title: Catherine of Siena

text: On 1 October 1999, Pope John Paul II made her one of Europe's patron saints, along with Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and Saint Bridget of Sweden. She is also the patroness of the historically Catholic American woman's fraternity, Theta Phi Alpha.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: The people of Siena wished to have Catherine's body. A story is told of a miracle whereby they were partially successful: knowing that they could not smuggle her whole body out of Rome, they decided to take only her head which they placed in a bag. When stopped by the Roman guards, they prayed to Catherine to help them, confident that she would rather have her body (or at least part thereof) in Siena. When they opened the bag to show the guards, it appeared no longer to hold her head but to be full of rose petals.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine ranks high among the mystics and spiritual writers of the Church. She remains a greatly respected figure for her spiritual writings, and political boldness to "speak truth to power"—it being exceptional for a woman, in her time period, to have had such influence in politics and on world history.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Raymond of Capua's "Life" was translated into English in 1493 and 1609, and in Modern English is translated as:


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The United States presidential state car (nicknamed "the Beast", "Cadillac One", "First Car"; code named "Stagecoach") is the official state car of the president of the United States.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: United States presidents embraced automotive technology in the early 20th-century with President William Howard Taft's purchase of four cars and the conversion of the White House stables into a garage. Presidents rode in stock, unmodified cars until President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration bought the "Sunshine Special", the first presidential state car to be built to United States Secret Service standards. Until the assassination of John F. Kennedy, presidential state cars frequently allowed the president to ride uncovered and exposed to the public. President Kennedy's assassination began a progression of increasingly armored and sealed cars; the 2009–2018 state car had bulletproof glass and was hermetically sealed with its own environmental system. The current model of presidential state car is a unique Cadillac that debuted on September 24, 2018.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: Decommissioned presidential state cars are dismantled and destroyed with the assistance of the Secret Service to prevent their secrets from being known to outside parties. Late 20th-century and 21st-century presidential motorcades have consisted of 24–45 vehicles other than the presidential state car, including vehicles for security, healthcare, the press, and route-clearing, among others.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The first serving president to ride in a car was President William McKinley, who briefly rode in a Stanley Motor Carriage Company steam car on July 13, 1901. According to the United States Secret Service, it was customary for them to follow the presidential horse-and-buggy on foot, but that with the popularization of the automobile, the Secret Service purchased a 1907 White Motor Company steam car to follow President Theodore Roosevelt's horse-drawn carriage. The president himself eschewed riding in the vehicle due to his "image as a rough-riding horseman".


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: President William Howard Taft changed things at the White House, converting the stables there to a garage and purchasing a four-car fleet on a budget of : two "luxurious" Pierce-Arrow cars, a Baker Motor Vehicle electric car, and a 1911 White Motor Company steam car. President Taft became a fan of the steam car when he discovered he could conceal himself from press photographers with a "carefully timed burst of steam."


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: President Woodrow Wilson was such a fan of the three Pierce-Arrow cars purchased by his administration that he bought one of them from the government for when he left office in 1921. President Warren G. Harding was the first president to use a car to drive to his inauguration, and was the first qualified driver to be elected president. President Herbert Hoover had a Cadillac V-16.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt bought a Ford V8 Phaeton coupe and had it equipped with hand controls in direct contravention of a Secret Service directive prohibiting sitting presidents from getting behind the wheel of a car.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In December 1939, President Roosevelt received a 1939 Lincoln Motor Company V12 convertible—the "Sunshine Special". The Sunshine Special (so named because the top was frequently open) became the president's best-known automobile, the very first to be built to Secret Service specifications, and the first to be leased rather than bought. Built on the chassis of the Lincoln K-series, the "Sunshine Special" has a wheelbase, room for 10 passengers, rear doors hinged backwards, heavy-duty suspension, two side-mounted spare tires, and standing platforms attached to the exterior to accommodate Secret Service agents. The "Sunshine Special" underwent two sets of modifications. Firstly in 1941 the car's top was lowered out of aesthetic concerns. Then, in 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the car underwent the addition of armor, bulletproof glass, "metal-clad flat-proof inner tubes, a radio transceiver, a siren, red warning lights, and a compartment for submachine guns." After the second set of modifications, the car weighed and was longer.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: Legend has it that Harry S. Truman held a grudge against General Motors because they would not give him use of their cars during his run for the 1948 presidential election; and, so, in 1950 he chose Lincoln to make the presidential state car. The White House leased ten Lincoln Cosmopolitans. The cars were modified by coachbuilder Henney Motor Company and Hess and Eisenhardt provided extra security features, with extra headroom to accommodate the tall silk hats popular at the time, and were painted black. Nine of the automobiles had enclosed bodies, while the tenth was an armored convertible especially for President Truman. The tenth Cosmopolitan was long, wide, and weighed , heavier than a stock Cosmopolitan. All ten cars were outfitted with V8 engines "with heavy-duty Hydra-Matic transmissions." In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had the Cosmopolitan convertible fitted with a Plexiglas roof that became known as the "Bubble-top"; it remained in presidential service until 1965, and has approximately on the odometer.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: President John F. Kennedy's 1961 Lincoln Continental was originally a stock car, built in Wixom, Michigan, and retailing for . The federal government leased it from the Ford Motor Company for annually, and then commissioned Hess and Eisenhardt to modify it for presidential use—with a pricetag of . The convertible was painted "Presidential Blue Metallic", with silver metal flakes embedded within it; it was given the Secret Service code names of SS-100-X and X-100.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The dark-blue car included a "heavy-duty heater and air conditioner, a pair of radiotelephones, a fire extinguisher, a first-aid kit, and a siren." The car was longer than Lincoln's because Hess and Eisenhardt had added a "middle row of forward-facing jump seats that folded away when not in use." The exterior featured improved, retractable standing platforms and handles for Secret Service agents, and flashing red lights recessed into the bumper. Unique to the X-100 were three sets of removable roofs (a standard soft top, a lightweight metal one, and a transparent plastic one) and a hydraulic lift that raised the rear cushion off the floor. Both of these feature sets were designed to make the president more visible to the public, but they also increased the president's vulnerability (e.g., the assassination of John F. Kennedy).


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: After the assassination, the "Death Car" (as named by the Associated Press), was redesigned in an operation named "The Quick Fix". Hess and Eisenhardt, the Secret Service, the United States Army Materials and Mechanics Research Center, PPG Industries, and Ford engineers all collaborated to strip the limousine and improve everything. In an effort to prevent "ghoulish collectors" from obtaining the discarded car parts, they were destroyed. For an estimated cost of $500,000, the car was painted black and featured "improved telecommunications gear, a more powerful engine and flat-proof tires made of rubber-coated aluminum." The fuel tank was protected against explosion by a "porous foam matrix" that minimized spillage in the event of a puncture. The passenger compartment was protected by of armor, and the three removable roofs were replaced by a fixed glass enclosure that cost more than $125,000. The glass enclosure was made of 13 different pieces of bulletproof glass ranging in thickness from , and was then the largest piece of curved bulletproof glass ever made. Titanium armor was added to the body of the car, the standard windows were made bullet-resistant with sandwiched layers of glass and polycarbonate vinyl, and prototype aluminum run-flat tires were added. Due to an increase of 25 percent more weight—to —the upgraded car received a hand-built V8 engine that provided a 17% increase in power, to .


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In 1967, the convertible was modified again with an upgraded air conditioning system, an openable rear-door window, and structural enhancement to the rear deck. Despite successive presidential state cars being built and delivered to the White House, the X-100 continued to be occasionally used by Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter until it was retired from service in early 1977. , it was publicly exhibited at The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The license plates (DC plates, "GG-300") were removed from the X-100 when the vehicle was upgraded after the Kennedy shooting; when they were auctioned in 2015, they sold for .


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: President Johnson preferred white convertibles, but "concerns for protocol and safety" had him receiving a black 1967 Lincoln Continental as his state car. The hardtop cost the Ford Motor Company about ; they in turn leased it to the federal government for per year. With of armor, "a bubble top thicker than the protective cockpit of an F-16 fighter", and a V8 engine, the car could still reach speeds of — or with four flat tires. This car also served Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and traveled to 32 nations before it was retired in the mid-to-late 1970s. In 1996, Ford restored the car to its original state and donated it to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum; the auto manufacturer chose Nixon's library because he took the car on several of his most-significant presidential trips.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: A modified, , 1972 Lincoln Continental was delivered to the White House in 1974. The six-passenger limousine was leased from the Ford Motor Company for per year and featured a , V8 engine. The fully loaded automobile also had external microphones to allow occupants to hear outside noises, full armor plate, bulletproof glass, and racks for the Secret Service to store submachine guns.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The car was used by Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. It was the vehicle in which Ford was shot at by Sara Jane Moore. During the March 1981 attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the car was hit by the last two (of six) gunshots: the penultimate damaged the bulletproof window of the right rear passenger's door, while the last ricocheted off the back-right quarter panel and struck the president. The car then transported Reagan to George Washington University Hospital. After the 1981 shooting, the car was returned to Ford to receive a new interior, front sheet metal, and 1979 Lincoln grille.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The 1972 car left service in 1992 with on its odometer. After maintenance and care in 2008, The Henry Ford measured the car at long, wide, tall, at , with a wheelbase of .


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The next presidential state car was a 1983 Cadillac that was delivered on January 30, 1984. This Cadillac Fleetwood is longer and taller than the stock Fleetwood. It featured armor and bulletproof glass ( thick), and was described as "distinctively styled, with a raised roof and a large rear greenhouse." To deal with the added weight of the armor, the car had oversized wheels and tires, heavy-duty brakes, and an automatic leveling system.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The 1989 presidential state car that was delivered to the White House was a modified 1989 Lincoln Town Car that was long and more than tall.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: President Bill Clinton used a 1993 Cadillac Fleetwood as his presidential state car. It is currently on display at the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, where it sits with all its doors closed to the public. Museum curator Christine Mouw noted that they can "dust the outside of the car, but if we needed to get inside it, we would have to contact the regional Secret Service office".


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: CNN interviewed Joe Funk, a former Secret Service agent and driver of Clinton's presidential state car during part of his tenure. Funk described a dichotomy of the car: while the president is wholly cut off from the outside world by the armor and bulletproof glass of the vehicle, he has at his fingertips communication capabilities including phones, satellite communications, and the Internet.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In 2001, for the first inauguration of George W. Bush, Cadillac no longer produced a car suitable for conversion into a presidential limousine. Furthermore, the additional armor and amenities that were added to the state car by the Secret Service taxed previous presidential limousines beyond their limits, resulting in failing transmissions and short-lived brakes. The George W. Bush state car was instead designed from the ground-up by "an R&D arm of General Motors in Detroit" to meet Secret Service specifications. speculation" had President George W. Bush's Cadillac Deville actually based on the chassis of General Motors' line of full-size sport utility vehicles such as the "Chevrolet Suburban, GMC Yukon[,] and Cadillac Escalade." This "Deville" featured armored doors, and "bulletproof glass so thick it blocks out parts of the light spectrum." Rumored components of the car were sealed passenger compartments with their own air supply, run-flat tires, and a engine. Confirmed accessories include "an integrated 10-disc CD changer, a foldaway desktop[,] and reclining rear seats with massaging, adaptive cushions." This presidential state car was estimated to weigh approximately . Bush's presidential state car was nicknamed "The Beast", a name that persisted through the presidency of Donald Trump. When traveling, President Bush took along two of the armored limousines (flown by either C-5 or C-17), one for use and one for backup. This proved fortuitous during a 2007 trip to Rome where one of the presidential state cars stalled for five minutes on a street; the car was re-started, but was replaced with the backup limousine after President Bush reached his destination. Sometimes, President Bush would instead use vehicles already present at his destination such as embassy motor pool cars or military assets, rather than transporting the presidential state car. The president never used non-American-governmental vehicles when overseas.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The 2009–2018 presidential state car went into service on January 20, 2009 and drove President Obama the down Pennsylvania Avenue from his inauguration to the inaugural parade. A Cadillac, the presidential state car was not based on any single model of car, though it had the "dual-textured grille and the dinner plate-sized Cadillac coat-of-arms badge" emblematic of the Cadillac CTS and the Cadillac Escalade. The headlights and taillights were identical to those used on other Cadillac production models. Anton Goodwin of CNET's "Road/Show" blog noted that speculation was that the presidential state car was based on the GMC Topkick platform. If that is to be the case, then Goodwin assumed the car would feature either a gasoline-powered V8 General Motors Vortec engine or a diesel-powered Duramax turbo V8 engine. "Autoweek" magazine asserted that the car ran on a gasoline-fueled engine. This presidential state car was speculated to be much heavier than its predecessor as it is equipped with Goodyear Regional RHS tires that are usually reserved for medium- and heavy-duty trucks; speculated weights range from . Due to the weight of the car, it could only reach about , and only achieved . The limousine was reported to cost between and (equivalent to about $– in ). The presidential state car was maintained by the United States Secret Service.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The car had more bulletproof glass than the previous model. It also had run-flat tires and an interior that was completely sealed to protect the occupants in the event of a chemical attack. The 2009 presidential state car model had night vision optics, a tear gas cannon, onboard oxygen tanks, an armored fuel tank filled with foam to prevent explosion, and pump-action shotguns. Whether it was or was not armed with rocket-propelled grenades, the car featured doors. General Motors spokeswoman Joanne K. Krell said of the presidential state car, "The presidential vehicle is built to precise and special specifications, undergoes extreme testing and development, and also incorporates many of the top aspects of Cadillac's 'regular' cars—such as signature design, hand-cut-and-sewn interiors, etc." The curator of The Henry Ford told "The Dallas Morning News" that President Obama's state car was "a tank with a Cadillac badge."


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In 2013, the presidential state car was outfitted with standard Washington, D.C., license plates that read "TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION" in reference to the district's lack of representation in the United States Congress. The switch came after the D.C. city council petitioned the president to use the plates on his motorcade, which would be seen by millions of people as the president headed down Pennsylvania Avenue for his second inauguration.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In 2014, General Motors (GM) was awarded three contracts for the new limousine. Each state car was expected to cost , and by January 2016, GM had been paid for its work on the new model.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: After prototypes of the new model were seen driven on public roads wrapped in monochromatic multi-scale camouflage, Cadillac confirmed to Fox News that "We've completed our task and we've handed over the vehicle to the customer". The Secret Service confirmed that the program to replace the presidential car was "on track and on schedule" and should be in service by late summer 2018. Fox News' Gary Gastelu opined that the camouflaged prototype looked similar to the Cadillac CT6.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: Still nicknamed "the Beast" (as established with the 2001–2009 model), the current model debuted with a presidential trip to New York City on September 24, 2018. "Road & Track" reported that "the design appears to be a simple evolution of the old model with more current Cadillac design cues, like an Escalade sedan." "Road & Track" described the state car as "massive and tall", and weighing . NBC News reported a weight of 20,000 pounds and the capacity to seat seven, and speculated that the limousine was intended to evoke the aesthetic of the Cadillac XT6. "Business Insider" reported in 2019 that the Beast is actually built upon a GM truck chassis. "Car and Driver" said that the car was built on the GMC TopKick platform, weighs as much as 15,000 pounds, has the headlamps from the Cadillac Escalade, and the grille emblematic of the Cadillac Escala concept car.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In addition to defensive measures designed to protect the president, this state car also has stores of blood in the president's type for medical emergencies. The car is hermetically sealed against fluid attacks, and features run-flat tires, night-vision devices, smoke screens, and oil slicks as defensive measures against attackers. NBC reported that the car features armor made of aluminum, ceramic, and steel; the exterior walls have a thickness of , the windows are multi-layered and thick, and each door—believed to weigh as much as those on a Boeing 757—can electrify its handles to prevent entry.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: In the late 20th-century, it was customary for the United States Secret Service to participate in the destruction of the presidential state car after it had run its course. The federal agents use bullets and explosive rounds for two purposes. The first is to demonstrate the automobile's effectiveness against such weaponry, while the second is to shred the vehicle and destroy the secrets of its manufacture, armoring, and defensive abilities.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: Motorcades involving the presidential state car are detailed, involved operations. Motorcades under President George W. Bush involved up to two dozen cars; under President Barack Obama they constituted 30 other vehicles.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The Obama presidential motorcade included many other vehicles than the official presidential state car. Involved were police cars to lead the motorcade and clear the streets; sport utility vehicles to carry the United States Secret Service detail, electronic countermeasures, key staff, a counter-assault team, "hazardous-materials-mitigation" personnel and equipment, and White House Communications Agency personnel. Also included in the motorcade were press vans, an ambulance, and more.


title: Presidential state car (United States)

text: The presidential state car is maintained by the United States Secret Service, while other support vehicles in the president's motorcade are maintained by the White House Military Office. Due to difficulty in organizing motorcades, helicopters (Marine One) are preferred.


title: Ron Jeremy filmography

text: Ron Jeremy is a former American pornographic film actor, actor, filmmaker, businessman, television personality and stand-up comedian.


title: Allspice

text: Allspice, also known as Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, is the dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica, a midcanopy tree native to the Greater Antilles, southern Mexico, and Central America, now cultivated in many warm parts of the world. The name "allspice" was coined as early as 1621 by the English, who valued it as a spice that combined the flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove.


title: Allspice

text: Several unrelated fragrant shrubs are called "Carolina allspice" ("Calycanthus floridus"), "Japanese allspice" ("Chimonanthus praecox"), or "wild allspice" ("Lindera benzoin").


title: Allspice

text: Allspice is the dried fruit of the "Pimenta dioica" plant. The fruits are picked when green and unripe, and are traditionally dried in the sun. When dry, they are brown and resemble large, smooth peppercorns. Fresh leaves are similar in texture to bay leaves and similarly used in cooking. Leaves and wood are often used for smoking meats where allspice is a local crop.


title: Allspice

text: Care must be taken during drying to ensure that volatile oil, such as eugenol, remains in the end products.


title: Allspice

text: Allspice is one of the most important ingredients of Caribbean cuisine. Under the name "pimento", it is used in Jamaican jerk seasoning, and traditionally its wood was used to smoke jerk in Jamaica. In the West Indies, an allspice liqueur is produced under the name "pimento dram". In Mexican cuisine, it is used in many dishes.


title: Allspice

text: Allspice is also indispensable in Middle Eastern cuisine, particularly in the Levant, where it is used to flavour a variety of stews and meat dishes, as well as tomato sauce. In Arab cuisine, for example, many main dishes use allspice as the only spice.


title: Allspice

text: In northern European and North American cooking, it is an ingredient in commercial sausage preparations and curry powders, and in pickling.


title: Allspice

text: In the United States, it is used mostly in desserts, but it is also responsible for giving Cincinnati-style chili its distinctive aroma and flavor. Allspice is commonly used in Great Britain, and appears in many dishes. In Portugal, whole allspice is used heavily in traditional stews cooked in large terracotta pots in the Azores islands.


title: Allspice

text: Allspice is also one of the most used spices in Polish cuisine (used in most dishes, soups and stews) and is commonly known under the name English herb ().


title: Allspice

text: Allspice is an important part of Swedish and Finnish cuisine. Whole allspice is used to flavour soups as well as stews such as Karelian hot pot. Ground allspice is also be used in various dishes, such as minced meat sauces, Swedish meatballs, lutefisk and different cakes.


title: Allspice

text: The allspice tree, classified as an evergreen shrub, can reach in height. Allspice can be a small, scrubby tree, quite similar to the bay laurel in size and form. It can also be a tall canopy tree, sometimes grown to provide shade for coffee trees planted underneath it. It can be grown outdoors in the tropics and subtropics with normal garden soil and watering. Smaller plants can be killed by frost; larger plants are more tolerant. It adapts well to container culture and can be kept as a houseplant or in a greenhouse.


title: Allspice

text: Christopher Columbus discovered allspice on his second New World voyage, and the plant soon became part of European diets. At the time, it was found only on the island of Jamaica, where birds readily spread the seeds. To protect the pimenta trade, Jamaican growers guarded against export of the plant. Many attempts at growing the pimenta from seeds were reported, but all failed. Eventually, passage through the avian digestive tract, whether due to the acidity or the elevated temperature, was found to be essential for germinating the seeds, and successful germination elsewhere was enabled. Today, pimenta grows in Tonga and in Hawaii, where it has become naturalized on Kauai and Maui. Jamaica remains the leading source of the plant, although some is grown by other countries in the same region.


title: Turban

text: A turban (from Persian دولبند, "dulband"; via Middle French "turbant") is a type of headwear based on cloth winding. Featuring many variations, it is worn as customary headwear by people of various cultures. Communities with prominent turban-wearing traditions can be found in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, and amongst some Turkic peoples in Russia as well as Ashkenazi Jews.


title: Turban

text: A keski is a type of turban, a long piece of cloth roughly half the length of a traditional "single turban", but not cut and sewn to make a double-width "Double Turban" (or Double Patti).


title: Turban

text: Wearing turbans is common among Sikh men, and infrequently women. They are also worn by Hindu monks. The headgear also serves as a religious observance, including among Shia Muslims, who regard turban-wearing as "Sunnah mu’akkadah" (confirmed tradition). The turban is also the traditional headdress of Sufi scholars. Additionally, turbans have often been worn by nobility, regardless of religious background.


title: Turban

text: Turbans originated in the Middle East. Some of the ancient civilizations such as those of Mesopotamia, Sumerian, and Babylonian evidently used turbans. A style of turban called a "phakeolis" continued to be worn in that region by soldiers of the Byzantine army in the period 400–600, as well as by Byzantine civilians as depicted in Greek frescoes from the 10th century in the province of Cappadocia in modern Turkey, where it was still worn by their Greek-speaking descendants in the early 20th century. The Islamic prophet, Muhammad, who lived 570–632, wore a turban in white, the most holy colour. The style of turban he introduced was a cap with a cloth tied around it; this headwear is known as "Imamah" and was emulated by Muslim kings and scholars throughout history. Shiah clergies today wear white turbans unless they are descendants of prophet Muhammad or Sayyid, in which case they wear a black turban. Many Muslim men choose to wear green, because it represents paradise, especially among followers of Sufism. In parts of North Africa, where blue is common, the shade of a turban can signify the tribe of the wearer.


title: Turban

text: Contemporary turbans come in many shapes, sizes and colours. Turban wearers in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Philippines (Sulu) usually wind it anew for each wearing, using long strips of cloth. The cloth is usually under five meters in length. Some elaborate South Asian turbans may also be permanently formed and sewn to a foundation. Turbans can be very large or quite modest depending upon region, culture, and religion.


title: Turban

text: Turbans are commonly worn in East Africa by Muslim clerics, as well as Ethiopian Orthodox Christian priests. The headwrap has a long presence in the region, where it was frequently sported by Sultans, Wazirs, and other aristocratic and court officials. Among these nobles are the Somali Sultans Deria Hassan of the Isaaq Sultanate, Mohamoud Ali Shire of the Warsangali, Osman Mahamuud of the Majeerteen Sultanate, and Yusuf Ali Kenadid and Ali Yusuf Kenadid of the Sultanate of Hobyo. Prominent historical Islamic leaders in the region that are known to have worn turbans include Sheikh Abadir Umar Ar-Rida. It is typically worn with a maccawiis (sarong) or a jellabiya.


title: Turban

text: In most countries of the Arabian peninsula, a plain or checkered scarf (called "ghutrah", "shumagh" or "chefiyah"), not usually described as a turban is often worn, though the Arabic "Emamah" tradition remains strong in Oman (see Sultan Qaboos of Oman), Sudan and some parts of the Arabian peninsula. The colored turban, "Ghabanah", is a common inherited cultural turban in the regions of Hijaz, and it still the inhabitants costume of Mecca, Madinah and Jeddah in particular. "Ghabanah" is the heritage uniform headwear for traders and the general community categories of the prestigious and middle-class, with the exception of religious scholars who have had their special turbans distinctiveness predominately white. The Hijazi turbans with different shapes are the extension of the turban of Islamic prophet Muhammad who lived in Mecca and Madinah. There are several types of "Ghabanah", perhaps the most famous is the yellow (Halabi), that made in Aleppo, that characterized by different inscriptions, and wrapped on a dome-like hollow taqiyah or a Turkish fez or kalpak cap. Colorful turbans called "Masar" are the national headwear costume in Oman, and also are common in some regions in south of Yemen and Hadhramaut. Moreover, the white "ghutrah" or "shumagh" are commonly wrapped in "Hamdaniyah" style, which is also the shape of turbans in the United Arab Emirates.


title: Turban

text: Turbans are part of the national dress in Afghanistan. They are used more widely than elsewhere in the Muslim world, and are worn in a wide range of styles and colours. In the country's south-east, turbans are wrapped loosely and largely, whereas in Kabul the garment tends to be smaller and tighter. In traditional Afghan society, a related piece of extra cloth called a "patu" serves practical purposes, such as for wrapping oneself against the cold, to sit on, to tie up an animal or to carry water in the cap. Different ethnic groups in Afghanistan wear different lungees with different patterns, way of styling it, fabric, stripes, lengths and colouration. Males of all ethnic backgrounds generally avoid wearing bright-coloured turbans that draw attention to oneself and prefer wearing simple colors that are white, off white, gray, dark blue and black.


title: Turban

text: Navy blue is a color common more to the Sikh Nihangs, it signifies war and service, while black is associated with resistance, orange with sacrifice and martyrdom, and white with wisdom, old age, death, or peace; however during times of peace, or rallies for peace, people will usually be in war gear, blue. It is also traditionally worn by members of the Taliban.


title: Turban

text: In Bangladesh, the turban is known as "pagri", or "fagri" in Chittagong and Sylhet. The pagri is worn by religious leaders and preachers of Islam. The most common colour worn is white, and generally it is the Sufis that wear green turbans. It is also worn by elders in rural areas as a symbol of honour and respect.


title: Turban

text: In Malaysia, the "serban" is used to refer to both the Sikh gear and those worn by certain Muslim clerics.


title: Turban

text: In India, the turban is referred to as a "pagri", meaning the headdress that is worn by men and is manually tied. There are several styles, which are specific to the wearer's region or religion, and they vary in shape, size and colour. For example, the Mysore Peta, the Marathi pheta, Puneri Pagadi. The pagri is a symbol of honour and respect everywhere it is worn. It is a common practice to honour important guests by offering them one to wear.


title: Turban

text: Colours are often chosen to suit the occasion or circumstance: for example saffron, associated with valour or sacrifice (martyrdom), is worn during rallies; white, associated with peace, is worn by elders; and pink, associated with spring, is worn during that season or for marriage ceremonies.


title: Turban

text: In Indonesia, the turban-styled headdress for men is traditionally called "iket" (from Javanese and Sundanese language). It literally means 'to tie', the main way to attach the fabric over the head of the wearer. It is made of a square or rectangular batik cloth that is folded diagonally to form a triangle. Although there are different ways of folding and tying the fabric over the head, and therefore different shapes of "iket", they can in general show the social level of the wearer and the area of origin. Its origin is not yet clearly identified, however many sources seemed to conclude that the Javanese might be influenced by turban-wearing Gujarati traders who came to Indonesia more than 500 years ago.


title: Turban

text: In other parts of Java, for practicality the iket has developed into fixed-form headdresses, called "blangkon" in Central Java and Yogyakarta and "bendo" in West Java. In East Java and Bali, the headdress is still made in traditional way and it is called "udeng". The batik cloth is made stiff through a process of molding, attaching to stiff paper, and sewing. Similar to "iket, blangkon" and "bendo" come with some variations of shapes based on the areas of origin and the wearer's social rank.


title: Turban

text: The turban in Nepal is commonly worn in rural areas by males. The rural turban is called either a Pagdi or Pheta. It is common among farmers. All types of coloured clothes were used for Pheta. Historically, Gorkhali nobleman used to wear white turban called Shirpau awarded by the King of Nepal. For example; "Sardar" Ram Krishna Kunwar was awarded with 22 pairs of headgear called Shirpau by the Gorkhali monarch "Maharajadhiraj" Prithvi Narayan Shah. It was common among aristocrats in other contemporary kingdoms. Rulers and vassal lords also adapted a crest to the white turban.


title: Turban

text: In Pakistan, the turban is in widespread use, especially among the rural population. It is worn in different styles and colours across the country, varying by region, e.g. in the north of the country, black and white turbans are preferred. The turban most commonly found in Pakistan is white and crestless, and worn commonly in the Pashtun belt, while in rural Punjab and Sindh, it is mostly worn by elders or feudal lords. The turban is called either a "pagri" or "pag" by Punjabis, while the Pashtuns and Sindhi's call it "patkay/patko".


title: Turban

text: The Baloch people are famous for their large turbans that are worn with both ends hanging from the sides or as a loop that rests above the chest. These turbans are made with many feet of cloth that are wrapped around a cap and are mostly made with white cloth.


title: Turban

text: In the United Kingdom, turbans have been worn by men and women since the sixth century without ever becoming very common. Poet Alexander Pope is sometimes depicted wearing a turban, as were other notable men seen in contemporary paintings and illustrations. The common use of turbans on less formal occasions, among gentlemen at the time, reflects that their heads were closely cropped, or shaved, to allow the wearing of the elaborate wigs that were the fashion in Europe in the century from about 1650 to 1750, and when wigs were off, some kind of head cover was useful. Hence, the turban.


title: Turban

text: Now that hats are infrequently worn, turbans too are relatively uncommon. They are worn primarily by women of West Indian descent, Karinas. Some women wear them to make a statement of individuality, such as the British social entrepreneur Camila Batmanghelidjh, who usually wears a colourful matching turban and robe.


title: Turban

text: In Greece, specifically the island of Crete, the men traditionally wear a turban known as a "sariki". The headwrap's name is borrowed from "sarık", the Turkish word for turban. Today, it may be more commonly known as a "kritiko mandili" (Cretan kerchief). It is not found commonly amongst the younger generation, but mostly worn by older men in remoter, mountainous villages.


title: Turban

text: iTaukei indigenous chiefs and priests were known to have worn "masi" (barkcloth) coverings around their head similar to a turban, called an "i-sala". However, most of the bulk and shape of the "i-sala" came from the bushy hair under the cloth.


title: Turban

text: In the Philippines, the turban has a long history associated with native Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) cultures, and reinforced with significant cultural influences from the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia (especially Java, Borneo and Sumatra), India, Arabia, China, and Persia, through the different epochs of Philippine history.


title: Turban

text: The most common turban worn by Muslim Filipino women is called the "kombong", the traditional style of hijab by Muslim women in the Davao area of Mindanao (associated with Maranao, Maguindanao, and Iranun speakers). The kombong is worn as a headwrap-turban, and is paired with the tudong or headscarf, which is ordinarily draped over the chest or shoulder, but worn over the top of the kombong for Islamic prayer, or for providing extra veiling when out of the house or barangay. A white kombong signifies that its wearer has been on the pilgrimage to Makkah, known as Hajj. The wearer of the white kombong will hence be referred to as Hadja, a title given to any Muslim woman who has been on the Hajj.


title: Turban

text: For men, the most common turban worn is called a "putong", "potong" or "pudong". The "putong" was historically worn by men of nearly all major ethnolinguisitc groups in the country, such as the Bisaya, Tagalog and Ilocano, before the mid-17th century, but had waned in lieu of the western hat since the coming of Catholicism in the north and subsequent colonization under Spanish and then American rule. In the precolonial period, pudong were dyed into different distinct colors to signify the social caste of its wearer. Blue was worn for the maginoo nobility class only, red putong for the maharlika warrior class, and other colors like yellow or natural hue for the timawa freeman/raiding caste, and alipin slave castes, respectively.


title: Turban

text: Today, the turban is worn primarily by Muslim Filipino men, especially by Imams and members of the ulama (Islamic scholars), but is also worn by non-Muslim groups too. Among Muslims, the putong can signify the status of its wearer. Muslim men and imams who have been on the Hajj pilgrimage have traditionally opted to wear the keffiyeh as a putong instead. This is usually bought in Saudi Arabia before returning to the Philippines, in order to signify that they are Hajji. This practice has waned in recent years due to younger jihadist militant groups in the south of the country using keffiyeh as signifiers that they are members of the extremist takfiri groups.


title: Turban

text: The pre-colonial item of clothing is also worn by non-Muslim Lumad and Cordilleran chiefs and upper class individuals in times of celebration or for specific rituals. These putong or turbans can be ornately women or designed, and act as a status symbol for the wearer.


title: Turban

text: In the southern part of the country, in the Sulu archipelago, Tausug and Yakan men wear the pis syabit, an ornate headscarf worn in a manner similar to a turban or bandana. Larger pis syabit are turban like, whereas smaller pis resemble bandanas. As with the other putong found in the Philippines, the size or visual design of the pis indicates the social-status or caste of its wearer.


title: Turban

text: On some Babuyan islands in the far north of the country, the head of the household wears a white turban, the younger males wear a red turban after their 13th birthday. The three chiefs all wear yellow turbans. It no longer has religious significance and the origin dates back to the end of the Tondo era (circa 900s – 1589). Most Babuyan settlers fled the Philippines in 1589 when Spain began to invade the Philippines. The turban was made from a type of bark cloth but now is made from cotton or silk brought over from the Philippines mainland. The turban style head dress is then cut and wrapped around the head, then tucked in front.


title: Turban

text: Alongside a variety of hats, turbans were also worn by the majority ethnic Việt, called "khăn vấn" or "khăn đóng" in Vietnamese. Initially, they were pieces of fabric that had to be coiled every time, but starting in the 20th century, they were replaced with ready-to-wear versions already coiled. Similar turbans are worn by surrounding ethnic groups in Northern Vietnam and Southern China, such as the Zhuang, Hmong, and Yi people. Turbans are also common amongst many ethnic groups in other parts of Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia.


title: Turban

text: Much of Armenia's traditions and cultures reflect Middle Eastern origins. Though not common in daily apparel, turbans are sometimes worn by men ceremonially (often with beards), as a symbol of national identity during celebrations and festivals. However, before Armenia became a Christian nation, turbans were a common part of the daily apparel, just as in other Middle Eastern countries.


title: Turban

text: On the Swahili Coast, turbans were frequently worn by the ruling Omani Sultans of Zanzibar and their retinue.


title: Turban

text: Tuareg Berbers, and some northern Berbers, Sahrawi, Songhai, Wodaabe, Fulani, and Hausa peoples of North and West Africa wear varieties of turbans. Tuareg Berbers often veil the face to block dust. This Tuareg-Berber turban is known as a tagelmust, and is often blue. The Bedouin tribes in North Africa sometimes wear brown-beige, white or orange turbans.


title: Turban

text: Colombian politician Piedad Cordoba is known to wear turbans (or a similar headgear). Her use of turbans has made her so distinguishable to the point of having earned the nickname "the lady with the turban" in Colombian popular culture.


title: Turban

text: Kurdish people wear a turban, which they call a "jamadani". It is worn in many different ways across Iraqi Kurdistan depending on the style of the locality; e.g. the Barzani Kurds are a tribe which wears the turban in a colour (red and white) and style which is typical of their clan. In most parts of South Kurdistan a black-white pattern is used for Jamadani. Mostly, Kurdish turbans consist of a length of striped cloth known as "kolāḡī" which is wound around a conical hat; the tassels that border the kolāḡī are allowed to hang down over the face. In modern times, many Kurds use black and white Ghutra and roll them into turbans.


title: Turban

text: Turbans have also been a type of headwear worn by women in Western countries. The wearing of such turbans by women in Western societies is less common than it was earlier in the 20th century. They are usually sewn to a foundation, so that they can be donned or removed easily. Turbans are also sometimes donned to protect hair or as a headwrap for women following cancer treatments that cause hair loss. They can also be tied together to form a rope in emergency rescue situations.


title: Turban

text: In Kenya, the Akurinu, a Christian denomination, wear turbans as religious headgear. The official name of the denomination is The Kenya Foundation Of The Prophets Church or else Holy Ghost Church. Both men and women wear white turbans; children wear tunics. Some Oriental Orthodox churches such as the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church include turbans in the vestments for the priest.


title: Turban

text: In Islamic cultures, some men wear a turban-style headdress in emulation of Muhammad who is believed to have worn a black or white turban. The head wraps are worn in different ways and called by different names depending on the region and culture. Examples include ( "`emãmah") in Arabic, and the Dastar () in Persian.


title: Turban

text: In Shi'a Islam, a black head wrap around a small white cap is worn by descendants of Muhammad called Sayyids, and white turbans by other well-educated persons and scholars. Sufi Muslims often wear a green head wrap around a small cap or the green head wrap alone. Members of the Dawat-e-Islami movement wear green turbans, whereas members of Sunni Dawate Islami (which broke away from Dawat-e-Islami in 1992) wear white turbans.


title: Turban

text: In Sudan, large white headdresses connote high social status. In India and Pakistan the cap is called a topi. Women of Islam typically do not wear turbans, as it is typically considered part of a man's dress, while women do typically cover their hair as part of hijab.


title: Turban

text: However, just as some Muslim women wear no headcovering, some modern Muslim women wear a turban style covering. Although it is still not as widely accepted by the more conservative Islamic communities.


title: Turban

text: When the Jewish High Priest served in the Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem, he wore a head covering called "mitznefet" מִצְנֶפֶת. This word has been translated as "mitre" (KJV) or "headdress". It was most likely a turban, as the word comes from a root meaning 'to wrap'.


title: Turban

text: In the Hebrew Bible, the turban worn by the High Priest was much larger than the head coverings of the priests and wound to make a broad, flat-topped shape resembling the blossom of a flower. The head covering of the priests was different, being wound to form a cone, called a "migbahat".


title: Turban

text: The priestly crown (Hebrew "tzitz" צִיץ "blossom", "flower") was attached to the turban by means of two sets of blue cords: one going over the top of the head and the other around the sides of the head at the level of the ears (Exodus 39:31).


title: Turban

text: According to the Talmud, the wearing of the turban atoned for the sin of haughtiness on the part of the Children of Israel (B. Zevachim 88b).


title: Turban

text: The Jews who lived under Arab rule during the Middle Ages, notably in Islamic Spain, wore turbans and headwear not too different from their Muslim counterparts.


title: Turban

text: In Hinduism, many Rajputs wear it due to culture. It is a cultural practice driven by the harsh summer months in India especially in the state of Rajasthan. It is also worn by the Gujjars of Rajasthan. Apart from turban; there are several other headgears and also different types of turbans used in different parts of India and people wear them when going out especially in villages.


title: Turban

text: Members of the Bobo Ashanti mansion of the Rastafari movement keep their hair and beards, mainly with their hair in dreadlocks, and they have been wearing turbans over their dreadlocks, which are not to be removed publicly or even not at all, so as to protect and keep their dreadlocks clean. Along with the turban, they have also been wearing robes since their founding in the 1950s, Since they are a relatively small population, it makes them more distinctive in appearance in Jamaica and elsewhere.


title: Turban

text: The Sikh turban, known as the "Dastar" or a "Dumalla", is used to show others that they represent the embodiment of Sikh teachings, the love of the Guru and dogma to do good deeds. The Gurus ensured that both men and women are able to wear a turban, which shows another action of equality. Other Purposes of the turban include protecting Sikhs' long unshorn hair and keeping it clean.


title: Turban

text: Sikhs do not cut their hair, as a religious observance. The turban protects the hair and keeps it clean. As Sikhs form 1.7% of India's population and 1.5% of Canada's population, their turbans help identify them. When he institutionalized the turban as a part of the Sikh identity, Guru Gobind Singh said, "My Sikh will be recognized among millions".


title: Turban

text: Turbans were formerly associated with the upper class, and many men in the cultural elite still wear turbans. This distinction between the turban-wearing upper class (Sardars) and commoners promoted segregation and elitism. In order to eliminate the class system associated with turbans, Guru Gobind Singh Ji declared each and every Sikh a Sardar.


title: Turban

text: Modern Sikh men mainly wear four kinds of Turban- Vattan Wali Turban, Amritsar Shahi Turban, Barnala Shahi and Taksali Dumala. The more traditional Turban styles are the Darbara Singh Dummala, Dastar Bunga (The original turban of the Khalsa) and the Puratan Nok Pagg.


title: Turban

text: The most common turban colors worn by Sikhs are blue, white and black, although other colors are very popular as well. Blue and yellow are particularly prestigious and tend to be worn on religious events such as Vaisakhi. Meanings of the turbans are that the white turban means a saintly person leading an exemplary life, and an off-shade color of white means someone is learning in the Sikh religion. The blue turban signifies a mind as broad as the sky with no place for prejudice. The black turban serves as a reminder of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, and represents humility. The Basanti or yellow turbans are associated with the revolutionary movement, Sardar Bhagat Singh also wore a yellow turban for this reason. Royal blue is usually worn by those who are learned in the Sikh religion and are patriotic about their traditions and culture. The colour green signifies farmers. The orange turban means courage and wisdom. The colour Gold symbolizes a sense of calm and healing that helps with anxiety and clearing the mind which significance derives from the Golden temple.


title: Turban

text: Akali Nihang Sikhs decorate their blue turbans or Dumalla by wearing small weapons known as shastars in them. The turban's color may reflect association with a particular group of Sikhs, although none of the popular turban colors are exclusive to any particular group. The preferred color of the Sikh wedding is pink. All shades of this color from magenta to baby pink is used by families for the joyful occasion. Some prefer red, maroon or orange turbans for the weddings, but pink is so far the most popular. Turban colors are generally a matter of personal choice in Sikhism, with many Sikh men choosing colors based on fashion or taste, sometimes to match clothes. There are traditions associated with some colours, for instance orange and black are often worn at political protest rallies whilst red and pink turbans are worn at weddings and other celebratory events.


title: Black market

text: A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of prohibited goods and services are members of the . Examples include the illegal drug trade, prostitution (where prohibited), illegal currency transactions, and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion in the .


title: Black market

text: Because tax evasion or participation in a black market activity is illegal, participants attempt to hide their behavior from the government or regulatory authority. Cash is the preferred medium of exchange in illegal transactions since cash transactions are less-easily traced. Common motives for operating in black markets are to trade contraband, avoid taxes and regulations, or skirt price controls or rationing. Typically the totality of such activity is referred to with the definite article, e.g. ""the" black market in bush meat".


title: Black market

text: The black market is distinct from the grey market, in which commodities are distributed through channels that, while legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original manufacturer, and the white market, in which trade is legal and official.


title: Black market

text: Black money is the proceeds of an illegal transaction, on which income and other taxes have not been paid, and which can only be legitimised by some form of money laundering. Because of the clandestine nature of the black economy it is not possible to determine its size and scope.


title: Black market

text: The literature on the black market has not established a common terminology and has instead offered many synonyms including: subterranean, hidden, grey, shadow, informal, clandestine, illegal, unobserved, unreported, unrecorded, second, parallel, and black.


title: Black market

text: There is no single underground economy; there are many. These underground economies are omnipresent, existing in market-oriented as well as in centrally planned nations, be they developed or developing. Those engaged in underground activities circumvent, escape, or are excluded from the institutional system of rules, rights, regulations, and enforcement penalties that govern formal agents engaged in production and exchange. Different types of underground activities are distinguished according to the particular institutional rules that they violate:


title: Black market

text: The "illegal economy" consists of economic activities pursued in violation of legal statutes that define the scope of legitimate forms of commerce. Illegal economy participants produce and distribute prohibited goods and services, such as drugs, weapons, and prostitution.


title: Black market

text: The "unreported economy" circumvents or evades institutionally established fiscal rules as codified in the tax code. A summary measure of the unreported economy is the amount of income that should be reported to the tax authority but is not so reported. A complementary measure of the unreported economy is the "tax gap": the difference between the amount of tax revenues due the fiscal authority and the amount of tax revenue actually collected. In the U.S. unreported income is estimated to be $2 trillion resulting in a "tax gap" of $450–600 billion.


title: Black market

text: The "unrecorded economy" circumvents the institutional rules that define the reporting requirements of government statistical agencies. A summary measure of the unrecorded economy is the amount of unrecorded income, namely the amount of income that should (under existing rules and conventions) be recorded in national accounting systems (e.g. National Income and Product Accounts) but is not. Unrecorded income is a particular problem in transition countries that switched from a socialist accounting system to UN standard national accounting. New methods have been proposed for estimating the size of the unrecorded (non-observed) economy. But there is still little consensus concerning the size of the unreported economies of transition countries.


title: Black market

text: The "informal economy" circumvents the costs of, and is excluded from the benefits and rights incorporated in, the laws and administrative rules covering property relationships, commercial licensing, labor contracts, torts, financial credit, and social security systems. A summary measure of the informal economy is the income generated by economic agents that operate informally. The informal sector is the part of an economy that is not taxed, monitored by government, or included in gross national product (GNP), unlike the formal economy. In developed countries the informal sector is characterized by unreported employment. This is hidden from the state for tax, social security, or labour law purposes but is legal in other aspects.


title: Black market

text: The term "black market" can also be used in reference to a specific part of the economy in which contraband is traded.


title: Black market

text: Goods and services acquired illegally and/or transacted for in an illegal manner may exchange above or below the price of legal market transactions:


title: Black market

text: Even when the underground market offers lower prices, consumers still have an incentive to buy on the legal market when possible, because:


title: Black market

text: However, in some situations, consumers conclude that they are better off using black market services, particularly when government regulations hinder what would otherwise be a legitimate competitive service. For example, in Baltimore, many consumers actively prefer illegal taxi cabs, citing that they are more available, convenient, and priced fairly.


title: Black market

text: Prostitution is illegal or highly regulated in many countries. This demonstrates the underground economy, because of consistent high demand from customers, relatively high pay, but labor-intensive and low skilled work, which attracts a continual supply of workers. While prostitution exists in every country, studies show that it tends to flourish more in poorer countries, and in areas with large numbers of unattached men, such as around military bases. For instance, an empirical study showed that the supply of prostitutes rose abruptly in Denver and Minneapolis in 2008 when the Democratic and Republican National Conventions took place there.


title: Black market

text: Prostitutes in the black market generally operate with some degree of secrecy, sometimes negotiating prices and activities through codewords and subtle gestures. In countries such as Germany or the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal but regulated, illegal prostitutes exist whose services are offered cheaper without regard for the legal requirements or procedures—health checks, standards of accommodation, and so on.


title: Black market

text: In other countries, such as Nicaragua, where legal prostitution is regulated, hotels may require both parties to identify themselves, to prevent child prostitution.


title: Black market

text: Personally identifying information, financial information like credit card and bank account information, and medical data is bought and sold, mostly in darknet markets. People increase the value of the stolen data by aggregating it with publicly available data, and sell it again for a profit, increasing the damage that can be done to the people whose data was stolen.


title: Black market

text: From the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many countries began to ban the possession or use of some recreational drugs, such as in the United States' war on drugs. Many people nonetheless continue to use illegal drugs, and a black market exists to supply them. Despite law enforcement efforts to intercept them, demand remains high, providing a large profit motive for organized criminal groups to keep drugs supplied. The United Nations has reported that the retail market value of illegal drugs is $ billion.


title: Black market

text: Although law enforcement agencies intercept a fraction of illegal drugs, and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of wholesale and retail sellers, the very stable demand for such drugs and the high profit margins encourages new distributors to enter the market without a decrease in the retail price. Drug legalization activists draw parallels between the illegal drug trade and the Prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s.


title: Black market

text: The legislatures of many countries forbid or restrict the personal ownership of weapons. These restrictions can range from small knives to firearms, either altogether or by classification (e.g. caliber, handguns, automatic weapons, and explosives). The black market supplies the demands for weaponry that can not be obtained legally, or may only be obtained legally after obtaining permits and paying fees. This may be by smuggling the arms from countries where they were bought legally or stolen, or by stealing from arms manufacturers within the country itself, using insiders. In cases where the underground economy is unable to smuggle firearms, they can also satisfy requests by gunsmithing their own firearms. Those who may buy this way include criminals to use for illegal activities, gun collectors, and otherwise law-abiding citizens interested in protecting their dwellings, families, or businesses.


title: Black market

text: In England and Wales, certain categories of weapons used for hunting may be owned by qualified residents but must be registered with the local police force and kept within a locked cabinet. Among those who may purchase weapons on the black market are people who are unable to pass the legal requirements for registration—convicted felons or those suffering from mental illness for example.


title: Black market

text: The illegal logging of timber, according to Interpol, is an industry worth almost as much as the drug production industry in some countries.


title: Black market

text: In many developing countries, living animals are captured in the wild and sold as pets. Wild animals are also hunted and killed for their meat, hide, and organs, the latter of which and other animal parts are sold for use in traditional medicine.


title: Black market

text: In several states in the United States, laws requiring the pasteurization of milk have created black markets in raw milk, and sometimes in raw-milk cheese which is legal in a number of EU countries but banned in the U.S. if aged less than 60 days


title: Black market

text: Rum-running, or bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting (smuggling) alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling is usually done to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws. The term "rum-running" is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; "bootlegging" is applied to smuggling over land. According to the PBS documentary "Prohibition", the term "bootlegging" was popularized when thousands of city dwellers would sell liquor from flasks they kept in their boot leg all across major cities and rural areas. The term "rum-running" most likely originated at the start of Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbean rum to Florida speakeasies. Rum's cheapness made it a low-profit item for the rum-runners, and they moved on to smuggling Canadian whisky, French champagne, and English gin to major cities like New York City and Boston, where prices ran high. It was said that some ships carried $200,000 (roughly equivalent to U$4.5 million in 2022 ) in contraband in a single run.


title: Black market

text: The United Kingdom has some of the highest taxes on tobacco products in the world and strict limits on the amount of tobacco that can be imported duty-free from other countries, leading to widespread attempts to smuggle relatively cheap tobacco from low tax countries into the U.K. Such smuggling efforts range from vacationers concealing relatively small quantities of tobacco in their luggage to large-scale enterprises linked to organized crime. British authorities have aggressively tried to detect and confiscate such illegal imports, and to prosecute those caught. Nevertheless it has been reported that "27% of cigarettes and 68% of roll your own tobacco is purchased on the black market".


title: Black market

text: Smuggling one truckload of cigarettes from a low-tax U.S. state to a high-tax state can result in a profit of up to $ million. Because traffic crossing U.S. state borders is not usually stopped or inspected to the same extent as happens at the country's international borders, interdicting this sort of smuggling (especially without causing major disruption to interstate commerce) is difficult. Low-tax states are generally the major tobacco producers, and have come under criticism for their reluctance to increase taxes. North Carolina eventually agreed to raise its taxes from 5 cents to 35 cents per pack of 20 cigarettes, although this remains far below the national average. , South Carolina has refused to follow suit and raise taxes from seven cents per pack (the lowest in the USA).


title: Black market

text: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), illegal organ trade occurs when organs are removed from the body for the purpose of commercial transactions. The WHO justifies its stance on the issue by stating, "Payment for… organs is likely to take unfair advantage of the poorest and most vulnerable groups, undermines altruistic donation and leads to profiteering and human trafficking." Despite prohibitions, it was estimated that 5% of all organ recipients engaged in commercial organ transplant in 2005. Research indicates that illegal organ trade is on the rise, with a recent report by Global Financial Integrity estimating that the illegal organ trade generates profits between $600 million and $1.2 billion per year across many countries.


title: Black market

text: A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist. Conducting a racket is called racketeering. The potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the intent to engender continual patronage for the racketeer. An archetype is the protection racket, wherein a person or group (e.g., a criminal gang) indicates to a store owner that they could protect her/his store from potential damage, damage that the same person or group would otherwise inflict, while the correlation of threat and protection may be more or less deniably veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act of extortion.


title: Black market

text: Racketeering is often associated with organized crime. The term was coined by the Employers' Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters union.


title: Black market

text: Where taxicabs, buses, and other transportation providers are strictly regulated or monopolized by government, a black market typically flourishes to provide transportation to poorly served or overpriced communities. In the United States, some cities restrict entry to the taxicab market with a medallion system (taxicabs must get a special license and display it on a medallion in the vehicle). In most such jurisdictions it is legal to sell the medallions, but the limited supply and resulting high prices of medallions have led to a market in unlicensed carpooling/illegal taxicab operation. In Baltimore, Maryland, for example, it is not uncommon for private individuals to provide illegal taxicab service for city residents.


title: Black market

text: In places where there is rent control there may be a black market for housing. For instance, in the UK there is illegal subletting of social housing homes where the tenant illegally rents out the home at a higher rent. In Sweden, rental contracts with regulated rent can be bought on the black market, either from the current tenant or sometimes directly from the property owner. Specialised black-market dealers assist the property owners with such transactions.


title: Black market

text: Medicines and essential aircraft and automobile parts (e.g. brakes, motor parts, etc.) are counterfeited on a large scale.


title: Black market

text: Street vendors in countries where there is little enforcement of copyright law, particularly in Asia and Latin America, often sell copies of films, music CDs, and computer software such as video games, sometimes even before the official release of the title. A determined counterfeiter with a few hundred dollars can make copies that are digitally identical to an original with no loss in quality; innovations in consumer DVD and CD writers and the widespread availability of cracks on the Internet for most forms of copy protection technology make this cheap and easy to do.


title: Black market

text: Copyright-holders and other proponents of copyright laws have found this phenomenon hard to stop through the courts, as the operations are distributed and widespread, traversing national borders and thus legal systems. Since digital information can be duplicated repeatedly with no loss of quality, and passed on electronically at little to no cost, the effective underground market value of media is zero, differentiating it from nearly all other forms of underground economic activity. The issue is compounded by widespread indifference to enforcing copyright law, both with governments and the public at large. To steal a car is seen as a crime in most people's eyes, but to obtain unauthorized copies of music or a game is not. Additionally, not all people agree with copyright laws, on the grounds that they unfairly criminalize competition, allowing the copyright-holder to effectively monopolize related industries. Copyright-holders also may use region-coding to discriminate against selected populations price-wise and availability-wise.


title: Black market

text: The comparison to car-theft, although common, is not truly analogous. Automobile theft results in an item being removed from the owner with the ownership transferred to a second party. Media piracy is a crime of duplication, with no physical property being stolen. Copyright infringement law goes as far as to deem illegal "mixtapes" and other such material copied to tape or disk. Copyright holders typically attest the act of theft to be in the profits forgone to the pirates. However, this makes the unsubstantiated assumption that the pirates would have bought the copyrighted material if it had not been available through file sharing or other means. Copyright holders also say that they did work creating their copyrighted material and they wish to get compensated for their work. No other system than copyright has been found to compensate artists and other creators for their work, and many artists do not have an alternative source of income or another job. Many artists and film producers have accepted the role of piracy in media distribution. The spread of material through file sharing is a source of publicity for artists and builds fan bases that may be inclined to see the performer live (live performances make up the bulk of successful artists' revenues, however not all artists can make live performances, for example photographers typically only have a single source of income: the licensing of their photos).


title: Black market

text: Money itself may be subject to a black market. Money may be exchangeable for a differing amount of the same currency if it has been acquired illegally and needs to be laundered before the money can be used. Counterfeit money may be sold for a lesser amount of genuine currency.


title: Black market

text: The rate of exchange between a local and foreign currency may be subject to a black market, often described as a "parallel exchange rate" or similar terms. This may happen for one or more of several reasons:


title: Black market

text: A government may officially set the rate of exchange of its currency with that of other, "harder" currencies. When it does so, the peg may overvalue the local currency relative to what its market value would be if it were a floating currency. Those in possession of the harder currency, for example expatriate workers, may be able to use the black market to buy the local currency at better exchange rates than they can get officially.


title: Black market

text: In situations of financial instability and inflation, citizens may substitute a foreign currency for the local currency. The U.S. dollar is viewed as a relatively stable and safe currency and is often used abroad as a second currency. In 2012, US$340 billion, roughly 37 percent of all U.S. currency, was believed to be circulating abroad. The study of the amount of currency held overseas suggests that only 25 percent of U.S. currency was held abroad in 2014. The widespread substitution of U.S. currency for local currency is known as "de facto dollarisation", and has been observed in transition countries such as Cambodia and in some Latin American countries. Some countries, such as Ecuador, abandoned their local currency and use U.S. dollars, essentially for this reason, a process known as de jure dollarization. (See also the example of the Ghanaian cedi from the 1970s and 1980s.)


title: Black market

text: If foreign currency is difficult or illegal for local citizens to acquire, they will pay a premium to acquire it. U.S. currency is viewed as a relatively stable store of value and, since it does not leave a paper trail, it is also a convenient medium of exchange for both illegal transactions and for unreported income both in the U.S and abroad.


title: Black market

text: More recently cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have been used as a medium of exchange in black market transactions. Cryptocurrencies are sometimes favored over centralized currency due to and their ability to be traded over the Internet.


title: Black market

text: In the EU, it is not illegal for a person or business to buy fuel in one EU state for their own use in another, but as with other goods the tax will generally be payable by the final customer at the physical place of making the purchase.


title: Black market

text: Between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, there has often been a black market in petrol and diesel.


title: Black market

text: The direction of smuggling can change depending on variation in the taxes and the exchange rate between the Republic's euro (and previously punt) and Northern Ireland's pound sterling; indeed sometimes diesel will be smuggled in one direction and petrol the other.


title: Black market

text: In some countries, diesel fuel for agricultural vehicles or domestic use is taxed at a much lower rate than that for other vehicles. This is known as dyed fuel, because a coloured dye is added so it can be detected if used in other vehicles (e.g. a red dye in the UK, a green dye in Ireland). The saving is attractive enough to make for a black market in agricultural diesel, which was estimated in 2007 to cost the UK £350 million annually in lost tax.


title: Black market

text: In countries including India and Nepal, the price of fuel is set by the government, and it is illegal to sell the fuel at a higher price. During the petrol crisis in Nepal, black marketing in fuel became common, especially during mass petrol shortage. At times, people queued for hours or even overnight to get fuel. Petrol pump operators were alleged to hoard the fuel and sell it to black marketeers. Black marketing in vehicle/cooking fuel became widespread during the 2015 Nepal blockade; even after it was eased and petrol imports resumed, people were not getting the fuel as intended, and resorted to the black market.


title: Black market

text: In some countries including Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and India sex toys are illegal, and are sold illegally, without compliance with regulations on safety, etc. Platforms used to sell sex toys on the black market include consumer-to-consumer online auction websites and private pages on social media websites. In black market venues in Cambodia, sex toys have been seized alongside aphrodisiac products. It has been suggested that if efforts in North America to ban realistic-looking sexbots succeed, it may result in a black market.


title: Black market

text: People engaged in the black market may run their business hidden behind a front business that is not illegal.


title: Black market

text: Often certain types of illegal products are traded for each other, depending on the geographical location.


title: Black market

text: Black markets flourish during wartime. States engaged in total war or other large-scale, extended wars often impose restrictions on use of critical resources that are needed for the war effort, such as food, gasoline, rubber, metal, etc., typically through rationing. A black market then develops to supply rationed goods at exorbitant prices. The rationing and price controls enforced in many countries during World War II encouraged widespread black market activity. One source of black-market meat under wartime rationing was by farmers declaring fewer domestic animal births to the Ministry of Food than actually happened. Another in Britain was supplies from the U.S., intended only for use in U.S. army bases on British land, but leaked into the local native British black market.


title: Black market

text: For example, in the Parliament of the United Kingdom on February 17, 1945, members said that "the whole turkey production of East Anglia had gone to the black market" and "prosecutions [for black-marketing] were like trying to stop a leak in a battleship", and it was said that official prices of such foods were set so low that their producers often sold their produce on the black market for higher prices; one such route (seen to operate at the market at Diss, Norfolk) was to sell live poultry to members of the public; each purchaser would sign a form promising that he was buying the birds to breed from, but then take them home for eating.


title: Black market

text: During the Vietnam war, American soldiers would spend Military Payment Certificates on maid service and sexual entertainment. Also if a Vietnamese civilian wanted something that was hard to get, he would buy it at double the price from one of the soldiers, who had a monthly ration card and thus had access to the military stores. The transactions the on-base maids to the local populace. Although these activities were illegal, only flagrant or large-scale black-marketeers were prosecuted by the military.


title: Black market

text: A classic example of new regulation creating a black market is the prohibition of alcohol. When such a law disappears, so does the black market. Sin taxes — taxes levied on harmfully deemed products such as alcohol and tobacco — may increase the black market supply. One argument for marijuana legalization is the elimination of the black market, resulting in taxes from that economy being available for the government.


title: Zener diode

text: A Zener diode is a special type of diode designed to reliably allow current to flow "backwards" (inverted polarity) when a certain set reverse voltage, known as the Zener voltage, is reached.


title: Zener diode

text: Zener diodes are manufactured with a great variety of Zener voltages and some are even variable. Some Zener diodes have a sharp, highly doped p–n junction with a low Zener voltage, in which case the reverse conduction occurs due to electron quantum tunnelling in the short space between p and n regions − this is known as the Zener effect, after Clarence Zener. Diodes with a higher Zener voltage have a more gradual junction and their mode of operation also involves avalanche breakdown. Both breakdown types are present in Zener diodes with the Zener effect predominating at lower voltages and avalanche breakdown at higher voltages.


title: Zener diode

text: They are used to generate low-power stabilized supply rails from a higher voltage and to provide reference voltages for circuits, especially stabilized power supplies. They are also used to protect circuits from overvoltage, especially electrostatic discharge.


title: Zener diode

text: The device is named after American physicist Clarence Zener who first described the Zener effect in 1934 in his primarily theoretical studies of breakdown of electrical insulator properties. Later, his work led to the Bell Labs implementation of the effect in form of an electronic device, the Zener diode.


title: Zener diode

text: A conventional solid-state diode allows significant current if it is reverse-biased above its reverse breakdown voltage. When the reverse bias breakdown voltage is exceeded, a conventional diode is subject to high current due to avalanche breakdown. Unless this current is limited by circuitry, the diode may be permanently damaged due to overheating. A Zener diode exhibits almost the same properties, except the device is specially designed so as to have a reduced breakdown voltage, the so-called Zener voltage. By contrast with the conventional device, a reverse-biased Zener diode exhibits a controlled breakdown and allows the current to keep the voltage across the Zener diode close to the Zener breakdown voltage. For example, a diode with a Zener breakdown voltage of 3.2 V exhibits a voltage drop of very nearly 3.2 V across a wide range of reverse currents. The Zener diode is therefore ideal for applications such as the generation of a reference voltage (e.g. for an amplifier stage), or as a voltage stabilizer for low-current applications.


title: Zener diode

text: Another mechanism that produces a similar effect is the avalanche effect as in the avalanche diode. The two types of diode are in fact constructed the same way and both effects are present in diodes of this type. In silicon diodes up to about 5.6 volts, the Zener effect is the predominant effect and shows a marked negative temperature coefficient. Above 5.6 volts, the avalanche effect becomes predominant and exhibits a positive temperature coefficient.


title: Zener diode

text: In a 5.6 V diode, the two effects occur together, and their temperature coefficients nearly cancel each other out, thus the 5.6 V diode is useful in temperature-critical applications. An alternative, which is used for voltage references that need to be highly stable over long periods of time, is to use a Zener diode with a temperature coefficient (TC) of +2 mV/°C (breakdown voltage 6.2–6.3 V) connected in series with a forward-biased silicon diode (or a transistor B-E junction) manufactured on the same chip. The forward-biased diode has a temperature coefficient of −2 mV/°C, causing the TCs to cancel out.


title: Zener diode

text: It is also worth noting that the temperature coefficient of a 4.7 V Zener diode is close to that of the emitter-base junction of a silicon transistor at around -2 mV/°C, so in a simple regulating circuit where the 4.7 V diode sets the voltage at the base of an NPN transistor (i.e. their coefficients are acting in parallel), the emitter will be at around 4 V and quite stable with temperature. Modern devices below 4.7 V have similar low temperature coefficients so it is worth checking specification sheets for (or measuring) the coefficient of specific devices if you want to achieve temperature-stable voltages.


title: Zener diode

text: Modern manufacturing techniques have produced devices with voltages lower than 5.6 V with negligible temperature coefficients, but as higher-voltage devices are encountered, the temperature coefficient rises dramatically. A 75 V diode has 10 times the coefficient of a 12 V diode.


title: Zener diode

text: Zener and avalanche diodes, regardless of breakdown voltage, are usually marketed under the umbrella term of "Zener diode".


title: Zener diode

text: Under 5.6 V, where the Zener effect dominates, the IV curve near breakdown is much more rounded, which calls for more care in targeting its biasing conditions. The IV curve for Zeners above 5.6 V (being dominated by avalanche), is much sharper at breakdown.


title: Zener diode

text: The Zener diode's operation depends on the heavy doping of its p–n junction. The depletion region formed in the diode is very thin (<1 µm) and the electric field is consequently very high (about 500 kV/m) even for a small reverse bias voltage of about 5 V, allowing electrons to tunnel from the valence band of the p-type material to the conduction band of the n-type material.


title: Zener diode

text: At the atomic scale, this tunneling corresponds to the transport of valence band electrons into the empty conduction band states; as a result of the reduced barrier between these bands and high electric fields that are induced due to the high levels of doping on both sides. The breakdown voltage can be controlled quite accurately in the doping process. While tolerances within 0.07% are available, the most widely used tolerances are 5% and 10%. Breakdown voltage for commonly available Zener diodes can vary widely from 1.2 V to 200 V.


title: Zener diode

text: For diodes that are lightly doped the breakdown is dominated by the avalanche effect rather than the Zener effect. Consequently, the breakdown voltage is higher (over 5.6 V) for these devices.


title: Zener diode

text: The emitter-base junction of a bipolar NPN transistor behaves as a Zener diode, with breakdown voltage at about 6.8 V for common bipolar processes and about 10 V for lightly doped base regions in BiCMOS processes. Older processes with poor control of doping characteristics had the variation of Zener voltage up to ±1 V, newer processes using ion implantation can achieve no more than ±0.25 V. The NPN transistor structure can be employed as a "surface Zener diode", with collector and emitter connected together as its cathode and base region as anode. In this approach the base doping profile usually narrows towards the surface, creating a region with intensified electric field where the avalanche breakdown occurs. The hot carriers produced by acceleration in the intense field sometime shoot into the oxide layer above the junction and become trapped there. The accumulation of trapped charges can then cause 'Zener walkout', a corresponding change of the Zener voltage of the junction. The same effect can be achieved by radiation damage.


title: Zener diode

text: The emitter-base Zener diodes can handle only smaller currents as the energy is dissipated in the base depletion region which is very small. Higher amount of dissipated energy (higher current for longer time, or a short very high current spike) causes thermal damage to the junction and/or its contacts. Partial damage of the junction can shift its Zener voltage. Total destruction of the Zener junction by overheating it and causing migration of metallization across the junction ("spiking") can be used intentionally as a 'Zener zap' antifuse.


title: Zener diode

text: A subsurface Zener diode, also called 'buried Zener', is a device similar to the surface Zener, but with the avalanche region located deeper in the structure, typically several micrometers below the oxide. The hot carriers then lose energy by collisions with the semiconductor lattice before reaching the oxide layer and cannot be trapped there. The Zener walkout phenomenon therefore does not occur here, and the buried Zeners have voltage constant over their entire lifetime. Most buried Zeners have breakdown voltage of 5–7 volts. Several different junction structures are used.


title: Zener diode

text: Zener diodes are widely used as voltage references and as shunt regulators to regulate the voltage across small circuits. When connected in parallel with a variable voltage source so that it is reverse biased, a Zener diode conducts when the voltage reaches the diode's reverse breakdown voltage. From that point on, the low impedance of the diode keeps the voltage across the diode at that value.


title: Zener diode

text: In this circuit, a typical voltage reference or regulator, an input voltage, "U" (with + on the top), is regulated down to a stable output voltage "U". The breakdown voltage of diode D is stable over a wide current range and holds "U" approximately constant even though the input voltage may fluctuate over a wide range. Because of the low impedance of the diode when operated like this, resistor "R" is used to limit current through the circuit.


title: Zener diode

text: In the case of this simple reference, the current flowing in the diode is determined using Ohm's law and the known voltage drop across the resistor "R";


title: Zener diode

text: A load may be placed across the diode in this reference circuit, and as long as the Zener stays in reverse breakdown, the diode provides a stable voltage source to the load. Zener diodes in this configuration are often used as stable references for more advanced voltage regulator circuits.


title: Zener diode

text: Shunt regulators are simple, but the requirements that the ballast resistor be small enough to avoid excessive voltage drop during worst-case operation (low input voltage concurrent with high load current) tends to leave a lot of current flowing in the diode much of the time, making for a fairly wasteful regulator with high quiescent power dissipation, suitable only for smaller loads.


title: Zener diode

text: These devices are also encountered, typically in series with a base-emitter junction, in transistor stages where selective choice of a device centered on the avalanche or Zener point can be used to introduce compensating temperature co-efficient balancing of the transistor p–n junction. An example of this kind of use would be a DC error amplifier used in a regulated power supply circuit feedback loop system.


title: Zener diode

text: Another application of the Zener diode is the use of noise caused by its avalanche breakdown in a random number generator.


title: Zener diode

text: Two Zener diodes facing each other in series clip both halves of an input signal. Waveform clippers can be used not only to reshape a signal, but also to prevent voltage spikes from affecting circuits that are connected to the power supply.


title: Zener diode

text: A Zener diode can be applied to a circuit with a resistor to act as a voltage shifter. This circuit lowers the output voltage by a quantity that is equal to the Zener diode's breakdown voltage.


title: Zener diode

text: A Zener diode can be applied in a voltage regulator circuit to regulate the voltage applied to a load, such as in a linear regulator.


title: The Death of Marat

text: The Death of Marat ( or "Marat Assassiné") is a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David depicting the artist's friend and murdered French revolutionary leader, Jean-Paul Marat. One of the most famous images from the era of the French Revolution, David painted it when he was the leading French Neoclassical painter, a Montagnard, and a member of the revolutionary Committee of General Security. Created in the months after Marat's death, the painting shows Marat lying dead in his bath after his murder by Charlotte Corday on 13 July 1793. Art historian T. J. Clark called David's painting the first modernist work for "the way it took the stuff of politics as its material, and did not transmute it".


title: The Death of Marat

text: The painting is in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium. A replica, created by the artist's studio, is on display at the Louvre.


title: The Death of Marat

text: Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) was one of the leaders of the Montagnards, a radical faction active during the French Revolution from the Reign of Terror to the Thermidorian Reaction. Marat was stabbed to death by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin and political enemy of Marat who blamed Marat for the September Massacre. Corday gained entrance to Marat's dwelling with a note promising details about a counter-revolutionary ring in Caen.


title: The Death of Marat

text: Marat suffered from a skin condition that caused him to spend much of his time in his bathtub; he would often work there. Corday fatally stabbed Marat, but she did not attempt to flee. She was later tried and executed for the murder.


title: The Death of Marat

text: When he was murdered Marat was correcting a proof of his newspaper "L'Ami du peuple". The blood stained page is preserved. In the painting the note Marat is holding is not an actual quotation of Corday, but a fictional expression based on what Corday might have said.


title: The Death of Marat

text: The leading French painter of his generation, David was a prominent Montagnard and a Jacobin, aligned with Marat and Maximilian Robespierre. As a deputy of the museum section at the National Convention, David voted for the death of French king Louis XVI and served on the Committee of General Security, where he actively participated in sentencings and imprisonment, eventually presiding over the "section des interrogatoires". David was also on the Committee of Public Instruction.


title: The Death of Marat

text: "The Death of Marat" has often been compared to "Michelangelo's Pietà", a major similarity being the elongated arm hanging down in both works. David admired Caravaggio's works, especially "Entombment of Christ", which mirrors "The Death of Marat"'s drama and light.


title: The Death of Marat

text: David sought to transfer the sacred qualities long associated with the monarchy and the Catholic Church to the new French Republic. He painted Marat, martyr of the Revolution, in a style reminiscent of a Christian martyr, with the face and body bathed in a soft, glowing light.


title: The Death of Marat

text: Several copies of the painting were made by David's pupils in 1793–1794, when the image was a popular symbol of martyrdom amid the Reign of Terror. From 1795 to David's death, the painting languished in obscurity. During David's exile in Belgium, it was hidden, somewhere in France, by Antoine Gros, David's most famous pupil.


title: The Death of Marat

text: There was renewed interest in the painting after Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Charles Baudelaire praised the work after seeing it at the Bazar Bonne-Nouvelle in 1845. In the 20th century, David's painting inspired several artists (including Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch, and Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry), poets (Alessandro Mozzambani) and writers (Peter Weiss' play "Marat/Sade"). Brazilian artist Vik Muniz created a version composed of contents from a city landfill as part of his "Pictures of Garbage" series.


title: The Death of Marat

text: The letter that appears in the painting, with bloodstains and bath water marks still visible, has survived and is owned by Robert Lindsay, 29th Earl of Crawford.


title: Group (mathematics)

text: In mathematics, a group is a set and an operation that combines any two elements of the set to produce a third element of the set, in such a way that the operation is associative, an identity element exists and every element has an inverse. These three axioms hold for number systems and many other mathematical structures. For example, the integers together with the addition operation form a group. The concept of a group and the axioms that define it were elaborated for handling, in a unified way, essential structural properties of very different mathematical entities such as numbers, geometric shapes and polynomial roots. Because the concept of groups is ubiquitous in numerous areas both within and outside mathematics, some authors consider it as a central organizing principle of contemporary mathematics.


title: Group (mathematics)

text: In geometry groups arise naturally in the study of symmetries and geometric transformations: The symmetries of an object form a group, called the symmetry group of the object, and the transformations of a given type form a general group. Lie groups appear in symmetry groups in geometry, and also in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Poincaré group is a Lie group consisting of the symmetries of spacetime in special relativity. Point groups describe symmetry in molecular chemistry.


title: Group (mathematics)

text: The concept of a group arose in the study of polynomial equations, starting with Évariste Galois in the 1830s, who introduced the term "group" (French: ) for the symmetry group of the roots of an equation, now called a Galois group. After contributions from other fields such as number theory and geometry, the group notion was generalized and firmly established around 1870. Modern group theory—an active mathematical discipline—studies groups in their own right. To explore groups, mathematicians have devised various notions to break groups into smaller, better-understandable pieces, such as subgroups, quotient groups and simple groups. In addition to their abstract properties, group theorists also study the different ways in which a group can be expressed concretely, both from a point of view of representation theory (that is, through the representations of the group) and of computational group theory. A theory has been developed for finite groups, which culminated with the classification of finite simple groups, completed in 2004. Since the mid-1980s, geometric group theory, which studies finitely generated groups as geometric objects, has become an active area in group theory.