History.

The Byzantine historian Procopius first reported the epidemic in 541 from the port of Pelusium, near Suez in Egypt. Two other firsthand reports of the plague's ravages were by the Syriac church historian John of Ephesus and Evagrius Scholasticus, who was a child in Antioch at the time and later became a church historian. Evagrius was afflicted with the buboes associated with the disease but survived. During the disease's four returns in his lifetime, he lost his wife, a daughter and her child, other children, most of his servants and people from his country estate.  According to contemporary sources, the outbreak in Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by infected rats on grain ships arriving from Egypt. To feed its citizens, the city and outlying communities imported large amounts of grain, mostly from Egypt. The rat (and flea) population in Egypt thrived on feeding from the large granaries maintained by the government.  Procopius, in a passage closely modelled on Thucydides, recorded that at its peak the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople daily, but the accuracy of the figure is in question, and the true number will probably never be known. He noted that because there was no room to bury the dead, bodies were left stacked in the open. Funeral rites were often left unattended to, and the entire city smelled like the dead. In his "Secret History," he records the devastation in the countryside and reports the ruthless response by the hard-pressed Justinian:  When pestilence swept through the whole known world and notably the Roman Empire, wiping out most of the farming community and of necessity leaving a trail of desolation in its wake, Justinian showed no mercy towards the ruined freeholders. Even then, he did not refrain from demanding the annual tax, not only the amount at which he assessed each individual, but also the amount for which his deceased neighbors were liable.  As a result of the plague in the countryside, farmers could not take care of crops and the price of grain rose in Constantinople. Justinian had expended huge amounts of money for wars against the Vandals in the region of Carthage and the Ostrogoths' kingdom in Italy. He had invested heavily in the construction of great churches, such as Hagia Sophia. As the empire tried to fund the projects, the plague caused tax revenues to decline through the massive number of deaths and the disruption of agriculture and trade. Justinian swiftly enacted new legislation to deal more efficiently with the glut of inheritance suits being brought as a result of victims dying intestate.  The plague's long-term effects on European and Christian history were enormous. As the disease spread to port cities around the Mediterranean, the struggling Goths were reinvigorated and their conflict with Constantinople entered a new phase. The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at a critical point, when Justinian's armies had nearly retaken all of Italy and the western Mediterranean coast; the evolving conquest would have reunited the core of the Western Roman Empire with the Eastern Roman Empire. Although the conquest occurred in 554, the reunification did not last long. In 568, the Lombards invaded Northern Italy, defeated the small Byzantine army that had been left behind and established the Kingdom of the Lombards. Gaul suffered severely, so it is unlikely that Britain escaped.

Epidemiology.

Genetics of the Justinian plague strain.

The Plague of Justinian is generally regarded as the first historically recorded epidemic of "Yersinia pestis". This conclusion is based on historical descriptions of the clinical manifestations of the disease and the detection of "Y. pestis" DNA from human remains at ancient grave sites dated to that period.  Genetic studies of modern and ancient "Yersinia pestis" DNA suggest that the origin of the Justinian plague was in Central Asia. The most basal or root level existing strains of the "Yersinia pestis" as a whole species are found in Qinghai, China. After samples of DNA from "Yersinia pestis" were isolated from skeletons of Justinian plague victims in Germany, it was found that modern strains currently found in the Tian Shan mountain range system are most basal known in comparison with the Justinian plague strain. Additionally, a skeleton found in Tian Shan dating to around 180 AD and identified as an "early Hun" was found to contain DNA from "Yersinia pestis" closely related to the Tian Shan strain basal ancestor of the Justinian plague strain German samples. This finding suggests that the expansion of nomadic peoples who moved across the Eurasian steppe, such as the Xiongnu and the later Huns, had a role in spreading plague to West Eurasia from an origin in Central Asia.  Earlier samples of "Yersinia pestis" DNA have been found in skeletons dating from 3000–800 BC, across West and East Eurasia. The strain of "Yersinia pestis" responsible for the Black Death, the devastating pandemic of bubonic plague, does not appear to be a direct descendant of the Justinian plague strain. However, the spread of Justinian plague may have caused the evolutionary radiation that gave rise to the currently extant 0ANT.1 clade of strains.

Virulence and mortality rate.

The number of deaths is uncertain. Some modern scholars believe that the plague killed up to 5,000 people per day in Constantinople at the peak of the pandemic. According to one view, the initial plague ultimately killed perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants and caused the deaths of up to a quarter of the human population of the Eastern Mediterranean. Frequent subsequent waves of the plague continued to strike throughout the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries, with the disease becoming more localized and less virulent. A revisionist view expressed by scholars such as Lee Mordechai and Merle Eisenberg has recently argued that the mortality of the Justinian Plague was far lower than previously believed.  After the last recurrence in 750, pandemics on the scale of the Plague of Justinian did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century.

The Plague of Justinian or Justinianic Plague (541–549 AD) was the beginning of the first plague pandemic, the first Old World pandemic of plague, the contagious disease caused by the bacterium "Yersinia pestis". The disease afflicted the entire Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Near East, severely affecting the Sasanian Empire and the Roman Empire and especially its capital, Constantinople. The plague is named for the Roman emperor in Constantinople, Justinian I (r. 527–565), who according to his court historian Procopius contracted the disease and recovered in 542, at the height of the epidemic which killed about a fifth of the population in the imperial capital. The contagion arrived in Roman Egypt in 541 and spread around the Mediterranean Sea until 544; in Northern Europe and the Arabian Peninsula it persisted until 549.


Design and development.

The Super Mystère represents the final step in evolution which began with the Dassault Ouragan and progressed through the Mystère II/III and Mystère IV. While earlier Mystère variants could attain supersonic speeds only in a dive, the Super Mystère could exceed the speed of sound in level flight. This was achieved thanks to the new thin wing with 45° of sweep (compared with 41° of sweep in the Mystère IV and only 33° in Mystère II) and the use of an afterburner-equipped turbojet engine.  The first prototype Super Mystère B.1, powered by a Rolls-Royce Avon RA.7R, took to the air on 2 March 1954. The aircraft broke the sound barrier in level flight the following day.  As the Super Mystère B.2, sometimes known as the SMB.2, the aircraft entered production in 1957. The production version differed from the prototype by having a more powerful SNECMA Atar 101G engine. A total of 180 Super Mystère B.2s were built.  In 1958, two Super Mystère B.4 prototypes were built. Equipped with a new 48° swept wing and a more powerful SNECMA Atar 9B engine, the aircraft were capable of Mach 1.4. Production never materialized because the faster Dassault Mirage III was entering service.  In 1973, the Israeli Air Force and Honduras Air Force upgraded their Super Mystère B.2s with a non-afterburning version of the Pratt & Whitney J52-P8A and new avionics. In Israeli service these upgraded SMB.2s were also known as the IAI Sa'ar (after a Hebrew word meaning "storm").

Operational history.

The Super Mystère served with the French Air Force until 1977. In addition, 24 aircraft were sold to the Israeli Air Force in 1958. The aircraft saw action in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. They were well liked by the Israeli pilots and were a match for the Arab MiG-19 aircraft in air-to-air combat.  In 1976, Israel sold 12 complete airframes to Honduras. In 1979, Honduras purchased 4 more complete airframes, totaling 16 aircraft. They were involved in numerous border skirmishes with Sandinistan Nicaragua and were finally withdrawn from service in 1996, replaced by 12 Northrop F-5Es. The 11 surviving aircraft are for sale as surplus and 1 more is preserved at the Honduras Air Museum.

The Dassault Super Mystère is a French fighter-bomber and was the first Western European supersonic aircraft to enter mass production.


Biography.

Early years.

Marcantonio's date of birth is unknown, but was by 1482 at the latest. He was possibly born in Argine, near Bologna, Italy, where he is assumed to have grown up. He trained in the workshop of the leading goldsmith and painter in Bologna, Francesco Francia. Vasari claimed that Marcantonio quickly demonstrated more aptitude than Francia, and started designing and producing fashionable waist-buckles (among other items) in "niello" (engraved metal which is filled in with alloy in a contrasting colour). This is doubted, however, by Arthur Mayger Hind, who sees no evidence of a background in niello technique in his early engravings.  No paintings produced by Marcantonio are known or documented, although some drawings survive. His first dated engraving, "Pyramus and Thisbe", comes from 1505, although a number of undated works come from the years before this. From 1505–11, Marcantonio engraved about 80 pieces, with a wide variety of subject matter, from pagan mythology, to religious scenes. His early works use his own compositions, combining elements from Francia and other North Italian artists, and like all Italian printmakers in these years he was strongly affected by the enormously accomplished prints of Dürer, which were widely distributed in Italy. Like other printmakers such as Giulio Campagnola, he borrowed elements of Dürer's landscapes in a cut and paste fashion, and also borrowed from his technique. Dürer was in Bologna in 1506, as was Michelangelo, and he may have met one or both of them.

Reproductions.

About this time he began to make copies of Dürer's woodcut series, the Life of the Virgin. This was extremely common practice, although normally engravers copied other expensive engravings rather than the cheaper woodcuts. However Dürer's woodcuts had raised the standard of the medium considerably, and since Marcantonio continued to copy a large number of both Dürer's engravings and woodcuts, he must have found it profitable.  His early copies included Dürer's famous AD monogram, and Dürer made a complaint to the Venetian Government, which won him some legal protection for his monogram, but not his compositions, in Venetian territory - an important case in the slowly evolving history of intellectual property law.  Marcantonio appears to have spent some of the last half of the decade in Venice, but no dates are known.

Rome.

Around 1510, Marcantonio travelled to Rome and entered the circle of artists surrounding Raphael. This influence began showing up in engravings titled "The Climbers" (in which he reproduced part of Michelangelo's "Soldiers surprised bathing", also called "Battle of Cascina"). After a reproduction of a work by Raphael, entitled "Lucretia", Raphael trained and assisted Marcantonio personally.  Another famous engraving, the "Judgement of Paris", dated 1515 or 1516, after Raphael, became the composition source for Édouard Manet when he painted The Luncheon on the Grass.  The two started a successful printing establishment under a colorgrinder, Il Baveria, that quickly expanded into an engraving school with Marcantonio at the head. Among his most distinguished pupils were Marco Dente (Marco da Ravenna), Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio and Agostino de Musi (Agostino Veneziano).

Later years.

Marcantonio and his pupils continued to make engravings based upon Raphael's work, even after Raphael's death in 1520. In many instances, Marcantonio would not copy the finished painting, but instead worked from early sketches and drafts. This method produced variations on a theme and were moderately successful.  Around 1524, Marcantonio was briefly imprisoned by Pope Clement VII for making the I modi set of erotic engravings, from the designs of Giulio Romano, which were later accompanied by sonnets written by Pietro Aretino. At the intercession of the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, Baccio Bandinelli and Pietro Aretino, he was released, and set to work on his plate of the "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" after Bandinelli.  During the Sack of Rome, in 1527, he was forced to pay a heavy ransom by the Spaniards and fled in poverty. It is unclear where he stayed after his departure from Rome until his death in 1534.

Marcantonio Raimondi, often called simply Marcantonio (c. 1470/82 – c. 1534), was an Italian engraver, known for being the first important printmaker whose body of work consists largely of prints copying paintings. He is therefore a key figure in the rise of the reproductive print. He also systematized a technique of engraving that became dominant in Italy and elsewhere. His collaboration with Raphael greatly helped his career, and he continued to exploit Raphael's works after the painter's death in 1520, playing a large part in spreading High Renaissance styles across Europe. Much of the biographical information we have comes from his life, the only one of a printmaker, in Vasari's "Lives of the Artists". He is attributed with around 300 engravings. After years of great success, his career ran into trouble in the mid-1520s; he was imprisoned for a time in Rome over his role in the series of erotic prints "I Modi", and then, according to Vasari, lost all his money in the Sack of Rome in 1527, after which none of his work can be securely dated.


Breeding.

Lesser bushbabies usually give birth during the rainy season. The offspring are usually twins. After the birth there is usually a second period of heat. A female’s gestation period is between 125–142 days and will usually consist of the female mating with up to 6 different males.  Lesser bushbaby mothers initially shelter their offspring in a nest or tree hollow, later on concealing the infants in foliage while they forage at night. In some species, such as dwarf galagos ("Galago demidoff" group), the day-sleeping nests may be shared by groups of females or occasionally by visiting males.

Diet.

Galagos generally consume insects and gums, however some have been known to eat small invertebrates.

Appearance.

Galagos are brown grey to light grey in color, with many showing a yellowish tint to the sides and limbs. They also have a distinct dark marking around the eye.

Behavior.

Galagos are tree dwelling primates and are capable of leaping great distances, using flattened disks on their feet and hands as a way of grasping branches. However they do walk on the ground sometimes, either bipedally or on all fours. Galagos are solitary foragers, however they do meet up at night in groups, and sleep during the day in groups of around 6. Calls are a big part of galago life and there are up to 18 distinct calls. All these calls are part of three categories, defensive and aggressive, social contact, and annunciatory. They also have very highly developed hearing.

Lesser bushbabies, or lesser galagos, are strepsirrhine primates of the genus Galago. They are classified, along with the bushbabies (genus "Euoticus") and the rest of the galagos (genus "Otolemur"), in the family Galagidae. They are probably the most numerous primate in Africa, and can be found in every large forest on the continent. Galagos also prefer savannahs, woodlands, riverine bush and the fringes of forests. They mark their territory by urinating on their hands and leaving traces on the trees they climb across, and they follow these detectable paths through the trees night after night. Males will also urinate on females to mark them. They are related to lorises, and have similar behavior and anatomy. They are much faster, however, and typical hunt by speed rather than by stealth. Primitive bushbabies are thought to have been the ancestors of all lemurs.


History.

The standard procedure for multiplication of two "n"-digit numbers requires a number of elementary operations proportional to formula_4, or formula_5 in big-O notation. Andrey Kolmogorov conjectured that the traditional algorithm was "asymptotically optimal," meaning that any algorithm for that task would require formula_6 elementary operations.  In 1960, Kolmogorov organized a seminar on mathematical problems in cybernetics at the Moscow State University, where he stated the formula_6 conjecture and other problems in the complexity of computation. Within a week, Karatsuba, then a 23-year-old student, found an algorithm (later it was called "divide and conquer") that multiplies two "n"-digit numbers in formula_8 elementary steps, thus disproving the conjecture. Kolmogorov was very excited about the discovery; he communicated it at the next meeting of the seminar, which was then terminated. Kolmogorov gave some lectures on the Karatsuba result at conferences all over the world (see, for example, "Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians 1962", pp. 351–356, and also "6 Lectures delivered at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm, 1962") and published the method in 1962, in the Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The article had been written by Kolmogorov and contained two results on multiplication, Karatsuba's algorithm and a separate result by Yuri Ofman; it listed "A. Karatsuba and Yu. Ofman" as the authors. Karatsuba only became aware of the paper when he received the reprints from the publisher.

Algorithm.

Basic step.

The basic step of Karatsuba's algorithm is a formula that allows one to compute the product of two large numbers formula_9 and formula_10 using three multiplications of smaller numbers, each with about half as many digits as formula_9 or formula_10, plus some additions and digit shifts. This basic step is, in fact, a generalization of a similar complex multiplication algorithm, where the imaginary unit is replaced by a power of the base.  Let formula_9 and formula_10 be represented as formula_15-digit strings in some base formula_16. For any positive integer formula_17 less than formula_15, one can write the two given numbers as  where formula_21 and formula_22 are less than formula_23. The product is then  formula_24  where  These formulae require four multiplications and were known to Charles Babbage. Karatsuba observed that formula_28 can be computed in only three multiplications, at the cost of a few extra additions. With formula_29 and formula_30 as before one can observe that  An issue that occurs, however, when computing formula_32 is that the above computation of formula_33 and formula_34 may result in overflow (will produce a result in the range formula_35), which require a multiplier having one extra bit. This can be avoided by noting that  This computation of formula_37 and formula_38 will produce a result in the range of formula_39. This method may produce negative numbers, which require one extra bit to encode signedness, and would still require one extra bit for the multiplier. However, one way to avoid this is to record the sign and then use the absolute value of formula_37 and formula_38 to perform an unsigned multiplication, after which the result may be negated when both signs originally differed. Another advantage is that even though formula_42 may be negative, the final computation of formula_32 only involves additions.

Example.

To compute the product of 12345 and 6789, where "B" = 10, choose "m" = 3. We use "m" right shifts for decomposing the input operands using the resulting base ("B" = "1000"), as:  Only three multiplications, which operate on smaller integers, are used to compute three partial results:  We get the result by just adding these three partial results, shifted accordingly (and then taking carries into account by decomposing these three inputs in base "1000" like for the input operands):  Note that the intermediate third multiplication operates on an input domain which is less than two times larger than for the two first multiplications, its output domain is less than four times larger, and base-"1000" carries computed from the first two multiplications must be taken into account when computing these two subtractions.

Recursive application.

If "n" is four or more, the three multiplications in Karatsuba's basic step involve operands with fewer than "n" digits. Therefore, those products can be computed by recursive calls of the Karatsuba algorithm. The recursion can be applied until the numbers are so small that they can (or must) be computed directly.  In a computer with a full 32-bit by 32-bit multiplier, for example, one could choose "B" = 2 =, and store each digit as a separate 32-bit binary word. Then the sums "x" + "x" and "y" + "y" will not need an extra binary word for storing the carry-over digit (as in carry-save adder), and the Karatsuba recursion can be applied until the numbers to multiply are only one-digit long.

Asymmetric Karatsuba-like formulae.

Karatsuba's original formula and other generalizations are themselves symmetric. For example, the following formula computes with 6 multiplications in formula_45, where formula_46 is the Galois field with two elements 0 and 1.  where formula_48 and formula_49. We note that addition and subtraction are the same in fields of characteristic 2.  This formula is symmetrical, namely, it does not change if we exchange formula_50 and formula_51 in formula_52 and formula_53.  Based on the second Generalized division algorithms, Fan et al. found the following asymmetric formula:  where formula_55 and formula_56.  It is asymmetric because we can obtain the following new formula by exchanging formula_50 and formula_51 in formula_59 and formula_60.  where formula_62 and formula_63.

Efficiency analysis.

Karatsuba's basic step works for any base "B" and any "m", but the recursive algorithm is most efficient when "m" is equal to "n"/2, rounded up. In particular, if "n" is 2, for some integer "k", and the recursion stops only when "n" is 1, then the number of single-digit multiplications is 3, which is "n" where "c" = log3.  Since one can extend any inputs with zero digits until their length is a power of two, it follows that the number of elementary multiplications, for any "n", is at most formula_64.  Since the additions, subtractions, and digit shifts (multiplications by powers of "B") in Karatsuba's basic step take time proportional to "n", their cost becomes negligible as "n" increases. More precisely, if "t"("n") denotes the total number of elementary operations that the algorithm performs when multiplying two "n"-digit numbers, then  for some constants "c" and "d". For this recurrence relation, the master theorem for divide-and-conquer recurrences gives the asymptotic bound formula_66.  It follows that, for sufficiently large "n", Karatsuba's algorithm will perform fewer shifts and single-digit additions than longhand multiplication, even though its basic step uses more additions and shifts than the straightforward formula. For small values of "n", however, the extra shift and add operations may make it run slower than the longhand method. The point of positive return depends on the computer platform and context. As a rule of thumb, Karatsuba's method is usually faster when the multiplicands are longer than 320–640 bits.

Pseudocode.

Here is the pseudocode for this algorithm, using numbers represented in base ten. For the binary representation of integers, it suffices to replace everywhere 10 by 2.  It's important to note that the "split_at" function works as follows: split_at("12345", 3) returns: high="12", low="345". procedure karatsuba(num1, num2)

The Karatsuba algorithm is a fast multiplication algorithm. It was discovered by Anatoly Karatsuba in 1960 and published in 1962. It reduces the multiplication of two "n"-digit numbers to at most formula_1 single-digit multiplications in general (and exactly formula_2 when "n" is a power of 2). It is therefore faster than the traditional algorithm, which requires formula_3 single-digit products. For example, the Karatsuba algorithm requires 3 = 59,049 single-digit multiplications to multiply two 1024-digit numbers ("n" = 1024 = 2), whereas the traditional algorithm requires (2) = 1,048,576 (a speedup of 17.75 times).


Name.

"" is the Latin form of the Greek "Artábanos" (), itself from the Old Persian "*Arta-bānu" ("the glory of Arta."). The Parthian and Middle Persian variant was "Ardawān" ().

Background and kingship of Media Atropatene.

Artabanus was not from the ruling branch of the Arsacid royal family; his father was a Dahae prince, who was most likely descended from the former Parthian monarch Mithridates II (), whilst his mother was a daughter of the incumbent Parthian King of Kings Phraates IV (). Born between 30–25 BC, Artabanus was raised amongst the Dahae in Central Asia. When he reached adulthood, he became the ruler of Media Atropatene, which occurred sometime during the late reign of Phraates IV or during the reign of the latters son and successor Phraates V (). The factor behind Artabanus' rise to kingship of Media Atropatene is unclear. The kingdom served as Artabanus' headquarters of his attacks against the Parthian king Vonones I (), with whom he fought against over the crown. Vonones I, who had originally resided in Rome, had been placed on the Parthian throne by a faction led by the Karin and Suren clans. His rule was supported by the Romans. However, the Parthian nobility was quickly alienated by Vonones I, who had become Romanized during his stay in Rome. This increased Artabanus' odds—after years of fighting—to finally defeat Vonones I, who fled to Armenia and became its king.

Reign.

Artabanus, now the monarch of the Parthian Empire, attempted to depose Vonones I from the Armenian throne and appoint his own son instead. This was attempt instantly opposed by the Romans, who regarded this as posing a danger to their interests. As a result, the Roman emperor Tiberius () sent his stepson Germanicus to prevent this from happening. However, the Roman general was met with no resistance by the Parthians, and reached an agreement with Artabanus to appoint Artaxias III the new king of Armenia and renounce their support of Vonones I. The Romans thus acknowledged Artabanus as the legitimate Parthian ruler. In order to ratify the friendly relationship between the two empires, Artabanus and Germanicus met on an island in the Euphrates in 18.  The Romans moved Vonones I to Cilicia, where he was killed the following year after attempting to flee. His death and the now unchallenged dominance of Artabanus split the Parthian nobility, since not all of them supported a new branch of the Arsacid family taking over the empire. In 19/20, the Parthian satrap of Sakastan, Drangiana and Arachosia, named Gondophares, declared independence from Artabanus and founded the Indo-Parthian Kingdom. He assumed the titles of "Great King of Kings" and ""Autokrator"", demonstrating his new-found independence. Nevertheless, Artabanus and Gondophares most likely reached an agreement that the Indo-Parthians would not intervene in the affairs of the Arsacids.  Artabanus spent the following years increasing his authority. To the northeast, he was victorious in his efforts to have a new dynasty established in Khwarazm, thus starting a new era in the history of the country. Artabanus most likely operated in western Bactria as well, which had been part of the Parthian domains for centuries.  In AD 35, he tried a new way to conquer Armenia and to establish his son Arsaces I as King there. A war with Rome seemed inevitable. The faction among the Parthian magnates which was hostile to Artabanus II applied to Tiberius for a king of the race of Phraates IV. Tiberius sent Phraates IV's grandson, Tiridates III, and ordered Lucius Vitellius the Elder (the father of the Roman emperor Vitellius) to restore Roman authority in the East. By very dexterous military and diplomatic operations Vitellius succeeded completely. Artabanus II was deserted by his followers and fled to the East. Tiridates III, who was proclaimed King, could no longer maintain himself, because he appeared to be a vassal of the Romans. Artabanus II returned from Hyrcania with a strong army of Scythian (Dahae) auxiliaries and was again acknowledged by the Parthians. Tiridates III left Seleucia and fled to Syria. Artabanus II wasn’t strong enough for a war with Rome; he therefore concluded a treaty with Vitellius in 37, in which he gave up all further pretensions. A short time afterwards Artabanus II was deposed again, and a certain Cinnamus was proclaimed king. Artabanus II took refuge with his vassal, the King Izates bar Monobaz. Izates, by negotiations and the promise of a complete pardon, induced the Parthians to restore Artabanus II once more to the throne. Shortly afterwards Artabanus II died and was succeeded by his son, Vardanes I, whose reign was still more turbulent than that of his father.  Artabanus II had four sons: Arsaces I, Orodes, Artabanus, Vardanes I and an adoptive son named Gotarzes II.

Artabanus II (also spelled Artabanos II or Ardawan II; "Ardawān"), incorrectly known in older scholarship as Artabanus III, was King of Kings of the Parthian Empire from 12 to 38/41, with a one-year interruption. He was the nephew and successor of Vonones I (). His father was a Dahae prince, whilst his mother was a daughter of the Parthian King of Kings Phraates IV ()


Production.

Peracetic acid is produced industrially by the autoxidation of acetaldehyde:  It forms upon treatment of acetic acid with hydrogen peroxide with a strong acid catalyst: As an alternative, acetyl chloride and acetic anhydride can be used to generate a solution of the acid with lower water content.  Peracetic acid is generated "in situ" by some laundry detergents. This route involves the reaction of tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) in the presence of an alkaline hydrogen peroxide solution. The peracetic acid is a more effective bleaching agent than hydrogen peroxide itself. PAA is also formed naturally in the environment through a series of photochemical reactions involving formaldehyde and photo-oxidant radicals.  Peracetic acid is always sold in solution as a mixture with acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide to maintain its stability. The concentration of the acid as the active ingredient can vary.

Uses.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency first registered peracetic acid as an antimicrobial in 1985 for indoor use on hard surfaces. Use sites include agricultural premises, food establishments, medical facilities, and home bathrooms. Peracetic acid is also registered for use in dairy and cheese processing plants, on food processing equipment, and in pasteurizers in breweries, wineries, and beverage plants. It is also applied for the disinfection of medical supplies, to prevent biofilm formation in pulp industries, and as a water purifier and disinfectant. Peracetic acid can be used as a cooling tower water disinfectant, where it prevents biofilm formation and effectively controls "Legionella" bacteria. A trade name for peracetic acid as an antimicrobial is Nu-Cidex.  In the European Union, Peroxyacetic acid was reported by the EFSA after submission in 2013 by the US Department of Agriculture.

Epoxidation.

Although less active than more acidic peracids (e.g., "m"-CPBA), peracetic acid in various forms is used for the epoxidation of various alkenes. Useful application are for unsaturated fats, synthetic and natural rubbers, and some natural products such as pinene. A variety of factors affect the amount of free acid or sulfuric acid (used to prepare the peracid in the first place).

Safety.

Peracetic acid is a strong oxidizing agent and severe irritant to the skin, eyes, and respiratory system. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published the following Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGL):

Peracetic acid (also known as peroxyacetic acid, or PAA), is an organic compound with the formula CHCOH. This organic peroxide is a colorless liquid with a characteristic acrid odor reminiscent of acetic acid. It can be highly corrosive.


Medical uses.

Epilepsy.

In Canada, vigabatrin is approved for use as an adjunctive treatment (with other drugs) in treatment resistant epilepsy, complex partial seizures, secondary generalized seizures, and for monotherapy use in infantile spasms in West syndrome.  As of 2003, vigabatrin is approved in Mexico for the treatment of epilepsy that is not satisfactorily controlled by conventional therapy (adjunctive or monotherapy) or in recently diagnosed patients who have not tried other agents (monotherapy).  Vigabatrin is also indicated for monotherapy use in secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures, partial seizures, and in infantile spasms due to West syndrome.  On August 21, 2009, Lundbeck announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had granted two New Drug Application approvals for vigabatrin. The drug is indicated as monotherapy for pediatric patients one month to two years of age with infantile spasms for whom the potential benefits outweigh the potential risk of vision loss, and as adjunctive (add-on) therapy for adult patients with refractory complex partial seizures (CPS) who have inadequately responded to several alternative treatments and for whom the potential benefits outweigh the risk of vision loss.  In 1994, Feucht and Brantner-Inthaler reported that vigabatrin reduced seizures by 50-100% in 85% of children with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome who had poor results with sodium valproate.

Others.

Vigabatrin reduced cholecystokinin tetrapeptide-induced symptoms of panic disorder, in addition to elevated cortisol and ACTH levels, in healthy volunteers.  Vigabatrin is also used to treat seizures in succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency (SSADHD), which is an inborn GABA metabolism defect that causes intellectual disability, hypotonia, seizures, speech disturbance, and ataxia through the accumulation of γ-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB). Vigabatrin helps lower GHB levels through GABA transaminase inhibition. However, this is in the brain only; it has no effect on peripheral GABA transaminase, so the GHB keeps building up and eventually reaches the brain.

Adverse effects.

Central nervous system.

Sleepiness (12.5%), headache (3.8%), dizziness (3.8%), nervousness (2.7%), depression (2.5%), memory disturbances (2.3%), diplopia (2.2%), aggression (2.0%), ataxia (1.9%), vertigo (1.9%), hyperactivity (1.8%), vision loss (1.6%) (See below), confusion (1.4%), insomnia (1.3%), impaired concentration (1.2%), personality issues (1.1%). Out of 299 children, 33 (11%) became hyperactive.  Some patients develop psychosis during the course of vigabatrin therapy, which is more common in adults than in children. This can happen even in patients with no prior history of psychosis. Other rare CNS side effects include anxiety, emotional lability, irritability, tremor, abnormal gait, and speech disorder.

Gastrointestinal.

Abdominal pain (1.6%), constipation (1.4%), vomiting (1.4%), and nausea (1.4%). Dyspepsia and increased appetite occurred in less than 1% of subjects in clinical trials.

Body as a whole.

Fatigue (9.2%), weight gain (5.0%), asthenia (1.1%).

Teratogenicity.

A teratology study conducted in rabbits found that a dose of 150 mg/kg/day caused cleft palate in 2% of pups and a dose of 200 mg/kg/day caused it in 9%. This may be due to a decrease in methionine levels, according to a study published in March 2001. In 2005, a study conducted at the University of Catania was published stating that rats whose mothers had consumed 250–1000 mg/kg/day had poorer performance in the water maze and open-field tasks, rats in the 750-mg group were underweight at birth and did not catch up to the control group, and rats in the 1000 mg group did not survive pregnancy.  There is no controlled teratology data in humans to date.

Sensory.

In 2003, vigabatrin was shown by Frisén and Malmgren to cause irreversible diffuse atrophy of the retinal nerve fiber layer in a retrospective study of 25 patients. This has the most effect on the outer area (as opposed to the macular, or central area) of the retina. Visual field defects had been reported as early as 1997 by Tom Eke and others, in the UK. Some authors, including Comaish et al. believe that visual field loss and electrophysiological changes may be demonstrable in up to 50% of Vigabatrin users.  The retinal toxicity of vigabatrin can be attributed to a taurine depletion.  Due to safety issues, the Vigabatrin REMS Program is required by the FDA to ensure informed decisions before initiating and to ensure appropriate use of this drug.

Interactions.

A study published in 2002 found that vigabatrin causes a statistically significant increase in plasma clearance of carbamazepine.  In 1984, Drs Rimmer and Richens at the University of Wales reported that administering vigabatrin with phenytoin lowered the serum phenytoin concentration in patients with treatment-resistant epilepsy. Five years later, the same two scientists reported a fall in concentration of phenytoin of 23% within five weeks in a paper describing their failed attempt at elucidating the mechanism behind this interaction.

Pharmacology.

Vigabatrin is an irreversible mechanism-based inhibitor of gamma-aminobutyric acid aminotransferase (GABA-AT), the enzyme responsible for the catabolism of GABA. Inhibition of GABA-AT results in increased levels of GABA in the brain. Vigabatrin is a racemic compound, and its [S]-enantiomer is pharmacologically active.

Pharmacokinetics.

With most drugs, elimination half-life is a useful predictor of dosing schedules and the time needed to reach steady state concentrations. In the case of vigabatrin, however, it has been found that the half-life of biologic activity is far longer than the elimination half-life.  For vigabatrin, there is no range of target concentrations because researchers found no difference between the serum concentration levels of responders and those of non-responders. Instead, the duration of action is believed to be more a function of the GABA-T resynthesis rate; levels of GABA-T do not usually return to their normal state until six days after stopping the medication.

History.

Vigabatrin was developed in the 1980s with the specific goal of increasing GABA concentrations in the brain in order to stop an epileptic seizure. To do this, the drug was designed to irreversibly inhibit the GABA transaminase, which degrades the GABA substrate. Although the drug was approved for treatment in the United Kingdom in 1989, the authorized use of Vigabatrin by US Food and Drug Administration was delayed twice in the United States before 2009. It was delayed in 1983 because animal trials produced intramyelinic edema, however, the effects were not apparent in human trials so the drug design continued. In 1997, the trials were temporarily suspended because it was linked to peripheral visual field defects in humans.

Society and culture.

Brand Names.

Vigabatrin is sold as Sabril in Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. The brand name in Denmark is Sabrilex. Sabril was approved in the United States on August 21, 2009 and is currently marketed in the U.S. by Lundbeck Inc., which acquired Ovation Pharmaceuticals, the U.S. sponsor in March 2009.

Generic equivalents.

On January 16, 2019, the FDA approved the first generic version of Sabril (vigabatrin) in the United States.

Vigabatrin, brand name Sabril, is a medication used to treat epilepsy. It became available as a generic medication in 2019.


Personal life.

Winogrand's parents, Abraham and Bertha, emigrated to the US from Budapest and Warsaw. Garry grew up with his sister Stella in a predominantly Jewish working-class area of the Bronx, New York, where his father was a leather worker in the garment industry, and his mother made neckties for piecemeal work.  Winogrand graduated from high school in 1946 and entered the US Army Air Force. He returned to New York in 1947 and studied painting at City College of New York and painting and photography at Columbia University, also in New York, in 1948. He also attended a photojournalism class taught by Alexey Brodovitch at The New School for Social Research in New York in 1951.  Winogrand had a complicated relationship with women. He married Adrienne Lubeau in 1952. They had two children, Laurie in 1956 and Ethan in 1958. They separated in 1963 and divorced in 1966.  "Being married to Garry was like being married to a lens," Lubeau once told photography curator Trudy Wilner Stack. Indeed, "colleagues, students and friends describe an almost obsessive picture-taking machine."  Around 1967 Winogrand married his second wife, Judy Teller. They were together until 1969.  In 1972 he married Eileen Adele Hale, with whom he had a daughter, Melissa. They remained married until his death in 1984.

Career.

Winogrand worked as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1952 and 1954 he freelanced with the PIX Publishing agency in Manhattan on an introduction from Ed Feingersh, and from 1954 at Brackman Associates.  Winogrand's beach scene of a man playfully lifting a woman above the waves appeared in the 1955 "The Family of Man" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York which then toured the world to be seen by 9 million visitors. His first solo show was held at Image Gallery in New York in 1959. His first notable exhibition was in "Five Unrelated Photographers" in 1963, also at MoMA in New York, along with Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling, and Ken Heyman.  In the 1960s, he photographed in New York City at the same time as contemporaries Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus.  In 1964 Winogrand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to travel "for photographic studies of American life".  In 1966 he exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York with Friedlander, Duane Michals, Bruce Davidson, and Danny Lyon in an exhibition entitled "Toward a Social Landscape," curated by Nathan Lyons. In 1967 his work was included in the "influential" "New Documents" show at MoMA in New York with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, curated by John Szarkowski.  His photographs of the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium made up his first book "The Animals" (1969), which observes the connections between humans and animals. He took many of these photos when, as a divorced father, accompanying his young children to the zoo for amusement.  He was awarded his second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969 to continue exploring "the effect of the media on events", through the then novel phenomenon of events created specifically for the mass media. Between 1969 and 1976 he photographed at public events, producing 6,500 prints for Papageorge to select for his solo exhibition at MoMA, and book, "Public Relations" (1977).  In 1975, Windogrand's high-flying reputation took a self-inflicted hit. At the height of the feminist revolution, he produced "Women Are Beautiful", a much-panned photo book that explored his fascination with the female form. "Most of Winogrand’s photos are taken of women in either vulgar or at least, questionable positions and seem to be taken unknown to them," says one critic. "This candid approach adds an element of disconnect between the viewer and the viewed, which creates awkwardness in the images themselves."  He supported himself in the 1970s by teaching, first in New York. He moved to Chicago in 1971 and taught photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology between 1971 and 1972. He moved to Texas in 1973 and taught at the University of Texas at Austin between 1973 and 1978. He moved to Los Angeles in 1978.  In 1979 he used his third Guggenheim Fellowship to travel throughout the southern and western United States investigating the social issues of his time.  In his book "Stock Photographs" (1980) he showed "people in relation to each other and to their show animals" at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.  Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at New York's MoMA, became an editor and reviewer of Winogrand's work. Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation.

Death and legacy.

Winogrand was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer on 1 February 1984 and went immediately to the Gerson Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, to seek an alternative cure (6,000 per week in 2016). He died on 19 March, at age 56.  At the time of his death his late work remained largely unprocessed, with about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and about 3,000 rolls only realized as far as contact sheets being made. In total he left nearly 300,000 unedited images.  The Garry Winogrand Archive at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) comprises over 20,000 fine and work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 100,000 negatives and 30,500 35 mm colour slides as well as a small number of Polaroid prints and several amateur and independent motion picture films. Some of his undeveloped work was exhibited posthumously, and published by MoMA in the overview of his work "Winogrand, Figments from the Real World" (2003).  Yet more from his largely unexamined archive of early and late work, plus well known photographs, were included in a retrospective touring exhibition beginning in 2013 and in the accompanying book "Garry Winogrand" (2013). Photographer Leo Rubinfien who curated the 2013 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art felt that the purpose of his show was to find out, "...was Szarkowski right about the late work?” Szarkowski felt that Winogrand's best work was finished by the early 1970s. Rubinfien thought, after producing the show and in a shift from his previous estimation of 1966 to 1970, that Winogrand was at his best from 1960 to 1964.  All of Winogrand's wives and children attended a retrospective exhibit at the San Francisco Art Museum after his death. On display was a 1969 letter from Judith Teller, Winogrand's second wife:  Frank Van Riper of the "Washington Post" described him as "one of the greatest documentary photographers of his era" but added that he was "a bluntspoken, sweet-natured native New Yorker, who had the voice of a Bronx cabbie and the intensity of a pig hunting truffles."

Collections.

Winogrand's work is held in the following public collections:

Garry Winogrand (14 January 1928 – 19 March 1984) was an American street photographer from the Bronx, New York, known for his portrayal of U.S. life and its social issues, in the mid-20th century. Though he photographed in California, Texas and elsewhere, Winogrand was essentially a New York photographer.


Early life.

Élisabeth was born on 3 May 1764 in the Palace of Versailles, the youngest child of Louis, Dauphin of France and Marie-Josèphe of Saxony. Her paternal grandparents were King Louis XV of France and Queen Maria Leszczyńska. As the granddaughter of the king, she was a Petite-Fille de France.  At the sudden death of her father in 1765, Élisabeth's oldest surviving brother, Louis Auguste (later to be Louis XVI) became the new Dauphin (the heir apparent to the French throne). Their mother Marie Josèphe died in March 1767 from tuberculosis. This left Élisabeth an orphan at just two years old, along with her older siblings: Louis Auguste, Louis Stanislas, Count of Provence, Charles Philippe, Count of Artois and Clotilde, ("Madame Clotilde").  Élisabeth and her elder sister Clothilde were raised by "Madame de Marsan", Governess to the Children of France. The sisters were considered very dissimilar in personality. While Elisabeth was described as "proud, inflexible, and passionate", Clothilde was in contrast estimated to be "endowed with the most happy disposition, which only needed guiding and developing". They were given the usual education of contemporary royal princesses, focusing upon accomplishments, religion and virtue,

Louis XVI.

On 10 May 1774, her grandfather Louis XV died, and her elder brother Louis Auguste ascended the throne as Louis XVI.  In August 1775, her sister Clothilde left France for her marriage to the crown prince of Sardinia. The farewell between the sisters was described as intense, with Élisabeth hardly able to tear herself from Clothilde's arms. Queen Marie Antoinette commented:

Adult life.

On 17 May 1778, after the visit of the court to Marly, Madame Élisabeth formally left the children's chamber and became an adult when she, upon the wish of the king her brother, was turned over to the king by her governess and given her own household, with Diane de Polignac as maid of honour and the Bonne Marie Félicité de Sérent as lady-in-waiting. The ceremony was described: "Mme Elizabeth accompanied by the Princesse de Guéménée, the under governesses, and the ladies in attendance, went to the King's apartments, and there Mme de Guéménée formally handed over her charge to His Majesty, who sent for Mme la Comtesse Diane de Polignac, maid of honour to the Princess and Mme la Marquise de Sereat, her lady-in-waiting, into whose care he gave Mme Elizabeth."  Several attempts were made to arrange a marriage for her. The first suggested partner was Jose, Prince of Brazil. She made no objections to the match, but was reportedly relieved when the negotiations were discontinued.  Next, she was offered a proposal by the Duke of Aosta (future Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia), brother of the crown prince of Savoy and brother-in-law of her sister Clothilde. The court of France, however, did not consider it proper for a French princess to be married to a

Revolution.

Élisabeth and her brother Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois, were the staunchest conservatives in the royal family. Unlike Artois, who, on the order of the king, left France on 17 July 1789, three days after the storming of the Bastille, Élisabeth refused to emigrate when the gravity of the events set in motion by the French Revolution became clear.  On 5 October 1789, Élisabeth saw the Women's March on Versailles from Montreuil, and immediately returned to the Palace of Versailles. She advised the king to carry out "a vigorous and speedy repression of the riot" rather than to negotiate, and that the royal family should relocate to some town further from Paris, so as to be free from any influence of factions. Her advice was countered by Necker, and she retired to the queen's apartments. She was not disturbed when the mob stormed the palace to assassinate the queen, but awoke and called to the king, who was worried about her. When the mob demanded that the king return with them to Paris, and Lafayette advised him to consent, Élisabeth unsuccessfully advised the king differently:  Élisabeth accompanied the royal family to Paris, where she chose to live with them in the Tuileries Palace rather than with her aunts "mesdames" Adélaïde and Victoire, in the château de Bellevue. The day after their arrival, Madame de Tourzel stated that the royal family was woken by large crowds outside, and that every member of the family, "even the Princesses", was obliged to show themselves to the public wearing the national cockade.  In the Tuileries, Élisabeth was housed in the Pavillon de Flore. Initially on the first floor beside the queen, she swapped with the Princesse de Lamballe to the second floor in the Pavillon de Flore after some fish market women had climbed into her apartment through the windows.  In contrast to the queen, Madame Élisabeth had a good reputation among the public, and was referred to as the "Sainte Genevieve of the Tuileries" by the market women of Las Halles. The court life at the Tuileries was described as subdued. Élisabeth attended dinner with the royal family, worked on a tapestry with the queen after dinner and participated in the evening family supper with the count and countess of Provence every day, and continued to manage her property in Montreuil by letter. She also maintained a significant correspondence with friends both inside and outside France, particularly her exiled brothers and her friend Marie-Angélique de Bombelles, which is preserved and describes her political views.  In February 1791, she chose not to emigrate with her aunts Adélaïde and Victoire. She commented in a letter:

Beatification.

The Cause of Beatification of Élisabeth was introduced in 1924, but has not

Assessment.

Élisabeth, who had turned thirty a week before her death, was executed essentially because she was a sister of the king; however, the general consensus of the French revolutionaries was that she was a supporter of the ultra-right royalist faction. There is much evidence to suggest that she actively supported the intrigues of the comte d'Artois to bring foreign armies into France to crush the Revolution. In monarchist circles, her exemplary private life elicited much admiration. Élisabeth was much praised for her charitable nature, familial devotion and devout Catholic faith. There can be no question that she saw the Revolution as the incarnation of evil on earth and viewed civil war as the only means to drive it from the land.  Royalist literature represents her as a Catholic martyr, while left-wing historians severely criticise her for extreme conservatism, which seemed excessive even to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Several biographies have been published of her in French, while extensive treatment of her life is given in Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette and Deborah Cadbury's investigative biography of Louis XVII.

Élisabeth of France ("Élisabeth Philippe Marie Hélène de France"; 3 May 1764 – 10 May 1794), known as "Madame" Élisabeth, was a French princess and the youngest sibling of King Louis XVI. She remained beside the king and his family during the French Revolution and was executed at Place de la Révolution in Paris during the Terror. She is regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as a martyr and is venerated as a Servant of God.


Family.

Hermann II was the younger son of Count Hermann I of Celje and his wife, Catherine of Bosnia. The House of Celje were Styrian vassals of the Habsburg dukes of Styria and Carinthia with estates along the river Savinja, in present-day Slovenia, as well as in much of Carniola and parts of Carinthia. Hermann's mother was a member of the House of Kotromanić, daughter of Ban Stephen II of Bosnia and thus cousin of the first King of Bosnia, Tvrtko I. His older brother Hans (c. 1363–1372) having predeceased their father, Hermann was the sole heir of their father upon the latter's death on 21 March 1385. The death of his son-less cousin William on 19 September 1392 made him the sole possessor of the family titles and estates.  Hermann II married Anna, daughter of Count Henry of Schaunberg and Ursula of Gorizia, in c. 1377. They had six children: Frederick (1379–1454), Hermann (1380–1426), Elizabeth (1382), Anne (c. 1384–c. 1439), Louis (1387–1417) and Barbara (1392–1451). Hermann had his illegitimate son, Hermann (1383–1421), legitimized and installed as Bishop of Freising. For his legitimate issue he arranged prestigious marriages, but encountered serious problems with his firstborn. Frederick was married to Elizabeth of Krk until she was murdered in 1422; Frederick himself was likely the culprit. He quickly remarried to Veronika of Desenice, but Hermann refused to accept a minor noblewoman as his daughter-in-law. He accused her of witchcraft and had her drowned. Frederick's rebellion against Hermann ended with Frederick's imprisonment.

Rise of Celje.

In 1396, Hermann bravely fought at the side of King Sigismund of Hungary during the battle against the Ottoman Turks in the Bulgarian town of Nicopolis. The Christian coalition was soundly defeated. Hermann saved Sigismund's life. The two escaped the battlefield on the same fishing boat and underwent a long journey back to Hungary together. Sigismund rewarded Hermann by assigning to him the district of Varaždin in 1397, followed in 1399 by various other districts in Zagorje along the border of the Kingdom of Croatia and the Holy Roman Empire. These grants were hereditary and made the Celje counts the greatest landowners in Slavonia; from then on, they styled themselves "counts of Celje and Zagorje".  Hermann's loyalty persisted during the Hungarian civil war, when Sigismund's kingdoms of Croatia and Hungary were being claimed by King Ladislaus of Naples with the support of Sigismund's rebellious vassals. The rebels succeeded in capturing and imprisoning Sigismund in 1401. Hermann and the Palatine of Hungary Nicholas II Garay procured his release later that year, after Hermann threatened to invade Hungary. The relations between the two men then became even closer. Sigismund had promised to remove foreigners such as Hermann from state offices upon being liberated, but never carried out the promise.  In 1405, Sigismund married Hermann's youngest daughter Barbara and granted extensive lands in Slavonia to his father-in-law. Anne, another daughter of Hermann, was married to the Palatine, linking the three families through affinity. In 1406, Sigismund named Hermann Ban of Dalmatia and Croatia and Ban of Slavonia. He held these offices until 1408 and again from 1423 until 1435, benefiting from the dedicated support of Eberhard, the German-born Bishop of Zagreb. All of this made the House of Celje the most powerful family in the Kingdom of Croatia. Hermann was one of the founding members of Sigismund's elite Order of the Dragon, established in 1408. For reasons of economy rather than religious fanaticism, Hermann expelled all Jews from his domain.  When Count Frederick III of Ortenburg, the last of his line, died in 1418, his domain was inherited by Hermann. From then on, he controlled three quarters of Carinthia. This made it easier for him to attain imperial immediacy, his family's long-set goal. The marriage of his son Louis and Duke Ernest of Bavaria's daughter Beatrix provided Hermann with a powerful ally against his Habsburg overlords. His goal was finally achieved in 1423 when Duke Ernest of Styria and Carinthia renounced his feudal supremacy over the counts of Celje. This was a reward by Sigismund, also King of Germany since 1411, for Hermann's successful negotiation with the dissatisfied Croatian nobles. It came with the right of coinage as well as the right to collect tolls and revenues from various mines. Now enjoying a direct legal relationship with the Crown, Hermann was free to concentrate on a new goal: becoming Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. He was close to succeeding in this endeavour as well in 1430, but the draft charter granting him this honour never seems to have been published, possibly due to Habsburg objections.

Bosnian succession.

In 1426, the Kingdom of Bosnia was under constant threat of Ottoman raids. Its king, Tvrtko II, was desperate to obtain Hungarian protection. King Sigismund agreed but under a condition: the childless Tvrtko was to recognize Hermann, his second cousin and Sigismund's father-in-law, as his heir presumptive. The Bosnian nobility was outraged by the demand. Hermann's accession would have meant an increased influence of Hungary over Bosnia, something they were determined to prevent. Besides, they were used to controlling the royal succession and considered it their right to elect kings. They also feared that Hermann, whose domain enveloped Bosnia, would assist Tvrtko in curbing their power and privileges. The plan nevertheless went ahead; a treaty providing for Hermann's accession in the event of Tvrtko's death without male issue was signed on 2 September 1427.

Death and aftermath.

Hermann died in Pressburg on 13 October 1435. Tvrtko indeed died childless, but only eight years later, and Hermann thus never became King of Bosnia. As it happened, the Bosnian crown never passed to the House of Celje at all. Hermann was buried in the Pleterje Charterhouse, a monastery he had founded in 1403 as the last Carthusian monastery in the Slovene lands. The Celje were recognized as princes of the Holy Roman Empire a year following his death, though there is spurious evidence that suggests this may have taken place shortly before Hermann's death, on 27 September 1435. Hermann's allodial titles passed undivided to his firstborn and the only son who outlived him, the 56-year-old Frederick II.  The most outstanding among the counts of Celje, Hermann inherited the headship of a family of merely local significance and eventually transformed it into one of Central Europe's most prominent noble families. Hermann's efforts to help Sigismund strengthen the royal authority and centralize the state earned him a bad reputation in old Hungarian historiography, which was itself usually sympathetic to Hungarian nobility. He was portrayed as a selfish manipulator of a weak king.

Marriage and children.

Hermann married Anna, a daughter of Henry VII, Count of Schaunberg. They had six children who survived infancy:

Hermann II (; early 1360s – 13 October 1435), Count of Celje, was a Styrian nobleman and magnate most notable as the faithful supporter and father-in-law of the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg. Hermann's loyalty to the King ensured him generous grants of land and privileges that led him to become the greatest landowner in Slavonia. He served as governor of Carniola, and twice as ban of the combined provinces of Slavonia, Croatia and Dalmatia, and was recognized by a treaty in 1427 as heir presumptive to the Kingdom of Bosnia. The House of Celje's rise to power culminated in achieving the dignity of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. At the peak of his power, he controlled two thirds of the land in Carniola, most of Lower Styria and exercised power over all of medieval Croatia. Hermann was the most important representative of the line of Celje counts, having brought the family from merely local importance to the focus of Central European politics.


Early life and education.

Riboud was born in Saint-Genis-Laval and went to the lycée in Lyon. He photographed his first picture in 1937, using his father's Vest Pocket Kodak camera. As a young man during World War II, he was active in the French Resistance, from 1943 to 1945. After the war, he studied engineering at the École Centrale de Lyon from 1945 to 1948.

Career.

Until 1951 Riboud worked as an engineer in Lyon factories, but took a week-long picture-taking vacation, inspiring him to become a photographer. He moved to Paris where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and David Seymour, the founders of Magnum Photos. By 1953 he was a member of the organization. His ability to capture fleeting moments in life through powerful compositions was already apparent, and this skill was to serve him well for decades to come.  Over the next several decades, Riboud traveled around the world. In 1957, he was one of the first European photographers to go to China, and in 1968, 1972, and 1976, Riboud made several reportages on North Vietnam. Later he traveled all over the world, but mostly in Asia, Africa, the U.S. and Japan. Riboud has been witness to the atrocities of war (photographing from both the Vietnam and the American sides of the Vietnam War), and the apparent degradation of a culture repressed from within (China during the years of chairman Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution). In contrast, he has captured the graces of daily life, set in sun-drenched facets of the globe (Fès, Angkor, Acapulco, Niger, Bénarès, Shaanxi), and the lyricism of child's play in everyday Paris. In 1979 Riboud left the Magnum agency.  Riboud's photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, including "Life", "Géo", "National Geographic", "Paris Match", and "Stern". He twice won the Overseas Press Club Award, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Sony World Photography Awards and has had major retrospective exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the International Center of Photography in New York.  Riboud was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1998.

Photography.

One of Riboud's best known images is "Eiffel Tower Painter", taken in Paris in 1953. It depicts a man painting the tower, posed like a dancer, perched between the metal armature of the tower. Below him, Paris emerges from the photographic haze. Lone figures appear frequently in Riboud's images. In "Ankara", a central figure is silhouetted against an industrial background, whereas in "France", a man lies in a field. The vertical composition emphasizes the landscape, the trees, sky, water and blowing grass, all of which surround but do not overpower the human element.  An image taken by Riboud on 21 October 1967, entitled "," is among the most celebrated anti-war pictures. Shot in Washington, D.C. where thousands of anti-war activists had gathered in front of the Pentagon to protest against America's involvement in Vietnam, the picture shows a young girl, Jan Rose Kasmir, with a flower in her hands and a kindly gaze in her eyes, standing in front of several rifle-wielding soldiers stationed to block the protesters. Riboud said of the photo, "She was just talking, trying to catch the eye of the soldiers, maybe trying to have a dialogue with them. I had the feeling the soldiers were more afraid of her than she was of the bayonets."  In contrast to the images in his photo essay, "A Journey to North Vietnam" (1969), Riboud says in the accompanying interview: "My impression is that the country's leaders will not allow the slightest relaxation of the population at large [...] it is almost as if [...] they are anxious to forestall the great unknown – peace." In the same "Newsweek" article, he expanded further in his observations on life in North Vietnam:  I was astonished, for example, at the decidedly gay atmosphere in Hanoi's Reunification Park on a Sunday afternoon [...] I honestly did not have the impression they were discussing socialism or the 'American aggressors' [...] I saw quite a few patriotic posters crudely 'improved' with erotic graffiti and sketches.  There is a divide between what is photographed (or published) and what Riboud had to say by way of his interview. Commenting on this in 1970, the author Geoffrey Wolff wrote:  Riboud's photographs illustrate the proposition. The French photographer has been to North Vietnam twice [...] and he is most friendly, on the evidence of his pictures, to the people and the institutions he found there. His photographs are of happy faces,[...] An Air Force ace illustrates how he shot the American "air pirates" from the sky [...] Who knows the truth about these places?  American, revolutionary political Rap Metal band, Rage Against the Machine used two of Riboud's photographs for their second single "Bullet in the Head". Both photographs carry strong political and social messages, but are very different. The front cover is a picture of American school children pledging allegiance to the 'flag' (Stars and Stripes) in a classroom; the back cover picture, is of a young (probably Vietnamese) boy, who is pointing a pistol, while soldiers stand on parade in the background. It is unclear who or what the boy is aiming at and whether the gun is real or a toy.

Marriage and family.

In 1961 Riboud married the American sculptor Barbara Chase, who was living in Paris. They had two children. She became well known for her novel, "Sally Hemings" (1979), which earned critical acclaim and became a bestseller. They divorced before 1981.  He later married Catherine Chaine, a journalist and author.  Riboud died in Paris on 30 August 2016, at the age of 93.

Marc Riboud (; 24 June 1923 – 30 August 2016) was a French photographer, best known for his extensive reports on the Far East: "The Three Banners of China", "Face of North Vietnam", "Visions of China", and "In China".


Description.

A protector of Buddhist dharma is called a dharmapala. They are typically wrathful deities, depicted with terrifying iconography in the Mahayana and tantric traditions of Buddhism. The wrathfulness is intended to depict their willingness to defend and guard Buddhist followers from dangers and enemies. The "Aṣṭagatyaḥ" (the eight kinds of nonhuman beings) is one category of "dharmapālas", which includes the Garuda, Deva, Naga, Yaksha, Gandharva, Asura, Kinnara and Mahoraga.  In Vajrayana iconography and thangka depictions, dharmapala are fearsome beings, often with many heads, many hands, or many feet. Dharmapala often have blue, black or red skin, and a fierce expression with protruding fangs. Although dharmapala have a terrifying appearance, they only act in a wrathful way for the benefit of sentient beings.  The devotional worship of "dharmapālas" in the Tibetan tradition is traceable to early 8th-century.

Tibetan Buddhism.

There are many different dharmapalas in Tibetan Buddhism. Each school has its own principle dharmapalas and most monasteries have a dedicated dharmapāla which was originally comparable to a genius loci. The many forms of Mahakala are emanations of Avalokiteshvara. Kalarupa and Yamantaka are considered by practitioners to be emanations of Manjushri the Bodhisattva of Wisdom.  Principal wisdom protector dharmapalas include:  Other dharmapalas include: The main functions of a dharmapāla are said to be to avert the inner and outer obstacles that prevent spiritual practitioners from attaining spiritual realizations, as well as to foster the necessary conditions for their practice.

Shingon Buddhism.

In Japanese Shingon Buddhism, a descendant of Tangmi, or Chinese Esoteric Buddhism, dharmapālas such as Acala and Yamantaka are classified as Wisdom Kings. Other dharmapālas, notably Mahakala, belong to the Deva realm, the fourth and lowest class in the hierarchy of honorable beings.

Related deities.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there are two other classes of defender, the lokapālas and s. Papiya, Guan Yu and Hachiman are also known as defenders.

A dharmapāla (, Chinese: 達磨波羅, 達摩波羅,, 護法鬼神, 諸天鬼神, 護法龍天, 諸天善神, ) is a type of wrathful god in Buddhism. The name means ""Dharma" protector or defender" in Sanskrit, and the "dharmapālas" are also known as the Defenders of the Law (Dharma), or the Protectors of the Law. There are two kinds of dharmapala, Worldly Protectors and Wisdom Protectors. Only Wisdom Protectors are enlightened beings.


Early life and education.

He lived and studied at the Gymnasium in Německý Brod (today Havlíčkův Brod is named after Borovský), and his house on the main square is today the Havlíček Museum. In 1838 he moved to Prague to study philosophy at Charles University and, influenced by the revolutionary atmosphere before the Revolutions of 1848, decided on the objective of becoming a patriotic writer. He devoted himself to studying Czech and literature. After graduating he began studying theology because he thought the best way to serve the nation would be as a priest. He was expelled after one year for "showing too little indication for spiritual ministry".

Career.

After failing to find a teacher's job in Bohemia, he left for Moscow to work as a tutor in a Russian teacher's family: with a recommendation by Pavel Josef Šafařík. He became a Russophile and a Pan-Slav, but after recognizing the true reality of the Russian society he took the pessimistic view that "Pan-Slavism is a great, attractive but feckless idea". His memories of the Russian stay were published first in magazines and then as a book "Obrazy z Rus" ("Pictures from Russia").  He returned to Bohemia in 1844, aged 24 and used his writing skills to criticize the fashion of embracing anything written in the recently reborn Czech language. He specifically aimed at a novel by Josef Kajetán Tyl. In 1846 Havlíček attained a position as editor of the "Pražské noviny" newspaper with the help of František Palacký.  In April 1848 he changed the name of the newspaper to "Národní noviny" ("National News") and it became one of the first newspapers of the Revolutionary-era Czech liberals, and one of the most influential publications of 1848-1849. "Národní noviny" became popular especially for his sharp-tongued epigrams and its wit. Havlíček was concerned with the preparations of the Congress of the Slavs in Prague. In July 1848 he was elected as a member of the Austrian Empire Constituent Assembly in Vienna and later in Kroměříž. He eventually relinquished his seat to focus on journalism.  Havlíček was a "liberal nationalist" politically, but refused to allow a "party line" to inform his opinions. Often, he would criticize those that agreed with him as much as those that disagreed. He excoriated revolutionaries for their radicalism, but also advocated ideas like universal suffrage-a concept altogether too radical for most of his fellow liberals. He was a pragmatist, and had little patience for those that spent their time romanticizing the Czech nationality without helping it achieve political or cultural independence. He used much of the space in his newspapers to educate the people on important issues-stressing areas like economics, which were sorely neglected by other nationalist writers.  The Bohemian revolution was defeated in March 1849 with the dissolution of the Kroměříž assembly, but Havlíček continued to criticize the new regime. He was brought to court for his criticism (there was no freedom of the press in the Habsburg's territory) but was found not guilty by a sympathetic jury. "Národní noviny" had to cease publication in January 1850, but Havlíček did not end his activities. In May 1850 he began publishing the magazine "Slovan" in Kutná Hora. The magazine was a target of censorship from the start. It had to stop publication in August 1851, and Havlíček stood again at the court to answer on charges of dissent. Again, he was found not guilty by a sympathetic jury of Czech commoners.  Havlíček translated and introduced some satirical and critical authors into the Czech language culture including Nikolai Gogol (1842) and Voltaire (1851).  In the night of December 16, 1851, he was arrested by the police and forced into exile in Brixen, Austria (present-day Italy). He was depressed from the exile, but continued writing and wrote some of his best work: Tyrolské elegie (Tirol Laments), Křest svatého Vladimíra (Baptism of St. Vladimir) and Král Lávra (King Lavra, based on the legend of Labraid Loingsech).  When he returned from Brixen in 1855, he learned that his wife had died a few days earlier. Most of his former friends, afraid of the Bach system, stood aloof from him. Only a few publicly declared support for him.  In 1856, Havlíček died of tuberculosis, aged 35. Božena Němcová put a crown of thorns on his head in the coffin. His funeral was attended by about 5,000 Czechs.

Memorials.

In 1911, a monument was raised to Havlicek in Chicago by Czech residents of the city in Douglas Park. The bronze statue by Joseph Strachovsky was cast by V. Mašek in Prague and shows Havlicek in a revolutionary pose, dressed in a full military uniform and a draped cape with his outstretched arm motioning the viewer to join him. The statue was moved to Solidarity Drive on today's Museum Campus in the vicinity of the Adler Planetarium in 1981.  In the year 1918 was new Rifle Regiment of the 3rd division of Czechoslovak legions in Russia named "regiment of Karel Havlíček Borovský"  In 1925 a biographical film was released.  In 1945, the 20 Czechoslovak koruna banknote bore Havlicek's portrait.

Karel Havlíček Borovský (; Borová, today "Havlíčkova Borová;" 31 October 1821 – 29 July 1856) was a Czech writer, poet, critic, politician, journalist, and publisher.


Overview.

Xtables allows the system administrator to define "tables" containing "chains" of "rules" for the treatment of packets. Each table is associated with a different kind of packet processing. Packets are processed by sequentially traversing the rules in chains. A rule in a chain can cause a goto or jump to another chain, and this can be repeated to whatever level of nesting is desired. (A jump is like a “call”, i.e. the point that was jumped from is remembered.) Every network packet arriving at or leaving from the computer traverses at least one chain.  The origin of the packet determines which chain it traverses initially. There are five "predefined chains" (mapping to the five available Netfilter hooks), though a table may not have all chains. Predefined chains have a "policy", for example DROP, which is applied to the packet if it reaches the end of the chain. The system administrator can create as many other chains as desired. These chains have no policy; if a packet reaches the end of the chain it is returned to the chain which called it. A chain may be empty.  A chain does not exist by itself; it belongs to a "table". There are three tables: "nat", "filter", and "mangle". Unless preceded by the option "-t", an iptables command concerns the "filter" table by default. For example, the command "iptables -L -v -n", which shows some chains and their rules, is equivalent to "iptables -t filter -L -v -n". To show chains of table "nat", use the command "iptables -t nat -L -v -n"  Each rule in a chain contains the specification of which packets it matches. It may also contain a "target" (used for extensions) or "verdict" (one of the built-in decisions). As a packet traverses a chain, each rule in turn is examined. If a rule does not match the packet, the packet is passed to the next rule. If a rule does match the packet, the rule takes the action indicated by the target/verdict, which may result in the packet being allowed to continue along the chain or may not. Matches make up the large part of rulesets, as they contain the conditions packets are tested for. These can happen for about any layer in the OSI model, as with e.g. the codice_8 and codice_9 parameters, and there are also protocol-independent matches, such as codice_10.  The packet continues to traverse the chain until either  Targets also return a verdict like codice_11 (codice_16 modules will do this) or codice_12 (e.g. the codice_18 module), but may also imply codice_19 (e.g. the codice_20 module; codice_19 is an internal name) to continue with the next rule as if no target/verdict was specified at all.

Userspace utilities.

Front-ends.

There are numerous third-party software applications for iptables that try to facilitate setting up rules. Front-ends in textual or graphical fashion allow users to click-generate simple rulesets; scripts usually refer to shell scripts (but other scripting languages are possible too) that call iptables or (the faster) codice_22 with a set of predefined rules, or rules expanded from a template with the help of a simple configuration file. Linux distributions commonly employ the latter scheme of using templates. Such a template-based approach is practically a limited form of a rule generator, and such generators also exist in standalone fashion, for example, as PHP web pages.  Such front-ends, generators and scripts are often limited by their built-in template systems and where the templates offer substitution spots for user-defined rules. Also, the generated rules are generally not optimized for the particular firewalling effect the user wishes, as doing so will likely increase the maintenance cost for the developer. Users who reasonably understand iptables and want their ruleset optimized are advised to construct their own ruleset.

iptables is a user-space utility program that allows a system administrator to configure the IP packet filter rules of the Linux kernel firewall, implemented as different Netfilter modules. The filters are organized in different tables, which contain chains of rules for how to treat network traffic packets. Different kernel modules and programs are currently used for different protocols; "iptables" applies to IPv4, "ip6tables" to IPv6, "arptables" to ARP, and "ebtables" to Ethernet frames.


Life and work.

Bada Shanren, a purported child prodigy born to a handicapped father, began painting and writing poetry in his early childhood. About the year 1644, when the Ming emperor committed suicide and the Manchu army from the north attacked Beijing, the young Han Chinese man sought refuge in a vihara. Because he was a Ming prince, the dynastic upheaval created a great amount of uncertainty for his position in society. As years passed and the Manchurian court became more firmly established, there was less and less insecurity among the Qing regime about remaining Ming loyalties and possible future rebellions. Due to these more stable circumstances, after 40 years, Bada Shanren deemed it acceptable to leave the monastery and to re-enter day-to-day life among society. In the aftermath of a nervous breakdown that could have been staged to avoid retribution for his family background, Zhu Da abandoned his monastic life and developed a career as a professional painter, adopting a series of descriptive pseudonyms, most notably Bada Shanren by which he is most often known today. He is said to have screamed and made weird sounds while painting. The stylized vertical writing of his pseudonym Bada Shanren () looks like the characters for "laugh" () and "cry" (), thus by signing his paintings he implied his confusion and feelings of grief for the fate of his country and home.  His paintings feature sharp brush strokes which are attributed to the sideways manner by which he held his brush. In the 1930s, Chinese painter Zhang Daqian produced several forgeries of Bada Shanren's works but they are easily spotted by the trained eye, because the modern copies were softer and rounder. Yale University scholar Fred Fangyu Wang was a major collector of Bada Shanren paintings from the 1960s until his death in 1997.

Bada Shanren (born Zhu Da; c. 1626–1705) was a Han Chinese painter of ink wash painting and a calligrapher. He was of royal descent, being a direct offspring of the Ming dynasty prince Zhu Quan who had a feudal establishment in Nanchang. His master lineage's accession was revoked following the last Ning Lineage King Zhu Chenhao's rebellion in 1521, but the rest of the lineage was allowed to retain status in Jiangxi. Art historians have named him as a brilliant painter of the period.


History.

In the early 1990s, the Disney Development Company (DDC) established the Celebration Company to spearhead its development within about of land in the southern portion of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Total investment for the project is estimated at US$2.5 billion.  The master plan was developed by the two Driehaus Prize winners, Cooper, Robertson & Partners and Robert A. M. Stern, and the extensive landscape, parks, trails and pathways were designed by the San Francisco firm EDAW (now AECOM). Urban Design Associates, of Pittsburgh, PA, developed design guidelines, called a Pattern Book, as a tool for the design of new architecture within the community. Celebration is planned in an early 20th-century architectural style and is not zoned for high-density residences. Celebration was named the "New Community of the Year" in 2001 by the Urban Land Institute.  The first phase of residential development occurred in the summer of 1996 with Celebration Village, West Village, and Lake Evalyn; this was followed by the North Village, South Village, East Village and Aquila Reserve and the final Artisan Park phases. Disney CEO Michael Eisner took an especially keen interest in the development of the new town in the early days, encouraging the executives at Disney Development Company to "make history" and develop a town worthy of the Disney brand and legacy that extended to Walt Disney's vision of an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). DDC executives collaborated extensively with leaders in education, health, and technology in addition to planners and architects to create the vision and operating policies for the town.  Later phases included construction by a number of developers, including David Waronker.

Geography.

Celebration is located at (28.320059, −81.540149).  According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of, of which, or 0.28%, is water.  Celebration is under USPS ZIP code 34747, sometimes known as Kissimmee. This is due to the city being unincorporated, as Celebration is not a subdivision and is still considered an unincorporated town.

Demographics.

As of the census of 2010, there were 7,427 people, 3,063 households, and 716 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 704.9 people per square mile (272.16.0/km2). There were 4,566 housing units at an average density of 102.4/sq mi (39.6/km2). The racial makeup of the CDP was 91.0% white (with 81.9% of the population non-Hispanic white), 1.5% black, 3.2% Asian, 2.2% from two or more races and 0.26% Native American. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 11.2% of the population.  There were 3,063 households, out of which 32.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.0% were married couples living together, 4.5% had a female householder with no married spouse present, and 35.0% were non-families. 24.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 3.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the average family size was 2.96.  The age distribution was 25.6% under the age of 18, and 9.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.5 males in that age range.  The median income for a household in the CDP was $74,231, and the median income for a family was $92,334. Males had a median income of $51,250 versus $46,650 for females. The per-capita income for the CDP was $39,521, and 4.1% of the population lived below the poverty line.

Government.

The area is organized under state law as a community development district. As a result, voting is restricted to local landowners. The largest landowners are entities controlled by The Walt Disney Company.

City life.

Downtown.

Celebration Town Center contains shops, restaurants, and other commercial establishments, as well as 106 residences.

Worship.

Celebration has six Christian churches, one Jewish congregation, and one hospital ministry.

Commerce.

There are now more than 500 registered companies listed as doing business in the shopping plazas, small office complexes, and the Disney World office building park. This community holds the only Class A office buildings in Osceola County.

Villages.

Celebration is separated into areas referred to as "villages." The main village, closest to downtown, is where the first homes were constructed. North Village, closest to U.S. 192, houses the Georgetown Condos as well as Acadia Estate Homes. East Village includes Roseville Corner and Aquila Loop. Lake Evalyn, generally considered its own area of Celebration but not quite its own village, includes a small lake where one can find a multitude of ducks, alligators, and the occasional river otter. South Village houses the Spring Park Loop estate homes and Heritage Hall. Additionally, Siena Condos complete the outer edge of South Village by Celebration Blvd. Mirasol includes condos with concierge service and a day spa. Artisan Park is at the end of Celebration Ave and houses condos, townhomes, single-family residences as well as a clubhouse consisting of a pool, gym, and restaurant.

Events.

Celebration hosts many celebrations every year, including community-wide yard sales, an art show, an exotic car festival, an annual Radio Disney Holiday concert, an Oktoberfest Celebration, the "Great American Pie Festival" (televised on The Food Network), a "Posh Pooch" festival, and downtown events for the Fall and Christmas seasons when autumn leaves and "snow" (small-scale soap flakes) are released into the Town Center. The community also hosts a large Independence Day fireworks celebration. The town events are organized on the Internet by the Community Calendar.

Civil suit.

In 2016, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that Celebration Town Center condominium owners "are battling leaky roofs, balconies that have become separated from the sides of buildings and mold spreading in their walls. Their properties have become so dilapidated, they say, they're having trouble selling them."  An April 2016 civil suit seeks to force the Town Center Foundation, a controlling entity under sole direction of Lexin Capital, "which took control of part of Celebration in 2004, to pay for upward of $15 million to $20 million in repairs" which were deferred over ten years.

Transportation.

91% of residents who work outside their homes drive to work.  The two main roads going through the center of the Celebration's downtown area are Market Street and Front Street. Other streets in Celebration include:

Education.

The School District of Osceola County, Florida, operates public schools in Celebration. Celebration is zoned to the Celebration School for K-8. Celebration High School, located in the city, serves Celebration for grades 9–12. There are private education options provided by The Montessori Academy of Celebration (K-8). Private graduate education is available at Stetson University Celebration Campus. There are free classes offered at the community center by clubs for cooking, gardening, art, writing, and technology.  The Osceola Library System operates the West Osceola Branch Library in Celebration.

References.

Notes Bibliography

Celebration is a census-designated place (CDP) and a master-planned community in Osceola County, Florida, United States, located near Walt Disney World Resort and originally developed by The Walt Disney Company. The town, whose population was 7,427 at the 2010 census, is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee Metropolitan Statistical Area.


History.

The House of Visconti had ruled Milan since 1277, in which year Ottone Visconti defeated Napoleone della Torre. The Duchy of Milan "(Ducatus Mediolani)" as a state of the Holy Roman Empire was created on 1 May 1395, when Gian Galeazzo Visconti, purchased a diploma for 100,000 Florins from King Wenceslaus. It was this diploma that installed Visconti as Duke of Milan and Count of Pavia.

Visconti rule (1395–1447).

The Duchy, as defined in the diploma of 1395, included the territory surrounding Milan, between the Adda and Ticino rivers, but the dominions of Gian Galeazzo Visconti extended beyond, including 26 towns and spanned from Piedmont to Veneto and from present-day Canton of Ticino to Umbria. Milan thus became one of the five major states of the Italian peninsula in the 15th century. The House of Visconti had been expanding their dominions for nearly a century, under the reigns of Azzone Visconti, Luchino Visconti, Giovanni Visconti, Bernabò Visconti and Gian Galeazzo Visconti: during the rule of Azzone Visconti, the Ossola in Piedmont had been conquered in 1331, followed by Bergamo and Pavia (Lombardy) and Novara (Piedmont) in 1332, Pontremoli (Tuscany) in 1333, Vercelli (Piedmont) and Cremona (Lombardy) in 1334, the Lombard cities of Como, Crema, Lodi and the Valtellina in 1335, Bormio (Lombardy) and Piacenza (Emilia) in 1336, and Brescia and the Val Camonica in 1337.  The brothers Luchino and Giovanni Visconti added Bellinzona (present-day Switzerland in 1342, Parma (Emilia) in 1346 and several territories in southwestern Piedmont in 1347: Tortona, Alessandria, Asti, and Mondovì. Bernabò conquered Reggio Emilia in 1371 and Riva del Garda in 1380, and Gian Galeazzo greatly expanded Milan's dominions, first estwards, with the conquest of the Venetian cities of Verona (1387), Vicenza (1387), Feltre (1388), Belluno (1388) and Padova (briefly, from 1388 to 1390), and later southwards, conquering Lucca, Pisa and Siena in Tuscany in 1399, Bologna in Emilia in 1402, and Perugia and Assisi in Umbria also in 1402.

Ambrosian Republic (1447–1450).

When the last Visconti Duke, Filippo Maria, died in 1447 without a male heir, the Milanese declared the so-called Golden Ambrosian Republic, which soon faced revolts and attacks from its neighbors. In 1450 mercenary captain Francesco Sforza, having previously married Filippo Maria Visconti's illegitimate daughter Bianca Maria, conquered the city and restored the Duchy, founding the House of Sforza.

Sforza rule (1450–1499).

During the rule of the Visconti and Sforza, the duchy had to defend its territory against the Swiss, the French and the Venetians, until the "Betrayal of Novara" in 1500 when the duchy passed to the French-claim of Louis XII.

French rule (1499–1526).

In 1498, the Duke of Orleans became King of France as Louis XII, and immediately sought to make good his father's claim to Milan. He invaded in 1499 and soon ousted Lodovico Sforza. The French ruled the duchy until 1512, when they were ousted by the Swiss, who put Lodovico's son Massimiliano on the throne. Massimiliano's reign did not last very long. The French, now under Francis I, invaded the area in 1515 and reasserted their control at the Battle of Marignano. The French took Massimiliano as their prisoner. The French were again driven out in 1521, this time by the Austrians, who installed Massimiliano's younger brother, Francesco II Sforza.  Following the French defeat at Pavia in 1525, which left the imperial armies of Charles V dominant in Italy, Francesco joined the League of Cognac against the emperor along with Venice, Florence, the Pope, and the French. This resulted quickly in his own expulsion from Milan by imperial forces, but he managed to remain in control of various other cities in the duchy, and was again restored to Milan itself by the peace concluded at Cambrai in 1529.  In 1535, Francesco died without heirs, the question of succession again arose, with both the emperor and the King of France claiming the duchy, leading to more wars. The Duchy of Parma was created in 1545 from a part of the Duchy of Milan south of the Po River, as a fief for Pope Paul III's illegitimate son, Pier Luigi Farnese, centered on the city of Parma.

Spanish Habsburg rule (1556–1707).

The emperor Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor held the duchy from 1535, eventually investing it on his son Philip II, King of Spain from 1556. The possession of the duchy by Habsburg Spain was finally recognized by the French in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559.  The Duchy of Milan remained in Habsburg Spain hands until the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), when the Austrians invaded it (1701) and obtained it with the "Convention of Milan" in 1707.

Austrian Habsburg rule (1714–1796).

The duchy remained in Austrian hands until it was overrun by the French army of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1796. The duchy was ceded by Austria in the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, and formed the central part of the new Cisalpine Republic.

Legacy.

After the defeat of Napoleon, based on the decisions of the Congress of Vienna on 9 June 1815, the Duchy of Milan was not restored. The Duchy instead became part of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, a constituent of the Austrian Empire and with the Emperor of Austria as its king. This kingdom ceased to exist when the remaining portion of it was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.

The Duchy of Milan was a state of the Holy Roman Empire in northern Italy. It was created in 1395 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Lord of Milan, who obtained from Wenceslaus, King of the Romans, the founding diploma. At that time, it included twenty-six towns and the wide rural area of the middle Padan Plain east of the hills of Montferrat. During much of its existence, it was wedged between Savoy to the west, Venice to the east, the Swiss Confederacy to the north, and separated from the Mediterranean by Genoa to the south. The Duchy eventually fell to Habsburg Austria with the "Convention of Milan" during the War of the Spanish Succession. The Duchy remained an Austrian possession until 1796, when a French army under Napoleon Bonaparte conquered it, and it ceased to exist a year later as a result of the Treaty of Campo Formio, when Austria ceded it to the new Cisalpine Republic.