title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: The Taliban rise to power in Kabul and impose harsh rules on the local population, severely curtailing women's rights. Laila is forced to give birth to a son, Zalmai, via a Caesarian section without anaesthesia due to the women's hospital being stripped of its supplies. Laila and Mariam struggle with raising Zalmai, whom Rasheed dotes on and favours over Aziza, causing difficulties in managing Zalmai's behaviour. During a drought, Rasheed's workshop burns down, and he is forced to take other jobs. Due to a lack of food, Rasheed sends Aziza to an orphanage. Laila endures a number of beatings from Taliban when caught travelling alone to attempt to visit Aziza when Rasheed refuses to accompany her as her guardian.


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: Tariq appears at the family home and reunites with Laila, who learns Rasheed hired a man to falsely claim that Tariq had been killed so that she would agree to marry him. When Rasheed returns home from work, Zalmai informs Rasheed that Laila had a male visitor. Suspicious of Laila and Tariq's relationship and suspecting he is Aziza's real father, Rasheed beats Laila and attempts to strangle her; Mariam strikes Rasheed with a shovel, killing him. She tells Laila and Tariq to leave with Aziza and Zalmai, and confesses to the Taliban to killing Rasheed, for which she is publicly executed.


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: Laila and Tariq leave Afghanistan and move to Murree, Pakistan, where they get married. After the fall of the Taliban, they decide to return to Kabul to be present for the rebuilding of Afghan society. They stop en route to Herat, where Laila visits the village where Mariam was raised. She meets with the son of a kindly mullah who taught Mariam, who gives her a box Jalil had entrusted to the family to care for and give to Mariam should she return to Herat. The box contains a videotape of "Pinocchio", a small sack of money, and a letter, in which Jalil expresses regrets at sending Mariam away, wishing he had fought for her and raised her as his legitimate child. The family return to Kabul and use the money to repair the orphanage Aziza had stayed in, and Laila works there as a teacher. She becomes pregnant with her third child, whom she will name Mariam if it is a girl.


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: When asked about common themes in "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns", Hosseini replied:"Both novels are multigenerational, and so the relationship between parent and child, with all of its manifest complexities and contradictions, is a prominent theme. I did not intend this, but I am keenly interested, it appears, in the way parents and children love, disappoint, and in the end honor each other. In one way, the two novels are corollaries: "The Kite Runner" was a father-son story, and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" can be seen as a mother-daughter story."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: He considers both novels to be "love stories" in the sense love "draws characters out of their isolation, that gives them the strength to transcend their own limitations, to expose their vulnerabilities, and to perform devastating acts of self-sacrifice".


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: Hosseini visited Afghanistan in 2003, and "heard so many stories about what happened to women, the tragedies that they had endured, the difficulties, the gender-based violence that they had suffered, the discrimination, the being barred from active life during the Taliban, having their movement restricted, being banned essentially from practicing their legal, social rights, political rights". This motivated him to write a novel centered on two Afghan women.


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: "The Washington Post" critic Jonathan Yardley suggested that "the central theme of "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is the place of women in Afghan society", pointing to a passage in which Mariam's mother states, "learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: In the book, both Mariam and Laila are forced into accepting marriage to Rasheed, who requires them to wear a burqa long before it is implemented by law under the Taliban. He later becomes increasingly abusive. A "Riverhead Trades Weekly" review states that the novel consistently shows the "patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: In the first week following its release, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" sold over one million copies, becoming a number-one "New York Times" bestseller for fifteen weeks. "Time" magazine's Lev Grossman placed it at number three in the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007, and praised it as a "dense, rich, pressure-packed guide to enduring the unendurable." Jonathan Yardley said in the "Washington Post" "Book World", "Just in case you're wondering whether Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is as good as "The Kite Runner", here's the answer: No. It's better."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: "A Thousand Splendid Suns" received significant praise from reviewers, with "Publishers Weekly" calling it "a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan" and "USA Today" describing the prose as "achingly beautiful". Lisa See of "The New York Times" attributed the book's success to Hosseini "[understanding] the power of emotion as few other popular writers do". Natasha Walter from "The Guardian" wrote, "Hosseini is skilled at telling a certain kind of story, in which events that may seem unbearable - violence, misery and abuse - are made readable. He doesn't gloss over the horrors his characters live through, but something about his direct, explanatory style and the sense that you are moving towards a redemptive ending makes the whole narrative, for all its tragedies, slip down rather easily."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: Cathleen Medwick gave the novel a highly positive review in "O, the Oprah Magazine":"Love may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you consider the war-ravaged landscape of Afghanistan. But that is the emotion—subterranean, powerful, beautiful, illicit, and infinitely patient—that suffuses the pages of Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns". As in his best-selling first novel, "The Kite Runner", Hosseini movingly examines the connections between unlikely friends, the fissures that open up between parents and children, the intransigence of quiet hearts."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: "The New York Times" writer Michiko Kakutani wrote a more critical review, describing the opening as "heavy-handed" and early events in the novel as "soap-opera-ish". Despite these objections, she concluded, "Gradually, however, Mr. Hosseini's instinctive storytelling skills take over, mowing down the reader's objections through sheer momentum and will. He succeeds in making the emotional reality of Mariam and Laila's lives tangible to us, and by conjuring their day-to-day routines, he is able to give us a sense of what daily life was like in Kabul — both before and during the harsh reign of the Taliban." Similarly, Yvonne Zipp of "The Christian Science Monitor" concluded that "A Thousand Splendid Suns" was ultimately "a little shaky as a work of literature".


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: The depictions of the lead female characters, Mariam and Laila, were praised by several commentators. John Freeman from "The Houston Chronicle" found them "enormously winning" while Carol Memmott from "USA Today" further described them as "stunningly heroic characters whose spirits somehow grasp the dimmest rays of hope". Medwick summed up the portrayals: "Mariam, branded as a harami, or bastard, and forced into an abusive marriage at the age of fifteen, and Laila, a beauty groomed for success but shrouded almost beyond recognition by repressive sharia law and the husband she and Mariam share. The story, epic in scope and spanning three decades, follows these two indomitable women whose fortunes mirror those of their beloved and battered country—'nothing pretty to look at, but still standing'—and who find in each other the strength they need to survive."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: Jennifer Reese from "Entertainment Weekly" dubbed Rasheed "one of the most repulsive males in recent literature". Lisa See wrote that, with the exception of Tariq, "the male characters seem either unrelentingly evil or pathetically weak" and opined, "If a woman wrote these things about her male characters, she would probably be labeled a man-hater."


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: On November 5, 2019, the "BBC News" listed "A Thousand Splendid Suns" on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: Columbia Pictures owns the movie rights to the novel. Steven Zaillian finished writing the first draft of the screenplay in 2009 and was also slated to direct; Scott Rudin had signed on as a producer. In May 2013, studios confirmed a tentative release date of 2015, although as of 2022 the film remains unproduced.


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: The first theatrical adaptation of the novel premiered in San Francisco, California, on February 1, 2017. It is co-produced by the American Conservatory Theater and Theatre Calgary. The theatrical adaptation condenses the novel for length, beginning with the deaths of Hakim and Fariba and telling earlier sections (such as Mariam's childhood and Laila and Tariq's romance) through flashbacks.


title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

text: An opera adaptation of the novel, composed by Sheila Silver, has been commissioned by Seattle Opera and will premiere in February 2023.


title: Beringia

text: Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It includes the Chukchi Sea, the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi and Kamchatka Peninsulas in Russia as well as Alaska in the United States and the Yukon in Canada.


title: Beringia

text: The area includes land lying on the North American Plate and Siberian land east of the Chersky Range. At certain times in prehistory, it formed a land bridge that was up to wide at its greatest extent and which covered an area as large as British Columbia and Alberta together, totaling approximately . Today, the only land that is visible from the central part of the Bering land bridge are the Diomede Islands, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island, and King Island.


title: Beringia

text: The term "Beringia" was coined by the Swedish botanist Eric Hultén in 1937, from the Danish explorer Vitus Bering. During the ice ages, Beringia, like most of Siberia and all of North and Northeast China, was not glaciated because snowfall was very light. It was a grassland steppe, including the land bridge, that stretched for hundreds of kilometres into the continents on either side.


title: Beringia

text: It is believed that a small human population of at most a few thousand arrived in Beringia from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum before expanding into the settlement of the Americas sometime after 16,500 years Before Present (YBP). This would have occurred as the American glaciers blocking the way southward melted, but before the bridge was covered by the sea about 11,000 YBP.


title: Beringia

text: Before European colonization, Beringia was inhabited by the Yupik peoples on both sides of the straits. This culture remains in the region today along with others. In 2012, the governments of Russia and the United States announced a plan to formally establish "a transboundary area of shared Beringian heritage". Among other things this agreement would establish close ties between the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and the Cape Krusenstern National Monument in the United States and Beringia National Park in Russia.


title: Beringia

text: The remains of Late Pleistocene mammals that had been discovered on the Aleutians and islands in the Bering Sea at the close of the nineteenth century indicated that a past land connection might lie beneath the shallow waters between Alaska and Chukotka. The underlying mechanism was first thought to be tectonics, but by 1930 changes in the ice mass balance, leading to global sea-level fluctuations were viewed as the cause of the Bering land bridge. In 1937, Eric Hultén proposed that around the Aleutians and the Bering Strait region were tundra plants that had originally dispersed from a now-submerged plain between Alaska and Chukotka, which he named Beringia after the Dane Vitus Bering who had sailed into the strait in 1728. The American arctic geologist David Hopkins redefined Beringia to include portions of Alaska and Northeast Asia. Beringia was later regarded as extending from the Verkhoyansk Mountains in the west to the Mackenzie River in the east. The distribution of plants in the genera "Erythranthe" and "Pinus" are good examples of this, as very similar genera members are found in Asia and the Americas.


title: Beringia

text: During the Pleistocene epoch, global cooling led periodically to the expansion of glaciers and the lowering of sea levels. This created land connections in various regions around the globe. Today, the average water depth of the Bering Strait is ; therefore the land bridge opened when the sea level dropped more than below the current level. A reconstruction of the sea-level history of the region indicated that a seaway existed from  YBP, a land bridge from  YBP, intermittent connection from  YBP, a land bridge from  YBP, followed by a Holocene sea-level rise that reopened the strait. Post-glacial rebound has continued to raise some sections of coast.


title: Beringia

text: During the last glacial period, enough of the earth's water became frozen in the great ice sheets covering North America and Europe to cause a drop in sea levels. For thousands of years the sea floors of many interglacial shallow seas were exposed, including those of the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea to the north, and the Bering Sea to the south. Other land bridges around the world have emerged and disappeared in the same way. Around 14,000 years ago, mainland Australia was linked to both New Guinea and Tasmania, the British Isles became an extension of continental Europe via the dry beds of the English Channel and North Sea, and the dry bed of the South China Sea linked Sumatra, Java, and Borneo to Indochina.


title: Beringia

text: The last glacial period, commonly referred to as the "Ice Age", spanned 125,000–14,500YBP and was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age, which occurred during the last years of the Pleistocene era. The Ice Age reached its peak during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets began advancing from 33,000YBP and reached their maximum limits 26,500YBP. Deglaciation commenced in the Northern Hemisphere approximately 19,000YBP and in Antarctica approximately 14,500 yearsYBP, which is consistent with evidence that glacial meltwater was the primary source for an abrupt rise in sea level 14,500YBP and the bridge was finally inundated around 11,000 YBP. The fossil evidence from many continents points to the extinction of large animals, termed Pleistocene megafauna, near the end of the last glaciation.


title: Beringia

text: During the Ice Age a vast, cold and dry Mammoth steppe stretched from the arctic islands southwards to China, and from Spain eastwards across Eurasia and over the Bering land bridge into Alaska and the Yukon where it was blocked by the Wisconsin glaciation. The land bridge existed because sea-levels were lower because more of the planet's water than today was locked up in glaciers. Therefore, the flora and fauna of Beringia were more related to those of Eurasia rather than North America. Beringia received more moisture and intermittent maritime cloud cover from the north Pacific Ocean than the rest of the Mammoth steppe, including the dry environments on either side of it. This moisture supported a shrub-tundra habitat that provided an ecological refugium for plants and animals. In East Beringia 35,000 YBP, the northern arctic areas experienced temperatures degrees warmer than today but the southern sub-Arctic regions were degrees cooler. During the LGM 22,000 YBP the average summer temperature was degrees cooler than today, with variations of degrees cooler on the Seward Peninsula to cooler in the Yukon. In the driest and coldest periods of the Late Pleistocene, and possibly during the entire Pleistocene, moisture occurred along a north–south gradient with the south receiving the most cloud cover and moisture due to the air-flow from the North Pacific.


title: Beringia

text: In the Late Pleistocene, Beringia was a mosaic of biological communities. Commencing from  YBP (MIS 3), steppe–tundra vegetation dominated large parts of Beringia with a rich diversity of grasses and herbs. There were patches of shrub tundra with isolated refugia of larch ("Larix") and spruce ("Picea") forests with birch ("Betula") and alder ("Alnus") trees. It has been proposed that the largest and most diverse megafaunal community residing in Beringia at this time could only have been sustained in a highly diverse and productive environment. Analysis at Chukotka on the Siberian edge of the land bridge indicated that from  YBP (MIS 3 to MIS 2) the environment was wetter and colder than the steppe–tundra to the east and west, with warming in parts of Beringia from  YBP. These changes provided the most likely explanation for mammal migrations after  YBP, as the warming provided increased forage for browsers and mixed feeders. Beringia did not block the movement of most dry steppe-adapted large species such as saiga antelope, woolly mammoth, and caballid horses. However, from the west, the woolly rhino went no further east than the Anadyr River, and from the east North American camels, the American kiang-like equids, the short-faced bear, bonnet-headed muskoxen, and American badger did not travel west. At the beginning of the Holocene, some mesic habitat-adapted species left the refugium and spread westward into what had become tundra-vegetated northern Asia and eastward into northern North America.


title: Beringia

text: The latest emergence of the land bridge was years ago. However, from  YBP the Laurentide Ice Sheet fused with the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which blocked gene flow between Beringia (and Eurasia) and continental North America. The Yukon corridor opened between the receding ice sheets  YBP, and this once again allowed gene flow between Eurasia and continental North America until the land bridge was finally closed by rising sea levels  YBP. During the Holocene, many mesic-adapted species left the refugium and spread eastward and westward, while at the same time the forest-adapted species spread with the forests up from the south. The arid adapted species were reduced to minor habitats or became extinct.


title: Beringia

text: Beringia constantly transformed its ecosystem as the changing climate affected the environment, determining which plants and animals were able to survive. The land mass could be a barrier as well as a bridge: during colder periods, glaciers advanced and precipitation levels dropped. During warmer intervals, clouds, rain and snow altered soils and drainage patterns. Fossil remains show that spruce, birch and poplar once grew beyond their northernmost range today, indicating that there were periods when the climate was warmer and wetter. The environmental conditions were not homogenous in Beringia. Recent stable isotope studies of woolly mammoth bone collagen demonstrate that western Beringia (Siberia) was colder and drier than eastern Beringia (Alaska and Yukon), which was more ecologically diverse. Mastodons, which depended on shrubs for food, were uncommon in the open dry tundra landscape characteristic of Beringia during the colder periods. In this tundra, mammoths flourished instead.


title: Beringia

text: The extinct pine species "Pinus matthewsii" has been described from Pliocene sediments in the Yukon areas of the refugium.


title: Beringia

text: The paleo-environment changed across time. Below is a gallery of some of the plants that inhabited eastern Beringia before the beginning of the Holocene.


title: Beringia

text: The earliest "Canis lupus" specimen was a fossil tooth discovered at Old Crow, Yukon, Canada. The specimen was found in sediment dated 1 million YBP, however the geological attribution of this sediment is questioned. Slightly younger specimens were discovered at Cripple Creek Sump, Fairbanks, Alaska, in strata dated 810,000 YBP. Both discoveries point to an origin of these wolves in eastern Beringia during the Middle Pleistocene. Grey wolves suffered a species-wide population bottleneck (reduction) approximately 25,000 YBP during the Last Glacial Maximum. This was followed by a single population of modern wolves expanding out of their Beringia refuge to repopulate the wolf's former range, replacing the remaining Late Pleistocene wolf populations across Eurasia and North America as they did so.


title: Beringia

text: The Bering land bridge is a postulated route of human migration to the Americas from Asia about 20,000 years ago. An open corridor through the ice-covered North American Arctic was too barren to support human migrations before around 12,600 YBP. A study has indicated that the genetic imprints of only 70 of all the individuals who settled and traveled the land bridge into North America are visible in modern descendants. This genetic bottleneck finding is an example of the founder effect and does not imply that only 70 individuals crossed into North America at the time; rather, the genetic material of these individuals became amplified in North America following isolation from other Asian populations.


title: Beringia

text: Seagoing coastal settlers may also have crossed much earlier, but there is no scientific consensus on this point, and the coastal sites that would offer further information now lie submerged in up to a hundred metres of water offshore. Land animals migrated through Beringia as well, introducing to North America species that had evolved in Asia, like mammals such as proboscideans and American lions, which evolved into now-extinct endemic North American species. Meanwhile, equids and camelids that had evolved in North America (and later became extinct there) migrated into Asia as well at this time.


title: Beringia

text: A 2007 analysis of mtDNA found evidence that a human population lived in genetic isolation on the exposed Beringian landmass during the Last Glacial Maximum for approximately 5,000 years. This population is often referred to as the Beringian Standstill population. A number of other studies, relying on more extensive genomic data, have come to the same conclusion. Genetic and linguistic data demonstrate that at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, as sea levels rose, some members of the Beringian Standstill Population migrated back into eastern Asia while others migrated into the Western Hemisphere, where they became the ancestors of the indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere. Environmental selection on this Beringian Standstill Population has been suggested for genetic variation in the Fatty Acid Desaturase gene cluster and the ectodysplasin A receptor gene. Using Y Chromosome data Pinotti et al. have estimated the Beringian Standstill to be less than 4600 years and taking place between 19.5 kya and 15 kya.


title: Beringia

text: Biogeographical evidence demonstrates previous connections between North America and Asia. Similar dinosaur fossils occur both in Asia and in North America. For instance the dinosaur "Saurolophus" was found in both Mongolia and western North America. Relatives of "Troodon", "Triceratops", and even "Tyrannosaurus rex" all came from Asia.


title: Beringia

text: Fossil evidence indicates an exchange of primates between North America and Asia around 55.8 million years ago. By 20 million years ago, evidence in North America shows a further interchange of mammalian species. Some, like the ancient saber-toothed cats, have a recurring geographical range: Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. The only way they could reach the New World was by the Bering land bridge. Had this bridge not existed at that time, the fauna of the world would be very different.


title: Toradora!

text: The title "Toradora!" is derived from the names of the two main characters Taiga Aisaka and Ryūji Takasu. Taiga's name is almost homophonic with from English "tiger" (the final "a" is more lengthened in the English loanword), which is synonymous with the native Japanese word . Inversely, means dragon, and is synonymous with , the English word "dragon" transcribed into Japanese.


title: Toradora!

text: An Internet radio show was broadcast between September 2008 and May 2009 hosted by Animate TV. A 25-episode anime adaptation produced by J.C.Staff aired in Japan on TV Tokyo between October 2008 and March 2009. A Blu-ray Disc (BD) box set containing an original video animation episode was released on December 21, 2011. NIS America licensed the anime and released it in North America in two half-season DVD collections in July and August 2010, with an English dubbed BD collection released in July 2014. A visual novel based on the series was released in April 2009 by Bandai Namco Games for the PlayStation Portable.


title: Toradora!

text: Ryuji Takasu is frustrated at trying to look his best as he enters his second year of high school. Despite his gentle personality, his eyes give him the appearance of an intimidating delinquent. He is happy to be classmates with his best friend Yusaku Kitamura, as well as the girl he has a crush on, Minori Kushieda. However, he unexpectedly runs into "the school's most dangerous animal of the highest risk level"—Taiga Aisaka—who just happens to be Minori's best friend. Taiga has a negative attitude towards others and has a habit of snapping violently at people. She takes an instant dislike to Ryuji, and it turns out she is living in an apartment facing Ryuji's house. When Ryuji discovers that Taiga has a crush on Yusaku, and Taiga finds out about Ryuji's affections towards Minori, they make an arrangement to help set each other up with their crushes.


title: Toradora!

text: Over the course of the series, Ryuji and Taiga try to set up romantic situations to help each other get to know their friends, but many of the situations backfire. Their classmates observe that they are spending a lot of time with each other, leading to rumors that they might be a couple. Although Ryuji and Taiga try to dispel the rumors, they find that they do enjoy each other's company, with Taiga visiting Ryuji's house to share meals, and Ryuji checking up on Taiga to get her to school, and cleaning for her. They meet Yusaku's childhood friend Ami Kawashima, a popular teen model who transfers into their school. She appears to be friendly and is a self-proclaimed ditz, but beneath her facade is a rather mean and spoiled brat, and she quickly finds herself at odds with Taiga. In spite of this, Taiga tries to put up with her antics as Yusaku wants them to all get along, and Ami begins to grow feelings for Ryuji. The series follows the lives of these friends and how love blossoms among them.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The Horten H.IX, RLM designation Ho 229 (or Gotha Go 229 for extensive re-design work done by Gotha to prepare the aircraft for mass production) was a German prototype fighter/bomber initially designed by Reimar and Walter Horten to be built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik. Developed at a late stage of the Second World War, it was the first flying wing to be powered by jet engines.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The Ho 229 had been designed in response to a call by Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe, in 1943 for light bomber designs capable of meeting the "3×1000" requirement; namely, to carry of bombs a distance of with a speed of . Only jet propulsion was capable of achieving the required speed, but such engines were relatively primitive and extremely fuel-hungry, necessitating considerable effort across the rest of the design in order to satisfy the range requirement as well. The flying wing configuration was favoured by the Horten brothers due to its high aerodynamic efficiency, as had been demonstrated by the Horten H.IV glider. In order to minimise drag, the Ho 229 was not fitted with any extraneous flight control surfaces. Its ceiling was . The Ho 229 was the only design that even came close to the requirements set out, and the Horten brothers quickly received an initial order for three prototypes after the project garnered Göring's approval.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: Due to the Horten brothers lacking appropriate production facilities, the Ho 229's manufacturing was contracted out to Gothaer Waggonfabrik; however, the company allegedly undermined the project and sought to have Air Ministry officials favour its own flying wing designs instead. On 1 March 1944, the first prototype "H.IX V1", an unpowered glider, performed its maiden flight; it was followed by the "H.IX V2", powered by Junkers Jumo 004 turbojet engines, in December 1944. However, on 18 February 1945, tragedy struck the programme when the V2 was destroyed in a fatal crash, killing its test pilot. Despite as many as 100 production aircraft being ordered, none were ever completed; the near-complete "H.IX V3" prototype was amongst the items captured by the American military and transferred back to the United States under Operation Paperclip. It was evaluated by both British and American researchers before entering long term storage; it is presently on static display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: During the early 1930s, the Horten brothers had become interested in the flying wing configuration as a method of improving the performance of gliders. At that time, the German government had been actively funding glider clubs across the country as a response to the production of military and even motorized aircraft being forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War. The flying wing layout removed the need for a tail and associated control surfaces and theoretically offered the lowest possible weight, using wings that were relatively short and sturdy, and without the added drag of the fuselage. Their first aircraft of such a configuration was the Horten H.IV.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: In 1943, "Reichsmarschall" Hermann Göring issued a request for design proposals to produce a bomber that was capable of carrying a load over at ; the so-called "3×1000 project". Conventional German bombers were capable of reaching Allied targets across Great Britain, but were suffering devastating losses from Allied fighters in the process. At the time, there was no conventional means for aircraft designers to meet these goals—the new Junkers Jumo 004B turbojets could provide the required speed, but had excessive fuel consumption. However, the Horten brothers concluded that the low-drag flying wing design could meet all of the goals: by reducing the drag, cruise power could be lowered to the point where the range requirement could be met. They put forward their private project, the "H.IX", as the basis for the bomber.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The Government Air Ministry ("Reichsluftfahrtministerium") quickly approved the Horten proposal, but ordered the addition of two 30 mm cannons, as they felt the aircraft would also be useful as a fighter due to its estimated top speed being significantly higher than that of any Allied aircraft. German officials assigned the designation "Ho 229" to the aircraft. Göring was reportedly impressed with the design and personally intervened to ensure that three prototypes were ordered at a cost of 500,000 ℛℳ. At one point, the Air Ministry issued an order for 100 production aircraft, although this was subsequently curtailed to only 20 aircraft. Furthermore, as the Horten brothers lacked appropriate production facilities, it was decided that the manufacturing of the aircraft would be handled by an established company, Gothaer Waggonfabrik. This arrangement was somewhat complicated by Gothaer's alleged efforts to persuade German authorities to favour its own projects, which included flying wing designs, over the Ho 229.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: Observing the difficulties present in the Ho 229's design and development, Russell Lee, the chair of the Aeronautics Department at the National Air and Space Museum, speculated that an important motivating factor of the project for the Horten brothers was to prevent them and their workers from being assigned to more dangerous roles by the German military. Looking beyond the Ho 229, the Horten brothers produced numerous flying wing designs, such as the Horten H.VII fighter-trainer and the Horten H.XVIII Amerikabomber. According to the aviation historian Jean-Denis G.G. LePage, various other wartime projects were inspired by the Horten brother's work.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The H.IX was of mixed construction; while the center pod was made from welded steel tubing, the wing spars was composed of pine. The wings were made up of a pair of thin plywood panels that were glued together with a charcoal and sawdust mixture. The exterior was covered by a fireproof paint. The wing had a single main spar, penetrated by the jet engine inlets, and a secondary spar used for attaching the elevons. It was designed with a 7g load factor and a 1.8× safety rating; therefore, the aircraft had a 12.6g ultimate load rating. The wing's chord/thickness ratio ranged from 15% at the root to 8% at the wingtips. There was relatively little available interior space, making the addition of new equipment or more crew members either difficult or impossible.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The aircraft was fitted with retractable tricycle landing gear, with the nosegear on the first two prototypes sourced from a He 177's tailwheel system, with the third prototype using an He 177A main gear wheelrim and tire on its custom-designed nosegear strutwork and wheel fork. A drogue parachute slowed the aircraft upon landing. The pilot sat on a primitive ejection seat. A special pressure suit was developed by Dräger. While the aircraft had originally been designed to be powered by the BMW 003 turbojet engine, this engine was not quite ready at the time, thus the Junkers Jumo 004 engine was substituted. Flight control was achieved via a combination of elevons and spoilers. This control system included both long-span (inboard) and short-span (outboard) spoilers, with the smaller outboard spoilers activated first; it reported provided a smoother and more graceful control of yaw than would have been by a single-spoiler system.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: On 1 March 1944, the first prototype H.IX V1, an unpowered glider with fixed tricycle landing gear, performed its maiden flight. Flight results were very favorable, but there was an accident when the pilot attempted to land without first retracting an instrument-carrying pole extending from the aircraft. Following the transference of design responsibility from the Horten brothers to Gothaer Waggonfabrik, the company's design team implemented several changes: they added a simple ejection seat, substantially redesigned the undercarriage to enable a higher gross weight, changed the jet engine inlets, and added ducting to air-cool the jet engine's outer casing to prevent damage to the wooden wing.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The H.IX V1 was followed in December 1944 by the Junkers Jumo 004-powered second prototype H.IX V2; the BMW 003 engine had been preferred but was not available in sufficient quantity. Göring believed in the design and ordered a production series of 40 aircraft from Gothaer Waggonfabrik with the RLM designation Ho 229, even though it had not yet taken to the air under jet power. On 2 February 1945, the first flight of the H.IX V2 was conducted at Oranienburg. The Horten brothers were unable to witness this flight as they were occupied with producing the design for a new turbojet-powered strategic bomber in response to the "Amerikabomber" competition. All of the subsequent test flights and development were conducted by Gothaer Waggonfabrik. The test pilot was "Leutnant" Erwin Ziller. Two further test flights were performed: on 2 February 1945 and on 18 February 1945. Another test pilot who performed the evaluation was .


title: Horten Ho 229

text: Two weeks later, on 18 February 1945, disaster struck during the third test flight. Ziller took off without any problems to perform a series of flight tests. After about 45 minutes, at an altitude of around 800 m, one of the Jumo 004 turbojet engines developed a problem, caught fire and stopped. Ziller was seen to put the aircraft into a dive and pull up several times in an attempt to restart the engine and save the precious prototype. Ziller undertook a series of four complete turns at 20° angle of bank. Ziller did not use his radio or eject from the aircraft. He may already have been unconscious as a result of the fumes from the burning engine. The aircraft crashed just outside the boundary of the airfield; Ziller was thrown from the aircraft on impact and died from his injuries two weeks later. The prototype aircraft was completely destroyed.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: Despite this setback, the project continued with sustained energy. On 12 March 1945, nearly a week after the U.S. Army had launched Operation Lumberjack to cross the Rhine River, the Ho 229 was included in the "Jäger-Notprogramm" (Emergency Fighter Program) for accelerated production of inexpensive "wonder weapons". The prototype workshop was moved to the Gothaer Waggonfabrik (Gotha) in Friedrichroda, western Thuringia. In the same month, work commenced on the third prototype, the Ho 229 V3.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The V3 was larger than previous prototypes, the shape being modified in various areas, and it was meant to be a template for the pre-production series Ho 229 A-0 day fighters, of which 20 machines had been ordered. The V3 was meant to be powered by two Jumo 004C engines, with 10% greater thrust each than the earlier Jumo 004B production engine used for the Me 262A and Ar 234B, and could carry two MK 108 30 mm cannons in the wing roots. Work had also started on the two-seat Ho 229 V4 and Ho 229 V5 night-fighter prototypes, the Ho 229 V6 armament test prototype, and the Ho 229 V7 two-seat trainer.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: During the final stages of the war, the U.S. military initiated Operation Paperclip, an effort to capture advanced German weapons research, and keep it out of the hands of advancing Soviet forces. In April 1945, a Horten glider and the Ho 229 V3, which was undergoing final assembly, were captured and subsequently transported by sea to the United States as part of "Operation Seahorse" for evaluation. Along the way, the Ho 229 spent a brief time at RAE Farnborough in the UK, during which it was evaluated as to whether British jet engines could be installed, but the mountings were found to be incompatible with the early British turbojets, which used larger-diameter centrifugal compressors as opposed to the slimmer axial-flow turbojets the Germans had developed. The Americans were just starting to create their own axial-compressor turbojets before the conflict's end, such as the Westinghouse J30, with a thrust level only approaching the BMW 003A's full output. It is uncertain if the aircraft's original Junkers-supplied engines were ever ran, although the American evaluation team at one point had the intention of flying it.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The only surviving Ho 229 airframe, the V3—and the only surviving Second World War-era German jet prototype still in existence—has been at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Paul E. Garber Restoration Facility in Suitland, Maryland, U.S. In December 2011, the National Air and Space Museum moved the Ho 229 into the active restoration area of the Garber Restoration Facility, where it was reviewed for full restoration and display. The central section of the V3 prototype was meant to be moved to the Smithsonian NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in late 2012 to commence a detailed examination of it before starting any serious conservation/restoration efforts and has been cleared for the move to the Udvar-Hazy facility's restoration shops as of summer 2014, with only the NASM's B-26B Marauder "Flak Bait" medium bomber ahead of it for restoration, within the Udvar-Hazy facility's Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. As of early 2018, the surviving Horten Ho 229 has been moved to display in the main hall, alongside other WWII-era German aircraft.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: In 1983, Reimar Horten stated that he intended to mix charcoal dust in with the wood glue to absorb electromagnetic waves (radar), which he believed could shield the aircraft from detection by the British early-warning ground-based radar that operated at 20 to 30 MHz (10 to 15m wavelength), top end of the HF band, known as Chain Home. This charcoal glue treatment was planned for the never-made production model; however, it remained unclear if the V3 prototype had benefited from a preliminary iteration of this technology.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: During 2008, a team of engineers from Northrop Grumman undertook electromagnetic tests on the V3's multilayer wooden centre-section nose cones. They tested over a frequency range of 12 to 117 THz, with wavelengths of the order of 10 microns. The cones are thick and made from thin sheets of veneer. The team observed that the "Ho 229 leading edge has the same characteristics as the plywood [of the control sample] except that the frequency [do not exactly match] and have a shorter bandwidth." The team who had assumed the presence of carbon black from visual inspection went on to conclude that the "similarity of the two tests indicates that the design using the carbon black type material produced a poor absorber." The Smithsonian Institution has since performed a technical study of the materials used on the prototype and determined that there is "no evidence of carbon black or charcoal", thus invalidating the proposed presence of carbon black to explain the slightly different absorbent property of the prototype wood compared to the control sample of plywood used in the Northrop Grumman testing.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: A jet-powered flying wing design such as the Horten Ho 229 has a smaller radar cross-section (RCS) than conventional contemporary twin-engine aircraft because the wings blended into the fuselage and there are no large propeller disks or vertical and horizontal tail surfaces to provide a typical identifiable radar signature.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: In early 2008, Northrop Grumman paired up television documentary producer Michael Jorgensen and the National Geographic Channel to produce a documentary to determine whether the Ho 229 was the world's first true "stealth" fighter-bomber. Northrop Grumman built a full-size non-flying reproduction of the V3, made out of wood primarily, unlike the original aircraft which had an extensive steel space-frame to which the wooden skin was bolted. The space-frame for the real aircraft was made from steel tubes up to in diameter, and provided the entire structure for the centre section of the aircraft. After an expenditure of about US$250,000 and 2,500 man-hours, Northrop's Ho 229 reproduction was tested at the company's RCS test range at Tejon, California, US where it was placed on a 15-metre (50 ft) articulating pole and exposed to electromagnetic energy sources from various angles at a distance of , using the same three HF/VHF-boundary area frequencies in the 20–50 MHz range.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: Radar simulations showed a hypothetical Ho 229, with the radar characteristics of the mockup, which had neither metal frame nor engines, approaching the English coast from France flying at at above the water would have been visible to CH radar at a distance of 80% that of a Bf 109. This implies a frontal RCS of only 40% that of a Bf 109 at the Chain Home frequencies.


title: Horten Ho 229

text: The US magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology published summaries about stealth technology; some reports indicate the Horten Ho-IX/ Gotha Go-229 returned radar echo just from the annular air entries to turbines, the nose and canopy, and the wing track binding the inner part of turbine intake to cabin.


title: Archery

text: Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows. The word comes from the Latin "arcus", meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In modern times, it is mainly a competitive sport and recreational activity. A person who practices archery is typically called an archer, bowman, or toxophilite.


title: Archery

text: The oldest known evidence of the bow and arrow comes from South African sites such as Sibudu Cave, where the remains of bone and stone arrowheads have been found dating approximately 72,000 to 60,000 years ago.


title: Archery

text: Based on indirect evidence, the bow also seems to have appeared or reappeared later in Eurasia, near the transition from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic. The earliest definite remains of bow and arrow from Europe are possible fragments from Germany found at Mannheim-Vogelstang dated 17,500 to 18,000 years ago, and at Stellmoor dated 11,000 years ago. Azilian points found in Grotte du Bichon, Switzerland, alongside the remains of both a bear and a hunter, with flint fragments found in the bear's third vertebra, suggest the use of arrows at 13,500 years ago. Other signs of its use in Europe come from the in the north of Hamburg, Germany and dates from the late Paleolithic, about 10,000–9000 BC. The arrows were made of pine and consisted of a main shaft and a fore shaft with a flint point. There are no definite earlier bows; previous pointed shafts are known, but may have been launched by spear-throwers rather than bows. The oldest bows known so far comes from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark.


title: Archery

text: At the site of Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya, obsidian bladelets found embedded in a skull and within the thoracic cavity of another skeleton, suggest the use of stone-tipped arrows as weapons about 10,000 years ago.


title: Archery

text: Bows eventually replaced the spear-thrower as the predominant means for launching shafted projectiles, on every continent except Australasia, though spear-throwers persisted alongside the bow in parts of the Americas, notably Mexico and among the Inuit.


title: Archery

text: Bows and arrows have been present in Egyptian and neighboring Nubian culture since its respective predynastic and Pre-Kerma origins. In the Levant, artifacts that could be arrow-shaft straighteners are known from the Natufian culture, (c. 10,800–8,300 BC) onwards. The Khiamian and PPN A shouldered Khiam-points may well be arrowheads.


title: Archery

text: Classical civilizations, notably the Assyrians, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Parthians, Romans, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese fielded large numbers of archers in their armies. Akkadians were the first to use composite bows in war according to the victory stele of Naram-Sin of Akkad. Egyptians referred to Nubia as "Ta-Seti," or "The Land of the Bow," since the Nubians were known to be expert archers, and by the 16th Century BC Egyptians were using the composite bow in warfare. The Bronze Age Aegean Cultures were able to deploy a number of state-owned specialized bow makers for warfare and hunting purposes already from the 15th century BC. The Welsh longbow proved its worth for the first time in Continental warfare at the Battle of Crécy. In the Americas archery was widespread at European contact.


title: Archery

text: Archery was highly developed in Asia. The Sanskrit term for archery, dhanurveda, came to refer to martial arts in general. In East Asia, Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea was well known for its regiments of exceptionally skilled archers.


title: Archery

text: The medieval shortbow was technically identical with the classical era bows, having a range of approximately . It was the primary ranged weapon of the battlefield through the early medieval period. Around the tenth century the crossbow was introduced in Europe. Crossbows generally had a longer range, greater accuracy and more penetration than the shortbow, but suffered from a much slower rate of fire. Crossbows were used in the early Crusades, with models having a range of and being able to penetrate armour or kill a horse.


title: Archery

text: During the late medieval period the English army famously relied on massed archers armed with the longbow. The French army relied more on the crossbow. Like their predecessors archers were more likely to be peasants or yeomen than men-at-arms. The longbow had a range of up to . However its lack of accuracy at long ranges made it a mass weapon rather than an individual one. Significant victories attributable to the longbow, such as the Battle of Crecy and Battle of Agincourt resulted in the English longbow becoming part of military lore.


title: Archery

text: Tribesmen of Central Asia (after the domestication of the horse) and American Plains Indians (after gaining access to horses by Europeans) became extremely adept at archery on horseback. Lightly armoured, but highly mobile archers were excellently suited to warfare in the Central Asian steppes, and they formed a large part of armies that repeatedly conquered large areas of Eurasia. Shorter bows are more suited to use on horseback, and the composite bow enabled mounted archers to use powerful weapons. Seljuk Turks used mounted archers against the European First Crusade, especially at the Battle of Dorylaeum (1097). Their tactic was to shoot at the enemy infantry, and use their superior mobility to prevent the enemy from closing with them. Empires throughout the Eurasian landmass often strongly associated their respective "barbarian" counterparts with the usage of the bow and arrow, to the point where powerful states like the Han Dynasty referred to their neighbours, the Xiong-nu, as "Those Who Draw the Bow". For example, Xiong-nu mounted bowmen made them more than a match for the Han military, and their threat was at least partially responsible for Chinese expansion into the Ordos region, to create a stronger, more powerful buffer zone against them. It is possible that "barbarian" peoples were responsible for introducing archery or certain types of bows to their "civilized" counterparts—the Xiong-nu and the Han being one example. Similarly, short bows seem to have been introduced to Japan by northeast Asian groups.


title: Archery

text: The development of firearms rendered bows obsolete in warfare, although efforts were sometimes made to preserve archery practice. In England and Wales, for example, the government tried to enforce practice with the longbow until the end of the 16th century. This was because it was recognized that the bow had been instrumental to military success during the Hundred Years' War. Despite the high social status, ongoing utility, and widespread pleasure of archery in Armenia, China, Egypt, England and Wales, the Americas, India, Japan, Korea, Turkey and elsewhere, almost every culture that gained access to even early firearms used them widely, to the neglect of archery. Early firearms were inferior in rate-of-fire, and were very sensitive to wet weather. However, they had longer effective range and were tactically superior in the common situation of soldiers shooting at each other from behind obstructions. They also required significantly less training to use properly, in particular penetrating steel armor without any need to develop special musculature. Armies equipped with guns could thus provide superior firepower, and highly trained archers became obsolete on the battlefield. However, the bow and arrow is still an effective weapon, and archers have seen military action in the 21st century. Traditional archery remains in use for sport, and for hunting in many areas.


title: Archery

text: Early recreational archery societies included the Finsbury Archers and the Ancient Society of Kilwinning Archers. The latter's annual Papingo event was first recorded in 1483. (In this event, archers shoot vertically from the base of an abbey tower to dislodge a wood pigeon placed approximately above.) The Royal Company of Archers was formed in 1676 and is one of the oldest sporting bodies in the world. Archery remained a small and scattered pastime, however, until the late 18th century when it experienced a fashionable revival among the aristocracy. Sir Ashton Lever, an antiquarian and collector, formed the Toxophilite Society in London in 1781, with the patronage of George, the Prince of Wales.


title: Archery

text: Archery societies were set up across the country, each with its own strict entry criteria and outlandish costumes. Recreational archery soon became extravagant social and ceremonial events for the nobility, complete with flags, music and 21-gun salutes for the competitors. The clubs were "the drawing rooms of the great country houses placed outside" and thus came to play an important role in the social networks of the local upper class. As well as its emphasis on display and status, the sport was notable for its popularity with females. Young women could not only compete in the contests but retain and show off their sexuality while doing so. Thus, archery came to act as a forum for introductions, flirtation and romance. It was often consciously styled in the manner of a Medieval tournament with titles and laurel wreaths being presented as a reward to the victor. General meetings were held from 1789, in which local lodges convened together to standardise the rules and ceremonies. Archery was also co-opted as a distinctively British tradition, dating back to the lore of Robin Hood and it served as a patriotic form of entertainment at a time of political tension in Europe. The societies were also elitist, and the new middle class bourgeoisie were excluded from the clubs due to their lack of social status.


title: Archery

text: After the Napoleonic Wars, the sport became increasingly popular among all classes, and it was framed as a nostalgic reimagining of the preindustrial rural Britain. Particularly influential was Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel, "Ivanhoe" that depicted the heroic character Lockseley winning an archery tournament.


title: Archery

text: The 1840s saw the second attempts at turning the recreation into a modern sport. The first Grand National Archery Society meeting was held in York in 1844 and over the next decade the extravagant and festive practices of the past were gradually whittled away and the rules were standardized as the 'York Round' - a series of shoots at , , and . Horace A. Ford helped to improve archery standards and pioneered new archery techniques. He won the Grand National 11 times in a row and published a highly influential guide to the sport in 1856.


title: Archery

text: Towards the end of the 19th century, the sport experienced declining participation as alternative sports such as croquet and tennis became more popular among the middle class. By 1889, just 50 archery clubs were left in Britain, but it was still included as a sport at the 1900 Paris Olympics.


title: Archery

text: The National Archery Association of the United States was organized in 1879, in part by Maurice Thompson (the author of the seminal text “The Witchery of Archery”) and his brother Will Thompson. Maurice was president in its inaugural year and Will was president in 1882, 1903, and 1904. The 1910 President was Frank E Canfield. Today it is known as USA Archery and is recognized by United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.


title: Archery

text: In the United States, primitive archery was revived in the early 20th century. The last of the Yahi Indian tribe, a native known as Ishi, came out of hiding in California in 1911. His doctor, Saxton Pope, learned many of Ishi's traditional archery skills, and popularized them.


title: Archery

text: From the 1920s, professional engineers took an interest in archery, previously the exclusive field of traditional craft experts. They led the commercial development of new forms of bow including the modern recurve and compound bow. These modern forms are now dominant in modern Western archery; traditional bows are in a minority. Archery returned to the Olympics in 1972. In the 1980s, the skills of traditional archery were revived by American enthusiasts, and combined with the new scientific understanding. Much of this expertise is available in the "Traditional Bowyer's Bibles" (see Further reading). Modern game archery owes much of its success to Fred Bear, an American bow hunter and bow manufacturer.


title: Archery

text: Deities and heroes in several mythologies are described as archers, including the Greek Artemis and Apollo, the Roman Diana and Cupid, the Germanic Agilaz, continuing in legends like those of Wilhelm Tell, Palnetoke, or Robin Hood. Armenian Hayk and Babylonian Marduk, Indian Karna (also known as Radheya/son of Radha), Abhimanyu, Eklavya, Arjuna, Bhishma, Drona, Rama, and Shiva were known for their shooting skills. The famous archery competition of hitting the eye of a rotating fish while watching its reflection in the water bowl was one of the many archery skills depicted in the "Mahabharata".


title: Archery

text: Persian Arash was a famous archer. Earlier Greek representations of Heracles normally depict him as an archer. Archery, and the bow, play an important part in the epic poem the "Odyssey," when Odysseus returns home in disguise and then bests the suitors in an archery competition after hinting at his identity by stringing and drawing his great bow that only he can draw, a similar motif is present in the Turkic Iranian heroic archeheroic poem "Alpamysh".


title: Archery

text: The () were worshipped on the Greek island of Delos as attendants of Artemis, presiding over aspects of archery; (), represented distancing, (), trajectory, and (), aim.


title: Archery

text: Yi the archer and his apprentice Feng Meng appear in several early Chinese myths, and the historical character of Zhou Tong features in many fictional forms. Jumong, the first Taewang of the Goguryeo kingdom of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, is claimed by legend to have been a near-godlike archer. Archery features in the story of Oguz Khagan. Similarly, archery and the bow feature heavily into historical Korean identity.


title: Archery

text: In West African Yoruba belief, Osoosi is one of several deities of the hunt who are identified with bow and arrow iconography and other insignia associated with archery.


title: Archery

text: While there is great variety in the construction details of bows (both historic and modern), all bows consist of a string attached to elastic limbs that store mechanical energy imparted by the user drawing the string. Bows may be broadly split into two categories: those drawn by pulling the string directly and those that use a mechanism to pull the string.


title: Archery

text: Directly drawn bows may be further divided based upon differences in the method of limb construction, notable examples being self bows, laminated bows and composite bows. Bows can also be classified by the bow shape of the limbs when unstrung; in contrast to traditional European straight bows, a recurve bow and some types of longbow have tips that curve away from the archer when the bow is unstrung. The cross-section of the limb also varies; the classic longbow is a tall bow with narrow limbs that are D-shaped in cross section, and the flatbow has flat wide limbs that are approximately rectangular in cross-section. Cable-backed bows use cords as the back of the bow; the draw weight of the bow can be adjusted by changing the tension of the cable. They were widespread among Inuit who lacked easy access to good bow wood. One variety of cable-backed bow is the Penobscot bow or Wabenaki bow, invented by Frank Loring (Chief Big Thunder) about 1900. It consists of a small bow attached by cables on the back of a larger main bow.


title: Archery

text: In different cultures, the arrows are released from either the left or right side of the bow, and this affects the hand grip and position of the bow. In Arab archery, Turkish archery and Kyūdō, the arrows are released from the right hand side of the bow, and this affects construction of the bow. In western archery, the arrow is usually released from the left hand side of the bow for a right-handed archer.


title: Archery

text: Compound bows are designed to reduce the force required to hold the string at full draw, hence allowing the archer more time to aim with less muscular stress. Most compound designs use cams or elliptical wheels on the ends of the limbs to achieve this. A typical let-off is anywhere from 65% to 80%. For example, a bow with 80% let-off only requires to hold at full draw. Up to 99% let-off is possible. The compound bow was invented by Holless Wilbur Allen in the 1960s (a US patent was filed in 1966 and granted in 1969) and it has become the most widely used type of bow for all forms of archery in North America.


title: Archery

text: Mechanically drawn bows typically have a stock or other mounting, such as the crossbow. Crossbows typically have shorter draw lengths compared to compound bows. Because of this, heavier draw weights are required to achieve the same energy transfer to the arrow. These mechanically drawn bows also have devices to hold the tension when the bow is fully drawn. They are not limited by the strength of a single archer and larger varieties have been used as siege engines.


title: Archery

text: The most common form of arrow consists of a shaft, with an arrowhead at the front end, and fletchings and a nock at the other end. Arrows across time and history have normally been carried in a container known as a quiver, which can take many different forms. Shafts of arrows are typically composed of solid wood, bamboo, fiberglass, aluminium alloy, carbon fiber, or composite materials. Wooden arrows are prone to warping. Fiberglass arrows are brittle, but can be produced to uniform specifications easily. Aluminium shafts were a very popular high-performance choice in the latter half of the 20th century, due to their straightness, lighter weight, and subsequently higher speed and flatter trajectories. Carbon fiber arrows became popular in the 1990s because they are very light, flying even faster and flatter than aluminium arrows. Today, the most popular arrows at tournaments and Olympic events are made of composite materials.


title: Archery

text: The arrowhead is the primary functional component of the arrow. Some arrows may simply use a sharpened tip of the solid shaft, but separate arrowheads are far more common, usually made from metal, stone, or other hard materials. The most commonly used forms are target points, field points, and broadheads, although there are also other types, such as bodkin, judo, and blunt heads.


title: Archery

text: Fletching is traditionally made from bird feathers, but solid plastic vanes and thin sheet-like spin vanes are used. They are attached near the nock (rear) end of the arrow with thin double sided tape, glue, or, traditionally, sinew. The most common configuration in all cultures is three fletches, though as many as six have been used. Two makes the arrow unstable in flight. When the arrow is "three-fletched", the fletches are equally spaced around the shaft, with one placed such that it is perpendicular to the bow when nocked on the string, though variations are seen with modern equipment, especially when using the modern spin vanes. This fletch is called the "index fletch" or "cock feather" (also known as "the odd vane out" or "the nocking vane"), and the others are sometimes called the "hen feathers". Commonly, the cock feather is of a different color. However, if archers are using fletching made of feather or similar material, they may use same color vanes, as different dyes can give varying stiffness to vanes, resulting in less precision. When an arrow is "four-fletched", two opposing fletches are often cock feathers, and occasionally the fletches are not evenly spaced.


title: Archery

text: The fletching may be either "parabolic" cut (short feathers in a smooth parabolic curve) or "shield" cut (generally shaped like half of a narrow shield), and is often attached at an angle, known as "helical" fletching, to introduce a stabilizing spin to the arrow while in flight. Whether helical or straight fletched, when natural fletching (bird feathers) is used it is critical that all feathers come from the same side of the bird. Oversized fletchings can be used to accentuate drag and thus limit the range of the arrow significantly; these arrows are called "flu-flus". Misplacement of fletchings can change the arrow's flight path dramatically.


title: Archery

text: Dacron and other modern materials offer high strength for their weight and are used on most modern bows. Linen and other traditional materials are still used on traditional bows. Several modern methods of making a bowstring exist, such as the 'endless loop' and 'Flemish twist'. Almost any fiber can be made into a bowstring. The author of "Arab Archery" suggests the hide of a young, emaciated camel. Njál's saga describes the refusal of a wife, Hallgerður, to cut her hair to make an emergency bowstring for her husband, Gunnar Hámundarson, who is then killed.


title: Archery

text: Most modern archers wear a bracer (also known as an arm-guard) to protect the inside of the bow arm from being hit by the string and prevent clothing from catching the bowstring. The bracer does not brace the arm; the word comes from the armoury term "brassard", meaning an armoured sleeve or badge. The Navajo people have developed highly ornamented bracers as non-functional items of adornment. Some archers (nearly all female archers) wear protection on their chests, called chestguards or plastrons. The myth of the Amazons was that they had one breast removed to solve this problem. Roger Ascham mentions one archer, presumably with an unusual shooting style, who wore a leather guard for his face.


title: Archery

text: The drawing digits are normally protected by a leather tab, glove, or thumb ring. A simple tab of leather is commonly used, as is a skeleton glove. Medieval Europeans probably used a complete leather glove.


title: Archery

text: Eurasiatic archers who used the thumb or Mongolian draw protected their thumbs, usually with leather according to the author of "Arab Archery", but also with special rings of various hard materials. Many surviving Turkish and Chinese examples are works of considerable art. Some are so highly ornamented that the users could not have used them to loose an arrow. Possibly these were items of personal adornment, and hence value, remaining extant whilst leather had virtually no intrinsic value and would also deteriorate with time. In traditional Japanese archery a special glove is used that has a ridge to assist in drawing the string.


title: Archery

text: A release aid is a mechanical device designed to give a crisp and precise loose of arrows from a compound bow. In the most commonly used, the string is released by a finger-operated trigger mechanism, held in the archer's hand or attached to their wrist. In another type, known as a back-tension release, the string is automatically released when drawn to a pre-determined tension.


title: Archery

text: Stabilizers are mounted at various points on the bow. Common with competitive archery equipment are special brackets that allow multiple stabilizers to be mounted at various angles to fine tune the bow's balance.


title: Archery

text: Stabilizers aid in aiming by improving the balance of the bow. Sights, quivers, rests, and design of the riser (the central, non-bending part of the bow) make one side of the bow heavier. One purpose of stabilizers are to offset these forces. A reflex riser design will cause the top limb to lean towards the shooter. In this case a heavier front stabilizer is desired to offset this action. A deflex riser design has the opposite effect and a lighter front stabilizer may be used.


title: Archery

text: Stabilizers can reduce noise and vibration. These energies are absorbed by viscoelastic polymers, gels, powders, and other materials used to build stabilizers.


title: Archery

text: Stabilizers improve the forgiveness and accuracy by increasing the moment of inertia of the bow to resist movement during the shooting process. Lightweight carbon stabilizers with weighted ends are desirable because they improve the moment of inertia while minimizing the weight added.


title: Archery

text: The standard convention on teaching archery is to hold the bow depending upon eye dominance. (One exception is in modern kyūdō where all archers are trained to hold the bow in the left hand.) Therefore, if one is right-eye dominant, they would hold the bow in the left hand and draw the string with the right hand. However, not everyone agrees with this line of thought. A smoother, and more fluid release of the string will produce the most consistently repeatable shots, and therefore may provide greater accuracy of the arrow flight. Some believe that the hand with the greatest dexterity should therefore be the hand that draws and releases the string. Either eye can be used for aiming, and the less dominant eye can be trained over time to become more effective for use. To assist with this, an eye patch can be temporarily worn over the dominant eye.


title: Archery

text: The hand that holds the bow is referred to as the "bow hand" and its arm the "bow arm". The opposite hand is called the "drawing hand" or "string hand". Terms such as "bow shoulder" or "string elbow" follow the same convention.


title: Archery

text: If shooting according to eye dominance, right-eye-dominant archers shooting conventionally hold the bow with their left hand. If shooting according to hand dexterity, the archer draws the string with the hand that possesses the greatest dexterity, regardless of eye dominance.


title: Archery

text: To shoot an arrow, an archer first assumes the correct stance. The body should be at or nearly perpendicular to the target and the shooting line, with the feet placed shoulder-width apart. As an archer progresses from beginner to a more advanced level other stances such as the "open stance" or the "closed stance" may be used, although many choose to stick with a "neutral stance". Each archer has a particular preference, but mostly this term indicates that the leg furthest from the shooting line is a half to a whole foot-length from the other foot, on the ground.


title: Archery

text: To load, the bow is pointed toward the ground, tipped slightly clockwise of vertical (for a right handed shooter) and the shaft of the arrow is placed on the arrow rest or shelf. The back of the arrow is attached to the bowstring with the nock (a small locking groove located at the proximal end of the arrow). This step is called "nocking the arrow". Typical arrows with three vanes should be oriented such that a single vane, the "cock feather", is pointing away from the bow, to improve the clearance of the arrow as it passes the arrow rest.


title: Archery

text: A compound bow is fitted with a special type of arrow rest, known as a launcher, and the arrow is usually loaded with the cock feather/vane pointed either up, or down, depending upon the type of launcher being used.


title: Archery

text: The bowstring and arrow are held with three fingers, or with a mechanical arrow release. Most commonly, for finger shooters, the index finger is placed above the arrow and the next two fingers below, although several other techniques have their adherents around the world, involving three fingers below the arrow, or an arrow pinching technique. "Instinctive" shooting is a technique eschewing sights and is often preferred by traditional archers (shooters of longbows and recurves). In either the split finger or three finger under case, the string is usually placed in the first or second joint, or else on the pads of the fingers. When using a mechanical release aid, the release is hooked onto the D-loop.


title: Archery

text: Another type of string hold, used on traditional bows, is the type favoured by the Mongol warriors, known as the "thumb release", style. This involves using the thumb to draw the string, with the fingers curling around the thumb to add some support. To release the string, the fingers are opened out and the thumb relaxes to allow the string to slide off the thumb. When using this type of release, the arrow should rest on the same side of the bow as the drawing hand i.e. Left hand draw = arrow on left side of bow.


title: Archery

text: The archer then raises the bow and draws the string, with varying alignments for vertical versus slightly canted bow positions. This is often one fluid motion for shooters of recurves and longbows, which tend to vary from archer to archer. Compound shooters often experience a slight jerk during the drawback, at around the last , where the draw weight is at its maximum—before relaxing into a comfortable stable full draw position. The archer draws the string hand towards the face, where it should rest lightly at a fixed "anchor point". This point is consistent from shot to shot, and is usually at the corner of the mouth, on the chin, to the cheek, or to the ear, depending on preferred shooting style. The archer holds the bow arm outwards, toward the target. The elbow of this arm should be rotated so that the inner elbow is perpendicular to the ground, though archers with hyper extendable elbows tend to angle the inner elbow toward the ground, as exemplified by the Korean archer Jang Yong-Ho. This keeps the forearm out of the way of the bowstring.


title: Archery

text: In modern form, the archer stands erect, forming a "T". The archer's lower trapezius muscles are used to pull the arrow to the anchor point. Some modern recurve bows are equipped with a mechanical device, called a clicker, which produces a clicking sound when the archer reaches the correct draw length. In contrast, traditional English Longbow shooters step "into the bow", exerting force with both the bow arm and the string hand arm simultaneously, especially when using bows having draw weights from to over . Heavily stacked traditional bows (recurves, long bows, and the like) are released immediately upon reaching full draw at maximum weight, whereas compound bows reach their maximum weight around the last , dropping holding weight significantly at full draw. Compound bows are often held at full draw for a short time to achieve maximum accuracy.


title: Archery

text: The arrow is typically released by relaxing the fingers of the drawing hand (see bow draw), or triggering the mechanical release aid. Usually the release aims to keep the drawing arm rigid, the bow hand relaxed, and the arrow is moved back using the back muscles, as opposed to using just arm motions. An archer should also pay attention to the recoil or "follow through" of his or her body, as it may indicate problems with form (technique) that affect accuracy.


title: Archery

text: Mechanical sights can be affixed to the bow to aid in aiming. They can be as simple as a pin, or may use optics with magnification. They usually also have a peep sight (rear sight) built into the string, which aids in a consistent anchor point. Modern compound bows automatically limit the draw length to give a consistent arrow velocity, while traditional bows allow great variation in draw length. Some bows use mechanical methods to make the draw length consistent. Barebow archers often use a sight picture, which includes the target, the bow, the hand, the arrow shaft and the arrow tip, as seen at the same time by the archer. With a fixed "anchor point" (where the string is brought to, or close to, the face), and a fully extended bow arm, successive shots taken with the sight picture in the same position fall on the same point. This lets the archer adjust aim with successive shots to achieve accuracy.


title: Archery

text: Modern archery equipment usually includes sights. Instinctive aiming is used by many archers who use traditional bows. The two most common forms of a non-mechanical release are split-finger and three-under. Split-finger aiming requires the archer to place the index finger above the nocked arrow, while the middle and ring fingers are both placed below. Three-under aiming places the index, middle, and ring fingers under the nocked arrow. This technique allows the archer to better look down the arrow since the back of the arrow is closer to the dominant eye, and is commonly called "gun barreling" (referring to common aiming techniques used with firearms).


title: Archery

text: When using short bows or shooting from horseback, it is difficult to use the sight picture. The archer may look at the target, but without including the weapon in the field of accurate view. Aiming then involves hand-eye coordination—which includes proprioception and motor-muscle memory, similar to that used when throwing a ball. With sufficient practice, such archers can normally achieve good practical accuracy for hunting or for war. Aiming without a sight picture may allow more rapid shooting, not however increasing accuracy.


title: Archery

text: Instinctive shooting is a style of shooting that includes the barebow aiming method that relies heavily upon the subconscious mind, proprioception, and motor/muscle memory to make aiming adjustments; the term used to refer to a general category of archers who did not use a mechanical or fixed sight.


title: Archery

text: When a projectile is thrown by hand, the speed of the projectile is determined by the kinetic energy imparted by the thrower's muscles performing work. However, the energy must be imparted over a limited distance (determined by arm length) and therefore (because the projectile is accelerating) over a limited time, so the limiting factor is not work but rather power, which determines how much energy can be added in the limited time available. Power generated by muscles, however, is limited by force–velocity relationship, and even at the optimal contraction speed for power production, total work by the muscle is less than half of what it would be if the muscle contracted over the same distance at slow speeds, resulting in less than 1/4 the projectile launch velocity possible without the limitations of the force–velocity relationship.


title: Archery

text: When a bow is used, the muscles are able to perform work much more slowly, resulting in greater force and greater work done. This work is stored in the bow as elastic potential energy, and when the bowstring is released, this stored energy is imparted to the arrow much more quickly than can be delivered by the muscles, resulting in much higher velocity and, hence, greater distance. This same process is employed by frogs, which use elastic tendons to increase jumping distance. In archery, some energy dissipates through elastic hysteresis, reducing the overall amount released when the bow is shot. Of the remaining energy, some is dampened both by the limbs of the bow and the bowstring. Depending on the arrow's elasticity, some of the energy is also absorbed by compressing the arrow, primarily because the release of the bowstring is rarely in line with the arrow shaft, causing it to flex out to one side. This is because the bowstring accelerates faster than the archer's fingers can open, and consequently some sideways motion is imparted to the string, and hence arrow nock, as the power and speed of the bow pulls the string off the opening fingers.


title: Archery

text: Even with a release aid mechanism some of this effect is usually experienced, since the string always accelerates faster than the retaining part of the mechanism. This makes the arrow oscillate in flight—its center flexing to one side and then the other repeatedly, gradually reducing as the arrow's flight proceeds. This is clearly visible in high-speed photography of arrows at discharge. A direct effect of these energy transfers can clearly be seen when dry firing. Dry firing refers to releasing the bowstring without a nocked arrow. Because there is no arrow to receive the stored potential energy, almost all the energy stays in the bow. Some have suggested that dry firing may cause physical damage to the bow, such as cracks and fractures—and because most bows are not specifically made to handle the high amounts of energy dry firing produces, should never be done.


title: Archery

text: Modern arrows are made to a specified 'spine', or stiffness rating, to maintain matched flexing and hence accuracy of aim. This flexing can be a desirable feature, since, when the spine of the shaft is matched to the acceleration of the bow(string), the arrow bends or flexes around the bow and any arrow-rest, and consequently the arrow, and fletchings, have an un-impeded flight. This feature is known as the archer's paradox. It maintains accuracy, for if part of the arrow struck a glancing blow on discharge, some inconsistency would be present, and the excellent accuracy of modern equipment would not be achieved.


title: Archery

text: The accurate flight of an arrow depends on its fletchings. The arrow's manufacturer (a "fletcher") can arrange fletching to cause the arrow to rotate along its axis. This improves accuracy by evening pressure buildups that would otherwise cause the arrow to "plane" on the air in a random direction after shooting. Even with a carefully made arrow, the slightest imperfection or air movement causes some unbalanced turbulence in air flow. Consequently, rotation creates an equalization of such turbulence, which, overall, maintains the intended direction of flight i.e. accuracy. This rotation is not to be confused with the rapid gyroscopic rotation of a rifle bullet. Fletching that is not arranged to induce rotation still improves accuracy by causing a restoring drag any time the arrow tilts from its intended direction of travel.


title: Archery

text: The innovative aspect of the invention of the bow and arrow was the amount of power delivered to an extremely small area by the arrow. The huge ratio of length vs. cross sectional area, coupled with velocity, made the arrow more powerful than any other hand held weapon until firearms were invented. Arrows can spread or concentrate force, depending on the application. Practice arrows, for instance, have a blunt tip that spreads the force over a wider area to reduce the risk of injury or limit penetration. Arrows designed to pierce armor in the Middle Ages used a very narrow and sharp tip ("bodkinhead") to concentrate the force. Arrows used for hunting used a narrow tip ("broadhead") that widens further, to facilitate both penetration and a large wound.


title: Archery

text: Using archery to take game animals is known as "bow hunting". Bow hunting differs markedly from hunting with firearms, as distance between hunter and prey must be much shorter to ensure a humane kill. The skills and practices of bow hunting therefore emphasize very close approach to the prey, whether by still hunting, stalking, or waiting in a blind or tree stand. In many countries, including much of the United States, bow hunting for large and small game is legal. Bow hunters generally enjoy longer seasons than are allowed with other forms of hunting such as black powder, shotgun, or rifle. Usually, compound bows are used for large game hunting due to the relatively short time it takes to master them as opposed to the longbow or recurve bow. These compound bows may feature fiber optic sights, stabilizers, and other accessories designed to increase accuracy at longer distances. Using a bow and arrow to take fish is known as "bow fishing".


title: Archery

text: Competitive archery involves shooting arrows at a target for accuracy from a set distance or distances. This is the most popular form of competitive archery worldwide and is called target archery. A form particularly popular in Europe and America is field archery, shot at targets generally set at various distances in a wooded setting. Competitive archery in the United States is governed by USA Archery and National Field Archery Association (NFAA), which also certifies instructors.


title: Archery

text: Para-archery is an adaptation of archery for athletes with a disability, governed by the World Archery Federation (WA), and is one of the sports in the Summer Paralympic Games. There are also several other lesser-known and historical forms of archery, as well as archery novelty games and flight archery, where the aim is to shoot the greatest distance.


title: The Turtles

text: The Turtles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965, best known the 1967 hit song "Happy Together". They charted several other top 40 hits, including "It Ain't Me Babe" (1965), "You Baby" (1966), "She'd Rather Be With Me" (1967), "Elenore" (1968) and "You Showed Me" (1969).


title: The Turtles

text: As the Turtles' commercial success waned by the end of the 1960s, they became plagued with management issues, lawsuits and conflicts with their label, White Whale Records, leading the group to break up in 1970. Kaylan and Volman later found long-lasting success as session musicians and reunited in 1983 under the name Flo & Eddie, a comedy rock act. In 2010, a reconstituted version of the band, the Turtles featuring Flo & Eddie, began performing live shows again.


title: The Turtles

text: In early 1963, New Yorker Howard Kaylan and Californian Mark Volman attended the same school, Westchester High in Los Angeles (Kaylan had moved from New York City as a child). The two sang in the school's a cappella choir, where Volman soon heard about Kaylan's instrumental surf music band, the Nightriders (which included Kaylan on saxophone and choir members Al Nichol on lead guitar, Don Murray on drums and Chuck Portz on bass). Volman joined the group as a saxophonist, just before the group changed name in the Crossfires in the same year. After high school graduation, the band continued on while its members attended area colleges (picking up rhythm guitarist Jim Tucker along the way).


title: The Turtles

text: They released a single, "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" b/w "Fiberglass Jungle", on the local "Capco Records" label, always in 1963. With the help of KRLA and KFWB DJ and club owner Reb Foster, the Crossfires signed to the newly formed White Whale Records. Adhering to the prevailing musical trend, the group rebranded itself as a folk rock band under the name the Tyrtles, an intentionally stylized misspelling inspired by the Byrds and the Beatles. However, the trendy spelling did not survive long, and they finally had to name themselves the Turtles.


title: The Turtles

text: Because of the stylistic change from "Surf music" to "Folk rock", Kaylan and Volman dropped the saxophones to become the band's vocalists. Kaylan became the group's lead singer, and keyboardist (although he would give up most of the keyboard parts to Nichol in their hits). Volman began to harmonize with Kaylan's lead singing becoming a third guitarist, as well as a percussionist, for the band.


title: The Turtles

text: As with the Byrds, the Turtles achieved breakthrough success with a cover of a Bob Dylan song. "It Ain't Me Babe" reached the "Billboard" Top Ten in the late summer of 1965, and was the title track of the band's first album. Their second single, "Let Me Be", reached the top 30, while their third hit, "You Baby", charted in the top 20 in early 1966. "You Baby", with its intricate vocal harmonies and upbeat tempo, would prove to be influential in the band's sound, as it saw them departing from the political Byrds-type folk rock; the band's new sound ranged from chamber pop to straightforward pop music.


title: The Turtles

text: The band's second album, "You Baby", failed to reach "Billboard"s Top LPs chart, and of several singles released in 1966, "Grim Reaper of Love" and "Can I Get to Know You Better" barely entered the "Billboard" Hot 100. One single, the tough "Outside Chance", written by Warren Zevon and featuring guitar work in the style of the Beatles' "Taxman", did not chart. In 1966, the Turtles made an appearance in Universal's beach party spy spoof film "Out of Sight", singing "She'll Come Back" on screen.


title: The Turtles

text: At the start of 1966, drummer Don Murray and bassist Chuck Portz quit the group. They were replaced by Joel Larson and then John Barbata on drums, and by Chip Douglas on bass (October 1966).


title: The Turtles

text: The first of several key Turtles singles co-written by Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon, "Happy Together" had already been rejected by countless performers. "Happy Together", both their biggest hit and their signature song, signaled a turning point for both the Turtles and for Chip Douglas, who provided the arrangement. The single replaced the Beatles' "Penny Lane" at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the spring of 1967. The Turtles' only No. 1 remained there for three weeks. An album of the same name followed and peaked at No. 25. "Happy Together" reached No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart. This same year saw the Turtles performing the title song (composed by John Williams with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse) for the Twentieth Century-Fox bedroom farce "A Guide for the Married Man".


title: The Turtles

text: Impressed by Chip Douglas's studio arrangements, Michael Nesmith approached him after a Turtles show at the Whisky a Go Go and invited him to become the Monkees' new producer, as that band wanted to break out of their "manufactured" studio mold. Douglas accepted and left the Turtles, ultimately producing three Monkees albums: "Headquarters"; "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd." (both 1967) and co-produced "The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees" (1968). Douglas was replaced by Jim Pons on bass.


title: The Turtles

text: Other hits, all written by Gordon/Bonner, followed "Happy Together", turning the year of 1967 extremely lucrative for the Turtles. A follow-up, the brassy "She'd Rather Be with Me", reached No. 3 on the US charts in late spring and actually out-charted "Happy Together" overseas, reaching No. 4 in the UK. Two successive Top 15 songs followed: "You Know What I Mean" and "She's My Girl". Both 45s showed a psychedelic side in the band's style. "Golden Hits" was released later that year, charting in the top 10. The similar album covers for "The Turtles! Golden Hits" and its follow up "More Golden Hits" were designed by Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean.


title: The Turtles

text: In 1967, rhythm guitarist Jim Tucker left the band citing the pressure of touring and recording new material. He moved to Grass Valley where he became an electrical contractor. He has denied that he left the band because John Lennon was rude to him as suggested by singer Kaylan.


title: The Turtles

text: The first two singles in 1968, "Sound Asleep" and "The Story of Rock and Roll", stalled somewhere in the middle of the top 100. The band's fortunes changed when Chip Douglas returned to work with them in the studio. Late in 1968 the band released a concept album called "The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands", in which the group pretended to be 11 different bands (with fanciful names including the Bigg Brothers, Nature's Children, the US Teens featuring Raoul, and the Fabulous Dawgs), each with a song in a different genre. The album yielded two singles: "Elenore" and "You Showed Me" (both peaking at No. 6). "Elenore" also reached No. 7 in the UK chart. Although both singles were successful, they didn't help to boost the album's sales, which only peaked at No.128 on the "Billboard" Pop Albums. The 1969 hit "You Showed Me" had been written by the Byrds' Gene Clark and Roger (then Jim) McGuinn in 1964. It was their last top 10 single. Television appearances included a February 1968 spot on "The Mike Douglas Show", to which they returned in April 1969.


title: The Turtles

text: Towards the end of 1969, the group released its next album, "Turtle Soup", a critically well-received LP produced by Ray Davies of the Kinks. Inspired by the revered 1968 concept album "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society", this was Davies's only released production work for another band (although Davies had previously produced demo recordings for the Iveys). Notable tracks include "Somewhere Friday Nite" and "Love in the City". In spite of "Turtle Soup"s positive reception from the music press, its commercial success was marginal and the band soon began to disintegrate.


title: The Turtles

text: Long disillusioned with their record label and its growing financial problems by this time, Kaylan and Volman resisted White Whale's efforts to turn the Turtles into something approaching an assembly-line pop act, like the early Monkees. The label apparently encouraged Kaylan and Volman to fire the rest of the band, tour with hired musicians and make records by adding their vocals to backing tracks recorded by Memphis session players. Such pressure convinced the band to record a single called "Who Would Ever Think That I Would Ever Marry Margaret?", which they disowned after its release.


title: The Turtles

text: The Turtles wound down their career in 1970 with a second compilation album, "More Golden Hits", and a B-sides and rarities album, "Wooden Head". With the demise of the Turtles, White Whale Records lost its biggest moneymaker and then was left with few commercially viable bands, and soon ceased operation.


title: The Turtles

text: Kaylan and Volman (accompanied by Chip Douglas' replacement, bassist Jim Pons) joined the Mothers of Invention as the Phlorescent Leech & Eddie, since the use of the Turtles name (and even their own names in billings) was prohibited by their contract with their label White Whale Records. Flo & Eddie, as they soon became known, recorded albums with Frank Zappa's band, appeared in Zappa's film "200 Motels" in 1971, and later released a series of records on their own.


title: The Turtles

text: Kaylan and Volman sang backing vocals on several recordings by the band T. Rex, including their worldwide 1971 hit "Get it On (Bang A Gong)" and the albums "Electric Warrior" and "The Slider". When White Whale's master recordings were sold at auction in 1974, the duo won the Turtles' masters, making them the owners of their own recorded work. They promptly licensed the tracks to Sire Records, who issued them as a compilation called ""Happy Together Again"". In the mid-1970s, Kaylan and Volman started their own syndicated radio show called "Flo & Eddie by the Fireside", which originated from KMET in Los Angeles.


title: The Turtles

text: In the 1980s, the duo began hosting their own radio show on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles and WXRK in New York City and recorded soundtrack music for children's shows like the "Care Bears" and "Strawberry Shortcake". In 1980, Flo and Eddie performed backing vocals on Alice Cooper's "Flush the Fashion" album, and sang backup on Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart", from his album "The River". 1982 saw the re-release of the Turtles' original albums through Rhino Records.


title: The Turtles

text: In 1983 they also contributed backing vocals to the self-titled debut album of British New wave band Espionage, produced by Roy Thomas Baker and released by A&M Records. Also in 1983, Howard Kaylan appeared in the Rock and roll comedy film "Get Crazy", starring Malcolm McDowell and Daniel Stern: Kaylan played the part of Captain Cloud, a spiritual guru, leader of a caravan of time-lost hippies. In the same year, Kaylan and Volman legally regained the use of "the Turtles" name and began touring as the Turtles... Featuring Flo and Eddie: instead of trying to reunite with their earlier bandmates, they began featuring all-star sidemen who had played with different groups. In 1984, the Turtles embarked on a U.S. "Happy Together" tour with Gary Puckett & the Union Gap, Spanky & Our Gang and the Association.


title: The Turtles

text: In 1987, Kaylan and Volman appeared in a new music video of their 1967 song Happy Together to promote the romantic comedy "Making Mr. Right", starring John Malkovich. That year also saw the debut of the previously unreleased "Shell Shock" album, as well as a new retrospective CD, "20 Greatest Hits", both released by Rhino. The latter compilation was followed up in 1988 with another, "Turtle Wax: The Best of the Turtles, Vol. 2", which featured the best of their "album tracks" and previously-neglected single B-sides.


title: The Turtles

text: The 1989 debut album by hip hop combo De La Soul, featured an uncredited sample from the Turtles (specifically, the intro to "You Showed Me"), in the song "Transmitting Live from Mars". Kaylan and Volman sued, winning a large settlement, setting a legal precedent, and causing the music industry to begin carefully crediting (and paying royalties for) sampled works on future rap music and other recordings in general. As they explained, "We don't hate sampling; we like sampling. If we don't get credit, we sue, and all that stuff (a share of the royalties, plus punitive damages) comes back to us!". It was incorrectly reported in 2009 that Volman was involved in another lawsuit against rapper Gucci Mane for an unauthorized sample; the sample of "Keep It Warm" used in Mane's "Lemonade" was cleared legitimately prior to the release of the song. Also in 1989, the Turtles' recording of "Happy Together" was featured in the eponymous romantic comedy film "Happy Together", starring Patrick Dempsey and Helen Slater, as well as in the film soundtrack album.


title: The Turtles

text: In 1991 "Music Club Records" released a Turtles' anthology in the United Kingdom: "Happy Together: The Best of the Turtles". In 1993 Repertoire Records in Germany released their own compilation, titled "Elenore", as well as re-releasing the original "Happy Together" album. In the same year, Rhino Records also presented "Captured Live", a live album of their 1992 tour. In 1994 Sundazed Records re-released all of the Turtles' original albums, and in 1999 Varèse Sarabande released "Happy Together: The Best of White Whale Records", which included many of the Turtles' singles.


title: The Turtles

text: Original drummer Don Murray (born "Donald Ray Murray" on November 8, 1945) died on March 22, 1996 at age 50.