is a Japanese martial art.  It was developed in the former Ryūkyū Kingdom in what is now Okinawa Prefecture. Karate has been an Olympic sport since the 2020 Summer Olympics but in 2020, the IOC decided to drop Karate for the 2024 Paris Olympics, one year later in 2021, the IOC decided to reinstate Karate for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Karate uses all parts of the human body as a weapon such as the hand, fist, elbow, leg and knee.
Karate training has three main sections:
  is learning the basic techniques or fundamentals;
  is the training of form, the specific order and way of using techniques;
  is to learn how to fight using those techniques.

History of Karate
Gichin Funakoshi, a school teacher from the island of Okinawa, introduced Karate to mainland Japan in the early 1900s. Traditional karate is different from boxing, wrestling and kickboxing: in karate, there is just as much importance on the strength of the mind and good manners as there is on strength of the body and self-defence to use when you're in trouble.

Karate became more known around the world because of Karate movies in the 1960s and 1970s. Now people all over the world learn Karate.

After World War II, Karate also became popular in Korea, where a local variation appeared, it is called "tangsudo".

The full name of Karate is "Karate-do" which means "the way of the empty hand" in English.

There are many schools or styles of karate, including
 Gōjū-ryū
 Sankukai
 Shitō-ryū
 Shōtōkan
 Wadō-ryū

A person who does Karate is called a "karateka".  Notable Karateka include: Gichin Funakoshi, Yoshitaka Funakoshi, Shigeru Egami, Masutatsu Oyama, and Fumio Demura.

Karate Clothing

When people practice Karate, they wear special clothes called a karategi. The karategi is made up of a white jacket and white pants. People who practice Karate also wear a colored belt, which tells other people their rank. The belt shows how long you have trained rather than how good you are. Two people wearing different colored belts can be surprisingly similar.

Different schools of Karate have different colours of belts for their ranks. You cannot know precisely how good they are without either asking them or knowing how their school arranges the belt colours in ranks. Usually the black belt is for the students who try very hard to be the best that they can be for a long time.

Some schools have several degrees of black belts. They show this by having a white stripe, called a Dan, on the one end of the belt, for the black belt degree the person has. For instance a "3 Dan black belt" would have 3 white stripes on his black belt and would be higher ranked than a "1 Dan black belt".

Related pages
 Sports in Japan

References

Other websites

Karate


In Christianity, the Arrest and Trial of Jesus is an event that takes place in February/March of 30 AD, before the Death and Ressurrection of Jesus and after the Last Supper.

Description
The New Testament Gospels all tell the story of how Jesus was arrested.  His trial is told with many details. Jesus was with his disciples in a garden where He was praying.  After dark, some soldiers came.  With them was Judas Iscariot.  Judas kissed Jesus to show the soldiers who He was.  The soldiers took Jesus prisoner. All of the other followers of Jesus ran away.

Jesus was taken to the high priest where he was questioned. He was accused of many things by false witnesses.  Finally, the high priest asked Jesus if he was the Son of God.  Jesus said it was true and that in the future he would come in the clouds.  The high priest then said that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy.

Since the Romans did not allow the Jewish authorities to kill anyone, Jesus was then brought to Pontius Pilate.  Pilate was the Roman governor. He also asked Jesus many questions.  Jesus didn't answer some of the questions, but he told Pilate that he was a king.  But he said that his kingdom was "not of this world".  Pilate wanted to release Jesus, but the crowd demanded instead that Jesus be crucified.  To prevent a riot, Pilate agreed to their demand.

Other
Scholars note that the reader receives an almost hour-by-hour account of what is happening.

References

Jesus
Gospels

Arrest and trial of Jesus


Thomas Henry Selby (May 14, 1820 – June 17, 1875) was an American politician and businessperson. He served as the 12th Mayor of San Francisco, from December 6, 1869 until December 3, 1871. He was the first Republican Mayor of San Francisco.

Biography
Thomas Henry Selby was born on May 14, 1820, in New York City, New York.

When he was 29 years old, Selby went to California for the California Gold Rush. He moved to San Francisco, California and became a merchant in the city. Selby built the Selby Shot Tower in San Francisco and founded the Selby Smelting Works.

He was then elected mayor and served from December 6, 1869, to December 3, 1871.

Selby died in San Francisco on June 17, 1875, of pneumonia. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

Family
Selby's daughter, Jeanie, married Faxon Dean Atherton Jr., a son of Atherton namesake Faxon Dean Atherton. His daughter Clair married Andrew Jackson Ralston, brother of William Chapman Ralston. His son, Prentiss, married Nattie Cofin of the Nantucket Cofins. His daughter, Cornelia, married Rear-Admiral  Louis Kempff of Belleville, Ill.

References

 The San Francisco Genealogy The History of San Mateo County by Phillip Alexander

1820 births
1875 deaths
Mayors of San Francisco
19th-century American politicians

Thomas Henry Selby


Sundre, in Alberta, is a rural town of about 2,000 in population. It is a half hour drive east of the Rocky Mountains. The mayor of Sundre is Annette Clews. Sundre is home to the Pro Rodeo. Sundre has one public Kindergarten to grade 8 school called River Valley School with Chinooks Edge School Division. And there is one public high school called Sundre High School. Sundre became a village in 1950 and a town in 1956.

Towns in Alberta

Sundre, Alberta


The Fraser Pass is a mountain pass in the British Columbian Rockies of Western Canada.  Its summit is  above sea level.  Although immediately adjacent to the Continental Divide, the pass does not cross it; rather, it bridges the drainage basins of the Fraser River and Columbia River, both Pacific-draining rivers.

The pass is drained to the north by the Fraser River, and a dripping spring just west of a pond at Fraser Pass is the source of British Columbia's longest river. The south side of the pass is drained by Hugh Allan Creek, which flows into Canoe Reach, the north arm of Kinbasket Lake that is the reservoir behind Mica Dam on the Columbia River.

Fraser Pass is difficult to reach. Access by foot requires about  of bushwhacking from the Yellowhead Highway near Lucerne Campground. The most feasible access is by a 25-minute helicopter flight from Valemount. Beautiful British Columbia Magazine first identified the source of the Fraser River during an expedition to Fraser Pass in 1985. Group tours by helicopter to the source of the Fraser are offered every few years by Wells Gray Tours.

See also
List of passes of the Rocky Mountains

References

Mountain passes of British Columbia
Canadian Rockies
Robson Valley

Fraser Pass


Lanthanum is a chemical element. It has the chemical symbol La. It has the atomic number 57. It is part of a group of chemical elements in the periodic table named the Lanthanides. It is a rare earth element. It is silvery white, malleable and ductile. It is soft and can be cut with a knife.

Lanthanides

Lanthanum


Lord of the Rings: Conquest is a video game based off the award-winning science-fiction movie The Lord of the Rings. It is a real-time strategy game. The game was produced by Pandemic Studios and published by EA Games. This game released on PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and a version was also released on Nintendo DS.

Gameplay

Playable classes
Warrior: A melee fighting unit. The warrior has three different attacks. Another attack is the ranged attack, is a throwing axe. There are also some special attacks, like the fire sword, and the "crowd-breaker" which is used when the character is blocking.
Scout: The scout also has three levels of attack. His long-ranged attack he throws a bomb, and he has two knives instead of a sword. He has invisibility and can back-stab people, which can kill them in one attack. The scout is good at killing trolls.
Archer: The archer cannot block attacks, instead he zooms in making it easier to aim. He has four attacks. One is that he has a poison arrow, which slowly decreases their health over time. The effect can be canceled if the character is healed. There is also the fire arrow, which does an enormous amount of damage by exploding upon impact.
Mage: They use magic to defeat their enemies. Their spells consist of lightning bolt, firewall, shield and healing. Lightning is a range attack that can take out single enemies, it can also be charged up and have it bounce from person to person. Fire wall is a spell that creates a circle of flame that damages the enemies if they go near it. The shield blocks certain kinds of attacks. The mage also has an attack where he can damage enemies with an earthquake.

Game modes
The player can choose between single player and multiplayer. The tutorial of the game is where the player will get trained in the moves of every unit class. It is set in the Battle of the Last Alliance, where elves and men have to fight against Sauron and his forces.

The game's "campaign" mode has 16 levels, 8 good and 8 evil, but the player must finish the good campaign before being able to unlock the evil one. The campaign's plot follows the movies closely. The campaign can be played in either single player or in multiplayer. It can also be set to 4 different difficulty modes: easy, normal, difficult or heroic.

"Instant action" is another playable mode. It allows the player about 16 different scenarios, plus 2 more downloadable ones. There are several different game types that can be played:
Team death match: makes the player have to kill as many enemies as possible.
Capture the ring: is where the player must take the ring of power to the enemy's base.
Conquest: the objective is to keep as many bases as possible for as long as possible.
Hero team death match: a variation of death match where the player exclusively uses heroes.

Instant action can also be played online with anybody else, whenever anybody is online. The campaign mode, however has to be played with a friend, someone that the player knows and has consciously added. This way, if the friend with the game is not online, then the campaign cannot be played.

References

Other websites
 The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Official Site

2009 video games
The Lord of the Rings
Real-time strategy video games
Nintendo DS games
PlayStation 3 games
Online games
Video games based on movies
Windows games
Xbox 360 games

Lord of the Rings: Conquest


Dean Cornwell (March 5, 1892 – December 4, 1960) was an American illustrator and muralist. His oil paintings were frequently featured in popular magazines and books as literary illustrations, advertisements, and posters promoting the war effort. Throughout the first half of the 20th century he was a dominant presence in American illustration. At the peak of his popularity he was nicknamed the "Dean of Illustrators".

Background
Cornwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Charles L. Cornwell, was a civil engineer whose drawings of industrial subjects fascinated Cornwell as a child. He began his professional career as a cartoonist for the Louisville Herald. Soon thereafter he moved to Chicago, where he studied at the Art Institute and worked for the Chicago Tribune. In 1915 he moved to New Rochelle, New York, a well known artist colony, and studied in New York City under Harvey Dunn at the Art Students League of New York. Eventually he traveled to London to study mural painting as an apprentice to Frank Brangwyn.

Cornwell's paintings were in Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, and Good Housekeeping magazines, illustrating the work of authors including Pearl S. Buck, Lloyd Douglas, Edna Ferber, Ernest Hemingway, W. Somerset Maugham, and Owen Wister. He painted murals for the Los Angeles Public Library, the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands, California, "The History of Transportation" in the Eastern Airlines Building (now 10 Rockefeller Plaza), executed Federal Art Project murals in two post offices, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Morganton, North Carolina, with other murals in the Warwick New York Hotel in New York City, the New England Telephone headquarters building in Boston, the Davidson County Courthouse and Sevier State Office Building in Tennessee, and the Centre William Rappard in Geneva, Switzerland. His mural for the Los Angeles Public Library was a rendering of the history of California.  Cornwell's Feb 1953 cover of a riverboat for True was later made into a US Postage stamp as part of the USPS's 2001 American Illustrators series.

Cornwell taught and lectured at the Art Students League in New York. He served as president of the Society of Illustrators from 1922 to 1926, and was elected to its Hall of Fame in 1959. In 1934, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1940. He served as president of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1953 to 1957.

Artist and illustrator James Montgomery Flagg said, "Cornwell is the illustrator par excellence-his work is approached by few and overtopped by none...he is a born artist."

Cornwell died on December 4, 1960, in New York City at the age of 68.

Examples of Cornwell's Work

Notes

References
 Anne-Leslie Owens, Dean Cornwell, The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
Telephone Men and Women at Work
Dean Cornwell: Dean of Illustrators, by Patricia Janis Broder, Hardcover 240 pages Publisher: Collectors Pr (October 1, 2000)

External links
Dean Cornwell collection at the National Museum of American Illustration
Works in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
Dean Cornwell artwork can be viewed at American Art Archives web site

1892 births
1960 deaths
20th-century American painters
American male painters
American muralists
Artists from Louisville, Kentucky
Artists from New Rochelle, New York
Art Students League of New York faculty
Art Students League of New York alumni
Painters from Kentucky
National Academy of Design members
People of the New Deal arts projects
American magazine illustrators
20th-century American male artists

Dean Cornwell


Captain is a military rank.

Captains are officers in an army.  In a navy, the commander of an entire ship is called "Captain" even if he is actually a lower rank. A Navy Captain rank is equal to the army rank of colonel. Another type of captain may command a merchant vessel or other ship that is not in a navy.

There are also captains in other uniformed organisations, including the police. A leader of a sports team is also called a captain, as well as the pilot of an airliner.

Military ranks
Law enforcement occupations
Ships

Captain


Duckboards are wooden walkways. They are usually put over muddy ground. Doing this means that people can walk on the dry duckboards instead of the muddy ground.

Hiking
Duckboards are used to allow hikers to walk over wet and/or muddy ground, like a swamp or shores of a lake. Very wide duckboards are used sometimes so that wheelchair users can use them. Duckboards can be nailed into logs with wooden stakes.

World War I
During World War I, duckboards were put along the ground of trenches on the Western Front. This is because the trenches usually flooded. Mud and water would stay in the trenches for months. The boards helped to keep the soldiers' feet dry. It also helped stop soldiers get a disease called trench foot. Trench foot is caused by standing on wet, muddy ground for a long time. They also helped soldiers move along the trenches faster. Sometimes, falling from duckboards could be deadly. Some unlucky soldiers drowned in mud because of their heavy equipment.

Other websites

World War I

Duckboards


Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) is a set of major research fellowships created by the European Union/European Commission to support research in the European Research Area (ERA). The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are among Europe's most competitive and prestigious research and innovation fellowships.

Established in 1996 as Marie Curie Actions and known since 2014 as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, they aim to foster the career development and further training of researchers at all career stages. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions promote interdisciplinary research and international collaborations, supporting scientists from not only within Europe but also across the globe.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are currently financed through the ninth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (called Horizon Europe) and belong to the so-called 'first pillar' of Horizon: "Excellent Science." Through this funding scheme, the European Research Executive Agency (REA) has devoted € 6,6 billion to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions between 2021 and 2027 (about 7% of all Horizon Europe Programme).

Since the launch of the programme in 1996, over 100,000 researchers had received MSCA grants by March 2017. To mark this milestone, the European Commission selected thirty highly-promising researchers (who achieved the highest evaluation scores in 2016) to showcase the EU's actions dedicated to excellence and worldwide mobility in research.

The eponymous Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish-French physicist and chemist, and the first female Nobel prize winner. The only person to win a Nobel Prize for contributions in two different sciences (physics and chemistry), she was also the first person — and only woman — to have been awarded a Nobel Prize twice.

Types of funding

Fellowships are awarded by the European Commission across scientific disciplines within the framework of Horizon Europe.

MSCA are grouped into the following schemes:
 Doctoral Networks (DN),
 Postdoctoral Fellowships (PF),
 Staff Exchanges (SE),
 Co-funding of regional, national and international programs involving mobility (COFUND),
 MSCA and Citizens.

See also
 Horizon Europe

References

Sources

External links
 UE website Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
 Marie Curie Alumni Association

Fellowships
Science and technology in Europe

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions


"The Horla" (French: Le Horla) is an 1887 short horror story written in the style of a journal by the French writer Guy de Maupassant, after an initial, much shorter version published in the newspaper Gil Blas, October 26, 1886.

The story has been cited as an inspiration for Lovecraft's  "The Call of Cthulhu", which also features an extraterrestrial being who influences minds and who is destined to conquer humanity.

The word horla itself is not French, and is a neologism. Charlotte Mandell, who has translated "The Horla" for publisher Melville House, suggests in an afterword that the word "horla" is a portmanteau of the French words hors ("outside"), and là ("there") and that "le horla" sounds like "the Outsider, the outer, the one Out There", and can be transliterally interpreted as "the 'what's out there'".

Summary
In the form of a journal, the narrator, an upper-class, unmarried, bourgeois man, conveys his troubled thoughts and feelings of anguish. This anguish occurs for four days after he sees a "superb three-mast" Brazilian ship and impulsively waves to it, unconsciously inviting the supernatural being aboard the boat to haunt his home.

All around him, he senses the presence of a being that he calls the "Horla". The torment that the Horla causes is first manifested physically: The narrator complains that he suffers from "an atrocious fever", and that he has trouble sleeping. He wakes up from nightmares with the chilling feeling that someone is watching him and "kneeling on [his] chest".

Throughout the short story, the main character's sanity, or rather, his feelings of alienation, are put into question as the Horla progressively dominates his thoughts. Initially, the narrator himself questions his sanity, exclaiming "Am I going mad?" after having found his glass of water empty, despite not having drunk from it. He later decides that he is not, in fact, going mad, since he is fully "conscious" of his "state" and that he could indeed "analyze it with the most complete lucidity." The presence of the Horla becomes more and more intolerable to the protagonist, as it is "watching ... looking at ... [and] dominating" him.

After reading about a large number of Brazilians who fled their homes, bemoaning the fact that "they are pursued, possessed, governed like human cattle by ... a species of vampire, which feeds on their life while they are asleep ... [and] drinks water", the narrator soon realizes the Horla was aboard the Brazilian three-mast boat that he had previously greeted. He feels so "lost" and "possessed" to the point that he is ready to kill the Horla. The narrator traps the Horla in a room and sets fire to the house, but forgets his servants, who perish in the fire. In the last lines of the story, faced with the persistence of the Horla's presence, he concludes suicide to be his only liberation.

Influences

Literature
"The Horla" is used as an extension of the plot in the short story "The Theater Upstairs" by Manly Wade Wellman. In Wellman's novel Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds (1975), Sherlock Holmes suggests to Professor Challenger that the events of "The Horla" might actually be true.
 The Bartimaeus Trilogy (2003–2010) features  as powerful spirits, who appear as shadowy apparitions that cause madness in humans similar to the titular Horla of the short story.
American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, in his survey "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927), provides his own interpretation of the story:

 "The Horla" is the inspiration for Robert Sheckley's short story "The New Horla" (2000) in his collection Uncanny Tales.
 Kingsley Amis's first novel Lucky Jim (1954, chapter 6) describes Jim Dixon, a guest lecturer at a university, waking in a guestroom owned by the senior colleague whose good will he is depending on to continue in his job the next academic year, discovering he has fallen asleep drunk, and burned holes through blankets and sheets and on a bedside table. "Had he done this all to himself? Or had a wayfarer, a burglar, camped out in his room? Or was he the victim of some Horla fond of tobacco?"

Popular culture

 The movie Diary of a Madman (1963) is loosely based on "The Horla".
 The Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold" (1967) features a Horla-like entity.
 Jean-Daniel Pollet directed a film adaptation called Le Horla in 1966.
 The CBS Radio Mystery Theater adapted the story for episode 044, originally aired on February 22, 1974.
 The Hall of Fantasy radio show aired an episode on September 5, 1952, called "The Shadow People", which makes reference to the Horla.
 "The Horla" (1947) is episode 8 of Peter Lorre's radio serial Mystery in the Air.
 "The Horla" was adapted for the syndicated radio program The Weird Circle.
 Horlas are mentioned or featured in several stories from the Tales of the Shadowmen series, including one story where a Horla is encountered by Solomon Kane.
 Tim Lucas has argued that "The Horla" is also an influence on Mario Bava's story "Telephone", featured in his film Black Sabbath (1963).
 "The Horla" is the title of a song from the British heavy metal band Angel Witch, appearing on their 2012 album As Above, So Below.
 The concept album D'Après Le Horla De Maupassant by Canadian progressive rock band The Box is based on "The Horla".
 The third track of French hip-hop artist Nekfeu's debut album, Feu, is entitled "Le Horla".

References

External links

 Full English text of "The Horla" second version (University of Virginia Electronic Text Center) (archived link)
 Full English text of "The Horla" (from East of the Web)
 Full French text of "Le Horla" (Project Gutenberg)
 Free audiobook : Le Horla (in French)
 The Horla starring Peter Lorre, Mystery in the Air, NBC radio, August 21, 1947

1887 short stories
Short stories by Guy de Maupassant
Horror short stories
Fiction with unreliable narrators
Short stories adapted into films
Fictional diaries
Works originally published in Gil Blas (periodical)

The Horla


David Ben-Gurion ( ;  ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel as well as the state's first prime minister. Born in Płońsk, then part of Congress Poland, to Polish Jewish parents, he immigrated to the Palestine region of the Ottoman Empire in 1906. Adopting the name of Ben-Gurion in 1909, he rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, which he led until 1963 with a short break in 1954–55.

Ben-Gurion's interest for Zionism developed early in his life, leading him to become a major Zionist leader and executive head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led the movement for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine.

On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. Under Ben-Gurion's leadership, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw the uniting of the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the expulsion and flight of a majority of the Palestinian Arab population. Subsequently, he became known as "Israel's founding father". Following the war, Ben-Gurion served as Israel's first prime minister and minister of defence. As prime minister, he helped build state institutions, presiding over national projects aimed at the development of the country. He also oversaw the absorption of Jewish immigrants. A major part of his foreign policy was improving relations with West Germany through a reparations agreement in compensation for Nazi confiscation of Jewish property during the Holocaust.

In 1954, he resigned as prime minister and minister of defence but remained a member of the Knesset. He returned as minister of defence in 1955 after the Lavon Affair and the resignation of Pinhas Lavon. Later that year he became prime minister again, following the 1955 elections. He led Israel's reprisal operations to Arab guerrilla attacks, and its invasion of Egypt along with Britain and France during the Suez Crisis in 1956. He stepped down from office in 1963, and retired from political life in 1970. He then moved to his modest "hut" in Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death. Posthumously, Ben-Gurion was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th century.

Early life

Childhood and education
David Ben-Gurion was born in Płońsk in Congress Polandthen part of the Russian Empire, to Polish Jewish parents. His father, Avigdor Grün, was a pokątnym doradcą (secret adviser), navigating his clients through the often corrupt Imperial legal system. Following the publication of Theodore Herzl's Der Judenstaat in 1896 Avigdor co-founded a Zionist group called Beni ZionChildren of Zion. In 1900 it had a membership of 200. David was the youngest of three boys with an older and younger sister. His mother, Scheindel (Broitman), died of sepsis following a stillbirth in 1897. It was her eleventh pregnancy. Two years later his father remarried. Ben-Gurion's birth certificate, found in Poland in 2003, indicated that he had a twin brother who died shortly after birth. Between the ages of five and 13 Ben-Gurion attended five different heders as well as compulsory Russian classes. Two of the heders were 'modern' and taught in Hebrew rather than Yiddish. His father could not afford to enroll Ben-Gurion in Płońsk's beth midrash so Ben-Gurion's formal education ended after his bar mitzvah. At the age of 14 he and two friends formed a youth club, Ezra, promoting Hebrew studies and emigration to the Holy Land. The group ran Hebrew classes for local youth and in 1903 collected funds for the victims of the Kishinev pogrom. One biographer writes that Ezra had 150 members within a year. A different source estimates the group never had more than "several dozen" members.

In 1904 Ben-Gurion moved to Warsaw where he hoped to enroll in the Warsaw Mechanical-Technical School founded by Hipolit Wawelberg. He did not have sufficient qualifications to matriculate and took work teaching Hebrew in a Warsaw heder. Inspired by Tolstoy he had become a vegetarian. He became involved in Zionist politics and in October 1905 he joined the clandestine Social-Democratic Jewish Workers' PartyPoalei Zion. Two months later he was the delegate from Płońsk at a local conference. While in Warsaw the Russian Revolution of 1905 broke out and he was in the city during the clamp down that followed; he was arrested twice, the second time he was held for two weeks and only released with the help of his father. In December 1905 he returned to Płońsk as a full-time Poalei Zion operative. There he worked to oppose the anti-Zionist Bund who were trying to establish a base. He also organised a strike over working conditions amongst garment workers. He was known to use intimidatory tactics, such as extorting money from wealthy Jews at gunpoint to raise funds for Jewish workers.

Ben-Gurion discussed his hometown in his memoirs, saying:

For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant.

In autumn of 1906 he left Poland to go to Palestine. He travelled with his sweetheart Rachel Nelkin and her mother, as well as Shlomo Zemach his comrade from Ezra. His voyage was funded by his father.

Ottoman Empire and Constantinople

Immediately on landing in Jaffa, 7 September 1906, Ben-Gurion set off, on foot, in a group of 14, to Petah Tikva. It was the largest of the 13 Jewish agricultural settlements and consisted of 80 households with a population of nearly 1,500; of these around 200 were Second Aliyah pioneers like Ben-Gurion. He found work as a day labourer, waiting each morning hoping to be chosen by an overseer. Jewish workers found it difficult competing with local villagers who were more skilled and prepared to work for less. Ben-Gurion was shocked at the number of Arabs employed. In November he caught malaria and the doctor advised he return to Europe. By the time he left Petah Tikva in summer of 1907 he had worked an average 10 days a month which frequently left him with no money for food. He wrote long letters in Hebrew to his father and friends. They rarely revealed how difficult life was. Others who had come from Płońsk were writing about tuberculosis, cholera and people dying of hunger.

On his disembarkation at Jaffa, Ben-Gurion had been spotted by Israel Shochat who had arrived two years previously and had established a group of around 25 Poale Zion followers. Shochat made a point of inspecting new arrivals looking for recruits. A month after his arrival at Petah Tikva, Shochat invited Ben-Gurion to attend the founding conference of the Jewish Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Land of Israel in Jaffa. The conference, 4–6 October 1906, was attended by 60 or so people. Shochat engineered the elections so that Ben-Gurion was elected onto the five-man Central Committee and the 10-man Manifesto Committee. He also arranged that Ben-Gurion was chosen as chairman of the sessions. These Ben-Gurion conducted in Hebrew, forbidding the translation of his address into Russian or Yiddish. The conference was divided: a large factionRostovianswanted to create a single Arab–Jewish proletariat. This Shochat and Ben-Gurion opposed. The conference delegated the Manifesto Committee the task of deciding the new party's objectives. They produced The Ramleh Program which was approved by a second smaller 15-man conference held in Jaffa the following January 1907. The program stated "the party aspires to political independence of the Jewish People in this country." All activities were to be conducted in Hebrew; there should be segregation of the Jewish and the Arab economies; and a Jewish trade union was to be established. Three members of the Central Committee resigned and Ben-Gurion and Shochat continued meeting weekly in Jaffa or Ben Shemen where Shochat was working. Ben-Gurion walked to the meetings from Petah Tikva until he moved to Jaffa where he gave occasional Hebrew lessons. His political activity resulted in the establishment of three small trade unions amongst some tailors, carpenters and shoemakers. He set up the Jaffa Professional Trade Union Alliance with 75 members. He and Shochat also brokered a settlement to a strike at the Rishon Le Zion winery where six workers had been sacked. After three months the two-man Central Committee was dissolved, partly because, at that time, Ben-Gurion was less militant than Shochat and the Rostovians. Ben-Gurion returned to Petah Tikva.

During this time Ben-Gurion sent a letter to Yiddish Kemfer ("The Jewish Fighter), a Yiddish newspaper in New York City. It was an appeal for funds and was the first time something written by Ben-Gurion was published.

The arrival of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi in April 1907 revitalised the local Poale Zion. Eighty followers attended a conference in May at which Ben-Zvi was elected onto a two-man Central Committee and all Ben-Gurion's policies were reversed: Yiddish, not Hebrew, was the language to be used; the future lay with a united Jewish and Arab proletariat. Further disappointment came when Ben-Zvi and Shochat were elected as representatives to go to the World Zionist Congress. Ben-Gurion came last of five candidates. He was not aware that at the next gathering, on Ben-Zvi's return, a secret para-military group was set upBar-Gioraunder Shochat's leadership. Distancing himself from Poale Zion activism Ben-Gurion, who had been a day-labourer at Kfar Saba, moved to Rishon Lezion where he remained for two months. He made detailed plans with which he tried to entice his father to come and be a farmer.

In October 1907, on Shlomo Zemach's suggestion, Ben-Gurion moved to Sejera. An agricultural training farm had been established at Sejera in the 1880s and since then a number of family-owned farms, moshavah, had been established forming a community of around 200 Jews. It was one of the most remote colonies in the foothills of north-eastern Galilee. It took the two young men three days to walk there. Coincidentally at the same time Bar Giora, now with about 20 members and calling themselves 'the collective' but still led by Shochat, took on the operating of the training farm. Ben-Gurion found work in the farm but, excluded from 'the collective', he later became a labourer for one of the moshav families. One of the first acts of 'the collective' was organising sacking of the farm's Circassian nightwatchman. As a result, shots were fired at the farms every night for several months. Guns were brought and the workforce armed. Ben-Gurion took turns patrolling the farm at night.

In the autumn of 1908 Ben-Gurion returned to Plonsk to be conscripted into the army and avoid his father facing a heavy fine. He immediately deserted and returned to Sejera, travelling, via Germany, with forged papers.

On 12 April 1909 two Jews from Sejera were killed in clashes with local Arabs following the death of a villager from Kfar Kanna, shot in an attempted robbery. There is little conformation of Ben-Gurion's accounts of his part in this event.

Later that summer, Ben-Gurion moved to Zichron Yaakov. From where the following spring he was invited, by Ben-Zvi, to join the staff of Paole Zion's new Hebrew periodical, Ha'ahdut (The Unity), which was being established in Jerusalem. They needed his fluency in Hebrew for translating and proof reading. It was the end of his career as a farm labourer. The first three editions came out monthly with an initial run of 1000 copies. It then became a weekly with a print run of 450 copies. He contributed 15 articles over the first year, using various pen names, eventually settling for Ben Gurion. The adopting of Hebrew names was common amongst those who remained during the Second Aliyah.  He chose Ben-Gurion after the historic Joseph ben Gurion.

In the spring of 1911, faced with the collapse of the Second Aliyah, Poale Zion's leadership decided the future lay in "Ottomanisation". Ben-Zvi, Manya and Israel Shochat announced their intention to move to Istanbul. Ben-Zvi and Shochat planned to study law; Ben-Gurion was to join them but first needed to learn Turkish, spending eight months in Salonika, at that time the most advanced Jewish community in the area. Whilst studying he had to conceal that he was Ashkanazi due to local Sephardic prejudices. Ben-Zvi obtained a forged secondary school certificate so Ben-Gurion could join him in Istanbul University. Ben-Gurion was entirely dependent on funding from his father, while Ben-Zvi found work teaching. Struggling with ill health, Ben-Gurion spent some time in hospital.

Ben-Gurion in America, 1915–1918

Ben-Gurion was at sea, returning from Istanbul, when the First World War broke out. He was not amongst the thousands of foreign nationals deported in December 1914. Based in Jerusalem he and Ben-Zvi recruited forty Jews into a Jewish militia to assist the Ottoman Army. Despite his pro-Ottoman declarations he was deported to Egypt in March 1915. From there he made his way to the United States, arriving in May. For the next four months Ben-Gurion and Ben Zvi embarked on a speaking tour planned to visit Poale Zion groups in 35 cities in an attempt to raise a pioneer army, Hechalutz, of 10,000 men to fight on the Ottoman side. The tour was a disappointment. Audiences were small; Poale Zion had fewer than 3,000 members, mostly in the New York area. Ben-Gurion was hospitalised with diphtheria for two weeks and spoke on only five occasions and was poorly received. Ben-Zvi spoke to 14 groups as well as an event in New York City and succeeded in recruiting 44 volunteers for Hechalutz; Ben-Gurion recruited 19. Ben-Gurion embarked on a second tour in December, speaking at 19 meetings, mostly in small towns with larger events in Minneapolis and Galveston. Due to the lack of awareness of Poale Zion's activities in Palestine it was decided to republish Yizkor in Yiddish. The Hebrew original was published in Jaffa in 1911; it consisted of eulogies to Zionist martyrs and included an account by Ben-Gurion of his Petah Tikva and Sejera experiences. The first edition appeared in February 1916 and was an immediate success; all 3,500 copies were sold. A second edition of 16,000 was published in August. Martin Buber wrote the introduction to the 1918 German edition. The follow-up was conceived as an anthology of work from Poale Zion leaders; in fact Ben-Gurion took over as editor, writing the introduction and two-thirds of the text. He suspended all his Paole Zion activities and spent most of the next 18 months in New York Public Library. Ben-Zvi, originally designated as co-editor, contributed a section on Jewish history in which he expounded the theory that the fellahin currently living in the area were descendants of pre-Roman conquest Jews. Eretz Israel – Past and Present was published in April 1918. It cost $2 and was 500 pages long, over twice the length of Yizkor. It was an immediate success, selling 7,000 copies in 4 months; second and third editions were printed. Total sales of 25,000 copies made a profit of $20,000 for Poale Zion. It made Ben-Gurion the most prominent Poale Zion leader in America.

In May 1918 Ben-Gurion joined the newly formed Jewish Legion of the British Army and trained at Fort Edward in Windsor, Nova Scotia. He volunteered for the 38th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, one of the four which constituted the Jewish Legion. His unit fought against the Ottomans as part of Chaytor's Force during the Palestine Campaign, though he remained in a Cairo hospital with dysentery. In 1918, after a period of guarding prisoners of war in the Egyptian desert, his battalion was transferred to Sarafand. On 13 December 1918 he was demoted from corporal to private, fined three days' pay and transferred to the lowest company in the battalion. He had been five days absent without leave visiting friends in Jaffa. He was demobilised in early 1919.

Marriage and family
One of Ben-Gurion's companions when he made the Aliyah was Rachel Nelkin. Her step-father, Reb Simcha Isaac, was the leading Zionist in Płońsk, and they had met three years previously at one of his meetings. It was expected that their relationship would continue when they landed in Jaffa but he shut her out after she was fired on her first day labouringmanuring the citrus groves of Petah Tikva.

Whilst in New York City in 1915, he met Russian-born Paula Munweis and they married in 1917. In November 1919, after an 18-month separation, Paula and their daughter Geula joined Ben-Gurion in Jaffa. It was the first time he met his one-year-old daughter. The couple had three children: a son, Amos, and two daughters, Geula Ben-Eliezer and Renana Leshem. Amos married Mary Callow, already pregnant with their first child. She was an Irish gentile, and although Reform rabbi Joachim Prinz converted her to Judaism soon after, neither the Palestine rabbinate nor her mother-in-law Paula Ben-Gurion considered her a real Jew until she underwent an Orthodox conversion many years later. Amos became Deputy Inspector-General of the Israel Police, and also the director-general of a textile factory. He and Mary had six granddaughters from their two daughters and a son, Alon, who married a Greek gentile. Geula had two sons and a daughter, and Renana, who worked as a microbiologist at the Israel Institute for Biological Research, had a son.

Zionist leadership between 1919 and 1948
After the death of theorist Ber Borochov, the left-wing and centrist factions of Poalei Zion split in February 1919, with Ben-Gurion and his friend Berl Katznelson leading the centrist faction of the Labor Zionist movement. The moderate Poalei Zion formed Ahdut HaAvoda with Ben-Gurion as leader in March 1919.

In 1920 he assisted in the formation of the Histadrut, the Zionist Labor Federation in Palestine, and served as its general secretary from 1921 until 1935. At Ahdut HaAvoda's 3rd Congress, held in 1924 at Ein Harod, Shlomo Kaplansky, a veteran leader from Poalei Zion, proposed that the party should support the British Mandatory authorities' plans for setting up an elected legislative council in Palestine. He argued that a Parliament, even with an Arab majority, was the way forward. Ben-Gurion, already emerging as the leader of the Yishuv, succeeded in getting Kaplansky's ideas rejected.

In 1930, Hapoel Hatzair (founded by A. D. Gordon in 1905) and Ahdut HaAvoda joined forces to create Mapai, the more moderate Zionist labour party (it was still a left-wing organisation, but not as far-left as other factions) under Ben-Gurion's leadership. In the 1940s the left-wing of Mapai broke away to form Mapam. Labor Zionism became the dominant tendency in the World Zionist Organization and in 1935 Ben-Gurion became chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency, a role he kept until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Ben-Gurion instigated a policy of restraint ("Havlagah") in which the Haganah and other Jewish groups did not retaliate for Arab attacks against Jewish civilians, concentrating only on self-defense. In 1937, the Peel Commission recommended partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas and Ben-Gurion supported this policy. This led to conflict with Ze'ev Jabotinsky who opposed partition and as a result Jabotinsky's supporters split with the Haganah and abandoned Havlagah.

The house where he lived from 1931 on, and for part of each year after 1953, is now a historic house museum in Tel Aviv, the "Ben-Gurion House". He also lived in London for some months in 1941.

In 1946, Ben-Gurion and North Vietnam's Politburo chairman Ho Chi Minh became very friendly when they stayed at the same hotel in Paris. Ho Chi Minh offered Ben-Gurion a Jewish home-in-exile in Vietnam. Ben-Gurion declined, telling Ho Chi Minh: "I am certain we shall be able to establish a Jewish Government in Palestine."

Views and opinions

Leninist views
According to his biographer Tom Segev, Ben-Gurion deeply admired Lenin and intended to be a 'Zionist Lenin'. In Ben-Gurion: A Political Life by Shimon Peres and David Landau, Peres recalls his first meeting with Ben-Gurion as a young activist in the No'ar Ha'Oved youth movement. Ben-Gurion gave him a lift, and out of the blue told him why he preferred Lenin to Trotsky: "Lenin was Trotsky's inferior in terms of intellect", but Lenin, unlike Trotsky, "was decisive". When confronted with a dilemma, Trotsky would do what Ben-Gurion despised about the old-style diaspora Jews: he manoeuvred; as opposed to Lenin, who would cut the Gordian knot, accepting losses while focusing on the essentials. In Peres' opinion, the essence of Ben-Gurion's life work were "the decisions he made at critical junctures in Israel's history", and none was as important as the acceptance of the 1947 partition plan, a painful compromise which gave the emerging Jewish state little more than a fighting chance, but which, according to Peres, enabled the establishment of the State of Israel.

1937 letter

The 1937 Ben-Gurion letter was written when he was head of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency, to his son Amos on 5 October 1937. The letter is well known to scholars as it provides insight into Ben-Gurion's reaction to the report of the Peel Commission released on 7 July of the same year. It has also been subject to significant debate by scholars as a result of scribbled-out text that may or may not provide written evidence of an intention to "expel the Arabs" or "not expel the Arabs" depending on one's interpretation of whether such deletion was intended by Ben-Gurion.

Role in 1948 exodus of Palestinians

Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that the idea of expulsion of Palestinian Arabs was endorsed in practice by mainstream Zionist leaders, particularly Ben-Gurion. He did not give clear or written orders in that regard, but Morris claims that Ben-Gurion's subordinates understood his policy well.

Attitude towards Arabs

Ben-Gurion published two volumes setting out his views on relations between Zionists and the Arab world: We and Our Neighbors, published in 1931, and My Talks with Arab Leaders published in 1967. Ben-Gurion believed in the equal rights of Arabs who remained in and would become citizens of Israel. He was quoted as saying, "We must start working in Jaffa. Jaffa must employ Arab workers. And there is a question of their wages. I believe that they should receive the same wage as a Jewish worker. An Arab has also the right to be elected president of the state, should he be elected by all."

Ben-Gurion recognised the strong attachment of Palestinian Arabs to the land. In an address to the United Nations on 2 October 1947, he doubted the likelihood of peace:

This is our native land; it is not as birds of passage that we return to it. But it is situated in an area engulfed by Arabic-speaking people, mainly followers of Islam. Now, if ever, we must do more than make peace with them; we must achieve collaboration and alliance on equal terms. Remember what Arab delegations from Palestine and its neighbors say in the General Assembly and in other places: talk of Arab-Jewish amity sound fantastic, for the Arabs do not wish it, they will not sit at the same table with us, they want to treat us as they do the Jews of Bagdad, Cairo, and Damascus.

Nahum Goldmann criticised Ben-Gurion for what he viewed as a confrontational approach to the Arab world. Goldmann wrote, "Ben-Gurion is the man principally responsible for the anti-Arab policy, because it was he who molded the thinking of generations of Israelis." Simha Flapan quoted Ben-Gurion as stating in 1938: "I believe in our power, in our power which will grow, and if it will grow agreement will come..."

Goldmann reported that Ben Gurion had told him in private in 1953:

In 1909, Ben-Gurion attempted to learn Arabic but gave up. He later became fluent in Turkish. The only other languages he was able to use when in discussions with Arab leaders were English, and to a lesser extent, French.

Attitude towards the British
The British 1939 White paper stipulated that Jewish immigration to Palestine was to be limited to 15,000 a year for the first five years, and would subsequently be contingent on Arab consent. Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs. After this Ben-Gurion changed his policy towards the British, stating: "Peace in Palestine is not the best situation for thwarting the policy of the White Paper". Ben-Gurion believed a peaceful solution with the Arabs had no chance and soon began preparing the Yishuv for war. According to Teveth "through his campaign to mobilize the Yishuv in support of the British war effort, he strove to build the nucleus of a 'Hebrew Army', and his success in this endeavor later brought victory to Zionism in the struggle to establish a Jewish state."

During the Second World War, Ben-Gurion encouraged the Jewish population to volunteer for the British Army. He famously told Jews to "support the British as if there is no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there is no war". About 10% of the Jewish population of Palestine volunteered for the British Armed Forces, including many women. At the same time Ben-Gurion assisted the illegal immigration of thousands of European Jewish refugees to Palestine during a period when the British placed heavy restrictions on Jewish immigration.

In 1944, the Irgun and Lehi, two Jewish right-wing armed groups, declared a rebellion against British rule and began attacking British administrative and police targets. Ben-Gurion and other mainstream Zionist leaders opposed armed action against the British, and after Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State in the Middle East, decided to stop it by force. While Lehi was convinced to suspend operations, the Irgun refused and as a result, the Haganah began supplying intelligence to the British enabling them to arrest Irgun members, and abducting and often torturing Irgun members, handing some over to the British while keeping others detained in secret Haganah prisons. This campaign, which was called the Saison or "Hunting Season", left the Irgun unable to continue operations as they struggled to survive. Irgun leader Menachem Begin ordered his fighters not to retaliate so as to prevent a civil war. The Saison became increasingly controversial in the Yishuv, including within the ranks of the Haganah, and it was aborted at the end of March 1945.

At the end of World War II, the Zionist leadership in Palestine had expected a British decision to establish a Jewish state. However, it became clear that the British had no intention of immediately establishing a Jewish state and that limits on Jewish immigration would remain for the time being. As a result, with Ben-Gurion's approval the Haganah entered into a secret alliance with the Irgun and Lehi called the Jewish Resistance Movement in October 1945 and participated in attacks against the British. In June 1946, the British launched Operation Agatha, a large police and military operation throughout Palestine, searching for arms and arresting Jewish leaders and Haganah members in order to stop the attacks and find documentary evidence of the alliance the British suspected existed between the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. The British had intended to detain Ben-Gurion during the operation but he was visiting Paris at the time. The British stored the documents they had captured from the Jewish Agency headquarters in the King David Hotel, which was being used as a military and administrative headquarters. Ben-Gurion agreed to the Irgun's plan to bomb the King David Hotel in order to destroy incriminating documents that Ben-Gurion feared would prove that the Haganah had been participating in the violent insurrection against the British in cooperation with the Irgun and Lehi with the approval of himself and other Jewish Agency officials. However, Ben-Gurion asked that the operation be delayed, but the Irgun refused. The Irgun carried out the King David Hotel bombing in July 1946, killing 91 people. Ben-Gurion publicly condemned the bombing. In the aftermath of the bombing, Ben-Gurion ordered that the Jewish Resistance Movement be dissolved. From then on, the Irgun and Lehi continued to regularly attack the British, but the Haganah rarely did so, and while Ben-Gurion along with other mainstream Zionist leaders publicly condemned the Irgun and Lehi attacks, in practice the Haganah under their direction rarely cooperated with the British in attempting to suppress the insurgency.

Due to the Jewish insurgency, bad publicity over the restriction of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, non-acceptance of a partitioned state (as suggested by the United Nations) amongst Arab leaders, and the cost of keeping 100,000 troops in Palestine the British Government referred the matter to the United Nations. In September 1947, the British decided to terminate the Mandate. In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution approving the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. While the Jewish Agency under Ben-Gurion accepted, the Arabs rejected the plan and the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine broke out. Ben-Gurion's strategy was for the Haganah to hold on to every position with no retreat or surrender and then launch an offensive when British forces had evacuated to such an extent that there would be no more danger of British intervention. This strategy was successful, and by May 1948 Jewish forces were winning the civil war. On 14 May 1948, a few hours before the British Mandate officially terminated, Ben-Gurion declared Israeli independence in a ceremony in Tel Aviv. A few hours later, the State of Israel officially came into being when the British Mandate terminated on 15 May. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War began immediately afterwards as numerous Arab nations then invaded Israel.

Attitude towards conquering the West Bank

After the ten-day campaign during the 1948 war, the Israelis were militarily superior to their enemies and the Cabinet subsequently considered where and when to attack next. On 24 September, an incursion made by the Palestinian irregulars in the Latrun sector, killing 23 Israeli soldiers, precipitated the debate. On 26 September, Ben-Gurion put his argument to the Cabinet to attack Latrun again and conquer the whole or a large part of West Bank. The motion was rejected by a vote of seven to five after discussions. Ben-Gurion qualified the cabinet's decision as  ("a source of lament for generations") considering Israel may have lost forever the Old City of Jerusalem.

There is a controversy around these events. According to Uri Bar-Joseph, Ben-Gurion placed a plan that called for a limited action aimed at the conquest of Latrun, and not for an all-out offensive. According to David Tal, in the cabinet meeting, Ben-Gurion reacted to what he had been just told by a delegation from Jerusalem. He points out that this view that Ben-Gurion had planned to conquer the West Bank is unsubstantiated in both Ben-Gurion's diary and in the Cabinet protocol.

The topic came back at the end of the 1948 war, when General Yigal Allon also proposed the conquest of the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state. This time, Ben-Gurion refused although he was aware that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest. He feared the reaction of Western powers and wanted to maintain good relations with the United States and not to provoke the British. Moreover, in his opinion the results of the war were already satisfactory and Israeli leaders had to focus on the building of a nation.

According to Benny Morris, "Ben-Gurion got cold feet during the war. ... If [he] had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country -the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion rather than a partial one- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

Religious parties and status quo
In order to prevent the coalescence of the religious right, the Histadrut agreed to a vague status quo agreement with Mizrahi in 1935.

Ben-Gurion was aware that world Jewry could and would only feel comfortable to throw their support behind the nascent state if it was shrouded with religious mystique. That would include an orthodox tacit acquiescence to the entity. Therefore, in September 1947 Ben-Gurion decided to reach a formal status quo agreement with the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party. He sent a letter to Agudat Yisrael stating that while being committed to establishing a non-theocratic state with freedom of religion, he promised that the Shabbat would be Israel's official day of rest, that in state-provided kitchens there would be access to kosher food, that every effort would be made to provide a single jurisdiction for Jewish family affairs, and that each sector would be granted autonomy in the sphere of education, provided minimum standards regarding the curriculum be observed. To a large extent this agreement provided the framework for religious affairs in Israel till the present day, and is often used as a benchmark regarding the arrangement of religious affairs in Israel.

Religious belief
Ben-Gurion described himself as an irreligious person who developed atheism in his youth and who demonstrated no great sympathy for the elements of traditional Judaism, though he quoted the Bible extensively in his speeches and writings. Modern Orthodox philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz considered Ben-Gurion "to have hated Judaism more than any other man he had met". He was proud of the fact that he had only set foot in a synagogue once in Israel, worked on Yom Kippur and ate pork. In later time, Ben-Gurion refused to define himself as "secular", and he regarded himself a believer in God. In a 1970 interview, he described himself as a pantheist, and stated that "I don't know if there's an afterlife. I think there is." During an interview with the leftist weekly Hotam two years before his death, he revealed, "I too have a deep faith in the Almighty. I believe in one God, the omnipotent Creator. My consciousness is aware of the existence of material and spirit ... [But] I cannot understand how order reigns in nature, in the world and universeunless there exists a superior force. This supreme Creator is beyond my comprehension . . . but it directs everything."

In a letter to the writer Eliezer Steinman, he wrote "Today, more than ever, the 'religious' tend to relegate Judaism to observing dietary laws and preserving the Sabbath. This is considered religious reform. I prefer the Fifteenth Psalm, lovely are the psalms of Israel. The Shulchan Aruch is a product of our nation's life in the Exile. It was produced in the Exile, in conditions of Exile. A nation in the process of fulfilling its every task, physically and spiritually ... must compose a 'New Shulchan'—and our nation's intellectuals are required, in my opinion, to fulfill their responsibility in this."

Military leadership

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Ben-Gurion oversaw the nascent state's military operations. During the first weeks of Israel's independence, he ordered all militias to be replaced by one national army, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). To that end, Ben-Gurion used a firm hand during the Altalena Affair, a ship carrying arms purchased by the Irgun led by Menachem Begin. He insisted that all weapons be handed over to the IDF. When fighting broke out on the Tel Aviv beach he ordered it be taken by force and to shell the ship. Sixteen Irgun fighters and three IDF soldiers were killed in this battle. Following the policy of a unified military force, he also ordered that the Palmach headquarters be disbanded and its units be integrated with the rest of the IDF, to the chagrin of many of its members. By absorbing the Irgun force into Israel's IDF, the Israelis eliminated competition and the central government controlled all military forces within the country. His attempts to reduce the number of Mapam members in the senior ranks led to the "Generals' Revolt" in June 1948.

As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, Ben-Gurion was de facto leader of the Jewish population even before the state was declared. In this position, Ben-Gurion played a major role in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. When the IDF archives and others were opened in the late 1980s, scholars started to reconsider the events and the role of Ben-Gurion.

Plan Dalet

Plan Dalet was a plan worked out by the Haganah in Mandatory Palestine in March 1948, requested by Ben Gurion, consisting of a set of guidelines to take control of Mandatory Palestine, declare a Jewish state, and defend its borders and people, including the Jewish population outside of the borders, "before, and in anticipation of" the invasion by regular Arab armies. According to the Israeli Yehoshafat Harkabi, Plan Dalet called for the conquest of Arab towns and villages inside and along the borders of the area allocated to the proposed Jewish State in the UN Partition Plan. In case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule.

The intent of Plan Dalet is subject to much controversy, with historians on one side asserting that it was entirely defensive , while other historians assert that the plan aimed at the expulsion, sometimes called an ethnic cleansing , on the grounds that this was an integral part of a planned strategy.

Founding of Israel

On 14 May 1948, on the last day of the British Mandate, Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel. In the Israeli declaration of independence, he stated that the new nation would "uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race".

In his War Diaries in February 1948, Ben-Gurion wrote: "The war shall give us the land. The concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war." Also later he confirmed this by stating that, "In the Negev we shall not buy the land. We shall conquer it. You forget that we are at war." The Arabs, meanwhile, also vied with Israel over the control of territory by means of war, while the Jordanian Arab Legion had decided to concentrate its forces in Bethlehem and in Hebron in order to save that district for its Arab inhabitants, and to prevent territorial gains for Israel. Israeli historian Benny Morris has written of the massacres of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, and has stated that Ben-Gurion "covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

First tenure as prime minister
After leading Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Ben-Gurion was elected Prime Minister of Israel when his Mapai (Labour) party won the largest number of Knesset seats in the first national election, held on 14 February 1949. He remained in that post until 1963, except for a period of nearly two years between 1954 and 1955. As prime minister, he oversaw the establishment of the state's institutions. He presided over various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country and its population: Operation Magic Carpet, the airlift of Jews from Arab countries, the construction of the National Water Carrier, rural development projects and the establishment of new towns and cities. In particular, he called for pioneering settlement in outlying areas, especially in the Negev. Ben-Gurion saw the struggle to make the Negev desert bloom as an area where the Jewish people could make a major contribution to humanity as a whole. He believed that the sparsely populated and barren Negev desert offered a great opportunity for the Jews to settle in Palestine with minimal obstruction of the Arab population, and set a personal example by settling in kibbutz Sde Boker at the center of the Negev.

Reprisal operations

During this period, Palestinian fedayeen repeatedly infiltrated into Israel from Arab territory. In 1953, after a handful of unsuccessful retaliatory actions, Ben-Gurion charged Ariel Sharon, then security chief of the northern region, with setting up a new commando unit designed to respond to fedayeen infiltrations. Ben-Gurion told Sharon, "The Palestinians must learn that they will pay a high price for Israeli lives." Sharon formed Unit 101, a small commando unit answerable directly to the IDF General Staff tasked with retaliating for fedayeen raids. During its five months of existence, the unit launched repeated raids against military targets and villages used as bases by the fedayeen. These attacks became known as the reprisal operations. One such operation gained international condemnation of Israel, after an Israeli army attack on the village of Qibya in the then Jordanian-ruled West Bank, ended with a massacre of 69 Palestinian villagers, two thirds of them women and children. Ben Gurion denied involvement of the army and placed blame on Israeli civilians, a fabrication which was repeated by him at the UN. He was seen as having protected involved subordinates in the military from accountability.

Acting prime minister
In 1953, Ben-Gurion announced his intention to withdraw from government and was replaced by Moshe Sharett, who was elected the second Prime Minister of Israel in January 1954. However, Ben-Gurion temporarily served as acting prime minister when Sharett visited the United States in 1955. During Ben-Gurion's tenure as acting prime minister, the IDF carried out Operation Olive Leaves, a successful attack on fortified Syrian emplacements near the northeastern shores of the Sea of Galilee. The operation was a response to Syrian attacks on Israeli fishermen. Ben-Gurion had ordered the operation without consulting the Israeli cabinet and seeking a vote on the matter, and Sharett would later bitterly complain that Ben-Gurion had exceeded his authority.

Second tenure as prime minister

Ben-Gurion returned to government in 1955. He assumed the post of defence minister and was soon re-elected prime minister. When he returned to government, Israeli forces began responding more aggressively to Egyptian-sponsored Palestinian guerrilla attacks from Gaza, which was under Egyptian rule. Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser signed the Egyptian-Czech arms deal and purchased a large amount of modern arms. The Israelis responded by arming themselves with help from France. Nasser blocked the passage of Israeli ships through the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Canal. In July 1956, the United States and Britain withdrew their offer to fund the Aswan High Dam project on the Nile and a week later, Nasser ordered the nationalisation of the French and British-controlled Suez Canal. In late 1956, the bellicosity of Arab statements prompted Israel to remove the threat of the concentrated Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. Other Israeli aims were elimination of the fedayeen incursions into Israel that made life unbearable for its southern population, and opening the blockaded Straits of Tiran for Israeli ships. Israel occupied much of the peninsula within a few days. As agreed beforehand, within a couple of days, Britain and France invaded too, aiming at regaining Western control of the Suez Canal and removing the Egyptian president Nasser. The United States pressure forced the British and French to back down and Israel to withdraw from Sinai in return for free Israeli navigation through the Red Sea. The United Nations responded by establishing its first peacekeeping force, (UNEF).  It was stationed between Egypt and Israel and for the next decade it maintained peace and stopped the fedayeen incursions into Israel.

In 1959, Ben-Gurion learned from West German officials of reports that the notorious Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, was likely living in hiding in Argentina. In response, Ben-Gurion ordered the Israel foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, to capture the international fugitive alive for trial in Israel. In 1960, the mission was accomplished and Eichmann was tried and convicted in an internationally publicised trial for various offences including crimes against humanity, and was subsequently executed in 1962.

Ben-Gurion is said to have been "nearly obsessed" with Israel's obtaining nuclear weapons, feeling that a nuclear arsenal was the only way to counter the Arabs' superiority in numbers, space, and financial resources, and that it was the only sure guarantee of Israel's survival and the prevention of another Holocaust. During his final months as premier Ben-Gurion was engaged in a, now declassified, diplomatic standoff with the United States.

Ben-Gurion stepped down as prime minister on 16 June 1963. According to historian Yechiam Weitz, when he unexpectedly resigned:

He was asked to reconsider his decision by the cabinet. The country, however, seemed to have anticipated his move and, unlike the response to his resignation in 1953, no serious efforts were made to dissuade him from resigning.... [His reasons include] his political isolation, suspicion of colleagues and rivals, apparent inability to interact with the full spectrum of reality, and belief that his life's work was disintegrating. His resignation was not an act of farewell but another act of his personal struggle and possibly an indication of his mental state.

Ben-Gurion chose Levi Eshkol as his successor. A year later a bitter rivalry developed between the two on the issue of the Lavon Affair, a failed 1954 Israeli covert operation in Egypt. Ben-Gurion had insisted that the operation be properly investigated, while Eshkol refused. After failing to unseat Eshkol as Mapai party leader in the 1965 Mapai leadership election, Ben-Gurion subsequently broke with Mapai in June 1965 and formed a new party, Rafi, while Mapai merged with Ahdut HaAvoda to form Alignment, with Eshkol as its head. Alignment defeated Rafi in the November 1965 election, establishing Eshkol as the country's leader.

Later political career

In May 1967, Egypt began massing forces in the Sinai Peninsula after expelling UN peacekeepers and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. This, together with the actions of other Arab states, caused Israel to begin preparing for war. The situation lasted until the outbreak of the Six-Day War on 5 June. In Jerusalem, there were calls for a national unity government or an emergency government. During this period, Ben-Gurion met with his old rival Menachem Begin in Sde Boker. Begin asked Ben-Gurion to join Eshkol's national unity government. Although Eshkol's Mapai party initially opposed the widening of its government, it eventually changed its mind. On 23 May, IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin met with Ben-Gurion to ask for reassurance. Ben-Gurion, however, accused Rabin of putting Israel in mortal danger by mobilising the reserves and openly preparing for war with an Arab coalition. Ben-Gurion told Rabin that at the very least, he should have obtained the support of a foreign power, as he had done during the Suez Crisis. Rabin was shaken by the meeting and took to bed for 36 hours.

After the Israeli government decided to go to war, planning a preemptive strike to destroy the Egyptian Air Force followed by a ground offensive, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told Ben-Gurion of the impending attack on the night of 4–5 June. Ben-Gurion subsequently wrote in his diary that he was troubled by Israel's impending offensive. On 5 June, the Six-Day War began with Operation Focus, an Israeli air attack that decimated the Egyptian air force. Israel then captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria in a series of campaigns. Following the war, Ben-Gurion was in favour of returning all the captured territories apart from East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Mount Hebron as part of a peace agreement.

On 11 June, Ben-Gurion met with a small group of supporters in his home. During the meeting, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan proposed autonomy for the West Bank, the transfer of Gazan refugees to Jordan, and a united Jerusalem serving as Israel's capital. Ben-Gurion agreed with him, but foresaw problems in transferring Palestinian refugees from Gaza to Jordan, and recommended that Israel insist on direct talks with Egypt, favouring withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace and free navigation through the Straits of Tiran. The following day, he met with Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in his Knesset office. Despite occupying a lower executive position, Ben-Gurion treated Kollek like a subordinate.

Following the Six-Day War, Ben-Gurion criticised what he saw as the government's apathy towards the construction and development of the city. To ensure that a united Jerusalem remained in Israeli hands, he advocated a massive Jewish settlement program for the Old City and the hills surrounding the city, as well as the establishment of large industries in the Jerusalem area to attract Jewish migrants. He argued that no Arabs would have to be evicted in the process. Ben-Gurion also urged extensive Jewish settlement in Hebron.

In 1968, when Rafi merged with Mapai to form the Alignment, Ben-Gurion refused to reconcile with his old party. He favoured electoral reforms in which a constituency-based system would replace what he saw as a chaotic proportional representation method. He formed another new party, the National List, which won four seats in the 1969 election.

Final years and death
Ben-Gurion retired from politics in 1970 and spent his last years living in a modest home on the kibbutz, working on an 11-volume history of Israel's early years. In 1971, he visited Israeli positions along the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition.

On 18 November 1973, shortly after the Yom Kippur War, Ben-Gurion suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and was taken to Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer, Ramat Gan. His condition began deteriorating on 23 November and he died a few days later, on 1 December. His body lay in state in the Knesset compound before being flown by helicopter to Sde Boker. Sirens sounded across the country to mark his death. He was buried alongside his wife Paula at Midreshet Ben-Gurion.

Awards
 In 1949, Ben-Gurion was awarded the Solomon Bublick Award of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in recognition of his contributions to the State of Israel.
 In both 1951 and 1971, he was awarded the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought.

Commemoration
 Israel's largest airport, Ben Gurion International Airport, is named in his honour.
 One of Israel's major universities, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, located in Beersheva, is named after him.
 Numerous streets, as well as schools, throughout Israel have been named after him.
 An Israeli modification of the British Centurion Tank was named after Ben-Gurion
 Ben-Gurion's Hut in Kibbutz Sde Boker which is now a visitors' center.
 A desert research center, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, near his "hut" in Kibbutz Sde Boker has been named in his honour. Ben-Gurion's grave is in the research center.
 An English Heritage blue plaque, unveiled in 1986, marks where Ben-Gurion lived in London at 75 Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, W9.
 In the 7th arrondissement of Paris, part of a riverside promenade of the Seine is named after him.
 His portrait appears on both the 500 lirot and the 50 (old) sheqalim notes issued by the Bank of Israel.

See also
 Ben Gurion Canal Project
 Jewish Agency for Israel
 List of Bialik Prize recipients
 Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany

References

Further reading

 Aronson, Shlomo. "Leadership, preventive war and territorial expansion: David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol." Israel Affairs 18.4 (2012): 526–545.
 Aronson, Shlomo. "David Ben-Gurion and the British Constitutional Model." Israel Studies 3.2 (1998): 193–214. online
 Aronson, Shlomo. "David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol and the Struggle over Dimona: A Prologue to the Six-Day War and its (Un) Anticipated Results." Israel Affairs 15.2 (2009): 114–134.
 .
 Cohen, Mitchell. "Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel" (Columbia University Press, 1987)
 Eldar, Eran. "David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir: from partnership to enmity" . Israel Affairs 26.2 (2020): 174–182.
 Friling, Tuvia, and Ora Cummings. Arrows in the Dark: David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv Leadership, and Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust (2 vol.; University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).
 Gal, Allon. David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State (Indiana UP, 1991).
 Getzoff, Joseph F. "Zionist frontiers: David Ben-Gurion, labor Zionism, and transnational circulations of settler development." Settler Colonial Studies 10.1 (2020): 74–93.
 Kedar, Nir. David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy (Indiana UP, 2021).
 Oren, Michael B. "Ambivalent Adversaries: David Ben-Gurion and Israel vs. the United Nations and Dag Hammarskjold, 1956–57." Journal of Contemporary History 27.1 (1992): 89–127.
 Pappe, Ilan. "Moshe Sharett, David Ben‐Gurion and the 'Palestinian option,' 1948–1956." Studies in Zionism 7.1 (1986): 77–96.
 Peres, Shimon. Ben-Gurion (Schocken Pub.,  2011) .
 Reynold, Nick. The War of the Zionist Giants: David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
 Rosenberg-Friedman, Lilach. "David Ben-Gurion and the 'Demographic Threat': His Dualistic Approach to Natalism, 1936–63." Middle Eastern Studies 51.5 (2015): 742–766.
 Sachar, Howard Morley. A history of Israel: From the rise of Zionism to our time (Knopf, 2007).
 St. John, Robert William. Builder of Israel; the story of Ben-Gurion, (Doubleday, 1961) online
 Segev, Tom. A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) Finalist for 2019 National Jewish Book Award.
 Shatz, Adam, "We Are Conquerors" (review of Tom Segev, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, Head of Zeus, 2019, 804 pp., ), London Review of Books, vol. 41, no. 20 (24 October 2019), pp. 37–38, 40–42. "Segev's biography... shows how central exclusionary nationalism, war and racism were to Ben-Gurion's vision of the Jewish homeland in Palestine, and how contemptuous he was not only of the Arabs but of Jewish life outside Zion. Liberal Jews may look at the state that Ben-Gurion built, and ask if the cost has been worth it." (p. 42 of Shatz's review.)

 Shapira, Anita. Ben-Gurion (Yale UP, 2014).
 Shiff, Ofer. "Abba Hillel Silver and David Ben‐Gurion: A Diaspora Leader Challenges the Revered Status of the 'Founding Father'" Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10.3 (2010): 391–412.
 Weitz, Yechiam. "The Founding Father and the General: David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan." Middle Eastern Studies 47.6 (2011): 845–861.
 Witzthum, David. "David Ben-Gurion and Konrad Adenauer: Building a Bridge across the Abyss." Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 13.2 (2019): 223–237.
 Zweig, Ronald W. David Ben-Gurion: Politics and Leadership in Israel (Routledge, 2013).

Historiography
 Keren, Michael. "Biography and Historiography: The Case of David Ben-Gurion." Biography (2000): 332–351. .

External links

 Special Report David Ben-Gurion BBC News
 "David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973)" Jewish Agency for Israel
 David Ben-Gurion's Personal Correspondence and Historical Documents Shapell Manuscript Foundation
 Annotated bibliography for David Ben-Gurion from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
 March 2011 Ben-Gurion and Tewfik Toubi finally meet (28 October 1966)
 David Ben-Gurion personal manuscripts

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David Ben-Gurion


The South Suburban Co-operative Society (SSCS) was a co-operative retailer in south London, Surrey and Kent, England. It became part of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, now the Co-operative Group.

The SSCS came into existence in 1918 with the amalgamation of the Croydon (formed 1887), Bromley and Crays (formed 1882 and 1870) and Penge and Beckenham (formed 1879) Societies. In 1930, SSCS merged with the Reigate Industrial and Provident Society, followed by the Tonbridge Industrial Society in 1938.

In May 1947, a  sports centre was opened at Beckenham and in May 1949 employees were accorded full membership rights.

The SSCS registered office was at 99 London Road, Croydon, Surrey, where it remained until it merged with the Co-operative Wholesale Society on 28 July 1984. Following the merger of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society (RACS) with CWS in February 1985, administration of both the SSCS and RACS was moved to Woolwich on 6 May 1985. The London Road offices closed on 17 May 1985 and moved to 18 Blackhorse Lane, Addiscombe until later that year.

Co-operative education was an important part of the SSCS philosophy and in 1920 an Education Department was formed to arrange numerous educational, cultural and social activities and events. It became very influential in both local and national co-operative educational affairs.

The SSCS financially supported a local Co-operative Party Committee, which initiated and sponsored local political candidates and events.

The merger with CWS saw the SSCS operating shops and services over an area of  of eastern Surrey and western Kent. In its last full trading year, the SSCS had a turnover of £47m, share capital of £1.7m, membership of 167,000, and 1,100 staff.

References
Looking Back..., South East region, Co-operative Wholesale Society Membership & Education Dept., July 1992.

Former co-operatives of the United Kingdom
History of the London Borough of Croydon
History of Surrey
Defunct department stores of the United Kingdom
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Retail companies established in 1918

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South Suburban Co-operative Society


José Ignacio Álvarez Thomas (15 February 1787 – 20 July 1857) was a South American military commander and politician of the early 19th century.

Biography
Álvarez Thomas was born in Arequipa, Peru, and his family lived for some time in Lima. When his father, who was in Spanish service, was called back to Madrid in 1797, they travelled via Buenos Aires. The family stayed there while his father continued the voyage alone, and Álvarez joined the army in 1799. Subsequently, he got heavily involved in the independence war in Argentina.

In the war against the British in 1806/07, he was wounded and captured, and released only after the withdrawal of the British troops. Under Carlos María de Alvear, he fought as a colonel at Montevideo, where he was awarded a medal. However, soon after he openly opposed the politics of de Alvear's government, and his insurrection caused the resignation of the latter and resulted in a new election of a Supreme Director in the Constituting General Assembly, where he was designated interim Supreme Director from 20 April 1815, to 16 April 1816, in place of the elected José Rondeau, who was absent on a military campaign in Peru. Álvarez was sworn in on 6 May but had to resign a year later after some military failures. When the Constituting General Assembly was dissolved in 1820, he was, as a still-influential member of the former leadership, sent to prison, but released after 19 days. Subsequently, his political influence was greatly diminished.

In 1825, he was named ambassador in Peru, and in October also named ambassador to Chile. After his return to Buenos Aires, he was exiled and also spent some time in prison for his opposition against the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. He emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, from where he tried to mount an insurrection against Rosas in 1840. In 1846, he fled first the Chile and then Peru, before returning to Buenos Aires after the fall of Rosas government in 1852.

He died likely of tuberculosis on 20 July 1857, in Buenos Aires in Argentina at the age of 70.

References

External links

1787 births
1857 deaths
People from Arequipa
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Ignacio Álvarez Thomas


The franc (ISO 4217 code MGF) was the currency of Madagascar until 1 January 2005. It was subdivided into 100 centimes. In Malagasy the corresponding term for the franc is iraimbilanja, and five Malagasy francs is called ariary.

History
The first francs to circulate in Madagascar were French francs. These were supplemented during the First World War by emergency issues, including issues of postage stamps fixed to pieces of card in denominations of 0.05 up to 2 francs.

The Banque de Madagascar was created on 1 July 1925 by the French government. The currency was issued by the government-owned Banque de Madagascar and was pegged at par to the French franc. Only banknotes were issued with French coins continuing to circulate. When the Comoro Islands became a separate French territory, the name of the issuing bank was changed to Banque de Madagascar et des Comores. The Madagascar-Comores CFA franc (XMCF) replaced the franc of Madagascar on 26 December 1945, with the creation of the other CFA francs. The CFA franc was worth 1.7 French francs until 1948 when a devaluation of the French currency increased the rate to 1 CFA franc = 2 French francs. When the new French franc was introduced in 1960, the rate became 1 CFA franc = 0.02 French francs.

After independence from France, the privilege to issue banknotes was transferred to the Institut d'Émission Malgache on 31 December 1961. The CFA franc was replaced by the Malagasy franc on 1 July 1963. It was pegged to the French franc with the same value as the CFA franc (1 FRF = 50 MGF), guaranteed by the French treasury. Denominations were given both in francs and ariary, with 5 francs = 1 ariary. Madagascar left the CFA franc zone in 1972 and the Malagasy franc was declared inconvertible. Banknotes were issued by the Institut d'Émission Malgache until 1974 when the Banque Centrale de Madagascar (Central Bank of Madagascar) took over that function.

The peg to the French franc was kept until 1982 when a series of devaluations began. Finally, the franc was floated freely in May 1994. On 1 June 1995 the exchange rate had dropped to 1 FRF = 777 MGF. On 1 January 2005 it was replaced by the ariary at a rate of 5 francs to the ariary. By then, the exchange rate was 1 EUR = 11,531 MGF (with one euro = 6.55957 FRF).

Coins

The first Malagasy coins were issued in 1943 by the Free French. These were bronze 50 centime and 1 franc coins bearing the Cross of Lorraine symbol. In 1948, aluminum 1 and 2 franc coins were introduced, followed by aluminum 5 francs and aluminum bronze 10 and 20 francs in 1953.

From 1965, coins were issued denominated in both francs and ariary.

Banknotes

Following emergency issues between 1914 and 1917 related to the availability of 5, 10 and 20 franc notes, distinct Malagasy notes were introduced in 1925 in denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 1000 francs. The lower three denominations were replaced by coins in the 1940s and 50s, with 5000 franc notes introduced in 1950.

From 1961, banknotes were issued denominated in both francs and ariary. Following France's switch to the euro, Madagascar decided it was time to phase out the franc as well. While still denominated in both ariary and francs, on notes issued since 31 July 2003, the former is emphasized with larger fonts and predominant placement. Beginning in 2007, new notes no longer contain references to the franc as a currency and are instead denominated solely in ariary, which replaced the franc as the official currency of Madagascar on 1 January 2005, at a rate of 5 francs per ariary.

References

External links

  Central Bank of Madagascar web site
History of Malagasy currencies
  Les Monnaies à Madagascar (PDF)
 Historical banknotes of Madagascar

Currencies of Africa
Currencies of Madagascar
History of Madagascar
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1925 establishments in the French colonial empire
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Malagasy franc


A protagonist is the main character of a story. It can be used for any kind of story: in literature, a movie, a television show or a play. The protagonist is also called the central character or main character and is often the hero of the story. However, the protagonist does not always win and survive in a story.

Protagonists are usually moral and benevolent, helping other characters to change their badness to become good again, or defeating the bad characters. This is not always the case. For example, the protagonists in Psycho and Lolita are (respectively) a serial killer and a pedophile.

The protagonist's name can sometimes be in the title of the fiction he or she is in, for example:
In Harry Potter, Harry Potter is the protagonist.
In the anime Naruto and InuYasha, Naruto and Inuyasha are the protagonists.
In the tragedy Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the prince Hamlet himself is the protagonist of the story.
In DC Comics, Batman is the protagonist.
In Marvel Comics, Spider-Man is the protagonist.
In the Mario Games, Mario is the protagonist.
In the Sonic Games, Sonic is the protagonist.
In Stranger Things,Eleven is the protagonist

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Protagonist


A centrifugal governor is a specific type of governor with a feedback system that controls the speed of an engine by regulating the flow of fuel or working fluid, so as to maintain a near-constant speed. It uses the principle of proportional control.

Centrifugal governors, also known as "centrifugal regulators" and "fly-ball governors", were invented by Christiaan Huygens and used to regulate the distance and pressure between millstones in windmills in the 17th century. In 1788, James Watt adapted one to control his steam engine where it regulates the admission of steam into the cylinder(s), a development that proved so important he is sometimes called the inventor. Centrifugal governors' widest use was on steam engines during the Steam Age in the 19th century. They are also found on stationary internal combustion engines and variously fueled turbines, and in some modern striking clocks.

A simple governor does not maintain an exact speed but a speed range, since under increasing load the governor opens the throttle as the speed (RPM) decreases.

Operation

The devices shown are on steam engines. Power is supplied to the governor from the engine's output shaft by a belt or chain connected to the lower belt wheel. The governor is connected to a throttle valve that regulates the flow of working fluid (steam) supplying the prime mover.  As the speed of the prime mover increases, the central spindle of the governor rotates at a faster rate, and the kinetic energy of the balls increases.  This allows the two masses on lever arms to move outwards and upwards against gravity. If the motion goes far enough, this motion causes the lever arms to pull down on a thrust bearing, which moves a beam linkage, which reduces the aperture of a throttle valve. The rate of working-fluid entering the cylinder is thus reduced and the speed of the prime mover is controlled, preventing over-speeding.

Mechanical stops may be used to limit the range of throttle motion, as seen near the masses in the image at right.

Non-gravitational regulation
A limitation of the two-arm, two-ball governor is its reliance on gravity, and that the governor must stay upright relative to the surface of the Earth for gravity to retract the balls when the governor slows down.

Governors can be built that do not use gravitational force, by using a single straight arm with weights on both ends, a center pivot attached to a spinning axle, and a spring that tries to force the weights towards the center of the spinning axle. The two weights on opposite ends of the pivot arm counterbalance any gravitational effects, but both weights use centrifugal force to work against the spring and attempt to rotate the pivot arm towards a perpendicular axis relative to the spinning axle.

Spring-retracted non-gravitational governors are commonly used in single-phase alternating current (AC) induction motors to turn off the starting field coil when the motor's rotational speed is high enough.

They are also commonly used in snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle (ATV) continuously variable transmissions (CVT), both to engage/disengage vehicle motion and to vary the transmission's pulley diameter ratio in relation to the engine revolutions per minute.

History

Centrifugal governors were invented by Christiaan Huygens and used to regulate the distance and pressure between millstones in windmills in the 17th century.

James Watt designed his first governor in 1788 following a suggestion from his business partner Matthew Boulton. It was a conical pendulum governor and one of the final series of innovations Watt had employed for steam engines. A giant statue of Watt's governor stands at Smethwick in the English West Midlands.

Uses
Centrifugal governors' widest use was on steam engines during the Steam Age in the 19th century. They are also found on stationary internal combustion engines and variously fueled turbines, and in some modern striking clocks.

Centrifugal governors are used in many modern repeating watches to limit the speed of the striking train, so the repeater does not run too quickly.

Another kind of centrifugal governor consists of a pair of masses on a spindle inside a cylinder, the masses or the cylinder being coated with pads, somewhat like a centrifugal clutch or a drum brake. This is used in a spring-loaded record player and a spring-loaded telephone dial to limit the speed.

Dynamic systems
The centrifugal governor is often used in the cognitive sciences as an example of a dynamic system, in which the representation of information cannot be clearly separated from the operations being applied to the representation. And, because the governor is a servomechanism, its analysis in a dynamic system is not trivial.  In 1868, James Clerk Maxwell wrote a famous paper "On Governors" that is widely considered a classic in feedback control theory. Maxwell distinguishes moderators (a centrifugal brake) and governors which control motive power input. He considers devices by James Watt, Professor James Thomson, Fleeming Jenkin, William Thomson, Léon Foucault and Carl Wilhelm Siemens (a liquid governor).

Natural selection
In his famous 1858 paper to the Linnean Society, which led Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species, Alfred Russel Wallace used governors as a metaphor for the evolutionary principle:

The action of this principle is exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident; and in like manner no unbalanced deficiency in the animal kingdom can ever reach any conspicuous magnitude, because it would make itself felt at the very first step, by rendering existence difficult and extinction almost sure soon to follow.

Bateson revisited the topic in his 1979 book Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, and other scholars have continued to explore the connection between natural selection and systems theory.

Culture
A centrifugal governor is part of the city seal of Manchester, New Hampshire in the U.S. and is also used on the city flag. A 2017 effort to change the design was rejected by voters.

See also
 Cataract (beam engine)
 Centrifugal switch
 Hit and miss engine

References

External links

British inventions
Control devices
Cybernetics
Inventions by Christiaan Huygens
Mechanical power control
Mechanisms (engineering)
Rotating machines
Scottish inventions
Steam engine governors

Centrifugal governor