentrop followed up Schulenburg's report by sending Dr. Julius Schnurre of the Foreign Office's trade department to negotiate a German-Soviet economic agreement. At the same time, Ribbentrop's efforts to convert the Anti-Comintern Pact into an anti-British alliance met with considerable hostility from the Japanese over the course of the winter of 1938–1939, but with the Italians, Ribbentrop enjoyed some apparent success. Because of Japanese opposition to participation in an anti-British alliance, Ribbentrop decided to settle for a bilateral German-Italian anti-British treaty. Ribbentrop's efforts were crowned with success with the signing of the Pact of Steel in May 1939, but it was accomplished only by falsely assuring Mussolini that there would be no war for the next three years.
Ribbentrop played a key role in the conclusion of a Soviet-German non-aggression pact, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in 1939 and in the diplomatic action surrounding the attack on Poland. In public, Ribbentrop expressed great fury at the Polish refusal to allow for Danzig's return to the "Reich" or to grant Polish permission for the "extra-territorial" highways, but since the matters were intended after March 1939 to be only a pretext for German aggression, Ribbentrop always refused privately to allow for any talks between German and Polish diplomats about those matters. Ribbentrop feared that if German–Polish talks took place, there was the danger that the Poles might back down and agree to the German demands, as the Czechoslovaks had done in 1938 under Anglo-French pressure, depriving the Germans of their excuse for aggression. To block German–Polish diplomatic talks further, Ribbentrop had the German Ambassador to Poland, Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, recalled, and he refused to see the Polish ambassador, Józef Lipski. On 25 May 1939, Ribbentrop sent a secret message to Moscow to tell the Soviet Foreign Commissar, Vyacheslav Molotov, that if Germany attacked Poland "Russia's special interests would be taken into consideration".
Throughout 1939, Hitler always privately referred to Britain as his main opponent but portrayed the coming destruction of Poland as a necessary prelude to any war with Britain. Ribbentrop informed Hitler that any war with Poland would last for only 24 hours and that the British would be so stunned with this display of German power that they would not honour their commitments. Along the same lines, Ribbentrop told Ciano on 5 May 1939, "It is certain that within a few months not one Frenchman nor a single Englishman will go to war for Poland".
Ribbentrop supported his analysis of the situation by showing Hitler only the diplomatic dispatches that supported his view that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland. In that, Ribbentrop was particularly supported by the German Ambassador in London, Herbert von Dirksen, who reported that Chamberlain knew "the social structure of Britain, even the conception of the British Empire, would not survive the chaos of even a victorious war" and so would back down over Poland. Furthermore, Ribbentrop had the German embassy in London provide translations from pro-appeasement newspapers such as the "Daily Mail" and the "Daily Express" for Hitler's benefit, which had the effect of making it seem that British public opinion was more strongly against going to war for Poland than it actually was. The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the newspapers used by Ribbentrop to provide his press summaries for Hitler were out of touch not only with British public opinion but also with British government policy in regard to Poland. The press summaries Ribbentrop provided were particularly important, as Ribbentrop had managed to convince Hitler that the British government secretly controlled the British press, and just as in Germany, nothing appeared in the British press that the its did not want to appear. Furthermore, the Germans had broken the British diplomatic codes and were reading the messages between the Foreign Office in London to and from the Embassy in Warsaw. The decrypts showed that there was much tension in Anglo-Polish relations, with the British pressuring the Poles to allow Danzig to rejoin the "Reich" and the Poles staunchly resisting all efforts to pressure them into concessions to Germany. On the basis of such decrypts, Hitler and Ribbentrop believed that the British were bluffing with their warnings that they would go to war to defend Polish independence. During the summer of 1939, Ribbentrop sabotaged all efforts at a peaceful solution to the Danzig dispute, leading the American historian Gerhard Weinberg to comment that "perhaps Chamberlain's haggard appearance did him more credit than Ribbentrop's beaming smile", as the countdown to a war that would kill tens of millions inexorably gathered pace.
Neville Chamberlain's European Policy in 1939 was based upon creating a "peace front" of alliances linking Western and Eastern European states to serve as a "tripwire" meant to deter any act of German aggression. The new "containment" strategy adopted in March 1939 was to give firm warnings to Berlin, increase the pace of British rearmament and attempt to form an interlocking network of alliances that would block German aggression anywhere in Europe by creating such a formidable deterrence to aggression that Hitler could not rationally choose that option. Underlying the basis of the "containment" of Germany were the so-called "X documents", provided by Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, over the course of the winter of 1938–1939. They suggested that the German economy, under the strain of massive military spending, was on the verge of collapse and led British policy-makers to the conclusion that if Hitler could be deterred from war and that if his regime was "contained" long enough, the German economy would collapse, and, with it, presumably the Nazi regime. At the same time, British policymakers were afraid that if Hitler were "contained" and faced with a collapsing economy, he would commit a desperate "mad dog act" of aggression as a way of lashing out. Hence, emphasis was put on pressuring the Poles to allow the return of Danzig to Germany as a way of resolving the crisis peacefully by allowing Hitler to back down without him losing face. As part of a dual strategy to avoid war via deterrence and appeasement of Germany, British leaders warned that they would go to war if Germany attacked Poland, but at the same time, they tried to avoid war by holding unofficial talks with would-be peacemakers such as the British newspaper proprietor Lord Kemsley, the Swedish businessman Axel Wenner-Gren and another Swedish businessmen Birger Dahlerus, who attempted to work out the basis for a peaceful return of Danzig.
In May 1939, as part of his efforts to bully Turkey into joining the Axis, Ribbentrop had arranged for the cancellation of the delivery of 60 heavy howitzers from the Škoda Works, which the Turks had paid for in advance. The German refusal either to deliver the artillery pieces or refund the 125 million "Reichsmarks" that the Turks had paid for them was to be a major strain on German-Turkish relations in 1939 and had the effect of causing Turkey's politically-powerful army to resist Ribbentrop's entreaties to join the Axis. As part of the fierce diplomatic competition in Ankara in the spring and the summer of 1939 between von Papen and French Ambassador René Massigli with British Ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen to win the allegiance of Turkey to either the Axis or the Allies, Ribbentrop suffered a major reversal in July 1939 when Massigli was able to arrange for major French arms shipments to Turkey on credit to replace the weapons that the Germans had refused to deliver to the Turks.
In June 1939, Franco-German relations were strained when the head of the French section of the "Dienststelle Ribbentrop", Otto Abetz, was expelled from France following allegations that he had bribed two French newspaper editors to print pro-German articles. Ribbentrop was enraged by Abetz's expulsion and attacked Count Johannes von Welczeck, the German Ambassador in Paris, over his failure to have the French readmit him. In July 1939, Ribbentrop's claims about an alleged statement of December 1938 made by French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet were to lead to a lengthy war of words via a series of letters to the French newspapers between Ribbentrop and Bonnet over precisely what Bonnet had said to Ribbentrop.
On 11 August 1939, Ribbentrop met the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, and the Italian Ambassador to Germany, Count Bernardo Attolico, in Salzburg. During that meeting, both Ciano and Attolico were horrified to learn from Ribbentrop that Germany planned to attack Poland that summer and that the Danzig issue was just a pretext for aggression. When Ciano asked if there was anything Italy could do to broker a Polish-German settlement that would avert a war, he was told by Ribbentrop, "We want war!" Ribbentrop expressed his firmly held belief that neither Britain nor France would go to war for Poland, but if that occurred, he fully expected the Italians to honour the terms of the Pact of Steel, which was both an offensive and defensive treaty, and to declare war not only on Poland but on the Western powers if necessary. Ribbentrop told his Italian guests that "the localisation of the conflict is certain" and "the probability of victory is infinite". Ribbentrop brushed away Ciano's fears of a general war. He claimed, "France and England cannot intervene because they are insufficiently prepared militarily and because they have no means of injuring Germany". Ciano complained furiously that Ribbentrop had violated his promise given only that spring, when Italy signed the Pact of Steel, that there would be no war for the next three years. Ciano said that it was absurd to believe that the "Reich" could attack Poland without triggering a wider war and that now the Italians were left with the choice of going to war when they needed three more years to rearm or being forced into the humiliation of having to violate the terms of the Pact of Steel by declaring neutrality, which would make the Italians appear cowardly. Ciano complained in his diary that his arguments "had no effect" on Ribbentrop, who simply refused to believe any information that did not fit in with his preconceived notions. Despite Ciano's efforts to persuade Ribbentrop to put off the attack on Poland until 1942 to allow the Italians time to get ready for war, Ribbentrop was adamant that Germany had no interest in a diplomatic solution of the Danzig question but wanted a war to wipe Poland off the map. The Salzburg meeting marked the moment when Ciano's dislike of Ribbentrop was transformed into outright hatred and of the beginning of his disillusionment with the pro-German foreign policy that he had championed.
On 21 August 1939, Hitler received a message from Stalin: "The Soviet Government has instructed me to say they agree to Herr von Ribbentrop's arrival on 23 August". The same day, Hitler ordered German mobilisation. The extent that Hitler was influenced by Ribbentrop's advice can be seen in Hitler's orders for a limited mobilisation against Poland alone. Weizsäcker recorded in his diary throughout the spring and summer of 1939 repeated statements from Hitler that any German–Polish war would be a localized conflict and that there was no danger of a general war if the Soviet Union could be persuaded to stay neutral. Hitler believed that British policy was based upon securing Soviet support for Poland, which led him to perform a diplomatic U-turn and support Ribbentrop's policy of rapprochement with the Soviet Union as the best way of ensuring a local war. That was especially the case as decrypts showed the British military attaché to Poland arguing that Britain could not save Poland in the event of a German attack and that only Soviet support offered the prospect of Poland holding out.
The signing of the Non-Aggression Pact in Moscow on 23 August 1939 was the crowning achievement of Ribbentrop's career. He flew to Moscow, where, over the course of a thirteen-hour visit, Ribbentrop signed both the Non-Aggression Pact and the secret protocols, which partitioned much of Eastern Europe between the Soviets and the Germans. Ribbentrop had expected to see only the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and was most surprised to be holding talks with Joseph Stalin himself. During his trip to Moscow, Ribbentrop's talks with Stalin and Molotov proceed very cordially and efficiently with the exception of the question of Latvia, which Hitler had instructed Ribbentrop to try to claim for Germany. When Stalin claimed Latvia for the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop was forced to telephone Berlin for permission from Hitler to concede Latvia to the Soviets. After finishing his talks with Stalin and Molotov, Ribbentrop, at a dinner with the Soviet leaders, launched into a lengthy diatribe against the British Empire, with frequent interjections of approval from Stalin, and exchanged toasts with Stalin in honour of German-Soviet friendship. For a brief moment in August 1939, Ribbentrop convinced Hitler that the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union would cause the fall of the Chamberlain government and lead to a new British government that would abandon the Poles to their fate. Ribbentrop argued that with Soviet economic support, especially in the form of oil, Germany was now immune to the effects of a British naval blockade and so the British would never take on Germany. On 23 August 1939, at a secret meeting of the "Reich"'s top military leadership at the Berghof, Hitler argued that neither Britain nor France would go to war for Poland without the Soviet Union, and fixed "X-Day", the date for the invasion of Poland, for 26 August. Hitler added, "My only fear is that at the last moment some "Schweinehund" will make a proposal for mediation". Unlike Hitler, who saw the Non-Aggression Pact as merely a pragmatic device forced on him by circumstances, the refusal of Britain or Poland to play the roles that Hitler had allocated to them, Ribbentrop regarded the Non-Aggression Pact as integral to his anti-British policy.
The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 not only won Germany an informal alliance with the Soviet Union but also neutralized Anglo-French attempts to win Turkey to the "peace front". The Turks always believed that it was essential to have the Soviet Union as an ally to counter Germany, and the signing of the pact undercut completely the assumptions behind Turkish security policy. The Anglo-French effort to include the Balkans into the "peace front" had always rested on the assumption that the cornerstone of the "peace front" in the Balkans was to be Turkey, the regional superpower. Because the Balkans were rich in raw materials such as iron, zinc and oil, which could help Germany survive a British blockade, it was viewed as highly important by the Allies to keep German influence in the Balkans to a minimum. That was the principal motivation behind efforts to link British promises to support Turkey in the event of an Italian attack, in exchange for Turkish promises to help defend Romania from a German attack. British and French leaders believed that the deterrent value of the "peace front" could be increased if Turkey were a member, and the Turkish Straits were open to Allied ships. That would allow the Allies to send troops and supplies to Romania over the Black Sea and through Romania to Poland.
On 25 August 1939, Ribbentrop's influence with Hitler wavered for a moment when the news reached Berlin of the ratification of the Anglo-Polish military alliance and a personal message from Mussolini that told Hitler that Italy would dishonour the Pact of Steel if Germany attacked Poland. This was especially damaging to Ribbentrop, as he always assured Hitler, "Italy's attitude is determined by the Rome-Berlin Axis". As a result of the message from Rome and the ratification of the Anglo-Polish treaty, Hitler cancelled the invasion of Poland planned for 26 August but ordered it held back until 1 September to give Germany some time to break up the unfavourable international alignment. Though Ribbentrop continued to argue that Britain and France were bluffing, both he and Hitler were prepared, as a last resort, to risk a general war by invading Poland. Because of Ribbentrop's firmly-held views that Britain was Germany's most dangerous enemy and that an Anglo-German war was inevitable, it scarcely mattered to him when his much-desired war with Britain came. The Greek historian Aristotle Kaillis wrote that it was Ribbentrop's influence with Hitler and his insistence that the Western powers would fail to go to war for Poland that was the most important reason that Hitler did not cancel "Fall Weiß", the German invasion of Poland, altogether, instead of only postponing "X-day" for six days. Ribbentrop told Hitler that his sources showed that Britain would not be militarily prepared to take on Germany at the earliest until 1940 or more probably 1941, so that meant that the British were bluffing. Even if the British were serious in their warnings of war, Ribbentrop took the view that since a war with Britain was inevitable, the risk of a war with Britain was acceptable and so he argued that Germany should not shy away from such challenges.
On 27 August 1939, Chamberlain sent a letter to Hitler that was intended to counteract reports Chamberlain had heard from intelligence sources in Berlin that Ribbentrop had convinced Hitler that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact would ensure that Britain would abandon Poland. In his letter, Chamberlain wrote:
Ribbentrop told Hitler that Chamberlain's letter was just a bluff and urged his master to call it.
On the night of 30–31 August 1939, Ribbentrop had an extremely heated exchange with British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson, who objected to Ribbentrop's demand, given at about midnight, that if a Polish plenipotentiary did not arrive in Berlin that night to discuss the German "final offer", the responsibility for the outbreak of war would not rest on the "Reich". Henderson stated that the terms of the German "final offer" were very reasonable but argued that Ribbentrop's time limit for Polish acceptance of the "final offer" was most unreasonable, and he also demanded to know why Ribbentrop insisted upon seeing a special Polish plenipotentiary and could not present the "final offer" to Ambassador Józef Lipski or provide a written copy of the "final offer". The Henderson–Ribbentrop meeting became so tense that the two men almost came to blows. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg described the Henderson–Ribbentrop meeting:
When Joachim von Ribbentrop refused to give a copy of the German demands to the British Ambassador [Henderson] at midnight of 30–31 August 1939, the two almost came to blows. Ambassador Henderson, who had long advocated concessions to Germany, recognized that here was a deliberately conceived alibi the German government had prepared for a war it was determined to start. No wonder Henderson was angry; von Ribbentrop on the other hand could see war ahead and went home beaming.
As intended by Ribbentrop, the narrow time limit for acceptance of the "final offer" made it impossible for the British government to contact the Polish government in time about the German offer, let alone for the Poles to arrange for a Polish plenipotentiary envoy to arrive in Berlin that night, thereby allowing Ribbentrop to claim that the Poles had rejected the German "final offer". As it was, a special meeting of the British cabinet called to consider the "final offer" and declined to pass on the message to Warsaw under the grounds that it was not a serious proposal on the part of Berlin. The "rejection" of the German proposal was one of the pretexts used for the German aggression against Poland on 1 September 1939. The British historian D.C. Watt wrote, "Two hours later, Berlin Radio broadcast the sixteen points, adding that Poland had rejected them. Thanks to Ribbentrop, they had never even seen them". On 31 August, Ribbentrop met with Ambassador Attolico to tell him that Poland's "rejection" of the "generous" German 16-point peace plan meant that Germany had no interest in Mussolini's offer to call a conference about the status of Danzig. Besides the Polish "rejection" of the German "final offer", the aggression against Poland was justified with the Gleiwitz incident and other SS-staged incidents on the German–Polish border.
As soon as the news broke in the morning of 1 September 1939 that Germany had invaded Poland, Mussolini launched another desperate peace mediation plan intended to stop the German–Polish war from becoming a world war. Mussolini's motives were in no way altruistic. Instead, he was motivated entirely by a wish to escape the self-imposed trap of the Pact of Steel, which had obligated Italy to go to war while the country was entirely unprepared. If he suffered the humiliation of having to declare neutrality, which make him appear cowardly. French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, acting on his own initiative, told the Italian Ambassador to France, Baron Raffaele Guariglia, that France had accepted Mussolini's peace plan. Bonnet had Havas issue a statement at midnight on 1 September: "The French government has today, as have several other Governments, received an Italian proposal looking to the resolution of Europe's difficulties. After due consideration, the French government has given a 'positive response'". Though the French and the Italians were serious about Mussolini's peace plan, which called for an immediate ceasefire and a four-power conference in the manner of the Munich conference of 1938 to consider Poland's borders, British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated that unless the Germans withdrew from Poland immediately, Britain would not attend the proposed conference. Ribbentrop finally scuttled Mussolini's peace plan by stating that Germany had no interest in a ceasefire, a withdrawal from Poland or attending the proposed peace conference.
On the morning of 3 September 1939, Chamberlain followed through with his threat of a British declaration of war if Germany attacked Poland, a visibly-shocked Hitler asked Ribbentrop "Now what?", a question to which Ribbentrop had no answer except to state that there would be a "similar message" forthcoming from French Ambassador Robert Coulondre, who arrived later that afternoon to present the French declaration of war. Weizsäcker later recalled, "On 3 Sept., when the British and French declared war, Hitler was surprised, after all, and was to begin with, at a loss". The British historian Richard Overy wrote that what Hitler thought he was starting in September 1939 was only a local war between Germany and Poland and that his decision to do so was largely based on a vast underestimate of the risks of a general war. Ribbentrop's influence caused it to have been often observed that Hitler went to war in 1939 with the country he wanted as his ally, the United Kingdom, as his enemy and the country he wanted as his enemy, the Soviet Union, as his ally.
After the outbreak of World War II, Ribbentrop spent most of the Polish campaign travelling with Hitler. On 27 September 1939, Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow. There, at meetings with the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and Joseph Stalin, he was forced to agree to revising the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact in the Soviet Union's favour, most notably agreeing to Stalin's demand for Lithuania to go to the Soviet Union. The imposition of the British blockade had made the "Reich" highly dependent upon Soviet economic support, which placed Stalin in a strong negotiating position with Ribbentrop. On 1 March 1940, Ribbentrop received Sumner Welles, the American Under-Secretary of State, who was on a peace mission for US President Franklin Roosevelt, and did his best to abuse his American guest. Welles asked Ribbentrop under what terms Germany might be willing to negotiate a compromise peace, before the Phoney War became a real war. Ribbentrop told Welles that only a total German victory "could give us the peace we want". Welles reported to Roosevelt that Ribbentrop had a "completely closed and very stupid mind". On 10 March 1940, Ribbentrop visited Rome to meet with Mussolini, who promised him that Italy would soon enter the war. For his one-day Italian trip, Ribbentrop was accompanied by a staff of thirty-five, including a gymnastics coach, a masseur, a doctor, two hairdressers and various legal and economic experts from the Foreign Office. After the Italo-German summit at the Brenner Pass on 18 March 1940, which was attended by Hitler and Mussolini, Count Ciano wrote in his diary: "Everyone in Rome dislikes Ribbentrop". On 7 May 1940, Ribbentrop founded a new section of the Foreign Office, the "Abteilung Deutschland" (Department of Internal German Affairs), under Martin Luther, to which was assigned the responsibility for all anti-Semitic affairs. On 10 May 1940, Ribbentrop summoned the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg ambassadors to present them with notes justifying the German invasion of their countries several hours after the Germans had invaded those nations. Much to Ribbentrop's fury, someone leaked the plans for the German invasion to the Dutch embassy in Berlin, which led Ribbentrop to devote the next several months to conducting an unsuccessful investigation into who leaked the news. That investigation tore apart the agency, as colleagues were encouraged to denounce each other.
In early June 1940, when Mussolini informed Hitler that he would finally enter the war on 10 June 1940, Hitler was most dismissive, in private calling Mussolini a cowardly opportunist who broke the terms of the Pact of Steel in September 1939 when the going looked rough, and was entering the war in June 1940 only after it was clear that France was beaten and it appeared that Britain would soon make peace. Ribbentrop shared Hitler's assessment of the Italians but welcomed Italy coming into war. In part, that seemed to affirm the importance of the Pact of Steel, which Ribbentrop had negotiated, and in addition, with Italy now an ally, the Foreign Office had more to do. Ribbentrop championed the so-called Madagascar Plan in June 1940 to deport all of Europe's Jews to Madagascar after the presumed imminent defeat of Britain.
Ribbentrop, a Francophile, argued that Germany should allow Vichy France a limited degree of independence within a binding Franco-German partnership. To that end, Ribbentrop appointed a colleague from the "Dienststelle", Otto Abetz, as Ambassador to France with instructions to promote the political career of Pierre Laval, whom Ribbentrop had decided to be the French politician most favourable to Germany. The Foreign Office's influence in France varied, as there were many other agencies competing for power there. But in general, from late 1943 to mid-1944, the Foreign Office was second only to the SS in terms of power in France.
From the latter half of 1937, Ribbentrop had championed the idea of an alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan that would partition the British Empire among them. After signing the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, Ribbentrop expanded on this idea for an Axis alliance to include the Soviet Union to form a Eurasian bloc that would destroy maritime states such as Britain. The German historian Klaus Hildebrand argued that besides Hitler's foreign policy programme, there were three other factions within the Nazi Party who had alternative foreign policy programmes, whom Hildebrand designated the agrarians, the revolutionary socialists, and the Wilhelmine Imperialists. Another German diplomatic historian, Wolfgang Michalka argued that there was a fourth alternative to the Nazi foreign policy programme, and that was Ribbentrop's concept of a Euro-Asiatic bloc comprising the four totalitarian states of Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy and Japan. Unlike the other factions, Ribbentrop's foreign policy programme was the only one that Hitler allowed to be executed during the years 1939–41, though it was more due to the temporary bankruptcy of Hitler's own foreign policy programme that he had laid down in "Mein Kampf" and "Zweites Buch" following the failure to achieve an alliance with Britain, than to a genuine change of mind. Ribbentrop's foreign policy conceptions differed from Hitler's in that Ribbentrop's concept of international relations owed more to the traditional Wilhelmine "Machtpolitik" than to Hitler's racist and Social Darwinist vision of different "races" locked in a merciless and endless struggle over "Lebensraum". The different foreign-policy conceptions held by Hitler and Ribbentrop were illustrated in their reaction to the Fall of Singapore in 1942: Ribbentrop wanted this great British defeat to be a day of celebration in Germany, whereas Hitler forbade any celebrations on the grounds that Singapore represented a sad day for the principles of white supremacy. Another area of difference was Ribbentrop's obsessive hatred for Britain – which he saw as the main enemy – and view of the Soviet Union as an important ally in the anti-British struggle. Hitler saw the alliance with the Soviet Union as only tactical, and was nowhere as anti-British as his Foreign Minister.
In August 1940, Ribbentrop oversaw the Second Vienna Award, which saw about 40% of the Transylvania region of Romania returned to Hungary. The decision to award so much of Romania to the Hungarians was Hitler's, as Ribbentrop himself spent most of the Vienna conference loudly attacking the Hungarian delegation for their coolness towards attacking Czechoslovakia in 1938 and then demanding more than their fair share of the spoils. When Ribbentrop finally got around to announcing his decision, the Hungarian delegation, which had expected Ribbentrop to rule in favour of Romania, broke out in cheers, while the Romanian foreign minister Mihail Manoilescu fainted.
In the autumn of 1940, Ribbentrop made a sustained but unsuccessful effort to have Spain enter the war on the Axis side. During his talks with the Spanish foreign minister, Ramón Serrano Súñer, Ribbentrop affronted Súñer with his tactless behaviour, especially his suggestion that Spain cede the Canary Islands to Germany. An angry Súñer replied that he would rather see the Canaries sink into the Atlantic than cede an inch of Spanish territory. An area in which Ribbentrop enjoyed more success arose in September 1940, when he had the Far Eastern agent of the "Dienststelle Ribbentrop", Dr. Heinrich Georg Stahmer, start negotiations with the Japanese foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, for an anti-American alliance. The end result of these talks was the signing in Berlin on 27 September 1940 of the Tripartite Pact by Ribbentrop, Count Ciano, and Japanese Ambassador Saburo Kurusu.
In October 1940, "Gauleiters" Josef Bürckel and Robert Wagner oversaw the near total expulsion of the Jews into unoccupied France; they deported them not only from the parts of Alsace-Lorraine that had been annexed that summer to the "Reich", but also from their "Gaue" as well. Ribbentrop treated in a "most dilatory fashion" the ensuing complaints by the Vichy French government over the expulsions.
In November 1940, during the visit of the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin, Ribbentrop tried hard to get the Soviet Union to sign the Tripartite Pact. Ribbentrop argued that the Soviets and Germans shared a common enemy in the form of the British Empire, and as such, it was in the best interests of the Kremlin to enter the war on the Axis side. He proposed that, after the defeat of Britain, they could carve up the territory in the following way: the Soviet Union would have India and the Middle East, Italy the Mediterranean area, Japan the British possessions in the Far East (presuming of course that Japan would enter the war), and Germany would take central Africa and Britain. Molotov was open to the idea of the Soviet Union entering the war on the Axis side, but demanded as the price of entry into the war that Germany recognise Finland, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Hungary and Yugoslavia as within the exclusive Soviet sphere of influence. Ribbentrop's efforts to persuade Molotov to abandon his demands about Europe as the price of a Soviet alliance with Germany were entirely unsuccessful. After Molotov left Berlin, the Soviet Union indicated that it wished to sign the Tripartite Pact and enter the war on the Axis side. Though Ribbentrop was all for taking Stalin's offer, Hitler by this point had decided that he wanted to attack the Soviet Union. The German–Soviet Axis talks led nowhere.
As World War II continued, Ribbentrop's once-friendly relations with the SS became increasingly strained. In January 1941, the nadir of the relations between the SS and the Foreign Office was reached when the Iron Guard attempted a coup in Romania. Ribbentrop supported Marshal Ion Antonescu's government and Himmler supported the Iron Guard. In the aftermath of the failed coup in Bucharest, the Foreign Office assembled evidence that the SD had backed the coup, which led Ribbentrop to restrict sharply the powers of the SD police attachés. Since October 1939 they had operated largely independently of the German embassies at which they had been stationed. In the spring of 1941, Ribbentrop appointed an assemblage of SA men to German embassies in eastern Europe, with Manfred von Killinger dispatched to Romania, Siegfried Kasche to Croatia, Adolf Beckerle to Bulgaria, Dietrich von Jagow to Hungary, and Hans Ludin to Slovakia. The major qualifications of all these men, none of whom had previously held a diplomatic position before, were that they were close friends of Luther and helped to enable a split in the SS (the traditional rivalry between the SS and SA was still running strong).
In March 1941, Japan's Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, a Germanophile, visited Berlin. On 29 March 1941, during a conversation with Matsuoka, Ribbentrop, as instructed by Hitler, told the Japanese nothing about the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, as Hitler believed that he could defeat the Soviet Union on his own and preferred that the Japanese attack Britain instead. Hitler did not wish for any information that might lead the Japanese into attacking the Soviet Union to reach their ears. Ribbentrop tried to convince Matsuoka to urge the government in Tokyo to attack the great British naval base at Singapore, claiming the Royal Navy was too weak to retaliate due to its involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic. Matsuoka responded that preparations to occupy Singapore were under way.
In the winter of 1940–41, Ribbentrop strongly pressured Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact, despite advice from the German Legation in Belgrade that such an action would probably lead to the overthrow of Crown Prince Paul, the Yugoslav Regent. Ribbentrop's intention was to gain transit rights through the country that would allow the Germans to invade Greece. On 25 March 1941, Yugoslavia reluctantly signed the Tripartite Pact; the next day the Yugoslav military overthrew Prince Paul in a bloodless coup. When Hitler ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia, Ribbentrop was opposed, because he thought the Foreign Office was likely to be excluded from ruling occupied Yugoslavia. As Hitler was displeased with Ribbentrop over his opposition to the invasion, the minister took to his bed for the next couple of days. When Ribbentrop recovered, he sought a chance to increase his agency's influence by giving Croatia independence. Ribbentrop chose the Ustaša to rule Croatia. He had Edmund Veesenmayer successfully conclude talks in April 1941 with General Slavko Kvaternik of the Ustaša on having his party rule Croatia after the German invasion. Reflecting his displeasure with the German Legation in Belgrade, which had advised against pushing Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact, Ribbentrop refused to have the German Legation withdrawn in advance before Germany bombed Belgrade on 6 April 1941. The staff was left to survive the fire-bombing as best it could.
Ribbentrop liked and admired Joseph Stalin and was opposed to the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. He passed a word to a Soviet diplomat: "Please tell Stalin I was against this war, and that I know it will bring great misfortune to Germany." When it came to time for Ribbentrop to present the German declaration of war on 22 June 1941 to the Soviet Ambassador, General Vladimir Dekanozov, the interpreter Paul Schmidt described the scene:
It is just before four on the morning of Sunday, 22 June 1941 in the office of the Foreign Minister. He is expecting the Soviet Ambassador, Dekanozov, who had been phoning the Minister since early Saturday. Dekanozov had an urgent message from Moscow. He had called every two hours, but was told the Minister was away from the city. At two on Sunday morning, von Ribbentrop finally responded to the calls. Dekanozov was told that von Ribbentrop wished to meet with him at once. An appointment was made for 4 amVon Ribbentrop is nervous, walking up and down from one end of his large office to the other, like a caged animal, while saying over and over, "The "Führer" is absolutely right. We must attack Russia, or they will surely attack us!" Is he reassuring himself? Is he justifying the ruination of his crowning diplomatic achievement? Now he has to destroy it "because that is the "Führer"'s wish".
When Dekanozov finally appeared, Ribbentrop read out a short statement saying that the Reich had been forced into "military countermeasures" because of an alleged Soviet plan to attack Germany in July 1941. Ribbentrop did not present a declaration of war to General Dekanozov, confining himself to reading the statement about Germany being forced to take "military countermeasures".
Despite his opposition to Operation Barbarossa and a preference to concentrate against Britain, Ribbentrop began a sustained effort on 28 June 1941, without consulting Hitler, to have Japan attack the Soviet Union. But Ribbentrop's motives in seeking to have Japan enter the war were more anti-British than anti-Soviet. On 10 July 1941 Ribbentrop ordered General Eugen Ott, the German Ambassador to Japan to:
Go on with your efforts to bring about the earliest possible participation of Japan in the war against Russia…The natural goal must be, as before, to bring about the meeting of Germany and Japan on the Trans-Siberian Railroad before winter sets in. With the collapse of Russia, the position of the Tripartite Powers in the world will be so gigantic that the question of the collapse of England, that is, the absolute annihilation of the British Isles, will only be a question of time. An America completely isolated from the rest of the world would then be faced with the seizure of those of the remaining positions of the British Empire important to the Tripartite Powers.
As part of his efforts to bring Japan into Barbarossa, on 1 July 1941, Ribbentrop had Germany break off diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek and recognized the Japanese-puppet government of Wang Jingwei as China's legitimate rulers. Ribbentrop hoped that recognizing Wang would be seen as a coup that might add to the prestige of the pro-German Japanese Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, who was opposed to opening American-Japanese talks. Despite Ribbentrop's best efforts, Matsuoka was sacked as foreign minister later in July 1941, and the Japanese-American talks began.
After the war, Ribbentrop was found to have had culpability in the Holocaust based on his efforts to persuade the leaders of satellite countries of the Third Reich to deport Jews to the Nazi extermination camps. In August 1941, when the question of whether to deport foreign Jews living in Germany arose, Ribbentrop argued against deportation as a way of maximizing the Foreign Office's influence. To deport foreign Jews living in the Reich, Ribbentrop had Luther negotiate agreements with the governments of Romania, Slovakia and Croatia to allow Jews holding citizenship of those states to be deported. In September 1941, the Reich Plenipotentiary for Serbia, Felix Benzler, reported to Ribbentrop that the SS had arrested 8,000 Serbian Jews, whom they were planning to execute en masse. He asked for permission to try to stop the massacre. Ribbentrop assigned the question to Luther, who ordered Benzler to co-operate fully in the massacre.
In the autumn of 1941, Ribbentrop worked for the failure of the Japanese-American talks in Washington and for Japan to attack the United States. In October 1941 Ribbentrop ordered Eugen Ott, the German ambassador to Japan, to start applying pressure on the Japanese to attack the Americans as soon as possible. Ribbentrop argued to Hitler that a war between the United States and Germany was inevitable given the extent of American aid to Britain and the increasingly frequent "incidents" in the North Atlantic between U-boats and American warships guarding convoys to Britain. He said that having such a war start with a Japanese attack on the United States was the best way to begin it. Ribbentrop told Hitler that because of his four years in Canada and the United States before 1914, he was an expert on all things American; he thought that the United States was not a serious military power. On 4 December 1941, the Japanese Ambassador General Hiroshi Ōshima told Ribbentrop that Japan was on the verge of war with the United States. In turn, Ribbentrop promised that Germany would join the war against the Americans. On 7 December 1941, Ribbentrop was jubilant at the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and did his utmost to support a declaration of war on the United States. He delivered the official declaration to the American "Chargé d'Affaires" Leland B. Morris on 11 December 1941. In the winter and spring of 1942, following American entry into war, the United States successfully pressured all of the Latin American states, except for Argentina and Chile, to declare war on Germany. Ribbentrop considered the acceptance of declarations of war from small states such as Costa Rica and Ecuador to be deeply humiliating, and he refused to see any of the Latin American ambassadors. He had Weizsäcker accept their declarations of war instead.
In April 1942, as part of a diplomatic counterpart to Case Blue, a military operation in southern Russia, Ribbentrop assembled a collection of anti-Soviet émigrés from the Caucasus in the Hotel Adlon in Berlin with the intention to have them declared leaders of governments-in-exile. From Ribbentrop's point of view, this had the dual benefit of ensuring popular support for the German Army as it advanced into the Caucasus and of ensuring that it was the Foreign Office that ruled the Caucasus once the Germans occupied the area. Alfred Rosenberg, the German Minister of the East, saw this as an intrusion into his area of authority, and told Hitler that the émigrés at the Hotel Adlon were "a nest of Allied agents". To Ribbentrop's disappointment, Hitler sided with Rosenberg.
Despite the often fierce rivalry with the SS, the Foreign Office played a key role in arranging the deportations of Jews to the death camps from France (1942–44), Hungary (1944–45), Slovakia, Italy (after 1943), and the Balkans. Ribbentrop assigned all of the Holocaust-related work to Martin Luther, an old crony from the "Dienststelle" who represented the Foreign Ministry at the Wannsee Conference. In 1942, Ambassador Otto Abetz secured the deportation of 25,000 French Jews, and Ambassador Hans Ludin secured the deportation of 50,000 Slovak Jews to the death camps. Only once, in August 1942, did Ribbentrop try to restrict the deportations, but only because of jurisdictional disputes with the SS. Ribbentrop halted deportations from Romania and Croatia; in the case of the former, he was insulted because the SS were negotiating with the Romanians directly, and in the case of the latter, he learned that the SS and Luther had pressured the Italians in their zone of occupation to deport their Jews without first informing Ribbentrop. He had required being kept updated on all developments in Italo-German relations. In September 1942, after a meeting with Hitler, who was unhappy with his foreign minister's actions, Ribbentrop changed course and ordered the deportations to be resumed immediately.
In November 1942, following Operation Torch (the British-American invasion of North Africa), Ribbentrop met with French Chief of the Government Pierre Laval in Munich. He presented Laval with an ultimatum for Germany's occupation of the French unoccupied zone and Tunisia. Ribbentrop tried unsuccessfully to arrange for the Vichy French troops in North Africa to be formally placed under German command. In December 1942, he met with the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, who carried Mussolini's request urging the Germans to go on the defensive in the Soviet Union in order to focus on attacking North Africa. Ribbentrop joined with Hitler in belittling Italy's war effort. During the same meeting in East Prussia with Count Ciano, Pierre Laval arrived. He quickly agreed to Hitler's and Ribbentrop's demands that he place French police under the command of more radical anti-Semitics and transport hundreds of thousands of French workers to labor in Germany's war industry.
Another low point in Ribbentrop's relations with the SS occurred in February 1943, when the SD backed a Luther-led internal "putsch" to oust Ribbentrop as foreign minister. Luther had become estranged from Ribbentrop because Frau Ribbentrop treated Luther as a household servant. She pushed her husband into ordering an investigation into allegations of corruption on Luther's part. Luther's "putsch" failed largely because Himmler decided that a foreign ministry headed by Luther would be a more dangerous opponent than the Ribbentrop version. At the last minute, he withdrew his support from Luther. In the aftermath of the "putsch", Luther was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In April 1943, during a summit meeting with Hungary's Regent Miklos Horthy, Ribbentrop strongly pressed the Hungarians to deport their Jewish population to the death camps, but was unsuccessful. During their meeting, Ribbentrop declared "the Jews must either be exterminated or taken to the concentration camps. There is no other possibility".
As the war went on, Ribbentrop's influence waned. Because most of the world was at war with Germany, the Foreign Ministry's importance diminished as the value of diplomacy became limited. By January 1944, Germany had diplomatic relations only with Argentina, Ireland, Vichy France, the Italian Social Republic in Italy, Occupied Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, and the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the Wang Jingwei regime of China. Later that year, Argentina and Turkey severed ties with Germany; Romania and Bulgaria joined the Allies and Finland made a separate peace with the Soviet Union and declared war on Germany.
Hitler found Ribbentrop increasingly tiresome and started to avoid him. The Foreign Minister's pleas for permission to seek peace with at least some of Germany's enemies—the Soviet Union in particular—played a role in their estrangement. As his influence declined, Ribbentrop spent his time feuding with other Nazi leaders over control of anti-Semitic policies to curry Hitler's favour.
Ribbentrop suffered a major blow when many old Foreign Office diplomats participated in the 20 July 1944 "putsch" and assassination attempt on Hitler. Ribbentrop had not known of the plot, but the participation of so many current and former Foreign Ministry members reflected badly on him. Hitler felt that Ribbentrop's "bloated administration" prevented him from keeping proper tabs on his diplomats' activities. Ribbentrop worked closely with the SS, with which he had reconciled, to purge the Foreign Office of those involved in the "putsch". In the hours immediately following the assassination attempt on Hitler, Ribbentrop, Göring, Dönitz, and Mussolini were having tea with Hitler in Rastenberg when Dönitz began to rail against the failures of the Luftwaffe. Göring immediately turned the direction of the conversation to Ribbentrop, and the bankruptcy of Germany's foreign policy. "You dirty little champagne salesman! Shut your mouth!" Göring shouted, threatening to smack Ribbentrop with his marshal's baton.
On 20 April 1945, Ribbentrop attended Hitler's 56th birthday party in Berlin. Three days later, Ribbentrop attempted to meet with Hitler, but was rejected with the explanation the Führer had more important things to do.
After Hitler's suicide Ribbentrop attempted to find a role under the new Fuhrer, Dönitz, but was rebuffed. He went into hiding under an assumed name (Herr Reiser) in port city of Hamburg. On 14 June, after Germany's surrender, Ribbentrop was arrested by Sergeant Jacques Goffinet, a French citizen who had joined the 5th Special Air Service, the Belgian SAS, and was working with British forces near Hamburg. Found with him was a rambling letter addressed to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill criticizing British foreign policy for anti-German sentiments, and blaming Britain's failure to ally with Germany before the war for the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and the advancement of Bolshevism into central Europe.
Ribbentrop was a defendant at the Nuremberg trials. The Allies' International Military Tribunal convicted him on four counts: crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. According to the judgment, Ribbentrop was actively involved in planning the Anschluss, as well as the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was also deeply involved in the "final solution"; as early as 1942 he had ordered German diplomats in Axis countries to hasten the process of sending Jews to death camps in the east. He supported the lynching of Allied airmen shot down over Germany, and helped to cover up the 1945 murder of Major-General Gustave Mesny, a French officer being held as a prisoner of war. He was held directly responsible for atrocities which took place in Denmark and Vichy France, since the top officials in those two occupied countries reported to him. Ribbentrop claimed Hitler solely made the important decisions, and he had been deceived by Hitler's repeated claims of only wanting peace. The Tribunal rejected this argument, saying that given how closely involved Ribbentrop was with the execution of the war, "he could not have remained unaware of the aggressive nature of Hitler's actions." Even in prison, Ribbentrop remained loyal to Hitler: "Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'do this!', I would still do it."
Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, was allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who stood trial. Among other tests, he administered a German version of the Wechsler–Bellevue IQ test. Joachim von Ribbentrop scored 129, the 10th highest among the Nazi leaders tested. At one point during the trial, a US Army interpreter asked Ernst "Freiherr" von Weizsäcker how Hitler could have promoted Ribbentrop to high office. "Freiherr" von Weizsäcker responded, "Hitler never noticed Ribbentrop's babbling because Hitler always did all the talking."
On 16 October 1946, Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged after Göring committed suicide just before his scheduled execution. The hangman was U.S. Master Sergeant John C. Woods. Ribbentrop was escorted up the 13 steps of the gallows and asked if he had any final words. He said: "God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be understanding between East and West. I wish peace to the world." Nuremberg Prison Commandant Burton C. Andrus later recalled that Ribbentrop turned to the prison's Lutheran chaplain, , immediately before the hood was placed over his head and whispered, "I'll see you again." His body, as those of the other nine executed men and the corpse of Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.
Joachim von Ribbentrop has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theatre productions: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16547 |
John, King of England
John (24 December 1166 – 19 October 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of ", a document sometimes considered an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom.
John was the youngest of the four surviving sons of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was nicknamed John Lackland because he was not expected to inherit significant lands. He became Henry's favourite child following the failed revolt of 1173–74 by his brothers Henry the Young King, Richard, and Geoffrey against the King. John was appointed the Lord of Ireland in 1177 and given lands in England and on the continent. The war between Henry II and his eldest sons ended with the deaths of Henry the Young King and Geoffrey. John unsuccessfully attempted a rebellion against the royal administrators of his brother, King Richard, whilst Richard was participating in the Third Crusade, but he was proclaimed king after Richard died in 1199. He came to an agreement with Philip II of France to recognise John's possession of the continental Angevin lands at the peace treaty of Le Goulet in 1200.
When war with France broke out again in 1202, John achieved early victories, but shortages of military resources and his treatment of Norman, Breton, and Anjou nobles resulted in the collapse of his empire in northern France in 1204. He spent much of the next decade attempting to regain these lands, raising huge revenues, reforming his armed forces and rebuilding continental alliances. His judicial reforms had a lasting effect on the English common law system, as well as providing an additional source of revenue. An argument with Pope Innocent III led to John's excommunication in 1209, a dispute he finally settled in 1213. John's attempt to defeat Philip in 1214 failed due to the French victory over John's allies at the battle of Bouvines. When he returned to England, John faced a rebellion by many of his barons, who were unhappy with his fiscal policies and his treatment of many of England's most powerful nobles. Although both John and the barons agreed to the " peace treaty in 1215, neither side complied with its conditions. Civil war broke out shortly afterwards, with the barons aided by Louis VIII of France. It soon descended into a stalemate. John died of dysentery contracted whilst on campaign in eastern England during late 1216; supporters of his son Henry III went on to achieve victory over Louis and the rebel barons the following year.
Contemporary chroniclers were mostly critical of John's performance as king, and his reign has since been the subject of significant debate and periodic revision by historians from the 16th century onwards. Historian Jim Bradbury has summarised the current historical opinion of John's positive qualities, observing that John is today usually considered a "hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general". Nonetheless, modern historians agree that he also had many faults as king, including what historian Ralph Turner describes as "distasteful, even dangerous personality traits", such as pettiness, spitefulness, and cruelty. These negative qualities provided extensive material for fiction writers in the Victorian era, and John remains a recurring character within Western popular culture, primarily as a villain in films and stories depicting the Robin Hood legends.
John was born on 24 December 1166. His father, Henry II of England, had inherited significant territories along the Atlantic seaboardAnjou, Normandy and Englandand expanded his empire by conquering Brittany. John's powerful mother Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, had a tenuous claim to Toulouse and Auvergne in southern France, and was the former wife of Louis VII of France. The territories of Henry and Eleanor formed the Angevin Empire, named after Henry's paternal title as Count of Anjou and, more specifically, its seat in Angers. The Empire, however, was inherently fragile: although all the lands owed allegiance to Henry, the disparate parts each had their own histories, traditions and governance structures. As one moved south through Anjou and Aquitaine, the extent of Henry's power in the provinces diminished considerably, scarcely resembling the modern concept of an empire at all. Some of the traditional ties between parts of the empire such as Normandy and England were slowly dissolving over time. It was unclear what would happen to the empire on Henry's death. Although the custom of primogeniture, under which an eldest son would inherit all his father's lands, was slowly becoming more widespread across Europe, it was less popular amongst the Norman kings of England. Most believed that Henry would divide the empire, giving each son a substantial portion, and hoping that his children would continue to work together as allies after his death. To complicate matters, much of the Angevin empire was held by Henry only as a vassal of the King of France of the rival line of the House of Capet. Henry had often allied himself with the Holy Roman Emperor against France, making the feudal relationship even more challenging.
Shortly after his birth, John was passed from Eleanor into the care of a wet nurse, a traditional practice for medieval noble families. Eleanor then left for Poitiers, the capital of Aquitaine, and sent John and his sister Joan north to Fontevrault Abbey. This may have been done with the aim of steering her youngest son, with no obvious inheritance, towards a future ecclesiastical career. Eleanor spent the next few years conspiring against Henry and neither parent played a part in John's very early life. John was probably, like his brothers, assigned a "magister" whilst he was at Fontevrault, a teacher charged with his early education and with managing the servants of his immediate household; John was later taught by Ranulf de Glanvill, a leading English administrator. John spent some time as a member of the household of his eldest living brother Henry the Young King, where he probably received instruction in hunting and military skills.
John grew up to be around tall, relatively short, with a "powerful, barrel-chested body" and dark red hair; he looked to contemporaries like an inhabitant of Poitou. John enjoyed reading and, unusually for the period, built up a travelling library of books. He enjoyed gambling, in particular at backgammon, and was an enthusiastic hunter, even by medieval standards. He liked music, although not songs. John would become a "connoisseur of jewels", building up a large collection, and became famous for his opulent clothes and also, according to French chroniclers, for his fondness for bad wine. As John grew up, he became known for sometimes being "genial, witty, generous and hospitable"; at other moments, he could be jealous, over-sensitive and prone to fits of rage, "biting and gnawing his fingers" in anger.
During John's early years, Henry attempted to resolve the question of his succession. Henry the Young King had been crowned King of England in 1170, but was not given any formal powers by his father; he was also promised Normandy and Anjou as part of his future inheritance. His brother Richard was to be appointed the Count of Poitou with control of Aquitaine, whilst his brother Geoffrey was to become the Duke of Brittany. At this time it seemed unlikely that John would ever inherit substantial lands, and he was jokingly nicknamed "Lackland" by his father.
Henry II wanted to secure the southern borders of Aquitaine and decided to betroth his youngest son to Alais, the daughter and heiress of Humbert III of Savoy. As part of this agreement John was promised the future inheritance of Savoy, Piedmont, Maurienne, and the other possessions of Count Humbert. For his part in the potential marriage alliance, Henry II transferred the castles of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau into John's name; as John was only five years old his father would continue to control them for practical purposes. Henry the Young King was unimpressed by this; although he had yet to be granted control of any castles in his new kingdom, these were effectively his future property and had been given away without consultation. Alais made the trip over the Alps and joined Henry II's court, but she died before marrying John, which left the prince once again without an inheritance.
In 1173 John's elder brothers, backed by Eleanor, rose in revolt against Henry in the short-lived rebellion of 1173 to 1174. Growing irritated with his subordinate position to Henry II and increasingly worried that John might be given additional lands and castles at his expense, Henry the Young King travelled to Paris and allied himself with Louis VII. Eleanor, irritated by her husband's persistent interference in Aquitaine, encouraged Richard and Geoffrey to join their brother Henry in Paris. Henry II triumphed over the coalition of his sons, but was generous to them in the peace settlement agreed at Montlouis. Henry the Young King was allowed to travel widely in Europe with his own household of knights, Richard was given Aquitaine back, and Geoffrey was allowed to return to Brittany; only Eleanor was imprisoned for her role in the revolt.
John had spent the conflict travelling alongside his father, and was given widespread possessions across the Angevin empire as part of the Montlouis settlement; from then onwards, most observers regarded John as Henry II's favourite child, although he was the furthest removed in terms of the royal succession. Henry II began to find more lands for John, mostly at various nobles' expense. In 1175 he appropriated the estates of the late Earl of Cornwall and gave them to John. The following year, Henry disinherited the sisters of Isabella of Gloucester, contrary to legal custom, and betrothed John to the now extremely wealthy Isabella. In 1177, at the Council of Oxford, Henry dismissed William FitzAldelm as the Lord of Ireland and replaced him with the ten-year-old John.
Henry the Young King fought a short war with his brother Richard in 1183 over the status of England, Normandy and Aquitaine. Henry II moved in support of Richard, and Henry the Young King died from dysentery at the end of the campaign. With his primary heir dead, Henry rearranged the plans for the succession: Richard was to be made King of England, albeit without any actual power until the death of his father; Geoffrey would retain Brittany; and John would now become the Duke of Aquitaine in place of Richard. Richard refused to give up Aquitaine; Henry II was furious and ordered John, with help from Geoffrey, to march south and retake the duchy by force. The two attacked the capital of Poitiers, and Richard responded by attacking Brittany. The war ended in stalemate and a tense family reconciliation in England at the end of 1184.
In 1185 John made his first visit to Ireland, accompanied by 300 knights and a team of administrators. Henry had tried to have John officially proclaimed King of Ireland, but Pope Lucius III would not agree. John's first period of rule in Ireland was not a success. Ireland had only recently been conquered by Anglo-Norman forces, and tensions were still rife between Henry II, the new settlers and the existing inhabitants. John infamously offended the local Irish rulers by making fun of their unfashionable long beards, failed to make allies amongst the Anglo-Norman settlers, began to lose ground militarily against the Irish and finally returned to England later in the year, blaming the viceroy, Hugh de Lacy, for the fiasco.
The problems amongst John's wider family continued to grow. His elder brother Geoffrey died during a tournament in 1186, leaving a posthumous son, Arthur, and an elder daughter, Eleanor. Geoffrey's death brought John slightly closer to the throne of England. The uncertainty about what would happen after Henry's death continued to grow; Richard was keen to join a new crusade and remained concerned that whilst he was away Henry would appoint John his formal successor.
Richard began discussions about a potential alliance with Philip II in Paris during 1187, and the next year Richard gave homage to Philip in exchange for support for a war against Henry. Richard and Philip fought a joint campaign against Henry, and by the summer of 1189 the king made peace, promising Richard the succession. John initially remained loyal to his father, but changed sides once it appeared that Richard would win. Henry died shortly afterwards.
When Richard became king in September 1189, he had already declared his intention of joining the Third Crusade. He set about raising the huge sums of money required for this expedition through the sale of lands, titles and appointments, and attempted to ensure that he would not face a revolt while away from his empire. John was made Count of Mortain, was married to the wealthy Isabella of Gloucester, and was given valuable lands in Lancaster and the counties of Cornwall, Derby, Devon, Dorset, Nottingham and Somerset, all with the aim of buying his loyalty to Richard whilst the King was on crusade. Richard retained royal control of key castles in these counties, thereby preventing John from accumulating too much military and political power. The King named his four-year-old nephew Arthur as his heir. In return, John promised not to visit England for the next three years, thereby in theory giving Richard adequate time to conduct a successful crusade and return from the Levant without fear of John seizing power. Richard left political authority in England – the post of justiciar – jointly in the hands of Bishop Hugh de Puiset and William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex, and made William Longchamp, the Bishop of Ely, his chancellor. Mandeville immediately died, and Longchamp took over as joint justiciar with Puiset, which would prove a less than satisfactory partnership. Eleanor, the queen mother, convinced Richard to allow John into England in his absence.
The political situation in England rapidly began to deteriorate. Longchamp refused to work with Puiset and became unpopular with the English nobility and clergy. John exploited this unpopularity to set himself up as an alternative ruler with his own royal court, complete with his own justiciar, chancellor and other royal posts, and was happy to be portrayed as an alternative regent, and possibly the next king. Armed conflict broke out between John and Longchamp, and by October 1191 Longchamp was isolated in the Tower of London with John in control of the city of London, thanks to promises John had made to the citizens in return for recognition as Richard's heir presumptive. At this point Walter of Coutances, the Archbishop of Rouen, returned to England, having been sent by Richard to restore order. John's position was undermined by Walter's relative popularity and by the news that Richard had married whilst in Cyprus, which presented the possibility that Richard would have legitimate children and heirs.
The political turmoil continued. John began to explore an alliance with King Philip II of France, freshly returned from the crusade. John hoped to acquire Normandy, Anjou and the other lands in France held by Richard in exchange for allying himself with Philip. John was persuaded not to pursue an alliance by his mother. Longchamp, who had left England after Walter's intervention, now returned, and argued that he had been wrongly removed as justiciar. John intervened, suppressing Longchamp's claims in return for promises of support from the royal administration, including a reaffirmation of his position as heir to the throne. When Richard still did not return from the crusade, John began to assert that his brother was dead or otherwise permanently lost. Richard had in fact been captured en route to England by the Duke of Austria and was handed over to Emperor Henry VI, who held him for ransom. John seized the opportunity and went to Paris, where he formed an alliance with Philip. He agreed to set aside his wife, Isabella of Gloucester, and marry Philip's sister, Alys, in exchange for Philip's support. Fighting broke out in England between forces loyal to Richard and those being gathered by John. John's military position was weak and he agreed to a truce; in early 1194 the King finally returned to England, and John's remaining forces surrendered. John retreated to Normandy, where Richard finally found him later that year. Richard declared that John – despite being 27 years old – was merely "a child who has had evil counsellors" and forgave him, but removed his lands with the exception of Ireland.
For the remaining years of Richard's reign, John supported his brother on the continent, apparently loyally. Richard's policy on the continent was to attempt to regain through steady, limited campaigns the castles he had lost to Philip II whilst on crusade. He allied himself with the leaders of Flanders, Boulogne and the Holy Roman Empire to apply pressure on Philip from Germany. In 1195 John successfully conducted a sudden attack and siege of Évreux castle, and subsequently managed the defences of Normandy against Philip. The following year, John seized the town of Gamaches and led a raiding party within of Paris, capturing the Bishop of Beauvais. In return for this service, Richard withdrew his "malevolentia" (ill-will) towards John, restored him to the county of Gloucestershire and made him again the Count of Mortain.
After Richard's death on 6 April 1199 there were two potential claimants to the Angevin throne: John, whose claim rested on being the sole surviving son of Henry II, and young Arthur I of Brittany, who held a claim as the son of John's elder brother Geoffrey. Richard appears to have started to recognise John as his heir presumptive in the final years before his death, but the matter was not clear-cut and medieval law gave little guidance as to how the competing claims should be decided. With Norman law favouring John as the only surviving son of Henry II and Angevin law favouring Arthur as the only son of Henry's elder son, the matter rapidly became an open conflict. John was supported by the bulk of the English and Norman nobility and was crowned at Westminster Abbey, backed by his mother, Eleanor. Arthur was supported by the majority of the Breton, Maine and Anjou nobles and received the support of Philip II, who remained committed to breaking up the Angevin territories on the continent. With Arthur's army pressing up the Loire Valley towards Angers and Philip's forces moving down the valley towards Tours, John's continental empire was in danger of being cut in two.
Warfare in Normandy at the time was shaped by the defensive potential of castles and the increasing costs of conducting campaigns. The Norman frontiers had limited natural defences but were heavily reinforced with castles, such as Château Gaillard, at strategic points, built and maintained at considerable expense. It was difficult for a commander to advance far into fresh territory without having secured his lines of communication by capturing these fortifications, which slowed the progress of any attack. Armies of the period could be formed from either feudal or mercenary forces. Feudal levies could be raised only for a fixed length of time before they returned home, forcing an end to a campaign; mercenary forces, often called Brabançons after the Duchy of Brabant but actually recruited from across northern Europe, could operate all year long and provide a commander with more strategic options to pursue a campaign, but cost much more than equivalent feudal forces. As a result, commanders of the period were increasingly drawing on larger numbers of mercenaries.
After his coronation, John moved south into France with military forces and adopted a defensive posture along the eastern and southern Normandy borders. Both sides paused for desultory negotiations before the war recommenced; John's position was now stronger, thanks to confirmation that the counts Baldwin IX of Flanders and Renaud of Boulogne had renewed the anti-French alliances they had previously agreed to with Richard. The powerful Anjou nobleman William des Roches was persuaded to switch sides from Arthur to John; suddenly the balance seemed to be tipping away from Philip and Arthur in favour of John. Neither side was keen to continue the conflict, and following a papal truce the two leaders met in January 1200 to negotiate possible terms for peace. From John's perspective, what then followed represented an opportunity to stabilise control over his continental possessions and produce a lasting peace with Philip in Paris. John and Philip negotiated the May 1200 Treaty of Le Goulet; by this treaty, Philip recognised John as the rightful heir to Richard in respect to his French possessions, temporarily abandoning the wider claims of his client, Arthur. John, in turn, abandoned Richard's former policy of containing Philip through alliances with Flanders and Boulogne, and accepted Philip's right as the legitimate feudal overlord of John's lands in France. John's policy earned him the disrespectful title of "John Softsword" from some English chroniclers, who contrasted his behaviour with his more aggressive brother, Richard.
The new peace would last only two years; war recommenced in the aftermath of John's decision in August 1200 to marry Isabella of Angoulême. In order to remarry, John first needed to abandon his wife Isabella, Countess of Gloucester; the King accomplished this by arguing that he had failed to get the necessary papal dispensation to marry the Countess in the first place – as a cousin, John could not have legally wed her without this. It remains unclear why John chose to marry Isabella of Angoulême. Contemporary chroniclers argued that John had fallen deeply in love with her, and John may have been motivated by desire for an apparently beautiful, if rather young, girl. On the other hand, the Angoumois lands that came with her were strategically vital to John: by marrying Isabella, John was acquiring a key land route between Poitou and Gascony, which significantly strengthened his grip on Aquitaine.
Isabella, however, was already engaged to Hugh IX of Lusignan, an important member of a key Poitou noble family and brother of Raoul I, Count of Eu, who possessed lands along the sensitive eastern Normandy border. Just as John stood to benefit strategically from marrying Isabella, so the marriage threatened the interests of the Lusignans, whose own lands currently provided the key route for royal goods and troops across Aquitaine. Rather than negotiating some form of compensation, John treated Hugh "with contempt"; this resulted in a Lusignan uprising that was promptly crushed by John, who also intervened to suppress Raoul in Normandy.
Although John was the Count of Poitou and therefore the rightful feudal lord over the Lusignans, they could legitimately appeal John's actions in France to his own feudal lord, Philip. Hugh did exactly this in 1201 and Philip summoned John to attend court in Paris in 1202, citing the Le Goulet treaty to strengthen his case. John was unwilling to weaken his authority in western France in this way. He argued that he need not attend Philip's court because of his special status as the Duke of Normandy, who was exempt by feudal tradition from being called to the French court. Philip argued that he was summoning John not as the Duke of Normandy, but as the Count of Poitou, which carried no such special status. When John still refused to come, Philip declared John in breach of his feudal responsibilities, reassigned all of John's lands that fell under the French crown to Arthur – with the exception of Normandy, which he took back for himself – and began a fresh war against John.
John initially adopted a defensive posture similar to that of 1199: avoiding open battle and carefully defending his key castles. John's operations became more chaotic as the campaign progressed, and Philip began to make steady progress in the east. John became aware in July that Arthur's forces were threatening his mother, Eleanor, at Mirebeau Castle. Accompanied by William de Roches, his seneschal in Anjou, he swung his mercenary army rapidly south to protect her. His forces caught Arthur by surprise and captured the entire rebel leadership at the battle of Mirebeau. With his southern flank weakening, Philip was forced to withdraw in the east and turn south himself to contain John's army.
John's position in France was considerably strengthened by the victory at Mirebeau, but John's treatment of his new prisoners and of his ally, William de Roches, quickly undermined these gains. De Roches was a powerful Anjou noble, but John largely ignored him, causing considerable offence, whilst the King kept the rebel leaders in such bad conditions that twenty-two of them died. At this time most of the regional nobility were closely linked through kinship, and this behaviour towards their relatives was regarded as unacceptable. William de Roches and other of John's regional allies in Anjou and Brittany deserted him in favour of Philip, and Brittany rose in fresh revolt. John's financial situation was tenuous: once factors such as the comparative military costs of materiel and soldiers were taken into account, Philip enjoyed a considerable, although not overwhelming, advantage of resources over John.
Further desertions of John's local allies at the beginning of 1203 steadily reduced his freedom to manoeuvre in the region. He attempted to convince Pope Innocent III to intervene in the conflict, but Innocent's efforts were unsuccessful. As the situation became worse for John, he appears to have decided to have Arthur killed, with the aim of removing his potential rival and of undermining the rebel movement in Brittany. Arthur had initially been imprisoned at Falaise and was then moved to Rouen. After this, Arthur's fate remains uncertain, but modern historians believe he was murdered by John. The annals of Margam Abbey suggest that "John had captured Arthur and kept him alive in prison for some time in the castle of Rouen ... when John was drunk he slew Arthur with his own hand and tying a heavy stone to the body cast it into the Seine." Rumours of the manner of Arthur's death further reduced support for John across the region. Arthur's sister, Eleanor, who had also been captured at Mirebeau, was kept imprisoned by John for many years, albeit in relatively good conditions.
In late 1203, John attempted to relieve Château Gaillard, which although besieged by Philip was guarding the eastern flank of Normandy. John attempted a synchronised operation involving land-based and water-borne forces, considered by most historians today to have been imaginative in conception, but overly complex for forces of the period to have carried out successfully. John's relief operation was blocked by Philip's forces, and John turned back to Brittany in an attempt to draw Philip away from eastern Normandy. John successfully devastated much of Brittany, but did not deflect Philip's main thrust into the east of Normandy. Opinions vary amongst historians as to the military skill shown by John during this campaign, with most recent historians arguing that his performance was passable, although not impressive.
John's situation began to deteriorate rapidly. The eastern border region of Normandy had been extensively cultivated by Philip and his predecessors for several years, whilst Angevin authority in the south had been undermined by Richard's giving away of various key castles some years before. His use of "routier" mercenaries in the central regions had rapidly eaten away his remaining support in this area too, which set the stage for a sudden collapse of Angevin power. John retreated back across the Channel in December, sending orders for the establishment of a fresh defensive line to the west of Chateau Gaillard. In March 1204, Gaillard fell. John's mother Eleanor died the following month. This was not just a personal blow for John, but threatened to unravel the widespread Angevin alliances across the far south of France. Philip moved south around the new defensive line and struck upwards at the heart of the Duchy, now facing little resistance. By August, Philip had taken Normandy and advanced south to occupy Anjou and Poitou as well. John's only remaining possession on the Continent was now the Duchy of Aquitaine.
The nature of government under the Angevin monarchs was ill-defined and uncertain. John's predecessors had ruled using the principle of "vis et voluntas" ("force and will"), taking executive and sometimes arbitrary decisions, often justified on the basis that a king was above the law. Both Henry II and Richard had argued that kings possessed a quality of "divine majesty"; John continued this trend and claimed an "almost imperial status" for himself as ruler. During the 12th century, there were contrary opinions expressed about the nature of kingship, and many contemporary writers believed that monarchs should rule in accordance with the custom and the law, and take counsel of the leading members of the realm. There was as yet no model for what should happen if a king refused to do so. Despite his claim to unique authority within England, John would sometimes justify his actions on the basis that he had taken council with the barons. Modern historians remain divided as to whether John suffered from a case of "royal schizophrenia" in his approach to government, or if his actions merely reflected the complex model of Angevin kingship in the early 13th century.
John inherited a sophisticated system of administration in England, with a range of royal agents answering to the Royal Household: the Chancery kept written records and communications; the Treasury and the Exchequer dealt with income and expenditure respectively; and various judges were deployed to deliver justice around the kingdom. Thanks to the efforts of men like Hubert Walter, this trend towards improved record keeping continued into his reign. Like previous kings, John managed a peripatetic court that travelled around the kingdom, dealing with both local and national matters as he went. John was very active in the administration of England and was involved in every aspect of government. In part he was following in the tradition of Henry I and Henry II, but by the 13th century the volume of administrative work had greatly increased, which put much more pressure on a king who wished to rule in this style. John was in England for much longer periods than his predecessors, which made his rule more personal than that of previous kings, particularly in previously ignored areas such as the north.
The administration of justice was of particular importance to John. Several new processes had been introduced to English law under Henry II, including "novel disseisin" and "mort d'ancestor". These processes meant the royal courts had a more significant role in local law cases, which had previously been dealt with only by regional or local lords. John increased the professionalism of local sergeants and bailiffs, and extended the system of coroners first introduced by Hubert Walter in 1194, creating a new class of borough coroners. The King worked extremely hard to ensure that this system operated well, through judges he had appointed, by fostering legal specialists and expertise, and by intervening in cases himself. He continued to try relatively minor cases, even during military crises. Viewed positively, Lewis Warren considers that John discharged "his royal duty of providing justice ... with a zeal and a tirelessness to which the English common law is greatly endebted". Seen more critically, John may have been motivated by the potential of the royal legal process to raise fees, rather than a desire to deliver simple justice; his legal system also applied only to free men, rather than to all of the population. Nonetheless, these changes were popular with many free tenants, who acquired a more reliable legal system that could bypass the barons, against whom such cases were often brought. John's reforms were less popular with the barons themselves, especially as they remained subject to arbitrary and frequently vindictive royal justice.
One of John's principal challenges was acquiring the large sums of money needed for his proposed campaigns to reclaim Normandy. The Angevin kings had three main sources of income available to them, namely revenue from their personal lands, or "demesne"; money raised through their rights as a feudal lord; and revenue from taxation. Revenue from the royal demesne was inflexible and had been diminishing slowly since the Norman conquest. Matters were not helped by Richard's sale of many royal properties in 1189, and taxation played a much smaller role in royal income than in later centuries. English kings had widespread feudal rights which could be used to generate income, including the scutage system, in which feudal military service was avoided by a cash payment to the King. He derived income from fines, court fees and the sale of charters and other privileges. John intensified his efforts to maximise all possible sources of income, to the extent that he has been described as "avaricious, miserly, extortionate and moneyminded". He also used revenue generation as a way of exerting political control over the barons: debts owed to the crown by the King's favoured supporters might be forgiven; collection of those owed by enemies was more stringently enforced.
The result was a sequence of innovative but unpopular financial measures. John levied scutage payments eleven times in his seventeen years as king, as compared to eleven times in total during the reign of the preceding three monarchs. In many cases these were levied in the absence of any actual military campaign, which ran counter to the original idea that scutage was an alternative to actual military service. John maximised his right to demand relief payments when estates and castles were inherited, sometimes charging enormous sums, beyond barons' abilities to pay. Building on the successful sale of sheriff appointments in 1194, the King initiated a new round of appointments, with the new incumbents making back their investment through increased fines and penalties, particularly in the forests. Another innovation of Richard's, increased charges levied on widows who wished to remain single, was expanded under John. John continued to sell charters for new towns, including the planned town of Liverpool, and charters were sold for markets across the kingdom and in Gascony. The King introduced new taxes and extended existing ones. The Jews, who held a vulnerable position in medieval England, protected only by the King, were subject to huge taxes; £44,000 was extracted from the community by the tallage of 1210; much of it was passed on to the Christian debtors of Jewish moneylenders. John created a new tax on income and movable goods in 1207 – effectively a version of a modern income tax – that produced £60,000; he created a new set of import and export duties payable directly to the Crown. He found that these measures enabled him to raise further resources through the confiscation of the lands of barons who could not pay or refused to pay.
At the start of John's reign there was a sudden change in prices, as bad harvests and high demand for food resulted in much higher prices for grain and animals. This inflationary pressure was to continue for the rest of the 13th century and had long-term economic consequences for England. The resulting social pressures were complicated by bursts of deflation that resulted from John's military campaigns. It was usual at the time for the King to collect taxes in silver, which was then re-minted into new coins; these coins would then be put in barrels and sent to royal castles around the country, to be used to hire mercenaries or to meet other costs. At those times when John was preparing for campaigns in Normandy, for example, huge quantities of silver had to be withdrawn from the economy and stored for months, which unintentionally resulted in periods during which silver coins were simply hard to come by, commercial credit difficult to acquire and deflationary pressure placed on the economy. The result was political unrest across the country. John attempted to address some of the problems with the English currency in 1204 and 1205 by carrying out a radical overhaul of the coinage, improving its quality and consistency.
John's royal household was based around several groups of followers. One group was the "familiares regis", his immediate friends and knights who travelled around the country with him. They also played an important role in organising and leading military campaigns. Another section of royal followers were the "curia regis"; these "curiales" were the senior officials and agents of the King and were essential to his day-to-day rule. Being a member of these inner circles brought huge advantages, as it was easier to gain favours from the King, file lawsuits, marry a wealthy heiress or have one's debts remitted. By the time of Henry II, these posts were increasingly being filled by "new men" from outside the normal ranks of the barons. This intensified under John's rule, with many lesser nobles arriving from the continent to take up positions at court; many were mercenary leaders from Poitou. These men included soldiers who would become infamous in England for their uncivilised behaviour, including Falkes de Breauté, Geard d'Athies, Engelard de Cigongé, and Philip Marc. Many barons perceived the King's household as what Ralph Turner has characterised as a "narrow clique enjoying royal favour at barons' expense" staffed by men of lesser status.
This trend for the King to rely on his own men at the expense of the barons was exacerbated by the tradition of Angevin royal "ira et malevolentia" ("anger and ill-will") and John's own personality. From Henry II onwards, "ira et malevolentia" had come to describe the right of the King to express his anger and displeasure at particular barons or clergy, building on the Norman concept of "malevoncia" – royal ill-will. In the Norman period, suffering the King's ill-will meant difficulties in obtaining grants, honours or petitions; Henry II had infamously expressed his fury and ill-will towards Thomas Becket, which ultimately resulted in Becket's death. John now had the additional ability to "cripple his vassals" on a significant scale using his new economic and judicial measures, which made the threat of royal anger all the more serious.
John was deeply suspicious of the barons, particularly those with sufficient power and wealth to potentially challenge the King. Numerous barons were subjected to his "malevolentia", even including the famous knight William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, normally held up as a model of utter loyalty. The most infamous case, which went beyond anything considered acceptable at the time, was that of the powerful William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber, who held lands in Ireland. De Braose was subjected to punitive demands for money, and when he refused to pay a huge sum of 40,000 marks (equivalent to £26,666 at the time), his wife and one of his sons were imprisoned by John, which resulted in their deaths. De Braose died in exile in 1211, and his grandsons remained in prison until 1218. John's suspicions and jealousies meant that he rarely enjoyed good relationships with even the leading loyalist barons.
John's personal life greatly affected his reign. Contemporary chroniclers state that John was sinfully lustful and lacking in piety. It was common for kings and nobles of the period to keep mistresses, but chroniclers complained that John's mistresses were married noblewomen, which was considered unacceptable. John had at least five children with mistresses during his first marriage, and two of those mistresses are known to have been noblewomen. John's behaviour after his second marriage is less clear, however. None of his known illegitimate children were born after he remarried, and there is no actual documentary proof of adultery after that point, although John certainly had female friends amongst the court throughout the period. The specific accusations made against John during the baronial revolts are now generally considered to have been invented for the purposes of justifying the revolt; nonetheless, most of John's contemporaries seem to have held a poor opinion of his sexual behaviour.
The character of John's relationship with his second wife, Isabella of Angoulême, is unclear. John married Isabella whilst she was relatively young – her exact date of birth is uncertain, and estimates place her between at most 15 and more probably towards nine years old at the time of her marriage. Even by the standards of the time, she was married whilst very young. John did not provide a great deal of money for his wife's household and did not pass on much of the revenue from her lands, to the extent that historian Nicholas Vincent has described him as being "downright mean" towards Isabella. Vincent concluded that the marriage was not a particularly "amicable" one. Other aspects of their marriage suggest a closer, more positive relationship. Chroniclers recorded that John had a "mad infatuation" with Isabella, and certainly the King and Queen had conjugal relationships between at least 1207 and 1215; they had five children. In contrast to Vincent, historian William Chester Jordan concludes that the pair were a "companionable couple" who had a successful marriage by the standards of the day.
John's lack of religious conviction has been noted by contemporary chroniclers and later historians, with some suspecting that he was at best impious, or even atheistic, a very serious issue at the time. Contemporary chroniclers catalogued his various anti-religious habits at length, including his failure to take communion, his blasphemous remarks, and his witty but scandalous jokes about church doctrine, including jokes about the implausibility of the Resurrection of Jesus. They commented on the paucity of John's charitable donations to the Church. Historian Frank McLynn argues that John's early years at Fontevrault, combined with his relatively advanced education, may have turned him against the church. Other historians have been more cautious in interpreting this material, noting that chroniclers also reported his personal interest in the life of St Wulfstan and his friendships with several senior clerics, most especially with Hugh of Lincoln, who was later declared a saint. Financial records show a normal royal household engaged in the usual feasts and pious observances – albeit with many records showing John's offerings to the poor to atone for routinely breaking church rules and guidance. The historian Lewis Warren has argued that the chronicler accounts were subject to considerable bias and the King was "at least conventionally devout", citing his pilgrimages and interest in religious scripture and commentaries.
During the remainder of his reign, John focused on trying to retake Normandy. The available evidence suggests that he did not regard the loss of the Duchy as a permanent shift in Capetian power. Strategically, John faced several challenges: England itself had to be secured against possible French invasion, the sea-routes to Bordeaux needed to be secured following the loss of the land route to Aquitaine, and his remaining possessions in Aquitaine needed to be secured following the death of his mother, Eleanor, in April 1204. John's preferred plan was to use Poitou as a base of operations, advance up the Loire Valley to threaten Paris, pin down the French forces and break Philip's internal lines of communication before landing a maritime force in the Duchy itself. Ideally, this plan would benefit from the opening of a second front on Philip's eastern frontiers with Flanders and Boulogne – effectively a re-creation of Richard's old strategy of applying pressure from Germany. All of this would require a great deal of money and soldiers.
John spent much of 1205 securing England against a potential French invasion. As an emergency measure, he recreated a version of Henry II's Assize of Arms of 1181, with each shire creating a structure to mobilise local levies. When the threat of invasion faded, John formed a large military force in England intended for Poitou, and a large fleet with soldiers under his own command intended for Normandy. To achieve this, John reformed the English feudal contribution to his campaigns, creating a more flexible system under which only one knight in ten would actually be mobilised, but would be financially supported by the other nine; knights would serve for an indefinite period. John built up a strong team of engineers for siege warfare and a substantial force of professional crossbowmen. The King was supported by a team of leading barons with military expertise, including William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, William the Marshal, Roger de Lacy and, until he fell from favour, the marcher lord William de Braose.
John had already begun to improve his Channel forces before the loss of Normandy and he rapidly built up further maritime capabilities after its collapse. Most of these ships were placed along the Cinque Ports, but Portsmouth was also enlarged. By the end of 1204 he had around 50 large galleys available; another 54 vessels were built between 1209 and 1212. William of Wrotham was appointed "keeper of the galleys", effectively John's chief admiral. Wrotham was responsible for fusing John's galleys, the ships of the Cinque Ports and pressed merchant vessels into a single operational fleet. John adopted recent improvements in ship design, including new large transport ships called "buisses" and removable forecastles for use in combat.
Baronial unrest in England prevented the departure of the planned 1205 expedition, and only a smaller force under William Longespée deployed to Poitou. In 1206 John departed for Poitou himself, but was forced to divert south to counter a threat to Gascony from Alfonso VIII of Castile. After a successful campaign against Alfonso, John headed north again, taking the city of Angers. Philip moved south to meet John; the year's campaigning ended in stalemate and a two-year truce was made between the two rulers.
During the truce of 1206–1208, John focused on building up his financial and military resources in preparation for another attempt to recapture Normandy. John used some of this money to pay for new alliances on Philip's eastern frontiers, where the growth in Capetian power was beginning to concern France's neighbours. By 1212 John had successfully concluded alliances with his nephew Otto IV, a contender for the crown of Holy Roman Emperor in Germany, as well as with the counts Renaud of Boulogne and Ferdinand of Flanders. The invasion plans for 1212 were postponed because of fresh English baronial unrest about service in Poitou. Philip seized the initiative in 1213, sending his elder son, Louis, to invade Flanders with the intention of next launching an invasion of England. John was forced to postpone his own invasion plans to counter this threat. He launched his new fleet to attack the French at the harbour of Damme. The attack was a success, destroying Philip's vessels and any chances of an invasion of England that year. John hoped to exploit this advantage by invading himself late in 1213, but baronial discontent again delayed his invasion plans until early 1214, in what was his final Continental campaign.
In the late 12th and early 13th centuries the border and political relationship between England and Scotland was disputed, with the kings of Scotland claiming parts of what is now northern England. John's father, Henry II, had forced William the Lion to swear fealty to him at the Treaty of Falaise in 1174. This had been rescinded by Richard I in exchange for financial compensation in 1189, but the relationship remained uneasy. John began his reign by reasserting his sovereignty over the disputed northern counties. He refused William's request for the earldom of Northumbria, but did not intervene in Scotland itself and focused on his continental problems. The two kings maintained a friendly relationship, meeting in 1206 and 1207, until it was rumoured in 1209 that William was intending to ally himself with Philip II of France. John invaded Scotland and forced William to sign the Treaty of Norham, which gave John control of William's daughters and required a payment of £10,000. This effectively crippled William's power north of the border, and by 1212 John had to intervene militarily to support William against his internal rivals. John made no efforts to reinvigorate the Treaty of Falaise, though, and William and his son Alexander II of Scotland in turn remained independent kings, supported by, but not owing fealty to, John.
John remained Lord of Ireland throughout his reign. He drew on the country for resources to fight his war with Philip on the continent. Conflict continued in Ireland between the Anglo-Norman settlers and the indigenous Irish chieftains, with John manipulating both groups to expand his wealth and power in the country. During Richard's rule, John had successfully increased the size of his lands in Ireland, and he continued this policy as king. In 1210 the King crossed into Ireland with a large army to crush a rebellion by the Anglo-Norman lords; he reasserted his control of the country and used a new charter to order compliance with English laws and customs in Ireland. John stopped short of trying to actively enforce this charter on the native Irish kingdoms, but historian David Carpenter suspects that he might have done so, had the baronial conflict in England not intervened. Simmering tensions remained with the native Irish leaders even after John left for England.
Royal power in Wales was unevenly applied, with the country divided between the marcher lords along the borders, royal territories in Pembrokeshire and the more independent native Welsh lords of North Wales. John took a close interest in Wales and knew the country well, visiting every year between 1204 and 1211 and marrying his illegitimate daughter, Joan, to the Welsh prince Llywelyn the Great. The King used the marcher lords and the native Welsh to increase his own territory and power, striking a sequence of increasingly precise deals backed by royal military power with the Welsh rulers. A major royal expedition to enforce these agreements occurred in 1211, after Llywelyn attempted to exploit the instability caused by the removal of William de Braose, through the Welsh uprising of 1211. John's invasion, striking into the Welsh heartlands, was a military success. Llywelyn came to terms that included an expansion of John's power across much of Wales, albeit only temporarily.
When the Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, died on 13 July 1205, John became involved in a dispute with Pope Innocent III that would lead to the King's excommunication. The Norman and Angevin kings had traditionally exercised a great deal of power over the church within their territories. From the 1040s onwards, however, successive popes had put forward a reforming message that emphasised the importance of the Church being "governed more coherently and more hierarchically from the centre" and established "its own sphere of authority and jurisdiction, separate from and independent of that of the lay ruler", in the words of historian Richard Huscroft. After the 1140s, these principles had been largely accepted within the English Church, albeit with an element of concern about centralising authority in Rome. These changes brought the customary rights of lay rulers such as John over ecclesiastical appointments into question. Pope Innocent was, according to historian Ralph Turner, an "ambitious and aggressive" religious leader, insistent on his rights and responsibilities within the church.
John wanted John de Gray, the Bishop of Norwich and one of his own supporters, to be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, but the cathedral chapter for Canterbury Cathedral claimed the exclusive right to elect the Archbishop. They favoured Reginald, the chapter's sub-prior. To complicate matters, the bishops of the province of Canterbury also claimed the right to appoint the next archbishop. The chapter secretly elected Reginald and he travelled to Rome to be confirmed; the bishops challenged the appointment and the matter was taken before Innocent. John forced the Canterbury chapter to change their support to John de Gray, and a messenger was sent to Rome to inform the papacy of the new decision. Innocent disavowed both Reginald and John de Gray, and instead appointed his own candidate, Stephen Langton. John refused Innocent's request that he consent to Langton's appointment, but the Pope consecrated Langton anyway in June 1207.
John was incensed about what he perceived as an abrogation of his customary right as monarch to influence the election. He complained both about the choice of Langton as an individual, as John felt he was overly influenced by the Capetian court in Paris, and about the process as a whole. He barred Langton from entering England and seized the lands of the archbishopric and other papal possessions. Innocent set a commission in place to try to convince John to change his mind, but to no avail. Innocent then placed an interdict on England in March 1208, prohibiting clergy from conducting religious services, with the exception of baptisms for the young, and confessions and absolutions for the dying.
John treated the interdict as "the equivalent of a papal declaration of war". He responded by attempting to punish Innocent personally and to drive a wedge between those English clergy that might support him and those allying themselves firmly with the authorities in Rome. John seized the lands of those clergy unwilling to conduct services, as well as those estates linked to Innocent himself; he arrested the illicit concubines that many clerics kept during the period, releasing them only after the payment of fines; he seized the lands of members of the church who had fled England, and he promised protection for those clergy willing to remain loyal to him. In many cases, individual institutions were able to negotiate terms for managing their own properties and keeping the produce of their estates. By 1209 the situation showed no signs of resolution, and Innocent threatened to excommunicate John if he did not acquiesce to Langton's appointment. When this threat failed, Innocent excommunicated the King in November 1209. Although theoretically a significant blow to John's legitimacy, this did not appear to greatly worry the King. Two of John's close allies, Emperor Otto IV and Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, had already suffered the same punishment themselves, and the significance of excommunication had been somewhat devalued. John simply tightened his existing measures and accrued significant sums from the income of vacant sees and abbeys: one 1213 estimate, for example, suggested the church had lost an estimated 100,000 marks (equivalent to £66,666 at the time) to John. Official figures suggest that around 14% of annual income from the English church was being appropriated by John each year.
Innocent gave some dispensations as the crisis progressed. Monastic communities were allowed to celebrate Mass in private from 1209 onwards, and late in 1212 the Holy Viaticum for the dying was authorised. The rules on burials and lay access to churches appear to have been steadily circumvented, at least unofficially. Although the interdict was a burden to much of the population, it did not result in rebellion against John. By 1213, though, John was increasingly worried about the threat of French invasion. Some contemporary chroniclers suggested that in January Philip II of France had been charged with deposing John on behalf of the papacy, although it appears that Innocent merely prepared secret letters in case Innocent needed to claim the credit if Philip did successfully invade England.
Under mounting political pressure, John finally negotiated terms for a reconciliation, and the papal terms for submission were accepted in the presence of the papal legate Pandulf Verraccio in May 1213 at the Templar Church at Dover. As part of the deal, John offered to surrender the Kingdom of England to the papacy for a feudal service of 1,000 marks (equivalent to £666 at the time) annually: 700 marks (£466) for England and 300 marks (£200) for Ireland, as well as recompensing the Church for revenue lost during the crisis. The agreement was formalised in the "Bulla Aurea", or Golden Bull. This resolution produced mixed responses. Although some chroniclers felt that John had been humiliated by the sequence of events, there was little public reaction. Innocent benefited from the resolution of his long-standing English problem, but John probably gained more, as Innocent became a firm supporter of John for the rest of his reign, backing him in both domestic and continental policy issues. Innocent immediately turned against Philip, calling upon him to reject plans to invade England and to sue for peace. John paid some of the compensation money he had promised the Church, but he ceased making payments in late 1214, leaving two-thirds of the sum unpaid; Innocent appears to have conveniently forgotten this debt for the good of the wider relationship.
Tensions between John and the barons had been growing for several years, as demonstrated by the 1212 plot against the King. Many of the disaffected barons came from the north of England; that faction was often labelled by contemporaries and historians as "the Northerners". The northern barons rarely had any personal stake in the conflict in France, and many of them owed large sums of money to John; the revolt has been characterised as "a rebellion of the king's debtors". Many of John's military household joined the rebels, particularly amongst those that John had appointed to administrative roles across England; their local links and loyalties outweighed their personal loyalty to John. Tension also grew across North Wales, where opposition to the 1211 treaty between John and Llywelyn was turning into open conflict. For some the appointment of Peter des Roches as justiciar was an important factor, as he was considered an "abrasive foreigner" by many of the barons. The failure of John's French military campaign in 1214 was probably the final straw that precipitated the baronial uprising during John's final years as king; James Holt describes the path to civil war as "direct, short and unavoidable" following the defeat at Bouvines.
In 1214 John began his final campaign to reclaim Normandy from Philip. He was optimistic, as he had successfully built up alliances with the Emperor Otto, Renaud of Boulogne and Ferdinand of Flanders; he was enjoying papal favour; and he had successfully built up substantial funds to pay for the deployment of his experienced army. Nonetheless, when John left for Poitou in February 1214, many barons refused to provide military service; mercenary knights had to fill the gaps. John's plan was to split Philip's forces by pushing north-east from Poitou towards Paris, whilst Otto, Renaud and Ferdinand, supported by William Longespée, marched south-west from Flanders.
The first part of the campaign went well, with John outmanoeuvring the forces under the command of Prince Louis and retaking the county of Anjou by the end of June. John besieged the castle of Roche-au-Moine, a key stronghold, forcing Louis to give battle against John's larger army. The local Angevin nobles refused to advance with John; left at something of a disadvantage, John retreated back to La Rochelle. Shortly afterwards, King Philip won the hard-fought battle of Bouvines in the north against Otto and John's other allies, bringing an end to John's hopes of retaking Normandy. A peace agreement was signed in which John returned Anjou to Philip and paid him compensation; the truce was intended to last for six years. John arrived back in England in October.
Within a few months of John's return, rebel barons in the north and east of England were organising resistance to his rule. John held a council in London in January 1215 to discuss potential reforms and sponsored discussions in Oxford between his agents and the rebels during the spring. He appears to have been playing for time until Pope Innocent III could send letters giving him explicit papal support. This was particularly important for John, as a way of pressuring the barons but also as a way of controlling Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the meantime, John began to recruit fresh mercenary forces from Poitou, although some were later sent back to avoid giving the impression that John was escalating the conflict. The King announced his intent to become a crusader, a move which gave him additional political protection under church law.
Letters of support from the Pope arrived in April but by then the rebel barons had organised. They congregated at Northampton in May and renounced their feudal ties to John, appointing Robert fitz Walter as their military leader. This self-proclaimed "Army of God" marched on London, taking the capital as well as Lincoln and Exeter. John's efforts to appear moderate and conciliatory had been largely successful, but once the rebels held London they attracted a fresh wave of defectors from John's royalist faction. John instructed Langton to organise peace talks with the rebel barons.
John met the rebel leaders at Runnymede, near Windsor Castle, on 15 June 1215. Langton's efforts at mediation created a charter capturing the proposed peace agreement; it was later renamed "Magna Carta", or "Great Charter". The charter went beyond simply addressing specific baronial complaints, and formed a wider proposal for political reform, albeit one focusing on the rights of free men, not serfs and unfree labour. It promised the protection of church rights, protection from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, new taxation only with baronial consent and limitations on scutage and other feudal payments. A council of twenty-five barons would be created to monitor and ensure John's future adherence to the charter, whilst the rebel army would stand down and London would be surrendered to the King.
Neither John nor the rebel barons seriously attempted to implement the peace accord. The rebel barons suspected that the proposed baronial council would be unacceptable to John and that he would challenge the legality of the charter; they packed the baronial council with their own hardliners and refused to demobilise their forces or surrender London as agreed. Despite his promises to the contrary, John appealed to Innocent for help, observing that the charter compromised the Pope's rights under the 1213 agreement that had appointed him John's feudal lord. Innocent obliged; he declared the charter "not only shameful and demeaning, but illegal and unjust" and excommunicated the rebel barons. The failure of the agreement led rapidly to the First Barons' War.
The rebels made the first move in the war, seizing the strategic Rochester Castle, owned by Langton but left almost unguarded by the archbishop. John was well prepared for a conflict. He had stockpiled money to pay for mercenaries and ensured the support of the powerful marcher lords with their own feudal forces, such as William Marshal and Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester. The rebels lacked the engineering expertise or heavy equipment necessary to assault the network of royal castles that cut off the northern rebel barons from those in the south. John's strategy was to isolate the rebel barons in London, protect his own supply lines to his key source of mercenaries in Flanders, prevent the French from landing in the south-east, and then win the war through slow attrition. John put off dealing with the badly deteriorating situation in North Wales, where Llywelyn the Great was leading a rebellion against the 1211 settlement.
John's campaign started well. In November John retook Rochester Castle from rebel baron William d'Aubigny in a sophisticated assault. One chronicler had not seen "a siege so hard pressed or so strongly resisted", whilst historian Reginald Brown describes it as "one of the greatest [siege] operations in England up to that time". Having regained the south-east John split his forces, sending William Longespée to retake the north side of London and East Anglia, whilst John himself headed north via Nottingham to attack the estates of the northern barons. Both operations were successful and the majority of the remaining rebels were pinned down in London. In January 1216 John marched against Alexander II of Scotland, who had allied himself with the rebel cause. John took back Alexander's possessions in northern England in a rapid campaign and pushed up towards Edinburgh over a ten-day period.
The rebel barons responded by inviting the French prince Louis to lead them: Louis had a claim to the English throne by virtue of his marriage to Blanche of Castile, a granddaughter of Henry II. Philip may have provided him with private support but refused to openly support Louis, who was excommunicated by Innocent for taking part in the war against John. Louis' planned arrival in England presented a significant problem for John, as the prince would bring with him naval vessels and siege engines essential to the rebel cause. Once John contained Alexander in Scotland, he marched south to deal with the challenge of the coming invasion.
Prince Louis intended to land in the south of England in May 1216, and John assembled a naval force to intercept him. Unfortunately for John, his fleet was dispersed by bad storms and Louis landed unopposed in Kent. John hesitated and decided not to attack Louis immediately, either due to the risks of open battle or over concerns about the loyalty of his own men. Louis and the rebel barons advanced west and John retreated, spending the summer reorganising his defences across the rest of the kingdom. John saw several of his military household desert to the rebels, including his half-brother, William Longespée. By the end of the summer the rebels had regained the south-east of England and parts of the north.
In September 1216, John began a fresh, vigorous attack. He marched from the Cotswolds, feigned an offensive to relieve the besieged Windsor Castle, and attacked eastwards around London to Cambridge to separate the rebel-held areas of Lincolnshire and East Anglia. From there he travelled north to relieve the rebel siege at Lincoln and back east to Lynn, probably to order further supplies from the continent. In Lynn, John contracted dysentery, which would ultimately prove fatal. Meanwhile, Alexander II invaded northern England again, taking Carlisle in August and then marching south to give homage to Prince Louis for his English possessions; John narrowly missed intercepting Alexander along the way. Tensions between Louis and the English barons began to increase, prompting a wave of desertions, including William Marshal's son William and William Longespée, who both returned to John's faction.
John returned west but is said to have lost a significant part of his baggage train along the way. Roger of Wendover provides the most graphic account of this, suggesting that the King's belongings, including the English Crown Jewels, were lost as he crossed one of the tidal estuaries which empties into the Wash, being sucked in by quicksand and whirlpools. Accounts of the incident vary considerably between the various chroniclers and the exact location of the incident has never been confirmed; the losses may have involved only a few of his pack-horses. Modern historians assert that by October 1216 John faced a "stalemate", "a military situation uncompromised by defeat".
John's illness grew worse and by the time he reached Newark Castle, Nottinghamshire, he was unable to travel any farther; he died on the night of 18/19 October. Numerous – probably fictitious – accounts circulated soon after his death that he had been killed by poisoned ale, poisoned plums or a "surfeit of peaches". His body was escorted south by a company of mercenaries and he was buried in Worcester Cathedral in front of the altar of St Wulfstan. A new sarcophagus with an effigy was made for him in 1232, in which his remains now rest.
In the aftermath of John's death William Marshal was declared the protector of the nine-year-old Henry III. The civil war continued until royalist victories at the battles of Lincoln and Dover in 1217. Louis gave up his claim to the English throne and signed the Treaty of Lambeth. The failed "Magna Carta" agreement was resuscitated by Marshal's administration and reissued in an edited form in 1217 as a basis for future government. Henry III continued his attempts to reclaim Normandy and Anjou until 1259, but John's continental losses and the consequent growth of Capetian power in the 13th century proved to mark a "turning point in European history".
John's first wife, Isabella, Countess of Gloucester, was released from imprisonment in 1214; she remarried twice, and died in 1217. John's second wife, Isabella of Angoulême, left England for Angoulême soon after the King's death; she became a powerful regional leader, but largely abandoned the children she had had by John. Their eldest son, Henry III, ruled as King of England for the majority of the 13th century. Richard of Cornwall became a noted European leader and ultimately the King of the Romans in the Holy Roman Empire. Joan became Queen of Scotland on her marriage to Alexander II. Isabella was Holy Roman Empress as the wife of Emperor Frederick II. The youngest daughter, Eleanor, married William Marshal's son, also called William, and later the famous English rebel Simon de Montfort. By various mistresses John had eight, possibly nine, sons – Richard, Oliver, John, Geoffrey, Henry, Osbert Gifford, Eudes, Bartholomew and probably Philip – and two or three daughters – Joan, Maud and probably Isabel. Of these, Joan became the most famous, marrying Prince Llywelyn the Great of Wales.
Historical interpretations of John have been subject to considerable change over the centuries. Medieval chroniclers provided the first contemporary, or near contemporary, histories of John's reign. One group of chroniclers wrote early in John's life, or around the time of his accession, including Richard of Devizes, William of Newburgh, Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto. These historians were generally unsympathetic to John's behaviour under Richard's rule, but slightly more positive towards the very earliest years of John's reign. Reliable accounts of the middle and later parts of John's reign are more limited, with Gervase of Canterbury and Ralph of Coggeshall writing the main accounts; neither of them were positive about John's performance as king. Much of John's later, negative reputation was established by two chroniclers writing after his death, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, the latter claiming that John attempted conversion to Islam in exchange for military aid from the Almohad ruler Muhammad al-Nasir – a story modern historians consider untrue.
In the 16th century political and religious changes altered the attitude of historians towards John. Tudor historians were generally favourably inclined towards the King, focusing on his opposition to the Papacy and his promotion of the special rights and prerogatives of a king. Revisionist histories written by John Foxe, William Tyndale and Robert Barnes portrayed John as an early Protestant hero, and Foxe included the King in his "Book of Martyrs". John Speed's "Historie of Great Britaine" in 1632 praised John's "great renown" as a king; he blamed the bias of medieval chroniclers for the King's poor reputation.
By the Victorian period in the 19th century, historians were more inclined to draw on the judgements of the chroniclers and to focus on John's moral personality. Kate Norgate, for example, argued that John's downfall had been due not to his failure in war or strategy, but due to his "almost superhuman wickedness", whilst James Ramsay blamed John's family background and his cruel personality for his downfall. Historians in the "Whiggish" tradition, focusing on documents such as the Domesday Book and "Magna Carta", trace a progressive and universalist course of political and economic development in England over the medieval period. These historians were often inclined to see John's reign, and his signing of "Magna Carta" in particular, as a positive step in the constitutional development of England, despite the flaws of the King himself. Winston Churchill, for example, argued that "[w]hen the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns".
In the 1940s, new interpretations of John's reign began to emerge, based on research into the record evidence of his reign, such as pipe rolls, charters, court documents and similar primary records. Notably, an essay by Vivian Galbraith in 1945 proposed a "new approach" to understanding the ruler. The use of recorded evidence was combined with an increased scepticism about two of the most colourful chroniclers of John's reign, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris. In many cases the detail provided by these chroniclers, both writing after John's death, was challenged by modern historians. Interpretations of "Magna Carta" and the role of the rebel barons in 1215 have been significantly revised: although the charter's symbolic, constitutional value for later generations is unquestionable, in the context of John's reign most historians now consider it a failed peace agreement between "partisan" factions. There has been increasing debate about the nature of John's Irish policies. Specialists in Irish medieval history, such as Sean Duffy, have challenged the conventional narrative established by Lewis Warren, suggesting that Ireland was less stable by 1216 than was previously supposed.
Most historians today, including John's recent biographers Ralph Turner and Lewis Warren, argue that John was an unsuccessful monarch, but note that his failings were exaggerated by 12th- and 13th-century chroniclers. Jim Bradbury notes the current consensus that John was a "hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general", albeit, as Turner suggests, with "distasteful, even dangerous personality traits", including pettiness, spitefulness and cruelty. John Gillingham, author of a major biography of Richard I, follows this line too, although he considers John a less effective general than do Turner or Warren, and describes him "one of the worst kings ever to rule England". Bradbury takes a moderate line, but suggests that in recent years modern historians have been overly lenient towards John's numerous faults. Popular historian Frank McLynn maintains a counter-revisionist perspective on John, arguing that the King's modern reputation amongst historians is "bizarre", and that as a monarch John "fails almost all those [tests] that can be legitimately set". According to C. Warren Hollister, "The dramatic ambivalence of his personality, the passions that he stirred among his own contemporaries, the very magnitude of his failures, have made him an object of endless fascination to historians and biographers."
Popular representations of John first began to emerge during the Tudor period, mirroring the revisionist histories of the time. The anonymous play "The Troublesome Reign of King John" portrayed the King as a "proto-Protestant martyr", similar to that shown in John Bale's morality play "Kynge Johan", in which John attempts to save England from the "evil agents of the Roman Church". By contrast, Shakespeare's "King John", a relatively anti-Catholic play that draws on "The Troublesome Reign" for its source material, offers a more "balanced, dual view of a complex monarch as both a proto-Protestant victim of Rome's machinations and as a weak, selfishly motivated ruler". Anthony Munday's play "The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington" portrays many of John's negative traits, but adopts a positive interpretation of the King's stand against the Roman Catholic Church, in line with the contemporary views of the Tudor monarchs. By the middle of the 17th century, plays such as Robert Davenport's "King John and Matilda", although based largely on the earlier Elizabethan works, were transferring the role of Protestant champion to the barons and focusing more on the tyrannical aspects of John's behaviour.
Nineteenth-century fictional depictions of John were heavily influenced by Sir Walter Scott's historical romance, "Ivanhoe", which presented "an almost totally unfavourable picture" of the King; the work drew on 19th century histories of the period and on Shakespeare's play. Scott's work influenced the late 19th-century children's writer Howard Pyle's book "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood", which in turn established John as the principal villain within the traditional Robin Hood narrative. During the 20th century, John was normally depicted in fictional books and films alongside Robin Hood. Sam De Grasse's role as John in the black-and-white 1922 film version shows John committing numerous atrocities and acts of torture. Claude Rains played John in the 1938 colour version alongside Errol Flynn, starting a trend for films to depict John as an "effeminate ... arrogant and cowardly stay-at-home". The character of John acts either to highlight the virtues of King Richard, or contrasts with the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is usually the "swashbuckling villain" opposing Robin. An extreme version of this trend can be seen in the 1973 Disney cartoon version, for example, which depicts John, voiced by Peter Ustinov, as a "cowardly, thumbsucking lion". Popular works that depict John beyond the Robin Hood legends, such as James Goldman's play and later film, "The Lion in Winter", set in 1183, commonly present him as an "effete weakling", in this instance contrasted with the more masculine Henry II, or as a tyrant, as in A. A. Milne's poem for children, "King John's Christmas". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16550 |
Jule Styne
Jule Styne (; born Julius Kerwin Stein, December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-American song writer and composer best known for a series of Broadway musicals, including several famous frequently-revived shows that also became successful films: "Gypsy," "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," and "Funny Girl."
Styne was born to a Jewish family in London, England. His parents, Anna Kertman and Isadore Stein, were emigrants from Ukraine, the Russian Empire and ran a small grocery. Even before his family left Britain, he did impressions on the stage of well-known singers, including Harry Lauder who saw him perform and advised him to take up the piano. At the age of eight, he moved with his family to Chicago where he began piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.
Before Styne attended Chicago Musical College, he had already attracted the attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It was the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne composed in his career. His first hit, "Sunday," was written in 1926.
In 1929, Styne was playing with the Ben Pollack band.
Styne was a vocal coach for 20th Century Fox until Darryl F. Zanuck fired him because vocal coaching was "a luxury, and we're cutting out those luxuries." Zanuck told him he should write songs because "that's forever." Styne established his own dance band, which got him noticed in Hollywood where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and began a collaboration with lyricist Sammy Cahn. He and Cahn wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (No. 1 for three weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1945), "Five Minutes More," and the Oscar-winning title song for "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954). Ten of his songs were Oscar-nominated, many of them written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before" (No. 1 for 13 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1943), "I'll Walk Alone," "It's Magic" (a No. 2 hit for Doris Day in 1948), and "I Fall In Love Too Easily." He collaborated with Leo Robin on the score for the 1955 musical film "My Sister Eileen."
In 1947, Styne wrote his first score for a Broadway musical, "High Button Shoes," with Cahn, and over the next several decades wrote the scores for many Broadway shows, most notably "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," "Peter Pan" (additional music), "Bells Are Ringing," "," "Do Re Mi," "Funny Girl," "Lorelei," "Sugar" (with a story based on the movie "Some Like It Hot," but all new music), and the Tony-winning "Hallelujah, Baby!."
Styne wrote original music for the short-lived themed amusement park Freedomland U.S.A. that opened on June 19, 1960.
His collaborators included Sammy Cahn, Leo Robin, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim, and Bob Merrill. Carol Channing was the lead in many of his musicals.
He was the subject of "This Is Your Life" for British television in 1978 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in New York's Time Square.
Styne died of heart failure in New York City at the age of 88. His archiveincluding original hand-written compositions, letters, and production materialsis housed at the Harry Ransom Center.
Styne was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972 and the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981, and he was a recipient of a Drama Desk Special Award and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990. Additionally, Styne won the 1955 Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for "Three Coins in the Fountain", and "Hallelujah, Baby!" won the 1968 Tony Award for Best Original Score.
A selection of the many songs that Styne wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16551 |
Julia Roberts
Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress and producer. She established herself as a leading lady in Hollywood after headlining the romantic comedy film "Pretty Woman" (1990), which grossed $464million worldwide. She has won three Golden Globe Awards, from eight nominations, and has been nominated for four Academy Awards for her film acting, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in "Erin Brockovich" (2000).
Her films have collectively brought box office receipts of over US$2.8billion, making her one of the most bankable actresses in Hollywood. Her most successful films include "Mystic Pizza" (1988), "Steel Magnolias" (1989), "Pretty Woman" (1990), "Sleeping with the Enemy" (1991), "The Pelican Brief" (1993), "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997), "Notting Hill" (1999), "Runaway Bride" (1999)," Erin Brockovich" (2000), "Ocean's Eleven" (2001), "Ocean's Twelve" (2004), "Charlie Wilson's War" (2007), "Valentine's Day" (2010), "Eat Pray Love" (2010), "Money Monster" (2016), and "Wonder" (2017). Roberts was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her performance in the HBO television film "The Normal Heart" (2014). In 2018, she starred in the Prime Video psychological thriller series "Homecoming".
Roberts was the highest-paid actress in the world throughout most of the 1990s and in the first half of the 2000s. Her fee for 1990's "Pretty Woman" was US$300,000; in 2003, she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in "Mona Lisa Smile" (2003). , Roberts's net worth was estimated to be $170 million. "People" magazine has named her the most beautiful woman in the world a record five times.
Roberts was born on October 28, 1967, in Smyrna, Georgia, to Betty Lou Bredemus (1934–2015) and Walter Grady Roberts (1933–1977). She is of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, German, and Swedish descent. Her father was a Baptist, her mother a Catholic, and she was raised Catholic. Her older brother Eric Roberts (b. 1956), from whom she was estranged for several years until 2004, older sister Lisa Roberts Gillan (b. 1965), and niece Emma Roberts, are also actors. She also had a younger half-sister named Nancy Motes (1976–2014).
Roberts' parents, one-time actors and playwrights, met while performing in theatrical productions for the armed forces. They later co-founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in Atlanta, off Juniper Street in Midtown. They ran a children's acting school in Decatur, Georgia, while they were expecting Julia. The children of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King attended the school; Walter Roberts served as acting coach for their daughter, Yolanda Denise King. As a thank-you for his service, Mrs. King paid Mrs. Roberts's hospital bill when Julia was born.
Her parents married in 1955. Her mother filed for divorce in 1971; the divorce was finalized in early 1972. From 1972, Roberts lived in Smyrna, Georgia, where she attended Fitzhugh Lee Elementary School, Griffin Middle School, and Campbell High School. In 1972, her mother married Michael Motes, who was abusive and often unemployed; Roberts despised him. The couple had Nancy, who died at 37 on February 9, 2014, of an apparent drug overdose. The marriage ended in 1983, with Betty Lou divorcing Motes on cruelty grounds; she had stated that marrying him was the biggest mistake of her life. Roberts's own father died of cancer when she was ten.
Roberts wanted to be a veterinarian as a child. She also played the clarinet in her school band. After graduating from Smyrna's Campbell High School, she attended Georgia State University but did not graduate. She later headed to New York City to pursue a career in acting. Once there, she signed with the Click Modeling Agency and enrolled in acting classes.
Roberts made her first big screen appearance in the film "Satisfaction" (1988), alongside Liam Neeson and Justine Bateman, as a band member looking for a summer gig. She had previously performed a small role opposite her brother Eric, in "Blood Red" (she has two words of dialogue), filmed in 1987, although it was not released until 1989. Her first television appearance was as a juvenile rape victim in the initial season of the series "Crime Story" with Dennis Farina, in the episode titled "The Survivor", broadcast on February 13, 1987. Her first critical success with moviegoers was her performance in the independent film "Mystic Pizza" in 1988; that same year, she had a role in the fourth-season finale of "Miami Vice". In 1989, she was featured in "Steel Magnolias", as a young bride with diabetes, and received both her first Academy Award nomination (as Best Supporting Actress) and first Golden Globe Award win (Motion Picture Best Supporting Actress) for her performance.
Roberts became known to worldwide audiences when she starred with Richard Gere in the Cinderella–Pygmalionesque story, "Pretty Woman", in 1990, playing an assertive freelance hooker with a heart of gold. Roberts won the role after Michelle Pfeiffer, Molly Ringwald, Meg Ryan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Karen Allen, and Daryl Hannah (her co-star in "Steel Magnolias") turned it down. The role also earned her a second Oscar nomination, this time as Best Actress, and second Golden Globe Award win, as Motion Picture Best Actress (Musical or Comedy). "Pretty Woman" saw the highest number of ticket sales in the U.S. ever for a romantic comedy, and made US$463.4million worldwide.
Roberts starred as one of five students conducting clandestine experiments that produce near-death experiences in the supernatural thriller "Flatliners", in 1990. Her next film was the commercially successful thriller "Sleeping with the Enemy" (1991), in which she took on the role of a battered wife who escapes her abusive husband, played by Patrick Bergin, and begins a new life in Iowa. Roberts played Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's "Hook", and starred as a nurse in Joel Schumacher's romance film "Dying Young"; both films were also released in 1991, to a highly positive commercial response.
Roberts took a two-year hiatus from the screen, during which she made no films other than a cameo appearance in Robert Altman's "The Player" (1992). In early 1993, she was the subject of a "People" magazine cover story asking, "What Happened to Julia Roberts?". Roberts starred with Denzel Washington in the thriller "The Pelican Brief" (1993), based on John Grisham's 1992 novel of the same name. In it, she played a young law student who uncovers a conspiracy, putting herself and others in danger. The film was a commercial success, grossing US$195.2 million worldwide. None of her next film releases – "I Love Trouble" (1994), "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994) and "Something to Talk About" (1995) – were particularly well-received by critics. In 1996, she guest-starred in the second season of "Friends" (episode 13, "The One After the Superbowl"), and appeared with Liam Neeson in the historical drama "Michael Collins", portraying Kitty Kiernan, the fiancée of the assassinated Irish revolutionary leader. Stephen Frears' "Mary Reilly", her other 1996 film, was a critical and commercial failure.
By the late 1990s, Roberts enjoyed renewed success in the romantic comedy genre. In "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997), she starred opposite Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett, as a food critic who realizes she's in love with her best friend and tries to win him back after he decides to marry someone else. The film was a global box-office hit and is considered to be one of the best romantic comedy films of all time. In 1998, Roberts appeared on "Sesame Street" opposite the character Elmo, and starred in the drama "Stepmom", alongside Susan Sarandon, revolving around the complicated relationship between a terminally-ill mother and the future stepmother of her children. While reviews were mixed, the film made US$159.7 million worldwide.
Roberts paired with Hugh Grant for "Notting Hill" (1999), portraying a famous actress falling in love with a struggling book store owner. The film displaced "Four Weddings and a Funeral" as the biggest British hit in the history of cinema, with earnings equalling US$363million worldwide. An exemplary of modern romantic comedies in mainstream culture, the film was also received well by critics. CNN reviewer Paul Clinton called Roberts "the queen of the romantic comedy [whose] reign continues", and remarked: ""Notting Hill" stands alone as another funny and heartwarming story about love against all odds." She reunited with Richard Gere and Garry Marshall, both of "Pretty Woman", to play a woman who has left a string of fiancés at the altar in "Runaway Bride", also released in 1999. "Runaway Bride" received generally mixed reviews from critics, but it did very well at the box office, grossing US$309.4million around the globe. Roberts was a guest star on the episode "Empire", of the television series "Law & Order", with regular cast member Benjamin Bratt (at that time her boyfriend). She earned a nomination for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
In 2000, Roberts portrayed real-life environmental activist Erin Brockovich in her fight against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) of California in the film "Erin Brockovich", for which she received US$20 million; "Rolling Stone" magazine's Peter Travers wrote, "Roberts shows the emotional toll on Erin as she tries to stay responsible to her children and to a job that has provided her with a first taste of self-esteem", while "Entertainment Weekly" critic Owen Gleiberman felt that it was a "delight to watch Roberts, with her flirtatious sparkle and undertow of melancholy". "Erin Brockovich" made US$256.3 million worldwide, and Roberts won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role. In December 2000, Roberts, who had been the highest-paid actress through the 1990s, became the first actress to make "The Hollywood Reporter"s list of the 50 most influential women in show business since the list had begun in 1992.
Roberts' first film following "Erin Brockovich" was the road gangster comedy, "The Mexican" (2001), giving her a chance to work with long-time friend Brad Pitt. The film's script was originally intended to be filmed as an independent production without major motion picture stars, but Roberts and Pitt, who had for some time been looking for a project they could do together, learned about it and decided to sign on. Though advertised as a typical romantic comedy star vehicle, the film does not focus solely on the Pitt/Roberts relationship and the two shared relatively little screen time together. "The Mexican" earned $66.8 million at the U.S. box office.
Her next film, the romantic comedy "America's Sweethearts" (also 2001), starred Roberts along with Billy Crystal, John Cusack, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Directed by Joe Roth, the Hollywood farce centers on a supercouple, Gwen and Eddie, who separate when she dumps him for another man. Roberts portrayed Gwen's once-overweight sister and assistant who has been secretly in love with Eddie (Cusack) for years. Reviews of the film were generally unfavorable: critics' felt that despite its famous cast, the movie lacked "sympathetic characters" and was "only funny in spurts." A commercial success, it grossed over US$138 million worldwide, however.
In fall 2001, Roberts teamed with "Erin Brockovich" director Steven Soderbergh for "Ocean's Eleven", a comedy-crime caper film and remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film of the same name, featuring an ensemble cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon. Roberts played Tess Ocean, the ex-wife of leader Danny Ocean (Clooney), originally played by Angie Dickinson, who is dating a casino owner played by Andy García. A success with critics and at the box office alike, "Ocean's Eleven" became the fifth highest-grossing film of the year with a total of US$450 million worldwide.
In 2003, Roberts was cast in Mike Newell's drama film "Mona Lisa Smile", also starring Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Julia Stiles. Roberts received a record US$25 million for her portrayal of a forward-thinking art history professor at Wellesley College in 1953 – the highest ever earned by an actress until then. The film garnered largely lukewarm reviews by critics, who found it "predictable and safe".
In 2004, Roberts replaced Cate Blanchett in Mike Nichols's "Closer", a romantic drama film written by Patrick Marber, based on his award-winning 1997 play of the same name. The film also starred Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen. Also in 2004, she reprised the role of Tess Ocean in the sequel "Ocean's Twelve". The film was deliberately much more unconventional than the first, epitomized by a sequence in which Roberts' character impersonates the real-life Julia Roberts, due to what the film's characters believe is their strong resemblance. Though less well reviewed than "Eleven", the film became another major success at the box office, with a gross of US$363 million worldwide, mostly from its international run. Unlike all the male cast members, Roberts did not appear in the series' third and final installment, "Ocean's Thirteen" (2007), due to script issues. In 2005, she was featured in the music video for the single "Dreamgirl" by the Dave Matthews Band; it was her first music video appearance. Roberts appeared in "The Hollywood Reporter"'s list of the 10 highest-paid actresses every year from 2002 (when the magazine began compiling its list) to 2005.
Besides providing her voice for roles in the 2006 animated films "The Ant Bully" and "Charlotte's Web", Roberts made her Broadway debut on April 19, 2006, as Nan in a revival of Richard Greenberg's 1997 play "Three Days of Rain" opposite Bradley Cooper and Paul Rudd. Although the play grossed nearly US$1million in ticket sales during its first week and was a commercial success throughout its limited run, her performance drew criticism. Ben Brantley of "The New York Times" described Roberts as being fraught with "self-consciousness (especially in the first act) [and] only glancingly acquainted with the two characters she plays." Brantley also criticized the overall production, writing that "it's almost impossible to discern its artistic virtues from this wooden and splintered interpretation, directed by Joe Mantello." Writing in the "New York Post", Clive Barnes declared, "Hated the play. To be sadly honest, even hated her. At least I liked the rain—even if three days of it can seem an eternity."
Her next film was "Charlie Wilson's War", with Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Mike Nichols; Roberts played socialite Joanne Herring, the love interest of Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson. It was released on December 21, 2007, to critical acclaim, with Roberts eventually earning her sixth Golden Globe nomination. "Fireflies in the Garden", an independent drama in which Roberts played a mother whose death sets the story in motion, also starred Ryan Reynolds and Willem Dafoe; the film was screened at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival and was subsequently shown in European cinemas—it did not get a North American release until 2011. In 2009, Roberts starred with Clive Owen in the moderately successful comic thriller "Duplicity", playing a CIA agent collaborating with another spy to carry out a complicated con. For her performance, she received her seventh Golden Globe nomination. Also in 2009, Lancôme announced that Roberts would become their global ambassador for their company.
In 2010, Roberts played an U.S. Army captain on a one-day leave, as part of a large ensemble cast, in the romantic comedy "Valentine's Day", and starred as an author finding herself following a divorce in the film adaptation of "Eat Pray Love". While she received US$3 million up front against 3 percent of the gross for her six-minute role in "Valentine's Day", "Eat Pray Love" had the highest debut at the box office for Roberts in a top-billed role since "America's Sweethearts". Later in the year, she signed a five-year extension with Lancôme for million.
In 2011, she appeared as a college teacher and the love interest of a middle-aged man returning to education in the romantic comedy "Larry Crowne", opposite Tom Hanks, who directed and played the title role. The movie received generally mediocre reviews with only 35% of the 175 Rotten Tomatoes reviews giving it high ratings, although Roberts's comedic performance was praised. In "Mirror Mirror" (2012), the Tarsem Singh adaptation of "Snow White", Roberts portrayed Queen Clementianna, Snow White's evil stepmother, opposite Lily Collins.
In 2013, Roberts starred alongside Meryl Streep and Ewan McGregor in the black comedy drama "", about a dysfunctional family that re-unites into the familial house when their patriarch suddenly disappears. Her performance earned her nominations for the Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics' Choice Award, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, amongst other accolades. It was her fourth Academy Award nomination.
In 2014, Roberts starred as Dr. Emma Brookner, a character based on Dr. Linda Laubenstein, in the television adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS-era play, "The Normal Heart", which aired on HBO; the film was critically acclaimed and "Vanity Fair", in its review, wrote: "Roberts, meanwhile, hums with righteous, "Erin Brokovich"-ian anger. Between this and "August: Osage County", she's carving out a nice new niche for herself, playing brittle women who show their love and concern through explosive temper". Her role garnered her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. She also narrated "Women in Hollywood", an episode of the second season of "", in 2014. In 2015, Roberts appeared in Givenchy's spring–summer campaign, and starred as a grieving mother opposite Nicole Kidman and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the little-seen film "Secret in Their Eyes", a remake of the 2009 Argentine film of the same name, both based on the novel "La pregunta de sus ojos" by author Eduardo Sacheri.
In 2016, she reunited with Garry Marshall again to appear as an accomplished author who gave her child for adoption in the romantic comedy "Mother's Day", opposite Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, Jason Sudeikis, and Timothy Olyphant. The film received "overwhelmingly negative reviews", but budgeted at US$25million, was a moderate box office success, grossing US$48.5million. She also starred as a television director in the thriller "Money Monster", directed by Jodie Foster and alongside George Clooney and Jack O'Connell.
In "Wonder" (2017), the film adaptation of the 2012 novel of the same name by R. J. Palacio, Roberts played the mother of a boy with Treacher Collins syndrome. "The Times" felt Roberts "lifts every one of her scenes in "Wonder" to near-sublime places", as part of a positive reception, and with a worldwide gross of US$305.9 million, "Wonder" emerged as one of Roberts' most widely seen films. Roberts took on the role of a caseworker at a secret government facility in her first television series, "Homecoming", which premiered on November 2, 2018 on Amazon Video.
Roberts runs the production company Red Om Films (Red Om is "Moder" spelled backwards, after her husband's last name) with her sister, Lisa Roberts Gillan, and Marisa Yeres Gill. Through Red Om, Roberts served as an executive producer of the first four films of the "American Girl" film series (based on the "American Girl" line of dolls), released between 2004 and 2008.
Roberts had romantic relationships with actors Jason Patric, Liam Neeson, Kiefer Sutherland, Dylan McDermott, and Matthew Perry. She was briefly engaged to Sutherland; they broke up three days before their scheduled wedding on June 11, 1991. On June 25, 1993, she married country singer Lyle Lovett; the wedding took place at St. James Lutheran Church in Marion, Indiana. They separated in March 1995 and subsequently divorced. From 1998 to 2001, Roberts dated actor Benjamin Bratt.
Roberts and her husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, met on the set of her film "The Mexican" in 2000 while she was still dating Bratt. At the time, Moder was married to Vera Steimberg. He filed for divorce a little over a year later, and after it was finalized, he and Roberts wed on July 4, 2002, at her ranch in Taos, New Mexico. Together, they have three children: twins, a daughter and a son, born in November 2004, and another son born in June 2007.
In 2010, Roberts said she was Hindu. Roberts is a devotee of the guru Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji), a picture of whom drew Roberts to Hinduism.
In September 2009, Swami Daram Dev of Ashram Hari Mandir in Pataudi, where Roberts was shooting "Eat Pray Love", gave her children new names after Hindu gods: Laxmi for Hazel, Ganesh for Phinnaeus and Krishna Balram for Henry.
Roberts has given her time and resources to UNICEF as well as to other charitable organizations. On May 10, 1995, Roberts arrived in Port-au-Prince, as she said, "to educate myself." The poverty she found was overwhelming. "My heart is just bursting," she said. UNICEF officials hoped that her six-day visit would trigger an outburst of giving: US$10million in aid was sought at the time.
In 2000, Roberts narrated "Silent Angels", a documentary about Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder. The documentary was designed to help raise public awareness about the disease. In July 2006, Roberts became a spokeswoman for Earth Biofuels, as well as chair of the company's newly formed Advisory Board promoting the use of renewable fuels. She supported Gucci's "Chime For Change" campaign that aims to spread female empowerment.
Roberts was the voice of Mother Nature in a 2014 short film for Conservation International, intended to raise awareness about climate change. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16553 |
John Sealy Hospital
John Sealy Hospital is a hospital that is a part of the University of Texas Medical Branch complex in Galveston, Texas, United States.
Sealy opened on January 10, 1890. It was founded by the widow and brother of one of the richest citizens of Texas, John Sealy after his death. Accompanied by the John Sealy Hospital Training School for Nurses, which was opened two months after the hospital, the foundation became the primary teaching facility of University of Texas Medical Branch opened in October 1891. In 1922, John Sealy's children, John Sealy, II and Jennie Sealy Smith established the Sealy & Smith Foundation for the hospital. This enabled construction of several new facilities, including the Rebecca Sealy Nurses' home.
A second John Sealy Hospital was built in 1954 to replace the 1890 building. Today it is known as the John Sealy Annex and houses administrative and support services.
The current John Sealy Hospital was completed in 1978 at a cost of $32.5 million and was funded in full by the Sealy & Smith Foundation. The 12-story hospital includes single-patient rooms and specialized intensive care units. Other features include the Acute Care for Elders Unit, or ACE Unit and a Level I Trauma Center, one of only three in the entire Greater Houston area.
The Sealy & Smith Foundation has contributed over $600 million to UTMB since its inception.
Hurricane Ike forced the closing of UTMB temporarily. John Sealy Hospital and its trauma center have reopened, with renovations being undertaken in damaged areas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16554 |
Jack Kirby
Jacob "Kirby" Kurtzberg (; August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) was an American comic book artist, writer and editor, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics.
After serving in the European Theater in World War II, Kirby produced work for DC Comics, Harvey Comics, Hillman Periodicals and other publishers. At Crestwood Publications, he and Simon created the genre of romance comics and later founded their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications. Kirby was involved in Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, which in the next decade became Marvel. There, in the 1960s under writer-editor Stan Lee, Kirby created many of the company's major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Thor, the Hulk and Iron Man. The Lee–Kirby titles garnered high sales and critical acclaim, but in 1970, feeling he had been treated unfairly, largely in the realm of authorship credit and creators' rights, Kirby left the company for rival DC.
At DC, Kirby created his Fourth World saga which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, the Fourth World's New Gods have continued as a significant part of the DC Universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby, who has been called "the William Blake of comics", began receiving great recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987 he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. In 2017, Kirby was posthumously named a Disney Legend with Lee for their co-creations not only in the field of publishing, but also because those creations formed the basis for The Walt Disney Company's financially and critically successful media franchise, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Kirby was married to Rosalind Goldstein in 1942. They had four children and remained married until his death from heart failure in 1994, at the age of 76. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor, and he is known as "The King" among comics fans for his many influential contributions to the medium.
Jack Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, at 147 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, where he was raised. His parents, Rose (Bernstein) and Benjamin Kurtzberg, were Austrian-Jewish immigrants, and his father earned a living as a garment factory worker. In his youth, Kirby desired to escape his neighborhood. He liked to draw, and sought out places he could learn more about art. Essentially self-taught, Kirby cited among his influences the comic strip artists Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, and Alex Raymond, as well as such editorial cartoonists as C.H. Sykes, "Ding" Darling, and Rollin Kirby. He was rejected by the Educational Alliance because he drew "too fast with charcoal", according to Kirby. He later found an outlet for his skills by drawing cartoons for the newspaper of the Boys Brotherhood Republic, a "miniature city" on East 3rd Street where street kids ran their own government.
At age 14, Kirby enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, leaving after a week. "I wasn't the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done".
Kirby joined the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate in 1936, working there on newspaper comic strips and on single-panel advice cartoons such as "Your Health Comes First!!!" (under the pseudonym Jack Curtiss). He remained until late 1939, when he began working for the movie animation company Fleischer Studios as an inbetweener (an artist who fills in the action between major-movement frames) on "Popeye" cartoons at the same time in 1935. He left the Studio before the Fleischer strike in 1937. "I went from Lincoln to Fleischer," he recalled. "From Fleischer I had to get out in a hurry because I couldn't take that kind of thing," describing it as "a factory in a sense, like my father's factory. They were manufacturing pictures."
Around that time, the American comic book industry was booming. Kirby began writing and drawing for the comic-book packager Eisner & Iger, one of a handful of firms creating comics on demand for publishers. Through that company, Kirby did what he remembers as his first comic book work, for "Wild Boy Magazine". This included such strips as the science fiction adventure "The Diary of Dr. Hayward" (under the pseudonym Curt Davis), the Western crimefighter feature "Wilton of the West" (as Fred Sande), the swashbuckler adventure "The Count of Monte Cristo" (again as Jack Curtiss), and the humor features "Abdul Jones" (as Ted Grey) and "Socko the Seadog" (as Teddy), all variously for "Jumbo Comics" and other Eisner-Iger clients. He first used the surname Kirby as the pseudonymous Lance Kirby in two "Lone Rider" Western stories in Eastern Color Printing's "Famous Funnies" #63–64 (Oct.–Nov. 1939). He ultimately settled on the pen name Jack Kirby because it reminded him of actor James Cagney. However, he took offense to those who suggested he changed his name in order to hide his Jewish heritage.
Kirby moved on to comic-book publisher and newspaper syndicator Fox Feature Syndicate, earning a then-reasonable $15-a-week salary. He began to explore superhero narrative with the comic strip "The Blue Beetle", published from January to March 1940, starring a character created by the pseudonymous Charles Nicholas, a house name that Kirby retained for the three-month-long strip. During this time, Kirby met and began collaborating with cartoonist and Fox editor Joe Simon, who in addition to his staff work continued to freelance. Simon recalled in 1988, "I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt through ... about 25 years."
After leaving Fox and collaborating on the premiere issue of Fawcett Comics' "Captain Marvel Adventures" ([March] 1941), the first solo title for the previously introduced superhero, and for which Kirby was told to mimic creator C.C. Beck's drawing style, the duo were hired on staff at pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman's Timely Comics (later to become Marvel Comics). There Simon and Kirby created the patriotic superhero Captain America in late 1940. Simon, who became the company's editor, with Kirby as art director, said he negotiated with Goodman to give the duo 25 percent of the profits from the feature. The first issue of "Captain America Comics", released in early 1941, sold out in days, and the second issue's print run was set at over a million copies. The title's success established the team as a notable creative force in the industry. After the first issue was published, Simon asked Kirby to join the Timely staff as the company's art director.
With the success of the Captain America character, Simon said he felt that Goodman was not paying the pair the promised percentage of profits, and so sought work for the two of them at National Comics Publications (later renamed DC Comics). Kirby and Simon negotiated a deal that would pay them a combined $500 a week, as opposed to the $75 and $85 they respectively earned at Timely. The pair feared Goodman would not pay them if he found they were moving to National, but many people knew of their plan, including Timely editorial assistant Stan Lee. When Goodman eventually discovered it, he told Simon and Kirby to leave after finishing work on "Captain America Comics" #10.
Kirby and Simon spent their first weeks at National trying to devise new characters while the company sought how best to utilize the pair. After a few failed editor-assigned ghosting assignments, National's Jack Liebowitz told them to "just do what you want". The pair then revamped the Sandman feature in "Adventure Comics" and created the superhero Manhunter. In July 1942 they began the "Boy Commandos" feature. The ongoing "kid gang" series of the same name, launched later that same year, was the creative team's first National feature to graduate into its own title. It sold over a million copies a month, becoming National's third best-selling title. They scored a hit with the homefront kid-gang team, the Newsboy Legion, featuring in "Star-Spangled Comics". In 2010, DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that "Like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby was a mark of quality and a proven track record."
With World War II underway, Liebowitz expected that Simon and Kirby would be drafted, so he asked the artists to create an inventory of material to be published in their absence. The pair hired writers, inkers, letterers, and colorists in order to create a year's worth of material. Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army on June 7, 1943. After basic training at Camp Stewart, near Savannah, Georgia, he was assigned to Company F of the 11th Infantry Regiment. He landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on August 23, 1944, two-and-a-half months after D-Day, although Kirby's reminiscences would place his arrival just 10 days after. Kirby recalled that a lieutenant, learning that comics artist Kirby was in his command, made him a scout who would advance into towns and draw reconnaissance maps and pictures, an extremely dangerous duty.
After the war, Simon arranged work for Kirby and himself at Harvey Comics, where, through the early 1950s, the duo created such titles as the kid-gang adventure "Boy Explorers Comics", the kid-gang Western "Boys' Ranch", the superhero comic "Stuntman", and, in vogue with the fad for 3-D movies, "Captain 3-D". Simon and Kirby additionally freelanced for Hillman Periodicals (the crime-fiction comic "Real Clue Crime") and for Crestwood Publications ("Justice Traps the Guilty").
The team found its greatest success in the postwar period by creating romance comics. Simon, inspired by Macfadden Publications' romantic-confession magazine "True Story", transplanted the idea to comic books and with Kirby created a first-issue mock-up of "Young Romance". Showing it to Crestwood general manager Maurice Rosenfeld, Simon asked for 50% of the comic's profits. Crestwood publishers Teddy Epstein and Mike Bleier agreed, stipulating that the creators would take no money up front. "Young Romance" #1 (cover-date Oct. 1947) "became Jack and Joe's biggest hit in years". The pioneering title sold a staggering 92% of its print run, inspiring Crestwood to increase the print run by the third issue to triple the initial number of copies. Initially published bimonthly, "Young Romance" quickly became a monthly title and produced the spin-off "Young Love"—together the two titles sold two million copies per month, according to Simon—later joined by "Young Brides" and "In Love", the latter "featuring full-length romance stories". "Young Romance" spawned dozens of imitators from publishers such as Timely, Fawcett, Quality, and Fox Feature Syndicate. Despite the glut, the Simon and Kirby romance titles continued to sell millions of copies a month.
Bitter that Timely Comics' 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, had relaunched Captain America in a new series in 1954, Kirby and Simon created "Fighting American". Simon recalled, "We thought we'd show them how to do Captain America". While the comic book initially portrayed the protagonist as an anti-Communist dramatic hero, Simon and Kirby turned the series into a superhero satire with the second issue, in the aftermath of the Army-McCarthy hearings and the public backlash against the Red-baiting U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy.
At the urging of a Crestwood salesman, Kirby and Simon launched their own comics company, Mainline Publications, securing a distribution deal with Leader News in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friend Al Harvey's Harvey Publications at 1860 Broadway. Mainline, which existed from 1954 to 1955, published four titles: the Western "Bullseye: Western Scout"; the war comic "Foxhole" because EC Comics and Atlas Comics were having success with war comics, but promoting theirs as being written and drawn by actual veterans; "In Love" because their earlier romance comic "Young Love" was still being widely imitated; and the crime comic "Police Trap", which claimed to be based on genuine accounts by law-enforcement officials. After the duo rearranged and republished artwork from an old Crestwood story in "In Love", Crestwood refused to pay the team, who sought an audit of Crestwood's finances. Upon review, the pair's attorney's stated the company owed them $130,000 for work done over the past seven years. Crestwood paid them $10,000 in addition to their recent delayed payments. The partnership between Kirby and Simon had become strained. Simon left the industry for a career in advertising, while Kirby continued to freelance. "He wanted to do other things and I stuck with comics," Kirby recalled in 1971. "It was fine. There was no reason to continue the partnership and we parted friends."
At this point in the mid-1950s, Kirby made a temporary return to the former Timely Comics, now known as Atlas Comics, the direct predecessor of Marvel Comics. Inker Frank Giacoia had approached editor-in-chief Stan Lee for work and suggested he could "get Kirby back here to pencil some stuff." While freelancing for National Comics Publications, the future DC Comics, Kirby drew 20 stories for Atlas from 1956 to 1957: Beginning with the five-page "Mine Field" in "Battleground" #14 (Nov 1956), Kirby penciled and in some cases inked (with his wife, Roz) and wrote stories of the Western hero Black Rider, the Fu Manchu-like Yellow Claw, and more. But in 1957, distribution troubles caused the "Atlas implosion" that resulted in several series being dropped and no new material being assigned for many months. It would be the following year before Kirby returned to the nascent Marvel.
For DC around this time, Kirby co-created with writers Dick and Dave Wood the non-superpowered adventuring quartet the Challengers of the Unknown in "Showcase" #6 (Feb. 1957), while contributing to such anthologies as "House of Mystery". During 30 months freelancing for DC, Kirby drew slightly more than 600 pages, which included 11 six-page Green Arrow stories in "World's Finest Comics" and "Adventure Comics" that, in a rarity, Kirby inked himself. Kirby recast the archer as a science-fiction hero, moving him away from his Batman-formula roots, but in the process alienating Green Arrow co-creator Mort Weisinger.
He began drawing "Sky Masters of the Space Force," a newspaper comic strip, written by the Wood brothers and initially inked by the unrelated Wally Wood. Kirby left National Comics Publications due largely to a contractual dispute in which editor Jack Schiff, who had been involved in getting Kirby and the Wood brothers the "Sky Masters" contract, claimed he was due royalties from Kirby's share of the strip's profits. Schiff successfully sued Kirby. Some DC editors had criticized him over art details, such as not drawing "the shoelaces on a cavalryman's boots" and showing a Native American "mounting his horse from the wrong side."
Several months later, after his split with DC, Kirby began freelancing regularly for Atlas despite harboring negative sentiments about Lee (the cousin of Timely publisher Martin Goodman's wife), whom Kirby believed had disclosed to Timely back in the 1940s that he and Simon were secretly working on a project for National. Because of the poor page rates, Kirby would spend 12 to 14 hours daily at his drawing table at home, producing four to five pages of artwork a day. His first published work at Atlas was the cover of and the seven-page story "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers" in "Strange Worlds" #1 (Dec. 1958). Initially with Christopher Rule as his regular inker, and later Dick Ayers, Kirby drew across all genres, from romance comics to war comics to crime comics to Western comics, but made his mark primarily with a series of supernatural-fantasy and science fiction stories featuring giant, drive-in movie-style monsters with names like Groot, the Thing from Planet X; Grottu, King of the Insects; and Fin Fang Foom for the company's many anthology series, such as "Amazing Adventures," "Strange Tales," "Tales to Astonish," "Tales of Suspense," and "World of Fantasy." His bizarre designs of powerful, unearthly creatures proved a hit with readers. Additionally, he freelanced for Archie Comics' around this time, reuniting briefly with Joe Simon to help develop the series "The Fly" and "The Double Life of Private Strong". Additionally, Kirby drew some issues of "Classics Illustrated".
It was at Marvel, in collaborating with writer and editor-in-chief Lee that Kirby hit his stride once again in superhero comics, beginning with "The Fantastic Four" #1 (Nov. 1961). The landmark series became a hit that revolutionized the industry with its comparative naturalism and, eventually, a cosmic purview informed by Kirby's seemingly boundless imaginationone well-matched with the consciousness-expanding youth culture of the 1960s. For almost a decade, Kirby provided Marvel's house style, co-creating with Stan Lee many of the Marvel characters and designing their visual motifs. At Lee's request, he often provided new-to-Marvel artists "breakdown" layouts, over which they would pencil in order to become acquainted with the Marvel look. As artist Gil Kane described:
Highlights of Lee and Kirby's collaboration also include the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the original X-Men, Doctor Doom, Uatu the Watcher, Magneto, Ego the Living Planet, the Inhumans and their hidden city of Attilan, and the Black Panther, comics' first black superhero, and his Afrofuturist nation, Wakanda. Kirby initially was assigned to pencil the first Spider-Man story, but when he showed Lee the first six pages, Lee recalled, "I "hated" the way he was doing it! Not that he did it badly—it just wasn't the character I wanted; it was too heroic". Lee then turned to Steve Ditko to draw the story that would appear in "Amazing Fantasy" #15, for which Kirby nonetheless penciled the cover. Lee and Kirby gathered several of their newly created characters together into the team title "The Avengers" and would bring back old characters from the 1940s such as the Sub-Mariner and Captain America. In later years, Lee and Kirby would contest who deserved credit for such creations as "The Fantastic Four".
The story frequently cited as Lee and Kirby's finest achievement is "The Galactus Trilogy" in "Fantastic Four" #48–50 (March–May 1966), chronicling the arrival of Galactus, a cosmic giant who wanted to devour the planet, and his herald, the Silver Surfer. "Fantastic Four" #48 was chosen as #24 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel's readers in 2001. Editor Robert Greenberger wrote in his introduction to the story that "As the fourth year of the "Fantastic Four" came to a close, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby seemed to be only warming up. In retrospect, it was perhaps the most fertile period of any monthly title during the Marvel Age." Comics historian Les Daniels noted that "[t]he mystical and metaphysical elements that took over the saga were perfectly suited to the tastes of young readers in the 1960s", and Lee soon discovered that the story was a favorite on college campuses. Kirby continued to expand the medium's boundaries, devising photo-collage covers and interiors, developing new drawing techniques such as the method for depicting energy fields now known as "Kirby Krackle", and other experiments.
In 1968 and 1969, Joe Simon was involved in litigation with Marvel Comics over the ownership of Captain America, initiated by Marvel after Simon registered the copyright renewal for Captain America in his own name. According to Simon, Kirby agreed to support the company in the litigation and, as part of a deal Kirby made with publisher Martin Goodman, signed over to Marvel any rights he might have had to the character.
At this same time, Kirby grew increasingly dissatisfied with working at Marvel, for reasons Kirby biographer Mark Evanier has suggested include resentment over Lee's media prominence, a lack of full creative control, anger over breaches of perceived promises by publisher Martin Goodman, and frustration over Marvel's failure to credit him specifically for his story plotting and for his character creations and co-creations. He began to both write and draw some secondary features for Marvel, such as "The Inhumans" in "Amazing Adventures" volume two, as well as horror stories for the anthology title "Chamber of Darkness," and received full credit for doing so; but in 1970, Kirby was presented with a contract that included such unfavorable terms as a prohibition against legal retaliation. When Kirby objected, the management refused to negotiate any contract changes. Kirby, although he was earning $35,000 a year freelancing for the company, subsequently left Marvel in 1970 for rival DC Comics, under editorial director Carmine Infantino.
Kirby spent nearly two years negotiating a deal to move to DC Comics, where in late 1970 he signed a three-year contract with an option for two additional years. He produced a series of interlinked titles under the blanket sobriquet "The Fourth World", which included a trilogy of new titles — "New Gods," "Mister Miracle," and "The Forever People" — as well as the extant "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen." Kirby picked the latter book because the series was without a stable creative team and he did not want to cost anyone a job.
The three books Kirby originated dealt with aspects of mythology he'd previously touched upon in "Thor". "The New Gods" would establish this new mythos, while in "The Forever People" Kirby would attempt to mythologise the lives of the young people he observed around him. The third book, "Mister Miracle" was more of a personal myth. The title character was an escape artist, which Mark Evanier suggests Kirby channeled his feelings of constraint into. Mister Miracle's wife was based in character on Kirby's wife Roz, and he even caricatured Stan Lee within the pages of the book as Funky Flashman.
The central villain of the Fourth World series, Darkseid, and some of the Fourth World concepts, appeared in "Jimmy Olsen" before the launch of the other Fourth World books, giving the new titles greater exposure to potential buyers. The Superman figures and Jimmy Olsen faces drawn by Kirby were redrawn by Al Plastino, and later by Murphy Anderson. Les Daniels observed in 1995 that "Kirby's mix of slang and myth, science fiction and the Bible, made for a heady brew, but the scope of his vision has endured." In 2007, comics writer Grant Morrison commented that "Kirby's dramas were staged across Jungian vistas of raw symbol and storm ... The Fourth World saga crackles with the voltage of Jack Kirby's boundless imagination let loose onto paper."
In addition to his artistic efforts, Kirby proposed a variety of new formats for comics such as planning to collect his published Fourth World stories into square-bound books, a format that would later be called the trade paperback, which would eventually become standard practice in the industry. However, Infantino and company were not receptive and Kirby's proposals only went as far as producing the one-shot black-and-white magazines "Spirit World" and "In the Days of the Mob" in 1971.
Kirby later produced other DC series such as "OMAC", "Kamandi", "The Demon", and "Kobra", and worked on such extant features as "The Losers" in "Our Fighting Forces". Together with former partner Joe Simon for one last time, he worked on a new incarnation of the Sandman. Kirby produced three issues of the "1st Issue Special" anthology series and created Atlas The Great, a new Manhunter, and the Dingbats of Danger Street.
Kirby's production assistant of the time, Mark Evanier, recounted that DC's policies of the era were not in synch with Kirby's creative impulses, and that he was often forced to work on characters and projects he did not like. Meanwhile, some artists at DC did not want Kirby there, as he threatened their positions in the company; they also had bad blood from previous competition with Marvel and legal problems with him. Since he was working from California, they were able to undermine his work through redesigns in the New York office.
At the comic book convention Marvelcon '75, in 1975, Stan Lee used a Fantastic Four panel discussion to announce that Kirby was returning to Marvel after having left in 1970 to work for DC Comics. Lee wrote in his monthly column, "Stan Lee's Soapbox", "I mentioned that I had a special announcement to make. As I started telling about Jack's return, to a totally incredulous audience, everyone's head started to snap around as Kirby himself came waltzin' down the aisle to join us on the rostrum! You can imagine how it felt clownin' around with the co-creator of most of Marvel's greatest strips once more."
Back at Marvel, Kirby both wrote and drew the monthly "Captain America" series as well as the "Captain America's Bicentennial Battles" one-shot in the oversized treasury format. He created the series "The Eternals", which featured a race of inscrutable alien giants, the Celestials, whose behind-the-scenes intervention in primordial humanity would eventually become a core element of Marvel Universe continuity. He produced an adaptation and expansion of the film "", as well as an abortive attempt to do the same for the classic television series "The Prisoner". He wrote and drew "Black Panther" and drew numerous covers across the line.
Kirby's other Marvel creations in this period include Machine Man and Devil Dinosaur. Kirby's final comics collaboration with Stan Lee, "The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience", was published in 1978 as part of the Marvel Fireside Books series and is considered Marvel's first graphic novel.
Still dissatisfied with Marvel's treatment of him, and with an offer of employment from Hanna-Barbera, Kirby left Marvel to work in animation. In that field, he did designs for "Turbo Teen", "Thundarr the Barbarian" and other animated series for television. He worked on "The New Fantastic Four" animated series, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee. He illustrated an adaptation of the Walt Disney movie "The Black Hole" for "Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales" syndicated comic strip in 1979–80.
In 1979, Kirby drew concept art for film producer Barry Geller's script treatment adapting Roger Zelazny's science fiction novel, "Lord of Light", for which Geller had purchased the rights. In collaboration, Geller commissioned Kirby to draw set designs that would be used as architectural renderings for a Colorado theme park to be called Science Fiction Land; Geller announced his plans at a November press conference attended by Kirby, former American football star Rosey Grier, writer Ray Bradbury, and others. While the film did not come to fruition, Kirby's drawings were used for the CIA's "Canadian Caper", in which some members of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, who had avoided capture in the Iran hostage crisis, were able to escape the country posing as members of a movie location-scouting crew.
In the early 1980s, Kirby and Pacific Comics, a new, non-newsstand comic-book publisher, made one of the industry's earliest deals for creator-owned series, resulting in "Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers", and the six-issue miniseries "Silver Star" (later collected in hardcover format in 2007). This, together with similar actions by other independent comics publishers as Eclipse Comics (where Kirby co-created the character Destroyer Duck in a benefit comic-book series published to help Steve Gerber fight a legal case against Marvel), helped establish a precedent to end the monopoly of the work-for-hire system, wherein comics creators, even freelancers, had owned no rights to characters they created.
In 1983 Richard Kyle commissioned Kirby to create a 10-page autobiographical strip, "Street Code", which became one of the last works published in Kirby's lifetime. It was published in 1990, in the second issue of Kyle's revival of "Argosy". Kirby continued to do periodic work for DC Comics during the 1980s, including a brief revival of his "Fourth World" saga in the 1984 and 1985 "Super Powers" miniseries and the 1985 graphic novel "The Hunger Dogs". DC executives Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz had Kirby re-design the Fourth World characters for the "Super Powers" toyline as a way of entitling him to royalties for several of his DC creations. In 1985, Kirby and Gil Kane helped to create the concept and designs for the Ruby-Spears animated television series "The Centurions". A comic-book series based on the show was published by DC and a toy line produced by Kenner.
In the twilight of his life, Kirby spent a great deal of time sparring with Marvel executives over the ownership rights of his original page boards. At Marvel, many of these pages owned by the company (due to outdated and legally dubious copyright claims) were given away as promotional gifts to Marvel clients or simply stolen from company warehouses. After the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, which greatly expanded artist copyright capabilities, comics publishers began to return original art to creators, but in Marvel's case only if they signed a release reaffirming Marvel's ownership of the copyright. In 1985, Marvel issued a release that demanded Kirby affirm that his art was created for hire, allowing Marvel to retain copyright in perpetuity, in addition to demanding that Kirby forego all future royalties. Marvel offered him 88 pages of his art (less than 1% of his total output) if he signed the agreement, but reserved the right to reclaim the art if Kirby violated the deal. After Kirby publicly slammed Marvel, calling the company thugs and claiming they were arbitrarily holding his creations, Marvel finally returned (after two years of deliberations) approximately 1,900 or 2,100 pages of the estimated 10,000 to 13,000 Kirby drew for the company.
For the producer Charles Band, Jack Kirby made concept art for the films " Doctor Mortalis " and " Mindmaster ", which would later be released as "Doctor Mordrid" (1992) and "Mandroid" (1993), respectively. Initially, Doctor Modrid would be an adaptation of a Marvel Comics character, the Dr. Strange.
For Topps Comics, founded in 1993, Kirby retained ownership of characters used in multiple series of what the company dubbed "The Kirbyverse". These titles were derived mainly from designs and concepts Kirby had kept in his files, some intended initially for the by-then-defunct Pacific Comics, and then licensed to Topps for what became the "Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga" mythos. "Phantom Force" was the last comic book Kirby worked on before his death. The story was co-written by Kirby with Michael Thibodeaux and Richard French, based on an eight-page pitch for an unused Bruce Lee comic in 1978. Issues #1 and 2 were published by Image Comics with various Image artists inking over Kirby's pencils. Issue #0 and issues #3-8 were published by Genesis West, with Kirby providing pencils for issues #0 and 4. Thibodeaux provided the art for the remaining issues of the series after Kirby died.
In the early 1940s, Kirby and his family moved to Brooklyn. There, Kirby met Rosalind "Roz" Goldstein, who lived in the same apartment building. The pair began dating soon afterward. Kirby proposed to Goldstein on her 18th birthday, and the two became engaged. They married on May 23, 1942. The couple had four children together: Susan (b. December 6, 1945), Neal (b. May 1948), Barbara (b. November 1952), and Lisa (b. September 1960).
After being drafted into the U.S. Army and serving in the European Theater in World War II, Kirby corresponded with his wife regularly by v-mail, with Roz sending daily letters while she worked in a lingerie shop and lived with her mother at 2820 Brighton 7th Street in Brooklyn. During the winter of 1944, Kirby suffered severe frostbite and was taken to a hospital in London for recovery. Doctors considered amputating Kirby's legs, which had turned black, but he eventually recovered and was able to walk again. He returned to the United States in January 1945, assigned to Camp Butner in North Carolina, where he spent the last six months of his service as part of the motor pool. Kirby was honorably discharged as a Private First Class on July 20, 1945, having received a Combat Infantryman Badge, a European/African/Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and a Bronze Star Medal.
In 1949, Kirby bought a house for his family in Mineola, New York, on Long Island. This would be the family's home for the next 20 years, with Kirby working out of a basement studio just wide, which the family referred to jocularly as "The Dungeon". He moved the family to Southern California in early 1969, both to live in a drier climate for the sake of daughter Lisa's health, and to be closer to the Hollywood studios Kirby believed might provide work.
In an interview, Kirby's granddaughter Jillian Kirby said Kirby was a "liberal Democrat".
On February 6, 1994, Kirby died at age 76 of heart failure in his Thousand Oaks, California, home. He was buried at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, Westlake Village, California.
Brent Staples wrote in the "New York Times":
Jack Kirby has been referred to as the "superhero of style", his artwork described by John Carlin in "Masters of American Comics" as "deliberately primitive and bombastic", and elsewhere has been compared to Cubist, Futurist, Primitivist and outsider art. His contributions to the comic book form, including the many characters he created or co-created and the many genres he worked on have led to him being referred to as the definitive comic book artist. Given the number of places Kirby's artwork can now be found, the toys based on his designs and the success of the movies based upon his work, Charles Hatfield and Ben Saunders declare him "one of the chief architects of the American imagination." He was regarded as a hard working artist, and it has been calculated that he drew at least 20,318 pages of published art and a further 1,385 covers in his career. He published 1,158 pages in 1962 alone. Kirby defined comics in two periods. His work in the early 1940s with Joe Simon on the Captain America strip, and then his superhero comics of the 1960s with Stan Lee at Marvel Comics and on his own at DC Comics. Kirby has also created stories in almost every genre of comics, from the autobiographical "Street Code" to the apocalyptic science fiction fantasy of Kamandi.
Like many of his contemporaries, Kirby was hugely indebted to Milton Caniff, Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, who codified many of the tropes of narrative art in adventure comic strips. It has also been suggested that Kirby also drew from Burne Hogarth, whose dynamic figure work may have informed the way Kirby drew figures; "his ferocious bounding, and grotesquely articulated figures seem directly descended from Hogarth's dynamically contorted forms." His style drew on these influences, all major artists at the time Kirby was learning his craft, with Caniff, Foster and Raymond between them imparting to the sequential adventure comic strip a highly illustrative approach based on realising the setting to a very high degree. Where Kirby diverged from these influences, and where his style impacted on the formation of comic book art, was in his move away from an illustrated approach to one that was more dynamic. Kirby's artistic style was one that captured energy and motion within the image, synergizing with the text and helping to serve the narrative. In contrast, successors to the illustrative approach, such as Gil Kane, found their work eventually reach an impasse. The art would illustrate, but in lacking movement caused the reader to contemplate the art as much as the written word. Later artists such as Bryan Hitch and Alex Ross combined the Kirby and Kane approaches, using highly realistic backgrounds contrasted with dynamic characters to create what became known as a widescreen approach to comics.
Kirby's dynamism and energy served to push the reader through the story where an illustrative, detailed approach would cause the eye to linger. His reduction of the presentation of a given scene down to one that represents the semblance of movement has led Kirby to be described as cinematic in his style. Having worked at Fleischer Studios before coming to comics, Kirby had a grounding in animation techniques for producing motion. He also realised that comic books weren't subject to the same constraints as the newspaper strip. While other comic book artists recreated the layouts that format used, Kirby swiftly utilised the space a whole comic book page created. As Ron Goulart describes, "(h)e broke up the pages in new ways and introduced splash panels that stretched across two pages." Kirby himself described the creation of his dynamic style as a reaction both to the cinema and to the urge to create and compete: I found myself competing with the movie camera. I had to compete with the camera. I felt like John Henry ... I tore my characters out of the panels. I made them jump all over the page. I tried to make that cohesive so that it would be easier to read ... I had to get my characters in extreme positions, and in doing so I created an extreme style which was recognizable by everybody."
In the early 1940s Kirby would at times disregard panel borders. A character would be drawn in one panel, but their shoulder and arm would extend outside the border, into the gutter and sometimes on top of a nearby panel. A character may be punched out of one panel, feet being in the original panel and body in the next. Panels themselves would overlap, and Kirby would find new ways to arrange panels on a comic book page. His figures were depicted as lithe and graceful, although Kirby would place them thrusting from the page towards the reader. The late 1940s and 1950s saw Kirby move away from superhero comics and, working with Joe Simon, try his hand at a number of genres. Kirby and Simon created the romance comics genre, and working in this as well as the war, Western and crime genres saw Kirby's style change. He left behind the diverse panel framing and layouts. The nature of these genres enabled him to channel the energy into the posing and blocking of characters, forcing the drama into the constraints of the panel.
When Kirby and Stan Lee came together at Marvel Comics, his art developed again. His characters and representations became more abstract, less anatomically correct. He would place figures across three planes of a panels depth to suggest three dimensions. His backgrounds would be less detailed where he did not want the eye to be drawn. His figures would move actively along diagonals, and he utilised foreshortening to make a character appear to recede more deeply into the panel, so that they appeared to move towards the reader, off the page. During the 1960s Kirby also developed a talent for collages, initially utilising them within the pages of "The Fantastic Four". He introduced the Negative Zone as a place within the Marvel Universe that would only be illustrated via collage. However the reproduction within the published comics of the collages, coupled with the low page rate he was being paid and the time they took to develop saw their use discarded. Kirby would later return to the use of collage in his Fourth World work at DC Comics. Here he used them most often in the pages of "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen".
Kirby's style in the late 1960s was regarded so highly by Stan Lee that he instituted it as Marvel's house style. Lee would instruct other artists to draw more like Jack, and would also assign them books to work on using Kirby's breakdowns of the story so that they could more closely hew to Kirby's style. Over time, Kirby's style has become so well known that imitations, homages and pastiche are referred to as Kirbyesque.
Kirby Krackle, also referred to as Kirby Dots is Kirby's artistic convention of depicting the effect of energy. Within the drawing, a field of black, pseudo-fractal images is used to represent negative space around unspecified kinds of energy. Kirby Krackles are typically used in illustrations of explosions, smoke, the blasts from ray guns, "cosmic" energy, and outer space phenomena. The advanced technology Kirby drew, from the Afrofuturistic state of Wakanda through the Mother Boxes of the New Gods to the spaceships and design of the Celestials is gathered together under the collective term "Kirby Tech". John Paul Leon has described it as "It's tech; it's mechanical even if it's alien, but it's drawn in such an organic way that you don't question it. It's just an extension of his world. I'm not sure who else you could say did that." Kirby's depiction of technology is linked by Charles Hatfield to Leo Marx's idea of the technological sublime, specifically utilising Edmund Burke's definition of the Sublime. Using this definition, Kirby's view and depiction of technology is that of it as something to be feared.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kirby did not use preliminary sketches, rough work or layouts. He would instead start with the blank board and draw the story onto the page from top to bottom, start to finish. Many artists, including Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane and Jim Steranko have remarked on the unusual nature of his method. Kirby would rarely erase while working, the art, and therefore the story, would flow from him almost fully formed. Kirby's pencils had a reputation for being detailed, to the point that they were difficult to ink. Will Eisner remembers even in the early years that Kirby's pencils were "tight". Working for Eisner, Kirby initially inked with a pen, not confident enough in his ability to use the Japanese brushes Lou Fine and Eisner preferred. By the time Kirby worked with Joe Simon, Kirby had taught himself to use a brush, and would on occasion ink over inked work where he felt it was needed.
Due to the amount of work Kirby produced, it was rare for him to ink his own work. Instead the pencilled pages were sent on to an inker. Different inkers would therefore impact on the published version of Kirby's art, with Kirby himself noting that individual inkers were suited to different genres. For a period during the 1950s, when work had dried up, it's been suggested by Harry Mendryk that Kirby inked himself. By the late 1960s, Kirby preferred to pencil, feeling that "inking in itself is a separate kind of art." Stan Lee recalls Kirby not really being too interested in who inked him: "I cared much more about who inked Kirby than Kirby did ... Kirby never seemed to care who inked him ... I think Kirby felt his style was so strong that it just didn't matter who inked him". Chic Stone, an inker of Kirby's during the 1960s at Marvel, recalled "(T)he two best [inkers] for Jack were Mike Royer and Steve Rude. Both truly maintained the integrity of Jack's pencils."
The size of the art board made a difference to Kirby's style. During the late 1960s the industry shrunk the size of the art board artists used. Prior to 1967, art boards were around 14 x 21 inches, being reproduced at 7 x 10 inches. After 1967 the size of the board shrunk to 15 x 10. This affected the way Kirby drew. Gil Kane noted that "the amount of space around the figures became less and less ... The figures became bigger and bigger, and they couldn't be contained by a single panel or even a single page". Professor Craig Fischer asserts Kirby at first "hated" the new size. Fischer argues that it took Kirby around 18 months to negotiate a way of working at the smaller size. Initially he retreated to a less detailed, close up style, as seen in "Fantastic Four" #68. In adjusting to the new size, Kirby began utilising depth to bring the pages to life, increasing his use of foreshortening. By the time Kirby had moved to DC, he started to incorporate the use of two page spreads into his art more. These spreads helped define the mood of the story, and came to define Kirby's late era work.
Kirby's art has been exhibited as part of the Masters of American Comics joint exhibition by The Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art from November 2005 to March 2016. In 2015 Charles Hatfield curated the "Comic Book Apocalypse" exhibition at the California State University, Northridge Art Galleries. The exhibition focused on Kirby's work from 1965 onward. In 2018 "A Jack Kirby Odyssey" was organised by Tom Kraft. The exhibition displayed photocopies of unpublished Kirby's pencils for stories intended for publication in the "" comic book adaptation series as well as reproductions of the published work. In 1994 The Cartoon Art Trust organised an exhibition in
London of Kirby art, "Jack Kirby: The King of Comic Books", in the wake of Kirby's death. In 2010 Dan Nadel and Paul Gravett curated "Jack Kirby: The House That Jack Built", a retrospective of Kirby's career from 1942 to 1985. The exhibition was part of the Fumetto International Comics Festival held in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Kirby's original art regularly sells at auction, with Heritage Auctions listing the cover of "Tales of Suspense" #84, inked by Frank Giacoia as realising a price of $167,300 in a February 2014 auction. A large portion of Kirby's art remains unaccounted for. Work created around World War II would have been reused or pulped due to paper shortages. DC Comics had a policy of destroying original art in the 1950s. Marvel Comics would also destroy art, up until 1960, when it stored artwork prior to a policy which saw art returned to the artist. In Kirby's case, it's reported he was returned roughly 2100 pieces of the estimated 10,000 pages drawn. The whereabouts of these missing pages are unknown, although some do turn up for sale, provenance unknown.
Lisa Kirby announced in early 2006 that she and co-writer Steve Robertson, with artist Mike Thibodeaux, planned to publish via the Marvel Comics Icon imprint a six-issue limited series, "Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters", featuring characters and concepts created by her father for "Captain Victory". The series, scripted by Lisa Kirby, Robertson, Thibodeaux, and Richard French, with pencil art by Jack Kirby and Thibodeaux, and inking by Scott Hanna and Karl Kesel primarily, ran an initial five issues (Sept. 2006–Jan. 2007) and then a later final issue (Sept. 2007).
Marvel posthumously published a "lost" Kirby/Lee "Fantastic Four" story, "Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure" (April 2008), with unused pages Kirby had originally drawn for a story that was partially published in "Fantastic Four" #108 (March 1971).
In 2011, Dynamite Entertainment published "Kirby: Genesis", an eight-issue miniseries by writer Kurt Busiek and artists Jack Herbert and Alex Ross, featuring Kirby-owned characters previously published by Pacific Comics and Topps Comics.
On September 16, 2009, Kirby's four children served notices of termination to The Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures to attempt to gain control of various Silver Age Marvel characters. Marvel sought to invalidate those claims. In mid-March 2010 Kirby's children "sued Marvel to terminate copyrights and gain profits from [Kirby's] comic creations." In July 2011, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a summary judgment in favor of Marvel, which was affirmed in August 2013 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The Kirby children filed a petition on March 21, 2014, for a review of the case by the Supreme Court of the United States, but a settlement was reached on September 26, 2014, and the family requested that the petition be dismissed. While the settlement has left uncertain the legal right to works governed by the Copyright Act of 1909 created before the Copyright Act of 1976 came into force, the Kirby children's attorney, Marc Toberoff, said the issue of creators' rights to reclaim the work done as independent contractors remains, and other potential claims have yet to become ripe.
Jack Kirby received a great deal of recognition over the course of his career, including the 1967 Alley Award for Best Pencil Artist. The following year he was runner-up behind Jim Steranko. His other Alley Awards were:
Kirby won a Shazam Award for Special Achievement by an Individual in 1971 for his "Fourth World" series in "Forever People", "New Gods", "Mister Miracle", and "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen". He received an Inkpot Award in 1974 and was inducted into the Shazam Awards Hall of Fame in 1975. In 1987 he was an inaugural inductee into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. He received the 1993 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award at that year's Eisner Awards.
His work was honored posthumously in 1998: The collection of his New Gods material, "Jack Kirby's New Gods", edited by Bob Kahan, won both the Harvey Award for Best Domestic Reprint Project, and the Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection/Project. On July 14, 2017, Jack Kirby was named a Disney Legend for the co-creation of numerous characters that would comprise Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor. He was the posthumous recipient of the Bill Finger Award in 2017.
With Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Gary Panter and Chris Ware, Kirby was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007.
Asteroid 51985 Kirby, discovered September 22, 2001, was named in his honor. A crater on Mercury, located near the north pole, was named in his honor in 2019.
This is an abridged listing of Kirby's comics work (interior pencil art) for the two main comics publishers, DC Comics and Marvel Comics. For his work at DC it lists any title Kirby worked on for eight or more issues between 1970 and 1976. Of his Marvel Comics work, it lists any title Kirby worked on for eight or more issues between 1959 and 1978. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16556 |
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